托福TPO31听力文本

Section 1Conversationl — Community Planning in the ColoniesNarratorListen to part of a conversation between a Student and her United States History Professor. ProfessorSo, Amanda, you've asked a lot of questions about trade during the colonialperiod of the United States. Has our discussion clarified things for you?StudentWell, yeah, but now, I think writing about trade for my paper isn't going to work.ProfessorOh, so your questions about shipping routes were for your research paper?StudentYeah. But now, I see that I probably need to come up with a new paper topic.Actually, there was one other idea I had. I have been thinking about doingsomething about community planning in the early British settlements in EasternNorth America.ProfessorOh. OK. I am curious. Why are you interested in doing something on communityplanning in colonial times?StudentWell, I am much more into architecture. It’s my major and I mean, planning out atown or city goes along with that. I mean, not that I don't like history...l aminterested in history…really interested. But I think, you know, for a career,architecture is more for me.ProfessorThat's great. I've gotten some very thought-provoking papers from Studentswhose interests go beyond history.StudentOK. But for the paper you wanted us to try to include a comparison, right?ProfessorYes. Actually, that was really the purpose of the assignment. The way the UnitedStates developed or perhaps I should say the colonies, since the land that wouldbecome the Eastern United States…uh...there were British colonies there fourhundred years ago. But anyway…uh... development in the colonies differedgreatly depending on geography. I am looking for papers that have ideas aboutsomething that happened one way in the Northern colonies happened a differentway in the Southern colonies.StudentIs that true in terms of urban planning?ProfessorVery true. Towns in the Northern colonies were centralized and compact. Theyprovided ameeting point for exchanging goods, for participatory government,and for practicing religion. Houses would be built along the roads that led intotown. And just outside the developed area, there would usually be an open areaof some sort for grazing animals and also group activities. Actually, the model forplanning a town in the Northern colonies was not unlike the model for thedevelopment of towns in medieval Europe. After all, the colonists had just comefrom Europe and the medieval period was just ended.StudentMedieval Europe. But what about the South?If I remember correctly... In theSouth, at least initially, they didn't build towns so much as they built tradingposts.ProfessorThat's right. Most of the settlers in the North wanted to start a whole new life.But most of the people who came from Europe to the South just wanted to makesome money and then go back. It is not surprising that some of most commonbuildings were storage facilities and port facilities. Lecturel-Music — Ancient Greek Music & PlatoNarratorListen to part of a lecture in a music class.ProfessorToday we are going to do something a little different. In the past few classes,we've listened to traditional music from around the world and we've talkedabout the characteristics of these music, what makes these styles distinctive,what kinds of instruments are used. And you've talked about what soundsfamiliar to you and what sounds strange. And many of you found some of whatwe've listened to very strange indeed.Well, today I want to start talking about western music and I am going to start inancient Greece. But, now here's the part that's different. We're not going to talkvery much about the actual music. Instead, we are going to talk about what theGreeks believed about music.Now, there are some very good reasons to approach the material in this way.First, well, we don't have very much ancient Greek music studied. Only about 45pieces survived…uh...these are mostly records of poems and songs. And we arenot sure how well we can reproduce the melodies or rhythms, because they wereapparently improvised in many cases. So we really don't know all that muchabout what the music sounded like.What we do know about - and this really is the most important reason I amapproaching today's lecture the way I am -is the Greek philosophy about musicand its continuing influence on western attitudes toward music.Now, if we're going to understand the philosophy, we have to first understandthat music for the Greeks was about much more than entertainment. Yes, therewas music at festivals and we have sculptures and paintings showing peoplelistening to music for many of the same reasons that we do. But this isn't thewhole story.The important thing about music was that it was governed by rules,mathematical rules. And for those of you who are also studying music theory,you’ll see thatit is in fact highly mathematical. Um...and for the Greeks, the same mathematical principles that govern musicalso govern the universe as well as the human character, the essence ofpersonality. People's characters were believed to be very sensitive to music.1fyou started playing around with the rules, you know,messing up themathematical order, you could do serious harm. That's why music wasconsidered so powerful, if you knew the rules, it could do great good. But if youbroke them, you could do great harm to the character of the listener.So, we have this Greek idea that music