六级英语

Part II Listening Comprehension

Section A

Directions:

In this section, you will hear 8 short conversations

and 2 long conversations.

At the end of each conversation,

one or more questions will be asked about what was said.

Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once.

After each question there will be a pause.

During the pause,

you must read the four choices marked A), B), C) and D),

and decide which is the best answer.

Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1

with a single line through the centre.

Now let's begin with the eight short Conversations.

Question 1.

W: Can you come to the concert with me this weekend or

do you have to prepare for exams?

M: I still have a lot to do. But maybe a break will do me good.

Q: What will the man probably do?

Question 2.

W: What does the paper say about the horrible incident that happened

this morning on Flight 870 to Hong Kong?

M: It ended with the arrest of the three hijackers.

They have forced the plane to fly to Japan.

But all the passengers and the crewmembers landed safely.

Q: What do we learn from the conversation?

Question 3.

M: Helen, this is the most fascinating article I’ve ever come across.

I think you should spare some time to read it.

W: Oh, really? I thought that anything about the election would be tedious.

Q: What are the speakers talking about?

Question 4.

W: I’m not going to trust the restaurant critic from that magazine again.

The food here doesn’t taste anything like what we had in Chinatown.

M: It definitely wasn’t worth the wait.

Q: What do we learn from the conversation?

Question 5.

W: Do you know what’s wrong with Mark? He’s been acting very strangely lately.

M: Come on. With his mother hospitalized right after he’s taking on a new job,

he's just got a lot on his mind.

Q: What do we learn from the conversation about Mark?

Question 6.

W: There were only 20 students at last night’s meeting, so nothing could be voted on.

M: That’s too bad. They'll have to turn up in greater numbers

if they want a voice on campus issues.

Q: What does the man mean?

Question 7.

M: I try to watch TV as little as possible. But it’s so hard.

W: I didn’t watch TV at all before I retired.

But now I can hardly tear myself away from it.

Q: What do we learn from the conversation?

Question 8.

W: I’m having a problem registering for the classes I want.

M: That’s too bad.

But I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to work everything out before the semester starts.

Q: What does the man mean?

Now you will hear two long conversations.

Conversation one

W: Jack, sit down and listen. This is important.

we’ll have to tackle the problems of the exporting step by step.

And the first move is to get an up-to-date picture of where we stand now.

M: Why don’t we just concentrate on expending here at home?

W: Of course, we should hold on to our position here.

But you must admit the market here is limited.

M: Yes, but it’s safe. The government keeps out foreigners with import controls.

So I must admit I feel sure we could hold our own against foreign bikes.

W: I agree. That’s why I am suggesting exporting.

Because I feel we can compete with the best of them.

M: What you are really saying is that we’d make more profit by selling bikes abroad,

where we have a cost advantage and can charge high prices.

W: Exactly.

M: But,wait a minute. Packaging, shipping, financing, etc.

will push up our cost and we could no better off, maybe worse off.

W: OK. Now there are extra cost involved. But if we do it right,

they can be built into the price of the bike and we can still be competitive.

M: How sure are you about our chances of success in the foreign market?

W: Well, that’s the sticky one. It’s going to need a lot of research.

I’m hoping to get your help. Well, come on, Jack. Is it worth it, or not?

M: There will be a lot of problems.

W: Nothing we can’t handle.

M: Um… I’m not that hopeful.But,

yes, I think we should go ahead with the feasibility study.

W: Marvelous, Jack. I was hoping you be on my side.

Questions 9-12 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

9.Q：What does the woman intend to do?

10.Q：Why does the man think it’s safe to focus on the home market?

11.Q：What is the man’s concern about selling bikes abroad?

12Q：What do the speakers agree to do?

Conversation Two

W: What does the term “alternative energy source” mean?

M: When we think of energy or fuel for our homes and cars, we think of petroleum,

a fossil fuel processed from oil removed from the ground, of which there was a limited supply.

But alternative fuels can be many things. Wind, sun and water can all be used to create fuel.

W: Is it a threat of running out of petroleum real?

M: It has taken thousands of years to create the natural stores of petroleum we have now.

We are using what is available at a much faster rate that it is being produced over time.

The real controversy surrounding the mass petroleum we have is how much

we need to keep in reserve for future use.

Most experts agree that by around 2025, the petroleum we use will reach a peak，

then production and availability will begin to seriously decline.

This is not to say there will be no petroleum at this point.

But it’ll become very difficult and therefore expensive to extract.

W: Is that the most important reason to develop alternative fuel and energy sources?

M:There are two very clear reasons to do so.

