1、Test1(section1-1) Hello? Oh, hello. I wanted to enquire about hiring a room in the Village Hall, for the evening of September the first. Let me just see.Yes, we have both rooms available that evening. Theres our Main Hall-thats got seating for 200 people. Or theres the Charlton Room. Sorry? The Char
2、lton Room - C-H-A-R-l-T-0-N.Thats got seating for up to one hundred. Well, were organising a dinner to raise money for a charity, and were hoping for at least 150 people, so I think well go for the Main Hall. How much would that cost? Lets see. You wanted it for the evening of September 1st? Yes, th
3、ats a Saturday. So from 6 p. m. to midnight thatd be 115 pounds-thats the weekend price, its 75 pounds on weekdays. Thats all right. And I have to tell you theres also a deposit of 250 pounds, which is returnable of course as long as theres no damage. But we do insist that this is paid in cash, we d
4、ont take cards for that. You can pay the actual rent of the room however you like though cash, credit card, cheque. Oh, well I suppose thats OK.So does the charge include use of tables and chairs and so on? Oh, yes. And what about parking? Yeah thats all included. The only thing that isnt included i
5、s that.you said you were organising a dinner? Yeah. Well, youll have to pay extra for the kitchen if you want to use that. Its 25 pounds. Its got very good facilities good quality cookers and fridges and so on. OK, well I suppose thats all right. We can cover the cost in our entry charges. Right. So
6、 Ill make a note of that. Now there are just one or two things you need to think about before the event. For example, youll have to see about getting a licence if youre planning to have any music during the meal. Oh, really? Its quite straightforward, Ill give you the details later on. And about a w
7、eek or ten days before your event youll need to contact the caretaker, thats Mr Evans, to make the arrangements for entry- heIl sort that out with you. And do I give him the payment as well? No, you do that directly with me. Test1(section1-2) Right. Now is there anything I need to know about what ha
8、ppens during the event? Well, as youll be aware, of course the building is no smoking throughout. Of course. Now, are you having a band? Yes. Well, theyll have a lot of equipment, so rather than using the front door they should park their van round the back and use the stage door there. You can open
9、 that from inside but dont forget to lock it at the end. OK. And talking of bands, Im sure I dont need to tell you this, but you must make sure that no one fiddles about with the black box by the fire door thats a system that cuts in when the volume reaches a certain level. Its a legal requirement.
10、Sure. Anyway, we want people to be able to talk to one another so we dont want anything too loud. Oh, that reminds me, well be having speeches-are there any microphones available? Yeah. Just let the caretaker know, hell get those for you. Right, now when the event is over we do ask that the premises
11、 are left in good condition. So theres a locked cupboard and youIl be informed of the code you need to open that. Its got all the cleaning equipment, brushes and detergent and so on. Right, so what do we need to do after everyones gone? Sweep the floors I suppose? Well actually they have to be washe
12、d not just swept. Then youll be provided with black plastic bags, so all the rubbish must be collected up and left outside the door. Of course. Well make sure everythings left tidy. Oh. and I forgot to ask. I presume we can have decorations in the room? Yes, but you must take them down afterwards. S
13、ure. And the chairs and tables should be stacked up neatly at the back of the room. Ill make sure Ive got a few people to help me. Test1(section2-1) Welcome to the Fiddy Working Heritage Farm. This open-air museum gives you the experience of agriculture and rural life in the English countryside at t
14、he end of the nineteenth century. So youll see a typical farm of that period, and like me, all the staff are dressed in clothes of that time. I must give you some advice and safety tips before we go any further. As its a working farm, please dont frighten or injure the animals. We have a lot here, a
15、nd many of them are breeds that are now quite rare. And do stay at a safe distance from the tools: some of them have sharp points which can be pretty dangerous, so please dont touch them. We dont want any accidents, do we? The ground is very uneven, and you might slip if youre wearing sandals so Im
16、glad to see youre all wearing shoes - we always advise people to do that. Now, children of all ages are very welcome here, and usually even very young children love the ducks and lambs, so do bring them along next time you come. I dont think any of you have brought dogs with you, but in case you hav
17、e, Im afraid theyll have to stay in the car park, unless theyre guide dogs. Im sure youll understand that they could cause a lot of problems on a farm. Test1(section2-2) Now let me give you some idea of the layout of the farm. The building where you bought your tickets is the New Barn, immediately t
