6月2日美国举行的SAT考试，阅读部分整体难度中等，在北美考区连续两次难度阅读难度高企后，CB在6月给大家呈现了一场比较友好的考试，与去年相同地出现多套不同试卷。

第一篇文学，选自JaneAusten的名著persuasion，语言难度较高；第二篇社科，第三篇 自然科学双篇对比和第五篇科学难度一般，话题动物学也并不陌生，第四篇历史是Cherokee Nation的领导人Ross的一篇回信，围绕pending conflicts between the United States and Confederacy states, 相对3月和5月北美，本次历史文章立场人物的观点非常明确，行文结构很清晰，虽然语言有一定难度但整体难度不高。

文法部分，题型和考点都很常规，第四篇考察style and tone, 和第三篇最后两道句法题难度较大，标点符号又考察了很经典的双逗号与限制性成分的结合，值得注意的是本次文法考试细节询读题并没有出现难题，特别是让很多学生失分的排序题基本没有考察。

数学难度略高于3月和5月，可能陌生的概念来自于球体积的计算，复数i的四次方，难题主要存在于可以使用计算器的Section 4，统计部分对于标准差的考察侧重于概念理解与图形结合而不是纯计算。

注意：本次美国的SAT考试很多考生反映对于不考essay的模式没有Section 5的加试。

阅读部分详细点评：

本次美国新SAT考试阅读部分维持在一个比较友好的难度，我想这是CB在2018年3月和5月北美阅读难度都很高的情况下做出的合理的动态调整，文学语言本身难度较高，但选材和爱情话题对于well-prepared 考生来说应该比较熟悉，单篇历史涉及Ross（Chief of the Cherokee Nation)对于pending conflicts between the United States and Confederacy states出于国家利益的考虑，Cherokee人民也应采取中立的态度，总体难度低于3月和5月的历史文，社会科学难度依然中等偏低，科学一篇以双篇对比形式出现在第三篇，另一篇为单篇出现在第五篇，低于历次北美考试最后一篇科学文章的难度。

考察到的词汇题：exquisite/sense/unspecified/distinct

第一篇文学阅读原文：

第二篇社会科学阅读原文：

Your Speech Is Packed With Misunderstood, Unconscious Messages

你的演讲中充满无意识的、令人不解或误解的信息

Imagine standing up to give a speech in front of a critical audience. As you do your best to wax eloquent, someone in the room uses a clicker to conspicuously count your every stumble, hesitation, um and uh; once you’ve finished, this person loudly announces how many of these blemishes have marred your presentation.

conspicuous /kənˈspɪk.ju.əs/ adjective very noticeable or tending to attract attention, often in a way that is not wanted

This is exactly the tactic used by the Toastmasters public-speaking club, in which a designated “Ah Counter” is charged with tallying up the speaker’s slip-ups as part of the training regimen. The goal is total eradication. The club’s punitive measures may be extreme, but they reflect the folk wisdom that ums and uhs betray a speaker as weak, nervous, ignorant, and sloppy, and should be avoided at all costs, even in spontaneous conversation.

Many scientists, though, think that our cultural fixation with stamping out what they call “disfluencies” is deeply misguided. Saying um is no character flaw, but an organicfeature of speech; far from distracting listeners, there’s evidence that it focuses their attention in ways that enhance comprehension.

organic（formal) consisting of different parts that are all connected to each other

Disfluencies arise mainly because of the time pressures inherent in speaking. Speakers don’t pre-plan an entire sentence and then mentally press “play” to begin unspooling it. If they did, they’d probably need to pause for several seconds between each sentence as they assembled it, and it’s doubtful that they could hold a long, complex sentence inworking memory. Instead, speakers talk and think at the same time, launching into speech with only a vague sense of how the sentence will unfold, taking it on faith that by the time they’ve finished uttering the earlier portions of the sentence, they’ll have worked out exactly what to say in the later portions. Mostly, the timing works out, but occasionally it takes longer than expected to find the right phrase. Saying “um” is the speaker’s way of signaling that processing is ongoing, the verbal equivalent of a computer’s spinning circle. People sometimes have more disfluencies while speaking in public, ironically, because they are trying hard not to misspeak.

Since disfluencies show that a speaker is thinking carefully about what she is about to say, they provide useful information to listeners, cueing them to focus attention on upcoming content that’s likely to be meaty. One famous example comes from the movie Jurassic Park. When Jeff Goldblum’s character is asked whether a group of only female animals can breed, he replies, “No, I’m, I’m simply saying that life, uh…finds a way.” The disfluencies emphasize that he’s coming to grips withsomething not easy to explain—an idea that turns out to be a key part of the movie.

come to grips withto make an effort to understand and deal with a problem or situation

Experiments with ums or uhs spliced in or out of speech show that when words are preceded by disfluencies, listeners recognize them faster and remember them more accurately. In some cases, disfluencies allow listeners to make useful predictions about what they’re about to hear. In one study, for example, listeners correctly inferred that speakers’ stumbles meant that they were describing complicated conglomerations of shapes rather than to simple single shapes.

