工硕英语材料.docnew

Passage 1The Mayan Indians lived in Mexico for thousands of years before the Spanish arrived in the 1500s. The Maya were an intelligent, culturally rich people whose achievements were many. They had farms, beautiful palaces, and cities with many building s. The Mayan people knew a lot about nature and the world around them. This knowledge helped them to live a better life than most people of that time, because they could use it to make their lives more comfortable and rewarding. Knowledge about tools and farming, for instance, made their work easier and more productive.In ancient Mexico there were many small clearings in the forest. In each clearing was a village with fields of corn, beans, and other crops around it. To clear the land for farms, the Maya cut down trees with stone axes. They planted seeds by digging holes in the ground with pointed sticks. A farmer was able to grow crops that produced food for several people. But not every Maya had to be a farmer. Some were cloth makers, builders, or priests.The Maya believed in many gods, including rain gods, sun gods, and corn gods. The people built large temples to honor the Mayan gods. Skillful workers built cities around these temples. It was difficult for them to construct these cities, because they had no horses to carry the heavy stone they used to build with. Workers had to carry all of the building materials themselves. Today, many of these ancient Mayan cities and temples are still standing.Although the cities that the Maya built were beautiful, and the people worked hard to build them, very few of the people lived in them. Usually, only the priests lived in the cities.The other people lived in small villages in the forests. Their houses were much simpler than the elaborate structures in the cities. They lived in small huts with no windows. The walls were made of poles covered with dried mud, and the roof was made of grass or leaves. Most Maya lived a simple life close to nature.Measuring time was important to the Maya, so they developed a system for measuring it accurately. Farmers needed to know when to plant and harvest their crops. Mayan priests made a system to keep track of time. They wrote numbers as dots (...) and bars (-). A dot was one and a bar was five.The Mayan priests studied the Sun, Moon, stars, and planets. They made a calendar from what they learned. The year was divided into 18 months of 20 days each with five days left over. The Mayan calendar was far more accurate than the European calendars of the time.Around the year 800, the Maya left their villages and beautiful cities, never to return.No one knows why this happened. They may have died from an infectious disease. They may have left because the soil could no longer grow crops. Archaeologists are still trying to find the lost secrets of the Maya. They are still one of our greatest mysteries.Passage 2For centuries, people have been playing kicking games with a ball. The game of soccer developed from some of these early games. The English probably gave soccer its name and its first set of rules. In European countries, soccer is called football or association football. Some people believe that the name "soccer" came from "assoc.," an abbreviation for the word association. Others believe that the name came from the high socks that the players wear.Organized soccer games began in 1863. In soccer, two teams of eleven players try to kick or head the ball into their opponents’ goal. The goalie, who tries to keep the ball out of the goal, is the only player on the field who is allowed to touch the ball with his or her hands. The other players must use their feet, heads, and bodies to control the ball.Every four years, soccer teams around the world compete for the World Cup. The World Cup competition started in 1930.Brazil is the home of many great soccer players, including the most famous player of all, Pelé. With his fast footwork, dazzling speed, and great scoring ability, Pelé played for many years in Brazil and then later in New York. During his 22 years in soccer, he scored 1,281 goals and held every major record for the sport.People in more than 140 countries around the world play soccer. It is the national sport of most European and Latin American countries. Soccer is definitely the world’s most popular sport!James Naismith, a physical education teacher in Massachusetts, invented basketball in 1891. Naismith’s boss asked him to invent a game that students could play indoors during bad weather. He wanted to find a game that wasn’t as physically rough as soccer, football, or wrestling.Naismith attached peach baskets to a railing ten feet above the floor at either end of the gym. The players used a soccer ball.A person sat on a ladder next to each basket at either end of the gym, and threw out the balls that landed in the baskets. Naismith decided that having only five players on each team would keep the game from getting too rough.Two years later, metal hoops with net bags replaced the peach baskets. Officials pulleda string on the nets to release the balls that went in. In 1894, Naismith added the backboard behind each net and changed to a larger ball. In 1913, people began using the bottomless nets that are used today.During a basketball game, two teams of five players each throw the ball into two baskets at opposite ends of a court. Players bounce, or dribble, the ball to the basket or pass the ball to teammates. A team scores points by getting the ball into their team’s basket. The team with the highest score wins.By