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Text 1:

The Harm When Schools Play Down Writing

I can only speak for whats happening in the U.K., but it 1. to me that attitudes to are grammar teaching here are profoundly socially divisive. Kids at fee-paying schools are 2. to be given a pretty good grounding in the mechanics of language, while the 3. largely taught that grammar is unimportant 4. freely on it; or b) first learn to play the thing? Of 6. with expressing yourself. This makes , the difference is that people are 7. out

me crazy. Imagine its the piano we are talking about. Which would be better: a) to express 5. not judged every day on their ability to play the piano. Kyle Wiens is right to misled. The interesting thing to me about this hoo-ha is that a company C.E.O. can still put his 8. down that it hasnt (yet) become illegal to discriminate against job applicants 9. poor grammar. In schools in the U.K., I imagine, 10. 11. judgmentalism would not be tolerated. I recently heard an alarmist report that the British education authorities are proposing introduce an oral version of the standard school exams (at age 16), because the traditional written method unfairly favors candidates who can read and write. Im sure Wiens is right that 12. trained to look at words on a page makes you the news to people that concept they have never

that when young people are taught to undervalue literacy as a life skill, they are being cruelly

generally more attentive to detail. The difficult thing is 13. sometimes they are wrong, when wrong is 14.

encountered. The other day a young airline employee offered to send me the irrelevant form. I said, Do you mean the relevant form? And she said, Yes, the irrelevant form. Well, beware. 15. will come a day when Wiens will have no choice but to offer that girl a job.

Text 2:

Its Not Just Rules; Its Clear Thinking

In a culture characterized less by the printed word than by YouTube videos, it's easy to cast 1. _________ grammar as if it 2. _________ a quaint vestige of some prim and proper era a form of good manners or etiquette, 3. _________ using the right fork. But 4. _________ grammar, we lose the agreed-upon standards about what 5. _________ what. We lose the ability to communicate when respondents are not actually in the same room speaking to one another. Without grammar, we lose the precision required to be effective and purposeful 6. _________ writing. Yes, this is important. Unlike the grunt of pleasure or pain 7._________ might express in the moment, written language endures over time. It 8. _________ the place of live human contact, and stands in 9. _________ the full array of verbal and nonverbal communication passing between people who are together in real time and space. Text extends our speech into the future. 10. _________ to the introduction of text in the Axial Age, we were able to invent contracts, the law and even the covenant that 11. _________ as the basis for the Judeo-Christian tradition. Our civilization owes its notions of ethics, progress and human rights 12. _________ the durability and accountability of text. For better or for 13. _________, a person's ability to participate in the culture of the past thousand or so years has depended on his or her ability to read and write. In 14. _________ jobs, the ability to write clearly and unambiguously 15. _________ an essential skill. It distinguishes the worker who takes direction 16. _________ the boss who can leverage the power of text to write down instructions and leave them 17. _________ someone else. Only the writer skilled in grammar is entrusted with representing a company in a letter or an e-mail. 18. _________ the entrepreneur who can persuasively express a new idea in writing can craft a business plan that will win the faith of partners and investors. Language is 19. _________ less exacting than math. As the book title Eats, Shoots and Leaves demonstrates, a 20. _________ comma can change a sentence about the diet of a panda to one describing the behavior of a dine-and-dash killer. The emergence of digital technology 21. _________ precision in language even more important than before. As the grammar of standard English extends to the grammar of code, our errors find 22. _________ embedded in programs and replicating further and more widely than previously imaginable. Even a poorly constructed tweet reflects a poorly constructed thought, while grammatically lacking e-mail messages one can't even truly read, 25. _________ less write. 23. _________ become the hallmark of password phishing scams. Without 24. _________ of grammar,

So yes, an employee who can write properly is far more valuable and promotable than one whose ambiguous text is likely to create confusion, legal liability and embarrassment. Moreover, a thinking citizen deserves the basic skills required to make sense through language, and to parse the sense and nonsense of others.

Text 3:

Facebook: Its a Gift and a Curse

Facebook is the dating worlds greatest gift and its greatest curse. For 1.__________ seeking companionship, it opens up vast opportunities. It speeds 2. __________ possible love connections by showcasing the bonds that 3. __________ to strengthen relationships: mutual friends, interests and points of 4. __________. Because so many users offer an intimate look into their lives 5. __________ their status updates and photo albums, its possible to remove a bit of the blind aspect that comes with dating a new person. Of course, this works best when the online persona and the actual person are one in the same, which is not always the case. Most importantly, Facebook is a great place to meet potential partners, but 6. __________ to date. After a few online exchanges, I think its best to meet 7. __________ person, or 8. __________ minimum, on Skype. MTVs show Catfish highlights the necessity of this approach. Each episode features a love 9. __________ where the participants have 10. __________ met in the 11. __________. When they finally meet face-to-face, the outcome quickly becomes a reality check. Someone has used an outdated photograph, 12. __________ someone else has created an entirely fictional character. Im waiting for the inevitable episode featuring a married person with a single avatar. You can be 13. __________ you want to be, said one woman on a recent episode. Shes right, and that can be a huge 14. __________. Facebook can also be tricky for couples, so 15. __________ so that I actually encourage partners not to befriend one another because of the numerous issues that can 16. __________. Twenty and 80 percent of divorce lawyers have reported a spike in the number of cases that use social media for evidence, 17. __________ to a survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. 18. __________ have been countless stories that cite Facebook as the cause of an affair. There is certainly a wide swath of potential partners available to married users who want to relive their glory days. But here, Facebook gets a bad 19. __________; it didnt cause the cheating. It just made it more convenient to do (and perhaps easier to catch).

