范文背诵

6. Limiting the Use of Disposable Bags

此次作文属于问题解决性的作文，相对比较简单， 提出问题-分析问题-解决问题

答题思路：

1． 一次性塑料袋给人们生活带来便利。 广为使用。

2． 由此带来的问题， 举例子。

3． 限制使用塑料袋的意义，理论与实际相结合。

范文：

In modern world, Disposable plastic bags were once widely used in China.

People used to take it for shopping and shopping assistants often provided free plastic bags for our convenience. For a while, life without them seemed unimaginable for most of us.

However, disposable plastic bags do bring severe damage to our environment and lot of harms to life. First and foremost, they are abandoned everywhere. It cannot be absorbed which will have great influence for the environment. Finally the pollution brought by plastic threat to our species life.

To sum up, it is meaningful to limit the use of disposable plastic. It’s significant that our government has banned the use of disposable plastic bags officially, and people will be charged for the use of such bags. This action is reducing the consumption of bags to a great extent.

Everyone in this society should contribute some effort to the improvement of the environment. We should protect our earth and living environment to make a better life.

7. Recreational activities

Directions: For this part, you are allowed thirty minutes to write a composition on the

topic Recreational activities. You should write at least 120 words and you should base your composition on the outline (given in Chinese) below:

1. 娱乐活动多种多样

2. 娱乐活动可以使人们受益，也可能有危害性

3. 作为大学生我们的看法

范文：

With the dramatic development of our society and our living standard, there are a variety of recreational activities coming to our lives. Some may go to KTV with their friends on weekends to get relaxed after five-day intense work. Meanwhile, others might choose to surf the internet to kill time and appreciate vast resources on the Internet.

Everything has two sides just like a coin, and entertainment is no exception. On the one hand, amusement activities can enrich our lives, broaden our horizon, and cultivate our mind. On the other hand, we could wasted and our mind contaminated if we fail to approach recreation properly.

As far as college students are concerned, we are supposed to take advantage of the benefits from diverse entertainment activities. In addition, it is essential to be self-disciplined and steer clear of the adverse influences.

8. The Best Way of Learning

Some people believe that the best way of learning about life is by listening to the advice of family and friends, which they think is always well-meaning. But I am of the opinion that the best way of learning about life is through personal experience.

Being well-meaning does not necessarily mean being correct. More often than not, family and friends give you advice from their perspective. They do no put

themselves in your place. Therefore their advice may apply to their situations, but not yours.

The advice of family and friends is just for your reference. You should learn

about life mainly through your personal experience. As an old saying goes, you won't know the taste of a pear unless you have a bite.

In short, the best way of learning about life is through your personal experience. Whether the advice of your family and friends is correct is also to be verified through your own experience.

9. Life in the University

Life in the university is not as satisfactory as what we had expected. First of all, we are so tightly bound by continual classes, excessive homework and exams that some students complain we are becoming "exam machines". Secondly, the teaching method is boring.

In spite of all these adversities, we still enjoy our life in the university. During the four-year university study, we can not only acquire a lot of book learning, but also foster various abilities. All types of extracurricular activities such as sports meets, speech contests, different social gatherings and dancing parties provide opportunities to make friends.

In short, we should cherish our life in the university. In the university, we get mature, and prepare ourselves for the real world. Al-though there are many things lacking, the four years' university life is a worthwhile experience in our lifetime.

10. Rome Was Not Built in a Day

The old proverb, "Rome was not built in a day", reminds us that great things are never done without much time and labor. It takes us back to Rome, the capital of the greatest empire of the ancient world and the most brilliant city of ancient times.

Indeed, Rome was built through the labor of many a great man who had been striving against difficulties.

As human beings, we are eager to win merits for ourselves. It is, however, only patience as well as endurance that can help us to succeed in performing great deeds;

for difficulties are in fact unavoidable, unless we do not engage in anything at all.

Young people are, however, mostly impatient. Brave as they may be in the

beginning, they often give up halfway in the fact of what seems to be insurmountable. Men of such a type can hardly expect to succeed.

