Summary

Unit 1 Time-conscious Americans

Americans save time carefully. This attitude results in a nation of people committed to researching, experimenting and exploring. And they treat time as a precious resource. They budget time, save it, waste it, kill it, cut it, account for it, and charge for it.

A foreigner’s first impression of the U.S. is likely to be that everyone is in a rush_ – often under pressure. This is because people value time highly, and they resent someone else ‘wasting’ it beyond a certain appropriate point.

Besides, many new arrivals in the States will miss the_openning exchange of a business call, for example. This is because Americans generally assess and probe professionally rather than socially. For Americans, time is always tickingtheir inner ear.

What’s more, Americans work hard at the task of saving time through labor-saving decives. For them, the impersonality of electronic communication has little or no relation to the significance of the matter at hand.

In a word, Americans are time-conscious. In the US, it is taken as a sign of skillfulness or being competent to solve a problem, or fulfill a job successfully, with speed.

Unit 3 Marriage Across Nations

During our two years together, Gail and I had experienced the usual ups and downsand cultural differences enhanced our relationship and taught us a great deal about tolerance, compromise, and being open with each other. Therefore, we decided to marry each other, although we had no illusions about what the future held for us as a married, mixed couple in America.

When Gail spread the news of our wedding plans to her family she met with some resistance

Both her mother and her father were against our plans. Hearing this, Gail’s mother, Deborah, counseled Gail to be really sure she was doing the right things.

And when her father learned of my problems with the citizenship department, he immediately suspected that I was marring his daughter in order to remain in the United States. In order to persuade her daughter, the father proceeded to quote statistics showing that mixed couples had higher divorce of the same race. Besides, he told Gail that she had to be realistic because people can be cruel to toward children from mixed marriage.

Unit 5 Weeping for My Smoking Daughter

In the passage, the writer tells us her daughter smokes. She feels terrible and does weep, when seeing her daughter smoking, which makes her father die of_pneumonia.

Smoking is harmful not only to her father but also to people in The Third World countries. In these poor countries, money should be spent for food goes instead to the tobacco companies; over time, people starve themselves _of__both food and air, effectively weakening and hooking their children, eventually killing themselves.

In a word, the writer is strong against smoking and even the prosperous leaders who own the tobacco company. For her, smoking is a form of _self-battering that also batters those who must sit by.

Unit 6 As His Name Is, So Is He!

In the passage, the author believes that names can make a difference. A woman, for example, sub

stituted Lynne, her middle name for Debbie, her first name and then got success in her career. Although name change can not cause one’s professional achievement, it surely helpes.

Besides, names are attached to specific images. And names with a positive sense can work for you and even encourage new acquaintances. However, to some extent, we’re all guilty of name stereotyping. Such prejudices can affect classroom achievement. But names itself can cause classroom difference.

In a word, names can not_merely identify people, but also describe them. You can change it if your name no longer seems to fit you.

Unit 7 Lighten Your Load and Save Your Life

Stress can be harmful for us. For example, stressed people have higher cholesterol levels,_among other things__And anger is the root of stress. For many people, they feel angry because they think _everything must be perfect, while others are angry because they have no compass in life.

In order to deal with the problem, first, you need to learn to take charge of your life. Eliot suggests you should write down the six most important things in your life, set your priorities and then put them on a note card with you. And keep in mind that over time these priorities are going to change. Besides, the other key to controlling stress is to realize that there are something beyond your control. At that moment, you have to learn how to flow rather than fight or flee.

In the passage, the writer tells us that the saddest thing about youth is that it is wasted on the young. Besides, a survey shows that college beginners are more consumerist and less idealistic. For instance, more students enroll in business program, engineering and computer science.

How to solve this problem? One solution is education. We should educate people for life as well as for a career. And The duty of education is to make students understand what is truly important in life. Education should teach us to see the connections between things, as well as to see beyond our _immediate needs. What’s more, education should make students distinguish right from wrong. In the long run

that’s what education really ought to be about .

第二篇：新视野大学英语读写4总结

新视野大学英语读写教程4 summary

Unit2

Chaplin is a great comic not only for his own mother country but more for the world. Chaplin’s Tramp was considered a little _crude_ and thought that he had too much of an eye for the ladies and that his clothes gave him an_appearance_ more like an Italian waiter than anything else. He resisted making a _talking_ movie until 1936 when he made up a_nonsense_ language which sounded like no known nationality. Chaplin achieved great success because he was an immensely _talented_ man and the kind of comic who used his _physical_ senses to invent his art as he went along.

However, the _collision_between the need to be loved and the fear of being _betrayed_ resulted in disaster in his _emotional_ life which was shown in his movies. Eventually, life gave Chaplin the stable _happiness_, that is, his marriage with Oona O’Neil. Chaplin died on _Christmas_ Day 1977.

Unit3

Life in a wheelchair is tough. Living on welfare is just like sharing a dinner of raw pet food _with_ the cat. Many welfare

_clients_ do not have money to _live_a decent life. As a result, lying and cheating the _welfare_ system for _extra_ money becomes normal. However, some unusual individuals, who have made a choice to live a life of complete _honesty_, do tell the truth to caseworkers and _declare_ any extra income they make. Being honest, however, is not without its problems.

Caseworkers will greatly _increase_ the frequency of their visits and leave behind a small mountain of paper work for the client to _fill_ out. The rules say that not a penny is to be

_unaccounted_ for. Not a single gift, no matter how small, is to be unreported. These rules and the natural consequent lying unfortunately tend to transform caseworkers from being helpers of the poor to being _detectives_ constantly

searching for any forms of cheating.

Unit4

Telecommunications is widely conceived as a key to _developing_ countries’ dream of jumping into the modern world. Although there is some dispute as to how _fast_ they can push ahead with their plans, different developing countries are still seeking their own ways of leaping over their _backwardness_ with one jump in this direction. Surely, they will catch up with _developed_

countries on the information super-highway as long as they _persist_ in their efforts.

Unit7

The book The History and Geography of Human Genes was written after the _researchers_ have spent 16 years examining the _genetic similarities_ between the populations of the world. This was achieved largely by taking the blood of hundreds of thousands of _individuals_ from all around the world, and then analyzing their _blood proteins_.

Scientifically this has allowed the writers to discover the

_routes_ taken by early people migrating around the world and also to show that _under the skin_we are all very similar on a genetic level. The ultimate goal of the study, however, is not just _scientific_: it hopes to have a _social_ effect by proving that there is no biological basic for _racial prejudice_.

Unit10

If a business does not adapt to changes in the business

environment, then _it will fail_. Recently it has been argued that _smart but inflexible employees_ don’t necessarily have the abilities to _smart but inflexible employees_. It would appear

that _flexibility and Emotional Intelligence_ rather than IQ is a more accurate measure of intelligence. It is also _a more

accurate predictor of success_. This is an important point for businesses to understand because customers don’t really care about _how highly intelligent a businessman is_: they will take their business to _wherever they are understood and respected_. Such a place will be a business staffed with

people _with a high Emotional Intelligence who have the ability to understand and relate well to others_.