SAT 机考练习 100 道

主旨细节句⼦功能篇

使⽤说明
1. 本册练习主要改编⾃ SAT 纸笔考 2021-2022 年真题，另有部分题⽬选⾃ The
Princeton Review - Reading and Writing Workout for the NEW SAT - short passage
drills
2. 题⽬类型涉及三种：主旨结构类，句⼦短语功能类（修辞⽬的），细节类
3. 题⽬已分为 easy, medium, hard 三种难度，并按⾃然科学，社会科学，⼩说以
及⼈⽂进⾏整理
4. 参与题⽬改编的分校有（排名不分先后）：
北京学校
⼴州学校
合肥学校
济南学校
宁波学校
⽯家庄学校
沈阳学校
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

Content
⼀. ⽂章主旨结构 main idea / purpose / structure of the passage or paragraph ................................ 4
⾃然科学 natural science ....................................................................................................................... 4
easy ...................................................................................................................................................... 4
medium ............................................................................................................................................... 6
hard ...................................................................................................................................................... 8
社会科学 social science ......................................................................................................................... 8
medium ............................................................................................................................................... 8
⼩说 literature ........................................................................................................................................... 9
easy ...................................................................................................................................................... 9
medium ............................................................................................................................................. 10
hard .................................................................................................................................................... 10
⼈⽂ humanity ........................................................................................................................................ 11
medium ............................................................................................................................................. 11
hard .................................................................................................................................................... 11
⼆. 句⼦/短语功能 function of sentences or phrases ............................................................................. 12
⾃然科学 natural science ..................................................................................................................... 12
easy .................................................................................................................................................... 12
medium ............................................................................................................................................. 13
hard .................................................................................................................................................... 14
社会科学 social science ....................................................................................................................... 15
easy .................................................................................................................................................... 15
medium ............................................................................................................................................. 16
hard .................................................................................................................................................... 17
⼩说 literature ......................................................................................................................................... 18
easy .................................................................................................................................................... 18
medium ............................................................................................................................................. 18
三. 细节 details ............................................................................................................................................... 20
⾃然科学 natural science ..................................................................................................................... 20
easy .................................................................................................................................................... 20
medium ............................................................................................................................................. 21
hard .................................................................................................................................................... 25
社会科学 social science ....................................................................................................................... 26
easy .................................................................................................................................................... 26
medium ............................................................................................................................................. 27
hard .................................................................................................................................................... 29
⼩说 literature ......................................................................................................................................... 29
easy .................................................................................................................................................... 29
medium ............................................................................................................................................. 31
hard .................................................................................................................................................... 35
⼈⽂ humanities ...................................................................................................................................... 37
easy .................................................................................................................................................... 37
medium ............................................................................................................................................. 37

2
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

hard .................................................................................................................................................... 38
Answers .............................................................................................................................................................. 39
⼀. ⽂章主旨结构 .................................................................................................................................. 39
⼆. 句⼦/短语功能 ................................................................................................................................ 39
三. 细节 .................................................................................................................................................... 40

3
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

⼀. ⽂章主旨结构 main idea / purpose / structure of the passage

or paragraph

⾃然科学 natural science

easy

1. A female guppy can be sexually mature at two months of age and have her first babies
just a month later. This unstinting rate of reproduction makes guppies ideally suited for
studying the rate of evolution, and David Reznick, a biologist at UC Riverside, has been
doing exactly that for the last few decades.
People usually think of guppies as colorful aquarium fish, but they also have a life in
the real world, inhabiting streams and rivers in tropical places like Trinidad, where
Reznick has done his fieldwork.

The first paragraph mainly serves to

A. establish the reason why a certain species was selected for scientific observation.
B. illustrate the value of studying the offspring of a particular animal shortly after birth.
C. introduce a theory at the center of an ongoing scientific debate.
D. offer a rationale for the prevalence of a new field of scientific inquiry."

2. After lengthy spontaneous training with its owner at home, a border collie (Rico), a
larger type of dog, was able to retrieve more than 200 objects by their name. Another
border collie (Chaser) learnt the names of more than 1000 objects over three years. This
word repertoire is comparable to that of a two-year-old human infant thus researchers
wondered whether humans and dogs share some of the mental processes necessary for
word learning and comprehension.

The main purpose of the passage is to

A. suggest that despite improved training techniques, the number of words dogs are
capable of learning is limited.
B. promote a method of teaching dogs to recognize words that has been effective in
infants.
C. suggest that at earlier ages, it is easier to determine the number of words recognized
by infants than the number recognized by dogs.
D. investigate whether there are similarities in the way that dogs and infants learn
words.

3. Gene drives thwart the rules of inheritance in sexually reproducing organisms.

Normally, offspring have a 50:50 chance of inheriting a gene from their parents. Gene
drives alter those odds, preferentially passing on one version to an organism's offspring
until, in theory, an entire population bears that gene.

The main purpose of this paragraph is to

A. criticize the use of the gene-drive technique by explaining its effects on a species.
B. provide context for how the gene-drive technique works in certain organisms.
C. offer a solution to the problem of organisms in the wild developing genetic
resistance.

4
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

D. convey a sense of excitement that researchers feel about the possibilities of

thwarting genetic resistance.

4. How does the microscopic amoeba track down prey in the vastness of the forest floor?
Ample research on the soil amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum, affectionately called
“Dicty” by researchers, has provided some clues. But the mechanisms behind long-
distance sensing of bacterial signals are still largely a mystery. A recent study takes a
simple behavioral biology approach to uncover crucial clues. Further insights could
elucidate other cell-sensing mysteries, such as how immune cells pick up signals from
invading pathogens.

The main purpose of the passage is to

A. discuss research that explores factors that influence the prey selection of a soil
amoeba.
B. examine the relationship between different cell-sensing mechanisms used by a soil
amoeba
C. challenge the consensus view about a soil amoeba and the chemical stimuli it
responds to.
D. suggest that further research into different strains of a soil amoeba is necessary to
understanding bacterial signals.

5. Meerkats are a small carnivorous species of mongoose that must survive in the harsh
African desert through coordination and teamwork. Meerkat pups are almost entirely
reliant on food provisioned by older group members, known as “helpers," which
include both parents and other colony members. Yet by three months of age, those same
youngsters have become entirely self-sufficient at feeding and can handle a variety of
difficult and dangerous prey, including lizards, spiders, and even scorpions with their
deadly stings.
Recent work shows that the helpers facilitate this transition to nutritional independence
by gradually introducing pups to live prey. Cambridge University researchers Alex
Thornton and Katherine McAuliffe set out to establish whether this process meets the
definition of teaching.

The first paragraph mainly serves to

A. provide background information on meerkats and their young.
B. acknowledge the particular difficulties involved in meerkat research.
C. give an overview of the studies discussed in the rest of the passage.
D. pose a research question that will be answered in the rest of the passage.

6. The term “genetic modification” refers to technology that is used to alter the genes
of living organisms. Genetically modified organisms are called “transgenic” if genes
from different organisms are combined. The most common transgenic organisms are
crops of common fruits and vegetables, which are now grown in more than fifty
countries. These crops are typically developed for resistance to herbicides pesticides,
and disease as well as to increase nutritional value. Some of these transgenic crops
currently under development might even yield human vaccines. Along with improving
nutrition and alleviating hunger genetic modification of crops may also help to conserve
natural resources and improve waste management.

The primary purpose of the paragraph is to

5
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

A. establish that transgenic crops are safe.

B. critique the process of genetic modification.
C. overcome opposition to genetically modified foods.
D. provide information about transgenic crops.

7. Perhaps the scientists most excited about reigniting the lunar program are not lunar
specialists, but astronomers studying a wide range of subjects. Such scientists would
like new missions to install a huge interplanetary telescope with a diameter of 30 meters
on the far side of the moon. Two things that a telescope needs for optimum operation
are extreme cold and very little vibration. Temperatures on the moon can be as frigid as
200°C below zero in craters on the dark side. Because there is no seismic activity, the
moon is a steady base. Permanent darkness means the telescope can be in constant use.
Proponents claim that under these conditions a lunar-based telescope could accomplish
as much in seventeen days as the replacement for the Hubble telescope will in ten years
of operation.

The main idea of the paragraph is most accurately described by which of the following
statements?
A. Most astronomers are in favor of reigniting the lunar program.
B. Some scientists believe the moon is an ideal location for an interplanetary telescope.
C. New lunar missions could discover important new features of the moon.
D. The new lunar telescope will replace the defunct Hubble telescope

medium

8. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National

Laboratory are part of a scientific collaboration that has identified a new electrocatalyst
that efficient converts carbon dioxide (CO2) to carbon monoxide (CO), a highly
energetic molecule. Their findings were published in Energy Environmental Science.
“There are many ways to use CO,” said EIi Stavitski, a scientist at Brookhaven and an
author on the paper. “You can react it with water to produce energy-rich hydrogen gas,
or with hydrogen to produce useful chemicals, such as hydrocarbons or alcohols. If
there were a sustainable cost-efficient route to transform CO2 to CO, it would benefit
society greatly.”

The main purpose of the second paragraph is to

A. show how a commonly practiced process can be made more efficient.
B. define important terms that will be used later in the passage.
C. present a conventional theory that researchers seek to contradict.
D. describe why a research project is considered worthwhile.

9. “Lichens are nearly impossible to re-synthesize in the lab,” Spribille said, explaining
how the colonies take a long time to grow and the conditions needed to induce
symbiosis are not well known. Unable to rear their test subjects in controlled
environments, lichen researchers have struggled to perform basic experiments that
could shed light on the roles of the different symbionts.

A main purpose of the paragraph is to

A) question the methodology scientists have used in most studies of lichens.

6
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

B) highlight the amount of time required to cultivate lichen colonies.

C) imply that scientists must find a new way to synthesize lichens.
D) explain some of the difficulties of conducting research involving lichens.

10. Our computational work suggests that palladium is a great catalyst because it speeds
up the chemical reaction in a different way than conventional materials. Basically,
palladium is unique in absorbing hydrogen atoms from water and forming an
intermediate called palladium hydride from which hydrogen atoms can hop to nitrogen
molecules to produce ammonia. Such a pathway requires less energy than directly
adding hydrogen from water to nitrogen molecules.
As a fundamental study and a proof of concept, we demonstrated the approach in a
glass cell filled with a water solution at room temperature. and then ran an electrical
current through carbon electrodes that were loaded with nano-sized palladium particles.

