Directions: In this section, you will hear 3 short passages. At the end of each passage, you will hear some questions. Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.

Passage One

The diner, or what we call dining car, is only a humble restaurant, but it has a special place in American life. Diners appear in our novels, plays, poems, and movies. Many artists have used diners as scenes for their paintings. Why are diners so fascinating to us? The diner attracts many different kinds of people. It is a heaven for lonely truck drivers far away from home. Construction workers learn about new jobs in distant cities. Traveling salesman exchange gossip with one another. Teenagers sit in their booths, sipping cokes and eating hamburgers. The people who work in diners are also interesting. Where did the new waitress come from? Will she remain here or will she suddenly leave one day, as the last one did? And is the short-order cook really an escaped convict, fleeing from the law? Everyone comes to the diner for a different reason. Some want to work there, and some want to eat there. Some stay for years, and others stay only for a few minutes. But, for all of them, the diner is a bright, warm stopover between the endless stretches of open road.

Questions 26 to 28 are based on the passage you have just heard.

26: What do diners here stand for?

27: What kind of clients do diners target?

28: Why do truck drivers like diners?

Passage Two

To be a good teacher, you need some of the gifts of a good actor — the key point is that you must know how to hold the attention and interest of your audience. Watch a good teacher, and you will see that he does not sit motionless before his class: he stands the whole time while teaching; he walks about, using his arms, hands and fingers to help him in his explanations, and his face to express feelings. Listen to him, and you will hear the loudness, the quality and the musical note of his voice always changing according to what he is talking about. However, all this doesn’t mean that he will indeed be able to act well on the stage, for there are very important differences between the teacher’s work and the actor’s. The actor has to speak words which he has learnt by heart; he has to repeat exactly the same words each time he plays certain part. What he has to do is to make all these carefully learnt words and actions seem natural on the stage. A good teacher works in quite a different way. His audience takes an active part in his play; they ask and answer questions, they obey orders, and if they don’t understand something, they say so. The teacher therefore has to suit his act to the need of his audience, which is his class. He cannot learn his part by heart, but must invent it as he goes along.

Questions 29 to 31 are based on the passage you have just heard.

29: What topic does this text mainly deal with?

30: In what way is a teacher’s work different from an actor’s?

31: What is the main difference between students in class and audiences in theaters?

Passage Three

When someone says, “Well, I guess I’ll have to go and face the music”, it does not mean he is planning to go to a concert. It is something far less pleasant, like being called in by your boss to explain why you did this or that. Sour music, indeed, but it has to be faced. The phrase “to face the music” is familiar to every American, young and old. It is at least 100 years old. Where did the expression come from? The first information came from the American writer James Fenimore Cooper. He said ―in 1851― that the expression was first used by actors while waiting in the wings to go on stage. After they got their cue to go on, they often said, “It’s time to go to face the music”. And that is exactly what they did ―face the orchestra which was just below the stage.

An actor might be frightened or nervous as he moved on to the stage in front of the audience that might be friendly or perhaps unfriendly, especially if he forgot his lines. But he had to go out. So, “to face the music” came to mean having to go through something, no matter how unpleasant the experience might be, because you had no choice. The other explanation comes from the army. Men had to face inspection by their leader. The soldiers worried about how well they looked. Was their equipment clean and shiny enough to pass inspection? Still, the men had to go out, and face the music of the band, as well as the inspection. What else could they do?

Questions 32 to 35 are based on the passage you have just heard.

32: According to the passage, what does the word “music” probably refer to?

33: Who first used the phrase “to face the music”?

34: Why might an actor feel frightened or nervous when going on stage?

35: When is “to face the music” used to describe soldiers?

Section C

Directions: In this section, you will hear a passage three times. When the passage is read for the first time, you should listen carefully for its general idea. When the passage is read for the second time, you are required to fill in the blanks numbered from 36 to 43 with the exact words you have just heard. For blanks numbered from 44 to 46 you are required to fill in the missing information. For these blanks, you can either use the exact words you have just heard or write down the main points in your own words. Finally, when the passage is read for the third time, you should check what you have written.

The first English (36) dictionary, called an Alphabetical Table of Hard Words, was published in 1604. The dictionary was (37) actually nothing more than a list of about 3000 difficult words, each followed by a one-word (38) definition. The author, Robert Cawdrey, made no attempt to include everyday words in his dictionary. No one, he reasoned, would ever have to look up a word in a dictionary if he already knew the meaning of the word. During the 1600’s more dictionaries were published. Each followed Cawdrey’s lead and (39) presented a few (40) thousand hard words. Around 1700 one dictionary maker, John Kersey, did define easy words as well as hard ones. But until the 1750’s all dictionaries were rather crude and not very (41) valuable.

A man (42) named Dr. Samuel Johnson changed all this. In 1755 Dr. Johnson produced the (43) first modern dictionary. He included in his dictionary all important words, both easy and hard, and he gave good meanings. He also gave good sentences to show how each word was actually used in speech and in writing. (44) By the end of the 1700’s most dictionary makers had followed Johnson’s lead. Dictionaries were getting better and better.

(45) The 1800’s saw the greatest improvement in the quality of dictionaries. In England scholars planned and prepared the Oxford English Dictionary, a twenty-volume work. One of the most interesting features of the Oxford Dictionary is its word histories. (46) It keeps track of the history of each word from its earliest recorded use up to the time of the printing of the dictionary.

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