2024年8月24日雅思考试题阅读回忆及答案

　　2024年8月24日雅思考试已经结束, 那这次考试阅读都考了哪些内容呢？本文为大家整理了2024年8月24日雅思考试题阅读回忆及答案，希望对大家的备考有所帮助。

　　 阅读

　　一、 考试概述：

　　本场考试三篇全新，难度很高。第一篇公园，上来就拔高了难度;第二篇水下考古，难度依旧很高;第三篇关于做决定的研究，心理学范畴，难度也很高。

　　二、具体题目分析：

　　Passage One：

　　文章题材：说明文(生态环境类)

　　文章题目：公园

　　文章难度：★★★

　　题型及数量：待补充

　　题目及答案：

　　Preserving Gardens

　　A

　　With a quarter of the world’s plants set to vanish within the next 50 years, Dough Alexander reports on the scientists working against the clock the preserve the Earth’s botanical heritage. They travel the four corners of the globe, scouring jungles, forests and savannas. But they’re not looking for ancient artefacts, lost treasure or undiscovered tombs. Just pods. It may lack the romantic allure of archaeology or the whiff of danger that accompanies going after a big game, but seed hunting is an increasingly serious business. Some seek seeds for profit-hunters in the employ of biotechnology firms, pharmaceutical companies and private corporations on the lookout for species that will yield the drugs or crops of the future. Others collect to conserve, working to halt the sad slide into extinction facing so many plant species.

　　B

　　Among the pioneers of this botanical treasure hunt was John Tradescant, an English royal gardener who brought back plants and seeds from his journeys abroad in the early 1600s. Later, the English botanist Sir Joseph Banks – who was the first director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and travelled with Captain James Cook on his voyages near the end of the 18th century – was so driven to expand his collections that he sent botanists around the world at his own expense.

　　C

　　Those heady days of exploration and discovery may be over, but they have been replaced by a pressing need to preserve our natural history for the future. This modern mission drives hunters such as Dr Michiel van Slageren, a good-natured Dutchman who often sports a wide-brimmed hat in the field – he could easily be mistaken for the cinematic hero Indiana Jones. He and three other seed hunters work at the Millennium Seed Bank, an 80 million [pounds sterling] international conservation project that aims to protect the world’s most endangered wild plant species.

　　D

　　The group’s headquarters are in a modern glass-and-concrete structure on a 200-hectare Estate at Wakehurst Place in the West Sussex countryside. Within its underground vaults are 260 million dried seeds from 122 countries, all stored at -20 Celsius to survive for centuries. Among the 5,100 species represented are virtually all of Britain’s 1,400 native seed-bearing plants, the most complete such collection of any country’s flora.

　　E

　　Overseen by the Royal botanic gardens, the Millennium Seed Bank is the world’s largest wild-plant depository. It aims to collect 24,000 species by 2010. The reason is simple: thanks to humanity’s effort, an estimated 25 per cent of the world’s plants are on the verge of extinction and may vanish within 50 years. We’re currently responsible for habitat destruction on an unprecedented scale, and during the past 400 years, plant species extinction rates have been about 70 times greater than those indicated by the geological record as being ‘normal’. Experts predict that during the next 50 years further one billion hectares of wilderness will be converted to farmland in developing countries alone.

　　F

　　The implications of this loss are enormous. Besides providing staple food crops, plants are a source of many machines and the principal supply of fuel and building materials in many parts of the world. They also protect soil and help regulate the climate. Yet, across the globe, plant species are being driven to extinction before their potential benefits are discovered.

　　G

　　The world Conservation Union has listed 5,714 threatened species is sure to be much higher. In the UK alone, 300 wild plant species are classified as endangered. The Millennium Seed Bank aims to ensure that even if a plant becomes extinct in the wild, it won’t be lost forever. Stored seeds can be used the help restore damaged or destroyed the environment or in scientific research to find new benefits for society- in medicine, agriculture or local industry- that would otherwise be lost.

