2012年英语专八真题听力原文

2012年英语专八真题听力原文

　　听力原文

　　Part 1, Listening Comprehension

　　SECTION A MINI-LECTURE

　　Observing Behaviour

　　Good morning, everyone. Today we will look at how to observe behaviour in research.Perhaps you would say it is easy and there is nothing extraordinary. Yes, you may be right. Allof us observe behaviour every day. For example, when traveling in another country, we canavoid embarrassment by observing how people behave in that culture. And failing to beobserving while walking or driving can be life-threatening.

　　We learn by observing people's behaviour. Researchers too rely on their observations tolearn about behaviour,but there are differences. For instance, when we observe casually, wemay not be aware of factors that bias our observations, and, [1] and when we rarely keepformal records of our observations. Instead, we rely on our memory of events. [2]Observationsin research on the other hand are made under precisely defined conditions, that is, in asystematic and objective manner, and with careful record keeping.

　　Then how are we going to conduct observations in our research studies, and what do weneed to do in order to make a scientific and objective observation? Now, as you remember,the primary goal of observation is to describe behaviour, but it is in reality impossible toobserve and describe all of a person's behaviour. So we have to rely on observing samples ofpeople's behaviour. Doing so, we must decide whether the samples represent people's usualbehaviour. Thus, we will first take a brief look at how researchers select samples of behaviour.

　　Before conducting an observational study, researchers must make a number of importantdecisions, that's about when and where observations will be made. As I've said before, theresearcher cannot observe all behaviour. Only certain behaviours occurring at particulartimes, in specific settings can be observed. In other words, behaviour must be sampled. In thislecture, I will briefly introduce two kinds of sampling, that is, time sampling and situationsampling.

　　Now first, time sampling. Time sampling means that researchers choose various timeintervals for their observation. Intervals may be selected systematically or randomly. Supposewe want to observe students' classroom behaviour. Then in systematic time sampling, ourobservations might be made during five 20-minute periods, beginning every hour. The firstobservation period could begin at 9 am, the second at 10 am and so forth. [3]However, inrandom sampling, these five 20-minute periods may be distributed randomly over the courseof the day. That is to say, intervals between observation periods could vary—some longerothers shorter. One point I'd like to make is systematic and random time sampling are notalways used in isolation. They are often combined in studies. For example, while observationintervals are scheduled systematically, observations within an interval are made at randomtimes. That means the researcher might decide to observe only during 15-second intervals thatare randomly distributed within each 20-minute period.

　　[4]Now let's come to situation sampling. Then, what is situation sampling? It involvesstudying behaviour in different locations and under different circumstances and conditions. Bysampling as many different situations as possible researchers can reduce the chance that theirobservation results will be peculiar to a certain set of circumstances and conditions. [5]Why?Because people or for that manner animals do not behave in exactly the same way across allsituations. For example, children do not always behave the same way with one parent as theydo with the other parent, and animals do not behave the same way in zoos as they do in thewild. [6]So, by sampling different situations, a researcher can make more objectiveobservations than he would in only a specific situation.

　　[7]Having discussed ways to sample behaviour in research, we are now moving ontoanother issue, that is, what researchers should do to record behaviour as it occurs, that iswhether researchers are active or passive in recording behaviour. This refers to the methodsof observation. Observational methods can be classified as “observation with intervention”or “observation without intervention”. Observation with intervention can be made in at leasttwo ways, participant observation and field experiment. In participant observation,observers, that is researchers, play a dual role: They observe people's behaviour and theyparticipate actively in the situation they are observing. If individuals who are being observedknow that the observer is present to collect information about their behaviour, this isundisguised participant observation. But in disguised participant observation, those whoare being observed do not know that they are being observed.

　　[8]Another method of observation with intervention is field experiment. What is a fieldexperiment? When an observer controls one or more conditions in a natural setting in order todetermine the effect on behaviour, this procedure is called field experiment. The fieldexperiment represents the most extreme form of intervention in observational methods. Theessential difference between field experiments and other observational methods is thatresearchers have more control in field experiments.

　　Now let's take a look at observation without intervention. [9]Observation withoutintervention is also called naturalistic observation because its main purpose is to describebehaviour as it normally occurs, that is, in a natural setting, [10] without any attempt by theobserver to intervene. An observer using this method of observation acts as a passiverecorder of what occurs. The events occur naturally and are not controlled by the observer.

　　OK, in today's lecture, we have focused on how to make decisions of sampling beforebeginning our observation, and what we can do during observation. I hope what we'vediscussed will help you in your future research design.

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