UNIVERSIDAD DE CHILE

FACULTAD DE FILOSOFÍA Y HUMANIDADES

DEPARTAMENTO DE LINGÜÍSTICA

INGLÉS IV

Prof. Javiera Adaros

UNIT 1: GLOBAL ISSUES

POPULATION GROWTH

Pre-reading activity
Read the information below and discuss the questions that follow with your classmates.

There are an estimated 7.4 billion people in the world. 2.7 billion people live in China and India.

World population grows at a rate of around 1.13 per cent per year. It is predicted that this growth rate will
decline in the coming years, accounting for 1% by 2020 and less than 0.5% by 2050.

Fertility rates have been declining for many years, the result of a growing desire for small families and
improved access to voluntary family planning. In the early 1970s, women had on average 4.5 children each;
by 2014, women had around 2.5 children each.

A staggering 225 million women in developing countries want to avoid pregnancy but are not using modern
contraceptive methods. And tens of millions of women do not receive the basic pregnancy and delivery care
they need.

Women in sub-Saharan Africa are as likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth as women in nineteenth-century
England. Yet, since 1990, there has been a 45 per cent decline in globally maternal mortality rates.

HIV-related deaths have been decreasing but estimates suggest that deaths among adolescents are actually
rising.

There are about 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24—the largest youth population ever.
Many of them are concentrated in developing countries, and many of them see their potential hindered by
extreme poverty, discrimination or lack of information.

More than half of the global population is urban—and history's largest-ever urbanization wave will continue
for many years to come.

 What is the approximate population of your country?

 Is your country's fertility rate increasing or decreasing?
 What do you know about maternal mortality rates in your country?
 Where do most people live in your country?

Now read a text about population change.

For the past million years the world's population has grown almost continuously, although
not always at the same rate. Despite this, demographers are predicting that our population
growth will slow down and then stabilize or stay steady.

There have been three great population surges in the life of humankind. Each followed a
technological revolution that dramatically increased the number of people that the world could
keep alive. The first revolution was the invention of tool making (using stone and animal parts to
make hunting and cooking equipment) that occurred gradually around the world between a million
and 100,000 years ago. The second was the invention of farming, which began at the end of the
last ice age, about 10,000 years ago. Agriculture helped the world's population rise from less than
10 million to about 150 million at the time of Christ and 350 million one thousand years ago.
Then, in the fourteenth century, the number of people dropped dramatically because of the Black
Death―a terrible sickness that spread rapidly across Europe and Asia. In Europe it reduced the
population by a third. But by the nineteenth century, the third technological revolution, the
industrial revolution, had begun in Europe and its progress around the world continues today. This
latest revolution has already raised the world's population to around 6 billion, six times what it
was at the start of the nineteenth century. This is three times what it was in 1930, and almost
twice what it was in 1960. The population may reach 10 billion before, as demographers predict, it
stabilizes. At present, they think this will occur before the end of the twenty-first century.

Why do demographers predict that the world's population may begin to stabilize? The
answer is that they believe that human populations go through different demographic stages (see
Figure 10.1) and that these are linked to their societies' economic development.

Figure 10.1
The demographic transition

In the first stage, birth and death rates are both high. This was the stage of the
populations in Western Europe in the seventeenth century, before industralization. In the second
stage, there is a fall in death rates, because of improved health care and eating habits, but there
is no change in birth rates. Populations in Western Europe entered the second stage after
industralization, but many countries in the developing world are still at this stage. In the third
stage, social changes bring about a decline in the birth rate and the death rate, and the population
begins to stabilize. Many Western countries reached this stage when they became highly
industrialized. Today Taiwan, South Korea, and Argentina, for example, are in this stage. The
fourth stage―with low birth and death rates―has been reached by a small number of highly
industrialized countries today―for example, the United States, Japan, and some countries in
Western Europe. These countries are moving close to zero growth―a situation where birth rates
are lower than death rates.

What are the social changes that can bring about a decline in birth rates? Why do people in
many countries of the world have fewer children now than in the past? In Europe, around the start
of the twentieth century, population growth rates reached a high point and then began to fall, as
people chose to have smaller families and use modern methods of birth control. This move to
smaller families was linked to social changes. In poor rural or farming societies, children were
needed to work in the fields and to take care of their parents in old age. However, in richer urban
societies typical of the twentieth century, they were not needed in this way. In fact, children were
seen as costly to educate, clothe, and feed―in other words, it was better economics to have a
small number of children. Another factor was that as child death rates fell, people became more
confident that their children would survive to adulthood. They did not need to have a lot of
children to make sure that one or two survived.

Now, although it varies from country to country, the fertility rate―the number of children
per woman―is declining overall. The average world rate is now 2.5. However, fertility rates are
still very high in poor, developing nations, particularly in Africa. In fact, because of this, Africa's
population, over the last few years, has become larger than Europe's.

There are other theories about population growth, in particular the doomsday theories first
developed by Malthus in the late eighteenth century, and taken up again by some
environmentalists in the 1960s and 1970s. Malthus suggested that food production would not be
able to keep up with population growth, and that this would result in the death of hundreds of
millions of people. It is true that today nearly one billion people around the world do not have
enough food, but opponents of the doomsday theories say that famine is mainly the result of
other social and economic factors―for example, war, poverty, and politics. The problem is not that
there is not enough food. It is that the food cannot get to the people who need it because of other
problems.

Complete this chart with information from paragraph 2.

Year Population

10,000 year ago less than 10 million

1 AD

1000 AD

1800 AD

1930 AD

1960 AD

2000 AD

2100 AD

4
Look back at the text to find the meaning of the words in italics.

1. Each followed a technological revolution that dramatically increased the number of people that
the world could keep alive. (p. 2) _____________________________

2. The second was the invention of farming, which began at the end of the last ice age, about
10,000 years ago (p. 2) _____________________________

3. … and its progress around the world continues today. (p. 2) _____________________________

4. … but many countries in the developing world are still at this stage. (p. 4)
_____________________________

5. Today Taiwan, South Korea, and Argentina, for example, are in this stage. (p. 4)
_____________________________

6. … they were not needed in this way. (p.5) _____________________________

7. It is that the food cannot get to the people who need it because of other problems. (p. 7)
_____________________________

Now answer these questions.

1. What is the relationship between population and technological revolutions?

________________________________________________________________________________
2. What is the relationship between population and social change?

________________________________________________________________________________
3. What is the current situation with fertility rates around the world?

________________________________________________________________________________
4. What do the doomsday theorists say and why? What do their opponents say?

________________________________________________________________________________

• What can be done to avoid problems related to population growth?

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Grammar Spot
Verb Tenses (Active voice)

Look at the expressions in italics. What are the different tenses' names? What are they used for?
Complete the list below.

Verb tense: ___________________________________

Use: ___________________________________________________________________________________

Verb tense: ___________________________________

Use: ___________________________________________________________________________________

Verb tense: ___________________________________

Use: ___________________________________________________________________________________

Verb tense: ___________________________________

Use: ___________________________________________________________________________________

Verb tense: ___________________________________

Use: ___________________________________________________________________________________

Relative Pronouns

Look at all the underlined words in the text. What do they refer to?

Relative pronouns (who, which, whose, that) introduce relative clauses. We use relative clauses to
identify the noun in the main clause.
Example: Women who live in Niger average 7.5 children.

We use who or that instead of subject pronouns (I, you, he, etc.) to refer to people.
We use which or that to refer to objects or animals.
We use whose instead of possessive adjectives (my, your, his, etc) with people, objects and animals in
order to show possession.
We use where to refer to a place.
We use when to refer to time.
We use why to give a reason.
We use what to refer to “the thing that” (e.g. I don't know what to do)
We do not omit the relative pronoun when it is the subject of the relative clause, that is, when there is
no noun or subject pronoun between the relative clause and the verb.

Example: Fertility rates are a source of concern for industralized countries. In fact, they are being
discussed at international meetings.  An example of concerns that/which are being discussed at
international meetings are fertility rates.

We can omit the relative pronoun when it is the object of the relative clause, that is, when there is a
noun or a subject pronoun between the relative pronoun and the verb.

Example: Fertility rates are a source of concern for industralized countries. In fact, they are being
discussed at international meetings.  Fertility rates are one of the issues (that/which are) being
discussed at international meetings.

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 Economics

Before you read: Brainstorming

• What do you know about economics?
• What is the economic situation in your country? Has it always been the same?
• What do you think will be the future of economic issues in the world? Why?

Now read the text below. Compare and contrast the 4 different systems.

Economic Systems

Various nations have different economic systems, but each system must answer the same
four basic questions: 1) What goods and services (and how much of each) should be produced? 2)
Who should produce them? 3) How should they be produced? 4) Who should be able to use them?
Each society answers these questions according to its values and goals, which determine its
economic system. Economists have identified four types of economic systems: traditional,
command (or controlled), market (or capitalist), and mixed.

Traditional System
A pure traditional economic system answers the four basic questions according to tradition.
In such a system, things are done “the way they have always been done.” Economic decisions are
based on customs, beliefs, and religion-- that is, the traditional way of doing things. The San
people of southern Africa, for example, are nomadic hunters and gatherers. In other words, the
San travel from one area to another to hunt animals and gather fruits and vegetables, and they
move on when there is no more food. Traditional economic systems exist today in very few areas
of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.

Command (or Controlled) System

In a pure command economic system, an individual person has little-- or possibly no--
influence over how the basic economic questions are answered. The government controls
production and makes all decisions about the use of good and services. “The government” may be
one person, a small group of leaders, or a group of central planners in a government agency.
These people choose how resources will be used and decide the distribution of goods and services.
They also regulate-- that is, control-- the amount of education that people receive, so they guide
people into certain jobs. These days, the only areas that still have a pure command economy are
North Korea and parts of China.

Market (or Capitalist) System

The opposite of a pure command economic system is a pure market economic system-- or
capitalism, in which the government does not intervene. In other words, individual people own the
factors of production, and they decide for themselves the answers to the four basic economic
questions. Economic decisions are made in the market-- that is, the freely choosen activity
between buyers and sellers of goods and services. This exchange of goods and services may
take place in a neighborhood market for someone's services such as delivering newspapers, or
it may happen in a worldwide market for a good such as oil. People may take, refuse, or change
jobs whenever they want to-- if there is a demand for their labor.
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 Mixed System
Except for the traditional economic system, a pure economic system has probably never
existed; most economies are mixed. A mixed econonomy has some characteristics of a command
and some of a market economy. Two examples are the United States and The People's Republic of
China. The U.S. economy tends towards the market system, but there are laws that regulate some
areas of business. The People's Republic of China tends towards the command system, but in
some “special economic zones” people can make economic decisions without interference by the
government.

➔ How are the four economic systems different from each other?

Vocabulary Spot
Find a word or expression in the passage for each definition that follows. The numbers in parentheses
refer to the paragraphs.

1. people who study economics (p. 1): ______________________________________

2. command economy (p. 3): ______________________________________

3. market economy (p. 4): ______________________________________

4. to show the way or tell someone where to go (p. 3): ______________________________________

5. the freely chosen activity between buyers and sellers of goods and services (p. 4):
______________________________________

6. everywhere in the world (p. 4): ______________________________________

7. work (noun, p. 4): ______________________________________

8. “leans” in one direction instead of another (p. 5): ______________________________________

Words in English do not have only one form; they can vary according to their function in the speech.
Complete this table with the correct forms of the words given.

