2017年7月8日雅思阅读考题回忆
——华盟教育雅思部

总体评析  

此次考试三篇文章为两篇新题加一篇旧题，第一篇讲的泰晤士河底隧道的修建，第二篇讲的是雇佣老人工作，第三篇讲的是班级规模对教学质量的影响。出现了较多的段落信息配对题，整体难度偏难。

Passage 1

新旧

题材

文章标题

题型

新

建筑

The tunnel under the Thames

判断8+填空5

文章大意

英国有必要建造一条连接南北的地下管道，一个叫Trevithick的专家在没有前人的经验下领队动工，但是由于现有技术的局限性导致终止了工程。之后，另一个叫Brunel的专家也尝试建造，但是由于他的设计催在空气污染等问题，并且他在建造过程中缺少资金，最后这个隧道停工了。之后，基于这些经验，描述了泰晤士河下地下管道建设的现状。

详细回忆

 (以下题目为部分回忆，答案可能有误，仅供参考)

1. NOT GIVEN
2. TRUE
3. TRUE
4. FALSE
5. TRUE
6. NOT GIVEN
7. 暂缺
8. FALSE
9. technique
10.  solidarity
11.  headaches
12.  accidents
13.  government

类似文章

The Tunnel Under the Thames
　　 At the beginning of the 19th century, the port of London was the busiest in the world. Cargoes that had traveled thousands of miles, and survived all the hazards of the sea, piled up on the wharves of Rotherhithe—only for their owners to discover that the slowest, most frustrating portion of their journey often lay ahead of them. Consignments intended for the southern (and most heavily populated) parts of Britain had to be heaved onto creaking ox carts and hauled through the docklands and across London Bridge, which had been built in the 12th century and was as cramped and impractical as its early date implied. By 1820, it had become the center of the world’s largest traffic jam.
　　It was a situation intolerable to a city with London ’s pride, and it was clear that if private enterprise could build another crossing closer to the docks, there would be a tidy profit to be made in tolls. Another bridge was out of the question—it would deny sailing ships access to the Pool of London—and ambitious men turned their thoughts to driving a tunnel beneath the Thames instead. This was not such an obvious idea as it might appear. Although demand for coal was growing fast as the industrial revolution hit high gear, working methods remained primitive. Tunnels were dug by men wielding picks in sputtering candlelight.
　　No engineers had tunneled under a major river, and the Thames was an especially tricky river. To the north, London was built on a solid bed of clay, ideal tunneling material. To the south and east, however, lay deeper strata of water-bearing sand, gravel and oozing quicksand, all broken up by layers of gravel, silt, petrified trees and the debris of ancient oyster beds. The ground was semi-liquid, and at depth it became highly pressurized, threatening to burst into any construction site.
　　The chief engineer of this first tunnel project was a muscular giant named Richard Trevithick, a self-educated man who had progressed from youthful fame as a Cornish wrestler by displaying a dazzling talent for invention. Trevithick had harnessed steam power to drive the first self-propelled engine to run on rails and designed the world ’s first high-pressure steam engine. He was convinced that a tunnel could be hacked out under the Thames relatively easily. It did not take long for him to realize he was wrong. Trevithick’s men made fine progress while tunneling through London clay, but once they got under the Thames they had constant trouble. Their pilot tunnel was just five feet high and three feet wide, and sewage-laden water seeped in from the river, thirty feet above their heads, at the rate of 20 gallons a minute. Within this narrow space three miners worked on their knees, one hewing at the face with his pick, another clearing away the sodden earth, the third shoring up the drift with timbers. Working conditions during the six-hour shifts were appalling; the men were soaked with sweat and river water, no one could stand or stretch, and the tunnel was so poorly ventilated that the fetid air sometimes extinguished the candles.
