Man: Next, at number four, is an office building in Prague, in the Czech Republic that's supposed to look like a couple dancing together and is called the Dancing House. I'm not so sure it looks like a dancing couple myself.
Woman: Oh, I don’t know, if you use a little imagination.
Man: This work of art was designed by a Czech architect, Valdo Milunic, and the great Canadian architect Frank Gehry and was completed in 1996
Woman: Moving on the third place is a very strange house indeed. It's instantly recognizable by the tall long legged figures at the front. It was built by a French postman called Ferdinand Cheval and he spent 33 years constructing it from stones he collected while delivering mail. It's called the Ideal Palace and is in a small town, in France. It's quite an extraordinary from the photos. I’d love to see it.
Woman: Me too. And now, in second place is a hotel that, although it was only built in 1997, is already a legend. It's the Bur Al Arab Hotel on the coastline of Dubai. This building is the tallest hotel in the world and it looks like a billowing（汹涌的） sail.
Man: And finally, in first place is the most unusual building of all according to our listeners, the Basket Housein Newyark, Ohio, in the United States. It's the company office of the Longaberger Basket Company and as its name suggests, it looks like a casket. The building, which was completed in 1997, is made of steel. The exterior is covered in stucco（灰泥）, a substance that gives it a rough surface and this makes it look like a basket.
Woman: Actually, when you get closer it looks lees like a basket.
Unit 9
Inside view conversation 1
M: So you still OK for next Friday evening?
W: yes I am looking to it. It starts at 7, doesn’t it? J: Hello, mate .What are you up to? M: Hey, Jack. How are things?
J: Not so bad. What about you? Haven’t seen you in ages? Is this your latest squeeze? M: Not really. This is Janet. She is a friend from work. J: Nice to meet you.
M: So you still in the same job?
J: Yeah, but not for long. I am getting really hacked off（非常恼火） with it. M: That’s tough. Fancy a pint one day. J: Yeah, nice one.
M: I will see you down in the local. It’s on me. Bye now. J: OK, mate. See you.
W: I have no idea what you two were talking about. I was completely lost.
M: That was my mate—my friend, Jack. We were at school together. He’s got quite a strong London accent.
W: Well. It was like a different language. It wasn’t just the accent. I haven’t a clue what he said. M: Well. I asked him about his job and he said he was getting really hacked off—fed up. W: Now, I am beginning to understand. So then you invite him for a drink? M: Yean, fancy a pint.
W: And the local is the local pub, isn’t it? M: Yeah, I said I’d buy him the drink. W: This one is on me, OK?
M: Well done. You are becoming a right pukka（真的） Londoner.
W: Hang on. I am confused again. And what did he mean when he asked if I was you latest squeeze?
M: Oh, nothing really. He just wanted to know if you were my new girlfriend. W: Now I get it.
Conversation 2
M: so one more week and you will be going back to Oxfords
W: that’s right .I am going to miss the place. But tell me, how do you get on with the language? M :it’s hard to say .I sometimes can’t understand anything. How do you find it?
W well ,it depends .On the one hand ,there’re so many words which are so different to the ones we learned at school .But on the other hand, I guess I understand most of it, especially when people use standard English ,not slang（俚语）.
M :you know, English is an extraordinary language .It keeps changing over the centuries. Take Shakespeare, for example.，they reckon he introduced over 3000 words into English. W: Such as ?
M: Well, let me think, words like amazement, assassination,（暗杀） critic, majestic（庄严的）, oh, many of words we use today.
W: And I believe he introduced a number of phrases as well.
M: Yes, someone who has “a heart of gold” a very kind person, or the “green—eyed monster” which is someone who is very jealous. And there are even everyday expressions like “to catch a cold” or “to break the ice ,which are originally in his plays. W: Well, I will have to brush up（复习） my Shakespeare .I’ve got tickets for Shakespeare’s Globe next Friday.
M: Tickets? What’s on? W: Romeo and Julie
M: Oh, great. Who are you going with? W: Oh, er, no one special
M: Friday, that’s your last day, isn’t it? Well ,I will see you before then but have a great time. Oh,
and take an umbrella .It might rain at Globe Theatre
W: OK, shashibiya’s in the rain. Sounds like a good name for a musical.
Outside view
Do you really want to learn English? Clestino Santee, an English language teacher gives students important advice.
M: Please give some advice to those who come to the US to learn English.
