把握文章结构对于做好与全文主题相关的题型非常有效。例如，

 

    Symbiotic Relationships

 

    A symbiotic relationship is an interaction between two or more species in which one species lives in or on another species. There are three main types of symbiotic relationships: parasitism, commensalism, and mutualism. The first and the third can be key factors in the structure of a biological community; that is, all the populations of organisms living together and potentially interacting in a particular area.

 

    Parasitism is a kind of predator-prey relationship in which one organism, the parasite, derives its food at the expense of its symbiotic associate, the host. Parasites are usually smaller than their hosts. An example of a parasite is a tapeworm that lives inside the intestines of a larger animal and absorbs nutrients from its host. Natural selection favors the parasites that are best able to find and feed on hosts. At the same time, defensive abilities of hosts are also selected for. As an example, plants make chemicals toxic to fungal and bacterial parasites, along with ones toxic to predatory animals(sometimes they are the same chemicals). In vertebrates, the immune system provides a multiple defense against internal parasites.

 

    At times, it is actually possible to watch the effects of natural selection in host-parasite relationships. For example, Australia during the1940 s was overrun by hundreds of millions of European rabbits. The rabbits destroyed huge expanses of Australia and threatened the sheep and cattle industries. In1950, myxoma virus, a parasite that affects rabbits, was deliberately introduced into Australia to control the rabbit population. Spread rapidly by mosquitoes, the virus devastated the rabbit population. The virus was less deadly to the offspring of surviving rabbits, however, and it caused less and less harm over the years. Apparently, genotypes(the genetic make-up of an organism) in the rabbit population were selected that were better able to resist the parasite. Meanwhile, the deadliest strains of the virus perished with their hosts as natural selection favored strains that could infect hosts but not kill them. Thus, natural selection stabilized this host-parasite relationship.

 

    In contrast to parasitism, in commensalism, one partner benefits without significantly affecting the other. Few cases of absolute commensalism probably exist, because it is unlikely that one of the partners will be completely unaffected. Commensal associations sometimes involve one species' obtaining food that is inadvertently exposed by another. For instance, several kinds of birds feed on insects flushed out of the grass by grazing cattle. It is difficult to imagine how this could affect the cattle, but the relationship may help or hinder them in some way not yet recognized.

 

    The third type of symbiosis, mutualism, benefits both partners in the relationship Legume plants and their nitrogen-fixing bacteria, and the interactions between flowering plants and their pollinators, are examples of mutualistic association. In the first case, the plants provide the bacteria with carbohydrates and other organic compounds, and the bacteria have enzymes that act as catalysts that eventually add nitrogen to the soil, enriching it. In the second case, pollinators(insects, birds) obtain food from the flowering plant, and the plant has its pollen distributed and seeds dispersed much more efficiently than they would be if they were carried by the wind only. Another example of mutualism would be the bull's horn acacia tree, which grows in Central and South America. The tree provides a place to live for ants of the genus Pseudomyrmex. The ants live in large, hollow thorns and eat sugar secreted by the tree. The ants also eat yellow structures at the tip of leaflets: these are protein rich and seem to have no function for the tree except to attract ants. The ants benefit the host tree by attacking virtually anything that touches it. They sting other insects and large herbivores(animals that eat only plants) and even clip surrounding vegetation that grows near the tree. When the ants are removed, the trees usually die, probably because herbivores damage them so much that they are unable to compete with surrounding vegetation for light and growing space.

 

    The complex interplay of species in symbiotic relationships highlights an important point about communities: Their structure depends on a web of diverse connections among organisms.

 

    What is the main purpose of this passage?

 

    (A)To explain the concept of symbiosis by expanded descriptions of its principal types

 

    (B)To make a comparison between human relationships and symbiotic interactions in the natural world

 

    (C)To demonstrate the unforeseen benefits of natural processes that at first seem wholly destructive

 

    (D)To argue that parasitism is a problem that can be solved by scientific intervention

 

    此题问本文的写作目的，等于从结构角度问本文的主题。文中涉及三种生物共生现象(symbiotic relationships)，标题中的复数名词relationships表明文中讨论一种以上的生物共生现象。浏览各段首句也可以帮助我们确定本文论述多种生物共生关系。由此可见个选项为正确答案。

 

    又如，

 

    Orientation and Navigation

 

    To South Americans, robins are birds that fly north every spring. To North Americans, the robins simply vacation in the south each winter. Furthermore, they fly to very specific places in South America and will often come back to the same trees in North American yards the following spring. The question is not why they would leave the cold of winter so much as how they find their way around. The question perplexed people for years, until, in the1950s, a German scientist named Gustave Kramer provided some answers and, in the process, raised new questions.

