英语高级视听-上-听力原文-Unit1-pirates-of-the-internet
上外版英语高级视听说上册听力原文.doc
Unit 1Pirates of the InternetIt’s no secret that online piracy has decimated the music industry as millions of people stopped buying CDs and started stealing their favorite songs by downloading them from the internet. Now the hign-tech thieves are coming after Hollywood. Illegal downloading of full-length feature films is a relatively new phenomenon, but it’s becoming easier and easier to do. The people running America’s movie studios know that if they don’t do something----and fast---they could be in the same boat as the record companies. Correspodent: “What’s really at stake for the movie industry with all this privacy?” Chernin: “Well, I think, you know, ultimately, our absolute features.” Peter Chernin runs 20th Century Fox, one of the biggest studios in Hollywood. He knows the pirates of the Internet are gaining on him. Correspont: “Do you know how many movies are being downloaded today, in one day, in the United States?” Chernin: “I think it’s probably in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.” Correspondent: “And it’s only going to grow.” Chernin: “It’s only going to grow. √Somebody can put a perfect digital copy up on the internet. A perfect digital copy, all right. And with the click of mouse, send out a million copies all over the world, in an instant.”5And it’s all free. If that takes hold, kiss Hollywood goodbye. Chernin recently organized a “summit” between studio moguls and some highschool and college kids---the people most likely to be downloading. Chernin: “And we said, ‘Let’s come up with a challenge. Let’s give them five movies, and see if they can find them online.’ And we all sat around and picked five movies, four of which hadn’t been released yet. And then we came back half an hour later. They had found all five movies that we gav e them. ” Correspondent: “Even the ones that hadn’t even been released yet?” Chernin: “Even the ones that hadn’t even been released yet.” Correspondent: “Did these kids have any sense that they were stealing?” Chernin: “You know it’s… it’s a weird dichotom y. I think they know it’s stealing, and I don’t think they think it’s wrong. I think they have an attitude of, ‘It’s here.’” The Internet copy of last year’s hit Signs, starring Mel Gibson, was stolen even before director M. Night Shyamalan could organize the premiere. Correspondent: “The movie was about to be released. When did the first bootleg copy appear?”6Shyamalan: “Two weeks before it or three weeks before it. Before the Internet age, when somebody bootlegged a movie, the only outlet they had was to see it to those vendors on Times Square, where they had the boxes set up outside and they say, ‘Hey, we have Signs---it’s not even out yet.’ And you walk by and you know it’s illegal. But now, because it’s the digital age, you can see, like, a clean copy. It’s no longer the kind of the sleazy guy in Times Square with the box. It’s just, oh, it’s on this。
英语高级听力1-12课听力原文
Lesson 5The House began debate today on a three-year bill to combat trafficking and use of illegal drugs. The measure has the support of most representatives and House Speaker Thomas O'Neill says he expects it to pass by tomorrow. Among other things, the bill would increase penalties for violators, provide money to increase drug enforcement and coast guard personnel, and require drug producing countries to establish eradication programs as a condition of US support for development loans.A cultural exchange between the US and the Soviet Union may face an American boycott unless US News and World Report correspondent, Nicholas Daniloff, is freed from a Moscow jail. An American style town meeting is scheduled to take place in Latvia next week, but the two hundred seventy Americans due to take part say they won't go if Daniloff remains in jail. They add the decision is a personal one and is not being made by the Reagan Administration in retaliation for the Daniloff detention.Egyptian and Israeli negotiators have reached agreement on resolving the Taba border dispute, clearing the way for a summit between the two countries to begin tomorrow. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres will meet in Alexandria. Details of the Taba agreement have not been made available.The United States House of Representatives is debating an omnibus drug bill and expects to pass the measure tomorrow. Though the bill has attracted strong bipartisan support, NPR's Cokey Roberts reports the debate on the issue points up the differences between political parties.When Congress returned from the Fourth of July recess, House Speaker Tip O'Neill said there was only one thing members were talking about in the cloak-room: drugs. The Democrats quickly pulled together chairmen from twelve different committees to draft a drug package. Then, stung by criticism that they were acting in a partisan fashion, the Democratic leaders invited the Republicans to join them in the newly declared war on drugs. So, when the bill came to the House floor today, the party leaders led off debate. Texas Democrat Jim Wright."It's time to declare an all-out war, to mobilize our forces, public and private, national and local, in a total coordinated assault upon this menace, which is draining our economy of some two hundred and thirty billion dollars this year, slowly rotting away the fabric of our society, seducing and killing our young. That it will take money is hardly debatable. We can't fight artillery with spitballs."The question of just how much money this measure will cost has not been answered to the satisfaction of all members. Democrats say it's one and half billion dollars over three years, with almost seven hundred thousand for next year. Republicans claim the price tag will run higher and are trying to emphasize other aspects of the drug battle, aspects which they think play better in Republican campaigns. Minority leader Robert Michel."The ultimate cure for the drug epidemic must come from within the heart of each individual faced with the temptation of taking drugs. It is ultimately a problem of character, of will power, of family and community, and concern, and personal pride."Among other items, the bill before the House increases penalties for most drug related crimes, sets the minimum jail term of twenty years for drug trafficking and manufacturing, authorizes money for the drug enforcement administration and prison construction, beefsup the ability of the coast guard and customs service to stop drugs coming into this country, and creates programs for drug education. The various sections of the measure give House members ample opportunity to speak on an issue where they want their voices heard. Maryland Democratic Barbara McCulsky was nominated for the Senate yesterday. Today, she spoke to the part of the bill which funds drug eradication programs in foreign countries."When we fought yellow fever, we didn't go at it one mosquito at a time. We went right to the swamp. That's what the Foreign Affairs section of this legislation will do. It will go to the swamps, or where cocaine is either grown, refined, or manufactured."Republican Henson Moore is running for the Senate in Louisiana. He spoke to the part of the drug bill which changes the trade laws for countries which deal in drugs."We're moving to stop something; it's absolutely idiotic. It needs to be stopped: this situation of where a country can sell legally to us on the one hand and illegally to us under the table, selling drugs in this country poisoning our young people and our population." Today in China, in Nanjing, balloons, firecrackers and lion dancers mark the dedication of the Johns Hopkins University—Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies. For the first time since World War II, Chinese and American students will attend a graduate institution in China that is administered jointly by academic organizations that are worlds apart figuratively and literally. NPR's Susan Stanberg reports.Cross-cultural encounters can be extremely enriching; cross-cultural encounters can be utterly absurd."Let's see. That would be eighty-seven. So, ... ba-shi-qi-nian-qian, ... let's see, ... equal ... proposition equal, ..."Here's what that American was trying to say in Chinese."Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation ... a new nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."Now you don't have to be dealing with classic American oratory to run into problems. In planning for the Center for Chinese and American Studies, there was much debate as to whether the new auditorium on the Nanjing campus should have a flat or sloped floor. If the floor were flat, the auditorium could be used for dances, for parties, but a sloped floor would be better for listening, for viewing films and slides."The argument finally won out that for practical reasons a flat floor would be best because it ... it really would make it a multi-purpose room. You wouldn't have to fix the furniture." Stephen Muller is President of Johns Hopkins University, the US end of this Sino-American joint venture in learning."So, a flat floor was built. Only the Chinese in building it finally ended up with a flat floor but at two different levels, one higher than the other. So, if you want to use it for dances, you either have to have very short women with very tall men or vice versa."Twenty-four Americans and thirty-six Chinese of mixed heights are the first students at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center. Nanjing used to be Nanking, by the way, back in the days when Beijing was Peking. The Americans will take classes in Chinese history, economics, trade, politics, all from Chinese faculty. The Chinese will study the US with American university professors. Johns Hopkins President Stephen Muller says this is advanced study work. Allthe Chinese students are proficient in English; all the Americans have master's degrees plus fluency in Chinese."The twenty-four Americans come from about eighteen colleges and universities. No one institution in this country produces that many people of this character; so that's a beginning. Nanjing is not the place; the Center is not the place to go, if you want a doctorate in Chinese history or Chinese language or Chinese literature or whatever. This is a pre-professional program."Which means the men and women who spend the year at the Nanjing Center will end up as diplomats or business people in one another's country."Our hope is that the Americans, to speak about those, who are going to be incidentally rooming with Chinese roommates, which is a very interesting thing the Chinese agree to, that the Americans will not only bring a year of living in China, a year of having studied with Chinese faculty and hearing the Chinese view of Chinese foreign policy in economics and so on, that they will also have the kind of friends among Chinese roughly their age who are going to be dealing with the United States. That will slowly, over the years, create a real network, if you will, if people who, because they've had this common experience, can deal with each other very easily and, you know, be kind of a rallying point—an old boy, old girl network, as it were."Hopkins President Muller admits that a simple exchange program—Chinese students coming to the US, and American students going to China—would involve far fewer headaches than running jointly an academic institution on foreign soil. Plus the success of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center depends on undependables, like continuing sweet Sino-American relations and being able to attract funding. And there's this wrinkle." "Some of the people who will study there, without any question, will probably come from or afterwards enter the intelligence community. That it's really desirable that people who do that have that kind of background. We're very honest about that, but it's so easy to denounce the whole thing as an espionage center, or something. You know, there's a lot of fragility in this thing."Stephen Muller is President of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The Hopkins-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies was dedicated today in China. I'm Susan Stanberg."How do you say good luck in Chinese?""Don't know. I don't know Chinese.""You'd better learn.""That's a phrase I should know. Yes."Lesson 6The Senate has voted to override President Reagan's veto of sanctions against South Africa by a decisive seventy-eight to twenty-one. As the House has already voted to override, the sanctions now become law. NPR's Linda Wertheimer reports. "American civil rights leaders, including Mrs. Caretta Scott King, watched the Senate debate from the Senate family gallery as members argued not so much about sanctions and the efficacy of sanctions, more about the choice between affirming the bill already passed by congress or supporting the President."American food aid to southern African countries could be cut off if South Africa carries outits threat to ban imports of US grain. Foreign Minister Pic Botha said if US sanctions were imposed, his government would stop imports and would not allow its transport service to carry US grain to neighboring countries.The White House today denied that it planted misleading stories in the American news media as part of a plan to topple Libyan leader Muammar Quddafi. The Washington Post reported this morning that stories were leaked this summer alleging Quddafi was resuming his support for terrorist activities, even though National Security Adviser John Poindexter knew otherwise. Today, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said Poindexter denied the administration had involved the media in an anti-Quddafi campaign but Speakes left open the possibility a disinformation campaign was conducted in other countries.The question in Washington today is this: Did the federal government try to scare Libya's Colonel Muammar Quddafi in August by way of a disinformation campaign in the American media? The Washington Post Bob Woodward reports today that there was an elaborate disinformation program set up by the White House to convince Quddafi that the United States was about to attack again, or that he might be ousted in a coup. The White House today denies that officials tried to mislead Quddafi by using the American media. NPR's Bill Busenburg has our first report on the controversy.The story starts on August 25th when the Wall Street Journal ran a front page story saying that Libya and the United States were once again on a collision course. Quoting multiple official sources, the paper said Quddafi was plotting new terrorist attacks and the Reagan Administration was preparing to teach him another lesson. The Journal reported that the Pentagon was completing plans for a new and wider bombing of Libya in case the President ordered it.That story caused a flurry of press attention. Officials in Washington and at the western White House in California were asked if it was true. "The story was authoritative," said the White House spokesman Larry Speakes. Based on that official confirmation, other news organizations, including the New York Times , the Washington Post , NPR and the major TV networks, all ran stories suggesting Libya should watch out. US naval maneuvers then taking place in the Mediterranean might be used as a cover for more attacks on Libya as in the past.Today's Washington Post , however, quotes from an August 14th secret White House plan, adopted eleven days before the Wall Street Journal story. It was outlined in a memo written by the President's National Security Advisor John Poindexter. That plan called for a strategy of real and illusory events, using a disinformation program to make Quddafi think the United States was about to move against him militarily. Here are some examples the Post cites, suggesting disinformation was used domestically: Number one, while some US officials told the press Quddafi was stepping up his terrorist plans, President Reagan was being told in a memo that Quddafi was temporarily quiescent, in other words, that he wasn't active. Number two, while some officials were telling the press of internal infighting in Libya to oust Quddafi, US officials really believed he was firmly in power and that CIA's efforts to oust him were not working. Number three, while officials were telling the press the Pentagon was planning new attacks, in fact nothing new was being done. Existing contingency plans were several months old, and the naval maneuvers were justmaneuvers. The Post says this policy of deception was approved at a National Security Planning Group meeting chaired by President Reagan and his top aides.Two new studies were published today on the links between television coverage of suicide and subsequent teenage suicide rates. The New England Journal of Medicine reports that both studies suggest that some teenagers might be more likely to take their own lives after seeing TV programs dealing with suicide. NPR's Lorie Garrett reports. The first suicide study, done by a team from the University of California in San Diego, examines television news coverage of suicides. David Philips and Lundy Carseson looked at forty-five suicide stories carried on network news-casts between 1973 and '79. The researchers then compared the incidence of teen suicides in those years to the dates of broadcast of these stories. David Philips says news coverage of suicides definitely prompted an increase in the number of teens in America who took their lives."The more TV programs that carry a story, the greater they increase in teen suicides just afterwards."The suicide increase among teens was compared by Philips to adult suicide trends. "The teen suicides go up by about 2.91 teen suicides per story. And adult suicides go up by, I think, around two adult suicides per story. The increase for teens, the percentage increase for teens is very, very much larger than the percentage increase for adults. It's about, I think, fourteen or fifteen times as big a response for teens percentagewise as it is for adults."The TV news coverage appears to have prompted a greater increase than is seen around other well-known periods of adolescent depression, such as holidays, personal birthdays, the start of school and winter. Philips could not find any specific types of stories that seem to trigger a greater response among depressed teens. Philips says it seems to simply be the word "suicide" and the knowledge that somebody actively executed the act that pushes buttons in depressed teenagers. Psychiatrists call this "imitative behavior." "What my study showed was that there seems to be imitation not only of relatively bland behavior like dress, dressing or hairstyles, but there seems to be imitation of really quite deviant behavior as well. The teenagers imitate apparently across the board, not just suicides, but everything else as well."In a separate study, Madeline Gould and David Shaeffer of Columbia University found that made-for-television movies about suicide also stimulated imitative behavior. Even though the movies were intended to portray the problem of teen suicide and offered, in some cases, suicide hot line numbers and advice on counselling, the team believes the four network movies prompted eighty teen suicides. One of the made-for-TV movies examined by the Columbia University team was a CBS production. George Schweitzer, a CBS's Vice President, is well aware of this research. He says, "It is terribly unfortunate that any teens took their lives after the broadcast, but if they had it to do over," says Schweitzer, "CBS would still run the movie.""Studies like these do not measure the most, what we think is the most important thing, which I don't think can be measured, and that is the hundreds and hundreds and probably thousands of teenagers who were positively moved by these kinds of broadcasts." Moved to call suicide hot lines, moved to seek counseling, and moved to discuss their depressions with family members. Schweitzer does not dispute today's studies: someteens may moved to suicide."But ignoring the issue for fear of that, I think, would be far more disastrous than addressing important social issues to help create awareness and again to have a positive effect."But researcher David Philips suggests the media could decrease the teen suicide problem by avoiding some suicide stories all together and changing the way the others are covered. For example, says Philips, "Don't make suicide seem heroic." He cites the story of a young Czechoslovakian dissident who set himself on fire. But the dissident action was taken to draw attention to government repression in Czechoslovakia. Should the news media really have ignored such a story? "I think it's a really difficult question. There are all these goods on all sides of the issue. And thank God, I don't have to be the one to disentangle that issue."One prominent expert in this field said the young people moved to take their lives, following a news story or movie, are particularly vulnerable, suicidal individuals. In the absence of television stories, some other events in their lives might well have triggered their actions. So while most psychiatrists agree there is an imitative component to teenage suicides, that tendency, they say, should not lead society to repress information. On the contrary, some say we are now facing a major epidemic of adolescent suicide in America. We must publicize and confront the problem. Last year some fifty-five hundred adolescents between fifteen and twenty-four years of age took their lives. At least ten times that tried. Some estimates are that 275 thousand teens attempted suicide last year. The rate of teenage suicide in America has tripled since 1955.Lesson 7Both House and Senate negotiators today approved sweeping immigration legislation that could grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens who entered the country before 1982. The bill, as worked out in five hours of closed-door negotiations, would establish a system of fines against employers who hire illegal immigrants. It would also make those who came to the US illegally but have established roots in this country eligible for amnesty.The Supreme Court today agreed to decide if Illinois can require minors wanting abortions to notify their parents or obtain judicial consent. The justices will review the decision striking down a 1983 law, which required some girls to wait twenty-four hours after telling their parents they wanted an abortion.It was announced today that the winner of this year's Noble Peace Prize is Elie Wiesel. He has written twenty-five books on his experiences in a Nazi prison of war camp and on the Holocaust. And he's been a human rights activist for thirty years. NPR's Mike Shuster reports. "Wiesel was sleeping in his Manhattan apartment when he received the word at five o'clock this morning from the Nobel Committee in Oslo, Norway. Wiesel said he was flabbergasted at the news, and later at a press conference, he said he would dedicate his Prize to the survivors of the Holocaust and their children. "The honor is not mine alone. It belongs to all the survivors who have tried to do something with their pain, with their memory, with their silence, with their life." Wiesel, fifty-eight, is a native of Rumania. As a teenager, he and his family were sent to a Nazi death camp. He and two sisters survived; his mother, father, and younger sister did not. After the War, Wiesel went first to France, then to the United States. He is credited with the first use of the word 'Holocaust' todescribe the Nazi extermination of the Jews."A House-Senate Conference Committee has agreed to an immigration reform bill. The measure, which had died in the final days of the last two Congresses, now looks as though it will become law. NPR's Cokie Roberts reports.One of the chief advocates of the immigration bill, New York Democrat Charles Schumer, says that this year immigration became a white hat issue, that the forces fighting against the measures finally had a force on the opposite side of equal rate public opinion. The opponents of immigration reform have always been many: Hispanics in Congress and in the country have opposed the part of the bill most lawmakers consider key—punishment for employers who knowingly hire illegals. The measure, passed at a conference today, would provide civil penalties and criminal penalties for those who repeatedly hire illegal aliens. Hispanics worry the employer sanctions would cause discrimination against anyone with an accent or Spanish name, whether legal or not. The new bill includes strong anti-discrimination language for employers who do refuse to hire any Hispanics while still allowing someone to hire a citizen before an alien. To appease Hispanics and others, the immigration bill includes amnesty for aliens who have been in this country for five years. Many border state representatives fought against the legalization provisions, saying that millions of people could eventually become citizens and bring their relatives to this