大学英语基础口语教程（大学英语口语13）

Lesson 13 Work to Live or Live to Work?，今天小编就来说说关于大学英语基础口语教程?下面更多详细答案一起来看看吧!

大学英语基础口语教程

Lesson 13

Work to Live or Live to Work?

Text

What Does Work Mean to People?

A group of people from different walks of life are being interviewed about what role vork plays in their lives. Their attitudes, as we can see, vary.

Interviewer: Mr. Fisher, you are an accountant and earn a good enough salary to

enable you to live comfortably. What does your work mean to you?

Mr. Fisher: I regard it as a means to an end. Basically I'm a family man, and as

long as I have a job which enables me to earn enough money to live

well, I'm happy. I find a comfortable life or the fact

that I have a routine life and three weeks holiday per year.

Interviewer: So in fact, you don't really mind what you do for a living?

Mr. Fisher: I didn't say that. I wouldn't want to be a manual worker, for

instance.I enjoy my profession up to a point,but it certainly doesn't

rule my life. As soon as I get home I forget about the office.

I suppose you could say I work to live.

Interviewer: Miss Burnes - as a school teacher in a working class area of London,

how do.you feel about Mr. Fisher's attitude towards his work?

Miss Burnes: Personally,I couldn't work to live. I must enjoy whatever I do-even

if the salary is low--otherwise I feel it isn't worth doing.

Mr.Fisher: Of course Miss Burnes, you do have long holidays which must be a

great compensation. Also, you aren't married and therefore have no

family responsibilities...

Miss Burnes: Being single has nothing to do with it! Even if I were married I' d

still have to have a fulfilling profession.

Interviewer: In other words, Miss Burnes, work plays one of the most important

roles in your life?

Miss Burnes: Definitely! It gives me the mental satisfaction I need and a role in

society. Contrary to Mr. Fisher, I can say that I live to work.

Interviewer: Of course, Mr.Fisher is employed by a company and Miss Burnes by a

school and therefore both have a certain amount of guaranteed

security.Mr.Evans' "history" is unusual. At the age of forty he gave

up a good job in industry to do what he had always wanted to do --

become a journalist and photographer. He's self-employed and does

freelance work. Mr. Evans, do you have any regrets?

Mr.Evans: Yes - one. That is that I didn't resign from my oth.er job when I was

younger!.

Interviewer: What made you leave the business world?

Mr. Evans: Well - although I had a good salary and a job which involved a lot of

travelling abroad, I always felt I was in the wrong job.

I felt tense all the time and I suddenly realized that, in spite of

security and what seemed to my friends to be an exciting job, I' d

stopped enjoying simple but important things...'

Mr.Fisher: Don't you consider your choice rather selfish? What about your wife

and family?

Mr.Evans: They're delighted. They see the change in me - find me more relaxed,

and therefore my relationship with my wife and family has improved,

because I'm not any more. It's because I'm doing what

I want to do.

Interviewer: Do you work as hard as before?

Mr.Evans: Yes - even harder. But I'm self-disciplined and I find that working

hard for a few hours gives me time to play hard too. I have a more

balanced life.

Miss Burnes: So in fact, you too have a routine life?

Mr.Evans: Of course! Everything becomes routine after a while. But it's up to

us to make that routine a creative experience -

Miss Burnes: Oh yes-I do.agree!

Mr.Evans: And we mustn't forget that"all work and no play makes a dull

boy"...

II . Read

Read the following passages. Underline the important viewpoints while reading.

l. Why Work?

Matthew: Michael, do you go out to work?

Michael: Not regularly, no. I... I used to;I used to have a job in a publishing

company, but I it wasn' t really what I wanted to do and that

what I wanted to do wouldn't earn me much money, so I gave up working

and luckily I had a private income from my family to support me and

now I do the things I want to do. Some of them get paid like lecturing

and teaching, and others don't.

Matthew: What are the advantages of not having to go to work from nine till

five?

Michael: Ah... there' re. . . there' re two advantages really. One is that if

yeu feel tired you don't have to get up, and the other is that you can

spend your time doing things you want to do rather than being forced

to do the same thing all the time.

Matthew: But surely that's in a sense very self-indulgent and very lucky because

most of us have to go out and earn our... our livings...um.Do you feel

in having this privileged position?

Michael: Yes,because I think I ase it well. I do.things which I think are useful

to people and the community and which I enjoy doing.

Matthew: Joan, do you think that in order to lead a balanced life, people need

some form of work?

