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You are now going to hear a conversation between two friends. One of them has been studying computers for some time. The other is a beginner.
3rd year: How are you finding the course so far?
1st year: Oh, I'm enjoying it but there are so many weird words to remember.
3rd year: Yeah? Such as?
1st year: Well, for instance, I was reading yesterday about something called A-S-C-I-I...
3rd year: Oh, you mean ASCII — that's easy. It's an acronym. It stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It's a way of representing letters as numbers so they can be stored in a computer.
1st year: All right, well what about 'algorithm' then! When I first saw that I thought it was a misprint for logarithm'.
3rd year: Ah well! Algorithms crop up all over the place. What an algorithm is, is a list of instructions to be carried out in a certain order, in order to solve a problem.
1st year: Hang on... I thought that was a program?...
3rd year: We-ell yes... A program is just an algorithm but written down in a language that the computer can understand.
1st year: Oh I see... Well, while we're on the subject — why do programming languages have such funny names like FORTRAN and Algol and PROLOG?
3rd year: Er... well, they're sort of acronyms as well. FORTRAN is mostly used by scientists and engineers and it stands for FORmula TRANSlation. Algol was invented by computer people for communicating algorithms...
1st year:... and stands for ALGOrithmic Language!
3rd year: Bright spark!
1st year: And PROLOG?
3rd year: That stands for PROgramming in LOGic — it's really useful for A.I. applications.
1st year: Now you're doing it! What on earth's A.I.?
3rd year: Sorry — that stands for Artificial Intelligence. In other words, trying to make computers understand what they're doing instead of just being ultra-fast calculators.
1st year: All right — one last thing. Pascal's a programming language. What does Pascal stand for — something to do with algorithms I suppose?
3rd year: 'Fraid not. It doesn't stand for anything. It's named after Blaise Pascal, the famous mathematician!
Unit 3.
I. Understanding discourse: Numbers (1)
Kaleni and Tariq are talking.
K: Hi there, Tariq! You look busy. How are things going?
T: Oh hello, Kaleni, fine! But yes, I am busy. I'm trying to make sense of the notes I made this morning in the model office.
K: Anything I can help with?
T: Not really, it's just that I find it very difficult to hear numbers correctly and write them down quickly.
K: Yes, numbers are always difficult to hear in the foreign language, I don't know why. Don't worry, it certainly gets easier with practice.
T: I'm sure, but I'm worried about getting behind early in my course.
K: Well there are two things I found helpful: one was to spend as much time as possible in the language lab, listening to tapes, and the other was to get a friend, preferably an English friend, to read numbers out to me, a sort of dictation. You ought to try it!
T: (ruefully) Hmm, that's good advice —- trouble is I haven't made many friends yet.
K: Well, don't look at me! I'm even busier than you! I've got finals this year.
T: Oh, of course, I didn't mean... I just thought...
K: Oh all right! Come on, get your notebook!
T: Thanks.
II. Understanding a lecture: Artificial Intelligence
... so, as we were saying, robots, unlike people, don't become ill, don't have tea breaks, don't go on strike! (laughter) They can also work continuously and at the same rate throughout the day. Robots are able to produce the same standard of work over and over again. I guess most of us would like to have a robot as a personal servant to do those jobs we hate doing, you know, washing up, the ironing... doing assignments in computer science perhaps (more laughter!). Unfortunately the robots we have at the moment aren't capable of doing the problem-solving type of jobs that would really be useful! Who knows what the future might bring, of course! We do, however, have personal robots such as OMNIBOT and TOPO that can deliver goods and messages from one room to another. The commonest type of robot is free-standing and used in factories. They consist of a flexible arm to which any number of tools can be attached, paint sprayers, soldering irons etc. controlled by a computer which is built into the stand. They are mainly used for building cars, washing machines and other household goods. We now even have robots to build robots.
One huge advantage of robots is that they can work in dirty or dangerous conditions. It is obviously much easier to replace a robot than a human life. The army use robots to investigate bombs and make them safe. Cars are often left filled with explosives and booby trapped. A moving robot can be steered by remote control and used to view the inside of the car. Robots can also be used under water where they can work for a much longer time than a human being would be able to. They are used for inspecting underwater structures such as drilling platforms and can be very useful in recovering ships which have sunk or aircraft that have crashed into the sea. I have here a film I thought you might like to see...
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| Unit 1. Computer Applications | | | II. Understanding discourse |