UNIT 1
Strangers
1. The stranger looked at me skeptically for a few minutes and then drove away from the parking lot without a word.
2. Though she's studied in a foreign language university for several years, she is a stranger French.
3. The little boy felt strange amid so many foreign children.
4. It seems odd that John could afford a new BMW,for he was laid off from his job a year ago.
5. She was very curious about the way he counted the votesafter the election for school president.
6. My curiosity as well as anger rose as I watched him flip through the letterson my desk in his nosy way.
7. It is quite indifferent to me whether you agree or disagree with the argumentthat men are born evil.
8. It's queer indeed that a stranger offered me a cup of teawhen I was thirsty on the train during the journey.
9. The new regulations imposed by the police are very unusual and it will take time to get used to them.
10. That newspaper is notorious for giving biased accounts.
11. The old lady always slept under the bed with her clothes on,and this eccentric habit of hers actually saved her lifewhen an earthquake struck abruptly one night.
12. Too many people, especially young people,like to use screen names to chat online.
13. Though you can not tell how old your pal(伙伴) in an Internet room is,more often than not you can tell whether the chatter is a male or a female.
14. Talkative persons are dangerous, for they have no secrets about themselves and keep no secrets of others.
15. I like easy-going people and feel relaxed when talking to them. The monitor, for example, acts and thinks in one and the same way.
16. Speech is silver, but silence is gold.
17. Facial expressions are very important. We sometimes can tell from the way a stranger talks whether he or she is trustworthy or not.
18. Instant Messaging(即时信息), or \"IM,\" is a new phenomenon that has rapidly grown in popularity around the world in just a few years. Some experts now believe that IM may be one of the most popular computer applications ever.
19. IRC, or Internet Relay Chatting, has become very popularity on the World Wide Web, for it enables people from different part of the world to talk to each other via the Internet.
20. MSN is a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft.Microsoft used the MSN brand nameto promote numerous popular Web-based services in the late 1990s,most notably Hotmail and Messenger,before reorganizing many of them in 2005 under another brand name, Windows Live.Some of the MSN services affected by the rebranding included MSN Hotmail,which became Windows Live Hotmail;MSN Messenger, which became Windows Live Messenger;MSN Search, which became Live Search, now known as Bing.
QQ is a popular instant messaging system that is commonly used in China and the Asia-Pacific. It enables real-time communication between PCs, mobile phones and pagers. Perhaps it is one of the best ways to develop contact in China.
21. Tencent QQ, generally referred to as QQ,is the most popular free instant messaging computer program in mainland China.It enables real-time communication between PCs, mobile phones and pagers.The number of simultaneous online QQ users exceeded 100 million on March 5, 2010.
It is reported that the number of registered QQ users in China has exceeded 7 million. On February 18th, 2003 alone, the number of QQ users online was 295063.
22. Skype is a popular chatting program on the Internet.The Skype communications system is notable for its broad range of features,including free voice and video conferencing,its ability to use peer to peer technology(点对点网络技术) to overcome common firewall(防火墙)and network address translation problems.
Mobile QQ is a service that seamlessly allows the customer’s PC-based instant messaging service to become integrated with his or her mobile phone, allowing the customer to stay in touch with PC-or mobile-based contacts from just about anywhere.
UNIT 2
UFOs
1. UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object. Some people also call UFOs flying saucers,because their shapes look like saucers.
2. In its broader sense, the UFO includes any object or light, reportedly sighted in the sky, that cannot be immediately explained by the observer.
3. I remember as a child, I would save every penny my mother gave me to buy the latest UFO magazines from the grocery store.
4. We cannot deny the existence of the UFO phenomenon simply because we have not seen it or cannot explain it.
5. Science has its limitations and many mysteries throughout the world have remained unsolved. 6. Sightings of unusual aerial phenomena date back to ancient times.
7. The early cave paintings and ancient scriptures(经文) seem to indicate that we may have had visitors from other worlds or planets in the past.
8. In fact, ancient scriptures from many different cultures would give us the impression that we've had visitors from outer space.
9. How do you explain ancient tales of chariots(战车) from the sky? And what are the flying ships appearing in science fiction novels before the first plane was ever thought about?
10. Even the Bible has been suggested as possible evidence of alien contact,for its numerous accounts of objects in the sky, and other strange events.
11. What secrets lie with ancient Egypt, Stonehenge(Salisbury),or possibly even Atlantis ?Have there indeed been more advanced civilizations of man that
have somehow been lost?
