英文美文赏析
经典美文,经得起时间的考验,被历史证明是最有价值、最重要的文化精髓,思想宏远,构思巧妙,语言精美。加强经典美文诵读与积累,并对学生加以写作指导,做到读写训练有效结合,能让学生有效地提高写作能力。下面是本站小编带来的英语美文阅读，欢迎阅读!
解读石油价格(Getting real about gas prices)
Woe! Woe to the politician who is perceived to be failing to do something about the soaring price of gasoline, which has jumped about 20 percent in the past six months. AAA estimates the average two-car household will consume more than 1,200 gallons of gasoline a year. That means the 50-cents-a-gallon increase over the past year has families spending an extra $600 of after-tax money each year, squeezing middle- and low-income families the most.
可悲!在过去的六个月，政客们对石油价格骤升20%束手无策真是可悲。每星期，当司机加油时,总感觉被宰了。AAA估计平均有两部车的家庭一年要消耗1200多加仑汽油，也就是说，每加仑汽油升价50美分就使这个家庭在交税以后，还要多付600美元，这使得中下收入的家庭更加拮据。
Chinese drivers. This time nobody is sure that the spike in oil prices will be Asia.,who could have imagined that India and China would become such big consumers? Chinese demand grew by 33 percent last year and by an additional 20 percent this year, pushing consumption to over 6 million barrels a day. China is on the verge of an exploding demand for automobiles. Gasoline consumption will have risen from about 10 percent of China's oil needs 10 years ago to an estimated 40 percent by the end of this decade, when private car ownership is expected to soar to almost 28 million. Those people with incomes high enough to afford autos in India and China are growing by about 12 percent a year. No longer will 80 percent of the world's energy be used by only 20 percent of the world's population.
在中国，司机都认为这次石油价格骤升不会是短期的。对于亚洲，谁曾想得到印度和中国会成为这么大的消耗国。中国需求去年增长33%，今年还要再增加20%，使得消耗量每天超过600万桶。中国对汽车的需求很快就要激增，当私人汽车增加到2800万时，汽油的消耗也要从十年前的10%增加到这个年代底的估计的40%。在中国和印度能买得起汽车的人以每年12%增加。世界能源的80%不再是只被20%的人口所使用。
And what about supply? No one is paying attention to the experts' warnings, any more than they did nearly 50 years ago. Back then, the United States was the world's biggest oil producer, pumping more than half as much again as the Soviet Union and twice as much as many Middle Eastern countries. But the Cassandras, as it turned out, were right. U.S. production peaked, in 1970, at about 10 million barrels a day and is now at least 30 percent below that. As for the OPEC countries, we know very little about their potential for new energy sources. Most of their oil comes from a handful of old oil fields, concentrated in a small area called the "golden triangle." It has been years since any significant new fields have been found. Whether Saudi Arabia could step up production from its current level, 8 million barrels a day, to 20 million barrels a day by 2020 is questionable. Political turmoil, meanwhile, besets producers like Venezuela and Nigeria.
那么供应呢?尽管专家在50年前就提出警告,但没人注意.那时,美国是世界最大的石油出产国,出油量比苏联多一半,是一些中东国家有二倍.但事实证明,预言家是正确的.美国在1970年顶端时,每天出产大约1000万桶,而现在至少下降了30%.至于OPEC国家,我们对于他的能源潜力知之甚少。他们的大多数石油来自老的油井，集中在“金三角”地带，在新的油田发现之前，这状况还要持续很多年。沙特阿拉伯半岛能否在现在的每天800万桶水平上提高到2020年的2000万桶还是个问题。同时，政治上的骚乱困扰像委内瑞拉、尼日利亚这样的生产国。
So a crisis looms. Matthew Simmons of Strategic Economic Decisions says that the crisis will be global because the $3 trillion-a-year energy industry underpins every aspect of society。
所以能源危机正在迫近，经济战略中心的Matthew Simmons说这个危机是全球性的，因为每年3万亿的能源行业支撑着社会的各个方面。
What to do? We must provide an environment certain to attract the huge capital investment necessary to enhance and improve production of every energy resource--oil, gas, nuclear, hydro, coal, and renewables. The auto industry has shown how it can improve fuel efficiency, so we must work out a timely updating of such standards for cars, light trucks, and SUVs。No progress will be possible, however, without sacrifice. We will pay more dearly ,if we procrastinate. Failure to develop an energy policy means we can look forward to a lifetime of enriching the obscene sheiks, of wasting treasure and blood to defend the Middle East while impoverishing ordinary Americans and hobbling our economy.
那我们应该怎样做?我们必须营造一个环境，确保吸引大量的资金以提高每一种能源的生产，如石油，天然气，核能，氢，煤和可再生的能源。汽车生产业已经向我们展示了他们如何提高燃料效率，而我们要必须及时地对汽车，轻卡，越野车，制定一个新的这样的标准。任何进步都必须付出代价，如果我们在耽搁的话，就要付出更大的代价。如果能源政策失败就意味着我们一辈子要富足那个猥琐的酋长，一辈子要浪费钱财和鲜血去保卫中东，而同时我们国民贫穷，经济不前。
英语美文阅读篇二Are you a good tipper?
You're out to dinner. The food was delicious and the service was fine. You decide to leave a big fat tip - why? The answer may not be as simple as you think.
当你在外面吃饭的时候，食物可口，服务周到，于是你决定留下一笔丰盛的小费——这是为什么呢?答案也许不像你想得那么简单。
Tipping, psychologists have found, is rarely just service. Instead, studies have shown tipping can be influenced by psychological reactions to an array of factors ranging from the waiter's choice of words to how they carry themselves while taking orders to the bill's total. Even how much waiters remind customers of themselves can determine how much change they pocket by the end of the night.
