Examen de práctica 27
Reading Passage 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1.
The Dollar-a-Year Man
How John Lomax set out to record American folk music
A. In the early 1930s, folklorist, platform lecturer, college professor and former banker John Avery Lomax was trying to recapture a sense of direction for his life. For two decades he had enjoyed a national reputation for his pioneering work in collecting and studying American folk songs; no less a figure than President Theodore Roosevelt had admired his work and had written a letter of support for him as he sought grants for his research. He had always dreamed of finding a way of making a living by doing the thing he loved best, collecting folk songs, but he was now beginning to wonder if he would ever realise that dream.
B. Lomax wanted to embark on a nationwide collecting project, resulting in as many as four volumes, and ‘complete the rehabilitation of the American folk-song’. Eventually, this was modified to where he envisioned a single book tentatively called American Ballads and Folk Songs, designed to survey the whole field. It called for firsthand field collecting, and would especially focus on the neglected area of black folk music.
C. En 1932, Lomax travelled to New York and stopped in to see a man named H.S. Latham of the Macmillan Company. He informally outlined his plan to Latham, and read him the text of an earthy African American blues ballad called ‘Ida Red’. Latham was impressed, and two days later Lomax had a contract, a small check to bind it, and an agreement to deliver the manuscript about one year later. The spring of 1932 began to look more green, lush and full of promise.
D. Lomax immediately set to work. He travelled to libraries at Harvard, the Library of Congress, Browm University and elsewhere in order to explore unpublished song collections and to canvas the folk songbooks published over the past ten years. During his stay in Washington, D.C., Lomax became friendly with Carl Engel, Music Division chief of the Library of Congress. Engel felt that Lomax had the necessary background and energy to someday direct the Archive of Folk Song. Through funds provided by the Council of Learned Societies and the Library of Congress, Lomax ordered a state-of-the-art portable recording machine. More importantly, the Library of Congress agreed to furnish blank records and to lend their name to his collecting; Lomax simply had to agree to deposit the completed records at the Library of Congress. He did so without hesitation. On July 15, 1933, Lomax was appointed an ‘honorary consultant’ for a dollar a year.
mi. Together with his eighteen-year-old son Alan, he began a great adventure to collect songs for American Ballads and Folk- Songs, a task that was to last for many months. Lomax’s library research had reinforced his belief that a dearth of black folk song material existed in printed collections. This fact, along with his early appreciation of African American folk culture, led Lomax to decide that black folk music from rural areas should be the primary focus. This bold determination resulted in the first major trip in the United States to capture black folk music in the field. In order to fulfil their quest, the two men concentrated on sections of the South with a high percentage of blacks. They also pinpointed labouring camps, particularly lumber camps, which employed blacks almost exclusively. But as they went along, prisons and penitentiaries also emerged as a focal point for research.
F. The recordings made by the Lomaxes had historical significance. The whole idea of using a phonograph to preserve authentic folk music was still fairly new. Most of John Lomax’s peers were involved in collecting- songs the classic way: taking both words and melody down by hand, asking the singer to perform the song over and over until the collector had ‘caught’ it on paper. John Lomax sensed at once the limitations of this kind of method, especially when getting songs from African-American singers, whose quarter tones, blue notes and complex timing often frustrated white musicians trying to transcribe them with European notation systems.
GRAMO. The whole concept of field recordings was, en 1933 and still is today, radically different from the popular notion of recording. Field recordings are not intended as commercial products but as attempts at cultural preservation. There is no profit motive, nor any desire to make the singer a ‘star’. As have hundreds of folk song collectors after him, John Lomax had to persuade his singers to perform, to explain to them why their songs were important, and to convince the various authorities – the wardens, the trusties, the bureaucrats – that this was serious, worthwhile work. He faced the moral problem of how to safeguard the records and the rights of the singers – a problem he solved in this instance by donating the discs to the Library of Congress. He had to overcome the technical problems involved in recording outside a studio; one always hoped for quiet, with no doors slamming or alarms going off, but it was always a risk. His new state-of-the-art recording machine sported a new microphone designed by NBC, but there were no wind baffles to help reduce the noise when recording outside. Lomax learned how to balance sound, where to place microphones, how to work echoes and walls, and soon was a skilled recordist.
