我表妹-肯定反义词

2021年1月19日发(作者：雍中本)
大学英语教材

大学英语自学教程
(
上
)
01-A. How to be a successful language learner?
―Learning a language is easy, even a child can do it!‖

Most adults who are learning a second language would disagree with
this statement. For them, learning a language is a very difficult task.
They need hundreds of hours of study and practice, and even this will
not guarantee success for every adult language learner.
Language learning is different from other kinds of learning. Some
people who are very intelligent and successful in their fields find it
difficult to succeed in language learning. Conversely, some people who
are successful language learners find it difficult to succeed in other
fields.
Language teachers often offer advice to language learners: “Read

as much as you can in th
e new language.”“ Practice speaking the

language every day. ”“Live with people who speak the language.”

“Don’t translate
-
try to think in the new language.”“ Learn as a
child
would learn; play with the language.”

But what does a successful language learner do? Language learning
research shows that successful language learners are similar in many
ways.
First of all, successful language learners are independent learners.
They do not depend on the book or the teacher; they discover their own
way to learn the language. Instead of waiting for the teacher to explain,
they try to find the patterns and the rules for themselves. They are
good guessers who look for clues and form their own conclusions. When
they guess wrong, they guess again. They try to learn from their
mistakes.
Successful language learning is active learning. Therefore,
successful learners do not wait for a chance to use the language; they
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look for such a chance. They find people who speak the language and
they ask these people to correct them when they make a mistake. They
will try anything to communicate. They are not afraid to repeat what
they hear or to say strange things; they are willing to make mistakes
and try again. When communication is difficult, they can accept
information that is inexact or incomplete. It is more important for them
to learn to think in the language than to know the meaning of every word.
Finally, successful language learners are learners with a purpose.
They want to learn the language because they are interested in the
language and the people who speak it. It is necessary for them to learn
the language in order to communicate with these people and to learn from
them. They find it easy to practice using the language regularly because
they want to learn with it.
What kind of language learner are you? If you are a successful
language learner, you have probably been learning independently,
actively, and purposefully. On the other hand, if your language learning
has been less than successful, you might do well to try some of the
techniques outlined above.
01-B. Language
When we want to tell other people what we think, we can do it not
only with the help of words, but also in many other ways. For instance,
we sometimes move our heads up and down when we want to say
es‖
and we move our heads from side to side when we want to say
who can neither hear nor speak (that is, deaf and dumb people) talk to
each other with the help of their fingers. People who do not understand
each other's language have to do the same. The following story shows how
they sometimes do it.
An Englishman who could not speak Italian was once traveling in
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Italy. One day he entered a restaurant and sat down at a table. When
the waiter came, the Englishman opened his mouth, put his fingers in it,
took them out again and moved his lips. In this way he meant to say,

The Englishman shook his head and the waiter understood that he didn't
want tea, so he took it away and brought him some coffee. The Englishman,
who was very hungry by this time and not at all thirsty,
looked very sad. He shook his head each time the waiter brought him
something to drink. The waiter brought him wine, then beer, then soda-
water, but that w
asn’t food, of course. He was just going to leave

the restaurant when another traveler came in. When this man saw the
waiter, he put his hands on his stomach. That was enough: in a few
minutes there was a large plate of macaroni and meat on the table before
him.
As you see, the primitive language of signs is not always very clear.
The language of words is much more exact.
Words consist of sounds, but there are many sounds which have a
meaning and yet are not words. For example, we may say
sh‖

whe
n we mean

happy, and when they cry, we know they are ill or simply want
something.
It is the same with animals. When a dog says ―G
-r-
r‖ or a cat says


f‖ we know they are angry.

But these sounds are not language. Language consists of words which
we put together into sentences. But animals can not do this: a dog can
say ―G
-r-
r‖ when he means
and then

repeat whole sentences and knows what they mean. We may say that a
parrot talks, but cannot say that it really speaks, because it cannot
form new sentences out of the words it knows. Only man has the power to
do this.
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02-A. Taxes, Taxes, and More Taxes
Americans often say that there are only two things a person can be
sure of in life: death and taxes, Americans do not have a corner on the

