Basic Reading — 第六冊

🔊Angelina is typing a letter to her friend. She uses Microsoft Word for this task. MS Word has features to help her with spelling and grammar. This makes the process much easier, especially if you are not so good with English.

🔊Even writers, such as myself, rely heavily on word programs nowadays. With the auto spell-check tool, it instantly tells me if a word is misspelled and highlights it. If I then right click on the word, it guesses at which word I am trying to spell and offers suggestions. This saves me a lot of time browsing through a dictionary for the correct spelling.

🔊If grammar isn’t your strong suit, then it can help with this as well. The program is quite good at catching mistakes with verb tenses, sentence structure and many other common grammar mistakes.

🔊Though it is a very good writing tool, it is not foolproof. This is because English grammar can be very complex. Sometimes it may even tell you there is a mistake when there isn’t one. No computer program is going to beat good old-fashioned knowledge.

🔊Writing software like this is very helpful. No matter what your writing ability is, it can save you a lot of time with its assistance. But beware: many people that use these programs have become very reliant on the spell check feature and have thus become terrible spellers.

🔊There was a performance at the community center last night. The event was held to raise money for a much needed new hospital. The show was so important that a couple of professional entertainers even came and played for free.

🔊Several local groups got together to organize the show. They were in charge of finding people to perform, making tickets, advertising the event and numerous other tasks. These people were the real heart of the show because without them the event could never have taken place. Even though they were behind the scenes and didn’t actually perform, in my eyes they were still the stars. For individuals to selflessly donate their free time to such a worthy cause is very commendable.

🔊The audience really seemed to enjoy the acts, as did I. My favorite act was a group of male dancers dressed in white shirts with dark pants. They danced in a line to a very old Taiwanese song. All the dancers moved together to the music. They kicked and moved their arms at exactly the same time. It must have taken a lot of practice to get so good. The crowd cheered loudly when they were finished.

🔊As people left, they were asked to place money into a collection box and most of them did. There was over one hundred thousand dollars raised to help build the new hospital. All the volunteers should be very proud of their accomplishment. Their hard work paid off and the event was a big success. Hats off to them.

🔊Once in a while your pencil gets dull. When this happens, you need to sharpen it. You can try to sharpen it with a knife, but that can be very difficult. The easiest way is to use a pencil sharpener. Just insert the pencil into the hole and turn the handle a few times. When you pull the pencil out, it will have a nice sharp point on it. The leftover shavings collect in the sharpener and can be emptied when it is full. Remember, a pencil sharpener doesn’t work on mechanical pencils, or pens, or fingers, but you can always try.

🔊This girl is sharpening her pencil while sitting on a wicker chair. She steadies the sharpener with one hand and turns the crank with the other. She has two more pencils lying on the table waiting to be sharpened.

🔊Security cameras, also called surveillance cameras, are a very common sight in Taiwan—that is if you look up. They are not always as visible as this one and, even if they are, they are usually mounted out of reach to prevent tampering.

🔊The idea is that by having cameras around your home or business, you can prevent theft, vandalism and other crimes. If they are not visible enough to deter crime, they may at least help you to catch the perpetrator.

🔊This particular camera has been mounted high up on a utility pole, or power pole as it is sometimes referred to. The lines coming out the back of the camera are constantly transmitting a video feed to a computer that records it. In the event of a crime, the police can replay the video data to help them catch the criminal. And with video evidence, conviction shouldn’t be too difficult.

🔊Pineapples have very tough, prickly skin and are a little difficult to peel, but this lady seems to be very good at it. She uses a cleaver-like knife to peel off the tough outer layer. She holds the pineapple firmly on the cutting board as she peels off the skin. After that she cuts the pineapple into bite-sized pieces.

🔊There is a scale on the table used for weighing the pineapples. This is because pineapples may be sold by weight and not by unit, as are many fruits. The price per kilogram fluctuates depending on quality, availability and demand.

🔊After peeling and cutting the pineapple, the lady puts the pieces into a container. Then she places the container on the scale and weighs it. Now she knows exactly how much to charge for the container of pineapple.

🔊Nigel has to fill out registration forms for his GEPT test next month. A registration kit was mailed to him several months ago, but he never got around to filling it out. Now the clock is ticking and he is in a hurry to get it done.

🔊First, he needs to put in some basic information: his name, address, ID number, age, grade, school, etc. There are also boxes to check: one for gender (male or female), learning disabilities (yes or no) and languages spoken (Mandarin or other).

🔊He then attaches a passport-sized picture to the form and sticks it in an envelope. All that is left to do now is to mail it and wait for a response. He crosses his fingers and hopes that the registration form gets there in time.

🔊These two are up to no good. They are fooling around with their father’s personal stereo. Maybe they just want to listen to a CD or the radio or something. The little girl looks like she just woke up because she is still wearing her pink pajamas. She plays with the knobs as her brother tries to eject a cassette tape.

🔊This stereo has a CD player on the top. It also has a radio and a cassette player built in. Because it has three functions, there are a lot of buttons on it.

🔊The CD player has separate controls. It has a skip button for skipping ahead to the next track or going back to the previous track. It also has fast-forward and rewind buttons. Other buttons are eject, play, stop, and pause.

