TOEFL Listening Practice Skill 1-3 (Longman TOEFL PBT)

Our Complex Relationship With Technology

Julian Stodd

(1) I woke this morning to an angrily vibrating phone, on fire with little red alerts. My first action on getting up used to be making a cup of tea but it’s now hijacked by technology. Our relationship with devices is complex: love or hate, or need and want. In the Social Age, it’s technology that brings us together, that provides access to communities and facilitates the discussions we have within them. It enables the formation of wide collections of loose social ties and the maintenance of increased numbers of strong and deep ones, whilst also providing access to knowledge. My first instinct in many situations is to reach for the phone: maps, directions, email and texts, tuning the guitar or sharing on Facebook, finding out how to change the oil in the car or book a festival for the summer. I have some personal views to express my ideas in response to the advancement of technology.

(2) There are few aspects of life that technology doesn’t touch, but it’s easy to let the horse lead the cart. We are seeing technology transforming learning: systems provide infrastructure, media can be easily created to enhance learning, language itself is translated and transformed, we capture, share and journal with ease. The learning experience is more easily quantified, both for individuals and for organisations. But quantification doesn’t always equate to quality.

(3) It’s all about balance and agility: our ability to learn, to innovate and be creative, to do things differently tomorrow from how we did them yesterday. It means that we should have as much say in things as the devices we buy and carry around with us. Whilst the features of technology may connect us ever more closely and ever more vocally, scheduling, chasing and reprimanding us ever more often, we need to ensure that underneath it all we are being effective. It should be our natural behaviours that are being enhanced by the technology, not the technology forcing us to adapt our behaviours.

(4) We need to recognise that we now live in the Social Age of learning, where the bywords are agility and engagement, where formal experiences are less valuable than applied ones, where traditional models of authority and expertise are subverted by more social methodologies that rely on communities and sharing. We are in a time of change: change to how organisations and individuals engage with each other, changes in our relationship with technology, changes to how we engage within communities to learn to co-create meaning.

(5) Instead of depending upon lumbering formal technology, needing unwieldyservers and infrastructure, today’s artisan workers use tablets, phones and apps to achieve much the same thing. Instead of needing offices and pot plants, we need WiFi and coffee shops, Dropbox and Skype. However, it’s the social technology that fits into our lives rather than requiring us to adapt our lives to suit it. Social technology should give us access to our communities whilst we are on the move anytime, anywhere. Because social learning is anchored and grounded in reality making links back to formal learning, whilst formal learning is always trying to reach out to meet reality.

(6) Social Technology has to be effortlessly social, or it’s not social at all. The reason is obvious that large organisations spend so much money on that field and they fail to meet the needs or expectations of users. They are built around the requirements of IT teams, compliance teams, learning teams, but not the people who actually count: the people who use them.

(Adapted from:http://www.lifewidemagazine.co.uk/uploads/1/0/8/4/10842717/magazine_10_june_2014.pdf).

In paragraph 2, the writer expresses his opinion that ....

Question 1 options:

	horses drawing carriages are no longer appropriate in a modern life.
	many aspects of quality life has been quantified by technology.
	technology should develop to improve as well the quality life
	technology to improve quality learning activities is easy to do.

Question 2 (1 point)

Saved

In which paragraphs does the writer explicitly express his hopes about modern technology?

Question 2 options:

	3 and 5
	1 and 2
	2 and 6
	2 and 4

Question 3 (1 point)

The word lumbering in paragraph 5 is closest in meaning to....

Question 3 options:

	simple
	advanced
	complicated
	Differentiated

Question 4 (1 point)

The word they in paragraph 6 refers to....

Question 4 options:

	people who use them
	needs or expectations of users
	people who actually count
	organisations spending much money

Question 5 (1 point)

What can you infer from the text?

Question 5 options:

	The writer feels worried with the advancement of technology for education.
	The writer worries if technology may suit the peoples needs and expectation.
	The writer expects one day horse-drawn carts will apply modern technology.
	The writer doesnt like advanced technology because it hijacks his morning tea.

Question 6 (1 point)

What does the text mainly discuss?

Question 6 options:

	The uncertain affection with modern technology.
	The anger of being hijacked by technology.
	The instinct of reaching cellular phones.
	The habit of making a cup of tea.

Question 7 (1 point)

What is the key point of paragraph 4?

Question 7 options:

	People recognise that change is difficult to learn
	People are now living in a changing world.
	People believe that Social Age is frightening.
	People are now forced to adapt their living habits.

Question 8 (1 point)

When you scan-read the text, you will understand that ....

Question 8 options:

	there are equal numbers of paragraphs expressing writers optimism and pessimism
	there are more paragraphs expressing writers optimistic than pessimistic opinions
	there are more paragraphs expressing writers pessimistic than optimistic opinions
	there is no pessimistic opinion expressed by the writer in the text

Question 9 (1 point)

Which one is NOT TRUE according to the text?

Question 9 options:

	The connectivity between technology and its users is imbalanced.
	Technology facilitates people to widen their access for communication.
	Social technology is effortless to empower people to learn.
	Its undebatable that currently we are living in the age of social technology.

Question 10 (1 point)

Who might be interested in reading the text?

Question 10 options:

	Some one working in a telephone company.
	Some one living in a modern society.
	Any one who can read English texts.
	Any one who is interested in high technology. Note: Kunci jawaban diatas sesuai dengan pendapat admin sendiri, silahkan anda kembangkan sendiri jawabnnya..