托福听力训练-托福备考

　　托福考试已经近在眼前了。不知道各位考生们现在是否已经制定好了适合自己的复习备考计划。下面小编对托福听力训练做了总结，希望能帮到即将考试的各位考生们，下面一起来看看吧~ 　　【听力原文】 　　Welcome to the Four Winds HistoricalFarm, where traditions of the past are preserved for visitors like you. Today,our master thatchers will begin giving this barn behind me a sturdy thatchedroof, able to withstand heavy winds and last up to a hundred years. How do they do it?Well, in a nutshell, thatching involves covering the beams or rafters, thewooden skeleton of a roof with reeds or straw. 　　Our thatchers here haveharvested their own natural materials for the job, the bundles of water reedsyou see lying over there beside the barn. Thatching is certainly uncommon inthe Untied States today. I guess that's why so many of you have come to seethis demonstration. But it wasn't always that way. In the seventeenth century,the colonists here thatched their roofs with reeds and straw, just as they haddone in England. 　　After a while, though, they began to replace the thatch withwooden shingles because wood was so plentiful. And eventually, other roofingmaterials like stone, slate, and clay tiles came into use. It's a real shamethat most people today don't realize how strong and long lasting a thatchedroof is. In Ireland, where thatching is still practiced, the roofs can survivewinds of up to one hundred ten miles per hour.

　　That's because straw and reedsare so flexible. They bend but don't break in the wind like other materialscan. Another advantage is that the roofs keep the house cool in the summer andwarm in the winter. And then, of course, there's the roofs' longevity—theaverage is sixty years, but they can last up to a hundred. With all thesereasons to start thatching roofs again, wouldn't it be wonderful to see this disappearingcraft return to popularity?