Chapter1
❖ The two main islands of the British Isles are Great Britain____ and Ireland_____.
❖ The longest river of Britain, the___Severn River__, originates in Mid-Wals_______.
❖ Among the four parts of the UK, Northern Ireland____ is the smallest.
❖ The River Thames____, the second largest and the most important river in Britain.
❖ _London_____ is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, __Edinburgh_____ is the capital of Scotland, __Cardiff_____ is the capital of Wales and ___Belfast_____ is the capital of Northern Ireland.
❖ According to a 2005 estimate, Britain now has a population of over __60___ million. Almost a quarter of the population of the UK lives in _England_____’s prosperous and fertile __southeast_____.
❖ The majority of the UK’s population are descendents of the _Anglo-Saxons__, a _Germanic_____ people from __Europe____ who went to England between the 5th and 7th centuries.
❖ Most people in Wales, Scotland and Ireland are descendents of the _Celtic
1
People___ who were the earlist known inhabitants of Britain.
❖ English belongs to the _Germanic ____ group of Indo-European_____ family of language.
❖ The introduction of Christianity to Britain added the first element of _Latin and Greek______ words to English.
❖ English changed into what is described as Modern English from the late _15th____ century.
❖ Samuel Johnson’s dictionary was influential in establishing a standard form of _spelling_____.
❖ Standard English is based on the speech of the _upper___ class of __southeastern_____ England. It is also called __Queen___’s English or _BBC____ English. Standard English is codified to the extent that the __grammar____ and _vocabulary_______ of English are much the same everywhere in the world where English is used.
❖ At present, nearly _a quarter______ of the word’s population communicate in English.
Chapter2
❖ The British history before _____ is basically undocumented.
2
❖ The Celts inhabited the island and____ became the dominant group in Britain between the 8th and 5th centuries BC.
❖ The name of Britain came from a _Celtic teibe____---the Britons.
❖ The __Germanic barbarians_____ attack on Rome ended the Roman occupation in Britain in 410.
❖ By the late 7th century, _Roman Christianity____became the dominant religion in England.
❖ _The Vikings____ began to attack the English coast in the 8th century.
❖ Westminster Abbey was built by _Edward the Confessor____ in 1052.
❖ The _Norman Conquest of England________ marked the establishment of feudalism in England.
❖ __The Magna Carta______________ lay the foundation of the British Constitution today.
❖ __The House of Commons________ and _the House of Lords___________ are the two components of the British Parliament.
❖ The Hundred Years’ War(1337-1453) was a series of wars between England and _France___ for trade and territory.
3
❖ The end of the Wars of the Roses(1445-1485) led to the rule of ____________.
❖ Under ______, England became a national state with an efficient centralized government, and started changing from a medieval to modern country.
❖ The direct cause for the Religious Reformation was King _________’s effort to declare his supreme power over the church.
❖ The English Civil War broke out in 1642 between _the Cavaliers______ and __Roundheads_______.
❖ __Bill of Rights_______ was passed after the Glorious Revolution.
❖ Parliament succeeded in establishing a system known as constitutional monarchy in the __Glorious______Revolution.
❖ By the middle of __19th___ century, the Industrial Revolution was accomplished in Britain.
❖ By the beginning of the _20th__ century, Britain faced strong challenges in its global imperial dominance.
Chapter3
❖ The British Constitution is made up of three main parts: ___Statutory Law_____________, ___Common Law___________, ___Conventions______.
4
❖ As a parliamentary democracy, the British government is characterized by a division of powers among the _legislature_________, the _executive__________, and the ___judiciary_________.
❖ __Parliament__________ is the law-making body of Britain.
❖ The importance of the British monarchy can be seen in its effect on public attitude__________.
❖ The house of Lords consists of the __Loeds Spiritual____________ and the __Lords Temporal_____________.
❖ The Prime Minister is the leader of the _maiority_________ party in Parliament.
❖ The ____Cabinet______ is at the center of the British political system. It is the supreme decision-making body in the British government.
❖ In Britain, the parliamentary election is held every _five____ years.
❖ __Scotland______ has a distinct legal system based on Roman law.
❖ Generally speaking, the British Parliament operates on a ____two-party_____ system.
❖ The
three political parties in Britain are _the Conservative
5
Party_____________________, ___the Labor Party________________ and __the Liberal Democrats__________________.
❖ The policies of the Conservative Party are charaterized by pragmatism and a belief in __individualism__________.
