Idioma Moderno: Idioma 1, IV: Inglés

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READING TEST 1 (30 points)

1. You are going to read an extract from an article about popular TV cartoon series.
Seven paragraphs have been removed from the extract. Choose from the
paragraphs A-H the one which fits each gap (1-7). There is one extra paragraph
which you do not need to use. (14 points, 2 per answer)

THE SIMPSONS
Nick Griffiths meets the faces behind America’s best-loved family of cartoon characters

Mike Scully, writer/producer of The Simpsons, is in Aspen Colorado with the show’s
creator, Matt Groening, to attend the four-day US Comedy Arts Festival. Among the
attractions is The Simpsons Live, a read-through of two separate episodes on-stage
by members of the cast.
1.
The shorts ran from 1987 and were subsequently developed into a full series that
made its début on American primetime two years later. From the off, the show was
a huge hit, topping Fox’s ratings. Although it is hard to figure out why it exploded so
quickly, Scully has his own theory.
2.
The Aspen venue for the Simpsons events is the Wheeler Opera House. The seven-
strong cast take the stage, including Dan Castallaneta (Homer Simpson and others),
Nancy Cartwright (Bart and others) and Yeardly Smith (Lisa).
3.
Stripped of the visual distraction of animation, you also realise how relentlessly clever
and funny the scripts are. After the show, Scully acknowledges, ‘It’s times like that
when you realise just what an impact the show has had on people. The Simpsons
were dysfunctional yet you could also see that they loved and stuck by each other.
People have always liked that because they don’t see enough of it in real life.’
4.
Quite simply, The Simpsons redefined television animation, spawning shows that
were extreme by comparison – which naturally helped its own acceptance into the
mainstream. For every action, of course, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.
‘Every time there’s a fad that kids really like, there’s gonna be a grown-up going,
“Something’s wrong here”’, says Groening. ‘It happened with video games, heavy
metal, rap, and Pokemon.’
5.
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Indeed, it was deemed so influential that even President George Bush Senior waded
in, criticising its portrayal of the American family during his 1992 election campaign
His wife, Barabara, called the show the ‘dumbest thing’ she had ever seen.
6.
Groening refers to his secret motto, ‘To entertain and to subvert.’ ‘It’s not so much
trying to change the minds of people who are already set in their ways, it’s to point
out to children that a lot of the rules that they’re told are by authorities who do not
have their best interests at heart. That’s a good lesson. This for yourself.’
7.

But perhaps what pleases Groening and Scully most is the well-known fact that
families watch The Simpsons together. In an age of meals-on-the-move, three-
television households, computer games and the internet, it is an achievement of
which they can be justifiably proud.

A - Unwittingly, The Simpsons struck a chord,
which endures today: however much they mess up
and frustrate each other, they are a viable family
unit. Yet the American networks misread this
popularity as a public craving for more primetime
animation. ‘They rushed all these shows on air and
the public rejected most of them,’ Scully explains.
E - So a mere animation series has quietly
subverted the world’s youth, helped to bring
down a president, been stamped all over what
we wear and changed the face of
contemporary animation. Now academics are
using it in universities: ‘Having the donut and
eating it_ self-reflexivity in The Simpsons’ is
part of the Introduction to Cultural Studies
module at Edinburgh’s Napier University.

B - ‘At the core is a family, and everyone can
identify with that,’ he says. ‘This is probably why it
plays well overseas, too.’ At the last count, the
series has been shown in a staggering 94 countries
worldwide.
F - Groening is a chunky, bearded man with
tiny specs, a floppy fringe, Simpsons baseball
jacket and baggy jeans. Oregon-raised and LA-
based since college, he initially conceived the
Simpsons family as a brief animated segment
within the new Fox TV network’s Tracey
Ullman Show.

C - In a small way, The Simpsons probably
contributed to the demise of the administration. ‘It
didn’t fly with a lot of Americans,’ recalls Scully.
‘People who enjoyed the show didn’t want to be
told that they were watching something bad or
stupid, or something wrong for their kids.’
G - And such was the case initially with The
Simpsons. Homer was seen as a disgraceful
role model; Bart’s insolence to his elders
would encourage the same. Bart Simpson t-
shirts (notably ‘Underachiever and proud of
it’) became so popular that some schools
banned them for their subversive messages.
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D - Serious issues crop up regularly on the show,
cloaked in humour and vivid animation: corrupt
media and politicians, ineffective policing, the
environment. Groening again, ‘In conceiving the
show, I made sure Homer worked in a nuclear
power plant, because then we can keep returning
to that and making a point about the
environment.’
H - It doesn’t matter that both episodes have
been aired previously on television. In the
second, Lisa falls in love with the school bully
(Bart to Lisa: ‘I’ll probably never say this to you
again, but you can do better’). Watching a
short, smiling woman come up with his voice
is surreal and deeply impressive.

