August 8, 2011

Week 4: Reading exercises

The study of this week was reading which I learnt from www.usingenglish.com. I chose the exercises of Cambridge ESOL.

Certificate in Advanced English (CAE) - 6 Exercises

Exam Board: Cambridge ESOL
Description: An advanced exam - if you can communicate with confidence in English for work or study purposes, this is the exam for you.

My scores: 6/6  4/5  5/5  5/6  13/15

 

English as a National Foreign Language

India has two national languages for central administrative purposes: Hindi and English. Hindi is the national, official, and main link language of India. English is an associate official language. The Indian Constitution also officially approves twenty-two regional languages for official purposes.

Dozens of distinctly different regional languages are spoken in India, which share many characteristics such as grammatical structure and vocabulary. Apart from these languages, Hindi is used for communication in India. The homeland of Hindi is mainly in the north of India, but it is spoken and widely understood in all urban centers of India. In the southern states of India, where people speak many different languages that are not much related to Hindi, there is more resistance to Hindi, which has allowed English to remain a lingua franca to a greater degree.

Since the early 1600s, the English language has had a toehold on the Indian subcontinent, when the East India Company established settlements in Chennai, Kolkata, and Mumbai, formerly Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay respectively. The historical background of India is never far away from everyday usage of English. India has had a longer exposure to English than any other country which uses it as a second language, its distinctive words, idioms, grammar and rhetoric spreading gradually to affect all places, habits and culture.

In India, English serves two purposes. First, it provides a linguistic tool for the administrative cohesiveness of the country, causing people who speak different languages to become united. Secondly, it serves as a language of wider communication, including a large variety of different people covering a vast area. It overlaps with local languages in certain spheres of influence and in public domains.

Generally, English is used among Indians as a ‘link’ language and it is the first language for many well-educated Indians. It is also the second language for many who speak more than one language in India. The English language is a tie that helps bind the many segments of our society together. Also, it is a linguistic bridge between the major countries of the world and India.

English has special national status in India. It has a special place in the parliament, judiciary, broadcasting, journalism, and in the education system. One can see a Hindi-speaking teacher giving their students instructions during an educational tour about where to meet and when their bus would leave, but all in English. It means that the language permeates daily life. It is unavoidable and is always expected, especially in the cities.

The importance of the ability to speak or write English has recently increased significantly because English has become the de facto standard. Learning English language has become popular for business, commerce and cultural reasons and especially for internet communications throughout the world. English is a language that has become a standard not because it has been approved by any ‘standards’ organization but because it is widely used by many information and technology industries and recognized as being standard. The call centre phenomenon has stimulated a huge expansion of internet-related activity, establishing the future of India as a cyber-technological super-power. Modern communications, videos, journals and newspapers on the internet use English and have made ‘knowing English’ indispensable.

The prevailing view seems to be that unless students learn English, they can only work in limited jobs. Those who do not have basic knowledge of English cannot obtain good quality jobs. They cannot communicate efficiently with others, and cannot have the benefit of India’s rich social and cultural life. Men and women who cannot comprehend and interpret instructions in English, even if educated, are unemployable. They cannot help with their children’s school homework everyday or decide their revenue options of the future.
A positive attitude to English as a national language is essential to the integration of people into Indian society. There would appear to be virtually no disagreement in the community about the importance of English language skills. Using English you will become a citizen of the world almost naturally. English plays a dominant role in the media. It has been used as a medium for inter-state communication and broadcasting both before and since India’s independence. India is, without a doubt, committed to English as a national language. The impact of English is not only continuing but increasing.


