1、Lesson 1 NapoleonToday, Im going to talk to you about one of the most important historical figures in European history: Napoleon Bonaparte. Let s start by talking about his early life. Napoleon was born in 1769 on the island of Corsica. When he was only 10 years old, his father sent him to military
2、school in France. Napoleon was not a very good student in most of his classes, but he excelled in mathematics and military science. When he was 16 years old,he joined the French army. In that year 1785,he began the military career that would bring him fame ,power,riches and finally defeat. Napoleon
3、became a general in the French army at the young age of 24. Napoleon had many victories on the battlefield but he also became involved in French law and politics. And in 1804, at the age of 35,he became the first emperor of the France.Napoleon was many things. He was, first of all, a brilliant milit
4、ary leader. His soldiers were ready to die for him. As a result, N.won many military victories. At one time he controlled most of Europe, but some countries, including England, Russia, and Austria fought fiercely against him. His defeat “his end”came when he decided to attack Russia. In this militar
5、y campaign against Russia, he lost most of his army.The great French conqueror died alone deserted by his family and friends in 1821. Napoleon was only 51 years old when he died.=Lesson 2 Pompeii The lecture for this class is about the city of Pompeii. A natural disaster occurred there almost 2000 y
6、ears ago.Today many rich people who live in large metropolitan areas such as Beijing, Paris and New York leave the city in the summer. They go to the mountains or to the seashore to escape the city noise and heat.2,000 years ago, wealthy Romans did the same thing.They left the city of Rome in the su
7、mmer. Many of these wealthy Romans spent their summers in the city of Pompeii, a beautiful city, located on the Bay of Naples.In the summer of the year 79 C.E., a young Roman boy who later became a very famous Roman historian was visiting his uncle in P The boys name was Pliny the Younger. One day P
8、liny was looking up at the sky. He saw a frightening sight. It was a very large dark cloud. This black cloud rose high into the sky. What Pliny saw was the eruption of the volcano called Mount Vesuvius.Rock and ash flew through the air. The city of P . was at the foot of Mt. V When the volcano first
9、 erupted, many people were able to get out of the city and to escape death. In fact, 18,000 people escaped the terrible disaster. Unfortunately, there was not enough time for everyone to escape. More than 2,000 people died. These unlucky people were buried alive under the volcanic ash.The eruption l
10、asted for about 3 days. When the eruption was over, P . was buried under 20 feet of volcanic rock and ash. The city of P . was forgotten for almost 1,700 years.In the year of 1748 an Italian farmer was digging on his farm. As he was digging, he uncovered a part of a wall of the ancient city of P Soo
11、n archaeologists began to dig in the area. As time went by, much of the ancient city of P. was uncovered. Today tourists come from all over the world to see the ruins of the famous city of Pompeii.=Lesson 4 Roller CoasterLets talk about the physics involved in a ride on a roller coaster. Im sure man
12、y of you have taken a ride on a roller coaster. A simple roller coaster consists of a frame with a track on it. The track is very much like a train track, this track goes over a series of hills and around curves. It follows a path that ends at the same place it started. A train of cars travels aroun
13、d on this track, very fast. The cars have two sets of wheels. One set of wheels rolls on top of the track, and the others set of wheels rolls below the track. The wheels below the track keep the fast moving cars from coming off the track, roller coaster cars as you probably know dont have any motors
14、 or engines. Instead, a chain pulls the cars up the first, tallest and steepy staff hill, this is how the ride begins. Then, at the top of the hill the chain comes off the cars and gravity takes over. gravity pushes the cars down the other side of the hill. the taller and steeper the first hill is,
15、the faster the ride will be. And the farther the cars will travel. as the cars rolled downhill they gained speed. the cars have enough speed and energy to send them up the next hill. as the cars near the top of the second hill they begin to slow down. but then, the cars reached the top of that hill,
16、 and start down the other side. gravity again pushes them toward the ground. this process repeats on each hale. Okay, so lets go over this process again. first, the cars are pulled by a chain up the first highest hill. then they go down a very steep slope, at this point, there is enough energy to pu
