托福阅读常考话题及练习题推荐三：农业（3）

1托福阅读常考话题：农业练习题

Paragraph 5: As railroad lines fanned out from Chicago, farmers began to acquire open prairie land in Illinois and then Iowa, putting the fertile, deep black soil into production. Commercial agriculture transformed this remarkable treeless environment. To settlers accustomed to eastern woodlands, the thousands of square miles of tall grass were an awesome sight. Indian grass, Canada wild rye, and native big bluestem all grew higher than a person. Because eastern plows could not penetrate the densely tangled roots of prairie grass, the earliest settlers erected farms along the boundary separating the forest from the prairie. In 1837, however, John Deere patented a sharp-cutting steel plow that sliced through the sod without soil sticking to the blade. Cyrus McCormick refined a mechanical reaper that harvested fourteen times more wheat with the same amount of labor. By the 1850s McCormick was selling 1,000 reapers a year and could not keep up with demand, while Deere turned out 10,000 plows annually.

7. The word “transformed” in the passage is closest in meaning to

A. dominated

B. changed

C. improved

D. created

8. The word “erected” in the passage is closest in meaning to

A. looked for

B. lived on

C. preferred

D. built

9. Why does author point out that “Indian grass, Canada wild rye, and native big bluestem all grew higher than a person”?

A. To provide a reason why people from the eastern woodlands of the United States were impressed when they saw the prairie

B. To identify an obstacles to the development of the railroad lines fanning out from Chicago

C. To explain why the transformation of the prairies by commercial agriculture was so remarkable

D. To provide evidence supporting the claim that the prairies had fertile, deep black soil

10. According to paragraph 5, the first settlers generally did not farm open prairie land because

A. they could not plow it effectively with the tools that were available

B. prairie land was usually very expensive to buy

C. the soil along boundaries between the forest and the prairie was more fertile than the soil of the open prairie

D. the railroad lines had not yet reached the open prairie when the first settlers arrived

Paragraph 6: The new commercial farming fundamentally altered the Midwestern landscape and the environment. Native Americans had grown corn in the region for years, but never in such large fields as did later settlers who became farmers, whose surpluses were shipped east. Prairie farmers also introduced new crops that were not part of the earlier ecological system, notably wheat, along with fruits and vegetables.

11. The word “surpluses” in the passage is closest in meaning to

A. extra goods

B. commercial goods

C. unprocessed goods

D. transportable goods

Paragraph 8: Western farmers altered the landscape by reducing the annual fires that had kept the prairie free from trees. In the absence of these fires, trees reappeared on land not in cultivation and, if undisturbed, eventually formed woodlots. The earlier unbroken landscape gave way to independent farms, each fenced off in a precise checkerboard pattern. It was an artificial ecosystem of animals, woodlots, and crops, whose large, uniform layout made western farms more efficient than the more-irregular farms in the East.

12. According to paragraph 8, prairie farmers changed the landscape by doing all of the following EXCEPT:

A. Reducing annual fires

B. Dividing the land into large, regularly-shaped lots

C. Planting trees that eventually formed woodlots

D. Fencing off their farms

The new railroad networks shifted the direction of western trade. ■ In 1840 most northwestern grain was shipped south down the Mississippi River to the bustling port of New Orleans. ■ But low water made steamboat travel hazardous in summer, and ice shut down traffic in winter. ■ Products such as lard, tallow, and cheese quickly spoiled if stored in New Orleans’ hot and humid warehouses. ■ Increasingly, traffic from the Midwest flowed west to east, over the new rail lines. Chicago became the region’s hub, linking the farms of the upper Midwest to New York and other eastern cities by more than 2,000 miles of track in 1855. Thus while the value of goods shipped by river to New Orleans continued to increase, the South’s overall share of western trade dropped dramatically.

13. Look at the four squares [■] that indicate where the following sentence can be added to the passage. Where would the sentence best fit?

The problems were not limited to routes of transport.

14.【Directions】 An introductory sentence for a brief summary of the passage of the passage is provided below. Complete the summary by selecting the THREE answer choices that express the most important ideas in the passage. Some answer choices do not belong in the summery because they express ideas that are not presented in the passage or are minor ideas in the passage. This questions is worth 2 points.

The huge expansion of rail lines in Midwestern United States during the 1850s had major economic and environmental effects.

Answer Choices

A. Construction of new rail lines into the Midwest had been effectively stopped by the Appalachian Mountains, but by 1850 improved construction technology had made further advances possible.

B. Rail lines to Chicago and on to the East made it easier to get Midwestern goods to distant markets, while growing demand encouraged crop specialization and led to higher crop prices.

C. Because of the growing volume of traffic coming by rail from the Northeast and Midwest, the value of goods arriving in New Orleans for shipment to markets abroad increased dramatically.

D. Access to rail lines combined with the development of more-efficient farming equipment allowed a fertile land of the open prairies to be used for large-scale commercial agriculture.

E. Reduction of annual prairie fires allowed trees to reappear, and native grasses were replaced by a few commercially grown plants as previously unbroken grasslands were divided into large-fenced fields.

F. Native Americans had grown corn on the prairies for years but had not produced large surpluses because the varieties they planted had far poorer yields than those introduced by commercial farmers.