METU NEW ENGLISH PROFICIENCY EXAM CAREFUL READING PART SET 4
SADECE BİREYSEL KULLANIM İÇİNDİR
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Text I A Although its cradle is the sparsely wooded savannah, humankind has long looked to forests for food, fuel, timber and inspiration. Still a livelihood for 1.5bn people, forests maintain local and regional ecosystems and, for the other 6.2bn, provide a—fragile and creaking—buffer against climate change. Now droughts, wildfires and other human-induced changes are compounding the damage from chainsaws. In the tropics, which contain half of the world’s forest biomass, treecover loss has accelerated by two-thirds since 2015; if it were a country, the shrinkage would make the tropical rainforest the world’s third-biggest carbon-dioxide emitter, after China and America. B __________. It is not just because the Amazon contains 40% of Earth’s rainforests and protects 10-15% of the world’s terrestrial species. South America’s natural wonder may be dangerously close to the tipping-point beyond which its gradual transformation into something closer to steppe cannot be stopped or reversed, even if people lay down their axes. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, is speeding up the process—in the name, he claims, of development. The ecological collapse his policies may bring on would be felt most intensely within his country’s borders, which encircle 80% of the basin—but would go far beyond them, too. It must be averted. C. __________. Since the 1970s they have done so on an industrial scale. In the past 50 years Brazil has lost 17% of the forest’s original extent, more than the area of France, to road- and dam-building, logging, mining, soya bean farming and cattle ranching. After a seven-year government effort to slow the destruction, it picked up in 2013 because of weakened enforcement and an amnesty for past deforestation. Recession and political crisis further reduced the government’s ability to enforce the rules. Although congress and the courts have blocked some of Bolsonaro’s efforts to strip parts of the Amazon of their protected status, he has made it clear that rule-breakers have nothing to fear, despite the fact that he was elected to restore law and order. Because 70-80% of logging in the Amazon is illegal, the destruction has climbed to record levels. Since he took office in January, trees have been disappearing at a rate of over two Manhattans a week. D __________. As the forest shrinks, less recycling takes place. At a certain threshold, that causes more of the forest to dry up so that, over a matter of decades, the process feeds on itself. Climate change is bringing the threshold closer every year as the forest heats up. Mr Bolsonaro is pushing it towards the edge. Pessimists fear that the cycle of dreadful conditions may kick in when another 3-8% of the forest vanishes—which, under Mr Bolsonaro, could happen soon. There are hints the pessimists may be correct. In the past 15 years the Amazon has suffered three severe droughts. Fires are on the rise. E Brazil’s president dismisses such findings, as he does science more broadly. He accuses outsiders of hypocrisy—did rich countries not cut down their own forests?—and, sometimes, of using environmental dogma as a pretext to keep Brazil poor. “The Amazon is ours,” the president thundered recently. What happens in the Brazilian Amazon, he thinks, is Brazil’s business. Except it isn’t. A “dieback” would directly hurt the seven other countries with which Brazil shares the river basin. It would reduce the moisture channelled along the Andes as far south as Buenos Aires. If Brazil were damming a real river, not choking off an aerial one, downstream nations could consider it an act of war.
