Getting rid of dirt, in the opinion of most people, is a good thing. However, the attitudes to dirt are always changing.
In the early 16th century, people thought that dirt on the skin was a means to block out disease, and washing off dirt with hot water could open up the skin and let ills in. A particular danger was thought to lie in public baths. By 1538, the French king had closed the bath houses in his kingdom. The king of England did something similar in 1546. Thus began a long time when the rich and the poor in Europe lived with dirt in a friendly way. France’s Henry IV was famously dirty. Upon learning that a nobleman had taken a bath, the king ordered that, to avoid the attack of disease, the nobleman should not go out.
Though the belief above was long-lived, dirt has no longer been regarded as a nice neighbour ever since the 18th century. Scientifically speaking, cleaning away dirt is good to health. Clean water supply and hand washing are practical means of preventing disease. Yet, it seems that standards of cleanliness have moved beyond science since World War II. Advertisements repeatedly sell the idea; clothes need to be whiter than white, cloths ever softer, surfaces to shine. Has the hate for dirt, however, gone too far?
Attitudes to dirt still differ hugely nowadays. Many first-time parents nervously try to warn their children off touching dirt, which might be responsible for the spread of disease. On the contrary, Mary Ruebush, an American immunologist(免疫学家) , encourages children to play in the dirt to build up a strong immune system. And the latter position is gaining some ground.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________| A．which | B．that | C．when | D．where |
3 . As more and more people speak the global languages of English,Chinese, Spanish,and Arabic,other languages are rapidly disappearing. In fact, half of the 6,000-7,000 languages spoken around the world today will likely die out by the next century, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
In an effort to prevent language loss,scholars from a number of organizations — UNESCO and National Geographic among them — have for many years been documenting dying languages and the cultures they reflect.
Mark Turin, a scientist at the Macmillan Center,Yale University, who specializes in the languages and oral traditions of the Himalayas, is following in that tradition. His recently published book, A Grammar of Thangmi with an Ethnolinguistic Introduction to the Speakers and Their Culture, grows out of his experience living, looking and raising a family in a village in Nepal.
Documenting the Tangmi language and culture is just a starting point for Turin, who seeks to include other languages and oral traditions across the Himalayans reaches of India, Nepal, Bhutan, and China. But he is not content to simply record these voices before they disappear without record.
At the University of Cambridge Turin discovered a wealth of important materials — including photographs, films, tape recordings, and field notes — which had remained unstudied and were badly in need of care and protection.
Now, through the two organizations that he has founded — the Digital Himalaya Project and the World Oral Literature Project — Turin has started a campaign to make such documents, found in libraries and stores around the world,available not just to scholars but to the youngers.
Generations of communities from whom the materials were originally collected. Thanks to digital technology and the widely available Internet, Turin notes, the endangered languages can be saved and reconnected with speech communities.
1. Many scholars are making efforts to________.| A．promote global language | B．rescue disappearing languages |
| C．search for language communities | D．set up language research organizations |
| A．Having full records of the languages. | B．Writing books on language teaching. |
| C．Telling stories about language users. | D．Living with the native speakers. |
| A．The cultural studies in India. | B．The documents available at Yale. |
| C．His language research in Bhutan. | D．His personal experience in Nepal. |
| A．Write, sell and donate. | B．Record, repair and reward. |
| C．Design, experiment and report. | D．Collect, protect and reconnect. |
4 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once.
A. professional B. exclude C. consider D. restlessness E. incredible F. composition G. relatively H. assumption I. distraction J. hindered K. literally |
Do you ever draw? Most of us don’t, and the reason we usually leave drawing to the artists is because we’re not very good at it. Who wants to do something they’re bad at? But maybe we should rethink this
We should
“We have missed the significance of drawing because we see it as a
Here’s an example: You might enjoy eating at a restaurant that boasts an
Sitting (or standing!) with a pad and pencil, drawing something you see or imagine requires focus and a
Migrant workers
In the past twenty years, there has been an increasing tendency for workers to move from one country to another. While some newly independent countries have restricted most jobs to local people, others have attracted and welcomed migrant workers. This is particularly the case in the Middle East, where increased oil incomes have enabled many countries to call in outsiders to improve local facilities. Thus the Middle East has attracted oil-workers from the USA and Europe. It has brought in construction workers and technicians from many countries, including South Korea and Japan.
