雅思阅读真题解析及实战策略分析（1）
2013-01-14 18:58阅读：129
A Chronicle of Timekeeping
Our conception of time depends on the way we measure it
Chronicle 不认识不要紧，chillax~我们注意到图片是一个比较古典的钟，ok ，timekeeping
大家都应该可以理解，再加上这个副标题，Our conception of time depends on the way we
measure it.（有一套经典的英文教材，叫new concept
English，尽管它已经不new了，但是依然很有学习的价值）
结论：这篇文章是讲述人们怎么记录时间的
下面读题:1到4题，是关于paragraph的一个choose
也算是matching题，
1 A description of an early
timekeeping invention affected by
cold temperatures.
2 An explanation of the importance of
geography in the development of the
calendar in farming communities.
3 A description of the origins
of the pendulum clock
4 Details of the simultaneous efforts
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of different societies to calculate time using
uniform hours.
红色字体都是解答这些问题的关键词。先理解这句话的意思，我说的理解是指大致了解，偶尔遇到单词不认识，不要慌张，一般不影响做题。
5到8题，又是matching 题，关于events 和 nationalities 的matching
They devise a civil calendar in which the months were
equal in length
They divided the day into two equal halves
They developed the new cabinet shape for a type of
timekeeper
They created a calendar to organise public events and
work schedules
（大家请注意选项A到F，没有roman empire，所以我们不用在意文章中关心roman
empire的细节，从而节约时间，提高阅读速度）
9到13题，是label the diagram ，细节题
How the 1670 lever-based device worked
Escapement（resembling）(?)
The (?)
The (?)
A (?)which beats each(?)
small arc（注意那个虚线部分图型，帮助你理解什么叫small arc）
下面用很快的速度浏览这篇文章每段的开头，不用理解每句话的意思，仅仅为了找到逻辑关系（我们可以很快注意到这样的一些简单的单词，5000years
ago，before the，centuries before the ，the advent of the，the
earliest，today）基本上可以确定，文章以时间为写作线索，这对我们做题非常重要。
下面浏览（scan）第一段
A according to archaeological evidence, at least
5,000 years ago, and long before the advent of the Roman Empire,
the Babylonians began to measure time, introducing
calendars to co- ordinate communal activities,
（to plan the shipment of goods and, in particular, to
regulate planting and harvesting）（解释什么communal activities的）.
They based their calendars on three natural cycles: （pay
special attention to‘:’,因为这个后面肯定跟着很多细节，且内容不影响整段大意）the
solar day, marked by the successive periods of light
and darkness as the earth rotates on its axis; the lunar
month, following the phases of the moon（月相） as
it orbits the earth; and the solar year, defined by
the changing seasons that accompany our planet’s revolution around
the sun.
第八题 public events and work schedules = communal
activities
B Before the invention of artificial light, the
moon had greater social impact. And, for those
living near the equator in particular, its
waxing and waning（月圆月缺） was more conspicuous（显著的） than
the passing of the seasons. Hence, the calendars that were
developed at the lower latitudes were influenced more
by the lunar cycle than by the solar year. In more northern climes,
however, where seasonal agriculture was practised, the
solar year became more crucial. As the Roman Empire expanded
northward, it organised its activity chart for the most part around
the solar year.
请大家注意B段中红色的单词，这些单词都和geography 有联系，所以我们可以暂时认为第二题答案为B（注:第二题中的farming
communities
表明是农业文明时期，文章以时间为线索，从古至今，通过这点也可以帮我们确定答案可能在整篇阅读的前部分）
C Centuries before the Roman Empire, the
Egyptians had formulated a municipal calendar having
12 months of 30 days, with five days added to
approximate the solar year. Each period of ten days was marked by
the appearance of special groups of stars called decans（黄道十度分度）. At
the rise of the star Sirius（天狼星） just before sunrise, which
occurred around the all- important annual flooding of the Nile, 12
decans could be seen spanning the heavens. The cosmic significance
the Egyptians placed in the 12 decans led them to develop a system
in which each interval of darkness (and later, each interval of
daylight) was divided into a dozen equal parts. These periods
became known as temporal
hours（日光时—古罗马和奥斯曼帝国将白昼等分成小时而成的一种时间单位）because their duration
varied according to the changing length of days and nights with the
passing of the seasons. Summer hours were long, winter ones short;
only at the spring and autumn equinoxes（秋分） were the
hours of daylight and darkness equal. Temporal hours, which were
first adopted by the Greeks and then the Romans, who
disseminated（散播） them through Europe, remained in use for more than
2,500 years.
当看到Egyptian 的时候，你能联想到什么？pyramid？mummy？Cairo？Nile？long
history？ok，继续往下看。
D In order to track temporal hours during the day,
inventors created sundials（日晷）, which indicate time by the length
or direction of the sun’s shadow. The sundial’s counterpart, the
water clock, was designed to measure temporal hours at night. One
of the first water clocks was a basin with a small hole near the
bottom through which the water dripped out. The falling water level
denoted the passing hour as it dipped below hour lines
inscribed（内刻的） on the inner surface. Although these devices
performed satisfactorily around the Mediterranean, they could
not always be depended on in the cloudy and often freezing weather
of northern Europe.
这种把水流作为时间记录工具的设计，受到温度的影响，第一题答案为D
（另外，第一题题目中的early早期的，表明答案肯定也是在文章的前半部分）
E The advent of the mechanical clock
meant that although it could be adjusted to maintain temporal
hours, it was naturally suited to keeping equal ones. With these,
however, arose the question of when to begin counting, and so, in
the early 14th century, a number of systems evolved. The schemes
that divided the day into 24 equal parts varied according to the
start of the count: Italian hours began at sunset,
Babylonian hours at sunrise, astronomical hours at
midday and ‘great clock’ hours, used for some large public clocks
in Germany, at midnight. Eventually these were
superseded by（为…取代） ‘small clock’, or French,
hours, which split the day into two 12- hour periods
commencing at midnight.
