为什么用做托福阅读的方法答不出GRE高分，从头说起！

2016-07-07 16:03

来源：新东方广州学校

作者：新小编

摘要：新东方广州学校隶属于北京新东方教育科技（集团）有限公司， 22年专注教育培训，校区遍布广州各区，课程涵盖出国留学、英语学习、考研辅导、中学辅导、小学辅导、小语种等，是一所综合性教育培训学校。所有课程均可网报，更多优惠可咨询电话：400-020-9198

伙伴们必须首先认清，GRE的阅读考试不同于我们过去所经历的各种阅读考试，无论是中文还是英文，无论是小学和中学阶段的语言考试，还是大学之后可能经历的四六级阅读考试，又或是TOEFL/IELTS中的阅读考试。GRE阅读所测试的能力决定了我们必须以不同的阅读策略切入，抛弃我们所固有的、已经习以为常的阅读习惯。

那么，要做到这一点，我们就首先就必须弄清楚GRE阅读考试到底考察哪些能力。下面我们来看看GRE官方指南是怎么说的：

Reading Comprehension questions are designed to test a wide range of abilities required to read and understand the kinds of prose commonly encountered in graduate school. Those abilities include:

①understanding the meaning of individual words/理解词义

②understanding the meaning of individual sentences/理解句意

③understanding the meaning of paragraphs and larger bodies of text/理解段落及篇章的意义

④distinguishing between minor and major points/区分细节与主旨

⑤summarizing a passage/概括段落

⑥drawing conclusions from the information provided/从已有信息当中推出结论

⑦reasoning from incomplete data, inferring missing information/从已有信息当中推出缺失信息

⑧understanding the structure of a text, how the parts relate to one another/理解文章结构和各部分之间关系

⑨identifying the author’s perspective/判断作者的视角

⑩aidentifying the author’s assumptions/判断作者的假设

⑪banalyzing a text and reaching conclusions about it/从文本中得出结论

⑫cidentifying strengths and weaknesses/判断论证的优点与缺陷

今天我们先通过两道题目来了解能力1和2考察的具体展现形式，希望能够帮助大家迅速理解这项考试的策略，并寻找合适的应对方案。

understanding the meaning of individual words/理解词义

显然会出现在词汇题当中。与很多同学可能熟悉的TOEFL词汇题不同，我们都知道TOEFL词汇题的做法是不带回原文直接选词义，更多考察的是词汇量本身，而不是词汇在语境中的含义;GRE的词汇题更需要大家能够根据上下文推断词义。比如：

A critical consensus has emerged that Mary McCarthy will be remembered primarily as an essayist rather than as a novelist. But despite her formidable gifts as a polemical and discursive writer, and for all her reputation as an intellectual who sacrificed feeling to intelligence, what powers McCarthy’s best essays are her fictional rather than strictly intellectual gifts. She makes her points by telling stories or by way of vivid description, arresting images and subtle characterization. And for all her exacting sense of fact, McCarthy’s greatest contribution was to blur the distinctions between different kinds of prose writing: to show how fiction could be opened up to the thinking mind and how essays could profit from the techniques of fiction.

In the context in which it appears, “discursive” most nearly means

A. Prolific

B. Sophistic

C. Rambling

D. Analytical

E. Circuitous

答案：D

这道题目如果同学们查字典，很容易选出C这个答案，因为discursive和rambling这两个词就是同义词，是“离题的”的意思。然而，在本文背景下，discursive一定是essay的特点，是用来表达intelligence而不是feeling，在这种上下文背景下，它的意思应该是“推论的，论证的：通过推理而非直觉来得出结论的”，所以选择的答案是analytical。很显然，GRE的词汇题要求的并不简简单单是词汇量本身，而是上下文语义关系判断的能力。

understanding the meaning of individual sentences/理解句意

同样看似考察的是句子本身的字面意思，如果在TOEFL考试当中，只要看懂一个句子的语义，一道句子改写题基本就不成问题了。但是GRE考试当中，即便考察的是语句本身的语义，选项对原文的改写不仅仅是句型的改写，而很可能是不同逻辑形式对等效语义的表达。比如：

Astronomers studying a certain kind of supernova (exploding star) were surprised to find the supernovas were fainter than expected. Seeking explanations, they discounted the possibility that cosmic dust might be screening out some of the light, because it would filter out blue light more than red, causing the supernovas to appear redder than they really are. Also, unless spread very smoothly throughout space, the dust would introduce large variations in the measurements. Another possibility is gravitational lensing, the bending of light rays as they skirt galaxies en route. Such lensing occasionally causes brightening, but most often it contributes to the dimness of distant supernovas. Calculations show, however, that this effect becomes important only for sources more distant than the supernovas studied.

According to the passage, the astronomers rejected gravitational lensing as an explanation for their findings because

A. gravitational lensing can cause supernovas to appear brighter than they really are

B. their calculations showed a negligible effect of gravitational lensing for light rays from distant sources.

C. light rays traveling from the supernovas studied did not have to skirt galaxies.

D. the effect of gravitational lensing on the appearance of supernovas is unpredictable.

E. the supernovas studied were too near for gravitational lensing to have the observed dimming effect.

答案：E

这道题很明显考察的就是最后一句话“this effect becomes important only for sources more distant than the supernovas studied”的意思。而X becomes important for Y这句话，等效于X is not important for non-Y，而题干相当于在问X为什么not important，则答案就应该是non-Y。根据这个形式，鉴于原文的Y相当于distant，则正确选项就应该是以not distant为关键信息，所以选择了E，核心词是near。其实这个题反映了一个更普遍的常考察的语言现象，即以“only”为逻辑信息的句型其表面语义和实际语义之间的关系。当我在说“only when I work hard can I get high score”时，我并没有表达努力工作能够带来高分的意思，相反，我所表达是不努力工作没法带来高分的意思。而这种现象又代表的是一大类现象，即某种逻辑句型的表面语义和实际语义之间的关系，它要求同学们在阅读时能够在逻辑等效的句型之间进行语义的灵活切换。

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