新视野大学英语读写Word 文档.doc

The Company Man He worked himself to death, finally and precisely, at 3:00 A.M. Sunday morning. The article about his death didnt say that, of course. It said he died of a heart attack, but every one of his friends and acquaintances knew it instantly. He was a perfect Type A, addicted to working, they said to each other and shook their headsand thought for five or ten minutes about the way they lived. This man, Phil, who worked himself to death finally and precisely at 3:00 A.M. Sunday morningon his day offwas at work. He had devoted the last eighteen years of his life to that work. He was fifty-one years old and a vice-president. More precisely, he was one of six vice-presidents, and one of three that might conceivablyif the president died or retired soon enoughhave been promoted to the top spot. Phil could not afford a rest. He worked six days a week, five of them until eight or nine at night, during a time when his own company had begun the four-day week for everyone but the executives. He did not divide his time with outside interests, unless, of course, you consider his monthly game of golf. To Phil, it was work. He always ate egg salad sandwiches at his desk. He was, of course, overweight and had high blood pressure. On Saturdays, Phil wore a sports jacket to the office instead of a suit because it was the weekend. He had a lot of people working under him, maybe sixty, and most of them liked and admired him most of the time. Three of them will be seriously considered for his job. The article ignored this information. But it did list his survivors quite accurately. He is survived by his wife, Helen, forty-eight years old, a good woman of no particular marketable skills, who worked in an office before marrying and mothering. She had, according to her daughter, given up trying to compete with his work years ago when the children were small. A company friend said, I know how much you will miss him. And she answered, I already have. Missing him all these years, she had given up a part of herself, which had cared too much for the man. She would be well taken care of. His dearly beloved eldest of the dearly beloved children is a hard-working executive in a manufacturing firm down South. The day before the funeral, he went around the neighborhood talking to people and trying to get to know his father better. The neighbors were embarrassed, and pretended to know him better than they did. His second child is a girl, who is twenty-four and newly married. She lives near her mother and they are close, but whenever she was alone with her father, in a car driving somewhere, they had very little to say to each other. The youngest child is twenty, a boy, a high-school graduate and like a lot of his friends, he is content to do enough odd jobs to stay in grass and food. His fathers work did not suit him. Still, he was the one who tried to reach his father, and tried to mean enough to him to keep the man at home. He was his fathers favorite. Over the last two years, Phil stayed up nights worrying about the boy. The boy once said, My father and I only board here. At the funeral, the sixty-year-old company president told the forty-eight-year-old widow that the fifty-one-year-old deceased had meant so much to the company and would be missed and hard to replace. The widow couldnt bear to look him in the eye. She was afraid he would read her bitterness and, after all, she would need him to straighten out their financesthe stock options and all that. Phil was overweight, always wound up and worked too hard. If he wasnt at the office, he was worried about it. He was a natural choice for a heart attack. You could have picked him out in a minute from a line-up. So when he finally worked himself to death, at precisely 3:00 A.M. Sunday morning, no one was really surprised. By 5:00 P.M. the afternoon of the funeral, the company president had begun, discreetly of course, with care and taste, to make inquiries about his replacementone of three men. He asked around, Whos been working the hardest? 公司人星期天凌晨三点整，他终于把自己累死了。当然，讣告并没有这么说，只说他死于心脏病。但是他的朋友和熟人很快就明白了是怎么回事。他是个典型的A型人，工作成瘾。相互间他们这么说，摇着头，并且沉思五或十分钟，反思他们的生活方式。此君叫菲尔，星期天凌晨三点整，把自己累死了。那天是他的休息日，可他却在工作。他把自己生命中的最后18年献给了那项工作。他51岁，是公司的一位副总裁。更确切地说，他是六位副总裁之一，而且，假如公司总裁去世或者很快退休的话，他是有可能升至最高职位的三位副总裁之一。菲尔是休息不起的。他每周工作六天，其中五天每天工作到晚上八点或九点，而此时他的公司除了当官的，其他人都已开始每周工作四天。他抽不出时间来做户外活动，除非你把他每月打一次高尔夫球也算在内。对于菲尔来说，那也是工作。他总是在办公桌上吃鸡蛋色拉三明治。当然，他比较胖，患有高血压。每逢星期六，菲尔就穿运动茄克衫而不是西服去办公室，因为是周末。他手下有很多人，大约60个，多数时候大多数人都喜欢他，敬慕他。其中三人将被认真考虑来接替他的工作。讣告对此避而不谈。然而讣告却一一列出了被他“留下的人”。在他身后有妻子海伦，她48岁，心地善良，但却没有特别的职业技能，结婚生子之前曾做过办公室工作。据她女儿说，多年前孩子们还小时，她就放弃了与他的工作竞争。公司的一位朋友说：“我知道你将多么思念他。”而她回答道：“我早已这样了。”“这些年来思念着他，”她已经放弃了自己的一部分，这部分的她太关心这个男人了。从此她将“得到很好的关照” 。他“亲爱的孩子”中“亲爱的长子”在南方的一家制造公司当经理，工作很努力。在安葬父亲的前一天，他走访了邻居，试图多了解他的父亲。邻居们很尴尬，只能装作比事实上更了解他的父亲。他的第二个孩子是个女儿，今年24岁，刚刚结婚。她住在她母亲附近，两人关系亲密。但是，以前每当她和父亲单独在一起时，比如开车去什么地方时，两人几乎无话可说。