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 the 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 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 "yes” and we move our heads from side to side when we want to say "no." People 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 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, "Bring me something to eat." The waiter soon brought him a cup of tea. 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 wasn’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-sh-sh” when we mean "keep silent.” When babies laugh, we know they are 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-f-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 "I am angry,” but he cannot say first "I” and then "am” and then "angry.” A parrot can talk like a man; it can 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.
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 "death" market, but many people feel that the United States leads 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 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, 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 edge of the world." Sailors were afraid that they might sail right off the earth. 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 (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 "deep"
30, 246 feet - almost six miles (9.6 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 "rivers in the sea." One of
these "river" in the Atlantic is called the Gulf Stream. It is a current of 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.
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 "full moon," its whole disc looks bright. At other times only 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 we speak of seeing "the old moon in the new moon's arms." The light 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. "The old moon in the new moon's arms" is nothing but that part of the moon's 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 "the old earth in the new earth's arms.”
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 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 information in the long-term memory is hard to remember. Students taking exam often have this experience. [url=]In contrast[/url][zzg1]
, 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 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.
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 thanmany 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.
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 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 donot know the difference between right and wrong.
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 [url=]running out[/url][zzg2]
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 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, 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 [url=]turn aside from [/url][zzg3]
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 [url=]take place [/url][zzg4]
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 [url=]hold good[/url][zzg5]
.
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 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. [url=]No matter [/url][zzg6]
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 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 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 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.
08-A.Telecommunication via Satellite
At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were four powerful 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 pi[url=]cks them up [/url][zzg7]
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 "Teacher in Sky" satellite transmitted 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 patients 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 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-B.What 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 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 [url=]rests upon [/url][zzg8]
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.
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 not read or write. They concern the common things of life, and are the stock in trade of all who speak the language. Such words may be called “popular,” since they belong to the people at large and are not the possession of limited class only.
On the other hand, our language includes a large number of words which are relatively seldom used in ordinary conversation. Their meanings are known to every educated person, but there is little occasion to use them at home. Our first acquaintance with them comes not from our mother's lips or from the talk of our classmates, but from books that we read, lectures that we hear, or the more formal conversation of highly educated speakers who are discussing some particular topic in an elevated style. Such words are called "learned", and the difference between them and "popular" words is of great importance to a right understanding of language.
The difference between popular and learned words may be easily seen in a few examples. We may describe a girl as “lively” or as "vivacious." In the first case, we are using a native English word formed from the familiar noun life. In the latter, we are using a Latin derivative which has exactly the same meaning. Yet the atmosphere of the two words is quite different. No one ever got the adjective lively out of a book. It is a part of everybody's vocabulary. We cannot remember a time when we did not know it, and we feel sure that we learned it long before we were able to read. On the other hand, we must have passed several years of our lives before learning the word vivacious. We may even remember the first time that we saw it in print or heard it from some grown-up friend. Both lively and vivacious are good English words, but Lively is popular and vivacious is learned.
The terms "popular" and "learned,” as applied to words, are not absolute definitions. No two persons have the same stock of words, and the same word may be "popular" in one man's vocabulary and "learned
in another's. There are also different grades of "popularity." Still, the classification into "learned" and "popular" is convenient and sound. Different opinions may come up as to the classification of any particular word, but there can be no difference of opinion about the general principle. We must be careful, however, to avoid misconception. When we call a word "popular," we do not mean that it is a favorite word, but simply that it belongs to the people as a whole that is, it is everybody's word, not the possession of a limited number. When we call a word "learned” we do not mean that it is used by learned persons alone, but simply that its presence in the English vocabulary is due to books and the cultivation of literature rather than to the actual needs of ordinary conversation.
09-B. How Should You Build Up Your Vocabulary
Through context
When students in a college class were asked what should be done when they [url=]come across [/url][zzg9]
a new word in their reading, 84 percent said, “Look it up in the dictionary.” if you do, however, you interrupt the very mental processes needed to make your efforts most productive.
But there’s another reason. Suppose someone asks you what the word "fast" means. You answer, "swift." But does it mean that in such contexts as "fast color," "fast woman," or "fast friend"? And if a horse is fast, is it securely tied or running at top speed? It could be either. It all depends. On the dictionary? No, on context - on how the word is actually used. After all there are twenty different meanings for "fast" in the dictionary. But the dictionary doesn’t tell you which meaning is intended. That's why it makes such good sense to begin with context.
Through Word Parts
Now for the next step. Often new words contain one or more parts, which, if recognized, provide specific help with meaning. Suppose you read that someone "had a preference for reading travel books." The context certainly isn’t too helpful. But do you see a prefix, suffix, or root that you know? Well, there's the familiar prefix pre-, meaning "before. Look back at the context and cry inserting "before." Reading travel books apparently comes "before” other kinds of reading. Yes, a preference is something put "before" something else.
