英语六级阅读强化练习九.docVIP

阅读强化练习九 Part Ⅱ Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning) (15 minutes) On Friendship Few Americans stay put（固定不动的）for a lifetime. We move from town to city to suburb, from high school to college in different states, from a job in one region to a better job elsewhere, from the home where we raise our children to the home where we plan to live in retirement. With each move we are forever making new friends, who become part of our new life at that time. For many of us the summer is a special time for forming new friendships. Today millions of Americans vacation abroad and they go not only to see new sights but also—in those places where they do not feel too strange—with the hope of meeting new people. No one really expects a vacation trip to produce a close friend. But surely the beginning of a friendship is possible. Surely in every country people value friendship. They do. The difficulty when strangers from two countries meet is not a lack of appreciation of friendship, but different expectations about what constitutes friendship and how it comes into being. In those European countries that Americans are most likely to visit, friendship is quite sharply distinguished from other, more casual relations, and is differently related to family life. For a Frenchman, a German or an Englishman friendship is usually more particularized and carries a heavier burden of commitment. But as we use the word, “friend” can be applied to a wide range of relationships—to someone one has known for a few weeks in a new place, to a close business associate, to a childhood playmate, to a man or woman, to a trusted confidant（心腹朋友）.There are real differences among these relations for Americans—a friendship may be superficial, casual, situational or deep and enduring. But to a European, who sees only our surface behavior, the differences are not clear. As they see it, people known and accepted temporarily, casually, flow in and out of Americans’ homes with little cerem