Dictation: INventory

1)What advice would you give to someone trying to choose a

career?
2)The counselor gave me several assessments to identify my skills
and strengths.
3)The more experience you can accumulate, the better.
4)First impressions are important, so be sure to dress appropriately
for the job you want.
5)I’d like you to make an inventory of your various
accomplishments.

Dictation:
1) Tania takes her children to school activities and sports
events.
2) Say no when people try to give you more responsibilities.
3) When people ask you to do something extra, say, “I’m
sorry.”
4) They can take out the garbage, do the laundry, and other
chores.
5) Finally, make sure you get a little time every day to do
something you like.
Dictation:
1)Although saving money just to get rich might be a good goal, it’s
too broad.
2)In contrast, if you have a more specific goal, you’ll stay
motivated.
3)You might reward yourself with a new pair of shoes or a nice
dinner.
4)Likewise, you should plan to spend a little more than your
monthly average.
5)Still, a short-term loan will mean larger payments.

Dictation:
1)I would prefer a short-term loan over a long-term loan.
2)We all know that some people are better at managing money than
others.
3)In order to manage your finances successfully you need to start
with a budget.
4)If your budget is tight and restrictive, it may be impossible for
you to stick to it.
5)Not anticipating emergencies is a big reason why so many people
are unsuccessful in managing their money.
 Dictation:
1)Meanwhile, it’s increasingly evident that infections can have
lasting health effects.
2)Since then, however, there’s been wide variation in how long
schools shut their doors.
3)After lunch, she walked to the vantage point and surveyed the
space.
4) These products will be purchased by insurers, who will pass the
cost on to consumers.
5)After collecting his suitcase, he backtracked upstairs and found
the gate.

Dictation:
1) It would be difficult to find the implications of this train
of thought.
2) There are many kinds of collectors, and in each of them a
multitude of impulses is at work.
3) A prognosis was due, but it failed to materialize.
4) It was at home in a world where perspectives and
prospects counted.
5) Today the most real, mercantile gaze into the heart of
things is the advertisement.
Dictation:
1)Sometimes the recitation sounds like a lightly dramatized
Wikipedia article.
2)His beauty is coarse and a little wrong, and the combination is
thrilling.
3)The series turns into a kidnapping plot and is a straight crime
drama.
4)The narrator of this elliptical novel is a writer on a visiting
professorship.
5)The picture that emerges is of civilizations concerned with
justice.

Dictation:
1)Everyone is encouraged to eat unprocessed food and get plenty of
sleep.
2)The employees were given a discount on health insurance for
going to the gym.
3)The writer introduces a lot of evidence, and it’s enough to
convince me.
4)Homelessness has been increasing for decades, and it is a
complicated problem.
5)Shelters provide protection for people who are sleeping outside.
Dictation:
1)In these years, planners suffered four defeats over their plans to
remodel the city.
2)Some of the complaints were reasonable, others less so.
3)Soon there was talk of a government takeover, which was
eventually ruled out.
4)Three small ferries using diesel electric engines were already on
order.
5)The biggest area of contention lay closer to the start of the
shipbuilding process.

Dictation:
1) Seeking the logic behind such extraordinary economic
self-harm may be a fruitless exercise.
2) It didn’t take long for his music (spare and heavy) to find
its way to discerning ears.
3) The traditional distinction between disciplines of the
mind and of the body had been codified in the medieval
education system.
4) A thief and her three accomplices forced their way into
the library of a country house.
5) But origins have a way of being retrospectively produced
and partial.

Dictation:
1)I tend to love books where freakishness isn’t presented as
something inhuman.
 2)The trajectory from destitute orphan to famous author was
dramatically steeper in 1850.
3)For a novel to be a vehicle of social change, it must first capture
the public imagination.
4)A former senior campaign director for a civil rights nonprofit
tries to make sense.
5)Having decided to return home, he turns back for a final glance at
the monastery.

