TUTOR: OK, so what I’d like you to do now is to talk to your partner about your presentations on urban planning. You should have done most of the reading now, so I’d like you to share your ideas, and talk about the structure of your presentation and what you need to do next.
CARLA: OK Rob. I’m glad we chose quite a specific topic – cities built next to the sea. It made it much easier to find relevant information.
ROB: Yeah. And cities are growing so quickly – I mean, we know that more than half the world’s population lives in cities now.
CARLA: Yeah, though that’s all cities, not just ones on the coast. But 【Q21】 most of the biggest cities are actually built by the sea. I’d not realised that before.
ROB: Nor me. And what’s more, a lot of them are built at places where rivers come out into the sea. But apparently this can be a problem.
CARLA: Why?
ROB: Well, as the city expands, agriculture and industry tend to spread further inland along the rivers, and so agriculture moves even further inland up the river. That’s not necessarily a problem, except 【Q22】 it means more and more pollutants are discharged into the rivers.
CARLA: So these are brought downstream to the cities?
ROB: Right. Hmm. Did you read that article about Miami, on the east coast of the USA?
CARLA: No.
ROB: Well, apparently back in the 1950s they build channels to drain away the water in case of flooding.
CARLA: Sounds sensible.
ROB: Yeah, they spent quite a lot of money on them. 【Q23】 But what they didn’t take into account was global warming. So they built the drainage channels too close to sea level, and now sea levels are rising, they’re more or less useless. If there’s a lot of rain, the water can’t run away, there’s nowhere for it to go. The whole design was faulty.
CARLA: So what are the authorities doing about it now?
ROB: I don’t know. I did read that they’re aiming to stop disposing of waste into the ocean over the next ten years.
CARLA: But that won’t help with flood prevention now, will it?
ROB: No. Really 【Q24】 they just need to find the money for something to replace the drainage channels, in order to protect against flooding now. But in the long term they need to consider the whole ecosystem.
CARLA: Right. Really, though, coastal cities can’t deal with their problems on their own, can they? I mean, they’ve got to start acting together at an international level instead of just doing their own thing.
ROB: Absolutely. The thing is, everyone knows what the problems are and environmentalists have a pretty good idea of what we should be doing about them, so 【Q25】 they should be able to work together to some extent. But it’s going to be a long time before countries come to a decision on what principles they’re prepared to abide by.
CARLA: Yes, if they ever do.
CARLA: So I think we’ve probably got enough for our presentation. It’s only fifteen minutes.
ROB: OK. So I suppose we’ll begin with some general historical background about why coastal cities were established. But 【Q26】 we don’t want to spend too long on that, the other students will already know a bit about it. It’s all to do with communications and so on.
CARLA: Yes. We should mention some geographical factors, things like wetlands and river estuaries and coastal erosion and so on. We could have some maps of different cities with these features marked.
ROB: On a handout you mean? Or 【Q27】 some slides everyone can see?
CARLA: Yeah, that’d be better.
ROB: It’d be good to go into past mistakes in a bit more detail. Did you read that case study of the problems there were in New Orleans with flooding a few years ago?
CARLA: Yes, 【Q28】 We could use that as the basis for that part of the talk. I don’t think the other students will have read it, but they’ll remember hearing about the flooding at the time.
ROB: OK. So that’s probably enough background.
CARLA: So then we’ll go on to talk about what action’s being taken to deal with the problems of coastal cities.
ROB: OK. What else do we need to talk about? Maybe something on future risks, looking more at the long term, if populations continue to grow.
CARLA: Yeah. We’ll need to do a bit of work there, I haven’t got much information, have you?
ROB: No. 【Q29】 We’ll need to look at some websites. Shouldn’t take too long.
CARLA: OK. And I think we should end by talking about international implications. Maybe 【Q30】 we could ask people in the audience. We’ve got people from quite a lot of different places.
ROB: That’d be interesting, if we have time, yes. So now shall we …
Choose the correct letter, A, B or C.
听前预测：定位词 coastal cities；提示词 surprised。此处注意应该选择让两位说话者感到惊讶的信息。
题目解析：Rob 虽然提到“And cities are growing so quickly…more than half the world’s population lives in cities now.”，但是 Carla 对此进行了进一步的说明：“…that’s all cities, not just ones on the coast.”，因此 A 选项既不是只属于海滨城市的特点，也没有令两位说话者感到惊讶。接着在转折连词 but 之后出现了答案对应信息“But most of the biggest cities are actually built by the sea…”，并且 Carla 表示“I’d not realised that before”，Rob 也回答道“Nor me.”，由此可以判断出该信息在两人的意料之外，因此答案为 B。C 选项在文中未提及。
听前预测：定位词 near、rivers；提示词 Rob。此题的答案应出现在 Rob 说的话中。
题目解析：定位句为“…a lot of them are built at places where rivers come out into the sea”，其中 them 指代的是前文出现的 cities。定位词出现后，Rob 接着说“this can be a problem”，这个时候需要集中精神听这里出现的 problem 具体是什么，因为它就是我们要找的答案。在 Rob 接下来的话语中，先后出现了 B、C 选项中 的 agriculture、industry 这两个词，文中提到“…agriculture and industry tend to spread further inland along the rivers, and so agriculture moves even further inland up the river.”，可知 B、C 选项与原文意思不符。紧接着说“…except it means more and more pollutants are discharged into the rivers.”，其中 it 指代的是 as the city expands，对应题干中的 building coastal cities，因此答案为 A。
听前预测：定位词 Miami、1950s；提示词 mistake。
题目解析：此题比较容易定位。两位说话者提到了 Miami 在 20 世纪 50 年代建造的河道， 即“Yeah, they spent quite a lot of money on them. But what they didn’t take into
account was global warming.”，其中 global warming 对应 C 选项中的 climate change， 因此答案为 C。
听前预测：定位词 authorities、Miami；提示词 do、immediately。
题目解析：Carla 问“So what are the authorities doing about it now?”，所以接下来的回答会包含此题的答案。Rob 先回答道“I did read that they’re aiming to stop disposing of waste water into the ocean…”，但是 Carla 和他都觉得这样做对防洪无用，因此可以排除 C 选项。接着又提到“Really they just need to find the money for something to replace the drainage channels…”，其中 something 对应 B 选项中的 a new flood prevention system，因此答案为 B。后文虽然提到了 ecosystem，但是与 A 选项所表达的意思不符，而且文中说的是 in the long term，并不是题干中所说的立即采取的措施。
听前预测：定位词 international action；提示词 agree、priority。
题目解析：此题可根据 international 来定位。文中说“I mean, they’ve got to start acting together at an international level instead of just doing their own thing.”，并且后文又再次提到“they should be able to work together”，对应 A 选项中的 coordination of activities，因此答案为 A。B、C 选项在文中未提及。