2019年公共英语三级口语考试常用短文

The English Language

English is the principal language of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Bahamas, Jamaica, Barbodos, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana; the official language of over a dozen African countries, and other areas such as Belize, Hong Kong, and Gibraltar, and numerous islands in million, so the language has been referred to as the "unofficial international language".

There are three recognized periods in the history of English: Old English, from earliest time to 1150 A. D.; Middle English, 1150-1500; and Modern English, 1500 to the present. English reigned in England only in the late 14th century, with London dialect as the standard. As late as in 1700, there were only 8. 5 million English speakers. As a result of vast colonial expansion, the number shot up to 123 million by 1900, and has since tripled.

English is structurally closer to Chinese than to any of its European cousins. Parts of speech are ofter fuzzy; the word "up" can be an adverb, preposition, verb, noun, or adjective. Word order is stereotyped; there is a big difference in meaning between "look over" and "overlook" or "stand with" and "withstand". Seven different meanings can be put into the following sentence by successively inserting

The complete English vocabulary consists of almost 1 million words, yet 3,000 words make up 95% of all utterance. English accounts for 3/4 of the world’s mail, 1/2 of the newspapers, and 3/5 of all radio stations.

Job

Work and Careers

Sometimes we say that someone we know is "a square peg in a round hole". This simply means that the person we are talking about is not suited for the job he is doing. He may be a bookkeeper who really wants to be an actor or a mechanic who likes cooking. Unfortunately, many people in the world are "squarepegs"; they are not doing the kind of work they should be doing, for one reason or another. As a result they probably are not doing a very good job and certainly they are not happy.

Choosing the right career is very important. Most of us spend a great part of our lives at our jobs. For that reason we should try to find out what our talents are and how we can use them. We can do this through aptitude tests, interviews with specialists, and study of books in our field of interest.

There are many careers open to each of us. Perhaps we like science. Then we might prepare ourselves to be chemists, physicists, or biologists. Maybe our interests take us into the business world and such work as accounting, personnel management or public relations. Many persons find their place in government service. Teaching, newspaper work, medicine, engineering — these and many other fields offer fascinating careers to persons with talent and training.