Unit 6 The Spirit of Sports
Lesson 24
Exercise 1.2
On July 13, 2001 at a meeting of the
International Olympic Committee in Moscow,
Beijing was chosen to be the host city for the
2008 Olympics.
When the results came out,
Beijing's streets were crowded with thousands
of people celebrating the success.
Beijing's slogan for the 2008 Olympics is
"New Beijing,Great Olympics."
Beijing had promised to host a "Green
Olympics," a "Hi-tech Olympics," and a "
people's Olympics."
The city of Beijing had the idea of hosting
the Olympic Games several years before 2001.
The Chinese were fully prepared and confident
in the success.
The people of Beijing said,
"Give Beijing a chance and we will show you how
much more we can do for the Olympic movement."
The IOC was also confident that Beijing could
make the 2008 Olympics a great success.
More importantly, the IOC believed that the
Beijing Olympics would have special influence
on China and on sports.
Four other cities competed for hosting the
Olympics besides Beijing.
They were Istanbul, Turkey; Osaka, Japan;
Paris, France ; and Toronto, Canada.
Interestingly, of all the five cities,
Beijing had more support from citizens than
other cities.
A survey showed that 94.9 percent of the people
of Beijing wanted to have the Olympic Games in
theircity.
In contrast ,surveys in Paris and in Toronto
showed only about two thirds of the people
supported the idea of having the Olympic Games
in their city.
Exercise 2.2
The 29th Olympic will be held in Beijing in
2008.
Beijing citizens are excited and they are
talking a lot about what they should do for the
Olympic Games.
Here our reporter joins a group of middle
school students in their regular English
activity "Meet in English Corner."
Their topic for today is "Let's all help to
make the Beijing Olympics a great success."
Let's listen to their ideas and suggestions.
Hello, everyone. Glad to see you again.
Today we are going to talk about what we can do
to make the 29th Olympics more successful.
What are your ideas?
Please, Zhu Jianming.
The Organizing Committee must be very busy.
Shall we volunteer to help our local organizing
committee?
They must need a lot of people to
share the work.
What's your suggestion, Liu Li?
Why don't we look for information
on the Internet about the Olympics?
So we can work together with our local
community to have more people understand
the spirit of the Olympics.
That's a good idea.
Let's see if there are more ideas?
I think English is very important for
such a big international Games.
We should help more people to learn
and speak English.
I agree with you.
English will be more important in 2008.
What's your name please?
Zhao Xinping.
Oh, we have a new friend today.
Would you please introduce yourself
and say something?
My name is Xu Wei.
I think we can do something to make our city
more beautiful.
Let's go and visit the local community
and see if we can do something to
help improve the environment.
That's great.
We want to have a "Green Olympics", right?