【Native Speaker每日综合训练—38系列】【38-11】 文史哲

AceJ

内容： AceJ 编辑：AceJ

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Part I: Speaker

Building with Wood and Metal

Hugo: Wow, when you said that you did some woodworking on the weekends, I thought you meant refinishing furniture. But this! This is a real workshop and you’re actually building furniture.

Shawna: Yeah, this is what I’m working on right now. I’m building a dining table and chairs.

Hugo: The grain is beautiful on this piece of hardwood. It certainly looks better than the plywood furniture I have in my house. What is all this?

Shawna: Just some basic tools: saws, chisels, and drills.

Hugo: And what is all this metal for?

Shawna: I’m adding some grillwork for the back of the chairs. I don’t usually do metalwork, but I’m keeping it simple.

Hugo: This doesn’t look simple. These pieces have been welded together, and is that used for soldering?

Shawna: You got it. When all is said and done, I’ll have a new dining room set with a large table and eight chairs.

Hugo: Wow, I’m impressed.

Shawna: Want to try your hand at it?

Hugo: No thanks. You see these 10 fingers? I’m rather fond of them.

Script by Dr. Lucy Tse

Source: ESL
http://www.eslpod.com/website/show_podcast.php?issue_id=15312422

[Rephrase 1, 16:53]

AceJ

Part II: Speed

The Dark Side of Pride
BY Miz Cracker| June 25, 2014

[Time 2]
Here’s what my Pride weekend looks like: At my drag show tonight, I’ll stir up a gay bar with rants about queer power, before pressuring some handsome straight boy to take off his shirt for everyone’s entertainment. If I manage to wake up on Saturday, I’ll go looking for a spectacular dress. On Sunday morning, I’ll wear the dress regally on a train from Harlem to Christopher Street, shouting back at hecklers all the way. Before Sunday’s Pride March even begins, I’ll be my own one-bitch, loud-and-proud parade.

But then, when it’s all over, I’ll go home, slouch on my bed, and get ready to tone it down for the office on Monday.

It should go without saying that I love Pride. As a working drag queen, I’m counting on it to pay my electric bill! I love that it offers me a free pass to take to the streets in broad daylight and confront the world with my gayness. But every year after the festivities end and I’m scrubbing the grease paint off my face, I wonder why I confine that confrontational spirit to a few days in June. If—as letters in the LGBTQ community—we are really proud of ourselves, why can’t we live in that spirit year-round?
[211 words]

[Time 3]
To be clear, I’m not saying that we all go back into the closet after June 30; I’ve just noticed that many of us stop acting like it’s a joy to make ourselves heard. As it stands now, I spend most of the year with a muzzle on my sexuality—and I know too many other gays who do the same. Here’s an example that might sound familiar: Last weekend, my friend Marcus welcomed a female cousin into his Brooklyn kitchenette for a few days of long-overdue family bonding time. Marcus felt uncomfortably aware that their relationship had cooled since he came out as gay, but to keep things pleasant he let the matter pass. In fact, the subject of gayness didn’t come up until the last day of Ms. Cousin’s visit when she glanced around Marcus’ apartment and sighed, “It’s cool that you’re not too gay. Like, you don’t even do your dishes.” Sharing this story over lunch, Marcus told me, “I’m not sure if that was supposed to be a compliment or what. But for some reason I ended up saying thank you.
[185 words]

[Time 4]
This is the kind of mundane homophobia or stereotyping that we’d never accept during the heady effervescence of Pride. Why do we let it slide any other time? When someone congratulates us for being the right kind or the right amount of gay, so many of us act like Marcus and feign gratitude—or, worse, feel gratitude. When co-workers demand fashion advice, we don’t hesitate to take their cue and yap about high heels. When friends beg us to “do a Beyoncé dance,” we oblige. We play the roles we’re expected to play, and if we feel degraded in the process, we try not to let anyone know. Then, once a year in June, we gather to celebrate the importance of unbridled self-expression.

