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中级英语听力lesson 22

时间:2005-06-14 16:00:00

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(单词翻译)

Christine: Harry1, as an American, have you noticed any strong class distinctions in English society since you've been here?
Harry: Strong class distinctions? Yes, they haven't changed at all—that's what—that's what amuses me—in fifteen years or fourteen years—that the stratification is exactly the same as it was when I first came. It's extraordinary that it pervades2 everything.
Anna: What is class distinction? Because I don't know whether it's what job they do or ...
Harry: It's people's accents. In Pygmalion, you know, it goes back to, as soon as you open your mouth in England you're immediately you know placed.
Anna: Do you mean that there aren't different accents in America?
Harry: Not—of course there are different accents—but they're not as—they're not nearly as clearly defined.
Anna: But I mean, don't—doesn't a certain strata3 of American society use perhaps more slang than another one? More correct?
Harry: Not the way they do in England. In England they seem to really stick together. I mean I went the other week for the first time in my life to a point-to-point and I couldn't believe what I found. There I was in the middle of Lincolnshire and we went through muddy fields and suddenly we came upon this parking lot with nine thousand Range Rovers in it and everyone going 'Oh, hello darling. How are you?' you know and it was hilarious4 I mean and they were all you know this meeting of the clan5 and that certainly doesn't happen in America and all those people spoke6 the same way.
Barrie: But that—yes, I live in the middle of the country in the south and I must say when I moved there I noticed—I mean of course I'd been aware of class before that but I had no idea that the lines between them were so rigid7. I lived on an estate of a very big and successful farm until recently, and so the farm of course was run by the landed gentry8 who all went hunting and to point-to-point and all the rest of it. I lived next door to the groom9 who was—who despised them because they did all this and he had to just get the horses ready, um but at the same time he was terribly fond of them and they of him and there was all this sort of paternalistic attitude to the country workers that still goes on. I was staggered and nobody knew where to put me because I was living in a tied cottage that was tied to the farm, um but because I didn't work with any of them they were all uneasy with me. Most peculiar10.

Christine: But I think you raise a very good point there Barrie because you're in fact talking about yourself not fitting into either of these two extremes and I'd like to ask Harry again how many classes he can see very clearly defined.
Barrie: In England?
Christine: In England, yes.
Harry: Well, I guess, three off the top of my head. I mean not counting immigrants and foreigners. Yes, I mean there's the middle class is the most snobbish11 of all it seems to me. You know, they're the most aware of the whole system really because they're upwardly mobile usually you know they hope to be, and they're the ones—I mean the upper class are what I find extraordinary—they seem to be totally uninhibited for the most part. I think it's extraordinary. I mean I'm not passing any moral judgements on them but it still exists ...
John: Because they've got the confidence ...
Anna: ... and the money ...
Barrie: ... confidence and the money ...
John: Well no, I don't think money's much to do with it actually.
Anna: How can you change it? I mean how would you change it?
Harry: I'm not saying it should be changed ...
Anna: No, no, no, no. I don't—I mean people do say that it should be changed. Politicians say that we should have total equality which I don't believe you can ever have in anything.
Harry: Well there should be equality of opportunity. I mean at least it's a nice ideal to have, isn't it?

    Public school was hard compared to what I'd had before, day school on the reservation and a year at Sequoyah Government School. I almost flunked12 eighth grade at the public school, and it was a miracle that I passed. I just didn't know a lot of things, mathematics and stuff. I survived it somehow. I don't know how, but I did. The man who was head of the department of education at the Agency was the only person outside of my family who helped me and encouraged me to get an education. He understood and really helped me with many things I didn't know about. For a long time the white public school for the Big Cypress13 area would not let Indian children attend. A boy and I were the first Big Cypress Indians to graduate from that school. He is now in the armed forces.
    After I graduated from high school, I went to business college, because in high school I didn't take courses that would prepare me for the university. I realized that there was nothing for me to do. I had no training. All I could do was go back to the reservation. I thought maybe I'd go to Haskell Institute, but my mother was in a TB hospital, and I didn't want to go too far away. I did want to go on to school and find some job and work. So the director of education, at the Agency said, maybe he could work something out for me so I could go to school down here.
    I thought bookkeeping would be good because I had had that in high school and loved it. So I enrolled14 in the business college, but my English was so bad that I had an awful time. I had to take three extra months of English courses. But that helped me.
    I never did understand why my English was so bad—whether it was my fault or the English I had in high school. I thought I got by in high school; they never told me that my English was so inferior, but it was not good enough for college. It was terrible having to attend special classes.
    At college the hardest thing was not loneliness but schoolwork itself. I had a roommate from Brighton, one of the three reservations, so I had someone to talk to. The landlady15 was awfully16 suspicious at first. We were Indians, you know. She would go through our apartment; and if we hadn't done the dishes, she washed them. We didn't like that. But then she learned to trust us.
    College was so fast for me. Everyone knew so much more. It was as though I had never been to school before. As soon as I got home, I started studying. I read assignments both before and after the lectures. I read them before so I could understand what the professor was saying, and I read them again afterwards because he talked so fast. I was never sure I understood.
    In college they dressed differently from high school, and I didn't know anything about that. I learned how to dress. For the first six weeks, though, I never went anywhere. I stayed home and studied. It was hard—real hard. (I can imagine what a real university would be like.) And it was so different. If you didn't turn in your work, that was just your tough luck. No one kept at me the way they did in high school. They didn't say, "OK, I'll give you another week."
    Gradually I started making friends. I guess some of them thought I was different. One boy asked me what part of India I was from. He didn't even know there were Indians in Florida. I said, "I'm an American." Things like that are kind of hard. I couldn't see my family often, but in a way that was helpful because I had to learn to adjust to my new environment. Nobody could help me but myself.

