老托福听力是复习托福听力很有价值的材料，无忧托福网为同学们带来托福听力每日一练（共42天）的原文，同学们可以听写后对照原文，希望对同学们有所帮助。
托福听力每日一练第3天：（95年12月）
演讲听写训练 1
I'm sure almost every one of you looked at your watch or at a clock before you came to class today. Watches and clocks seem as much part of our life as breathing or eating. And yet did you know that watches and clocks were scarce in the United States until the 1850s. In the late 1700s, people didn't know the exact time unless they were near a clock. Those delightful clocks in the squares of European towns were built for the public. After all, most citizens simply couldn't afford a personal timepiece. Well into the 1800s in Europe and United States, the main purpose of a watch, which by the way was off and on a gold chain, was to show others how wealthy you were. The word "wrist watch" didn't even enter the English language until nearly 1900. By then the rapid pace of the industrialization in the United States meant that measuring time had become essential. How could the factory worker get to work on time unless he or she knew exactly what time it was? Since the efficiency was now measured by how fast the job was done, everyone was interested in time. And since industrialization made possible the manufacture of large quantities of goods, watches became fairly inexpensive. Furthermore electric lights kept factories going around the clock. Being “on time” had entered the language and life of every citizen.
演讲听写训练 2
This room is devoted to electric fish. The eel in the tank behind me can produce a strong jolt of electricity to stun its prey. But most of the fish in here produce only weak electrical impulses that are useful for navigating, locating food and even for communicating. The knife fish is a good example. This fish navigates using tiny receptors in the skin that are sensitive to electrical impulses. The knife fish produces an electrical signal and the receptors in its skin let it know when the signal is distorted by a tree root or some other obstacle so it can go around it. Fish also use the ability to produce and detect electrical impulses to communicate. They can tell each other what species they belong to, how big they are , and whether they are male or female. We have a tank here that 's specially equipped to convert the inaudible signals that the fish produce into sounds you can hear when you put on these headphones. I urge you all to listen in when I'm done speaking. Now have a look at the electric rays. Rays are especially interesting to medical researchers because of the organs they use to produce electricity. These organs contain a chemical that carries signals from one nerve ending to the next. Not only in rays but also in people. By studying these organs scientists hope to learn more about diseases that interrupt the transmission of impulses from one nerve to another.
演讲听写训练 3
So why did what is now called modern dance begin in the United States? To begin to answer this question, I'll need to back track a little bit and talk about classical ballet. By the late 1800s, ballet had lost a lot of its popularity. Most of the ballet dancers who performed in the United States were brought over from Europe. They performed using the rigid techniques that'd been passed down through the centuries. Audiences and dancers in the United States were eager for their own contemporary dance form and so around 1900 dancers created one. So how was this modern dance so different from classical ballet? Most notably, it wasn't carefully choreographed. Instead the dance depended on the improvisation and free personal expression of the dancers. Music and scenery were of little importance to the modern dance. And lightness of movement wasn't important either. In fact modern dancers made no attempt at all to conceal the effort involved in the dance step. But even if improvisation appeals to audiences, many dance critics were less enthusiastic about the performances. They questioned the artistic integrity of dancers who were not professionally trained and the artistic value of works that had no formal structure. Loi Fore, after performing fire dance was described as doing little more than turning around and around like an eggbeater. Yet the free personal expression of the pioneer dancers is the basis of the controlled freedom of modern dance today.