Dictation:
1)There is a willingness to collaborate despite the boundaries of
class and occupation.
2)The personal testimony reveals a remarkable intensity of
historical awareness.
3)They were dismissive of women and saw no reason to expend
political capital on them.
4)Music shaped not only the subject matter but the form of his
poetry.
5)These survived because they were not mere entertainment but
served a vital purpose.
Dictation:
1)In the spectacle they made of themselves, these clowns brought
with them unexamined emotional baggage.
2)The contents of country houses and villas had been requisitioned
during the war.
3)The polls told us that high inflation and anxiety about crime were
going to provoke a tsunami.
4)My father would regularly come home with purchases from the
nearby second-hand shop.
5)One such acquisition was a magic lantern with several wooden
boxes of slides.

Dictation:
1)He practiced the authenticity he preached, doing all his own
stunts.
2)It’s possible there was never a change of heart, only of
expedience.
3)Individually, we tend to see and address things in parts.
4)But the forces shaping our lives exist now in ecologies defying
solutions.
5)Another form of waste is showing ads on “made for advertising”
sites.
Dictation:
1)Keeping the diary has been a different sort of casualty as politics
became difficult to ignore.
2)It was a smash hit, with every night the audience studded with
celebrities.
3)Less successful, earlier in the show, was a monologue on the
subject of corporal punishment.
4)Some have their fun actually burning down the world, others
write novels.
5)That books themselves are pregnant with the urge to burn down
the world would seem to be part of their appeal.

Dictation:
1)The authorities were much better at getting the message out, and
an army of responders were ready.
2)A pumping station meant to prevent flooding was itself flooded
and three pumps ruined.
3)I was skeptical that anyone doing field work would be able to
afford a mortgage.
4)Companies and governments can plan a hundred years ahead, but
it’s hard for individuals.
5)We’re providing a rather perverse incentive for people to ignore
planning policy.
Dictation:
1) There may be no more contentious issue to be tackled in this
book than the story of London’s origin.
2)It’s a story attractive to developers, legally required to pay for
archaeological rescue digs.
3)This winter, the prohibitive cost of gas means the stove might get
a bit more use.
4)In the past some contract researchers did nevertheless make
careers out of funded research.
5)The most significant contributions to think-tank debates are often
made by practitioners.

Dictation:
1) Many of her poems are incantations and permutations of names.
2)There was a lot of Pennsylvania shrewdness shining through the
mythic mist.
3)She exited the rounds of upper-middle-class suburban life.
4)She was attuned to the feel of things rather than what people do.
5)Her life was one of intense discipline amid sometimes
overwhelming psychic difficulty.
Dictation:
1)The blame wasn’t put on urban poverty but on ignorance on the
part of parents.
2)Motherhood is less a lived experience than a site of collective
imaginings.
3)As the bombs rain down she registers a contemporary scene
divested of enchantments.
4)There is a feeling of euphoric fluency in the poems of the war
years.
5)He had already begun to establish the mainly female network that
would fund his work.

Dictation:
1)It didn’t burden individuals with guilt or scare them with the
anger of a distant god.
2)The United Kingdom is experiencing levels of strike action not
seen in decades.
3)Public sector pay has increased at a lower rate than private sector
almost every year since 2011.
4)It is clearly unsustainable for the government to continue to
reduce public pay.
5)This growing disparity has led to increased vacancies in public
sector jobs.
Dictation:
1)Where the building once stood, there is a chaos of luxury
investment vehicles.
2)For some time now it has been a destination for dystopia tourists.
3)There have been dozens of plans for renovation of the power
station over the years.
4)The building itself has been turned into a shopping mall, with all
the usual middle-class chains.
5)The mall is divided into two distinct levels, as a result of the
building’s complicated history.

Dictation:
1)They bought seven thousand acres in the mid-1980s and
cultivated it for commercial farming.
2)Google itself instructs us: if a Florida realtor offers you a
property with a basement, run.
3)The barbarous story of how a swamp became cultivated for
agriculture provides the basis for a novel.
4)This version of a commune is little better than a concentration
camp.
5)Living on the plantation means buying an army of surplus tent,
blankets, utensils, and dishes.
Dictation:
1) They would always sit in the dark theater watching the names
scroll down the screen while the ushers trickled in.
2) My parents were practicing what now feels like a lost pastime, one
I happily joined in as I got older. 
3) Though I haven’t ever been on the screen, I was brought up in
pictures.
4) I learned about other crew assignments too, including the script
supervisor, who showed me her clipboard.
5) I imagine that for industry people reading the credits is akin to
looking through an old yearbook.

