有时我们阅读有明确的目的，清楚自己要想获得什么信息，并且带着问题去阅读。比如你在阅读本单元 Text B 时，假定自己在阅读前要想找到下面一些问题的答案 ：

1. What did researchers find in a ten-year study at the National Institute on Aging?

2. What kind of person is an extrovert?

3. What have studies with prison inmates shown?

      回答第一个问题，你可以先找 the National Institute on Aging, 因为这是个首字母大写的机构名，比较显眼，在第一段中很容易就能找到，问题的答案也就有了。对第二个问题，文章第五段的黑体小标题 Extroversion 提供了一个很重要的线索，你很快就可以在这一段的第二句中找到答案。第三个问题的答案相对难找，但在第六段第五句中找到 prison inmates 这一短语，问题也就解决了。

      再比如，你在词典中查找一个词的意义，你翻到某一页就直接找到那个词，一般不会把那一页从头到尾读一遍。这种阅读方法称为查读 (Scanning) 或寻读。查读是一种快速阅读方法，是带着问题到阅读材料中去寻找某一特定的信息，如数目、地名、人名、某一细节等。快速是查读最重要的特征。

● A. Answer the following questions as quickly as possible, using the text below. Use your watch to time yourself. It should take you only 1 minute.

* Questions: 

1. When was Margaret Walker born?

    She was born in the summer of 1915.

2. How old was Margaret Walker when she completed her  B.A. in English?

    Nineteen.

3. In which year did Margaret Walker receive her master’s degree in creative writing?

    1942.

4. What book enabled her to win the Yale Younger Poets Competition?

     Her book of poetry For My People.

* Text:

      Margaret Walker was born in the summer of 1915 in Birmingham, Alabama. As the daughter of a minister and a teacher, Walker was encouraged to excel. In 1934, at the age of nineteen, she completed her B.A. in English at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, and one year later, she joined the Federal Writers Project. Walker worked on this project with such prominent writers as Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks. As a result of her friendship with Richard Wright, in 1988 she published Richard Wright, Daemonic Genius: A Portrait of the Man, a Critical Look at His Work. In 1942 she received her master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Iowa where she also received her Ph.D. in English in 1965. She won the Yale Younger Poets Competition for her book of poetry For My People in 1942. Following her marriage to Firnist Alexander in 1943, she began teaching English at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi, where she taught from 1946 to 1979. She lived in Jackson until her death in December, 1998. 

      Although best known for her poetry, Margaret Walker has also written an array of essays, interviews, speeches, biographies, and the novel Jubilee, which commemorates her great grandmother, who survived slavery. 

● B. Before you answer the following questions, decide what kind of answer, or which words from the questions, you are looking for. Then answer the questions. You have only 2 minutes.

* Questions: 

1. How many children worldwide have never been in school or have dropped out without learning to read or write?

    Some 275 million children.

2. How much money is needed each year to fulfill the plan that every child on earth has a basic level of literacy by 2015?

    About $8 billion.

3. When was that plan originally made?

    In 1990.

4. Which country is cited as an example of what can be done to improve education?

    Uganda.

5. What is a key factor in the improvement of education?

    The abolition of high fees parents had to pay.

* Text:

       A recent study reports that some 275 million children worldwide have never been in school or have dropped out without learning to read or write.

       The study being released today says about $8 billion each year is needed in spending for education in the world’s poorest countries to fulfill a plan by 155 nations that every child on earth has a basic level of literacy by 2015.

       That plan was originally made in 1990 and had the millennium’s end as the goal, but the date later was pushed back. Across the globe, the report found that 125 million children, two-thirds of them girls, have never been in a classroom. An additional 150 million had started school but left without minimal literacy.

   “Everyone agrees with the targets, but the promises have been broken,” said Justin Forsyth, director of a U.S. charity organization.

        If current trends continue, sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for one-third of out-of-school children, will have three-fourths of the total in 15 years, according to Oxfam.

       The organization is beginning a campaign to get wealthy nations and private donors to increase aid and grant debt relief to nations with high illiteracy rates.

       The report cites one of the world’s poorest countries, Uganda, as an example of what can be done to improve education.

 With outside help and new government policies, Uganda spends 17 times as much on primary education as it did in 1990. Enrollment has doubled over the past two years and now is estimated at close to 90 percent.

       A key factor in the improvement was the abolition of high fees parents had to pay so their children could attend school.