高级英语视听说2理解问答题与参考答案.doc

Volume Two For Term II

Unit One Scott Kruger: Binge Drinking
Comprehension Questions
Exercise 1. Questions (with answers for reference)
1. Who is Scott Kruger? What kind of person is he? What kind of family did he come from? What had happened to him shortly after he entered MIT?
Scott Kruger was a brilliant young college student who is from a loving supportive family. He was smart and particularly gifted in math and science. He was also an athlete and a student leader. By all accounts he was a well disciplined and remarkable young man. His family is a close and private one and there are 4 children in the family with Scott and his twin sister in the middle. He died shortly after he entered MIT, the leading Engineering Institute in the country.
2. Say something about the fraternity house that Scott chose to live.
The fraternity house Scott chose to live is called Fiji house. It has a notorious track record of binging which Scott had no knowledge of before his selection. There is one tradition of the Fiji house called “animal house night”, in which new members of the house are paired off with the senior members and have to collectively finish the amount of alcohol decided by the seniors.
3. Can you describe what happened that night that caused Scott’s death? Why did his story touch the people nation wide?
Scott had been drinking with the rest of the members that night. When he was passed out he was removed to the basement and put onto the couch where he threw up and inhaled his own vomit. When the other members came down to the basement to check on him, he was purple and unconscious. When he was finally rushed to the hospital, he was in cardiac rest. Despite the effort by the medics and doctors to save him, Scott still died from alcohol poisoning. The case of Scott touched the people nation wide because it set people thinking why such a brilliant kid with such promise ended up in such a tragedy shortly after he entered the nation’s No. 1 leading university. The death of Scott tells a lot about university fraternity management and university’s inadequate disciplinary actions.

Unit Two Sportsmanship

Comprehension exercises.
Exercise 1. Questions (with answers for reference)
1. What’s the recent malicious wave against referees, even the very young ones?
There is a malicious wave of violence against sports officials. The term “kill the umpire” is no longer a joke. There were cases of referees and umpires abused, beaten up by contestants or their coaches. This wave of violence even targeted kids.
2. Who are Bob West and Codie? What happened to them respectively?
Bob West is an umpire. In January 1996, he was appreciating a high school wrestling match. He was knocked out unconscious completely. He suffered a concussion and said he now lived with chronic back pain.
Codie is a young referee working at the baseball diamond in Loveland, Colorado. In July, 1996, he was head umpire at a playoff game between rival teams of 15 to 18 years olds.
The coach of one team, Seward, disagreed with Codie and he contested a call at the third base. One member of his team, Joyard Bara, was so anxious to win that when Codie declared his team the loser, he got so mad that he hit Codie right across the face. Codie was knocked out unconscious. He later received stitches in his mouth and treatment for bruise and chest pain.
3. According to a professor who writes books on the psychology of kids and sports and some experts, what happened to sportsmanship?
He believed that sportsmanship has become much more as an extinct concept in the society nowadays. According to some experts, the sports field is an extension of society. Society has become much more lax about miscreants and criminals and things people get away with. Things that people get away in real life get away in sports as well.

Unit Four Danger at Home
Comprehension exercises.
Exercise 1. Questions (with answers for reference)
1. What is the tragedy of Janet Edward? What happened to her two children in the family furniture fire? What did she do to save them? Was she successful?
She lost her two children in a furniture fire started at her house. It was clear that her five-year-old son, Tyler had been playing with matches or a lighter and started a small fire on the downstairs’ couch. He and his 2-year-old sister Tara were asked by their mother to wait upstairs and when
Janet returned she found the room had already been engulfed by an inferno. When the fire first broke out, she was in a belief that she could somehow put it out. Therefore, she ran downstairs to get the fire extinguisher. A couple of minutes later, the fire quickly spread and there were so much smoke and fire that she could not get to her children upstairs though she tried and was badly burned doing so.
2. What serious problems will the furniture fires cause? What has the furniture industry done? Is it good enough according to the Fire Marshals Association? Why or why not?
Furniture fires in residences kill two people every day in the United States. It is the one product in homes that will spread a fire more rapidly than anything else. It produces tremendous amounts of black, thick, toxic smoke. According to the fire Marshals Association, it poses a real threat to human lives.

The majority of the 700 deaths per year are the result of furniture fires started by smoldering cigarettes and the industry now has a voluntary standard making upholstered furniture resistant to cigarette heat but the Fire Marshals Association said that’s not good enough. According to them, smoldering cigarettes are not the only reason that fires occur in our home. It doesn’t address electrical ignitions. It does not address small open flame ignitions. And certainly it doesn’t cover the problems with children playing with matches and lighters.
3. How is the burn test of the chairs conducted? What does the burn test prove?
The fire test was conducted by Gordon Demont, a leading fire safety consultant and former director of Califonia’s Bureau of Home Furnishings. He used two chairs, the first one of which was stuffed with highly flammable while the other was flame retardant. In the burn test, they found that only one minute into the test the fire had burned through the fabric and into the foam. At a minute and a half the threat of toxic smoke was real.
The researcher found that once the fire reached the polyurethane foam, the flame quickly spread. And after just three minutes, the chair was fully engulfed. Intense heat and the foam’s flammability made it difficult for the firemen to extinguish the flames, despite the repeated dousing from the hoses. The test proved how dangerous an upholstered furniture fire can be.
4. What is the difference of the second burn test from the first one? What does this second test prove?
There was a dramatic difference when they tried to burn the second chair. It took six tries before the chair would even ignite. And after three minutes, it was still a very small fire. It provided a remarkable contrast with the first chair with standard form, which after three minutes was a firery inferno.
The reporter and the researcher stayed in that room close to 10 minutes, and the fire never burned deeply into the flame-retardant foam. And there was no problem extinguishing these flames.
Such a huge difference between the two chairs proved that the flame-retardant foam really works.

