考研英语阅读理解猜测词义的提问方式_新浪教育

考研英语阅读理解猜测词义的提问方式

http://www.sina.com.cn 2003/07/10 15:53 双博士丛书

　　这种题型就是理解文章中某一个词、词组或短语的含义，而理解这些词的含义主要是通过上下文的各种关系。包括词与词、短语与短语以及句子之间的关系等。

　　(一)掌握命题方式

　　常见的命题方式有：

　　①The phrase“…”(in line...) most probably means .

　　②As used in the passage, the phrase“…”suggests .

　　③What does the author probably mean by“…”in…Paragraph?

　　④By“…”, the writer means .

　　例：1992年第1篇全真考研题

　　It is all very well to blame traffic jams,the cost of petrol and the quick pace of modern life,but manners on the roads are becoming horrible.Everybody knows that the nicest men become monsters behind the wheel.It is all very well,again,to have a tiger in the tank,but to have one in the driver's seat is another

　　matter altogether.You might tolerate the odd roadhog,the rude and inconsiderate driver,but nowadays the well mannered motorist is the exception to the rule.Perhaps the situation calls for a“Be Kind to Other Drivers”campaign,otherwise itmay get completely out of hand.

　　Road politeness is not only good manners,but good sense too.It takes the most coolheaded and good tempered of drivers to resist the temptation to revenge when subjected to uncivilized behavior.On the other hand,a little politeness goes a long way towards relieving the tensions of motoring.A friendly nod or a wave of acknowledgment in response to an act of politeness helps to create an atmosphere of goodwill and tolerance so necessary in modern traffic conditions.But such acknowledgments of politeness are all too rare today.Many drivers nowadays donteven seem able to recognize politeness when they see it.

　　However,misplaced politeness can also be dangerous.Typical examples are the driver who brakes violently to allow a car to emerge from a side street at some hazard to following traffic,when a few seconds later the road would be clear anyway;or the man who waves a child across a zebra crossingsintosthe path of oncoming vehicles that may be unable to stop in time.The same goes for encouraging old ladies to cross the road wherever and whenever they care to.It always amazes me that the highways are not covered with the dead bodies of these grannies.

　　A veteran driver,whose manners are faultless,told me it would help if motorists learnt to filter correctlysintostraffic streams one at a time without causing the total blockages that give rise to bad temper.Unfortunately,modern motorists cant even learn to drive,let alone master the subtler aspects of roadsmanship.Years ago the experts warned us that the car ownership explosion would demand a lotmore give and take from all road users.It is high time for all of us to take this message to heart.

　　33.By“good sense”,the writer means.

　　A.the driver's ability to understand and react reasonably

　　B.the driver's prompt response to difficult and severe conditions

　　C.the driver's tolerance of rude or even savage behavior

　　D.the driver's acknowledgment of politeness and regulations

　　33A本题我们要根据上下文来判断“good sense”是什么意思，根据文章的第二段第一句话说，“Road politeness is not only good manners,but good sense too”。本段第四句话又说“A friendly nod or a wave of acknowledgment in response to an act of politeness...”，最后一句话又说：“Many drivers dont even seem able to recognize politeness when they see it”，这两句话从正反两方面论述了作者使用“good sense”的意思是“司机应能正确理解并且做出合理的反应”。所以本题目的正确答案是A。B的内容在原文中未被涉及；C的内容只说对了一半，不仅要容忍不文明的举止，而且要对礼貌行为予以认可以及作出反应；D与C相似只讲对了一半，除此还要作出某种反应，故后三个选项全不对。

　　(二)根据构词法和上下文推断词义

　　在任何阅读理解材料中，我们都不可避免地遇到不熟悉的词或词组，或者认识的单词在文中有了新的意义。当然我们可以查字典找出它们的意思，但是这样我们的阅读速度会大大减慢，并且在考试中是不允许考生查字典的。如果这些词或短语不影响对文章主要内容的理解，我们便可以将它们略过，继续阅读。如果了解这些词语的意思对准确理解文章很重要，这时我们就必须对这些生词的词义进行猜测，使之不影响对整篇文章的理解。因此，熟练地掌握判断词义这种技巧是非常有益的。需要注意的是，一个单词通常有好几个意思，我们要了解的是这些词在文中所表达的意思，因此，不可脱离上、下文，只根据自己了解的词义来确定其意义。通常，猜测词义可以采用以下几种方法：

