Passage 1 Town and Country Life in England Passage 2 A Change in Women's LifePassage 3 A Popular Pastime of the English People Passage 4 British and American Police Officers Passage 5 Living SpacePassage 6 The United NationsPassage 7 PlasticPassage 8 Display of GoodsPassage 9 Albert EinsteinPassage 10 Private CarsPassage 11 A Henpecked Husband and His Wife Passage 12 A Y oung Man's PromisePassage 13 A Kind NeighborPassage 14 That Isn't Our FaultPassage 15 A Guide's AnswerPassage 16 A Qualified PilotPassage 17 Living Things ReactPassage 18 Flowering PlantsPassage 19 Finding the Direction and Location Passage 20 WavesPassage 21 SoilsPassage 22 CrisisPassage 23 America's Worst SurprisePassage 24 Great Depression in the U.S.Passage 25 A Place of Our OwnPassage 26 Travel for WorkPassage 27 IntelligencePassage 28 A Free Dress Every WeekPassage 29 TimePassage 30 CartoonistsPassage 31 Water PollutionPassage 32 Making a ComplaintPassage 33 Where Do the British LivePassage 34 Will Computers Replace human Beings? Passage 35 SoccerPassage 36 ArtistsPassage 37 Professional Sports in the U.S. Passage 38 "How to" BooksPassage 39 Don't Give UpPassage 40 how high Can Y ou Jump?Passage 41 Apology HelpsPassage 42 SleepPassage 43 Our ConcernPassage 44 Gardening in AmericaPassage 45 The Influence of LifePassage 46 AutomobilesPassage 47 house and HomePassage 48 Population GrowthPassage 49 Natural ResourcesPassage 50 ReadingTown and Country Life in EnglandThere is a big difference between town life and country life in England. In the country, everybody knows everybody else. They know what time you get up, what time you go to bed and what you have for dinner. If you want help, you will always get it and you will be glad to help others.In a large town like London, however, it can sometimes happen that you have never seen your next door neighbor and you do not know his name or anything about him. People in London are often very lonely. This is because people go to different places in the evenings and at weekends. If you walk through the streets in the centre of London on Sunday, it is like a town without people. One is sorry for old people living on their own. They could die in their homes and would not be discovered for weeks or even months.Passage 2A Change in Women‟ s LifeThe important change in women‟s life pattern has only recently begun to have its full effect on women‟ s economic position. Even a few years ago most girls left school at the f irst opportunity, and most of them took a full-time job. However, when they married, they usually left work at once and never returned to it. Today the school-leaving age is sixteen, many girls stay at school after that age, and though women tend to marry younger, more married women stay at work at least until shortly before their first child is born. V ery many more afterwards return to full-time or part-time work. Such changes have led to a new relation-ship in marriage, with the husband accepting a greater share of the duties and satisfactions of family life and with both husband and wife sharing more equally in providing the money, and running the home, accord-ing to the abilities and interests of each of them.Passage 3A Popular Pastime of the English PeopleOne of the best means of understanding the peo-ple of any nation is watching what they do with their non-working time.Most English men, women and children love growing things, especially flowers. V isitors to England in spring, summer, or autumn are likely to see gar-dens all the way along the railway lines. There are flowers at the airports and flowers in factory grounds, as well as in gardens along the roads. Each English town has at least one park with beautifully kept flower beds. Public buildings of every kind have brilliant win-dow boxes and sometimes baskets of flowers are hang-ing on them. But what the English enjoy most is growing things themselves. If it is impossible to have a garden, then a window box or something growing in a pot will do.Looking at each other‟ s gardens is a popular pastime with the English.Passage 4British and American Police OfficersReal policemen, both in Britain and the U. S., hardly recognize any common points between their lives and what they see on TV - if they ever get home in time.Some things are almost the same, of course, but the policemen do not think much of them.The first difference is that a policeman‟ s real life deals with the law. Most of what he learns is the law. He has to know actually what actions are against the law and what facts can be used to prove them in court. He has to know nearly as much law as a lawyer, and what‟s more, he has to put it into prac-tice on his feet, in the dark and, running down a nar-row street after someone he wants to talk to.Little of his time is spent in talking with beautiful girls or in bravely facing cruel criminals. He will spend most of his working life arranging millions of words on thousands of forms about hundreds of sad, ordinary people who are guilty-—or not of stupid, unimportant crimes.Passage 5Living SpaceHow much living space does a person need? What happens when his space needs are not met? Scientists are doing experiments on rats to try to determine the effects of overcrowded conditions on man. Recent studies have shown that the behaviour of rats is greatly affected by space. If rats have enough living space, they eat well, sleep well and produce their young well. But if their living conditions become too crowd-ed, their behaviour and even their health change obvi-ously. They