情不自禁的反义词-步步为营的意思

Unit 1
Growing Up


Text A

When we are writing we are often told to keep our readers in mind, to shape what we say to fit their tastes and interests. But there is one reader in particular who should not be forgotten. Can you guess who? Russell Baker surprised himself and everyone else when he discovered the answer.

WRITING FOR MYSELF

Russell Baker

The idea of becoming a writer had come to me off and on since my childhood in Belleville, but it wasn't until my third year in high school that the possibility took hold. Until then I'd been bored by everything associated with English courses. I found English grammar dull and difficult. I hated the assignments to turn out long, lifeless paragraphs that were agony for teachers to read and for me to write.
When our class was assigned to Mr. Fleagle for third-year English I anticipated another cheerless year in that most tedious of subjects. Mr. Fleagle had a reputation among students for dullness and inability to inspire. He was said to be very formal, rigid and hopelessly out of date. To me he looked to be sixty or seventy and excessively prim. He wore primly severe eyeglasses, his wavy hair was primly cut and primly combed. He wore prim suits with neckties set primly against the collar buttons of his white shirts. He had a primly pointed jaw, a primly straight nose, and a prim manner of speaking that was so correct, so gentlemanly, that he seemed a comic antique.
I prepared for an unfruitful year with Mr. Fleagle and for a long time was not disappointed. Late in the year we tackled the informal essay. Mr. Fleagle distributed a homework sheet offering us a choice of topics. None was quite so simple-minded as "What I Did on My Summer Vacation," but most seemed to be almost as dull. I took the list home and did nothing until the night before the essay was due. Lying on the sofa, I finally faced up to the unwelcome task, took the list out of my notebook, and scanned it. The topic on which my eye stopped was "The Art of Eating Spaghetti."
This title produced an extraordinary sequence of mental images. Vivid memories came flooding back of a night in Belleville when all of us were seated around the supper table — Uncle Allen, my mother, Uncle Charlie, Doris, Uncle Hal — and Aunt Pat served spaghetti for supper. Spaghetti was still a little known foreign dish in those days. Neither Doris nor I had ever eaten spaghetti, and none of the adults had enough experience to be good at it. All the good humor of Uncle Allen's house reawoke in my mind as I recalled the laughing arguments we had that night about the socially respectable method for moving spaghetti from plate to mouth.
Suddenly I wanted to write about that, about the warmth and good feeling of it, but I wanted to put it down simply for my own joy, not for Mr. Fleagle. It was a moment I wanted to recapture and hold for myself. I wanted to relive the pleasure of that evening. To write it as I wanted, however, would violat
e all the rules of formal composition I'd learned in school, and Mr. Fleagle would surely give it a failing grade. Never mind. I would write something else for Mr. Fleagle after I had written this thing for myself.
When I finished it the night was half gone and there was no time left to compose a proper, respectable essay for Mr. Fleagle. There was no choice next morning but to turn in my tale of the Belleville supper. Two days passed before Mr. Fleagle returned the graded papers, and he returned everyone's but mine. I was preparing myself for a command to report to Mr. Fleagle immediately after school for discipline when I saw him lift my paper from his desk and knock for the class's attention.
"Now, boys," he said. "I want to read you an essay. This is titled, 'The Art of Eating Spaghetti.'"
And he started to read. My words! He was reading my words out loud to the entire class. What's more, the entire class was listening. Listening attentively. Then somebody laughed, then the entire class was laughing, and not in contempt and ridicule, but with open-hearted enjoyment. Even Mr. Fleagle stopped two or three times to hold back a small prim smile.
I did my best to avoid showing pleasure, but what I was feeling was pure delight at this demonstration that my words had the power to make people laugh. In the eleventh grade, at the eleventh hour as it were, I had discovered a calling. It was the happiest moment of my entire school career. When Mr. Fleagle finished he put the final seal on my happiness by saying, "Now that, boys, is an essay, don't you see. It's — don't you see — it's of the very essence of the essay, don't you see. Congratulations, Mr. Baker."
(797 words)


Unit 2
Friendship

Part I Pre-reading Task

Listen to the recording two or three times and then think over the following questions:
1. Have you ever heard of Dionne Warwick? Have you happened to hear her sing?
2. What does a fair weather friend mean?
3. What does Dionne Warwick think friends are for?
4. Does the song give you any idea of what the stories in this unit will be about?

Part II

Text A

How do you feel when old friends are far away? Do you make an effort to keep in touch? Sometimes it is easy to put off writing a letter, thinking that there will be plenty of time tomorrow. But then sometimes, as this story shows, we leave it too late. Perhaps reading it will make you want to reach for your pen.