Noun Verb Adjective Adverb

regulation
economically
control
free

9
Grammar Spot
The Passive Voice: Simple present and simple past

*Always remember that you need the past participle form of verbs to use this structure.
Infinitive Past Simple Past Participle
be was/were been
do did done
go went gone
have had had
10
Rewrite the underlined sections using the passive voice.

1. In a traditional system, people do things in a traditional way.

_________________________________________________________________________

2. In a controlled system, the government makes all decisions.

_________________________________________________________________________

3. They also regulate the amount of education that people receive.

_________________________________________________________________________

4. In a capitalist system, individual people own the factors of production.

_________________________________________________________________________

Progressive and perfect tenses

11
 Globalization

Pre-reading activity: Brainstorming

Write down all that comes to you mind when you think of globalization. Is it mostly positive or negative?
Why?

Now read the text below and answer the questions.

Disputes and confusion about globalization often begin around issues of definition. Indeed,
many people invoke notions of globalization without indicating explicitly what they mean by the
term. For example, various commentators have described globalization as a stage of “capitalism”
or “late modernity” without specifying the content of such phrases. Or authors have made
unfocused remarks that globalization is “a new way of thinking”. Circular definitions are not much
help either, with statements like “globalization is the present process of becoming global”. In this
and other ways, globalization has frequently become a label to cover whatever strikes the fancy. It
is not surprising then that critics have decried the emptiness of “global babble”.

However, such rejections are unfair. Actually, many key notions in social analysis can be
used loosely and vaguely. How often does one find airtight conceptualizations of “class”, “culture”,
“money”, “law”, “development”, “international”, etc? Moreover, some usages of globalization are
considerably more illuminating that loose globe talk. A serious academic literature on the subject
has developed over the past two decades.

Five different definitions have emerged to explain what globalization is. The first one would
be Internationalization. From this perspective, “global” is simply another adjective to describe
cross-border relations between countries, and “globalization” designates a growth of international
exchange and interdependence. In this regard, Hirst and Thompson have identified globalization
in terms of “large and growing flows of trade and capital investment between countries”.

A second idea is liberalization. Here globalization refers to a process of removing state-

imposed restrictions on movements between countries in order to create an “open”, “borderless”
world economy. In a similar way, the third concept refers to globalization as universalization,
though this applies more to people than to a world economy, meaning “a planetary synthesis of
cultures” in a “global humanism”.

A fourth definition has treated globalization as westernization or modernization, especially

in an Americanized form, which usually means imperialism of companies based on the U.S., such
as McDonald’s, Hollywood, or CNN.

Finally, a fifth approach has identified globalization as respatialization. Following this

interpretation, globalization entails a reconfiguration of social geography with increased
transplanetary connections between people.

From Globalization: A Critical Introduction by Jan Aart Scholte

12
 1. What does the word invoke mean?
a) Use
b) Call
c) Apply
d) Depict

2. Which sentence below best expresses the meaning of the highlighted sentence in paragraph 1?
a) Authors have not thought about globalization.
b) Authors have no added new ideas to the definition of globalization.
c) Authors have clearly stated what globalization is.
d) Authors have wrongly stated what globalization is.

3. What does the word decried mean?

a) Said
b) Criticized
c) Failed
d) Stated

4. What does the author imply in paragraph 2?

a) She disagrees with the misconceptions of globalization.
b) She disagrees with the authors that have wrongly defined globalization.
c) She disagrees with the authors that discredit the different meanings of globalization.
d) She disagrees with the definitions of globalization.

5. What are the main characteristics of the 5 definitions presented by the author?

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

6. Which definition do you mostly agree with? Why?

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

7. How has globalization affected you?

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

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Grammar Spot
Linking Words

Go back to the text and check the words or phrases in bold. Do you know their meaning? What is their
function in the text?

Classify them according to their function.

Addition: __________________________________________________________________________

Contrast/opposite: __________________________________________________________________

Illustration: _________________________________________________________________________

Signalling a sequence: ________________________________________________________________

Emphasis: __________________________________________________________________________

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15
 Marginalisation - poverty, inequality, and the consequences of climate change
Before you read:
• What does the title mean to you?
• What’s globalization’s role in this?
• How do these issues relate to Chile?

Now read a text from The Guardian about a book that deals with these issues.

Vocabulary Spot
Driving: leading
Warfare: fighting
Shift: move
Onset: start
Fuelled: encouraged
Well-neigh: almost

For decades, Paul Rogers has warned about the consequences of western military
adventures, urging us to consider the root causes of conflict. In his new book, Irregular War, he
reflects on Isis, al-Qaida, Boko Haram, Al Shabab, and the Taliban - all separate manifestations,
he says, of a new non-state dynamic driving international conflict through asymmetric and hybrid
warfare.

But their significance is more fundamental. They are part of what Rogers calls “an historical
shift towards revolts from the margins”. And such revolts are made more likely by “the widening
global socio-economic divide and the onset of climate disruption”.

The key word is “marginalisation”. Marginalisation was one of the main factors, with anger
at autocracy, compounded by the high rate of unemployment among the (educated) youth that
fuelled the Arab Awakening in 2011, Rogers argues.

The causes of conflict are many and deep – economic, political, societal, environmental,
demographic. In this holistic approach, he points to the enormous and growing gap between the
world’s rich and poor. But the old division between rich countries and poor countries no longer
applies as figures from the US demonstrate dramatically.

Rogers points to David Hulme’s book, Global Poverty: Global Governance and Poor People
in the Post-2015 Era – while the global poverty rate may be declining slowly, the relative poverty
rate in high-income countries has increased, and has more than doubled in the developing world.
Meanwhile, the global military-industrial complex consumes some $1,700 bn a year.

There are likely to be two fundamental trends threatening world security, according to
Rogers. One is “the increasing marginalisation of the majority of the world’s people caused by the
workings of the neo-liberal system of international economic activity” which concentrates most of
the fruits of economic growth in the hands of a transglobal elite of some 1.5bn people.

The other is climate change. “It is now well-nigh certain”, he writes, “that climate change
is going to lead to huge problems of food supply and also to far more dangerous episodes of
extreme weather, with profound political and social effects”. The author adds: “Overall, it is the
link between environmental limits and a world economy not fit for purpose that underpins the
security challenge”.
 Rogers says he is cautiously optimistic. He points to developments in alternative energy
technology, notably solar and wind power. Some of the most significant movements for social
change in the twentieth century were notable for their non-violent approach. Nuclear catastrophe
has been avoided. “The next two decades”, he concludes, “are likely to prove pivotal in avoiding
an unstable and insecure world, but there is immense potential for positive change and huge
possibilities”.

Norton-Taylor, Richard. "We Have Entered a New Era of Conflict, Warns New Book."The Guardian. Guardian
News and Media, 14 July 2016. Web. 25 July 2016.

 To what extent do you agree with the text? Are any of these changes affecting Chile in the short term?
Are they going to do so in the long run?

Grammar Spot
Future tense: will & going to

In English there are several ways to refer to future. Two of the most common ones are structuring
sentences using will or using going to. In both cases you refer to a future situation, though there are
some slight differences. Look at the images below:

17
When we make predictions, we can use will or going to with only one little difference. Read the
examples and find the difference.

You will meet a tall dark stranger. That's what the cards say.
Look at those black clouds. It's going to rain.
I feel terrible. I think I'm going to be sick.

• Present continuous: instead of using going to, we can use the present continuous tense to mean
the same (thought this structure usually refers to a near-future event)
Example: We are going to have a party on Saturday = We're having a party on Saturday.
* It is very important to include a time expression with this tense. Compare:
We're having a party on Saturday. We're having a party.

• Present simple: for schedules (timetables) we use present simple.

Example: The plane departs at 5 pm. The class starts at 12 pm.

Exercises

Read the situations and complete the sentences using will or going to and the verbs in brackets.

1. The phone rings and you answer. Somebody wants to speak to Jim.

Caller: Hello. Can I speak to Jim, please?

You: Just a moment. ______________________________ (I/get) him.

2. It's a nice day. You've decided to go to the park. Before going outside, you tell your friend.

You: The weather it's too nice to stay home. ______________________________ (I/go) to the
park.

Your friend: That's a good idea. I think ______________________________ (I/join) you.

3. There was a job advertised in the newspaper recently. At first you were interested but then you
decided not to apply.

Friend: Have you decided what to do about that job that was advertised?

You: Yes, ______________________________ (I/not/apply) for it.

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 THE ENVIRONMENT

Pre-reading activity
 Complete this questionaire below about caring for our planet.

 Share you answers with the class and find out which classmate is the most planet-friendly.
 How is the quality of the environment of your local area? Of the whole country? Of the whole
planet?

Now read a text about this topic.

(1) Social change can be caused by changes in the physical environment. A flood, an
earthquake, or a hurricane, for example, may change how people live and relate to one another.
However, changes in society―the way we live and the way we behave―may also affect the
environment.

(2) Scientists believe that human beings are responsible for today's major environmental
problems. They say we have ignored two important principles of nature. First, natural resources
have a limit. There is only so much life that each ecosystem (for example, a forest, a river, or an
ocean) can support. Second, all our actions have consequences. If we try to change one aspect of
nature, we end up changing others as well. For example, farmers used to use DDT, a toxic
chemical, on their crops to kill pests. However, DDT got into the soil and water, and from there
into plankton (very small plants and animals on which fish feed), into the fish that ate the
plankton, and into the birds that ate the fish. The chemical also found its way into our food.
19
(3) We can blame some environmental damage on ignorance or poverty, but most damage has
nothing to do with either. A major cause of environmental problems is the fact that clean air, clean
rivers, and other natural resources are public, not private, possessions. And, in Aristotle's words,
“What is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care.” Individually, we gain by
using these resources and so, in our own interests, we keep doing so. Eventually, the resources
are damaged or run out, and then society as a whole has to pay the cost.

(4) What, then, are our main environmental problems? The major ones are a decrease in
natural resources and an increase in environmental pollution.

___________________________________________
(5) Although they make up less than 6 percent of the world's population, each year people in
the United States use about 30% of the world's energy and raw materials (such as oil, water, and
basic food crops such as wheat). Other industrialized nations also take more than their fair share.
If this continues, soon there will be no resources for anybody to use. According to some
estimates, the global supply of oil will last only fifty years. We are also endangering supplies of
food farming land and water. For example, we are losing topsoil―the good, rich top layer of soil
that plants need to grow well―at an alarming rate. In the worst cases, an inch of topsoil, which
nature takes 100 to 1,500 years to form, is going to be destroyed in ten to twenty years.

___________________________________________
(6) For a long time now, we have been producing more waste than nature can deal with. We
have also created new toxic substances that cannot be recycled safely. The result is pollution. Air
pollution, in particular, is a problem for us all.

(7) There are many resources of air pollution but the greatest is the automobile. It accounts
for at least 80% of air pollution. The pollutants―the gases and other materials that do the
message―get into our eyes, noses, and throats and can cause serious illnesses such as bronchitis
and lung cancer. Industry is another major cause of air pollution. Burning coal, oil, and wood
release carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere. A thick blanket of the gases forms
and traps heat within our atmosphere. This is called the greenhouse effect. The result of it is
global warming. Many scientists believe that global warming will cause worldwide flooding due to
rising sea levels, serious climatic change, and social disruption (Stevens 1995; Lemonick 1995).
Small low-lying island communities in the Pacific, for example, may lose their homes as ocean
levels rise higher and higher.

