教材文本：
［课例1］ The Secret Language of Plants
Talking plants have long been a thing of myths and legends. Many cultures have stories of talking trees that give advice as well as warnings to people. Alexander the Great and Marco Polo were said to have visited such a tree in India. And in some modern stories, such as the film Avatar, trees can communicate with animals and people.
With us long believing that talking plants are fantasy, new research has revealed something amazing: it appears that plants can communicate after all.
It has been known for some time that plants use chemicals to communicate with each other. This happens when a plant, say a bean plant, gets attacked by insects. The plant releases tiny amounts of chemicals from the leaves that are being eaten. This is like a warning, or a call for help: “I'm being attacked!” When another bean plant detects the chemicals from its injured neighbour, it starts to release its own, different chemicals. Some of these chemicals drive insects away. Others attract insects — the wasps! The wasps kill the insects that are eating the bean plants. Scientists hope to learn more about this plant warning system, so that we can use it to grow crops without pesticides.
More surprisingly, plants also use sound to communicate. People can't hear these sounds, but plants are making them. Some plants make noises with their roots. Corn and chilli plants do this. They also “listen” to the noises from other plants. A chilli plant can tell if a neighbouring plant is helpful, or unfriendly. Some trees make clicking noises when there is not enough water, indicating drought is arriving.
Most surprisingly of all, plants have an amazing system of communication that can link nearly every plant in a forest. Scientists call this system the “wood wide web”. It is in some ways similar to the Internet we use. While the Internet is a worldwide network of computers linked by cables and satellites, the wood wide web is linked underground by fungi. This fungal network links the roots of different plants to each other. Using the wood wide web, plants can share information and even food with each other. For example, some pine trees can send food to smaller pine trees to help them grow. But just like our own Internet, the wood wide web has its own version of “cybercrime”. Plants can steal food from each other, or spread poisons to attack other plants. Perhaps one day scientists will learn how to create a “firewall” to help prevent these attacks within the wood wide web.
Scientists are learning more every day about the secret ways in which plants talk to each other. Who knows? Maybe one day we will know enough about plant communication to be able to “talk” with them ourselves.
［课例2］ A Journey of Discovery
The captain of the ship, the Beagle, wanted someone who would “profit by the opportunity of visiting distant countries yet little known”. The person who answered the call was not the captain's first choice. It was a young man who had left medical school without completing his degree. What's more, he had recently received a letter from his father predicting that he would be “a disgrace to yourself and all your family”. Despite all this, his adventures on this ship would lead to one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time.
The young man in question, Charles Darwin, was a geologist and naturalist, fascinated by rocks, plants and animals. He left England on the ship, the Beagle, in 1831. The journey gave him the chance to study various living things in their natural environments. After Darwin had spent some time in South America, his room on the ship was crowded with samples of the plants and animals he had collected. As he studied these, he asked himself the question: how did different species come to exist?
At that time, people believed that all species had appeared on Earth at the same time, and had not changed since. But Darwin began to think differently. He noticed that some species of animals were very similar to each other. Maybe animals evolved as they adapted to their changing environments? It was just an idea, but enough to inspire Darwin to look for more evidence.
When the Beagle reached the Galápagos Islands in 1835, Darwin saw a variety of new species, but it was the birds that interested him the most. Darwin noticed that there was a difference between the finches on each of the islands. It seemed their beaks had evolved according to what food was available on that particular island. Darwin suspected that the finches had evolved from a common ancestor, which had arrived on the islands a long time before. Over time, it had slowly evolved into many new species. And that was the answer to how new species of plants and animals came to exist: they evolved from earlier ancestors.
It was a completely new idea — a theory of evolution. Darwin explained this theory in his book, On the Origin of Species. It was not published until 1859 and immediately caused a storm. Many people refused to believe that living things, including humans, had evolved from lower forms of life. They were shocked. But Darwin's scientific studies were so convincing that more and more people started to believe his theory.
Today, On the Origin of Species is regarded as one of the most important works ever written. It has changed ideas about life on Earth forever. And it all began with the journey on the Beagle.
［课例3］ The Well That Changed the World
As a six-year-old Canadian schoolboy, Ryan had trouble believing the words spoken by his teacher that many people in developing African countries couldn't get enough clean water. He looked across the classroom at the drinking fountain. It was very close — only ten steps away. So, Ryan asked himself, “Why do some African children have to walk ten kilometres to get water every day? And why is the water so dirty that it makes them sick?” Young Ryan thought, “Life is easy for me, but hard for those people. Why don't I help?”
At first, his plan was to earn money to build a single well somewhere in Africa. He cleaned windows and did gardening for his family and neighbours. He soon reached his first target of $70, but when he gave the money to a charity, he was told that it actually cost $2,000 to build a well. Seventy dollars was only enough for a hand pump. Ryan understood that a hand pump wouldn't help the children. What they needed was a well dug near their homes.
Two thousand dollars was a lot of money, but Ryan didn't give up. He was determined to help other children have clean water. He started to ask for help from his classmates and neighbours and persuaded them to donate money. At the same time, a friend of Ryan's mother helped make his story go public. After several months, Ryan had raised the $2,000, with which a well was built near a primary school in Uganda. The children at the school no longer needed to walk for hours to get water. They were grateful to him and invited him to visit.
In Uganda, Ryan at last saw the finished well with his own eyes. But that was not all. He also saw hundreds of delighted students who had turned out to welcome him. They sang and danced happily. Some even offered him food and gifts. At first Ryan was nervous, but soon a great warmth filled him. He really had made a difference for these children. He broke into a joyful smile.
Later, Ryan's experience led him to set up a foundation to encourage more people to help. Many inspired people gave him their support. Ryan's foundation continues to attract support from more and more people, so the work of building more wells can go on. Today, over 800,000 people in 16 countries across Africa have benefited from the life-changing gift of clean, safe water.
Now, as an adult, Ryan says that the question to ask is not “Why don't I help?”, but “How can I help today?”. This insight grew from the determined attitude of a six-year-old boy who had the courage and perseverance to make his dream a reality.
［课例4］ Good Book, Bad Movie?
They say that “a picture is worth a thousand words”, but the briefest look at books and the movies based on them would have anyone questioning this common saying. All too often, great words end up being turned into cinematic “turkeys”.
Good movies need good stories. If so, why has one of the earliest and greatest works in Western storytelling, Homer's The Odyssey, never had an equally great movie based on it? Movies need strong characters. So why have the movies based on The Great Gatsby never been praised as “great”? Movies of course need impressive images, so why has Alice in Wonderland only resulted in movies best described as “interesting”?
One of the key reasons behind this is that while a book usually takes a few days to read, a movie typically lasts undertwo hours. This means that great books can lose plot details and characters when they move to the big screen. This is something that even the highly successful Harry Potter movies can't escape from, with fans of the books disappointed not to see some of their favourite characters in the movie versions.
Movies also disappoint us when things don't look the way we imagined them in the books. Take, for example, the epic movie Troy, which is in part based on Homer's The Iliad and was met with mixed reviews from the audience. The most questionable issue was the actress chosen to play the part of Helen. Many people thought she didn't live up to Helen's title of “the most beautiful woman in the world”, influencing opinions of the movie to some extent.
There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people's eyes. Furthermore, books and movies are two different forms of media and therefore have different rules. With this in mind, perhaps we should judge a movie in its own right, and not against its original source. Interestingly, audiences have in recent years turned to television series such as Sherlock or Mad Men, which can have many characters and gradual plot development. Perhaps, one day, readers of F. Scott Fitzgerald's most admired work will find themselves glued to their screens by episodes of The Great Gatsby.