the 1900s, basketball was the most popular indoor sport. Athletes in approximately 130 countries play the game. Basketball is especially popular in the United States, China, and Puerto Rico.Baseball began in the United States in the early 1800s. Some people believe that Abner Doubleday invented the game. Others think that baseball came from an old British sport called rounders. Baseball and rounders are very similar. However, in rounders the field players throw the ball right at the runner. If the ball hits the runner, he or she is out. In baseball, a field player just touches the ball to the base or the running player to get the player out.Today’s baseball players use special equipment to help prevent injuries. Field players wear baseball gloves to protect their hands. The catcher wears a metal mask, a chest protector, and shin guards. Batters wear plastic helmets to protect their heads.Every spring in the United States, people of all ages play baseball at local baseball fields. It’s no wonder that baseball is called the national pastime o f the United States.Passage 3It's probably the greatest mammal pest of all time, the cause of more deaths than all the wars in history. Harbouring lice and fleas and spreading diseases through its urine and droppings, it has been the source of bubonic plague, typhus, salmonella, Weil's disease, trichina, infectious jaundice and many other serious or fatal illnesses. Due to the risk of disease it is the only animal that SAS soldiers are banned from eating in the field. The only thing in the rat's favour is that it may have been unfairly blamed for the Black Death, which, according to a recent study, is more likely to have been an ebola-like virus transmitted from person to person.Rats destroy some 20% of the world's crops and cause a huge amount of damage to buildings and their contents with their chewing. The enamel on rats' incisor teeth is the hardest animal substance on earth - harder than aluminium or copper - so they can gnaw through piping, wires, masonry, even corrugated iron. Rats once put out the lights at Heathrow airport by gnawing through double-insulated power cables. In the USA alone, economic losses due to rats are estimated to be in the region of $1,000m annually.Partly because they're ideally suited to living among humans. The common brown rat, Rattus Norvegicus - which consumes the equivalent of 10% of its own body weight every day – eats everything from soap to sweets, milk, eggs, meat, poultry and grains of all sorts. In cities they thrive on uneaten and spoiled food discarded by humans. The average rat is about 12 inches long, not including the tail, but can grow to twice this length. Yet it can squeeze through a hole no bigger than a man's thumb. Adept at hiding, rats are also good jumpers, climbers and swimmers - they can even swim round the U-bend of lavatories. But perhaps the rat's greatest advantage is its amazing fertility. They reach sexual maturity eight weeks after birth and have sex about 20 times a day. Females typically produce six to eight litters a year of up to 14 babies per litter.In Mexico and Africa they eat them; in China they drink 'baby rat wine' as a cure for arthritis. Selective breeding has produced the albino laboratory rat, which has been vital in developing cures for a range of human diseases. More bizarrely, an 'explosive rat' was developed by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II. It was made by skinning the animals, filling them with explosives, and then sewing them up. The rats were to be placed next to boilers in strategic German buildings in the hope they would then be spotted and thrown on the fire, causing huge explosions. In the event, the Germans intercepted the container of rats before they could used, but the ruse still caused disruption. The trick rats were exhibited at German military schools, prompting a mass hunt across Germany for hundreds of others.Rats tend to live in big groups in which the larger males are dominant. Nests are built out of leaves, paper, twigs, or any other material the rat finds useful. If a suitable cavity or crevice is not available for nesting, rats make burrows in the ground. They tend to follow set trails on the surface, particularly under the cover of old boards or other rubbish. Even though rats are nocturnal, some can be found foraging during the daytime. These ones tend to be socially low-ranked individuals who have been denied access to food by dominant rats during the night, when most foraging activity takes place.Flooding has driven rats above ground, warmer winters encourage extended breeding, and the growth of fast-food restaurants has left pavements conveniently strewn with chicken and chips. In fact, over the past 35 years the amount of rubbish dropped on the streets has increased by 35% - to the rat's great benefit. Some experts believe that greater use of plastic building products has enabled more rats to chew their way out of sewers into homes and gardens. Meanwhile, there has been an increase in communities of rats resistant to standard poisons. This has led to the introduction of stronger poisons which are more toxic to the birds and animals that eat rodents. Earlier this year a team of scientists at the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology discovered alarming levels of rat poisons in barn owls, polecats, foxes, weasels, stoats, red kites and even domestic cats and dogs.Local authorities have responsibility for dealing with infestations of rats above ground and in houses, but the