17、ll the cars up and over the next hill. when they reached the bottom of that hill, there is enough energy to climb the next hill, the roller coaster cars lose energy as the ride continues. so, the hills have to be smaller toward the end of the track, finally we roll to a stop on ground level right wh
18、ere we began.=Lesson 5 Language: How Children Acquire TheirsWhat Id lie to talk to you about today is the topic of child language development. I know that you all are trying to develop a second language, but for a moment, lets think about a related topic, and that is: How children develop their firs
19、t language.What do we know about how babies develop their language and communication ability? Well, we know babies are able to communicate as soon as they are born,even before they learn to speak their first language. At first, they communicate by crying. This crying lets their parents know when the
20、y are hungry, or unhappy, or uncomfortable. However, they soon begin the process of acquiring their language. The first state of language acquisition begins just a few weeks after birth. At this stage, babies start to make cooing noises when they are happy. Then, around four months of age they begin
21、 to babble. Babies all over the world begin to babble around the same age, and they all begin to make the same kinds of babbling noises. Now, by the time they are ten months old, however, the babbling of babies from different language backgrounds sounds different. For example, the babbling of a baby
22、 in a Chinese-speaking home sounds different from the babbling of a baby in an English-speaking home. Babies begin a new stage of language development when they begin to speak their first words. At first, they invent their own words for things. For example, a baby in an English-speaking home may say
23、 baba for the word bottle or kiki for cat. In the next few months, babies will acquire a lot of words. These words are usually the names of things that are in the babys environment, words for food or toys, for example. They will begin to use these words to communicate with others. For example, if a
24、baby holds up an empty juice bottle and then says juice, to his father, the baby seems to be saying, I want more juice, Daddy or May I have more juice, Daddy? This word juice is really a one-word sentence.Now, the next stage of language acquisition begins around the age of 18 months, when the babies
25、 begin to say two-word sentences. They begin to use a kind of grammar to put these words together. The speech they produce is called telegraphic speech because the babies omit all but the most essential words. An English-speaking child might say something like Daddy, up which actually could mean Dad
26、dy, pick me up, please. Then, between two and three years of age, young children begin to learn more and more grammar. For example, they begin to use the past tense of verbs. The children begin to say things such as I walked home and I kissed Mommy. They also begin to overgeneralize this new grammar
27、 rule and make a log of grammar mistakes. For example, children often say such thins as I goed to bed instead of I went to bed, or I eated ice cream instead of I ate ice cream. In other words, the children have learned the past tense rule for regular verbs such as walk and kiss, but they havent lear
28、ned that they cannot use this rule for all verbs. Some verbs like eat are irregular, and the past tense forms for irregular verbs must be learned individually. Anyway, these mistakes are normal, and the children will soon learn to use the past tense for regular and irregular verbs correctly. The chi
29、ldren then continue to learn other grammatical structures in the same way.If we stop to think about it, actually its quite amazing how quickly babies and children all over the world learn their language and how similar the process is for babies all over the world.Do you remember anything about how y
30、ou learned your first language during the early years of your life? Think about the process for a minute. What was your first word? Was it mama or maybe papa ? Now think also about the process of learning English as a second language. Can you remember the first word you learned in English? I doubt t
31、hat it was mama. Now, think about some of the similarities and differences involved in the processes of child and adult language learning. Well talk about some similarities and differences in the first and second language learning processes tomorrow. See you then.=Lesson 7 RobotsWhen people think ab
32、out a robot, they often picture a machine that looks something like a human being. However, thats not always the case. Most robots do not look much like a human being at all, they look like machines because thats what most of them are- industrial machines. Today, Im going to talk mostly about indust
