READING WARS

A. In many developed countries literacy skills are under siege. This is true even
in societies where access to primary education is universal and governments
invest heavily in education. New Zealand, for example, was leading the world in
literacy rates in 1970, but tumbled to thirteenth place in 2001 and then again to
twenty-fourth just a few years later. Test scores in the USA also slumped ten
percent during the 1990s despite the country riding an economic boom for much
of the decade. In some cases these statistics reverse trends that were in motion
for over a century and a haft. The steady, gradual expansion of literacy across
social groups and classes was one of the greatest successes of the period of
industrialisation that began in the mid-1850s.

B. This reversal of fortunes has lead to widespread contention over the pedagogy
of teaching literacy. What was once a dry and technical affair—the esoteric
business of linguists and policy analysts—rapidly escalated into a series of
skirmishes that were played out in high-visibility forums: Newspapers ran
special features, columns and letters-to-the-editor on the literacy crisis;
politicians successfully ran their national campaigns on improving reading test
scores; and parents had their say by joining Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs)
and lobby groups.

C. The arguments around reading pooled into two different classroom

methodologies: constructivism and behaviourism. The constructivist
methodology grew from a holistic conception of knowledge creation that
understood reading and writing to be innate, humanistic and interpretative
practices that suffered when they were spliced and formalised within rigid
doctrines, strict rules and universal skill-sets. Constructivists associate words
with meanings; each word might be thought of as a Chinese ideogram. Students
are encouraged to learn individual words and skip over and guess words they do
not understand, or learn to interpret those words by situating them within the
lexical infrastructure of the sentence and the story's wider narrative. These
practices materialise as learning processes centred on guided group reading and
independent reading of high-quality, culturally diverse literature or textual
composition that emphasises pupils conveying their own thoughts and feelings
for real purposes such as letters to pen pals or journal entries.

D. Behaviourism sees the pedagogical process in a less dialectical fashion—

words are initially taught not lexically, as vehicles to convey meaning, but rather
sub-lexically, as a combination of features that can be separated and learnt in a
schematic process. The behaviourist approach does not focus on words at all in
the early stages of learning. Rather, it is centred on a universally applicable
method of teaching students to isolate graphemes and phonemes with the
intention that students will eventually learn to synthesise these individual parts
and make sense of spoken words textually. In this way, individual components
are not equated with the strokes of a brush on a Chinese ideogram, but rather as
the focal pieces of interpretation—as in, for example, learning to read musical
notations or Morse Code. Because of its emphasis on universal rules,
behaviourism is much more conducive to formal examination and the
consolidation of results across regions and countries. The ability to master
language is considered to rest in the acquisition of a set of skills that exist
independently of individuals. Classroom learning is therefore based upon the
transmission of knowledge from tutor to student, rather than seen as an
internalised process that erupts within the students themselves.

E. So who comes out on top? It is not easy to say. Champions of behaviourism

have claimed victory because constructivist learning took over in the late 1980s,
just before test scores on literacy began sinking across the West. Constructivists,
however, can make the valid claim that the behaviourist approach has a heavy
methodological bias towards testing and examination, and that test results do
not represent the ability of individuals to use and interpret language freely and
creatively. Furthermore, different socio-economic groups respond in different
ways to each method. Those from wealthier families tend to do well regardless
of the method, but thrive on the constructivist approach implemented in the
1990s. Children from poorer families, however, are better served by
behaviourism. These outcomes have ramped up levels of socio-economic based
educational disparities in educational systems that have pushed the
constructivist method.