18、o your right, and were now at the beginning of the main path to the farmland and of course the car park is on your left. The scarecrow you can see in the car park in the corner beside the main path, is a traditional figure for keeping the birds away from crops, but our scarecrow is a permanent sculp
19、ture. Its taller than a human being, so you can see it from quite a distance. If you look ahead of you youll see a maze. Its opposite the New Barn beside the side path that branches off to the right just over there. The maze is made out of hedges which are too tall for young children to see over the
20、m, but its quite small, so you cant get lost in it! Now can you see the bridge crossing the fish pool further up the main path? If you want to go to the cafe go towards the bridge and turn right just before it. Walk along the side path and the cafes on the first bend you come to. The building was or
21、iginally the schoolhouse, and its well over a hundred years old. As you may know, we run skills workshops here, where you can learn traditional crafts like woodwork and basket-making. You can see examples of the work, and talk to someone about the courses, in the Black Barn. If you take the side pat
22、h to the right here just by the New Barn youll come to the Black Barn just where the path first bends. Now I mustnt forget to tell you about picnicking, as I can see some of you have brought your lunch with you. You can picnic in the field, though do clear up behind you, of course. Or if youd prefer
23、 a covered picnic area theres one near the farm yard: just after you cross the bridge theres a covered picnics spot on the right. And the last thing to mention is Fiddy House itself. From here you can cross the bridge then walk along the foot path through the field to the left of the farm yard. That
24、 goes to the house, and itll give you a lovely view of it. Its certainly worth a few photographs, but as its a private home, Im afraid you cant go inside. Right. Well, if youre all ready, well set off on our tour of the farm. Test1(section3-1) OK, Greg, so I finally managed to read the article you m
25、entioned the one about the study on gender in physics. About the study of college students done by Akira Miyake and his team? Yeah. I was interested that the researchers were actually a mix of psychologists and physicists. Thats an unusual combination. Yeah. I got a little confused at first about wh
26、ich students the study was based on. They werent actually majoring in physics they were majoring in whats known as the STEM disciplines. Thats science, technology, engineering and.-.and math. Yes, but they were all doing physics courses as part of their studies. Thats correct. So as I understood it,
27、 Miyake and co started from the fact that women are underrepresented in introductory physics courses at college, and also that on average, the women who do enrol on these courses perform more poorly than the men. No one really knows why this is the case. Yeah. But what the researchers wanted to find
28、 out was basically what they could do about the relatively low level of the womens results. But in order to find a solution they needed to find out more about the nature of the problem. Right. Now lets see if I can remember.it was that in the physics class, the female students thought the male stude
29、nts all assumed that women werent any good at physics.was that it? And they thought that the men expected them to get poor results in their tests. Thats what the women thought, and that made them nervous, so they did get poor results. But actually they were wrong.No one was making an assumptions abo
30、ut the female students at all. Anyway, what Miyakes team did was quite simple getting the students to do some writing before they went into the physics class. What did they call it? Values-affirmation they had to write an essay focusing on things that were significant to them, not particularly to do
31、 with the subject they were studying, but more general things like music or people who mattered to them. Right. So the idea of doing the writing is that this gets the students thinking in a positive way. And putting these thoughts into words can relax them and help them overcome the psychological fa
32、ctors that lead to poor performance. Yeah. But what the researchers in the study hadnt expected was that this one activity raised the womens physics grades from the C to the B range. A huge change. Pity it wasnt to an A, but still! No, but it does suggest that the women were seriously underperformin
33、g beforehand, in comparison with the men. Yes. Mind you, Miyakes article left out a lot of details. Like, did the students do the writing just once, or several times? And had they been told why they were doing the writing? That might have affected the results. You mean, if they know the researchers
