外研社必修五课文reading 原文(10页).doc

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1、-外研社必修五课文reading 原文-第 10 页Module 1 British and American EnglishWords, words, wordsBritish and American English are different . The first and most way is in the vocabulary. There are hundreds of different words which are not used on the other side of the Atlantic, or which are used with a different m

2、eaning. Some of these words are Americans drive automobiles and fill up with gas; the British drive cars and petrol. As a tourist, you will need to use the in London or the in New York, or maybe you will prefer to the town by taxi (British) or cab (American).Chips or French fries?But other words and

3、 expressions are not so well known. Americans use a , while for the British, its a torch. The British up; Americans stand in line. Sometimes the same word has a slightly different meaning, which can be . Chips, for example, are pieces of hot fried potato in Britain; in the States chips are very thin

4、 and are sold in packets. The British call these crisps. The chips the British know and love are French fries on the other side of the Atlantic.Have or have got?There are a few differences in grammar, too. The British say Have you got .? while Americans prefer Do you have .? An American might say My

5、 friend just arrived, but a British person would say My friend has just arrived. Prepositions, too, can be different: on the team, on the weekend (American) with in the team, at the weekend (British). The British use prepositions where Americans sometimes them (Ill see you Monday; Write me soon!).Co

6、lour or color?The other two areas in which the two are spelling and pronunciation. American spelling seems simpler: center, color and program instead of centre, colour and programme. Many factors have influenced American pronunciation since the first settlers arrived four hundred years ago. The , wh

7、ich is most similar to British English, can be heard on the East Coast of the US. When the Irish writer George Bernard Shaw made the famous that the British and the Americans are two nations divided by a common language, he was obviously thinking about the differences. But are they really so importa

8、nt? , there is probably between them. A Londoner has more difficulty understanding a Scotsman from Glasgow than understanding a New Yorker.Turn on the TVSome experts believe that the two varieties are moving closer together. For more than a century communications across the Atlantic have developed .

9、 Since the 1980s, with TV and the Internet, British and American English at the of a . This non-stop communication, the experts think, each other. But it has also led to lots of American words and structures passing into British English, so that some people now believe that British English will disa

10、ppear.However, if you turn on CNN, the American TV network, you find newsreaders and weather forecasters all speaking with different accents American, British, Australian, and even Spanish. One of the best-known faces, Monita Rajpal, was born in Hong Kong, China, and grew up speaking Chinese and Pun

11、jabi, as well as English.This international dimension that in the future, there are going to be many Englishes, not just two main varieties. But the message is Dont worry. Users of English will all be able to understand each other wherever they are.Module 2 The Human Traffic SignalThe roadAt 3,500 m

12、etres, La Paz, in Bolivia, is the highest capital in the world. Life is hard , and the mountains make communications difficult. Many roads are and accidents are . One road , which goes north from La Paz, is considered the most dangerous road in the world. On one side the mountains steeply; on the ot

13、her side there is a , which is hundreds of metres deep. Although there is not a lot of traffic, , one vehicle comes off the road every two weeks. The drop is so great that anyone inside the vehicle is lucky to survive. , the road can only be used by traffic going uphill from 8 in the morning, and by

14、 traffic coming downhill from 3 in the afternoon. But , few drivers the rules.The manBut one man, the has fallen. Timoteo Apaza is a gentle 46-year-old man who lives in a village near the most dangerous part of the road, known locally as la curva del diablo (the Devils ). Timoteo has an unusual job

15、he is a human traffic . Every morning he climbs up to the with a large board in his hand. The board is red on one side and green on the other. Timoteo stands on the and directs the traffic. When two vehicles approach from opposite directions they cant see each other, but they can see Timoteo. Timote

16、o is a . No one asked him to do the job, and no one pays him for it. Sometimes drivers give him a , so that he has just enough money to live on. But often they just , .The reason why he does itSo why does he do it? Before he to the traffic, Timoteo had had lots of jobs. He had been a and a soldier.