12. Some UFO enthusiasts even claim to have been abducted and taken aboard UFOs.But so far, no one has produced scientifically acceptable proof of these claims. 13. Some people believe that UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft,even though no scientifically valid evidence supports that belief.
14. Scientists speculate that intelligent life may well exist elsewhere in the universe.
15. In addition to many reports and sightings of UFOs,observers have provided photographs or even videos.
16. UFOs became widely discussed only after the first widely publicized US sighting in 1947.Many thousands of such observations have since been reported worldwide.
17. From 1947 to 1969 the US Air Force investigated UFOs as a possible threat to national security.
18. The UK Ministry of Defence recorded 634 UFO sightings in 2009,the second highest annual total after 1978, when there were 750,according to UFO expert Dr David Clarke.The UK Ministry of Defence recorded 634 UFO sightings in 2009,the second highest annual total after 1978, when there were 750,according to UFO expert Dr David Clarke.
A total of 12618 reports were received ,of which 701 or 5.6 percent were listef as unexplained.
19. UFOs have been subject to investigations over the yearsthat vary widely in scope and scientific rigor.Governments or independent academics in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom,Japan, France, Belgium, Sweden, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Spain, and the Soviet Unionare known to have investigated UFO reports at various times.UFOs have been subject to investigations over the yearsthat vary widely in scope and scientific rigor.Governments or independent academics in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom,Japan, France, Belgium, Sweden, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Spain, and the Soviet Unionare known to have investigated UFO reports at various times.
Since 1959 no agence of the us government has had any active program of ufo investigation.
20. In 1997 the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) admitted that the US military had deceived the American publicin an effort to hide information about high-altitude spy planes.
21. At least 90 percent of UFO sightings can be identified as conventional objects, although time-consuming investigations are often necessary for such identification.
22. The objects most often mistaken for UFOs are bright planets and stars,
aircraft, birds, balloons, kites, aerial flares, peculiar clouds, meteors, and satellites.
UNIT 3
Part A
1. We are living in an era of globalization.
Overseas study has become popular in many countries.
We are living in an era of globalization.
2. Each year, over one million students worldwide
choose to study outside their own countries.
3. More than 195,000 students from 188 countries
and regions came to study at more than 500 Chinese universities,
colleges and research institutes in 2008.
This compares with 141,000 students from 179 countries and regions in 2005.
4. Meanwhile, the number of American students studying abroad
has more than doubled in the last decade.
5. Recent reports by Britain and the US indicate
that China ranks first in the number of students
who have gained doctorate degrees in the two countries.
6. According to a government report,
overseas students from China are largely self-funded.
7. The number of high school and even primary school students going abroad
has been increasing recently.
8. Rapid domestic economic growth makes it more affordable
for Chinese students to study abroad.
9. The process of application has become easier
since many intermediate agencies were founded to help students.
10. In the age of a global economy,
your experience abroad distinguishes you from others and becomes an excellent résumé builder.
11. The first group of foreign students came from East Europe in 1950.
Since then over 60,000 students from 160 countries
have come to China for further studies.
The first group of foreign students came from East Europe in 1950.
12. China is politically stable and economically optimistic,
which is the main reason why so many foreign students are attracted.
13. People living together in a society share a common culture.
For example, almost all people living in the US use the English language,
dress in similar styles, eat many of the same foods,
and celebrate many of the same holidays.
14. Exchange can provide many benefits for all societies.
Different societies can exchange ideas,
people, manufactured goods, and natural resources.
15. International education improves the relations among peoples of different cultures
and encourages cross-cultural communication.
16. Culture shock is the anxiety and feelings of surprise,
disorientation, uncertainty, confusion, etc.
felt when people have to operate within a different and unknown culture
such as one may encounter in a foreign country.
17. Culture shock grows out of the difficulties in assimilating the new culture,
causing difficulty in knowing what is appropriate and what is not.
This is often combined with a dislike for,
or even disgust (moral or aesthetic) with certain aspects of the new or different culture.
18. Culture shock is something that many international students experience
in the course of adjusting to a new culture.
19. Many things may bring about culture shock — different foods and ways of eating,
different learning and teaching methods,
the peculiar attitudes of people in a certain place, etc.
20. According to the Chinese Ministry of Education,
Chinese students are currently studying in more than 100 countries.
The top five destinations are the US, Japan, the UK, Canada and Australia.
Non-English-speaking countries like Italy,
Germany and France are also becoming popular destinations.
