口语资料9.docx

1、口语资料9英语范文背诵精华(1):IdeasofHomeHaveChangedA great many people, when they speak of home, tend to associate it with a certain atmosphere, certain physical surroundings, and certain emotional attitudes within themselves. This sentimentality toward home is something that has come down to us from the past.

2、Many modern people do not have it, and I think it is a good thing that they do not. In the old days life was difficult. Enemies could attack you and kill or rob you, and you had little protection against them. People did not live in well-built houses where doors could be locked. They did not have th

3、e protection of an organized police force or telephones which could summon the police instantly. How did this influence the way people felt about home? Small family groups clung tightly together for protection against beasts and against other men. Only the bravest went beyond the small family area.

4、Even in the Middle Ages only the most daring went to lands beyond sea. The human pursuit of security conditioned men to love their homes. I am sure that this feeling must have been very strong among the early settlers of the United States who were obliged, by famine and oppression, to take the plung

5、e and go to the new land where they knew no one and where they were subject to Indian attack. We can see this even today in the attitudes of minority groups who, because of a feeling of insecurity, still preserve cohesive family ties. Today, thanks to modern transportation and well-organized societi

6、es, thousands of people willingly and eagerly leave the surroundings where they were born, and the oftener they do so, the less sentiment they are likely to have for those surroundings. I lived in England for three years, and I noticed that boys and girls left their parents homes and lived in dwelli

7、ngs of their own. There they could just telephone and ask an agency to provide them with a house or an apartment, which was their home. How has the meaning of this word home been altered by such activity? What does home mean to those people or to families who often move about, living in first one ho

8、tel and then another? I believe that for them home means a place where they can have privacy. This idea of home as being a place of privacy is emerging in my country, Saudi Arabia, where the young are abandoning their parents homes to live their own life. As for me, the atmosphere and surroundings o

9、f the place where my parents live have no sentimental attachment. Home is where I can shut the door and be by myself. At the moment it is a room in Eaton Hall. When I left my parents several years ago, I was anxious to leave. You might call it unfeeling, but that was the way I felt. On the day of my

10、 departure for the United States, my grandmother sobbed and wept. My father, however, indicated that he understood how I felt. “Son,” he said, “I am not sorry that you are leaving us. I only hope that you make the most of your time.2. Love of Life Two men walked slowly, one after the other, through

11、the low water of a river. It ran cold over their feet. They had blanket packs on their backs; guns, but no bullets; matches, but no food. Suddenly the man behind fell over a stone, hurt his foot badly and called: Hey, Bill, Ive hurt my foot. Bill continued without looking back. The man was alone but

12、 not lost in the empty land. He knew the way to camp, and its food and bullets. He struggled to his feet and limped on. He had not eaten for two days. He picked some small round, tasteless fruits. They did not satisfy, but he knew he must eat them. In the evening he built a fire and slept like a dea

13、d man. When he woke up, he took out a small bag weighing fifteen pounds. He wasnt sure he could carry it any longer. But he couldnt leave it behind. He had to take it with him. He put it back into his pack, rose to his feet and continued. His foot hurt, but it was nothing compared with his hunger, w

14、hich made him go on until darkness fell. His blanket was wet, but he knew only he was hungry. In his troubled sleep, he dreamed of rich meals. He woke up cold, sick and lost; the small bag was still with him. As he pulled himself along, the bag became heavier and heavier. He opened the bag, full of

15、small pieces of gold. He left half the gold on a rock. 1. _ Eleven cold, rainy days passed. Once he found some animal bones with no meat on them. He broke them and ate them like an animal. Would he, too, be bones tomorrow? Why not? This was life. Only life hurt. There was no hurt in death. To die wa

16、s to sleep. Then why was he not ready to die? He, as a man, no longer desired. Life in him, unwilling to die, drove him on. One morning he woke up beside a river. Slowly he followed it with his eyes and saw it emptying into a shining sea. When he saw a ship, he closed his eyes. He knew there could b

