Official 1 special 2

Lecture1

What is the lecture mainly about?

A. an example of rapid climate change
B. a comparison of two mechanisms of climate change
C. the weather conditions in the present-day Sahara
D. recent geological findings made in the Sahara

2. Not long ago, the Sahara had a different climate. What evidence does the professor mention to support this:

1. Ancient pollen

2. Bones from large animals

3. Rock paintings

4. Agriculture in ancient Egypt

5. Underground water

(A) 1,3,5
(B) 2,3,1
(C) 1,4,5
(D) 5,4,3

3. In the lecture, what do the Ice Age and the creation of the Sahara Desert both illustrate about past climate changes?

1. that some climate changes benefited the development of civilization

2. that some climate changes were not caused by human activity.

3. that some climate change were caused by a decrease of moisture in the atmosphere

4. that some climate changes were caused by changes in Earth’s motion and position

(A) 1,4
(B) 2, 4
(C) 1, 3
(D) 2, 3

What started the runway effect that led to the Sahara area of North Africa becoming a desert

A. the prevailing winds became stronger
B. the seasonal rains moved to a different area
C. the vegetation started to die off in large areas
D. the soil lost its ability to retain rainwater

The professor mentions a theory that people migrating from the Sahara were important to the development of the Egyptian civilization. Which sentence best describes the professor’s attitude toward this theory?

A. It is exciting because it perfectly explains recent archaeological discoveries
B. It is problematic because it goes too far beyond the generally available data
C. It raises an interesting possibility and he hopes to see more evidence for it
D. It cannot be taken seriously until it explains how the migrants got to Egypt

Why does the professor say this?

A. To correct a misstatement he made about the Sahara's climate.
B. To suggest that the current dryness of the Sahara is exaggerated.
C. To indicate that scientists are not in agreement about the Sahara's past climate.
D. To emphasize the difference between the current and past climates of the Sahara.

Lecture 2

Why does the man go to the computer center?

To learn how to use the Internet
To ask the woman where he can buy a computer
To ask if he can get instruction on using computers
To find out where the computer labs are located

How did the man probably feel when he first arrived at the computer center?

Embarrassed about his lack of computer skills
Excited to learn about computers
Upset that he needs to take an expensive computer course
Nervous about an assignment to write a paper on a computer

3.What does the woman imply about the book she bought for her father.

It does not include instruction on word processing.
It is not available at the campus bookstore.
|t is intended only for people with a lot of computer experience.
It might be helpful for the man.

4.What does the woman imply about the student assistants?

The man will not be able to work with them for long.
They may not be good instructors for beginners.
They are required to teach students to use the computers.
Not all of them know about computers.

5.What will the woman do to help the man?

Lend him a book on computers
Give him a list of computer courses
Give him a list of student assistants
Recommend a computer instructor

Lecture 3

1.What is the lecture mainly about?

Ways to limit the expansion of international trade
How restrictions on international trade can cause economic harm
Factors that influence the distribution of exports
Why international trade has expanded in recent years

2.According to the professor, why do many people want imports to be regulated?

To allow for price increases in domestic products
To make the prices of exports more competitive
To protect against domestic unemployment
To encourage the economic growth of certain industries

3.According to the professor, what is the negative result of limiting imports?

The pace of technological innovation slows down.
Te number of domestic low-paying jobs decreases.
People move to areas where income is lower.
The potential income from exports is reduced.

What does the professor imply about the sugar industry in Florida?

It is a good source of high-paying jobs
It should not be protected from competition from imports.
It is a good example of the effect of international specialization
It is managed cost effectively.

What does the professor imply about the effect of increasing imports?

It will eventually result in a decrease in exports.
It is not necessarily bad for the economy.
Its impact on the economy is immediately apparent.
It creates domestic economic problems that are easily solved

What is the professor’s opinion of retraining and relocating unemployed people,

It Is more expensive overtime than blocking imports.
It can sometimes have unintended consequences.
It is one possible way to adapt to an increase in imports.
It maintains the production levels of inefficient industries

Lecture 4

1.What is the lecture mainly about?

Why some newspapers do not improve their services
What newspapers can do to increase their readership
Why local newspapers cannot compete with major newspapers
How the topics that interest readers have changed over the years

According to the professor, what topics are newspaper readers most interested in? Choose 2 answers.