The second paragraph mainly serves to

A. note a challenge in designing an experiment.
B. introduce a new idea for scientific consideration.
C. summarize the findings of an experiment.
D. illustrate how scientific idea was validated.

11. Researchers used a beam of ions to cut thin cross sections in chicken eggshells.
They found structural variation on a minute scale throughout the eggshell. Inner layers
have less osteopontin, leading to bigger nanostructures. That may make the inner shell
less resilient than the outer shell, which makes sense, McKee says. The outer shell needs
to be hard enough to protect the chick while the inner shell nourishes the developing
chick.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

A. to discuss research that focuses on the structure of eggshells.
B. to promote the use of nanostructure technology in new materials.
C. to investigate the role of nanostructures in different natural environments.
D. to explore ways to make eggshells more resistant to cracking.

12. The goal of plants, or any living organism, is to propagate as much as possible. To
this end, many plants in the wild, including wheat's ancestor have mechanisms that
scatter seeds as widely as possible. However, this adaptation makes it difficult to
cultivate some plants; it is impossible to farm productively if a crop is spread hither and
thither! Wild wheat had a number of other mechanisms that supported its existence in
nature but lessened its usefulness in the field. A number of mutations had to take place
before wild wheat was a suitable candidate for agriculture. Humans encouraged these
mutations by providing a stable environment that favored and nurtured the mutations
that would have proven deleterious in the wild.

Which choice best summarizes the main idea of the paragraph?

A. Wheat's evolution into a plant that could be farmed productively was shaped by
human needs and actions.
B. Wheat is a difficult plant to farm unless a very stable environment is available.
C. The most important mechanism utilized by wild wheat is the means of scattering
seeds as widely as possible.
D. All living organisms seek to reproduce as much as possible.

7
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

hard

13. Energy capture per capita in the most industrialized Western economies grew
sevenfold, from roughly 38,000 kilocalories per person per day around 1800 to 230,000
by the 1970s. The age of energy abundance had begun. People of course still need to
eat, which meant that domesticated plants and animals remained vital sources of energy,
but fossil fuels quickly transformed farming too. By the late nineteenth century, trains
and steamships had made it much easier and cheaper to move food to people and in the
twentieth, chemical fertilizers gasoline for tractors and electricity to pump water to
fields directly increased output. By 2000, each acre of American farmland absorbed, on
average, eighty times as much energy as it had done in 1900, and yielded four times as
much food.

What’s the main idea of the text?

A. Fossil fuels have been quite efficient in reducing the amount of land needed to
produce a given amount of food.
B. Transportation tools have seen great improvement because of fossil fuels.
C. Fossil fuels have replaced all the other sources of energy in agricultural work.
D. People are becoming increasingly reliant upon fossil fuels for everything in their
life.

14. Researchers used a beam of ions to cut thin cross sections in chicken eggshells.
They then analyzed the shells with electron microscopy and other high-resolution
imaging techniques. The team found that proteins disrupt the crystallization of calcium
carbonate, so that what seems at low resolution to be neatly aligned crystals is actually
a more fragmented jumble. This misalignment can make materials more resilient.
Instead of spreading unimpeded, a crack must zig and zag through scrambled crystals.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

A. The researchers examined the layers of an eggshell and determined that the calcium
carbonate crystals are not uniformly arranged.
B. The researchers proposed an experiment to identify the components of the various
layers of an eggshell.
C. The researchers carried out an experiment to find out what percentage of an
eggshell is composed of calcium carbonate.
D. The researchers concluded that the presence of neatly aligned calcium carbonate
crystals prevents an eggshell from cracking before incubation is complete.

社会科学 social science

medium

15. Initially, I was skeptical that boosting the production of a single protein out of
thousands in the plant could have such a dramatic impact on crop yield. But, after two
years of field trials, my colleagues and I have demonstrated that increasing H-protein
levels leads to larger plants, boosting the crop yield by 27-47 percent.

8
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

The main purpose of the paragraph is to

A. express a researcher's sustained surprise about a finding.
B. illustrate the evolution of a researcher's confidence in a hypothesis.
C. highlight the time-consuming nature of a project.
D. endorse the simplification of a technique for future use.

16. For decades studies of self-control in short-term decision-making have led to two
clear, but seemingly contradictory, results. Part of the problem has been how hard it is
to conduct behavioral research. Traditional methods assume that test subjects fully
understand the questions they're asked and give honest answers. Unfortunately,
researchers had no practical way of knowing whether this was the case, or whether they
actually measured what they intended to. But here at the nation's largest biometrics lab,
my Texas A&M colleagues and I figured out a new way to investigate the question that
didn't rely on just what volunteers report to us. We designed a two-part experiment.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

A. discuss research that helps explain a growing trend in findings about self-control.
B. present a study that helps resolve a long-standing question about self-control.
C. compare the effectiveness of two different methods of assessing self-control.
D. describe an experiment designed to find ways that people can increase self-control.

17. “We show that incentives make persuaders less effective at communicating sincere
concern for a charitable cause, which means the incentive is having harmful effects on
the very activity it was designed to improve,” says psychological scientist and study
author Alixandra Barasch “This is important because it helps us understand the costs
and benefits of incentives in the context of philanthropy.”

One important function of the paragraph is to

A. establish the implications of the findings in the passage.
B. characterize the study's conclusions identified in the passage as controversial.
C. clarify how the methods discussed in the passage build on previous research.
D. explain how the lead researcher described in the passage formulated her hypothesis.

⼩说 literature

easy

18. I'm here, they said. Always by your side. I buy your food. I make your bed. I place
the pillow under your head. But you don't notice. You don't care. You seem to think I’ll
always be there. What would happen, if I were to leave? No one notices the air they
breathe.

The main purpose of the paragraph is to

A. underscore a mood of determined ambition.
B. suggest a sudden shift in attitude.
C. establish a mood of weary intensity.
D. emphasize a sense of increasing dread

9
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

medium

19. In a futile attempt to domesticate the landscape, Ruth planted European climbing
roses around the house. Oliver planted bamboo. The two species quickly grew up into
a densely tangled thicket, so that soon it was almost impossible to find the entrance to
the house if you didn't already know where it was. The house seemed in danger of
disappearing, and by then, the meadow was beginning to shrink, too, as the forest
encroached like a slow-moving coniferous wave, threatening to swallow them
completely.

The description in the paragraph mainly serves to

A. provide context for a discussion of the novel Ruth is writing.
B. suggest that Ruth and Oliver are naive in their assumptions about nature.
C. communicate the increasing intensity of nature's presence in Ruth and Oliver's life.
D. explain the reasoning behind Oliver's plan to create his own forest.

20. Phaedra liked to look at Christopher, who had the same sloe-eyed gaze as his
mother's, an ever-ready smile, and pink lips that made him seem more tender than other
boys his age. Now she watched as he stuffed the stocky fingers of his eternally ashy
hands into his pockets and surveyed the land below the hill mimicking the firm stance
he'd seen his father take in the pulpit.

The main purpose of the paragraph is to

A. describe a character's qualities that endear him to another character.
B. illustrate a character's striking resemblance to a family member.
C. explain the reason for a character's admiration for his father.
D. highlight a turning point in the relationship between two characters.

21. Spring was my favorite time of year, and it took extra energy to stay in a bad mood.
The sun came home to the Arctic and shone tirelessly on the shimmering world of snow.
Midwinter diminished into memory and the Darkness of next winter seemed
inconceivable. Warm smells rose from the black soil of exposed cutbanks; birds
shrieked and carelessly tossed leftover seeds down out of the birches.

The main purpose of the paragraph is to

A. demonstrate the appeal of a season by making a series of comparisons.
B. evoke a vivid impression of a particular setting with striking sensory imagery.
C. describe the ways in which certain aspects of daily life alter throughout the year.
D. emphasize the symbolic importance of the dangers present in the natural world.

hard

22. He was gracious, with his quietness. When he spoke, he was tentative and languid.
Even then I understood his rareness by the pace of his gestures. He stood up only when
it was essential, as if he were a sick cat. He was not used to public effort, even though
he was now going to be a part of a public world as a teacher of literature and history in
England.

The paragraph mainly serves to

10
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

A. illustrate how certain traits in a character can undermine a character's goals.

B. provide essential details about a character’s past that foreshadow the character's
future.
C. reveal personal information about a character that explains the character's internal
conflict.
D. demonstrate how a character's external mannerisms reflect that character’s inner
being.

⼈⽂ humanity

medium

23. Robert Schumann’s orchestral music has been underappreciated and misunderstood
for many years by critics and audiences alike. The nineteenth-century virtuoso's works
for the piano are acknowledged as brilliant masterworks. However, his large-scale
orchestral works have always suffered by comparison to those of contemporaries such
as Mendelssohn and Brahms. Perhaps this is because Schumann’s works should be
measured with a different yardstick. His works are often considered poorly orchestrated,
but they actually have an unusual aesthetic. He treats the orchestra as he does the piano:
one grand instrument with a uniform sound. This is so different from the approach of
most composers that to many it has seemed like a failing rather than a conscious artistic
choice.

The author's primary purpose in this paragraph is to

A. praise Schumann for his innovative approach.
B. reassess a portion of Schumann's portfolio.
C. re-evaluate the standing of Mendelssohn and Brahms.
D. examine the influence of Schumann's performances.

hard

24. Ben Jonson, a well-known playwright and seventeenth-century contemporary of

John Donne, wrote that while “the first poet in the world in some things, Donne
nevertheless “for not keeping of an accent deserved hanging. ”Donne’s generation
admired the depth of his feeling, but was puzzled by his often irregular rhythm and
obscure references. It was not until the twentieth century and modern movements that
celebrated emotion and allusion that Donne really began to be appreciated. Writers such
as T.S. Eliot and W B. Yeats admired the psychological intricacies of a poet who could
one moment flaunt his earthly dalliances with his mistress and the next wretched,
implore God to “bend your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.”

The main idea of the paragraph is that

A. poetry is judged by different standards at different times.
B. Jonson misjudged Donne's worth.
C. Donne's poetry was not fully appreciated until hundreds of years after his death.
D. Donne's rough meter prevented him from being understood in his own lifetime.

