Summary of English Course（基英二）U1 We Have Been Hit!Adam Mayblum is an employee of May Davis, a financial services firm whose office was on the 87th floor of the World Trade Center. He used to be very proud of working in the tallest building in the world. And then on that September morning, he left it when the plane hit the building. He remained calm among the confusion, ripping his T-shirt into pieces, soaking the pieces in water and giving them to colleagues to cover their faces. He raced down the stairs with his colleagues including the head trader Harry Ramos and his trading partner Hong Zhu. When they came to the 53th floor, they met a heavyset man whose legs would not move and they tired to help him. Hong decided to be the guinea pig to test the safety of the elevator. When everything was all right, he went back up to collect the others. The elevator took them to the 44th floor and then it stopped working, so they had to take the stairs. When they reached the 36th floor, the heavyset man refused to move on the spite of their encouragement. So Hong left along sorrowfully ,while Ramos refused to leave the man along there. The next day ,Adam Mayblum’s e-mail about his experience was read by someone who knew the wife of the heavyset man. On September 15th,friends and family had a gathering. All the employees of May Davis survived except Harry Ramos .His wife Mickytried to develop to a pictures of his escape, but it began to fade on the 36th floor.U2 The Virtues of Growing OlderOur society worships youth.Advertisements convince us to look younth, and people are working out in gyms to delay the effects of the age.point of view:Being young is often pleasant, but being older has many advantages. reason:When young, you are apt to be obsessed with your appearance.Being older is preferable to being younger in another way.The greatest benefit of being forty is knowing who I am. Conclusion:There is a great deal of happiness to be found as we grow older.U3 My Stroke of luckMy wife and I have been married for 47 years. She keep saving my life and giving me reasons to live. She has a good judgment and intuition . After the plane crashed , she reached me immediately and insisted on moving me to the neighborhood hospital . And her decision was right .She took good care of me, consoled me during my survivor’s anguish, but would not tolerate me feeling sorry for myself. She endured my depression, but did not allow me to complain. As a believer in tough love , she was not about to let me just lie around either. My wife, Anna’s secret is that she learns from life, and move on. Thirty years ago, she got breast cancer. She dealt with it with great courage and optimism and she helped others after she recovered. Her method is to find ways to help others and I have been the biggest beneficiary.U4 Cultural EncountersBackground:We live in an age of easy access to the rest of the world.Cheap flights mean that millions of people are able to visit places their parents could only dream about, while the Internet enables us to communicate with the remotest placesTransitional Sentence：English has simply become the language that facilitates communication, and for many people learning English is an essential stepping stone on the road to successTransitional Sentence：Significantly also, this great global communications revolution is also linked to the expansion of English, which has now become the leading international languagetopic sentence:Most fundamental is the profound relationship between language and culture that lies at the heart of society and one that we overlook at our peril.Now:Millions of people are discovering how to bridge cultures, while the English-speaking world becomes ever more complacent and cuts down on foreign language learning programmes in the mistaken belief that it is enough to know EnglishFuture attitudce:World peace in the future depends on intercultural understanding. Those best placed to help that process may not be the ones with the latest technology and state of the art mobile phones, but those with the skills to understand what lies in, under and beyond the words spoken in many different languagesU5 Fourteen StepsPeople says that a cat has nine lives. I tend to believe this true, for I, as a man ,am living my third life now. My first life began when I was born into a large family, I began my second life when I was afflicted with a slowly progressive disease of the motor nerves. In spite of my disease , I managed to keep my health and optimism to a degree by climbing 14 steps every day. Those 14 steps were a gauge of my life. As I become older ,I become more disillusioned .Then on a dark stormy night ,my third life began .I was driving home in the rain ,then my car got a flat tire and I was stuck them on a less-traveled road. I ask for help from a house near the little side road. A little girlcame out with her grandpa after I explained my trouble. When I sitting comfortable and dry in the car ,they were repairing my car in the rain. Finally after their work done ,I offered 5-dollar bill, but was rejected. The litter girl told me that his grandpa was blind, which greatly shocked me . I felt ashamed of my behavior. Now, I am trying not only to climb 14steps each day, but to help others in my small way .U6 Diary of