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Make sure your headset is on. The Writing section measures your ability

游客2024-01-04  21
问题     Make sure your headset is on.
    The Writing section measures your ability to use writing to communicate in an academic environment. There will be 2 writing tasks.
    For the first task, you will be asked to read a passage and listen to a lecture. You will then answer a question based on what you have read and heard. For the second task, you will be asked to answer a question based on your own knowledge and experience.
    Now listen to the directions for the first writing task.
    The Integrated Writing Task
    For this task, you will read a passage about an academic topic. A clock at the top of the screen will show how much time you have to read. Then the passage will be removed and you will listen to a lecture about the same topic. You will be able to see the passage again when it is time to write. You may take notes while you read and listen.
    You will then have 20 minutes to write a response to a question that asks you about the relationship between the reading passage and the lecture. Using information from the reading and the lecture, try to answer the question as completely as possible. The question does not ask you to express your personal opinion.
    Typically, an effective response will be 150 to 225 words long. Your response will be judged on the quality of your writing and on the completeness and accuracy of the content. You may use your notes to help you answer.
    Now you will see the reading passage for 3 minutes. Remember the reading passage will be available to you again when you write. After the reading time ends, the lecture will begin immediately, so keep your headset on until the lecture is over.
    Reading
    DDT has a half-life of anywhere from a month in running water to fifteen years in contaminated soil. Like any toxic pesticide, it is extremely dangerous, both to humans and to the natural world in general, and was therefore banned in most parts of the world in the 1970s.
    Its damaging effects to the environment were first recorded by a woman named Rachel Carson, who wrote a book on the subject called Silent Spring. She started investigating DDT when she noticed that the number of song birds around her home decreased shortly after neighboring farms started using the pesticide. She discovered that the chemical built up in animals as it progressed along the food chain. Small animals had only small amounts of DDT in their bodies, but they passed that poison along to whatever predators had the misfortune to eat them. This meant that predators at the top of their food chain, such as bald eagles, ended up accumulating large amounts of the toxin in their bodies. DDT had terrible effects on them. One of the worst was that it caused the birds to produce eggs that had shells that were too thin. As a result, the chicks inside died before they were born. That was why the number of birds around Rachel Carson’s home was decreasing.
    Humans, of course, are also at the top of their food chain, so this raised questions about our own exposure to the chemical. It was already known that DDT could be poisonous to humans from its effects on those who sprayed it. Especially in the developing world, where workers sprayed excessive amounts of the pesticide without the benefit of protective gear, humans were often directly sickened by the toxin. Eventually, most governments decided that DDT served no useful purpose that could not be carried out by using safer chemicals, so it was banned.
    Listening

    Question
    Directions: You have 20 minutes to plan and write your response. Your response will be judged on the quality of your writing and on how well you present the points in the lecture and their relationship to the reading passage. Typically, an effective response will be 150-225 words long.
    Question: Summarize the points made in the lecture being sure to explain how they challenge or cast doubt on specific points made in the reading.
    DDT has a half-life of anywhere from a month in running water to fifteen years in contaminated soil. Like any toxic pesticide, it is extremely dangerous, both to humans and to the natural world in general, and was therefore banned in most parts of the world in the 1970s.
    Its damaging effects to the environment were first recorded by a woman named Rachel Carson, who wrote a book on the subject called Silent Spring. She started investigating DDT when she noticed that the number of song birds around her home decreased shortly after neighboring farms started using the pesticide. She discovered that the chemical built up in animals as it progressed along the food chain. Small animals had only small amounts of DDT in their bodies, but they passed that poison along to whatever predators had the misfortune to eat them. This meant that predators at the top of their food chain, such as bald eagles, ended up accumulating large amounts of the toxin in their bodies. DDT had terrible effects on them. One of the worst was that it caused the birds to produce eggs that had shells that were too thin. As a result, the chicks inside died before they were born. That was why the number of birds around Rachel Carson’s home was decreasing.
    Humans, of course, are also at the top of their food chain, so this raised questions about our own exposure to the chemical. It was already known that DDT could be poisonous to humans from its effects on those who sprayed it. Especially in the developing world, where workers sprayed excessive amounts of the pesticide without the benefit of protective gear, humans were often directly sickened by the toxin. Eventually, most governments decided that DDT served no useful purpose that could not be carried out by using safer chemicals, so it was banned.
Now, many of you have probably heard of DDT, the pesticide that was banned in the West, and throughout most of the developing world as well, after Rachel Carson condemned its negative environmental effects in her book Silent Spring. Getting DDT banned was one of the first great triumphs of the environmental movement--the one that established environmentalism as a political force to be reckoned with--but ironically, we now know it was really a terrible mistake.
