【#英語聽力# #雅思聽力材料：An American Christmas#】英語聽力的提高是一個(gè)需要長期堅(jiān)持的過程，要有持之以恒的毅力和決心，在平常多多練習(xí)。下面是®無憂考網(wǎng)分享的雅思聽力材料：An American Christmas。歡迎閱讀參考！

　　"We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas…"Have you heard that song? Yup! It's Christmas time! This Christmas, I stayed with my "host family"1. It was an amazing experience to see how a typical American family would celebrate the biggest western festival of the year.

　　Christmas, like our Spring Festival, has a meaning in itself. Christmas Day, which is on December 25, is the birthday of Jesus Christ--the son of God. That's why it is called Christmas. On that day, Christians would get together with their families to celebrate the birthday of Jesus. But nowadays, the religious meaning of Christmas has become less emphasized. To many families, it is just a time of family reunion and the ever-exciting present-giving.

　　Our school had been on winter vacation since December 11. I stayed at my friend, Stephen Stapczynski's house--his family was my "host family". Although Christmas was still more than ten days ahead, the festive spirit had already been teeming everywhere. The Christmas tree had already been set up, and on every windowsill, there were Christmas lights. On the first day I arrived at their house, Stephen and I helped Mrs. Stapczynski put decorations on the Christmas tree. The tree looked so nice with all the lights on and the beautiful ornaments dangling from its branches.

　　As Christmas came closer, the whole neighborhood had made preparations too. Some people would hold parties at their houses, inviting all their neighbors to come. So every night, if you went out, you would see a long line of cars parked in front of some house--a party's on!

　　What's more, the Christmas decorations that some people put on their windows and in gardens were just amazing. On one night, we went out in our car for a "tour of lights". There was one street that was so famous for its lights that it got its way into the local paper. We had a hard time finding the well-hidden street, but it turned out to be worth the effort. Lights shone brightly in front of nearly every house, on trees, bushes, doors, windows…everywhere, taking different shapes, making it seem almost like daytime. Huge inflatable figures in the front gardens were waving to us: there were Santa Clauses2, of course, chuckling merrily away; and there were also other Christmas figures, like Rudolph3--the red-nosed reindeer--with his red nose gleaming ever so brightly; even Bart Simpson--a character in the famous comedy The Simpsons--had joined the jolly party, wearing a Santa's hat. The street set off a lot of "ooh"s and "aah"s inside the car.4 When we left, there was a line of cars in the street, all there to see the lights.

　　Christmas is the time for exchanging presents. Stephen and Niko had been thinking about their Christmas lists (a list of things they wish "Santa"to give them for Christmas) for a long time. I didn't want to ask for anything, but the Stapczynskis were so kind to "force"me make one list as well (Mr. Stapczynski told me if I didn't make one he would chop off my legs). So I wrote down a couple of things that I would like to have, and gave the list to them--sorry, my mistake--to Santa.

　　Finally, Christmas Eve came. There was a special Christmas service at the church at 6 p.m. It was certainly a very interesting experience for me. The priest started the service reading and sang out extractions from a holy book--The Divine Liturgy. For several times, we would stand up and pray. Sometimes, the church choir would start singing. The atmosphere was very quiet and holy. Then there was a ceremony called "The Receiving Communion". People waited in line to "receive"a spoonful of food from the priest. It was a very special Christmas tradition. The food was made from bread and wine. The bread represents the body of Jesus, and the wine represents his blood. After this ceremony, the priest had a speech. He reminded us not to forget the true meaning of Christmas, and let Jesus really live inside us--that is, to love the people around us wholeheartedly. I think that no matter if you are a Christian or not, this principle should be part of our lives. After the priest finished his speech, the part that I enjoyed most came: Christmas carols5. Christmas carols are songs that people sing at Christmas, such as "Jingle Bells", "We Wish You a Merry Christmas", "Silent Night"and so on. Some were very merry, others sounded quite holy, but all of them were beautiful. I closed my eyes, and let all the peacefulness and happiness that were in the songs flow through me. What a feeling it was!

　　We went to sleep earlier that day for we had to get up early on Christmas Day to open our presents. Sure enough, when I was still half-way during a sweet dream, Stephen burst into my room and told me to get up and open presents. There were a huge pile of presents under the Christmas tree, and there was such a mysterious mist shrouding them that made me eager to see what they all were. So one by one, we went through all the presents. Mr. and Mrs. Stapczynski had bought me everything I had written on my Christmas list--and a lot more! I got music CDs, film DVDs, clothes, books… I was very happy, and I didn't know how to express my appreciation for what they had done for me. Stephen and Niko had gotten a lot of presents too, and they had already been trying out their new games!

　　In the afternoon, we went to Mrs. Stapczynski's brother, Uncle Stan's house. They had prepared a marvelous meal for us. A lot of their friends and relatives also came. I saw Stephen and Niko's grandparents, Yiayia and Papou (words of grandma and grandpa in Greek--Mrs. Stapczynski's parents came from Greece, so they like the boys using Greek words to call them). They were very kind to me, and treated me just like one of their family members. We had a very luxurious meal, consisting of turkey, beef, pork, and all sorts of other food.

