Unit 1O A glimpse of the Age
Part Ⅰ Getting ready
A The following words and phrases will appear in this unit. Listen carefully and study the definitions.
1. cosmopolitan: composed of people or elements from many parts of the world
2. proximity: nearness in place, etc.
3. endorse: express approval or support of
4. spectrum: a broad range
5. derision: laughing at in contempt
6. armada: a fleet of warships
7. exotic: not native; foreign
8. staggering success: a huge success
9. echo: repeat in imitation
10. HMS: used before the names of ships in the British Royal Navy. HMS stands for "Her Majesty's Ship" or "His Majesty's Ship".
11. punk music: music marked by extreme and often deliberately offensive expression of social discontent
12. obscure: not readily seen
B Listen to some short paragraphs describing some places in Australia. Write the place names on the map.
Built around the shores of one of the world's most beautiful harbors, Sydney is the capital of New South Wales and is the oldest and largest city in Australia. From its beginning as a settlement for British convicts over 200 years ago, Sydney has grown and developed into a dynamic, cosmopolitan city of over 3 million people, and is one of the world's top tourist destinations.
Midway up the east coast of Australia is Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland. With the Gold Coast to the south and the Sunshine Coast to the north, domestic and international airports, Brisbane is an ideal headquarters for a Queensland holiday.
Tasmania is located southeast of mainland Australia. As a major tourist attraction, it has got its diverse and spectacular scenery, unspoilt wilderness and heritage. Southern Tasmania is the most populous region of the state. Hobart, Tasmania's state capital is in the southeast and boasts historic buildings as well as proximity to regional attractions.
C Listen to the conversation. Supply the missing information about the history quiz.
M: Can you help me with this history quiz?
W: I'll try. What do you need to know?
M:Well, first, when did the Berlin Wall start to come down?
W:Oh, that's easy to remember. It started coming down in 1989.
M: And how long has the United Nations been in existence?
W: Mmm, ... the United Nations has existed since 1945.
M: And when did jazz first become popular?
W:Jazz? Well, I believe it really become popular in the 1920's.
M:Hmm. Now just one more. In what century was Napoleon emperor of France?
W: He was emperor of France in the nineteenth century.
M: Thanks. Gee, you're great at history.
W: I should be. I'm a history teacher.
Part Ⅱ Australian bicentennial
A Listen to the letter from Australia. Add more key words in notes column. Then with the help of the questions, make an outline of the material.
Letter from Australia. From his home in Hobart in Tasmania, writer and broadcaster Keith McCreal looks back at Australia's bicentennial celebrations.
"I think the first thing that must be said is that you simply can't compress a whole year and a continent into fifteen minutes because all across the country there's been so much to see and do and to hear, and the range as well as the number of activities has been enormous. There've been exhibitions, shows, firework displays, festivals, new roads laid down, to say nothing of a billion dollar new parliament built for the politicians in Canberra. The Australian Bicentennial Authority has spent millions and endorsed everything it seems, from the special bicentennial history that we've had written to the bicentennial seminar of the Australian Geranium Society. Most spectacular of all, in the physical sense, was Expo in Brisbane. When they said in Queensland, at the start of this decade, that Brisbane would host a world exposition as its contribution to the bicentennial celebrations, there was a spectrum of reaction from the rest of Australia, ranging from polite silence to openly vocal derision. Well, the 'doomsayers' got it wrong. When it ended in late October eighteen and a half million people had been to Expo, twice the number predicted. Funded by private enterprise, it hadn't cost government a penny, and when the Australian newspaper called it a staggering success, in an editorial, it was only echoing what we all thought.
Down here in Hobart we've had bicentennial visits from two queens, our own Elizabeth from Britain and Beatrix of the Netherlands to remind us that Tasmania was named after her Dutch compatriot, Janson Abel Tasman, who landed in 1642, called the island Van Dieman's Land and never returned. The Duke of York came here on HMS Edinburgh, and the Duchess, together with an armada of other warships. We had too a beautiful summer with lovely clear, warm days and it was during that summer that the tall ships came; those beautiful sail trading ships with exotic names from far away. The Captain Maranda from Uruguay, The Shababoman, from the Gulf, a Polish one, the biggest, with a name we could never pronounce and the Young Endeavour, Britain's bicentennial gift to Australia, with a mixed crew of British and Australian youngsters. They all tied up here for five days and thousands came to see them. Hobart was packed and sunny and happy and on the morning that they left we boarded scores of small boats and followed them down the deep Derwent River to see them off to Sydney. It made a sight never seen before and not again, I think. At least not in our lifetimes."
B Now try this: listen to a more authentic version of the letter. Fill in the blanks with the words you hear on the tape.
本题听力原文同上。
Part Ⅲ Grand projects of the age
A Listen to the passage. Try to guess the meaning of the words. Match column A with column B.
As a mighty symbol of rebirth, the 102-floor Empire State Building opened in the teeth of the Depression 1931. Built by General Motors executive John Raskob, the building remained for 42 years the world's tallest. A few skyscrapers have since soared higher, but none has surpassed its limestone majesty.
Chinese people have dreamed of taming the Yangtze, China's longest river, whose floodwaters have claimed the lives of millions. Now people are expecting this $24 billion Three Gorges Dam to harness the river, giving the nation a great leap forward as it generates electricity for China's fast growing cities and makes the river more navigable. It is scheduled to be finished in 2009.
Started in 1956, the Interstate Highway System was created by Dwight Eisenhower. The 43 000-mile, $330 billion (and still counting) network is the greatest project ever. It made the U.S. an automobile society, created millions of jobs and laced the country with superhighways that increased mobility, encouraged trade and opened the countryside to development.