(8) Another problem relates to the ozone layer that surrounds our planet and protects us from
the harmful rays of the sun. Now, because of the use of certain gases such as chlorofluorocarbons
(used in refrigeration and air conditioners) there is a hole in the ozone layer. At present the hole is
largest over the Antartic.

___________________________________________
(9) Today, there is considerable awareness of the need to “save the environment.” There are
many “good news” stories about communities, governments, and industries that have worked
together to protect our environment. In many countries around the globe “green” political parties
are now having a strong influence, and environmental organizations are often asked for advice by
governments and private organizations that are planning major developments (roads, bridges,
mines, dams, etc.)
 • These are the titles for three paragraphs. Write the correct title on the blanks.

i. Environmental Pollution
ii. Endangered Species
iii. Social Injustice
iv. Diminishing Natural Resources
v. Global Warming
vi. Saving the Environment

• Choose the correct letter a), b), c), or d)

1. What is the relationship between society and the environment?

a) The former affects the latter
b) One affects the other
c) The environment can be changed by the society
d) The society can greatly affect the environment

2. Why did the author mention DDT?

a) To describe changes in the environment
b) To illustrate that resources have a limit
c) To illustrate that all our actions have consequences
d) To show the effects of DDT

3. The word either in paragraph 3 refers to

a) ignorance
b) poverty
c) ignorance or poverty
d) ignorance and poverty

4. Why did the author quote Aristotle?

a) To describe environmental problems
b) To illustrate ignorance and poverty
c) To show the cost that society pays
d) To explain why we have environmental problems

5. The word share in paragraph 5 is closest in meaning to

a) whole
b) allotment
c) serving
d) status

6. The word accounts for in paragraph 7 is closest in meaning to

a) explains
b) counts
c) relates
d) allocates
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 7. What can be inferred from paragraph 8?
a) Without the ozone layer, the planet can be seriously affected by the sun rays.
b) Refrigerators are the main cause for the hole in the ozone layer.
c) People should stop using air conditioner in order to restore the ozone layer.
d) The southern hemisphere is more threatened than the northern hemisphere.

8. Which sentence below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in
paragraph 9?
a) People have started to care about the environment.
b) Environmental awareness has been a major issue lately.
c) “Save the environment” seems to be a common sign of awareness nowadays.
d) People are working hard to save the environment.

Grammar Spot
Modal Auxilaries: Possibility and Obligation

Read the following sentences. What does may mean in this context?
 A flood, an earthquake, or a hurricane, for example, may change how people live and relate to
one another
 Small low-lying island communities in the Pacific, for example, may lose their homes as ocean
levels rise higher and higher

Which other modal auxiliaries do you know that can express the same meaning?

Now read this other sentences. What does should mean in this context?
➢ People should stop using air conditioner in order to restore the ozone layer.

Which other modal auxiliaries do you know that can express the same meaning?

Possibility
We can use could, may, and might when talking about future, present, or past possibility. Might is
usually used to express a weaker possibility than could and may.
However, changes in society may also affect the environment.

We can use can in affirmative sentences when we talk about a more general possibility of something
happening rather than the possibility of something happening in a particular situation; it usually suggests
a greater degree of certainty.
We can blame some environmental damage on ignorance or poverty, but most damage has nothing to do
with either.

There is a difference in meaning when using these modal auxiliaries in a negative form:
The government has plans to stop CO2 emissions, but they may not/ might not happen for another ten
years. (= It is possible that it won't happen for another ten years)
The government has plans to stop CO2 emissions, but they can't/ couldn't happen for another ten
years. (= It is not possible that it will happen for another ten years)
The difference is that we use may not or might not to say that it is possible that something is not true,
and can't or couldn't to say that it is not possible that something is true.

Obligation
We can use should and ought to to give advice or make a recommendation. They can also be used in the
case of responsibility or duty as in the case of moral obligation.
People should stop using air conditioner in order to restore the ozone layer.
People ought to consider renewable energy in order to stop polluting our environment.

If the obligation is stronger, then we have to use must/ mustn't or have to. Must is usually related to
laws or regulations.
Companies must get a permit in order to build a dam.

However, when have to is used in a negative form, the meaning of what is said changes:
You mustn't smoke here.
You don't have to smoke here.

Don't have to means that something is not necessary to do instead of meaning that something is
forbidden.

Exercises
These are different situations where you can use modal auxiliares of possibility and obligation. Read
them and decide which one you would you use and why.

1. You are at a friend's house. It's almost midnight and you're having a test the following day.

You say: __________________________________________________________________________

2. There have been a lot of changes in the weather in the last month and you are not sure if it's a
good idea to take an umbrella with you.

You say: ____________________________________

3. You're traveling to Europe and you're looking for information about your trip. You ask a friend
about the documents you need.

You say: ___________________________________________

4. Your roommate says that you're out of cookies but you are sure there are some because you
haven't eaten them all.

You say: __________________________________________________

23
 Fast Food

Pre-reading activity
What is fast food? Describe it and give a few examples.
Do you eat fast food? How often? When do you it eat?
Do you like fast food? Why or why not?

Look at the cartoon below. What is the artist trying to say? Do you agree with the artist's message? Why
or why not?

Now read a text about this topic.

(1) People in the U.S. have always looked for ways to save time and to do things faster. Beginning in
the twentieth century, new machines such as washing machines and dishwashers made housework faster
and easier. Transportation and communications also became faster and easier. Yet today, people still
complain that they do not have enough time. In many homes in the U.S., both the husband and wife
work, and it can be difficult to balance the demands of work and family. That is why the fast-food
restaurant provided one way for them to save valuable time.

The Popularity of Fast Food

(2) Fast-food restaurants first appeared in the United States in the 1940s. Today there are hundreds
of thousands of them. According to Eric Schlosser in his book Fast Food Nation, the amount of money
people in the U.S. spend on fast food went from $6 billion in 1970 to more than $100 billion in the late
1990s. Twenty-five percent of the population eats at a fast-food restaurant every day. People eat an
average of three hamburgers and four orders of french fries every week.

(3) Although fast food started in the United States, it has spread across the world and its popularity
is growing. For many fast-food chains, the majority of their profits now come from abroad. In 2005,
China had more than 600 McDonald's, Korea had more than 300, and there are more fast-food restaurants
on the way. According to KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken), every day, over two million Chinese eat in one of
their 900 restaurants. KFC has adapted its menu for different countries. In China, the company offers
dark meat chicken instead of the white meat that is preferred in the U.S., and rice porridge instead of
mashed potatoes. In India, their menu includes more vegetarian options, which many Indians,
particularly Hindus, require.

(4) The influence goes both ways. Fast food in the United States is becoming more international. For
example, in the 1990's, McDonald's bought the Chipotle Restaunrant chain, which serves Mexican tacos
and burritos. Chipotle began in Colorado with just a few restaurants, and by the time McDonald's sold it
in 2006, there were almost 500 throughout the United States. Samurai Sam's started with one restaunrat
in Arizona and now serves Japanese teriyaki at over 70 fast-food restaurants across the western U.S.

(5) Another example of international influence in the United States is the establishment of fast-food
chains that began in other countries. When these restaurants arrive in other countries, localbusiness
people decide to start their own. Some, such as Nirula's in India, or Gusto in Japan, serve western-style
food. Others, such as Pollo Loco in Mexico, Pollo Campero in Guatemala, and Yoshinoya in Japan, serve
local food. These last three chains are examples of fast-food restaurants that began in other countries
and now also have many locations in the United Sates. Some of them, such as Yoshinoya, are popular
because many people in the U.S. Like international foods. Others are serving the immigrant market.
When Pollo Campero came to Chicago in 2005, 200 people, many waving Guatemalan flags, waited more
than six hours in the summer heat for the restaurant to open. Making the trip around the globe
complete, Pollo Campero has opened its first restaurant in China and plans to open 500 more there by
2010.

The Negative Side of Fast Food

(6) Fast food also has a negative side. Although eating in fast food restaurants is convenient and less
expensive than eating in traditional restaurants, it can have a harmful effect on health. Many studies
suggest that the increased consumption of fast food may be one factor in the growing number of
overweight and obese people in the United States, which has become a rising threat to health. The
Centers for Disease Control reports that one-third of all adults in the U.S. are obese and about 15% of
children and teenagers are obese. Of course fast-food consumption is not the only reason for the
national weight problem; insufficient exercise is another important factor. However, most of the choices
at fast-food restaurants are high in fat and calories.

(7) Unfortunately, the problem of obesity has begun to spread across the world, and fast food may
be one contributing factor. In some countries, people — especially young people — are replacing their
traditional diets, which include lots of fruits and vegetables, with fast food, which contains more fat and
sugar. In response to complaints about the health effects of their food, many fast-food restaurants have
begun to offer healthier choices, such as fresh fruits and salads. Yet, a recent study shows that
customers continue to prefer the high-fat, high-calorie options.

1. The word complain in paragraph (1) is closest in meaning to

a) object
b) defend
c) praise
d) support
25
 2. The word them in paragraph (1) refers to
a) fast-food restaurant
b) husband and wife
c) homes
d) people

3. The phrase on the way in paragraph (3) is closest in meaning to

a) to be close to doing something
b) to be close to getting somewhere
c) to do something quickly
d) to achieve something

4. What can be inferred from paragraph (3)?

a) Despite its origins, fast-food restaurants can be found in other countries.
b) Fast food has become very popular in India since the inclusion of vegetarian options in the
menus.
c) KFC has achieved great popularity in Asia.
d) Despite its origin, KFC is aware of the different eating habits that people have, which
influences its menus.

5. The word it in paragraph (4) refers to

a) McDonald's
b) Chipotle Restaurant
c) Colorado
d) Mexican food

6. Why does the author mention Nirula's and Gusto in paragraph (5)?
a) Because they are examples of successful fast-food restaurants that serve international food in
the U.S.
b) Because they are examples of the extent of western fast food's influence.
c) Becaue they are examples of fast-food restaurants whose target clients are inmigrants.
d) Because they are examples of local fast-food restaurants in the U.S.

7. The word many in paragraph 5 refers to

a) people
b) flags
c) six hours
d) none of the above

8. The word it in paragraph (6)

a) eating in traditional restaurants
b) eating in fast-food restaurants
c) a negative side
d) a harmful effect

26
 9. What can be inferred from paragraph (7)?
a) Obesity is the most dangerous consequence of fast-food consumption.
b) Traditional diets include fruits and vegetables.
c) Fast-food restaurants have started to offer healthier options.
d) Despite the efforts made by fast-food restaurants, it's the people the ones who haven't
changed their eating habits.

Grammar Spot
Modal Auxiliaries: Permission and Ability

Read the following sentences and say why they use those modal auxiliaries:

➢ We can't afford to buy expensive meals, so we eat fast food almost every day.
➢ Mom, can I have some more french fries?

Permission
We can use can or could to ask permission to do something: Can/Could Itake another cookie?
Could is used to be particularly polite. If we want to put extra pressure on someone to give a positive
answer, we can use can't or couldn't: Can't/Couldn't I have another cookie?
We usually use can/can't instead of could/couldn't to give and refuse permission: OK, you can have
another one.
In formal English, may is used to ask, give or refuse permission; might can be used to ask permission:
Excuse me, may I talk to Mr. Smith?

