TOEFL IBT LISTENING PRACTICE TEST 22 FROM SHARPENING SKILLS FOR THE TOEFL IBT Solution
Listening 1
1. B
2. C
3. D
4. YES : B, D / NO: A, C
5. D
6. A
Listening 2
7. C
8. A
9. A, C
10. A
11. D
12. C
Listening 3
13. C
14. D
15. YES: B, C / NO: A, D
16. A
17. D
18. C
Listening 4
1. B
2. C
3. C
4. C
5. B
6. B
Listening 5
7. D
8. A
9. D
10. Yes: A, B / NO: C,D
11. A
12. C
Listening 6
13. C
14. B
15. A
16. C
17. B
18. B
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TOEFL IBT LISTENING PRACTICE TEST 22 FROM SHARPENING SKILLS FOR THE TOEFL IBT Transcripts
Listening 1
Listen to part of a lecture in a biology class.
M: so to day we are going to spend the first part of class talking about Wallaces, a very unique zoogeographic region. You may have noticed that your textbook mentions zoogeographic regions; these are areas of distinctive animal life, or fauna. The book discusses the examples of the Neotropical and Ethiopian regions, among others. Um, er, all of these zoogeographic regions are characterized by having a diversity of species that make up a giant gene pool.
You may remember from our last dass that a gene pool refers to the total genetic material available for a population or species at a given time… the bigger the gene pool for a species, the more genetic material available for that species to evolve and adapt to their environment. And, out of this gene pool and the forces of natural selection, we see the evolution of a variety of related speaes. These species have evolved in relationship to each other but are different from species in other zoogeographic regions. Move to a different region, and the gene pool, the diversity of species living there, well that gene pool would be different.
Now, Wallacea is such a zoogeographic region, and especially interesting for the huge diversity in a relatively small area. It’s located between the Moluccan Islands of Indonesia and the continental shelf of Australia, and it covers a total land area of 347,000 km2. It’s named after Alfred Russel Wallace, the father of animal geography, and whose other claim to fame is that he was developing the theory of evolution at the same time as Charles Darwin. However, um, Darwin was a little more established and managed to publish it first. The moral of this story: publish or perish. Right, well, uh, back to our point, Wallacea.
OK, so, Alfred Russel Wallace spent a lot of time traveling the East Indies, or what is today called Indonesia, where he was, umm, studying the biology of the region. Aside from this being a part of the world that is rich in biological diversity, both animal and plant We on land, terrestrial, as well as marine life see, what was unusual to this pioneering biologist—and this is important—what was unusual was the sudden difference in species. Wallace was sailing between the islands of Bali and Lombok, a distance of merely fifteen miles, when he discovered a significant and drastic change between the bird families living on the two islands. On the one hand, there were Asian bird species found on Bali Yet, just a short distance away, on Lombok, he found no Asian birds. What he found, on the other hand, were several distinctly Australian species. It was as if there was a line, and not a very thick one, that the birds refused to cross. But it was not only birds, take mammals for instance East of the line, there are placental mammals such as tigers, rhinoceros, and apes, similar to those of the Asian mainland In contrast, to the west, he found marsupials. Now these . . . these, uh, marsupials are distinct from placental mammals in that female marsupials typically have a pouch in which they rear their young.
Well, true explorer and scientist that he was, Wallace was not content to study the birds of Bali and Lombok, but sailed to nearby islands in the East Indies . . he marked the channel between the two islands of Bali and Lombok and followed it north, observing species on other islands and discovering what was in fact a distinctive line between zoogeographic regions. What he discovered has been called the “Wallace Line” in his honor, a dividing line between the species of two large zoogeographic provinces, those of Asia and Australia.