In view of the difficult living and working conditions in the Middle East, surprising it is not that the pay is high to attract suitable workers. Many engineers and technicians can earn at least twice as much money in the Middle East as they can in their own country, and this is a major attraction. An allied(联合的)benefit is the low taxation or a complete lack of it. This increases the amount of pay received by visiting workers and is very popular with them.
Sometimes a disadvantage has a compensating(补偿的)advantage. For example, the difficult living conditions often lead to increased friendship when workers have to depend on each other for safety and comfort. In addition, many migrant workers can save large sum of money partly because of the lack of entertainment facilities. The work is often complex and full of problems but this merely presents greater challenge to engineers who prefer to find solutions to problems rather than do routine work in their home country.
One major problem which affects migrant workers in the Middle East is that their jobs are temporary ones. (They are nearly always on contract, so it is not easy for them to plan ahead with great confidence. This is to be expected since no country welcomes a large number of foreign workers as permanent residents.) In any case, migrant workers accept this disadvantage along with others, because of the considerable financial benefits which they receive.
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9 . As Climate Changes, Global Inequality Worsens
Scientists have long predicted that warmer temperatures caused by climate change will have the biggest impact on the world’s poorest, most vulnerable people. New research now indicates that this has already happened over the last several decades.
A study published this May in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that in most poor countries, higher temperatures are more than 90% likely to have resulted in decreased economic output, compared to a world without global warming. Meanwhile, the effect has been less dramatic in wealthier nations - with some even potentially benefiting from higher temperatures.
“We’re not arguing that global warming created inequality,” says Noah S. Diffenbaugh, the author of the study and professor at Stanford University who studies climate change. But “global warming has put a drag on improvement.” The countries most likely to have lost out economically as a result of warmer temperatures have done the least to contribute to the problem, he adds.
Higher temperatures affect economic output in a variety of ways. For example, labor productivity decreases with extreme heat, crops produce lower yields and cognitive functioning declines.
The new study builds on past research, including a landmark report released last fall from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN’s climate science body. The report showed that if global temperatures rise more than 1.5℃ by 2099, poor countries will likely face critical challenges, including the destruction of entire communities and millions of premature deaths.
Climate policymakers have tried for years to address the problem of the poorest countries facing the worst effects of rising temperatures. These countries were not generally responsible for global warming. Early attempts at addressing climate change internationally included different expectations for emissions reduction based on each country’s level of development. Poorest countries received more leeway (自由行事的空间) while the richest were set stricter targets.
But in some ways, that approach backfired (起反效果), especially in the U. S. It helped feed the popular narrative that Washington is overpaying for climate change mitigation, while poorer countries are away with doing less. That conservative viewpoint has done some damage. Hardline distinctions between carbon reduction targets for rich and poor countries have been softened in recent years, in favor of a lighter version of what climate change policymakers refer to as “common but differentiated responsibilities.” That principle suggests that richer countries should bear a greater burden in addressing climate change, but remains vague about what that means for concrete policy.
Many of the world’s developing countries have cried foul. “This problem is created somewhere else,” Abdur Rouf Taiukder, Bangladesh’s Finance Scretary, told TIME in a recent interview. “We are spending more on adaptation because we have to live.”
