英语口语练习材料.doc

Doctor: Good morning. How are you?Patient: Im very worried; doctor.Doctor: Oh? What are you worried about?Patient: Im afraid that Im very ill.Doctor: Im sorry to hear that. Why do you think so?Patient: Because I feel tired all the time, even when I wake up in the morning. I findit very difficult to do any work. 1 have no appetite. My wife cooks medelicious meals but I can only eat a little.Doctor: How do you sleep?Patient: Very badly, doctor.Doctor: Do you find it difficult to get to sleep, or do you wake up early?Fatient: Both, doctor. I never get to sleep until 2 oclock and I always wake at 5.Doctor: Are you worried about anything?Patient: Well , yes , I am. Im worried about my work. Ive just taken a new job.I earn a lot of money but its difficult work. Im always afraid of makinga mistake.Doctor: I see. Please take off your shirt and lie down on the couch.Patient: Yes , doctor.(The Doctor examines the patient )Doctor: Well , theres nothing very much wrong with you , Im glad to say. Youreworking too hard and worrying too much. Do you take much exercise?Patient: No, doctor. I never have enough time for exercise. I start work very early inthe morning and finish late in the evening. Then I cant get to sleep.Canyou give me some medicine to help me to sleep?Doctor: I can, but Im not going to. You dont need medicine. You need advice.Dont work so hard. Too much work is bad. for you. Dont worry about yourwork. Its silly to worry. Take regular exercise.Patient: But I may lose my job , doctor ! Its hard to get a job like mine.Doctor: Then get an easier one , even if you earn less money.Which would you rather have, health or wealth?Patient: You re right , doctor. Its more important to be healthy than wealthy. Illchange my job. Im grateful for your advice.Doctor: Come and see me again in a months time. I think youll be a different man !I sometimes wonder what my mind is like inside, often I fancy that it is like this. I feel as if my mind goes round and round like the earth and if my lessons make me think hard it begins to spin. In my other class it was getting all stodgy and still and lumpy and rusty. I feel as if there is a ball in my mind and it is divided into pieces -each piece stands for a different mood.The ball turns every now and then and thats what makes me change moods. I have my learning mood, my goodlooks mood, my happy mood, my loose-end mood and my grumpy mood, my miserable mood, my thoughtful mood and my planning mood. At the moment I am writing this I am in my thoughtful mood.When I am in my thoughtful mood I think out my maths and plan stories and poems. When my kitten is in her thoughtful mood she thinks shall I pounce or not, and shall I go to sleep or not. This sort of thing goes on in my own mind, too. It is very hard for me to put my thoughts into words.Why Go to School?Text AMATTHEW: Lesley, youre a teacher. How does the English school system work?LESLEY: Um, well, first of all most children start school at the age of five and theycant leave school until the age of sixteen , which is just , you know , the agethe age of five until eleven. . . um, and previously they used to take an eevenplus examination which would then determine whether they would go to a grammarschool or alternatively a secondary modern school. But now we have a. a newsysten where children arent divided off at the age of eleven and will go into acomprehensive system ofschooling, and. . . will do the things that theyre bestable to do at certain ages and if they want to take the exams they are able toat. . . at the age of sixteen.MATTHEW: Do you think thats a . . . an improvement to th system?LESLEY: Well,. mm, theoretically. its supposed t be much better because it gives. . .it stops separating children off at the age of eleven and gives them abetter chance, and in fact what usually happens is that those children whowouldnt. . . er who would have gone to a grammar school tend to be at thetop end of the comprehensive system, and those that would have gone tosecondarymodern school find themselves at the lower levels of the school.MATTHEW: Do you think that the present school system is an efficient way ofeducating children?LESLEY Mm. . . well if you , if you accept that , you know , there have to be schools,it seems to work fairly efficiently. Of course one of our great problems inEngland is that we have very large classes and. . . um, it would be very nicein a class, there are only twenty. . . mm and so that each child gets moreindividual attention so that their own particular needs just arent passed over.MATTHEW Do you think the. . . the subjects that er. . . children study today areadapted to present-day society?LESLEY It would be very good if. er, more children at school had the opportunity oflearning about the society they live in. in economic terms and in socialterms , so that they are much more aware of the problems that we face today.But I also think that education isnt only something that has to be. . . hasto be relevant. . . um, I think education can be just a. . a gradualextension of one self , and I dont think its um. . . importarit forsubjects to be seen only in terms of how useful they are when you leaveschool. . . but how much you enjoy