country. All those people could bankrupt the state's social services, said the representatives, but the idea of deporting all of those people seemed impractical as well as inhumane to most members of Congress. And aliens who came to this country before 1982 will be able to apply for legalization. The other major controversial area of the immigration bill is the farm worker program. Agricultural interests wanted to be able to bring workers into this country to harvest crops without being subjected to employer sanctions, but the trade unions opposed this section of the bill. Finally, a compromise was reached where up to three hundred and fifty thousand farm workers could come into this country, but their rights would be protected and they would also be able to apply for legalization if they met certain conditions. The elements of the final immigration package have been there all along, but this year, say the key lawmakers around this legislation, the Congress was ready to act on them. The combination of horror stories about people coming over the borders and editorials about congressional inability to act made members of Congress decide the time had come to enact immigration reform. But supporters of reform warn the end is not here yet. The conference report must still pass both houses of Congress, and a Senate filibuster is always a possibility. I'm Cokie Roberts at the Capitol. Many photography shops are quite busy this time of the year. People back from vacation are dropping off rolls of film and hoping for the best. But commentator Tom Baudet learned a long time ago he was better off not hoping.I've been told that I take lousy pictures. It's not that my shots aren't technically OK; it's just that my pictures seem to bring out the worst in people. I hope that's not a sign of something. I usually end up throwing half the pictures I take. It's not that they're deceiving. Not at all; they're just too honest. It's true what they say that a camera never lies, but you certainly can lie to a camera. We do it all the time; at least we exaggerate a little to a lens. The first thing you'll usually hear when you point a camera at someone is, "Wait, I'm not ready." Well, so you wait while they brush the crumbs off their chin, put out a cigarette, orthrow an arm around the person next to them like they've been standing that way all day. Well, you get your picture, but it's blown all out of proportion. Everybody's having a little more fun than they really were and liking each other more than they actually do. We're all guilty of this one time or another. You're with your sweetheart travelling somewhere. You've been walking and complaining about the price of the room, the blister on your heel and the rude waitress at the cafe. But then, you stop somebody on the street, hand them your camera, and put on your very best having-a-wonderful-time smile. Well, ten years later you'll look at that picture in a scrapbook and remember what a great trip it was, whether it was or not. For it's natural thing to do: plant little seeds of contentment in our lives in case we doubt we ever had any. Well, it's good practice to take an opportunity to mug up to a camera. There never seems to be a camera around for the real special times: that make-up embrace after a long and dangerous discussion, the look on your face as you hold the phone and hear you got that promotion, the quiet ride home from the hospital after learning those suspicious lumps were benign and something to watch but not worry about. Those are the memories that should be preserved, to be remembered and relied upon when harder times take hold. Those times when a photographer like me will catch you at a party with a loneliness on your face that you didn't think would show or bitterness tugging at your lips during a conversation you didn't intend to be overheard. Well, we all slip up like this sometimes, and sooner or later we get caught with our guards down. I think that's why I end up with pictures like that, I like it when people leave their guards down. We all know our best sides, and it's nice to keep that face forward whenever we can. But I don't mind having pictures of the other sides. Either way they all look just like people to me.Writer Tom Baudet. He lives in Homer, Alaska.Lesson 8Two years of sensitive negotiations paid off today as seventy former Cuban political prisoners arrived in the United States. All of the prisoners had served least ten years in Cuban jails, and some had been in prison since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. The release was arranged in part by French underwater explorer, Jacques Cousteau, and a delegation of American Roman Catholic bishops.President Reagan today unveiled plans for nine hundred million dollar plan to reduce drug abuse in the United States. It includes half a billion dollars for stepping up drug enforcement along US borders, especially in the southwest. The plan also calls for mandatory drug testing for some federal workers. NPR's Brenda Wilson reports. "As part of his national crusade against drugs, President Reagan signed an executive order today requiring federal workers in sensitive positions to undergo drug tests. The order covers employees who have access to classified information, presidentially appointed officials, law enforcement officials, and any federal worker engaged in activities which affect public health and safety or national security. But heads of government agencies may order additional workers to take the test. Federal employees who are found to have continued to use illegal drugs after a second test will be automatically fired. The overall rug testing program is expected to cost fifty-six million dollars, but administration officials could not get even a ballpark figure of how many workers may be included in the mandatory program. I'm Brenda Wilson."。
英语高级听力listentothis原文11-13
Lesson ElevenSection One: News in BriefTapescript1. Texas Air announced today that it will buy the troubled People Express Airlines for about a hundred and twenty-five million dollars. The proposed deal would allow most People Express employees to keep their jobs, although the company will eventually lose its identity and become part of Texas Air. Federal officials must approve the merger. Texas Air is also trying to buy Eastern Airlines.2. A rally on Wall Street today after six consecutive losing sessions, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day up nearly nine points, to close at seventeen sixty-seven point fifty-eight.3. What's being called a 'freedom flight" of seventy former Cuban political prisoners landed in Miami today to an ecstatic reception by thousands of relatives and well-wishers. The plane also carried forty one relatives of former prisoners. The flight culminated nearly two years of negotiations with the Castro regime.Section Two: News in DetailTapescriptTexas Air Corporation today announced that it has agreed to buy People Express Airlines for one hundred twenty-five million dollars in securities. Texas Air already owns Continental Airlines and New York Air. It is in the process of acquiring Eastern Airlines. People Express, one of the first no-frills, low-fare air carriers, has been in financial trouble lately. It was forced to shut down its subsidiary, Frontier Air flights. Texas Air now says it will acquire Frontier's assets as part of its deal with People Express. Joining us now from New York, NPR's business reporter Barbara Mantel.' Barbara, it is said this is a very attractive low price, this one hundred twenty-five million dollars in securities. Besides that, why does Texas Air want People Express?' "Well, Frank Lorenzo, who is Chairman of Texas Air, will get airplanes from People Express, which he might need. He will get the lowest cost work-force in the industry at People Express. He will get a new terminal at Newark, New Jersey that People Express is building. He'll get flights to London, and he will get control over competition. People Express competes heavily, especially in the northeast corridor, with Texas Air.''This issue of competition has been a sticking point before for the Department of Transportation when two airlines wanted to get together. How will Texas Air get around it this time?''Well, they might not. Texas Air wanted to acquire East ..., or wants to acquire, Eastern Airline, and the Department of Transportation said, 'No, not unless you sell more landing slots, more slots in the northeast corridor to Pan Am so that we'll have some competition there.' And Texas Air agreed to that just last week. That may happen again here. The Department of Transportation may require that Texas Air sell some slots or some gates to another airline to ensure that there is still competition in the northeast part of the marketplace. But Texas Air has some leverage here with the Department of Transportation because People Express is a failing company. And the Department of Transportation may feel, 'Well, we'll let them buy PeopleExpress and keep it running, rather than let it fail and lose all those jobs.'"'Mm hm. Now, if the deal is approved by the Department of Transportation, what is it likely to mean for consumers? If there's less competition the fares could possibly go up. "'Well, yes. You would think that when you move from two competitors in a market to just one airliner that prices would just have to go up. But I want you to keep in mind that unrestricted fares of the kind People Express offered, you know, wholesale unrestricted fares, were being eliminated and phased out anyway, because they were not profitable. And the Department of Transportation theory here is that if you allow mergers to take place, or many mergers to take place, you might create more efficiencies and low costs, leading possibly to lower fares. And also the Department of Transportation believes that there's a lot of potential competition in the marketplace. Airlines can move planes around and buy gates, and so that if an airline in a particular market segment was making a lot of money and raising prices excessively, other airlines would move in and prices would be brought down through competition. So that it's a nice theory, the theory of potential competition keeping prices in line, but it's sort of a new idea and it's not clear that that's really the way it would work.''Thanks.' From New York, NPR's Barbara Mantel.Section Three: Special ReportTapescript"My audiences have been very devoted over the years throughout the country. And they've expanded and grown and the country audience has been just as kind and as supportive as the folk audience has been.''I was thinking though, nonetheless, when I put on this album, 'The Last of the True Believers,' especially the title cut, that I heard more country there than I'd perhaps heard before.""Well, I guess it has .-.. I've moved in that direction, mainly because I am playing with the band more. My natural roots are there in country and hillbilly music. And so I think that that just comes out more when you put the band with it."I'I want to ask you some questions, please, about this album, about the ... not so much what's on the inside right now, but what‟s on the outside - a picture on the front of you in front of a Woolworth store, someplace, I guess, in Texas or Tennessee, and 'Houston, Texas.' In Houston, Texas? Is it the Woolworth store that has the hardwood floor still 'and the parakeets in the back and that sort of thing?'"Well, this one that we shot this in front of in Houston Texas is one of the largest ones in the country. It's a two-storey and it's got the escalator that does a little pinging noise every couple of minutes. And it takes up a whole city block.""But, why a cover photo in front of Woolworth's?''Well,, that comes from the song 'Love at the Five and Dime,' which was a song that Cathy Mattea also cut this year and had my first, you know, top five country hit with. And it deals with the Woolworth store.'"There is, on the cover, you are holding a book, and you can‟t really see. ... What is the name of the book on the cover you're holding?''In the Kindness of Strangers, the latest Tennessee Williams' biography.''And on the back is Larry McMurtrie's book about a cattle drive around the turn of the century, Lonesome Dove.'"He's my main prose hero.''Now, why? Why would you do that? Why would you pose with a book?'"Well, I have, my audience consists of a lot of young people between the ages of, maybe you know, fourteen and twenty-f'ive. And I read a lot, and I also write short stories and have written a novel. And I just feel like young people are missing out because they don't read books. And any time I have the opportunity to influence the young person to pick up a book and read it, I would try to do that.''When you hear these lyrics, when the words come to you, are you hearing the stanzas as poetry or as music?''Well, I'm hearing them as music. Lyrics usually come to me, and songs come to me as a total picture. And the music and the lyrics come at the same time. Sometimes they shoot me straight up in bed, you know, in the middle of the night. 'The Wing and the Wheel' is a very special song to me. It's probably my favorite song that I've ever written. And that song was inspired at the Vancouver Folk Festival by two people who are from Managua, Nicaragua. They have a duo call Duo Guar Buranco. And just about four o'clock in the morning, I was sitting in my hotel room and listening to them sing in the room next door, and looking out the window at this little fingernail moon hanging out over the Vancouver Bay, and that song just came flowing, you know, and was inspired by those two people.''Now, that sounds easy.''Well, it IS easy. If you listen. to yourself and you listen to the inspiration that's bringing on that particular song, it's easy. It's just a matter of getting up and writing it down.' Nancy Griffith, talking with us in WPLN in Nashville. She is continuing her national tour with the Everly Brothers. Her latest album is called "The Last of the True Believers.'Lesson 12Section One: News in Brief1. American reporter Nicholas Daniloff is in Frankfurt, West Germany, on his way home from Moscow after being detained for a month on espionage charges. President Reagan in Kansas City on a campaign swing announced Daniloff‟s release, denying that any trade had been agreed to in order to win his freedom. Asked by reporters if he blinked in staring down Soviet leader Gorbachev over the Daniloff affair, the President said they blinked. The agreement to release Daniloff came after a three-hour meeting last night in New York between Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. No details of the agreement have been released, and it is not known if Daniloff‟s freedom is the first step in a trade involving accused Soviet spy Gennadi Zakharov. When he arrived in Frankfurt, Daniloff thanked President Reagan, Secretary of State Shultz, and other US officials for “dotting all the i‟s and crossing the t‟s” that permitted him to be in Frankfurt tonight.2. The House of Representatives is expected to vote soon to override President Reagan‟s veto of a bill imposing economic sanctions against South Africa. NPR‟s Cokie Roberts reports that the President has promised to expand economic sanctions on his own in hopes of getting Congress tosustain his veto. “Both houses of Congress passed the economic sanctions against South Africa by wide enough margins to override a presidential veto. And it‟s expected the House will easily garner the two-thirds vote necessary for override. So it‟s in the Senate the President is concentrating his efforts. Today President Reagan sent a long letter to majority leader Robert Dole, restating his opposition to …punitive sanctions that harm the victims of apartheid. ‟ The letter went on to outline an executive order the President plans to sign which would impose some but not all of the sanctions passed by Congress. For example, there‟d be a ban on some new investments in South Africa, but not as many as called for by Congress. The President hopes the executive order will win over the fourteen additional senators he needs to sustain his veto. The Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said today that Congress would simply come back next year with tougher sanctions if the veto is sustained. I‟m Cokie Roberts at the Capitol”Section Two: News in DetailAmerican reporter Nicholas Daniloff was freed today in Moscow. He flew into Frankfurt, West Germany this afternoon and spoke with reporters gathered at the airport.“It‟s wonderful to be back in the West. I think it‟s obvious to everybody what has happened over this last month. I was arrested without an arrest warrant. A case was fabricated against me with a narrow political purpose of giving the Soviet Union some political leverage over the case of Gennadi Zakharov in New York. The KGB did not punish me; the KGB punished itself. I cannot tell you anything about any other arrangements. All I know is that I am free in the West, very grateful, delighted to see you.” Nicholas Daniloff.When Daniloff left the Soviet Union today he had been detained there for thirty-one days, facing a possible trial on espionage charges. Daniloff left Moscow only hours after Secretary of State Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze met last night in New York in the latest of four negotiating sessions concerning the fate the American journalist. But so far no details have emerged about the arrangements that brought Daniloff his freedom. NPR‟s Mike Shuster has more from New York.Reporters in Moscow who had been staking out the American Embassy there first got wind this morning that Daniloff might be released, after he left the Embassy in a car and flashed the “V for Victory” sign. Apparently Daniloff was simply informed that he could leave, and his passport was returned to him. He was then taken to the airport along with his wife, and soon thereafter boarded a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, West Germany. The official American announcement of his release came from President Reagan mid-day today as he was campaigning in Kansas City, Missouri:“I have something of a news announcement I would like to make, that in case you have‟nt heard it already, that at twelve o‟clock, twelve o‟clock Central time, a Lufthansa Airliner, left Moscow bound for Frankfurt West Germany, and on board are Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Daniloff!”So far though neither the White House nor the State Department has said anything about the specific agreements that ended the negotiations on Daniloff, and lacking any fuller explanation from the government, many questions remain. First, what will happen to the Russian scientist Gennadi Zakharov whose arrest last month in New York for spying led to Daniloff‟s detention? No date has been set for Zakharov‟s trial in Brooklyn, and a representative of the Justice Department in Brooklyn said today the US attorney there was waiting for instructions on the handling of Zakharov‟s case. There have been suggestions that Zakharov might be returned to the Soviet Union at a later date in exchange for one or more jailed Soviet dissidents. There is also thequestion of the American decision to expel twenty-five Soviet personnel from their Unite Nations Mission here. Several have already left New York and the deadline for the expulsion of the rest is Wednesday. The Soviets have threatened to retaliate if the order is not rescinded. There is no word whether the agreement that freed Daniloff includes anything on the twenty-five Soviets, which naturally leads to the final question: Has Daniloff‟s release today brought the United States and the Soviet Union any closer to a summit meeting? Secretary Shultz has said that a summit could not take place without Daniloff gaining his freedom. That has now been removed as an impediment to a summit, but the Soviets have called the Zakharov case and the matter of the twenty-five Soviets diplomats obstacles to a summit as well. Until the details are made public of the agreement Shultz and Shevardnadze worked out, it will not be known what the prospects for a summit truly are. This is Mike Shuster in New York.Section Three: Special ReportOne year ago this month, a powerful earthquake in Mexico City killed more than nine thousand people. Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs because of the massive damage. Among those hardest hit by the quake were women garment workers. Who worked in sweatshops concentrated in the heart of Mexico City. One year after the earthquake, Lucie Conger reports that some of the forty thousand seamstresses who lost their jobs are changing their attitudes about work.Lesson ThirteenSection One: News in BriefTape-script1. A special committee of twelve senators today began the impeachment trial of Federal Judge Harry Claiborne. It's the first such proceeding in fifteen years. Claiborne is serving a jail sentence for tax evasion.2. President Reagan today continued his campaign for a drug-free America. He ordered mandatory testing for federal workers in sensitive positions. And he also sent Congress a legislative package that would increase federal anti-drug spending by nine hundred million dollars, much of that on increased border patrols. The President said the legislation is the federal government's way of just saying no to drugs. "We're getting tough on drugs; we mean business. To those who are thinking of using drugs, we say 'Stop.' And to those who are pushing drugs, we say 'Beware.' " Mandatory drug testing for some federal workers is the most controversial part of the President's plan. It's been condemned by some employee groups.3. One person was killed and more than fifty injured today in Paris when a bomb exploded at the drivers' permit office at police headquarters. It was the fourth blast in seven days in the French capital.Section Two: News in DetailTapescriptIn Paris today, one person was killed and more than fifty were injured when a bomb exploded at police headquarters. This is the fourth attack on a crowded public target in a week.A police officer was killed yesterday while removing a bomb from a restaurant on the Avenue Champs Elysee. Minutes after that incident, Prime Minister Jacques Chirac announced new security measures aimed at curbing terrorist activities in, France. Melodie Walker reports from Paris.A group calling itself 'the Committee for Solidarity with Arab and Middle-Eastern Prisoners' has claimed responsibility for the current series of bombings in Paris, in addition to ten other attacks in the French capital over the past year. The Committee has delivered messages to news agencies in Beirut threatening to continue its bombing campaign in Paris until the French government agrees to release three men jailed in France on charges of terrorism. One of the convicted prisoners, George Abraham Abdullah, is believed to be the leader of the Lebanese Army Faction suspected of killing a US military attached in Paris in 1982. The French government has officially declared it will not release the prisoners. In response to the repeated attacks in Paris, Prime Minister Chirac last night announced new anti-terrorist measures: military patrols along the French borders will be increased and, beginning today, all foreigners will require a visa to enter France. Citizens of European Common Market countries and Switzerland will be exempt from the visa requirement. But Americans planning to visit France will need to apply for visas at the nearest French consulate. For an initial period of fifteen days, however, emergency visas will be granted at French airports and other border checkpoints. France has been plagued with terrorism at home and abroad in recent years. In the past two weeks, three French members of the United Nations peace keeping force in Lebanon have been killed by remote-controlled bombs. Today, France, called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the role and safety of the force. Seven French hostages in Beirut are also a major concern for the Chirac government. Dominique Moazi, Associate Director of the French Institute for International Relations, says the bombings in Paris, the attacks on the UN troops, and the hostage situation are all indirectly related. 