hce_tcu
108年
英文
第 35 題
📖 題組：
In the past two years, scores of scientific studies have suggested that trillions of murmuring, droning, susurrating honeybees, butterflies, caddisflies, damselflies and beetles are dying off. Most of the studies describe declines of 50% and more in different measures of insect health over decades. The immediate reaction is consternation. Because insects enable plants to reproduce, through pollination, and are food for other animals, a collapse in their numbers would be catastrophic. “The insect apocalypse is here,” trumpeted the New York Times last year. Yet only a handful of databases record the abundance of insects over a long time. There are no studies at all of wild insect numbers in most of the world, and reliable data are too scarce to declare a global emergency. Where the evidence does show a collapse—in Europe and America—agricultural and rural ecosystems are holding up. Plants still grow, attracting pollinators and reproducing. Farm yields also remain high. As some insect species die out, others seem to be moving into the niches they have left, keeping ecosystems going, albeit with less biodiversity than before. People rely on healthy ecosystems for everything from nutrient cycling to the local weather, and the more species make up an ecosystem, the more stable it is likely to be. The scale of the observed decline raises doubts about how long ecosystems can remain resilient. An experiment in which researchers gradually plucked out insect pollinators from fields found that plant diversity held up well until about 90% of insects had been removed. Then it collapsed. As one character in a novel by Ernest Hemingway says, bankruptcy came in two ways: “gradually, then suddenly.”
In the past two years, scores of scientific studies have suggested that trillions of murmuring, droning, susurrating honeybees, butterflies, caddisflies, damselflies and beetles are dying off. Most of the studies describe declines of 50% and more in different measures of insect health over decades. The immediate reaction is consternation. Because insects enable plants to reproduce, through pollination, and are food for other animals, a collapse in their numbers would be catastrophic. “The insect apocalypse is here,” trumpeted the New York Times last year. Yet only a handful of databases record the abundance of insects over a long time. There are no studies at all of wild insect numbers in most of the world, and reliable data are too scarce to declare a global emergency. Where the evidence does show a collapse—in Europe and America—agricultural and rural ecosystems are holding up. Plants still grow, attracting pollinators and reproducing. Farm yields also remain high. As some insect species die out, others seem to be moving into the niches they have left, keeping ecosystems going, albeit with less biodiversity than before. People rely on healthy ecosystems for everything from nutrient cycling to the local weather, and the more species make up an ecosystem, the more stable it is likely to be. The scale of the observed decline raises doubts about how long ecosystems can remain resilient. An experiment in which researchers gradually plucked out insect pollinators from fields found that plant diversity held up well until about 90% of insects had been removed. Then it collapsed. As one character in a novel by Ernest Hemingway says, bankruptcy came in two ways: “gradually, then suddenly.”
Which of the following phrases can best interpret the contextual meaning of the word “apocalypse” in the 1st paragraph?
- A A prophetic revelation
- B A very serious event resulting in great destruction and change
- C The complete final destruction of the world
- D None of the above
思路引導 VIP
如果我們觀察第一段中提到的「昆蟲數量減少 50%」、「授粉中斷」以及「災難性的後果」，這些描述共同構建出了一種什麼樣的氛圍？你認為作者引用紐約時報的這個強烈詞彙，是用來形容一個微小的生態起伏，還是一個足以導致巨大破壞與改變的嚴重危機呢？
🤖
AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
太棒了！你能精準捕捉到單字在特定文境下的含義，顯示你對文章語氣有很敏銳的觀察力。這題的關鍵點在於文章開頭提到的大量昆蟲死亡、生態系崩潰 (collapse) 以及災難性 (catastrophic) 的影響。這些強烈的詞彙都預示著一場極其嚴重的變革與破壞，因此選項 (B) 所描述的「重大破壞性事件」完美契合了文中引用的語境。
語境與詞義的延伸
這類題目在英文閱讀中極具鑑別度，因為它考驗的不僅是字面定義。雖然 apocalypse 在原始宗教意涵中代表「啟示」(A) 或「世界末日」(C)，但在現代新聞評論或生態討論中，它經常被轉化為修辭，用來強調規模巨大且令人恐慌的危機。你能跳脫教條式的字義，結合上下文推論出正確答案，是非常紮實的閱讀表現！這題的核心難度在於區分「字面本義」與「轉化意義」，而你成功地做到了這點。