Part 1

版本1：

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

The History of the Pencil

(A) The history of the pencil starts with a violent thunderstorm. When some particularly ferocious weather struck the Lake District in North West England in the sixteenth century, locals in the village of Borrowdale discovered a large uprooted tree. Underneath the tree lay an unknown black substance which we now know as graphite, was slightly shiny and smooth to the touch. And it left a black smear on the hands of all who touched it.

(B) Initially, the local farmers used the newly discovered material as a handy way to identify their sheep. However, others quickly realised the potential for using this intriguing substance to write on paper. When it was untreated the material was very soft, which meant that it was messy to handle. To make it fit for use with paper, people enclosed a thin core of the substance in stiff sheep hides or rope. At this time chemistry was still in its infancy. People searched for a word to describe this increasingly useful substance and came up with plumbago which, in Latin, means acts or writes like lead. Later the name was changed to graphite. But because words have remarkable staying power, we still call graphite the lead of a pencil even though it is now known that there is no trace of real lead in graphite.

(C) Graphite has a very high melting point at around 3,500 degrees Celsius. This made it invaluable to the British army and navy as a secret ingredient in the manufacture of cannon balls. The Royal Ordnance, or weaponry section of the British armed forces, used graphite as a lining inside the moulds for cannon balls, which, as a result, the British could turn out faster and more cheaply than their European rivals. In addition to its value to the armed forces, the government quickly realised the commercial potential of the graphite at Borrowdale, and assumed control of all the mines there during the sixteenth century. Armed guards accompanied the precious graphite all the way down to the metal foundries by the naval shipyards in the south of England. The graphite was so valuable that the locals, who called it wad, started to steal it. As a deterrent, an act of Parliament in 1752 made this offence punishable by time in prison.

(D) The Italians originally invented the wooden casing to hold a thin rod of plumbago firmly in place for ease of writing. Italian craftsmen hollowed out two small sections of cedar wood, into one of which they laid the lead. They then glued the other section over the top and left the two halves to set. When dry, the whole apparatus formed what today we know as a pencil. The Germans took this technique and developed it further by applying mass-production techniques to pencils. At the same time Nicolas-Jacques Conté, a French officer in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army during the late 1700s, developed a method of mixing powdered graphite and clay together for firing in a kiln. Adding more clay to the mixture helped make the pencil harder, sharper, and more precise in its mark. More graphite helped make a pencil mark that was softer, thicker and darker.

(E) The varying quality of pencil leads eventually gave rise to a system for categorizing the fineness of the pencil mark. Pencil manufacturers all over the world still use this so-called HB grading system today. The H stands for the Hardness of the pencil while the B stands for its Blackness. An HB pencil is a standard pencil and a variety of letters and numbers are used to designate different types of lead.

(F) Significant seams of graphite exist in parts of China, which now produces most of the world’s pencils. Interestingly, the Borrowdale mine in the Lake District remains the only significant source of graphite in its near-pure form in the world. Nowadays the highest grade of graphite at Borrowdale is totally exhausted, although other grades can still be found, and England’s pencil industry continues to thrive in the nearby town of Keswick.

(G) The pencil has turned out to be a remarkably resilient and valuable tool whose use has survived well into our high-tech times, as a well-known story shows. It is sometimes said that the American space programme spent millions of dollars to invent a pen capable of writing in the zero gravity of space. The Russians, by contrast, simply equipped their astronauts with good old-fashioned pencils that never let them down. It should be pointed out though, that the popular myth about Americans overlooking the practical advantages of pencils in zero gravity is merely fiction. In actual fact, both American and Russian astronauts were equipped with pencils in their respective countries’ first space flights. A private company later developed pens for writing in zero gravity. In fact, astronauts of every nation now use pens. But no matter — pencils remain in use in every classroom, every planning, building and drawing office, and in every art studio in the world. And there is nothing to suggest that we are likely to invent anything better than graphite to use in our pencils.

Questions 1–6

Complete the notes below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 1–6 on your answer sheet.

The early history of graphite in Britain

• Graphite was first found below a 1__________ blown down in a storm.

• The first use of graphite was to make marks on 2__________.

• The characteristics of raw graphite:

– dirty to use because it is so 3__________.

– originally wrapped in 4__________ or animal skin to make it useable as a pencil.

• Graphite came to the notice of the government for military and commercial purposes.

– The government completely took over the 5__________ at Borrowdale.

– They employed guards to protect the graphite on its journey south.

• Local people began to 6__________ graphite for the money involved.

– The government passed a law to protect the graphite industry.

Questions 7–13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 7–13 on your answer sheet, write.

7The Italians were the first to make pencils out of wood.

TRUEFALSENOT GIVEN

8The Germans used different types of wood to produce pencils.