11
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

⼆. 句⼦/短语功能 function of sentences or phrases

⾃然科学 natural science

easy

1. Like foraging and farming, serious fossil-fuel use began in a specific place
(Northwest Europe) at a specific time (roughly two hundred years ago). The great
difference between the industrial revolution and the two earlier transformations in
energy capture, though, was that industrialization changed the world much more
abruptly. It made so much energy available so suddenly that Britain, where the initial
breakthrough came, was able to project its power across the entire globe in the
nineteenth century.

In the text, the author compares the Industrial Revolution with other major
developments in energy use to make the point that the Industrial Revolution occurred
A. earlier in history.
B. in a more limited region.
C. with lesser impact.
D. more rapidly.

2. As a student of biodiversity and perhaps more importantly, at heart a congenital

optimist I believe I can add credibility to the search for extrasolar life from the history
of Earth itself. Life arose here quickly when conditions became favorable. Our planet
was born about 4.54 billion years ago. Microbes appeared soon after the surface became
even marginally habitable, within one hundred million to two hundred million years.
The interval between habitable and inhabited may seem an eternity to the human mind,
but it is scarcely a night and a day in the history of the Milky Way galaxy as a whole.

In the context of Passage, the author's use of the phrase “scarcely a night and a day”
mainly serves to
A. emphasize that the phases of planetary development are cyclical.
B. illustrate a galactic perspective of time by referring to a human perspective.
C. highlight that the concepts of night and day are irrelevant when describing galaxies.
D. assert that the human mind cannot comprehend time spans that are hundreds of
millions of years.

3. Red colors are a potent signal in the bird world. Their vibrancy is a reliable indicator
of health, and females are most attracted to the reddest males. Bloch, who studies the
evolution of color, says." Finding the genes responsible for color brings us one step
closer to understanding how male traits and female preferences co-evolve and whether
they share a common genetic basis."

In context, the quote from Bloch mainly serves to

A. assert that recent genetic studies of bird pigmentation have been too narrowly
focused.
B. raise a question about the role of breeders in bird color selection.
C. offer additional evidence that the gene responsible for pigmentation in birds has

12
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

been identified.
D. suggest that recent research into the color of birds can influence broader research
topics.

medium

4. The theory that the Earth was once completely frozen emerged in the 1960s when
scientists realised that global freezing could happen if the polar ice sheets grew above
a certain threshold size. Because bright ice reflects sunlight and heat back into space,
growing ice sheets cause further cooling. This feedback loop could tip the climate
system into a deep freeze. The planet could eventually thaw as carbon dioxide from
volcanoes poking through the ice warms it.
In the late 1980s, Joe Kirschvink nicknamed this state "Snowball Earth". Around the
same time, geologists began to uncover hints in the geological record that this freeze-
thaw process might have happened at least once in the distant past — at the end of the
Proterozoic eon, 600 to 800 million years ago. But it was unclear what could have
tipped the world into that state in the first place. Yannick Donnadieu in Gif sur Yvette,
France, and co-workers provided an explanation.

The underlined sentences serve mainly to

A. indicate the authors skepticism about the validity of a finding.
B. present a hypothesis that is supported by the results of a study.
C. dismiss recent criticism of a widely accepted explanation.
D. identify a research question that a team of scientists investigated.

5. A sweeping genetic analysis of lichen has revealed a third symbiotic organism,

hiding in plain sight alongside the familiar two, that has eluded scientists for decades.
The stowaway is another fungus, a basidiomycete yeast. It's been found in 52 genera
of lichen across six continents, indicating that it is an extremely widespread, if not
ubiquitous, part of the symbiosis. And according to molecular dating, it's probably been
along for the ride since the beginning.

The phrase "hiding in plain sight" and the words "eluded" and "stowaway" mainly serve
to
A. identify the challenges inherent in using genetic analysis to isolate basidiomycete
yeast.
B. characterize basidiomycete yeast as a component that was undetected even during
studies of lichens.
C. highlight traits of basidiomycete yeast that led scientists to misclassify it as a
different fungus.
D. hint at the likelihood that the presence of basidiomycete yeast will be visible in
additional genera of lichen.

6. Recently, Luke Rendell has been working with Weinrich, a student named Jenny
Allen, and other colleagues in an analysis of the data records from the beginning of
lobtail feeding in 1981 right through to 2008. This analysis highlighted several
important points. The first was that the use of this foraging tactic was strongly related
to the abundance of sand lance fish in the habitat. The second was that, as in Weinrich's
original study, having a mother that did this made very little difference to whether her

13
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

calf would go on to develop the behavior. Third, Rendell and his colleagues found that
the data on the spread of the behavior massively supported a role for social learning.
This analysis demonstrates how ecology and culture can interact with each other—
ecologically, the availability of a particular prey item, the sand lance, was varying over
time.

Which choice best describes the function of the last sentence in the overall structure of
the text?
A. It criticizes a naive assumption about an outcome.
B. It provides an example of an unusual effect.
C. It presents an opposing view of a compelling example.
D. It broadens the relevance of a research result.

hard

7. If any given exoplanet within the habitable zone of a red dwarf doesn't have the same
luxury of a magnetosphere—which is entirely dependent on the makeup of the planet-
any would-be life—protecting atmosphere would likely be slowly stripped away before
life even had a chance to take root. In short, the exoplanets where we're hoping to find
alien life might be the right temperature, but lack an atmosphere, which is a huge deal-
breaker.

In the passage, the phrase “a huge deal-breaker” mainly serves to

A. emphasize that a feature being described is physically very large.
B. stress how crucial a certain characteristic is to achieving an intended outcome.
C. highlight a factor that undermines the credibility of recent research on a certain
question.
D. underscore the degree of consensus required for researchers' findings to be
convincing.

8. In late 2015, researchers reported a CRISPR gene drive that caused an infertility
mutation in female mosquitoes to be passed on to all their offspring. Lab experiments
showed that the mutation increased in frequency as expected over several generations,
but resistance to the gene drive also emerged, preventing some mosquitoes from
inheriting the modified genome.
This is hardly surprising, says Philipp Messer, a population geneticist at Cornell
University in Ithaca, New York. Just as antibiotics enable the rise of drug-resistant
bacteria, population-suppressing gene drives create the ideal conditions for resistant
organisms to flourish.

The author mentions the 2015 mosquito research mainly to support the argument that
A. CRISPR gene drives have solved the problems that earlier experiments with gene
drives faced.
B. CRISPR gene drives shouldn't be used on mosquitoes because they cause infertility.
C. gene drives have encountered some problems despite promising early results.
D. gene drives have become less popular among researchers because of the problem
of genetic resistance.

14
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

9. Hundreds of millions of years ago, a tiny green microbe [an alga] joined forces with
a fungus, and together they conquered the world. It's a tale of two cross-kingdom
organisms, one providing food and the other one shelter, and it's been our touchstone
example of symbiosis for 150 years. Trouble is, that story is nowhere near complete.
A sweeping genetic analysis of lichen has revealed a third symbiotic organism, hiding
in plain sight alongside the familiar two, that has eluded scientists for decades. The
stowaway is another fungus, a basidiomycete yeast. It's been found in 52 genera of
lichen across six continents, indicating that it is an extremely widespread, if not
ubiquitous, part of the symbiosis. And according to molecular dating, it's probably been
along for the ride since the beginning.

In context, the main purpose of the sentence ("Trouble ... complete") is to

A. advance the argument that scientists still have much to learn about the interactions
of organisms across kingdoms.
B. challenge the assertion that algae and fungi are especially dominant types of
organisms.
C. suggest that research into lichens has generally been proceeding at too slow a pace.
D. introduce the idea that the most widely accepted understanding of lichens is flawed.

10. In the early 1990s, Gary Polis, a professor at the University of California at Davis
who studied how food webs were regulated, began to question the notion that
ecosystems are self-contained when the facts from his own research on oceanic island
ecosystems off Baja California did not conform to the prevailing theory. For example,
oceanic island ecosystems are sharply separated from each other and from the mainland
by large distances and a seemingly impermeable saltwater barrier. These inhospitably
arid islands, being mostly covered by Opuntia cactus, had low primary productivity.
Herbivorous insect species were accordingly rare. The islands nevertheless supported
extraordinarily high abundances of spider predators. This didn't make sense in light of
reigning ecological principles.

In the paragraph, the author most likely mentions the climate of the Baja California
islands and the main plant found there in order to
A. illustrate how the islands have been affected by the ecological subsidy that they
receive.
B. contrast the environment of the islands with that of the nearby mainland.
C. provide context that helps suggest why the islands abundance of predatory spiders
needed explanation.
D. offer potential reasons why predatory spiders are more abundant on small islands
than on large islands.

社会科学 social science

easy

11. Metaphors can play a role in triggering not just a specific set of thoughts, but also a
specific set of feelings. This aspect of metaphor is like turning on the colored stage
lights. Using metaphor can have the effect of switching from a flat white light aimed at

15
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

the stage to one that bathes the scene in melancholy blue. It makes you care.

The underlined sentences serve mainly to

A. elaborate on a claim.
B. challenge a perspective
C. define a term
D. introduce a theory

12. Recent studies trace a wave of Austronesian colonization between 700 C.E. and
1200 C.E. The telltale evidence is in effect breadcrumbs: crops distinctive to
Austronesia sprinkled across Madagascar and neighboring islands. “We finally have a
signal of this Austronesian expansion, said Nicole Boivinan archaeologist and director
of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany.

The use of the words “breadcrumbs” and “sprinkled” serves mainly to

A. emphasize that the crops dispersed by Austronesian colonists consisted primarily
of grains.
B. illustrate that no evidence of Austronesian colonization survived past the initial
period of colonization.
C. indicate that food was scarce for the early Austronesian colonists.
D. suggest that the minimal evidence left by Austronesian colonists created a trail.

medium

13. As more of the economy becomes automated, doomsayers worry that the gap
between the haves and the have-nots will only grow. History shows, however, that this
need not be so.

In the context of the passage as a whole, the phrase “doomsayers worry" serves mainly
to
A. emphasize that a particular view is overly negative.
B. associate the author with a specific school of economic thought.
C. convey the full urgency of a contemporary problem.
D. suggest the biases of a group of researchers.

