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读书破万卷 下笔如有神
Unit 1
ANNE’S BEST FRIEND
Do you want a friend whom
you could tell everything to, like your deepest
feelings and thoughts?
Or are you afraid that
your friend would laugh at you, or would not
understand what you are going
through? Anne
Frank wanted the first kind, so she made her diary
her best friend.
Anne lived in Amsterdam in
the Netherlands during World War II. Her family
was Jewish so they
had to hide or they would
be caught by the German Nazis. She and her family
hid away for nearly
twenty-five months before
they were discovered. During that time the only
true friend was her
diary. She said, “I don’t
want to set down a series of facts in a diary as
most people do, but I want
this diary itself
to be my friend, and I shall call my friend
Kitty.” Now read how she felt after
being in
the hiding place since July 1942.
Thursday
15
th
June, 1942
Dear Kitty,
I
wondered if it is because I haven’t been able to
be outdoors for so long that I’ve grown so crazy
about everything to do with nature. I can well
remember that there was a time when a deep blue
sky, the song of the birds, moonlight and
flowers could never have kept me spellbound.
That’s
changed since I came here.
…
For example, one evening when it was so warm, I
stayed awake on purpose until half past
eleven
in order to have a good look at the moon by
myself. But as the moon gave far too much
light, I didn’t dare to open a window. Another
time five months ago, I happened to be upstairs at
dusk when the window was open. I didn’t go
downstairs until the window had to be shut. The
dark,
rainy evening, the wind, the thundering
clouds held me entirely in their power; it was the
first time
in a year and a half that I’d seen
the night face to face
…
…
Sadly
…
I am only able to look at nature through
dirty curtains hanging before very dusty
windows. It’s no pleasure looking through
these any longer because nature is one thing that
really
must be experienced.
Yours,
Anne
Unit 2
English around the world
The road to modern English
At the end of
the 16
th
century, about five to seven
million people spoke English. Nearly all of them
lived in
England. Later in the next century,
people from England made voyages to conquer other
parts of the world and
because of that,
English began to be spoken in many other
countries. Today, more people speak English as
their
first, second or foreign language than
ever before.
Native English speakers can
understand each other even if they don’t speak the
same kind of English. Look at
this example:
British Betty: Would you like to see my
flat?
American Amy: Yes. I’d like to come
up to your apartment.
So why has English
changed over time? Actually, all languages change
and develop when cultures meet and
communicate
with each other. At first, the English spoken in
England between about AD 450 and 1150 was very
different from the English spoken today. It
was based more on German than the English we speak
at present. Then
gradually between about AD
800 and 1150, English became less like German
because those who ruled England
spoke first
Danish and later French. These new settlers
enriched the English language and especially its
vocabulary.
读书破万卷 下笔如有神
So by
the 1600’s Shakespeare was able to make use of a
wider vocabulary than ever before. In 1620 some
British
settlers moved to America. Later in
the 18
th
century some British people were
taken to Australia too. English began
to be
spoken in both countries.
Finally by the
19
th
century the language was settled. At
that time two big changes in English spelling
happened:
first Samuel Johnson wrote his
dictionary and later Noah Webster wrote The
America Dictionary of the English
Language.
The latter gave a separate identity to American
English spelling.
English now is also
spoken as a foreign or second language in South
Asia. For example, India has a very large
number of fluent English speakers because
Britain ruled India from 1765 to 1947. During that
time English
became the language for
government and education. English is also spoken
in Singapore and Malaysia and
countries in
Africa such as South Africa. Today the number of
people learning English in China is increasing
rapidly. In fact, China may have the largest
number of English learners. Will Chinese English
develop its own
identity? Only time will tell.
STANDARD ENGLISH AND DIALECTS
What
is standard English? Is it spoken in Britain, the
US, Canada, Australia, India and New Zealand?
Believe
it or not, there is no such thing as
standard English. This is because in the early
days of radio, those who reported
the news
were expected to speak excellent English. However,
on TV and the radio you will hear differences in
the
way people speak.
When people use
words and expressions different from “standard
language”, it is called a dialect. American
English has many dialects, especially the
midwestern, southern, African American and Spanish
dialects. Even in
some parts of the USA, two
people from neighboring towns speak a little
differently. American English has so
many
dialects because people have come from all over
the world.
Geography also plays a part in
making dialects. Some people who live in the
mountains of the eastern USA
speak with an
older kind of English dialect. When Americans
moved from one place to another, they took their
dialects with them. So people from the
mountains in the southeastern USA speak with
almost the same dialect as
people in the
northwestern USA. The USA is a large country in
which many different dialects are spoken.
Although many Americans move a lot, they still
recognize and understand each other’s dialects.
