We'll talk about the cultural symbols in this unit,before we come to the details of the text ,let's discuss the following question first.

When talking about the symbols of American culture, probably we will never leave out McDonald’s and Disney. McDonald’s is the world’s leading fast food service retailer. Nowadays, it has more than 30,000 restaurants in over 100 countries serving millions of customers each day. That explains why the tearing down of the first McDonald’s restaurant had caused such a big stir in the minds of many Americans.

McDonald's

McDonald's is the world's largest  restaurant corporation with more than 30,000 restaurants in 119 countries serving 68 million customers each day.

In the United States, there are more than  5,000 McDonald's restaurants. It serves some of its favorite foods—world-famous French fries, Chicken McNuggets (大鸡块) and so on. The largest McDonald's restaurant is located in Beijing, China. This restaurant has 1,000 employees. Also, up to 700 customers can sit and eat in this restaurant at one time.

Ray Kroc

Raymond Albert Kroc was the founder of the McDonald's Corporation. Brothers Mac and Dick McDonald opened the first fast food restaurant called McDonald's in 1953 in Downey, California.

Dick and Mac McDonald

In 1953, the McDonald brothers—Dick and Mac—developed a new idea for their restaurant. The brothers called their idea a "drive-in" restaurant, and customers  could order food from their cars. The restaurant also cut down on the number of choices on the menu, so the cooks could make the food very quickly. The restaurant specialized in making hamburgers, French fries, and chocolate shakes. In 1955, Ray Kroc visited the restaurant and offered to buy the rights to the two brothers' idea. The two brothers agreed, and the McDonald's restaurant chain was born.

New Words and Phrase

1. Hamburger                2. fry            3. cultural           4. symbol      

5. southern                     6. arch         7. danger            8. destroy

9. damage           10. earthquake        11. resident        12. public

13. location         14. drive-thru          15.  inspector     16. structure

17. afford            18. amount              19. claim            20. actually

21. deny              22. local                   23. historian      24. explanation

25. rewrite          26. national              27. register        28. historic

29. abandon         30. peace                 31. board          32. moment

Fill in the blanks with the new words, the first letter is given. 

1. tear down                      2. in danger of                        3.  agreewith    

4. line of thinking              5. can afford to do                  6. close down 

7. have nothing to do with                              8. make sense 

9. stop someone fromdoing something            10. even so    

11. take away

Fill in each of the blanks in the following sentenceswith a suitable preposition or adverb.