淘金式 英语专业四级听力文本test--04

淘金式 英语专业四级听力文本test--04 Dictation Changing Rate of Employment West Germany had one of the lowest rates of unemployment back in 1980./ It stood at just three percent. But then over the nest three years it rose quite sharply and steadily. / In 1982 it was nearly six percent, and in 1983 it was the same as France. / 1984 saw a slight increase, and 1985 a slight fall./ The 1985 figure was eight percent,/ in between France and the United States. / The United States has had ups and downs, / or rather, it’s the only country to show a significant drop in the number of unemployed. / This is due to high interest rates, / which haven’t helped the rest of the world. / In 1980 the rate was about the same as France and Great Britain, / slightly higher than France, actually, at about seven percent. / This rose to 7.5 percent in 1981, and then peaked the following year at over nine percent. Conversation 1 W: Oh, it’s very nice. I really enjoyed the meal. Thank you very much for inviting me. M: Not at all. Er..Pamela.. W: Did you watch TV last night, Bill? M: No, I didn’t. I hardly watch television, Pamela… W: Really? I did. I watched the World Cup. The match yesterday was between Germany and Italy. It was so exciting… M: Pamela… W: Yes, both teams played well, though. Actually I tried to ring you, but you weren’t in. M: Why? W: Because it was so exciting. All the fans shouted and cheered so much that you could hardly hear anything. And I know how much you like football. M: No, I don’t . I hate it. W: It is incredible, you used to play it at school, didn’t you? M: Yes, I did. But I stopped playing years ago. Listen, Pamela… W: What’s the matter? You look as white as a sheet. Is there anything wrong? M: Yes, I’m afraid there is. I’ve got something to tell you. W: What? M: I didn’t bring any money with me. I can’t pay the bill. Conversation 2 W: Hi, Mark, how is it going? M: Well, not so great. I’ve got a big problem with the poetry course that’s required for my major. W: Is that all filled up? M: No, no, there’s plenty of room, but there is a prerequisite. I’ve got to take an introduction to poetry before I can take the special course in poets of the 1960s and the introductory course is only offered in the evenings. W: You don’t like evening classes? M: No, that’s no the point. I work in the cafeteria every evening. I need the money to pay my tuition. W: Can you ask someone to switch hours with you? M: I wish I could. My boss just did me a favor by putting me on evenings. And he’ll hit the ceiling if I ask to change again. W: Wait a minute. I have an idea. Have you checked the courses over at the community college? They might offer an introductory poetry course during the day. M: Hey, that’s a great idea! I’m free this afternoon. I think I will go over and check it out. W: Yeah, their courses are actually cheaper, and you can transfer the credits over there. M: Thanks for the advice, Linda. I’ll let you know what happens. Prerequisite 先决条件 Switch 交换 Conversation 3 M: How do you and your housemates like the co-op. I’m thinking of joining it myself. W: We like it quite a bit. We got some very fresh produce and both staples at fair prices. But the co-op doesn’t carry everything. So we still wind up going to the supermarket too, for cleaning supplies, batteries, that sort of thing. I wish the co-op solved those items. I’ve been talking about it with some of the other members. M: What do members have to do? Just pay a membership fee? W: Yeah, there’s a fee, and there are meetings. But attendance isn’t required. But we do have to work there for an hour every week. M: I wouldn’t mind working there sometimes. But is the food free of addictives. That will be the main reason I join. I’m a convert from junk food. W: Well, a lot of food is pure and pesticides-free. M: I’d like to try it just for a month or so. Do they have trial memberships? W: The shortest membership is one month. Then if you like it you can join for a longer period. And it becomes cheaper. A six-month membership costs as much as five individual months. M: Sounds pretty easy. Maybe the next time I run into you again it will be in the checkout line at the co-op. housemate co-op staple日常必需品;主食;主要产品; 钉订 addictive junk food pesticide杀虫剂，农药 checkout结帐;检验;调查;查看 Section B passages Passage 1 The United States is on the verge of losing its leading place in the world’s technology. So says more than one study in recent years. The main reason for this decline is the parallel-decline in the number of U.S. scientists and engineers. Since 1976, employment of scientists and engineers has gone up 85 percent. This trend is expected to continue. However, the trend shows that the number of 22-year-olds—the near term source of future phDs to foreign nationals is increasing rapidly. Our inability to motivate students to pursue science and engineering careers at the graduate level is compounded because of the intense demand industry has for bright Bachelor’s and Master’s degree holders. Too often, promising PHD candidates, confronting the cost and financial sacrifice of pursuing their education, find the attraction of industry irresistible. Compound 使增加;增加: e.g. …compound the difficulties of the firefighters. Passage 2 It is estimated that some seven hundred million people are unable to read and write and there are probably two hundred and fifty million more whose level of attainment is so slight that it barely qualifies as literacy. Recently the attack on illiteracy has been stepped up. A world plan has been drawn up by a committee of UNESCO experts in Paris, as part of the UNESCO Nations Development Decade, and an international conference on the subject has also been held. UNESCO stresses that functional literacy is the aim. People must learn the basic skills of responsible citizenship: the ability to read notices, newspapers, timetables, letters, pricelists, to keep simple records and accounts, to sort out the significance of the information gathered, and to fill in forms. The major areas of illiteracy are in Asia, Africa and Central and South America. There are at least one hundred million illiterates in Africa, comprising eighty-five percent of the total population. In Europe the figure is about twenty-four million, most of them in Southern Europe, Italy, Portugal, and Yugoslavia heading the list. literacy有文化，有教养，有读写能力 UNESCO联合国教科文组织(United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) c Passage 3 