综英四课后问答问题及答案

Unit 2 Space Invader1. Why does the writer tell his experience at the bank?Because the author wants to show the significance of personal space in maintaining public order. If everyone invades into others’ personal space, it would cause chaos in public or der.2. How is the concept of personal space defined?He defines it as one’s individual sphere with the self at the center and certain distance on each side. It is part of one’s privacy, the invasion of which necessarily makes one uneasy.3. What is meant by “this tendency” in Paragraph4? What did the author think caused this tendency?This tendency refers to the phenomenon exemplified in the previous part the escalation of the invasion of personal space. He attributed the tendency to the population explosion, then to the hot weather and the stimulation of caffeine and later he concludes that self- absorption is the real cause.4. What is the characteristic of personal space as described in Paragraph5?Personal space is a relative concept. It varies from people to people, from country to country, from region to region, i.e. different people are given different concepts of personal space.5. Why is personal space shrinking in general?Because people are more self-absorbed than ever before. In other words, they are paying less attention to the outside world, including personal space, than before. The fact that people care less about their personal space in effect encourages space invasion.Unit 3 Alienation and the Internet1. What is the author’s viewpoint abou t the benefit of the Internet? What does he see about its negative side?As the author sees it, the Internet is likely to make our global village a better place to live in. it helps to realize human potentials. It is a powerful tool for the acquisition and application of knowledge. But it may deprive the user of his time so that the world may be further fragmented. It gives the user a skewed sense of reality.2. What happened to the author’s friend as regards the Internet? What negative consequences did he see about it?Addicted to the Internet and without any face-to-face verbal communication with other people, he felt lonely and depressed.3. What alienated society members before the Internet gained popularity? What alienates them in the information age?Automobile ownership. The Internet.4. What is meant by the “cruel irony” that appears in Paragraph4?The Internet provides the user with a convenient means of communication and making friend. But on the other hand, it estranges the user from people around him by canceling his availability for the face-to-face communication even with his families and friends.5. How, according to the author, can the potential of the Internet be realized?It can be realized when the users strike a balance between the reality and the Internet. The only way to avoid being addicted is to make moderate use of this tool without losing one’s sense of place in the real world.Unit 4 A View of Mountains1.Why is a view of mountains provided by a picture so significant that itwas chosen as the title of the essay?Because it reminded us of the city that was leveled/destroyed to the ground by the atomic bomb and of the normal life that would have been going on there.2.Why are Y amahata’s pictures still news?Because it was the first time that Americans had ever seen the pictures since the atomic bombing fifty years ago.3.In what way(s) is the bombing of Nagasaki the fitter symbol of thenuclear danger?The bombing of Nagasaki is regarded as the fitter symbol of the nuclear peril of two reasons. First, it is the evidence that nuclear weapons can be used again to destroy the human civilization. Second, the fact that Nagasaki was not the original target city indicates the unexpectability of the nuclear attacks in future.4.What is the universal meaning of Yamahata’ photos?They were intended to demonstrate the devastating power of nuclear weapons.5.Do Yamahata’s pictures fully express the author’s intention of writing?Why or why not?No, his pictures only express part of his intension because he intends not only to express his apprehension, but to call on the people to take actions to banish forever nuclearweapons from the earth.Unite 10 How I Found My Voice1.Why could the narrator hardly believe that such good things asdescribed in P. 1 could ever happen to him?Because when he was young, he stuttered so badly that he was completely unable to speak in public. The achievements are far beyond his expectation as a stutter.2. Why does the narrator describe his moving at the age of 5 traumatic? He felt the place he moved to was drastically different climatically and culturally from where he had been.3. Why did the narrator quit Sunday school and church?Because he wanted to avoid humiliation he suffered there for his stuttering. 4. Why does the narrator say the farm animals knew he could talk? Because the animals never laughed at him, he was not nervous at all when he talked to them as a way of venting his feelings.5. Why couldn’t Prof. Crouch stand not being a part of the narrator’s school?For Prof. Crouch, English was his favorite subject, poetry was his deepest love. When he heard that the narrator’s school taught Chaucer, Shakespeare and other classics, he could n’t help being a part of it.1.What event made the narrator open his mouth in public withoutstuttering for the first time?It was a trick made by Professor. Crouch. After the narrator handed in his poem, the professor purposefully denied his authorship in class. Thus the narrator was provoked into recite his poem in front of his classmates without stuttering.Unit 14 The Idiocy of Urban Life1.What is the purpose of mentioning rats as true city dwellers?The author mentions rats at the beginning of the article for the purpose of contrasting rats with human beings. In a sense, both rats and human beings are city dwellers, but there are differences between them in terms of life in the city. As natural inhabitants of the city, rats are social creatures and lead a stable urban life. By contrast, most human dwellers do not enjoy the urban life but live outside the city boundaries; and they live an individualistic and atomized rather than gregarious life. Therefore, relativelyspeaking, rats are truly city dwellers.2.What is the idiocy of the city dwellers’ trying to live outside the cityboundaries?The idiocy of the practice lies in the pretence of the city dwellers. For one thing, they disdain rural life on the one hand, and on the other hand they try to simulate it by creating large or small patches of greenery around their suburb residences. For another, while they intend to live a rural life by going to the country, they have in fact spoiled the natural features of the rural areas and created urban surroundings where they have settled down. As a result their purpose fails in the end.3.What does the author call the city dwellers’ journey to work “the firstidiocy of his day”?The author’s saying reflects his attitude towards the office in the city. Unlike farming which is part of the rural home life, joyless work in the city is separated, both physically and emotionally, from the home life and consequently causes unnecessary frenzy. The workers’ going to and from work wastes a lot of time and thus is pointless, and yet the worker “not only accepts and even seeks” it. Hence the idiocy of “the journey to work”.4.How do you understand sentence “The city dweller reels fromunreality to unreality through each day…”?The quoted statement describes in what environment the city dweller lives and works.With the windows that never open, the modern office, artificially cooled in summer and heated in winter, alienates the worker from the true natural world. The home surroundings are no better. They provide the dweller with no true sense of the seasons either. In general, the city dweller is moved from nature and submerged in a man-made environment every day.\5.What accounts for the fact that “Americans are mostround-shouldered people in the world”?The phenomenon is caused by the demerits of the office work. Compared with the physical labor in the rural life, the office work in the city needs very little exertion, but it requires long-time sitting with the posture every day. Even the after-work exercises cannot compensate for the damage done to the physical construction of the worker during the work hours. This accounts for the rounder-shoulders of Americans.。