UNIT 1

Active Reading 1

What are the most important issues for students today? Is the university campus really such a different place compared to what it was 40 years ago?

For the students in the 1960s, going to college was the most exciting and stimulating experience of their life. They took part in protests and launched strikes against the establishment with their new and passionate commitment to freedom and justice. Going to college also meant their first taste of real freedom. They could discuss the meaning of life, read their first forbidden book and see their first indie film.

In contrast, the students today don’t have the passion for college life that they used to. Today, college is seen as a kind of small town from which people are keen to escape. Instead of the heady atmosphere of freedom which students in the 1960s discovered, students today are much more serious.College has become a means to an end, an opportunity to improve their prospects of being competitive in the employment market, and not an end in itself.

But in spite of all this, the role of the university is the same as it always has been. It is the place where students have the opportunity to learn to think for themselves.

Active Reading 2

Older generations generally have a negative attitude to today’s students, the product of postmodern times. Today’s students are expected to accomplish anything in an era with extraordinary privileges and opportunities. It would seem they do the opposite. They direct their energy on the Internet communicating ideas and frustrations, instead of trying to assert their identity by revolution. Perhaps when they are not told about what their parents did before, they will be seen writing the revolution in technology.

UNIT 2

Active Reading 1

Empathy, orginally known as motor mimicry, stemmed from physical imitation of others’ plight, which then evokes the same feelings in oneself. Children seem to feel sympathetic distress from infancy—much earlier than they realize they exist apart from other people

By one year old, they start to learn the pain is someone else’s but still seem confused about what to do. At around two and a half years, motor mimicry fades from toddlers’ repertoire when they are able to distinguish their own feelings from others’ feelings, so they are able to use other means to comfort others. At the same time, their sensivity to other’s emotional upsets begins to diverge from one to another.

Active Reading 2

This is Sandy is an extract from Tone, a story about the life of a deaf girl. She thinks her friends are honorable people who beam with pride when they introduce her to someone new. When people find out she is deaf they are mostly shocked for a moment at first but pretend not to be. Sandy says that the hearing aids she saw in a catalog are great fashion accessories, they’re just like a clip you put onto your ear. Sandy likes to show her hearing aid. She doesn’t tie her hair up in a knot but she tucks it behind her ears. Sandy’s friend Carol introduces her to a boy called Colin at a party. They sit together on a couch and Colin realizes that Sandy can understand what he is saying by reading his lips. Someone turns up the volume of the music and they dance together. Soon they are dating. This is when the real drama begins.

UNIT 3

Active Reading 1

Identity theft refers to stealing information about someone that makes it possible to use their bank account or credit card. With an informal and conversational tone the author persuades readers into actions against the threats of identity fraud in our daily life. According to the author we make the thieves’ job easy by leaving our mails unprotected, using ball pens for checks and forms, throwing documents containing our personal information in the trash, leaving our computer on and so on. So we should look for different ways to protect ourselves and change our mindset.

Identity crime is very likely to happen at any time, to any of us. We can take precautions to improve the chances of avoiding this crime, though it will never go away.

Active Reading2

The writer tries to create a feeling of fear in order to warn readers of the threat involved in the ever-increasing amounts of data on people being collected. With various stylistic devices, the writer leads readers along his thought-path step by step to the point that collecting personal information places people in peril because we don’t know who collects it for what purposes. And neither do we know where the information goes and how it is used. According to the writer, identity theft is much feared in society but there are worse things than that. And the danger is growing though it is vague, not certain. There is no balance yet between the convenience of the

world and the peril that we sense in the presence of all that information in the databases which can be employed as a weapon as well as a tool.

UNIT 4

Active Reading 1

What exactly is news? The objective importance and the historical, international significance of an event is not enough. It is the odd, unexpected and human nature that made news like 9/11 memorable and newsworthy. So is immediacy which refers to the nearness of the event in time. When it comes to immediacy, those media like TV, radio and Internet have an enormous advantage over the press. However, no matter what form it may take, all the media more or less covertly, influence the public. That is the so- called power of the media.

In the new millennium, maybe the press or TV are not going to disappear overnight, but the power of the media may be eroded or at least devolved to ordinary people.

Active Reading 2

All over the English-speaking world, newspaper circulation has been confronted with a long-term trend of decline. The decline comes much from the challenge of internet and the negative environmental impact of newspaper industry. The challenge of internet mainly focuses on its attraction to readers and minute-by-minute ads monitoring system. But maybe the newspaper won’t die without struggle. Besides its convenience over laptop, the demand for local news and the exploitation of lifestyle journalism will create new revenue streams. And more interestingly, the ritual of reading the newspaper has become a hard habit to break.

UNIT 5

Active Reading 1

As an anti-war novel, Catch-22 is well known for its comic tone as against the normal perception of a war novel which tends to be serious, sentimental and involve bloodshed. Its main character is Yossarian. Unlike the war heroes who would die for their home country, Yossarian aims to survive the war and go back home.

To achieve this goal, he has to pretend to be insane. If he were crazy, he could be grounded. So he had to ask Doc Daneeka first. But once he asked Doc Daneeka, it meant he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions.Normally, he was sane if he didn’t fly more missions while he would be crazy if he flew more missions. Anyway, he would be plunged into a tricky situation– a Catch-22 situation.

Active Reading 2

To escape from Nazi persecutionof the Jews, Anne and her family members emigrated from Germany to Holland. However, in 1940 the Germans invaded, and occupied Holland. So quickly did the persecution of the Dutch Jews begin there that the Franks and another Jew family, the Van Pels went into hiding in the secret annexe. For the next two years, eight people of the two families were confinedto just six small rooms and could never go outside.

Under such harsh circumstances, Anne continued to write her diary, which she started a few weeks before they moved to the hiding. Her diary was the account of the day-to-day activity in the annexe – the suffering, but her dreams and aspirations were still there. The diary voiced a declaration of her principles and of the right to human dignity so profoundly that it was viewed as the voice of Holocaust.

In August 1944,the hiding place was stormed, and Nazi officers arrested everyone.They were taken to concentration camps.Out of the eight people in hiding, Otto Frank was the only survivors, and when he found his daughter’s diary after the war, he arranged for its publication in recognition of her courage. Anne’s writing would be a support and comfort to the world after her death.

UNIT 6

Active Reading 1

Standing at the vast and beautiful Stadium Australia, I was tense and excited. The feeling was fantastic since I was so close to my childhood dream. I tried to concentrate on the crowd and felt unified with them. The first lap was good but mental and physical fatigue were starting to crush me on the second lap. I kept telling myself: “two minutes, one more lap towardsbeing the Olympic champion”. As I crossed the line I was sure that I’d just made it. But negative thoughts lingered in my mind. When I saw my name in lights, I felt a tingle through the whole of my body. It was the moment that will stay with mefor the rest of my life.

Active Reading 2

It is time to blow the whistle on the so-called beautiful game -- soccer. For one thing, it is a game of chance. Goals are the best illustration of the chance natureof this game. Ninety percent of goal shots failed. The scoring system is another evidence. Most finals, 0-0, 1-0, 2-1, indicate that games tend to be standoffs and it’s a matter of luck to be ahead when time runs out. For another, soccer is a sport in which strategies and regulations are so obscure. No universal interpretation can be found for offside rules. Besides, with only one referee on the field, most of the infractions-- pushing, punching, tripping, kneeing, handballing-- are committed when he isn’t looking.