专四听力文本doc.doc

Model Test 1Hobbies In early times, most people were too busy making a living to have many hobbies. Today as machines have reduced the amount of time they must spend on their jobs, people have more time than before for hobbies. People take up hobbies because these activities offer enjoyment, friendship, knowledge, and relaxation. Sometimes they even yield financial profit. Hobbies help people relax after periods of hard work. They provide a balance between work and play, especially for workers who do the same monotonous tasks all day long. Hobbies also offer interesting activities for persons who have retired. Those who have devoted hobbies never need to worry about what to do with their newly-found leisure hours. Anyone can follow a satisfying hobby, regardless of his age, position, or income. A famous Canadian doctor expressed the value of hobbies by saying, “ No man is really happy or safe without a hobby.”Model Test 3Let Children Learn to Judge Their Own Work A child learning to talk does not learn by being corrected all the time. If corrected too much, he will stop talking. He notices a thousand times a day the difference between the language he uses and the language those around him use. Bit by bit, he makes the necessary changes to make his language like other peoples. In the same way, when children learn to do all the other things, such as walking, running, climbing, and riding a bicycle, they learn to do them without being taught. Rather, they compare those performances with those of more skilled people, and slowly make the needed changes. But in school we never give a child a chance to find out his own mistakes for himself. We act as if we thought that he would never notice a mistake unless it was pointed out to him. Soon he becomes dependent on the teacher.Model Test 4A New Need for Traffic Lights Space is getting crowded. Thats the latest worry for many scientists. About ten thousand objects are orbiting our planets now. Some are satellites that have a job to do. Other items have finished their work. Parts of rockets may have been discarded during a flight and left behind in space. This is becoming a real problem. More items in space lead to more danger. Some of the objects now floating through space are just a few inches in size. But they can still do harm. If they hit a spacecraft or spacelab, they might destroy it. Space agencies can now locate objects in space with a computer. Yet, accidents still happen. Someone may see that two objects seem to be very close. But they have no power to prevent the crash. Experts can only plot courses to help future rockets avoid some of the objects.Model Test 5SportThe word “sport” first meant something that people did in their free time. Later, it often meant hunting wild animals and birds. About a hundred years ago, the word was first used for organized games, which is its usual meaning today. People spend their spare time playing football, basketball, tennis and many other sports. Such people play because they want to. Some people are paid for the sport they play. These people are called professional sportsmen. They may be sportsmen for only a few years, but many of them can earn a lot of money. Of course, it is only possible for a few sportsmen to earn much money in sports for individuals, like golf, tennis and motor racing. And famous stars can even get huge amounts of money from advertisements. They allow the companies to use their names or photographs and are paid for this. Sport is no longer just something for peoples spare time.Model Test 7Teaching and Learning Teaching is supposed to be a professional activity requiring long and complicated training as well as official certification. The act of teaching is looked upon as a flow of knowledge from a higher source to an empty container. The students role is one of receiving information, while the teachers is one of sending it. There is a clear distinction assumed between one who is supposed to know and another, usually, younger person who is supposed not to know. However, teaching neednt be the province of a special group of people nor need it be looked upon as a technical skill. Teaching can be more like guiding and assisting than forcing information into a supposedly empty head. If you have a certain skill, you should be able to share it with someone. You dont have to get certified to convey what you know to someone else or to help them in their attempt to teach themselves. Model Test 8The Use of Computers Nearly everything we do in the modern world is helped or even controlled by computers. Computers are being used more and more extensively for the simple reason that they are far more efficient than human beings. They have much better memories and can store huge amounts of information. They can collect and analyze enormous numbers of facts very quickly. This makes them suitable for all kinds of work. They can pay wages, reserve seats on planes, control machines in factories. They can even play chess, write poetry, or compose music. But perhaps the most interesting applications will be for personal use. In some countries, modified television sets have been connected by telephone to a very large computer. Users dial a few numbers on the telephone to get information from the large computer such as schedules for airplanes, information from dictionaries, or weather forecasts. They can also use the computers to do complicated calculations and to play games.Model test 9Life in Space Some scientists say that in twenty years, there will be communities in space. These will begin because men will go to work on the moon, and send important metals back to earth. They will need somewhere to live, and so, with the help of special building machines, they will create large “ships ”in space. People will be able to live a new way of life because the ships will be large enough for all the things people need. In the middle of the ship there could be a river. On the outside of the ship, the people will grow vegetables, under plastic or glass. These will grow very quickly because of the light from the sun. But perhaps the most beautiful thing about these communities is that people inside will be able to fly, since the gravity will be very low. Perhaps when people live in places like these, they will have a better life than in the cities on earth.Model Test Ten Foreign Language StudyThe knowledge of a foreign language is an important part of an education A person cannot be considered truly educated if he knows only one language. Nevertheless, the importance of learning foreign language is often underestimated. English is one of the most commonly used languages in international communication. Some speakers of English mistakenly argue that it is important for them to know another langua