News in Brief
News Item 1:
1. General Comprehension. Choose the statement that best summarizes this news item.
(1) Arnold Loskin was fired from his job because he objected the US foreign policy.
(2) Arnold Loskin arrived in Moscow today for a one-month lecture tour.
(3) Arnold Loskin has defected to the Soviet Union.
Answer:
2. True or False Questions.
(1) Arnold Loskin is an American can-food researcher.
(2) Arnold Loskin has arrived in Moscow alone.
(3) Arnold Loskin defected to Moscow without being granted political asylum.
(4) Arnold Loskin defected to the Soviet Union after being fired from his job in the United States.
News Item 2:
1. General Comprehension. Choose the statement that best summarizes this news item.
(1) The House has attached arms control demands to the spending bill.
(2) The House has approved a compromise anti-drug bill.
(3) President Reagan said he wanted to shut down the government.
(4) The scheduled summit has some impact on the budget debate in the US Congress.
Answer:
2. Choose the best answer (a, b, c, or d) to complete each of the following statements.
(1) By attaching arms control demands to the spending bill, ___________.
a. Congress has given help to the Soviet leader
b. Congress is supporting President Reagan in the upcoming summit
c. President Reagan is helping Congress
d. President Reagan and Congress have reached a compromise
(2) President Reagan was forced by Congress to abide by __________.
a. the ratified SALT I Treaty
b. the unratified SALT I Treaty
c. the ratified SALT II Treaty
d. the unratified SALT II Treaty
(3) President Reagan's reaction towards the House's pressure was that ___________.
a. he would obey the House's requirements
b. he would shut down the government if he was forced to give up his way on arms issues
c. he would negotiate with the House and try to make a compromise
d. he would pay no attention to whatever the House said
3. Spot Dictation. Listen to the tape again and fill in the following blanks.
The House today approved a compromise that would institute for . A threatened a to keep it from passing. Representatives dropped from the original bill that would to patrol the border against .
News Item 3:
1. General Comprehension. Choose the statement that best summarizes this news item.
(1) The flooding problem in St. Charles county now is worse than any previous disasters in recent history.
(2) Flooding problems continue to intensify along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers north of St. Louis.
(3) Residents of the flooded area will not be able to return home in the near future.
(4) All of the levees along the Missouri River have broken and a large number of small towns are several feet under water.
Answer:
2. Identification. Locate the following places according to what you have heard on the tape.
(1) St. Louis:
(2) St. Charles County:
(3) Portage Des Sioux:
(4) Westalton:
3. Focusing on Details. Fill in the information concerning the damages from the flood.
(1) All of the levees along the Missouri River have , and the towns of Portage Des Sioux and Westalton have .
(2) Levees and dikes north of the confluence of the two rivers are causing . Westalton is now . That town is after .
(3) Almost the entire peninsula which sits at is under as much as of water, and is now .
4. True or False Questions.
(1) Thousands of people have been allowed to return to their homes since rain stopped last Saturday in eastern Missouri.
(2) A report about the damages caused by flooding was given by Ray Camp, an officer at the St. Charles County Office of Emergency Management.
(3) According to emergency management officials, it will be quite some time before the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers reach their crest.
News in Detail
1. Note-taking Exercises. Listen to the news just once and then try to fill in the following blanks.
(1) Cal Thomas works as a . He is a for .
(2) He thinks that the House Democrats are (doing a favor for/having an enmity against) Soviet leader Gorbachev.
(3) Jim Wright is the .
(4) Other members of Congress believe Jim Wright's behavior on the eve of a summit meeting is (suitable/unsuitable) .
(5) Daniel Ortega is Nicaragua's .
(6) Jim Wright sent a to Ortega in .
(7) Jim Wright believes a deal with the Soviets will result in .
(8) Cal Thomas thinks the restraints imposed upon President Reagan by House Democrats will lead to:
a. Jim Wright is trying to before the summit;
b. Gorbachev will try to as well.
