外研版高中英语必修四课文电子版(全册)
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Module 1 Reading
The
City of the Future
What will the city of the
future look like? No one knows
for sure, and
making predictions is a risky business. But one
thing is certain—they are going to get bigger
before they get
smaller. In the future, care
for the environment will become
very important
as earth's natural resources run out. We will
use lots of recycled materials, such as
plastic, aluminium, steel, glass, wood and paper,
and we will waste fewer natural resources. We
will also have to rely more on
alternative
energy, such as solar and wind power. All this
seems certain, but there are
plenty of things
about city life in the future which are not
certain.
To find out what young people think
about the future of urban life, a teacher at a
university in Texas in the United States asked
his students to think how they would run
a
city of 50,000 people in the year 2025. Here are
some of the ideas
they had:
Garbage ships
To get rid of garbage problems, the city will
load huge spaceships with waste materials and
send them towards
the sun, preventing landfill
and environmental problems.
Batman Nets Police
will arrest criminals by firing nets instead of
guns.
Forget smoking No smoking will be
allowed within a future city's limits. Smoking
will be possible only outside cities, and
outdoors.
Forget the malls In the future all
shopping will be done online, and catalogue will
have voice commands to place orders.
Telephones for life Everyone will be
given a telephone number at birth that will
never change no matter where they live.
Recreation All forms of recreation, such as
cinemas, bowling, softball, concerts
and
others, will be provided free of charge by the
city.
Cars All cars will be powered by
electricity, solar energy or wind, and it will be
possible to change the colour of cars at the
flick of a switch.
Telesurgery Distance
surgery will become common as doctors carry out
operations
from thousands of miles away, with
each city having its own telesurgery outpatient
clinic.
Holidays at home Senior citizens
and people with disabilities will be able to go
anywhere in the world using high-tech cameras
attached to their head.
Space travel
Travelling in space by ordinary citizens will be
common. Each city
will have its own spaceport.
Cultural Corner
Famous Last Words
Not
all predictions come true. Many of them are wrong,
and some are very
wrong. Here are just a few
of the bad predictions people made in the
twentieth
century about the twenty-first
century:
AIRPLANES
Orville Wright,
1908.
COMPUTERS
Thomas Waston,
chairman of IBM, 1943.
CLOTHES
they will be able to throw away after
wearing them two or three times.
Changing Times
Magazine, 1957.
MEN ON THE MOON
the first
moon colonies predicted for the 1970's, work is
now in
progress on the types of building
required for men to stay in when they're on the
moon.
Arnold B. Barach in The Changes to
Come, 1962.
THE BEATLES
Decca
Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
ROBOTS IN THE HOUSE
with one large eye
on the top, several arms and hands, and long
narrow pads on
the side for moving
about.
New York Times, 1966.
KEYS
under the doormat again, because there
won't be any
keys.
Computer scientist
Christopher Evans,
The Micro Millennium, 1979.
Module 2 Reading
Getting
Around in Beijing
Taxis
Taxis are on the
streets 24 hours a day. Simply raise your
hand, and a taxi appears in no time. They are
usually red, and
they display the price per
kilometre on the window. You
should check the
cab has a business permit, and make sure
you
ask for a receipt.
Buses and trolleybuses
Public transport provides a cheap way to get
around in Beijing. There are 20,000
buses and
trolleybuses in Beijing, but they can get very
crowded. It's a good idea to
avoid public
transport during the rush hour (6:30 a.m.–8:00
a.m. and 5:00 p.m.–6:30
p.m.). Fares are
cheap, starting at 1 yuan. Air-conditioned buses
cost more.
Buses numbered 1 to 100 are limited
to travel within the city centre. Higher
numbers have destinations in the suburbs.
Tourists shouldn't miss the 103 bus which
offers one of the most impressive routes, past
the Forbidden City and the White
Pagoda in
Beihai Park. If you get on a double-decker bus,
make sure you sit upstairs.
You'll have a good
view of the rapidly changing city.
Most buses
run from about 5:00 a.m. to midnight. However,
there is also a night
bus service, provided by
buses with a number in the 200s.
Minibuses
Minibuses with seats for 12 passengers offer
an alternative to expensive taxis and
crowded
public transport in some areas. They run regular
services and follow the same
routes as large
public buses. And in a minibus you always get a
seat even in rush hours.
Underground
There are four underground lines in Beijing,
and several lines are under
construction.
Trains are fast and convenient, but rush hours can
be terrible. A one-way
trip costs 3 yuan.
Station names are marked in pinyin. The
underground is open from
5:00 a.m. to 11:00
p.m.