心理学家发现，给小费不仅仅是因为服务。研究表明人们给小费会受到对一系列因素产生的心理反应所影响。这些因素包括从服务员的措辞到结帐时他们的举止。甚至连服务员能在多大程度上让顾客想到自己也决定了他一天下来能够拿到多少小费。
"Previous studies have shown that mimicry enhances positive feelings for the mimicker," wrote Rick van Baaren, a social psychology professor at the University of Nikmegen in the Netherlands, in a recent study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. "These studies indicate that people who are being mimicked become more generous toward the person who mimics them."
荷兰Nikmegen大学的社会心理学教授里克·范·巴伦在《实验社会心理学》杂志上最近发表的一项研究中写到：“以前的研究已经表明模仿能够增加人们对模仿者的好感。这些研究表明被模仿者对模仿自己的人更慷慨大方。”
To detect the benefit of copying the customer, van Baaren and his colleagues surveyed staff in American-styled restaurants in southern Holland. Among a group of 59 waitstaff, van Baaren requested that half respond to diner's meal orders with a positive phrase such as, "Coming up!"
为了弄清模仿消费者的好处，范·巴伦和他的同事们对荷兰南部美国风味餐馆的员工们进行了调查。在一组总共59名服务员中，范·巴伦要求他们中的一半跟点餐者说“就来!”等明确的答复。
Those in the other half were instructed to repeat the orders and preferences back to the customers. Van Baaren then compared their take-home. The results were clear -it pays to imitate your customer. The copycat waiters earned almost double the amount of tip than the other group.
另一半服务员则被要求把顾客点的餐和喜好重复一遍。范·巴伦随后比较了他们所得的小费，结果很清楚——模仿顾客对服务员有好处。模仿顾客的服务员获得的小费差不多是另一组服务员所得的两倍。
Leonard Green and Joel Myerson, psychologists at Washington University in St. Louis, found the generosity of a tipper may be limited by their bill. After compiling data from nearly 1,000 tips left for waiters, cab drivers and hair stylists, they found that tip percentages in all three areas dropped as customers' bills went up.
圣路易斯华盛顿大学的心理学家莱昂纳德和乔尔·迈尔森发现，给小费者人是否慷慨可能会受到帐单金额的影响。通过汇总服务员、出租车司机和发型师收到的近1000份小费的数据，他们发现这三个领域中小费的比例都随着顾客帐单金额的上升而下降。
In fact, tip percentages appear to plateau when bills topped 0 and a bill for 0 garnered the worker no bigger percentage tip than a bill for 0.
当帐单超过100美元后，小费的比例变化不明显。一笔200美元的消费对于服务员来说获得小费的比例并不比100美元的消费高。
Why? Green has his theories, including one he attributes to an old Woody Allen saying: "Eighty percent of success in life is showing up."
这是为什么呢?格林有他自己的理论，其中的一条他总结为伍迪·艾伦的名言：“生活中80%的成功是自我表现。”
"That's also a point of tipping," Green says. "You have to give a little extra to the cab driver for being there to pick you up and something to the waiter for being there to serve you. If they weren't there you'd never get any service. So I think part of the idea of a tip is for just being there."
格林说：“这一点对于给小费来说也很重要。对于接你的出租车司机和为你服务的服务员，你不得不给一点额外的小费。如果他们不存在，你就得不到任何服务，所以我认为给小费一部分是因为他们的存在。”
Green explains since everyone would earn the "just being there" tip, it's inevitable that portion would make up a larger percentage of smaller bills.
格林解释说，既然每个人都会获得“因为存在”的那部分小费，所以小费在较小金额的消费中必然占较大的比例。
英语美文阅读篇三Do animals Think?
The question has often been asked, Do animals think? I believe that some of them think a great deal. Many of them are like children in their sports. We notice this to be true very often with dogs and cats; but it is true with other animals as well.
Some birds are very lively in their sports; and the same is true with some insects. The ants, hardworking as they are, have their times for play. They run races; they wrestle; and sometimes they have mock fights together. Very busy must be their thoughts while engaged in these sports.
There are many animals, however, that never play; their thoughts seem to be of the more sober kind. We never see frogs engaged in sport. They all the time appear to be very grave. The same is true of the owl, who always looks as if he were considering some important question.
Animals think much while building their houses. The bird searches for what it can use in building its nest, and in doing this it thinks. The beavers think as they build their dams and their houses. They think in getting their materials, and also in arranging them, and in plastering them together with mud. Some spiders build houses which could scarcely have been made except by some thinking creature.
As animals think, they learn. Some learn more than others. The parrot learns to talk, though in some other respects it is quite stupid. The mocking bird learns to imitate a great many different sounds. The horse is not long in learning many things connected with the word which he has to do. The shepherd dog does not know as much about most things as some other dogs, and yet he understands very well how to take care of sheep.
Though animals think and learn, they do not make any real improvement in their ways of doing things, as men do. Each kind of bird has its own way of building a nest, and it is always the same way. And so of other animals. They have no new fashions, and learn none from each other. But men, as you know, are always finding new ways of building houses, and improved methods of doing almost all kinds of labor.
Many of the things that animals know how to do they seem to know either without learning, or in some way which we cannot understand. They are said to do such things by instinct; but no one can tell what instinct is. It is by this instinct that birds build their nests and beavers their dams and huts. If these things were all planned and thought out just as men plan new houses, there would be some changes in the fashions of them, and some improvements.
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