大英2级口语reading_aloud

Reading Aloud

Unit 1 Active Reading 1

In the 1960s, California's colleges and universities had transformed the state into the world's seventh largest economy. However, Berkeley, the University of California's main campus, was also well-known for its student demonstrations and strikes, and its atmosphere of political radicalism. When Ronald Reagan ran for office as governor of California in 1966, he asked if Californians would allow \"a great university to be brought to its knees by a noisy, dissident minority\". The liberals replied that it was the ability to tolerate noisy, dissident minorities which made universities great.

Unit 1 Active Reading 2

At college, we sign petitions, join organizations, sign up for mailing lists, wear our Live Strong bracelets, and watch Live Aid and Live Earth on the television – go to the concerts even, if we can get the tickets. But what do we stand for? Like a true postmodern generation, we have no way to describe our political commitment, we have no inspirational characters, we have no philosophy, we have no direction or theme. We're only defined by what came before us, we're the generation of the Che Guevara T-shirt.

Unit 2 Active Reading 1

Developmental psychologists have found that infants feel sympathetic distress even before they fully realize that they exist apart from other people. Even a few months after birth, infants react to a disturbance in those around them as though it were their own, crying when they see another child's tears.

Unit 2 Active Reading 2

I love it when my friends introduce me to new people, although I never let on. I love the proud and honorable expression they wear when they say \"This is Sandy – she's deaf\as if I were evidence of their benevolence. I also love the split-second shocked expression on the new people, the hasty smiles and their best imitations of what they think of as their \"normal faces\".

Unit 3 Active Reading 1

Since 2003, identity theft has become increasingly common. Few people could imagine how important things like taking mail to the post office and not leaving it in the mailbox for pickup, shredding documents instead of throwing them out with the trash, even using a pen costing a couple of bucks, have become to avoid life-changing crimes.

Unit 3 Active Reading 2

If we've learned one thing from terrorists, not to mention action movies, it's that a tool is also a weapon. Globally accepted credit cards and the databases that support them are tools for taking the friction out of commerce. That's another way of saying that they're tools for extracting money from people with minimum effort on everyone's part.

Unit 4 Active Reading 1

So what exactly is news? The objective importance of an event is obviously not enough – there are plenty of enormous global issues out there, with dramatic consequences, from poverty to global warming – but since they are ongoing, they don't all make the headlines on the same day. 9/11, in contrast, was not just international, but odd, unexpected, and (in the sense that it was possible to identify with the plight of people caught up in the drama) very human.

Unit 4 Active Reading 2

But all over the English-speaking world, newspaper editors are facing the same problem: Circulation has declined, as more and more readers turn to the Internet for their news. This means that the revenue from advertising is also declining, and the cover price of the newspaper is rising, so they can make the same amount of money. And of course, a price-sensitive product like a newspaper could lose readers, and the vicious circle continues. So what does the future hold? Is it the death of the newspaper?

Unit 5 Active Reading 1

There was only one catch and that was catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

Unit 5 Active Reading 2

The Franks were in fact refugees, Jews from Germany who had emigrated to Holland, settling in Amsterdam to escape from Nazi persecution. But when, in May 1940 the German army invaded and occupied Holland, the persecution of the Dutch Jews very quickly began there too.

Unit 6 Active Reading 1

I knew I would do my best, that I would run my heart out and finish the race. I felt the performer in me move in and take over. I had just two laps to run, that was all. Just two laps until the emotional and physical strain of the past two days and the last 28 years would be eclipsed by victory or failure. This race was all about survival. It's only two minutes, I kept telling myself, anyone can run for two minutes.

Unit 6 Active Reading 2

If the ball happens to be aimed about right and slips through the forest of hairy legs, it's sheer luck. The shooter, or \"striker\his shirt and sprints around in circles as four or five fellow players jump on his back to try to stop him and get his shirt back on.

Unit 7 Active Reading 1

I had tossed sticks for him before and knew the approximate distance they would go, depending upon their weight and my motion. This stick, however, caught a gust and, flying where the sheet wanted to go, sailed across the yard, over the fence, and, with a fine skater's touch, glided onto the pond. As I looked up, I saw Hogahn racing through the gate and, with a magnificent leap, crashing through the ice just short of the stick and into the water.

Unit 7 Active Reading 2

One of the first scientists to try to investigate the animal mind was the British naturalist Charles Darwin. In his book The Descent of Man, published in 1871, he questioned whether higher mental abilities such as self-consciousness and memory, were limited to human beings. Darwin speculated that human and non-human minds aren't all that different. Animals, he argued, face the same general challenges and have the same basic needs as humans: to find food and a mate, to navigate through the sky, the woods or the sea.