Your second step, then, is to look for familiar word parts. If they do not give you exact meanings, they should at least bring you much closer.
Now you can see why you should consult the dictionary last, not first. You looked carefully at context. You've looked for familiar word parts. Now you play Sherlock Holmes - an exciting role. You guess. What exactly does that strange word mean? Only when you go through the mental exercises to come up with a tentative definition should you open the dictionary to see if you're right.
After all, those first two steps or approaches spark a stronger than usual interest in that dictionary definition. You're now personally involved. Did you find out the word meaning? Your heightened interest will lead to better memory of both word and meaning. It also encourages your development of the habits needed to speed your progress. And when you see in black and white the definition you had expected, what a feeling of success is yours. In that way, the CPD Formula provides you with maximum effectiveness.
Well, there it is, your new formula - Context, Parts, Dictionary. Use it! The exercises which follow will give you specific, step-by-step help in sharpening your awareness of contextual clues, learning the most useful word parts, and using the dictionary with increased accuracy and ease. The results will be like money in the bank.
10-A. Scientific Attitudes
Science had its beginning when man started asking questions about his environment. He wondered where the sun went at night and why the sky was blue. He questioned why the wind blew and the leaves fell. He sought answers to these and other questions. Not all his answers were correct, but at least he did want to know.
Curiosity and Imagination
Science began to develop rapidly when man laid aside his wrong beliefs and begs to seek true explanations. Young children are curious about how things work. The child wants to take apart a watch to see what makes it work.
Benjamin Franklin wondered about lightning He combined his curiosity with imagination and carried out his well-known experiment to show that lightning and an electric spark are the same thing. Curiosity and
imagination are important qualities which help stimulate the discovery of new facts and advance science.
Belief in Cause and Effect
Scientifically minded people believe in a "cause-and-effect" relationship. They feel there is a perfectly natural explanation for everything. For example, there is a good reason why some leaves turn red and others yellow in the fall. Changes such as these, which are easily observed, are called phenomena.
Some common phenomena, however,
are not completely understood. Still others cannot be explained at all at this time. In cases where the explanation is unknown the scientific point of view is that there is a reason if it can only be discovered.
Being Open - Minded
Open-mindedness is also extremely important to a scientific attitude. This means the ability to face the facts as they are regardless of what one has previously thought. It includes an ability to accept new and sometimes even disagreeable ideas. The worker in science must face facts whether they are pleasant or unpleasant. He must expect many failures and be willing to try again. Thomas Edison failed thousands of times before he succeeded in producing the first electric lamp.
The solutions to real problems cannot be seen in advance. Scientists must be able to change their thinking and to adapt their theories to new facts as they are discovered. The mind cannot be made up once and for all. New knowledge may make a change in thinking necessary. This is another way of saying that man's understanding is always less than perfect. What is accepted as true often is relatively, and not absolutely, true. A scientific truth offers an explanation that is acceptable only in the light of what is known at a particular time.
Respect for the Views of Others
Another part of a scientific attitude is respect for the views of others. This is easy when these views are like one's own. The difficulty comes up when their ideas are different. Views which are entirely new or foreign may also be hard to accept.
New ideas are frequently very slow to be accepted. Scientists such as Galileo, Louis Pasteur, and Edward Jenner were laughed at because they held theories that were not accepted. Respect for new ideas is important for continued progress in all fields of knowledge
Opinions on Evidence
Sometimes evidence is not complete. It may take time for new facts to become available. When they are available, a person may have to change his mind. New findings may also require a “wait-and-see” attitude. For example, there is an experiment on the sprouting of seeds which has been running for more than 50 years. The purpose is to determine how long a time can be buried in the ground and still grow when proper conditions for growth exist.
10-B. Solving Problems Scientifically
There are scientific ways in which man solves problems. Once his curiosity has been aroused, he uses certain methods and procedures to obtain new knowledge and greater understanding. Although the methods are not always the same, there are usually certain elements in the procedures that are similar.
Recognizing the Problem
Problems must first of all be recognized. The right answers can be obtained only if the right questions are asked. A thoroughly understood problem is well started toward solution. Problems arise in a variety of ways. Sometimes they grow out of a chance observation. They may result from reading, from laboratory experiments, or simply from thinking. They also may result from new developments or from new or different human needs. Today, for example, problems are arising from new discoveries in the fields of nuclear physics, biological engineering and microelectronics. The development of industry has also brought about large numbers of problems which have to be solved.
