一、掌握文章的组织结构
文章和段落在长度上有明显不同，但是在结构上是非常相似的。段落通常由一个主题句引出，接着是一系列说明主题句的细节，最后是结尾句。同样，文章是由篇首段、主体段和结论段三部分组成。引言段揭示主题，正文部分对主题分点阐述，结论段对全文归纳总结。同时，无论文章还是段落都要遵循一致性和连贯性的原则。可以说，文章是段落的扩展， 段落是文章的缩影。
1.篇首段目的在于揭示主题，也就是说，引出文中要讨论的核心问题，从而起到统领全文的作用。通常，篇首段由引语句和中心思想句两部分组成。前者目的是引起读者的兴趣，同时使读者对文章要讨论的问题在心理上有所准备。后者向读者交待该文的主题或写作目的。总之，篇首段的作用就是使读者顺利地进入正文。
2.主体段一般由若干段落组成，它们从不同的侧面对文章的主题展开讨论。各段阐述的内容必须与主题一致，有助于说明中心思想，但是只涉及主题的一个方面。
3.结尾段概括全文的内容，使读者对全文有一个完整、清晰的认识。它往往使用不同的话重新阐述中心思想，从而与篇首段相呼应。
二、掌握段落的组织与发展方式
(一) 段落的组织结构
段落是若干相关句子围绕一个中心思想或为表达一个统一的主题而组合在一起的写作单位。一般而言，段落结构的组织有如下四种方式：
1.演绎型(general-specific)：即段落开头先给一个General statements，之后为Specific sentences。这种段落组织模式最为常见，而且多应用于说明、解释类主题结构的文章中。
2.匹配型(matching)：段落的发展主线为两种事物之间的类比，可以是两种事物各自优缺点的一一对应，也可以是先介绍完一个事物，再接着介绍另一个事物。这种结构多用于比较类主题结构的文章中。
3.假设—真实型(hypothetical-real)：即作者先提出一种普遍认可或某些人认可的主张和观点，然后进行澄清，说明自己的主张和观点，或者说提出反主张或真实情况。这种组织结构常见于反驳类主题结构的文章中。
4.问题—解决型(problem-solution)：首先陈述文章背景(situation)，在该背景下问题(problem)提出，然后给出问题的解决方法(solution)或对该问题的反应(response)，最后评估该方法(evaluation)。该模式常用于科学论文和新闻报道主题结构的文章中。
(二)段落的发展模式
1.等级型发展：即段内句际关系之间存在下定义、比较或对比、归类或列举关系。
2.线型发展：(1)以时间为顺序，常见于记叙文，表示时态的词贯穿主线。
(2)段落各句之间以因果关系为主线发展。
(3)以事物或事件的发展过程为主线，多见于说明文。
(三)段落的组成
段落一般由主题句或过渡句、扩展句、细节句组成。主题句是段落的灵魂，是为整篇文章的中心服务的，因此每个段落要么有自己的主题句，要么本身没有主题句，但它是为上文或下文的主题句服务的，以表明文章的大意；过渡句在文章中起承上启下的作用，一般有顺接关系(对上文内容的继续和发展)和转折关系(表示作者转变叙述或表达角度)；扩展句是用具体的事实去扩展、证明或支持前面主题句的句子；细节句的存在形式和扩展句相似，只是它是为后面的主题句服务的。
段落是文章的组成部分，它从某一方面阐述、说明整篇文章的主题。好的段落应清晰地、有条理地、有依据地表述一个中心思想。具体来说，好的段落具备以下三个要素：
1.中心突出
段落中心突出会给读者一目了然的感觉，否则就会显得杂乱无章。突出段落中心的一个重要手段就是主题句。主题句通常置于段落之首，这符合英语的语篇思维特征，先采用主题句开门见山地摆出问题，随之辅以细说。其作用是便于读者迅速把握主题，抓住段落的中心思想。当然，也有段落主题句设在段尾，相当于对上文的总结，考生应该能够辨明。
2.思想上保持一致(unity)
主题句确立后，还要注意说明、解释主题句的内容是否与主题相符。总之，一个段落只能有一个中心，段落中所有内容都必须围绕这一中心展开。
3.内容上连贯(coherence)
连贯的段落结构清晰，逻辑性强，过渡自然，使读者容易跟上作者的思路去理解其意图。
当然，做阅读理解Part B部分时还要考虑段际关系，即段落与段落之间的关系。段际关系可能是顺接关系、转折关系、例证关系或对比与对照关系。段际关系的理解是理解过渡句使用的前提条件。还有一种特殊的段际关系，即过渡关系，两个段落之间有一个过渡段起承上启下的作用。
三、了解常见的句际关系及语篇标识词
句际关系主要是考察空白处与前后句子之间的逻辑关系。句子与句子之间的关系可能是显性的，也可能是隐性的。显性的句际关系有明显的标志词出现，这会给考生理解文章的发展脉络带来很大方便。句际关系主要有以下几种：
1.顺接关系(顺承关系或并列关系)：后句是前句的延续或补充，标识词主要有then, after that, furthermore, also, when(this happens)等。2.转折关系：前后两句意思相反，标识词通常有but, however, nevertheless, (al)though, in fact等。3.例证关系：即论据对于论点的论证关系。典型标识词是for example, for instance， take...as an example等。4.因果关系：前因后果，或前果后因。可能出现的标识词有for, as a result, as a consequence, consequently, therefore, accordingly等。5.对比、对照关系：对比关系说明前后内容的相同之处，可能出现similarly, like等标志词；对照关系则说明前后内容的不同之处，标识词通常有as a contrast, on the contrary, on the one hand...on the other hand等。
四、理解文章中词汇的语义特征
上文提到了从整体把握文章的命脉；另外，文章中的某些关键词也能为考生提供线索。在选择时，尽量往这些关键词上“靠”，可以避免离题太远。以下三类词的作用不容忽视：