ALL THE CABBIE HAD WAS A LETTER

Foster Furcolo

He must have been completely lost in something he was reading because I had to tap on the windshield to get his attention.
"Is your cab available?" I asked when he finally looked up at me. He nodded, then said apologetically as I settled into the back seat, "I'm sorry, but I was reading a letter." He sounded as if he had a cold or something.
"I'm in no hurry," I told him. "Go ahead and finish your letter."
He shook his head. "I've read it several times already. I guess I alm
ost know it by heart."
"Letters from home always mean a lot," I said. "At least they do with me because I'm on the road so much." Then, estimating that he was 60 or 70 years old, I guessed: "From a child or maybe a grandchild?"
"This isn't family," he replied. "Although," he went on, "come to think of it", it might just as well have been family. Old Ed was my oldest friend. In fact, we used to call each other 'Old Friend' — when we'd meet, that is. I'm not much of a hand at writing."
"I don't think any of us keep up our correspondence too well," I said. "I know I don't. But I take it he's someone you've known quite a while?"
"All my life, practically. We were kids together, so we go way back."
"Went to school together?"
"All the way through high school. We were in the same class, in fact, through both grade and high school."
"There are not too many people who've had such a long friendship," I said.
"Actually," the driver went on, "I hadn't seen him more than once or twice a year over the past 25 or 30 years because I moved away from the old neighborhood and you kind of lose touch even though you never forget. He was a great guy."
"You said 'was'. Does that mean —?"
He nodded. "Died a couple of weeks ago."
"I'm sorry," I said. "It's no fun to lose any friend — and losing a real old one is even tougher."
He didn't reply to that, and we rode on in silence for a few minutes. But I realized that Old Ed was still on his mind when he spoke again, almost more to himself than to me: "I should have kept in touch. Yes," he repeated, "I should have kept in touch."
"Well," I agreed, "we should all keep in touch with old friends more than we do. But things come up and we just don't seem to find the time."
He shrugged. "We used to find the time," he said. "That's even mentioned in the letter." He handed it over to me. "Take a look."
"Thanks," I said, "but I don't want to read your mail. That's pretty personal."
The driver shrugged. "Old Ed's dead. There's nothing personal now. Go ahead," he urged me.
The letter was written in pencil. It began with the greeting "Old Friend," and the first sentence reminded me of myself. I've been meaning to write for some time, but I've always postponed it. It then went on to say that he often thought about the good times they had had together when they both lived in the same neighborhood. It had references to things that probably meant something to the driver, such as the time Tim Shea broke the window, the Halloween that we tied Old Mr. Parker's gate, and when Mrs. Culver used to keep us after school.
"You must have spent a lot of time together," I said to him.
"Like it says there," he answered, "about all we had to spend in those days was time." He shook his head: "Time."
I thought the next paragraph of the letter was a little sad: I began the letter with "Old Friend" because that's what we've become over the years — old friends. And there aren't many of us left.
"You know," I
said to him, "when it says here that there aren't many of us left, that's absolutely right. Every time I go to a class reunion, for example, there are fewer and fewer still around."
"Time goes by," the driver said.
"Did you two work at the same place?" I asked him.
"No, but we hung out on the same corner when we were single. And then, when we were married, we used to go to each other's house every now and then. But for the last 20 or 30 years it's been mostly just Christmas cards. Of course there'd be always a note we'd each add to the cards — usually some news about our families, you know, what the kids were doing, who moved where, a new grandchild, things like that — but never a real letter or anything like that."
"This is a good part here," I said. "Where it says Your friendship over the years has meant an awful lot to me, more than I can say because I'm not good at saying things like that. " I found myself nodding in agreement. "That must have made you feel good, didn't it?"
The driver said something that I couldn't understand because he seemed to be all choked up, so I continued: "I know I'd like to receive a letter like that from my oldest friend."
We were getting close to our destination so I skipped to the last paragraph. So I thought you'd like to know that I was thinking of you. And it was signed，Your Old Friend, Tom.
I handed back the letter as we stopped at my hotel. "Enjoyed talking with you," I said as I took my suitcase out of the cab. Tom? The letter was signed Tom?
"I thought your friend's name was Ed," I said. "Why did he sign it Tom?"
"The letter was not from Ed to me," he explained. "I'm Tom. It's a letter I wrote to him before I knew he'd died. So I never mailed it."
He looked sort of sorrowful, or as if he were trying to see something in the distance. "I guess I should have written it sooner."
When I got to my hotel room I didn't unpack right away. First I had to write a letter — and mail it.
(1093 words)


Unit 3
Understanding Science

Part I Pre-reading Task

Listen to the recording two or three times and then think over the following questions:
1. Who is it about?
2. What questions interest him?
3. What makes his achievements so remarkable?

