PASSAGE 1 : video games Unexpected Benefits to Human Brain
James Paul Gee, professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, played his first video game years ago when his six-year-old son Sam was playing Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When It’s Dark Outside. He wanted to play the game so he could support Sam’s problem solving. Though Pajama Sam is not an “educational game”, it is replete with the types of problems psychologists study when they study thinking and learning. When he saw how well the game held Sam’s attention, he wondered what sort of beast a more mature video game might be.
Video and computer games, like many other popular, entertaining and addicting kid’s activities, are looked down upon by many parents as time-wasters, and worse, parents think that these games rot the brain. Violent video games are readily blamed by the media and some experts as the reason why some youth become violent or commit extreme anti-social behavior. Recent content analyses of video games show that as many as 89% of games contain some violent content, but there is no form of aggressive content for 70% of popular games. Many scientists and psychologists, like James Paul Gee, find that video games actually have many benefits – the main one being making kids smart. Video games may actually teach kids high-level thinking skills that they will need in the future.
“Video games change your brain,” according to University of Wisconsin psychologist Shawn Green. Video games change the brain’s physical structure the same way as do learning to read, playing the piano, or navigating using a map. Much like exercise can build muscle, the powerful combination of concentration and rewarding surges of neurotransmitters like dopamine, which strengthens neural circuits, can build the player’s brain.
Video games give your child’s brain a real workout. In many video games, the skills required to win involve abstract and high level thinking. These skills are not even taught at school. Some of the mental skills trained by video games include: following instructions, problem solving, logic, hand-eye coordination, fine motor and spatial skills. Research also suggests that people can learn iconic, spatial, and visual attention skills from video games. There have been even studies with adults showing that experience with video games is related to better surgical skills. Jacob Benjamin, doctor from Beth Israel Medical Center NY, found a direct link between skill at video gaming and skill at keyhole or laparoscopic surgery. Also, a reason given by experts as to why fighter pilots of today are more skillful is that this generation’s pilots are being weaned on video games.
The players learn to manage resources that are limited, and decide the best use of resources, the same way as in real life. In strategy games, for instance, while developing a city, an unexpected surprise like an enemy might emerge. This forces the player to be flexible and quickly change tactics. Sometimes the player does this almost every second of the game giving the brain a real workout. According to researchers at the University of Rochester, led by Daphne Bavelier, a cognitive scientist, games simulating stressful events such as those found in battle or action games could be a training tool for real-world situations. The study suggests that playing action video games primes the brain to make quick decisions. Video games can be used to train soldiers and surgeons, according to the study. Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today’s Popular Culture, says gamers must deal with immediate problems while keeping their long-term goals on their horizon. Young gamers force themselves to read to get instructions, follow storylines of games, and get information from the game texts.
James Paul Gee, professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that playing a video game is similar to working through a science problem Like students in a laboratory, gamers must come up with a hypothesis. For example, players in some games constantly try out combinations of weapons and powers to use to defeat an enemy. If one does not work, they change hypothesis and try the next one. Video games are goal- driven experiences, says Gee, which are fundamental to learning. Also, using math skills is important to win in many games that involve quantitative analysis like managing resources. In higher levels of a game, players usually fail the first time around, but they keep on trying until they succeed and move on to the next level.
Many games are played online and involve cooperation with other online players in order to win. Video and computer games also help children gain self-confidence and many games are based on history, city building, and governance and so on. Such games indirectly teach children about aspects of life on earth.
In an upcoming study in the journal Current Biology, authors Daphne Bavelier, Alexandre Pouget, and C. Shawn Green report that video games could provide a potent training regimen for speeding up reactions in many types of real-life situations. The researchers tested dozens of 18- to 25-year-olds who were not ordinarily video game players. They split the subjects into two groups. One group played 50 hours of the fast-paced action video games “Call of Duty 2” and “Unreal Tournament,” and the other group played 50 hours of the slow-moving strategy game “The Sims 2.” After this training period, all of the subjects were asked to make quick decisions in several tasks designed by the researchers. The action game players were up to 25 percent faster at coming to a conclusion and answered just as many questions correctly as their strategy game playing peers.
Questions 1-4 Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
1/ What is the main purpose of paragraph one
A Introduction of professor James Paul Gee.
B Introduction of the video game: Pajamas Sam.
C Introduction of types of video games.
D Introduction of the background of this passage.
2/ What does the author want to express in the second paragraph
A Video games are widely considered harmful for children’s brain.
B Most violent video games are the direct reason of juvenile delinquency.
C Even there is a certain proportion of violence in most video games; scientists and psychologists see its
benefits of children’s intellectual abilities.
D Many parents regard video games as time-wasters, which rot children’s brain.
3/ What is correctly mentioned in paragraph four
A Some schools use video games to teach students abstract and high level thinking.
B Video games improves the brain ability in various aspects.
