2012年上半年10级口语考试复习范围

发布时间:2012-05-23  来源:公共外语教学部 

Part IRead Aloud (30%)

 Unit 2  Charlie Chaplin

He was born in a poor area of South London. He wore his mother's old red stockings cut down for socks. His mother was temporarily declared mad. Dickens might have created Charlie Chaplin's childhood. But only Charlie Chaplin could have created the great comic character of "the Tramp", the little man in rags who gave his creator permanent fame.

 

Other countries—France, Italy, Spain, even Japan—have provided more applause (and profit) where Chaplin is concerned than the land of his birth. Chaplin quit Britain for good in 1913 when he journeyed to America with a group of performers to do his comedy act on the stage, where talent scouts recruited him to work for Mack Sennett, the king of Hollywood comedy films.

 

Sad to say, many English people in the 1920s and 1930s thought Chaplin's Tramp a bit, well, "crude". Certainly middle-class audiences did; the working-class audiences were more likely to clap for a character who revolted against authority, using his wicked little cane to trip it up, or aiming the heel of his boot for a well-placed kick at its broad rear. All the same, Chaplin's comic beggar didn't seem all that English or even working-class. English tramps didn't sport tiny moustaches, huge pants or tail coats: European leaders and Italian waiters wore things like that.

Then again, the Tramp's quick eye for a pretty girl had a coarse way about it that was considered, well, not quite nice by English audiences—that's how foreigners behaved, wasn't it?

But for over half of his screen career, Chaplin had no screen voice to confirm his British nationality.

 

Indeed, it was a headache for Chaplin when he could no longer resist the talking movies and had to find "the right voice" for his Tramp. He postponed that day as long as possible: In Modern Times in 1936, the first film in which he was heard as a singing waiter, he made up a nonsense language which sounded like no known nationality. He later said he imagined the Tramp to be a college-educated gentleman who'd come down in the world. But if he'd been able to speak with an educated accent in those early short comedies, it's doubtful if he would have achieved world fame.

And the English would have been sure to find it "odd". No one was certain whether Chaplin did it on purpose but this helped to bring about his huge success.

 

He was an immensely talented man, determined to a degree unusual even in the ranks of Hollywood stars. His huge fame gave him the freedom—and, more importantly, the money—to be his own master. He already had the urge to explore and extend a talent he discovered in himself as he went along. "It can't be me. Is that possible? How extraordinary," is how he greeted the first sight of himself as the Tramp on the screen.

 

But that shock roused his imagination. Chaplin didn't have his jokes written into a script in advance; he was the kind of comic who used his physical senses to invent his art as he went along.

Lifeless objects especially helped Chaplin make "contact" with himself as an artist. He turned them into other kinds of objects. Thus, a broken alarm clock in the movie The Pawnbroker became a "sick" patient undergoing surgery; boots were boiled in his film The Gold Rush and their soles eaten with salt and pepper like prime cuts of fish (the nails being removed like fish bones). This physical transformation, plus the skill with which he executed it again and again, is surely the secret of Chaplin's great comedy.

 

He also had a deep need to be loved—and a corresponding fear of being betrayed. The two were hard to combine and sometimes—as in his early marriages—the collision between them resulted in disaster. Yet even this painfully-bought self-knowledge found its way into his comic creations.

The Tramp never loses his faith in the flower girl who'll be waiting to walk into the sunset with him; while the other side of Chaplin makes Monsieur Verdoux, the French wife killer, into a symbol of hatred for women.

 

It's a relief to know that life eventually gave Charlie Chaplin the stability and happiness it had earlier denied him. In Oona O'Neill Chaplin, he found a partner whose stability and affection spanned the 37 years age difference between them, which had seemed so threatening, that when the official who was marrying them in 1942 turned to the beautiful girl of 17 who'd given notice of their wedding date, he said, "And where is the young man? "—Chaplin, then 54, had cautiously waited outside. As Oona herself was the child of a large family with its own problems, she was well prepared for the battle that Chaplin's life became as many unfounded rumors surrounded them both—and, later on, she was the center of calm in the quarrels that Chaplin sometimes sparked in his own large family of talented children.

 

Chaplin died on Christmas Day 1977. A few months later, a couple of almost comic body thieves stole his body from the family burial chamber and held it for money. The police recovered it with more efficiency than Mack Sennett's clumsy Keystone Cops would have done, but one can't help feeling Chaplin would have regarded this strange incidents as a fitting memorial—his way of having the last laugh on a world to which he had given so many.

