Part II Listening Comprehension

　　Section A

　　News Report One

　　You probably think college students are experts at sleeping, but parties, preparations for test, personal problems and general stress can

　　rag a student’s sleep habits which can be bad for the body and for the mind. Texas Tech University is even offering a class called improving your sleep habits. People suffering from sleep loss are at an increased risk from obesity, psychological problems and car crashes.

　　Students who don’t get enough sleep have poor attendance and lower grades. On top of all that, a new study published in the journal Learning and Memory finds you are probably better off sleeping than making last-minute preparations for a test. Two hundred college kids were talked to play some unfamiliar video games. Subjects who learned the games in the morning lost some skills when they played again 12 hours later. But they did much better after getting a good night sleep. So if you really want to do your job well, don’t forget to get some sleep.

　　News Report Two

　　Long queues, delayed flights and over-crowing at airports have become almost as much a topic for conversation in Britain, as the traditional complaining about the weather. Meanwhile, there are complains that the poor service at London’s major airports is discouraging foreigners from doing business in Britain. Much of the criticism is directed at the British Airport Authority, which runs seven major airports, including the three main ones serving London. The

　　competition commission is now to investigate whether the

　　British Airport Authority needs to sell off some of its assets. The idea is the competition between rival operators would lead to better service at airports. The British Airport Authority, recently bought by a Spanish company, says the root cause of the problem is not the ownership structure, but a lack of runway and terminal capacity, which is addressing through a program of heavy investment.

　　News Report Three

　　Under the law in Massachusetts, tobacco companies have to measure the nicotine content of every type of cigarette and report the results. The Department of Public Health in Boston gathers and carefully examines the figures and then draws its conclusions. A hundred and sixteen brands were looked at for the study. Ninety two were found to have higher nicotine yields than they did six years previously. The biggest increases tended to be in brands that were popular with young smokers. That worries the department because of the addicted nature of nicotine. Stendal Glanz, a professor of medicine in San Francisco, explains why, “The amount of nicotine that is delivered in every cigarette is ten percent higher than it was six years ago, which means that is easier to get hooked and harder to quit. The big tobacco companies have always insisted that they are frank with their customers about the dangers of smoking and provide them with enough detail to make an informed decision. However, none of them were prepared to comment on this study or discuss the detailed nicotine content of their products.”

　　Section B

　　Conversation One

　　M: And you know one thing that I want to ask you, it is greatly you have happy experiences of teaching in Indonesia and following up on what you have just mentioned. What would you to recommend for students who do not live in English speaking country? And you know, they want to learn. I don’t know about perfecting but they want at least to be able to communicate decently. How can we go about this?

　　W: Yeah, it is really hard. That’s the real struggle because right now I do live in Holland but I really don’t socialize much with Dutch people. And my boyfriend’s English is so good that we just basically speak English all the time. So I have to make a real effort to practice. There is as much listening exposure as I want. All I have to do is turning on the TV.

　　M: And reading also, right?

　　W: Yeah, reading. There is plenty I can get to read and listen to. But for speaking, there really is no substitute for trying to speak and use the language in a relaxed atmosphere. So I think that’s really the challenge for people who live in a country where their target language isn’t spoken. And for that, gosh, what would I do? If I didn’t have people here, probably… try to find a club? In Sweden, they have a really cool system called study circles, well it’s not. It’s like a

　　course, but really you just have a course leader, who is there sort of as

　　a coaching guide and to help out. And you don’t get grades, and you go just because you want to learn.

　　Conversation Two

　　W: OK, Nathan, so we’re talking about driving. And are there any rules or regulations that you’d like to change?

　　M: I’m not sure I want to change rules, but I’d like the police to be strict on the rules. Like, if people jump the traffic lights, I don’t know why there isn’t a camera on the traffic lights to stop people doing that. Or like speeding, it is very easy to put speed cameras in some places.

　　W: Maybe car manufacturers should have some responsibility in limiting the power of their engines. What’s the point in producing the engines that is big and powerful enough to go like 200 kilometers /h when the speed limit is only 100.

　　M: Right. But do you know…there are no speed limits in Germany.

