托福听力短文 II-02-2

(MA) That's an interesting question, Tom. Women did participate in the early days of motion-picture making. One of the most outstanding is Lois Weber. She is credited as the first consistently successful woman film director. In the early 1900's, whe

托福听力短文 II-02-3

(WA-LC) Well, if there are no more questions I would like to continue our discussion of human evolution by looking at Homo erectus, the earliest of our ancestors who stood upright. Homo erectus lived about one and a half million years ago and was gi

托福听力短文 II-03-1

(WA-WW) Yesterday we talked about the anecdote. Today we're going to move on to one of the most popular literary forms in Western literature --- the short story. A short story is a piece of prose fiction, usually under 10,000 words. Although it's si

托福听力短文 II-03-2

(WA) One reason oceanographers analyze the sediment on the ocean floor is to see how long-terms changes in Earth's temperature have affected the depth of the ocean. By analyzing the remains of sea animals in old layers of ocean sediment, oceanograph

托福听力短文 I-16-3

(Woman) You might think that most of the patients at sleep clinic are being treated for sleeplessness, commonly referred to as insomnia, but that is not the case. The majority of sleep-clinic patients suffer from disorders of excessive sleep --- or

托福听力短文 II-07-2

(MA) Welcome to the largest retrospective exhibit this art museum has ever devoted to an architect. The architect chosen for this honor is Frank Lloyd Wright --- probably the greatest United States architect of the twentieth century. Wright has the

托福听力短文 II-05-1

(WA) I was really glad when your club invited me to share my coin collection. It's been my passion since I collected my first Lincoln cent in 1971; that's the current penny with Abraham Lincoln's image. Just a little history before I start in on my

托福听力短文 II-05-3

(WA) One of the most popular myths about the United States in the nineteenth century was that of the free and simple life of the farmer. It was said that farmers worked hard on their own land to produce whatever their families needed. They might som

托福听力短文 II-06-1

(WA) Before moving on to a new topic, I want to finish up our unit on arachnids by looking at what may seem a very unusual aspect of spider behavior --- a species where the young spiders actually consume the body of their mother. Unlike most other s

托福听力短文 II-06-2

(MA-KC) Moving away from newspapers, let's now focus on magazines. Now, the first magazine was a little periodical called The Review, and it was started in London in 1704. It looked a lot like the newspapers of the time, but in terms of its content,

托福听力短文 II-06-3

(MA) There's an art exhibition here on campus which ties in well with the discussions we're had about folk art. It's an exhibition of wildlife art calendars from about a hundred years ago. Like most other folk art, the calendar pictures were not con

托福听力短文 II-07-1

(WA) As many of you already know, March is Women's History Month, so it's just a few weeks until the university begins its annual observance. The Women's Studies Program, in conjunction with the College Life Office, is pleased to announce that a ful

托福听力短文 II-07-3

(WA) Today, I'd like to turn our attention to an area of management often overlooked in traditional management courses: small-business management. Small businesses have gone from being traditional small-town stores selling food or clothing to sophis

托福听力短文 II-08-1

(WA) The next style of furniture design I'd like to discuss is Shaker furniture design. The Shakers are a religious group that flourished in the nineteenth-century United States. At that time, the Shakers lived in their own communities and believed

托福听力短文 II-08-2

(MA) Scientists are always on the lookout for alternative sources of energy. Today we're going to discuss one that's so plentiful they say it could supply more energy than all the coal and oil in the world. It's found in something called gas hydrate

托福听力短文 II-08-3

(W-JA) Today, I want to talk about the Cariboo gold rush of 1858, which began when gold was discovered in the frontier town of Quesnel [k-NEL] Forks in the Canadian province of British Columbia. By 1861 thousands of men had flocked to the region hop

托福听力短文 II-09-1

(MA) Look at our topographical map and you'll see that the middle third of the North American continent --- from the Rocky Mountains almost to the Mississippi River --- is pretty flat. This is the Great Plains. This kind of area is sometimes called

托福听力短文 II-09-2

(WA) Did you know you can catch a mood? A bad mood isn't spread by a virus like the flu is, but it can be contagious. Moods sort of drift from person to person unconsciously --- slight, unintentional signals carry the mood. You've probably experienc

托福听力短文 II-05-2

(MA) Today I want to talk to you about wasps and their nests. You'll recall that biologists divide species of wasps into two groups: solitary and social. Solitary wasps, as the name implies, do not live together with other wasps. In most species the

托福听力短文 II-09-3

(MA) We've probably all wondered how a new word gets into the dictionary. Take the word doofus, for example, spelled d-o-o-f-u-s, meaning a stupid or incompetent person. This word, which has been around since the late 1960's in a slang sense, made i