2005年英语专八真题听力原文

　　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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