C Some surgeons have better skills because they play more video games.
D Skillful fighter pilots in this generation love to play video games.
4/ What is the expectation of the experiment the three researchers did
A Gamers have to make the best use of the limited resource.
B Gamers with better math skills will win in the end.
C Strategy game players have better ability to make quick decisions.
D Video games help increase the speed of players’ reaction effectively.
Questions 5-8 In boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
5/ Most video games are popular because of their violent content.
6/ The action game players minimized the percentage of making mistakes in the experiment.
7/ It would be a good idea for schools to apply video games in their classrooms.
8 /Those People who are addicted to video games have lots of dopamine in their brains.
Questions 9-13
Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-F) with opinions or deeds below.
Write the appropriate letters, A-F, in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.
A. The writer’s opinion
B. James Paul Gee
C. Shawn Green
D. Daphne Bavelier
E . Steven Johnson
F . Jacob Benjamin
9/ Video games as other daily life skills alter the brain’s physical structure.
10/ Brain is ready to make decisions without hesitation when players are immersed in playing stressful games.
11/ The purpose-motivated experience that video games offer plays an essential role in studying.
12/ Players are good at tackling prompt issues with future intensions.
13/ It helps children broaden their horizon in many aspects and gain self-confidence.
Questions 1-5 Summary: Complete the Summary paragraph below. In boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet, write the correct answer with NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS
The result of Ekman’s study demonstrates that fear and surprise are persistently 1 ……………….. and made a conclusion that some facial expressions have something to do with certain 2 ………………… Which is impossible covered, despite of 3 ……………….. and whether the culture has been 4 ……………….. or 5 ……………….. to the mainstream.
Questions 6-11
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-H, Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-H, in boxes 6-11 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
6/ the difficulty identifying the actual meaning of facial expressions
7/ the importance of culture on facial expressions is initially described
8/ collected data for the research on the relation between blink and the success in elections
9/ the features on the sociality of several facial expressions
10/ an indicator to reflect one’s extent of nervousness
11/ the relation between emotion and facial expressions
Questions 12-13
Choose two letters from the A-E
Write your answers in boxes 12-13 on your answer sheet
Which Two of the following statements are true according to Ekman’s theory?
A/ No evidence shows animals have their own facial expressions.
B/ The potential relationship between facial expression and state of mind exists
C/ Facial expressions are concerning different cultures.
D/ Different areas on face convey a certain state of mind.
E/ Mind controls men’s facial expressions more obvious than women’s
PASSAGE 3 Grimm’s Fairy Tales
The Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, named their story collection Children’s and Household Tales and published the first of its seven editions in Germany in 1812. The table of contents reads like an A-list of fairy-tale celebrities: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, the Frog King. Drawn mostly from oral narratives, the 210 stories in die Grimm’s’ collection represent an anthology of fairy tales, animal fables, rustic farces, and religious allegories that remain unrivalled to this day.
Such lasting fame would have shocked the humble Grimms. During their lifetimes the collection sold modestly in Germany, at first only a few hundred copies a year. The early editions were not even aimed at children. The brothers initially refused to consider illustrations, and scholarly footnotes took up almost as much space as the tales themselves. Jacob and Wilhelm viewed themselves as patriotic folklorists, not as entertainers of children. They began their work at a time when Germany had been overrun by the French under Napoleon, who was intent on suppressing local culture. As young, workaholic scholars, single and sharing a cramped flat, the Brothers Grimm undertook the fairy-tale collection with the goal of serving the endangered oral tradition of Germany.
For much of the 19th century teachers, parents, and religious figures, particularly in the United States, deplored the Grimms’ collection for its raw, uncivilized content. Offended adults objected to the gruesome punishments inflicted on the stories’ villains. In the original “Snow White” the evil stepmother is forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she falls down dead. Even today some protective parents shy from the Grimms’ tales because of their reputation for violence.
Despite its sometimes rocky reception, Children’s and Household Tales gradually took root with the public. The brothers had not foreseen that the appearance of their work would coincide with a great flowering of children’s literature in Europe. English publishers led the way, issuing high-quality picture books such as Jack and the Beanstalk and handsome folktale collections, all to satisfy a newly literate audience seeking virtuous material for the nursery. Once the Brothers Grimm sighted this new public, they set about refining and softening their tales, which had originated centuries earlier as earthy peasant fare. In the Grimms’ hands, cruel mothers became nasty stepmothers, unmarried lovers were made chaste, and the incestuous father was recast as the devil.
In the 20th century the Grimms’ fairy tales have come to rule the bookshelves of children’s bedrooms. The stories read like dreams come true: handsome lads and beautiful damsels, armed with magic, triumph over giants and witches and wild beasts. They outwit mean, selfish adults. Inevitably the boy and girl fall in love and live happily ever after. And parents keep reading because they approve of the finger-wagging lessons inserted into the stories: keep your promises, don’t talk to strangers, work hard, obey your parents. According to the Grimms, the collection served as “a manual of manners”.
