2010年3月20日托福机经英文版原文(康老师)

　　2010.3.20
　　1. 使用clay去writing具有悠久的历史，用来纪录日常生活，政府纪录等等。然后文章提某个种族特擅长这个发展的也很好，但是training起来特难，所以也只有少数人掌握这个技术（有题，问是什么造成他们擅长此道）。然后这个民族被哪个给占领了，那个侵入者让他们使用一种适合入侵者使用的语言（有题），但是这个民族并未完全遗忘自己的语言（插入题）。
　　词汇题：virtue, vital
　　Books on clay tablets
　　The ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Hittites wrote on tablets made from water-cleaned clay. Although these writing bricks varied in shape and dimension, a common form was a thin quadrilateral tile about five inches long. While the clay was still wet, the writer used a stylus to inscribe it with cuneiform characters. By writing on every surface in small characters, he could copy a substantial text on a single tablet. For longer texts he used several tablets, linking them together by numbers and catchwords as is done in modern books.
　　Book production on clay tablets probably continued for 2,000 years. The nature and volume of the surviving records from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor indicate a heavy emphasis on the preservative function of writing and the book. Either dried in the sun or baked in a kiln, clay tablets were almost indestructible. The latter process was used for texts of special value, legal codes, royal annals, and epics to ensure greater preservation. Buried for thousands of years in the mounds of forgotten cities, they have been removed intact in modern archaeological excavations. The number of clay tablets recovered approaches 500,000, but new finds continually add to the total. The largest surviving category consists of private commercial documents and government archives. Of the remainder, many are duplications of texts.
　　Clay tablets are usually associated with cuneiform writing, a script that takes its modern name from the wedge-shaped (from Latin cuneus, “wedge”) marks made by the stylus in clay. When the Aramaic language and alphabet arose in the 6th century BC, the clay tablet book declined because clay was less suited than papyrus to the Aramaic characters

　　以上机经是康老师2011年10月－12月托福预测范围里的。