新东方：新概念英语第四册课文2

新概念英语第四册 Lesson 2 Spare that spider 不要伤害蜘蛛

First listen and then answer the following question.

听录音，然后回答以下问题。

How much of each year do spiders spend killing insects?

    Why, you may wonder, should spiders be our friends? Because they destroy so many insects, and insects include some of the greatest enemies of the human race. Insects would make it impossible for us to live in the world; they would devour all our crops and kill our flocks and herds, if it were not for the protection we get from insect-eating animals. We owe a lot to the birds and beasts who eat insects but all of them put together kill only a fraction of the number destroyed by spiders. Moreover, unlike some of the other insect eaters, spiders never do the harm to us or our belongings.

    Spiders are not insects, as many people think, nor even nearly related to them. One can tell the difference almost at a glance, for a spider always has eight legs and insect never more than six.

    How many spiders are engaged in this work no our behalf? One authority on spiders made a census of the spiders in grass field in the south of England, and he estimated that there were more than 2,250,000 in one acre; that is something like 6,000,000 spiders of different kinds on a football pitch. Spiders are busy for at least half the year in killing insects. It is impossible to make more than the wildest guess at how many they kill, but they are hungry creatures, not content with only three meals a day. It has been estimated that the weight of all the insects destroyed by spiders in Britain in one year would be greater than the total weight of all the human beings in the country.

                    T. H. GILLESPLE Spare that spider from The Listener

New words and expressions 

    beast

n.  野兽

    census

n.  统计数字

    acre

n.  英亩

    content

adj. 满足的

参考译文

    你可能会觉得奇怪， 蜘蛛怎么会是我们的朋友呢？因为它们能消灭那么多的昆虫，其中包括一些人类的大敌，要不是人类受一些食虫动物的保护，昆虫就会使我们无法在地球上生活下去，昆虫会吞食我们的全部庄稼，杀死我们的成群的牛羊。我们要十分感谢那些吃昆虫的鸟和兽，然而把它们所杀死的昆虫全部加在一起也只相当于蜘蛛所消灭的一小部分。此外，蜘蛛不同于其他食虫动物，它们丝毫不危害我们和我们的财物。

    许多人认为蜘蛛是昆虫，但它们不是昆虫，甚至与昆虫毫无关系。人们几乎一眼就能看出二者的差异，因为蜘蛛都是8条腿，而昆虫的腿从不超过6条。

    有多少蜘蛛在为我们效力呢？一位研究蜘蛛的权威对英国南部一块草坪上的蜘蛛作了一次调查。他估计每英亩草坪里有225万多只蜘蛛。这就是说，在一个足球场上约有600万只不同种类的蜘蛛。蜘蛛至少有半年在忙于吃昆虫。它们一年中消灭了多少昆虫，我们简直无法猜测，它们是吃不饱的动物，不满意一日三餐。据估计，在英国蜘蛛一年里所消灭昆虫的重量超过这个国家人口的总重量。

 

新东方：新概念英语第四册课文2的延伸阅读——新概念英语学习方法手册

 

　　1、先整体听一遍课文。看看自己到底能听懂多少。

　　2、利用复读机复读功能，逐句播放，听一句，写一句，碰到不会的单词了就先空着。继续往下听写。整篇课文或者你拟定的几句话都听写完了，再结合上下文看看那些不会的单词能不能猜出来。

　　3、逐句回放那些空着单词的句子，试一试能不能写出来。如果还不行，就打开书对照的看一下。在这里，我倒是不主张钻牛角尖，恨不能一个不会的单词憋好几年才写出来。因为，有些单词确实我们不会，那么直接看一下书，就知道了，下次也可能在其他课文中还会遇到，这就等于是复习了，不要太死板了。其实，这次看了，未必下次你真的就会写。

　　4、把不会的单词，或者你认为含糊的单词去逐个的查词典，逐条的去看注解。

　　5、每天多听这些听写过的录音，最起码你要在今天听写新内容之前要默写一遍昨天听写过的。

　　6、看着中文注解写英文，联系中英互换。绝对有效。

　　7、如果你想练就口语，就要大声的去模仿朗读，最好能背读。

　　8、运用李阳的“一口气”训练你的伶牙俐齿，这个真是很管用，以后你会发现听任何英语都不会觉得语速快的。