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1、六 级 阅 读 材 料（流 利 阅 读 2 分 钟）短 文 1No one knows for sure just how old kites are.In fact,they have been inuse for centuries.25 centuries ago,kites were well-known in China.Thesefirst kites were probably made of wood.They may even have been coveredwith silk,because silk were used a lot at that time.Early
2、kites werebuilt for certain uses.In ancient China,they will use to carry ropesto cross rivers.Once across,the ropes were tear down and wooden bridgeswould hang for them.Legend tells of one General who flew musical kitesover the enemies camp.The enemy fled,believing the sounds to be thewarming voices
3、 of angels.By the 15th century,many people flew kites inEurope.Marco Polo may have brought the kite back from his visit to China.The kite has been linked to great names and events.For instance,BenjaminFranklin used kite to prove the lightening electricity.He flew the kitein the storm.He did this in
4、order to draw lightening from the clouds.He tied a metal key and a strip of silk to the kite line.The silk ribbonwould stop the lightening from passing through his body.Benjamin s ideawas first laughed at.But later on,it enlightened the invention of thelightening rod.With such grand history,kite fly
5、ing is short remain anentertaining and popular sport.短 文 2I have learnt many languages,but I m not mastered them the way theprofessional interpreter or translator has.Still,they have open doorsfor me.They have allowed me the opportunity to seek jobs in internationalcontexts and help me get those job
6、s.Like many people who have livedoverseas for a while,I simply got crazy about it.I can t image livingmy professional or social life without international interactions.Since1977,I have spent much more time abroad than in the United States.I likegoing to new places,eating new foods and experiencing n
7、ew cultures.Ifyou can speak the language,it s easier to get to know the country andits people.If I had the time and money.I would live for a year in asmany countries as possible.Beyond my career,my facility with languageshas given me a few rare opportunities.Once,just after I returned my yearin Vien
8、na.I was asked to translate for a German judge at Olympic levelhorse event and learned a lot about the sport.In Japan,once when I was in the studio audience of a TV cooking show,I was asked to go up on the stage and taste the beef dish that was beingprepared and tell what I thought.They asked“Was it
9、 as good as Americanbeef?”It was very exciting for me to be on Japanese TV,speaking inJapanese about how delicious the beef was.短 文 3Dr.Ben Carsen grew up in a poor single parent house-hold in Detroit.His mother,who had only a 3rd grade education helds two jobs cleaningbathrooms.To his classmates an
10、d even to his teachers he was thought ofas the dummest kid in his class.According to his own not so fond memories.He had a terrible temper,and once threatened to kill another child.Dr.Carsen was headed down part of seld distraction until a critical momentin his youth.His mother convinced that he had
11、 to do something dramaticpreventing leading a life of failure laid down some rules.He could notwatch television except for two programs a week,could not play with hisfriends after school until he finished his homework.And had to read twobooks a week,and write book reports about them.His mother s str
12、ategyworked.Of course,I didn t know she couldn t read.So there I wassubmitting these reports.he said.She would put check marks on themlike she had been reading them.As I began to read about scientists,economists and philosophers.I started imaging myself in their shoes.Ashe got into the hobbit of har
13、d work,his grade began to soar.Ultimatelyhe received a scholarship to attending Yale University,and later he wasadmitted to the University of Michigan Medical School.He is now a leadingsurgeon at Johns Hopkins Medical School and he is also the author of thethree books.短 文 4In early 1994,when Mark An
14、dreessen was just 23 years old,he arrived inSilicon Valley with an idea that would change the world.As a student atthe University of Illinois,he and his friends had developed a programcalled Mosaic,which allowed people to share information on theworldwide web.Before Mosaic,the web had been used main
15、ly byscientists and other technical people,who were happy just to send andreceive text.But with Mosaic,Andreessen and his friends had developeda program,which could send images over the web as well.Mosaic was anovernight success.It was put on the university s network at thebeginning of 1993.And by t
16、he end of the year,it had over a million users.Soon after,Andreessen went to seek his fortune in Silicon Valley.Once hegot there,he started to have meetings with a man called Jim Clark,whowas one of the Valley,s most famous entrepreneurs.In 1994,nobody wasmaking any real money from the Internet,whic
17、h was still very slow andhard to use.But Andreessen had seen an opportunity that would makehim and Clark rich within two years.He suggested they should create anew computer program that would do the same job as Mosaic but wouldbe much easier to use.Clark listened carefully to Andreessen,whoseideas a
