Passage 1

Internet May Cause Depression

Internet use appears to cause a decline in psychological well-being, according to research at Carnegie Mellon University.

Even people who spent just a few hours a week on the Internet experienced more depression and loneliness than those who logged on less frequently, the two-year study showed. And it wasn’t that people who were already feeling bad spent more time on the Internet, but that using the Net actually appeared to cause the bad feelings.

Researchers are puzzling over the results, which were completely contrary to their expectations. They expected that the Net would prove socially healthier than television, since the Net allows users to choose their information and to communicate with others.

The fact that Internet use reduces time available for family and friends may account for the drop in well-being, researchers hypothesized. Faceless, bodiless “virtual” relationships formed through it may be shallower. Another possibility is that exposure to the wider world via the Net makes users less satisfied with their lives.

“But it’s important to remember this is not about the technology; it’s about how it is used”, says psychologist Christine Riley of Intel, one of the study’s sponsors. “It really points to the need for considering social factors in terms of how you design applications and services for technology.”

Passage 2

Message from the Sea

In 1956 a young sailor at sea was feeling very far from his family and friends. He wrote a note and put it into a bottle. Then he closed the bottle and threw it into the ocean. The note in the bottle asked any pretty girl who found it to write to him.

Two years later a man was fishing on a shore in Sicily. The fisherman saw the sailor’s bottle and picked it up. As a joke, he gave it to his pretty daughter. Still as a joke, the girl wrote the lonely sailor a letter. More letters went back and forth. Soon the sailor visited Sicily. He and the girl were married in 1958.

This is just one of the many stories about drifting bottles that have changed people’s lives.

    Strange as it may seem, a sealed bottle is a good traveler at sea. It can travel safely through storms that destroy ships. And glass well last almost forever.

    The speed of a drifting bottle changes with the wind and the ocean current. A bottle drifting in a quiet place may not move a mile in a month. Another bottle may move 100 miles in a day.

    But no one can be sure just where a bottle will go. For example, two bottles of the same size, shape and weight were dropped at the same time into the ocean near Brazil. The first bottle drifted east for 130 days. It was found on a shore in Africa. The second bottle went northwest for 196 days, and was found in Nicaragua. Two other bottles, which were thrown into middle of the Atlantic Ocean, landed 350 days later in France, only a few yards from each other.

Passage 3

Identifying Supporting Details

As we have noted, the main idea is usually strengthened by such details as examples, reasons, facts, and other specific details. All of these specific details are called supporting details. Without them, it would be difficult to fully understand the more general main idea.

To illustrate, imagine a friend saying to you, “My English teacher is terrible.” You would understand the general idea that your friend dose not like his English teacher, but you wouldn’t understand exactly why. Your friend might then go on to clarify with some supporting details: “He is always late for class and he never corrects our homework. What’s more, he is very important with us and tends to get angry for no reason at all.” Those supporting details clarify your friend’s general comment, his English teacher is really terrible.

These are two kinds of supporting details — major and minor. The main idea and its major supporting details form the basic framework of paragraphs. The major details are the primary points that support the main idea. Paragraphs often contain minor details as well. While the major details explain and develop the main idea, they, in turn, are expanded upon by the minor supporting details. An important reading skill is the ability to find these major details and to distinguish them from the minor ones. Clearly, both the major and minor details are needed for the reader to really understand the main idea.

Passage 4

Caring for a Dog

Dog owners are responsible for feeding and cleaning their pets. They should also oversee the health of their dogs. It’s best to consult a veterinarian at the first sign of a dog ailment.

A dog can be fed the dry meal, biscuit, semi-moist and cellophane-wrapped, or canned type of dog food. Whichever type is selected must contain the carbohydrates, fats, proteins, minerals, and vitamins essential for the animal’s well-being. As a rule, the cost of feeding a large dog can be kept low by giving it the inexpensive dry meal type.

