外研版英语必修三课文原文
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Great European Cities
PARIS
Paris
is the capital and largest city of France,
situated on River Seine. It is one of the most
beautiful cities in the
world and is visited
by more than eight million tourists every year.
The most popular place for tourists is the Eiffel
Tower, the famous symbol of Paris. One of the
world’s largest art galleries, the Louvre, is also
located in Paris.
The city is also located in
Paris. The city is also famous for its
restaurants, cafes and theatres. About two-thirds
of
France’s artists and writers live in Paris.
BARCELONA
Barcelona is the second largest
city of Spain and is situated on the northeast
coast, about five hundred kilometres
east of
the Spanish capital, Madrid. One of Barcelona’s
most famous landmarks is the Church of Sagrada
Familia,
which was designed by an architect
called Antonio Gaudi. Gaudi worked on the project
from 1882 until his death
in 1926. The church
hasn’t been finished yet!
FLORENCE
Florence is an Italian city which became
famous because of the Renaissance, a great
artistic movement which
began in the 1300s and
lasted for three hundred ears. During the
Renaissance, some of the greatest painters of all
time lived and worked in Florence. Many of
Florence’s most beautiful paintings and sculptures
were produced by
great artists such as
Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Florence is
visited each year by about a million tourists
who come to see the art galleries, churches
and museums. The Uffizi Palace is the most famous
art gallery
in the city.
ATHENS
Athens, the capital of Greece, is known as the
birthplace of western civilization. Two thousand
four hundred years
ago, it was the world’s
most powerful city. Buildings such as the
Parthenon on the Acropolis Hill were built
during this period. Greece’s best writers
lived in ancient Athens. Their work has influenced
other writers ever
since.
The Human
Development Report
In the year 2000, 147 world
leaders agreed to work together to reduce poverty
by 2015 or earlier. From this
agreement came
the Human Development Report.
One of the most
important sections of this report is the Human
Development Index. This examines the
achievements of 175 countries. The Index
measures a country’s achievements in three ways:
life expectancy (how
long people usually
live), education and income. The index has some
surprises. Norway is at the top of the list,
while the US is at number 7. The other top
five countries are: Iceland(2), Sweden(3),
Australia(4), the
Netherlands(5). The UK is in
the thirteenth position, while China is in the
middle of the list. The bottom ten
countries
are all African countries, with Sierra Leone(in
West Africa) at the bottom of the list.
The
report describes eight Development Goals. The most
important goals are to:
Reduce poverty and
hunger;
Make sure that all children have
education up to the age of 11;
Fight AIDS and
other diseases;
Improve the environment of
poor people, e.g. make sure they have safe
drinking water;
Encourage developed countries
to give more help to other countries.
The 2003
Human Development Report gives examples of
successful development. For example, in nine
years,
China increased life expectancy by 13
years. In the last ten years in China, 150 million
people moved out of
poverty. However, the
challenges are still great. Every day 799 million
people in developing countries are hungry.
Over half of these are in South Asia or
Africa. Although more than 80% of children in
developing countries go to
primary school,
about 115 million children are not being educated.
More than 1 billion people in developing
countries do not drink safe water. However, in
other regions of the world, e.g. Eastern Europe,
water is now
mostly safe to drink.
The report shows that we are making
some progress but that we need to make greater
efforts. Although developed
countries give
some financial help, they need to give much more.
Interestingly, the countries that give the most
money are the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.
These are among the five richest countries in the
world , so it is
right that they should do so.
The Violence of Nature
What is a Tornado?
A tornado is a rotating column of air from a
thunderstorm to the ground. The most violent have
winds of more
than 400 kilometres per hour.
Almost all of them occur in the US, in the area
from Texas in the southeast to South
Dakota in
the north.
Tornadoes can pick up cars, trains
and even houses and put them down in the next
street—or even in the next
town. They can tale
the fur off the back of a cat and the feathers off
a chicken. They can destroy houses, but leave
the furniture inside exactly where it was.
On average, there are 800 tornadoes in the us
each year, causing about 80 deaths and 1500
injuries. The worst
tornado of all time
occurred in 1925, affecting three US states:
Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. By the time it
ended,
more than 700 people had been killed
and 2700 had been injured.
What Is a
Hurricane?
Hurricanes are strong tropical
storms, and they usually occur in the southern
Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea
and the Gulf
of Mexico. There are violent winds of 120
kilometres per hour or more, which cause huge
waves,
heavy rain and floods. There are on
average six Atlantic hurricanes each year and they
usually affect the east coast
of the US from
Texas to Maine.
The worst hurricane disaster
of all time occurred on the 8
th
September
1900 in Galveston, Texas. Winds of 200
kilometres per hour and five-metre-high waves
hit the city. The disaster killed 6000 people in a
population of
37000 and destroyed 3600
buildings.
An Extraordinary Event
This is
a story about the 1900 Galveston hurricane.
Charles Coghlan was a nineteenth-century Irish
actor who
went to live in Canada. He then
moved to New York, where he became famous. By the
late 1890s, he had moved
to Galveston, where
he died in 1899, a year before the hurricane
struck. The cemetery where Goghlan was buried
was destroyed by the hurricane and Goghlan’s
coffin ended up in the sea.
