考研英語閱讀文章一般在400～500字左右，如此短的文章中夾雜著生僻的單詞和疑難句，從而使得閱讀工作變得異常困難。那么在這其中，我們應當怎么做呢？ 在此建議大家使用如下的方法：

　　1、掃讀文章，了解基本內容、作者立場和文章結構。一般而言，我們所要閱讀的內容集中在文章首段、各段首尾句和轉折句處。

　　2、仔細讀題目，劃出“標桿詞”——最獨特的詞組、數字或符號（如生詞、拼寫較長或很短的詞、大寫的詞、斜體詞、百分比、年代或日期、貨幣代號等）。

　　3、掃視全文，一旦找到和題目相對應的信息，立馬放慢速度，直到所讀意群表達意思與題目無關為止。

　　4、對比選項，選出最適合的答案。

　　5、在定位的同時，要結合自然段定位的原則輔助定位。

　　下面我們結合真題來進行一下具體講解。

　　真題解析（2000年 Text1）

　　A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap， but， if properly handled， it may become a driving force. When the United States entered just such a glowing period after the end of the Second World War， it had a market eight times larger than any competitor， giving its industries unparalleled economies of scale. Its scientists were the world‘s best， its workers the most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies the war had destroyed.

　　It was inevitable that this primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just as inevitably， the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the mid1980s Americans had found themselves at a loss over their fading industrial competitiveness. Some huge American industries， such as consumer electronics， had shrunk or vanished in the face of foreign competition. By 1987 there was only one American television maker left， Zenith. （Now there is none： Zenith was bought by South Korea’s LG Electronics in July.） Foreign made cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market. America‘s machine-tool industry was on the ropes. For a while it looked as though the making of semiconductors， which America had invented and which sat at the heart of the new computer age， was going to be the next casualty.

　　All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing， and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. The mid-1980s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of America’s industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition from overseas.

　　How things have changed！ In 1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been struggling. Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as a devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. Self doubt has yielded to blind pride. “American industry has changed its structure， has gone on a diet， has learnt to be more quick witted，” according to Richard Cavanagh， executive dean of Harvard‘s Kennedy School of Government. “It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our businesses are improving their productivity，” says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute， a think tank in Washington， DC. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business School believes that people will look back on this period as “a golden age of business management in the United States.”

　　51. The U.S. achieved its predominance after World War II because ________.

　?。跘］ it had made painstaking efforts towards this goal

　?。跙］ its domestic market was eight times larger than before

　?。跜］ the war had destroyed the economies of most potential competitors

　?。跠］ the unparalleled size of its workforce had given an impetus to its economy

　　52. The loss of U.S. predominance in the world economy in the 1980s is manifested in the fact that the American ________.

　?。跘］ TV industry had withdrawn to its domestic market

　?。跙］ semiconductor industry had been taken over by foreign enterprises

　　［C］ machine-tool industry had collapsed after suicidal actions

　?。跠］ auto industry had lost part of its domestic market