14. After the three-in-one policy was lifted, Hanna and her colleagues expanded their
sample to include several additional roads, some suggested by the Jakarta Department
of Transportation. To address the lack of data for these roads before the policy change,
the authors queried Google Maps for predicted travel times on these routes. Because
predicted travel times are based on historical data, they should give an accurate picture
of traffic levels before the policy change.

The last sentence mainly serves to

A. account for the reliability of a source of data.
B. introduce a novel application of common technology.
C. acknowledge that the published findings may not be relevant in the future.
D. identify a discrepancy found in the research methods.

15. Like foraging and farming, serious fossil-fuel use began in a specific place

16
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

(Northwest Europe) at a specific time (roughly two hundred years ago). The great
difference between the industrial revolution and the two earlier transformations in
energy capture, though, was that industrialization changed the world much more
abruptly. It made so much energy available so suddenly that Britain was able to project
its power across the entire globe in the nineteenth century. Consequently, once Britain
began its industrial revolution, there was no time for anyone else to invent fossil-fuel
industry independently. By 1914, most of the people on earth were part of a Western-
dominated fossil-fuel economy and tied to global markets. The industrial revolution is
the biggest discontinuity in human history—so far.

The main effect of the phrase "so far" in the text is to

A. imply uncertainty about the accuracy of the data in the passage.
B. emphasize the cautions issued throughout the passage.
C. suggest that a future development may negate the preceding claim.
D. note the topic of the author's future publications

hard

16. Again, less positive reviews appear to be more persuasive than more positive
reviews in the context of an extremely positive default. In a follow-up study we found
that extreme reviews regain their persuasiveness if they are long. We presented
consumers with real consumer reviews for pens, and varied the reviews' star ratings so
that some deviated from a five-star default.

The sentence ("In a... long") mainly serves to

A. introduce testing conditions that determined the limits of the authors' earlier
findings.
B. concede the failure of a theory in its wider applications.
C. reinforce the research goal originally proposed by the authors.
D. suggest practical solutions to a common problem.

17. Not until the seventeenth century were fossil fuels and steam power put together in
a productive way, by northwest European coalminers who realized that they could burn
the coal they dug up to power engines that would pump water out of their mineshafts,
allowing them to dig deeper to find more coal. The earliest steam engines burned so
much coal that they were economical only if used right next to the mines that fed them,
but in 1776, James Watt and Matthew Boulton managed to build an engine with separate
heating and condensing chambers, greatly cutting its coal consumption, Industrialists
quickly figured out how to augment human and animal muscles with steam power in
all walks of life. Productivity soared and prices collapsed, but despite this, sales
increased so much that profits rose much higher than ever before.

Which choice best illustrates the function of the underlined sentence?

A. This sentence emphasizes the tendency for the prices to go down continuously.
B. This sentence bespeaks the importance of maintaining a steady supply of steam
power.
C. This sentence clearly illustrates the idea that steam power lowered the cost of
industrial production.
D. This sentence argues for the severity of price decrease and market paralysis.

17
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

⼩说 literature

easy

18. Moran walked to the window, which overlooked the parking lot. Earlier, at the café,
two or three tables of people had been discussing the coming snowstorm, which the
forecast said would hit the area hard by the end of the week; would it affect holiday
traveling, the people at the café had wondered, worries about their children's
homecoming lining the old women's faces. The nurse, too, when saying farewell to
Josef, had said glumly that they were going into another long winter, as though, in her
tired eyes last year's stale snow was still sitting in gray piles by the roadside, never
melting with time.
Moran remembered the delight in the eyes of the Thai couple and the Indian students
from years ago upon seeing their first snowfall; back in their home countries, the news
must have left ripples of marvel in many hearts.

The references to characters eyes in different lines primarily serve which function?
A. They emphasize the emotional impact of an event recounted in the passage.
B. They foreshadow an important change that occurs over the course of the passage.
C. They represent different attitudes toward a phenomenon described in the passage.
D. They reveal the underlying motivations of the main characters in the passage.

medium

19. Snow was in her hands. It melted and ran along her palms and evaporated into the
white at her feet. Again, she looked at him, and it suddenly occurred to her. "I can do
anything here,” she said, her eyes large and bright. When he looked at her again with
a queer expression, she elaborated." I can be anything. Like you," she said. "I can be a
doctor in America if I like.”

The description of the character's eyes as "large and bright” serves to emphasize the
character’s
A. eager anticipation of the adventures that lie ahead.
B. feelings of apprehension regarding her future life.
C. fierce determination to adopt a new value system.
D. joy at being reunited with Job after so many years.

20. The roda was a ritual. It was an event not a show What's the difference? A show‘s
done for those watching. The roda was done for those of us playing and singing and
composing. If you weren't part of the roda, you didn't exist. The roda was a conversation
among musicians into which you had to be invited. The batucada—that glorious,
improvised roda sound—was like a school of fish, sometimes floating serenely together,
sometimes darting faster than you could keep up with, but you had to earn the right to
lead that school.

The discussion about the school of fish serves primarily to

A. use sensory imagery to show how a certain musical style became widespread.
B. make a comparison between different types of artistic expression.

18
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

C. provide an analogy to explore the effect of a musical style on a culture.

D. describe an auditory experience using an evocative visual image.

21. Dusk melted into a chalk white that floated and exploded into the sky. Job clicked
the wipers, and they flipped back and forth at a frenetic pace, splitting the flakes. In
defiance, they grew fatter and rimmed the windshield with dust that scattered on the
wind.

The description of the snowflakes’ “defiance" serves primarily to

A. emphasize the growing power of the storm.
B. imply that the storm will prove dangerous.
C. suggest that overcoming the storm requires technology.
D. underscore the quiet beauty of the storm.

19
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

三. 细节 details

⾃然科学 natural science

easy

1. Word learning in infants is a relatively spontaneous process which starts around the
age of 8-12 months. A particular characteristic feature of word learning is that infants
are able to learn and remember the name of an object after a single exposure. This
phenomenon is called “fast mapping”, and it is believed to explain the rapid expansion
of the word repertoire in the following years of development.
Despite the fact that as far as we know most dogs learn the words the hard way (by
being trained for many hours per day), they may also rely on fast mapping. Rico was
the first dog tested on this problem. His skills were tested in two experiments each of
which was repeated using different objects.

Based on the passage, which claim does the author most likely believe was well
established prior to the study with Rico?
A. Infants learn the names of objects after one presentation.
B. Infants acquire language more quickly if it is intentionally taught.
C. Dogs learn the names of toys as readily as infants do.
D. Dogs mentally represent objects in a different manner than humans do.

2. We managed to speed up the recycling of these toxins by designing plants that

produce more of a protein, called the H-protein, that is already present 40 in our crop
plants and plays a role in photorespiration. Previous work in the lab using the small
plant Arabidopsis, the "lab rat" of plant research, suggested that increasing the quantity
of H-protein could speed up photorespiration and enable 45 our plants to grow larger.
Our team translated this idea from the lab to the field using a strain of tobacco,
Nicotiana tabacum, which we grew outside at a research field station.

When the author says that he and the other researchers "translated this idea from the lab
to the field", he most likely means that they
A. applied a concept to a new environment.
B. predicted variable study results based on a new setting.
C. adjusted their hypothesis to account for a different location.
D. changed the experimental process to accommodate a different venue.

3. Red siskins and red factor canaries get their distinctive colors by converting yellow
chemicals (carotenoids) in their food into red chemicals (ketocarotcnoids) in their
feathers. This transformation is carried out by an enzyme called a ketolase, and it takes
place mostly in the skin and liver. Given how active CYP2J19 is in these organs, it's
almost certainly the gene that makes the ketolase.

The passage indicates that in some birds, CYP2J19 most likely produces
A. ketolase.
B. yellow skin.
C. carotenoids.

20
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

D. green feathers.

4. As a fundamental study and a proof of concept, we demonstrated the approach in a

glass cell filled with a water solution at room temperature, and then ran an electrical
current through carbon electrodes that were loaded with nano-sized palladium particles
As exciting as this is, it can still be improved, and made even faster. We plan on
developing more efficient catalysts that require less palladium—which is pretty
expensive.

According to the author, which characteristic of palladium is important for the team
members to consider in perfecting their electrochemical method?
A. Toxicity
B. Durability
C. Luster
D. Cost

medium

5. Scientists have long sought a way to convert CO2 to CO, but traditional
electrocatalysts cannot effectively initiate the reaction. That's because a competing
reaction, called the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), takes precedence over the CO2
conversion reaction.
A few noble metals, such as gold and platinum, can avoid HER and convert CO2 to CO;
however, these metals are relatively rare and too expensive to serve as cost-efficient
catalysts. So, to convert CO2 to CO in a cost-effective way scientists used an entirely
new form of catalyst. Instead of noble metal nanoparticles, they used single atoms of
nickel.

It can reasonably be inferred from the passage that conversion of CO2 to CO with an
electrocatalyst
A. had been accomplished in the past but was impractical to perform on a large scale.
B. is more efficient to accomplish with bulk metals than with individual atoms.
C. has been performed when the electrocatalyst is a liquid but not a solid.
D. creates more hydrogen than it does carbon monoxide if a noble metal is used.

6. Although there are many experiments that ought still to be conducted in order to
reach a firm conclusion, it seems unlikely that dogs and humans share mental processes
underlying word learning. It is probably more interesting to find out whether
domestication contributed in any sense to the skill of word learning in this species.

One reasonable criticism of the author's assertion that dogs and humans are not likely
to share mental processes in word acquisition is that it
A. does not take into account results of experiments illustrating fast mapping in dogs.
B. has a very small amount of experimental evidence supporting it.
C. ignores the fact that dogs classify objects by size rather than by shape.
D. overlooks the sophisticated ways in which dogs process language syntax.

7. To fine-tune the expression of the H-protein, the team engineered the tobacco using
DNA from a close relative, Solanum tuberosum, or potato. Using a known sequence of

21
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

potato DNA, we were able to boost the H-protein specifically in the desired leaf tissue.
That proved to be the key to increasing yield without harming the plant.

