SECTION 4: LISTENING TEST (30 minutes)

Part A: Note-taking And Gap-filling
Directions: In this part of the test you will hear a short talk. You will hear the talk only once. While listening to the talk, you may take notes on the important points so that you can have enough information to complete a gap-filling task on a separate answer booklet. You are required to write ONE word or figure only in each blank. You will not get your answer booklet until after you have listened to the talk.

I'm Diana Winston, a Cherokee medicine priest. I'd like to say something about the Cherokee beliefs regarding the environment and conservation. Basically Cherokee tradition tells us we are part of the nature and we depend on nature for our life. So we don't compete with it and we are not trying to tame it. We are trying to live with it. It's different from our contemporary view that nature exists for the benefit of people. We believe that we are part of what we call great life. And as part of the great life, we are as important as everything else, but certainly no more important than anything else. And we feel that within the great life, there are what we call the laws of nature. We believe that there are many laws of nature. But there are three great laws of nature. And those are the laws that tell us how we have to live in harmony with everything else.

The first law of nature is that you don't take any life without a real reason. And a real reason would be for food, for medicine, for protection. Those would be the reasons for taking life. But basically life is sacred. So we shouldn't kill needlessly. That would absolutely include plants. We believe everything is alive. In fact, we believe stones are alive, trees are alive, plants are alive, animals are obviously alive. And so to us, taking the life of a plant is just as a grave responsibility as taking the life of an animal. And all of those things should be done in a sacred way and in a good way. So for instance, when you go to gather a plant, you don't want to go and say, "wow, here's a whole patch of plants." And go and gather them all. You gather a few and then you gather a few from another spot, leaving the majority of the plants so that they can grow and continue to provide not only for themselves but for us and for our children and for their children.

The second law is that everything we do should serve the great life. Well, what we mean is that we believe that there is one spirit that fills all things: humans, plants, rocks, whatever. And the some and all of that and more is what we call the great life. And so we all are a part of the same great life. And everything we do affects the great life. And everything that happens within the great life affects us. So it's very very important that within the second law of nature that what we do will not harm other parts of the great life. Well, I could give a lot of examples and on a very personal simple level. An example could be for instance. Lots of people might go out and get an electric toothbrush. Uh, maybe it works a little bit better. It certainly easier: the toothbrush does all the work for you. But I have a manual toothbrush and I've used one for my whole life. And it works just fine. To use the electricity necessary to power that electric toothbrush requires coal or nuclear power that harms the air. It harms the water. It harms the great life.

The third law basically is that we don' t pollute where we live. And where we live is not just our home. It's not just our intimate small community. It's not just our country. It's this planet. This sacred altar we call the earth. We don't pool chemical waste down the stream because they all wind up in the water. So basically we don't pollute the earth.

 Well, it might seem a little difficult to live by those three laws today in this industrialized society. But the Cherokee didn't have a problem with plastic. We didn't have plastic. We didn't have a lot of the things that exist today. We still have a lot of options. There are small things that each of us can do. Things like recycling. Things like choosing what we buy and buying things carefully. There are other things we can do. Instead of using the car for every short trip to the store, save them up so we use the car as little as possible. We can do things like organic gardening. We can do things to create greater community within our communities. There are a lot of things that we can do to bring these laws into our lives. And alternately our lives really depend on these. The great life can live without us, but we can't live without the great life.

Part B: Listening and Translation

1. Sentence Translation

Directions: In this part of the test, you will hear 5 sentences in English. You

will hear the sentences ONLY ONCE. After you have heard each sentence, translate

it into Chinese and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER

BOOKLET.

1. The report notes that obesity can lead to potentially fatal health problems including diabetes, stroke and cancer. But unfortunately, the obesity epidemic in America is getting worse.

2. This company has a very good reputation for job security and looking after its staff with things like good perks, good canteen and paid holidays, that sort of thing. Do those things actually motivate people at their work?

3. Many employees can assume that they're being watched while they work during the day. The majority of the U.S. companies keep watch on their workers with video cameras, tape recorders,  computer surveillance.

4. Within a decade of the introduction of the Divorce Act, the total divorce rate rose from 14% of all marriages in 1989 to 30% in 2006.

5、The Chinese currency has appreciated by more than 8% since July, 2005, when the country allowed the Yuan to float against the U.S. dollar within a daily band of 0.3%.

2. Passage Translation

Directions: In this part of the test, you will hear 2 passages in English. You

will hear the passages ONLY ONCE. After you have heard each passage, translate

it into Chinese and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER

BOOKLET. You may take notes while you are listening.

1. A growing number of educators in the United States have begun to question just how beneficial computers are in the classroom. The debate raging in the US is being closely watched by European and Asian educators who welcome technology but also want to learn from American mistakes. Statistic shows 26% of American school children aged 5 to 9 years old use computers at school. Yet, little research has been conducted to examine at what impact computers have on children's cognitive and emotional development. Our concern is that this is very powerful technology the effects of which we really don't know.

2. This morning, I am going to talk briefly about consumer price changes in five major countries. Let's look at the US figures. As you can see, the annual change in consumer prices rose from around 4% in 2002 to just under 6% in 2004. At present, the United States has the highest rate of inflation of the 5 countries considered. Now, turning to France. We can see that consumer prices rose less quickly than those in Britain and the US. Inflation rose over to over3% in 2005. By 2006, the inflation rate in France had fallen below that in Germany and was now equal to that in Japan.