Even for the faithful, Facebook can exaggerate relationship problems. Some partners overshare in their status updates, allowing their friends glimpses 20. __________ what should be private business. In 21. __________instances, there are friends 22. __________ cross boundaries by leaving inappropriate comments on status updates and photos, 23. __________ unsurprisingly can cause conflict in a relationship. Finally, theres the issue of social media burnout 24. __________ couples. If partners are intimately involved in each others online lives, they dont get much opportunity to allow, if you will, 25. __________ to make the heart grow fonder. Occasionally, the over-familiarity, even if its just online, can breed contemptand thats just after two months of dating.

Text 4:

Technology and Privacy Can Co-Exist

In a case 1.__________ with GPS technology, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wrote this year that new technology may provide increased convenience or security at the 2. __________ of privacy. He noted that people might find that tradeoff not 3.__________ worthwhile, but even inevitable. This view is fast becoming a common one. 4.__________ technology becomes cheaper, and its capabilities grow, 5.__________ does the fear that technology has the ability to shrink privacy, 6.__________ easier access to intimate details like our DNA sequence, precise location and reading habits. But history has shown that technology also has the 7.__________ to enhance privacy. Software like Tor allows people to browse the Internet anonymously, giving people in repressed countries the ability to access uncensored information. Anonymous Web mail services allow whistleblowers to safely communicate with journalists, and give voice to political dissidents living in repressive regimes. A businessman 8. __________ encrypts data on a company laptop computer keeps valuable trade secret information private from competitors 9.__________ lost or stolen. For these individuals, the use of technology does not 10. __________ an inevitable tradeoff with privacy. Rather, their use of technology is specifically 11. __________ to protect their privacy. We should all view technology the same way; the only inevitability must be the demand that privacy be a value built into our technology. This requires confronting privacy problems head 12. __________. Consumers should expect technology companies to 13. __________ their information secure. Governments can play a 14.

__________ in protecting privacy rights. California recently sued Delta Airlines over its mobile apps 15. __________ to include a privacy policy and updated the states reader privacy law to include digital books. In Washington, a Senate committee recently passed an amendment to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, to require all law enforcement agencies obtain a search warrant 16. __________ reading your e-mail. There will of course be difficulties 17. __________ the way, and progress may move slowly. But 18. __________ up now will 19. __________ to a far more damaging result: the complete, 20. __________ than the gradual, erosion of the fundamental human right of privacy.

Text 5:

Vital Needs Dont Always Attract Donations

The priorities of charities are appropriately set by 1.__________ who finance and manage those charities. If Bill Gates decides to spend his $40 billion on health, then he has 2.__________ right to do so. But it seldom stops there. Philanthropists also usually come to view their priorities as 3.__________ important than those set through democratic processes. The rich ones (like Gates) frequently lobby governments and multilateral financing agencies to spend more on the philanthropists priorities. And less-rich ones often lobby for government money for their organizations As Eduardo Porter recently noted in The New York Times, In 2008, philanthropic Governments, on the other 6.__________, typically and necessarily see things like jobs as overwhelming priorities and sectors like infrastructure as critical for creating jobs 7.__________ reducing poverty. I know of not a single nongovernmental organization that contributions provided only 12 percent of nonprofits' revenue. Fees and grants from government 4.__________ for about a third. So 5.__________ do philanthropists priorities relate to the priorities of elected governments? In the United States and other rich countries there is a vast array of nongovernmental organizations that focus on health and education.

focuses on job creation, the provision of electricity at scale, or transport. 8.__________ a senior official in the World Bank I saw this dynamic at work every day. NGOs would lobby their governments for more attention to health, Rich education country and the environment. governments

A final word on a peculiar phenomenon of the ex-politician reborn as a philanthropist, with the iconic figure 15.__________ Bill Clinton. It is very strange that a person who understood very well what it means to set priorities in a democratic system should traverse the world, foisting his own, new, priorities on democratic governments.

would then use their position on the board of the World Bank to push for these priorities. Over the last 20 years this has 9.__________ to a profound distortion in the priorities of the bank, with the social sectors becoming dominant and, for a long time, infrastructure lending the original mandate of the Bank falling 10.__________ less than 10 percent of total lending. An interesting evolution over the last decade has 11.__________ the rise of the Middle Income Countries. China, India and Brazil gave and give high priority and to as things their 12.__________ infrastructure,

weight in the global system has increased, this has led to somewhat of a rebalancing of priorities at an institution like the World Bank, but, more important a rebalancing in options for developing countries. 13.__________ countries, having recently

emerged from poverty, know that it is not by putting the social cart before the economic horse that development and poverty reduction happen. They have 14.__________ patience for the pleas of philanthropists rich and poor to deny poor countries the option of following the only known road to poverty reduction.