short passages for you to read

[ام اي عزيزي]

The following will be short passages taken from Mosaic 1 Grammar

Book by, Patricia K. Warner / Lou Spaventa

International edition

I have found these passages pretty nice for you and me to read and have ideas about how American lived. This come with no intention for imitation or copying the American way of living, but to have an idea about their culture and the primary goal is for READING



enjoy reading



قمت بتظليل الكلمات التي أظن أنها صعبه وتحتاج لأن ترجع الى الديكشنري !


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Taking care of herself

Alicia Owens is eight years old. For the past two years, she has come home to an empty house. Her mother and her father work all day from 9 to 5. Alicia returns home from school by 3 o'clock. Alicia's mother Laurie, calls her from work at 3 : 15.

Alicia has already made herself a cup of cocoa and is sitting in front of TV set when her mother calls. She asks if everything is all right. Alicia always says, " Yes Mom."



Alicia is not allowed to invite her friends to her house when her parent are not home. Sometimes she receives invitations to play at a classmate's home after school. However, she cannot accept them unless either her mother or father knows where she is. As a result, Alicia has spent a lot of afternoon alone in her house, usually watching TV or playing on the computer. By the time her parents arrive, she has also finished her homework, and she has set the table for dinner. Sometimes, she has even done laundry and started preparing dinner. All by herself.



When Alicia was born, her mother took maternity leave and stayed at home.

But when Alicia was six months old, her mother brought her to the home of a child care worker who took care of the very young. When Alicia was two and a half, she began attending preschool. Although Alicia is just eight years old, she has attended school for nearly six years. In that time, she has learned to take care of herself. She can dress herself, make herself snacks, get in and out of her house, answer the phone, and take messages.



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Page : 73

I don't think that there is a difficult word here!!

? How healthy are you

Good health is not something you are able to buy at the drugstore, and you can't depend on getting it back with a quick visit to the Doctor when you are sick , either. Keeping yourself healthy is your responsibility. Mistreating your system by keeping bad habits, neglecting symptoms of illness, and ignoring common health rules can counteract the best medical care.



Nowadays, health specialists promote the idea of wellness for everybody. Wellness means achieving the best possible health within the limits of your body. One person may need many fewer calories than another, depending on metabolism. Some people might prefer a lot of easier exercise to more strenuous exercise. While one person enjoys playing 72 holes of golf a week, another would rather play three sweaty, competitive games of tennis.



Understanding the needs of your own body is the key. Everyone runs the risk of accidents, and no one can be sure of avoiding chronic disease. Nevertheless, poor diet, stress, a bad working environment, and carelessness can ruin good health. By changing your habits or the conditions surrounding you, you can lower the risk or reduce the damage of disease,





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Page : 100

[ام اي عزيزي]

الرد: short passages for you to read

Families

Exactly what is family ? Until about 40 years ago, the traditional American family consisted of a working husband, a wife at home, and two or more children Responsibilities were clearly divided in the American nuclear family.

While the husband was earning a living, the wife was caring for the home

and raising the children. Of course, there were exceptions, but this concept of the family was general rule until the 1960s.



Since the 1960s, however, the family has become more diverse, fragile, and changeable. Americans have accepted differing concepts of families, including

single-parent, blended, two-paycheck, interracial, childless, and commuter families.



Some critics believe that the American family has suffered greatly because of all the changes in society. According to these critics, the family had been much stronger before it began to struggle with issues such as divorce, working mothers, gay couples, and unmarried relationships. Today's strongest critics feel that the traditional nuclear family will become rare in the 21st century.



Nationwide, however, most Americans believe that the family is going to survive. In fact, almost all major surveys in recent years have found that the American family is as strong as it has ever been. For most Americans, the family continues to provide their deepest source of satisfaction and meaning in life. Thus, although today's family is different from what it used to be, it seems to be thriving. (1)





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Page, 62

Old and New Technology

Old inventions are not necessarily eliminated by new ones. After all, people did not stop riding bicycles after the car was invented. Thus, older inventions may be replaced, but they seldom disappear because new roles are created for them. Some of the best examples of this are from the field of long-distance communication.



Until the 19th century, communication had been limited by distance and time.

Then came a series of amazing inventions that extended the range of human communication. Each of these inventions was expected to replace existing technology. For example, when the telephone was invented in 1876, it was feared that letters would become obsolete. When television was introduced in the 1940s, many people predicate the " Death" of radio. And as television became more popular, people worried that it would lead to the " Death" of books and reading.



But it is clear that these predications were wrong. The older technologies, letters, books, and the radio have not disappeared. Instead their roles have been changed by the appearance of new technology. Television, together with the automobile, has provided a new role of the radio. Both television and the radio have created new roles for the news paper. And all of these have affected the book.



The technology of the 21st century is progressing rapidly. With the availability and affordability of the personal computer, more and more households are wired to the ( www) World WideWeb on the internet. This puts the individual in instantaneous contact with other computer users anywhere in the world. Information on the World Wide Web has proliferated to the point where much of what once was in libraries and archives can now be found on the internet. Thus, communication has become at once global and personal. Commercial enterprises that use the internet are now among the fastest growing business in the world.