One is that whether we have 60 or 600 years of fossil fuels left,

we have to find other fuel sources eventually.

So the sooner we start, the better off we will be.

The other big argument is that when you burn fossil fuels,

you release substances trapped into the ground for a long time,

which leads to some long-term negative effects, like global warming and greenhouse effect.

Questions 13-15 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

13.Q：What do we usually refer to when we talk about energy according to the man?

14.Q：What do most experts agree on according to the man?

15.Q：What does the man think we should do now?

Section B

Directions:

In this section, you will hear 3 short passages.

At the end of each passage, you will hear some questions.

Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once.

After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer

from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D).

Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1

with a single line through the centre.

Passage 1

Karen Smith is a buyer for a department store in New York.

Department store buyers purchase the goods that their stores sell. They not only have to know what is fashionable at the moment,

but also have to guess what will become fashionable next season or next year.

Most buyers work for just one department in a store,

but the goods that Karen finds may be displayed and sold in several different sections of the store. (17.) Her job involves buying handicrafts from all over the world.

Last year, she made a trip to Morocco, and returned with rugs, pots, dishes, and pans.

The year before, she visited Mexico, and brought back hand-made table cloths,

mirrors with frames of tin, and paper flowers.

The paper flowers are bright and colorful, so they were used to decorate the whole store. This year, Karen is traveling in Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia.

Many of the countries that Karen visits have government offices that promote handicrafts.

They officials are glad to cooperate with her, by showing her the products that are available.

Karen especially likes to visit markets and small towns and villages whenever she can arrange for it.

She’s always looking for interesting and unusual items.

Karen thinks she has the best job she could have found.

She loves all the traveling that she has to do, because she often visits markets and small out-of-the-way places.

She sees much more of the country she visits than an ordinary tourists would.

As soon as she gets back to New York from one trip, Karen begins to plan another.

Questions 16 to 19 are based on the passage you have just heard

16.Q：What is said to make a good department store buyer?

17.Q：What does Karen’s job involve?

18.Q：Why does Karen think she has got the best job?

Passage 2

Mark felt that it was time for him to take part in his community,

so he went to the neighborhood meeting after work.

The area city councilwoman was leading a discussion about how the quality of life was on the decline.

The neighborhood faced many problems. Mark looked at the charts taped to the walls.

There were charts for parking problems, crime, and for problems in vacant buildings.

Mark read from the charts, “Police patrols cut back, illegal parking up 20%”.

People were supposed to suggest solutions to the council woman. It was too much for Mark.

“The problems are too big”, he thought.

He turned to the man next to him and said, “I think this is a waste of my time.

Nothing I can do would make a difference here.”

As he neared the bus stop on his way home, Mark saw a woman carrying a grocery bag, and a baby.

As Mark got closer, her other child, a little boy, suddenly darted into the street. The woman tried to reach for him,

but as she moved, her bag shifted, and groceries started to fall out.

Mark ran to take the boy’s arm and led him back to his mother. “You gotta stay with mom,” he said.

Then he picked up the stray groceries while and the woman smiled in relief. “Thanks,” she said,

“You’ve got great timing.” “Just being neighborly,” Mark said. As he rode home,

he glanced at the poster near his seat in the bus.

Small acts of kindness add up. Mark smiled and thought, “Maybe that’s a good place to start.”

Questions 19 to 22 are based on the passage you have just heard

19.Q：What did Mark think he should start doing?

20.Q：What was being discussed when Mark arrived at the neighborhood meeting?

21.Q：What did Mark think of the community’s problems?

22.Q：Why did Mark smile on his ride home?

Passage 3

And if stress in childhood can lead to heart disease, what about current stresses?

Longer work hours, threats of layoffs, collapse in pension funds. A study last year in the Lancered examined more than 11,000 heart attack sufferers from 52 countries.

It found that in the year before their heart attacks,

patients have been under significantly more stress than some 13,000 healthy control subjects.

Those stresses came from work, family, financial trouble, depression and other causes.

Each of these factors individually was associated with increased risk, says Dr. Salim Yosef,

professor of medicine at Canada’s McMaster University, and senior investigator on the study.

Together they accounted for 30% of overall heart attack risk,

but people respond differently to high pressure work situations.

Whether it produces heart problems seems to depend on whether you have a sense of control over life,

or live at the mercy of circumstances and superiors.

That was the experience of JanoCano, a roughed Illinois laboratory manager,

who suffered his first heart attack in 1996 at the age of 56. In the two years before, his mother and two of his children had suffered serious illnesses,

and his job had been changed in a reorganization. “My life seemed completely out of control,” he says,

“I had no idea where I would end up.”

