TOEFL Reading. 14 советов, практика, видео
В продолжение вводной статьи о TOEFL на этой странице можно более подробно ознакомиться со структурой секции международного теста по английскому языку - TOEFL READING.
TOEFL Reading - структура секцииРаздел 'Reading' содержит три-четыре академических текста, на работу с которыми отводится 60-80 минут.
Качество выполнения заданий позволяет оценить,
насколько хорошо и быстро аттестуемый может в течение этого времени:
Типы и форматы вопросов
К текстам задается до 14 вопросов с вариантами
ответов. Вопросы могут быть разных типов, например,
Вопросы можно отнести к трем форматам:
Подготовка к TOEFL - 14 советовДля улучшения навыков чтения рекомендуется следующее:
TOEFL ПримерНиже размещен вариант одного из текстов, включенных в раздел TOEFL Reading. Прочитайте текст, проанализируйте его и постарайтесь использовать некоторые из рекомендаций
Meteorite Impact and Dinosaur Extinction
There is increasing evidence that the impacts of
meteorites have had important effects on Earth, particularly in the field of
biological evolution. Such impacts continue to pose a natural hazard to life on
Earth. Twice in the twentieth century, large meteorite objects are known to have
collided with Earth.
If an impact is large enough, it can disturb the
environment of the entire Earth and cause
an ecological catastrophe. The best-documented such impact took place 65
million years ago at the end of the
Cretaceous period of geological history. This break in Earth’s history is marked
by a mass extinction, when as many as half the species on the planet became
extinct. While there are a dozen or more mass extinctions in the geological
record, the Cretaceous mass extinction has always intrigued
paleontologists because it marks the
end of the age of the dinosaurs. For tens of millions of years, those great
creatures had flourished. Then, suddenly, they disappeared.
The body that impacted Earth at the end of the
Cretaceous period was a meteorite with a mass of more than a trillion tons and a
diameter of at least 10 kilometers. Scientists first identified this impact in
1980 from the worldwide layer of sediment deposited from the dust cloud that
enveloped the planet after the impact. This sediment layer is enriched in
the rare metal iridium and other elements that are relatively abundant in
a meteorite but very rare in the crust of Earth. Even diluted by the terrestrial
material excavated from the crater, this component of meteorites is easily
identified. By 1990 geologists had located the impact site itself in the Yucatán
region of Mexico. The crater, now deeply buried in sediment, was originally
about 200 kilometers in diameter.
This impact released an enormous amount of
energy, excavating a crater about twice as
large as the lunar crater Tycho. The explosion lifted about 100 trillion
tons of dust into the atmosphere, as
can be determined by measuring the thickness of the sediment layer formed when
this dust settled to the surface. Such a quantity of material would have
blocked the sunlight completely from reaching the surface, plunging Earth
into a period of cold and darkness
that lasted at least several months. The explosion is also calculated
to have produced vast quantities of nitric acid and melted rock that
sprayed out over much of Earth,
starting widespread fires that must have consumed most terrestrial forests
and grassland. Presumably, those environmental disasters could have been
responsible for the mass extinction,
including the death of the dinosaurs.
Several other mass extinctions in the geological
record have been tentatively identified with large impacts, but none is so
dramatic as the Cretaceous event. But even without such specific documentation,
it is clear that impacts of this size do occur and that their
results can be catastrophic. What is a catastrophe for one group of
living things, however, may create opportunities for another group. Following
each mass extinction, there is a sudden evolutionary burst as new species
develop to fill the ecological niches opened by the event.
Impacts by meteorites represent one mechanism
that could cause global catastrophes and seriously influence the evolution of
life all over the planet. According to some estimates, the majority of all
extinctions of species may be due to such impacts. Such a perspective
fundamentally changes our view of biological evolution. The standard criterion
for the survival of a species is its success in competing with other species and
adapting to slowly changing environments. Yet an equally important criterion is
the ability of a species to survive random global ecological catastrophes due
to impacts.
Earth is a target in a cosmic shooting gallery,
subject to random violent events that were unsuspected a few decades ago. In
1991 the United States Congress asked NASA to investigate the hazard posed today
by large impacts on Earth. The group conducting the study concluded from a
detailed analysis that impacts from meteorites can indeed be hazardous. Although
there is always some risk that a large impact could occur, careful
study shows that this risk is quite small.
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Дополнительные ресурсы для изучающих английский язык |
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