TOEFL iBT Part1 Reading(Simulation Test)

In this section, you will be able to demonstrate your ability to understand academic passages in English.

There are two passages in this section. You have 36 minutes to complete the entire section. You may read the passages and answer the questions in any order you choose but plan to spend about 18 minutes on each passage and the accompanying questions.

Most questions are worth one point, but the last question for each passage is worth more than one point. The directions for the last question indicate how many points you may receive.

Beginning in the 1820s, a new intellectual movement known as transcendentalism began to grow in the Northeast. In this context, to transcend means to go beyond the ordinary sensory world to grasp personal insights and gain an appreciation of a deeper reality, and transcendentalists believed that all people could attain an understanding of the world that goes past rational, sensory experience. Transcendentalists were critical of mainstream American culture. They reacted against the age they lived in where people were encouraged to act the same as others, and argued for greater individualism against conformity. European romanticism, a movement in literature and art that stressed emotion over cold, calculating reason, also influenced transcendentalists in the United States, especially the transcendentalists’ celebration of the uniqueness of individual feelings.

Ralph Waldo Emerson emerged as the leading figure of this movement. Born in Boston in 1803, Emerson came from a religious family. His father served as a minister, and after graduating from Harvard Divinity School in the 1820s, Emerson followed in his father’s footsteps. However, after his wife died in 1831, he left the clergy. On a trip to Europe in 1832, he met leading figures of romanticism who rejected the cold, strict rationalism of popular 18th-century Enlightenment thought, emphasizing emotion instead.

When Emerson returned home the following year, he began giving lectures on his romanticism-influenced ideas. In 1836, he published “Nature,” an essay arguing that humans can find their true spirituality in nature, not in the everyday bustling working world of cities and industrial factories. In 1841, Emerson published his essay, “Self-Reliance,” which urged readers to think for themselves and reject the mass conformity he believed had taken root in American life. Emerson expressed concern that a powerful majority could overpower the will of individuals.

Among those attracted to Emerson’s ideas was his friend, Henry David Thoreau, whom he encouraged to write about his own ideas. Thoreau placed a special emphasis on the role of nature as a gateway to the transcendentalist goal of greater individualism. In 1848, Thoreau gave a lecture in which he argued that individuals must stand up to governmental injustice, a topic he chose because of his disgust over the Mexican-American War and slavery. In 1849, he published his lecture, “Civil Disobedience,” and urged readers to refuse to support a government that was immoral.

Margaret Fuller also came to prominence as a leading transcendentalist and advocate for women’s equality. Fuller was a friend of Emerson and Thoreau, and other intellectuals of her day. Because she was a woman, she could not attend Harvard, as it was a male-only institution for undergraduate students until 1973. However, she was later granted the use of the library there because of her towering intellect. In 1840, she became the editor of The Dial, a transcendentalist journal, and she later found employment as a book reviewer for the New York Tribune newspaper. Tragically, in 1850, she died at the age of forty in a shipwreck off Fire Island, New York.

Some critics took issue with transcendentalism’s emphasis on individualism by pointing out the destructive consequences of compulsive human behavior. Herman Melville’s novel, Moby Dick, emphasized the problems with individual obsession by telling the tale of Captain Ahab’s single-minded quest to kill a white whale, Moby Dick, which had destroyed Ahab’s original ship and caused him to lose one of his legs. Edgar Allan Poe, a popular author, critic, and poet, decried “the so-called poetry of the so-called transcendentalists". These American writers who questioned transcendentalism illustrate the underlying tension between individualism and conformity in American life.

 

 

Where would the sentence best fit?

 

A Some critics took issue with transcendentalism’s emphasis on individualism by pointing out the destructive consequences of compulsive human behavior. B Herman Melville’s novel, Moby Dick, emphasized the problems with individual obsession by telling the tale of Captain Ahab’s single-minded quest to kill a white whale, Moby Dick, which had destroyed Ahab’s original ship and caused him to lose one of his legs. C Edgar Allan Poe, a popular author, critic, and poet, decried “the so-called poetry of the so-called transcendentalists". D These American writers who questioned transcendentalism illustrate the underlying tension between individualism and conformity in American life.

 

The world is in the middle of a food crisis. Opinions differ as to its severity, but most accept that the crisis is real and potentially poses a major threat to the health and food supply of a large proportion of the global population. The roots of the crisis are diverse, but among them are two primary factors. The first of these is changing weather patterns and extreme weather events. Simply put, a number of previously productive agricultural regions are no longer as fertile as they once were because of the weather. And second, many farmers have found that they can get a better return growing biofuels than raising crops. As a result, large areas of valuable cropland are no longer being used for this end. Conventional agriculture is ill-suited to solve the food crisis, but hydroculture might be a potential solution.

 

As its name suggests, hydroculture typically involves growing plants in nutrient-rich water rather than in soil. Hydroponics is the most widely-known method of hydroculture. Some believe it has significant potential to reduce the impact of the food crisis by allowing farmers to produce large quantities of food in a sustainable and cost-effective way. In a typical hydroponic system, crops are grown indoors in controlled environments. The plants grow in containers that are filled with water and nutrients that they need to thrive. These nutrients vary depending on the crop being grown but typically include nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, calcium, iron, zinc, and copper, among other trace elements. A light source provides the energy the sun would usually deliver.