F. It is unlikely that either constructivism or behaviourism will be permanently

sidelined from curricula in the near future. Most teachers find it easier to
incorporate aspects of each approach. Constructivism may ultimately hold the
trump card because of its proven success with pupils who come from families
where they are introduced to reading and writing in various forms from a young
age—this process of 'living and learning' and immersing oneself in language is
a sound principle. In a world rife with social inequities, households with
illiterate parents and a scarcity of funding for education, however, the
behaviourist approach may have the upper hand in teaching children to access
the basic skiffs of literacy quickly and efficiently, even if some linguistic
creativity is crushed in the process.
Question 27-33
Reading Passage 3 has six paragraphs, A-F.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
27 A reason why constructivism might increase inequalities in society
28 Ways in which people debated the merits of different ways of teaching
reading
29 A comparison between forms of communication that build meaning from
isolated parts
30 Reasons why a method that is theoretically superior might not always work
effectively in practice
31 An explanation of why measuring the success of different reading methods
is difficult
32 An example of an activity that teachers might use to develop writing skills
33 Evidence of a national decline in reading standards

Question 34-36
Choose THREE letters, A-G.
Write your answers in boxes 34-36 on your answer sheet.
Which THREE of the following are features of constructivism?
A. Students learn best by working on their own.
B. People are naturally inclined to develop language abilities.
C. It is vital that a disciplined and regulated approach is used.
D. It is important that students understand every word they encounter.
E. Language is best learnt as a single, organic process.
F. Everyone learns to read and write in a similar manner.
G. Context can provide helpful cues to understanding words.
Question 34-36
Choose THREE letters A-G.
Write your answers in boxes 37-39 on your answer sheet.
Which THREE of the following are features of behaviourism?
A. The whole of a word is less important than its parts.
B. There is not a common set of conventions.
C. Students learn best by working on their own.
D. Meaning is created by connecting word fragments.
E. Linguistic capacities are built into people.
F. Students learn by receiving information from teachers.
G. It is difficult to judge how well students are doing collectively.

Question 40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write your answer in box 40 on your answer sheet.
40 Which of the following statements best summarises the writer's general
conclusion?
A. Constructivism is better, while behaviourism leads to negative social effects.
B. Each method complements the other, and their application should be
integrated.
C. Ideally constructivism would be used, but behaviourism is more pragmatic.
D. Neither is particularly useful, and there needs to be a new alternative.
THE BIRTH OF SUBURBIA
A. There is no single pivotal moment that could be separated out from any other
as the conception of the suburban lifestyle; from the early 1800s, various types
of suburban development have sprung up and evolved in their own localised
ways, from the streetcar suburbs of New York to the dormitory towns outside of
London. It is William Levitt, however, who is generally regarded as the father of
modern suburbia. During World War II, Levitt served in the United States Navy
where he developed expertise in the mass construction of military housing, a
process that he streamlined using uniform and interchangeable parts. In 1947,
the budding developer used this utilitarian knowledge to begin work with his
father and architect brother constructing a planned community on Long Island,
New York. With an emphasis on speed, efficiency, and cost-effective production,
the Levitts were soon able to produce over 30 units a day.

B. William Levitt correctly predicted the demand for affordable, private, quiet,
and comfortable homes from returning GIS after World War II and with the baby
boom starting to kick in. All the original lots sold out in a matter of days, and by
1951, nearly 18,000 homes in the area had been constructed by the Levitt fit Sons
Company. Levit town quickly became the prototype of mass-produced housing,
spurring the construction of similar projects in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and
even Puerto Rico, followed by a new industry, and soon a new way of life and a
new ideal for the American family.

C. One of the major criticisms of suburbia is that it can lead to isolation and
social dislocation. With properties spread out over great swathes of land, sealed
off from one another by bushes, fences and trees, the emphasis of suburban life
is placed squarely on privacy rather than community. In the densely populated
urban settlements that predated suburbs (and that are still the predominant way
of life for some people), activities such as childcare and household chores as well
as sources of emotional and moral support were widely socialised. This insured
that any one family would be able to draw on a pool of social resources from their
neighbours, building cohabitants and family on nearby streets. Suburbia breaks
these networks down into individual and nuclear family units resulting in an
increase in anti-social behaviour even amongst the wealthy. Teens from
wealthy suburban families, for example, are more likely to smoke, drink alcohol,
and use drugs than their poorer urban peers, and are also more likely to
experience depression and anxiety.

