Part II Listening Comprehension

Section A

Directions:

In this section, you will hear two long conversations.

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

Both the conversation 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.

Now you will hear two long conversation.

Conversation One

M: ICS. Good morning. How can I help you?

W: Good morning. 

I`m thinking of sending a parcel to Boston by courier next week. 

Can you tell me what the procedure is, please?

M: Certainly. When you ring us, we need the following information: 

the invoice address—that`s probably your own address,

isn`t it? And then the pickup address if that`s different. 

And a contact phone number…

W: Just a moment…I`m taking notes. Phone number…right.

M: Then we need the full name, address and phone number 

of the person you`re sending the parcel to.

W: OK. Anything else?

M: Yes, the weight and dimensions of the parcel—that`s height,

 width and length…and the value of the goods…and a full description.

W: …value…description…

M: Yes, but don`t seal the parcel.

 You need to leave it open so that the driver 

can check the contents when he collects it.

 After the recent bombing, the airlines said that 

we`d have to check all parcels; they told us we had to do it.

W: Fine. Now, how long will the parcel take to get to Boston?

M: One to two working days. Just a moment, 

I`ll check with the manager. 

Yes, the manager says that there are daily flights at midday. 

If your parcel catches that flight, it`ll arrive within 24 hours.

W: Good. I live near Oxford.

 What time would you need to collect from here 

in order to catch the midday flight?

M: Near Oxford…What`s your postcode?

W: OX7.

M: Just a moment. 

Yes, the manager says we can collect the parcel from you at 10∶15 

on the morning of the flight. 

Now, there`s one more thing. What are you planning to sent?

W: Books.

M: In that case, you`ll need to write an invoice for customs. 

We need six copies, and the driver will take them from you when he collects the parcel. 

On the invoice you need to write your address 

and the destination. Then you must say what`s in the parcel, 

and specify the weight and the value. 

Write a sentence declaring that the information is true, and sign each copy.

W: …sign each copy. Right. Thank you very much. 

You`ve been very helpful.

M: Not at all. Goodbye.

W: Goodbye.

Questions 1 to 4 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

Questions 1

Why do all parcels need to be open and checked by a driver?

Questions 2

From where to where does the woman want to send her parcel?

Questions 3

Which of the following information doesn`t the woman 

need to give about her parcel?

Questions 4

What`s the woman`s postcode?

Conversation Two

M: We`ve fought for all this time for the simple reason that 

you refuse to allow me to have the space in my life 

to invite people over to stay here.

W: That`s not true. I said I know I`m not gonna feel like 

this forever—let me think about how I can deal with this. 

The way I have decided to deal with it is not to be here. 

I don`t want to be here. I just don`t want to be here. 

I don`t want to be around someone I`m totally uncomfortable 

with and I can`t by myself around 

because everything he`s gonna say…

and I`m gonna be sitting there like—oh no, 

I can`t believe he said that!

M: Then why can`t you…Lisa, 

I feel like your role in life is to react to things 

that happen around you and that`s it, 

that`s all you ever do.

 Why don`t you, I mean, come on, 

you know, why don`t you talk to some people? 

For one thing you`ll be less dogmatic…

it`ll be nice.

W: I don`t want to be less dogmatic. 

I like being dogmatic. I like thinking what I think.

 I like having strong opinions.

M: You don`t have to change any of those things…

W: You want me to be nice and mellow and polite 

and docile and I`m not willing to be your nice little wife…

M: Lisa. Nice, mellow, polite and docile are four words. 

Three of them mean similar things and one of them is not a synonym. 

Docile…you don`t have to be nice and docile…

that`s not the same thing.

W: David, I`m not nice…

M: …polite and docile are different…

W: …I`m just not nice…and you`re gonna have to just live 

with that if you`re interested.

 I`m just not nice. That`s not what I am. 

I don`t walk around buttering people up 

because I`m supposed to be this nice female type saying—

“Oh yes, let me get you some tea.”…

“Would you like something to drink?”…

I am not nice.

Questions 5 to 8 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

Questions 5

According to the conversation, what might be the main problem between the two speakers?

Questions 6

What does the man mean by saying his wife is dogmatic?

Questions 7

Why is the woman so angry?

Questions 8

What does the woman need not to do according to the man?

Section B

Directions:

In this section, you will hear two 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 One

Darwin was a great scientist. He studied living things in the world.

He said, “There are thousands of living things. But in the past, 

the number was smaller. In the far past, 

a still smaller number. In the beginning—perhaps only one.”

