很多同学感觉到雅思阅读中生词太多，考试时时间太紧张，有人考了几次，阅读始终徘徊在5.5-6，上培训班也没有实质性提高。问我怎么办。　　记得中学有一篇课文《卖油翁》里有一句话：“无他 唯手熟耳。”

　　阅读，乃至整个英语学习，亦无他，唯眼熟耳。这一点在我的开博文《雅思四大境界》中早有提到。

　　无奈，时间紧、任务重。很多同学没有时间泛读英文报刊杂志，即使有时间，也不知道从那些文章下手。不是读得太杂太泛，就是太深太偏。如何能够在2-3个月内通过泛读来提高自己的阅读实际水平？

        一、选材要精当

　　尽量选择与曾经考过的雅思话题有关的文章。以2007年全年曾经出现过的雅思文章类型为例：
　　其中总共出现了25篇自然科学类的文章，包括：

　　1.冰河世纪
　　2.昆虫进化
　　3.探索外星
　　4.蝴蝶演变
　　5.鸟类方向感
　　6.恐龙灭绝
　　7.蚂蚁智商
　　8.彗星
　　9.BIO DIVERSITY
　　10.水獭
　　11.珍稀植物
　　12.金星凌日
　　13.清洁海滩
　　14.蝴蝶演变
　　15.冰川
　　16.保护海龟
　　17.动物智商
　　18.龙涎香
　　19.蚂蚁防虫
　　20.小鸟孵化
　　21.声波测海洋
　　22.海藻研究
　　23.澳洲能源
　　24.动物的学习能力
　　25.乌鸦造工具

　　如果能够在各大外刊上寻找到相关信息，并且作为背景知识加以泛读，将来在考场上遇到，起码脸熟。

        二、单词要适度

　　有的同学一泛读就落进了单词的陷阱，基本上遇到一个生词就要停下来查，翻字典翻到手断，阅读语感仍然没有。我的建议是当在泛读过程中遇到生词时，不要马上查，先联系一下上下文，猜测一下词义，真不明白的时候再翻字典。实在不成就偷偷懒，求助一下金山词霸。它的屏幕取词功能还是很强大的。一般来讲，在一篇泛读文章中你真正值得查的单词不应该超过50个。

        三、时间要控制

　　泛读总给人不认真，泛泛而读，不求甚解的感觉。好像就是茶余饭后，窝在沙发上，就着饼干水果茶昏黄灯光进行的休闲活动。SORRY。泛读真滴不是这个样子滴。你可以这样读八卦杂志，看言情小说，但是对于英文，尤其对于初学者，基本没有享受而言。目标，很重要。在读一篇文章前，你一定要有个目标。没有目标，就定个时间。比如，我要在20分钟内把这篇文章搞定。这样才能在最短时间内培养语感，提升速度，不然将来上场，还是无法适应考试的快节奏。

　　为了帮助DDMM们做好泛读工作，学好雅思阅读，从今天起，我将不定期地甄选雅思背景文章在BLOG上供大家泛读用。

　　下面先贴出刚刚过去的3月8日考试中一篇文章的类似背景文章，大家可以来试试水。

        TIME:10’
        1700字

        Creatures of the Thermal Vents

        By Dawn Stover

        The three-person submersible Alvin sank through the cold, dark waters of the Pacific Ocean for more than an hour, finally touching down on the sea floor more than 8,000 feet below the surface. It was December 1993, and the scientists inside the sub had come to this stretch of the East Pacific Rise, an underwater mountain range about 500 miles southwest of Acapulco, Mexico, to inspect a recently formed hydrothermal vent --- a fissure in the ocean bottom that leaks scalding, acidic water.

        Peering out through the sub’s tiny windows, the visitors were astonished to see thickets of giant tube worms, some four feet tall. The tail ends of the worms were firmly planted on the ocean floor, while red plumes on the other ends swayed like a field of poppies. Alvin had brought researchers to the same spot less than two years earlier, when they had seen none of these strange creatures. Measurements at the site have since shown that individual tube worms can increase in length at a rate of more than 33 inches per year, making them the fastest-growing marine invertebrates. That means tube worms can colonize a vent more rapidly than scientists once thought.

