2018何凯文英语二强化班阅读补充讲义

补充讲义 Unit 9

Text 1

In agrarian, pre-industrial Europe, “you’d want to wake up early, start working with the sunrise, have a break to have the largest meal, and then you’d go back to work,” says Ken Albala, a professor history at the University of the Pacific. “Later, at 5 or 6, you’d have a smaller supper.” This comfortable cycle, in which the rhythms of the day helped shape the rhythms of the meals, gave rise to the custom of the large midday meal, eaten with the extended family. “Meals are the foundation of the family,” says Carole Counihan, a professor at Millersville University in Pennsylvania, “so there was a very important interconnection between eating together” and strengthening family ties.

Since industrialization, maintaining such a slow cultural metabolism has been much harder, with the long midday meal shrinking to whatever could be stuffed into a lunch bucket or bought at a food stand. Certainly, there were benefits. Modern techniques for producing and shipping food led to greater variety and quantity, including a tremendous increase in the amount of animal protein and dairy products available, making us more vigorous than our ancestors.

Yet plenty has been lost too, even in cultures that still live to eat. Take Italy. It’s no secret that the Mediterranean diet is healthy, but it was also a joy to prepare and eat. Italians, says Counihan, traditionally began the day with a small meal. The big meal came at around 1 p.m. In between the midday meal and a late, smaller dinner came a small snack. Today, when time zones have less and less meaning, there is little tolerance for offices’ closing for lunch, and worsening traffic in cities means workers can’t make it home and back fast enough anyway. So the formerly small supper get together. “The evening meal carries the full burden that used to be spread over two meals,” says Counihan.

1.What do we learn from the passage about people in pre-industrial Europe? A) They had to work from early morning till late at night. B) They were so busy working that they only ate simple meals. C) Their daily routine followed the rhythm of the natural cycle. D) Their life was much more comfortable than that of today.

2.What does Professor Carole Counihan say about pre-industrial European families eating meals together?

A)It was helpful to maintain a nation’s tradition. B)It brought family members closer to each other. C)It was characteristic of the agrarian culture. D) It enabled families to save a lot of money.

3.What does “cultural metabolism” (Line 1, Para. 3) refer to? A) Evolutionary adaptation.

B) Changes in lifestyle. C) Social progress. D) Pace of life.

4.What does the author think of the food people eat today? A) Its quality is usually guaranteed.

B) It is varied, abundant and nutritious.

C) It is more costly than what our ancestors ate. D) Its production depends too much on technology. 5.What does the author say about Italians of the old days? A) They enjoyed cooking as well as eating. B) They ate a big dinner late in the evening. C) They ate three meals regularly every day. D) They were expert at cooking meals.

Text 2

Come on—Everybody’s doing it. That whispered message, half invitation and half forcing, is what most of us think of when we hear the words peer pressure. It usually leads to no good—drinking, drugs and casual sex. But in her new book Join the Club, Tina Rosenberg contends that peer pressure can also be a positive force through what she calls the social cure, in which organizations and officials use the power of group dynamics to help individuals improve their lives and possibly the world.

Rosenberg, the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, offers a host of examples of the social cure in action: In South Carolina, a state-sponsored antismoking program called Rage Against the Haze sets out to make cigarettes uncool. In South Africa, an HIV-prevention initiative known as loveLife recruits young people to promote safe sex among their peers.

The idea seems promising，and Rosenberg is a perceptive observer. Her critique of the lameness of many pubic-health campaigns is spot-on: they fail to mobilize peer pressure for healthy habits, and they demonstrate a seriously flawed understanding of psychology. “Dare to be different, please don’t smoke!” pleads one billboard campaign aimed at reducing smoking among teenagers—teenagers, who desire nothing more than fitting in. Rosenberg argues convincingly that public-health advocates ought to take a page from advertisers, so skilled at applying peer pressure. But on the general effectiveness of the social cure, Rosenberg is less persuasive. Join the Club is filled with too much irrelevant detail and not enough exploration of the social and biological factors that make peer pressure so powerful. The most glaring flaw of the social cure as it’s presented here is that it doesn’t work very well for very long. Rage Against the Haze failed once state funding was cut. Evidence that the loveLife program produces lasting changes is limited and mixed.

There’s no doubt that our peer groups exert enormous influence on our behavior. An emerging body of research shows that positive health habits—as well as negative

ones—spread through networks of friends via social communication. This is a subtle form of peer pressure: we unconsciously imitate the behavior we see every day. Far less certain, however, is how successfully experts and bureaucrats can select our peer groups and steer their activities in virtuous directions. It’s like the teacher who breaks up the troublemakers in the back row by pairing them with better-behaved classmates. The tactic never really works. And that’s the problem with a social cure engineered from the outside: in the real world, as in school, we insist on choosing our own friends.

