English Weekly CET-6  Listening Practice Test Ⅵ

Part III Listening Comprehension

Section A

Directions: In this section, you will hear 8 short conversations and 2 long conversations. At the end of each conversation, one or more questions will be asked about what was said. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After each question there will be a pause. During the pause, you must read the four choices marked A)， B)， C) and D)， and decide which is the best answer. Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre。

11.   W: I’m afraid the project has to be given up. You know, my partner always turns a deaf ear to me whenever we have any difference。

M: Why don’t you communicate with each other? There must be some misunderstandings。

Q: What’s the woman complaining about?

12.   M: Now I know what has been keeping you so busy these days!

W: Yes, I’ve been tied up with these application forms and resumes. The ten candidates are scheduled to have interviews with the human resource manager tomorrow。

Q: What is the woman busy doing?

13.  M: I’ll go dinner with some of my colleagues Sunday night. How about Flower Garden? I remember you’ve visited there several times。

W: Yes, but the only thing that impressed me was the elegant table cloth。

Q: What does the woman imply?

14.   M: Who were you talking to just now? I kept calling you but it was always busy。

W: Oh, sorry. It’s Stella, you know, she’s always well-informed of the latest news in our class so I can’t wait to talk with her。

Q: What do we learn from the conversation?

15.   M: Do you believe that a neighbor is more dependable than a distant relative?

W: Exactly. But the closeness that was once typical in a traditional courtyard is gone now since people moved into the high-rise apartment buildings。

Q: What does the woman imply?

16.   W: Mike didn’t complain about his working load this morning, and we could finish the conference half an hour earlier。

M: It’s kind of rare, isn’t it?

Q: What does the man imply?

17.   M: How can we decide to buy the house without having a close look at it!

W: We’ll arrange that for you provided that you can pay this $1,000 as the warranty fee。

Q: What can we learn from the conversation?

18. M: I heard the percentage of college students’ suicide has been increasing in the past several years。

W: I’m afraid so. But we’ve been trying to offer them free psychological counseling and courses. So it will only be a matter of time to see the improvement。

Q: What can we learn from the conversation?

Now you’ll hear two long conversations。

Conversation One

W: I’m Avi Arditti, and today we are going to continue our interview with Arthur Schulman. He’s compiled a book of words and definitions set forth by Noah Webster in his 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language. Tell us a little bit about Noah Webster, who he was and how he came about writing his dictionary。

M: Well, he did a lot of things. He was a patriot. He was at Yale University when the American revolution broke out, and then he had to leave school for the revolution. He came back and finished his degree there. After the revolution, he was an early newspaperman, a columnist. And then he was a federalist—until his death, I think, but certainly early on, defending the revolution and a great supporter of it。

W: And as I understand it, he believed that the nation—the new nation—really needed a national language。

M: That’s right. And so he was a considerable educator. In fact, his first books were called—there were three books, all parts of what he called the Grammatical Institute, and the first one was the Speller, which continued in print until well past 1900s. So that book was in print for more than a hundred years。

W: Did he have a problem or an issue, that all these different spellings he wanted to…

M: Well, early on he, like Ben Franklin, was interested in reforming spelling and really making radical changes so that the written language could be read and sound like the spoken language. But I think everybody gave that up as an impossible job after a while。

W: And what was the product that he produced in 1828?

M: In 1828 he produced a dictionary of seventy thousand words that he had been working on for well over twenty years—actually, I think more like twenty-five years. And he did that because he felt very strongly that the country needed a dictionary to reflect the language that existed here, which was no longer exactly the same as the language that existed in the home country。

W: And what does this dictionary tell us about the American character—who were we as Americans in 1828?

M: Well, it tells us a lot about Webster’s character. He was a great moralist. He tells us how to behave. He tells us what’s right. He tells us that we should educate our children. He tells us that slavery is evil。

Questions 19 to 21 are based on the conversation you have just heard。

19.   What do we know about the personal experience of Noah Webster according to the conversation?

20.   Why did Webster spend over two decades on his dictionary published in 1828?

21.   What does his dictionary published in 1828 tell us about Webster?