'I think there is a global goal, which is looked after, and that is to punish France for its involvement in Middle-Eastern affairs, either Lebanon or the war between Iran and Iraq. And France is, at the same time, more visible than any other European actors, in Lebanon and in the Gulf.' According to Moazi, the long French tradition of granting political asylum has made France more open and accessible to terrorist activities."In the past we have given, unfortunately, the impression, which was maybe a reality, of being less resolute in our treatment of terrorist action than, for example, the Israelis. So that combination of visibility, vulnerability, and lack of resolution has made us the ideal target of terrorists now.'In a statement released today, President Francois Mitterand said, ' The fight against terrorism is the business of the entire nation.' But despite the government's determination to combat terrorism, the question of how to do it remains unanswered.For National Public Radio, this is Melodie Walker in Paris.Section Three: Special ReportTapescriptThe United States Senate Intelligence Committee today released a report calling for sweeping changes in US security policies and counter-intelligence, its first unclassified assessmentof recent spy cases. The Committee says the damage done has cost billions of dollars, threatening America's security, as never before. NPR's David Malthus has the story. The report states that the damage done from espionage and lax security is worse than anyone in the government has yet acknowledged publicly. It concludes that US military plans and capabilities have been seriously compromised, intelligence operations gravely impaired. US technological advantages have been overcome in some areas because of spying. And diplomatic secrets were exposed to adversaries. V ermont Democrat Patrick Leahy is Vice-Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.'The national security is many times threatened more by this than by the buildup of Soviet arms, or the buildup of Soviet personnel, or breakthrough in weapon development." The Committee report says foreign intelligence services have penetrated some of the most vital parts of US defense, intelligence, and foreign policy structures. The report cites a string of recent cases, including the Walker-Whitworth spy ring, which gave the Soviets the ability to decode at least a million military communications.Despite some improvements by the Reagan Administration in security and tough talk over the last two years, the report also concludes that the administration has failed to follow through with enough specific steps to tighten security, and that its counter-intelligence programs have lacked the needed resources to be effective. Republican Dave Durenberger of Minnesota, Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, sums up the current situation this way:'Too many secrets, too much access to secrets, too many spies, too little accountability for securing our national secrets, and too little effort given to combating the very real threat which spies represent to our national security.'Senator Durenberger said the Committee found some progress has been made in toughening up security clearances for personnel, and some additional resources have been devoted to countering technical espionage, but he said much more needs to be done and he described the current security system as one 'paralyzed by bureaucratic inertia.' The Committee makes ninety-five specific recommendations, including greater emphasis on re-investigations of cleared personnel, a streamlined classification system, more money for counter-intelligence elements of the FBI, CIA and the military services, and tighter controls on foreign diplomats from hostile countries. The report cites FBI assessments on how extensively the Soviets use, diplomatic cover to hide spying activity. There are twenty-one hundred diplomats, UN officials, and trade representatives from the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries living in the United States. And according to the FBI, 30% of them are professional intelligence officers. The Committee report also says the Soviet Union is effectively using United Nations organizations worldwide to conduct spying operations. It says approximately eight hundred Soviets work for UN agencies, three hundred of them in New York, and one fourth of those are working for the KGB or the Soviet military intelligence, the GRU. Next week, the Reagan Administration is to deliver to. the Congress its, classified report on counter-intelligence. I'm David Malthus in Washington.。
英语高级视听说上册课后练习题含答案
英语高级视听说上册课后练习题含答案本文将提供英语高级视听说上册课后练习题及其答案,旨在帮助读者巩固所学知识,提升英语水平。
Unit 1Listening Comprehension1.Listen to the passage and fill in the blanks withthe words you hear.(1)The party boss was unhappy with the slow______ of the local government.(2)The program is designed to help peoplefrom low-income families to gn ______ to education.(3)Every time we had a ______, the bosswould come up with an amazing idea.(4)The government is taking urgent action toaddress the problem of climate ______.(5)Although the workers were dissatisfiedwith their pay, they didn’t dare to ______ theiremployer.Answers:(1)pace(2)access(3)brnstorm(4)change(5)confront2.Listen to the conversation and answer the followingquestions.(1)What is the woman’s name?(2)What does the man want to drink?(3)How much is the coffee?Answers:(1)The woman’s name is Karen.(2)The man wants to have a cappuccino.(3)The coffee costs three dollars and fiftycents.Speaking Practice1.Work in prs and discuss the following questions.(1)What do you think are the advantages ofliving in a city?(2)What are the disadvantages of living in a city?(3)Do you prefer to live in a city or in a rural area? Why?Sample answer:(1)Some advantages of living in a city include access to a wider range of job opportunities, cultural events, and entertnment options. Cities also tend to have better public transportation and more shopping options.(2)One major disadvantage of living in acity is the high cost of living. Cities are also often crowded and noisy, and there can be higher levels of pollution. Crime rates may also be higher in some cities.(3)Personally, I prefer to live in a city. I enjoy being able to walk to restaurants and activities, and I appreciate the convenience of having a range of services close by. However, I also appreciate the tranquility of rural areas and enjoy taking trips to the countryside from time to time.Unit 2Listening Comprehension1.Listen to the passage and fill in the blanks withthe words you hear.(1)The ______ between the two countriesescalated into a full-blown war.(2)The company promises to provide ______service to its customers.(3)The CEO is known for his ______ to detl.(4)The documentary tells the story of agroup of adventurers who set out to explore the______.(5)The company is facing a ______ crisis dueto its flure to manage its finances properly.Answers:(1)conflict(2)quality(3)attention(4)jungle(5)financial2.Listen to the conversation and answer the followingquestions.(1)What does the woman think of the movie?(2)Why does the man like the movie?(3)What is the man going to do after themovie?Answers:(1)The woman thinks the movie is terrible.(2)The man likes the movie because of thespecial effects.(3)The man is going to have dinner with hisfriends after the movie.Speaking Practice1.Work in prs and discuss the following questions.(1)What do you think are the qualities of agood leader?(2)Can people learn to be good leaders, orare they born with leadership abilities?(3)Who is a leader you admire, and why?Sample answer:(1)In my opinion, a good leader should be able to inspire and motivate others, communicate clearly, and make good decisions. They should also be honest, trustworthy, and lead by example.(2)I think that people can learn to be good leaders, but some people may have a naturalaptitude for leadership. It’s important to develop the skills and qualities that make a good leader, such as communication and decision-making, through trning and practice.(3)One leader I admire is Nelson Mandela. He was able to unite a divided country and lead a peaceful transition to democracy in South Africa. Mandela also demonstrated forgiveness and reconciliation, even after spending 27 years in prison. He was a leader who truly embodied the qualities of integrity and humility.。
高级英语视听说听记教程1听力原文
高级英语视听说听记教程1听力原文English:Listening and Note-Taking Tutorial for Advanced English Listening.Step 1: Before Listening.Preview the text or audio. Read the title and skim through the text to get an idea of the topic and structure.Identify key vocabulary and concepts related to the topic.Set a purpose for listening. Determine what specific information you need to obtain from the recording.Step 2: During Listening.Listen attentively for main ideas and supportingdetails.Take notes in a concise and organized manner.Use abbreviations, symbols, or shorthand to capture key points.Focus on understanding the overall message rather than every single word.Step 3: After Listening.Review your notes immediately. Fill in any gaps or clarify any unclear sections.Summarize the main points of the recording in your own words.Check your understanding by answering comprehension questions or discussing the topic with others.Additional Tips.Practice regularly to improve your listening comprehension skills.Use authentic materials such as news broadcasts, podcasts, or movies to expose yourself to real-world speech patterns.Seek feedback from a native speaker or language tutor to improve your pronunciation and grammar.Don't be afraid to replay sections of the recording to clarify your understanding.中文回答:高级英语听力理解听记教程。
英语高级视听 上_听力原文_Unit1 pirates of the internet上课讲义
英语高级视听上_听力原文_U n i t1p i r a t e s o f t h ei n t e r n e tVideo Script------------------------------10.25Pirates of the InternetIt’s no secret that online piracy has decimated the music industry as millions of people stopped buying CDs and started stealing their favorite songs by downloading them from the internet. Now the hign-tech thieves are coming after Hollywood. Illegal downloading of full-length feature films is a relatively new phenomenon, but it’s becoming easier and easier to do. The people running Ameri ca’s movie studios know that if they don’t do something----and fast---they could be in the same boat as the record companies. Correspodent: “What’s really at stake for the movie industry with all this privacy?” Chernin: “Well, I think, you know, ultimately, our absolute features.” Peter Chernin runs 20th Century Fox, one of the biggest studios in Hollywood. He knows the pirates of the Internet are gaining on him. Correspont: “Do you know how many movies are being downloaded today, in one day, in the United States?” Chernin: “I think it’s probably in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.” Correspondent: “And it’s only going to grow.” Chernin: “It’s only going to grow. Somebody can put a perfect digital copy up on the internet. A perfect digital copy, all right. And with the click of mouse, send out a million copies all over the world, in an instant.”5And it’s all free. If that takes hold, kiss Hollywood goodbye. Chernin recently organized a “summit” between studio moguls and some high school and college kids---the people most likely to be downloading. Chernin: “And we said, ‘Let’s come up with a challenge. Let’s give them five movies, and see if they can find them online.’ And we all sat around and picked five movies, four of which hadn’t been released yet. And then we came back half an hour later. They had found all five movies that we gave them. ” Correspondent: “Even the ones that hadn’t even been released yet?” Chernin: “Even the ones that hadn’t even been released yet.” Correspondent: “Did these kid s have any sense that they were stealing?” Chernin: “You know it’s… it’s a weird dichotomy. I think they know it’s stealing, and I don’t think they think it’s wrong. I think they have an attitude of, ‘It’s here.’” The Internet copy of last year’s hit Signs, starring Mel Gibson, was stolen even before director M. Night Shyamalan could organize the premiere. Correspondent: “The movie was about to be released. When did the first bootleg copy appear?”6Shyamalan: “Two weeks before it or three weeks before it. Before the Internet age, when somebody bootlegged a movie, the only outlet they had was to see it to those vendors on Times Square, where they had the boxes set up outside and they say, ‘Hey, we have Signs---it’s not even out yet.’ And you walk by and you know it’s illegal. But now, because it’sthe digital age, you can see, like, a clean copy. It’s no longer the kind of the sleazy guy in Times Square with the box. It’s just, oh, it’s on this beautiful site, and I have to go, ‘Click.’” Correspondent: “How d id those movies get on the Internet? How did that happen?” Chernin: “Through an absolute act of theft. Someone steals a print from the editor’s room; someone steals a print from the person; the composer who’s doing the music…absolute physical theft, steals a print, makes a digital copy, and uploads it.” Correspondent: “And there you go.” Digital copies like this one of The Matrix Reloaded have also been bootlegged from DVDs sent to reviewers or ad agencies, or circulated among companies that do special effe cts, or subtitles. Chernin: “The other way that pre-released movies end up (stolen) is that people go to … there are lots of screenings that happen in this industry… People go to those screenings with a camcorder, with a digital camcorder, sit in the back, turn the camcorder on…”Correspondent: “And record it.” This is one of those recorded-off-the-screen copies of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean. Not great quality, but not awful either. And while it used to take forever to download a movie, anyone with a high-speed Internet connection can now have a full-length film in an hour or two.Saaf: “Well, this is just one of many websites where basically people, hackers if you will, announce their piracy releases.” Randy Saaf runs a company called Media Defender that helps movie studios combat online piracy. Correspondent: “Look at this, all these new movies that I haven’t even seen yet, all here.” Saaf: “ Yep.” Correspondent: “Secondhand Lions that just came out. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person in this country who has never downloaded anything. But maybe there is a few others of us out there. So I’m going to ask you to show us Kazaa, that’s the biggest downloading site, right?” Saaf: “Right. This is the Kazaa media desktop. Kazaa is the largest peer-to-peer network.” It’s called peer-to-peer because computer users are sharing files8with each other, with no middleman. All Kazaa does is provide the software to make that sharing possible. When we went online with Randy Saaf, nearly four million other Kazaa users were there with us, sharing every kind of digital file. Saaf: “Audio, documents, images, software, and video. If you wanted a movie, you would click on the video section, and then you would type in a search phrase. And basically what this is doing now, it is asking the people on the peer-to-peer network, ‘Who has Finding Memo’?” Within seconds, 191 computers sent an answer: “We have it.” This is Finding Memo, crisp picture and sound, downloaded free from Kazaa a month before its release for video rental or sale. If youdon’t want to watch it on a little computer screen, you don’t have to. On the newest computers, you can just “burn” it onto a DVD and watch it on your big-screen TV. And that’s a dagger pointed right at the heart of Hollywood. Chernin: “Where movies make the bulk of their money is on DVD and home videos. 50 percent of the revenues for any movie come out of home video…” Correspondent: “15 percent?” Chernin: “50 percent so that if piracy occurs and it wipes out your home video profits or ultimately your television profits, you are out9of business. No movies will get made.” Even if movies did get made, Night Shyamalan says that wouldn’t be any good, because profits would be negligible, so budgets would shrink dramatically. Shyamalan: “And slowly it will degrade what’s possible in that art form.” Rosso: “Technology always wins. Always. You can’t shut it down.” Wayne Rosso is Hollywood’s enemy. They call him a pirate, but officially he’s the president of Grokster, another peer-to-peer network that works just like Kazaa. Correspondent: “Ok, I have downloaded your softwar e.” Rosso: “Right.” Correspondent: “Ok, did I pay to do that?” Rosso: “No, it’s free.” Correspondent: “So who pays you? How do you make money?” Rosso: “We’re like radio. We are advertising-supported.” Correspondent: “And how many people use Grokster?” Rosso: “Ten million.” Correspondent: “Ten million people have used it.” Rosso: “A month.”Correspondent: “Every month, ten million people?” Rosso: “Uh-huh, uh-huh. And growing.”10Correspondent: “Use it to download music, movies, software, video games, what else?” Rosso: “I will assume. See, we have no way of knowing what people are downloading.” Correspondent: “That’s just a fig leaf. You are facilitating, allowing, helping people steal.” Rosso: “We have no idea what the content is, and whatever it is…” Correspondent: “Well, you may not know the specifics, but you know that’s what your site…” Rosso: “And we can’t stop it. We have no control over it.” Correspondent: “But you are the re for that purpose, that is why you exist, of course it is.” Rosso: “No, no, no, no, no, no.” Correspondent: “Come on, this is the fig leaf part.” Rosso: “No, no, no, no, no.” Shyamalan:“He is totally conformable with putting on his site a stolen piece of material. Am I wrong in that? If my movie was bootlegged, he’d be totally comfortable putting it on his site?” Correspondent: “Because I have nothing to do with it.” Shyamalan:“Yeah, right.” Correspondent: “Because I just provided the software.” Shyamalan:“Yeah, right. So, immediately, how can you ever have a11conversation with him? Because he’s taken a stolen material and he is totally fine with passing it around in his house. All these, all these areillegal activities. So, I’m not, it’s just my house,I’m not doing anything wrong.” But it is Rosso who has the law on his side. A federal judge has ruled that Grokster and other file-swapping networks are not liable for what their downloaders are doing. Rosso: “So we are completely legal, and unfortunately this is something the entertainment industry refuses to accept. They seem to think the judge’s decision was nothing but a typo.” The studios are appealing that court ruling. And they may follow the music industry and begin to sue individuals who download movies. And they are fighting the pirates in other ways, with ads about people whose jobs are at risk because of the piracy---people like the carpenters and painters who work on film sets. At the same time, Hollywood is trying to keep copies of movies from leaking in the first place. Chernin: “ You will very seldom go to an early screening of a movie right now where, probably you don’t notice until you pay attention, someone’s not in the front of that auditorium with infrared binoculars looking for somebody with a camcorder.”12And once a movie is released, or copies do begin to leak, the studios hire people like Randy Saaf to hack the hackers. Saaf: “What we’re just trying to do is make the actual pirated content difficult to find. And the way we do that i s by, you know, serving up fake files.” It’s called “spoofing.” Saaf and his employees spend their days on Kazaa and Grokster, offeringup thousands of files that look like copies of new movies, but aren’t. Correspondent: “So if I had clicked on any number of those Finding Nemo offerings, I could have clicked on one of yours, or somebody like you. And what would I have found after my hour and a half of downloading?” Saaf: “it might just be a blank screen or something. You know, typically speaking, what we p ush out is just not the real content.” Correspondent: “What you are trying to do is make this so impossible, so infuriating that people will just throw up their hands and say it’s just easier for me to go rent this thing, buy the DVD or whatever, it’s just easier.” Saaf: “Right.” Correspondent: “That’s your goal.” Saaf::“Right.”13Correspondent: “Does that work? Is that a good idea?” Rosso: “No. It doesn’t work. I mean I don’t blame them but it doesn’t work because what happens is that the community clea nses itself of the spoofs.” He means that downloaders quickly spread the word online about how to tell the fake movie files from the real thing. Correspondent: “It’s like an arms race(军备竞赛), isn’t it?” Chernin: “That’s exactly what it’s like. It’s like an arms race. There will be, you know, they’re gonna get a step ahead. We’re gonna try and get that step back.” Rosso: “But I’ll tell you one thing: I’ll bet on the hackers.” Correspondent: “That they will breakwhatever…” Rosso: “The studios come up with.” Correspondent: “The companies throw at them.”Hollywood knows that downloading off the Internet is the way millions of consumers want to get their entertainment---and that isn’t going away. Chernin: “The generally accepted estimate is that more that 60 million Americans have downloaded file-sharing software onto their computers.” Correspondent: “60 million.”14Chernin: “At 60 million Americans, that’s a mainstream product. That’s not a bunch of college kids or, you know, a bunch of computer geeks. That’s America.” So, instead of trying to stop it entirely, the studios are looking for ways to embrace it, but get paid too. Wayne Rosso says the best way is to negotiate some kinds of licensing deal with him. Rosso: “If the movie industry acts now and starts exploring alternatives and solutions with guys like me, hopefully they won’t have a problem.” Correspondent: “What if they try to buy you?” Rosso: “I’d sell it in al heartbeat.” Correspondent: “You would sell, Grokster would sell to a movie studio?” Rosso: “Sure, call me.” The idea of making deals with wha t Peter Chernin calls “a bunch of crooks” doesn’t appeal to Hollywood. Instead, Fox and other studios have just launched their own site, Movielink, where consumers can download a film for a modest fee, between three and five dollars. Chernin: “I think you would love the ideathat you don’t have to go to the video store. You can do this. And that’s what we’re working15on. But in order for that to be effective, we have to stop privacy, because the most effectiv e business model in the world can’t compete with free.” Not that Peter Chernin is interested, but he won’t have the chance to buy Grokster, at least not from Wayne Rosso. A few days ago, Rosso announced that he is leaving Grokster to take over as president of another file-swapping software company, this one based in Spain. Grokster will continue under new management.Key to the exercises Task I Global Listening1. C2. C.3. D .4. D5. A6. B.7. B8. CTask II Episode 1 1. T 2. F 3. T 4. F 5. TListen for DetailsEpisode 2 1 2 3Episode 3 (1) technology always wins (2) software (4) radio(3) advertising supported (5) Ten million people(6) music (8) not liable for (10) control (12) facilitating (14) comfortable(7) video games (9) typo (11) fig leaf (13) stealEpisode 41. Following the music industry and begin to sue individuals who download movies.2. Airing ads about people whose jobs are at risk because of piracy.3. Keeping copies of movies from leaking in the first place.4. Hiring people to hack the hackers/serve up thousands of fake copies of new movies.Episode 51. Downloading off the Internet.2. 60 million3. Embrace it and get paid too.4. A bunch of crooks.5. 3-5 dolloars.6. Stopping piracy.。
