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2002年英语专业八级考试听力MP3附试题和答案
听力原文
SECTION A TALK
The first area in American urban history extended from the early 17th century to about 1840. Throughout those years the total urban population remained small and so with the cities. At the first federal censors in 1790, city dwellers made up nearly 5.1% of the total population and only two places had more than 25000 inhabitants. Fifty years later only 10.8% of the national population fell into the urban category and only one city, New York, contained more than 250000 people. Largely because of the unsophisticated modes of transportation, even the more populous phrases in the early 19th century remained small enough that people could easily work from one end of the city to the other in those days.
Though smaller in modern standards these working cities, as it were, performed variety of functions in those days. One was economic. Throughout the pre-modern era, this part of urban life remained so overwhelmingly commercial that almost every city owed its development to trade.
Yet city dwellers concerned themselves not only with promoting agricultural activities in their own areas, they also collected and processed goods from these areas and distributed them to other cities. From the beginning line and increasingly in the 18th and early 19th centuries, city served as centres of both commerce and simple manufacturing.
Apart from the economical functions, the early cities also had important non-economic functions to play. Since libraries, museums, schools and colleges were built and needed people to go there to visit or to study, cities and the large early towns with their concentrations of population tended to serve as centres of educational activities and its policy from which information were spread to the countryside. In addition, the town with people of different occupational, ethnic, racial and religious filiation became focuses of formal and informal organizations which were set up to foster the security and to promote the interests and influence of each group. In these days the pre-industrial city in America functioned as a complex and varied organizing element in American life, not as a simple, homogeneous and sturdy union.
The varieties of these early cities were reinforced by the nature of their location and by the process of town spreading. Throughout the pre-industrial period of American history, the city occupied sites on the eastern portion of the then largely under-developed continent, and settlement on the countryside generally followed the expansion of towns in that region. The various interest groups in each city tended to compete with their counterparts in other cities for economic, social and political control first nearby and later more distant and larger areas. And always there remained the underdeveloped regions to be developed through the establishment of new towns by individuals and groups. These individuals and groups sought economic opportunities or looked for a better social, political or religious atmosphere. In this sense, the cities builder had development of succession of urban frontiers. While this kind of circumstance made Americans one of the most prolific and self-conscious city building peoples of their time, it did not resort the steadily urbanizing society in the sense that decade by decade and ever larger proportion of the people lived in cities.
In 1690 an estimated 9 to 10 percent of American colonists lived in urban settlements. A century later, that was the end of the 18th century, though 24 places had 2 500 persons or more, city dwellers accounted for only 5.1% of the total population. For the next thirty years, the proportion remained relatively stable and it was not until the 1830 did the urban figure moved back up to the level of 1690.
In short, as the number of cities increased after 1690, they sent large number of people into countryside and they retained. Nonetheless the continuous movement of people into and out of the cities made life in the many but relatively small places lively and stimulating.
SECTION B INTERVIEW
M: I'm talking to Janet Holmes who has spent many years negotiating for several well-known national and multi-national companies. Hello, Janet.
W: Hello.
M: Now Janet. You've experienced and observed the negotiation strategies used by people from different countries and speakers of different languages. So before we comment on the differences, could I ask you to comment first of all on what such encounters have in common?
W: OK, well, I'm just going to focus on the situations where people are speaking English in international business situations.
M: I see. Now, not every one speaks English to the same degree of proficiency. So, maybe that affects situations.
M: Yes, perhaps. But that is not always so significant. Well, because, I mean, negotiations between business partners from different countries normally mean we have negotiations between individuals who belong to distinct cultural traditions.
M: Oh, I see.
W: Well, every individual has a different way of performing various tasks in everyday life.
M: Yes, but. but isn't it the case that in the business negotiation, they must come together and work together to a certain extent. I mean, doesn't that level up the style of , the style of differences or somewhat?
W: Oh, 1 am not so sure. I mean there's people in the so-called Western World who say that in course of the past 30 or 40 years, there were a lot of things had changed a great deal globally, and that as a consequence, national differences had diminished. We have got fewer, giving way to some sort of international Americanized style.
M: Yeah, I've heard that. Now some people say this Americanized style has acted as a model for local patterns.