Ability
When we say that somone or something has or doesn't have the ability to do something, we can use
can/can't (or cannot) if it's a present action, or could/couldn't if it's a past action:
He can analize people's handwriting. I can't climb mountains.
I could speak three different languages before I was six. She said she couldn't wait for us.
We can use be able to to instead of can/could to talk about an ability that someone has or had:
He is able to analize people's handwriting.
They were able to climb the mountain even though they hadn't trained.
We don't use be able to when we talk about something that is happening as we are speaking:
Look! I can swim! NOT Look! I am able to swim!

Exercises
Imagine you are in charge of the cafeteria at this university. What would you offer? Why? Write 4
sentences using the modal auxiliaries for permission and ability.

1. ___________________________________________________________________________

2. ___________________________________________________________________________

3. ___________________________________________________________________________

4. ___________________________________________________________________________
UNIT 2: THE NEW FACE OF POVERTY

OBESITY AND POVERTY

Before you read:

• What comes to your mind when you think of Africa?
• In your opinion, how can poverty be linked to higher levels of obesity?

Now read part of a text from The Guardian about this topic.

Vocabulary Spot
Score: 20 or approximately 20
Ubiquitous: seeming to be everywhere
Rueful: feeling sorry and wishing that something had not happened
Entrepreneur: someone who starts their own business, especially when this involves seeing a new opportunity
Chide: to speak to someone severely because they have behaved badly
Fondness: liking something a lot
Chubby: fat in a pleasant and attractive way
Breakneck: carelessly fast and dangerous
Span: the period of time that sometimes exists or happens
Gorge: to eat until you are unable to eat anymore

* 17 stone = 108 kilograms approximately

Obesity: Africa’s new crisis

The arrival of fast food has triggered the latest health epidemic to hit developing countries. As doctors begin the
fightback against morbid obesity, Bénédicte Desrus travels round Africa photographing people living with the
condition, while Ian Birrell reveals why South Africa now faces its biggest challenge since HIV

When the first McDonald’s restaurant opened almost two decades ago in Johannesburg, a teenage boy
named Thando Tshabalala was among the thousands who stood in line patiently waiting to try one of those
famous burgers. “We had seen this place in every movie we ever watched, and it seemed to be mentioned in
every song, so I had to try it for myself,” he said.

Given such enthusiasm, it was hardly surprising that South Africa proved to be fertile territory for the
burger chain, breaking expansion records with 30 outlets opening in under two years. Today the company
operates more than 200 restaurants across the country. When arch-rival Burger King finally entered the market
last year it was greeted with similar excitable scenes –almost 5,000 people descended on its launch branch in
Cape Town, some even sleeping on the street to ensure they got their hands on a Whopper. “We did not expect
the demand to be so great,” its chairman confessed later.

Tshabalala, now a successful 33-year-old corporate trainer, still enjoys fast food. When we met he was
eating a steak sandwich in the food court of a smart shopping mall, sitting among scores of shoppers and
families feasting on curries, pizzas, fried fish and the ubiquitous chips. But that skinny teenager has grown into
a 5’5” man weighing almost 17 stone* – and today he struggles to find clothes to fit his inflated body and
complains that seats are becoming too small for comfort.
 “To be honest I feel rather self-conscious about my size,” Tshabalala told me with a rueful smile. “There
is this saying in South Africa that if you have a one-pack belly, like a beer belly, you must have lots of money,
but if you have a six-pack there is something wrong. But I know it is not really a sign of success to have a big
belly.”

Sitting with him was his girlfriend Fiona Sefara, an entrepreneur building a recycling business. A
former vegetarian, she recalled leaving South Africa before the end of apartheid to live in the United States.
“When I went there I was surprised to see all these overweight people on the streets – but when I came back
home, McDonald’s was everywhere and there were all these bigger people on our own streets.”

As we chatted, she chided her partner for his fondness for fried food and huge portions, then confided
that the worst aspect of the change in her homeland was seeing so many overweight children. “We had nothing
as children so we’d take a tennis ball outside and play for hours until it was dark. But now they have computers
and are driven everywhere,” she said. “My own nephew is so chubby that he has become one of those American
kids.”

Fat is no longer just a developed world problem. Forget those tired old clichés beloved by the aid
industry. Today more people in poorer countries go to bed each night having consumed too many calories than
go to bed hungry – a revelation that underlines the breakneck pace of change on our planet. A landmark report
by the Overseas Development Institute earlier this year showed that more than one-third of the world’s adults are
overweight – and that almost two-thirds of the world’s overweight people are found in low and middle-income
nations. The number of obese or overweight people in developing countries rose from 250 million to almost 1
billion in under three decades, and these rates are rising significantly faster than in rich nations.

South Africa typifies this alarming new trend, with nearly double the average global obesity rates, and
according to another report has become the world’s third fattest nation. Nearly two-thirds of the population is
overweight and, unlike in the developed world, the problem afflicts more women than men. Incredibly, 69.3% of
South African females display unhealthy levels of body fat and more than four in 10 are clinically obese (defined
as having a BMI higher than 30).

These findings emerged in a Lancet study published in May which analysed data over a 33-year span
from 188 countries. It found the rise in global obesity rates was “rapid, substantial and widespread, presenting a
major public health epidemic in both the developed and developing world”. More than half the women in
Botswana and one in eight Nigerian men are also obese, for example, while Egypt saw one of the fastest rises
among women.

Obesity is on the rise in poorer nations even among children; more than a quarter of girls and almost one
in five boys in South Africa is overweight. “These are devastating figures, especially since it is such an
expensive disease,” said Professor Tess Van der Merwe, who performs weight-loss surgery and is president of
the South African Society for Obesity and Metabolism. “We cannot afford to spend the next decade debating this
issue. The obesity problem in our country is where the HIV epidemic was 10 years ago, when we turned a blind
eye to the scale of the problem in terms of health economics and became the worst in the world in terms of
outcomes.”

Terrifying talk for a nation in transition that provides only rudimentary healthcare for most of its
population and where a quarter of citizens still struggle with food security. Experts say such diseases such as
cancer, cardiovascular conditions and diabetes will soon overtake HIV and tuberculosis as the biggest causes of
death in South Africa.

One man who understands the scale of South Africa’s challenge is Aaron Motsoaledi, a 56-year-old
doctor from Limpopo and the country’s current minister of health. “It is weird when we are seeing malnutrition
co-exist alongside obesity,” he told me. “I am not only sad but also alarmed, because of my medical training. In
the next decade many countries will not be able to afford their health costs, and this definitely includes South
Africa.”

Motsaoledi believes the problems fit a global pattern of obesity caused by the rapid shift to urban living
combined with increased consumption of western-style diets high in sugar, fat and salt. The problem has
worsened in South Africa since it is a nation whose love of meat barbecued on the braai cuts across ethnic
boundaries – the two groups hit hardest by obesity are white Afrikaner males and black urban females. On top of
this, fears over crime have boosted car culture, with cities designed around US-style shopping malls and fewer
children running free in the streets.

“Thirty years ago black people in South Africa were eating produce from fields that was much healthier,
and they were walking big distances,” said Motsaoledi. “When I was a child, pupils would walk 6km to school;
some even walked 10km each way. Now life has changed and people do not want to walk anywhere.”

Unfortunately poor people fill their bellies with cheap food – and this often means salt-drenched starchy
carbohydrates, highly processed sweetened products and the fattiest cuts of meat discarded by wealthier
consumers. Street-food surveys found that chicken sold in townships is often little more than skin and other meat
is just fatty offal, while foreign fast food is seen as sophisticated. Meanwhile mothers go without meals to ensure
that their children eat, then gorge when they have money.

All this can lead to “hidden hunger”, when people eat regularly and even put on weight but lack
necessary nutrients and vitamins, leading to long-term health damage. “In one household you can see children
who are undernourished, the man with normal weight and then the wife who may be heavily overweight,” said
Zandile Mchiza, an expert with the Chronic Diseases of Lifestyle Unit at the Medical Research Council. “This is
why we have the issue of obesity coming up so strongly in Africa even while many people are still starving.”

30
Mchiza also pointed to cultural issues that fuel obesity in Africa, with big men seen as successful and big
women seen as beautiful. “The majority of black South African men prefer chubby women,” said the 34-year-old
scientist. “If you are too thin it means your husband is not taking care of you or you are unhappy. And your
children must be fat, too – we were force fed growing up, always told to eat up all our food and not waste
anything on our plates.’

Several township women mentioned told me of another depressing reason not to diet. “There is a stigma
that if you are a black woman and start losing weight, you might be ill, you might have HIV,” said Dudu
Masooana, a friendly 38-year-old mother of three from Soweto whom I met as she lunched on fried chicken and
pap, a traditional porridge made from ground maize. “This really matters if you are a woman coming from the
ghetto.”
 1. What is happening in developing nations nowadays?

__________________________________________________________________

2. Why do some people eat fast food? What is the main problem with this?

__________________________________________________________________

3. What used to be the biggest problem in South Africa in the past? How has that changed now?

__________________________________________________________________

4. Why did the author mention Nigeria and Egypt as well?

__________________________________________________________________

5. Why did the author mention “white Afrikaner males and black urban females”?

__________________________________________________________________

6. What is another factor that influences obesity in South Africa?

__________________________________________________________________

7. What is “hidden hunger”?

__________________________________________________________________

8. Why do some women not want to be lose weight?

__________________________________________________________________

• In your opinion, how is obesity affecting our society?

31
Grammar Spot
Zero & First Conditional Clauses

Conditionals are cluses introduced with mostly if. The consist of two parts: the if-clause (hypothesis)
and the main clause (result).
When the if-clause comes before the main clause, the two clauses are separated with a comma.
When the main clause comes before the if-clause, then no comma is necessary.

Type Zero Conditionals are used to express something which is always true. It is common to use when
instead of if. They are structured this way: If + subject + present simple, subject + present simple.

Type First Conditionals are used to express real or very probable situations in the present or future. They
are structured this way: If + subject + present simple, subject + will* + infinitive.
*Will can be replaced with other modal auxiliaries such as can, may, might and must.

Read the following sentences from the text and identify the type of conditional clause they use.

If you are too thin it means your husband is not taking care of you or you are unhappy.
If you are a black woman and start losing weight, you might be ill.
This really matters if you are a woman coming from the ghetto.

Exercises
Read the information and make type zero or first conditional clauses. Justify your answer.

1. developing countries / not do something about inequality / people / continue eating unhealthy
food.

______________________________________________________________________________

Type of conditional clause: _______

2. poor people / have little money / they / not buy healthy food.

______________________________________________________________________________

Type of conditional clause: _______

32
 HUNGER IN THE US

Before you read:

• What is the richest country in the world?
• What problems do you imagine this country has?

Read the text below. What do you think of it?

Why are people malnourished in the richest country?

Millions of working Americans don’t know where their next meal is coming from. We sent three
photographers to explore hunger in three very different parts of the United States, each giving different faces to
the same statistic: One-sixth of Americans don’t have enough food to eat.

Now read the rest of an extract from and article published in National Geographic Magazine.

