雅思阅读解题方法讲解之精读文章 教您如何用经济学人与雅思说分手

烤鸭们应该都知道雅思阅读想要考高分讲究一个快准，而做题又快有准的基础就是要有足够的词汇和理解能力。那么今天给大家分享的雅思阅读解题方法就是精读了，尤其是《经济学人》中的文章，更是烤鸭需要重点关注的。

以下文章选自经济学人

Boys are being outclassed by girls at both school and university, and the gap is widening.

在校园中，男学员们正被女生们超越，且差距还在扩大。

“It’s all to do with their brains and bodies and chemicals,”says Sir Anthony Seldon, the master of Wellington College, a posh English boarding school. “There’s a mentality that it’s not cool for them to perform, that it’s not cool to be smart,”suggests Ivan Yip, principal of the Bronx Leadership Academy in New York. One school charges £25,000 ($38,000) a year and has a scuba-diving club; the other serves subsidised lunches to most of its pupils, a quarter of whom have special needs. Yet both are grappling with the same problem: teenage boys are being left behind by girls.

 翻译：一所豪华的英国寄宿学校威灵顿学院的院长安东尼·塞尔登说道：“这一切都与他们的大脑、身体和化学物质有关。”纽约布朗克斯领导学院的校长伊凡·叶指出：“他们持有一种心态，即表现出挑和显得聪明都是不恰当的。“其中一所学校每年收费2.5万英镑(3.8万美元)，还设有一个潜水俱乐部；另一所学校为大部分学员提供午餐补贴，其中四分之一的学员有特殊需求。然而，他们都在努力解决同样的问题：十几岁的男孩正被女孩们甩在后头。

讲解：

① Posh：If you describe something as posh, you mean that it is elegant, fashionable, and expensive. 时髦的; 豪华的

② Scuba-diving：The sport or activity of swimming underwater using special breathing equipment consisting of a container of air which you carry on your back and a tube through which you breathe the air.  戴水肺潜水

③ Grapple：If you grapple with a problem or difficulty, you try hard to solve it. 努力解决 (问题)

背景知识：

① Wellington College：英国惠灵顿公学建于1859年，惠灵顿公爵在滑铁卢战役中击败了法皇拿破仑，并两次担任英国首相。维多利亚女王于1856年亲自为学校奠基，以纪念惠灵顿公爵。

② Bronx Leadership Academy：Bronx Leadership Academy High School is ranked 961-1,217th within New York. Students have the opportunity to take Advanced Placement coursework and exams. The AP participation rate at Bronx Leadership Academy High School is 32%. The total minority enrollment is 98%, and 87% of students are economically disadvantaged. Bronx Leadership Academy High School is 1 of 548 high schools in the New York City Public Schools. 

It is a problem that would have been unimaginable a few decades ago. Until the 1960s boys spent longer and went further in school than girls, and were more likely to graduate from university. Now, across the rich world and in a growing number of poor countries, the balance has tilted the other way. Policymakers who once fretted about girls’ lack of confidence in science now spend their time dangling copies of“Harry Potter”before surly boys. Sweden has commissioned research into its“boy crisis”. Australia has devised a reading programme called “Boys, Blokes, Books & Bytes”. In just a couple of generations, one gender gap has closed, only for another to open up.

 翻译：这个问题在几十年前是不会被人们所考虑的。直到20世纪60年代，男生们在学校里花费的时间比女生们长，且在校表现普遍优于女生。因此，他们更有机会顺利从大学毕业。如今，在富足的国度以及越来越多的贫困国家中，天枰倒向了另外一边。曾经担忧女孩们在科学领域信心不足的政策制定者们如今费心于花时间在乖戾的男学员们面前摇晃着《哈利波特》。瑞士已经委托他方对“男孩危机”展开调查研究。澳大利亚设计了一个名为“Boys, Blokes, Books & Bytes”的阅读项目。在短短几代人的历程中，一个性别差异已然消失，但另一条鸿沟却被打开。

讲解：

① Tilt：If you tilt an object or if it tilts, it moves into a sloping position with one end or side higher than the other. 使倾斜; 倾斜

② Fret：If you fret about something, you worry about it. 担心

③ Dangle：If something dangles from somewhere or if you dangle it somewhere, it hangs or swings loosely. 悬挂; 悬摆

④ Surly：Someone who is surly behaves in a rude bad-tempered way. 粗暴的; 乖戾的

背景知识：

Blokes, Books & Bytes’ programme utilizes peer role models to motivate others. 3,000 UK schools and other institutions have joined the Reading Champions programme so far.

