1、雅思（阅读）历年真题试卷汇编 11及答案与解析 0 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below. The Origins of Laughter While joking and wit are uniquely human inventions, laughter certainly is not. Other creatures, including chimpanzees, gorillas and even rats, laugh. The
2、fact that they laugh suggests that laughter has been around for a lot longer than we have. There is no doubt that laughing typically involves groups of people. “Laughter evolved as a signal to others it almost disappears when we are alone,“ says Robert Provine, a neuroscientist at the University of
3、Maryland. Provine found that most laughter comes as a polite reaction to everyday remarks such as “see you later“, rather than anything particularly funny. And the way we laugh depends on the company were keeping. Men tend to laugh longer and harder when they are with other men, perhaps as a way of
4、bonding. Women tend to laugh more and at a higher pitch when men are present, possibly indicating flirtation or even submission. To find the origins of laughter, Provine believes we need to look at play. He points out that the masters of laughing are children, and nowhere is their talent more obviou
5、s than in the boisterous antics, and the original context is play. Well-known primate watchers, including Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, have long argued that chimps laugh while at play. The sound they produce is known as a pant laugh. It seems obvious when you watch their behavior they even have the
6、 same ticklish spots as we do. But after removing the context, the parallel between human laughter and a chimps characteristic pant laugh is not so clear. When Provine played a tape of the pant laughs to 119 of his students, for example, only two guessed correctly what it was. These findings underli
7、ne how chimp and human laughter vary. When we laugh the sound is usually produced by chopping up a single exhalation into a series of shorter with one sound produced on each inward and outward breath. The question is: does this pant laughter have the same source as our own laughter? New research len
8、ds weight to the idea that it does. The findings come from Elke Zimmerman, head of the Institute for Zoology in Germany, who compared the sounds made by babies and chimpanzees in response to tickling during the first year of their life. Using sound spectrographs to reveal the pitch and intensity of
9、vocalizations, she discovered that chimp and human baby laughter follow broadly the same pattern. Zimmerman believes the closeness of baby laughter to chimp laughter supports the idea that laughter was around long before humans arrived on the scene. What started simply as a modification of breathing
10、 associated with enjoyable and playful interactions has acquired a symbolic meaning as an indicator of pleasure. Pinpointing when laughter developed is another matter. Humans and chimps share a common ancestor that lived perhaps 8 million years ago, but animals might have been laughing long before t
11、hat. More distantly related primates, including gorillas, laugh, and anecdotal evidence suggests that other social mammals can do too. Scientists are currently testing such stories with a comparative analysis of just how common laughter is among animals. So far, though, the most compelling evidence
12、for laughter beyond primates comes from research done by Jaak Panksepp from Bowling Green State University, Ohio, into the ultrasonic chirps produced by rats during play and in response to tickling. All this still doesnt answer the question of why we laugh at all. One idea is that laughter and tickl
13、ing originated as a way of sealing the relationship between mother and child. Another is that the reflex response to tickling is protective, alerting us to the presence of crawling creatures that might harm us or compelling us to defend the parts of our bodies that are most vulnerable in hand-to-han
14、d combat. But the idea that has gained the most popularity in recent years is that laughter in response to tickling is a way for two individuals to signal and test their trust in one another. This hypothesis starts from the observation that although a little tickle can be enjoyable, if it goes on to
15、o long it can be torture. By engaging in a bout of tickling, we put ourselves at the mercy of another individual, and laughing is what makes it a reliable signal of trust, according to Tom Flamson, a laughter researcher at the University of California, Los Angels. “Even in rats, laughter, tickle, pl
16、ay and trust are linked. Rats chirp a lot when they play,“ says Flamson. “These chirps can be aroused by tickling. And they get bonded to us as a result, which certainly seems like a show of trust.“ Well never know which animal laughed the first laugh, or why. But we can be sure it wasnt in response
