提升英语阅读能力是我们学习英语的关键，下面我为大家带来英语阅读小文章，希望大家喜欢!
The expensive shops in a famous arcade near Piccadilly were just opening. At this time of the morning, the arcade was almost empty. Mr Taylor, the owner of a jewellery shop was admiring a new window display. Two of his assistants had been working busily since 8 o'clock and had only just finished. Diamond necklaces and rings had been beautifully arranged on a background of black velvet. After gazing at the display for several minutes, Mr Taylor went back into his shop.
The silence was suddenly broken when a large car, with its headlights on and its horn blaring, roared down the arcade. It came to a stop outside the jeweler's. One man stayed at the wheel while two others with black stockings over their faces jumped out and smashed the window of the shop with iron bars. While this was going on, Mr Taylor was upstairs. He and his staff began throwing furniture out of the window. Chairs and tables went flying into the arcade. One of the thieves was struck by a heavy statue, but he was too busy helping himself to diamonds to notice any pain. The raid was all over in three minutes, for the men scrambled back into the car and it moved off at a fantastic speed. Just as it was leaving, Mr Taylor rushed out and ran after it throwing ashtrays and vases, but it was impossible to stop the thieves. They had got away with thousands of pounds worth of diamonds.
皮卡迪利大街附近的一条著名拱廊街道上，几家高档商店刚刚开始营业。在早晨的这个时候，拱廊街上几乎空无一人。珠宝店主泰勒先生正在欣赏新布置的橱窗。他手下两名店员从早上8点就开始忙碌，这时刚刚布置完毕。钻石项链、戒指漂亮地陈列在黑色丝绒上面。泰勒先生站在橱窗外凝神欣赏了几分钟就回到了店里。
宁静突然被打破，一辆大轿车亮着前灯，响着喇叭，呼啸着冲进了拱廊街，在珠宝店门口停了下来。一人留在驾驶座上，另外两个用黑色长筒丝袜蒙面的人跳下车来。他们用铁棒把商店橱窗的玻璃砸碎。这开始发生时，泰勒先生正在楼上。他与店员动手向窗外投掷家具，椅子，桌子飞落花流水在拱廊街上。一个窃贼被一尊很重的雕像击中，但由于他忙着抢钻石首饰，竟连疼痛都顾不上了。这场抢劫只持续了3分钟，因为窃贼争先恐后地爬上轿车，以惊人的速度开跑了。就在轿车离开的时候，泰勒先生从店里冲了出来，跟在车后追赶，一边还往车上扔烟灰缸、花瓶。但他已无法抓住那些窃贼了。他们已带着价值数千镑的首饰逃之夭夭了。
Yesterday afternoon Frank Hawkins was telling me about his experiences as a young man. Before he retired, Frank was the head of a very large business company, but as a boy he used to work in a small shop. It was his job to repair bicycles and at that time he used to work fourteen hours a day. He saved money for years and in 1958 he bought a small workshop of his own. In his twenties Frank used to make spare parts for aeroplanes. At that time he had two helpers. In a few years the small workshop had become a large factory which employed seven hundred and twenty-eight people. Frank smiled when he remembered his hard early years and the long road to success. He was still smiling when the door opened and his wife came in. She wanted him to repair their grandson's bicycle!
昨天下午弗兰克·霍金斯向我讲述了他年轻时的经历。在他退休之前，弗兰克是一家非常大的事务公司头，但作为一个男孩，他曾经工作在一个小商店。他的工作是修理自行车，那时他一天工作十四小时。他积蓄多年，并在1958他买了属于自己的小作坊。在他二十几岁的弗兰克曾生产飞机零配件。那时他有两个帮手。在几年的小作坊已经成为一个雇用七百二十八人的大工厂。弗兰克回想着他早年的艰难经历和走过的漫长的成功之路。他正笑着的时候，门开了，他的妻子走了进来。她叫他去修理他们孙子的自行车!
Nearly a week passed before the girl was able to explain what had happened to her. One afternoon she set out from the coast in a small boat and was caught in a storm. Towards evening, the boat struck a rock and the girl jumped into the sea. Then she swam to the shore after spending the whole night in the water. During that time she covered a distance of eight miles. Early next morning, she saw a light ahead. She knew she was near the shore because the light was high up on the cliffs. On arriving at the shore, the girl struggled up the cliff towards the light she had seen. That was all she remembered. When she woke up a day later, she found herself in hospital.
