Đáp án và giải thích

Before you hear the rest of the talk, you have some time to look at questions 15 to 20.

Now listen and answer questions 15 to 20.

Right, now if you’d like to gather a little closer to the window I’ll point out the various buildings. We're at the highest point of the stadium here in the rooftop café, on the opposite side to the main entrance doors. On our left, you can see two buildings just beyond the end of the stadium. The closest one is the business centre, used for meetings and conferences, and so on, which provides a good source of revenue for the upkeep of the sports facilities; and next to the business centre the bigger building is the hotel which is rented from us by an independent company. As you see, they are served by the perimeter road which runs round three-quarters of the site. Now, coming round to the front of the building, immediately in front of the entrance, that circular open space at the end of the road is the transport hub. From here, there are buses and a monorail link to the free car park, about ten minutes from here, but you can't see that. There's also a large secure cycle park. Oh, and disabled parking, of course. People find it’s very convenient and it keeps the site virtually car-free.

1. Now if you look as far as you can over to the right, beyond the buildings, you can see our outdoor pitches which I mentioned earlier. Between the pitches and the entrance is a little kind of pedestrian plaza … are you with me? OK, with the cinema in the building furthest away from us, next to the pitches, then there's the ten-pin bowling between the cinema and the road.

Near the far end of the perimeter road and between the mini-roundabout and the pitches – there’s our fitness centre, with all kinds of equipment, and a small pool, and changing rooms for teams using the pitches. Then, joined on to the stadium, next to the entrance, is a range of small shops which all specialise in sports equipment, clothes, shoes. They sell toys and so on as well, all that sort of thing. They seem to be doing well! As you see, the service road goes right round, but we keep the traffic and the pedestrians well apart, so it’s all very relaxed round the plaza, popular with families. And just in front of the bowling is our lovely restaurant. You can see it from here – it’s that building on the plaza between us and the bowling. It’s open all day and in the evenings. There’s quite a queue there at weekends, I’m pleased to say.

So, now you’ve got the layout, we can go and have a closer look at everything.

Đáp án và giải thích

Rob: But while you’re here, Mia, I wanted to ask you about the year abroad option. Would you recommend doing that?

Mia: Yes, definitely. It’s a fantastic chance to study in another country for a year.

Rob: I think I’d like to do it, but it looks very competitive - there’s only a limited number of places.

Mia: Yes, so next year when you are in the second year of the course, you need to work really hard in all your theatre studies modules. Only students with good marks get places - you have to prove that you know your subject really well.

Rob: Right. So how did you choose where to go?

Mia: Well, I decided I wanted a programme that would fit in with what I wanted to do after I graduate, so I looked for a university with emphasis on acting rather than directing for example. It depends on you. Then about six months before you go, you have to email the scheme coordinator with your top three choices. I had a friend who missed the deadline and didn’t get her first choice, so you do need to get a move on at that stage. You’ll find that certain places are very popular with everyone.

Rob: And don’t you have to write a personal statement at that stage?

Mia: Yes.

Rob: Right. I’ll get some of the final year students to give me some tips ... maybe see if I can read what they wrote.

Mia: I think that’s a very good idea. I don’t mind showing you what I did.

And while you’re abroad don’t make the mistake I made. I got so involved I forgot all about making arrangements for when I came back here for the final year. Make sure you stay in touch so they know your choices for the optional modules. You don’t want to miss out doing your preferred specialisms.

Rob: Right.

Đáp án và giải thích

Last week, we started looking at reptiles, including crocodiles and snakes. Today, I’d like us to have a look at another reptile - the lizard - and in particular, at some studies that have been done on a particular type of lizard whose Latin name is tiliqua rugosa. This is commonly known as the sleepy lizard, because it’s quite slow in its movements and spends quite a lot of its time dozing under rocks or lying in the sun.

I’ll start with a general description. Sleepy lizards live in Western and South Australia, where they're quite common. Unlike European lizards, which are mostly small, green and fast­ moving, sleepy lizards are brown, but what’s particularly distinctive about them is the colour of their tongue, which is dark blue, in contrast with the lining of their mouth which is bright pink. And they're much bigger than most European lizards. They have quite a varied diet, including insects and even small animals, but they mostly eat plants of varying kinds.

Even though they're quite large and powerful, with strong jaws that can crush beetles and snail shells, they still have quite a few predators. Large birds like cassowaries were one of the main ones in the past, but nowadays they’re more likely to be caught and killed by snakes. Actually, another threat to their survival isn't a predator at all, but is man-made – quite a large number of sleepy lizards are killed by cars when they’re trying to cross highways.

One study carried out by Michael Freake at Flinders University investigated the methods of navigation of these lizards. Though they move slowly, they can travel quite long distances. And he found that even if they were taken some distance away from their home territory, they could usually find their way back home as long as they could see the sky – they didn't need any other landmarks on the ground.

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Observations of these lizards in the wild have also revealed that their mating habits are quite unusual. Unlike most animals, it seems that they're relatively monogamous, returning to the same partner year after year. And the male and female also stay together for a long time, both before and after the birth of their young.

It's quite interesting to think about the possible reasons for this. It could be that it's to do with protecting their young – you'd expect them to have a much better chance of survival if they have both parents around. But in fact observers have noted that once the babies have hatched out of their eggs, they have hardly any contact with their parents. So, there’s not really any evidence to support that idea.

Another suggestion’s based on the observation that male lizards in monogamous relationships tend to be bigger and stronger than other males. So maybe the male lizards stay around so they can give the female lizards protection from other males. But again, we’re not really sure.

Finally, I’d like to mention another study that involved collecting data by tracking the lizards. I was actually involved in this myself. So we caught some lizards in the wild and we developed a tiny GPS system that would allow us to track them, and we fixed this onto their tails. Then we set the lizards free again, and we were able to track them for twelve days and gather data, not just about their location, but even about how many steps they took during this period.

One surprising thing we discovered from this is that there were far fewer meetings between lizards than we expected – it seems that they were actually trying to avoid one another. So why would that be? Well, again we have no clear evidence, but one hypothesis is that male lizards can cause quite serious injuries to one another, so maybe this avoidance is a way of preventing this – of self-preservation, if you like. But we need to collect a lot more data before we can be sure of any of this.