The following words in the recording may be new to you:

universe
n. 宇宙

muscle
n. 肌肉

engage
v. 与…订婚

Part II

Text A

Professor Hawking thinks it important to keep everybody in touch with what science is about. In this article he explains why.

PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARD SCIENCE

Whether we like it or not, the world we live in has changed a great deal in the last hundred years, and it is likely to change even more in the next hundred. Some people would like to stop these changes and go back to what they see as a purer and simpler age. But as history shows, the past was not that wonderful. It was not so bad for a privileged minority, though even they had to do without modern medicine, and
hool can provide the basic framework. But the rate of scientific progress is now so rapid that there are always new developments that have occurred since one was at school or university. I never learned about molecular biology or transistors at school, but genetic engineering and computers are two of the developments most likely to change the way we live in the future. Popular books and magazine articles about science can help to put across new developments, but even the most successful popular book is read by only a small proportion of the population. Only television can reach a truly mass audience. There are some very good science programmes on TV, but others present scientific wonders simply as magic, without explaining them or showing how they fit into the framework of scientific ideas. Producers of television science programmes should realize that they have a responsibility to educate the public, not just entertain it.
The world today is filled with dangers, hence the sick joke that the reason we have not been contacted by an alien civilization is that civilizations tend to destroy themselves when they reach our stage. But I have sufficient faith in the good sense of the public to believe that we might prove this wrong.
(812 words)

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Unit 4
American Dream

Part I Pre-reading Task

Listen to the recording two or three times and then think over the following questions:
1. According to Dr. Hertz, what did the American Dream mean to his grandparents?
2. In Dr. Hertz's opinion, who wants people to believe in the American Dream? Why?
3. Why does Dr. Hertz say the American Dream is in one's head and in one's pocket?
4. What do you understand by the American Dream?

The following words in the recording may be new to you:

poverty
n. 贫穷

advertising
n. 广告宣传

Part II

Text A

The American Dream means different things to different people. But for many, particularly immigrants, it means the opportunity to make a better life for themselves. For them the dream is that talent and hard work can take you from log cabin to White House. Tony Trivisonno did not rise quite so high, yet he managed to make his own dream come true.

TONY TRIVISONNO'S AMERICAN DREAM

Frederick C. Crawford

He came from a rocky farm in Italy, somewhere south of Rome. How or when he got to America, I don't know. But one evening I found him standing in the driveway, behind my garage. He was about five-foot-seven or eight, and thin.
"I mow your lawn," he said. It was hard to comprehend his broken English.
I asked him his name
. "Tony Trivisonno," he replied. "I mow your lawn." I told Tony that I couldn't afford a gardener.
"I mow your lawn," he said again, then walked away. I went into my house unhappy. Yes, these Depression days were difficult, but how could I to turn away a person who had come to me for help?
When I got home from work the next evening, the lawn had been mowed, the garden weeded, and the walks swept. I asked my wife what had happened.
"A man got the lawn mower out of the garage and worked on the yard," she answered. "I assumed you had hired him."
I told her of my experience the night before. We thought it strange that he had not asked for pay.
The next two days were busy, and I forgot about Tony. We were trying to rebuild our business and bring some of our workers back to the plants. But on Friday, returning home a little early, I saw Tony again, behind the garage. I complimented him on the work he had done.
"I mow your lawn," he said.
I managed to work out some kind of small weekly pay, and each day Tony cleaned up the yard and took care of any little tasks. My wife said he was very helpful whenever there were any heavy objects to lift or things to fix.
Summer passed into fall, and winds blew cold. "Mr. Craw, snow pretty soon," Tony told me one evening. "When winter come, you give me job clearing snow at the factory."
Well, what do you do with such determination and hope? Of course, Tony got his job at the factory.
The months passed. I asked the personnel department for a report. They said Tony was a very good worker.
One day I found Tony at our meeting place behind the garage. "I want to be 'prentice," he said.
We had a pretty good apprentice school that trained laborers. But I doubted whether Tony had the capacity to read blueprints and micrometers or do precision work. Still, how could I turn him down?
Tony took a cut in pay to become an apprentice. Months later, I got a report that he had graduated as a skilled grinder. He had learned to read the millionths of an inch on the micrometer and to shape the grinding wheel with an instrument set with a diamond. My wife and I were delighted with what we felt was a satisfying end of the story.
A year or two passed, and again I found Tony in his usual waiting place. We talked about his work, and I asked him what he wanted.
"Mr. Craw," he said, "I like a buy a house." On the edge of town, he had found a house for sale, a complete wreck.
I called on a banker friend. "Do you ever loan money on character?" I asked. "No," he said. "We can't afford to. No sale."
"Now, wait a minute," I replied. "Here is a hard-working man, a man of character, I can promise you that. He's got a good job. You're not getting a damn thing from your lot. It will stay there for years. At least he will pay your interest."
Reluctantly, the banker wrote a mortgage for $$2,000 and gave Tony the house with no down payment. Tony was delighted. From then on, it was interesting to see that any discarded od
ds and ends around our place — a broken screen, a bit of hardware, boards from packing — Tony would gather and take home.
After about two years, I found Tony in our familiar meeting spot. He seemed to stand a little straighter. He was heavier. He had a look of confidence.
"Mr. Craw, I sell my house!" he said with pride. "I got $$8,000."
I was amazed. "But, Tony, where are you going to live without a house?"
"Mr. Craw, I buy a farm."
We sat down and talked. Tony told me that to own a farm was his dream. He loved the tomatoes and peppers and all the other vegetables important to his Italian diet. He had sent for his wife and son and daughter back in Italy. He had hunted around the edge of town until he found a small, abandoned piece of property with a house and shed. Now he was moving his family to his farm.
Sometime later. Tony arrived on a Sunday afternoon, neatly dressed. He had another Italian man with him. He told me that he had persuaded his childhood friend to move to America. Tony was sponsoring him. With an amused look in his eye, he told me that when they approached the little farm he now operated, his friend stood in amazement and said, "Tony, you are a millionaire!"
Then, during the war, a message came from my company. Tony had passed away.
I asked our people to check on his family and see that everything was properly handled. They found the farm green with vegetables, the little house livable and homey. There was a tractor and a good car in the yard. The children were educated and working, and Tony didn't owe a cent.
After he passed away, I thought more and more about Tony's career. He grew in stature in my mind. In the end, I think he stood as tall, and as proud, as the greatest American industrialists.
They had all reached their success by the same route and by the same values and principles: vision, determination, self-control, optimism, self-respect and, above all, integrity.
Tony did not begin on the bottom rung of the ladder. He began in the basement. Tony's affairs were tiny; the greatest industrialists' affairs were giant. But, after all, the balance sheets were exactly the same. The only difference was where you put the decimal point.
Tony Trivisonno came to America seeking the American Dream. But he didn't find it — he created it for himself. All he had were 24 precious hours a day, and he wasted none of them.
(1110 words)


