Section B
26. A 27. A 28. D 29. D 30. A 31. B 32. A 33. A 34. C 35. B
Passage One
Ok, so in our last class we were discussing big band swing music. You remember this was a kind of dance music with a steady rhythm. But today we deal with music played by smaller jazz bands. It's called bebop which may use all sorts of new types of rhythms; some of them are very irregular. We'll talk more about that later. But first I want to talk about some of the social elements that I believe contributed to the development of bebop music. To do this, we have to look at when bebop arose and started becoming so popular. It was from the late 1930s to the 1940s. The environment for bebop music was the decline of the US economy. During the great depression the economy suffered tremendously. And fewer people had money to spend on entertainment. Then during the 2nd World War the government imposed a new tax on public entertainment, what you might call performance tax. The government collected money on performances that included any types of acting, dancing or singing, but not instrumental music. So to avoid this new tax, some jazz bands stopped using singers altogether. They started relying on the creativity of the instrumentalist to attract audiences. This was what bebop bands did. Now remember a lot of bands have singers. So the instrumentalists simply played in the background and had occasional solos while the singer sang the melody to the songs, but not with bebop bands. So the instrumentalists had much more freedom to be creative. They experimented, playing the music faster and using new irregular sorts of rhythms.
Questions 26 to 28 are based on the passage you have just heard.
26. How did the bebop bands avoid the performance tax?
27. Why does the speaker mention the decline of the US economy during the great depression?
28. What does the speaker describe as a significant characteristic of bebop music?
Passage Two
Recently some researchers conducted an interesting case study in one ethic culture. The study was about the development of basket weaving by African-American women who lived in the town of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. The town is known for its high quality sweet grass baskets which are woven by these women. They've been weaving the baskets for generations, handing down the skill from mother to daughter. Some of the baskets have been placed on permanent display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The origin of their basket weaving dates back to the 17th centuries and even earlier when these women's ancestors came to the United States from the west coast of Africa. Now, it's mainly a hobby. But back in the 17th and 18th centuries African and American women wove the baskets for use on the rice plantations. There were two types of baskets then: workbaskets and baskets for use in the home. The workbaskets were made out of the more delicate sweet grass. They were used for everything from fruit baskets to baby cradles.
Questions 29 to 31 are based on the passage you have just heard.
29. What is the talk mainly about?
30. According to the passage, how did the women learn to weave baskets?
31. What is the main reason that the women in South Carolina now weave baskets?
Passage Three
Some of the most practical lessons coming out of research in psychology are in the area of memory. People ask, why can't I remember that term from the text book or when the library books are due? With a lot of people, memory may be weak, because they don't use it enough. It's like muscle.If you don't exercise it, it won't get strong. That's why it's important to keep our minds active, to keep on learning through our life. We can do this by reading, playing memory games and seeking things out. It's my guess though that the lack of stimulation isn't a problem for students like you. More likely, the life you are now leading is so busy and stimulating that it may sometime interfere with learning. Information needs to be recorded from memory, in other words, learned. And for busy people like you and me, that will be a real problem. If we are distracted, or we are trying to think what we are going to do next, the incoming message just might not get recorded effectively. And that leads to the first tip for students who want to improve their memories. Give your full attention to the information you hope to retain. Research clearly shows the advantages of this, and also of active learning, of consciously trying to visualize a new fact, perhaps to make a mental picture, even a wild ridiculous one, so the new fact will stick in the memory. Let me illustrate that for you here a little more this evening.
Questions 32 to 35 are based on the passage you have just heard.
32. What is the talk mainly about?
33. What does the speaker illustrate with the example of a muscle?
34. What does the speaker suggest students do to learn new information more effectively?
35. What will the speaker probably do next?
Section C
Graduate students often work as teaching assistants while they study in the United States. Teaching assistants (T.A.) may get money or get to take classes for (36) free, or both. A T.A. usually works about twenty hours each week. In some cases, the professors they assist have big (37) undergraduate classes with hundreds of students. The professor gives one or two (38) lectures a week, and teaching assistants (39) lead smaller discussions at other times. They also give tests, (40) grade work, provide laboratory assistance and meet with students who need help. And they have their own educations to think about.
Many states have (41) proposed to require that teaching assistants be able to speak English well enough for students to understand them. Universities have increased their (42) efforts to deal with this problem. Our example school this week is the University of Southern California (USC), in Los Angeles.The American Language Institute at USC provides (43) training to help international teaching assistants improve their English. (44) The university requires most non-native English speakers to pass a test before they can become a T.A.
The exam at USC is a fifteen-minute spoken test that involves two examiners. Students talk about their education and interest in the school. (45)Then they present some issue or idea from their area of study, and answer questions about it from the examiners. Those who do not score high enough on the test have to take classes to improve their English.(46) Until their English is better, some departments give them jobs that do not require them to communicate with students. |