In his enthusiasm. Wallace mav have exaggerated the distinctness of this line. Other biologists have since adjusted the boundary between the Asian and the Australian regions. As with otfier zoogeographic regions—now this is important—the core areas of a region, their centers, are most distinct, and as you go out from the center, it’s fuzzier on the periphery, the edges. We now know that some Asian species have crossed the Wallace line, these may not be the birds of Bali or the Asian mammals, but other species such as insects. What we see along the line is more of a Wending of species as one zoogeographic region meets another Moving westward from the Wallace line, there is a gradual reduction in Asian species and an increase in Australian species. So, this area, this transition region, between the Asian and Australian regions, well, it has subsequently been named Wallacea. a particularly interesting zoogeographic transitional region.
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Listening 2
Listen to part of a conversation between a student and a clerk at the student union.
M: I’d like to buy some tickets, please.
W: Um, OK . . . but if it’s for the Phobos Quartet tomorrow, you’re too late. That performance is already sold out.
M: No, no, it’s not for that. I want five tickets to the game next weekend.
W: Football tickets. I’m sorry, but the Student Union doesn’t sell tickets for football games or any other sporting events. You’ll have to go to the athletic office for that. Do you know where it is?
M: Yes, thanks. Sorry about the mistake I guess I’ll go over there now.
W: Umm, before you go, can I ask you something?
M: Sure.
W: Is this the first time you’ve bought tickets for an athletic event?
M: Yes it is. Why?
W: Well, I can probably save you some time. First of all, you can’t buy more than one student ticket for an athletic event. Every student is limited to one. You only pay half-price for it, though
M: Why is that? I wanted to bring the rest of my family to the game. How are they supposed to go?
W: Well, student tickets are limited to one each, but your family can always buy general admission tickets, if any are available.
M: So … I can’t get a discount for them?
W: No, unfortunately not Student tickets only. And a certain number of seats for each game are reserved just for students. You can imagine what would happen otherwise. No one would ever buy a full- price ticket, and students would get squeezed out of the games.
M: What if some of my friends who don’t plan on going to the game give their tickets to my family? You know—my family uses their tickets?
W: Yes. you could probably do that. But your friends would have to actually go to the ticket office, show ID, and buy the tickets personally.
M: OK. but would someone at the stadium say to my dad, “Hey. This is a student ticket and you don’t look like a student”?
W: I’m not really sure. I suppose than possible. You just have to deade whether you want to take that chance.
M: Hmm. Yeah. I’ll have to think about that
W: But I don’t want to give you wrong information. Maybe there wouldn’t be a problem. You’d really better check it out with the athletic ticket office. I don’t know all their rules. If you’re embarrassed to do it in person, give them a call. Their extension is 5-3010.
M: Five three zero one zero. I’ll do that. Thanks for all your help.
Listening 3
Listen to part of a talk in a film class.
W: OK, so we’ve watched a couple of great films well, I think they’re great films, and most critics agree – urn. The Big Sleep. Citizen Kane, of course. The Maltese Fakon-and today I’d like to talk a bit about, uh, the genre, um, the style of filmmaking – these films are part of the film noir tradition. Film noir. What does it mean? Anv,uh, French speaker here
?
M1: Uh, literally “black film.” But uh, noir can also be translated as “dark”-so uh. “dark film?”
W: Yes, dark film Film noir. So why do you suppose the genre is called that?
Mi: Well, the films are all shot in black-and-white …
W: That’s true, at least for the classics of the genre— uh, it started m the 1940s and peaked in the 1950s, but some films from the 1970s-um, Coppola’s The Godfather for example—and later, too, have some noir elements, even though they’re shot in color. But. yes, being shot in black-and-white is one of the elements of the genre Stil, this question of its name …
M2: Their plots are kinda gloomy, kinda dark, y’know?
Not light-hearted at all. I mean, there may be some humor—um, especially Bogart, for instance in The Big Sleep, trading quips with Bacall—but the overall mood isn’t very upbeat. Itt pretty somber, depressing, even cynical, I think.
