unaided eye would be unable to see. Secondly, it enables computers downstream to steer cutters around flaws.

Float glass is sold by the square metre, and at the final stage

computers translate customer requirements into patterns of cuts designed to minimise waste.

Questions 1-8

Complete the table and diagram below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.

Early methods of producing flat glass

Method Advantages Disadvantages · Slow ·3 …………………… · Glass was 5…………………………· ·20% of glass rubbed away · Machines were expensive 1…………………… · Glass remained 2. …………………… Ribbon · Could produce glass sheets of varying 4 …………………… · Non-stop process Pilkington's float process

Questions 9-13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information FALSE if the statement contradicts the information NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9 The metal used in the float process had to have specific properties. 10 Pilkington invested some of his own money in his float plant. 11 Pilkington's first full-scale plant was an instant commercial success.

12 The process invented by Pilkington has now been improved. 13 Computers are better than humans at detecting faults in glass. 我们来通过下图说明剑桥雅思阅读的出题顺序： 文 第1段 第第第4第5第第第23678章 段 段 段 段 段 段 段 6,7,8 题Quenstion1-8 1,2,3 4,5 型1 9 10,11 12 13 题Quenstion9-13 型2 这篇文章考查两种题型（也可理解为三种）：Table（填表）+Diagram（填图），和TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN判断题。

我们看到了每种题型内部的顺序原则；同时也看到了两种题型之间宏观的顺序（第9题稍有例外）；我们还看到了文章中有的自然段不设题，比如上文末段在真实考试中是不用读的，因为没有考题涉及。

所以对这篇文章，正确的处理顺序是： Step1:看文章标题；

Step2:看文章后题型组合；

Step3:看1～3题，发现题目中好理解记忆的定位词是slow, method; Step4:回到原文开始快速阅读，注意到首段最后出现took a long time, 意识到是slow 的同义表达，停止往下阅读，开始往前精读，理解相关信息，查找答案做题；

Step5:完成1～3题后，看4～5题，心中记住定位词Ribbon,回原文从第2段开始快速阅读。

??（循环重复此过程）阅读先看题，定位快寻觅

对于这种各题型按原文顺序安排的文章，考生只需要顺着题型和题号顺序，在原文中边读边做，那么一篇文章读完一遍，所有的题目也就做完了。这是这篇文章最快速的雅思阅读方法，也很简单。但遗憾的是，按这种顺序出题的文章较少。每本《剑桥雅思真题》中收录有4套以前的A类阅读考试真题，共12篇，其中只有不到一半是如此出题。真实考试中碰到的概率小于50%。

乱序

这种混搭或者说错乱剪辑法，是现代电影中最常见的模式。这样的好处是：

优点1：测试更为全面。因为可以在一个段落里用多角度、不同的测试点去考查，减少单题型的测试偏差。

优点2：不缺少推动力。因为各个题型循环推荐，可读性会更强，更有助于学生理解原文。凡是不出题的段落，我们称之为没有冲突的情节，这样的情节往往是舒缓的，不影响对全文的理解。

多数雅思阅读文章是按照各题型乱序组合来出题的。

真题示例A

《剑桥雅思8》第18页Test1 Reading Passage1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

A According to archaeological evidence, at least 5,000 years ago, and

long before the advent of the Roman Empire, the Babylonians began to measure time, introducing calendars to co-ordinate communal activities, to plan the shipment of goods and, in particular, to

regulate planting and harvesting. They based their calendars on three natural cycles: the solar day, marked by the successive periods of light and darkness as the earth rotates on its axis; the lunar month, following the phases of the moon as it orbits the earth; and the solar year, defined by the changing seasons that accompany our planet's revolution around the sun. B Before the invention of artificial light, the moon had greater social

impact. And, for those living near the equator in particular, its waxing and waning was more conspicuous than the passing of the seasons. Hence, the calendars that were developed at the lower latitudes were influenced more by the lunar cycle than by the solar year. In more northern climes, however, where seasonal agriculture was practised, the solar year became more crucial. As the Roman Empire expanded northward, it organised its activity chart for the most part around the solar year.

Our conception of time depends on the way we measure it

C Centuries before the Roman Empire, the Egyptians had formulated a

municipal calendar having 12 months of 30 days, with five days added to approximate the solar year. Each period of ten days was marked by the appearance of special groups of stars called decans. At the rise of the star Sirius just before sunrise, which occurred around the all-important annual flooding of the Nile, 12 decans could be seen spanning the heavens. The cosmic significance the Egyptians placed in the 12 decans led them to develop a system in which each interval of darkness (and later, each interval of daylight) was divided into a dozen equal parts. These periods became known as temporal hours because their duration varied according to the changing length of days and nights with the passing of the seasons. Summer hours were long, winter ones short; only at the spring and autumn equinoxes

were the hours of daylight and darkness equal. Temporal hours, which were first adopted by the Greeks and then the Romans, who disseminated them through Europe, remained in use for more than 2,500 years.

D In order to track temporal hours during the day, inventors created sundials,

which indicate time by the length or direction of the sun's shadow. The sundial's counterpart, the water clock, was designed to measure temporal hours at night. One of the first water clocks was a basin with a small hole near the bottom

through which the water dripped out. The falling water level denoted the passing hour as it dipped below hour lines inscribed on the inner surface. Although these devices performed satisfactorily around the Mediterranean, they could not always be depended on in the cloudy and often freezing weather of northern Europe. E The advent of the mechanical clock meant that although it could be adjusted to

maintain temporal hours, it was naturally suited to keeping equal ones. With these, however, arose the question of when to begin counting, and so, in the early 14th century, a number of systems evolved. The schemes that divided the day into 24 equal parts varied according to the start of the count: Italian hours began at sunset, Babylonian hours at sunrise, astronomical hours at midday and 'great clock' hours, used for some large public clocks in Germany, at midnight. Eventually these were superseded by 'small clock', or French, hours, which split the day into two 12-hour periods commencing at midnight. F The earliest recorded weight-driven mechanical clock was built in 1283 in

Bedfordshire in England. The revolutionary aspect of this new timekeeper was neither the descending weight that provided its motive force nor the gear wheels (which had been around for at least 1,300 years) that transferred the power; it was the part called the escapement. In the early 1400s came the invention of the coiled spring or fusee which maintained constant force to the gear wheels of the timekeeper despite the changing tension of its mainspring. By the 16th century, a pendulum clock had been devised, but the pendulum swung in a large arc and thus was not very efficient. G To address this, a variation on the original escapement was invented in 1670,

in England. It was called the anchor escapement, which was a lever-based device shaped like a ship's anchor. The motion of a pendulum rocks this device so that it catches and then releases each tooth of the escape wheel, in turn allowing it to turn a precise amount. Unlike the original form used in early pendulum clocks, the anchor escapement permitted the pendulum to travel in a