　　H

　　Seed banks are an insurance policy to protect the world’s plant heritage for the future, explains Dr Paul Smith, another Kew seed hunter. “Seed conservation techniques were originally developed by farmers,” he says. “Storage is the basis what we do, conserving seeds until you can use them just as in farming,” Smith says there’s no reason why any plant species should become extinct, given today’s technology. But he admits that the biggest challenge is finding, naming and categorizing all the world’s plants. And someone has to gather these seeds before it’s too late. “There aren’t a lot of people out there doing this,” he says. “The key is to know the flora from a particular area, and that knowledge takes years to acquire.”

　　I

　　There are about 1,470 seedbanks scattered around the globe, with a combined total of 5.4 million samples, of which perhaps two million are distinct non-duplicates. Most preserve genetic material for agriculture use in order to ensure crop diversity; others aim to conserve wild species, although only 15 per cent of all banked plants is wild.

　　J

　　Many seed banks are themselves under threat due to a lack of funds. Last year, Imperial College, London, examined crop collections from 151 countries and found that while the number of plant samples had increased in two-thirds of the countries, the budget had been cut in a quarter and remained static in another 35 per cent. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research has since set up the Global Conservation Trust, which aims to raise the US $260 million to protect seed banks in perpetuity.

　　Questions 14-19

　　Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

　　In boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet, write

　　TRUE if the statement is true

　　FALSE if the statement is false

　　NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage

　　14 The purpose of collecting seeds now is different from the past.

　　15 The millennium seed bank is the earliest seed bank.

　　16 One of the major threats for plant species extinction is farmland expansion into wildness.

　　17 The approach that scientists apply to store seeds is similar to that used by farmers.

　　18 technological development is the only hope to save plant species.

　　19 The works of seed conservation are often limited by financial problems.

　　Questions 20-24

　　Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage 2,

　　Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.

　　Write your answers in boxes 20-24 on your answer sheet.

　　Some people collect seeds for the purpose of protecting certain species from 20____________ others collect seeds for their ability to produce 21____________ They are called seed hunters. The 22____________Of them included both gardeners and botanists, such as 23____________, who financially supported collectors out of his own pocket. The seeds collected are usually stored in seed banks, one of which is the famous millennium seed bank, where seeds are all stored in the24____________ at a low temperature.

　　Questions 25-26

　　Choose the correct letter, A-E.

　　Write your answers in boxes 25, 26 on your answer sheet.

　　Which TWO of the following are provided by plants to the human?

　　A food

　　B fuels

　　C clothes

　　D energy

　　E commercial products

　　参考答案

　　14. TRUE

　　15. NOT GIVEN

　　16. TRUE

　　17. TRUE

　　18. FALSE

　　19. TRUE

　　20. extinction

　　21. drugs, crops

　　22. pioneers

　　23. Sir Joseph Banks

　　24. underground vaults

　　25. A

　　26. B

　　*本文话题与实考一致，但是文章和题目与考试有出入，仅供各位考生复习使用~

　　可参考真题：剑桥19—TEST2 Passage 2 The global importance of wetlands

　　Passage Two：

　　文章题材：说明文(人类学历史学)

　　文章题目：水下考古

　　文章难度：★★★★

　　题型及数量：待补充

　　题目及答案：

　　Coastal Archaeology of Britain

　　A

　　The recognition of the wealth and diversity of England’s coastal archaeology has been one of the most important developments of recent years. Some elements of this enormous resource have long been known. The so-called ‘submerged forests’ off the coasts of England, sometimes with clear evidence of human activity, had attracted the interest of antiquarians since at least the eighteenth century but serious and systematic attention has been given to the archaeological potential of the coast only since the early 1980s.

