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Compulsory Extra Reading-Student - S
Compulsory Extra Reading-Student - S
Compulsory Reading
Pack
Student’s Copy
Fall 2023
CDO
Supplementary Reading Material 1
II. "When I'm on the road driving our taxi, I feel very proud because this is a taxi service for women, and
I'm a woman," says 31-year-old Shanti Sharma. "Our work is supporting the women of Delhi. We're giving them
safety." Sharma is one of the eight female drivers with a taxi service called Cabs for Women by Women. The
last couple of months has been particularly busy for Shanti Sharma and colleagues since the cruel rape and
murder of a student travelling on a bus. "After this case, our business has shot up so much," says Sharma.
"Women who used other taxi services are also turning to us now since there is no other taxi company with
female drivers."
III. Most women in Delhi say they are routinely disturbed by men, and worse, especially on public transport.
But life is not simple for the women taxi drivers, either. Some of them had not even been in a car before they
were employed. They needed several months of training not only in driving and learning the rules of the road
but also first-aid and self-defense, just in case. One of the drivers was attacked by an angry male taxi driver as
she was filling up petrol. Another was attacked by a couple because she refused to reverse on a main street to
make way for their car.
IV. Sharma, a single parent with three daughters, has been working as a taxi driver since 2011 when the
service was first established, and it has changed her life. This is the first time that she has earned enough –
about $250 (£160) a month – to support her family. Of course, she and the other female taxi drivers are
completely outnumbered by male taxi drivers. "When I park somewhere, there are always men there and five
or six of them get together and chat," she says. "I'm usually the only woman in the car park, so I just stay inside
the car… even one more woman driver would be nice to spend time with." It's not much better when she is
out on the road. Sharma says the male drivers give her a hard time. "As soon as they see a girl at the wheel,
they start honking for no reason. They'll try to overtake you. I'm always worrying about how to avoid getting
hit by someone."
V. The company behind Cabs for Women by Women, Sakha Consulting Wings, had a number of goals when
it established the service. With its partner, the Azad Foundation, Sakha Consulting Wings wanted to give
women from poor backgrounds an opportunity "to earn on par with the men," says Nayantara Janardhan,
Sakha's chief operating officer. "But by putting women ‘in charge of technologies’ – or at least motor cars –
they also wanted to change attitudes, and open up limits for women," she says.
VI. "Everyone thought that having a women's taxi service in Delhi was not going to work," Janardhan recalls.
"But we thought, let us put it on the road and see what happens. Many women weren't willing to try out
women drivers at first," says Janardhan. So their first customers were friends and family. They were pleased
with the service and news spread. Today, she's waiting for the eighth taxi that the company has ordered
recently. And in the last couple of months, since the death of the young student, she has received calls and
emails from people all over the world offering to help Sakha grow. The number of customers is up too – by as
much as 40%, she says and proudly adds, "We're changing old beliefs about what women can and cannot do."
2
Answer the following questions according to the text.
3
Supplementary Reading Material 2
BRAINWASHING
I. The term “mind control”, also known as brainwashing, refers to a process in which a
group or an individual forces a person to think or believe something. To achieve that, they
use some methods that make the person unable to think normally, so brainwashing can
be seen as an attempt to subvert an individual's control over their own thinking,
attitudes, emotions, or decision-making.
III. How does brainwashing happen? Some psychologists define brainwashing as a different form of ‘social
influence.’ Social influence happens every minute of every day. It's the collection of methods in which people
can change other people's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. For instance, the ‘compliance method’ aims to
produce a change in a person's behavior and is not concerned with his attitudes or beliefs. It's the ‘Just do it’
approach. ‘Persuasion’, on the other hand, especially aims for a change in attitude. The ‘education method’,
which is also called the ‘propaganda method’, tries to cause a change particularly in the person's beliefs.
Brainwashing is a cruel form of social influence that combines all of these approaches to cause changes in
someone's way of thinking without that person's consent and often against his will.
IV. In the brainwashing process, the agent (the brainwasher) tries to gain complete control over the target
(the brainwashee). Then the agent systematically breaks down the target's identity to the point that it doesn't
work anymore. The agent then replaces it with another set of behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs.
V. On the other hand, some psychologists do not take brainwashing very seriously. Many experts believe that
even under ideal brainwashing conditions, the effects of the process are most often short-term. The
brainwashed victim's old identity is not, in fact, destroyed by the process, but instead is in hiding, and once
the ‘new identity’ stops being reinforced, the person's old attitudes and beliefs will start to return.
VI. Moreover, there are psychologists who say that the apparent change of American prisoners of war during
the Korean War was the result of torture, not ‘brainwashing’. And in fact, most prisoners of war in the Korean
War did not become communists at all, which leads to some doubts about the reliability of brainwashing.
4
Answer the following questions according to the text.
5. Fill in the chart according to the information in the 3rd paragraph of the text.
PURPOSE
PURPOSE
II. "I believe the Great Freeze was colder than any other within the recent history of Europe," wrote
William Derham, one of England's most careful meteorological observers. He was right. The Great Freeze
holds the record as the coldest European winter of the past 1000 years. Derham wrote a detailed account of
the freeze and the destruction it caused. Fish froze in the rivers, animals lay down in the fields and died, and
small birds died by the millions. The loss of many imported plants and exotic fruit trees was no surprise, but
even native oaks and ash trees couldn’t endure the cold. How extraordinary was that winter of 1708/1709?
