字神帝國英語天地

 GMAT閱讀超神方法：結構化閱讀法

 眾所周知，GMAT閱讀的出題，大多都經歷了過改編流程：首先，從自然科學、社會科學、人文學科等相關學術刊物和書籍中，挑選出合適文章；其次，再審核挑選出來的文章，從中精選出具有一定層次和鮮明態度的文章；再將文章進行改寫，使其邏輯更加緊湊、嚴密。最後，再將已改寫好的文章進行出題。

 正因為有這樣的一個出題流程，使得 GMAT 文章都有一套較為完善的邏輯結構。如果能將 GMAT 的閱讀文章分成幾個結構大類，並帶著一套邏輯結構的預期，來閱讀文章，就能找出重要資訊並閱讀次要證據。這種結構化的閱讀方法，會讓考生無論在讀文章還是做題時，都能得到事半功倍的效果。

就 GMAT 閱讀文章而言，大致可分為以下四類：新老觀點型、論點說明型、現象解釋型、問題回答型。以【新老觀點型】為例，這類題型通常標誌的就是在首段部分提出老觀點，後文以 however 或者 Yet 連接，從而提出新觀點。一般來說，新觀點和老觀點在內容上是對立的。比如，一個說高、一個說矮；一個說影響大、一個說影響小等等。這類結構的文章，當題目問到作者態度的時候，通常作者是支持後面提出的新觀點。還有一點就是這篇文章的主旨，通常是新的觀點。以下看一篇例子：

 The new school ofpolitical history that emerged in the 1960’s and 1970’s sought to go beyond thetraditional focus of political historians on leaders and governmentinstitutions by examining directly the political practices of ordinarycitizens. Like the old approach, however, this new approach excluded women. Thevery techniques these historians used to uncover mass political behavior in thenineteenth century United States—quantitative analyses of election returns, forexample—were useless in analyzing the political activities of women, who weredenied the vote until 1920.

 By redefining“political activity,” historian Paula Baker has developed a political historythat includes women. She concludes that among ordinary citizens, politicalactivism by women in the nineteenth century prefigured trends in twentiethcentury politics. Defining “politics” as “any action taken to affect the courseof behavior of government or of the community,” Baker concludes that, whilevoting and holding office were restricted to men, women in the nineteenthcentury organized themselves into societies committed to social issues such astemperance and poverty. In other words, Baker contends, women activists wereearly practitioners of nonpartisan, issue-oriented politics and thus were moreinterested in enlisting lawmakers, regardless of their party affiliation, onbehalf of certain issues than in ensuring that one party or another won anelection. In the twentieth century, more men drew closer to women’s ideas aboutpolitics and took up modes of issue-oriented politics that Baker sees women ashaving pioneered.

 這是摘自 GMAT Verbal Review 上的一篇文章。在第一段中提出了兩種研究政治歷史的方法，這兩種方法都有一個共同性，那就是“exclude women" ，並沒有將女性包括在內。緊著第二段有一個 However, 就提出第三種方法，由 Paula Baker 提出的將女性包括在內的政治歷史研究。如果在抓住了文章結構的基礎上，再去閱讀和做題，特別是在做主旨題的時候，一定會輕鬆不少。比如這篇文章，它的第一道題就問：

 The primary purposeof the passage is to

A. enumeratereasons why both traditional scholarly methods and newer scholarly methods havelimitationsB. identify a shortcoming in a scholarly approach and describe analternative approachC. provide empirical data to support a long-held scholarlyassumptionD. compare two scholarly publications on the basis of their authors’backgroundsE. attempt to provide a partial answer to a long-standing scholarly dilemma.

如果弄清楚文章的結構，那麼這道題很容易就得出答案，選 B。

 上述內容是把結構化閱讀好處做個簡要說明。總之，學習很重要，用對的方法的確可以增加提分的機會。