🔊The tape deck has its own controls as well. Its buttons are fast forward, rewind, stop, play, pause, record and eject. Pretty much the same controls as the CD, but you can’t skip a track like you can with a CD.

🔊The radio basically has one knob. It is for tuning in a radio station. Some radios have a seek button for finding a strong signal. There is also a switch that enable you to change the frequency from AM to FM radio.

🔊All the components on the stereo share some basic controls: a couple of buttons to adjust the sound quality and one for the volume. There is also an input on the front to connect a set of headphones. Sometimes there is also a microphone input for recording.

🔊These are grizzly bears. They live in a small cage at the zoo. Their cage is bare except for a few dead trees to climb on and a small dirty pond to swim in. They don’t look happy.

🔊Grizzlies are the second largest type of bear in the world. Only the polar bear is larger. By comparison, Taiwan’s black bear is much smaller than the grizzly.

🔊Many people may think they are mostly hunters, but this isn’t true. These giants eat lots of berries, grasses and some meat. But they are opportunists and will always take advantage of whatever food presents itself.

🔊A long time ago they roamed freely on the plains of North America. Now the majestic giants are restricted to mountainous, forested and other isolated areas where they can avoid people.

🔊Grizzlies are quite solitary animals and don’t live in groups. Sometimes they gather along rivers to fish, but they usually avoid each other and have very large territories. Keeping them in small cages with other bears will make them very unhappy.

🔊In the winter time grizzlies hibernate. They crawl into dens in late fall or early winter and sleep until spring. This is also when females, called sows, give birth to cubs, usually two.

🔊Baby grizzlies are very small and helpless. This is why sows are extremely protective of their cubs and are to be considered dangerous whenever they have cubs with them.

🔊Cubs will stay with their mother for about two years. They learn to hunt and find food at this time with their mother’s help and protection. But when the time to leave eventually comes, they will be forced out on their own so that mom can breed again.

🔊Maggie had been staring at her homework for some time. She likes to try and do it by herself, but this particular question is just too difficult.

🔊“Mom, I don’t understand this question,” little Maggie cries. “Can you help me with it?”

🔊“Sure. What seems to be the trouble?” her mother, Eva, kindly asks.

🔊“Can you look at this question?” she asks still staring deeply into her book.

🔊“Let me see.” Her mother takes the book and begins to read it over.

🔊“I don’t understand what they are asking in the second question. It says ‘what did Tom buy when he WENT to the store?’” Maggie asks as her frustration grows.

🔊“Oh. I see. You don’t know what ‘went’ means,” Eva says, trying to calm down her daughter.

🔊“Exactly!” Maggie replies.

🔊“’Went’ is simply the past form of ‘go’,” her mother explains and then continues with an example. “Today, I ‘go’ to the store and yesterday, I ‘went’ to the store.”

🔊Maggie grins as it suddenly becomes clear to her.

🔊“I wish I would have asked you earlier instead of wasting my time dwelling on it,” she says as the frustration begins to disappear.

🔊“What’s going on here?” Nick, Maggie’s brother, asks as he leans over his mother’s shoulder.

🔊Nick never likes to be left out of anything. He always wants to be the center of attention.

🔊“Did I miss something?” he asks.

🔊“Nothing going on here,” Eva replies. “Why don’t you get back to your own homework?”

🔊“This is more exciting than algebra. Besides, I’m finished,” he boasts.

🔊“Well…” Eva pauses and tries to quickly think of something to get rid of him. “Then go wash the dishes.”

🔊Nick drops his head like a dog that was caught doing something bad. His smile twists into an ugly frown and he slowly moves toward the kitchen.

🔊“That should get rid of him for a while.” Eva winks at Maggie and then continues to help her with her homework. “Now, where were we?”

🔊“Let’s go play on the slide,” Sophia shouted to her friend.

🔊“Last one there is a rotten egg!” her friend, Oscar declared after he’d already got a good head start.

🔊The children giggled happily as they raced across the playground. Oscar, waving his hands prematurely in victory, was almost there when he suddenly tripped on his own shoelace and wiped out. Before he had a chance to figure out what had happened,   Sophia whizzed past him.

🔊“I win!” she screamed.

🔊“That wasn’t fair,” Oscar whined. “I tripped.”

🔊“It serves you right for cheating, Mr. Head-start,” Sophia told him. “If you have to win by cheating, what’s the point?”

🔊“I guess so, but I was just having fun. I’m sorry,” Oscar confessed.

🔊“Okay. Let’s forget about it and play on the slide.”

🔊“After you,” Oscar said to Sophia. “Ladies first, you know.”

🔊The little girl in pink climbed the steep steps to the top of the slide. Then she sat at the top and gave herself a push.

🔊“Wee!” she happily yelled as she slid to the bottom.

🔊Next it was Oscar’s turn. “Watch this,” he said. He stood at the top and started sliding down on his feet. When he was about halfway to the bottom, his shoes suddenly squeaked to a stop, sending the wide-eyed boy sailing into the air.

🔊“Ahhh!” he screamed in terror before inevitably landing face first on the ground.

🔊Sophia ran to him as fast as she could.

🔊“Are you alright, Oscar?” she asked with deep concern.

🔊“Is that you Doraemon? I love you,” is all he said.

🔊Sophia ran off to get help.