第9讲.阅读理解之猜测词义题

第九讲阅读理解之猜测词义题
【考点说明】
阅读理解之猜测词义题在阅读考试中考察得比重不大，但难度很大。

在有传统阅读题型的联盟考试（复旦千分考、北约、卓越同盟）中，四选一的阅读理解有时会考这种题型，其中复旦千分考考查较多，几乎每年都有该题型。

此类题目考查的是考生对阅读文章中出现的关键词或短语的理解能力，对考生的上下文分析能力要求比较高。

【题型特点分析】
对于文中单词的考查又无外乎两种情况：一种是多义常用词在特定语境中的具体含义；一种是可以根据上下文推测出含义的生僻词汇。

常见题干表现形式如：
①The word“…”mostly probably means…
②By saying“…”,the author means…
③The word“…”mostly probably refers…
④Which of the following is the closet in meaning to the word“…”
⑤The statement“…”probably means…
【解题技巧】
猜测词义时，一般可利用以下四个方面的线索：
一．通过构词法
根据前缀，后缀，转化猜测词义
如：But judging from recent studies Of crying behavior, links between illness and crying and the chemical composition of tears，both those responses to tears are often inappropriate and may even be counterproductive．【解析】“counter”表示“相反的、逆向的”，而“productive”表示“产生的”，再综合上下文，我们可以断定其含义是“对健康有害意思。

所以答案为D。

注：关于这一块内容，建议复习第二讲中的构词法
二．篇章逻辑关系法
所谓逻辑关系法，即通过理解引号内的部分在原文中所在的句子，以及其之前和之后的句子，并通过这些句子之间的逻辑关系判断引号内部分的含义。

这里常见的句子之间的关系有：
1.并列关系。

其特征是，句子之间由and, or等并列连词连接，或者没有连接词。

2.转折关系。

其特征是，句子之间由but, yet, however, still, contrary to , in contrast等转折连词连接。

3.因果关系。

在句子或段落中，若两个事物现象之间构成因果关系，我们可以根据这种逻辑关系推测生
词词义。

利用逻辑关系法解答语义理解题的做题步骤是：
1，回归原文
在原文中找到题干中引号内的部分，这一步非常简单，因为题干中会标出引号内部分在文中的段落数和行
数。

2，瞻前顾后
在原文中找到定位后，就要判断引号内部分和它之前、之后的句子的关系，并且通过阅读相应的句子理解引号内的部分的含义。

这一步最关键也最灵活，下面笔者还会结合今年真题进行具体对此进行讲解。

3，比对选项
最后一步，将四个选项分别与从上一步中得到的信息做比对，选出一致选项。

三．文章内针对性解释
1.根据定义（definition）猜测词义
如果生词有一个句子（定语从句或是同位语前常有or, similarly, that is to say, in other words, namely, or other, say等>或是同位语从句）或段落来定义,或使用破折号，冒号，分号后的内容和引号括号中的内容加以解释和定义，那么理解这个句子或段落本身就是推断词义。

定义常用的谓语动词多为：be, mean, deal with, be considered, to be, be called, define, represent, refer to, signify 等。

如：A supernova is a massive star that undergoes a gravitational collapse, then a gigantic explosion, blasting away the outer layers into space.
【解析】Supernova是一种巨大的恒星，它不断进行着引力的收缩，然后就会发生巨大的爆炸，而它的外层会随着爆炸产生的巨大气流被吹向外太空。

这里的supernova对我们可能非常陌生，但这里的is给了我们对supernova的定义，所以我们知道其实它就是一种巨大的恒星。

2.根据举例猜测词义
恰当的举例能够提供猜测生词的重索。

表示例举关系的词常有：like, for example, for instance, such as, especially, include, consist of
如：Defined most broadly, folklore includes all the customs, beliefs and traditions that people have handed down from generation to generation.
【解析】此句中include后面的例子基本上表示出了“folklore”的内容，这些东西都是通常所获得的民俗传统，这也就是folklore的基本含义。