Vocabulary Spot
dwindling: to become smaller in size or amount, or fewer in number
pantry: a small room or storage area near a kitchen, where food is kept
tough: difficult/ violent
gambit: something that you do or say that is intended to achieve an advantage and usually involves taking a risk
dregs: the part of something that is considered unimportant or unwanted
battered: old and damaged
pit (something/someone against something/someone): to put something/someone in opposition or competition with
something/someone else
pared: cut down, decreased
running the errand: taking a short trip to do a specific thing
when push comes to shove: when all the easy solutions to a problem have not worked, and something must be done
gaunt: very thin, especially because of illness or hunger
scavenging: (of animals) to search for food on dead animals
bare: not covered by anything
cope: to deal successfully with a difficult situation

On a gold-gray morning in Mitchell County, Iowa, Christina Dreier sends her son, Keagan, to school
without breakfast. He is three years old, barrel-chested, and stubborn, and usually refuses to eat the free meal he
qualifies for at preschool. Faced with a dwindling pantry, Dreier has decided to try some tough love: If she
sends Keagan to school hungry, maybe he’ll eat the free breakfast, which will leave more food at home for
lunch.
Dreier knows her gambit might backfire, and it does. Keagan ignores the school breakfast on offer and
is so hungry by lunchtime that Dreier picks through the dregs of her freezer in hopes of filling him and his little
sister up. She shakes the last seven chicken nuggets onto a battered baking sheet, adds the remnants of a bag of
Tater Tots and a couple of hot dogs from the fridge, and slides it all into the oven. She’s gone through most of the
food she got last week from a local food pantry; her own lunch will be the bits of potato left on the kids’ plates.
“I eat lunch if there’s enough,” she says. “But the kids are the most important. They have to eat first.”
The fear of being unable to feed her children hangs over Dreier’s days. She and her husband, Jim, pit
one bill against the next—the phone against the rent against the heat against the gas—trying always to set aside
money to make up for what they can’t get from the food pantry or with their food stamps, issued by the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Congressional cuts to SNAP last fall of five billion dollars
pared her benefits from $205 to $172 a month.
On this particular afternoon Dreier is worried about the family van, which is on the brink of
repossession. She and Jim need to open a new bank account so they can make automatic payments instead of
scrambling to pay in cash. But that will happen only if Jim finishes work early. It’s peak harvest time, and he
often works until eight at night, applying pesticides on commercial farms for $14 an hour. Running the errand
would mean forgoing overtime pay that could go for groceries.
It’s the same every month, Dreier says. Bills go unpaid because, when push comes to shove, food wins
out. “We have to eat, you know,” she says, only the slightest hint of resignation in her voice. “We can’t starve.”
Chances are good that if you picture what hunger looks like, you don’t summon an image of someone
like Christina Dreier: white, married, clothed, and housed, even a bit overweight. The image of hunger in
America today differs markedly from Depression-era images of the gaunt-faced unemployed scavenging for
food on urban streets. “This is not your grandmother’s hunger,” says Janet Poppendieck, a sociologist at the City
University of New York. “Today more working people and their families are hungry because wages have
declined.”
In the United States more than half of hungry households are white, and two-thirds of those with
children have at least one working adult—typically in a full-time job. With this new image comes a new lexicon:
In 2006 the U.S. government replaced “hunger” with the term “food insecure” to describe any household where,
sometime during the previous year, people didn’t have enough food to eat. By whatever name, the number of
people going hungry has grown dramatically in the U.S., increasing to 48 million by 2012—a fivefold jump
since the late 1960s, including an increase of 57 percent since the late 1990s. Privately run programs like food
pantries and soup kitchens have mushroomed too. In 1980 there were a few hundred emergency food programs
across the country; today there are 50,000. Finding food has become a central worry for millions of Americans.
One in six reports running out of food at least once a year. In many European countries, by contrast, the number
is closer to one in 20.
To witness hunger in America today is to enter a twilight zone where refrigerators are so frequently bare
of all but mustard and ketchup that it provokes no remark, inspires no embarrassment. Here dinners are cooked
using macaroni-and-cheese mixes and other processed ingredients from food pantries, and fresh fruits and
vegetables are eaten only in the first days after the SNAP payment arrives. Here you’ll meet hungry farmhands
and retired schoolteachers, hungry families who are in the U.S. without papers and hungry families whose
histories stretch back to the Mayflower. Here pocketing food from work and skipping meals to make food stretch
are so common that such practices barely register as a way of coping with hunger and are simply a way of life.
It can be tempting to ask families receiving food assistance, If you’re really hungry, then how can you be
—as many of them are—overweight? The answer is “this paradox that hunger and obesity are two sides of the
same coin,” says Melissa Boteach, vice president of the Poverty and Prosperity Program of the Center for
American Progress, “people making trade-offs between food that’s filling but not nutritious and may actually
contribute to obesity.” For many of the hungry in America, the extra pounds that result from a poor diet are
collateral damage—an unintended side effect of hunger itself.

34
 What is different between hunger during the Depression era and now?

________________________________________________________________________
What is “food insecure”?

________________________________________________________________________
How have the figures for hunger changed in the U.S.?

________________________________________________________________________
What do people do in order to deal with hunger?

________________________________________________________________________
What is the link between poverty and obesity here?

________________________________________________________________________
What do you think is likely to happen in the future?

________________________________________________________________________

Grammar Spot
Second Conditional Clauses

Look at the sentence below and answer the questions.

If I was the president of the U.S., I would do the following: …

How is this sentence structured?

If you compare it with the other conditional clauses, what differences can you see? Is there any
difference in meaning?

Does this sentence refer to the past, present, or future? Why?

35
 POVERTY THOUGHTS

Pre-reading activity
Read the following definition of poverty.

• What is Chile's GDP? What does that say about our country?
• What is the reality of our country in terms of poverty?
• Some people say that the poor are poor because they “don't try hard enough”. What do you think
about it?
• Others think that poor people do things that seem self-destructive (e.g. having many children
they can't support, eating unhealthy foods, etc) What do you think about this?

Now read a text by Linda Tirado that was published some years ago. She tries to provide an answer to
the last question above.

36
Vocabulary Spot
on someone's behalf: representing; for the good of or because of
tend: to care for something or someone
soothe: to cause someone to be less upset or angry
catch up on: to do something that you have not been able to do recently
fuck something up: (offensive) to damage, harm, or upset someone or something; to do something very badly
pattern: a particular way in which something is done, organized, or in which something happens
afford: to have enough money or time to buy, keep, or do something
fairly: more that a little
room: space available for something
WIC: Women, Infants, and Children (federal assistance program of the Food and Nutrition Service)
stove: a piece of kitchen equipment having a top for cooking food and that usually has an oven below
knocked up: (slang) being pregnant
palatable: good enough to eat or drink
convenience food: commercially prepared food designed for easy consumption (e.g. instant ramen noodles)
wandered: walked for a long time without any clear purpose
surety: a promise, or money, or property given as a promise that someone will do something that they have said they will
do
turn down (something/someone): to refuse or reject something/someone
gtfo, pov: (offensive) get the fuck out, poor man/woman
b12: (slang) chemical element used in the manufacturing of crack cocaine
roaches: short for “cockroach”, a flat brown or black insect sometimes found in a house and associated with unhealthy
places
blow five bucks: (slang) spend five dollars
bleak: without hope
spot: see

Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or, Poverty Thoughts

There's no way to structure this coherently. They are random observations that might help explain the
mental processes. But often, I think that we look at the academic problems of poverty and have no idea of the
why. We know the what and the how, and we can see systemic problems, but it's rare to have a poor person
actually explain it on their own behalf. So this is me doing that, sort of.

Rest is a luxury for the rich. I get up at 6AM, go to school (I have a full courseload, but I only have to go
to two in-person classes) then work, then I get the kids, then I pick up my husband, then I have half an hour to
change and go to Job 2. I get home from that at around 12.30AM, then I have the rest of my classes and work to
tend to. I'm in bed by 3. This isn't every day, I have two days off a week from each of my obligations. I use that
time to clean the house and soothe Mr. Martini and see the kids for longer than an hour and catch up on
schoolwork. Those nights I'm in bed by midnight, but if I go to bed too early I won't be able to stay up the other
nights because I'll fuck my pattern up, and I drive an hour home from Job 2 so I can't afford to be sleepy. I
never get a day off from work unless I am fairly sick. It doesn't leave you much room to think about what you
are doing, only to attend to the next thing and the next. Planning isn't in the mix.

When I was pregnant the first time, I was living in a weekly motel for some time. I had a minifridge with
no freezer and a microwave. I was on WIC. I ate peanut butter from the jar and frozen burritos because they
were 12/$2. Had I had a stove, I couldn't have made beef burritos that cheaply. And I needed the meat, I was
pregnant. I might not have had any prenatal care, but I am intelligent enough to eat protein and iron whilst
knocked up.
37
 I know how to cook. I had to take Home Ec to graduate high school. Most people on my level didn't.
Broccoli is intimidating. You have to have a working stove, and pots, and spices, and you'll have to do the dishes
no matter how tired you are or they'll attract bugs. It is a huge new skill for a lot of people. That's not great, but
it's true. And if you fuck it up, you could make your family sick. We have learned not to try too hard to be
middle-class. It never works out well and always makes you feel worse for having tried and failed yet again.
Better not to try. It makes more sense to get food that you know will be palatable and cheap and that keeps well.
Junk food is a pleasure that we are allowed to have; why would we give that up? We have very few of them.

The closest Planned Parenthood to me is three hours. That's a lot of money in gas. Lots of women can't
afford that, and even if you live near one you probably don't want to be seen coming in and out in a lot of areas.
We're aware that we are not "having kids," we're "breeding." We have kids for much the same reasons that I
imagine rich people do. Urge to propagate and all. Nobody likes poor people procreating, but they judge abortion
even harder.

Convenience food is just that. And we are not allowed many conveniences. Especially since the Patriot
Act passed, it's hard to get a bank account. But without one, you spend a lot of time figuring out where to cash a
check and get money orders to pay bills. Most motels now have a no-credit-card-no-room policy. I wandered
around SF for five hours in the rain once with nearly a thousand dollars on me and could not rent a room even if
I gave them a $500 cash deposit and surrendered my cell phone to the desk to hold as surety.

Nobody gives enough thought to depression. You have to understand that we know that we will never
not feel tired. We will never feel hopeful. We will never get a vacation. Ever. We know that the very act of being
poor guarantees that we will never not be poor. It doesn't give us much reason to improve ourselves. We don't
apply for jobs because we know we can't afford to look nice enough to hold them. I would make a super legal
secretary, but I've been turned down more than once because I "don't fit the image of the firm," which is a nice
way of saying "gtfo, pov." I am good enough to cook the food, hidden away in the kitchen, but my boss won't
make me a server because I don't "fit the corporate image." I am not beautiful. I have missing teeth and skin that
looks like it will when you live on b12 and coffee and nicotine and no sleep. Beauty is a thing you get when you
can afford it, and that's how you get the job that you need in order to be beautiful. There isn't much point trying.

Cooking attracts roaches. Nobody realizes that. I've spent a lot of hours impaling roach bodies and
leaving them out on toothpick pikes to discourage others from entering. It doesn't work, but is amusing.

