四、材料阅读技巧

新SAT作文的考查方向由“说服技巧”转化为“分析技巧”。在写分析性作文时，考生需要在文章中给出主旨及主题句，并从考试给定的资料文本中选取论据来支持自己的分析，所以透彻阅读资料文本是写出一篇优秀作文的“基石”。

现在我们来介绍三种基本的阅读技巧。

1．略读（Skimming）

略读是一种快速了解文章信息的方式。我们不需要逐字逐句地读，而是利用有选择的阅读方式来跳过细节，把握文章大意。

对于SAT作文的阅读材料，我们可以从以下几个方面进行略读：

1）跳过顶部的考试说明（Prompt），略读底部的考试说明（Prompt）

考试说明（Prompt）位于阅读文章开头顶部和结尾底部的方框中。其中顶部的考试说明（Prompt）在每次考试中（除作者名字）是固定不变的；底部的考试说明（Prompt）基本不变，每次变化的只有一句总结作者行文目标的表述，我们可以找出并掌握这句话。

考生基本不需要在考试期间阅读考试说明，只需在备考期间找一个官方的固定版本，读懂并知道主要任务就可以了。

考试说明（Prompt）示例如下：

在考试说明（Prompt）中规定了作文的任务和目标，具体可参照下面表格中的译文：

2）阅读黑体字中的标题

文章的开头上方有一段黑体字，引号中的内容就是这则新闻报道的标题。一般根据标题就能大致推测出文章的题材。

如图所示，本篇材料文本的标题就是“Foreign News at a Crisis Point”，依据题目我们可以推测出，本篇文章可能是关于文化和新闻方面的题材。

3）阅读大意

用略慢的速度阅读文章的第一段、结尾段及每段的开始句和结尾句，体会文章的特色和语气，然后找出主旨句，并粗略地把握文章的内容。

示例

2．注读（Close Reading ＆ Annotation）

注读包括了精读和批注。精读（Close Reading）常常被用于短篇文章，即利用精确细致的阅读方式来获取细节信息。而批注（Annotation）则用于精读时对信息的标注，以便于读者记录其阅读理解的过程，两者合称为“注读”。在注读的过程中，我们需要注意以下几点：

1）把握段落及篇章结构

用批注的方式（一般是下划线）标注出篇章主旨、段落主题句及篇章结论句；注意过渡句或过渡词，因为这些句或词的出现，标志着重要或一般语义的转换。

示例

2）把握主要技巧

理解并把握文本的特征性论据、语气及风格论证技巧等文本技巧。通过一些标志性语言找出作者在文章中采用的技巧，如通过数字来判断论据方式，通过一些形象生动的表达来判定修辞方式等。

示例

3）把握细节

一篇具有广泛读者群且有争议性的文章，它的词汇往往是经过字斟句酌而精心选择的，某些选词更是有目的地去表达某种特殊效果。所以在精读过程中，应标注特殊选词，尤其是那些与支持文章主旨或主题句相关的或表达某种修辞效果的词汇和数据等。

4）批注

读者可以在注读时，在页面的边缘空白处及字里行间做出批注。批注的顺序及常用符号如下图所示：

示例

在平时练习时，学生要注意使用清晰的、一致的符号进行系统性的批注练习，这样才能在写作文时快速选择并标出自己所需要的信息。

下面我们通过问答的形式学习一篇完整的议论文批注。（Reading an argument and answering the following question.）

Adapted from Anna Lee, "We're throwing away tons of fruits and veggies for not being pretty enough." @ 2015 by Washington Post. Originally published March 13, 2015.

Anna Lee is a PhD student in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources at Stanford University.

You can always tell when I've been munching from a bowl of tortilla chips because the only ones left are the perfect ones: all three corners intact, no folded edges, no giant air bubbles. The broken chips and burnt bits and crumbs usually lurking at the bottom of the bowl are gone. I ate them.

● In the first sentence, "munching" is used to indicate what?

Snacking.

● If the only information available was the first paragraph, what would you think the remainder of the article was about?

The writer is discussing eating something that isn't perfect, so I would think the remainder of the article is about imperfect food.

I like to eat the weird ones, whether it's chips or cauliflower. I habitually seek the nonconformist food products: the intertwined "love carrots," the kiwi twins, the apples with codling moth damage, the kale leaves that the cabbage loopers have nibbled. I picked up this habit while I was working on an organic farm in California, where we grew everything from strawberries to chard to sweet corn. When we harvested "seconds" — the perfectly edible, often slightly more delicious, fruits and veggies that weren't quite pretty enough to offer to our customers — they went directly to our own kitchen, where we ate them with (or made them into) relish.

