B2 reading review test

Every year, the major English dictionaries announce lists of new entries, and every year the announcement causes a small storm. Some readers are delighted to see a familiar piece of slang recognised; others complain that the dictionary is lowering its standards by including words that, in their view, are not “real English”. Both reactions rest on the same misunderstanding of what modern dictionaries are for.

Most dictionary makers today see their job as describing the language as it is actually used, not deciding how it ought to be used. A word is added not because the editors like it, but because there is enough evidence that many people use it, with a stable meaning, over a period of time. A word that is popular for a few months and then disappears is unlikely to be included, however much attention it received.

Collecting that evidence used to be slow, manual work. For generations, volunteers read books and newspapers and copied interesting examples onto paper slips, which were then sorted by hand. Today, lexicographers, the people who write dictionaries, rely mainly on corpora: enormous electronic collections of written and spoken texts, often containing billions of words. By searching a corpus, an editor can see in seconds how often a word appears, in what kinds of texts, and which other words it usually combines with.

Even with this technology, human judgement is still required. Lexicographers must decide whether a new use is a separate meaning or just a variation of an existing one, and how to write a definition that is short, accurate and easy to understand. They also have to decide when a word has become established. There is no fixed rule: some editors look for evidence across several years and several types of source, while a word that spreads very widely in a short time may be added sooner.

Removing words is a different matter. Printed dictionaries had limited space, so rarely used words were sometimes dropped to make room for new ones. Online dictionaries, which have no such limits, usually keep old words but mark them as dated or rare, because readers may still meet them in older texts. In this sense, a modern dictionary is less a list of approved words than a record of the language's past as well as its present.

Few school practices are as familiar, or as disputed, as homework. Parents argue about it, teachers set it in very different amounts, and some schools have recently abolished it for younger pupils altogether. Researchers, too, disagree about its value, partly because “homework” covers everything from ten minutes of spelling practice to a project that takes a whole weekend.

The educational psychologist Dr Ana Ferreira has spent several years reviewing studies of homework and achievement. Her conclusion is that the link between the two depends strongly on age. For teenagers, she finds a clear connection between moderate amounts of homework and better results, but for children in their first years of primary school the connection is weak or absent. She warns, however, that even for older students the benefits stop growing after a certain point: students who spend very long hours on homework do not, on average, do better than those who spend a moderate amount.

Martin Osei, a secondary school head teacher, believes the debate focuses too much on quantity. In his school, teachers were asked to set fewer tasks but to explain the purpose of each one and to give feedback on all of them. He says that students now complete their homework more reliably, although he admits that he has no data yet to show whether their exam results have improved.

For the sociologist Professor Lena Brandt, the most important question is fairness. Homework, she argues, assumes that every child has a quiet place to work, access to the internet and an adult who can help. Children from poorer homes are less likely to have these advantages, so homework may widen the gap between them and their classmates. She proposes that schools run supervised homework clubs after lessons, where all pupils have the same support.

Not everyone accepts this solution. The education writer Paul Ridley questions whether homework clubs would solve the problem, pointing out that the pupils who most need them are often the least likely to attend. He also defends homework for a different reason: in his view, it teaches young people to organise their time and work independently, skills that matter at university and at work but are rarely measured in tests.

Ferreira agrees with Ridley that these skills are valuable, but she doubts that long assignments are the best way to develop them. Short, regular tasks, she suggests, are more likely to build good habits than occasional large projects that students leave until the last minute.

Lost your student ID card?

Replacement cards can be collected from the Card Office (Room 112, Hanley Building) between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday to Thursday. Please bring a photo ID, such as a passport or driving licence.

The first replacement costs $15; any further replacements cost $25. If your card was stolen, show a police report and the replacement will be free.

Cards are usually printed while you wait, but at the start of each semester this may take up to two days.

Sam: Are you going to the careers fair tomorrow?

Nina: Planning to, but I've got a lab until 2. Doesn't the fair finish at 3?

Sam: It did, but they've extended it to 5 because so many companies signed up.

Nina: Great, then I'll head over straight after my lab. Can you save me a map of the stands?

Each autumn, the leaves of many trees turn from green to yellow, orange or red before they fall. The green colour of a leaf comes from chlorophyll, the pigment that captures sunlight for photosynthesis. Leaves also contain yellow and orange pigments called carotenoids, but during spring and summer these are hidden by the much larger amount of chlorophyll.

As the days shorten in autumn, trees stop producing new chlorophyll and begin to break down what remains, so that valuable nutrients such as nitrogen can be moved into the branches and stored for the following year. As the green fades, the carotenoids, which were there all along, become visible.

Red colours have a different origin. They come from pigments called anthocyanins, which many trees actually produce in autumn rather than in summer. Since making new pigments costs energy, scientists have asked why a tree would do this just before losing its leaves. One widely discussed explanation is that anthocyanins act like a sunscreen, protecting the leaf from light damage while the tree recovers its nutrients.

From: Grace Morales · To: Facilities Department · Date: 13 October · Subject: Office move

Hello,

I'm in the Marketing team. Our manager is on leave until 20 October, and I still haven't received my new desk number. Could you send it to me directly?

Also, I'll be working from home on Friday the 17th. Would it be possible for me to pack my things on Thursday afternoon instead?

Many thanks,

Grace