历年高口NTGF原文真题

2014年3月高级口译听力真题NTGF含解析Note Taking and Gap FillingGood afternoon, class. I want to start my lecture by telling you a story. Once there was a young woman from Mexico named Consuela, who came to New York to learn English. She got a job at a factory owned by a Chinese. One day as Consuela came to work, her Chinese boss handed her a red envelope. Consuela looked inside and saw 20 dollars. She became very upset and threw the envelope back at her boss! Her boss was shocked. Well, he had given her the red envelope and the money because it was Chinese New Year. And on the Chinese New Year, it is traditional to give money to young, single people for good luck. However, from Consuela’s point of view, he was an older man giving her money in an envelope, which meant that he was asking her for sexual favors. Naturally, she refused to take the money.Now, what does this story show us? It shows that an action can have totally opposite meanings in different cultures. Every culture has its own rules for what is appropriate and what is not appropriate behavior. And to illustrate my point today, I’m going to give examples from four areas. First, the way people greet each other in different cultures. Second, the way they use names and titles. Third, the way people eat. And finally, the way they exchange gifts.OK, let’s start with greeting customs—First of all, I’m sure you know that in the United States and in most western countries, greetings often involve some sort of touching, such as a handshake, a hug, or a kiss if people know each other very well. On the other hand, people from most Asian countriesdon’t usually feel as comfortable touching in public. Although handshakes between business people are common, many Japanese prefer a bow, while people from Thailand, normally hold their hands together in a kind of prayer position. So imagine how embarrassing it would be if an American was invited to someone’s home in Japan or Thailand and she tried to hug the host!Now, another behavior that differs from culture to culture is the use of names. Have you noticed that Americans ar e quick to use people’s first names even if they have just met. For instance, visitors to the United States are always surprised to hear employees speak to their bosses using first names. In contrast, people in most other cultures are more formal and prefer to be addressed as Mr. Brown or Mr. Honda, for example. In addition, in some countries, such as Italy or Korea, people like you to include their title orposition with their family names, especially if they’re university graduates or owners of a business.Now I want to look at eating customs. I’ll talk about the behaviors connected with eating that vary from culture to culture. One of these is the use of utensils. You probably know that people in many Asian cultures use chopsticks but in some countries i t’s customary to eat with your fingers. It’s important to be aware of different dining customs. Here is another example. In some cultures, eating everything on your plate is considered impolite. In Egypt and China, you should leave some food in your dish at the end of the meal. This is to show that your hosts were generous and gave you more than enough to eat. However, Americans generally consider a clean plate as a sign of satisfaction with the food.Finally, what I want to mention today is gift giving, which you may think is a universal custom and there is not much variation from culture to culture. But the rules of gift giving can be very complicated. In USA, if you’re invited to someone’s home for dinner, bring wine or flowers or small item as a present. On the other hand, the Japanese give gifts quite frequently, often to thank someone, such as a teacher or a doctor. In the Japanese culture, gift giving is a very ancient tradition and it has many detailed rules. Another interesting fact about gift giving is that many cultures have strict rules about gifts you should not give. For example, never give yellow flowers to people from Iran, which means you hate them!【评析】本文题材对考生来说并不陌生，是老生常谈的文化差异。

作者先从一个故事引入，再从四个方面（打招呼，称谓，饮食及送礼）介绍各国不同的风俗习惯。

做笔记时，从这四个角度进行归类，记下关键的实词，相信正确答案就近在咫尺了。

【难词】bow n. 鞠躬address v. 称呼utensil n. 餐具universal adj. 普遍的，通用的2013年9月高级口译听力真题NTGF 含解析Note Taking and Gap FillingGood morning, ladies and gentlemen. Last week, we talked about some important terms in environmental science. Shall you still remember them, right? So in today’s environmental science class, I want to discuss a few of the terms here, actually some ideas about how we manage our resources. Let’s talk about what that means.If we take resources like water, now maybe we should get a little bit more specific here, back from a more general case and talk about underground waterin particular. So hydro geologists have tried to figure out how much water can we take out from underground sources. That has been an important question. Let me ask you guys, how much water, based on what you know so far, could you take out of , say, an aquifer… under the city. As much as what gets recharged?Ok. So we wouldn’t like to take out more than naturally comes into it. The implication is that, well, if you only take as much out as comes in. You’renot going to deplete the amount of water that stores in there. Right? Wrong.But that’s the principle. That’s the idea behind how we manage our water supplies. It’s called Safe Yield. Basically what t his message says is that you can pump as much water out of the system as naturally recharges, as naturally flows back in. So this principle of safe yield is based on balancing what we take out with what gets recharged. But what it does is it ignores how muchwater naturally comes out of the system, and natural system of certain matterof recharge comes in and certain matter of water naturally flowing out through springs, streams and lakes, and over long terms the amount that’s stored inthe aquifer doesn’t really change much. It’s balanced. Now humans come in and start taking water out of the system. How have we changed the equation? It’s not balanced any more. Right. We take water out but water also naturally flows out. And the recharge rate doesn’t change.So the result is we’ve reduced the amount of water that stores in the underground system. If you keep doing that long enough, if you pump as much water out as naturally comes in, gradually the underground water level will drop. And when that happens, they can’t fix service water. How? Well, underground systems there are natural discharge points, places where the water flows out from the underground systems and into lakes and streams. Well, a drop of water level can mean those discharge points will eventual ly dry up, and that means water’s not getting to lakes and streams that depend on it. So we end up reducing the surface water supply, too. You know, in the state of Arizona, we’re managing some major water supplies with the principle of safe yield and under this method they will eventually dry up the natural discharge points of those aquifer systems. Now, why is this anissue? Well, aren’t some of you going to want to live in the state for a while? Won’t your kids grow up here, and your kids’ kids? You mayb e concerned with “dose Arizona have water supplies which is sustainable—a key word here. What that means? The general definition of sustainable is whether it is enough to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future to have the availability to have the same resources. Now, I hope you see these two ideas are incompatible---sustainability and safe yield. Because what sustainability means is that it’s sustainable for all systems that depend on the water, for the people who use it, and for supplying water to the dependent water bodies like some streams. So I’m going to repeat this. So, if we are using a safe yield method, we’re only balancing what we take out with whatgets recharged, but don’t forget, water also flows out natural ly. Then the amount that has stored under ground gradually gets reduced, and that is goingto lead to another problem: these discharge points with water flowing out the lakes and streams, they’re going to dry up. Ok?【评析】话题 environmental science本段落选自TOEFL OG Practice Test 1 Q11-16，重点讲了underground water 地下水的平衡问题。