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新概念英语四册３７课《衰老过程》（The Process of Ageing）,讲到了人类衰老的问题，笔者进而想到讲点关于中国人口的诸多问题，供各位朋友参考，同时也想给我的朋友们提个醒：“人无远虑，必有近忧！”，加强学习，踏实工作，同时还得学会理财，饱藏饥粮啊

贴出数张芝加哥大学校园的相片，缅怀那美丽和短暂的时光！

下面的英文材料是新概念四册第21课的文化背景资料，后面的中文部分是笔者修改过的课文第1、2段的中文译文，供各位朋友参考！

第一篇：Three Passions I Have Lived for!

Three passions,simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life,the longing for love,the search for knowledge,and the unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.these passions,like great winds,have blown me hither and thither,in a wayward course over a deep ocean of anguish,reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love,first, because it bring ecstasy--ecstasy so great that i would often have sacrificed all the rest of my life for a few hours for this joy.I have sought it,next,because it relieves loneliness---that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss.I have sought it ,finally,because in the union of love seen,in a mystic miniature,the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imaged.THis is what I sought,and though it might seem too good for human life,this is what---at last--I have found.

With equal passion I have found knowledge.I have wished to understand the hearts of men.I have wished to know why the stars shine...A little of this,but not much,I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible,led upward toward the heavens.But always pity brought me back to earth.Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart.Children in femine, victims tortured by opressors,helpless old people--a hated burden to their sons,and the whole world of loneliness,poverty,and pain make a mockery of what human life should be.I long to alleviate the evil,but I cann't,and I too suffer.This has been my life.I have found it worth living,and would gladly live it again if the chance offered me.

第二篇：The Road to Happiness

It is a commonplace among moralists that you cannot get happiness by pursuing it. This is only true if you pursue it unwisely. Gamblers at Monte Carlo are pursuing money, and most of them lose it instead, but there are other ways of pursuing money which often succeed. So it is with happiness. If you pursue it by means of drink, you are forgetting the hang-over. Epicurus pursued it by living only in congenial society and eating only dry bread, supplemented by a little cheese on feast days. His method proved successful in his case, but he was a valetudinarian, and most people would need something more vigorous. For most people, the pursuit of happiness, unless supplemented in various ways, is too abstract and theoretical to be adequate as a personal rule of life. But I think that whatever personal rule of life you may choose it should not, except in rare and heroic cases, be incompatible with happiness.

There are a great many people who have all the material conditions of happiness, i.e. health and a sufficient income, and who, nevertheless, are profoundly unhappy. In such cases it would seem as if the fault must lie with a wrong theory as to how to live. In one sense, we may say that any theory as to how to live is wrong. We imagine ourselves more different from the animals than we are. Animals live on impulse, and are happy as long as external conditions are favorable. If you have a cat it will enjoy life if it has food and warmth and opportunities for an occasional night on the tiles. Your needs are more complex than those of your cat, but they still have their basis in instinct. In civilized societies, especially in English-speaking societies, this is too apt to be forgotten. People propose to themselves some one paramount objective, and restrain all impulses that do not minister to it. A businessman may be so anxious to grow rich that to this end he sacrifices health and private affections. When at last he has become rich, no pleasure remains to him except harrying other people by exhortations to imitate his noble example. Many rich ladies, although nature has not endowed them with any spontaneous pleasure in literature or art, decide to be thought cultured, and spend boring hours learning the right thing to say about fashionable new books that are written to give delight, not to afford opportunities for dusty snobbism.

If you look around at the men and women whom you can call happy, you will see that they all have certain things in common. The most important of these things is an activity which at most gradually builds up something that you are glad to see coming into existence. Women who take an instinctive pleasure in their children can get this kind of satisfaction out of bringing up a family. Artists and authors and men of science get happiness in this way if their own work seems good to them. But there are many humbler forms of the same kind of pleasure. Many men who spend their working life in the city devote their weekends to voluntary and unremunerated toil in their gardens, and when the spring comes, they experience all the joys of having created beauty.