33、rial robots used in industry. These are robots that do work that for humans would be physically demanding, repetitive, dangerous or very boring. Most industrial robots workon in an assembly line in a factory. For example, a robot might put liz onjars of fruits or start boxesfor shaping. In a car fac
34、tory, robotic arms on an assembly line join the parts of a car together; other robots tighten the boats on the cars wheelsor paint the car. There are thousands of robots putting cars together in _ plan. These robots are very precise when repeating a task. For example, they always tighten boats with
35、the same exact amount of force. They always move a heavy engine to exactly where it should be and they always put ahold in the exact same place in every car door hour after hour. These are examples of robots doing the work humans could do but the robots are doing the work more efficiently and precis
36、ely. So, just how do robots work? To do its job a robot first needs a control system. This control system directs the robots mechanical parts. The control system of a robot is sort of speak-a robot brain. So how does a robot learn which action to do first and which of its moving part needs to do tha
37、t action? A robot learns its job with the help and guidance of a human being. To teach an industrial robot to do something, first a person must use a hand-held computer. The computer is used to guide the robots arm and hand through the motions it needs to do. Then, the robot stores exact movement in
38、 its computer memory. The robot has sensors to gather information, so now the robot will use its sensors to direct its actions. The robot tells its moving part what to do and then it performs the action. For example, to pick up and move a box, the robot first finds the box, next it decides the weigh
39、t of the box. Then it decides how much force is needed to lift and move the box, and finally, it finds the correct place to put the box down. It repeats the process over and over until its turned off. It does the same job until it is given the job and new program to follow. Some scientists think tha
40、t robots of the future will be smarter than todays robots. They may also look more human like or even animal like. In fact, they may work and think more like humans do. The industrial robots weve been talking about so far today are automatic robots. They are known as automatic robots because they ha
41、ve program to follow a specific series of movement. Usually, they have parts that move but they really dont travel around. On the other hand, an autonomous machine can change itsbehavior in relation to its surroundings. For example, an autonomous robot with wheelsor legs to move around can change di
42、rection when it senses that there are something in its way. A robot such as can detect the movement of people nearby. It can move to avoid bumping into sb. coming toward it. Asthma can even learn to dance by following the movements of a dancer next to it. I dont know whether or when people would wel
43、come autonomousmachines or human like robots. I guess that we will not only think about that in the future. We need to think about how we will interact with our global doctor: robal teacher, robal pet, or even our robal friend.=Lesson 8 A Tidal WaveA tidal wave is a very large and very destructive w
44、all of water that rushes in from the ocean towards the shore. Many scientists call these waves tsunami. In Japanese tsunami means “storm wave.” But do you know that tidal are not caused by storms and that they are not true tidal at all? A true tidal is the regular rise a waves and fall of ocean wate
45、rs, at definite times each day, but a tidal wave comes rushing in suddenly and unexpectedly. A tidal wave is caused by an underwater earthquake. The word “seaquake” is made up of two words, the word “sea” which means “ocean” and the word “quake”. “To quake” means “to shake” or “to tremble.” When a s
46、eaquake takes place at the bottom of the ocean, the ocean floor shakes and trembles, and sometimes the ocean floor shifts. It is this shaking that produces the tidal wave. The tidal wave begins to move across the sea at great speed.Tidal waves have taken many human lives in the past. Today scientist
47、s can predict when a tidal wave will hit land. They use a seismograph to do this. A seismograph is an instrument that records the strength, the direction, and the length of time of an earthquake or seaquake. It is not possible to hold back a tidal wave, but it is possible to warn people that a tidal
48、 wave is coming. This warning can save many lives.=Lesson 9 Levels of LanguageToday I want to talk about levels of language usage. You probably have noticed that people express similar ideas in different ways, depending on the situation they are in. This is very natural. All languages have two general, broad categories, or levels of usage: a formal level and an informal level. English is no exception. Im not talking about correct and incorrect English. What Im talking a
