METU / SFL Spring 2022

DBE INTERMEDIATE GROUP

RHO12 (Student’s Copy)
TEXT I
A The first time you heard the word “troll”, it was likely in the context of folklore or fairytale - a
gruesome, mythical creature hiding under a bridge or in a cave to terrorize passing people or
goats. However, now you probably hear the word “troll” all the time. We use “trolling” to
describe everything from innocent pranks to mean tweets to vicious harassment. Putting up with
trolls has become the toll we all pay for a life lived online.
B a) ■ The troll, though, is not a creation of Twitter or Facebook or even 4chan and Reddit. b) ■ The
word “troll” first popped up in the early days of the Internet, in forums like Usenet and BBS. According
to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest known mention of the word in the context of the
Internet was on December 14, 1992 in the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban, which was dedicated to
discussing and unmasking urban legends. c) ■ The full conversation and the context has been lost over
the decades, but someone wrote, “Maybe after I post it, we could go trolling some more and see what
happens.”
C On the early Internet, you might have called someone a troll for being quarrelsome or for trying to get
a response out of an audience. “Trolling was used as a general, condemnatory, post-hoc descriptor of
an online encounter,” Mercer University professor Whitney Phillips wrote in The Atlantic back in
2012. “It was — and in many circles remain — something you accused someone else of being.”
However, by the first decade of this century, Phillips said, the troll had become an identity people
assumed and embraced. The Guardian even described trolls as “having a certain charm.” “The term
entered the public consciousness, due largely to media interventions that solidified that particular
meaning of the term,” said Phillips, who has dedicated her academic scholarship to trolling.
D (a) The message forum 4chan's board and the Anonymous hacker collective became infamous
breeding grounds for self-described trolls, where outrageous and offensive behavior thrived just for
kicks. (b) They called themselves trolls to justify their abuse of other people for their own personal
sick enjoyment, in other words. (c) Trolling began to spill into the real world, and people at all levels
started to suffer its unfavorable consequences. In 2010, 4chan users piled onto an 11-year-old girl in
Florida, circulating her real name, phone number, and address online after the girl got involved in an
Internet quarrel. People prank-called her, spammed her Facebook and MySpace accounts and had
pizzas delivered to her house. A satirical website associated with Anonymous called Encyclopedia
Dramatica posted a three-part section explaining “How to troll her” that included “Tell her to kill
herself” and “Tell her dad that we are going to beat her up.”
E The year 2012 was a pivotal moment — it was the year that the word “troll” became a staple of the
modern lexicon, the year the troll became a lead character on the Internet's stage. Amanda Todd,
16, committed suicide after years of being bullied online, including attacks from anonymous strangers,
while Australian television personality Charlotte Dawson attempted suicide after publicly battling trolls
on Twitter. Dawson survived the attempt, but committed suicide two years later, in 2014. The
BBC and Gawker unmasked racist and misogynistic trolls, respectively, putting human faces on
an anonymous web epidemic. Governments considered anti-troll legislation. Troll explainer pieces
flourished. Google searches for “internet troll” increased. Patton Oswalt even dressed up like the kind
that hangs out under bridges to mock online trolling for the website Funny or Die.
F We now use the word “troll” to describe both harmless prank texts to friends about cats and the kind
of malicious prank phone calls that result in a SWAT team showing up at someone’s house. “Internet
trolling is one of the fastest spreading pieces of computer jargon of the 21st century,” Jonathan
Bishop wrote in 2014. “The term trolling has essentially gone from meaning provoking others for
mutual enjoyment to meaning abusing others for only one’s own enjoyment.” Bishop also argues that
what now exists is two separate but related definitions of trolling: “classical trolling” in which the end
goal is a good laugh and “anonymous” trolling which is actually predicated on harassment and abuse.

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 Mark the alternatives that best answer the questions or complete the statements about the text.
1. Which of the following can be concluded from paragraph A?
a) After being used online, the word “troll” was used for a very ugly creature in stories.
b) Trolling is only used for silly jokes that do not have any intention to harm.
c) Trolling is an issue that all Internet users have to deal with.

2. Where in paragraph B does the following sentence belong?

The troll is almost as old as the World Wide Web itself.
a) a
b) b
c) c

3. What is the function of paragraph C?

a) It states how the personality traits of trolls can differ.
b) It explains how the concept of “trolling” evolved over time.
c) It shows how the media helped trolling become prevalent in a short time.