The passage indicates that the use of Solanum tuberosum DNA allowed the researchers
to
A. reduce the amounts of glycolate and ammonia produced in the tobacco plants by
slowing photorespiration.
B. localize increased production of H-protein to an area that is most beneficial in the
tobacco plant.
C. confirm whether boosting production of proteins other than H-proteins would have
a similar effect on tobacco plant growth.
D. determine whether their experimentation with the tobacco plants could be harmful
to other major crop plants.

8. According to Macdonald and Wordsworth's hypothesis, first, the Franklin LIP formed
in an area rich in sulfur; as it erupted, large plumes of hot gas and dust would have
lofted sulfur particles kilometers into the air. Sulfur particles block the incoming sun
and also keep heat from escaping Earth, which can create either a warming or cooling
effect, depending on the location. That’s why the next piece of physical evidence is
key—geologic records show the Franklin LIP sat at the equator where Earth receives
more solar energy than the amount of heat it radiates back out to space. According to
the researchers' model, if enough sulfur particles reached high enough into the
atmosphere at this equatorial location, it would block enough of the sun's incoming
energy to trigger runaway cooling.

Based on the Passage, which additional finding, if true, would most likely help validate
Macdonald and Wordsworth's hypothesis?
A. Several large volcanic regions extending beyond the Franklin LIP were also found
to be rich in sulfur.
B. The amount of sulfur emitted during volcanic eruptions in the Franklin LIP was
less than the amount of carbon dioxide emitted.
C. Volcanic eruptions in the Franklin LIP were powerful enough to propel sulfur
particles to an altitude where they could redirect solar energy.
D. Volcanic activity occurring in the Franklin LIP caused the breakup of Rodinia into
several smaller landmasses.

9. Ammonia is a critical ingredient in agricultural fertilizers. With more than 145

million tonnes manufactured annually, only sulfuric acid outranks it as the world's most
produced chemical. Manufacturing this simple molecule, made from just four atoms—
one nitrogen and three hydrogens—is, however, surprisingly difficult and one of the
most energy-intensive manufacturing processes on the planet; consuming 3 to 5 percent
of the word's annual natural gas production. With a growing world population,
escalating demand for food and energy and the looming perils of fossil fuel induced
climate change, there is an urgent need to make ammonia synthesis more sustainable.

It can reasonably be inferred from the passage that the global need for ammonia will
A. begin to decline as agriculture decreasingly relies on fertilizers.
B. change depending on the annual climate fluctuations that farming regions
experience.
C. increase as more ammonia is required to meet the expanding need for agriculture.

22
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

D. stabilize when production is supported by a renewable energy source such as solar

power.

10. People of course still need to eat, which meant that domesticated plants and animals
remained vital sources of energy, but fossil fuels quickly transformed farming too. By
the late nineteenth century, trains and steamships had made it much easier and cheaper
to move food to people and in the twentieth, chemical fertilizers gasoline for tractors
and electricity to pump water to fields directly increased output. By 2000, each acre of
American farmland absorbed, on average, eighty times as much energy as it had done
in 1900, and yielded four times as much food.

Based on the text, which choice best describes the effect of fossil fuel use on food
production?
A. Fossil fuels have reduced the amount of land needed to produce a given amount of
food.
B. Fossil fuels have raised the costs of food production due to farmers purchasing
more equipment.
C. Fossil fuels have decreased the amount of food that needs to be produced per acre
of land.
D. Fossil fuels have resulted in increased food production by increasing the number
of farmers.

11. Thornton and McAuliffe were also able to provide experimental evidence that the
helpers' behavior promoted skill acquisition. Meerkats’ pups that were artificially given
additional opportunities to handle live, stingless scorpions subsequently outperformed
siblings that had been given dead scorpions, showing that the opportunity to practice
on disabled but live scorpions facilitates skill acquisition.

According to the passage. meerkat pups who played with living but harmless versions
of scorpions were
A. less able to discern when prey was dangerous than were pups who encountered
intact prey.
B. less likely to consume enough to survive than were pups who were provided with
dead prey.
C. more skillful at handling intact prey than were pups who were provided with dead
prey.
D. more likely to lose their prey than were pups who encountered intact prey.

12. Various places in the ocean offer abundant nitrate and phosphate but no
phytoplankton. In the 1930s, a Norwegian oceanographer named Haaken Hasberg Gran
suggested that the phytoplankton were absent because there wasn't enough iron to
support them. Iron crops up all through the biochemistry of photosynthesis. But
unfortunately, because the levels of iron involved are indeed low, and ocean research
ships are made of iron, measuring iron levels with enough precision to prove Gran's
hypothesis was hard.

According to the passage, Gran's idea about iron was primarily intended to explain the
A. lack of certain organisms in some apparently nutrient-rich areas.
B. relative dryness of most land masses during ice ages.
C. atypical biochemistry of certain phytoplankton species.

23
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

D. variations in carbon dioxide levels during ice ages.

13. The major source of iron to the mid-oceans is dust from the continents—the tropical
North Atlantic is more productive than the southern part of the same ocean because of
dust from the Sahara. Martin suggested that the increased amount of dust blown from
the drier continents in the ice ages would have made various parts of the ocean more
productive. The effect would be particularly marked, he thought, in the southern oceans,
where the level of unused nutrients is currently quite high, and where the dust supply
might have been particularly abundant.

According to the passage, Martin thought that ice-age ocean productivity differed from
present ocean productivity because of the
A. higher levels of nitrate and phosphate in the oceans during an ice age.
B. greater amounts of dust being deposited in the oceans during an ice age.
C. increased concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide during an ice age.
D. more southerly position of South America during an ice age.

14. The researchers added a key shell-building protein called osteopontin to calcium
carbonate to yield crystals like those seen in the eggshells. The presence of that protein
makes calcium carbonate crystals form in a nanostructured pattern, rather than smooth
and even crystal study coauthor Marc McKee, a biomineralization researcher at McGill
University in Montrealand colleagues found. The team also found structural variation
on a minute scale throughout the eggshell though it's only about a third of a millimeter
thick. Inner layers have less osteopontin, leading to bigger nanostructures. That may
make the inner shell less resilient than the outer shell, which makes sense, McKee says.

Which choice regarding resistance to cracking can most reasonably be inferred from
the text?
A. Shells with relatively high levels of proteins tend to be less resistant to cracking
than shells with lower levels are.
B. Shells with relatively large nanostructures tend to be less resistant to cracking than
shells with smaller nanostructures are.
C. Shells with more neatly aligned calcium carbonate crystals tend to be more
resistant to cracking than shells with less neatly aligned calcium carbonate crystals
are.
D. Shells with bumpier surface textures tend to be more resistant to cracking than
shells with smoother surface textures are.

15. Researchers used a beam of ions to cut thin cross sections in chicken eggshells.
They then analyzed the shells with electron microscopy and other high-resolution
imaging techniques. The team found that proteins disrupt the crystallization of calcium
carbonate, so that what seems at low resolution to be neatly aligned crystals is actually
a more fragmented jumble. This misalignment can make materials more resilient:
Instead of spreading unimpeded, a crack must zig and zag through scrambled crystals.
Lab tests back up that finding: the researchers added a key shell-building protein called
osteopontin to calcium carbonate to yield crystals like those seen presence of that
protein makes in the eggshells.

Based on the text, which assumption did the researchers make in designing the study?
A. Using high-resolution imaging techniques would enable them to determine which

24
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

proteins are most abundant in chicken eggshells.

B. Examining thin cross sections of chicken eggshells would reveal what percentage
of the shell is composed of calcium carbonate.
C. Combining a particular protein with calcium carbonate would simulate an
important effect produced by the proteins found in chicken eggshells.
D. Adjusting the protein levels in chicken eggshells would allow them to enhance
crack resistance in eggshells.

16. If thinking of motion as going from left to right is a cognitive universal that's
pervasive across our species, then the Arabic or Hebrew speaker should act like an
English speaker. But if the direction of your writing system accounts for how you think
of lateral motion, then the Arabic or Hebrew speaker should have a mental
representation of lateral motion that’s a mirror image of what English speakers see. A
pair of European researchers took this question on, in several ways. They asked
speakers of Italian (which is written from left to right) and Arabic (which, again, is
write from right to left) to listen to sentences about actions, like “The girl pushes the
boy.”

Based on the passage, what sentence other than “The girl pushes the boy” would most
likely have been used in the study?
A. The dog chases the ball.
B. The rain starts to fall.
C. The girl raises her hand.
D. The man turns on the light.

hard

17. The satellites in Zwally's study fire lasers toward Earth. The beams reflect back at
the satellite allowing scientists to calculate the surface ice's height. But this technique
is not perfect, and the beams require careful calibration using a flat unchanging
“reference surface.” For this, most scientists use well-understood regions on the ice
sheet itself. But Zwally and his team used stretches of the Southern Ocean that are
exposed between cracks in the ice, and glaciologist Theodore Scambos worries that
these pools are not as still as they seem. He argues that such surfaces can easily form a
new layer of ice or even frost flowers—ice crystals that grow upward from the sea. This
would make the reference surface move, an effect that could interfere with the data.

According to Passage, the reference surfaces that Zwally used in his study may not be
suitable for calibration because they are
A. likely to develop new ice formations.
B. generally difficult for satellites to detect.
C. too flat to provide an accurate baseline.
D. too few in number to provide a representative sample.

18. Granted that the origin of life on Earth is only one datum in a very big Universe.
But astrobiologists, using an increasingly sophisticated technology focused on the
search for alien life believe that at least a few and probably a large number of planets
in our sector of the galaxy have had similar biological geneses. The conditions they
seek are that the planets have water and are in “Goldilocks” orbit—not close enough to

25
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

the mother star to be furnace-blasted, yet not so far away that their water is forever
locked in ice. It should also be kept in mind, however, that just because a planet is
inhospitable now does not mean it always has been so. Further on a seemingly
otherwise barren surface there may exist small pockets of habitats—oases—that
support organisms. Finally, life might have originated somewhere with molecular
elements different from those in DNA and energy sources used by organisms on Earth.

