2019年GRE阅读模拟题及答案解析3

>>GRE模拟题：2019年GRE阅读模拟题及答案解析3

>>GRE核心模考课程

长篇阅读

Architectural morphology is the study of how shifting cultural and environmental conditions produce changes in an architectural form. When applied to the mission churches of New Mexico exemplifying seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Spanish colonial architecture in what is now the southwestern United States, architectural morphology reveals much about how Native American culture transformed the traditional European church architecture of the Spanish missionaries who hoped to convert Native Americans to Christianity.

Many studies of these mission churches have carefully documented the history and design of their unique architectural form, most attribute the churches’ radical departure from their sixteenth-century European predecessors to local climate and a less-mechanized building technology. Certainly, the limitations imposed by manual labor and the locally available materials of mud-brick and timber necessitated a divergence from the original European church model. However, the emergence of a church form suited to life in the Southwest was rooted in something more fundamental than material and technique. The new architecture resulted from cultural forces in both the Spanish colonial and indigenous Native American societies, each with competing ideas about form and space and different ways of conveying these ideas symbolically.

For example, the mission churches share certain spatial qualities with the indigenous kiva, around, partly subterranean room used by many Southwest Native American communities for important rituals. Like the kiva it was intended to replace, the typical mission church had thick walls of adobe (sun-dried earth and straw), a beaten-earth floor, and one or two small windows. In deference to European custom, the ceilings of these churches were higher than those of the traditional kiva. However, with the limited lighting afforded by their few small windows, these churches still suggest the kiva's characteristically low, boxlike, earth-hugging interior. Thus, although pragmatic factors of construction may have contributed to the shape of the mission churches, as earlier studies suggest, the provision of a sacred space consistent with indigenous traditions may also have been an important consideration in their design.

The continued viability of the kiva itself in Spanish mission settlements has also been underestimated by historians. Freestanding kivas discovered in the ruins of European-style missionary communities have been explained by some historians as examples of “superposition”. Under this theory, Christian domination over indigenous faiths is dramatized by surrounding the kiva with Christian buildings. However, as James Ivey points out, such superposition was unlikely, since historical records indicate that most Spanish missionaries, arriving in the Southwest with little or no military support, wisely adopted a somewhat conciliatory attitude toward the use of the kiva at least initially. This fact, and the careful, solitary placement of the kiva in the center of the mission-complex courtyards, suggests an intention to highlight the importance of the kiva rather than to diminish it.

逻辑阅读

Sport fishers introduced the Zander, a type of perch, to Britain’s rivers and canals in the 1970s. Because zander eat large numbers of smaller fish, they have had a devastating effect on native fish populations. To protect the native fish, a government program removed a significant proportion of the zander from Britain’s waterways last year. Surprisingly, this year the loss of native fish to zander has been greater than before.

Which of the following, if true, would most help to explain the greater effect of zander on the native fish population?

A. The climate in Britain is very similar to the climate in regions to which zander are native.

B. Most of the zander removed were fully grown, and fully grown zander eat large numbers of smaller zander.

C. Every year a large number of zander are caught by sport fisher in Britain’s waterway.

D. Previous government program designed to remove nonnative species from Britain’s waterways have failed.

E. Zander are just one of several nonnative fish that prey on the other fish found in Britain’s waterway.

以上就是坦途网GRE考试频道准备的模拟题，希望可以帮助大家。小编认为，学习贵在坚持，如果你们已经完成GRE考试报名了，制定好备考计划之后就要努力执行。小编先在这里预祝大家能够取得令自己满意的理想成绩，在备考过程脚踏实地一定可以的！