第二篇：英语范文背诵20篇

01 The Language of Music

A painter hangs his or her finished pictures on a wall, and everyone can see it. A composer writes a work, but no one can hear it until it is performed. Professional singers and players have great responsibilities, for the composer is utterly dependent on them. A student of music needs as long and as arduous（艰辛的） a training to become a performer as a medical student needs to become a doctor. Most training is concerned with technique, for musicians have to have the muscular proficiency of an athlete or a ballet dancer. Singers practice breathing every day, as their vocal（声音的） chords（和音） would be inadequate without controlled muscular support. String players practice moving the fingers of the left hand up and down, while drawing the bow to and fro with the right arm—two entirely different movements.

Singers and instruments have to be able to(能够，可以) get every note perfectly in tune. Pianists are spared this particular anxiety, for the notes are already there, waiting for them, and it is the piano tuner’s responsibility to tune the instrument for them. But they have their own difficulties; the hammers that hit the string have to be coaxed not to sound like percussion, and each overlapping tone has to sound clear.

This problem of getting clear texture is one that confronts student conductors: they have to learn to know every note of the music and how it should sound, and they have to aim at controlling these sound with fanatical(狂热的) but selfless authority. （with A but B,是A而不是B）

Technique is of no use unless it is combined with musical knowledge and understanding. Great artists are those who are so thoroughly at home in the language of music that they can enjoy performing works written in any century.

02 Schooling and Education

It is commonly believed in United States that school is where people go to get an education. Nevertheless（然而，不过）, it has been said that today children interrupt their education to go to school. The distinction between schooling and education implied by this remark is important.

Education is much more open-ended and all-inclusive than schooling. Education knows no bounds（教育被认为是没有界限的）. It can take place anywhere, whether in the shower or in the job, whether in a kitchen or on a tractor. It includes both the formal learning that takes place in schools and the whole universe（整个世界） of informal learning. The agents(代理) of education can range from a revered (尊敬的)grandparent to the people debating politics on the radio, from a child to a distinguished(著名的) scientist. Whereas schooling has a certain predictability(可预言的), education quite often produces surprises. A chance conversation with a stranger may lead a person to discover how little is known of other religions. People are engaged in education from infancy on. Education, then, is a very broad, inclusive term. It is a lifelong process, a process that

starts long before the start of school, and one that should be an integral part of one’s entire life.

Schooling, on the other hand, is a specific, formalized process, whose general pattern varies little from one setting to the next. Throughout a country, children arrive at school at approximately the same time, take assigned seats, are taught by an adult, use similar textbooks, do homework, take exams, and so on. The slices of reality that are to be learned(所要学习的本质上是。。), whether they are the alphabet or an understanding of the working of government, have usually been limited by the boundaries of the subject being taught. For example, high school students know that there not likely to find out in their classes the truth about political problems in their communities(举个例子，高年级学生知道在他们的课堂中不太可能会涉及到他们政党中存在的政治问题的真相) or what the newest filmmakers are experimenting with. There are definite conditions surrounding the formalized process of schooling.(在这种正式的学校教学过程中有明确的周边环境)

03 The Definition of “Price”

Prices determine how resources are to be used.(价格决定多少资源被使用) They are also the means by which products and services that are in limited supply are rationed among buyers.(它们也是有限的产品和服务在购买者之间按比例分配的依据) The price system of the United States is a complex network composed of the prices of all the products bought and sold in the economy as well as those of a myriad of(无数的) services, including labor, professional, transportation, and public-utility services. The interrelationships of all these prices make up the “system” of prices. The price of any particular product or service is linked to a broad, complicated system of prices in which everything seems to depend more or less upon everything else.