the world with the worst taxes.
Taxes consist of the money which people pay to support their
government. There are generally three levels of government in the United
States: federal, state, and city; therefore, there are three types of
taxes.
Salaried people who earn more than a few thousand dollars must pay a
certain percentage of their salaries to the federal government. The
percentage varies from person to person. It depends on their salaries.
The federal government has a graduated income tax, that is, the
percentage of the tax (14 to 70 percent) increases as a person's income
increases. With the high cost of taxes, people are not very happy on
April 15, when the federal taxes are due.
The second tax is for the state government: New York, California,
North Dakota, or any of the other forty-seven states. Some states have
an income tax similar to that of the federal government. Of course, the
percentage for the state tax is lower. Other states have a sales tax,
which is a percentage charged to any item which you buy in that state.
For example, a person might want to buy a packet of cigarettes for
twenty-five cents. If there is a sales tax of eight percent in that
state, then the cost of the cigarettes is twenty-seven cents. This
figure includes the sales tax. Some states use income tax in addition to
sales tax to raise their revenues. The state tax laws are diverse and
confusing.
The third tax is for the city. This tax comes in two forms: property
tax (people who own a home have to pay taxes on it) and excise tax,
which is charged on cars in a city. The cities use these funds for
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education, police and fire departments, public works and municipal
buildings.
Since Americans pay such high taxes, they often feel that they are
working one day each week just to pay their taxes. People always
complain about taxes. They often protest that the government uses their
tax dollars in the wrong way. They say that it spends too much on
useless and impractical programs. Although Americans have different
views on many issues, they tend to agree on one subject: taxes are too
high.
02-B. Advertising
Advertising is only part of the total sales effort, but it is the
part that attracts the most attention. This is natural enough because
advertising is designed for just that purpose. In newspapers, in
magazines, in the mail, on radio and television, we constantly see and
hear the messages for hundreds of different products and services. For
the most part, they are the kinds of things that we can be persuaded to
buy
–
food and drinks, cars and television sets, furniture and clothing,
travel and leisure time activities.
The simplest kind of advertising is the classified ad. Every day the
newspapers carry a few pages of these ads; in the large Sunday editions
there may be several sections of them. A classified ad is usually only a
few lines long. It is really a notice or announcement that something is
available.
Newspapers also carry a large amount of display advertising. Most of
it is for stores or for various forms of entertainment. Newspapers
generally reach an audience only in a limited area. To bring their
message to a larger audience, many who want to put out their ads use
national magazines. Many of the techniques of modern advertising
were developed in magazine ads. The use of bright colors, attractive
pictures,
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and short messages is all characteristic of magazine ads. The most
important purpose is to catch the eye. The message itself is usually
short,
often no more than a slogan which the public identifies with the
product.
The same techniques have been carried over into television
advertising. Voices and music have been added to color and pictures
to catch the ear as well as the eye. Television ads are short
–
usually
only
15,30, or 60 seconds, but they are repeated over and over again so
that the audience sees and hears them many times. Commercial television
has mixed entertainment and advertising. If you want the entertainment,
you have to put up with the advertising-and millions of people want the
entertainment.
The men and women in the sales department are responsible for the
company’s advertising, They must decide on the audience they want to

reach. They must also decide on the best way to get their message to
their particular audience. They also make an estimate of the costs
before management approves the plan. In most large companies management
is directly involved in planning the advertising.
03-A. The Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is one of the oceans that separate the Old World
from the New. For centuries it kept the Americas from being discovered
by the people of Europe.
Many wrong ideas about the Atlantic made early sailors unwilling to
sail far out into it. One idea was that it reached out to
the world.
Another idea was that at the equator the ocean would be boiling hot.
The Atlantic Ocean is only half as big as the Pacific, but it is
still very large. It is more than 4,000 miles (6,000 km) wide where
Columbus crossed it. Even at its narrowest it is about 2, 000 miles
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(3,200 km) wide. This narrowest place is between the bulge of south
America and the bulge of Africa.
Two things make the Atlantic Ocean rather unusual. For so large an
ocean it has very few islands. Also, it is the world's saltiest ocean.
There is so much water in the Atlantic that it is hard to imagine
how much there is. But suppose no more rain fell into it and no more
water was brought to it by rivers. It would take the ocean about 4,000
years to dry up. On the average the water is a little more than two
miles (3.2 km) deep, but in places it is much deeper. The deepest spot
is near Puerto Rico. This
km).
One of the longest mountain ranges of the world rises the floor of
the Atlantic. This mountain range runs north and south down the middle
of the ocean. The tops of a few of the mountains reach up above the sea
and make islands. The Azores are the tops of peaks in the mid-Atlantic
mountain range.
Several hundred miles eastward from Florida there is a part of the
ocean called the Sargasso Sea. Here the water is quiet, for there is
little wind. In the days of sailing vessels the crew were afraid they
would be becalmed here. Sometimes they were.
Ocean currents are sometime called

