For my own part, I find that appearances are all too often deceptive. For instance, you might be wrong if you judged by appearances only people like Edward Hyde Burton. In appearance, he seemed a man
all of a piece. He was a tiny little fellow with white hair and mild blue eyes, gentle and candid. Nevertheless, he turned out to be very cruel. He insulted and fooled Lenny who was down and
out and made him commit himself to an insane venture. What was still more surprising was that he was completely indifferent to Lenny’s death. Without doubt, Burton was a man with a heart of stone.
Today we are under constant pressure to work
longer hours, to produce more, and to possess more. Lots of people hold the wrong
perception that happiness lies in working hard and earning well/ good money.
Many women today feel the same stress to work and get ahead and, at the same time, to nurture their offspring and shoulder the burden of domestic responsibilities.
Research shows that workaholism tends to distance us from our immediate families. It forces us to toil longer and longer hours, leaving a minutefraction of our time to be physically and emotionally available to our loved ones. Intimacy among family members is doomed to die in the process.
Today, long after the earthquake shook // hit my tome-town, I can still recall, in crystal detail, what I saw as I ran out of my home with my parents. The building just
across the street toppled right before our eyes, debris flew
everywhere and a cloud of choking dust blotted out the sun. Horror-stricken people ran in all directions, crying and screaming.
Now, many years after that tragic event, a new town has risen on the wreckage of the old one. In the town square, a memorial has been build to remember those killed in the disaster. It seems the wounds in people’s hearts have healed, but the memory will linger.
听力一：
Emotion is sometimes regarded as the opposite of reason; s is suggested by phrase such as” appeal to emotions rather than reason” and “don’t let your emotions take over”. Emotional reactions sometimes produce consequences or thoughts which people may later regret or disagree with; but during an emotional state, they could not control their actions. Thus, it is generally believed that one of the most distinctive facts about human beings is a contradiction between emotion and reason.
However, recent empirical studies do not suggest there is a clear distinction between reason and emotion. Indeed, anger or fear can often be thought of as an instinctive response to observed fact. The human mind possesses many possible reactions to the external world. Those reactions can lie on a continuum, with some of them involving the extreme of pure intellectual logic, which is often called “cold”, and others involving the extremes of pure emotion not related to logical agreement, which is called “the heat of passion”. The relation logic and emotion merits careful study. Passion, emotion, or feeling can reinforce an argument, event one based primarily on reason. This is especially true in religion or ideology, which frequently demands an all-or-nothing rejection or acceptance. In such areas of thought, human beings have to adopt a comprehensive view partly backed by empirical argument and partly by feeling and passion. Moreover, several researchers have suggested that typically there is no “pure” decision or thought; that is, no thought is based “purely”” on intellectual logic or “purely” on emotion—most decisions are founded on a mixture of both.
听力二：
Within personal finance, the act of saving means preservation of money for future use. A deposit account is typically used to hold money for future needs such as buying a car, going out on vacation and spending money on children's education. On the other hand, money used to buy shares or any asset where there is some risk is called an investment. The distinction between
saving and investment is important, as investment, unlike cash savings, has the risk of a capital loss. Cash savings accounts are considered to have almost no risk. In the United States, all banks are required to have deposit insurance, typically issued by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. In extreme cases, a bank failure can cause deposits to be lost as it happened at the start of the Great Depression. However, since the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was created, no deposits in the United States have been lost due to a bank failure.
In many instances the terms saving and investment are used interchangeably. For example, banks may just use deposit savings for investment in the market.
To know whether an asset of yours is savings or an investment, you should ask yourself, \is my money invested?\fluctuate in value, then it is investment. There may be problems in saving money for the long term. In about 30 years its value will decrease to about a half of its original value due to inflation, if there is a two to three percent inflation rate.
听力三：
With the invention of modern laptops and the advances in broadband internet access and
communication software, there is no longer a need to work in the office, more and more people are starting to work from home. Opinions on this new trend vary as there are both pros and cons of working from home.
The disadvantages are obvious. To begin with, you may feel lonely at home since you lack social interaction and face to face communication with colleagues. Besides, there are many distractions at home: your wife and kids may knock on your door or call you any time. You yourself may want to stop and have a cup of coffee or find something to eat from time to time. Without the official discipline, you may even be tempted to play computer games, what’s more, it may be very monotonous if you have to stay at home all day long.
On the other hand, many people think the pros of working at home outweigh the cons. The most obvious benefit is flexibility. You don’t have to wake up to an alarm clock early in the morning, and you can work any time you want any in any way you want. For those who are more productive at night, working from home must be a paradise. Moreover, without a boss supervising you over your shoulder, you fell less stress. Like to work in pajamas? Fine. Like to listen to heavy metal at the highest volume while you are designing? Go for it. Also, people that work in the home
environment value immensely the extra time they can spend with their loved ones. As a mom or dad, you will be in a much better position to educate and take care of your children. 听力四：
A blizzard is a sever weather condition characterized by low temperatures and strong winds, greater than 15 miles per hour, bearing a great amount of snow.
Because the factors for classifying winter storms are complex, there are many different definitions of what a blizzard truly is. But it is generally agreed that in order to be classified as a blizzard, as opposed to merely a winter storm, the weather must meet several conditions. The storm must decrease visibility to a quarter of a mile for three hours running. Include snow or ice as
precipitation, and have wind speed of at least 32 miles per hour, which means Force 7 or more on the Wind Scale.
Another standard, according to Environment Canada, is that the winter storm must have winds of 40 kilometers per hour or mi=ore, plenty of snow, visibility less than 1 kilometer, a temperature of less than -25 degrees Celsius, and all of these conditions must last for 4 hours or more, before the storm can properly be called a blizzard.
When all these conditions continue after snow has stopped falling, the storm is referred t o as a ground blizzard.
An extensive form of blizzard is a whiteout, when the downdrafts, together with snowfall, become so sever that it is impossible to distinguish the ground from the air. People caught in a whiteout can quickly become disoriented, losing their sense of up and down as well as their sense of direction. Severe blizzard can also occur along with arctic cyclones.