Assessment week 7

Passage 1

Read each paragraph. Decide what would be the best topic.

1. Stocks, also known as equity shares, are units of ownership in a company. If a company
wants to raise money to develop new products or services, it may sell shares of the
company. The price of a stock is determined by its demand. The demand to buy the
stock may go up when investors feel the stock may make them a good profit. Typically,
investors buy stocks at a lower price and hold onto them un l the price of the stock
goes up. Then they 36 sell the stocks and keep the profit. The stock market is constantly
changing due to many factors. However, like all products, the price of stocks will
increase when the demand to buy increases, and it will decrease when the demand to
buy decreases.
Topic: _________________
2. Men who drink a lot of alcohol may have a higher chance of having children with
physical or mental problems. Doctors have long been aware that women alcoholics
may give birth to defec ve babies. However, scien sts have recently discovered that
alcoholism in men may be responsible for birth defects too. Large quan es of alcohol
may affect the quality of the father’s genes. This gene c change may cause a child to
be born defec ve in some way. Scien sts are not sure how this happens. But the
sta s cs of the study seem to leave li le doubt that it can happen.
Topic: ___________________
3. When trying to save money, you need to know about your op ons. Most people save
their money in a savings account at a bank. They are paid interest from the bank for
allowing the bank to hold and use their money. If you save money in a money market
account, your interest rate will be determined by how well the stock market is doing.
Although you won’t lose any of your original investment, you won’t be making much
interest when interest rates are low. Another way to save money is to buy a cer ficate
of deposit, or CD. You cannot cash in the cer ficate un l it reaches a certain age, but
CDs are a good investment if you don’t need the money right away.
Topic: ___________________
Passage 2
Decide the Main idea also the characteris c of it.
Passage 3

Read each of the following paragraphs and define the main idea and the characteris c.

A Warmer Arc c Ocean Leads to More Snowfall Further South

Rising air temperatures due to global warming melt glaciers and polar ice caps.
Seemingly paradoxically, snow cover in some areas in northern Eurasia has increased over the
past decades. However, snow is a form of water; global warming increases the quan ty of
moisture in the atmosphere, and thus the quan ty and likelihood of rain and snow.
Understanding where exactly the moisture comes from, how it is produced and how it is
transported south is relevant for be er predic ons of extreme weather and the evolu on of
the climate.

Hokkaido University environmental scien st Tomonori Sato and his team developed a
new tagged moisture transport model that relies on the “Japanese 55-year reanalysis dataset”,
a painstaking reanalysis of world-wide historical weather data over the span of the past 55
years. The group used this material to keep their model calibrated over much longer distances
than hitherto possible and were thus able to shed light onto the mechanism of the moisture
transport in par cular over the vast landmasses of Siberia.

A standard technique to analyze moisture transport is the “tagged moisture transport

model”. This is a computer modelling technique that tracks where hypothe cal chunks of
atmospheric moisture form, how they are moved around, and where they precipitate due to
the local clima c condi ons. But the computer models become more and more inaccurate as
the distance to the ocean increases. In par cular, this makes quan ta ve predic ons difficult.
Thus, these methods have not been able to sa sfyingly explain the snowfall in northern
Eurasia.

An increasingly warm and ice-free Arc c Ocean has, in recent decades, led to more
moisture in higher la tudes. This moisture is transported south by cyclonic weather systems
where it precipitates as snow, influencing the global hydrological cycle and many terrestrial
systems that depend on it.

Source: Environmental News Network, 2022, Hokkaido University

Passage 4

Decide topic, main idea, also the characteris c of it.

Assessment week 8
Read the passage below, try to find every clue needed and answer the following ques on.
Read the conversa on below and answer the following ques on.
Decide the main idea from each paragraph below, also write down the clues from the
paragraph that help you to decide the main idea .