    I see a few shocked looks. But banning DDT really was a mistake. For one thing, it may cause some harm to wildlife, especially larger birds of prey, whose eggs it thins, but it is considerably less toxic to humans than many of the chemicals that have replaced it. Many of today’s pesticides have to be sprayed by people wearing protective suits. DDT, in contrast, could be sprayed without protection. In fact, in one study, people actually drank small amounts of DDT every day for two years. They suffered almost no ill effects.
    Many people now also question the science behind Silent Spring. While DDT does poison wildlife--it is a pesticide, after all-- much of the damage occurred because of uncontrolled agricultural spraying. It is doubtful that the amounts needed for use in, say, fighting disease spreading insects, would do any real damage to the ecosystem.
    And that’s the real reason the DDT ban was a mistake. It allowed malaria to make a comeback. Today, we think of malaria as a tropical disease, but it used to plague all areas of the world, including North America. The use of DDT to control mosquito populations eliminated the disease in the First World and was well on its way to doing so in the developing world, too. Once DDT was banned in many developing nations, though, the mosquito populations there surged, and the disease made a comeback. Now, anywhere from one to three million people a year die from malaria worldwide, with most if not all of these deaths directly attributable to the ban on DDT.
选项
答案     Both of the professor and reading passage have different opinion about DDT, which is a pesticide that was banned in the 1970s because of its negative environmental effects.
    First, the professor is mainly in disagreement with the reading passage. He only partly acknowledges one of the points made in the reading passage that DDT caused damage to the environment, accumulating in animals’ bodies as it worked its way through the food chain. However, he actually disputes this point. He claims that this was the result of "uncontrolled" spraying. He says that "controlled" sprays would be less harmful to the environment.
    Second, the professor points out that DDT is much safer than most modern pesticides while the reading passage says that DDT could be harmful to humans, either directly or indirectly. He also claims that people who drank small amounts of it every day for two years suffered no serious side effects.
    Finally, the professor says that DDT was also responsible for eliminating malaria in the West and was getting close to doing so all over the world. But the reading passage just mentions that DDT was banned because it served no useful function and could be replaced by other safer chemicals. So he claims that after the ban, malaria has once again become a major problem, killing millions of people each year.
解析 在托福考试写作部分的题型中，综合题型是指在三分钟时间内精读短文，短文的主题思想和内容十分丰富，然后收听与精读短文内容一致的听力讲座，根据听到的讲座要点在20分钟内写出与所给精读短文要点之间的关系。听力讲座的内容与精读短文的内容要么相反，要么是对精读短文的内容进行补充说明。
    本题的问题基本上是听力讲座与精读课文相反的概念。精读短文提出的观点和对此进行批判的听力讲座，从大的方面可以就提出与DDT毒性相关的疑问、DDT对人类的负面影响是否是事实、以DDT的实际使用效果为基础禁止使用DDT的妥当性等三个方面展开论述。参考答案中认为精读短文与听力讲座内容相反，并对这些要点进行了比较和梳理。
    1．精读课文：根据食物链的移动规律，动物体内积累的DDT会在食物链终端的肉食动物体内大量残留。鸟卵的外壳开始变薄，孵化率低，个体数量减少，因此文中主张禁止使用DDT。
[听力讲座：DDT本身虽然有毒性，但是比起对人类产生致命影响的其他物质来说，DDT毕竟是很微量的，带来的损害不是DDT本身的毒性，而是人类胡乱喷洒造成的，因此禁止使用DDT是错误的。]
    2．精读课文：通过对没有佩戴保护装置而喷洒DDT的人们生病的事例指出禁止使用DDT。
[听力讲座：与当今需要使用保护装置的杀虫剂不同，DDT不是必须使用保护装置，很长时间以来人们每天都吸入DDT，可这些人并没有生病。听力讲座以这样的研究结果为依据，认为不应该禁止使用DDT。]
    3．精读课文：DDT不能产生其化学物质不能替代的效果，因此应禁止使用DDT。
[听力讲座：以发病率低的疟疾在禁止使用DDT后又开始重新扩散的例子反驳精读课文的观点。]
    在作答写作的综合题时，需要十分注意的部分是精读短文和听力讲座所包含的重要信息。当然，要将各个部分中相重复或是相补充的要点进行连接，一致地、明确地进行归纳。此外，要考虑作答时使用的词汇及语法是否正确，是否抓住问题的核心，对全盘进行了把握。因此，在平时的作文练习中，最好能同时练习归纳精读课文和听力讲座内容要点的能力。
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