2005年英语专业八级考试真题（附听力mp3及答案）

听力原文

Part 1, Listening Comprehension

Section A, Mini-Lecture

I think as seniors, you are often required by yourinstructors to do some library research on this topicor that. And, in the end, you have to write aresearch paper, right? Then what is writing aresearch paper like? How are we going to write one?What are the steps in producing a research paper and what are the points we need to take careof? In today’s lecture, I’ll try to answer these questions.

First of all, what is writing a research paper like? We may start by comparing it to an ordinaryessay, a form of writing you are very familiar with. Writing a research paper is much like writingan essay. Both kinds of writing involve many of the same basic steps. That is, choosing atopic, asking questions to define and develop the topic, identifying the audience, getting rawmaterial to work with, outlining the paper, writing it, and, finally, revising it. These are the stepsshared between research paper writing and essay writing.

Is there any difference, you may ask. Yes. What makes a research paper different is that muchof your raw material comes not from your own head, but from printed sources: mainly booksand periodicals in the library. Collecting raw material, that is reading books and taking notes, isvery much like the process of brainstorming at the prewriting stage of an ordinary essay.

Generally speaking, there are two basic types of research papers, and a paper may belong toeither type. It may be a survey of facts and opinions available on a given topic or ananalytical argument that uses those facts and opinions to prove a point. Your instructor maytell you which kind of paper you are expected to write. If not, you yourself should eventuallychoose between surveying and arguing. You will then have a definite way of managing yoursources.

Now, let’s take a look at how you are going to write a survey-type research paper or anargumentative research paper. In a survey-type research paper, you gather facts and avariety of opinions on a given topic. You make little attempt to interpret or evaluate whatyour sources say or to prove a particular point. Instead, through quotation, summary, andparaphrase, you try to provide a representative sampling of facts and opinions to give anobjective report on your topic. You explain the pros and cons of various attitudes or opinions,but you don’t side definitely with any one of them.

While in an argumentative research paper, you do considerably more. You do not simplyquote, paraphrase, and summarize as you do in a survey-type paper. You interpret,question, compare, and judge the statements you cite. You explain why one opinion is soundand another is not; why one fact is relevant and another is not; why one writer is correct andanother is mistaken. What’s more, your purpose may vary with your topic. You may try toexplain a situation to recommend a course of action, to reveal the solution to a problem, orto present and defend a particular interpretation of a historical event or a work of art. Butwhether the topic is space travel or trends in contemporary American literature, anargumentative research paper deals actively – I say it again, actively – with the statements itcites. It makes these statements work together in an argument that you create, that is, to anargument leading to a conclusion of your own.

In the next part of the lecture, I’d like to talk about one of the basic steps in writing Imentioned earlier in the lecture. That is how to choose a topic. Choosing a topic for a researchpaper is in some ways like choosing a topic for an ordinary essay, but there are somedifferences. As you think about your topic, ask yourself these questions:

Question number one: Do you really want to know more about this topic? This is the initialquestion you have to ask yourself, because research on any subject will keep you busy forweeks. You certainly do not wish to waste your time on something you have little interest in.You do it well only if you expect to learn something interesting or important in the process.

Question number tw Are you likely to find many sources of information on this topic? Youcannot write a research paper without consulting a variety of sources. If only one source ornone at all is readily available, you should rethink your topic or choose another.

Question number three: Can you cut the topic down to a manageable size? Be reasonableand realistic about what you can do in a short period, say, two to four weeks. If your topic is“The American Revolution”, you’ll scarcely have time to make a list of books on your subject, letalone read and analyze them. So try to find something specific, such as “The Role of ThomasJefferson in the American Revolution” or “The Franco-American Alliance”

Question number four: What questions can you ask about the topic itself? Questions help youget the topic down to a manageable size, discover its possibilities, and find the goal of yourresearch, that is, the specific problem you want to investigate. Suppose you want to writeabout the issue of financing a college education – A topic not only current, but also directlylinked to the lives of most college students and their families. You could ask at least two orthree pointed questions: How much does educational opportunity depend on financial status?Is financial aid going to the students who need it most? How much should universities andcolleges charge their students? You can ask yourself these questions or more as you start workon the research paper.

Okay. To sum up, in today’s lecture, we’ve looked at some of the issues in research paperwriting, like the basic steps, types of research paper, and how to choose a topic. In our nextlecture, we’ll concentrate on how to identify the audience, how to work out an outline, andhow to edit the draft.

Section B, Interview

M: Today, we’ve Professor McKay on our morning talk show. Good morning, Professor McKay.

W: Good morning.

M: I’ve heard that you and your team have just completed a report on old age.

W: That’s right.

M: Could you tell me what your report is about?

W: Well, the report basically looks into the various beliefs that people hold about old age andtries to verify them.

M: And what do you think your report can achieve?

W: We hope that it will somehow help people to change their feelings about old age. Theproblem is that far too many of us believe that most old people are poor, lonely, and unhappy.As a result, we tend to find old people, as a group, unattractive. And this is very dangerousfor our society.

