这篇文章是讲The new school of political history和traditional都没有把women考虑进去，By redefining “political activity,” 某人把women考虑进去了。
发现自己在做主题题和句子作用题的时候，很容易被ets的干扰项迷惑。想请大家帮忙纠正一下我的思路有什么问题或说说ETS's trick。
谢谢了，文章在最后。
131.The primary purpose of the passage is to
(A) enumerate reason why both traditional scholarly methods and newer scholarly methods have limitations
(B) identify a shortcoming in a scholarly approach and describe an alternative approach
(C) provide empirical data to support a long-held scholarly assumption
(D) compare two scholarly publications on the basis of their authors’ backgrounds
(E) attempt to provide a partial answer to a long-standing scholarly dilemma
答案为B,但我看到a shortcoming in a scholarly approach就排除了，因为这个exclude women的shortcoming是new approach和old approach都有的。我认为原文是有三个approach.相反我选了E，因为我把new approach和old approach的shortcoming看作了dilemma，不知道我是不是就错在partial和dilemma这两个词的理解上？
133.It can be inferred that the author of the passage quotes Baker directly in the second paragraph primarily in order to
(A) clarify a position before providing an alternative of that position
(B) differentiate between a novel definition and traditional definitions
(C) provide an example of a point agreed on by different generations of scholars
(D) provide an example of the prose style of an important historian
(E) amplify a definition given in the first paragraph
答案为B,但我把definition误作为approach因而把B排除。其实新旧两个approach都是一个traditional definition。我选E，感觉虽然原文是redefine definitioin，但是这个definition只是include了women，所以还是把它看作是amplify.
原文：
The new school of political history that emerged in the 1960’s and 1970’s sought to go beyond the traditional focus of political historians on leaders and government institutions by examining directly the political practices of ordinary citizens. Like the old approach, however, this new approach excluded women. The very techniques these historians used to uncover mass political behavior in the nineteenth-century United States—quantitative analyses of election returns, for example—were useless in analyzing the political activities of women, who were denied the vote until 1920.
By redefining “political activity,” historian Paula Baker has developed a political history that includes women. She concludes that among ordinary citizens, political activism by women in the nineteenth century prefigured trends in twentieth-century politics. Defining “politics” as “any action taken to affect the course of behavior of government or of the community,” Baker concludes that, while voting and holding office were restricted to men, women in the nineteenth century organized themselves into societies committed to social issues such as temperance and poverty. In other words, Baker contends, women activists were early practitioners of nonpartisan, issue-oriented politics and thus were more interested in enlisting lawmakers, regardless of their party affiliation, on behalf of certain issues than in ensuring that one party or another won an election. In the twentieth century, more men drew closer to women’s ideas about politics and took up modes of issue-oriented politics that Baker sees women as having pioneered.作者: teyvhf 时间: 2004-9-17 12:40
本人水平有限，权当讨论。
第一题中，文章在第一段提及60s, 70s的new school, 与过去的traditional相对（后者基本没提）。 但是new school有不涉及女性，所以a shortcoming in a scholarly approach是对此而言。
那么第二段是文章重点，引出Baker的理论，即所谓an alternative approach了。
至于E为什么不对，是new school 和 traditional appproach都不涉及women，而baker的理论（加入女性研究）并不是解决他们之间的争论，即long-standing scholarly dilemma。前两者的不同在于focus of political historians on leaders and government institutions by examining directly the political practices of ordinary citizens. 这不是baker理论的重点。
希望有所帮助。
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