上海新东方：2009年1月考研完形填空分析

　　本次考研英语考试刚落下帷幕，究其完形填空部分，我们发现此文始见于2008年5月7日的New York Times，全文原为四段，为符合考研要求和篇幅标准，考研命题者将其中第三段剔除，留下了三段。原文如下(其中标注出了考试的选项答案部分)：

　　Editorial Notebook

　　The Cost of Smarts

　　By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

　　Published: May 7, 2008

　　Research on animal intelligence always makes me wonder just how smart humans are. Consider the fruit-fly experiments described in Carl Zimmer's piece in the Science Times on Tuesday. Fruit flies who were taught to be smarter than the average fruit fly tended to live shorter lives. This suggests that dimmer bulbs burn longer, that there is an advantage in not being too terrifically bright.

　　Intelligence, it turns out, is a high-priced option. It takes more upkeep, burns more fuel and is slow off the starting line because it depends on learning - a gradual process - instead of instinct. Plenty of other species are able to learn, and one of the things they've apparently learned is when to stop.

　　Is there an adaptive value to limited intelligence? That's the question behind this new research. I like it. Instead of casting a wistful glance backward at all the species we've left in the dust I.Q.-wise, it implicitly asks what the real costs of our own intelligence might be. This is on the mind of every animal I've ever met.

　　Every chicken that looks at you sideways - which is how they all look at you - is really saying what Thoreau said less succinctly: you are endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem itself. Thoreau himself would not dispute that he was hoping to recover the chicken's point of view. He went to Walden Pond "to remember well his ignorance."

　　Research on animal intelligence also makes me wonder what experiments animals would perform on humans if they had the chance. Every cat with an owner, for instance, is running a small-scale study in operant conditioning. I believe that if animals ran the labs, they would test us to determine the limits of our patience, our faithfulness, our memory for terrain. They would try to decide what intelligence in humans is really for, not merely how much of it there is. Above all, they would hope to study a fundamental question: Are humans actually aware of the world they live in? So far the results are inconclusive.

　　通过对答案部分的研究，我们不难发现此文以文学的方式包装了科学的内在。就其内容而言，本文描述了智慧的代价，是从一个前人罕见的角度以批判的眼光看待了"智慧"这一事物。

　　而从措辞与笔触角度，则相当文学化。文中Intelligence, it turns out, is a high-priced option.一句，很多考生从语法角度分析， 发现无法理解，因为原文出现两组主谓结构，但居然没有连接词。但从文学角度而言，将it turns out作为插入语却未尝不可，而这个it其实是主语复指现象，也仅在文学性较强的文章中会出现。接触过老TOEFL考试语法部分的同学，恰恰很容易发现，老TOEFL考试将主语重复出现作为一种常见的语法错误，可见在本文中所用的文学笔触。主语复指其实并不罕见，最为经典的莫过于莎翁笔下的To be or not to be, that is the question.中这个that的存在了，而过分深究语法者将其改为To be or not to be is the question.就在文学色彩上大打折扣了。

　　文末也很有意思的采用了虚拟的方式，展开充分联想，描述到：如果动物能对人类做实验，......。原文：

　　Research on animal intelligence also makes me wonder what experiments animals would perform on humans if they had the chance. Every cat with an owner, for instance, is running a small-scale study in operant conditioning. I believe that if animals ran the labs, they would test us to determine the limits of our patience, our faithfulness, our memory for terrain. They would try to decide what intelligence in humans is really for, not merely how much of it there is. Above all, they would hope to study a fundamental question: Are humans actually aware of the world they live in? So far the results are inconclusive.

　　这里利用虚拟，从动物的角度来看待人类，作者无非希望跳出人类这个圈子，从一个更客观、更具批判性的角度来分析智慧的代价，然而这种角度是在前人中鲜见的，是容易引起人们争议的，从文学角度而言，又是与文章开头的果蝇实验呼应的。

　　解题而言，这次题型中仍然有大量相似相近相反选项可供考生参考，如第三题的lighter和dimmer，第九题的limited与indefinite，第十题的forward和backward，第十八题的above all与after all等。而在逻辑考察方面，考试秉承了一贯的原则，依旧在往年的那些逻辑关系中徘徊，比如十四题出现的对比关系by contrast和举例关系for instance，而by chance和as usual这样的词就没有作为正确答案而存在，主要是因为缺乏前后文的呼应。比如十五题选择的if为条件关系，而且还是个虚拟的条件。选项词汇而言，此次考试也鲜见难词、偏词，都是一些比较基本的词汇，所以在充分准备的情况下，有四、六级基础的考生看不懂选项的概率应该是不高的，而真正作为答案的词汇无一例外都是四级词汇，所以还是应证了那句老话，考研完型填空不倾向与选择难词与偏词。

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