Unit One  Love

Part 1  Listening, Understanding and Speaking

Listening I 

Exercise 1  1)gaze 2)sighs 3)touch 4)hugs 5)such 6)words 7)praises 8)understands 9)lends 10)holds

Scripts:

A Mother's Love

You can see it in her eyes—

in her gaze and in her sighs.

It is a mother's love.

You can feel it in her touch—

in her tender hugs and such.

It is a mother's love.

You can hear it in her words—

in her praises and bywords.

It is a mother's love.

She cares. She understands.

She lends an ear and holds our hands.

She gives us a mother's love.

 

Listening II  

Exercise 1  1)B 2)B 3)A 4)D 5)C

Exercise 2 

a lot of garbage; came up all over the city; raw sewage and it smelled; became suburban sprawl with very little planning; the NRDC; Board of Trustees; New England; join the cause of protecting the environment

Scripts:

For more than four decades, John Adams has fought to defend the environment and empowered individuals in the U.S. and around the world to join the cause. Adams is cofounder of the National Resources Defense Council, the NRDC, the nation’s first law firm for the environment.

 

“Defending the environment,” John Adams says, “is personal.”

 

“When you care about something, like the environment, it does become a passion,” he says. “It becomes your life. I grew up on a small-town farm in the Catskill Mountains of New York. It was a wonderful place to grow up. I loved it.”

 

But by the 1960s, he didn’t love what he saw happening to the environment.

 

“We were a major industrial force with no pollution controls. So if you were in Pittsburgh or New York or the factory areas of New Jersey or California, you would be hit with air pollution that had virtually no pollution controls,” says Adams. “In New York, we burned a lot of our garbage right in the buildings. Fly ash would come up and it was really all over the city. The Hudson River was filled with raw sewage and it smelled because there were no requirements for sewage control.”

 

He also worried about the disappearing farmland around the big cities which became suburban sprawl with very little planning.

 

Adams turned his love for nature into action, leaving his job with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York in 1970 to help establish the Natural Resources Defense Council. The 33-year-old lawyer became its first director.

 

In their new book, A Force for Nature, John Adams and his wife, Patricia, also an environmental activist, chronicle the evolution of the NRDC from a homegrown advocacy group to a 1.3-million-member organization with international reach.

 

Adams led the NRDC for 36 years, and remains on its Board of Trustees. Today, he is chairman of the Open Space Institute, working to purchase scenic and natural land in New England to protect it from development.

 

Listening III

Exercise 1  D     

Exercise 2  1)unsuccessful marriages 2)failed relationships 3)dreamed of 4)words; action 5)men; natural

Scripts:

I grew up in a family with six sisters. In my lifetime I have seen all of them abused by various men in their lives. Even my mother has the scars from two unsuccessful marriages.

When I was a teenager, my mother shared some insights into all of their failed relationships. She explained that they really weren't expecting to be treated as queens, but they did desire two things from the men in their lives: to be told frequently that they are loved and to be shown often that they are special. It was at that point that I decided I would be the sort of husband my mom and sisters had dreamed of but never had.

When I was dating my wife-to-be I remembered those two points my mother shared with me years earlier. I admit that I struggled trying to be able to express my love in words and in action. For most men, it isn't natural for us to be romantics. But then again, it isn't natural for us to be millionaires or sports superstars. It does take effort, practice and diligence. But the rewards are there.

Now we've been married for nine years. I really, truly, deeply love my wife and let her know it every day by what I say and what I do. Our friends and family members all admire us and want to know our secret.

 

Listening IV

Exercise 1  B     

Exercise 2

1)the challenge of dating 2)security and survival 3)a good breadwinner 4)a nurturing woman 5)practice 6)supportive of 7)emotional and spiritual needs 8)a soul mate 9)no longer enough 10)increased closeness

Scripts:

In past generations, the challenge of dating was different. Men and women wanted a partner who could fulfill their basic needs for security and survival. Women looked for a strong man who would be a good bread-winner; men searched for a nurturing woman to make a home. This practice that worked for thousands of years has suddenly changed.

The new challenge of dating is to find a partner who not only will be supportive of our physical needs for survival and security but will support our emotional and spiritual needs. Today we want more from our relationships. Millions of men and women around the world are searching for a soul mate to experience lasting love, happiness, and romance.

It is no longer enough to just find someone who is willing to marry us, and we want partners who will love us more as they get to know us: We want to live happily ever after. To find and recognize partners who can fulfill our new needs for increased closeness, good communication, and a great love life, we need to update our dating skills.

 

Part 2  Viewing, Understanding and Speaking

Exercise 1  1)A 2)A 3)D 4)C 5)C 6)C 7)B 8)D     

Exercise 2  1)football; basketball; baseball  2)steady boyfriend  3)guess; realized  4)broke up 

5)in a group  6)save up  7)here comes  8)happened to  9)not; at all  10)except for

 

Part 3  Video Appreciation and Singing for Fun

Exercise 1 

1)happened 2)talking 3)girls 4)next 5)date 6)romance 7)a thousand 8)end 9)went out 10)point

Exercise 2 

1)She feels it inappropriate and awkward to meet her boyfriend’s family when she looks so dirty and clumsy.