四．作者语气推断
学会关注文章中三处展现的感情色彩：观点句或者结论句出现的地方，代表人物或代表流派出现的地方，强烈感情色彩出现的地方。

因为感情色彩通过语境能够传达出很多单词的大概意思或者说是关键特征，甚至强烈感情色彩还能给出下面很多文字的中心。

如：They must gain an understanding of human nature, including its negative aspects, such as the sources of human conflict and the pitfalls of power.
【解析】他们必须获得对人类本质的理解，包括人类本质中不好的方面，例如人类冲突的源泉和人类权利的pitfalls。

虽然pitfalls很多同学并不认识，但我们通过negative aspects传达出的负态度和such as的举例标志词，我们可以做出这样的合理推测pitfalls表示不好的方面。

【典例精讲】
A
Ever since news of widespread food recalls caused by a carcinogenic dye broke, there has been confusion
over possible links to the country of the same name, but Sudan officials say there is no connection whatever.
Sudan 1 is a red industrial dye that has been found in some chilli powder, but was banned in food products across the European Union (EU) in July 2003.
Since the ban was put in place, EU officials have been striving to remove some food products from the shelves. So far 580 products have been recalled.
Last week Sudan’s Embassy in the United Kingdom asked the Food Standards Agency (FSA) for clarification of the origin of the dye’s name.
Sudan dyes, which include Sudan 1 to 4, are red dyes used for coloring solvents, oils, waxes, petrol, and shoe and floor polishes. They are classified as carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
1. What does the underlined word mean in paragraph one?
A. Causing cancer.
B. Having side effect.
C. Containing poison.
D. Poisonous.
【答案】A
【解析】词义猜测题。

根据They are classified as carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. 可知这个词与癌症有关，故可推出carcinogenic意为"致癌的"。

注意信息点的寻找：
我们在做题时习惯于在划线词附近寻找解题的信息点，寻而不得时
往往就会慌张，其实往下多看看，可能在后面的某一段就出现了相关的
信息，因此，冷静的寻找对于解题至关重要。

B
People in earlier eras were surrounded by reminders of misery. They worked until exhausted, lived with few protections and died young. In the West, before mass communication and literacy, the most powerful mass medium was the church, which reminded worshippers that their souls were in danger and that they would someday be meat for worms. Given all this, they did not exactly need their art to be a bummer too.
1. The word “bummer” most probably means something ________.
A. religious
B. unpleasant
C. entertaining
D. commercial
【答案】B
【解析】词义推测题。

我们很容易地定位到本段末句，通过分析段落，不难发现本段共包括4句话，前三句之间并没有出现表示逻辑关系的词汇，因此没有转折现象发生，而最后两句之间出现Give all this作为连接，很明显四句话之间均为顺承关系，通过阅读文章我们不难发现前三句中出现的诸如misery, worked until exhausted, lived with few protections and died young, their souls were in danger and that they would someday be meat for worms等信息都是负性词汇，因此bummer一词必然表达了一种负面的含义，通过选项的分析，AD都为中性词，只有B表达了负面含义，因此本题选择B作为正确选项。

注重句与句的关系：
英文文章行文紧凑，句与句之间的衔接也非常紧密，考试中常涉及的逻辑关系包括
转折、让步、因果、递进、并列等，而在具体的解题过程中，我们可以对其进行简
化处理：将句与句之间的关系简单地分为顺承和转折两类，顺承表示前后语句同义，
而转折表示前后语句反义，于是对于并列、因果、递进而言，前后句在方向上并未
发生变化，而转折和让步则体现前后反差性。

