精聽建議：

先完整地把一條新聞聽一到三遍，爭取掌握大意。然后，一句一句精聽，力爭每句話都聽明白。遇到實在不懂的地方，再聽寫。

下面的文本材料中空缺部分里面要填的詞都很簡單，不過是一些值得注意的連讀或者典型的美式發音哦，有些語速比較快。試試看，你能不能全部寫對？

（參考文本，歡迎指出錯誤^^）

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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