【解题技巧】实例讲解托福阅读句意解释题答题策略

在备考托福阅读之前，最为重要的除了词汇和句型的掌握之外，就是托福的阅读中的各种题型的解题技巧。在以下的内容中，小站教育将为大家带来关于句意解释题的解答方法，希望对于题型的解答方法能为大家的备考带来帮助。

【解题技巧】实例讲解托福阅读句意解释题答题策略

在托福阅读中，有一类题目就是用自己的语言来改写文章中的句子或者段落，以不同的方式重新陈述另一句话，这样的题目，也通常被称为句意解释题也有人称其为变换措辞题。其答题的关键要点就是保留其内容，而不改变原来句子的意思。应对这样类型的题目，我们有应对策略呢?下面为大家进行详细的分析一下。

这类型题目的题干表达为：Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the passage? Incorrect choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information.

解决这类题目的三种方法：

第一种：在保持原句序基本不变的前提下进行重点词汇或者词组的同义替换;

第二种：在句序不变的前提下再进行重点词汇或者词组的同义替换;

第三种：对原句进行总结性重复。

下面我们通过一个例子来看这些方法的具体应用：

Small marketers should be less concerned with whether U.S. and European consumers are alike and more concerned with monitoring the variety of factors that account for potential similarities and differences. Attention to the dynamic nature of those factors will produce opportunities for the alert marketer.

Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the passage? Incorrect choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information.

A marketer who is not so smart should be more concerned with the difference of eating habits between U.S. and European consumers and less concerned with monitoring the variety of factors that account for potential similarities and differences.

It is not important whether U.S. and European consumers have a similar eating habit. I t is the potential similarities and differences that people should be more concerned with.

Marketers should focus on the factors that account for difference rather than the difference themselves.

Monitoring the variety of foods could explain the potential similarities and differences.

解题：

首先，我们来分析这个句子，整个主句的主语为Small-marketers，谓语为be-concerned-with，宾语为factors，这个分析完成之后，我们采用同意替换的方法，替换其中的重点词组-谓语be concerned with，其同义词为focus on。这样替换完之后把两个句子的意思进行比较，得出正确答案C。这道题目采用了第一种方法。

托福阅读真题1

Prehistoric mammoths have been preserved in the famous tar pits of Rancho La Brea (Brea is the Spanish word for tar) in what is now the heart of Los Angeles, California. These tar pits have been known for centuries and were formerly mined for their natural asphalt, a black or brown petroleum-like substance. Thousands of tons were extracted before 1875, when it was first noticed that the tar contained fossil remains. Major excavations were undertaken that established the significance of this remarkable site. The tar pits were found to contain the remains of scores of species of animals from the last 30,000 years of the Ice Age.

Since then, over 100 tons of fossils, 1.5 million from vertebrates, 2.5 million from invertebrates, have been recovered, often in densely concentrated and tangled masses. The creatures found range from insects and birds to giant ground sloth's, but a total of 17 proboscides (animals with a proboscis or long nose) — including mastodons and Columbian mammoths — have been recovered, most of them from Pit 9, the deepest bone-bearing deposit, which was excavated in 1914. Most of the fossils date to between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago.

The asphalt at La Brea seeps to the surface, especially in the summer, and forms shallow puddles that would often have been concealed by leaves and dust. Unwary animals would become trapped on these thin sheets of liquid asphalt, which are extremely sticky in warm weather. Stuck, the unfortunate beasts would die of exhaustion and hunger or fall prey to predators that often also became stuck.

As the animals decayed, more scavengers would be attracted and caught in their turn. Carnivores greatly outnumber herbivores in the collection: for every large herbivore, there is one saber-tooth cat, a coyote, and four wolves. The fact that some bones are heavily weathered shows that some bodies remained above the surface for weeks or months. Bacteria in the asphalt would have consumed some of the tissues other than bones, and the asphalt itself would dissolve what was left, at the same time impregnating and beautifully preserving the saturated bones, rendering them dark brown and shiny.

