Questions 29 to 32 are based on the passage you have just heard.

29. What is Chris’s main responsibility at Taxlong Company?

30. What problem did Chris encounter in his Division?

31. What does Chris hope for in the near future?

32. What do we learn about Kim from the passage?

Passage Three

Proverbs, sometimes called sayings, are examples of folk wisdom. They are little lessons which older people of a culture pass down to the younger people to teach them about life. Many proverbs remind people of the values that are important in the culture. Values teach people how to act, what is right, and what is wrong. Because the values of each culture are different, understanding the values of another culture helps explain how people think and act. Understanding your own culture values is important too. If you can accept that people from other cultures act according to their values, not yours, getting along with them will be much easier. Many proverbs are very old. So some of the values they teach may not be as important in the culture as they once were. For example, Americans today do not pay much attention to the proverb “Haste makes waste”, because patience is not important to them. But if you know about past values, it helps you to understand the present and many of the older values are still strong today. Benjamin Franklin, a famous American diplomat, writer and scientist, died in 1790, but his proverb “Time is money” is taken more seriously by Americans of today than ever before. A study of proverbs from around the world shows that some values are shared by many cultures. In many cases though, the same idea is expressed differently.

Questions 33- 35 are based on the passage you have just heard.

33. Why are proverbs so important?

34. According to the speaker what happens to some proverbs with the passage of time?

35 What do we learn from the study of proverbs from around the world?

Section C

Compound Dictation

Our lives are woven together. As much as I enjoy my own company, I no longer imagine I can get through a single day much less all my life completely on my own. Even if I am on vacation in the mountains, I am eating food someone else has grown, living in a house someone else has built, wearing clothes someone else has sewn from cloth woven by others, using electricity someone else is distributing to my house. Evidence of interdependence is everywhere; we are on this journey together.

As I was growing up, I remember being carefully taught that independence not interdependence was everything. “Make your own way”,” Stand on your own two feet” or my mother’s favorite remark when I was face-to-face with consequences of some action: Now that you’ve made your bed, lie on it.

Total independence is a dominant thing in our culture. I imagine that what my parents were trying to teach me was to take responsibilities for my actions and my choices. But the teaching was shaped by our cultural imagines. And instead, I grew up believing that I was supposed to be totally independent and consequently became very reluctant to ask for help. I would do almost anything not to be a burden, and not require any help from anybody.