Altogether some 40 persons delivered tales to the Grimms. Many of the storytellers came to the Grimms’ house in Kassel. The brothers particularly welcomed the visits of Dorothea Viehmann, a widow who walked to town to sell produce from her garden. An innkeeper daughter, Viehmann had grown up listening to stories from travellers on the road to Frankfurt. Among her treasure was “Aschenputtel” -Cinderella. Marie Hassenpflug was a 20-year- old friend of their sister, Charlotte, from a well-bred, French-speaking family. Marie’s wonderful stories blended motifs from the oral tradition and from Perrault’s influential 1697 book, Tales of My Mother Goose, which contained elaborate versions of “Little Red Riding Hood”, “Snow White”, and “Sleeping Beauty”, among others. Many of these had been adapted from earlier Italian tales.
Given that the origins of many of the Grimm fairy tales reach throughout Europe and into the Middle East and Orient, the question must be asked: How German are the Grimm tales? Very, says scholar Heinz Rolleke. Love of the underdog, rustic simplicity, creative energy—these are Teutonic traits. The coarse texture of life during medieval times in Germany, when many of the tales entered the oral tradition, also coloured the narratives. Throughout Europe, children were often neglected and abandoned, like Hansel and Gretel. Accused witches were burned at the stake, like the evil mother-in-law in “The Six Swans”. “The cruelty in the stories was not the Grimm’s fantasy”, Rolleke points out” It reflected the law-and-order system of the old times”.
The editorial fingerprints left by the Grimms betray the specific values of 19th-century Christian, bourgeois German society. But that has not stopped the tales from being embraced by almost every culture and nationality in the world. What accounts for this widespread, enduring popularity? Bernhard Lauer points to the “universal style” of the writing, you have no concrete descriptions of the land, or the clothes, or the forest, or the castles. It makes the stories timeless and placeless,” The tales allow us to express ‘our utopian longings’,” says Jack Zipes of the University of Minnesota, whose 1987 translation of the complete fairy tales captures the rustic vigour of the original text. They show a striving for happiness that none of us knows but that we sense is possible. We can identify with the heroes of the tales and become in our mind the masters and mistresses of our own destinies.”
Fairy tales provide a workout for the unconscious, psychoanalysts maintain. Bruno Bettelheim famously promoted the therapeutic of the Grimms’ stories, calling fairy tales the “great comforters. By confronting fears and phobias, symbolized by witches, heartless stepmothers, and hungry wolves, children find they can master their anxieties. Bettelheim’s theory continues to be hotly debated. But most young readers aren’t interested in exercising their unconsciousness. The Grimm tales, in fact, please in an infinite number of ways, something about them seems to mirror whatever moods or interests we bring to our reading of them. The flexibility of interpretation suits them for almost any time and any culture.
Questions 1-6
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement is true
NO if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
1/ The Grimm brothers believed they would achieve international fame.
2/ The Grimm brothers were forced to work in secret.
3/ Some parents today still think Grimm fairy tales are not suitable for children.
4/ The first edition of Grimm’s fairy tales sold more widely in England than in Germany.
5/ Adults like reading Grimm’s fairy tales for reasons different from those of children.
6/ The Grimm brothers based the story “Cinderella” on the life of Dorothea Viehmann
Questions 7-9
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write your answers in boxes 7-9 on your answer sheet.
7./ In paragraph 4, what changes happened at that time in Europe?
A Literacy levels of the population increased.
B The development of printing technology made it easier to publish.
C Schools were open to children.
D People were fond of collecting superb picture books.
8./ What changes did the Grimm Brothers make in later editions?
A They made the stories shorter.
B They used more oral language.
C The content of the tales became less violent.
D They found other origins of the tales.
9./ What did Marie Hassenpflug contribute to the Grimm’s Fairy tales?
A She wrote stories.
B She discussed the stories with them.
C She translated a popular book for the brothers using her talent for languages.
D She told the oral stories that were based on traditional Italian stories.
Questions 10-14
Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 10-14 on your answer sheet.
10/ Heinz Rolleke said the Grimm’s tales are “German” because the tales
11/ Heinz Rolleke said the abandoned children in tales
12/ Bernhard Lauer said the writing style of the Grimm brothers is universal because they
13/ Jack Zipes said the pursuit of happiness in the tales means they
14/ Bruno Bettelheim said the therapeutic value of the tales means that the fairy tales
A reflect what life was like at that time
B help children deal with their problems
C demonstrate the outdated system
D tell of the simplicity of life in the German countryside
E encourage people to believe that they can do anything
F recognize the heroes in the real life
G contribute to the belief in nature power
H avoid details about characters’ social settings.
