爱枪者，美国选民 - FT速读测试

速读测试：爱枪者，美国选民

爱枪的是美国选民，而且他们越来越爱枪，即使康州惨案发生后，控枪也是最不受欢迎的措施之一。FT专栏作家考德威尔(Christopher Caldwell)指出，是美国选民，而不是NRA，阻止政客控枪。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：
carnage	大屠杀
Seung-Hui Cho	韩国学生赵承熙，由于精神不稳定，于2007年4月16日在弗吉尼亚理工大学枪杀了包括自己在内的33人。
foie gras	['fwɑ:'ɡrɑ:]鹅肝酱
constituency	选民
disgruntled	不满的；不高兴的

常见问题

阅读FT对你有什么好处？

对于全球的商业精英来说，阅读英国《金融时报》是每天必须进行的修炼。《金融时报》的文章以分析见长，逻辑严密，特别适合准备GRE和GMAT的考生。培生集团推出的PTE考试的阅读题，就是利用了FT的文章来做阅读理解。

阅读速度多快才够用？

在信息爆炸的今天，能够迅速地阅读和理解大量资料，已成为所有人必不可少的技能。对于准备参加各种英语测试的考生来讲，阅读速度可能是决定成绩的关键。要想在GRE和GMAT的考试中拿到高分，你的阅读速度至少要达到每分钟200字。

如何迫使自己提高阅读速度?

我们有一个自动滚屏的工具来帮助你提高速度。点击该按钮后，屏幕就开始滚动，迫使你改掉向回看的习惯，加快速度。默认为每分钟140字（朗读速度）。随着你的技能提升，你可以挑战更高的速度，直到达到1000。

小字速度：+ -

阅读以下文章

<b>It’s US voters who really love weapons</b>
Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told a reporter at the National Journal: “This level of carnage is something that the elected officials aren’t going to be able to ignore.”
Mr Helmke’s words sound correct, as the US continues to reel from the murder of 20 six and seven-year-olds in a school in Newtown, Connecticut, in mid-December. Then again, his words also seemed correct when he first uttered them, which was back in April 2007, just after a disturbed undergraduate, Seung-Hui Cho, massacred 32 people on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic University before turning his weapons on himself. Elected officials have proved quite capable of ignoring Cho’s rampage, not to mention several more since then. There is no guarantee the outrage over Newtown will spur them to action, either.

In seeking to prevent the next massacre, it is natural and right to focus on mass gun ownership, American’s modern-day peculiar institution. There may be a quarter of a billion guns in private hands in the US, and yet the government regulates them less stringently than it does foie gras, tobacco or office humour.
President Barack Obama has called for the revival of a ban on so-called assault weapons that was in place for a decade after 1994. On Wednesday he put Vice-President Joe Biden in charge of a task force on gun violence. But Mr Biden will have little scope for action. The lobbying power of the National Rifle Association is part of the problem, but only a small part. The constituency for serious gun control in the US is shrinking.
We know where Mr Obama’s heart is on guns. He doesn’t like them. He would sincerely like to regulate them. To a roomful of rich San Francisco donors in 2008 he described disgruntled workers who “cling to guns and religion”. And yet it is hardly an exaggeration to say that gun control is a topic that the president has, until now, never discussed in public, except to describe himself as a defender of the second amendment, which protects “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”.
The problem for Mr Obama is that his party’s smartest political consultants decided several elections ago that hostility to guns was killing the Democratic party, and they have been proved right in almost every election since. Forty-seven per cent of Americans have guns in their homes.
After Bill Clinton signed his ban on assault weapons, Democrats lost the congressional majority they had held for four decades. Al Gore might have been elected president in 2000 had he not sought to paint himself as more liberal on guns than Bill Bradley, his Democratic primary challenger. Democrats won the Senate back in 2006 when they recruited gun-enthusiasts as candidates (Jim Webb in Virginia, Jon Tester in Montana, Bob Casey Jr in Pennsylvania), enforced a candidates’ vow of silence on gun control and then put the chamber under the control of a gun-friendly majority leader, Harry Reid.
This alliance has had consequences. Senators reportedly agreed to alter their landmark 2010 health reform to prevent insurers from charging higher premiums to gun owners.
It is voters, not the NRA, who are intimidating Democrats. For reasons no one has fully explained, Americans are getting fonder and fonder of firearms. In the 1950s, 60 per cent of Americans said they would support a ban on handguns, according to Gallup; in 2011, 73 per cent said they would oppose one. Even in the immediate aftermath of the Connecticut shootings, gun control strikes voters as among the least appealing remedies. This week Gallup showed 42 per cent felt gun bans would be effective, well behind beefing up the police (53 per cent), doing better mental-health screening (50 per cent) and cracking down on violent video games (47 per cent). After mass shootings, gun purchases soar as potential gun buyers decide to act before the law changes to stop them. After last summer’s slaughter (12 dead, 58 wounded) at a cinema complex in Aurora, Colorado, the state saw a 41 per cent rise in firearms background checks from one weekend to the next.
The anti-gun lobby is as well organised as the pro-gun lobby, even if it is not quite so big. It will not need much thinking or study to produce a programme of legislation. A likely purpose of the Biden “task force” will be to plot political strategy and to protect the president against accusations that he is exploiting a tragedy to pass the wish list of his political allies.
One unusual factor, though, is working in favour of fresh gun laws: never has there been a mass killing this far from the next congressional election. Representatives casting votes now will have 22 or 23 months to make gun owners forget. Any legislation they get through will probably be limited, partisan and resented. The alternative is no legislation at all.