E-commerce, business via the internet, has begun to make its influence felt in the new century.



At the same time, the inventions of one and two centuries before still play important roles in the daily life of millions of people all over the world. The telephone and the television, in their new forms such as the cell phone and the watchman, are still with us and, oh yes that most ancient technology, the book, is still with us too.













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Page : 138

[سمر22]

الرد: short passages for you to read

Thank u My Dear
It's very useful passegaes
I like it 2 mutch
_______
with my Beast wishes; smar

[ام اي عزيزي]

الرد: short passages for you to read

Thank u My Dear

It's very useful passegaes
I like it 2 mutch
_______
with my Beast wishes; smar

Its Pleasure Dear visitor
You are very
[img]http://schizo97***********/welcome17.gif[/img]

[ام اي عزيزي]

الرد: short passages for you to read

The new is here :




Living in Antarctica

Antarctica is a frozen continent where the temperature seldom manages to reach 25°F ( - 4°C ). It tends to hover around -20°F ( -30°C ) , and it can plunge to -100°F

( - 80°C ) or less. The winds can reach 200 miles per hour ( 320 km ). The sun shines most of the day during the very short summer, but the winter is month after month of dusk and darkness.

You might like to pay a short visit to Antarctica to see its frozen beauty from the warmth of your cruise ship, but would you like to live there ? Approximately, 1000 people live in Antarctica year-round, and two of those remarkable people are Adriana Romero and Victor Figueroa, from Argentina.
Victor Figueroa has spent almost five years in Antarctica, and the last full year he spent there, he was joined by his wife Adriana. Victor was commander of the scientific station at Espreanza ( Hope ), named because of a shipwrecked group from Sweden that managed to survive an Antarctica winter there in 1903.

Adriana was hired to help run the Antarctica radio station, and she also volunteered to teach in the Esperanza school, to help with the Adelie penguin counts, and to translate for foreign visitors.

For them, living in Antarctica was exciting, but both also admit being bored and even being frightened at times. Through all, they persisted with high spirits and courage, both making major contributions to our knowledge of this forbidding continent.

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Page : 221

The Risk of Being Victim



In a recent survey, 17 percent of the people interviewed said that at least one member of their household had been either a victim or witness to a crime in the past year. However, if you had been a victim of a crime, it most likely wouldn't have been a violent one. Even though a violent crime is three times more likely to occur now than it was 30years ago, today 94 percent of all crimes don't involve any threat of violence. Most crimes are not the sensational type that become headlines or top stories on the evening news.

So what are your chances of being involved in a crime ? if it were 1960 and you were living in the united states, the chances of your experiencing a crime would be low. Today, the odds of experiencing a crime vary. For example, if you lived in an impoverished household, you would be a greater risk than if lived in a well-to-do household. If you were an adult, you would be less likely to be victimized than if you were a youth. If you used drugs and committed crimes yourself you would raise your chances. Interestingly, the odds of being a victim are highest for criminals themselves.

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Page : 338

[ام اي عزيزي]

الرد: short passages for you to read

Crime without violence

Wife : I can't believe this !

Husband : What happened ? what's wrong ?
Wife : Someone must have gotten my credit card number and used it. I've got charges here that I never made !
Husband : But how could it have happened ?
Wife : Well, lately, I haven't asked for the carbon paper when I've made charges. Someone may have gotten my number out of a wastebasket in some store. Or maybe it happened because I gave my credit card in formation for an internet auction. Do you remember those " Beanie Babies " I bought on line ? Somebody might have gotten access to my account there. Oh, I should have been more careful…

Husband : No matter what, these things shouldn't happen. It's wrong. Well, let's call the credit card company and put a stop on the card.

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Page : 342

Margaret Mead Speaking on the future of humanity

I am optimistic by nature. I am glad that I am alive. I am glad that I am living at this particular, very difficult, very dangerous, and very crucial period in human history.

To this extent my viewpoint about the future reflects a personal temperamental
bent- something that must always be taken into account. But, of course, unsupported optimism is not enough.

I support my optimism with my knowledge of how far mankind has come. Through out the hundreds of thousands of years that human life has evolved, at first physically and later culturally, human beings have withstood tremendous changes and have adjusted to radically new demands. What we have to realize, I believe, is that human ingenuity, imagination, and faith in life itself have been crucial both in initiating changes and in meeting new demands imposed by change.

As an anthropologist I also have seen how a living generation of men born into a stone age culture has moved into a modern world all at once, skipping the many small steps by which mankind as a whole moved from the distant past into the present.

I find these things encouraging. An earlier generation invented the idea of invention. Now we have invented the industrialization of invention – a way of meeting a recognize problem by setting hundreds of trained persons together to work out solutions and, equally important, to work out the means of putting solutions into practice.

This is what made it possible to send men to the moon and to begin the exploration of our space. This should give us reason to believe also that we can meet the interlocking problems of runaway populations, war, and the pollution of the earth on which we depend for life. None of these problems is insoluble.

What we need is the will to demand solutions and the patience to learn how to carry them out.

Margaret Mead

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Page : 400