17、Then one day while he was working as a lorry driver he had a with death. He was driving when he came off the road at a and fell three hundred metres down the mountain. Somehow he survived. He was in hospital for months. Then, a few years later, he was called out in the night to help pull people out

18、of a bus which had crashed at la curva del diablo. This last experience Timoteo. He realised that he was lucky to be alive himself, and felt that it was his in life to help others. And so every morning, , from dawn to dusk, Timoteo on the and directs the traffic.Module 3 The SteamboatThere was a big

19、 storm after midnight and the rain poured down. We stayed inside the we had built and let the sail down the river. Suddenly, by the light of the lightning, we saw something in the middle of the river. It looked like a house at first, but then we realized it was a steamboat. It had hit a rock and was

20、 half in and half out of the water. We were sailing straight towards it.It looks as if itll go under soon, Jim said, after a couple of minutes.Lets go and take a look, I said.I dont want to a sinking ship, said Jim, but when I suggested that we might find something useful on the boat, he agreed to g

21、o. So we paddled over and climbed on to the steamboat, keeping as quiet as mice. To our astonishment, there was a light in one of the cabins. Then we heard someone shout, Oh please boys, dont kill me! I wont tell anybody!A mans angry voice answered, Youre lying. You said that last time. Were going t

22、o kill you.When he heard these words, Jim and ran to the . But although I was frightened, I also felt very , so I put my head round the door. It was quite dark, but I could see a man lying on the floor, up with . There were two men standing over him. One was short, with a . The other was tall and ha

23、d something in his hand that looked like a gun.I you. Im going to shoot you now, this man said. He was the one who had threatened the man on the floor. And it was a gun he had in his hand.No, dont do that, said the short man. Lets leave him here. The steamboat will sink in hours and hell go down wit

24、h it.When he heard that, the frightened man on the floor started crying. He sounds as if hes going to ! I thought. I have to find a way to save him!I crawled along the deck, found Jim, and told him what I had heard. We must find their boat and take it away, then theyll have to stay here, I said.Jim

25、looked . Im not staying here, he said. But I persuaded him to help me, and we found the mens boat tied to the other side of the steamboat. We climbed quietly in and as we paddled away we heard the two men shouting. By then we were . But now I began to feel bad about what we had done. I didnt want al

26、l three men to die.Module 4 The Magic of the MaskThink of , and you think of crowds, , and . The sounds and sights change from one country to another but the excitement is the same everywhere. comes from two Latin words, meaning no more meat. In Europe, where it began, was followed by forty days wit

27、hout meat, as people prepared for the festival of Easter. People a last chance to have fun at the end of the winter season. Having fun meant eating, drinking, and dressing up.The most famous in Europe was in Venice. At the beginning, it lasted for just one day. People ate, drank, and wore masks. As

28、time passed, however, the period was extended, so that it began just after Christmas. people walked round the streets wearing masks, doing what they wanted without being recognised. Ordinary people could to be rich and important, while famous people could have romantic adventures in secret. Many cri

29、mes .The government realised that wearing masks had become a problem. Their use was limited by laws, the first of which to the fourteenth century. Men were not allowed to wear masks at night; and they were not allowed to as women. In later times more laws were passed. People who wore masks could not

30、 carry firearms; and no one could enter a church wearing a mask. If they broke the laws, they were put into prison for two years. Finally, when Venice became part of the Austrian , at the end of the eighteenth century, masks were banned completely, and became just a .But in the late 1970s the tradit

31、ion was revived by students. They began making masks and organising parties, and threw bits of brightly coloured paper (called coriandoli) at tourists. The town realised that was good for business, and the festival was developed for tourists.Today, in Venice is celebrated for five days in February.

