附件：2018年大学生英语口语能力比赛指定朗诵篇目（共10篇）.docx

2018 年大学生英语口语能力比赛指定朗诵篇目 朗诵材料 1 （选自《新视野大学英语》读写教程四） Passage 1 The farmer nodded in a neighborly way. I was filled with pride. “James Williams’ son.” Those three words had opened a door to an adult’s respect and trust. As I heaved the heavy freight into the bed of the truck, I did so with ease, feeling like a stronger man than the one that left the farm that morning. I had discovered that a good name could furnish a capital of good will of great value. Everyone knew what to expect from a Williams: a decent person who kept his word and respected himself too much to do wrong. My great grandfather may have been sold as a slave at auction, but this was not an excuse to do wrong to others. Instead my father believed the only way to honor him was through hard work and respect for all men. We children—eight brothers and two sisters—could enjoy our good name, unearned, unless and until we did something to lose it. We had an interest in how one another behaved and our own actions as well, lest we destroy the name my father had created. Our good name was and still is the glue that holds our family tight together. Passage 2 Not long after Christmas last year, Suzanne came to inspect my apartment and saw some new posters pasted on the wall. “Where’d you get the money for those? ” she wanted to know. “Friends and family.” “Well, you’d better have a receipt for it, by God. You have to report any donations or gifts.” This was my cue to beg. Instead, I talked back. “I got a cigarette from somebody on the street the other day. Do I have to report that? ” “Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t make the rules, Mr. Callahan.” Suzanne tries to lecture me about repairs to my wheelchair, which is always breaking down because welfare won’t spend money maintaining it properly. “You know, Mr. Callahan, I’ve heard that you put a lot more miles on that wheelchair than average.” Of course I do. I’m an active worker, not a vegetable. I live near downtown, so I can get around in a wheelchair. I wonder what she’d think if she suddenly broke her hip and had to crawl to work. Passage 3 Behind me someone switched on a light, and I could see his thick silvery hair and strong, square jaw. His eyes seemed to contain a white mist. “Could I please sit beside you at the dinner? ” he asked. “And I’d love it if you’d describe a little of what you see.” “I’d be happy to, ” I replied. My guest walked ahead toward the restaurant with newly found friends. The blind man and I followed. My hand held his elbow to steer him, but he stepped forward with no sign of hesitation or stoop, his shoulders squared, his head high, as though he were guiding me. We found a table close to the stage. He ordered half a liter of beer and I ordered a grape soda. As we waited for our drinks, the blind man said, “The music seems out of tune to our Western ears, but it has charm. Please describe the musicians.” I hadn’t noticed the five men performing at the side of the stage as an introduction to the show. “They’re seated cross-legged on a rug, dressed in loose white cotton shirts and large black trousers, with fabric around their waists that has been dyed bright red. Three are young lads, one is middle-aged and one is elderly. One beats a small drum, another plays a wooden stringed instrument, and the other three have smaller, violin-like pieces they play with a bow.” Passage 4 The American high priest of solitude was Thoreau. We admire him, not for his self-reliance, but because he was all by himself out there at Walden Pond, and he wanted to be — all alone in the woods. Actually, he lived a mile, or 20 minutes’ walk, from his nearest neighbor; half a mile from the railroad; three hundred yards from a busy road. He had company in and out of the hut all day, asking him how he could possibly be so noble. Apparently the main point of his nobility was that he had neither wife nor servants, used his own axe to chop his own wood, and washed his own cups and saucers. I don’t know who did his laundry; he doesn’t say, but he certainly doesn’t mention doing his own, either. Listen to him: “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.” Thoreau had his own self-importance for company. Perhaps there’s a message here: The larger the ego, the less the need for other egos around. The more modest and humble we feel, the more we suffer from solitude, feeling ourselves inadequate company. Passage 5 I do not always feel colored. Even now I often achieve the unconscious Zora of that small village, Eatonville. For instance, I can sit in a restaurant with a white person. We enter chatting about any little things that we have in common and the white man would sit calmly in his seat, listening to me with interest. At certain times I have no race, I am me. But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of mixed items propped up against a wall—against a wall in company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a pile of small things both valuable and worthless. Bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since decayed away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still with a little fragrance. In your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the pile it held—so much like the piles in the other bags, could they be emptied, that all might be combined and mixed in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place—who knows? 