them and how much they mean to you.MATTHEW David, what would you do in an average day at school?DAVID Um. it mainly consists of English and Maths, which takes up a lot of thelesson time and then. . . um. . . like on Mondays , for example. . .er,we would do .er, I dont know, Maths, English, Art, History and thenTuesdays would be some more English, probably . um, His tory , Reiigiousstudies , Physics , whatever taking now which is O level , which is. isnine subjects in all.MATTHEW I see, so you can choose. . . the subject you want to take for O level.You dont have to take. . . every subject in the schdol?DAVID No,. no, no.MATTHEW What about games. . . er and drama and things like that?DAVID We have about an hour and a half of games a week, and for about an hour a weekwe. . . do a. . . a thing known as er. . . social studies, which isum. its a kind of a cross-section of. er what life wili be after wewe leave school. . . Um. . . where we do drama. . a . . . we studyecology,sociology et cetera. Um, its not O level, we dont take an Olevel in it, its just for er. expersence.MATTHEW janet, do you. think that your daughters gain a tremendous amount fromtheir education?JANET I think they. . . they gain a certain amount of um. necessary knowledge,yes,but I wish it was broader. I wish that instead of being driventowards passing exams that they had, certainly at this stage of adolescence ,the chance to really broaden their outlook completely and not feel thisnecessity to read towards passing an exam , to collecting a pieceof paper at the end of it.MATTHEW Er. . . do you have any specific ways in which you think. . . time atschool could be improved?JANET Yes , I think there could be a. . . a lot more encouragement in doingthings for their own sake, for getting the satisfaction out of them. um,rather than this rat race that everybodys forced into. . . um. for whatis achieved at the end. I think . . . a lot more should be done to encouragepeople to get the value out of it themselves.MATTHEW Do you think that er. . . education is just something that takes placeinside a school building , or is . it a. . . an activity which takesplace not only outside but right the way through your life?JANET I think it starts the moment youre born, and . . . er. that its going onall around you. Its notjust taking place in a school building. . .um it should be. . . part of your whole life.Why Are They So Unlucky?Text AI wonder why so many shop-assistants are so foultempered? Inspite of so many campaigns to improve the services in the past years, we see no appreciable change so far. If Dad and Mum are to be believed, the services used to be quite good in the fifties. But then, they always say everything used to be good in the fifties. I find the older people grow, the more nostalgic they become.Now Granny never lets a day go by without remi-niscing on the good old things in the good old days . Once when she saw Xiao Hong and me eating some mooncakes with relish, she said pityingly, You poor children, you dont know what real mooncakes taste like. The worst in the old tasted much better than the best that rnoney can buy nowadays! We burst out laughing, not taking her words seriously.Now to come back to the bad service in shops and department stores. People often say that when you buy something, you are spending money to buy rudeness and anger. Today I saw a loing exactly that. I was at a department store and I happened to witness a typical quarrel. I was next to a counter selling tea and I saw an elderly man come up and ask a young woman was busy weighing and wrapping tea into standard-sized packs Do you have very good green tea?The woman glanced up to size him up. He was ordinarily dressed and spoke with a provincial accent. obviously a man of no consequence. She went on with her work and the man had to repeat his question. After another pause the woman snorted out: Yes: Twenty-six yuan a liang. Not believing his ears, the man tried to correct her. You mean twenty-six yuaw a jin? Upon this the woman flared up and shouted: I said twenty-six yuan a LIANG ! Cant you hear straight? If you want a jin, then its two hundred and sixty yuan. Is that CLEAR?The man seemed to be stunried by her sudden outburst but he kept his temper and asked again. Do you have some thing under two yuan a Liang? Obviously she was makinj things difficult for the old man for she answered as rudely as be fore;What do you mean under two yuan? Anything from on cent to one yuan ninety-nine cents is under two yuan. I dont remember what exaetly the man said , but somehow he manage to find out there was a kind costing one yuan ninety-six a liang Can you show it to me?Do you want to buy it or not?Well, I want to look at the leaves and smell the flavoc first. You can look , smell , eat , drink or do whatever you like with it at home. Here I only sell tea. If you want to buy it, buy it. If you cant afford it, dont come here to waste peoples time Obviously you dont know what is proper in Beijing ! Look here young lady, its you who dont know what proper! I have been living in Beijing long before you were born, and Ive never seen anyone as rude as you are. Your job is to serve the customers , not to insult them. Now for the last