Preguntas 1-5
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in blank spaces next to 1-5 on our answer sheet.
John Lomax’s Project
Lomax began the research for this project by looking at 1………………………………………………… that were not available in book form, as well as at certain books. While he was doing this research, he met someone who ran a department at the 2…………………………. in Washington. As a result of this contact, he was provided with the very latest kind of 3………………………………. . for his project. Lomax believed that the places he should concentrate on were 4………………………………. in the South of the US. While he and his son were on their trip, they added 5……………………………….. as places where they could find what they were looking for.
Preguntas 6-10
Reading Passage 1 has seven sections labelled A-Q.
Which section contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-Q in boxes 6—10 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
6 a reference to the speed with which Lomax responded to a demand
7 a reason why Lomax doubted the effectiveness of a certain approach
8 reasons why Lomax was considered suitable for a particularofficial post
9 a reference to a change of plan on Lomax’s part
10 a reference to one of Lomax’s theories being confirmed
Preguntas 11-13
Choose THREE letters A-F.
Write your answers in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.
Which THREE of the following difficulties for Lomax are mentioned by the writer of the text?
A finding a publisher for his research
B deciding exactly what kind of music to collect
C the scepticism of others concerning his methods
D the reluctance of people to participate in his project
E making sure that participants in his project were not exploited
F factors resulting from his choice of locations for recording
11
12
13
Reading Passage 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 on the following pages.
Preguntas 14-20
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs A—Q.
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
Write the correct numbers i-x m boxes 14-20 on you answer sheet.
List of Headings
i. Optimistic beliefs held by the writers of children’s literature
ii The attitudes of certain adults towards children’s literature
iii The attraction of children’s literature
iv A contrast that categorises a hook as children’s literature
v A false assumption made about children’s literature
vi The conventional view of children’s Literature
vii Some good and bad features of children’s literature
viii Classifying a book as children’s literature
ix The treatment of various themes in children’s literature
x Another way of looking at children’s literature
14 Paragraph A
15 Paragraph B
16 Paragraph C
17 Paragraph D
18 Paragraph E
19 Paragraph E
20 Paragraph G
Children’s Literature
A. I am sometimes asked why anyone who is not a teacher or a librarian or the parent of little kids should concern herself with children’s books and folklore. I know the standard answers: that many famous writers have written for children, and that the great children’s books are also great literature; that these books and tales are an important source of archetype and symbol, and that they can help us to understand the structure and functions of the novel.
B. All this is true. But I think we should also take children’s literature seriously because it is sometimes subversive: because its values are not always those of the conventional adult world. Por supuesto, in a sense, much great literature is subversive since its very existence implies that what matters is art, imagination and truth. In what we call the real world, what usually counts is money, power and public success.
C. The great subversive works of children’s literature suggest that there are other views of human life besides those of the shopping mall and the corporation. They mock current assumptions and express the imaginative, unconventional, noncommercial view of the world in its simplest and purest form. They appeal to the imaginative, questioning, rebellious child within all of us, renew our instinctive energy, and act as a force for change. This is why such literature is worthy of our attention and will endure long after more conventional tales have been forgotten.
D. An interesting question is what – besides intention – makes a particular story a ‘children’s book’? With the exception of picture books for toddlers, these works are not necessarily shorter or simpler than so-called adult fiction, and they are surely not less well written. The heroes and heroines of these tales, it is true, are often children: but then so are the protagonists of Henry James’s What Maisie Knew and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Yet the barrier between children’s books and adult fiction remains; editors, critics and readers seem to have little trouble in assigning a given work to one category or the other.
mi. In classic children’s fiction, a pastoral convention is maintained. It is assumed that the world of childhood is simpler and more natural than that of adults and that children, though they may have faults, are essentially good or at least capable of becoming so. The transformation of selfish, whiny, disagreeable Mary and hysterical, demanding Colin in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden is a paradigm. Por supuesto, there are often unpleasant minor juvenile characters who give the protagonist a lot of trouble and are defeated or evaded rather than reeducated. But on occasion, even the angry bully and the lying sneak can be reformed and forgiven. Richard Hughes’s A High Wind in Jamaica, though most of its characters are children, never appears on lists of recommended juvenile fiction; not so much because of the elaborations of its diction (which is no more complex than that of, say, Treasure Island), but because in it children are irretrievably damaged and corrupted.
