托福TPO46阅读文本题附答案.pdf

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1、托福TPO46阅读文本题附答案文档信息文档作为关于“外语学习 中 托福 的参考范文，为解决如何写好实用应用文、正确编写文案格式、内容素材摘取等相关工作提供支持。正文25111字，doc格式，可编辑。质优实惠，欢迎下载！正文托福TPO46阅读文本题附答案托福TPO46阅读文本+题目+答案1.The Origi of WritingIt was in Egypt and Mesopotamia(modern-day Iraq)that civilizationarose,and it is there that we find the earliest examples of that key f

2、eatureof civilization,writing.These examples,in the form of icribed clay tabletsthat date to shortly before 3000 have been discovered among thearchaeological remai of the Sumeria,a gifted people settled in southernMesopotamiaThe Egyptia were not far behind in developing writing,but we cannotfollow t

3、he history of their writing in detail because they used a perishablewriting material.In ancient times the banks of the Nile were lined withpapyrus plants,and from the papyrus reeds the Egyptia made a form ofpaper;it was excellent in quality but,like any paper,fragile.Mesopotamia1 s rive boasted no s

4、uch useful reeds,but its land did providegood clay,and as a coequence the clay tablet became the standardmaterial.Though clumsy and bulky it has a virtue dear to archaeologists:it isdurable.Fire,for example,which is death to papyrus paper or otherwriting materials such as leather and wood,simply bak

5、es it hard,therebymaking it even more durable.So when a conqueror set a Mesopotamianpalace ablaze,he helped eure the survival of any clay tablets in it.Clay,moreover,is cheap,and forming it into tablets is easy,facto that helpedthe clay tablet become the preferred writing material not only throughou

6、tMesopotamia but far outside it as well,in Syria,Asia Minor,Peia,andeven for a while in Crete and Greece.Excavate have unearthed clay tablets inall these lands.In the Near East they remained in use for more than two anda half millennia,and in certain areas they lasted down to the beginning ofthe com

7、mon era until finally yielding,once and for all,to more convenientalternativeSoThe Sumeria perfected a style of writing suited to clay.This script coistsof simple shapes,basically just wedge shapes and lines that could easily beincised in soft clay with a reed or wooden stylus;schola have dubbed itc

8、uneiform from the wedge-shaped marks(cunei in Latin)that are its hallmarkAlthough the ingredients are merely wedges and lines,there are hundredsof combinatio of these basic forms that stand for different sounds or words.Learning these complex sig required long training and much practice;inevitably,l

9、iteracy was largely limited to a small professional class,thescribes0The Akkadia conquered the Sumeria around the middle of the thirdmillennium and they took over the various cuneiform sig used for writingSumerian and gave them sound and word values that fit their own language.The Babylonia and Assy

10、ria did the same,and so di d peoples in Syria andAsia Minor.The literature of the Sumeria was treasured throughout theNear East,and long after Sumerian ceased to be spoken,the Babyloniaand Assyria and othe kept it alive as a literary language,the way Europeakept Latin alive after the fall of Rome.Fo

11、r the scribes of these nonSumerian languages,training was doubly demanding since they had toknow the values of the various cuneiform sig for Sumerian as well as for theirown language.The contents of the earliest clay tablets are simple notatio of numbe ofcommoditiesanimals,ja,baskets,etc.Writing,it

12、would appear,started as a primitive form of bookkeeping.Its use soon widened todocument the multitudinousthings and acts that are involved in daily life,from simple inventories ofcommodities to complicated governmental rules and regulatio.Archaeologists frequently find clay tablets in batches.The ba

13、tches,some of which contain thousands of tablets,coist for the most part ofdocuments of the types just mentioned:bills,deliveries,receipts,inventories,loa,marriage contracts,divorce settlements,courtjudgments,and so on.These records of factual matte were kept in storageto be available for reference-

14、they were,in effect,files,or,to use theterm preferred by specialists in the ancient Near East,archives.Now andthen these files include pieces of writing that are of a distinctly differentorder,writings that do not merely record some matter of fact but involvecreative intellectual activity.They range

15、 from simple textbook material toliterature-and they make an appearance very early,even from the thirdmillennium B C Eo1.The word key in the passage is closest in meaning toO frequentO essentialO originalO familiar2.Th e word virtue in the passage is closest in meaning toO priceO designO desirable q

16、ualityO physical characteristic3.Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential informationIn the highlighted sentence in the passage?Incorrect choices change themeaning in important ways or leave out essential informationoO In part because of its low cost and ease of use,clay became thep