Dictation:
1) Racial resentment and sharp regional disparity in economic growth
is driving the class upheaval.
2) In terms of income, the respective classes have become mirror
images of each other.
3) Racial resentment does a much better job of explaining our current
political divisions than education polarization.
4) The unequal distribution of recovery after the economy crashed in
2008 has been profoundly overlooked.
5) One result of the changing composition of the parties has been a
shift in focus to social and cultural issues.
Dictation:
1) He agrees that challenging times have people longing for a deeper
kind of connection.
2) Not everyone’s going to be able to follow me around in the woods
for a few hours.
3) The cold season is prime time for black trumpet and candy cap
mushrooms in California.
4) After what seems like an endless cold, gray winter in the Pacific
Northwest, there is nothing like the explosion of flowering trees.
5) Understanding the intricacies of the ecosystem you’re exploring is
key for finding the mushrooms you desire.

Dictation:
1) Companies that receive the subsidies to build new plants will be
able to use some of the government money.
2) That shortage is particularly acute in some of the areas where
manufacturers are set to begin building new chip plants.
3) Childcare costs consume about 18 percent of a typical construction
or manufacturing worker’s salary. 
4) We need chip manufacturers, construction companies and unions
to work with us toward a national goal.
5) Some US American manufacturers have already turned to on-site
care facilities to help meet workers' needs.
Dictation:
1) The moves have exacerbated fears that there are not enough people
or institutional knowledge to solve Twitter’s problems.
2) In the past, Twitter prevented breakages from escalating by having
people around to diagnose and solve problems.
3) Now the platform is likely to be plagued by more glitches as it
takes workers longer to pinpoint issues.
4) In early February, a Twitter worker deleted data from an internal
service meant to prevent spam.
5) Twitter’s engineers took several hours to diagnose the problem and
restore the data stored with a backup.

Dictation:
1)The codes connect hundreds of millions of people in an instant
payment system that has revolutionized commerce.
2)Billions of mobile app transactions course each month through a
homegrown digital network.
3)With this network, India has shown on a previously unseen scale
how rapid technological innovation can be.
4)At its heart has been a robust campaign to deliver every citizen a
unique identification number.
5)The country could make a technological leap because it had little
legacy digital infrastructure in place.
Dictation:
1) Memphis has one of the highest crime rates in the country and is
one of the most racially segregated cities. 
2) He captured murals painted along the streets, blue skies framed by
pedestrian bridges and sunsets reflected in the wide expanse of the
Mississippi.
3) He would often swing his legs over an arm of the chair, sipping on
a large coffee with almond milk.
4) His photographs highlighted peaceful corners of the city that some
longtime residents said had faded into their periphery.
5) At his funeral, mourners viewed his images of sunsets and bridges
on screens in the church sanctuary.

Dictation:
1)He was thirty-five at the time and had dreams of being a social
media influencer, she recalled.
2)Until one day he sent her a link to his show, inviting her to listen
and share her thoughts. 
3) It wasn’t just the content of the man’s podcast, but that he had
one at all.
4)Many women have taken to social media to mock just that kind
of programming and the men who make it.
5)Some said they had come across romantic prospects who view
their profession as a potential red flag.
Dictation:
1)The geography alone resisted my sense of what a metropolis
should be.
2)The built environment is often rough and grainy, almost
deliberately antipretty.
3)Yet there’s so much of it, radiating from multiple cores, that the
amount worth walking is colossal.
4)Even with all the state’s problems, it still strikes me that to wind
up in California is a stroke of luck.
5)Amid all this a sense of low-key peace prevails, along with a
shared notion of tolerance.

Dictation:
1) Today our supposedly revolutionary advancements in artificial
intelligence are indeed cause for both concern and optimism.
2) They take huge amounts of data, search for patterns in it and
become increasingly proficient at generating statistically probable
outputs.
3) These programs have been hailed as the first glimmers on the
horizon of artificial general intelligence.
4) That day may come, but its dawn is not yet breaking, contrary to
what can be read in hyperbolic headlines.
5) The human mind is a surprisingly efficient and even elegant
system that operates with small amounts of information.
Dictation:
1)A major late-winter storm was on its way into the Northeast on
Monday, packing a mix of heavy, wet snow.
2)Strong winds could cause widespread power failures, disrupt
travel, and flood coastal communities.
3)Elsewhere, the wet, heavy snow could bring down tree branches
and power lines.
4)Widespread minor coastal flooding and beach erosion were also
possible, the Weather Service said.
5)Communities in higher elevations were expected to get the most
snow, with heavy rain and light snow.

