听力试题1

SECTION A MINI-LECTURE

In this section you will hear a mini-lecture. You will hear the lecture ONCE ONLY. While listening, take notes on the important points. Your notes will not be marked, but you will need them to complete a gap-filling task after the mini-lecture. When the lecture is over, you will be given two minutes to check your notes, and another ten minutes to complete the gap-filling task on ANSWER SHEET ONE. Use the blank sheet for note-taking.

Meaning in literatine

In reading literary works, we are concerned with the "meaning" of one literary piece or another. However, finding out what something really means is a difficult issue. There are three ways to tackle meaning in literature.

I.Meaning is what is intended by (1) ______________________________
Apart from reading an author's work in question, readers need to
1 )read (2) _______ by the same author;
2) get familiar with (3) ____ at the time;
3) get to know cultural values and symbols of the time.

II. Meaning exists "in" the text itself.
1) some people's view: meaning is produced by the formal properties of the text like (4) _______ , etc.
2) speaker's view: meaning is created by both conventions of meaning and (5)__________________________
Therefore, agreement on meaning could be created by common traditions and conventions of usage. But different time periods and different (6) ________ perspectives could lead to different interpretations of meaning in a text.

III Meaning is created by (7) ____________________________________
1) meaning is (8) ___________________________________
2) meaning is contextual;
3) meaning requires (9)______________________________________
—practicing competency in reading
—practicing other competencies
—background research. in (10) , etc.

听力试题2

SECTION B INTERVIEW

In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Mark the correct answer to each question on your coloured answer sheet.

Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions.

Now listen to the interview.

1. Which of the following statements is TRUE about Miss Green's university days?
A. She felt bored.
B. She felt lonely.
C. She cherished them.
D. The subject was easy.

2. Which of the following is NOT part of her job with the Department of Employment?
A. Doing surveys at workplace.
B. Analyzing survey results.
C. Designing questionnaires.
D. Taking a psychology course.

3. According to Miss Green, the main difference between the Department of Employment and the advertising agency lies in ________.
A. the nature of work
B. office decoration
C. office location
D. work procedures

4. Why did Miss green want to leave the advertising agency?
A. She felt unhappy inside the company.
B. She felt work there too demanding.
C. She was denied promotion in the company.
D. She longed for new opportunities.

5. How did Miss Green react to a heavier workload in the new job?
A. She was willing and ready.
B. She sounded mildly eager.
C. She a bit surprised.
D. She sounded very reluctant.

听力试题3

SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST

In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Mark the correct answer to each question on your coloured answer sheet.

Questions 6 and 7 based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the two questions.

Now listen to the news.

6. The man stole the aircraft mainly because he wanted to ________.
A. destroy the European Central Bank
B. have an interview with a TV station
C. circle skyscrapers in downtown Frankfurt
D. remember the death of a US astronaut

7. Which of the following statements about the man is TRUE?
A. He was a 31-year-old student from Frankfurt.
B. He was piloting a two-seat helicopter he had stolen.
C. He had talked to air traffic controllers by radio.
D. He threatened to land on the European Central Bank.

Question 8 is based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the question.

Now listen to the news.

8. The news is mainly about the city government's plan to ________.
A. expand and improve the existing subway system
B. build underground malls and parking lots
C. prevent further land subsidence
D. promote advanced technology

Questions 9 and 10 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the two questions.

Now listen to the news.

9. According to the news, what makes this credit card different from conventional ones is ________.
A. that it can hear the owner's voice
B. that it can remember a password
C. that it can identify the owner's voice
D. that it can remember the owner's PIN

10. The newly developed credit card is said to said to have all the following EXCEPT ___________
A. switch
B. battery
C. speaker
D. built-in chip

试题答案

Section A Mini-lecture
1.the author
2.other works
3.literary trends
4.grammar,diction or uses of image
5.cultural codes
6.cultural
7.the reader
8.social
9.reader competency
10. social sructure,traditions of writing or political cultural influences,etc.