 

Unit 3  Longing for a New Welfare System

A welfare client is supposed to cheat. Everybody expects it. Faced with sharing a dinner of raw pet food with the cat, many people in wheelchairs I know bleed the system for a few extra dollars. They tell the government that they are getting two hundred dollars less than their real pension so they can get a little extra welfare money. Or, they tell the caseworker that the landlord raised the rent by a hundred dollars.

 

I have opted to live a life of complete honesty. So instead, I go out and drum up some business and draw cartoons. I even tell welfare how much I make! Oh, I'm tempted to get paid under the table. But even if I yielded to that temptation, big magazines are not going to get involved in some sticky situation. They keep my records, and that information goes right into the government's computer. Very high-profile.

 

As a welfare client I'm expected to bow before the caseworker. Deep down, caseworkers know that they are being made fools of by many of their clients, and they feel they are entitled to have clients bow to them as compensation. I'm not being bitter. Most caseworkers begin as college-educated liberals with high ideals. But after a few years in a system that practically requires people to lie, they become like the one I shall call "Suzanne", a detective in shorts.

 

Not long after Christmas last year, Suzanne came to inspect my apartment and saw some new posters pasted on the wall. "Where'd you get the money for those? " she wanted to know.

 "Friends and family."

 "Well, you'd better have a receipt for it, by God. You have to report any donations or gifts."

 This was my cue to beg. Instead, I talked back. "I got a cigarette from somebody on the street the other day. Do I have to report that? "

 "Well, I'm sorry, but I don't make the rules, Mr. Callahan."

 

Suzanne tries to lecture me about repairs to my wheelchair, which is always breaking down because welfare won't spend money maintaining it properly. “You know, Mr. Callahan, I've heard that you put a lot more miles on that wheelchair than average.”

 

Of course I do.

I'm an active worker, not a vegetable.

I live near downtown, so I can get around in a wheelchair.

I wonder what she'd think if she suddenly broke her hip and had to crawl to work.

 

Government cuts in welfare have resulted in hunger and suffering for a lot of people, not just me. But people with spinal cord injuries felt the cuts in a unique way: The government stopped taking care of our chairs. Each time mine broke down, lost a screw, needed a new roller bearing, the brake wouldn't work, etc., and I called Suzanne, I had to endure a little lecture. Finally, she'd say, "Well, if I can find time today, I'll call the medical worker."

 

She was supposed to notify the medical worker, who would certify that there was a problem. Then the medical worker called the wheelchair repair companies to get the cheapest bid. Then the medical worker alerted the main welfare office at the state capital. They considered the matter for days while I lay in bed, unable to move. Finally, if I was lucky, they called back and approved the repair.

 

When welfare learned I was making money on my cartoons, Suzanne started "visiting" every fortnight instead of every two months. She looked into every corner in search of unreported appliances, or maids, or a roast pig in the oven, or a new helicopter parked out back. She never found anything, but there was always a thick pile of forms to fill out at the end of each visit, accounting for every penny.

 

There is no provision in the law for a gradual shift away from welfare. I am an independent businessman, slowly building up my market. It's impossible to jump off welfare and suddenly be making two thousand dollars a month. But I would love to be able to pay for some of my living and not have to go through an embarrassing situation every time I need a spare part for my wheelchair.

 

There needs to be a lawyer who can act as a champion for the rights of welfare clients, because the system so easily lends itself to abuse by the welfare givers as well as by the clients. Welfare sent Suzanne to look around in my apartment the other day because the chemist said I was using a larger than usual amount of medical supplies. I was, indeed: The hole that has been surgically cut to drain urine had changed size and the connection to my urine bag was leaking.

 

While she was taking notes, my phone rang and Suzanne answered it. The caller was a state senator, which scared Suzanne a little. Would I sit on the governor's committee and try to do something about the thousands of welfare clients who, like me, could earn part or all of their own livings if they were allowed to do so, one step at a time?

 

Someday people like me will thrive under a new system that will encourage them, not seek to convict them of cheating. They will be free to develop their talents without guilt or fear—or just hold a good, steady job.

 

Unit 5  Choose to be alone on purpose

Here we are, all by ourselves, all 22 million of us by recent count, alone in our rooms, some of us liking it that way and some of us not. Some of us divorced, some widowed, some never yet committed.

 

Loneliness may be a sort of national disease here, and it's more embarrassing for us to admit than any other sin. On the other hand, to be alone on purpose, having rejected company rather than been cast out by it, is one characteristic of an American hero. The solitary hunter or explorer needs no one as they venture out among the deer and wolves to tame the great wild areas. Thoreau, alone in his cabin on the pond, his back deliberately turned to the town. Now, that's character for you.

