2013年3月17日托福阅读考题解析.doc

2013年3月17日托福阅读考题解析 　　第一篇阅读：古文字：古文字可以解释很多让历史学家困惑的社会间题。能说明古代政府的名称啊什么的。还说文字刻在marble上和clay什么的，还和古埃及的文字作比较，说古埃及文字已经lost了因为刻字的东西没法保存．还讲到了coins，能解释古代的商业贸易方面的间题。 　　解析：本文的重点讲解古文字的作用。故文章的重点应梳理古文字在哪些方面具有哪些作用。将文字和历史作用联系起来可以迅速梳理文章的逻辑结构。下面是关于古代埃及楔形文字的介绍，大家参考阅读。 　　As writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in the hieratic (priestly) and demotic (popular) scripts. These variants were also more suited than hieroglyphs for use on papyrus. Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed alongside the other forms, especially in monumental and other formal writing. The Rosetta Stone contains three parallel scripts - hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. 　　Hieroglyphs continued to be used under Persian rule (intermittent in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE), and after Alexander the Greats conquest of Egypt, during the ensuing Macedonian and Roman periods. It appears that the misleading quality of comments from Greek and Roman writers about hieroglyphs came about, at least in part, as a response to the changed political situation. Some believe that hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish true Egyptians from some of the foreign conquerors. Another reason may be the refusal to tackle a foreign culture on its own terms which characterized Greco-Roman approaches to Egyptian culture generally. Having learned that hieroglyphs were sacred writing, Greco-Roman authors imagined the complex but rational system as an allegorical, even magical, system transmitting secret, mystical knowledge. 　　By the 4th century, few Egyptians were capable of reading hieroglyphs, and the myth of allegorical hieroglyphs was ascendant. Monumental use of hieroglyphs ceased after the closing of all non-Christian temples in 391 CE by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I.[?/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphic] 　　第二篇阅读：青蛙的叫声。大多数是公音蛙叫。目的是吸引母青蛙交配。多在半夜叫，声音传的远，可以穿透obstacles，比视觉信号要好。母青蛙通过音量、音频来判断公青蛙的年龄。音量越大年龄越大，越有能力帮助母杳蛙的后代躲避危险，所以母青蛙倾向选择年龄大的公青蛙（有题