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Lesson 1 Napoleon令狐采学Today, I’m going to talk to you about one of the most important historical figures in European history: Napoleon Bonaparte. Let ’s start by talking about his early life. Napoleon was born in 1769 on the island of Corsica. When he was only 10 years old, his father sent him to military school in France. Napoleon wasnot a very good student in most of his classes, but he excelled in mathematics and military science. When he was 16 yearsold,hejoinedtheFrencharmy.Inthatyear1785,hebeganthemilitarycareerth at wouldbringhimfame ,power,riches andfinallydefeat.NapoleonbecameageneralintheFrencharmyattheyoungageo f24.Napoleonhad many victories on the battlefield but he also became involved in French law and politics. And in 1804, at the age of35,hebecamethefirst emperoroftheFrance.Napoleonwas many things. He was, first of all, a brilliant military leader. His soldiers were ready to die for him. As a result, N.won many military victories. At one time he controlled most of Europe, but some countries, including England, Russia, and Austria fought fiercely against him. His defeat —“his end”came when he decided to attack Russia. In this military campaign against Russia, he lost most of his army.ThegreatFrenchconquerordied alone – desertedbyhisfamilyand friends in 1821.Napoleonwasonly51yearsoldwhenhedied.========================================= ==================Lesson 2 PompeiiThe lecture for this class is about the city of Pompeii. A natural disaster occurred there almost 2000 years ago.Today many rich people who live in large metropolitan areas such as Beijing, Paris and New York leave the city in the summer. They go to the mountains or to the seashore to escape the city noise and heat.2,000 years ago, wealthy Romans did the same thing.They left the city of Rome in the summer. Many of these wealthy Romans spent their summers in the city of Pompeii, a beautiful city, located on the Bay of Naples.In the summer of the year 79 C.E., a young Roman boy who later became a very famous Roman historian was visiting his uncle in P.. The boy’s name was Pliny the Younger. One day Pliny was looking up at the sky. He saw a frightening sight. It was a very large dark cloud. This black cloud rose high into the sky. What Pliny saw was the eruption of the volcano called Mount Vesuvius.Rock and ash flew through the air. The city of P . was at the foot of Mt. V.. When thevolcano first erupted, many people were able to get out of the city and to escape death. In fact, 18,000 people escaped the terrible disaster. Unfortunately, there was not enough time for everyone to escape. More than 2,000 people died. These unlucky people were buried alive under the volcanic ash.The eruption lasted for about 3 days. When the eruption was over, P . was buried under 20 feet of volcanic rock and ash. The city of P . wasforgotten for almost 1,700 years.In the year of 1748 an Italian farmer was digging on his farm. As he was digging, he uncovered a part of a wall of the ancient city of P.. Soon archaeologists began to dig in the area. As time went by, much of the ancient city of P. was uncovered. Today tourists come from all over the world to see the ruins of the famous city of Pompeii.========================================= ==================Lesson 4 Roller CoasterLet's talk about the physics involved in a ride on a roller coaster. I'm sure many of you have taken a ride on a roller coaster. A simple roller coaster consists of a frame with a track on it. The track is very much like a train track, this track goes over a series of hills and around curves. It follows a path that ends at the same place it started. A train of cars travels around on this track, very fast. The cars have two sets of wheels. One set of wheels rolls on top of the track, and the others set ofwheels rolls below the track. The wheels below the track keep the fast moving cars from coming off the track, roller coaster cars as you probably know don't have any motors or engines. Instead, a chain pulls the cars up the first, tallest and steepy staff hill, this is how the ride begins. Then, at the top of the hill the chain comes off the cars and gravity takes over. gravity pushes the cars down the other side of the hill. the taller and steeper the first hill is, the faster the ride will be. And the farther the cars will travel. as the cars rolled downhill they gained speed. the cars have enough speed and energy to send them up the next hill. as the cars near the top of the second hill they begin to slow down. but then, the cars reached the top of that hill, and start down the other side. gravity again pushes them toward the ground. this process repeats on each hale. Okay, so let's go over this process again. first, the cars are pulled by a chain up the first highest hill. then they go down a very steep slope, at this point, there is enough energy to pull the cars up and over the next hill. when they reached the bottom of that hill, there is enough energy to climb the next hill, the roller coaster cars lose energy as the ride continues. so, the hills have to be smaller toward the end of the track, finally we roll to a stop on ground level right where we began.========================================= ===============Lesson 5 Language: How Children Acquire TheirsWhat I’d lie to talk to you about today is the topic of child language development. I know that you all are trying to developa second language, but for a moment, let’s think about a related topic, and that is: How children develop their first language.What do we know about how babies develop their language and communication ability? Well, we know babies are able to communicate as soon as they are born,even before they learn to speak their first language. At first, they communicate bycrying. This crying lets their parents know when they are hungry, or unhappy, or uncomfortable. However, they soon begin the process of acquiring their language. The first state of language acquisition begins just a few weeks after birth. At this stage, babies start to make cooing noises when they are happy. Then, around four months of age they begin to babble. Babies all over the world begin to babble around the same age, and they all begin to make the same kinds of babbling noises. Now, by the time they are ten months old, however, the babbling of babies from different language backgrounds sounds different. For example, the babbling of a baby in a Chinese-speaking home sounds different from the babbling of a baby in an English-speaking home. Babies begin a new stage of language development when they begin to speak their first words. At first, they invent their own words for things. For example, a baby in anEnglish-speaking home may say ―baba‖for the word ―bottle‖or ―kiki‖ for ―cat.‖ In the next few months, babies will acquire a lot of words. These words are usually the names of things that are in the baby’s environment, words for food or toys, for example. They will begin to use these words to communicate with others. For example, if a baby holds up an empty juice bottle and then says ―juice,‖ to his father, the baby seems to be saying, ―I want more juice, Daddy‖or ―May I have more juice, Daddy?‖ This word ―juice‖ is really a one-word sentence.Now, the next stage of language acquisition begins around the age of 18 months, when the babies begin to say two-word sentences. They begin to use a kind of grammar to put these words together. The speech they produce is called ―telegraphic‖speech because the babies omit all but the most essential words. An English-speaking child might saysomething like ―Daddy, up‖which actually could mean ―Daddy, pick me up, please.‖Then, between two and three years of age, young children begin to learn more and more grammar. For example, they begin to use the past tense of verbs. The children begin to say things such as ―I walked home‖and ―I kissed Mommy.‖ They also begin to overgeneralize this new grammar rule and make a log of grammar mistakes. For example, children often say such thins as ―I goed to bed‖ instead of ―I went to bed,‖ or ―Ieated ice cream‖ instead of ―I ate ice cream.‖ In other words, the children have learned the past tense rule for regular verbs such as ―walk‖ and ―kiss,‖ but they haven’t learned that they cannot use this rule for all verbs. Some verbs like ―eat‖ are irregular, and the past tense forms for irregular verbs must be learned individually. Anyway, these mistakes are normal, and the children will soon learn to use the past tense for regular and irregular verbs correctly. The children then continue to learn other grammatical structures in the same way.If we stop to think about it, actually it’s quite amazing how quickly babies and children all over the world learn their language and how similar the process is for babies all over the world.Do you remember anything about how you learned your first language during the early years of your life? Think about the process for a minute. What was your first word? Was it ―mama‖or maybe ―papa‖? Now think also about the process of learning English as a second language. Can you remember the first word you learned in English? I doubt that it was ―mama.‖ Now, think about some of the similarities and differences involved in the processes of child and adult language learning. We’ll talk about some similarities and differences in the first and second language learning processes tomorrow. See you then.===========================================================Lesson 7 RobotsWhen people think about a robot, they often picture a machine that loo ks something like a human being. However, that’s not always the case . Most robots do not look much like a human being at all, they look lik e machines because that’s what most of them are- industrial machine s.Today, I’m going to talk mostly about industrial robots used in indu stry. These are robots that do work that for humans would be physicall y demanding, repetitive, dangerous or very boring. Most industrial robo ts work on in an assembly line in a factory. For example, a robot might put liz on jars of fruits or start boxesfor shaping. In a car factory, robot ic arms on an assembly line join the parts of a car together; other robot s tighten the boats on the car’s wheelsor paint the car. There are thou sands of robots putting cars together in ___ plan. These robots are ver y precise when repeating a task. For example, they always tighten boats with the same exact amount of force. They always move a heavy engine to exactly where it should be and they always put ahold in the exact sa me place in every car door hour after hour. These are examples of robo ts doing the work humans could do but the robots are doing the work more efficiently and precisely.So, just how do robots work? To do its job a robot first needs a control system. This control system directs the robots mechanical parts. The control system of a robot is sort of speak--a robot brain. So how does a robot learn which action to do first and which of its moving part nee ds to do that action? A robot learns its job with the help and guidance of a human being. To teach an industrial robot to do something, first a person must use a hand-held computer. The computer is used to guide the robot’s arm and hand through the motions it needs to do. Then, t he robot stores exact movement in its computer memory. The robot ha s sensors to gather information, so now the robot will use its sensors to direct its actions. The robot tells its moving part what to do and then i t performs the action. For example, to pick up and move a box, the rob ot first finds the box, next it decides the weight of the box. Then it deci des how much force is needed to lift and move the box, and finally, it fi nds the correct place to put the box down. It repeats the process over a nd over until it's turned off. It does the same job until it is given the jo b and new program to follow. Some scientists think that robots of the f uture will be smarter than today's robots. They may also look more hu man like or even animal like. In fact, they may work and think more lik e humans do. The industrial robots we've been talking about so far tod ay are automatic robots.They are known as automatic robots because they have program to foll ow a specific series of movement. Usually, they have parts that move but they really don't travel around. On the other hand, an autonomous machine can change itsbehavior in relation to its surroundings. For exa mple, an autonomous robot with wheelsor legs to move around can ch ange direction when it senses that there are something in its way. A rob ot such as …can detect the movement of people nearby. It can move t o avoid bumping into sb. coming toward it. Asthma can even learn to d ance by following the movements of a dancer next to it. I don't know whether or when people would welcome autonomousmachines or hum an like robots. I guess that we will not only think about that in the futu re. We need to think about how we will interact with our global doctor: robal teacher, robal pet, or even our robal friend.========================================= ==================Lesson 8 A Tidal WaveA tidal wave is a very large and very destructive wall of water that rushes in from the ocean towards the shore. Many scientists call these waves tsunami. In Japanese tsunami means “storm wave.”But do you know that tidal are not caused by storms and that they are not true tidal at all? A true tidal is the regular rise a waves and fall of ocean waters, at definite times each day, but a tidal wave comes rushing in suddenly and unexpectedly. A tidal wave is caused by an underwater earthquake. The word “seaquake”is made up of two words, theword “sea”which means “ocean”and the word “quake”. “To quake”means “to shake”or “to tremble.”When a seaquake takes place at the bottom of the ocean, the ocean floor shakes and trembles, and sometimes the ocean floor shifts. It is this shaking that produces the tidal wave. The tidal wave begins to move across the sea at great speed.Tidal waves have taken many human lives in the past. Today scientists can predict when a tidal wave will hit land. They use a seismograph to do this. A seismograph is an instrument that records the strength, the direction, and the length of time of an earthquake or seaquake. It is not possible to hold back a tidal wave, but it is possible to warn people that a tidal wave is coming. This warning can save many lives.========================================= ==================Lesson 9 Levels of LanguageToday I want to talk about levels of language usage. You probably have noticed that people express similar ideas in different ways, depending on the situation they are in. This is very natural. All languages have two general, broad categories, or levels of usage: a formal level and an informal level. English is no exception. I’m not talking about correct and incorrect English. What I’m talking about are two levels of correct English. The difference in these two levels is the situation inwhich you use a particular level. Formal language is the kind of language you find in textbooks, reference books such as encyclopedias, and in business letters. For example, a letter to a university would be in formal style. You would also use formal English in compositions and essays that you write in school. People usually use formal English when they give classroom lectures or speeches and at ceremonies such as graduations. We also tend to use formal language in conversations with persons we don’t know well or with people we have a formal relationship with, such as professors, bosses, doctors, friends of our parents’, strangers, etc. Informal language is used in conversations with colleagues, family and friends, and when we write personal notes or letters to close friends, as well as in diaries, etc.Formal language is different from informal language in several ways. However, today I’m going to talk only about a couple of ways. First of all, formal language tends to be more polite. Interestingly, it usually takes more words to be polite. For example, I might say to a friend or family member, "Close the door, please", but to a stranger or someone in authority I probably would say "Would you mind closing the door" or "Excuse me, could you please close the door" Using words like "could" and "would" makes my request sound more polite, but also more formal.Another difference between formal and informal language is some ofthe vocabulary. There are some words and phrases that belong in formal language and others that are informal. Let me give you a couple of examples of what I mean. Let’s say "I’m just crazy about soccer!" But if I were talking to my supervisor or a friend of my parents’, I would probably say "I really enjoy soccer" or "I like soccer very much". Let’s say I’m telling someone some news I heard about the police arresting a criminal. To my friend I might say "The cops bagged the crook". To my parents’friend I might say "The police arrested the thief".Although the line between formal and informal language is not always clear and although people are probably less formal today than in the past, it is useful to be aware that these two levels, or categories, do exist. The best way for a non-native speaker of English to learn the difference is to observe the different ways English speakers speak or write in different situations. Television newscasters, your college professors in class, your doctors in their offices, etc, will usually speak rather formally. However, your classmates, teammates, family members, friends, etc. will generally speak in an informal fashion. The difference can be learned over time by observing and interacting with native speakers.========================================= ==================Lesson 10 Power: The Kinds People Use and AbuseJohn Mack, who is the author of a book about power, says that the need for a sense of personal power is one of the primary forces in human life. On the other hand, he also says that a feeling of powerlessness is one of the most disturbing of human emotions ―a feeling to be avoided at all costs. Just what is power? Psychologists define power as the ability to determine or to change the actions or behavior of other people. Psychologists are trying to identify different kinds of power so that they can better understand how people use these different kinds of power to gain control over other people. They are trying to understand how people manipulate other people for good and evil purposes. Psychologists have identified five basic types of power, and I’d like to talk about each of these briefly in the next few minutes.The first type of power is called information power. Some psychologist believe that information power is one of the most effective types of power and control. The person who has information that other people want and need, but do not have, is in a position of power. Why is this? Well, most people like to receive and have information. Having information increases a person’s own sense of power. People who provide information can manipulate those who do not have information. Often, when people receive information, theydo not know that they are being manipulated by those who provided the information. The psychologist named Edwards says, for example, that newspapers provide a lot of information to their readers, and that these newspaper readers generally believe the information they read. Readers do not question the accuracy of the reports about world events they read in the newspapers.A second type of power is called referent power. For example, a person may want to behave like the members of a particular group, such as a soccer team ( or a group of classmates), or a person may identify with and want to be like a certain teacher, a friend, or say , a rock star. If you identify with another person, that person has power over you, and that person can influence your actions and behavior. Many people imitate and are controlled by the people they identify with. Let me give you a sad example of the use of this type of power for evil purposes. In the 1970s in Jonestown, Guyana, more than 900 people committed suicide when their religious leader Jim Jones told them to kill themselves. They did what he told them to do because he had referent power over them. They identified with him; they believe him, and they did what he told them to do. More recently a man named David Koresh controlled the lives and destinies of a small community of men, women, and children in Waco, Texas. Mostpeople in his community died in a fire, along with their leader, during a confrontation with U.S. government agents.A third kind of power is classified as legitimate power. Government officials, according to Edwards, have a lot of legitimate power. When the government decides to raise taxes or make people go to war, most people will do what their government officials tell them to do. One psychologist reported on an experiment that showed an example of this type of power. In this experiment, a researcher asked people on the street to move away from a bus stop. When he was dressed as a civilian, few people moved away from the bus stop. When the researcher was dressed as a guard, most people moved away from the bus stop. The guard’s uniform seemed to give the researcher a look of legitimate power.A fourth kind of power is called expert power. An expert is a person who is very skilled in some area, such as sports, or who knows a lot about something, such as computers. Most people are impressed by the skills or knowledge of an expert. Some of these “experts” use their skills at playing sports or knowing about computers to gain power and influence ―and to gain money or admiration, according to Edwards. In other words, they use their expertise to gain power. Finally, reward or coercive power is used by people who have the power to reward or punish another person’s actions or behavior.Giving a reward will change people’s behavior because it offers people a chance for gain. Giving a punishment may or may not cause the people to do what the powerful person wants them to do, but the changes may not last for a long time. The person who uses coercive power may also have to carefully watch thatthe less powerful person does, in fact, change his or her actions or behavior.To sum up, then, power may be gained in many ways. It may come from having information that other people want or need; it may come from being a referent for other people to identify with or to imitate; it may come from having an official, or legitimate, position of authority; it may come from having skills or expertise; or it may come from having the power to reward or punish people. We all exercise one or more of these various kinds of power over other people, and other people will try to exercise one or more of these kinds of power over us throughout our lives.======================================== ==========Lesson 11 Asian and African Elephants: Similarities and Differences The African and the Asian elephants are the largest land animals in the world. They are really enormous animals. The African and the Asian el ephants are alike, or similar, in many ways, but there are differences between the 2 types of elephants, too.What are some of the similarities between the African and the Asian ele phant? Well, for one thing, both animals have long noses, called trunks. An elephant sometimes uses its trunk like a third hand. Both kinds of elephants use their trunks to pick up very small objects and very large, heavy objects. They can even pick up trees with their trunks. For anoth er thing, both the African and the Asian elephants have very large ears, although the African elephant’s ears are considerably larger.In addition, both animals are intelligent. They can be trained to do heav y work. They can also be trained to do tricks to entertain people. In oth er words, they both work for people, and they entertain people also. As I said before, the African and Asian elephants are alike in many way s, but they are also quite different, too. Let me explain what I mean. Th e African elephant is larger and heavier than the Asian elephant. Asian elephantsreach a height of about 10 feet, and African elephants reach about 13 feet tall.The African male elephant weighs between 12,000 and 14,000 pounds. In contrast, the average Asian male elephant weighs between 7,000 and 12,000 pounds. So one is bigger than the other, but as you can see,both are still enormous animals.Another difference between the 2 kinds of elephants is the size of the ears. Asian elephants have smaller ears than African elephants . The African elephant has 2 very large teeth. These teeth are called tusks. The Asian elephanthowever sometimes does not have any tusks at all. The elephants differ in color, too. The African elephant is dark gray in color while the Asia n elephant is light gray. Occasionally an Asian elephant is even white ! The last big difference between the 2 typesof elephants is their temperament. The Asian elephant is tamer than th e African elephant, orin another way, the African elephant is much wilder than the Asian elep hant. As a result, it’s more difficult to train the African elephant to pe rform tricks to entertain people. That’s why the elephants you see in t he circus are probably Asian elephants and not African elephants. Yes, there certainly are differences between the African and the Asian e lephants, but as I mention at the start of mytall, there is one big similarity between the 2 animals: they are both fasc inating and enormous animals.========================================= ==================Lesson 13 Lincoln and KennedyJohn F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln lived in different times and ha d very different family and educational backgrounds. Kennedy lived in the 20th century; Lincoln lived in the 19th century. Kennedy was bornin 1917, whereas Lincoln was born more than a hundred years earlier, i n 1809. As for their family backgrounds, Kennedy came from a rich fa mily, but Lincoln’s family was not wealthy. Because Kennedy came fr om a wealthy family, he was able to attend expensive private schools. H e graduated from Harvard University. Lincoln, on the other hand, had only one year of formal schooling. In spite of his lack of formal schooli ng, he became a well-known lawyer. He taught himself law by reading l aw books. Lincoln was, in other words, a self-educated man.In spite of these differences in Kennedy and Lincoln’s backgrounds, some interesting similarities between the 2 men are evident. In fact, bo oks have been written about the strange coincidences in the lives of the se 2 men. Take forexample ,their political careers. Lincoln began his political career in con gress. Similarly, Kennedy also began his political career in congress. Lin coln was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1847, and Ke nnedy was elected to the House in 1947. So they were elected to congress exactly 100 yearsapart. Another interesting coincidence is that each man was elected pre sident of the United States in a year ending with the number 60. Lincol n was elected president in 1860, and Kennedy was elected in 1960; furt hermore, both men were president during years of civil unrest in the co untry. Lincoln was president during the American Civil War. At the令狐采学创作time Kennedy became president,African-Americans were fighting for their civil rights ,unrest took the form of civil rights demonstrations. Timeschange and it’s just over 15 more years,the United States elected its first African-American president Barack Obama. President Obama was elected in 2008 and…,but let me get back to talk about Lincoln and Kennedy.Another striking similarity between these 2 men was that, as you proba bly know, neither president lived to complete his term in office. Lincol n and Kennedy were both assassinated while in office. Kennedy was as sassinated in 1963 inDallas, Texas, after only 1,000 days in office. Lincoln was assassinated i n 1865 a few days after the end of the American Civil War. It’s rather curious to note that both presidents were shot while they were sitting next to their wives.These are only a few examples of the unusual similarities in the destinie s of these 2 Americans – men who had a tremendous impact on the s ocial and political life in the United States and the imagination of the A merican people.令狐采学创作。