 

Inspiration in solitude is a major commodity for poets and philosophers. They're all for it. They all speak highly of themselves for seeking it out, at least for an hour or even two before they hurry home for tea.

 

Consider Dorothy Wordsworth, for instance, helping her brother William put on his coat, finding his notebook and pencil for him, and waving as he sets forth into the early spring sunlight to look at flowers all by himself. "How graceful, how benign, is solitude," he wrote. No doubt about it, solitude is improved by being voluntary.

 

Look at Milton's daughters arranging his cushions and blankets before they silently creep away, so he can create poetry. Then, rather than trouble to put it in his own handwriting, he calls the girls to come back and write it down while he dictates.

 

You may have noticed that most of these artistic types went outdoors to be alone. The indoors was full of loved ones keeping the kettle warm till they came home.

The American high priest of solitude was Thoreau. We admire him, not for his self-reliance, but because he was all by himself out there at Walden Pond, and he wanted to be—all alone in the woods.

 

Actually, he lived a mile, or 20 minutes' walk, from his nearest neighbor; half a mile from the railroad; three hundred yards from a busy road. He had company in and out of the hut all day, asking him how he could possibly be so noble. Apparently the main point of his nobility was that he had neither wife nor servants, used his own axe to chop his own wood, and washed his own cups and saucers. I don't know who did his laundry; he doesn't say, but he certainly doesn't mention doing his own, either. Listen to him: "I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."

 

Thoreau had his own self-importance for company. Perhaps there's a message here: The larger the ego, the less the need for other egos around. The more modest and humble we feel, the more we suffer from solitude, feeling ourselves inadequate company.

 

If you live with other people, their temporary absence can be refreshing. Solitude will end on Thursday. If today I use a singular personal pronoun to refer to myself, next week I will use the plural form. While the others are absent you can stretch out your soul until it fills up the whole room, and use your freedom, coming and going as you please without apology, staying up late to read, soak in  the bath, eating a whole pint of ice cream at one sitting, moving at your own pace.

Those absent will be back. Their waterproof winter coats are in the closet and the dog keeps watching for them at the window. But when you live alone, the temporary absence of your friends and acquaintances leaves a vacuum; they may never come back.

 

The condition of loneliness rises and falls, but the need to talk goes on forever. It's more basic than needing to listen. Oh, we all have friends we can tell important things to, people we can call to say we lost our job or fell on a slippery floor and broke our arm. It's the daily succession of small complaints and observations and opinions that backs up and chokes us. We can't really call a friend to say we got a parcel from our sister, or it's getting dark earlier now, or we don't trust that new Supreme Court justice.

 

Scientific surveys show that we who live alone talk at length to ourselves and our pets and the television. We ask the cat whether we should wear the blue suit or the yellow dress.

We ask the parrot if we should prepare steak, or noodles for, dinner. We argue with ourselves over who is the greater sportsman: that figure skater or this skier. There's nothing wrong with this.

 

It's good for us, and a lot less embarrassing than the woman in front of us in line at the market who's telling the cashier that her niece Melissa may be coming to visit on Saturday, and Melissa is very fond of hot chocolate, which is why she bought the powdered hot chocolate mix, though she never drinks it herself.

It's important to stay rational.

 

It's important to stop waiting and settle down and make ourselves comfortable, at least temporarily, and find some grace and pleasure in our condition, not like a self-centered British poet but like a patient princess sealed up in a tower, waiting for the happy ending to our fairy tale.

After all, here we are. It may not be where we expected to be, but for the time being we might as well call it home. Anyway, there is no place like home.

 

Unit 9  Make Euro Disney More European

Does Mickey Mouse have a beard?

No.

Does this mean that French men seeking work with the Disney organization must shave off their moustaches too?

It depends.

 

A labor inspector took the Disney organization to court this week,

contending that the company's dress and appearance code—which bans moustaches, beards, excess weight, short skirts and fancy stockings—offends individual liberty and violates French labor law.

The case is an illustration of some of the delicate cultural issues the company faces as it gets ready to open its theme park 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of Paris in five months' time.

 

The Disney management, which is assembling what it calls a "cast" of 12,000 to run the theme park, argues that all the employees, from bottle washers to the president, are similar to actors who have to obey rules about appearance. Anyway, a company spokesman says, no one has yet put his moustache before a job. As one new "cast member" put it: "You must believe in what you are doing, or you would have a terrible time here."