Napoleon thought of one, but not until 192 years later would a tunnel under the Channel linking England and the Continent be finished. Beginning on their respective shores, teams of French and English workers used 1000-ton boring machines to dig through the 24 miles of chalk, clearing 20 million tons. The two sides met on Dec.1, 1990 and the Channel was completed in 1994.
Like the Suez Canal that preceded it, the $380 million project — the Panama Canal was an epic assault on nature that employed as many as 43 400 workers at a time. More than 211 million cu. yds. of earth and rock were moved to unite the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The canal cut the voyage from New York to California by 7 800 miles when it was completed in 1914.
B Now listen again. Supply the missing information about each item mentioned.
Part Ⅳ More about the topic: Americans from the 1960s to the 1980s
A Listen to the recording. Complete the outline.
Today, we tell the story about some social and cultural issues of the 1970s and the 1980s.
An economics professor from the United States was teaching in Britain in the early 1980s. One of his students asked this question, "What is most important to Americans these days?" He said, "Earning money". Clearly, his answer was far too simple. Still, many observers would agree that great numbers of Americans in the 1980s were concerned with money. These people wanted the good life that they believed money could buy.
In some ways, the 1980s were the opposite of the 1960s. The 1960s were years of protest and reform. Young Americans demonstrated against the Vietnam War. African Americans demonstrated for civil rights. Women demonstrated for equal treatment. For many, society's hero was the person who helped others. For many in the 1980s, society's hero was the person who helped himself. Success seemed to be measured only by how much money a person made.
The period of change came during the 1970s. For a while, these years remained tied to the social experiments and struggles of the 1960s. Then, they showed signs of what America would be like in the 1980s. There were a number of reasons for the change. One reason was that the United States ended its military involvement in Vietnam. Another was that the civil rights movements and the women's movements reached many of their goals. A third reason was the economy. During the 1970s, the United States suffered an economic recession. Interest rates and inflation were high. There was a shortage of imported oil.
As the 1970s moved towards the 1980s, Americans became tired of social struggle. They became tired of losing money. They had been working together for common interests. Now, many wanted to spend more time on their own personal interests. This change appeared in many parts of American society. It affected popular culture, education and politics. In the 1960s, folk music was very popular. Many folk songs were about social problems. In the 1970s, groups played hard rock and punk music instead. Self-help books were another sign that Americans were becoming more concerned about their own lives. These books described ways to make people happier with themselves. The 1970s also saw a change in education. In the 1960s, many young people expressed little interest in continuing their education after four years of study in college. They were busy working for social reforms. Many believed that more education only created unequal classes of people. By the middle 1970s, however, more young people decided it was acceptable to make a lot of money. Higher education was a way to get the skills to do this. Law schools and medical schools soon had long lists of students waiting to get in. Politically, the United States went through several changes during the 1970s.
The 1980s were called the Reagan years because he was president for eight of them. During his first term, the recession ended. Inflation was controlled. He reduced taxes. Americans felt hopeful that they could make money again.
Entertainment in the 1980s showed the interests society placed on financial success. The characters in a number of television programs, for example, lived in costly homes, wore costly clothes and drove costly automobiles. They were not at all like average Americans. They lived lives that required huge amounts of money.
A big change in American life during the 1980s came as a result of the computer. Computers were invented 40 years earlier. By the 1980s, computers had become much smaller. Anyone could learn how to use them even children. Millions of Americans soon had a personal computer in their home. They could use it to read newspaper stories, buy things, do school work and play games. Such technological improvement and the bright economy filled the Americans of the early and middle 1980s with hope.
Part Ⅴ Do you know ...?
A Listen to the report. Decide whether the statements are true or false. Put "T" or "F" in the brackets.
The photograph shows a man kissing a woman. And it's quite a kiss. He has a bent almost over backwards. The photographer was the renowned Alfred Eisenstein, who published the picture on the cover of a nation wide magazine. But since the subject was kissing, it's hard to see their faces clearly. So for 50 years no one could figure out who they were.
It is one of the most famous kisses in American history: a sailor and a nurse in a victory embrace right in the middle of Broadway. The image was captured on 14 August, 1945 by photographer Alfred Eisenstein and printed on the cover of Life magazine. But the kissers whose faces are obscured remained anonymous for years. In 1980, Edith Sheng came forward to admit she was the nurse. Although she recognized herself from the minute she saw the magazine's cover, she said she was too embarrassed to tell anyone because she didn't know who the sailor in the picture was.
"I was just standing there and I ... grabbed and this is a stranger. But this is a man who fought for us, and who helped end the war."
Miss Sheng says she's received several calls over the past 15 years from men who claimed to be the sailor who kissed her, but she says none of their stories rang true.
But Carols Muscarrela says he didn't have any trouble persuading Edith Sheng that he was the man in Eisenstein's photograph when he met her in July, nearly 50 years after their first encounter. Mr Muscarrela said he didn't even know the picture had been taken because he was shipped out a few days later and didn't return for 3 months. He said his mother saw the picture, however, and was shocked.
"My mother went to visit the doctor's office in Berklin. This is several weeks after the photograph was taken and she picked up a magazine in the doctor's office and she said: 'This is my boy. This is my little boy.'"
When he did learn about the picture, Carols said he didn't come forward to identify himself because he was happily married and really had no interest in the publicity. But, he says, a friend persuaded him to come forward for the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War and the most famous kiss in American history.
B Now try this: listen to a more authentic version of the report. |