学术英语(社科)unit1-8 听力大案及原文

Listening
Businesses are structured in different ways to meet different needs.
The simplest form of business is called an individual or sole proprietorship. The proprietor(经营者) owns all of the property of the business and is responsible for everything.
For legal purposes, with this kind of business, the owner and the company are the same. This means that the proprietor gets to keep all of the profits of the business, but also must pay any debts.
Another kind of business is the partnership. Two or more people go into business together. An agreement is usually needed to decide how much of the partnership each person controls.
One kind of partnership is called a limited liability partnership. These have full partners and limited partners. Limited partners may not share as much in the profits, but they also have less responsibilities for the business.
Doctors, lawyers and accountants often form partnerships to share their risks and profits. A husband and wife can form a business partnership together.
Partnerships exist only for as long as the owners remain alive. The same is true of individual proprietorships.
But corporations are designed to have an unlimited lifetime. A corporation is the most complex kind of business organization.
Corporations can sell stock as a way to raise money. Stock represents shares of ownership in a company. Investors who buy stock can trade their shares or keep them as long as the company is in business.
A company might use some of its earnings to pay dividends(红利) as a reward to shareholders. Or the company might reinvest the money into the business.
If shares lose value, investors can lose all of the money they paid for their stock. But shareholders are not responsible for the debts of the corporation.
A corporation is recognized as an entity(实体)——its own legal being, separate from its owners.
A board of directors control corporate policies. The directors appoint top company officers. The directors might or might not hold shares in the corporation.
But not all corporations are traditional businesses that sell stock. Some nonprofit groups are also organized as corporations.
Script for listening task
Task 1 p40-41
Keys：
1.BACDA
2.particular; concrete; in the light of the past; outside his regard; as near the earth as a politician
Listening
Keys to After-class tasks
Task 2
FTFF
Script for listening:
People differ in many ways. One difference is in how attractive they are. The actor Brad Pitt, for instance, is a handsome man. In part for this reason, his movies attract large audiences. Not surprisingly, the large audiences mean a large income for Mr. Pitt.
How prevalent are the economic benefits of beauty? Labor economists Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle tried to answer this question in a study published in the December 1994 issue of The American Economic Review. Hamermesh and Biddle examined data from surveys of individuals in the United States and Canada. The interviewers who conducted the survey were asked to rate each respondent’s physical appearance. Hamermesh and Biddle then examined how much the wages of the respondents depended on the standard determinants --- education, experience, and so on--- and how much they depended on physical appearance.
Hamermesh and Biddle found that beauty pays. People who are deemed to be more attractive than average earn five percent more than people of average looks. People of average looks earn five to 10 percent more than people considered less attractive than average. Similar results were found for
men and women.
What explains these differences in wages? There are several ways to interpret the ―beauty premium‖.
One interpretation is that good looks are themselves a type of innate ability determining productivity and wages. Some people are born with the attributes of a movie star; other people are not. Good looks are useful in any job in which workers present themselves to the public--- such as acting, sales, and waiting on tables. In this case , an attractive worker is more valuable to the firm than an unattractive worker. The firm’s willingness to pay more to attractive workers reflects its customers’ preferences.
A second interpretation is that reported beauty is an indirect measure of other types of ability. How attractive a person appears depends on more than just heredity. It also depends on dress, hairstyle, personal demeanor, and other attributes that a person can control. Perhaps a person who successfully projects an attractive image in a survey interview is more likely to be an intelligent person who succeeds at other tasks as well.
A third interpretation is that the beauty premium is a type of discrimination, a topic to which we return later.
Listening
Keys to textbook tasks
1.demography; the scientific study of population
2.standard measures; births; deaths; the number of those moving in and out; general
statistics; identify trends
1.the number of births per 1000 people in a given year
2.the number of deaths per 1000 people in a given year
3.the number of live births per 1000 women of the world
4.18
Listening script:
The scientific study of population is known as demography. The word comes from the Greek for ―measuring people‖. But counting heads is only a small part of what demographers do. They also attempt to calculate the growth rate of a population and to assess the impact of such things as the marriage rate and life expectancy, the sex ratio, the age structure on human behavior and the structure of society. They are interested in the distribution of population and in movements of people. Put another way, demographers study the effects of such numbers on social trends.
