国家地理是一个对我们雅思阅读能力提高很有帮忙的网站，上面有很多关于环境和人文的文章，难度和雅思阅读比较接近，可以做为我们课余阅读训练很好的素材。下面选择一篇源自国家地理的文章，举例子来说明一下。这篇文章的内容是关于气候变暖的，我们简单选择其中一些词汇来解释一下。

Its there on a monitor: the forest is breathing. Late summer sunlight filters through a canopy（这个词是遮篷的意思，但这个词相对就不那么常用，过于学术化了） of green as Steven Wofsy unlocks a shed in a Massachusetts woodland and enters a room stuffed with equipment and tangled（缠结的意思，这个词用于此处，形象生动地表现了电线和管子缠结而造成的混乱情景，远好于我们经常使用且只会这么用的“full of sth”） with wires and hoses.

The machinery monitors the vital functions of a small section of Harvard Forest in the center of the state. Bright red numbers dance on a gauge, flickering(闪烁摇曳，用来形容监控器上的数字上下跳动的状态，如果是我们来形容，恐怕只能用jump这么贫乏的词了吧) up and down several times a second. The reading reveals the carbon dioxide concentration just above the treetops near the shed, where instruments on a hundred-foot (30-meter) tower of steel lattice sniff the air. The numbers are running surprisingly low for the beginning of the 21st century: around 360 parts per million, ten less than the global average. Thats the trees doing. Basking in the sunshine, they inhale （吸入的意思，吸入空气等时常用的一个好词，我们平时使用take in这个短语是可以替换这个词的）carbon dioxide and turn it into leaves and wood.

中间段落省去，结尾段如下：

Who can complain? No one, for now. But the problem is that scientists cant be sure that this blessing（好的事情，我们常用good thing或bad thing等来表示好事坏事，但比较地道的表示法是blessing or curse，即我们所说的福祸，是不是听起来更书面？）will last, or whether, as the globe continues to warm, it might even change to a curse if forests and other ecosystems change from carbon sinks to sources, releasing more carbon into the atmosphere than they absorb. The doubts have sent researchers into forests and rangelands, out to the tundra and to sea, to track down and understand the missing carbon.

通过以上几个词汇的分析比较，我们能看的出，通过对一此好文章的词语等的分析和积累，不仅可以扩大我们的词汇量，更可以加深我们对于英语的文化和语感等的理解，相信通过这种良性的积累，可以让我们的英语水准（你知道阳春白雪和下里巴人的区别），让我们的英语步入“上流社会”。

                                                                                                               (原创文章，转载请注明出处)