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2020年全国英语等级考试教材第三级第三单元环境

CHAPTERS 3 ENVIRONMENT
Unit 3 Environment
Conversations
Mr.Zhang visits his hometown,where he spent his childhood.
Now he is talking with Mr.Jackson.
We're nearly there.All has come back to me.
Look,the old park"People's Park"is still there.
I used to pass the park to go scholl each day.
True?I thought you are living in Xi'an city all your life.
No,I used to live in this old city from 1970s to early 1980s.
Have you ever been back since you left here?
No,but I'm always dreaming of visiting it.
I didn't have enough time,so I've never come back here.
Now,we are in the city center?
Er,oh,yes,you're right.The busy road,the skyscrapers..
It seems that the old department store has disappeared.
It's there!Right?
Yeah,it has changed a lot,bigger and taller than ever,
but there was no flyover here in 1980s.
Look at these skyscrapers!
Wonderful!But in the past,there were only small shops.
I especially liked t buy sweets in one of them,
its name was"Xiao Hong Shop".
Twenty years have passed.Great changes have taken place,
we have been getting older,just as a saying goes"Time is waiting for no man"!
I agree with you.My old guy,let's find a parking lot and walk around the city,OK?
OK,I'm glad to.
Tim and Am are talking about Mr.Mark's new house.
Ann,have you received your invitation?
No,I haven't.My invitation?By whom?
A house warming party next Sunday.
Whose party?
Mr.Mark's.They have bought a new house beside the North Gate.
It's a bout half an hour's wark from here.
Have you seen the house?
Of course.I went there yesterday.
Is it quite nice?
Yes.Their house is surrounded by a large and beautiful garden,
full of all kinds of flowers.
The house is standing in the middle of the garden.
It has three storeys.
It sounds good!
The house has five bedrooms,a big living room,a dining room,
a kitchen and three bathrooms.
The carpet in his sitting room is made in China.
It must be very delicate.
Yes,it goes very well with the curtain and their sofas.
Anything else?
Mr.Mark has decorated his study with many expensive works of art.
It's well known that he likes to collect works of art wherever he goes.
They also have a four-car garage.
Really?It's just his dream.
How I wish I had a house like his!
It's a piece of cake.
I suggest that you sell up all your stocks for a new house.
Mr.Brown and his son Robert are walking along the river.
Dad,how foggy it is this morning!
Yes,it's a new problem.
A new problem?Why do you say so?
The problem results from smog.
Smog?What is it?
Smog is blended with two words"smoke"and"fog".
It has seriously affected people more than any other type of air pollution.
I see.Look,there are some plastic bags floating on the river.
Some citizens are still ignorant of the environmental protection.
It's really a pity!
But,anyway,public concern over the environmental pollution has greatly increased.
There is hope for the future.
Passage In Our"Rurban"Age-To know the countryside,you must live in the city
In his book Badgers,the naturalist Michael Clark describes
surveying the animal back in the 1960s.
Calling at a farm cottage,
he asked an old countryman whether he knew of any badgers living nearby.
"What's badgers?"came the reply.
The countryman,Clark writes,"genuinely did not know of the species".
You can be a countryman,it seems,and know little of the country.
But traditionally,country folks are regarded as being in tune with the land.
They live there,don't they?What can townies know of the"way of nature"?
This assumption infects much of our culture.
It predicates the existence of a clear division between town and country.
It enables the rural to characterize itself as an indigenous culture,
its"native"traditions and pastimes"hunting and fishing"
threatened by an oppressive urban majority.
The underlying message lies
in that the countryside is best managed by country people.
After all,the know about such things...
Unfortunately,too often,they don't.
As the historian Keith Thomas showed in his study Man and the Natural World,
the growth of our knowledge about nature has come by correcting
the"vulgar errors"of country people.
And although Thomas was writing about the period between 1500 and 1800,
that process continues today
-what country dwellers take for granted is still being confounded
by the careful observation of reality.