What does the passage most strongly suggest could pose a challenge to the researchers
trying to accurately identify signs that alien life arose on a planet?
A. The researchers’ examinations may be restricted to small habitable areas of the
surface.
B. The molecular biosignatures of life on that planet may be different from those of
life on Earth.
C. The researchers are focusing only on planets where life arose shortly after
conditions became hospitable.
D. Certain molecules may be less concentrated in the atmosphere of the planet than
the researchers previously realized.

19. A quirk in the evolution of the protein, called Rubisco, is that sometimes instead of
converting carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, it uses oxygen instead. This produces
waste products which can be toxic to plants and slow or stunt their growth. To remove
these toxic chemicals, another process needs to kick into gear. Photorespiration is a part
of natural plant metabolism that recycles these toxins. Recycling these toxic byproducts
sucks up a huge portion of the plants’ energy—and can inhibit the plant’s growth by
more than 30 percent. At higher temperatures, plants tend to increase the amount of
oxygen they convert, so as growing season temperatures rise and heat waves strike, up
to 50 percent of the energy generated from photosynthesis can be required for
photorespiration to recycle toxins in major crops like wheat and soybeans.

Which statement about the production of toxins resulting from Rubisco’s conversion of
oxygen in certain crop plants is best supported by the passage?
A. oxygen conversion results in higher levels of toxins in major crop plants than it
does in other plant varieties.
B. The presence of toxins in the plants results in a greater reduction in plant growth
than does photorespiration.
C. As environmental temperatures decrease, photorespiration recycles the toxins in
the plants less effectively.
D. As environmental temperatures decrease, the amount of the toxins produced in the
plants decreases.

社会科学 social science

easy

20. Projections from America's Bureau of Labor Statistics show that four of the five
fastest-growing occupations in the country involve personal care; none of those jobs
requires a bachelor's degree.

26
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

It can reasonably be inferred from the discussion of projections from the US Bureau of
Labor Statistics that, over time, university degrees may become
A. weaker indicators of employ ability.
B. easier to attain than they were prior to the computer age.
C. stronger predictors of earning potential.
D. less valuable for those who are not studying technology.

medium

21. Social psychologists inferred that humans were, indeed, so spontaneously groupish
that they would favor their group even if the group was entirely arbitrary, and even if
groups were arbitrarily constructed by an experimenter. A spectacular demonstration of
the phenomenon was Henri Tajfel's "minimal group" paradigm, where people were
assigned to two distinct groups, A and B, or blue and red, or any other meaningless
label, on the basis of clearly arbitrary criteria. People grouped together had nothing
particular in common; in fact, they did not interact during the experiment. After a while,
in an ostensibly unrelated task, they were asked to allocate various goods and tokens
among all participants. The result, replicated many times, was that people invariably
tended to favor members of their own group.

According to the passage, Tajfel's "minimal group" paradigm reveals that

A. the existence of in-group bias is more likely to arise in smaller groups than in larger
ones.
B. people require a basic sense of common purpose if they are to feel loyalty to a
group.
C. a sense of group identification emerges when people start to engage in the exchange
of resources.
D. in-group bias can occur even when the basis of the group's existence is apparently
insignificant.

22. As the psychologist Toshio Yamagishi pointed out, the mistake is for participants to
assume that they are engaging in a social exchange interaction, in which people can
reciprocate favors. Participants, knowing that they will allocate goods to others and
receive goods allocated by these same others, intuitively (and wrongly, in this case)
infer that they will receive more if they give more. As this reciprocation heuristic is
constantly activated in real in-group situations, people spontaneously apply it to
whatever in-group situation they experience.

Yamagishi's observations most strongly support which statement about social

interactions?
A. People think that the mere sense of belonging to a group is sufficient motivation
for favoring their own group.
B. People will treat others outside of their group more generously if they learn they
have common interests.
C. People believe that their prior experiences of group dynamics in other contexts will
likely have relevance in new situations.
D. People will act to benefit those in their group even if they will not be personally
rewarded for doing so.

27
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

23. Although financial incentives can provide motivation to perform a task well,
Barasch and colleagues Jonathan Z. Berman (London Business School) and Deborah
A. Small (the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania) wondered whether
paying people to advocate for a cause that they were already motivated to support might
have unintended negative consequences. In one study, the researchers recruited 36
“persuaders” at a community event intended to raise money for an organization
supporting medical research and awareness. The persuaders were asked to make a video
pitch for the organization, doing their best to persuade potential donors to contribute.

Based on the passage, one likely reason Barasch's team recruited persuaders at a
medical research fund-raiser was that the team assumed that attendees of the event
A. had varying levels of expertise concerning medical research.
B. were predisposed to care about the importance of raising money for medical
research.
C. had personal contacts with a history of donating to charitable causes.
D. were sufficiently outgoing to advocate effectively for a charitable cause.

24. Online reviews can play a big role in influencing people's purchase decisions, but
what makes a review most persuasive one way or the other? Certainly, bad reviews can
dissuade customers, but it turns out that some good reviews can too. Our research on
persuasion and marketing is the first to find that a moderately positive review can be
more persuasive than an extremely positive review. We found that a moderately positive
review is even more persuasive when the default review selection is extremely positive.
This is because reviews that deviate from a default review selection are perceived to be
more thoughtful—and thus more accurate—than reviews that conform to the default.

According to the passage, the researchers were primarily interested in investigating

which question?
A. Are consumers likely to believe that extremely positive reviews are intentionally
deceptive marketing tools?
B. Why are moderately positive reviews just as likely to deter purchases as they are
to encourage them?
C. In what circumstances might positive reviews have effects similar to those of
negative reviews?
D. Do consumers find qualitative reviews with no numerical ratings less accurate than
those with numerical ratings?

25. One dominant strain of thought among charity researchers is that our donations
aren't chiefly driven by concern for others, or a principled sense of altruism-that instead,
it's largely a way for us to indulge the desire to feel virtuous and happy about our role
in the world. This theory was formalized in 1989 by behavioral economist James
Andreoni, who described the rush of self-satisfaction and sense of purpose one
experiences after committing support to a worthy cause as a "warm glow." The reason
we give money, Andreoni wrote, is that it makes us feel good-regardless of how much
it benefits the people we're ostensibly trying to help.

Based on the passage, which statement best describes a belief held by charity
researchers about the behavior of donors?
A. They tend to donate based on the persuasiveness of an organization's advertising.
B. They are less inclined to donate to local charities than to those outside their

28
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

community.
C. They are often reluctant to donate before researching an organization's background.
D. They often make donations to help strengthen their own sense of benevolence.

hard

26. The experiment results seem to show that people who are used to reading and
writing in a certain direction tend to understand language about horizontal motion as
going in the same direction. But we should tread cautiously here—other cultural
practices could potentially correlate with writing direction, which could muddy the
explanatory waters. For instance, it could be that visual depictions of events that Italians
see in comic books, cartoons or movies tend to cast motion from left to right, but the
ones made for Arabic speakers are more likely to go from right to left. Differences in
how people mentally represent events could in principle be due to how events are
depicted, and not to writing direction per se. And to make things even more complicated,
it's even possible that people creating comic books and other artifacts depict horizontal
events in different directions in different cultures because of their language's writing
direction. This would introduce another link in the causal chain.

Which possible theory regarding a potential “causal chain” can most reasonably be
inferred from the passage?
A. People are influenced in their mental representation of events by the writing
direction of language, and this in turn determines the types of art cultures produce.
B. Writing direction of language influences how graphic artists depict horizontal
motion, which in turn influences how people mentally represent events.
C. Graphic artists from different cultures do not depict horizontal motion in the same
way, but readers tend to ignore those differences in their mental representations.
D. Writing direction of language is an important factor in how readers mentally
represent horizontal motion, and this factor is taken into account by graphic artists
creating comic books

⼩说 literature

easy

27. Miss Spivey looked like just the right person to give it to them. She was, by almost
anyone's standards, a woman of the world. She'd gone to boarding schools since she
was six years old; she'd studied French in Paris and drama in London; and during what
she called a “fruitful intermission” in her formal education, she had traveled extensively
in the Near East and Africa with a friend of her grandmother's one Janet Miller, who
was a medical doctor from Nashville Tennessee. After her travels with Dr. Miller, Miss
Spivey continued her education by attending Barnard College in New York City.

Miss Spivey most likely uses the phrase “fruitful intermission” to indicate that
A. she benefited from taking time off from her studies in order to travel.
B. her travels with Janet Miller encouraged her to start medical school.
C. her early years at boarding school resulted in unanticipated rewards.
D. what she thought would be a short break from school lasted several years.
29
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

28. Before she met Josef, Moran had been in Madison for two and a half months, but
those days like the time since she had left Josef, had been willfully turned into the
footprints of seabirds on wet sand, existing only between the flow and ebb of the tide.
Is it possible for one to develop an attachment to a place or a time without another
person being involved? If so, the place and the time must make a most barren habitat.
Guangzhou where she had gone to college for four years, had been marked by the
absence of any communication between her and her old friends in Beijing, but even that
lack had been meaningful: people absent could claim more space.

The passage most directly indicates that when Moran was in college, she was
A. out of contact with friends she had known earlier, though they remained important
to her.
B. too busy with her academic work to make new friends, though she very much
wanted to.
C. determined to forget about her childhood friends, though she thought about them
occasionally.
D. so shy that she had only a few friends, though she formed close relationships with
them.

29. It was time to get a new scraper, Josef said, and when he saw Moran’s puzzled look,
he asked if things were all right. She said everything was all right, though he looked
concerned still, and wanted to know if her headache was bothering her and if she needed
some medicine. She would not have said anything more, but she knew that if she did
not tell the truth, she would make a good-hearted man worry unnecessarily. She
reassured him that she was perfectly fine except that she did not know what he meant
when he talked about a scraper.

According to the passage Moran's confusion regarding Josef’s comment about a new
scraper most likely stemmed from the fact that she
A. was not able to hear everything he said.
B. believed that he had just bought a new scraper.
C. did not understand his meaning
D. had not noticed that it was snowing

30. The home they bought in Whaletown was built in a meadowlike clearing that had
been hacked from the middle of the dense temperate rain forest. A smaller cottage stood
at the foot of the drive where her mother would live. On all sides, massive Douglas firs,
red cedars, and bigleaf maples surrounded them, dwarfing everything human. When
Ruth first saw these giant trees, she wept. They rose up around her, ancient time beings,
towering a hundred or two hundred feet overhead. At five feet five inches, she had never
felt so puny in all her life.

