雅思

资讯中心 > 雅思 > 雅思真题 > 雅思模拟题 > 正文
雅思阅读模拟练习题:摘要题(1)

2015.07.29 11:47

  新东方在线雅思网特为大家准备了雅思阅读模拟练习题:摘要题(1)。雅思模拟试题在雅思备考过程中所起的作用不可小觑,通过模拟练习题,我们可以很直接地了解到自己的备考状况,从而可以更有针对性地进行之后的复习。希望以下内容能够对大家的雅思备考有所帮助!更多雅思报名官网的最新消息,最新、最专业的雅思备考资料,新东方在线雅思网将第一时间为大家发布。

  Visual Symbols and the Blind

  Part 1

  From a number of recent studies, it has become clear that blind people can appreciate the use of outlines and perspectives to describe the arrangement of objects and other surfaces in space. But pictures are more than literal representations. This fact was drawn to my attention dramatically when a blind woman in one of my investigations decided on her own initiative to draw a wheel as it was spinning. To show this motion, she traced a curve inside the circle (Fig. 1). I was taken aback. Lines of motion, such as the one she used, are a very recent invention in the history of illustration. Indeed, as art scholar David Kunzle notes, Wilhelm Busch, a trend-setting nineteenth-century cartoonist, used virtually no motion lines in his popular figures until about 1877.

  When I asked several other blind study subjects to draw a spinning wheel, one particularly clever rendition appeared repeatedly: several subjects showed the wheel's spokes as curved lines. When asked about these curves, they all described them as metaphorical ways of suggesting motion. Majority rule would argue that this device somehow indicated motion very well. But was it a better indicator than, say, broken or wavy lines—or any other kind of line, for that matter? The answer was not clear. So I decided to test whether various lines of motion were apt ways of showing movement or if they were merely idiosyncratic marks. Moreover, I wanted to discover whether there were differences in how the blind and the sighted interpreted lines of motion.

  To search out these answers, I created raised-line drawings of five different wheels, depicting spokes with lines that curved, bent, waved, dashed and extended beyond the perimeter of the wheel. I then asked eighteen blind volunteers to feel the wheels and assign one of the following motions to each wheel: wobbling, spinning fast, spinning steadily, jerking or braking. My control group consisted of eighteen sighted undergraduates from the University of Toronto.

  All but one of the blind subjects assigned distinctive motions to each wheel. Most guessed that the curved spokes indicated that the wheel was spinning steadily; the wavy spokes, they thought, suggested that the wheel was wobbling; and the bent spokes were taken as a sign that the wheel was jerking. Subjects assumed that spokes extending beyond the wheel's perimeter signified that the wheel had its brakes on and that dashed spokes indicated the wheel was spinning quickly.

  In addition, the favoured description for the sighted was the favoured description for the blind in every instance. What is more, the consensus among the sighted was barely higher than that among the blind. Because motion devices are unfamiliar to the blind, the task I gave them involved some problem solving. Evidently, however, the blind not only figured out meanings for each line of motion, but as a group they generally came up with the same meaning at least as frequently as did sighted subjects.

  Part 2

  Words associated Agreement

  with circle

  uare among

  subjects (%)

  SOFT-HARD 100

  MOTHER-FATHER 94

  HAPPY-SAD 94

  GOOD-EVIL 89

  LOVE-HATE 89

  ALIVE-DEAD 87

  BRIGHT-DARK 87

  LIGHT-HEAVY 85

  WARM-COLD 81

  SUMMER-WINTER 81

  WEAK-STRONG 79

  FAST-SLOW 79

  CAT-DOG 74

  SPRING-FALL 74

  QUIET-LOUD 62

  WALKING-STANDING 62

  ODD-EVEN 57

  FAR-NEAR 53

  PLANT-ANIMAL 53

  DEEP-SHALLOW 51

  Fig. 2 Subjects were asked which word in each pair fits best with a circle and which with a square. These percentages show the level of consensus among sighted subjects.

  We have found that the blind understand other kinds of visual metaphors as well. One blind woman drew a picture of a child inside a heart—choosing that symbol, she said, to show that love surrounded the child. With Chang Hong Liu, a doctoral student from China, I have begun exploring how well blind people understand the symbolism behind shapes such as hearts that do not directly represent their meaning.

  We gave a list of twenty pairs of words to sighted subjects and asked them to pick from each pair the term that best related to a circle and the term that best related to a square. For example, we asked: What goes with soft? A circle or a square? Which shape goes with hard?

  All our subjects deemed the circle soft and the square hard. A full 94% ascribed happy to the circle, instead of sad. But other pairs revealed less agreement: 79% matched fast to slow and weak to strong, respectively. And only 51% linked deep to circle and shallow to square. (See Fig. 2.) When we tested four totally blind volunteers using the same list, we found that their choices closely resembled those made by the sighted subjects. One man, who had been blind since birth, scored extremely well. He made only one match differing from the consensus, assigning 'far' to square and 'near' to circle. In fact, only a small majority of sighted subjects—53%—had paired far and near to the opposite partners. Thus, we concluded that the blind interpret abstract shapes as sighted people do.


加载更多
课程推荐
加载更多课程>>
雅思备考资料包

扫码添加助教号

免费获取最新雅思口语题库

相关阅读查看更多>>

资料下载查看更多>>