Unit Five No Dad at Home
Comprehension exercises.
Exercise 1. Questions (with answers for reference)
1. Who is Sharon Anty? What kind of life does she lead with her son?
Sharon Anty is a single mother living with her 11 year-old son Gillon on the North shore of Massachusetts. She has great trouble handling her son. She says Sunday services are among the few times she is at peace with her son. When they get home, there is very little of it. The boy frequently refuses to respond directly to her requirements and she is depressed by the condition.
2. No dad at home, how does it affect the kids psychologically?
Most of the boys felt sad and depressed and lonely. They felt that they didn’t have a role model to follow. The following are some of the remarks:“Without a father, you can not have father to father talks and sometimes I am sad at night. I think how come I don’t have a father. I wish I had one.” “I have never gotten mad, but I have gotten pretty sad, that’s why I cried a lot. ” “Every time I think about him, I feel pain and sadness. ”The ache in the heart for an absent father makes many boys sad and angry.
3. According to some psychologists, what can single mothers do to handle their children’s psychological troubles?
Dr. William Pollack, a child psychologist says mums can provide much what a boy needs from his father. In his book “Real Boys”, he says mums can find out what is really troubling their boys and learn to handle them the way many fathers do instinctively. He says one key is to understand that the boys communicate very differently from girls. They have to learn to decipher the code, trying to listen to and talk with their sons.

Unit Six Autopsy
Comprehension exercises.
Exercise 1. Questions (with answers for reference)
1. What can an autopsy tell people? Why did doctors use autopsies?
It can tell people why someone died. It can help people to find out the causes of the death. Doctors used autopsies to confirm their diagnosis or to learn from their mistakes.
2. Why are hospitals reluctant to do autopsy?
Doctors or hospitals sometimes make mistakes which caused the death of their patients. Therefore, they are afraid that the patient’s family will charge them with malpractice or negligence of duty which will cost them a lot of money.
3. How did some doctors account for the low hospital autopsy rate in U.S. now?
1) Some doctors regard autopsy as largely unnecessary, because they believe they have fancy lab tests, imaging devices and all sorts of new technology that would answer all the questions.
2) It is not a popular thing to do as doctors are unwilling to go to the family who have just lost their loved ones to ask for an autopsy.

Unit Seven An Agonizing Choice
Comprehension exercise.
Exercise 1. Questions (with answers for reference)
1. Who is John Cook? What agonizing choice had he to face? Why?
John cook is an ex-FBI agent and a cop. He had an agonizing choice to make as he had to report his son, Andy, to the police because Andy turned out to be the murderer of the Lake Juliet homicides on January 3rd, 1995. Few parents will ever face such an agonizing choice. It was truly a difficult choice as Andy would have to spend the rest of his life behind bars or it might mark the end of Andy’s life. Yet, as a cop, Cook’s duty was to get justice done. Therefore, he was really facing an agonizing choice.
2. How did the father think about his son and his crime?
He had been a good boy in the father’s eyes. He was respectful and polite. He was a loner, but he had never been in trouble before. The father couldn’t understand why his son could go so wrong. It was completely out of his expectation that his son would commit such a cruel crime.
3. What did the father have to sacrifice for his son’s wrongdoing?
John Cook was humiliated. He had to bear all the shame, the pain, the hurt and the disgrace. It was as if he had to bear his soul before the public. It was demeaning and extremely hurtful for having a son like that as he himself was in the law enforcement. Besides, he had to leave the FBI.

Unit Eight A Dangerous Encounter
Comprehension exercises.
Exercise 1. Questions (with answers for reference)
1. Who is Antonio Ferliciano? What happened to him when he was on a graveyard shift in a 7-Eleven chain store? How did he feel when he heard the robber cocked the hammer on the rifle? How did he fight with the robber afterwards?
Antonio Ferliciano, 27 years old, married, and the father of two young children, was a former employee with 7-Eleven. One day, early in the morning, when Antonio was on a graveyard shift with another clerk, a woman armed with a sawed-off rifle rushed in and asked them to get behind the counter, and give her the money. She threatened to blow their heads off. Antonio felt that his fear tripled as soon as he heard that click of the gun. He felt as if he was not going home and not seeing his children ever again. In order to protect himself, he grabbed the gun, pulled it over around the robber’s shoulder and jerked it down out of her hand, then found himself in a knock-down-and-drag-out fight. Hull, the robber, fought hard, and even bit him.
2. What’s the response of his boss to the case? According to 7-Eleven, under what condition can a clerk resist? What happened to Antonio’s family and how do people look upon him?
The boss was upset and felt Antonio had clearly violated the policy of the company which was not to resist an armed robber. Antonio was supposed to just do as the robber said, just step back from the register and just give anything they asked for. According to the policy, it’s all right for a clerk to resist only if they were attacked. Antonio’s heroic deed was regarded as “just acted carelessly” by his boss.
Antonio’s family were in a plight. Financially they were struggling as Antonio was fired. Some people sent him mails to encourage him and addressed him as the ‘the 7-Eleven robbery attempt hero’.
3. Will the 7-Eleven store consider giving back his job? How did the company base its policy on?
No, 7-Eleven had remained firm in its position. According to the administrative of the company “No asset in 7-Eleven stores is worth defending with the employee’s life.” They cited a study that found victims who resisted the robbery were far more likely to be killed than those who cooperated. They regarded Antonio’s behavior as not sensible and recommendable.

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