雅思剑桥真题4(以下简称剑4)上72页C段第二小段第一句话为:Sometimes it is slow: vast bubbles of magma - molten rock from the mantle - inch towards the surface, cooling slowly, to show through as granite extrusions (as on Skye, or the Great Whin Sill, the lava dyke squeezed out like toothpaste that carries part of Hadrian's Wall in northern England). 很多学生一看到文中出现了magma;mantle以及granite等词就开始有些晕。其实如果大家可以看到 "it is slow"后面出现了特殊符号"冒号",那直接看冒号后面的信息就好了;而下文又出现了两个破折号解释前面。如此一来,"vast bubbles of magma"这4个词就成了这句话的重点内容了。
剑9上97页A段第六行有一句话是这样的:Museums used to look - and some still do - much like storage rooms of objects packed together in showcases: good for scholars who wanted to study the subtle differences in design, but not for the ordinary visitor, to whom it all looked alike. 这句话一共有42个单词,那么大的信息量到底哪些是重点呢?借用上文说到的特殊符号冒号后面是关键信息这一说法,"showcases"后面出现了冒号,那么冒号前面的文字都可以不用看了。如果再往下读,一个"but"转折连词就会出现在我们面前,而"to whom it all looked alike"是一个非限定性定语从句,即使去掉,主句的意思和逻辑关系也不受影响。这样一来,这句话最关键的信息就成了:but not for the ordinary visitor这6个单词了。
例如:剑桥雅思6的94页D段倒数第二句话:In Norway, after an intervention campaign was introduced nationally, an evaluation of forty-two schools suggested that, over a two-year period, bullying was halved. 这句话虽然有一堆逗号,但是大家可以一点点往后推:跳过InNorway这两个词,再跳过after引导的状语从句,就会发现后面出现"…suggest that…"宾语从句,即后面是重点信息。"over a two-year period"这个时间段不是重点,因此也可以直接跳过,然后大家会发现这句话就只剩下了"bullying was halved"这3个词了。