　　W: People there do drive responsibly though. Often, people break laws simply because the laws are there. If the law isn’t there, people will drive within their ability range. When you’ve got speed limits, this creates situations that actually present dangers on the road.

　　M: Do you think Germans have better education about the personal responsibility when driving?

　　W: Possibly. They also have very good cars.

　　M: Right.

　　W: If you’ve got a good car that can go at a high speed, then it’s really nice to do that.

　　M: But still with care.

　　W: So I think it’s the restrictions that create the dangers sometimes

　　M: OK

　　W: Obviously, when driving through residential areas or where there is a school, you’ve got to have speed policeman.

　　M: Speed bumps

　　W: Yes, speed bumps, those speed-bumps that force you to slow down. I think that’s a good idea.

　　M: So you don’t think fining people is useful?

　　W: Not really, because the police don’t have time to police every single driver.

　　Section C

　　Passage One

　　Behind

　　the cards register at a store in downtown San Francisco, Sam Azar swiped his credit card to pay for a pack of cigarettes. The store’s card reader failed to scan the card’s man-made stripe. Azar tried again and again. No luck. As customers began to queue, Mr. Azar reached beneath the counter for a black plastic bag. He wrapped one layer of the plastic around the card and tried again. Success, the sale was completed. “I don’t know how it works, it just does,” said Mr. Azar who learned the trick from another clerk. Therefore, the company that makes the store’s card reader would not confirm or deny that plastic bag trick worked. But it’s one of many low-tech fixes for high-tech failures that people without engineering degrees have discovered often out of desperation and shared. Today’s shaky economy is likely to produce many more such tricks. “In postwar Japan, the economy wasn’t doing so great, so you couldn’t get everyday use items like household cleaners, ” says Lisa Khayyam, author of Yowaza, a book named after the Japanese term for clever lifestyle tips and tricks. So people look for ways to do with what they had. Today, Americans are finding their own tips and tricks for fixing malfunctioning devices with supplies as simple as paper and glue. Some, like Mr. Azar’s plastic bag, are open to arguments as to how they work, or whether they really work at all. But many tech-home remedies can be explained by a little science.

　　Passage Two

　　If you are a graduate student, you may depend on your adviser for many things四级听力考试，including help with improving grades, acquiring financial support, forming and examining committee and getting letters of recommendation. If you are a graduate teaching assistant, your adviser also may be your boss. Academic departments vary in that procedures for assigning academic advisers to graduate students. In some departments, either the chairman or the director of graduate studies serves for at least the first semester as a new student adviser. Then the students select an adviser based on shared academic interests. In other departments, a new student is assigned a faculty adviser based on some systems of distribution of departments advising load. Later, students may have the opportunity of selecting adviser that they prefer. In any case, new graduate students can learn who their advisers or temporary advisers are by visiting or emailing the departmental office and asking for the information. Graduation requirements specify the number of credits you must earn, the minimum grade point average you must achieve and the distribution of credits you must have for among differing departments or fields of study. In addition, it is necessary to apply for graduation, when you are near the time that you will be completing your graduation requirements. Since graduation requirements vary among divisions among the university, you should consult the Bulletin of information. You should also direct your questions to your departmental office or academic adviser.

　　Passage Three

　　Jody Hebert is a diet and nutrition expert who travels around the state to speak in middle and high schools. She primarily speaks to students in health classes, but sometimes the school will arrange for her to speak to several different groups of girls. Her biggest concern is the emphasis American culture places on thinness and the negative ways that this affects girls today. Jody has a Ph.D in nutrition, but more important, she has personal experience. Her mother told her to diet when she was only 8 years old. Jody has created several different presentations which she gives to different types of audiences, and she tries to establish an emotional connection with the students so that they will feel comfortable asking questions or talking to her privately. She shows them pictures and images from popular culture of beautiful women and explain how computers are used to make the women look even more thin and beautiful than they are in real life. She describes how the definition of beauty has changed over the years and even from culture to culture. She then talks about health issues and the physical damages that can occur as a result of dieting. Finally, she addresses self-respect and the notion that a person’s sense of beauty must include more than how much a person weighs. Sometimes Jody feels that she succeeds in persuading some students to stop dieting; other times, she feels that she fails.