　　B

　　It is possible to trace a variety of causes for this concentration of effort and interest. In the 1980s and 1990s scientific research into climate change and its environmental impact spilt over into a much broader public debate as awareness of these issues grew; the prospect of rising sea levels over the next century, and their impact on current coastal environments, has been a particular focus for concern. At the same time, archaeologists were beginning to recognize that the destruction caused by natural processes of coastal erosion and by human activity was having an increasing impact on the archaeological resource of the coast.

　　C

　　The dominant process affecting the physical form of England in the post-glacial period has been the rise in the altitude of sea level relative to the land, as the glaciers melted and the landmass readjusted. The encroachment of the sea, the loss of huge areas of land now under the North Sea and the English Channel, and especially the loss of the land bridge between England and France, which finally made Britain an island, must have been immensely significant factors in the lives of our prehistoric ancestors. Yet the way in which prehistoric communities adjusted to these environmental changes has seldom been a major theme in discussions of the period. One factor contributing to this has been that, although the rise in relative sea level is comparatively well documented, we know little about the constant reconfiguration of the coastline. This was affected by many processes, mostly quite, which have not yet been adequately researched. The detailed reconstruction of coastline histories and the changing environments available for human use will be an important theme for future research.

　　D

　　So great has been the rise in sea level and the consequent regression of the coast that much of the archaeological evidence now exposed in the coastal zone, whether being eroded or exposed as a buried land surface, is derived from what was originally terrestrial occupation. Its current location in the coastal zone is the product of later unrelated processes, and it can tell us little about past adaptations to the sea. Estimates of its significance will need to be made in the context of other related evidence from dry land sites. Nevertheless, its physical environment means that preservation is often excellent, for example in the case of the Neolithic structure excavated at the Stumble in Essex.

　　E

　　In some cases, these buried land surfaces do contain evidence for human exploitation of what was a coastal environment, and elsewhere along the modern coast, there is similar evidence. Where the evidence does relate to past human exploitation of the resources and the opportunities offered by the sea and the coast, it is both diverse and as yet little understood. We are not yet in a position to make even preliminary estimates of answers to such fundamental questions as the extent to which the sea and the coast affected human life in the past, what percentage of the population at any time lived within reach of the sea, or whether human settlements in coastal environments showed a distinct character from that inland.

　　F

　　The most striking evidence for use of the sea is in the form of boats, yet we still have much to learn about their production and use. Most of the known wrecks around our coast are not unexpectedly of post-medieval date and offer an unparalleled opportunity for research which has as yet been little used. The prehistoric sewn-plank boats such as those from the Humber estuary and Dover all seem to belong to the second millennium BC; after this, there is a gap in the record of a millennium, which cannot yet be explained, before boats reappear, but built using a very different technology. Boatbuilding must have been an extremely important activity around much of our coast, yet we know almost nothing about it. Boats were some of the most complex artefacts produced by pre-modern societies, and further research on their production and use make an important contribution to our understanding of past attitudes to technology and technological change.

　　G

　　Boats needed landing places, yet here again, our knowledge is very patchy. In many cases the natural shores and beaches would have sufficed, leaving little or no archaeological trace, but especially in later periods, many ports and harbors, as well as smaller facilities such as quays, wharves, and jetties, were built. Despite a growth of interest in the waterfront archaeology of some of our more important Roman and medieval towns, very little attention has been paid to the multitude of smaller landing places. Redevelopment of harbor sites and other development and natural pressures along the coast are subjecting these important locations to unprecedented threats, yet few surveys of such sites have been undertaken.

　　H

　　One of the most important revelations of recent research has been the extent of industrial activity along the coast. Fishing and salt production are among the better-documented activities, but even here our knowledge is patchy. Many forms of fishing will eave little archaeological trace and one of the surprises of the recent survey has been the extent of past investment in facilities for procuring fish and shellfish. Elaborate wooden fish weirs, often of considerable extent and responsive to aerial photography in shallow water, have been identified in areas such as Essex and the Severn estuary. The production of salt, especially in the late Iron Age and early Roman periods, has been recognized for some time, especially in the Thames estuary and around the Solent and Poole Harbor, but the reasons for the decline of that industry and the nature of later coastal salt working are much less well understood. Other industries were also located along the coast, either because the raw materials outcropped there or for ease of working and transport: mineral resources such as sand, gravel, stone, coal, ironstone, and alum were all exploited. These industries are poorly documented, but their remains are sometimes extensive and striking.