W: Very good And. uh, well, that was. that pretty much reflected the America of the post World War II era People were pessimistic—they didn’t expect things to turn out well. There had been the Great Depression in the 1930s, World War II in the 1940s … and well, the nuclear bomb might have won the war for the Allies, but, uh, there’s no denying that it also unleashed an era of fear, even hopelessness—the possibility of nuclear war anyway, um, we can debate the reasons behind the mood of these movies, but there’s no denying that that mood was pretty dark. There’s another reason for the term film noir, though —uh, it’s actually what caused French critics to call the films noir in the first place …
Mi: The lighting? It’s pretty stark, full of contrast, and also lots of shadows ..
W: Yes. lighting effects, the use of those shadows, low-light scenes. There are some iconic film noir scenes—uh, the dark hotel room or apartment at night and through the window there’s the blinking neon sign of a diner or a bar. . . rain-drenched streets that give off wonderful reflections of headlights-or the flashing neon signs again.
M2: And there’s always the shot of cigarette smoke kind of drifting in and out of the light
W: Yes, lighting is a real hallmark of film noir. Another characteristic is what’s called the omniscient narrator. Omniscient That means all-knowing People speak of a god as being omnisoent—he knows everything that happened and everything that’s going to happen In the same way, the narrator of the film noir knows all about the story he’s telling. And he explains some of the plot sometimes, or gives you his viewpoint—often cynical, like we said. A lot of times, the narrator is the main character in the story. There’s another narrative device that’s used a lot in film noir. That’s the flashback, using flashbacks to tell the story. Think of Citizen Kane. It opens up with the ending, uh. with the death of the main character, and then the rest of the film tells what happened, how he got to that point.
Um, let’s talk a bit about the mam characters. The noir hero-uh, Humphrey Bogart is probably the most wel-known noir actor. I mentioned the Maltese halcon arid The Big Sleep. In both of them, he plays a private detective—typical character. Uh, that’s because most of the genre is crime films, so a detective is a natural. The hero certainly has his flaws —he’s not as, uh, as moral as we might expect a hero to be. In fact, his morals are kind of vague, his ethics, too. He isn’t motivated by any noble idea of humanity or anything like that. In fact, he can be pretty cynical, um, paranoid sometimes, fatalistic —he can’t control what’s going on—and alienated from society, uh, feeling like he doesn’t fit in. And the women are interesting, too. Attractive, they often rely on their sexual attractiveness to manipulate the male character into doing something that in the end is going to be his downfall, hers too. But. still, these women, we have some sympathy for them, too. because their situations are usually pretty bleak–locked in loveless marnages, or victims of abuse … we can understand what’s motivating their need for revenge—and we can see that it can’t end well!
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Listening 4
Listen to part of a discussion in a sociology dass.
M: Today, we are going to discuss Max Weber’s theoretical categories of social action. I hope that you’ve had a chance to look over the reading. So, uh, in formulating his approach to sociology, Weber was responding to the ideas of his time. He was not interested in structural forces or natural laws explaining human societies– Instead, he was interested in the subjective meanings human actors attach to their actions. According to Weber, everything that we can observe people doing socially, they do with a purpose in mind. In other words, all action is intentional, and it is directed toward other people, and this is why the sociologist must consider the social context in which people act. There is an exception, though, and that is the person who is insane and thus behaving without a socially understood purpose.
For now, I want to be dear that Weber’s approach differs from classical economic models of human behavior that narrowfy define rational behavior as using the most rational means to obtain one’s self-interest, particularly material self-interest. It’s . not that Weber was uninterested in economics, guite the opposite. He was trained in economic history, but he … he saw things a Irttie differently, and the way he spelled this out was through distinguishing different types of purposeful social action.
Can anyone recall how Weber characterized the different types of social action?
