PRUEBA DE GRADO IDIOMA INGLÉS

(Comprensión)
PARA EL GRADO DE BACHILLERATO

NOMBRE: _______________________________ CARNÉ: ________________

CARRERA______________________________/ FECHA: 23 de junio de 2018.

PRUEBA DE IDIOMA
La Primera Prueba tendrá una duración máxima de dos horas. El examen consistirá en una
comprensión de lectura de un texto de aproximadamente setecientas palabras, en cuya lectura
el estudiante podrá emplear diccionario. Luego deberá contestar por escrito diez preguntas
sobre comprensión de lectura, escritas en inglés, las que el estudiante podrá contestar en
español o en inglés. La Primera Prueba únicamente tendrá voto de aprobado o reprobado, y
no se promediará su resultado para el cálculo de la mención de graduación. Es requisito haber
superado la primera Prueba para presentar las siguientes en cualquiera de las modalidades.
El estudiante que no la apruebe deberá repetirla hasta su aprobación o su retiro de la
Universidad. En la respuesta al examen, el estudiante debe contestar estrictamente según el
texto.

INSTRUCCIONES GENERALES: El estudiante deberá responder obligatoriamente las 10

preguntas de la Prueba. No se permitirá el uso del corrector o lápiz. Es indispensable
trabajar de la forma más ordenada y clara posible, ya que no se calificarán aquellos
exámenes que se encuentren ilegibles o desordenados. Deberá contestar únicamente en
el espacio dispuesto para las respuestas, en caso de necesitar hojas adicionales deberá
solicitarlas al Oidor encargado; no podrá responder en la parte posterior de las hojas. El
estudiante podrá hacer uso del diccionario para la realización de la Prueba, no se permitirá
el uso de ningún dispositivo electrónico.

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 THE CASE FOR CHARLES DICKENS, THE SCIENCE
COMMUNICATOR

Charles Dickens had the uncanny ability to absorb the tiniest details of daily life and
the mannerisms of people around Victorian London and present them on the page
in literary Technicolor. In fact, Dicken’s eye for minutia even covered the science of
the day, and in several characters and asides he explores fields like geology,
medicine and paleontology. That’s why, reports Robin McKie at The Guardian, the
Charles Dickens Museum is opening a new exhibition this month called Charles
Dickens: Man of Science.

While devout Dickens fans may have picked up on Dickens’ keen interest in science,
McKie explains that because the Victorian novelist’s writings are so associated with
the plight of the poor, the sick, the homeless, the elderly, the overworked and the
underpaid, scientific observations in his writings have, in fact, become obscured.

“For 150 years, it has been thought that Dickens was uninterested in or actually
hostile to science,” Frankie Kubicki, curator at the museum, tells McKie. “That is a
misunderstanding, and a travesty. He was one of the most influential scientific
communicators of the Victorian age.”

Julian Hunt, emeritus professor at Gresham College, who has written considerably
about Dickens’ relationship with science, affirms that Dickens was very much a
student of the scientific advancements of his age. “His brilliant essay on ‘a new ology’
describes how a science moves from its first tentative steps to mature general
concepts, when they are often transformed into other areas of science and human
understanding - a very modern perspective,” Hunt explains in one 2015 lecture.

In another story at The Guardian, Hannah Devlin reports that Dickens’ descriptions
of medical ailments in his writings are so precise they often predated the formal
description of some diseases. His description of Joe, the “fat boy” who has trouble
staying awake in the Pickwick Papers, was used by doctors in 1956 looking to find
out why severely obese people can have trouble staying awake. The researchers
originally named their findings after Dickens, calling the diagnosis “Pickwickian
Syndrome.”

Examples of Dickens’ scicom skills can be found throughout his texts. In

1848’s Dombey and Son, Mrs. Skewton loses the power to speak and becomes

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paralyzed on her right side. That observation anticipated the 1861 discovery by
researcher Paul Broca that the speech center is located on the right side of the brain.
“That hadn’t been observed in the medical literature at all by then – that speech loss
and paralysis can occur together,” Adelene Buckland, an advisor to the exhibition
from King’s College London, tells Devlin.

While Dickens wasn’t known to dabble in the sciences himself, he was also actively
conversing with those who were. Devlin reports he corresponded with Michael
Faraday, one of the early researchers of electromagnetism, traveled with
chemist Jane Marcet, who wrote a series of books popularizing scientific concepts,
wrote the obituary of the criminally overlooked paleontologist Mary Anning and
read Dombey and Son to the mathematician and, by some reckoning, the first
computer programmer, Ada Lovelace, on her deathbed.

Dickens’ interest in science was not just academic in nature. In true Dickens fashion,
he wanted to see how science could improve the human condition. As the Charles
Dickens Museum writes, “for Dickens, science mattered when it transformed lives by
curing disease or cleaning streets, or opening up new vistas of wonder in a humdrum
world.”

Concerns like medical treatment, malnourishment, and sanitation were his scientific
preoccupations. He wanted to demonstrate that these problems weren’t due to
moral failings or the corrupt character of individuals, but rather were products of a
poorly designed society that had inadequate safeguards for its most vulnerable.

“He’s linking modern urban life and the social structure of the city with disease,”
Buckland tells Devlin. “You don’t get disease just because you’re living a dissolute
lifestyle, it’s because you’re living in a slum that’s been neglected. It’s a social
responsibility.”

Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/exhibit-showcases-
dickens-scienctific-side-180969118/

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 THE CASE FOR CHARLES DICKENS, THE SCIENCE
COMMUNICATOR

1. What was Charles Dickens´ most surprising ability?

2. What are Dickens´ writings associated with?

3. What was Dickens actual relation to science?

4. What does professor Julian Hunt say about Dickens and science?

5. How are Dickens´ descriptions of medical ailments?

6. How did Dickens learn about sciences?

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7. What was Dickens´ interest in science?

8. What were his main scientific concerns?

9. What was he trying to demonstrate in his writings?

10. According to Devlin, how does he understand disease as part of urban life?

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