關於愛，我是個小學生。

以下為各篇閱讀摘要，重點都在裡面：
Reading Highlights: 
 

Amish Renegade Isaac: 

1. There are 80% ~ 90% Amish young men want to stay in their Amish communities while 10% ~ 20% decide to leave. Isaac Schlabach is one of them, who would like to experience the outside world. Two weeks before his baptism, a mark to show his will to stay steadfastly, Isaac left his hometown, so did his older brother. Isaac felt no regrets for he knew his hometown would always welcome him home if he should change his mind. 
 

2. In order not to see his parents' shock and tears, Isaac left only with a note behind. Anyway, his parents still chased him way to Ohio to tell him that he would soon take a compulsory military service if he still remained outside the Amish world. But Isaac simply didn't give a shit about it, having a modern hairdo and jeans. This 17-year-old just wanted to test his skills and try his luck. He would invest in real estate with his brother, hoping to achieve his financial security for the rest of his life. So they moved to Texas and managed to buy a house there. Later they bought more and more houses which brought them more rental income and allowed them to continue investing.
 

3. Now, Isaac works full-time, going to college, and manages his own properties. His world is busy but satisfying in a world he has been taught dangerous and evil. Recalling his childhood, Isaac realized the value of his upbringing including hard physical work and neighborly concern for others. He also appreciates that his parents never quarreled in front of their 14 children, in spite of all the stress of raising a large family with so little money. His only regret is that he can not contact with his Amish relatives so often as before. He contacts his mother only once or twice a year. Beside this regret, Isaac enjoys the rewards that come as a result of his success in the modern world of business. 
 

Vietnamese Squawk: 
 

1. A 27-year-old Vietnamese complained to an editor of a student newspaper of an American university about his college classmates for mocking at his personal life. The Vietnamese came to the US for a business degree, and it was beyond his imagination to find a totally different viewpoints of the ordinary Americans from his about the way of dating. 
 

2. The Viet folks have been married for 35 years, which consists of deep friendship, love, and trust. The lad is their second son of the six, who would go back to his motherland in no time as he finishes his study in America.
 

3. His parents met for the first time on their wedding day. And that's way too incredible for Americans, who suspect the reliability of arranged marriage. But his folks are the very evidence proper!!! They love each other faithfully, are proud of their children who were produced after their marriage. (Of course, they met each other for the first time on their wedding day...) 
 

以下為各篇克漏字、生字 (畫底線者)、及結構重點 (粗黑體者)，若仍看不太懂，再問我吧！
Cloze (vocabulary, phrases), and Grammatik Structures: 
 

The Amish: 
 

1. North America is a land of immigrants, many of whom left their home countries to escape religious persecution. In the early 1700s, a group of Christians from Switzerland come to the United States and Canada . Pious and hard-working, they established farming communities. These people, known as the Amish, still live in Ontario , Canada , and in several states in the U.S. , including Pennsylvania , Ohio , and Indiana . Avoiding the use of modern technology such as computers, their goal has always been to maintain the simple farming life that they had in Europe.
 

2. The Amish people are considered 'reclusives' because they live separately from other people. They speak Pennsylvania Dutch, a form of German. Children learn English at school and complete their formal education by the end of the 8th grade. Because the Amish have traditionally worked on family farms, they see no need for higher learning. Working on farms and small family-owned businesses allows fathers, mothers, and children to remain together all day. Men dress in dark suits and wear full beards, while women wear plain long dresses and head coverings. The Amish work hard on their farms without using modern farm equipment or electricity. They normally do not drive cars or keep telephones in their homes. While the Amish pay taxed, they neither vote nor serve in the military.
 

3. As farming has declined in the United States , more Amish have recently entered the outside would as factory and restaurant workers. This means that more young people are spending time away from the Amish community and becoming familiar with the 'English' way of life. While Amish people still use the horse and buggy in their daily lives, many learn about the outside world through contact with car and taxi drivers who are hired to provide them with transportation. One Amish woman, Ruth Irene Garrett, left her community to marry her family's driver. In her book 'Crossing Over' she describes how difficult it was to leave her family and friends. After Garrett left her community, family and friends stayed away from her. Because the Amish have a custom of shunning, or staying away from, people who leave the Amish way of life, the choice to leave means losing the opportunity to stay in touch with family and friends.
 

4. One very important Amish custom is adult baptism. Through baptism, a person becomes a full member of the Amish church and is expected to follow all church rules. The period before baptism is known as 'rumspringa', which can be translated as 'running around'. At age 16, young people are allowed to leave their parents' homes and meet together in youth groups for singing and playing games. In some communities, young people are allowed to attend parties, drive cars, and socialize in the outside world. Most Amish youth in rumspringa decide to join the Amish church, settle down, marry and raise families. However, some choose to live in the outside world, a decision which usually leads to a permanent separation from their Amish family and friends. It is estimated that 80 - 90% of Amish youth decide to remain within their communities. The bonds of family and religion are very strong. According to Dr. Donald Kraybill, author of "The Riddle of Amish Culture", the Amish way of life meets important social and psychological needs, providing its members with 'identity, meaning , and belonging'.
 