Eight years later,
the coffin was found by fishermen in the sea near
his home on Prince Edward Island in the east
of Canada. The Gulf Stream had carried it 3000
kilometres up the eastern US coast to Prince
Edward Island.
Coghlan traveled back to
Canada—after he had been buried in Texas!
Sandstorms in Asia
Sandstorms have been a
major disaster for many Asian countries for
centuries. Scientists have tried many ways to
solve this problem and in China, a mass
campaign has been started to help solve it.
Sandstorms are strong, dry winds that carry
sand. They are often so thick that you cannot see
the sun, and the
wind is sometimes strong
enough to move sand dunes. The four main places in
the world where there are
sandstorms are
Central Asia, North America, Central Africa and
Australia. Ren Jianbo, from Inner Mongolia
described a terrible sandstorm he experienced
as a child in the desert. “To have been caught in
a sandstorm was a
terrible experience,” he
said. “There was nothing to be done. It was the
most frightening and the most dangerous
situation I’ve ever been in. You just had to
hope you’d survive. I thought I was going to
disappear under the sand.”
Northwest China is
part of the sandstorm centre in Central Asia.
Sandstorms begin in desert areas. Sandstorms in
China appear to have increased in recent years
as a result of “destertification”. This is a
process that happens when
land becomes desert
because of climate changes and because people cut
down trees and dig up grass.
Sandstorms
sometimes affect Beijing. Citizens wake up to an
orange sky and strong winds that cover the city in
a
thick, brown-yellow dust. The storms
sometimes continue all day and traffic moves very
slowly because the thick
dust makes it
difficult to see.
The Chinese Central
Weather Station can forecast a sandstorm some
weeks before it arrives in Beijing, but the
strength of the storm sometimes surprises
people. When a sandstorm arrives in the city,
weather experts advise
people not to go out.
Huang Xiaomei, who lives in Beijing says, “To be
cycling in a sandstorm is frightening. The
winds are very strong. It’s difficult to
breathe and the dust makes me ill. So if you want
to go out, you’d better
wear a mask.”
The
desert is only 250 kilometres away to the west of
Beijing. To prevent it coming nearer, the
government is
planting trees. Already the
government has planted more than 30 billion trees
and plans to continue planting for
the next
five years.
Philosophers of Ancient China
Ancient China was a place where states were
often at war with each other. But it was also a
time when there were
many great philosophers.
Confucius is the philosopher whose influence has
been the greatest. He stressed the
importance
of kindness, duty and order in society. Chinese
society was influenced by these ideas for more
than
2000 years.
Mencius was a thinker
whose teachings were very similar to those of
Confucius. Mencius was born in 372 BC.
His
father died when he was young, and he was brought
up by his mother. He became a student of
Confucius’s
ideas, and was then given an
important position in the government of a state.
However, when he saw that the ruler
was not
following his advice, he resigned. For many years
he traveled from state to state, teaching the
principles
of Confucius. He then became an
adviser to another ruler. He spent his last years
preparing a book of his teachings
called the
Book of Mencius. Mencius believed that the reason
why man is different from animals is that man is
good. He taught that if the government was
kind, then people would be good. He believed that
people were more
important than rulers, and
hated the state when it treated people badly.
Mozi was another teacher who was very
influential. Born in 476 BC, he came from a family
which was very poor.
He became famous for his
unusual clothes and behaviour. Mozi founded the
philosophy called Mohism. In some
ways, his
beliefs were similar to those of Confucius. For
example, he considered that government was most
important. As a result, he spent many years
trying to find a state where people would follow
his teachings. Mozi
believed that all men were
equal. His ides of love was different from the
Confucian idea of kindness. Mozi taught
that
we should love all human beings and look after
those who are weaker than ourselves. He hated the
idea of war.
Mozi died in 390 BC.
The
Three Gorges Dam
“Walls of stone to hold back
clouds and rain”
Mao Zedong wrote a poem in
which he dream of “walls of stone to hold back
clouds and rain till a smooth lake
rises in
the narrow gorges”. Now his dream has come true.
The power of the Yangtze River, which is the
world’s
third longest river, has been
harnessed by the Three Gorges Dam.
The Three
Gorges Dam, which is the biggest construction
project in China since the building of the Great
Wall
and the Grand Canal, has been built to
control flooding and provide hydro-electric power
for the central region of
China. The dam is
nearly 200 metres high and 1.5 kilometres wide. It
is the largest hydro-electric power station
and dam in the world and has cost more than
any other construction project in history.
Sun
Yan-sen, who was the leader of the 1911
Revolution, first suggested the idea of a dam
across the Yangtze
River in 1919. Three
quarters of China’s energy is produced by burning
coal. In 1993, China used 1.2 billion tons
of
coal for heating and generating electricity.
Unfortunately, burning coal causes serious air
pollution and
increases global warming. The
dam will generate electricity equal to about 40
million tons of coal without causing
so much
air pollution.
The reservoir has flooded 2
cities, 11 counties, 140 towns and more than 4000
villages. More than a million
people who lived
in the region have moved from their homes. Now
they’re living a happy new life in different
areas.
The Three Gorges area is one of the
most beautiful areas of China and the project has
flooded some of China’s
most famous
historical sites, including the Qu Yuan Temple,
the Han Watchtower and the Moya Cliff carvings.
About 800 historical relics have been
submerged. Some of them are being removed and some
are being put into
museums.