2019수능특강 영어독해연습 7강 TEXT

수능특강 영어독해연습 7강.docx

0.02MB

1

The people of every culture have pondered their origins and the origins of the cosmos. What is this space around us? Where did we come from? It is no mistake that these questions—questions that many of us asked as children—remain some of the most pressing in science. Questions like these point both to our innate curiosity about our origins and, as questions do, to the limits of our knowledge. For millennia we could only answer these questions with myth. But since the scientific revolution, we have tried to put myth aside, leaving the exploration of human and universal origins to scientists and their hard-fact methodologies. Modern cosmologists, though armed with fancy equations and high-tech experiments, can be said to be the myth makers of our time. Despite our precision mathematics and experiments, new surprises in modern physics and cosmology have emerged that compel some of the most able physicists to resort to myth making to try and explain the mind-bending information they have uncovered about the nature of the universe.

 

2

Beginners in rock climbing should not buy a complete set of equipment immediately. In most cases, when first attempting climbing under the guidance and support of an instructor, you can rent the necessary climbing equipment from the climbing gym. Often, this is included in the initial fee for a beginners’ course. With a little experience, novice climbers can better assess what equipment is appropriate and necessary for them. Advice from instructors and advanced climbers can also be useful, although their advice sometimes tends toward personal favorites or trendy brands that are often very expensive and not necessarily the best choice for beginners. Because of the large number of products available, climbing equipment is now much more affordable. Extra care is required when purchasing used equipment, especially for inexperienced climbers who may not be able to evaluate wear and tear of such equipment.

 

3

The spring migration of birds is ultimately motivated by the physics of the earth’s orbit around the sun. Spring happens because the earth’s axis of rotation is tilted 23.5 degrees away from vertical with respect to its annual orbit of the sun. As the earth circles the sun, its poles gradually tilt toward and then away from the sun. As the earth moves from its northern winter solstice to spring equinox, more direct sunlight hits the earth’s surface in the Northern Hemisphere and day length increases. These two physical changes to our north-temperate sector of the planet produce the procession of spring. Longer days and increased daily solar radiation encourage the rapid growth of plant life and the invertebrates that live on plants. Birds move north to follow this burst of plant and insect life as the sun moves northward with the season. The migrants time their travel to arrive at their breeding habitat at a point of maximum seasonal abundance.

 

4

It is a general belief that insects in the tropics are larger and more colorful than insects in temperate regions, though it’s also true that there’s more of everything in the tropics, including small, dull-brown insects. To our eyes, brightly colored insects are beautiful, but to predators such as birds, bright colors are a warning sign that indicates the insect is likely to contain nasty chemical compounds. Some perfectly innocuous insects mimic the colors of toxic species, thereby scaring off potential predators through subterfuge. At the same time, numerous nasty insects all resemble one another, making it easier for predators to remember—and avoid—them. With these two kinds of mimicry at play, there are a lot of distinct species that resemble one another, which makes it difficult to correctly identify, say, a tropical butterfly. It remains to be seen whether mimicry is more common in the tropics—perhaps due to greater predation pressure—or whether the percentage of mimetic species is the same as in temperate regions.

 

5-6

For our present self-understanding, it is of consuming importance to estimate what the ancestral humans said and did in the firelight. A recent thorough record was made by the anthropologist Polly W. Wiessner of the talk around the campfire of the most famous of Earth’s hunter-gatherers, the Ju/’hoansi (!Kung Bushmen) of the Kalahari Desert. Wiessner found differences between “daytime talk” and “firelight talk” that were even more striking than imagined previously. Daytime talk is focused on practical aspects of travel and the search for food and water. People working together talk about the food they seek. They also gossip back and forth in a manner that helps to stabilize their social networks. The subject matter is highly personal. Given the stringent quality of Ju/’hoansi existence, their talk is imbued with life-and-death choices. The conversation is also practical. It doesn’t stray far, or play on the imagination and fantasies that are possible in periods of leisure. In the evening the mood relaxes. In the firelight the talk turns to storytelling, which drifts easily into singing, dancing, and religious ceremonies. Storytelling, especially among the men, turns frequently to successful hunts and epic adventures, their dominant daytime activity. As described by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas in her 2006 classic The Old Way: A Story of the First People, the stories are (or once were) commonly mythlike accounts of actual hunts. They were recited over and over by men in special voices, becoming almost chants, to which everyone listened.

