这里我想就同学们问的最多的一个问题结合自己的心得体会给予解答。做托福阅读的时候到底是先看文章再做题还是直接做题？

答案一定是先看文章再做题！我发现很多同学认为考试时间很紧张，所以根本没有看文章的时间，拿到文章都是直接拉到最后，马上开始做题。其实这种想法是错误的。我说的看文章并不是从头看到尾，而是看每个段落的主题句（通常都是每段的一二句）。当你的语法知识足够扎实，对不同文体的展开方式足够了解的时候，我相信这样一个步骤并不会耽误你多少时间。当你简单的看完文章之后，你会对它的主题，展开方式以及作者的基本态度有所了解，这样一来，对你之后做题无论是速度还是准确率都有很重要的影响。

那么看完文章之后是不是马上开始做第一题呢？不是的。看完文章直接开始做最后一题--小结题。看完文章之后是做小结题的最佳时机！这个时候做小结题有几大好处：第一点当然不用说了，那就是那个时候你刚看完文章记得最清楚呀；其二，小结题的六个选项其实就是在帮你简明扼要的总结这篇文章，所以当你做完它，相信你对文章内容已经了熟于心了，那做剩下的题目也会更有信心。

提到小结题，我发现很多同学都没有掌握到正确的做题方法，最常见的两种情况是：一种是做到最后一题发现时间不够了，就凭自己的印象随便选三个，拿个一分就够了；另一种是做到小结题还有时间，反复的在原文和题目间跳转，结果就是脑子混乱，最后还是只能得一分。所以说，这些都是错误的做题方法。那么，小结题拿满分真的有那么难么？不是的。当你找到方法，小结题简直就是送分题啊！接下来我们就用一个真题来讲一讲到底该怎么做。

The Development of Steam Power（TPO34-2）

1.By the eighteenth century, Britain was experiencing a severe shortage of energy. Because of the growth of population, most of the great forests of medieval Britain had long ago been replaced by fields of grain and hay. Wood was in ever-shorter supply, yet it remained tremendously important. It served as the primary source of heat for all homes and industries and as a basic raw material. Processed wood (charcoal) was the fuel that was mixed with iron ore in the blast furnace to produce pig iron (raw iron). The iron industry's appetite for wood was enormous, and by 1740 the British iron industry was stagnating. Vast forests enabled Russia to become the world's leading producer of iron, much of which was exported to Britain. But Russia's potential for growth was limited too, and in a few decades Russia would reach the barrier of inadequate energy that was already holding England back.（背景）

2.As this early energy crisis grew worse, Britain looked toward its abundant and widely scattered reserves of coal as an alternative to its vanishing wood. Coal was first used in Britain in the late Middle Ages as a source of heat. By 1640 most homes in London were heated with it, and it also provided heat for making beer, glass, soap, and other products. Coal was not used, however, to produce mechanical energy or to power machinery. It was there that coal's potential wad enormous.（条件）

3.As more coal was produced, mines were dug deeper and deeper and were constantly filling with water. Mechanical pumps, usually powered by hundreds of horses waling in circles at the surface, had to be installed. Such power was expensive and bothersome. In an attempt to overcome these disadvantages, Thomas Savery in 1698 and Thomas Newcomen in 1705 invented the first primitive steam engines. Both engines were extremely inefficient. Both burned coal to produce steam, which was then used to operate a pump. However, by the early 1770s, many of the Savery engines and hundreds of the Newcomen engines were operating successfully, though inefficiently, in English and Scottish mines.（Stage1：由0到1的标志）

4.In the early 1760s, a gifted young Scot named James Watt was drawn to a critical study of the steam engine. Watt was employed at the time by the University of Glasgow as a skilled crafts worker making scientific instruments. In 1763, Watt was called on to repair a Newcomen engine being used in a physics course. After a series of observations, Watt saw that the Newcomen's waste of energy could be reduced by adding a separate condenser. This splendid invention, patented in 1769, greatly increased the efficiency of the steam engine. The steam engine of Watt and his followers was the technological advance that gave people, at least for a while, unlimited power and allowed the invention and use of all kinds of power equipment.（Stage 2：发展，改良）

