新视野大学英语第二版第二册总结.doc

SummaryUnit 1 Time-conscious Americans Americans save time carefully. This attitude results in a nation of people committed to researching, experimenting and exploring. And they treat time as a precious resource. They budget time, save it, waste it, kill it, cut it, account for it, and charge for it. A foreigners first impression of the U.S. is likely to be that everyone is in a rush_ often under pressure. This is because people value time highly, and they resent someone else wasting it beyond a certain appropriate point. Besides, many new arrivals in the States will miss the_openning exchange of a business call, for example. This is because Americans generally assess and probe professionally rather than socially. For Americans, time is always ticking in their inner ear. Whats more, Americans work hard at the task of saving time through labor-saving decives. For them, the impersonality of electronic communication has little or no relation to the significance of the matter at hand. In a word, Americans are time-conscious. In the US, it is taken as a sign of skillfulness or being competent to solve a problem, or fulfill a job successfully, with speed.Unit 3 Marriage Across Nations During our two years together, Gail and I had experienced the usual ups and downs of a couple learning to know, understand and respect each other. And our racial and cultural differences enhanced our relationship and taught us a great deal about tolerance, compromise, and being open with each other. Therefore, we decided to marry each other, although we had no illusions about what the future held for us as a married, mixed couple in America. When Gail spread the news of our wedding plans to her family she met with some resistance Both her mother and her father were against our plans. Hearing this, Gails mother, Deborah, counseled Gail to be really sure she was doing the right things. And when her father learned of my problems with the citizenship department, he immediately suspected that I was marring his daughter in order to remain in the United States. In order to persuade her daughter, the father proceeded to quote statistics showing that mixed couples had higher divorce rates_than_couples of the same race. Besides, he told Gail that she had to be realistic because people can be cruel to toward children from mixed marriage. Unit 5 Weeping for My Smoking Daughter In the passage, the writer tells us her daughter smokes. She feels terrible and does weep, when seeing her daughter smoking, which makes her father die of_pneumonia. Smoking is harmful not only to her father but also to people in The Third World countries. In these poor countries, money should be spent for food goes instead to the tobacco companies; over time, people starve themselves _of_both food and air, effectively weakening and hooking their children, eventually killing themselves. In a word, the writer is strong against smoking and even the prosperous leaders who own the tobacco company. For her, smoking is a form of _self-battering that also batters those who must sit by.Unit 6 As His Name Is, So Is He! In the passage, the author believes that names can make a difference. A woman, for example, substituted Lynne, her middle name for Debbie, her first name and then got success in her career. Although name change can not cause ones professional achievement, it surely helpes. Besides, names are attached to specific images. And names with a positive sense can work for you and even encourage new acquaintances. However, to some extent, were all guilty of name stereotyping. Such prejudices can affect classroom achievement. But names itself can cause classroom difference.In a word, names can not_merely identify people, but also describe them. You can change it if your name no longer seems to fit you. Unit 7 Lighten Your Load and Save Your Life Stress can be harmful for us. For example, stressed people have higher cholesterol levels,_among other things_And anger is the root of stress. For many people, they feel angry because they think _everything must be perfect, while others are angry because they have no compass in life. In order to deal with the problem, first, you need to learn to take charge of your life. Eliot suggests you should write down the six most important things in your life, set your priorities and then put them on a note card with you. And keep in mind that over time these priorities are going to change. Besides, the other key to controlling stress is to realize that there are something beyond your control. At that moment, you have to learn how to flow rather than fight or flee. In the passage, the writer tells us that the saddest thing about youth is that it is wasted on the young. Besides, a survey shows that college beginners are more consumerist and less idealistic. For instance, more students enroll in business program, engineering and computer science. How to solve this problem? One solution is education. We should educate people for life as well as for a career. And The duty of education is to make students understand what is truly