can not sleep and eat well, and signs of fear and worry become clear. The more crowded they are, the more they tend to bite each other and even kill each other. Thus, for rats, population and vio-lence are directly related. Is this a natural law for hu-man society as well? Is enough space not only satisfac-tory, but necessary for human survival? These are in-teresting questions.Passage 6The United NationsIn 1945, representatives of 50 nations met to plan this organization. It was called the United Nations. after the war, many more nations joined.There are two major parts of the United Nations. One is called the General Assembly. In the General As-sembly, every member nation is represented and has an equal vote. The second part is called the Security Council. It has representatives of just 15 nations. Five nations are permanent members: the United States, Russia, France, Britain, and China. The 10 other members are elected every two years by the General Assembly.The major job of the Security Council is to keep peace in the world. If necessary, it can send troops from member nations to try to stop little wars before they turn into big ones.It is hard to get the nations of the Security Coun-cil to agree on when this is necessary. But they did vote to try to stop wars.Passage 7PlasticWe use plastic wrap to protect our foods. We put our garbage in plastic bags or plastic cans. We sit on plastic chairs, play with plastic toys, drink from plas-tic cups, and wash our hair with shampoo from plastic bottles!Plastic does not grow in nature. It is made by mixing certain things together. We call it a produced or manufactured material. Plastic was first made in the l860s from plants, such as wood and cotton. That plastic was soft and burned easily.The first modem plastics were made in the l930s. Most clear plastic starts out as thick, black oil. That plastic coating inside a pan begins as natural gas.Over the years, hundreds of different plastics have been developed. Some are hard and strong. Some are soft and bendable. Some are clear. Some are many-colored. There is a plastic for almost every need. Scientists continue to experiment with plastics.They hope to find even ways to use them!Passage 8Display of GoodsAre supermarkets designed to persuade us to buy more?Fresh fruit and vegetables are displayed near su-permarket entrances. This gives the impression that only healthy food is sold in the shop. Basic foods that everyone buys, like sugar and tea, are not put near each other. They are kept in different aisles so cus-tomers are taken past other attractive foods before they find what they want. In this way, shoppers axe encouraged to buy products that they do not really need.Sweets are often placed at children‟ s eye level at the checkout. While parents are waiting to pay, chil-dren reach for the sweets and put them in the trolley.More is bought from a fifteen-foot display of one type of product than from a ten-foot one. Customers also buy more when shelves are full than when they are half empty. They do not like to buy from shelves with few products on them because they feel there is something wrong with those products that are there.Passage9Albert EinsteinAlbert Einstein was born in Germany in l879. His father owned a factory that made electrical devices. His mother enjoyed music and books. His parents were Jewish but they did not observe many of the reli-gion‟ s rules. Albert was a quiet child who sp ent much of his time alone. He was slow to talk and had diffi-culty learning to read. When Albert was five years old, his father gave him a compass. The child was filled with wonder when he discovered that the compass needle always pointed in the same direction - to the north. He asked his father and his uncle what caused the needle to move. Their answers about magnetism and gravity were difficult for the boy to understand. Y et he spent a lot of time thinking about them. He said later that he felt something hidden had to be behind things.Passage 10Private CarsWith the increase in the general standard of liv-ing, some ordinary Chinese families begin to afford a car. Y et opinions of the development of a private car vary from person to person.It gives a much greater degree of comfort and mo-bility. The owner of a car is no longer forced to rely on public transport, and hence no irritation caused by waiting for buses or taxis. However, others strongly object to developing private cars. They maintain that as more and more cars are produced and run in theStreet, a large volume of poisonous gas will be given off, polluting the atmosphere and causing actual harm to the health of people.Whether private cars should be developed in China is a difficult question to answer, yet the desire for the comfort and independence a private car can bring will not be eliminated.Passage 11A Henpecked Husband and His WifeThere was once a large, fat woman who had a small, thin husband. He had a job in a b ig company and was given his weekly wages every Friday evening. As soon as he got home on Fridays, his wife used to make him give her all his money, and then she used to give him back only enough to buy his lunch in his company every day.One day, the small man came home very excited. He hurried into the living-room. His wife was listening to the radio and eating chocolates there.“Y ou will never guess what happened to me to-day, dear,” he said.He waited for a few seconds and then added, “I won ten thousand dollars on the lottery!”