Demographers use a number of standard measures in translating a locality’s raw totals--- births, deaths, the number of those moving in and out--- into general statistics that allow them to identify trends. The birthrate is the number of births per 1000 people in a given years. Suppose there were 900 births in a city of 50000 in a specific year. Demographers calculate the birthrate for the city by dividing the number of births (900) by the population (50000) and multiplying the result (0.018) by 1000 to get 18. The birthrate in developed countries is 1.6; in less developed countries it is 4.0. The death rate is the number of deaths per 1000 people in a given year. The fertility rate is the number of live births per 1000 women of the world. As mentioned earlier, population and population growth rates are highest in developing nations and lower in Western nations. These rates are also complicated by mass movements of refugees to and from certain countries. By 1994 the population of refugees was over 23 million, up from about 10 million refugees worldwide in 1983. Mass movements of people into and out of Afghanistan, Somalia and Mozambique have contributed to this sharp increase. Famine and political upheaval are usually behind these mass exoduses.
Listening
Task 1
1) culture identity 2) ethnic identity
3) cultural group 4) ethnic group
2.
1) Culture identity embodies standards of behavior and the ways in which beliefs, values, and attitudes are transmitted to the younger generation. It also entails the ways in which kinship relationships and marital and sexual relationships are structured.
2) Ethnic identity refers to the geographic origin of a minority group within a country or culture.
3) Cultural group refers to a set of people who embrace core beliefs, behaviors, values, and norms and transmit them from generation to generation.
4) Ethnic group is a set of people who are embedded within a larger cultural group or society and who share beliefs, behaviors, values, and norms that are also transmitted from generation to generation.
Dictation
One’s cultural identity is an important aspect of being human. Cultural identity evolves from the shared beliefs, values, and attitudes of a group of people. It embodies standards of behavior and the ways in which beliefs, values, and attitudes are transmitted to the younger generation. Cultural identity also entails the ways in which kinship relationships and marital and sexual relationships are structured. Examples of the vast array of cultural identities in the United States include Anglo American, Italian American, African American, and Asian American – to name just a few
Script:
One’s cultural identity is an important aspect of being human. Cultural identity evolves from the shared beliefs, values, and attitudes of a group of people. It embodies standards of behavior and the ways in which beliefs, values, and attitudes are transmitted to the younger generation. Cultural identity also entails the ways in which kinship relationships and marital and sexual relationships are structured. Examples of the vast array of cultural identities in the United States include Anglo American, Italian American, African American, and Asian American – to name just a few.
Cultural identity transcends ethnic identity, or ethnicity, which refers to the geographic origin of a minority group within a country or culture. Whereas many people learn about their specific ethnic identities from their parents, many more children are born with parents from several ethnic groups. As this increases in the United States, more young people are unclear about their ethnic identity
and are simply calling themselves American.
A cultural group is a set of people who embrace core beliefs, behaviors, values, and norms and transmit them from generation to generation. Most cultures contain subgroups called co-cultures, distinct cultural of social groups living within the lesbians. An Ethnic group is a set of people who are embedded within a larger cultural group or society and who share beliefs, behaviors, values, and norms that are also transmitted from generation to generation. Ethnicity plays a major role in determining what we eat and how we work, relate, celebrate holidays and rituals, and feel about life and death an illness.
Unit 6
Listening
Keys to textbook tasks
Task 1
1.
1) blogger: someone’s online record of the websites he or she visits.
2) Web logger: one-person Internet blabbermouths who pop off to anyone who will listen
2.
1). TV has coped well with technological change
2). almost 37 hours a week watching television
3). people are constantly messaging and tweeting about them, and discussing them on Facebook.
4). more than two million in America last year
5). more than 600 today
6). paying for greater television choice
Script:
Task 1
Internet journalism has been greatly influenced by the so-called ―bloggers‖. In the strict sense, a blogger is someone’s online record of the websites he or she visits. Blogger is a contraction of ―Web logger‖. Web loggers have been called one-person Internet blabbermouths who pop off to anyone who will listen. They criticize each other but some of the best take on, sometimes unfairly, the big newspapers and networks. They provide a kind of instant feedback loop for media corporations. Some equate them with the more lively editorial pages of earlier times. Web loggers are having an important impact on the ―old media‖as well as on public opinion over salient political and social issues.
