It is said that Lincoln prepared his speech on the train while going to Gettysburg. Late that night alone in his hotel room and tired out, he again worked briefly on the speech. The next day Everett spoke first. He spoke for an hour and 57 minutes. His speech was a perfect example of the rich oratory of the day. Then Lincoln rose. The crowd of 15,000 people at first paid little attention to him. He spoke for only nine minutes. At the end there was little applause. Lincoln turned to a friend and remarked , "I have failed again." On the train back to Washington, he said sadly, "That speech was a flat failure, and the people are disappointed."
Some newspapers at first criticized the speech. But little by little as people read the speech they began to understand better. They began to appreciate its simplicity and its deep meaning. It was a speech which only Abraham Lincoln could have made.
Today, every American school child learns Lincoln's Gettysburg Address by heart. Now everyone thinks of it as one of the greatest speeches ever given in American history.
文章后面的第五题就是一个推理性试题。
It can be inferred from the text that _____.
A. Lincoln prepared his speech very carefully before he went to Gettysburg
B. Lincoln was very busy at the time and didn't have much time to prepare his speech
C. Lincoln's speech was full of rich words
D. Lincoln's speech was very long
文章的第二段有这样的话：“It is said that Lincoln prepared his speech on the train while going to Gettysburg. Late that night, alone in his hotel room and tired out, he again worked briefly on the speech.”“据说林肯是在去葛底斯堡的火车上准备他的演讲的。那天深夜，在宾馆的房间里，他既孤独又疲倦，只是又简单准备了一下。”所以通过这些句子我们可以判断林肯非常的忙，没有更多的时间准备他的演讲，B是正确答案。A, C, D,均不符合文章的内容。
(4) 词汇题设题形式及答题技巧
词汇题是询问文章中出现的某个词、某个词组甚至某个句子含义的题型。其中所询问的词、词组或句子，往往不为考生所熟悉，但又能在文中找到线索进行推测，所以这类考题是检查考生是否具备根据一个词、词组或句子所处的特定环境来判断其意义的能力。
解答这类试题时，考生应首先明白，任何词或词语都不是孤立的，它或它们所在的上下文往往能提供重要的线索。某个定义、解释、甚至标点符号、关联词都可以帮助考生推测一些词或词语的意义，除此之外，我们还必须注意所测试的词或词语与其前后一些词形成的同义、反义、并列和指代等关系。
这类题常见的提问方式有以下几种：
The word “ … ”in line 5 refers to………
The word “… ”(Line 6. para.2) most probably means _____.
By “… ”,the author means _____.
The word “… ”could best be replaced by which of the following?
which of the following is nearest in meaning to “… ”?
In para.2,the sentence “…… ” probably means “…… ”
我们以2002年阅读第二篇文章为例：
The market investigation is indispensable to sales promotion. They are closely related as the lips and teeth, so to speak. What you produce is for sale on the market. It would be impossible to succeed in selling a product without first investigating the market.
