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1、雅思阅读全真练习系列 整理了一些雅思阅读全真练习,一起来看看吧，下面就和大家分享，来欣赏一下吧。雅思阅读全真练习系列：How Private Universities Could Help to Improve Public OnesHow Private Universities Could Help to Improve Public OnesA.There are many rich Germans. In 2003 private assets are estimated to have been worth ?5 trillion ($5.6 trillion)， half of w
2、hich belongs to the richest tenth of the population. But with money comes stinginess， especially when it comes to giving to higher education. America devotes twice as much of its income to universities and colleges as Germany (2.6% of GDP， against 1.1%) mainly because of higher private spendingand b
3、igger donations.B.Next years figures should be less embarrassing. In November Klaus Jacobs， a German-born billionaire living abroad， announced that he would donate ?200m to the International University Bremen ( IUB )the biggest such gift ever. It saved the IUB ， Germanys only fully fledged private a
4、nd international university (with 30 programmes and 1，000 students from 86 countries) from bankruptcy. It may also soften the countrys still rigid approach to higher education.C.German higher education has long been almost entirely a state-run affair， not least because universities were meant to pro
5、duce top civil servants. After 1945 the German states were put in charge， deciding on such details as examination and admission rules. Reforms in the 1970s made things worse by strengthening， in the name of democracy， a layer of bureaucracy in the form of committees of self-governance.D.Tuition fees
6、 were scrapped in the name of access for all. But ever-rising student numbers then met ever-shrinking budgets， so the reforms backfired. Today the number of college drop-outs is among the highest in the rich world， making tertiary education an elite activity： only 22% of young Germans obtain a degre
7、e， compared with 31% in Britain and 39% in America. German universities come low in world rankings， so good students often go abroad.E.In the 1980s it was hoped that private universities might make a difference. Witten-Herdecke University， founded in 1980， was the first. Teaching at IUB， which will
8、change its name to Jacobs University soon， began in 2001. Today， there are 69 (non-faith-based) private institutions of higher learning， up from 24 a decade ago. There is growing competition， particularly among business schools.F.At the same time the states have been introducing private enterprise i
9、nto higher education. In 2003 Lower Saxony turned five universities into foundations， with more autonomy. Others have won more control over their own budgets. Some states have also started to charge tuition fees. And in October a jury announced the winners of the first round of the “excellence initi
10、ative”a national competition among universities for extra cash.G.Yet all this has led to only small improvements. Private universities educate only 3% of Germanys 2m-odd students， which may be why they find it hard to raise money. It also explains why many focus on lucrative subjects， such as the Bu
11、cerius Law School in Hamburg. Others have come to depend on public money. Only recently have rich individuals foundations made big investments， as at IUB or at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.H.Public universities， meanwhile， still have not been granted much autonomy. There is less direct
12、control， but far more “administered competition”： a new bureaucracy to check the achievement of certain goals. This might all be avoided through price competition， but tuition fees， now ?1，000 a year on average， are fixed centrally by each state. The excellence initiative is a mere drop in the bucke
13、t.I.That is why Mr. Jacobss donation matters. For the first time， Germany will have a private university worth the name and with a solid financial footing (if it keeps up its academic performance， that is： Mr Jacobs has promised to donate ?15m annually over the next five years and another ?125m in 2
14、0XX to boost the endowment， but only if things go well)。 If it works， other rich Germans may be tempted into investing in higher education too.J.Even so， private universities will play a small part in German higher education for the foreseeable future. This does not mean that public universities sho
