第一篇：

　　题材划分：地质研究类文章

　　主要内容：文章主要讲了在19世纪科学家用不同的方法去测量地球的年龄(geological Earth time)，主要讲了3种不同方法。第一种方法是通过自然过程中fossil record中动物进化的速度来推断，该方法的不足之处体现在fossil remains不连续。第二种方法是通过sedimentary厚度来测定，比如某一时间段底层的厚度以及整体底层的厚度，该方法的不足之处在于底层有侵蚀(erosion)。第三种方法是通过海水的盐度，海水的量来测定。该方法成功的测定了地球年龄，与跟许多地质学家的观点一样，但也同样存在问题，因为海水每年的循环和海底盐分的沉积测量不准确。

　　解析：该篇文章框架非常清晰，学员要重点把握文章结构，理解文中提到的三个不同的测量方法，以及该方法存在的问题。

　　相似TPO练习推荐：

　　TPO 07：The Geologic History of The Mediterranean

　　相关知识背景：

　　The geological history of Earth follows the major events in Earth's past based on the geologic time scale, a system of chronological measurement based on the study of the planet's rock layers (stratigraphy). Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago by accretion from the solar nebula, a disk-shaped mass of dust and gas left over from the formation of the Sun, which also created the rest of the Solar System.

　　Earth was initially molten due to extreme volcanism and frequent collisions with other bodies. Eventually, the outer layer of the planet cooled to form a solid crust when water began accumulating in the atmosphere. The Moon formed soon afterwards, possibly as the result of a Mars-sized object with about 10% of the Earth's mass impacting the planet in a glancing blow. Some of this object's mass merged with the Earth, significantly altering its internal composition, and a portion was ejected into space. Some of the material survived to form an orbiting moon. Outgassing and volcanic activity produced the primordial atmosphere. Condensing water vapor, augmented by ice delivered from comets, produced the oceans.

　　As the surface continually reshaped itself over hundreds of millions of years, continents formed and broke apart. They migrated across the surface, occasionally combining to form a supercontinent. Roughly750 million years ago, the earliest-known supercontinent Rodinia, began to break apart. The continents later recombined to form Pannotia, 600 to 540 million years ago, then finally Pangaea, which broke apart180 million years ago.

　　The present pattern of ice ages began about 40 million years ago, then intensified at the end of thePliocene. The polar regions have since undergone repeated cycles of glaciation and thaw, repeating every 40,000?100,000 years. The last glacial period of the current ice age ended about 10,000 years ago.

　　第二篇

　　题材划分：生态类文章

　　主要内容：

　　文章主要讲了威尼斯的水污染问题，政府禁止染坊(dyer)等乱倾倒污水，这些人一开始很排斥，后来选择倒在城外。

　　后来人们开始用储水器(cistern)来收集雨水，但是这个事情是非常复杂的(physically and socially complex)，后来又发展了城市供水系统。

　　13-15世纪又另建了一些新的储水器(cistern)，中间暂停了一部分，因为爆发了瘟疫。当cistern跟不上供水需求的时候，人们开始用船去最近的河流打水过来卖。政府支持这个做法，但因为资金问题而放弃。

　　解析：典型的问题解决类文章，先提出一个生态问题，然后提出不同的解决方法。学生需要掌握该类文章的框架结构，重点是把握相关的解决方法。

　　相似TPO练习推荐：

　　TPO14 Maya Water Problems

　　相关知识背景：

　　Venice is a city in northeastern Italy sited on a group of 118 small islands separated by canals and linked by bridges.It is located in the marshy Venetian Lagoon which stretches along the shoreline, between the mouths of the Po and the Piave Rivers. Venice is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks.The city in its entirety is listed as a World Heritage Site, along with its lagoon.Venice is the capital of the Veneto region. In 2009, there were 270,098 people residing in Venice's comune (the population estimate of 272,000 inhabitants includes the population of the whole Comune of Venezia; around 60,000[3]in the historic city of Venice (Centro storico); 176,000 in Terraferma (the Mainland), mostly in the large frazioni(roughly equivalent to "parishes" or "wards" in other countries) of Mestre and Marghera; 31,000 live on other islands in the lagoon). Together with Padua and Treviso, the city is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area(PATREVE), with a total population of 1,600,000. PATREVE is only a statistical metropolitan area without any degree of autonomy.