2. Summary. With the help of the above sentences, summarize this news commentary in no more than one hundred words.
Special Report
1. Choose the best answer (a, b, c, or d) to complete each of the following statements.
(1) This special report is mainly about __________.
a. the origin of the Bladder Festival
b. the emigration of some blacks to the Soviet Union during the Depression
c. the Alaska Performing Arts for Peace and the significance of its tour to the Soviet Union
d. the history of the US-Soviet relations, especially the people-to-people exchange between the two countries
(2) The Alaska Performing Arts for Peace consists of artists from __________.
a. throughout Alaska
b. Anchorage
c. Alaska and two other states
d. The northern part of Alaska
(3) The Bladder Festival lasts about __________.
a. a month
b. two weeks
c. ten days
d. seven days
(4) The Alaska Performing Arts for Peace will travel through a succession of __________ in the Soviet Union.
a. cities and towns
b. cities, towns and villages
c. factories and farms
d. towns and villages
(5) The tour of the Alaska Performing Arts for Peace will last about ___________.
a. a month
b. two months
c. two weeks
d. three weeks
2. True or False Questions.
(1) The Bladder Festival usually ends with the return of the seal bladders to the ocean.
(2) According to Shirley Staten, one of the symbolism in the Bladder Festival is togetherness of people or peace.
(3) The tour of the Alaska Performing Arts for Peace is significant because it reunifies the Upic Eskimos along the Bering Sea on both continents for the first time in history.
(4) Apart from some forty Eskimos, the group also includes a chorus, cloggers, fiddlers and black gospel singers.
(5) According to the organizer, it has taken two years to materialize this tour.
3. Identification. Match each item in Column I with one item in Column II by recognizing the person's occupation.
Column I Column II
(1) Joanna Urick a. one of the five gospel singers
(2) John Pingyer b. organizer of this tour
(3) Aura Gologrogin c. NPR's reporter
(4) Shirley Staten d. a Upic Eskimo who reads his lines at the rehearsal
(5) Digby Belger e. a 70-year-old woman who went to the Soviet Union in 1940
Answer: (1) ?? ; (2) ?? ; (3) ?? ; (4) ?? ; (5) ?? .
4. Fill in the blanks to complete the following statements.
(1) The leaders of the two countries met in without at the time of this people-to-people exchange.
(2) The Alaskan artists gathered to rehearse their show in a on a outside of .
(3) Before the Cold War the Upic Eskimos in the two countries made a contact that they could between the two countries.
(4) The contact between the Upic Eskimos in the two countries has been since the end of the Second World War.
(5) Aura Gologrogin was looking forward to the people whom she knew when she went over to and stayed there for a while.
(6) Shirley Staten believes that each culture has and the of each culture can be and by different cultures.
(7) In the gospel singers' eyes, the highlight of the tour will be the time when they could with a small group of Russians, descendants of .
(8) The organizer of the tour believes it is a good time to go because there is a greater for the two peoples to when there is more between the two countries.
1. SALT II Treaty
The second treaty of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talk which was signed in Vienna on June 18, 1979, by Brezhnev and President Jimmy Carter. Ratification was delayed by the US Senate, however, and later indefinitely postponed following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 1979.
2. St. Louis
Chief city and river port of Missouri. Founded as a trading post by the French in 1764, it passed to the United States in 1803 by the Louisiana Purchase, and has many important industries, such as automobile, steel, aerospace equipment, etc.
1. Politburo
A contraction for "Political Bureau," a sub-committee of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR, responsible for laying down the lines of party policy.
2. Daniel Ortega
Nicaraguan guerrilla leader, member of the Sandinista junta that took over power in 1979, and from November 5, 1984, president of Nicaragua. In the fall of 1967 Ortega was arrested for his part in a bank robbery and spent the next seven years in jail. He was released in 1974 and exiled to Cuba, where he received several months of guerrilla training. After secretly returning to Nicaragua, Ortega played a major role in the conciliation of various factions of Sandinist National Liberation Front, and in the formation of alliances with business and political groups. One of the five members of the Sandinista junta, he was named coordinator of the Junta in 1981 and elected president of Nicaragua three years later.
1. Alaska
Situated at the northwest corner of the North American continent, Alaska is separated by Canadian territory from the conterminous forty-eight states. Alaska is the largest of the fifty states, with a total area of 591,000 square miles. Its name comes from the Aleut word "alakshak," meaning "peninsula" or "mainland." Its capital is Juneau and it entered the Union in 1959.
2. Anchorage
Port and largest town of Alaska, at the head of Cook Inlet. There is a salmon canning industry, and coal and gold are mined; and Anchorage has an international airport.
3. St. Lawrence Island
Island of western Alaska, in the Bering Sea, 150 miles south of Bering Strait and 118 miles from nearest Alaskan mainland. It is inhabited by Eskimos and was discovered in 1728.