Lecture 11 1

Strategies for Summary Completion

• Questions generally follow the sequence. In some rare cases, there may be alteration. But
they will be not that surprising.

• First, read the questions, find out the key points, underline the keywords.

• Then, before going to the passage take the immediate questions in your mind and try to
find the answers. Finally crosscheck to be sure about the answer.

• Check grammar and spelling.

• If you can’t find the answer or feel confused, write the possible answer and move forward.
You can always come back later.

• In case of given options

- You need to find out the best match with the obtained answers.

- There will be more options than needed.

- You may try to predict the answers.

- Make use of the elimination process.

- Be ready for a high level of paraphrasing.

Strategies for Short Answer Questions

• Usually these questions follow the sequence.

• Read the questions first and carefully understand the focus point of the questions while
underlining them as well.

• Then take the immediate one or two questions in mind and start reading the passage to
find them.

• Once you can locate the question in the passage, underline them and recheck the
questions to find out the exact answer.

• Answer with exact words from the passage. But check grammar in case you need to
change the form of the word (rarely happens).

• Stay within the word limit.

• Skip whenever you are confused, and come back later.

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 Lecture 11 2

Exercise
CAMBRIDGE 8 TEST 2 READING PASGAE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on
Reading Passage 2 below.
Questions 14-19
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-F.
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B and D-F from the list of headings
below.
Write the correct number, i-ix, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i Predicting climatic changes

ii The relevance of the Little Ice Age today
iii How cities contribute to climate change
iv Human impact on the climate
v How past climatic conditions can be determined
vi A growing need for weather records
vii A study covering a thousand years
viii People have always responded to climate change
ix Enough food at last

Example Answer
Paragraph A viii

14 Paragraph B

Example Answer
Paragraph C v

15 Paragraph D

16 Paragraph E

17 Paragraph F

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 Lecture 11 3

THE LITTLE ICE AGE

A This book will provide a detailed examination of the Little Ice Age and other climatic
shifts, but, before I embark on that, let me provide a historical context. We tend to
think of climate - as opposed to weather - as something unchanging, yet humanity
has been at the mercy of climate change for its entire existence, with at least eight
glacial episodes in the past 730,000 years. Our ancestors adapted to the universal
but irregular global warming since the end of the last great Ice Age, around 10,000
years ago, with dazzling opportunism. They developed strategies for surviving
harsh drought cycles, decades of heavy rainfall or unaccustomed cold; adopted
agriculture and stock-raising, which revolutionised human life; and founded the
world's first pre-industrial civilisations in Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Americas.
But the price of sudden climate change, in famine, disease and suffering, was often
high.

B The Little Ice Age lasted from roughly 1300 until the middle of the nineteenth
century. Only two centuries ago, Europe experienced a cycle of bitterly cold
winters; mountain glaciers in the Swiss Alps were the lowest in recorded memory,
and pack ice surrounded Iceland for much of the year. The climatic events of the
Little Ice Age did more than help shape the modern world. They are the deeply
important context for the current unprecedented global warming. The Little Ice Age
was far from a deep freeze, however; rather an irregular seesaw of rapid climatic
shifts, few lasting more than a quarter-century, driven by complex and still little
understood interactions between the atmosphere and the ocean. The seesaw
brought cycles of intensely cold winters and easterly winds, then switched abruptly
to years of heavy spring and early summer rains, mild winters, and frequent Atlantic
storms, or to periods of droughts, light northeasterly winds, and summer heat
waves.

C Reconstructing the climate changes of the past is extremely difficult, because

systematic weather observations began only a few centuries ago, in Europe and
North America. Records from India and tropical Africa are even more recent. For
the time before records began, we have only 'proxy records' reconstructed largely
from tree rings and ice cores, supplemented by a few incomplete written accounts.
We now have hundreds of tree-ring records from throughout the northern
hemisphere, and many from south of the equator, too, amplified with a growing
body of temperature data from ice cores drilled in Antarctica, Greenland, the
Peruvian Andes, and other locations. We are close to a knowledge of annual
summer and winter temperature variations over much of the northern hemisphere
going back 600 years.

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 Lecture 11 4

D This book is a narrative history of climatic shifts during the past ten centuries, and
some of the ways in which people in Europe adapted to them. Part One describes
the Medieval Warm Period, roughly 900 to 1200. During these three centuries,
Norse voyagers from Northern Europe explored northern seas, settled Greenland,
and visited North America. It was not a time of uniform warmth, for then, as always
since the Great Ice Age, there were constant shifts in rainfall and temperature.
Mean European temperatures were about the same as today, perhaps slightly
cooler.

