雅思閱讀方法之結構閱讀法

　　其實雅思閱讀並沒你想象中那麼難，你只要詳細閱讀高分技巧，並且有針對性的練習，伸手撥開迷霧，早日找到核心本質，就一定能順利過關。下面是小編給大家帶來的，希望能幫到大家!

　　雅思考題的設計思路不僅是為了測試考生的語言水平，更在於幫助考生培養起一套適合英聯邦大學教學觀念的學習方法。在英國念文科的同學都會有這樣一種共識，那就是一學期要看很多書，寫很多essay，有的同學雖然很刻苦，整日地泡在圖書館裡做書蟲，但還是讀不完readinglList中的必讀書。再對比周圍英國同學，他們不見得比我們刻苦，卻很能掉書袋，寫出的essay理論功底更深。學習效率的高低正是由閱讀方法的差異造成的。

　　中國學生從小接受英語精讀教學，咬文嚼字，看書喜歡一頁頁地細嚼慢嚥。就個人閱讀習慣而言，這種讀法無可厚非，但若是做學問，這就不是正確的方法了。而英國學生讀書，總是先瀏覽目次、摘要等資訊，然後閱讀索引，找尋需要的資訊，所以他們一本書通常讀甚至於幾小時就夠了。同樣雅思的文章，也沒必要逐字逐句的讀，而是要了解作者行文時的構思以及寫文章要達到的目的。如果做題前就能對文章的思路瞭如指掌，那就好比站在了作者的高度，定位時也就不會出現無的放矢的碰運氣了。

　　有的同學也許會有這樣的疑問，雅思文章題材五花八門，行文艱深晦澀，要看懂都不容易，如何能在幾分鐘內，梳理出作者的寫作思路呢?對於這個問題我們知道，雅思文章的學術性雖然決定了它的深度，但另一方面也決定了相對固定的文章結構。因為學術是嚴謹的，在形式上它有一套嚴格的規範***the established academic caliber***。就學術範疇的文章而言，其觀點可以犀利獨到，但論證必須縝密，所以文章層次結構相比起他體裁是穩定的。換言之，學術文章有點八股文的味道。那麼我們就可以利用這點迅速掌握文章結構繼而掌握思路了。

　　雅思閱讀材料：the Innovation of Ameirica

　　這篇雅思閱讀材料的主要內容是雖然美國的經濟正在復甦，但是，美國人的信心仍然深陷在經濟危機當中沒有回覆。在2月份的一次對於世界經濟的領導力量的調查中，大多數人選擇了中國。所以美國的經濟復甦雖然充滿了想法，但是還需付出實踐。

　　Still full of ideas, but not making jobs

　　America needs to share the benefits of innovation more widely

　　THE economy is recovering, yet American confidence remains mired at levels more commonly seen in recessions. For that blame unemployment, petrol prices and a deeper, nagging feeling that America is in decline. A Gallup poll in February asked Americans to name the world’s leading economic power. By a significant margin, they said China.

　　Barack Obama has exploited this anxiety. America, he has said, faces a new “Sputnik moment” and must “compete for the jobs and industries of our time” by spending more on research, education and infrastructure. But the notion that America is on the verge of being vanquished by cleverer, more innovative competitors is flawed. First, competitiveness is a woolly concept that wrongly supposes countries, like football teams, win only when another team loses. But one country’s economic growth does not subtract from another’s. Second, America’s ability to innovate and raise productivity remains reasonably healthy. The problem is that the benefits of that innovation and productivity have become so narrowly concentrated that workers’ median wages have stagnated.

　　Towards the end of the last decade American productivity began to slump, a sign to some that the pay-off from new information technology had largely been exhausted. But coming out of the recession productivity surged; it rose by 3.9% last year, the fastest rate since 2002. This was largely cyclical, since business output has recovered more quickly than hiring. Long-term productivity growth will be more modest, and its rate will depend on investment, human capital and innovation.