Unit 3
JOURNEY DOWN THE MEKONG
PART I THE DREAM AND THE PLAN
My
name is Wang Kun. Ever since middle school, my
sister Wang Wei and I have dreamed about taking a
great bike trip. Two years ago she bought an
expensive mountain bike and then she persuaded me
to buy one. Last
year, she visited our
cousins, Dao Wei and Yu Hang at their college in
Kunming. They are Dai and grew up in
western
Yunnan Province near the Lancang River, the
Chinese part of the river that is called the
Mekong River in
other countries. Wang Wei soon
got them interested in cycling too. After
graduating from college, we finally got
the
chance to take a bike trip. I asked my sister,
“Where are we going?” It was my sister who first
had the idea to
cycle along the entire Mekong
River from where it begins to where it ends. Now
she is planning our schedule for
the trip.
I am fond of my sister but she has one
serious shortcoming. She can be really stubborn.
Although she didn’t
know the best way of
getting to places, she insisted that she organize
the trip properly. Now I know that the proper
way is always her way. I kept asking her,
“When are we leaving and when are we coming back?”
I asked her
whether she had looked at a map
yet. Of course she hadn’t; my sister doesn’t care
about details. So I told her that
the source
of the Mekong is in Qinghai Province. She gave me
a determined look--the kind that said she would
not
change her mind. When I told her that our
journey would begin at an altitude of more than
5,000 metres, she said it
读书破万卷
下笔如有神
would be an interesting experience. I
know my sister well. Once she has made up her
mind, nothing can change it.
Finally, I had to
give in.
Several months before our trip,
Wang Wei and I went to the library. We found a
large atlas with good maps that
showed details
of world geography. From the atlas we could see
that the Mekong River begins in a glacier on a
mountain in Qinghai Province. At first the
river is small and the water is clear and cold.
Then it begins to move
quickly. It becomes
rapids as it passes through deep valleys,
travelling across western Yunnan Province.
Sometimes the river becomes a waterfall and
enters wide valleys. We were both surprised to
learn that half of the
river is in China.
After it leaves China and high altitude, the
Mekong becomes wide, brown and warm. As it enters
Southeast Asia, its pace slows. It makes wide
bends or meanders through low valleys to the
plains where rice
grows. At last, the river
delta enters the South China Sea.
PART II
A NIGHT IN THE MOUNTAINS
Although it
was autumn, the snow was already beginning to fall
in Tibet. Our legs were so heavy and cold that
they felt like blocks of ice. Have you ever
seen snowmen ride bicycles? That’s what we looked
like! Along the way
children dressed in long
wool coats stopped to look at us. In the late
afternoon we found it was so cold that our
water bottles froze. However, the lakes shone
like glass in the setting sun and looked
wonderful. Wang Wei rode in
front of me as
usual. She is very reliable and I knew I didn’t
need to encourage her. To climb the mountains was
hard work but as we looked around us, we were
surprised by the view. We seemed to be able to see
for miles. At
one point we were so high that
we found ourselves cycling through clouds. Then we
began going down the hills. It
was great fun
especially as it gradually became much warmer. In
the valleys colourful butterflies flew around us
and we saw many yaks and sheep eating green
grass. At this point we had to change our caps,
coats, gloves and
trousers for T-shirts and
shorts.
In the early evening we always stop
to make camp. We put up our tent and then we eat.
After supper Wang Wei
put her head down on her
pillow and went to sleep but I stayed awake. At
midnight the sky became clearer and the
stars
grew brighter. It was so quiet. There was almost
no wind- only the flames of our fire for company.
As I lay
beneath the stars I thought about how
far we had already travelled.
We will reach
Dali in Yunnan Province soon, where our cousins
Dao Wei and Yu Hang will join us. We can
hardly wait to see them!
Unit 4 A NIGHT THE EARTH DIDN’T SLEEP
Strange
things were happening in the countryside of
northeast Hebei. For three days the water in
the village wells rose and fell. Farmers
noticed that the well walls had deep cracks in
them. A
smelly gas came out of the fields
looking for places to hide. Fish jumped out of
their bowls and
ponds. At about 3:00 am on
July 28, 1976, some people saw bright lights in
the sky. The sound of
planes could be heard
outside the city of Tangshan even when no planes
were in the sky. In the city,
the water pipes
in some buildings cracked and burst. But the one
million people of the city, who
thought little
of these events, were asleep as usual that night.
At 3:42 am everything began to shake. It
seemed as if the world was at an end! Eleven
kilometres directly below the city one of the
greatest earthquakes of the 20
th
century
had begun. It
was felt in Beijing, which is
more than two hundred kilometres away. One-third
of the nation felt
it. A huge crack that was
eight kilometres long and thirty metres wide cut
across houses, roads and
canals. Steam burst
from holes in the ground. Hard hills of rock
became rivers of dirt. In fifteen
terrible
seconds a large city lay in ruins. The sufferings
of the people was extreme. Two-thirds of
读书破万卷 下笔如有神
them died or were
injured during the earthquake. The number of
people who were killed or
seriously injured
reached more than 400,000.
