外研社四级段落听写文本.doc

1. Mourning to the EarthquakeThe Chinese State Council declared a three-day period of national mourning for the earthquake victims starting from May 19, 2008. The Chinese National Flag and Regional Flags of Hong Kong SAR and Macao SAR were raised at half mast. At 14: 28 on ay 19, 2008, a week after the earthquake, the Chinese public observed silence to express mourning; vehicles, vessels, trains, and air-defense alarms sounded, followed by a 3-minute silence. The Ningbo Organizing Committee of Beijing Olympic torch relay announced that the relay will be suspended for these three days. All websites and newspapers printed in black and white on May 19. During three days of national mourning ordered by the government, public entertainment was cancelled. Across the country, sirens and horns wailed; people fell silent. China Central Television darkened its screen. In the headquarters of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, more than 200 employees gathered in front of their office building, facing southwest, towards Sichuan, in a silent tribute.2. Social InsectSocial insects live in integrated communities which in some ways are similar to human communites. In both types of community there is a division of labour. In insect societies certain insects are responsible for reproduction; the workers collect food while the soldiers defend the colony. In the same way human groups such as farmers and shopkeepers have specialized functions in producing goods and providing services to the community.Insect and human societies are also alike in that individual members of the commmunity work together. Ants coordinate their efforts to build nests. Similarly, in human societies engineers, architects, town planners and construction workers unite to build cities.The nests of social insects are as complex as a man-made city. In some insect nests special accommodation is provided for the young and for food storage. Many nests also have devices for regulating the temperature. So insect nests are as functional as human houses.3. Buckingham HouseBuckingham House was built for the Duke of Buckingham in the 18th century. However, it became a royal residence in 1775 when George III bought it. His son, George IV, began the reconstruction of the house, which was not finished until the time of Queen Victoria who was the first queen to live there. Today, the Queens home is officially called Buckingham Palace, although many Londones still call it Buck House. When the Queen is in residence, a flag called the Royal Standard flies at the top of a pole. The palace is guarded by sentries of the Guards Division. The guards are changed in the morning in the forecourt behind the railings. The ceremony is always very popular with tourists, who take many photographs, mainly because it is so colorful. The new guard marches behind a band and the ceremony usually lasts half an hour.4. DolphinsDolphins are social animals. Many of them even enjoy being around humans. In addition to being playful, they are helpful to men. For example, as early as 400 BC, the Greek poet Aron was saved from drowning by a dolphon. Even since then, dolphins have been helping swimmers who are in trouble. Swimmers, however, are not the only humans they help. In some parts of the world, they help men catch fish.Dolphins are very clever. A dolphins brain is even larger than a human brain. Therefore, some people think a dolphin must be smarter than a man. But of course, brain size is not the only measure of cleverness. Besides, measuring dolphins cleverness in other ways is not possible since men cannot talk with them. But we can almost be sure that dolphins can talk with each other. They make different sounds which seem to be at least a form of language.5. AdvertisingAdvertising has become a very specialized activity in modern times. In the business world of today, supply is usually greater than demand. There is great competition between different manufacuturers 厂商of the same kind of product to persuade customers to buy their particular brands. They always have to remind the customers of the names and qualities of their products. They do this by advertising. The manufacturer advertisers in the newspaper and on posters. He employs attractive sales-girls to distribute分配 samples of their products. Most important of all, in countries that have televisions, he puts advertisements into programmes that will be easy to accept. Manufacturers often spend sums of money on advertisements. We buy a particular product because we think that it is the best. We usually think so because of the advertisements that say so. People never pause to ask themselves if the advertisements are telling the truth.6. Basketball, Baseball and Football in the USBasketball is well-known around the world. The American National Basketball Association tournament has become one of the most popular sports events around the world. Professional basketball games in the United States are played indoors during the winter months. From November to April one can find a professional basketball game several nights a week in most large American cities. Baseball is an American sport. It has been called the national pass-time. The game is played in the evenings, nearly everyday of the week. The season begins in April and finishes with the world series in October. Football has become the most popular professional sport in the US. It is played on Sundays during the fall and winter from August to Janurary. American football is different from international football, which Americans call soccer. Both games require strength and specialized skills. Professional athletes are very well paid. The most famous athletes