Unit 5
Romance

Part I Pre-reading Task

Listen to the recording two or three times and then think over the following questions:
1. Do you have a favorite love song? What is its name? Who is the singer? Can you sing or hum the tune?
2. What is the song you have just heard mainly about?
3. Do you think it appropriate to begin this unit with a love song? Why or why not?

The following word in the recording may be new to you:

rhyme
n. 韵；韵味

Part II

Text A

A letter or telephone call comes from someone you have not met, and you find y
ourself imagining what the person looks like, putting a face to the hidden voice. Are you any good at this? Sometimes it is easy to get it wrong.

A VALENTINE STORY

Doug Bell

John Blanchard stood up from the bench, straightened his Army uniform, and studied the crowd of people making their way through Grand Central Station.
He looked for the girl whose heart he knew, but whose face he didn't, the girl with the rose. His interest in her had begun twelve months before in a Florida library. Taking a book off the shelf he soon found himself absorbed, not by the words of the book, but by the notes penciled in the margin. The soft handwriting reflected a thoughtful soul and insightful mind.
In the front of the book, he discovered the previous owner's name, Miss Hollis Maynell. With time and effort he located her address. She lived in New York City. He wrote her a letter introducing himself and inviting her to correspond. The next day he was shipped overseas for service in World War II.
During the next year the two grew to know each other through the mail. Each letter was a seed falling on a fertile heart. A romance was budding. Blanchard requested a photograph, but she refused. She explained: "If your feeling for me has any reality, any honest basis, what I look like won't matter. Suppose I'm beautiful. I'd always be haunted by the feeling that you had been taking a chance on just that, and that kind of love would disgust me. Suppose I'm plain (and you must admit that this is more likely). Then I'd always fear that you were going on writing to me only because you were lonely and had no one else. No, don't ask for my picture. When you come to New York, you shall see me and then you shall make your decison. Remember, both of us are free to stop or to go on after that — whichever we choose..."
When the day finally came for him to return from Europe, they scheduled their first meeting — 7:00 p.m. at Grand Central Station, New York.
"You'll recognize me," she wrote, "by the red rose I'll be wearing on my lapel." So, at 7:00 p.m. he was in the station looking for a girl who had filled such a special place in his life for the past 12 months, a girl he had never seen, yet whose written words had been with him and sustained him unfailingly.
I'll let Mr. Blanchard tell you what happened:
A young woman was coming toward me, her figure long and slim. Her golden hair lay back in curls from her delicate ears; her eyes were blue as flowers. Her lips and chin had a gentle firmness, and in her pale green suit she was like springtime come alive.
I started toward her, entirely forgetting to notice that she was not wearing a rose.
As I moved, a small, provocative smile curved her lips. "Going my way, sailor?" she murmured. Almost uncontrollably I made one step closer to her, and then I saw Hollis Maynell. She was standing almost directly behind the girl. A woman well past 40, she had graying hair pinned up under a worn hat.
She was more
than a little overweight, her thick-ankled feet thrust into low-heeled shoes.
The girl in the green suit was walking quickly away. I felt as though I was split in two, so keen was my desire to follow her, and yet so deep was my longing for the woman whose spirit had truly companioned me and upheld my own.
And there she stood. Her pale, round face was gentle and sensible, her gray eyes had a warm and kindly glow. I did not hesitate.
My fingers gripped the small worn blue leather copy of the book that was to identify me to her. This would not be love, but it would be something precious, something perhaps even better than love, a friendship for which I had been and must ever be grateful.
I squared my shoulders and saluted and held out the book to the woman, even though while I spoke I felt choked by the bitterness of my disappointment. "I'm Lieutenant John Blanchard, and you must be Miss Maynell. I am so glad you could meet me; may I take you to dinner?"
The woman's face broadened into a smile. "I don't know what this is about, son," she answered, "but the young lady in the green suit who just went by, she begged me to wear this rose on my coat. And she said if you were to ask me out to dinner, I should go and tell you that she is waiting for you in the big restaurant across the street. She said it was some kind of test!"
It's not difficult to understand and admire Miss Maynell's wisdom. The true nature of a heart is seen in its response to the unattractive.
"Tell me whom you love," Houssaye wrote, "and I will tell you who you are."
(890 words)