warm water. Another is the Labrador Current - cold water coming down
from the Arctic. Ocean currents affect the climates of the lands near
which they flow.
The Atlantic furnishes much food for the people on its shores. One
of its most famous fishing regions, the Grand Banks, is near
Newfoundland.
Today the Atlantic is a great highway. It is not, however, always a
smooth and safe one. Storms sweep across it and pile up great waves.
Icebergs float down from the Far North across the paths of ships.
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We now have such fast ways of traveling that this big ocean seems to
have grown smaller. Columbus sailed for more than two months to cross it.
A fast modern steamship can make the trip in less than four days.
Airplanes fly from New York to London in only eight hours and from South
America to Africa in four!
03-B. The Moon
We find that the moon is about 239,000 miles (384,551km) away from
the earth, and, to within a few thousand miles, its distance always
remains the same. Yet a very little observation shows that the moon is
not standing still. Its distance from the earth remains the same, but
its direction continually changes. We find that it is traveling in a
circle - or very nearly a circle - round the earth, going completely
round once a month, or, more exactly, once every 27 1/3 days. It is our
nearest neighbour in space, and like ourselves it is kept tied to the
earth by the earth's gravitational pull.
Except for the sun, the moon looks the biggest object in the sky.
Actually it is one of the smallest, and only looks big because it is so
near to us. Its diameter is only 2, 160 miles (3,389 km), or a little
more than a quarter of the diameter of the earth.
Once a month, or, more exactly, once every 29 1/2 days, at the time
we call
part of it appears bright, and we always find that this is the part
which faces towards the sun, while the part facing away from the sun
appears dark. Artists could make their pictures better if they kept in
mind -- only those parts of the moon which are lighted up by the sun are
bright. This shows that the moon gives no light of its own. It merely
reflects the light of the sun, like a huge mirror hung in the sky.
Yet the dark part of the moon’s surface is not absolutely black;
generally it is just light enough for us to be able to see its outline,
so that
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we speak of seeing
by which we see the old moon does not come from the sun, but from the
earth. we knows well how the surface of the sea or of snow, or even of a
wet road, may reflect uncomfortably much of the sun's light on to our
faces. In the same way the surface of the whole earth reflects enough of
the sun's light on to the face of the moon for us to be able to see the
parts of it which would otherwise be dark.
If there were any inhabitants of the moon, they would see our earth
reflecting the light of the sun, again like a huge mirror hung in
the sky. They would speak of earthlight just as we speak of moonlight.

moon in the new moon's arms
surface on which it is night, lighted up by earth light. In the same
way, the lunar inhabitants would occasionally see part of our earth in
full sunlight, and the rest lighted only by moonlight; they might call
this

