全新版大学英语快速阅读.doc

全新版大学英语快速阅读3Unit 1Why I Love the City A lot of my friends are moving out of the city. They re buying houses in the suburbs because they want to get away from the noise, smog, traffic, and crime of the city. One friend says, Theres too much air pollution in the city. I prefer the suburbs, where the air is clean. Another friend complains about the traffic: There are too many cars downtown! You cant find a parking place, and the traffic jams are terrible. Everyone complains about crime: The city is full of criminals. I rarely leave my house at nightits too dangerous. Before my friends move out of the city, they usually recite the advantages of suburban life: green grass, flowers, swimming pools, barbecues, and so on. Yet after my friends have lived there for a year or so, they realize that suburban life is not so pleasant as they were expecting. What causes this change? Their gardens! They soon learn that one unavoidable part of suburban life is yardwork. After they work all weekend in their gardens, they re much too tired to take a swim in their pools or even to cook some meat on their barbecues. And they have another complaint: they cant live in the suburbs without a car. Most of my friends moved to the suburbs to avoid traffic, but now they have to commute to work downtown. They sit on a busy freeway two hours every day! My opinions about urban life are very different from my friendsI live downtown? and I love it! Why? Well, first, I love natureflowers, green grass, trees, and animals. In the city, I have all the advantages of nature: I can walk through the public park, smell the flowers, and sit on the grass under the trees. I can visit the animals in the zoo. Yet I have none of the disadvantages: I dont have to do yardwork or feed the animals. Also, in the city, I can get everywhere by bus? if theres a traffic jam, I can walk home. It seems that everyone is moving to the suburbs to avoid the crime of the big cities. I have a theory about urban crime, however, so I feel safe downtown. The criminal life will reflect changes in society: if people are buying homes in the suburbs, the criminals will soon follow. Criminals want to avoid noise, smog, and pollution, too. Soon, overcrowding and crime will be problems of the suburbs instead of the city! People on the Move The history of the American people is, in part, the history of the movement of the American people. They moved from the colonies of the East Coast to the open spaces of the West. They moved from the country and the farm to the city. More recently, Americans have been moving from the cities to the suburbs. Open Space; The Move West Pioneer Americans began moving from the East Coast to the West 250 years ago. They moved west for many reasons. One reason was the availability of unlimited open space and land for farming. Americans liked large open spaces, and they also liked the freedom and independence to develop the land in their own way. Some of the land became farms. Important minerals were discovered in some areas, so some of the land became mines. Other large areas became cattle ranches. There seemed to be enough land for everybody. But it was a difficult lifea life of endless work and hardship. The Cities After 1860, the Industrial Revolution changed the United States. Americans learned how to manufacture steel. They began to produce petroleum. The automobile was invented. Factories of all kinds began to appear, and cities began to grow up around the factories. Farmers and other country people moved to the growing cities in order to find jobs and an easier life. In the early 1900s, the cities were busy, exciting places. However, there was also a lot of poverty and hardship. The cities grew upthe buildings got tallerand the cities grew outthey spread out from the center. Private houses with yards and porches disappeared. Apartment buildings, each one taller than the next, took their place. More and more people moved to the cities, and the cities got bigger and bigger. Some cities could not spread out because there was no room to do so. These cities, of which New York is the best example, became more and more crowded. More people meant more cars, trucks, and buses, more noise, more pollution, and more crime. Many cities became ugly and dirty. Some people and some businesses began to leave the cities and move to the suburbs outside the cities. The Suburbs The move to the suburbs is still happening. Americans are looking for a small piece of land that they can call their own. They want a house with a yard. However, they do not want to give up the good jobs they have in the city. In many cases, companies in the suburbs give them jobs. In other cases, Americans tend to commute to and from the cities where their jobs are. In recent years, more and more businesses are moving to the suburbs. They are attracting many people and the suburbs are becoming crowded. What Next? Americans have watched their big cities fall slowly into disrepair and die. Many middle-class people have left the cities, and only the very rich and the very poor are staying behind. Concerned Americans are trying to solve the problems of noise, dirt, crime, and pollution in the big cities. They are trying to rebuild bad sections of the cities in order to attract and keep business people. They are trying to make their cities beautiful. Now many Americans are thinking of moving back to the cities. Other Americans are finding that even the suburbs have become too crowded. They are looking for unpolluted open spaces and for an independent way of life. They are ready to move from the suburbs to the country. Perhaps Americans will always be on the move. Caution: Bumpy Road Ahead Students graduating from colleges today are not fully prepared to deal with the real world. It is my belief that college students need to be taught more skills and information to enable them to meet the challenges that face everyone in daily life. The areas in which students need training are playing the credit game, planning their personal financial strategy, and consumer awareness. Learning how to obtain and use credit is probably the most valuable knowledge a young person can have. Credit is a dangerous tool that can be of tremendous help if it is handled with caution. Having credit can enable people to obtain material necessities before they have the money to purchase them outright. But unfortunately, many, many young people get carried away with their handy plastic credit cards and awake one day to find