A study,from York University,
has cast strange new light on the farmers'enemy-foxes.
The more foxes a farmer kills,the more lambs he appears to lose to foxes.
Theat is because:
new foxes will almost certainly occupy the slain animals'territory,
and new animals,unused to the terrain,
may then choose more obvious prey-such as lambs.
The message of studies such as this is that matural systems are complex,
unpredictable:
understanding them requires patient observation and careful analysis.
The lack of these conditions explains why,in the early modern era,
grass snakes were killed as venomous,
and gardeners destroyed worms because they were thought to gnaw plant roots.
The assumption that people"ought"to know
such things is based on an urban-rural divide that opened up in the 18th century.
For a couple fo centuries,city and country people did inhabit separate realms.
But the car,the phone,the media and the Internet
have contributed to the unifying tendency of what we call modern lifestyle;
and the vast population outflow from cities into rural areas
blurred the difference between urban and rural.
Thus,a new word-"rurban"-has been coined to describe this condition.
Most of us now work indoors or in an office,
and even if we are involved in our primary industries,
we are far more likely to be staring
at a computer than communicating with the landscape.
Human life has turned generally into a monoculture by work,
sleep,shopping and TV
-all actually identical whether performed in town or country.
Words and Expressions
badger naturalist survey call at
n.獾n.自然主义者vt.仔细全面地观察访问;停靠
countryman genuinely species traditionally
n.乡下人adv.真正的;真实地n.种adv.传统上
townie assumption infect culture
n.城里人n.假定,假设vt.感染,影响n.文化;文明
predicate existence division enable
vt.断言n.存在n.分开,分割vt.使能够;授予权力或方法
rural lobby characterize indigenous
adj.乡下的n.游说议员者vt.表..的特点adj.本土的
pastime hunting fishing threaten
n.消遣,娱乐n.狩猎,猎狐n.捕鱼vt.威胁;预示
oppressive urban underlying
adj.压制性的,压迫的adj.城市的,市内的adj.潜在的,出现但不明显示的
historian vulgar error process
n.历史学家的adj.粗俗的n.错误,过失n.过程,程序
dweller confound observation cast
n.居住者;居民vt.使窘迫;使羞愧n.观察,观测v.投,抛,投射
lamb occupy slay territory
n.小羊vt.占,占领vt.杀,杀死n.领土
unused terrain obvious prey
adj.不习惯..的n.地势,地形adj.明显的,显而易见n.被捕食的动物
complex unpredictable analysis era
adj.复杂的;综合的adj.不可预知的n.分析,分解n.时代,纪元,时期
venomous gardener gnaw inhabit
adj.有毒的,分泌毒液的n.园丁v.咬,啃,啮vt.居住于;存在于
realm Internet contribute unify
n.领域,范围n.因特网,国际互联网vi.帮助实现,有助于vt.统一,使成一体
tendency lifestyle outflow blur
n.趋向,倾向n.生活方式n.流出,流出物vt.使模糊
indoors likely communicate landscape
adv.在户内adj.很可能的,有希望的v.沟通n.风景;山水画
generally monoculture identical
adv.广泛地,普通地n.单一文化adj.同一的,同样的
Exercises
Section I listening Comprehension
Listen to the record.
Answer each question by chossing A,B,C or D from the four possible choices.
1.Any news in the newspaper?
Yes.A black was beaten and thrown into prison only because of his complaints.
2.Would you like to go to the beach for sunbath?
I'm glas to.It's said that the smell of beach
can soothe people who suffer from anxiety.
3.The kitchen is filled with smoke.I can hardly breathe.
True?But I have got used to it.
4.Good afternoon,I'm living in the suburb now.
The heavy traffic is quite terrible in the city.
I have thought that you want to buy a big apartment.
5.Darling,I can't tolerate my mother any more.
She always complains.Can we find another house,however big it is!
OK,let's read the newspaper with ads.
B
Wang Hua is talking with a foreign student,Peter,about the environment.