Pedicabs
Tourists like these human-
pedalled
should talk to the driver, and make
sure you know the price before you begin the
journey, for example, if it is per person,
single or return. Tricycles are worth using if
you want to explore the narrow alleys (hutong)
of old Beijing.
Cultural Corner
The
London Congestion Charge
Beijing isn't the
only city with traffic problems. You can get stuck
in a traffic jam
anywhere in the world. The
worst problems occur in cities which are growing
fast,
such as Sao Paolo in Brazil and Lagos in
Nigeria. But even cities in developed
countries such as the US suffer. Los Angeles,
which was built with the motor car in
mind,
and is famous for its six-lane highways, is now
the
USA's most congested city.
In Europe
most capital cities were planned and built
before cars, and city centre traffic jams have
been part of
daily life for a long time. The
situation in central London,
where drivers
spent fifty percent of their time in queues,
became so bad that the local
government
decided to do something about it. In February 2003
the Mayor of London,
Ken Livingstone,
introduced a —a tax for cars entering the centre
of the city.
The idea is simple:
every car coming into the centre has to pay £5 a
day. Drivers
can pay the charge at any of
10,000 pay points in the capital before 10 p.m. As
the cars
come into the centre, video cameras
record their registration numbers, and these are
checked with a list of drivers who have paid
the charge for that day. People who do not
pay
the charge will face a fine of £80.
Most
Londoners are not happy with the idea. They agree
that London has a traffic
problem, but the
congestion charge is expensive, and limits their
freedom ...
But does the congestion charge
work? A survey carried out at the end of 2003
suggests it does. After only six months,
traffic coming into central London was
reduced
by about 30 percent, and journey times by 15
percent. More people used
public transport to
get to work, and bicycles were suddenly very
popular. What's more,
central London shops did
not lose business even though there were fewer
cars.
But there are a few people who think the
charge should be much higher, for
example rich
businessmen who work in the city centre and can
easily afford it. This
would keep even more
cars out of central London, and the roads would be
nearly
empty. However, there are no plans to
increase the charge.
Module 3 Reading
Greetings Around the World
If you say the
word
of words and sentences. Although these
are very important,
we communicate with more
than just spoken and written
words. Indeed,
body positions are part of what we call
languageWe see examples of unconscious body
language
very often, yet there is also
varies from culture to culture.
We
use
animals, we are on guard until we know it
is safe to relax. So every culture has
developed a formal way to greet strangers, to
show them we are not aggressive.
Traditionally, Europeans and Americans shake
hands. They do this with the right
hand—the
strongest hand for most people. If our right hand
is busy greeting someone,
it cannot be holding
a weapon. So the gesture is saying, trust you.
Look, I'm not
carrying a threatening
weapon.
them. We shake hands when we make a
deal. It means,
other.
Greetings in Asian
countries do not involve touching the other
person, but they
always involve the hands.
Traditionally in China, when we greet someone, we
put the
right hand over the left and bow
slightly. Muslims give a
their heart, mouth
and forehead. Hindus join their hands and bow
their heads in respect.
In all of these
examples, the hands are busy with the greeting and
cannot hold a
weapon.
Even today, when
some people have very informal styles of greeting,
they still use
their hands as a gesture of
trust. American youths often greet each other with
the
expression, One person then holds up his
hand, palm outwards and
five fingers spread.
The other person raises his hand and slaps the
other's open hand
above the head in a
Body
language is fascinating for anyone to study.
People give away much more by
their gestures
than by their words. Look at your friends and
family and see if you are a
mind reader!
Cultural Corner
Clapping
Why
do we clap? To show we like something, of course.
But we don't clap at the
end of a television
programme or a book, however good they are. We
clap at the end
of a live performance, such as
a play, or a concert, to say thank you to the
performers.
First they give, and then we give.
Without us—the audience—the performance would
not be complete.
The custom of clapping
has early beginnings. In classical Athens,
applause meant
judgement and taking part.
Plays were often in competition with each other,
and
prolonged clapping helped a play to win.
The theatre was large—it could hold 14,000
people, half the adult male population of the
city, which meant that the audience could
make
a lot of noise.
Applause was a sign of being
part of the community, and
of equality between
actors and audience. The important thing
was
to make the noise together, to add one's own small
handclap to others. Clapping is social, like
laughter: you don't
very often clap or laugh
out loud alone. It is like laughter in
another
way, too: it is infectious, and spreads very
quickly. Clapping at concerts and
theatres is
a universal habit. But some occasions on which
people clap change from
one country to
another. For example, in Britain people clap at a
wedding, but in Italy
they sometimes clap at a
funeral.