　　1.根据构词法，判断生词词义

　　一个单词可以通过前缀、后缀、合成等形式派生出很多其他单词，如light(光)、lighten(使明亮)、lighting(照明)、lighter(打火机)、lightness(光亮)、lightless(无光的)等。根据构词法，只要我们知道其中词根的词义，就可判断出其派生的其他词义。例如：

　　The throw way spirit or the spirit of wastefulness has become part of American life and consumption only keeps rising. Besides,according to the economists,we depend so much on this wasting and buying that people will probably be encouraged to consume even more in the years to come if the U.S. economy is to prosper. In other words,these marketing experts say that‘the average citizen will have to step up his buying by nearly fifty percent inthe next dozen years, or the economy will sicken.’This means that the producer of household commodities,i.e. a television manufacturer,will have to find new means of making further sales since nine out of ten American homes nowadays have one television set. He could,for instance,launch a campaign to induce people to have a second TV set or one for each member of the family - or he could produce a TV set so sophisticated that people wouldwish to replace their old set.

　　根据单词的后缀，知道waste是名词，ful是形容词的后缀，表示“充满……”。名词+ful构成形容词，wasteful意思是“浪费的”，“耗费的”，就可推出wastefulness是其名词的形式。知道consume是动词，意思是“消费”，那么consumption就是其名词形式。知道sick是形容词，意思是“患病”，sicken就是其动词形式，“变坏”。知道manufacture是动词，意思是“制造”，manufacturer就是名词，意思是“制造者，制造商”。根据单词的合成，知道了house和hold的词义，分别是“房屋”和“拥有”，就会猜到household是“家用”的意思，如此等等。当然要做到这一点就得有一定的英语基本构词知识。

　　例：1994年第4篇全真考研题

　　“I have great confidence that by the end of the decade well know in vast detail how cancer cells arise,”says microbiologist Robert Weinberg,an expert on cancer.“But,”he cautions,“some people have the idea that once one understands thecauses,the cure will rapidly follow.Consider Pasteur,he discovered the causes of many kinds of infections,but it was fifty or sixty years before cures were available.”

　　This year,50 percent of the 910,000 people who suffer from cancer will survive atleast five years.In the year 2,000,the National Cancer Institute estimates,thatfigure will be 75 percent.For some skin cancers,the five year survival rate isas high as 90 percent.But other survival statistics are still discouraging-13 percent for lung cancer,and 2 percent for cancer of the pancreas(胰腺).

　　With as many as 120 varieties in existence,discovering how cancer works is not easy.The researchers made great progress in the early 1970s,when they discovered that oncogenes,which are cancer-causing genes(基因)，are inactive in normal cells.Anything from cosmic rays to radiation to diet may activate a“dormant”oncogene,but how remains unknown.If several oncogenes are drivensintosaction,the cell,unable to turn them off,becomes cancerous.

　　The exact mechanisms involved are still mysterious,but the likelihood that many cancers are initiated at the level of genes suggests that we will never prevent all cancers.“Changes are a normal part of the evolutionary process,”says oncologists William Hayward.Environmental factors can never be totally eliminated;asHayward points out,“We cant prepare a medicine against cosmic rays.”

　　The prospects for cure,though still distant,are brighter.

　　“First,we need to understand how the normal cell controls itself.Second,we haveto determine whether there are a limited number of genes in cells which are always responsible for at least part of the trouble.If we can understand how cancerworks,we can counteract its action.”

　　66.The word“dormant”in the third paragraph most probably means.

　　A.deadB.ever presentC.inactiveD.potential

　　66C此题我们要推测词的意思。根据文章的第三段的第二、三句话，oncogene一般情况下是不活动的、迟钝的，但是任何情况诸如宇宙射线，辐射或饮食都会激活这一不活动的、迟钝的oncogene，理所当然，dormant应为inactive之意，所以C是本道题目的正确答案。B.ever present意思是“无时无处不在的”；D.potential“潜在的”。

　　2.利用所出现生词的上下文与其意义上的联系或下文进一步的叙述猜测词义

　　例如：

　　①My parents usual arguments only made her more inconsolable. Nothing they said made her feel any better.

　　通过第二句“什么事情也不能使她感觉好些”，可以判断inconsolable的意思是“没法安慰的”。

　　②The female mosquito is a vampire and lives on blood.

　　如不知道vampire的词义，从下文lives on blood(靠吸血而生存)则可得知其词义为吸血昆虫。

　　例：1994年第5篇全真考研题

　　Discoveries in science and technology are thought by“untaught minds”to come in blinding flashes or as the result of dramatic accidents.Sir Alexander Flemingdid not ,as legend would have it,look at the mold(霉)on a piece of cheese and get the idea for penicillin there and then.He experimented with antibacterial substances for nine years before he made his discovery.Inventions and innovations almost always come out of laborious trial and error.Innovation is like soccer;even the best players miss the goal and have their shots blocked much more frequently than they score.

