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Text B Tiime IIs Money

1．Read the following passage and then finish the following exercises.

1)By saying“Time is money”, Americans mean time is very____ .

2)If an American is likely to be late for a formal or business appointment, he or she usually____ .

3)In all situations, Americans try their best to arrive on time.The statement is ____.(True/False)

4)For Americans, the time schedule is flexible and open to changes.The statement is ____.(True/False)

5)In the U.S., if people want to come to your house for a friendly visit, they will usually ____.It is only very close friends who can .

6)In the U.S., people can call each other any time they want.The statement is ____.(True/False)

7)Many eastern cultures view time as a cycle, and thus they value time____ (more/less)importantly than American people do.

What is time? Is it a thing to be saved or spent or wasted, like money? Or is it something we have no control over, like the weather? Is time the same all over the world? That's an easy question, you say.Wherever you go, a minute is 60 seconds, an hour is 60 minutes, a day is 24 hours, and so forth.Well, maybe.But in America, time is more than that.Americans see time as a valuable resource.Maybe that's why they are fond of the expression, “Time is money.”

Because Americans believe time is a limited resource, they try to conserve and manage it.People in the U.S.often attend seminars or read books on time management. It seems they all want to organize their time better.Professionals carry around pocket planners—some in electronic form—to keep track of appointments and deadlines.People do all they can to squeeze more life out of their time.The early American hero Benjamin Franklin expressed this view best:“Do you love life? Then do not waste time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”

To Americans, punctuality is a way of showing respect for other people's time. Being more than 10 minutes late to an appointment usually calls for an apology, and maybe an explanation.People who are running late often call ahead to let others know of the delay.Of course, the less formal the situation, the less important it is to be exactly on time.At informal get-togethers, for example, people often arrive as much as 30 minutes past the appointed time.But they usually don't try that at work.

American lifestyles show how much people respect the time of others.When people plan an event, they often set the time days or weeks in advance.Once the time is fixed, it takes almost an emergency to change it.If people want to come to your house for a friendly visit, they will usually call first to make sure it is convenient.Only very close friends will just“drop by”unannounced.Also, people hesitate to call others late at night for fear they might be in bed.The time may vary, but most folks think twice about calling after 10:00 p.m.

To outsiders, Americans seem tied to the clock.People in other cultures value relationships more than schedules.In these societies, people don't try to control time, but to experience it.Many Eastern cultures, for example, view time as a cycle.The rhythm of nature—from the passing of the seasons to the monthly cycle of the moon—shapes their view of events.People learn to respond to their environment.As a result, they find it easier to“go with the flow”than Americans, who like plans to be fixed and unchangeable.

Even Americans would admit that no one can master time.Time—like money—slips all too easily through our fingers.And time—like the weather—is very hard to predict. Nevertheless, time is one of life's most precious gifts.And unwrapping it is half the fun.

Text C What IIs an Ameriican?

By Bradford Smith

1．Read the following passage and then finish the following exercises.

1)The topic sentence of the text is .

2)“They love to think of themselves as tough-minded business men, yet they are push-overs for any hard luck story.”Through the context, we can tell the underlined word carries the meaning that Americans are____ (hard/easy)to overcome or control.

3)American people are very fond of bigness.The statement is____ .(True/False)

4)Americans crowd their highways with cars while complaining about the traffic. The underlined phrase can be replaced by____ (griping about/gripping about).

5)In recent years, they have learned how to play, but they make work of that too.The italicized sentence can be paraphrased as____ .

Americans are a peculiar people.They work like mad, then give away much of what they earn.They play until they are exhausted, and call this a vacation.They love to think of themselves as tough-minded business men, yet they are push-overs for any hard luck story.They have the biggest of nearly everything including government, motor cars and debts, yet they are afraid of bigness.They are always trying to chip away at big government, big business, big unions, big influence.

They like to think of themselves as little people, average men, and they would like to cut everything down to their own size.Yet they boast of their tall buildings, high mountains, long rivers, big state, the best country, the best world, the best heaven. They also have the most traffic deaths, the most waste, the most racketeering.

When they meet, they are always telling each other, “Take it easy, ”then they rush off like crazy in opposite directions.They play games as if they were fighting a war, and fight wars as if playing a game.They marry more, go broke more often and make more money than any other people.They love children, animals, gadgets, mother, work, excitement, noise, nature, television shows, comedy, installment buying, fast motion, spectator sports, the underdog, the flag, Christmas, jazz, shapely women and muscular men, classical recordings, crowds, comics, cigarettes, warm houses in winter and cool ones in summer, thick beefsteaks, coffee, ice cream, informal dress, plenty of running water, do-it-yourself, and a working week trimmed to forty hours or less.

They crowd their highways with cars while complaining about the traffic, flock to movies and television while griping about the quality and the commercials, go to church but do not care much for sermons, and drink too much in the hope of relaxing—only to find themselves stimulated to even bigger dreams.

Americans love work.It is meat and drink to them.In recent years, they have learned how to play, but they make work of that too.If it is skiing, they throw themselves at it with an effort that would kill a horse.If it is a vacation, they travel at sixty miles an hour, pause only long enough to snap pictures, and then discover what it was they went to see when they get home and look at the photographs.

Americans still like to be handy at all things.College professors go in for making furniture or remodeling an old house in the country.Bankers don aprons and become expert barbecue chefs.Nearly everyone knows how to use tools, make simple repairs to plumbing or electrical fixtures, refinish furniture or paint a wall.Far from being thought a disgrace if he performs these“menial”tasks, a man is thought ridiculous if he does not know how to perform them.