选择正确答案

"There is no guarantee the outrage over Newtown will spur them to action···"
Who is them?

Good!
B是正确的。
文章开头，控枪团体人士认为：这个级别的惨案，是民选官员们无法忽视的。
但是在第二段中，作者说，Elected officials have proved quite capable of ignoring Cho’s rampage··· 因为反对控枪甚至禁枪的是美国的选民，所以，人们不能保证这一次能通过什么重要的立法。

Schools and universities.
Elected officials.
Pro-gun organizations.
National media.

选择正确答案

What about President Obama?

Good!
A是正确的。奥巴马本人是不喜欢枪，并希望控枪的，甚至公开抱怨过热爱枪支和宗教的工人。但是，民主党的高参们早就敏锐地发现，对枪有敌意的话会让选民抛弃民主党，于是奥巴马在这个问题上一直低调地将自己描述为a defender of the second amendment.

He doesn't like guns.
He likes the disgruntled workers who favor guns.
He paints himself as a gun-enthusiast.
He believes that being friendly to guns is killing Democrats.

选择正确答案

Which of the following can support this argument:
"It is voters, not the NRA, who are intimidating Democrats."

Good!
ABC都是正确答案。
正反两方面的经验教训让民主党不愿控枪，而且越来越不愿。

Even immediately after the Connecticut shootings, gun control is among the least appealing.
Democrats chose a gun-friendly Senate leader Harry Reid.
After Clinton signed his ban on assault weapons, his party lost congressional majority.
All of above.

选择正确答案

What can we learn from this article, about US society and politics?

Good!
A是正确答案。美国政府对枪支的管控还不如对鹅肝酱（不符合健康饮食）、烟草，和办公室幽默（不能有歧视色彩或性骚扰）的力度大。 BC与事实相反，liberal在美国的语境下常不是字面意思，它往往与倾向民主党、倾向政府干预是同义词，其反义词conservative才是pro-gun的。
在科罗拉多州枪击惨案发生后，购枪者背景调查数猛增，这说明这个经常出现在西部片中的州也有背景调查要求，有犯罪前科和精神疾病的人不能随便买枪。
“众议员们有22到23个月的时间让人来淡忘他们的所为”，也就是说众议员每两年改选一次，下一次是2014的“中期选举”。

US government regulates foei gras, tobacco and office humour.
"Liberal on guns" means "pro-gun".
You can buy guns without being background-checked in Colorado.
US Representatives are being elected every 4 years.

放松与总结

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<<后退

开始>>

您的正确率太低，在目前这个阶段，对你来说最重要的是提高英文水平和金融专业水平，而不是速度。请您点击后退仔细查看您答错的题目，并和原文对照。对原文中所有不懂的句子和知识点，也请一一查明。建议您：
1. 在进行下一次训练的时候，将滚屏速度保持在100以下。
2. 您可以找一些有声读物，如《经济学人》的audio edition，帮助你提高英文水平。

看得出你是非常认真来进行这次训练的，如果你坚持的话，你会获得非常大的提高。目前你的阅读速度偏低，可能是因为英文不是你的母语。不过，请不要放慢阅读速度。研究表明，阅读速度越快的人，其理解的正确率反而越高。因此，您可以同时提高您的阅读速度和理解能力。给你一点建议：
1. 一定要改掉默念的习惯
2. 不要一个词一个词的看，要学会把一个语义群当作一个整体来看。比如“an emergency $180bn injection of dollar”这个语义群，你要学会把他当作一个整体来看。
3. 看DVD的时候，切换到英文字幕。

用正常语速来朗读一篇文章，平均速度是每分钟140词。这说明你的阅读速度比朗读还要慢。建议您：1. 每一段的第一句话往往是最重要的。
2. “速读”最忌讳的就是“读”，不要一边看一边默念。
3. 在下一个训练中将滚屏速度设为140，迫使自己不能回头去看已经读过的部分。

您的阅读速度已经超过了正常语速，说明你已经开始有些速读的感觉了。美国大学生的最低阅读速度为每分钟250词，加把劲你就可以赶上了。建议您：
1. 养成习惯，读过的部分不要回头去看，这样会影响速读。
2. 加强“扫描”的训练，让自己的眼睛能“一目一行”。

您的阅读速度已经达到了美国大学生的水平，可喜可贺。不过作为金融从业人员，每天需要阅读数不清的中英文研究报告、公司年报、报刊杂志等，您还需要向每分钟350字进军。建议您：
1. 加强“扫描”的训练，让自己的眼睛能“一目两行”。
2. 对中英文的数字，尤其是大数字(million, billion)的转换进行总结和练习。

厉害，您的阅读速度已经超过了美国大学生的水平。不过，要成为巴菲特那样的金融专家，您需要锻炼出“一目十行”的火眼金睛。建议您在每次的训练中注意三个要点：
1. 您已经学会了将文章分成语义群，而非词来阅读，现在，你需要扩大每一个语义群中的词数。
2. 加快阅读每个语义群的速度。
3. 看过的内容尽量不要回看。

这就是传说中的“一目十行”吗？难以置信！

世界纪录才每分钟416,250字，居然被你破了！无语...

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