LISA: OK, Greg, so I finally managed to read the article you mentioned – the one about the study on gender in physics.
GREG: About the study of college students done by Akira Miyake and his team? Yeah. I was interested that the researchers were actually a mix of psychologists and physicists. That’s an unusual combination.
LISA: Yeah. I got a little confused at first about which students the study was based on. They weren’t actually majoring in physics – they were majoring in what’s known as the STEM disciplines. That’s science, technology, engineering and … 【Q21】
GREG: … and math. Yes, but they were all doing physics courses as part of their studies.
LISA: That’s correct. So as I understood it, Miyake and co started from the fact that women are underrepresented in introductory physics courses at college, and also that on average, the women who do enrol on these courses perform more poorly than the men. No one really knows why this is the case.
GREG: Yeah. But what the researchers wanted to find out was basically what they could do about the relatively low level of the women’s results 【Q22】. But in order to find a solution they needed to find out more about the nature of the problem.
LISA: Right – now let’s see if I can remember … it was that in the physics class, the female students thought the male students all assumed that women weren’t any good at physics … was that it? And they thought that the men expected them to get poor results in their tests.
GREG: That’s what the women thought, and that made them nervous, so they did get poor results. But actually they were wrong … No one was making any assumption about the female students at all. 【Q23】
LISA: Anyway, what Miyake’s team did was quite simple – getting the students to do some writing before they went into the physics class. What did they call it?
GREG: Values-affirmation – they had to write an essay focusing on things that were significant to them, not particularly to do with the subject they were studying, but more general things like music or people who mattered to them. 【Q24】
LISA: Right. So the idea of doing the writing is that this gets the students thinking in a positive way.
GREG: And putting these thoughts into words can relax them and help them overcome the psychological factors that lead to poor performance 【Q25】. Yeah. But what the researchers in the study hadn’t expected was that this one activity raised the women’s physics grades from the C to the B range. 【Q26】
LISA: A huge change. Pity it wasn’t to an A, but still! No, but it does suggest that the women were seriously underperforming beforehand, in comparison with the men.
GREG: Yes. Mind you, Miyake’s article left out a lot of details. Like, did the students to the writing just once, or several times? And had they been told why they were doing the writing? That might have affected the results. 【Q27】
LISA: You mean, if they know the researchers thought it might help them to improve, then they’d just try to fulfil that expectation?
GREG: Exactly.
GREG: So anyway, I thought for our project we could do a similar study, but investigate whether it really was the writing activity that had that result.
LISA: OK. So we could ask them to do a writing task about something completely different … something more factual? Like a general knowledge topic.
GREG: Maybe … or we could have half the students doing a writing task and half doing something else, like an oral task.
LISA: Or even, half do the same writing task as in the original research and half do a factual writing task 【Q28】. Then we’d see if it really is the topic that made the difference, or something else.
GREG: That’s it. Good. So at our meeting with the supervisor on Monday we can tell him we’ve decided on our project. We should have our aims ready by then. I suppose we need to read the original study – the article’s just a summary.
LISA: And these was another article I read, by Smolinsky. It was about her research on how women and men perform in mixed teams in class, compared with single-sex teams and on their own.
GREG: Let me guess … the women were better at teamwork.
LISA: That’s what I expected, but actually the men and the women got the same results whether they were working in teams or on their own 【Q29】. But I guess it’s not that relevant to us.
GREG: What worries me anyway is how we’re going to get everything done in the time.
LISA: We’ll be OK now we know what we’re doing. Though I’m not clear how we assess whether the students in our experiment actually make any progress or not …
GREG: No. We may need some advice on that. The main thing’s to make sure we have the right size sample, not too big or too small.
LISA: That shouldn’t be difficult. Right, what do we need to do next? We could have a look at the timetable for the science classes … or perhaps we should just make an appointment to see one of the science professors. That’d be better. 【Q30】
GREG: Great. And we could even get to observe one of the classes.
LISA: What for?
GREG: Well … OK maybe let’s just go with your idea. Right, well …
Choose the correct letter, A, B or C.