(一)名词表主题When it comes to the slowing economy, Ellen Spero isn’t biting her nails just yet. But the 47yearold manicurist isn’t cutting, filing or polishing as many nails as she’d like to, either. Most of her clients spend ＄12 to ＄50 weekly, but last month two longtime customers suddenly stopped showing up. Spero blames the softening economy. “I’m a good economic indicator”, she says. “I provide a service that people can do without when they’re concerned about saving some dollars.” So Spero is downscaling, shopping at middle brow Dillard’s department store near her suburban Cleveland home, instead of Neiman Marcus. “I don’t know if other clients are going to abandon me, too,” she says.文中的这些名词为考生提供了一条主线，即使没完全读懂，但通过这些名词考生也可以确定这是一篇与经济有关的文章，每句话都没离开这个主题。可以设想一下，如果把其中的任何一句删去，然后让考生选择后补上，在遵循以“经济”为线索的前提下都是很容易解决的。也就是说这些名词表明了这篇文章的主题。
(二)动词表变化All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing, and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. The mid1980s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of America’s industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition from overseas.动词是各种变化最明显的体现，它可以表明文中所述情况的变化、作者态度的变化以及情感的变化等。本段文字中，先不看其它文字，只看这些关键的动词“caused”、“stopped”、“began to believe”、“begin to fall”、“decline”就可以表明这是一种由好到坏或由坏到好的变化，再结合其他部分可以更加肯定这一点，因为文中所述正是关于美国经济引发的一场信任危机，以及这场危机给人们带来的情感及经济方面的变化。
(三)形容词表态度Even before Alan Greenspan’s admission that America’s red hot economy is cooling, lots of working folks had already seen signs of the slowdown themselves. From car dealerships to Gap outlets, sales have been lagging for months as shoppers temper their spending. For retailers, who last year took in 24 percent of their revenue between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the cautious approach is coming at a crucial time. Already, experts say, holiday sales are off 7 percent from last year’s pace. But don’t sound any alarms just yet. Consumers seem only mildly concerned, not panicked, and many say they remain optimistic about the economy’s long term prospects even as they do some modest belt tightening .在阅读理解Part A部分经常会遇到表明作者态度的题，同样，在Part B部分如果能明确把握作者的态度对解题也是很关键的，而形容词是最能体现作者态度的关键词。以此段为例，前半部分都是关于美国经济不景气的描述，如果只看到这些，一定会认为下文也应该是一些消极方面的描述。但其实本段的关键在后面，消费者的“only mildly concerned”和“not panicked”以及最明显的一个形容词“optimistic”都与前面的情况形成鲜明的对比，表明了作者的态度。如果在此段后设题进行选择，考生就不得不考虑这些因素了。
五、掌握词汇和语法的衔接
词汇或语法衔接(cohesion)指篇章中通过语法手段或不同的词汇形式以达到语义上的衔接连贯，这种联系表现为以下几种：
(一)重复(reiteration)：1.原词的重复，又叫原词复现，指同一主题词或关键词的重复出现。2.同义或近义词的衔接，又叫同义复现，指同义词、近义词重复出现在语篇中，语篇中的句子通过这种关系达到了相互衔接。坐标词与下义词的衔接，上坐标词是指那些意义较概括的词，它们的词义包括了下义词的词义，如bird就是swallow的上坐标词。上坐标词与下义词在语篇中相互衔接。
(二)共现(cooccurrence )：又叫搭配性衔接(collocation cohesion)，意指一系列相关的词项在篇章中的经常共现。搭配性衔接对语言信息的生成和解释均有一定的指导作用，有助于对篇章的潜在的语义演进(semantic evolution)做出预测和推测(anticipation and prediction)。
