TOEFL Listening
TPO20
Set1
Listen to a conversation between a student and a library employee. Excuse me, I received a letter that I am supposed to return the book that I checked out back in September. It is called Modern social problems. But I am writing my senior thesis. So I thought I was allowed to keep the book for the whole academic year. So you signed up for ‘extended borrowing privileges’. And we are still asking you to bring this book back? You can keep it all year as long as no one else request it. But some one else has, it looks like one of the professors in sociology department, so you have to bring it back. You can check it out again when it is returned in a couple of weeks. So what if the person renews it and I really need it right now. Is there a certain section or chapter you are working with? There is one chapter I am particular working with. Because of the circumstances, we can photocopy up to one chapter of the book for you. Why do not you do that for the one you are working with right now. By the time you need the rest of the book, maybe it will have been returned. Is it okay if I bring that by in a couple of days? Actually the due day is tomorrow. After that, there will be a two-dollar per day fine. But you need to return it today if you want to check out any books today. That’s out policy. No a lot of people realize that. In fact, every semester we get a few students who have had their borrowing privileges suspended completed because they haven’t return books. They are allowed to use books only in the library. They are not allowed to check anything out because of unreturned books. That is not good. I guess I should head back down to the dorm room right now. Before you go what you should do is fill out a form requesting the book back in two weeks. Then the person who requested it won’t be able to renew it, and you will get it back quickly.
Set2
Listen to part of the lecture in a linguistic class. Okay the conventions or assumptions that govern the conversation. These may vary from one culture to another. But basically for people who communicate, they have to follow certain rules. If I am talking with you and I start saying things that are not true. If you cannot tell when I am lying and when I am telling the truth. We are not going to have a very satisfactory conversation, aren’t we. Why, because it violates one of the ‘Gricean maxims’. That is a set of rules or maxims a philosopher named P.H Grice came up with(提出) in the 1970s. One of thes Gricean maxims is ... I've already given you a hint. You just can't go around telling lies. Or as Grice put it, do not say what you believe to be false. That is one of Grice's maxims of quality, as he called it. So that is pretty obvious, but there are others that are just as important. Supposed you were to ask me what time it was and I replied, 'My sister just got married'. No I am not, am I. There is no connection at all which feels wrong because you generally expect to find one. So one important maxim is simply 'be relevant'. And using this so-call maxim of relevance we can infer things as well or rather the speaker can imply things an speakers can make inferences. For instance, suppose you said you'd really love to have a cup of coffee right now. And I said, there a shop around the corner. Well that shop sells coffee for one thing(一来，首先是). Right, and I believe it is open now. Because if I am not implying those things my answer would not be relevant. It'd have no connection with what you said before. But according to the maxim my response should be relevant to your statement meaning 'We should assume some connection between the statement and the response'. And this maxim of relevance is quite efficient to use, even if I do not spell out(拼写，讲清楚) all the details details you can still make some useful logical inferences namely(也就是，即) ‘the shop is open’ and 'it sells coffee'. If we actually had to explain all these details, conversations would move along pretty slowly, wouldn't they? Then there is the maxims of manner including things like 'be clear' and 'avoid ambiguity'. And another, more interesting maxim is one of the so-call maxim of quantity, quantity of the information, that is. It says to give as much information as is required in the situation. So suppoes if you ask me what I did yesterday and I said, 'I went to the art museum'. You would likely to infer that I saw some works of art. Suppose though that I didnot go inside the museum, I just walked up to(走进) it and left. Then I've violated the quantity maxim by not giving enough information. So you can see how important implications are to our ability to carry on(继续、坚持) a concersation. But there are times that people will violate these maxims on purpose. Let's say a boss is asked to write a letter of recommendation for a former employee seeking engineering job. The letter he writes is quite brief, something like Mr.X is polite always dressed neatly. So what does this really mean? By not mentioning any important qualities related to the job. The boss is implying that this is the best that can be said about Mr. X that he is really not qualified. It is a written letter not a conversation. But the principle is the same. The boss is conveying a negative impression about Mr. X without actually saying anything negative about him. So by violating the maxim, it can be a way to be subtle(不易察觉的), or polite or to convey humor through sarcasm(讽刺) or irony. Somtimes though, people will violate maxims for another purpose--to deceive. Now can you imagine who might do such a thing. Some politicians? Or advertisers? Anyone who may see an advantage in implying certain things that are untrue without explicitly saying something untrue. They think, do not blame us if our audiance happens to draw inferences that are simply not true. So next time, you see adertisement saying some product could be up to 20% more effective, think of these maxims of quantity and relevance and ask yourself what inferences you are being led to draw. Think 'more effective' than what exactly and why did they use these little phrases 'could be' and 'up to'. These claims give us a lot less information than they seem to.
Set3
Let's take you back about 11 thousand years ago when earth entered the latest interglacial period. Interglacial periods are typically periods of time between ice ages when the climate warms and glical ice retreats(撤退、收缩) for a time before things cool off again and other ice age begins. And for over the past several million year, earth sort of default climate has actually been ice age. But we have experienced periodic, regular thaws(解冻时期) and the last one, the one we are in now, started about 11,000 years ago. Now the typically pattern for an interglacial period, and we have studied several, is that the concentration of carbon dioxid and methane(甲烷) gas actually reaches its peak that is there is the most carbon dioxid and methane gas, greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere just after the beginning of the interglacial period. And then for reasons which are not entirely clear, the concentration of greenhouse gases gradually goes down. Now the climate continues to warm for a while because there is a lag effect, but gradually as the concentration of greenhouse gases goes down earth starts to cool again and eventually you slip back to an ice age. However for the latest interglacial period, the one we are in now, this pattern did not hold. That is the concentration of carbon dioxide dipped(蘸；下降) a little bit after peaking(vi. 达到最高值) at the beginning near the beginning of interglacial period but then it began to rise again.