　　I

　　Some appreciation of the variety and importance of the archaeological remains preserved in the coastal zone, albeit only in preliminary form, can thus be gained from recent work, but the complexity of the problem of managing that resource is also being realised. The problem arises not only from the scale and variety of the archaeological remains, but also from two other sources: the very varied natural and human threats to the resource, and the complex web of organisations with authority over, or interests in, the coastal zone. Human threats include the redevelopment of historic towns and old dockland areas, and the increased importance of the coast for the leisure and tourism industries, resulting in pressure for the increased provision of facilities such as marinas. The larger size of ferries has also caused an increase in the damage caused by their wash to fragile deposits in the intertidal zone. The most significant natural threat is the predicted rise in sea level over the next century especially in the south and east of England. Its impact on archaeology is not easy to predict, and though it is likely to be highly localised, it will be at a scale much larger than that of most archaeological sites. Thus protecting one site may simply result in transposing the threat to a point further along the coast. The management of the archaeological remains will have to be considered in a much longer time scale and a much wider geographical scale than is common in the case of dry land sites, and this will pose a serious challenge for archaeologists.

　　Questions 1-3

　　Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

　　Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.

　　1 What has caused public interest in coastal archaeology in recent years?

　　A Golds and jewelleries in the ships that have submerged

　　B The rising awareness of climate change

　　C Forests under the sea

　　D Technological advance in the field of sea research

　　2 What does the passage say about the evidence of boats?

　　A We have a good knowledge of how boats were made and what boats were for prehistorically

　　B Most of the boats discovered was found in harbors

　　C The use of boats had not been recorded for a thousand years

　　D The way to build boats has remained unchanged throughout human history

　　3 What can be discovered from the air?

　　A Salt mines

　　B Shellfish

　　C Ironstones

　　D Fisheries

　　Questions 4-10

　　Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

　　In boxes 4-10 on your answer sheet, write

　　TRUE if the statement is true

　　FALSE if the statement is false

　　NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage

　　4 England lost much of its land after the ice-age due to the rising sea level.

　　5 The coastline of England has changed periodically.

　　6 Coastal archaeological evidence may be well-protected by seawater.

　　7 The design of boats used by pre-modern people was very simple.

　　8 Similar boats were also discovered in many other European countries.

　　9 There are a few documents relating to mineral exploitation.

　　10 Large passenger boats are causing increasing damage to the seashore.

　　Questions 11-13

　　Choose THREE letters A-G

　　Write your answer in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet

　　Which THREE of the following statements are mentioned in the passage?

　　A Our prehistoric ancestors adjusted to the environmental change caused by the rising sea level by moving to higher lands.

　　B It is difficult to understand how many people lived close to the sea.

　　C Human settlements in the coastal environment were different from that inland

　　D Our knowledge of boat evidence is limited.

　　E The prehistoric boats were built mainly for collecting sand from the river.

　　F Human development threatens the archaeological remains.

　　G The reason for the decline of the salt industry was the shortage of laborers.

　　参考答案

　　1. B

　　2. C

　　3. D

　　4. TRUE

　　5. FALSE

　　6. TRUE

　　7. FALSE

　　8. NOT GIVEN

　　9. TRUE

　　10. TRUE

　　11. B

　　12. D

　　13. F

　　*本文话题与实考一致，但是文章和题目与考试有出入，仅供各位考生复习使用~

　　可参考真题：剑桥17—TEST2 Passage1 The Dead Sea Scrolls

　　Passage Three：

　　文章题材：议论文(心理学)

　　文章题目：关于做决定的研究

　　文章难度：★★★★

　　题型及数量：待补充

　　题目及答案：

　　Decision, Decision !

