雅思模拟试卷阅读

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Questions 18-23

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 18-23 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statements agree with the information FALSE if the statements contradicts the information NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

18 there appears to be a fixed patter for the padanus probe’s construction.

19 there is plenty of evidence to indicate how the crows manufacture the padanus prove 20 crows seem to practice a number of times before making a usable padanus probe

21 the researchers suspect the crows have a mental images of the padanus probe before

they create it.

22 research into how the padanus probe is made as helped to explain the toolmaking

skills of many other bird species.

23 the researchers believe the ability to make the padanus probe is passed down to the

crows in their genes

Questions 24-26

Choose THREE letters, A-G

Write the correct letters in boxes 24-26 on you answer sheet.

According to the information in the passage, which THREE of the following features are probably common to both New Caledonian crows and human beings? A keeping the same mate for life B having few natural predators

C having a bias to the right when working D being able to process sequential tasks E living in extended family groups F eating a variety of foodstuffs G being able to diverse habitats

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10

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 on pages 10 and 11.

How did writing begin?

Many theories, few answers

The Sumerians, an ancient people of the Middle East, had a story explaining the invention of writing more than 5000 years ago. It seems a messenger of the king of Uruk arrived at the court of a distant ruler so exhausted that he was unable to deliver the oral message. So the king set down the words of his next messages on a clay tablet. A charming story, whose retelling at a recent symposium at the university of Pennsylvania amused scholars. They smiled at the absurdity of a letter which the recipient would not have been able to read. They also doubted that the earliest writing was a direct rendering of speech. Writing more likely began as a separate, symbolic system of communication and only later merger with spoken language.

Yet in the story the Sumerians, who lived in Mesopotamia, in what is now southern Iraq, seemed to understand writing’s transforming function. As Dr Holly Pittman, director of the University’s Center for Ancient Studies, observed, writing ‘ arose out of the need to store and transmit information…over time and space’.

In exchanging interpretations and information, the scholars acknowledged that they still had no fully satisfying answers to the questions of how and why writing developed. Many favourated an explanation of writing’s origins in the visual arts, pictures becoming increasingly abstract and eventually representing spoken words. Their views clashed with a widely held theory among archaeologists writing developed from the pieces of clay that Sumerian accountants used as tokens to keep track of goods.

Archaeologists generally concede that they have no definitive answer to the question of whether writing was invented only once, or arose independently in several places, such as Egypt, the Indus Valley, China, Mexico and Central America. The preponderance of archaeological data shows that the urbanizing Sumerians were the first to develop writing, in 3200 or 3300 BC. These are the dates for many clay tablets in an early form of cuneiform, a script written by pressing the end of a sharpened stick into wet clay, found at the site of the ancient city of Uruk. the baked clay tablets bore such images as pictorial symbols of the names of people, place and things connected with government and commerce. The Sumerian script gradually evolved from the pictorial to the abstract, but did not at first represent recorded spoken language.

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Dr Peter Damerow, a specialist in Sumerian cuneiform at the Mac Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, said, “It is likely that there were mutual influences of writing systems around the world. However, their great variety now shows that the development of writing, once initiated, attains a considerable degree of independence and flexibility to adapt to specific characteristics of the sounds of the language to be representation of words by pictures. New studies of early Sumerian writing, he said, challenge this interpretation. The structures of this earliest writing did not, for example, match the structure of spoken language, dealing mainly in lists and categories rather than in sentences and narrative.

For at least two decades, Dr Denise Schmandt-Besserat, a University of Texas archaeologist, has argued that the first writing grew directly out of a system practiced by Sumerian accountants. They used clay tokens, each one shaped to represent a jar of oil, a container of grain of a particular kind of livestock. These tokens were sealed inside clay spheres, and then then number and type of tokens inside was recorded on the outside using impressions resembling the tokens. Eventually, the token impressions were replaced with inscribed signs, and writing had been invented.

Though Dr Schmandt-Besserat has won much support, some linguists question her thesis, and others, like Dr Pittman, think it too narrow. They emphasise that pictorial representation and writing evolved together. ‘There’s no question that the token system is a forerunner of writing,’ Dr Pittman said, ‘but I have an argument with her evidence for a link between tokens and signs, and she doesn’t open up the process to include picture making.’

Dr Schmandt-Besserat vigorously defended her ideas. ‘My colleagues say that pictures were the beginning of writing,’ she said, ‘but show me a single picture that becomes a sign in writing. They say that designs on pottery were the beginning of writing, but show me a single sign of writing you can trace back to a pot- it doesn’t exist.’ In its first 500 years, she asserted, cuneiform writing was used almost solely for recording economic information, and after that its uses multiplied and broadened.

Yet other scholars have advanced different ideas. Dr Piotor Michalowski, Professor of Near East Civilizations at the University of Michigan, said that the proto-writing of Sumerian Uruk was ‘so radically different as to be a complete break with the past’. It no doubt served, he said, to store and communicate information, but also became a new instrument of power. Some scholars noted that the origins of writing may not always have been in economics. In Egypt, most early writing is high on monuments or deep in tombs. In this case, said Dr Pascal Vernus from a university in Paris, early writing was less administrative than scared. It seems that the only certainty in this field is that many questions remain to be answered.

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Questions 27-30

Choose the correct letter, A,B,C or D.

Write the correct letter in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

27 The researchers at the symposium regarded the story of the King of Uruk as ridiculous

because

A writing probably developed independently of speech. B clay tablets had not been invented at that time.

C the distant ruler would have spoken another language.

D evidence of writing has been discovered from an earlier period. 28 According to the writer, the story of the King of Uruk

A is a probable explanation of the origins of writing.

B proves that early writing had a different function to writing today. C provides an example of symbolic writing.

D shows some awareness amongst Sumerians of the purpose of writing. 29 There was disagreement among the researchers at the symposium about A the area where writing began.

B the nature of early writing materials. C the way writing began.

D the meaning of certain abstract images.

30 The opponents of the theory that writing developed from tokens believe that it A grew out of accountancy. B evolved from pictures.

C was initially intended as decoration.

D was unlikely to have been connected with commerce.

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