下面这是一道推断题（我们在第【十四】讲的时候讲到了推断题的答题逻辑）。

GRE阅读 | 破解GRE阅读理解系列（十四）

第【十四】讲的那道推断题难度不大，是推断题的难度下限。我们今天看到的是推断题的难度上限。

首先看题：

It can be inferred that the author of the passage considers traditional scholarly methods courses to be

(A) irrelevant to the work of most students

(B) inconsequential because of their narrow focus

(C) unconcerned about the accuracy of reference sources

(D) too superficial to establish important facts about authors

(E) too wide-ranging to approximate genuine scholarly activity

题目问的是traditional scholarly methods courses被认为是什么样的。正确答案是：(E) too wide-ranging to approximategenuine scholarly activity。虽然我们可以迅速确定这个选项的关键词是wide-ranging和genuine，但是整个选项的陈述是由too…to…（“太如何如何以至于无法怎样怎样”）贯穿，所以我们要理解为wide-ranging看来是个劣势/缺陷，同时，genuine是一个无法“接近”（approximate的动词意义）的状态。

接下来，我们直接给出这个题目的正确答案的判定依据：

To minimize the artificial aspects of the conventional course, the usual procedure of assigning a large number of small problems drawn from the entire range of historical periods was abandoned, though this procedure has the obvious advantage of at least superficially familiarizing students with a wide range of reference sources.

许多同学并不能完全理解这句话的“潜台词”，从而无法理解这句话与正确选项的关系。我们来拆解和解读：

首先，To minimize the artificial aspects of the conventional course 意味着 the conventional course 中有 artificial aspects，并且这些 artificial aspects 的存在不是好事（而是劣势/缺陷），不然，怎么会要to minimize呢？

其次，the usual procedure of assigning a large number of small problems drawn from the entire range of historical periods was abandoned 意味着 the usual procedure 不好，不然不会was abandoned。那么，the usual procedure是什么特点呢？特点是 assigning a large number of small problems drawn from the entire range of historical periods。这个特点中，有两个点：1）a large number of small problems 以及 2）the entire range of historical periods。这两个特点是好事/优势么？并不是，正如我们刚才所说，不然 the usual procedure 不会 was abandoned。于是我们知道：a large number 不是好事，the entire range 不是好事。

接下来我们可以推断出：

带着 to minimize the artificial aspects 这个目的，the procedure of assigning a large number of small problems drawn from the entire range of historical periods was abandoned，可见 a large number of small problems drawn from the entire range of historical periods就是存在 the artificial aspects 的原因。

同时，因为artificial aspects的存在，所以genuine是一个无法实现的状态。所以，这句话的逻辑可以理解为：因为a large number of small problems drawn from the entire range of historical periods，所以artificial aspects存在。吻合于正确答案选项的逻辑：因为wide-ranging，所以无法genuine。

如果你问“那这个句子的后半部分 though this procedure has the obvious advantage of at least superficially familiarizing students with a wide range of reference sources 就没用么？”是的，这个部分对于答这道题是没用的，而是用于答另一道推断题。我们往后不断精讲推断题的时候来讲。