Collecting Information
Next, the scientist tries to learn as much as possible about it. Often this means going to the library and studying books which contain accounts of man’s experience and knowledge of the problem. This is called searching the literature.
The scientist may find that others have already solved all or a part of the problem. Occasionally he finds answers to closely related questions, which give clues for solving the new one. In his search the scientist
accumulates much background information. With these new ideas and facts he builds a firm foundation for solving the problem.
Organizing the Information
After the scientist has finished this part of his work he will probably take the many facts which he has collected and organize them into some kind of system. This may be a logical classification or it may be a mathematical analysis. Usually the analysis will show unanswered questions. Sometimes it will suggest areas that are in need of further study. Perhaps one of the most important results of such an analysis is that it indicates certain truths, which generally are called inferences.
Making a Hypothesis
In making an inference the scientist has built up a hypothesis. A hypothesis is only a "best” guess. It must next be tested.
If it is correct, then certain things should follow. This means if a particular experiment is carried out, certain observations ought to be possible or it should be possible to make certain predictions.
Should the observations or predictions turn out to be as expected, the scientist has added confidence in the probable truth of his hypothesis. If, however, observations cannot be made or the predictions are unreliable, then the hypothesis will probably be given up or at least modified.
The Experiment
The hypothesis must check with the facts. Scientific facts are
usually established by work in the laboratory. Experiments have to be
made under carefully controlled conditions. Thorough and accurate records must be kept.
In making certain kinds of experiments in science variables are used. A variable is something which has different values under different conditions. In one type of laboratory test all the variables but one are controlled. This method of testing is called controlled experimentation.
11-A. The Great American Garage Sale
Not long ago, Charles Erickson and his family decided to do some spring housecleaning. Sorting through their possessions, they came up with some 1,500 old, unwanted items - all sorts of things they wanted to get rid of. The Ericksons decided to do what a lot of other Americans are doing these days -- have a “garage sale.” They posted homemade signs throughout the neighborhood, ran an advertisement in the local newspaper, then set out the unwanted objects on the front yard of their home in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and waited to see if any one would come. The Ericksons needn’t have worried. Eager buyers bought all but 50 of the items in one weekend, leaving the family $442 richer.
Garage sale, yard sale, basement sale - whatever they're called and wherever they're held, Americans are having them in ever-increasing numbers.
The variety of things put up for sale is really wonderful - dishes, books, used clothing, tools, tires, empty bottles, bicycles, furniture. A man in Atlanta, Georgia, even sold a full-size replica of a 1931 Ford.
"You wouldn't believe the stuff people will buy,” says Mrs. Jerry McNeely of Houston, Texas, who has held two garage sales with friends. "On the other hand, you wouldn’t believe some of the things people will put out to sell.”
Why would Americans want to shop by searching among someone else’s castoffs?
Rising living costs are considered by almost everyone as a reason both for holding sales and for attending them. The seller makes a little extra money and the buyer saves quite a lot, since garage-sale items usually are priced at a very small part of their original cost.
But beyond that, they’re fun. Garage sales have become suburban social events, drawing people of all ages. Neighbors enjoy meeting new people, and some families even serve drinks and cakes. One psychologist suggests that people are fed up with the computerization of their lives - they may be searching for their roots. Many of the younger buyers say they are turned off by the poor quality of modern goods and are looking for remnants of a stronger and firmer era, when things were built to last.
Some people have made garage-sale shopping into a hobby; they spend their weekends going from sale to sale, hoping to run across a real treasure. Says one long-time weekend bargain hunter, "In the back of your mind you have the hope of finding some fabulous painting stored away somewhere or something else of great value for a bargain price.
Diana McLellan, a reporter for the Washington Star-News, wrote, "The garage sale is like the quality of mercy - it blesseth him that gives and him that takes. It separates clothes, toys, pots, cups, forks and knives from their reluctant owners and places them in loving new homes.”
How long will all this enthusiasm continue? Says one recent seller, “Some day the people who are buying are bound to be faced with the same problem we had – getting rid of this stuff.”
11-B. American Stores
In the United States you will find yourself being urged from every page of every newspaper and on practically every television station to buy all kinds of goods that you are actually quite happy without.
Not only is there a wide range of prices for goods in America, there is also a wide range in the quality of goods offered for sale. Unlike some countries, Americans generally pay the price of a product without question, instead of trying to get a lower price by bargaining. However, there are many "sales” in the United States, during which time stores will lower their normal prices. This may all be very confusing to the visitor. Which is the best product to buy out of hundreds to choose from? How are you going to know how to "get your money's worth” when you shop? Perhaps the best advice is: Don't hurry. Visit various stories and determine the quality of goods. Examine them carefully. Read the advertisements so that you can compare prices. Explore and examine before you buy.
