雅思阅读是一种任务型阅读。在做题目的时候，我们需要在跳读、扫读和精读之间灵活转换，从而快速找到题目中所需的信息并在必要的时候对文中的一句话或几句话进行深层次的理解。
所谓精读，就是通过逐行阅读文章从而精确而清晰地理解文章的意思。为了能够让大家更有效地精读每篇文章，我们结合例子，由浅入深从词汇、句子、段落3个层面来了解精读的时候都需要注意理解哪些内容，而通过理解这些内容又能给我们带来什么好处。
之前我们讲述了应如何从【词汇层面】、【句子层面】了解精读时应注意的一些内容，这次为大家带来了【段落层面】的相关内容。
段落层面
逻辑连接
背景：在看文章的时候，一些同学可能会收到自身语言能力和阅读习惯的限制，经常只见树木不见森林，导致一篇文章看下来，只抓住了一些零散的信息，却没有抓住这些信息之间的逻辑。其实在学术文章中，作者的逻辑都是非常清晰的，他们会运用各种“逻辑连接词”来对段落中的内容以及几个段落中的内容进行衔接，方便读者跟上他们的思路，由于篇幅原因，笔者放两段原文给大家抛砖引玉，请关注下方原文中加粗的逻辑连接词，体会它们的作用。
【原文1】Psychologists have long held that a person’s character cannot undergo a transformation in any meaningful way and that the key traits of personality are determined at a very young age. However, researchers have begun looking more closely at ways we can change. Positive psychologists have identified 24 qualities we admire, such as loyalty and kindness, and are studying them to find out why they come so naturally to some people. What they’re discovering is that many of these qualities amount to habitual behaviour that determines the way we respond to the world. The good news is that all this can be learned.
【原文2】Hunt and Lipo contend that moai-building was an activity that helped keep the peace between islanders. They also believe that moving the moai required few people and no wood, because they were walked upright. On that issue, Hunt and Lipo say, archaeological evidence backs up Rapanui folklore. Recent experiments indicate that as few as 18 people could, with three strong ropes and a bit of practice, easily manoeuvre a 1,000 kg moai replica a few hundred metres. The figures' fat bellies tilted them forward, and a D-shaped base allowed handlers to roll and rock them side to side.
Moreover, Hunt and Lipo are convinced that the settlers were not wholly responsible for the loss of the island's trees. Archaeological finds of nuts from the extinct Easter Island palm show tiny grooves, made by the teeth of Polynesian rats. The rats arrived along with the settlers, and in just a few years, Hunt and Lipo calculate, they would have overrun the island. They would have prevented the reseeding of the slow-growing palm trees and thereby doomed Rapa Nui's forest, even without the settlers' campaign of deforestation. No doubt the rats ate birds' eggs too. Hunt and Lipo also see no evidence that Rapanui civilisation collapsed when the palm forest did. They think its population grew rapidly and then remained more or less stable until the arrival of the Europeans, who introduced deadly diseases to which islanders had no immunity. Then in the nineteenth century slave traders decimated the population, which shrivelled to 111 people by 1877.
Hunt and Lipo's vision, therefore, is one of an island populated by peaceful and ingenious moai builders and careful stewards of the land, rather than by reckless destroyers ruining their own environment and society. 'Rather than a case of abject failure, Rapu Nui is an unlikely story of success’, they claim. Whichever is the case, there are surely some valuable lessons which the world at large can learn from the story of Rapa Nui.
分析：【原文1】是一种比较典型的开头段展开方式，先用一个传统的观点作为引入，然后通过“however”这个转折词来表明后面的内容才是作者真正想要进行展开的内容，从而体现出这篇文章的新奇之处和写作意义；【原文2】中有三段话，虽然很长，但是通过辨识“moreover”和“therefore”这两个逻辑连接词，我们很快就可以分辨出这三段之间的关系：前两段是并列关系，都是具体论述；而最后一段和前面两个段落是因果关系，作者在最后一段中给出了结论。
好处：在精读文章的时候，如果能有意识地去关注这些逻辑连接词，就可以提升自己对逻辑衔接方面的敏感度，从而在练习的时候更好地把上下文的意思进行串联；同时，学习逻辑连接词的用法还对写作颇有益处，让自己写出来的文章更有条理。
段落结构
背景：这个层面涉及到雅思阅读中一个难度较高的题型——标题配对题，这个题型要求同学们能够快速识别出一个段落（或几个段落）的大意。由于各种因素的影响，一些同学可能会把段落中的一些细节信息或次要信息误认为是一个段落的大意。先来看看下面3个段落，可以尝试辨认下这些段落的大意分别是什么。
【原文1】The supporters of vertical farming claim many potential advantages for the system. For instance, crops would be produced all year round, as they would be kept in artificially controlled, optimum growing conditions. There would be no weather-related crop failures due to droughts, floods or pests. All the food could be grown organically, eliminating the need for herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers. The system would greatly reduce the incidence of many infectious diseases that are acquired at the agricultural interface. Although the system would consume energy, it would return energy to the grid via methane generation from composting nonedible parts of plants. It would also dramatically reduce fossil fuel use, by cutting out the need for tractors, ploughs and shipping.