C
Indeed, school systems in rural Maine and New York City are eager to follow Arace Middle School's example. Governor Angus King has proposed using $50 million from an unexpected budget surplus to buy a laptop for all of Maine's 17,000 seventh-graders — and for new seventh-graders each fall. The funds would create a permanent endowment whose interest would help buy the computers. The plan, scaled back to $30 million in a compromise with the legislature, is scheduled to be voted on this week.
In the same spirit，the New York City board of education voted unanimously on April 12 to create a school Internet portal, which would make money by selling ads and licensing e-commerce sites. The portal will also provide e-mail service for the city's 1.1 million public school students. Profits will be used to buy laptops for each of the school system's 87,000 fourth-graders. Within nine years, all students in grades 4 and higher will have their own computers.
Back in Bloomfield, the school board is seeking federal grant money to expand its laptop program to high school students. In the meantime, most of the kinks have been worked out. Some students were using their computers to goof off or visit unauthorized websites. But teachers have the ability to track where students have been on the Web and to restrict them. “That is the worst when they disable you”，says eighth-grade honors student Jamie Bassell. "You go through laptop withdrawal.”The habit is rubbing off on parents. “I taught my mom to use e-mail," says another eighth-grader, Katherine.
34.The underlined word “kink” most probably means___.
A. plan
B. method
C. problem
D. process
【答案】C
【解析】词义推断题。

属于比较明显的举例分析，根据后文的例子，即学生浏览不良网站，可推断此词意思近于“问题”。

D
There must be few questions on which responsible opinion is so utterly divided as on that of how much sleep we ought to have. There are some who think we can leave the body to regulate these matters for itself. "The answer is easy," says Dr A. Burton. "With the right amount of sleep you should wake up fresh and alert five minutes before the alarm rings. “ If he is right, many people must be under sleeping, including myself. But we must remember that some people have a greater inertia than others. This is not meant rudely. They switch on slowly and they are reluctant to switch off. They are alert at bedtime and sleepy when it is time to get up, and this may have nothing to do with how fatigued their bodies are, or how much sleep they must take to lose their fatigue.
Other people feel sure that the present trend is towards too little sleep. To quote one medical opinion, thousands of people drift through life suffering from the effects of too little sleep; the reason is not that they can't sleep. Like advancing colonists, we do seem to be grasping ever more of the land of sleep for our waking needs, pushing the boundary back and reaching, apparently, for a point in our evolution where we will sleep no more. 40.The meaning of the underlined word is closest to________.
A. slowness
B. stupidity
C. sensitivity
D. bluntness
【答案】A
【解析】词义推断题。

通过后面一句“They switch on slowly and they are reluctant to switch off” 的解释，可以推出文中的inertia最接近的意思为slowness。

inertia原意为“惰性”。

B意为“愚蠢”，C为“敏感”，D为“迟钝，直率”。

不管语义题属于哪种情况，其考查的侧重点并不是我们的词汇量，而是我们通过上下文猜测词义的能力，应试技巧有：
1)结合文章和段落的主旨进行判断。

不能只根据孤立的句子来判断，要将词汇放到上下文中去判断。

2)切忌从字面意思来判断选项含义与被考单词在含义上字面相近的一般不是答案。

3)通过连接词判断被考词汇含义。

4)利用被考词的修饰、限定成分判断其含义。

这种修饰、限定成分的表现形式多样，可以是定语、其他修饰语、特殊标点符号（如冒号、破折号、引号）后面的内容、甚至该词下属的例子及定义，可以通过这些表达从侧面理解被考单词含义。

5)利用上下文中给出的相关信息作为线索进行推测。

6)利用实例。

列举实例是作者常用的一种写作方法，它常常跟在生词、难词、短语或句子的后面用以解释或重申上文的内容，理解了例子的用意也就弄清了所考词汇的含义。

7) 利用排除法进行选择。

如果直接判断存在困难，也可以将各选项带入原文，看其是否能使上下文语义通顺，利用排除法进行选择。

【真题模拟题训练】
（1）
（北京大学10）
……
Everyone is not equally open with all their friends. The degree of intimacy is determined by many factors. Close friends can be formed at any stage in one’s life but they are usually very rare. Not very many people have more than a few really close friends. Irrespective of the level of intimacy, all friendships are based on reciprocity, honesty and a certain of love and affection.
1.The word “irrespective” means________.
A.not respecting
B. dishonoring
C. regardless
D. considering
【答案】C
【解析】词义猜测题。