       The giant tube worm is one of the most conspicuous members of a diverse community that forms around hydrothermal vents. Scientists once thought that no living thing could survive the harsh combination of toxic chemicals, high temperatures, high pressures, and total darkness at these vents. But in 1977, researchers diving in Alvin discovered tube worms and other bizarre organisms thriving at a vent off the Galapagos Islands. Similar communities have since been found at several hundred hot spots around the world. These creatures are like nothing else on Earth.

       Vents form where the planet’s crustal plates are slowly spreading apart and magma is welling up from below to form mountain ranges known as mid-ocean ridges. As cracks form at these spreading centers, seawater seeps a mile or two down into the hot rock. Enriched with minerals leached from the rock, the water heats and rises to the ocean floor to form a vent.

       Vents are usually clustered in fields, underwater versions of Yellowstone’s geyser basins. Individual vent openings typically range from less than a half inch to more than six feet in diameter. Such fields are normally found at a depth of more than a mile. Most have been discovered along the crest of the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, a 46,000-mile-long chain of mountains that wraps around Earth like the seams on a baseball. A few vents have also been found at seamounts, underwater volcanoes that are not located at the intersection of crustal plates.

       The largest vent field, called TAG (short for Trans-Atlantic Geotraverse),  is about the size and shape of a football stadium. Other fields have more whimsical names like Clam Acres, Mussel Bed, Rose Garden, Garden of Eden, Broken Spur, and Lucky Strike. Snow Blower is named for the white, flaky bacteria discharged from its vents. Genesis is a vent that sputtered out but came back to life a few years later. Hydrothermal vents are underwater oases, providing habitat for many creatures that are not found anywhere else in the ocean. More than 300 new species have been identified since the first vent was discovered in 1977.

       Besides the giant tube worms, which have so far been found only in the Pacific, there are pencil-size Jericho worms with accordion-like tubes; orange worms covered with tiny bristles; small benthic worms that wriggle through the mud; and finger-length, dark red palm worms that stand upright, topped with wig-like fronds. A special class of small worms, called Alvinellids (named after the sub), live on the walls of mineral deposits that form around vents.

      Mussels, shrimp, clams, and crabs are abundant at many vents, but these are not the same species that you find in seafood dishes. The cocktail-size shrimp that dominate vents in the mid-Atlantic, for example, have no eyes. However, at least on species has an extremely sensitive receptor on its head that may be used to detect heat or even dim light coming from vents. Scientists still aren’t sure how shrimp and other vent creatures cope with chemical-laden seawater that would kill ordinary shellfish.

      Biologists have observed a variety of smaller crustaceans around vents, including miniature lobsters called galatheids, and amphipods resembling sand fleas. They have also seen snail-like limpets the size of BBs, sea anemones, snakelike fish with bulging eyes, and even octopuses.

     While octopuses are at the upper end of the vent’s food chain, bacteria are at the bottom. They are the first organisms to colonize newly formed vents, arriving in a snowlike flurry and then settling to form white mats or tendrils attached to the ocean floor. Bacteria have been found living beneath the ocean’s floor, and it seems likely that they emerge from below when the conditions are right. Vent bacteria can withstand higher temperatures than any other organism. That makes them attractive to researchers who are developing heat-stable enzymes for genetic engineering, and culturing bacteria designed to break down toxic waste.

     Water pouring out of vents can reach temperatures up to about 400 C; the high pressure keeps the water from boiling. However, the intense heat is limited to a small area. Within less than an inch of the vent opening, the water temperature drops to 2 C, the ambient temperature of deep seawater. Most of the creatures that congregate around vents live at temperatures just above freezing. Thus chemicals are the key to vent life, not heat.

     The most prevalent chemical dissolved in vent water is hydrogen sulfide, which smells like rotten eggs. This chemical is produced when seawater reacts with sulfate in the rocks below the ocean floor. Vent bacteria use hydrogen sulfide as their energy source instead of sunlight. The bacteria in turn sustain larger organisms in the vent community.

