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1、(test2)剑桥雅思阅读7真题解读 为了帮助大家更好地备考雅思阅读，下面我给大家共享剑桥雅思阅读7原文翻译及答案解析(test2)，希望对你们有用。 剑桥雅思阅读7原文(test2) READING PASSAGE 1 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below. Why pagodas dont fall down In a land swept by typhoons and shaken by earthquakes, how have J
2、apans tallest and seemingly flimsiest old buildings 500 or so wooden pagodas remained standing for centuries? Records show that only two have collapsed during the past 1400 years. Those that have disappeared were destroyed by fire as a result of lightning or civil war. The disastrous Hanshin earthqu
3、ake in 1995 killed 6,400 people, toppled elevated highways, flattened office blocks and devastated the port area of Kobe. Yet it left the magnificent five-storey pagoda at the Toji temple in nearby Kyoto unscathed, though it levelled a number of buildings in the neighbourhood. Japanese scholars have
4、 been mystified for ages about why these tall, slender buildings are so stable. It was only thirty years ago that the building industry felt confident enough to erect office blocks of steel and reinforced concrete that had more than a dozen floors. With its special shock absorbers to dampen the effe
5、ct of sudden sideways movements from an earthquake, the thirty-six-storey Kasumigaseki building in central Tokyo Japans first skyscraper was considered a masterpiece of modern engineering when it was built in 1968. Yet in 826, with only pegs and wedges to keep his wooden structure upright, the maste
6、r builder Kobodaishi had no hesitation in sending his majestic Toji pagoda soaring fifty-five metres into the sky nearly half as high as the Kasumigaseki skyscraper built some eleven centuries later. Clearly, Japanese carpenters of the day knew a few tricks about allowing a building to sway and sett
7、le itself rather than fight natures forces. But what sort of tricks? The multi-storey pagoda came to Japan from China in the sixth century. As in China, they were first introduced with Buddhism and were attached to important temples. The Chinese built their pagodas in brick or stone, with inner stai
8、rcases, and used them in later centuries mainly as watchtowers. When the pagoda reached Japan, however, its architecture was freely adapted to local conditions they were built less high, typically five rather than nine storeys, made mainly of wood and the staircase was dispensed with because the Jap
9、anese pagoda did not have any practical use but became more of an art object. Because of the typhoons that batter Japan in the summer, Japanese builders learned to extend the eaves of buildings further beyond the walls. This prevents rainwater gushing down the walls. Pagodas in China and Korea have
10、nothing like the overhang that is found on pagodas in Japan. The roof of a Japanese temple building can be made to overhang the sides of the structure by fifty per cent or more of the buildings overall width. For the same reason, the builders of Japanese pagodas seem to have further increased their
11、weight by choosing to cover these extended eaves not with the porcelain tiles of many Chinese pagodas but with much heavier earthenware tiles. But this does not totally explain the great resilience of Japanese pagodas. Is the answer that, like a tall pine tree, the Japanese pagoda with its massive t
12、runk-like central pillar known as shinbashira simply flexes and sways during a typhoon or earthquake? For centuries, many thought so. But the answer is not so simple because the startling thing is that the shinbashira actually carries no load at all. In fact, in some pagoda designs, it does not even
13、 rest on the ground, but is suspended from the top of the pagoda hanging loosely down through the middle of the building. The weight of the building is supported entirely by twelve outer and four inner columns. And what is the role of the shinbashira, the central pillar? The best way to understand t
14、he shinbashiras role is to watch a video made by Shuzo Ishida, a structural engineer at Kyoto Institute of Technology. Mr Ishida, known to his students as Professor Pagoda because of his passion to understand the pagoda, has built a series of models and tested them on a shake-table in his laboratory
15、. In short, the shinbashira was acting like an enormous stationary pendulum. The ancient craftsmen, apparently without the assistance of very advanced mathematics, seemed to grasp the principles that were, more than a thousand years later, applied in the construction of Japans first skyscraper. What
16、 those early craftsmen had found by trial and error was that under pressure a pagodas loose stack of floors could be made to slither to and fro independent of one another. Viewed from the side, the pagoda seemed to be doing a snake dance with each consecutive floor moving in the opposite direction t
17、o its neighbours above and below. The shinbashira, running up through a hole in the centre of the building, constrained individual stories from moving too far because, after moving a certain distance, they banged into it, transmitting energy away along the column. Another strange feature of the Japa
18、nese pagoda is that, because the building tapers, with each successive floor plan being smaller than the one below, none of the vertical pillars that carry the weight of the building is connected to its corresponding pillar above. In other words, a five-storey pagoda contains not even one pillar tha
19、t travels right up through the building to carry the structural loads from the top to the bottom. More surprising is the fact that the individual stories of a Japanese pagoda, unlike their counterparts elsewhere, are not actually connected to each other. They are simply stacked one on top of another
20、 like a pile of hats. Interestingly, such a design would not be permitted under current Japanese building regulations. And the extra-wide eaves? Think of them as a tightrope walkers balancing pole. The bigger the mass at each end of the pole, the easier it is for the tightrope walker to maintain his
21、 or her balance. The same holds true for a pagoda. With the eaves extending out on all sides like balancing poles, says Mr Ishida, the building responds to even the most powerful jolt of an earthquake with a graceful swaying, never an abrupt shaking. Here again, Japanese master builders of a thousan
22、d years ago anticipated concepts of modern structural engineering. Questions 1-4 Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet, write YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer NO if the statement contradicts th
23、e claims of the writer NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this 1 Only two Japanese pagodas have collapsed in 1400 years. 2 The Hanshin earthquake of 1995 destroyed the pagoda at the Toji temple. 3 The other buildings near the Toji pagoda had been built in the last 30 y