"Free" only exists for rich people. It's great that there's a bowl of condoms at my school, but most poor
people will never set foot on a college campus. We don't belong there. There's a clinic? Great! There's still a
copay. We're not going. Besides, all they'll tell you at the clinic is that you need to see a specialist, which
seriously? Might as well be located on Mars for how accessible it is. "Low-cost" and "sliding scale" sounds like
"money you have to spend" to me, and they can't actually help you anyway.

I smoke. It's expensive. It's also the best option. You see, I am always, always exhausted. It's a stimulant.
When I am too tired to walk one more step, I can smoke and go for another hour. When I am enraged and beaten
down and incapable of accomplishing one more thing, I can smoke and I feel a little better, just for a minute. It is
the only relaxation I am allowed. It is not a good decision, but it is the only one that I have access to. It is the
only thing I have found that keeps me from collapsing or exploding.

38
 I make a lot of poor financial decisions. None of them matter, in the long term. I will never not be poor,
so what does it matter if I don't pay a thing and a half this week instead of just one thing? It's not like the
sacrifice will result in improved circumstances; the thing holding me back isn't that I blow five bucks at
Wendy's. It's that now that I have proven that I am a Poor Person that is all that I am or ever will be. It is not
worth it to me to live a bleak life devoid of small pleasures so that one day I can make a single large purchase. I
will never have large pleasures to hold on to. There's a certain pull to live what bits of life you can while there's
money in your pocket, because no matter how responsible you are you will be broke in three days anyway. When
you never have enough money it ceases to have meaning. I imagine having a lot of it is the same thing.

Poverty is bleak and cuts off your long-term brain. It's why you see people with four different
babydaddies instead of one. You grab a bit of connection wherever you can to survive. You have no idea how
strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It's more basic than food. You go to these people who make you feel lovely
for an hour that one time, and that's all you get. You're probably not compatible with them for anything long-
term, but right this minute they can make you feel powerful and valuable. It does not matter what will happen in
a month. Whatever happens in a month is probably going to be just about as indifferent as whatever happened
today or last week. None of it matters. We don't plan long-term because if we do we'll just get our hearts broken.
It's best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it.

I am not asking for sympathy. I am just trying to explain, on a human level, how it is that people make
what look from the outside like awful decisions. This is what our lives are like, and here are our defense
mechanisms, and here is why we think differently. It's certainly self-defeating, but it's safer. That's all. I hope it
helps make sense of it.

 To what extent do you think this story is similar to what happens in Chile? Why/why not?

Grammar Spot
First & Second Conditional Clauses

Read the following prompts and make conditional clauses (type 1 or 2). Explain your choice.

• The government doesn't care about the poor. Consequently, their lives are not good enough.

______________________________________________________________________________

• Politicians don't seem to take the tax reform seriously. I think it will not be successful.

______________________________________________________________________________

• Linda Tirado works a lot. Her life quality can't be better.

______________________________________________________________________________

• We need to work together to achieve our goals.

______________________________________________________________________________
 A NEW HOPE

Before you read:

Do you throw food away? Why?
How much food is thrown away everyday in Chile? Why?
What solutions would you propose to stop food waste in Chile and in the world?

Now read a text from The Guardian about this topic.

Vocabulary Spot
Bounty: reward, prize
Keen: extreme, passionate
Stretch: prolong, extend
Peeked: looked
Produce: things that have been made or grown, especially things connected with farming.
Recoup: recover
Lead: advantage

The truck was still backing into the loading dock when Pastor Ben Slye began taking stock of that
morning’s bounty. Slye fixed his eyes on about 20 pallets of bagged kale, lettuce and other premium salad
greens.
After five years of Mondays collecting donated food from cold storage warehouses, Slye, the
indefatigable pastor of a church in a poorer suburb of Washington DC, has a keen sense of how far he can
stretch large deliveries of pre-washed, bagged salad and other items – and a deeply felt indignation that such
high-quality food could go to waste.

“That is the problem in the world today,” Slye said. “It’s not a food production problem or a food storage
problem. It is a food distribution problem.” If Slye had not arrived with two volunteers and a truck, the food –
rejected by supermarkets and fast-food chains before delivery – would have ended up in a dumpster or landfill
site.

Instead, it was donated to a network run by community groups and college students that aims to solve
two problems: how to feed the rising number of Americans who go hungry or do not have access to nutritious
food, and reduce the environmental toll of food waste.

His first stop that morning was the Taylor Farms warehouse at Annapolis Junction, Maryland. The
company is one of North America’s leading salad makers, producing bagged baby spinach, rocket and spring
mix for supermarkets, orange and apple slices and chopped onions for fast-food restaurants.

Slye and his network of two dozen volunteers have not missed a Monday morning at the cold storage
warehouses in five years. He estimated his efforts saved at least 340 tons of food a year – much of it pricey salad
greens at peak freshness. “People are not only getting the food that people were going to throw away but they are
getting the quality food,” he said. “Most of these boxes have eight, 10, 12 days of freshness, and you only get
five to six days in the stores. So these people are getting good food, and getting it even before it gets to the
store.”

Slye peeked inside a carton of chopped romaine lettuce, pronouncing it a “beautiful salad”. It was not
immediately clear why the produce was rejected. Over-ordering? Dented packing crates? Shifting customer
preferences? “With the store chains they have the right to receive or reject it,” Slye said. “If it’s not perfect
produce they are not receiving it. It could be something so small.”

But within a few hours, Slye and his companions had rescued the leafy greens and were distributing the
food to churches, including his Christian Life Center in Riverdale Park, Maryland.

About 16% of food in North America is lost during processing and distribution, according to UN
estimates. Much occurs when supermarkets and fast-food restaurants reject delivery.

Distributors scramble to find a new destination for the food, and recoup costs, but often run out of time.
Supermarkets generally demand a long lead time before accepting delivery. That is when groups such as Slye’s
step in, taking delivery and distributing to a network of food banks and shelters. “It is just an amazing thing to
recognise the opportunity we have here,” Slye said. “There is so much more food. We have tapped into just a
little bit of it, there is so much more food that’s available.”

Goldenberg, Suzanne. "From Field to Fork: The Six Stages of Wasting Food."The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 14 July 2016.
Web. 29 Aug. 2016.

1. Who is Ben Slye and what does he do every Monday?

________________________________________________________________

2. According to him, why is so much food thrown away?

________________________________________________________________

3. Apart from people who don’t have anything to eat, what is the other problem with wasting food?

________________________________________________________________

4. Why is food rejected by store chains?

________________________________________________________________

5. According to you, is this a good solution for the problem? Why?

________________________________________________________________

6. What else could be done to stop this?

________________________________________________________________

41
Grammar Spot
Third Conditional Clauses

Read these conditional clauses and match them to their meaning below.

If people were more careful, they wouldn’t throw away so much food.
If the volunteers get to the warehouse in time, there’s plenty of food they can get.
If the food is not sold within a week, it will be thrown away.

a) there’s a good chance this happens

b) a fact
b) this has not happened and it’s unlikely to happen

Type-3 conditional clauses are very different from zero, first, and second conditional clauses. This type of
conditional clause expresses imaginary situations in the past; that is, they refer to past situations that did not
happen (and therefore can’t be changed).

They are structured this way:

If-clause + past perfect  would/could/might + present perfect
If he had arrived alone, he would have been able to get all the food
(This didn’t happen; what actually happened is that he arrived with other people, not alone, so they were
able to take all the food that had been thrown away)

Exercises
Read the prompts and write type-3 conditional clauses.

1. I’m happy the stores agreed to help us. Now we can get the food to the ones who need it.

_______________________________________________________________________________
2. Those college students were very helpful. They gave us some very good ideas to improve our community
center.

_______________________________________________________________________________
3. The community garden has produced lots of food for everyone. It was great to create it.

_______________________________________________________________________________
4. We haven’t thrown away anything since you taught how to reuse food.

_______________________________________________________________________________
UNIT 3: NATURE VS. NURTURE

MEMORY

Pre-reading activity
Do you think you have a good memory or a bad memory?
What is your earliest childhood memory?
How can people improve their memories?

Now read a text about this topic.

Most people wish they had a better memory. They also worry about forgetting things as
they get older. But did you know that we have different kinds of memory? When one or more of
these kinds of memories start to fail, there are a few simple things that everyone can do to
improve their memories.

What most people think of as memory is, in fact, five different categories of memory. Our
capability to remember things from the past, that is, years or days ago, depends on two
categories of memory. They are remote memory and recent memory, respectively. Think back to
last year's birthday. What did you do? If you can't remember that, you are having a problem with
your remote memory. On the other hand, if you can't remember what you ate for lunch yesterday,
that is a problem with your recent memory.

Remembering past events is only one way we use memories. When taking a test, we need
to draw on our semantic memories. That is the sum of our acquired knowledge. Or maybe we
want to remember to do or use something in the future, either minutes or days from now. These
cases use our immediate and prospective memories, respectively. Have you ever thought to
yourself, “I need to remember to turn off the light,” but then promptly forgot it? That would be a
faulty immediate memory. On the other hand, maybe you can easily remember to meet your
friend for lunch next week. That means that at least your perspective memory is in good working
order.

Many people think that developing a bad memory is unavoidable as we get older, but this is
actually not the case. Of our five kinds of memory, immediate, remote, and prospective (if aided
with cues like memos) do not degrade with age. But how can we prevent a diminishing of our
semantic and unaided prospective memories? The secret seems to be activity. Studies have shown
that a little mental activity, like learning new things or even doing crossword puzzles, goes a long
way in positively affecting our memories. Regular physical activity appears to be able to make our
memories better as well. This is possibly due to having a better blood supply to the brain. The one
thing to avoid at all costs, though, is stress. When we are stressed, our bodies release a hormone
called cortisol, which is harmful to our brain cells, and thus our memories. Reducing stress
through meditation, exercise, or other activities can help to preserve our mental abilities.

43
 1. What is the main idea of the text?
a) Types of human memory
b) Functions of brain chemicals
c) Tricks for remembering things
d) How to stay active

2. The word they in paragraph 1 refers to

a) things
b) most people
c) memories
d) people

3. Which category of memory would you use to remember where your car keys are?
a) Immediate memory
b) Recent memory
c) Remote memory
d) Semantic memory

4. The word that in paragraph 2 refers to

a) memory
b) what you did for your last birthday
c) when your last birthday was
d) recent memory

5. The phrase draw on in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to

a) sketch
b) fasten
c) take
d) use

6. The word promptly in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to

a) simultaneously
b) lately
c) eventually
d) immediately

7. Which of the following would positively affect your memory?

a) Watching TV
b) Stretching
c) Working a lot
d) Producing cortisol

8. Which of the following is NOT true, according to the reading?

a) Some kinds of memory are not affected by age.
b) Stress makes us forget more things.
c) Too much blood flow can degrade our memory.
d) Physical activity and having a good memory are connected.
44
Scan the passage and complete the chart with the correct information.

Type of Memory Definition

1. __________________ memory: used to remember things that happened long ago

2. __________________ memory: used to remember things that happened a few days ago

3. __________________ memory: used to remember the sum of one's acquired knowledge

4. __________________ memory: used to remember to do something now or soon

5. __________________ memory: used to remember to do something in the future

• Types 1, 4 and 5 don't __________________ with age (if aided with cues like memos)

• You can __________________ degrading of types 2, 3, and unaided 5 by the following practices:

− __________________ activity (learning new things or doing puzzles)

− physical __________________

− avoid __________________, which produces cortisol that harms brain cells

Now listen to a short dialogue and complete the sentences

They are talking about a time when they _________________ sailing.

