【www.jianqiaoenglish.com--英语四级口语】
Passage 1
In 1848, gold was discovered in California; from all over the nation, thousands of young men set out for California. People called this the time of the Gold Rush.
A gold miner came into a city looking for a pair of pants. He wanted pants strong enough to stand up to the rough work of mining. He met a young man named Levi, who sold heavy cloth for tents and wagon tops. They asked a tailor to use heavy cloth for their pants. Then Levi went into the business of making work pants. He asked his brothers to send him some strong blue cotton cloth called denim (斜纹粗棉布). With this blue denim cloth, Levi started making the kind of pants we call blue jeans today. They were sewed up in the same way as other pants.
In 1860, a miner said that the pockets weren"t strong enough to hold the pieces of gold he found. The pockets kept falling off the pants. The cloth was all right. It was the thread that wasn"t strong enough. So Levi used rivets (铆钉) to attach the pockets onto the pants.
Cowboys needed tough pants, too. They liked their pants to fit tightly. But the rivets marked the cowboys" saddles. So Levi covered the rivets with cloth. Then everybody was happy.
Passage 2
Rote-learning (死记硬背), spoon-fed education, produces a brand of kids that don"t know what to do when entering university. They are disciplined into following, not leading. Yet the future depends on creativity and imagination. The world needs creators, makers and shakers of the new centuries, not the followers of the past centuries. As the numbers increase at college and university level, more students from the lower ends are likely to be thrown into a process designed to choose only learners that have proved excellent in listening to teachers.
There are three ways to learn: looking, listening and doing.
Students and teachers today are a product of learning by listening. The computer may not be liked by traditional teachers, who use rote-learning to put information, which will be out of date in a few years, into the heads of the students. With computer learning you learn by looking, listening and doing; you use three methods of learning, not just one. Therefore, you can learn faster.
The changing speed of information is frightening. What we learn now will be out of date in the near future. So what students are learning now at school may be replaced by the time they finish university. We have to learn by choice what to forget. Rote-learning for exams is one thing, but wouldn"t it be better to learn how to learn? The students at university today could possibly be doing a job in the not too distant future which has not yet been invented.
Passage 3
Why is it that the more connected we get, the more disconnected I feel? Every advance in communications technology is a step back from the closeness of human interaction. With email and instant messaging over the Internet, we can now communicate without seeing or talking to one another. With voice mail, you can conduct entire conversations without ever reaching anyone. If my mom has a question, I just leave the answer on her machine.
As almost every imaginable contact between human beings becomes automatic by machine, the alienation quotient goes up. You can"t even call a person to get the phone number of another person anywhere. Phone assistance is almost always fully automatic by machine. Pumping gas at the station? Why say good morning to the worker when you can use your credit card at the pump and save yourself the bother of human contact? Placing money at the bank? Why talk to a clerk who might live in the neighborhood when you can just put your credit card into the ATM?
Pretty soon you won"t have the hard task of making eye contact at the grocery store. Some grocery chains are using a self-scanner so you can check yourself out, avoiding those annoying clerks who look at you and ask how you are doing.
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1. Hundreds of workers sat __________ on the factory floor waiting for the assembly line to start again.
2. Police found __________ traces of blood on the car seats.
3. Consumers expect to find the brand available at a __________ and are unpleasantly surprised to find a higher price.
4. I prefer to eat vegetables ___________, not cooked, because I believe that is better for my health.
5. If you will require childcare in order to attend the meeting, please ___________ us by leaving a message for Jan or Martha at Jordan’s office.
6. The report was ___________ because it did not contain sufficient balance of views.
7. The people here are said to be ___________ from the Vikings.
8. ____________ with the evidence, they admitted that, of all humans, Australians are the most distant from Africans genetically.
9. The spy looked ____________ around and then walked away from the cinema and disappeared into the dark.
10. The car accident has caused ___________ damage to her eyesight.
I am talking to the children in the street and also thinking about the very difficult question of how best to learn their language. The problem is (1)______ simple. Learning a first language is easy. These children, for example, started listening to their own language even before they were born and they will keep (2)______ it throughout their lives. They aren"t even aware they are learning it most of time. I, however, have not had (3)______ to or the benefit of speaking and listening to my second language (4)______ a very young age.
I am often (5)______ trying to express myself in my second language. I want to be like the children I see on the street who can speak the (6)______ language so well. I make myself (7)______ better by telling myself that I have more experience and knowledge than those children and so I can (8)______ better. But, instead of holding on to this (9)______ thought for a couple of moments, I turn right around and remind myself that having knowledge and experience is not always (10)______. For example, knowledge and habits that I have taken from my first language often cause me to make mistakes that a child (11)______ never make. In fact, I have reaped very few (12)______ being an older language learner. I think about how I can keep notes to help me remember what I have learned (13)______ young children cannot. But, of course, if I (14)______ the memory of a child, I would not need to keep so many notes. Sometimes I feel like just (15)______.
A child must gather information about a language from all around and use that language for many years in order to communicate well. The same is (16)______ for me. But, (17)______ a child, I use experience and insight I"ve (18)______ and find opportunities to try to discuss more difficult subjects and, (19)______ , I often make bigger mistakes than a child would. When I ask for directions or (20)______ myself, I embarrass myself. I should only talk to the children on the street for now.
Translation
1. 当局控告他们威胁国家安全。
2. 我们忠于我们的承诺：凡是答应做的，我们都会做到。
3. 这位小个子男子并不如他看上去那么单纯。
4. 毕竟，金钱不是万能的，最富有的人不一定是最幸福的。
5. 也许只是为进步而付出的代价，谁知道呢？
Writing
Good Personality Determines Success. :
1. 你认为好的性格包括哪些方面
2. 良好的性格是成功的关键
3. 如何完善自己的性格