is directly related to human character andbehavior.The philosopher, Plato, talks about this in the context of education. For Plato,music is an important element in education, but only the right kind of music. Thatmeans the kind of music that builds the kind of character a good citizen or afuture leader would need. Yes. For Plato, there is a kind of music that instills thequalities of leadership, just as there is a kind of music that makes a person softand weak.Now, Plato has very specific, very conventional kinds of music in mind. He is notfond of innovation. There were musicians in Plato's day who were experimentingwith different melodies and rhythms. A definite no-no for Plato. He thinks thatbreaking with tradition leads to all sorts of social problems, serious problems,even the breakdown of the fabric of society. I am thinking back now to when Ifirst started listening to rock 'n' roll and I remember my father saying it was a badinfluence on us. I think he would have gotten along well with Plato.Anyway, I don't need to tell you what I think about Plato's ideas aboutinnovation, do l? Though I have to say it's interesting that the same argumentsagainst new music and art are still being made. Perhaps like the Greeks, werecognize, and maybe even fear the power of music.Lecture2-Geology — Movement of Tectonic PlatesNarratorListen to part of a lecture in a geology class.ProfessorAs we've discussed, Earth's crust is made up of large plates that rest on a mantleof molten rock. These plates…uh...now these tectonic plates support thecontinents and oceans. Over time, the tectonic plates move and shift, whichmoves the continents and the ocean floors too. Once it was understood howthese plates move, it was possible to determine past movements of Earth'scontinents and how these slow movements have reshaped Earth's features atdifferent times.OK. Well, (as) studying the movements of the plates can tell us about the locationof the continents in the past, it can conceivably tell us about their location in thefuture too, right? So, in recent years, some geologists have used plate tectonictheory to make what they call geopredictions. Geopredictions are guesses aboutwhat Earth's surface might look like millions of years from now.So, we know how certain continents are currently moving. For example, thecontinents of Africa has been creeping north toward Europe. And Australia hasbeen making its way north too, toward Asia.Does anyone know what's happening to the Americas? l...l think we've talkedabout that before. Lisa?StudentThey are moving westward, away from Europe and Africa. Right?ProfessorRight. And what makes us think that?StudentThe Atlantic Ocean floor is spreading and getting wider, so there is more oceanbetween the Americas and Europe and Africa.ProfessorOK. And why is it spreading?StudentWell, the seafloor is spilt. There is a ridge, a mountain range that runs north andsouth there. And the rock material flows up from Earth's interior here, at thesplit, which forces the two sides of the ocean floor to spread apart, to make roomfor the new rock material.ProfessorGood. And that means, over the short term…uh…and by short term I mean 50million years, that's a blink of the eye in geological time. Um…over the shortterm, we can predict that the Americas will continue tomove westward, fartheraway from Europe, while Africa and Australia will continue to move northward.But what about over the long term? Say 250 million years or more. Well, overthat length of time, forecasts become more uncertain. But lots of geologistspredict that eventually all the continents, including Antarctica, will merge andbecome one giant land mass, a super continent, one researchers calling Pangaea Ultima, which more or less means the last super continent.Now, how that might happen is open to some debate. Some geologists believethat the Americas will continue to move westward and eventually merge withEast Asia. This hypothesis is based on the direction the Americas are moving innow. But others hypothesize that a new super continent will form in a differentway. They think that a new subduction zone will might occur at the western edgeof the Atlantic Ocean.Paul, can you remind us what a subduction zone is?StudentYeah. Um...basically, a subduction zone is where two tectonic plates collide. So ifan ocean floor tectonic plate meets the edge of a continent and they pushagainst each other, the heavier one sinks down and goes under the other one. Sothe…um...the oceanic plate is made of denser and heavier rock, so it begins tosink down under the continental plate and into the mantle.ProfessorRight. So the ocean floor would kind of slide under the edge of the continent. Andonce the ocean plate begins to sin k, it would be affected by another force –slab pull. Slab pull happens at the subduction zone.So to continue our example…As the ocean floor plate begins to sink down intothe mantle, it would drag or pull the entire plate along with it. So more and moreof this plate, the ocean floor, would go down under the continent into themantle. OK?So, as I said, currently the Atlantic Ocean floor is spreading, getting wider, butsome researchers speculate that eventually a subduction zone will occur wherethe oceanic plate meets the continental plate of the Americas.1f that happens,slab pull could draw the oceanic crust under the continent, actually causing theAmericas to move eastward