You will hear a series of short passages. Each is an introduction to a larger listening. After each is played, discuss what was said with your group and predict what you believe will be talked about next.
Listen for key devices such as these which indicate the start of a main idea.
- What I'd like to talk about today is...
- Let's take a look at...
- First, we'll outline X, and then relate this to Y.
- The main point I'd like to make today is about...
Listening
Number 1
Transcript
Number one, how many people here are right-handed? Well, put up your right hand if you are. Okay, that seems to follow the actual average, which says that about 90% of the population has their right hand as their dominant hand. How does being left-handed, part of that minority, affect your life? We'll take a look at how being left-handed has continued to affect people's daily lives, from inconveniences to social problems they may have. After that, we'll discuss some of the reasons why scientists believe left-handedness occurs in the first place.
Number 2
Transcript
Number 2. Last time we were talking about ecosystems and how organisms, plant or animal, all work together in a big cycle. Today we'll continue with this idea by explaining a specific type of relationship that exists within ecosystems regarding food chains and the hierarchy of who eats who, which is called a trophic relationship. That's T-R-O-P-H-I-C. Trophic. I'll use an example of marine life in this case and we'll show how, as you can guess, the big fish eat the little fish. But of course, it's a bit more complex than that.
Number 3
Transcript
Number three, there has been a lot in the news lately about bees and the fact that they seem to be disappearing, which is a great threat to agriculture around the world. We'll discuss that in another lecture, but before we do, let's answer some basic questions about bees and what they do for us. The first question to answer is how bees assist the process of flower pollination and help plants grow. What do they give and take from the flowers themselves? A second and I think more amazing aspect is how these bees communicate. When one finds a flower, how does he tell the rest of the hive where it is?
Number 4
Transcript
Number four, sociology and biology are two seemingly very separate disciplines and it's hard to imagine studying both together, let alone taking a course with both. Yet here we are in Sociobiology 101. Welcome. I suppose the first thing we need to do before we begin our main lecture is discuss the nature of sociobiology and a bit of the history as to how it was created. Once we have that background we'll be more prepared to look at some examples of the kinds of research and topics that sociobiologists work with.
Number 5
Transcript
Number five, one of the greatest achievements in medical technology was what, heart transplants, x-ray machines? Well you may be surprised that one of the most important steps forward was getting physicians to wash their hands and the fact that doctors realize the connection between germs and illness. The history of how this was discovered is quite interesting, so we'll touch on that slightly before getting into more scientific details about how modern hospitals work to ensure that everything in their environment is as clean as possible.
Exercise
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