English is the language of international communication. It is the language of international business, research, and science. More than three-fourths of the world's mail is written in English. More than three-fifths of the world’s radio stations use English. More than half of the scientific and research journals are in English. Most other languages have borrowed many English words.
Where , according to the text, is English used as the native language?
Why is it necessary for students in many countries to know English?
How many mails in the world are written in English?
Is English important in science? How do you know?
What language have most of the languages in the world borrowed?
II.“ What time is it ?” “ I don’t have enough time.” “Is it time to go yet ?” “Hurry up ! We’re going to be late.”
We talk about time every day. We measure it by the second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year, and century. But what is time ? No one can say exactly what it is. It is one of the greatest mysteries of our lives.
We don’t know exactly what time is, but our ability to measure it is very important. It makes our way of life possible. All the members of a group have to measure time in the same way.
Time lets us put things in a definite order. We know that breakfast comes before lunch. The reading class is after the writing class. Children can’t play until school is over. Time enables us to organize our lives.
The earliest people saw changes around them. They saw day and night, the changes of the moon, and the seasons. They started measuring their lives by these changes.
Then people started inventing clocks. The Chinese invented a water clock in the eleventh century, but the Egyptians had them long before that. As water dripped from one container to another, it measured the passing time.
Why is time a mystery ?
How do we measure time ?
Why is our ability to measure time important ?
How does time enable us to organize our lives ?
When the early settlers, especially the English, arrived in the New World, the hardships and dangers awaiting them were totally unexpected. Had it not been for some friendly Indians, the colonists never would have survived the terrible winters. They knew nothing about planting crops, hunting animals, building sod houses, or making clothing from animal skins. Life in England had been much simpler, and this new life was not like what the Spanish explorers had reported.
What faced the early settlers when they arrived in the New World ?
What were the Indians like ?
Could the early colonists survive the terrible winters ?
What did the Indians teach them ?
Where were the early settlers from ?
In 1920, after some thirty-nine years of problems with disease, high costs, and politics, the Panama Canal was officially opened, finally linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by allowing ships to pass through the fifty-mile canal zone instead of travelling some seven thousand miles around Cape Horn. It takes a ship approximately eight hours to complete the trip through the canal and costs an average of fifteen thousand dollars, one-tenth of what it would cost an average ship to round the Horn. More than fifteen thousand ships pass through its locks each year.
When was the Panama Canal officially opened ?
In what year was construction probably begun on the canal ?
How long is the canal zone ?
On the average, how much would it cost a ship to travel around Cape Horn ?
How many ships travel through the Panama Canal annually ?
Clocks as we know them were probably developed by very religious people in Europe in the thirteenth century. They needed to know the exact time so they could pray at the right times. By the 1700s, people had clocks and watches that were accurate to the minute. Some clocks were beautiful. They had very complicated moving parts. Some had figures of people or animals that moved on the hour or quarter hour. Others played music. The movement of the parts is beautiful to watch when you open these clocks.
Who developed clocks?
Why did they develop clocks?
When did people have very accurate clocks?
Describe some kinds of clocks at that time.
What can you see when you open these clocks?
Bài 3: Đọc bài đọc dưới đây và tìm một từ thích hợp để điền vào chỗ trống:
Greenland is the largest …..1………..in the world. It covers over 2,000,000 (two million) square kilometers. Most of it ……..2………..inside the Arctic Circle, and a huge sheet of …..3……..covers 85% (85 percent) of it. Imagine that a map of Greenland is on top of a map of Europe. Greenland ….4……..from London to the middle of the Sahara Desert.
The ice sheet is more than 1.6 kilometers thick, and it …….5…….. melts. There is probably only rock under the ice, but no one knows for sure. Along the sea coast, mountains rise ……6……the sea. There are a few low trees in the southwest, but no forests. ….7…….covers everything in winter, but in summer very low plants cover the ground between the sea and the ice sheet.
Norwegian Vikings were the first Europeans to see the island in A.D. 875, but no one visited it until 982. Three years ….8……….a few Vikings went to live there. In 1261 the people in Greenland decided to join Norway. Norway and Denmark united in 1380. This union ended in 1814, and Greenland stayed with Denmark. Greenland is fifty times ….9…….than Denmark, but it is still a …..10…….of this small country.
B.There was once a large, fat ( 1 ) ____who had a small, thin husband. He ( 2 ) _____ a job in a big company and was given his weekly wages every Friday evening. As soon as he got ( 3 ) _____ on Fridays, his wife used to make him give her all his ( 4 ) ____ , and then she used to give him back only enough to ( 5 ) _______ his lunch in the office every day.
One day ( 6 ) ____ small man came home very excited. He hurried into the living-room. His ( 7 ) ____ was listening to the radio and eating chocolates there.
“You’ll never guess ( 8 ) ____ happened to me today, dear,” he said.