One night Mrs Rochester succeeded in setting the house on fire. Mr Rochester managed to lead the servants to safety and then went back into the burning mansion to rescue his wife。
After we had travelled for about twenty miles there was still no sign of the town which was marked on the map. We were beginning to get worried. Then without warning the car stopped. A quick examination showed that we had run out of petrol. Although we had little food with us only a few biscuits and some chocolate we decided to spend the night in the car。
这一段中,假设petrol和biscuit两个词是生词,但我们可以从句子的前后文中推断出这两个词的意思。如文中提到汽车在没有任何出毛病的先兆时就突然停了,文中又有run our of——“用完”这个词组,因此可以推断出一定是汽油用完了,从而petrol的意思即可推测出。下边的biscuit是生词,但这一句的前半句提到了we had little food with us biscuit和chocolate都是进一步补充说明是什么样的food,由此可见,这两样东西是“食品”。这时我们已经明白了大致的意思,不查词典,也不妨碍我们理解文章的意思。因此,就可以继续读下去,有时读到后面,又会发现前面出现的生词的意思在后面有了解释。