17、 to a prehistoric joke. The funny thing is that while the origins of laughter are probably quite serious, we owe human laughter and our language-based humor to the same unique skill. While other animals pant, we alone can control our breath well enough to produce the sound of laughter. Without that
18、control there would also be no speech and no jokes to endure. Questions 1-6 Look at the following research findings(Questions 1-6)and the list of people below. Match each finding with the correct person, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter, A, B, C or D, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet. NB You
19、may use any letter more than once. List of People A Provine B Zimmerman C Panksepp D Flamson 1 Babies and some animals produce laughter which sounds similar. 2 Primates are not the only animals who produce laughter. 3 Laughter can be used to show that we feel safe and secure with others. 4 Most huma
20、n laughter is not a response to a humorous situation. 5 Animal laughter evolved before human laughter. 6 Laughter is a social activity. 6 Complete the summary using the list of words, A-K, below. Write the correct letter, A-K, in boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet. Some scientists believe that laughter
21、 first developed out of【 R1】 _. Research has revealed that human and chimp laughter may have the same【 R2】 _. Scientists have long been aware that【 R3】 _laugh, but it now appears that laughter might be more widespread than once thought. Although the reasons why humans started to laugh are still unkn
22、own, it seems that laughter may result from the【 R4】 _we feel with another person. A combat B chirps C pitch D origins E play F rats G primates H confidence I fear J babies K tickling 7 【 R1】 8 【 R2】 9 【 R3】 10 【 R4】 10 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage
23、1? In boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet, write TRUE if the statement agrees with the information FALSE if the statement contradicts the information NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 11 Both men and women laugh more when they are with members of the same sex. （ A）真 （ B）假 （ C） Not Given 12 P
24、rimates lack sufficient breath control to be able to produce laughs the way humans do. （ A）真 （ B）假 （ C） Not Given 13 Chimpanzees produce laughter in a wider range of situations than rats do. （ A）真 （ B）假 （ C） Not Given 13 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading
25、 Passage 2 below. THE LOST CITY Thanks to modern remote-sensing techniques, a ruined city in Turkey is slowly revealing itself as one of the greatest and most mysterious cities of the ancient world. Sally Palmer uncovers more. A The low granite mountain, known as Kerkenes Dag, juts from the northern
26、 edge of the Cappadocian plain in Turkey. Sprawled over the mountainside are the ruins of an enormous city, contained by crumbling defensive walls seven kilometers long. Many respected archaeologists believe these are the remains of the fabled city of Pteria, the sixth-century BC stronghold of the M
27、edes that the Greek historian Herodotus described in his famous work The Histories. The short-lived city came under Median control and only fifty years later was sacked, burned and its strong stone walls destroyed. B British archaeologist Dr Geoffrey Summers has spent ten years studying the site. Ex
28、cavating the ruins is a challenge because of the vast area they cover. The 7 km perimeter walls run around a site covering 271 hectares. Dr Summers quickly realised it would take far too long to excavate the site using traditional techniques alone. So he decided to use modern technology as well to m
29、ap the entire site, both above and beneath the surface, to locate the most interesting areas and priorities to start digging. C In 1993, Dr Summers hired a special hand-held balloon with a remote-controlled camera attached. He walked over the entire site holding the balloon and taking photos. Then o
30、ne afternoon, he rented a hot-air balloon and floated over the site, taking yet more pictures. By the end of the 1994 season, Dr Summers and his team had a jigsaw of aerial photographs of the whole site. The next stage was to use remote sensing, which would let them work out what lay below the intri
31、guing outlines and ruined walls. “Archaeology is a discipline that lends itself very well to remote sensing because it revolves around space,“ says Scott Branting, an associated director of the project. He started working with Dr Summers in 1995. D The project used two main remote-sensing techniques
32、. The first is magnetometry, which works on the principle that magnetic fields at the surface of the Earth are influenced by what is buried beneath. It measures localised variations in the direction and intensity of this magnetic field. “The Earths magnetic field can vary from place to place, depend
33、ing on what happened there in the past,“ says Branting. “If something containing iron oxide was heavily burnt, by natural or human actions, the iron particles in it can be permanently reoriented, like a compass needle, to align with the Earths magnetic field present at that point in time and space.“
