VOA · As It Is
Intermediate · B1–B2learner speed3:542025-02-19public domain
As It Is is VOA Learning English's daily news magazine. Each report covers a current story in clear, learner-speed English with a controlled vocabulary — the closest thing to real news broadcasts that intermediate learners can fully digest, and ideal raw material for dictation.
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01The year was 1931.
02The top-selling book in the United States was The Good Earth by Pearl S.
03Buck.
04The following year, Buck won the Pulitzer Prize for the Best Novel by an American Writer.
05In 1938, Buck became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
06She wrote more than 100 books.
07She also wrote short stories, poetry, plays, essays, and children's books.
08But most people remember Pearl Buck for her novels about China.
09She knew the country and its people very well.
10For nearly 40 years, China was her home.
11Pearl's parents were Caroline and Absalom Seidenstricker.
12They were religious workers in China.
13Pearl's education began at home.
14Her mother taught her many of the things she would have learned in an American school.
15A Chinese teacher taught Pearl other subjects.
16In 1910, Pearl went back to the United States to study philosophy at Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia.
17After graduation, she returned to China.
18Three years later, she met John Lossing Buck.
19He was a religious worker who studied agriculture.
20They were married and moved to a small village in the north of China.
21Their life among the poorest people provided the subject matter for many of the books she later wrote.
22The Good Earth is the story of a poor Chinese man named Wang Lung.
23His wife is O Lan.
24They work very hard together and finally make enough money to buy some land for a farm.
25After a time, they grow enough crops to feed their family well, with some left over to sell.
26Their lives get much better and they are happy.
27But the good times do not last.
28Pearl Buck wrote her first books about China After almost 40 years in China, the writer moved back to the United States.
29She bought Green Hills Farm in eastern Pennsylvania.
30She began to write articles for newspapers and magazines.
31She expressed her opinions on war, politics, religion, equal rights for all people, and many other subjects.
32She also gave many speeches.
33Buck talked to young people about the importance of a good education.
34She also told them they needed to know more about other people around the world.
35Pearl Buck died in 1973 at the age of 80.
36I'm John Russell.
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