5.The steam engine was quickly put to use in several industries in Britain. It drained mines and made possible the production of ever more coal to feed steam engines elsewhere. The steam power plant began to replace waterpower in the cotton-spinning mills as well as other industries during the 1780s, contributing to a phenomenal rise in industrialization. The British iron industry was radically transformed. The use of powerful, steam-driven bellows in blast furnaces helped iron makers switch over rapidly from limited charcoal to unlimited coke (which is made from coal) in the smelting of pig iron (the process of refining impure iron) after 1770. In the 1780s, Henry Cort developed the puddling furnace, which allowed pig iron to be refined in turn with coke. Cort also developed heavy-duty, steam-powered rolling mills, which were capable of producing finished iron in every shape and form.（影响，作用）

6.The economic consequence of these technical innovations in steam power was a great boom in the British iron industry. In 1740 annual British iron production was only 17,000 tons, but by 1844, with the spread of coke smelting and the impact of Cort's inventions, it had increased to 3,000,000 tons. This was a truly amazing expansion. Once scarce and expensive, iron became cheap, basic, and indispensable to the economy.（影响，结果）

在这篇文章中我们需要看的只有我划线的部分，所以这个看文章的过程根本耽误不了几分钟。但是，你会发现在第三段和第四段中，我并没有划第一句话，而是划出了人名与年份对应的句子，这里我想强调一下：文章中出现的时间点一定是事物发展过程中产生变化的时间点，而文章中出现的人，一定是对事物发展产生影响的人，所以他们的出现是有意义的，需要我们去关注的。

做过TPO的同学们会发现，有不止一篇的The development of …,The extinction of …,The origin of …,以及 …in 18th Europe。其实，这些文章的展开方式都有一定的pattern，通俗来讲就"套路"。它们都是按照 ①背景原因 ②发展历程 ③结果影响来展开的，其中②发展历程无疑是最重要的。所以在看到这样的文章的时候，你要留意每一段处于这三个部分的哪一个阶段，在这篇文章的每段后我已经用黑体字标明了。

好了，到这一步，阅读文章的工作就已经完成了，接下来看看题目吧。

14.Prose Summary.

By the eighteenth century, Britain was experiencing a severe shortage of energy.

A. The development of blast furnaces for the manufacture of pig iron made the Britain less dependent on wood.

B. After the medieval period, both Russia and Britain began to look for alternative sources of energy, such as steam power, in order to maintain the growth of their iron industries.

C. Two inventors designed the first steam engines in order to overcome the disadvantages of relying on horses to power the pumps used in mining coal.

D. James Watt was able to improve upon the efficiency of the steam engine and make it useful to several industries.

E. The puddling furnace increased the availability of charcoal to a variety of industries from cotton to iron production.

F. Steam power increased coal production, which in turn allowed extraordinary growth of the iron industry and the British economy.

第一步分析题目给的句子（By the eighteenth century, Britain was experiencing a severe shortage of energy.）对应的是原文第一段，也就是背景。这时候你要意识到接下来我们所选的的三个至少有两个要属于发展阶段的内容（因为这是全文最重要的部分），而发展阶段的内容一定是围绕主题的（steam power）所以我们只需要找出A-E六个选项中那些提到steam power，把提到的留下，再检验就可以选出正确答案了。答案是C,D,F.

C选项对应的是文章第三段（由0-1的过程）；D选项对应的是第四和第五段（Stage 2 改良）；而F对应的是最后一段（影响与结果）。

这样做小结题的方法既简单又高效，重要的是准确率杠杠的，屡试不爽，希望同学们能自己尝试一下运用到做题过程中去。