15、uld be privatised. But they need more autonomy and an incentive to compete with one anotherwhether for students， staff or donors. With luck， Mr Jacobss gift will not only induce other German billionaires to follow suit， but also help to persuade the states to set their universities free.Do the follo
16、wing statemets reflect the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 1?Write your answer in Boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.TRUE if the statement reflets the claims of the writerFALSE if the statement contradicts the claims of the writerNOT GIVEN if it is possbile to say what the writer thinks about th
17、is1. Mr. Jacobs donation to the IUB is more likely to result in a firmer approach to the managemnt of German higher education.2. German higher education is a mainly state-run affair primarily because universities were intended to train top civil servants.3. The reforms in the sector of German tertia
18、ray education in the 1970s produced the opposite result to the one which it intended.4. The Bucerius Law School in Hamburg offers profitable business opprtunities for its students to make money for tuition fees.5. Mr. Jacob would like to donate ?125 million annually over the next five years to IUB o
19、n the condition that things go well .6. Private universities will continue to play a small role in German higher education for quite a long period of time in the future.Complet the following sentencces.Choose A FIGURE (NUMBER OR PERCENTAGE) from Reading Passage 1 for each answer.Write your answer in
20、 Boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet.7. German government spends _of its GDP on the sectorof higher education.8. _ less of young people obtain a degree in Germany than in America.9. There are _more private insitutions of higher learning now than a decade ago.10.Currently， there are over _million German
21、students studying in universities.Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 11-13 on your answe sheet.11. Which of the following features about German higher education is NOT true：A. The number of studenst drop out in the tertiary educatoin is one of the highest among the rich count
22、ries in the world.B. The universities have a higher position in the scale of the world concerning the number of students obtaining a degree.C. The public univerities exercise fairly less autonomy and they also experience more “administratered competition ”。D. The competition among the private univer
23、sities is becoming incresingly tough and it is espceially true of business schools.12. The word “scrapped” in the first line of the fourth paragraph means_.A. raisedB. loweredC. charged.D. cancelled13. What benefits will Jacobs donation bring about for German tertiaray education?A. It will enable th
24、e International univerity Bremen to have a tight financial base.B. It will cause the other wealthiest Gemans to save as much money as he does .C. It will help the states grant more authority to their univerisites in the future.D. It will tempt the good students studying abroad for a degree to return
25、 to Germany.雅思阅读全真练习系列：Suns fickle heart may leave us coldSuns fickle heart may leave us cold1 Theres a dimmer switch inside the sun that causes its brightness to rise and fall on timescales of around 100,000 years - exactly the same period as between ice ages on Earth. So says a physicist who has c
26、reated a computer model of our stars core.2 Robert Ehrlich of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, modelled the effect of temperature fluctuations in the suns interior. According to the standard view, the temperature of the suns core is held constant by the opposing pressures of gravity and
27、 nuclear fusion. However, Ehrlich believed that slight variations should be possible.3 He took as his starting point the work of Attila Grandpierre of the Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2005, Grandpierre and a collaborator, Gbor goston, calculated that magnetic fields i
28、n the suns core could produce small instabilities in the solar plasma. These instabilities would induce localised oscillations in temperature.4 Ehrlichs model shows that whilst most of these oscillations cancel each other out, some reinforce one another and become long-lived temperature variations.