As it’s currently practiced, Pride isn’t helping us live proud. In fact, it’s probably working to keep us quiet. Like the designated bars, restaurants, shops, and gayborhoods we escape to after work at night, it gives us the little break we need in order to stay compliant and complacent in other contexts. It gives us the strength to be caricatures of ourselves, or conversely, to code-switch, butch up, and shut up for the rest of the year. Instead of symbolizing our bravery, it’s an icon of our double-consciousness—our capacity to be perennially docile so long as we can act out in special contexts.
[227 words]

[Time 5]
But Pride doesn’t have to function that way. Let’s start with a small fix—if you don’t feel comfortable actively calling out homophobia and condescension quite yet, at least stop helping it along. From now on, don’t force a smile when strangers call you “girl.” Don’t nod approvingly when a man says “Hey, I don’t care what you do behind closed doors as long as you don’t come at me with that stuff.” Don’t glorify parents who accept their gay kids, as if it’s a feat to love a homo. When an opportunity arises, demonstrate the pride you plan to celebrate this weekend. Otherwise, you are about as “proud” as a Christmas/Easter church-goer is religious.

Of course, there may be gays among us who already live their pride year round. I know a few outspoken queens who crowd their Facebook walls with posts about heterosexism and homophobia, using trendy terms like “micro-aggression.” Maybe they’re as confrontational in their daily lives as they are online. But I’m not writing for them. I’m also not writing to stir up animosity between gays and the rest of the world. Most of the irksome remarks I’ve mentioned were made by well-meaning allies, people who consider themselves to be friends of The Gays. It would be counterproductive to lecture or shame these folks every time they misstep—we’d end up driving our only support away. But it would be helpful if we started speaking up when we have an opportunity to defy an unwelcome stereotype, rebuke a thinly veiled insult, or help someone learn about who we are as individuals. It would be good for us to start acting and talking proud.
[277 words]

[Time 6]
And staying vocally proud all the time means more than speaking up to alleged heterosexuals; it also means standing up to people in the queer community. A few weeks ago, I overheard a gay boy teasing my girlfriend Dana for failing to pick a sexual preference. The gist of his joke was that Dana had to give up men and declare herself a lesbian because she wears plaid shirts and has slept with women. I didn’t intervene, probably because I expected Dana to laugh it all off. But she didn’t. “How about this,” she said, “How about I do what I want and call myself what I want?” And that was the end of that.

The problem with Pride is not the event itself. The problem with Pride is that we don’t back it up with action when it’s over. This year, I want to fix that by behaving differently—starting now. Just a few minutes ago, as I was finishing up this piece, a co-worker that I never talk to dropped by to tell a story about his gay friend, a person who I’d never met or heard about. Normally, I let things like this go, giving the benefit of the doubt—maybe his gay friend and I have some common interest that makes his story relevant to my life. But today, I leaned back in my chair and asked, “Are you telling me this just because I’m gay?” There was a pause. “Oh,” my co-worker said, “I guess so.” I’m not sure if that was the right approach. And, I may have done some Beyoncé dancing for a tension-breaking laugh soon thereafter. But it was a step.

The names in this essay have been changed.
[287 words]

Source: Slate
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/06/27/pride_extending_the_lgbtq_celebration_throughout_the_year.html

AceJ

Part III: Obstacle

A very UN-American Triumph
By John Cassidy| June 26, 2014

[Paraphrase 7]
How do you celebrate a loss? The English, who have long glorified their country’s valiant second-place finishers, don’t have a problem with it. But Americans? Surely, we are all about winning, coming out on top, stomping the other guy’s face into the dirt. To lose is to be a loser—a term of opprobrium I only learned after moving across the Atlantic. Isn’t cheering a team of losers an un-American activity?

Not necessarily—at least, not in the World Cup, where the initial stage of the competition is conducted in groups rather than on a knockout basis. But it does take a bit of getting used to, as we discovered today, when Team U.S.A. progressed to the next stage of the tournament despite losing to Germany, 1–0, in the rain-sodden city of Recife, on Brazil’s northeast coast.

“The United States have one hundred per cent earned the right to get out of this group,” Taylor Twellman, a retired soccer player who was serving as ESPN’s color commentator, intoned as the match drew to an end. And he went on, “Nobody, and I mean nobody, thought they had a chance in this group.” The U.S. players and Jürgen Klinsmann, their coach, may quarrel with the latter point, but Twellman was broadly right. According to FIFA’s official ranking, Germany is the second-best team in the world, and Portugal is the fourth-best. Team U.S.A. is ranked thirteenth, yet overcame the odds and progressed.

