2000年8月TOEFL机经

      There were two types of baskets then: workbaskets and baskets for use in the home. The workbaskets were made out of the more delicate sweet grass. They were used for everything from
　　Fruit baskets to baby cradles.
　　40 what is the talk mainly about?
　　41 how did the women mentioned in the talk learn to wave basket?
　　42 according to the speaker, what type of baskets was make out of bulrush?
　　43 what is the main reason that the women in South Carolina now weave baskets?
　　Questions 44 through 46:
　　This morning I want to tell u about a recent scientific discovery dealing with the relation between plants and animals. This is about a desert shrub whose leaves can shoot up a stream of poisonous resin a distance of six feet. Do you think it would be safe from all attacks by insects? But a recent
　　Study has found one insect, a beetle, that can chew its way past the plant's defense system by cutting the mainly vein that delivers the poison to the leaves. This vein cutting is jut one method the beetles used to prepare a safe meal. Another is by cutting a path all the way across the leave to hold the flow of chemicals. Then they simply eat between the veins of poison. In the past, scientists who studied inset adaptation to plant defenses have focused on chemical responses. That is how the insects can neutral or alter the poisonous substances plants produce. What's unique about this chewing strategy is that the beetle is actually exhibiting a behavior response to the plant's defenses rather than the more common chemical response. It is only after a beetle's survived several encounters with the plant' resin that it learns how to avoid the poison: by chewing through the resin
　　Transporting veins on the next leaf it eats. And thus gives itself a meal. However, it can take a battle an hours an a half of careful vein cutting to prepare a small leaf that takes it only a few minutes to
　　Eat. So, though the method is effective, it's not very efficient.
　　41 what is the talk mainly about?
　　42 what is unusual about the desert plant?
　　43 how can the beetles avoid being poisoned by the plant?
　　Questions 47 through 50:
　　We're going to start our discussion of poetry in Western Europe with the Iliad and the odyssey. These two great poems stand out as great examples of the earliest European poems. They are believed to have been written some time between 800bc and 700bc, partly because the poems refer to the social conditions of that time, conditions that have been validated by the findings
　　Of archeologists. But just who was the poet who laid down these cornerstones of western literature? Well, tradition ascribes them to a man named homer, but we know virtually nothing about this homer. In fact, some say that such a poet never existed at all, that neither the Iliad nor the odyssey was written by a single poet, but rather each poem is composed of the writings of several people. This, anyway, is the view of a school of literary critics in the 18th century known as the analysts. The analysts pointed to internal evidence such as variations in the literary devices used in the poem to argue that each work was in fact a collection of several poems by several Greek authors. Opposing the analysts were a second group of scholars called the Unitarian. They insisted that the Iliad and the odyssey could have been the work of single poetic genius. To support their argument, they stress among other things the consistency of the character portrayed in the poetry. This wouldn't have been possible, they said, if they were written by many different poets. Now how we look at the Homeric question today has been greatly influenced by someone named milman parry, an American scholar who first presented his ideas about homer in the 1930s. So let's take a look at parry's research and how it affects what modern day scholars think about homer.
　　47 what aspect of the Iliad and the odyssey does the professor mainly discuss?
　　48 according to the professor, what is one of the claims made by the analysts?
　　49 according to the Unitarians, what is one type of evidence that a single
　　Poet could have written both the Iliad and the odyssey?
　　50 what will the professor probably talk about next?