Reading Passage 1

Section A
The role of governments in environmental management is difficult but inescapable. Sometimes,
the state tries to manage the resources it owns, and does so badly. Often, however, governments
act in an even more harmful way. They actually subsidise the exploitation and consumption of
natural resources. A whole range of policies, from farm-price support to protection for coal-
mining, do environmental damage and (often) make no economic sense. Scrapping them offers a
two-fold bonus: a cleaner environment and a more efficient economy. Growth and
environmentalism can actually go hand in hand, if politicians have the courage to confront the
vested interest that subsidies create.

Section B
No activity affects more of the earth's surface than farming. It shapes a third of the planet's land
area, not counting Antarctica, and the proportion is rising. World food output per head has risen
by 4 per cent between the 1970s and 1980s mainly as a result of increases in yields from land
already in cultivation, but also because more land has been brought under the plough. Higher
yields have been achieved by increased irrigation, better crop breeding, and a doubling in the use
of pesticides and chemical fertilisers in the 1970s and 1980s.

Section C
All these activities may have damaging environmental impacts. For example, land clearing for
agriculture is the largest single cause of deforestation; chemical fertilisers and pesticides may
contaminate water supplies; more intensive farming and the abandonment of fallow periods tend
to exacerbate soil erosion; and the spread of monoculture and use of high-yielding varieties of
crops have been accompanied by the disappearance of old varieties of food plants which might
No. 10 have provided some insurance against pests or diseases in future. Soil erosion threatens the
productivity of land in both rich and poor countries. The United States, where the most careful
measurements have been done, discovered in 1982 that about one-fifth of its farmland was losing
topsoil at a rate likely to diminish the soil's productivity. The country subsequently embarked
upon a program to convert 11 per cent of its cropped land to meadow or forest. Topsoil in India
and China is vanishing much faster than in America.

Section D
Government policies have frequently compounded the environmental damage that farming can
cause. In the rich countries, subsidies for growing crops and price supports for farm output drive
No. 11 up the price of land. The annual value of these subsidies is immense: about $250 billion, or more
than all World Bank lending in the 1980s. To increase the output of crops per acre, a farmer's
easiest option is to use more of the most readily available inputs: fertilisers and pesticides.
Fertiliser use doubled in Denmark in the period 1960-1985 and increased in The Netherlands by
150 per cent. The quantity of pesticides applied has risen too: by 69 per cent in 1975-1984 in
Denmark, for example, with a rise of 115 per cent in the frequency of application in the three
years from 1981.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s some efforts were made to reduce farm subsidies. The most
dramatic example was that of New Zealand, which scrapped most farm support in 1984. A study
 No 12
of the environmental effects, conducted in 1993, found that the end of fertiliser subsidies had
been followed by a fall in fertiliser use (a fall compounded by the decline in world commodity
prices, which cut farm incomes). The removal of subsidies also stopped land-clearing and over-
stocking, which in the past had been the principal causes of erosion. Farms began to diversify.
The one kind of subsidy whose removal appeared to have been bad for the environment was the
subsidy to manage soil erosion.

In less enlightened countries, and in the European Union, the trend has been to reduce rather than
eliminate subsidies, and to introduce new payments to encourage farmers to treat their land in
environmentally friendlier ways, or to leave it fallow. It may sound strange but such payments
need to be higher than the existing incentives for farmers to grow food crops. Farmers, however,
dislike being paid to do nothing. In several countries they have become interested in the
possibility of using fuel produced from crop residues either as a replacement for petrol (as
ethanol) or as fuel for power stations (as biomass). Such fuels produce far less carbon dioxide
than coal or oil, and absorb carbon dioxide as they grow. They are therefore less likely to
contribute to the greenhouse effect. But they are rarely competitive with fossil fuels unless
subsidised - and growing them does no less environmental harm than other crops.