He ended up in hospital due to a block in his artery. Two months later, he had a triple bypass surgery.

A second heart attack when he was 58 left his doctor shaking his head.

“There’s nothing more we can do for you,”doctors told him.

Questions 23 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard.

23.Q：What does the passage mainly discuss?

24.Q：What do we learn about Jano Cano’s family?

25.Q：What did Jano Cano’s doctors tell him when he had a second heart attack?

Section C

Directions:

In this section,

you will hear a passage three times.

When the passage is read for the first time,

you should listen carefully for its general idea.

When the passage is read for the second time,

you are required to fill in the blanks with the exact words you have just heard.

Finally, when the passage is read for the third time,

you should check what you have written.

Now listen to the passage.

When most people think of the word “education”, they think of a pupil as a sort of animate sausage casing.

Into this empty casting, the teachers are supposed to stuff “education.”

But genuine education, as Socrates knew more than two thousand years ago,

is not inserting the stuffing of information into a person, but rather eliciting knowledge from him;

it is the  drawing-out of what is in the mind.

“The most important part of education,”

once wrote William Ernest Hocking, the  distinguished Harvard philosopher,

“is this instruction of a man in what he has inside of him.”

And, as Edith Hamilton has reminded us, Socrates never said, “I know, learn from me.”

He said, rather, “Look into your own selves and find the spark  of the truth that God has put into

every heart and that only you can kindle to a flame .” In a dialogue,

Socrates takes an ignorant slave boy, without a day of  schooling ,

and proves to the amazed observers that the boy really “knows” geometry –because the principles of geometry

are already in his mind, waiting to be called out.

So many of the discussions and  controversies  about the content of education are useless

and inconclusive because they  are concerned with what should “go into”

the student rather than with what should be taken out, and how this can best be done.

The college student who once said to me, after a lecture,

“I spend so much time studying that I don’t have a chance to learn anything,”

was clearly expressing his dissatisfaction  with the sausage casing view of education.

Now the passage will be read again.

When most people think of the word “education”, they think of a pupil as a sort of animate sausage casing.

Into this empty casting, the teachers are supposed to stuff “education.”

But genuine education, as Socrates knew more than two thousand years ago,

is not inserting the stuffing of information into a person, but rather eliciting knowledge from him;

it is the  drawing-out of what is in the mind.

“The most important part of education,”

once wrote William Ernest Hocking, the  distinguished Harvard philosopher,

“is this instruction of a man in what he has inside of him.”

And, as Edith Hamilton has reminded us, Socrates never said, “I know, learn from me.”

He said, rather, “Look into your own selves and find the spark  of the truth that God has put into

every heart and that only you can kindle to a flame .” In a dialogue,

Socrates takes an ignorant slave boy, without a day of  schooling ,

and proves to the amazed observers that the boy really “knows” geometry –because the principles of geometry

are already in his mind, waiting to be called out.

So many of the discussions and  controversies  about the content of education are useless

and inconclusive because they  are concerned with what should “go into”

the student rather than with what should be taken out, and how this can best be done.

The college student who once said to me, after a lecture,

“I spend so much time studying that I don’t have a chance to learn anything,”

was clearly expressing his dissatisfaction  with the sausage casing view of education.

Now the passage will be read for the third time.

When most people think of the word “education”, they think of a pupil as a sort of animate sausage casing.

Into this empty casting, the teachers are supposed to stuff “education.”

But genuine education, as Socrates knew more than two thousand years ago,

is not inserting the stuffing of information into a person, but rather eliciting knowledge from him;

it is the  drawing-out of what is in the mind.

“The most important part of education,”

once wrote William Ernest Hocking, the  distinguished Harvard philosopher,

“is this instruction of a man in what he has inside of him.”

And, as Edith Hamilton has reminded us, Socrates never said, “I know, learn from me.”

He said, rather, “Look into your own selves and find the spark  of the truth that God has put into

every heart and that only you can kindle to a flame .” In a dialogue,

Socrates takes an ignorant slave boy, without a day of  schooling ,

and proves to the amazed observers that the boy really “knows” geometry –because the principles of geometry

are already in his mind, waiting to be called out.

So many of the discussions and  controversies  about the content of education are useless

and inconclusive because they  are concerned with what should “go into”

the student rather than with what should be taken out, and how this can best be done.

The college student who once said to me, after a lecture,

“I spend so much time studying that I don’t have a chance to learn anything,”

was clearly expressing his dissatisfaction  with the sausage casing view of education.

 This is the end of listening comprehension.