Joan: Yes, I do, but I think it's equally important that their attitude

to work... um. .. should be positive. If orie is going to look on work

as , something that one does so that one will enjoy one' s

leisure or whatever comes after it, then... then I don't think there...

there can be very much satisfaction in it. But it seems to me that

whatever work one is actually doing... er... can become creative,and

I think that this is what we all need to feel that we are creating

something,in the same way that even when er... a mother cooks a meal,

she is creating, in her own way, something which... which is very

necessary to her family.

2. What Is the Value of Work?

Matthew: Chris, what do you think the value of work is?

Chris: Well, I think it... in our present-day society... um... for

most people, work has very little value at all um... Most of us go

out to work for about eight to nine hours of our working day.

We do things which are either totally and totally useless

or have very little , and for most of us

the only reason for working is that we need to keep ourselves

alive, to pay for somewhere to live, to pay to feed our... our

children.

Matthew: But surely people wouldn' t know what to do if they didn't have to

go to work?

Chris: Well, again this raises the sort of... two main aspects of work...

That one, should we think of'work only as... as a sort of

breadwinning process, and this is very much the role it has in

current society, or should we take a much wider perspective on work

and...and think of all the possible sort of activities that human

beings could be doing during the day? I think the sort of

distinction um currently is between say, someone who works in a car

factory and who produces cars which are just adding to pollution,

to overconsumption of vital resources, who is doing something

which is... very harmful, both to our environment and to, probably

society... um, to contrast his work with someone perhaps like a

doctor, wbo I think in any society could be jostified as doing a

very valuable job and one which incidentally,is...is satisfying to

the person who is doing it.

Matthew: What do you do? Is your job just a breadwinning process or do you

get some satisfaction out of doing it?

Chris: Well, in the job I... I do I find that most of the

satisfaction...is a mental one; it's coming to grips with the

problems of my subject and with the problems of teaching in the

University. Clearly this is the type of satisfaction that most

people doing what we call in England "white-collar" jobs... um...

tend to look for and tend to appreciate in theii jobs. This is

quite different from the sort of , who is either working

that his hands or with his skills on a machine, or from people

perhaps who are using skills which are of a quite different

character.

Certainly it's becoming a that people who do

"white-collar?jobs during the day, who work with their minds to

some extent, although many "white-collar" jobs now are becomin very

mindless, people who work on computers, people who... um... are

office clerks, um... bank employees, these people have fairly

soul-destroying jobs which nevertheless don't involve much

physical effort, that they tend to come home and do"do-it-yourself

" activities at home. They make cupboards... um... paint their

houses, repair their cars... which somehow provide the sort of

physical job satisfaction... um that they're denied in their

working day.

3. The Worst Job

The worst job I ever had was as a waitress at a rest stop on the New Turnpike the summer I was 18. Everyone who passed through the place wanted their food now, and many of them seemed to think that tipping was a nice idea in theory but not in practice. The' pace was manic, and I had to wear a hairnet and white oxfords: Most of the time I arrived at work crying, and drove hotne crying. The only good thing I can say about the experience is that it left me with the most profound respect for people who wait tables and with a pronounced tendency to overhp.

I had other jobs, before and after that one. I stuffed jelly doughnuts at a bakery in a bad neighborhood; I called people who were behind on their bills and ordered them to pay up. I was good at doughnuts and bad at threats. After that I bad jobs in the newspaper business only, so I never felt that I had a bad job again. I did not particularly care for working night rewrite on New Year's Eve, but I imagine that makes me just about average.

4. What Do You Do, Daddy?

A young boy asks his father, "What do you do, Daddy?" Here is how the father might answer: "I struggle with crowds, traffic jams and parking problems for about an hour. I talk a great deal on the telephone to people I hardly know . I to a secretary and then proof-read what she types. I have all sorts of meetings with people I don't know very well or like very much. I eat lunch in a big hurry and can't taste or remember what I've eaten. I hurry, hurry, hurry. I spend my time in very offices wi~h very functional furniture, and I never look at the weather or sky or`people passing by.

I talk but I don't sing or dance or touch people. I spend the last hour, all alone, struggling with crowds, traffic and parking." Now this same father might also answer: "I am a lawyer. I help people and businesses to solve their problems. I help everybody to know the rules that we all have to live by, and to get along according to these rules."

5. I Can't Stop Working

There have clearly been three times in my life when it would have been not only appropriate but reasonable for me to do something other than earn money. Once my father would have supported me while I went to summer school. Once I could have supported myself with while I was on strike. And once I would have been supported by my husband while I raised small children.

