托福TPO25阅读试题及答案（2）

　　4、All of the following are mentioned in paragraph 2 as ways that Venice provided rowers for its galley EXCEPT
Requiring business associations to provide sailors

　　Recruiting sailors from other cities in northern Italy

　　Drafting Venetian citizens into services as rowers

　　Appealing to the traditions of Venice as a sea power

　　Paragraph 3
The problem in shipping extended to the Arsenate, Venice's huge and powerful shipyard. Timber ran short, and it was necessary to procure it from father and father away. In ancient Roman times, the Italian peninsula had great forest of fir preferred for warships, but scarcity was apparent as early as the early fourteenth century. Arsenate officers first brought timber from the foothills of the Alps, then from north toward Trieste, and finally from across the Adriatic. Private shipbuilders were required to buy their oak abroad. As the costs of shipbuilding rose, Venice clung to its outdated standard while the Dutch were innovation in the lighter and more easily handled ships.

　　5、The word "outdated" in the passage is closest in meaning to
strict

　　enforced

　　improved

　　old-fashioned

　　6、According to paragraphs 3, why did the building of ships in Venetian shipyards become increasingly expensive?
The wages of officers and workers in the Arsenale kept rising
Roman shipyards were using all the available fir trees for the warships
The timber used in the shipbuilding had to be brought from farther and farther away
Venetian standards required that shipbuilders use top-quality materials.

　　Paragraph 4
The step from buying foreign timber to buying foreign ships was regarded as a short one, especially when complaints were heard in the latter sixteenth century that the standards and traditions of the Arsenate were running down. Work was stretched out and done poorly. Older workers had been allowed to stop work a half hour before the regular time, and in 1601 younger works left with them. Merchants complained that the privileges reserved for Venetian-built and owned ships were first extended to those Venetians who bought ships from abroad and then to foreign-built and owned vessels. Historian Frederic Lane observes that after the loss of ships in battle in the late sixteenth century, the shipbuilding industry no long had the capacity to recover that it had displayed at the start of the century.

　　7、 All of the following are mentioned in paragraph 3 and 4 as contributing to the problems of the Venetian shipbuilding industry at the end of the sixteenth century EXCEPT
The quality of work performed in the Arsenate had declined
Venetian-built ships were heavy and generally inefficient
Arsenate shipbuilders worked more slowly
Only a few merchants controlled the buying and selling of most of the Venetian-built ships

　　8、 Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the passage? Incorrect choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information.

　　The loss of ships in battle at the end of the sixteenth century showed that Venetian shipbuilders lacked the skills they had possessed at the beginning of the century.

　　Venetian shipbuilding failed to quickly replace the ships lost in battle at the end of the sixteenth century as it would have done earlier in the century.

　　Frederic Lane noted that Venice lost ships in battle at the end of the sixteenth century, showing that Venetian shipbuilding was not longer known for its reliability.

　　Venetian shipbuilding had been known for its high quality of work at the beginning of the sixteenth century, but toward the end of the century Venetian ships were poorer in quality.

　　Paragraph 5
The conventional explanation for the loss of Venetian dominance in trade is establishment of the Portuguese direct sea route to the East, replacing the overland Silk Road from the Black sea and the highly profitable Indian Ocean-caravan-eastern Mediterranean route to Venice. The Portuguese Vasco de Gama's Voyaga around southern Afica to India took place at the end of the fifteenth century, and by 1502 the trans- Abrabian caravan route had been cut off by political unrest.

　　9、The word "conventional" in the passage is closest in meaning to
informal

　　logical

　　correct

　　usual

　　10、Why does the author mention "Vasco da Gama Voyage around southern Africa to India" in the passage?
to indicate how the Portuguese came to challenge Venetian dominance of trade vmh the East

　　to explain why political troubles resulted in the closing of the usual routes to India

　　to prove that Venetians could not sail round ships as efficiently as sailors from other countries did

　　to show that Venetian reliance on round