[00:07.00]Listening Task
[02:12.65]Listening Task
[03:55.42]READING TASK
[04:03.98]AN APRIL FOOL'S JOKE:THE NOODLE HARVEST
[04:09.55]"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."
[04:15.61]April Fool's Day,or April lst,
[04:22.77]is known in many countries as a day for playing jokes on others.
[04:29.71]It is usually a time when children make fun of each other
[04:35.28]but sometimes other people can get caught in the fun too.
[04:41.23]One of the most famous jokes in England
[04:45.81]took place on British television in 1957.
[04:52.05]It was a Monday night
[04:55.81]when there were always many serious programmes on the television.
[05:01.58]One of them was called Panorama,
[05:05.71]which explored problems and progress all over the world.
[05:11.67]So nobody was surprised when it began with a report
[05:17.73]on the excellent noodle harvest in south Switzerland.
[05:23.40]The programme mentioned two reasons for the good crop:
[05:29.46]an unusually warm winter and the disappearance of the insect
[05:36.12]that attacked the noodle crop every year.
[05:40.85]The reporter showed many noodle trees
[05:45.60]with the farmers pulling noodles off them and putting them into baskets.
[05:52.57]The people watching
[05:55.81]were told that they may not have heard of noodles from this part of the world
[06:01.69]because noodles were grown as part of small family businesses.
[06:07.86]The jprogramme makers
[06:11.02]realised that people might wonder why noodles were always the same size
[06:17.57]so they explained that
[06:21.23]"it was the result of many years'patient research with the trees
[06:27.79]to produce noodles of exactly the smae lenght."
[06:33.14]But even so they explained that the life of noodle farmer was not easy.
[06:40.51]"The last two weeks of March are an anxious time for noodle farmers.
[06:47.46]There is always a chance of very cold weather spoiling their crop.
[06:53.73]Then it is difficult for them to get top prices on the world markets."
[07:00.57]Many people in England believed this story.
[07:05.61]They rang the BBC to find out how to grow their own noodle tree.
[07:12.48]They were told to"place a piece of noodle in a tin of tomato sauce
[07:19.54]and hope for the best."
[07:23.09]This may seem very silly.
[07:27.06]But in the 1950s very few British people travelled abroad for their holidays
[07:35.11]and even fewer of them ate noodles.
[07:40.15]So it seemed possible to imagine that noodles grew on trees like apples,
[07:47.80]pears and nuts.
[07:51.28]Also people trusted the Panorama programme
[07:57.20]for its careful research and serious informations.
[08:03.16]So they were shocked to find the next day
[08:08.12]that they had all believed an April Fool's joke.
[08:14.39]Even today the report of the noodle harvest
[08:19.54]is remembered as one of the best April Fool's jokes ever |