2. You are going to read an article about relationship problems at work. For questions
1-6, choose the answer (A, B, C, or D) which you think fits best according to the text;
make sure you only check one answer. (12 points, 6 per answer)

FIGHTING TALK

It would seem that some people are simply incapable of settling scores amicably at work
and practising some good old-fashioned forgiveness. A high court judge was recently
forced to order two doctors who were unable to settle a personal dispute to divide their
surgery in two by building a wall right through their medical practise.
You might think that doctors Anne Rodway, 65, and Paul Landy, 49, were old
enough to know better but somehow the two could not manage to work alongside each
other. The two set up their partnership three years ago in Sevenoaks, Kent, but stopped
talking just three months after their business started. Both staff and around 3,500
patients have been asked to decide on which side their loyalties lie as the practice is
formally divided – especially difficult for the staff, who have already had to become used
to being paid separately by the warring doctors.
Although an extreme case, it demonstrates just how bad things can get when
communication and understanding break down between colleagues at work. Office
feuds can be experienced in even the friendliest of environments. But what to do when
faced with one?
Whether you are involver directly or an innocent bystander watching others
curdle the workplace atmosphere, Jane Clarke, author of Office Politics, offers some
sound advice. ‘On the whole, people do not like dealing with conflict, but it is very
important to grab the bull by the horns. If you feel you are able to, you should try and
sort it out. If not, the very least you can do is report it to a manager who should make
sure that workers know that bad behaviour in the workplace will not be tolerated.’
But what causes acrimony in the first place? Reasons can be as diverse as a clash
of personalities, jealousy, backstabbing or a simple misunderstanding. If you are
personally involved – and almost all of us have been in one way or another – then the
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best thing to do, says Clarke, is to try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Easier
said than done, since empathy is not an easy emotion to come by, even to the most
virtuous.
‘Often it is easy to dump on the other person and blame them totally for the
situation but remember it is your problem and you have a responsibility to try to resolve
it,’ says Clarke.
Listening skills are vital. If the problem is between other colleagues, things can
be a bit trickier. You may not be the gallant sort – practising an unhealthy dose of denial
is often what most people would prefer to do – but ignoring the situation will not make
it go away.
So what are your options? ‘If you feel you are up to It, try talking with the feuding
parties individually and try to understand what the issue is,’ advises Clarke. ‘Make it
clear that it is not an acceptable state of affairs.’
Mediation is another option; get the two parties to sit together and act as a
buffer zone. You might have the urge to bash their heads together, but it won’t achieve
a great deal. As Clarke says, ‘Sometimes it is a case of translating. People are often so
different that it seems that they speak a different language.’
Any meetings between disputing colleagues should have some follow-up. All
involver should be made aware of the next steps – failing to do this could mean that the
situation repeats itself.
Negative energy between people need not produce bad karma. Harnessed
creatively, it can actually become a positive force. So, if you are having problems with
office dullards who insist on putting downers on any bright ideas you might have, use
their criticism and objections as a way of really testing a brainwave. Try looking at
people’s weaknesses as strengths: assign, a pedant to research the finer details of a
project; the loudmouth of the office can always be pushed forward when it comes to
public speaking.
Disputes and ill feelings can arise both among employees or between employee
and employer, a fact clearly illustrated by the record numbers of people who contacted
the conciliation service ACAS over the past year. Reassuringly, however, 76% of cases
were settled through mediation – an indication, perhaps, that rather than working on
building walls in the workplace, we should be bringing them down.
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1. In telling the story of the two doctors, the 4. The view is expressed that work conflicts
writer suggests they will not get resolved unless both parties

☐ A didn’t give their partnership enough of a ☐ A have a personal involvement

chance
☐ B were totally incompatible from day one ☐ B accept some blame for the situation

