精听建议：

先完整地把一条新闻听一到三遍，争取掌握大意。然后，一句一句精听，力争每句话都听明白。遇到实在不懂的地方，再听写。

下面的文本材料中空缺部分里面要填的词都很简单，不过是一些值得注意的连读或者典型的美式发音哦，有些语速比较快。试试看，你能不能全部写对？

（参考文本，欢迎指出错误^^）

Lesson38 The Metric System

During the French Revolution (1789—1799) against the king, the revolutionary government started the metric system. Before that France had different systems for measuring things 2 .

Cloth makers measured cloth with one system. Jewellers used another system. Carpenters used another. Other countries used other systems. The revolutionary government wanted one international scientific system of measurement. They asked a group of scientists and mathematicians to 3 .

The mathematicians and scientists 4 use the numbers ten, hundred, and thousand for their system. Next they had to decide on a “natural” length. They chose one ten-millionth of the distance from the Equator to the North Pole. They called this one meter. Then they chose one gram for weighing water in a cubic centimetre.

Mathematicians and scientists worked on these problems for twenty years until they finally finished the complete system.The metric system was a 5 gift to the world. There are only a few countries that don't use it. The United States is one.

The metric system is truly an international system.

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