04-A. Improving Your Memory
Psychological research has focused on a number of basic principles
that help memory: meaningfulness, organization, association, and
visualization. It is useful to know how these principles work.
Meaningfulness affects memory at all levels. Information that does
not make any sense to you is difficult to remember. There are several
ways in which we can make material more meaningful. Many people, for
instance, learn a rhyme to help them remember. Do you know the rhyme
―Thirty days has September, April, June, and November…? ‖ It helps
many people remember which months of the year have 30 days.
Organization also makes a difference in our ability to remember. How
useful would a library be if the books were kept in random order?
Material that is organized is better remembered than jumbled information.
One example of organization is chunking. Chunking
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consists of grouping separate bits of information. For example, the
number 4671363 is more easily remembered if it is chunked as 467,13,63.
Categorizing is another means of organization. Suppose you are asked to
remember the following list of words: man, bench, dog, desk, woman,
horse, child, cat, chair. Many people will group the words into similar
categories and remember them as follows: man, woman, child; cat, dog,
horse; bench, chair, desk. Needless to say, the second list
can be remembered more easily than the first one.
Association refers to taking the material we want to remember and
relating it to something we remember accurately. In memorizing a number,
you might try to associate it with familiar numbers or events. For
example, the height of Mount Fuji in Japan - 12, 389 feet - might be
remembered using the following associations: 12 is the number of months
in the year, and 389 is the number of days in a year(365) added to the
number of months twice (24).
The last principle is visualization. Research has shown striking
improvements in many types of memory tasks when people are asked to
visualize the items to be remembered. In one study, subjects in one
group were asked to learn some words using imagery, while the second
group used repetition to learn the words. Those using imagery remembered
80 to 90 percent of the words, compared with 30 to 40 percent of the
words for those who memorized by repetition. Thus forming an integrated
image with all the information placed in a single mental picture can
help us to preserve a memory.
04-B. Short-term Memory
There are two kinds of memory: shore-term and long-term. Information
in long-term memory can be recalled at a later time when it is needed.
The information may be kept for days or weeks. Sometimes
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information in the long-term memory is hard to remember. Students
taking exam often have this experience. In contrast, information in
shore- term memory is kept for only a few seconds, usually by repeating
the information over and over. For example, you look up a number in the
telephone book, and before you dial, you repeat the number over and over.
If someone interrupts you, you will probably forget the number. In
laboratory studies, subjects are unable to remember three letters after
eighteen seconds if they are not allowed to repeat the letters to
themselves.
Psychologists study memory and learning with both animal and human
subjects. The two experiments here show how short-term memory has been
studied.
Dr. Hunter studied short- term memory in rats. He used a special
apparatus which had a cage for the rat and three doors, There was a
light in each door. First the rat was placed in the closed cage. Next,
one of the lights was turned on and then off. There was food for the rat
only at this door. After the light was turned off, the rat had to wait a
short time before it was released from its cage. Then, if it went to the
correct door, it was rewarded with the food that was there. Hunter did
this experiment many times. He always turned on the lights in a random
order. The rat had to wait different intervals before it was released
from the cage. Hunter found that if the rat had to wait more than ten
seconds, it could not remember the correct door. Hunter's results show
that rats have a short-term memory of about ten seconds.
Later, Dr. Henning studied how students who are learning English as
a second language remember vocabulary. The subjects in his experiment
were 75 students at the University of California in Los Angeles. They
represented all levels of ability in English; beginning, intermediate,
advanced, and native-speaking students.
To begin, the subjects listened to a recording of a native speaker
reading a paragraph in English. Following the recording, the subjects
took a 15-question test to see which words they remembered. Each
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question had four choices. The subjects had to circle the word they
had heard in the recording. Some of the questions had four choices that
sound alike. For example, weather, whether, wither, and wetter are four
words that sound alike. Some of the questions had four choices that
have the same meaning. Method, way, manner, and system would be four
words with the same meaning. Some of them had four unrelated choices.
For instance, weather, method, love, and result could be used as four
unrelated words. Finally the subjects took a language proficiency
test.
Henning found that students with a lower proficiency in English made
more of their mistakes on words that sound alike; students with a higher
proficiency made more of their mistakes on words that have the same
meaning. Henning’s results suggest that beginning students hold

