口语期末考试题目

口语期末考试题目

2011. 12

一、朗读 Passage I

As society develops, man tends to become less dependent on nature directly, while indirectly his dependence grows. Our distant ancestors lived in fear of nature’s destructive forces. Very often they were unable to obtain the merest daily necessities. However, despite their imperfect tools, they worked together stubbornly, collectively, and were able to attain results. Nature was also changed though interaction with man. Forests were destroyed and the area of farmland increased. Nature with its elemental forces was regarded as something wild and frightening and people tried to force it to retreat. This was all done in the name of civilisation, which meant the places where man had made his home, where the earth was cultivated, where the forest had been cut down.

Passage II

Between labor and play stands work. A man is a worker if he is personally interested in the job which society pays him to do; what from the point of view of society is necessary labor is from his own point of view voluntary play. Whether a job is to be classified as labor or work depends, not on the job itself, but on the tastes of the individual who undertakes it. The difference does not, for example, coincide with the difference between a manual and a mental job; a gardener or a cobbler may be a worker, a bank clerk a laborer. Which a man is can be seen from his attitude toward leisure. To a worker, leisure means simply the hours he needs to relax and rest in order to work efficiently. He is therefore more likely to take too little leisure than too much; workers die of coronaries and forget their wives’ birthdays. To the laborer, on the other hand, leisure means freedom from compulsion, so that it is natural for him to imagine that the fewer hours he has to spend laboring, and the more hours he is free to play, the better.

Passage III

Sara and Michael lent me their copy of 99 Ways to a Simple Lifestyle, a handbook of practical suggestions that can be applied to anyone's living situation. I read it

carefully, giving myself high marks in some areas, surprised at my socially sanctioned irrational behavior in others. That night, accompanying my daughter on a shopping trip, I came across an inexpensive hand towel that matched our kitchen wallpaper, and

a pair of \"bargain\" shoes too handsome to resist. When I stood in the parking lot, $11 poorer and no happier than I had been before, I felt like a child, helpless in the face of my own impulses. It is a world of illusion, this shopping merry-go-round we ride, but with all the action and excitement, it's sometimes hard to find the resolve and the courage to dismount.

Passage VI

In the 20th century, Americans, Europeans, and East Asians enjoyed material and technological advances that were unimaginable in previous eras. In the United States, for instance, gross domestic product per capita tripled from 1950 to 2000. Life expectancy soared. The boom in productivity after World War II made goods better and cheaper at the same time. Things that were once luxuries, such as jet travel and long-distance phone calls, became necessities. And even though Americans seemed to work extraordinarily hard, their pursuit of entertainment turned media and leisure into multibillion-dollar industries.

(以上题目，现场四抽一，进行朗读)

二．小组讨论

1. Advertisements and life 2. True love 3. Pets and human 4. My favorite movie

(以上题目，现场四抽一，选取某个角度进行小组讨论)