【PTE真题】Summarize Written Text真题解析

Published by PTE管理 at 2017/04/13

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最近有一位考生向我们提供了他回忆的PTE Summarise Written Text的考题，并向我们求证了答案。题目中提到了一个纳米比亚的女孩，叫Pascolena Florry，提到了关于野生动物的话题。澳大利亚语言学院的老师们根据这位同学提供的线索尽可能地还原了文章，并在这里为各位考生分析这道题，到底怎么做。赶快来看一看吧！也许下次你在考试中就会遇到它哦！

真题原文

When Namibia gained independence in 1990, teenager Pascolena Florry was herding goats in the country’s dry, desolate northern savannah. Her job, unpaid and dangerous, was to protect her parents’ livestock from preying jackals and leopards. She saw wildlife as the enemy, and many of the other indigenous inhabitants of Namibia’s rural communal lands shared her view. Wildlife poaching was commonplace. Fifteen years later, 31-year-old Pascolena’s life and outlook are very different. She has built a previously undreamed-of career in tourism and is the first black Namibian to be appointed manager of a guest lodge. Her village, and hundreds of others, have directly benefited from government efforts to devolve wildlife management and tourism development on communal lands to conservancies run by indigenous peoples. “Now we see the wildlife as our way of creating jobs and opportunities as the tourism industry grows,” she says. “The future is better with wildlife around, not only for jobs, but also for the environment”.

Namibia’s establishment of conservancies is among the most successful efforts by developing nations to decentralize natural resource management and simultaneously combat poverty. In fact, it is one of the largest-scale demonstrations of so-called “community-based natural resource management” and the state-sanctioned empowerment of local communities. Most conservancies are run by elected committees of local people, to whom the government devolves user rights over wildlife within the conservancy boundaries. Technical assistance in managing the conservancy is provided by government officials and local and international nongovernmental organizations. In late 2004, 31 conservancies were operating on 7.8 million hectares of desert, savannah, and woodlands occupied by 98,000 people.

词汇解析

Conservancy n. 保留地，保护区；conserve的变形

Communal adj. 公有的，公用的，社区的；community的变形

Indigenous adj. 土著的；比如澳洲的土著我们也可以称为Aboriginal People

Boundary n. 边界，国界；bound的变形，也可以形容事物的轮廓

Decentralize adj. 分散的，离开中心的；central的否定变形

Desolate adj. 荒凉的；著名的霍比特人第二部就叫The Desolation of Smaug，意为史矛革（巨龙）的荒原

Devolve v. 下放，放权；源于拉丁文de- = down，-volvee = roll，意为to roll down

Empowerment n. 赋予权力，使…拥有力量；power的变形

Herding n. 放牧；herd也有牛羊群的意思

Jackal n. 豺狼；看过狮子王的话，一定会记得里面作为反派角色的土狼们吧。它们就是Jackals。

Leopard n. 豹子，雪豹；用过Mac OS的同学可能会知道，Leopards是其中的一个版本。升级版记得是Lion。

Poaching n. 盗猎；这里指的是人类的偷捕，属于违法行为

Preying n. 捕猎；这里指的是自然界动物的捕食，属于自然界的正常行为

这是一篇非常有意思的文章，也很好地反映了PTE的一个考点：对于文章大意的理解。这两段内容究竟想要表述什么呢？我们来大致理一下文章的脉络：文章整体分为2节，第一节讲述了一个叫Pascolena Florry的女孩的故事，而第二段描述了Namibia这个国家的自然保护区。

于是，很多同学都会把Summary写成一个小女孩的人生，说她经历了怎样的变化。但是，如果这样回答的话，方向是完全错误的，会导致内容上的失分。关于这点，我们可以先剧透一下，这篇文章的标题是：NATURE IN LOCAL HANDS: TheCase for Namibia’s Conservancies. （有兴趣的同学可以阅读原文链接：http://www.grida.no/wrr/046.htm）

在回答之前，我们再想一下，作者为什么会给出这样一个小女孩的故事呢？两段话里真正重要的是哪部分呢？

我们不妨来设想一个这样的场景：小时候有一天放学后你的老师找你谈话，然后她开始滔滔不绝地聊起了你的同学小明的故事，说他之前上课专心，作业也完成的很好，但自从去了网吧之后，交了一些不合适的朋友，结果成绩一落千丈。嗯，请问老师究竟想表达什么呢？大家应该都已经猜到了，那就是不要去网吧，要专心学习。一般后面就会有无数的大道理等着你，但重点不外乎就是这些（自黑的作者默默地回忆着他的学生时代）。

在这段场景中，故事只是为了陪衬一个道理，而这个道理本身才是对话交流的重点。这个理论同样适用于这篇文章。说到底，这个女孩究竟是谁不重要，因为哪怕没有这个女孩，Namibia的局势也不会有任何的不同，这个女孩只是时局的一个见证，一个陪衬。关于她的故事，我们没有必要过多地去关注。

反之，在第二段中提到的词语，我们需要认真地去分析。

第二段的核心词语是conservancy，也就是自然保护区。

Namibia’sestablishment of conservancies is among the most successfulefforts by developing nations to decentralize natural resource management andsimultaneously combat poverty.（Topic Sentence引入话题，提出Namibia的保护区很成功）In fact, it is one of thelargest-scale demonstrations of so-called “community-based natural resourcemanagement” and the state-sanctioned empowerment of local communities.（In fact这个词语意味着具体解释，因此可以完全无视。） Most conservancies are runby elected committees of local people, to whom the government devolves userrights over wildlife within the conservancy boundaries.（这句话说的是保护区是由谁来运营的）Technicalassistance inmanaging the conservancy is provided by government officials and localand international nongovernmental organizations.（这句话说的是技术支持是由谁来提供的）In late 2004,31 conservancies were operating on 7.8 million hectares of desert, savannah,and woodlands occupied by 98,000 people.（这句话是一个例子，可以无视。）

在精简成这三句话之后，我们可以进一步地进行从句的清理：towhom …这句话是修饰，完全可以省略。

语法基础不佳，目标考50-65的同学可以完全照搬原句，直接把精简过后的内容连接起来变成一段话，记得把句号的部分拆开成连接部分：

Namibia’s establishment of conservancies is amongthe most successful efforts by developing nations to decentralize naturalresource management and simultaneously combat poverty,and most conservancies are run by elected committees of local people, while technical assistance in managing theconservancy is provided by government officials and local and internationalnongovernmental organizations. (51 words)

相对成绩需求较高的同学可以试试看重组句子，通过插入语或从句的方式把内容精简。这里我们提供一份Kathy老师（90分学霸）的参考答案：

In Namibia, the establishment of conservancies, run by local communities andassisted by the government and nongovernmental organisations, has been provedsuccessful to help developing countries to decentralize natural resources,create jobs and improve the economy. (36 words)

注意在Summarise Written Text里一个隐性的评分标准是，当涉及到同样数量的关键点时，一般越精简的句子得到的分数会越高。大家在考试的时候如果写完了关键点，千万不要硬加句子去凑字数，一来容易出现语法错误，而来也会增加许多冗余，是没有必要的。

当然，这里的标准答案并不是只有唯一的。欢迎大家自己思考，尝试做题，并且在留言中写下你的答案，澳大利亚语言学院的老师会一一查看并回复。