〖TOEFL 2009上半年-Dark_Tournament听力组〗m2zhy的听力备考日志贴

m2zhyUID: 2440721

2000-05-p4:

Last week, you recall(recalled), we discussed the early development of (the) railroads in the United States. Today, I want to mention an even (an) earlier form of transportation, one that brought the first European settlers to America. And that's the wooden sailing ship. From colonial times, sailing ships were vital to the economy. Many coastal towns depended on fishing or whaling for employment and income. This was especially true in the northeastern states. And there, the wood from nearby forests and skills of local designers and workers also formed the basis of an important ship building industry. But the big profits were to(would) be made on trade with far away palces. And since sea captains often became part owners of their ships, they had a strong interest in the commercial success of their voyages. So these Yankees, that's what US sailors and officers came to be called, they carried on a very profitable trade with other parts of the world. The high point of this trade(the street) came in the middle 19th century, with the introduction of the clipper ship, the enormous Yankee clippers with huge sails reaching nearly 200 feet into the sky. He's carry(They carried) passangers and cargo from New York, around south America, to San Francisco in less than three month, and clear to china just half a year. At that time, this seemed unbelievably fast and efficent. But in the 1860s, more reliable steam powered ships began to take over. And soon, the important role of sailing ship in the US economy would come to an end.

m2zhyUID: 2440721

2000-05-p5:

The professor is discussing penmanship, the quality of one's handwriting.

As you prepare to become an elementary school teachers, you'll be hearing a lot of discussion about the relevance of teaching penmanship. Now, years ago when I was studing education in college, reading, writing and arithmetic(rhythsmatic) were the basics of(basic soul in) elementary school education. It went without saying that writing meant first and foremost penmanship. That is the neatness(needness) of (a) child's handwriting. Back then, penmanship was often taough as a seperate subject from the first grade right up to the sixth grade, long after the children had moved from writing in block(black) capital letters(characters) to cursive script. It was considered so important that sometimes prizes were even awarded for the best handwriting. But when we moved ahead of a few decades into the 1980s, we see teachers and administrators even parents telling us that teaching penmanship is a waste of time. With (the) computer, they said, children can successfully manipulate the keyboard or mouse of their home computers before they can even hold a pencil. This change in(changed) attitude had an impact on the classroom. In your homework for this week, you'll be looking at what statewide curiculum standard is in the US about penmanship. You will see that in many states, penmanship has been de-emphasized than the require curiculum, especially in the later years of elementary school. In Clifornia for example, the curriculum calls for fourth grade students to(too), and I(a) quote, "write fluently(frequently) and legibly in cursive or joined Italics", essentially a level appropriate(of proper r) for fourth graders. But after this, the curriculum makes no further mention of penmanship in grade five, six or beyond. Any higher level of the quanlity of neatness is simply not among the curriculum objectives. Your assignment is to look at what the curriculum standards say for all 50 states say(saying) about penmanship.

m2zhyUID: 2440721

2000-08-p3:

Recently, some anthropologists conducted an interesting case study in ethnology. Now ethnology, as you recall, is a branch of anthpology that(to) deal with how various cultures developed in change. The study was about the develpment of basket waving by African Ameircan women who live in the town of Mount Pleasant South Carolina. The town is known for its high quanlity, sweet grass baskets, which are(is) woven by these(its) women. They've been waving the baskets for generations, handing down the skills for mother to daughter. Some of the baskets have been placed(get their places) on permanent display at the(of) Philadelphia Museum of Art(heart). The origin of their basket waving dates back to the 17th century and even earlier when these women's ancestors came to the United States from the west coast of (the) Africa. Now, it's mainly a hobby. But(For) back in(to) the 17th and 18th century, African American women wove the baskets for use(using) on the rice plantations. There were two types of baskets then, work baskets and baskets for use in the(using at) home.
The work baskets were made out of bulrushes, bulrush is a long tough grass that grow in marshes. One type of work basket was the fan basket, which was used to seperate (the) grains of rice from the waste. The baskets used in the home were made out of more delicate sweet grass. They were used for everything, from fruit baskets to baby cradles.