F Mr Bolsonaro’s other arguments are also flawed. Yes, the rich world has destroyed its forests. Brazil should not copy its mistakes, but learn from them instead as, say, France has, by reforesting while it still can. Paranoia about Western scheming is just that. The knowledge economy values the genetic information hidden in the forest more highly than land or dead trees. Even if it did not, deforestation is not a necessary price of development. Brazil’s output of soyabeans and beef rose between 2004 and 2012, when forest-clearing slowed by 80%. In fact, aside from the Amazon itself, Brazilian agriculture may be deforestation’s biggest victim. The drought of 2015 caused maize farmers in the central Brazilian state of Mato Grosso to lose a third of their harvest. G If there is a green shoot in Mr Bolsonaro’s scorched-earth tactics towards the rainforest, it is that they have made the Amazon’s troubles harder to ignore—and not just for outsiders. Brazil’s agriculture minister urged Mr Bolsonaro to stay in the Paris agreement. Unchecked deforestation could end up hurting Brazilian farmers if it leads to foreign boycotts of Brazilian farm goods. Ordinary Brazilians should press their president to reverse course. They have been blessed with a unique planetary heritage, whose value is essential and life-sustaining as much as it is commercial. Letting it perish would be a needless catastrophe. Adapted from: www.theeconomist.com
The first sentences of paragraphs B, C and D are taken out from the text. Match sentences a-e with the blanks. There are more sentences than you need. a) Humans have been chipping away at the Amazon rainforest since they settled there well over ten millennia ago b) The world ought to make clear to Mr Bolsonaro that it will not tolerate his vandalism c) Nowhere are the risks higher than in the Amazon basin d) The Amazon is unusual in that it recycles much of its own water e) As the vast Amazonian store of carbon burned, the world could heat up by as much as 0.1°C by 2100 1. Paragraph B _____ 2. Paragraph C _____ 3. Paragraph D _____ 4. Economic recession and political crisis are two of the reasons why __________. a) law enforcement against deforestation in the Amazonian area has been weakened b) Brazilian congress has blocked some of the President’s attempts to destroy the Amazonian forest c) Brazilian government has strengthened Amazon’s protected status 5. Which one of President Bolsonaro’s arguments does the writer accept to some extent? a) Western governments are using environmental beliefs as an excuse to keep Brazil poor. b) Developed countries, themselves, are guilty of destroying their own forests.
c) If forest clearing slows down, agricultural output will slow down too. 6. Which one of the following does the writer see as a positive outcome of President Bolsonaro’s strategies? a) Life-sustaining value of the Amazonian forest will be better understood. b) Brazilian farmers will be penalized for the harms they have been causing through deforestation. c) There will be internal and external pressures on the President to change his course of action.
Text II A How did Rembrandt die? Considering that he is one of the most famous names in art history, it might come as a surprise that we don’t know. He was 63 at the time, but scholars say there is no record of any illness. The poets might say he died of grief, about a year after the death of his only surviving son, Titus. Although Rembrandt enjoyed worldwide fame in his lifetime, in the end he spent far beyond his means, filed for bankruptcy and was living on a subsistence wage. He was buried in a rented, unmarked grave. Later, his remains were dug up and destroyed, and there is no lasting marker of his resting place. B Let’s take a moment to consider Rembrandt’s death because it took place 350 years ago this year, in 1669. Museums across the globe, from Amsterdam to the Persian Gulf, are staging exhibitions to commemorate his extraordinary artistic legacy and a life that was far from a masterpiece. With all this renewed focus on this painter, engraver, printmaker, designer, lover, fighter, genius and debtor, it’s fair to ask: who is Rembrandt now? How do we interpret the life and work of the Dutch Golden Age master who knew great fame but also fell out of fashion in his own lifetime, and who has been resurrected again and again by different generations of art lovers who found new meaning in his work? C “Very few people know the story of Rembrandt’s life,” says Taco Dibbits, director of the Rijksmuseum, the national museum of the Netherlands, which is hosting the celebration’s centrepiece exhibition, “All the Rembrandts”, through 10 June. “Every generation has its own Rembrandt. Eighty years ago people loved Rembrandt as the old man of the soul, the lonely man reaching the highest point in art,” he says. “Now we think he’s more or less a rebel, who always invented himself anew, who always changed his way of doing things. He struggled and fought against himself and also against the standards of his time.” Other exhibitions across the globe span his career, in smaller bites. Thomas Kaplan, an American businessman who owns 17 Rembrandts as part of his Leiden Collection, said in an interview that he saw Rembrandt as “the universal artist” who “unleashed the freedom in other artists to become expressionists, to become cubists, to become whatever they wanted to be”, as well as “to show beauty through their own eyes, even if that beauty didn’t conform to society’s conventions”. D Until the 17th century, most European artists, working in the Italian Renaissance tradition, believed that the job of the artist was not just to imitate nature but to draw out the most beautiful aspects of any subject and improve on them, Bicker, Rembrandt’s biographer, says. “One of the reasons he was accused of breaking the rules of art was that he refused to idealise,” he says.