the sound of words in their short- term memory, while advanced
students hold the meaning of words in their short-term memory.
05-A. Fallacies about Food
Many primitive peoples believed that by eating an animal they could
get some of the good qualities of that animal for themselves. They
thought, for example, that eating deer would make them run as fast as
the deer. Some savage tribes believed that eating enemies that had shown
bravery in battle would make them brave. Man-eating may have started
because people were eager to become as strong and brave as their enemies.
Among civilized people it was once thought that ginger root by some
magical power could improve the memory. Eggs were thought to make the
voice pretty. Tomatoes also were believed to have magical powers. They
were called love apples and were supposed to make people who ate them
fall in love.
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Later another wrong idea about tomatoes grew up - the idea that they
were poisonous. How surprised the people who thought tomatoes poisonous
would be if they could know that millions of pounds of tomatoes were
supplied to soldiers overseas during World War II.
Even today there are a great many wrong ideas about food. Some
of them are very widespread.
One such idea is that fish is the best brain food. Fish is good
brain food just as it is good muscle food and skin food and bone food.
But no one has been able to prove that fish is any better for the brain
than many
other kinds of food.
Another such idea is that you should not drink water with meals.
Washing food down with water as a substitute for chewing is not a good
idea, but some water with meals has been found to be helpful. It makes
the digestive juices flow more freely and helps to digest the food.
Many of the ideas which scientists tell us have no foundation have
to do with mixtures of foods. A few years ago the belief became general
that orange juice and milk should never be drunk at the same meal. The
reason given was that the acid in the orange juice would make the milk
curdle and become indigestible. As a matter of fact, milk always meets
in the stomach a digestive juice which curdles it; the curdling of the
milk is the first step in its digestion. A similar wrong idea is that
fish and ice cream when eaten at the same meal form a poisonous
combination.
Still another wrong idea about mixing foods is that proteins and
carbohydrates should never be eaten at the same meal. Many people think
of bread, for example, as a carbohydrate food. It is chiefly a
carbohydrate food, but it also contains proteins. In the same way, milk,
probably the best single food, contains both proteins and carbohydrates.
It is just as foolish to say that one should never eat meat and potatoes
together as it is to say that one should never eat bread or drink milk.
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05-B. Do Animals Think?
The question has often been asked, Do animals think? I believe that
some of them think a great deal. Many of them are like children in their
sports. We notice this to be true very often with dogs and cats; but it
is true with other animals as well.
Some birds are very lively in their sports; and the same is true
with some insects. The ants, hardworking as they are, have their times
for play. They run races; they wrestle; and sometimes they have mock
fights together. Very busy must be their thoughts while engaged in these
sports.
There are many animals, however, that never play; their thoughts
seem to be of the more sober kind. We never see frogs engaged in sport.
They all the time appear to be very grave. The same is true of the owl,
who always looks as if he were considering some important question.
Animals think much while building their houses. The bird searches
for what it can use in building its nest, and in doing this it thinks.
The
beavers think as they build their dams and their houses. They think
in getting their materials, and also in arranging them, and in
plastering them together with mud. Some spiders build houses which could
scarcely have been made except by some thinking creature.
As animals think, they learn. Some learn more than others. The
parrot learns to talk, though in some other respects it is quite stupid.
The mocking bird learns to imitate a great many different sounds. The
horse is not long in learning many things connected with the work which
he has to do. The shepherd dog does not know as much about most things
as some other dogs , and yet he understands very well how to take care
of sheep.
Though animals think and learn, they do not make any real
improvement in their ways of doing things, as men do. Each kind of bird
has its own way of building a nest, and it is always the same way. And
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so of other animals. They have no new fashions, and learn none from
each other. But men, as you know, are always finding new ways of
building houses, and improved methods of doing almost all kinds of labor.
Many of the things that animals know how to do they seem to know
either without learning, or in some way which we cannot understand. They
are said to do such things by instinct; but no one can tell what
instinct is. It is by this instinct that birds build their nests and
beavers their dam and huts. If these things were all planned and thought
out just as men plan new houses. there would be some changes in the
fashions of them, and some improvements.
I have spoken of the building instinct of beavers. An English
gentleman caught a young one and put him at first in a cage. After a
while he let him out in a room where there was a great variety of things.
As soon as he was let out he began to exercise his building instinct. He
gathered together whatever he could find, brushes, baskets, boots,
clothes, sticks, bits of coal, etc., and arranged them as if to build a
dam. Now, if he had had his wits about him, he would have known that
there was no use in building a dam where there was no water.
It is plain that, while animals learn about things by their senses
as we do, they do not think nearly as much about what they learn, and
this is the reason why they do not improve more rapidly. Even the wisest
of them, as the elephant and the dog, do not think very much about what
they see and hear. Nor is this all. There are some thing that we
understand, but about which animals know nothing. They have no
knowledge of anything that happens outside of their own observation.
Their minds are so much unlike ours that they do not know the
difference between right and wrong.
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06-A. Diamonds
Diamonds are rare, beautiful, and also quite useful. They are the
hardest substance found in nature. That means a diamond can cut any
other surface. And only another diamond can make a slight cut in a
diamond.
Diamonds are made from carbon. Carbon is found in all living things,
both plant and animal. Much of the carbon in the earth comes from things
that once lived.
Scientists know that the combination of extreme heat and pressure
changes carbon into diamonds. Such heat and pressure exist only in the
hot, liquid mass of molten rock deep inside the earth. It is thought
that millions of years ago this liquid mass pushed upward through cracks
in the earth’s crust. As the liquid cooled, the carbon changed into
diamond
crystals.
There are only four areas where very many diamonds have been found.
The first known area was in India, where diamonds were found
thousands of years ago. In the 1600’s, travelers from Europe brought
back these beautiful stones from India. Diamonds became very popular
with the kings and queens of Europe.
In
the 1720’s, diamonds were discovered in Brazil. This discovery
came at a good time, too. India’s supply of diamonds was finally
running out after 2,500 years of mining the stones.
In the 1800’s, two other important areas were found in Russia and
South Africa. Today, most diamonds used in industry come from Russia.
Most diamonds used as gems come from South Africa. Only 25 percent of
all diamonds mined are good enough for cutting into gems.
Most of the diamonds in India were found in stream beds. People
would pick up handfuls of gravel from the bottom of the streams and
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sort out the diamonds. These diamonds were probably carried from
where they were formed to India by great sheets of moving ice that
covered parts of the earth 20,000 years ago.
Most diamonds today are not found in stream beds, however. They are
mined from rock formations deep inside the earth called pipes.
Scientists believe that these are parts of volcanoes that were formed
when molten rock pushed upward through the earth’s crust. The
hard rock
in which diamonds are found is called blue ground, because it is
somewhat blue. The blue ground is blasted into large pieces of rock
which are carried to the surface by elevator. Then the rocks are
carefully crushed so that the diamonds are not destroyed. Next, the
crushed material is taken over to washing tables. Here, it flows over
boards thickly coated with grease. Since diamonds stick to grease, they
are left behind by the rocks and mud which flow down the tables.
Diamonds, as they are found, do not look very impressive. They are
gray, greasy-looking pebbles. Experienced diamond miners can tell a
diamond immediately. But some people have carried around an unusual
pebble for weeks before finding out that they had got a diamond.
06-B. The difference between plants and animals
if you were asked, ―what is the difference between plants and
animals?‖ what answer do you think you would give? Your first thought