Hello,how long have you been here?
Actually I planned to come here in November,
but my parents suggested that I observe the Christmas,so I started in January.
That's less than two months.What do you think of here?
It's old with a long history.At the first sight,it's so beautiful.
Then,what do you mean?
Yesterday,when I was walking with a Chinese friend along a river,
I was surprised.Why?
Living in such a beautiful city,
some people seem to be deliberate to throw the wastes
or rubbish anywhere they like.
So this is why some dustbins are standing along the road.
This is less important.pollution,yes,
air and water pollution can endanger human health
and produce harmful effects on living things and other materials.
It's a global problem.It has already caught the public attention.
So,in Europe,environmentalists formed the party
and campaigned for the protection of environment.
Little by little,people have become aware of the problems facing us.
Our Chinese government has passed laws to protect our environment.
The same case in our country.
People in the world have begun to know how to value the protection of themselves
on the basis of protection of their world.
Supplementary Reading
Cleaner Ways of Travel
A Dutch lawyer drove his car from his suburban home
to the edge of Amsterdam and parked.
He took out a collapsible bicycle,unfolded it,
and fastened his brief case and tightly relled his umbrella to the side.
Then he climbed on and cycled to his office.
Not an eyebrow was raised,
because the lawyer was only one of many Europeans
who are switching form four wheels to two for in-city travel.
Stories like these are told with such enthusiasm
by experts on air pollution that one would expect to see hardly a car
on the streets of London or Paris in rush hour.
Of course,this is not the case.
The use of the bicycle is the result of the increase,
rather than the decrease,of cars in Europe.
Although European cars release fewer poisonous fumes than large American models,
smog is filling European air too.
Cities are so jammed with cars that officials have hegun to take action.
"People are beginning to realize what a dangerous contraption the car is,
"says a Danish professor.
Can the car then survive?Certainly no one today can imagine life without it.
In America a car appears to be essential.
Drivers will crawl through midtown traffic rather than give up their vehicles.
Many families even own two cars.
But we cannot continue to let car fums poison us.
City dwellers are already beginning to choke in the smog.
A drastic change is needed if we are going to go on driving.
In the hunt for a way to save the car from extinction,
all sorts of extreme methods have been proposed.
The increased use of electric power
is by far the most promising of the ideas put forward to date.
Many pollution fighters have acclaimed it.
At present,electric cars obtain their power from storage batteries.
Every night the battery has to be recharged in the garage.
This method is awkward,particularly for long-distance driving.
It has been suggested that at some time in the future booths
could be set up on high-ways.
Drivers on the road would stop every so often,
put a coin in the slot,
and plug the battery into an electric socket for a recharge.
In-city traffic would benefit most from electric cars.
Stop-and-go driving causes far more poisonous gases to be released.
An air monitor in one large city recently measured the poisonous gases
coming from cars on therir way home in the evening rush hour.
The amounts of hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide
released were four times as great as those expelled from vehicles moving
at a steady pace on the highway.
In some American cities
officials are not waiting for improved electric car models.
They have ordered minibuses run on the standard-storage batteries.
In this way they can reduce the number of diesel buses on the streets.
Diesel exhaust not only smells worse than fumes from internal combustion engines,
but also has large amounts of nitrogen oxides.
Some people think that an elevated system like the mounts
would help to reduce pollution.
The monorail,which is also powered by electricity,
is often seen at fairs and entertainment parks.
Traveling over the fairgrounds on its single rail,
the monorail offers and excellent view of the attractions below.
One day it may offer rush-hour travelers as good a view of the city below.
But a more electric world would not prevent air pollution.
If power plants are to generate enough electricity to run transportation,
as well as to produce heat,light,and energy for factories and homes,
the plants will have to be greatly expanded.
Moreover,utilities providing power have been repeatedly named as
major offenders in air pollution.
Nonetheless,it would be easier to control pollution
from a few large sources than from every car,bus,industry,and house.

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