(三)替代(substitution)：语篇中的代词构成了替代衔接关系，一般而言，one指代前面的单数可数名词；that指代前面的不可数名词或句子；this指代前面的单数名词或句子；it指代前面的单数名词或整个句子；they或them指代前面的复数名词。
结合前面所讲的必备知识及解题策略进一步分析2006年考研大纲中提供的样题，具体掌握解题思路与策略应用。
Directions: In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41—45, choose the most suitable one from the list A—G to fit into each of the numbered blank. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.(10 points)
Long before Man lived on the Earth, there were fishes, reptiles, birds, insects, and some mammals. Although some ofthese animals were ancestors of kinds living today, others are now extinct, that is, they have no descendants alive now.
（41）_______. Very occasionally the rocks show impression of skin, so that, apart from color, we can build up a reasonably accurate picture of an animal that died millions of years ago. The kind of rock in which the remains are found tells us much about the nature of the original land, often of the plants that grew on it, and even of its climate.
（42）_______.Nearly all of the fossils that we know were preserved in rocks formed by water action, and most of these are of animals that lived in or near water. Thus it follows that there must be many kinds of mammals, birds, and insects, of which we know nothing.
（43）_______.There were also crablike creatures, whose bodies were covered with a horny substance. The body segments each had two pairs of legs, one pair for walking on the sandy bottom, the other for swimming. The head was a kind of shield with a pair of compound eyes, often with thousands of lenses. They were usually an inch or two long but some were 2 feet.
（44）_______. Of these, the ammonites are very interesting and important. They have a shell composed of many chambers, each representing a temporary home of the animal. As the young grew larger it grew a new chamber and sealed off the previous one. Thousands of these can be seen in the rocks on the Dorset Coast.
（45）_______.About 75 million years ago the Age of Reptiles was over and most of the groups died out. The mammals quickly developed, and we can trace the evolution of many familiar animals such as the elephant and horse. Many of the later mammals, though now extinct, were known to primitive man and were featured by him in cave paintings and on bone carvings.
［A］The shell gush have a long history in the rock and many different kinds are known.
［B］Nevertheless, we know a great deal about many of them because their bones and shells have been preserved in the rocks as fossils. From them we can tell their size and shape, how they walked, the kind of food they ate.