Dictation:
1)It was chased out of Chicago by preservationists, only to become
the object of a bidding war.
2)Its arrival was jeered by some critics who saw it not as a civic
gift but a vanity project.
3)Its huge expanse of curving gray metal hovers over the landscape
like a low-flying spaceship.
4)It stands five stories high, with enough gallery space to fill one-
and-a-half football fields.
5)She led a visitor on a tour that, even after a full hour, did not
cover all the corners and crannies of the building.
Dictation:
1) At first he took on his disability with the same ingenuity that he
applied to maintaining his legendary lawn.
2) At the time, the contraption seemed emblematic of everything he
had stood for in his career as an inventor.
3) Newspapers ran eulogies recounting the heroic inventions he
brought into the world.
4) Each of these innovations offered a brilliant solution to an urgent
technological problem of the era.
5) But each turned out to have deadly secondary effects on a global
scale.

Dictation:
1)  The assessors concluded the experiences outlined in her résumé
had more than prepared her.
2) In making the rule, department officials sought to eliminate a
perceived unfair advantage.
3) The department has required them to identify as either a native
speaker or a heritage speaker.
4) It defines a native speaker as an applicant who has spoken the
language in question from earliest childhood and remains fluent.
5) It defines a heritage speaker as a student raised in a home where a
non-English language is spoken.
Dictation:
1)Our lives and our data are increasingly intertwined, almost
indistinguishable.
2)Such submission, in all senses of the word, can push our lives in
very particular and often troubling directions.
3)The claim that we are data can also be taken as a claim that we
live our lives through our data.
4)My claim is that your data has become something that is
increasingly inescapable.
5)The informational sides of ourselves clarify that we are
vulnerable.

Dictation:
1)Yet for all that drama, much of the oligarchs’ money was quietly
moved to safer havens.
2)Russian oligarchs have even evaded sanctions on the home turf
of one of the leading countries penalizing them.
3)The United States has become embroiled in a costly and
seemingly fruitless game.
4)This only enhances the international reputation those oligarchs
have cultivated as untouchable elites.
5)Punish the intermediaries, and the oligarchs lose access to many
offshore networks.
Dictation:
1. A treasured getaway for travelers in Japan is a retreat to one of
thousands of hot spring resorts.
2. Japan generates about 0.3 percent of its electricity from
geothermal energy, a squandered opportunity.
3. We can’t forcibly push a project forward without the proper
understanding.
4. The utility has been forced to give up on a number of geothermal
projects in past decades.
5. Geothermal plants are never going to be game-changers, but I
believe they can still play a role.

Dictation:
1)Police departments around the country have long used laws to
seize property believed to be associated with criminal activity.
2)Over the past decade, civil rights advocates in several states have
successfully pushed to make it harder for the police to seize
property.
3)The process for getting property back in the state can be
prohibitive for those who have little money.
4)Some of the 700 vehicles seized last year were taken from people
who were found guilty of serious criminal charges.
5)Other residents reported in interviews that they were compelled
to pay large fees to recover their vehicles.
Dictation:
1)  The video showed a man in a London taxi wearing an augmented
reality headset and calling his wife in San Francisco.
2) Some employees have defected from the project because of their
doubts about its potential.
3) For more than a decade, tech leaders have been hyping it as the
next wave of computing after the smartphone.
4) But the road to deliver augmented reality has been littered with
failures, false starts, and disappointments.
5) Some internal skeptics have questioned if the new device is a
solution in search of a problem.