toward Europe and the ocean floor to get smaller.That is, the Atlantic Ocean would start to close up, narrowing the distancebetween the eastern edge of the Americas and Europe and Africa. So they form asingle super continent.Section2Conversation 2—Credits for InternshipNarratorListen to a conversation between a Student and an Employee at the universitycenter for off-campus study.StudentHi. I am Tom Arnold. I am supposed to pick up a packet from the regional centerfor marine research. I am doing an internship there this summer.EmployeeYes. I have it right here. The mail carrier dropped it off a few minutes ago.StudentThanks. Um...l wanted to ask about getting credits for the internship. I don'tknow if…EmployeeI might be able to help you with that. Is there a problem?StudentI just wanted to make sure the details have been corrected. The system shouldshow that I am registered to earn four credits. But as of Friday, nothing wasshowing up yet. I was told it would be fixed this morning.EmployeeWell, I can check on the computer for you. Tom Arnold, right?StudentYes.EmployeeWell, it is showing credits…but only three.StudentReally?! So now what? These all have to be finalized last week.EmployeeWell, yes. The course enrollment period ended last week. But since our office wassupposed to get this straightened out for you before then... Let me see what I cando.Uh...did the university give approval for you to earn four credits for thisinternship? Because the other Students at the center for marine research are onlygetting three.StudentUm...l am pretty sure those other Students are doing the internship at thecenter's aquarium, taking classes in marine biology and then teaching visitorsabout the various displays. I am doing a special research internship with thecenter. We’ll be collecting data on changes to the seafloor outin the open ocean.EmployeeOh. That sounds quite advanced.StudentWell, the internship requires me to have scuba diving certification and to be asenior oceanography Student. I want to do advanced study in oceanographywhen I graduate. So I really want to get a sense of what real research is like.EmployeeI see. Now let's try and see if we can... Oh. OK. I see the problem. There are twokinds of internships listed here-regular and research. Yours is listed as regular soit is only showing three credits.StudentCan you switch it?EmployeeNot yet. But it lists Professor Leonard as…StudentShe is in charge of all the internships.EmployeeShe just needs to send an email so I have an official record. Then I can switch it.And that should solve everything.StudentGreat! And I know Professor Leonard is in her office this afternoon, so I can gothere later. It will be such a relief to get all these paperwork completed.Lecture3-Marine Biology — Coral Reefs & CoT starfishNarratorListen to part of a lecture in a Marine Biology class.ProfessorWe've been talking about the decline of coral reefs in tropical areas all over theworld…um... how natural and man-made stresses are causing them to degrade,and in some cases, to die.So now let's focus on a specific example of a natural predator that can cause a lotof damage to coral reefs-the Crown of Thorns, or CoT starfish. The Cot starfish isfound on coral reefs in the tropical Pacific Ocean and it eats coral. Now, in smallnumbers, the starfish don't affect coral reefs dramatically. But periodically,starfish population explodes. And when that happens, the reefs can becomebadly damaged or even destroyed, something we are trying very hard to prevent.For example, during the 1960s, there was an outbreak of CoT starfish in the GreatBarrier Reef, off the east coast of Australia. Luckily, the CoT starfish populationgradually declined on its own and the reefs recovered.But we were left wondering - what cause the population to increase sosuddenly? Well, over the years, we've come up with a few hypotheses. All stillhotly debated.One hypothesis is that it's a natural phenomenon, that the starfish naturallyundergo population fluctuations following particularly good spawning years.There are also several hypotheses that suggest some sort of human activitiesare partly responsible, like fishing. There are fish and snails that eat starfish,particularly the giant triton snail, which is the main predator of the starfish. Thesefish and snails have themselves experienced a decline in population because ofoverfishing by humans. So with a decline in starfish predators, the starfishpopulation can increase.Another hypothesized human-related cause is fertilizer runoff. People usefertilizer for their crops and plants and a lot of it eventually makes its way fromland into the seas. It's fertilizer, so it has a lot of nutrients. These nutrients havean effect on the starfish, because they cause an increase in the growth ofphytoplankton. Phytoplankton are microscopic plants that grow in the rval CoT starfish eat phytoplankton in their first month of life, so more fertilizerin the ocean means more phytoplankton, which means more starfish, bad for thereefs.Now, the final hypothesis has to do with storm events.1f some reefs aredestroyed by storms, starfish populations that inhabited those reefs would haveto condense and concentrate on the reefs that are left. So this can cause a kind ofmass feeding frenzy.So we have ideas, but no real answer. And because we aren't sure of the causesfor starfish population increases, it's difficult