And the team did deserve it. In defeating Ghana, 2–1, and then playing Portugal to a 2–2 tie, a game they were unfortunate not to win, the American players competed fiercely; they were well organized and, against Portugal in particular, they played some attractive soccer. Belgium, their likely opponents in the round of sixteen, a knockout round, will not take them lightly.

Still, the last stage of their passage was a bit disappointing, after all the buildup to the match. Germany was clearly the better team. For long stretches of the game, the Germans held possession of the ball, and denied the U.S. players any chance to go forward. For the first ten minutes, in fact, the Americans hardly touched the ball. A German goal seemed inevitable. Somewhat surprisingly, it was delayed until the fifty-fifth minute, when Tim Howard, the U.S. goalkeeper, made a great save from a corner—and then the ball ran out to Thomas Müller, the German striker, who calmly stroked it into the corner of the net.

At that point, the German goal didn’t seem too disastrous. With Portugal leading Ghana 1–0, the group-table arithmetic still favored Team U.S.A. But, a minute later, Ghana scored an equalizer, and the calculus changed. Suddenly, the African team was just a goal away from eliminating the American side.

Hitherto, my Twitter feed had been full of hope and bravado. Mark Knoller, a White House correspondent for CBS News, reported that President Obama watched some of the game on Air Force One, en route to an event in Minneapolis. “We’re gonna kick Germany’s ass just like in WW2,” Andrew Kaczynski, a political reporter at Buzzfeed, tweeted just before the kickoff. (Note to American soccer fans: never tease the Germans about the Second World War. It took English fans a long time to learn this lesson. Partly as a consequence, their national team hasn’t recorded a victory of consequence over the dreaded Jerries since 1966.)

Once Ghana scored, my newsfeed took a darker turn. “Right now, #GHA has the power to eliminate #USA from three straight World Cups,” the sports section of the Wall Street Journal reminded its readers. “Ghana going through … despite having lost to the U.S. would be a pretty good way to get Americans to quit caring about soccer again,” Sonny Bunch, the managing editor of the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative Web site, lamented.

At this stage, what was happening in Brasilia was what really mattered. My two daughters, who had just got out of school for the summer holidays, broke out in a chant of “Portugal, Portugal.” In the seventy-third minute, Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese pin-up who denied the United States a historic victory on Sunday by creating a goal in the last moments of the match, went racing into the Ghana penalty box and fell down under a heavy challenge. “I would call that a foul,” one of my daughters said. I agreed, but the referee didn’t.

The tension continued to mount. Then, in a flash, it dissipated. A high ball came into the Ghana penalty box. The Ghanaian goalkeeper went up for it, but neither caught it nor punched it away. Instead, he muffed it, pushing the ball softly out to the six-yard box where Ronaldo, standing alone, gratefully kicked it into the net. Portugal was leading 2–1, and, with less than ten minutes remaining in both matches, the United States was pretty much safe. To snatch a place in the last sixteen on goal difference, Ghana needed to score twice. Portugal, which got whacked, 4–0, by Germany in its first game, would have needed to score three more times—a hopeless task.

In the stands in Recife, the television cameras picked out some Americans who had heard the news from Brasilia. They were cheering and smiling, and, evidently, looking forward to journeying to the city of Salvador, where the next U.S. match will be played on Tuesday. The United States had lost. And won. For American soccer fans, particularly the newer ones, these are good times. Just don’t ask them to explain how goal difference works.
[931 words]

Source: The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2014/06/a-very-un-american-triumph-at-world-cup.html

wnj2611339

谢谢AceJ!

---

----Speaker

Hugo was surprised and impressed to seeShawna actually working on building furniture. Shawna was building a diningtable and chairs, and she wanted to keep the metalwork simple, while to Hugo,it is not simple at all.

----Speed

[Time 2] 1'12''

The author described what his Pride weekendlooks like, and wanted to use his action to show that he loved Pride.

[Time 3]1'20''

The author realized that gays were notbrave enough to stand out, and to let themselves to be heard.

[Time 4]1'40''

The author argued that gays should notburry their self-expression not only during Pride, but also in any other normaldays.

Pride gave them a place they can rest andbe themselves. It's an icon of their double-consciousness.