E It is known that the Little Ice Age cooling began in Greenland and the Arctic in
about 1200. As the Arctic ice pack spread southward, Norse voyages to the west
were rerouted into the open Atlantic, then ended altogether. Storminess increased
in the North Atlantic and North Sea. Colder, much wetter weather descended on
Europe between 1315 and 1319, when thousands perished in a continent-wide
famine. By 1400, the weather had become decidedly more unpredictable and
stormier, with sudden shifts and lower temperatures that culminated in the cold
decades of the late sixteenth century. Fish were a vital commodity in growing towns
and cities, where food supplies were a constant concern. Dried cod and herring
were already the staples of the European fish trade, but changes in water
temperatures forced fishing fleets to work further offshore. The Basques, Dutch,
and English developed the first offshore fishing boats adapted to a colder and
stormier Atlantic. A gradual agricultural revolution in northern Europe stemmed
from concerns over food supplies at a time of rising populations. The revolution
involved intensive commercial farming and the growing of animal fodder on land
not previously used for crops. The increased productivity from farmland made
some countries self-sufficient in grain and livestock and offered effective protection
against famine.

A Global temperatures began to rise slowly after 1850, with the beginning of the
Modern Warm Period. There was a vast migration from Europe by land-hungry
farmers and others, to which the famine caused by the Irish potato blight
contributed, to North America, Australia, New Zealand, and southern Africa.
Millions of hectares of forest and woodland fell before the newcomers' axes
between 1850 and 1890, as intensive European farming methods expanded across
the world. The unprecedented land clearance released vast quantities of carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere, triggering for the first time humanly caused global
warming. Temperatures climbed more rapidly in the twentieth century as the use
of fossil fuels proliferated and greenhouse gas levels continued to soar. The rise
has been even steeper since the early 1980s. The Little Ice Age has given way to
a new climatic regime, marked by prolonged and steady warming. At the same
time, extreme weather events like Category 5 hurricanes are becoming more
frequent.

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 Lecture 11 5

Questions 18-22
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-I, below.
Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 18-22 on your answer sheet.

Weather during the Little Ice Age

Documentation of past weather conditions is limited: our main sources of knowledge
of conditions in the distant past are 18 ....................... and 19 ....................... We
can deduce that the Little Ice Age was a time of 20 ....................... , rather than of
consistent freezing. Within it there were some periods of very cold winters, others of
21 ....................... and heavy rain, and yet others that saw 22 ....................... with no
rain at all.

A climatic shifts B ice cores C tree rings

D glaciers E interactions F weather observations
G heat waves H storms I written accounts

Questions 23-26
Classify the following events as occurring during the
A Medieval Warm Period
B Little Ice Age
C Modern Warm Period
Write the correct letter, A, B or C, in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.

23 Many Europeans started farming abroad.

24 The cutting down of trees began to affect the climate.

25 Europeans discovered other lands.

26 Changes took place in fishing patterns.

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 Lecture 11 6

CAMBRIDGE 9 TEST 1 READING PASGAE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.

William Henry Perkin

The man who invented synthetic dyes
William Henry Perkin was born on scientific breakthrough that would bring
March 12, 1838, in London, England. him both fame and fortune.
As a boy, Perkin's curiosity prompted
early interests in the arts, sciences, At the time, quinine was the only viable
photography, and engineering. But it medical treatment for malaria. The drug
was a chance stumbling upon a run- is derived from the bark of the cinchona
down, yet functional, laboratory in his tree, native to South America, and by
late grandfather's home that solidified 1856 demand for the drug was
the young man's enthusiasm for surpassing the available supply. Thus,
chemistry. when Hofmann made some passing
comments about the desirability of a
As a student at the City of London synthetic substitute for quinine, it was
School, Perkin became immersed in the unsurprising that his star pupil was
study of chemistry. His talent and moved to take up the challenge.
devotion to the subject were perceived
by his teacher, Thomas Hall, who During his vacation in 1856, Perkin
encouraged him to attend a series of spent his time in the laboratory on the
lectures given by the eminent scientist top floor of his family's house. He was
Michael Faraday at the Royal attempting to manufacture quinine from
Institution. Those speeches fired the aniline, an inexpensive and readily
young chemist's enthusiasm further, available coal tar waste product.
and he later went on to attend the Royal Despite his best efforts, however, he
College of Chemistry, which he did not end up with quinine. Instead, he
succeeded in entering in 1853, at the produced a mysterious dark sludge.
age of 15. Luckily, Perkin's scientific training and
nature prompted him to investigate the
At the time of Perkin's enrolment, the substance further. Incorporating
Royal College of Chemistry was potassium dichromate and alcohol into
headed by the noted German chemist the aniline at various stages of the
August Wilhelm Hofmann. Perkin's experimental process, he finally
scientific gifts soon caught Hofmann's produced a deep purple solution. And,
attention and, within two years, he proving the truth of the famous scientist
became Hofmann's youngest assistant. Louis Pasteur's words 'chance favours
Not long after that, Perkin made the only the prepared mind', Perkin saw the
potential of his unexpected find.

