2015年12月20日托福口语真题及答案解析

Task 1
　　Which one of the following volunteer work would you prefer doing? Tutoring children, driving senior citizens around or teaching adults to read?
　　I would choose to drive senior citizens around for the following reasons. Firstly, senior citizens are the group of people that need our help the most. Take my grandfather for example, he's 86 years old and he loves getting out of the house, he especially enjoys going to a café downtown where he meets with his friends regularly. But sometimes it can be really challenging for him, like last week it was snowing for like 3 days and it was icy on the ground outside, so he couldn't go anywhere, he was so upset that he was stuck at home. But if there were volunteers to drive him to places he wants to go, he wouldn't have had to suffer. Plus, it's nice to spend some time with senior citizens. Some young people but find it dull to talk to the elderly, but I always enjoy chatting with them, my grandfather for instance can always bring interesting topics to the table and he always cracks me up.
　　Task 2
　　If there's something you want to buy, do you prefer saving money yourself to buy it or ask someone to borrow some money to buy it?
　　I would definitely save money myself to buy what I want for the following reasons. First of all, I always think things can go a little awkward between friends when there's money involved. Take myself as an example, when I was in college I borrowed some money from my roommate to buy a laptop I really needed. At first I thought we were really good friends so it would be no problem as long as I could pay him back in 3 weeks, but after like 4 days, my roommate wanted me to pay him back because he needed to go on a school trip, of course I couldn't pay him back right away and he got mad at me. Things went pretty awkward since then and I was really embarrassed. So now if there's something I wanna buy, I would definitely save money myself. Plus, most of my friends are students just like me, we still rely on our parents, so it would be irresponsible to borrow money from our friends just to buy something we want, it's better to get a part-time job and save some money ourselves.
　　Task 3
　　题目回忆：
　　学生建议设置电子布告栏，因为很多学生经过，而且校园会更整洁。听力女生不同意，因为不是每个人都会经过那里，比如关于一个show如果只有图书馆张贴信息她就会错过。另外电子布告太慢了，大家还是喜欢看张贴的信息。
　　The student proposes that the university should have an electric bulletin board due to two reasons. The first reason is that students pass by the bulletin board every day. And the second reason is that the university will look much tidier and much cleaner. In the conversation, the woman disagrees with the proposal. Her first reason is that not everyone passes by the bulletin board every day. She once saw a poster about a show on campus, but if the information was only posted in the library, she wouldn't have been able to know about it. As for the second reason, she mentions that many students will think it's too slow to read information posted on the electric bulletin board, posters are much more convenient.
　　Task 4
　　题目回忆：阅读讲了shaping这个概念，意思是小孩在学习技能时会观察周围人的反应，人们可以利用这个特质。教授说自己孩子涂色的例子，一开始涂成什么样子都表扬，后来涂在树上才表扬，逐渐提高要求，最后要涂到树上才表扬。
　　In the lecture, the professor introduces the concept of shaping which means children observe the reaction of people around them when they learn a new skill, parents and teachers can better educate the children based on this quality. He offers us an example of his kid to illustrate it. When his kid just started coloring, he got praises and compliments despite of the quality of his work. After a while, the professor changed the strategy. Not like before, this time he only praised his kid when he was able to color the tree, he gradually raised the bar and his child started improving little by little as well. And now the professor only tells his kid that he's doing a good job when he's able to color the trunk of the tree. That's how the professor uses the example of his own child to illustrate the concept of shaping.
　　Task 5
　　题目回忆：女生论文选择了American landscape作为论文话题，但和别人重了。她可以坚持自己的话题，因为她很了解又喜欢，但是如果话题重复presentation的时候大家会觉得有点无聊。也可以换成folk art这个话题，老师本来也希望大家学习新的东西，但是所有内容都要重做。
　　The woman's problem is that she chose American landscape as the topic of her presentation, unfortunately someone else chose the exactly same topic. There are two possible solutions. The first solution is to stick to this topic. And the second solution is to change her topic to folk art. If I were in her shoes, I would choose the first solution. Because as she mentions in the conversation, she's really interested in American landscape and she knows a lot about it, so even if someone chose the same topic, I'm sure she will still be able to do a great job. I personally don't recommend the other solution, because choosing a different topic means that she will have to do everything about the presentation from scratch, it's too much work and a lot of time will be wasted. That's why in this case, I think the first solution is a better option.
　　Task 6
　　题目回忆：灌溉的两个缺点，其中一个是过度灌溉会造成土壤过度湿润，产生大量菌类影响植物，另一个是盐分太多，有些地区下雨少，湖水盐分大，也会影响植物生长。
　　In the lecture, the professor talks about two disadvantages of irrigation. The first one is that plants won't grow properly when there's too much water. Take soil growing plants like melons as an example, when the soil gets too wet, fungus starts to form, and it will keep melons from growing properly. That's why the whole irrigation system has to be designed carefully to avoid this problem. The second disadvantage is that in low-rainfall areas, salt builds up in lakes, when there's too much salt in water, it will be harmful to plants as well.