Section B Interview
1-5 CDDDA

Section C News Broadcast
6-10 DCBCA

听力原文1

Part 1, Listening Comprehension

SECTION A MINI-LECTURE

Good morning! In today's lecture we shall discuss what meaning is in literary, works. When we read novels, poems, etc. , we invariably ask ourselves a question—that is, what does the writer mean here? In other words, we are interested in finding out the meaning. But meaning is a difficult issue in literature. How do we know what a work of literature is supposed to mean or what its real meaning is? I'd like to discuss three ways to explain what meaning is.

No. 1, meaning is what is intended by the author. ( Q1)

No. 2, meaning is created by and contained in the text itself.

And No. 3 , meaning is created by the reader.

Now, let's take a look at the first approach—that is, meaning is what is intended by the author. Does a work of literature mean what the author intended to mean? And if so, how can we tell? If all the evidence we have is the text itself and nothing else, we can only guess what ideas the author had according to our understanding of literature and world. In order to have a better idea of what one par¬ticular author means in one of his works; I suggest that you do the following:

First, go to the library and read other works by the same author. ( Q2)

Second get to know something about what sort of meanings seem to be common in literary works in that particular tradition and .at that time. In other words, we need to find out what the literary trends were in those days. ( Q3)

And last, get to know what were the cultural values and symbols of the time. I guess you can understand the author's meaning much more clearly after you do the related background research.

Now, let's move on to the second approach to meaning—that is, meaning is created by and con¬tained in the text itself. Does the meaning exist in the text? Some scholars argue that the formal prop¬erties of the text like grammar, diction, uses of image and so on and so forth, contain and produce the meaning, ( Q4) so that any educated or competent reader will inevitably come to more or less the same interpretation as any other. As. far as I am concerned, the meaning is not only to be found in the literary traditions and grammatical conventions of meaning but also in the cultural codes which have been handed down from generation to generation. ( Q5) So when we and other readers, inclu¬ding the author as well, are said to come up with similar interpretations. That kind of agreement could be created by common traditions and conventions of usage, practice and interpretation. In other words, we have some kind of shared bases for the same interpretation, but that does not mean that readers agree on the meaning all the time. In different time periods, with different cultural perspec¬tives, including class, belief and world view, readers, I mean competent readers, can arrive at dif¬ferent interpretations of tdxts: ( Q6) So meaning in the text is determined by how readers see it. It is not contained in the text in a fixed way.

Now, the third approach to meaning—that is, meaning is created by the reader. ( Q7) Does the meaning then exist in the reader's response? In a sense, this is inescapable. Meaning exists only in so far as it means to someone , and literary works are written in order to evoke sets of responses in the reader. This leads us to consider three essential issues.

The first is—meaning is social—( Q8) that is, language and conventions work only a shared meaning and our way of viewing the world can exist only a shared or sharable. Similarly, when we read a text, we are participating in social or cultural meaning, so a response to a piece of literary work is not merely an individual thing but is part of culture and history.

Second, meaning is contextual. If you change the context, you often change the meaning.

And last, meaning requires reader competency. ( Q9) Texts constructed as literature have their own ways of expressions or sometimes we say styles. And the more we know of them, the more we can understand the text. Consequently, there is in regard to the question of meaning; the matter of reader competency as it is called the experience and knowledge of comprehending literary texts. Your professors might insist that you practice and improve competency in reading and they might also insist that you interpret meaning in the context of the whole work. But you may have to learn other compe¬tencies too. For instance, in reading Mulk Raj Anand's The Untouchables' you might have to learn what the social structure of India was like at that time, what traditions of writing were in practice in India in the early 1930s, what political, cultural and personal influences Mulk Raj Anand came un¬der when constructing the imaginative world of the short novel. ( Q10) Ok , you may see that this i¬dea that meaning requires competency in reading in fact brings us back to the historically situated un¬derstandings of an author and his works as we mentioned earlier in this lecture, to different conven¬tions and ways of reading and writing and to the point that meaning requires a negotiation between cultural meanings across time, culture, class, etc. As readers, you have in fact acquired a good deal of competency already but you should acquire more. The essential point of this lecture is that mean¬ing in literature is a phenomenon that is not easily located, that meaning is historical, social and de¬rived from the traditions of reading and thinking and understanding of the world that you are educated about. Thank you for your attention!