Unit 6
Animal Intelligence

Part I Pre-reading Task

Listen to the recording two or three times and then think over the following questions:
1. What do you know about Michael Jackson?
2. How does he feel about Ben? Why?
3. Do you think the song Ben reveals something about the relationship between man and animals? If so, what is it?
4. Is the song related to the theme of the unit — animal intelligence? How?

Part II

Text A

Food, warmth, sleep? Their thoughts may be much deeper than that.

WHAT ANIMALS REALLY THINK

Euqene Linden

Over the years, I have written extensively about animal-intelligence experiments and the controversy that surrounds them. Do animals really have thoughts, what we call consciousness? Wondering whether there might be better ways to explore animal intelligence than experiments designed to teach human signs, I realized what now seems obvious: if animals can think, they will probably do their best thinking when it serves their own purposes, not when scientists ask them to.
And so I started talking to vets, animal researchers, zoo keepers. Most do not study animal intelligence, but they encounter it, and the lack of it, every day. The stories they tell us reveal what I'm convinced is a new window on animal intelligence: the kind of mental feats animals perform when dealing with captivity and the dominant species on the planet —
humans.

Let's Make a Deal
Consider the time Charlene Jendry, a conservationist at the Columbus Zoo, learned that a female gorilla named Colo was handling a suspicious object. Arriving on the scene, Jendry offered Colo some peanuts, only to be met with a blank stare. Realizing they were negotiating, Jendry raised the stakes and offered a piece of pineapple. At this point, while maintaining eye contact, Colo opened her hand and revealed a key chain.
Relieved it was not anything dangerous or valuable, Jendry gave Colo the pineapple. Careful bargainer that she was, Colo then broke the key chain and gave Jendry a link, perhaps figuring. Why give her the whole thing if I can get a bit of pineapple for each piece?
If an animal can show skill in trading one thing for another, why not in handling money? One orangutan named Chantek did just that in a sign-language study undertaken by anthropologist Lyn Miles at the University of Tennessee. Chantek figured out that if he did tasks like cleaning his room, he'd earn coins to spend on treats and rides in Miles's car. But the orangutan's understanding of money seemed to extend far beyond simple dealings. Miles first used plastic chips as coins, but Chantek decided he could expand the money supply by breaking chips in two. When Miles switched to metal chips, Chantek found pieces of tin foil and tried to make copies.
Miles also tried to teach Chantek more virtuous habits such as saving and sharing. Indeed, when I caught up with the orangutan at Zoo Atlanta, where he now lives, I saw an example of sharing that anyone might envy. When Miles gave Chantek some grapes and asked him to share them, Chantek promptly ate all the fruit. Then, as if he'd just remembered he'd been asked to share, he handed Miles the stem.