I couldn't do it. I went to summer school at 9 a.m. and to work at il a.m. During the strike I did a radio show and magazine work. And during my leave, after the checks ran out, I started to get nervous. Very nervous. I was having a wonderful time with my children, but there was this little flutter in my stomach that said, "You haven,t got a ." For whatever reason, I am not good at assets unless my assets are making some substantial contribution.

It's hard to figure out why I can,t be more relaxed about this, why I never backpacked through Europe like my friends because I had to be at work. I grew up in a comfortable middle-class home. My father worked very hard-too hard, I always thought -to fill the role of working man and the role of Dad, which probably made him just about average for his time. My mother never worked outside her home. It,s hard for me to figure out how a little girl in such an environment wound up thi.nking of herself as a breadwinner before current fashion that she should do so.

It probably has a great deal to do with independence, with feeling beholden to no man-and i suppose I do mean man. Mothers worry now about raising daughters who are willing and able to support themselves and their children if their marriages go crash. But I worry about being a woman who is not quite able to relax about her own self-worth and the incalculable value of the domestic functions she performs, not quite able to let the household run for a time driven only by her husband , s paycheck. It would make sense for me to do that, when my next child is born. For a time, as I did with the other two, I will not work. But the flutter will begin and I will want to have earning power again-not to buy anything in part.icular, just to know I am still a player.

6. When Taking Home a Paycheck Means

More Than Dollars and Cents

I have worked for money since I was 16 and went to the principal's office to ask for working papers. My problem is that I don't know how to stop, even when it would make sense and be possible to:do so for a time. Working for money has always meant something more to me than a bank balance. I suppose I have felt that at?some level I am my paycheck. Not how much I take home; if quantity were a real issue I wouldn't be in . Just that, like Everest, the money is there. I need to be on a to affirm myself. It doesn't seem like a healthy need; if I were male, of course, it would seem like second nature.

It's an interesting concept, money, sort of the way is an interesting concept. We're not supposed to care about it too much, especially now, when the bad rap on baby boomers is that they've forsworn drugs because they can get high from their cash management accounts. To say it's.central to who and where we are may be verboten; it also happens to be true. If you haven't got any, you're on the streets or on welfare. If you've got a whole lot, you're on the best-seller list and you don' t have to play Monopoly anymore because in real life the entire boardwalk bears your name.

Most of us fall somewhere in the middle. Most of us need to work to pay the rent, make the mortgage payments. I.ots of us convince ourselves that we need to work 60-hour weeks to do that, but that's of ten because we've let the size of our toys get. out of control.

We've got a gap on the issue, too. A man who is not interested in earning money is a ne'er-do-well or a freeloader; a man who is successful is a captain of industry. But society is still more comfortable with women who see earning power in terms of selfprotection, not self-promotion.

While it has been fashionable during my lifetime for professional women, plagued by over conflicts between their roles as mothers and as workers, to say that they work because it them, that's only haif the story for me. I also like it because it pays. That makes me feel guilty. I should have better priorites. The new saw about not male behavior turns out to be an old saw in disguise: we should not be to the baser impulses.

7. Work Brings Social and Personal

For these men, work is seen, not so much as a necessary evil, but as an opportunity to use one's skills in a way that gains money and esteem and is quite pleasant in itself. Work is a way of life, a mental challenge, an emotional involvement. The rat race is described as being exciting, and, when high status is combined with high financial rewards, it brings both social and personal esteem, Work can also give scope for male assertiveness;being in a position of command and control is a satisfaction on which several men proudly commented.

8. Work for High Financial Rewards

"I've got happier as I've got richer in direct proportion . For me money buys happiness."

For some men the business of making money through work is gratifying and exciting in itself. Their lives are geared towards this and they have chosen their jobs principally for their high financial rewards. For them money is important, not just for what it will buy, but as a badge of success: money and status are inextricably linked. Sometimes the whole family is involved in the quest to "get on", sometimes wife and children have to take second place, but they all have a common aim. They are the competitors, the self-made men, many of them with a well-conceived plan of self-betterment over a five- or ten-year span. Most of them left school without any academic distinction and started in business without any capital resources; rhey took courses where necessary, worked hard and made their own chances.

