Unit 4
Section One Tactics for Listening
Part 1 Spot Dictation
Stephen Powelson’s Amazing Memory
When Stephen Powelson was nine, his school organized a (1) weekly contest in memorizing passages from the Bible. Stephen paid (2) no attention until he was chided* for (3) not competing. The next Sunday he surprised everyone by (4) reciting all the passages for the (5) entire year.
As a teenager in prep school, Stephen took Greek. His teacher (6) assigned 21 lines of the Iliad* to be memorized (7) in a week. At the end of the hour - though he (8) insisted he paid full attention to the (9) lecture - Stephen knew all 21. He went on to memorize the first (10) 100 lines.
In 1978, for the first time (11) since college, Powelson, now 60, had some (12) spare time. To keep his mind active, he reread the Iliad and (13) discovered that he still knew the first 100 lines (14) by heart.
That someone could memorize so much between ages 60 and 70 is (15) astonishing to most people, who are (16) convinced that memory (17) worsens as we grow older.
Powelson's method is to (18) read a book into his tape recorder, then read it several more times, making sure he understands (19) each word. \\
Part 2 Listening for Gist
You might not know how rarely images are viewed directly through telescopes. The most common way to observe the skies is to photograph them. The process is very simple. First, a photographic plate is coated with a light-sensitive material. The plate is positioned so that the image received by the telescope is recorded on it. Then the image can be developed, enlarged, and published so that many people can study it.
Because most astronomical objects are very remote, the light we receive from them is rather feeble. But by using a telescope as a camera, long time exposures can be made. In this way, objects can be photographed that are a hundred times too faint to be seen by just looking through a telescope.
1) This passage is about how to photograph astronomical objects.
2) Photograph, coated, light-sensitive material, positioned, received, recorded, developed, enlarged, published, remote, feeble, telescope, camera, long exposures
Section Two Listening Comprehension
Part one Dialogue
Tunisian Holiday
Vocabulary amphitheatre mosaic
coach n. 公共马车，普通旅客车厢 resort n. 胜地，常去之地
(Someone is enquiring about the Tunisian holiday.) Agent: Hello, Bath Travel.
Client: Hello, I'd like to find out more about your Tunisian holiday for amateur archaeologists. I've read about it in the paper, but I'd like to know more about what is involved. Agent: You mean you'd like to know the itinerary? Client: Yes, that's right.
Agent: All right. Just briefly, you arrive in Tunis at midday on the first day and go by coach to La Marsa. Then there is a short briefing by the archaeologist and then the rest of the day you are free to explore.
The second day you get up before dawn and go to Carthage to see the sunrise. You have breakfast and a lecture there and then go by coach to