● In the second paragraph, how many ways is the word "relish" used?

Two.

● Explain your answer to the last question.

There are two meanings here for relish. First, saying "relish" is a way to indicate enjoyment. For example, I relish the experience of walking on The Great Wall. So when the writer says "We ate them with relish" it means that they ate them with joy and pleasure. Second, relish is a kind of food made out of vegetables. So the writer puts parentheses around "or made them into" as a way to point out this play on words and the two meanings of "relish" since this is an article about enjoying food.

That farm was lucky to have a built-in community of people excited to consume the odd ones, but that's not how the rest of our food system works. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that high cosmetic standards in the retail industry exclude 20 to 40 percent of fresh produce from the market. Sometimes farmers can sell those unwanted to processors making jam or cider or pickles, but as those systems rely increasingly on mechanization, they become less flexible when it comes to shape and size. Tons of food — 800 to 900 million tons globally each year, the weight of 9,000 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers — rot in storage or don't make it out of the fields because farmers can't find a market.

● What is the main focus of this paragraph?

The main focus of this paragraph is the amount of food being wasted.

● Why does the writer say so much food is wasted?

The writer says food is wasted because of automation standards of machinery and cosmetic standards of the retail market.

● What does the writer use to make the reader understand how much food is wasted?

The writer uses statistics and a comparison to gigantic ships.

● In this paragraph, what is meant by "cosmetic?"

Cosmetic here refers to the physical appearance of the fruits and vegetables.

● What does the writer want us to feel in this sentence?

The writer wants us to be shocked by the amount of food that is wasted.

The organic farm where I worked marketed primarily through a farm stand and a subscription service, so we had the luxury of communicating directly with our customers about why our produce looked the way it did. But farmers selling through distributors face very different standards. Some criteria are rightly based on food-safety and shelf-life considerations, but many are manifestations of misguided normative ideas about what produce should look like. Cucumbers should be straight, cauliflower florets should be tightly held, and rhubarb stalks should be ruby red. If not, retailers tell farmers, consumers won't buy them.

● In this paragraph, how does the writer feel about farmers?

The writer is sympathetic to farmers.

● How do you know this?

The writer is acknowledging that the farmer has many difficulties to overcome that are not his fault and that are often unreasonable.

I worked on a second farm that sent much more produce to the compost pile. Beet butts, the ones that have deep vertical creases, and knobby potatoes were doomed. Kohlrabi that had grown too fast and split and Brussels sprout stalks that had seen any aphid action also got axed, even though the bugs pose no health risk. Even on the organic farm, we had to leave a lot of chard in the fields — our subscription-service customers, who tended to accept or even prefer imperfect produce, objected to certain types of damage to chard leaves.

● What is the goal of this paragraph?

In this paragraph, the writer is illustrating the inconsistencies from one farm to the next in the amount and types of food wasted.

● Why does the writer use the words "doomed" and "axed?"

The writer uses these words to make the reader think of a person who is facing a loss of a job, because both of these words are commonly used when talking about an employee in danger of being fired or laid off. The foods are going to be "fired" because they aren't pretty enough.

Farmers recognize that they're at the whim of nature, and they plan accordingly, sowing extra seed with the assumption that pests, diseases or weather will take out some of the crop. That's part of life. But when plants survive all of that, only to be rejected because they happen to be too small, a little twisted or not quite evenly colored, the loss is harder to face. My heart broke a little as I wheeled barrows of unmarketable onions that had grown long and skinny instead of short and round to the compost pile, or surveyed a field dotted with winter squash that we'd had to leave behind because the vegetables had been nibbled by bugs or were too small. The nutrients in that produce would go back into the soil and nourish next year's crops, which was a noble purpose in its own right. But it was not the future we'd planned for our seedlings. Good farmers invest themselves in their crops with visions of feeding their communities. To see our produce fall short of its potential, our efforts thwarted by senseless prejudice, struck me as an absurd injustice. Plant an extra row for the bugs, or one for the gophers, or one for the drought, sure — but an extra row for narrow-mindedness?

● What does the writer focus on here?

The writer focuses on the amount crops planted by the farmer.

● What things determine how much the farmer plants?

The farmer will plant according to anticipated problems such as bad weather, pests, plant diseases, and imperfect produce.

● In this article, what is the meaning of "produce?"

Produce is used here to mean fruits and vegetables.

● Does the writer think the farmer's reasons are logical and does she agree with them?