5. Those who consider leaving the Amish community face a very difficult decision: leaving their family and friends to join the modern world with all its conveniences and opportunities. Joe Keim, the oldest of 24 children, left the Amish as a young man. Since leaving, he and his wife have helped hundreds of other Amish people in their decision to join the outside world. Still, after more than 20 years, he and other former Amish sit together at their “English” church on Sundays. 'After all this time, we still need community,' he explains. 'We feel most comfortable when we’re together.'
 

6. Joe Keim’s comment shows how the closeness shared by Amish people continues even after individuals have left their Amish communities. Despite all the changes of technology and society, the Amish way of life has survived and continues to grow.
 

Finding a Spouse:
 

1. All human beings are born into families, together of a man and a woman in marriage. All societies have their own form of marriage. The ideas that we have about marriage are part of our cultural background; they are part of our basic beliefs about right and wrong. As we study marriage, we find that different cultures have solved the problem of finding a spouse in different ways. Finding a marriage partner has never been easy for people, no matter when or where they have lived.
 

2. In traditional Chinese culture, marriage decisions who wanted to find a spouse for their son or daughter asked a matchmaker to find someone with the right characteristics, including age and way of thinking, it would be a serious mistake to allow two young people to follow their romantic feelings and choose their own partners. The all-important decision of marriage was made by older family members who understood that the goal of marriage was to produce healthy sons. In traditional Chinese society, sons were important because they would take positions of leadership in the family and keep the family name alive.
 

3. As part of our cultural background, beliefs about marriage can be as different as the cultures of the world. While the traditional Chinese did not believe that young people should be free to choose their own marriage partners, the Hopi, a native people of North America , had a very different idea about freedom. The Hopi allowed boys to leave their parents’ home at age thirteen to live in a ‘kiva’, a special home for young males. Here they enjoyed the freedom to go out alone at night and secretly visit young girls. Most boys tried to leave the girl’s home before daylight, but a girl’s parents usually did not get angry about the night visits. They allowed the visits to continue if they were impressed that the boy was someone who would make a good marriage partner. After a few months of receiving visits, most girls became pregnant. As a consequence, they could choose their favorite boy for a husband.
 

4. The Hopi culture is not the only one that allowed young people to visit each other at night. Some Bavarian people of southern Germany once had a ‘windowing’ custom that took place when young women left their windows open at night so that young men could enter their bedrooms. When a woman became pregnant, the man usually asked her to marry him. But women who did not manage to get pregnant after windowing were often unable to find a husband. This was because fertility was a very important requirement for women in this culture, and the windowing custom women in this culture, and the windowing custom allowed them to prove their fertility to others in the community. Some people are surprised when they learn of this unique custom because they expect the people of southern Germany to follow the rules of the Catholic religion, which teach that it is wrong for unmarried women to become pregnant. But the windowing custom is only one example of the surprising views of marriage that are found around the world, even among people whose religious beliefs require more common marriage practices.
 

5. One view of marriage that surprises most of us today was held by John Noyes, a religious man who started the Oneida Community in the state of New York in 1831. He began it as an experiment of a different way of living. Noyes decided that group marriage was the best way for men and women to live together. In this form of marriage, men and women changed partners frequently. They were expected to love all members of the community equally. Children belonged to all members of the community, and all the adults worked hard to support themselves and shared everything they had. Members of the Oneida Community succeeded in this lifestyle for a while without any serious problems; however, this way of life ended when John Noyes left the community in 1876. Without his leadership and unique way of thinking, members of the community quickly returned to the traditional marriage of one woman and one man.
 

6. A more famous example of a different style of marriage is found among the early Mormons – a Christian sect that was founded in New York State in 1830 and migrated to Utah in 1848. The group’s first leader, Joseph Smith, believed in polygamy. As the Mormon Church grew, many of the men followed Smith’s teaching and married a number of wives. The Mormons believed that it was a woman’s duty to marry at a young age and raise as many children as possible. For example, in 1854, on Mormon leader became a father nine times in one week when nine of his wives all had babies. In 1890, however, polygamy was officially banned by the church. Today, while the Mormon Church teaches that marriage should be a partnership of one man and one woman, there are some smaller groups which have left the main group and still practice polygamy.
 

7. In these modern times, there are some men who might agree with the custom of allowing a man to have as many wives as he chooses. Many young lovers today dream of the freedom of the Hopi, and some of us wish that a matchmaker would help us find the perfect mate. Finding a spouse with whom we can commit to spending a lifetime has always been an important concern. Despite all the different ways of finding a marriage partner, one idea is the same throughout the world: Marriage is basic and important part of human life.

(To Be Contunued...)