经典教材精选的美文
这个优秀文章36篇是我从新概念三、四的教材里精心挑选出来的，其中新概念三20篇和新概念四的16篇，从贴近考研英语的角度来筛选，剔除了大部分的记叙文和说明文题材，主要就是论说文了。
这些精选出来的文章作为必须背诵的素材。原来的文档很多都有或多或少的小错误。这里我都精心对照过，并且尽力避免出现错误。
以前那个版本只有20篇文章（新三12篇，新四8篇），有网友反映排版使用不是很方便，这里重新排版。另外字体用稍微大一点的5号，眼睛会舒服一点，还可以做一点点笔记，不过页数会增加一点。
蓝色加粗是考研重点词汇，要从课文句子中掌握其用法，不是很熟的最好查一下牛津或者其他词典；加阴影紫色字体是考研用短语和句型。划线的重点要熟练应用的句子，尽量应用到作文中去。
对这36篇文章最好是听写、翻译、背诵一步步来。先把文章听写出来，然后翻译成中文，再
把中文翻译成英文，最后背诵。不过这个过程很花时间，但是也能提高英语能力。如果单纯考研应试，英语不想考那么高分，而其他科目需要的时间多点，那就只背诵吧。
背诵是一件很痛苦的事情，实在背不下来，可以给自己定一个量的要求：“50遍啊50遍！”甚至更强的“100遍啊100遍”读了50遍以上就算背不出来也很熟练了吧。
语言是背出来，模仿磁带的读音，大声跟读大声的背，将可以达到听说读写齐头并进。
新概念四Lesson 1 Finding fossil man 发现化石人
We can read of things that happened 5,000 years ago in the Near East, where people first learned to write.But there are some parts of the world where even now people cannot write. The only way that they can prerve their history is to recount it as sagas----legends handed down from one generation of story-tellers to another. The legends are uful becau they can tell us something about migrations of people who lived long ago, but none could write down what they did. Anthropologists wondered where the remote ancestors of the Polynesian peoples now living in the Pacific Islands came from.
早英文The sagas of the people explain that some of them came from Indonesia about 2,000 years ago.
But the first people who were like ourlves lived so long ago that even their sagas, if they had any, are forgotten. So archaeologists have neither history nor legends to help them to find out where the first‘modern men’ came from.
Fortunately两宋时期, however, ancient men made tools of stone, especially flint, becau this is easier to shape than other kinds. They may also have ud wood and skins, but the have rotted away. Stone does not decay, and so the tools of long ago have remained when even the bones of the men who made them have disappeared without trace.
我们从书籍中可以读到5,000年前近东发生的事情，那里的人最早学会了写字。但直到现在，世界上仍然有些地方；人们还不会书写。他们保存历史的唯一办法是将历史当作传说讲述，由讲述人一代接一代地将史实描述为传奇故事口传下来。这些传说是很有用的，因为它们能告诉我们以往人们迁居的情况。但是；没有人能把他们当时做的事情记载下来。人类学家过去不清楚如今生活在太平洋诸岛上的波利尼西亚人的祖先来自何方，当地人的
传说却告诉了人们：其中有一部分是约在2,000年前从印度尼西亚迁来的。
但是，和我们相似的原始人生活的年代太久远了；因此，有关他们的传说即使有如今也失传了。于是，考古学家们既缺乏历史记载，又无口头传说来帮助他们弄清最早的“现代人”是从哪里来的。
然而，幸运的是，远古人用石头制作了工具，特别是用燧石，因力燧石较之其他石头更易成形。他们也可能用过木头和兽皮，但这类东西早已腐烂殆尽。石头是不会腐烂的。因此，尽管制造这些工具的人的骨头早已荡然无存；但远古时代的石头工具却保存了下来。
Lesson 2 Spare that spider不要伤害蜘蛛
Why, you may wonder, should spiders be our friends? Becau they destroy so many incts, and incts include some of the greatest enemies of the human race．Incts would make it impossible for us to live in the world; they would devour all our crops and kill our flocks and herds, 呐的组词if it were not for the protection we get from inct-eating animals．We 蚂蚱的习性owe a lot to the birds and beasts who eat incts but all of them put togeth
er kill only a fraction of the number destroyed by spiders．Moreover, unlike some of the other inct eaters, spiders never do the least harm to us or our belongings.
Spiders are not incts, 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 an inct never more than six.
How many spiders are engaged in this work on our behalf? One authority on spiders made a census of the spiders in a 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 incts．It is 通货膨胀与通货紧缩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 incts destroyed by spiders in Britain in one year would be greater than the total weight of all the human beings in the country.
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考试后的反思和计划600万只不同种类的蜘蛛。蜘蛛至少有半年忙于吃昆虫。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了这个国家人口的总重量。
Lesson 3 Matterhorn man马特霍恩山区人
Modern alpinists try to climb mountains by a route which will give them good sport, and
the more difficult it is, the more highly it is regarded．In the pioneering days, however, this was not the ca at all．The early climbers were looking for the easiest way to the top, becau the summit was the prize they sought, especially if it had never been attained木兰诗教案 before．It is true that during their explorations they often faced difficulties and dangers of the most perilous nature, equipped in a manner which would make a modern climber shudder at the thought, but they did not go out of their way to court such excitement高血压健康教育．They had a single aim, a solitary goal---the top!
