ACA FLEX Reading 18-9

It is shocking to note that the majority of our schools do not even have the buildings. The classes are taken under the trees. These schools cannot afford the luxury of games. Sports activities in are nonexistent as the schools and colleges do not have infrastructure to give students the proper training. The hockey stick is present but the ball absent; the football is in front of us but without air. Sports generate sportsman spirit in the child, the ability to take decisions according to the situations and to struggle in situations that do not favor them.

• ASports and games generate a feeling of competition in the child and strengthen it.
• BThe schools lack sports infrastructure.
• CThe school education often fails to cover an important aspect of child education.
• DThe school curriculums need to be revisited to include sports as an important part.

Gas emission of Australia: Every day millions of lights and computers are left on in deserted offices, apartments and houses. Environmental activists say that simply switching them off could cut Sydney's greenhouse gas emissions by five percent over the next year. Per capita, Australia is one of the world's largest producers of carbon dioxide and other gases that many scientists believe are helping to warm the Earth's atmosphere, causing climate upset. A long-standing drought and serious water shortages in Australia have focused much attention on climate change. Some experts warn higher temperatures could leave this nation of 20 million people at the mercy of more severe droughts and devastating tropical cyclones.

• AGas emissions
• BEnvironmental activists
• CCarbon dioxide
• DDrought

Break out the binoculars and telescopes on Saturday, May 19th. Because it's the first International Sidewalk Astronomy Night. "Sidewalk Astronomers" was founded in San Francisco in 1968, when a lot of people were seeing stars, and not just at night. The group's goal is to ________ (3) more people to the beauty and wonder of celestial objects with good viewing equipment and to provide ________ (4) about what the eyewitnesses are actually looking at. The most ________ (5) viewed objects are the moon; Jupiter, whose major moons are visible with good binocs; and Saturn. I once trained a cheap telescope on Saturn and some friends were so amazed at the site of the rings they seriously looked at the other end of the scope to see if I had ________ (6) it. Sidewalk Astronomy Night is indeed an international event, with dozens of public viewing sites from Beijing to the corner of 81st Street and Central Park West in Manhattan. For more info and to find a site near you, just go to the official website. And if there's no ________ (7) site near you, feel free to go outside and look at the stars anyway.

Clones of an Eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides) in the Bronx and other city spots grew to double the biomass of clones ________ (8) outside small towns upstate or on Long Island, says Jillian Gregg, now of the Environmental Protection Agency's western-ecology division in Corvallis, Ore. The growth gap comes from ozone damage, she and her New York colleagues report. Ozone chemists have known that concentrations may spike skyscraper high in city air, but during a full 24 hours, rural trees actually get a higher cumulative ozone exposure from urban pollution that ________ (9) in and lingers. A series of new experiments now shows that this hang-around ozone is the ________ (10) factor in tree growth, the researchers say in the July 10 Nature. "This study has profound importance in showing us most vividly that rural areas ________ (11) the price for urban pollution," says Stephen P. Long of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "This work should be a wake-up call," he adds.

Those of you who’ve never heard the term neo-Latin, may be forgiven for thinking it’s a new South American dance craze. If you’re ________ (12) when I tell you it has something to do with the language of Romans, take heart, over the years many classes who have ________ (13) they are not really sure what it is either. Some have assumed that they are so-called ‘Late-Latin’, written at the end of the Roman Empire. Others have supposed it must have something to do with the middle ages. Or perhaps it’s that ________ (14) -Latin which my five and seven-year-old boys seem to have ________ (15) from the Harry Potter books, useful for spells and curses that they zip one another with makeshift paper ash ones. No, in fact, neo-Latin is more or less the same as the Latin that was written in the ________ (16) world, classical Latin. So, what’s so new about it?

Over the past 600 years, English has grown from a language of few speakers to become the dominant language of international communication. English as we know it today emerged around 1350, after having incorporated many elements of French that were introduced following the Norman invasion of 1030. Until the 1600s, English was, for the most part, spoken only in England and had not extended even as far as Wales, Scotland, or Ireland. However, during the course of the next two centuries, English began to spread around the globe as a result of exploration, trade (including slave trade), colonization, and missionary work. Thus, small enclaves of English speakers became established and grew in various parts of the world. As these communities proliferated, English gradually became the primary language of international business, banking, and diplomacy. Currently, about 80 percent of the information stored on computer systems worldwide is in English. Two-thirds of the world's science writing is in English, and English is the main language of technology, advertising, media, international airports, and air traffic controllers. Today there are more than 700 million English users in the world, and over half of these are non-native speakers, constituting the largest number of non-native users than any other language in the world.

