2015考研英语作文素材精选 (三)

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考研英语作文是一个考察综合运用语言的部分，需要同学们运用逻辑思维下笔成文，因此，考前看一些意义深远、质量好的文章很有必要。以下是2015考研英语作文备考素材精选，请作参考。
   
     2015考研英语作文素材精选 (三)
    09 Suburbanization
    If by "suburb" is meant an urban margin that grows more rapidly than its
already developed interior, the process of suburbanization began during the
emergence of the industrial city in the second quarter of the nineteenth
century. Before that period the city was a small highly compact cluster in which
people moved about on foot and goods were conveyed by horse and cart. But the
early factories built in the 1840's were located along waterways and near
railheads at the edges of cities, and housing was needed for the thousands of
people drawn by the prospect of employment. In time, the factories were
surrounded by proliferating mill towns of apartments and row houses that abutted
the older, main cities. As a defense against this encroachment and to enlarge
their tax bases, the cities appropriated their industrial neighbors. In 1854,
for example, the city of Philadelphia annexed most of Philadelphia County.
Similar municipal maneuvers took place in Chicago and in New York. Indeed, most
great cities of the United States achieved such status only by incorporating the
communities along their borders.
    With the acceleration of industrial growth came acute urban crowding and
accompanying social stress-conditions that began to approach disastrous
proportions when, in 1888, the first commercially successful electric traction
line was developed. Within a few years the horse-drawn trolleys were retired and
electric streetcar networks crisscrossed and connected every major urban area,
fostering a wave of suburbanization that transformed the compact industrial city
into a dispersed metropolis. This first phase of mass-scale suburbanization was
reinforced by the simultaneous emergence of the urban Middle Class, whose
desires for homeownership in neighborhoods far from the aging inner city were
satisfied by the developers of single-family housing tracts.
    10 Types of Speech
    Standard usage includes those words and expressions understood, used, and
accepted by a majority of the speakers of a language in any situation regardless
of the level of formality. As such, these words and expressions are well defined
and listed in standard dictionaries. Colloquialisms, on the other hand, are
familiar words and idioms that are understood by almost all speakers of a
language and used in informal speech or writing, but not considered appropriate
for more formal situations. Almost all idiomatic expressions are colloquial
language. Slang, however, refers to words and expressions understood by a large
number of speakers but not accepted as good, formal usage by the majority.
Colloquial expressions and even slang may be found in standard dictionaries but
will be so identified. Both colloquial usage and slang are more common in speech
than in writing.
    Colloquial speech often passes into standard speech. Some slang also passes
into standard speech, but other slang expressions enjoy momentary popularity
followed by obscurity. In some cases, the majority never accepts certain slang
phrases but nevertheless retains them in their collective memories. Every
generation seems to require its own set of words to describe familiar objects
and events. It has been pointed out by a number of linguists that three cultural
conditions are necessary for the creation of a large body of slang expressions.
First, the introduction and acceptance of new objects and situations in the
society; second, a diverse population with a large number of subgroups; third,
association among the subgroups and the majority population.
    Finally, it is worth noting that the terms "standard" "colloquial" and
"slang" exist only as abstract labels for scholars who study language. Only a
tiny number of the speakers of any language will be aware that they are using
colloquial or slang expressions. Most speakers of English will, during
appropriate situations, select and use all three types of expressions.
    11 Archaeology
    Archaeology is a source of history, not just a bumble auxiliary discipline.
Archaeological data are historical documents in their own right, not mere
illustrations to written texts, Just as much as any other historian, an
archaeologist studies and tries to reconstitute the process that has created the
human world in which we live - and us ourselves in so far as we are each
creatures of our age and social environment. Archaeological data are all changes
in the material world resulting from human action or, more succinctly, the
fossilized results of human behavior. The sum total of these constitutes what
may be called the archaeological record. This record exhibits certain
peculiarities and deficiencies the consequences of which produce a rather
superficial contrast between archaeological history and the more familiar kind
based upon written records.
    Not all human behavior fossilizes. The words I utter and you hear as
vibrations in the air are certainly human changes in the material world and may
be of great historical significance. Yet they leave no sort of trace in the
archaeological records unless they are captured by a dictaphone or written down
by a clerk. The movement of troops on the battlefield may "change the course of
history," but this is equally ephemeral from the archaeologist's standpoint.
What is perhaps worse, most organic materials are perishable. Everything made of
wood, hide, wool, linen, grass, hair, and similar materials will decay and
vanish in dust in a few years or centuries, save under very exceptional
conditions. In a relatively brief period the archaeological record is reduce to
mere scraps of stone, bone, glass, metal, and earthenware. Still modern
archaeology, by applying appropriate techniques and comparative methods, aided
by a few lucky finds from peat-bogs, deserts, and frozen soils, is able to fill
up a good deal of the gap.
    12 Museums
    From Boston to Los Angeles, from New York City to Chicago to Dallas,
museums are either planning, building, or wrapping up wholesale expansion
programs. These programs already have radically altered facades and floor plans
or are expected to do so in the not-too-distant future.
    In New York City alone, six major institutions have spread up and out into
the air space and neighborhoods around them or are preparing to do so.
    The reasons for this confluence of activity are complex, but one factor is
a consideration everywhere - space. With collections expanding, with the needs
and functions of museums changing, empty space has become a very precious
commodity.
    Probably nowhere in the country is this more true than at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art, which has needed additional space for decades and which received
its last significant facelift ten years ago. Because of the space crunch, the
Art Museum has become increasingly cautious in considering acquisitions and
donations of art, in some cases passing up opportunities to strengthen its
collections.
    Deaccessing - or selling off - works of art has taken on new importance
because of the museum's space problems. And increasingly, curators have been
forced to juggle gallery space, rotating one masterpiece into public view while
another is sent to storage.
    Despite the clear need for additional gallery and storage space, however,"
the museum has no plan, no plan to break out of its envelope in the next fifteen
years," according to Philadelphia Museum of Art's president.