W: Maybe it has, maybe it hasn't. Because on the one hand, there does appear to be a fairly unified even uniform style of doing business with certain basic principles and preferences, you know, like "time is money", that sort of thing. But at the same time, it is very important to remember the way all retain aspects of national characteristics. But it is actual behavior that we will talk about here. We shouldn't be too quick to generalize that to national characteristic and stylistic type. It doesn't help much.
M: Yeah. You mentioned Americanized style. What is particular about American style of business bargaining or negotiating?
W: Well. I've noticed that, for example, when Americans negotiate with people from Brazil, the American negotiators make their points in a direct, sophistical way.
M: I see.
W: While Brazilian make their points in a more indirect way.
M: How?
W: Let me give you an example. Brazilian importers look at people they're talking to straight in the eyes a lot. They spend time on what some people thinks to be background information. They seem to be more indirect.
M: Then, what about the American negotiators?
W: American style of negotiating, on the other hand, is far more like that of point-making, first point, second point, third point, and so on. Now of course, this isn't the only way in which one can negotiate and absolutely no reason why this should be considered as the best way to negotiate.
M: Right. Americans seem to have different styles, say, even from the British, don't they?
W: Exactly, which just show how careful you must be about generalizing. 1 mean, how asking you explain how the American negotiators are seen as informal, and sometimes much too open. For British eyes, Americans are direct even blunt.
M: Is that so?
W: Yeah, at the same time, the British too. German negotiators can appear direct and uncompromising in the negotiations, and yet if you experience Germans and Americans negotiating together, it is often the Americans who are being too blunt for the German negotiators.
M: Fascinating! So people from different European countries use different styles, don't they?
W: That's right.
M: OK. So what about the Japanese then? I mean, is their style different from the Americans and Europeans?
W: Oh, well, yes, of course. Many Europeans nod its extreme politeness of their Japanese counterparts, the way they avoid giving the slightest defense, you know. They're also very reserved to people they don't know well. At the first meetings American colleagues have difficulties in finding the right approach sometimes. But then when you meet the Japanese negotiators again, this initial impression tends to disappear. But it is perhaps true to say that your average Japanese business person does choose his or more really her words very carefully.
M: So can we say that whatever nationalities you are dealing with, you need to remember that different nationalities negotiate in different ways?
W: Well, it's perhaps more helpful to bear in mind the different people behave in negotiating in different ways. And you shouldn't assume that everyone will behave in the same way that you do.
M: Right. It is definitely a very useful tip for our businessman who often negotiate with their overseas partners. OK, Janet, thank you very much for talking with us.
W: Pleasure.
SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST
News Item One (For Question 11)
The first International Tibetan Traditional Medicine Conference will be held July 15th to 17th in Lasha, capital city of Tibet autonomous region. China's Ethnic Medicine Institute, Tibetan Bureau and Tibetan Medical College will co-host the conference. The conference has received more than 500 research papers from China and abroad. The organizing committee primarily selected 290 articles to be discussed at the conference. More than 50 foreign guests from United States, Russia. Britain, India. Germany, France, Italy and Nepal will attend the meeting. The Chinese mainland has sent delegation consisting of 250 Tibetan medicine experts to the conference.
News Item Two (For Questions 12—13)
The government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region were actively adopting information technology and building an electronic government, a senior Hong Kong official said yesterday. This is an integral part of Hong Kong's Digital 21 Strategy formulated in 1998 to make Hong Kong both a regional and world-wide internet centre, said Carrion, secretary for information technology and broadcasting. She outlined three policy objectives in developing an e-government in Hong Kong at the IBM Asian Pacific E-government Executive Seminar. The first policy objective is to develop an electronic and paperless government so as to improve the efficiency, cost-effectiveness and quality of public services. The second is to promote the wide adoption of e-commerce with the government setting a leading example. The third is, through the e-government program, to integrate service delivery across multiple department and agencies.
