新编英语教程4课文背诵.docVIP

Unit 1 This Year It’s Going to Be Different New Year’s resolutions are like anything else--you get out of them what you put in.Judging from results of other years,I had never put enough in,but this year was going to be different.I read books on self-improvement before I wrote my list.Find some beauty in everything...Make the other fellow feel important...About thirty like that.Pretty clearly,anyone who followed my collection of rules would be blessed with a richer life,boundless love from his family,and the admiration of the community.I could hardly wait until New Year’s Day. When I came downstairs Maggie,my wife,was at the kitchen sink.I tiptoed over and kissed her on the back of the neck.(Resolution No.1:Be spontaneous in showing affection.)She shrieked and dropped a cup.“Don’t ever sneak up on me like that again!”she cried. Unit 2 Englishes Of course a scale of styles exists in all our use of English.Each of us works not just with one English but with many Englishes,and the wider the range of our life and the more various the contacts we have,the wider and suppler must be our command over a range of English styles,each of which we know how to use consistently.A haphazard knowledge of several styles may be worse than useless if we do not know when we are sliding from one to another.We do not say,“It was extremely gracious of you to invite me,Lady Jones,and I’ve had bags of fun,”because“bags of fun”does not mix with“extremely gracious”,and because to use an expression like“bags of fun,”we should need to know Lady Jones well enough to be addressing her by her first name. It is not--we must never tire of insisting--that bags of fun can be labelled“bad” or“slovenly” English,“a lazy substitute for thought”,“Bags of fun”is no more a lazy substitute for thought in its appropriate setting than is“extremely gracious” in the setting that is appropriate for this expression.As we have seen repeatedly,it is the height of naivety to go round with a single yardstick,me