According to the passage, what is Ruth's initial reaction to encountering the forest of
Whaletown?
A. She is overwhelmed by its immensity.
B. She is surprised by its diversity of species.
C. She feels a sense of kinship.
D. She wishes to return to the city.

30
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

31. I knew scarcely a thing about the world of literature, but Mr. Fonseka welcomed
me with unusual and interesting stories, stopping abruptly in mid-tale and saying that
someday I should find out what happened after that. "You will like it, I think. Perhaps
he will find the eagle.” Or, “They will escape the maze with the help of someone they
are about to meet…"Often, during the night, while stalking the ship with Ramadhin and
Cassius, I'd attempt to add to the bare bones of an adventure Mr. Fonseka had left
unfinished.

The narrator indicates that his acquaintance with Mr. Fonseka influenced him because
Mr. Fonseka
A. inspired him to become a writer.
B. motivated him to pursue teaching.
C. taught him to memorize stories.
D. introduced him to literature.

32. Dusk melted into a chalk white that floated and exploded into the sky. Job clicked
the wipers, and they flipped back and forth at a frenetic pace, splitting the flakes. In
defiance, they grew fatter and rimmed the windshield with dust that scattered on the
wind.
"Snow,” Ifi said as it slowly dawned on her. She had only read of it in books. This was
snow, flaking on the car, the same as the blanket laid on the grass. This is America, she
said to herself. She would scoop it into an envelope and mail it to Aunty. No, she would
not do that. She laughed. Instead, she would take a picture for her little cousins. Without
thinking, Ifi reached for the door handle.

According to the passage, when the snow begins to fall

A. Job stops the car in anticipation of worsening conditions.
B. Job is concerned that the snow will delay their arrival.
C. Ifi realizes that the snow is potentially dangerous.
D. Ifi does not immediately recognize what it actually is.

medium

33. The following text is adapted from Oscar Hijuelos’s 1993 novel The Fourteen Sisters
of Emilio Montez O'Brien. Mariela Montez and her husband Nelson O'Brien live in a
small town in Pennsylvania with their fifteen children.

And they had those few visual clues as to what their father had left behind in Ireland—
no photographs save for one, of a beautiful young woman, life brimming within her,
kept on the wall in a gold-leaf oval frame, their Aunt Kate, Nelson's sister, they'd been
told, with whom their father had first traveled to America in 1896.

Based on the text, what is true about the photograph of Aunt Kate?
A. It is a treasured memento from Nelson's past.
B. It is an image portraying life in Ireland.
C. It is of little interest to the younger sisters.
D. It is a symbol of Nelson's desire to return to Ireland.

34. Miss Grace Spivey arrived in Threestep, Georgia, in August 1938. She stepped off

31
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

the train. August was a hellish month to step off the train in Georgia, although it was
nothing, she said, compared to the 119 degrees that greeted her when she arrived one
time in Timbuktu, which, she assured us, was a real place in Africa. I believe her remark
irritated some of the people gathered to welcome her on the burned grass alongside the
tracks. When folks are sweating through their shorts, they don’t like to hear that this is
nothing compared to someplace else. Irritated or not, the majority of those present were
inclined to see the arrival of the new schoolteacher in a positive light.

It can reasonably be inferred from the passage that some of the people at the train station
regard Miss Spivey’s comment about the Georgia heat with
A. sympathy, because they assume that she is experiencing intense heat for the first
time.
B. disappointment, because they doubt that she will stay in Threestep for very long.
C. embarrassment, because they imagine that she is superior to them.
D. resentment, because they feel that she is minimizing their discomfort.

35. Miss Spivey showed us on the map how she and Dr. Janet Miller had sailed across
the Atlantic Ocean and past the Rock of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea. Using
the end of a ruler, she gently tapped such places as Morocco and Tunis and Algiers to
mark their route along the top of Africa. “And can you guess what we saw from the
train?” Miss Spivey asked. We could not. “Camels!” she said. “We saw a whole caravan
of camels.” She looked around the room, waiting for us to be amazed and delighted at
the thought.
We all hung there for a minute, thinking hard, until Mavis Davis spoke up.

In the passage, when Miss Spivey announces that she had seen camels, the students’
reaction suggests that they are
A. delighted.
B. fascinated.
C. baffled.
D. worried.

36. Miss Grace Spivey arrived in Threestep, Georgia, in August 1938. August was a
hellish month to step off the train in Georgia, although it was nothing, she said,
compared to the 119 degrees that greeted her when she arrived one time in Timbuktu,
which, she assured us, was a real place in Africa. I believe her remark irritated some of
the people gathered to welcome her on the burned grass alongside the tracks. When
folks are sweating through their shorts, they don’t like to hear that this is nothing
compared to someplace else. Hard times were still upon us in 1938, but, like my
momma said, “We weren’t no poorer than we’d ever been,” and the citizens of
Threestep were in the mood for a little excitement.

In the passage, Threestep is mainly presented as a

A. summer retreat for vacationers.
B. small rural town.
C. town that is home to a prominent university.
D. comfortable suburb.

37. Moran remembered the delight in the eyes of the Thai couple and the Indian students
from years ago upon seeing their first snowfall. She herself had not shared their relish.

32
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

One can always go back to another moment in history to negate the present; only the
impressionable and the inexperienced—in that case the people from the snowless
tropics — are liable to christen a moment memory. The snow-covered hills west of the
Back Sea; her bicycle tires skidding on rutted, hard-pressed snow before crashing into
her friend Boyang‘s; — if she wanted, she could always assign more meaning to those
memories, diminishing others.

It can reasonably be inferred from the passage that Moran regards memory as
something that
A. makes her resent others who have different experiences.
B. blurs reality in a way that causes her to feel uneasy.
C. has an emotional impact that she can control at will.
D. influences the depth of her relationships with friends.

38. For like the Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where the German Emperor
profoundly dines with the seven Imperial Electors, so these Ahab’s cabin meals were
somehow solemn meals, eaten in awful silence; and yet at table old Ahab forbade not
conversation; only he himself was dumb.

The passage most strongly suggests that a dinner in Ahab's cabin is similar to the
“Coronation banquet at Frankfort” because it
A. is an event that occurs only rarely.
B. is an occasion for ritual and ceremony
C. can be unexpectedly perilous for its guests.
D. can be a time when a person of high rank dispenses wisdom.

39. I started to gather together some odds and ends, tripping all over myself. Just to
boost my spirits a bit, I turned on all the lights in the apartment. Still, it didn't feel bright.
The walls were beige, painted by the previous owner. There were drawings by a childish
hand, friendly like. And a faint footprint. A couple of mosquito corpses. At this point,
the doorbell rang.

According to the passage, turning on all of the lights in the apartment reveals that
A. all of the rooms have spacious, airy interiors.
B. the apartment is much smaller than the narrator expected it would be.
C. the apartment has a warm and cozy feel.
D. there is evidence of the lives of previous tenants.

40. One night, after a week of visiting Ciata's, I tapped my nails against the metal table
in time to the boys' music. Another night, I clinked the tip of a bottle against my empty
glass. On another night, I shook a box of matches. Each night I pulled my chair closer
to the roda circle, then closer still. Until, one day, I wasn't sitting behind Vinicius
anymore but beside him, ticking away the beat, moving in time with the men around
me. No one looked up from their instruments. The music did not stop, the boys did not
complain. To mask my elation, I focused even harder on keeping the beat.

Which claim about the narrator's attempt to join the roda can most reasonably be
inferred from the passage?
A. The narrator is tentatively allowed to participate in the roda but is then quickly
dismissed as being too inexperienced.

33
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

B. The narrator successfully joins the roda but never receives an explicit invitation to
join.
C. The narrator joins the roda but has to compromise some of her artistic values in
order to be accepted by the musicians.
D. The narrator impresses the musicians at the roda but fails to captivate the audience.

41. In this case, Phaedra thought the force of her foul mood came in handy; it
encouraged a quick end to what had been an uncomfortable, bordering on unpleasant
afternoon.

In describing the "force of her foul mood" the narrator most likely means that Phaedra
is able to
A. postpone a tough confrontation.
B. influence the outcome of a situation.
C. convince others to alter their preferences
D. exaggerate the severity of a problem.

42. From the start, I told Frankie she was in charge, and the arrangement seemed to
please her. She got to work at once, methodically making her way through Cal's files,
hunting down marketing and sales people—and even my father—when I was of no help.
If she noticed the way her new colleagues whispered about her American assertiveness,
she didn't let it bother her.

The text indicates that Frankie is the type of office worker who
A. strives to make a positive impression on her colleagues.
B. hopes to be promoted quickly.
C. handles tasks systematically and capably.
D. makes business decisions quickly and independently.

43. “Come now. We'll drop your (Ifi) baggage at the house, and then we will meet other
Nigerians at a restaurant. Emeka and Gladys. You'll like them.” Job paused for a
moment, as if choosing his words with care. " You will like Gladys immediately. She is
a classical lady. But Emeka, you must become acquainted with him before you can
understand his foolish humor.”

It can be inferred from the passage that Job regards Ifi's first meeting with his friends
with
A. concern that Emeka will not make a good first impression.
B. hope that Ifi will enjoy the food at the restaurant he has chosen.
C. doubt that Gladys and Emeka will have anything in common with Ifi.
D. inattention to Ifi's own reluctance for such a meeting.

44. Abe clattered the shovel around the ice walls of the water hole. He flung a last
shovelful “Go 'head.” Under his heavy mustache he had the faint curl to his lip that a
person wouldn't notice unless they knew him well. I wasn't sure if his aversion was to
the tall buildings, ice cubes, or this change in Iris.

The narrator indicates that a faint curl to his father's lip generally reflects Abe's feelings
of
A. disapproval of something heard or seen.

34
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

B. concern about a challenging problem.

C. defensiveness over a perceived criticism.
D. amusement regarding a personal interaction.

hard

45. It was there, Miss Spivey told us, in the midst of trying to find her true mission in
life that she wandered one afternoon into a lecture by the famous John Dewey who
was talking about his famous book Democracy and Education. Professor Dewey was
in his seventies by then, she said, but he still liked to chat with students after a lecture-
especially female students, she added-sometimes over coffee, and see in their eyes the
fire his words could kindle. It was after this lecture and subsequent coffee that Miss
Spivey had marched to the Teacher's College and signed up, all aflame. Two years later,
she told a cheery blue-suited woman from the WPA that she wanted to bring democracy
and education to the poorest, darkest, most remote and forgotten corner of America.