21. Across the country, a total of 98,510 Chinese graduate and undergraduate students
were enrolled at US institutions in the 2008-2009 academic year,
meaning that roughly 15 percent of international students were from China.
These numbers also signify a staggering 60 percent increase
from the previous academic year in the number of Chinese students studying abroad in the US.
22. Official statistics show that from 1978 to the end of 2005,
Chinese students studying abroad are over 930,000 and 230,000 of them
are employed in China upon return,
an evidence that the policy of encouraging students
and scholars to study abroad is very successful.
23. There is a whole emerging middle class of Chinese,
well over 300 million, many of them with one-child families
who are interested in sending their son or daughter
abroad for higher educational experience.
24. International students and their families contribute
more than $15 billion annually to the US economy,
according to a separate survey by NAFSA(美国国际教育工作者协会).
UNIT 4
Laughter: the Best Medicine
1. Humour is the tendency of particular cognitive(认知的) experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement.
2. People of all ages and cultures respond to humour. The majority of people are able to experience humour, i.e., to be amused, to laugh or smile at something funny, and thus they are considered to have a sense of humour.
3. Though there are many ways to laugh, from giggles to guffaws(大笑) and from chuckles to cackles(咯咯的笑), it turns out that we humans laugh at the strangest things.
4. Laughter is rightly called the best medicine as it relieves not only the one who laughs, but all those around him too.
5. A healthy sense of humour helps you to laugh at the worst situations and above all at yourself, a very positive sign of a happy life.
6. The world is certainly not worth crying over and little jokes show us the funny side of the gravest things.
7. A sense of humour makes you more acceptable in society. It makes you welcome everywhere, especially at parties, picnics and social gatherings.
8. If you can use humour to bridge the gap between people from different backgrounds, you can learn how to use diversity to enhance business objectives.
9. Laugh and make others laugh and get rid of nervousness and depression. A man who always sees the funny side of a situation can never be a pessimist
10. If you can learn to relax with a sense of humour you can keep away boredom and fatigue job pressures and domestic worries.
11. It is proved that laughter enhances the level of hormones which stimulate the heart and act as natural pain-killers.
12. As a Chinese saying goes, \"A smile can make you ten years younger.\" Doctors say laughter removes stress, burns calories and improves one's digestion.
13. Laughing at yourself is of immense benefit for your puffed-up pride. If you learn to laugh at yourself it will ease all your tensions and worries.
14. Laughter has been known to have cured serious illnesses and helped people get over bad phases in their lives.
15. Science has proven that when we're happy, the body recovers more quickly from the biological arousal of upsetting emotions.
16. Adults laugh approximately 15 times per day, while children laugh about 400 times a day! When we grow up, somehow we lose a few hundred laughs a day.
17. People believe that if they try to be funny and no one laughs, something terrible and embarrassing will happen.
18. The problem is that I tell a joke to co-workers and no one laughs. Now every time I see a straight face I have a panic attack.
19. We now know that there are two types of stress: good stress and bad stress. Laughter is a form of good stress, or stress in reverse.
20. Research on stress has shown that bad stress suppresses your immune system while good stress, or laughter, improves the immune system.
21. Being unhappy or very sad can seriously damage your health. So don't worry, be happy and laugh!
22. As the highest emotion, laughter is magical. It is an inner human tool that can be used to respond to any situation with power and grace. Cultivate a habit of smiling at the neutral, the tragic, and the horrible. Find laughter in tears. This cultivates not only physical and psychological health, but also a happier and friendlier personality.
Unit 5
Neighbours
1. Good fences make good neighbours. This proverb means that good neighbours respect one another’s property. As long as neighbours mind their own business, they will get along fine. Good farmers, for example, maintain their fences in order to keep their livestock from wandering onto neighbouring farms.
2. Jack and I have been roommates and friends for four years. We have been through many experiences together, learning and playing together, and there seems to be no border between us.
3. Difficult neighbours refer to those who are not easy to get along with, to deal with or to put up with, when a dispute arises.
4. The Bible says: “Love thy neighbour.” But in real life situations, loving one’s neighbour as oneself can be very difficult.
5. We build fences to keep our dog in our own yard and not in our neighbour’s. Folks well off enough to have a swimming pool build a fence around it to keep outsiders out — and safe.
6. But we build too many fences and walls — walls in our personal lives, walls in our churches, walls in our community and nation. So we have walls of hostility, anger, judgment, indifference, and isolation.
