[00:04.41]Lesson 53 1 Reading comprehension
[00:11.47]Read the text fast to find answers to these questions
[00:17.95]1 What happened to Kunta in this story?
[00:23.59]2 What do you think happened to many of the black people on the ship?
[00:29.36]JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
[00:33.52]Kunta wondered why the white people had done this to him.
[00:38.97]Born a free man,he was now in chains.
[00:44.54]Heavy iron chains around his feet and hands were fixed to a metal bar
[00:51.91]that ran round the hall about ten centimetres off the ground.
[00:57.47]He was just able to lie down on the ground,but could not stand up.
[01:03.74]He sat in the darkness and listened to the people around him.
[01:09.20]One man had a head wound and was in pain.
[01:13.95]Another,whose language Kunta understood,was crying softly to himself.
[01:21.50]Kunta knew it was the middle of the night,
[01:25.34]for through the small open window high in the wall he could see stars.
[01:31.69]He could also hear night insects and the sound of waves on the shore.
[01:38.17]Kunta had been seized in the forest and then hit on the head with a hard object.
[01:45.53]When he woke up,his hands and feet had already been tied together.
[01:51.78]What shocked him most was that the men who carried him were black.
[01:57.45]He reasoned with them,and tried to persuade them to set him free.
[02:03.30]But they would not listen to him.
[02:06.64]When they came to the river,seemed,in a language that Kunta did not understand.
[02:19.39]Finally,Kunta was thrown into th bottom of the boat
[02:24.74]and covered with a old smelly cloth.
[02:28.82]The men took him in their boat to the castle on the coast
[02:33.68]where he was now held prisoner.
[02:37.13]Another thing which shocked Kunta was that women were held in the castle too.
[02:43.66]He could hear their cryint,also children's voices.
[02:48.93]What was to become of them all,he wondered.
[02:52.77]For all his life,he had known that people suddenly disappeared from their villages.
[02:59.44]He had known that it was not safe to travel alone in the forest near the coast.
[03:05.39]But why did white people want to catch Africans and put them in chains?
[03:11.45]Would they be killed or even eaten?
[03:15.53]The situation seemed hopeless and he knew his life was in danger.
[03:21.40]Worse was to come.A few days later about 140 black people
[03:29.06]were taken and put on a tall sailing ship waiting off the coast.
[03:35.12]Once on the boat,they were taken below
[03:39.66]and their chains were fixed to two bars that ran the length of the ship.
[03:45.02]Their feet were fixed to one bar and their hands to another bar.
[03:50.87]Thus they lay on hard wooden boards,unable to stand up or move around.
[03:57.92]The sea journey lasted over sixty days and nights.
[04:03.88]They had rough weather,
[04:06.83]and Kunta's back bled from rolling over on the hard wooden boards.
[04:13.00]Many of the men fell sick with fever.
[04:17.75]They sighed and cried out for more water,
[04:22.01]but food and water were only given out once a day.
[04:26.97]Once in a while sailors came sown,Kunta thought,
[04:31.33]to carry sick men upstairs for treatment.
[04:35.41]When the ship finally arrived in a port,
[04:39.98]the wooden cover was opened wede and Kunta could see in daylight for the first time
[04:46.93]across the part of the ship where he had been chained.
[04:50.69]About a third of the people who had been chained up below
[04:55.44]at the beginning of the journey were missing.
[04:59.52]Lesson 54
[05:07.77]1 Reading comprehension
[05:11.30]Read the text fast to find answers to these questions
[05:17.47]1 Where did Haley's ancestor come from?
[05:23.11]2 What were Haley's"roots"?
[05:27.78]ROOTS
[05:30.63]There is a journalist and writer living in America whose name is Alex Haley.
[05:37.40]In his youth,his father and grandfather
[05:42.05]often told him stories about their family history
[05:46.91]A long time ago,one of his ancestors who lived in Africa
[05:52.68]went into the forest to cut down a tree to make a drum.
[05:57.93]He was caught,put in chains,and sent to America as a slave.
[06:04.88]On his arrival he was sold to a farmer and worked in the fields.
[06:11.54]He tried to escape but was followed and caught.
[06:16.89]The farmer cut off part of his foot to make sure he could not run away again.
[06:24.76]When he became a writer,Haley up his mind to find out more about his ancestors.
[06:32.12]"I want to find cut more about my 'roots',"he said.
[06:37.48]He did a lot of research and travelled around the USA
[06:43.12]looking for information about his ancestors.
[06:47.77]In this way he was able to find out where they lived,how many children they had,
[06:55.03]and where they died and were buried.
[06:58.87]He collected letters and made copies of people's diaries.
[07:04.44]But Haley was not satisfied.
[07:07.89]He did not know from which pqrt of Africa his ancestor had come.
[07:13.82]All he knew was that his African ancestor taught his son
[07:21.57]and grandson the words in his own language for "river"and "guitar".
[07:28.13]One day Haley met an African who was from Gambia,
[07:33.77]a small country on the west coast of Africa.
[07:38.21]This persom recognized the words for"river"and"guitar",
[07:43.36]and so Haley thought that his ancestor must have come from Gambia.
[07:47.93]His newspaper provided him with some money
[07:52.08]in order that he might travel to Gambia for his research.
[07:57.34]The moment he reached the country,he started his search.
[08:02.32]He discovered that there was a group in the east of the country
[08:07.18]that shared the same family name--Kinte.
[08:11.91]So he travelled there to find out more.
[08:15.67]In Gambia,as in most parts of Africa,
[08:20.32]there are few written records of family history.
[08:24.58]All the stories of families,heroes,wars and journeys
[08:31.35]are passed down from generation to generation.
[08:35.89]A few people in each group
[08:39.44]are given the task of remembering the group's family history
[08:44.59]that goes back over centuries.
[08:48.35]One of these men was found and he began to tell the story of this family group.
[08:55.48]After speaking for about half an hour he came to a sad part of the family history.
[09:02.62]One day,a young man named Kunta Kinte went off into the forest
[09:09.38]to cut down a tree as he wanted to make a drum a drum.
[09:14.24]He was never seen agfain.Haley jumped up and cried,"That was my ancestor".
[09:21.50]He had found his family,and his"roots"at last! |