Darwin waited a long time before he put these things into a book. 

He always tried to add more and more facts: 

he wanted his ideas about evolution to be right.

It took him many years to write the book. On the first day,

 people bought every copy. 

The men of the churches fought against Darwin`s ideas.

 His story of the world was different from theirs. 

So either Darwin or the men of the churches must be wrong. 

But the churches did not bring any new facts, or better ideas. 

They only brought angry words.

Later, Darwin wrote a book about the evolution of man. 

He said that man is also a kind of animal. 

And again, Darwin did not just write down his own ideas.

 He filled his book with facts. We know now that he was right. 

There have been men for more than a million years. 

We have found some of their bones. 

Bones have told us a lot about the evolution of living things.

Like any other animals, man slowly changed through time. 

But we cannot find the bones of man from a few million years ago. 

There were not any men at that time. 

The world`s animals were different then.

But the bones can take us backwards through time—into the past.

 And they can help us with our study of the evolution of life.

Questions 9 to 11 are based on the passage you have just heard.

Questions 9

 What were Darwin`s ideas based on?

Questions 10

Why did the men of the churches fight against Darwin`s ideas?

Questions 11

According to the passage, which of the following is not true?

Passage Two

One way that scientists learn about man is by animals, 

such as mice, rats and monkeys. 

The scientists in this laboratory are experimenting on mice. 

They are studying the relationship between diet and health.

 At this time over one hundred experiments are going on in this laboratory.

In this experiment, 

the scientists are studying the relationship 

between the amount of food the mice eat and their health. 

The mice are in three groups.

 All three groups are receiving the same healthy diet.

 But the amount of food that each group is receiving is different.

The first group is eating one cup of food each day, 

the second is eating two cups, 

and the third group of mice is eating three cups.

After three years, the healthiest group is the one 

that is only eating one cup of food each day. 

The mice in this group are thinner than normal mice. 

But they are more active. Also they are living longer. 

Mice usually live for two years.

 Most of the mice in this group are still alive after three years.

 The second group of mice is normal weight. 

They are healthy, too. They are active,

but not as active as the thinner mice. 

But they are only living about two years. 

The last group of mice spends most of the day eating or sleeping.

 They are not very active. 

These mice are living longer than the scientists thought: 

about a year and a half. But they are not healthy. 

The experiment is still going on.

 The scientists hope to finish their studies in two years.

Questions 12 to 15 are based on the passage you have just heard.

Questions 12

According to the passage, what animals are often used by scientists tolearn about man?

Questions 13

What are the scientists studying in this laboratory?

Questions 14

 Which group of mice is the healthiest among the three groups after three years?

Questions 15

Which of the following is implied but not stated in the experiment?

Section C

Directions:

In this section, you will hear recordings of lectures or talks followed by some questions.

The recordings will be played 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.

Now listen to the following recording and answer questions 16 to 19.

I`m here to tell you that we have a problem with boys, 

and it`s a serious problem with boys.

Their culture isn`t working in schools, 

and I`m going to share with you ways that we can think about overcoming that problem.

First, I want to start by saying, this is a boy, 

and this is a girl, 

and this is probably stereotypically what you think of as a boy and a girl. 

If I essentialize gender for you today, then you can dismiss what I have to say. 

So I`m not going to do that. I`m not interested in doing that.

 This is a different kind of boy and a different kind of girl.

 So the point here is that not all boys exist within these rigid boundaries

 of what we think of as boys and girls, 

and not all girls exist within those rigid boundaries of what we think of as girls.

 But, in fact, most boys tend to be a certain way, 

and most girls tend to be a certain way.

And the point is that, for boys, 

the way that they exist and the culture 

that they embrace isn`t working well in schools now. How do we know that?

The Hundred Girls Project tells us some really nice statistics. 

For example, for every 100 girls that are suspended from school, 

there are 250 boys that are suspended from school. 

For every 100 girls who are expelled from school, 

there are 335 boys who are expelled from school. 

For every 100 girls in special education, there are 217 boys. 

For every 100 girls with a learning disability, 

there are 276 boys. For every 100 girls with an emotional disturbance diagnosed,

 we have 324 boys. And by the way, 

all of these numbers are significantly higher if you happen to be black, 

if you happen to be poor, if you happen to exist in an overcrowded school. 

And if you are a boy, 

you`re four times as likely to be diagnosed with

 ADHD—Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Now there is another side to this.And it is important that we recognize 

that women still need help in school,

that salaries are still significantly lower,

even when controlled for job types,

and that girls have continued to struggle in math and science for years.