　　After the meal, when all the stomachs were full and everyone was feeling drowsy6 from all the food, we just sat around the table and chatted, just like what we Chinese people do at the Spring Festival. After all, Christmas, like the Spring Festival, is a time for us to get away from our busy lives, a time for family gathering, and a time to have some fun.

　　Notes:

　　1. host family: 寄住家庭或接待家庭。學(xué)校安排那些圣誕節(jié)仍留在美國的國際學(xué)生住在當(dāng)?shù)氐募淖〖彝ブ小?/p>

　　2. Santa Claus: 圣誕老人。

　　3. Rudolph:　每到圣誕節(jié)，圣誕老人乘坐馴鹿雪撬給孩子們送禮物，其中指路的馴鹿的名字叫Rudolph，它的鼻子是紅色的，所以稱其為"red-nose reindeer"。

　　4. 街上的景象使車中響起一片驚奇的聲音。set off: 激起，引起。

　　5. carol: (圣誕)頌歌。

　　6. drowsy: 困倦的。

擴(kuò)展閱讀：雅思聽力有效練習(xí)方法介紹

　　一、聽寫法
　　 在雅思聽力考試中，最終體現(xiàn)成績的是答題卡上面填寫的內(nèi)容，因此只聽懂是遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)不夠的，能夠?qū)憣?duì)才是最終的得分要素。而很多烤鴨在考試中都會(huì)出現(xiàn)這樣的問題：聽到答案時(shí)，卻來不及寫下來錄音就已經(jīng)到了下一題;或者聽出了答案，下筆時(shí)卻寫不對(duì)�？偨Y(jié)起來，由兩大原因：一是拼寫速度太慢，二是對(duì)單詞熟練程度不夠。

　　解決上述的兩個(gè)問題，聽寫法是的方法。在聽寫的練習(xí)中，大家可以及時(shí)發(fā)現(xiàn)自己對(duì)哪些單詞的拼寫沒有掌握或者是模棱兩可，這對(duì)單詞的熟練掌握有很好的幫助。同時(shí)，在聽寫練習(xí)中，能夠提高大家的書寫速度，和邊聽邊做筆記的能力，這對(duì)于雅思聽力考試中快速記下所聽到的答案也是很有幫助的。

　　二、影視作品練習(xí)法

　　說道雅思聽力練習(xí)，怎么少的了英劇、美劇以及英文電影呢?影視作品的妙處是創(chuàng)造了一種活生生的語言環(huán)境，這個(gè)語言環(huán)境包羅萬象――語言、文化、思維。在這個(gè)環(huán)境中耳聞目染，大家的雅思聽力就會(huì)不斷的提高，當(dāng)然口語也會(huì)得到很好的提高。那么，問題來了，怎樣用影視作品練習(xí)雅思聽力呢?這中間當(dāng)然還是有技巧可循的，大家在練習(xí)的過程中也要掌握正確的方法，才能夠有效提高雅思聽力水平。

　　三、冷凝法

　　看到這個(gè)方法，很多烤鴨會(huì)感到疑惑，其實(shí)冷凝法的重點(diǎn)是教會(huì)大家“吃透”一個(gè)練習(xí)材料。在雅思聽力備考中，特別適合聽力練習(xí)的材料并不多，因此大家要充分利用有限的資源。冷凝法將聽力練習(xí)分為四步：初聽、細(xì)聽、冷卻、回暖，經(jīng)過這四個(gè)步驟，大家已經(jīng)將這份練習(xí)材料完全掌握，可謂是“物盡其用”。

　　四、精聽法

　　眾所周知，雅思聽力注重對(duì)細(xì)節(jié)的考查，因此在雅思聽力練習(xí)過程中大家需要掌握每個(gè)英語音節(jié)的發(fā)音特點(diǎn)以及音節(jié)在單詞中的發(fā)音變化規(guī)律，而這些只有通過精聽才能夠真正實(shí)現(xiàn)�？梢娋�聽對(duì)于雅思聽力的提高有著根本性的作用。當(dāng)然，要達(dá)到精聽?wèi)?yīng)有的效果，大家就必須要掌握正確的精聽練習(xí)方法，這樣才能夠有效提高雅思聽力水平。

　　五、泛聽法

　　很多考生對(duì)泛聽有一定的誤解，認(rèn)為所謂“泛聽”就是泛泛的聽，不需要?jiǎng)幽X，只要把英語當(dāng)做生活背景就可以了。其實(shí)這種理解是錯(cuò)誤的，這樣是無法真正有效提高雅思聽力水平的。泛聽雖然不像精聽那樣要求大家掌握每一個(gè)句子、每一個(gè)單詞，甚至是每一個(gè)音節(jié)的含義，但是卻要求大家在聽的過程中要掌握文章的大意。因此泛聽需要建立在一定的詞匯量的基礎(chǔ)之上進(jìn)行，也就是說對(duì)于雅思聽力初學(xué)者，其實(shí)是不建議開始備考聽力的時(shí)候就用這種方法的。