17、referred writing material throughout Mesopotamia and well beyond itO Clay was cheap throughout Mesopotamia,so clay tablets fromMesopotamia became the preferred writing material as far as theMediterranean0O For a while,the day tablet was the preferred writing material in Creteand Greece0O Moreover,be

18、cause day was used as the writing material of choice inMesopotamia,Syria,Asia Minor,Peia,and the Mediterranean,it wascheap and popularo4.What can be inferred from paragraph 2 about clay as a writingmaterial?O It had to be baked before it could be written onO Its good points outweighed its bad points

19、oO Its durability was its most important feature for its use0O It was not available in Egypt05.In paragraph 2,why does the author discuss the Egyptian use ofpapyrus as a writing material人O To describe the superiofity of papyrus over leattier and wood as awriting materialO To explain why writing in E

20、gypt did not develop as quickly as it didMesopotamiaO To explain why archaeologists knowledge of the early history ofwriting relies mainly on Sumerian cuneiform O To explain why the Sumeriapreferred clay tablets for writing over papyrus6.According to paragraph 3,all of the following are true of cune

21、iformwriting EXCEPT:O It was composed of very simple shapesO It was perfected by the ancient Sumeria0O It influenced the choice of material on which it was written0O It was undetood by very few Sumeria07.According to paragraph 4,how did the Akkadia use the Sumerianlanguage?O They used Sumerian for s

22、peaking but used their own nationallanguage for writing0O They used the complex cuneiform sig developed by the Babylonia andAssyria rather than the Sumerian sig0O They developed their own cuneiform shapes on clay tablets to replacethose used by the Sumeria0O They assigned new sound and word values t

23、o the sig of Sumeriancuneiformo8.Paragraph 4 awe all the following questio about Sumerian writing inthe period after the Sumeria were conquered EXCEPT:O Did Sumerian literature continue to be read?O Did Sumerian continue to be spoken?O Did scribes compose new texts in Sumerian?O Did Sumerian have th

24、e same fate as Latin had after the fall of Rome?9.The word document in the passage is closest in meaning toO includeO influenceO organizeO record10.According to paragraph 5,writing was fit used forO simple bookkeepingO descriptio of daily eventsO counting the contents of clay tabletsO government rep

25、orts11.The phrase HNow and then in the passage is closest in meaning toO alwaysO occasionallyO sooner or laterO fit and last12.According to paragraph 6,large batches of clay writing tablets werestored because the tabletsO were being produced quickly and in large quantitiesO did not serve any practic

26、al purpose for most MesopotamiaO contained information that needed to be available for future referenceO could not be used again once they had been written on13.Look at the four squares that indicate where the followingsentence could be added to the passage。However,the Sumerian language did not enti

27、rely disappear0Where would the sentence best fit?Click on a square to add thesentence to the passage14.Directio:An introductory sentence for a brief summary of the passageis provided below.Complete the summary by selecting the THREE awerchoices that express the most important ideas in the passage So

28、mesentences do not belong in the summary because they express ideas that arenot presented in the passage or are minor ideas in the passage.Thisquestion is worth 2 points,Drag your awer choices to the spaces where they belong To remove anawer choice,click on it0To review the passage,click VIEW TEXTTh

29、e earliest examples of writing have been found in Mesopotamia anddate to shortly before 3000 0Awer ChoicesWriting was invented in the same areas in which civilization began by theancient civilizatio of Mesopotamia,Asia Minor and the Mediterranean0The development of cuneiform is known because it was

30、written on along-lasting material and because it was long and widely used throughoutthe ancient Near East0Cuneiform tablets generally dealt with business and factual matte,butother topics,including literature,were also recorded and valued0Writing was developed fit by the Sumeria using wedge shaped m

31、arks(cuneiform)on clay tablets and then by the Egyptia using papyrus paper.Scribes using cuneiform in Assyria,Babylon,Syria and Asia Minor hadto learn allthe languages that used the cuneiform script0Batches of clay tablets,sometimes with as many as a thousand tabletseach,are often found by archaeolo

32、gists,Commercial Revolution in Medieval EuropeBeginning in the 1160s,the opening of new silver mines in northernEurope led to the minting and circulation of vast quantities of silver coi.Thewidespread use of cash greatly increased the volume of international trade.Business procedures changed radical