The writer thinks the reasons are logical, but she does not agree with planting additional crops just because some of them might make ugly fruits and vegetables.

● Does the writer like farmers?

Yes.

This system hurts more than the wallets and feelings of farmers — it's a tremendous waste of resources. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that global food wastage, about half of which occurs during production and post-harvest handling and storage, was responsible for 3.6 billion tons of CO2 equivalent emissions in 2007, the most recent year for which data is available; that's more CO2 than Brazil, Japan and Australia together emitted in 2011. Wasted food also takes 250 cubic kilometers of water to produce every year, which is 38 times the amount used by all households in the United States combined.

● What is the focus of this paragraph?

The focus of this paragraph is the environmental impact of wasting food.

● What parts of the environment are impacted in the process of wasting the food?

There are greenhouse gases produced and water wasted.

● What does the writer use to illustrate the volume of environmental waste?

The writer uses a comparison.

By insisting on perfect-looking produce, customers also cheat themselves of taste and variety. Apple breeders used to select specifically for russetting because it was associated with longer shelf life. That's how we got Hudson's Golden Gem, a delicious variety that's a favorite among my farmer friends. But you'll never find a Gem in a standard grocery store today, precisely because of that russetting. We've decided that apples should be shiny, not rough; large, not small; and red or green, but definitely not brown; so now what we find in stores are piles of uniform red delicious apples with latex-like skin, mealy flesh and no complexity of flavor. Customers are missing out on the pleasures of a russetted apple: the coarse texture against the tongue and the concentrated flavor of the dense flesh that accompanies it.

● What is the focus of this paragraph?

The writer is illustrating how farmers in the past would grow crops more for their taste and longevity and less for their appearance.

● Does the writer prefer the pretty and perfect or the ugly and imperfect?

The writer prefers the ugly and imperfect.

● How do you know this?

The writer talks about an apple with a perfect appearance in a negative way, and talks about all of the perfect points as if they are bad things.

Consumers waste plenty of food after the point of purchase, and we can change our habits to curb that — by planning our grocery trips better; by ignoring "best by" dates, which indicate nothing about the safety of the food; by saving those overripe bananas for banana bread. But we can help cut waste upstream as well by embracing broader aesthetic standards. Choose the odd tomatoes and the gnarly parsnips. Buy the undersize beets and the broken almonds. Tell our grocers and our farmers that we'd rather have a slightly dented butternut squash than a hot, dry planet. Support businesses that help get the less-beautiful produce out of fields and onto consumers' tables. (One French grocer, Intermarché, began buying "ugly" produce in 2014 and selling it at slightly reduced prices at several locations; the success prompted the company to expand the initiative to all of its stores.) We can stop our valuable food — every pound of which represents a sizable investment of energy, water, labor and money — from leaving the system without fulfilling is purpose.

● What is the purpose of this paragraph?

The writer is trying to encourage people not to waste food and suggests ways to make that happen.

● Does the writer believe this is practical?

Yes, because she gives an example of a supermarket chain that sold imperfect product and had a great success with it.

By all means, eat the beautiful ones and celebrate the unblemished apple that nature is capable of producing. But don't neglect their equally nutritious, no less wondrous, slightly unconventional brethren. When you stop to consider how much you're really saving, you may even find they taste better.

● What is the purpose of this paragraph?

This paragraph is the conclusion.

● What does the writer want us to do?

The writer suggest us to eat both pretty and ugly fruits and vegetables because both are excellent food sources.

示例

Reading an argument and answering the following questions.（请大家先自己回答，然后再参照给出的答案打分。）

Adapted from Anne Karpf, "Our cities must undergo a revolution for older people." @ 2015 by The Guardian. Originally published March 15, 2015.

Stand at the traffic lights on a major street in any city．Now, when the green man invites you, try to cross the road．Unless you have the acceleration of an Olympic sprinter, the chances are that the beeps will stop, the green man will flash and cars will rev impatiently before you've reached the sanctuary of the other side．Especially if you have a disability, are pushing a buggy or laden with shopping．Or are old．The Department of Health says the average walking speed demanded by pedestrian crossings is 1．2 meters a second, while the average speed of the older pedestrian is just 0．7 to 0．9 meters per second．

1．What is the purpose of this paragraph?

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2．What does the reader think it is like to be an elderly person in a big city?

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3．How does the writer make you know this?

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4．Why does the writer underline the information in the last sentence?

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Cities are designed for a mythical average person — super-mobile, without dependents or disabilities and with a cast-iron bladder. This person is more likely to be young than old. And yet by 2030, two-thirds of the world's population will be living in cities and, in high-income societies, a quarter of them will be over the age of 60.