　　After collapsing during the recession, investment in business equipment has bounced back, rising 17% in the last quarter of 2010 from the figure a year earlier. Human capital is more of a challenge. Americans once led the world in educational attainment, but this is now barely rising while other countries have caught up ***see article***. That is a key reason why Dale Jorgenson, an economist at Harvard University, reckons overall productivity growth will average 1.5% in the coming decade, down from 2% in the previous two.

　　Innovation is what preoccupies Mr Obama. He worries that the next breakthroughs in energy, transport and information technology will occur elsewhere. His advisers fret that federal research and development has fallen sharply since the Sputnik era. But the picture is more encouraging once private R&D is included. In 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, total R&D was 2.8% of GDP, near the top of its historical range ***see chart***. American patent applications tailed off during the recession, but only after doubling in the decade before.

　　Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think-tank backed by the technology industry, acknowledges that America starts from an impressive level, but says other countries are catching up as their growth in R&D and the number of their scientists and engineers gradually approaches, or overtakes, America’s. China has doubled the share of its GDP devoted to R&D, although it remains below America’s. In 2000 Americans filed six times as many patent applications as Chinese residents did. By 2009, however, China had surpassed the American total.

　　American companies have begun to build more R&D facilities in emerging countries, both in response to local government pressure and to be closer to customers. General Electric, which already has research centres in China, India and Germany, announced last year that it would put one in Brazil. This, it says, has not come at America’s expense: GE plans to add two more research centres in the United States to the one it runs in upstate New York. Mark Little, the head of GE Global Research, the company’s in-house research division, says putting scientists and researchers into other countries enables GE to come up with products it would not have thought of before. For rural Chinese hospitals, more used to doing things manually than in America and Europe, GE designed less-automated MRI machines.

　　Adam Segal, author of “Advantage: How American Innovation can Overcome the Asian Challenge”, says Asia’s threat to American technological leadership is overstated. China’s research output is soaring, but much of it is poor-quality or based on plagiarism. Chinese companies are seizing market share in solar panels and wind turbines largely because of low manufacturing wages, says Mr Segal: “They have made no major breakthroughs in any of the underlying technologies.” R&D spending in India is minuscule.

　　The real problem for America is not its innovative capacity, but the fact that its benefits go to relatively few. This is illustrated by a recent paper by Michael Spence and Sandile Hlatshwayo, both of New York University. They divided jobs among tradable and non-tradable sectors. Tradable sectors include manufacturing, commodities and services such as finance and engineering that compete globally. Value-added per person, a proxy for productivity, rose sharply in this sector, but the number of jobs actually declined between 2000 and 2008. The opposite was true in the non-tradable services such as government and health care. There real value-added rose only sluggishly, but employment expanded significantly. Behind this, says Mr Spence, is the trend of American multinationals to keep the highest value-added activities at home while shifting lower value-added activities, such as manufacturing, abroad.

　　Qualcomm, a developer of mobile-phone chips and technology based in San Diego, earns roughly 40% of its revenue from licensing and royalty fees for technology developed primarily in America, where three-quarters of its employees work. Last year it spent $2.5 billion, or roughly 20% of revenue, on R&D for such projects as developing Mirasol, an easy-to-read, energy-efficient phone display. Paul Jacobs, the company’s boss, complains about high corporate-tax rates and the difficulty of getting immigrant visas for foreign-born engineers and scientists, but maintains that America is not about to be superseded as a centre for innovation. In California Qualcomm has access to the best college graduates and a pool of ideas and recruits generated by a nexus of established and start-up companies.

　　But Qualcomm has done no manufacturing of its own since selling its last handset plant in 2000. Although Mirasol was developed in America, the displays will be made in Taiwan, which has the skills, the suppliers and the economies of scale.

　　These findings present a dilemma for America’s policymakers. Raising federal R&D spending and easing immigration for foreign-born PhDs would boost innovation and company successes, but would not produce many jobs. Mr Spence and Mr Atkinson would like to see government incentives aimed at strategic manufacturing sectors. But such policies have a poor track record. And in any case Congress is in no mood to pay for them, no matter what Mr Obama says.