听前预测：定位词 students、Akira Miyake’s study、majoring。
题目解析：题目问的是研究对象中学生的专业。Greg 先提到题干里的定位词 Akira Miyake 并带出干扰选项 B“About the study of college students done by Akira Miyake and his team? Yeah. I was interested that the researchers were actually a mix of psycholo-gists and physicists. That’s an unusual combination.”这里提及的是 researchers，和 题干涉及的人物不符，所以排除。接着听力原文又否定了选项 A“They weren’t actually majoring in physics.”因此该项排除。紧接着答案出现“they were major-ing in what’s known as the STEM disciplines. That’s science, technology, engineering and…”“…and math”，因此本题答案为 C。
听前预测：定位词 aim；提示词 investigate；选项关键词 kind of women study physics、improving women’s performance、fewer women than men。
题目解析：干扰项 C 先出现“the women who do enroll on these courses perform more poorly than the men”，这里选项是从数量上说的，而原文是从表现上说的，两者不一致，所以排除。然后答案和提示词出现“But what the researchers wanted to find out was basically what they could do about the relatively low level of the women’s results.”虽然该句没有提及定位词，定位词 aim 被 what the researchers wanted to find out 同义替换，其中 find out 也是 investigate 的同义替换，这里是说研究者想要找出是什么影响了女性在物理课上的成绩，意思就是说目的在于改进她们 在这一科的表现，因此答案为 B。
听前预测：定位词 female physics students；提示词 wrong、believe；选项关键词 marked unfair、male expected badly、test results lower。
题目解析：题目中定位词和部分答案先出现“the female students thought the male students all assumed that women weren’t any good at physics…was that it?” 其 中 weren’t good at 同义替换了选项 B 中的 badly，assumed 同义替换了 expected；然后干扰选 项 C 出现“And they thought that the men expected them to get poor results in their tests.”但是被后文转折词和答案否定。“But actually they were wrong…No one was making any assumptions about the female students at all.”而且原文提到没有任何人做过对女生物理成绩低的假设，所以再次证实这是女生们的错误认识，因此排除 C，答案为 B。
听前预测：定位词 Miyake’s team；提示词 write；选项关键词 enjoyed studying physics、successful experiences、important personally。
题目解析：本题的定位词先出现“Anyway, what Miyake’s team did was quite simple—getting the students to do some writing before they went into the physics class.”然后答案出现“they had to write an essay focusing on things that were significant to them…but more general things like music, or people who mattered to them.”其中 significant 同义替换了 important，因此答案为 C。
听前预测：定位词 aim、writing exercise。
题目解析：本题部分定位词出现“So the idea of doing the writing is that this gets the students thinking in a positive way.”然后答案出现“And putting these thoughts into words can relax them and help them overcome the psychological factors that lead to poor performance.”其中 relax 同义替换了 reduce stress，因此答案为 A。
听前预测：定位词 researchers、study；选项关键词 few students A grades、positive impact on physics results、difference performance。
题目解析：本题答案离 25 题很近。本题的定位词和答案一起出现“But what the researchers in the study hadn’t expected was that this one activity raised the women’s physics grades from the C to the B range.”其中 raised grades 同义替换了 positive impact， 因此答案为 B。干扰项 A、C 中的 A grades、performance 虽有被提及，但选项意思和原文意思不符，因此排除。
听前预测：定位词 Miyake’s results；提示词 affected；选项关键词 length of task、the number of students、information。
题目解析：本题的定位词先出现“Mind you, Miyake’s article left out a lot of details.”然后提示词和答案一起出现“And had they been told why they were doing the writing? That might have affected the results.”如果她们被告知为什么写作，这可能影响她们的成绩，因此答案为 C。
听前预测：定位词 project；选项关键词 writing tasks、writing with oral、oral tasks。
题目解析：本题的定位词先出现“I thought for our project we could do a similar study, but investigate whether it really was the writing activity that had that result.”其中 Greg 先提议了干扰项 B，然后 Lisa 提出了答案 A，“half do the same writing task as in the original research and half do a factual writing task. Then we’d see if it really is the topic that made the difference, or something else.”Greg 认可了 Lisa 的观点“That’s it. Good.”因此答案为 A。
听前预测：定位词 Smolinsky’s research、class teamwork activities；选项关键词 effective、no effect、improved the results。
题目解析：本题的定位词先出现“And there was another article I read, by Smolinsky.”“…the women were better at teamwork.”然后答案出现“…but actually the men and the women got the same results whether they were working in teams or on their own.”其中 same results 同义替换了 no effect，所以答案为 B。
听前预测：提示词 do next。
题目解析：本题易被干扰，本题的提示词先出现“Right, what do we need to do next?”Lisa 提出了选择“We could have a look at the timetable for the science classes…or perhaps we should just make an appointment to see one of the science professors.”然后她作出了倾向后者的选择“That’d be better.”Greg 也认同 Lisa“Great”，因此答案为 A。