2016年10月1日
1 10月1日SAT亚太阅读考察篇目
本次5篇文章分别是：
(1) 夏洛蒂勃朗特的简爱chapter 12 开头部分节选。
(2)Thomas Panie的Common sense 节选。
(3) Eric Jaffe的cities are innovative because they contain more ideas to steal. (4) Sid Perkins的Cold Climate Shrinks Mountains
(5) 双篇阅读pasage1 是Erin Wayman 的Oxygen boost aided carnivore evolution in Cambrian Explosion，Passage 2 是Tamarra Kemsley的Discovery Challenges Theory Behind Reason for Cambrian Explosion。
2 10月1日SAT亚太阅读选段分析
(1) 简爱选段。描述的是女主人公爱对她做家庭教师的小女孩的性格描述以及简爱对于生活现在的不满，渴望远方。这段选段其实文本难度不低，尤其是第一段中很多词汇同学们可能不是特别熟悉，如wayward, acquaintance， belie等。考察了词汇题包括nature(essential character)，还有本短的主旨以及文段最后简爱的visions。
文章部分节选：
The promise of a smooth career, which my first calm introduction toThornfield Hall seemed to pledge, was not belied on a longer acquaintance with the place and its inmates. Mrs. Fairfax turned out to be what she appeared, a placid-tempered, kind-natured woman,
of competent education and average intelligence. My pupil was a lively child, who had been spoilt and indulged, and therefore was sometimes wayward;
(2) 本次考试最难的依然是建国纲要类文章，虽然这次没有考察双篇，但是题目出的仍然是相对来说较为抽象。这部分选段，潘恩逐一驳斥了一些人的说法，可谓是将这些人的旧有的观念驳斥成了“渣”。全文的论述相当精彩，比方说开头，一些人说我们过去与Great Britain的联系让我们富裕，所以这种联系就要保存。潘恩上来就骂道，一个小孩儿小时候喝牛奶，以后就不吃别的了么?过去不能预测未来。这是潘恩在逻辑上驳斥了第一类人的说法。
文章部分节选：
I have heard it asserted by some, that as America hath flourished under her former connection with Great Britain, that the same connection is necessary towards her future happiness, and will always have the same effect. Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We may as well assert, that because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat; or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty.
(3) 城市更有创新能力。作者通过详细详细介绍了两位经济学家的论文，指出城市更具有创新能力是因为在城市更能从其他的模式上进行“舶来”。再详细说，在新产品的创造上主要靠original idea，但是在新模式的创造上主要是从其他的人那里借想法。全文的逻辑非常的清晰，行文结构也非常的典型，因此难度不大。考察了词汇题sheer。
We all know that cities are great engines of innovation. One reason that's the case, as Emily Badger recently pointed out, is that cities grow "superlinearly": interpersonal connections grow at an greater rate than sheer population, and with that super proximity comes a super exchange of ideas. The secrets of industry, as economist Alfred Marshall once wrote, are truly "in the air."
(4) 冰冷的气候让山在萎缩。文章探讨了气候climate在山体腐蚀率上的作用，最后得出结论，如果气候持续变冷，则长期来看，腐蚀率会继续攀升。这篇科学类的文章观点单一，主要围绕两者之间的关系展开论证，因此难度也并不高。图表题可能同学们需要注意黑线和浅灰色区域的关系，黑线是平均值。
Every year, billions of tons of rock and soil vanish from Earth’s surface, scoured from mountains and plains and swept away by wind, rain, and other elements. The chief driver of this dramatic resurfacing is climate, according to a new study. And when the global temperature falls, erosion kicks into overdrive.
Scientists have long debated what drives most of the world’s erosion: Is it predominantly triggered by climate, or is it the result of mountain-building, tectonic activity? Most previous studies of erosion have relied on measuring the amounts of sediment that accumulate somewhere after being carried away from their sources and deposited elsewhere. But such analyses focus on the aftereffects of erosion, not the process itself, says Frédéric Herman, a geophysicist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. And most research has looked at limited regions of Earth—a particular mountain range, say, and not the planet as a whole.
(5) 双篇阅读。这篇科学双篇阅读，让大家松了一口气。因为亚太和北美此前都是建国纲要的双篇阅读。两篇文章的观点不同。第一篇文章认为氧含量的上升帮助了cambrian explosion中carnivore的进化，但第一篇文章结尾，Butterfield不同意这个观点。第二篇文章对这个观点进行了驳斥，因为氧含量很充足，所以不是氧气导致了进化。同时文章最后还对这个研究的implication进行了阐述。
Passage 1
Paleobiologist Nicholas Butterfield of the University of Cambridge sees the data differently. He thinks the rise of oxygen was actually an effect of the animals on the environment. He contends that shallow marine areas, where early animals most likely lived, were probably well oxygenated and therefore a lack of the gas did not stifle their evolution. It just took a while for a burst of complex animals to arise from simpler ones, he says. “It takes a whole lot of tinkering and experimenting and false starts until you trip over something that works.”
Passage 2
Ample oxygen saturated Earth's atmosphere prior to the sudden eruption in the development of life during the Cambrian explosion some 542 million years ago, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Led by an international team of researchers, the report reveals that the oxygen content was roughly the same 2.1 billion years ago as 500 million years ago. The finding challenges a long-held theory that the Cambrian explosion was in part triggered by a sudden uptick in the element required by all higher organisms.