2)Very surprised. At first she cannot believe he lives here.

3)His father owned a brake shop.

4)His father actually owns hundreds of brake shops.

5)She comes back early.

 

Part 4  Further Listening

Listening I  1)T 2)F 3)T 4)T 5)F 6)T 7)T 8)F

Scripts:

My son's primary school celebrates Valentine's Day in a wonderful way. Each day throughout the month of February, the school honors each student in informal ceremonies. At the ceremony, classmates, teachers and parents get together to deliver compliments to that particular child. They believe that a child's emotional and social skills should be developed alongside their intellectual skills. Learning to acknowledge qualities and strengths in others—and receiving that acknowledgment gracefully—is a very important learning lesson.

I know I compliment my son frequently, and certainly try to make sure he knows he is loved. But I realize that I have never actually pointed out, one by one, specific qualities that make him unique and so special to me. And how infrequently we really point out what is special in others. Sure, we say “I love you” or “thanks” regularly, but when do we take the opportunity to really and truly examine what makes a person special? What is unique and different about them?

This year, the time was scheduled for my son to receive more than 40 compliments from his peers, teachers, parents, and himself. Each child had their day at the center of the circle, their friends coming up one by one to give a gift of powerful words. This year, my son heard that his thoughtfulness was appreciated, his ideas important, his expressions inspiring. He was also expected to write and deliver a compliment to each of his classmates.

 

Listening II

1)learning 2)admire 3)vocabulary 4)loving 5)relationships 6)connections 7)experiences 8)remembering 9)proud 10)try 11)body 12)expressions 13)willingness 14)fears 15)pace 16)best 17)jokes 18)fondness 19)laugh 20)with

Scripts:

In the end, I had to ask my husband to read my Valentine compliment to our son. I was simply crying too hard to get the words out. Witnessing the tenderness of school-age children saying what they thought was special about my little boy proved too much for me. But I was not alone. When I warned my son I might get emotional, he said, “That's OK. Lots of parents cry.” He was right.

This is what my husband read to our son on my behalf:

Dear Cole:

Your love of language and information has always amazed me. I love learning from you and with you. I admire how new words are so easily incorporated into your vocabulary. I think you are fresh and eager and loving.

I admire that relationships are important to you. I like to listen to the connections you make with past experiences. I think you are good at remembering.

I love how you are proud of yourself when you try something new. I feel proud, too.

I like how your whole body tells a story, and your expressions make me feel good. I am proud of your willingness to express your fears and appreciate the reminder that you will grow at the pace that suits you best. I love your jokes and your fondness for telling them over and over—so I will laugh. I think you are fun to be with.

I love that you are my son.

I am really grateful to this school for creating a learning environment. These exercises benefit the parents as well as the kids. That, to me, is a Valentine worth giving.

 

Listening III  1)C 2)B 3)A 4)B 5)D 6)B 7)C

Scripts:

Hisham and I will have been married for twenty years this February. Everybody said it would not work. He is Jordanian, Muslim, and I am Italian, Catholic. We met in Florida twenty-two years ago. What we had in common was nothing except youth. He could barely speak the English language, and I thought Arabs were from India. Within a year I found out where Jordan was exactly and he could say “I love you” in broken English.

When we got married people actually placed bets at our small wedding in my family's dining room. They thought our relationship would not last a year. Hisham did not tell his parents he was married for almost five years. He felt that if he failed at school his family would blame the marriage. Of course everybody, from Arabs to Americans, thought he married me to get a green card. I knew he didn't.

I lived in his country for six years after graduation and had a son there. Through Hisham's eyes I saw the beauty of his culture and religion and the simple ways of his people. Being from New York and living in Amman, Jordan, I still had my Christmas tree each year, my Easter eggs and even a Halloween pumpkin in the window. I also took some of their ways—cooking, methods of mothering, socializing—and it enhanced my own character in the long run.

Throughout the years, I was not the Italian girl from New York, not the American married to the Arab; I was a beautiful blended person with two children and a man who loves me.

 

Listening IV 

1)kind 2)gold 3)heartless 4)love 5)songs 6)says 7)touch 8)lifetime 9)gone 10)happens 11)feelings 12)speed

Scripts:

Traditionally the heart is the part of the body where emotions come from. If you are a warm-hearted person, for example, you are kind and thoughtful towards others. If you have a heart of gold, you are a very generous person. But if you are heartless, you are cruel and unfeeling.

Of all the emotions, it is love that is the most associated with the heart. In love songs, all over the world, love almost always goes together with the heart. As the song from Titanic says, “You are here in my heart and my heart will go on and on. Love can touch us one time and last for a lifetime, and never let go till we're gone.”

Perhaps the role of the heart in love comes from what happens to it when you feel really attracted to someone. The strong feelings of attraction make your breathing speed up and your heart beat faster.