[雅思机经]2017年7月15日雅思阅读真题回顾

考试日期

2017年7月15日

Reading Passage 1

Title

The Pearl

Question types

段落信息配对题 4题

Summary（带选项） 6题

TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN 3题

文章内容回顾

文章大意：

*段：珍珠在古代是富贵的象征。

第二段：珍珠可以分为自然、人工培养和人模仿制造三种。

第三段：如何区分天然珍珠和养殖珍珠。

第四段：珍珠的来源，淡水或海水，各自的特征和形成过程。

第五段：天然珍珠的形成需要一定的时间，期间牡蛎可能会死于疾病或其它一些原因，剩下的并不多。

第六段：人模仿制造珍珠的产业。

第七段：*各地的珍珠情况，包括波斯湾，墨西哥湾，印度等。

The Pearl

A. Throughout history, pearls have held a unique presence within the wealthy and powerful. For instance, the pearl was the favored gem of the wealthy during the Roman Empire. This gift from the sea had been brought back from the orient by the Roman conquests. Roman women wore pearls to bed so they could be reminded of their wealth immediately upon waking up. Before jewelers learned to cut gems, the pearl was of greater value than the diamond. In the Orient and Persia Empire, pearls were ground into powders to cure anything from heart disease to epilepsy, with possible aphrodisiac uses as well. Pearls were once considered an exclusive privilege for royalty. A law in 1612 drawn up by the Duke of Saxony prohibited the wearing of pearls by nobility, professors, doctors or their wives in an effort to further distinguish royal appearance. American Indians also used freshwater pearls from the Mississippi River as decorations and jewelry.

B. There are essentially three types of pearls: natural, cultured and imitation. A natural pearl (often called an Oriental pearl) forms when an irritant, such as a piece of sand, works its way into a particular species of oyster, mussel, or clam. As a defense mechanism, the mollusk secretes a fluid to coat the irritant. Layer upon layer of this coating is deposited on the irritant until a lustrous pearl is formed.

C. The only difference natural pearls and cultured pearls is that the irritant is a surgically implanted bead or piece of shell called Mother of Pearl. Often, these shells are ground oyster shells that are worth significant amounts of money in their own right as irritant-catalysts for quality pearls. The resulting core is, much larger than in a natural pearl. Yet, as long as there are enough layers of nacre (the secreted fluid covering the irritant) to result in a beautiful, gem-quality pearl, the size of the nucleus is of no consequence to beauty or durability.

D. Pearls can come from either salt or freshwater sources. Typically, saltwater pearls tend to be higher quality, although there are several types of freshwater pearls that are considered high in quality as well. Freshwater pearls tend to be very irregular in shape, with a puffed rice appearance the most prevalent. Nevertheless, it is each individual pearls merits that determines value more than the source of the pearl. Saltwater pearl oysters are usually cultivated in protected lagoons or volcanic atolls. However, most freshwater cultured pearls sold today come from China. Cultured pearls are the response of the shell to a tissue implant. A tiny piece of mantle tissue from a donor shell is transplanted into a recipient shell. This graft will form a pearl sac and the tissue will precipitate calcium carbonate into this pocket. There are a number of options for producing cultured pearls: use freshwater or seawater shells, transplant the graft into the mantle or into the gonad, add a spherical bead or do it nonbeaded. The majority of saltwater cultured pearls are grown with beads.

E. Regardless of the method used to acquire a pearl, the process usually takes several years. Mussels must reach a mature age, which can take up t0 3 years, and then be implanted or naturally receive an irritant. Once the irritant is in place, it can take up to another 3 years for the pearl to reach its full size. Often, the irritant may be rejected, the pearl will be terrifically misshapen, or the oyster may simply die from disease or countless other complications. By the end of a 5 t0 10 year cycle, only 50% of the oysters will have survived. And of the pearls produced, only approximately 5% are of substantial quality for top jewelry makers. From the outset, a pearl fanner can figure on spending over $100 for every oyster that is farmed, of which many will produce nothing or die.

