Unit 6

The Pace of Life

1. Leading-in2. Text Analysis3. Language Points4. Presentation and Exercises

Text A Old Father Time Becomes a

Terror

Lead-in

Background InformationDiscussion

Richard Tomkins: consumer industries editor of the Financial Times, where he has been a member of the editorial staff since 1983. He is currently based at the company’s London headquarters, where he leads a team of journalists covering the consumer goods sector and writes about consumer trends.

Background Information

Tomkins was born in Walsall, England, in 1952. His formal education ended at the age of seventeen. Before becoming a journalist, he was a casual laborer, a factory worker, a truck driver, a restaurant cashier, a civil servant, and an assistant private secretary to a government minister.

He left government service in 1978 to hitchhike around the world, and on returning to the U.K. in 1979, joined a local newspaper as a trainee reporter. He joined the Financial Times as a sub-editor four years later. In this selection, he discusses the time squeeze that many people are experiencing and offers a way of combating the problem.

Discussion

1. Do you keep a diary? What sort of things do you write about?

2. With so much to do and so little time to do it in, how are we to cope?

Text Analysis

Part Division

Comprehension

Part DivisionParts Para-

graphsMain Ideas

Part One

Paras 1-11

The author gives three reasons why we feel so time-pressed today

Part Two

Paras 12-18

Not every one is time-stressed, and in the case of Americans they have actually gained more free tome in the past decade.

Part Three

Paras 19-23

The perception of time-famine has triggered a variety of reactions.

Part Four

Paras 24-28

The author pins down the crux (症结 ) of the problem and puts forward for the stress we feel.

Comprehension

1. What did we use to expect from technology?

2. What new burdens has technology produced apart from cramming work into our leisure time?

3. What gives rise to our discontent with super abundance?

4. What is stress envy, as conceived by Paul Edwards?

5. What does Godbey mean by saying “It’s the kid in the candy store?”

6. For time stress, what remedy does the author offer?

Language Points

Vocabulary

Sentences

on the go / upon the go: be busy(inf) active or busy

I’ve been on the go all week, preparing my thesis.

I was on the go all day and went home at about 10’oclock in the evening.

set about： begin（ a task）； start（ doing sth.）（ used in the pattern： set about sth./doing sth.; no passive）

The school authorities must set about finding

solutions to the campus security problems. My mom and I set about clearing up / clearin

g the table after the guests left.

eat into: gradually reduce the amount of (sth. valuable); damage or destroy

All these car expenses are eating into our savings.

Responsibilities at home and work eat into his time.

Our holiday travel has eaten into the money we saved.

in reality: in actual fact; really

Some famous private schools are theoretically open to the public, but in reality are attended by those who can afford the fees.

He is much smaller in reality than he looks on the television.

multiply: increase in number or quantity; add a number to itself a particular number of times

Multiplying large quantities in one’s head has become a lost art since the arrival of the calculator.

Efficiency would be -lied several times with the new technology.

When animals have more food, they generally multiply faster.

fraction: small part, bit, amount or proportion(of sth.)

Only a (small) fraction of my friends have video recorder.

Mother's careful with her money, and spends only a fraction of her earnings.

The black miners in South Africa used to earn only a fraction of the wages paid to white miners doing equivalent work.

pour in: go into a place quickly and in large numbers

Tourists poured onto Shanghai on National Day.

many football fans poured into the stadium to have a look at their favorite football players.

minute: very small in size or amount

Only a minute amount of money is needed.

Studies show that water contains minute quantities of lead.

oblige: make (someone) legally or morally bound to an action or course of action

She was obliged to go. Circumstances oblige me to do that.The police obliged him to leave. I am obliged to you for your gracious hospitalit

y.

abundance: quantity that is more than enough; plenty (followed by of)

The visitor to Oxford has an abundance of sights to see.

The tree yields an abundance of fruit. --a year of abundance --a life of abundance

1. Once upon a time, technology, we thought, would make our lives easier. Machines were expected to do our work for us, leaving us with ever-increasing quantities of time to waste away on idleness and pleasure.

从前，我们以为技术发展会使我们的生活变得更安逸。那时我们觉得机器会替代我们工作，我们则有越来越多的时间休闲娱乐。

Sentences

spend

休闲娱乐

2. The motorcar, for example, promised unimaginable levels of personal mobility. But now, traffic in cities moves more slowly than it did in the days of the horse-drawn carriage, and we waste our lives stuck in traffic jams.

比如，汽车曾使我们希望个人出行会方便得让人难以想象。可如今，城市车辆运行得比马车时代还要慢，我们因交通堵塞而困在车内，徒然浪费生命。

3. The aircraft promised new horizons, too. The trouble is, it delivered them. Its very existence created a demand for time-consuming journeys that we would never previously have dreamed of undertaking --- the transatlantic shopping expedition, for example, or the trip to a convention on the other side of the world. 飞机也曾有可能为我们拓展新天地。问题是飞机提供了新的天地。其存在本身产生了对耗时的长途旅行的需求，这种旅行，如越洋购物，或远道前往地球的另一半参加会议，以前我们是根本无法想象的。

4. It has also provided us with the opportunity to spend hours fixing software glitches on our personal computers or filling our heads with useless information from the Internet.

技术发展还向我们提供机会，在个人电脑上一连几小时处理软件故障，或把因特网上那些无用的信息塞进自己的大脑。

5. A couple of centuries ago, nearly all the world's accumulated learning could be contained in the heads of a few philosophers. Today, those heads could not hope to accommodate more than a tiny fraction of the information generated in a single day.

几个世纪以前，人类积累的几乎所有知识都能装在几个哲人的大脑之中。如今，这些大脑休想容纳下一天中产生的新信息中的小小一部分。

6. Driven on by advertising, we do our best to oblige: we buy more, travel more and play more, but we struggle to keep up. So we suffer from what Wilson calls discontent with super abundance --- the confusion of endless choice.

在广告的推动下，我们努力照办：多多购买多多旅游多多玩乐，但得尽力坚持下去。于是我们就深受威尔逊所谓的对极大富足不满之苦 --- 即无休止的选择所造成的困惑。

Presentation and ExercisesTranslate the following sentences into English.

1. 以前，我们都认为技术的发展会使我们的生活变得更加安逸。

2. 但是技术发展并没有把我们解放出来，反而使我们自己成为了奴隶，人们不得不一直忙碌着。

3. 生活的节奏似乎比以前更快。结果，当人们努力挣扎着去应付被他们看做是时间缺乏的问题时，他们就感受到了压力。

3. 这样广泛存在的感情部分是由大量涌向我们的信息导致的。

Keys:1. Once upon a time, technology, we thought, w

ould make our lives easier. 2. But instead of liberating us, technology has e

nslaved us. People are obliged to be on the go all the time.

3. The pace of life seems to grow ever faster. As a result, feelings of stress are common as people struggle to cope with what they see as a shortage of time.

4. Such widespread feelings are in part caused by the large quantity of infor-mation that comes pouring in on us.

Thank you!