    Well, I graduated and went down to the bank. The president of the bank had called the agency and said he would like to employ a qualified17 Indian girl. So I went down there, and they gave me a test, and I was interviewed. And then they told me to come in the following Monday. That's how I went to work. I finished college May 29, and I went to work June 1. I worked there for three years.
    In the fall of 1966, my father and the president of the Tribal18 Board asked me to come back to Big Cypress to manage a new economic enterprise there. It seemed like a dream come true, because I could not go back to live at Big Cypress without a job there.
    But it was not an easy decision. I liked my bank work. You might say I had fallen in love with banking19. But all my life I had wanted to do something to help my people, and I could do that only by leaving my bank job in Miami. Being the person I am, I had to go back. I would have felt guilty if I had a chance to help and I didn't.
    But I told my daddy that I couldn't give him an answer right away, and I knew he was upset because he had expected me to jump at the chance to come back. He did understand, though, that I had to think about it. He knew when I went to live off the reservation that I had had a pretty hard time, getting used to a job, getting used to people. He knew I had accomplished20 a lot, and it wasn't easy for me to give it up. But that's how I felt. I had to think. At one time it seemed to me that I could never go back to reservation life.
    But then really, through it all, I always wished there was something, even the smallest thing, that I could do for my people. Maybe I'm helping21 now. But I can see that I may get tired of it in a year, or even less. But right now I'm glad to help build up the store. If it didn't work out, if the store failed, and I thought I hadn't even tried, I would really feel bad.
    The basic thing about my feeling is that my brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews can build later on in the future only through the foundation their parents and I build. Maybe Indian parents don't always show their affection; but they have taught us that, even though we have a problem, we are still supposed to help one another. And that is what I am trying to do. Even when we were kids, if we had something and other kids didn't, we must share what we had ...
    By the age of nine, girls were expected to take complete care of younger children. I too had to take care of my little brother and sister. I grew up fast. That's just what parents expected. Now teenagers don't want to do that, so they get angry and take off. Head Start and nurseries help the working mothers because older children don't tend the little ones anymore. The old ways are changing, and I hope to help some of the people, particularly girls about my age, change to something good.
    There are people on the reservation who don't seem to like me. Maybe they are jealous, but I don't know why. I know they resent me somehow. When I used to come from school or from work back to the reservation, I could tell some people felt like this. I don't think that I have ever, ever, even in the smallest way, tried to prove myself better or more knowing than other people. I have two close friends here, so I don't feel too lonely; but other people my age do not make friends with me. I miss my sister, and I miss my roommate from Miami. My two friends here are good friends. I can tell them anything I want. I can talk to them. That's important, that I can talk to them. That's what I look for in a friend, not their education, but for enjoyment22 of the same things, and understanding. But there are only two of them. I have not been able to find other friends.
    The old people think I know everything because I've been to school. But the old people don't have the kind of experience which allows them to understand our problems. They think that it is easy somehow to come back here. They think there is nothing else. They do not understand that there are things I miss on the outside. They do not understand enough to be friends. They are kind, and they are glad that I am educated, but they do not understand my problems. They do not understand loneliness ...

