第一篇
TOPIC 美国经济萧条The Great Depression
经济萧条之前的经济繁荣，1920年前后经济飞速增长，导致人们认为不应该干涉经济（有考点），但在大萧条之后观点改变了。经济萧条之前，人们都投钱到股市，这是股价上升的主要原因，而非上市公司的利润也增加（考点）。但股票投资者哄抬股市，比公司实际收益高出好多。然后突然就下降了，从1929年某天起，股市一天下降9%。持续长达两年半（句子简化）。
接下来说人们没有存钱和保险，还涉及unemployment，买东西都是根据信用向银行贷款，然后萧条之后没工作没钱，就什么都买不到了，所以manufacture和retailer也受到了影响。因为他们卖不出东西了。
然后说大萧条的两个stage，一开始没那么严重，由于没钱投资外国了，然后就造成了更长更严重的影响（考点）。然后人们态度转变，银行不可信了。大家求助于，银行家和胡佛就是始作俑者（考点）。
词汇题：extensive
解析：本文属历史类话题，涉及内容是美国近代历史中非常著名的1929-33年经济大萧条。可以看到当涉及历史内容时，经济还是最主要的考察维度。本文结构属描述类文章，非常类似于维基百科式写法。关于大萧条相信很多同学尤其是学习经济金融相关专业的同学一定非常熟悉，下附简单介绍，结合学习了解。
The Great Depression
The Great Depression began in August of 1929, when the United States economy first went into an economic recession. Although the country spent two months with declining GDP, it was not until the Wall Street Crash of October, 1929 that the effects of a declining economy were felt, and a major worldwide economic downturn ensued. The market crash marked the beginning of a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth and personal advancement. Although its causes are still uncertain and controversial, the net effect was a sudden and general loss of confidence in the economic future.
The usual explanations include numerous factors, especially high consumer debt, ill-regulated markets that permitted overoptimistic loans by banks and investors, and the lack of high-growth new industries, all interacting to create a downw;lard economic spiral of reduced spending, falling confidence, and lowered production.
Industries that suffered the most included construction, agriculture as dust-bowl conditions persisted in the agricultural heartland, shipping, mining, and logging as well as durable goods like automobiles and appliances that could be postponed. The economy reached bottom in the winter of 1932–33; then came four years of very rapid growth until 1937, when the Recession of 1937 brought back 1934 levels of unemployment.
The Depression caused major political changes in America. Three years into the depression, Herbert Hoover lost the 1932 presidential election to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a sweeping landslide. Roosevelt's economic recovery plan, the New Deal, instituted unprecedented programs for relief, recovery and reform, and brought about a major realignment of American politics.
The Depression also resulted in an increase of emigration of people to other countries for the first time in American history. For example, some immigrants went back to their native countries, and some native US citizens went to Canada, Australia, and South Africa. It also resulted in the mass migration of people from badly hit areas in the Great Plains and the South to places such as California and the North, respectively (see Okies and the Great Migration of African Americans). Racial tensions also increased during this time. By the 1940s immigration had returned to normal, and emigration declined. A well-known example of an emigrant was Frank McCourt, who went to Ireland, as recounted in his book Angela's Ashes.
The memory of the Depression also shaped modern theories of economics and resulted in many changes in how the government dealt with economic downturns, such as the use of stimulus packages, Keynesian economics, and Social Security. It also shaped modern American literature, resulting in famous novels such as John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Of Mice and Men".