They could not get back because _________________ down. They _________________ to used the motor

instead of the sails.

The man remembers that the woman _________________ overboard, but the woman remembers that

only her shoe _________________ in the water and she _________________ safely to the shore.

Post-reading activity
What kinds of things do you have trouble remembering? Give at least one example.
What methods do you use to remember things? Which of them would you recommend others? Why?

45
 The Intelligent Life of the City Raccoon
Adapting to the urban jungle has made Rocky smarter.

Before you read:

Read the subheading again. What does it refer to?
What do you know about raccoons? Why are they considered “smart”?

Now read a text about urban raccoons.

Vocabulary Spot
Snow-bound lot: an open space (such as a yard or a parking lot) covered by snow
Bin: container
Lid: a cover over a container that can be removed or opened by turning it or lifting it
Latch: a small metal bar that is used to fasten a door or a gate
Fiddle: keep touching or moving something with your hand
Trump: to beat something that somebody says or does by saying or doing something even better
Baited: to place food on a hook, in a trap, etc. in order to attract or catch an animal
Grasp: to take a firm hold of something
Maelstrom: a situation full of strong emotions or confusing events, that is hard to control and makes you feel frightened

Toronto resident Simon Treadwell wheeled a garbage bin onto a snow-bound lot next to his property one
evening this past winter. Inside the bin was a smelly mixture of wet and dry cat food, sardines, and fried chicken.
Treadwell sprinkled some of the mix on and around the bin, made sure his three motion-activated night vision
cameras were on, and went back into his house.

Treadwell was testing a new lid latch he had devised in response to the city of Toronto's request for
proposals: the city needed help keeping raccoons out of people's garbage. For over a decade, residents had been
asked to place organic compostable materials such as vegetables, meat, bones, and even paper towels into green
bins. But raccoons had learned to overturn the bins, causing the latches to give way when they hit the ground.
And if the latches didn't pop open, racoons often fiddled with them until they did. The city wanted to upgrade its
garbage bins so that they could resist raccoons, but still open easily when picked up by garbage truck's
automated arm. Desing continue to be evaluated.

“We've devised all sorts of ways of protecting our garbage, which all fail,” says Michael Pettit, an associate
professor of psychology at York University, who has studied the history of animal behavior, including that of
raccoons. The success of the city's aggressive raccoons have struck fear into the hearts of Torontonians. Even
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford confessed to the media that his family was too frightened to take out their trash.
“Everyone I know has had to evict a raccoon from their house,” says Pettit. “Everybody has a raccoon story.”

Unlike many animals, raccoons “flourished rather than receded in the face of human expansion, “ Pettit
points out in an article for the American Psychological Association. Part of the reason for their success may be
that the urban environment has contributed to their intelligence. In humans, the effect is well known. Educational
psychologist Walkiria Fontes has compared the cognitive abilities of rural and urban children on two metrics:
crystallized intelligence, which is associated with experience, and fluid intelligence, which is the ability to think
logically and solve problems in novel situations, independent of acquired knowledge. She found that urban rich
kids have the edge with both kinds of intelligence. But even poor urban students scored better than poor rural
students in fluid intelligence.

46
 City raccoons also appear to be smarter than their rural counterparts. Suzanne MacDonald, a comparative
psychologist who studies raccoon behavior at York University in Toronto, has compared the problem-solving
skills of rural and city raccoons. The result? Urbanites trump their country counsins in both intelligence and
ability. For the past few summers, she videotaped rural and urban raccoons toying with containers baited with cat
food. While both rural and city raccoons readily approached familiar containers, they dealt differently with
unfamiliar ones. Where rural raccoons took a long time to approach novel containers, city raccoons would attack
them the moment she turned her back.

One particular persistent urban raccoon even learned to open doors leading into MacDonald's garage,
where she keeps her garbage bins. It stood up on an overturned flowerpot, and kept pulling and pushing on the
round knob of the door handle with its five-digit paws until it turned. “Normally, they can't do that, they can't
grasp and turned things very easily, “ MacDonald says. “Raccoons in the city are extraordinary, not only in their
ability to approach things, but they have no fear, and they stick with it, they will spend hours trying to get food
out of something.”

The city itself may be partly to blame. “Cities are machines for learning. They offer a maelstrom of
activities,” says Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, author of Triumph of the City. “I'm sure it must be for
animals as well, a range of possibilities to learn from and learn about.” Cities might proved particularly beneficial
to raccoons because of their innate boldness. MacDonald says bold and curious animals like raccoons make good
learners. The connection between boldness and learning has also been observed in other animals. Lynne Sneddon
of the University of Liverpool, for example, found that bold rainbow trout learn better and more quickly than shy
ones.

As cities invent more complex latches and levers, they may actually be training raccoons to open them—
and increasing their overall intelligence. Bill Dickens, an economist at Northeastern University, studies the g
factor, a measure of general intelligence. “If they're in a greatly enriched and cognitively demanding environment
and if there are a bunch of traits that are more demanded by a city environment,” Dickens says, “they could all be
enhanced together.”

But with some luck, Treadwell's invention may turn raccoons' learning skills against them. His latch
system requires an opposable thumb, something raccoons don't have. They might just take the hint and give up.
Teadwell's tapes show the raccoons struggling to open his bins for an epic five nights before they finally started
to lose interest, Treadwell says. By the end of the fifth night, they turned their attention to the bait on and around
the bin—and left. “It looked like they learned it was a waste of time and moved on,” Treadwell says. “But to draw
this conclusion you'd have to do a larger test.”

The city of Toronto is currently testing and evaluating bin designs and will start rolling the winner out
across the city next fall, says Robert Orpin, director of the city's Solid Waste Collections. Raccoons beware: at
least 500,000 of them will be manufactured.

1. What was Treadwell's experiment about?

___________________________________________________________________
2. What was Toronto's problem?

___________________________________________________________________

47
 3. There are two experiments involving rural and urban participants. What were these experiments
about?

___________________________________________________________________
4. According to the text, what are two characteristics of raccoons? Why are these important?

___________________________________________________________________
5. Can these two characteristics be found in other species?

___________________________________________________________________
6. What do you think of raccoons? Have you heard of other animals that behave in a similar way?

___________________________________________________________________

Grammar Spot
Phrasal verbs

Phrasal verbs are two- and three-part phrases that have a specific meaning by themselves, usually
different from one-part verbs.
Example: “break out” does not mean the same as “break”

Go back to the text and look at the underlined phrases. Match them to the meanings below.

a) to officially make a new product available or to start to use a new system

b) to avoid something; to prevent somebody/yourself from being affected by something
c) to take hold of and lift somebody/something
d) to be on your feet
e) to continue your journey after stopping for a short while
f) to stop trying to do something, usually because it's too difficult
g) to remove or get something out of a place
h) to return to a place where you were before
i) to carry something with you outside

48
 Super-Intelligent Humans Are Coming
Genetic engineering will one day create the smartest humans who have ever lived.

Before you read: Vocabulary

Genetic engineering: making artificial changes to the genetic structure of organisms
Gene therapy: changing genes in order to prevent disease or disability
Human genome: the “map” or index of all the genes in a human being
DNA: deoxyribonucleic acid. It is the chemical substance of genes
Heredity: transmission of traits from parents to offspring through genes
Genotype: a individual's total heredity makeup. It determines the hereditary potentials and limitations
of an individual.
Phenotype: all the observable characteristics of an organism, such as such shape, size, color, and
behavoir, that result from the interaction of its genotype with the environment. It may change
throughout the life of an individual because of aging.

• Read the subheading again. Is this possible? What would be the pros and cons of such humans?

Now read three extracts from a text about this topic and answer the questions for each passage.

Part 1
The genetic study of cognitive ability suggests that there exist today variations in human DNA
which, if combined in an ideal fashion, could lead to individuals with intelligence that is qualitatively
higher than has ever existed on Earth: crudely speaking, IOs of order 1,000, if the scale were to
continue to have meaning.

In Daniel Keyes' novel Flowers for Algernon, a mentally challenged adult called Charlie Gordon
receives an experimental treatment to raise his IQ from 60 to somewhere in the neighborhood of 200.
he is transformed from a bakery worker who is taken advantage of by his friends, to a genius with an
effortless perception of the world's hidden connections. “I'm living at a peak of clarity and beauty I
never knew existed,” Charlie writes. “There is no greater joy than the burst of solution to a problem...
This is beauty, love, and truth all rolled into one. This is joy.” The contrast between a super-
intelligence and today's average IQ of 100 would be greater still.

 In the second paragraph, what does “mentally challenged” mean?

_________________________________________________________
 Do you think that such therapy could be possible?

_________________________________________________________
 What would you do with an IQ of 1,000?

_________________________________________________________

49
Part 2
Some of the assumptions behind the prediction of 1,000 IQs are the subject of ongoing
debate. In some quarters, the very idea of a quantification of intelligence is contentious.

In his autobiographical book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, the Nobel Prize winning
physicist Richard Feynman dedicated an entire chapter to his quest to avoid humanities, called
“Always Trying to Escape.” As a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he says, “I was
interested only in science, I was not good at anything else.”

The sentiment is a familiar one. Common wisdom sometimes says that people who are good at
math are not so good with words, and vice versa. This distinction has affected how we understand
genius, suggesting it is an endowment of one particular faculty of the brain, and not a general
superlative of the whole brain itself. This in turn makes the idea of apples-to-apples comparisons of
intelligence moot, and the very idea of a 1,000 IQ problematic.

But psychometric studies, which seek to measure the nature of intelligence, paint a different
picture. Millions of observations have shown that essentially all “primitive” cognitive abilities —short
and long term memory, the use of language, the use of quantities and numbers, the visualization of
geometric relationships, pattern recognition, and so on—are positively correlated.

1. The word contentious in paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to

a) quarrelsome
b) distant
c) disputable

2. Why was Richard Feyman mentioned?

a) To illustrate a common belief regarding intelligence
b) To illustrate the debate over an IQ of 1,000
c) To illustrate that all “primitive” cognitive abilities correlate positively

3. The word it in paragraph 3 refers to

a) endowment
b) genius
c) distinction

 Are you good at both, numbers and words?

 Do you know people that are good at both?

50
Part 3
Super-intelligence may be a distant prospect, but smaller, still-profound developments are
likely in the immediate future. Large data sets of human genomes and their corresponding
phenotypes (which are the physical and mental characteristics of the individual) will lead to significant
progress in our ability to understand the genetic code—in particular, to predict cognitive ability.
Detailed calculations suggest that millions of phenotype-genotypes pairs will be required to tease out
the genetic architecture, using advanced statistical algorithms. However, given the rapidly falling cost
of genotyping, this is likely to happen in the next 10 years or so.

Once predictive models are available, they can be used in reproductive applications, ranging
from embryo selection to active genetic editing. Nonetheless, the corresponding ethical issues are
complex and deserve serious attention in what may be a relatively short interval before these
capabilities become a reality. Each society will decide for itself where to draw the line on human
genetic engineering, but we can expect a diversity of perspectives. Almost certainly, some countries
will allow genetic engineering, thereby opening the door for global elites who can afford to travel for
access to reproductive technology. As with most technologies, the rich and powerful will be the fist
beneficiaries. Eventually, though, I believe many countries will not only legalize human genetic
engineering, but even make it a (voluntary) part of their national healthcare systems. The alternative
would be inequality of a kind never before experienced in human history.