☐ C should have been able to resolve their ☐ C commit to finding a solution

problems
☐ D were introverted ad intolerant people ☐ D accept watch other in spirit of friendship

2. What main point is the doctors’ story used 5. Which phrase from the penultimate
to illustrate? paragraph sums up its main point?
☐ A Conflicts at work divide staff and clients ☐ A bad karma

☐ B The failure of relationships at work can ☐ B harnessed creatively

have serious consequences
☐ C Work conflicts can happen where you ☐ C putting downers on
least expect them
☐ D It is not always easy to know how to ☐ D testing a brainwave
handle conflicts at work
3. According to Jane Clarke, office disputes 6. Which of the following best describes the
tone of the article?
☐ A occur for any number of reasons ☐ A constructive and practical
☐ B are caused in the first instance by ☐ B detached and critical
acrimonious feelings
☐ C are usually attributable to personality ☐ C understanding and empathetic
differences
☐ D tend to arise when least expected ☐ D ironic and dismissive
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3. Answer the questions 1-10 by referring to the article below. Choose from the list of
famous Hollywood actors (A-D) for each question. For some of the questions, more
than one letter is required, in which case the two letters should be written, in
alphabetical order, with a hyphen between them, i.e. A-E. For ONE question, the
answer is "none". (14 points, 1 per answer)

