Most buildings are built to stand up straight, but these look as if they might fall over!

The church tower of Suurhusen

    Built in 1450, the 27-meter-high church tower lies in Suurhusen, Germany. It was built in wet land on foundations of oak tree trunks (树干). When the land was drained (排水) later, the wood broke down, causing one side of the tower to be a little lower than the other. In 1975, the tower became a real hazard and people were not allowed to enter until the foundations were made strong again. The lean (倾斜) of the tower is now about five degrees.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa

    The work of building the tower began in 1173, and was finally completed in 1372. In fact, it began to lean after just a couple of floors were built. And this condition continued in the centuries after its completion. The tower was finally closed to the public in 1990 after people failed to stabilize (使稳固) its foundations. In 2001, it was reopened after engineers removed soil from underneath its raised side. Now it leans just an angle of 3.97 degrees.

Capital Gate of Abu Dhabi

    Completed in 2011, the Capital Gate tower in Abu Dhabi was designed to lean eighteen degrees. The building stands next to the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre and contains, among other things, a fine hotel with wonderful views of the harbour. Also known as the leaning tower of Abu Dhabi, the tower is one of the tallest buildings in the city.

Big Ben of London

    The building leans 0.26 degrees to the northwest. This is mainly caused by the engineering projects that have been carried out in the ground below it since the late 1800s. The tower, which has been continuously open since it was completed in 1858, has nowhere near the lean of the Tower of Pisa and is still completely safe to enter.

    There is distinction between reading for information and reading for understanding. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    The first sense is the one in which we read newspapers, magazines, or anything else. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Such materials may increase our store of information, but they cannot improve our understanding. And clearly we don't have any difficulty in gaining the new information, for our understanding was equal to them before we started. Otherwise, we would have felt the shock of puzzlement.

    The second sense is the one in which we read something that at first we do not completely understand. Here the thing to be read is at the first sight better or higher than the reader. The writer is communicating something that can increase the reader's understanding. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Otherwise one person could never learn from another. Here “learning” means understanding more, not remembering more information.

    What are the conditions in this kind of reading? First, there is inequality in understanding {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Besides, his book must convey something he possesses and his potential readers lack. Second, the reader must be able to overcome this inequality in some degree. And he should always try to reach the same level of understanding with the writer. If the equality is approached, success of communication is achieved.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} It is the least demanding and requires the least amount of effort. Everyone who knows how to read can read for entertainment if he wants to. In fact, any book that can be read for understanding or information can probably be read for entertainment as well.

A．Thus, we can employ the word “reading” in two distinct senses.

B．Such communication between unequals must be possible.

C．We can get access to the content of those materials easily.

D．The writer must be “superior” to the reader in understanding.

E. The writer should have a better communicating skill.

F. Besides gaining information and understanding, there's another goal of reading—entertainment.

G. Reading for entertainment is capable of increasing our understanding for   information.

    A handsome middle-aged man walked quietly into the café and sat down. Before he ordered, he couldn't help but noticed a group of younger men at the table next to him. It was obvious they were making fun of something about him and it wasn't until he remembered he was wearing a small pink ribbon(丝带) on the lapel of his suit that he became aware of what the joke was all about.

The man pretended not to notice it, but the whisper and laughter began to get to him. He looked one of the rude young men straight into the eye, placed his hand beneath the ribbon and asked, “This?”

    With that the young men all began to laugh out loud. The man he spoke to said, “Hey, sorry, man, but we were just commenting on how pretty your little pink ribbon looks against your blue jacket!”

    The middle-aged man calmly invited the joker to come over to his table, and politely seated him. As uncomfortable as he was, the young guy had to, not really sure why. In a soft voice, the middle-aged man said, “I wear this ribbon to bring awareness about breast cancer. I wear it in my mother's honor.”

    “Oh, sorry. She died of breast cancer?”

    “No, she didn't. She's alive and well. But her breasts nourished me as a baby, and were a soft resting place for my head when I was scared or lonely as a little boy. I'm very grateful for my mother's breasts, and her health.”

    “Umm,” the young replied, “yeah.”

    “And I wear this ribbon to honor my wife,” the man continued.

    “And she's okay, too?” the young guy asked.

    “Oh, yes. She's fine. Her breasts have been a great source of loving pleasure for both of us, and with them she nurtured and nourished our daughter 23 years ago. I'm grateful for my wife's breasts, and her health.”

    “Uh, huh. And I guess you wear it to honor your daughter, also?”