最小的是个男孩，今年20岁，是个高中毕业生。和他的许多朋友一样，他满足于打零工，以维持吃饭和吸大麻。他父亲的工作不适合他。虽然如此，他依然努力理解他父亲，努力表明自己对他很重要，以此将他拴在家里。他是他父亲的最爱。在过去的两年里，菲尔常为担心这个男孩而睡不着觉。这男孩有一次说道：“我和我父亲只住在这里。”在葬礼上，60岁的公司总裁告诉48岁的寡妇，51岁的死者对公司非常重要，公司会思念他，很难找到人来代替他。寡妇不敢正面看他。她担心他会看出她的不快。毕竟，她需要他来理清他们之间的财务优先认股权等等之类。菲尔身体胖，弦总是绷得紧紧的，工作太卖力。如果他不在办公室，他就放心不下。他是容易患心脏病的那种人。在一大群人中，你一眼就能将他辨认出来。因此，当他星期天凌晨三点整终于把自己累死时，没有人真正感到吃惊。安葬的那天下午五点，公司总裁已经开始（当然非常谨慎地）向他的左右询问接替菲尔的人选（三者之一）的情况。他问大家：“谁工作最卖力？”Vocabulary Task 1Fill in the blanks with the words given below. Change the form where necessary. register continuous retreat graduate boast employment theory tremble dump outdoors peculiar route harm contrary 窗体顶端1. He should be polite enough not to about what he has achieved. 2. I pressed my parents until they finally gave in and me for skating classes. 3. They stressed the need for more opportunities and better health care. 4. Some questions seem obvious but others seem and hard to answer. 5. exposure to sunlight is harmful to the skin. 6. The university I from with honors in 1998 is one of the best in China. 7. People who want to get rid of old cars sometimes them in the woods. 8. He doesnt into self-pity because of his job as a trashman; instead, he feels proud of it as he thinks it is an essential task. 9. Michael won the competition, to everyones expectations. 10. When the boss told her she was fired, she was pale and with shock. 11. It is therefore important that you take a that is likely to succeed. 12. This helps to explain how animals communicate with each other. 13. Im only trying to earn a bit of money. Wheres the in that? 14. He wants to find a job which would not let him work . Vocabulary Task 1Fill in each of the blanks with a suitable preposition or adverb. 窗体顶端1. Look me straight the eye and say that you are not in any trouble. 2. You shouldnt worry about failing the examits nothing to be ashamed . 3. She knows it will be hard to leave her boyfriend because she has been with him many years. 4. Its no use raging the unpleasant situation you are in. Perhaps trying to do something to change it may do you less harm. 5. the sound of the car, the boy rushed out of the house to meet his father, who had promised to buy him a bike as a birthday gift. 6. Its disgusting to hear him boasting his new car. 7. I love that pale blue wallpaper, but I dont think it would go the carpet. 8. The Saturday afternoon flew , and before we knew it, it was over. 9. Dont look down them just because they havent passed the final exam. 10. The woman continued to yell him though he had apologized. 11. As the authors ideas have been wrongly interpreted, the paper calls a thorough revision. 12. He came back in as I was heading up the shower. Surprise, surprise, he said. 13. The guard had orders to stay his post whatever happened. Fill in the blanks in the following passage by selecting suitable words from the Word Bank. You may not use any of the words more than once. 窗体顶端I shouldnt have been surprised how tired I was after working a whole day in the factory. Each day I worked continuously assembling radios. It wasnt heavy work, but the repetition and standing for an entire day was difficult. At the end of the day, my legs from having stood in one place so long. We were supposed to get a rest outdoors every four hours, but we hardly ever were given the opportunity. The heat inside the factory was and many people often became ill. Although I did not become ill, my muscles often hurt wickedly near days end. Besides, a sore body was nothing new to me. But, finding was not easy, so I stayed on. I tried to as little as possible. After many years, I was a job managing a small group of workers. I knew the job would be more stressful, but I agreed to try it anyway. During the , I assisted another manager. After a few days, I started my group on how to do their work. They all had been my when I was an ordinary worker, so some of them refused to listen to me. I often had to at them so they would understand I was serious. The hardest day I ever had was when I had to fire one of them. complainpeersregretintenseyellburningofferedcoachingaffordedunfortunatelytrembledeffortemploymenttrialcareerRead the following passage carefully and choose the best word or phrase to fill in each blank. 窗体顶端Lets face it; young people entering the workforce today are lazy. I have heard just about complaint about todays workplace as I can take. to the view young people seem to have that things were better for generations, the fact is that there have never been so many great jobs for people wanting to enter the workforce. There are educational opportunities that have never existed before, and the standard of living is getting better all the time. Frankly, people who courage and commitment shouldnt blame but themselves for not taking the opportunities that are there for them.My first job was working as a trashman.