TOEFL Listening Practice: Lecture20
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MP3 SoundCloud
Answer
- B
- B, D
- B, D
- A
- D
- D
Transcript
| William: | So, here’s our title,…uh….what have you found out about Dickens? Have you found out something? Anything? |
| Miranda: | Yeah, I did some research, but now I look at the title, and I’m not really sure if I’ve done what was asked. |
| Tilly: | Well, let’s hear it anyway, Miranda. |
| Miranda: | Okay, well I found out something about his background. He was born in Portsmouth, England, but when he was young, he was forced to leave school and work in a factory. His family was very poor. His father was thrown in prison because he couldn’t pay his debts. And then… |
| William: | Yeah, I think you’re right, Miranda. You’re not really answering the question there. You’re just giving us a biography. |
| Tilly: | Not necessarily. What this shows us is that Dickens had real, first-hand knowledge of what it was like to be poor in Victorian England, and that’s why he was able to portray poverty in his books so well. His books certainly show really deep sympathy for the lower classes, especially women, children and the elderly, and all those people working so hard, while the upper classes are sitting around in the lap of luxury. |
| William: | Okay, fair enough. Did you get anything else, Miranda? |
| Miranda: | Ok, well, only that his style was supposedly greatly influenced by 18th century picaresque novels that were left on his father’s bookshelf at home. The Arabian Nights in particular. |
| William: | Oh ok, that’s interesting. Do you have any examples of how he used that in his work? |
| Miranda: | Uh –no, sorry. |
| William: | That’s a shame. Maybe you should go back and find something else. Otherwise, we can’t really use it, if we can’t back it up. What about you, Tilly? |
| Tilly: | Okay, well I was looking in particular at the format of his work, and how this influenced the way he wrote. Because, although he wrote loads of short stories and articles, the majority of his great works were written as monthly or weekly installments in magazines. Books were too expensive for people to buy, but that way literature could reach a big…no…. a huge audience. It was the dominant mode for publication back then, and the Victorians lapped it up. Apparently when The Old Curiosity Shop was being serialised, American fans were waiting at the docks for the ships to come in, carrying the latest issue, shouting at the crew of an incoming ship, “Is little Nell dead?” |
| Miranda: | HAHAH Like a modern day soap opera. |
| Tilly: | Definitely. |
| William: | Ok, interesting, but even so, how does that affect his style? |
| Tilly: | Hold on, I haven’t got on to that bit yet. In order to keep people reading, he would finish each chapter on a cliff-hanger –you know, just like TV programmes these days. And of course, when you put the novel together as a whole, we still see this feature. Another thing is that he was able to respond to people’s reactions of his characters as the books came out, so, chapter by chapter, he could adapt the story while he was writing. I’ve got some examples of that here. |
| William: | Okay, that sounds interesting. Thanks for that, Tilly. |
| Miranda: | What were you looking at, William? |
| William: | Well I was looking at the features that are particularly..uh..Dickensian. One of the things he was really renowned for was satire. He was really able to caricature the people in society at the time, and focus on their foibles and weak points, and flag them up for all to ridicule. Another thing he was crafty with was names. He spent a lot of time and effort coming up with the right name to represent the character he was conjuring up. One example is Mr Murdstone. See how it sounds like Murder, and kinda sounds like stone cold – which makes you think he’s unemotional. And you see that throughout his books. |
| Tilly: | Yes, he did a lot of that, didn’t he? I mean use comparison – I suppose you call it metaphor, or simile – in one of his books I was reading about. He was comparing orphans to stocks and shares, and people to tug boats, and dinner-party guests to furniture and… |
| Miranda: | Dinner guests to furniture? |
| Tilly: | Yes, he had all sorts of crazy flights of fancy, but it works – it’s really effective in his novels. |