7. A warm and cordial relationship between neighbours can greatly increase the chances of a peaceful resolution. A warm and cordial relationship between neighbours can greatly increase the chances of a peaceful resolution.
8. Some people say that good fences make bad neighbours and others say good lawyers make bad neighbours.
9. There might be a time when you share a room with another person. Keep in mind that unfamiliar situations and stress will cause a person to act differently.
10. It is true that we all need to be good roommates. Students and residents need to respect each other, in and out of the university.
11. Being a good neighbour means working together to win together. Helping your fellow neighbour without expecting something in return is being a good neighbour.
12. A 60-year-old woman was arrested last week and charged with attempted murder, for she poisoned a dog of her next-door neighbour.
13. A man lived in a house that was separated from a next-door neighbour by a hedge. He allowed the hedge to grow to a towering height, blocking out all the sun in the neighbour’s yard. The neighbour tried to communicate about the problem, but was met with a wall of silence and quickly closed doors.
14. My father is being sued by his neighbour for building up a 6-foot-tall wood fence between his neighbour’s property and his own. There was an existing 4-foot-tall wood fence, but my father decided to tear that down and put up a new one. The result is: good fences make bad neighbours.
15. My housemates and I were fined $70 last month because there was trash in front of our house. The worst part about it is that it wasn’t our trash.
16. My next-door neighbour is not only mean but noisy; she often plays her stereos loud enough to wake up the whole community.
17. A man known as the “most annoying neighbour” went before a jury for the first time last Tuesday on charges of littering in his home’s yard. Neighbours have complained about the piles of junk and rats in his yard for more than 10 years.
18. When some neighbours complained about the loud noise that my classmates made on weekends, the university quickly adopted a new noise policy that restricted some traditional events held on weekends.
19. There are good neighbours and bad neighbours, both students and non-students, that live around the campus. I am not trying to say that our neighbours are bad or mean, just that the university should not always take their side.
20. Every year in the US, the Good Neighbour Awards are given to about 2,000 winners who have made extraordinary commitments to improving the quality of life in their communities.
21. We hope to show the world the neighbour’s virtues and to inspire people around the country to contribute to their communities.
22. Indonesia and Australia are neighbours, whether we like it or not. Between neighbours, there are always ups and downs. Sometimes we have very good and excellent relations and at other times we may have some problems — this is just normal between neighbours.
Unit6
Find keepers
1.“Finders keepers, losers weepers” means a person who finds something can keep it,
and the loser has no right to it.
Today this proverb is of dubious ethical merit.
2. “Finders keepers, losers weepers” is believed to be an old Scottish proverb
and while it may be common in some places,
it is not law.
It is folk wisdom.
3. According to a legal casebook,
the principle that the finder of an object has the propriety right against
the true owner goes back to an English case in 1722.
4. In most instances,
the principle of “Finders keepers” translates into victory for the finder,
simply because no one else can demonstrate true ownership to satisfaction of a court.
5. In a hospital in Taiwan,
Mr. Wang, a devout Buddhist, found a wallet on top of a payphone.
He promptly took it to the reception desk.
When asked why he did that, he simply said:
the
“It is my duty and belief that made me do it.”
6. Robert, aged 44, from Glasgow, had no thought of hanging on to the wallet he found,
despite living on income support.
He said: “I am a miner’s son and was a Sunday school teacher.
Honesty is second nature to me.”
7. A wallet was spotted by a boy out shopping with his mother and sister in Thailand.
The mother quickly stuffed the wallet into her trousers,
grabbed both children and hurried to catch a bus.
8. Shannon Hill was a student in North Carolina,
doing three jobs to pay for her tuition, food and rent.
When she found a wallet, her first thought was, I could really use this money.
But then she saw a picture of a baby in the wallet and changed her mind.
Someone else needed it more, she thought.
9. Andrew, 26, a TV production student in Glasgow,
had just ￡10 to buy food for the week.
Yet when he found a watch in a supermarket, he went to hand it in.
He explained: “It might have sentimental value.
I lost my watch and never got it back.”
10. Mary, a little girl in a pink floral dress,
found a wallet on a bench in a Seattle amusement park.
She ran to her father, who immediately handed it back to her.
“You must take this to someone who can help find the owner,” he said.
“You must take this to someone who can help find the owner,” he said.
The nine-year-old took her dad’s hand and they went off to find the park office.
11. In some countries,
if you pick up a wallet containing a handsome amount of money that does not belong to you,
and you keep it, you won’t really be prosecuted.
