Composition and Rhetoric I-ENG 201

Exam Three – Spring 2019-2020

Name: Karl Serge Aswad Section: _____________________

I- Reading Comprehension

A- Read the following passage and then answer the questions below.

Unnatural Selection

Sex-selective abortions in India reach an alarming rate

By Maria Hvistendahl, published on July 05, 2011 – Psychology Today

NEW DELHI, INDIA

For Dr. Puneet Bedi, the intensive care unit in Apollo Hospital's maternity ward is a source of
both pride and shame. The unit's technology is among the best in Delhi—among the best, for that
matter, in all of India. But as a specialist in high-risk births, he works hard so that babies can be
born. The fact that the unit's technology also contributes to India's skewed sex ratio at birth
gnaws at him. Seven out of 10 babies born in the maternity ward, Bedi says, are male. He
delivers those boys knowing that many of them are replacements for aborted girls.

A tall, broad-shouldered man with a disarmingly gentle voice, Bedi stands in the unit's control
room, gazing into a sealed, temperature-controlled room lined with rows of cribs. He performs
abortions himself. For sex-selective abortions, however, he reserves a contempt bordering on
fury. To have his work negated by something as trifling as sex preference feels like a targeted
insult. "You can choose whether to be a parent," he says. "But once you choose to be a parent,
you cannot choose whether it's a boy or girl, black or white, tall or short."

A broad interpretation of parental choice, indeed, is spreading throughout India—along with

China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Albania. Preliminary results from India's
2011 census show a sex ratio of only 914 girls for every 1000 boys ages 6 and under, a decline
from 2001. In some Chinese counties the sex ratio at birth has reached more than 150 boys for
every 100 girls. "We are dealing with genocide," Bedi says. Sex-selective abortion, he adds, is
"probably the single most important issue in the next 50 years that India and China are going to
face. If you're going to wipe out 20 percent of your population, nature is not going to sit by and
watch."

Bedi speaks with an immaculate British accent that hints at years spent studying at King's
College London. The accent helps in this part of Delhi, where breeding can trump all else. His
patients are the sort who live in spacious homes tended by gardeners, belong to bucolic country
clubs, and send their children to study in the United States. India's wealthy are among the most

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frequent practitioners of sex selection, and in their quest to have a son Bedi is often an obstacle.
His refusal to identify sex during ultrasound examinations disappoints many women, he says:
"They think it's just a waste of time and money if you don't even know whether it's a boy or a
girl."

India outlawed fetal sex identification and sex-selective abortion in 1994, but so many
physicians and technicians break the law that women have little trouble finding one willing
to scan fetal sex. Bedi says sex-selective abortion has caught on in Delhi because it bears the
imprint of a scientific advance. "It's sanitized," he says. The fact that sex selection is a
medical act, he adds, neatly divides the moral burden between two parties: parents tell
themselves their doctor knows best, while doctors point to overwhelming patient demand
for the procedure.

Hospital administrators, for their part, have little incentive to do anything about the problem
because maternity wards bring in substantial business. (At Apollo, a deluxe delivery suite
outfitted with a bathtub, track lighting, a flat screen television, and a large window looking out
onto landscaped grounds runs to $200 a night.) "When you confront the medical profession,
there is a cowardly refusal to accept blame," Bedi says. "They say, 'We are doctors; it's a noble
profession.' This is bullshit. When it comes to issues like ethics and morality, you can have an
opinion, but there is a line which you do not cross. Everybody who [aborts for reasons of sex
selection] knows it's unethical. It's a mass medical crime."

For as long as they have counted births, demographers have found an average of 105 boys born
for every 100 girls. This is our natural sex ratio at birth. (The small gap neatly makes up for the
fact that males are more likely to die early in life.) If Asia had maintained that ratio over the past
few decades, the continent would today have an additional 163 million women and girls.

For Westerners, such a gender gap may be difficult to fathom: 163 million is more than the entire
female population of the United States. Walk around Delhi's posh neighborhoods, or visit an
elementary school in eastern China, and you can see the disparity: Boys far outnumber girls.