Nowadays, the standard for measuring power has changed. These changes foretell a new standard for measuring power. No longer will a nation's political influence be based solely on the strength of its military forces. Of course, military effectiveness will remain a primary measure of power. But political influence is also closely tied to industrial competitiveness. It's often said that without its military the Soviet Union would really be a third-world nation. The new standard of power and influence that is evolving now places more emphasis on the ability of a country to compete effectively in the economic markets of the world. America must recognize this new course of events. Our success in shaping world events over the past 40 years has been the direct result of our ability to adapt technology and to take advantage of the capabilities of our people for the purpose of maintaining peace. Our industrial prowess over most of this period was unchallenged. It is ironic that it is just this prowess that has enabled other countries to prosper and in turn to threaten our industrial leadership. The competitiveness of America's industrial base is an issue bigger than the Department of Defense and is going to require the efforts of the major institutional forces in our society: government, industry and education. prowess高超的技艺和能力 Section 3 News News 1 Former Deputy President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, is to be charged with corruption. Mr. Zuma was sacked by President Thabo Mbeki last week after being implicated in a fraud trial. Jacob Zuma, just days ago, was Deputy President of Africa's most powerful nation. Now he's out in the cold. First he was sacked, now he's to face a trial that could end in the prison. His people, especially the Zulus are behind him. They think it's all a set-up to get rid of the man they wanted to be the next leader of South Africa. But a judge, two weeks ago, accused Zuma of probable corruption in a multi-billion-pound arms scandal. Deputy President sack fraud News 2 Japan's super-fast maglev train has broken the world's train speed record previously set by itself. The magnetically levitated train reached five hundred and eighty-one kilometers per hour or three hundred and sixty-one miles per hour on a test track west of Tokyo. Racing to a new record. The MLX-01 clocks in the world's fastest ever train speed at three hundred and sixty-one miles per hour. No one was on board the maglev train as it hurtled across the eleven-mile test just outside Tokyo. It was remote controlled by these engineers. Just two days ago, this team broke their old record by sending the maglev to three hundred and forty-eight miles per hour. Now, after reaching three hundred and sixty-one miles or five hundred and eighty-one kilometers per hour, they're celebrating another world record for the super-fast train. 磁力悬浮火车: magnetically levitated train Magnetic levitation Maglev News 3 OPEC has decided this was not the time for cutting petroleum output. Energy ministers here didn't have the stomach to cut back production at a time when crude oil prices were reaching historic highs on the international exchanges. It was feared that cuts in the output would send prices even higher and dent global economic growth. While nobody here seems surprised about oil output level's remaining the same. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela managed to raise a few eyebrows among delegates when he held a highly politicized speech calling on OPEC to be an anti-imperialist organization. He went on to describe Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the jailed Marxist militant, as a good friend. Venezuelan-born Ramirez, better known as Carlos the jackal, led a terror attack against OPEC's Vienna headquarters in 1975. dent削弱,使凹下, 凹进 militant斗士 jackal 走狗;同伙 News 4 The President has signed the first ever legislation outlawing certain kinds of SPAM messages that plague computer users with unwanted junk e-mail. The new law has long name. Officially it's called, the Controlling the Assault of non-solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003. The White House says SPAM is not just annoying, but it also hurts productivity, jams up computers, and thus is costly to the economy. The law makes it a crime, punishable by large, multi-million dollars fines for violators and possibly jail time, forbidding mass e-mails with misleading subject lines or with sender's identity disguised. outlaw宣布...为不合法,将...放逐 垃圾邮件:SPAM messages; junk e-mail plague折磨, 使苦恼, 使得灾祸 News 5 The United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has said he believes that UN peacekeeping forces will have to return to East Timor just a year after its withdrawal. Speaking to the Security Council, Mr. Annan expressed deep concern about the recent situation in East Timor, where at least 20 people have died in the fighting between rival sections of the security forces. Chrisben Thoreau reports from New York. "East Timor was held as a great success of the United Nations, a model of nation building. But after the violence in the recent weeks which left at least 20 people died, the prospects of Asia's youngest nation do not look good. At the moment soldiers from four countries led by Australia are patrolling daily. They were deployed there at the end of May. The United Nations' peacekeeping forces left the country a year ago but they may now return. The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said he expected the Australian would remain in East Timor in the medium term before possibly handing over to the UN." Security Council联合国安全理事会 News 6 The South Korean businessman who founded the Daewoo Industrial Group has been arrested on his return home after six years on the run. Kim Woo Choong fled South Korea after his business empire collapsed with debts of more than $70 billion. He's accused of fraud and embezzlement. Kim Woo Choong arrived on an early morning flight from Vietnam and was immediately arrested by prosecutors. He faces an array of embezzlement and fraud charges, including the illegal diversion of $20 billion overseas. He also faces more than 40 civil suits. He was mobbed at the airport by reporters and protestors, some of whom lost millions when The Daewoo business group collapsed in 1999. Kim Woo Choong fled abroad shortly afterwards and is reported to have spent most of his time in France. embezzlement盗用, 侵占, 挪用 illegal diversion 非法转移 mob围住