SAT备考总体思路与词汇篇

　　——SAT2400牛人提分法点评之一

　　网上疯传一篇SAT牛人备考经验谈，该文作者获得SAT考试满分2400, 阅读分数短期内从500飞跃到800，最终被哈佛大学录取。对此有的同学感叹：这个人真的好强!!有的同学摇头：这个人纯属吹牛，方法太玄!! 2013年，三位经我辅导的北京学生被Cornell大学录取。对比他们的成功经验，我发现这位牛人的方法可行，英语值得学习(请数数本文用了几个vouch for——证实，与attest to, verify, testify to, substantiate, certify, corroborate, warrant, validate等构成一个庞大的同义词群)。在下文中，该文的英语原文在前，我的中文点评在后。请注意英语原文的划线部分。

　　Do you want to learn the most infallible and least error-prone method of attacking the SAT Critical Reading Section? Learn from someone who knows. I was accepted into Harvard with a 2400 (that sounds pretentious but you should know where I'm coming from). I first have to tell you that achieving a great score on SAT CR is not easy and there's no single silver bullet. As with everything, this method requires repeated practice and experimentation before results can show. Please read on as I share with you my successful method of tackling CR.

　　作者：牛人背景华丽，让人羡慕妒忌恨。不过，“No pains, no gains.”

　　战略上要积极应对

　　Step 1. Let's start with the approach. You have probably encountered people in your daily life who snidely demean the SAT or at least the experience of taking the SAT. However, you must approach this important experience with a fundamentally different mindset. Okay, perhaps the SAT is a test full of tricks --- a test purely to be gamed. If so, however, learning to work within a system is a very valuable skill to have in life. Furthermore, I believe that the fundamental basis of the SAT is not its tricks, but its call for a rapid comprehension of certain situations, a supple maneuverability, and a positive approach to the material. After all, a multiple-choice test with any semblance of difficulty can be said to contain tricks. How good is your knowledge if you can't manipulate a small challenge? Don't demean your opponent - that's a recipe for disaster. The last quality, a positive approach to the material, is the most important and the one you can control the easiest. However, it does not come naturally (as can be seen with scores of grumbling teens) and takes reinforcing.

　　作者：战略上要积极应对——视SAT考试为机遇，而不是视其为障碍和刁难。说起来容易做起来难，但是讨厌或害怕一门考试或考试的某一项对备考极其不利。不要害怕面对自己的弱点，不要自暴自弃。认真对待才是正道。罗斯福说：“我们真正要害怕的是害怕本身”，以此重振极度绝望的美国民众的信心。在5,000年考试智慧熏陶下的中国同学一定能完胜SAT。

　　战术上要换位思考

　　Step 2. A second word about approach: You didn't pay College Board 45 bucks so that you could be nice. When you're faced with five choices on a question, you've got to be ruthless. Stop internally justifying why one answer could be right, and instead make the shift to asking yourself why that answer could be wrong - play Devil's Advocate, as clichéd as that may sound. I can't tell you enough how much this shift in thinking has helped me when I have been stuck between two seemingly correct choices. Despite appearances, all choices ARE different and one is certainly the best, or else College Board would be losing thousands of dollars to successful lawsuits. Keep this in mind. You have got to find the right answer and I will show you how.

　　作者：战术上要换位思考(play Devil's Advocate)——从命题人的角度分析答案的对错，思考正确选项的编写方法与错误选项的干扰陷阱。

　　词汇上要力求

　　Step 3. It is my intention to focus mostly on the long reading passages in this How-To, since that is where the majority of the CR questions lie and since these questions give many test-takers a higher level of grief. For sentence completions, my biggest advice is to stop wasting your time on tricks, to buckle down, and to start attacking vocabulary lists. Direct Hits is vouched for by many and proven to be most effective, though I personally used Princeton Review's Word Smart I and II cover to cover (perhaps not as efficient as the previously mentioned title). One problem is retention, so what I did was that I made flashcards for every word I didn't know in the book (it came out to about 1000 words). It takes a long time, but it pays off for the SAT, your reading, your writing, and your life. Only if you really know the words will you be able to confidently answer sentence completions (and consummately schmooze at cocktail parties). For the short passages, it's all about absorbing the small paragraphs as efficiently as you can before going on to answer the questions. They're considerably easier if you keep your mind, and obsessing about the short passages (going back to double or triple check) is a huge time drain. Most of the time, it's a quick fact check paired with a tone question. If you practice a lot on long passages, short passages will be an easy relief for you.

　　作者：词汇上要力求。SAT是监狱，词汇能打开它的大门。背单词的时间永远不够，所以背单词要做到：只背对的，不背累的，即集中精力背常考的核心词汇和同义词群(如上述的“证实”词群)，不背几乎不考的偏僻词汇。再辅之以真题中出现的词汇的复习(请参考《SAT真词汇》)，拿下高分并不难。文中提到的Princeton Review的Word Smart的上下两册不错，类似Barron’s 3, 500，有注释，有例句，还有练习，个人觉得比 Barron’s 3, 500更;文中提到的Direct Hits收集的词汇也比较。如文中所说，对于不认识的词汇，可以写在单词卡片上背诵，一面儿写英文和注释，另一面儿写中文和例句。请记住：SAT考试比耐力，更比效率，所以一定要选择很有效的备考方法。