由本句后一部分“all friendships are based on reciprocity, honesty and a certain of love and affection.”可以推断出答案，该词的意思为“不管，不顾”。

Word bank---Dripping water penetrates the stone(滴水石穿)
Write down the words & phrases unfamiliar to you in this passage.
（2）
（交通大学，09）
……
Sometimes these errors or failures can’t be helped. For example, if you can’t get parts because of materials shortages or a transportation strike, customers may be denied the goods they’ve ordered. And not infrequently the customer is to blame, for example, failing to clearly identify the article or service required.
……
1.The underlined word “identify” can be replaced by_______
A.distinguish
B. describe
C. notice
D. recognize
【答案】D
【解析】词义猜测题。

通过将四个答案带进原文翻译后，只有D选项的翻译：识别当初所定的商品或服务意思通顺，因而选择D.
Word bank---Dripping water penetrates the stone(滴水石穿)
Write down the words & phrases unfamiliar to you in this passage.
（3）
(复旦08)
General Electric has found robots far more productive in some work than human workers in one case; a robot saved enough to pay for itself in ten months: At Ford Motor Company, about fifty small robots are deftly fitting light bulbs into dashboards and speakers into car radios.
The next phase of the computer revolution may well turn out to be the robot revolution Robots have been fixtures in comedy and science fiction for a long time, but the first industrial robot wasn't used in the United States until 1961. Industrial robots scarcely resemble the stereotyped humanoid with flashing eyes and a combinations chest. They're basically just combinations of a computer with very deft and efficient producing machines. What's really new, of course, is the extent to which these electronic wonders are transforming the way people work and the composition of the work force, especially in Japan. There are about 36,000 robots working in Japan and approximately 6,500 in the United States. In early i982. Raymond Donovan, U.S. Secretary of Labor, predicted
that by 1990 half the workers in U.S. factories would be specialists trained to service and repair robots.
……
54. In Paragraph 1, the word deftly means________
A. clumsily
B. swiftly
C. expensively
D. skillfully
【答案】B
【解析】词义猜测题。

第一段最后一句提到一些小机器人将灯泡装入仪表等，此处用deftly形容机器人的动作，只有D选项最为贴合原文意思，与原文中该意思相近。

Word bank---Dripping water penetrates the stone(滴水石穿)
Write down the words & phrases unfamiliar to you in this passage.
（4）
（复旦，08）
If all goes according to plan, the entire North American continent will become a free trade zone devoid of tariffs, quotas, and other trade barriers some time during the 1990s. This plan is the result of recent agreements and discussions involving the United States and Canada on the one hand and the United States and Mexico on the other.
Canada and the United States are already each other’s largest trading partners. In 1986, for example, the U.S. accounted for 71 percent of Canadian merchandise trade (exports plus imports); Canada accounted for 19 percent of U.S. trade. In 1988, a historic document was signed, the Canada-United States Free-Trade Agreement.
In many respects, this event seems a natural consequence of long-standing friendship, common economic interests, and geographic proximity. Nevertheless, it took more than a century to reach agreement. In the mid 1800s, after Great Britain repealed the Corn Laws, Canada proposed bilateral free trade with the United States, and a limited treaty covering natural products only was signed. However, it was abrogated during the Civil War by the United States because of close Canadian-British ties and British support for the Confederacy. After more than a century of fluctuating sentiments on the issue, the 1988 agreement finally eliminates all bilateral tariffs (in stages to be completed by 1998) and all quantitative trade restrictions. The agreement, it was thought, would particularly boost trade in agricultural products (fruits, vegetables, poultry), mining products (coal and oil), and services (banking, computer, insurance, professional and telecommunications services, plus retail and wholesale trade). Both countries expected net gains between $1 and 3 billion per year.
……
52. As used in Paragraph 3, the word abrogated means _______.
A. abolished
B. abridged
C. ignited suddenly
D. ended formally
【答案】A
【解析】词义猜测题。

