2014.8.21雅思考试阅读考题回顾

考试日期

2014年8月21日

Reading Passage 1

Title

The History of Coffee House

Question types

TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN 6题

表格填空 2题

完成句子 5题

文章内容回顾

咖啡馆的变迁；较后变成为了penny universities。

相关英文原文阅读

English coffeehouses, in the 17th and 18th centuries, were public social places where people would meet for conversation and commerce while drinking coffee. For the price of a penny, customers purchased a cup of coffee and admission. Travelers introduced coffee as a beverage to England during the mid-17th century; previously it had been mainly for its supposed medicinal properties. Coffeehouses also served tea and chocolate.

The historian Brian Cowan describes English coffeehouses as "places where people gathered to drink coffee, learn the news of the day, and perhaps to meet with other local residents and discuss matters of mutual concern." The absence of alcohol created an atmosphere in which it was possible to engage in more serious conversation than in an alehouses. Coffeehouses also played an important role in the development of financial markets and newspapers.

Topics discussed included politics and political scandals, daily gossip, fashion, current events, and debates surrounding philosophy and the natural sciences. Historians often associate English coffeehouses, during the 17th and 18th centuries, with the intellectual and cultural history of the Age of Enlightenment: they were an alternate sphere, supplementary to the university. Political groups frequently used coffeehouses as meeting places.

Early London coffeehouses

The Oxford-style coffeehouses, which acted as a centre for social intercourse, gossip, and scholastic interest, spread quickly to London, where English coffeehouses became popularized and embedded within the English popular and political culture. Pasqua Rosée, the Greek servant of a Levant Company merchant named Daniel Edwards, established the first London coffeehouse in 1652. London''s second coffeehouse was named the Temple Bar, established by James Farr in 1656. Initially, there was little evidence to suggest that London coffeehouses were popular and largely frequented, due to the nature of the unwelcome competition felt by other London businesses.[14] When Harrington''s Rota Club began to meet in another established London coffeehouse known as the Turk''s Head, to debate "matters of politics and philosophy", English coffeehouse popularity began to rise. This club was also a "free and open academy unto all comers" whose raison d''être was the art of debate, characterized as "contentious but civil, learned but not didactic." According to Cowan, despite the Rota''s banishment after the Restoration of the monarchy, the discursive framework they established while meeting in coffeehouses set the tone for coffeehouse conversation throughout the rest of the 17th century.

Penny universities

Penny University is a term originating from the 18th-century coffeehouses in London, England. Instead of paying for drinks, people were charged a penny to enter a coffeehouse. Once inside, the patron had access to coffee, the company of others, various discussions, pamphlets, bulletins, newspapers, and the latest news and gossip. Reporters called "runners" went around to the coffeehouses announcing the latest news, perhaps not too unlike what we might hear on the TV or the radio today.

This environment attracted an eclectic group of people who met and mingled with each other at these coffeehouses. In a society that placed such a high importance on class and economic status, the coffeehouses were unique because the patrons were people from all levels of society. Anyone who had a penny could come inside. Students from the universities also frequented the coffeehouses, sometimes even spending more time at the shops than at school.

题型难度分析

这篇文章是新题，之前没有出现过。题型以完成表格和句子为主，所以难度一般，方法仍然是定位加上同义替换来解决。是非无判断题对于某些考生来说可能难度偏大，尤其需要注意对FALSE和NOT GIVEN的区别。

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Reading Passage 2

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