[00:13.51]Reading
[00:17.35]ELIAS'STORY
[00:21.60]My name is Elias.I am a poor black worker in South Africa.
[00:29.47]The time when I first met Nelson Mandela was a very difficult period of my life.
[00:37.64]I was twelve years old.
[00:41.40]It was in 1952 and he had opened a black law firm
[00:47.75]to advise poor black people on their problems.
[00:52.61]I began school at six.
[00:57.47]The school where I studied only two years was three kilometres away.
[01:03.95]I had to leave,
[01:07.60]because my family could not continue to pay the school fees and the bus fare.
[01:13.95]I could not read or write.After trying hard,I got a job in a gold mine.
[01:22.29]This was a time when one had got to have a passbook to live in Johannesburg.
[01:29.94]Sadly I did not have this passbook because I was not born there
[01:36.42]and I was worried about whether I would be of work.
[01:41.56]The day when Nelson Mandela told me what to do
[01:47.02]and helped me was one of the happiest days of my life.
[01:52.20]He told me how to get the correct papers so I could stay in Johannesburg.
[01:58.96]I never forgot how kind he was and whe he organized the ANC Youth League,
[02:06.62]I joined it as soon as I could.He said:
[02:11.94]"The last thirty years have seen the greatest number of laws
[02:17.61]stopping our rights and progress,
[02:22.05]until today we have reached a stage where we have almost no rights at all."
[02:28.82]It was the truth.Black people had no vote and could not choose who ruled them.
[02:36.87]The parts of town where they lived were places decided by white people.
[02:43.03]They could not get jobs they wanted.
[02:47.08]The places where they were sent to live were the poorest areas in South Africa.
[02:53.74]No one could grow food there.In fact as Nelson Mandela said:
[03:00.90]"...we were put in a position
[03:04.97]in which we had either to accept we were less important,or fight the Government.
[03:11.74]We first broke the law in a way which was peaceful;
[03:16.00]when this was not allowed...
[03:21.27]only then did we decide to answer violence with violence."
[03:28.93]As a matter of fact,I do not like violence...
[03:34.36]but in 1963 I helped him blow up some government buildings.
[03:40.81]It was very dangerous because if I was caught I could be put in prison for years.
[03:48.26]But I was happy to help because I knew it was to realize our dream
[03:54.61]of making black and white people equal.
[03:58.97]Using Language
[04:06.23]Listening
[04:09.18]1.Listen to the tape and find out the reason why
[04:16.73]Elias joined the ANC Youth League.
[04:21.69]Then answer the following questions.
[06:23.74]Reading
[06:31.18]THE REST OF ELIAS'STORY
[06:35.55]You cannot imagine how the sound of the name of Robben Island made us afraid.
[06:43.20]It was a prison from which no one escaped.
[06:48.37]There I spent the hardest time of my life.
[06:53.83]But when I got there Nelson Mandela was also there and in one way it helped me.
[07:01.28]For Mr Mandela began a school for those of us who had studied very little.
[07:08.25]He taught us during the lunch breads and the evenings
[07:13.40]when we should have been asleep.
[07:16.87]We read books under our blankets
[07:21.52]and used anything we could find to make candles to see the words.
[07:28.16]I became a good student and wanted to study for my degree
[07:34.19]but I was not allowed to do that.
[07:38.03]I knew I was clever enough
[07:41.98]because Mr Mandela allowed the prison guards to join us.
[07:47.64]He said they should not be stopped from studying for their degrees.
[07:53.50]As they were not cleverer than me,but did pass their exams,
[07:59.37]I knew I could get a degree too.
[08:03.21]That made me feel good about myself.
[08:07.58]When I had finished the four years in prison,I went to find a job.
[08:13.51]Since I was better educated,I got a job working in an office.
[08:19.98]But the police found out and told the important men in my business
[08:26.15]that I had been to prison for blowing up government buildings
[08:31.50]So I lost my job.
[08:35.16]I did not work for twenty years until Mr Mandela
[08:41.04]and the ANC came to power in 1993.
[08:46.37]All that time
[08:49.89]my wife and children had to beg for food and help from relatives or from friends.
[08:56.66]Luckily Mr Mandela remembered me
[09:01.10]and gave me a job taking tourists round my old prison on Robben Island.
[09:07.55]I felt bad the first time I talked to a group.
[09:12.59]All the terror and fear of that time came back to me.
[09:17.45]I remembered the beatings and the cruelty of the guards
[09:23.02]and my friends who had died and felt I would not be able to do it.
[09:29.39]But my family encouraged me.
[09:33.83]They said that the job and the pay from the new South African government
[09:39.58]was my reward after wording all my life for equal rights for the Blacks.
[09:46.11]So now at 51 I am proud to show visitors over the priwon,
[09:52.98]for I helped to make our people free in our own land.
[09:58.13]Workbook
[10:05.49]LISTENING
[10:08.65]Look at the questions before you listen to the text.
[10:14.09]This will help you understand the information.
[12:21.12]LISTENING TASK
[12:28.59]1.When you look at people or things,
[12:34.94]you may have a different point of view from others.
[12:39.98]Now listen to the tape and answer the following questions.
[14:30.22]2.Listen to the tape again and then complete the following tables.
[14:38.99]READING TASK
[14:46.94]A FOLLOWER OF BILL GATES
[14:51.30]I have been a friend of Bill Gates for a long time.
[14:56.65]I knew him when he was a student at Harvard University.
[15:02.11]We were surprised when he left University to set up his own company "Microsoft"
[15:09.66]and make his own software.
[15:13.21]But he was he clever one!
[15:17.29]He is very good at writing computer languages
[15:22.75]and almost all computers now use Microsoft software.
[15:29.10]The program "Word" is used from Britain to China!
[15:35.65]Of course he has made a lot of money and that makes people very jealous.
[15:42.81]They want to stop his success.
[15:47.17]Even the government is against him and has tried to bread his company into two parts.
[15:54.25]They say that he is unfair to other people who want to sell similar software.
[16:01.41]Because he fits his new software free in every new computer,
[16:07.76]the government says he is stopping other companies from selling their programs.
[16:14.03]This is not fair.
[16:17.68]Everyong should be able to do what they can to make their company bigger.
[16:24.22]Bill Gates has only done what he can to stop other competitors.
[16:30.85]He is very rich,but he is generous.
[16:36.18]He has given millions of dollars to help the education and health
[16:42.06]of many children around the world.
[16:46.32]You could not meet a better man than Bill Gates.
[16:51.28]A COMPETITOR OF BILL GATES
[16:56.92]Bill Gates has been very successful and become very rich.
[17:03.76]He is very generous but how has he got his money?
[17:09.51]He has done this by making sure
[17:14.19]that no one else will be able to compete with his software.
[17:19.65]His software is not the best but it is used most widely in the world.
[17:26.41]When he sees what is needed,
[17:30.78]he makes a program and produces it quicker than anybody else.
[17:37.04]That way he gets a large part of the software market.
[17:42.97]Then he works on improving the software later.
[17:48.23]He tries hard to stop others making better software.
[17:54.10]In 1995 the government tried to make things fairer for people like me.
[18:01.97]The government wanted to make Microsoft into two companies
[18:08.21]so that neither of them was so strong mor so rich.
[18:14.27]This meant that they could not stop somebody else making new software.
[18:20.83]I always wonder how he could get so rich so quickly.
[18:26.78]Has he done it by fair means?Or has he done it by being a computer bully |