　　At that time, the only machines used in mines were pumps. It took a man of genius to recognize that a different sort of machine was needed —a machine that could both prevent the roof and walls from collapsing and hold back any quicksand or water at the tunnel face. This man was Marc Brunel, an emigré who had fled his native France during the Revolution and quickly made a name for himself as one of the most prominent engineers in Britain. Not long after the failure of the Thames Archway Company, Brunel happened to be wandering through the Royal Dockyard at Chatham when he noticed a rotten piece of ship’s timber lying on the quay. Examining the wood through a magnifying glass, he observed that it had been infested with the dreaded teredo, or shipworm, whose rasping jaws can riddle a wooden ship with holes. As it burrows, this ‘worm’ (it is actually a mollusk) shoves pulped wood into its mouth and digests it, excreting a hard, brittle residue that lines the tunnel it has excavated and renders it safe from predators.
　　From then on the project proved ever more difficult. Brunel ’s machine could cope with the sodden mud and dry gravel that his miners encountered nearly as well as clay, but he ran short of funds. The economies that followed left the shaft was poorly drained and ventilated, and miners were poisoned by the polluted river water or afflicted by illnesses ranging from diarrhea and constant headaches to temporary blindness. Most of Brunel’s workers complained of feeling suffocated and tormented by temperatures that could plunge or rise by as much as 30 degrees Fahrenheit within an hour. One miner died of disease.
　　Brunel ’s triumph was only partial. Once again his company’s funds were at a low ebb, and the tens of thousands of penny-a-head visitors hardly paid the interest on the government loan There was never enough to complete the approaches to the tunnel and make it accessible to horse-drawn vehicles, as intended. Instead, the passageways were filled with souvenir-sellers by day and by the city’s homeless at night. For a penny toll, vagrants could bed down under Brunel’s arches in what became known as the Hades Hotel.
　　It was only when the underground railway came to London in the 1860s that the Thames Tunnel achieved a measure of real usefulness. Purchased by the East London Railway in 1869, it was found to be in such excellent condition that it was immediately be pressed into service carrying steam-driven trains —at first along the Brighton line and later from Wapping to New Cross. The tunnel became, and remains, part of the London Underground network. It is a tribute to Trevithick and Brunel—and mute testimony to the difficulties of tunneling in London—that it remained the only subway line so far to the east until the opening of the Jubilee Line Extension in 1999.

