2020最新托福阅读理解真题

陈铃1147由分享时间：2020-08-30 13:30:13

为了让大家更好的准备托福考试，小编给大家整理一些托福阅读真题，下面小编就和大家分享，来欣赏一下吧。

托福阅读真题1

No two comets ever look identical, but they have basic features in common, one of the most obvious of which is a coma. A coma looks like a misty, patch of light with one or more tails often streaming from it in the direction away from the sun.

At the heart of a comet's coma lies a nucleus of solid material, typically no more than 10 kilometers across. The visible coma is a huge cloud of gas and dust that has escaped from the nucleus, which then surrounds like an extended atmosphere. The coma can extend as far as a million kilometers outward from the nucleus. Around the coma there is often an even larger invisible envelope of hydrogen gas.

The most graphic proof that the grand spectacle of a comet develops from a relatively small and inconspicuous chunk of ice and dust was the close-up image obtained in 1986 by the European Giotto probe of the nucleus of Halley's Comet. It turned out to be a bit like a very dark asteroid, measuring 16 by 8 kilometers. Ices have evaporated from its outer layers to leave a crust of nearly black dust all over the surface. Bright jets of gas from evaporating ice burst out on the side facing the Sun, where the surface gets heated up, carrying dust with them. This is how the coma and the tails are created.

Comets grow tails only when they get warm enough for ice and dust to boil off. As a comet's orbit brings it closer to the sun, first the coma grows, then two distinct tails usually form. One, the less common kind, contains electrically charged (i.e., ionized) atoms of gas, which are blown off directly in the direction away from the Sun by the magnetic field of the solar wind. The other tail is made of neutral dust particles, which get gently pushed back by the pressure of the sunlight itself. Unlike the ion tail, which is straight, the dust tail becomes curved as the particles follow their own orbits around the Sun.

1. The passage focuses on comets primarily in terms of their

(A) orbital patterns

(B) coma and tails

(D) size

2. The word identical in line 1 is closest in meaning to

(A) equally fast

(B) exactly alike

(D) invisible

3. The word heart in line 4 is closest in meaning to

(A) center

(B) edge

(D) beginning

4. Why does the author mention the Giotto probe in paragraph 3?

(A) It had a relatively small and inconspicuous nucleus.

(B) It was very similar to an asteroid.

(D) It provided visual evidence of the makeup of a comet's nucleus.

5. It can be inferred from the passage that the nucleus of a comet is made up of

(A) dust and gas

(B) ice and dust

(D) electrically charged atoms

6. The word graphic in line 9 is closest in meaning to

(A) mathematical

(B) popular

(D) vivid

7. Which of the following occurred as the ices from Halley's Comet evaporated?

(A) Black dust was left on the comet's surface.

(B) The nucleus of the comet expanded.

(D) Jets of gas caused the comet to increase its speed.

8. All of the following statements about the tails of comets are true EXCEPT:

(A) They can contain electrically charged or neutral particles.

(B) They can be formed only when there is sufficient heat.

(D) They always point in the direction away from the Sun.

9. The word distinct in line 17 is closest in meaning to

(A) visible

(B) gaseous

(D) new

10. Compared to the tail of electrically charged atoms, the tail of neutral dust particles is

relatively

(A) long

(B) curved

(D) bright

PASSAGE 65 BBADB DACCB

托福阅读真题2

Long before they can actually speak, babies pay special attention to the speech they hear around them. Within the first month of their lives, babies' responses to the sound of the human voice will be different from their responses to other sorts of auditory stimuli. They will stop crying when they hear a person talking, but not if they hear a bell or the sound of a rattle. At first, the sounds that an infant notices might be only those words that receive the heaviest emphasis and that often occur at the ends of utterances. By the time they are six or seven weeks old, babies can detect the difference between syllables pronounced with rising and falling inflections. Very soon, these differences in adult stress and intonation can influence babies' emotional states and behavior. Long before they develop actual language comprehension, babies can sense when an adult is playful or angry, attempting to initiate or terminate new behavior, and so on, merely on the basis of cues such as the rate, volume, and melody of adult speech.

Adults make it as easy as they can for babies to pick up a language by exaggerating such cues. One researcher observed babies and their mothers in six diverse cultures and found that, in all six languages, the mothers used simplified syntax, short utterances and nonsense sounds, and transformed certain sounds into baby talk. Other investigators have noted that when mothers talk to babies who are only a few months old, they exaggerate the pitch, loudness, and intensity of their words. They also exaggerate their facial expressions, hold vowels longer, and emphasize certain words.