“That is wonderful!” said his wife delightedly.But then she pulled a long face and added angrily,“But how could you afford to buy the ticket?”Passage 12A Y oung Man‟ s PromiseOne day a young man was writing a letter to his girl friend who lived just a few miles away in a nearby town. He was telling her how much he loved her and how wonderful he thought she was. The more he wrote, the more poetic he became. Finally, he said that in order to be with her he would suffer the great-est difficulties, he would face the greatest dangers that anyone could imagine. In fact, to spend only one minute with her, he would swim across the widest riv-er, he would enter the deepest forest, and he would fight against the fiercest animals with his bare hands.He finished the letter, signed his name, and then suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to mention something quite important. So, in a postscript below his name, he added :“By the way, I‟ll be over to see you on Wednes-day night, if it doesn‟t rain.”Passage 13A Kind NeighborMr. and Mrs. Jones‟ apartment was full of lug-gage, packages, furniture and boxes. Both of them were very busy when they heard the doorbell ring. Mrs. Jones went to open it and she saw a middle-aged lady outside. The lady said she lived next door. Mrs. Jones invited her to come in and apologized because there was no place for her to sit. “Oh, that‟s OK,” said the lady. “I just come to welcome you to your new home. M you know, in some parts of this city neighbors are not friendly at all. There are some apart-ment houses where people don‟ t know any of their neighbors, not even the ones next door. But in this building everyone is very friendly with everyone else. We are like one big happy family. I‟m sure you‟ll be very happy here.” Mr. and Mrs. Jones said, “But madam, we are not new dwellers in this apartment. We‟ve lived here for two years. We‟ re moving out tomorrow. “Passage 14That Isn‟ t Our FaultMr. and Mrs. Williams got married when he was twenty-three, and she was twenty. Twenty-five years later, they had a big party, and a photographer came and took some photographs of them.Then the photographer gave Mrs. Williams a card and said, “They‟ II be ready next Wednesday. Y ou ca n get them from studio.”“No,” Mrs. Williams said, “please send them to us.The photographs arrived a week later, but Mrs. Williams was not happy when she saw them. She got into her car and drove to the photographer‟ s studio.She went inside and said a ngrily, “Y ou took some photographs of me and my husband last week, but I‟m not going to pay for them.”“Oh, why not?” the photographer asked. “Because my husband looks like a monkey,”Mrs. Williams said.“Well,” the photographer answered, “that isn‟ t our fault. Why didn‟ t you think of that before you married him?”Passage 15A Guide‟ s Answer1n1861, the Civil War started in the United States between the Northern and the Southern states. The war continued with great bitterness until 1865, when the Northerners were victorious. However, even to-day, many Southerners have not forgotten their defeat, or forgiven theNortherners.A few years ago, a party of American tourists were going round one of the battlefields of the Civil War with a guide who came from one of the Southern states. At each place, the guide told the tourists stir-ring stories about how a few Southern soldiers had conquered powerful forces of Northerners there.At last, one of the tourists, a lady who came from the North, stopped the guide and said to him, “But surely the Northern army must have won at least one victory in the Civil War?”“Not as long as I‟m the guide here, madam,” an-swered the Southern guide.Passage 16A Qualified PilotThe captain of a small ship had to go along a rocky coast, but he was unfamiliar with it, so he tried to find a qualified pilot to guide him. He went ashore in one of the small ports, and a local fisherman pre-tended that he was a pilot because he needed some money. The captain took him on board and asked him where to steer the ship.After half an hour the captain began to suspect that the fisherman did not really know what he was doing and where he was going.“Are you sure you are a qualified pilot?” he asked.“Oh, yes,” answered the fisherman. “I know ev-ery rock on this part of the coast.”Suddenly there was a terrible crash from under the ship. At once the fisherman added, “And that‟ s one of them.Passage 17Living Things ReactY ou and all organisms live in an environment. An environment is made up of everything that surrounds an organism. It can include the air, the water, the soil, and even other organisms.An organism responds to changes in its environ-ment. When an organism responds to a change, it re-acts in certain ways. All living things respond in some way.Have you ever noticed how plants and insects re-spond to light? Plants bend toward light. Insects fly toward light. Living things also respond in other ways. The leaves on some trees respond to a change in season.In autumn, they change colors and then fall off the branches. Animals also respond to a change in season. Squirrels save nuts for the winter. Bears sleep through the winter in a cave.Y ou respond to your environment in many ways, too. Y ou may shiver if you are cold. What other ways do you respond to changes in your environment?Passage 18Flowering PlantsWhat are the parts of a flower?Flowers can have male parts and female parts. The female parts make eggs that become seeds. The male parts make pollen. Pollen is a powdery material that is needed by the eggs to make seeds. …lb make seeds, pollen and eggs