If one were to ask a group of randomly selected individuals to define “price”, many would reply that price is an amount of money paid by the buyer to the seller of a product or service or, in other words that price is the money values of a product or service as agreed upon in a market transaction. This definition is, of course, valid as far as it goes. For a complete understanding of a price in any particular transaction, much more than the amount of money involved must be known. (为了在任一个特定的交易中透彻地了解价格的含义，需要了解除钱的数量之外所涉及的更多内容) Both the buyer and the seller should be familiar with not only the money amount, but with the amount and quality of the product or service to be exchanged, the time and place at which the exchange will take place and payment will be made, the form of money to be used, the credit terms and discounts(折扣) that apply to the transaction, guarantees on the product or service, delivery terms, return privileges(特权，特别待遇), and other factors. In other words, both buyer and seller should be fully aware of all the factors that comprise the total “package” being exchanged for the asked-for amount of money in order that they may evaluate a given price. (换句话说，为了能够评估一个给定的价格，买者和卖者都应该完全清楚组成这个总的“包裹”的所有因素，这个总的“包裹”是用来和标定的钱数来交换的)

04 Electricity

The modern age is an age of electricity. People are so used to electric lights, radio, televisions, and telephones that it is hard to imagine what life would be like without them. When there is a power failure, people grope(摸索) about in flickering candlelight, cars hesitate in the streets because there are no traffic lights to guide them, and food spoils(损坏，宠坏，弄糟) in silent refrigerators.

Yet, people began to understand how electricity works only a little more than two centuries ago. Nature has apparently been experimenting in this field for million of years. Scientists are discovering more and more that the living world may hold many interesting secrets of electricity that could benefit humanity.

All living cell send out tiny pulses(脉冲) of electricity. As the heart beats, it sends out pulses of record; they form an electrocardiogram, which a doctor can study to determine how well the heart is working. The brain, too, sends out brain waves of electricity, which can be recorded in an electroencephalogram. The electric currents generated by most living cells are extremely small ? often so small that sensitive instruments are needed to record them. But in some animals, certain muscle cells have become so specialized as electrical generators that they do not work as muscle cells at all.(但是一些动物它们特定的肌肉细胞已经变得和发电机一样，但是发电机的工作原理和它们完全不一样) When large numbers of these cell are linked together, the effects can be astonishing.

The electric eel is an amazing storage battery. It can seed a jolt of as much as eight hundred volts of electricity through the water in which it live. ( An electric house current is only one hundred twenty volts.) As many as four-fifths of all the cells in the electric eel’s body are specialized for generating electricity, and the strength of the shock it can deliver corresponds roughly to length of its body.

05 The Beginning of Drama

There are many theories about the beginning of drama in ancient Greece. The one most widely accepted today is based on the assumption that drama evolved from ritual（典礼，宗教仪式）. The argument for this view goes as follows. In the beginning, human beings viewed the natural forces of the world-even the seasonal changes-as unpredictable, and they sought through various means to control these unknown and feared powers. Those measures which appeared to bring the desired results were then retained and repeated until they hardened into fixed rituals. Eventually stories arose which explained or veiled(以面纱遮盖，隐避) the mysteries of the rites(仪式，典礼). As time passed some rituals were abandoned, but the stories, later called myths, persisted and provided material for art and drama.

Those who believe that drama evolved out of ritual also argue that those rites contained the seed of

theater because music, dance, masks, and costumes(服装) were almost always used, Furthermore, a suitable site had to be provided for performances and when the entire community did not participate, a clear division was usually made between the "acting area" and the "auditorium." In addition, there were performers, and, since considerable importance was attached to avoiding mistakes in the enactment(设定制定) of rites, religious leaders usually assumed that task. Wearing masks and costumes, they often impersonated other people, animals, or supernatural beings, and mimed(模仿) the desired effect-success in hunt or battle, the coming rain, the revival of the Sun-as an actor might. Eventually such dramatic representations were separated from religious activities.

Another theory traces the theater's origin from the human interest in storytelling. According to this views tales (about the hunt, war, or other feats) are gradually elaborated, at first through the use of impersonation, action, and dialogue by a narrator and then through the assumption of each of the roles by a different person. A closely related theory traces theater to those dances that are primarily rhythmical and gymnastic or that are imitations of animal movements and sounds.

06 Television

Television-----the most pervasive（弥漫性的，渗透性的） and persuasive(有说服力的，使人信服的) of modern technologies, marked by rapid change and growth-is moving into a new era, an era of extraordinary（非凡的） sophistication and versatility(多功能性), which promises to reshape our lives and our world. It is an electronic revolution of sorts(各种各样的), made possible by the marriage of television and computer technologies.