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listen to this:高级英语听力 lesson Lesson NineSection One: News in BriefTapescript1. There was an assassination attempt against Indian Prime MinisterRajiv Gandhi today. A man fired several shots at Gandhi and otherIndian leaders participating in an open-air praver meeting. Gandhiwas not injured. Six people received minor wounds when thegunman burst from the brushes where he had apparently hidden pri-or to the cerem4Dny.to avoid security checks. He surrendered whenguards surrounded.him. Those in charge of Gandhi's security havebeen suspended, and an investigation is under way.2. Jess Moore, NASA's top official in charge of the shuttle programwhen Challenger exploded, announced today he's leaving his newpost as Director of the Johnson Space Center. Moore will take aleave of absence and then be reassigned to NASA headquarters inWashington. NPR's Daniel Zwerdling reports. 'Theobvious ques-tion, of course, is this: Is Jess Moore leaving his job and taking ayear off work because of the Challenger accident? Moore came un-der quite a bit of pressure before a congressional committee earlythis summer when his former assistant testified that hetold Moore indetail almost a year ago that there were seriousproble'ms with the,shuttle rocket's 0-rings, the same 0-rings thateventually causedthe Challenger accident. That testimony flatlycontradicted whatMoore's been saying all along: that he did not know the0-ringproblems were serious until after the Challenger exploded. Congres-sional sources who've interviewed Moore told me that they have noway of knowing just who's telling the truth, Moore, or Moore's for-mer assistant. But one top congressional aide who met with Moorerecently says the NASA veteran's been depressed since the Chal-lenger blew up. He says, 'Moore doesn't have the edge he used to.He's hollow inside, just like a lot of guys at NASA who worked onthe shuttle. ' 'Jess Moore,' the aide says, 'is not the man he was be-fore the accident, and he needs a rest.' I'm Daniel Zwerdling inWashington."Section Two: News in DetailTapescriptIndian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi survived an assassinationattempt in New Delhi today. The assailant fired a succession of shotsat Gandhi, who was attending a Hindu prayer service with his wifeand Indian President Zail Singh. Official sources have called the in-cident a major security lapse. Witnesses say Gandhi told securityguards two times he had heard gun shots; the security forcesreportedly dismissed the noise as motorcycle backfire.It was overhalf an hour later that police finally surrounded and captured thegunman. Six people were injured during the arrest. The BBC'sHumphrey Hoxley reports.'An official statement from the Home Ministry said that thosepolice officials who were directly responsible for the security ar-rangements for Mr. Gandhi have been suspended from duty. Seniorofficials in the Ministry say that a top-level investigation is underway to determine why the security around the Prime Minister, who'smeant to be one of the most closely protected government leaders inthe world, collapsed and how a gunman armed with an illegallymanufactured revolver broke through the security cordon undetect-ed to get within a few feet of the Prime Minister. Police say thegunman who's in his twenties may even have fired at Mr. Gandhiand his party as they were approaching the area to commemorate thebirthday of the independence leader Mohandas Gandhi, who is cre-mated there. The area was searched immediately; but security menfailed to spot the gunman, who was hiding on top of a concrete shel-ter hidden among thick green vines. The man opened fire again whenMr. Gandhi was leaving half an hour later. But when he was spotted,eyewitnesses say, he threw up his arms and shouted in Hindi, "I sur-render.' Police say he's not connected with any terrorist organiza-tion., nor is he part of the Sikh movement which murdered Mr.Gandhi's mother, Indira, two years ago. Humphrey Hoxley, BB4C,Delhi.@tion Three: Special ReportTapescriptIt is not just the weather with which farmers contend; there arehigher costs for growing food and lower prices when selling it. Andthese combined to make farming an increasingly difficult life, espec-ially for small family farms. In New York, a new organization called'Farm Hands' is trying to help struggling farms in the region bylinking city dwellers with farmers. As John Kailish reports, thescheme seems to benefit both.Last week, two actors, a housewife, a tour guide, a dog walkerand an unemployed social worker, all from the New York metropoli-tan area, spent a day working on Hall Gibson's fruit and vegetablefarm located in the Upstate New York town of Brewster. The con-tingent also included two four-year-olds. The group listenedattentively as Gibson gave the lengthy orientation talk complete withaerial photographs of his 125-acre farm. 'This area was called partof the New York milk shed. One of the big incentives to producingmilk in this area was the founding of the Borden plant.' After theorientation talk the group walked to a five-acre fieldthat was linedwith rows of tomatoes and turnips, eggplants and cabbage. Gibsongave some brief picking instructions to two women whowere goingto harvest cherry tomatoes. 'If they are split like this, throw them,away or eat them.' "OK.' The transplanted urbanites picked sixbushels of tomatoes and sixty pints of raspberries over the course ofseveral hours. The farmhands were perfect strangers when they leftManhattan, but out in the field in Putnam County, they had notrouble striking up conversations that included such heady topics asromance in television.Laura Moore, a housewife and part-time teacher fromBrooklyn, has made four trips to area farms with her daughterShe was picking yellow lowacid tomatoes as she explainedwhy she enjoys the Farm Hands program."It's therapeutic, mentally, physically, and it's exhilarating. Thisis my way of getting out, escaping the city life for a while. I love thecity. But in the fresh air, you get a feeling that you are really living."In addition to the one-day farm outings, Farm Hands alsoplaces individuals ( . farms for periods ranging from a week to sev-eral months. In exchange for their labor, participantsget a minimumwage, room and board, or produce to take back with themto thecity. In its first year of operation, Farm Hands has placed twentypeople on farms for a period of two months or longer. More thantwo hundred people have gone on the one-day workintensives orthe field trips that are often more play than work. Hall Gibson hashad four long term farm-hands this summer. At the moment, he'sbenefiting from the hard work of a twenty- eight-year-old NewYork City painter named Debby Fisher. Because Gibson's farm isorganic, weeds are a major problem. Farmer Gibson says that whenDebby Fisher clears weeds from the fields, she works like a demon.'She's been just driven to rescue crops and she's rescued a num-ber of crops. My bok choy crop - the best I've ever had - was res-cued by her. Debby is a gem.'The Farm Hands program was founded bytwenty-seven-year-old Wendy Dubid, an enthusiastic advocate oflinking farms and cities. In an interview at a farmers' market in NewYork city, Dubid said Farm Hands may mean cheap laborsforfarmers, but she maintains the program has a broader impact."It's not just the labor that helps those farmers; it's the appre-ciative consumers. They suddenly realize after an hour of pickingraspberries and scratching their own arms on the bramble, they un-derstand the farm reality and the value of food, and may becomevaluable consumers and customers for those farmers.'Dubid says there was only one Farm Hand placement thatdidnot work out this year, a fifteen-year-old footballplayer who an-tagonized his host family in Upstate New York. Farmhands arecurrently working in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. Plansare already under way to expand the Farm Hands program toMaryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Vermont.。
高级英语视听综合教程上册课文翻译
高级英语视听综合教程上册课文翻译Unit1 选词填空1.The <essence> of her argument is that learning is a kind of inborn ability. 2.The head of our office is an aggressive young <executive>. 3.When you run into a <thorny> problem,you can phone the number. 4.Through the careful investigation , the Supreme Court<override> the decision of the local court . 5.The government put the blame on the <demonstration>, accusing the group of seeking to produce chaos for political reasons. 6.Don't <meddle> in others'affairs; mind your own business. 7.As far as the socialist system is concerned,<democratic> centralism is an integral part of it . 8.A politician should vote according to the opinion of the <constituents> which he or she represents . 9.In the film Mark of Zorro,Zorro is a hero who opposes the <oppressive> colonial government and 10.appears with a flashing sword, scarring the faces of enemies with his Mark. An <appeal> to arms should be avoided if possible,but once made should be carried through. 汉译英1.在封建社会,一些君王用残酷的、专制的手段统治人们。
12-15高级英语视听说教程第一册文本及答案
Chapter 12 The Titanic and the Andrea Doria: Tragedies at Sea On the morning of April 10, 1912, the luxury liner the Titanic left England on a voyage to New York. Four days later, she lay at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. On Wednesday, July 18, 1956, the ocean liner the Andrea Doria left Italy. The Andrea Doria was also traveling to New York. Eight days later this great ship also lay at the bottom of the Atlantic.The sinking of these two huge ships, these two very, very large ships shocked the world. Reports of these two tragedies filled the newspapers for days. When the Andrea Doria went down, people compared her sinking with the sinking of the Titanic. There were similarities between the two events; however there were also important differences.What were some of these similarities? First of all, both ships were transatlantic ocean liners. In addition, they were also both luxury liners. They carried many of the world’s rich and famous people. In fact, ten American millionaires lost their lives when the Titanic went down. Today millions of dollars worth of gold, silver and cash may still remain locked inside these two sunken ships.Another similarity was that, as each ship was sinking, there were acts of heroism and acts of villainy. Some people acted very bravely, even heroically. Some people even gave up their lives so that others could live. There were also some people who acted like cowards. For example, one man on the Titanic dressed up as a woman so that he could get into a lifeboat and save his own life. One last similarity was that both of these ships were considered “unsinkable.” People believed that they would never sink.I’d like to shift my attention now to the differences between these great ship disasters. To begin with, the Titanic was on her maiden voyage; that is, she was on her very first voyage across the Atlantic. The Andrea Doria on the other hand, was on her 101st transatlantic crossing. Another difference was that the ships sank for different reasons. The Titanic struck an iceberg whereas the Andrea Doria collided with another ship. Another contrast was that the Andre Doria had radar to warn of the approach of another ship, but the Titanic was not equipped with radar. The Titanic only had a lookout. The lookout was able to see the iceberg only moments before the ship struck it. But, of course, the greatest difference between these two terrible accidents was the number of lives lost. When the Titanic sank, more than 1,500 people died. They drowned or froze to death in the icy north Atlantic water. Over 700 people survived the sinking of the Titanic. In the Andrea Doria accident 60 people lost their lives, and about 1, 650 lives were saved. One of the reasons that so many people died on the Titanic was that the ship was considered to be unsinkable, and so there were about half the number of life boats needed to rescue all the people aboard the ship. The Andrea Doria had more than enough lifeboats to rescue every person on the ship; however, they were able to use only about half of the lifeboats they had because of a mechanical problem. The passengers and crew of the Andrea Doria were very lucky that another ship was able to rescue most of them. The passengers on the Titanic were not so fortunate. It is interesting that the wreck of the Titanic was only found in September of 1985.Whenever there are large numbers of people traveling together on a boat, ship, or plane, the possibility of disaster is always present. Most people arrive safely at their destination, but accidents like shipwrecks and plane crashes do happen, and these accidents remind us that no matter how safe we feel, accidents can happen suddenly and unexpectedly.PostlisteningA. The Comprehension Check1. Recognizing Information and Checking Accuracy1. What was the destination of the Titanic as it was sailing across the Atlantic? (c)2. How were the Titanic and the Andrea Doria similar? (d)3. How were the Titanic and the Andrea Doria different? {b)4. Dressing up as a woman to save your life is an example of which of the following? (c)5. What was different about the sinking of the Andrea Doria from the sinking of the Titanic? (b)6. Fewer people on the Titanic would have died if there had been more lifeboats available. (I can infer it.)7. The Andrea Doria was crossing the Atlantic for the 101st time. (I heard it.)8. More people on the Andrea Doria would have died if there hadn't been another ship near by to rescue most of the people. (I can infer it.)9. It's very dangerous to travel the Atlantic by ship. (I cannot infer it.)10. The Titanic struck an iceberg, but the Andrea Doria collided with another ship. (I heard it.)Listening Factoid #1In a recent survey reported in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, American men were asked if they would give up their seats to other people if they were on the Titanic today. Seventy-four percent of the men said they would give up their seat in a lifeboat for their child. Almost as many men, 67%, said they would surrender their seat to their wife. Fifty-four percent reported that they would give their seat to their mother, and 52% said they would for their father. Only 35% said they would give up their seat to any other woman who was not a wife or a child. However, 52% said they would give up their seat for the Catholic humanitarian Mother Teresa, but only 8% said they would give their seat to pop singer Madonna.Listening Factoid #2The story of the ill-fated Titanic continues to interest people today partly because of the 1988 Hollywood movie, Titanic. People are also still interested because of the discovery of where the Titanic lies at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. In 1986, Robert Ballard and a group of scientists located the resting place of the Titanic beneath 12,000 feet, or 3,647 meters, of water in the north Atlantic.Since Ballard's discovery of the resting place of the Titanic, a number of scientific and commercial expeditions have visited the site, and more than 8,000 artifacts have been taken (or stolen) from the sunken ship. These artifacts include jewelry, dishes and glasses, and many other things that went down with the ship.V arious companies have taken tourists in submarines to visit the Titanic. Some of the submarines have landed on the deck of the sunken ship, and left holes in the deck of the Titanic.Scientists have determined that the wreck of the Titanic has deteriorated significantly since its 1986 discovery for two reasons: (1) natural forces; and {2) underwater tourists and treasure hunters.It is estimated that by the year 2004, more than 200 tourists had visited the Titanic in submarines, Treasure hunters had also visited in submarines and taken thousands of artifacts or treasures from the ship. In fact, in 2003, a menu taken from the Titanic sold for 25,000 euros at an auction, and one of the Titanic's deck chairs went for 30,000 euros.Everyone seems to want a piece of the Titanic, and a piece of history.Chapter 13 Dinosaurs: Why They DisappearedSeveral theories have been proposed about why the dinosaurs disappeared from the face of the earth. In recent years one popular theory proposes that climatic changes caused the dinosaurs to become extinct. This climatic change theory says that millions of years ago the climate of the world gradually became colder. As the earth slowly became colder, fewer plants were able to grow. The cold weather finally resulted in a severe shortage of food for the dinosaurs. As you probably know, most of the dinosaurs were vegetarians, and they depended on plants for their food supply. In summary, then, the disappearance of the dinosaurs was caused directly by a shortage of plants to eat, and indirectly by a change in the climate. Many scientists still believe that the climatic change theory best explains why the dinosaurs disappeared. This theory argues that the dinosaurs disappeared gradually—slowly—as the earth became colder and ass their food supply dwindled.Today there is new evidence for the theory that the dinosaurs did not disappear gradually, but that they disappeared quickly and suddenly. This theory is known as the asteroid theory. It states that a huge asteroid, or perhaps a comet, hit the earth about 65 million years ago. When this comet or asteroid hit the earth, it caused a huge dust cloud. The huge dust cloud covered the whole earth and blocked out the sun for months. Since there was no sun for many, many months, most of the plants on earth died the dinosaur’s food supply was destroyed in a period of months.While this asteroid theory is not new, what is new is the evidence for the theory. Until recently there was no evidence that an asteroid or a comet had hit the earth 65 million years ago. What happened recently was that scientists found large amounts of a rare earth element called iridium all over the world. This iridium was found in layers of the earth that are 65 million years old. The iridium was found in the same layers where the bones of the last dinosaurs were found.The element iridium is very uncommon, in fact, rare, on the earth. It is an element, however, that is more often found in space. Scientists speculate that this iridium was brought to earth 65 million years ago when a comet or asteroid hit the earth.The comet or asteroid theory explains two things: (1) It explains the larger amounts of the rare element iridium found in the 65-million-year-old layers of earth, and (2) it explains why the dinosaurs disappeared from the earth.Today scientists continue to debate the two theories: the climatic change theory and the asteroid theory. In the future evidence may be found that supports a new theory of why the terrible lizards died out.PostlisteningA. The comprehension check1. Recognizing information and check accuracy1. What does the statement “Dinosaurs are extinct” mean? (d)2. Why did the dinosaurs die out, according to the asteroid theory? (d)3. Which of the following statements is true, according, to the climatic change theory? (b)4. Which of the following statements is true? (b)5. The climatic change theory says that cold weather caused a serious shortage of food for the dinosaurs. (I heard it.)6. According to the asteroid theory, a dust cloud caused the plants to die. (I heard it.)7. Fewer plants are able to grow when the weather is cold. (I can infer it.)8. Some dinosaurs were over 100 feet tall. (I cannot infer it.)9. Larger amounts of iridium can be found in space than on earth. (I heard it.)10. If the asteroid theory is correct, the earth was dark, day and night, for several months. (I can infer it.)Listening factoid #1Dinosaurs are generally believed to have been very large animals and it's true that some of them were incredibly large. One dinosaur, believed to have been the largest dinosaur ever, is called seismosaurus. Seismosaurus literally means "earth shaker.” This animal was between 100 and 120 fe et long and weighed about 89 tons. To give you some idea of how big seismosaurus was, let me tell you that an American football field is 300 feet long. Consider that the African elephant weighs between six and seven tons, This means that seismosourus was about 13 to 14 times heavier than an African elephant. It's not surprising that his name means "earth shaker"!Listening Factoid #2Dinosaur life spans probably varied in length from tens of years to hundreds of years, Many scientists who study dinosaurs think that their possible age can be estimated from the maximum life spans of modern reptiles, such as the 66-year lifespan of the common alligator and the amazing lifespan of a Black Seychelles Tortoise. The BlackSeychelles Tortoise is now extinct, but one of these tortoises was captured in 1766, when it was an adult tortoise. The captured tortoise lived until 1918, a record 152 years in captivity. The sad thing is that the tortoise had an accidental death, so no one knows how long it might have lived, if it had not been for the accident. Now, these estimates of the life spans of the dinosaurs would be too long if it, turned out that dinosaurs were more similar to modern birds or animals, rather than to reptiles, as some scientists believe. Scientists may gain more knowledge about the life spans of the dinosaurs in coming years.Chapter 14 The American Civil War: Why It HappenedThe American Civil War was fought over 100 years ago. It began in 1861 and lasted until 1865. The battles of the American Civil War resulted in the death of 620,000 Americans. What caused this terrible civil war between the North and the South?Well, historians believe that there were many causes of the war. One of the important causes of the war was the friction between the North and the South over the issues of slavery. The southern way of life and the southern economy were based on the use of slave labor. For almost 250 years before the Civil War, the economy of the South depended on the use of black slaves. The slaves were used to plant and pick cotton and tobacco. Cotton and tobacco were the main crops grown in the South. Most southerners did not think it was wrong to own, buy, or sell slaves like farm animals. Slavery was, in fact, the foundation of the entire economy and way of life in the South. This was not the situation in the North. The northern economy did not depend on the use of slave labor. Why not?Well, in the South there were many large cotton plantations that used hundreds of slaves. In the North, however, there were smaller farms. The northern farmers planted many different kinds of crops, nor just cotton or tobacco. The Northerners did not need slaves, since their farms were smaller than most of the southern plantations. In fact, many Northerners were so opposed to slavery that thy wanted to end slavery completely. The northern attitude against slavery made the Southerners angry. So, for many years before the war, there was constant friction between the North and the South over this issue. This friction eventually led to war.There was other friction, too, as I said before, between the North and the South. There were, in other words, other causes of conflict between the North and the South. One involved the growth of industry in the North. While the South remained an agricultural area, the North became more and more industrialized. As industry increased in the North, it brought more people and greater wealth to the northern states. As a result, many Southerners began to fear northern political and economic domination. Because of this fear, many Southerners believed that the South should leave the Union and that they should form their own country.In 1860, the Southerners decided it was time to leave the Union when Abraham Lincoln became president of the United States. Lincoln, as you may know, was against slavery. The people of the South were afraid that their way of life and their economic system were in danger with Lincoln in the presidency. Consequently, the