News Item Three (For Questions 14—15)
Canadian Olympic 100-meter champion Donovan Bailey showed he was on his way back to the top form on Tuesday by winning 100-meter at the athletic meeting in Switzerland in the time of 9.98 seconds. Despite unfavorable windy conditions. Bailey recorded the second best time of the year short of the 9. 91 set by double world champion Moris Greene of the United States on May 13th in Nosoka, Japan. "I would have run 9.80 if I'd really pushed myself." said Bailey, 1996 Olympic and 1995 world champion. The Canadian has been fighting for form before the Sidney Olympics, following a long-term injury which resulted in a disappointing series of starts in the season.
SECTION D NOTE-TAKING AND GAP-FILLING
Good morning, today well look at some study activities carried out in university as we know, students in colleges or universities are expected to master some academic materials that are fairly difficult to understand. However, some of them find it hard to learn some complex, abstract or unfamiliar subject matter. As a result, a central problem in higher education is how to internalize academic knowledge, that is, how to make knowledge your own. In order to do so we must convert knowledge from being other's knowledge to being part of our own way of thinking.
Then how are we going to do it? What's the means available to help us in the process of learning? There are four key study activities currently used in higher education to encourage students to internalize knowledge. They are the ones we are familiar with: writing essay, going to classes and seminars, having individual tutorials and listening to lectures. The four activities are long-established features of our higher education, and they are as important now as they were a hundred years ago. Now let's look at the features of them one by one.
First, essay writing. The central focus of university work, especially in humanities, for example in literature, history or politics, is on students' producing regular essays or papers which summarize and express their personal understanding of the topic. Then what is good about essay writing? Firstly, writing essays forces you to select what you find interesting in books and journals and to express your understanding in the coherent form. Individual written work also provides teachers with the best available guide to how you are processing in the subject, and allows them to give advice on how to develop your strengths or counteract your weaknesses. Lastly, of course, individual written work is still the basis of almost all assessment in higher education. Written assignments familiarize you with the form of your exams or course what papers will take.
The second key activity in colleges and universities is seminars and class discussions. Their role is to help you to internalize academic knowledge by providing specialized contexts so that you can talk about such difficult problems as the treat of between inflation and the unemployment in economic policy or the use of the metaphors in Shakespeare's plays. Talking is a more interactive activity than written work. In the conversation you know immediately how effective you are in expressing your point and can modify what you are saying in response to people's reactions. In addition, a normal program of between 10 to 25 classes will cover far more topics than one subject. Then you can hope to manage your written work. Participating in flexible conversations across this range of issues also allows you to practice using the broader knowledge gained from other key activities such as lectures.
Now let's take a look at another activity, individual tutorials. Discussions between the teacher and one or two students are used in many colleges as a substitute for or supplement to group discussion in classes like those mentioned before. Tutorials can range from direct explanation by teacher and subject to flexible conversational sessions which at their best very effective in stimulating students' mastery of body of knowledge. The one-to-one quality of the personal interaction is very important in stimulating acceptance of ideas and producing fruitful interaction. In order to make individual tutorial really work, students should make good preparation beforehand, and during the tutorial they also should ask questions to keep the ball rolling rather than let the teachers talk the vacuum.
The last activity is lectures. As we all know, lectures play a large part of most students' timetable and occupy considerable proportion of teachers' efforts. However the major difficulty with lectures is that they are not interactive like discussion or tutorials. The lecturer normally talks for the whole time with minimal feed-back from questions. The signs making notes the lecture well-concentrating on the argument being developed is often difficult to some students, especially when the argument is very complicated. However, we have said that lectures are clearly valuable in several specific ways. They can provide a useful overview in every map, as it were, to familiarize you with the mainland features to be encountered during the course. Lectures typically give much more accessible descriptions of theoretical perspectives in their oral presentations that can be found in the academic literature. Whenever there is a rapid pace of progress in theory or practice, lectures play an indispensable part in letting students know the development immediately, usually several years before the new material is included in textbooks. Lastly, lectures are often very useful in allowing you to see directly how exponents of different views build up their arguments. The cues provided by things someone talking in person may seem irrelevant, but these cues are important aids to understanding the subject matter better later.
So far we've discussed four study activities and their respective features and roles in higher education. Of course, study activities are not limited to just these four types. There're other activities that are equally important, such as general reading, project learning, etc. We will cover them during our next lecture.