 

But what do people think of Euro Disney? People everywhere are wondering whether Europeans would like this form of American recreation.

For all its concern about foreign cultural invasion and its defense against the pollution of the French language by English words, France's Socialist government has been untroubled about putting such a huge American symbol on the doorstep of the capital and has been more concerned about its economic effect. It made an extraordinary series of tax and financial concessions to attract the theme park here rather than let it go to sunny Spain.

 

The theme park itself will be only part of a giant complex of housing, office, and resort developments stretching far into the next century, including movie and television production facilities. As part of its deal with the Disney organization, the government is laying and paying for new highways, an extension of Paris' regional express railway and even a direct connection to the high speed TGV railway to the Channel Tunnel. The TGV station is being built in front of the main entrance of Euro Disneyland, and is scheduled to come into service in 1994.

 

If Euro Disneyland succeeds—theme parks already in France have so far failed—a second and even a third park is likely to be built by the end of the century. Financial experts say that Euro Disneyland, the first phase of which is costing an estimated $3.6 billion, is essential to Disney's overall fortunes, which have been hit by competition and declining attendance in the United States.

 

French intellectuals have not found many kind things to say about the project. The kids, however, will probably never notice. Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Peter Pan, and Pinocchio all come from European fairy tales or stories and are as familiar to children here as they are in the United States.

To a French child Mickey is French. To an Italian kid he is Italian.

 

The Disney management is stressing this tradition in an apparent response to suggestions that it is culturally insensitive. Although the concept of the theme park is closely based on the original Magic Kingdom in California and Walt Disney World in Florida, "Euro Disneyland will be unique in a manner appropriate to its European home," the company says. "The legends and fairy tales which come from Europe figure prominently in the creative development of the theme park."

Officials point out, for example, that Sleeping Beauty's castle, the central feature of the theme park, is based not on Hollywood, as some might think, but on the illustrations in a medieval European book. Also, a 360-degree movie, based on the adventures of Jules Verne, features well-known European actors.

 

Asked to describe other aspects of the effort to make the park more European, a spokesman mentioned that direction signs in the theme park will be in French as well as English, and that some performers will chat in French, Spanish and English. "The challenge is telling things people already know—and at the same time making it different," the spokesman said.

 

On the other hand, this effort is not being taken too far. Another Disney spokesman said earlier that the aim of the theme park is to provide a basically American experience for those who seek it.

In this way, he said, people who might otherwise have contemplated a vacation in the United States will be happy to stay on this side of the Atlantic.

 

The Disney organization does seem to focus a bit too much on hair. "Main Street, USA", the heart of Euro Disneyland, it promises, will feature an old time "Harmony Barber Shop" to deal with "messy hair and hairy chins"—and perhaps even offending moustaches. One difference from California or Florida: Parts of Main Street and waiting areas to get into the attractions will be covered over as a concession to Paris' rainy weather.

 

Euro Disneyland's short distance to Paris is a definite attraction. Anyone tiring of American or fake European culture can reach the Louvre art museum by express railway in less than an hour—from Minnie Mouse to Mona Lisa in a flash.

 

Communications figured largely in the Disney organization's decision to site its fourth theme park near Paris. The site is within a two-hour flight of 320 million Europeans. The opening of Eastern Europe is another prize for the company, which thinks that millions of people will put Disneyland at the top of a list of places to visit on their first trip to Western Europe.

 

Unit 10  How to cultivate EQ

What is the most valuable contribution employees make to their companies, knowledge or judgment? I say judgment. Knowledge, no matter how broad, is useless until it is applied. And application takes judgment, which involves something of a sixth sense—a high performance of the mind.

 

This raises interesting questions about the best training for today's business people.

As Daniel Goleman suggests in his new book, Emotional Intelligence, the latest scientific findings seem to indicate that intelligent but inflexible people don't have the right stuff in an age when the adaptive ability is the key to survival.

 

In a recent cover story, Time magazine sorted through the current thinking on intelligence and reported, "New brain research suggests that emotions, not IQ, may be the true measure of human intelligence." The basic significance of the emotional intelligence that Time called "EQ" was suggested by management expert Karen Boylston: "Customers are telling businesses, 'I don't care if every member of your staff graduated from Harvard. I will take my business and go where I am understood and treated with respect.'"

 

If the evolutionary pressures of the marketplace are making EQ, not IQ, the hot ticket for business success, it seems likely that individuals will want to know how to cultivate it. I have a modest proposal: Embrace a highly personal practice aimed at improving these four adaptive skills.

