A man who knows a bit about carpentry (木工术) will make his ta

A man who knows a bit about carpentry (木工术) will make his table more quickly
than the man who does not.If the instructions are not very clear,or the shape
of a piece is puzzling his experience helps him to conclude that it must fit
there,or that its function must be that.In the same way,the reader's sense
and experience helps him to predict what the writer is likely to ,say next; that
he must be going to say this rather than that.A reader who can think along with
the writer in this way will find the text.
This skill is so useful that
you may wish to make your students aware of it so that they can use it to tackle
difficult texts.It does seem to be the case that as we read we make hypotheses
(假设) about what the writer intends to say; these are immediately modified by
what he actually does say,and are replaced by new hypotheses about what will
follow.We have all had the experience of believing we were understanding a text
until suddenly brought to a halt by some word or phrase that would not fit into
the pattern and forced us to reread and readjust our thoughts.Such occurrences
lend support to the notion of reading as a constant making and remaking of
hypotheses.
If you are interested in finding out how far this idea
accords with (符合) practice,you may like to try out the text and questions.To
do so,take a piece of card and use it to mask the text.Move it down the page,
revealing only one section at a time.Answer the question before you go on to
look at the next section.Check your prediction against what the text actually
says,and use the new knowledge to improve your next prediction.You will need
to look back to earlier parts of the text if you are to make accurate
prediction,for you must keep in mind the general organization of the argument
as well as the detail within each sentence.If you have tried this out,you have
probably been interested to find how much you can predict,though naturally we
should not expect to be right every time -- otherwise there would be no need for
us to read.
Conscious use of this technique can be helpful when we are
faced with a part of the text that we find difficult:if we can see the overall
pattern of the text,and the way the argument is organized,we can make a
reasoned guess at the next step.Having an idea of what something might mean can
be a great help in interpreting it.

一个略懂木工术的人,往往比不懂得人在制作桌子时要快的多.如果知道方法不是非常明了,或者根据以往的经验,木头的形状使他大伤脑筋,这就会帮助他去思考一些问题,例如：这材料适合这个位置或者它的功能做…更合适,等等
同样,读者的意识以及经验,往往能帮助读者预料作者接下来所希望表达的,例如,作者可能会这样写而不是那样写.因而,读者能够与作者一起思考,以此完成阅读全文.
这项技能十分有用.你一定希望你的学生能知道它,从而他们可以使用此项技能来解决难题. 实际上,我们发现当我们阅读时, 我们假设作者接下来试图想表达的,而这种假设很快会被作者实际表达的内容所纠正,随后新的假设产生,然后再被纠正,以此类推.我们大家都有这种体验,我们认为已经理解了全文,随后突然被其中的一些只字片语打断,发现并非与之前预估的文章构架相符,从而迫使我们重新开始阅读并且调整思路.这样的体验,帮助我们理解阅读的概念,它是一遍又一遍的重复“假设、被纠正,再假设,再纠正...”的过程.
假如你对这个概念究竟有多少与实践的结果相符感兴趣,你可以尝试去试试看这篇文章和回答相关的问题.
想做这个实验,首先准备一张卡片把文章盖起来,把卡片慢慢下移,每次只显示一段,在你开始阅读下一段前先回答相关的问题.然后再看看你的预言是否与下一段实际表达的内容相符?然后用新的理解来预言再下一段的内容.为了能够更加准确的预言后面的内容,你需要回头重新阅读之前较早的段落,你必须牢记全文的主题的总框架以及每句话的细节. 如果你尝试过了, 你应该会对预言的内容有多少被证实而感兴趣.当然,我们并不会去期待每次的预言都是正确的,否则,我们就没有必要再去阅读文章了.
有意识的应用此项技能可以在我们阅读遇到困难时提供帮助.假如我们能够了解全文的构架,了解主题的构成方式,我们就能够在下一步获得合理的预测.预知下一步可能需要表达的想法会帮助我们进一步的了解全文.