PASSAGE 3
1. What does the professor mean when he says this:
A. It is not something important.
B. The students should already know it
C. It will be explained later in the lecture.
D. The students need to answer his question.
2. Listen again----Which sentence best describes how the speaker feels about the Winchester House?
A. It was a fairly normal house for its time.
B. It appears to have been carefully planned.
C. It represents a common style of architecture.
D. It is notable for its haphazard design
3. Listen again----Why does the professor say this:
A. To announce what he is about to explain
B. To encourage the students to respond
C. To indicate that the answer is unknown
D. To suggest that the students should have prepared more
4. Listen again----How did Sarah seem to feel about the ghosts?
A. The house was haunted because of the way the way the family had achieved its wealth
B. The house was not really haunted, but stories about ghosts helped the house to become famous.
C. The house may have been haunted, but she did not understand why.
D. She made up stories about the house being haunted to get sympathy.
5. Listen again----Which sentence best describes the professor's view of ghosts?
A. He believes in them even more than Sarah did.
B. The fact that the house is haunted by ghosts makes it special.
C. He does not believe in them, but the fact that Sarah did is important
D. He does not believe in them, and he thinks that Sarah did not either.
LISTENING SCRIPT
Listen to a lecture in a course on architecture.
Today we're going to take a look at one of the more unusual houses in America, the Winchester House in San Jose, California. This house was built by Sarah Winchester, the nineteenth-century heiress of the Winchester family. I don't think I need to tell you why the Winchester family is famous. That's right. The Winchester family is the owner of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, the company that accrued its wealth in the business of manufacturing Winchester rifles, the rifle of note and notoriety in the American West.
Let's take a look at this rather incredible house that Sarah created. She began construction on the home in 1884, and she created an unbelievably wild profusion of rooms, corridors, stairways, doors, and windows. She continued to add to the house until her death in 1922. By the time of her death, the number of rooms had reached 160, and it had…can you believe it…more than 2,000 doors and 10,000 windows.
Why do you think someone might build such a house? Well, here is Sarah's story. Sarah Winchester was married to the son of Oliver Winchester, who'd founded the Winchester Repeating Arms Company and made a huge success of it. In 1881, Sarah's husband and their month-old baby daughter died. Because Sarah's husband had been heir to the Winchester fortune, on his death, Sarah inherited the fortune. The fortune notwithstanding, Sarah was devastated by the loss of her beloved husband and daughter.
In the aftermath of her loss, Sarah was convinced by a trusted advisor that the family's misfortune was due to the fact that the family's massive fortune had been obtained through the manufacture of weapons responsible for uncountable deaths. Sarah became convinced that the family was being haunted by the ghosts of those victims of the Winchester rifle. To thwart the ghosts that Sarah believed were haunting her family, it seems that her plan was to build such a confusing house that the ghosts who were haunting it wouldn't be able to find their way through it. Sarah dedicated the remainder of her life to adding onto the house in such a way as to make the ghosts get lost and disappear.
This is the story of how the Winchester House came to be the way it is. Whether or not you believe in ghosts yourself, and…well…not everyone does…you can see that Sarah did. The world of architecture has one huge, very tangible, and eye-catching reminder of Sarah's belief in ghosts.