“Instead of painting or making a print of a beautiful young woman, he would use an ordinary woman, or show an old woman with a lot of wrinkles or a lot of cellulite.” E Gregor Weber, who leads the department of fine and decorative arts at the Rijksmuseum, shares that view. Rembrandt “approached the sitter very closely”, he explains, “and that is the reason that you feel that the man or woman depicted is close to you; it feels like he’s made them for you.” That’s not just true of the portraits, Weber continues: “If you look at his Bible scenes you see that he’s doing the same thing: depicting Christ and his disciples as normal people from the neighbourhood. You have the feeling that he’s an artist who speaks to you personally.”Dibbits, the museum’s director, says: “Rembrandt is not about impressing; he’s about making you feel, making you live that moment. That’s a completely different type of rhetorical approach than we were used to from earlier painters. He doesn’t monumentalise it; he makes the story internal and makes you feel it. His gods are people in the end.” F If Rembrandt brought painting back down to Earth, it may have been because his origins were relatively humble. He was the fifth son of 10 children born to a Leiden miller. The eldest son was to inherit the mill, and Rembrandt was apprenticed to a painter at age 15 and recognised as a prodigy by one of the Netherlands’ most powerful art brokers, Constantijn Huygens. In the winter of 1631, at 26, he moved to Amsterdam to run a painting studio. He married his art dealer’s cousin, Saskia van Uylenburgh, a wealthy woman, and together they had four children, only one of whom would survive infancy. After his son Titus was born, Saskia became ill and died months after giving birth; he delivered his largest and best-known work, “The Night Watch,” just a month later. Knowing of his fondness for women and his extravagance with money, Saskia had demanded that he could inherit her fortune only if he never married again. His two subsequent relationships – one with Geertje Dircx, his son’s nanny, and Hendrickje Stoffels, mother of his daughter, Cornelia, both ended tragically. G “A lot of people still see Rembrandt as a genius, which of course he was, but one of the things we see in our museum is that people want to know who he was as a person,” says Lidewij de Koekkoek, director of the Rembrandt House Museum. “People feel they can relate to him because he had his ups and downs in life and he wasn’t the easiest person to get along with.”Dibbits said that what he feels people will understand through all of this year’s exhibitions is that Rembrandt, throughout his life, had “a complete obsession with depicting the world around him as it is”. “He gets better at it and he gets closer to it as he gets older,” he adds. “That’s why we find his late portraits so compelling: it’s because we feel as if we’re looking straight into the person. His work is a tribute to humanity and to us as human beings.” Adapted from: www.theindependent.com
7. What is the main idea of paragraph A? a) Despite being famous, Rembrandt struggled with poverty all his life. b) In contrast to the fame he enjoyed in his lifetime, Rembrandt died as a poor and ordinary man. c) Having made lots of enemies throughout his life, Rembrandt’s remains and grave were destroyed several times.
8. The questions asked by the writer in paragraph B are related to the__________. a) reason why Rembrandt lost his popularity during his lifetime b) kind of artistic talent that Rembrandt had c) significance of Rembrandt’s work for new generations 9. According to Thomas Kaplan, Rembrandt’s importance lies in the fact that he __________. a) started the expressionist and then the cubist movements b) could highlight the most beautiful aspects of his subjects c) refused to follow the well-established principles of his time 10. Which one of the following interpretations do experts emphasize in paragraphs D and E? a) Rembrandt preferred to draw ordinary people to depicting Chris and other biblical scenes. b) Both in his drawing of normal people and in his religious scenes, Rembrandt represented people as they really are. c) When telling religious stories from Bible, Rembrandt used a different technique from the one he used in his portraits. 11. The writer thinks that one reason why Rembrandt had a realistic approach to painting may be that __________. a) he came from an ordinary family b) his wife had a tragic death c) he had problematic relations with women 12. What can we infer from the art experts’ analysis of Rembrandt’s work? a) You can get the feelings of the people in the paintings as if they were alive. b) People visiting the exhibitions don’t understand what makes Rembrandt a genius. c) The ups and downs in Rembrandt’s private life affected his work negatively.