　　The name is derived from the ancient Veneti people who inhabited the region by the 10th century BC.[4][5] The city historically was the capital of the Republic of Venice. Venice has been known as the "La Dominante", "Serenissima", "Queen of the Adriatic", "City of Water", "City of Masks", "City of Bridges", "The Floating City", and "City of Canals". Luigi Barzini described it in The New York Times as "undoubtedly the most beautiful city built by man".[6]Venice has also been described by the Times Online as being one of Europe's most romantic cities.[7]

　　The Republic of Venice was a major maritime power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and a staging area for the Crusades and the Battle of Lepanto, as well as a very important center of commerce (especially silk, grain, and spice) and art in the 13th century up to the end of the 17th century. This made Venice a wealthy city throughout most of its history.[8] It is also known for its several important artistic movements, especially the Renaissance period. Venice has played an important role in the history of symphonic and operatic music, and it is the birthplace of Antonio Vivaldi.[9]

　　第三篇

　　题材划分：艺术类文章

　　主要内容：

　　该篇文章主要讲解动画(motion picture)的起源。 M拍摄到了24张马的照片来证明某个时刻马的四脚是离地的。之后爱迪生发明了动画照相机(motion camera)，一开始失败了，因为不知道如何影片快速的通过照相机，后来通过打孔的方法解决了。

　　之后，爱迪生发明了留声机，投币看短电影(short films)，只能允许一个人看到屏幕。如果一大群人一起看就卖不出这么多的机器了。欧洲人改良了爱迪生的机器，他被迫无奈发明了vistascope.

　　一开始电影的题材很简单，关于赛马、拳击之类的，后来有人用它来讲故事也很不错。一些人也开始创办电影公司。

　　解析：该篇文章按照动画发展的过程来讲述，典型的现象解释类文章。学生可以根据不同阶段的相关发明来把握文章结构。

　　相似TPO练习推荐：

　　TPO 22：The Birth of Photography

　　相关知识背景：

　　The cinema did not emerge as a form of mass consumption until its technology evolved from the initial "peepshow" format to the point where images were projected on a screen in a darkened theater. In the peepshow format, a film was viewed through a small opening in a machine that was created for that purpose. Thomas Edison's peepshow device, the Kinetoscope, was introduced to the public in 1894. It was designed for use in Kinetoscope parlors, or arcades, which contained only a few individual machines and permitted only one customer to view a short, 50-foot film at any one time. The first Kinetoscope parlors contained five machines. For the price of 25 cents (or 5 cents per machine), customers moved from machine to machine to watch five different films (or, in the case of famous prizefights, successive rounds of a single fight).

　　These Kinetoscope arcades were modeled on phonograph parlors, which had proven successful for Edison several years earlier. In the phonograph parlors, customers listened to recordings through individual ear tubes, moving from one machine to the next to hear different recorded speeches or pieces of music. The Kinetoscope parlors functioned in a similar way. Edison was more interested in the sale of Kinetoscopes (for roughly $1,000 apiece) to these parlors than in the films that would be run in them (which cost approximately $10 to $15 each). He refused to develop projection technology, reasoning that if he made and sold projectors, then exhibitors would purchase only one machine-a projector-from him instead of several.

　　Exhibitors, however, wanted to maximize their profits, which they could do more readily by projecting a handful of films to hundreds of customers at a time (rather than one at a time) and by charging 25 to 50 cents admission. About a year after the opening of the first Kinetoscope parlor in 1894, showmen such as Louis and Auguste Lumiere, Thomas Armat and Charles Francis Jenkins, and Orville and Woodville Latham (with the assistance of Edison's former assistant, William Dickson) perfected projection devices. These early projection devices were used in vaudeville theaters, legitimate theaters, local town halls, makeshift storefront theaters, fairgrounds, and amusement parks to show films to a mass audience.

　　With the advent of projection in 1895-1896, motion pictures became the ultimate form of mass consumption. Previously, large audiences had viewed spectacles at the theater, where vaudeville, popular dramas, musical and minstrel shows, classical plays, lectures, and slide-and-lantern shows had been presented to several hundred spectators at a time. But the movies differed significantly from these other forms of entertainment, which depended on either live performance or (in the case of the slide-and-lantern shows) the active involvement of a master of ceremonies who assembled the final program.