Wi: Well, he did talk about people being goal-oriented … the way they use means to achieve ends …
M: OK. you’re touching on his idea of purposeful rational action, or [back to normal cadence] goal- onented action as you say. And, yes, he is referring to the rational choices of means and ends. This type of social action is closest to the standard economic view of the self-interested individual . A good example is the engineer who builds a bodge by rationally choosing the most efficient means possible to achieve his goal, of building the bridge. He aims to build the strongest bodge, at the lowest cost, in the shortest period of time. That’s an example of purposeful rationality. Yet Weber observed there are other forms of social action, all equally meaningful to the actor, and important to the sociologist. Take value-oriented rationality for an example …
WJ: That would be like the monk that he talked about—the one who would live a very simple life, in the woods, to obtain salvation
Wi: Right, and didn’t Weber say that he also—the monk. I mean—he also used rational means to attain his goal of holiness, but that the goal wasn’t necessarily rational, I mean not everyone believes in hofiness. That’s a religious idea that’s not necessarily shared by all people.
M: Very good, the monk is an excellent example of value rationality, because he is striving for a goal, which in itself may not be rational, but which is pursued through rational means within an ethical, religious, or other moral context. The rational means are self-denial, in his case, eating simple food and living a very modest life, and he does this because he believes these actions will help him attain his goal of hotness, a goal that is shared by his religious community and perhaps some members of the broader society. So, now, Weber had a third type of social action as well, which he called affective action, affect being another word for emotion. OK, then affective action refers to social action anchored in emotions rather than the rational weighing of means and ends.
Wi: Sounds like my roommate, she only decided to go to this university because her boyfriend went here. She is, like, so in love …
M: OK. Her decision was emotionally meaningful to her, and thus purposeful. Moving on then, what about the final type: traditional action?
W2: I think Weber said traditional action was guided by the past. An individual will look to what she sees as traditional, and than the way she will try to do things.
M: Can you think of an example?
W2: Well. I guess I did that, a little I mean, uh, when I chose to go to this college. My dad, my uncles, my mom, lots of their friends, well, they all went here. And. well, I think it was expected that I would go to school here, too, it’s a good school and all, but I never really looked at other options
M: In Weber’s eyes that could be traditional action. So, we can see that practicing Weber’s sociology is not as clear-cut as simply studying society as if all people were making rational decisions all the time.
Listening 5
Listen to part of a conversation between a student and a university advisor.
M: Hello, welcome to the student assistance center. How can I help you?
W: I’m sort of anxious about how the semester is going to turn out The last one was really hard for me.
M: I don’t think you have to worry so much. It’s only the first day, after all.
W: The truth is, one of the requirements for my major is Chinese, but I’m having a lot of trouble learning it. I almost failed my Chinese class last term. I really don’t want to have to switch majors
M: Have you ever thought about studying in a different way? Your problems might just be caused by your study habits more than anything else.
W: I asked my professor about that last semester. I tried out the things that she recommended, but it didn’t help. I don’t think I’m talented at learning languages.
M: You could try the language lab. They’ve added Chinese to their program this semester.
W: What do you mean? I didn’t know there was anything like that here.
M: Well, it used to be just a room with tape players and – headphones, and they only had French, German, and Spanish. It has really been improved a lot.
W: How do you think it could help me?
M: The main thing is that it’s a good place to practice outside of class. When you’re teaming a language, you need all the practice you can get.
W: OK, but I know I’m not very diligent by myself. I need something to stimulate me to work harder, or something to make practicing easier.
M: I think you won’t have a problem with that. There are twenty-five computers there now, and they’re specialized for language learning. You can practice a lot of things that would be really difficidt otherwise, like pronunciation. You can record your own voice speaking Chinese or whatever, and then compare it to an audio file of a native speaker saying the same thing. There are many other kinds of programs as well. You can even get writing assistance.
W: That sounds pretty good, but I don’t really like working alone all that much. I’d like to practice with other people, too.
M: You can do that. The computers are networked, so you can work with other people at the language lab. You can do this in pairs or groups. The programs can be used by several people at the same time, so you can work on assignments together.
W: Do you know if any professors will use this for their classes?
