Barely a minute into your performance evaluation your boss loses his composure completely. Between his hoarse sobs you hear again how much the company is honored to have you - a genuine hero - in its ranks. "The board is so pleased that it's decided to double your salary, and also your vacation time." A thick brown envelope stuffed with cash suddenly materializes on the desk before you. "We also took up a collection for your orphanage work...."We can always dream about getting this kind of review. In the meantime, check out this Intermediate listening test find out what happens when things go the other way. Listen to our podcast once and then click over to the quiz section to see how much you understand. Our popup-annotated copy of the entire transcript is available on the text page if you have any questions. Good luck!
barrister
said on January 26, 2009
Listened to this one twice before taking the test. The male voice was an issue the first time, but less of a problem on round two. The big problem for me was the numbers. Even though I thought I understood what they were saying, I was thrown off mentally calculating all those 翻 and 倍.
hotpotmike
said on February 1, 2009
Great lesson. Trying to get caught up on my studies.. noticed a couple of transcription errors. The 4th and 5th sentences are reversed in the text.
trevelyan
said on February 1, 2009
@hotpotmike - re-ordered, thx. I think Echo has been dreading getting a question about the difference between 倍 and 翻. We gave her a headache sorting out the difference is between the two here.My own understanding is that 两倍 and 两翻 are 2x and 4x respectively. It gets messy for me when you've got 加两倍 (is that 2x or 3x...).
hotpotmike
said on February 1, 2009
The dialog shows 4x for 两倍.. is that a mix-up?
trevelyan
said on February 1, 2009
That would be the super-combo of 翻了两倍.
Echo... Echo... help!
Echo
said on February 1, 2009
Hey guys, Now finally come to this 头疼问题. It is really tough. We just did a survey online. We got all kinds of answers for "翻几番" ,"翻几倍" ,"几倍" ,"增加几倍". Most people had problems with "翻几倍".Here is the definition in the dictionary -- "翻几倍" means double and redouble, so "翻n番" and "翻n倍" have the same meaning in the dictionary, which is 2^n.As everyone knows, "n倍" is nx. "增加n倍" is to add nx, so it should be (n+1)x.You might always hear people say "翻番". That means "翻一番", which is 2^1 -- plus 2.Ok, enough mathematics !Usually when people say "翻", they mean something a lot or at least more than 2x.Therefore, "翻两倍" in the dialogue means 4x. The trick part is "翻".--Echoecho@popupchinese.com
oyamakuma
said on February 6, 2014
It seems I can only download the dialogue and not the show.
mike_underhill
said on May 7, 2014
Hi,A couple of questions about the test. 1. We never hear her response to the 600 offer. So is 妥协 here meant to imply agreement or just one step towards an agreement? 2. Is one of the test answers wrong? Did they reach agreement because she convinced him of her value, which the test says this is the "correct" answer? Or because she threatened to quit, which is what she does just before he offers 600?
Grace Qi
said on May 7, 2014
@mike_underhill,1. The boss originally offered 400, then he 妥协 compromised and offered 600 after what the employee said.So 妥协 here means the boss compromised which doesn't have anything to do with her response, he still 妥协了.2.The answer is not wrong. It's obvious that it's because she threatened to quit, but the answer is "She threatened to quit and open her own company" so that's wrong. So the closest answer would be the boss didn't want her to quit because he knew how valuable she was to the company and that's why he compromised and offered 600!