time are you going to show me the tea or not?And for the last time I am telling it to you. Either buy it or get out of here! I know the likes of you-you want something good, and yet grudge the money you have to spend on it!This is insufferable 1 Who is in charge here? I want to see your head ! My head? Its on my shoulders. Take a good look if you want to. The old man went away fuming. Ive got down your number ber. Ill write to the Evening News. The threat didnt seem to frighten the girl. At most shell have to make a self-criticism, which costs her nothing. Even if she should lose a months bonus, it is only a few yuan. But if she could be sacked, I bet she wouldnt dare to be so rude and aggressive.Text BAll the housewives who went to the new supermarket had one great ambition: to be the lucky customer who did not have to pay for her shopping. For this was what the notice just inside the entrance promised. It said; Remember, once a week, one of our customers gets free goods. This may be your lucky day ! For several weeks Mrs Edwards hoped , like many of her friends, to be the lucky customer. Unlike her friends, she never gave up hope. The cupboards in her kitchen were full of things which she did not need. In vain her husband tried to dissuade suade her. She dreamed of the day when the manager of the supermarketwould approach her and say:Madam, this is your lucky day. Everything in your basket is free. One Friday morning, after she had finished her shopping and had taken it to her car, she found that she had forgotten to buy any tea. She dashed back to the supermarket, got the teaand went towards the cashdesk. As she did so, she saw the manager of the supermarket approaeh her. Madam , he said, holding out his handzs, I want to congratutate you! You are our lucky customer and everything you have in your hasket is free!Additional InformationThree times a man in his early 30s approached Shen Limins clothes counter in the Baihua Garment Store on busy Xidan Street in central Beijing.The first time Shen showed him the various garments. He left but returned a while later and stood there staring at a skirt. Then he went away again, but came back after a few minutes.Curious, Shen asked, Why dont you buy that skir since you love it so much?The man said that he really wanted to, but the 198-yuan price was too much for him. She suggested that he choose something cheaper, but he replied that the skirt was what his wife would like most.They started talking and he told her he bought his wife a gift every year in celebration of their wedding anniversary. Shen was so moved that she offered the skirt to him for 130 yuan, the wholesale price.When the man hesitated in surprise, she told hsm, I do that simply becauseyou are a good husband. As a divorcee, Shen, 35, spoke from the depths of her heart.She could not imagine any husband being so considerate or tender.Her failure in marriage and her divorce three years ago scared her away men and prompted her to resign from her job as a log keeper in a film studio and become a self-employed garment seller.What makes Shen unusual is that she make money to help deserted ids.Her love of children and her sympathy for the wretched stemmed fiom the day her six-year-old younger brother was crushed to death in a mishap in a warehouse near her home.Her sympathetic nature kept her marriage together for seven years.Her husband had been a clarinet player in an army band. A go-between had introduced them. One cold snowy night they deeided to get married. He had been walking her home and kept darting into shops. She grew impatient thinking he was merely wanting to buy cigarettes and she stomped off. But he ran after her and presented her with a gauze mask he had bought. for her to help keep out the cold.His thoughtfulness moved her to tears. He said that perhaps they should break up since she cotild not understand him. I will marry you if that can atone for my mistake, Shen said she responded. And so the matter was sealed.The death of a bosom fiiend seven years later marked the beginning of the end for Shen and her husband.As the friend lay dying of heart disease. 20 days after giving birth to a son-a pregnancy she had risked because her husband was the only son of hi, family-she asked Shen to care for the child.Shen promised she would, even though she had a son of her own. Her husband was strongly opposed, however. Still. Shen would often go to see the child, who was living in his grandmothers home.I felt guilty when I saw the child wearing dirty clothes, Shen said. I thought the child would not have been like that had his mother been alive. When the grandparents decided to send the boy to friends in Tianjin, Shen wanted to adopt him. Her husband then moved out and said he wanted a divorce.Shen went to Tianjin to look for the child and found him. But the family refused to give the boy up. Shen would not leave until she was convinced the child was being kindly treated and properly cared for.Her years of marriage had given Shen a comfortable life-style but that was all, she said. The divorce made her realizeshe had feelings and ambitions again.Shen had once dreamed of becoming a film actress, and tried out for roles but only ended up w