ترنسکریپت فایل های صوتی درس 1 کتاب آمریکن انگلیش فایل 4

All four journalists Excuse me…, Cindy…, Excuse me…, Cindy…, Excuse me….

J1 Just a few questions…

C OK, OK, but you have just one minute.

J1 What brings you to Toronto?

C I’m here to accept an award and do some interviews.

J2 How long are you going to be in Toronto for?

C Just 48 hours, then I’m flying back to the States.

J3 That’s a very short stay. Don’t you like Toronto?

C I love Toronto, but unfortunately my new movie starts shooting on Monday.

J4 There’ve been rumors that you and your husband are having relationship problems. Can you tell us if there’s any truth in that?

C No, no, no, no. No comment. No, no more questions.

Do you have a big family?

M Yes, actually, I’m one of seven. I have five sisters and a brother.

W Wow! That’s a huge family.

What don’t you like about the place where you live?

W Well, for one thing, I don’t like my neighbors very much.

M Why not? What’s wrong with them?

What sports or games are you good at?

M Well, I’m not really very athletic, but I’m quite good at chess.

W Me too! We could play a game one day.

Do you think you have a healthy diet?

M Yes, very. In fact I’m a vegan, so I only eat fruit and vegetables, and grains, and no meat or fish.

W How interesting! How long have you been a vegan?

What makes you feel happy?

W Lots of things. Uh…like buying new shoes.

M Oh really? I can’t think of anything worse!

1 Wow! That’s a huge family.

2 Why not? What’s wrong with them?

3 Me too! We could play a game one day.

4 How interesting! How long have you been a vegan?

5 Oh really? I can’t think of anything worse!

I Have you ever been asked a strange question in an interview?

D Yes, it was my first interview when I was applying to Sarah Lawrence University in New York – where I’m studying now.

I What was the question?

D The question was, “If you could have dinner with three people from the past, who would you choose and why?”

I And what did you answer?

D It was one of the first questions I was asked, and I said, “I can’t answer this right now. Can I answer at the end?” because I couldn’t think of anyone. So they said “OK,” and then they asked me the question again later, and I said something ridiculous like John Lennon, um, Picasso, and…uh…I can’t even remember who the third person was, it was another sort of artist or musician I think.

I Do you think it was a good question?

D Yes, because it made me think – I mean, it wasn’t something I was expecting at all, and all the other ones were more yes / no, direct questions, so this one made me think a little more.

I And you got in?

D Yes, I did.

I Have you ever been asked a strange question in an interview?

H Yes, I have. That was many years ago, it was one of my first job interviews, in London, actually, after I moved to London from Germany. It was for a financial department, and the manager who interviewed me, I can’t remember, but I believe he, he must have been German – he asked me, “Do you have a boyfriend?” and “Are you planning to get pregnant?”

I That’s illegal now, isn’t it?

H Yes, I know, I believe that was illegal then.

I And what did you answer?

H I said no, I didn’t have a boyfriend, and I had no plans to get pregnant any time soon, but at that point, it was pretty clear to me that I did not want to work for that company.

I Have you ever been asked a strange question in an interview?

S Yes. I was being interviewed for a job with an advertising agency and the interviewer kept checking information on my résumé and then asking me about it, and he saw that I’d studied philosophy in college, and he said, “Oh, I see that you studied philosophy in college. Do you still practice philosophy?”

I What did you answer?

S I said the first thing that came into my head – I said, “Well, I still think a lot.”

I Was the interviewer impressed?

S Well, he obviously liked the answer, because I got the job.

I Have you ever been asked a strange question in an interview?

A There’s one I can think of, which was when I was being interviewed for a job with a company in Canada.

I What was it?

A Well, the interviewer asked me, “What animal would you like to be reincarnated as?”

I Weird question!

A Totally.

I What did you say?

A So I said a cat because it was the first thing I thought of and because cats have a good life – well, at least in the US they do. And then the interviewer immediately looked embarrassed and said that he’d been told to ask me that question to see how I’d react, but that he thought it was a stupid question.

I What happened in the end?

A I didn’t get the job, so maybe the interviewer wasn’t very fond of cats!

On December 4th, 1872, a ship called the Mary Celeste was found floating in the Atlantic. There was no one on board. The ship wasn’t damaged, and everything was in order, although the lifeboat was missing. None of the crew or passengers were ever seen again.

