Passage One
Wild carrots probably evolved with the other flowering plants about 360 million years ago.
Like apples, carrots are native to Central Asia. That"s why horses,
which also come from Central Asia, like both apples and carrots so much. With wild carrots,
the roots are white, small and skinny, so you"d have to pick a lot of wild carrots to get enough to eat.
Doctors used carrot seeds and roots as medicine, on the theory that foods that taste bad must be good for you.
Around 800 AD, people in Central Asia
managed to develop a new kind of carrot— a purple carrot—that attracted more interest from international traders. Then, in the late 1500s,
food scientists in the Netherlands
cultivated large, straight, sweet, red carrots like the ones we eat today.
But people still mostly fed carrots to horses,
donkeys and pigs, and didn"t eat them themselves. In the 1600s,
people in China used carrots as medicine, but they also ate carrots boiled in soup. The red color was popular for Chinese New Year celebrations. But carrots got their biggest boost during the two world wars,
when food shortages forced people to eat them, and governments told everyone how healthy carrots were. Today, cooler countries
grow most of the world"s carrots.
Machines do most of the planting and picking, and carrots are easy to store and ship, so they are cheap almost everywhere.
Questions 16 to 18 are based on the passage you have just heard.
16. What do we learn from the talk about wild carrots?
17. What does the speaker say about carrots in the late 1500s?
18. Why did people turn to carrots for food during the two world wars?
Passage Two
Katherine loved Facebook. With Facebook,
she could stay connected with her family no matter how far away they were. She could see their photos and read their status updates. With Facebook,
she could keep her relatives up-to-date on what she was doing.
Another thing Katherine loved about Facebook was that she didn"t have to think about time zones when updating family.
Whenever she called her parents or other relatives, she always had to think about the time difference so that she wouldn"t wake someone up or call when she knew they were at church. Facebook was so convenient.
When Katherine joined Facebook, some of her classmates at high school started to add her as a friend. At first, this didn"t bother her.
She loved learning about the success of people she knew when she was just a teenager.
She loved finding out people were getting married, having babies, and traveling.
Soon, however, Katherine found herself comparing herself with the people she was reading about on Facebook. It began to make her feel bad
that some people seemed to be doing so much better than she was.
She was also spending a lot of time on Facebook. It took a lot of time and energy
to keep up with everyone"s status updates. Katherine started to think.
She looked at the list of over 500 friends she had on Facebook and realized
some of them were not really friends at all. Questions 19 to 21 are based on the passage you have just heard.
19. What was one particular convenience Katherine loved about Facebook? 20. How did Katherine feel
when her classmates added her as a Facebook friend?
21. What made Katherine feel bad about herself later on? Passage Three
Do you know where a mule comes from? It is the child of a donkey and a horse. Mules have strong muscles like horses, but they eat less, can work longer, and are gentler, like donkeys.
George Washington was the first person in the United States to own mules.
He had heard that mules made good farm animals and he contacted the U.S. ambassador in Spain to ask about them.
In 1785, King Charles Ⅲ of Spain
sent Washington a male donkey as a gift. That male donkey became
the father of the mule industry in the U.S. Every April,
Maury County holds a Mule Day celebration. Held in Columbia, Tennessee,
Mule Day had its beginnings as "Breeder"s Day" in the 1840s.
Farmers and farm animal breeders
would bring their animals to market every April to show, buy, and trade.
This was an important business before the days of tractors,
when many families made a living from farming and mules were used as work animals.
Eventually, tractors began to replace mules,
making them less in demand.
A parade was added to Mule Day in 1934 to attract more people.
Over the years other activities have been added, and today more than 200,000 people show up each year to watch and participate.
If you visit during Mule Day celebrations, you might see mule-driving contests, square dances, horse shows
or even tree-cutting competitions.
Questions 22 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard.
22. What does the speaker say about mules? 23. What do we learn about the donkey which is said to be
the father of the U.S. mule industry?
24. What did farmers usually do on Mule Day in the 1840s?
25. What made mules less in demand in America? This is the end of listening comprehension.
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