Section 6. Interpreting Skills Training

Ex.1.Restore the order of the paragraphs

The real Romney-Obama dog fight

By: Andrew Davidson
Senior Producer, CBCNews.ca

B. Obama's chief strategist David Axelrod took to Twitter to fire a subtle barb at the Romney camp by posting a photograph of President Barack Obama with the first family's pet dog, Bo, inside the president's armoured limo. It came with the quip "How loving owners transport their dogs."

C. One hopes these are just the dog days of a presidential race and we can get on to more substantial topics soon. Harry Truman once said, "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog." That was, of course, well before politicians were hounded the way they are today.

E. The intensifying battle between President Barack Obama and his likely Republican challenger Mitt Romney is going way back into the past and even farther into the realm of ridiculous trivialities.

F. Grown men are sniping at each other over whether it's worse for a 40-year-old to put a dog in a cage on the roof of a car, or for a child to eat one as part of a national cuisine in another culture.

A. Throughout the primary season, Romney has faced intense criticism from Democrats and animal lovers for his treatment of the family pet on a 1983 car trip from Boston to a cottage in Grand Bend, Ont.
The Romney's Irish Setter, Seamus, spent the epic journey in a carrier strapped to the roof of a Chevy station wagon, as the car was filled with Romney kids. Critics have cited Romney's own jokes about the trail of doggie diarrhea down the back of the station wagon as proof of mistreatment.

D. Republicans have now fired back, with conservative website The Daily Caller resurrecting a segment from Obama's memoir Dreams of My Father, in which he recounts his time as a child in Indonesia with his step-father, who introduced him to eating snake, grasshopper and, yes, dog meat.

Answer: 1E ; 2A ; 3B; 4D ; 5F ; 6C;

Ex.2.Selective Listening.

1. Work in group of three. Listen to two texts at the same time. Follow one of the text with phonetic shadowing, skipping the meaning of the second text.

2. Remember key information. Verbalize the facts obtained.

19th century	20th century
1.The 19th century (1801–1900) was a period in history marked by the collapse of the Spanish, Portuguese, First and Second French, Chinese, Holy Roman and Mughal empires. It also marks the fall of the Ottoman occupation of the Balkans. This paved the way for the growing influence of the British Empire, Russian Empire, German Empire, the United States and the Empire of Japan	1.The 20th century is defined as the time period running from January 1, 1901 to December 31, 1999. The Chinese, Russian, German, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires dissolved in the first half of the century, with all but the British, French, Portuguese, and Japanese empires collapsing during the course of World War I. Russia transformed into communist state of Soviet Union which collapsed internally in 1991.
2.The Victorian era was notorious for the employment of young children in factories and mines. The first empire to abolish slavery was the Portuguese Empire, followed by Britain, who did so in 1834. America's 13th Amendment following their Civil War abolished slavery there in 1865.In Brazil slavery was abolished in 1888. Similarly, serfdom was abolished in Russia.	2.The inter-war years saw a Great Depression cause a massive disruption to the world economy. Shortly afterwards, World War II broke out, pitting the Allied powers (chiefly the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom) against the Axis powers (Nazi Germany, the Empire of Japan, and Italy) which eventually resulted in a total victory for the Allies, at the cost of over 60 million lives. Remaining colonial empires dissolved shortly after the war.
3.The 19th century was an era of invention and discovery, with significant developments in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, electricity, and metallurgy that lay the groundwork for the technological advances of the 20th century. The Industrial Revolution began in Europe. The introduction of railroads provided the first major advancement in land transportation for centuries, changing the way people lived and obtained goods. The 19th century also saw the rapid creation, development and codification of many sports, particularly in Britain and the United States.	3.Accelerating scientific understanding, more efficient communications, and faster transportation transformed the world in those hundred years more rapidly and widely than in any previous century. Rapid technological advancements, however, also allowed warfare to reach unprecedented levels of human destruction. These developments were made possible by the large-scale exploitation of fossil fuel resources (especially petroleum), which offered large amounts of energy in an easily portable form, but also caused widespread concerns about pollution and long-term impact on the environment.
4.Advances in medicine and the understanding of human anatomy and disease prevention took place in the 19th century, and were partly responsible for rapidly accelerating population growth in the western world. Europe's population doubled during the 19th century, from roughly 200 million to more than 400 million.	4.Mass media, telecommunications, and information technology (especially computers, paperback books, public education, and the Internet) made the world's knowledge more widely available to people. Advancements in medical technology also improved the welfare of many people: the life expectancy of the world increased from 35 years to 65 years.
5.The last remaining undiscovered landmasses of Earth, including vast expanses of interior Africa and Asia, were discovered during this century, and with the exception of the extreme zones of the Arctic and Antarctic, accurate and detailed maps of the globe were available by the 1890s.	5.The century saw a major shift in the way that vast numbers of people lived, as a result of changes in politics, ideology, economics, society, culture, science, technology, and medicine. It was a century that started with horses, simple automobiles, and freighters but ended with luxury sedans, cruise ships, airliners and the space shuttle.