they are in serious financial debt. Learning how to use credit properly can be a very difficult and painful lesson indeed. Of equal importance is learning how to plan a personal budget. People have to know how to control money; otherwise, it can control them. Students should leave college knowing how to allocate their money for living expenses, insurance, savings, and so forth in order to avoid the Oh, no! I m flat broke and I dont get paid again for two weeks! anxiety syndrome. Along with learning about credit and personal financial planning, graduating college students should be trained as consumers. The consumer market today is flooded with a variety of products and services of varying quality and prices. A young person entering the real world is suddenly faced with difficult decisions about which product to buy or whose services to engage. He is usually unaware of such things as return policies, guarantees, or repair procedures. Information of this sort is vital knowledge to everyday living. For a newly graduated college student, the real world can be a scary place to be when he or she is faced with such issues as handling credit, planning a budget, or knowing what to look for when making a purchase and whom to purchase it from. Entering this real world could be made less painful if persons were educated in dealing with these areas of daily life. What better place to accomplish this than in college? Memory Lane Isnt What It Used to Be About this time every year, I get very nostalgic. Walking through my neighborhood on a fall afternoon reminds me of a time not too long ago when sounds of children filled the air, children playing games on a hill, and throwing leaves around in the street below, I was one of those children, carefree and happy. I live on a street that is only one block long. I have lived on the same street for sixteen years. I love my street. One side has six houses on it, and the other has only two houses, with a small hill in the middle and a huge cottonwood tree on one end. When I think of home, I think of my street, only I see it as it was before. Unfortunately, things change. One day, not long ago, I looked around and saw how different everything has become. Life on my street will never be the same because neighbors are quickly growing old, friends are growing up and leaving, and the city is planning to destroy my precious hill and sell the property to contractors. It is hard for me to accept that many of my wonderful neighbors are growing old and wont be around much longer. I have fond memories of the couple across the street, who sat together on their porch swing almost every evening, the widow next door who yelled at my brother and me for being too loud, and the crazy old man in a black suit who drove an old car. In contrast to those people, the people I see today are very old neighbors who have seen better days. The man in the black suit says he wants to die, and another neighbor just sold his house and moved into a nursing home. The lady who used to yell at us is too tired to bother anymore, and the couple across the street rarely go out to their front porch these days. It is difficult to watch these precious people as they near the end of their lives because at one time I thought they would live forever. The comings and goings of the younger generation of my street are now mostly goings as friends and peers move on. Once upon a time, my life and the lives of my peers revolved around home. The boundary of our world was the gutter at the end of the street. We got pleasure from playing night games, or from a breathtaking ride on a tricycle. Things are different now, as my friends become adults and move on. Children who rode tricycles now drive cars. The kids who once played with me now have new interests and values as they go their separate ways. Some have gone away to college, a few got married, two went into the army, and one went to prison. Watching all these people grow up and go away only makes me long for the good old days. Perhaps the biggest change on my street is the fact that the city is going to turn my precious hill into several lots for new homes. For sixteen years, the view out of my kitchen window has been a view of that hill. The hill was a fundamental part of my childhood life; it was the hub of social activity for the children of my street. We spent hours there building forts, sledding, and playing tag. The view out of my kitchen window now is very different; it is one of tractors and dump trucks tearing up the hill. When the hill goes, the neighborhood will not be the same. It is a piece of my childhood. It is a visual reminder of being a kid. Without the hill, my street will be just another pea in the pod. There was a time when my street was my world, and I thought my world would never change. But something happened. People grow up, and people grow old. Places change, and with the change comes the heartache of knowing I can never go back to the times I loved. In a year or so, I will be gone just like many of my neighbors. I will always look back to my years as a child, but the place I remember will not be the silent street whose peace is interrupted by the sounds of construction. It will be the happy, noisy, somewhat strange, but wonderful street I knew as a child. Unit 2Rosa ParksA Hero of Civil Rights Most historians say that the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in the United States was December 1, 1955. That was the day when an unknown seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. This brave woman, Rosa Parks, was arrested and fined for violating a city law. However, her act of defiance began a movement that ended the laws that racially segregated America. Because of this, she also became an inspiration to freedom-loving people everywhere. Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her parents, James McCauley, a carpenter, and Leona McCauley, a teacher, named her Rosa Louise McCauley. When she was two, she moved to her grandparents farm in Alabama with her mother and younger brother, Sylvester. At the age of 11, she became a student at the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, a private school. The school believed that self-esteem was the key to success. This was consistent with Rosa s mother s advice to take advantage of the opportunities, no matter how few they were. And the opportunities were few indeed. Mrs. Parks said in an interview: Back then, we didnt have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down. In the same interview, she explained that she felt fearless, because she had always been faced with fear. This fearlessness gave her the courage to fight her conviction during the bus boycott. I didnt have any special fear, she said. It was more of a relief to know that I wasnt alone. After attending Alabama State Teachers College, Rosa settled in Montgomery, with her husband, Raymond Parks. The couple joined the local chapter of the NAACP and worked for many years to improve the conditions of African-Americans in the segregated South. The bus incident led to the formation of the Montgomery Improvement Association. The Association s leader was a young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church named Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They called for a boycott of the city-owned bus company. The boycott lasted 382 days and brought recognition to Mrs. Parks, Dr. King, and their cause. A Supreme Court decision struck down the Montgomery law under which Mrs. Parks had been fined, and outlawed racial segregation on public transportation. After her husband died, Mrs. Parks founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. The Institute sponsors an annual summer program for teenagers called Pathways to Freedom. The young people tour the country in buses learning the history of their country and of the civil rights movement. Best of Friends, Worlds Apart Havana, sometime before 1994: As dusk descends on the quaint seaside village of Guanabo, two young men kick a soccer ball back and forth and back and forth across the sand. The tall one, Joel Ruiz, is black. The short, muscular one, Achmed Valdes, is white. They are the best of friends. Miami, January 2000: Mr. Valdes is playing soccer, as he does every Saturday, with a group of light-skinned Latinos in a park near his apartment. Mr. Ruiz surprises him with a visit, and Mr. Valdes, flushed and sweating, runs to greet him. They shake hands warmly. But when Mr. Valdes darts back to the game, Mr. Ruiz stands off to the side, arms crossed, looking on as his childhood friend plays the game that was once their shared joy. Mr. Ruiz no longer plays soccer. He prefers basketball with black Latinos and African-Americans from his neighborhood. The two men live only four miles apart, not even 15 minutes by car. Yet they are separated by a far greater distance, one they say they never imagined back in Cuba. In ways that are obvious to the black man but far less so to the white one, they have grown apart in the United States because of race. For the first time, they inhabit a place where the color of their skin defines the outlines of their liveswhere they live, the friends they make, how they speak, what they wear, even what they eat. Its like I am here and he is over there, Mr. Ruiz said, And we cant cross over to the other s world. It is not that, growing up in Cuba s mix of black and white, they were unaware of their difference in color. Fidel Castro may have officially put an end to racism in Cuba, but that does not mean racism has simply gone away. Still, color was not what defined them. Nationality, they had been taught, meant far more than race. They felt, above all, Cuban. Here in America, Mr. Ruiz still feels Cuban. But above all he feels black. His world is a black world, and to live there is to be constantly conscious of race. He works in a black-owned bar, dates black women, goes to an African-American barber. White barbers, he says, dont understand black hair. He generally avoids white neighborhoods, and when his world and the white world meet, he feels always watched, and he is always watchful. For Joel Ruiz, there is little time for relaxation. On this night, he works as a cashier at his uncle s bar in a black Miami neighborhood. Mr. Valdes, who is 29, a year younger than his childhood friend, is simply, comfortably Cuban, an upwardly mobile citizen of the Miami mainstream. He lives in an all-white neighborhood, hangs out with white Cuban friends and goes to black neighborhoods only when his job, as a deliveryman for Restonic mattresses, forces him to. When he thinks about race, which is not very often, it is in terms learned from other white Cubans: American blacks, he now believes, are to be avoided because they are dangerous and resentful of whites. The only blacks he trusts, he says, are those he knows from Cuba. Since leaving Havana in separate boats in 1994, the two friends have seen each other just a handful of times in Miamiat a funeral, a baby shower, a birthday party and that soccer game, a meeting arranged for a newspaper photographer. They have visited each other s homes only once. They say they remain as good friends as ever, yet they both know there is little that binds them anymore but their memories. Had they not become best friends in another country, in another time, they would not be friends at all today. Coming to an Awareness of Language It was because of my letters (which Malcolm X wrote to people outside while he was in jail) that I happened to stumble upon starting to acquire some kind of a homemade education. I became increasingly frustrated at not being able to express what I wanted to convey in letters that I wrote . And every book I picked up had few sentences which didnt contain anywhere from one to nearly all the words that might as well have been in Chinese. When I skipped those words, of course, I really ended up with little idea of what the book said . I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionaryto study, to learn some words. I requested a dictionary along with some notebooks and pencils from the Norfolk Prison Colony school. I spent two days just turning uncertainly the pages of a dictionary. I d never realized so many words existed! I didnt know which words I needed to learn. Finally, just to start some kind of action, I began copying. In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my notebook everything printed on that first page, down to the punctuation marks. I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back to myself everything I d written in the notebook. Over and over, aloud, to myself, I read my own handwriting. I woke up the next morning, thinking about those wordsimmensely proud to realize that not only had I written so much at one time, but I d written words that I never knew were in the world. Moreover, with a little effort, I also could remember what many of these words meant. I reviewed the words whose meanings I didnt remember. Funny thing, from the d