are from other countries, and so it makes what could be a really dull mid-west town something special. The library is very good. Cultural events are much more interesting than the rest of Minnesota, and actually it’s not a bad place to grow up. On the other hand I was dying to leave there. And all I could think of was getting away from the mid-west in the cold winters. You have about 6 months when it’s almost too cold to go outside. A lot of the buildings are designed so that you can walk from one to the other underground. There is a big pedestrian subway system so you can avoid all these snow.
Questions:
1) According to the passage what is unusual about the town as described by the speaker?
2) About how many people are there in the town?
3) Who are the foreign residents in the town?
4) In which parts of the United States is the town situated?
5) How does the speaker feel about being a child there?
6) How did the people in the town avoid the snow?
3. What kind of city is it? Listen to the following passage about Tokyo. And then choose the correct answer to each question you hear.
What kind of city is it? It’s a very modern city. I expected that Tokyo would be quite old. But there are very few parts of it which are old in fact at all. Because it was fire bombed during the second world war by the Americans. There are one or two temples that survived, but basically it’s a city that’s being built since 1945. A lot of it is low rise, one, two, three storeys houses because of the earthquake danger, because it gets lots of earthquakes. Once you have mastered a little bit of Japanese it’s relatively easy to get around Tokyo, because they get excellent subway system and it’s quick and easy to get around. The problem is of course Tokyo is the city of 13,14,15 million people and they all want to get around at exactly the same time. So especially if you are travelling in the rush hours, 8 o’clock in the morning, 5 o’clock at night, it is a question in many of the big stations being pushed onto the train. They paid students a bit of pocket money to do this. Right in the center of Tokyo is the Imperial Palace. And that’s set in delightful gardens, but it is completely closed to the public, so nobody have seen it. In the rest of Tokyo there are 10, 12 public gardens but they tend to get very filled up of people especially during national holidays. Other than that it’s just street after street, and block after block very similar houses as I say one or two storied houses which just go on and on for mile after mile, because Tokyo extends hundreds of square miles, a massive city.
Questions:
1) What’s special with most of the buildings in Tokyo?
2) Why is it relatively easy to get around Tokyo according to the speaker?
3) How do you get on the trains in the busy periods of the day?
4) Why is it a problem to go to the public gardens?
5) In which part of Tokyo is the Imperial Palace located?
Part 4. Listening and translation. 2. Exercises.
1. Sentence translation. Listen and translate each sentence you have heard into Chinese. Then write it in the space given below.
1) I am afraid we will have to change our appointment for tomorrow morning. Something unexpected came up. And I have to handle that first.