33、ly.The individual traveling merchantwho alone handled virtually all aspects of exchangeevolved into an operation invoh/ing three separate types of merchants:the sedentary merchant who ran the home office,financing andorganizing the firm1 s entire export-import trade;the carrie who traportedgoods by

34、land and sea;and the company agents resident in cities abroadwho,on the advice of the home office,looked after sales andprocurementSoCommercial correspondence,unnecessary when one businesspeonoveaw everything and made direct bargai with buye and selle,multiplied.Regular courier service among commerc

35、ial cities began.Commercialaccounting became more complex when firms had to deal with shareholde,manufacture,custome,branch offices,employees,and competingfirms.Tolls on roads became high enough to finance what has been called aroad revolution,involving new surfaces and bridges,new passes throughthe

36、 Alps,and new in and hospices for travele.The growth of mutual trustamong merchants facilitated the growth of sales on credit and led to newdevelopments in finance,such as the bill of exchange,a device that madethe long,slow,and very dangerous shipment of coi unnecessary0The ventures of the German H

37、aeatic League illustrate theseadvancements.The Haeatic League was a mercantile association of Europeantow dating from 1159.The league grew by the end of the fourteenth centuryto include about 200 cities from Holland to Poland.Across regular,well-defined trade routes along the Baltic and North seas,t

38、he ships of leaguecities carried fu,wax,copper,fish,grain,timber,and wine.Thesegoods were exchanged for finished products,mainly cloth and salt,fromwestern cities.At cities such as bruges and London,Haeatic merchantssecured special trading concessio,exempting them from all tolls andallowing them to

39、trade at local fai.Haeatic merchants established foreigntrading cente,the most famous of which was the London Steelyard,awalled community with warehouses,offices,a church,and residentialquarte for company representatives.By the late thirteenth century,Haeaticmerchants had developed an important busi

40、ness technique,the businessregister.Merchants publicly recorded their debts and contracts and receiveda league guarantee for them.This device proved a decisive factor in the laterdevelopment of credit and commerce in northern EuropeoThese developments added up to what one modern scholar has called a

41、commercial revolution.In the long run,the commercial revolution of theHigh Middle Ages(A D 1000-1300)brought about radical change inEuropean society.One remarkable aspect of this change was that thecommercial classes cotituted a small part of the total populationnevermore than 10 percent.They exerci

42、sed an influence far in excess of theirnumbe.The commercial revolution created a great deal of new wealth,which meant a higher standard of living.The existence of wealth did notescape the attention of kings and other rule.Wealth could be taxed,andthrough taxation,kings could create strong and centra

43、lized states.In theyea to come,alliances with themiddle classes were to enable kings to weaken aristocratic interests andbuild the states that came to be called modernoThe commercial revolution also provided the opportunity for thousandsof agricultural worke to improve their social position.The slow

44、 but steadytraformation of European society from almost completely rural and isolatedto relatively more urban cotituted the greatest effect of the commercialrevolution that began in the eleventh century0Even so,merchants and business people did not run medievalcommunities,except in central and north

45、ern Italy and in the county ofFlande.Most tow remained small.The nobility and churchmen determinedthe predominant social attitudes,values,and patter of thought andbehavior.The commercial changes of the eleventh through fourteenthcenturies did however,lay the economic foundation for the development o

46、furban life and culture。1.According to paragraph 1,one effect of the increased use of cashwas thatO an individual merchant no longer performed all aspects of tradingoperaticO a companys home office declined in importanceO merchants no longer had to traport their goods to distant placesO the volume o

47、f trade declined in areas lacking silver mines2.The word radically”,in the passage is closest in meaning toO fundamentallyO quicklyO unexpectedlyO gradually3.The word oveaw in the passage is closest In meaning toO undetoodO includedO deliveredO supervised4.According to paragraph 2,which of the follo

48、wing was NOT an effectof the change in business procedures?O An increase in credit salesO The use of courier services between citiesO The adoption of simpler accounting proceduresO The improvement of roads5.Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential informationin the highlighted sente

49、nce in the passage?Incorrect choices change themeaning in important ways or leave out essential information,O Credit sales and bills of exchange were devices that merchantsdeveloped in order to increase their mutual trust,O Merchants developed ways to finance their sales without having to relyon slo

50、w and dangerous shipments of coiO Greater trust among merchants led to an increase in credit sales and tothe use of bills of exchange that made the shipping of coi unnecessaryO Merchants began to trust one another when it became too slow anddangerous for a single merchant to ship coio6.According to