赵金海的

选这篇文章也有我自己的个人喜好的因素，这是VOA Special English的新闻播报节目In The News里当时对Michael Jackson的报道。这篇文章也希望同学们仔细听每个细节，尤其是开始不久那里有一段电话录音，那是最真实的英语。我们一般学习英语的过程中是很难接触 到真正的现实生活中的英语的。比如我们大多是从一些英语教学的录音里、电影、电视、收音机等等地方听到的模拟场景的声音，而我们在生活中遇到英语国家的人 的时候，他们给我们说话时经常会不由自主地放慢语速，尽量吐字清楚并且使用简单的词汇及句型。所以这篇文章中的那段电话录音是个很好的材料。在那段录音中 有这么一句"OK, OK. How old is he?"，而实际上我们听到的是"OK, OK. How’di?"这是个很严重的略读现象，并且把is给全省没了，我们要说他发音错了都不为过。而实际上呢，电话另一头的人一点都没有迟疑，立刻回 答"He’s uh, he’s 50 years old, sir."。所以各位同学，请放心大胆地把该省的音省掉，该连的音连起来，该弱读的音就弱读。咱们中国人可能听不明白，但只要你不是乱说的，英语为母语的 国家的人们反而会感觉到听你的英语很亲切！

点这里下载音频

This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.
(MUSIC)
Fans around the world are remembering the man who called himself the King of Pop. Michael Jackson died Thursday in Los Angeles. This was the emergency call from the house where he was living.
CALLER: "We have a gentleman here that needs help and he’s not breathing. He’s not breathing and we’re trying to pump him but he’s not –”
OPERATOR: "OK, OK. How old is he?"
CALLER: "He’s fifty years old, sir."
OPERATOR: "Fifty, OK."
A personal doctor was with him at the house. 
Michael Jackson would have celebrated his fifty-first birthday in August. He was just days from launching what he hoped would be a comeback — a series of fifty concerts

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如题。语音课第二次的综合练习是选自VOA Special English的Words And Their Stories节目。在教材里只是那篇文章的片断。这里我把全文及其音频发出来，供各位同学学习：

点击下载音频

下面是文本内容：

Words and Their Stories: Pulling a Fast One

Now, the VOA Special English program WORDS AND THEIR STORIES.

(MUSIC)

Today I will tell about expressions using numbers. Let us start with the number one. Numbers can be tricky. On the one hand, they are simply numbers. On the other hand, they have meanings. I for one use these expressions a lot.

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