朗诵材料 2 （选自《大学英语》精读教程二） Passage 6 Jefferson’s courage and idealism were based on knowledge. He probably knew more than any other man of his age. He was an expert in agriculture, archeology, and medicine. He practiced crop rotation and soil conservation a century before these became standard practice, and he invented a plow superior to any other in existence. He influenced architecture throughout America and he was constantly producing devices for making the tasks of ordinary life easier to perform. Of all Jefferson’s many talents, one is central. He was above all a good and tireless writer. His complete works, now being published for the first time, will fill more than fifty volumes. His talent as an author was soon discovered, and when the time came to write the Declaration of Independence at Philadelphia in 1776, the task of writing it was his. Millions have thrilled to his words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ...” When Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of American independence, he left his countrymen a rich legacy of ideas and examples. American education owes a great debt to Thomas Jefferson, who believed that only a nation of educated people could remain free. Passage 7 Praise is like sunlight to the human spirit; we cannot flower and grow without it. And yet, while most of us are only too ready to apply to others the cold wind of criticism, we are somehow reluctant to give our fellows the warm sunshine of praise. Why — when one word can bring such pleasure? A friend of mine who travels widely always tries to learn a little of the language of any place she visits. She’s not much of a linguist, but she does know how to say one word — “beautiful” — in several languages. She can use it to a mother holding her baby, or to a lonely salesman fishing out pictures of his family. The ability has earned her friends all over the world. It’s strange how chary we are about praising. Perhaps it’s because few of us know how to accept compliments gracefully. Instead, we are embarrassed and shrug off the words we are really so glad to hear. Because of this defensive reaction, direct compliments are surprisingly difficult to give. That is why some of the most valued pats on the back are those which come to us indirectly, in a letter or passed on by a friend. When one thinks of the speed with which spiteful remarks are conveyed, it seems a pity that there isn’t more effort to relay pleasing and flattering comments. Passage 8 We frequently hear about “the good old days”, when Americans were better, happier, and more honest. But were they more honest? Maybe yes, a long time ago when life was very different from what it is today. School children used to know the story of how Abraham Lincoln walked five miles to return a penny he’d overcharged a customer. It’s the kind of story we think of as myth. But in the case of Lincoln, the story is true ... unlike the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. Washington’s first biographer invented the tale of little George saying to his father, “I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my ax.” What is important in both stories, however, is that honesty was seen as an important part of the American character. And these are just two stories out of many. Students in the last century usually didn’t read “fun” stories. They read stories that taught moral values. Such stories pointed out quite clearly that children who lied, cheated, or stole came to bad ends. Parents may have further reinforced those values. It’s difficult to know. We do know that children didn’t hear their parents talk of cheating the government on income taxes — there weren’t any. Passage 9 The school was a red brick house with big windows. The front garden was a gravel square; four evergreen shrubs stood at each corner, where they struggled to survive the dust and fumes from a busy main road. It was clearly the headmaster himself that opened the door. He was short and fat. He had a sandy-colored moustache, a wrinkled forehead and hardly any hair. He looked at me with an air of surprised disapproval, as a colonel might look at a private whose bootlaces were undone. ‘Ah yes,’ he grunted. ‘You’d better come inside.’ The narrow, sunless hall smelled unpleasantly of stale cabbage; the walls were dirty with ink marks; it was all silent. His study, judging by the crumbs on the carpet, was also his dining-room. ‘You’d better sit down,’ he said, and proceeded to ask me a number of questions: what subjects I had taken in my General School Certificate; how old I was; what games I played; then fixing me suddenly with his bloodshot eyes, he asked me whether I thought games were a vital part of a boy’s education. I mumbled something about not attaching too much importance to them. He grunted. I had said the wrong thing. The headmaster and I obviously had very little in common. Passage 10 My grandparents believed you were either honest or you weren't. There was no in-between. They had a simple motto hanging on their living-room wall: "Life is like a field of newly fallen snow; where I choose to walk every step will show." They didn't have to talk about it—they demonstrated the motto by the way they lived. They understood instinctively that integrity means having a personal standard of morality and ethics that does not sell out to expediency and that is not relative to the situation at hand. Integrity is an inner standard for judging your behavior. Unfortunately, integrity is in short supply today—and getting scarcer. But it is the real bottom line in every area of society. And it is something we must demand of ourselves. A good test for this value is to look at what I call the Integrity Triad, which consists of three key principles: Stand firmly for your convictions in the face of personal pressure. Always give others credit that is rightfully theirs. Be honest and open about what you really are. Integrity means you do what you do because it's right and not just fashionable or politically correct. A life of principle, of not succumbing to the seductive sirens of an easy morality, will always win the day. It will take you forward into the 21st century without having to check your tracks in a rearview mirror. My grandparents taught me that.