trouble is that 60% of urban infestations occur in our decrepit sewer system where cracks in pipes provide bolt holes and allow rats to come above ground to search for food. Council pest control services used to deal with sewers too, but since privatisation of the ten regional water authorities in the Eighties, responsibility for sewer baiting has been passed increasingly to private companies, many of which have little contact with the local council. The resulting lack ofco-ordination, experts argue, is frustrating our ability to tackle the problem. When sewer baiting in Yorkshire and Humberside was contracted to a private company three years ago, councils soon complained of a rise in the rat population. In Sheffield, a public slanging match erupted after the city council blamed Yorkshire Water for a 40% rise in infestations. Pest control teams in other parts of the country worry that baiting may not be taking place at all.Passage 4You may already know that hurricanes are major tropical storms that can cause devastating waves, wind, and rain. They happen during “Hurricane Season,” which is from June 1st until November 30th in the Atlantic Ocean and from May 15th until November 30th in the Pacific Ocean. A hurricane that forms in the Atlantic Ocean begins as tropical disturbance. This is a large area of windy thunderstorms that forms over the warm ocean, near the equator. When the storms grow larger, rains and wind pick up, and the “disturbance” can develop into a fullfledged hurricane.Stages of a Hurricane: Simple Storms Grow Into GiantsA storm progresses through four different stages before it is actually considered a hurricane. First is a tropical disturbance, which has thunderstorms and rotating winds, or what scientists call cyclonic circulation. Next is a tropical depression, which is similar to a tropical disturbance, but has winds between 23 and 39 miles per hour. A tropical storm is the next level, which has stronger wind speeds between 40and 73 miles per hour. Once winds reach 74 miles per hour, the storm is officially classified as a hurricane. The winds pick up energy from the warm surface ocean water.Hurricanes rotate counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. Hurricanes can vary in size and can grow to have a diameter of up to 600 miles, which is longer than the entire state of Florida!As a hurricane crosses over land, it begins to dissipate, or break apart and reduce in strength. This is because it is no longer over the warm ocean water that it needs for energy. At this point, a hurricane can still cause a lot of damage because of high winds, rain, and flooding, but unless it makes its way back over the open ocean, it is downgraded from a hurricane back to a tropical storm.Hurricane DangersWhen a hurricane makes landfall, it can be very dangerous along coastlinesbecause of a storm surge, where ocean waters rush onto land. When this is combined with heavy rainfall, there can be devastating floods.The center of a hurricane is called the eye. While most of a hurricane contains dangerously strong winds, the eye is actually a calm area in the storm. When the eye of a hurricane passes over land, people might think that it’s over, but before long the wind and rain increase again as the second part of the hurricane moves through.Passage 5Muhammad Yunus was the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2006. He is often referred to as "the world's banker to the poor". His life's work has been to prove that the poor are credit-worthy. His revolutionary Grameen (Village) banking system is estimated to have extended credit to more than seven million of the world's poor, most of them in Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations in the world. The vast majority of the beneficiaries（受益者）are women.Mr Yunus came up with the idea in 1976 while professor of economics at Chittagong University in southern Bangladesh. The first loans he issued had a value of $27 (£14.50). Their recipients were 42 women from the village of Jobra, near the university. The women had relied until then on local money-lenders who charged high interest rates. The conventional banking system had been reluctant to give credit to those who were too poor to provide any form of guarantee.The success of Mr Yunus' scheme exceeded all expectations and has been copied in developing countries around the world. His "micro-finance" initiative reaches out to people avoided by conventional banking systems - people so poor they have no collateral(抵押品) to guarantee a loan, should they be unable to repay it. Mr Yunus' has tried to transform the vicious circle of "low-income, low saving and low investment" into a virtuous circle of "low income, injection of credit, investment, more income, more savings, more investment, more income". As a result, even beggars have been able to borrow money under his scheme.Mr Yunus has already created a legacy of real social change in Bangladesh. His work has been widely recognised. In 1999 he was awarded the Indira Gandhi prize for peace, disarmament and development in India. And it is not just in the developing world that he has had an impact. Mr Yunus has helped the Clinton government introduce micro-credit schemes to some of the poorest communities in Arkansas, USA.Now Mr Yunus hopes that the Nobel peace prize will provide a huge boost to Grameen. "It's recognition of our movement to ensure the rights of the poor," he told the reporter. "With this recognition, we expect that the model we have developed will spread across the world.”。