大全32，Q1，2，7 感觉文章读懂了，做题结果不尽人意

aaron22 · 发表于 2013-1-15 21:33:45

Passage 32 (32/63)

Increasingly, historians are blaming diseases imported from the Old World for the staggering disparity between the indigenous population of America in 1492—new estimates of which soar as high as 100 million, or approximately one-sixth of the human race at that time—and the few million full-blooded Native Americans alive at the end of the nineteenth century. There is no doubt that chronic disease was an important factor in the precipitous decline, and it is highly probable that the greatest killer was epidemic disease, especially as manifested in virgin-soil epidemics.

Virgin-soil epidemics are those in which the populations at risk have had no previous contact with the diseases that strike them and are therefore immunologically almost defenseless. That virgin-soil epidemics were important in American history is strongly indicated by evidence that a number of dangerous maladies—smallpox, measles, malaria, yellow fever, and undoubtedly several more—were unknown in the pre-Columbian New World. The effects of their sudden introduction are demonstrated in the early chronicles of America, which contain reports of horrendous epidemics and steep population declines, confirmed in many cases by recent quantitative analyses of Spanish tribute records and other sources. The evidence provided by the documents of British and French colonies is not as definitive because the conquerors of those areas did not establish permanent settlements and begin to keep continuous records until the seventeenth century, by which time the worst epidemics had probably already taken place. Furthermore, the British tended to drive the native populations away, rather than enslaving them as the Spaniards did, so that the epidemics of British America occurred beyond the range of colonists’ direct observation.

Even so, the surviving records of North America do contain references to deadly epidemics among the indigenous population. In 1616-1619 an epidemic, possibly of bubonic or pneumonic plague, swept coastal New England, killing as many as nine out of ten. During the 1630’s smallpox, the disease most fatal to the Native American people, eliminated half the population of the Huron and Iroquois confederations. In the 1820’s fever devastated the people of the Columbia River area, killing eight out of ten of them.

Unfortunately, the documentation of these and other epidemics is slight and frequently unreliable, and it is necessary to supplement what little we do know with evidence from recent epidemics among Native Americans. For example, in 1952 an outbreak of measles among the Native American inhabitants of Ungava Bay, Quebec, affected 99 percent of the population and killed 7 percent, even though some had the benefit of modern medicine. Cases such as this demonstrate that even diseases that are not normally fatal can have devastating consequences when they strike an immunologically defenseless community.

1.The primary purpose of the passage is to

(A) refute a common misconception

(B) provide support for a hypothesis

(C) analyze an argument

(D) suggest a solution to a dilemma

(E) reconcile opposing viewpoints

答案是B，我选的是C，请问怎么看出来是hypothesis的呢？

而且最后一段说文件unreliable,如果是完全的support，不是应该没有有这样的质疑啊

2 .According to the passage, virgin-soil epidemics can be distinguished from other catastrophic outbreaks of disease in that virgin-soil epidemics

(A) recur more frequently than other chronic diseases

(B) affect a minimum of one-half of a given population

(C) involve populations with no prior exposure to a disease

(D) usually involve a number of interacting diseases

(E) are less responsive to medical treatment than are other diseases
请问怎么看出来no prior exposure是virgin-soil所独有的呢？文中我也没有读出来

7 .The author mentions the 1952 measles outbreak most probably in order to

(A) demonstrate the impact of modern medicine on epidemic disease

(B) corroborate the documentary evidence of epidemic disease in colonial America

(C) refute allegations of unreliability made against the historical record of colonial America

(D) advocate new research into the continuing problem of epidemic disease

(E) challenge assumptions about how the statistical evidence of epidemics should be interpreted

请问B选项在文中怎么表现的，我并没有读出来有支持的意味啊，难道是and it is necessary to supplement what little we do know with evidence from recent epidemics among Native Americans. 能不能详细的解释下，这题一点思路也没有

非常感谢，等大牛指点~

aaron22 · 发表于 2013-1-29 12:45:27

额，回头又看还是不懂，up。。。。

aaron22 · 发表于 2013-1-29 12:51:53

第7题看到NN解释了，贴出来，其他2个还是没有思路

引用platobungee：

B选项中的corroborate 是我标出的原文中的supplement的一个改写，原文中我标出的句子意思是：

因为这些文献（documentation ）不可靠（unreliable），所以我们要用evidence from recent epidemics among Native Americans来补充（supplement）这个文献。下面接着就举了题目中的例子，所以例子应该正是证明这一点

所以选B

典座 · 发表于 2020-8-4 12:17:43

7题本来选了B，但是看到选项里是colonial America，而原文说的是美国印第安人，所以就选A了........不知道有没有人和我一样

大全32，Q1，2，7 感觉文章读懂了，做题结果不尽人意

所属分类: GMAT考试

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