On March 4th, 1989, a huge ship called the USS Cyclops left Barbados with 300 people on board, and sailed into what we now call the Bermuda Triangle. Then it disappeared without a trace. No distress call was made, and no bad weather was reported in the region.

A huge search for the Cyclops was launched – boats and planes scoured the area for wreckage or survivors – but nothing of the enormous ship was ever seen again.

On July 2nd, 1937, Amelia Earhart, the famous American aviator, took off with her navigator from New Guinea, in a small plane, on the last stage of their around-the-world flight. It was the last time they were seen alive. Four million dollars were spent on the search, but no trace of Amelia or the navigator was ever found.

An Edinburgh police officer, Robert Muirhead, was sent to the island to solve the mystery. Muirhead was a hard-working, practical investigator, and not at all superstitious. Among other clues, he found equipment lying all over the island, and also a huge rock, much too heavy for any men to carry, lying on the steps leading up to the lighthouse. In the end, the only explanation he could think of was that the men had been carried off by an enormous wave.

Muirhead’s explanation was immediately rejected. But more than 100 years later, in 1995, the ship Queen Elizabeth II was hit by a 100-foot wave that, according to her captain, “came out of the darkness” and “looked like the White Cliffs of Dover.”

Then a paper published in a scientific journal recently proved that the “monster wave,” which for centuries had been considered a sailors’ myth, is a mathematical reality: many smaller waves can suddenly combine in mid-ocean and create a huge wave of devastating force. Most marine scientists now agree that it is a naturally occurring – though rare – event.

So finally, the only explanation that fits the facts is that the three lighthouse men had rushed out to attend to some emergency and had then been swept away by an enormous wave. Inspector Muirhead, it now appears, was almost certainly right. He solved the case back in 1901, but he had to wait another century for the proof.

However, science still cannot answer all the questions surrounding the Flannan Islands mystery. Why did one man leave his rain jacket behind? Why were the bodies of the men never found? Maybe these are things we will never know.

1 A I heard a noise in the middle of the night.

B You did? What kind of noise?

2 A You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?

B No, I don’t.

3 A I’ve never been to a fortune-teller.

B Neither have I.

C I have. It was really interesting.

4 A I don’t believe you really saw a UFO.

B I did see one! It couldn’t have been anything else.

I’m going to describe a situation and ask you some questions. Answer quickly without thinking about it too much – the first thing that comes into your head. Are you ready?

Imagine that you’re walking through a beautiful forest. The sun is out; there’s a light breeze. It’s a really beautiful day. You’re walking with one other person.

Question 1: Who are you walking with?

As you walk through the forest, you come across an animal.

Question 2: What kind of animal is it? A big animal or a small one? How do you interact with the animal?

Now you’re walking deeper into the forest, and you come to a clearing, where there are no trees. There’s a house in the middle of the clearing.

Question 3: How big is the house? Does it have a fence around it or not?

You walk up to the door of the house and it’s open. You go in, and you see a table.

Question 4: What is there on the table? Are there any people sitting around it?

You finish looking around the house and you leave out of the back door. There’s a huge yard behind the house. You go into the yard, and in the middle you find a cup.

Question 5: What is the cup made of? Is it a ceramic cup? Metal? Plastic? Paper?

As you walk to the end of the yard, you come to some water. You must cross this water in order to get home.

Question 6: What kind of water is it? A lake? A river? A small pond? How do you cross it? How wet do you get?

What you have just done is a psychological test that analyzes how you interact with other people. Now I’m going to tell you what your answers mean.

The person you were walking with is an important person in your life. The animal represents problems in your life. The bigger the animal, the more problems you have.

How you interact with the animal represents how you deal with your problems. If you were aggressive or decisive, that means you confront your problems, try to solve them. If the interaction was peaceful, then you’re a more passive person and often wait for problems to go away.

The house represents your ambitions. The bigger the house, the more ambitious you are. If there was no fence around the house, it means you’re very open-minded, and welcome new ideas. If it had a fence, then you’re more convinced that you’re right, and tend to surround yourself by people who agree with you.

The table represents how you’re feeling right now. If there was food or there were flowers on the table, and people sitting around it, this suggests that you’re feeling happy in your relationships. No food, flowers, or people suggests that someone in your family, or a friend, is making you unhappy.