The whole subject of happiness has, in my opinion, been treated too solemnly. It had been thought that man cannot be happy without a theory of life or a religion. Perhaps those who have been rendered unhappy by a bad theory may need a better theory to help them to recovery, just as you may need a tonic when you have been ill. But when things are normal a man should be healthy without a tonic and happy without a theory. It is the simple things that really matter. If a man delights in his wife and children, has success in work, and finds pleasure in the alternation of day and night, spring and autumn, he will be happy whatever his philosophy may be. If, on the other hand, he finds his wife fateful, his children's noise unendurable, and the office a nightmare; if in the daytime he longs for night, and at night sighs for the light of day, then what he needs is not a new philosophy but a new regimen----a different diet, or more exercise, or what not.

Man is an animal, and his happiness depends on his physiology more than he likes to think. This is a humble conclusion, but I cannot make myself disbelieve it. Unhappy businessmen, I am convinced, would increase their happiness more by walking six miles every day than by any conceivable change of philosophy

《新概念四册》 07年2月班 半期补充资料

下面是《新概念四册》的半期补充资料，都是精妙无比的美文，希望朋友们认真阅读感悟哈，对英语的提高绝对有帮助！
其他喜欢英语的朋友们也不妨参考参考！

1. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud<我象一朵云，孤独地飘荡>

William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud//That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,//A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,// Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine,//And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line,//Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,// Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they//Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,//In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie//In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye// Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,// And dances with the daffodils.

2．Death, Be Not Proud! By John Donne（死神，你不要得意！ 约翰。多恩）

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee /
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,/
For, those, whom thou think, you do overthrow,/
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me. /
From rest and sleep, which but your pictures be,/
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow, /
And soonest our best men with you do go, /
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery./
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,/
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, /
10 And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well, /
And better then thy stroke; why swell you then; /
One short sleep past, wee wake eternally, /
And death shall be no more; death, thou shall die.

（注：thee是you的宾格；thou是you 的主格；art=are）

3. Lady Chatterley’s Lover，by D.H. Lawrence《查泰莱夫人的情人》，劳伦斯）

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

This was more or less Constance Chatterley's position. The war had brought the roof down over her head. And she had realized that one must live and learn. //She married Clifford Chatterley in 1917, when he was home for a month on leave. They had a month's honeymoon. Then he went back to Flanders: to be shipped over to England again six months later, more or less in bits. Constance, his wife, was then twenty-three years old, and he was twenty-nine. //His hold on life was marvelous. He didn't die, and the bits seemed to grow together again.

4. A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens（《双城记》， 查尔斯。狄更斯）

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil,---- in the superlative degree of comparison only.

5．Daisy Miller, by Henry James（《戴西。米勒》， 亨利。詹姆斯）

At the little town of Vevey, in Switzerland, there is a particularly comfortable hotel. There are, indeed, many hotels, for the entertainment of tourists is the business of the place, which, as many travelers will remember, is seated upon the edge of a remarkably blue lake--a lake that it behooves every tourist to visit. The shore of the lake presents an unbroken array of establishments of this order, of every category, from the "grand hotel" of the newest fashion, with a chalk-white front, a hundred balconies, and a dozen flags flying from its roof, to the little Swiss pension of an elder day, with its name inscribed in German-looking lettering upon a pink or yellow wall and an awkward summerhouse in the angle of the garden. One of the hotels at Vevey, however, is famous, even classical, being distinguished from many of its upstart neighbors by an air both of luxury and of maturity. In this region, in the month of June, American travelers are extremely numerous; it may be said, indeed, that Vevey assumes at this period some of the characteristics of an American watering place. There are sights and sounds which evoke a vision, an echo, of Newport and Saratoga. There is a flitting hither and thither of "stylish" young girls, a rustling of muslin flounces, a rattle of dance music in the morning hours, a sound of high-pitched voices at all times. You receive an impression of these things at the excellent inn of the "Trois Couronnes" and are transported in fancy to the Ocean House or to Congress Hall. But at the "Trois Couronnes," it must be added, there are other features that are much at variance with these suggestions: neat German waiters, who look like secretaries of legation; Russian princesses sitting in the garden; little Polish boys walking about held by the hand, with their governors; a view of the sunny crest of the Dent du Midi and the picturesque towers of the Castle of Chillon.