5．In this paragraph, what does the writer believe about cities?

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6．What word tells you this?

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7．In the last sentence, how much is one quarter?

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8．Why is this important?

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There's a paradox at the heart of cities and old people, and it's this: all the research on health and wellbeing—and there's reams of it—suggests that old people are more content and more likely to flourish if they go out, participate in local life and have a decent amount of social interaction.

9．What is the purpose of this paragraph?

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And yet about half of people over 65 face problems getting outdoors; for them the city is an inhospitable place, with its cluttered streets, uneven pavements, poor lighting and signage. Details — like the bus driver who moves off before you have time to sit down, or doesn't park close enough to the curb — have a huge impact on their sense of confidence and safety. But if they stay in — in "self-imposed house arrest", as Chris Phillipson, professor of sociology and social gerontology at the University of Manchester, calls it — their physical and mental health is liable to deteriorate, and they're prone to isolation and depression.

10．What is the purpose of this paragraph?

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The result is that our city centers have become age-cleansed youth enclaves, where the only older people to be seen (in theatres, museums and concerts) are affluent ones. "It's a form of spatial injustice that has crept up on us: we've come to accept that certain areas of the urban environment are appropriate only for certain income groups and ages, as if that's just how it is," says Phillipson. "It's quite dangerous, as if we're pushing certain social groups back into the home." Where they become, literally, socially invisible.

11．How does this paragraph differ from the previous paragraph in #10?

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12．Does the writer believe there are many older people enjoying public places?

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13．Why?

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14．What assumption is the writer making about most elderly people in large cities?

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15．How do you know this?

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It's curious, then, that the chief narrative about aging should dwell so much on biomedical ideas of declining bodies requiring clinical solutions, and so little on the ways in which the environment is itself disabling for older people. It's an approach that privatizes public experience, displacing it on to the individual and their deteriorating capacities. Aging becomes a "problem", and a personal matter rather than a relational one that takes place in the symbiosis of body and culture. What would it be like to reconfigure this, so we're not seen as impaired by age—to understand that human needs change over a lifetime and the well-designed city should be sensitive to them?

16．What is the purpose of this paragraph?

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17．How does the writer believe people are currently acting about becoming older?

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This is precisely what the World Health Organization has done with its Age-Friendly Cities project, set up in 2006, which shows how the physical and social environment can help people "age actively". Now 258 cities and communities have signed up to what has become a global network, with Manchester in 2010 the first British city to join. The concept of "age-friendly" cities seems to be having a moment, with three events on age-friendly cities taking place this month. Public Wisdom, which runs an education program and has organized one of the events, is even campaigning to turn Angel in Islington, north London, into the UK's first age-friendly town center.

18．What is the purpose of this paragraph?

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19．Why is this important?

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But what does all this actually mean? Peruse the literature on this matter and you end up suffering from mission statement fatigue. Much of what's being called for is simply an improvement to the fabric of the city. Better housing? Check. Better public transport? Check. Better infrastructure? Check. It's a wish-list that, whatever our ages, we'd all applaud. Yet we're living in an age of savage slicing of public services, with city centers shaped by marauding developers who care not at all if they're age-friendly or even people-friendly.

Are the abundant joint strategies, steering groups, actions, plans, forums, workshops and hubs advocating "age-friendly" cities anything more than, at best, an aspiration that demonstrates how age-unfriendly most cities are?

20．Does the writer believe that the changes needed to cities will benefit only old people?

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21．How do you know this?

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22．Does the writer approve of the way builders design city facilities?

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23．How do you know this?

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24．What does the writer think prevents many of these things from happening?

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25．How do you know this?

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Paul McGarry, of the Age-Friendly Manchester program, concedes that, while there may be "an element of slogan to it, we're trying to change the way that old people are perceived". And then I realize that I've been looking in the wrong place — searching for the grand gesture, the sweeping change: age-friendly by government fiat. In reality, age-friendly changes are taking place all around us at the level where most of us live — locally and hyper-locally. They are micro-changes, which is why they're so easily overlooked. The take-a-seat initiative, in Manchester's Old Moat area, gave chairs to a row of local shops so that people could sit down, without any pressure to buy or consume on the premises. Like putting shelters and seats at bus stops, this also encourages social interaction.

26．Does the writer believe the necessary changes are being made?

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27．Does the writer believe the changes are being made all at one time?

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28．What examples show that the changes are slow and small?

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29．How does the person quoted think old people are perceived now?

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30．How do you know this?