F. Imitation pearls are a different story altogether. In most cases, a glass bead is dipped into a solution made from fish scales. This coating is thin and may eventually wear off. One can usually tell an imitation by biting on it. Fake pearls glide across your teeth, while the layers of nacre on real pearls feel gritty. The Island of Mallorca (in Spain) is known for its imitation pearl industry. Quality natural pearls are very rare jewels. The actual value of a natural pearl is determined in the same way as it would be for other precious gems. The valuation factors include size, shape, color, quality of surface, orient and luster. In general, cultured pearls are less valuable than natural pearls, whereas imitation pearls almost have no value. One way that jewelers can determine whether a pearl is cultured or natural is to have a gem lab perform an x-ray of the pearl. If the x-ray reveals a nucleus, the pearl is likely a beadnucleated saltwater pearl. If no nucleus is present, but irregular and small dark inner spots indicating a cavity are visible, combined with concentric rings of organic substance, the pearl is likely a cultured freshwater. Cultured freshwater pearls can often be confused for natural pearls which present as homogeneous pictures which continuously darken toward the surface of the pearl. Natural pearls will often show larger cavities where organic matter has dried out and decomposed. Although imitation pearls look the part, they do not have the same weight or smoothness as real pearls, and their luster will also dim greatly. Among cultured pearls, Akoya pearls from Japan are some of the most lustrous. A good quality necklace of 40 Akoya pearls measuring 7mm in diameter sells for about $1,500, while a super- high quality strand sells for about $4,500. Size on the other hand, has to do with the age of the oyster that created the pearl (the more mature oysters produce larger pearls) and the location in which the pearl was cultured. The South Sea waters of Australia tend to produce the larger pearls; probably because the water along the coast line is supplied with rich nutrients from the ocean floor. Also, the type of mussel common to the area seems to possess a predilection for producing comparatively large pearls.

G. Historically, the world’s best pearls came from the Persian Gulf, especially around what is now Bahrain. The pearls of the Persian Gulf were natural created and collected by breath-hold divers. The secret to the special luster of Gulf pearls probably derived from the unique mixture of sweet and salt water around the island. Unfortunately, the natural pearl industry of the Persian Gulf ended abruptly in the early 1930’s with the discovery of large deposits of oil. Those who once dove for pearls sought prosperity in the economic boom ushered in by the oil industry. The water pollution resulting from spilled oil and indiscriminate over-fishing of oysters essentially ruined the once pristine pearl producing waters of the Gulf. Today, pearl diving is practiced only as a hobby. Still, Bahrain remains one of the foremost trading centers for high quality pearls. In fact, cultured pearls are banned from the Bahrain pearl market, in an effort to preserve the location’s heritage. Nowadays, the largest stock of natural pearls probably resides in India. Ironically, much of India’s stock of natural pearls came originally from Bahrain. Unlike Bahrain, which has essentially lost its pearl resource, traditional pearl fishing is still practiced on a small scale in India.

题型技巧分析

对于Summary题型，一般把握三个关键信息：逻辑关系词，语法属性，定位。首先，观察空格前后语义间是否有逻辑关系的连接词；其次，题库空格处所填的语法属性；较后，根据顺序原则在空格前后找定位关键词回原文定位。

剑桥雅思推荐原文练习

剑6 Test 4 Passage 2

Reading Passage 2

Title

European Heat Wave

Question types

TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN 6题

简答题 2题

Summary填空题 4题

选择题 1题

原文题目回顾

European Heat Wave

A. It was the summer, scientists now realize, when felt. We knew that summer 2003 was remarkable: global warming at last made itself unmistakably Britain experienced its record high temperature and continental Europe saw forest fires raging out of control, great rivers drying of a trickle and thousands of heat related deaths. But just how remarkable is only now becoming clean.

B. The three months of June, July and August were the warmest ever recorded in western and central Europe, with record national highs in Portugal, Germany and Switzerland as well as Britain. And they were the warmest by a very long way Over a great rectangular block of the earth stretching from west of Paris to northern Italy, taking in Switzerland and southern Germany, the average temperature for the summer months was 3.78℃ above the long-term norm, said the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, which is one of the world’s lending institutions for the monitoring and analysis of temperature records.

C. That excess might not seem a lot until you are aware of the context-but then you realise it is enormous. There is nothing like this in previous data, anywhere. It is considered so exceptional that Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director, is prepared to say openly-in a way few scientists have done before that the 2003 extreme may be directly attributed, not to natural climate variability, but to global warming caused by human actions.

D. Meteorologists have hitherto contented themselves with the formula that recent high temperatures are consistent with predictions of climate change. For the great block of the map-that stretching between 35-50N and 0-20E-the CRU has reliable temperature records dating back to 1781. Using as a baseline the average summer temperature recorded between 1961 andl990, departures from the temperature norm, or anomalies’: over the area as a whole can easily be plotted. As the graph shows, such is the variability of our climate that over the past 200 years, there have been at least half a dozen anomalies, in terms of excess temperature-the peaks on the graph denoting very hot years approaching, or even exceeding, 20 ℃ . But there has been nothing remotely like 2003，when the anomaly is nearly four degrees.

