此文为寄托天下GRE阅读专版定期总结文章。

首段是全文最重要的一段，因为它不仅很大程度决定了文章的结构类型，而且还常常是TS所在段落，是作者阐述观点的段落，以前有观点说，首段全部要认真读，我觉得这是比较笼统的说法，有相当一部分文章首段很精炼，除了观点之外没有多余的话，这样的短小首段的确应该字字句句都斟酌，但是的确有很多文章首段有大段的话，都读了有点浪费时间，最好有所取舍，我大致对no.4-6比较典型的这些首段分了一下类，罗列如下，大家仔细题会一下，也许对于提高阅读速度，抓住文章重点有所帮助。

另外，第五点没有合适的文章，我暂且取了国内题的一段做为例子，大家不妨一看。

我提个建议，有时间的可以按照一试，我想对于文章脉络的把握和作者起始的思路的理解会有所帮助吧。就是对照我的这个总结，吧no.4-6的阅读文章的首段都抽出来分析一下，看看是属于短小精悍需要字斟句酌呢？还是可以套用在下面的读法里面的首段，我只是抛砖引玉，肯定总结的还有偏差，大家可以跟贴补充，或者有什么新的发现和心得，大家一起分享，共同提高:)

一．观点已然论述清晰，支持它所引用的细节内容可以略读
例1． P5 短第一段
By the time the American colonists took up arms against Great Britain in order to secure their independence, the institution of Black slavery was deeply entrenched. But the contradiction inherent in this situation was, for many, a source of constant embarrassment. "It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me," Abigail Adams wrote her husband in 1774, "to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have."

例2． P236短第一段(国内)
Analyzing the physics of dance can add fundamentally to a dancer's skill. Although dancers seldom see themselves totally in physical terms-as body mass moving through space under the influence of well-known forces and obeying physical laws-neither can they afford to ignore the physics of movement. For example, no matter how much a dancer wishes to leap off the floor and then start turning, the law of conservation of angular momentum absolutely prevents such a movement.

二．一定要关注however，but，那才是作者真正想要说的
例2．P24长第一段
The evolution of intelligence among early large mammals of the grasslands was due in great measure to the interaction between two ecologically synchronized groups of these animals, the hunting carnivores and the herbivores that they hunted. The interaction resulting from the differences between predator and prey led to a general improvement in brain functions;
however, certain components of intelligence were improved far more than others.

例3．P33长第一段
"I want to criticize the social system, and to show it at work, at its most intense." Virginia Woolf's provocative statement about her intentions in writing Mrs. Dalloway has regularly been ignored by the critics, since it highlights an aspect of her literary interests very different from the traditional picture of the "poetic" novelist concerned with examining states of reverie and vision and with following the intricate pathways of individual consciousness. But Virginia Woolf was a realistic as well as a poetic novelist, a satirist and social critic as well as a visionary: literary critics' cavalier dismissal of Woolf's social vision will not withstand scrutiny.

三．旧观点的例子，论证略读
例4：P44长第一段
It has long been known that the rate of oxidative metabolism (the process that uses oxygen to convert food into energy) in any animal has a profound effect on its living patterns. The high metabolic rate of small animals, for example, gives them sustained power and activity per unit of weight, but at the cost of requiring constant consumption of food and water. Very large animals, with their relatively low metabolic rates, can survive well on a sporadic food supply, but can generate little metabolic energy per gram of body weight. If only oxidative metabolic rate is considered, therefore, one might assume that smaller, more active, animals could prey on larger ones, at least if they attacked in groups. Perhaps they could if it were not for anaerobic glycolysis, the great equalizer.

四．已知作者观点以后，剩下的内容当第二段来读
例5：P67长第一段
Extraordinary creative activity has been characterized as revolutionary, flying in the face of what is established and producing not what is acceptable but what will become accepted. According to this formulation, highly creative activity transcends the limits of an existing form and establishes a new principle of organization. However, the idea that extraordinary creativity transcends established limits in misleading when it is applied to the arts, even though it may be valid for the sciences. Differences between highly creative art and highly creative science arise in part from a difference in their goals. For the sciences, a new theory is the goal and end result of the creative act. Innovative science produces new propositions in terms of which diverse phenomena can be related to one another in more coherent ways. Such phenomena as a brilliant diamond or a nesting bird are relegated to the role of data, serving as the means for formulating or testing a new theory. The goal of highly creative art is very different: the phenomenon itself becomes the direct product of the creative act. Shakespeare's Hamlet is not a tract about the behavior of indecisive princes or the uses of political power; nor is Picasso's painting Guernica primarily a propositional statement about the Spanish Civil War or the evils of fascism. What highly creative artistic activity produces is not a new generalization that transcends established limits, but rather an aesthetic particular. Aesthetic particulars produced by the highly creative artist extend or exploit, in an innovative way, the limits of an existing form, rather than transcend that form.

五.首句给出了观点句,二句的让步不用特别关注,也一定是对首句的进一步阐述
例6: P236短L1-6(国内)
Analyzing the physics of dance can add fundamentally to a dancer's skill. Although dancers seldom see themselves totally in physical terms-as body mass moving through space under the influence of well-known forces and obeying physical laws-neither can they afford to ignore the physics of movement.

作者:花儿