题目内容
听力原文：W: In public speaking, the watchword is preparation. Most of us tend to put things off, at least occasionally. It's so easy to put things off, especially those things we do not look forward to doing. So if a speaking engagement is several weeks off, we may feel we still have plenty of time. But as the day draws closer, we begin to panic. Do not let this happen to you. Start preparing as soon as you are given or accept the speaking assignment. You have much to do and to do it right will take time. How much better your speech will be and how much better you will feel, if you have taken the time to do it right.
When you are prepared, you have gathered the needed date, determined what is appropriate to the listeners' understanding and acceptance levels, organized the ideas so they flow logically, selected examples and other support for your ideas, and made them interesting to your listeners. Develop a great opening that you know will catch that attention of even day dreamers in your audience. Check out the room you will be speaking in. Request any feasible changes which you wish in the set-up of the room. If you are prepared, you are confident you can best convey your message to your listeners. If you have waited until a few days before your presentation to begin to prepare, or worse, yet, the day before, no doubt you will be anxious, and with good reasons. Now there is out enough time to engage in more than a superficial attempt; both you and your audience will feel uncomfortable. Like retirement planning, it is never too early to start preparing for your presentation. So start preparing right away.
What is the most important thing in public speaking？
查看答案
搜索结果不匹配？点我反馈
更多问题
How long do most people wait to hold their wedding ceremony after they decide to marry？
当年形成的会计档案，在会计年度终了，最多可暂由本单位财务会计部门保管半年。()
The City
In one sense, we can trace all the problems of the American city back to a single starting point: we Americans don't like our cities very much.
That is, on file face of it, absurd (荒谬的). After all, more than three-fourths of us now live in cities, and more are flocking to them every year. We are told that the problems of our cities are receiving more attention in Washington, and scholarship has discovered a whole new field in urban studies.
I don't pretend to be a scholar on the history of the city in American life. But my thirteen years in public office, first as an officer of the U.S. Department of Justice, then as Congressman, and now as Mayor of the biggest city in America, have taught me all too well the fact that a strong anti-urban attitude runs consistently through the mainstream of American thinking. Much of the drive behind the settlement of America was in reaction to the conditions in European industrial centers -- and much of the theory supporting the basis of freedom in America was linked directly to the availability of land and the perfectibility of man outside the corrupt influences of the city.
What has this to do with the predicament of the modem city？ I think it has much to do with it. The fact is that the United States, particularly the federal government, which has historically established our national priorities, has simply never thought that the American city was "worthy" of improvement -- at least not to the extent of expending any basic resources on it.
Antipathy (反感) to the city predates the American experience. When industrialization drove the European working man into the major cities of the continent, books and pamphlets appeared attacking the city as a source of crime, corruption, filth, disease, vice, licentiousness (放荡), subversion, and high prices. The theme of some of the earliest English novels -- Moll Flander for example -- is that of the innocent country youth coming to the big city and being subjected to all forms of horror until justice -- and a return to the pastoral life -- follow.
The proper opinion of Europe seemed to support the Frenchman who wrote: "In the country, a man's mind is free and easy; but in the city, the persons of friends and acquaintances, one's own and other people's business, foolish quarrels, ceremonies, visits, impertinent discourses, and a thousand other diversions steal away the greatest part of our time and leave no leisure for better and necessary employment. Great towns are but a large sort of prison to the soul, like cages to birds or pounds to beasts."
This was not, of course, the only opinion on city life. Others maintained that the city was "the fireplace of civilization, whence light and heat radiated out into the cold dark world." And William Penn planned Philadelphia as the "holy city," carefully laid out so that each house would have the appearance of a country cottage m avoid the density and overcrowding that so characterized European cities.
Without question, however, the first major thinker to express a clear antipathy to the urban way of life was Thomas Jefferson. For Jefferson, the political despotism (专制制度) of Europe and economic despotism of great concentrations of wealth, on the one hand, and poverty on the other, were symbolized by the cities of London and Paris, which he visited frequently during his years as a diplomatic representative of the new nation. In the new world, with its opportunities for widespread landholding, there was the chance for a flowering of authentic freedom, with each citizen, free from economic dependence, both able and eager to participate in charting the course of his own future. America, in a real sense, was an escape from all the injustice that had flourished in Europe -- injustice that was characterized by the big city.
This Jeffersonian theme was to remain an integral part of the A
听力原文：M: Could I get a ride with you to the concert tonight？
W: I can't go, but you might ask Betty. I think she's leaving at around 7: 30.
Q: What does the woman mean？
(18)
微信支付 
支付宝支付