The word "television", derived from its Greek (tele: distant) and Latin (visio: sight) roots, can literally be interpreted as sight from a distance. Very simply put, it works in this way: through a sophisticated system of electronics, television provides the capability of converting an image (focused on a special photoconductive plate within a camera) into electronic impulses(刺激，推动力), which can be sent through a wire or cable. These impulses, when fed into a receiver (television set), can then be electronically reconstituted into that same image.

Television is more than just an electronic system, however. It is a means of expression, as well as a vehicle for communication, and as such becomes a powerful tool for reaching other human beings.

The field of television can be divided into two categories determined by its means of transmission. First, there is broadcast television, which reaches the masses through broad-based airwave transmission of television signals. Second, there is nonbroadcast television, which provides for the needs of individuals or specific interest groups through controlled transmission techniques.

Traditionally, television has been a medium of the masses. We are most familiar with broadcast television because it has been with us for about thirty-seven years in a form similar to what exists today. During those years, it has been controlled, for the most part, by the broadcast networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS, who have been the major purveyors(承办商)of news, information, and entertainment. These giants of broadcasting have actually shaped not only television but our perception(感觉) of it as well. We have come to look upon the picture tube as a source of entertainment, placing our role in this dynamic medium as the passive viewer.(我们作为被动的观众把我们的角色溶入这种动态的媒体，我们已经开始把显像管看做一种娱乐的资源。)

07 Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie, known as the King of Steel, built the steel industry in the United States, and , in the process, became one of the wealthiest men in America. His success resulted in part from his ability to sell the product and in part from his policy of expanding during periods of economic decline, when most of his competitors were reducing their investments.

Carnegie believed that individuals should progress through hard work, but he also felt strongly that the wealthy(有钱人，富人) should use their fortunes for the benefit of society. He opposed charity(施舍), preferring instead to provide educational opportunities that would allow others to help themselves. "He who dies rich, dies disgraced," he often said.

Among his more noteworthy contributions to society are those that bear his name, including the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh, which has a library, a museum of fine arts, and a museum of national history. He also founded a school of technology that is now part of Carnegie-Mellon University. Other philanthrophic gifts are the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to promote understanding between nations, the Carnegie Institute of Washington to fund scientific research, and Carnegie Hall to provide a center for the arts.

Few Americans have been left untouched by Andrew Carnegie's generosity(慷慨，大方). His contributions of more than five million dollars established 2,500 libraries in small communities throughout the country and formed the nucleus of the public library system that we all enjoy today.

08 American Revolution

The American Revolution was not a revolution in the sense of a radical or toal change .It was not a sudden and violent overturning of the political and social framework, such as later occurred in France and Russia, when both were already independent nations. Significant changes were ushered(引导，展示) in, but they were not breathtaking(惊人的，惊险的). What happened was

accelerated evolution rather than outright(直率的，彻底的) revolution. During the conflict itself people went on working and praying, marrying and playing. Most of them were not seriously disturbed by the actual fighting, and many of the more isolated communities scarcely knew that a war was on.

America's War of Independence heralded(预报，宣布) the birth of three modern nations. One was Canada, which received its first large influx(注入，流入) of English-speaking population from the thousands of loyalists(忠诚的人，反对独立的人) who fled there from the United States. Another was Australia, which became a penal(刑事的) colony now that America was no longer available for prisoners and debtors. The third newcomer-the United States-based itself squarely on republican principles.

Yet even the political overturn was not so revolutionary as one might suppose. In some states, notably Connecticut and Rhode Island, the war largely ratified a colonial self-rule already existing. British officials, everywhere ousted, were replaced by a home-grown governing class, which promptly sought a local substitute for king and Parliament.(现在就算是政治革命也不如以前想像的那样具有革命性。在一些州，特别明显的像康涅狄格和瑞候德岛，战争在很大程度上批准一些殖民居住地自治的做法已经存在。英国政府到处掠夺，它被本国的政治阶层所取代，而这个政治阶层很快地在当地为国王和国会找到本国的替代品)

