阅读拓展:2:学生用书:Student book

本书特色

《阅读拓展(学生用书2)》为新开端英语专业基础课系列教材,安徽省高等学校“十一五”规划教材。

内容简介

本书文章大都选自英语国家近年来出版的正规纸质图书和网络材料，其中很大一部分来自知名杂志和网站。题材涉及教育、科学、体育、文学、文化等诸多领域，体裁涵盖报告文学、新闻通讯、科学小品、回忆录、说明文、记叙文、议论文、散文、小说、传记、演讲等。

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插图：It was on such an occasion the other evening, as the conversation moved desultorily here and there, from the most commonplace to thoughts of Jupiter, without any focus and with no need for one, that suddenly the alchemy of conversation took place, and all at once there was a focus. I do not remember what made one of our companions say it she clearly had not come into the bar to say it, it was not something that was pressing on her mind——but her remark fell quite naturally into the talk."Someone told me the other day that the phrase, 'the King's English' was a term of criticism, that it means language which one should not properly use. "The glow of the conversation burst into flames. There were affirmations and protests and denials, and of course the promise, made in all such conversation, that we would look it up on the morning. That would settle it; but conversation does not need to be settled; it could still go ignorantly on.It was an Australian who had given her such a definition of "the King's English," which produced some rather tart remarks about what one could expect from the descendants of convicts. We had traveled in five minutes to Australia. Of course, there would be resistance to the King's English in such a society. There is always resistance in the lower classes to any attempt by an upper class to lay down rules for "English as it should be spoken. "Look at the language barrier between the Saxon churls and their Norman conquerors. The conversation had swung from Australian convicts of the 19th century to the English peasants of the 12th century. Who was right, who was wrong, did not matter. The conversation was on wings.Someone took one of the best-known of examples, which is still always worth the reconsidering. When we talk of meat on our tables we use French words ; when we speak of the animals from which the meat comes we use Anglo-Saxon words. It is a pig in its sty; it is pork (porc) on the table. They are cattle in the fields, but we sit down to beef (boeuf). Chickens become poultry ( poulet), and a calf becomes veal (veau). Even if our menus were not written in French out of snobbery, the English we used in them would still be Norman English. What all this tells us is of a deep class rift in the culture of England after the Norman conquest.The Saxon peasants who tilled the land and reared the animals could not afford the meat, which went to Norman tables. The peasants were allowed to eat the rabbits that scampered over their fields and, since that meat was cheap, the Norman lords of course turned up their noses at it. So rabbit is still rabbit on our tables, and not changed into some rendering of lapin. As we listen today to the arguments about bilingual education, we ought to think ourselves back into the shoes of the Saxon peasant. The new ruling class had built a cultural barrier against him by building their French against his own language. There must have been a great deal of cultural humiliation felt by the English when they revolted under Saxon leaders like Hereward the Wake. " The King's English "——if the term had existed then had become French. And here in America now, 900 years later, we are still the heirs to it.