4. Which underlined sentence does not fit in paragraph D?

a) a
b) b
c) c

5. Why does the writer tell the stories of a girl in Florida, Amanda Todd and Charlotte Dawson in paragraphs
D and E?
a) To exemplify how trolling can turn into online harassment
b) To emphasize that anybody could be involved in trolling
c) To state that governments cannot prevent trolling

6. It can be concluded from paragraph F that today the word “trolling”______.

a) has both positive and negative connotations depending on the situation it describes
b) has more than one definition which are totally different and not connected to each other
c) only means writing negative and hostile comments on a website to provoke others

7. Which of the following is the best title for the text?

a) The Offline Nightmares Behind Online Trolling
b) Any of Us are Capable of Trolling
c) The Evolution of the Internet Troll

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TEXT II
A We share this earth with snails, snakes, mosquitoes, and elephants, as well as deer and whales, giraffes and
kangaroos. These species differ enormously from one another in countless ways, but not even one comes
close to us in our ability to adapt to the environment. As for adapting the environment to us (through air
conditioning, furnaces, and other technological wonders), human beings are, of course, unique. The strategy
for survival adopted by animal species, some now extinct and some still extant, has been specialization.
Overtime, each species developed a life-sustaining harmony with its surroundings; the anatomy, physiology,
and behaviour of the species became exquisitely adapted to their own habitats. As a result, they flourished.
However, when conditions on earth changed through the course of centuries, when rivers dried up and ice
caps formed, their habitats changed, too. Eventually, the species failing to adjust to their altered habitats
disappeared from the face of the earth. However, human strategy for survival has not been specialization
but diversification. Fish swim, birds fly, and animals roam the land, while we are able to do all three. People
can be found living among ice floes, in dense steamy jungles, and in scorching deserts.
B Being all familiar with the phrases “natural selection” and “survival of the fittest”, we tend to overlook some
of the facts that are implied in the notion of “the fittest”. What traits or abilities make an individual
adaptable to the living conditions, then? The answer is that different qualities are important at different
times. Over a period of years, for example, the temperature of a lake may rise. When this happens, only the
fish and the frogs which can tolerate increased heat will survive and reproduce. Future generations in this
lake, therefore, will be the offspring of those few heat-tolerating fish and frogs. The lake will now be
populated by fish and frog species which have a higher proportion of individuals that are able to tolerate
warm water. If that lake should dry up completely, some frogs — the better long distance jumpers — might
jump as far as a nearby lake and survive, but all of its fish would become extinct because no fish species can
live without water. This shows that, in fact, a species may not have solved its problem of survival by adapting
to its surroundings only.
C Not only the trait of adaptability, but adaptability to an ever-changing environment, is the key to survival.
This is true for every species. In the case of the fish and frogs above, being “fit” has nothing to do with
strength or intelligence, two traits which are usually considered essential for survival. At first, all that
mattered to the frog was the ability to keep cool as the lake was getting warm. Later, the ability to keep cool
became irrelevant, and the ability to jump was all that mattered.
D People can endure a wider range of environmental conditions than can other creatures. They can use a
greater variety of food sources to nourish their bodies. In all sorts of other ways, too, humans’ limits of
survival and effective functioning are broader than those of other species. a) This doesn’t mean that each
individual person is almost infinitely adaptable; it is humankind, as a whole, that is remarkably adaptable. b)
We see this over and over again through thousands of years as mankind has been exposed to natural
catastrophes such as earthquakes, floods, and famines, and man-made catastrophes like war. c) The point
here is that mankind has survived over the ages under more varied conditions than any one person
encounters in a lifetime. We must distinguish, then, between what a person can do and what people can do.
Each person has their limits, and they are, necessarily, narrower than those of their species as a whole. One
human being can do something that another human being cannot. This diversity is what makes the human
race viable and able to withstand extinction.
E We, then, should all cherish diversity. The differences among individuals should be valued. This is not
because we want to become tolerant of differences among people, though. We must cherish diversity
because it is essential to our very survival. The variations among us increase the chances that the human
race, as a whole, will be able to adapt to almost anything that it may encounter. Is human diversity a cause
or an effect of our adaptability? It is both a cause and an effect. That is, our ability to adapt to a changing
environment is made possible by our diversity — by the fact that some among us will survive under almost
any condition. Our diversity, in turn, is increased as we change and adapt to that ever changing world.

