托福阅读常考话题及练习题推荐五：工业革命（2）

1  托福阅读常考话题：工业革命练习题

Paragraph 1:Because of industrialization, but also because of a vast increase in agricultural output without which industrialization would have been impossible, Western Europeans by the latter half of the nineteenth century enjoyed higher standards of living and longer, healthier lives than most of the world’s peoples. In Europe as a whole, the population rose from 188 million in 1800 to 400 million in 1900. By 1900, virtually every area of Europe had contributed to the tremendous surge of population, but each major region was at a different stage of demographic change.

1.According to paragraph 1, which of the following is true about Europe in the nineteenth century?

A. A large increase in food production led to industrialization.

B. Population changes occurred at the same pace in the major regions.

C. The standard of living rose to the level of that in most parts of the world.

D. The tremendous rise in population led to greater agricultural output in every region.

Paragraph 2:Improvements in the food supply continued trends that had started in the late seventeenth century. New lands were put under cultivation, while the use of crops of American origin, particularly the potato, continued to expand. Setbacks did occur. Regional agricultural failures were the most common cause of economic recessions until 1850, and they could lead to localized famine as well. A major potato blight (disease) in 1846-1847 led to the deaths of at least one million persons in Ireland and the emigration of another million, and Ireland never recovered the population levels the potato had sustained to that point. Bad grain harvests at the same time led to increased hardship throughout much of Europe.

2.According to paragraph 2, which of the following caused the food supply to increase in most of Western Europe during the nineteenth century?

A. Replacement of seventeenth-century farming techniques with more modern ones

B. Improved grain harvests in most European countries

C. Reduced demand for food as a result of a decreased population

D. Use of new land to grow crops

3.In paragraph 2, why does the author mention the potato blight that occurred in Ireland?

A. To identify a crop that was more successful in the United States than it was in Western Europe

B. To support a claim about regional agricultural failures

C. To give an example of a problematic trend that had started in the late seventeenth century

D. To provide evidence that many countries in Europe experienced a loss of population in the nineteenth century

Paragraph 3: After 1850, however, the expansion of foods more regularly kept pace with population growth, though the poorer classes remained malnourished. Two developments were crucial. First, the application of science and new technology to agriculture increased. Led by German universities, increasing research was devoted to improving seeds, developing chemical fertilizers, and advancing livestock. After 1861, with the development of land-grant universities in the United States that had huge agricultural programs, American crop-production research added to this mix. Mechanization included the use of horse-drawn harvesters and seed drills, many developed initially in the United States. It also included mechanical cream separators and other food-processing devices that improved supply.

4.The phrase "kept pace with" in the passage is closest in meaning to

A. exceeded

B. matched the increase in

C. increased the rate of

D. caused

5.According to paragraph 3, all of the following factors helped the supply of food meet the needs of a growing population EXCEPT

A. increased agricultural research in Germany

B. introduction of new crops

C. development of food-processing devices

D. agricultural programs in universities in the United States

Paragraph 4: The second development involved industrially based transportation. With trains and steam shipping, it became possible to move foods to needy regions within Western Europe quickly. Famine (as opposed to malnutrition) became a thing of the past. Many Western European countries, headed by Britain, began also to import increasing amounts of food, not only from Eastern Europe, a traditional source, but also from the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. Steam shipping, which improved speed and capacity , as well as new procedures for canning and refrigerating foods (particularly after 1870), was fundamental to these developments.

6.The word "capacity" in the passage is closest in meaning to

A. variety of goods

B. distance

C. reliability

D. available storage space

7.According to paragraph 4, famine became less of a problem in Western Europe during the nineteenth century because of

A. the decline of malnutrition

B. the construction of more food-storage facilities

C. faster means of transportation

D. improved agricultural methods in Eastern Europe

Paragraph 5: Europe's population growth included one additional innovation by the nineteenth century: it combined with rapid urbanization. More and more Western Europeans moved from countryside to city, and big cities grew most rapidly of all. By 1850, over half of all the people in England lived in cities, a first in human history. In one sense, this pattern seems inevitable growing numbers of people pressed available resources on the land, even when farmwork was combined with a bit of manufacturing, so people crowded into cities seeking work or other resources. Traditionally, however, death rates in cities surpassed those in the countryside by a large margin; cities had maintained population only through steady in-migration. Thus rapid urbanization should have reduced overall population growth, but by the middle of the nineteenth century this was no longer the case. Urban death rates remained high, particularly in the lower-class slums, but they began to decline rapidly.

8.The word "inevitable" in the passage is closest in meaning to

A. unexplainable

B. undesirable

C. unavoidable

D. unpredictable

9.According to paragraph 5, which of the following factors led to rapid urbanization in the first half of the nineteenth century?

A. The destruction of many farms due to bad harvests

B. The reduction in the amount of good-quality farmland

C. The rise in death rates in the countryside

D. The lack of jobs in the countryside

10.The word "surpass" in the passage is closest in meaning to

A. exceed

B. influence

C. equal

D. differ from