此段中又出现了冒号，后面部分的内容依然为细节，不影响段落意思，但是可能作为细节出题，第6题，They divided the day
into two equal
halves，通过这段内容可知每天有24小时，而法国人把每天分为2个12小时，与题意相符合。故第六题答案为F
看到这儿，可能头脑已经有种晕晕的感觉了，这时，不妨停下来，再看下1到8题中没有解答的问题，之所以不看9到13是因为那样的细节题，我之前也说过，肯定不会散落在文章各个角落，暂时放一边（句子细节填空除外）
我们发现3,4,5,7题依然没有找到答案，第三题中的pendulum好像还没看到，第四题好像和E段有点关系，因为E段中提到了很多细节，符合题目中的details，而且E段中出现了好几个国家关于“从何时开始计时”的分歧，而且他们都是统一使用24小时的时制（uniform在这儿什么意思呢？制服？肯定不是呀，其实不难联想到这个意思应该和统一的有关系，这个也和E段中的内容相符，统一采用24小时制度），暂时将第四题答案定为E(这样做的原因，首先题目中的simultaneous可能不认识，影响了对题目的理解，其次考试时间有限，我们要保证在1小时的时间内，把这40道题尽可能作对，为一道题折腾太久肯定不合适，和时间赛跑，不得已而为之)
第5题，每月等长度，是不是上面的Egyptian提到了呢？不妨返回文中一看，“the Egyptians had formulated
a municipal calendar having 12 months of 30
days”考生心里想：“每年12个月，每月30天（之后再加5天）应该就是这个意思，先选Egyptian再说”.
第7题新的（new）cabinet什么什么的貌似还没提到，既然是新的，根据时间的逻辑顺序，应该是在后面出现吧（自我安慰在考试中对于我们稳定情绪非常重要，一个良好的情绪会帮助我们正常甚至超长发挥滴）
F The earliest recorded weight - driven mechanical
clock was built in 1283 in Bedfordshire in England. The
revolutionary aspect of this new timekeeper was neither the
descending weight that provided its motive force nor the gear
wheels (齿轮，which had been around for at least 1,300 years) that
transferred the power; it was the part called the escapement（擒纵机构）.
In the early 1400s came the invention of the coiled
spring（螺旋弹簧） or fusee which maintained constant force to the
gear wheels of the timekeeper despite the changing tension of its
mainspring. By the 16th century, a pendulum
clock我终于看到你了！（摆钟） had been devised, but the pendulum
swung in a large arc and thus was not very
efficient.（是不是记得题目中有个small arc，留心下这段吧）
第三题中origins of the pendulum clock就在这儿了，
最后一句but the pendulum swung in a large arc and thus was not very
efficient是不是说这种pendulum不是太好啊，那么更加确定这段是讲述origins了，下面改讲如何改进了吧
G To address this, a variation on the original
escapement was invented in 1670, in England. It was called the
anchor escapement（锚式擒纵机构）, which was a lever-based
device shaped like a ship’s anchor. The motion of a pendulum
rocks this device so that it catches and then releases each tooth
of the escape wheel, in turn allowing it to
turn a precise amount. Unlike the original form used in early
pendulum clocks, the anchor escapement permitted the pendulum to
travel in a very small arc. Moreover, this invention allowed the
use of a long pendulum which could beat once a
second and thus led to the development of a new floor
standing case design, which became known as the
grandfather clock（落地式大摆钟）.
根据1670，我们定位到9到13题应该在G段中，（比如）可是看完却没找到第9题答案！不要慌张，chillax
~第7题和第9题还没搞定
再看下第九题，resembling和like的意思有点接近，像一个ship’s
anchor，管他像什么，应该就是这个答案了
H Today, highly accurate timekeeping instruments
set the beat for most electronic devices. Nearly all computers
contain a quartz- crystal clock to regulate their operation.
Moreover, not only do time signals beamed down from Global
Positioning System satellites calibrate（校准） the functions of
precision navigation equipment, they do so as well for mobile
phones, instant stock- trading systems and nationwide power-
distribution grids. So integral have these time- based technologies
become to day- to- day existence that our dependency on them is
recognised only when they fail to work.
看完最后一段，还是没找到第7题的答案，一看时间过了17分钟多了，得抓紧
当然如果你可以快速找到case design，并且知道cabinet的意思，很快就能确定是English了，
但是如果不知道怎么办？这里可以采取排除法，理论上ABF不会再选了，而且这种新的东西应该不是在古代，如果你对文章还有印象，你会发现，提到Germans或者French仅仅是在说明不同国家采取不同计时开始点时提到，而Greek（希腊）有印象吗？没有吧，并且，文章后面几乎每段都在提English，碰碰运气吧，选D，当然我不鼓励这种方法，但是没有办法时，这不失为一种比较好的方法哦~
对这道题目的评价：难度不大，第1,2,3,8,10,11题都是很容易找到答案，第4题需要对uniform包括文章中对应内容理解，5题细心点就会找到答案，6题也属于细节中的信息，7题可能需要理解什么是cabinet，9题得理解resembling和like是近义词，12,13题需要对这种钟摆的工作原理有一定理解。
文章中的评价和思路均来自于我本人，希望能给雅思考友一点点帮助和灵感，由于本人水平有限，如有疑问或者错误之处，或有更好的思路，还请各位老师批评指正，多提意见。
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