might be that a plant has leaves and roots and flowers, which an
animal has not. Yet that would not be correct; for there are many plants
which have neither roots nor leaves nor flowers, while there are some
animals which seem to have all three.
Look up into the sky, and then down at the earth beneath your feet,
It is easy enough, you think, to tell which is earth and which is sky;
but if you live in the wide, open country, or near the sea, you will
often find when you look far away to the place where sky and earth seem
to meet,
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that this is a matter of some difficulty. You see only the thin blue
haze, like smoke, which is the dividing line between the heavens and the
earth. But just where the one ends and the other begins, you cannot tell.
Just so it is throughout al the world of Nature. You may look at a
group of cows standing under the trees or catch a bee at his early drink
in a morning-glory bell, and you would laugh if any one should ask you
whether you can tell an animal from a plant.
But suppose you turn aside from these familiar, everyday things, and
study objects which you have to look at through a magnifying glass, and
you will find many things that will puzzle you. You will find plants
without roots, leaves, flowers, or seeds; and you will find animals
without heads, legs, eyes, mouths, or stomachs.
Students of Nature are not satisfied with guessing, but they observe,
day after day, the changes which take place in an object; and they see
many things which most people would fail to see. And thus they have
found that the real difference between plants and animals lies in what
they do, and not in what they seem to be.
We now know that about one fourth of all the kinds of seaweed are
animals. A few years age all of them were classed as plants. It was long
supposed that the main difference between animals and plants was that
the former could move about while the latter could not. But this
difference will not hold good.
How then are we to know whether a living object is a plant or an
animal? Plants can live on inorganic matter; they have the power of
changing earth and air and water into substances which enter into and
become a part of themselves. Animals can live only on what plants have
already turned from inorganic to vegetable matter. Animals, although
they need some inorganic food, cannot live on it alone.
All the food that keeps our bodies strong, or makes them grow, was
once in the vegetable form. No bird nor fish nor other animal could ever
have lived on this earth, if the plants had not come first and fitted it
for
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the dwelling place of a higher order of beings.
Plants are the true fairies that are forever working wonders around
us. Their roots dig down into the earth and gather its treasures. Their
leaves spread their broad surfaces to the air and take m its riches; and
out of what they have thus gathered they produce the beautiful flowers,
the delicious fruits, and the golden grain.
Let us study more closely the way in which a plant grows. The root
pushes itself down into the earth. If it finds no water, it soon dies.
If it finds water, it begins to suck it up and change it into sap
Besides the water, it takes up such parts of the soil as are dissolved
in the water.
Here, then, you see in what ways the food of the plant is different
from that of animals.
07-A. Families
―Family‖—
the word has different meanings for different people,
and even the dictionary gives us several definitions :―a group of
people related by blood or marriage,‖ ―two adults and their
children,‖ ―all those people descended from a common ancestor,‖ ―a
household,‖ and so on