Questions

Q1 - According to the writer, the Indian constitution recognises



Q2 - English's status as a lingua franca is helped by



Q3 - In paragraph 3, 'toehold' means that English



Q4 - Hindi-speaking teachers



Q5 - In paragraph eight, it says 'the prevailing view', which suggests that



Q6 - English in India







The Great Wall of China

Walls and wall building have played a very important role in Chinese culture. These people, from the dim mists of prehistory have been wall-conscious; from the Neolithic period – when ramparts of pounded earth were used - to the Communist Revolution, walls were an essential part of any village. Not only towns and villages; the houses and the temples within them were somehow walled, and the houses also had no windows overlooking the street, thus giving the feeling of wandering around a huge maze. The name for “city” in Chinese (ch’eng) means wall, and over these walled cities, villages, houses and temples presides the god of walls and mounts, whose duties were, and still are, to protect and be responsible for the welfare of the inhabitants. Thus a great and extremely laborious task such as constructing a wall, which was supposed to run throughout the country, must not have seemed such an absurdity.
However, it is indeed a common mistake to perceive the Great Wall as a single architectural structure, and it would also be erroneous to assume that it was built during a single dynasty. For the building of the wall spanned the various dynasties, and each of these dynasties somehow contributed to the refurbishing and the construction of a wall, whose foundations had been laid many centuries ago. It was during the fourth and third century B.C. that each warring state started building walls to protect their kingdoms, both against one another and against the northern nomads. Especially three of these states: the Ch’in, the Chao and the Yen, corresponding respectively to the modern provinces of Shensi, Shanzi and Hopei, over and above building walls that surrounded their kingdoms, also laid the foundations on which Ch’in Shih Huang Di would build his first continuous Great Wall.
The role that the Great Wall played in the growth of Chinese economy was an important one. Throughout the centuries many settlements were established along the new border. The garrison troops were instructed to reclaim wasteland and to plant crops on it, roads and canals were built, to mention just a few of the works carried out. All these undertakings greatly helped to increase the country’s trade and cultural exchanges with many remote areas and also with the southern, central and western parts of Asia – the formation of the Silk Route. Builders, garrisons, artisans, farmers and peasants left behind a trail of objects, including inscribed tablets, household articles, and written work, which have become extremely valuable archaeological evidence to the study of defence institutions of the Great Wall and the everyday life of these people who lived and died along the wall. 

Questions

Q1 - Chinese cities resembled a maze



Q2 - Constructing a wall that ran the length of the country



Q3 - The Great Wall of China



Q4 - Crops were planted



Q5 - The Great Wall




 

Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko, one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century, was born in Daugavpils, Latvia in 1903. His father emigrated to the United States, afraid that his sons would be drafted into the Czarist army. Mark stayed in Russia with his mother and older sister; they joined the family later, arriving in the winter of 1913, after a 12-day voyage.
Mark moved to New York in the autumn of 1923 and found employment in the garment trade and took up residence on the Upper West Side. It was while he was visiting someone at the Art Students League that he saw students sketching a nude model. According to him, this was the start of his life as an artist. He was twenty years old and had taken some art lessons at school, so his initial experience was far from an immediate calling.
In 1936, Mark Rothko began writing a book, which he never completed, about the similarities in the children's art and the work of modern painters. The work of modernists, which was influenced by primitive art, could, according to him, be compared to that of children in that "child art transforms itself into primitivism, which is only the child producing a mimicry of himself." In this same work, he said that "the fact that one usually begins with drawing is already academic. We start with colour."
It was not long before his multiforms developed into the style he is remembered for; in 1949 Rothko exhibited these new works at the Betty Parsons Gallery. For critic Harold Rosenberg, the paintings were a revelation. Rothko had, after painting his first multiform, secluded himself to his home in East Hampton on Long Island, only inviting a very few people, including Rosenberg, to view the new paintings. The discovery of his definitive form came at a period of great grief; his mother Kate died in October 1948 and it was at some point during that winter that Rothko chanced upon the striking symmetrical rectangular blocks of two to three opposing or contrasting, yet complementary colours. As part of this new uniformity of artistic vision, his paintings and drawings no longer had individual titles; from this point on they were simply untitled, numbered or dated.  However, to assist in distinguishing one work from another, dealers would sometimes add the primary colours to the name. Additionally, for the next few years, Rothko painted in oil only on large vertical canvasses. This was done to overwhelm the viewer, or, in his words, to make the viewer feel enveloped within the picture.
On February 25, 1970, Oliver Steindecker, Rothko’s assistant, found him in his kitchen, lying on the floor in front of the sink, covered in blood. His arms had been cut open with a razor. The emergency doctor arrived on the scene minutes later to pronounce him dead as the result of suicide; it was discovered during the autopsy that he had also overdosed on anti-depressants. He was just 66 years old.

