THE HISTORY OF POPCORN*

Popcorn, also known as popping corn, is a special variety of corn. Each

kernel contains a tiny drop of water. When it is heated, the water expands
causing the kernel to explode and flip inside out. Most US popcorn is grown
in Nebraska and Indiana, and increasingly in Texas.
Native Americans first discovered popcorn thousands of years ago in
Guatemala or Mexico. It was popped in China during the Song Dynasty
(960-279) as well as in Sumatra and India long before Columbus reached
the Americas. In 1948 and 1950, anthropologist Herbert Dick and botanist
Earle Smith discovered ears of popcorn in the Bat Cave of west central
New Mexico. The ears measured from smaller than a penny to about 2
inches. They were carbon dated to be about 5,600 years old.
In 1519 when he invaded Mexico, Hernando Cortes first saw popcorn
when he met the Aztecs. Popcorn was important to the Aztecs as food, as
decoration for ceremonial headdresses and necklaces, and as ornaments
on statues of their gods. Around 1612, French explorers around the Great
Lakes met Iroquois who used heated sand in a pottery vessel to make
popcorn.
There is an unproven theory that an Indian named Quadequina brought a
deerskin bag of popped corn for first Thanksgiving feast on October 15,
1621.
Colonial housewives served popcorn with sugar and cream for breakfast.
Some colonists used a cylinder of thin sheet-iron that revolved on an axle
in front of the fireplace to make popped corn.
In 1885, Charles Cretors of Chicago, Illinois, invented the first popcorn
machine. Street vendors were soon pushing steam or gas-powered
poppers through fairs, parks, and expositions. Today much of the popcorn
you buy at movies and fairs is popped in machines manufactured by the
Cretors family. In 1914, in Sioux City, Iowa, Cloid H. Smith created
America's first branded popcorn (Jolly Time), and for the first time, popcorn
was available in grocery stores.
Americans eat more than 17 billion quarts of popcorn a year, an average
of 60 quarts per person per year. As the result of an elementary school
project, popcorn became the official state snack food of Illinois. January
19 is National Popcorn Day, and October is National Popcorn Month.

*adapted from http://mrnussbaum.com/readingcomp/popcorn/

PART I : VOCABULARY

A. Identify what the items below refer to in the text.

1. it (line 2) refers to ...

2. they (line) refers to ...
3. he (line 10) refers to ...

B. Match the vocabulary items below with their referents regarding

their use in the text.

a.

penny

__
_

a person who sells things, for example food or

newspapers, usually outside on the street

a small meal or amount of food, usually

eaten in a hurry

b.

ornament

__
_

c.

vessel

__
_

a small British coin and unit of money

d.

vendor

__
_

a container such as a bowl, cup, etc.

e.

snack

__
_

an object that is used as decoration in a room,

garden/yard, etc.

PART II : COMPREHENSION

A. Choose the correct option according to the text.

1.

Who discovered the popcorn ?

a.
b.
c.
d.

2.

Americans
Charles Cretors
Native Americans
Mexicans

Aztecs did not use popcorn for/as

a.
b.
c.
d.

food
fuel
decoration
ornaments for statutes

3. Which one of the statements below is True ?

a. Popcorn became available in the grocery stores 29 years later after
the invention of the popcorn machine.
b. The first branded popcorn of America was Cretors Time.
c. The colonial housewives preferred to make popcorn with cream and
sugar for dinner.
d. Popcorn became the official state snack food of Illinois because it is
easy to make popcorn and bring it to the schools.

B. Give short answers to the questions below.

1. What causes corn to pop ?

2. How did the Iroquois make popcorn?

3. How much popcorn do American people consume per year?

ANSWER KEY

PART I:
A.
1. the water
2. the ears
3. Hernando Cortes

B.

a. d
b. e
c. a
d. c
e. b

PART II :

A.
1. c
2. b
3. a

B.
1. The water inside the kernel expands when heated causing it to explode and flip
out.
2. They used heated sand in a pottery vessel to make popcorn.
3. Americans eat more than 17 billion quarts of popcorn a year, an average

of 60 quarts per person per year.

JUSTIFICATIONS

(Hughes, 1989)

1. We have chosen this passage for the reasons stated below;

It is appropriate for intermediate high school students with respect to

included lexical and structural items.
It has an interesting but not a boring or overexciting topic at all.
The topic is a part of daily life about which students may have a more
general understanding, but the passage aims to give students more
detailed information and it makes more room to write comphrehension
questions which lead us to include macro and micro reading skills in
testing.

2.We have had various types of questions in the testing part, those are ;

-identifying: We asked the testees to find the referents of some pronouns, here
we want to test to what extent they can make syntactic and semantic
connections as a result of reading process.
-multiple choice: We asked multiple choice questions because we think that
choosing successfully against other alternatives is an indicator of a successful
comprehension. We aim to see to what extent the testees can interpret the
stated information and how they make use of it in inference questions.
-matching: Our matching part, which includes carefully chosen vocabulary
items, aims to check whether the testees can make use of the contextual
inferences and guess meaning of the vocabulary.
-short answer: By using short answer questions in our assessment, we aim to
see the testees capability to produce their own sentences as a result of their
understanding of the passage and to what degree they can transform the ideas
given inthe passage into their own justifications.

References
Hughes, A. (1989). Testing for Language Teachers . Cambridge University
Press.
http://mrnussbaum.com/readingcomp/popcorn/
http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/