But your action is considered by many as a theft.
12. A lawyer explains that a person is guilty of theft
if he dishonestly takes property belonging to another
with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.
13. People argue that if you believe that keeping the money you find is acceptable
and other people would do the same, then you are not dishonest.
14. A lost and found (American English),
or lost property (British English) office,
is one in a large public building
or area where visitors can go to retrieve lost articles
that may have been found by other visitors.
15. Frequently found at museums, amusement parks and schools,
a lost and found office will typically be a clearly-marked box
or room in a location near the main entrance.
16. Some lost and found offices will try to contact the owners of any lost items
if there are any personal identifiers available.
Practically all will either sell,
give or throw away items after a certain period has passed to clear their storage.
17. Lost and found offices at large organizations can handle a large
and varied collection of articles.
Transport for London’s lost property offices (which handle items lost on the city’s tube,
buses and taxis) handles over 130,000 items a year,
including 24,000 bags and 10,000 mobile phones.
18. In China, the law clearly stipulates
that lost property should be returned to its rightful owner.
Those who find a misplaced article should inform the owner or the person who lost it,
or hand it in to relevant authorities, within 20 days of the property being found.
19. Those who offer a reward for returned property should pay up as agreed.
Lost property reverts to the State if nobody claims it.
But some people say it goes against the traditional Chinese virtue of
“returning to the owner what one has picked up (拾金不昧).”
20. Some Chinese finders feel it is their right to keep property of little value.
For more valuable property they think
they have the right to claim a certain amount as a handling fee,
and would expect to receive a reward.
21. A young security guard from the countryside, who earned only 300 yuan a month,
found a wallet containing 80,000 yuan in cash and other valuables whilst on duty,
and took the trouble to return the wallet to its owner.
The young man refused to accept the 5,000-yuan reward offered by the owner.
22. The website Lostinworld.com is a research tool which allows you to find people,
things or information through a system of classifieds.
Because of its easy and ambitious principle,
Lostinworld.com allows you to find anyone or anything, anywhere.
UNIT 7
The Skeptical Mind
1. Having a skeptical mind means keeping an open mind and basing your
beliefs far as possible, on the total available evidence.
2. You believe that everything is “explainable” in principle, and the only difference between a miracle and a natural phenomenon is that you are not able yet to explain the former in natural terms.
3. Skepticism is essentially a way of evaluating other people’s beliefs and forming your own.
4. Skeptics believe that in matter of the intellect, we ought to follow our reason so far as it is possible.
Skepticism does not necessarily preclude belief in God or an afterlife. It may be true that most skeptics are atheists and doubt the possibility of an afterlife.
5. It is a mistake to think that we ought to either believe in God or not believe in God because of the psychological benefits of doing so.
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9. Being a skeptic means being a mature adult who take responsibility for his or her own life and who makes his or her own judgement.
10. Sometime people’s opinion are influenced by the media and by what is said over and over again. There are few filter that separate reliable information from false and misleading data.
11. The Internet is quickly growing into the largest and most complex web of information our world has ever known.
12. We are presented with piles upon piles of ideas, claims and unusual phenomena without a tool kit to help us sort out the good from the bad.
13. Skepticism is a primary tool of science, but unbridled disbelief is a threat to the development of science.
14. However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of natural laws is imperfect and limited, so that the belief in the existence of basic all-embracing laws in Nature also rests on a sort of faith.
15. Apollo was the name given to any of a series of manned U.S. spacecraft designed to explore the Moon and surrounding space.
16. On July 16,1969, the crew of Apollo 11-Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins, and Buzz Aldrin-headed off to attempt the first lunar landing.
17. In April 1970 Apollo 13 almost ended tragically when an oxygen tank inside the service module exploded.
18. On 19th December 1972 the return of the astronauts aboard Apollo 17 after the 6th successful Moon landing marked the end of the Apollo era.
19. Over the past thirty years, many people have been persuaded that the
Apollo missions never actually took place and therefore represent the largest hoax in history.
20. It would be quite easy for me to state that the people who believe that the Apollo Moon landings were faked are wrong or just mad.
21. My present interest in Apollo is historical I love the details of how and why the Apollo spacecraft worked as well as the details of the lunar exploration.
22. I watch astronauts carrying out experiments, picking up Moon rocks, taking pictures and so forth, especially during the last few flights to the Moon.
23. But it wasn’t until later that I really understood how and why they would pick a particular rock to sample or crater to visit.
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