34、 The magnetometer detects differences in the orientations and intensities of these iron particles from the present-day magnetic field and uses them to produce an image of what lies below ground. E Kerkenes Dag lends itself particularly well to magnetometry because it was all burnt once in a savage f
35、ire. In places the heat was sufficient to turn sandstone to glass and to melt granite. The fire was so hot that there were strong magnetic signatures set to the Earths magnetic field from the time around 547 BC resulting in extremely clear pictures. Furthermore, the city was never rebuilt. “If you h
36、ave multiple layers, it can confuse pictures, because you have different walls from different periods giving signatures that all go in different directions,“ says Branting. “We only have one going down about 1.5 meters, so we can get a good picture of this fairly short-lived city.“ F The other main
37、sub-surface mapping technique, which is still being used at the site, is resistivity. This technique measures the way electrical pulses are conducted through sub-surface soil. Its done by shooting pulses into the ground through a thin metal probe. Different materials have different electrical conduc
38、tivity. For example, stone and mudbrick are poor conductors, but looser, damp soil conducts very well. By walking around the site and taking about four readings per metre, it is possible to get a detailed idea of what is where beneath the surface. The teams then build up pictures of walls, hearths a
39、nd other remains. “It helps a lot if it has rained, because the electrical pulse can get through more easily,“ says Branting. “Then if something is more resistant, it really shows up.“ This is one of the reasons that the project has a spring season, when most of the resistivity work is done. Unfortu
40、nately, testing resistivity is a lot slower than magnetometry. “If we did resistivity over the whole site it would take about 100 years,“ says Branting. Consequently, the team is concentrating on areas where they want to clarify pictures from the magnetometry. G Remote sensing does not reveal everyt
41、hing about Kerkenes Dag, but it shows the most interesting sub-surface areas of the site. The archaeologists can then excavate these using traditional techniques. One surprise came when they dug out one of the fates in the defensive walls. “Our observations in early seasons led us to assume that we
42、were looking at a stone base from a mudbrick city wall, such as would be found at most other cities in the Ancient Near East,“ says Dr Summers. “When we started to excavate we were staggered to discover that the walls were made entirely from stone and that the gate would have stood at least ten metr
43、es high. After ten years of study, Pteria is gradually giving up its secrets.“ Questions 14-17 Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet. 14 The reason for the deployment of a va
44、riety of investigative methods 15 An example of an unexpected find 16 How the surface of the site was surveyed from above 17 The reason why experts are interested in the site 17 Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes
45、18-25 on your answer sheet. Exploring the ancient city of Pteria Archaeologists began working ten years ago. They started by taking photographs of the site from the ground and then from a distance in a【 D1】 _. They focused on what lay below the surface using a magnetometer, which identifies variatio
46、ns in the magnetic field. These variations occur when the【 D2】 _in buried structures have changed direction as a result of great heat. They line up with the surrounding magnetic field just as a【 D3】 _would do. The other remote-sensing technique employed was resistivity. This uses a【 D4】 _ to fire el
47、ectrical pulses into the earth. The principle is that building materials like【 D5】 _and stone do not conduct electricity well, while【 D6】 _does this much more effectively. This technique is mainly employed during the【 D7】 _, when conditions are more favourable. Resistivity is mainly being used to【 D
48、8】 _ some images generated by the magnetometer. 18 【 D1】 19 【 D2】 20 【 D3】 21 【 D4】 22 【 D5】 23 【 D6】 24 【 D7】 25 【 D8】 26 Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in box 26 on your answer sheet. How do modern remote-sensing techniques help at the Pteria site? A They detect
49、minute buried objects for the archaeologists to dig up. B They pinpoint key areas which would be worth investigating closely. C They remove the need for archaeologists to excavate any part of the site. D They extend the research period as they can be used at any time of year. 26 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below. Designed to Last: Could Better Design Cure Our Throwaway Culture? Jonathan Chapman, a senior lecturer at the University of Brighton, UK, is one