听力原文2

SECTION B INTERVIEW

Interviewer: Well, I see from your resume , Miss Green, that you studied at the university college. How did you find there?

Miss Green: I had a great time. The teaching there was good and I made a lot of friends. The psy¬chology department was a great place to be. ( Q1)

Interviewer: How come you chose psychology?

Miss Green: Well, at first I didn't have any clear idea of what I wanted to do after university. I guess I've just always been interested in people and the way they act. I wanted to know why people think and act the way they do. It's a fascinating area.

Interviewer: And what was the course like? .

Miss Green: Good. The teachers were all really nice and they had the special approach to teaching. You know they didn't just give us lectures and tell us to read books like they might do in some more traditional places. The whole course was based on the problem-solving ap¬proach. You know they described a pai-ticular situation to us and we discuss what might happen. And after that we do some reading and see if it confirmed our own ideas. That's what I liked best—the really practical orientation of the course. I learnt very well with that style. So for me, it was just great. ( Q1)

Interviewer: I see from your resume that you graduated about four years ago and after that... let me see...

Miss Green:I got a job with the Department of Employment. It was only a temporary thing for about five months. I was a researcher in the department. We design a survey, go out to the factories, and ask all the questions to the workers and the management , then go back to the office, analyze all the data and produce a report. ( Q2) It was quite interesting and I guessed the psychology course at college helped me a lot.

Interviewer:And after that you worked for three years in an Advertising Agency. That must be a bit of change from the Department of Employment, wasn't it?

Miss Green: Well, not really. I supposed the office furnishings were a bit more sophisticated, but the work was quite, similar. I was basically still doing the same thing—designing ques¬tionnaires, going out, asking questions and writing reports. The only difference was that this time I wasn't asking people about their work. I was asking them what kind of sham¬poo they bought and if they preferred brand X to brand Y. ( Q3) Then I make up a re¬port and the agency would use the information in the advertising campaigns. I enjoyed my work a lot.

Interviewer: So why did you decide to leave?

Miss Green :Three years is a long time to be asking people those sorts of questions about shampoo and drinks. No. Seriously , after two years I was in charge of the research department of the agency and .I had one assistant researcher. I guess after two years of doing that, I sup¬pose I felt, you know, I can do this well. And now I want to do something else that's a little different. And there was nowhere for me to go inside the company. It just wasn't challenging for me any more and because I needed a challenge, I decided to move on. ( Q4) When I heard about the position of senior researcher here, I thought that's exactly what I want—the chance to combine my management skills and my research interests working in a much larger department with more varied work.

Interviewer: And you felt that the job description and our advertisement would offer you the kind of challenge you're looking for?

Miss Green:Exactly. Yes. As I said, management in a larger organization and research combined. Also to be honest with you, I heard about the job before it was advertised. A friend of mine, who works here, Mark Austen, told me a few weeks ago that you were looking for someone to take over the job. He described the position to me in quite a bit of detail. And I thought, "Well, , that's exactly what I'm looking for. " So really I'd written my let¬ter of application before the job was even advertised.

Interviewer: I should tell you that with the present cutbacks, we've only got one full-time administer assistant in the section. How would you feel about doing your own word processing, photo copying, that sort of thing?