There is a great variety of shops in the United States, ranging from very large stores called "department stores,” offering clothing, furniture, household goods as well as many other goods, to very small shops that specialize in just one kind of product. There are "discount houses”
offering goods at low prices, and “dime stores” specializing in a wide range of inexpensive items.
Most department stores in large cities carry average to better quality products at average to higher prices. However, they offer the shopper great convenience since they contain such a wide variety of products.
If convenience isn't as important to you as price, you may want to shop in some of the discount houses. These stores have nearly as great a variety of goods as department stores, but offer lower prices. They can do so for several reasons. They don't offer the same services to buyers that department stores do; there may be fewer sales people; and the store probably doesn't deliver purchases.
There are many small shops in America, as there are everywhere, that offer a more limited quantity of products. Usually run by a small number of salespeople, these shops offer products that range from inexpensive to very expensive, depending on the shop. You are likely to receive more attention from the sales-people in small shops than in department stores.
Another popular shop is the "dime store,” sometimes referred to as the "five and ten.” No longer selling many things for five or ten cents, these stores got their name in the last century when it was decided that a small profit on a great quantity of goods would be better than a large profit on fewer sales. Dime stores specialize in a wide variety of inexpensive items and today, prices range from a quarter or 50 cents up to several dollars. If you need a small item and don’t want to spend very much, the dime store is likely to have just what you are looking for.
The United States is also known for its "supermarkets,” where huge quantities of all kinds of food and household articles are sold. These stores offer good quality food at lower prices than smaller food stores.
The vast majority of Americans do all their food shopping in supermarkets. One of the most interesting sections to visit is the frozen food section. With discoveries in methods to preserve food, almost every kind of food can be frozen and yet keep its original flavor. Since frozen foods require so little time to cook, they have naturally become very popular everywhere in the country.
12-A. How Dictionaries Are Made
It is widely believed that every word has a correct meaning, that we learn these meanings mainly from teachers and grammarians, and that dictionaries and grammars are the supreme authority in matters of meaning and usage. Few people ask by what authority the writers of dictionaries and grammars say what they say. I once got into a dispute with an English woman over the pronunciation of a word and offered to look it up in the dictionary. The English woman said firmly, “What for? I am English. I was born and brought up in England, The way I speak is English.” Such self-assurance about one’s own language is fairly common among the English. In the United States, however, anyone who is willing to quarrel with the dictionary is regarded as either eccentric or mad.
Let us see how dictionaries are made and how the editors arrive at definitions. What follows applies only to those dictionary offices where first-hand, original research goes on - not those in which editors simply copy existing dictionaries. The task of writing a dictionary begins with the reading of vast amounts of the literature of the period or subject that the dictionary is to cover. As the editors read, they copy on cards every interesting or rare word, every unusual or peculiar occurrence of a common word, a large number of common words in their ordinary uses, and also the sentences in which each of these words appears.
That is to say, the context of each word is collected, along with the word itself. For a really big job of dictionary writing, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, millions of such cards are collected, and the task of editing occupies decades. As the cards are collected, they are alphabetized and sorted. When the sorting is completed, there will be for each word anywhere from two or three to several hundred quotations, each on its card.
To define a word, then, the dictionary editor places before him the stack of cards illustrating that word; each of the cards represents an actual use of the word by a writer of some literary or historical importance. He reads the cards carefully, discards some, re-reads the rest, and divides up the stack according to what he thinks are the several senses of the word. Finally, he writes his definitions, following the hard-and-fast rule that each definition must be based on what the quotations in front of him reveal about the meaning of the word. The editor cannot be influenced by what he thinks a given word ought to mean. He must work according to the cards, or not at all.
The writing of a dictionary, therefore, is not a task of setting up authoritative statements about the "true meanings" of words, but a task of recording, to the best of one's ability, what various words have meant to authors in the distant or immediate past, If, for example, we had been writing a dictionary in 1890, or even as late as l919, we could have said that the word "broadcast" means "to scatter" (seed, for example), but we could not have stated that from 1921 on, the common meaning of the word should become “to send out programs by radio or television.”
In choosing our words when we Speak or write, we can be guided by the historical record provided us by the dictionary, but we cannot be bound by it, because new situations, new experiences, new inventions, new feelings, are always forcing us to give new uses to old words. Looking under a “hood,” we should ordinarily have found, five hundred years ago, a monk; today, we find a car engine.
12-B. Reading Provides Necessary Survival Skills
With the coming of the television age and the increasing emphasis on pictures and sound in all quarters of our society, many people would have us believe that we are moving rapidly away from reading as a necessary life skill. But this is not the case at all.
