【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】[听力原文] What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure. At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, but I was good at passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers. Now I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known heartbreak or hardship. Talent and intelligence never yet immunized anyone against the willfulness of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of quiet privilege and contentment. However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown. Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had gone off, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had for me, and that I had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew. Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality. What did the speaker fear most at the graduates' age? 录音开头，说话人开门见山地指出自己在大学生时代最害怕的不是贫穷而是失败，故D正确。 录音开头说话人已经提及自己害怕的不是贫穷，故A错误，说话人并没有论及疾病，故排除B。虽然演讲者有提到她离婚的经历，但没有指出这是她最害怕的，故排除C。
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】[听力原文] What did the speaker say about the seven years after her graduation? 从选项看，此题可能跟某人对某一段时光的感受有关。演讲者描述自己毕业后的7年经历了一系列的失败事件，如婚姻破裂、失业和变成单亲家庭等，她将这段时间称为黑暗期，C“生活中充满失败的黑暗期”符合说话人的表述。 说话人指出大学毕业后7年是充满失败的黑暗期，A“充满荣誉的最成功的时期”与此相反，故排除。B的迷惑性较强，但说话人提到毕业后的7年黑暗期不仅仅是由婚姻破裂造成，还有失业等其它原因，B只提到一点，以偏概全，故排除。D“充满不可思议经历的奇幻时期”，缺乏录音依据，说话人没有指出失败的经历不可思议，这些经历也谈不上奇幻，故排除D。