根据前一句可得知加拿大提议与美国实行双边自由贸易，同时签订了关于天然产品的合约。

下文出现了However，可以得知后文与前面进行了转折，将四个选项答案带入，A符合原文，表示废除。

Word bank---Dripping water penetrates the stone(滴水石穿)
Write down the words & phrases unfamiliar to you in this passage.
（5）
If you found yourself in a cocktail bar with a Neanderthal man(尼安德特人,直立猿人) what would he say?
A good conversation is one of the great joys of being human, but it is not clear just how far back in the hominid lineage the ability to use language stretches. The question of when grunts and yelps turned into words and phrases is a tricky one. One way of trying to answer it is to look in the fossil record for evidence about what modern humanity's closest relatives could do.
Svante Pääbo, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, and his colleagues have done just that. Dr Pääbo is an expert in extracting and interpreting the DNA of fossils. As he reports in the latest issue of Current Biology, he and his team have worked their magic on a gene called FOXP2 found in Neanderthal remains from northern Spain. The reason for picking this particular gene is that it is the only one known so far to have a direct connection with speech. In 1990, a family with an inherited speech disorder known as verbal dyspraxia(运动障碍) drew the attention of genetics researchers. Those researchers identified a mutation in FOXP2 as the cause of the dyspraxia.
Since then FOXP2 has been the subject of intensive study. It has been linked to the production of birdsong and the ultrasonic musings of mice. It is a conservative type, not changing much from species to species. But it has undergone two changes since humans split from chimpanzees 6m years ago, and some researchers believe these changes played a crucial role in the development of speech and language.
Dr Pääbo's research suggests precisely that: the FOXP2 genes from modern humans and Neanderthals are essentially the same. To the extent that the gene enables language, it enables it in both species.
There has been much speculation about Neanderthals' ability to speak. They were endowed with a hyoid bone, which anchors the tongue and allows a wide variety of movements of the larynx. Neanderthal skulls also show evidence of a large hypoglossal canal. This is the route taken by the nerves that supply the tongue. As such, it is a requisite for the exquisitely complex movements of speech.
That Neanderthals also shared with moderns the single known genetic component of speech is another clue that they possessed the necessary apparatus for having a good natter（闲聊）. But suggestive as that is, the question
remains open. FOXP2 is almost certainly not “the language gene”. Without doubt, it is involved in the control and regulation of the motions of speech, but whether it plays a role in the cognitive processes that must precede talking remains unclear. The idea that the forebears of modern humans could talk would scupper the notion that language was the force that created modern human culture—otherwise, why would they not have built civilizations? But it would make that chat with a Neanderthal much more interesting.
4. The word “scupper”(in Paragraph 6) most probably means _____
A. deny
B. defeat.
C. demolish.
D. destroy
【答案】A
【解析】根据上下文，现代人类的祖先可以说话会推翻语言是现代人类文化创造的力量这样的论点，选项中A最为符合这个意思。

Word bank---Dripping water penetrates the stone(滴水石穿)
Write down the words & phrases unfamiliar to you in this passage.
（6）
Tesco is preparing a legal battle to clear its name of involvement in the dairy price-fixing scandal that has cost consumers £270 million. Fail to prove that it had no part in collusion with other supermarkets and dairy processors may land it with a fine of at least £80 million. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) said yesterday that Asda, Sainsbury’s and the former Safeway, plus the dairy companies Wiseman, Dairy Crest and Cheese Company, had admitted being in a cartel to fix prices for milk, butter and cheese. They were fined a total of just over £116 million as part of a leniency deal offered by the watchdog to companies that owned up quickly to anti-competitive behavior.
……
The OFT investigation is continuing, however, in relation to Tesco, Morrisons and the dairy group Lactalis McLelland, and any legal action is expected to be delayed until that is completed.
Tesco was defiant and said that it was preparing a robust defense of its actions. Lucy Neville-Rolfe, its executive director, said: “As we have always said, we acted independently and we did not collude with anyone. Our position is different from our competitors and we are defending our own case vigorously. Our philosophy is to give a good deal to customers.”
3. The word “defiant” most probably means _____.
A. resisting
B. angry
C. deficient
D. confident
【答案】A
【解析】猜词题。