Political issues
Entertainment and weather
Natural disasters and accidents
Ordinary people

According to the professor, how can newspapers attract readers to serious stories?

By including photos that provide background information
By making minor revisions to the content of the story
By making the format more appealing to readers
By gradually increasing the number of serious stories

4.What does the professor imply about the use of colors in newspapers?

It has been greatly influenced by reader preferences.
It is more effective than early research indicated.
It has not resulted in significant increases in the number of readers.
It has been neglected in the study of journalism.

What does the student imply when he says this?

He agrees with the professor completely.
He is surprised by the professor’s point of view.
He is not familiar with the topic the professor is discussing
He can offer a solution to the problem being discussed.

What does the professor imply when he says this:

He fully supports the student’s statement.
His experience this morning was unexpected.
He was not affected by what happened this morning.
The student should not complain.

Lecture 5

What does the professor mainly discuss?

A. A common weather pattern in the southern Great Plains region
B. Factors that created an ecological and human disaster
C. Farming techniques introduced during the Dust Bowl era
D. The erosion of grasslands by excessive rainfall

What happened during the agricultural expansion in the southern Great Plains?

A. People improved the soil by planting wheat.
B. Raising cattle and other livestock became less common.
C. Most of the landowners became farmers.
D. Much of the grassland was destroyed.

What point does the professor make when he mentions that good topsoil takes thousands of years to form?

A. It takes a long time to ruin good topsoil.
B. It was wrong to believe that land could not be damaged.
C. Farmers should not have moved on to other places.
D. Plowing the land creates good topsoil faster than natural processes do.

Why does the professor mention that drought is often blamed as the cause of the Dust Bowl?

A. To explain that many tenant farmers had to leave their land before the Dust Bowl era
B. To emphasize that the Dust Bowl resulted mainly from soil erosion
C. To show why the local population increased when rainfall returned to normal
D. To prove that the drought was the worst on record at that time

According to the professor, what did the Soil Erosion Act do to improve soil conservation? Choose 2 answers.

A. It provided special equipment for farmers.
B. It encouraged farmers to use better farming techniques.
C. It turned damaged farmland into permanent grassland.
D. It increased the variety of crops grown on each farm. .

Listen to Track 91.

A. To ask the students for their opinions
B. To express uncertainty about a historical situation
C. To emphasize a point he has just made
D. To correct an earlier statement

Lecture 6

What is the lecture mainly about?

A. How astronomers found the correct interpretation for a certain observation
B. How astronomers distinguish between two kinds of nebulae
C. Various improvements to the telescope over the last 300 years
D. An old problem in astronomy that remains unsolved

According to the lecture, how did distant galaxies appear to eighteenth-century astronomers?

A. Like the moons of planets
B. Like small clouds
C. Like variable stars
D. Like bright points of light

What could astronomers better estimate once they knew what nebulae really were?

A. The diameter of variable stars
B. The density of cosmic dust
C. The size of the universe
D. The average number of planets in a galaxy

According to the professor, what did a 1920s telescope allow astronomers to do for the first time?

A. Study the moons of Jupiter
B. Observe gamma-ray bursters
C. Reject the dust theory of nebulae
D. Prove that galaxies are surprisingly small.

What did eighteenth-century astronomers have in common with astronomers today?

A. They could not explain everything they detected with their instruments.
B. They knew the correct distances of objects they could not identify.
C. Their instruments were not powerful enough to detect spiral nebulae.
D. They argued over the natural brightness of variable stars.

What can be inferred about the student when he says this?

A. She is certain about the correct answer.
B. She is now aware that her original idea had a weakness.
C. She is not convinced that the professor is right.
D. She thinks that the professor misunderstood what she said earlier.

Lecture 7

What is the lecture mainly about?

A. Various painting techniques
B. Ways to determine the purpose of a piece of art
C. How moral values are reflected in art
D. How to evaluate a piece of art

According to the professor, what did ancient Greek philosophers value in a work of art?

A. An accurate imitation of life
B. An unusual perspective on life
C. The expression of complex emotions
D. The use of symbolism

Why does the professor talk about personal taste?

