Download 2013年1月12日托福写作真题回忆

【往年机经】2012年11月30日托福阅读真题解析
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本次考试与 2012 年 4 月 22 日 ML 托福考试题目完全相同，阅读部分是 2010 年 3 月 6 日 NA 的考题。
TOPIC 观众效应与共同活动效应
版本一：
讲影响人们行为的观众效应和参与者效应，列举了一堆学者的实验和观点。
版本二：
讲人在有其他人在做同样事情的时候的效率相对于单独做一件事情的时候会如何?然后就给了两个
effect(具体什么 effect 不是很清楚了，反正就这描述这个现象的)，其次，下面开始讲几个 experiment
来证明这两个 effect。还有给出了一些解释，说如果个人贡献可以被测量的时候，或者这份工作很
challenge 的话，其中一种 effect 不会出现。大致是这样。
版本三：
讲人在有其他人在做同样事情的时候的效率相对于单独做一件事情的时候会更好。例如骑车的时候，
和其他竞赛的话比自己计时骑车会快。但是不是一定这样。说有时候当人们一个 group 干活，但是每个组
员的贡献不能被很好 measure 的时候，个人效率就低了。提到一个 experiment。另外小组人数少的时候比
人多更有效率。提到一个 experiment，让人们一起喊，结果一个人的时候 80%力量喊，二个人、四个人的
时候又怎样喊。还有给出了一些解释，说如果个人贡献可以被测量的时候，或者这份工作很 challenge 的
话，或者小组成员之间关系很铁的时候，其中一种 effect 不会出现。
Social Facilitation
Studies on social facilitation concern the extent to which a given piece of an individual's
behavior is affected by the real, imagined or implied presence of others.
Perhaps the first social psychology laboratory experiment was undertaken in this area by
Norman Triplett in 1898.
In his research on the speed records of cyclists, he noticed that racing against each other
rather than against the clock alone increased the cyclists' speeds. He attempted to duplicate
this under laboratory conditions using children and fishing reels. There were two conditions:
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the child alone and children in pairs but working alone. Their task was to wind in a given amount
of fishing line and Triplett reports that many children worked faster in the presence of a partner
doing the same task.
Triplett's experiments demonstrate the co-action effect, a phenomenon whereby increased
task performance comes about by the mere presence of others doing the same task.
The co-action effect may come into operation if you find that you work well in a library
in preference to working at home where it is equally quiet (and so on)。 Other co-action effect
studies include Chen (1937) who observed that worker ants will dig more than three times as
much sand per ant when working (non-co-operatively) alongside other ants than when working alone
and Platt, Yaksh and Darby (1967) found that animals will eat more of their food if there are
others of their species present.
Social facilitation occurs not only in the presence of a co-actor but also in the presence
of a passive spectator/audience. This is known as the audience effect, surprisingly.
Dashiell (1935) found that the presence of an audience facilitated subjects' multiplication
performance by increasing the number of simple multiplications completed. Travis (1925) found
that well-trained subjects were better at a psychomotor task (pursuit rotor) in front of spectators.
However, Pessin (1933) found an opposite audience effect, namely that subjects needed fewer
trials at learning a list of nonsense words when on their own than when in front of an audience.
It seems, then, that the extent of social facilitation or inhibition depends upon the nature
of the interaction between the task and the performer. In some cases the presence of
co-actors/audience improved the quality of performance (Dashiell 1935, Cottrell 1972) but in
others it impaired the quality (though it increased the quantity of, say, multiplications)。
Audience Effect
The audience effect is the impact that a passive audience has on a subject performing a
task. It was first formally noted in various psychology studies in the early 20th century. During
some studies the presence of a passive audience facilitated the better performance of a simple
task; while other studies show the presence of a passive audience inhibited the performance
of a more difficult task.
In 1965, Robert Zajonc proposed Drive theory as an explanation of the audience effect.