I hardly know whether it was the analogies or the differences that were uppermost in the mind of a young American, who, two or three years ago, sat in the garden of the "Trois Couronnes," looking about him, rather idly, at some of the graceful objects I have mentioned. It was a beautiful summer morning, and in whatever fashion the young American looked at things, they must have seemed to him charming. He had come from Geneva the day before by the little steamer, to see his aunt, who was staying at the hotel--Geneva having been for a long time his place of residence. But his aunt had a headache-- his aunt had almost always a headache--and now she was shut up in her room, smelling camphor, so that he was at liberty to wander about. He was some seven-and-twenty years of age; when his friends spoke of him, they usually said that he was at Geneva "studying." When his enemies spoke of him, they said--but, after all, he had no enemies; he was an extremely amiable fellow, and universally liked. What I should say is, simply, that when certain persons spoke of him they affirmed that the reason of his spending so much time at Geneva was that he was extremely devoted to a lady who lived there--a foreign lady--a person older than himself.

6. Nature, by R. W. Emerson（《自然》， 爱默生）

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchers of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us and invite us by the powers they supply to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among dry bones of the past or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines today also. There is more wool and flex in their fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own laws and worship.
Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great apparition that shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquire, to what end is nature?

　　　　　　　　　何谓渊博与境界？

　下课时，经常会在不经意间，听到有学生朋友说：“李老师的知识好渊博啊！李老师看的书好多啊！”每次听到这样的话，我都是诚惶诚恐，惭愧不已！
　　李某人何德何能，堪担此美誉？书诚然是读了一点，或许有点想法，但离渊博的境界，那实在是差得太远了！
　　先不说近现、代史上的大家，如陈寅恪、王国维、钱穆、梁启超、钱钟书、季羡林、南怀瑾、李敖等前辈，他们涉猎有多广，境界有多高，就是我身边接触的老师、学者，学问也是令人“高山仰止”。说句不好听的话，我给他们提鞋都不一定配！
　我随便举几个例子！
四川大学外语系才退休的林必果老师，学问极高，精通好几种语言，家里全是书。上次我看了他的一篇随笔，叫做《四大与西方的The Four Elements》,短短数千字，其论述里面就包括现代英语、中古英语、德语、法语、意大利语、拉丁语等资料文献，内容涵盖了马洛、莎士比亚、歌德、乔叟、雨果、但丁、贺拉斯、柏拉图的诸多作品。人品那更是高，一辈子没向权贵和名利低过头、折过腰！堪称学者之典范！
又如四川大学外国语学院的石坚老师，学问、心胸、气质、思想境界，在他的同龄人中可以说是unparalleled！虽已是四川大学的副校长，却无任何架子，对后生学辈诸多提携和照顾。上他的课，可以说得上是享受思想的盛宴！
又如新东方的王强老师，读书、藏书之多，涉猎之广，思想之敏锐，也是让我佩服得五体投地！上次聊天的时候，从德国的康德哲学，法国的文艺学、美学等入手，几句话就把现代和后现代的主线梳理得清清楚楚，让我是受益匪浅！古人说：“与君一席话，胜读十年书！”此言不虚！
Man, Know Thyself!人啊 认识你自己！这是古希腊德尔斐神庙篆刻的名言！所以，我时刻都在提醒自己，不能迷失自己，更清楚自己离他们有多远。
或许，我天资愚钝，永远都达不到大家们的那种境界！但是，我知道自己一直都在努力！

愿与追求自由和智慧的朋友们共勉！

阿杰
2007年2月7日夜
成都

　　

新概念四册（新版）推荐背诵的经典美文（ＧＲＥ班）

版主按：
应ＧＲＥ班朋友的要求，我推荐了以下新概念四册的十多篇经典美文，建议大家背诵哈！

祝大家杀鸡成功！Let’s Zheng together, and we’ll be Mengest!

