注重表达的顺畅与质量：
1．虽然感到有些可疑，但我还是跟着他进了店里。（Though a little suspicious, I followed him into the shop.）
2．我开始对他的意图起疑心是当他反复地说我能从中得到什么好处的时候。（I started to feel suspicious about his intention when he kept on talking about what good I could get out of it.）
3．这些票上面说的是哪天用就只能哪天用。（The tickets must be used on the stated date.）
4．让我再次重申：我绝对无意去伤害你。（Let me reiterate that I have absolutely no intention to hurt you.）
5．经过很多天的争吵与讨价还价，一项纺织品进出口双边协议终于达成了。（After many days of quarreling and bargaining, a bilateral agreement on textile import and export was finally arrived at // reached // concluded.）
6．警方悬赏一大笔奖金打探有关那个肇事后逃逸驾驶员的下落。（The police are offering a big reward for any information about the whereabouts of the hit-and-run driver.）
7．银行遭劫时，有人看到他的汽车正在附近，这决不是巧合。（It is no coincidence that his car was seen near the bank at the time of the robbery.）
8．他们结婚很久了，但两人的感情渐渐变淡，最后终于分居了。（They had been married for a long time but gradually drifted apart until they separated.）
9．谈话漫无边际地从一个话题转到另一个话题。（The conversation drifted from one subject to another.）
10．请随时来我们商店转转，不一定非要买东西。（Come and look round our shop without commitment to buy anything.）
11．会议开得乱七八糟的，这表明事先缺乏妥善筹划。（The disorganized meeting suggested a lack of proper planning.）
12．她脸上挂着的表情显示她生气了。（The expression she is wearing on the face suggests anger.）
13．如果你没有分散我的注意力的话，我报告早已经写完了。（I would have finished writing the report if you hadn’t distracted my attention.）
14．他成了，不妨说，一个没有太太的已婚男人。（He became, as it were, a married man without a wife.）
15．虽然他们吃的、喝的都快耗尽了，但他们依然保持着快乐的心情和坚定的信念，相信很快就会出去的，而且他们被告知救援行动进展顺利。（Though they are running out of food and drink, the men are cheerful and confident that they will get out soon. They have been told that rescue operations are progressing smoothly.）
16．太感谢你的礼物了，但你没必要花这么多钱。（Thanks so much for the present! But you needn’t have spent so much money.）
17．我本该知道他是个保不住什么密的人。我真不该告诉他那件事。（I should have known he could not keep anything secret. I really shouldn’t have told him that.）
18．我是不是来的不是时候啊？（Have I come at an awkward time?）
19．她强挤出了一丝微笑来掩饰自己的尴尬。（She forced a smile to cover up her awkwardness.）
20．太湖由于过度捕捞，著名的“三白”，即：白鱼、白虾、银鱼几乎要枯竭了。（The Taihu Lake has been overfished and the well-known “Three Whites”, namely, white fish, white shrimps and small ‘silver’ fish are almost exhausted.）
21．我的背景是工薪阶层，在这些高收入人群中感到很不自在。（With my working-class background, I feel like a fish out of water among these high-income people.）
22．很抱歉我不能整天坐在这儿和你瞎侃。我还有更要紧的事要做。（Sorry I can’t afford to sit here and chat with you all day. I have bigger fish to fry.）
23．我恐怕得让你走人了。我这里庙小，装不下你这个大和尚。（I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave. You are a big fish in a small pond.）
24．她突然辞职，我们皆为之愕然。（Her sudden resignation took us all by surprise.）
25．要确保胜利，我们就必须出其不意、攻其不备。（To ensure success, we’ll have to take them by surprise.）
26．造成这些鱼长这么大个儿的因素有三：海底的热输油管道、钻井平台工作人员扔下去的充足的食物供应、石油平台附近完全没有捕鱼船。（Three factors have caused these fish to grow so large: the warm water round the hot oil pipes under the sea; the plentiful supply of food thrown overboard by the crews of the rigs; the total absence of fishing boats around the oil rigs.）
27．就供需而言，经济型的中档轿车在汽车市场上还是供货不足。（In terms of supply and demand, economical intermediate-grade cars are still in short supply on the auto market.）
28．那是你不在的时候发生的。（It happened during // in your absence.）
29．我不会接受任何我不在场的情况下做出的决定的。（I wouldn’t accept any decision made in my absence.）
30．经理不在的时候，由我负责。（In the absence of the manager, I shall be in charge.）

写作构思训练：
From ideas to expressing：
University should accept equal numbers of male and female students in every subject.
To what extent do you agree or disagree?
现实生活中总难免会存在不平等的地方，比如男女之间的不平等、老少之间的不平等、上下级之间的不平等。在这里，我想谈一谈男女之间的不平等事宜，具体而言，就是我认为大学里各科目不应该追求男女比例相同的作法，因为这样的做法太走极端，从而忽视了性别之间毕竟存在着差异。

In real life, it is always hard to avoid inequalities. For example, there are inequality between men and women, young and old, inferior and superior. Right here, I’d like to talk about inequalities between men and women. To be more specific, I argue that universities should not pursue to accept equal numbers of male and female students in every subject because this is an extreme way of doing things, ignoring the actual differences between the two sexes.