Tale of a Whale
Why would an animal want to cooperate with a human? Behaviorists would say that animals cooperate when they learn it is in their interest to do so. This is true, but I don't think it goes far enough.
Gail Laule, a consultant on animal behavior, speaks of Orky, a killer whale, she knew. "Of all the animals I've worked with, he was the most intelligent," she says. "He would assess a situation and then do something based on the judgments he made."
Like the time he helped save a family member. When Orky's mate, Corky, gave birth, the baby did not thrive at first, and keepers took the little whale out of the tank by stretcher for emergency care. Things began to go wrong when they returned the baby whale to the tank. As the workers halted the stretcher a few meters above the water, the baby suddenly began throwing up through its mouth. The keepers feared it would choke, but they could not reach the baby to help it.
Apparently sizing up the problem, Orky swam under the stretcher and allowed one of the men to stand on his head, something he'd never been trained to do. Then, using his tail to keep steady, Orky let the keeper reach up and release the 420-pound baby so that it c
ould slide into the water within reach of help.

Primate Shell Game
Sometimes evidence of intelligence can be seen in attempts to deceive. Zoo keeper Helen Shewman of Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo recalls that one day she dropped an orange through a feeding hole for Melati, an orangutan. Instead of moving away to get it, Melati looked Shewman in the eye and held out her hand. Thinking the orange must have rolled off somewhere inaccessible, Shewman gave her another one. But when Melati moved off, Shewman noticed the original orange was hidden in her other hand.
Towan, the colony's dominant male, watched this whole trick, and the next day he, too, looked Shewman in the eye and pretended that he had not yet received an orange. "Are you sure you don't have one?" Shewman asked. He continued to hold her gaze steadily and held out his hand. Giving in, she gave him another one, then saw that he had been hiding his orange underneath his foot.
What is intelligence anyway? If life is about survival of a species — and intelligence is meant to serve that survival — then we can't compare with pea-brained sea turtles, which were here long before us and survived the disaster that wiped out the dinosaurs. Still, it is comforting to realize that other species besides our own can stand back and assess the world around them, even if their horizons are more limited than ours.
(928 words)

Unit 7
Emergency

Part I Pre-reading Task

Listen to the recording two or three times and then think over the following questions:
1. How did the father understand courage at first?
2. What did courage mean to the father after the fire was put out?
3. The poet says that firemen fight a war they can never win. What does he mean?
4. How does courage as described in the poem relate to the theme of the unit — emergency?

The following words in the recording may be new to you:

clad
（clothe的过去式和过去分词）穿上

armor
n. 盔甲（文中指防火衣）

at stake
在危险中

lair
n. 兽穴

talon
n. 魔爪

Part II

Text A

At first it seemed as if it might just be an old box or rags ahead of the train. But then they realized just what it was.

"KIDS ON THE TRACK!"

