国际交流英语视听说4U4听力原文以及翻译.docx

U 2 Listening 1 A Student Presentation Teacher: OK, class, let ’s get started with the first presentation. Sompel has prepared a short presentation about his home country of Bhutan. Go ahead, Sompel. Sompel: Thanks. Um, hi, everybody! You know that my name is Sompel, but you may not know that I ’m from Bhutan. Bhutan is a small country — high in the Himalaya Mountains — between India and China. In our language, Bhutan is known as Druk Yul, which in English is land, land of the thunder dragon. The dragon is even displayed on our flag. For many years, my country was isolated from the world, partly due to its geography — it ’s surrounded by high mountains — but also because of government policies. Our government had always been a, an absolute monarchy, I mean, government headed by a king with unlimited power. Anyway, until very recently, Bhutan had no electricity, no cars or trucks, no telephones, and no postal service. You may be surprised to learn that in Bhutan people have only had television since 1999. It was the last country on Earth to get it. You may be wondering: Why did Bhutan reject the modern world for so long? Well, the government was trying to protect the people from negative influences such as high crime rates, youth violence, and pollution. But the king has admitted that the policy of isolation had many negative consequences. For example, the education system definitely fell behind. Some people never learned to read and write. Then, one of our kings began opening up Bhutan to the outside world, and our current king has continued the process. There are new roads, schools, and health clinics. The king doesn ’twant to open up the country all at once to the outside world and risk ruining it. He wants our country ’s development to be guided by, now let me think, oh, yes, Gross National Happiness. Teacher: Sompel, sorry to interrupt, before you continue, could you define Gross National Happiness for the class, please? Sompel: Um, sure. How shoul