 

    Kramer initiated important new kinds of research regarding how animals orient and navigate. Orientation is simply facing in the right direction; navigation involves finding ones way from point A to point B.

 

    Early in his research, Kramer found that caged migratory birds became very restless at about the time they would normally have begun migration in the wild. Furthermore, he noticed that as they fluttered around in the cage, they often launched themselves in the direction of their normal migratory route. He then set up experiments with caged starlings and found that their orientation was, in fact, in the proper migratory direction except when the sky was overcast, at which times there was no clear direction to their restless movements. Kramer surmised, therefore, that they were orienting according to the position of the Sun. To test this idea, he blocked their view of the Sun and used mirrors to change its apparent position. He found that under these circumstances, the birds oriented with respect to the new"Sun." They seemed to be using the Sun as a compass to determine direction. At the time, this idea seemed preposterous. How could a bird navigate by the Sun when some of us lose our way with road maps? Obviously, more testing was in order.

 

    So, in another set of experiments, Kramer put identical food boxes around the cage, with food in only one of the boxes. The boxes were stationary, and the one containing food was always at the same point of the compass. However, its position with respect to the surroundings could be changed by revolving either the inner cage containing the birds or the outer walls, which served as the background. As long as the birds could see the Sun, no matter how their surroundings were altered, they went directly to the correct food box. Whether the box appeared in front of the right wall or the left wall, they showed no signs of confusion. On overcast days, however, the birds were disoriented and had trouble locating their food box.

 

    In experimenting with artificial suns, Kramer made another interesting discovery. If the artificial Sun remained stationary, the birds would shift their direction with respect to it at a rate of about15 degrees per hour, the Sun's rate of movement across the sky. Apparently, the birds were assuming that the"Sun" they saw was moving at that rate. When the real Sun was visible, however, the birds maintained a constant direction as it moved across the sky. In other words, they were able to compensate for the Sun's movement. This meant that some sort of biological clock was operating-and a very precise clock at that.

 

    What about birds that migrate at night? Perhaps they navigate by the night sky. To test the idea, caged night-migrating birds were placed on the floor of a planetarium during their migratory period. A planetarium is essentially a theater with a domelike ceiling onto which a night sky can be projected for any night of the year. When the planetarium sky matched the sky outside, the birds fluttered in the direction of their normal migration. But when the dome was rotated, the birds changed their direction to match the artificial sky. The results clearly indicated that the birds were orienting according to the stars.

 

    There is accumulating evidence indicating that birds navigate by using a wide variety of environmental cues. Other areas under investigation include magnetism, landmarks, coastlines, sonar, and even smells. The studies are complicated by the fact that the data are sometimes contradictory and the mechanisms apparently change from time to time. Furthermore, one sensory ability may back up another.

 

    Which of the following best describes the author's presentation of information in the passage?

 

    (A) A number of experiments are described to support the idea that birds use the Sun and the night sky to navigate.

 

    (B) The author uses logic to show that the biological clock in birds is inaccurate.

 

    (C) A structured argument about the importance of internal versus external cues for navigation is presented.

 

    (D) The opposing points of view about bird migration are clarified through the study of contrasting experiments.

 

    此题问作者如何陈述自己所写的内容，等于从结构上问主题。本文以Kramer等人所做的一系列实验来研究鸟类如何定位和导航。A选项符合此意，为正确答案。

 

    除了上述主题类型以外，托福阅读每篇文章的最后一道题一般是文章摘要题或表格题，把握文章结构对于破解这两种主题类题型的好处不言而喻。文章摘要题常与现象—解释类文章相联系。例如，

 

    The mystery of yawning

 

    According to conventional theory, yawning takes place when people are bored or sleepy and serves the function of increasing alertness by reversing, through deeper breathing, the drop in blood oxygen levels that are caused by the shallow breathing that accompanies lack of sleep or boredom. Unfortunately, the few scientific investigations of yawning have failed to find any connection between how often someone yawns and how much sleep they have had or how tired they are. About the closest any research has come to supporting the tiredness theory is to confirm that adults yawn more often on weekdays than at weekends, and that school children yawn more frequently in their first year at primary school than they do in kindergarten.