At first glance, the imbalance might seem to be the result of entrenched

gender discrimination and local practices. Scholars and journalists typically look to the Indian
convention of dowry, which makes daughters expensive, and to China's one-child policy, which
makes sons precious, to explain sex selection in Asia. (Sons have long been favored in China, as
in many other parts of the world.) But this logic doesn't account for why South Koreans also
aborted female fetuses in large numbers until recently, or why a sex ratio imbalance has lately
spread to the Caucasus countries—Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia—and the Balkans, or why
sex-selective abortion occurs among some immigrant communities in the United States.

1. What is the rhetorical purpose? Support your answer with evidence from the text.
(5 marks)

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Outlines the facts behind injustice of sex selective abortions in India, which is then compared to

other countries’ statistics.

___________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

2. How would you describe the tone and voice of the text? (5 marks)
Embarrassed and shocked by the reckless behavior of careless doctors.

_____________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

3. Who is the intended audience? What assumptions is the writer making about the
audience? What evidence in the text supports these assumptions about the audience?
(6 marks)
In the conclusion, the author mentions scholars and journalist. It assumes that he wants to make

this problem known to them in order to eradicate the problem.

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

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______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

4. Write a brief personal response to what you have read, stating whether you support or
oppose the writer’s claim. Give reasons and examples. (9 marks)
I agree with the doctors in the essay. To fix the problem of over population, we must take

measures to diminish the number of infant producers.

5. Identify examples of signposting in the above article. Do the signposts hedge or boost the
writer’s opinion? (5 marks)
He uses a lot of hedges. Example, “the imbalance might seem… “the gender gap may …”

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6. Summarize the boldfaced paragraph in the article. (10 marks)
Inspight of the India outlawing the act of aborting sex selectively. Parents choose to ignore the

ban and give a blanc check to doctors whom they blindly trust.

B. Read the following text, and then choose the best answer. (10 marks; 2 for each
question)

There is no doubt that aggression and territoriality are part of modern life: vandalism is a
distressingly familiar mark of the urban scene; we lock the doors of our houses and apartments
against strangers who might wander in; and there is war, an apparent display of territoriality and
aggression on a grand scale. Are these unsavory aspects of modern living simply part of an
inescapable legacy of our animal origins? Or are they phenomena with entirely different causes?
These are questions that must be answered since they are so clearly relevant to the future of our
species.
To begin with, it is worth taking a broad view of territoriality and aggression in the
animal world. Why are some animals territorial? Simply to protect resources, such as food, a
nest, or a similar reproductive area. Many birds defend one piece of real estate in which a male
may attract and court a female, and then move off to another one, also to be defended, in which
they build a nest and rear young. The ‘choking’ by male kittiwakes, the lunging by sticklebacks,
and the early morning chorus by gibbons are all displays announcing ownership of territory.
Intruders who persist in violating another’s territory are soon met with such displays, the
intention of which is quite clear. The clarity of the defender’s response, and also of the intruder’s
prowess, is the secret of nature’s success with these so-called aggressive encounters.

Such confrontations are strictly ritualized, so that on all but the rarest occasions the
biologically fitter of the two wins without the infliction of physical damage on either one. This
‘aggression’ is in fact an exercise in competitive display rather than physical violence. The
individuals engage in stereotyped lunges, thrusts, and postures which may or may not be similar
to their responses when a real threat to their lives arises, as from a predator, for instance. In
either event, the outcome is a resolution of a territorial dispute with minimal injury to either

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party. The biological advantage of these mock battles is clear: a species that insists on settling
disputes violently reduces its overall fitness to thrive in a world that offers enough environmental
challenges anyway.

The biological common sense implicit in this simple behavioral device is reiterated again
and again throughout the animal kingdom, and even as far down as some ants. This law is so
deeply embedded in the nature of survival and success in the game of evolution that for a species
to transgress there must be extremely unusual circumstances. We cannot deny that with the
invention of tools, first made of wood and later of stone, an impulse to employ them occasionally
as weapons might have caused serious injury, there being no stereotyped behavior patterns to
deflect their risk. And it is possible that our increasingly intelligent ancestors may have
understood the implications of power over others through the delivery of one swift blow with a
sharpened pebble tool. But is it likely?