 

7

Successful writing teachers know that outlining prevents straggling prose and weak connections within a composition. Because students must organize their work and give it shape, outlining forces students to go deeper in their thought processes as they sort through the facts and ideas in their notes and in their heads. Outlining in some form is the first stage in delineating a line of thought. Experienced writing teachers spend more time on this stage than any other. They typically provide students with templates and conference with each student to ensure they have defined the structure and line of thought appropriate for the assignment. Spending time and effort on this stage provides an opportunity to teach thinking about ordering ideas and supporting those ideas. This instruction makes the difference between loosely connected pieces of evidence and ones that closely illustrate or support the main idea of each paragraph and the composition as a whole. One experienced writing teacher told us that outlining is her “main defense against chaos.”

8

Paulo Freire, a renowned Brazilian educator, once said: “Reading the world precedes reading the word.” By this, Freire meant that, from the moment that we are born, we begin to make sense of the world around us by associating the unknown with the known. This is why a baby might call all males ‘Daddy’ or all animals ‘doggie.’ If babies were not able to make these associations, they would be hopelessly confused by any new object or person that they came across. In the same way, everything that you read would be totally incomprehensible if you were not able to form associations between it and what you already know about a particular topic and the world in general. Therefore, when you are reading for study purposes, it is critical to read systematically, so that you are able to integrate the new knowledge you acquire with what you already know.

 

9

When trying to communicate a coherent message, having too many words can be just as damaging as having too few words. When revising, having too many words on the page can impede the flow of ideas. However, it is often difficult to throw things away once you have worked so hard to write them. A psychological trick to use in this situation is called the bone pile. Here you cut out those things that you think you can do without and move them down to the very bottom of the page in a section called the “bone pile.” This is a pile of discarded sentences and paragraphs. This gets them out of the way so you can see what you are working with; however, you know that you can still go back and retrieve them if necessary. This makes them much easier to pull out.

 

10

Morels are highly distinctive and especially delicious mushrooms that pop up briefly at the height of spring and are found in woodlands where one can also see spring wildflowers and new foliage. The experience of searching for and finding these mushrooms is one in which one is immersed in a world of new growth, where one enjoys the sights, sounds, smells, and anticipating taste. The beauty is not sharply separate from the fact that one is foraging for one’s dinner. Indeed, it seems to be enhanced by this pursuit. Hence, the practically oriented self can be very much present because the object of the experience is valued both for itself and for other things to which it is a means. The harmony between pure delight and practical pursuits creates an appreciation of beauty in nature that can be prized as intensely as selfless absorption, but the two experiences are not to be conflated.

 

11

In the spring of 1999 I was pregnant with my first child. I believed I knew a lot about babies as I had been a pediatric nurse for more than fifteen years. I also had seven nieces and nephews and many friends with their own babies. I expected advice from my mother and sisters, and even a few close friends. But advice from strangers in the supermarket or in the mall? Even in the bookstore, while selecting from among the thousands of books on pregnancy, childbirth, and baby care, I received unwanted advice on which book worked best. Everyone, it seemed, had an opinion—about breast-feeding versus bottle-feeding, the use of disposable versus cloth diapers, developmental toys versus pure playing, babysitters, day care versus stay-at-home moms — the list was endless. I purchased several baby care books and along with the pamphlet handed out by the pediatrician after our daughter’s birth tried to make sense of it all. This task proved impossible. One expert advised picking up a crying baby at once while another expert with similar impressive credentials advised letting the baby cry for a while. The contradictions in advice were everywhere. Eventually my husband suggested that we get Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care book and forget about the rest. After all, Spock worked for his mother! I put the books away, we bought Dr. Spock’s book and referred to it sparingly, preferring at last to rely on our own instincts. We asked for advice only when we felt it was needed. This decision still did not stop the advice. We were, like many other new parents, the recipients of a century’s worth of generally well-meaning baby care advice.