Drive Theory in Social Psychology
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In social psychology, drive theory was used by Robert Zajonc in 1965 as an explanation of
the phenomenon of social facilitation. The audience effect notes that in some cases the presence
of a passive audience will facilitate the better performance of a task, while in other cases
the presence of an audience will inhibit the performance of a task. Zajonc's drive theory suggests
that the variable determining direction of performance is whether the task is composed of a
correct dominant response (that is, the task is perceived as being subjectively easy to the
individual) or an incorrect dominant response (perceived as being subjectively difficult)。
In the presence of a passive audience, an individual is in a heightened state of arousal.
Increased arousal, or stress, causes the individual to enact behaviors that form dominant
responses, since an individual's dominant response is the most likely response, given the skills
which are available. If the dominant response is correct, then social presence enhances
performance of the task. However, if the dominant response is incorrect, social presence produces
an impaired performance.
TOPIC 月球表面成因
版本一：
月球表面的成因，两种说法，星球撞击说，和火山爆发说，分别进行论证。
版本二：
讲月球的地面状况，讲月球上的一个特征，这个特征是由于 impact 形成的还是 lava 形成的，说每个
科学家有什么发现，然后这些发现支持哪种观点。这篇个人觉得比较难，因为关于有地质学的单词，又有
天文学的单词，看得比较辛苦，但是大致思路不是很难懂。
Surface of the moon
Early observers of the Moon believed that the dark regions on its face were oceans, giving
rise to their name maria (Latin for “seas”)。 This term is still used today although these
regions are now known to be completely dry. The brighter regions were held to be continents.
Modern observation and exploration of the Moon has yielded far more comprehensive and specific
knowledge.
The Moon has no movement of wind or water to alter its surface, yet it was geologically
active in the past and is still not totally unchanging. Craters cover the surface, and meteors
continue to create new craters. Micrometeorites also slowly erode surface features and alter
the lunar soil. Billions of years ago volcanic eruptions sculpted large areas of the surface.
Volcanic features such as maria, domes (low, rounded, circular hills)， and rilles (channels
or grooves) are still discernable. Small amounts of gas from deep in the Moon may still reach
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the surface. Scientists have also recently discovered possible evidence of ice in permanently
shadowed areas of the surface. Such ice could have come from comet impacts.
A. Craters
The Moon’s surface is covered with craters overlain by a layer of soil called regolith.
Nearly all the craters were formed by explosive impacts of high-velocity meteorites. Billions
of years of this meteorite bombardment ground up the Moon’s surface rocks to produce the finely
divided rock fragments that compose the regolith. Craters range in size from microscopic to
the South Pole-Aitken Basin, which measures over 2,500 km (1560 mi) in diameter and would nearly
span the continental United States. The highest mountains on the Moon, in the Leibnitz and Doerfel
ranges near the south pole, make up the rim crest of the South Pole-Aitken Basin and have peaks
up to 6,100 m (20,000 ft) in height, comparable to the Himalayas on Earth. At full Moon long
bright streaks that radiate from certain craters can be seen. These streaks are called ray systems.
Ray systems are created when bright material ejected from the craters by meteorites splashes
out onto the darker surrounding surface.
The biggest of the Moon’s craters were created by the impacts of large remnants from the
formation of the planets billions of years ago when the young solar system still contained many
such remnants. Astronomers, however, have directly observed meteorites forming small craters
on the Moon’s surface. Seismometers operating on the lunar surface have also recorded signals
indicating between 70 and 150 meteorite impacts per year, with projectile masses from 100 g
to 1,000 kg (4 oz to 2,200 lb)。 Hence the Moon is still being bombarded by meteorites, although
neither as often nor as violently as in the distant past.