Good reading is a more important life skill than ever before and the printed word continues to be the cornerstone of both higher education and better positions in the job market.
For students, almost all studying involves reading. For adults, reading is day to day, either a stumbling block or a smooth path to pleasure and opportunity. This is why good reading habits are not only an important study skill for the student, but also an important life skill for anyone.
SCANNING -- You can get a good idea about the material by taking a few moments right off to read the title, chapter headings, section titles and headlines. The purpose of scanning is to get a quick understanding of what to expect from the reading, so that you will know what you are reading as you go along.
Maps, charts, graphs and pictures are clues that will help the reader to cue in on the content and organization of the material. This simple technique of scanning can help you read for ideas because you will know where you are going when you begin to read.
READING SPEED -- Another good reading habit is reading fast. The expression "haste makes waste" does not apply to reading. In fact, most people read much too slowly. Right now you are probably reading this slower than you need for good comprehension. Studies show that fast readers are the best readers, and that slow
readers often lose their concentration and comprehension abilities because their minds will wander out of boredom.
Remember, nothing hurts concentration more than reading too slowly. Your mind will keep up with your reading speed if you ask it to. By always reading at your top speed, you challenge your understanding and make it easier for your mind to concentrate on the material.
VOCABULARY BUILDING -- For a person with good reading habits, a printed page contains not only words but ideas, actions, thoughts and feelings. But all these things are built on words. The more words you are familiar with, the less you are aware of reading words and the more you are aware of content and meaning. Expanding your vocabulary will help you to read more effectively and rapidly.
Many people simply skip over words they do not understand. This, naturally, hurts their overall comprehension. Other people stop at each new word and look it up in the dictionary, but this method can slow down your reading, affecting concentration and comprehension.
But you can build your vocabulary without using a dictionary each time. Here are two rules:
1. Pause for a moment on each new word and let it register in your mind.
2. Try to guess what the word means from context clues, from the words around it.
What happens with this method is that you will see the word again and again. Each time you will have a stronger impression of the meaning. Soon, the new word will be familiar and its meaning clear.
The key to the method is to be alert to new words. Don’t skip over them. You'll find you are adding to your vocabulary each day and a good strong vocabulary is a great help to reading quickly and with strong comprehension.
Good reading habits like these can help students and working adults alike to be more successful. The special world of school and the real world of school and of everyday life can be more comfortable, productive and rewarding with the addition of simple yet important life skills such as good reading habits.
13-A. Insurance
An insurance agent called me this morning.
This particular agent wanted to discuss my automobile coverage, but the next agent to call might be interested in
my life insurance program, my health insurance, or fire protection for my home and furniture. The American consumer often feels constantly disturbed by insurance agents. Many agents selling many different policies call us by phone and sometimes even come to our doors. These insurance agents are always friendly, well dressed, and eager to be of help.
Yet few Americans really enjoy visiting with these eager, helpful men and women. We are not happy when they call us; we are on guard when they visit our homes. They are never really our friends; at best, they are a necessary evil.
Three reasons why we are unwilling to discuss insurance can be suggested. First of all, insurance is expensive. A young father who purchases a fairly small life insurance policy agrees to pay a sum of $200 every year for 40 years - a total of $8,000. Many college students pay $800 to $1,000 per year for car insurance. In effect, they pay as much for the insurance as they do for the car itself. Health insurance that pays for modern medical miracles often costs Americans as much as $2,000 every year. Adequate insurance is expensive; it is a major item for most families.
Insurance also reminds us that we live in an unsafe world. We are human and we must face the possibilities of illness, injury, death, and financial loss. Our rational minds recognize the many unfortunate events that can occur, but in our hearts we hope that we might be spared. Serious injury or death is not a pleasant subject to discuss or even consider. We are afraid; we would rather talk about football or the weather or what we had for lunch.
Finally, insurance is a difficult, complex subject. No one understands it completely and only a few insurance professionals really feel comfortable in a discussion of automobile, life, and major medical coverages. We feel inadequate and try to hide our ignorance by avoiding discussions of insurance.
Yet these three reasons for not discussing insurance provide three excellent reasons why we should learn more about it. Insurance
is expensive. In a lifetime, many of us spend as much on insurance as we do on the purchase of a home. If we are to spend our money intelligently, we need information about the products and services available. We don’t depend entirely on salespeople when we buy a car, a house, or a suit of clothes. Neither should we depend entirely on the agent when we buy insurance. We need a basic knowledge of insurance coverages if we are to be intelligent consumers.
The intelligent consumer looks problems in the face. Although accident, illness, and death are not pleasant subjects, each of us knows we face these possibilities. It is better that we plan for these situations by finding means to deal with them than to just hope that they will somehow go away.
