1、 托福阅读真题 3 PASSAGE 3 The Native Americans of northern California were highly skilled at basketry, using the reeds,grasses, barks, and roots they found around them to fashion articles of all sorts and sizes- not only trays, containers, and cooking pots, but hats, boats, fish traps, baby carriers, and
2、ceremonialobjects. Of all these experts, none excelled the Pomo a group who lived on or near the coast during the 1800s, and whose descendants continue to live in parts of the same region to this day. They made baskets three feet in diameter and others no bigger than a thimble. The Pomo people were
3、masters of decoration. Some of their baskets were completely covered with shell pendants; others with feathers that made the baskets surfaces as soft as the breasts of birds. Moreover, the Pomo people made use of more weaving techniques than did their neighbors. Most groups made all their basketwork
4、 by twining the twisting of a flexible horizontal material, called a weft, around stiffer vertical strands of material, the warp. Others depended primarily on coiling a process in which a continuous coil of stiff material is held in the desired shape with tight wrapping of flexible strands. Only the
5、 Pomo people used both processes with equal ease and frequency. In addition, they made use of four distinct variations on the basic twining process, often employing more than one of them in a single article. Although a wide variety of materials was available, the Pomo people used only a few. The war
6、p was always made of willow, and the most commonly used weft was sedge root, a woody fiber that could easily be separated into strands no thicker than a thread. For color, the Pomo people used the bark of redbud for their twined work and dyed bullrush root for black in coiled work. Though other mate
7、rials were sometimes used, these four were the staples in their finest basketry. If the basketry materials used by the Pomo people were limited, the designs were amazingly varied. Every Pomo basketmaker knew how to produce from fifteen to twenty distinct patterns that could be combined in a number o
8、f different ways. 1. What best distinguished Pomo baskets from baskets of other groups? (A) The range of sizes, shapes, and designs (B) The unusual geometric (C) The absence of decoration (D) The rare materials used 2. The word “fashion“ in line 2 is closest in meaning to (A) maintain (B) organize (
9、C) trade (D) create 3. The Pomo people used each of the following materials to decorate baskets EXCEPT (A) shells (B) feathers (C) leaves (D) bark 4. What is the authors main point in the second paragraph? (A) The neighbors of the Pomo people tried to improve on the Pomo basket weaving techniques. (
10、B) The Pomo people were the most skilled basket weavers in their region. (C) The Pomo people learned their basket weaving techniques from other Native Americans. (D) The Pomo baskets have been handed down for generations. 5. The word “others “ in line 9 refers to (A) masters (B) baskets (C) pendants
11、 (D) surfaces 6. According to the passage , a weft is a (A) tool for separating sedge root (B) process used for coloring baskets (C) pliable maternal woven around the warp (D) pattern used to decorate baskets 7. According to the passage , what did the Pomo people use as the warp in their baskets? (A
12、) bullrush (B) willow (C) sedge (D) redbud 8. The word “article“ in line 17 is close in meaning to (A) decoration (B) shape (C) design (D) object 9. According to the passage . The relationship between redbud and twining is most similar to the relationship between (A) bullrush and coiling (B) weft an
13、d warp (C) willow and feathers (D) sedge and weaving 10. The word “staples“ in line 23 is closest in meaning to (A) combinations (B) limitations (C) accessories (D) basic elements 11. The word “distinct“ in lime 26 is closest in meaning to (A) systematic (B) beautiful (C) different (D) compatible 12
14、. Which of the following statements about Pomo baskets can be best inferred from the passage ? (A) Baskets produced by other Native Americans were less varied in design than those of the Pomo people. (B) Baskets produced by Pomo weavers were primarily for ceremonial purposes. (C) There were a very l
15、imited number of basketmaking materials available to the Pomo people. (D) The basketmaking production of the Pomo people has increased over the years. PASSAGE 4 The term “Hudson River school“ was applied to the foremost representatives of nineteenth- century North American landscape painting. Appare
16、ntly unknown during the golden days of the American landscape movement, which began around 1850 and lasted until the late 1860s, the Hudson River school seems to have emerged in the 1870s as a direct result of the struggle between the old and the new generations of artists, each to assert its own st
17、yle as the representative American art. Theolder painters, most of whom were born before 1835, practiced in a mode often self-taught and monopolized by landscape subject matter and were securely established in and fostered by the reigning American art organization, the National Academy of Design. Th
18、e younger painters returning home from training in Europe worked more with figural subject matter and in a bold and impressionistic technique; their prospects for patronage in their own country were uncertain, and they sought to attract it by attaining academic recognition in New York. One of the re
19、sults of the conflict between the two factions was that what in previous years had been referred to as the “American“, “native“, or, occasionally, “New York“ school the most representative school of American art in any genre had by 1890 become firmly established in the minds of critics and public al
20、ike as the Hudson River school. The sobriquet was first applied around 1879. While it was not intended as flattering, it was hardly inappropriate. The Academicians at whom it was aimed had worked and socialized in New York, the Hudsons port city, and had painted the river and its shores with varying
21、 frequency. Most important, perhaps, was that they had all maintained with a certain fidelity a manner of technique and composition consistent with those of Americas first popular landscape artist, Thomas Cole,who built a career painting the Catskill Mountain scenery bordering the Hudson River. A po
22、ssible implication in the term applied to the group of landscapists was that many of them had, like Cole,lived on or near the banks of the Hudson. Further, the river had long served as the principal route toother sketching grounds favored by the Academicians, particularly the Adirondacks and the mou
23、ntains of Vermont and New Hampshire. 1. What does the passage mainly discuss? (A) The National Academy of Design (B) Paintings that featured the Hudson River (C) North American landscape paintings (D) The training of American artists in European academies 2. Before 1870, what was considered the most
24、 representative kind of American painting? (A) Figural painting (B) Landscape painting (C) Impressionistic painting (D) Historical painting 3. The word “struggle“ in line 5 is closest in meaning to (A) connection (B) distance (C) communication (D) competition 4. The word “monopolized“ in line 7 is c
25、losest in meaning to (A) alarmed (B) dominated (C) repelled (D) pursued 5. According to the passage , what was the function of the National Academy of Design for the painters born before 1835? (A) It mediated conflicts between artists. (B) It supervised the incorporation of new artistic techniques.
26、(C) It determined which subjects were appropriate. (D) It supported their growth and development. 6. The word “it“ in line 12 refers to (A) matter (B) technique (C) patronage (D) country 7. The word “factions“ in line 13 is closest in meaning to (A) sides (B) people (C) cities (D) images 8. The word
27、 “flattering“ in line 18 is closest in meaning to (A) expressive (B) serious (C) complimentary (D) flashy 9. Where did the younger generation of painters receive its artistic training? (A) In Europe (B) In the Adirondacks (C) In Vermont (D) In New Hampshire 答案： PASSAGE 3 BDCBB CBDAD CA PASSAGE 4 BBDBD CACA