6. According to the first paragraph, peer pressure often emerges as

[A]a supplement to the social cure

[B] a stimulus to group dynamics [C]an obstacle to social progress [D]a cause of undesirable behaviors

7.Rosenberg holds that public-health advocates should . [A]recruit professional advertisers

[B]learn from advertisers’ experience [C]stay away from commercial advertisers [D]recognize the limitations of advertisements 8.In the author’s view, Rosenberg’s book fails to

.

.

[A]adequately probe social and biological factors [B]effectively evade the flaws of the social cure [C]illustrate the functions of state funding [D]produce a long-lasting social effect 9.Paragraph 5 shows that our imitation of behaviors

[A]is harmful to our networks of friends [B]will mislead behavioral studies [C]occurs without our realizing it [D]can produce negative health habits

10.The author suggests in the last paragraph that the effect of peer pressure is .

[ A]harmful [ B]desirable [ C]profound [ D]questionable

Text 3

If you intend using humor in your talk to make people smile, you must know how to identify shared experiences and problems. Your humor must be relevant to the audience and should help to show them that you are one of them or that you understand their situation and are in sympathy with their point of view. Depending on whom you are addressing, the problems will be different. If you are talking to a group of managers, you may refer to the disorganized methods of their secretaries; alternatively if you are addressing secretaries, you may want to comment on their disorganized bosses.

Here is an example, which I heard at a nurses’ convention, of a story which works well because the audience all shared the same view of doctors. A man arrives in heaven and is being shown around by St. Peter. He sees wonderful accommodations, beautiful gardens, sunny weather, and so on. Everyone is very peaceful, polite and friendly until, waiting in a line for lunch, the new arrival is suddenly pushed aside by a man in a white coat, who rushes to the head of the line, grabs his food and stomps over to a table by himself. “Who is that?” the new arrival asked St. Peter. “Oh, that’s God,” came the reply, “but sometimes he thinks he’s a doctor.”

If you are part of the group, which you are addressing, you will be in a position to know the experiences and problems which are common to all of you and it’ll be appropriate for you to make a passing remark about the inedible canteen food or the chairman’s notorious bad taste in ties. With other audiences you mustn’t attempt to cut in with humor as they will resent an outsider making disparaging remarks about their canteen or their chairman. You will be on safer ground if you stick to scapegoats like the Post Office or the telephone system.

If you feel awkward being humorous, you must practice so that it becomes more natural. Include a few casual and apparently off-the-cuff remarks which you can deliver in a relaxed and unforced manner. Often it’s the delivery which causes the audience to smile, so speak slowly and remember that a raised eyebrow or an unbelieving look may help to show that you are making a light-hearted remark. Look for the humor. It often comes from the unexpected. A twist on a familiar quote “If at first you don’t succeed, give up” or a play on words or on a situation. Search for exaggeration and understatements. Look at your talk and pick out a few words or sentences which you can turn about and inject with humor.

11. To make your humor work, you should ________.

[A] take advantage of different kinds of audience [B] make fun of the disorganized people [C] address different problems to different people [D] show sympathy for your listeners

12. The joke about doctors implies that, in the eyes of nurses, they are ________.

[A] impolite to new arrivals

[B] very conscious of their godlike role [C] entitled to some privileges [D] very busy even during lunch hours

13. It can be inferred from the text that public services ________.

[A] have benefited many people [B] are the focus of public attention [C] are an inappropriate subject for humor [D] have often been the laughing stock

14. To achieve the desired result, humorous stories should be delivered ________.

[A] in well-worded language [B] as awkwardly as possible [C] in exaggerated statements [D] as casually as possible

15. The best title for the text may be ________.

[A] Use Humor Effectively [B] Various Kinds of Humor [C] Add Humor to Speech [D] Different Humor Strategies

Text 4

Just how much does the Constitution protect your digital data? The Supreme Court will now consider whether police can search the contents of a mobile phone without a warrant if the phone is on or around a person during an arrest.

California has asked the justices to refrain from a sweeping ruling, particularly one that upsets the old assumption that authorities may search through the possessions of suspects at the time of their arrest. It is hard, the state argues, for judges to assess the implications of new and rapidly changing technologies. The court would be recklessly modest if it followed California’s advice. Enough of the implications are discernable, even obvious, so that the justices can and should provide updated guidelines to police, lawyers and defendants.

They should start by discarding California’s lame argument that exploring the contents of a smart phone—a vast storehouse of digital information—is similar to, say, going through a suspect’s purse. The court has ruled that police don’t violate the Fourth Amendment when they go through the wallet or pocketbook of an arrestee without a warrant. But exploring one’s smart phone is more like entering his or her home. A smart phone may contain an arrestee’s reading history, financial history,

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