The answer must be no. An animal that develops a proclivity for killing its fellows thrusts
itself into a disadvantageous evolutionary position. Because our ancestors probably lived in
small bands, in which individuals were closely related to one another, and had as neighbours
similar bands which also contained blood relatives, in most acts of murder the victim would
more than likely have been kin to the murderer. As evolutionary success is the production of as
many descendants as possible, an innate drive for killing individuals of one’s own species would
soon have wiped that species out. Humans, as we know, did not blunder up an evolutionary blind
alley, a fate that innate, unrestrained aggressiveness would undoubtedly have produced.

1-The writer considers it important to determine the reasons for aggression in modern life
because

A. he wants to stress our links with animals.

B. vandalism is unpleasant.
C. future generations may be affected.
D. personal safety has become an issue.

2-Animals are territorial because

A. they have to protect their offspring.

B. nests are needed for different purposes.
C. they are naturally aggressive.
D. there is a limited supply of things they need.

3-In territorial confrontations, physical damage is

A. usually what happens in the end.

B. a consequence of competitive display.

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 C. inflicted to indicate superior status.
D. unlikely to happen in mock battles.

4-Physical damage is likely to occur during

A. courtship rituals.
B. conflict with a predator.
C. encounters between aggressive males.
D. the search for food.

5-What is the mark of evolutionary success for a species?

A. gaining control over a larger area

B. developing superior methods of attack
C. destroying all potential enemies
D. increasing the size of the population

II- Underline the examples of signposting in the following sentences and determine if they
are boosters or hedges. (10 marks)

1. I would suggest that the font on the New York Times website may be too small.

Hedges

2. Science in fact tells us that three-toed sloths have the slowest metabolism of any
mammal.

boosters

3. The pitch of a musical sound is clearly determined by the number of cycles or vibrations
per second. The more cycles per second, the higher the pitch.
boosters

4. In 1990, McDonald’s changed its French fry recipe forever. Obviously some of us are too
young to remember that fateful day, but connoisseurs of the French fry are still in
mourning.
boosters

5. I think to some extent you’re right that I’m not all that committed to this relationship.

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 Hedges

III- Grammar
Correct the mistakes in the following conditional sentences. (10 marks)

 1. If he didn't know what to do, he would have asked us.

 If he hadn’t known______________________________________________________

2. Unless she comes soon, we would be late for the first performance.
unless she had come_____________________________________________________

3. I'd love to be able to swim if I'm not afraid of the water.

   ________________________if I had not been ______________________________

4. I'll tell him the news if I'll see him.

   ___________________I see___________________________________

5. If she hadn't gone to university in Paris, she won’t be able to speak French so well.
_____________________________________she wouldn’t be able_________________

IV- Essay (30 marks)

Choose one topic and develop it into a well-organized essay.

a. Online learning is not only convenient for students and teachers but often more effective
than traditional classroom instruction. Do you agree or disagree?

b. Miscommunication is considered a main reason why relationships fail, whether at home

or at work. Write an essay about the importance of communication, explaining how its
absence can ruin families and/or people’s careers.

During the COVID lockdown, it appears that there has been a surge of people who have shifted from
traditional to online education. Colleges like Harvard’s are embracing the online system as a means to
eliminate having a void on your CV. In this essay, we will be discussing the benefits of online learning
and whether it has a place to be the main source of education.

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There are 3 benefits of online college. First, it is convenient. Many people who may be busy, can fit
education in their busy schedule. Second, it less expensive to work from home than studying in an
establishment – it is less costly. Lastly, it is flexible, students can stop and rewind a point that they did
not understand. However, there are also disadvantages.

For instance, access to professors may be limited because they may not be fully present during the
education process. This disadvantage may disrupt the learning process, which means that the student
would not be fully immersed in education. The professor would not fully be there to explain a specific
topic that the student does not understand. Also, the absence of professors perplexes misguided
students. It is known that college helps students to grow and mature. It makes it challenging for them to
understand reality and develop.

Overall, it is much more beneficial for students to go to college and be surrounded by like-minded
individuals than take the education at home. The many benefits of online education do not trump the
educational ecosystem. It is far better because people would be able to access a network of people and
engage with professors, who are keen to reexplain unfamiliar subjects. Unfortunately, our society has
not technologically developed to the point where robots can replace the education process. Therefore,
the current system is the best for the time being.

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