2016考研英语：阅读词义题

在英语学习中，我们自然会遇到许多生词。这时，许多人立即翻阅字典，查找词义。其实，这种做法是不科学的。它不但费时费力，而且影响阅读速度。事实上，阅读材料中的每个词与它前后的词语或句子甚至段落有着互相制约的关系。我们可以利用语境(各种已知信息)推测、判断某些生词的词义，因为考研阅读部分的词汇题 要考的并不是考生认不认识题中所考的单词，真正要考的是考生阅读中的推断能力，也就是说题中所考单词的词义必定能根据上下文推断出来。推断出词义后，可将词义代入原文看是否通畅来判断自己的推测是否准确。

例如：

2003年第54题

Railroads justify rate discrimination against captive shippers on the grounds that in the long run it reduces everyone’s cost. If railroads charged all customers the same average rate, they argue, shippers who have the option of switching to trucks or other forms of transportation would do so, leaving remaining customers to shoulder the cost of keeping up the line. It’s a theory to which many economists subscribe, but in practice it often leaves railroads in the position of determining which companies will flourish and which will fail.“Do we really want railroads to be the arbiters of who wins and who loses in the marketplace?”asks Martin Bercovici, a Washington lawyer who frequently represents shippers.

The word“arbiters”most probably refers to those_________.
[A] who work as coordinators
[B] who function as judges
[C] who supervise transactions
[D] who determine the price

该题的解题关键在于是否知道arbiters后的介宾短语of who wins and who loses in the marketplace就是对该词的最准确定义，依据该介宾短语，不难得出arbiters是决定谁输谁赢的人，四个选项中只有B选项和这个意思最为接近。

再例：

2004年第43题

For any job search, you should start with a narrow concept—what you think you want to do—then broaden it.“None of these programs do that,”says another expert.
“There's no career counseling implicit in all of this.”Instead, the best strategy is to use the agent as a kind of tip service to keep abreast of jobs in a particular database; when you get E-mail, consider it a reminder to check the database again.“I would not rely on agents for finding everything that is added to a database that might interest me,”says the author of a job-searching guide.

The expression“tip service”most probably means .
[A] advisory
[B] compensation
[C] interaction
[D] reminder

该题的解题关键在于充分利用分号，分号前面的短语use the agent as a kind of tip service和分号后的consider it a reminder属于并列关系，it和the agent都是指的文章中所说的搜索代理，自然我们就找到了tip service的同义词reminder。所以该题答案D。

根据考研英语阅读理解词义题破解的总体原则，可以总结出两种具体的词义题解题方法：

1、内在逻辑关系法

即根据内在逻辑关系推测词义是指运用语言知识分析和判断相关信息之间存在的逻辑关系，然后根据逻辑关系推断生词词义或大致义域。

a. 根据对比关系猜测词义

在一个句子或段落中，有对两个事物或现象进行对比性的描述，我们可以根据生词或难词的反义词猜测其词义。

例如：Andrew is one of the most supercilious men I know. His brother, in contrast, is quite humble and modest.该例中supercilious对许多人来说可能是个生词，但是句中短语in contrast，(相对照的，相对比的)可以提示我们supercilious和后面词组humble and modest(谦卑又谦虚)是对比关系。分析出这种关系后，我们便能猜出supercilious意为“目空一切的，傲慢的”。

表示对比关系的词汇和短语主要是unlike，not，but，however，despite，in spite of，in contrast和while引导的并列句等。例如，A good supervisor can recognize instantly the adept workers from the unskilled ones.该句中并未出现上面提到的表示对比关系的词或短语，但是通过上下文可以判断出句子前后是对比关系，即把熟练工人与非熟练工人区分开。这时我们也能够推断出生词adept的词义为“熟练的”。