 

Raising consciousness. I think of this as thinking differently on purpose. It's about noticing what you are feeling and thinking and escaping the conditioned confines of your past. Raise your consciousness by catching yourself in the act of thinking as often as possible. Routinely take note of your emotions and ask if you're facing facts or avoiding them.

 

Using imagery. This is what you see Olympic ski racers doing before entering the starting gate.

With their eyes closed and bodies swaying, they run the course in their minds first, which improves their performance. You can do the same by setting aside time each day to dream with passion about what you want to achieve.

 

Considering and reconsidering events to choose the most creative response to them. When a Greek philosopher said 2,000 years ago that it isn't events that matter but our opinion of them, this is what he was talking about. Every time something important happens, assign as many interpretations to it as possible, even crazy ones. Then go with the interpretation most supportive of your dreams.

 

Integrating the perspectives of others. Brain research shows that our view of the world is limited by our genes and the experiences we've had. Learning to incorporate the useful perspectives of others is nothing less than a form of enlarging your senses. The next time someone interprets something differently from you—say, a controversial political event—pause to reflect on the role of life experience and consider it a gift of perception.

 

The force of habit—literally the established wiring of your brain—will pull you away from practicing these skills. Keep at it, however, because they are based on what we're learning about the mechanism of the mind.

 

Within the first six months of life the human brain doubles in capacity. It doubles again by age four and then grows rapidly until we reach sexual maturity. The body has about a hundred billion nerve cells, and every experience triggers a brain response that literally shapes our senses. The mind, we now know, is not confined to the brain but is distributed throughout the body's universe of cells. Yes, we do think with our hearts, brains, muscles, blood and bones.

 

During a single crucial three-week period during our teenage years, chemical activity in the brain is cut in half. That done, we are "biologically wired" with what one of the nation's leading brain researchers calls our own "world view". He says it is impossible for any two people to see the world exactly alike. So unique is the personal experience that people would understand the world differently.

 

However, it is not only possible to change your world view, he says, it's actually easier than overcoming a drug habit. But you need a discipline for doing it. Hence, the method recommended here.

No, it's not a curriculum in the sense that an MBA is. But the latest research seems to imply that without the software of emotional maturity and self-knowledge, the hardware of academic training alone is worth less and less.

 

Part IIShort Answer Questions(30%)

1.  How did Chaplin usually create his great comedy?

2.  What do you learn about Charlie Chaplin’s childhood?

3.  Why didn’t Chaplin’s comic beggar seem very English?

4.  What impresses you most about Chaplin’s life?

5.  What influence did Oona have on Chaplin’s life?

6.  What is the writer’s attitude toward caseworkers in Unit 3?

7.  What does the writer think of the current welfare system?

8.  How could the writer possibly get his wheelchair repaired?

9.  What kind of new welfare system does the writer dream of?

10. If you can decide, which do you prefer, living alone or not? Why?

11. Why is loneliness called a national disease of the US according to unit 5?

12. Why do poets and philosophers like solitude?

13.    What can be learned from Thoreau’s choice of the solitary way of life?

14. Why is it important for a person living alone to talk to others?

15. Does Disneyland have a responsibility to include the local culture in its attractions and shows?

16. Why did a labor inspector take the Disney organization to court?

17. What is the writer’s purpose to cite the case at the beginning of text A of unit 9?

18. What did the French government do to attract Euro Disneyland to Paris?

19. What has become the hot ticket for business success?

20. How can we develop our Emotional Intelligence?

 

Part IIITopics (40%)

1.  Which do you prefer, to study in classroom or in dormitory?

2.  What’s your view on skipping classes in universities?

3.  Is a double degree worth working on?

4.  How to make full use of reference books?

5.  What’s your view on the public morals in today’s China? How to improve them?

6.  What’s your way of dealing with depression?

7.  What’s your understanding of the saying “Actions speak louder than words”?

8.  Which do you prefer, living in the dormitory or renting an apartment?

9.  What’s your understanding of the relation between your major in college and your future job?

10. Is it good for college students to start their own undertakings on graduation? Why?

11. What’s your view on the Real-name Train Ticket System?

12. Should university students often attend school activities? Why?

13. What is your view on drunk driving?

14. What’ your ideal occupation? Why?

15. What do you think of micro-blog?

16. Should cell phones be banned in classroom?

17. Is flat marriage acceptable? Why?

18. What’s your view on cutting the line/ jumping the queue?

19. Should university lower admission requirements for celebrities?

20. What do you think of online school?

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