Text III A Before we go further, I’d like to clear something up: Wellness is not the same as medicine. Medicine is the science of reducing death and disease, and increasing long and healthy lives. Wellness used to mean a blend of health and happiness. Something that made you feel good or brought joy and was not medically harmful — perhaps a massage or a walk along the beach. But it has become a false antidote to the fear of modern life and death. The wellness industry takes medical terminology, such as “inflammation” or “free radicals,” and rises it up to the point of
incomprehension. The resulting product is a D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) medicine for longevity that comes with a confidence that science can only aim to achieve. B Let’s take the trend of adding a pinch of activated charcoal to your food or drink. While the black color is strikingly unexpected and appealing, it’s sold as a supposed “detox.” Guess what? It has the same efficacy as a spell from the local witch. Maybe it’s a matter of aesthetics. Wellness potions in beautiful jars with untested ingredients of unknown purity are practically packaged for Instagram. I also want to clear up what toxins actually are: harmful substances produced by some plants, animals and bacteria (and, for them, charcoal is no cure). “Toxins,” as defined by the dealers of these dubious cures, are the stinky discharge of modern life that supposedly roam our bodies, causing belly bloat and brain fog. There are also sacred acts and rituals to follow, which are mostly ancient cleansing rituals with a modern variation supplements, useless products and scientifically unsupported tests. C The dietary supplements that are the backbone of wellness make up a $30 billion a year business despite studies showing they have no value for longevity (only a few vitamins have proven medical benefits, like folic acid before and during pregnancy and vitamin D for older people at risk of falling). Modern medicine wants you to get your micronutrients from your diet, which is inarguably the most natural source. Yet the wellness-industrial complex has managed to distort that narrative and make supplements a necessary tool for nonsensical practices, such as boosting the immune system or fighting the war on inflammation. The resulting fluorescent yellow urine from multivitamins may provide a false sense of usefulness, but it’s a fool’s gold. D So what’s the harm of spending money on charcoal for non-existent toxins or vitamins for expensive urine or grounding bedsheets to better connect you with the earth’s electrons? Here’s what: the placebo effect or “trying something natural” can lead people with serious illnesses to postpone effective medical care. Every doctor I know has more than one story about a patient who died because they chose to try to alkalinize their blood or gambled on intravenous vitamins instead of getting cancer care. Data is emerging that cancer patients who opt for alternative medical practices, many promoted by companies that sell products of questionable value, are more likely to die. E Promoting the kind of product that turns the wheels of the wellness-industrial complex requires a constant stream of fear and misinformation. Look closer at most wellness sites and at many of their physician partners, and you’ll find an overabundance of medical conspiracy theories: Vaccines and autism, the dangers of water fluoridation, bras and breast cancer, cellphones and brain cancer. Most people think they will be immune to these marginal ideas, but science says otherwise. We all mistake repetition for accuracy, a phenomenon called the illusory truth effect, and knowledge about the subject matter doesn’t necessarily protect you. Even a single exposure to information that sounds like it could be acceptable can increase the perception of accuracy. Belief in medical conspiracy theories, such as the idea that the pharmaceutical industry is suppressing “natural” cures, increases the likelihood that a person will take dietary supplements. So to keep selling supplements and the other revenue generating merchandise, you can’t just spark fear. You must constantly stoke its flames. F Why do so many people turn to wellness? There are symptoms that I believe have been with us since the beginning of time, so common that they are likely part of the human experience:
fatigue, bloat, low libido, episodic pain, loss of strength. When medicine can only offer a therapy, not a cure, or when doctors give undesired answers it isn’t hard to see how the intoxicating confidence and theatre of wellness could appear attractive. G Medical illness is also scary. Who wouldn’t want to take vitamins instead of chemotherapy? I admit that doctors can learn something from wellness. It’s clear that some people are looking for healers, so we must find ways to serve that need that are medically ethical. We doctors can do more to provide factual information about hazardous substances, such as carcinogens and endocrine disrupting chemicals, in products and the environment from medically inspected sites with no products to sell, such as the National Cancer Institute and the Endocrine Society. H Many people — women especially — have long been marginalized and dismissed by medicine, but the answer does not lie in predatory conspiracy theories, a false religion or expensive magic. In its current form, wellness isn’t filling in the gaps left by medicine. It’s exploiting them. Adapted from www.newyorktimes.com
