自考综合英语2-05.doc

Lesson Five First Principles Frances Gray Patton 　　本课情节简单。韦德一家如何在丈夫失业，亲戚告急求助这样困难的情况下，愉快地度过了圣诞节。故事也给了我们一些启发，当一个家庭突然遇到一些不幸的事件时，家庭的成员应该如何面对这些。学习课文时，还要注意作者的叙事方法。作者打破传统小说情节发展的时间顺序，用意识流的方式来组织故事。  1. No family had ever had a nicer Christmas, Emily Wade thought happily as she drove the children to school for the first time after the holidays, and, of course, it had been largely Lauras doing. She glanced at Laura, a slim, dark-haired girl of fourteen, sitting beside her, and felt warm with that most comfortable of parental emotions, gratitude to ones own child. The air was soft with the vapors of melting snow, and almost fragrant, as if some delicate flowers were blooming near at hand. Its like spring, isnt it? she said to Laura. And tomorrow well probably have a raging sleet storm. 　　2. King Claudius weather, said Laura, looking prettily shy as she made the literary allusion. It can smile and smile and still be a villain. [0804:37] 　　3. Exactly, Emily agreed. She wasnt sure for a moment who King Claudius was, and then she saw a copy of Hamlet among Lauras books. She thought her heart would burst with pride (imagine a child saying that!), and thought how wise she and Henry had been when theyd decided to make every possible sacrifice for the sake of Lauras education. 　　4. Laura, who was in first-year high, had gone to the same public school that her brothers now attended, but this year she was a pupil at Green Valley Academy, a small country day school on the outskirts of the city. It was a very good school and a very expensive one, and most of the Wades friends thought they were being rather fancy in sending Laura there. They knew Laura was smart, of course, but some of the other Baltimore private schools for girls were excellent and had lower tuition, and even the public high schools were all right. Lots of nice kids, whose fathers had twice as big an income as Henry Wade, went to them. Besides, you werent doing a girl a favor when you encouraged her to develop tastes