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TOEFL Directory > TOEFL writing > TOEFL Reading Class Unit 2_Passage 24_Question 254-264
TOEFL Reading Class Unit 2_Passage 24_Question 254-264
You have about 15 minutes to finish this passage.
First,use about 3-4 minutes to read the passage, try to understand the main idea of this passage.
Don't read it so slowly or try to remember all details.You need to do "fast reading",and "scan" the passage.
Second, read questions 1-11, and with questions you go back the passage again and look for correct answers.
Question 254-264
Passge 24
Artifacts from hundreds of early sites dotting the American Southwest provide evidence that jewelry making by the Native Americans there has spanned more than two thousand years. To adorn themselves and their clothing, Native Americans in the Southwest produced innumerable types of beads, pendants, bracelets, rings, necklaces, earrings and buttons, utilizing such diverse materials as stone, shell, wood, clay, and bones. Evidence suggests that they exchanged ideas, materials, and objects along well-established trade routes for centuries before Europeans started to explore the North American continent.
From approximately 300 B.C. to A.D. 1540, three major cultural groups inhabited the Southwest, developing agricultural communities based on the cultivation of corn, squash, and beans. The Hohokam settled in southern Arizona along the Gila, Salt and Santa Cruz rivers, where they refined the artistry of creating jewelry from shells. The Anasazi (whose name is a Navajo word meaning "The Ancients? occupied the high-plateau country of the Four Corners area, where they built grand cities of multistoried cliff dwellings and ceremonial chambers in what is now Colorado and New Mexico. And the Mogollon, renowned for their distinctive figurative pottery, founded their villages in the mountainous region of eastern Arizona and the Mimbres valley of southwestern New Mexico. These cultures all reached the pinnacle of their artistic expression during approximately the same period, between A.D. 900 and 1200. The legacy of their traditions in making turquoise and shell jewelry enriches the southwestern Native American cultures of today.
Much of the jewelry featured turquoise and shell, but other stones were also used. In addition to beads, pendants in various geometric and representational shapes were also popular; they have been found in abundance throughout the Southwest. The life-forms depicted in the pendants included snakes, whose sinuous shapes may have represented lightening, many types of birds, often in profile, as well as animals that might have been encountered in the hunt. Animals associated with water, such as frogs and turtles, also appear frequently. For cultures inhabiting a semiarid environment in which water was---and is---a precious commodity, water symbols were predictably popular and proliferated on pottery as well as jewelry.
254. What does the passage mainly discuss?
a) The geography and climate of the American Southwest
b) Plants and animals of the American Southwest
c) Exchange of goods along trade routes in Native American societies
d) Jewelry making among Native Americans of the Southwest
255. The word adorn in the passage is closest in meaning to
a) identify
b) cover
c) decorate
d) advance
256. The word suggests in the passage is closest in meaning to
a) indicates
b) advises
c) challenges
d) demands
257. The passage mentions all of the following as materials used to make jewelry EXCEPT
a) shell
b) clay
c) wood
d) silver
258. The word refined in the passage is closest in meaning to
a) perfected
b) selected
c) defined
d) maintained
259. The word pinnacle in the passage is closest in meaning to
a) gradual change
b) high point
c) innovation
d) acknowledgment
260. The author explains the origin of which of the following names?
a) Hohokam
b) Mogollon
c) Anasazi
d) Navajo
261. All of the following are mentioned as being true of the Native Americans of the Southwest EXCEPT that they
a) cultivated crops
b) considered artistic expression important
c) built cities
d) traded with Europeans
262. The word they in the passage refers to
a) pendants
b) beads
c) other stones
d) turquoise and shell
263. According to paragraph 3, frogs and turtles were common motifs in southwestern Native American jewelry because they were
a) believed to bring good luck
b) associated with water
c) plentiful in the areas where the jewelry makers lived
d) easy to depict
264. It can be inferred that the designs on jewelry made by southwestern Native Americans were based on
a) ancient narratives
b) objects found in cities
c) hunting scenes
d) observation of the environment
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