???

面對這個問題：

It can be inferred from the passage that the first two generations of landscape photographers in the western United States had which of the following in common? 

你會不會到文章中去找題干中的關鍵詞 the first two generations？

令你失望的是，文章中不會有 the first two generations 的。當然，也很可能并不會被你找到“first”的直接同義詞（注意：無處可尋的是“直接”同義詞。所以，你要小心“間接”同義詞，通常是詞義不直接完全對等，卻在設定好的語境下表達了同樣的概念）。

然而，你會在文章中找到這段話：

Western American landscape photography grew out of a male tradition, pioneered by photographers attached to government and commercial survey teams that went west in the 1860’s and 1870’s. These explorer-photographers documented the West that their employers wanted to see: an exotic and majestic land shaped by awesome natural forces, unpopulated and ready for American settlement. The next generation of male photographers, represented by Ansel Adams and Eliot Porter, often worked with conservationist groups rather than government agencies or commercial companies, but they nonetheless preserved the “heroic” style and maintained the role of respectful outsider peering with reverence at a fragile natural world. 

不知道你是不是立即找到了兩個“generations of landscape photographers”。但是，你一定是立刻找到了“The next generation …”。于是，你已經鎖定了其中一個“generation”，并且可以判斷出另一個應該是在他們前面。于是，你可能找到前面的“These explorer-photographers”作為“pioneer”（是不是就是題干中的“first”？）的存在。那么，the first two generations 是不是就以“1+1=2”的方式出現了？

接下來，我們看一道“2+1=3”的算術題：

Biologists have long maintained that two groups of pinnipeds, sea lions and walruses, are descended from a terrestrial bearlike animal, whereas the remaining group, seals, shares an ancestor with weasels. But the recent discovery of detailed similarities in the skeletal structure of the flippers in all three groups …

你應該不會讀到“in all three groups”突然懵圈了吧？畢竟“two groups of pinnipeds”加上“the remaining group”就是“all three groups”，這種簡單的算術你一定會算。