A puppy should be housebroken as soon as possible. When the puppy takes its first water or food, note how long it takes for the puppy to urinate or defecate. When you discover the schedule, take the pup outside when the prescribed time has elapsed after feeding or drinking. Soon, the puppy will associate the outdoors with toilet function and will no longer soil the house or the newspapers that have been spread around its living area.

Young puppies should not be excessively groomed. A daily brushing with a soft brush is sufficient to remove surface dust and dirt. Some authorities believe that to conserve its natural skin oils a pup should not be completely bathed until its first birthday. Mud and deep dirt in its coat, however, can be removed with a damp, warm washrag. Afterward, the puppy should be completely dried with a rough towel. A dog can then have a complete bath when it is old enough, but it must be kept in the house until thoroughly dry, especially during winter.

Passage 5

Waterways

Despite the road improvements of the turnpike era (1790-1830), Americans continued as in colonial times to depend wherever possible on water routes for travel and transportation. The larger rivers, especially the Mississippi and the Ohio, became increasingly useful as steamboats grew in number and improved in design.

River boats carried to New Orleans the corn and other crops of northwestern farmers, the cotton and tobacco of southwestern planters. From New Orleans, ships took the cargoes on to eastern seaports. Neither the farmers of the west nor the merchant of the east were completely satisfied with this pattern of trade. Farmers could get better prices for their crops if the alternative existed of sending them directly eastward to market, and merchants could sell larger quantities of their manufactured goods if these could be transported more directly and more economically to the west.

New waterways were needed. Sectional jealousies and constitutional scruples stood in the way of action by the federal government, and necessary expenditures were too great for private enterprise. If extensive canals were to be dug, the job would be up to the various states.

New York was the first to act. It had the natural advantage of a comparatively level route between the Hudson River and Lake Erie, through the only break in the entire Appalachian Mountain chain. Yet the engineering tasks were imposing. The distance was more than 350 miles, and there were ridges to cross and a wilderness of woods and swamps to penetrate. The Erie Canal, begun in 1817 and completed in 1825, was by far the greatest construction job that Americans had ever undertaken. It quickly proved a financial success as well. The prosperity of the Erie encouraged the state to enlarge its canal system by building several branches.

Passage 6

Cartoons

Millions of people struggle out of bed each morning, fumble into some clothes, and make their way to a cup of coffee and the morning newspaper. They need something cheerful to remind them that the rest of the day will be less difficult than getting up. This need may be the reason that many of them turn their half-opened eyes to the comics section of the newspaper as they sip their first cups of coffee of the day.

Cartoons reflect the times and the troubles and worries of people. They give people an opportunity to laugh at themselves and at familiar situations. In times of prosperity, for example, cartoons show people enjoying the good economic situation. They also make fun of the problems that people make for themselves — like making a problem out of which type of car to buy. In hard times — times of economic troubles — people want someone or something to blame their troubles on. Cartoons provide scapegoats. They also help people to see the humor in a not-so-funny situation. For example, a cartoon might say that government of a country is responsible for the bad economy and also show the government leaders as a group of ridiculous people. Being able to use the leaders as scapegoats and to laugh at the leaders somehow makes people feel better about their situation.

Cartoons also make people laugh at their own personal worries. Young people who are not always sure of how to act can smile at their awkwardness. Old people whose grown children pay little attention to them can chuckle at their neglect and loneliness. Students who have studied too little before examination can laugh at their anxiety. Everyone’s problems are made bigger-than-life in the comics. Perhaps the problems seem funny because there is humor in something that is real being made unreal.

Passage 7

A Society of Employees

Ours has become a society of employees. A hundred years or so ago only one out of every five Americans at work was employed, i.e., worked for somebody else. Today only one out of five is not employed but working for himself. And when fifty years ago “being employed” meant working as a factory laborer or as a farmhand, the employee of today is increasingly a middle-class person with a substantial formal education, holding a professional or management job requiring intellectual and technical skills. Indeed, two things have characterized American society during these last fifty years: middle-class and upper-class employees have been the fastest-growing groups in our working population — growing so fast that the industrial worker, that oldest child of the Industrial Revolution, has been losing in numerical importance despite the expansion of industrial production.