1. What aspect of the La Brea tar pits does the passage mainly discuss?

(A) The amount of asphalt that was mined there

(B) The chemical and biological interactions between asphalt and animals

(C) The fossil remains that have been found there

(D) Scientific methods of determining the age of tar pits

2. In using the phrase the heart of Los Angeles in line 2, the author is talking about the city's

(A) beautiful design

(B) central area

(C) basic needs

(D) supplies of natural asphalt

3. The word noticed in line 5 closest in meaning to

(A) predicted

(B) announced

(C) corrected

(D) observed

4. The word tangled in line 10 is closest in meaning to

(A) buried beneath

(B) twisted together

(C) quickly formed

(D) easily dated

5. The word them in line 13 refers to

(A) insects

(B) birds

(C) cloths

(D) proboscideans

6. How many proboscideans have been found at the La Brea tar pits?

(A) 9

(B) 17

(C) 1.5 million

(D) 2.5 million

7. The word concealed in line 17 is closest in meaning to

(A) highlighted

(B) covered

(C) transformed

(D) contaminated

8. Why does the author mention animals such as coyotes and wolves in paragraph 4?

(A) To give examples of animals that are classified as carnivores

(B) To specify the animals found least commonly at La Brea

(C) To argue that these animals were especially likely to avoid extinction.

(D) To define the term scavengers

托福阅读真题2

One area of paleoanthropological study involves the eating and dietary habits of hominids, erect bipedal primates — including early humans. It is clear that at some stage of history, humans began to carry their food to central places, called home bases, where it was shared and consumed with the young and other adults. The use of home bases is a fundamental component of human social behavior; the common meal served at a common hearth is a powerful symbol, a mark of social unity. Home base behavior does not occur among nonhuman primates and is rare among mammals. It is unclear when humans began to use home bases, what kind of communications and social relations were involved, and what the ecological and food-choice contexts of the shift were. Work on early tools, surveys of paleoanthropological sites, development and testing of broad ecological theories, and advances in comparative primatology are contributing to knowledge about this central chapter in human prehistory.

One innovative approach to these issues involves studying damage and wear on stone tools. Researchers make tools that replicate excavated specimens as closely as possible and then try to use them as the originals might have been used, in woodcutting, hunting, or cultivation. Depending on how the tool is used, characteristic chippage patterns and microscopically distinguishable polishes develop near the edges. The first application of this method of analysis to stone tools that are 1.5 million to 2 million years old indicates that, from the start, an important function of early stone tools was to extract highly nutritious food — meat and marrow — from large animal carcasses. Fossil bones with cut marks caused by stone tools have been discovered lying in the same 2-million-year-old layers that yielded the oldest such tools and the oldest hominid specimens (including humans) with larger than ape-sized brains. This discovery increases scientists' certainty about when human ancestors began to eat more meat than present-day nonhuman primates. But several questions remain unanswered: how frequently meat eating occurred; what the social implications of meat eating were; and whether the increased use of meat coincides with the beginnings of the use of home bases.