09 Suburbanization

If by "suburb" is meant an urban margin that grows more rapidly than its already developed interior, the process of suburbanization began during the emergence of the industrial city in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Before that period the city was a small highly compact cluster in which people moved about on foot and goods were conveyed by horse and cart. But the early factories built in the 1840's were located along waterways and near railheads at the edges of cities, and housing was needed for the thousands of people drawn by（由……拉动） the prospect of employment. In time, the factories were surrounded by proliferating（增生扩散） mill towns of apartments and row houses that abutted(v.邻接，毗邻) the older, main cities. As a defense against this encroachment（侵蚀） and to enlarge their tax bases, the cities appropriated their industrial neighbors. In 1854, for example, the city of Philadelphia annexed（并吞，附加） most of Philadelphia County. Similar municipal maneuvers took place in Chicago and in New York. Indeed, most great cities of the United States achieved such status only by incorporating the communities along their borders.

With the acceleration of industrial growth came acute urban crowding and accompanying social stress-conditions that began to approach disastrous proportions when, in 1888, the first commercially successful electric traction line was developed. Within a few years the horse-drawn trolleys were retired and electric streetcar networks crisscrossed and connected every major urban area, fostering a wave of suburbanization that transformed the compact industrial city into a dispersed metropolis. This first phase of mass-scale suburbanization was reinforced by the

simultaneous emergence of the urban Middle Class, whose desires for homeownership in neighborhoods far from the aging inner city were satisfied by the developers of single-family housing tracts.

10 Types of Speech

Standard usage includes those words and expressions understood, used, and accepted by a majority of the speakers of a language in any situation regardless of the level of formality. As such, these words and expressions are well defined and listed in standard dictionaries. Colloquialisms, on the other hand, are familiar words and idioms that are understood by almost all speakers of a language and used in informal speech or writing, but not considered appropriate for more formal situations. Almost all idiomatic expressions are colloquial language. Slang, however, refers to words and expressions understood by a large number of speakers but not accepted as good, formal usage by the majority. Colloquial expressions and even slang may be found in standard dictionaries but will be so identified. Both colloquial usage and slang are more common in speech than in writing.

Colloquial speech often passes into standard speech. Some slang also passes into standard speech, but other slang expressions enjoy momentary popularity followed by obscurity. In some cases, the majority never accepts certain slang phrases but nevertheless retains them in their collective memories. Every generation seems to require its own set of words to describe familiar objects and events. It has been pointed out by a number of linguists that three cultural conditions are necessary for the creation of a large body of slang expressions. First, the introduction and acceptance of new objects and situations in the society; second, a diverse population with a large number of subgroups; third, association among the subgroups and the majority population.

Finally, it is worth noting that the terms "standard" "colloquial" and "slang" exist only as abstract labels for scholars who study language. Only a tiny number of the speakers of any language will be aware that they are using colloquial or slang expressions. Most speakers of English will, during appropriate situations, select and use all three types of expressions.

11 Archaeology

Archaeology is a source of history, not just a bumble auxiliary discipline. Archaeological data are historical documents in their own right, not mere illustrations to written texts, Just as much as any other historian, an archaeologist studies and tries to reconstitute the process that has created the human world in which we live - and us ourselves in so far as we are each creatures of our age and social environment. Archaeological data are all changes in the material world resulting from human action or, more succinctly, the fossilized results of human behavior. The sum total of these constitutes what may be called the archaeological record. This record exhibits certain peculiarities and deficiencies the consequences of which produce a rather superficial contrast between

archaeological history and the more familiar kind based upon written records.

Not all human behavior fossilizes. The words I utter and you hear as vibrations in the air are certainly human changes in the material world and may be of great historical significance. Yet they leave no sort of trace in the archaeological records unless they are captured by a dictaphone or written down by a clerk. The movement of troops on the battlefield may "change the course of history," but this is equally ephemeral from the archaeologist's standpoint. What is perhaps worse, most organic materials are perishable. Everything made of wood, hide, wool, linen, grass, hair, and similar materials will decay and vanish in dust in a few years or centuries, save under very exceptional conditions. In a relatively brief period the archaeological record is reduce to mere scraps of stone, bone, glass, metal, and earthenware. Still modern archaeology, by applying appropriate techniques and comparative methods, aided by a few lucky finds from peat-bogs, deserts, and frozen soils, is able to fill up a good deal of the gap.

