最近看了美国《GMAT阅读理解题》，觉得回味无穷，深感美国对研究生论坛入学英语阅读理解考试的要求除了理解细节之外还有如下特点：
　　1. 要求考生理解全文的主旨；
　　2. 要求考生理解全文的逻辑框架；
　　3. 要求考生理解段落与段落之间的逻辑关系；
　　4. 要求考生在理解段落细节以后，能够对其进行类比；
　　5. 要求考生在理解段落细节以后，能够对其进行推理判断；
　　6. 要求考生理解作者或某人物对所述事例的观点、态度和看法；
　　7. 要求考生理解段落内论点与论据、细节与主题之间的逻辑关系。
　　美国《GMAT阅读理解题》与 考研命题思路的对比
　　一、GMAT的阅读文章（一般有450字左右，紧接着7 – 9道测试题）
　　Historians have only recently begun to note the increase in demand for luxury goods and services that took place in eighteenth-century England. McKendrick has explored the Wedgwood firm’s remarkable success in marketing luxury pottery; Plumb has written about the rapid increase of provincial theaters, musical festivals, and children’s toys and books. While the fact of this consumer revolution is hardly in doubt, three key questions remain: Who were the consumers? What were their motives? And what were the effects of the new demand for luxuries?
　　An answer to the first of these has been difficult to obtain. Although it has been possible to infer from the goods and services actually produced what manufacturers and servicing trades thought their customers wanted, only a study of relevant personal documents written by actual consumers will provide a precise picture of who wanted what. We still need to know how large this consumer market was and how far down the social scale the consumer demand for luxury goods penetrated. With regard to this last question, we might note in passing that Thompson, while rightly restoring laboring people to the stage of eighteenth-century English history, has probably exaggerated the opposition of these people to the sudden attacks of capitalist consumerism in general. For example, laboring people in eighteenth-century England readily shifted from home-brewed beer to standardized beer produced by huge, heavily capitalized urban breweries.
　　To answer the question of why consumers became so eager to buy, some historians have pointed to the ability of manufacturers to advertise in a relatively uncensored press. This, however, hardly seems a sufficient answer. McKendrick favors a Veblen model of conspicuous consumption stimulated by competition for status. The “middling sort” bought goods and services because they wanted to follow fashions set by the rich. Again, we may wonder whether this explanation is sufficient. Do not people enjoy buying things as a form of self-gratification? If so, consumerism could be seen as a product of the rise of new concepts of individualism and materialism, but not necessarily of the frenzy for conspicuous competition.