Task 2
Newspapers are dying; the music industry is still yelping about iTunes; book publishers think they are next. Yet one bit of old media seems to be doing rather well. In the final quarter of 2009 the average American spent almost 37 hours a week watching television. Earlier this year 116 million of them saw the Super Bowl-- a record for a single programme. Far from being cowed by new
media, TV is colonizing it. Shows like ―American Idol‖and ―Britain’s Got Talent‖draw huge audiences partly because people are constantly messaging and tweeting about them, and discussing them on Facebook.
Advertising wobbled during the recession, shaking the free-to-air broadcasters that depend on it. But cable and satellite TV breezed through. Pay-television subscriptions grew by more than two million in America last year. The explosive growth of cable and satellite TV in India explains how that country has gone from two channels in the early 1990s to more than 600 today. Pay-TV bosses scarcely acknowledge the existence of viewers who do not subscribe to multichannel TV, talking only of people who have ―yet to choose‖ a provider. This is not merely bluster. As our special report this week explains, once people start paying for greater television choice, they rarely stop.
Unit 7
Listening
Task 1
1) puts a barrier up
2) just the connection
3) quite unreliable
4) could break at any moment
Task 2
FFTFT
Script:
Interviewer: Today’s ―big story‖ is the Information Society. We’ll focus on some of the issues and, of course, the language behind the top ic. ―Information and communications technology‖, the ―information society‖, the ―digital divide‖--- these terms have become buzz words in the modern world. But what do they all mean?
Interviewee: This is a way of looking how society has changed. If we look back to a hundred years ago, we were talking about the Industrial Revolution--- countries becoming economic powers, developing their businesses through the use of machines. Now the emphasis has shifted to information, and technology is a tool by which people can gain that information--- be it through computers, on the Internet, or maybe over a mobile phone. And that’s what we are talking abut here: using technology as a tool to get ac cess to information, to find out what’s happening in the world.
Interviewer: And why is this such an important area? Why does it feature in the list of World Service Big Stories, do you think?
Interviewee: Say you are a farmer in Senegal, and you want to find out what the price is for the mangos or the pineapples that you’re growing. When you come to sell them to the trader, you don’t know what the price of that pineapple is in the capital. You have to take, at face value, what you’re offered for it. But sa y you had a mobile phone, and that on that mobile phone, you could find out what the price of pineapples was in the capital, that would put you in a much stronger position when it came to selling your goods, and you would get a much better price for your crops. That would make a very big difference to how much money you earned every month.
Interviewer: So let’s say we’re talking about telephones and computers as you’ve suggested, what do we mean when we say there’s a ―digital divide‖?
Interviewee: this all comes down to having access to information--- being able to find information about crop prices, about the latest research, even news about what’s happening in your country or in your part of the world easily. In industrialized countries it’s all around us. Apart from
newspapers and radio stations, we now have the Internet, or you can even get this sort of information on your mobile phone. The problem for developing countries is that they don’t have access to that information.
Interviewer: Success in the modern world depends on having access to up-to-date information--- whether for business, farming, education, healthcare--- for every aspect of life. And in this so-called ―information society‖, there’s a digital divided between the haves and the have-nots---- those who are able to access information and those who aren’t. But the ability to access information depends on more than just having the right technological equipment.
Interviewee: there are several big problems wen it comes to the internet access. One of the big ones is that a lot of the material on the Internet is in English, and that instantly puts a barrier up to a lot of people in the world because they have to speak at least some English to understand the information there. The other thing is just the connection. To connect to the Internet, you need to connect either through cables or you can do it through radio waves. But in many parts of the developing world, what you have is a very slow connection over a telephone line. Telephone lines in a lot o f these parts of the world are quite unreliable, they’re a bit crackly, they might have some interference on the line. So what you then have is an Internet connection that, not only is slow, but could break at any moment. This is a huge problem for the developing countries.
Interviewer: We’ve talked a bit about the Internet, then, the difference that can make to people’s lives. What about the phone? And particularly the mobile phone?
Interviewee: This is almost more revolutionary than the Internet itself. B ecause what you’re finding now is that in countries like Nigeria, almost everybody will have a mobile phone. In the past they would have had to rely on trying to get a normal landline, something connected with wires to the local exchange, and the problem i s there wouldn’t be many of these telephones, they would expensive. But now mobile phones are opening the world of communication to just about everybody. So, selling goods is easier; sharing ideas is much more possible now than in the past; or even just giving advice to colleagues or friends.