英语阅读精选文章
学习英语需要每天积累，除了积累单词之外，还有就是文章了。以下是网我整理的关于英语阅读的精选文章，供同学们阅读。
篇一：读书之乐
Reading is a pleasure of the mind, which means that it is a little like a sport: your eagerness and knowledge and quickness make you a good reader. Reading is fun, not because the writer is telling you something, but because it makes your mind work. Your own imagination works along with the author's or even goes beyond his. Your experience, compared with his, brings you to the same or different conclusions, and your ideas develop as you understand his.
Every book stands by itself, like a one-family house, but books in a library are like houses in a city. Although they are separate, together they all add up to something; they are connected with each other and with other cities. The same ideas, or related ones, turn up in different places; the human problems that repeat themselves in life repeat themselves in literature, but with different solutions according to different writings at different times.
Reading can only be fun if you expect it to be. If you concentrate on books somebody tells you "ought" to read, you probably won't have fun. But if you put down a book you don't like and try another till you find one that means something to you, and then relax with it, you will almost certainly have a good time--and if you become as a result of reading, better, wiser, kinder, or more gentle, you won't have suffered during the process.
读书是愉悦心智之事。在这一点上它与运动颇为相似:一个优秀的读者必须要有热情、有知识、有速度。读书之乐并非在于作者要告诉你什么，而在于它促使你思考。你跟随作者一起想像，有时你的想象甚至会超越作者的。把自己的体验与作者的相互比较，你会得出相同或者不同的结论。在理解作者想法的同时，也形成了自己的观点。
每一本书都自成体系，就像一家一户的住宅，而图书馆里的藏书好比城市里千家万户的居所。尽管它们都相互独立，但只有相互结合才有意义。家家户户彼此相连，城市与城市彼此相依。相同或相似的思想在不同地方涌现。人类生活中反复的问题也在文学中不断重现，但因时代与作品的`差异，答案也各不相同。
如果你希望的话，读书也能充满乐趣。倘若你只读那些别人告诉你该读之书，那么你不太可能有乐趣可言。但如果你放下你不喜欢的书，试着阅读另外一本，直到你找到自己中意的，然后轻轻松松的读下去，差不多一定会乐在其中。而且，当你通过阅读变得更加优秀，更加善良，更加文雅时，阅读便不再是一种折磨。
篇二：任教印象
The main impression growing out of twelve years on the faculty of a medical school is that the No.1 health problem in the U.S. today, even more than AIDS or cancer, is that Americans don’t know how to think about health and illness. Our reactions are formed on the terror level.
We fear the worst, expect the worst, thus invite the worst. The result is that we are becoming a nation of weaklings and hypochondriacs, a self-medicating society incapable of
distinguishing between casual, everyday symptoms and those that require professional attention.
Early in life, too, we become seized with the bizarre idea that we are constantly assaulted by invisible monsters called germs, and that we have to be on constant alert to protect ourselves against their fury. Equal emphasis, however, is not given to the presiding fact that our bodies are superbly equipped to deal with the little demons and the best way of forestalling an attack is to maintain a sensible life-style.
在医学院任教十二年来，我获得的主要印象是，当今美国头号健康问题——一个比艾滋病或癌症更为严重的问题——是美国人不知道如何去认识健康与疾病。我们的反应是惊恐万状。我们怕最坏的事，想着最坏的事，而恰恰就召来了最坏的事。结果 ，我们变成了一个孱弱不堪，总疑心自己有病的民族，一个分不清哪些是日常偶发症状，哪些是需要治疗的症状，而自己擅自用药的社会。
我们年轻的时候还染上了一种奇怪的观念：一种肉眼看不见的叫做细菌的小妖怪在不断向我们进攻，我们必须长备不懈地保护自己不受其伤害。然而，对另一个重要事实，我们却未能给予同样的重视，那就是，我们的身体装备精良，足以对付这些小妖怪，而且防止妖怪进攻的最佳途径就是保持合理的生活方式。
经典的英语文章适合我们闲时练习英语阅读，下面我为大家带来，希望大家喜欢!
篇一：
I am an art student and I paint a lot of pictures. Many people pretend that they understand modern art. They always tell you what a picture is 'about'. Of course, many pictures are not 'about' anything. They are just pretty patterns. We like them in the same way that we like pretty curtain material. I think that young children often appreciate modern pictures better than anyone else. They notice more. My sister is only seven, but she always tells me whether my pictures are good or not. She came into my room yesterday.
