2019英语专八听力mini lecture全真模拟训练MP3附文本（八）

2019英语专八听力mini lecture全真模拟训练MP3附文本（八）

　　2019专八考试临近，寒假期间专八考生们也别松懈了对专八听力的训练，新东方在线专八频道整理了2019英语专八听力mini lecture全真模拟训练MP3附文本，希望大家认真复习。

2019英语专八听力mini lecture全真模拟训练MP3附文本汇总

　　[00:10.12]TEST FOR ENGLISH MAJORS--GRADE EIGHT

　　[00:13.51]Section A MINI-LECTURE

　　[00:16.97]In this section you will hear a mini-lecture.

　　[00:20.29]You will hear the mini-lecture ONCE ONLY.

　　[00:23.73]While listening to the mini-lecture,

　　[00:25.82]please complete the gap-filling task on ANSWER SHEET ONE

　　[00:30.29]and write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each gap.

　　[00:34.70]Make sure the word(s) you fill in is (are) both grammatically

　　[00:39.23]and semantically acceptable.

　　[00:41.85]You may use the blank sheet for note-taking.

　　[00:45.67]You have THIRTY seconds to preview the gap-filling task.

　　[01:19.89]Now, listen to the mini-lecture.

　　[01:22.30]When it is over, you will be given THREE minutes

　　[01:25.05]to check your work.

　　[01:27.29]Four Characteristics of Culture

　　[01:30.46]Good morning, everyone.

　　[01:31.83]Today, I would like to discuss with you about the characteristics of culture.

　　[01:36.64]As we all know, culture refers to the pattern of human activity

　　[01:42.34]and the symbols that give significance to these activities.

　　[01:46.53]Culture manifests itself in terms of the art, literature, costumes, customs,

　　[01:53.00]language, religion and religious rituals.

　　[01:57.48]The people and their pattern of life make up the culture of a region.

　　[02:02.64]Cultures vary in different parts of the world.

　　[02:05.82]They are different across the land boundaries

　　[02:08.45]and the diversity in cultures results in the diversity in people around the world.

　　[02:14.98]Culture also consists of the system of beliefs held by the people of the region,

　　[02:20.77]their principles of life and their moral values.

　　[02:24.83]The patterns of behavior of the people of a particular region

　　[02:28.93]also form a part of the region's culture.

　　[02:32.50]Now, let me share with you four characteristics of culture.

　　[02:38.22]First of all, culture is shared, by which we mean

　　[02:42.34]that every culture is shared by a group of people.

　　[02:46.40]Depending on the region they live in,

　　[02:48.84]the climatic conditions they thrive in and their historical heritage,

　　[02:54.07]they form a set of values and beliefs.

　　[02:57.12]This set of their principles of life shapes their culture.

　　[03:01.99]No culture belongs to an individual.

　　[03:04.85]It is rather shared among many people of a certain part of the world.

　　[03:09.72]It belongs to a single community and not to any single human being.

　　[03:15.70]Secondly, culture is learned.

　　[03:18.70]Human infants come into the world with basic drives such as hunger and thirst,

　　[03:24.73]but they do not possess instinctive patterns of behavior to satisfy them.

　　[03:30.21]Likewise, they are without any cultural knowledge.

　　[03:33.63]However, they are genetically predisposed

　　[03:36.57]to rapidly learn language and other cultural traits.

　　[03:41.49]New born humans are amazing learning machines.

　　[03:45.47]Any normal baby can be placed into any family on earth

　　[03:49.45]and grow up to learn their culture and accept it as his or her own.

　　[03:54.87]Since culture is non-instinctive,

　　[03:57.23]we are not genetically programmed to learn a particular one.

　　[04:01.34]Every human generation potentially can discover new things

　　[04:05.82]and invent better technologies.

　　[04:08.74]The new cultural skills and knowledge

　　[04:11.42]are added onto what was learned in previous generations.

　　[04:15.59]As a result, culture is cumulative.

　　[04:18.95]Due to this cumulative effect, most high school students today are now familiar with

　　[04:25.25]mathematical insights and solutions that ancient Greeks

　　[04:29.35]such as Archimedes and Pythagoras

　　[04:32.22]struggled their lives to discover.

　　[04:35.45]Next in order, cultures change.

　　[04:38.56]All cultural knowledge does not perpetually accumulate.

　　[04:43.04]At the same time that new cultural traits are added,

　　[04:46.71]some old ones are lost because they are no longer useful.

　　[04:50.88]For example, most city dwellers today do not have or need the skills

　　[04:56.92]required for survival in a wilderness.

