Unit Six

Reading skills

Reading between the lines--making inferences

Writers don’t always express all their thoughts directly,but they give you hints (暗示、示意）or clues (线索）thathelp you “read between the lines”. The information is not clearly stated. Wemake an inference or a guess.

1. Makeuse of contextual (上下文的）clues, common sense, and ourbackground knowledge.

2. Connectideas and draw conclusions from the reading text.

3. Formand test what we have understood between the lines.

Here are examples from Text A:

Example 1

To his troops’ astonishment, he ordered their cooking potscrushed and their sailing ships burned. (para. 2)

Question: Why did Xiang Yu do somethingso unusual or insane?

Possible answer: Whathe did was part of his strategy and the action was necessary to assure that thetroops would eventually defeat the enemy. He made a bold sacrifice when hedestroyed any chance for running away and left his troops with only one option:to fight for their lives.

Example 2

General Xiang Yu was a rare exception to the norm, a veteranleader who was highly respected for his many conquests and who achieved thesummit of success. (para. 3)

Question: What inferences can be madefrom the statement?

Possible answer: Itwas exactly due to using these seemingly abnormal battle strategies thatGeneral Xiang Yu successfully defeated his enemy and won his soldiers’highrespect.