TOEFL iBT® Quick Prep

APPENDIX B

Listening Practice Set 3:
Transcript for Track 5:

Narrator Listen to part of a lecture in a history class.
Professor So we’ve been talking about the printingpress, how it changed people’s lives,
making books more accessible to everyone.
More books meant more reading, right?
But as you know, not everyone has perfectvision. This increase in literacy, in reading,
led to an increase in demand for eyeglasses. And here’s something you probably
haven’t thought of: This increased demand impacted societal attitudes towardseyeglasses.
But, um, ﬁrst let me back up a bit and talk about vision correction before theprinting press. And what did people with poor vision do—I mean especially those
few people who were actually literate—what did they do before glasses wereinvented? Well, they had different ways of dealing with not seeing well. If you think
about it, poor vision wasn’t their only problem. I mean, think about the conditions
they lived in: Houses were dark, sometimes there weren’t any windows, candles
were the only source of light … So in some places, umm … like ancient Greece, forexample, the wealthiest people with poor vision could have someone else read tothem. Easy solution if you could afford it.
Another solution was something called a reading stone. Around 1000 C.E.,
European monks would take a piece of clear rock, often quartz, and place it on topof the reading material. The clear rock magniﬁed the letters, making them appear
larger. Umm, it’s like what happens when a drop of water falls on something.
Whatever’s below the drop of water appears larger, right? Well, the reading stone
works in a similar way.
But rocks like quartz, quartz of optical quality, weren’t cheap. Late in the thirteenth
century, glassmakers in Italy came up with a less expensive alternative—they madereading stones out of clear glass. And these clear-glass reading stones evolved into
the eyeglasses we know today.
So we’re pretty sure that glasses were invented in about the late 1200s, well overa hundred years before the printing press. But, it’s not clear who exactly invented35

TOEFL iBT® Quick Prep

APPENDIX B

them ﬁrst, or exactly what year, but records show that they were invented
in both Europe and China at about the same time. By the way, we call thisindependent discovery.
Independent discovery means when something is invented in different parts of
the world at the same time. And it’s not as unusual as it sounds. You can lookat the time line charts in the back of your textbook to see when things wereinvented in different cultures at about the same time … to see what I’m talking
about.
So now let’s tie this to what I said before about societal attitudes towards
glasses. Initially, in parts of Europe and in China, glasses were a symbolof wisdom and intelligence. This is evident in the artwork from the period.
European paintings often portrayed doctors or … or … judges wearing glasses.
In China, glasses were very expensive, so in addition to intelligence they also
symbolized afﬂuence, wealth. In fourteenth-century Chinese portraits, the bigger
the glasses, the smarter and wealthier the subject was. So glasses were astatus symbol in some parts of the world.
Now let’s get back to the invention of the printing press in 1440. What
happened? Suddenly books became readily available, and more people wanted
to read, so the need, well actually, not only the need, but the demand formore affordable glasses rose drastically. Eventually, inexpensive glasses wereproduced and then glasses were available to everyone. People could purchasethem easily from a traveling peddler.
Transcript for Track 6:

Narrator Listen again to part of the lecture. Then answer the question.
Professor So in some places, umm … like ancient Greece, for example, the wealthiestpeople with poor vision could have someone else read to them. Easy solution if
you could afford it.
Narrator What does the professor imply when she says this:Professor Easy solution if you could afford it.

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