P1 霸王龙 T-rex: Hunter or Scavenger

P2 铸造艺术Can we call it “ART”? Life-casting and Art

P3 自我评价 Self-Perception

 

朗阁教师吴苏哲点评

1. 本次阅读考试难度中等。

2. 整体分析：涉及生物（P1）、历史类（P2）、社会类（P3）。

   本场考试文章新旧情况为三篇旧题，题型组合整体比较常规。第一篇为常考旧题，是简单的判断+填空组合；第二篇文章为旧题，是经典的细节配对+判断+选择的组合；第三篇文章今年3月份开始出现，依然是细节配对+判断+选择的组合，但各题型占比信息现尚不明确。

主要题型：本次考试延续了今年整体风格，配对题型考察较多，判断题型也偏多，有超过13题，选择题考察适中，填空题考察较少。

3. 文章分析：第一篇文章主要介绍对一种霸王龙的研究；

             第二篇文章讲述通过人体硅胶制作3D模型的方法；

             第三篇文章谈了对自己想法特点的个人认知和他人看法

 

4. 部分答案及参考文章：

Passage 1：

题型：判断7+填空6

技巧分析：最为简单的判断+填空“双顺”组合。此种组合往往有答案对半分布的特点，本篇文章也符合这个特点，先出现的判断题答案集中在文章前部，后出现的Summary填空题答案集中在文章后部。难度也不高，应快速做完。

参考答案：

1. TRUE

2. FALSE

3. NOT GIVEN

4. TRUE

5. NOT GIVEN

6. TRUE

7. FALSE

8. shin bone

9. slow walker

10. cheetah

11. run fast

12. blunt

13. crush

参考原文及考题

Traditional Farming System in Africa

 Jack Horner is an unlikely academic: his dyslexia is so bad that he has trouble reading a book. But he can read the imprint of life in sandstone or muddy shale across a distance of 100 years, and it is this gift that has made him curator of paleontology at Montana State University’s Museum of the Rockies, the leader of a multi-million dollar scientific project to expose a complete slice of life 68 million years ago, and a consultant to Steven Spielberg and other Hollywood figures.

  His father had a sand and gravel quarry in Montana, and the young Horner was a collector of stones and bones, complete with notes about when and where he found them. “My father had owned a ranch when he was younger, in Montana,” he says. “He was enough of a geologist, being a sand and gravel man, to have a pretty good notion that they were dinosaur bones. So when I was eight years old he took me back to the area that had been his ranch, to where he had seen these big old bones. I picked up one. I am pretty sure it was the upper arm bone of a duckbilled dinosaur: it probably wasn’t a duckbilled dinosaur but closely related to that. I catalogued it, and took good care of it, and then later when I was in high school, excavated my first dinosaur skeleton. It obviously started earlier than eight and I literally have been driven ever since. I feel like I was born this way.”

  Horner spent seven years at university, but never graduated. “I have a learning disability, I would call it a learning difference — dyslexia, they call it — and I just had a terrible time with English and foreign languages and things like that. For a degree in geology or biology they required two years of a foreign language. There was no way in the world I could do that. In fact, I didn’t really pass English. So I couldn’t get a degree, I just wasn’t capable of it. But I took all of the courses required and I wrote a thesis and I did all sorts of things. So I have the education, I just don’t have the piece of paper.” he says.

 “We definitely know we are working on a very broad coastal plain with the streams and rivers bordered by conifers and hardwood plants, and the areas in between these rivers were probably fern-covered. There were no grasses at all: just ferns and bushes — an unusual landscape, kind of taking the south-eastern United States — Georgia, Florida — and mixing it with the moors of England and flattening it out,” he says. “Triceratops is very common: they are the cows of the Cretaceous, they are everywhere. Duckbilled dinosaurs are relatively common but not as common as triceratops and T-rex, for a meat-eating dinosaur, is very common. What we would consider the predator-prey ratio seems really off the scale. What is interesting is the little dromaeosaurs, the ones we know for sure were good predators, are haven’t been found.”

  That is why he sees T-rex not as the lion of the Cretaceous savannah but its vulture. “Look at the wildebeest that migrate in the Serengeti of Africa, a million individuals lose about 200,000 individuals in that annual migration. There is a tremendous carrion base there. And so you have hyenas, you have tremendous numbers of vultures that are scavenging, you don’t have all that many animals that are good predators. If T-rex was a top predator, especially considering how big it is, you’d expect it to be extremely rare, much rarer than the little dromaeosaurs, and yet they are everywhere, they are a dime a dozen,” he says. A 12-tonne T-rex is a lot of vulture, but he doesn’t see the monster as clumsy. He insisted his theory and finding, dedicated to further research upon it, of course, he would like to reevaluate if there is any case that additional evidence found or explanation raised by others in the future.

