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1996年英语专业八级考试听力MP3
听力原文
SECTION A TALK
OK, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. In the previous week we talked about different types of pollution, and this week I want to focus on air pollution, air pollution caused by the car. It's well known that cars are the main cause of air pollution in a city. This can mean up to 50% of some diseases or even higher than 90 % of all air pollution are caused by the car. Obviously cars contribute a great deal to the air pollution in our cities, and this will get worse as the number of cars increases in the cities.
Firstly, I would like to talk about how cars cause air pollution. How does the car cause air pollution? Well, you are all familiar with internal combustion engine, there is a mixture of petrol which explodes, and the explosion that propels the car forward. Unfortunately, in this process there are some poisonous chemicals made, and these poisonous chemicals mainly come out of the back of the car through the exhaust.
Now it's not just what comes out of the car exhaust that is dangerous, the brakes also cause pollution. The brakes in some cars give off asphaltum, and you know asphaltum is, is highly dangerous substance, and can kill us. And thirdly, the tyres themselves give off small rubber particle which is not very good for health.
We need to find solutions to this problem. I'm going to talk about four possible solutions. Firstly, we could try and discourage the use of cars. We could do this by putting higher taxes on petrol, or we could make cars more expensive, we could put prices of cars up.
Secondly, we might encourage alternative methods of transport. For example, recently in Shanghai, a new built supra-underground will take some of the pressure off the roads. Some people will use the underground rather than use cars.
In addition we could improve public transport, make it more comfortable, safer, more regular so that people will use the public transport rather than the car. Next, we could also use cleaner fuel rather than petrol. For example, we might use natural gas in the future or we might experiment battery cars.
And lastly, we could try mechanical means for reducing the amount of chemicals that are emitted, which comes out of the cars' the exhaust pipe. We could fix things called "absolute converters" for exhaust pipe. It's something, it's a device which is seated over the exhaust, which controls the carbon amount of minor primer, which reduces the amount of dangerous chemical that cars give off. Now, it's unlikely that any one of these solutions will work on its own. I'm pretty sure that it will take a combination of all four of these solutions to solve this problem.
SECTION B INTERVIEW
Interviewer: So, you are an architect?
Interviewee: Yes.
Interviewer: Do you work for a public or private organization, or are you self-employed, that is, working on your own?
Interviewee: I'm working for a private design and construction company.
Interviewer: How did you start your career?
Interviewee: I started it with the government.
Interviewer: Oh, did you? What made you decide to work for the government?
Interviewee: Well, it was a matter of chance really. I saw an advertisement for a vacant position in a newspaper, and I thought "Why don't you try it?" In fact, I have no preferences to where I work, public or private.
Interviewer; And do you still have this idea, or ...
Interviewee: More or less. Yes. Although I'm now working for a private firm. I worked for the government for about three years. It was all right. Of course, there is the bureaucracy one has to put up with, but that's not that bad, if you don't mind bureaucratic wheels turning slowly, and things not being as efficient.
Interviewer: Ah-ah. And what made you leave the public sector?
Interviewee: Money mainly. You see, I got married, and my wife doesn't work, and we wanted to start a family right away. So we thought it might be better if I moved to the private sector. This is why it's hard for me to be self-employed because self-employed work has the disadvantage that there may be time, or a period of time when you are unemployed.
Interviewer: I see, so, did you join this company straight away or ...
Interviewee: No, I worked for ..., in a couple of private firms before I came to this one.
Interviewer: Hmm ... hmm. Now, what qualifications does one have to have to become an architect?
Interviewee: Well, you've got to have a degree in architecture. That means before you apply to study architecture in any university you have to pass exams. Usually 3A levels with good results. Also you generally have to study sciences at school rather than arts ... as the basis for the subject to be studied at university level. Although when you really get down to it, the subject involves some aspects of arts too. Then you need between six and seven years to work through, by the end of which you usually sit for the final examination.
Interviewer: So, you mean to take up architecture, one has to have a scientific background?
Interviewee: Well, yes, mainly scientific, but it helps if you have some general arts background too. You know, architecture is not a pure science.
Interviewer: Now, if one wants to take up architecture, one has got to be able to draw? Is that really true?
Interviewee: Well, it is true that the work of an architect involves a lot of drawing, and to be an architect you must be able to draw. But this doesn't mean that if you can't at present draw, you won't have the opportunity to be an architect, because you can be taught to draw. In fact, drawing in architecture is different from drawing in art. An artist's drawing must be good in a sense that it gives a certain impression in the mind of the viewer, in fact, some famous artists can't draw very well at all, at least not from the technical point of view. On the other hand, architect's drawing must be accurate. So, I'd say that accuracy of the drawings is what we aim at, what's important.
Interviewer; Now what qualities do you think make a good architect, apart from the accuracy in his drawings?
Interviewee: Well, I'm not sure if I can generalize about that. You see architecture is a mixture of theory and practice. So I suppose a good architect should be good at both. An architect's work is good in as much as the construction is built precisely as the theory requires, so that it doesn't collapse or can't be used after a period of time because it's dangerous. I don't mean a well-built construction will last forever, but it's predictable that if the building is constructed in a certain way, or with certain materials, we can say how long it will last, provided there's no other factor.
Interviewer: Such as?
Interviewee; Er, for example, an earthquake or if the ground level sinks which may destroy it, so that's one part of being a good architect — to design a construction which is attractive and will last a long time.
Interviewer: Right. So that's the theory side. Now, what about the practical aspect?
