英語四級晨讀美文3篇
英語閱讀是學習語言知識、提高英語語言能力的有效途徑，也是人們獲取外部信息、瞭解世界的主要手段。下面是本站小編帶來的英語四級晨讀美文，歡迎閱讀!
Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle is an official residence of The Queen and the largest occupied castle in the world. A royal palace and fortress for over 900 years, the Castle remains a working palace today. Visitors can walk around the State Apartments, extensive suites of rooms at the heart of the working palace; for part of the year visitors can also see the Semi State rooms, which are some of the most splendid interiors in the castle. They are furnished with treasures from the Royal Collection including paintings by Holbein, Rubens, Van Dyck and Lawrence, fine tapestries and porcelain, sculpture and armour.
Within the Castle complex there are many additional attractions. In the Drawings Gallery regular exhibitions of treasures from the Royal Library are mounted. Another popular feature is the Queen Mary's Dolls' House, a miniature mansion built to perfection. The fourteenth-century St. George's Chapel is the burial place of ten sovereigns, home of the Order of the Garter, and setting for many royal weddings. Nearby on the Windsor Estate is Frogmore House, an attractive country residence with strong associations to three queens - Queen Charlotte, Queen Victoria and Queen Mary.
英語四級晨讀美文篇二Roman Colosseum
The Colosseum or Flavian Amphitheater was begun by Vespasian, inaugurated by Titus in 80 A.D. and completed by Domitian. Located on marshy land between the Esquiline and Caelian Hills, it was the first permanent amphitheater to be built in Rome. Its monumental size and grandeur as well as its practical and efficient organization for producing spectacles and controlling the large crowds make it one of the great architectural monuments achieved by the ancient Romans.
The amphitheater is a vast ellipse with tiers of seating for 50,000 spectators around a central elliptical arena. Below the wooden arena floor, there was a complex set of rooms and passageways for wild beasts and other provisions for staging the spectacles. Eighty walls radiate from the arena and support vaults for passageways, stairways and the tiers of seats. At the outer edge circumferential arcades link each level and the stairways between levels.
The three tiers of arcades are faced by three-quarter columns and entablatures, Doric in the first story, Ionic in the second, and Corinthian in the third. Above them is an attic story with Corinthian pilasters and small square window openings in alternate bays. At the top brackets and sockets carry the masts from which the velarium, a canopy for shade, was suspended.
The construction utilized a careful combination of types: concrete for the foundations, travertine for the piers and arcades, tufa infill between piers for the walls of the lower two levels, and brick-faced concrete used for the upper levels and for most of the vaults.
Details
The Colosseum was designed to hold 50,000 spectators, and it had approximately eighty entrances so crowds could arrive and leave easily and quickly.
The plan is a vast ellipse, measuring externally 188 m x 156 m (615 ft x 510 ft), with the base of the building covering about 6 acres. Vaults span between eighty radial walls to support tiers of seating and for passageways and stairs.
The facade of three tiers of arches and an attic story is about 48.5 m (158 ft) tall — roughly equivalent to a 12-15 story building.
英語四級晨讀美文篇三民族特性
I find it easiest to look forwards by looking back, to the "Great Labour Migration"1 of 1948-55, seenat the time as a matter of2 black guests coming to a white host. It's a quasi-imperial3 perception that4 has shifted since the 1970s, but the social problems and deficiencies it engendered dog5 us still.
It's highly questionable whether Britain is an open society even now. Against6 the upward trend in the 1980s of ethnic minorities breaking into the professions and the media must be set objective evidence of a very racist society7. Since the Stephen Lawrence affair8 the government has at least been talking about the existence of racism, but it's always the case that racism diminishes in times of prosperity. When the economic going gets tough9, people want someone to take their feelings out on10.
The social landscape11 seems to me at a surreal crossroads. Britain fosters images of itself as homogeneous12 ?to be white is no longer the central defining feature?but there remain various kinds of "Britishness". So I can envisage the future in two very different ways.