Tom Hanks was born in Concord, California. His father, Amos Mefford Hanks, was an
itinerant cook. His mother was a hospital worker. Hanks' mother is of Portuguese
ancestry, while two of his paternal great-grandparents immigrated from Britain. Hanks's
parents divorced in 1960. The family's three oldest children, Sandra, Larry and Tom,
went with their father, while the youngest, Jim, now an actor and film maker, remained
with his mother in Red Bluff, California.
In addition to having a family history of Catholicism and Mormonism, Hanks was
a "Bible-toting evangelical teenager" for several years. In school, Hanks was unpopular
with students and teachers alike, later telling Rolling Stone magazine: "I was a geek, a
spaz. I was horribly, painfully, terribly shy. At the same time, I was the guy who'd yell
out funny captions during filmstrips. But I didn't get into trouble. I was always a real
good kid and pretty responsible." In 1965, Amos Hanks married Frances Wong, a San
Francisco native of Chinese descent. Frances had three children, two of whom lived with
Tom during his high school years. Hanks acted in school plays, including South Pacific,
while attending Skyline High School in Oakland, California.
Hanks studied theater at Chabot College in Hayward, California, and after two
years, transferred to California State University, Sacramento. Hanks told New York
magazine in 1986: "Acting classes looked like the best place for a guy who liked to make
a lot of noise and be rather flamboyant ...I spent a lot of time going to plays. I wouldn't
take dates with me. I'd just drive to a theater, buy myself a ticket, sit in the seat and
read the program, and then get into the play completely. I spent a lot of time like that,
seeing Brecht, Tennessee Williams, Ibsen, and all that."
During his years studying theater, Hanks met Vincent Dowling, head of the Great
Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, Ohio. At Dowling's suggestion, Hanks became an
intern at the Festival. His internship stretched into a three-year experience that covered
most aspects of theater production, including lighting, set design, and stage
management, all of which caused Hanks to drop out of college. During the same time,
Hanks won the Cleveland Critics Circle Award for Best Actor for his 1978 performance as
Proteus in Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona, one of the few times he played
a villain.
Robert De Niro was born in Greenwich Village, New York City, the son of Virginia
Holton Admiral, a painter and poet, and Robert De Niro, Sr., an abstract expressionist
painter and sculptor. His father was of Italian and Irish descent, and his mother was of
English, German, French, and Dutch ancestry. His Italian great-grandparents, Giovanni
De Niro and Angelina Mercurio, emigrated from Ferrazzano, in the province of
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Campobasso, Molise, and his paternal grandmother, Helen O'Reilly, was the
granddaughter of Edward O'Reilly, an immigrant from Ireland.
De Niro's parents, who had met at the painting classes of Hans Hofmann in
Provincetown, Massachusetts, divorced when he was three years old. De Niro was raised
by his mother in the Little Italy neighborhood of Manhattan, and in Greenwich Village.
His father lived within walking distance and Robert spent much time with him as he was
growing up. De Niro attended PS 41, a public elementary school in Manhattan, through
the sixth grade, and then went to the private Elisabeth Irwin High School, the upper
school of the Little Red School House, for the seventh and eighth grades. He was
accepted at the High School of Music and Art for the ninth grade, but only attended for
a short time, transferring instead to a public junior high school. He began high school at
the private McBurney School, attended the private Rhodes Preparatory School, but
never graduated.
Nicknamed "Bobby Milk" for his pallor, the youthful De Niro hung out with a
group of street kids in Little Italy, some of whom have remained lifelong friends of his.
But the direction of his future had already been determined by his stage debut at age
ten, playing the Cowardly Lion in his school's production of The Wizard of Oz. Along with
finding relief from shyness through performing, De Niro was also entranced by the
movies, and he dropped out of high school at age sixteen to pursue acting. De Niro
studied acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory, as well as Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio.
Leonardo DiCaprio, an only child, was born in Los Angeles, California. His mother,
Irmelin (née Indenbirken), is a former legal secretary; born in Germany; she came to the
US as a child with her parents. His father, George DiCaprio, is an underground comic
artist and producer/distributor of comic books. DiCaprio's mother moved from Oer-
Erkenschwick in the Ruhr, Germany, to the U.S. during the 1950s with her parents. A
fourth-generation American, DiCaprio's father is of half Italian (from the Naples area)
and half German descent (from Bavaria). DiCaprio's maternal grandmother, Helene
Indenbirken (1915-2008), was born Yelena Smirnova in Russia. In a 2010 conversation
with the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, DiCaprio said that two of his
grandparents were Russian.
DiCaprio's parents met while attending college and subsequently moved to Los
Angeles. He was named Leonardo because his pregnant mother was looking at a
Leonardo da Vinci painting in a museum in Italy when DiCaprio first kicked.
His parents divorced when he was a year old and he lived mostly with his mother.
The two lived in several Los Angeles neighborhoods, such as Echo Park, and at 1874
Hillhurst Avenue, Los Feliz district (which was later converted into a local public library),
while his mother worked several jobs to support them. She remarried. He attended
Seeds Elementary School and graduated from John Marshall High School a few blocks
away, after attending the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies for four years.
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John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison at 216 South Second Street in
Winterset, Iowa. His middle name was soon changed from Robert to Mitchell when his
parents decided to name their next son Robert.
Wayne's father, Clyde Leonard Morrison (1884-1937), was the son of American
Civil War veteran Marion Mitchell Morrison (1845-1915). Wayne's mother, the former
Mary "Molly" Alberta Brown (1885-1970), was from Lancaster County, Nebraska. Wayne
was of Scots-Irish and Scottish descent on both sides of his family.
Wayne's family moved to Palmdale, California, and then in 1911 to Glendale,
California, where his father worked as a pharmacist. A local fireman at the station on his
route to school in Glendale started calling him "Little Duke" because he never went
anywhere without his huge Airedale Terrier, Duke. He preferred "Duke" to "Marion",
and the name stuck for the rest of his life.
As a teen, Wayne worked in an ice cream shop for a man who shod horses for
Hollywood studios. He was also active as a member of the Order of DeMolay, a youth
organization associated with the Freemasons. He attended Wilson Middle School in
Glendale. He played football for the 1924 champion Glendale High School team.
Wayne applied to the U.S. Naval Academy, but was not accepted. He instead
attended the University of Southern California (USC), majoring in pre-law. He was a
member of the Trojan Knights and Sigma Chi fraternities. Wayne also played on the USC
football team under coach Howard Jones. An injury curtailed his athletic career; Wayne
later noted he was too terrified of Jones's reaction to reveal the actual cause of his
injury, a bodysurfing accident. He lost his athletic scholarship and, without funds, had to
leave the university.
Wayne began working at the local film studios. Prolific silent western film star
Tom Mix had found him a summer job in the prop department in exchange for football
tickets. Wayne soon moved on to bit parts, establishing a longtime friendship with the
director who provided most of those roles, John Ford.

WHICH OF THESE ACTORS…

1. came from a broken home (3 answers)

2. left school early
3. still sees childhood friends
4. was timid as a youngster (2 answers)
5. gave up a college education for acting
6. had a dangerous hobby he was forced to give up
7. looked unhealthy as a child
8. had a beloved pet as a child
9. didn’t have brothers or sisters
10. was religious when young
11. was born in Iowa