❖ The headquarters and the standing bodies of the Commonwealth of Nations are all located in __London__________.
Chapter4
❖ By the __1880s_____, the British economy had achieved global dominance.
❖ After __World War II_________, British economy declined.
❖ In ___1946___, Parliament passed two very importand acts to establish a welfare state.
❖ Britain has devoted _74%____ of its land area to agriculture, with two thirds of it for ___Stock raising________.
❖ Coal mining industry in Britain provides _a quarter___ of the energy consumed in the country.
❖ Besides coal, the other major sources of energy in Britain are _nuclear power_____ and ____Oil________.
6
Chapter5
❖ Compulsory Education in Britain has been a fundamental policy since __1944_______.
❖ In Britain, the division between grammar schools and vocational schools were ended by the introduction of comprehensive schools in the ___1960s______.
❖ National Curriculum was introduced in _1988________.
❖ Education in Britain is divided into four stages:__primary____, and
____higher
____secondary______, education___________.
_____further _education_________
❖ About __6%___ of British children receive primary and secondary education through the independent system.
❖ When children finished their secondary schooling at 16, they are required to take a national exam, _the General Certificate of Secondary Education______.
❖ Admittance to universities depends largely on _A-level______ results.
❖ __Backingham University________________ is only privately-financed university in Britain.
❖ ___The observer________, first appeared in 1791, is the world’s oldest
7
national newspaper.
❖ __The Times_________, first published in 1785, is the Britain’s oldest daily newspaper.
❖ ___The Times _________, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph are referred to as Britain’s “Big Three”.
❖ _British sky Broadcasting Group plc_______ is Britain’s top pay television provider.
❖ The Queen’s official birthday is celebrated with “_Trooping the Color_______________” on the 2nd Saturday in June.
Chapter6
❖ The most famous work in the Old English period is the epic ___Beowulf______.
❖ The most significant Middle English author is the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, whose masterpiece is _Canterbury Tales________.
❖ The most significant achievement of the English Renaissance is _drama________.
❖ __Hamlet_______ is regarded as a milestone in Shakespeare’s dramatic
8
development.
❖ __Alexander Pope___________ was the first English poet who could live off the sales of his works alone.
❖ “Preface to _Lyrical Ballads___________” is viewed as Romantic poetry’s “Declaration of Independence”.
❖ Of Dickens’ novels, ___David Copperfield____________ is considered autobiographical.
Chapter8
❖ The United States has _50 ____ states.
❖ The state __Alaska_______ is the largest in area of all the states.
❖ On the mainland of the U.S.A _Texas____ is the largest state.
❖ The longest river in North America is the __Mississippi________ River.
❖ Some of the world famous universities like Havard, Yale and MIT are located in ____New England__________.
❖ __Niagara_________Falls is located on the U.S.-Canadian border between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.
9
❖ In the U.S.A. the state __Alaska ______ is known as a world full of glaciers, waterfalls and lakes.
❖ Chinatown in __San Francisco___________ is the largest and oldest Chinese settlement in the U.S.
❖ The world famous Hollywood and Disneyland are located in the city _____Los Angles________.
❖ The largest minority in the United States is the __black_______, which holds about 12% of America’s population.
Chapter9
❖ The first successful English colony was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in __1607_______.
❖ Pilgrim Fathers are a group of _Puritans________who came to what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts to avoidpercecution in 1620.
❖ In 1775, the first shots of the American War of Independence were fired in ___Lexington______.
❖ In May 1775, the __Second______ Continental Congress was held in Philadelphia and began to assume the functions of a national government.
10
❖ The Declaration of Independence, which the Congress adopted on July 4, 1776, drafted by __Thomas Jefferson___________.
❖ With the signing of the __Treaty of Paris_______________in 1783, the US. won its independence.
❖ The president __Lincoln______________ issued Emancipation Proclamation to grant freedom to all slaves.
❖ In 1933 President ___Franklin D.Poosevelt______ rallied the people to the banner of his program, known as the “New Deal,” which helped the country get out of the Great Depression.
❖ President __Nixon_______ achieved two diplomatic breakthroughs: reestablishing U.S. relations with China and the former Soviet Union.
❖ President ___Reagan______was the oldest person ever elected as US President in 1980. At the end of his administration, the nation was enjoying its longest recorded period of peacetime prosperity without a recession or depression.
❖ The United Nations was established in April, __1945______.
❖ President Truman declared the “__Truman Doctrine_______________”, aiming at expanding American sphere of influence, which marked the beginning of the
11
cold war period.