In 2004, Jürg Luterbacher, a climatologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland, produced a month-by-
month record of Europe's climate since 1500. The winter of 1708-1709 was the coldest. In fact, the
temperature was 7°C colder than the average for 20th-century Europe.
III. Why it was so cold is hard to explain. Overall, the climate was colder, with the sun's energy output at
its lowest for 1000 years. There were some spectacular volcanic eruptions in 1707 and 1708, including Mount
Fuji in Japan and Santorini and Vesuvius in Europe. These sent dust high into the atmosphere, forming a veil
over Europe. This normally leads to cooler summers and warmer winters, but climatologists think that during
this period, the dust lowered both summer and winter temperatures. However, none of these things fully
explains the coldness of that particular winter.
IV. The most immediate cause of cold winters in Europe is usually an icy wind from Siberia. However,
Dennis Wheeler, a British climatologist, found that there were mostly southerly and westerly winds, which
would normally bring warm air to Europe. Another strange finding was that January was unusually stormy.
In general, winter storms bring warmer but wilder weather to Europe. He says "This combination of cold,
storms and westerly winds was caused by some other mechanism that winter."
V. Although there is no easy explanation for the Great Freeze, the unexpected weather patterns
revealed by Wheeler's data show that studying the weather is very important. "We need to explain the
natural variation in climate over past centuries so that we can find all the factors that contribute to climate
change," says Wheeler and he adds "Climate does not always function consistently, so warmer and colder,
drier and wetter periods must be explained using different mechanisms. In the two decades after that terrible
winter, the climate warmed very rapidly. Some people look at that and say today's global warming is nothing
new. However, they are not comparable. The factors causing warming then were quite different from those
operating now."
6
Answer the following questions according to the text.
6. According to paragraph IV, ______ usually cause ______ during European winters.
A) icy winds / storms C) storms / warmer weather
B) westerly winds / cold weather D) southerly winds / storms
10. The author of the text wants readers to understand that ________.
A) England was affected more than other European countries in the Great Freeze
B) some researchers do not realize the large effect that volcanic eruptions have on temperatures
C) changes in climate are influenced by many factors and are difficult to explain
D) it is quite likely that Europe will have another very cold winter quite soon
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Supplementary Reading Material 4
IV. The researchers at the New School in New York City found their subjects through Amazon.com. They
were between the ages of 18 and 75, and took part in each of five experiments. They were paid $2 or $3 each
to read for a few minutes. Some of them read parts from award-winning literary fiction. Others read best
sellers like The Da Vinci Code.
V. After the people read the books, they took tests on a computer. Those tests measured people’s ability
to understand a person’s emotions. In a test, called ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’, people tried doing that.
They studied 36 photographs of pairs of eyes. Researchers gave them four adjectives and asked them to
choose the one which described the emotion which the eyes showed. The result was that people who read
literary fiction got higher scores than people who read popular fiction.
VI. “It’s a really important result,” said Nicholas Humphrey, an evolutionary psychologist at Cambridge
University. He has written about human intelligence, but he was not involved in the research. Dr Humphrey
said everybody knows that reading generally makes people more empathetic and understanding. But the
most interesting point about this research was this: They separated literary fiction from popular fiction, and
they showed that it has different effects from the other forms of reading.
VII. “I wasn’t involved in the study, but I think this study really proves the effect of literary books on
people’s psychology,” said Keith Oatley, a professor at the University of Toronto. “These people have done
five experiments, and they have found the same effects.”
VIII. “I agree with their study,” said Albert Wendland, a professor at Seton Hill University. “Reading detailed
books about people’s lives can make you more sensitive because you put yourself into another person’s
position. This is different from popular fiction. It usually deals more with one’s own self, and with one’s own
wants, desires, and needs, but literary fiction deals with people’s emotions and feelings.”
IX. John Kidd, one of the researchers of the study, said, “In popular fiction, the writer is in control, and
the reader has a more passive role. However, in literary fiction, there is no single, authorial voice,” he said.
“Each character presents a different version of reality, and they aren’t reliable. Like in Dostoevsky’s The
Brothers Karamazov, you need to use your mind and imagination to understand the characters. You have to
play an active part in this story, which is really something you have to do in real life.”
8
Answer the following questions according to the text.
1. According to paragraph I, the writer probably _______.
A) reads best sellers to have a better social life
B) wants to write like Chekhov
C) doesn’t like Sophie Kinsella
D) thinks that Sophie Kinsella is a popular book writer
7. One of the researchers who took part in the study at the New School is _______.
A) Nicholas Humphrey B) Keith Oatley C) Albert Wendland D) John Kidd
Part B. Read the statements about the text. Write T (true) or F (false). If it is not possible to tell, put “a
question mark (?)”.
________ 1. The people who took part in the study were different ages.
________ 2. The people did not receive any money for taking part in the study at the New School.
________ 3. Keith Oatley and Albert Wendland have similar opinions.
________ 4. Most of the people who read popular fiction are university students.
________ 5. Albert Wendland says literary fiction and popular fiction focus on different parts of human
psychology.
________ 6. The reader has a passive role while he/she is reading The Brothers Karamazov.