Questions

Q1 - Mark Rothko emigrated to the United States



Q2 - Rothko wanted to be an artist



Q3 - Rothko thought that modern art



Q4 - Rothko's distinctive style



Q5 - Who named paintings by their colours?







Dirty Britain

Before the grass has thickened on the roadside verges and leaves have started growing on the trees is a perfect time to look around and see just how dirty Britain has become. The pavements are stained with chewing gum that has been spat out and the gutters are full of discarded fast food cartons. Years ago I remember travelling abroad and being saddened by the plastic bags, discarded bottles and soiled nappies at the edge of every road. Nowadays, Britain seems to look at least as bad. What has
gone wrong?
The problem is that the rubbish created by our increasingly mobile lives lasts a lot longer than before. If it is not cleared up and properly thrown away, it stays in the undergrowth for years; a semi-permanent reminder of what a tatty little country we have now.

Firstly, it is estimated that 10 billion plastic bags have been given to shoppers. These will take anything from 100 to 1,000 years to rot. However, it is not as if there is no solution to this. A few years ago, the Irish government introduced a tax on non-recyclable carrier bags and in three months reduced their use by 90%. When he was a minister, Michael Meacher attempted to introduce a similar arrangement in Britain. The plastics industry protested, of course. However, they need not have bothered; the idea was killed before it could draw breath, leaving supermarkets free to give away plastic bags.

What is clearly necessary right now is some sort of combined initiative, both individual and collective, before it is too late. The alternative is to continue sliding downhill until we have a country that looks like a vast municipal rubbish tip. We may well be at the tipping point. Yet we know that people respond to their environment. If things around them are clean and tidy, people behave cleanly and tidily. If they are surrounded by squalor, they behave squalidly. Now, much of Britain looks pretty squalid. What will it look like in five years?


Questions

Q1 - The writer says that it is a good time to see Britain before the trees have leaves because



Q2 - According to the writer, things used to be



Q3 - For the writer, the problem is that



Q4 - Michael Meacher



Q5 - The writer thinks



Q6 - The writer thinks that





HIV Breakthrough

Scientists believe that they have made a 1) __________ breakthrough in fighting HIV- they have shown what happens when an infection-fighting antibody attacks a 2) __________ in HIV's 3) __________ defences.  Finding a vaccine against HIV has been very difficult because the proteins on the surface of the virus are continually mutating, but they have shown an antibody, called b12, attacking a weak spot of the virus where the protein is 4) __________.  The virus is able to 5) __________ rapidly to avoid 6) __________ by the immune system, and is also covered in sugary molecules which block access by antibodies.  7) __________, certain parts of the virus must remain 8) __________ unchanged so that it can catch hold of and enter human cells.  One protein that sticks out from the surface of the virus and binds to receptors on host cells is one such region, which makes it a target for vaccine development.
Previous analyses of the 9) __________ of people that have been able to keep HIV from developing into AIDS for long periods of time 10) __________ revealed a 11) __________ group of antibodies - including b12 - that seem to fight HIV with some degree of 12) __________.  The latest study showed how the antibody and 13) __________ protein interact.  Scientists hope that revealing the 14) __________ of this bond in such 15) __________ detail will provide clues about how best to attack HIV.


Questions

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Gender bias and poverty

1) __________ between men and women results in poorer health for children and greater 2) __________ for the family, 3) __________ to a new study. The UN agency Unicef found that in places where women are 4) __________ from family decisions, children are more likely to suffer from 5) __________. There would be 13 million 6) __________ malnourished children in South Asia if women had an equal say in the family, Unicef said.
Unicef 7) __________ family decision-making in 30 countries 8) __________ the world. Their chief finding is that equality between men and women is vital to 9) __________ poverty and improving health, especially that of children, in developing countries. The conclusions are contained in the agency's latest report. This report 10) __________ to a greater 11) __________ of opportunities for girls and women in education and work which contributes to disempowerment and poverty. Where men control the household, less money is spent on health care and food for the family, which 12) __________ in poorer health for the children.
An increase in 13) __________ and income-earning opportunities for women would increase their 14) __________ power, the report said. For example, the agency found that 15) __________ has the greater share of household income and assets decides whether those resources will be used for family needs. 

Questions

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