m2zhyUID: 2440721

2000-08-p4:

This morning, I want to tell you about a recent scientific discovery dealing with the relationship between plants and animals. This is about desert shrub, whose leaves can shoot a stream of poisonous reasin a(and) distance of six feet(heat). You think it would be safe from all attackes(the tacks) by insect. But a recent study has found one insect, a beetle, that can chew(choose) its way passed the plant's defense system, by cutting the main vein that delivers the poison to the leaves. This vein cutting is just one method the beetles use to prepare a safe meal, another is by cutting a path all the way across the leaf to hold the flow of chemicals. Then they safely eat between the veins of poison. In the past, scientists who studied insect adaptations to plant defenses have focused on chemical responses. That is how the insects can neutralize or alter(out to) the poisonous subsitances (that) plants produce. What's unique about this chewing strategy is that the beetle is actually exhibiting a hehavior (role) response to the plant's defenses rather than the more common chemical response. It is only after a beetle's survive several encounters(in counters) with the plant resin that it learns how to avoid the poison by chewing through the resin transporting veins( ga) on the next leaf it eats, and thus gets itself a safe meal. However, it can take a bettle an hour and a half of careful vein cutting to prepare a small leaf that take it only a few minutes to eat. So, though the method is effective, it's not very efficient.

m2zhyUID: 2440721

2000-08-p5:

We are going to start our discussion of poetry in western Europe with the Iliad and the Odyssey. These two great poems stand out as great(the greatest) samples of the earlist(early) European poems. They are believed to have been(be) written some time between 800 BC and 700 BC, partly because the poems refer to the social condition of that time, conditions that've been validated by the findings of archeologists. But just who was(two words of) the poet who laid down thses(this) corner stones of western literature. Well, tradition ascribes them(is g then) to a man named Homer, but we know virtually nothing about this Homer. In fact, some say that such a poet never existed at all(off), that neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey was written by a single poet, but rather each poem is composed of(compositively) the writings of several people. This anyway was a view of the school literary critics in the 18th century known as the Analysts. The Analysts pointed to(two) internal evidence, such as variations in the literary devices used in the poems to argue that each work was(wasn't) in fact a collection of several poems by several Greek authors. Opposing the Analysts was a second group of scholars called the Unitarians. They insisted that the Iliad and the Odyssey could well have been the work of single poetic genius. To support their argument, they stressed among other things, the consistency of the characters portrayed in the stories. This wouldn't have been(be) possible they said if they were(it was) written by many different poets. Now, how we look at the Homeric(whole America) questions today has been greatly influenced by someone named Milkman Parry, an American scholar who first presented the idea about Homer in the 1930s. So let's take a look at a Parry's(present) research and how it affects what modern day scholars think about(out of) Homer.

m2zhyUID: 2440721

2000-10-p3:

Ok, since we've been talking about mechanics, then we still have a few minutes. Let me tell you a little about the anciet Greeks and what they thought about mechanics. They came up with a(the) system that for them seemed to describe and explain the different motions of different materials. More than 2000 years ago, Aristotle, an anciet Greek philosopher assumed that all the matter on the earth was made up of four prime substances, earth, water, air and fire. Under this system, earth is the densest, water is next, air is less denser than water and fire is the least dense of all. The heaviest objects were made of earth and water, and lighter objects contains significant amounts of fire or air. So when Aristotle observed that different types of matter had different characteristics, he assumed that this was because the different types of matter were composed of different amounts of the four prime substances. And Aristotle believed that the motion of objects could also be explained by the basic natures of the four prime substances. Er, for example, there was a basic motion of up or down. Aristotle noticed that when he released most objects, they would drop downward. But he also knew(noticed) that something would rise upward like smoke. Aristotle considered an(the) object downward or upward motion to be the result of the dominant nature of the object. So, according to Atistotle, matter like rocks were primarily composed of (the) earth. Therefore they naturally wanted to move towards the center of the earth, because this was where all things earthly rested. But fire had a different resting place, the sky. So smoke would(was) naturally rise when it was released, because it was driven to its natural resting place.

