Mastering Skills for the TOEFL iBT 2nd - Speaking

TranscriptsW: Yeah, but I’m not thrilled with the idea of havingto pack up all my stuff.M: It might be a lot of trouble. But if it means you geta good night’s sleep, it could be worth it.W: Maybe you’re right. Thanks for the advice.Question 6M: Today we’re going to discuss language divergence—how one language can diverge into multiplelanguages. It’s generally believed by linguiststhat all the languages of today originated from acommon proto-language thousands of yearsago. A proto-language is the ancestor of modernlanguages. Now, as time passed and peoplebegan to split into different tribes, this originalproto-language began to evolve independently ineach tribe. The process of language divergencehas begun. When a language begins to divergelike this, it usually goes through two key stages:first, it separates into multiple dialects, andeventually these dialects become two or moreseparate languages.Dialects occur when one language beginsto be altered into two or more versions. Thismay occur when people of one language adaptexisting words to talk about new concepts.These alterations in language form what areknown as dialects, different variations of the samelanguage. Now, dialects are not yet separate,different languages. They’re simply differentversions of one language. For example, comparethe speech of people in the United Kingdom tothe speech of Americans. They’re speaking thesame language—English—but differently. Althoughthey pronounce words differently and use differentterminology, they are speaking different dialectsof English.Eventually, as time elapses, dialects canbecome so dissimilar from one another that theybecome their own individual language. Frenchand Spanish are good illustrations of this. Each ofthese languages is different from the other. ASpanish person would not generally understanda French person without knowing the other’slanguage. However, if you look attentively at bothlanguages, you’ll find that they do have manysimilarities. This is evidence that Spanish andFrench both evolved from one common language:a proto-language. Therefore, we can say thatFrench and Spanish originated from the samelanguage.Practice Test 2Question 3W: Hi, Wallace. How’s it going?M: Not so great since they announced that thepublications class was cancelled.W: Oh yeah, I heard about that—were you planningon taking it?M: Yes, I was. It was the last class I needed tograduate.W: I’m really sorry.M: Yeah. I mean, I realize that Professor Thomson ison extended leave, but I know of another personthat could easily teach it.W: Oh really? Another professor?M: No. Actually, it’s a former student of ProfessorThomson’s who took the publications class lastyear. She’s a graduate student now, but I knowshe’d make a great student teacher.W: Does she know a lot about publishing?M: She probably knows more about publishing thanmost of the professors.W: Didn’t they say that not enough students wereinterested in the class, too?M: Yes, that was the official announcement fromthe committee, but I know of at least ten otherstudents besides myself that were planning ontaking that publications class.W: That is upsetting . . . I can understand why you’reangry.M: Well, I’m hoping that if I talk to the right people, Ican convince them to reverse their decision.Question 4W: There are actually a couple of physiologicaldifferences which allow male songbirds toproduce more complex songs than those offemale songbirds.First, there’s a difference in the song-producingparts of songbird brains. It all comes down to a partcalled the robustus archisriatalis, or RA. This is anarea of the brain responsible for song productionin birds. As it turns out, the size of the RA in malesongbirds is significantly larger than those infemale songbirds. In zebra finches, the RA is atleast five times larger in males than in females. Somale birds simply have a better ability to producesongs because they have bigger song-producingmechanisms.Transcripts 17