Disfluencies can also improve our comprehension of longer pieces of content. Psychologists Scott Fraundorf and Duane Watson tinkered with recordings of a speaker’s retellings of passages from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and compared how well listeners remembered versions that were purged of all disfluencies as opposed to ones that contained an average number of ums and uhs (about two instances out of every 100 words). They found that hearers remembered plot points better after listening to the disfluent versions, with enhanced memory apparent even for plot points that weren’t preceded by a disfluency. Stripping a speech of ums and uhs, as Toastmasters are intent on doing, appears to be doing listeners no favors.

Moreover, there’s reason to question the implicit assumption that disfluencies reveal a speaker’s lack of knowledge. In a study led by Kathryn Womack, experienced physicians and residents in training looked at images of various dermatological conditions while talking their way to a diagnosis. Not surprisingly, the expert doctors were more accurate in their diagnoses than the residents. They also produced more complex sentences—and a greater number of disfluencies, giving lie to the notion that disfluencies reflect a lack of control over one’s material. On the contrary, the study’s authors suggest that the seasoned doctors had more disfluent speech because they were sifting through a larger body of knowledge and constructing more detailed explanations while planning their speech.

If disfluencies appear to generally help communication more than they hinder it, why are they so stigmatized? Writer and linguist Michael Erard argues in his book Um… that historically, public speakers have been blissfully unconcerned with disinfecting their speech of disfluencies until about the 20th Century—possibly because neither hearers nor speakers consciously noticed them until it became possible to record and replay spoken language in all its circuitous and halting glory. The aversion to disfluencies may well have arisen from speakers’ horror at hearing their own recorded voices. Erard suggests that the modern repugnance for disfluencies is less an assessment of a person’s speech than it is a “deeper judgment about how much control he should have over his self-presentation and his identity.” In truth, disfluencies appear to distract mainly those who have been trained to revile them.

Perhaps there’s an argument to be made that public speaking is different from day-to-day communication, that it’s a performance in which the artist is meant to demonstrate almost superhuman mastery over speech and make verbal virtuosity look easy precisely because of the absence of cues that reveal its complexity. Maybe so. But the prohibition of ums should be recognized for what it is—a display focused on presenting the speaker in a flattering light—and not mistaken for courtesy directed at the listener.

In fact, designers of synthesized voice systems, who often are rather solicitous when it comes to the hearer’s ease and comfort, have begun experimenting with the insertion of naturalistic disfluencies into artificial speech (though it’s too soon to tell whether listeners respond to these as they do to human disfluencies). It’s an irony of our age that robots, unconcerned with ego, may be busy putting disfluencies into their speech just as humans, preoccupied with their self-images, are submitting to strenuous training to take them out.

第三篇科学：双篇对比

P1: The Origin of A Little Tyrant

P2: 

Top predator wannabe is just another T. rex

第四篇：历史单篇 阅读原文

Cherokee Nation的领导人Ross的一篇回信，围绕pending conflicts between the United States and Confederacy states, 相对3月和5月北美，本次历史文章立场人物的观点非常明确，认为Cherokee人民应该也保持对于conflicts的中立态度，行文结构很清晰，虽然语言有一定难度但是题目难度不高。

第五篇：科学
选自Douglas的Animal Weapons：The Evolution of Battle

阅读原文：

文法部分详细点评

考察题型

1. 纯语法题型

--- 标点符号题: 本次考试中逗号, 冒号, 分号的使用都有所涉及。 考察内容都是之前OG和真题中出现过的知识点, 没有特别大的难度。

--- 标点符号

--- 代词指代

--- 句子合并题

--- 平行结构题

--- 逻辑主语题

--- 固定搭配与近义(形近）词辨析（1. by/in the tradition of; 2. cite/site as/for; 3. specified/defining/delineating/determined; 4.determine/designate/arbitrate/ordain; 5.unsuitable/unbecoming/unseemly/untimely）

2. 与文章相关的题型:

--- 段落/全篇主旨题（I/C）

--- 句子加减题/逻辑顺序题: 根据上下文内容进行句子增加, 删节, 以及排序

--- 逻辑词题（注意无逻辑关系的题目）

--- Style and Tone 

--- 重复

3. 图表题: 

--- 此次考试中出现的图表题, 需要结合文章内容找出正确的选项. 

预祝大家可以获得自己理想的成绩。

本考试回顾整理自沙老师北美留学考试，沙老师是西点致美教育创始人、董事长兼校长

来源：SAT考试网