F. Adults in most children’s books, on the other hand, are usually stuck with their characters and incapable of alteration or growth. If they are really unpleasant, the only thing that can rescue them is the natural goodness of a child. Here again, Mrs.Burnett provides the classic example, in Little Lord Fauntleroy. (Scrooge’s somewhat similar change of heart in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, sin embargo, is due mainly to regret his past and terror of the future. This is one of the things that makes the book a family rather than a juvenile romance; another is the helpless passivity of the principal child character, Tiny Tim.).
GRAMO. Of the three principal preoccupations of adult fiction – sex, money and death – the first is absent from classic children’s literature and the other two either absent or much muted. Money is a motive in children’s literature, in the sense that many stories deal with a search for the treasure of some sort. These quests, unlike real-life ones, are almost always successful, though occasionally what is found in the end is some form of family happiness, which is declared by the author and the characters to be a ‘real treasure’. Simple economic survival, sin embargo, is almost never the problem; what is sought, rather, is a magical (sometimes literally magical) surplus of wealth.
H. Death, which was a common theme in nineteenth-century fiction for children, was almost banished during the first half of the twentieth century. Since then it has begun to reappear; the breakthrough book was E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. Today not only animals but people die, notably in the sort of books that get awards and are recommended by librarians and psychologists for children who have lost a relative. But even today the characters who die tend to be of another generation; the protagonist and his or her friends survive. Though there are some interesting exceptions, even the most subversive of contemporary children’s books usually follow these conventions. They portray an ideal world of perfectible beings, free of the necessity for survival.
Preguntas 21-26
Do the following statement’s agree with the news of the writer in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet write
YES, if the statement agrees with the news of the writer
NO, if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN, if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
21 Adults often fail to recognise the subversive elements in books their children read.
22 In publishing, the definition of certain genres has become inconsistent.
23 Characters in The Secret Garden are a good example of the norm in children’s literature.
24 Despite the language used in A High Wind in Jamaica, it should be considered a children’s hook.
25 The character of Tiny Tim contrasts with that of the child in Little Lord Fauntleroy.
26 A more realistic view of money should be given in children’s hooks.
Reading Passage 3
The Birth of Our Modern Minds
A. When did we begin to use symbols to communicate? Roger Highfield reports on a challenge to prevailing ideas. Anyone who doubts the importance of art need do no more than refer to the current account of human evolution, where the emergence of modern people is not so much marked by Stone Age technology as a creative explosion that rocked Europe 40,000 hace años que. Our ancestors began to adorn their bodies with beads and pendants, even tattoos; they painted representations of animals, people and magical hybrids on cave walls in Lascaux, France and Altamira in Spain. They sculpted voluptuous stone figures, such as the Venus of Willendorf. This cultural Big Bang, which coincided with the period when modern humans reached Europe after they set out, via the Near East, from Africa, marked a decisive point in our story when a man took a critical step beyond the limitations of his hairy ancestors and began to use symbols. The modern mind was born.
B. Or was it? Britain’s leading archaeologist questions the dogma that the modern human mind originated in Europe and, instead, argues that its birth was much more recent, alrededor 10,000 hace años que, and took place in the Middle East. Lord Renfrew, professor of archaeology at Cambridge University, is troubled by what he calls the ‘sapient behaviour paradox’: genetic findings, based on the diversity of modern humans, suggest that our big brains emerged 130,000 years ago when Homo sapiens evolved from Homo Erectus and were fully developed about 60,000 hace años que. But this hardware, though necessary, was not sufficient for modern behaviour, software (cultura) is also required to run a mind and for this to be honed took tens of millennia. There is something unsatisfactory about the genetic argument that rests on the ‘potential’ for change emerging, he argues. Por último, little happened — or at least not for another 30,000 años.