    “No. It's too late to honor my daughter by wearing it now ……”

    Shaken and ashamed, the young guy said, “Oh, I'm so sorry, mister.”

    “So, in my daughter's memory, too, I proudly wear this little ribbon, which allows me the opportunity to enlighten others. And here…” With this, he reached in his pocket and handed the young man a little pink ribbon. The young guy looked at it, slowly raised his head and asked, “……?”

    The United States of America is mainly an English-speaking country. The majority of the population speak English as their native language. Besides, education, social activities, etc. are conducted in English. Across but for the most part, Americans speak one common language. This language is sometimes called American English.

    However, not everyone in the USA is a native speaker of English. Most immigrants(移民) are speakers of other languages. There are hundreds of communities around the USA where English is not the most commonly used languages. Chinese, Italian, German, Greek, Spanish and French are all spoken in various communities in the USA. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language after English. It is widely spoken in New York and across the southern part of the country. For speakers of other languages, learning English is important, but teaching people to speak English as a second language was given little attention. Non-English speakers were expected to pick up the language by meeting with others in public. Recently, this has changed.

    Today, most large public schools and community colleges have ESL (English as a Second Language) programs; American English teachers feel that English students should learn the language the way they will use it. Therefore, ESL programs offer different English lessons to different students. Some programs teach students to communicate in English in public. Other programs teach the kind of English people who will need for their jobs. American ESL instructional methods do not lay emphasis on grammar or translation, but on the importance of communication. The goal is to get the English learners to learn by using the language.

    Everyone knows that if a dog's ears are up and its tail is wagging vigorously, it is definitely pleased to see you, but now scientists using a robot have found that the way dogs use their tails is more complicated than we thought, and that dogs which wag them to the left may he more friendly. The animal psychologists discovered that when real dogs approached a life-sized robot dog, they were less cautious about it when it was wagging its tail to the left, while if it was wagging its tail to the right, far fewer dogs approached it in a confident manner.

    In the first experiments, 56 percent of the animals approached the model without hesitation when the tail was wagged to the left, while only 21 percent did so in the other situation. When the researchers excluded (排除) owners from being present, the result were: 31 percent of the dogs approached continuously when the tail was wagging to the left, while only 18 percent did so when it was on the right.

    Animal psychologist Roger Mugford said it added to the growing evidence that does were even more complicated communicators than the animals more closely related to man such as monkeys. He said, "We know that dogs, in a sense, have languages, but it is more complicated because it is not just them wagging their tails, but also giving out chemical displays."

    He adds, "The research confirms earlier studies suggesting that dogs, like humans, had a left-side preference. If you are going to present a signal to a dog, it is sensible to put it on your left-hand side because that is where dogs, unlike most other animals, tend to look. It is another example of the similarity between dogs and humans. They are a lot more human than we give them credit for."

Researchers believe they have found evidence for a hidden ocean on Mimas, one of Saturn's major moons. This makes Mimas a target for learning more about the origins of life in our solar system. 

Saturn has 146 moons orbiting it. The biggest is larger than the planet Mercury; the smallest is roughly the size of a sports field on the Earth. Mimas, which was first discovered in 1789, is one of the major moons and is about 250 miles wide. 

Experts used to think Mimas was mostly made out of solid ice and rock. In 2014, astronomers noticed its orbit around Saturn was moving unsteadily. A shaky orbit can be caused either by a core shaped like a rugby ball or a huge liquid ocean beneath the surface. At first, lots of astronomers argued against the suggestion that Mimas had an ocean because there is no sign of it on the surface. 

To investigate more thoroughly, researchers looked at images taken by Cassini, a NASA spacecraft sent to study Satun. The images showed that the moon's orbit around Saturn drifted by about six miles over 13 years. The team's calculations found that the only way Mimas could move in this way is if it had a hidden ocean under the surface. They think the ocean formed when the moon's core warmed up and melted some of the ice. 

Mimas is just one of many moons that scientists think could have oceans below the surface Ganymede, which orbits Jupiter and is the largest moon in the solar system, has more water in its ocean than all of the oceans on the Earth. Titan, another of Saturn's moons, is believed to have a salty ocean beneath the surface. 

Space agencies want to study these oceans because they might be home to living organisms. However, the ocean on Mimas might not be old enough for life to have emerged there yet. It took hundreds of millions of years for life to develop on the Earth and the ocean on Mimas is relatively young;it is less than 25 million years old.