Passage Three

Since a union representative visited our company to inform us about our rights and protections. My coworkers have been worrying about health conditions and complaining about safety hazards in the workplace. Several of the employees in the computer department, for example, claim to be developing vision problems from having to stare at a video display terminal for about 7 hours a day. The supervisor of the laboratory is beginning to get headaches and dizzy spells because she says it’s dangerous to breathe some of the chemical smoke there. An X-rays technician is refusing to do her job until the firm agrees to replace its out-dated equipment. She insists that it’s exposing workers to unnecessarily high doses of radiation. She thinks that she may have to contact the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and asked that government agency to inspect the department. I’ve heard that at a factory in the area two pregnant women who were working with paint requested a transfer to a safer department, because they wanted to prevent damage to their unborn babies. The supervisor of personnel refused the request. In another firm the workers were constantly complaining about the malfunctioning heating system, but the owners was too busy or too mean to do anything about it. Finally, they all met an agree to wear ski-clothing to work the next day. The owner was too embarrassed to talk to his employees. But he had the heating system replaced right away.

Questions 32- 35 are based on the passage you have just heard.

32 What does the talk focus on?

A) Health and safety conditions in workplace.

33 What did the X-ray technician ask her company to do?

Replace its out-dated equipments.

34 What does the speaker say about the two pregnant women working with paint?

A) They requested to transfer to a safer department.

35 Why did the workers in the firm wear ski-clothing to work?

C）To protest against the poor working condition                                                                        

Section C Compound Dictation

Contrary to the old warning that time waits for no one, time slows down when you are on the move. It also slows down more as you move faster, which means astronauts some day may survive so long in space that they would return to an earth of the distant future.

If you could move at the speed of light, your time would stand still,考試用書 if you could move faster than light, your time would move backward. Although no form of matter yet discovered, moves as fast as or faster than light, scientific experiments has already confirmed that accelerated motion causes a traveler’s time to be stretched. Albert Einstein predicted this in 1905, when he introduced the concept of relative time as part of his special theory of relativity. A search is now under way to confirm the suspected existence of particles of matter that move at a speed greater than light.    And therefore, might serve as our passports to the past. An obsession with time, saving, gaming, wasting, losing and mastering it, seems to have been a part of humanity for as long as human have existed. Humanity also has been obsessed with trying to capture the meaning of time. Einstein used a definition of time for experimental purposes, as that which is measured by a clock. Thus time and time’s relativity are measurable by any hour glass, alarm clock, or atomic clock that can measure a billionth of a second.

36. survive

37. distant

38. backward

39. discovered

40. scientific

41. motion

42. predicted

43. introduced

44. that move at a speed greater than light, and therefore, might serve as our passports to the past.

45. seems to have been a part of humanity for as long as human have existed.

46. used a definition of time for experimental purposes, as that which is measured by a clock.