2020-04-08 TOEFL: reading ins, listening gist

Greg Malivuk
[email protected]
http://www.pastebin.com/u/gmalivuk - notes from all classes
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https://ed.ted.com/lessons/can-animals-be-deceptive-eldridge-adams
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Homework: Finish the handout - Read about fast food addiction and answer the insertion and reference questions about it
Discuss your answers in a group and try to convince your partners if you disagree.
1 d - “its swelling obesity crisis” = “its crisis”, so the crisis belongs to “it”
2 c
3 d
4 a
5 c - The portion of food meets the caloric requirement.
6 b
7 b - Beta-endorphins are just one example of endogenous opioids, and all endogenous opioids are naturally occurring painkillers.
8 d
9 b
10 d
11 a
12 c - It refers to the entire contrast between those two things, not just one or the other.
13 b
14 b
15 d - It refers to the relationship between the quantities, not just one or the other.
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“heave” gives us both “heavy” and “hefty” (the latter from the noun “heft”)

English has some patterns where nouns are formed with ‘t’ or ‘th’ at the end of roots from verbs or adjectives:
heave - heft (Before a voiceless sound, /v/ becomes /f/.)
give - gift
drive - drift
draw - draft
high - height
heal - health
steal - stealth
bear - birth
long - length / wide - width / broad - breadth / deep - depth
strong - strength
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This pattern is no longer productive, meaning it isn’t used to make new words in English.
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Take 10 minutes to do Delta 1.7.B (the first 4 pages of the pdf)
1 C
2 A
3 C - This sentence introduces “status and occupation of the deceased”, so it belongs before the other sentence that mentions someone’s occupation.
4 B
5 D
6 B - C and D break the flow of the discussion of forces, and the new sentence is two specific to go in A.
7 B
8 C
9 D - The “long slow process” was “working out different rates of exchange”
10 A - The new sentence introduces the use of paper money, and the original first sentence gives details of why it was preferable.
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Listening Question Types:
- main idea (content or purpose)
- purpose
- prediction
- function/replay
- attitude
- detail
- inference
- complete a chart or table (basically a multi-part detail question)
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Main Idea questions can be about the overall topic of a listening (“What do the speakers mainly discuss?” “What is the lecture mainly about?”) or the purpose (“Why does the student go to see his professor?” “What is the purpose of the lecture?”)
- The main purpose generally comes from the very beginning of the listening, whereas the topic might be different from how the conversation or lecture begins.
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BREAK
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Cambridge exercise L9 - Listen to the first sentence of a lecture. In your words, what do you think the topic will be?
1 the United Kingdom
2 architecture award
3 Irish linen
4 hillside figures (of humans and animals)
5 geology of Mars
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hydro = water or fluid
geo = Earth or another planet or moon
moon = Earth’s moon, or any natural satellite of another planet
solar system = the system around the Sun, or any system around a star
(Many roots and expressions end up with broader meanings because it’s easier to extend an existing term than invent a new one.)
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L10 - Choose what you predict the topic will be. (Like on the TOEFL, incorrect answers may be too general, too specific, or use the same or similar words in a different way.)
1 C
2 B
3 A (More specifically, it’s about communication satellites and the problems and possibilities it presents for education.) - B and C are wrong because those aren’t the things they’ll talk about. D is an incorrect answer choice because it’s only part of what they’ll probably talk about.
4 D
5 A or C - It probably will focus on influenza rather than the cold, which is only mentioned for comparison in the introduction, but we wouldn’t necessarily predict it will just be about signs and symptoms of the flu.
6 D - There’s no reason to predict it will be about causes of malnutrition in general, rather than the specific cause of insufficient animal protein.
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L11 - Identify what the main topic will be. Is this stated in the first sentence?
1 magic squares - yes
2 public zoos - no
3 pony express - no
4 Malaysian butterly house - yes
5 gargoyles - no
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‘oil’ or ‘oyl’ can sometimes be described as “1.5 syllables”, because the vowel changes a bit between the /i/ sound and the /l/ sound
(A similar thing happens with ‘l’ after ‘r’ in “world”)
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L12 - All of these change topic after the first sentence. In your own words, what is the overall topic likely to be?
1 system to record dance movements
2 reasons people came to America
3 the lack of historical value in modern photographs (because digital images are easy to manipulate)
4 official language policy in the US
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de jure - by law
de facto - by fact/deed (English is the de facto official language in the US, but it’s not official by law.)
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gist = the big picture (In American English, it’s not uncommon in conversation, like, “I got the gist of it,” but we don’t usually use it for language teaching.)
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Homework: Oxford main idea handout, just the “test questions” exercises (3L8, 3L10, 3L12, 3L13, 3L14)