Task 1
Is it important to be polite and have good manners?
Politeness and good manners are very important in social settings. For one, if you go to a social event and want to make new friends, good manners help a lot. When you hold the door for others and talk to them nicely, you will leave a good impression on people and they will more likely want to talk to you. In family gatherings, having good table manners, like not talking with your mouth full, or helping family members prepare food, shows your respect for them. I've seen people talking loud at dinner table or in a quite setting, and I always think it's kind of embarrassing.
Task 2
To be successful in sport, which is more important? Talent or hard work?
Although talent and hard work are both important for anyone to achieve any kind of success, I believe hard work is the deciding factor when talent is present. For example, I have two high school friends, Jack and Peter, who were both into basketball. They were both pretty good at it, but Jack was very humble and always trying to get better, while Peter said it was good enough to help his get girls. Jack practiced every day without fail, saying that Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant worked so hard to get where they were, and he made it to the school team and got a sports scholarship at a good university. Peter was pretty mediocre upon graduation, and gave it up. It is very common that people give up their dreams because they don't want to work hard enough, and it's a shame.
Task 3
A student proposes that the school should publish club information so that students can get more info about campus activities, and they can hear about club members' experience.
The man in the conversation agrees. First, he says right now there's no one central place to provide all the information, so they have to know what's happening through posters or friends, and sometimes it's not very convenient. Second, he is in a photography club. You don't know how interesting it is until you talk to the members. You cannot know about their stories from posters and stuff.
Task 4
Social behavior training: Adults perform social behavior and make children imitate the behavior and children eventually know how to behave in social settings themselves.
In the listening, the professor used to teach in a kindergarten. One day he was teaching kids color pictures. A girl named Mary wanted a red crayon but couldn't find one in the box, so she grabbed one from a boy named Paul's hand. The professor then showed her how to borrow things from others politely, and from then on, the girl learned to always be polite when borrowing things.
Task 5
The girl's problem is that she has one afternoon class and one evening class, but there's only a 30-minute break in between which is not enough for her to have dinner. The first solution is to bring supper to class, but it's a lot of work preparing the food. The second solution is to move the afternoon class to the evening, but then she'll get out of class very late and she'll be exhausted.
Task 6
The professor talks about two ways animals survive in dry seasons. The first is special physical feathers. For example, elephants have big-sized bodies and sharp tusks that can help them drink water from barks which can store water. The second is special behavior. For example, wild beasts migrate to the north during droughts, because there's enough water and food there.