其它喜爱英语，也想提高英语、挑战自我、提高记忆能力的朋友，也可以背诵这些优美的文章哈！

Lesson 5, Youth
Lesson 6, The Sporting Spirit
Lesson 8, Trading Standards
Lesson 11, How to Grow Old
Lesson 16, The Modern City
Lesson 21, William S. Hart and the Early Western Film
Lesson 24, Beauty
Lesson 25, Non-auditory Effects of Noise
Lesson 28, Patients and Doctors
Lesson 32, Galileo Reborn
Lesson 33, Education
Lesson 34, Adolescence
Lesson 39, What Every Writer Wants
Lesson 44, Patterns of Culture
Lesson 46, Hobbies
Lesson 47, The Great Escape

另外，我也强烈推荐《生而为赢》这本书上的文章，非常精彩！
这本书在大愚书店有售，不到十块钱！
下面是我推荐背诵的10篇文章！
Lesson 1, Youth (注意：这篇文章跟新四上的那篇不一样！)
Lesson 3, Companionship of Books
Lesson 11, What is Your Recovery Rate?
Lesson 14, The Goodness of Life
Lesson 16, Abundance is a Life Style
Lesson 21, The Love of Beauty
Lesson 23, Born to Win
Lesson 27, An October Sunrise
Lesson 29, Gettysburg Address

据ETS官方网站(www.ets.org)上得到最新消息，早在2006年ETS就宣布的新GRE考试（Revised GRE general）改革将于2007年9月正式开始。ETS官方网站显示新GRE改革的具体时间安排如下表：

2007年春季
完成考试辅导材料的准备

考点时间表确定

2007年7月
新GRE考试开始接受报名

2007年9月
新GRE考试正式实行

开始实行网络化考试

2007年10月
新的语文和数学分数换算表确定

2007年11月
前3 个考点和其他考点的分数公布

考试的百分比分数在网上和分数报告中公布

新旧考分对照表将在网上公布

旧GRE考试分数将可换算成新标准下分数并提供新分数报告

给分数接受方的考分报告完成

2008年1月
分数分布报告在网上公布


　　据悉，此次新GRE考试将在考试形式与内容上引入重大变化，主要目的有两个，一是为了解决连续的自适应考试所带来的考试安全（利用题目的重复出现作弊）问题；二是希望通过减少语文和分析性写作中背诵成分所占比例提高考试的有效性。另外通过改革，ETS希望给研究生院提供更好的关于申请者情况的评估，在考试中更多考察对研究生学习直接相关的内容。

1、改革后考试的主要优点：

考试安全性提高：有了新的考试计划来解决现在和将来可能出现的安全问题。

考试成绩对于考生的评估有效性提高：新的考试减少了背诵对于考试的作用。

考试编制正确性提高：新的考试更直接考察与研究生学习有关的技巧。

考试形式更友好：比起以前机考的自适应形式来，新采用的线性的考试形式对考生来说更熟悉，考试中考生可以跳过一些题目，也可以回头检查，修改答案等。

2 内容的主要变化：

　　语文主要考察的内容有：理解词语、句子和整篇文章，理解词语之间以及概念之间的关系，选择重点；能区分重点与非重点之间的关系；总结文章，理解文章的结构。从论文中分析并得出结论；用不完整的信息进行分析；找出作者的前提假设；理解不同层次的意义。更强调与研究生学习有关的技巧，比如复杂的推理。更强调在上下文中的逻辑分析。增多了阅读理解问题的数量，加大了文章的多样性。去掉了类比和反义词两种题型，减少单独对词汇的考察。语文分成2个40分钟的部分

数学主要考察理解、解释和分析数量信息的能力，对于基本数学知识如算数、几何、代数、概率和统计等的掌握。新的考试加强了对数据分析，几何以及实际数学问题的考察。考试会提供一个有四个功能的计算器，以减少对计算的考察，增加了用键盘输入答案的题型。数学分成2个40分钟的部分

　　批判性思维和分析性写作部分用了新的名字代替了原来的分析性写作。这部分主要考察考生清楚有效陈述复杂思想的能力；检查观点和证据；用相关的例子来支持自己的观点；能完成重点突出、连贯的论文；能用便准的书面英文写作。新的考试将减低用记忆好的材料来写作的可能。此部分中的issue和argument各为30分钟，作文的电子版会发给接受考分的学校