1.       One wonders how, then, these students have arrived at such a false conclusion. One reason, of course, may be that they're science students. Scientific terms generally possess only one, precisely23 defined, meaning. It is, in fact, exactly this quality that makes these words distinctive24 in English, or indeed in any other language. Another reason could be the way in which these students were taught English. For example, long vocabulary lists are still an important feature in the foreign language learning programmes of many countries. On one side of the page is the word in English; on the other side a single word in the student's native language.

2.       2. Practically all the students think that every word in English had an exact translational equivalent in their own language. Again this is a gross distortion of the truth. Sometimes a word in the student's native language may not have an equivalent in English at all, which may have to employ a phrase as a translation. Sometimes one word in the student's language may be translated by one of two possible words in English. The difficulty that many students have with the two verbs 'do' and 'make' is an example of this. Often the area of meaning covered by one word in the student's language may be wider or narrower than the area of meaning covered by a corresponding word in English. This sometimes happens with the naming of colours, where most students would expect an exact correspondence between their language and English. The borders between the primary colours of the spectrum25 are, however, drawn26 at different places in different languages. Translation, in fact, is a particularly difficult thing to do well. It certainly can't be done by matching single words from one language by single words from another. At first, those computer scientists who attempted to construct an automatic translation machine made this mistake. The machines often produced nonsense.

3.  What, then, is the best way to increase one's vocabulary in a foreign language? This can be answered in three words. Firstly, observation: the unknown word should be observed in its context; in other words, the neighbouring words and the grammatical construction should be noted27. A good dictionary should be referred to and examples of the usage of the word should be noted. Secondly28, imitation: the student should use the new word in appropriate contexts, imitating the examples he has noted. Finally, repetition: he'll need to practise using the word several times before he's confident that he can use it correctly; in other words, repetition is necessary if the new word is to 'stick', and especially if it is to enter the student's active vocabulary.

 


