一、考纲要求分析与考试重点概述
根据考研英语大纲，阅读理解B节部分主要考查考生对诸如连贯性、一致性等语段特征以及文章结构的理解。
本题型的内容是一篇总长度为500~600词的文章，其中有5段空白，文章后有6~7段文字，要求考生根据文章内容从这6~7段文字中选出5个答案，分别放进文章中的5个空白处。此题型所考文章不仅长度长于阅读理解A节中的文章(每篇约400~450词)，阅读量大，而且文字难度和做题要求也都高于A节。A节中的文章是完整的，在通读文章或查读细节时，思路不会被打断。而此题型文章中有5处空白，在阅读过程中，如果不明白文章的主旨和段落主题、作者的写作意图，就很难顺畅地读下去、读明白，自然就很难选出正确答案。而一个空填错势必又影响到对另外一个空的选择。另外，此题有5个空白处，却提供6~7个选项(根据大纲)，因此有1~2个选项是多余的干扰选项，从而又加大了选出正确答案的难度。
该题型要求考生从整体上把握文章的逻辑结构和内容上的联系，理解句子之间、段落之间的关系，对诸如连贯性、一致性等语段特征有较强的意识和熟练的把握，并具备运用语法知识分析理解长难句的能力。可以说，此题型是对语言能力和阅读理解能力的综合测试，因此要求更高。考生有必要对这类题型的答题思路多练习，以提高自己在这个部分的应试能力。
二、考纲样题分析与详解
我们先以大纲所附样题为例，概括地分析一下此类题型的命题特点及解题思路。然后我们再对解题思路进行全面的归纳和总结。
大纲样题
Part B
Sample One
Directions:
In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41~45, choose the most suitable one from the list ［A］~［G］ to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. (10 points)
Long before Man lived on the Earth, there were fishes, reptiles, birds, insects, and some mammals. Although some of these animals were ancestors of kinds living today, others are now extinct, that is, they have no descendants alive now. (41). Very occasionally the rocks show impression of skin, so that, apart from color, we can build up a reasonably accurate picture of an animal that died millions of years ago. The kind of rock in which the remains are found tells us much about the nature of the original land, often of the plants that grew on it, and even of its climate.
(42) . Nearly all of the fossils that we know were preserved in rocks formed by water action, and most of these are of animals that lived in or near water. Thus it follows that there must be many kinds of mammals, birds, and insects of which we know nothing.
(43) . There were also crablike creatures, whose bodies were covered with a horny substance. The body segments each had two pairs of legs, one pair for walking on the sandy bottom, the other for swimming. The head was a kind of shield with a pair of compound eyes, often with thousands of lenses. They were usually an inch or two long but some were 2 feet.
(44) . Of these, the ammonites are very interesting and important. They have a shell composed of many chambers, each representing a temporary home of the animal. As the young grew larger it grew a new chamber and sealed off the previous one. Thousands of these can be seen in the rocks on the Dorset Coast.
(45) . About 75 million years ago the Age of Reptiles was over and most of the groups died out. The mammals quickly developed, and we can trace the evolution of many familiar animals such as the elephant and horse. Many of the later mammals, though now extinct, were known to primitive man and were featured by him in cave paintings and on bone carvings.
［A］The shellfish have a long history in the rock and many different kinds are known.
［B］Nevertheless, we know a great deal about many of them because their bones and shells have been preserved in the rocks as fossils. From them we can tell their size and shape, how they walked, the kind of food they ate.
［C］The first animals with true backbones were the fishes, first known in the rocks of 375 million years ago. About 300 million years ago the amphibians, the animals able to live both on land and in water, appeared. They were giant, sometimes 8 feet long, and many of them lived in the swampy pools in which our coal seam, or layer, formed. The amphibians gave rise to the reptiles and for nearly 150 million years these were the principal forms of life on land, in the sea, and in the air.
［D］The best index fossils tend to be marine creatures. These animals evolved rapidly and spread over large areas of the world.
［E］The earliest animals whose remains have been found were all very simple kinds and lived in the sea. Later forms are more complex, and among these are the sealilies, relations of the starfishes, which had long arms and were attached by a long stalk to the sea bed, or to rocks.
［F］When an animal dies, the body, its bones, or shell, may often be carried away by streams into lakes or the sea and there get covered up by mud. If the animal lived in the sea its body would probably sink and be covered with mud. More and more mud would fall upon it until the bones or shell become embedded and preserved.
［G］Many factors can influence how fossils are preserved in rocks. Remains of an organism may be replaced by minerals, dissolved by an acidic solution to leave only their impression, or simply reduced to a more stable form.