E. This is quite remarkable, Professor Jones told The Independent. It’s very unusual in a statistical sense. If this series had a normal statistical distribution, you wouldn’t get this number. There turn period how often it could be expected to recur would be something like one in a thou-sand years. If we look at an excess above the average of nearly four degrees, then perhaps nearly three degrees of that is natural variability, because we’ve seen that in past summers. But the final degree of it is likely to be due to global warming, caused by human actions.

F. The summer of 2003 has, in a sense, been one that climate scientists have long been expecting. Until now, the warming has been manifesting itself mainly in winters that have been less cold than in summers that have been much hotter. Last week, the United Nations predicted that winters were warming so quickly that winter sports would die out in Europe’s lower-level ski resorts. But sooner or later the unprecedented hot summer was bound to come, and this year it did.

G. One of the most dramatic features of the summer was the hot nights, especially in the first half of August. In Paris, the temperature never dropped below 230 ℃ (73.40 ℉ ) at all between 7 and 14 August, and the city recorded its warmest-ever night on 11-12 August, when the mercury did not drop below 25.50 ℃ (77.90 ℉ ). Germany recorded its warmest-ever night at Weinbiet in the Rhine valley with a lowest figure of 27.60℃ (80.60 ℉ ) on 13 August, and similar record-breaking nighttime temperatures were recorded in Switzerland and Italy.

H. The 15,000 excess deaths in France during August, compared with previous years, have been related to the high night-time temperatures. The number gradually increased during the first 12days of the month, peaking at about 2,000 per day on the night of 12-13 August, then fell off dramatically after 14 August when the minimum temperatures fell by about 50C. The elderly were most affected, with a 70 per cent increase in mortality rate in those aged 75-94.

I. For Britain, the year as a whole is likely to be the warmest ever recorded, but despite the high temperature record on 10 August, the summer itself defined as the June, July and August period-still comes behind 1976 and 1995, when there were longer periods of intense heat. At the moment, the year is on course to be the third-hottest ever in the global temperature record，which goes back to 1856, behind 1998 and 2002 but when all the records for October, November and December are collated, it might move into second place, Professor Jones said. The 10 hottest years in the record have all now occurred since 1990. Professor Jones is in no doubt about the astonishing nature of European summer of 2003.The temperatures recorded were out of all proportion to the previous record, he said. It was the warmest summer in the past 500 years and probably way beyond that It was enormously exceptional.

J. His colleagues at the University of East Anglia’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research are now planning a special study of it. It was a summer that has not: been experienced before, either in terms of the temperature extremes that were reached, or the range and diversity of the impacts of the extreme heat, said the centre’s executive director, Professor Mike Hulme. It will certainly have left its mark on a number of countries, as to how they think and plan for climate change in the future, much as the 2000 floods have revolutionised the way the Government is thinking about flooding in the UK. The 2003 heat wave will have similar repercussions across Europe.

Questions 14-19

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

14. The average summer temperature in 2003 is approximately four degrees higher than that of the past. TRUE

15. Jones believes the temperature statistic is within the normal range. FALSE

16. Human factor is one of the reasons that caused hot summer. TRUE

17. In large city, people usually measure temperature twice a day. NOT GIVEN

18. Global warming has obvious effect of warmer winter instead of hotter summer before 2003. TRUE

19. New ski resorts are to be built on a high-altitude spot. NOT GIVEN

Questions 20-21

Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR NUMBERS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 20-21 on your answer sheet.

20. What are the two hottest years in Britain besides 2003?

1976 and 1995

21. What will affect UK government policies besides climate change according to Hulme?

2000 floods

Questions 22-25

Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage. Write your answers in boxes 22-25 On your answer sheet.

In the summer of 2003, thousands of extra death occurred in the country of 22. France. Moreover, world-widely, the third record of hottest summer date from 23. 1856, after the year of 24. 1998 and 2002. According to Jones, all the 10 hottest years happened from 25. 1990. However, summer of 2003 was at the peak of previous  500 years, perhaps even more.

Question 26

Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D

Write your answer in box 26 on your answer sheet

26. Which one can be best served as the title of this passage in the following options? 选：D

A. Global Warming effect

B. Global Warming in Europe

C. The Effects of hot temperature

D. Hottest summer in Europe

剑桥雅思推荐原文练习

剑8 Test 4 Passage 3

Reading Passage 3

Title

科学和实验

Question types

判断题 5题

单选题 4题

Summary（带选项） 5题

文章内容回顾

当代新科学家与过去科学家相比的发展变化，以及他们对社会的贡献。