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Mark the alternatives that best answer the questions or complete the statements about the text.
1. According to paragraph A, specialization is a strategy that _______.
a) involves the behaviour of various animal species
b) allows animals to survive, but cannot always prevent extinction
c) enables animals to resemble human beings in their ability to adapt to the environment

2. Why does the writer give the “fish and frog” example in paragraph B?
a) To show that adaptation itself is not enough to survive
b) To illustrate how different species share the same habitat
c) To exemplify how habitats of species change over time

3. Which of the following can be concluded from paragraph C?

a) Unusual environmental conditions force all species to develop the ability to keep cool.
b) Animal species cannot survive without intelligence or strength.
c) Adaptation must be a continuous process for the survival of species.

4. Where in paragraph D does the following sentence belong?

Actually, individual human beings have survived under conditions which they themselves would have called
impossible.
a) a
b) b
c) c

5. Which statement is true according to paragraph D?

a) Humankind has mainly survived man-made disorders.
b) Individuals have a limitless potential for adaptation.
c) Each person has distinct limits compared to whole species.

6. According to paragraphs D and E, the reason why the differences among individuals should be
valuable is that _______.
a) diversity is vital for humankind to survive
b) differences result from adaptability rather than leading to it
c) people need to tolerate individual differences

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 COLLOCATIONAL VOCABULARY
RHO12 – Texts 1&2
harassment (n.): behavior that annoys or upsets
someone
illegal behavior towards a person that causes
mental or emotional suffering(, which
includes repeated unwanted contacts,
insults, threats, touching or offensive
language)
online / vicious, etc harassment
 harass(v) smo
 outrageous (adj.): shocking and morally
unacceptable
 used to describe something or someone that is
shocking because they are unusual or strange
outrageous behaviour
 staple (n.): a main product or part of something
a staple(n) of the modern lexicon / diet, etc
 to flourish (v.): To grow or develop successfully
species/parts of the city/companies
flourish (v)
 dense (adj.): having parts that are close together
so that it is difficult to go or see through
a dense(adj) population / forest
density (n.)
 to tolerate (v.): to accept behavior and beliefs
that are difficult from your own
tolerate(v) heat/desert conditions/rude behavior
tolerance(n) of heat/desert conditions/rude
behavior
 infinite (adj.): without limits, extremely large or
great, endless
an infinite(adj) number / variety
infinitely(adv)
 catastrophe (n.): a sudden event that causes very
great trouble or destruction
a natural/environmental catastrophe(n) // to
prevent a catastrophe
a catastrophic(adj) event
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* Sexual harassment in the workplace is not a trivial
matter; on the contrary, it should be taken very
seriously.
*The company investigated claims of workplace
harassment and racial discrimination.
*It is outrageous that these buildings remain emtry
while there are thousands of people who cannot
afford proper housing.
*These prices are outrageous. (=much too high)
*Shortages mean that even staples like bread are
difficult to find.
*Romantic fiction and reference books are a staple
of many public libraries.
*My tomatoes are flourishing this summer – it must
be the warm weather.
Watercolour painting started to flourish in Britain
around 1750.
*The forest was so dense that we couldn’t see the
sky when we looked up.
* The population in big cities is so dense that it is
difficult to control the spread of the virus.
*I will not tolerate aggressive behavior in my class.
*With trials for the believers of other faiths, this
period in history is not noted for its religious
tolerance.
*Theoretically, the universe is infinite.
*With infinite patience, she explained the procedure
to us four times.
*World leaders are being warned of the ecological
catastrophe due to global warming, but they do not
seem to care.
*The emigration of scientists is a catastrophe for a
 country.

 viable (adj.): able to work as intended or able to
succeed
a viable(adj) alternative / option
 to withstand (v.): to be strong enough or not be
changed by something
withstand(v) extinction/earthquakes/air attacks
* In order to make the project viable, we need to
reduce the costs.
*Our toys are designed to withstand the rough
treatment of the average five-year-old.
*The aircraft base I protected with specially
designed shelters that are built to withstand ground
and air attacks.

 to cherish (v.): to love, protect and care for *Her most cherished possession is a 1926 letter
someone or something that is important to you from F. Scott Fitzgerald.
cherish(v) diversity/freedom of speech
cherished (adj.) *People of this country cherish the right of freedom
of speech.

 offensive (adj.): causing unpleasant feelings *He found her comments unjustified and deeply
offensive.
offensive(adj) behavior
*Bad words –swear words- are examples of
offensive language