gradually disappeared.
Some people say no. America isn't a melting pot. It's more like a salad bowl. Important
differences between groups of people haven't disappeared. Many groups have kept their own ways, their customs, their identities, and this has given America great strength.
Melting pot? Salad bowl? Perhaps there's some troth to both ideas.
In any case, life in America was hard for most immigrants—especially at first. Often they
were cheated. Often they met with prejudice. They were often laughed at, even mistreated, by people who themselves had been immigrants.
Most of them soon found that the streets of America weren't paved with gold. They usually
got the hardest jobs, and those that paid the least, the dirtiest places to live in, the most overcrowded tenements.
They came to be citizens of a new country; but often they felt like people without a country.
They had given up their own, but they didn't understand their new one. They didn't really feel a part of it. And the people of the new one didn't always welcome them.
They came for the sake of their children, but in America their children often rejected them.
To the children, their parents seemed old-fashioned. They didn't learn the new language quickly. Some didn't learn it at all. Their parents' customs made children ashamed.
Gradually, however, problems were overcome. For most immigrants, life in America was
better. It certainly was better for their children and for their grandchildren.
Task 6:
【答案】
A.
The Life Story of Thomas Edison
Ohio，1847，industrial development, 1931, a modern nation
I.
A. curiosity，desire
B. 1857，station master‘s son
C. 1863
II.
A. New York City，electricity，report the prices
B. New Jersey，invented，produced
C. organized industrial research
D. 1877
E. 1879
III.
A. B. motion-picture machine
C. photography
D. streetcars，electric trains
IV.
B. turn off all power
C. the progress of man
B.
很全的听力答案,还有听力原文
1) F
2) F
3) T
4) T
5) F
【原文】
When Thomas Edison was born in the small town of Milan, Ohio, in 1847, America was just
beginning its great industrial development. The time in which he lived was an age of invention, filled with human and scientific adventures, and Edison became the hero of that age.
As a boy, Edison was not a good student. His parents took him out of school and his mother
taught him at home, where his great curiosity and desire to experiment often got him into trouble. When he was ten, Edison built his own chemistry laboratory. He sold sandwiches and newspapers on the local trains in order to earn money to buy supplies for his laboratory. His parents became accustomed, more or less, to his experiments and the explosions which sometimes shook the
house.
Edison‘s work as a sales boy with the railroad introduced him to the telegraph and with a friend, he built his own telegraph set. He taught himself the Morse telegraphic code and hoped for the chance to become a professional telegraph operator. A stroke of luck and Edison's quick thinking soon provided the opportunity.
One day, as young Edison stood waiting for a train to arrive, he saw the station master's sot
wander into the track of an approaching train. Edison rushed out and carried the boy to safety. The thankful station master offered to teach Edison railway telegraphy. Afterwards, in 1863, he became tan expert telegraph operator and left home to work in various cities.
Six years later, in 1869, Edison arrived in New York City, poor and in debt. He went to work
with a telegraph company. It was there that he became interested in the uses of electricity. At that time electricity was still in the experimental stages, and Edison hoped to invent new ways to use it for the benefit of people. As he once said: "My philosophy of life is work. I want to bring out the secrets of, nature and apply them for the happiness of man. I know of no better service to render for the short time we are in this world."
The same year, when he was only 22 years old, Edison invented an improved ticker-tape
machine which could better report the prices on the New York Market. The ticker-tape machine was successful, and Edison decided to leave his job and concentrate wholly on inventing. When the president of the telegraph company asked how much they owed him for his invention, Edison was ready to accept only $3,000. Cautiously he said: "Suppose you make me an offer."
"How would $40,000 strike you?" the president inquired. Edison almost fainted, but he
finally replied that the price was fair.
With this money, and now calling himself an electrical engineer, Edison formed his own
"invention factory" in Newark, New Jersey. Over the next few years he invented and produced many new items, including the mimeograph machine, wax wrapping paper, and improvements of the telegraph.