Passage 2

新旧

题材

文章标题

题型

新

管理

The Older Employees

段落信息配对7+ 多选2+填空4

内容回忆

年纪大的员工是现在很多公司面临的问题，但通过合理的管理手段可以使年纪大的员工对公司而言是优点而不是缺点。列举了老年员工的各项优点及缺点。如何来满足并管理老年员工使其充分发挥优势。最后，对比了美国河其他国家在老年人管理上的不同。

详细回忆

(以下题目为部分回忆，答案可能有误，仅供参考)

1. A
2. C
3. B
4. D
5. F
6. E
7. G
8. C
9. D
10. technology
11. social
12. adventurous
13. flexibility

类似文章

The Older Employees
　　 By 2020 more than 25% of workforce will be age 55 or older, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unfortunately, many companies searching for employees overlook older employees or recently retired workers. Employers may resist hiring or working to retain older workers partly because they believe older workers have higher health insurance costs and higher salaries and partly because of the belief that older workers do not have the digital skills that younger workers may have. So, if you are 55 years and older you may have a tough road ahead of you finding a new job in today’s job market. Even with much lower paying jobs, you are competing with people half of your age.
　　Age discrimination may come into play. The Age Discrimination Act of 1967 makes it illegal for an employer to discriminate against a candidate for hire based on the candidate’s age. There was a time when American workers and their employers had fair contracts. The longer you worked for a company, the more you were paid, and when you retired you could expect a pension. Work culture started to change in the 1980s, when trends like deregulation, outsourcing and union-busting started to give employers more power to do what they wanted and as they pleased. Business schools began to advise the misguided principal of shareholder value maximization, which held that instead of investing in the skills and training of employees, companies should pursue layoffs and cost-cutting measures in the interest of short-term profits.
　　These days, it seems 50 is new 65 in the world of work. Older workers are getting booted from jobs and denied new opportunities. Older workers are suspicious of employers who stress a "youthful" company culture and justify their hiring decisions only on branding purposes. Most people know Silicon Valley has diversity problem. Life may begin at 50 elsewhere, but in tech-biz the only thing that is certain is middle age. Silicon Valley is ill-reputed for finding creative ways to dodge discrimination laws, such as using the term "digital natives" or "recent grads.". Many tech companies post openings exclusively for new recent graduates, a pool of candidates that are overwhelmingly in their early twenties. While this loaded language does not specify age, it communicates a preference for millennial workers. It is estimated that Google’s average employee age is 30, while Facebook, LinkedIn and Apple rank at 28, 29 and 31, respectively. The idea that after a certain age you can’t do demanding tasks is just a myth. Employers may feel the older applicants are more likely to be burned-out, resistant to new technologies, absent due to illness, poor at working with younger supervisors and reluctant to travel. According to AARP studies, employers assume older applicants are less creative, less productive, slower mentally and more expensive to employ than early- or mid-career employees.
　　U.S. companies spends millions of dollars each year placing ads, prescreening and interviewing candidates, and hiring and training workers, only to find that many of the younger employees they hire work for just a few months to a year and then leave for a better opportunity. Older employees have been working their entire lives and are often not searching for the next opportunity like younger workers. Frequently, the older workers know exactly what they want to do and are focused on getting the work done. Older workers are more interested in stability than other age groups. Survey shows more than 54% of workers age 65 and older are satisfied with their job, compared with 29% of workers ages 16 to 64. A report published by BLS indicates, “the length of time a worker remains with the same employer increases with the age at which the worker began the job.” The report also found that, “tenure for workers with their current employer was highest for the oldest workers at 10.2 years. For those between the ages of 55 and 64, this number was 9.9 years and for those between 45 and 54 years old it was 7.6 years.” However, since older workers tend to stay on the job by choice, rather than circumstance, they are less willing to tolerate hypocrisy, double standards, or perceived injustice. They expect company leaders to walk the walk and talk the talk, earning loyalty with their actions, not their checkbook.
　　Older employees can bring maturity in customer service and decision making. In 2014, the Society for Human Resource Management asked HR professionals what they considered the top advantages of older workers. Experience was number one on the list with 77%, followed closely by maturity and professionalism at 71% and work ethic at 70% respectively, out of 1,913 survey respondents. Based on scientific research, as we age, our views about ourselves and the people around us change. Older employees are more often confident in their expertise and subsequently bring stability to the workplace, often acting as role models and mentors to younger employees. The maturity and knowledge that comes from years of life and work enables older workers to make critical, often innovative decisions, considering factors that younger workers simply may not have.
　　Another asset that older employees offer to the employers is flexibility in availability. They often don’t need to keep 9-to-5 core hours. They are empty-nesters, the kids are grown up and have left home. Older workers may relish the freedom of unconventional job schedules. Peter Cappelli, a management professor at the Wharton School of business and coauthor of the 2010 book “Managing the Older Worker”, looked more closely at older employees and indicated that when it comes to actual job performance, older employees defeat the younger colleagues. "Every aspect of job performance gets better as we age," he declares. "I thought the picture might be more mixed, but it isn’t. The juxtaposition between the superior performance of older workers and the discrimination against them in the workplace just really makes no sense.”
　　Clearly, there are a number of benefits to hiring both younger and older employees. Employers should recognize the benefits that both younger and older employees bring to the table and try to create a diversified workforce. Don ’t limit yourself to hiring only younger employees.

Passage 3

新旧

题材

文章标题

题型

旧

教育类

Does the class size matter?

段落信息配对题5+matching 9

内容回忆

课堂大小对学生的影响。多数人认为缩小课堂规模是一种很好的提高教学质量的方法，有一部分人对该方法对学习成绩没有多大的影响，但辍学率降低了。并讲了三个实验：STAR、California project和SAGE。

详细回忆

(以下题目为部分回忆，答案可能有误，仅供参考)