Although insurance can be complex, its basic concepts are neither difficult nor impossible to learn. Quite the opposite. Insurance fundamentals can be understood by those willing to study them. Serious study provides knowledge. The study of insurance is an effective, proven method of dealing with the insurance ignorance faced by many American families.
13-B. What Is Money and What Are Its Functions?
Money is something you've been familiar with throughout your life. In fact, you may already consider yourself an expert on the subject. You regularly use money to measure the value of things you own. You also have some of it in your pocket and in bank accounts. It might surprise you to learn that there's a great deal of disagreement among economists about what money is and how to measure it. Money serves a number of functions, and any definition of money must consider all of its functions.
The four major functions of money are as a medium of exchange, a standard of value, a standard of deferred payment, and a store of value.
A Medium of Exchange. As a generally accepted medium of exchange, money rules out the need for barter, the direct exchange of one item for another. Barter is a very inconvenient means of trading because it requires the double coincidence of wants. A seller with a good or service to offer must search for a buyer who has exactly what the seller desires. For example, if a baker wants meat, he must search for a person who sells meat and wants bread under a barter system. Because money is generally accepted as payment for any purchase, a baker who sells bread for money can use the money to buy meat or anything else he wants.
A Standard of Value. Money provides a unit of account that serves as a standard to measure value. The value of an item is a measure of what a person will sacrifice to obtain it. How much is a two week vacation in Hawaii worth to you? If you're like most people, you'll probably respond to such a question by valuing the vacation in dollars - say $2,000 - rather than in terms of other things (like your car). Whether or not you're conscious of it, you're constantly valuing items in dollars. As a standard of value, money allows the addition of values of many different items as automobiles, repairs, and all other goods and services. The concept of GNP is useless without a standard of value such as the dollar.
A Standard of Deferred Payment. Many contracts involve promises to pay sums of money in the future. The unit of account for deferred payment of debts is also money. If you borrow money to buy a car, the loan contract specifies how much you must pay back every month and the number of months required to satisfy your obligation. However, money serves its function as a standard of deferred payment only if its purchasing power remains fairly constant over time. If the price level rises, the future purchasing power of money over time will go down. Similarly, a decrease in the price level will increase the future purchasing power of money.
A Store of Value. Money can also serve as a store of value that can be quickly converted to goods and services. Money as the actual medium of exchange is completely liquid, meaning it can immediately be converted to goods and services without any inconvenience or cost. Other assets that serve as stores of value must first be sold to be converted into a generally accepted medium of exchange. There are often costs and inconvenience associated with liquidating other assets. Holding money as a store of value thus can reduce the transaction costs involved in everyday business.
14-A. The Importance of Being Kind and Polite
"Frankly, I think you’re boring.” Why do we seldom hear people speak so honestly? Unless you want to end a relationship, you don't tell another person what you think of her or him like this. Failing to be impressed by a friend's collection of stamps, yawning when a golfer tells you about that great shut he made on the 14th hole, or falling asleep when friends show pictures from their last trip to Sault Ste. Marie are all things that educated people try not to do. This is what manners are about: acting in a civilized way to avoid misunderstanding, friction, and conflict.
There are no laws enforcing respect. Yet we cannot interact with others without some rules of behavior, rules that are set by some form of social consensus. These guidelines represent what a majority of people consider acceptable and what they consider unacceptable. Rude people are those whose behavior shows little respect for the rules that the majority follow. For instance, because they talk at home while the television is on, many people think they can talk at movies as well. They are not even aware that this habit will bother the other members of the audience.
Restaurants have smoking and non-smoking sections, and most smokers are polite enough to ask, "Do you mind if I smoke?" before lighting up. Restaurants should also have cellular-phone and no-cellular-phone sections. A new class of rude people has been born: the look-at-me phone users whose boring conversations are just as dangerous to our mental health as smoke is to our lungs. Sometimes, it is better to remain unknown than to make pimple hate you.
There are many children and adolescents whose behavior is generally unacceptable. They swear no matter who is around them, they listen to their Walkmans while the teacher is talking to them. Indifferent parents who refuse to discipline their children are not helping them. Kids who have no idea what being polite means will pay the price sooner or later. When they join the work force, their employers and associates alike will soon realize that the behavior of these rude young people is closer to that of animals than civilized individuals. When they lose a few contracts because they talk with their mouth full, or when they say "Bob" to someone who should be "Mr. Johnson," these grown-up kids, because of their ignorance, will never understand why others are getting ahead and they are not.
Every little bit of kindness helps. With manners, the best rule is the one that works. It is easier to look and sound attractive when we are nice to other people. Being polite and showing respect can give us an edge. Why do we need an edge? Success in life often starts with a job we like, and since getting a job is usually based on making the right impression, it is always a good idea to be kind and polite.