12 Museums

From Boston to Los Angeles, from New York City to Chicago to Dallas, museums are either planning, building, or wrapping up wholesale expansion programs. These programs already have radically altered facades and floor plans or are expected to do so in the not-too-distant future.

In New York City alone, six major institutions have spread up and out into the air space and neighborhoods around them or are preparing to do so.

The reasons for this confluence of activity are complex, but one factor is a consideration everywhere - space. With collections expanding, with the needs and functions of museums changing, empty space has become a very precious commodity.

Probably nowhere in the country is this more true than at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which has needed additional space for decades and which received its last significant facelift ten years ago. Because of the space crunch, the Art Museum has become increasingly cautious in considering acquisitions and donations of art, in some cases passing up opportunities to strengthen its collections.

Deaccessing - or selling off - works of art has taken on new importance because of the museum's space problems. And increasingly, curators have been forced to juggle gallery space, rotating one masterpiece into public view while another is sent to storage.

Despite the clear need for additional gallery and storage space, however," the museum has no plan, no plan to break out of its envelope in the next fifteen years," according to Philadelphia Museum of Art's president.

13 Skyscrapers and Environment

In the late 1960's, many people in North America turned their attention to environmental problems, and new steel-and-glass skyscrapers were widely criticized. Ecologists pointed out that a cluster of tall buildings in a city often overburdens public transportation and parking lot capacities.

Skyscrapers are also lavish consumers, and wasters, of electric power. In one recent year, the addition of 17 million square feet of skyscraper office space in New York City raised the peak daily demand for electricity by 120, 000 kilowatts-enough to supply the entire city of Albany, New York, for a day.

Glass-walled skyscrapers can be especially wasteful. The heat loss (or gain)through a wall of half-inch plate glass is more than ten times that through a typical masonry wall filled with insulation board. To lessen the strain on heating and air-conditioning equipment, builders of skyscrapers have begun to use double-glazed panels of glass, and reflective glasses coated with silver or gold mirror films that reduce glare as well as heat gain. However, mirror-walled skyscrapers raise the temperature of the surrounding air and affect neighboring buildings.

Skyscrapers put a severe strain on a city's sanitation facilities, too. If fully occupied, the two World Trade Center towers in New York City would alone generate 2.25 million gallons of raw sewage each year-as much as a city the size of Stanford, Connecticut , which has a population of more than 109, 000.

14 A Rare Fossil Record

The preservation of embryos and juveniles is a rate occurrence in the fossil record. The tiny, delicate skeletons are usually scattered by scavengers or destroyed by weathering before they can be fossilized. Ichthyosaurs had a higher chance of being preserved than did terrestrial creatures because, as marine animals, they tended to live in environments less subject to erosion. Still, their fossilization required a suite of factors: a slow rate of decay of soft tissues, little scavenging by other animals, a lack of swift currents and waves to jumble and carry away small bones, and fairly rapid burial. Given these factors, some areas have become a treasury of well-preserved ichthyosaur fossils.

The deposits at Holzmaden, Germany, present an interesting case for analysis. The ichthyosaur remains are found in black, bituminous marine shales deposited about 190 million years ago. Over the years, thousands of specimens of marine reptiles, fish and invertebrates have been recovered from these rocks. The quality of preservation is outstanding, but what is even more impressive is the number of ichthyosaur fossils containing preserved embryos. Ichthyosaurs with embryos have been reported from 6 different levels of the shale in a small area around Holzmaden, suggesting that a specific site was used by large numbers of ichthyosaurs repeatedly over time. The embryos are quite advanced in their physical development; their paddles, for example, are already well formed. One specimen is even preserved in the birth canal. In addition, the shale contains the remains of many newborns that are between 20 and 30 inches long.

