PART Ⅰ LISTENING COMPREHENSION
SECTION A TALK


      The first area in American urban history extended from the early 17th cent ury to about 1840. Throughout those years the total urban population remained sm all and so with the cities. At the first federal census in 1790, city dwellers made up nearly 5.1% of the total population and only two places had more than 25 ,000 inhabitants. Fifty years later only 10.8% of the national population fell i nto the urban category and only one city, New York, contained more than 250,000 people. Largely because of the unsophisticated modes of transportation, even the  more populous places in the early 19th century remained small enough that peop le could easily walk from one end of the city to the other in those days.
    Though smaller in modern standards these walking cities, as it were, perfor med a variety of functions in those days. One was economic. Throughout the pre-mod ern era, this part of urban life remained so overwhelmingly commercial that almo st every city owed its development to trade. Yet city dwellers concerned themsel ves not only with promoting agricultural activities in their own areas, they als o collected and processed goods from these areas and distributed them to other c ities. From the beginning line and increasingly in the 18th and early 19th centu ries, cities served as centres of both commerce and simple manufacturing.
    Apart from the economical functions, the early cities also had important no n-economic functions to play. Since libraries, museums, schools and colleges wer e built and needed people to go there to visit or to study, cities and the large early towns with their concentration of population tended to serve as centres o feducational activities and as places from which information was spread to th e countryside. In addition, the town with people of different occupational, ethn ic, racial and religious affiliations became focuses of formal and informal organi zations which were set up to foster the security and to promote the interests an d influence of each group. In those days the pre-industrial city in America func tioned as a complex and varied organizing element in American life, not as a sim ple, heterogeneous and sturdy union.
    The variety of these early cities was reinforced by the nature of their loc ation and by the process of town spreading. Throughout the pre-industrial period of American history, the city occupied sites on the eastern portion of the the largely under-developed continent, and settlement on the countryside generally followed the expansion of towns in that region. The various interest groups in e ach city tended to compete with their counterparts in other cities for economic, social and political control first nearby and later more distant and larger are as. And always there remained the underdeveloped regions to be developed through the establishment of new towns by individuals and groups. These individuals and groups sought economic opportunities or looked for a better social, political o r religious atmosphere. In this sense, the cities better developed a succession of urban frontiers. While this kind of circumstance made Americans one o f the most prolific and self-conscious city-building peoples of their time, it d id not retard the steadily urbanizing society in the sense that decade by decade an ever larger proportion of the people lived in cities.
     In 1680 an estimated 9 to 10 percent of American colonists lived in urban s ettlements. A century later, that was the end of the 18th century, though 24 pla ces had 2500 persons or more, city dwellers accounted for only 5.1% of the total population. For the next thirty years, the proportion remained relatively stabl e and it was not until 1830 that the urban figure moved back up to the level of 1690.
    In short, as the number of cities increased after 1680, they sent large num bers of people into the countryside and their ratainers. Nonetheless the continuous  movement of people into and out of the cities made life in the many but relativ ely small places lively and stimulating.