14-B. Why We Walk in Circles
"Pin the Tail on the Donkey" is always fun when you're watching rather than pinning. It is somewhat surprising to see how the blindfolded performers act. Instead of going straight, they always wander off to one side or the other. The greater the distance to the donkey, the farther they go astray. Have you ever wondered why they are unable to walk straight ahead?
It is a well-known fact that a person will move in a circle when he cannot use his eyes to control his direction. Dark nights, dense fogs, blinding snowstorms, thick forests - all these can keep a traveler from seeing where he is going. Then he is unable to move in any fixed direction, but walks in circles.
Animals act the same way. You have probably heard the saying "running around like a chicken with its head cut off." Well, a chicken with its head cut off actually does run around in circles. Blind birds fly in circles. And a blindfolded dog will swim in circles.
A Norwegian biologist, F. O. Guldberg, decided that this problem of circular movement was worth investigating. He collected many true stories on the subject.
One of his stories is about people rowing on a lake during a fog on a dark night. One group of rowers who tried to cross three miles of water in foggy weather never succeeded in reaching their goal. Without knowing it, they rowed in two large circles. When they finally got to the shore, they discovered that they were at the spot they had started from.
After studying many stories such as this, Professor Guldberg wrote an article in which he discussed "Circular Motion as the Basic Motion of Animals." A simple example will help you to understand his explanation of why we walk in circles.
Have you ever wound up a toy automobile and started it off across the floor? Then you know that it will rarely travel in a straight path. It will travel, instead, in some kind of arc, or curve. If it is to travel in a straight line, the wheels on both sides have to be of exactly equal size. If they are not, the little automobile turns toward the side with the smaller wheels.
Circular movement in walking is caused in much the same way. Usually a man walking will "watch his step” and "look where he is going." He needs his senses, especially his eyes, to get to the point he intends to reach. When he cannot use his eyes to guide his steps, he will walk straight only if he takes a step of the same length with each foot.
In most people, however, muscle development is not the same in both legs, so that it is probable that the steps will be uneven. The difference may be so small that no one is aware of it. But small as it is, it can cause circular movement.
Let us suppose that a man's left foot takes a step 20 inches long and that his right foot takes a step 30 inches long. Now suppose he takes ten step -- five with his left foot and five with his right. His left foot will travel 100 inches. His right foot will travel 150 inches. This sounds impossible. One foot cannot remain 50 inches behind the other. What really happens? At each step the man turns a little bit to the left. Sooner or later he makes a complete circle. The tracks of his feet, however, make two circles, one inside the other. His left foot makes the smaller circle because it is taking smaller steps. His right foot makes the larger circle because it is taking larger steps. This is why a person may walk in an arc when he sets out in a straight line.
The muscles of a man's arms are no more identical than the muscles of his legs. This explains why the rowers who set out to cross the lake at night rowed in a circle. By the same rule, a bird’s wings do not develop evenly, and so it will fly in circles when blinded. Thus, dear readers, our circular mystery has a very straight answer.
15-A. How TV Violence Affects Kids
For more than a quarter of a century, evidence has been increasing that children's exposure to violence on television has long-lasting, effects on their behavior. Between 1982 and 1986, the amount of television time allocated each week to violent programs increased significantly. And the number of violent acts on television in the past years has increased from about 19 to 27 per hour. Given the amount of time that children watch television, it has become one of the most powerful models they want to follow.
The Position Statement on Media Violence in Children's Lives, recently adopted by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, points out that preschool children are particularly easily affected by the media because they are not yet fully able to distinguish fantasy from reality and their understanding of the underlying motives for behavior and the subtleties of moral conflicts is not yet well developed. For example, the rapid recoveries of people on TV from violent attacks give children an unrealistic picture of the injuries that have been suffered.
Effects on Play
Children naturally often want the toys shown on and advertised during these programs. And with these toys, their play tends to be more imitative than imaginative. Children simply imitate the behavior observed during the program, thus undermining both the imaginative and the expressive functions of play. The narrow range of most violence-related toys advertised on television jeopardizes the role of play in helping children make better sense of their own feelings and interpret their world. Some research even suggests that children apply the behaviors observed on TV programs to their real-life situations.
Parents Can Help
It is a good idea for parents to monitor the amount as well as the kind of television their preschool child watches. If your child appears to be crazy about war play and weapons, it would be a good idea to control his viewing. Controlling viewing is easier to do during the preschool years than during the school years, so you should initiate a pattern of restricted television watching now.
