在线英语听力室

VOA日常语法2022 使用语法进行推理,提高阅读技能

时间:2022-02-18 02:13:38

搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号:tingroom,领取免费英语资料大礼包。

(单词翻译)

Use Grammar to Make Inferences2, Improve Reading Skills

Imagine you want to improve your reading skills in English. Perhaps you pick up a book such as "The Night Watchman," an award-winning book by Louise Erdrich. You read the following words:

Thomas Wazhashk removed his thermos3 from his armpit and set it on the steel desk alongside4 his scuffed5 briefcase6.

In today's Everyday Grammar, we will explore these words in some detail. You will learn how you can improve your reading skills by making inferences – conclusions or opinions that are based on facts or evidence.

Asking questions

When you read in English, one way to improve your understanding is to ask yourself an important question: Who is doing what?

This question gets to the heart of one of the important structures of English grammar: subject, verb, object.

Let's consider our example sentence:

Thomas Wazhashk removed his thermos from his armpit and set it on the steel desk alongside his scuffed briefcase.

We can start by identifying the subject of the sentence – Thomas Wazhashk. Then we can look to the next word: the verb removed. It is in the past tense. We know this because of the –ed ending.

We already have several important pieces of information. The writer is describing something that Thomas Wazhashk did in the past. He was removing .... what exactly?

Imagine you do not know what a thermos is, or an armpit for that matter. Do not be worried about the terms you do not know. Instead, look for words that you do know.

Note the word his. This word shows possession. It comes before nouns. Therefore, you know that a thermos is a noun, and an armpit is a noun.

So far, the basic structure of the sentence is something like this:

Thomas removed his [noun] ...from his [noun]...

Let's continue with our example sentence. We arrive at the words and set it. The word and is a conjunction, the word set is another past tense verb. Because there is not a different subject stated, we can guess that Thomas Wazhashk is doing another action.

Once again, we have the word his, as in his scuffed briefcase.

You know that a briefcase is likely to be a noun. The word scuffed is probably an adjective. We know this because adjectives often come before nouns and after words such as his.

If we look at the entire sentence – and look for words that mark nouns as well - we arrive at something like this:

Thomas Wazhashk removed his [noun] from his [noun] and set it on the steel desk alongside his [adjective] [noun].

Moving forward

Once you have identified the basic sentence structure, you have a few different ways you could continue reading. You could look up the unfamiliar7 words in the dictionary. But that process would make your reading very slow.

You could also keep reading and try to understand the broader ideas and actions of the story without paying special attention to unusual words. Instead, you could use what you understand to try to reach a conclusion about what an unfamiliar word means. This is called making an inference1.

Here is an example. Imagine you continued reading the description about Thomas. Perhaps you read the following words (which do not actually appear in Erdrich's book):

Thomas opened the thermos and poured hot, steaming coffee into his cup.

When you read this sentence, you can make an inference about what a thermos is. It is an object that holds liquids and keeps them hot.

Closing thoughts

When you become good at making inferences, your reading skills will improve – as will your enjoyment8 of reading.

Grammar can help you make inferences. Look for the sentence's subject, verb, objects. And look for function words – words like his, her, their, the, a, an, this, those. These words give you clues about grammatical9 relationships and can tell you if an unfamiliar word is a noun or adjective.

It will take effort to improve your reading skills, but taking the time to do so will help you read all kinds of wonderful books, news stories, and even social media posts. You will also have better results on difficult English reading tests.

Words in This Story

watchman – n. a person whose job is to watch and guard property at night or when the owners are away

function word – n. a word whose purpose is to show a grammatical relationship


分享到:


点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 inference a7KxB     
n.推断结果,结论,推论,推理,推断
参考例句:
  • The inference I've drawn from his lateness is he overslept.从他来晚我得出的结论是他睡过头了。
  • You seemed to know about this book,and by inference I thought you had read it.你好像了解这本书,因此我推断你已读过它了。
2 inferences ab3805cdd09ee925028a9bd42a81fbad     
推论( inference的名词复数 ); 推理; 推断结果; 结论
参考例句:
  • The inferences drawn from data have led to some major changes in our policy. 根据资料做出的推论使得我们的方针发生了一些重大变化。
  • A teacher should be good at drawing inferences about other cases from one instance. 老师要善于举一反三。
3 thermos TqjyE     
n.保湿瓶,热水瓶
参考例句:
  • Can I borrow your thermos?我可以借用你的暖水瓶吗?
  • It's handy to have the thermos here.暖瓶放在这儿好拿。
4 alongside XLWym     
adv.在旁边;prep.和...在一起,在...旁边
参考例句:
  • There was a butcher's shop alongside the theatre.剧院旁边有一家肉店。
  • Alongside of him stood his uncle.他的身旁站着他叔叔。
5 scuffed 6f08ab429a81544fbc47a95f5c147e74     
v.使磨损( scuff的过去式和过去分词 );拖着脚走
参考例句:
  • I scuffed the heel of my shoe on the stonework. 我的鞋跟儿给铺好的石头磨坏了。
  • Polly dropped her head and scuffed her feet. 波莉低下头拖着脚走开了。 来自辞典例句
6 briefcase lxdz6A     
n.手提箱,公事皮包
参考例句:
  • He packed a briefcase with what might be required.他把所有可能需要的东西都装进公文包。
  • He requested the old man to look after the briefcase.他请求那位老人照看这个公事包。
7 unfamiliar uk6w4     
adj.陌生的,不熟悉的
参考例句:
  • I am unfamiliar with the place and the people here.我在这儿人地生疏。
  • The man seemed unfamiliar to me.这人很面生。
8 enjoyment opaxV     
n.乐趣;享有;享用
参考例句:
  • Your company adds to the enjoyment of our visit. 有您的陪同,我们这次访问更加愉快了。
  • After each joke the old man cackled his enjoyment.每逢讲完一个笑话,这老人就呵呵笑着表示他的高兴。
9 grammatical SfLx6     
adj.语法的,符合语法规则的
参考例句:
  • His composition is excellent except for some grammatical mistakes.他的作文写得很好,只有几处语法错误。
  • He can barely form a grammatical sentence.他几乎造不出合乎语法的句子。

本文本内容来源于互联网抓取和网友提交,仅供参考,部分栏目没有内容,如果您有更合适的内容,欢迎 点击提交 分享给大家。