善用阅读老方法 破解考研英语阅读“新题型”

从2005年起，考研英语阅读部分增设了“新题型”，旨在“考查考生对诸如连贯性、一致性等语段特征及文章结构的理解”，题量设置为5道题目，总分值为10分。在最近的几期班开课伊始，陆续收到学生的邮件，问能否把新题型放在阅读课堂的最初几节课去讲，原因是“新题型太难，完全摸不着头绪，而且分值又高！”——这样的问题，在我看来，非常具有代表性，反映了相当一部分考生对新题型由于陌生感而产生的恐惧感，由恐惧感而导致的无力感！实际上，考生对新题型部分的控制能力从2005年、2006年新题型部分的平均得分不足4.5分亦可见一斑。

那么，对于那些有志于在考研英语的阅读中“锱铢必较”、力争高分，面对新题型却又无所适从的学生，我感到有必要在这里进一言：善用阅读老方法，破解考研新题型！

根据《大纲》，考研新题型共有三种备选形式。在这里，仅就2005年、2006年连续出现的“七选五”或称之为“完形填段”，也是众多考生公认最难的一种进行解析。实际上，“七选五”题型是把一篇完整的文章中的五个段落“挖”出来，要求考生将其合理“归位”，为了提高难度，额外增加了两个混淆选择加以迷惑。

考生怎样才能把看似七零八落的段落重新合理归位呢？总的来讲，必须从上下文内容的连贯性、逻辑的一致性两方面入手，大胆假设、小心求证，以期一一破解。

就以下面的这篇大纲样题为例：

Long before Man lived on the Earth, there were fishes, reptiles, birds, insects, and some mammals. Although some of these 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 are also crab-like 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 shellfish 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 sea-lilies, 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.