Some people think of a family as a mother, a father, and their
children; others include grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. For
some of us, family means the group of relatives living far away from
home. For others, having a family simply means having children. Some
families have long histories, while others know very little about their
ancestors. No matter if it is young or old, large or small, traditional
or modern, every family has a sense of what a family is. It is that
feeling of belonging, of love and security that comes from living
together, helping and sharing.
There are basically two types of families: nuclear families and
extended families. The nuclear family usually consists of two parents
(mother and father) and their children. The mother and father form the
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nucleus, or center, of the nuclear family. The children stay in the
nuclear family until they grow up and marry. Then form new nuclear
families.
The extended family is very large. There are often many nuclear
families in one extended family. An extended family includes children
parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. The members of an
extended family are related by blood (grandparent, parents, children,
brothers, sisters, etc.) or by marriage (husbands, wives, mothers-in-law,
etc). They are all related, so the members of an extended family are
called relatives.
Traditionally, all the members of an extended family lived in the
same area. However, with the change from an agricultural to an
industrial society, many nuclear families moved away from the family
home in order to find work. In industrial societies today, the members
of most nuclear families live together, but most extended families do
not live together. Therefore we can say that the nuclear family becomes
more important than the extended family as the society industrializes.
In post-industrial societies like the United States, even the
nuclear family is changing. The nuclear family is becoming smaller as
parents want fewer children, and the number of childless families is
increasing. Traditionally, the father of a nuclear family earned money
for the family while the mother cared for the house and the children.
Today more than 50% of the nuclear families in the United States are
two-earner families
–
both the father and the mother earn money for the
family
–
and in a
few families the mother earns the money while the father takes care
of the house and the children. Many nuclear families are also
―splitting up‖ –
more and more parents are getting divorced.
What will be the result of this ―splitting‖ of the nuclear family?
Social scientists now talk of two new family forms: the single parent
family and the remarried family. Almost 20% of all American families are
single parent families, and in 85% of these families the single parent
is the mother. Most single parents find it very difficult to take care
of a family alone, so they soon marry again and form remarried families.
As
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social scientists study these two new family form, they will be able
to tell us more about the future of the nuclear family in the post-
industrial age.
07-B. The Changing American Family
The family is important to people all over the world although the
structure of the family is quite different from one country to another.
In the United States, as in many countries in the world, the family is
changing. A generation or two ago, the traditional family, in which the
father was boss, was customary. Now, the modern family, in which both
the father and the mother are equal partners, is more common. Although
there are several similarities between the traditional and the modern
family, there are also some very important differences.
The traditional family of yesterday and the modern family of today
have several similarities. The traditional family was a nuclear family,
and the modern family is, too. The role of the father in the traditional
family was to provide for his family. Similarly, the father in the
modern family is expected to do so, also. The mother in the traditional
family took care of the children’s physical and
emotional needs just as
the modern mother does.
On the other hand, there are some great differences between the
traditional family and the modern family. The first important difference
is in the man’s role. the traditional husband was the head of the
household, because he was the only one who worked outside the home. If
the wife worked for pay, then the husband was not considered to be a
good provider. In many families today, both husband and wife work for
pay. Therefore, they share the role of head of household. In addition,
the traditional husband usually made the big decisions about spending
money. However, the modern husband shares these decisions with his
working wife. Also, the traditional husband did not help his wife with
the housework or meal preparation. Dinner was ready when he came
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home. In contrast, the modern husband helps his working wife at home.
He may do some of the household jobs, and it is not unusual for him to
cook.
The second difference is in the woman’s role. In the traditional
family, the woman may have worked for pay during her first years of
marriage. However, after she became pregnant, she would usually give up
her job. Her primary role was to take care of her family and home. In
contrast, in many families today, the modern woman works outside the
home even after she has children . She's doing two jobs instead of one,
so she is busier than the traditional mother was. The traditional wife
learned to live within her husband's income. On the other hand, the
modern wife does not have to because the family has two incomes.
The final difference is in the role of the children. In the
traditional family, the children were taken care of by the mother
because she did not work outside the home. However, today preschool
children may go to a child care center or to a baby-sitter regularly
because the mother works. The school-age children of a traditions family
were more dependent. their mother was there to help them to get ready
for school and to make their breakfast. In contrast, modern children are
more independent. They have to get up early in the morning and get ready
for school. Their mother is busy getting ready for work, so they may
even have to make their own breakfast.
In conclusion, the American family of today is different from the
family of fifty years ago. In the modern family, the roles of the father,
mother, and children have changed as more and more women work outside
the home. The next century may bring more important changes to the
American family structure. It should be interesting to see.
mmunication via Satellite
At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were four powerful
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means of transmitting and receiving information over long distances:
print, photography, telegraph and telephone. By the middle of the
century, both radio and television had become established means of
transmitting sound and/or pictures. In 1964, the Olympic Games in Tokyo
became the first program to be transmitted via satellite.
In order to transmit an event such as the Olympics via satellite,
television signals are first changed into radio waves, which are then
sent from a station on earth to an orbiting satellite. The satellite
receives the radio waves and sends them back to earth, where another
station picks them up and changes them back into television signals.
Because any form of sound or visual information can be changed into
radio waves, satellites are capable of transmitting not only television
broadcasts, but telephone calls and printed materials such as books and
magazines.
The combination of satellites, which transmit information, computers,
which store information, and television, which displays information,
will change every home into an education and
entertainment center. In theory, every person will have access to an
unlimited amount of information.
Another important use of telecommunication satellites was
demonstrated in 1974 when the
educational programs to classes in remote areas of the United States. In
1975, many people in India saw television for the first time as they
watched programs about agriculture and health.
The satellite also demonstrated how it could provide help to people
living in isolated areas where transportation is difficult. For example,
a health worker in an isolated area was able to transmit pictures of a
patient s wound to a doctor far away. He was then able to follow the
doctor's instructions on how to care for the patient.
The most common use of telecommunication satellites, however, has
been for transmitting telephone calls. Most of them trave1 40, 000 miles
to a satellite and then back to earth. Ten years ago, a satellite was
capable of receiving and transmitting more than 3?000 telephone
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conversations simultaneously. Now a single satellite is able to
transmit over 100,000 conversations as well as several hundred
television channels - all at the same time.
Telecommunication can make information from around the world
available to use quickly and easily, but some people worry that this may
be a risk to our privacy. If personal information is stored in computers,
then it may be easily transmitted via satellite to anyone who can pay
for the service.
Another worry is that telecommunication systems may isolate people
from each other. When people are able to shop from their homes, do their
banking without leaving the house, watch any movie they want on their
television, as well as get any information they need, then there will
not be as much contact between people.
It is important to realize that the same technology that helps us
may also harm us. We can prevent this from happening by carefully
controlling the new technology. As one telecommunication expert says,
―We must remember that technology alone is not the answer…It is the
intelligent application of technology that will lead us to success.
08-
people Don’t know about Air