1. The passage mainly discusses which of the following aspects of hominid behavior?

(A) Changes in eating and dietary practices

(B) The creation of stone hunting tools

(C) Social interactions at home bases

(D) Methods of extracting nutritious food from carcasses

2. According to the passage , bringing a meal to a location to be shared by many individuals is

(A) an activity typical of nonhuman primates

(B) a common practice among animals that eat meat

(C) an indication of social unity

(D) a behavior that encourages better dietary habits

3. The word consumed in line 4 is closest in meaning to

(A) prepared

(B) stored

(C) distributed

(D) eaten

4. According to paragraph 2, researchers make copies of old stone tools in order to

(A) protect the old tools from being worn out

(B) display examples of the old tools in museums

(C) test theories about how old tools were used

(D) learn how to improve the design of modern tools

5. In paragraph 2, the author mentions all of the following as examples of ways in which early

stone tools were used EXCEPT to

(A) build home bases

(B) obtain food

(C) make weapons

(D) shape wood

6. The word innovative in line 13 is closest in meaning to

(A) good

(B) new

(C) simple

(D) costly

7. The word them in line 15 refers to

(A) issues

(B) researchers

(C) tools

(D) specimens

8. The author mentions characteristic chippage patterns in line 16 as an example of

(A) decorations cut into wooden objects

(B) differences among tools made of various substances

(C) impressions left on prehistoric animal bones

(D) indications of wear on stone tools

9. The word extract in line 19 is closest in meaning to

(A) identify

(B) remove

(C) destroy

(D) compare

10. The word whether in line 26 is closest in meaning to

(A) if

(B) how

(C) why

(D) when

托福阅读真题3

Plants are subject to attack and infection by a remarkable variety of symbiotic species and have evolved a diverse array of mechanisms designed to frustrate the potential colonists. These can be divided into preformed or passive defense mechanisms and inducible or active systems. Passive plant defense comprises physical and chemical barriers that prevent entry of pathogens, such as bacteria, or render tissues unpalatable or toxic to the invader. The external surfaces of plants, in addition to being covered by an epidermis and a waxy cuticle, often carry spiky hairs known as trichomes, which either prevent feeding by insects or may even puncture and kill insect larvae. Other trichomes are sticky and glandular and effectively trap and immobilize insects.

If the physical barriers of the plant are breached, then preformed chemicals may inhibit or kill the intruder, and plant tissues contain a diverse array of toxic or potentially toxic substances, such as resins, tannins, glycosides, and alkaloids, many of which are highly effective deterrents to insects that feed on plants. The success of the Colorado beetle in infesting potatoes, for example, seems to be correlated with its high tolerance to alkaloids that normally repel potential pests. Other possible chemical defenses, while not directly toxic to the parasite, may inhibit some essential step in the establishment of a parasitic relationship. For example, glycoproteins in plant cell walls may inactivate enzymes that degrade cell walls. These enzymes are often produced by bacteria and fungi.

Active plant defense mechanisms are comparable to the immune system of vertebrate animals, although the cellular and molecular bases are fundamentally different. Both, however, are triggered in reaction to intrusion, implying that the host has some means of recognizing the presence of a foreign organism. The most dramatic example of an inducible plant defense reaction is the hypersensitive response. In the hypersensitive response, cells undergo rapid necrosis — that is, they become diseased and die — after being penetrated by a parasite; the parasite itself subsequently ceases to grow and is therefore restricted to one or a few cells around the entry site. Several theories have been put forward to explain the basis of hypersensitive resistance.

1. What does the passage mainly discuss?

(A) The success of parasites in resisting plant defense mechanisms

(B) Theories on active plant defense mechanisms

(C) How plant defense mechanisms function

(D) How the immune system of animals and the defense mechanisms of plants differ

2. The phrase subject to in line 1 is closest in meaning to

(A) susceptible to

(B) classified by

(C) attractive to

(D) strengthened by

3. The word puncture in line 8 is closest in meaning to

(A) pierce

(B) pinch

(C) surround

(D) cover .

4. The word which in line 12 refers to

(A) tissues

(B) substances

(C) barriers

(D) insects

5. Which of the following substances does the author mention as NOT necessarily being toxic to

the Colorado beetle?

(A) resins

(B) tannins

(C) glycosides

(D) alkaloids

6. Why does the author mention glycoproteins in line 17?

(A) to compare plant defense mechanisms to the immune system of animals

(B) to introduce the discussion of active defense mechanisms in plants

(C) to illustrate how chemicals function in plant defense

(D) to emphasize the importance of physical barriers in plant defense

7. The word dramatic in line 23 could best be replaced by

(A) striking

(B) accurate

(C) consistent

(D) appealing

8. Where in the passage does the author describe an active plant-defense reaction?

(A) Lines 1-3

(B) Lines 4-6

(C) Lines 13-15

(D) Lines 24-27

9. The passage most probably continues with a discussion of theories on

(A) the basis of passive plant defense

(B) how chemicals inhibit a parasitic relationship.

(C) how plants produce toxic chemicals

(D) the principles of the hypersensitive response.