m2zhyUID: 2440721

2001-01-p3:

The cattle ranching industry started in the new western United States in the late 1800s. As the industry developed, so did the hourse riding contests that we call rodeos. Rodeos weren't always the big entertainment(begin to team) shows that we see nowadays. The first one were(was) small contests started as a form of(formal) competetion among people historically refered to as(the) cowboys, although they did include both men and women. One duty of the cowboys was to guide(get) herds of cattle from the grassy ranges into towns around(along) the railroad lines where the cows were loaded(reloaded) onto trains. The cowboys would(were) gather near these cow towns to compete for the unoffical(???) title of "best horse rider", they would(were) demonstrate the riding skills they had learn as a matter of survival. The audience was composed mainly of other cowboys who watched the competitors(competitive) critically, since they knew what the events were all about. Rodeo contests took a different turn(term) in the 1890s when organizers began to hold cowboy sports(cowboys' force) during yearly agricultural affairs. What was different with the audience, it consisted mostly of people who were unfamiliar with the life on the range. They were amazed by the skills of the riders and the intelligence of the horses. The rodoes at agricatual affairs became so popular that the ranchers(adventures) and business people began to organize rodeos as (an) indepedant events, seperate from affairs. The organizers built large arenas and earned money by requiring the spectators to pay for admission(permission).
One of the most notable redoes of this type is(time) still held annually in Wyoming. It's called Frontier Days. Well, Frontier Days is not the first independent rodeo, it is the oldest annual show(old shell) taking place each year since 1897.

m2zhyUID: 2440721

2001-01-p4:

We've been looking at a theory from a biological perspective and someone asked whether the tendency to be fearful is genetic. Well, some studies done with mice(my) indicate that mammals(none of them) do inherit fearfulness to some degree. In one study for instance, a group of mice were placed in(into) a brightly lit open box with no hiding places. Some of the mice wandered around the box and didn't appear to be bothered about being so exposed. But other mice didn't move, they stayed(sat) up against one wall which indicated that they were afraid. Well, when fearful mice, or you might say anxious mice like the one who stayed in one place, when mice like these were bred with one another repeatedly, after about 12 or so generations, then all of the offspring showed similar signs of fearfulness. And even when the new born mouse from this generation was raised by a mother and with other mice who were not fearful, that mouse still tended to be fearful as an adult(at the dolt). Now, why is this? Well, it's thought that specific gens in an(the) animal's body have an influence on anxious behavior. These are genes that are asociated with particular nerve-cell receptors in the brain. And the degree of overall fearfulness in an mammal seems to(into) depend in large part on the presence(present) or absense of these nerve-cell receptors. And this appears to apply to human as well by the way. But while a tendency towards anxiety and fear may well be an inherit trait(trade), the specific form that the fear takes has more to do with the individual's environment. So a particular fear like the fear of snakes or the fear of spider, say(see), is not genetic, but the overall tendency to have fearful(it for the) reponses is.

m2zhyUID: 2440721

2001-01-p5:

One type of natural springs geographers are interested in is artesian springs. Hiking through the woods(I can choose the word), some of you may have been surprised to see water flowing from an(the) opening in the ground that was nowhere(not) near a stream or river. That may have been an artesian spring. To help you understand why water might flow like this from underground, I'd like to explain the two basic conditions that are necessary for their formation. The first condition is that water must(not to) be contained in an aquifer. An aquifer is a underground layer of rock or sediment that has pores or holes in it. And this(these) porous rock allows water to flow through it freely. The aquifer must be inclined, so that the upper end of it is exposed to the air at
the surface of the ground. Rain water enters it through the(this truly) exposed end(in) and travels downward to the lower portion of the aquifer. The second condition is that above and below the aquifer there must be a layer of non-pores(non-porous) rock or clay. These are called aquicludes and they block or hind the flow of water. Aquiclude presents water from draining out of aquifer. So, let's go back to our artesian springs. They are usually located above ground near the lower end of inclined(any planed) aquifer. Artesian springs are those places with some hole or(holer) crack extends from ground surface down to the aquiclude and into the aquifer. Now the rain water that has drained into the aquifer from the exposed upper end, creates a buildup of pressure at the lower end. So if there is a crack in the rock, a crack that runs from the aquifer to the surface, then the pressure pushed the water up through it. And water comes trickling out of the artesian spring.