must come together. The wind, in-sects, and birds bring pollen to eggs. Many animals love flowers‟ bright colors. They also like a sugary liq-uid in flowers. This is called nectar. While they drink nectar, pollen rubs off on their bodies. As they move, some of this pollen gets delivered to the female flower parts.Over time, the female parts turn into fruits that contain seeds. Animals often eat the fruits and the seeds pass through their bodies as waste. The animals do not know they are working for the plants by plant-ing seeds as they travel to different placesPassage 19Finding the Direction and LocationHow can you tell which direction? By day, look for the Sun. It is in the east in the morning and the west in the afternoon. At night, use the Big Dipper to help you find the North Star. It would be better to bring a compass because its needle always points north.How do you know how far you have gone? Y ou could count every step. Each step is about two feet. Y ou‟ d better wear a pedometer which is a tool that counts steps. If you know where you started, which direction you are heading, and how far you have gone, you can use a good map to figure out exactly where you are.Today there is a new way for travelers to figure out where they are. It is the GPS. It has 24 satellites that orbit the earth and constantly broadcast their posi-tions. Someday you may carry a small receiver as you hike and use GPS to find out if you are there yet!Passage 20WavesHow does light get from the sun to the earth?How does music get from the stage to the audience? They move the same way —in waves!Light and sound are forms of energy. All waves carry energy, but they may carry it differently. Light and sound travel through different kinds of matter. For example, light waves cannot move through walls, but Sound waves can. That is why you can hear people talking in another room even though you cannot see them. The energy of some waves is destructive. An earthquake produces seismic waves.Catch a wave. Ask a friend to stand a few feet away from you. Stretch a spring between you. Shake the spring to transfer energy to it. What happens? The spring bounces up and down in waves. When the waves reach your friend, they bounce back to you!Light waves travel 300,000 kilometers (186, 000 miles) per second! They can also travel through a vac-uum. That is why light from the sun and distant stars can travel through space to the earth!Passage 21SoilsThere are many different kinds of soils. Different soils have different types of rock and minerals in them. Some soils have more water in them than oth-ers. Some soils might have more plant and animal ma-terial in them, too.Different kinds of soils are found in different parts of the world. There are several kinds of soils found in the United States. In some areas, the soil has a lot of clay. Other soils are very sandy. Loam is a kind of soil that has a good mixture of clay and sand.In some places, soil layers are very thick. Lots of plants grow in places with a thick soil layer. In dry and windy places soil layers are much thinner, layers of soil on mountains are thin because gravity pulls the soil downhill. The type of soil in a particular place affects what kinds of plants can grow there.Passage 22CrisisLife is a contest! Who will win? A bluebird and sparrow both compete for space to build their nests. A fast-growing maple tree and slower-growing dogwood compete for the sunlight they both need. Oil competes with coal and nuclear power as an energy source for electric power plants.There is a problem. There is a limited amount of space for birds, sunlight for trees, and energy for peo-ple! If we do not cut back on our uses of some of our resources, someday they will be gone!How can we use energy today and know we will have enough to go around in the future? We can choose alternate, or replacement, energy resources. It takes the earth millions of years to create coal, oil, and gas. They are nonrenewable resources.Solar energy, wind energy and water energy are renewable. What other ways can we conserve our re-sources? How can we make sure there is always enough to go around?Passage 23America‟ s Worst SurpriseDecember 7, 1941 was one of the worst days in America n history. Nearly all Americans who are old enough to remember that day can still remember what they were doin g at the moment they heard “the news”, the news was that America has been attacked!Shortly before 2:00 P.M., a radio dispatch came into Washington from Honolulu, Hawaii. “Air Raid, Pearl Harbor—This is no drill.” Japanese planes had begun an attack on the largest American military base in the Pacific. They first destroyed planes on the ground. Then they bombed the ships in the harbor. No one had expected the attack. So no one was prepared for it. And it did not take long for the Japanese to do their damage. When the smoke cleared, the Navy counted its losses. Eighteen ships had been sunk or badly damaged. Nearly 150 planes had been destroyed. More than 2,400 Americans had been killed and more than 1, 200 wounded.Passage 24Great Depression in the U. S.In 1929, the bills started to come in. Americanindustry had produced too many goods. Americans could not afford to buy all of them. So factories had to cut down on their production. Many workers lost their jobs. Investors tried to get their money back. But businesses did not have enough money to pay them.Banks tried to get their money back from investors. But the investors could not pay, either. Too many people owed money. And few of them