The air around us is important to everyone. Without air, we could
not exist. Everyone understands that. But air is necessary in many other
ways - ways that are not always so obvious or widely known.
For example, if we did not have air, there would be no sound. Sound
travels through air. Where there is no air, there is no sound. Without
air, there would be no fire. There would be no cars or trucks, since
motors need air in order to work.
Without air, there would be no wind or clouds. There would be no
weather, as we know it. The night time would be very cold and the days
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very hot. We would be forced to seek shelter from the sun, as there
would be no atmosphere to protect us from the sun's deadly rays.
The atmosphere is all the air surrounding the earth. Atmospheric
pressure is the weight of all that air against the surface of the earth.
If we did not have atmospheric pressure, we could not have automobile
tires. The tires would burst if they did not have the pressure of the
atmosphere against their surfaces.
Large and powerful, the atmosphere consists of an ocean of gases
hundreds of miles high. It presses down on out bodies with a force of
more than fourteen pounds per square inch. The narrow column of air
which rests upon our shoulders weighs almost 2,000 pounds. But our
bodies are built in such a way that this weight does not crush us.
In this huge ocean of air there is more energy than in all the coal,
oil, and gas we have on earth. Electrical energy is collected in the
atmosphere as water is collected and stored in a dam. The existence of
electricity in the air has been known for centuries. Men have gazed in
wonder at the bright patterns of lightning in storm clouds. But a
thorough study of electricity in the atmosphere was not possible until
the development of radio and radar.
One scientist, Dr. Sydney Chapman, has tried to explain the electric
field which surrounds the earth. He believes that the great storms on
the sun create large amounts of electric energy. This energy is
contained in a very light gas called hydrogen. The earth pulls the gas
toward it, and a ring is formed around the earth several thousand feet
above its surface. the great space ring is a powerful current of
electrical energy. Sometimes the ring comes down and curves into the
lower atmosphere, causing strange electrical effects.
Dr. Chapman's ideas explain many things. It has long been known that
there is an electric field inside the earth. It moves in much the same
manner as the electric energy contained in the atmosphere. Scientists
now believe that the electric energy in the atmosphere causes the
electric energy inside the earth to flow.
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If we can learn to control the energy in the atmosphere, we will
have an unending supply of energy. Many scientists are trying to learn
how to control it. In the meantime, even those of us who are not
scientists have begun to pay attention to air. We realize that air does
not contain the same elements that it contained years ago. Automobiles,
airplanes, factories, and atomic explosions have added dust and waste
gases to the atmosphere. It is time to learn how to protect our
atmosphere, the roof over the world of man.
09-A. Learned words and popular words
In every cultivated language there are two great classes of words
which, taken together, make up the whole vocabulary. First, there are
those words with which we become familiar in ordinary conversation,
which we learn, that is to say, from the members of our own family and
from our friends, and which we should know and use even if we could

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