Jack Murphy

Monday, May 1, 1989 was a pleasant morning in Ramsey, N.J. Kate Pritchard bent over her car trunk and struggled with the bags of groceries she'd just brought home. She heard the distant cry of a locomotive horn. The trains of Conrail passed less than 300 feet from the Pritchards' house. No fence separated their backyard from the track — only a thick row of trees. But, her sons, 3(1/2)-year-old Todd and 18-month-old Scott, were nearby, playing on the driveway.
"Stay right there," Kate said, "while Mommy puts the groceries away. Then we'll go inside and have lunch, okay?"
"Okay!" said Todd, giving a thumbs-up gesture he'd seen his father make.
"Okay!" echoed Scott, trying to copy his older brother.
They watche
d their mother enter the house with several bags.
Kate shut the refrigerator and hurried outside. Good. The boys were playing right where she'd left them.
As she lifted more bags from the trunk, Kate heard a train race past — a passenger express, she judged from its speed. She carried more bags into the house.
The sounds of the train apparently drew the boys' attention to the track. After making their way through the trees, they climbed to the top of the steep roadbed, knelt down along the railroad and began to play.
A few thousand feet west, a freight train rolled slowly toward the children. Overhead lights signaled to engineer Rich Campana that the passenger train ahead was out of the way, and they could resume their normal speed of 40 miles per hour. The engineer adjusted the accelerator, then turned to conductor Anthony Falzo, a man, medium in height and strongly built, who had worked for Conrail for almost half of his 35 years.
"So what'd you do over the weekend, Anthony?"
"Oh, not much. Mostly messing around — a little TV, then bed. What else?"
Campana smiled. "Hey, you'd better cool down, Anthony — you're getting to be a real party animal!"
The two men laughed. They were still laughing as the train began gathering speed, moving at 21 miles per hour.
Rich and Anthony spotted something ahead at the same instant.
"What's that up there?" asked the engineer. Anthony didn't answer. Staring intently, he was trying to identify the curious shape on the track ahead. A box? Old rags?
Suddenly both men realized what it was. Rich threw on the emergency brake and pulled on the air-horn handle with all his strength.
The horn's blast and Anthony's words exploded at the same time: "Kids on the Track!"
Anthony sprang through the cab door onto a narrow running board six feet above the wheels and raced to the front of the swaying train. Climbing quickly down a steel ladder, he paused at the bottom, two feet above the roadbed flashing by.
Now he could clearly see the two little children. They were sitting alongside the rail. Anthony waved wildly and shouted, "Get away! Get away!"
He mentally calculated the train's deceleration rate and groaned. We'll never stop in time.
Absorbed in play, Todd and Scott did not hear the train. Finally, as the sound became thunderous, Scott looked up and froze.
Though the train was slowing, Anthony knew it was still going faster than he could run. So he forced himself to wait until he would be close enough to leap off and grab the boys. With perhaps ten feet left between them and the sharp-edged snowplow blade at the front of the train, Anthony sprang forward from the ladder. Landing on the loose, fist-size stones alongside the track, he had to struggle to keep his balance. In two giant steps he almost reached the children. They stared up at him in wide-eyed shock. Anthony, throwing his body into space, flew toward them.
The unending blast of the train horn struck Kate Pritchard like a h
ammer blow. "The boys! " she cried, and raced out the door. They were gone!
The track, she thought. I must get to the track!
As his body crashed downward, Anthony covered Todd while reaching out with one arm to grab Scott and pull him clear of the track. But the train had caught up to them. Anthony saw the black steel edge of the snowplow blade hit the young child under the chin, driving his head back and scraping over his face. Instantly, blood flashed across the boy's forehead.
Part of the train then punched into the back of Anthony's work jacket, tearing the nylon fabric. Still, Anthony managed to pull Scott completely under him.
He's dead, Anthony thought. He felt sick with horror. Burying his face in the stones, he pushed downward on the two boys with all his strength as the train passed inches above them.
The first person Kate saw when she reached the halted train was Todd. Her older boy was jumping up and down and crying uncontrollably. But Kate could see he wasn't injured. She grabbed and hugged him. Then she saw the still figure of a man lying under the third car. Scott's head, a mask of darkening blood, was visible under him. Kate ran to them. "Scott!" she screamed.
Anthony twisted to face her. "Lady," he said, his voice calm, "go to your house. Call the police and ambulance." Kate, only half hearing him, extended her arms to take her baby. Anthony spoke again, more sharply, "Ma'am, listen! Go to your house and call the police — call an ambulance. Go!"
Kate tore back to the house, made the calls, then reached her husband, Gary, via his beeper.
When the first police car arrived, Anthony was still holding little Scott. The conductor knew from the child's cries that he was alive, but Scott might have internal injuries that any movement could worsen. So Anthony insisted the emergency personnel check the boy before he would release his grip. Miraculously, Scott's injuries were not serious, requiring just 13 stitches.
There had only been 14 inches between the plow blade and the ground. Reporters later asked Anthony if he had hesitated before risking his life.
"No," he replied. "All I could think was that those two little kids have their whole lives still ahead of them, and if I do nothing, they're dead. There was no way I could let that happen."
Soon after the incident, Anthony visited the Pritchards' home. He recalls putting his arms around Todd and Scott and lifting them. "It made me remember the moment when I first sheltered them under the train. It was a strange feeling, holding them again — and wonderful too."
Since that first visit, the Pritchards say that Anthony has almost become a member of the family. They also report that a fence now separates their neighborhood from the railroad track.
(1161 words)


Unit 8
Coping with an Educational Problem

Part I Pre-reading Task

Listen to the recording two or three times and then think over the following questions:
1. What was the teacher's purpose
in asking his class the riddle?
2. What can you learn about Little Geoffrey from his answer to the riddle? Was he used to trying to think clearly? Had he formed the habit of making good use of his brain?
3. Is the story related to the theme of the unit — coping with an educational problem? In what way?

The following words and expressions in the recording may be new to you:

riddle
n. 谜语

scratch one's head
挠头（表示迷惑等）

knit one's brows
皱眉

Part II

Text A

Benjamin Stein weaves a tale to bring home to young Americans the need to change the way they think about education. Read it and see whether you think it holds any lessons for us as well.