B. Volcanic Features
Maria, domes, rilles, and a few craters display indisputable characteristics of volcanic
origin. Maria are plains of dark-colored rock that cover approximately 40 percent of the Moon's
visible hemisphere. The maria formed when molten rock erupted onto the surface and solidified
between 3.16 billion and 3.96 billion years ago. This rock resembles terrestrial basalt, a volcanic
rock type widely distributed on Earth, but the rock that formed the maria has a higher iron
content and contains unusually large amounts of titanium. The largest of the maria is Oceanus
Procellarum, an oval-shaped plain on the near side of the Moon 2,500 km by 1,500 km wide.
Photographs of the side of the Moon not visible from Earth have revealed a startling fact:
The far side generally lacks the maria that are so conspicuous a feature of the visible side.
This probably reflects the fact that the Moon’s crust is thicker on the far side than on the
near side, and therefore the lavas that form the maria were more easily erupted through the
thinner crust of the near side.
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Rilles are of two basic types: sinuous and straight. Sinuous rilles are meandering channels
that are probably lava drainage channels or collapsed lava tubes formed by large lava flows.
Straight rilles are large shallow troughs caused by movement of the Moon’s crust; they may
be up to a thousand kilometers long and several kilometers wide.
Domes are small rounded features that range from 8 to 16 km (5 to 10 mi) in diameter and
from 60 to 90 m (200 to 300 ft) in height. Domes, thought to be small inactive volcanoes, often
contain a small rimless pit on their tops.
Magnetic and other measurements indicate a current temperature at the Moon’s core as high
as 1600°C (2900°F)， above the melting point of most lunar rocks. Evidence from seismic
recordings suggests that some regions near the lunar center may be liquid. However, no recent
eruptions of liquid rock have been observed and the Moon evidently has had no volcanic activity
on its surface over the last 1 billion years. At most, trapped gas from deep in the Moon may
still reach the surface in some places.
Astronomers reported possible evidence of “out-gassing” on the surface of the Moon in
the last 1 to 10 million years in a paper published in 2006. The unusually bright soil around
a feature 3 km (2 mi) wide on the Moon’s equator indicates some process has turned over fresh
regolith that has not had enough time to be “weathered” by solar wind and micrometeorites.
Called Ina, the feature was first photographed from Apollo spacecraft orbiting the Moon in the
1970s, and was later examined by the Clementine probe. Gases from inside the Moon may have erupted
on the surface, lifting and exposing fresh lunar soil. Scientists do not know the exact source
and nature of the gases. At least three other lunar features that look similar to Ina have been
identified. They may have been formed by bursts of gas, as well.
Moon surface
The face of the Moon turned toward us is termed the near side. It is divided into light
areas called the Lunar Highlands and darker areas called Maria (literally, "seas"; the singular
is Mare)。 The Maria are lower in altitude than the Highlands, but there is no water on the
Moon so they are not literally seas. The dark material filling the Maria is actually dark,
solidified lava from earlier periods of Lunar volcanism. Both the Maria and the Highlands exhibit
large craters that are the result of meteor impacts. There are many more such impact craters
in the Highlands.
The side of the Moon unseen from the Earth is called the far side. One of the discoveries
of the first Lunar orbiters is that the far side has a very different appearance than the near
side. In particular, there are almost no Maria on the far side, but a number of meteor impact
craters.
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The amount of cratering is usually an indication of the age of a geological surface: the
more craters, the older the surface, because if the surface is young there hasn't been time
for many craters to form. Thus, the Earth has a relatively young surface because it has few
craters. This is because the Earth is geologically active, with plate tectonics and erosion
having obliterated most craters from an earlier epoch. In contrast the surface of the Moon is
much older, with much more cratering. Further, different parts of the surface of the Moon exhibit
different amounts of cratering and therefore are of different ages: the Maria are younger than
the highlands, because they have fewer craters.
The oldest surfaces in the Solar System are characterized by maximal cratering density.
This means that one cannot increase the density of craters because there are so many craters
that, on average, any new crater that is formed by a meteor impact will obliterate a previous
crater, leaving the total number unchanged. Some regions of the moon exhibit near maximal cratering
density, indicating that they are very old.