补偿，报酬( compensate的第三人称单数 )；给（某人）赔偿（或赔款）参考例句：

The company compensates her for extra work. 公司因她的额外工作而给她报酬。
A vertical spring compensates for the weight of the sensing element. 用一根垂直弹簧补偿敏感元件的负荷。

adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧参考例句：

It's very easy to get frustrated in this job. 这个工作很容易令人懊恼。
The bad weather frustrated all our hopes of going out. 恶劣的天气破坏了我们出行的愿望。来自《简明英汉词典》

n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克参考例句：

I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的参考例句：

This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

a.正当的，有理的参考例句：

She felt fully justified in asking for her money back. 她认为有充分的理由要求退款。
The prisoner has certainly justified his claims by his actions. 那个囚犯确实已用自己的行动表明他的要求是正当的。

n.苦工，重活，单调乏味的工作参考例句：

People want to get away from the drudgery of their everyday lives.人们想摆脱日常生活中单调乏味的工作。
He spent his life in pointlessly tiresome drudgery.他的一生都在做毫无意义的烦人的苦差事。

adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的参考例句：

They were killed,to the last man,in a futile attack.因为进攻失败，他们全部被杀，无一幸免。
Their efforts to revive him were futile.他们对他抢救无效。

n.正当的理由；辩解的理由参考例句：

There's no justification for dividing the company into smaller units. 没有理由把公司划分成小单位。
In the young there is a justification for this feeling. 在年轻人中有这种感觉是有理由的。

adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么参考例句：

There's no reason whatsoever to turn down this suggestion.没有任何理由拒绝这个建议。
All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you,do ye even so to them.你想别人对你怎样，你就怎样对人。

n.技工，精于一门工艺的匠人参考例句：

A cabinet maker must be a master craftsman.家具木工必须是技艺高超的手艺人。
The craftsman is working up the mass of clay into a toy figure.艺人把一团泥捏成玩具形状。

adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的参考例句：

The picture on this screen is a good artistic work.这屏风上的画是件很好的艺术品。
These artistic handicrafts are very popular with foreign friends.外国朋友很喜欢这些美术工艺品。

n.现象参考例句：

Ade couldn't relate the phenomena with any theory he knew.艾德无法用他所知道的任何理论来解释这种现象。
The object of these experiments was to find the connection,if any,between the two phenomena.这些实验的目的就是探索这两种现象之间的联系，如果存在着任何联系的话。

n.运动衫参考例句：

He wears a cotton jersey when he plays football.他穿运动衫踢足球。
They were dressed alike in blue jersey and knickers.他们穿着一致，都是蓝色的运动衫和灯笼短裤。

v.口授；(使)听写；指令，指示，命令参考例句：

It took him a long time to dictate this letter.口述这封信花了他很长时间。
What right have you to dictate to others?你有什么资格向别人发号施令？

adj.为实用而设计的，具备功能的，起作用的参考例句：

The telephone was out of order,but is functional now.电话刚才坏了，但现在可以用了。
The furniture is not fancy,just functional.这些家具不是摆着好看的，只是为了实用。

n.存款，储蓄参考例句：

I can't afford the vacation,for it would eat up my savings.我度不起假，那样会把我的积蓄用光的。
By this time he had used up all his savings.到这时，他的存款已全部用完。

n.母性，母道，妇产科病房；adj.孕妇的，母性的参考例句：

Women workers are entitled to maternity leave with full pay.女工产假期间工资照发。
Trainee nurses have to work for some weeks in maternity.受训的护士必须在产科病房工作数周。

n.（指美国、加拿大的钱币）一角参考例句：

A dime is a tenth of a dollar.一角银币是十分之一美元。
The liberty torch is on the back of the dime.自由火炬在一角硬币的反面。

adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合参考例句：

I had a bad fall,which put my shoulder out of joint.我重重地摔了一跤，肩膀脫臼了。
We wrote a letter in joint names.我们联名写了封信。

v.大声讲或读( dictate的过去式和过去分词 )；口授；支配；摆布参考例句：

He dictated a letter to his secretary. 他向秘书口授信稿。
No person of a strong character likes to be dictated to. 没有一个个性强的人愿受人使唤。来自《简明英汉词典》

n.新闻工作，报业参考例句：

He's a teacher but he does some journalism on the side.他是教师，可还兼职做一些新闻工作。
He had an aptitude for journalism.他有从事新闻工作的才能。

n.工资表，在职人员名单，工薪总额参考例句：

His yearly payroll is $1.2 million.他的年薪是120万美元。
I can't wait to get my payroll check.我真等不及拿到我的工资单了。

n.呼吸作用；一次呼吸；植物光合作用参考例句：

They tried artificial respiration but it was of no avail.他们试做人工呼吸，可是无效。
They made frequent checks on his respiration,pulse and blood.他们经常检查他的呼吸、脉搏和血液。

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性参考例句：

French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

adv.无上地，崇高地参考例句：