the unknown soldierThe text includes three diaries written by an American soldier during Second World War .The first entry was dated No.24,1943,six months after being recruited to the battlefield. The man was already horrified by the war he was involved in. All the time he was his brothers-in-arms killed and houses destroyed, and the original confidence to win yielded to hopelessness and self-questioning: What fools they were. He was constantly in danger. Only thoughts of his family brought him a momentary stay out of frustration and despair. After the reflections on their own enthusiasm andconfidence about the war, in the second entry, the author continued to ponder over the cause of war and the people who started the war. He was so infuriated that he said, “It is no excuse for ending innocent lives and destroying whole countries .”The last letter entry was the most fearful part of the story. The location of the soldiers was being invaded when the author wrote the diary, hidden in a small trench. Through he tried to keep himself “from panicking”, the Nazi soldier was coming in the direction.We can only surmise that this unknown must have been killed then, but the last question he asked may linger in our mind for long :Why?U7 Letter to a B StudentA teacher’s letter to a student explains what hisB grade for the course does and does not represent in the terms of the student’s achievement or success as a human being or in the future accomplishment .In the today’s society , the grade determines eligibility for graduate school and special programs and at last success in the future. But put in perspective ,grade B simply means that one can successfully competed a specific course of study. But as a measurement tool the grade is a rather fuzzy symbol .So we should differentiate the student as performer at school and human being in the society.Grade B student does not guarantee that from now on we forever B performers .We should shift to ourselves ,locating goals and opportunities in frustrations in the frustrations and obstacle we may encounter in our journey of life/U8 Focus on Global WarmingThe text is centered on the problem of global warming. And now global warming is receives worldwide attention because of its possible influence upon the Earth we have living on.Global warming is perhaps the single largest threat to our planet. The very root of the temperature increase is that human being create much greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. The scientific searches prove that the amount of the first two reaches the highest point in the past 420000 years and they help excessive heat from leaving the Earth.With the hotter summer and few cool days ,some low-lying nations would be awash in seawater.What is more ,we would likely have more days of perilous air quality and have more risk of developing respiratory problems.As a result, to slow global warming ,we should cut down the emission of heart-trapping gases.It require everyone to work together to change the current situation we find ourselves in.U9 What Is Happiness？The text tell us what is the idea about“happiness,”and we can find that the idea of happiness to be sure, will not sit still for easy definition.In the first sentence , the author tell us that happiness is never more than partial and there are no pure states of mankind.We can find the writer want to let us know whatever else happiness may be, it is neither in having nor in being, but in becoming.At the last paragraph , Founding Fathers declared, we should do well to remember, was not happiness but the pursuit of happiness market, is the cardinal fact that happiness is in the pursuit itself, in the meaningful pursuit of what is life-engaging and life-revealing,.In a word , in the idea of becoming. A nation is not measured by what it possesses or wants to possess, but by what it wants to become.U10 The Jeaning of AmericaBlue jeans, more suitable than the dollar and Cola, have become an American symbol.In the second, the text introduces us that the Levis Strauss’ life in New York. Levis Strauss, the inventor of blue jeans, was of German origin and immigrated to New York in 1848 to peddle sundries to eke out a marginal living.In the third part, it describe why the Blue jeans was invented and how the early business of Blue jeans.In the fourth part , two reason . It tell us that in the 1930s Levis’ s jeans were introduced to the East during the dude ranch craze and in the Second World War blue jeans were declared an essential commodity .In last part , in San Francisco, a museum exhibits the history of blue jeans.U11Open the Door to ForgivenessThe text can be divided into three parts.As Starting with the second person, the author tell us that for most of us , forgive is unnatural and uneasy , so we dwell on our pains and keep being hurt. The only power that can stop the stream of painful memories is the faculty of forgiving.How to practice forgiveness.(Two sides)1 Confront your malice / separate the wrongdoer from the wrong2 Let go of the past / keep working on itWhat we can learn from text :The most important thing is that we are seldom merely sinned against, that is to say, we ourselves contribute to the sins. So try to forgive and by doing so, we can heal the hurt and create a new beginning.。