     The clams, mussels, tube worms, and other creatures at the vent have a symbiotic relationship with bacteria. The giant tube worms, for example, have no digestive system-no mouth or gut. “The worm depends virtually solely on the bacteria for its nutrition,” says microbial ecologist Colleen M. Cavanaugh of Harvard University. “Both partners benefit.”

     The brown, spongy tissue filling the inside of a tube worm is packed with bacteria-about 285 billion bacteria per ounce of tissue. “It’s essentially a bacterial culture,” says Cavanaugh.

     The plumes at the top of the worm’s body are red because they are filled with blood, which contains hemoglobin that binds hydrogen sulfide and transports it to the bacteria housed inside the worm. In return the bacteria oxidize the hydrogen sulfide and convert carbon dioxide into carbon compounds that nourish the worm.

     Tube worms reproduce by spawning: They release sperm and eggs, which combine in the water to create a new worm. Biologists don’t know how the infant worm acquires its own bacteria. Perhaps the egg comes with a starter set.

     Scientists also don’t know how tube worms and other organisms locate new vents for colonization. “The vents are small, and they’re separated, like island,” says Cindy Lee Van Dover, a biologist and Alvin pilot who studies vent life. Most vent organisms have a free-swimming larval stage. But scientists aren’t sure whether the larvae float aimlessly or purposely follow clues-such as chemical traces in the water-to find new homes.

     Studying the life cycle of vent organisms is difficult. Researchers have visited only a fraction of the ocean’s hot spots. They have been able to observe vent life only by shining bright lights on creatures accustomed to inky darkness, and many specimens die quickly when removed from their unique environment. Underwater cameras are helping scientists make less intrusive observations, but diving expeditions are still the most useful way to gather information. The1993 Alvin expedition to the East Pacific Rise was one in a series of dives to the area. The site was first visited in 1989, and scientists observed vent organisms thriving there. But when Alvin returned in April 1991, its flabbergasted occupants witnessed the birth of a hydrothermal vent. A recent volcanic eruption had spread glassy lava across the ocean floor, and the researchers measured temperatures up to 403C-the hottest ever recorded at a hydrothermal vent. The scientists dubbed the site Tube Worm Barbecue, because the worms they brought back to their ship had charred flesh.

    “The most spectacular sight down there was this massive blinding snowstorm of bacteria,” says Rich Lutz, a marine ecologist at Rutgers University, who led the expedition. On the ocean floor, the bacteria formed mats several inches thick, but the scientists saw no other living things.

      Since the eruption, scientists have been able to watch several stages of colonization at the site. When they returned in March 1992, only a few bacterial mats remained. In their place were colonies of Jericho worms and a variety of small crustaceans. The scientists named the area Phoenix, because new life had arisen from the ashes of the eruption.

      The scientists first observed the giant tube worms at Phoenix in December 1993. They also noticed a number of mineral deposits, some towering to heights of more than 30 feet. These structures form where hot vent water meets cold seawater, causing metal sulfides to precipitate out. The precipitating sulfides, which look like smoke, amass to form chimneys called black smokers. Like the vent fields, some smokers have names. Smoke and Mirrors, for example, has shelf-like overhangs that trap hot water rising from below, creating upside-down shimmering pools. The largest known black smoker is Godzilla, a 160-foot-tall structure off the coast of Oregon.

      During a December 1993 dive to the Phoenix vent field, Alvin accidentally toppled a 33-foot-tall smoker. When the sub returned for a brief visit three months later, the chimney had already grown back 20 feet. Scientists were surprised by the speedy recovery, which seems to parallel the rapid growth of tube worms and other organisms at the vents. The visits to the Phoenix site “give us a sense of how quickly these vents are colonized,” says Van Dover.

      Another expedition is planned for November. By then, the community of organisms now prospering at the vents may already be a ghost town. When the flow of hot, sulfide-rich water slows to a trickle, death also comes quickly.    

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