TOEFL iBT® sample
Date: March 2th of 2020.Activity: Resolve the test IELTS
Skill: Reading and answering
Summary script
On Walden Pond
1 During his lifetime, Henry David Thoreau wrote over twenty books—travel books, books of poetry, and collections of essays—but none has had such a lasting influence as Walden, an account of the time he spent in a tiny house on the shore of Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. Born in 1817 in Concord, Thoreau graduated from Harvard University in nearby Cambridge, Massachusetts. When he returned to Concord, he worked for his father, who manufactured pencils, and tutored the children of writer Ralph W. Emerson, Thoreau’s friend and mentor. Thoreau then decided to move to a relatively isolated one-room cabin in the woods just outside of Concord on land owned by Emerson. Thoreau began clearing the land and building the cabin in the spring of 1845 and, perhaps significantly, he chose to move in on July 4 of that year—on the holiday celebrating the independence of the United States in 1776. He lived on the pond for two years, but in Walden, he compresses that time into a single year.
2 Thoreau wrote in Walden, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately . . . and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Essentially, Walden is Thoreau’s description of an experiment in self-reliance and in living the simple life. He believed that owning anything beyond the basic necessities of life was an obstacle to a happy life rather than an advantage. He wrote, “I see young men . . . whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of.” He built his own house for a mere $28.13 (about $300.00 in today’s dollars). He grew beans and other vegetables, which he sold for a modest profit. In Walden, he includes a rather lengthy, detailed reckoning of how much he spent and how much he earned, information which some readers find tedious. He spent the rest of his time at the pond walking in the woods, reading, and writing a book about a canoe trip with his brother, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
3 Although Thoreau valued solitude and spent much time alone, he was not completely cut off from society. His cabin was close to the road to Concord and he often walked to town to do business and have dinner with family or friends. He entertained visitors at his cabin and his mother sometimes brought him meals. Richard Zachs, a contemporary critic, says that it was like “suburban boys going to their tree house in the backyard and pretending they're camping in the heart of the jungle.”
4 Thoreau had an ambivalent attitude towards technology. He invented a method of making pencils from low-grade clay for use in his father’s factory. But he was suspicious of the greatest technological innovations of his time, the telegraph and the railroad. He pointed out in Walden that the nation was hastily building a telegraph system that would soon link the country from Maine to Texas, but Thoreau said “Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.” He believed that trains gave people an illusion of freedom, but in fact represented a new servitude, because it meant obeying fixed train schedules and routes. He also wrote that he found a “train” of clouds moving across the sunrise of much more interest than a train of railroad cars going to Boston.
5 Thoreau was a dedicated student of nature. Walden is filled with minute observations of animals, plants, and weather. He wrote, “For years I was a self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms.” When writing about animals, he would relate their behavior to that of humans, as in his fascinating account of war between red and black ants. His writings about the “interconnectedness” of nature anticipate the environmental movement by about 125 years.
6 Like his fellow New Englander, twentieth-century poet Robert Frost, Thoreau wrote in a style that seems folksy on the surface, but it contains wit and symbolism. Thoreau sprinkled his prose with classical allusions as well as with word play and puns, some of which are difficult for today’s readers to comprehend. Thoreau can be poetic too, as when he beautifully describes ice on the pond. But despite the clarity of his writing, Walden is not an easy book, especially for first time readers. It has no plot line, no real characters outside of Thoreau himself, and even the most enthusiastic Thoreau admirer would probably agree that some of his descriptions of ponds, woods and storms go on too long. But it is an important book, and definitely worth the effort.
Answers of the questions
Correction of answers
14 C unitereting.
13 A This sentence summarizes the information in paragraphs 2 and 3.
C This sentence summarizes the information about Thoreau’s writing style in paragraph 6.
D This sentence summarizes the information in paragraphs 4 and 5.
Page of answers
Highlights
- This type text is a complex for understanding because his level of difficult is is hard, it was necessary recognize the main success and specific questions for a word or the intention of author.
- I think about the text was too long. Because, the biographies are very boring for to read however the most important I believe that was the different form to transmite feelings across his life to the people, he had supported in the description nature and style written compare the problem.
Comments
Post a Comment