A. To point out its importance in the evaluation of art
B. To help students understand the meaning of aesthetics
C. To show that personal taste and aesthetics are the same
D. To help explain art from different cultures

Why does the professor mention wheels and spheres?

A. To illustrate how movement can be expressed in a piece of art
B. To demonstrate that objects are more important than colors in a piece of art
C. To give an example of objects that have symbolic significance
D.To explain why some objects rarely appear in works of art

5.What does the professor imply when he says this?

A. He will assign 12 pieces of art to evaluate.
B. He is organizing a class trip to the art museum.
C. It takes a lot of time to evaluate a piece of art.
D. Students will now be able to evaluate art quickly

Lecture 6

What is the lecture mainly about?

A. Reasons the United States government should not support the arts.
B. The history of government support for the arts in the United States.
C. Strengths and weaknesses of different government-sponsored arts programs.
D. Different ways in which governments can help support artists.

Incorrect

Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a United States government class.

Professor: OK, last time we were talking about government support for the arts. Who can sum up some of the main points? Frank?

Frank: Well, I guess there wasn’t really any, you know, official government support for the arts until the twentieth century. But the first attempt the United States government made to, you know, to support the arts was the Federal Art Project.

Professor: Right, so what can you say about the project?

Frank: Um…it was started during the Depression, um…in the 1930s to employ out of-work artists

Professor: So was it successful? Janet? What do you say?

Janet: Yeah, sure, it was successful. I mean, for one thing, the project established a lot of…uh like community art centers and galleries and places like rural areas where people hadn’t really had access to the arts.

Professor: Right.

Frank: Yeah. But didn’t the government end up wasting a lot of money for art that wasn’t even very good?

Professor: Uh…some people might say that. But wasn’t the primary objective of the Federal Art Project to provide jobs?

Frank: That’s true. I mean…it did provide jobs for thousands of unemployed artists.

Professor: Right. But then when the United States became involved in the Second World War, unemployment was down and it seems that these programs weren’t really necessary any longer. So, moving on, we don’t actually see any govern…well any real government involvement in the arts again until the early 1960s, when President Kennedy and other politicians started to push for major funding to support and promote the arts. It was felt by a number of politicians that …well that the government had a responsibility to support the arts as sort of… oh, what can we say?…the the soul…or spirit of the country. The idea was that there be a federal subsidy…um…uh…financial assistance to artists and artistic or cultural institutions. And for just those reasons, in 1965, the National Endowment for the Arts was created. So it was through the NEA, the National Endowment for the Arts, um…that the arts would develop, would be promoted throughout the nation. And then individual states throughout the country started to establish their own state arts councils to help support the arts. There was kind of uh…cultural explosion. And by the mid-1970s, by 1974 I think, all fifty states had their own arts agencies, their own state arts councils that work with the federal government with corporations, artists, performers, you name it.

Frank: Did you just say corporations? How are they involved?

Professor: Well, you see, corporations aren’t always altruistic. They might not support the arts unless…well, unless the government made it attractive for them to do so, by offering corporations tax incentives to support the arts, that is, by letting corporations pay less in taxes if they were patrons of the arts. Um, the Kennedy Centre in Washington D.C. , you may uh…maybe you’ve been there, or Lincoln Centre in New York. Both of these were built with substantial financial support from corporations. And the Kennedy and Lincoln center’s aren’t the only examples. Many of your cultural establishments in the United States will have a plaque somewhere acknowledging the support – the money they received from whatever corporation. Oh, yes, Janet?

Janet: But aren’t there a lot of people who don’t think it’s the government’s role to support the arts?

Professor: Well, as a matter of fact, a lot of politicians who did not believe in government support for the arts, they wanted to do away with the agency entirely, for that very reason, to get rid of governmental support. But they only succeeded in taking away about half the annual budget. And as far as the public goes, well…there are about as many individuals who disagree with the government support as there are those who agree. In fact, with artists in particular, you have lots of artists who support and who have benefited from this agency, although it seems that just as many artists suppose a government agency being involved in the arts, for many different reasons, reasons like they don’t want the government to control what they create. In other words, the arguments both for and against government funding of the arts are as many and, and as varied as the individual styles of the artists who hold them.

Unattempted