Help your child to interpret what she sees - to think of explanations for the events depicted and to imagine how the show is put together. Make simple critique of a show without implying that her fascination with the drama and the weapons makes her guilty by association.
Ask the teachers of your child's preschool about their policy on war play and toy weapons. Many preschool teachers do not like to have commercially made toy weapons brought into the classroom and welcome hearing your concerns about this matter. Look for other parents who share your views. Work together to control the amount of violent programs watched and the number of violent toys found in the home. Try to arrange play dates for the children as an alternative to TV viewing. Or look for videos of healthy, nonviolent programs for children, and encourage their use as an attractive alternative to violent television programs.
15-B. Why Don’t Girls Think Like Boys?
Do you believe that only boys do well in science? Does it seem to you that girls have better vocabularies than boys? In your opinion, are boys better at building things? If your answer to each of those questions is "Yes," you are right, according to an article in Current Science. There are exceptions, but here are the facts.
On the average, males score higher on tests that measure mathematical reasoning, mechanical ability, and problem-solving skills. Females show superior ability in tests measuring vocabulary, spelling, and memory. But these differences will probably not always exist. In the future, a person’s abilities may not be determined by sex. As one scientist says, "Nothing is impossible for a person to be or do.
In several recent studies, young babies have been observed and tested to discover how different abilities are developed. A scientific team headed by Jerome Kagan, a psychologist at Harvard University, is studying the thinking ability of children 11 1/2 months old. The test is a simple one. The baby, while seated on its mother's lap, watches a "show” on a small theater stage.
In act 1 of the show, an orange-colored block is lifted from a blue box and moved slowly across the stage. Then it is returned to the box. This is repeated six times. Act 2 is similar, except that the orange block is smaller. Baby boys do not seem to notice the difference in the size of the block, but girls immediately become excited and begin to make noises that sound like language. They seem to be trying to talk.
It is known that bones, muscles, and nerves develop faster in baby girls. Usually, too, baby girls talk at an earlier age than boys do. Scientists think there is a physical reason for this. They believe that nerves in the left side of the brain develop faster in girls than in boys. And it is this side of the brain that strongly influences an individual's ability to use words, to spell, and to remember things.
By the time they start to school, therefore, little girls have an advantage that boys do not have. Girls are physically more ready to remember facts, to spell, and to read. These, of course, are skills that are important in elementary school.
But what have the boys been doing in the years before starting school? They have been developing something called aggression. An aggressive person has courage and energy. He feels strong and independent. He is often the first one to start a fight.
What produces aggression in little boys? It has long been assumed that aggression is caused by male hormones. Scientists today believe that male hormones are only part of the explanation, however. They say aggressiveness in boys is also caused by mothers.
A team of psychologists discovered this by placing mothers and their one-year-old babies in a room filled with toys. The room had a wall through which the scientists could observe what happened without being seen. They took notes on everything the mothers and babies did.
Here is a sample of those notes, taken during the observation of a baby boy and his mother:
"Baby leans against mother. Looks up at her. She speaks to him. She turns him around. He walks away, picks up toy cat. Goes to mother, drops cat, and leans against her. Looks up at her. She turns him around."
From such observations and from conversations with mothers, the scientists learned something about the treatment of baby boys and baby girls. While the mother keeps her daughter close to her, she trains her son to move away from her, to develop independence.
Consequently, it is easy to understand why little girls often per-form school tasks better than boys, especially if the task require sitting still, obeying commands, and accepting the teacher’s ideas. A girl may pass easily through the first few grades. While boys of her age bring home low marks, the girl may easily get good grades. Girls seem to have "better brains" in school. Why, then, do so few girls become great scientists? Why is the most important thinking in adult society done by men?
According to scientists, the answer is aggression. Because boys are aggressive, they refuse to accept other people's solutions; they insist upon solving problems for themselves. Thus, while little girls are getting high marks in school for remembering what the teacher has told them, little boys are learning to think in more independent ways.
In the adult world, the aggressive person is usually the one who gets the big salary, the great responsibility, the powerful job. And since males are trained at an early age to be aggressive, males are more often chosen for key positions.
Many people believe this situation is wrong. They think women could be successful in science and industry if they were trained to be independent and problem solving, as boys are.
[zzg1]相反
[zzg2]run out 用尽
[zzg3]turn aside from
离开
[zzg4]take place
⑴<事件等>发生
⑵ <仪式、活动等> 举行,举办
[zzg5]hold good
适用
[zzg6]No matter
how (what, who, when,
where ,whether/if)
不论怎样（什么，保时，何地，是否）
[zzg7]pick …, up
提取
[zzg8]rest upon 信赖 依靠
[zzg9]come across 偶然遇见， 碰上
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发表于 2007-9-4 09:02:34
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