时间:2019-02-19 作者:英语课 分类:听播客学英语


英语课

   In the podcast about Mr Speaker, I told you that I was going on holiday. I said that I would be the captain of a ship and sail away to new and interesting places. So, where did I go on my ship? Perhaps I sailed across the Atlantic. Perhaps I visited the islands of Greece.


  But, no. Actually, my wife and I hired a canal boat and we went for a holiday on one of Britain’s beautiful canals.
  We have lots of canals in Britain, especially in England. Most of them were built in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Boats on the canals carried coal, iron, pottery 1, stone, lime 2, salt and many other goods needed by the new industries which grew during the Industrial Revolution. Until the railways came, the canals were one of the most important forms of transport in the country.
  The centre of the canal system in England is here in Birmingham, where I live. We like to tell visitors that there are more canals in Birmingham than in Venice! (This is true, but the canals in Venice are probably more beautiful!)
  Originally, horses pulled the boats on the canals. The horses walked along a path at the side of the canal. Do you know the English verb “to tow 3”? It means to pull something which cannot move by itself. If your car breaks down, you may need to use another vehicle to tow the car to a garage. So, the horses towed 4 the boats along the canal, and we still call the path beside a canal a “towpath”. In the 19th century, however, some canal boats had steam engines instead of horses, and today, most canal boats have diesel 5 engines.
  Compared to the great canals of the Netherlands or Germany, English canals and canal boats are tiny. The traditional boats of the English canals are only about 2 meters wide and between 10 and 20 meters long. A bigger boat could not fit through the bridges or the locks. We call these boats “narrowboats”. Why are they so small? Well, the canals are narrow, because it was cheaper and easier to build a narrow canal than a wide canal. And the boats are small because, originally, they were towed by a single horse. Traditional English narrowboats are brightly painted in red, blue, green or yellow, or all of these colours. Often they are decorated with pictures of flowers or castles.
  When the railways arrived, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the canals began to decline 6. It was much quicker to move goods on a railway than on a canal. And in the 20th century, road vehicles took traffic from the canals as well.
  Here is a typical story about the decline of the canals. There was company with a factory which made feed for animals. It was beside a canal, and the company had 11 narrowboats which brought grain and other things which it needed from a sea port. The narrowboats took 3 or 4 days to make the journey from the factory to the sea port and back. In 1923, the company bought a lorry. The lorry could make two return journeys each day. Naturally, the company scrapped 7 the narrowboats and used the lorry instead.
  And so, everyone thought, that is the end of the old canals. The narrowboats disappeared, many canals were abandoned, weeds grew in the water so that boats could not pass, the towpaths collapsed 8 into the canals, the locks would not work any more. It was all very sad.
  Then, shortly after the Second World War, people started to think that the canals could have a new use, for recreation i.e. for leisure 9 and holidays. They saw that many canals went through beautiful, quiet countryside, where people could relax and enjoy nature. Gradually, people started to use the canals again. Abandoned canals were cleaned and re-opened; locks were repaired; and in one or two places new canals were built. Today, you can see large numbers of brightly-painted traditional narrowboats on our canals again. But they are carrying holiday-makers, not coal, or lime or pottery.
  There will be more about canal boats in the next podcast. There is a quiz on the Listen to English website so that you can test how well you have understood what I have said.

n.陶器,陶器场
  • My sister likes to learn art pottery in her spare time.我妹妹喜欢在空余时间学习陶艺。
  • The pottery was left to bake in the hot sun.陶器放在外面让炎热的太阳烘晒焙干。
n.石灰,酸橙,酸橙树,粘鸟胶,钙;vt.施石灰,涂上粘性物质,沾上粘鸟胶
  • Lime exists in many soils.许多土壤中都含有石灰。
  • A broad avenue of lime trees led up to a grand entrance with huge oak doors.一条栽有酸橙树的宽阔林阴道通向巨大的橡木门的雄伟入口。
n.拖,拉,牵引
  • The broken-down car was taken in tow by a lorry.那辆坏了的车由一辆货车拖着。
  • Mrs Hayes went to the supermarket with her four little children in tow.海斯太太带着她的4个小孩到超市去了。
v.拖,拉,拽( tow的过去式和过去分词 )
  • Our car was towed away by the police. 我们的汽车被警察拖走了。
  • The tugboat towed the damaged ship into port. 拖船把坏了的船拖进港口。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
n.柴油发动机,内燃机
  • We experimented with diesel engines to drive the pumps.我们试着用柴油机来带动水泵。
  • My tractor operates on diesel oil.我的那台拖拉机用柴油开动。
n.衰微,跌落,下降;vt.使降低,婉谢;vi.下降,衰落,偏斜
  • I must decline to show favour to any of the candidates.我必须拒绝偏袒任何一位候选人。
  • The birthrate is on the decline.出生率在下降。
废弃(scrap的过去式与过去分词); 打架
  • This machine is so old that it will soon have to be scrapped. 这架机器太旧,快报废了。
  • It had been thought that passport controls would be scrapped. 人们曾认为会放开护照管制。
adj.倒塌的
  • Jack collapsed in agony on the floor. 杰克十分痛苦地瘫倒在地板上。
  • The roof collapsed under the weight of snow. 房顶在雪的重压下突然坍塌下来。
n.空闲时间,空暇;悠闲,安逸
  • I am seldom at leisure.我很少有空。
  • He read books at his leisure.他在空闲时读一些书。
标签: 英语播客
学英语单词
absorber coupling
actuator
ADC, A/D converter
additional post
aladan
amphoric resonance
Anemone demissa
aplosyenite
audience rating
biomass liquefaction
blunt nosed body
brachionus forficula
color television
craythorne
crucible steel moldboard
cyclone separation
damaged Thoroughfare and Conception Vessels
data construction
degw
dinoseb
ecosystem type
fascisti
finished product
fixed order quantity
Franklin Institute
frowsiest
gamiest
go into liquidation
half solid floor
heating resistance
height of high tide
hexacontane
hexahydro-salicylic acid
hornotine
hot-driven rivet
houda
interrogative sentences
Introdouche
lapilli mound
library-user
lobular glomerulonephritis
long list
manganese trichloride
marbofloxacin
maritane
methylcholanthrenes
net of canals and ditches
new political economy of development
nitrification inhibitor
patrollers
Peltovuoma
peve
pipiles
plasma oscillation analysis
pressure and vacuum release valve
pyrotechnian
radical operation
record of cash disbursement
renner
right circular cylinder coordinate
rough board
Rowell.
safety communications equipment
self-consciously
Senekjie's medium
serenader
shoot craps
sideways extrusion
sing the praises of sb
single-length normalization
sinoradimella costata
snail-shell
Solvay, Ernest
spadger
spatial noise
strata mucosum membranae tympani
t head bolt
tax on slaughtering animals
Tazlina Glacier
tenomyoplasty
third-degree relatives
thymus glands
trimoxamine
turuq
uncurably
under no obligation
univorous
unmanned rocket
unsuit
upper Ordovician series
urts
UTRR (University of Teheran Research Reactor)
vajazzles
vibration and shock
view-finder
viewing prism
vincis
wee-weed
well-penned
xerosis of conjunctiva
zanthoxyli pericarpium