英语Unit 4

Reading Focus – Language Point 1. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. (Para. 1) Here, the author is talking about his past experience. For example, he used to be easily absorbed in a book or a long article. His attention would also be drawn to the narrative, complex arguments and long prose.
高等院校研究生英语系列教材
综合教程（下）
INTEGRATED COURSE
Unit 4
Science and Technology
2
Content
Starting out Reading Focus Reading More Practical Translation Focused Writing Final Project
Complete the following extract with information from the text.
uncomfortable Over the past few years, I’ve had an 1) _____________ feeling that I’m not thinking the way I used to think, particularly when I am 2) ________. reading In the past, I would be able to 3) immerse ________ myself in lengthy articles. But, it is a different story now. It has become an exacting thing for me to do some 4) _______ deep reading. This, I think, can be attributed to a universal medium – the Net, which provides immediate 5) ________ access to such an incredibly rich store of information. Reliance on the Net leads to the gradual loss of my capacity for 6) _____________ concentration and contemplation. Similar troubles with reading also fall upon other people,
Reading Focus
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Background Information
Watch a short video then 1) find out about people’s ideas about what Google has done from different angles and 2) fill in the following paragraph with the information you’ve got from the video. Six simple letters on a plain white page – that’s the face of the most powerful technology company in the world, revered, ___________________________________ envied, and sometimes scorned. Google’s cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page started the company as grad students _________. in 1998 It has astonishingly rich Today they stand atop an empire cast made them ________________. in their own image, __________, ___________. audacious ambitious, and often controversial It is a company like no other, ________ thriving on long hours, too much coffee, and something quite elusive – genius.
Reading Focus—Critical Thinking
Discuss in groups the following questions
People can gain easy access to virtually all the information on the Internet, including e-books, which acts as a catalyst for the debate as to whether to abandon or strengthen the copyright of books. In your opinion, how should the issue of copyright be dealt with?
Reading Focus – Detailed Information
Task 2 Choose the sentence that best expresses the meaning of the sentence from the text. (P103)
Key: 1 D 2 A 5 D Understanding
As a consequence, our ability to interpret and make rich mental connections remains tremendously 12)disengaged _______. Another good case in point, illustrating the point that 13) ___________ variations extend across many regions of the brain when we apply different media, is Friedrich Nietzsche. When his vision was failing and it was tough for him to keep his eyes focused on a page, he bought a typewriter, with which 14) _________ words could once again flow from his mind to the page. But, as one of Nietzsche’s friends claimed, it made Nietzsche’s terse prose even 15) ____________ and more telegraphic. tighter
Reading Focus – Global Understanding
including Scott Karp, who recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether, and Bruce 7) ________ altered Friedman, who claimed that the Internet has 8) _______ his mental habits. A recently published study of online research habits also change in the way we read and think. points to the 9) _______ Although the Internet and text-messaging on cell phones different kind of reading. facilitate our reading, it’s a 10) ________ According to Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University, we tend to become ―mere 11) _________ decoders of information‖ while reading online.
1. ―We are not only what we read,‖ says Maryanne Wolf. ―We are how we read.‖ 2. When we read online, she says, we tend to become ―mere decoders of information.‖
Reading Focus—Critical Thinking
Read the following sentences or questions and discuss with your partner whether you have the same problems and if you have, how you will cope with these problems. 1. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. 2. People using the sites exhibited ―a form of skimming activity,‖ hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. 3. ―I can’t read War and Peace anymore,‖ he admitted. ―I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.‖