That`s all true. Nothing about that prevents us 

from paying attention to the literacy needs of our boys between ages three and 13.

 And so we should, in fact, 

what we ought to do is to take a page from their playbook,

because the initiatives and programs that have been set in place

 for women in science and engineering and mathematics are fantastic.

 They`ve done a lot of good for girls in these situations,

and we ought to be thinking about how we can make 

that happen for boys too in their younger years.

Even in their older years, what we find is that there`s still a problem.

Now listen to the following recording and answer questions 20 to 22.

I believe that there are new,

 hidden tensions that are actually happening between people and institutions—institutions 

that are the institutions that people inhabit in their daily life:

 schools, hospitals, workplaces, factories, offices, etc. 

And something that I see happening is something 

that I would like to call a sort of “democratization of intimacy.”

And what do I mean by that? 

I mean that what people are doing is, in fact, they are sort of,

 with their communication channels, they are breaking an imposed isolation 

that these institutions are imposing on them.

How are they doing this? They`re doing it in a very simple way,

 by calling their mom from work, 

by IMing from their office to their friends,

 by texting under the desk.

The pictures that you`re seeing behind me are people that I visited in the last few months. 

And I asked them to come along with the person they communicate with most.

 And somebody brought a boyfriend, somebody a father.

 One young woman brought her grandfather. 

For 20 years, I`ve been looking at how people use channels such as email, 

the mobile phone, texting, etc.

What we`re actually going to see is that, 

fundamentally, people are communicating on a regular basis with five, six, 

seven of their most intimate sphere. Now, lets take some data of Facebook, 

recently some sociologists from Facebook—Facebook is the channel 

that you would expect is the most enlargening of all channels.

 And an average user, said Cameron Marlow, 

from Facebook, has about 120 friends.

 But he actually talks to, has two way exchanges with,

 about four to six people on a regular base, depending on his gender.

Academic research on instant messaging also shows 100 people on buddy lists,

 but fundamentally people chat with two, three, four—anyway,

 less than five. 

My own research on cellphones and voice calls shows

 that 80 percent of the calls are actually made to four people.

 80 percent. And when you go to Skype, it`s down to two people.

A lot of sociologists actually are quite disappointed. I mean, 

I`ve been a bit disappointed sometimes when I saw this data and all this deployment, 

just for five people. And some sociologists actually feel that it`s a closure, 

it`s a cocooning, that we`re disengaging from the public. 

And I would actually, I would like to show you that if we actually look at who is doing it, 

and from where they`re doing it, actually there is an incredible social transformation.

There are three stories that I think are quite good examples.

Now listen to the following recording and answer questions 23 to 25.

People are living longer and societies are getting grayer. 

You hear about it all the time. 

You read about it in your newspapers.

 You hear about it on your television sets. 

Sometimes I`m concerned that we hear about 

it so much that we`ve come to accept longer lives

 with a kind of a complacency, even ease. But make no mistake,

 longer lives can and, I believe, will improve quality of life at all ages.

Now to put this in perspective, let me just zoom out for a minute.

 More years were added to average life expectancy 

in the 20th century than all years added across all prior millennia of human evolution combined. 

In the blink of an eye, we nearly doubled the length of time that we`re living. 

So if you ever feel like you don`t have this aging thing quite pegged, 

don`t kick yourself. 

It`s brand new. 

And because fertility rates fell across that very same period that life expectancy was going up, 

that pyramid that has always represented the distribution of age in the population, 

with many young ones at the bottom winnowed to a tiny peak of older people 

who make it and survive to old age is being reshaped into a rectangle.

And now, if you`re the kind of person who can get chills from population statistics, 

these are the ones that should do it. 

Because what that means is that for the first time in the history of the species,

 the majority of babies born in the Developed World are having the opportunity to grow old.

How did this happen?

Well we`re no genetically hardier than our ancestors were 10,000 years ago.

 This increase in life expectancy is the remarkable product of culture—the crucible 

that holds science and technology and wide scale changes 

in behavior that improve health and well being. 

Through cultural changes, our ancestors largely eliminated early death 

so that people can now live out their full lives.

Now there are problems associated 

with aging—diseases, poverty, loss of social status.

 It`s hardly time to rest on our laurels. But the more we learn about aging, 

the clearer it becomes that a sweeping downward course is grossly inaccurate. 

Aging brings some rather remarkable improvements—increased knowledge, 

expertise—and emotional aspects of life improve. 

That`s right, older people are happy.

 They`re happier than middle aged people, 

and younger people certainly.