新世纪英语高二下册全部课文

上海外语教育出版社——新世纪英语高二全部课文

（包括Additional Reading）及重点词组

高二第二学期

17. Words and their stories

EAGER BEAVER An eager beaver is a person who is always willing to do and is excited about doing what is expected of him.

Suppose, for example, that a teacher tells his students they each must solve one hundred math problems before coming to school the next day. The children complain about so much homework. But one student does not protest at all. That student is an eager beaver. He loves to do math problems, and does not mind all the homework.

The expression is said to have come from the name of a hard-working animal---the beaver.

Beavers are strange-looking creatures. They spend a lot of time in the water, building dams to create little lakes or ponds. They use their huge teeth and work hard to cut down trees, remove branches and put them across streams. They use their tails to pack mud on the branches to make

the dams solid. Few other animals work so hard.

Historians say the beaver had an important part in the settlement of North America.

There were hundreds of millions of beavers when European settlers first arrived. The settlers put great value on the fur of beavers. In fact, for two hundred years or more, beavers provided the most valuable fur in North America. Beaver skins often used as money.

Young men looking for adventure headed west across the country to search for beavers. In their search, they explored much of the western territories. The trading posts, where they exchanged beaver skins for the goods they needed, became villages, and later towns and cities.

IT’S IN THE BAG The bag---one of the simplest and most useful things in every man or woman’s life---has given the world many strange expressions that are not very simple. A number of these expressions are widely used in the United States today. Some were imported from England a long time ago.

When you are sure of something, you can say, “It’s in

the bag.”

This phrase seemed to have arrived with the modern paper bag. Before, Americans used to say, “It’s all wrapped up.” Then, things you bought were wrapped in plain brown paper, or sometimes in old newspaper.

Another widely used expressions is “to let the cat out of the bag”, meaning to reveal a well-kept secret.

No one can explain how the cat got into the bag, or why it remained there. But there is an old story about it. Long ago tradesman sold things in large cloth bags. Once a woman asked for a pig. The tradesman held up his cloth bag. Inside there was supposed to be a live pig. The woman asked to see it. When the dishonest tradesman opened the bag, out jumped a squealing cat, not a pig. The tradesman’s secret was out: he was tricky, and now everybody knew it.

18. English proverbs

Characters

Teacher of English: Ms Smith (MS)

Students: Li (LI), Mao (MA), Anne (AN), Rivera (RI)