中级口译阅读UNITTHREEHOUSE.doc

UNIT THREE HOUSEREADING AIntroductionModem houses are airy, light and comfortable. They are built to keep out the cold and wet and to stay warm. Large windows, electricity hot and cold running water and good heating systems make them very cozy to live in. As towns and cities grew in size, thousands of cheap apartments or small cheap houses were built to house workers. Today, houses are built from a wide variety of different materials, and in many shapes and sizes. Tall blocks of flats are mostly built of steel and concrete, while small suburban houses are usually made of bricks or stone. Do you know how to-build a house? Building a House1 We all like to watch work going on. Work on buildings, whether houses, offices, factories, roads or bridges, interests us because there are so many men doing different things.2 Some men and machines are digging. Some are carrying away earth or rock. Some are putting together the steel frame, some are mixing and pouring concrete, and some are laying bricks.3 The roof must be covered. All the pipes for water, gas and drainage have to be laid. The woodwork has to be made and fitted. The electricity has to be brought in and the lights and electric points fixed. Before the work is finished, painting has to be done.4 There are men who are skilled at each kind of work. Some drive bulldozers and work cranes. Others are steel erectors, bricklayers, and plasterers, tilers, plumbers, joiners, electricians and painters.5 Each man has to know about the things he uses, which he calls his materials. He must know about his tools and the proper way to use them. He will have spent a long time learning this, beginning when he left school. In other words, he will have learned his craft or trade.6 Some of the men working will not be craftsmen doing special work, but will help different craftsmen. These are the labourers. They have to learn to dig, lift and carry and to work all day without tiring themselves too much or straining themselves.7 As well as the people we see every day working on a new building, there are other people, the foreman and the manager of the building firm, who arrange the work. They see that all the materials are there when they are wanted by each craftsman.8 Before any of the building can begin, plans have to be drawn to show what the building will be like, the exact place in which it is to go and how everything is to be done.9 Suppose that your family wanted to have a new house built. You would find a piece of land, the right size and in the right place, which you would then have to buy. To make quite certain that both you and the owner of the land were agreed about where it was, you would have to find it on a map or plan. Maps showing all the land in the country may be bought from shops.10 The first thing you would look at on the map would be the scale. This tells you what length a line must be on the map to show a certain distance on the ground. If the map has a large scale - when, for instance, twenty-five inches on the map stands for one mile - we call it a plan. As most of the maps used for buying land are on this scale we will call them all plans.11 To make quite certain that the land for the building has been fairly and properly bought and sold, and to avoid any quarrels afterwards, all the papers are made out by a man who has been specially trained to do this. He is called a solicitor.12 The next person whose skill you would need to help you build your house would be an architect. He makes drawings to show what the house will be like. There will be a plan for each floor. This shows the kind of view you would have if you could take the roof off and look into the house from a helicopter.13 He will also draw views from the side. These are called elevations.14 These plans and elevations have on them everything the builder will want to know. They are often on the scale of four feet to one inch.15 Now the architect has to find out how much of each material the building will need, how many bricks, how much wood, how much steel, how much cable for the electricity, how many feet of pipe for water and gas, how many slates or tiles for the roof and many other things. He may do this himself or he may have the help of an expert in this work called a quantity surveyor.16 When all these lists are ready a builder will say how much it will cost to build the house and, if the price is agreed, everything is put down on paper. This paper is called a contract and the builder and the buyer of the house both sign it to show that they have agreed on everything.ComprehensionA Explain what the following men do when a house is being built. a steel erector a plumber a bricklayer an electrician a plasterer a painter a tiler a laborer a joinerB Explain in your own words what is meant by the following: 1) be skilled at 2) to make quite certain 3) to avoid any quarrels 4) to make drawings 5) to have a new house builtC The verb put joins with prepositions or adverbs to form a number of useful verbs. Here are some examples: A story was put about that the rebels had overthrown the government, and taken the president captive. I always try to put by a small sum of money each week to meet emergencies. You need only put dozen ten pounds now; the rest can be paid in monthly installments. Owing to the state of the ground, the match has been put off. Whenever she was reprimanded she would put on an aggrieved look. Have you put the light out in the dining-room? I cannot put up with his insolence any longer. D Questions. 1) What