英语听力精选进阶版 9592

World Bulletin

Hi there, I'm Leah from the BBC World News for Schools. It's Thursday the 31st of March. 

Coming up: 

A space tourism exclusive. 

Sachin Tendulkar talks about Saturday's cricket final. 

And the world's loudest cat? 

First, time for a world exclusive! For a lucky few, a sightseeing trip into space will soon become reality. The BBC's Richard Scott has travelled all the way to the Mojavi Desert in America, to become the first journalist on the planet to be let into the spaceship. He even met the pilot! 

CLIP: "Seeing a new vehicle that will some day be taking commercial passengers into space and allowing the popuation at large to experience space travel is just tremendously exiting." 

Next, 1.21 billion - that's the number of people living in India according to the latest census¹. That means there are 181 million more people than there were a decade ago. That's more than the population of Pakistan! At the rate India is going, it's set to overtake China as the most populous² country within twenty years. 

The other massive story in India is of course the cricket. Fan's have been celebrating yesterday's World Cup semi-final victory over Pakistan. Sachin Tendulkar was named man of the match. The star player is only only one away from his 100th century for India but will that be playing on his mind when India play Sri Lanka on Saturday? 

CLIP: "No it's not about my individual goals, it's about the team's performance and you know winning matches, and I will continue to say that in the next match as well. While doing that If I get 100, wonderful, but the most important thing is to win." 

And for today's question we want to know who won the last Cricket World Cup? Yesterday, we asked you who Pakistan's Prime Minister is and the answer is....Yousuf Raza Gilani.

Before we go check this out.... 

CLIP: Purring 

That is the sound of the cat who hopes to be crowned the world's loudest purrer! Yep, Smokey - who's from England - can reach 73 decibels³, sixteen times louder than an average cat. Her owners say she drowns out the TV and neighbours mistake the noise for a tumble drier. Scientists have measured Smokey's purr and sent the results off to see if she's a record breaker. Good luck with that Smokey! 

OK, that's all from the World News for Schools team. We just have time to say a big shout out to all the kids in Grade 3 at the International school of IITA in Ibadan, Nigeria, and to Catherine and Alexander who e-mailed us all the way from Beijing in China. If you want to e-mail us, the address is [email protected]. Bye for now!

1 census   

n.(官方的)人口调查，人口普查

参考例句：

• A census of population is taken every ten years.人口普查每10年进行一次。
• The census is taken one time every four years in our country.我国每四年一次人口普查。

2 populous   

adj.人口稠密的，人口众多的

参考例句：

• London is the most populous area of Britain.伦敦是英国人口最稠密的地区。
• China is the most populous developing country in the world.中国是世界上人口最多的发展中国家。

3 decibels   

n.分贝( decibel的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The typical lawn mower makes about 90 decibels of noise. 典型的割草机发出的声响约为90分贝。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A normal conversation reaches 55 decibels. 普通的谈话即可达55分贝。 来自《简明英汉词典》