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点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 harry heBxS     
vt.掠夺,蹂躏,使苦恼
参考例句:
  • Today,people feel more hurried and harried.今天,人们感到更加忙碌和苦恼。
  • Obama harried business by Healthcare Reform plan.奥巴马用医改掠夺了商界。
2 pervades 0f02439c160e808685761d7dc0376831     
v.遍及,弥漫( pervade的第三人称单数 )
参考例句:
  • An unpleasant smell pervades the house. 一种难闻的气味弥漫了全屋。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • An atmosphere of pessimism pervades the economy. 悲观的气氛笼罩着整个经济。 来自辞典例句
3 strata GUVzv     
n.地层(复数);社会阶层
参考例句:
  • The older strata gradually disintegrate.较老的岩层渐渐风化。
  • They represent all social strata.他们代表各个社会阶层。
4 hilarious xdhz3     
adj.充满笑声的,欢闹的;[反]depressed
参考例句:
  • The party got quite hilarious after they brought more wine.在他们又拿来更多的酒之后,派对变得更加热闹起来。
  • We stop laughing because the show was so hilarious.我们笑个不停,因为那个节目太搞笑了。
5 clan Dq5zi     
n.氏族,部落,宗族,家族,宗派
参考例句:
  • She ranks as my junior in the clan.她的辈分比我小。
  • The Chinese Christians,therefore,practically excommunicate themselves from their own clan.所以,中国的基督徒简直是被逐出了自己的家族了。
6 spoke XryyC     
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说
参考例句:
  • They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
  • The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。
7 rigid jDPyf     
adj.严格的,死板的;刚硬的,僵硬的
参考例句:
  • She became as rigid as adamant.她变得如顽石般的固执。
  • The examination was so rigid that nearly all aspirants were ruled out.考试很严,几乎所有的考生都被淘汰了。
8 gentry Ygqxe     
n.绅士阶级,上层阶级
参考例句:
  • Landed income was the true measure of the gentry.来自土地的收入是衡量是否士绅阶层的真正标准。
  • Better be the head of the yeomanry than the tail of the gentry.宁做自由民之首,不居贵族之末。
9 groom 0fHxW     
vt.给(马、狗等)梳毛,照料,使...整洁
参考例句:
  • His father was a groom.他父亲曾是个马夫。
  • George was already being groomed for the top job.为承担这份高级工作,乔治已在接受专门的培训。
10 peculiar cinyo     
adj.古怪的,异常的;特殊的,特有的
参考例句:
  • He walks in a peculiar fashion.他走路的样子很奇特。
  • He looked at me with a very peculiar expression.他用一种很奇怪的表情看着我。
11 snobbish UhCyE     
adj.势利的,谄上欺下的
参考例句:
  • She's much too snobbish to stay at that plain hotel.她很势利,不愿住在那个普通旅馆。
  • I'd expected her to be snobbish but she was warm and friendly.我原以为她会非常势利,但她却非常热情和友好。
12 flunked 22d4851a3e2958f8b24bdb0b15e15314     
v.( flunk的过去式和过去分词 );(使)(考试、某学科的成绩等)不及格;评定(某人)不及格;(因不及格而) 退学
参考例句:
  • I flunked math in second grade. 我二年级时数学不及格。
  • He flunked out (of college) last year. 他去年(从大学)退学了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
13 cypress uyDx3     
n.柏树
参考例句:
  • The towering pine and cypress trees defy frost and snow.松柏参天傲霜雪。
  • The pine and the cypress remain green all the year round.苍松翠柏,常绿不凋。
14 enrolled ff7af27948b380bff5d583359796d3c8     
adj.入学登记了的v.[亦作enrol]( enroll的过去式和过去分词 );登记,招收,使入伍(或入会、入学等),参加,成为成员;记入名册;卷起,包起
参考例句:
  • They have been studying hard from the moment they enrolled. 从入学时起,他们就一直努力学习。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • He enrolled with an employment agency for a teaching position. 他在职业介绍所登了记以谋求一个教师的职位。 来自《简明英汉词典》
15 landlady t2ZxE     
n.女房东,女地主
参考例句:
  • I heard my landlady creeping stealthily up to my door.我听到我的女房东偷偷地来到我的门前。
  • The landlady came over to serve me.女店主过来接待我。
16 awfully MPkym     
adv.可怕地,非常地,极端地
参考例句:
  • Agriculture was awfully neglected in the past.过去农业遭到严重忽视。
  • I've been feeling awfully bad about it.对这我一直感到很难受。
17 qualified DCPyj     
adj.合格的,有资格的,胜任的,有限制的
参考例句:
  • He is qualified as a complete man of letters.他有资格当真正的文学家。
  • We must note that we still lack qualified specialists.我们必须看到我们还缺乏有资质的专家。
18 tribal ifwzzw     
adj.部族的,种族的
参考例句:
  • He became skilled in several tribal lingoes.他精通几种部族的语言。
  • The country was torn apart by fierce tribal hostilities.那个国家被部落间的激烈冲突弄得四分五裂。
19 banking aySz20     
n.银行业,银行学,金融业
参考例句:
  • John is launching his son on a career in banking.约翰打算让儿子在银行界谋一个新职位。
  • He possesses an extensive knowledge of banking.他具有广博的银行业务知识。
20 accomplished UzwztZ     
adj.有才艺的;有造诣的;达到了的
参考例句:
  • Thanks to your help,we accomplished the task ahead of schedule.亏得你们帮忙,我们才提前完成了任务。
  • Removal of excess heat is accomplished by means of a radiator.通过散热器完成多余热量的排出。
21 helping 2rGzDc     
n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的,辅助的
参考例句:
  • The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
  • By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。
22 enjoyment opaxV     
n.乐趣;享有;享用
参考例句:
  • Your company adds to the enjoyment of our visit. 有您的陪同,我们这次访问更加愉快了。
  • After each joke the old man cackled his enjoyment.每逢讲完一个笑话,这老人就呵呵笑着表示他的高兴。
23 precisely zlWzUb     
adv.恰好,正好,精确地,细致地
参考例句:
  • It's precisely that sort of slick sales-talk that I mistrust.我不相信的正是那种油腔滑调的推销宣传。
  • The man adjusted very precisely.那个人调得很准。
24 distinctive Es5xr     
adj.特别的,有特色的,与众不同的
参考例句:
  • She has a very distinctive way of walking.她走路的样子与别人很不相同。
  • This bird has several distinctive features.这个鸟具有几种突出的特征。
25 spectrum Trhy6     
n.谱,光谱,频谱;范围,幅度,系列
参考例句:
  • This is a kind of atomic spectrum.这是一种原子光谱。
  • We have known much of the constitution of the solar spectrum.关于太阳光谱的构成,我们已了解不少。
26 drawn MuXzIi     
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的
参考例句:
  • All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
  • Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。
27 noted 5n4zXc     
adj.著名的,知名的
参考例句:
  • The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
  • Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。
28 secondly cjazXx     
adv.第二,其次
参考例句:
  • Secondly,use your own head and present your point of view.第二,动脑筋提出自己的见解。
  • Secondly it is necessary to define the applied load.其次,需要确定所作用的载荷。

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