24、ears. 4 The builders of pagodas knew how to absorb some of the power produced by severe weather conditions. Questions 5-10 Classify the following as typical of A both Chinese and Japanese pagodas B only Chinese pagodas C only Japanese pagodas Write the correct letter. A, B or C, in boxes 5-10 on you
25、r answer sheet. 5 easy interior access to top 6 tiles on eaves 7 use as observation post 8 size of eaves up to half the width of the building 9 original religious purpose 10 floors fitting loosely over each other Questions 11-13 Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in bo
26、xes 11-13 on your answer sheet. 11 In a Japanese pagoda, the shinbashira A bears the full weight of the building. B bends under pressure like a tree. C connects the floors with the foundations. D stops the floors moving too far. 12 Shuzo Ishida performs experiments in order to A improve skyscraper d
27、esign. B be able to build new pagodas. C learn about the dynamics of pagodas. D understand ancient mathematics. 13 The storeys of a Japanese pagoda are A linked only by wood. B fastened only to the central pillar. C fitted loosely on top of each other. D joined by special weights. READING PASSAGE 2
28、You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below. The True Cost of Food A For more than forty years the cost of food has been rising. It has now reached a point where a growing number of people believe that it is far too high, and that bringing it down
29、 will be one of the great challenges of the twenty first century. That cost, however, is not in immediate cash. In the West at least, most food is now far cheaper to buy in relative terms than it was in 1960. The cost is in the collateral damage of the very methods of food production that have made
30、the food cheaper: in the pollution of water, the enervation of soil, the destruction of wildlife, the harm to animal welfare and the threat to human health caused by modern industrial agriculture. B First mechanisation, then mass use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, then monocultures, then ba
31、ttery rearing of livestock, and now genetic engineering the onward march of intensive farming has seemed unstoppable in the last half-century, as the yields of produce have soared. But the damage it has caused has been colossal. In Britain, for example, many of our best-loved farmland birds, such as
32、 the skylark, the grey partridge, the lapwing and the corn bunting, have vanished from huge stretches of countryside, as have even more wild flowers and insects. This is a direct result of the way we have produced our food in the last four decades. Thousands of miles of hedgerows, thousands of ponds
33、, have disappeared from the landscape. The faecal filth of salmon farming has driven wild salmon from many of the sea Iochs and rivers of Scotland. Natural soil fertility is dropping in many areas because of continuous industrial fertiliser and pesticide use, while the growth of algae is increasing
34、in lakes because of the fertiliser run-off. C Put it all together and it looks like a battlefield, but consumers rarely make the connection at the dinner table. That is mainly because the costs of all this damage are what economists refer to as externalities: they are outside the main transaction, w
35、hich is for example producing and selling a field of wheat, and are borne directly by neither producers nor consumers. To many, the costs may not even appear to be financial at all, but merely aesthetic a terrible shame, but nothing to do with money. And anyway they, as consumers of food, certainly
36、arent paying for it, are they? D But the costs to society can actually be quantified and, when added up, can amount to staggering sums. A remarkable exercise in doing this has been carried out by one of the worlds leading thinkers on the future of agriculture, Professor Jules Pretty, Director of the
37、 Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex. Professor Pretty and his colleagues calculated the externalities of British agriculture for one particular year. They added up the costs of repairing the damage it caused, and came up with a total figure of 2,343m. This is equivalent to
38、 208 for every hectare of arable land and permanent pasture, almost as much again as the total government and EU spend on British farming in that year. And according to Professor Pretty, it was a conservative estimate. E The costs included: 120m for removal of pesticides; 16m for removal of nitrates
39、; 55m for removal of phosphates and soil; 23m for the removal of the bug cryptosporidium from drinking water by water companies; 125m for damage to wildlife habitats, hedgerows and dry stone walls; 1,113m from emissions of gases likely to contribute to climate change; 106m from soil erosion and orga
40、nic carbon losses; 169m from food poisoning; and 607m from cattle disease. Professor Pretty draws a simple but memorable conclusion from all this: our food bills are actually threefold. We are paying for our supposedly cheaper food in three separate ways: once over the counter, secondly through our
41、taxes, which provide the enormous subsidies propping up modern intensive farming, and thirdly to clean up the mess that modern farming leaves behind. F So can the true cost of food be brought down? Breaking away from industrial agriculture as the solution to hunger may be very hard for some countrie
42、s, but in Britain, where the immediate need to supply food is less urgent, and the costs and the damage of intensive farming have been clearly seen, it may be more feasible. The government needs to create sustainable, competitive and diverse farming and food sectors, which will contribute to a thriv
43、ing and sustainable rural economy, and advance environmental, economic, health, and animal welfare goals. G But if industrial agriculture is to be replaced, what is a viable alternative? Professor Pretty feels that organic farming would be too big a jump in thinking and in practices for many farmers
44、. Furthermore, the price premium would put the produce out of reach of many poorer consumers. He is recommending the immediate introduction of a Greener Food Standard, which would push the market towards more sustainable environmental practices than the current norm, while not requiring the full com
45、mitment to organic production. Such a standard would comprise agreed practices for different kinds of farming, covering agrochemical use, soil health, land management, water and energy use, food safety and animal health. It could go a long way, he says, to shifting consumers as well as farmers towar
46、ds a more sustainable system of agriculture. Questions 14-17 Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once. 14 a cost involved in purifying
47、domestic water 15 the stages in the development of the farming industry 16 the term used to describe hidden costs 17 one effect of chemicals on water sources Questions 18-21 Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 18-21 on your answer sheet, write YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this 18 Several spec