Yet you will find little if anything written on what it is to be an employee. You can find a great deal of very dubious advice on how to get a job or how to get a promotion. You can also find a good deal of work in a chosen field, whether it be the mechanist’s trade or bookkeeping. Every one of these trades requires different skills, sets different standards, and requires a different preparation. Yet they all have employeeship in common. And increasingly, especially in the large business or in government, employeeship is more important to success than the special professional knowledge or skill. Certainly more people fail because they do not know the requirements of being an employee than because they do not adequately possess the skills of their trade; the higher you climb the ladder, the more you get into administrative or executive work, the greater the emphasis on ability to work within the organization rather than on technical abilities or professional knowledge.

Passage 8

Snoring Kids Do Worse in School

Children who snore perform worse at school, according to a new study by German scientists. “Our study clearly showed that snoring has a detrimental effect on children’s performance in school,” said Christian Poets, head of a joint study by the University of Tuebingen and the Hanover Medical School. Scientists monitored the sleeping behavior of 1,144 school children aged between eight to ten in the western city of Hanover, measuring pulse rates and blood oxygen levels. The study showed that children who snored continually were three to four times as likely as non-snorers to get poor marks in math, spelling and elementary sciences. Snorers had more variable pulse rates, and Poets suggested this led snorers to wake up more tired than other children, making it harder to concentrate. “We believe the interruptions to sleep caused by snoring affect school performance, not an occasional reduction in the (blood) oxygen content snoring can produce,” Poets told reporters. The study matched the findings of scientists at the University of Louisville in the United States, who presented research recently showing that children who snore are more likely to have problems with learning and behavior than those who do not.

Passage 9

Matching Products and Markets

Marketing has been defined as the process of matching an organization’s resources with customer needs. The result of this process is a product. The need, therefore, for the organization to remain dynamic is obvious because the product is the only key to the organization’s solvency and profitability. No matter how else the organization runs itself cost-effectively and sensibly, if the product is not selling well then the money simply will not be coming in, company and consumer are interdependent.

Successful product management depends on the organization knowing how and if the current product range meets consumer and organizational objectives. One way of doing this, as previously described, is to conduct detailed benefit analysis segmentation.

The most important attitude towards product management is to view the product as only one part of the marketing mix which also includes price, place and promotion. In this way, the product is viewed as a variable which can be adapted or even changed radically to meet a changing market. How it can be changed will depend on several factors within and outside the organization, including the organization’s resources, market conditions and opportunities and competitive threats.

Passage 10

Work, Play and Rest

Hard work over a long period of time brings genuine tiredness, to which body and mind eventually make the natural response of sleep. But long before this point is reached we are often afflicted with lassitude. After a day’s work, for instance, we settle down in an easy chair to watch television. Before long we feel drowsy and nod off to sleep; perhaps we stay in front of the screen all evening, intermittently dozing, until finally we decide that our day’s work was exhausting and we retire to bed early. On another occasion, after a similar day’s work, we may spend the evening playing tennis, or building a needed bookcase, or mapping out a planned addition to the house, or in delightful conversation with charming friends, without any feeling of exhaustion or weariness. Now, on the television evening were we genuinely tired or not? And is such an evening refreshing or debilitating?

There is a need for much more careful study of the nature of play, rest, and fatigue, and the relationship between them. Cyril Burt carried out an experiment with two matched groups of children who were very backward in arithmetic. One group was given an extra arithmetic lesson every afternoon while the other group slept. At the end of the term the “sleepers” had improved in arithmetic more than those specially coached. Of course, there are many variables that might be causally involved here, but the results should make us question the assumption that “work” is the productive sphere and “play” the unproductive sphere.

We all need to rest. But in order to understand the kind of rest an organism needs, we must study the nature of the organism. The way in which they rest, however, is by gradually reverting to the normal rhythm of breathing, not by stopping. This is because they are built for action. Similarly, everything intended to act, from muscles to minds, can find rest in natural action as well as in inertia.

