解题思路：GRE阅读当中的词汇题应该如何结合语境推断词语意思呢？_常见问题

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解题思路：GRE阅读当中的词汇题应该如何结合语境推断词语意思呢？

作者： 2020-09-02 16:46 来源：重庆编辑

嗨，亲爱的们，今天小编要给大家分享的是关于GRE的词汇题

在阅读的题型中，有一类题的题干标志是：In the context in which it appears, “XXX” nost nearly means…

这类题，我们称之为词汇题。

雅思、托福的阅读中也会出现这类题型，但是作为语言水平的测试，雅思、托福的词汇题往往考的就是这个单词的同义替换。

而在GRE阅读中，词汇题不仅会考同义替换（当然，这种情况不多），还会考查这个单词在上下文语境中的使用，也就是我们常说的一词多义。

所以，针对GRE阅读中的词汇题，需要我们结合上下文去推断出最适合当前语境的该单词的意思。

阅读机经

2018/4/9

A critical consensus has emerged that Mary McCarthy will be remembered primarily as an essayist rather than as a novelist. But despite her formidable gifts as a polemical and discursive writer, and for all her reputation as an intellectual who sacrificed feeling to intelligence, what powers McCarthy’s best essays are her fictional rather than strictly intellectual gifts. She makes her points by telling stories or by way of vivid description, arresting images and subtle characterization. And for all her exacting sense of fact, McCarthy’s greatest contribution was to blur the distinctions between different kinds of prose writing: to show how fiction could be opened up to the thinking mind and how essays could profit from the techniques of fiction. For the following question, consider each of the choices separately and select all that apply.

2. In the context in which it appears, “discursive” most nearly means

A. prolific

B. sophistic

C. rambling

D. analytical

E. circuitous

本题最常见的错误选项是B和C，因为discursive的字面意思就是离题的，东拉西扯的。

但是请注意，正如我们上面所说，GRE阅读中的词汇题，并不总是考察字面意思的同义替换，更多的是考察这个词在文章语境中的意思，正如题干中所说的“In the context in which it appears”

这道题的答案是D选项很多同学都不能理解，为什么要给一个正向的词。

首先，我们要注意到polemical and discursive是用来修饰McCarthy的天赋（gifts）的，所以肯定要给正向的词；

其次，discursive在韦氏字典中本身就有“ analytical reasoning”含义，只不过大家背单词总喜欢看个解析，而忽略这种小众的含义；

再者，我们通过本句话中gifts，reputation，powers等也可判断出，此句应该是正向态度。