Task 1
How was it when you went to school for the first time? Did you like it or not and why?
范例
I can tell you that the feelings are mixed, but I like it. First, there is this of sense of familiarity. Actually my parents were all teachers and I’ve been living there for several years before I started my kindergarten life. So everything was just normal for me, I don’t even have to adapt to it, I mean, the campus was quite familiar to me, the teachers were acquaintances of me and I’ve had loads of experiences of being in classes, of course not attending classes, just being there, don’t get me wrong. And then, there were these kinds of excitement, the feeling of getting text books of your own, being surrounded by a bunch of unfamiliar kids that were of the same age, and maybe also kind of funny, you know, looking at those teachers whom I knew of from quite young addressing from the podium.
Task 2
Some people prefer to work independently, others prefer to work with others. Which do you prefer? Explain your answer in details.
范例
Some would argue that group work would expose us to different kinds of perspectives and thus help to spark some genuine thoughts out of us, but that’s often not the case, in fact, it blocks production, simply put, we could not talk all at once, and as a result, some ideas and some people won’t get heard, and there is ego threat, people who are afraid of looking stupid or foolish would get could feet, so they hold back on their most genuine ideas, and then, conformity, every group member wants to jump on the majority bandwagon as oppose to bringing in some radical, different ways of thinking, if one or two ideas tend to be popular than others. In short, working with others startles authenticities and smothers originalities. Therefore, I am in favor of working alone.
Task 3
Reading:Student letter
学生建议通过2种方式鼓励更多的人读校报
1.降低校报的价格。
2.提升服务,比如把报纸送到宿舍里面去。
Listening:The woman disagrees
1:现在校报已经很便宜了,才45美分一份,而且报纸上的图片是很有质量的,所以值那个钱。
2:学校人手不够,如果提供递送服务要雇佣更多的员工,会花费更多。
范例
The woman is not in favor of those two ways that are been proposed in the student letter in regard of encouraging more students to read school newspaper.
As for the point about lowering the price of the newspaper to draw a larger subscription, she argues that right now the newspaper is already a bargain with its price at 45 cents, and those pictures on the paper, they are of high quality, so the price they are charging is legitimate.
Plus, for providing better services like dispatching newspapers to dormitories, she points out that the university lacks staffers, if dispatching service were added, they would have to hire more employees, which means higher costs for the university.
That’s why she doesn’t think those two ways are feasible.
Task 4
Reading: Cyclic population change
不同物种相互作用,捕食者和被捕食者的数量会变化,这种变化会形成一种循环,物种的数量上升或者下降最终回到开始时的水平,周而复始。
Listening:
狼和老鼠,老鼠是prey,狼是predator。如果把他们之间数量相互印象的repeating cycle看成不同的阶段。第一个阶段,老鼠多狼少,狼的食物很充足,就会活的更久,更健康,有机会来繁殖和喂养狼崽。第二个阶段,当狼的数量越来越多,被吃的老鼠也越来越多,老鼠的数量会降低,狼因为食物减少没有足够的可以吃,没有充足的食物喂养狼崽,数量也会下降,因此老鼠的数量又开始上升,然后就到达了跟第一个阶段类似的第三阶段,狼的数量少,老鼠的数量多,这个循环就一直持续。
范例
Cyclic population change is a phenomenon where the interaction between species will form a repeating cycle in which population numbers of predator and prey increase and decrease then eventually return to their original size.
For example, wolf is predator and mice is prey, it would be good for us to look at how the populations of these two species affect each other in phases, in the first phase, say we have a lot of mice and only a few wolves, wolves have a large food supply, so they can live longer and healthier, reproduce and feed their pups, then wolves population will grow, and when it comes to the point where there are more wolves to eat the mice, the mouse population starts to decline, and this is phase two, wolves would have a hard time to survive, let alone feed their young, so the wolves population begins to shrink, therefore fewer mouse would get eaten, so that their population will amass, and we would reach the third phase, that is abundant mice and not many wolves, equivalent to phase one, right where we started.
Task 5
Problem:明天电影课上会放最后一场电影,这是这个女生最喜欢的电影,准备用这场电影写论文,但是明天约好了要去看医生。
Solution 1:课后租电影看。
Disadvantage:错过课上的讨论及教授的见解,这些对她的论文很有帮助。
Solution 2写之前课上放过的电影。
Disadvantage 对其他电影没兴趣,会影响论文质量。
范例
The last movie that’s gonna be shown in tomorrow’s film class is the woman’s favorite and she is planning to write a paper about it, however she has an appointment with the doctor at the same time. She could either rent a copy of the movie to watch it later, or write her paper about one of those films shown before.
I would go for the first option.
Missing the class doesn’t necessarily mean that she would miss out all those discussions and the professor’s perspective that might be essential for her paper, actually, with various digital gadgets available nowadays, she could simply ask her classmates to film the whole class session with a film recorder for her later paper-writing use. What’s more, it’s kind of torture to write about something you are not found of, you wouldn't be as motivated, inspirations would be escaping from you, procrastination would be inflicted, and eventually costing her score of the paper.
Task 6
Business class:Two parts of a contingency plan
当一些公司遇到不可预知的一些事情的时候,那些事情会对他们的公司造成损失,所以他们会有应急预案,预案包含两部分:
1. How to continue
e.g.滑雪场有一年下雪特别少,没法滑,那么就应该买machine造人工雪。
2. How to communicate to public
e.g.给他们发邮件说滑雪场说今年雪量少,可能不会让你们玩的很尽兴,所以当顾客来的时候就不会报多大的希望,觉得滑雪场会有多好。
范例
Usually companies would have some contingency plans in place to deal with unexpected incidents that are gonna cause some damages for them. And a contingency plan usually contains two parts.
The first part is how to continue, that is to say, a company would work out a plan to deal with the contingency directly to minimize the impact. For instance, if a ski area is suffering a lack of snowfall in a particular year that would render the resort unable to use, the company would resolve the problem by purchasing some snow cannons to supplement the natural snow with artificial ones, thus avoid being shut down and lose a lot of money.
Another part is how to communicate to the public. The same company might send out emails to their potential customers to notify them that they are experiencing snowfall shortage this year, and as a result, they might not be having a great time than they expected, so by lowering their customers’ expectations, the company wouldn't be expecting as much complaints, and thus bear less or even no damage from the snowfall shortage.