'What are you doing?' she asked.
'I'm hanging this picture on the wall,' I answered. 'It's a new one. Do you like it?'
She looked at it critically for a moment. 'It's all right,' she said, 'but isn't it upside down?'
I looked at it again. She was right! It was!
我是个学艺术的学生，画了很多画。有很多人装成很懂现代艺术。他们总是告诉你一幅画的。当然，有很多画是什么意思也没有的。他们只不过是漂亮的图案。我们喜欢它们就像我们喜欢漂亮的窗帘布。我觉得小孩子们往往比任何人都更能欣赏现代绘画。他们观察到的东西更多。我的妹妹只有七岁，但她总能说出我的画是好还是不好。昨天她到我房里来了。"你干什么呢。她问。"我把这幅画挂到墙上，我回答。"这是一个新的。你喜欢吗。她用挑剔的目光一会儿。"这都是正确的，"她说，"但这不是颠倒的吗?"我又看。她是对的!这是!
篇二：
Late in the afternoon, the boys put up their tent in the middle of a field. As soon as this was done, they cooked a meal over an open fire. They were all hungry and the food *** elled good. After a wonderful meal, they told stories and sang songs by the campfire. But some time later it began to rain. The boys felt tired so they put out the fire and crept into their tent. Their sleeping bags were warm and fortable, so they all slept soundly. In the middle of the night, two boys woke up and began shouting. The tent was full of water! They all leapt out of their sleeping bags and hurried outside. It was raining heavily and they found that a stream had formed in the field. The stream wound its way across the field and then flowed right under their tent!
在下午晚些时候，男孩子们把帐篷搭在一个领域中。一旦这是，他们在篝火上烧起了饭。他们都饿了，而且食物闻起来很香。一顿美餐之后，他们讲故事、唱歌的篝火。但过了些时候开始下雨了。孩子们感到累了，所以他们扑灭了火，爬进了帐篷。睡袋既暖和又舒适，所以他们都睡得很香。在半夜里，两个男孩醒来了，开始喊。帐篷里全是水!他们全都跳出睡袋，跑到外面。雨下得很大，他们发现地上已经形成了一个流。那小溪弯弯曲曲穿过田野，然后正好从他们的帐篷!
篇三：
Editors of newspapers and magazines often go to extremes to provide their readers with unimportant facts and statistics. Last year a journalist had been instructed by a well-known magazine to write an article on the president's palace in a new African republic. When the article arrived, the editor read the first sentence and then refused to publish it. The article began: 'Hundreds of steps lead to the high wall which surrounds the president's palace.' The editor at once
sent the journalist a fax instructing him to find out the exact number of steps and the height of the wall.
The journalist immediately set out to obtain these important facts, but he took a long time to send them. Meanwhile, the editor was getting impatient, for the magazine would soon go to press. He sent the journalist two urgent telegrams, but received no reply. He sent yet another telegram rming the journalist that if he did not reply soon he would be fired. When the journalist again failed to reply, the editor reluctantly published the article as it had originally been written. A week later, the editor at last received a telegram from the journalist. Not only had the poor man been arrested, but he had been sent to prison as well. However, he had at last been allowed to send a cable in which he rmed the editor that he had been arrested while counting the 1084 steps leading to the 15-foot wall which surrounded the president's palace.
报刊杂志的编辑常常为了向读者提供成立一些关紧要的事实和统计数字而走向极端。去年，一位记者受一家有名的杂志的委托写一篇关于非洲某个新成立共和国总统府的文章。稿子寄来后，编辑看第一句话就拒绝予以发表。文章的开头是这样的："几百级台阶通向环绕总统的高墙。"编辑立即给那位记者发去传真，要求他核实一下台阶的确切数字和围墙的高度。
记者立即出发去核实这些重要的事实，但过了好长时间不见他把数字寄来，在此期间，编辑等得不耐烦了，因为杂志马上要付印。他给记者先后发去两份传真，但对方毫无反应。于是他又发了一份传真，通知那位记者说，若再不迅速答复，将被解雇。但记者还是没有回复。编辑无奈，勉强按原样发稿了。一周之后，编辑终于接到记者的传真。那个可怜的记者不仅被捕了，而且还被送进了监狱。不过，他终于获准发回了一份传真。在传真中他告诉编辑，就在他数通向15英尺高的总统府围墙的1，084级台阶时，被抓了起来。
