Letter, Reading Skills G3p03

 

July 1, 19_

Dear Ah Fang,

With this letter I would like to introduce myself to you as a new pen friend. I am eighteen years old and have just graduated from Central High School. High school studies in this country last four to six years. In a few months I will enter a university to study education. I hope to be a teacher.

My interests, besides my studies, are art, music, and sports. I especially enjoy swimming, horseback riding, and skiing. It doesn't snow much where I live, so when the skiing season comes, I have to travel to the mountains about ten hours away by car.

I am enclosing a photograph of myself. I would like to hear from you soon. Please tell me about yourself, your interests, and life in your country. I'm looking forward to being your pen friend and exchanging ideas on various subjects, even though we live so far away from each other.

Your friend,

Bob

Your reply to the letter may begin like this:

July 19, 19_

Dear Bob,

I was very glad to receive your letter of July 4.Thank you for writing. I would be very happy to be your pen friend.

....

VII. Read the following passage, then translate it into Chinese orally:

**Reading Skills**

If you want to get the most out of the study of a language, you must also read for pleasure: novels, plays, travel books, and so on. And in reading books of this kind the important thing is to get on with the reading; to try to grasp what the writer is going to tell you in the book as a whole. This is impossible if you stop and think over the meaning of every single word which happens to be unfamiliar. You cannot enjoy a story if you stop half a dozen times on every page in order to look up words in the dictionary. You may even prevent yourself from understanding the story as a whole by doing this.

When you are reading books of this kind, therefore, you will usually have to rely mainly on the context to help you. If you meet an unfamiliar word, do not let it take too much of your attention from the main thread of the story. In all probability you will meet the same word again a few pages later on in a slightly different context, and each time you see it your understanding of it will become more exact.