W: Well, I’d love to give some suggestions and some advices based on my experience to students learning English. First of all, don’t be afraid to speak to Americans. Americans seem to enjoy meeting people from other countries, and they like to share the information that they have. So if you are afraid to speak to Americans that mean you are passing about an opportunity for communication, which is really what it is all about. It’s not about reading books or learning grammar in some abstract way, it’s more about speaking, communicating learning how real people talk and what they have to say. Um, a good way to do this is to go out in to the community. Another piece of advice I’d like to give to people is try to learn as much about you culture as you can. And I think in that way you’ll be more confident and you’ll also be able to appreciate our culture a little bit better learning about some of the differences but also some of the similarities. M: What is the best age to learn English?
W: As a teacher and a tutor I’ve taught all the different ages from, really, people in their 60s and the 70s, all the way down to lowest elementary（小学的） school children. And I found some real differences. Of course, the adults have more traditional based, traditional form of education that they base their form of learning on. Also, in many cases they’re more hesitant to speak. They’re a little bit more embarrassed and they want to make sure that they have the structure of the grammar. However, the young children are like sponges（海绵）. They really just want to soak up every piece of the information. They are not afraid of making mistakes as are the older people. It is so much easier to learn a language when you’re a child. But you know it can be done at any age. And I think it just takes a little bit more of an effort and also the willingness to take risks to appear a little bit of foolish perhaps. But in so doing, if you can laugh at yourself a little bit and your own mistakes then other people feel more comfortable around you. And this makes everybody, and make more comfortable and of course communication is what it’s all about. M: What is the best way to teach English?
W: There’re so many different ways of teaching English. It varies school to school. It varies teacher to teacher. It also varies as to whether you’re taking private lessons with a tutor or if you’re in a large classroom situation. In some ways, it’s great to have a tutor individually because you can have somebody work with you one-on-one. However, there is also an advantage to be able to take a class with students from., not just your country but other countries as well. So therefore, you can communicate with other people, which is again, what it’s all about. You can learn about other cultures in addition to the American culture. You can learn about other cultures. I’ve had students who complain about being in a class with other English-as-a-second-language students, but over all I ha e found that the communication outweighs any disadvantages. So students really enjoy meeting each other and being forced to speak in English.
Listening in
P: We have with us today Dr Jonathan Bingham, an expert on disappearing languages. I
understand that as many as 2000 languages are in danger of disappearing?
B: Yes. There are more than 6000 languages in the world, and about 2000 of them may disappear.
P: Presumably可能的 this is because there are very few people left who speak the languages. B: That’s right. For example, there’s a remote part 偏远地区of the north Australian coast-where a man called Pick lives. There are only three remaining speakers of his Aboriginal language 土著语言 . One lives quite a distance away and the other is his sister who he’s got allowed to speak to because she’s a woman.
P: So with only three speakers that languages is certain to die out, isn’t it?
B: It looks like it. Another, it’s got to be admitted very amusing example-200 years ago a German explorer came across a village near the Orinoco river in Venezuela. He heard a parrot speaking and asked the villagers what is was saying. They said they didn’t know because the parrot had learned is language from its owner. The owner, who had died, was the last person to speak it.
B: Very sad. But nowadays small tribes部落 or peoples get absorbed into进入吸收 the mainstream cultures around them and-have to speak the language or that culture in order to survive. The terrible thing is, when a language disappears, the culture and its traditions tend to disappear too. P: Why is that?
B: Well, for example, there are 28000 Khanty members of an aboriginal people who live in Siberia, in northern Russia-and only 20 of them speak their traditional language well. Now there are words in their language that refer to certain rituals 仪式and these words don’t exist in Russian. How can they practice their rituals when they don’t have the words?
P： You ‘re involved in a project that works to preserve endangered languages.
B: Yes, indeed. We visit cultures whose language is endangered and document the language’s grammar, vocabulary, oral traditions-songs, stories, things like that. A language is so rich and there’s so much to learn from it. P: Of course
B: And we also try to keep the language alive through education. Welsh is an excellent example of a language that has been saved. P: Welsh was dying, wasn’t it?
B: Yes, but a lot of effort has been made and now 20 percent of the Welsh population speak Welsh P: So it can be done. B: Yes, it can
Passage 2
When a dog growls(狂叫) at another dog, it’s giving a warning signal. When a dog wags（摇尾巴） his tail at its human owner, It’s expressing excitement or happiness. It has always been clear to us that animals communicate, both to others of their own species and to other species. But in recent decades scientists have attempted to find out if animals have any communication systems that resemble human language.
To qualify as a langrage, two features are needed. The language must have rules, in other words, grammar or syntax（句法）. Equally important, the language, whether it’s sound or movement, must have meaning to the communicator. For example, when a child says, “Daddy watch telly,”the words may not be correct grammatically, but the child knows what it’s saying.