1、雅思（阅读）历年真题试卷汇编 19及答案与解析 0 Morse Code Morse code is being replaced by a new satellite-based system for sending distress calls at sea. Its dots and dashes have had a good run for their money. A “Calling all. This is our last cry before our eternal silence.“ Surprisingly this message, which flashed ove
2、r the airwaves in the dots and dashes of Morse code on January 31st 1997, was not a desperate transmission by a radio operator on a sinking ship. Rather, it was a messagesignalling the end of the use of Morse code for distress calls in French waters. Since 1992 countries around the world have been d
3、ecommissioning their Morse equipment with similar(if less poetic)sign-offs, as the worlds shipping switches over to a new satellite-based arrangement, the Global Mari-time Distress and Safety System. The final deadline for the switch-over to GMDSS is February 1st, a date that is widely seen as the e
4、nd of an era. B The code has, however, had a good history. Appropriately for a technology commonly associated with radio operators on sinking ships, the idea of Morse code is said to have occurred to Samuel Morse while he was on board a ship crossing the Adantic At the time Morse was a painter and o
5、ccasional inventor, but when another of the ships passengers informed him of recent advances in electrical theory, Morse was suddenly taken with the idea of building an electric telegraph to send messages in codes. Other inventors had been trying to do just that for the best part of a century. Morse
6、 succeeded and is now remembered as “the father of the telegraph“ partly thanks to his single-mindedness it was 12 years, for example, before he secured money from Congress to build his first telegraph line but also for technical reasons. C Compared with rival electric telegraph designs, such as the
7、 needle telegraph developed by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone in Britain, Morses design was very simple: it required little more than a “key“(essentially, a spring-loaded switch)to send messages, a clicking “sounder“ to receive them, and a wire to link the two. But although Morses hardware was
8、 simple, there was a catch: in order to use his equipment, operators had to learn the special code of dots and dashes that still bears his name. Originally, Morse had not intended to use combinations of dots and dashes to represent individual letters. His first code, sketched in his notebook during
9、that transatlantic voyage, used dots and dashes to represent the digits 0 to 9. Morses idea was that messages would consist of strings of numbers corresponding to words and phrases in a special numbered dictionary. But Morse later abandoned this scheme and, with the help of an associate, Alfred Vail
10、, devised the Morse alphabet, which could be used to spell out messages a letter at a time in dots and dashes. D At first, the need to learn this complicated-looking code made Morses telegraph seem impossibly tricky compared with other, more user-friendly designs. Cookes and Wheatstones telegraph, f
11、or example, used five needles to pick out letters on a diamond-shaped grid. But although this meant that anyone could use it, it also required five wires between telegraph stations. Morses telegraph needed only one. And some people, it soon transpired, had a natural facility for Morse code. E As ele
12、ctric telegraphy took off in the early 1850s, the Morse telegraph quickly became dominant. It was adopted as the European standard in 1851, allowing direct connections between the telegraph networks of different countries.(Britain chose not to participate, sticking with needle telegraphs for a few m
13、ore years.)By this time Morse code had been revised to allow for accents and other foreign characters, resulting in a split between American and International Morse that continues to this day. F On international submarine cables, left and right swings of a light-beam reflected from a tiny rotating m
14、irror were used to represent dots and dashes. Meanwhile a distinct telegraphic subculture was emerging, with its own customs and vocabulary, and a hierarchy based on the speed at which operators could send and receive Morse code. First-class operators, who could send and receive at speeds of up to 4
15、5 words a minute, handled press traffic, securing the best-paid jobs in big cities. At the bottom of the pile were slow, inexperienced rural operators, many of whom worked the wires as part-timers. As their Morse code improved, however, rural operators found that their new-found skill was a passport
16、 to better pay in a city job. Telegraphers soon swelled the ranks of the emerging middle classes. Telegraphy was also deemed suitable work for women. By 1870, a third of the operators in the Western Union office in New York, the largest telegraph office in America, were female. G In a dramatic cerem