SECTION B INTERVIEW


M: I'm talking to Janet Holmes who has spent many years negotiating fo r several well-known national and multi-national companies. Hello, Janet.
W: Hello.
M：Now Janet, you've experienced and observed the negotiation strategies used by people from different countries and speakers of different languages.  So befor e we comment on the differences, could I ask you to comment, first of all, on what such encounters have in common?
W：OK, well, I'm just going to focus on the situations where people are speakin g English in international business situations.
M: I see. Now, not every one speaks to the same degree of proficiency. Maybe tha t affects the situation.
W: Yes, perhaps. But that is not always so significant. Well, because, I mean, n egotiations between business partners from different countries normally mean we have negotiations between individuals who belong to distinct cultural traditions
M: Oh, I see.
W: Well, every individual has a different way of performing various tasks in eve ryday life.
M: Yes, but, but isn't it the case that in the business negotiation, they must c ome together and work together to a certain extent. I mean, doesn't that level up the style of, the style of differences or somewhat?
W: Oh, I am not so sure. I mean there're people in the so-called Western World w ho say that in the course of the past 30 or 40 years, there are a lot of things that have changed a great deal globally, and that as a consequence, national differences had diminished, giving way to some sort of international Amer icanized style.
M: Yeah, I've heard that. Now some people say this Americanized style has acted  as a model for local patterns.
W: Maybe it has, maybe it hasn't. Because on the one hand, there does appear to  be a fairly unified even uniform style of doing business with certain basic pri nciples and preferences, you know, like "time is money", that sort of thing. B ut at the same time, it is very important to remember the way all retain aspects of national characteristics. But it is the actual behaviour that we will talk a bout here. We shouldn't be too quick to generalize that to national characteris tic and stylistic type. It doesn't help much.
M: Yeah.  You mentioned Americanized style. What is particular about American st yle of business bargaining or negotiating?
W: Well, I've noticed that, for example, when Americans negotiate with people f rom Brazil, the American negotiators make their points in a direct, sophistical way.
M: I see.
W: While Brazilians make their points in a more indirect way.
M: How?
W: Let me give you an example. Brazilian importers look at people they're talki n g to straight in the eyes a lot. They spend time on what some people thinks to b e background information. They seem to be more indirect.
M: Then, what about the American negotiators?
W: American style of negotiating, on the other hand, is far more like that of po int-making; first point, second point, third point, and so on. Now of course, th is isn't the only way in which one can negotiate and there's absolutely no reason why t his should be considered as the best way to negotiate.
M: Right. Americans seem to have a different style, say, even from the British, do n't they?
W: Exactly, which just show how careful you must be about generalizing. I mean, how about asking you explain how the American negotiators are seen as informal, and so metimes much too open. For British eyes, Americans are too direct even blunt.
M: Is that so?
W: Yeah, at the same time, the British too.  German negotiators can appear direc t and uncompromising in the negotiations, and yet if you experience Germans and Americans negotiating together, it often is the Americans who are too blunt for the German negotiators.
M: Fascinating! So people from different European countries use different styles , don't they?
W: That's right.
M: OK. So what about the Japanese then? I mean, is their style different from th e Americans and Europeans?
W: Oh, well, yes, of course. Many Europeans nod its extreme politeness of their Japanese counterpart, the way they avoid giving the slightest defense, you know.  They're also very reserved to people they don't know well. At the first meeti ng s American colleagues have difficulties in finding the right approach sometimes.  But then when you meet the Japanese negotiators again, this initial impression tends to disappear. But it is perhaps true to say the average Japanese business person does choose his or her words really very carefully.
M: So can we say that whatever nationalities you are dealing with, you need to r emember that different nationalities negotiate in different ways?
W: Well it's perhaps more helpful to bear in mind that different people behave i n negotiating in different ways. And you shouldn't assume that everyone will be have in the same way that you do.
M: Right. It is definitely a very useful tip for our businessman who often negot iate with their overseas partners, OK, Janet, thank you very much for talking wi th us.
W: Pleasure.

SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST


News Item 1(For Question 11)
     The first International Tibetan Traditional Medicine Conference will be hel d July 15th to 17th in Lasa, capital city of Tibet autonomous region. China's E thnic Medicine Institute, Tibetan Bureau and Tibetan Medical College will co-hos t the conference. The conference has received more than 500 research papers from  China and abroad.  The organizing committee primarily selected 290 articles to be discussed at the conference. More than 50 foreign guests from the United States, Russia, Britain, India, Germany, France, Italy and Nepal will attend the meeting . The China mainland has sent a delegation consisting of 250 Tibetan medicine expe rts to the conference.
News Item 2(For Questions 12-13)
     The government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was actively adopting information technology and building an electronic government, a senior Hong Kong official said yesterday. This is an integral part of Hong Kong's Digi t al 21 Strategy formulated in 1998 to make Hong Kong both a regional and world-wi de internet centre, said Carrion, secretary for information technology and broad casting. She outlined three policy objectives in developing an E-government in H ong Kong at the IBM Asian E-government Executive Seminar. The first policy objec tive is to develop an electronic and peopleless government so as to improve the efficiency, cost-effectiveness and quality of public service. The second is to p romote the wide adoption of E-commence with the government setting a leading exa mple. The third is, through the E-government program, to integrate service deliv ery across motorable departments and agencies.
News Item 3(For Questions 14-15)
       Canadian Olympic 100-meter champion Donovan Bailey showed he was on his w ay back to top form on Tuesday by winning the 100-meters at the athletic mee ting in Switzerland in the time of 9.98 seconds. Despite unfavorable windy co nditions, Bailey recorded the second best time of the year short of the 9. 91 se t by double world champion Moris Greene of the United States on May 13th in Noso ka, Japan. "I would have run 9. 80 if I'd really pushed myself. " said Bailey , 1 996 Olympic and 1995 world champion. The Canadian has been fighting for form since before the Sidney Olympics, following a long-term injury which resulted in a disappo inting series of starts in the season.