The first is broadly the way Britain is at the moment: a mosaic of communities13 ?Bangladeshi, Afro-Caribbean, Chinese or Jewish holding fast to a strong social identity, but lumbered also with14 a whole raft of15 benefits and disadvantages, most of them defined in economic terms16. It's possible that will still be the pattern in 50 years time, but not very likely.
Instead17, I expect the old duality of a "host community" and "immigrants" whose bad luck it is to be excluded and disadvantaged to have vanished18. Some ethnic communities may make a point of19 survival, but only those who are most proud of their cultural roots.
The alternative20 is a pick-and-mix social landscape. At the moment ethnic minorities are moving in different directions at different rates, with personal and social engagement across ethnic boundaries increasing all the time. One crude indicator is the level of mixed-race marriage: one in five Bangladeshi and Pakistani men born in Britain now has a white wife, and one in five babies born in Britain has one Afro-Caribbean and one white parent.
This implies a Britain in which people will21 construct multiple identities defined by all sorts of factors: class, ethnicity, gender, religion, profession, culture and economic position. It22 won't be clear-cut. Not all ethnic minorities, or members of an ethnic minority, will be moving in the same direction or identifying the same issues at the heart of their identities. It's about deciding who you are, but also about how other people define you.
That's what will be at the heart of the next 50 years: enduring communities linked by blood through time versus23 flexible, constantly shifting identities. Identity won't be about where you have come from; it will be a set of values you can take anywhere that is compatible with24 full participation in whichever society you live in.
民族特性
我發覺展望未來的最簡便方法是回顧過去。1948-55年的"勞工大遷移"在當時被視爲黑皮膚客人來到白皮膚主人家。這種帶有帝國意識的看法自20世紀70年代以來已有轉變，不過它產生的諸多社會問題和缺陷依然跟隨着我們。
即便到現在英國是不是個開放社會仍令人懷疑。鑑於少數民族打入專業性職業和媒體在20世紀80年代已呈上升趨勢，必須拿出客觀證據才能說社會上有嚴重的種族歧視。斯蒂文。勞倫斯事件後，政府至少一直在談論種族主義的存在，但情況總是:每逢經濟繁榮，種族主義問題便減少;每逢經濟不景氣，人們就想拿什麼人撒氣。
在我看來，社會形勢正處於一個超現實的十字路口。英國總讓人覺得它是個單一民族國家——儘管白皮膚不再是英國人的核心定義性特徵，但仍存在各種"英國人特性".因此我可以把未來設想成兩種截然不同的局面。
一種大體是英國目前的樣子:馬賽克式的多元社區——孟加拉人、非洲裔加勒比人、華人或猶太人，各自保持其牢靠的社會身份，但也受一大堆好處和壞處的拖累，這些利弊大多是經濟方面的。五十年後可能仍是這種格局，但可能性不太大。
相反，我預計"主流社區"和"外來移民"(其厄運就是受排擠和吃虧)那種老的二元結構到時候將會消失。一些少數民族社區可能會力求生存，但只會是那些對自己的文化根源深感自豪的社區。
可能性較大的是出現一種拼湊式的社會局面。少數民族目前正以不同速度朝不同方向發展，個人及社會跨越民族界線的交往一直在增加。一個顯而易見的標誌就是異族通婚的程度:英國出生的孟加拉裔和巴基斯坦裔男子現在有五分之一娶了白人妻子，英國出生的嬰兒有五分之一父母一方是非洲裔加勒比人另一方是白種人。
這就意味着在英國人們將構建由階級、民族、性別、宗教、職業、文化和經濟地位等各種因素界定的多重身份，結果不會一清二楚。並非所有少數民族(或少數民族的成員)都將朝同一方向發展，或認定同一些問題構成他們身份的核心。這關係到決定自己是誰，也關係到別人如何界定自己。
這就是今後五十年的核心問題:一方面是靠長期血緣關係而延續的各個社區，一方面是靈活而不斷轉變的各種身份。身份將不是你來自哪裏的問題;而是一套你可以帶到任何地方的價值觀，不論你生活在哪個社會，它都不妨礙你完全加入。
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