The cup represents how strong your relationship is with the person you’re walking with, and how long the relationship will last. The harder and more resistant the material of the cup is, the stronger your relationship is.

The water represents your friends. If you saw a large river or lake, you have a big social circle and like to be surrounded by people. If you got very wet when you crossed it, your friends are very important for you. If you hardly got wet at all, it means that you depend less on your friends and are more self-sufficient.

1 The more you study, the more you learn.

2 The more coffee I drink, the worse I sleep.

3 The more time you have, the slower you do things.

4 The more in shape you are, the better you feel.

1 If there was no fence around the house, it means you are very open-minded, and welcome new ideas.

2 If you hardly got wet at all, it means that you depend less on your friends and are more self-sufficient.

J My name is Jeff Neil. I’m a career coach, and I help people discover the right career for them and actually go get that job.

I How important is the résumé when you’re applying for a job?

J The résumé is really important because it represents you. It’s often the first presentation of your skills and abilities to an employer before they actually have a chance to talk with you.

I What are some mistakes that people make with their résumés?

J So some of the biggest mistakes that, that I’ve seen that people make on their résumé is they include everything. Right, as an employer, I don’t care what you did 20 years ago or 30 years ago. You may have been a star at something that you did 25 years ago, but as an employer I’m thinking, this has no relevancy to me. You’ve changed over 25 years. The world has changed over 25 years. So people include far too much information on their résumés. My recommendation is that they only go back about 15 years.

I Are there any other mistakes?

J Another completely, another completely unforgivable mistake is grammatical errors, bad punctuation, and spelling errors. When I see a résumé that has, you know, more than one error, it’s done. Right? We live in a world where résumés are expected to be perfect. So word processing has spell check on it. There’s just no reason to have something misspelled.

I How important is a candidate’s social media presence?

J Yeah, in today’s world, almost all hiring managers and HR staff will look for you online before they interview you. So your online profile can actually either help you get an interview, or it can stop you from getting an interview. So for your social media, you want to be really careful, particularly when you’re looking for a job. You want to be really careful about what pictures you’re showing and what conversations you’re posting, um, is public information. You also want to do a Google search on your own name.

I Assuming a candidate gets an interview, how do you help them to prepare for it?

J So the way I help candidates prepare for interviews is I, I have them take the job advertisement. Right, they can get the job advertisement if it’s posted online, or a job description from the HR office. And to go through it and simply circle what are the skills and abilities that are required to do that kind of job? And to take an eight and a half sheet of paper and make three columns, and in the first column, list the key skills and abilities that are required to do that position. And then in the second column, list where they’ve used those skills and abilities in different roles in their career. And then in the third column, to actually create stories that demonstrate how they’ve used those skills in those different companies.

I What tips can you give a candidate for the day itself? For example, how should people dress for an interview?

J It’s important to dress appropriately for an interview, because if you’re underdressed for an interview it shows a lack of respect. Right? Companies, an employer’s going to look at that and say, this isn’t, this person’s not taking this interview seriously. So I encourage my clients to actually overdress a little bit for an interview. Now, how can you determine the best way to dress for an interview? You might actually get on a company’s LinkedIn page and look at their LinkedIn photos, because that’ll give you a sense of that company’s style. Are they all dressed in suits and they’re really formal? Are they more relaxed? Another way, uh, outside of a big city is that you can often stake out the front door, you know, a couple days ahead of time and see how employees are actually going into that office. How are they dressed?

I Obviously you shouldn’t be late, but how early should you get there?

J So you want to show up at an interview about 5 minutes early. If you get there earlier than that, just grab a cup of coffee in a nearby, uh, restaurant or shop. And then when you walk into the interview you don’t want to have your headphones on. You want to make sure your cell phone is turned off. You don’t want to have any interruptions.

I Do you have any other tips before the interview starts?

J As soon as you walk into the building for a job interview, you’ve already begun the interview. The way that you greet people, the way that you greet the receptionist at the front desk, and security if there is security, all those people are part of the interview process. Because if you don’t handle it in the right way, they may tell the person that you’re interviewing with how you approached them. And your chances of getting the job can actually be eliminated. So it’s important that you treat everyone that you meet in the building as part of the interview process.

