TOEFL iBT® 词汇专题突破

五年前，我出版了《TOEFL核心词汇21天突破》（世界图书出版公司，ISBN: 7-5062-6219-3），再版三次，加印数次，销量（正版）超过20万册。成为很多备考托福学生手中必备的书籍。那本书在这五年之中当然也成为我心情愉悦的根源之一。既能帮助别人又能自己赚钱，除了努力之外多少还要靠运气。前些日子，我把《TOEFL核心词汇21天突破》制作成“简明网络版”，放在网上，希望那本书能够帮助更多的人。

我的新书《TOEFL iBT® 词汇专题突破》（暂定名）正在紧张制作之中；这次我有意独自出版，并只通过网络销售。（点击这里查看《TOEFL iBT® 词汇专题突破》的词汇文本。）

与《TOEFL核心词汇21天突破》不同，《TOEFL iBT® 词汇专题突破》更加强调的是“通过上下文记忆词汇”。这些年的教学经验告诉我，很多学生缺乏的不仅仅是词汇。更多的时候，即便已经背过许多单词，有些学生依然无法读懂文章。究其原因，学生缺乏的是“概念”以及“概念与概念之间的逻辑联系”。比如，大多数学生认识“destruction”，也认识“habitat”，但不知道“habitat destruction”是“濒临灭绝动物所面临的最大威胁之一”；再比如，很多学生背过“prey”，知道这个单词是“被掠食者”的意思，但根本就没有与刚刚背过的“predator”（掠夺者, 食肉动物）联系起来，尽管这两个单词都是“p”字母开头，所以通常在单词书的同一个列表之中；更进一步，很少有学生知道“birds of prey”是“食肉鸟”的意思。

托福考试是一个考试范围明确的考试。在《新托福官方指南》中，ETS清楚地说明，该考试的阅读文章、听力录音的内容在以下范围之内：

BASIC CATEGORY

• Arts
• Life Science
• Physical Science
• Social Science

Arts

1. Architecture
2. Industrial design/art
3. City planning
4. Crafts: weaving, knitting, fabrics, furniture, carving, mosaics, ceramics, etc; folk and tribal art
5. Cave/rock art
6. Music and music history
7. Photography
8. Literature and authors
9. Books, newspapers, magazines, journals

Life science

1. Extinction of or conservation efforts for animals and plants
2. Fish and other aquatic organisms
3. Bacteria and other one-celled organisms
4. Viruses
5. Medical techniques
6. Public health
7. Physiology of sensory organs
8. Biochemistry
9. Animal behavior, e.g., migration, food foraging, defensive behavior
10. Habitats and the adaptation of animals and plants to them
11. Nutrition and its impact on the body
12. Animal communication

Physical science

1. Weather and atmosphere
2. Oceanography
3. Glaciers, glacial landforms, ice ages
4. Deserts and other extreme environments
5. Pollution, alternative energy, environmental policy
6. Other planets’ atmospheres
7. Astronomy and cosmology
8. Properties of light, optics
9. Properties of sound
10. Electromagnetic radiation
11. Particle physics
12. Technology of TV, radio, radar
13. Math
14. Chemistry of inorganic things
15. Computer science
16. Seismology (plate structure, earthquakes, tectonics, continental drift, structure of volcanoes)

Social science

1. Anthropology of non-industrialized civilizations
2. Early writing systems
3. Historical linguistics
4. Business, management
5. TV/radio as mass communication
6. Social behavior of groups, community dynamics, communal behavior
7. Child development
8. Education
9. Modern history (including the history of urbanization and industrialization and their economic and social effects)

因为托福考试的考核内容范围清楚，所以，“radical”这个单词在托福中只能是“剧烈的、激烈的”，而不可能是“激进的”，因为托福的内容基本上不涉及政治；“cardinal”这个单词在托福中不可能是“红衣主教”的意思，因为托福的内容不涉及宗教，“cardinal”在托福中只能是形容词“重要的、首要的”，相当于“principal”。

我在编写《TOEFL核心词汇21天突破》的时候，主要依赖的是词频统计工具。当时为了准确统计词频，购买了Oxford University Press发行的词频统计工具“WordSmith Tools”，自己编制TOEFL语料库，而后在电脑统计结果的基础上再进行人工筛选，工作量之大是最初远远没有想到的。但是付出的辛苦有着巨大的回报——那本书的前言的标题就是“从12000到2140”。

这一次的《TOEFL iBT® 词汇专题突破》不仅仅是最大限度地包含“2140个核心词汇”，更重要的是，要让学生在语境中学习这些词汇，不仅了解这些词汇的基本含义，更重要的是要了解这些词汇所表示的概念与其它的概念之间的联系。细想想就能明白，如若一个学生认识“warp”（[纺]经线, 经纱）却不认识“weft”（[纺]纬线, 纬纱），那其实是相当荒谬的。

一下是《TOEFL iBT® 词汇专题突破》的两段摘录：

135

The three major subdivisions of the world ocean are the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and the Indian Ocean, which are bounded by the continental masses. The two minor subdivisions of the world ocean are the Southern Ocean, bounded by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current to the north and Antarctica to the south, and the Arctic Ocean, almost landlocked except between Greenland and Europe. From the shorelines of the continents a submerged part of the continental mass, called the continental shelf, extends sea ward an average distance of 75 km; it varies in width from nearly zero to 1,500 km. The shelf gives way abruptly at a depth of about 200m to a steeper zone known as the continental slope, which descends about 3,500 m. The continental rise, a gradually sloping zone of sediment that is considered part of the ocean bottom, extends about 600 km from the base of the continental slope to the flat abyssal plains of the deep-ocean floor. In the central parts of the oceans are the midocean ridges, which are extensive mountain chains with inner troughs that are heavily intersected by cracks, called fracture zones. The ridge system seems to merge into the continents in several areas, such as the Red Sea and the Gulf of California, and such areas are regions of great geologic activity, characterized by volcanoes, or earthquakes and faults. The midocean ridges play a key role in plate tectonics (movements in the earth’s crust), for it is from the inner troughs of these ridges that molten rock upwells from the earth’s mantle and spreads laterally on both sides, adding new material to the earth’s rigid crustal plates.

150

The farther a glacier moves from its source of accumulation into warmer, lower-elevation regions, the more likely it is to ablate, or melt. As the ice ablates, it begins to deposit the material it has eroded in the mountains, as well as any rock debris that has fallen into its crevasses. Just as streams of liquid water create landforms when they deposit their load of material, streams of frozen water—glaciers—drop their burden and shape the landscape as they recede.

《TOEFL iBT® 词汇专题突破》总计包括192个小单元。为了保证“最少文本中涵盖最多核心词汇”的同时保证“地道且有意义的文字”，这些单元中的文本摘录、改编、缩写自微软的在线百科《Encarta》。在最终的版本中，这些文本还将配有mp3朗读文件。