大学英语阅读教程(二)
Warm Up 1. Children with what kind of family background are most likely to be college students ? 2. Why did Archie give up his favorite sport? Archie Against the Odds 1 For Archie McNealy, the road between two worlds started when he was a fifth-grader at Dunbar Elementary School in Over town, Fla., part of Miami's inner city. That's when he met John Flickinger, director of Summerbridge Miami, a nonprofit program that helps disadvantaged kids prepare for high school. Little Archie was sitting in the middle of the front row. 2 "He was so excited his legs were bouncing up and down," Flickinger remembers. 3 Flickinger was telling the class how it was possible to achieve your dreams just by taking one step after the other---the future would be there for you. When he asked if anyone was interested in Summerbridge's summer school, Archie was the first to raise his hand. 4 Passing out the applications, Flick-inger told the children to answer the questions in the first section themselves, then ask their parents or guardians to fill out the rest. When Archie got to that part, it never occurred to him to ask his grandmother, with whom he lived, for help. She'd dropped out of school in the ninth grade. So he did it himself. "Because it is good for his future," he wrote. 5 Flickinger was stunned when he received Archie's application. It seemed impossible that a child would have such ingenuity and guts. But there it was: the entire application filled out in the same childish scrawl. "That kind of motivation was way beyond what I'd ever seen before," he says. So in the summer of 1992 Archie attended Summerbridge. Different Path 6 Archie was born into a family seemingly destined for heartbreak. His mother abandoned him and his sister soon after he was born. His father, who died of stomach cancer when Archie was 14, was a role model in an upside-down way: he was a man who sold drugs, yet told his son to live a life as different from his as he could. 7 One night when Archie's cousin had been sent to jail, his father came into his room. "I'll never forget this," Archie says. "He pleaded with me to never, ever get into trouble." 8 And then he said something Archie has tucked inside his heart ever since. "He told me I was special. That I had what it took to make it." 9 Almost all his life, Archie has lived with his father's mother, Emma Harris, a no-nonsense woman he calls ‘my mom.’ Her two-bedroom unit in an Overtown housing project is immaculate and has framed Biblical and inspirational quotes hanging on the walls. Though her words may be few, the ones she does speak mean a lot to Archie. 10 Like the time he got picked up by the police. He and a friend, both about 14, were walking to a grocery when they were stopped and taken to the police station as suspects in a robbery. When the police let them go, Archie's grandmother came to pick him up. "I didn't do anything, and I told her," he says. "She was real quiet. Then she looked at me and said one thing: 'You turning out just like your dad.' That went straight into me." 11 Archie could have rebelled and made it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead, he saw the truth of her words, saw how easily he could head down that path. So he used it as a reminder of what could be---if he didn't make his grandmother proud. 12 Early on, he got the feeling that
his grandmother just wanted him to graduate from high school and
get a decent job. After all, not a single person in his family
had ever graduated from high school, let alone college.But
in 1996 he was accepted by Between Two Worlds 13 On this day in September 1998, Archie---now a tall, lanky senior with a chiseled, mature face and DAWG (Dwelling
Always With God) tattooed on his barefoot through his grandmother's moonlit kitchen
to pour himself a bowl of cereal. In a couple of hours he will
be at school, surrounded by some of the richest kids in 14 Archie takes one last look over
his essay on the human mind, then races out the door and chases
the No.2 city bus around the corner of 15 The contrast between Archie's life of poverty in Overtown and school days at affluent Ransom is the stuff of a modern-day Tale of Two Cities. Archie is on full scholarship and has to live on what he makes from a part-time job and on what his grandmother can share of her welfare check. "It's tough," he says. "But I don't want to drop out and end up on a street corner selling drugs and thinking, 'Man, what if I'd gone to Ransom and done the best I could?"' 16 So many others would give up. But for Archie, Ransom is a rung on the ladder to better times. He wants nothing more than to go to college. 17 By the world's standards, Archie has the statistical right to become a hoodlum. According to the U.S. Department of Education, two out of three high-schoolers won't make it to college if they belong to a single-parent household, have an older sibling who dropped out of high school, repeat a grade, change schools more than twice or have lower than average grades. Archie fits three of these categories: He has no parents. His older sister dropped out of high school in the 11th grade. And before he went to Summerbridge, his reading and writing levels were below average. 