同学们要想取得
Announcement from the President
The university has decided to increase tuition and fees for all students by approximately 8%next semester. For the past 5 years, the tuition and fees have remained the same, but it is
necessary to increase them now for several reasons. The university has many more stu¬dents than we had five years ago, and we must hire additional professors to teach these students. We have also made a new commitment to research and technology and will be renovating
and upgrading(升级) our laboratory facilities to better meet our students' needs.
The reading passage will appear on the screen:
When the passage appears, a clock at the top of your computer screen will begin counting down(倒计时) the time you have to read. When reading time has ended, the passage will disappear from the screen and will be replaced by a picture of two students engaged in(参加) conversation.
You will then hear:
Narrator
Now listen to two students as they discuss the announcement.
Then the dialogue will begin.
Man
Oh great, now we have to come up with(赶上，提出，拿出) more money for next semester.
Woman
Yeah, I know, but I can see why. When I first started here, classes were so much smaller than they are now. With this many students, it\'s hard to get the personal attention you need ...
Man
Yeah, I guess you\'re right. You know, in some classes I can't even get a seat. And I couldn't take the math course I wanted to because it was already full when I signed up.
Woman
And the other thing is, well, I am kind of worried about not being able to get a job after I graduate.
Man
Why? I mean you\'re doing really well in your classes, aren't you?
Woman
I'm doing ok, but the facilities here are so limited. There are some great new experiments in micro¬biology that we can\'t even do here… there isn't enough equipment in the laboratories, and the equipment they have is out of date. How am I going to compete for jobs with people who have prac-tical research experience? I think the extra tuition will be a good investment.
When the dialogue has ended, the picture of the students will be replaced by the following:
Now get ready to answer the question.
The question will then appear on your computer screen and will also be read aloud by the narrator.
3. The woman expresses her opinion of the announcement by the university president. State her opinion and explain the reasons she gives for holding that opinion.
Preparation Time: 30 Seconds
Response Time: 60 Seconds
After you hear the question, you will be told when to begin to prepare your response and when to begin speaking. A "Preparation Time" clock will appear below the question and begin to count down from 30 seconds (00:00:30). At the end of 30 seconds you will hear a short beep. After the beep, the clock will change to read "Response Time" and will begin counting down from 60 seconds (00:00:60). When the response time has ended, recording will stop and a new screen will appear alerting you that the response time has ended.
In giving your response to this question, you should state what the woman's opinion about the tuition increase is, and then explain her reasons for holding that opinion. You will probably have noticed as you listened to the conversation that the woman's reasons are essentially(本质上) the same as those of the university president but are drawn from her own experience as a student, so in your answer you would probably want to connect information from the two sources. You could perhaps begin by saying that the woman agrees with the announcement and thinks that the university is right to increase its fees. In describing her reasons, you might say that she thinks the tuition increase is necessary because the university can then hire more teachers. She feels that classes are getting too crowded and more teachers are needed. You might also want to mention that she has found it hard to get personal attention from her professors. You could also point out that she agrees that the money should be spent to improve laboratory facilities because they are out of date, and that this has made it hard for her to get the practi¬cal laboratory experience she feels she needs to get a good job. Your response should be complete(全部的，完全的) enough that someone listening to your response who has not read the announcement or heard the conversation would understand what the new policy is, what the woman\'s opinion about it is, and the reasons she has for her opinion. There is a great deal of information in the reading passage and the conversation, and you are not expected to summarize all of the information in giving your response.
TIP:
Recognize the attitude of the speaker through intonation(语调), stress, and word choice. This helps you understand his or her point of view and plan an appropriate response.
Question 4
Question 4 is the second of the Integrated Speaking Tasks. For this task you will read a short passage about an academic subject and listen to a professor give a brief excerpt(摘录，引用) from a lecture on that subject. You will then be asked a question which you will answer based on what you have read and heard. You will have 60 seconds in which to give your spoken response.
The topics for this question are drawn from a vari¬ety of fields: life science, social science, physical science, and the humanities. Although the topics are aca¬demic in nature, none of the written passages, lectures, or the questions themselves requires prior knowledge of any academic field in particular. The language and con¬cepts used are designed to be accessible to you no mat¬ter what your academic specialization may be.