make millions of dollars for their playing skills. Americas best athletes have higher salaries than the countrys President.7. Unidentified Flying ObjectsThere are many explanations for why UFOs visit the earth. The most popular one is that they may contain visitors from other planets. To fly such an aircraft, their builders must develop different forms of aviation, because they seem to fly much faster than normal aircraft. The UFOs, it is believed, must contain scientists from other planets who are studying life on earth. It is even believed that several such aircraft may have landed on earth and the space visitors may be living amongst us. But there are also less fantastic explanations available. Although some sights of UFOs are difficult to explain, most can be explained quite easily. In many cases the observers might have made a mistake. They might have seen a weather balloon or an aircraft. Or the light they saw in the sky might have been light from the ground, reflected on to the clouds. However, the exact cause of many sights still remains a mystery.8. Prices of the HousesThe price of a house depends on its size and location. Big houses are more expensive than smaller ones, and houses closer to the center of big cities are more expensive thatn ones in the suburbs or in small towns. Regardless of the cost, it is usual for people to buy their houses over a period fo time. When a family buys a house, it is necessary to borrow money from a bank to pay for it. Then they repay the bank in regualr payments. Families can take 30 years to pay off the loan. Without a loan it would be impossible for most people to own their houses. Many Americans do not own their own homes, they pay landlords房东 to live in their homes. The money they pay for this is called rent. Usually, it is cheaper to rent than to buy. Also when something needs to be repaired, it is easy for the renter to ask the landlord to fix it. Some people rent houses, but most renters live in apartments. Apartment buildings are located in cities where it is too costly to build houses.9. TobaccoAmerican Indians grew and smoked tobacco before Columbus come to America. The Tobacco industry has been large and important for Americas economy ever since colonial farmers grew tobacco for export 300 years ago. Even today tobacco is grown in large quantities along Americas Eastern Coast. Since the 1800s, the most common form of smoking tobacco is cigarettes. Men and women of all ages smoke cigarettes and there are dozens of brands sold in the US. Nearly all cigarettes now sold have filters. Pipe smoking had some popularity and cigars are usually only smoked by older men. Over the past 30 years, many people have stopped smoking. This movement keeping away from cigarettes began when lung cancer and other ailments were linked to smoking. In the 1970s when taxes on cigarettes were greatly increased, cigarette smoking became much more expensive. Since the late 1970s, physical fitness has become a major aim of millions of Americans. These three factors have been the major causes for many people to stop smoking.10. Characteristics of a Good ReaderTo cultivate your reading habits, you must understand the charateristics of a good reader. First, a good reader usually reads rapidly. Of course, he does not read every piece of material at the same rate. But whether he is reading a newspaper or a chapter in a physical text, his reading rate is relatively fast. He has learned to read for ideas rather than words one at a time. Next, a good reader can recognize and understand general ideas and specific details. Thus he is able to comprehend the material with a minimum of effort and a maximum of interest. Finally, a good reader has in his command several special skills, which he can apply to solving reading problems as they occur. For the college students, the most helpful of these skills include making use of the various aids to understanding that most text books provide and skim-reading for a general survey. In any way, cultivating a good habit of reading is significant to promote your reading efficiency.11. Every artist knows in his heart that he is saying something to the public. Not only does he want to say it well, but he wants it to be something which has not been said before.What visual artists, like painters, want to say is easy to make out but difficult to explain, because painters translate their experiences into shapes and colors, not words. They seem to feel that a certain selection of shapes and colors, out of the countless billions of possible, is exceptionally interesting for them and worth showing to us.Most artists take their shapes and colors from the world of nature and from human bodies in motion and response; their choices indicate that these aspects of the world are worth looking at, that they contain beautiful sights. Contemporary artists might say that they merely choose subjects that provide an interesting pattern, that there is nothing more in it. Yet even they do not choose entirely without reference to the character of their subjects.12. How High Can You Jump?Flea trainres have observed a strange habit of fleas while training them. Fleas are trained by putting them in a cardboard box with a top on it. The fleas will jump up and hit the top of the cardboard box over and over again. As you watch them jump and hit the lid, something very interetsting becomes obvious. The fleas continue to jump, but they are no longer jumping high enough to hit the top.When you take off the lid, the fleas continue to jump, but they will not jump out of the box. They will not jump out because they cannot jump out. Why? The reason is simple. They have conditioned themselves to