  He examined the leg bones of the T-rex, and compared the length of the thigh bone (upper leg) to the shin bone (lower leg). He found that the thigh bone was equal in length or slightly longer than the shin bone, and much thicker and heavier, which proves that the animal was built to be a slow walker rather than fast running. On the other hand, the fossils of fast hunting dinosaurs always showed that the shin bone was longer than the thigh bone. This same truth can be observed in many animals of today which are designed to run fast: the ostrich, cheetah, etc.

 He also studied the fossil teeth of the T-rex, and compared them with the teeth of the Velociraptor, and put the nail in the coffin of the “hunter T-rex theory”. The Velociraptor’s teeth which like stake knifes: sharp, razor-edged, and capable of tearing through flesh with ease. The T-rex’s teeth were huge, sharp at their tip, but blunt, propelled by enormous jaw muscles, which enabled them to only crush bones.

  With the evidence presented in his documentary, Horner was able to prove that the idea of the T-rex as being a hunting and ruthless killing machine is probably just a myth. In light of the scientific clues he was able to unearth, the T-rex was a slow, sluggish animal which had poor vision, an extraordinary sense of smell, that often reached its “prey” after the real hunters were done feeding, and sometimes it had to scare the hunters away from a corpse.In order to do that, the T-rex had to have been ugly, nasty-looking, and stinky. This is actually true of nearly all scavenger animals. They are usually vile and nasty looking.

 

Questions 1-7

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

1 Jack Horner knew exactly that the bone picked up in his father’s ranch belonged to a certain dinosaur when he was at the age of 8.

2 Jack Horner achieved a distinctive degree in university when he graduated.

3 Jack Horner believes that the number of preys should be more than that of predators.

4 T-rex’s number is equivalent to the number of vultures in the Serengeti.

5 The hypothesis that T-rex is the top predator conflicts with the fact of predator-prey ratio which Jack found.

6 Jack Horner refused to accept any other viewpoints about T-rex’s theory.

7 Jack Horner is the first man that discovered T-rex’s bones in the world.

 

Questions 8-13

Complete the sentences below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.

   Jack Horner found that T-rex’s 8 __________ is shorter than the thigh bone, which demonstrates that it was actually a 9 __________, unlike other swift animals such as ostrich or 10 ____________ that was built to 11 ____________.Another explanation supports his idea is that T-rex’s teeth were rather 12 ____________, which only allowed T-rex to 13 ____________ hard bones instead of tearing flesh like Velociraptor.

 

Passage 2：

题型：配对5+判断6+选择2

技巧分析：这是一种经典的“一乱两顺”组合。应对这种组合，应从容地应用上课所学的内容，采取“先顺后乱”的策略，先做好后面的顺序题，再用“打包法”做前面的乱序题。做顺序题时，要养成勾画出答案出处的好习惯，这样一旦前面的乱序题涉及的出处和顺序题相重合，即可实现快速定位，做到“秒杀”！

参考答案：

14. D

15. C

16. G

17. H

18. F

19. YES

20. NO

21. NOT GIVEN

22. NO

23. YES

24. YES

25. B

26. D

参考原文及考题

Can we call it “ART"? Life-casting and Art

　　A When these life castings were made in the 19th century, no one thought of them as art. But, if critics today can hail Tracey Emin's unmade bed and the lights going off and on in a gallery as masterpieces of some kind, then shouldn't these more skillful and profoundly strange works have a greater claim on our attention?

　　B Art changes over time; what is art changes, too. Objects intended for devotional(虔诚的)，ritualistic or recreational use are recategorized, by latecomers from another civilisation who no longer respond to these original purposes. Where would New Yorker cartooning be without Lascaux gags in which one bison painter makes anachronistically "artistic" remarks to another? What also happens is that techniques and crafts judged non-artistic at the time are reassessed.

　　C In the 19th century, lifecasting was to sculpture what photography was to painting; and both were viewed as cheating short-cuts by the senior arts. Their virtues of speed and unwavering realism also implied their limitations; they left little or no room for the imagination. For many, lifecasting was an insult to the sculptor's creative gesture; in a famous lawsuit of 1834, a moulder whose mask of the dying Napoleon had been reproduced and sold without his permission, was judged to have no rights in the image in other words, he was specifically held not to be an artist. Rodin said of life-casting: "It happens fast, but it doesn't make art” Others feared that the whole canon of aesthetics might be blown off course if too much nature was allowed in, it would lead art away from its proper pursuit of the ideal.