　　[05:00.28]Most would very likely starve to death because they do not know

　　[05:04.01]how to acquire wild foods and survive the extremes of weather outdoors.

　　[05:09.80]What is more important, in modern urban life are such things

　　[05:13.97]as the ability to drive a car, use a computer,

　　[05:17.89]and understand how to obtain food in a supermarket or restaurant.

　　[05:22.62]The regular addition and subtraction of cultural traits results in culture change.

　　[05:28.78]All cultures change over time—none is static.

　　[05:32.64]However, the rate of change and the aspects of culture that change

　　[05:37.50]vary from society to society.

　　[05:40.74]For instance, people in Germany today generally seem happy

　　[05:44.60]to adopt new words from other languages, especially from American English,

　　[05:49.33]while many French people are resistant to it

　　[05:52.14]because of the threat of "corrupting" their own language.

　　[05:55.69]However, the French are just as eager as the Germans to adopt new technology.

　　[06:01.68]Change can occur as a result of both inventions within a society

　　[06:06.41]as well as the diffusion of cultural traits from one society to another.

　　[06:12.38]Predicting whether a society will adopt new cultural traits or abandon others

　　[06:17.67]is complicated by the fact

　　[06:19.97]that the various aspects of a culture are closely interwoven into a complex pattern.

　　[06:26.63]Changing one trait will have an impact on other traits

　　[06:30.37]because they are functionally interconnected.

　　[06:33.42]As a result, there commonly is a resistance to major changes.

　　[06:38.21]For example, many men in North America and Europe

　　[06:41.82]resisted the increase in economic and political opportunities for women

　　[06:46.30]over the last century because of the far ranging consequences.

　　[06:51.17]It inevitably changed the nature of marriage, the family, and the lives of all men.

　　[06:58.42]It also significantly altered the workplace

　　[07:02.22]as well as the legal system and the decisions made by governments.

　　[07:08.32]Last but not least, cultures no longer exist in isolation.

　　[07:13.23]It is highly unlikely that there are any societies

　　[07:16.78]still existing in total isolation from the outside world.

　　[07:21.38]Even small, out of the way tribal societies

　　[07:24.74]are now being integrated to some extent into the global economy.

　　[07:30.41]That was not the case a few short generations ago.

　　[07:34.26]Some of the societies in the Highlands of New Guinea

　　[07:37.25]were unaware of anyone beyond their homeland

　　[07:40.67]until the arrival of European Australian miners in the 1930s.

　　[07:46.21]A few of the Indian tribes in the Upper Amazon Basin of South America

　　[07:50.83]remained unaware of the outside world

　　[07:53.26]until explorers entered their territories in the 1950s and 1960s.

　　[07:59.35]Members of these same New Guinean and Amazonian societies

　　[08:03.74]today buy clothes and household items produced by multinational corporations.

　　[08:09.78]They are developing a growing knowledge of other cultures

　　[08:13.32]through schools, radios, and even televisions and the Internet.

　　[08:18.55]As a result of this inevitable process,

　　[08:21.23]their languages and indigenous cultural patterns are being rapidly replaced.

　　[08:27.32]Virtually all societies are now acquiring cultural traits

　　[08:31.81]from the economically dominant societies of the world.

　　[08:35.86]The most influential of these dominant societies today

　　[08:39.45]are predominantly in North America and Western Europe.

　　[08:43.62]However, even these societies are rapidly adopting words, foods,

　　[08:49.10]and other cultural traits from all over the world.

　　[08:53.02]The emergence of what is essentially a shared global culture

　　[08:57.31]is not likely to result in the current major cultures disappearing

　　[09:01.98]in the immediate future the same way many of the small indigenous ones have.

　　[09:07.39]Language differences and ethnocentrism

　　[09:10.44]will very likely prevent that from happening.

　　[09:13.76]There are powerful conflicting trends in the world today.

　　[09:17.61]For example, some of the nations in Africa

　　[09:20.23]whose boundaries were arbitrarily created by Europeans during the colonial era

　　[09:26.01]are now experiencing periodic tribal wars

　　[09:29.25]that may result in the creation of more ethnically based countries.

　　[09:34.04]OK. I have outlined four characteristics of culture for you.

　　[09:38.27]I am sure you have a better understanding of

　　[09:40.57]what traits culture presents and how we can perceive culture with an open mind.

　　[09:48.54]Now you have THREE minutes to check your work.

　　[12:52.88]This is the end of Section A MINI-LECTURE.

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