托福听力每日一练第26天：
演讲听写训练1：
Recently some anthropologist conducated an interesting case study in ehnology. now ethnology as u reacall is a branch of anthropology that deal with how various cultrues develped change. the study was about the development of basket weaving by African-american women who live in the town of Mount Pleasant,South Carolina.the town is known for its high quality sweet grass baskets which are woven bye these women.they've been weaving the baskets for generations,handing down the skiss from mother to daughter. some of the baskets have been place on permanent display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.the origin of their basket weaing dates back to the 17th century and even earlier when these women's ancestors came to the United States from the west coast of Africa. Now,it's mainly a hobby.but back in the 17th and 18th century African and American women wove the baskets for use on hte rice plantations.there were two types of backets then:workbaskets and baskets for use in the home. the wrokbaskets were made out of the more delicate sweet grass.they were used for everything from fruit baskets to baby cradles.
演讲听写训练2：
This morning i want to tell u about a recent scientific discovery dealing with the relation between plants and animals.this is about a desert shrub whose leaves can shoot up a stream of poisonous resin a distance of six feet.do you think it would be safe from all attacks by insects.but a recent study has found one insect,a beetle,that can chew its way past the plant's defense system by cutting the mainly vein that delivers the poison to the leaves.this vein cutting is jut one method the beetles used to prepare a safe meal.another is by cutting a path all the way across the leave to hold the flow of chemicals.then they simply eat between the veins of poison.in the past,scienists who studied inset adaptation to plant defenses have focused on chemical responses.that is,how the insects can neutrala or alter the poisonous substances plants produce.what's unique about this chewing strategy is that the beetle is actually exhibiting a behavior response to the plant's defenses rather than the more commom chemical response. it is only after a beetle's survived weveral encounters with the plant' resin that it learns how to avoid the poison:by chewing through the resin transporting veins on the next leaf it eats.and thus gives itself a meal.however,it can take a bettle an hours an a half of careful vein cutting to prepare a small leaf that takes it only a few minutes to eat.so,though the method is effective,it's not very efficient.
演讲听写训练3：
We're going to start our discussion of poetry in Western Europe with the Iliad and the Odyssey.these two great poems stand out as great examples of the earliest Euopean poems.they are believeed to have been written some time between 800BC and 700BC,partly because the poems refer to the social conditions of that time,conditions that have been validated by the findings of archeologists.but just who was the poet who laid down these cornerstones of western literature?well,tradition ascribles them to a man named Homer,but we know virtually nothing about this Homer.In fact,some say that such a poet never existed at all,that neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey was written by a single poet,but rather each poem is composed of the writings of several people.this,anyway,is the view of a school of literary critics in the 18th century known as the Analysts. the Analysts pointed to internal evidence such as variations in the literary devices used in the poem to argue that each work waaas in fact a collection of sereral poems by several Greek authors.Opposing the ananlysts were a second group of scholars called the Unitarian. they insisted that the Iliad and the Odyssey could have been the wrok of single poetic genius.To support their argument,they stress among other things the consistency of the character portrayed in the poetry.this wouldn't've been possilbe,they said,if they were written by many different poets.now how we look at the Homeric question today has been greatly influenced by someone named Milman Parry,an American scholar who first presented his ideas about Homer in the 1930s. so let's take a look at Parry's research and how it affects what modern day scholars think about Homer.