1. C
2. D
3. B
4. E
5. F
6. A
7. B
8. A
9. A
10. B
11. C
12. B
13. A
14. C

类似文章

Does the Class Size Matter?
　　 Few education reforms make as much sense on a gut level as giving teachers fewer students to teach. The idea is popular with parents and politicians alike — at least 40 states have carried out some kind of class-size reduction in the past 15 years — and the Legislature in Washington has pledged to reduce average class sizes in kindergarten through third grade to 17 students by the fall of 2017. Initiative 1351 on the Nov. 4 ballot would go even further, lowering average class sizes to 25 for grades four through 12 in Washington’s schools (with smaller sizes for schools where the majority of students come from low-income families). According to the latest federal data based on teacher surveys, the average class size is 24 in the state’s elementary schools and 30 in secondary schools. But despite more than four decades of research in the U.S. and abroad, the effects of this simple idea about how to raise student achievement have been hard to isolate and measure, leading to academic squabbles over its value
　　Researchers generally agree that lower class sizes, at least in the earliest grades, are linked to positive educational benefits such as better test scores, fewer dropouts and higher graduation rates, especially for disadvantaged children. They disagree, however, on whether those benefits outweigh the costs — I-1351 would cost nearly $5 billion through 2019 for more teachers and other school staff — fueling a highly politicized debate that becomes more intense when money is tight. In recent years, researchers have been trying to figure out why smaller class size works, how it works and who benefits most. Nailing those questions would help educators, policymakers — and the public — understand what else they need to do besides just shrinking classes to get the biggest bang for the buck.
　　The studies, based on classroom observations and interviews, have revealed some surprising insights:
　　The most obvious explanation for why reducing class size works — that teachers give students better, more-tailored instruction in smaller classes — probably isn’t the reason why achievement goes up. Teachers for the most part don’t change their practices automatically when their classes have fewer students. Students behave better and pay more attention in smaller groups, and this may account at least initially for the gains. For example, it’s harder for a couple of troublemakers in the back of the room to derail the class when they can’t hide in a crowd. Reducing class sizes can have the potential to make a big difference for students only if teachers get the training and administrative support to take advantage of the situation by changing how they teach and how they interact with parents.
　　The Tennessee results inspired California and Wisconsin to carry out statewide class size-reduction projects in lower grades in 1996, a time when state governments were enjoying surpluses. There ’s scant research on the effects, positive or negative, of reducing class sizes in the upper grades because the variables are much harder to pin down, Finn said. Wisconsin achieved similar results to Tennessee, but California did not, which showed that simply making classes smaller is not all that needs to be addressed. In 2003, Finn co-authored a paper that identified a gaping hole in the puzzle: “Despite the many studies that show positive effects, research has yet to come up with a consistent, integrated explanation for the gains attributable to reduced class size,” according to the paper, published in the journal Review of Educational Research. The most intuitively satisfying explanation — that teachers give students more individualized instruction in smaller classrooms — did not pan out when researchers observed what actually happened in smaller classes. Several studies have found that while teachers may have more interactions with students, they tend to teach the same way they always have, regardless of the size of the class. Finn and his colleagues proposed a different explanation, which they believe better fit the evidence from the studies and also jibed with classroom observations: Students behave better and participate more often when they can’t hide in the back of the classroom. He saw the change himself visiting classrooms in Buffalo. “In a big class, everybody in the back of the room is talking and giggling, and the little kids are throwing things at each other,” Finn said. “But in a small class, the first thing a teacher says is ‘Let’s all bring our chairs around me here in a circle. ’ ” Smaller, quieter classes (fewer than 20 students) may have their biggest effect on kids who are inattentive and try to avoid looking the teacher in the eye. That’s because they can’t hide either. Using Project STAR data, Finn compared the academic performance of fourth graders considered to be disruptive, inattentive or neither. But if class-size reduction works because students change their behavior, wouldn’t it work even better if teachers and principals changed what they’re doing, too? That’s the question Elizabeth Graue and her colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been studying at schools involved in a project called SAGE (Student Achievement Guarantee in Education).
　　The SAGE program began in 1996 with 30 low-income schools around Milwaukee and eventually spread to almost 500 schools around the state as part of a broader effort to combat poverty. Graue and her team have studied several SAGE schools to get a handle on what it takes for teachers and principals to make the most of small classes. They found wide variations. For example, sometimes schools would put two veteran teachers in the same room, which lowered the class size on paper. But in practice, if one teacher was doing administrative work while the other was teaching all the kids, then the class size had effectively gone up for those kids. It also didn ’t work well if teachers didn’t have enough physical space. “We saw classes that were in former locker rooms,” Graue said. “I don’t know how many classrooms I saw where they used a row of bookcases as a wall … and anytime the other class did anything noisy, everything ground to a halt in the class next door.”
　　Smaller classes worked best when teachers received training in how to better tailor instruction to each student ’s needs and when they spent more time getting to know their students’ families. “Class-size reduction alone will only get fewer children in a class,” Graue said. “It doesn’t translate directly to a change in achievement.” The same year Wisconsin launched SAGE, California rolled out its own statewide class-size reduction, which wasn’t as successful as SAGE or Tennessee’s Project STAR. Critics have pointed to California’s rapid hiring of inexperienced teachers and the lack of physical space to accommodate the smaller classes, which affected kids at low-income schools the most. And even in Wisconsin and Tennessee, there were wide variations in the effect that smaller classes had from building to building. “Often it comes down to the individual school,” Graue said. “I don’t think any state program can be identified as a slam dunk.”