Unit 8
Listening
Keys to After-class tasks
Summaries：politically correct means socially correct according to the views of those who were politically left of center. There are three kinds of political correctness. Type A refers to new ways of saying things, avoiding giving offence to members of minority groups. For examples, person is preferred to man/woman, Ms to Miss/Mrs and physically challenged to disabled. Type B refers to terms used to attack those thought to be politically incorrect. Words such as sexist, racist, Eurocentric are examples. Type C refers to terms indicating a positive program for addressing wrongs. Expressions such as multiculturalism and affirmative action are cases in point.
Listening script
Well, good evening ladies and gentlemen. I’m giving a talk on political correctness. Can you hear me at the back?
What is political correctness? What is it? Well, let’s look at the appearance of the term. In the 1980s, in the United States, then in this country, we suddenly had a number of strange inventions in the language. For example, The Washington Post newspaper, on 12th of March 1984, we read about a writer called Langer. Langer is saying that novelists have a duty higher than the one they owe to their art, that is the art of writing, of course, and in their private vision of world, they have
a duty to be politically correct. And again The Washington Post in the following year, ―it is the only caffeinated coffee served by the waitpersons,‖ they’re called in the politically correct Tacoma Café in Tacoma Park. Well, what’s all this about? What does politically correct mean in its sense? Well, I would suggest in the original sense in the States, politically correct meant socially correct according to the views of those who were politically left of center. It was a descriptive term.
Now let’s look at some examples of politically correct language. There are at least three categories, I suggest, of politically correct language. Let’s call them A, B and C. So A. There are new ways of saying things, avoiding giving offense to members of minority groups. Now what’s a minority group here? A group referred to as a minority is one which is in ways disadvantaged or oppressed. So the traditional categories here of minority group would include women, and in some countries blacks, perhaps the elderly and so on. So the new way of saying things, for, instead of ―man‖ or ―woman‖, we could say ―person‖. That would be politically correct usage because it is regarded as discriminatory to distinguish between men and women, we’re all persons. Or again, it became very fashionable to use ―Ms‖, ms, instead of ―Miss‖ or ―Mrs.‖ as a title for a woman. Or again ―s’he‖, or ―he/she‖, that, in place of ―he‖ or ―she‖. Or again, ―black‖ or ―negro‖. The quality of the language here is rather important. Blacks, themselves, in the States came to dislike the term ―negro‖, preferring to be called Black, with a capital ―B‖. Again, of ―poor‖, poor people, we talk of ―disadvantaged‖ people or perhaps ―exploited‖, but ―disadvantaged‖ seems more neutral. Then, what about male homosexuals, for example? Well, the term ―gay‖changed its meaning dramatically. ―Gay‖ used to mean cheerful, happy and so on, but now, it’s normally, it’s taken to mean male homosexual. Then there is the suffix ―challenged‖. So, some people would say, not ―disabled‖, perhaps somebody has a damaged leg, not ―disabled‖but ―physically challenged‖. And for ―old‖, we might say ―experientially enhanced‖, or something of that sort. So, so much for ways of saying things without giving offence to minority groups.
Next among these examples, Category B, let’s call it. Terms to attack those thought to be politically incorrect. Now, such terms are very important weapons and can be sued to destroy a person’s reputation. So, for example, ―sexist‖, a sexist is somebody who talks disparagingly of a woman or worse. A ―racist‖ is somebody who regards himself or themselves as a member of a superior race. An ―ageist‖ is somebody, normally not always, a hostile suffix. If you say someone is sexist, racist, ageist or whatever, you are attacking them. You’re attacking them as morally uncouth. Then, there are other terms used in attacking offensive people in politically correct method. For example, ―Eurocentric‖. A Eurocentric person is somebody who thinks that European culture is the center of world culture and talks and behaves as if that were so. European culture is somehow superior to the cultures of other centers. Or a ―homophobe‖. Have you heard this term? Homophobe is somebody who is said to discriminate against homosexuals. Phobe, P H O B E, being the Greek root for somebody who dislikes or fears something.
A third category, let’s call it C here, for example, terms indicating a positive program for addressing wrongs. For example, ―multiculturalism‖. Now, multiculturalism is the attitude which recognizes many centers of cultural interest in the world rather than only a white male Anglo-Saxon, or European, at it were. And ―affirmative action‖is another expression which is used to indicate putting things right that are wrong. So affirmative action might include promoting people with the advantaged groups and so on.。