【新SAT】社会科学类文章阅读解题备考方法

我们来看一下下面这篇社会科学类文章。

This passage is adapted from Richard Florida, The GreatReset. ©2010 by Richard Floria.

In today’s idea-driven economy, thecost of time is what really matters. With the constant pressure to innovate, itmakes little sense to waste countless collective hours commuting. So, the mostefficient and productive regions are those in which people are thinking andworking—not sitting in traffic.

The auto-dependent transportationsystem has reached its limit in most major cities and megaregions. Commuting bycar is among the least efficient of all our activities—not to mention among theleast enjoyable, according to detailed research by the Nobel Prize–winningeconomist Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues. Though one might think that theeconomic crisis beginning in 2007 would have reduced traffic (high unemploymentmeans fewer workers traveling to and from work), the opposite has been true.Average commutes have lengthened, and congestion has gotten worse, if anything.The average commute rose in 2008 to 25.5 minutes, “erasing years of decreasesto stand at the level of 2000, as people had to leave home earlier in themorning to pick up friends for their ride to work or to catch a bus or subwaytrain,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which collects the figures. And thoseare average figures. Commutes are far longer in the big West Coast cities ofLos Angeles and San Francisco and the East Coast cities of New York,Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. In many of these cities, gridlockhas become the norm, not just at rush hour but all day, every day.

The costs are astounding. In LosAngeles, congestion eats up more than 485 million working hours a year; that’sseventy hours, or nearly two weeks, of full-time work per commuter. In D.C.,the time cost of congestion is sixty-two hours per worker per year. In New Yorkit’s forty-four hours. Average it out, and the time cost across America’sthirteen biggest city-regions is fifty-one hours per worker per year. Across the country, commuting wastes 4.2billion hours of work time annually—nearly a full workweek for every commuter.The overall cost to the U.S. economy is nearly $90 billion when lostproductivity and wasted fuel are taken into account.At the Martin Prosperity Institute, we calculate that every minute shaved off America’scommuting time is worth $19.5 billion in value added to the economy. Thenumbers add up fast: five minutes is worth $97.7 billion; ten minutes, $195billion; fifteen minutes, $292 billion

It’s ironic that so many peoplestill believe the main remedy for traffic congestion is to build more roads andhighways, which of course only makes the problem worse. New roads generatehigher levels of “induced traffic,” that is, new roads just invite drivers todrive more and lure people who take mass transit back to their cars.Eventually, we end up with more clogged roads rather than a long-termimprovement in traffic flow.

The coming decades will likely seemore intense clustering of jobs, innovation, andproductivity in asmaller number of bigger cities and city-regions. Some regions could end up bloatedbeyond the capacity of their infrastructure, while others struggle, theirpromise stymied by inadequate human or other resources.

Adapted from Adam Werbach, “TheAmerican Commuter Spends 38 Hours a Year Stuck in Traffic.” ©2013 by TheAtlantic.

这篇文章是社会科学文章，更具体的说是偏向经济学一般知识的文章。这篇文章讲的是交通拥堵的经济代价。语言不是很难，读起来也算比较简单。

1. The passage most strongly suggests that researchers at the MartinProsperity Institute share which assumption?

(a) Employees who work from home are more valuable to their employers thanemployees who commute.

(b) Employees whose commutes are shortened will use the time saved to doadditional productive work for their employers.

(c) Employees can conduct business activities, such as composing memos orjoining conference calls, while commuting.

(d) Employees who have lengthy commutes tend to make more money than employeeswho have shorter commutes.

2. As used in line 42,“intense” most nearly means

(a) emotional

(b) concentrated

(c) brilliant

(d) determined.

3.Which claim about traffic congestionis supported by the graph?

(a) New York Citycommuters spend less time annually delayed by traffic congestion than theaverage for very large cities.

(b) Los Angeles commutersare delayed more hours annually by traffic congestion than are commuters in Washington,D.C.

(c) Commuters inWashington, D.C., face greater delays annually due to traffic congestion thando commuters in New York City.

(d) Commuters in Detroitspend more time delayed annually by traffic congestion than do commuters inHouston, Atlanta, and Chicago.

来自官方的导言：“SAT的社会科学段落通常会摘取自书本中关于社会科学的某个主题，但也很有很能来自历史中某个著名演说，或重要文件。因为很多社会科学的书籍对于学生来说很难从头读到尾，我们推荐你最好从最基础的议题开始接触，那就是美国历史。正如自然科学段落会要求学生对生物等学科的基本掌握，很多社会科学段落会假定学生对美国历史，以及政府政治的内容有基础知识。”

社会科学类文章篇章仍属于议论文范畴，仍然维持单篇题、双篇题题型，题目类型相对没有太大变化。长双篇章的题材选自社会科学类篇章可能性较大。现行 SAT 主要针对对社会产生影响的事件、趋势，文献筛选方面不会特别久远。而新 SAT 中出现了 18 世纪欧洲关于民主、权力方面的文献，以及美国建国早期的民权方面的文献等，阅读理解起来难度较大，需有一定文化、知识储备。

小编给大家的建议就是在平时要养成阅读的习惯，要开始对美国的社会文化以及历史有更深的了解，可关注积累相关少数族裔，女权、公民权利、民主等敏感点及相关文献、演讲资料。这样在考试中才不会出现对文章背景内容一无所知的情况。