［C］The first animals with true backbones were the fishes, first known in the rocks of 375 million years ago. About 300 million years ago the amphibians, the animals able to live both on land and in water, appeared. They were giant, sometimes 8 feet long, and many of them lived in the swampy pools in which our coal seam, or layer, or formed. The amphibians gave rise to the reptiles and for nearly 150 million years these were the principal forms of life on land, in the sea, and in the air.
［D］The best index fossils tend to be marine creatures. These animals evolved rapidly and spread over large areas of the world.
［E］The earliest animals whose remains have been found were all very simple kinds and lived in the sea. Later forms are more complex, and among these are the sallies , relations of the starfishes, which had long arms and were attached by a long stalk to the sea bed, or to rocks.
［F］When an animal dies the body, its bones, or shell, may often be carried away by streams into lakes or the sea and there get covered up by mud. If the animal lived in the sea its body would probably sink and be covered with mud. More and more mud would fall upon it until the bones or shell become embedded and preserved
［G］Many factors can influence how fossils are preserved in rocks. Remains of an organism may be replaced by minerals, dissolved by an acidic solution to leave only their impression, or simply reduced to a more stable form.
41.【解析】选［B］。本题主要通过句组关系的理解来解答。跳过空格阅读第一段可以看出，本段主要讲述了史前动物的存在(第一句)、部分种类的灭绝(空格前第二句，句中they have no descendants alive now是对extinct一词的解释)以及从化石(rocks as fossils)中我们所能发现的数百万年前就死掉了的动物的精确印记(空格后第一句)和当时的地貌及气候特征(空格后第二句)。由此，我们就看到了空格前后两个句组所叙述内容之间的矛盾和内容上的不足：1)既然已经“灭绝”，怎么还能了解有关的这一切呢？说明空格前的句子与其空格所在的句子之间具有转折关系。2)空格后第一句中the rocks指的又是什么石头呢？需要在前有所提及，即正确选项中应包含有rock这个词。能够同时满足这两个条件的只有选项［B］。［A］、［E］、［G］中也提到了rock，但在句际关系上与前后句组不相吻合，故不正确。所以正确答案只能是［B］。
42.【解析】选［F］。文章第一段说明了化石是我们研究史前动物的主要依据，而本段则主要说明了这些化石的形成。空格后“几乎我们所知的所有化石都是在由于水作用而形成的岩石中保存下来的 (Nearly all of the fossils that we know were preserved in rocks formed by water action) ”一句是一个结论性表述，之前应有“水作用形成的岩石(rocks formed by water action)”这一过程的细节描述。［F］的内容正好说明死去动物的尸体是如何被水和泥沙保存下来的，与此恰相吻合，所以选［F］。此题极易错选［G］，因为［G］一开始就有how fossils are preserved，后面又出现了impression一词，在用词上出现明显的复现现象。 但是［G］后面讲的是动物遗体上的有机组织“organism”可能转化成的几种形式，这与下文的内容不相吻合，故不选［G］。
43.【解析】选［E］。本题选择的线索有两条：1)空格后有“There were also crablike creatures...”，说明空白处应有关于另一类动物的内容；2) 从本段开始，文章转向讨论由低级向高级进化中的动物。［E］开始的部分是“The earliest animals whose remains have been found...”，符合文章写作的顺序。［B］与上文相符，但与下文不符，且与全文结构不相吻合。
44.【解析】选［A］。从上一段和本段的 “段际关系”来看，两段属于顺接关系，即两段在相继描述两种不同层级、不同种类的史前动物。从段落结构上来看，两段的开头句都是其主题句，下文接着展开进行细节描述。特别是本段空格后的Of these, ...，标志着空格后一句是空格所在句的拓展句。既然下文一开始就有Of these, ...，空白部分就应该有“some，several，many”或类似的词；再者，此段中关于the ammonites(总类中的一种，考生不必知道其确切含义)的描述，主要阐述了其shell的构造，由此说明shell是其主要特征，故在 “总类”的描述(即空缺句)中应该含有shell一词，这就不难判断答案只能是［A］了。
45.【解析】选［C］。此空独立成段，所以只能从段际关系来分析。因为前两段描述了史前动物由低级向高级的进化过程，而此段后就是结尾段，因此,此段必然要起“承上启下”的作用。所谓 “承上”，是指要对上文进行一定的概括、总结；所谓 “启下”则是要引出下文。下文中的“reptile”在本题空白处前面的文章中从没有提到，在下文中又没有作为新信息，因而作为正确答案的选项中一定有这个词。［C］从375 million years ago的化石的发现到300 million years ago的化石的发现，以及此后nearly 150 million years内the reptiles的存在，不但对史前动物的进化过程做了很好的概括，而且为下文the Age of Reptile的出现打下了伏笔，是一个很好的“承上启下”的过渡段，所以正确答案只能是［C］。
仿真试题
Passage 1
It was a cold, rainy and wholly miserable afternoon in Washington, and a hot muggy night in Miami. It was Sunday, and three games were played in the two cities. The people playing them and the people watching them tell us much about the ever-changing ethnic structure of the United States.