could pay their bills.During the next few years, business got worse and worse. By 1932, banks all over the country were closing.People without money could not buy goods. So more businesses closed. More and more people lost their jobs. By 1932, more than 12 million Americans were jobless. Millions more were earning barely enough to live on. The country was in a great depres-sion they had never experienced before.Passage 25A Place of Our OwnWe are all usually very careful when we buy something for the house. Why? Because we have to live with it for along lime. We paint a room to make it brighter, so we choose the colours carefully.We buy new curtains in order to match the newly decorated room, so they must be the right colour. We move the furniture round so as to make more space— or we buy new furniture—and so on. It is an endless business. Rich or poor, we take time to furnish a room. Perhaps some people buy furniture in order to impress their friends. But most of us just want to enjoy our surroundings. We want to live as comfortably as we can afford to. We spend a large part of our lives at home. We want to make a small corner in the world which we can recognize as our own.Passage 26Travel for WorkY ou can see them in every airport in the world. They are businessmen and women who have to travel for their work. When they first applied for the job, they may have thought of good food and hotels, huge expense accounts and fashionable cities. Now they have to sit in airport lounges, tired and uncomfortable in their smart clot hes, listening to the loudspeaker announce “The flight to Tokyo, or Berlin, or New Y ork is delayed for another two hours”. Some people say to me, “Howlucky you are to be able to travel abroad in your work! Y ou can go sightseeing without paying any money by yourself1.” They think that my job is like a continual holiday. it is not.There are advantages, of course, and I do think I am lucky, but only because I can go to places I would never visit if I was a tourist.Passage 27IntelligenceAre some people born clever and others born stupid?Or is intelligencedeveloped by our environment and our experience?Strangely enough, the answer to these questions is yes. To some extent，our intelligence is given us at birth, and no amount of special educationcan make a genius out of a child born with low intelligence. On the other hand, a child who lives in a boring enviro n ment will develop hisintelligence less than one who lives in rich and varied surroundings. Thus, the limits of a person‟s intelligence are fixed at birth, whether or not he reaches those limits will depend on his enviro n ment. This view, held bymost experts now, can be supported in a number of ways. As is easy to show that intelligence is to some exten t something we are born with. The closer the blood relationship between two people is, the closer they are likely to be in intelligence.Passage 28A Free Dress Every WeekThe temptation to steal is greater than ever before especially in large shops and people are not so honest as they once were.A detective recently watched a well-dressed wom-an who always went into a large store on Monday mornings. One Monday, there were fewer people in the shop than usual w hen the woman came in, so it was easier for the detective to watch her. The woman first bought a few small articles. After a little time, she chose one of the most expensive dresses in the shop and handed it to an assistant who wrapped it up for her as quickly as possible. The woman simply took the parcel and walked out of the shop without paying.When she was arrested, the detective found out that the shop assistant was her daughter. Believe it or not, the girl “gave” her mother a free dress every week!Passage 29TimeTime is tangible. One can gain time, spend time, waste time, save time, or even kill time. Common questions in American English reveal this concrete quality as though lime were a possession. “Do you have any time?”, “Can you get some time for this?”, “How much free time do you have?” The treatment of time as a possession influences the way that time is carefully divided.Generally, Americans are taught to do one thing at a time and may be uncomfortable when an activity is interrupted. In businesses, the careful scheduling of time and the separation of activities are common prac-tices. Appointment calendars are printed with 15-, 30-, and 60-minute time slots. The idea that “there is a time and place for everything” extends to America n social life. Visitors who drop by without prior notice may interrupt their host‟ s personal time. Thus, calling friends on the telephone before visiting them is gener-ally preferred to visitors‟ dropping by.Passage 30CartoonistsIn a good cartoon, the artist can tell in a few lines as much as a writer can tell in half a dozen para-graphs. The cartoonist not only tells a story but he al-so tries to persuade the reader to his way of thinking.He has great influence on public opinion. In a political campaign, he plays an important part. Controversial issues in Congress or at meetings of the United Nations may keep the cartoonist well-supplied with current materials.A clever cartoonist may cause laughter because he often uses humour in his drawings. If he is sketching a famous person, he takes a prominent feature and ex-aggerates it. Cartoonists, for instance, like to length-en an already long nose and to widen an already broad grin. This exaggeration of a person‟ s characteristics is called caricature. The artist uses such exaggeration to。