southern states decided to secede from the Union. In other words, they wanted to break away from the North and form a separate country. In 1861, South Carolina seceded, and by June of 1861 eleven states had seceded and established a new country. They called the new country the Confederate States of America. The war between the North and the South began when the southern states seceded from the Union.The main reason that the North went to war against the South was to bring the southern states back into the Union. In other words, the North went to war to keep the United States one country.After 4 years of terrible fighting, the North won the war against the South, and the US remained one country. The North won the war mainly because of its economic and industrial strength and power.The Civil War had 2 important results for the US: (1) the Civil War preserved the US as one country; and (2) it ended slavery in the US.Many Americans wonder what the US would be like today if the South had won the Civil War. The history of the US would have been very different if the South had won the war between the states.PostlisteningA. The Comprehension Check1. Recognizing Information and Checking Accuracy1. How long did the American Civil War last? (c)2. What was one cause of the American Civil War? (b)3. Describe the economy of the South at the time of the Civil War. (c)4. How was the economy of the North different from the economy of the South before the war? (d)5. How did the growth of industry change the North? (b)6. Why did the South decide to leave the Union and form its own country? (b)7. What was the name of the country formed by the southern states? (d)8. What was the most important reason that the North went to war with the South? (b)9. Why did the North win the war? (d)10. What did the Civil War accomplish? (c)11. The American Civil War started in 1861. (T)12. The American Civil War ended over 100 years ago. (T)13. There were many large cotton plantations in the North before the war. (F There were many large cotton plantations in the South.)14. The use of slaves in the South began around the time of the American Civil War. (F For almost 250 years before the Civil War, the economy of the South depended on the use of slaves.)15. Most Southerners felt that it was all right to own, buy, and sell slaves. (T)16. Most slaves were unhappy and wanted President Lincoln to free them. (?)17. Most Northerners wanted to use slaves to work on their small farms. (F The Northerners did not need slaves on their small farms.)18. The only reason for the American Civil War was the issue of slavery. (F There were other causes of the conflict between the North and the South, for example, the growth of industry in the North.)19. The North had better soldiers and generals than the South did. (?)20. The American Civil War was over in a few months. (F The war lasted from 1861 to 1865.)Listening Factoid # lIn 1853, a very important book against slavery was written by a woman who hated slavery. Her name was Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the title of the book was Uncle Tom's Cabin. The book quickly sold 100,000 copies; it helped create a wave of hatred against slavery in the North. When asked why she wrote it, Stowe stated that she had not written the book. She said, "God wrote it. I merely wrote his dictation." Uncle Tom's Cabin contributed to the start of the Civil War between the North and the South. In fact, when Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he asked, “Is this the little woman whose book made such a great war?”Listening Factoid #2More men died in the Civil War than in all other wars fought by the United States before or since that time. 620,000 men died of wounds and disease during the Civil War. In the 3 days of the battle at Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania, 51,116 men lost their lives. It's also known that 3,000 horses were killed at Gettysburg.Did you know that during the Battle of Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania, the only civilian to die was 20-year-old Mary Virginia Wade, who was shot through the heart while making bread?It is known that 3,530 Native Americans fought for the North (or the Union). One-third, or 1,018, of these Native Americans lost their lives.Did you know that when a husband died in the 1860s, she spent a woman mourned for a husband who minimum of two-and-a-half years in mourning? That meant little or no social activities: no parties, no outings, novisitors, and a wardrobe that consisted of nothing but black. However, the husband, when mourning for his wife who died, spent only three months in a black suit.Did you know that during the Civil War, including the times before and after, it was legal and socially acceptable for a man to beat his wife, provided the instrument used in the beating was no thicker than his thumb? Thus, we get the term: Rule of thumb.Chapter 15 Endangered Species: What Are the CausesOver the history of the earth, millions of animals and plant species have disappeared. Most of these species disappeared, or became extinct, because of natural causes such as climatic changes or a catastrophic event, like an asteroid hitting earth. What is different today is that most species that are in danger of becoming extinct are not endangered because of natural causes but because of human activity. Today, we will be looking at the reasons that many plants and animals are endangered and how these reasons, or causes, are related to human activity.The single most important cause of endangered species today is the destruction and/or degradation of habitat. Most animals and plants are adapted to live and reproduce in a specific environment, or habitat. They cannot survive if they lose the specific habitat that they are adapted to live and reproduce in.There are many ways that human activity destroys habitat. For example, forests, grasslands, and deserts, which provide habitat to many plants and animals, are cleared in order to develop residential areas for people to live in and industrial areas for people to work in. Land is also cleared to prepare it for farmers to grow crops on. Swamps and marshes, which provide habitat to many animal and plant species, are often drained and filled in, also to provide land for development or agriculture. In addition, rivers are sometimes dammed in order to provide people with electrical power. All of these human activities, such as clearing forests, grasslands, and deserts, draining swamps and marshes, and damming rivers result in the destruction of habitats that many plants and animals need to live and reproduce in.Closely related to the destruction of habitat is the degradation of habitat, which also endangered many species. Some examples of manmade causes that degrade habitat are oil spills, water pollution, and acid rain. You probably have seen pictures in newspapers or on TV of dead or dying marine animals and birds covered with oil after an oil tanker accident. Human beings also cause water pollution, which endangers the survival of many fish and marine animals. Acid rain, which results from people burning fossil fuels, also harms many species of fish and many species of trees. To sum up, some of the things related to human activity that result in the degradation of the environment are oil spills, water pollution, and acid rain.Illegal wildlife trade is the next major cause of endangered species. Although many governments have passed laws protecting endangered species, many animals are still illegally hunted. Sometimes people hunt these animals for food, but more often they hunt them only for specific parts of their bodies. For example, some species of animals such as tigers are illegally hunted for their furs. Elephants, which are the biggest land animals in the world and an endangered species, are often killed for their hides and tusks. These elephant hides and tusks are used to make souvenirs and works of art to sell to tourists and art collectors. Other animals such as chimpanzees are trapped to the sold to zoos for people to look at or for medical experiments. Some beautiful birds, such as some species of parrots, are in danger of extinction because so many are captured to be sold as pets to people all over the world.The third major cause that many species are endangered is over exploitation. People have always exploited, or used, plants and animals, and will, no doubt, continue to do so. It is only when people exploit animals and plants in an excessive manner that they become endangered. Some animals have already been hunted to extinction for food and sometimes for sport. Let me give you one well-known example---the passenger pigeon in the United States. Passenger pigeons were once so plentiful that people said they darkened the sky for hours, even days, when they flew over the land. Many people thought that the passenger pigeons could never disappear, but, in reality,they became extinct at the beginning of the 20th century. They became extinct as a result of over hunting, partly for food but mostly for sport. Today, some fish, like the cod, which is an important source of food for people in many parts of the world, have been over fished. As a result, cod are in danger of becoming extinct. At one time cod, like passenger pigeons, were very plentiful, and it seemed they could never be gone. And it’s not j ust animal species like the codfish that are in danger of becoming extinct. According to a recent article in the New Scientist, the Brazil nut tree, a very important source of nuts for both animals and people, is endangered due to over harvesting of the nuts.The fourth and final reason that some species today are endangered has to do with competition that is directly related to human activity. As you know, most animal and plant species have to compete with other species in their habitat for food, water, and any other resources they both need. This is usually natural, that is, not related to human activity. However, some animal and plant species today also face competition that is directly related to human activity. There are two kinds of competition that animal and plant species can face that is related to human activity. One has to do with domestic animals and the other has to do with what is called “introduced” species. Let’s discuss competition with domestic animals first.I’m sure you are all famili ar with most domestic animals such as cattle, horses, sheep, goats, and so forth. But did you know that these domestic animals can be a threat to wild, that is, non-domestic animals? The first reason is because these domestic animals compete for habitat with wild animals. And, in addition, the people who own these domestic animals often hunt, trap, and poison wild animals in order to protect their livestock. The wolf is an example of an animal that is widely hunted to near extinction to protect domestic animals.Another serious threat to some species is competition with introduced species, that is, plants or animals that are introduced, or brought, by humans into a new habitat, either on purpose or by accident. Take, for example, the introduction of a species of rabbit into Australia. In the 19th century, Europeans purposely introduced a species of European rabbit into Australia so they could hunt them for sport. Unfortunately, this animal has caused great damage to the habitat of many native animals and plants of Australia. Another introduced species, the brown tree snake, was accidentally introduced into the island Guam in the late 1940s. These snakes accidentally rode along on military cargo planes that landed there. Since that time, the brown tree snake has destroyed a large part of the bird population of Guam.Before I close, let me repeat the four major causes of endangered species today: 1) the destruction and/or degradation of habitat, 2) the illegal wildlife trade, 3) over exploitation, and 4) competition with domestic and “introduced” species.Let me conclude by saying that the relationship of all living plants and animals is complex and interdependent. The destruction of one animal or plant species can threaten the survival of other species of animals and plants. Human beings are part of the natural world and they might also, one day, become an endangered species themselves. Because the four major causes of endangered species today are largely the result of human activity, only human beings can change the situation. Time is running out for many endangered plant and animal species.PostlisteningA. The Comprehension Check1. Recognizing Information and Checking Accuracy1. What is the most important cause of endangered species today? (c)2. Which of the following is not mentioned as an endangered species? (b)3. Which of the following is an example of destruction of habitat? (d)4. Which of the following is an example of degradation of habitat? (a)5. Which of the following is an example of a domestic animal? (b)6. Which of the following is a source of food for humans that is in danger of becoming extinct? (d)7. Most of the causes that are endangering species today are related to human activity. (T)。
高级商务英语听说第四版听力原文
高级商务英语听说第四版听力原文Unit 4Task 2.2The Koreans aren’t concerned about how well planned a meeting is. They will not trust anything that doesn’t take years to build. For example, a strong relationship of 10 years is more important than a brand new office building or an impressive meeting. Trust is most important thing for them. They also seldom offer any opinions unless they are sure about what they want to say.Face is perhaps most important to the Japanese. For example, if you put pressure on a Japanese businessman at a meeting, he will respond with silence and your relationship is sure to be over even before the meeting finished. They will be more accepting of you if you learn to speak a little Japanese and look comfortable with their customs.Whenever there seems to be a business problem, the British will try to improve the situation by saying something amusing, but sometimes others don’t find this humour funny at all.Whenever you disagree with the French, they will enjoy arguing with you in a very lively way. They will offer you a business opportunity more quickly than people from other cultures, but they will change their minds at the last moment, if they feel that you are not doing business in a satisfactory way.Part 3.1Conversation 1A: I really think we need to get some people together to discuss this problem. If we don’t, it’ll just get worse.B: I believe you’re right, Leon. Who are you thinking of including?A: The Accountant, our Purchasing Manager, Tony, and of course you and me.B: All right, then. What are you going to tell them beforehand?A: I’ll give them this news report and the letter describing our problem. Do you think that’s OK?B: Yes, that’s fine. Let me know when and where.Conversation 2B: Good afternoon! I appreciate you all being here for this important meeting. Leon has asked you to join us to talk about the problem. You’ve a ll read the news report and the letter, so let’s get on with the discussion and try to solve the problem before it gets worse. Leon, could you start?Conversation 3A: Let’s see, we’ll begin with my boss opening the meeting. He can remind everyone about the report and letter. Then we should have the Accountant report on the cheques that have been written. Following that, we’ll ask the Purchasing Manager to review the purchasing procedure. I’m sure my boss and Tony will have some questions then, so next we’ll have questions. Then, we can go on to a discussion. Finally, hopefully, we’ll make a decision and close the meeting. There, that should do it!Conversation 4A: He llo! Why don’t you sit here? Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?C: Thanks! Coffee, please.A: Good afternoon, Tony. Here’s a seat for you.B: Is everyone here yet?A: No, not quite. The accountant has still to come. Boss, here’s your coffee. B: Thanks. I want to get started on time.A: Yes, I know. I’m sure we will.Conversation 5D: Hello! Accountant’s Office.A: Hello! This is Leon. Our boss wants to call a meeting to discuss a particular problem. Can you make it tomorrow afternoon?D: Tomorrow afternoon? What time?A: He’d like to begin at 2:30, in the conference room.D: Yes. I think I can make it. I have a lunch meeting, but I’ll hurry back in time for the meeting.A: Good. I’ll bring the information to your office in a little while.D: Oh! OK. Thanks.Conversation 6B: So, from our discussion this afternoon, it sounds like what we need to do is to stop the payment on this cheque, and contact our lawyer. Is that the decision you all think we should make?C: I’ll begin looking for new suppliers. That seems to be important, as wall. B: Yes, it is. We must do that.D: I’ll call the bank immediately and stop payment.B: And, Tony, we’ll follow your advice and turn the rest over to our lawyer. That seems to be the best way to handle this – for all of us.Part3.2(G: George; M: Mary)M: George, could you help me plan this meeting? I don’t have much experience planning meetings and you’ve been with the company for a long time. So…G: When is this meeting, Mary?M: Well, it’s this Friday.G: Friday, hmm. What kind of meeting is it going to be?M: We’re going to have a meeting with some new clients and try to get them to buy our new line of sportswear.G: Well, that sounds easy. The first thing we need to do is to create an agenda for the meeting and then give copies of it to everyone who is going to be attending. M: No problem, I have a list of all the people right here. The boss says that he wants the people from the sales department and the design department to give a short presentation.G: OK, but we should let them know as soon as possible. Ask them how long they will need for their presentations. Also, we should ask them if they are going to need anything special for the meeting, like a projector. I remember one time I forgotto ask about this and it was really embarrassing to be unprepared. Which meeting room are you going to use?M: Er, I think we should use 401; it’s the most comfortable room.G: Good idea. Is the boss going to make a presentation, too?M: Yes, he wants to tell the clients about the history of our company.G: OK, let’s write the agenda. It’s this Friday, the 1st of December. What time does the meeting start?M: 10:00 am, and it should be finished by noon because the boss is going to take them out for lunch afterwards.G: No problem, that should be more enough time. The first thing on the agenda should be to introduce everyone to each other. Then the boss gives them the information about our company. He usually takes about 10 minutes to do that.M: I think we should let the design people talk before the sales people, so that they can explain the products first.G: That’s a good idea. The customers need to know what they are going to buy first. After the presentations we should allow time for a discussion, in case the clients have any questions. If they don’t and the meeting is over more quickly than expected, you could give the clients a tour of the office. I think that would really impress the boss.M: Hey, this agenda looks good. I’ll go make copies for everyone.G: OK, don’t forget to make some extra copies to give the new clients and anyone else who for gets to bring theirs. Oh, one last thing, don’t forget to dress up for the meeting.M: I know. Thanks for all of your help.Part 4 video 1Gregory: Do you know why we are here?Richard: No. I have no idea. He just popped in and told me there would be a meeting at 3.Amy: I’m afraid it’s about cuts. I saw him this morning and he’s not happy. Chairperson: Bad news! I guess you’ve all seen last month’s sales figure for the laptop X600.A: No, actually I haven’t.R: Me, neither.C: Oh, well, there’s a twenty-one percent drop from July.G Twenty-one percent? That’s a disaster!A: I suppose you’re going to blame my sales team.C: No. Amy. We are not going to blame anyone. Not today. We need to decide what we are going to do about it.R: Wait. Before we go on, can we have a look at these poor figures?C: Sorry, I’m not sure if I have… Ah, yes, I’ve got a few copies here. As you can see…A: Larry, I want you to know that it’s not my fault! My people have been working really hard to promote sales.C: Yes, yes, I know. But the fact is that the results are not good.R: Maybe we can change…A: You should trust your team! There are always ups and downs in sales!C: Look, Amy. I do have confidence in my team! I have called this meeting to see what my team suggests we do! So shall we get on with it? I suppose we can start by finding out why we are having these poor results. Gregory, would you please give us an analysis of these figures?G: Er… Sorry, I don’t have anything prepared since I didn’t know…C: Oh, well…Part 6 Video 2Chairperson: I’m sorry to have called this meeting at such short notice. Did you all get a copy of the sales figures?Participants: Yes.C: Good. So you have seen from you memo the purpose of this meeting. Firstly, we need to figure out the reason for the drop, and secondly, what we should do about it. It might not be easy, but I want to finish the meeting by 3:00. Participants: OK. Uh-huh.C: Now, Amy, what do you think?Amy: Well, there’s a lot more competition out there now.C: That’s true, but our prices are competitive.Richard: In my opinion, the salespeople are not very motivated. We need to do something to encourage them to get out there and sell.A: I think they’re working pretty hard already.C: Bur it’s not hard enough, Amy! They need something to give them a bit of a push.What about the bonus system? How many salespeople get bonuses now?A: Not many.C: Really? Why not?A: The s ales quotas are pretty high. You have to make $60,000 in sales. That’s a lot. Most people average about $45,000.Gregory: Per month?A: Yes.R: Well, maybe we should lower our quotas.C: How’s that going to motivate them, Richard?R: If we lower the quotas, it will be easier for the salespeople to reach them. So more people will get…A: I don’t see the point. How’s that going to increase sales?C: Let him finish.R: Well, I think the quotas are just too high. The salespeople don’t t hink they can reach them so they don’t try. But, if someone is making, say, $45,000, and if the target is $50,000, then they’ll work just a little bit harder to reach $50,000.G: I see what you mean. And if they get a nice bonus at $50,000 then they’ll wor k even harder the next month.C: Yes. You’ve got a good point! Let’s come up with a proposal for lower quotas.。
高级英语听记教程1听力原文
高级英语听记教程1听力原文English Response:Lesson 1: Introducing the Basics of Advanced English Listening Comprehension.Welcome to the first lesson of our Advanced English Listening Comprehension course.In this lesson, we will introduce some of the basic concepts and strategies you need to know to improve your listening skills.First, it's important to understand the difference between listening and hearing.Hearing is the act of perceiving sound, while listening involves actively interpreting and understanding the sounds you hear.As you listen to English, you should be trying to understand the meaning of what is being said, not just the individual words.This is where comprehension comes in. Comprehension is the ability to understand the meaning of what you hear or read.There are a number of factors that can affect your listening comprehension, including:Your level of English proficiency.Your familiarity with the topic of the conversation.The speed of the speaker.The presence of background noise.Your ability to focus and concentrate.To improve your listening comprehension, you need to practice regularly and use a variety of listening materials.You should also try to listen to English in different contexts, such as watching movies, listening to music, and reading English newspapers and magazines.In addition, there are a number of specific strategies you can use to improve your listening skills, such as:Predicting what the speaker is going to say.Paying attention to key words and phrases.Making inferences.Summarizing what you hear.By following these tips, you can improve yourlistening comprehension and become a more confident English listener.Chinese Response:高级英语听力教程1听力原文。
视听说听力原文
