W: What do you mean?
M: Look, when I study mathematics, for instance, we start with definitions. Then we have problems and some equations and processes to learn. You go to class, you keep up, you do the homework, and you know it. You pass exams. But English class is quite different. First of all, they don’t want to teach us all the rules. They tell us on rule. Fine. We use that rule, but soon it won’t work. It’s more complicated or there are a lot of exceptions or something. Sometimes I think the teachers don’t know the rules either.
W: [24] But you don’t learn a language from the rules, anyway. You have to use it.
M: Yes. That’s something else they tell us. But why can’t we just go to class, study, and do our homework? That’s what I know how to do.
W: Look at this way, can you learn to play soccer by sitting at home and reading about soccer? M: No, of course. Not if you want to play well.
W: But why not? You could understand the rules of strategy, the duties of each position, and all the special situations. You have to feel the ball, practice kicking it hundreds of times, practice running down the field, moving toward the goal, and centering the ball. No one can learn that by passively studying. Learning a language is more like learning to play soccer than learning mathematics. You have to ask a lot of questions, and hear how the answers sound. You have to listen to how people indicate the important part of what they’re saying. And then of course endless practice on all the details—spelling, “s” endings, articles…just likes practice in simple dribbling and kicking.
M: But if it’s a skill like soccer, not a science, why do they teach it in schools and universities, and give you diplomas and grades?
W: That’s a good question. It is confusing, but languages are important and people do want to learn them. But the main thing is to practice the language a lot, just like soccer.
M: [25] Maybe I’ll join a soccer team and practice English and soccer at the same time. I can talk with people before and after the practice.
W: That’s a good idea.
Section B
Passage One
【听力原文】
[26] There are so many things going on in our modern lives, and change happens so quickly.
[27] It is hard to imagine a time when things were slower and you could really see a new thing come into your life and to remember the day or the year when those things happened. I know that today, for example, there are many instances of second and third generations of things, such as television or radios, when some of us were not even aware that there was a first generation.
A friend of mine was born at the end of the19th century, and talking to her, I really got a sense of her being a living history book, of being able to talk about the changes in her own life and to know that these changes were really the changes that society was going through.
She gets really excited, for example, when she talks about the first time she ever saw a camera, and even more excited when she saw herself in the picture that the photographer took. She lived in a small town, and at the time that she was very young, there were no cars or trains in her town at