　　Research explores when we can make a vital decision quickly and we need to proceed more deliberately

　　A

　　A widely recognised legend tells us that in Gordium (in what is now Turkey) in the fourth century BC an oxcart was roped to a pole with a complex knot. It was said that the first person to untie it would become the king of Asia. Unfortunately, the knot proved impossible to untie. The story continues that when confronted with this problem, rather than deliberating on how to untie the Gordian knot. Alexander, the famous ruler of the Greeks in the ancient world, simply took out his sword and cut it in two – then went on to conquer Asia. Ever since the notion of a ‘Gordian solution’ has referred to the attractiveness of a simple answer to an otherwise intractable problem.

　　B

　　Among researchers in the psychology of decision making, however, such solutions have traditionally held little appeal. In particular, the ‘conflict model’ of decision making proposed by psychologists Irving Janis and Leon Mann in their 1977 book, Decision Making, argued that a complex decision-making process is essential for guarding individuals and groups from the peril of ‘group-think’. Decisions made without thorough canvassing, surveying, weighing, examining and reexamining relevant information and options would be suboptimal and often disastrous. One foreign affair decision made by a well-known US political leader in the 1960s is typically held us as an example of the perils of inadequate thought, whereas his successful handling of a water crisis is cited as an example of the advantages of careful deliberation. However, examination of these historical events by Peter Suedfield, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, and Roderick Kramer, a psychologist at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, found little difference in the two decision-making processes; both crises required and received complex consideration by the political administration, but later only the second one was deemed to be the effective.

　　C

　　In general, however, organizational and political science offers little evidence that complex decisions fare better than simpler ones. In fact, a growing body of work suggests that in many situations simply ‘snap’ decisions with being routinely superior to more complex ones – an idea that gained widespread public appeal with Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book Blink (2005).

　　D

　　An article by Ap Dijksterhuis of the University of Amsterdam and his colleagues, Making the Right Choice: the Deliberation-without-attention Effect’, runs very much in the spirit of Gladwell’s influential text. Its core argument is that to be effective, conscious (deliberative) decision making requires cognitive resources. Because increasingly complex decisions place increasing strain on those resources, the quality of our decisions declines as their complexity increases. In short, complex decisions overrun our cognitive powers. On the other hand, unconscious decision making (what the author refer to as ‘deliberation without attention’) requires no cognitive resources, so task complexity does not Effectiveness. The seemingly counterintuitive conclusion is that although conscious thought enhances simple decisions, the opposite holds true for more complex decisions.

　　E

　　Dijksterhuis reports four Simple but elegant studies supporting this argument. In one, participants assessed the quality of four hypothetical cars by considering either four attributes (a simple task) or 12 attributes (a complex task). Among participants who considered four attributes, those who were allowed to engage in undistracted deliberative thought did better at discriminating between the best and worst cars. Those who were distracted and thus unable to deliberate had to rely on their unconscious thinking and did less well. The opposite pattern emerged when people considered 12 criteria. In this case, conscious deliberation led to inferior discrimination and poor decisions.

　　F

　　In other studies, Dijksterhuis surveyed people shopping for clothes (‘simple’ products) and furniture (‘complex’ products). Compared with those who said they had deliberated long and hard, shoppers who bought with little conscious deliberation felt less happy with their simple clothing purchase but happier with the complex furniture purchases. Deliberation without attention actually produced better results as the decisions became more complex.

　　G

　　From there, however, the researchers take a big leap. They write: There is no reason to assume that the deliberation-without-attention effect does not generalize to other types of choices – political, managerial or otherwise. In such cases, it should benefit the individual to think consciously about simple matters and to delegate thinking about more complicated matters to the unconscious.

　　H

　　This radical inference contradicts standard political and managerial theory but doubtless comforts those in politics and management who always find the simple solution to the complex problem an attractive proposition. Indeed, one suspects many of our political leaders already embrace this wisdom.