C. Although there is no doubt that genes shaped the hardware of the modern brain, genetics does not tell the whole story. ‘It is doubtful whether molecular sequences will give us any clear insights,’ said Lord Renfrew, adding that the current account of our origins has also become sidetracked by placing too much emphasis on one cultural event. Either side of the boundary between the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, 40,000 hace años que, people lived much the same way. To the casual observer, the archaeological record for Homo sapiens does not look much different from Homo Erectus’s or even our beetle-browed European cousins, the Neanderthals. ‘There are detailed changes in tools and so on but the only one that really strikes you is cave art.’
D. And this artistic revolution was patchy: the best examples are in Spain and France, in Britain, the oldest known cave art consists of 12.000 year-old engravings in Creswell Crags. Indeed, was there an artistic revolution 40,000 years ago at all? Two pieces of ochre engraved with geometrical patterns 70,000 years ago were recently found at Blombos Cave, 180 miles east of Cape Town, Sudáfrica. This means people were able to think abstractly and behave as modern humans much earlier than previously thought. Lord Renfrew argues that art, like genetics, does not tell the whole story of our origins. For him, the real revolution occurred 10,000 years ago with the first permanent • lieges. That is when the effects of new software kicked in, allowing our ancestors to work together in a more settled way. That is when plants and animals were domesticated and agriculture born.
mi. First, there were nests of skulls and unusual burial practices, cult centres and shrines. Then you have the first villages, the first towns, like Jericho in Jordan around 8000 BC) and Catalhoyuk in Turkey (est 6500 BC), then the spread of farming to Europe. Before long, you are accelerating towards the first cities in Mesopotamia, and then other civilisations in Mexico, China and beyond.’
F. Living in timber and mud-brick houses led to a very different engagement between our ancestors and the material world.’1 don’t think it was until settled village communities developed that you had the concept of property, or that “I own these things that have been handed down to me”.’ This, in turn, could have introduced the need for mathematics, to keep a tally of possessions, and written language to describe them. In the Near East, primitive counters date back to the early farming period and this could have marked the first stages of writing, said Lord Renfrew. ‘We have not solved anything about the origins of modern humans until we understand what happened 10,000 hace años que,’ he said. He is excited by excavations now underway in Anatolia, a potential birthplace of the modern mind, in Catalhôyük. one of the earliest places where close-knit communities were born, and Gobekli Tepe, a shrine that predates village life. These spiritual sites may have seeded the first human settled communities by encouraging the domestication of plants and animals.
Preguntas 27-32
Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.
27 According to the current view, what does NOT indicate the first appearance of the modern human.
28 What type of evidence does Lord Renfrew question in general?
29 What, apart from art, were the developments in the creation of 40,000 hace años que?
30 What kind of cave art in Britain is referred to?
31 What TWO things does Lord Renfrew believe to have been established 10,000 hace años que?
32 What TWO things did the notion of personal possessions lead to?
Preguntas 33-40
Write the correct letter A—D in boxes 33—40 on your answer sheet.
Classify the following statements as referring to the period.
A 10,000 hace años que
B 40,000 hace años que
C 60,000 hace años que
D 70,000 hace años que
33 The brain was completely formed physically but was not capable of all the functions of the modern mind.
34 There was a major change in the attitude of humans to each other.
35 A huge amount of art in different forms began to appear.
36 Development of the human mind occurred at the same time as a migration.
37 Art from the period casts doubt on the conventional view of the development of the human mind.
38 Tire modern mind developed in a different location from the one normally
assumed.
39 The only significant change in the development of man is shown in the art
produced.
40 Further research into the period is essential for accurate conclusions to be drawn on human development.