The reading passage is usually between 75 and 100 words in length. It provides background or context to help you understand the lecture that will follow. The reading passage will usually treat(视为，对待，论述，治疗，款待) the topic in some¬what(稍微，有点) general and abstract terms, and the lecture will treat the topic more specifically and concretely, often by providing an extended example, counterexample(反例), or application(请求，应用，申请) of the concept presented in the reading. To answer the question that follows the lecture, you will need to draw on(利用)the reading as well as the lecture, and integrate and convey key information from both these sources.
For example, some tasks will contain a reading passage that gives the definition of a general principle or process and a lecture that discusses a specific instance and/or counterexample of the principle or process. For a pairing like this, you might be asked to explain the principle or process using the specific information from the listening. Or another pairing might include a reading passage that describes a prob¬lem and a lecture that presents the success, failure, or unintended(无意识的) consequences of an attempt to solve the problem, together with a question that asks you to explain the attempt to solve the problem and account for its results.
The sample question 4 task presented below is a typical example. It begins with a reading passage discussing a general concept—the domestication(驯养) of animal species— by describing two characteristics that make an animal species suitable for domesti¬cation. This passage is coupled with(结合，和…联合) a lecture in which the professor talks about the behavior of two species of animals—a familiar domesticated animal that has both of the characteristics and a common, undomesticated species that lacks these charac¬teristics. The question asks you to apply(应用) the more general information you have learned in the reading to the examples discussed in the lecture, and explain how the behavior of the two species of animals is related to their suitability for domestication.
TIP:
Find listening and reading material on a topic that you like. The reading and the listening material can provide similar or different views. Take notes on what you listen to and read and create outlines. Use your notes and outlines to orally summarize the information and ideas from the listening and reading materials. Try to paraphrase(解释) what you have heard and read by using different words and grammatical structures.
Example
The following example shows how a question of this type will be presented to you on your computer. Question 4 will be presented visually in the same way as Question 3.
First you will hear the narrator say this:
Narrator
In this question you will read a short passage on an academic subject and then listen to a talk on the same topic. You will then answer a question using information from both the reading passage and the talk. After you hear the question, you will have 30 seconds to prepare your response and 60 seconds to speak.
Then you will hear this:
Narrator
Now read the passage about animal domestication. You have 45 seconds to read the passage. Begin reading now.
The reading passage will then appear on the screen:
Animal Domestication
For thousands of years, humans have been able to domesticate, or tame, many large mammals that in the wild live together in herds. Once tamed, these mammals are used for agricultural work and transportation. Yet some herd mammals are not easily domesticated.A good indicator(指示器) of an animal's suitability for domestication is how protective the animal is of its territory. Non-territorial animals are more easily domesticated than territorial animals because they can live close together with animals from other herds. A second indicator is that animals with a hierarchical social structure, in which herd members follow a leader, are easy to domesticate, since a human can function as the "leader."
A clock at the top of your computer screen will count down the time you have to read. When reading time has ended, a picture of a professor in front of a class will appear on the screen:
And you will hear this:
Narrator Now listen to a lecture on this topic in an ecology(生态学) class.
Then you will hear the lecture:
Professor
So we've been discussing the suitability of animals for domestication ... particularly animals that live together in herds. Now, if we take horses, for example ... in the wild, horses live in herds that consist of one male and several females and their young. When a herd moves, the dominant male leads, with the dominant female and her young immediately behind him. The dominant female and her young are then followed immediately by the second most important female and her young, and so on. This is why domesticated horses can be harnessed one after the other in a row. They're “programmed" to follow the lead of another horse. On top of that, you often find different herds of horses in the wild occupying overlapping areas—they don't fight off other herds that enter the same territory.
But it's exactly the opposite with an animal like the uh, the antelope(羚羊) . . . which . . . well, antelopes are herd animals too. But unlike horses, a male antelope will fight fiercely to prevent another male from entering its territory during the breeding season(繁殖期，配种季节), OK—very different from the behavior of horses. Try keeping a couple of male antelopes together in a small space and see what happens. Also, antelopes don't have a social hierarchy—they don't instinctively follow any leader. That makes it harder for humans to control their behavior.
When the lecture has ended, the picture of the professor will be replaced by a screen instruct¬ing you to get ready to answer the question. Then the question will appear on the screen and will be read aloud by a narrator as well.