TRUEFALSENOT GIVEN

9More clay in a pencil makes it write more darkly.

TRUEFALSENOT GIVEN

10After the HB code was introduced, it very quickly became used by all manufacturers.

TRUEFALSENOT GIVEN

11English pencil factories have now all closed down.

TRUEFALSENOT GIVEN

12American astronauts used pencils on their early journeys into space.

TRUEFALSENOT GIVEN

13The use of graphite pencils is unlikely to continue into the future.

TRUEFALSENOT GIVEN

版本2：

Part 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

The History of the Pencil

(A) Pencils have existed for millennia. It is known that the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans all used small pieces of metal as writing instruments, and that 14th-century European artists made pale grey drawings with thin rods of lead, silver or zinc. It is, however, generally accepted that the history of the modern pencil began in the 16th century, in the hilly, rural county of Cumberland in north-west England.

(B) Some time before 1565, an enormous deposit of the soft, dark grey mineral now known as graphite was discovered in the Borrowdale district of the county. Then, as now, Cumberland was a farming area, and the locals found the mineral useful for marking their sheep so they could identify the ones that belonged to them. It was thought to be a form of lead, and so was referred to as plumbago, a term deriving from the Latin name for that element. However, the mineral was later identified as a form of carbon, and in 1789 the German geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner renamed it graphite, a word based on the ancient Greek grapho, meaning ‘draw’ or ‘write’.

(C) The graphite found at Borrowdale was extremely dense and it could easily be sawn into sticks to be used for marking, writing or drawing. But because graphite is also soft, it requires some form of encasement around it, and so the sticks were initially wrapped in string for stability and ease of use. The news of the usefulness of these early pencils spread far and wide, attracting the attention of artists throughout Europe.

(D) In England, the government soon realised the value of the Borrowdale find, particularly for national defence purposes, because graphite proved ideal for lining the moulds used in the making of cannon balls. The mines were therefore taken over by the government, which guarded and periodically flooded them to prevent theft. Because of this, there were occasions when supplies for use in pencils had to be smuggled out in secret. Nevertheless, England still became the centre of a thriving pencil-making industry.

(E) Although deposits of graphite existed in other parts of the world, they were not of the same exceptional purity and quality as Borrowdale graphite, and had to be crushed to a powder to get rid of the impurities. England therefore continued to enjoy a monopoly on the production of pencils until a method of reconstituting the graphite powder could be found. English pencils continued to be made with sticks cut from pure Borrowdale graphite into the 1860s, after which the design was modified. The town of Keswick, close to the Cumberland graphite find, still manufactures pencils today, the factory also being the location of the Cumberland pencil museum

(F) Experimentation in pencil production was widespread across Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. Around 1560, an Italian couple named Simonio and Lyndiana Bernacotti made what are probably the first blueprints for the modern, wood-encased pencil. Their concept involved the hollowing out of a stick of juniper wood, and placing a stick of graphite inside. Shortly thereafter, a superior technique to that of the Bernacottis was adopted: two wooden halves were carved, a graphite stick inserted, and the halves then glued together — essentially the same method in use to this day.

(G) The first attempt to manufacture graphite sticks from powdered graphite was in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1662, using a mixture of graphite together with the elements sulphur and antimony.

(H) Today, pencils are manufactured around the world, using graphite from a number of sources. Most manufacturers use a mix of graphite and clay as the core of their pencils. Each of these substances is ground into a fine powder, which goes on to be cleaned in order to remove any impurities. After the two types of powders have been dried, they are mixed together using water. The amount of clay added to the mixture depends on how hard the pencil is intended to be — higher proportions of clay will make the pencil harder — and the amount of time spent grinding the mixture determines the quality of the core. The graphite-clay mixture is then shaped into long sticks, and after drying these are heated in a kiln to 1,200°C. In the next step in the process, the graphite-clay sticks are immersed in melted wax, which is absorbed into the mixture and helps to make it write more smoothly. In the next stage, the manufacturers use thin planks of cedar wood or juniper wood. Several long parallel grooves are cut into the planks, and the graphite-clay sticks are inserted into these. A second plank which has been prepared in the same way is then glued on top. The whole assembly is then cut into separate pencils. The outside may then be varnished, retaining the natural colour of the wood, or painted in different colours.

Questions 1–3

Complete the notes below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 1–3 on your answer sheet.

In the 1500s, Borrowdale graphite

• was used by farmers in the area to indicate which 1__________ they owned

• was first believed to be a type of 2__________

• was encased in string to produce early pencils

• was recognised by the English 3__________ as important in the manufacture of cannon balls

Questions 4–8

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 4–8 on your answer sheet, write.

4Borrowdale graphite was superior to all other forms of graphite.

TRUEFALSENOT GIVEN