阅读上课材料setencestudy.doc

Sentence Study第7周材料 When you have difficulty understanding a passage, just reading further will often make the passage clearer. Sometimes, how ever, comprehension of an entire passage depends on your being able to understand a single sentence. Sentences that are very long and sentences that contain difficult vocabulary or difficult grammatical patterns often cause comprehension problems for readers. The sentence study exercise that follows as well as similar ones in later gives you the opportunity to develop strategies for understanding complicated sentences. Although there is no easy formula that will help you to arrive at an understanding of a difficult sentence, you should keep the following points in mind. Try to determine what makes the sentence difficult: If the sentence contains a lot of difficult vocabulary, it may be that the sentence can be understood without knowing the meaning of every word. Try crossing out unfamiliar items: The West had sent armies to capture and hold Jerusalem; instead they themselves fell victim to a host of new ideas and subtle influences which left their mark on the development of European literature, chivalry, warfare, sanitation, commerce, political institutions, medicine, and the papacy itself. If the sentence is very long, try to break it up into smaller parts: The West had sent armies to capture and hold Jerusalem. The West fell victim to a hold of new ideas and subtle influences. These ideas and influences left their mark on the development of European literature, chivalry, warfare, sanitation, commerce, political institutions, medicine, and the papacy. Also the sentence is very long, try to determine which parts of the sentence express specific details supporting the main idea. Often clauses which are set off by commas, or introduced by words such as which, who and that, are used to introduce extra information or to provide supporting details. Try crossing out the supporting details in order to determine the