3 考试形式上的变化包括：

　　考试将不再采用根据答题者所给答案正确与否而改变考题难度的自适应考试，而是用线性的考试，所有同时参加考试的考生都会遇到相同的考题。

　　新的考试每年大约30次，在某区域内的考点数量将由该区域的参加考试频次数量决定。

　　为了防止作弊，考试的开始时间会根据不同时区错开安排。建立了一个有约3500个网页的网络化考试系统。

4 考试分数的变化：

　　新的考试成绩的范围在130到170之间，最小分值为1分，平均分为150分，最后的精确分数标准将在第一次考试之后确定。

5考试的样题可在官方网站上下载：点击进入
　　新东方提醒广大学员，新GRE考试虽然取消了中国学生最头疼的类比和反义词，但是新东方GRE专家经过对新GRE样题的研究，总体来看，新GRE考试要难于现行的GRE考试，所以准备参加GRE考试的同学，不要放过今年6月的考试机会。

　　另外，准备参加新GRE考试的学员也不要担心，如果新GRE考试在中国大陆推后实行（像新托福一样），ETS在中国必将加考现行GRE考试。如果ETS在今年秋天在中国大陆如期实行新GRE考试，成都新东方的新GRE培训课程也会如期推出，目前成都新东方国外部已经专门成立新GRE教研组，对新GRE考试进行研究。

爱情、婚姻、外遇与生活！

版主按：
这是一篇非常有意思的文章，讲述了什么是爱情、婚姻、外遇与生活，深入浅出，引人深思！虽然有点老，还是再次推荐给没有读过的朋友读读哈！


拉图有一天问老师苏格拉底什么是爱情
柏拉图叫他到麦田走一次
要不回头地走
在途中要摘一棵最大最好的麦穗
但只可以摘一次
柏拉图觉得很容易
充满信心地出去
谁知过了半天他仍没有回去
最后，他垂头丧气出现在老师跟前诉说空手而回的原因：
" 很难得看见一株看似不错的，却不知是不是最好，
不得已，因为只可以摘一次，只好放弃，再看看有没有更好的，
到发现已经走到尽头时，才发觉手上一棵麦穗也没有
这时，苏格拉底告诉他：
"那就是爱情"

柏拉图有一天又问老师苏格拉底什么是婚姻
苏格拉底叫他到杉树林走一次
要不回头地走
在途中要取一棵最好、最适合用来当圣诞树用的树材
但只可以取一次
苏格拉底有了上回的教训
充满信心地出去
半天之后，他一身疲惫地拖了一棵看起来直挺、翠绿，却有点稀疏的杉树
苏格拉底问他："这就是最好的树材吗？"
柏拉图回答老师：
"因为只可以取一棵，好不容易看见一棵看似不错的又发现时间、体力已经快不够用了，也不管是不是最好的，所以就拿回来了
这时，苏格拉底告诉他：
"那就是婚姻"

柏拉图又有一天又问老师苏格拉底什么是外遇
苏格拉底还是叫他到树林走一次
可以来回走
在途中要取一支最好看的花
柏拉图又充满信心地出去
两个小时之后，他精神抖擞地带回了一支颜色艳丽但稍稍焉掉的花，
苏格拉底问他："这就是最好的花吗？"
柏拉图回答老师：
"我找了两小时，发觉这是最盛开最美丽的花，但我采下带回来的路上，它就逐渐枯萎下来"
这时，苏格拉底告诉他：
"那就是外遇"

又有一天又问老师苏格拉底什么是生活
苏格拉底还是叫他到树林走一次
可以来回走
在途中要取一支最好看的花
柏拉图有了以前的教训
又充满信心地出去
过了三天三夜，他也没有回来。
苏格拉底只好走进树林里去找他，最后发现柏拉图已在树林里安营扎寨。
苏格拉底问他："你找着最好看的花么？"
柏拉图指着边上的一朵花说："这就是最好看的花吗。"
苏格拉底问："为什么不把它带出去呢？"
柏拉图回答老师：
"我如果把它摘下来，它马上就枯萎。即使我不摘它，它也迟早会枯。所以我就在它还盛开的时候，住在它边上。等它凋谢的时候，再找下一朵。这已经是我找着的第二朵最好看的花。"
这时，苏格拉底告诉他：
"你已经懂得生活的真谛了"