17、ony in 1871, Morse himself said goodbye to the global community of telegraphers he had brought into being. After a lavish banquet and many adulatory speeches, Morse sat down behind an operators table and, placing his finger on a key connected to every telegraph wire in America, tapped out his final
18、farewell to a standing ovation. By the time of his death in 1872, the world was well and truly wired: more than 650,000 miles of telegraph line and 30,000 miles of submarine cable were throbbing with Morse code; and 20,000 towns and villages were connected to the global network. Just as the Internet
19、 is today often called an “information superhighway“, the telegraph was described in its day as an “instantaneous highway of thought“. H But by the 1890s the Morse telegraphs heyday as a cutting-edge technology was coming to an end, with the invention of the telephone and the rise of automatic teleg
20、raphs, precursors of the teleprinter, neither of which required specialist skills to operate. Morse code, however, was about to be given a new lease of life thanks to another new technology: wireless. Following the invention of radiotelegraphy by Guglielmo Marconi in 1896, its potential for use at s
21、ea quickly became apparent. For the first time, ships could communicate with each other, and with the shore, whatever the weather and even when out of visual range. In 1897 Marconi successfully sent Morse code messages between a shore station and an Italian warship 19km(12 miles)away. By 1910, Morse
22、 radio equipment was commonplace on ships. You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 on the following pages. Questions 1-8 Reading passage 1 has eight paragraphs, A-H. Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-H from the list of headings below. Write
23、 the correct number, i-xi, in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet. List of Headings i The advantage of Morses invention ii A suitable job for women ill Morses invention was developed iv Sea rescue after the invention of radiotelegraphy v The emergence of many job opportunities vi Standard and variations
24、vii Application of Morse code in a new technology viii The discovery of electricity ix International expansion of Morse Code x The beginning of an end xi The move of using code to convey information 1 Paragraph A 2 Paragraph B 3 Paragraph C 4 Paragraph D 5 Paragraph E 6 Paragraph F 7 Paragraph G 8 P
25、aragraph H 8 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 9-13 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 9 Morse had alre
26、ady been famous as an inventor before his invention of Morse code. （ A）真 （ B）假 （ C） Not Given 10 Morse waited a long time before receiving support from the Congress. （ A）真 （ B）假 （ C） Not Given 11 Morse code is difficult to learn compared with other designs. （ A）真 （ B）假 （ C） Not Given 12 Companies an
27、d firms prefer to employ telegraphy operators from rural areas. （ A）真 （ B）假 （ C） Not Given 13 Morse died from overwork. （ A）真 （ B）假 （ C） Not Given 13 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.From A Novice to An ExpertExpertise is commitment cou
28、pled with creativity. Specifically, it is the commitment of time, energy, and resources to a relatively narrow field of study and the creative energy necessary to generate new knowledge in that field. It takes a considerable amount of time and regular exposure to a large number of cases to become an
29、 expert.An individual enters a field of study as a novice. The novice needs to learn the guiding principles and rules of a given task in order to perform that task. Concurrently, the novice needs to be exposed to specific cases, or instances, that test the boundaries of such principles. Generally, a
30、 novice will find a mentor to guide her through the process of acquiring new knowledge. A fairly simple example would be someone learning to play chess. The novice chess player seeks a mentor to teach her the object of the game, the number of spaces, the names of the pieces, the function of each pie
31、ce, how each piece is moved, and the necessary conditions for winning or losing the game.In time, and with much practice, the novice begins to recognise patterns of behavior within cases and, thus, becomes a journeyman. With more practice and exposure to increasingly complex cases, the journeyman fi
32、nds patterns not only within cases but also between cases. More importantly, the journeyman learns that these patterns often repeat themselves over time. The journeyman still maintains regular contact with a mentor to solve specific problems and learn more complex strategies. Returning to the exampl
33、e of the chess player, the individual begins to learn patterns of opening moves, offensive and defensive game-playing strategies, and patterns of victory and defeat.When a journeyman starts to make and test hypotheses about future behavior based on past experiences, she begins the next transition. O