18Yet Archie has something statistics don't reveal, something he made clear when he applied to Summerbridge. One of the questions on the form was, What makes you different from the other kids you know? "I believe in myself," he wrote. 20 It's just that right now the whole experience feels like a tug of war. "Sometimes I feel bad because my friends at home think I'm trying to fog them when I say I can't stay with them in the park at night," he says. "They tell me I'm afraid. I tell them not a lot of good comes from hanging out and having nothing to do." 21"A lot of the Ransom kids are really nice," he adds. "But we don't have much in common." 22 Still, Archie tries to be a part of both worlds. Fernando Tamayo, 18, who drives a Mercedes and lives in a house with a pool and basketball court, is one of the few wealthy kids Archie hooks up with on weekends. He describes Archie this way: "He's super-cool. A lot of kids want to know him better, but he lives real far away, and it's hard for him to do things. It makes me feel bad, kind of guilty, that I have all this stuff just because I was born into it." Survival Skills 23 As Archie arrives at Ransom each morning, the geographilcal changes are stunning. But the most amazing change is in Archie. 24 "See, where I live you have to put on this face, like Don't mess with me. It's a form of protection. But here people smile and say hi. The strangest thing is that the kids here put their backpacks down in the middle of the quad and leave them there. They trust their stuff is going to be there when they get back. That took me a while to get used to." 25 David Clark, dean of students at
Ransom, knows what Archie is going through. A black man who was once on
scholarship at Ransom, he's the only staff member Archie has invited into his
home. "I drove there once, and there had to be 15, 16 people in a little
park area smoking," explains 26 And so Archie has to make a
transformation between here and there. "Otherwise," 27 When the hour-and-a-half bus rides or the isolation of being so different brings Archie down, he fights the temptation to give up with an unfailing belief in the future. 28 Take the way he has to leave basketball practice early. It's his favorite sport. But every year, he joins the team and then has to drop out because he can't get enough practice in. 29"It was after basketball practice, and I had to run to the bus stop to catch the last bus out," says Archie. "The other kids were driving by in their Mercedes and Range Rovers and it was like, 'Man, I'm tired of this.'" 30 One week later Archie quits the team. "It's okay," he says. "It's either that or risk my grades. And nothing is going to make me do that. I'm going to college." (1,640 words) ( Lori Teresa Yearwood Reader’s Digest 1999 ) Words and Expressions: guardian [5^a:di[n] n. 监护人 ingenuity [indVi5njU:[ti] n. 精巧 gut [gQt] n. （口） 勇气 scrawl [skrR:l] n. 潦草的笔迹 destined [5destind] a 命中注定的 housing project （尤制公家出资营造供低收入家庭居住的）住宅区 immaculate [i5mAkjUl[] a. 无污迹的 Biblical [5biblik[l ] a. 圣经的 prophecy [5prRfisi ] n 预言 prestigious [pre5stid[s] a 有声望的 lanky [5lANki] a 瘦长的 chiseled [5tFiz[ld] a 轮廓鲜明的 tattoo [tA5tU:] v 连续有节奏地敲击 labyrinth [5lAb[rinW] n 曲折 affluent [5AflU[nt] a 富裕的 rung [rQN] n. （喻）阶梯 hoodlum [5hU:dlEm] n 小阿飞 sibling [ 5sibliN] n 兄弟姐妹 repeat a grade 留级 attorney [[5t[:ni] n 律师 a tug of war 拔河 hook up with 长时间 mess with sb 招惹 backpack [5bAkpAk] n 背包 quad [kwRd] n （口）（尤指大学学院的）四方院 dice [dais ] n 骰子 bring down （美俚）使沮丧 Tale Of Two Cities «双城记» COMPREHENSION CHECK I. Short answer questions: 1. How did Archie’s grandmother encourage him to be a good man? 2. Why did the author say “Archie has the statistical right to become a hoodlum”? 3. What made contribution to Archie’s success? 4. What have you got from Archie’s success? II. Translate the underlined sentences. 1. When Archie got to that part, it never occurred to him to ask his grandmother, with whom he lived, for help. 2. His father, who died of stomach cancer when Archie was 14, was a role model in an upside-down way: he was a man who sold drugs, yet told his son to live a life as different from his as he could. 3. After all, not a single person in his family had ever graduated from high school, let alone college. 4. The children of the well-to-do doctor and his attorney wife were good role models because they rarely doubted that they were going to college. 5. "See, where I live you have to put on this face, like Don't mess with me. It's a form of protection. But here people smile and say hi. Reference key: I. 1. She hang Biblical and inspirational quotes on the wall. At other times, she spoke little, but what se said meant a lot to Archie. 2. His family background and his level of reading and writing are all against him to be a college student. What’s more, he lives in a housing project. 3. His strong self-confidence, unfailing belief in the future and the encouragement of his teachers and grandmother . 4. Just as an English proverb goes,“ God help those who help themselves.” II. 1. 阿奇写到这里时，从为想到请与他一起生活的外祖母帮忙。 2. 阿奇14岁时，父亲死于胃癌。他是一个矛盾的榜样：自己是个毒品贩, 嘱咐阿奇要尽可能过一种与他不同的生活。 3. 毕竟，这个家庭中从未有人高中毕业，更不用说大学了。 4. 剧中有个富有的医生，妻子是个律师，他们的孩子成为他的好榜样，因为他们深信自己会上大学。 5. 一小时半的公车和与别的同学的差异而导致的孤立使他感到沮丧时，他就靠对未来坚定的信念去克制想要放弃的念头。 |