Step 1单词都在文中标出了，大家发挥一下想象和推理能力，猜猜那些生词都是什么意思吧。阅读中非常需要这种猜测推理能力的哦。

Lesson 5 The facts

Q: What was the consequence of the editor’s insistence on facts and statistics?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 telegram 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 more faxes, but received no reply. He sent yet another fax informing 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 fax in which he informed the editor that he had been arrested while counting the 1,084 steps leading to the fifteen-foot wall which surrounded the president's palace.

Step 2词汇的意思都在这里了哦。看看你都猜对了么？

editor n. 编辑

extreme n. 极端

statistics n. 统计数字

journalist n. 新闻记者

president n. 总统

palace n.王宫；宏伟的住宅

publish v. 出版

fax n. 传真

impatient adj. 不耐烦的

fire v. 解雇

originally adv. 起初，原先，从前新概念作文一等奖