34、nce she creatively generates knowledge, rather than simply matching superficial patterns, she becomes an expert. At this point, she is confident in her knowledge and no longer needs a mentor as a guide she becomes responsible for her own knowledge. In the chess example, once a journeyman begins comp
35、eting against experts, makes predictions based on patterns, and tests those predictions against actual behavior, she is generating new knowledge and a deeper understanding of the game. She is creating her own cases rather than relying on the cases of others.The Power of ExpertiseAn expert perceives
36、meaningful patterns in her domain better than non-experts. Where a novice perceives random or disconnected data points, an expert connects regular patterns within and between cases. This ability to identify patterns is not an innate perceptual skill; rather it reflects the organisation of knowledge
37、after exposure to and experience with thousands of cases.Experts have a deeper understanding of their domains than novices do, and utilise higher-order principles to solve problems. A novice, for example, might group objects together by color or size, whereas an expert would group the same objects a
38、ccording to their function or utility. Experts comprehend the meaning of data and weigh variables with different criteria within their domains better than novices. Experts recognise variables that have the largest influence pn a particular problem and focus their attention on those variables.Experts
39、 have better domain-specific short-term and long-term memory than novices do. Moreover, experts perform tasks in their domains faster than novices and commit fewer errors while problem solving. Interestingly, experts go about solving problems differently than novices. Experts spend more time thinkin
40、g about a problem to fully understand it at the beginning of a task than do novices, who immediately seek to find a solution. Experts use their knowledge of previous cases as context for creating mental models to solve given problems.Better at self-monitoring man novices, experts are more aware of i
41、nstances where they have committed errors or failed to understand a problem. Experts check their solutions more often man novices and recognise when they are missing information necessary for solving a problem. Experts are aware of the limits of their domain knowledge and apply their domains heurist
42、ics to solve problems that fall outside of their experience base.The Paradox of ExpertiseThe strengths of expertise can also be weaknesses. Although one would expect experts to be good forecasters, they are not particularly good at making predictions about the future. Since the 1930s, researchers ha
43、ve been testing the ability of experts to make forecasts. The performance of experts has been tested against actuarial tables to determine if they are better at making predictions than simple statistical models. Seventy years later, with more than two hundred experiments in different domains, it is
44、clear that the answer is no. If supplied with an equal amount of data about a particular case, an actuarial table is as good, or better, man an expert at making calls about the future. Even if an expert is given more specific case information than is available to the statistical model, the expert do
45、es not tend to outperform the actuarial table.Theorists and researchers differ when trying to explain why experts are less accurate forecasters than statistical models. Some have argued that experts, like all humans, are inconsistent when using mental models to make predictions. That is, the model a
46、n expert uses for predicting X in one month is different from the model used for predicting X in a following month, although precisely the same case and same data set are used in both instances.A number of researchers point to human biases to explain unreliable expert predictions. During the last 30
47、 years, researchers have categorised, experimented, and theorised about the cognitive aspects of forecasting. Despite such efforts, the literature shows little consensus regarding the causes or manifestations of human bias.Questions 14-18Complete the flow-chart below.Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS
48、from the passage for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet. 18 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 19-23 on your answer sheet, write TRUE if the statement agrees with the information FALSE if the statement contradic
49、ts the information NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 19 Novices and experts use the same system to classify objects. （ A）真 （ B）假 （ C） Not Given 20 A novices training is focused on memory skills. （ A）真 （ B）假 （ C） Not Given 21 Experts have higher efficiency than novices when solving problems in their own field. （ A）真 （ B）假 （ C） Not Given 22 When facing a problem, a novices always tries to solve it straight away. （ A）真 （ B）假 （ C） Not Given 23 Experts are better at recognising their own mistakes and limits. （ A）真 （ B）假 （ C） Not Given 23 Complete the summary below. Choose
