2014年职称英语综合类考试教材概况大意文章及译文.docVIP

2014年职称英语综合类考试教材概况大意文章及译文（3） 2014年职称英语考试时间为3月29日。小编为您整理职称英语教材中，概括大意部分的文章及译文，希望对您有所助益。 English and English Community 1 There is no denying that1 English is a useful language. The people who speak English today make up the largest speech community in the world with the exception of speakers of Chinese. Originally they were small tribes of people from northern Europe who settled in England. Their languages became more and more similar to each other. Finally, the language had enough uniformity2 to be used by all speakers in England. The people were united into a speech community through their shared language. 2 A speech community is similar to other kinds of communities. The people who make up the conimunity share a common language. Often they live side by side, as they do in aneighborhood, a village, or a city. More often they form a whole country. National boundaries, however, are not always the same as the boundaries of a speech community. A speech community is any group of people who speak the same language no matter where they happen to live. 3 We may say that anyone who speaks English belongs to the English speech community. For convenience3, we may classify the speakers into two groups: one in which the speakers use English as their native language, the other in which the speakers learn English as a second language for the purpose of education, commerce, and so on. 4 English serves as an alternative language in several areas of public activity for the many nations of the world which employ it as an international second language.4 English has been adoptedas the language of air traffic, commerce, as well as international diplomacy. Moreover, English is the language of the majority of published materials in the world so that education has come to rely heavily on an understanding of English. 5 Learning a second language extends ones vision and expands the mind. The history and literature of a second language record the real and fictional lives of people and their cul