Lesson 1 Napoleon之五兆芳芳创作Today, I’m going to talk to you about one of the most important historical figures in European history: Napoleon Bonaparte.Let ’s start by talking about his early life. Napoleon was born in 1769 on the island of Corsica. When he was only 10 years old, his father sent him to military school in France. Napoleon wasnot a very good student in most of his classes, but he excelled in mathematics and military science. When he was 16 yearsold,hejoinedtheFrencharmy.Inthatyear1785,hebeganthemilitaryc areerthat wouldbringhimfame ,power,riches and finallydefeat.NapoleonbecameageneralintheFrencharmyattheyou ngageof24.Napoleonhad many victories on the battlefield but he also became involved in French law and politics. And in 1804, at the age of 35,hebecamethefirst emperoroftheFrance. Napoleonwas many things. He was, first of all, a brilliant military leader. His soldiers were ready to die for him. As a result, N.won many military victories. At one time he controlled most of Europe, but some countries, including England, Russia, and Austria fought fiercely against him. His defeat —“his end”came when he decided to attack Russia. In this military campaign against Russia, he lost most of his army. ThegreatFrenchconquerordied alone – desertedbyhisfamilyandfriends in 1821.Napoleonwasonly51yearsoldwhenhedied.============================================== =============Lesson 2 PompeiiThe lecture for this class is about the city of Pompeii. A natural disaster occurred there almost 2000 years ago.Today many rich people who live in large metropolitan areas such as Beijing, Paris and New York leave the city in the summer. They go to the mountains or to the seashore to escape the city noise and heat.2,000 years ago, wealthy Romans did the same thing.They left the city of Rome in the summer. Many of these wealthy Romans spent their summers in the city of Pompeii, a beautiful city, located on the Bay of Naples.In the summer of the year 79 C.E., a young Roman boy who later became a very famous Roman historian was visiting his uncle in P.. The boy’s name was Pliny the Younger. One day Pliny was looking up at the sky. He saw a frightening sight. It was a very large dark cloud. This black cloud rose high into the sky. What Pliny saw was the eruption of the volcano called Mount Vesuvius.Rock and ash flew through the air. The city of P . was atthe foot of Mt. V.. When the volcano first erupted, many people were able to get out of the city and to escape death. In fact, 18,000 people escaped the terrible disaster. Unfortunately, there was not enough time for everyone to escape. More than 2,000 people died. These unlucky people were buried alive under the volcanic ash.The eruption lasted for about 3 days. When the eruption was over, P . was buried under 20 feet of volcanic rock and ash. The city of P . wasforgotten for almost 1,700 years.In the year of 1748 an Italian farmer was digging on his farm. As he was digging, he uncovered a part of a wall of the ancient city of P.. Soon archaeologists began to dig in the area. As time went by, much of the ancient city of P. was uncovered. Today tourists come from all over the world to see the ruins of the famous city of Pompeii.============================================== =============Lesson 4 Roller CoasterLet's talk about the physics involved in a ride on a roller coaster. I'm sure many of you have taken a ride on a roller coaster. A simple roller coaster consists of a frame with a track on it. The track is very much like a train track, this track goes over a series of hills and around curves. It follows a path that ends at the sameplace it started. A train of cars travels around on this track, very fast. The cars have two sets of wheels. One set of wheels rolls on top of the track, and the others set of wheels rolls below the track. The wheels below the track keep the fast moving cars from coming off the track, roller coaster cars as you probably know don't have any motors or engines. Instead, a chain pulls the cars up the first, tallest and steepy staff hill, this is how the ride begins. Then, at the top of the hill the chain comes off the cars and gravity takes over. gravity pushes the cars down the other side of the hill. the taller and steeper the first hill is, the faster the ride will be. And the farther the cars will travel. as the cars rolled downhill they gained speed. the cars have enough speed and energy to send them up the next hill. as the cars near the top of the second hill they begin to slow down. but then, the cars reached the top of that hill, and start down the other side. gravity again pushes them toward the ground. this process repeats on each hale. Okay, so let's go over this process again. first, the cars are pulled by a chain up the first highest hill. then they go down a very steep slope, at this point, there is enough energy to pull the cars up and over the next hill. when they reached the bottom of that hill, there is enough energy to climb the next hill, the roller coaster cars lose energy as the ride continues. so, the hills have to be smallertoward the end of the track, finally we roll to a stop on ground level right where we began.============================================== ==========Lesson 5 Language: How Children Acquire Theirs What I’d lie to talk to you about today is the topic of child language development. I know that you all are trying to developa second language, but for a moment, let’s think about a related topic, and that is: How children develop their first language. What do we know about how babies develop their language and communication ability? Well, we know babies are able to communicate as soon as they are born,even before they learn to speak their first language. At first, they communicate bycrying. This crying lets their parents know when they are hungry, or unhappy, or uncomfortable. However, they soon begin the process of acquiring their language. The first state of language acquisition begins just a few weeks after birth. At this stage, babies start to make cooing noises when they are happy. Then, around four months of age they begin to babble. Babies all over the world begin to babble around the same age, and they all begin to make the same kinds of babbling noises. Now, by the time they are ten months old, however, the babbling of babies fromdifferent language backgrounds sounds different. For example, the babbling of a baby in a Chinese-speaking home sounds different from the babbling of a baby in an English-speaking home. Babies begin a new stage of language development when they begin to speak their first words. At first, they invent their own words for things. For example, a baby in an English-speaking home may say ―baba‖ for the word ―bottle‖ or ―kiki‖ for ―cat.‖ In the next few months, babies will acquire a lot of words. These words are usually the names of things that are in the baby’s environment, words for food or toys, for example. They will begin to use these words to communicate with others. For example, if a baby holds up an empty juice bottle and then says ―juice,‖ to his father, the baby seems to be saying, ―I w ant more juice, Daddy‖ or ―May I have more juice, Daddy?‖ This word ―juice‖ is really a one-word sentence.Now, the next stage of language acquisition begins around the age of 18 months, when the babies begin to say two-word sentences. They begin to use a kind of grammar to put these words together. The speech they produce is called ―telegraphic‖ speech because the babies omit all but the most essential words. An English-speaking child might saysomething like ―Daddy, up‖ which actually could mean ―Daddy, pick me up, please.‖Then, between two and three years of age, young children begin to learn more and more grammar. For example, they begin to use the past tense of verbs. The children begin to say things such as ―I walked home‖ and ―I kissed Mommy.‖ They al so begin to overgeneralize this new grammar rule and make a log of grammar mistakes. For example, children often say such thins as ―I goed to bed‖ instead of ―I went to bed,‖ or ―I eated ice cream‖ instead of ―I ate ice cream.‖ In other words, the children have learned the past tense rule for regular verbs such as ―walk‖ and ―kiss,‖ but they haven’t learned that they cannot use this rule for all verbs. Some verbs like ―eat‖ are irregular, and the past tense forms for irregular verbs must be learned individually. Anyway, these mistakes are normal, and the children will soon learn to use the past tense for regular and irregular verbs correctly. The children then continue to learn other grammatical structures in the same way.If we stop to think about it, actua lly it’s quite amazing how quickly babies and children all over the world learn their language and how similar the process is for babies all over the world.Do you remember anything about how you learned your first language during the early years of your life? Think about theprocess for a minute. What was your first word? Was it ―mama‖ or maybe ―papa‖? Now think also about the process of learning English as a second language. Can you remember the first word you learned in English? I doubt that it was ―mama.‖ Now, think about some of the similarities and differences involved in the processes of child and adult language learning. We’ll talk about some similarities and differences in the first and second language learning processes tomorrow. See you then.============================================== =============Lesson 7 RobotsWhen people think about a robot, they often picture a machine t hat looks something like a human being. However, that’s not alw ays the case. Most robots do not look much like a human being a t all, they look like machines because that’s what most of them a re- industrial machines.Today, I’m going to talk mostly about industrial robots used in industry. These are robots that do work that for humans would b e physically demanding, repetitive, dangerous or very boring. M ost industrial robots work on in an assembly line in a factory. Fo r example, a robot might put liz on jars of fruits or start boxesfor shaping. In a car factory, robotic arms on an assembly line join the parts of a car together; other robots tighten the boats on the c ar’s wheelsor paint the car. There are thousands of robots putting cars together in ___ plan. These robots are very precise when re peating a task. For example, they always tighten boats with the s ame exact amount of force. They always move a heavy engine t o exactly where it should be and they always put ahold in the ex act same place in every car door hour after hour. These are exam ples of robots doing the work humans could do but the robots ar e doing the work more efficiently and precisely.So, just how do robots work? To do its job a robot first needs a control system. This control system directs the robots mechanica l parts. The control system of a robot is sort of speak--a robot br ain. So how does a robot learn which action to do first and whic h of its moving part needs to do that action? A robot learns its jo b with the help and guidance of a human being. To teach an indu strial robot to do something, first a person must use a hand-held computer. The computer is used to guide the robot’s arm and ha nd through the motions it needs to do. Then, the robot stores exa ct movement in its computer memory. The robot has sensors to g ather information, so now the robot will use its sensors to direct its actions. The robot tells its moving part what to do and then it performs the action. For example, to pick up and move a box, the robot first finds the box, next it decides the weight of the box. Then it decides how much force is needed to lift and move the b ox, and finally, it finds the correct place to put the box down. It r epeats the process over and over until it's turned off. It does the s ame job until it is given the job and new program to follow. Som e scientists think that robots of the future will be smarter than to day's robots. They may also look more human like or even anim al like. In fact, they may work and think more like humans do. T he industrial robots we've been talking about so far today are aut omatic robots.They are known as automatic robots because they have program to follow a specific series of movement. Usually, they have parts that move but they really don't travel around. On the other hand, an autonomous machine can change itsbehavior in relation to its surroundings. For example, an autonomous robot with wheelsor legs to move around can change direction when it senses that th ere are something in its way. A robot such as …can detect the m ovement of people nearby. It can move to avoid bumping into sb . coming toward it. Asthma can even learn to dance by following the movements of a dancer next to it. I don't know whether or w hen people would welcome autonomousmachines or human like robots. I guess that we will not only think about that in the future. We need to think about how we will interact with our global d octor: robal teacher, robal pet, or even our robal friend.============================================== =============Lesson 8 A Tidal WaveA tidal wave is a very large and very destructive wall of water that rushes in from the ocean towards the shore. Many scientists call these waves tsunami. In Japanese tsunami means “storm wave.” But do you know that tidal are not caused by storms and that they are not true tidal at all? A true tidal is the regular rise a waves and fall of ocean waters, at definite times each day, but a tidal wave comes rushing in suddenly and unexpectedly. A tidal wave is caused by an underwater earthquake. The word “seaquake” is made up of two words, the word “sea” which means “ocean” and the word “quake”. “To quake” means “to shake” or “to tremble.” When a seaquake takes place at the bottom of the ocean, the ocean floor shakes and trembles, and sometimes the ocean floor shifts. It is this shaking that produces the tidal wave. The tidal wave begins to move across the sea at great speed.Tidal waves have taken many human lives in the past. Today scientists can predict when a tidal wave will hit land. They use a seismograph to do this. A seismograph is an instrument thatrecords the strength, the direction, and the length of time of an earthquake or seaquake. It is not possible to hold back a tidal wave, but it is possible to warn people that a tidal wave is coming. This warning can save many lives.============================================== =============Lesson 9 Levels of LanguageToday I want to talk about levels of language usage. You probably have noticed that people express similar ideas in different ways, depending on the situation they are in. This is very natural. All languages have two general, broad categories, or levels of usage: a formal level and an informal level. English is no exception. I’m not talking about correct and incorrect English. What I’m talking about are two levels of correct English. The difference in these two levels is the situation in which you use a particular level. Formal language is the kind of language you find in textbooks, reference books such as encyclopedias, and in business letters. For example, a letter to a university would be in formal style. You would also use formal English in compositions and essays that you write in school. People usually use formal English when they give classroom lectures or speeches and at ceremonies such as graduations. We also tend to use formal language inconversations with persons we don’t know well or with people we have a formal relationship with, such as professors, bosses, doctors, friends of our parents’, strangers, etc. Informal language is used in conversations with colleagues, family and friends, and when we write personal notes or letters to close friends, as well as in diaries, etc.Formal language is different from informal language in several ways. However, today I’m going to talk only about a couple of ways. First of all, formal language tends to be more polite. Interestingly, it usually takes more words to be polite. For example, I might say to a friend or family member, "Close the door, please", but to a stranger or someone in authority I probably would say "Would you mind closing the door" or "Excuse me, could you please close the door" Using words like "could" and "would" makes my request sound more polite, but also more formal.Another difference between formal and informal language is some of the vocabulary. There are some words and phrases that belong in formal language and others that are informal. Let me give you a couple of examples of what I mean. Let’s say "I’m just crazy about soccer!" But if I were talking to my supervisor or a friend of my parents’, I would probably say "I really enjoysoccer" or "I like soccer very much". Let’s say I’m telli ng someone some news I heard about the police arresting a criminal. To my friend I might say "The cops bagged the crook". To my parents’ friend I might say "The police arrested the thief". Although the line between formal and informal language is not always clear and although people are probably less formal today than in the past, it is useful to be aware that these two levels, or categories, do exist. The best way for a non-native speaker of English to learn the difference is to observe the different ways English speakers speak or write in different situations. Television newscasters, your college professors in class, your doctors in their offices, etc, will usually speak rather formally. However, your classmates, teammates, family members, friends, etc. will generally speak in an informal fashion. The difference can be learned over time by observing and interacting with native speakers.============================================== =============Lesson 10 Power: The Kinds People Use and AbuseJohn Mack, who is the author of a book about power, says that the need for a sense of personal power is one of the primary forces in human life. On the other hand, he also says that afeeling of powerlessness is one of the most disturbing of human emotions ―a feeling to be avoided at all costs. Just what is power?Psychologists define power as the ability to determine or to change the actions or behavior of other people. Psychologists are trying to identify different kinds of power so that they can better understand how people use these different kinds of power to gain control over other people. They are trying to understand how people manipulate other people for good and evil purposes. Psychologists have identified five basic types of power, and I’d like to talk about each of these briefly in the next few minutes. The first type of power is called information power. Some psychologist believe that information power is one of the most effective types of power and control. The person who has information that other people want and need, but do not have, is in a position of power. Why is this? Well, most people like to receive and have information. Having information increases a person’s own sense of power. People who provide information can manipulate those who do not have information. Often, when people receive information, they do not know that they are being manipulated by those who provided the information. The psychologist named Edwards says, for example, that newspapersprovide a lot of information to their readers, and that these newspaper readers generally believe the information they read. Readers do not question the accuracy of the reports about world events they read in the newspapers.A second type of power is called referent power. For example, a person may want to behave like the members of a particular group, such as a soccer team ( or a group of classmates), or a person may identify with and want to be like a certain teacher, a friend, or say , a rock star. If you identify with another person, that person has power over you, and that person can influence your actions and behavior. Many people imitate and are controlled by the people they identify with. Let me give you a sad example of the use of this type of power for evil purposes. In the 1970s in Jonestown, Guyana, more than 900 people committed suicide when their religious leader Jim Jones told them to kill themselves. They did what he told them to do because he had referent power over them. They identified with him; they believe him, and they did what he told them to do. More recently a man named David Koresh controlled the lives and destinies of a small community of men, women, and children in Waco, Texas. Most people in his community died ina fire, along with their leader, during a confrontation with U.S. government agents.A third kind of power is classified as legitimate power. Government officials, according to Edwards, have a lot of legitimate power. When the government decides to raise taxes or make people go to war, most people will do what their government officials tell them to do. One psychologist reported on an experiment that showed an example of this type of power. In this experiment, a researcher asked people on the street to move away from a bus stop. When he was dressed as a civilian, few people moved away from the bus stop. When the researcher was dressed as a guard, most people moved away from the bus stop. The guard’s uniform seemed to give the researcher a look of legitimate power.A fourth kind of power is called expert power. An expert is a person who is very skilled in some area, such as sports, or who knows a lot about something, such as computers. Most people are impressed by the skills or knowledge of an expert. Some of these “experts” use their skills at playing sports or knowing about co mputers to gain power and influence ―and to gain money or admiration, according to Edwards. In other words, they use their expertise to gain power.Finally, reward or coercive power is used by people who have the power to reward or punish another person’s actions or behavior. Giving a reward will change people’s behavior because it offers people a chance for gain. Giving a punishment may or may not cause the people to do what the powerful person wants them to do, but the changes may not last for a long time. The person who uses coercive power may also have to carefully watch thatthe less powerful person does, in fact, change his or her actions or behavior.To sum up, then, power may be gained in many ways. It may come from having information that other people want or need; it may come from being a referent for other people to identify with or to imitate; it may come from having an official, or legitimate, position of authority; it may come from having skills or expertise; or it may come from having the power to reward or punish people. We all exercise one or more of these various kinds of power over other people, and other people will try to exercise one or more of these kinds of power over us throughout our lives.============================================= =====Lesson 11 Asian and African Elephants: Similarities and Diffe rencesThe African and the Asian elephants are the largest land animals in the world. They are really enormous animals. The African and the Asian elephants are alike, or similar, in many ways, but ther e are differences between the 2 types of elephants, too.What are some of the similarities between the African and the A sian elephant? Well, for one thing, both animals have long noses , called trunks. An elephant sometimes uses its trunk like a third hand. Both kinds of elephants use their trunks to pick up very s mall objects and very large, heavy objects. They can even pick u p trees with their trunks. For another thing, both the African and the Asian elephants have very large ears, although the African el ephant’s ears are considerably larger.In addition, both animals are intelligent. They can be trained to d o heavy work. They can also be trained to do tricks to entertain people. In other words, they both work for people, and they ente rtain people also.As I said before, the African and Asian elephants are alike in ma ny ways, but they are also quite different, too. Let me explain w hat I mean. The African elephant is larger and heavier than the A sian elephant. Asian elephantsreach a height of about 10 feet, andAfrican elephants reach about 13 feet tall.The African male elephant weighs between 12,000 and 14,000 p ounds. In contrast, the average Asian male elephant weighs betw een 7,000 and 12,000 pounds. So one is bigger than the other, but as you can see,both are still enormous animals.Another difference between the 2 kinds of elephants is the size of the ears. Asian elephants have smaller ears than African eleph ants . The African elephant has 2 very large teeth. These teeth ar e called tusks. The Asian elephanthowever sometimes does not have any tusks at all. The elephant s differ in color, too. The African elephant is dark gray in color while the Asian elephant is light gray. Occasionally an Asian ele phant is even white ! The last big difference between the 2 types of elephants is their temperament. The Asian elephant is tamer t han the African elephant, orin another way, the African elephant is much wilder than the Asi an elephant. As a result, it’s more difficult to train the African el ephant to perform tricks to entertain people. That’s why the elep hants you see in the circus are probably Asian elephantsand not African elephants.Yes, there certainly are differences between the African and the Asian elephants, but as I mention at the start of mytall, there is one big similarity between the 2 animals: they are b oth fascinating and enormous animals.============================================== =============Lesson 13 Lincoln and KennedyJohn F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln lived in different times a nd had very different family and educational backgrounds. Kenn edy lived in the 20th century; Lincoln lived in the 19th century. Kennedy was born in 1917, whereas Lincoln was born more tha n a hundred years earlier, in 1809. As for their family backgroun ds, Kennedy came from a rich family, but Lincoln’s family was not wealthy. Because Kennedy came from a wealthy family, he was able to attend expensive private schools. He graduated from Harvard University. Lincoln, on the other hand, had only one ye ar of formal schooling. In spite of his lack of formal schooling, h e became a well-known lawyer. He taught himself law by readin g law books. Lincoln was, in other words, a self-educated man. In spite of these differences in Kennedy and Lincoln’s backgrou nds, some interesting similarities between the 2 men are evident. In fact, books have been written about the strange coincidences in the lives of these 2 men. Take forexample ,their political careers. Lincoln began his political career in congress. Similarly, Kennedy also began his political career in congress. Lincoln was elected to the U.S. House of Represent atives in 1847, and Kennedy was elected to the House in 1947. S o they were elected to congress exactly 100 yearsapart. Another interesting coincidence is that each man was elect ed president of the United States in a year ending with the numb er 60. Lincoln was elected president in 1860, and Kennedy was elected in 1960; furthermore, both men were president during ye ars of civil unrest in the country. Lincoln was president during th e American Civil War. At the time Kennedy became president,African-Americans were fighting for their civil rights ,unrest took the form of civil rights demonstrations. Timeschange and it’s just over 15 more years,the United States elected its first African-American president Barack Obama. President Obama was elected in 2008 and…,but let me get back to talk about Lincoln and Kennedy.Another striking similarity between these 2 men was that, as you probably know, neither president lived to complete his term in o ffice. Lincoln and Kennedy were both assassinated while in offic e. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 inDallas, Texas, after only 1,000 days in office. Lincoln was assas sinated in 1865 a few days after the end of the American Civil W。
