中级口译：快速阅读冲刺法

对于阅读的复习，考生们应该在冲刺阶段继续熟悉文章的读法，因为时间有限，且每篇文章后面仅考五道题目，也就意味着考生实际上也没有必要通读全文，所以考场上的制胜关键就在于你是否能在短时间内迅速处理完文章了。

　　下面以09年9月的第三篇中口真题文章为例，来为大家解读应如何在短时间内抓住最重要的信息。

　　IT’S Monday morning, and you’re having trouble waking your teenagers. You’re not alone. Indeed, each morning, few of the country’s 17 million high school students are awake enough to get much out of their first class, particularly if it starts before 8 a.m. Sure, many of them stayed up too late the night before, but not because they wanted to.
　　第一段一上来就是些琐碎的现象描述，很明显只是为了引出主题，考生完全可将其略过。

　　Research shows that teenagers’ body clocks are set to a schedule that is different from that of younger children or adults. This prevents adolescents from dropping off until around 11 p.m., when they produce the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin, and waking up much before 8 a.m. when their bodies stop producing melatonin.
　　第二段话开头黑体字部分告诉我们，这里是一个结论句，阅读文章可略的是具体论据，但抽象论点是一定要把握的。接下来的内容是具体解释，不用读的太仔细了。

　　The result is that the first class of the morning is often a waste, with as many as 28 percent of students falling asleep, according to a National Sleep Foundation poll. Some are so sleepy they don’t even show up, contributing to failure and dropout rates.
　　第三段开头也是一样，结论句部分要仔细读，接下来的数字则不用太关注。

　　Here’s an idea: stop focusing on testing and instead support changing the hours of the school day, starting it later for teenagers and ending it later for all children. Indeed, no one does well when they’re sleep-deprived, but insufficient sleep among children has been linked to obesity and to learning issues like attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. You’d think this would spur educators to take action, and a few have.
　　第四段话开头的idea告诉我们，作者不仅在文章当中分析了现象，还阐述了解决问题的方案，可以细读。

　　In 2002, high schools in Jessamine County in Kentucky pushed back the first bell to 8:40 a.m., from 7:30 a.m. Attendance immediately went up, as did scores on standardized tests, which have continued to rise each year. Districts in Virginia and Connecticut have achieved similar success. In Minneapolis and Edina, Minn., which instituted high school start times of 8:40 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. respectively in 1997, students’ grades rose slightly and lateness, behavioral problems and dropout rates decreased. Later is also safer. When high schools in Fayette County in Kentucky delayed their start times to 8:30 a.m., the number of teenagers involved in car crashes dropped, even as they rose in the state.
　　第五段话里面划横线部分，大家可以明显看出全是在列举例子而已，可以略掉。

　　So why hasn’t every school board moved back that first bell? Well, it seems that improving teenagers’ performance takes a back seat to more pressing concerns: the cost of additional bus service, the difficulty of adjusting after-school activity schedules and the inconvenience to teachers and parents.
　　第六段话作者分析为什么这么好的措施不是全部学校在执行呢？因为他们关注的并非是青少年的利益。

　　But few of these problems actually come to pass, according to the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement at the University of Minnesota. In Kentucky and Minnesota, simply flipping the starting times for the elementary and high schools meant no extra cost for buses.
　　而第七段话的but就再次指示了作者的意图，作者始终认为应该推迟一大早上课的时间，不要那么早就让青少年起床。

　　There are other reasons to start and end school at a later time. According to Paul Reville, a professor of education policy at Harvard and chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education, “Trying to cram everything our 21st-century students need into a 19th-century six-and-a-half-hour day just isn’t working.” He says that children learn more at a less frantic pace, and that lengthening the school day would help “close the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and their better-off peers.”
　　最后一段话开头更是强调了整篇文章的主旨，接下来的专家头衔和直接引用全部可以略去不看，“He says that”开始的间接引用可以再看一下。

　　这样整篇文章看下来，其实要看的也没多少了，大大节省考生的阅读时间，提高了我们的阅读效率，让我们把更多的时间可以放在题目的操作上。在冲刺阶段，请大家反复体会这样的阅读方式。