Interviewee: Yes, the practical side concerns, I'd say, the use of the construction you design. If you design a house, the people who live in later on, must be happy as living in it. Er, a college student shouldn't think to himself. Oh, I'd rather be study, I'd rather study in the library. My bedroom is too cold because the ceiling seems to be too high, and the windows too big. Or say, when somebody is cooking in the kitchen, the smell of the food shouldn't disturb somebody who's still in bed. The bathroom should be situated for everyone's convenience, but while it's being used, the noise shouldn't disturb anyone. So you see these practical things which give you comfort apart from serving the purpose of the construction whatever it may be — a school, a hospital, a hotel and so on ...
SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST
News Item One (For Questions 11—12)
A man who fired three shots into a crowded birthday party killing one man and wounding two other people has been sentenced to six years in prison. 36-year-old Mark Eastwood was in court for sentencing today after a jury had found him guilty of manslaughter, but not guilty of murder.
Mark Eastwood snapped after being kept awake for four successive nights by noisy parties yards away from his home. He took a loaded revolver and fired three shots through the window of a house in the southwestern part of the city. A 25-year-old man at the party died after being hit in the head, two other people were seriously wounded.
The court was told that Eastwood had a lengthy criminal record for dishonesty and he was keeping a gun without a license. Sentencing him to six years in prison, Mr Justice Dawson said, "No one must be allowed to kill innocent people and not be severely punished."
News Item Two (For Questions 13—15)
A 23-day search operation that begins Thursday will include 84 Americans and their Vietnamese counterparts split in the eight teams. The spokesman for the operation said four of the teams are currently in the midst of a dry season. The spokesmen said Vietnam turned over 67 sets of remains which the Vietnamese believed to be of Americans last year, the most since it began returning such remains in the early 1980s. Vietnam first allowed American search teams into the country in 1988, and the first consisted of just three men. Vietnam has turned over hundreds of sets of remains since the end of the war in 1975. So far 280 such sets have been positively identified as the remains of missing Americans. The remains are examined by forensic specialists at a US military laboratory in Hawaii. The fates of more than 2200 American servicemen who are missing in southeast Asia remain unsolved. 1648 of those are listed as missing in Vietnam or its waters. In an interview with the Associated Press, Major General Thomas Needham, the search operation commander said he was pleased with the progress being made to account for the missing men. He said he and his teams were allowed to go wherever they wished in Vietnam. General Needham said that he constantly pushed the Vietnamese to find and hand over more documents about the missing men.
General Needham said that he didn't believe the Vietnamese government was holding back remains. However, he said some individuals who had come across remains were holding them back in the hope of being paid for them. The US does not pay for remains. In a related development, the US military announced Wednesday that Admiral Charles Lawson, the commander-in-chief of the Pacific will visit Vietnam beginning January 16. Admiral Lawson will visit the American Missing-in-Action Office in Hanoi, discuss the issue with the Vietnamese officials, and travel south to observe the excavations. Admiral Lawson will become the highest ranking US military officer to visit Vietnam since the end of the War. Admiral Lawson's visit and extensive search come at a time when officials in Washington say the question of the US trade embargo against Vietnam is under active review.
David Butler for VOA news, Bangkok.
SECTION D NOTE-TAKING AND GAP-FILLING
Today I'm going to consider very briefly a problem concerned with the competition for land use. That is, that is, whether crops should be used to produce food or to ... should be used to produce fuel. And um ... in considering this problem, I will look at three main areas: the historical background to the problem, the nature of the problems involved in, in the competition for land use, and some examples.
In considering the historical background, um ... we should look at the oil crisis of the 1970s. Due to the rapidly increase in ... in or the rapid, due to the rapid trend in increasing oil prices leading to an energy crisis, many countries have looked for alternative, energy sources to make them independent of other countries' fossil fuels. Examples of alternative energy sources include such thing as solar power, the harnessing of wind, and the wind and waves, tides and also the production of biogas. Biogas is methane which is produced from human and animal waste. A particularly interesting possibility for many developing countries has been the conversion of plant material to alcohol. This is interesting because in many developing countries, there is a large agricultural sector and at the same time a small industrial sector. And thus the possibility of using the agricultural sector to, to produce fuel is of interest to those countries.
Scientific research is going on in the production of alcohol, for example, from sugar. And there are two economic reasons for this. First of all, the world price of sugar has fallen dramatically, or the world price of sugar has fallen in very real terms in the last decade, which has caused the problem for those economics which are dependent on their sugar production as it gives them an alternative possibility for using their sugar. And secondly, sugar is the most efficient source of alcohol. Therefore, it is relatively economical to make fuel by distilling alcohol from it.
In addition to sugar, there are other starchy plants that can be used to make alcohol. For example, in tropical countries, such plants as the cassava plant and the sweet potato are good sources from which alcohol can be made. And in non-tropical countries, you have such things as corn and sugar beet. Now there is a problem arising from the fact that alcohol can be distilled from starchy plants and that is, that many poor countries use precisely these starchy plants, or these starch-rich crops for their food as a staple diet. So in many such countries, there is ... there is a conflict, if you like, between the choices whether to produce these crops for fuel, or to produce these crops for food and for their use, as their staple diet.
It is in fact an economic problem rather than a technical problem as the poor farmers will tend to choose that which is more profitable. Indeed it is an economic problem, not, not necessarily a technological problem. The technology for the conversion of alcohol from starchy plants has been in existence for over 40 years. And there are two ways of using alcohol as car fuel. One such way is in the form of pure alcohol, and an example of this is in Brazil in a project called the Pro-Alcohol Project. And in Brazil cars are being produced to run on pure alcohol. A second use of alcohol as a car fuel is in a mixture of petrol, or with gasoline. In a mixture with gasoline, this produces a mixture called "gasohol". In Germany for example, they have an experiment in which there, there is such a mixture of 85% petrol or 85% gas, 85% gasoline and 15% methanol. So if technology and conversion of engines are not a problem, then really it is a question of economics, and there are three main factors, which ...