m2zhyUID: 2440721

2001-05-p3:

The bird you see here in this slide are peregrine falcons. These birds represents a success story among animals on the endanged species list. In the 1970s, the peregrine falcons almost disappeared as a result of the contamination of the food chain by the DDT in(, a) pesticide. The presence of the poison in their systems(systance) resulted the eggs too weak to support the incubating chicks(check). Their(They are) remarkable recovery is a(the) result of the ban of DDT as a pesticide, aggressive captive feeding program and their own resiliency. The peregrine falcon is one the fastest birds alive. They've been clocked at 140-200 miles per hour in successful pursuit of(to) prey. In addtional to speed, these birds fly directly into head winds, and they are capable of flying more than 600 mile per day with favorable tail winds. Today, with the sophistication of telemetry, the speeds of thse birds can be tracked by orbiting satellites, by means of transmitters attached to the bird. For example, peregrine falcons stage(stay)(????) in warmer climate, in other words, they spend time in the southern United States awaiting hormonal changes preparing them(then) to breed in the Arctic. Then, they migrate north to the much colder Arctic regions. Birds have been tracked from Texas in late April to their nesting ground in Alaska, Canada and Greenland. Now, let's move on to another species of birds, the bold eagles.

m2zhyUID: 2440721

2001-05-p5:

Ok, so in our last class, we were discussing big bands swing music. You remember, this was a kind of dance(dancing) music with a steady rhythm. But today, we'll deal with a style of music played by smaller jazz bands. It's called bebop. Now, bebop made use of all sorts of new types of rhythms, some of them very irregular(irregulate). We'll talk more about that later. But first I want to talk about some of social elements that I believe contributed to the development of bebop music. To do this, we have to look at when bebop arose(roles) and started becoming so popular, which was from the late 1930s through the 1940s, from the time of great depression, rgiht in(into) the Second World War. Now, one factor that certainly helped create the environment for bebop music was the decline of the United States economy. During the great depression, the economy suffered tremendously. And fewer people had money to spend on entertainment. Then during the Second World War, the government imposed a new tax on public entertainment which you mght call it a performance tax.
The government collected money on performances that included any types of acting, dancing or singing, but not instrumental music. So to avoid this new tax, some jazz bands stoped using singers altogether. They started relying(to rely) on the creativity of the instrumentalists to attract audiences. This is what bebop bands did. Now, remember a lot of big bands had singers. So instrumentalists simply played in the background and had occasional soloes while the singers sang(sing) the melodies to the songs, but not bebop bands. So the instrumentalists had much more freedom to be creative. So they experimented (it), playing music faster and using new irregular sorts of rhythm.

m2zhyUID: 2440721

2001-05-p5:

Your professor has asked me to talk to you today about the(a) topic that(which) should be a real concern to civil engineers, the erosion of the United States beaches. Let me start with some statistics. Did you know that 90% of the coast in this country is eroding, on the gulf of Mexico for instance, erosion averages 4-5 feet per year. Over the past 20 years, there has been an increasing in building along the coast, even though geologists and environmentalists have been warning communities about problems like erosion. One way communities have tried(subtry) to peotect their buildings and roads(from erodes) has been(?????) to build sea wall. However, geologists have found such stabilizing structures(debried structions) actually speed up the destructions of the beaches(feature). These beaches with sea walls, called stabilized(deblied) beaches are much narrower than beaches without them. You may wonder how sea walls speed up beach loss. The explanation is simple. If the slop on the beach is gental, the water's energe is lessened
as(than) it rushes(washes) up along the shore. It is reduced even more as it(than) returns to the sea, so it doesn't carry back much sand. On the other hand, when the water hits the nearly vertical face of sea wall, it goes straight back to the sea with the full force of its(first full s) enege and carries back a great deal of sand. Because of the real risk(realrize) of losing beaches, many geologists support a ban on (the) all types of stablizing(civilized) construction on the shore line.