TOPIC 厄尔尼诺
版本一：
厄尔尼诺的起因，形成和影响。大概讲道冷暖洋流的运动，对经济，渔业，气候的影响。
版本二：
讲一个地理现象，是与洋流相关的，首先有一副配图，然后先介绍一个 trend 和 wind 的交汇形成了一
个 nutritious 的地方，在赤道附近。然后讲下突然会有几个月的反正，这个反常就是文章介绍的现象，还
有介绍名字的来源啊，还有一个伴随的现象啊，最后讲了这个现象是越来越频繁还有越来越厉害了。
版本三：
EINeno 厄尔尼诺现象讲一个地理现象，是与洋流相关的，首先有一副配图，然后先介绍一个 trend 和
wind 的交汇形成了一个 nutritious 的地方，在赤道附近。然后讲下突然会有几个星期的反常，有个什么
暖流经过，along the coast of Ecuador and Peru，limits the amount of nutrient-rich deep water
normally surfaced by the upwelling process，鱼就不行了。通常来说 lasting only a few weeks to
a month or more。当地的渔民都知道这个的，他们通常在这个时候就不干活。但是有时候这个现象会持续
几个月那么长，就会带来灾难。This is called "El Nino", or "the Christ Child", which is what Peruvian
fisherman call the particularly bad fishing period around December. 有一个科学家通过一些数据
发现这种现象的 pattern. 正常状况下，西太平洋的海表面温度高于东太平洋，风由东往西吹。但是有的
年份，El Ni?o is observed when the easterly trade winds weaken, allowing warmer waters of the
western Pacific to migrate eastward and eventually reach the South American Coast，进而导致全
球气候系统的异常。最后讲了这个现象是越来越频繁还有越来越厉害了 stronger。对美国造成影响。
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El Niño
El Niño (Spanish: “The Christ Child”)， in oceanography and climatology, the anomalous
appearance, every few years, of unusually warm ocean conditions along the tropical west coast
of South America. This event is associated with adverse effects on fishing, agriculture, and
local weather from Ecuador to Chile and with far-field climatic anomalies in the equatorial
Pacific and occasionally in Asia and North America as well.
The name El Ni?o was originally used during the 19th century by the fishermen of northern
Peru in reference to the annual flow of warm equatorial waters southward around Christmas time.
Peruvian scientists later noted that more intense changes occurred at intervals of several years
and were associated with catastrophic seasonal flooding along the normally arid coast, while
the thermal anomalies lasted for a year or more. The more unusual episodes gained world attention
during the 20th century, and the original annual connotation of the name was replaced by that
of the anomalous occurrence.
The timing and intensity of El Ni?o events vary widely. The first recorded occurrence of
unusual desert rainfall was in 1525, when the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro landed
in northern Peru . Historians suggest that the desert rains and vegetation encountered by the
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Spaniards may have facilitated their conquest of the Inca empire. The intensity of El Ni?o episodes
varies from weak thermal anomalies (2- 3 °C [about 4- 5 °F ]) with only moderate local effects
to very strong anomalies (8- 10 °C [14- 18 °F ]) associated with worldwide climatic perturbations.
El Ni?o events typically occur at three- to four-year intervals, with the strong events being
less common. The intermittency varies widely, however, and the phenomenon is neither periodic
nor predictable in the sense that ocean tides are.
