托福阅读 | 小指代里的大乾坤

做过托福阅读的同学都知道在托福阅读中有十大题型，这当中最没有存在感的题型是什么呢？大概就是指代题了吧。这种题型的题量不多，在不加试的情况下，三篇文章可能只会考到一道指代题。而且在TPO1-53的所有题目中，指代题一共考察过23道。这可能会给大部分同学一种错觉，指代似乎并不是那么重要。但也就是这么一个小小的指代，会影响到我们做其他题型的正确率以及速度。不信的话，我们来看一道题目吧。

[TPO34-] Protection of Plants by Insects

Paragraph 5: … Observations leave little doubt that ants protect morning glory flowers and fruits from the combined enemy force of grasshoppers, caterpillars, and seed beetles. Bentley compares the seed production of six plants that grew where there were no ants with that of seventeen plants that were occupied by ants. Unprotected plants bore only 45 seeds per plant, but plants occupied by ants bore 211 seeds per plant. Although ants are not big enough to kill or seriously injure grasshoppers, they drive them away by nipping at their feet. Seed beetles are more vulnerable because they are much smaller than grasshoppers. The ants prey on the adult beetles, disturb females as they lay their eggs on developing fruits, and eat many of the eggs they do manage to lay.

According to paragraph 5, ants defend morning glory plants from seed beetles in each of the following ways EXCEPT

A) driving adult beetles off the plants by nipping at their feet
B) catching and eating adult beetles
C) ating beetle eggs they find on developing fruits
D) making it difficult for beetles to lay eggs on developing fruits
Step 1:
按照否定事实题的解法，重点先看选项，要利用选项中的一些特殊词汇在原文段落中进行定位。那我们就来划一下定位词。

A)  driving adult beetles off the plants by nipping at their feet
B)  catching and eating adult beetles
C) eating beetle eggs they find on developing fruits
D)  making it difficult for beetles to lay eggs on developing fruits

Step 2:
利用选项中的定位词在原文中找到具体的句子

… Bentley compares the seed production of six plants that grew where there were no ants with that of seventeen plants that were occupied by ants. Unprotected plants bore only 45 seeds per plant, but plants occupied by ants bore 211 seeds per plant. Although ants are not big enough to kill or seriously injure grasshoppers, they drive them away by nipping at their feet. Seed beetles are more vulnerable because they are much smaller than grasshoppers. The ants prey on the adult beetles, disturb females as they lay their eggs on developing fruits, and eat many of the eggs they do manage to lay.

做到这一步，可能有同学就懵了，怎么四个选项都有，而且如果对prey(捕食)这个词不熟悉的话，很有可能就会错选到B选项了。

好，我们来看by nipping at their feet的部分，有一个their，那我们往回找出their的指代内容，会发现，实际上their指代的是grasshoppers。这样就与题目中ants defend morning glory plants from seed beetles发生了冲突，所以正确答案应该是A。

不要小看一个小小的指代，如果没有弄明白到底指代的内容是什么，很容易就会做错题。

此外，我们再来看一道句子插入题。
Despite its mostly unremarkable characteristics, the Northern Spotted Owl found itself in the center of a struggle between environmentalists and the logging industry in the 1990s due to its habitat. [A] This bird of prey occupies a very confined range of the North American continent, making its home in large tracts of old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest, a region stretching along the coast from northern California to the southernmost part of British Columbia. [B] In the summer of 1990, the Northern Spotted Owl was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, and all logging operations in national forests in the region were halted. [C] Loss of old-growth forest was seen as the primary cause of an alarming decrease in the population of the owls. [D] Thousands of jobs in the industry were lost as a result, and the timber market experienced a drop in supply and subsequent price increases.
 
Logging interests have traditionally been strong here because of the immense size of the native tree species.
Where would the sentence best fit?

在做这道题的过程中，有很多同学会利用logging这个词在原文中进行重复话题词的查找，但是这样并不能够帮助我们很快地解答这道题。但如果我们能够留意到句子中的一个指代”here”就会很好办了。看到”here”这个指代自然就要想到这个句子的前面应该出现过某个地点，所以我们可以把答案的范围缩小到A和B，A的前面有”habitat栖息地”，B的前面有”Pacific Northwest, a region … British Columbia”。那到底是选A还是选B呢？同样的，我们需要利用句子中的指代。看到A选项的后面，出现了”this bird of prey”，而这个指代在待插入的句子中找不到相应的词，所以我们可以肯定答案选的是B。

经过这两道题，希望能够引起大家对句子中指代的重视。