是对主题进行解释（注意答案中提到的本文主题：家庭经济变化）：

[C] they are more vulnerable to changes in family economies.

第二题与第三题都是以例子说明主题：

[B] less secured payments. （第二题）

[D] increase the families’ investment risk. （第三题）

第四题是对主题的引伸（经济变化可能带来的政治后果）：

[C] financial problems may bring about political problems.

当然，这不等于说所有题的答案都是主题。只不过全文主题与段落主题为常考对象，有的文章更是这样。仔细的读者会发现上述两篇文章都是经济类文章。这类文章谈论经济趋势，文中的经济趋势就是主题，值得关注。

除了主题，作者的态度也非常关键。如果这种态度在文中一以贯之，就很值得注意，因为不少题的答案都会涉及这一态度。例如，

Science, in practice, depends far less on the experiments it prepares than on the preparedness of the minds of the men who watch the experiments. Sir Isaac Newton supposedly discovered gravity through the fall of an apple. Apples had been falling in many places for centuries and thousands of people had seen them fall. But Newton for years had been curious about the cause of the orbital motion of the moon and planets. What kept them in place? Why didn’t they fall out of the sky? The fact that the apple fell down toward the earth and not up into the tree answered the question he had been asking himself about those larger fruits of the heavens, the moon and the planets.

……

What this amounts to, of course, is that the scientist has become the victim of his own writings. He has put forward unquestioned claims so consistently that he not only believes them himself, but has convinced industrial and business management that they are true. If experiments are planned and carried out according to plan as faithfully as the reports in the science journals indicate, then it is perfectly logical for management to expect research to produce results measurable in dollars and cents. It is entirely reasonable for auditors to believe that scientists who know exactly where they are going and how they will get there should not be distracted by the necessity of keeping one eye on the cash register while the other eye is on the microscope. Nor, if regularity and conformity to a standard pattern are as desirable to the scientist as the writing of his papers would appear to reflect, is management to be blamed for discriminating against the “odd balls” among researchers in favor of more conventional thinkers who “work well with the team.”(1999-5)

1. The author wants to prove with the example of Isaac Newton that.

[A]inquiring minds are more important than scientific experiments

[B]science advances when fruitful researches are conducted

[C]scientists seldom forget the essential nature of research

[D]unpredictability weighs less than prediction in scientific research

2. The author asserts that scientists.

[A]shouldn’t replace “scientific method” with imaginative thought

[B]shouldn’t neglect to speculate on unpredictable things

责任编辑:gaoyan