listen to this:高级英语听力 lesson 13
listen to this:高级英语听力 lesson 13 Lesson ThirteenSection One: News in BriefTapescript1. A special committee of twelve senators today began theimpeachment trial of Federal J udge Harry Claiborne.It's the firstsuch proceeding in fifteen years. Claiborne is serving a jail sentencefor tax evasion.2. President Reagan today continued his campaign for a drUg7freeAmerica. He ordered mandatory testing for federal workers in sensi-tive positions. And he also sent Congress a legislative package thatwould increase federal anti-drug spending by nine hundred milliondollars, much of that on increased border patrols. The President saidthe legislation is the federal government's way of just saying no todrugs. "We're getting tough on drugs; we mean business. To thosewho are thinking of using drugs, we say 'Stop.' And to those whoare pushing drugs, we say 'Beware.' " Mandatory drug testing forsome federal workers is the most controversial part of the President'splan. It's been condemned by some employee groups.3. One person was killed and more than fifty injured today in Pariswhen a bomb exploded at the drivers' permit office at police head-quarters. It was the fourth blast in seven days in the French capital.Section Two: News in DetailTapescriptin Paris today, one person was killed and more than fifty wereinjured when a bomb exploded at police headquarters. This is thefourth attack on a crowded public target in a week. A police officerwas killed yesterday while removing a bomb from a restaurant onthe Avenue Champs Elysee. Minutes after that incident, Prime Min-ister Jacques Chirac announced new security measures aimed atcurbing terrorist activities in, France. Melodie Walker reports fromParis.A group calling itself 'the Committee for Solidarity with Araband Middle-Eastern Prisoners' has claimed responsibility for thecurrent series of bombings in Paris, in addition to ten other attacksin the French capital over the past year. The Committee has deliv-ered messages to news agencies in Beirut threatening to continue itsbombing campaign in Paris until the French government agrees torelease three men jailed in France on charges of terrorism. One of theconvicted prisoners, George lbraham Abdullah, is believed to be theleader of the Lebanese Army Faction suspected of killing a US mili-tary attache in Paris in 1982. The French government has officiallydeclared it will not release tht prisoners. In response to the repeatedattacks in Paris, Prime Minister Chirac last night announced newanti-terrorist measures: military patrols along the French boiderswill be increased and, beginning today, all foreigners will require avisa to enter France. Citizens of European Common Market coun-tries and Switzerland will be exempt from the visa requirement. ButAmericans planning to visit France will need to apply for visas at thenearest French consulate. For an initial period of fifteen days, how-ever, emergency visas will be granted at French airports and otherborder checkpoints. France has been plagued with terrorism at homeand abroad in recent years. In the past two weeks, three Frenchmembers of the United Nations peace keeping force in Lebanonhave been killed by remote-controlled bombs. Today, France,calledfor an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss therole and safety of the force. Seven French hostages in Beirut are alsoa major concern for the Chirac government. Dominique Moazi, As-sociate Director of the French Institute forInternational Relations,says the bombings in Paris, the attacks on the UN troops, and thehostage situation are all indirectly related.'I think there is a global goal, which is looked after, and that isto punish France for its involvement in Middle-Eastern affairs, ei-ther Lebanon or the war between Iran and Iraq. And France is, atthe same time, more visible than any other European actors, inLebanon and in the Gulf.'According to Moazi, the long French tradition of granting polit-ical asylum has made France more open and accessible to terroristactivities."In the past we have given, unfortunately, the impression, whichwas maybe a reality, of being less resolute in our treatment of terror-ist action than, for example, the Israelis. So that combination of visi-bility, vulnerability, and lack of resolution has made us the ideal tar-get of terrorists now.'In a statement released today, President FrancoisMitterandsaid, ' The fight against terrorism is the business ofthe entirenation.' But despite the govemment's determination to combat ter-rorism, the question of how to do it remains unanswered. For Na-tional Public Radio, this is Melodie Walker in Paris.Section Three: Special ReportTapescriptThe United States Senate Intelligence Committee today releaseda report calling for sweeping changes in US security policies andcounter-intelligence, its first unclassified assessment of recent spycases. The Committee says the damage done has cost billions of dol-lars, threatening America's security,as never before. NPR's DavidMalthus has the story.The report states that the damage done from espionage and laxsecurity is worse than anyone in the government has yet acknow-ledged publicly. It concludes that US military plans and capabilitieshave been seriously compromised, intelligence operations gravelyimpaired. US technological advantages have been overcome in someareas because of spying. And diplomatic secrets were exposed to ad-versaries. Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy is Vice-Chairman ofthe Senate Intelligence Committee.'The national security is many times threatened more by thisthan by the buildup of Soviet arms, or the buildup of Soviet person-nel, or breakthrough in weapon development."The Committee report says foreign intelligence services havepenetrated some of the most vital parts of US defense, intelligence,and foreign policy structures. The report cites a string of recentcases, including the Walker-Whitworth spy ring, which gave the So-viets the ability to decode at least a million military communications.Despite some improvements by the Reagan Administration in securi-ty and tough talk over the last two years, the report also concludesthat the administration has failed to follow through with enoughspecific steps to tighten security, and that its counter-intelligenceprograms have lacked the needed resources to be effective. Republi-can Dave Durenberger of Minnesota, Chairman of the IntelligenceCommittee, sums up the current situation this way:'Too many secrets, too much access to secrets, too many spies,too little accountability for securing our national secrets, and too lit-tle effort given to combatting the very real threat which spies repre-sent to our national security.'Senator Durenberger said the Committee found someprogresshas been made in toughening up security clearances for personnel,and some additional resources have been devoted to counteringtechnical espionage, but he said much more needs to bedone and hedescribed the current security system as one 'paralyzed by bureau-cratic inertia.' The Committee makes ninety-five specific recom-me,ndations, including greater emphasis on re-investigations ofcleared personnel, a streamlined classification system, more moneyfor counter-intelligence elements of the FBI, CIA and the militaryservices, and tighter controls on foreign diplomats from hostile coun-tries. The report cites FBI assessments on how extensively the Sovi-ets use, diplomatic cover to hide spying activity. There aretwenty-one hundred diplomats, UN officials, and trade representa-tives from the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries living in theUnited States. And according to the FBI, 30% of them are profes-sional intelligence officers. The Committee report also says the Sovi-et Union is effectively using United Nations organizationsworldwide to conduct spying operations. It says approximately eighthundred Soviets work for UN agencies, three hundred of them inNew York, and one fourth of those are working for the KGB or theSoviet military intelligence, the GRU. Next week, the Reagan Ad-ministration is to deliver to. the Congress its, classified report oncounter-intelligence. I'm David Malthus in Washington.。
高级英语听说1Chapter8
Part 4 Real-World Tasks
Shanghai Knights 《上海武士》 comedy 喜剧
Part 4 Real-World Tasks
science fiction 科幻片 Matrix 《黑客帝国》
Part 4 Real-World Tasks
horror movie 恐怖片 Scream 《尖叫》
home.
Part 1 Conversation: Watching TV
couch potato
a person who watches a lot of television and does not have an active style of life
Part 1 Conversation: Watching TV
crazy stupid or not sensible
It's a crazy idea. You're crazy to buy a house without seeing it.
Part 2 News Report: An Airplane Crash
A news report about an airplane crash
block vt. 阻塞 A fallen tree is blocking the road. My view was blocked by a tall man in front of me. block n. (四面围有街道的) 街区
The store is three blocks away.
Part 2 News Report: An Airplane Crash run out of 用光,花完 She ran out of time and didn't finish the last question. He’s always running out of money before payday. Mary never runs out of ideas for having parties.
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Video Script------------------------------10.25Pirates of the InternetIt’s no secret that online piracy has decimated the music industry as millions of people stopped buying CDs and started stealing their favorite songs by downloading them from the internet. Now the hign-tech thieves are coming after Hollywood. Illegal downloading of full-length feature films is a relatively new phenomenon, but it’s becoming easier and easier to do. The people running America’s movie studios know that if they don’t do som ething----and fast---they could be in the same boat as the record companies. Correspodent: “What’s really at stake for the movie industry with all this privacy?” Chernin: “Well, I think, you know, ultimately, our absolute features.” Peter Chernin runs 20th Century Fox, one of the biggest studios in Hollywood. He knows the pirates of the Internet are gaining on him. Correspont: “Do you know how many movies are being downloaded today, in one day, in the United States?” Chernin: “I think it’s probably in the h undreds of thousands, if not millions.” Correspondent: “And it’s only going to grow.” Chernin: “It’s only going to grow. Somebody can put a perfect digital copy up on the internet. A perfect digital copy, all right. And with the click of mouse, send out a million copies all over the world, in an instant.”5And it’s all free. If that takes hold, kiss Hollywood goodbye. Cherninrecently organized a “summit” between studio moguls and some high school and college kids---the people most likely to be downloading. Chernin: “And we said, ‘Let’s come up with a challenge. Let’s give them five movies, and see if they can find them online.’ And we all sat around and picked five movies, four of which hadn’t been released yet. And then we came back half an hour later. They had found all five movies that we gave them. ” Correspondent: “Even the ones that hadn’t even been released yet?” Chernin: “Even the ones that hadn’t even been released yet.” Correspondent: “Did these kids have any sense that they were stealing?” Chernin: “You know it’s… it’s a weird dichotomy. I think they know it’s stealing, and I don’t think they think it’s wrong. I think they have an attitude of, ‘It’s here.’” The Internet copy of last year’s hit Signs, starring Mel Gibson, was stolen even before director M. Night Shyamalan could organize the premiere. Correspondent: “The movie was about to be released. When did the first bootleg copy appear?”6Shyamalan: “Two weeks before it or three weeks before it. Before the Internet age, when somebody bootlegged a movie, the only outlet they had was to see it to those vendors on Times Square, where they had the boxes set up outside and they say, ‘Hey, we have Signs---it’s not even out yet.’ And you walk by and you know it’s illegal. But now, because it’s the digi tal age, you can see, like, a clean copy. It’s no longer the kind of thesleazy guy in Times Square with the box. It’s just, oh, it’s on this beautiful site, and I have to go, ‘Click.’” Correspondent: “How did those movies get on the Internet? How did that happen?” Chernin: “Through an absolute act of theft. Someone steals a print from the editor’s room; someone steals a print from the person; the composer who’s doing the music…absolute physical theft, steals a print, makes a digital copy, and uploads it.” Correspondent: “And there you go.” Digital copies like this one of The Matrix Reloaded have also been bootlegged from DVDs sent to reviewers or ad agencies, or circulated among companies that do special effects, or subtitles. Chernin: “The other way that p re-released movies end up (stolen) is that people go to … there are lots of screenings that happen in this industry… People go to those screenings with a camcorder, with a digital camcorder, sit in the back, turn the camcorder on…”Correspondent: “And record it.” This is one of those recorded-off-the-screen copies of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean. Not great quality, but not awful either. And while it used to take forever to download a movie, anyone with a high-speed Internet connection can now have a full-length film in an hour or two.Saaf: “Well, this is just one of many websites where basically people, hackers if you will, announce their piracy releases.” Randy Saaf runs acompany called Media Defender that helps movie studios combat online piracy. C orrespondent: “Look at this, all these new movies that I haven’t even seen yet, all here.” Saaf: “ Yep.” Correspondent: “Secondhand Lions that just came out. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person in this country who has never downloaded anything. But maybe there is a few others of us out there. So I’m going to ask you to show us Kazaa, that’s the biggest downloading site, right?” Saaf: “Right. This is the Kazaa media desktop. Kazaa is the largest peer-to-peer network.” It’s called peer-to-peer because computer users are sharing files8with each other, with no middleman. All Kazaa does is provide the software to make that sharing possible. When we went online with Randy Saaf, nearly four million other Kazaa users were there with us, sharing every kind of digital file. Saaf: “Audio, documents, images, software, and video. If you wanted a movie, you would click on the video section, and then you would type in a search phrase. And basically what this is doing now, it is asking the people on the peer-to-peer network, ‘Who has Finding Memo’?” Within seconds, 191 computers sent an answer: “We have it.” This is Finding Memo, crisp picture and sound, downloaded free from Kazaa a month before its release for video rental or sale. If you don’t want to watch it on a little computer screen, you don’t have to. On the newest computers, you can just “burn” it onto a DVD and watch it onyour big-screen TV. And that’s a dagger pointed right at the heart of Hollywood. Chernin: “Where movies make the bulk of their money is on DVD and home videos. 50 percent of the revenues for any movie come out of home video…” Correspondent: “15 percent?” Chernin: “50 percent so that if piracy occurs and it wipes out your home video profits or ultimately your television profits, you are out9of business. No movies will get made.” Even if movies did get made, Night Shyamalan says that wouldn’t be any good, because profits would be negligible, so budgets would shrink dramatically. Shyamalan: “And slowly it will degrade what’s possible in that art form.” Rosso: “Technology always wins. Always. You can’t shut it down.” Wayne Rosso is Hollywood’s enemy. They call him a pirate, but officially he’s the president of Grokster, another peer-to-peer network that works just like Kazaa. Correspondent: “Ok,I have downloaded your softwar e.” Rosso: “Right.” Correspondent: “Ok, did I pay to do that?” Rosso: “No, it’s free.” Correspondent: “So who pays you? How do you make money?” Rosso: “We’re like radio. We are advertising-supported.” Correspondent: “And how many people use Grokster?” Rosso: “Ten million.” Correspondent: “Ten million people have used it.” Rosso: “A month.” Correspondent: “Every month, ten million people?” Rosso: “Uh-huh, uh-huh. And growing.”10Correspondent: “Use it to download music, movies, software, video games, what else?” Rosso: “I will assume. See, we have no way of knowing what people are downloading.” Correspondent: “That’s just a fig leaf. You are facilitating, allowing, helping people steal.” Rosso: “We have no idea what the content is, and whatever it is…” Correspondent: “Well, you may not know the specifics, but you know that’s what your site…” Rosso: “And we can’t stop it. We have no control over it.” Correspondent: “But you are there for that purpose, that is why you exist, of co urse it is.” Rosso: “No, no, no, no, no, no.” Correspondent: “Come on, this is the fig leaf part.” Rosso: “No, no, no, no, no.” Shyamalan:“He is totally conformable with putting on his site a stolen piece of material. Am I wrong in that? If my movie was bootlegged, he’d be totally comfortable putting it on his site?” Correspondent: “Because I have nothing to do with it.” Shyamalan:“Yeah, right.” Correspondent: “Because I just provided the software.” Shyamalan:“Yeah, right. So, immediately, how can you ever have a11conversation with him? Because he’s taken a stolen material and he is totally fine with passing it around in his house. All these, all these are illegal activities. So, I’m not, it’s just my house, I’m not doing anything wrong.” But it is Rosso w ho has the law on his side. A federal judge hasruled that Grokster and other file-swapping networks are not liable for what their downloaders are doing. Rosso: “So we are completely legal, and unfortunately this is something the entertainment industry refuses to accept. They seem to think the judge’s decision was nothing but a typo.” The studios are appealing that court ruling. And they may follow the music industry and begin to sue individuals who download movies. And they are fighting the pirates in other ways, with ads about people whose jobs are at risk because of the piracy---people like the carpenters and painters who work on film sets. At the same time, Hollywood is trying to keep copies of movies from leaking in the first place. Chernin: “ You will very seldom go to an early screening of a movie right now where, probably you don’t notice until you pay attention, someone’s not in the front of that auditorium with infrared binoculars looking for somebody with a camcorder.”12And once a movie is released, or copies do begin to leak, the studios hire people like Randy Saaf to hack the hackers. Saaf: “What we’re just trying to do is make the actual pirated content difficult to find. And the way we do that is by, you know, serving up fake files.” It’s called “spoofing.” Saaf and his employees spend their days on Kazaa and Grokster, offering up thousands of files that look like copies of new movies, but aren’t. Correspondent: “So if I had clicked on any number of those FindingNemo offerings, I could have clicked on one of yours, or somebody like you. And what would I have found after my hour and a half of downloading?” Saaf: “it might just be a blank screen or something. You know, typically speaking, what we push out is just not the real content.” Correspond ent: “What you are trying to do is make this so impossible, so infuriating that people will just throw up their hands and say it’s just easier for me to go rent this thing, buy the DVD or whatever, it’s just easier.” Saaf: “Right.” Correspondent: “That’s your goal.” Saaf::“Right.”13Correspondent: “Does that work? Is that a good idea?” Rosso: “No. It doesn’t work. I mean I don’t blame them but it doesn’t work because what happens is that the community cleanses itself of the spoofs.” He means that downloaders quickly spread the word online about how to tell the fake movie files from the real thing. Correspondent: “It’s like an arms race(军备竞赛), isn’t it?” Chernin: “That’s exactly what it’s like. It’s like an arms race. There will be, you know, they’re gonna get a step ahead. We’re gonna try and get that step back.” Rosso: “But I’ll tell you one thing: I’ll bet on the hackers.” Correspondent: “That they will break whatever…” Rosso: “The studios come up with.” Correspondent: “The companies throw at them.”Hollywood knows that downloading off the Internet is the way millionsof consumers want to get their entertainment---and that isn’t going away. Chernin: “The generally accepted estimate is that more that 60 million Americans have downloaded file-sharing softwa re onto their computers.” Correspondent: “60 million.”14Chernin: “At 60 million Americans, that’s a mainstream product. That’s not a bunch of college kids or, you know, a bunch of computer geeks. That’s America.” So, instead of trying to stop it entirely, the studios are looking for ways to embrace it, but get paid too. Wayne Rosso says the best way is to negotiate some kinds of licensing deal with him. Rosso: “If the movie industry acts now and starts exploring alternatives and solutions with guys like m e, hopefully they won’t have a problem.” Correspondent: “What if they try to buy you?” Rosso: “I’d sell it in al heartbeat.” Correspondent: “You would sell, Grokster would sell to a movie studio?” Rosso: “Sure, call me.” The idea of making deals with what Peter Chernin calls “a bunch of crooks” doesn’t appeal to Hollywood. Instead, Fox and other studios have just launched their own site, Movielink, where consumers can download a film for a modest fee, between three and five dollars. Chernin: “I think you wo uld love the idea that you don’t have to go to the video store. You can do this. And that’s what we’re working15on. But in order for that to be effective, we have to stop privacy, because the most effective business model in the world can’t compete with free.” Not that Peter Chernin is interested, but he won’t have the chance to buy Grokster, at least not from Wayne Rosso. A few days ago, Rosso announced that he is leaving Grokster to take over as president of another file-swapping software company, this one based in Spain. Grokster will continue under new management.Key to the exercises Task I Global Listening1. C2. C.3. D .4. D5. A6. B.7. B8. CTask II Episode 1 1. T 2. F 3. T 4. F 5. T Listen for DetailsEpisode 2 1 2 3Episode 3 (1) technology always wins (2) software (4) radio(3) advertising supported (5) Ten million people(6) music (8) not liable for (10) control (12) facilitating (14) comfortable(7) video games (9) typo (11) fig leaf (13) stealEpisode 41. Following the music industry and begin to sue individuals who download movies.2. Airing ads about people whose jobs are at risk because of piracy.3. Keeping copies of movies from leaking in the first place.4. Hiring people to hack the hackers/serve up thousands of fake copies ofnew movies.Episode 51. Downloading off the Internet.2. 60 million3. Embrace it and get paid too.4. A bunch of crooks.5. 3-5 dolloars.6. Stopping piracy.。