　　The point is that the players who score most are the ones who take the most shots at the goal and so it goes with innovation in any field of activity,the prime difference between innovators and others is one of approach.Everybody gets ideas,but innovators work consciously on theirs and they follow them through until they prove practicable or otherwise.What ordinary people see as fanciful abstractions,professional innovators see as solid possibilities.

　　“Creative thinking may mean simply the realization that there's no particular virtue in doing things the way they have always been done.”wrote Rudolph Flesch,a language authority.This accounts for our reaction to seemingly simple innovations like plastic garbage bags and suitcases on wheels that make life more convenient:“How come nobody thought of that before?”

　　The creative approach begins with the proposition that nothing is as it appears.Innovators will not accept that there is only one way to do anything.Faced with

　　getting from A to B,the average person will automatically set out on the best known and apparently simplest route.The innovator will search for alternate courses,which may prove easier in the long run and are bound to be more interesting and challenging even if they lead to dead ends.

　　Highly creative individuals really do march to a different drummer.

　　67.What does the author probably mean by“untaught minds”in the first paragraph?

　　A.A person ignorant of the hard work involved in experimentation

　　B.A citizen of a society that restricts personal creativity

　　C.A person who has had no education

　　D.An individual who often comes up with new ideas by accident

　　67AA person ignorant of the hard work involved in experimentation

　　文章的第一句话指出：“untaught minds”认为科学技术上的发现是碰巧及偶然而为之的结果，即untaught minds对科学实验中的辛苦劳动没有给予充分的重视，符合这一意思的是选项A。

　　3.利用文中的举例猜测词义

　　例如：

　　①The dromedary,like all desert animals,can go for long periods of time without drinking water.

　　通过like这个词，不难猜测dromedary这个词的意思应是“一种沙漠里的动物”。

　　②Some artists plan their paintings around geometric forms like squares,circles and triangles.

　　如不知道“geometric forms”的意思，可从文中所列举的三角形、正方形、圆形来猜得其意义为“几何图形”。

　　③Today young couples who are just starting their households often spend lots oftheir money on appliances,for instance,washing machines,refrigerators and color televisions.

　　如不知道appliances的意思，从文中的举例“washing machines(洗衣机)，refrigerators(冰箱)，televisions(电视机)”可以猜得该词的意思是“家用电器”。

　　4.利用文中说明词义的同位语或定语等猜测词义

　　例如：

　　①The type of meter is called multi meter,which is used to measure electricity.

　　通过定语从句“which is used to measure electricity”(用来测量电的)，我们可将“multimeter”的词义确定为“万用表”。

　　②They will be on the night shift-from midnight to 6 a.m.-next day.

　　由破折号之间的解释内容，我们可了解到“night shift”意思为“夜班”。

　　5.利用文章中所出现的、与某生词或词组意思相反的内容猜测词义

　　例如：

　　①American businessmen expect employees to be punctual. They do not expect that the workers will come late.

　　文中be punctual的意思，可理解为“not come late”，即“准时，不迟到”。

　　②Unlike her gregarious sister,Jane is a shy person,who does not liketo go to parties,or to make new friends.

　　根据文中“unlike…”的意思，可将gregarious理解为与文中“a shy person who does not like to go to parties,or to make new friends.”相反的意思，即：表示“好交际的”。

　　③Her shirt was clean but her shoes were grubby.

　　假定不认识grubby,但通过but这个词可以看出这个句子是一种转折和对比，由此，我们可推测这句话的意思是：“她的衬衣很干净而鞋却很脏。”

　　6.利用文章中用不同的话对同一概念的解释猜测词义

　　例如：

　　①Should the government regulate the cost of resources such as oil and gas? Somepeople do not believe that government control is the solution to the problem ofthe rising cost of fuel.

　　文中“regulate”的词义可猜测为与“government control”的意思相近。

　　②One of the predominant concerns today is the future of our natural resources. This issue is of greatest importance because it is becoming clear to many peoplethat our present resources will not last forever.

　　文中“predominent”的词义可猜测为具有与“of greatest importance”相近的意思。

　　Cleaning up waterways is an enormous task. The job is so large,infact,that the government may not be able to save some of the rivers and lakes which have been polluted.

　　文中“enormous”的词义可猜测为与“so large”的意思相近。

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