M: But surely we cannot escape the fact that many old people are lonely and many are sick.

W: No, we can’t. But we must also remember that the proportion of such people is no greateramong the 60-70 age group than among the 50-60 age group.

M: In other words, there is no more mental illness, for example, among the 60s-70s thanamong the 50s-60s.

W: Right! And why should there be? Why should we expect people to suddenly change whenthey reach their 60th or 60th birthday any more than they did when they reached their 21st?

M: But one would expect there to be more physical illness among old people, surely.

W: Why should one expect this? After all, those people who reach the age of 65 or 70 are thestrong among us. The weak die mainly in childhood, then in their 40s and 50s. Furthermore, bythe time people reach 60 or 65, they have learned how to look after themselves. They keepwarm, sleep regular hours, and eat sensibly. Of course, some old people do suffer fromphysical illnesses, but these do not suddenly develop on their 65th birthday. People who arehealthy in middle age tend to be healthy in old age, just as one would expect.

M: Do you find that young people these days are not as concerned about their parents astheir parents were about theirs?

W: We have found nothing that suggests that family feeling is either dying or dead. There donot appear to be large numbers of young people who are trying, for example, to have their dearold mother locked up in a mental hospital.

M: Don’t many more parents live apart from their married children then used to be the case?

W: True, but this is because many more young families can afford to own their own homesthese days than ever before. In other words, parents and their married children usually live inseparate households because they prefer it that way, not because the children refuse to havemum and dad living with them.

M: Is this a good thing, do you think?

W: I think that it’s an excellent arrangement. We all like to keep part of our lives private, evenfrom those we love dearly. I certainly don’t think that it’s a sign of the increased loneliness ofold age.

M: Are people’s mental abilities affected by old age?

W: Certain changes do take place as we grow older, but this happens throughout life. Thesechanges are very gradual and happen at different times with different people, but, in general, ifyou know a person well in his middle age and have seen how he deals with events andproblems, you will easily recognize him in old age.

M: So that someone who enjoys new experiences, travel, education, and so on in his middleyears will usually continue to do so into old age?

W: Exactly. We have carried out some very interesting experiments in which a group of peopleaged 60-70 and a group aged 30-40 had to learn the same things. The first thing wediscovered was that the young group tends to be quicker at learning than the old group.However, although the old group took longer to learn, eventually, they performed as well asthe young group. And when we tested the two groups several weeks later, there was again nodifference between the two groups.

M: That’s very interesting indeed. What else did your experiments show?

W: Well, one group of old people agreed to attend evening classes for a year to study Englishand mathematics. In fact, most of this group became so interested in their studies that theycontinued them for another year. Anyway, we discovered that they did best in the Englishclasses and that most of them steadily improved their ability to communicate in both thewritten and the spoken language.

M: What about the group who studied mathematics?

W: Well, that’s a different story. There seems to be no doubt that people find maths moredifficult as they grow older. Though, why this is so, I cannot say.

M: Perhaps pocket calculators will solve this problem.

W: I think you’re right. In fact, I’m sure that you are.

M: Okay. Time for a commercial. Stay tuned; we’ll be right back.

Section C: News Items

Question 6

M: Scientists in Brazil claim they’ve come up with a new way of treating burns. That is, withfrog skin. Researchers say it is cheap and effective. The frog skin has components thatdiminish the growth of bacteria, making the wound heal faster and reducing the amount oftime that patient has to stay in hospital. Researchers said the method had already beensuccessfully used in some hospitals in Brazil.

Question 7

W: Once a source of high-pitched business activity, Japan’s karaoke industry has slowed down.Japanese have less to sing about amid sustained economic problems. Karaoke firms are nowstriving to develop new ideas to attract cost-conscious karaoke singers. These include a new,high-tech machine that allows people to sing like famous singers and theme rooms on some ofthe Asian cartoon figures targeted at younger crowds. The new karaoke machine is beingdeveloped by a professor from the US Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The machineuses a technology called C-Sound that automatically adjusts the speed and tone of any songbeing played to match the tempo and key the singer is using. The tempo can be adjustedmanually on conventional karaoke machines, but the new product is the first machine to do itautomatically.

Question 8

M: The China Internet Network Information Center said this week that the nation’s onlinecommunity is expanding at a rapid pace, with 8.9 million users added in the first half of theyear, from January to June. China’s Internet population hit 68 million by the end of June, theworld’s second-largest figure after the United States. The figure was 10 million at the end of2000 and 1.5 million in 1997. “Cyberspace is a force to be reckoned with in China,” said ChenHua Lin, a senior Internet analyst at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Netizens between theages of 18 and 30 are the driving force. They spend 13 hours every week surfing the Internet,on average. Their major purpose is obtaining information or having fun. At the same time, only0.2 percent listed online shopping, e-business, and online learning as their main activity. As thenumber of China’s Internet users grows, so does the junk mail. 8.3 e-mails out of 16

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