The reversal is laid out in a report published on March 5th by the OECD, a Paris based rich-country think-tank. Boys’ dominance just about endures in maths: at age 15 they are, on average, the equivalent of three months’ schooling ahead of girls. In science the results are fairly even. But in reading, where girls have been ahead for some time, a gulf has appeared. In all 64 countries and economies in the study, girls outperform boys. The average gap is equivalent to an extra year of schooling.

翻译：OECD在3月5日发布的报告中提出了这种逆转，OECD是总部位于巴黎的富国智囊团。 男孩在数学上的统治地位几乎可以忍受：在15岁时，他们平均要比女孩早三个月上学。 在科学上，结果是相当均匀的。 但是在阅读中，女孩已经领先了一段时间，出现了鸿沟。 在研究的所有64个国家和地区中，女孩的表现均优于男孩。 平均差距相当于多上一年的教育。

讲解：

① Reversal：A reversal of a process, policy, or trend is a complete change in it. 彻底改变; 逆转

② Lay out：To lay out ideas, principles, or plans means to explain or present them clearly, for example, in a document or a meeting. 清晰表达

知识拓展：

OECD一般指经济合作与发展组织，全称：Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development。 成立于1961年，目前成员国总数38个，总部设在巴黎。

The OECD deems literacy to be the most important skill that it assesses, since further learning depends on it. Sure enough, teenage boys are 50% more likely than girls to fail to achieve basic proficiency in any of maths, reading and science (see chart 1). Youngsters in this group, with nothing to build on or shine at, are prone to drop out of school altogether.

翻译：经合组织认为读写能力是它所评估的最重要的技能，因为更深入的学习依赖于这项技能。很明显，十几岁的男孩在数学、阅读和科学方面达不到基本熟练度的可能性比女孩高出50%（见表1）。这一群体中的年轻人，由于没有什么可继续深造的，同时他们也没有出众之处，所以这批学员很容易辍学。

讲解：

① Deem：If something is deemed to have a particular quality or to do a particular thing, it is considered to have that quality or do that thing. 认为；相信

② Shine at：（例句）He didn't shine at languages, but he was a wonderful card-player. 干得出色

③ Prone：To be prone to something, usually something bad, means to have a tendency to be affected by it or to do it. 易于 (受某事物影响或做某事) 的

To see why boys and girls fare so differently in the classroom, first look at what they do outside it. The average 15-year-old girl devotes five-and-a-half hours a week to homework, an hour more than the average boy, who spends more time playing video games and trawling the internet. Three-quarters of girls read for pleasure, compared with little more than half of boys. Reading rates are falling everywhere as screens draw eyes from pages, but boys are giving up faster. The OECD found that, among boys who do as much homework as the average girl, the gender gap in reading fell by nearly a quarter.

翻译：想知道为何男孩和女孩在课堂上的表现如此不同，首先要看他们在课堂外的表现。15岁的女孩平均每周花在家庭作业上的时间为五个半小时，比男孩多一小时，而男孩们花在电子游戏和网络上的时间更多。四分之三的女孩读书是为了休闲娱乐，而男孩们的这一比例仅略高于一半。电子产品的吸引力尤为强大，使得世界各地的阅读率不断下滑，男孩们更容易身陷电子产品的漩涡。经济合作与发展组织(OECD)发现，在家庭作业完成度与一般女生一样的男学员中，阅读能力上的性别差距下降了近四分之一。

讲解：

Trawl：If you trawl through a large number of similar things, you search through them looking for something that you want or something that is suitable for a particular purpose. 搜索

Once in the classroom, boys long to be out of it. They are twice as likely as girls to report that school is a “waste of time”, and more often turn up late. Just as teachers used to struggle to persuade girls that science is not only for men, the OECD now urges parents and policymakers to steer boys away from a version of masculinity that ignores academic achievement. “There are different pressures on boys,”says Mr Yip. “Unfortunately there’s a tendency where they try to live up to certain expectations in terms of[bad] behaviour.”

讲解：

① Steer：If you steer people toward a particular course of action or attitude, you try to lead them gently in that direction. 引导

② Masculinity（→ masculine男性or男性的）：Masculinity means the qualities, especially sexual qualities, which are considered to be typical of men. 阳刚之气

③ Live up to：If someone or something lives up to what they were expected to be, they are as good as they were expected to be. 达到

以上就是本期《经济学人》的重点内容了，同学们在平时还是要雅思托福语言成绩呀，因为一份优秀的语言成绩对申请有着至关重要的作用。新一年的申请通道已开启，如果您有托福、雅思语言进阶的需求，赶紧来唯寻，唯寻有很多雅思在等着你。点击【预约试听】即可了解更多。

点击

经济学人精读来了 雅思成绩进阶的好方法

有哪些雅思阅读技巧和方法可以快速上8分 总结阅读题型是你复习的好助手

查看更多雅思方法。