32、People arrive from all over Europe to enjoy the fun. Hotels are fully booked and the narrow streets are crowded with wonderful costumes. German, French and English seem to be the main languages. But the spirit of Venice is not quite the same as the great American carnivals. If the key to Rio is musi

33、c and movement, then in Venice it is the mystery of the mask. As you through the streets, you see thousands of masks or frightening, sad or amusing, traditional or modern but you have no idea what the faces behind them look like. Nobody takes them off. If the masks come off, the is lost.Module 5 A L

34、ife in SportThey called him the prince of gymnasts. When he at the age of 26, he had won 106 gold medals in competitions across the world. They included six out of seven gold medals at the 1982 World Championship, and three at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles (as well as two silver and a bronze). Li

35、 Ning was the best. When sports journalists met in 1999 to make a list of the greatest sportsmen and sportswomen of the twentieth century, Li Nings name was , together with footballer Pel and boxer Muhammad Ali. But even though he had won everything it was possible to win in his sport, Li Ning retir

36、ed with the feeling that he had failed. He was disappointed because he had not performed well in the 1988 Seoul Olympics.But it was this failure that made him determined to succeed in his new life. A year after his , Li Ning began a new career as a businessman. But he didnt forget his sporting . He

37、decided to launch a new of , competing with global giants like Nike and Adidas. He made the unusual choice, for a Chinese person, of choosing his own name as the mark. The bright red is made up of the first two pinyin letters of Li Nings name, L and N.Li Nings sports clothes came onto the market at

38、just the right time. young people with money to spend was and sport had never been so popular. Li Nings designs were attractive, and they had a major their better-known rivals they were cheaper. A pair of Nike trainers, for example, could cost up to five times as much as a similar Li Ning product. S

39、uccess for Li Ning was guaranteed, and it came quickly.In just a few years, Li Ning won more than fifty percent of the national market. Today a Li Ning product is purchased every ten seconds. But the clothes are not only worn on the or the football . If you go into a school or university anywhere, t

40、he you will see students in Li Ning tracksuits with the familiar . The company has also grown internationally. The Spanish and French gymnastics teams wear Li Ning clothes, while Italian designers are employed by the company to create new styles. Whenever Chinese athletes step out onto the during th

41、e 2008 Olympics, they will be wearing Li Ning tracksuits.But Li Nings goal when he retired was not to make money. His dream was to open a school for gymnasts. He was able to do this in 1991. Since then, he has continued to help young people to achieve their sporting ambitions. Like Pel and Muhammad

42、Ali before him, who have worked with the United Nations for childrens rights and peace, Li Ning has discovered that the work of a great sportsman does not finish when he retires from the sport. It starts. And if you are a great sportsperson, anything is possible, as Li Nings advertising says.Module

43、6 Saving the AntelopesOn a freezing cold day in January 1994, Jiesang Suonandajie found what he was looking for a group of poachers who were killing the endangered Tibetan . Jiesang knew he had to move quickly. He shouted to the poachers to put down their guns. , the poachers had an advantage there

44、were more of them. In the which followed Jiesang was shot and killed. When his frozen body was found hours later, he was still holding his gun. He had given his life to save the Tibetan .At the beginning of the twentieth century there were millions of antelopes on the Qinghai-Tibetan . By the 1990s

45、the number had fallen to about 50,000. The reason is simple: the wool of the Tibetan is the most expensive in the world. It is soft, light, and warm the coat for an animal which has to survive at high altitudes. A made from the wool (known as shahtoosh, or king of wools in Persian) can sell for five

46、 thousand dollars. For poachers the profits can be huge.Often working at night, the poachers shoot whole herds of antelopes at a time, leaving only the babies, whose wool is not so much. The animals are skinned and the wool taken to India, where it is made into the shawls. From there, it is exported

47、 to rich countries in North America and Europe. The business is completely illegal there has been a ban on the trade since 1975. But in the 1990s the shawls came into fashion among rich people. A police on a shop in London found 138 shawls. About 1,000 antelopes or 2 percent of the worlds population

48、 had been killed to make them.In the 1990s the Chinese government began to protecting the antelopes in the Hoh Xil Nature the huge national park on the Qinghai-Tibetan , which is the main of the antelopes. Over the next ten years about 3,000 poachers were caught and 300 vehicles confiscated. Sometimes there were gunfights, like the one in which Jiesang Suonandajie was killed.But today the government seems to be winning the . The number of poachers has fallen. The small group of officials who work in the are helped by