Section E
In poor countries, governments aggravate other sorts of damage. Subsidies for pesticides and
artificial fertilisers encourage farmers to use greater quantities than are needed to get the highest
economic crop yield. A study by the International Rice Research Institute of pesticide use by
farmers in South East Asia found that, with pest-resistant varieties of rice, even moderate
applications of pesticide frequently cost farmers more than they saved. Such waste puts farmers
on a chemical treadmill: bugs and weeds become resistant to poisons, so next year's poisons must
be more lethal. One cost is to human health. Every year some 10,000 people die from pesticide
poisoning, almost all of them in the developing countries, and another 400,000 become seriously
ill. As for artificial fertilisers, their use world-wide increased by 40 per cent per unit of farmed
land between the mid-1970s and late 1980s, mostly in the developing countries. Overuse of
fertilisers may cause farmers to stop rotating crops or leaving their land fallow. That, in turn,
may make soil erosion worse.

Section F
A result of the Uruguay Round of world trade negotiations is likely to be a reduction of 36 per
cent in the average levels of farm subsidies paid by the rich countries in 1986-1990. Some of the
world's food production will move from Western Europe to regions where subsidies are lower or
non-existent, such as the former communist countries and parts of the developing world. Some
environmentalists worry about this outcome. It will undoubtedly mean more pressure to convert
natural habitat into farmland. But it will also have many desirable environmental effects. The
intensity of farming in the rich world should decline, and the use of chemical inputs will
diminish. Crops are more likely to be grown in the environments to which they are naturally
suited. And more farmers in poor countries will have the money and the incentive to manage
their land in ways that are sustainable in the long run. That is important. To feed an increasingly
hungry world, farmers need every incentive to use their soil and water effectively and efficiently.
Questions 10-12

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write your answers in boxes 10–12 on your answer sheet.

10) Research completed in 1982 found that in the United States soil erosion
A reduced the productivity of farmland by 20 per cent.
B was almost as severe as in India and China.
C was causing significant damage to 20 per cent of farmland.
D could be reduced by converting cultivated land to meadow or forest.

11) By the mid-1980s, farmers in Denmark

A used 50 per cent less fertiliser than Dutch farmers.

B used twice as much fertiliser as they had in 1960.

C applied fertiliser much more frequently than in 1960.

D more than doubled the amount of pesticide they used in just 3 years.

12) Which one of the following increased in New Zealand after 1984?

A farm incomes

B use of fertiliser

C over-stocking

D farm diversification
 Reading Passage 2

Is there more to video games than people realize?

Many people who spend a lot of time playing video games insist that they have helped them
in areas like confidence-building, presentation skills and debating. Yet this way of thinking
about video games can be found almost nowhere within the mainstream media, which still
tend to treat games as an odd mix of the slightly menacing and the alien. This lack of
awareness has become increasingly inappropriate, as video games and the culture that
surrounds them have become very big business indeed.

Recently, the British government released the Byron report into the effects of electronic
media on children. Its conclusions set out a clear, rational basis for exploring the regulation
of video games. The ensuing debate, however, has descended into the same old squabbling
between partisan factions: the preachers of mental and moral decline, and the innovative
game designers. In between are the gamers, busily buying and playing while nonsense is
talked over their heads.

Susan Greenfield, renowned neuroscientist, outlines her concerns in a new book. Every
individual’s mind is the product of a brain that has been personalized by the sum total of
their experiences; with an increasing quantity of our experiences from very early childhood
taking place ‘on screen’ rather than in the world, there is potentially a profound shift in the
way children’s minds work. She suggests that the fast-paced, second-hand experiences
No .7 created by video games and the Internet may inculcate a worldview that is less empathetic,
more risk-taking and less contemplative than what we tend to think of as healthy.

Greenfield’s prose is full of mixed metaphors and self-contradictions and is perhaps the
worst enemy of her attempts to persuade. This is unfortunate, because however much
technophiles may snort, she is articulating widely held fears that have a basis in fact. Unlike
even their immediate antecedents, the latest electronic media are at once domestic and
work-related, their mobility blurring the boundaries between these spaces, and video games
No. 8 are at their forefront. A generational divide has opened that is in many ways more profound
than the equivalent shifts associated with radio or television, more alienating for those
unfamiliar with new’ technologies, more absorbing for those who are. So how do our
lawmakers regulate something that is too fluid to be fully comprehended or controlled?