D. Another major problem with the suburban lifestyle is its damaging ecological
impact. The comparison of leafy, quiet, and low-density suburbs with life in the
concrete towers of sooty, congested urban conurbations is actually quite
misleading; as it turns out if you want to be kind to the natural environment, the
key is to stay away from it. Suburbia fails the environmental friendliness test on
a number of counts. Firstly, due to their low population density, suburbs
consume natural land at a much higher rate than high-density row housing or
apartment buildings. Secondly, they encourage the use of personal motor
vehicles, often at a rate of one per family member, at the expense of public
transport. It is also much less efficient to provide electricity and water to
individual suburban houses instead of individual units in an apartment building.
In his comparison of urban and suburban pollution, Edward L. Glaeser
concluded that we need to “build more sky towers – especially in California”.
Virtually everywhere, he found cities to be cleaner than suburbs. And the
difference in carbon dioxide emissions between high-density cities and their
suburbs (for example, in New York) was the highest. Urban residents of New
York can claim on average to produce nearly 15,000 pounds of carbon dioxide
less than their suburban peers.
E. Another negative aspect of suburban life is its stifling conformity and
monotony of social experience. It was not just the nuts and bolts and the
concrete foundations of suburban houses that got replicated street on street,
block upon block, and suburb upon suburb; it was everything from the shops and
cultural life to people’s hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Suburbia gave birth to
the “strip mall”, a retail establishment that is typically composed of a collection
of national or global chain stores, all stocked with a centrally dictated,
homogeneous array of products. The isolation and lack of interaction in suburbs
have also encouraged the popularity of television, a passively receptive medium
for the viewer that, in the early days at least, offered an extremely limited scope
of cultural exposure compared with the wealth of experiences available in the
inner city. Meanwhile, much of the inner-city “public sphere” has been lost
with the suburban flight. The public sphere is the area of social life in which
people come together to freely discuss and identify social problems. In the city,
this has traditionally occurred around newsstands, in coffee houses, salons,
theatres, meeting halls, and so on. Suburbia has not found a way to replace this
special type of social experience, however. Social meeting points in the suburbs
tend to be based exclusively around specific interests such as sports or cultural
clubs, with no broad forms of daily social interaction.

F. These points do not suggest the idea of suburbia itself is flawed, but that it has
not been executed in a way that takes into account the full spectrum of human
needs and desires. This likely reflects the hasty, thrown-together nature of early
suburban development. With the baby boom rippling across Western countries
and demand for family-friendly housing skyrocketing, developers and city
planners were unable to develop sophisticated models. Now, however, we
should take time to consider what has gone wrong and how we can reconfigure
the suburb. How can we imbue suburban life with the lost sphere of public
discussion and debate? How can people maintain their privacy without
sacrificing a sense of community? How can we use new technologies to make
suburbs environmentally friendly? These are questions for which the developers
of tomorrow will have to find answers, lest the dream of suburbia become the
nightmare of Disturbia.

Question 27-31
Reading Passage 3 has six paragraphs, A-F.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.
27 A reason to construct taller buildings
28 Where people might discuss issues of societal concern in urban locations
29 The founder of what is broadly understood as contemporary "suburbs"
30 Examples of problems suffered by youth that suburban lifestyles can make
worse
31 A model for suburban development in the latter half of the 20th century

Question 32-38
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading
Passage 2?
In boxes 32-38 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
32 A good principle for ecological preservation is to avoid human interference.
33 In some countries, suburbs are more environmentally friendly than in the
USA.
34 Suburban development fosters the use of both public and private forms of
transport.
35 People cannot relate to each other in suburbs because their lives are too
different.
36 There is not much variety amongst the goods at a strip mall.
37 Television has not tended to offer the same diversity as urban cultural
outlets.
38 There are no ways for people to get together and interact in suburbs.

Question 39-40
Choose TWO letters A-E.
Write your answers in boxes 39 and 40 on your answer sheet.
Which TWO of the following does the author conclude?
A. The very concept of a healthy suburban lifestyle is problematic.
B. The speed of suburban growth has contributed to its imperfections.
C. By thinking about human and ecological needs, suburbs can become better
places to live.
D. Developers will have to think about ways of living that do not require
suburbs.
E. Suburbs have their downsides, but they are the best way for parents to raise
children.