29、The favoured frequencies allow the suns core temperature to oscillate around its average temperature of 13.6 million kelvin in cycles lasting either 100,000 or 41,000 years. Ehrlich says that random interactions within the suns magnetic field could flip the fluctuations from one cycle length to the
30、other.5 These two timescales are instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with Earths ice ages: for the past million years, ice ages have occurred roughly every 100,000 years. Before that, they occurred roughly every 41,000 years.6 Most scientists believe that the ice ages are the result of subtle
31、changes in Earths orbit, known as the Milankovitch cycles. One such cycle describes the way Earths orbit gradually changes shape from a circle to a slight ellipse and back again roughly every 100,000 years. The theory says this alters the amount of solar radiation that Earth receives, triggering the
32、 ice ages. However, a persistent problem with this theory has been its inability to explain why the ice ages changed frequency a million years ago.7 In Milankovitch, there is certainly no good idea why the frequency should change from one to another, says Neil Edwards, a climatologist at the Open Un
33、iversity in Milton Keynes, UK. Nor is the transition problem the only one the Milankovitch theory faces. Ehrlich and other critics claim that the temperature variations caused by Milankovitch cycles are simply not big enough to drive ice ages.8 However, Edwards believes the small changes in solar he
34、ating produced by Milankovitch cycles are then amplified by feedback mechanisms on Earth. For example, if sea ice begins to form because of a slight cooling, carbon dioxide that would otherwise have found its way into the atmosphere as part of the carbon cycle is locked into the ice. That weakens th
35、e greenhouse effect and Earth grows even colder.9 According to Edwards, there is no lack of such mechanisms. If you add their effects together, there is more than enough feedback to make Milankovitch work, he says. The problem now is identifying which mechanisms are at work. This is why scientists l
36、ike Edwards are not yet ready to give up on the current theory. Milankovitch cycles give us ice ages roughly when we observe them to happen. We can calculate where we are in the cycle and compare it with observation, he says. I cant see any way of testing Ehrlichs idea to see where we are in the tem
37、perature oscillation.10 Ehrlich concedes this. If there is a way to test this theory on the sun, I cant think of one that is practical, he says. Thats because variation over 41,000 to 100,000 years is too gradual to be observed. However, there may be a way to test it in other stars: red dwarfs. Thei
38、r cores are much smaller than that of the sun, and so Ehrlich believes that the oscillation periods could be short enough to be observed. He has yet to calculate the precise period or the extent of variation in brightness to be expected.11 Nigel Weiss, a solar physicist at the University of Cambridg
39、e, is far from convinced. He describes Ehrlichs claims as utterly implausible. Ehrlich counters that Weisss opinion is based on the standard solar model, which fails to take into account the magnetic instabilities that cause the temperature fluctuations.(716 words)Questions 1-4Complete each of the f
40、ollowing statements with One or Two names of the scientists from the box below.Write the appropriate letters A-E in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.A. Attila GrandpierreB. Gbor gostonC. Neil EdwardsD. Nigel WeissE. Robert Ehrlich1. .claims there抯 a dimmer switch inside the sun that causes its brightn
41、ess to rise and fall in periods as long as those between ice ages on Earth.2. .calculated that the internal solar magnetic fields could produce instabilities in the solar plasma.3. .holds that Milankovitch cycles can induce changes in solar heating on Earth and the changes are amplified on Earth.4.
42、.doesnt believe in Ehrlichs viewpoints at all.Questions 5-9Do the following statements agree with the information given in the reading passage?In boxes 5-9 on your answer sheet writeTRUE if the statement is true according to the passageFALSE if the statement is false according to the passageNOT GIVE
43、N if the information is not given in the passage5. The ice ages changed frequency from 100,000 to 41,000 years a million years ago.6. The sole problem that the Milankovitch theory can not solve is to explain why the ice age frequency should shift from one to another.7. Carbon dioxide can be locked a
44、rtificially into sea ice to eliminate the greenhouse effect.8. Some scientists are not ready to give up the Milankovitch theory though they havent figured out which mechanisms amplify the changes in solar heating.9. Both Edwards and Ehrlich believe that there is no practical way to test when the sol
45、ar temperature oscillation begins and when ends.Questions 10-14Complete the notes below.Choose one suitable word from the Reading Passage above for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 10-14 on your answer sheet.The standard view assumes that the opposing pressures of gravity and nuclear fusions
46、hold the temperature .10.in the suns interior, but the slight changes in the earths .11. alter the temperature on the earth and cause ice ages every 100,000 years. A British scientist, however, challenges this view by claiming that the internal solar magnetic .12. can induce the temperature oscillat
47、ions in the suns interior. The suns core temperature oscillates around its average temperature in .13. lasting either 100,000 or 41,000 years. And the .14. interactions within the suns magnetic field could flip the fluctuations from one cycle length to the other, which explains why the ice ages changed frequency a million years ago.