Why are there so many pregnant females and young at Holzmaden when they are so rare elsewhere? The quality of preservation is almost unmatched and quarry operations have been carried out carefully with an awareness of the value of the fossils. But these factors do not account for the interesting question of how there came to be such a concentration of pregnant ichthyosaurs in a particular place very close to their time of giving birth.

15 The Nobel Academy

For the last 82years, Sweden's Nobel Academy has decided who will receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, thereby determining who will be elevated from the great and the near great to the immortal. But today the Academy is coming under heavy criticism both from the without and from within. Critics contend that the selection of the winners often has less to do with true writing ability than with the peculiar internal politics of the Academy and of Sweden itself. According to Ingmar Bjorksten , the cultural editor for one of the country's two major newspapers, the prize continues to represent "what people call a very Swedish exercise: reflecting Swedish tastes."

The Academy has defended itself against such charges of provincialism in its selection by asserting that its physical distance from the great literary capitals of the world actually serves to protect the Academy from outside influences. This may well be true, but critics respond that this very distance may also be responsible for the Academy's inability to perceive accurately authentic trends in the literary world.

Regardless of concerns over the selection process, however, it seems that the prize will continue to survive both as an indicator of the literature that we most highly praise, and as an elusive goal that writers seek. If for no other reason, the prize will continue to be desirable for the financial rewards that accompany it; not only is the cash prize itself considerable, but it also dramatically increases sales of an author's books.

16. the war between Britain and France

In the late eighteenth century, battles raged in almost every corner of Europe, as well as in the Middle East, south Africa ,the West Indies, and Latin America. In reality, however, there was only one major war during this time, the war between Britain and France. All other battles were ancillary to this larger conflict, and were often at least partially related to its antagonist’ goals and strategies. France sought total domination of Europe . this goal was obstructed by British independence and Britain’s efforts throughout the continent to thwart Napoleon; through treaties. Britain built coalitions (not dissimilar in concept to today’s NATO) guaranteeing British participation in all major European conflicts. These two antagonists were poorly matched, insofar

as they had very unequal strengths; France was predominant on land, Britain at sea. The French knew that, short of defeating the British navy, their only hope of victory was to close all the ports of Europe to British ships. Accordingly, France set out to overcome Britain by extending its military domination from Moscow t Lisbon, from Jutland to Calabria. All of this entailed tremendous risk, because France did not have the military resources to control this much territory and still protect itself and maintain order at home.

French strategists calculated that a navy of 150 ships would provide the force necessary to defeat the British navy. Such a force would give France a three-to-two advantage over Britain. This advantage was deemed necessary because of Britain’s superior sea skills and technology because of Britain’s superior sea skills and technology, and also because Britain would be fighting a defensive war, allowing it to win with fewer forces. Napoleon never lost substantial impediment to his control of Europe. As his force neared that goal, Napoleon grew increasingly impatient and began planning an immediate attack.

17.Evolution of sleep

Sleep is very ancient. In the electroencephalographic sense we share it with all the primates and almost all the other mammals and birds: it may extend back as far as the reptiles.

There is some evidence that the two types of sleep, dreaming and dreamless, depend on the life-style of the animal, and that predators are statistically much more likely to dream than prey, which are in turn much more likely to experience dreamless sleep. In dream sleep, the animal is powerfully immobilized and remarkably unresponsive to external stimuli. Dreamless sleep is much shallower, and we have all witnessed cats or dogs cocking their ears to a sound when apparently fast asleep. The fact that deep dream sleep is rare among pray today seems clearly to be a product of natural selection, and it makes sense that today, when sleep is highly evolved, the stupid animals are less frequently immobilized by deep sleep than the smart ones. But why should they sleep deeply at all? Why should a state of such deep immobilization ever have evolved?

Perhaps one useful hint about the original function of sleep is to be found in the fact that dolphins and whales and aquatic mammals in genera seem to sleep very little. There is, by and large, no place to hide in the ocean. Could it be that, rather than increasing an animal’s vulnerability, the University of Florida and Ray Meddis of London University have suggested this to be the case. It is conceivable that animals who are too stupid to be quite on their own initiative are, during periods of high risk, immobilized by the implacable arm of sleep. The point seems particularly clear for the young of predatory animals. This is an interesting notion and probably at least partly true.