首先，我们应该承认，男女在社会中的角色是有差别的。男性比女性更适合做体力活，而女性则比男性更适合做文秘、护理方面的工作。某些科目其实是有很强的性别要求的。比如航海专业就更适合男性，我们总不能期盼女性在大海上漂泊几个月吧？再比如采矿专业，很明显，女性不太适合在矿井里工作，因为这份工作的危险性及对体力的要求都会比较高。

First of all, we should acknowledge that men and women have different roles to play in the society. Men can do a better job than women when the work requires a lot of strength. Women, on the other hand, have the edge on men in terms of doing secretarial and nursing work. Some subjects such as ocean navigation and mining are actually sex distinctive. After all, we cannot expect women to be bumping and floating on the sea for months. Nor can we expect women to work under a mine as this job is often filled with danger and has a relatively high requirement for physical strength of the laborers.

其次，男女比例不一致有利于班级纪律和学习成效。有一项调查发现，当一个班级里男女比例为1:2时，学生的学习热情和效果、班级纪律最佳。这项研究是通过对比各种各样的男女生比例班级状况而进行的，其中包括100％纯男生班级、100％纯女生班级、男女各半班级等等，因此，具有相当的说服力。

Second, a disproportional rate of male and female students in one class is conducive to class discipline and learning effect. A survey shows that when the rate of males and females in one class is 1:2, the students’ motivation for learning and the actual learning effect as well as the class discipline are the best. This research was made by comparing the situations in various kinds of male-female student ratio classes, including all-boy classes, all-girl classes, 50%-50% male-female classes and, therefore, is rather persuasive.

当然，为了维护男女平等，很多科目一定要招收同等比例的男女生也没有什么问题，但关键的问题是：这样做对吗？恐怕会形成更大的不平等。举个例子说吧：某个学校的英语专业要招收30名新生，有200人申请，根据入学考试成绩，前30名中有21人是女生，男生只有9人入围，是不是应该把坚持录取15名男生、15名女生呢？那样的话，对6位没被录取的女生来讲公正吗？答案肯定是否定的。

Sure, it is okay to recruit the same number of male and female students just for the sake of maintaining equality between the two sexes, but the key point is: is it fair? I’m afraid this will lead to greater inequality. For instance: the English department planned to recruit 30 freshmen and it turned out that there were 200 applicants. Based on the entrance test result, among the top 30, 21 were girls while boys accounted for only 9. Does it mean that the university should insist on enrolling 15 girls and 15 boys? If so, is it fair to those six girls who were not accepted? The answer is obvious: No!

基于以上论证，我们可以看出：坚持招收同比例的学生数目没有道理，因此，是不可取的作法。

From the foregoing discussion, we can come to the conclusion that accepting the same number of male and female students in every subject does not hold water; therefore, it is totally unadvisable.

Reading to improve writing－context-based study
Passage 1:
Faces, like fingerprints, are unique. Did you ever wonder how it is possible for us to recognize people? Even a skilled writer probably could not describe all the features that make one face different from another. Yet a very young child—or even an animal, such as a pigeon—can recognize faces, and we all take this ability for granted.
We also tell people apart by how they behave. When we talk about someone’s personality, we mean the ways in which he or she acts, speaks, thinks, and feels that make that individual different from others.
Like the human face, human personality is very complex. But describing someone’s personality in words is somewhat easier than describing his face. If you were asked to describe what a ‘nice face’ looked like, you probably would have a difficult time doing so. But if you were asked to describe a ‘nice person’, you might begin to think about someone who was kind, considerate, friendly, warm, and so forth.
There are many words to describe how a person thinks, feels and acts. Gordon Allport, an American psychologist, found nearly 18,000 English words characterizing differences in people’s behavior. And many of us use this information as a basis for describing, or typing, his personality. Bookworms, conservatives, military types—people are described with such terms.
People have always tried to ‘type’ each other. Actors in early Greek drama wore masks to show the audience whether they played the villain’s or the hero’s role. In fact, the words ‘person’ and ‘personality’ come from the Latin persona, meaning ‘mask’. Today, most television and movie actors do not wear masks. But we can easily tell the ‘good guys’ from the ‘bad guys’ because the two types differ in appearance as well as in actions.

Passage 2:
Statuses are marvelous human inventions that enable us to get along with one another and to determine where we ‘fit’ in society. As we go about our everyday lives, we mentally attempt to place people in terms of their statuses. For example, we must judge whether the person in the library is a reader or a librarian, whether the telephone caller is a friend or a salesman, whether the unfamiliar person on our property is a thief or a meter reader, and so on.
The statuses we assume often vary with the people we encounter, and change throughout life. Most of us can, at very high speed, assume the statuses that various situations require. Much of social interaction consists of identifying and selecting among appropriate statuses and allowing other people to assume their statuses in relation to us. This means that we fit our actions to those of other people based on a constant mental process of appraisal and interpretation. Although, some of us find the task more difficult than others, most of us perform it rather effortlessly.
A status has been compared to ready-made clothes. Within certain limits, the buyer can choose style and fabric. But an American is not free to choose the costume of a Chinese farmer or that of a Hindu prince. We must choose from among the clothing presented by our society. Furthermore, our choice is limited to a size that will fit, as well as by our pocketbook. Having made a choice within these limits, we can have certain alterations made, but apart from minor adjustments, we tend to be limited to what the stores have on their racks. Statuses, too, come ready made, and the range of choice among them is limited.