朗阁海外考试研究中心  王上

纵观托福阅读10大题型，我们不难发现托福阅读说到底其实就是在考逻辑关系。句子简化题考的是句子内部的逻辑关系；指代题，句子插入题和修辞目的题考察的是句子与句子之间的关系；而最后一个题型：内容小结题和表格题则考察的是段落之间的逻辑关系。所以，如果广大的托儿们能熟练地掌握逻辑关系并且能够灵活运用，托福阅读绝不在话下。

逻辑关系主要有五种：因果关系，转折关系，比较关系，并列关系和否定关系。今天朗阁海外考试研究中心的们将主要介绍的是转折关系词及其运用。

可能说到转折关系词，大家印象往往是however、but，然后大家会下意识地认为转折之后是重点。其实这个想法非常危险也很容易掉入出题者的陷阱。下面我们来列举一个TPO的，来看看出题者到底是如何一步步带大家掉入陷阱的。

Paragraph 6: Perhaps so much time has passed that there will never be satisfactory answers to the cave images, but their mystique only adds to their importance. Certainly a great art exists, and by its existence reveals that ancient human beings were not without intelligence, skill, and sensitivity.

According to paragraph 6, why might the puzzling questions about the paintings never be answered?

A. Keeping the paintings a mystery will increase their importance.

B. The artists hid their tools with great intelligence and skill.

C. Too many years have gone by since the images were painted.

D. Answering the questions is not very important to scholars.

这道题所对应的段落非常短，定位很容易，想要把这段看懂也不是什么难事，重点是想要把这道题选对就蛮有迷惑性的了。首先，我们通过puzzling questions和never be answered进行定位，在行顺利找到出处。然后我们发现，这句话的后半句出现了闪亮亮的but，很多托儿们开始顺势往后读，发现出现了mystique adds to their importance，所以选A。其实在做这道题时，托儿们犯了两个致命的错误。，虽然划了定位词，但是忽略了考点词，why，这道题问的是原因，所以我们应该在原文中找因果关系词；第二，草率地认为转折之后是。出现转折词，我们知道转折词前后意思相反，托福阅读除了最后一个题型都在考察细节，所以其实取决于定位的信息，如果定位的信息在转折词之前，就是前面，反之亦然。

再看一遍原文，我们不难发现一个因果关系词：so...that..表示“如此…以至于”，so...that中间的表示原因，所以是so much time has passed，和时间有关。正确是C。

下面朗阁海外考试研究中心的帮助大家总结了托福阅读TPO中高频出现的转折关系词：but, however, in spite of, despite, although, though, instead of, nevertheless, nonetheless, yet, while, whereas.

我们再看一道：

Paragraph1: The earliest discovered traces of art are beads and carvings, and then paintings, from sites dating back to the Upper Paleolithic period. We might expect that early artistic efforts would be crude, but the cave paintings of Spain and southern France show a marked degree of skill. So do the naturalistic paintings on slabs of stone excavated in southern Africa. Some of those slabs appear to have been painted as much as 28,000 years ago, which suggests that painting in Africa is as old as painting in Europe. But painting may be even older than that. The early Australians may have painted on the walls of rock shelters and cliff faces at least 30,000 years ago, and maybe as much as 60,000 years ago.

Paragraph 1 supports which of the following statements about painting in Europe?

A. It is much older than painting in Australia.

B. It is as much as 28,000 years old.

C. It is not as old as painting in southern Africa.

D. It is much more than 30,000 years old.

这道题很好定位，题干中出现特殊定位词：Europe和名词painting，定位在第五行，这句话后面出现了转折词but，所以我们知道和题干有关的就只有划横线的这句。所以非洲的绘画和欧洲的一样旧。为B。

除了事实信息题，在句子简化题中，转折关系词也大量出现，而熟悉了解转折关系词能够帮助我们删除干扰选项，方便在更短的时间找寻正确。

下面我们来看OG上的一道题：

The structure of the backbone shows, however, that Ambulocetus swam like modern whales by moving the rear portion of its body up and down, even though a fluke was missing.

A. Even though Ambulocetus swam by moving its body up and down, it did not have a backbone.

B. The backbone of Ambulocetus , which allowed it to swim, provides evidence of its missing bone.

C. Although Ambulocetus had no fluke, its backbone structure shows that it swam like modern whales.

D. By moving the rear parts of their bodies up and down, modern whales swim in a different way from the way Ambulocetus swam.

细心的托儿们发现，这句话中出现了两个转折关系词：however和even though，但是真正表达转折关系的其实只有even though，因为however前后出现逗号，表明它是插入语，however真正的位置应该是句，表明这句话和上句话是转折关系。而句子简化题考查的是句子内部的逻辑关系，所以even though是真正的转折关系词。我们再来看一下四个选项，其中A和C出现了转折词：even though和although，所以我们优先看这两个选项。A选项说it did not have a backbone，很明显和句子意思不符。C选项，完全是文中句子的同义改写，所以是正确。

朗阁海外考试研究中心的提醒广大托儿们，句子简化根本上考察的是长难句分析能力，待简化的句子长达三至五行，而选项多半都是两行长度，如果我们一一阅读，再选出，那么会耽误太多时间，但是如果我们悉知逻辑关系词，那么我们可以很容易挑出满足逻辑关系的选项，再在这些选项中选出一个正确的，时间将大大缩短。