Passage 11

A Glimpse at the Life of Senior Viennese

Like many other metropolises in the world, Vienna has entered an old-age society. I must say, in a country with high social welfare benefits like Austria, aged people needn’t worry about their primary needs of livelihood. The all-embracing social welfare system facilitates people in their advanced age. In addition to the subsidies and insurances of every description, there are other favours such as traveling by train, visiting museums and attending operas at cut prices all on account of your old age.

Yet, we all know that supply of provisions and clothing is only one aspect of life; man’s demand on life is many-sided. Higher the civilization, higher is man’s psychological aspiration. This is especially true of old folks. Like young people, they have the need of cultural life, the need of recreation and amusement, the need of dignity and the need of accomplishment. Besides, having traversed greater part of their lives and unwilling to leave behind too many regrets, they want to, in their remaining years, make their lives easier and more substantial. During my stay in Vienna, I found that all the elderly people I met with seemed to enjoy their lives enormously. Contagiously, I couldn’t help admiring them for their positive attitude toward life, especially their optimism.

Passage 12

Scanning

 Scanning is a search for information which is of some special interest. A student has first to know the arrangement for information before he or she can start his or her search efficiently. Much of the reference material is arranged alphabetically. A dictionary, an encyclopedia, and index of a book, or a telephone directory is usually arranged alphabetically for easy and quick location of information. But not all material is arranged this way. TV programs, for instance, are listed by day and time. Historical data and tables may be listed by month and year. And sports pages of the newspaper are arranged by category: football, tennis, basketball, and so on.

At times if you are trying to locate specific information, you usually need not read the whole material carefully. What you have to do is try to find in which part that information is likely to be, then read this part with more attention. This is called “scanning”. Scanning, in itself, is not a completely new thing to you though it is perhaps the first time that you heard of the term. It is a technique often used when you look up a word in a dictionary. The purpose in scanning, as you know, is to search for specific information quickly. Thus, a high rate of speed is essential. Once you have located the appropriate part of the material, you should try to learn the information in the least amount of time. You are supposed not to be distracted by words or ideas unrelated to the purpose of scanning.

Meanwhile, accuracy is just as essential as speed in scanning. Since you are looking for specific information, it is important that it be accurate. 100 percent accuracy, along with the first-rate speed, should be your goal in scanning practice.

Passage 13

Sea Lion’s Long Memories Shake up Biologists

A California sea lion called Rio has astounded her trainers and may shake up the world of animal science after remembering a complicated trick for 10 years without ever practicing, researchers say. Shown cards with designs on them, Rio—at 16 a good age for a sea lion in captivity—picked out matching pairs without hesitation, in return for a reward of a fish. She first learnt to recognize pairs when she was six, but spent the next ten years learning new tasks, without a single reminder of this older one. Scientists have done little research into the long-term memory of animals, and many assumed it is relatively limited. But researchers said Rio’s astonishing response may force a rethink of how animal minds function. “It was mind-boggling. We thought she would lose something because she was not exposed to any of this material for ten years,” Ron Schusterman, one of the two scientists who trained Rio, told reporters in an interview. As well as shaking up what biologists think about long-term animal memory, Schusterman said their results are also important because they help prove animals can think even though they cannot express their thoughts in language and may give clues to how language developed in human beings.

Passage 14

Make Writing Clear and Complete

In writing, nothing can be more irritating and sometimes frustrating than the omission of essential detail. Suppose, for example, the shirts you manufacture come in several styles, colors, and sizes, but the order you have received in the mail gives no specifications. Or someone writes down a telephone message from your out-of-town friends, telling you they’re going to be in the city and will drop in to see you; but the message contains no date, no time, and nothing to indicate whether they are coming alone or with their children. And there are the instructions for setting up your hi-fi phonograph and tape recorder which take for granted that you know what a “patch cord” is.