jump just so high. Once they have conditioned themselves to jump just so high, that is all they can do!Many times, people do the same thing. They restrict themselves and never reach their potential. Just like the fleas, they fail to jump higher, thinking they are doing all they can do.13.SleepWhy is it so difficult to fall asleep when you are overtired? There is no one answer that apllies to every individual. It is possible to feel tired physically and still be unable to fall asleep, because while your body may be exhausted, you do not feel sleepy. It is not so easy to simply turn off.Lack of sleep complicates matters even more. Experts say adults need at least seven to eight hours of sleep a night to function properly. When you get less sleep than that on three consecutive nights, you begin to accrue for sleep debt. As sleep debt increases your body experiences a stress response. Now a vicious cycle has been created: you experience the feeling of being more and more tired, but your body is increasingly stimulated. “Power sleeping” for more hours on weekends is only a temporary solution. There is no substitute for getting a good nights sleep on a regular basis.14. AutomobilesIt is impossible to say that any one man invented the automobile. Many individuals living and working in different countries and at different times contributed to its development. Many of the discoveries that went into the creation of the automobile were small in themselves. But together they were important. Here are two examples.Carriage is running at a speed of eight to nine miles an hour. It was almost unheard of in those days. According to automobile historians, this was the first practical use of mechanical power to move a vehicle. After its first run, the machine reportedly burned up while the inventor and his friends were celebrating its success at a pub.Henry Ford is considered the father of modern automobile mass production. The low price of his famous Model-T car, made it possible to produce cars on a large scale and accessible to ordianry people.15. The American RevolutionThe American Revolution is regarded by military historians as a war Britain should never have lost. Many colonists were half-hearted about the conflict. Others thought of themselves as Englishmen misused by other Englishmen, and had no wish to kill their cousins. There were also many loyalists, some of whom fled to Canada, while others joined British regiments in America.The British, too, were divided. It was a war which inspired patriotism. In the British Parliament there was a fierce opposition to the war from a powerful minority led by Edmund Burke. Burke tole the House of Commons that he was not interested in what the law told him he could do, but in what humanity reason and justice told him he should do. Thomas Jefferson, one of the greatest rebel leaders, said: “We might have been a free and great people together.” But the British Government of that time was obstinate and stupid, and King George IIIhad such an influence on affairs that it has been called “The Kings War”.16. The Attraction of a BookstoreThis opportunity to escape the realities of everyday life is the main attraction of a bookstore. There are not many places where it is possible to do this. A music shop is very much like a bookstore.You can wander round such places to your hearts content. If it is a good shop, no assistant will approach you with the inevitable greeting: “Can I help you, sir?” You neednt buy anything you dont want. In a bookshop an assistant should remain in the background until you have finished browsing. Of course, you may want to find out where a particular section is, but when hw has led you there, the assistant should retire discreetly and look as if he is not interested in selling a single book. You have to be very careful with the variety of the books in the bookstore. It is very easy to enter the shop for a book on ancient coins and to come out carrying a copy of the lasted best-selling novel.17. GeographyGeography is the study of the relationship between people and the land. Geographers compare and contrast various places on the earth. But they also go beyond the individual places and consider the earth as a whole. The word geography comes from two Greek words. The English word geograph means to describe the earth. Some geography books focus on a small area like a town and a city. Others deal with the whole earth. Another way to divide the study of geography is to distinguish between physical geography and cultural geography. The former focuses on the natural world; the latter starts with human beings and studies how human beings and their environment act upon each other. But when geography is considered as a single subject, neither branch can neglect the other.18. The Library of CongressThe Library of CongressThe Library of Congress is the national library of the United States. / It was founded in 1800 to serve the needs of the congressmen. / Today, it contains books, articles and documents on every subject imaginable. / Besides senators, congressmen and other government officials, / it serves libraries, researchers, artists and scientists throughout the country and the world. / The Library is one of the largest libraries in the world. / It has a collection of 74 million items which are housed in three buildings. / The bookshelves stretch for 350 miles. / Of the 18 million books, more than half are in languages other than English. / The main reading room is a great hall of marble pillars. / It is the center of activity in the library. / There is a computer catalog center with six terminals for quick access to information. / For greater speed and efficiency, / the li