英语期末.doc

课文背诵段落Unit 5 These reflections have occurred to me because I read in this mornings paper that Edward Hyde Burton had died at Kobe. He was a merchant and he had been in business in Japan for many years. I knew him very little, but he interested me because once he gave me a great surprise. Unless I heard the story from his own lips, I should never have believed that he was capable of such an action. It was more startling because both in appearance and manner he suggested a very definite type. Here if ever was a man all of piece. He was a tiny little fellow, not much more than five feet four in height, and very slender, with white hair, a red face much wrinkled, and blue eyes. I suppose he was about sixty when I knew him. He was always neatly and quietly dressed in accordance with his age and station.Unit 6 Once upon a time, technology, we thought, would make our live easier. Machines were expected to do our work for us, leaving us with ever-increasing quantities of time to waste away on idleness and pleasure. But instead of liberating us, technology has enslaved us. Innovations are occurring at a bewildering rate: as many now arrive in a year as once arrived in a millennium. And as each invention arrives, it eats further into our time. The motorcar, for example, promised unimaginable levels of personal mobility. But now, traffic in cities moves more slowly than it did in the days of the horse-drawn carriage, and we waste our lives stuck in traffic jams.Unit 7 Long before the Boeing brought down the towers, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote “grief return with the revolving year.” So it is with New York. The time it took the Earth to circle the sun was time enough to clear the wreckage, but not enough to fade the memory of what happened there. It was time enough to plan memorials, but not enough to fill the gaping wound in lower Manhattan. For what is a year but a thin sliver of history, a beat of a hummingbirds wing?CLOZE You see that young man swimming out at sea? Hes trying to swim out to the beacon and back. He must be insane to have committed himself to such a ting. The current is far too strong. To be candid, I wouldnt attempt it. I dare say few swimmers are capable of such a feat. I met him on the beach before he set out. I dont mind what he was going to do, because he didnt look in good condition at all. Far from it. He may have had a good constitution once, but he had clearly let himself go all to pieces. However, it seems like he had no choice. He told me that he had gone broke, not a penny left, and that old Burton would only find him a vacancy in his firm if he did the swim. That was another surprise. Burton seems such a mild-mannered man, kind to everybody. Perhaps he thought the young man would not have the courage, that he would funk it. Then, again, perhaps Burton knew he was sending the young man to his death, but was too cold-blooded to care. It only goes to show how deceptive appearances can be. Can you switch off form the cares of life and relax? Many people cannot. They feel instead that they are obliged to be on the go all the time. The pace of life seems to grow ever faster. As the result, feelings of stress are common as people struggle to cope with what they see as a shortage of time. Such widespread feelings are in part caused by the large quantity if information that comes pouring in on us. “All man,” said Aristotle,” “by the nature desire to know.” But it is no longer possible, as it was in the past, for an individual to master the whole range of human knowledge. Instead, any individual, no matter how smart he is, can only command a fraction of total knowledge available. It may be argued that it is futile to even attempt to do so. We should learn to set more realistic goals for ourselves if we are to hope to escape from the tyranny of time. Corky Siemaszkos snapshots provide us with an insight into the mood of the American people following in the tragic events of 9/11. they start with two pieces written in the immediate of aftermath of the attack. These clearly reveal the state of chaos into which New Yorkers felt they had been plunged by the toppling of the twin towers. Balancing widespread feelings of shock came the welling up of a strong sense of solidarity with each other in the face of a common enemy. Together with this came a natural desire to take revenge on those responsible. A year later the snapshots reveal a city and a nation thinking back on the fateful events of 9/11 while mourning those who perished in the attacks.Vocabulary In a way refer shopping online because it is more convenient and saves time. The success of mechanics in discovering reliable and useful laws of nature suggested to Galileo that all nature is designed in accordance with mechanical laws. A vacancy exists for a sales manager at our Paris office. If youre interested in it, please send us an application letter and your resume at once. If you are over 18 and in good condition, its completely safe to do the job. Plastics can be made hard as stone, strong as steel, transparent as glass, and light as wood. Coat the shoes with polish, the hitherto hard with a soft cloth to give a shine. It was probably just a spicy joke to them, but it wasnt funny to me at all. Michaels praise for my wife opened my eyes and taught me to show gratitude for her day-to-day heroism, which I had hitherto taken for granted. The waitress did bring us clean plates eventually, but with a bad grace. Some scientists believe that human beings are born with an instinct for using their arms and legs to stay afloat, which however, disappears within a few months after birth. In order to pay the bills, Linda pawned her grandfathers gold watch in secret. Fish instinctively fight their way upst