to prevent them. I mean, someprogress has been made. For example, new survey techniques have enabled us todetect population increases when the starfish are quite young, so we can beready for them. But meaningful progress requires much better evidence aboutthe cause.On the bright side, in all the research being done on causes, we have discoveredsomething related to how starfish populations might affect coral reef diversity.We think that when reefs are damaged, after a few years, the fastest-growingcorals repopulate theareas. And these fast-growing species can grow over theslower-growing species of coral, denying them light and preventing them fromrecovery. However, the faster-growing species are the preferred food of the CoTstarfish. So when an outbreak of CoT starfish occurs, they thin out the fast-growing coral and may give the slower ones a chance to reestablish. So withoutthe outbreak, the diversity of coral would be reduced.Lecture4-Anthropology (the Botai People & Horses)NarratorListen to a part of a lecture in an anthropology class.ProfessorSo now that we've discussed how people in ancient societies tamed animals likecows and chickens for food and other uses. I'd like to talk about an ancientculture that domesticated horses. It's the Botai people.The Botai culture thrived over 5,000 years ago in central Asia, in what is nownorthern Kazakhstan. Pretty much all of what we know about the Botai comesfrom three archaeological sites. And we learned that the Botai were able to buildlarge perennial villages, sometimes with hundreds of homes. We also foundhorse bones at these sites and these can be traced back to the time of the Botaisettlements. The climate that the Botai culture lived in...it was harsh. And theBotaipeople…they didn't really seem to have much in the way of agriculturegoing on. So their whole economy was really based on horses. And becausehorses can withstand the tough climate, they can survive ice storms and theydon't need heated barns, the Botai people could settle in one place and rely onthe horses for food, clothing and transportation.StudentSo the Botai were the first to domesticate horses?ProfessorWell, we are pretty sure that horses were first domesticated a bit earlier, to thenorthwest, in the area that is now Ukraine and western Russia. It's quite possiblethat some of those people later migrated east to Kazakhstan.StudentBut what exactly tells us that these Botai people, that the horses in their areawere really domesticated?ProfessorAs with most ancient history, there is not much that we can be certain about. Butwe know there was a significant population of wild horses in that area. So therewere plenty of opportunities for the Botai people to find horses to domesticate.We also know that horse milk was an important source of food for the Botaipeople. What? Milking a wild horse? Well, now, that would be impossible…tomilk a wild horse. And then... there's the…Oh. Yes? Eric.StudentSo you said last week that for some animals, like for dogs, there were physicalchanges taking place over the course of generations of dogs because ofdomestication. So can we tell from those horse bones if it was sort of the samefor horses?ProfessorActually, it wasn't. We know that horses have not changed a lot physically as aresult of domestication. So those ancient horse bones don't tell us much aboutdomestication. But…we've found that…um…we've found what maybe pens orcorrals in the Botai settlements. And not too long ago, a new approach was usedto find out if the Botai people were keeping horses. Soil samples from these pensor corrals show ten times the concentration of phosphorus.StudentUm...phosphorus?ProfessorYes. Phosphorus is a very significant indicator that horses, large numbers ofhorses were being kept in the settlements. You see, horse manure, horse waste isrich in phosphorus and also nitrogen compared to normal soil. But nitrogen is anunstable element. It can be washed out when it rains or it can be released to theatmosphere, whereas phosphorus combines with calcium and iron, and can bepreserved in the soil for thousands of years.The soil from the Botai settlement sites was found to have high concentrations ofphosphorus and low nitrogen concentrations, which is important since it suggeststhat what we've got is really old, not something added to the soil more recently.StudentWait. So if horses have been there recently, there'd still be lots of nitrogen in thesoil.ProfessorThat's right. Yes. Karen.StudentI just read an article. It said that one way to determine if there was an ancientfireplace at an archaeological site was to check the soil for phosphorus. Socouldn't the phosphorus at the Botai sites just be from the frequent use offireplaces?ProfessorYou are absolutely right. However, when a fireplace leaves behind a lot ofphosphorus in the soil, we'd also find an unusually high concentration ofpotassium. But the soil at the Botai settlements, it was found with relatively littlepotassium, which makes it far more likely that the phosphorus came from horses.OK?Now, later on, people of the same region, northern Kazakhstan, started raisingsheep and cattle. And that led to a more nomadic culture. Since sheep and cattlecan't survive harsh climates, they needed to be taken south every winter. Movingaround meant working harder but the trade-off was far richer, fattier milk yearround and warm clothing from the sheep.。