一类托福听力题引发的血案The Butterfly Effect in TOEFL Listening-2019年精选文档

一类托福听力题引发的血案The Butterfly Effect in TOEFL Listening

托福考试中听力考试一直都是众多考生必须面对的一个问题。这个问题的解决关系着整个托福考试的成败。近期，越来越多的同学询问听力技巧和提高方法。从根本上讲，听懂每一句话、每一个段落、每一篇文章是必要的。尽管每个人的时间紧迫，但如果基础理解存在较大的问题，势必让整体听力分数的提高如空中楼阁水中望月。

按照ETS（托福考试的官方）规则，托福听力主要考查三个方面。即Basic Understanding占50%，Pragmatic Understanding占25%，Connecting Information占25%。从上述的比例分配中，ETS对基础理解的重视也可见一斑。那么，basic understanding具体考查什么呢？ETS到底认为什么内容才是最基础的昵？答案是词汇以及基础语法。众所周知，听力中很多都是属于基本词汇，不认知的词汇属于术语（term），通常情况下在后文中会有解释，因此建议同学们一定要将基础词汇――即大学英语四级词汇熟悉且掌握。

除了基础理解，Pragmatic Understanding部分有一类属于中上难度的题目，这类题目的攻克有助于考生掌握考试方向，理解其他题目，提高考试分数。这类题目即为：写作用意题。 具体来讲，这类题目一般以如下形式出现：Why does

professor mention the example？通常不会问What is the ex-ample？为了应对这类题目，同学们并不需要了解细节，只需要抓梗概即可。而重点还是放在大的框架和结构中。另外，根据美国人的思维方式，我们还要知道，答题一定要用直线思维方式，而不能用推理思维。

下面用一篇文章来教你如何抓大舍小：

Student：Hi，professor Handerson.That was a really in-teresting lecture in class today.

Professor：Thanks， Tom.Yeah，animals'use of decep-tion，ways they play tricks on other animals，that's a fascinat-ing area.One we are really just starting to understand.

Student：Yeah，you know，selective adaptations over time are one thing.Oh，like，non-poisonous butterflies，that have come to look like poisonous ones.But the idea that an-imals of the same species intentionally deceive each other，I have never heard that before.

Professor：Right，like，there are male frogs who lower their voices and end up sounding bigger than they really are.

Student：So they do that to keep other frogs from invad-ing their territory？

Professor：Right， bigger frogs have deeper voices，so if a smaller frog can imitate that deep voice.Well... Student：Yeah，I can see how that might do the trick.But，anyway，what I wanted to ask was，when you started talking about game theory.Well，I know a little bit about it，but I am not clear about its use in biology.

Professor：Yeah，it is fairly new to biology.BaSiCalIy，it uses math to predict what an individual would do under certain circumstances.But for example，a business sells，oh computer，say，and they want to sell their computers to a big university.But there is another company bidding too.So，what should they do？

Student：Well，try to offer the lowest price so they can compete，but still make money.

Professor：Right，they are competing，like a game，like the frogs.There are risks with pricing too high，the other com-pany might get the sale，there is also the number and types of computers to consider.Each company has to find a balance between the cost and benefits.Well， game theory creates mathematical models that analyze different conditions like this to predict outcomes. Student：Ok，I get that.But how does it apply to ani-mals？

Professor：Well，you know，if you are interested in this topic，it would be perfect for your term paper. Student：The literature review？

Professor：Yeah，find three journal articles about this or another topic that interests you and discuss them.lf there is a conflict in the conclusions or something，that would be import-ant to discuss.

Student：Well，from what I have looked at dealing with game theory，I can't say I understand much of the statistics end.

Professor：Well，I can point you to some that presents fairly basic studies，that don't assume much background knowledge.You'II just need to answer a few specific ques-tions：What was the researchers'hypothesis？What did they want to find out？And how did they conduct their research？An then the conclusions they came to.Learning to interpret these statistics will come later 文后有两道题目：

1.Why does the professor mention male frogs that lower their voices？

A.To give an example of a behavior that can be predict-ed using game theory，