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生词多,又想正确理解文章。该怎么办?

The more I read, the more unknown words I will find. I have almost lost patience to look them up in a dictionary one by one. But I want to understand the articles correctly. What shall I do?

阅读得越多,我发现的生词就越多。我已几乎无耐心去逐个查词典,但我又想正确理解文章。我该怎么办?


I agree the sheer volume of new words that you will encounter in any piece of writing is very great indeed. I also fully understand how tedious it is to have to look up so many words. It just takes the fun out of reading. One thing you should ask yourself is whether you are trying to read English which is beyond your level. You may not actually be ‘ready’ for completely unsimplified English. But if you think you are and want to continue reading general articles in the press, etc., I suggest you train yourself in the following:
 Scan (= quickly look through) the whole text before you begin reading it so that you get a general idea what it is about. Look particularly at the general title of an article and its section headings if it has any. Make sure you understand these by looking them up in a dictionary if necessary.
 Scan each paragraph before you begin reading it to get the general meaning.
 Read the paragraph sentence by sentence, trying to understand new words from context. Make intelligent guesses at the meanings of words and look up only those words which interfere with your understanding. You can’t, for example, read a text about pigeons if you don’t understand the word ‘pigeon’ because it’s essential to the understanding of a text as a whole.
This procedure will greatly reduce the number of times you consult the dictionary and will increase your pleasure in reading. However, it may be that your difficulty in understanding a text is not the result of vocabulary, but of syntax (= the way words are joined together to make sentences). If this is the case, you need practice in analysing and de-coding sentences. A practice book like my own Longman Advanced English Grammar is designed to train you in this skill.

我也认为你在阅读文章时所遇到的生词的绝对量的确是巨大的。我也完全理解要查这么多单词有多么乏味。它剥夺了阅读的乐趣。你首先应该问自己,你试图阅读的英语是否超过自己的实际水平了。事实上你可能还不适宜去读那些完全未经简写的英语。但如果你认为自己可以去读,而且想继续读书报上的文章,那么我建议你在以下方面加强训练:
 浏览(快速通读)全文后再开始正式阅读,以便获得总体印象。要特别注意文章的题目和各章节的小标题(如果有的话)。若有必要应查词典弄清这些标题的意思。
 在阅读一个段落前,应先浏览,以了解大概意思。
 阅读各段落时,要逐句阅读,根据上下文去理解生词。可以猜测单词的意思,只有在这些单词干扰了正常阅读时再去查词典。例如,如果你不知道pigeon的意思就不能去阅读一篇关于鸽子的文章,因为理解这个词对于理解全文是必不可少的。
这种步骤将大大减少你查词典的次数,增加阅读的乐趣。但是,也有可能你在文本理解上的困难不是因为词汇量的原因,而是因为句法(即词汇组成句子的方式)的原因。如果是这个问题,那你需要练习剖析句子。类似我著的Longman Advanced English Grammar这样的练习书就是设计来训练这方面技巧的。

文:路易亚历山大 新概念英语作者
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