18、nd enthusiasm impressed him greatly.Eventually,Clark agreed toinvest three million dollars of his own money in the project,and to raisean extra fifteen million from venture capitalists,who were always keen tolisten to Clark s new ideas.短 文 5The main part of this chapter will deal directly with the t
19、echnical andartistic limitations and resources that make television unique.But someimportant differences between television and other forms of literatureneed mentioning before we begin.In the first place,since the literature of television is transmittedsimultaneously to millions of people,its creato
20、rs are subject tolimitations of theme,language,and style.In general,the wider the baseof the audience,the greater the degree of restriction imposed on thecreator,and no contemporary literary form has a more massive audiencethan television.In the second place,the line that separates commercial intere
21、stsfrom literary interests in television is less distinct than in most otherliterary forms.To be sure,the publisher of novels and the producer ofstage plays are concerned with making money.But in television theadvertiser,the man who pays the bill,is primarily concerned with the saleof a commercial p
22、roduct rather than an artistic one.At the same time,selling products and presenting high quality programs are notnecessarily incompatible motives.There are,in fact,numerous examplesof sponsors who have done both simultaneously.We must remember,too,that the literature of television,unlike mosttypes o
23、f literature,is highly ephemeral（短 暂 的）in character.At themoment,the libraries of television are its reruns,but even so,aparticular show must be seen at a specific time or it cannot be seen at all.As a result,studying or teaching about television presents certainproblems not found in the study of ot
24、her types of literature,except thelegitimate stage.短 文 6It is doing something better than other people that makes us unique.Yeta surprising number of people still see individuality as a surface thing.They wear bright clothes,dye their hair strange colors and decorate theirskin with tattoos（文 身）to ma
25、ke some kind of social statement.The whole purpose of individuality is excellence.The people whocomprehend the simple principle of being unique through performancemake our entire political and economic system work.Those who invent,who improve,who know more about a subject than other people do,andwho
26、 take something that doesnt work and make it workthese peopleare the very soul of capitalism.Charles Kettering didnt like the idea of cranking a car to make itstart,so he invented the electric starter.Henry Ford figured out theassembly-line technique and made it possible to mass-produceautomobiles.L
27、ewis Waterman saw no need to go on dipping a pen intoan inkwell,so he put the ink into the pen.George Westinghouse told theworld how to stop a train,and Elisha Otis,inventor of the elevator,indirectly created the city skyline.These people understood thatindividualism means working at the top of ones
28、 capacity.Fortunately,enough Americans have been inspired to do somethingwith their uniqueness that we have developed in less than threecenturies from a frontier outpost into not only a country of freedom buta country strong enough to protect that freedom.These people prizedthe notions of individual
29、ity and excellence above all things and thus keptthe great machine functioning.The ones with the purple hair and thehorrorable jewelry are just along for the ride,trying to be different andnot knowing how to go about it.短 文 7Laziness is a sin（罪 everyone knows that.We have probably all hadlectures po
30、inting out that laziness is immoral,that it is wasteful,and thatlazy people will never amount to anything in life.But laziness can bemore harmful than that,and it is often caused by more complex reasonsrather than simple wish to avoid work.Some people who appear to belazy are suffering from much mor
31、e serious problems.They may be sodistrustful of their fellow workers that they are unable to join in anygroup task for fear of ridicule or of having their idea stolen.These peoplewho seem lazy may be ruined by a fear of failure that prevents fruitfulwork.Or other sorts of fantasies（幻 想）may prevent w
32、ork;some peopleare so busy planning,sometimes planning great deals of fantasticachievements that they are unable to deal with whatever lesser work ison hand.Still other people are not avoiding work;strictly speaking,theyare merely procrastinating rescheduling their day.Laziness can actually be helpf
33、ul.Like procrastinators,some peoplemay look lazy when they are really thinking,planning,researching.Weshould all remember that great scientific discoveries occurred by chance.Newton wasnt working in the orchard when the apple hit him and hedevised the theory of gravity.All of us would like to have s