[Time 5] 1'52''

The author suggested that gays shouldbravely express their opinions, and should defend themselves whenever theyencounter the things they don't like. Besides, they should start acting andtalking proud.

[Time 6] 1'10''

The author appealed that gays should standup only to themselves, but also to the people in the queer community. Moreover,gays should use their action to back Pride up even when the even is over.

----Obstacles 6'10''

In the World Cup, although Team U.S.A. was inferior to the German Team, it didcompete so fiercely as to defeat Ghanaand played Portugalto a 2–2 tie.

American fans had been full of hope thatTeam U.S.A. can beat German Team until Ghana scored.

The match tension continued. Portugal beat Ghanawith 2-1, and the U.S.was safe.

American soccer fans were looking forwardto the next U.S. match in Salvador.

醒醒Shine

[speaker]
build，wood，metal
solder 焊接
[time2]
how she spent weekend, Pride: have fun and tone down to work again
[time3]
spend too much time with a muzzle on sexuality
[time4]
reality: Pride let us to be silent
[time5]
call up: stand up to speak up,  defy an unwelcome stereotype... be proud
[time6]
Need action after the teasing event.

[obstacle]
World Cup of US
1-lose to Germany, tie to Portugal, but still good
2- describe the game show:begin with hope, and then get a lose but cheer up too


今天两篇都不太难。

世界杯那篇，真心为USer的乐观积极态度喝彩！=）
其实知道队员们尽力了，就很棒呀。对比想起咱们的某翔同学，顶着那样的伤还要去参赛，这还不说，回头还被自己国家的人黑。sigh。我还是很喜欢他的。作为一个华人运动员，他做到了极致。可以说前无古人，至于来者，我觉得很长时间内也不会有了……

疏离无罪

占～～～～～～～～

Speaker: Talking about building and refinishing furniture.

01:25
The content of the Pride weekend.Altought this weekend is wonderful,the author wants to know what it brings to LGBT.

01:11
LGBTQ people should make themselves be heard more than in this festival.

01:19
The Pride isn’t helping us live proud.,but it’s probably working to keep us quiet.

01:13
Pride doesn’t have to function that way.LGBTQ people can live with proud in daily life.They should speak up for themselves in any opportunies when they feel unwelcomed.

01:37
Staying proud means more than speaking up to alleged heterosexuals;,it also means standing up to people in the queer community.The problem with Pride is that we don’t back it up with action when it’s over.

05:32
Altough the USA soccer team lose the race with Germany,it is still a success.Because the USA team came to the next stage of World Cup.Many evidences showed that there is no chance for the USA team to get out of this group.But they did it and they drserve it.Then the author describe the two races:USA vs Germany and Portugal vs Ghana

hawk！！！

现在就做~~
谢谢LZ~~~
Speaker:
Lap 5        00:01:19.72        00:06:53.67
Lap 4        00:01:49.58        00:05:33.95
Lap 3        00:01:31.84        00:03:44.37
Lap 2        00:01:06.96        00:02:12.52
Lap 1        00:01:05.56        00:01:05.56
Be bride of who they are
pride weekend -> raise a question -> an example -> analyze -> other people reactions -> theme
I don't totally understand both the logic and some details. still a long way to go. ORZ…
Obstacle: 4'53"
some football staff… about USA football team. how a weaker team beat the stronger.
好难。。晚点回来看大神做的吧 = =

Talitha

2:1'30
author describes her Pride weekend. She raised the question why lesbian and gays can't live pridefully whole year round.

3:1'20
author feels that gay or lesbians should be proud of their identity. However, they may not feel so sometimes. author gives an example.

4:2'
we show gratitude for acting the right kind of people. we are not proud to be G or L. activities to help us unbridled are not useful and powerful

5:2'34
start with small things.author gives examples on how to live proudly as G or L. author also gives example of someone who live proud year round.

6:1'55
we do not only vocally say we are proud to be G OR L, we need to show action. author gives an example of Dana to back herself up. the problem with Pride is that it does not have action to practice after the event is over.

psychoarya

［speaker］
等会走路上听

[speed]
1:00
1:06
1:23
1:56
1:32

[obstacle]
5:05

robot青

time2 2：00
time3 1：23
time4 2：07
time5 2:46
time6 2:08
obstacle 8:23