SECTION D NOTE-TAKING AND GAP-FILLING


Study Activities in University


    Good morning, today we'll look at some study activities carried out in universi t y. As we know, students in colleges or universities are expected to master some academic materials that are fairly difficult to understand. However, some of the m find it hard to learn some complex, abstract or unfamiliar subject matters. As a result, a central problem in higher education is how to internalize academic k nowledge, that is how to make knowledge your own. In order to do so we must conv ert knowledge from being other's knowledge to being part of our own way of thin k ing. Then how are we going to do it? What's the means available to help us in t h e process of learning? There are four key study activities currently used in hig her education to encourage students to internalize knowledge. They are the ones we are familiar with: writing essays, going to classes and seminars, having indi vidual tutorials and listening to lectures. The four activities are long-establi shed features of our higher education, and they are as important now as they wer e a hundred years ago. Now let's look at the features of them one by one.
　　First, essay writing. The central focus of university work, especially in h umanities, for example in literature, history or politics, is on students' prod u cing regular essays or papers which summarize and express their personal underst anding of the topic. Then what is good about essay writing? Firstly, writing ess ays forces you to select what you find interesting in books and journals and to express your understanding in the coherent form. Individual written work also pr ovides teachers with the best available guide to how you are progressing in the s ubject, and allows them to give advice on how to develop your strengths or count eract your weaknesses. Lastly, of course, individual written work is still the b asis of almost all assessment in higher education. Written assignments familiari ze you with the form your exams will take.
    The second key activity in colleges and universities is seminars and class  discussions. Their role is to help you to internalize academic knowledge by pro viding such contexts so that you can talk about such difficult problems as the treatment of inflation and the unemployment in economic policy or the use of the metaphors in Shakespeare's plays. Talking is more active than written work. In conversation you know immediately how effective you are in expressing  your point and can modify what you are saying in response to people's reaction s . In addition，a normal program of between 10 to 25 classes covers far more topic s than one subject. Then you can hope to manage your written work. Participating in flexible conversations across this range of issues also allows you to practi se using the broader knowledge gained from other key activities such as lectures
　　Now let's take a look at another activity, individual tutorials. Discussi o ns between the teacher and one or two students are used in many colleges as a su bstitute for or supplement to group discussion in classes like those mentioned b efore.  Tutorials can range from direct explanation by teachers and are subject to flexible conversational sessions which at their best are very effective in stimu lating students' mastery of a body of knowledge. The one-to-one quality of the pe r sonal interaction is very important in stimulating acceptance of ideas and produ cing fruitful interaction.  In order to make individual tutorial really work, st udents should make good preparation beforehand, and during the tutorial they als o should ask questions to keep the ball rolling rather than let the teachers tal k the vacuum.
    The last activity is lectures. As we all know, lectures play a large part o f most students' timetable and occupy considerable proportion of teachers' eff or ts. However the major difficulty with lectures is that they are not interactive like discussions or tutorials. The lecturer normally talks for the whole time wi th minimal feed-back from questions. The science and making notes and the lecture while-con centrating on the argument being developed is often difficult to some students, especially when the argument is very complicated. We have said that lectures are clearly valuable in several specific ways. They can provide a useful overview i n every map, as it were, to familiarize you with the mainland features to be enc ountered during the course. Lectures typically give much more accessible descrip tions of theoretical perspectives in their oral presentations than can be found in the academic literature. Whenever there is a rapid pace of progress in theory or practice, lectures play an indispensable part in letting students know the d evelopment immediately, usually several years before the new material is include d in textbooks. Lastly lectures are often very useful in allowing you to see dir ectly how exponents of different views build up their arguments. The cues provid ed by someone talking in person may seem irrelevant, but these cues are i mportant aids to understanding the subject matter better later. So far we've discussed four study activities and their respective features and roles in higher education. Of course study activities are not limited to jus t these four types. They're other activities that are equally important, such, a s general reading, project learning, etc. We will cover them during our next lecture.