Module 4 Reading
The
Student Who Asked Questions
In a hungry world
rice is a staple food and China is the
world's
largest producer. Rice is also grown in many other
Asian countries, and in some European
countries like Italy. In
the rice-growing
world, the Chinese scientist, Yuan Longping,
is a leading figure.
Yuan Longping
was born and brought up in China. As a boy he was
educated in
many schools and was given the
nickname,
From an early age he was interested
in plants. He studied agriculture in college and
as a young teacher he began experiments in
crop breeding. He thought that the key to
feeding people was to have more rice and to
produce it more quickly. He thought there
was
only one way to do this—by crossing different
species of rice plant, and then he
could
produce a new plant which could give a higher
yield than either of the original
plants.
First Yuan Longping experimented with
different types of rice. The results of his
experiments were published in China in 1966.
Then he began his search for a special
type of
rice plant. It had to be male. It had to be
sterile. Finally, in 1970 a naturally
sterile
male rice plant was discovered. This was the
breakthrough. Researchers were
brought in from
all over China to develop the new system. The
research was supported
by the government.
As a result of Yuan Longping's discoveries
Chinese rice production rose by 47.5
percent
in the 1990's. There were other advantages too. 50
thousand square kilometres
of rice fields were
converted to growing vegetables and other cash
crops. Following
this, Yuan Longping's rice
was exported to other countries, such as Pakistan
and the
Philippines.
In Pakistan rice is
the second most important crop after wheat and
will be grown in
many parts of the country.
The new hybrid rice has been developed by the Yuan
Longping Hightech Agricultural Company of
China. Its yield is much greater than the
yield of other types of rice grown in
Pakistan.
Cultural Corner
Rockets
Today rockets are very
advanced machines which we can use to send
astronauts
into space. They are also used in
firework displays to celebrate great events, such
as
the end of the Olympic Games or the
beginning of the new millennium in the year
2000.
Rockets were probably invented by
accident about 2,000 years ago. The Chinese
had a form of gunpowder which was put in
bamboo tubes and thrown into fires to
make
explosions during festivals. Perhaps some of the
tubes jumped out of the fire
instead of
exploding in it. The Chinese discovered that the
gas escaping from the tube
could lift it into
the air. The idea of the rocket was born.
The
first military use of rockets was in 1232. The
Song Dynasty was at war with
the Mongols.
During the battle of Kaifeng, the Song army shot
fire
The tubes were attached to a long stick
which helped keep the rocket moving in a
straight direction. Soon the Mongols learned
how to make rockets themselves and it is
possible that they introduced them to Europe.
Between the 13th and 15th centuries
there were
many rocket experiments in England, France and
Italy. They were used for
military purposes.
One Italian scientist even invented a rocket which
could travel over
the surface of water and hit
an enemy ship.
But not everybody wanted to use
rockets in battles. Wan Hu, a Chinese government
official, invented a flying chair. He attached
two big kites to the chair, and 47 rockets
to
the kites. The rockets were lit, there was a huge
explosion and clouds of thick
smoke. When the
smoke cleared Wan Hu and his chair had
disappeared. No one
knows what happened. Did
Wan Hu die in the explosion? Or was he carried
miles into
space, becoming the world's first
astronaut?
Module 5 Reading
A Trip Along the Three Gorges
In August
1996, Peter Hessler, a young American teacher of
English, arrived in the
town of Fuling on the
Yangtze River. He and a colleague were to spend
two years
there teaching English at a teacher
training college. They were the only foreigners in
the town. The first semester finished at the
end of January and they had four weeks off
for
the Spring Festival. They could go anywhere they
wished. They decided to take a
boat
downstream.
We decided to buy tickets for
the Jiangyou boat. Our colleagues said,
shouldn't go on those ships. They are very
crowded. They are mainly for goods and
people
trading along the river. They don't stop at the
temples and there won't be any
other
foreigners.
let us get on the boat.
We left
the docks on a beautiful afternoon. The sun was
shining brightly as we
sailed downstream
through a hilly region. Men rode bamboo rafts
along the river's
edge and coal boats went
past. As the sun set we docked at Fengdu. We could
see the
sun setting behind the white pagoda.
It was beautiful.
We slept through the first
gorge, which is called the Qutang Gorge. The gorge
narrows to 350 feet as the river rushes
through the two-mile-high mountains.
well,
At Wushan we made a detour up the
Daning River to see some of the smaller
gorges. The next day we went through the big
gorges on the Yangtze River. It was a
lovely
morning as we went through the Wu Gorge. We passed
the Xiang River, home
of Qu Yuan, the 3rd
century BC poet. There was so much history along
the Yangtze
River. Every rock looked like a
person or animal, every stream that joined the
great
river carried its legends, every hill
was heavy with the past.
