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Passage One
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen! Asinstructed in our previous meeting, the subcommittee on building developmenthas now drawn up a brief to submit to the firm’s architect. In short, thebuilding would consist of two floors. There would be a storage area in thebasement be used by the research center as well as by other departments. Weare, as you know, short of storage base, so the availability of a largebasement would be a considerable advantage. The ground floor would be occupiedby laboratories. Altogether there would be six labs. In addition, there wouldbe six offices for the technicians, plus a general secretarial office andreception area.
The first floor would be occupied by theoffices of Research and Development staff. There would be a suite of offices forthe Research and Development director as well as a general office forsecretarial staff. It’s proposed to have a staff room with a small kitchen. Thiswould serve both floors. There would also be a library for research documents andreference materials. In addition, there would be a resource room in which audiovisual equipment and other equipment of that sort could be stored. Finally,there would be a seminar room with closed circuit television. This room couldalso be used to present displays and demonstrations to visitors to the center. Thebuilding would be of brick construction so it’s to conform to the general styleof construction on the site. There would be a pitched roof. Wall and ceilingspaces would be insulated to conform to new building regulations.
Questions 16 to 18 are based on the passageyou have just heard.
Question 16
What is said about the planned basement ofthe new building?
Question 17
Where would be the Research and Developmentdirector’s office?
Question 18
Why would the building be of brickconstruction?
Passage Two
Huang Yi works for a company that sellsfinancial software to small and medium size businesses. His job is to showcustomers how to use the new software. He spends two weeks with each client, demonstratingthe features and functions of the software. The first few months in the jobwere difficult. He often left the client feeling that even after two weeks hehadn’t been able to show the employees everything they needed to know. It’s notthat they weren’t interested; they obviously appreciated his instruction andshowed a desire to learn. Huang couldn’t figure out if the software wasdifficult for them to understand, or if he was not doing a good job ofteaching. During the next few months, Huang started to see some patterns.
He would get to a new client site and spendthe first week going over the software with the employees. He usually did thisin shifts, with different groups of employees listening to his lecture. Then hewould spend the next week in installing the program and helping individualstroubleshoot. Huang realized that during the week of troubleshooting andanswering questions, he ended up addressing the same issues over and over. Hewas annoyed because most of the individuals with whom he worked seem to haveretained very little information from the first week. They asked very basicquestions and often needed prompting from beginning to end. At first, hewondered if these people were just a little slow, but then he began to get thedistinct feeling that part of the problem might be his style presentinginformation.
Questions 19 to 22 are based on the passageyou have just heard.
Question 19
What does Huang Yi do in his company?
Question 20
What did Huang Yi think of his work?
Question 21
What did Huang Yi do in addition tolecturing?
Question 22
What did Huang Yi realize in the end?
Passage Three
As we help children get out into the world to do their learning well, wecan get more of the world into the schools. Aside from their parents, mostchildren never have any close contact with any adults except their teachers. Nowonder they have no idea what adult life or work is like. We need to bring morepeople who are not full-time teachers into the schools. In New York City, underthe teachers’ and writers’ collaborative, real writers come into the schools,read their works, and talk to the children about the problems of their crafts. Thechildren love it. In another school, a practicing attorney comes in every monthand talks to several classes about the law. Not the law that is in books, butthe law as he sees it and encounters it in his cases. And the children listenwith intense interest. Here’s something even easier: let children worktogether, help each other, learn from each other and each other’s mistakes. Wenow know from this experience of many schools that children are often the bestteachers of other children.
What’s more important, we know that whenthe fifth floor six-grader who is being having trouble with reading, startshelping a first grader, his own reading sharply improves. A number of schoolsare beginning to use what some call paired learning. This means that you letchildren form partnerships with other children. Do their work even includingtheir tests together and share whatever marks or results this work gets. Justlike grown-ups in the real world. It seems to work.
Question 23
Why does the speaker say most children haveno idea what adult life is like?
Question 24
What is happening in New York City schools?
Question 25
What does the experience of many schoolsshow?