Chapter10
❖ The U.S. Constitution came into effect in _1789________.
❖ According to the Constitution, a candidate for President must be natural born American citizen of at least ___35___years old and at least a __14___ years’ resident of the U.S..
❖ ThroughoutAmericanhistory Franklin D.Poosevelt______________________ was the only President who served more than two successive terms.
❖ ___Congress__________ is the law-making and the supreme legislative body of the U.S..
❖ The U.S. Congress consists of two houses: the __Senate_________ and the ___House of Pepresentatives__________________________.
❖ In U.S. Congress, the Senate has _100____ voting members.
❖ In U.S. Congress, the House of Representatives has 435______ voting members plus a non-voting representative from Puerto Rico, Guma and the District of Columbia respectively.
❖ The terms for a Senator and Representative are _six___ and _two___years
12
respectively.
❖ ___The Supreme Court____________________ is the highest court of the U.S..
❖ The Supreme Court of the U.S. is composed of __nine___ justices.
❖ Two major parties in America are the ____Democratic Party________________ and the ____Republican Party__________________.
❖ In the U.S. the symbol of the Democratic Party is a ___donkey__________, and an __elephant____________ represents the Republican Party.
❖ The __President___________ is the chief of the executive branch in the U.S..
❖ The _Cabinet___________ is a nucleus of leadership under the President in the administrative branch, which is the major surce of advice and assistance to the President in the U.S..
❖ __The White House_____________________, located in Washington D.C., is the official presidential residence.
❖ The _Capital___________ is the official building of U.S. Congress.
❖ Chapter12
❖ Formal education in the U.S. consists of elementary________________,
13
secondary and higher education.
❖ Higher education in the U.S. began with the founding of _Harvard College__________ College in 1636.
❖ ___Yale_______ University, the third oldest institution of higher education in the U.S., is located in New Haven, Connecticut.
❖ _The New York Times________________________was established in 1851, consistantly ranking number one for editorial quality and news coverage in the U.S.. It is sold especially to the upper or upper-middle class.
❖ ____The Washington Post_________________________, established in 1877, is the second largest newspaper in the U.S. .
❖ ___Voice of American_______________________ is the most famous radio station in the U.S. for the propaganda to foreign countries. It sends news to the whole world in over 40 languages 24 hours a day.
❖ Thanksgiving is celebrated in the U.S. on the ___fourth Thursday in November_________________ __________________.
❖ The national day of the U.S. falls on ____the 4th of July_________.
Chapter13
14
❖ Benjamin Franklin’s most famous work is his
__Autobiography______________, which records his rise from poverty and obscurity.
❖ ___Washington Irving__________________ is regarded as “the father of American literature”.
❖ James Fennimore Cooper devoted two great figures to American mythology: the brave __frontiersman______________ and the bold ___Indian_________.
❖ __Ralph Waldo Emerson_______________________ is acclaimed as the chief spokesman of New England Transcendentalism.
❖ Nathaniel Hawthorne’s most famous letter________________.
novel is ___The Scarlet
❖ ___Moby Dick_____________ is considered Herman Melville’s masterpiece.
❖ The poetic style devised by Walt Whitman is now called __free verse________.
❖ _Mark Twain____________ is considered “the true father of national literature” in the U.S..
❖ Mark Twain’s masterpiece was ___The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn___________________________ __________.
❖ F. Scott Fitzgerald’s finest novel is __The Great Gatsby______________, and its
15
theme is about the American Dream.
❖ __Ernest Hemingway___________________, a Nobel Prize winner for Literature, is the author of The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea, etc. ❖ __Willian Faulkner______________, a giant in the realm of American literature, is the author of The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, etc.
❖ ___Tony Morrison___________________ is the first African-American winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
❖ ___Eugene O’neill________________ is America’s greatest playwright, and won the 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature and the Pulitzer Prize for four times .
Chapter14
❖ Canada is the __second_______ largest country in the world in terms of territory.
❖ _Ottawa________, is the capital city of Canada, located in the province of Ontario.
❖ __Montreal_________ is the second largest French-speaking city in the world after Paris.
16
❖ __Vancouver___________ has the second largest Chinatown in North America after San Francisco.
❖ In 1497, __John Cabot____________, an Italian sea captain, sailed west from Britain, discovering the eastern shores of Canada, which Cabot claimed as Newfoundland.
17
因篇幅问题不能全部显示，请点此查看更多更全内容