As we came out of the
third gorge, the Xiling Gorge, we sailed into the
construction site of the dam. All the
passengers came on deck. We took pictures and
pointed at the site, but we weren't allowed to
get off the boat. The Chinese flag was
blowing
in the wind. On a distant mountain was a sign in
20-foot characters.
the Three Gorges Dam,
Exploit the Yangtze River,
Cultural Corner
Postcards to Myself
In 50 years of
travelling Colin McCorquodale has visited
every country in the world, except three. And
everywhere he
goes, he sends himself a
postcard. He always chooses a
postcard
with a beautiful view, and sticks on an
interesting stamp. Usually he writes
just a
short message to himself. His latest one, from the
Malvinas islands, reads Good
fishing.
On a
wall in his home in London there is a large map of
the world. There are
hundreds of little red
pins stuck in it. good to get a pin in the
map,says Mr
McCorquodale,
place for more
than 24 lly, Mr McCorquodale has his favourite
places.
New Zealand he describes as In Europe,
Italy is a favourite place.
trade that all
tourists are ripped off. Well, at least the
Italians rip you off with a smile.
which is
completely different. There's no European
influence. It's been around for
6,000 years,
yet it's a country of the future.
Wherever he
goes, Mr McCorquodale takes with him a
photo
of his wife, a candle, a torch, a shirt with a
secret
pocket, and a pen for writing his
postcards.
So why does he do it? For the
postcards or the travel? Mr
McCorquodale
laughs. do it for the journey,he says.
get a
kick out of travelling. And all the planning.
Module 6 Reading
The Monster of Lake
Tianchi
The Monster of Lake Tianchiin the
Changbai Mountains in Jilin province,
northeast China, is back in the news after
several recent sightings. The director of a
local tourist office, Meng Fanying, said the
monster, which seemed to be black in
colour,
was ten metres from the edge of the lake during
the most recent sighting.
jumped out of the
water like a seal—about 200 people on Changbai's
western peak
saw it,clear look at the
mysterious creature,
Xue Junlin, a local
photographer, claimed that its head looked like a
horse.
In another recent sighting, a group of
soldiers claim they
saw an animal moving on
the surface of the water. The
soldiers, who
were walking along the side of the lake,
watched the creature swimming for about two
minutes.
was greenish-black and had a round
head with 10-centimetre
horns
A third
report came from Li Xiaohe, who was visiting the
lake with his family. He
claims to have seen a
round black creature moving quickly through the
water. After
three or four hundred metres it
dived into the water. Ten minutes later the
monster
appeared again and repeated the
action. Mr Li Xiaohe said that he and his family
were
able to see the monster clearly because
the weather was fine and the lake was calm.
There have been reports of monsters in Lake
Tianchi since the beginning of the last
century, although no one has seen one close
up. Some photos have been taken but they
are
not clear because it was too far away. Many people
think the monster may be a
distant cousin of
the Loch Ness monster in Scotland. They also think
that there might
be similar creatures in other
lakes around the world. Scientists, however, are
sceptical.
They say that the low-temperature
lake is unlikely to be able to support such large
living creatures.
Lake Tianchi is the
highest volcanic lake in the world. It is 2,189
metres high and
covers an area of about ten
square kilometres. In places it is more than 370
metres
deep.
Cultural Corner
The
Universal Dragon
Dragons can be
friendly or fierce, they can bring good
luck
or cause death and destruction, but one thing is
sure—
people talk about them almost everywhere
in the world. For a
creature that doesn't
actually exist, that's quite something.
In
Chinese culture, dragons are generous and wise,
although they can be
unpredictable. The dragon
was closely connected to the royal family: the
emperor's
robes have a symbol of a gold dragon
with five claws. Other members of the royal
family were allowed to wear dragon symbols,
too, but with fewer claws and of a
different
colour. According to popular belief, if you were
born in the year of the
dragon, you are
intelligent, brave, and a natural leader.
But
in the west, dragons had a different reputation.
The very first text in English,
the Anglo-
Saxon poem Beowulf, tells the story of a
Scandinavian hero, Beowulf, who
fights and
kills a dangerous dragon but is himself killed in
the fight. However, across
the border in
Wales, the red dragon which appears on the Welsh
flag is a positive
symbol, indicating strength
and a sense of national identity.
Why should
the dragon have a different character in
different parts of the world? Some experts
believe it is due to
the animals the myths
grew out of. In the west, the idea of the
dragon probably came from the snake—an animal
which
people hated and were afraid of.
But
in China, the idea of the dragon may have come
from the alligator—a shy
animal which lives in
rivers, but which is usually only seen when there
is plenty of
water—a good sign for
agriculture. So the Chinese dragon was a bringer
of good
fortune.