 

    Another flaw of the tiredness theory is that yawning does not raise alertness or physiological activity, as the theory would predict. When researchers measured the heart rate, muscle tension and skin conductance of people before, during and after yawning, they did detect some changes in skin conductance following yawning, indicating a slight increase in physiological activity. However, similar changes occurred when the subjects were asked simply to open their mouths or to breathe deeply. Yawning did nothing special to their state of physiological activity. Experiments have also cast serious doubt on the belief that yawning is triggered by a drop in blood oxygen or a rise in blood carbon dioxide. Volunteers were told to think about yawning while they breathed either normal air, pure oxygen, or an air mixture with an above-normal level of carbon dioxide. If the theory was correct, breathing air with extra carbon dioxide should have triggered yawning, while breathing pure oxygen should have suppressed yawning. In fact, neither condition made any difference to the frequency of yawning, which remained constant at about24 yawns per hour. Another experiment demonstrated that physical exercise, which was sufficiently vigorous to double the rate of breathing, had no effect on the frequency of yawning. Again the implication is that yawning has little or nothing to do with oxygen.

 

    A completely different theory holds that yawning assists in the physical development of the lungs early in life, but has no remaining biological function in adults. It has been suggested that yawning and hiccupping might serve to clear out the fetuses airways. The lungs of a fetus secrete a liquid that mixes with its mother's amniotic fluid. Babies with congenital blockages that prevent this fluid from escaping from their lungs are sometimes born with deformed lungs. It might be that yawning helps to clear out the lungs by periodically lowering the pressure in them. According to this theory, yawning in adults is just a developmental fossil with no biological function. But, while accepting that not everything in life can be explained by Darwinian evolution, there are sound reasons for being skeptical of theories like this one, which avoid the issue of what yawning does for adults. Yawning is distracting, consumes energy and takes time. It is almost certainly doing something significant in adults as well as in fetuses. What could it be?

 

    The empirical evidence, such as it is, suggests an altogether different function for yawning—namely, that yawning prepares us for a change in activity level. Support for this theory came from a study of yawning behavior in everyday life. Volunteers wore wrist-mounted devices that automatically recorded their physical activity for up to two weeks: the volunteers also recorded their yawns by pressing a button on the device each time they yawned. The data showed that yawning tended to occur about15 minutes before a period of increased behavioral activity. Yawning bore no relationship to sleep patterns, however. This accords with anecdotal evidence that people often yawn in situations where they are neither tired nor bored, but are preparing for impending mental and physical activity. Such yawning is often referred to as"incongruous" because it seems out of place, at least on the tiredness view: soldiers yawning before combat, musicians yawning before performing, and athletes yawning before competing. Their yawning seems to have nothing to do with sleepiness or boredom—quite the reverse—but it does precede a change in activity level.

 

    Directions: An introductory sentence for a brief summary of the passage is provided below. Complete the summary by selecting the THREE answer choices that express the most important ideas in the passage. Some sentences do not belong in the summary because they express ideas that are not presented in the passage or are minor ideas in the passage. This question is worth2 points.

 

    The tiredness theory of yawning does not seem to explain why yawning occurs.

 

    1. Although earlier scientific studies strongly supported the tiredness theory, new evidence has cast doubt on these findings.

 

    2. Evidence has shown that yawning is almost completely unrelated to amount of oxygen in the blood and is unrelated to sleep behavior.

 

    3. Some have proposed that yawning plays a role in the development of the lungs before birth but that it serves no purpose in adults.

 

    4. Fluids in the lungs of the fetus prevent yawning from occurring, which disproves the developmental theory of yawning.

 

    5. New studies, along with anecdotal evidence, have shown that the frequency of yawning increases during extended periods of inactivity.

 

    6. There is some evidence that suggests that yawning prepares the body and mind for a change in activity level.

 

    上文对打哈欠(yawning)这一生理现象给出了三种解释：传统解释——打哈欠表明感觉疲倦、第二种解释——打哈欠有利于肺部早期发育但对成年人无作用、打哈欠表明人体处于活动前的准备状态。根据这一结构分析，可以较快地找到六个选项中对应上述三个解释的选项：个、第三个、第六个，它们就是正确答案。因此发现文章的结构属于上述结构时，要注意文章中针对现象进行的解释，它们通常就是文章摘要题的答案。

 

    由此可见，把握文章结构对于托福阅读而言是多么重要!

 

    (摘自《新托福阅读7天突破》，李传伟编著，中国对外翻译出版公司出版)