Professional football in the United States is almost wholly played by native-born American citizens, mostly very large and very strong, many of them black. It is a game of physical strength. Linemen routinely weigh more than 300 pounds. Players are valued for their weigh and muscles, for how fast they can run, and how hard they can hit each other. Football draws the biggest crowds, but the teams play only once a week, because they get so battered.
The 67,204 fans were in Miami for the final game of the baseball World Series. Baseball was once America''s favorite game, but has lost that claim to basketball.
Baseball is a game that requires strength, but not hugeness. Agility, quickness, perfect vision and quick reaction are more important than pure strength. Baseball was once a purely American game, but has spread around much of the New World. In that Sunday''s final, the final hit of the extra inning game was delivered by a native of Columbia. The Most Valuable Player in the game was a native of Columbia. The rosters of both teams were awash with Hispanic names, as is Miami, which now claims the World Championship is a game that may be losing popularity in America, but has gained it in much of the rest of the world. Baseball in America has taken on a strong Hispanic flavor, with a dash of Japanese added for seasoning.
Soccer, which many countries just call football, is the most widely enjoyed sport in the world. In soccer, which many countries just call football, the ethnic tide has been the reverse of baseball. Until recently, professional soccer in the United States has largely been an import, played by South Americans and Europeans. Now, American citizens in large numbers are finally taking up the most popular game in the world.
Basketball, an American invention increasingly played around the world, these days draws large crowds back home. Likewise, hockey, a game largely imported to the United States from neighboring Canada. Lacrosse, a version of which was played by Native Americans before the Europeans arrived, is also gaining a keen national following.
Sports of all kinds are winning support from American armchair enthusiasts from a variety of ethnic backgrounds.
1.Which of the following can reflect the ever-changing ethnic structure of America?
[A] Sportsman. [B] Audience. [C] Both of them. [D] None of them.
2.Who play professional football in the United States?.
[A] Native-born American citizens.[B] Europeans.
[C] South Americans. [D] Both B and C.
3.What is America''s favorite game?
[A] Baseball. [B] Basketball. [C] Professional football. [D] Soccer.
4.Which of the following statements about soccer is true?
[A] In soccer and basketball, the ethnic tide is different.
[B] Until recently, soccer becomes an important game, so many native Americans play it.
[C] It is the most popular game in the world, so many American citizens take up it.
[D] Although soccer is the most popular game in the world, American citizens in large numbers do not like first.
5.The author of the passage wants to tell us that ____.
[A] Americans like sports and sports reveal much about the changing ethnic structure of the United States.
[B] In Washington, several games are played in one day.
[C] Americans like all kinds of games.
[D] The American games are watched by native-Americans and played by people from different countries.
Keys to Passage 1
C A D B A