1. Which of the following statement is true about the study published in May?| A．It warned the world about a speedup in global warming. |
| B．It explained a wider wealth gap between poor and rich countries. |
| C．It predicted a future where wealthy countries will benefit from climate change. |
| D．It pointed out that climate change has already caused the least developed countries to suffer. |
| A．leads to extreme heat that has disastrous effects on agricultural output |
| B．results in higher temperatures which cause workers to be less productive |
| C．causes people to become less efficient in learning and other intellectual activities |
| D．is the direct cause of unbalanced development of the most and least developed countries |
| A．description | B．reduction | C．consumption | D．interaction |
| A．climate policymakers from developed countries have reached an agreement on how to address climate change. |
| B．many Americans are against the uneven division of the responsibility for addressing climate change among countries |
| C．there has been a lack of clarity in whether the poorest countries should share any of the burdens that climate change has put on the world |
| D．the less developed countries in the world have refused to spend any money in dealing with climate change |
10 . STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
Even if you are not familiar with the work of Elliott Erwitt, you may perhaps have seen some of his iconic work from around the globe. He has had one of the longest careers of any living photographers, spanning over 50 years.
What I most appreciate about Elliott Erwitt is his wry (冷嘲式的) sense of humour when looking at the world - as well as his straightforward philosophies about photography. In this article, I share some of his thoughts and advice.
DONT’T PLAN TOO MUCH - WANDER AROUND
I think that as a street photographer, sometimes I fall into trap of planning too much. I generally try to focus my attention on projects (having a pre-conceived project in mind when shooting in the streets) but I often find it also takes away from the shooting experience. One of the best things about street photography is to be a flaneur — someone who wanders around without specific destination in mind.
ERWITY: I don’t start out with any specific interests, I just react to what I see.
Takeaway point: Let your curiosity lead you. Just go out and shoot whatever you find interesting. Go down rads that may seem a bit foreign, and you might be lucky enough to stumble upon great street photography shots.
FOCUS ON CONTENT OVER FORM
Great photos are a combination of content (what is happening in the frame) as well as form (composition). But what is more important? Content or form?
ERWITT: My wish for the future of photograph is that it might continue to have some relevance to the human condition and might represent work that evokes knowledge and emotions. That photograph has content rather than just form. And I hope that there will be enough produced to balance out the visual garbage that we see in our current life.
Takeaway point: We often find fascinating characters in the street and take photos of them, but the compositions may not be so good. On the other hand, we might take well-composed photos of a street scene, but there is nothing going on in the photo-it is boring and without soul.
I agree with Erwitt that we should, as street photographers, put more emphasis on content over form. I feel that photos that evoke emotions and the human condition are far more powerful and meaningful than just photos with good composition.
DEVELOP YOUR SKILLS OF OBSERVATION
Erwitt was inspired to go out and take pictures when he saw a photograph by master photographer Henri Cartier Bresson. He realized it was an act of observation which made the photo great and that he could do something similar.
ERWITT: The picture seemed evocative and emotional. Also, a simple observation was all that it took to produce it. I thought, if one could make a living out of doing such pictures that would be desirable.
Takeaway point: One of the most beautiful things about street photography is that it doesn’t rely on having an expensive camera or exotic lenses. Rather, it comes down to having an observant and curious eye for people and the world around you. Therefore cultivate your vision and way of seeing the world. I recommend that you always carry a camera with you, because you never know when the best street photo opportunities will present themselves to you.
A fun exercise: Pretend that you are an alien from another planet and you have come to the planet Earth for the first time. Imagine how strange human beings would seem - and the urban environment they have built for themselves. As an alien, what would you find fascinating, amusing or ridiculous?
Always keep that mindset to be amazed by what you see around you.
1. Why shouldn’t street photographs plan much?| A．Planning is too time-consuming. |
| B．Things always turn out better than planned. |
| C．Planning much makes others less curious about their work. |
| D．Wandering around without planning may result in excellent shots. |
| A．Photos that one can see in the trash bin. |
| B．Photos that value form over content. |
| C．Photos that emphasize content over form. |
| D．Photos that combine content with form. |
| A．Aliens have better skills in photography. |
| B．Aliens have different outlooks on beautiful thing in life. |
| C．Photographers should be curious and observant. |
| D．Photographers should be emotional and imaginative. |
