英语听力材料-第一单元.doc

第一单元Listening in Passage 1 Interviewer Can you tell me something about the Ivy League? Youre a professor at Harvard, is that right? Professor Thats right, yes. Interviewer Tell me how many universities are there? How many institutions? Professor In total there are eight institutions: Theres Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeto s, institutions, chose their students on the basis of their skills at these particular sports. But in the last 50 years, Ivy League schools have accepted a wider range of students because it wasnt possible to be both world-famous for research and also top class in sport. Interviewer And what about their academic importance? I gather theyre academically very, very important, theyre very well-known. Professor Absolutely at the top. Theyre near or at the top of the USA colleges and university rankings. And theyre almost always in the top one per cent of the worlds academic institutions for financial resources. Interviewer And what does it mean socially to n, and the University of Pennsylvania. Interviewer Ah, OK. And whats the sporting ... I believe theres some link with sports. Professor There certainly is, yes. Originally the Ivy League referred to the sports teams from the universities which competed against each other, especially in football, basketball and ice hockey. Now sometimes these universitie go to an Ivy League university? Professor Certainly if youve been to one of these institutions, you are presumed or assumed to be at the top end of the scale. The Ivy League institutions have a reputation for social elitism, many of the students are rich, intellectual, white Anglo-Saxon, protestants. Not all of them of course, but quite a lot of them. Interviewer And do you know ... whys it called the Ivy League, whats the origin of the name? Professor There are a number of stories, derivations, but possibly its based on four universities, and IV, the letters IV, thats the Roman numeral for four. Another more likely story