FABLE OF THE LAZY TEENAGER

Benjamin Stein

One day last fall, I ran out of file folders and went to the drugstore to buy more. I put a handful of folders on the counter and asked a teenage salesgirl how much they cost. "I don't know," she answered. "But it's 12 cents each."
I counted the folders. "Twenty-three at 12 cents each, that makes $$2.76 before tax," I said.
"You did that in your head?" she asked in amazement. "How can you do that?"
"It's magic," I said.
"Really?" she asked.
No modestly educated adult can fail to be upset by such an experience. While our children seem better-natured than ever, they are so ignorant — and so ignorant of their ignorance — that they frighten me. In a class of 60 seniors at a private college where I recently taught, not one student could write a short paper without misspellings. Not one.
But this is just a tiny slice of the problem. The ability to perform even the simplest calculations is only a memory among many students I see, and their knowledge of world history or geography is nonexistent.
Moreover, there is a chilling indifference about all this ignorance. The attitude was summed up by a friend's bright, lazy 16-year-old son, who explained why he preferred not to go to U.C.L.A. "I don't want to have to compete with Asians," he said. "They work hard and know everything."
In fact, this young man will have to compete with Asians whether he wants to or not. He cannot live forever on the financial, material and human capital accumulated by his ancestors. At some point soon, his intellectual laziness will seriously affect his way of life. It will also affect the rest of us. A modern industrial state cannot function with an idle, ignorant labor force. Planes will crash. Computers will jam. Cars will break down.
To drive this message home to such young Americans, I have a humble suggestion: a movie, or TV series, dramatizing just how difficult it was for this country to get where it is — and how easily it could all be lost. I offer the following fable.
As the story opens, our hero, Kevin Hanley 1990, a 17-year-old high school senior, is sitting in his room, feeling bitter. His parents insist he study for his European history test. He wants to go shopping for headphones for his portabl
e CD player. The book he is forced to read — The Wealth of Nations — puts him to sleep.
Kevin dreams it is 1835, and he is his own great-great-great-grandfather at 17, a peasant in County Kerry, Ireland. He lives in a small hut and sleeps next to a pig. He is always hungry and must search for food. His greatest wish is to learn to read and write so he might get a job as a clerk. With steady wages, he would be able to feed himself and help his family. But Hanley's poverty allows no leisure for such luxuries as going to school. Without education and money, he is powerless. His only hope lies in his children. If they are educated, they will have a better life.
Our fable fast-forwards and Kevin Hanley 1990 is now his own great-grandfather, Kevin Hanley, 1928. He, too, is 17 years old, and he works in a steel mill in Pittsburgh. His father came to America from Ireland and helped build the New York City subway. Kevin Hanley 1928 is far better off than either his father or his grandfather. He can read and write. His wages are far better than anything his ancestors had in Ireland.
Next Kevin Hanley 1990 dreams that he is Kevin Hanley 1945, his own grandfather, fighting on Iwo Jima against a most determined foe, the Japanese army. He is always hot, always hungry, always scared. One night in a foxhole, he tells a friend why he is there: "So my son and his son can live in peace and security. When I get back, I'l1 work hard and send my boy to college so he can live by his brains instead of his back."
Then Kevin Hanley 1990 is his own father, Kevin Hanley 1966, who studies all the time so he can get into college and law school. He lives in a fine house. He has never seen anything but peace and plenty. He tells his girl friend that when he has a son, he won't make him study all the time, as his father makes him.
At that point, Kevin Hanley 1990 wakes up, shaken by his dream. He is relieved to be away from Ireland and the steel mill and Iwo Jima. He goes back to sleep.
When he dreams again, he is his own son, Kevin Hanley 2020. There is gunfire all day and all night. His whole generation forgot why there even was law, so there is none. People pay no attention to politics, and government offers no services to the working class.
Kevin 2020's father, who is of course Kevin 1990 himself, works as a cleaner in a factory owned by the Japanese. Kevin 2020 is a porter in a hotel for wealthy Europeans and Asians. Public education stops at the sixth grade. Americans have long since stopped demanding good education for their children.
The last person Kevin 1990 sees in his dream is his own grandson. Kevin 2050 has no useful skills. Machines built in Japan do all the complex work, and there is little manual work to be done. Without education, without discipline, he cannot earn an adequate living wage. He lives in a slum where there is no heat, no plumbing, no privacy and survives by searching through trash piles.
In a word, he lives much as Kevin Hanl
ey 1835 did in Ireland. But one day, Kevin Hanley 2050 is befriended by a visiting Japanese anthropologist studying the decline of America. The man explains to Kevin that when a man has no money, education can supply the human capital necessary to start to acquire financial capital. Hard work, education, saving and discipline can do anything. "This is how we rose from the ashes after you defeated us in a war about a hundred years ago."
"America beat Japan in war?" asks Kevin 2050. He is astonished. It seems as impossible as Brazil defeating the United States would sound in 1990. Kevin 2050 swears that if he ever has children, he will make sure they work and study and learn and discipline themselves. "To be able to make a living by one's mind instead of by stealing," he says. "That would be a miracle."
When Kevin 1990 wakes up, next to him is his copy of The Wealth of Nations. He opens it and the first sentence to catch his eye is this: "A man without the proper use of the intellectual faculties of a man is, if possible, more contemptible than even a coward."
Kevin's father walks in. "All right, son," he says. "Let's go look at those headphones."
"Sorry, Pop," Kevin 1990 says. "I have to study."
(1213 words)
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