文科段子：文学名著

　　Continuing our survey of the 19th century, let’s take a look now at Harriet Beecher Stowe. Now Stowe is best known for her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book that details the harshness of plantation¹ life in the south. The book was extremely popular in the United States as well as in other countries. Ironically though, for all the attention given to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, it’s far from Stowe’s best work. She did write one other novel about life in the south, but much of her best work has nothing with the south at all. In fact, Stowe’s best writing is about village life in the New England’s states in the 19th century. In recording² to the customs of the villages she wrote about, Stowe claimed that her purpose was to reflect the images as realistically as possible. She usually succeeded, for her settings were often described accurately³ and in detail. In this sense, she was an important forerunner⁴ to the realistic movement that became popular later in the 19th century. She was one of the first writers to use local dialect for her characters when they spoke⁵. And she did this for 30 years before Mark Twain popularized the use of local dialect. It makes sense that Stowe would write about New England life, since she was born in Connecticut. As a young woman there, she worked as a teacher. The teaching job helped lead to her first published work, a geography book for children. Later when she was married, her writing helped her support her family financially. Throughout her life, she wrote poems, travel books, biographical sketches⁶ and children’s books, as well as novels for adults.

生活段子：噪音影响

     I’m grad to see so many of you here. We’ve become really alarmed over the health center by the number of students we are seeing, who are experiencing hearing loss. First, I want to go over some basic about hearing. Then we can take a look at our school environment and see if we can figure out some ways to protect hearing. The leading cause of preventable hearing loss is excessive noise. Too much moderate noise for a long time or some types of intense noise for even a short time can damage hearing. Loudness is measured in units called decibels⁸. One decibel⁷ is the lowest sound that the average person can here. Sounds up to 80 decibels generally aren’t harmful. That’s noise like traffic on a busy street. But anything louder than 80 decibels, especially with continuous exposure, may eventually hurt your hearing. Once you are up to around 140 decibels, that’s like a jet plane taking off, then you might even feel pain in your ears. And pains are sure sign that your hearing’s at risk. Even one exposure to a really loud noise at close range can cause hearing loss. So what you need to do is limit your exposure to harmful levels. If you pass along this handout⁹, we can take a look at the decibel level of some common campus sounds. Notice how loud those horns are that people take to football games. They are really dangerous if blown right behind you. Now, let’s try to generate a list of damaging noises。