M: Actually, as far as I know, all language classes will use the lab during this semester. At least, you’ll be able to do your homework online. Oh yeah, there’s also an archive of foreign media. You can watch movies and TV programs at the terminals.
W: Maybe there’s hope for me this semester after all.
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Listening 6
Listen to part of a talk in a physical science class.
W: For the next week or so, we’re gonna be looking at so-called environmentally friendly technology; uh. technology that pollutes less, does less harm, even no harm if it’s possible, to the environment. An obvious place to start might be with the biggest polluters—industrial processes, or uh, automobiles. But instead. I’m gonna start with the microcosm -with something small, uh, that I think each one of us has in our homes to one degree or another. I’m gonna start with the personal, with our own lives.
Devices with standby power. What is standby power? Also called standby mode? It’s a feature offered by many appliances and electronic devices today. We turn the television off, but in not really off, or not completely off. It’s in standby mode, so that we can pick up the remote control and switch it back on whenever we want. Well, to read that remote control, some part of the TV’s electronics has still got to be on, always looking for that remote signal, standing by to receive that message and turn itself on. Think of all the devices you’ve got in your home that have some kind of standby mode—televisions. DVD players, stereos, computers … Do you have a coffeemaker or a microwave oven with a built-in digital dock? That’s consuming electricity even when you’re not making a fresh cup of coffee or reheating your morning coffee.
Mi: Yeah, but big deal. They couldn’t possibly be using much energy.
W: Would you be surprised if I told you that a typical microwave oven uses more electricity powering that dock than it uses heating food?
Mi: Yeah. Come on. in got to take a lot more power to heat food than run a digital clock.
W: Sure, at any given moment. If you’re heating food in the microwave, it actually takes 100 times as much power to heat the food as to run the clock. But most of the time your microwave isn’t heating food. In fact, most microwaves are on standby for more than ninety-nine percent of the time.
M2: But does it really add up to much?
W: There was a study done almost ten years ago that suggested that fwe percent of all household electrical use, five percent was consumed by devices in standby mode. But a team of scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory-! mention their employer just to give you a sense of how reputable these scientists are—they researched the actual standby-power use. And in fact they found the actual use approached ten percent of electricity consumption by households. And a French study in the same year-uh, 2000-reported that the figure in France was seven percent. There’ve been other studies in other developed countries, and some have even found standby power consumption in residences to be as high as thirteen percent.
M2: You’re right, then. That could be a significant savings.
Mi: Who’s gonna give up the convenience?
W: Well, there are ways to make standby power consumption more efficient. Some electronic devices use more than twenty watts of power in standby mode. And yet, the technology exists to enable standby modes to consume around one watt of power, even less. The problem, of course, is persuading manufacturers to install them.
M2: The government should make it mandatory that they use more efficient standby modes
M1: Why jump to such an extreme solution? What about that Energy Star program? You know, when you buy something that uses electricity—a refrigerator, a television, a computer—some of them have that energy star logo on them-it means the product complies with standards for energy efficiency. I think it’s international, not just the US. They could create some standards for the standby mode feature.
M2: Yeah, but it’s voluntary, right? Industry won’t change unless it’s forced to.
M1: If the environment is so important to consumers, then they’ll buy items that are more energy efficient. The market will take care of it.
M2: Come on. Until todays class, I never knew about the problem. When the government sees a problem like this, that they can easily hande with a regulation, they should do it.
M1: Government laying down these kinds of laws just gets in the way of industry doing what rt does best —which is innovation. And also, it means consumers lose some freedom—we don’t have as much choice.
W: Well, California introduced some legislation in 2004 that set standards for energy consumption of standby modes. Already, it’s illegal to sell a television or DVD player in California that uses more than three watts of power in standby mode . . . One of the Berkeley scientists has declared that if these household gadgets used the most efficient means of powering their standby modes, that the developed nations could reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by nearly half a percent. That’s the equivalent of removing more than 18 million cars from the roads.
M1: Or you could just unplug your appliances when you’re not using them.