CONFIDENTIAL 1 LG/NOV 2018/ELC231/230/SET 1

UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MARA

COURSE : INTEGRATED LANGUAGE SKILLS III /

INTEGRATED LANGUAGE SKILLS: WRITING

COURSE CODE : ELC231/230

TEST : READING

TIME : 1 HOUR 30 MINUTES

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES

1. This question paper consists of ten (10) questions.

2. Answer ALL questions in the Question Paper.

3. Fill in the details below:

UiTM STUDENT CARD NO. : _________________________________________

PROGRAMME/CODE : _________________________________________

PART : _________________________________________

ENGLISH LANGUAGE GROUP : _________________________________________

NAME OF LECTURER : _________________________________________

4. You are allowed to refer to a print English-English dictionary.

5. Please check to make sure that this examination pack consists of :

i) the Question Paper

DO NOT TURN THIS PAGE UNTIL YOU ARE TOLD TO DO SO.

This test paper consists of 8 printed pages.

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READING COMPREHENSION (25 MARKS)

Read the passage below and answer all the questions that follow.

Laugh, and be Merry!

I Laughing is an excellent way to reduce stress in our lives, and it can help us
to cope with and survive a stressful lifestyle. One does not need to be happy
or have a sense of humor to benefit from a good laugh, as everyone is born
with the gift of laughter. Laughter therapy, also called humour therapy, is the
use of humour to promote overall health and wellness. It aims to use the 5
natural physiological process to help relieve physical or emotional stress or
discomfort. While there are plenty of things that make us sad, there are also
countless reasons to be happy. As laughter is contagious, it brings people
together and gets people laughing to reduce their stress. In the long run,
laughter therapy helps to increase one’s health and emotion, as well as 10
heighten children’s cognitive skills.

II For years, the therapeutic values in humour has been used to assist
practitioners in medicine. Surgeons used humour to distract patients from pain
as early as the 13th century. Later, in the 20th century, a scientific study was
carried out on the effect of humour on physical wellness. Many credit this to 15
Norman Cousins, the writer of Anatomy of an Illness, who described the fatal
disease he contracted in 1964, his discovery of the benefits of humour and
other positive emotions, in battling the disease. Cousins found that ten
minutes of mirthful laughter gave him two hours of pain-free sleep. He
described how watching comedy movies helped him recover. His story baffled 20
the scientific community and inspired a number of research projects. In the
late 1960s, Dr William F. Fry, a psychiatrist from Stanford University,
California, began to examine the physiological effects of laughter. As the
father of ‘gelotology’ or the science of laughter, Dr Fry proved that mirthful
laughter provides good physical exercise and can decrease the chances of 25
respiratory infections as laughter causes the body to produce endorphins
which is the body’s natural painkiller. Meanwhile, Dr Hunter ‘Patch’ Adams put
into practice the idea that ‘healing should be a loving human interchange, not

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a business transaction’. He has inspired millions of people by bringing fun and

laughter back into the hospital world, and was even immortalised in the film
‘Patch Adams’ starring Robin Williams. In 1971, Patch founded the
Gesundheit Institute, a holistic medical community that provided free 30
medical care to thousands. As the catalyst for the creation of thousands of
therapeutic care clowns worldwide, Patch introduced clowns as part of his
therapy. Despite some people's fear of clowns, he saw clowns as a significant
part of laughter therapy using various techniques designed to produce
laughter. 35

III Today, more than ever before, people are turning to humour for therapy and
healing. Medical journals have acknowledged that laughter therapy can help
improve the quality of life for patients with chronic illnesses. Many hospitals 40
now offer laughter therapy programmes as a complementary treatment to
illness. For people living with cancer, it may seem strange to find humour
when facing such serious issues. Yet, laughter can be helpful in ways we
might not have realised or imagined. When used in addition to conventional
cancer treatments, laughter therapy may help in the overall healing process. 45
Patients would go through a number of laugh-related exercises including fake
laughters. One group laughter exercise involves patients standing in a circle
with the leader in the middle. Patients will put their fingertips on their
cheekbones, chest or lower abdomen and make “ha ha” or “hee hee” sounds
until they feel vibrations through their bodies. Laughing out makes the chest rise 50
and fall, making the stomach muscles work harder and tighten them. This
‘internal jogging’ may confer all the psychological benefits of a good workout.
With endorphins surging through the bloodstream, patients will be more apt to
feel happy and healthy. Additionally, scientists discovered that laughing
increased both heart rate and calorie expenditure by up to 20 per cent. A 15- 55
minute laughter a day will burn 10 to 40 calories, depending on a person’s
weight and the intensity of the laughter. So, the longer and louder you laugh,
the greater the effects in terms of losing weight.