13. The writer points out that the wellness industry __________. a) becomes more effective when combined with medical science b) helps in clarifying certain medical terminology c) is wrong in trying to function like a medical authority 14. The writer criticizes the way “toxins” are presented as __________. a) more harmful than they really are b) a kind of body excretion with a bad smell c) originating from plants, animals and bacteria 15. What is the writer’s opinion of the value of dietary supplements? a) They are useful when boosting the immune system and fighting inflammation. b) Except for a few vitamin supplements, they have no medicinal benefits. c) They should be used when you cannot get enough nutrients from your diet.
16. What does the writer think about the tendency to follow a cure consisting of wellness products? a) Successful combination of natural products with traditional treatment gives good results. b) There is a danger of delaying an effective medical care in case of serious illness. c) Alternative wellness products that are tested before work better. 17. The desired effect of constantly creating medical conspiracy theories is to __________.
a) get people to perceive the repeated inaccurate information as correct b) prevent people from reaching real knowledge about the subject matter c) make people aware of what the pharmaceutical industry is hiding 18. Why does wellness attract people as an easier solution to health issues? a) It gives the illusion that people will be cured in a natural way. b) People believe that wellness is a continuation of religious practices. c) Medical sites are not trusted because of lack of inspection.
Text IV A The moment when, 50 years ago, Neil Armstrong planted his foot on the surface of the Moon inspired awe, pride and wonder around the world. This newspaper argued that “man, from this day on, can go wheresoever in the universe his mind wills and his ingenuity contrives…to the planets, sooner rather than later, man is now certain to go.” But no. The Moon landing was an aberration, a goal achieved not as an end in itself but as a means of signalling America’s extraordinary capabilities. That point, once made, required no remaking. Only 571 people have been into orbit; and since 1972 no one has ventured much farther into space than Des Moines is from Chicago. B The next 50 years will look very different. Falling costs, new technologies, Chinese and Indian ambitions, and a new generation of entrepreneurs promise a bold era of space development. It will almost certainly involve tourism for the rich and better communications networks for all; in the long run it might involve mineral exploitation and even mass transportation. Space will become ever more like an extension of Earth—an arena for firms and private individuals, not just governments. But for this promise to be fulfilled the world needs to create a system of laws to govern the heavens—both in peacetime and, should it come to that, in war. C The development of space thus far has been focused on facilitating activity down below— mainly satellite communications for broadcasting and navigation. Now two things are changing. First, geopolitics is fuelling a new push to send humans beyond the shallows of low-Earth orbit. China plans to land people on the Moon by 2035. President Donald Trump’s administration wants Americans to be back there by 2024.__________. Apollo cost hundreds of billions of dollars (in today’s money). Now tens of billions are the ticket price. D Second, the private sector has come of age. Between 1958 and 2009 almost all of the spending in space was by state agencies, mainly NASA and the Pentagon. In the past decade private investment has risen to an annual average of $2bn a year, or 15% of the total, and it is set to increase further. SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket firm, made 21 successful satellite launches last year and is valued at $33bn. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, sells off $1bn-worth of his shares in the company each year to pay for Blue Origin, a space venture. Virgin Galactic plans to go public this year at a valuation of $1.5bn. As well as capital and ideas, the private sector provides much greater efficiency. According to NASA, developing SpaceX’s Falcon rockets would have cost the agency $4bn; it cost SpaceX a tenth of that.