　　D Gauguin, at the end of the century, worried about future developments in photography: if ever the process went into colour, what painter would labour away at a likeness with a brush made from squirrel-tail? But painting has proved robust. Photography changed it, of course, just as the novel had to reassess narrative after the arrival of the cinema. But the gap between the senior and junior arts was always narrower than the die-bards implied: painters have always used technical back-up studio assistants to do the boring bits, cameras lucida and obscura; while apparently lesser crafts involve great skill, thought, preparation, choice, and depending how we define it imagination. Life-casting was complex, technical work, as Benjamin Robert Haydon discovered when he poured 250 liters of plaster over his black model Wilson and nearly killed him.

　　E Time changes our view in another way, too. Each new art movement implies a reassessment of what has gone before; what is done now alters what was done before. In some cases, this is merely self-serving, with the new art using the old to justify itself: Look how all of that points to this; aren't we clever to be the culmination of all the sensibility, reminding us not to take things for granted; every so often we need the aesthetic equivalent of a cataract operation. So there are many items in this show innocent bit players back in the last half of the 19th century which would sit happily nowadays in a commercial or public gallery. Many curators would probably put in for the stunning cast of the hand of a giant from Barnum's circus.

 　F The initial impact is on the eye, in the contradiction (which Mueck constantly exploits) between unexpected size and extreme verisimilitude. Next, the human element kicks in: you note that the nails are dirt-encrusted unless this is the caster's decorative addition and the paddy fingertips extend far beyond them. (Was the giant an anxious gnawer, or does giantism mean that the flesh simply outgrows the nails?) Then you take in the element of choice, arrangement, art if you like poignantly of the full size original who in his time was just as much a victim of gawping. We are not a long way from Degas's La Petite Danseuse (which, after all, one critic said should be in the Dupuytren pathology museum); though we are nearer to contemporary art that lazily gets called cutting-edge.

　　G Barthcs proclaimed the death of the author, the liberation of the text from authorial intention, and the consequent empowerment of the reader, he announced this, needless to say, in a text written with a particular intention in order to communicate something very specific to a reader. An own goal of Keith Weller proportions. But what doesn't work for literature works much better for art. Pictures do float free of their creators' intentions; over time, the "reader" does become more powerful. Few of us can look at a medieval altarpiece as its painter "intended", we believe too little and aesthetically know too much, so we recreate, we find new fields of pleasure in the work. Equally, the lack of artistic intention of Paul Richer and other forgotten craftsmen who brushed oil on to flesh, who moulded cast, decorated and primped a century and more ago is now irrelevant.

　　H What counts is the surviving object and our living response to it. The tests are simple: does it interest the eye, excite the brain, move the mind to reflection, and involve the heart; further, is an apparent level of skill involved? Much currently fashionable art bothers only the eye and briefly the brain; but it fails to engage the mind or the heart. It may, to use the old dichotomy, be beautiful, but it is come at us from an unexpected angle arid stop us short in wonder. That is what many of the objects in this show do. The Ataxic Venus doesn't make Ron Mueck's Dead Dad any less intense and moving an image; but she does offer herself as a companion, precursor, and, yes, rival.

Questions 14-18

The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-H.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-H, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

14 Technicians do the boring work

15 A trial on a famous figure's mask in 19th century

16 Intention from author is claimed matters in Art

17 How to assess an art

18 Detailed depiction of an earlier work

Questions19-24

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

In boxes 19-24 on your answer sheet, write

19 The intention of an artist will change as time pass

20 In 19th century, people appreciate fast speed and realism of living casting.

21 Rodin indicated that slow pace would improve the artistic quality of casting.

22 The importance of painting casting dropped as the development of life casting.

23 Casting requires less skills than painting.

24 Emerge of new art makes people reacquaint the meaning of art.

Questions 25-26

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

Write your answers in boxes 25 on your answer sheet.

25 Why hand of giant from Barnum's circus attract people's attention in the first place?

A details and human element

B size and realism

C texture and color

D imagination and intuition

26 What requirements does it depend on when judging if an object is "art"?

A audience status

B fresh or old condition

C lasting period

D public response

 

Passage 3：

题型：配对+判断+选择

技巧分析：同上篇。

 

答案及原文待补充

 

考试预测

1. 2019年12月第一场考试，难度中等，整体延续了全年风格。在接下来考试中，考生还是要注意有可能出现大量配对题型集中的情况。同学们一定要多做练习巩固上课所讲的所有答题技巧。

2. 下场考试的话题可能有关教育类，医学类，传记类。

 

3. 重点浏览2014-2016年机经。

 

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