IV Building on the knowledge that making children laugh can enhance many
aspects of cognition, researchers found that humour could also have an 60

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effecton the ability of infants to learn. Children who laughed at the antics of
adults were able to repeat the action themselves more successfully than those
who did not. Why laughter seems to be related to the infants’ ability to learn is
not entirely clear, but two possible explanations relate to temperament and
brain chemistry. Temperamentally 'smiley' babies are more likely to engage 65
with the environment, allowing them to be more amenable to interacting with
others. The brain, on the other hand, reflects positive emotions, which in turn
has a positive effect on learning. It has been proven that as cognition in
children improves, their anxiety and stress are reduced, thus bolstering the
immune system. Doctors in children’s hospital wards believe that a few hearty 70
chuckles can help patients to recover. Hence, you might see shelves full of
books on humour, games and toys occupying the children’s hospital halls
today.

V It is questionable to even think that anything can be truly funny if one is

battling a depression, or dealing with the meanest boss. You can choose to be 75
miserable and sink into a depression. However, by choosing to laugh and
foster happiness, you will have more energy to fight. This holds true for
everything from diseases to work on an assignment with your worst nemesis.
Finding ways to laugh and be happy will help you remain in control, even if it
seems like everything else is out of your hands. Humour is highly subjective. 80
What gives one person the giggles might just as easily make someone doze
off. Part of laughter therapy is figuring out exactly what tickles your funny
bone. We all know people who are holding on too tightly to past pain.
Laughter can help those people loosen their grip, and begin to let go of what
is bothering them. Since our bodies cannot distinguish between real and fake 85
laughter, anything that makes us giggle will have a positive impact. Even a
chuckle, after being admonished by a rude classmate or a demanding
lecturer, can help us let go of the trifling situation. We could all afford to take
life a little less seriously, but using humour that could be construed negatively,
such as sarcasm, could do further damage. Researchers at Texas A&M 90
University found that constructive humour leads to increased hopefulness and
helps escalate positive emotions, so as to help people see a way out of their
misery, and be free from the shackles of negativity. However, it should be

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understood that not everyone is ready to let loose in the middle of a crisis or
during recovery of an illness. 95

VI Granting that laughter therapy may be unconventional, proponents claim that

laughter is the best medicine. However, while you may be laughing through
anxiety and pain, the actual act of laughing should not hurt. Because laughter
causes a little physical strain, the therapy may not be advisable for pregnant
women, those with hernia or patients who has gone through intensive surgery. 100
If you are practising group laughter, be wary of cold or flu sufferers who may
laugh away their germs on everyone, particularly when working with patients
with compromised immune system. Otherwise, laugh, and be merry!

Adapted from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/alternative-medicine/

10149577/Now-theres-proof-laughter-really-is-the-best-medicine.html

QUESTION 1
State whether the following statements are TRUE (T) or FALSE (F).

i. Laughter bonds people as it is contagious.

ii. Laughter worsens the condition of patients with respiratory infections

iii. The more intense one laughs, the longer it takes him to lose weight.

iv. Humour has been used by medical practitioners to assist patients to feel
less painful.

(4 marks)

QUESTION 2
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What do the following words mean as used in the passage?

a) mirthful (line 19) : ___________________________________________

b) immortalised (line 30) : ___________________________________________

c) antics (line 61) : ___________________________________________

d) admonished (line 87) : ___________________________________________

(4 marks)

QUESTION 3
All of the following statements are TRUE about laughter therapy except
(circle two (2) answers)

i. Various types of clown masks are used to produce laughter.

ii. Cancer patients can solely depend on laughter therapy programmes in order to heal.
iii. Patients who watched comedy videos could endure pain better than those who did not.
iv. A real laughter or a fake one will give the same impact on people.
(2 marks)

QUESTION 4
What was Cousins’ contribution to scientific studies?
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_________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

(2 marks)

QUESTION 5
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‘Healing should be a loving human interchange, not a business transaction.’ (line 27-28)
What can you infer from the statement?
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_________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

(2 marks)

QUESTION 6

Why is laughter exercise described as ‘internal jogging’?

_________________________________________________________________________

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_________________________________________________________________________

(2 marks)

QUESTION 7
How does laughter relate to infants’ ability to learn?
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_________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

(2 marks)

QUESTION 8
What does the author mean by the following statement?
‘Humour is highly subjective’. (line 78)
_________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

(2 marks)

QUESTION 9

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What could possibly happen if humour is interpreted negatively?

_________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

(2 marks)
QUESTION 10
Based on the passage, do you think humour is important in our lives? Provide two (2)
reasons to justify your answer.
_________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

(3 marks)

END OF QUESTION PAPER

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