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In the newly reopened Whitworth gallery all the guides are trained to be "dementia-friendly". Manchester's Band on the Wall club is reclaimed every couple of months for clubbers over 50. Then there are age-friendly gardens, with raised planting beds to make them accessible to people in wheelchairs, age-friendly parks (no steps), and in Newcastle the "vitality bench" (arm-rests that help you get up, and warm-to-touch materials).

Other countries are innovating, too. Lyon's "cyclopousse" is a delightful pedicab transport service tailored for older people. The Adeg and Kaiser supermarket chains in Germany have wider aisles, non-skid floors, lower shelves, brighter lighting, larger price labels and magnifying glasses hanging from chains.

Most interesting, perhaps, are what Sophie Handler, author of the fabulously playful An Alternative Age-Friendly Handbook (co-produced in Manchester), calls "third spaces" and "meanwhile spaces". This is where ostensibly private spaces are "borrowed" as public spaces of rest and chat, blurring the boundary of public and private. They often retrofit or modify what already exists, as in Eindhoven, where a design group, physiotherapists and residents of a sheltered housing complex together transformed the lamp-posts, benches and fences on a street into an alternative "public gym". Participation in design is key: this in itself reconceives old people as an active resource, rather than passive victims of urban change.

31．What is the purpose of this paragraph?

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32．Are these changes things that anybody can enjoy or are they limited to be used only by old people?

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The ability to do leg-lifts in the street may not reverse the age-apartheid evident in city centers, but the revolution will be easier with bold new thinking and supple joints. We should start it now.

33．Does the writer think these changes will be quick or slow?

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34．How do you know this?

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35．Does the writer still think the changes should be made?

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36．Why?

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37．Can you think of an example of a change in your neighborhood that would help older people live better?

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答案

1．The writer wants the reader to imagine what it is like to be an elderly person in a big city．

2．She thinks it is difficult and sometimes dangerous．

3．She talks about the cars revving their engines very close to where the people are walking．

4．The writer underlines this to show the reader how important it is．

5．That they are designed for the kind of people who don't really exist．

6．Mythical．

7．1/4．

8．Because it illustrates why all of these changes should be made．The world's population of older people is increasing, so changes are needed in order for them to live and be productive．

9．The writer wants the reader to know that elderly people have a better quality of life if they are able to go in public and interact with their neighbors．

10．The writer is describing the reasons why the city is not an easy place for older people to live．

11．In the previous paragraph, the writer is describing the conditions older people face in large cities．In this paragraph, the writer is showing how those conditions cause additional things to happen．

12．No．

13．Because she describes the city centers as "age-cleansed youth enclaves", which means there are not so many older people there．

14．That they don't all have a lot of money, which makes it harder for them to live in the big cities．

15．Because the writer says that the few older people you see in city centers are in places where people with a lot of money go．So that means the rest of the older people in cities don't go out because they don't have a lot of money．

16．The writer is suggesting that the conditions of the city are so obvious that it is surprising that nobody talks about how to make the conditions better for older people．

17．That it is a problem with the body and not a part of experiencing culture．That it is a sickness requiring medication and not just a stage of life that needs simple adjustments．

18．The writer is giving an example of how it is possible to have a city center that makes it easy for older people to enjoy it．

19．Because the writer wants to show that there is no reason for cities to continue not providing this kind of living for older people．

20．No．

21．Because the kinds of changes are things that can be used by all ages, not just elderly people．The writer says that all people like these things．

22．No．

23．The writer describes them as marauders who do not care if people can use the facilities easily．

24．Large reduction in government funding．

25．From "savage slicing of public services．"

26．Yes．

27．No．

28．Covered bus stops with benches and shops with chairs in front．

29．Unwelcome and inconvenient．

30．The changes are different from the present, and the changes are places to sit and be comfortable．These are things that make people feel welcome and convenient．So that means now they are perceived as unwelcome and inconvenient．

31．To give more examples of simple changes being made to slowly make society more convenient, welcoming and friendly towards elderly people．

32．All people can enjoy them．

33．Slow．

34．She acknowledges that the changes will probably not change the number of older people enjoying city centers．

35．Yes．

36．Because changes will be easier if thinking is different and bodies are healthy．

37．Free response

3．寻读（Scanning）

寻读被用于查找某个特殊的信息。在作文写作中或完成后，如果发现有些信息不够充分或被遗漏，可以极快地浏览并锁定文章中的某处位置查找细节信息。

寻读时应注意文章中的转换词和转折词（如additionally，but，in conclusion，therefore，although等）以及序列词（如firstly，secondly等）。