第二篇
TOPIC 欧洲工业化
先说虽然有和美国人贸易的原因，但主要是自己的原因。先是人口的增长导致需求增多，然后农民有钱了，就可以发展工业。一些小国家技术也发展。农民还把一些产品四处带来带去，使原来local-scale的产品国际化。
接下来说材料的原因。一些原来worthless的oil现在可以用了，原来很贵的材料不贵了，也大力发展这些。举了例子说法国急于发展出版业，因为当时有家族控制阻挠。本来1453年应该印刷某些说明，但推后了20年才出版。接着说printed技术特别好，传到巴黎后，传播飞快（考点）。
最后说了交通因素。因为战争变少（考点），导致loss变少，给了人们security。同时一些组织使得本应交纳的利息也变少了。这一切都导致了商品价格的下降。
解析：本文属历史类话题，涉及内容为欧洲史，重点谈及工业前的欧洲工业化发展情况。文章结构很明显很典型的因果类，先结果后原因。
Early modern Europe
Early modern Europe is the term used by historians to refer to a period in the history of Europe which spanned the centuries between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, roughly the late 15th century to the late 18th century. The early modern period is often considered to have begun with such events as the beginning of the High Renaissance in Italy; the invention of
moveable type printing in the 1450s; the Fall of Constantinople in 1453; the end of the Wars of the Roses in 1485; the Voyages of Christopher Columbus and the completion of the Reconquista in 1492 or the start of the Protestant Reformation in 1517. Its end point is often linked with the outset of the French Revolution in 17, or with the more nebulous origins of industrialism in late 18th century Britain. As with most periodizations of history, however, the precise dates chosen vary. Some of the more notable events of the early modern period included the Reformation and the religious conflicts it provoked (including the French Wars of Religion and the Thirty Years' War), the European colonization of the Americas and the peak of the European witch-hunt phenomenon.
Economy
The early modern economy witnessed dramatic changes in the global spheres of transoceanic voyage and market exchange. State building and colonialism shifted the center of gravity from the Mediterranean to the wider Atlantic world, Africa, and the Americas. Spain and Portugal experienced temporary prosperity during this global expansion, while England and the Low Countries thrived well beyond the sixteenth century. Global markets and new goods linked people of different continents through sugar, tobacco, and coffee. Neither women nor most men, however, were highly visible at this economic level, where capitalism was at work and European states were in competition to control global trade networks, for most people did not have access to large resources, to companies and monopolies of
control, or to the power of the state that would enable them to invest in capitalist enterprise.
Peasants and workers did, however, witness significant changes in production. The urban guilds that had prevailed in the Late Middle Ages waned in the sixteenth century, and production shifted to rural households where all family members took part in both productive and reproductive labor. Economic historian Carlo Cipolla states that the preponderance of demand centered around food, clothing, and housing, a phenomenon that determined the structure of production. Women, men, and children from the age of seven worked the land, cared for the livestock, and produced essentials for the family unit. They also tended and harvested crops that provided raw materials for manufactured products, such as flax, hemp, silk, and plants for dye. Capitalist investors found it in their interests to bypass the urban guilds and to hire women (and children), whose wages were more determined by custom than by the market. They bought from urban and rural households for export to Atlantic markets. Thus commercial capitalism and the globalization of the economy stepped up production based on hand technology in the family household.
The domestic industrial system changed the kinds of work opportunities available to women and children. It also transformed the functions of the family as men, women, and children began to receive individual wages for work. Nonetheless,
Europeans had to work harder between 1500 and 1800 than during the previous centuries in order to maintain what were stagnant living standards, for their purchasing power did not increase much. It was not until the nineteenth century that capitalism transformed definitions of work. In the Middle Ages it included all tasks that contributed to a family's sustenance. With nineteenth-century industrialization and capitalism work became more exclusively participation in production outside the home and the market economy. When the household lost its central economic role to capitalist production and became more a center for reproduction, the status and importance of women's work and work in the household declined. Productive labor was seen as men's sphere, while women's labor, largely involving childbirth, infant care, and WET-NURSING, took place in the home and was of no monetary value. Women and children's roles in economic development were hardly recognized until gender analysis among late twentieth-century scholars reevaluated the importance of reproduction and domestic work as well as proto-industry in the home, connecting public and private spheres.