Dictation:
1)  But believe us when we say his report, the culmination of decades
of scholarship, is incredibly important.
2) To make his complex review digestible, the film employs old
cartoons and some cursing.
3) That morning, the city’s bus operator announced that it would have
to suspend services because of financial difficulties.
4) The pandemic had hit it hard and the government hadn’t provided
subsidies that it had promised.
5) A few hours after posting its announcement, the company deleted
it, after it had made national headlines.
Dictation:
1) The advice that we take 10,000 steps a day is more a marketing
accident than based on science.
2) In that study, people who walked for about 8,000 steps a day were
half as likely to die prematurely from heart disease.
3) But the extra steps did not provide much additional protection
against dying young, either.
4) According to recent estimates, most adults in America, Canada and
other Western nations average fewer than 5,000 steps a day.
5) Most had slipped back to their baseline, taking about the same
number of steps now as at the study’s start.

Dictation:
1)  Traditional cucumbers didn’t like it much there, especially in the
summer. 
2) Answering that question has taken him time-traveling through
botanical and cultural history.
3) Many of them bear little resemblance in shape or flavor to the
generic supermarket model.
4) It turns out that cucumber doesn’t cover the range of eccentricities
expressed among everything labeled with that name.
5) Along the way, he has found cucumbers that will stand up to a
range of garden conditions.
Dictation:
1)  But recent research from the plant kingdom shows that a mouth
isn’t essential.
2) Stressed plants make audible sounds that can be heard many feet
away.
3) Plants were placed in wooden soundproof boxes with two
microphones pointing at their stems.
4) Researchers found that plants also made much more of a ruckus
when they were dehydrated.
5) The vexed vegetables didn’t air their grievances randomly but
rather made specific complaints.

Dictation:
1)  Body neutrality prioritizes the body’s function, and what the body
can do, rather than its appearance.
2) The premises behind body neutrality aren’t new, of course, and
plenty of people adhere to them without specifically trying.
3) She also places emphasis on movement as an intrinsic source of
pleasure, not a means for delayed gratifications like a cookie.
4) I operate from a space where exercise is fun and engaging, just
because it is.
5) Participants were more likely to be physically active on a regular
basis if it aligned with short-term objectives like relieving stress.
Dictation:
1)  Humans have run for hundreds of thousands of years, most
without the benefit of cushy, brightly colored footwear. 
2) But take a stroll around a sporting goods store and you’ll find a
dizzying array of options.
3) Some promise speed, others comfort and injury reduction, and
nearly all carry hefty price tags.
4) Traditional running sneakers are designed to blunt the impact of
hitting the ground and provide traction.
5) Running sneakers are made of fabric, foam, and rubber, but they’re
engineered to meet the specific demands of the sport.

Dictation:
1)  Most runners know that in order to get better, they need to train
the major muscle groups that are activated during a run.
2) When runners are not efficiently using their diaphragms during
exercise, they’re limiting how deeply they can inhale.
3) Other muscles in the chest, neck and shoulders also work to bring
in more air by pulling the chest up.
4) One way you can do it is to lie on your back with your hands on
your stomach and take deep breaths in.
5) The technique becomes more challenging to maintain as the length
or intensity of the exercise increases.
Dictation:
1)  Row upon row of computers were using enough electricity to
power about 6,500 homes.
2) The computers were performing trillions of calculations per
second, hunting for an elusive combination of numbers.
3) Then the state’s power grid operator ordered them shut off, under
an agreement that allowed it to do so.
4) Precisely how much electricity Bitcoin mines are using in America
and their effect on energy markets and the environment have been
unclear.
5) Their massive energy consumption combined with their ability to
shut off almost instantly allows some companies to save money.

Dictation:
1)  Many performers and attendees said part of the event’s appeal is
its unbridled enthusiasm. 
2) I would describe it as a bunch of fabulous people decked out in
their best ready to have a great time.
3) He hopes the event can retain its eccentricity as it grows.
4) Certain elements have remained the same, including the final act of
the show: a dance lesson.
5) She said she was most excited about seeing the dance
performances.
Dictation:
1)  She had once had what he wanted: flexible hours, no boss, and a
devoted audience rabid for her recommendations.
2) The co-worker pulled her aside that first morning, wanting to
impress upon her the stakes of that decision. 
3) The corporate gig, as a social media director for a tech platform,
was a revelation. 
4) The existence of the workshop indicates a new disillusionment on
the part of even the most prominent content creators.
5) For more than a decade, social media has carried with it the
implicit promise that a user with no discernible skill can become rich
and famous.