2016年4月23日
词汇题：
attest to=provide evidence of
fragments=pieces
painstaking=taking great effort to
substantial=considerable
configuration=arrangement
precise=accurate
distinctive=recognizable
in contrast to=as opposed to
dispersal=distribution
imitator=someone who copied his work
associated with=related to
第一篇：
题材划分：社科类文章
主要内容：
制造表的发展。
先说以前一个master一年只能做十几个表，特别painstaking只有富人才能买得起。后来有个人叫Elf，他简化了钟表制造的材料，创新了一些设备，行了一系列变革，通过专业化啊水力啊，让表产量变大，又轻，又便宜。本来特别重，不好运输，他就把弄得更轻了，可以挂住，不用专门做cabinet了。然后使钟表让中产阶级也买得起，从精细制造变成mass production。后来他为了peddler就继续发明创造，然后在1816年造出了shelf clock获得专利，但是还是有很多人抄袭模仿，这些模仿也在一定程度上促进了钟表的精细化。他有个员工叫Jerome，借鉴了上一个老板的经验，然后和Elf一起将钟表变得美观时尚又物廉价美。
解析：整体文章词汇相对较简单，没有生涩难懂的学术词汇，只是第一篇相对而言比较难进入状态，所以一定要调整好自己的心态。
相似TPO练习推荐：
TPO30- The Invention of the Mechanical Clock
TPO16- Development of the Periodic Table
相关文章：
The Invention of the Mechanical Clock
In Europe, before the introduction of the mechanical clock, people told time by sun (using, for example, shadow sticks or sun dials) and water clocks. Sun clocks worked, of course, only on clear days; water clocks misbehaved when the temperature fell toward freezing, to say nothing of long-run drift as the result of sedimentation and clogging. Both these devices worked well in sunny climates; but in northern Europe the sun may be hidden by clouds for weeks at a time, while temperatures vary not only seasonally but from day to night.
Medieval Europe gave new importance to reliable time. The Catholic Church had its seven daily prayers, one of which was at night, requiring an alarm arrangement to waken monks before dawn. And then the new cities and towns, squeezed by their walls, had to know and order time in order to organize collective activity and ration space. They set a time to go to sleep. All this was compatible with older devices so long as there was only one authoritative timekeeper; but with urban growth and the multiplication of time signals, discrepancy brought discord and strife. Society needed a more dependable instrument of time measurement and found it in the mechanical clock.
We do not know who invented this machine, or where. It seems to have appeared in Italy and England (perhaps simultaneous invention) between 1275 and 1300. Once known, it spread rapidly, driving out water clocks but not solar dials, which were needed to check the new machines against the timekeeper of last resort. These early versions were rudimentary, inaccurate, and prone to breakdown.
Ironically, the new machine tended to undermine Catholic Church authority. Although church ritual had sustained an interest in timekeeping throughout the centuries of urban collapse that followed the fall of Rome, church time was nature’ s time. Day and night were divided into the same number of parts, so that except at the equinoxes, days and night hours were unequal; and then of course the length of these hours varied with the seasons. But the mechanical clock kept equal hours, and this implied a new time reckoning. The Catholic Church resisted, not coming over to the new hours for about a century. From the start, however, the towns and cities took equal hours as their standard, and the public clocks installed in town halls and market squares became the very symbol of a new, secular municipal authority. Every town wanted one; conquerors seized them as especially precious spoils of war; tourists came to see and hear these machines the way they made pilgrimages to sacred relics.
The clock was the greatest achievement of medieval mechanical ingenuity. Its general accuracy could be checked against easily observed phenomena, like the rising and setting of the sun. The result was relentless pressure to improve technique and design. At every stage, clockmakers led the way to accuracy and precision; they became masters of miniaturization, detectors and correctors of error, searchers for new and better. They were thus the pioneers of mechanical engineering and served as examples and teachers to other branches of engineering.
The clock brought order and control, both collective and personal. Its public display and private possession laid the basis for temporal autonomy: people could now coordinate comings and goings without dictation from above. The clock provided the punctuation marks for group activity, while enabling individuals to order their own work (and that of others) so as to enhance productivity. Indeed, the very notion of productivity is a by-product of the clock: once on can relate performance to uniform time units, work is never the same. One moves from the task-oriented time consciousness of the peasant (working on job after another, as time and light permit) and the time-filling busyness of the domestic servant (who always had something to do) to an effort to maximize product per unit of time.
第二篇
题材划分：历史类文章
主要内容：
在泰国附近出现的一个D文明，语言和Mon语言有联系。信奉佛教，并且有很多的贸易路线。因为用的都是这个文字讲了好多什么雕塑啊乱七八糟的，最后说甚至不清楚有没有一个capital，不知道正值也不知道ethic，这个文明出现在6世纪，到了9世纪的时候，有另一批人到达了这里。
解析：
就文章题材而言，是TPO和
相似TPO练习推荐：
TPO26- Sumer and the First Cities of the Ancient Near East
TPO5- The Origin of the Pacific Island People
第三篇
题材划分： 生物类文章
主要内容：
考古学家如何区分家养的和野生的动植物，先说有好多方法可以区分，但有的时候很难分，他们的特征可能一样又列举了一堆区分方法，每个都有点问题，后来说一般都运用floated的技术使有机物和别的分离，这样就可以分析植物家养与否。但是动物没有这么好区分，因为很多特征在家养的和野生的动物身上都可以提现，所以有另外的办法，就是看人类的捕杀数量和对象，在某个时间，人类杀成年的动物数量很多，证明人类那时就有选择性的捕猎，但是这个办法需要好好考虑，因为有很多因素，比如雌雄和动物数量波动很大等三个原因。还有一个发现就是一些属于XX时代的磨光的石头，然后又说农业的发展让他们建了一堆谷仓啊，容器的来储藏粮食，所以不太可能游牧。这些都证明了在向驯养的转变，最后一段说不能只根据clay pot来证明驯养的举日本的例子。
解析：
就整体的文章结构来看，考生可通过阅读对应的TS句来了解段落的大意，相对比较容易把握，题目难度也不高，基本上都可以从原文中找到对应的信息点。
相似TPO练习推荐：
TPO5—Minerals and Plants
TPO28-Buck Rubs and Buck Scrapes