Unquestionably there is virtue in brevity, but as these examples show, you must never assume that your reader is as expert or as knowledgeable as you are about whatever you are writing. Brevity is not an excuse for lack of clarity. And clarity, above all, is essential to what you have to say on paper.

Clarity, precision, conciseness — each is of utmost importance to effective writing. But what of style, the way in which you pen your correspondence, business or social? Certainly you want to avoid stiffness and rigidity in any kind of writing you do. At the same time, you wouldn’t write a report on the market conditions in Hong Kong in the “chummy” manner of a letter to a cousin in Duluth or to that college roommate who has just become president of some giant, and competitive, organization.

The simplest and best approach toward developing your own particular style in writing is to write as you speak. This would seem to be just about as easy a task as you could set yourself — but in reality it isn’t. That old mystique which hovers over the written word seems to get into the way; even when we use a dictaphone to bridge the gap between what we wish to say and what we put to paper, the subliminal discomfort still lingers.

Passage 15

Is TV a Plus or a Minus?

TV is not only a convenient and cheap service of entertainment, but also a splendid mass medium of communication. People only have to pay once to buy the TV set, then they can sit at home enjoying the items on TV. All they have to do is to push a button or turn a knob, and they can see plays, films, operas and shows of every kind. TV keeps us well informed about the current events at home and abroad and the latest development in science and technology. The most distant countries and the strangest customs are brought right into our room. On TV everything is much more living and much more real. As a matter of fact, it has become so much a part of human life that a modern world without television is unimaginable. Some people even say that life without television is not worth living.

Some people argue against TV. They think the TV viewers need do nothing. The viewer does not even have to use his legs if he has a remote control. Many people are glued to seats to look at the movements on TV. They become so dependent on its pictures that it begins to control their lives. As a result, TV is taking up too much of a person’s life and making him lazy, not to mention its harmful influence upon him, such as the items of violence and pornography on television in some countries.

On the whole, there are more advantages than disadvantages in the use of TV. Yet different people may have different attitude toward TV. But we must realize that television in itself is neither good nor bad. Its value to people and society depends on how we look at it.

Passage 16

Male and Female Roles

Once it was possible to define male and female roles easily by the division of labor. Men worked outside the home and earned the income to support their families, while women cooked the meals and took care of the home and the children. These roles were firmly fixed for most people, and there was not much opportunities for men or women to exchange their roles. But by the middle of this century, men’s and women’s roles were becoming less firmly fixed.

In the 1950s, economic and social success was the goal of the typical American. But in the 1960s a new force developed called the counterculture. The people involved in this movement did not value the middle-class American goals. The counterculture presented men and women with new role choices. Taking more interest in child care, men began to share child-rising tasks with their wives. In fact, some young men and women moved to communal homes or farms where economic and child care responsibilities were shared equally by both sexes. In addition, many Americans did not value the traditional male role of soldier. Some young men refused to be drafted as soldiers to fight in the war in Vietnam.

In the 1970s, the feminist movement, or women’s liberation, produced additional economic and social changes. Women of all ages and at all levels of society were entering the work force in greater numbers. Most of them still took traditional women’s jobs such as public school teaching, nursing, and secretarial work. But some women began to enter traditionally male occupations: police work, banking, dentistry, and construction work. Women were asking for equal work, and equal opportunities for promotion.

Today the experts generally agree that important changes are taking place in the roles of men and women. Naturally, there are difficulties in adjusting to these changes.

Passage 17

Packaging a Person

A person, like a commodity, needs packaging. But going too far is absolutely undesirable. A little exaggeration, however, does no harm when it shows the person's unique qualities to their advantage. To display personal charm in a casual and natural way, it is important for one to have a clear knowledge of oneself. A master packager knows how to integrate art and nature without any traces of embellishment, so that the person so packaged is no commodity but a human being, lively and lovely.

A young person, especially a female, radiant with beauty and full of life, has all the favor granted by God. Any attempt to make up would be self-defeating. Youth, however, comes and goes in a moment of doze.