　　I

　　Still, it is there, in the realms of society and its governance, that the more problematic implications of deliberation without attention begin to surface. Variables that can be neatly circumscribed in decisions about shopping lose clarity in a world of group dynamics, social interaction, history and politics. Two pertinent questions arise. First, what counts as a complex decision? And second, what counts as a good outcome?

　　J

　　As social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890 – 1947) noted, a ‘good’ decision that nobody respects is actually bad, his classic studies of decision making showed that participating in deliberative processes makes people more likely to abide by the results. The issue here is that when political decision-makers make mistakes, it is their politics, or the relationship between their politics and our own, rather than psychology which is at fault.

　　K

　　Gladwell’s book and Dijksterhuis’s paper are invaluable in pointing out the limitations of the conventional wisdom that decision quality rises with decision-making complexity. But this work still tempts us to believe that decision making is simply a matter of psychology, rather than also a question of politics, ideology and group membership. Avoiding social considerations in a search for general appeal rather than toward it.

　　Questions 1-5

　　Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

　　Write your answers in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

　　1. The legend of the Gordian knot is used to illustrate the idea that

　　A anyone can solve a difficult problem

　　B difficult problems can have easy solutions

　　C the solution to any problem requires a lot of thought

　　D people who can solve complex problems make good leaders

　　2. The ‘conflict model’ of decision making proposed by Janis and Mann requires that

　　A opposing political parties be involved

　　B all-important facts be considered

　　C people be encouraged to have different ideas

　　D previous similar situations be thoroughly examined

　　3. According to recent thinking reinforced by Malcolm Gladwell, the best decisions

　　A involve consultation

　　B involve complex thought

　　C are made very quickly

　　D are the most attractive option

　　4.Dijksterhuis and his colleagues claim in their article that

　　A our cognitive resources improve as tasks become more complex

　　B conscious decision making is negatively affected by task complexity

　　C unconscious decision making is a popular approach

　　D deliberation without attention defines the way we make decisions

　　5. Dijksterhuis’s car study found that, in simple tasks, participants

　　A were involved in lengthy discussions

　　B found it impossible to make decisions quickly

　　C were unable to differentiate between the options

　　D could make a better choice when allowed to concentrate

　　Questions 6-9

　　Complete the summary using the list of words A-I below.

　　Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet.

　　Dijksterhuis’s shopping study and its conclusions

　　Using clothing and furniture as examples of different types of purchases, Dijksterhuis questioned shoppers on their satisfaction with what they had bought. People who spent 6__________ time buying simple clothing items were more satisfied than those who had not. However, when buying furniture, shoppers made 7__________ purchasing decisions if they didn’t think too hard. From this, the researchers concluded that in other choices, perhaps more important than shopping. 8__________ decisions are best made by the unconscious. The writer comments that Dijksterhuis’s finding is apparently 9__________ but nonetheless true.

　　A more B counterintuitive C simple

　　D better E conscious F obvious

　　G complex H less I worse

　　Questions 10-14

　　Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage?

　　In boxes 10-14 on your answer sheet, write

　　YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer

　　NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer

　　NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

　　10 Dijksterhuis’s findings agree with existing political and management theories.

　　11 Some political leaders seem to use deliberation without attention when making complex decisions.

　　12 All political decisions are complex ones.

　　13 We judge political errors according to our own political beliefs.

　　14 Social considerations must be taken into account for any examination of decision making to prove useful.

　　参考答案

　　1. B

　　2. B

　　3. C

　　4. B

　　5. C

　　6. A

　　7. D

　　8. G

　　9. B

　　10. NO

　　11. NOT GIVEN

　　12. NOT GIVEN

　　13. YES

　　14. NOT GIVEN

　　*本文话题与实考一致，但是文章和题目与考试有出入，仅供各位考生复习使用~

　　可参考真题：剑桥16—TEST2 Passage3 How to make wise decisions

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