A man who knows a bit about carpentry （木工术) will make his table more quickly than the m

A man who knows a bit about carpentry (木工术) will make his table more quickly than the man who does not. If the instructions are not very clear, or the shape of a piece is puzzling his experience helps him to conclude that it must fit there, or that its function must be that. In the same way, the reader's sense and experience helps him to predict what the writer is likely to ,say next; that he must be going to say this rather than that. A reader who can think along with the writer in this way will find the text.

This skill is so useful that you may wish to make your students aware of it so that they can use it to tackle difficult texts. It does seem to be the case that as we read we make hypotheses (假设) about what the writer intends to say; these are immediately modified by what he actually does say, and are replaced by new hypotheses about what will follow. We have all had the experience of believing we were understanding a text until suddenly brought to a halt by some word or phrase that would not fit into the pattern and forced us to reread and readjust our thoughts. Such occurrences lend support to the notion of reading as a constant making and remaking of hypotheses.

If you are interested in finding out how far this idea accords with (符合) practice, you may like to try out the text and questions. To do so, take a piece of card and use it to mask the text. Move it down the page, revealing only one

t a time. Answer the question before you go on to look at the next section. Check your prediction against what the text actually says, and use the new knowledge to improve your next prediction. You will need to look back to earlier parts of the text if you are to make accurate prediction, for you must keep in mind the general organization of the argument as well as the detail within each sentence. If you have tried this out, you have probably been interested to find how much you can predict, though naturally we should not expect to be right every time -- otherwise there would be no need for us to read.

Conscious use of this technique can be helpful when we are faced with a part of the text that we find difficult: if we can see the overall pattern of the text, and the way the argument is organized, we can make a reasoned guess at the next step. Having an idea of what something might mean can be a great help in interpreting it.

The author uses the examples of carpentry and reading to show______.

A．the importance of making prediction

B．the similarity in using one's senses

C．the necessity of making use of one's knowledge

D．the most effective method in doing anything