34、omeone lazybuild the car or stove we buy,particularly if that laziness were causedby the workers taking time tocheck each step of his work and to do his job right.And sometimes,being lazythat isz/taking time off for a restis good for theoverworked students or executives.Taking a rest can be particul
35、arlyhelpful to the athlete who is trying too hard or the doctor whos simplyworking himself overtime too many evenings at the clinic.So be carefulwhen youre tempted to call someone lazy.That person may be thinking,resting,or planning his or her next work.短 文 8For as long as humans have raised crops a
36、s a source of food and otherproducts,insects have damaged them.Between 1870 and 1880,locustsate millions of dollars worth of crops in the Mississippi Valley.Today inthe United States the cotton boll weevil damages about 300 milliondollars worth of crops each year.Additional millions are lost each ye
37、ar tothe appetites of other plant-eating insects.Some of these are cornborers,gypsy moths,potato beetles,and Japanese beetles.In modern times,many powerful insecticides（杀 虫 剂）have been usedin an attempt to destroy insects that damage crops and trees.Somekinds of insecticides,when carefully used,have
38、 worked well.Yet thesame insecticides have caused some unexpected problems.In one largearea,an insecticide was used against Japanese beetles,which eat almostany kind of flower or leaf.Shortly afterward,the number of corn borersalmost doubled.As intended,the insecticide had killed many Japanesebeetle
39、s.But it had killed many of the insect enemies of the corn borer aswell.In another case,an insecticide was used in Louisiana to kill thetroublesome fire ant.The insecticide did not kill many fire ants.It did killseveral small animals.It also killed some insect enemies of the sugarcaneborer,a much mo
40、re destructive pest than the fire ants.As a result,thenumber of sugarcane borers increased and severely damaged thesugarcane crop.To be sure that one insect pest will not be traded for another whenan insecticide is used,scientists must perform careful experiments anddo wide research.The experiments
41、and research provide knowledge ofthe possible hazards an insecticide may bring to plant and animalcommunities.Without such knowledge,we have found that naturesometimes responds to insecticides in unexpected ways.短 文 9Every day 25 million U.S.children ride school buses.The safety recordfor these buse
42、s is much better than for passenger cars;but nevertheless,about 10 children are killed each year riding on large school buses,andnearly four times that number are killed outside buses in the loadingzones.By and large,however,the nations school children aretransported to and from school safely.Even t
43、hough the number of school bus casualties（死 亡 人 数）is notlarge,the safety of children is always of intense public concern.Whileeveryone wants to see children transported safely,people are dividedabout what needs to be done-particularly whether seat belts should bemandatory(强 制 性 的”Supporters of seat
44、belts on school buses argue that seat belts arenecessary not only to reduce death and injury,but also to teach childrenlessons about the importance of using them routinely in any movingvehicle.A side benefit,they point out,is that seat belts help keepchildren in their seats,away from the bus driver.
45、Opponents of seat belt installation suggest that children are alreadywell protected by the school buses that follow the National HighwayTraffic Safety Administrations(NHTSA)safety requirement set in 1977.They also believe that many children wont wear seat belts anyway,andthat they may damage the bel
46、ts or use them as weapons to hurt otherchildren.A new Research Council report on school bus safety suggests thatthere are alternate safety devices and procedures that may be moreeffective and less expensive.For example,the study committeesuggested that raising seat backs four inches may have the sam
47、e safetyeffectiveness as seat belts.The report sponsored by the Department of Transportation at therequest of Congress,reviews seat belts extensively while taking abroader look at safety in and around school buses.短 文 10To understand why someone becomes an optimist or a pessimist,ithelps to understa
48、nd what distinguishes them.Say you crash your car.Doyou expect good things to happen after the accident an easyrecuperation（挽 回 损 失），a fat check from your insurer?Or do you worrythat your neck will hurt forever?Optimistic people tend to feel that bad things wont last long andwont affect other parts
49、of life,.Seligman says.Pessimists tend to believeone negative incident will last and undermine everything else in theirlives.Also important,researchers say,is the story you construct about whythings happen your explanatory style.Optimists believe that badevents have temporary causes The boss is in a
50、 bad m ood.Pessimistsbelieve the cause is permanent The boss is a je rk.This sense of control distinguishes one type from the other.Positivethinkers feel powerful.Negative thinkers,Seligman says,feel helplessbecause they have learned to believe theyre doomed,no matter what.Ayoung wife whos told shes