Listening Challenge

Port Two

Cxercise 7. Listen and uurite each uuord under the appropriate stressed vouuel symbol of the ujords you hear.

/a:/

Think. Try it. You'll like it.

We take English fo r granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we fin d th a t quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it th a t w rite rs w rite, but fingers d o n 't fing, grocers d o n 't groce, and hammers d o n 't ham?

English m uffins were not invented in England or French frie s in France. Sweetmeats are candies, while sweetbreads, which a re n 't sweet, are meat.

Cxercise 8 . Listen and uurite each uuord under the appropriate rhythmical structure

scheme.

Cxercise 9. Listen to the sentences. Mind the rhythm.

1.The contemporary hero is one who stands out against the crowd.

2.Aren't human affairs easier to understand on paper than they are in reality?

3.Was his working life spent in the British Museum or in the Natural History Museum?

4.In 1983 America was responsible for one quarter of the world's consumption of primary fuel.

5.The environmental impact in its widest sense is the primary concern, isn't it?

6.The authority of the author does not guarantee the quality of the end product.

7.These questions were the crucial ones, weren't they?

8.The Clean Air Act of 1970 marked the beginning of a new era of pollution control policy.

9.The number of inquiries is higher than in any other month since the branch opened in November 1991.

txerdse 10. listen and repeat the sentences; mind the structure and mark pauses betuieen

the syntagmas.

1.Perhaps I mock the world in general, if I mock at ail-

2.Th light was red, and he was stopped by a policeman as he reached the opposite pavement.

3.Before sleep overtook us, we reflected on our last few days' climbing.

4.He was embarrassed because she had never seen him.

5.Tony had seen the four standing dejectedly on the street corner and he put his foot on the brake pedal, bringing the vehicle to a shuddering halt.

6.But if you achieve your objectives on the way, you stand a much better chance of making it to your ultimate goal.

7.York is a vigorous, exciting city that is famous throughout the world but it would be much more low key without the visitors.

Cxercise 11. listen to the text about holidays.

Cxercise 12. Read the text about london.

A population of just under eight million, London is Europe's largest city, spreading across an area of more than 620 square miles from its core on the River Thames. Ethically it's also Europe's most diverse metropolis: around two hundred languages are spoken within its confines, and more than thirty percent of the population is made up of first-, secondand thirdgeneration immigrants. Despite Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish devolution, London still dominates the national horizon, too: this is where the country's news and money is made, it's where the central government resides and, as far as its inhabitants are concerned, provincial life begins beyond the circuit of the city's orbital motorway. London's sense of superiority causes enormous resentment in the other regions, yet it's undeniable that the capital has a unique aura of excitement and success - in most walks of British life, if you want to get on you've got to do it in London.

For the visitor, too, London is a thrilling place - and in the last few years, the city has been in a relatively buoyant mood. Thanks to the national lottery and the millennium-orientated funding frenzy, virtually every one of London's world-class museums, galleries and institutions has been renovated, from the Royal Opera House to the British Museum. With the Tate Modern and the London Eye, the city can now boast the world's largest modern art gallery and Ferris wheel, and the first new bridge to cross the Thames for over a hundred years. Furthermore, after sixteen years of being the only major city in the world without its own

governing body, London finally acquired its own elected assembly in 2000, along with a mayor who's determined to try and solve one of London's biggest problems: transport.

In the meantime, London's traditional sights - Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, St Paul's Cathedral and the Tower of London - continue to draw in millions of tourists every year. Monuments from the capital's more glorious past are everywhere to be seen, from medieval banqueting halls and the great churches of Christopher Wren to the eclectic Victorian architecture of the triumphalist British Empire. There is also much enjoyment to be had from the city's quiet Georgian squares, the narrow alleyways of the City of London, the riverside walks, and the quirks of what is still identifiably a collection of villages. And even London's traffic problems are offset by surprisingly large expanses of greenery: Hyde Park, Green Park and St James's Park are all within a few minutes' walk of the West End, while, further afield, you can enjoy the more expansive countryside of Hempstead Heath and Richmond Park.

