Part C

Additional Listening

A Passage    The Benson Family’s Decision

A. Listen to the passage and answer the following question.

What’s the main idea of the passage?

Without watching TV, people may find many interesting things to do. 

B. Listen to the passage again and choose the best answers.

What has each member of the Benson Family found time doing in the past year?

1. Mr. Benson    a. playing the piano      

b. playing tennis    

c. working in the cinema  

d. writing a novel

2. Mrs. Benson   a. taking up judo               

b. seeing films and plays      

c. writing a drama       

d. joining a film society

3. Daughter Emily   a. taking up acting     

b. reading ten novels  

c. learning to play the piano

d. solving math problems 

4. Son Mark             a. reading novels and other books 

b. playing tennis 

c. joining a society        

d. going to tennis classes    

Script

The Benson Family’s Decision

Have you ever spent a year without television? A year ago the Benson family decided that they were spending too much time in front of the box. So they got rid of it. And they have been living without a television for almost a year now. How have they been spending their free time then?

“We found it very hard for the first few weeks,” says Mrs. Benson. “We didn’t know what to do with our free time. But since then it’s been fine. We’ve done so many things that we hadn’t done for such a long time. Last year, for example, we didn’t go out to the cinema or the theatre once, but this year we’ve seen at least a dozen films and plays. And I’ve even joined the local drama society.

Mr. Benson has taken up tennis. Daughter Emily has been learning to play the piano and son Mark has been going to judo (柔道) classes. And they’ve all read more books. Mark said, “This year I’ve read about ten novels and five or six other books, too.”

So haven’t they missed the box at all? Emily says she has had a few problems: “I don’t like it when I go to school and all the kids are talking about a program that they’ve seen. Actually, I’ve just been watching a program at my friend’s house.”

Nevertheless, according to Mr. Benson, “We’ve all started doing so many interesting things that we wouldn’t have time to watch TV now.”

Movie Time

Watch a video clip. After watching it, do the following two exercises.

Word Bank

Oprah Winfrey 奥普拉·温弗瑞（美国著名的脱口秀主持人，作为黑人，她是全美最有影响力的电视节目人之一）

forum     n. 专题讨论节目

Nashville    美国一城市名，田纳西州首府

footage     （电视）片段

Bell and Howell 美国一家媒体设备厂商

octogenarian    80到89岁的人

hard news    重要新闻

anchor     n.主持人

co-anchor   n. 共同主持人

Baltimore      巴特摩尔（美国马里兰州一城市）

demotion    n. 降级

discontent    n.不满

Script:

I don't come to any of this without an acknowledgement of where I've come from. And I know it is no small thing to be a former colored girl, negro, black, now African-American in the United States of America with a media forum that is in the homes of millions of people in the United States and throughout the world. I did not take that lightly, and to this day, I don't take that lightly.

(video clips)

I had been doing news since I was 19 years old in Nashville. There were the days where you took your own camera and you shot footage with a Bell and Howell, and came back and edited it, and wrote the story, covered every octogenarian's birthday, every hundred's birthday. I did all the people's stories which really were harder to do than hard news.

(video clips)

Because you're starting from nothing. You're starting from you going to a birthday party for a 104-year-old, Mrs. Mimms, and there is nothing there but Mrs. Mimms’ family and a bad cake. So I had done every kind of story and covered hard news as well, and always felt that it was not the right place for me. But I had my father's voice in my ear: you know, constantly, “Well you are making 22,000 dollars and you're 22. I don't know what else you want in the world. You'd better save half your money ’cause you're not gonna make that kind of money … forever.” When I, you know, moved to Baltimore — I got the opportunity to move to Baltimore — I had the misfortune to be paired with an anchorman who didn’t want a young black co-anchor. He didn't want a co-anchor at all and certainly didn't want a young female one. It was a very difficult position for me to be in, very difficult. I didn't even know how bad it was. Because I thought they wanted me there since they hired me.

(video clips)

I got a huge demotion, huge demotion. I was doing the six o'clock news and they placed me on the new local talk show that was starting, called "People Are Talking".

(video clips)

I came off that stage, August 14th, 1978 and I knew that I was home. I knew that in all my years of being discontent, feeling like something is not quite right, feeling like I'm in the wrong place, in the wrong job. I knew this is it. It felt like home because it felt so natural. It felt like I could be myself.

(video clips)

I felt like I could ask a question or not ask a question. I could just listen. I could pay attention. It was the most natural I ever felt at work.

Exercise

I. From the following list of words and phrases, pick up the appropriate ones Oprah Winfrey uses in describing herself in the video clip.

Oprah Winfrey describes herself as   b. c. f. i. j  

a. middle class                                                         b. colored     
c. female                                                                 d. easy-going
e. well-educated                                                       f. good at talking with people
g. addicted to hard news  h. fighting for civil rights
i. starting from nothing   j. in charge of an influential show      
k. fond of acting on stage

II. Read the following questions and then choose the right answer to each of the following questions.

1. How did Oprah feel while she was doing the news report?
a. She felt unsatisfied with the salary.
b. She felt unsatisfied with doing the news.
c. She felt being treated unfairly.
d. She felt burdened with reporting work.

2. Why did Oprah feel difficult during the early years in Baltimore?
a. She was not capable of dealing with her new job.
b. The audience didn’t like the style of her TV show.
c. She missed her former job and colleagues.
d. Her co-anchor was not friendly to her.

3. What makes Oprah feel the happiest?
a. Communicating with people in a TV show.
b. Being in charge of the most influential TV program.
c. Being treated like a white woman.
d. Doing the important news report.

Part D

Test Your Listening

A Compound Dictation

Listen to the passage three times and supply the missing information.

There are different 1) types of media today. News and 2) entertainment

are communicated to us in a number of different ways, using different media. It may be 3) print media such as newspapers and magazines, or 4) electronic media such as radio and television. The word media is most often used to refer to the communication of news, and in this 5) context means the same as news media.  

Programs on radio and television may be referred to formally as 6) broadcasts or informally as shows, especially in American English. The person who 7) presents a program or a show on radio or TV is a host or hostess but the one who hosts a popular music program is called a disk jockey or DJ. 8) News programs may be hosted by an anchor, either a man or a woman, who is sometimes more famous than the people in the news. In more traditional news programs, the news is read by a newsreader.    

        There are many broadcasting organizations in a country and competition among them is serious. 9) Most TV and radio networks want to increase the size of their audience, or their ratings. Good ratings are especially important during prime-time, the time of day when most people watch TV. This is not surprising as high audience figures attract more advertising or commercials to be shown in commercial breaks between programs. And 10) the broadcasting organization that can attract most advertising makes most money.