阅读试题

Passage 32
America’s most popular newspaper website today announced that the era of free online journalism is drawing to a close. The New York Times has become the biggest publisher yet to set out plans for a paywall around its digital offering, _1_ the accepted practice that internet users will not pay for news.
Struggling with an evaporation of advertising and a downward drift in street corner sales, The New York Times intends to introduce a “metered” model at the beginning of 2011. Readers will be required to pay when they have _2_ a set number of its online articles per month.
The decision puts the 159-year-old newspaper on the charging side of an _3_ wide chasm (鸿沟）in the media industry. But others, including the Guardian, have said they will not _4_ internet readers.
The New York Times's publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, _5_ that the move is a gamble. Boasting a print _6_ of 995,000 on weekdays and 1.4 million on Sundays, The New York Times is the third bestselling American newspaper, behind the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. While most US papers focus on a single city, The New York Times is among the few that can claim _7_ scope—as well as 16 bureaus in the New York area, it has 11 offices around the US and maintains 26 bureaus elsewhere in the world.
But like many in the publishing industry, the paper is in the grip of a _8_ financial crisis. Its parent company, the New York Times Company, has 15 papers, but _9_ a loss of $70 million in the nine months to September and recently accepted a $250 million _10_ from a Mexican billionaire， Carlos Slim, to strengthen its balance sheet.
A) national B) interactively C) circulation D) loan
E) crude F) exceeded G) charge H) ascend
I) abandoning J) suffered K) serious L) deducting
M) increasingly N) evaluation O) acknowledged

解题思路

Passage 32
解题思路
1.[I]空格所在句主谓宾结构完整，故需填入及物动词的分词形式，作伴随状语。空格前说《纽约时报》着手制定对电子新闻产品收费的计划，空格后说现行的习惯做法(the accepted practice)是互联网为用户提供免费新闻，可见它要“放弃”这种习惯做法，abandoning “放弃”符合句意。
2.[F]此处需填入谓语动词，由have可知为过去分词形式。根据动词宾语a set number of...(—定量的），填人exceeded “超过”符合句意，表示：当读者每月阅读网上文章超过一定量时，就被要求付费。
3.[M]此处需填人副词，修饰wide。本句说《纽约时报》的决定使它处于收费(charging)的一边，这表明它与提供免费新闻的传媒业之间的鸿沟扩大了很多，故increasingly“日益，更加”正确。
4.[G]此处需填入动词。前一句说《纽约时报》决定站在收费(charging)的一边，but转折词和否定词not说明《卫报》等其他传媒不会对读者“收费”，charge为本题答案。
5.[O]此处需填入谓语动词，其后宾语从句意为:此举是一种赌博。这是讲Arthur Sulzberger的看法，应使用过去时态.acknowledged “承认”符合语义。
6.[C]空格后的of…表明此处需填人名词。根据空格后的99.5万、140万，再结合主句中的信息：《纽约时报》是美国第三大最畅销报纸，可知circulation“发行量”正确。
7.[A]此处需填人scope的修饰语，可为名词、形容词或分词。上半句讲到，多数美国报纸都立足于某个城市，句首表转折对比的while表明后半句是讲《纽约时报》覆盖的范围广，故选national一词,与上半分句的 a single city形成对比。
8.[K]此处需填人形容词或分词,修饰financial crisis“金融危机”。从下文所说的母公司所遭受的巨额损失a loss of $70 million,可知金融危机是serious“严重的”。
9.[J]此处需填人谓语动词,后接宾语a loss of...。suffered a loss为常见搭配，表示“遭受损失”。
10.[D]此处需填人accepted的宾语，应为名词。空格前提到《纽约时报》母公司损失了7000万美元，所以最近接受了2.5亿美元的……来缓解资产负债，空格处填人loan“贷款”符合语义逻辑。