 

In so-called static systems, the nutrient solution is changed or replaced either according to a schedule or when the plants require it. In continuous-flow systems, the nutrient solution flows constantly past the roots of the plants. Although it may seem like a technologically sophisticated form of agriculture, scientists have been experimenting with hydroculture since at least 1627. Early experiments showed that plants grow best when raised in water that is rich in various nutrients rather than in distilled water. By the early decades of the twentieth century, the concept of hydroponics was becoming more widely known and some commercial applications of the technology were even in place. These days, even NASA, the US government agency in charge of space missions, is researching hydroponics.

 

Hydroponics offers a number of benefits over conventional agriculture. It happens indoors, so it does not require large areas of land. In fact, hydroponic farms can be located in industrial warehouses in or near large cities. This gives them another advantage over traditional farms since they can be located much closer to the markets for their produce, reducing distribution and transportation costs for hydroponic farmers. The indoor location allows farmers to create controlled environments. Not only does this mean that crops are not affected by weather, it means that farmers can grow crops in regions where they would not normally thrive. For example, tropical vegetables can be grown in Canada. But hydroponic farms are not without their drawbacks. For one thing, some important food crops do not grow well hydroponically. Most herbs and vegetables thrive, but important sources of nutrition like carrots, potatoes, and corn are either not suitable or hard to grow. And so much space would be required to raise staple crops like rice and wheat cost-effectively that their hydroponic cultivation is not practical. Furthermore, most foods that grow well hydroponically are relatively low in protein, a vital nutrient for human health.

 

A variation on hydroponics that solves some of these issues is aquaponics. A basic aquaponics system is a hydroponics farm with a second layer. On top are plants growing hydroponically in nutrient-rich water. Below that is a tank of fish being raised as part of a fish farm. In traditional aquaculture, farmers must spend time and money cleaning the water in which the fish live; if they do not, the health of the fish will suffer as waste from the fish concentrates in the water. The clever part of aquaponics is that instead of having to filter and discard the fish waste, farmers can use it as the source of nutrients for the plants. By closing the system in this way, aquaponic farms can produce the same kinds of herbs, fruits, and vegetables as hydroponic farms, as well as high-quality protein from farm-raised fish.

 

The world is in the middle of a food crisis. Opinions differ as to its severity, but most accept that the crisis is real and potentially poses a major threat to the health and food supply of a large proportion of the global population. The roots of the crisis are diverse, but among them are two primary factors. The first of these is changing weather patterns and extreme weather events. Simply put, a number of previously productive agricultural regions are no longer as fertile as they once were because of the weather. And second, many farmers have found that they can get a better return growing biofuels than raising crops. As a result, large areas of valuable cropland are no longer being used for this end. Conventional agriculture is ill-suited to solve the food crisis, but hydroculture might be a potential solution.

 

As its name suggests, hydroculture typically involves growing plants in nutrient-rich water rather than in soil. Hydroponics is the most widely-known method of hydroculture. Some believe it has significant potential to reduce the impact of the food crisis by allowing farmers to produce large quantities of food in a sustainable and cost-effective way. In a typical hydroponic system, crops are grown indoors in controlled environments. The plants grow in containers filled with water and the nutrients that they need to thrive. These nutrients vary depending on the crop being grown but typically include nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, calcium, iron, zinc, and copper, among other trace elements. A light source provides the energy the sun would usually deliver.

 

In so-called static systems, the nutrient solution is changed or replaced either according to a schedule or when the plants require it. In continuous-flow systems, the nutrient solution flows constantly past the roots of the plants. Although it may seem like a technologically sophisticated form of agriculture, scientists have been experimenting with hydroculture since at least 1627. Early experiments showed that plants grow best when raised in water that is rich in various nutrients rather than in distilled water. By the early decades of the twentieth century, the concept of hydroponics was becoming more widely known and some commercial applications of the technology were even in place. These days, even NASA, the US government agency in charge of space missions, is researching hydroponics.

 

Hydroponics offers a number of benefits over conventional agriculture. It happens indoors, so it does not require large areas of land. In fact, hydroponic farms can be located in industrial warehouses in or near large cities. This gives them another advantage over traditional farms since they can be located much closer to the markets for their produce, reducing distribution and transportation costs for hydroponic farmers. The indoor location allows farmers to create controlled environments. Not only does this mean that crops are not affected by weather, it means that farmers can grow crops in regions where they would not normally thrive. For example, tropical vegetables can be grown in Canada. But hydroponic farms are not without their drawbacks. For one thing, some important food crops do not grow well hydroponically. Most herbs and vegetables thrive, but important sources of nutrition like carrots, potatoes, and corn are either not suitable or hard to grow. And so much space would be required to raise staple crops like rice and wheat cost-effectively that their hydroponic cultivation is not practical. Furthermore, most foods that grow well hydroponically are relatively low in protein, a vital nutrient for human health.

 

 

Where would the sentence best fit?

 

A variation on hydroponics that solves some of these issues is aquaponics. A basic aquaponic system is a hydroponics farm with a second layer. On top are plants growing hydroponically in nutrient-rich water. A Below that is a tank of fish being raised as part of a fish farm. In traditional aquaculture, farmers must spend time and money cleaning the water in which the fish live; if they do not, the health of the fish will suffer as waste from the fish concentrates in the water. B The clever part of aquaponics is that instead of having to filter and discard the fish waste, farmers can use it as the source of nutrients for the plants. C By closing the system in this way, aquaponic farms can produce the same kinds of herbs, fruits, and vegetables as hydroponic farms, as well as high-quality protein from farm-raised fish. D