17、e no ship, no sea, here. An imagined picture, he thought. Hearing a noise, he turned around. A wolf（狼）, old and sick, was coming slowly toward him. This was real, he thought. He turned back; the sea and the ship were still there. He didnt understand. Had he been walking north, away from the camp, to

18、ward the sea? He started slowly toward the ship, knowing full well the sick wolf was following him. In the afternoon, he found the bones of a man. Beside the bones was a small bag of gold, like his own. Bill had carried his gold to the end; he would carry Bills gold to the ship. Ha-ha! He would have

19、 the last laugh on Bill. His laughing sounded like the low cry of an animal. The wolf cried back. The man stopped suddenly and turned away. How could he laugh about Bills bones and take his gold? 2. _ 3. _ He was very sick, now. He inched about on hands and knees, having lost everything his blanket,

20、 his gun, and his gold. Only the wolf stayed with him hour after hour. At last he could go no further. He fell. The wolf came close to him, but the man was ready. He got on top of the wolf and held its mouth closed and bit it with his last strength. The wolfs blood flowed into his mouth. He held the

21、 wolf with his teeth and killed it; then he fell on his back and slept. 4. _ 5. _ The men on the ship saw a strange object lying on the beach. It was moving toward them perhaps twenty feet an hour. They went to look and could hardly believe it was a man. Three weeks later, when he felt better, he to

22、ld them his story. But there was one strange thing: he feared there wasnt enough food on the ship. They also noticed he was getting fat. They gave him less food, but still he grew fatter with each day. Then one day they saw him put some bread under his shirt. They searched his bed and found food und

23、er his blanket. They understood.3. How to grow old by Bertrand Russell 1、In spite of the title, this article will really be on how not to grow old, which, at my time of life, is a much more important subject. My first advice would be to choose your ancestors. My maternal grandfather, it is true, was

24、 cut off in the flower of his youth at the age of sixty-seven, but my other three grandparents all lived to be over eighty. Of remoter ancestors I can only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off. 2、A great grandmother

25、 of mine, who was a friend of Gibbon, lived to the age of ninety-two, and to her last day remained a terror to all her descendants. My maternal grandmother, after having nine children who survived, one who died in infancy, and many miscarriages, as soon as she became a widow, devoted herself to woma

26、ns higher education. She was one of the founders of Girton College, and worked hard at opening the medical profession to women. She used to relate how she met in Italy an elder gentleman who was looking very sad. She inquired the cause of his melancholy and he said that he had just parted from his t

27、wo grandchildren. Good gracious she exclaimed, I have seventy-two grandchildren, and if I were sad each time I parted from one of them, I should have a dismal existence! Mdaresnaturale, he replied. But speaking as one of the seventy-two, I prefer her recipe. After the age of eighty she found she had

28、 some difficulty in getting to sleep, so she habitually spent the hours from midnight to 3 a.m. in reading popular science. I do not believe that she ever had time to notice that she was growing old. This, I think, is proper recipe for remaining young. If you have wide and keen interests and activit

29、ies in which you can still be effective, you will have no reason to think about the merely statistical fact of the number of years you have already lived, still less of the probable brevity of you future. 3、As regards health I have nothing useful to say since I have little experience of illness. I e

30、at and drink whatever I like, and sleep when I can not keep awake. I never do anything whatever on the ground that it is good for health, though in actual fact the things I like doing are mostly wholesome. 4、Psychologically there are two dangers to be guarded against in old age. One of these is undu

31、e absorption in the past. It does not do to live in memories, in regrets for the good old days, or in sadness about friends who are dead. Ones thoughts must be directed to the future and to things about which there is something to be done. This is not always easy: ones own past is gradually increasi

32、ng weight. It is easy to think to oneself that ones emotions used to be more vivid than they are, and ones mind keener. If this is true it should be forgotten, and if it is forgotten it will probably not be true. 5、The other thing to be avoided is clingling to youth in the hope of sucking vigor from its vitality. When your children are grown up they want to live their own lives, and if you continue to be as interested in them as you were when they were young, you are likely become a burden to them, unless they are unusually callous. I do not mean that one should be without interested in th