Today：时间强对比

Think of laws forbidding anyone to teach slaves to read. Think of Hitler's book burnings. Think of all the attempts over the years to enforce either orthodoxy or the status quo by putting learning off-limits, and you begin to sense the power of what is happening. The walls of caste and class have not been razed, but they are suddenly, irrevocably, more porous.

Think of… Think of… Think of：并列的内容不太可能成为主题
Orthodoxy：正统观念
status：拉丁词，现状
caste：这里指严格分化的社会阶层
raze：夷为平地
irrevocably：不可撤销的
porous：多孔的

And yet not completely porous.
Yet：强对比

The pertinence of the “digital divide” is a reminder that some Americans remain cut off from the power of the knowledge revolution.

Pertinence：恰当、适当
digital divide：数字鸿沟
cut off from：被……排除在外

注意：上下文逻辑出现跳跃，可能就是出题的位置所在

We have to get serious not merely about the technology but also the psychology of bridging that divide. We have to infect our turned-off adults and our uninspired children with the desire to know more of what is within their grasp already and the oceans more that shortly will be.

We have to…We have to　并列句，不太可能是主题句
Uninspired：无灵感的
Ocean：差距

If that's true of end-of-the-century America, it is immeasurably worse for much of the rest of the world. As U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan remarked in a recent speech, “Half the worlds population has never even made, or received, a telephone call.”

我们要关注隐藏在名人引言后的含义，而不是具体引言本身。

9. The author quotes U.N. Secretary General?s remark in the last paragraph mainly to demonstrate that _________.
(A) telephone is more important to the Web than the poor
(B) digital revolution will be welcomed by the poor
(C) the gap between the rich and the poor can be wider in the information age
(D) half the world's population will benefit from knowledge explosion

10. The last two paragraphs of the passage can be perceived as __________.
(A) the summary of the whole passage
(B) the introduction of the concept “digital divide”
(C) the prediction about America in the new century
(D) the warning of issues behind technological progress

本题是结构功能题

8. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?
(A) Both Compton's and World Book are encyclopedias.
(B) Encarta Encyclopedia is giving way to Encyclopedia Britannica.
(C) The sales of Encyclopedia Britannica have been going down dramatically over the past decade.
(D) Encyclopedia Britannica opens its Web site to attract more readers.

本题是“杀手”题型，可以放到最后来做

Other Reading Skills:

一．主题原则
二．句义理解题要和主题挂钩
三．抓住强对比
四. 最后两段深化主题