m2zhyUID: 2440721

2001-08-p3:

We only have a few minutes left, so I'd like to go over a couple of points before we move on. Remeber that although there are both horizontal and (land) vertical movements of the air, the term wind is applied only to horizontal movements. And more air is involved in those horizontal movements than in vertical movements. And what causes these horizontal movements? Alternately(Automately), it's the solar(so a) radiation, because the unequal heating of the earth and the atmosphere produces horizontal differences in air pressure. These differences set(send) winds in motion. Essentially, winds are nature's way of balancing else uneven(on even) distribution of the air pressure over the earth. Secondly, let me repeat my answer to the question we had before about the wind direction. Many people get confused by what they hear in weather forecast. We talk about wind direction in term of where the wind's coming from not where it's blowing to. There is a good reason for this. To weather forecasters, the origin of the wind is more important than the destination. The wind origin helps them predict the weather. Logically, in the north hemisphere, a north wind turns to bring cold weather, and south wind warm(er) weather. I haven't forgotten vertical movements of the air(there), but we don't have time today to talk about them in depth. In our next class then, I'll begin by discussing updraft and downdraft and how they affect(effect) the weather. I suspect most of you can guess which of the two brings warm weather and which brings cold.

m2zhyUID: 2440721

2001-08-p4:

Some of the most practical lessons coming out of the research in psychology are the areas of memory. People ask, why can't I remember that term from the physics chapter or the date my library books due(do). Of(Often) a lot of people, memory may be weak because they don't use it enough(a lot). It's like a muscle, if you don't exercise it, it won't stay strong. That points it important to keep our minds active, to keep on learning throughout our lives, we can do this by reading, playing memory games and seeking out new experences. It's my guess though(so) that the lack of mental stimulation is not a problem for students like you. More likely, the life(line) you deliver so busy and stimulating, the dis(???) itself may sometimes interfere with learning. Later on I'll(we'll) discuss how information is recalled for memory. But first, the information is to be recorded, in other words, learned. And for busy people like you and me, that will be the real problem often lines(????). If we are distracted, or we try to think about what we are going to do next, the incoming message just might not be getting recorded effectively. And that leads to the first tip to students who want to improve their(once with poor) memories. Give your full attention to the information you hope to retain. Researches clearly show the advantages of this and also of(an) active learning, of conciously trying to visualize a new fact, perhaps to make a mental picture even a wildly ridiculous one, so the new fact will(effect is) stick in memory. Let me illustrate that for you, here a(are) little more contricly(???).

m2zhyUID: 2440721

2001-08-p5:

Today, we are going to continue our discussion of social insects, focusing on the Argentine ants which as you might guess is a species of ants that are(that's) native to Argentina. We'll consider what happened to this type of ant after some number of the species moved to California from their original habitat. Ok, well, in Argentina, these Argentine ants behave like most ants species around the world. They fight other ants of the same species if those ants are from some other nests. But the Argetine ants living in California behave differently. Ants from different nests form a single large colony. Within this colony, there is little aggression among ants from different nests. And when they fight with insects from outside colony, the Argetine ants can quickly recruit a huge army from their(none) network of nests. This of course gives them advantage over other ant species. So(Some) then, why do Argentine ants behave differently in California than they do in Argetina? Well, using genetic testing, researchers found that all the Argentine ants in California were very similar genetically. You see, when the first Argentine ants came to California, their popular must have been(be) very small, and all the later generations of Argentine ants there must be descended from the same few ancestors. So they are all closely related. This discovery is important, because for most social insects, membership in a(number of shapping) colony is based on how closely related they are geneticly.