超强托福考试复习资料-从ETS角度看GRE和TOEFL阅读文章来源.docVIP

剖析ETS官方论文 一直以来，新东方老师在深入研究ETS的各种考试过程中，形成了很多独到深刻的认识和系统的解题技巧。从某种意义说，新东方老师和ETS中的高层出题者变成了counterpart的辨证统一关系。一方面ETS出题者极尽所能把考试变得复杂烦难，另一方面，新东方力求“拨云见日”，揭示了种种试题背后隐藏的秘密。 近日，笔者从网上搜索发现了GRE Research的一份研究论文，其中主要内容涉及了对一个名叫Source Finder的软件实际使用效果的评估。论文发表于2002年，核心软件Source Finder的开发是为了帮助ETS在Internet上自动检索数字论文库EBSCO中的文献，从中提炼出符合ETS各种考试风格要求（比如GRE、GMAT和TOEFL等）的样本文章。根据开发的初衷，软件主要希望1）减少ETS寻找合适文章的时间；2）扩大现有合适备用文章储备；3）正规化从笔考到机考的转变过程；4）提供管理层对item writer（负责审查文章是否符合GRE风格的工作人员）评估文章重新考察的机会；5）为新item writer提供合适以及不合适文章的实例。 该项目从1999年开始投入，由哥伦比亚大学教授Rebecca Passonneau负责，该教授曾着力研究时态和语法规范的语义学计算模型Reading comprehension passages generally rely on some kind of tension to give them difficulty. A discussion or argument that develops in a linear fashion toward a conclusion is usually too simple to support challenging items. The requisite tension can take various forms: a conflict between different or opposing arguments about something, an unexpected finding that challenges previously established ways of understanding something, a disagreement about what evidence is relevant to the solution of a particular problem, etc. But disagreement or contrast or opposition is not in itself enough to provide the tension: a passage that merely states or describes opposing positions, without discussing in much detail the reasoning behind them, will not support very many or very complex items. For example, instead of saying that Brown believed X and Smith believed Y, a passage might tell us that Brown, heavily influenced by such-and-such school of thought, tended to assume A, and therefore believed X. Smith, on the other hand, had access to information that Brown did not have, namely B and C, and this information led Smith to conclude Y. However, Smith interpreted B in such a way that it seemed logical to conclude Y, when in fact this interpretation was ill founded. The more interdependent details, the more logical twists and turns, the better. Naturally, a passage containing this kind of density can only be created from a source tha