34、thought it might help them to improve, then theyd just try to fulfil that expectation? Exactly. Test1(section3-2) So anyway, I thought for our project we could do a similar study, but investigate whether it really was the writing activity that had that result. OK.So we could ask them to do a writing
35、 task about something completely different.something more factual? Like a general knowledge topic. Maybe.or we could have half the students doing a writing task and half doing something else, like an oral task. Or even, half do the same writing task as in the original research and half do a factual
36、writing task. Then wed see if it really is the topic that made the difference, or something else. Thats it. Good. So at our meeting with the supervisor on Monday we can tell him weve decided on our project. We should have our aims ready by then. I suppose we need to read the original study the artic
37、les just a summary. And there was another article I read, by Smolinsky. It was about her research on how women and men perform in mixed teams in class, compared with single-sex teams and on their own. Let me guess.the women were better at teamwork. Thats what I expected, but actually the men and the
38、 women got the same results whether they were working in teams or on their own. But I guess its not that relevant to us. What worries me anyway is how were going to get everything done in the time. Well be OK now we know what were doing. Though Im not clear how we assess whether the students in our
39、experiment actually make any progress or not. No. We may need some advice on that. The main things to make sure we have the right size sample, not too big or too small. That shouldnt be difficult. Right, what do we need to do next? We could have a look at the time table for the science classes. or p
40、erhaps we should just make an appointment to see one of the science professors. Thatd be better. Great. And we could even get to observe one of the classes. What for? Well.OK maybe lets just go with your idea. Right, well. Test1(section4-1) Ive been looking at ocean biodiversity, thats the diversity
41、 of species that live in the worlds oceans. About 20 years ago biologists developed the idea of what they called biodiversity hotspots. These are the areas which have the greatest mixture of species, so one example is Madagascar. These hotspots are significant because they allow us to locate key are
42、as for focusing efforts at conservation. Biologists can identify hotspots on land, fairly easily, but until recently, very little was known about species distribution and diversity in the oceans, and no one even knew if hotspots existed there. Then a Canadian biologist called Boris Worm did some res
43、earch in 2005 on data on ocean species that he got from the fishing industry. Worm located five hotspots for large ocean predators like sharks, and looked at what they had in common. The main thing hed expected to find was that they had very high concentrations of food but to his surprise that was o
44、nly true for four of the hotspots the remaining hotspot was quite badly off in that regard. But what he did find was that in all cases, the water at the surface of the ocean had relatively high temperatures even when it was cool at greater depths, so this seemed to be a factor in supporting a divers
45、e range of these large predators. However, this wasnt enough on its own, because he also found that the water needed to have enough oxygen in it so these two factors seemed necessary to support the high metabolic rate of these large fish. A couple of years later, in 2007, a researcher called Lisa Ba
46、llance, who was working in California, also started looking for ocean hotspots, but not for fish what she was interested in was marine mammals things like seals. And she found three places in the oceans which were hotspots, and what these had in common was that these hotspots were all located at bou
47、ndaries between ocean currents, and this seems to be the sort of place that has lots of the plankton that some of these species feed on. So now people who want to protect the species that are endangered need to get as much information as possible. For example, theres an international project called
48、the Census of Marine Life. Theyve been surveying oceans all over the world, including the Arctic. One thing they found there which stunned other researchers was that there were large numbers of species which live below the ice sometimes under a layer up to 20 meters thick. Some of these species had
49、never been seen before. Theyve even found species of octopus living in these conditions. And other scientists working on the same project, but researching very different habitats on the ocean floor, have found large numbers of species congregating around volcanoes, attracted to them by the warmth and nutrients there. Test1(section4-2) However, biologists still dont know how serious the threat to their survival is for each individual species. So a body called