More significant for language development than their response to general intonation is observation that tiny babies can make relatively fine distinctions between speech sounds. In other words, babies enter the world with the ability to make precisely those perceptual discriminations that are necessary if they are to acquire aural language.

Babies obviously derive pleasure from sound input, too: even as young as nine months they will listen to songs or stories, although the words themselves are beyond their understanding. For babies, language is a sensory-motor delight rather than the route to prosaic meaning that it often is for adults.

1. What does the passage mainly discuss?

(A) How babies differentiate between the sound of the human voice and other sounds

(B) The differences between a baby's and an adult's ability to comprehend language

development

(D) The response of babies to sounds other than the human voice

2. Why does the author mention a bell and a rattle in lines 4-5?

(A) To contrast the reactions of babies to human and nonhuman sounds

(B) To give examples of sounds that will cause a baby to cry

(D) To give examples of typical toys that babies do not like

3. Why does the author mention syllables pronounced with rising and falling inflections in lines

7-8?

(A) To demonstrate how difficult it is for babies to interpret emotions

(B) To illustrate that a six-week-old baby can already distinguish some language differences

(D) To give a reason for babies' difficulty in distinguishing one adult from another

4. The word diverse in line 14 is closest in meaning to

(A) surrounding

(B) divided

(D) stimulating

5. The word noted in line 17 is closest in meaning to

(A) theorized

(B) requested

(D) observed

6. The word They in line 18 refers to

(A) mothers

(B) investigators

(D) words

7. The passage mentions all of the following as ways adults modify their speech when talking to

babies EXCEPT

(A) giving all words equal emphasis

(B) speaking with shorter sentences

(D) using meaningless sounds

8. The word emphasize in line 19 is closest in meaning to

(A) stress

(B) repeat

(D) leave out

9. Which of the following can be inferred about the findings described in paragraph 2?

(A) Babies who are exposed to more than one language can speak earlier than babies exposed to

a single language.

(B) Mothers from different cultures speak to their babies in similar ways.

(D) The mothers observed by the researchers were consciously teaching their babies to speak.

10. What point does the author make to illustrate that babies are born with the ability to acquire

language?

(A) Babies begin to understand words in songs.

(B) Babies exaggerate their own sounds and expressions.

(D) Babies notice even minor differences between speech sounds.

11. According to the author, why do babies listen to songs and stories, even though they cannot

understand them?

(A) They understand the rhythm.

(B) They enjoy the sound.

(D) They focus on the meaning of their parents' words.

PASSAGE 66 CABCD AAABD B

托福阅读真题3

Geographers say that what defines a place are four properties: soil, climate, altitude, and aspect, or attitude to the Sun. Florida's ancient scrub demonstrates this principle. Its soil is pure silica, so barren it supports only lichens as ground cover. It does, however, sustain a sand-swimming lizard that cannot live where there is moisture or plant matter the soil. Its climate, despite more than 50 inches of annual rainfall, is blistering desert. The only plant life it can sustain is the xerophytic, the quintessentially dry. Its altitude is a mere couple of hundred feet, but it is high ground on a peninsula elsewhere close to sea level, and its drainage is so critical that a difference of inches in elevation can bring major changes in its plant communities. Its aspect is flat direct, brutal — and subtropical.

Florida's surrounding lushness cannot impinge on its desert scrubbiness. This does not sound like an attractive place. It does not look much like one either: shrubby little oaks, clumps of scraggly bushes prickly pear, thorns, and tangles. It appears, Said one early naturalist, to desire to display the result of the misery through which it has passed and is passing. By our narrow standards, scrub is not beautiful; neither does it meet our selfish utilitarian needs. Even the name is an epithet, a synonym for the stunted, the scruffy, the insignificant, what is beautiful about such a place?

The most important remaining patches of scrub lie along the Lake Wales Ridge, a chain of paleoislands running for a hundred miles down the center of Florida, in most places less than ten miles wide. It is relict seashore, tossed up millions of years ago when ocean levels were higher and the rest of the peninsula was submerged. That ancient emergence is precisely what makes Lake Wales Ridge so precious: it has remained unsubmerged, its ecosystems essentially undisturbed since the Miocene era. As a result, it has gathered to itself one of the largest collections of rare organisms in the world. Only about 75 plant species survive there, but at least 30 of these are found nowhere else on Earth.

1. What does the passage mainly discuss?

(A) How geographers define a place

(B) The characteristics of Florida's ancient scrub

(D) The history of the Lake Wales Ridge

2. The author mentions all of the following factors that define a place EXCEPT

(A) aspect

(B) altitude

(D) life-forms

3. It can be inferred from the passage that soil composed of silica

(A) does not hold moisture

(B) is found only in Florida

(D) provides food for many kinds of lizards