But how could the
survivors believe it was natural? Everywhere they
looked nearly everything
was destroyed. All of
the city’s hospital, 75％ of its factories and
buildings and 90％ of its homes
were gone.
Bricks covered the ground like red autumn leaves.
No wind, however, could blow
them away. Two
dams fell and most of the bridges also fell or
were not safe for travelling. The
railway
tracks were now useless pieces of steel. Tens of
thousands of cows would never give milk
again.
Half a million pigs and millions of chickens were
dead. Sand now filled the wells instead of
water. People were shocked. Then, later that
afternoon, another big quake which was almost as
strong as the first one shook Tangshan. Water,
food, and electricity were hard to get. People
began
to wonder how long the disaster would
last.
All hope was not lost. Soon after the
quakes, the army sent 150,000 soldiers to Tangshan
to help
the rescue workers. Hundreds of
thousands of people were helped. The army
organized teams to
dig out those who were
trapped and to bury the dead. To the north of the
city, most of the 10,000
miners were rescued
from the coal mines there. Workers built shelters
for survivors whose homes
had been destroyed.
Fresh water was taken to the city by train, truck
and plane. Slowly, the city
began to breathe
again.
UNIT 5 ELIAS’ STORY
My name is Elias. I am a
poor black worker in South Africa. The time when I
first met Nelson Mandela was a very
difficult
period of my life. I was twelve years old. It was
in 1952 and Mandela was the black lawyer to whom I
went for advice. He offered guidance to poor
black people on their legal problems. He was
generous with his time,
for which I was
grateful.
I needed his help because I had
very little education. I began school at six. The
school where I studied for only
two years was
three kilometres away. I had to leave because my
family could not continue to pay the school fees
and the bus fare. I could not read or write
well. After trying hard, I got a job in a gold
mine. However, this was a
time when one had
got to have a passbook to live in Johannesburg.
Sadly I did not have one because I was not born
there, and I worried about whether I would
become out of work.
The day when Nelson
Mandela helped me was one of my happiest. He told
me how to get the correct papers so I
could
stay in Johannesburg. I became more hopeful about
my future. I never forgot how kind Mandela was.
When
he organized the ANC Youth League, I
joined it as soon as I could. He said:
“The
last thirty years have seen the greatest number of
laws stopping our rights and progress, until today
we
have reached a stage where we have almost
no rights at all.”
It was the truth. Black
people could not vote or choose their leaders.
They could not get the jobs they wanted.
The
parts of town in which they had to live were
decided by white people. The places outside the
towns where they
were sent to live were the
poorest parts of South Africa. No one could grow
food there. In fact as Nelson Mandela
said:
“…we were put into a position in which we
had either to accept we were less important, or
fight the government.
读书破万卷 下笔如有神
We chose to attack the laws. We first broke
the law in a way which was peaceful; when this was
not allowed
…
only
then did we decided
to answer violence with violence. ”
As a
matter of fact, I do not like violence…but in 1963
I helped him blow up some government buildings. It
was
very dangerous because if I was caught I
could be put in prison. But I was happy to help
because I knew it would
help us achieve our
dream of making black and white people equal.
THE REST OF ELIAS’
STORY
You cannot imagine how the name of
Robben Island made us afraid. It was a prison from
which no one escaped.
There I spent the
hardest time of my life. But when I got there
Nelson Mandela was also there and he helped me.
Mr Mandela began a school for those of us who
had little learning. He taught us during the lunch
breaks and the
evenings when we should have
been asleep. We read books under our blankets and
used anything we could find to
make candles to
see the words. I became a good student. I wanted
to study for my degree but I was not allowed to
do that. Later, Mr Mandela allowed the prison
guards to join us. He said they should not be
stopped from studying
for their degrees. They
were not cleverer than me, but they did pass their
exams. So I knew I could get a degree too.
That made me feel good about myself.
When I finished the four years in prison, I went
to find a job. Since I was better educated, I got
a job working in
an office. However, the
police found out and told my boss that I had been
in prison for blowing up government
buildings.
So I lost my job. I did not work again for twenty
years until Mr Mandela and the ANC came to power
in
1994. All that time my wife and children
had to beg for food and help from relatives or
friends. Luckily Mr
Mandela remembered me and
gave me a job taking tourists around my old prison
on Robben Island. I felt bad the
first time I
talked to a group. All the terror and fear of that
time came back to me. I remembered the beatings
and
the cruelty of the guards and my friends
who had died. I felt I would not be able to do it,
but my family encouraged
me. They said that
the job and the pay from the new South Africa
government were my reward after working all
my
life for equal rights for the Blacks. So now I am
proud to show visitors over the prison, for I
helped to make
our people free in their own
land.