根据其上下文的意思，Tesco 声称正在为自己的行为准备最坚决的辩护，其执行理事的
一番话也表现了他们这种强硬的态度，可见他们采取了一种抵抗的态度，选项A最为符合。

Word bank---Dripping water penetrates the stone(滴水石穿)
Write down the words & phrases unfamiliar to you in this passage.
（7）
Just as Norman Mailer, John Updike and Philip Roth were at various times regarded as the greatest American novelist since the Second World War, John Ashbery and Robert Lowell vied for（竞争）the title of greatest American poet. Yet the two men could not be more different. Lowell was a public figure who engaged with politics—in 1967 he marched shoulder-to-shoulder with Mailer in protest against the Vietnam War, as described in Mailer's novel “The Armies of the Night”. Lowell took on substantial themes and envisioned himself as a tragic, heroic figure, fighting against his own demons. Mr Ashbery's verse, by contrast, is more beguilingly casual. In his hands, the making of a poem can feel like the tumbling of dice on a table top. Visible on the page is a delicately playful strewing of words, looking to engage with each other in a shyly puzzled fashion. And there is an element of Dada-like play in his unpredictability of address with its perpetual shifting of tones.
Lowell, who died in 1977 at the age of 60, addressed the world head on. By contrast, Mr. Ashbery, who celebrated his 80th birthday earlier this year, glances wryly at the world and its absurdities. In this edition of his later poems, a substantial gathering of verses selected from six volumes published over the past 20 years, his poetry does not so much consist of themes to be explored as comic routines to be improvised. He mocks the very idea of the gravity of poetry itself. His tone can be alarmingly inconsequential, as if the reader is there to be perpetually wrong-footed. He shifts easily from the elevated to the work-a-day. His poems are endlessly digressive and there are often echoes of other poets in his writings, though these always come lightly at the reader, as though they were scents on the breeze.
Lowell wrote in strict formal measures; some of his last books consisted of entire sequences of sonnets. Mr. Ashbery can also be partial to particular forms of verse, though these tend to be of a fairly eccentric kind—the cento (a patchwork of other poets' works), for example, and the pantoum (a Malaysian form, said to have been introduced to 19th-century Europe by Victor Hugo). Often he writes in a free-flowing, conversational manner that depends for its success upon the fact that the ending of lines is untrammeled by any concern about whether or not they scan. Within many of his poems, there often seems to be a gently humorous antagonism between one stanza and the next. Mr. Ashbery likes using similes in his poetry. This is often the poet's stock-in-trade, but he seems to single them out in order to send up the very idea of the simile in poetry, as in “Violets blossomed loudly like a swear word in an empty tank”.
Life, for Lowell, was a serious matter, just as he was a serious man. Mr Ashbery's approach, as evinced by his poetry, is more that of a gentle shrug of amused bewilderment. Unlike Lowell's, his poems are neither autobiographical nor confessional. He doesn't take himself that seriously. “Is all of life a tepid housewarming?”
For a poet this is a tougher question to answer than you might think.
1. The word “substantial” (Line 5, Paragraph 1) most probably means_____
A . philosophical. B. grand. C. indispensable. D. authentic.
【答案】B
【解析】猜词题。

根据上下文来断定该词的意思，这个词是用来形容Lowell 诗歌主题的特点的。

由第一段中Lowell喜欢参与政治，在诗歌中经常将自己视为悲剧的英雄人物这一点可以看出，他的主题选择应该是比较宏大的。

这一点在后面的几个段落中也可以发现。

选项A也容易混淆，但要从tragic heroic 这几个词中推导正确答案，因为这些就是宏大叙事中常见的特征。

因此，B为正确答案。

Word bank---Dripping water penetrates the stone(滴水石穿)
Write down the words & phrases unfamiliar to you in this passage.。