1997年8月托福听力文字_第2页

Part B
Questions 31-35 Listen to a telephone conversation about student housing.
Good morning, housing office. How can I help you?
Hi. I’m calling about the new subsidized low-cost housing for graduate students.

Are you aware that it’s only available to married graduate students and their families?
Yes. I think my wife and I may qualify, since she’s still in graduate school. But I was
wondering whether there were any other requirements.
Well, unless you have more than one child, you have to have a combined annual
income that’s less than 15,000 dollars.
I’m working as a part-time research assistant, so that’s no problem. But right now
we’re living with my wife’s parents. Does that mean we have to include their income too?
Not necessarily. Why don’t you stop by our office so I can give you some forms to fill
out and explain everything in more detail?
That sounds like a good idea. Would tomorrow morning be all right?
The afternoon might be better. It can be pretty crazy around here on a Friday
morning.
All right, then. I’ll try to make it in the afternoon. Is there anyone special I should
ask for?
You can ask for me, Susan Davison or my assistant Bill Brown.
31. Why does the man call the woman?
32. Where does the man live?
33. Why does the man believe he’s eligible for low-cost housing?
34. What can be inferred about the man?
35. Why does the woman suggest that the man visit her office in the afternoon?

Questions 36-38 Listen to a discussion about the Ice Age.
Hey, Jane. What’s so interesting?
What? Oh, hi, Tom. I’m reading this fascinating article on the societies of the Ice
Age during the Pleistocene period.
The Ice Age? There weren’t any societies then, just the bunch of cave people.
That’s what people used to think. But a new exhibition at the American Museum of
National History shows that ice age people were surprisingly advanced.
Oh, really? In what ways?
Well, ice age people were the inventors of languages, art and music as we know it.
And they didn’t live in caves. They built their own shelters.
What did they use to build them? The cold weather would have killed almost of the
trees, so they couldn’t have use wood.
In some the warmer climates, they did build houses of wood. In other places, they
used animal bones and skins or lived in natural stone shelters.
How did they stay warm? Animal skin walls don’t sound very sturdy.
Well, it says here, that in the early Ice Age, they often faced their homes towards the
south to take advantage of the sun, a primitive sort of solar heating.
Hey, that’s pretty smart!
Then people in the late Ice Age even insulated their homes by putting heated
cobblestones on the floor.
I guess I spoke too soon. Can I read that magazine article after you’re done? I
think I’m going to try to impress my anthropology teacher with my amazing knowledge of
Ice Age civilization.
Ha… What a show-off?
36. What did the man think about the people of the Ice Age?
37. How did people in the early Ice Age keep warm?
38. What does the man want the woman to do?
Part C
Questions 39-43 Listen as a guide describes the ancient art of thatching a roof.
Welcome to the Forewinds Historical Farm where traditions of the past are preserved
for visitors like you. Today our master thatchers will begin giving this barn behind me a
sturdy thatched roof able to withstand heavy winds and last up to a hundred years. How
did they do it? Well, in a nutshell , fetching involves covering the beams or rafters, the
wooden skeleton of a roof, with reeds or straw. Our thatchers here have harvested their
own natural materials for the job the bundles of water reeds you see lying over there
beside the barn. Thatching is certainly uncommon in the United States today. I guess
that’s why so many of you have come to see this demonstration.
But it wasn’t always that way. In the 17th century the colonists here thatched their
roofs with reeds and straw, just as they had done in England. After a while though, they
began to replace the thatch with wooden shingles, because woods were so plentiful.
And eventually, other roofing materials like stones, slates and clay tiles came into use.
It’s a real shame that most people today don’t realize how strong and long lasting a
thatched roof is. In Ireland, where thatching is still practiced, the roofs can survive winds
of up to 110 miles per hour. That’s because straw and reeds are so flexible. They bend
but don’t break in the wind like other materials can. Another advantage’s that the roofs
keep the house cool in the summer and warm in the winter. And then of course, there’s
the roof’s longevity. The average is sixty years, but they can last up to a hundred.
With all these reasons to start thatching roofs again wouldn’t it be wonderful to see this
disappearing craft to return to popularity.
39. What is about to be demonstrated?
40. What are thatch roofs made of?
41. According to the speaker, why did thatching die out in the United States?
42. According to the speaker, why does thatch survive strong winds?
43. According to the speaker, how might thatching become popular again?
Questions 44-46 Listen to a radio news story.
A lot of people in the United States are coffee drinkers. Over the last few years, a
trend has been developing to introduce premium specially blended coffees known as
gourmet coffees into the American market. Boston seems to have been the birthplace
of this trend. In fact, major gourmet coffee merchants from other cities like Seattle and
San Francisco came to Boston, where today they engaged in a kind of coffee war with
Boston’s merchants. They are all competing for a significant share of the gourmet coffee
market. Surprisingly, the competition among these leading gourmet coffee businesses
will not hurt any of them. Experts predict that the gourmet coffee market in the United
States is growing and will continue to grow to the point that gourmet coffee will soon
capture a half of what is now a 1.5 million-dollar market and will be an 8 million-dollar
market by 1999. Studies have shown that coffee drinkers who convert to gourmet coffee
seldom go back to the regular brands found in supermarkets. As a result, these brands
will be the real losers in the gourmet coffee competition.
44. What is the main topic of the news story?
45. What probably leads people to choose gourmet coffees over regular brands?
46. What will probably happen in the future to stores that sell only regular brands of
coffee?
Questions 47-50 Listen to part of a talk in an art history class.
You may remember that a few weeks ago we discussed the question of what
photography is. Is it art, or is it a method of reproducing images? Do photographs
belong in museums or just in our homes? Today I want to talk about a person who tried
to make his professional life an answer to such questions. Alfred Stieglitz went from the
United States to Germany to study engineering. While he was there, he became
interested in photography and began to experiment with his camera. He took pictures
under conditions that most photographers considered too difficult. He took them at night,
in the rain and of people and objects reflected in windows. When he returned to the
United States, he continued these revolutionary efforts.
Stieglitz was the first person to photograph skyscrapers, clouds and views from an
airplane. What Stieglitz was trying to do in his photographs was what he tried to do
throughout his life: make photography an art. He thought that photography could be just
as beautiful a form of self-expression as painting or drawing. For Stieglitz, his camera
was his brush. While many photographers of the late 1800s and early 1900s thought of
their work as a reproduction of identical images, Stieglitz saw his as a creative art form.
He understood the power of the camera to capture the moment. In fact, he never
retouched his prints or made copies of them. If he were in this classroom today, I’m
sure he’d say, “Well, painters don’t normally make extra copies of their paintings, do
they?”
47. What is the professor mainly discussing?
48. What question had the professor raised in the previous class?
49. What does the professor imply about the photographs Stieglitz took at night?
50. Why did Stieglitz choose not to make copies of his photographs?