A English Literature七选五阅读练习

A English Literature: why should we study it? When we read the rich variety of novels, poems, and plays which constitute English literature, we are reading works which have lasted for generations, or centuries, and they have lasted because they are good. These works sat something worth saying. Literature is part of the cultural heritage which is freely available to everyone, and which can enrich our lives in all kinds of ways. They can convey thought, richness of emotion, and insight into character. 1 . They deepen our understanding of our history, our society, and our own lives. 2 It can take us in our imaginations back to the roots of our culture and increase our understanding of our modern world. Literature can also enrich our experience in other ways too. Good words of literature are not museum pieces, preserved and studied only for historical interest. They last because they remain fresh as well as showing the times when they were written. Each reader reading each work is a new event and the works speak to us now telling us truths about human life. We can gain a lot from literature in many ways. 3 Such moments can help validate （证实）our personal experience at a depth which is rarely reached by everyday life. 4 Well, we don’t need to, but when we visit a co untry for the first time it can help to have books by people who have been there before by our side. When we start to read literature, particularly older works, we have to make an effort to accommodate （适应）to the writer’s use of language and to appreciate the ideas he is offering. Critics can help fill our out understanding by telling which a work was written or about the personal circumstances of the author while he was writing it. We are not going to enjoy every literary work. 5 Good literature lasts forever. A. B. C. So why do we need to study English literature, instead of just reading it? Literature can give us some information of much earlier ages. And our feeling for nature can be deepened when a landscape calls to mind images form some famous writers. D. They take us beyond our limited experience of life to show us the lives of other people at other times. E. Making the effort to shape our own thoughts into an essay is also an experience. F. There may be times when we find reading a critic is more interesting than reading the actual work. G. However, the most rewarding experiences can come in those moments when we feel that author has communicated something

personally to us. Key:B Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bernstein was a major force in the twentieth century music. 1 More than any American conductor before him, Bernstein expanded the audience of classical music while maintaining a deep artistic integrity（完整）. Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1918. His parents were first generation Jewish immigrants from Russia. Though he began learning the piano at the age of ten, his family hoped he would follow a more practical route and sent him to the Boston Latin School. 2 His interest was in becoming a concert pianist, but upon graduating he began to seriously study orchestration （管弦乐编曲）at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. More important than any of the formal training, however, were the summers he spent in Tanglewood, Massachusetts, studying with the great conductor Serge Koussevitzky. In 1942, Koussevitzky invited Bernstein to be the assistant conductor at Tanglewood. 3 One of whom was Arthur Rodzinzki, who appointed him assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic. Asked to fill in for a guest conductor, Bernstein (then only twenty-five) conducted a difficult and energetic performance with only an evening’s preparation. Impressing all who came, Bernstein found himself on the cover of The New York Times. He spent much of the 1950s conducing, teaching, and becoming involved in composing for non-classical genres 流派）Of his （ . many popular efforts of the time, On the Waterfront,(1954) Candide(1956), and West Side Story(1957) are the best known. 4 In 1957, Bernstein returned to the New York Philharmonic, where he was to make his greatest contribution to the music world. The musical genius that had make him a success on Broadway and in the classical concert halls of the world, found