Intermediate level – Reading comprehension

Multiple choice task:

The disposal of garbage in Barcelona remains a fairly unecological affair. True, large brightly coloured containers have been scattered about the city for the separated collection of paper, glass and cans, but use of them depends entirely on the citizens. Discouragingly, it is not unusual to see mounds of rubbish piling up around these and other refuse containers – the stuff is eventually hauled off, but it is hard to escape the feeling that recycling is not a big priority.

Runaway Bride
Julia Roberts surmounts this project’s improbable script through sheer force of will, and the result – while absolutely preposterous – is reasonably entertaining. She plays a woman in rural Maryland with a habit of leaving eligible husbands at the altar; this intrigues a New York-based journalist (Richard Gere) who routinely lambastes women in a regular column intended to shed light on the battle of the sexes. He gets some facts wrong; she complains and gets him fired. And so, by way of revenge, he travels to her small community and falls in love with her. Or something like that. Not one remotely credible character inhabits this film, but Roberts is impossible to resist: a classic case of star power overwhelming pedestrian material.

 True-false task:

AfroGEEKS: From Technophobia to Technophilia.

In recent years, African Americans, especially, have been portrayed as poster children for the digital divide discourse. Though rarely represented full participants in the information technology revolution, Black people are among the earliest adopters and comprise some of the most ardent and innovative users of IT. African diasporic people´s many successes within new media and information technologies are too often overshadowed by the significant inequalities in technology access which ultimately produces the racial digital divide.

Open-ended questions:

Transplanting a face is only half the challenge

Jean-Michel Dubernard, the French surgeon who conducted the ground-breaking face transplant, knows all about choosing the wrong patient. When he carried out the first hand transplant, the recipient refused to take his drugs or cooperate with doctors. The donated hand was eventually amputated.
Much has been made by surgical teams of the huge psychological resilience likely to be needed by patients chosen for face-transplant surgery, and the need for careful selection. So it is surprising to read newspaper reports claiming that the woman who received the first face transplant had tried committing suicide – though others tell a different story. However grievous the disfigurement, somebody who has taken an overdose of sleeping pills does not seem to fit the psychological profile.
Other circumstances surrounding the operation raise questions. Her identity and what she looks like have leaked out. Pictures of her before and after surgery have been published, and a video of the operation is circulating within the TV industry. These items appear to have emerged against her wishes: the surgical team insists that she asked for anonymity. All of which suggests that security surrounding the operation was poor.