Miss Green: Oh, I'm used to that. I've done all my own word processing for ages. It's the only way to write really , isn't it? I can type well about 60 words a minute. I did a secretarial course after I left school, so I learnt typing in short hand. Then a few years later, I bought a PC and I learnt how to do word processing, too. ( Q5 )

Interviewer: Well , that's handy. Now in the position you've applied for , you'd have five to six assis¬tant researchers responsible to you. That's considerably more responsibility than you've had before. So you're obviously ambitious. And as you said, you like challenge. I was wondering what you see yourself doing in, say, five or ten years on the track.

Miss Green:Oh, that is a difficult question. Let me try to answer your question in this way. I'm-par¬ticularly interested in experimental design and also in teaching. I'd like to continue the organization and planning site of research, but do some teaching, too. I know that you have lecturers here who do just that sort of thing—some practical worker and some un¬dergraduate and postgraduate teaching. So that's what I really be aiming for—to be a lec¬turer here as well. ( Q5 )

Interviewer: Well, that is certainly a career path that we'd encourage you to follow. But of course it might be necessary to upgrade your present qualifications first. I see from your resume that you've enrolled in an M. A. in experimental psychology. Could you tell me a bit about the courses you're planning to fake?

听力原文3

SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST
News Item 1 (for questions 6 and 7)
A man stole a small aircraft at gunpoint Sunday and flew it over downtown Frankfurt, circling skyscrapets and threatening tp crash into the European Central Bank. He landed safely after about two hours and was arrested.
The man told a television station he wanted to call attention to Judith Resnik, a U. S. astronaut killed in the 1986 post-launch explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. ( Q6) Military jets chased the stolen , two-seat motorized glider as the man began circling slowly above Frankfurt's banking dis¬trict. Thousands of people were evacuated from the main railway station, two opera houses and sever¬al skyscrapers. Police identified the man as a 31-year-old German student from Darmstadt, a city about 25 miles south of Frankfurt. In radio contact with air traffic controllers , the man threatened to crash into the. European Central Bank headquarters unless he was allowed the TV interview as well as a call to Baltimore. ( Q7 ) He later said he wanted to commit suicide by plunging the plane into the Maine River. It was unclear if the man was forced to land or talked down. Air traffic controllers and a police psychologist had been in contact with him.

News Item 2 (for question 8)
Shanghai plans to build a vast underground network of malls , restaurants and parking lots to make up for a lack of space above ground according to a recent government report. ( Q8 )

The development will cover 600,000 square meters , the equivalent of 120 soccer fields, spread across four underground floors, the city government reported on its website. The city is accepting bids from builders. Shanghai has about 20 million people , plus factories , office towers and high-rise apartments , crowded into a small triangular territory near the mouth of the Yangtze River. The plans called for the project due to be finished by 2006 to expand existing facilities scattered along Shanghai subway system. The project will need advanced technology to supply fresh air and ensure safety.

But the biggest concern is the stability off` the soil under the city. Shanghai is sinking by 1. 5 centimeters a year. Lands subsidence has been aggravated by over-pumping of underground water and the construction of thousands of high-rise buildings. Shanghai's foundations are built on soft soil. So building multi-storey spaces underground would be like digging holes in the piece of bean curd, the government report says.

The difficulties are easy to see.

News Item 3 (for questions 9 and 10)
A credit card that only works when it hears its owner's voice has been developed by US scien¬tists. Researchers hope that the device, which comes with a built-in voice recognition chip and mi¬crophone will be a weapon in the battle against credit card fraud. ( Q9) Even if thieves know a card's password and personal identification number, they will still have to copy the owner's voice accurate¬ly. The trial card was created by scientists at B Card in California, US. The first version is 3 times as thick as a normal credit card, but researchers believe smaller chips will allow the card to slim down to a more conventional size. The card is apparently the first to put a voice recognition chip, 'a micro¬phone speaker and battery into a credit card. ( Q10) To use the card, the owner first presses a but¬ton and hears the prompt: say your password. If the password is correct and spoken by the right per¬son, the card emits an identification signal which is processed by a computer connected to the Inter¬net. Researchers hope to get the card to handle ten transactions per day for two years before its non- replaceable battery runs out.