 According to you, should we do this? Why?

Read the following quote from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and discuss the questions below with
your classmates:

“Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully
clever. I'm really glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better
than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid.”

 If we had humans with an IQ of 1,000, would they be like the Alpha children described by the
character? What would happen to the ones with a lower IQ? Would they be classified as in the
description of Betas, Gammas and Deltas?

 The character used the adjective frightfully when she referred to Alpha children's intelligence.
Why do you think she did so?

51
 Neil Harbisson’s I Listen to Color

Before you watch the video

How important are colors in our lives?
Are there certain dangers associated with certain colors (e.g. red for ‘danger’)? If so, provide examples.

Now you’re going to watch a video about a man with a special way of experiencing life. Take notes and
answer the questions below.

 What is achromatopsia?

_________________________________________________________________________

 How does the electronic eye work?

_________________________________________________________________________

 What happened when he got the device? Describe the process.

_________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________

 When did he start to feel like a cyborg?

_________________________________________________________________________

 What does he say about:

Art galleries and supermarkets ______________________________________________

Clothes ______________________________________________

Food ______________________________________________

Beauty ______________________________________________

 Is there any side effect? How did he react to it?

_________________________________________________________________________

 What did he do once he could perceive 360 colors?

_________________________________________________________________________

 What’s next?

_________________________________________________________________________

52
After you’ve watched the video
• What would you do if you couldn’t see colors?
• The speaker says: “I think life will be much more exciting when we stop creating applications for
mobile phones and we start creating applications for our own body.” Do you agree with him?
Why?

53
UNIT 4: LINGUISTICS

Code-Switching Explains the World

Before you read:

• Have you ever heard of code-switching? What do you think it is?
• You're going to watch a gif of Barack Obama greeting two people in two ways.
Why do you think Obama did that? What did he mean by giving a handshake and then dapping up
the basketball player?
• Can you think of more examples about code-switching, both in language and in body language?

Now you're going to read about this topic.

So you're at work one day and you're talking to your colleagues in that professional, polite, kind of
buttoned-up voice that people use when they're doing professional work stuff.

Your mom or your friend or your partner calls on the phone and you answer. And without thinking,
you start talking to them in an entirely different voice — still distinctly your voice, but a certain kind of
your voice less suited for the office. You drop the g's at the end of your verbs. Your previously undetectable
accent — your easy Southern drawl or your sing-songy Caribbean lilt or your Spanish-inflected vowels or
your New Yawker — is suddenly turned way, way up. You rush your mom or whomever off the phone in
some less formal syntax ("Yo, I'mma holler at you later,"), hang up and get back to work.

Then you look up and you see your co-workers looking at you and wondering who the hell you'd
morphed into for the last few minutes. That right there? That's what it means to code-switch.

You're looking at the launch of a new team covering race, ethnicity and culture at NPR. We decided
to call this team Code Switch because much of what we'll be exploring are the different spaces we each
inhabit and the tensions of trying to navigate between them. In one sense, code-switching is about
dialogue that spans cultures. It evokes the conversation we want to have here.

Linguists would probably quibble with our definition. (The term arose in linguistics specifically to
refer to mixing languages and speech patterns in conversation.) But we're looking at code-switching a
little more broadly: many of us subtly, reflexively change the way we express ourselves all the time. We're
hop-scotching between different cultural and linguistic spaces and different parts of our own identities —
sometimes within a single interaction.

When you're attuned to the phenomenon of code-switching, you start to see it everywhere, and
you begin to see the way race, ethnicity and culture plays out all over the place.

You see it in the political world. In January 2009, then-President-elect Obama went to Ben's Chili
Bowl, a famous eatery in a historically black D.C. neighborhood. When the (black) cashier asks him if he
needs change, Obama replies, "nah, we straight."

54
 This works in the same way that you're still you when you're sending an e-mail to your boss that's
full of jargon and with proper capitalization and when you're texting to your best friend in lowercase
acronyms. The point is, code-switching is apparent in all the myriad ways we interact with one another
and try to feel each other out.

1. What does code-switching mean?

___________________________________________________________________

2. Why would linguists complain about the definition of code-switching?

___________________________________________________________________

3. Why did the author mention Barack Obama as an example for this?

___________________________________________________________________

4. The word polite in paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to

a) rude
b) nice
c) well mannered

5. The word suited in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to

a) appropiate
b) well mannered
c) slow

6. The word subtly in paragraph 5 is closest in meaning to

a) rudely
b) residentially
c) softly

7. The word attuned in paragraph 6 is closest in meaning to

a) adjusted
b) increased
c) lowered

 What are some examples of code-switching in your life?

55
 Word Crimes

Before you watch:

• Have you ever heard the phrase “grammar police/nazi” or “spelling nazi”? If so, what does it
mean?
• Have you ever been in situation like that? If not, can you think of examples of such situations?

• Imagine the following situations and explain how you would react in each of them.
i. You need to hire people for a job and the best résumé has spelling mistakes (or typos). Would you
hire that candidate? Why?
ii. You are applying for a job and get an e-mail for an interview. The e-mail was sent by the person
who would be your boss if you got hired. When you read the e-mail, you realize that there are
some spelling mistakes in it. Would you confirm your attendance to the meeting or would you
look for another job? Why?
iii. A person you are have a romantic interest in has contacted you via Facebook. When you read the
message this person sent, you see lots of spelling mistakes and misconjugated verbs. Would you
go out with this person? Why?
iv. You are at the doctor's office. When talking to him/her, you realize that the doctor uses a
fricative sound when pronouncing words that contain “ch” (e.g. Chile, leche, etc.) Would you
follow the doctor's recommendation or would you look for another doctor? Why?
v. You need to chose a professor for your thesis but you have never met any of the ones you have
considered as possible options. All of them are middle-aged people who have impressive
academic achievements and it would be an honor for you to work with any of them in the future.
When you finally make up your mind and meet your thesis professor, he/she lets you into his/her
office and says “gánese aquí”. How would you react?
vi. You attend a party and meet a person you feel strongly attracted to. You talk for a while and
realize that he/she sounds very nasal and sometimes it's difficult to understand what he/she
says. Would you agree to meet another time? Why?

• Why do you think people may react in a bad way when facing these situations?
• How much do we tend to judge others when they make these “mistakes”? Why?
• To what extent could these negative reactions affect them? Why?

Now you're going to watch a video by Weird Al Yankovic. Pay attention to the way he refers to people
who commit “word crimes”.

• What do you think of the song? Do you agree with its content? Why?

56
 Does Grammar Matter?

Before you watch:

• Have you ever been corrected by someone? If so, who was this person? Why did he/she correct
you? Did you agree with it?
• Think about you grammar lessons at school. What did you learn? Did you ever learn about the
different contexts in which you could use different forms (e.g. you can use “cachai” with friends
but not with teachers)? If not, why do you think you teacher(s) didn't teach you about this?

Now you are going to watch a video about grammar. Pay attention to it and answer the questions below.

1. According to linguistics, what is grammar?

______________________________________________________________
2. Do all languages have the same patterns?

______________________________________________________________
3. Why was Japanese mentioned?

______________________________________________________________
4. What is prescriptivism? What is descriptivism?

______________________________________________________________
5. Why was written language standardized?

______________________________________________________________
6. What is the “proper form”? What is the problem with it?

______________________________________________________________
7. Is there any advantage of prescriptivism?

______________________________________________________________
8. What is the other definition of grammar presented in the video?

______________________________________________________________
9. What is grammar compared to at the end of the video?

______________________________________________________________

 So, does grammar matter? Why?

57
 What Makes a Word Real?

Before you watch the video:

• Think about the words/expressions that you use to communicate with your friends and make a
list.

• Now think about the words/expressions you used to use to communicate with your friends 10
years ago and make another list.

• Are there any differences? What are those differences?

• Do any of these words/expressions appear in the RAE dictionary or any other dictionary?
Why/why not?
• Are these words/expressions real? How do you know?

Now you're going to watch a video about this topic. Pay attention to what the lecturer says and answer
the questions below.

1. What are two examples for slang that she mentioned?

___________________________________________________________________
2. According to the lecturer, what does “look it up in the dictionary” mean?

___________________________________________________________________
3. What are two examples of “word of the year”?

___________________________________________________________________
4. What is the lecturer favorite category?

___________________________________________________________________

58
 5. What is the relationship between lists of banished words and lists that are being considered for
words of the year?

___________________________________________________________________
6. What are usage notes? What is an example of this?

___________________________________________________________________
7. What does the lecturer advise us to do regarding language change?

___________________________________________________________________
1. How does a word get into a dictionary?

___________________________________________________________________

 Do you agree with the lecturer? Why/why not?

 Have you thought about this topic before? What were your ideas before watching this video?
 Do you think dictionaries are useful nowadays? How often do you use them?
 What is your favorite word/expression in Spanish? Why?
 What is the newest word/expression in Spanish you've heard/used? Do you think it's going to
make it to a dictionary? Why/why not?

59
REFERENCES

Brown, K. & S. Hood. Academic Encounters: Life in Society. Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Malarcher, C., & A. Janzen. “Social Science”. Reading Challenge 3. Compass Publishing, 2010.

McCarthy, Michael, & F. O'Dell. English Vocabulary in Use: Advance. Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Murphy, R. English Grammar in Use. Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Murphy, R. Essential Grammar in Use. Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Williams, J. Academic Encounters: American Studies. Cambridge University Press, 2007

Online Sources

“Current World Population.” World Population Clock: 7.4 Billion People (2016). Worldometers, 29 Aug.
2016. Web. 29 Aug. 2016.

Birrell, Ian. "Obesity: Africa's new crisis." The Guardian. The Observer, 21 Sept. 2014. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.

Calude, Andreea. “Does Grammar Matter? Youtube. N. p. 12 Abr. 2016. Web. 31 Aug. 2016.

Curzan, Anne. "What Makes a Word "real"?" Ted. N.p., Mar. 2014. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.

Demby, Gene. "How Code-Switching Explains The World." NPR. NPR, 08 Apr. 2013. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.

Edwards, Steven. “10 Things You Didn't Know about the World's Population.” UNFPA. United Nations
Population Fund, 13 Apr. 2015. Web. 29 Aug. 2016.

Harbisson, Neil. “I Listen to Color” Ted. N.p., Jul. 2012. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.

Hsu, Stephen. “Super-Intelligent Humans Are Coming.” Nautilus. Nautilus, 3 Mar. 2016. Web. 31 Aug.
2016.

Isabella, Jude. “The Intelligent Life of the City Raccoon.” Nautilus. Nautilus, 31 Mar. 2016. Web. 31 Aug.
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McMillan, Tracie, Kitra Cahana, Stephanie Sinclair, and Amy Toensing. "The New Face of Hunger." National
Geographic. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.

Tirado, Linda. "Why I Make Terrible Decisions, Or, Poverty Thoughts." KillerMartinis. N.p., 22 Oct. 2013.
Web. 12 Oct. 2015.

Yankovic, “Weird Al”. “Word Crimes”. YouTube. N. p., 15 July 2014. Web. 31 Aug. 2016.