6月的A Carbon Tax Beats A Vacuum Ban和11月的The Wrong Way to Protect Elephants虽然涉及到了一些同学们不熟悉的碳税和象牙制品的问题，但是因为引用了生活中碳排放和钢琴的例子，所以整体而言也比较容易理清作者的思路。其余几篇讨论社会话题的文章语言都比较平实，论证深入浅出，因此对于大部分考生而言，难度不大。
比如三月北美的A Call for National Service，5月北美的Air-Conditioning Will Be the End of US和11月北美的Bad for the Birds,Bad for All of Us，文章中除了贯穿全文的data，informative facts和quotation之外，几乎没有使用突出的修辞手法。针对这样的文章风格，evidence和logical organization成为分析文章的不二之选。
If the Mona Lisa had been sawed in two during the Napoleonic Wars and the separated halves had been acquired by different museums in,say,St.Petersburg and Lisbon,would there not be a general wish to see what they might look like if re-united?
在6月亚太的A Carbon Tax Beats A Vacuum Ban的第2段和第3段，作者连续提出了四个问题：
Want an incandescent light bulb?Too bad–they"re banned.How about a gas guzzling car?Sorry–they"re being squeezed out by tighter fuel economy standards.
Do we really want the government telling us what kind of vacuum cleaner or light bulb to buy?Don"t policy makers have better things to think about?
在10月北美的The North West London Blues开篇，作者便提出了两个问题引出下文的观点：
What kind of a problem is a library?It’s clear that for many people it is not a problem at all,only a kind of obsolescence.
With every book in the world online,what need could there be for the physical reality?
例如6月亚太的A Carbon Tax Beats A Vacuum Ban第五段和第六段中，作者立场鲜明的列举的carbon tax的两大优势：
The main advantage of the carbon tax is that it leaves consumers free to decide whether to buy energy-efficient vacuum cleaners and light bulbs or whether to reduce their carbon footprint in other ways.
A carbon tax is also better targeted than vacuum cleaner bans and other regulations.
用三个段落对两种减排措施carbon tax和vacuum ban的利弊进行了深入的对比。
另外，在12月亚太Op-Ed:Americans’Future Has to Be Multilingual第二段和第三段中，作者温和客观的对比了美国和欧洲对于外语教育的重视程度
在美国：Foreign language degrees account for only 1 percent of all U.S.undergraduate degrees.And fewer than 2 percent of U.S.undergraduates study abroad in a given year,the Education Department says.
而在欧洲：More than half of European Union citizens speak a language other than their mother tongue,and more than a quarter speak at least three languages.
Sadly,such jobs are increasingly being filled by workers in their mid-to late-20s,not teenagers just trying to supplement their allowances.And about a third of them are parents.
通过养育孩子的父母questions只能拿到最低工资，来引发人们对这个问题的共鸣。
12月北美的It"s Time For Paid Family and Medical Leave to Empower Working Women and Modernize the Workplace第三段，作者主张：
Hardworking men and women deserve not only job security,but also a paycheck when they need to take time off to care for a loved one.
阅读维度：增加阅读训练。平时注意从Washington Post（《华盛顿邮报》）、The New York Times（《纽约时报》）、U.S.News（《美国新闻》）等网站上选择600-900字的文章进行阅读训练。注意不要拖沓，计时练习，扩大词汇量的同时，提高阅读效率。话题可以兼顾公民，科学，环境，教育，文化等不同领域。