• AToday’s English language emerged as a result of Norman invasion of England
• BNearly half of the world’s population use English as their language
• CEnglish spread rapidly throughout the world instantly
• DExploration was one of the reasons why English was popularised as a language
• EFour-fifth of information saved in computers are in English

Autism is a brain development disorder that impairs social interaction and communication and causes restricted and repetitive behaviour, all starting before a child is three years old. The genetics of autism are complex and it is generally unclear which genes are responsible for it. Autism affects many parts of the brain but how this occurs is also poorly understood. Autism is strongly associated with agents that cause birth defects. Other proposed causes, such as childhood vaccines, are controversial and the vaccine hypotheses lack convincing scientific evidence. The number of people known to have autism has increased dramatically since the 1980s. Parents usually notice signs in the first two years of their child's life. Early behavioural cognitive intervention can help children gain self-care, social and communication skills but there is no cure for it. Few children with autism live independently after reaching adulthood, but same become successful and an autistic culture has developed, with same seeking a cure and others believing that autism is a condition rather than a disorder.

• Athat gives its first signs early in the childhood period
• Bwhich is caused by childhood vaccines
• Cwhich can't be diagnosed until after the child is three years old
• Dthat even if the treatment for autism starts early, the child doesn't have any chance to recover completely
• Ewhich is characterized by abnormalities of behaviour patterns

Unusual incidents are being reported across the Arctic. Inuit families going off on snowmobiles to prepare their summer hunting camps have found themselves cut off from home by a sea of mud, following early thaws. There are reports of igloos losing their insulating properties as the snow drips and refreezes, of lakes draining into the sea as permafrost melts, and sea ice breaking up earlier than usual, carrying seals beyond the reach of hunters. Climate change may still be a rather abstract idea to most of us, but in the Arctic it is already having dramatic effects- if summertime ice continues to shrink at its present rate, the Arctic Ocean could soon become virtually ice-free in summer. The knock- on effects are likely to include more warming, cloudier skies, increased precipitation and higher sea levels. Scientists are increasingly keen to find out what’s going on because they consider the Arctic the ‘canary in the mine’ for global warming - a warning of what’s in store for the rest of the World. For the Inuit the problem is urgent. They live in precarious balance with one of the toughest environments on earth. Climate change, whatever its causes, is a direct threat to their way of life. Nobody knows the Arctic as well as the locals, which is why they are not content simply to stand back and let outside experts tell them what’s happening. In Canada, where the Inuit people are jealously guarding their hard-won autonomy in the country’s newest territory, Nunavut, they believe their best hope of survival in this changing environment lies in combining their ancestral knowledge with the best of modern science. This is a challenge in itself.

• ALower temperature inside igloos
• BMud in the sea
• CDifficulty in hunting seals
• DHigher levels of ice
• EMore rainfall
• FTough environment

In the past, learning English as a separate subject seemed relatively easy. The textbook selected and graded items of language which were put into context and then practised intensively. New items were carefully controlled so that the student could cope quite easily. Now that English is used as a medium of instruction, however, all this has changed. Unknown items of grammar and vocabulary appear in texts which attempt to explain new and often difficult information. Difficulties with the language interact with difficulties as regards the subject matter. The student’s reading in his own subject slows down, and his comprehension becomes less secure. He expresses himself slowly and often fails to convey his ideas exactly. He is disappointed to find that under pressure he makes a lot of unnecessary mistakes in areas where he knows the correct language forms. His social relations are difficult as he cannot find the right phrase quickly enough to keep a conversation going, so his language often betrays him into dullness, coldness, or worst of all, rudeness. Instead of the student being in control of the language, the language seems now to be in control of the student. All this can be very depressing and the student can start to feel anxious. Working in a foreign language is also very tiring, and the concentration and self-discipline required to correct one’s mistake is very great indeed.

• ALearning of English as a subject is the more difficult part.
• BLearning of English as a medium of instruction is the more difficult part.
• CLanguage may hinder understanding of the subject.
• DLearning of English as a medium of instruction is the easier part.
• ELearning of English as a subject is the easier part.