I Is it OK for a candidate to talk about money or salary during an interview?

J It is OK for a candidate to talk about money and salary during an interview. But the real question is when should they talk about money and salary. And the answer is late. One of the biggest mistakes that job candidates make is they focus too much on their own needs. Right? So work–life balance is important. The number of hours I’m going to work, the amount of vacation I’m going to get, the pay, and the benefits, they’re all very important. But we have to understand that the employer is giving us money. What’s most important is I want to communicate that I can deliver enough value for this position that you offer me the job. Once an employer believes that I’m the right candidate, and then they offer me a position − that’s the right time to start talking about money and benefits. However, I wouldn’t raise the topic. I would let the employer raise it first.

I Do you have any other tips for candidates during the interview?

J Body image and body language is really, really important in an interview. I can remember interviewing someone − they were slouched back and they were down and their energy was really, really low and it just communicated to me, this person doesn’t really want this job. They didn’t feel motivated. And I can remember talking with candidates where they’re leaning forward and their, their voice is stronger. They’re making a lot of eye contact directly with me. I can tell that they’re really listening to what I’m saying. They’re hearing what I’m saying, and that they want to learn about this job to help me understand their value. So body language and eye contact are really, really important. The tone of voice is also really, really important, because when we’re unsure or less confident we tend to, you know, not only slouch, but our voice goes down. And that’s not communicating the confidence that you, that you’re confident in your skills and abilities.

I And just to finish, did you ever ask extreme questions during interviews when you worked in HR?

J As a director of HR, sometimes I would ask extreme questions, such as, if you could be any kind of tree in the world, what kind of tree would you want to be? Because I want to see what it reveals about someone’s personality.

I What would a good answer be?

J So one good answer could be, I’d like to be an oak tree, because it’s strong and it’s steady. Another good answer could be, I’d like to be an apple tree, because it’s beautiful when it’s blooming and it gives fruit to people that they would enjoy. Another answer could be, I’d like to be a cactus, because cactuses don’t need a lot of support and they’re very, very persistent. They can survive.

When you’re applying for a job, do you think it’s OK to slightly exaggerate on your CV?

I think it’s a terrible, terrible idea to even slightly exaggerate because I think it will always come back to hurt you. I think being as honest as you can − I think it doesn’t matter if you, if you can’t do something if you say “I’m willing to learn, I’m a good learner, I, like, I have these skills, I’m really open to learning some new ones,” but to go into an interview or, or write on your CV. Um, “I can speak, you know, a very average amount of French” when you don’t know anything, that… you might find yourself in a situation where you’ve wasted their time and you’ve just made yourself look really, really silly. I think it’s a terrible idea and I would feel really uncomfortable − um, I’d say I’m quite an honest person so, if I can’t do something, I’ll just say it.

I’ve definitely exaggerated on a CV! Um, I think you have to be – I mean, I would still consider myself an honest person and I’m not going to say I speak fluent Chinese when I don’t − but I think I’ve done, I’ve done it when it wouldn’t be an essential skill for the job, maybe just to pad − well, not even pad things out because I’m talking very small exaggerations here, but, where it’s more for the optional side of things − just to make it look a bit more…like, I might put a language on there that, yeah I can read a postcard or I can understand an airport announcement, but if you asked me to actually speak it…but I wouldn’t do that if I knew the job was going to require me speaking that language because, like you say, you’re going to be potentially in a very awkward situation if that ever comes up, um, and I’ve had, I have had job interviews where they suddenly start speaking to you in another language to check, to check whether you speak the language or not, so…but I think, I think white lies are OK, personally.

I swing between both. Um, you shouldn’t outright lie because you will get caught out and if it’s − a lot of the times it could cost a company a lot of money if they employ you to do a job and then when you turn up, you cannot do it or to the ability that you have told them you could, and there’s a lot of people to be affected. So, you shouldn’t lie because you will be asked to use it. But…the question didn’t say where on the CV, so I agree with you because when you’re talking about hobbies, that is to see what sort of person you are, whether they would like you to work with them, so if you’re quite a boring person and you don’t have many hobbies, I think you should exaggerate a few to make yourself look a little bit more interesting. So, I cook every single night, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy cooking, but I’m happy to put down that I love cooking.