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高中英语课文阅读材料 Furthermore...
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Story of a song
(Key words: song, sweet, talent, education, success, publish, insult, verse, replace, court)
The story of how the song Happy Birthday to You came into being began as a sweet one.
Two sisters, Mildred Hill, a teacher at the Louisville, Kentucky Experimental Kindergarten, and Dr Patty Hill, the principal of the same school, together wrote a song for the children, entitled Good Morning to All. When Mildred combined her musical talents, as the local expert on spiritual songs, and as the organist (1) for her church, with her sister's expertise in the area of kindergarten education, Good Morning to All was sure to be a success.
The sisters published the song in a collection entitled Song Stories of the Kindergarten in 1893. Thirty-one years later, after Dr Patty Hill became the head of the Department of Kindergarten Education at Columbia University's Teacher College, a gentleman by the name of Robert H Coleman published the song, without the sisters' permission. To add insult (2) to injury, he added a second verse (3), the familiar Happy Birthday to You.
Mr Coleman's addition of the second verse popularized the song and, eventually, the sisters' original first verse disappeared. Happy Birthday to You had altogether replaced the sisters' original title Good Morning to All.
After Mildred died in 1916, Patty, together with a third sister named Jessica, sprang into action (4) and took Mr Coleman to court. In court, they proved that they, indeed, owned the melody. And they won the case finally.
Question
1. Why did Hill sisters take legal actions against Robert H Coleman?
Notes: 1. (n.) 风琴师 2. (n.) 侮辱 3. (n.) 歌词 4. 采取行动
To walk, to be healthier
(Key words: hike, good, couch potato, beneficial, fat, heart, group, drop, disease, rise)
A lengthy hike (1) once a day will do you far more good than rambling around (2) the shops every couple of hours -- even if the short walks add up to the same amount of time, say exercise researchers in Britain. But walks of any length are better than sitting at home with your feet up and watching television, they stress.
Steve Bird and his colleagues in the department of sport and exercise science at Canterbury Christ Church University College in Kent reached these conclusions after putting 56 couch potatoes (3) through an l8-week course of daily walks. They found that longer walks produce the most beneficial changes to the composition of blood fats, but walks of any length improve the fitness of the heart. "It's the sort of thing that can make the heart 10 years younger," says Bird.
To find out, Bird divided his normally inactive subjects into three roughly equal groups. The "long walkers" took a hike of between 20 and 40 minutes every day. "Intermediate walkers" had two bouts (4) of l0 to l5 minutes, and "short walkers" did three stints (5) of 5 to l0 minutes. The controls (6) sat at home, as usual.
At the start and end of the l8 weeks, Bird measured the health and fitness of each group. He found that the long walkers were healthiest, as measured by altered fat composition in their blood.
At the end, each litre of blood from the long walkers had a drop of 0.05 grams of apolipoprotein II on average, a "bad" fat that is linked with heart disease. This was more than twice the drop seen in the intermediate walkers, and five times that in short walkers. In the controls, the level of this fat stayed the same. The drop in apolipoprotein II in the long walkers was matched by a rise in the blood level of apolipoprotein I, a "good" fat that is associated with unclogged (7) arteries.
Question
1. Why do people benefit more from a long walk than several times of short walks in a day?
Notes: 1. (n.) 长途步行 2. 闲逛 3. 沙发土豆，指老是躺在沙发里看电视的人 4. (n.) 一次，一段 5. (n.) 定额工作 6. (n.) 试验中的对照物 7. (adj.) 畅通的
McDonald's
(Key words: drive-in, customer, powerful, growing, sale, success, philosophy, quality, service, cleanliness, value)
McDonald's started with their little drive-in restaurant (1) in San Bernardion, California in the late 1940s. But McDonald's today serves 38 million customers each day, 20 million of them in the USA.
It has about 23,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries around the world. It's one of the world's treat entrepreneurial organizations, with most restaurants worldwide run by a franchisee (2) or affiliate partner (3) of the company. It's one of the two most recognized and powerful brands in the catering world, the other being Coca-Cola, the only soft drink supplier to McDonald's today.
It's a growing company, adding more than 2,000 new restaurants to their system each year. This means a new McDonald's will open somewhere in the world every five hours of every day. It generates sales of more than US$31 billion a year and earns net income of more than US$1.5 billion annually.
McDonald's opened its first restaurant in Beijing on April 23, 1992. It's the joint venture partnership between McDonald's and the General Corporation of Beijing Agriculture, Industry and Commerce. It took five years to establish the network of local farmers, manufacturers, and other suppliers to support the restaurant.
QSC&V has been the foundation that built McDonald's success. QSC&V stands for the McDonald's principles of Quality, Service, Cleanliness and Value. It's McDonald's business philosophy ever since it came into being.
Quality to McDonald's means that they ensure their customers receive food products that are the result of the best ingredients, strict standards and proven preparation procedures so that they will be safe, healthy, and great-tasting.
Fast and friendly service has always been a foundation for success of McDonald's. They use service enhancement techniques to help to provide service that meets and exceeds their customer's expectations.
Cleanliness has always been McDonald's principle. This means having the cleanest and freshest facilities -- from the kitchen and dining room to the rest rooms and parking lots.
Value means low prices at McDonald's. Today, value is defined as the total experience you receive for what you pay, and at McDonald's, the total experience includes nice food, friendly folks, a clean environment, quick and accurate service -- and fun!
Question
1. What factors do you think give rise to the enormous success of McDonald's?
Notes: 1. 顾客无须下车即可得到服务的"免下车"餐馆 2. (n.) 特许经营人 3. 合作伙伴
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