2013高考英语复习精品学案（文本）：英语范文背诵20篇20 The

Historical Significance of American Revolution

01 The Language of Music A painter hangs his or her finished pictures on a wall, and everyone can see it. A composer writes a work, but no one can hear it until it is performed. Professional singers and players have great responsibilities, for the composer is utterly dependent on them. A student of music needs as long and as arduous（艰辛的） a training to become a performer as a medical student needs to become a doctor. Most training is concerned with technique, for musicians have to have the muscular proficiency of an athlete or a ballet dancer. Singers practice breathing every day, as their vocal（声音的） chords（和音） would be inadequate without controlled muscular support. String players practice moving the fingers of the left hand up and down, while drawing the bow to and fro with the right arm—two entirely different movements. Singers and instruments have to be able to(能够，可以) get every note perfectly in tune. Pianists are spared this particular anxiety, for the notes are already there, waiting for them, and it is the piano tuner’s responsibility to tune the instrument for them. But they have their own difficulties; the hammers that hit the string have to be coaxed not to sound like percussion, and each overlapping tone has to sound clear. This problem of getting clear texture is one that confronts student conductors: they have to learn to know every note of the music and how it should sound, and they have to aim at controlling these sound with fanatical(狂热的) but selfless authority. （with A but B,是A而不是B）Technique is of no use unless it is combined with musical knowledge and understanding. Great artists are those who are so thoroughly at home in the language of music that they can enjoy performing works written in any century. [NoPage]

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第二篇：The Development of English Language

The Development of English Language

Back to the origin, English is West Germanic of Germanic of Indo-Europe language system. The development of English can be divided into three parts according to time. It went through the ancient English period from the fifth century to the 12th century, the middle English period from the 12th century to the 16th century and the modern English period from 16th century till now.

During the ancient English period, there were three foreign invasions and one Cultural Revolution. The first foreign invasion came about in the middle of the fifth century when three Germanic Angles, Saxons and Jutes invaded the Great Britain one after another. The language that the Germanic said belonged to the West Germanic of Indo-Europe, so they were very close to each other. Besides, both of them used a kind of letter called Runic, which was the universal letter of the Germanic, of which the alphabets were almost consisted of straight line so that it is easy to be carved on wood or stone. Also, this kind of letter was Nordic inscriptions on the tablet, developed from ancient Greek and Latin. With the development of the human society, Angles, Saxons and Jutes gradually formed a unitive English nation and their languages became merged together to be a new language called. This was the old English.

After the first foreign invasion, in A.D.597, Christianity was introduced into the Great Britain, followed by the indraught of a large amount of Latin vocabularies, which added huge vigor to the Anglo-Saxon civilization. With the establishment of the Christianity, the U.K. constructed a lot of churches and abbeys. These newly emerging churches and abbeys were the basis of the Anglo-Saxon culture. Monks of the churches and abbeys encouraged people to write in their own languages and supported the carryout of any kinds of art cultural events. Then this tendency developed to be a Cultural Revolution, which enriched the English vocabulary and moreover, enhanced the ability of expression in the abstraction aspect.

The second foreign invasion came in A.D.793 when the Scandinavian of Northern Europe who were called Danes by the Anglo-Saxon, invaded the U.K. Their coming simplified the structure of English, strengthened the expression ability and enriched the ways of expression.

In 1066, Normans conquered the U.K and English again experienced a language conflict. During 300 year afterwards, French became the language of the England court circular, noble, sociality and literature, but the language among ordinary people could not be forbidden, not only the ordinary spoke English but also did the French. Till the end of 20th century, English became the common spoken language of different levels of English people.

The Middle English period was from the 12th century to the 16th century. During this time, there were two major things, one was English became the formal language; the other was the appearance of the English edition of Bible.

From the 13th century, national literature works written by English appeared in every region of different dialects constantly. Although Latin and French were

still regarded as literary language, the important works, full of creativity, were all written in English. From the latter half of the 13th century, English gradually replaced the place of Latin and French, being the official language in political and social life and the standard literary language. In 1382, the religious reformer, the cheological professor John Wycliffe in Oxford translated the Bible from Latin to English and claimed that people use English to attend religious service in broad daylight. The English edition of Bible reflected the features of the English nation and did mean a lot to the standard of English and the creation of English prose.

The modern English was from the 16th century till now. During this period, the Revival of Learning was a big event to English. In order to express new things, new thoughts and new emotions, writers and scholars of the U.K largely lent from vocabularies of Greek, Latin, French, Italian and Spanish, besides, they boldly created new vocabularies. At this time, English became the richest but meanwhile, it also became rough-and-tumble. For this, it was indispensable to pure English, which was related to the Reformation. The Reformation let the Church of England break off with the Bishop of Roman, thus, English took the place of Latin and became the language in church and the English edition of Bible displaced the Latin edition. Scholars of the U.K much more emphasized English.

In the 17th and 18th century, English tended to be normalizing and standardization by degrees. In 1755, the, compiled by Samuel Johnson, came forth. Before this dictionary, some scholars also had tried to compile a dictionary. For example, in 1604, Robert Cawdrey once published a book A Table of Alphabetical English Words, which had 120 pages and included 3000words. In 1972, Nathanial Bailey published the Universal Etymological dictionary, which emphasized the origin of words. However, before the appearance of A Dictionary of the English Language, all of those just could be counted as rudiments of dictionaries, in terms of its scale, regulation and use value. The come-out of this dictionary promoted the standardization and formalization of English.

In the early 19th and 20th century, the use of English became more mature than ever before. For example, the form of the irregular verb transformation turned to be confirmed finally in 19th century. As the result of the cooperation with each other and the promotion of each other between the two tendencies, English turned to be a language of maturation and expressivity. But owing to the influence of politic and society, the power of the development of the modern English seemed to be stronger under the tendency of the second, which endowed English with some characteristics and limitations. In 19th century, the Benthamism and pragmatism of bourgeoisie in industry and commerce of the U.K made English become more point-blank, throwing away its refinement it ever had. Simpleness was the excellence of modern language, but also the demerit as it was harder to understand because of its simpleness. This phenomenon became more serious in 20th century in the new works, but now some writers and poetries are trying to correct it.