现代大学英语课文重难点分析
Unit 1
1. You will e to it that the cyanide stays out of the aspirin, that the bull doesn’t jump the fence, or that your client doesn’t go to the electric chair as a result of your incompetence. (P3 pra5)
You have to take responsibility for the work you do. If you’re a pharmacist, you should make sure that aspirin is not mixed with poisonous chemicals. As an engineer, you should make sure that the fence you design for instance will successfully keep out bulls. If you become a lawyer, you should make sure an innocent person is not ntenced to death becau you lack adequate legal knowledge and skill to defend your client.
在配置阿司匹林的时候，确保里面不掺进氰化物；在搞工程设计的时候，确保公牛不会跳进篱笆里；当律师时，确保你的委托人不会因为你的无能而被处以死刑。
2. Our colleges inevitably graduate a number of such life forms, but it cannot be said
that they went to college; rather the college went through them—without making contact. (P4 pra9)
A number of such push-button savages get college degrees. We cannot help that. But even with their degrees, we can’t say that the people have received a proper college education. It is more accurate to say that they pass through college without learning anything.
我们学校肯定有一些这样的毕业生，但不能说他们接受了大学教育，只能说他们上了大学——没有接触真正的人文思想。
3. If you are too much in a hurry, or too arrogantly proud of your own limitations, to世界武器 accept as a gift to your humanity some pieces of the minds of Aristotle, or Chaucer or Einstein, you are neither a developed human nor a uful citizen of a democracy. (P4 pra12)
If you are too anxious to make money, too ignorant to e your limitations then you could
n’t regard tho great people’s minds as a gift to your humanity, and thus you can’t be a developed human.
如果你活的匆忙没有时间，或者对自己的无知颇为得意，从而把亚里士多德、乔叟或爱因斯坦的思想等这些提高你的品德修养的礼物拒之门外，那么你既不是一个心智发展完全的人，也不是一个民主国家里有用的公民。
4. I speak, I’m sure, for the faculty of the liberal arts college and for the faculties of the specialized schools as well, when I say that a university has no real existence and no real purpo except as it succeeds in putting you in touch, both as specialists and as humans, with tho human minds your human mind needs to include. (treat意思p4 pra14)
我认为，要是一所大学不能使自己的学生，无论是作为专业人才，还是作为人，去接触那些应该吸纳的伟人的思想的话，那么，这所大学就没有真正的办学宗旨，也就没有存在的必要了。我相信这种说法既代表人文院校也代表理工院校的教师们的意见。
Unit 3
1. And root crops especially are hard to tell apart, when store-bought, from our own. (p60 pra1)
It’s difficult to tell the difference between the root crops you buy from stores and tho you grow yourlf in your garden.
尤其是那些根块类植物，根本就很难分辨出到底是自己种的还是店里买的。
2. 喝了中药老放屁为什么There is a human instinct at work here, a kind of back-breaking make-believe that has no reality. (P60 pra1)
It is perhaps partly human nature why we like gardening. It is human instinct to be active and pretend that what you have done is better than it really is.糯米粥的做法
这里肯定有人的本性在起作用。人就喜欢脱离现实，毫无意义地瞎折腾。
3. The birds begin screaming hysterically, thinking what I am thinking—the worms are deliciously worming 消逝的反义词their way through the melting soil. (p61 pra2)
鸟开始歇斯底里地鸣叫，想的和我想的一样——想着那些美味可口的虫子正从那融化的土中慢慢爬处来。
4. It is not only pleasure nding me back to stare at that plot of soil, it is really conflict. (p61 pra3)
让我回去看那块地的并不是快乐，而是矛盾。
5. The attractions of gardening, 洗衣服日记I think, at least for a certain number of gardeners, are neurotic and moral. (p61 pra6科试)
Notice that the word “neurotic” is usually ud in a negative n. The author, for humorous effect, keeps using such words and expressions to hide his inten interest and full appreciation of significance of gardening. But the ironical expressions cannot fool experienced readers.
种菜对人的吸引力，在我看来，起码对某些种菜的人来说，是出于神经或道德方面的原因。
6. In some cas, as with beans and cucumbers, your children — as it were, begin to turn upon you in massive numbers, growing more and more each morning and threatening to follow you into the hou to strangle you in their vines. (p61 pra6)
The author here is describing how the beans and cucumbers can grow in massive numbers and come to him suddenly as if to strangle him in their vines. “strangle” here doesn’t mean to choke him to death. He is saying the numerous beans and cucumbers are like naughty and playful children, struggling to embrace him at the same time, making him almost hard to breathe.
有时候，比如你种的是扁豆或黄瓜的话，你那些可以说是你的孩子们，会突然开始向你发动大肆进攻，每天早晨长得越来越多，好像要追着你进房间将你绞杀在他们的瓜豆藤条之中。
故事创作
7. There are few sights quite as beautiful as a vegetable garden glistening in the sun, all dewy and glittering with a dozen shades of green at ven in the morning. (p62 pra9)
