节目资讯
刊物:生活知识家
日期:2009-06-09
难易度:High
关键字:retrieve, capability, PDA, personal digital assist
(Music).
Hi, everyone.
Welcome to Studio Classroom Worldwide.
Thanks for taking time out of your busy day to join us.
Well, as I said yesterday, cell phones seem to be in the news a lot.
One reason for this, of course, is that they are constantly changing.
New technologies have enabled us to use a cell phone to surf the Internet, take
pictures, read books, oh yes, and make phone calls.
Despite all they can do, our author asks the question:
Can cell phones do everything we need them to?
We’ll look at that question more closely after we glance at four key words you
need to know.
The first is retrieve, as in:
Our Dog will retrieve a tennis ball when we throw it,
but sometimes she won’t give it back.
The second word is capability, as in:
This test is beyond the capability of a seven-year-old.
We have to make it easier.
Next is the acronym:
PDA,
which stands for personal digital assistant.
Our example sentence reads:
I don’t use my PDA anymore because I have one built into my cell phone.
And finally, the noun:
turf.
Our football team successfully defended our home turf by winning the
championship!
OK.
Let’s jump into the reading now.
It starts at the top of the left-hand column on page twenty-five.
(Backgroud Noise).
Smartphones.
Can cell phones fulfill all your technology needs?
What would you call a device that retrieves e-mail, surfs the web, plays games
and edits office documents?
It must be a laptop or desktop computer, right?
Wrong.
Nowadays, cell phones fit that description as well.
Phone manufacturers are constantly packing more power into their products,
and with every leap forward, the cell phone seems to absorb the capabilities of
another device.
PDAs, music players and digital cameras have all had to make room for the
do-it-all ”smartphones”.
Now the latest phones are invading the turf of the personal computer.
Travelers armed with cutting-edge phones can accomplish basic computing tasks
without dragging along their laptops.
Hi, friends.
I’m Chip.
And I’m Rachel. We’re glad you joined us for our lesson today on Smartphones.
And the question our author is asking us is:
Can a cell phone fulfill all of your technology needs?
Now uh, most of us, probably all of us use technology in some way.
And maybe we feel like we need more and more.
And cell phones can fulfill a lot of those needs.
So our article starts off with a question.
Our author asks:
What would you call a device or an electronic tool that retrieves e-mail, surfs
the web, plays games and edits office documents?
Now that word retrieves is one of our vocabulary words.
Uh, Rachel, can you tell us what the word retrieves mean?
Sure.
If you retrieve something, you get it or you can rescue it or save it.
We use uh, in different ways.
But here we’re talking about retrieving an e-mail.
And that means you just want to get that e-mail back or be able to read it.
So we’re asking the question:
If we have a device or a tool that can do all of these things, what would we
call it?
If it could edit document, surf the web and play games, it must be a laptop,
right?
It sounds to me like it would be some kind of computer,
either a laptop or a... a notebook computer or maybe a desktop computer at your
office.
But actually, that’s wrong.
Nowadays, these days, cell phones fit that description as well.
We have cell phones that can do all of those pretty advanced functions.
That’s amazing.
Well, currently I don’t have a cell phone that can do all of those things.
But those cell phones are out there and they are available.
And as we see in our text:
Phone manufacturers are constantly packing more power into their products.
You see a lot of Ps in that sentence:
packing more power into their products.
And that phrase ”packing power into something” is an idiom.
So it means they’re just putting more things into these small devices.
They’re making them more and more powerful.
OK.
And with every leap forword - and that’s... that’s not just every small step
forward but actually a jump forward,
the cell phone seems to absorb or drink in more capa... the capabilities of
another device.
And that word capabilities is one of our marked words.
A capability is almost the same thing as an ability.
It’s something that the cellphone is capable of doing,
or it’s a function that the cell phone is able to do.
So now cell phones are able to do more and more capabilities.
That’s right.
They have more and more capabilities.
So PDAs, music players and digital cameras have all had to make room for the
do-it-all ”smartphone”.
That’s another idiom. If you make room for something, you kind of step out of
the way and say:
All right, cell phone, come on in.
Or:
Smartphone, it’s your turn now to be the latest technology.
Now Chip, this is uh, pretty amazing.
I mean, for a while, digital cameras and PDAs, those were the big popular
things.
But now it seems like a lot of people are using their cell phones as cameras and
to keep track of things.
That’s true.
And that word PDA that you’re using is one of our vocabulary words.
It’s uh, personal digital assistant.
So you have things in a PDA.
For example, like a calendar and a calculator,
and ways of organizing your schedule and doing many of the functions that a
desktop computer would... would be able to do for you.
But here we are seeing that all in a cell phone.
Right.
So the smartphone is coming in and it’s taking over.
And we see in our text:
Now the latest phones are invading the turf of the personal computer.
In other words, sometimes the personal computer gets pushed to the side,
because people realize that they can do everything on their cell phone that they
could originally do only on their computer.
Let’s look at that word ”turf” for a minute.
What does it mean in this context, Chip?
Well, usually turf means the grass or the ground.
But that meaning can be enlarged to mean your personal space.
So if someone is invading your turf,
that means they’re invading something uh, some kind of space or maybe influence
that you think belongs to you,
and you’d rather them stay out of your turf.
Exactly.
I see a little competition here, don’t you?
Between the personal computer and the... the smartphone or the cell phones that
can do all of these amazing things.
And we also see that travelers armed with cutting-edge phones can accomplish
basic computing tasks without dragging along their laptops.
So this is a very important point.
You can do many things, basic things, without having to carry around a big,
heavy, bulky laptop.
Well, right now we need to take a break.
First we’re going to visit the Chat Room. And when... when we come back, we’ll
continue talking about smartphones.
Hello, everyone.
Welcome to the Chat Room.
I’m Ken.
And I have Brandon here with me today.
Hi, everyone.
Hi, Ken.
It’s great to be back here.
So Ken, what do you want to talk about today?
Well Brandon, I saw the phrase ”leap forward” in our article today.
But I don’t really understand what this means.
This simply means to go forward or to jump forward.
In our article, it’s actually used with the idea of taking a step forward or
making progress.
I see.
Can we use the word ”leap” in other ways?
Yes, Ken.
There are some idioms that we can talk about.
One idiom is by leaps and bounds.
This means something happens very quickly.
For example, if a company is very successful and it grows very quickly,
then they might say that the company has grown by leaps and bounds.
Hmm, that’s a very useful idiom.
(Chinese).
So are there other useful idioms that contain the word:
leap?
Yes, there are, Ken.
The phrase ”leap of faith” is an idiom that means you believe something is true
even though it cannot be proven to be true.
So if I open a new business, I may be taking a leap of faith because I don’t
know whether or not the new business is going to be successful.
But I believe that it will be based on the research that I’ve done.
(Chinese).
And here’s one more ”leap” phrase.
(Music).
leap in the dark.
This phrase means that you do something but you don’t know what the results will
be.
So in this case, the person who takes a leap in the dark is someone who does
something without having any idea of what will happen.
That’s right, Ken.
For example, imagine that I’m a scientist and I’m testing brand-new medicine for
cancer patients,
and I have no idea what the results will be.
In this case, I would be taking a leap in the dark because I’ve never used the
medicine before,
and I don’t know what the results will be.
(Chinese).
Right now it’s time for a break.
Stay tuned.
Studio Classroom will be right back.