高中英语人教版必修4 13

[00:07.00]Listening Task

[02:12.65]Listening Task

[03:55.42]READING TASK

[04:03.98]AN APRIL FOOL'S JOKE:THE NOODLE HARVEST

[04:09.55]"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."

[04:15.61]April Fool's Day,or April lst,

[04:22.77]is known 1 in many countries as a day for playing jokes on others.

[04:29.71]It is usually a time when children make fun of each other

[04:35.28]but sometimes other people can get caught in the fun too.

[04:41.23]One of the most famous jokes in England

[04:45.81]took place on British television in 1957.

[04:52.05]It was a Monday night

[04:55.81]when there were always many serious programmes on the television.

[05:01.58]One of them was called Panorama 2,

[05:05.71]which explored problems and progress all over the world.

[05:11.67]So nobody was surprised when it began with a report

[05:17.73]on the excellent noodle harvest in south Switzerland.

[05:23.40]The programme mentioned two reasons for the good crop:

[05:29.46]an unusually warm winter and the disappearance 3 of the insect

[05:36.12]that attacked the noodle crop every year.

[05:40.85]The reporter showed many noodle trees

[05:45.60]with the farmers pulling noodles off them and putting them into baskets.

[05:52.57]The people watching

[05:55.81]were told that they may not have heard of noodles from this part of the world

[06:01.69]because noodles were grown as part of small family businesses.

[06:07.86]The jprogramme makers 4

[06:11.02]realised that people might wonder why noodles were always the same size

[06:17.57]so they explained that

[06:21.23]"it was the result of many years'patient research with the trees

[06:27.79]to produce noodles of exactly the smae lenght."

[06:33.14]But even so they explained that the life of noodle farmer was not easy.

[06:40.51]"The last two weeks of March are an anxious time for noodle farmers.

[06:47.46]There is always a chance of very cold weather spoiling 5 their crop.

[06:53.73]Then it is difficult for them to get top prices on the world markets."

[07:00.57]Many people in England believed this story.

[07:05.61]They rang the BBC 6 to find out how to grow their own noodle tree.

[07:12.48]They were told to"place a piece of noodle in a tin of tomato sauce 7

[07:19.54]and hope for the best."

[07:23.09]This may seem very silly.

[07:27.06]But in the 1950s very few British people travelled abroad for their holidays

[07:35.11]and even fewer of them ate noodles.

[07:40.15]So it seemed possible to imagine that noodles grew on trees like apples,

[07:47.80]pears and nuts.

[07:51.28]Also people trusted the Panorama programme

[07:57.20]for its careful research and serious informations.

[08:03.16]So they were shocked to find the next day

[08:08.12]that they had all believed an April Fool's joke.

[08:14.39]Even today the report of the noodle harvest

[08:19.54]is remembered as one of the best April Fool's jokes ever