What is the narrator most likely suggesting by describing Miss Spivey as having
“wandered” in one situation and “marched” in another situation?
A. Dewey, knowing Miss Spivey wasn't very confident in her ability to teach, instilled
in her a sense of determination.
B. Talking with Dewey over coffee made Miss Spivey realize how excited she was to
teach in the poorest, most remote corner of America.
C. After two years spent studying, Miss Spivey was anxious to start teaching and be
in charge of her own classroom.
D. Miss Spivey’s initial encounter with Dewey's ideas was somewhat accidental but
ultimately motivated her to decisive action.

46. Flask was the last person down at the dinner, and Flask is the first man up. Consider!
For hereby Flask's dinner was badly jammed in point of time. Starbuck and Stubb both
had the start of him; and yet they also have the privilege of lounging in the rear. If Stubb
even, who is but a peg higher than Flask, happens to have but a small appetite, and soon
shows symptoms of concluding his repast, then Flask must bestir himself, he will not
get more than three mouthfuls that day; for it is against holy usage for Stubb to precede
Flask to the deck.

The passage states that if Stubb does not feel like eating much food at dinner, then Flask
will
A. receive the food that Stubb leaves behind.
B. be forced to leave the table prematurely.
C. be thankful that Stubb is spared the risk of choking.
D. dine with the sailors in the forecastle.

47. Peace and satisfaction, thought Flask, have forever departed from my stomach. I
am an officer; but, how I wish I could grab a bit of old-fashioned beef in the forecastle,
as I used to when I was before the mast. There's the fruits of promotion now; there's the
vanity of glory: there's the insanity of life! Besides, if it were so that any mere sailor of
the Pequod had a grudge against Flask in Flask's official capacity, all that sailor had to
do, in order to obtain ample vengeance, was to go aft at dinner-time, and get a peep at
Flask through the cabin sky-light, sitting silly and dumfoundered before awful Ahab.

35
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

It can reasonably be inferred from the passage that Flask views his position as an officer
as one that
A. has unintended consequences that outweigh its benefits.
B. separates him from former colleagues whose company he once enjoyed.
C. confers honors on him that those who are not officers would not appreciate.
D. places him in the company of others who take pleasure in silence.

48. I moved here half a year ago. A chrysanthemum I had planted in a flowerpot was
blooming—yellow petals, the kind the woman poet Li Qingzhao liked to write about.
The mums made my empty balcony look like a small cemetery.

The image of the chrysanthemum on the balcony mainly serves to suggest that
A. the narrator is confident about his ability to make a warm and inviting home in his
new apartment.
B. despite the difficulty of the moving process, the narrator has made a good choice
and will thrive in his new home.
C. the narrator's love for poetry and natural beauty permeates every aspect of his life.
D. the new apartment is so cold and bleak that even a beautiful flower can't transform
it into a happy place.

49. She laughed. Instead, she would take a picture for her little cousins. Without
thinking, Ifi reached for the door handle.
Job swerved the car. "What are you doing? Are you crazy?”
Save for a pickup truck that had passed many miles before, there was no one else on
the road.
“Let's stop. I would like to touch it.”
He gave her a strange look. "We cannot be late to dinner."
"Darling," Ifi said, settling on the word she had heard Aunty and Uncle use in the middle
of quarrels.
“Okie, okie,” he said. "We will stop. We are not far from home.”

After Ifi asks Job to stop the car, Job's feelings toward Ifi shift from
A. defensiveness to a realization of emotional security.
B. dismissiveness to a respect for an unusual ambition.
C. puzzlement to a recognition of emotional kinship.
D. hostility to a powerful surge of genuine affection.

50. My mother was given to sudden sprints of creativity. When she was young, she'd
wanted to be an artist—she had not yet told me the whole story but I'd seen the single
frightening canvas in the attic. I had never seen her take an interest in plants before,
beyond providing general instructions to the gardener. The geraniums were different:
they were not to be delegated to a mere professional. She repotted them herself. The
operation took three days. She commandeered the backyard and transformed it into a
flower factory crowded with pots and plants and large bags of fertile soil.

Based on the passage, Perla most likely views her mother's decision to repot the
geraniums as
A. significant, because Perla's mother rarely undertakes new projects.
B. amusing, because Perla's mother has previously expressed a dislike of gardening.

36
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

C. unsurprising, because the decision is consistent with an aspect of Perla's mother's

personality
D. ill-conceived, because Perla's mother has miscalculated the level of effort required
to implement the decision.

51. "Imagine," he (Oliver) said. "Palms and alligators flourishing once again as far north
as Alaska!"
This was his latest artwork, a botanical intervention he called the Neo Eocene. He
described it as a collaboration with time and place, whose outcome neither he nor any
of his contemporaries would ever live to witness, but he was okay with not knowing.
Patience was part of his nature, and he accepted his lot as a short-lived mammal,
scurrying in and out amid the roots of the giants.

Based on the passage, Oliver would most likely agree with which statement about
works of art?
A. They tend to be most original when they involve collaboration among multiple
artists.
B. They do not necessarily have to be confined to a formal setting.
C. They are likely to appeal to a wide audience when they depict images from nature.
D. They are often the creations of people who do not consider themselves artists.

⼈⽂ humanities

easy

52. Ben Jonson, a well-known playwright and seventeenth-century contemporary of

John Donne, wrote that while “the first poet in the world in some things, Donne
nevertheless “for not keeping of an accent deserved hanging.” Donne's generation
admired the depth of his feeling, but was puzzled by his often-irregular rhythm and
obscure references. It was not until the twentieth century and modern movements that
celebrated emotion and allusion that Donne really began to be appreciated. Writers such
as T.S. Eliot and W B. Yeats admired the psychological intricacies of a poet who could
one moment flaunt his earthly dalliances with his mistress and the next wretched,
implore God to “bend your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.”

It can be inferred from the passage that W. B. Yeats was

A. uninterested in meter and rhythm.
B. a modern writer.
C. close to T S. Eliot.
D. interested in imitating Donne's technique

medium

53. In 1782, philosopher J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur became the first to apply the
word “melting” to a population of immigrants: “Here individuals of all nations are
melted into a new race of men.” Crevecoeur idealized a nation built from individuals
who had transcended their origins and embraced a common American ethos: “From
involuntary idleness, servile dependence penury, and useless labour, he has passed to
37
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

toils of a very different nature, rewarded by ample subsistence. This is an American.”

While debate raged as to what exactly “melting meant—diverse peoples coexisting
peacefully while maintaining their differences or refashioning themselves to blend
indistinguishably into a new, common substance—Crèvecoeurs term was here to stay:
America, settled by immigrants, was to have a unified populace.

The phrase “common substance” in the last sentence is used to refer to

A. a new, distinctly American cuisine.
B. Crèvecouer's use of the term “melting pot.”
C. a culture and identity shared by all Americans.
D. a unified populace made of many diverse and distinct groups.

54. Robert Schumann’s orchestral music has been underappreciated and misunderstood
for many years by critics and audiences alike. The nineteenth-century virtuoso's works
for the piano are acknowledged as brilliant masterworks. However, his large scale
orchestral works have always suffered by comparison to those of contemporaries such
as Mendelssohn and Brahms. Perhaps this is because Schumann’s works should be
measured with a different yardstick. His works are often considered poorly orchestrated,
but they actually have an unusual aesthetic. He treats the orchestra as he does the piano:
one grand instrument with a uniform sound. This is so different from the approach of
most composers that to many it has seemed like a failing rather than a conscious artistic
choice.

The author of this passage would most likely attribute the underappreciation of
Schumann’s orchestral music to
A. the poor orchestration of the works.
B. comparisons of Schumann to the greater genius of Mendelssohn and Brahms.
C. Schumann's failure to make the best use of instruments other that the piano.
D. the difference between Schumann’s approach to the orchestra and that of many
other composers.

hard

55. In 1782, philosopher J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur became the first to apply the
word “melting” to a population of immigrants: “Here individuals of all nations are
melted into a new race of men.” Crevecoeur idealized a nation built from individuals
who had transcended their origins and embraced a common American ethos: “From
involuntary idleness, servile dependence penury, and useless labour, he has passed to
toils of a very different nature, rewarded by ample subsistence. This is an American.”
While debate raged as to what exactly “melting meant—diverse peoples coexisting
peacefully while maintaining their differences or refashioning themselves to blend
indistinguishably into a new, common substance—Crèvecoeurs term was here to stay:
America, settled by immigrants, was to have a unified populace.

According to the paragraph, “debate raged” over whether immigrant groups

A. had the ability to put aside their differences and coexist peacefully.
B. understood what Crèvecoeur originally meant by the term “melting.”
C. needed to change their identity to match a common American identity
D. transcended their humble origins merely by moving to the United States.

38
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

Answers

⼀. ⽂章主旨结构

1. A
2. D
3. B
4. A
5. A
6. D
7. B
8. D
9. D
10. D
11. A
12. A
13. A
14. A
15. B
16. B
17. A
18. C
19. C
20. A
21. B
22. D
23. B
24. C

⼆. 句⼦/短语功能

1. D
2. B
3. D
4. D
5. B
6. D
7. B
8. C
9. D
10. C
11. A
12. D
13. A
14. A
15. C
16. A

39
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

17. C
18. C
19. A
20. D
21. A

三. 细节

1. A
2. A
3. A
4. D
5. A
6. B
7. B
8. C
9. C
10. A
11. C
12. A
13. B
14. B
15. C
16. A
17. A
18. B
19. D
20. A
21. D
22. C
23. B
24. C
25. D
26. B
27. A
28. A
29. C
30. A
31. D
32. D
33. A
34. D
35. C
36. B
37. C
38. B
39. D
40. B
41. B

40
 新航道集团教学管理部 SAT 阅读教研组

42. C
43. A
44. A
45. D
46. B
47. A
48. D
49. C
50. C
51. B
52. B
53. C
54. D
55. C

41