TPO 3 Conversation 1
Narrator
Listen to a conversation between a student and a receptionist at the Registrar's Office on the first day of the semester.
Student：Excuse me, I'm supposed to be having my physics class in the science building, but no one's in the classroom. Could you tell me where the class is? Physics 403 — has it been moved?
Receptionist：Well, there's a room assignment sheet on the bulletin board outside this office.
Student：Yeah, I know, but my class isn't listed there. There must be some kind of mistake or something. Could you look it up, please?
Receptionist：Hmmm... ok, let me check on the computer. It's physics, right? Wait, did you say physics 403?
Student：Yeah. Receptionist Er…I'm sorry, but it says here that it was cancelled. You should have got note letter from the registrar's office about this.
Student：What? I've never got it.
Receptionist：Are you sure? ‘Cause it says on the computer that the letter was sent out to students a week ago.
Student：Really? I should have got it by now. I wonder if I threw it away with all the junk mail by mistake.
Receptionist：Well, it does happen. Er… let me check something. What's your name?
Student：Woodhouse, Laura Woodhouse.
Receptionist：Ok, hmmm…Woodhouse, let me see… ah, it says here we sent it to your apartment on er… Center Street.
Student：Oh, that's my old apartment. I moved out of there a little while ago.
Receptionist：Well, and I suppose you haven't changed your mailing address at the administration office. Well that would explain it.
Student：Yeah, I guess that's it. But how can they cancel the class after offering it. If I'd known this was going to happen, I would have taken it last semester.
Receptionist：I know, it's really inconvenient for you, I understand that, but er… if we don't have enough students sign up for the course, the college can't offer it. You know, it's a practical issue, like we can't have an instructor when there're only a few students in the class. You see what I mean?
Student：I guess, but now I don't know what course I should take instead.
Receptionist：Ok, let's see. Do you have any courses you're going to take next semester? If you do, you might want to take them now and sign up for physics 403 next semester.
Student：Yeah, I guess I could do that. I just hope it won't be cancelled again. Do you know how many people have to be enrolled in order to keep a class from being cancelled?
Receptionist：Well, it depends on the class, but for that class, you have to have er… let's see, usually it'd be at least ten people, but since it was cancelled this semester, they might even do it with less. But do you know what you should do? Give the physics department a call a couple of weeks before the semester starts. They'll be able to tell you if they're planning to go through with it. It's their decision, actually.
Student：Oh, ok, I will do that. Thanks for the info.
Receptionist：No problem. Sorry about the class. Oh, why aren't you to go change a mail address now. It lonely takes a minute.
Student：Oh, oh, sure, I will do that right way.
TPO 3 Lecture 1 Environmental
science NarratorListen to part of a lecture in an environmental science class.
Professor：Now, we've been talking about the loss of animal habitat from housing developments, uh …, growing cities – small habitatlosses. But today I wanna begin talking about what happens when habitat is reduced across a large area. There are, of course,animal species that require large areas of habitat, and some migrate over very long distances. So what's the impact ofhabitat loss on those animals – animals that need large areas of habitat? Well, I'll use the humming birds as an example.Now you know a humming bird is amazingly small, but even though it's really tiny, it migrates over very long distances,travels up and down the western hemisphere – the Americas, back and forth between where it breeds in the summer and thewarmer climates where it's spent the winter. So you would say that this whole area over which it migrates is its habitatbecause on this longdistance journey, it needs to come down to feed and sleep every so often, right? Well, the humming birdbeats its wings – get this – about 3 thousand times per minute. So you think, wow, it must need a lot of energy, a lot of food,right? Well, it does. It drinks a lot of nectar from flowers and feeds on some insects, but it's energyefficient too. You can'tsay it isn't. I mean, as it flies all the way across the Mexico Gulf, it uses up none of its body fat. But that doesn't mean itdoesn't need to eat. So humming birds have to rely on plants in their natural habitat. And it goes without saying, but theopposite is true as well, plants depend on humming birds too. There are some flowers that can only be pollinated by thehumming birds. Without its stopping to feed and spread pollen from flower to flower, these plants would cease to exist. Butthe problem, well, as natural habitat along these migration routes is developed by humans for housing or agriculture orcleared for raising cattle, for instance, there is less food available for migrating humming birds. Their nesting sites areaffected too, the same by the same sorts of human activities. And all of these activities pose a real threat to the hummingbird population. So help them survive, we need to preserve their habitats. And one of the concrete ways people have beendoing this is by cleaning up polluted habitat areas and then replanting flowers, um, replanting native flowers that hummingbirds feed on. Promoting ecological tourism is another way to help save their habitat. As the number of visitors, eco-touristswho come to humming bird habitats to watch the birds, the more the number of visitors grows, the more local businesses'profit, so ecological tourism can bring financial rewards, all the more reason to value these beautiful little creatures in theirhabitat, right? But to understand more about how to protect them to support the humming birds the best we can, we've gotto learn more about their breeding, nesting sites and migration routes, and also about the natural habitats we find there. Thatjust helps us determine how to prevent further decline in the population. A good research method, a good way to learn more,is by running a banding study. Banding the birds allows us to track them over their lifetime. It's been a practice that's beenused by researchers for years. In fact, most of what we've known about humming birds comes from banding studies, wherewe capture a humming bird and make sure all the information about it, like its weight and age and length, are all recordedand put into an international information database. And then we place an extremely lightweight band on one of its legs, well,what looks like a leg, although technically it's considered part of the bird's foot. Anyway, these bands are perfectly safe,and some humming birds have worn them for years with no evidence of any problems. The band is labeled with trackingnumber, oh, and there is a phone number on the band for people to call for free, to report a banded bird to be found orrecaptured. So when a banded bird is recaptured and reported, we learn about its migration route, its growth, and how longit has been alive, its lifespan. One recaptured bird was banded almost 12 years earlier – she was one of the oldest hummingbirds on record. Another interesting thing we learned is that some humming birds no longer use a certain route. They travel by a different route to reach their destination. And findings like these have been of interest to biologists and environmentalscientists in a number of countries who are trying to understand the complexities of how changes in a habitat affect thespecies in it.
