新SAT考试全解析

【内容提要】

美国大学一直以其优良的教学资源，严谨的治学风气吸引着世界上最优秀的学生。申请美国的顶级学院尤其是前50学校的学生必须在标准化成绩和个人背景之处有自己的独特魅力。其中的标准化成绩又以校内的GPA和SAT的成绩最为重要。以在美国大学排名15名左右的Vanderbilt University为例，所录取的学生老SAT均分2215，折合成新SAT的均分为1520。这是一个很有难度的分数。而在SAT的考试的各个部分中，阅读部分考生失分最多，难度最大，所以SAT能否取得高分，归根到底就是阅读部分能否取得高分。

【真题探讨】

对于态度转换类话题。首先要明确一点。SAT的阅读出题是不符合顺序原则的，换句话就是文章的行文顺序和出题顺序不是一致的。但是通过分析Khan上的6套真题，我们会发现出题原则符合从宏观到微观的原则。

什么是从宏观到微观呢？就是刚开始会出文章大意，全文态度转化类题目，会出一些段落大意，然后是单词在文中的含义，修辞目的，写作手法，语句功能等题目。

今天我们就来探讨一下【全文态度转化类】题目

我们先来看一下态度转换类题目的出题方式

Over the course of the passage, the author’s attitude shifts from

面对这样的问题很多学生是一头雾水，因为一篇SAT阅读文章大概有500-700个字，如何在文章中精准定位到作者的观点，并且感受到作者态度的转变，对很多学生是一个挑战，我们来看一篇文章

This passage is adapted from MacDonald Harris, The Balloonist. ©2011 by The Estate of Donald Heiney.

During the summer of 1897, the narrator of this story, a fictional Swedish scientist, has set out for the North Pole in a hydrogen-powered balloon. My emotions are complicated and not readily verifiable. I feel a vast yearning that is simultaneously a pleasure and a pain. I am certain of the consummation of this yearning, but I don’t know yet what form it will take, since I do not understand quite what it is that the yearning desires.

For the first time there is borne in upon me the full truth of what I myself said to the doctor only an hour ago: that my motives in this undertaking are not entirely clear. For years, for a lifetime, the machinery of my destiny has worked in secret to prepare for this moment; its clockwork has moved exactly toward this time and place and no other. Rising slowly from the earth that bore me and gave me sustenance, I am carried helplessly toward an uninhabited and hostile, or at best indifferent, part of the earth, littered with the bones of explorers and the wrecks of ships, frozen supply caches, messages scrawled with chilled fingers and hidden in cairns that no eye will ever see.

Nobody has succeeded in this thing, and many have died. Yet in freely willing this enterprise, in choosing this moment and no other when the south wind will carry me exactly northward at a velocity of eight knots, I have converted the machinery of my fate into the servant of my will. All this I understand, as I understand each detail of the technique by which this is carried out. What I don’t understand is why I am so intent on going to this particular place. Who wants the North Pole! What good is it! Can you eat it? Will it carry you from Gothenburg to Malmö like a railway? The Danish ministers have declared from their pulpits that participation in polar expeditions is beneficial to the soul’s eternal well-being, or so I read in a newspaper. It isn’t clear how this doctrine is to be interpreted, except that the Pole is something difficult or impossible to attain which must nevertheless be sought for, because man is condemned to seek out and know everything whether or not the knowledge gives him pleasure. In short, it is the same unthinking lust for knowledge that drove our First Parents out of the garden.

And suppose you were to find it in spite of all, this wonderful place that everybody is so anxious to stand on! What would you find? Exactly nothing. A point precisely identical to all the others in a completely featureless wasteland stretching around it for hundreds of miles. It is an abstraction, a mathematical fiction. No one but a Swedish madman could take the slightest interest in it. Here I am. The wind is still from the south, bearing us steadily northward at the speed of a trotting dog. Behind us, perhaps forever, lie the Cities of Men with their fate into the servant of my will. All this I understand, as I understand each detail of the technique by which teacups and their brass bedsteads. I am going forth of my own volition to join the ghosts of Bering and poor Franklin, of frozen De Long and his men.

What I am on the brink of knowing, I now see, is not an ephemeral mathematical spot but myself. The doctor was right, even though I dislike him. Fundamentally I am a dangerous madman, and what I do is both a challenge to my egotism and a surrender to it.

看完全文之后，我们来看第一道题目

Over the course of the passage, the author’s attitude shifts from

A) fear about the expedition to excitement about it.

B) doubt about his abilities to confidence in them.

C) uncertainty of his motives to recognition of them.

D) disdain for the North Pole to appreciation of it.

这是一个非常典型的态度转化类题目，看到这样的题目，有些同学会茫然不知所措，甚至把全文又扫一遍，希望从全文中获得答案。这种做法是非常不可取的，因为它浪费了大量的做题时间。面对这样的题目，其实我们只需回读第一段和最后一段即可。

通过对这篇文章第一段的回读，我们发现体现作者感情色彩的句子是My emotions are complicated and not readily verifiable. 我的感情是复杂的，并且不能被verified（ 我们假定考生对于verified这个词的含义是不确定的）， 后面解释了复杂的原因 一方面就是向往另作者痛并快乐着，I feel a vast yearning that is simultaneously a pleasure and a pain. 另外一方面就是对于这个向往作者有不确定的地方。I am certain of the consummation of this yearning, but I don’t know yet what form it will take, since I do not understand quite what it is that the yearning desires.

所以，通过对第一段的回读，我们发现刚开始作者的感情是复杂的，对自己的yearning，自己的动机不是很确定，所以我们会初步选定C,但是B中的doubt也表示怀疑的意思，所以我们可以先把B当做是一个备选。

通过对最后一段的回读，我们发现最后作者的感情色彩是（句子简练之后）what I now see is myself. 我可以看清自己，我基本上就是一个疯子，但是我会服从自己的内心。所以，作者的态度变得是非常确定的。并且，无论是开头还是结尾，都是对于自己动机，对于自我的认知。对于自己渴求的描述，没有涉及到能力，所以答案是C。

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