You could spend days just shopping in London, too, mixing with the upper classes in the tiara triangle around Harrods, or sampling the offbeat weekend markets of Portobello Road, Camden and Greenwich. The music and clubbing are second to none, and mainstream arts are no less exciting, with regular opportunities to catch brilliant theatre companies, dance troupes, exhibitions and opera. Restaurants, these days, are an attraction, too. London is now on a par with its European rivals, and offers a range from three-star Michelin establishments to low-cost, high-quality Chinese restaurants and Indian curry houses. Meanwhile, the city's pubs have heaps of atmosphere, especially away from the centre.

Cxercise 13. listen to the BBC programme.

Cxercise 2. Listen and uurite the uuords you hear.

Think. Try it. You'll like it.

How can a slim chance and a fa t chance be the same,

while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

How can overlook and oversee be opposites,

while quite a lot and quite a few are alike?^

Cxercise 6. Listen and mind the appropriate rhythmical structure scheme of the tuords you

Cxercise 7. Listen to the sentences. Pay attention that one and the same uuord can have о

stressed or an unstressed position in different phrases.

1 .He did not believe in love.

2.How can you not believe me?

3.You must report any change in your financial circumstances.

4.His financial skills were put to the work.

5.A soft light gave away the outline of the door.

6.Cook for 2 minutes until the fruit is soft.

7.She arrived ten minutes before the appointed time.

8.That insurer has 500 appointed representatives.

9.To make a strong net you can use tough plant fibres.

10. People searching for work face a tough task. 11. It came from two separate sources.

12. What were the key sources of management information?

Cxercise 8. Listen and repeat the sentences ujith emphatic stiuctures.

1.It is the young men who say yes or no.

2.It wasn't him who listened to the teacher attentively.

3.The above law does apply.

4.Important for this decision was the following point.

5.Never will we remain silent.

6.She was happy and so was her friend.

7.Nor should we forget the importance of this word.

8.Hard as it is we must listen to the text.

9.The case is not improbable.

10.However cold this winter may be, the previous one was still colder.

Think. Try it. You'll like it.

When a house burns up, it burns down. You fill in a form by filling it out and an alarm clock goes o ff by going on. I f the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural o f booth beeth?

One goose, 2 geese. So, one moose, 2 meese?

One index, two indices? Is cheese the plural of choose?

Cxercise 9 . Listen to the text about reading.

Cxercise 10. Read the folloujing text

Language barriers

Can a concept exist without words to describe it?

TAKE heart, those of you who struggled with maths at school. It seems that words for exact numbers do not exist in all languages. And if someone has no word .for a number, he may have no notion of what that number means.

The Pirahr, a group of hunter-gatherers who live along the banks of the Maid River in Brazil, use a system of counting called «one-two-many». In this, the word for «one» translates to «roughly one» (similar to «one or two» in English), the word for «two» means «a slightly larger amount than one» (similar to «a few» in English), and the word for «many» means «a much larger amount». In a paper just published in Science, Peter Gordon of Columbia University uses his study of the Pirahr and their counting system to try to answer a tricky linguistic question.

This question was posed by Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1930s. Whorf studied Hopi, an Amerindian language very different from the Eurasian languages that had hitherto been the subject of academic linguistics. His work led him to suggest that language not only influences thought but, more strongly, that it determines thought.

While there is no dispute that language influences what people think about, evidence suggesting it determines thought is inconclusive. For example, in 1972, Eleanor Rosch and Karl Heider investigated the colour-naming abilities of the Dani people of Indonesia. The Dani have words for only two colours: black and white. But Dr Rosch and Dr Heider found that, even so, Dani could distinguish and comprehend other colours. That does not support the deterministic version of the Whorf hypothesis.