托福阅读推理题不丢分的秘密

推断题Inference Question，又叫推理题，这种题型是托福阅读中较难的题型之一，也是考生们最容易丢分的一种题型。原因是：相比于其他大部分题型，比如说事实信息题”看到即答案”的简单逻辑，推理题的”模糊"逻辑会让我们无从下手，也是最容易丢的题目。

它通常会问我们："What can we infer about XXX”，也就是关于XXX我们可以推理出什么?看到这里从小到大做习惯了中国式推理题的学生们就会激动了，立马把自己想象成名侦探柯南，准备好好的抽丝剥茧推理一下。但是，请注意：在托福阅读考试中，做推理题一定要学会"控制智商"!

其实很多做过TPO的同学会发现看到推理题的答案就会发现是自己想多了，而那个让你觉得很正确的选项一般来说都存在”过度联想”，或者说”推理过度”的情况。而在提醒自己不要想太多以后，又会出现叫"推理不足"的情况。重要的就是合理拿捏这个度。

首先，我们可以把它的题目分为两类：一类是题干定位型，一类是选项定位型。

怎么样区分呢?

题干定位题，顾名思义，就是我们通过题目中的词可以定位到原文中答案所在的位置从而选出答案;而选项定位型则是指我们没办法通过题目来定位的情况。

比如说：题目问What can be inferred about fish?而原文中整段都在讲fish，你就没有办法去具体定位，这个时候我们就可以利用选项去定位原文。

好，区分了题目的两种类型，接下来，我们来讲题干定位型中的第一种逻辑推理—反向推理。我们在做题时要意识到：如果这道题可以通过题干定位到，我们需要做的就是紧扣定位区间，在这个定位区间中找到依据并根据这个依据推断出正确选项，需注意的是：虽然我们做的是推理题，但一定也是有依据的，一定要找到你的”证据”所在。

那么，什么是反向推理?就是学术写作中，当我们将事物按照某种标准进行分类后，分类的内容既不重合也不丢失。比如我们把A分成X和Y,X和Y之间没有重合的部分，同时X和Y合并构成A,也不会丢失A的某一部分。这样一来，当我们知道X所具有某一个特性，就能推出Y不具有这样的特性，这就是反向推理。

我们拿一道TPO的题目实践一下：

It should be obvious that cetaceans - whales, porpoises, and dolphins - are mammals. They breathe through lungs, not through gills, and give birth to live young. Their streamlined bodies, the absence of hind legs, and the presence of a fluke and blowhole cannot disguise their affinities with land-dwelling mammals. However, unlike the cases of sea otters and pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, and walruses, whose limbs are functional both on land and at sea), it is not easy to envision what the first whales looked like. Extinct but already fully marine cetaceans are known from the fossil record. How was the gap between a walking mammal and a swimming whale bridged? Missing until recently were fossils clearly intermediate, or transitional, between land mammals and cetaceans.

Q: Which of the following can be inferred from paragraph 1 about early sea otters?

A.It is not difficult to imagine what they looked like.

B.There were great numbers of them.

C.They lived in the sea only.

D.They did not leave many fossil remains.

这道题是非常经典的题干定位、反向推理。题干中的sea otter, 定位到的区间为unlike the cases of sea otters and pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, and walruses, whose limbs are functional both on land and at sea), it is not easy to envision what the first whales looked like.根据unlike推出sea otter情况与cetacean相反，因此选A。