Packaging for the middle-aged is primarily to conceal the furrows ploughed by time. If you still enjoy life's exuberance enough to retain self-confidence and pursue pioneering work, you are unique in your natural qualities, and your charm and grace will remain.

Elderly people are beautiful if their river of life has been, through plains, mountains and jungles, running its course as it should. You have really lived your life which now arrives at a complacent stage of serenity indifferent to fame or wealth. There is no need to resort to hair-dyeing—the snow-capped mountain is itself a beautiful scene of fairyland. Let your looks change from young to old synchronizing with the natural ageing process so as to keep in harmony with nature, for harmony itself is beauty, while the other way round will only end in unpleasantness. To be in the elder's company is like reading a thick book of deluxe edition that fascinates one so much as to be reluctant to part with.

As long as one finds where one stands, one knows how to package oneself, just as a commodity establishes its brand by the right packaging.

Passage 18

Advantages of Travel

Nowadays, more and more people are interested in traveling. Travel is beneficial to us in at least three ways.

First, by traveling we can enjoy the beautiful scenery in different places. We will see with our own eyes many places read of in books, and visit some famous cities and scenic spots.

Second, we will meet people with different interests and see strange and different things when we travel. We can get ideas of the conditions and customs of other people, taste various foods and local flavours if we like. In this way, we can understand how differently other people live.

Third, travel will not only help us to gain knowledge of geography and history and other knowledge, which will arouse our deep love for our motherland, but also will help us keep healthy and make us less narrow-minded. Travel does benefit us both mentally and physically.

With all these advantages of travel, it is no wonder that travel has now become more popular than ever in China.

Passage 19

Problems with Automobiles

America is the land of the automobile. This country has only 6 percent of the world’s population but 46 percent of the world’s cars. Right now, there are 97 million privately owned cars consuming 75 billion gallons of gasoline and traveling an estimated 1,000 billion miles a year. The figures also affirm something we know every time we refill our gasoline tank. The automobile is a very thirsty piece of technology. Of the total petroleum supply in the United States, 30 percent goes to quench that thirst. Every year for each passenger car, about 800 gallons of gasoline are consumed.

 Other aspects of our commitment to the automobile also bear mentioning here. It takes a great deal of energy to manufacture one automobile — about 150 million BTU’s of technology. This is equivalent to 1,200 gallons of gasoline, enough to run a car for about 16,000 miles. We expend energy in the process of shipping cars from factories to showrooms, displaying them for sale and making replacement parts for repairs. One out of six jobs in the nation is associated with the automobile business. About two gallons of gasoline are consumed in the process of making every ten gallons that are pumped into an automobile’s gas tank.

 Building highways and parking lots has used up much of our land. It has been estimated that we have paved over 21,000 square miles of this country’s surface, most of it to accommodate the automobile. The automobile is also the largest contributor to our nation’s air pollution problem and a very serious one because most of its pollutants are emitted in our large metropolitan areas.   

Passage 20

Punctuality

Punctuality means observing regular or appointed time. A man who gets up at seven o’clock every morning is punctual. A man who has promised to call on a friend at five o’clock in the afternoon and actually does so at that hour is also punctual.

Punctuality is a good habit, and unpunctuality is a bad one. A few minutes’ delay may not be a serious matter, but it may have bad results, getting up five minutes later than usual may upset the plan of the day. Calling on a friend five minutes later than the appointed time may cause him some unexpected trouble. Moreover, habitual unpunctuality leads to indolence and even failure in life. One delay after another makes a man unable to exert himself. It also proves him to be untrustworthy.

Those who are unpunctual should try their best to get rid of their bad habit. In doing this, they should avoid making any kind of exception. They should never say to themselves: “A few minutes’ delay does not matter this time. I shall never be unpunctual again.” Those who think in this way will find excuses for delay from time to time, and will at last give up the attempt to cultivate the good habit.

Like all other good habits, punctuality becomes second nature with those who have duly cultivated it.