18.Modern American Universities

Before the 1850’s, the United States had a number of small colleges, most of them dating from colonial days. They were small, church connected institutions whose primary concern was to shape the moral character of their students.

Throughout Europe, institutions of higher learning had developed, bearing the ancient name of university. In German university was concerned primarily with creating and spreading knowledge, not morals. Between mid-century and the end of the 1800’s, more than nine thousand young Americans, dissatisfied with their training at home, went to Germany for advanced study. Some of them return to become presidents of venerable colleges-----Harvard, Yale, Columbia---and transform them into modern universities. The new presidents broke all ties with the churches and brought in a new kind of faculty. Professors were hired for their knowledge of a subject, not because they were of the proper faith and had a strong arm for disciplining students. The new principle was that a university was to create knowledge as well as pass it on, and this called for a faculty composed of teacher-scholars. Drilling and learning by rote were replaced by the German method of lecturing, in which the professor’s own research was presented in class. Graduate training leading to the Ph.D., an ancient German degree signifying the highest level of advanced scholarly attainment, was introduced. With the establishment of the seminar system, graduate student learned to question, analyze, and conduct their own research.

At the same time, the new university greatly expanded in size and course offerings, breaking completely out of the old, constricted curriculum of mathematics, classics, rhetoric, and music. The president of Harvard pioneered the elective system, by which students were able to choose their own course of study. The notion of major fields of study emerged. The new goal was to make the university relevant to the real pursuits of the world. Paying close heed to the practical needs of society, the new universities trained men and women to work at its tasks, with engineering students being the most characteristic of the new regime. Students were also trained as economists, architects, agriculturalists, social welfare workers, and teachers.

19.children’s numerical skills

people appear to born to compute. The numerical skills of children develop so early and so inexorably that it is easy to imagine an internal clock of mathematical maturity guiding their growth. Not long after learning to walk and talk, they can set the table with impress accuracy---one knife, one spoon, one fork, for each of the five chairs. Soon they are capable of nothing that they have placed five knives, spoons and forks on the table and, a bit later, that this amounts to fifteen pieces of silverware. Having thus mastered addition, they move on to subtraction. It seems almost reasonable to expect that if a child were secluded on a desert island at

birth and retrieved seven years later, he or she could enter a second enter a second-grade mathematics class without any serious problems of intellectual adjustment.

Of course, the truth is not so simple. This century, the work of cognitive psychologists has illuminated the subtle forms of daily learning on which intellectual progress depends. Children were observed as they slowly grasped-----or, as the case might be, bumped into-----concepts that adults take for quantity is unchanged as water pours from a short glass into a tall thin one. Psychologists have since demonstrated that young children, asked to count the pencils in a pile, readily report the number of blue or red pencils, but must be coaxed into finding the total. Such studies have suggested that the rudiments of mathematics are mastered gradually, and with effort. They have also suggested that the very concept of abstract numbers------the idea of a oneness,

a twoness, a threeness that applies to any class of objects and is a prerequisite for doing anything more mathematically demanding than setting a table-----is itself far from innate

20 The Historical Significance of American Revolution

The ways of history are so intricate and the motivations of human actions so complex that it is always hazardous to attempt to represent events covering a number of years, a multiplicity of persons, and distant localities as the expression of one intellectual or social movement; yet the historical process which culminated in the ascent of Thomas Jefferson to the presidency can be regarded as the outstanding example not only of the birth of a new way of life but of nationalism as a new way of life. The American Revolution represents the link between the seventeenth century, in which modern England became conscious of itself, and the awakening of modern Europe at the end of the eighteenth century. It may seem strange that the march of history should have had to cross the Atlantic Ocean, but only in the North American colonies could a struggle for civic liberty lead also to the foundation of a new nation. Here, in the popular rising against a “tyrannical” government, the fruits were more than the securing of a freer constitution. They included the growth of a nation born in liberty by the will of the people, not from the roots of common descent, a geographic entity, or the ambitions of king or dynasty. With the American nation, for the first time, a nation was born, not in the dim past of history but before the eyes of the whole world.