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 Lecture 11 7

unlimited byproduct of London's gas

Historically, textile dyes were made street lighting, the dye works began
from such natural sources as plants and producing the world's first synthetically
animal excretions. Some of these, such dyed material in 1857. The company
as the glandular mucus of snails, were received a commercial boost from the
difficult to obtain and outrageously Empress Eugenie of France, when she
expensive. Indeed, the purple colour decided the new colour flattered her.
extracted from a snail was once so Very soon, mauve was the necessary
costly that in society at the time only the shade for all the fashionable ladies in
rich could afford it. Further, natural dyes that country. Not to be outdone,
tended to be muddy in hue and fade England's Queen Victoria also
quickly. It was against this backdrop appeared in public wearing a mauve
that Perkin's discovery was made. gown, thus making it all the rage in
England as well. The dye was bold and
Perkin quickly grasped that his purple
fast, and the public clamoured for more.
solution could be used to colour fabric,
Perkin went back to the drawing board.
thus making it the world's first synthetic
dye. Realising the importance of this Although Perkin's fame was achieved
breakthrough, he lost no time in and fortune assured by his first
patenting it. But perhaps the most discovery, the chemist continued his
fascinating of all Perkin's reactions to research. Among other dyes he
his find was his nearly instant developed and introduced were aniline
recognition that the new dye had red (1859) and aniline black (1863) and,
commercial possibilities. in the late 1860s, Perkin's green. It is
important to note that Perkin's synthetic
Perkin originally named his dye Tyrian
dye discoveries had outcomes far
Purple, but it later became commonly
beyond the merely decorative. The
known as mauve (from the French for
dyes also became vital to medical
the plant used to make the colour
research in many ways. For instance,
violet). He asked advice of Scottish dye
they were used to stain previously
works owner Robert Pullar, who
invisible microbes and bacteria,
assured him that manufacturing the dye
allowing researchers to identify such
would be well worth it if the colour
bacilli as tuberculosis, cholera, and
remained fast (i.e. would not fade) and
anthrax. Artificial dyes continue to play
the cost was relatively low. So, over the
a crucial role today. And, in what would
fierce objections of his mentor
have been particularly pleasing to
Hofmann, he left college to give birth to
Perkin, their current use is in the search
the modern chemical industry.
for a vaccine against malaria.
With the help of his father and brother,
Perkin set up a factory not far from
London. Utilising the cheap and
plentiful coal tar that was an almost

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Questions 1-7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1 Michael Faraday was the first person to recognise Perkin's ability as a student of
chemistry.

2 Michael Faraday suggested Perkin should enrol in the Royal College of

Chemistry.

3 Perkin employed August Wilhelm Hofmann as his assistant.

4 Perkin was still young when he made the discovery that made him rich and
famous.

5 The trees from which quinine is derived grow only in South America.

6 Perkin hoped to manufacture a drug from a coal tar waste product.

7 Perkin was inspired by the discoveries of famous scientist Louis Pasteur.

Questions 8-13
Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.
8 Before Perkin's discovery, with what group in society was the colour purple
associated?

9 What potential did Perkin immediately understand that his new dye had?

10 What was the name finally used to refer to the first colour Perkin invented?

11 What was the name of the person Perkin consulted before setting up his own dye
works?

12 In what country did Perkin's newly invented colour first become fashionable?

13 According to the passage, which disease is now being targeted by researchers

using synthetic dyes?
 Lecture 11 1

Homework
• Listening

- Cambridge 9, Listening Test 4.

• Reading

- Cambridge 8, Test 3, Reading Passage 1 (Page 65)

- Cambridge 9, Test 2, Reading Passage 1 (Page 41)

"You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great."

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