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Advanced / Pulp Friction — Themed Reading / Pulp
Friction: Timed Reading

Pulp Friction: Timed

Reading

This is a multiple-choice reading

exercise. You have 12 minutes to read
the text and answer the questions.

11:19

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1. How
Pulp Friction
long
does
Every second, one
it
hectare of the world's
take
rainforest is
for
destroyed. That's
100
equivalent to two
hectares
football fields. An
of
area the size of New
rainforest
York City is lost every
to be
day. In a year, that
destroyed?
adds up to 31 million
hectares -- more A.
than the land area of
less
Poland. This alarming
than
rate of destruction
two
has serious
minutes
consequences for the
environment; B. ?
scientists estimate,
about
for example, that 137
an
species of plant,
hour
insect or animal
become extinct every C. ?
day due to logging.
two
In British Columbia,
hours
where, since 1990,
thirteen rainforest D. ?
valleys have been
a
clearcut, 142 species
day
of salmon have
already become
extinct, and the
habitats of grizzly 2. Why
bears, wolves and is
many other creatures pulp
are threatened. and
Logging, however, paper
provides jobs, profits, production
taxes for the important
govenment and to
cheap products of all Canada?
kinds for consumers,
A. ?
so the government is
reluctant to restrict Canada
or control it. needs
to
Much of Canada's find
forestry production a
goes towards making way
pulp and paper. to
According to the use
Canadian Pulp and all
Paper Association, its
Canada supplies 34% spare
of the world's wood wood.
pulp and 49% of its
B. ?
newsprint paper. If
these paper products Canada
could be produced in publishes
some other way, a
Canadian forests lot
could be preserved. of
Recently, a possible newspapers
alternative way of and
producing paper has books.
been suggested by
C.
agriculturalists and
environmentalists: a Pulp
plant called hemp. and
paper
Hemp has been export
cultivated by many is
cultures for a
thousands of years. major
It produces fibre source
which can be made of
into paper, fuel, oils, income
textiles, food, and for
rope. For centuries, it Canada.
was essential to the
economies of many
countries because it
3. Who
was used to make
is
the ropes and cables
suggesting
used on sailing ships;
that
colonial expansion
pulp
and the
and
establishment of a
paper
world-wide trading
could
network would not
be
have been feasible
produced
without hemp.
without
Nowadays, ships'
cutting
cables are usually
down
made from wire or
trees?
synthetic fibres, but
scientists are now A. ?
suggesting that the the
cultivation of hemp logging
should be revived for industry
the production of
paper and pulp. B. ?

According to its the

proponents, four government
times as much paper
can be produced C.
from land using the
hemp rather than environmental
trees, and many lobby
environmentalists
believe that the
large-scale
cultivation of hemp 4. Why
could reduce the was
pressure on Canada's the
forests. plant
hemp
However, there is a essential
problem: hemp is to
illegal in many world-
countries of the wide
world. This plant, so trade
useful for fibre, rope, in the b
oil, fuel and textiles, past?
is a species of 1
A.
cannabis, related to
the plant from which Ships'
marijuana is ropes
produced. In the late were
1930s, a movement made
to ban the drug from
marijuana began to it.
gather force,
B. ?
resulting in the
eventual banning of Hemp

the cultivation not was

only of the plant used a

to produce the drug, very

but also of the profitable

commercial fibre- export.

producing hemp
C. ?
plant. Although both
Hemp
George Washington
was
and Thomas
used
Jefferson grew hemp
as
in large quantities on
fuel
their own land, any
for
American growing
ships.
the plant today would
soon find himself in
D. ?
prison -- despite the
Hemp
fact that marijuana
was
cannot be produced
used
from the hemp plant,
as
since it contains
food
almost no THC (the
for
active ingredient in
sailors.
the drug).

In recent years, two

major movements for 5. Why
legalization have do
been gathering agriculturalists
strength. One group think
of activists believes that
that ALL cannabis hemp
should be legal -- would
both the hemp plant be
and the marijuana better
plant -- and that the for
use of the drug paper
marijuana should not production
be an offense. They than
argue that marijuana trees?
is not dangerous or
addictive, and that it A. ?

is used by large It
numbers of people is
who are not criminals cheaper
but productive to
members of society. grow
They also point out hemp
that marijuana is less than
toxic than alcohol or to
tobacco. The other cut
legalization down
movement is trees.
concerned only with
the hemp plant used B.
to produce fibre; this More
group wants to make paper
it legal to cultivate can
the plant and sell the be
fibre for paper and produced
pulp production. This from
second group has the
had a major triumph same
recently: in 1997, area
Canada legalized the of
farming of hemp for land.
fibre. For the first
time since 1938, C. ?

hundreds of farmers Hemp

are planting this produces
crop, and soon we higher
can expect to see quality
pulp and paper paper.
produced from this
new source.
(NOTE: This activity
6. When
was written
was
before 2018, when
hemp
Canada legalized the
production
sale of recreational
banned
marijuana.)
in
Canada?
SHOW QUESTIONS
ONE BY ONE
A. ?

1930

B. ?

1960

C. ?

1996

D.
1938

7. Why
was
hemp
banned?

A.
It
is
related
to
the
marijuana
plant.

B. ?

It
can
be
used
to
produce
marijuana.

C. ?

It
was
no
longer
a
useful
crop.

D. ?

It
was
destructive
to
the
land.

8. What
chemical
ingredient
of
cannabis
plants
is a
powerful
drug?

A. ?

Fibre

B. ?

Marijuana

C.
THC

9. True
or
false:
Some
activists
believe
that
both
marijuana
and
hemp
should
be
legal.

A.
True

B. ?

False