E Two new commercial models exist or are within reach: the big business of launching and maintaining swarms of communications satellites in low orbits and the niche one of tourism for the rich. The coming year will almost certainly see Virgin and Blue Origin flying passengers on sub-orbital excursions that offer the thrill of weightlessness and a view of the curved edge of Earth against the black sky of space. Virgin claims it might carry almost 1,000 wealthy adventurers a year by 2022. SpaceX is developing a reusable “Starship” larger and much more capable than its Falcons. Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese fashion mogul, has made a down-payment for a Starship trip around the Moon; he intends to go with a crew of artists as early as 2023. F At a time when Earth faces grim news on climate change, slow growth and tense politics, space might seem to offer a surprising reason for optimism. But it is not a cure-all magic potion. And to realise its promise, a big problem has to be resolved and a dangerous risk avoided. The big problem is developing the rule of law. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 declares space to be “the province of all mankind” and forbids claims of sovereignty. That leaves lots of room for interpretation. America says private firms can develop space-based resources; international law is ambiguous. Who would have the best claim to use the ice at the poles of the Moon for life support? Should Martian settlers be allowed to do what they like to the environment? Who is legally responsible for satellite collisions? Space is already crowded—over 2,000 satellites are in orbit and NASA tracks over 500,000 individual pieces of debris racing at velocities of over 27,000km an hour. G Such uncertainties magnify the dangerous risk: the use of force in space. America’s unparalleled ability to project force on Earth depends on its extensive array of satellites. Other nations, knowing this, have built anti-satellite weapons, as America has itself. And military activity in space has no well-tested protocols or rules of engagement. America, China and India are rapidly increasing their destructive capabilities: blinding military satellites with lasers, jamming their signals to Earth or even blowing them up, causing debris to scatter across the cosmos. They are also turning their armed forces spaceward. Mr Trump plans to set up a Space Force, the first new branch of the armed forces since the air force was created in 1947. On the eve of the annual Bastille Day military parade on July 14th Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, also announced the formation of a new space command. H It is a mistake to promote space as a romanticised Wild West, an anarchic frontier where humanity can throw off its shackles and rediscover its destiny. For space to fulfil its promise governance is required. At a time when the world cannot agree on rules for the terrestrial trade of steel bars and soyabeans that may seem like a big demand. But without it the potential of all that lies beyond Earth will at best wait another 50 years to be fulfilled. At worst space could add to Earth’s problems. Adapted from www.theeconomist.com 19. The main idea the writer emphasizes in paragraph A is that Armstrong’s Moon landing 50 years ago __________. a) had not achieved its initial goal b) has continued to make the Americans feel proud c) was an abnormality without any further development
20. Which one of the following fits in the blank in paragraph C? a) Elon Musk hopes to send settlers to Mars. b) Falling costs make this showing off more affordable than before. c) The annual revenues of the space industry can double to $800bn by 2030 21. What conclusion can we draw about space industry from the examples given in paragraphs D and E? a) Private firms are contributing to the extension the industry’s capacity. b) Space exploration is now open to all kinds of adventurers, whether rich or poor. c) Space travel still requires state agencies’ financial support. 22. What kind of trips are being planned for the space tourists of the coming years? a) Excursions around the Earth. b) Landing on the Moon. c) Traveling to Mars. 23. The questions raised by the writer in paragraph F point at the necessity to in space. a) clean up the environment b) limit the American influence c) improve the rule of law 24. What does “it” refer to in paragraph H? a) governance b) trade c) demand
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Answer Key for Careful Reading Set 4
1. c 2. a 3. d 4. a 5. b 6. c 7. b 8. c 9. c 10. b 11. a 12. a 13. c 14. b 15. b 16. b 17. a 18. a 19. c 20. b 21. a 22. a 23. c 24. a