【原文2】Moving from water to land involved a major redesign of every aspect of life, including breathing and reproduction. Nevertheless, a good number of thoroughgoing land animals later turned around, abandoned their hard-earned terrestrial re-tooling, and returned to the water again. Seals have only gone part way back. They show us what the intermediates might have been like, on the way to extreme cases such as whales and dugongs. Whales (including the small whales we call dolphins) and dugongs, with their close cousins the manatees, ceased to be land creatures altogether and reverted to the full marine habits of their remote ancestors. They don`t even come ashore to breed. They do, however, still breathe air, having never developed anything equivalent to the gills of their earlier marine incarnation. Turtles went back to the sea a very long time ago and, like all vertebrate returnees to the water, they breathe air. However, they are, in one respect, less fully given back to the water than whales or dugongs, for turtles still lay their eggs on beaches.
【原文3】A survey conducted by Anthony Synott at Montreal's Concordia University asked participants to comment on how important smell was to them in their lives. It became apparent that smell can evoke strong emotional responses. A scent associated with a good experience can bring a rush of joy, while a foul odour or one associated with a bad memory may make us grimace with disgust. Respondents to the survey noted that many of their olfactory likes and dislikes were based on emotional associations. Such associations can be powerful enough so that odours that we would generally label unpleasant become agreeable, and those that we would generally consider fragrant become disagreeable for particular individuals. The perception of smell, therefore, consists not only of the sensation of the odours themselves, but of the experiences and emotions associated with them.
分析：这三个段落的大意，都可以通过它们各自的结构辨认出来，而这三段文字则代表了三种比较主流的段落组织结构：
【原文1】的结构是最为常见的“总-分”机构，其中的第一句话就是引领这个段落内容的主题句。在这个段落中，主题句先告诉读者垂直农业有很多优势，接下来就用具体的例子告诉读者具体有哪些方面的优势。
The supporters of vertical farming claim many potential advantages for the system.For instance, crops would be produced all year round, as they would be kept in artificially controlled, optimum growing conditions. There would be no weather-related crop failures due to droughts, floods or pests. All the food could be grown organically, eliminating the need for herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers. The system would greatly reduce the incidence of many infectious diseases that are acquired at the agricultural interface. Although the system would consume energy, it would return energy to the grid via methane generation from composting nonedible parts of plants. It would also dramatically reduce fossil fuel use, by cutting out the need for tractors, ploughs and shipping.
【原文2】的结构也是“总-分”，但和【原文1】不一样的是，这段话中的主题句是第二句，即“一部分动物从陆地回到了水中去生活”。其实，这段话的第一句话只是一个背景信息，而第二句开头的“nevertheless”这个转折词，则暗示我们第一句话并不是那么重要。
Moving from water to land involved a major redesign of every aspect of life, including breathing and reproduction. Nevertheless, a good number of thoroughgoing land animals later turned around, abandoned their hard-earned terrestrial re-tooling, and returned to the water again. Seals have only gone part way back. They show us what the intermediates might have been like, on the way to extreme cases such as whales and dugongs. Whales (including the small whales we call dolphins) and dugongs, with their close cousins the manatees, ceased to be land creatures altogether and reverted to the full marine habits of their remote ancestors. They don`t even come ashore to breed. They do, however, still breathe air, having never developed anything equivalent to the gills of their earlier marine incarnation. Turtles went back to the sea a very long time ago and, like all vertebrate returnees to the water, they breathe air. However, they are, in one respect, less fully given back to the water than whales or dugongs, for turtles still lay their eggs on beaches.
【原文3】的结构是“分-总”，基于前面的细节信息，作者在最后给出了一个结论，即“对气味的感知不仅包括对其本身的感觉，还包含了和这些气味相关的经历和情感”。
A survey conducted by Anthony Synott at Montreal's Concordia University asked participants to comment on how important smell was to them in their lives. It became apparent that smell can evoke strong emotional responses. A scent associated with a good experience can bring a rush of joy, while a foul odour or one associated with a bad memory may make us grimace with disgust. Respondents to the survey noted that many of their olfactory likes and dislikes were based on emotional associations. Such associations can be powerful enough so that odours that we would generally label unpleasant become agreeable, and those that we would generally consider fragrant become disagreeable for particular individuals. The perception of smell, therefore, consists not only of the sensation of the odours themselves, but of the experiences and emotions associated with them.
好处：通过在精读的时候分析段落结构，可以提升同学们区分主题（观点）和细节（论据）的能力，从而在解题的时候能够更快提取段落大意，减少被细节信息影响的可能性。
通过在精读时有意识地去理解上述层面中提到的内容，相信大家最终可以显著提升自己的语言能力以及学术文章的阅读和分析能力。但是，并不是说上面的层面就是精读的全部了，在打好基础之后，同学们还可以举一反三，自己尝试去提取文章的要点（这里的要点包括主题和主要细节信息）或者去理解不同类别学术文章的逻辑结构，从而培养优秀的阅读习惯和意识、增强获取信息的速度和准度。如果你掌握了这些能力，那么它们给你带来的回报就不仅仅局限于8分以上的阅读成绩——在今后的留学生涯中，你也将从这种高效阅读的体验中受益更多。
最后，祝愿看完这篇文章的你学业顺利，宏图大展！