Beginning with the work of Sir Gilbert Walker in the 1930s, climatologists recognized a
similar interannual change in the tropical atmosphere, which Walker termed the Southern
Oscillation (SO)。 El Ni?o and the Southern Oscillation appear to be the oceanic and atmospheric
components of a single large-scale, coupled interaction-the El Ni?o/Southern Oscillation (ENSO)。
During the warm phase of ENSO, the South Pacific trade-wind system undergoes a change of state,
or “seesaw,” in which the westward-blowing trades weaken along the equator as the normally
high pressure in the eastern South Pacific decreases and the low pressure over northern Australia
and Indonesia rises. The pressure change and diminished trade winds cause warm surface water
to move eastward along the equator from the western Pacific, while the warm surface layer in
the east becomes thicker. Under normal conditions, the northward-blowing winds off South America
cause nutrient-rich waters to upwell from below the shallow, warm surface layer. The nutrients
(mainly phosphates and nitrates) provide a plentiful supply of food for photosynthesizing plankton,
on which the fish feed. During El Ni?o, however, the thicker surface layer acts as a barrier
to effective upwelling by the coastal winds. The unenriched surface waters are poor in nutrients
and cannot support the normally productive coastal ecosystem. Fish populations are decimated
as great numbers migrate to less-affected areas in search of food, resulting in temporarily
reduced yields for the countries in the region. In 1972-73 this led not only to local economic
setbacks but to repercussions in the world commodity markets as well.
The warm ocean conditions in the equatorial Pacific induce large-scale anomalies in the
atmosphere. Rainfall increases manyfold in Ecuador and northern Peru, causing coastal flooding
and erosion and consequent hardships in transportation and agriculture. Additionally, strong
El Ni?o events are associated with droughts in Indonesia, Australia , and northeastern South
America and with altered patterns of tropical storms in the tropical belt. During the stronger
El Ni?o episodes, the atmospheric “teleconnections” are extensive enough to cause unusually
severe winter weather at the higher latitudes of North and South America.
El Niño
El Niño, oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean, during which unusually
warm ocean conditions appear along the western coast of Ecuador and Peru, causing climatic
disturbances of varying severity. The term originally was used to describe the warm southward
current that appears in the region every December, but it is now reserved for occurrences that
are exceptionally intense and persistent. These occur every three to seven years and can affect
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climates around the world for more than a year. The name El Ni?o, Spanish for “the child,”
refers to the infant Jesus Christ and is applied because the current usually begins during the
Christmas season. Because a fluctuation in air pressure and wind patterns in the southern Pacific
accompanies El Ni?o, the phenomenon is known as the El Ni?o Southern Oscillation, or ENSO.
The climate disturbances caused by El Ni?o occur when sea surface temperatures in the
southeastern tropical Pacific are unusually high. Normally, the warm waters are confined to
the western tropical Pacific, with temperatures more than 10 Celsius degrees (18 Fahrenheit
degrees) higher than the eastern waters of coastal Peru and Ecuador. The air pressure is quite
low over the warmer waters. Moist air rises in the region, causing the clouds and heavy rainfall
characteristic of southeastern Asia, New Guinea, and northern Australia. In the eastern Pacific,
the water is cold and air pressure is high, creating the typically arid conditions along coastal
South America. The trade winds blow from east to west, pushing sun-warmed surface waters westward
and exposing cold water to the surface in the east.
During El El Niño, however, the easterly trade winds collapse or even reverse. As the slight
weakening of the winds causes a modest change in sea surface temperatures, the change in wind
and pressure increases. The warm water of the western Pacific flows back eastward, and sea surface
temperatures increase significantly off the western coast of South America. As this happens,
the wet weather conditions normally present in the western Pacific move to the east, and the
arid conditions common in the east appear in the west. This brings heavy rains to South America
and can cause droughts in southeastern Asia, India, and southern Africa. It can also bring unusual
weather to large parts of the United States.
Economic effects of El Ni?o are felt particularly in coastal Peru and Ecuador. These cold-water
zones normally support large populations of fish, especially anchovies. The fish are caught
commercially and also provide food for seabirds, whose guano is an important component of the
regional fertilizer industry. However, during El Ni?o a layer of warmer, nutrient-depleted water
from the west covers the nutrient-rich eastern coastal waters. The fish and birds die or leave
the area in search of food, thus upsetting the economy of the region.
The El Ni?o events that began in 1982 and in 1997 were the most severe of the 20th century.
Other recent occurrences began in 1972, 1976, 1987, 1991, and 1994.
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