Adam Martin, a lead programmer for an online games developer, says:’ Computer games
No. 9 teach and people don’t even notice they’re being taught.’ But isn’t the kind of learning that
goes on in games rather narrow? ‘A large part of the addictiveness of games does come
from the fact that as you play you are mastering a set of challenges. But humanity’s larger
understanding of the world comes primarily through communication and experimentation,
through answering the question “What if?’ Games excel at teaching this too.’

Steven Johnson’s thesis is not that electronic games constitute a great, popular art, but that
the mean level of mass culture has been demanding steadily more intellectual engagement
 No. 10
from consumers. Games, he points out, generate satisfaction via the complexity of their
virtual worlds, not by their robotic predictability. Testing the nature and limits of the laws
of such imaginary worlds has more in common with scientific methods than with a pointless
addiction, while the complexity of the problems children encounter within games exceeds
that of anything they might find at school.

Greenfield argues that there are ways of thinking that playing video games simply cannot
teach. She has a point. We should never forget, for instance, the unique ability of books to
engage and expand the human imagination, and to give us the means of more fully
expressing our situations in the world. Intriguingly, the video games industry is now
growing in ways that have more in common with an old-fashioned world of companionable
pastimes than with a cyber future of lonely, isolated obsessives. Games in which friends and
relations gather round a console to compete at activities are growing in popularity. The
agenda is increasingly being set by the concerns of mainstream consumers – what they
consider acceptable for their children, what they want to play at parties and across
generations.

These trends embody a familiar but important truth: games are human products, and lie
within our control. This doesn’t mean we yet control or understand them fully, but it should
remind us that there is nothing inevitable or incomprehensible about them. No matter how
deeply it may be felt, instinctive fear is an inappropriate response to technology of any kind.
No 11 So far, the dire predictions many traditionalists have made about the ‘death’ of old-
fashioned narratives and imaginative thought at the hands of video games cannot be upheld.
Television and cinema may be suffering, economically, at the hands of interactive media.
But literacy standards have failed to decline. Young people still enjoy sport, going out and
listening to music And most research – including a recent $1.5m study funded by the US
government – suggests that even pre-teens are not in the habit of blurring game worlds and
real worlds.

The sheer pace and scale of the changes we face, however, leave little room for
complacency. Richard Battle, a British writer and game researcher, says Times change:
accept it; embrace it.’ Just as, today, we have no living memories of a time before radio, we
will soon live in a world in which no one living experienced growing up without computers.
It is for this reason that we must try to examine what we stand to lose and gain, before it is
too late.

Questions 7-11

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

7 According to the writer, what view about video games does Susan Greenfield put forward
in tier new book?

AThey are exposing a child to an adult view of the world too soon.
 BChildren become easily frightened by some of the situations in them.
CThey are changing the way children’s view of the world develops.
DChildren don’t learn from them because they are too repetitive.

8 According to the writer, what problems are faced when regulating video games?

AThe widespread and ever-changing use of games makes it difficult for lawmakers to
control them.
BThe appeal of the games to a younger generation isn’t really understood by many
lawmakers.
CThe lawmakers try to apply the same rules to the games as they did to radio and
television.
DMany lawmakers feel it is too late for the regulations to have much effect on the use
of games.

9 What main point does Adam Martin make about video games?

APeople are learning how to avoid becoming addicted to them.

BThey enable people to learn without being aware of it happening.
CThey satisfy a need for people to compete with each other.
DPeople learn a narrow range of skills but they are still useful.

10 Which of the following does Steven Johnson disagree with?

Athe opinion that video games offer educational benefits to the user
Bthe attitude that video games are often labelled as predictable and undemanding
Cthe idea that children’s logic is tested more by video games than at school
Dthe suggestion that video games can be compared to scientific procedures

11 Which of the following is the most suitable subtitle for Reading Passage?

AA debate about the effects of video games on other forms of technology.

BAn examination of the opinions of young people about video games.
CA discussion of whether attitudes towards video games are outdated.
DAn analysis of the principles behind the historical development of video games.