第三篇
TOPIC 海龟定位
海龟在夜晚生蛋laid and hatch eggs，蛋也在晚上破壳而出。这都是为了保护自己不被捕食者吃掉。
研究发现，海龟可以通过光sunlight来定位，回到海里。而不是通过斜坡等回到海里。高于地平线的光引导海龟回海里。做了一个实验，小海龟被蒙住眼睛就找不到路了（考点）。接着说海龟最不敏感黄色光。因为黄光是太阳升起时的光，容易扰乱海龟的方向。然后说vegetation，海龟会避开它。因为它们挡住了太阳，还有海岸没有这种植物，但海龟摸到这种shape就会调转方向。另外，人工光artificial light对海龟也有误导，让他们在旁边几百米外就忽略别的因素，只靠这个光（考点）。
接下来，海龟游到海里时，则可以通过海波wave定位。如果海面平静calm，则海龟就会random或者原地打转circle（考点）。
后来发现，海龟体内有个地理磁场类的东西，只要一开始确定了direction，靠geological congression可以帮助其定位。再后来，发现如果其他定位cue available，海龟就不用自己体内这个地理磁场定位。其他的不行时，再拿出自己的看家本领。考词汇switch on。总之，他们不会迷路，肯定能回到海里。
解析：本文属生物学话题，主要谈及海龟导航。关于动物导航，曾在托福考试中多次出现，所以广大考生在考试中遇到应感觉较为熟悉和简单。文中分别谈及各类海龟导航的方式，主要就分为外在环境因素和内在因素两大类来研究。生物学一直是托福阅读最稳定的考察点，请大家务必在此方面多多练习，多多扩充知识储备。
Sea Turtle Migration
Sea turtle migration refers to the long-distance movements of sea turtles (superfamily Chelonioidea) notably as adults but may also refer to the offshore migration of hatchings. Sea turtle hatchings emerge from underground nests and crawl across the beach towards the sea. They then maintain an offshore heading until they reach the open sea. The feeding and nesting sites of adult sea turtles are often distantly separated meaning some must migrate hundreds or even thousands of kilometres. Several main patterns of adult migration have been identified. Some such as the green sea turtle shuttle between nesting sites and coastal foraging areas. The loggerhead sea turtle uses a series of foraging sites. Others such as the leatherback sea turtle and olive ridley sea turtle do not show fidelity to any specific coastal foraging site. Instead, they forage in the open sea in complex movements apparently not towards any goal. Although the foraging movements of leatherbacks seem to be determined to a large part by passive drift with the currents, they are still able to return to specific sites to breed. The ability of adult sea turtles to travel to precise targets has led many to wonder about the navigational mechanisms used. Some have suggested that juvenile and adult turtles might use the Earth's magnetic field to determine their position. There is evidence for this ability in juvenile green sea turtles.
Orientation and navigation
Studies of loggerhead and leatherback hatchlings have shown that moonlight reflected from the sea is an important visual cue in guiding movement from the beach to the sea. This navigational mechanism becomes a handicap if nesting sites are affected by artificial lighting since this can mean that hatchlings head towards the artificial lights rather than offshore towards the moonlit sea. Hence, the use of moonlight by turtle hatchings as a navigational cue can be considered an 'evolutionary trap'. Loggerhead and green turtles can detect the orbital movement of waves and use this information to swim perpendicular to the waves crests. This means they swim offshore, since close to the shore, wave crests run parallel to the beach. Further offshore the Earth's magnetic field is used to maintain an offshore direction and therefore head towards the open sea The ability to head in a given direction without reference to landmarks, is called a compass mechanism and where magnetic cues are used to achieve this it is called a 'magnetic compass'. Hatchling loggerheads mature within the North Atlantic Gyre and it is important that they stay within this current system since here water temperatures are benign. It has been shown that loggerheads use the magnetic field to stay within the gyre. For example, when exposed to fields characteristic of a region at the edge of the gyre they responded by orienting in a direction which would keep them within the gyre. These responses are inherited rather than learned since the hatchlings tested were captured before reaching the ocean. Adult turtles may learn aspects of the magnetic field and use this to navigate in a learned rather than innate way.下载本文
