Women who changed the world
Text I
Born in Warsaw, Marie Curie became the first woman Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences at the Sorbonne (Paris) in 1906. She had Masters Degrees in both physics and mathematical sciences and was the first woman to obtain a Doctor of Science degree. Madame Curie was also the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. The first was in Physics in 1903, with her husband, Pierre Curie, and Henri Becquerel, for their study in spontaneous radiation. The second was in Chemistry in 1911 for her work in radioactivity.
Text II
An indigenous Guatemalan woman of the K’iche’ branch of the Mayan culture, Rigoberta Menchú has dedicated her life to promoting the rights of indigenous peoples. She became active in the women’s rights movement as a teenager and later was a prominent workers’ rights advocate. In 1992 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation for indigenous peoples in Guatemala and is the first indigenous person to receive the prize.
Text III
Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani advocate for girls education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate. In 2009, when Malala was just eleven she began blogging about life under the Taliban, speaking out directly against their threats to close girls’ schools. The blog on BBC Urdu garnered international attention while also making her the target of death threats. In October 2012, a gunman shot her and two other girls as they were coming home from school. Malala survived the attack, and, in October 2014, she received the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Indian children’s rights activist Kailash Satyart.
Felicity Amos. 12 women who changed the world. Internet: www.one.org (adapted)
Judge the following items according to texts I, II and III.
Malala’s life was threatened because of her opinions and views against the Taliban.
How can we ever change the world? Military
leaders have certainly managed to change large parts of it;
scientists devising cures and vaccines for disease can
spread a more benign influence across whole continents;
[5] the thoughts of religious leaders or philosophers can sweep
through generations like fire. But books?
Reading books is generally a solitary pastime:
bookishness is the very antithesis of the man-of-action
qualities that seem to shake the world. The pen may boast
[10] of being mightier than the sword, but it is generally the
sword that wins in the short term. It is that phrase, though,
which gives the game away: in the short term, writers can
be imprisoned or executed, their work censored, and their
books burned, but over history, it is books and the ideas
[15] expressed within them that have transformed the world.
But which books can be said to have changed the
world? There are few better ways of starting an argument
than producing a list, and I have no doubt that not
everyone will be happy about the books I included in my
[20] list. About some, like the Bible, Shakespeare’s First Folio
and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, there can be little
argument - but what about Euclid’s Elements, Thomas
Paine’s Rights of Man or A Vindication of the Rights of
Women by Mary Wollstonecraft? The answer is that any
[25] list can only be subjective.
Andrew Taylor. Books that changed the world: the 50 most influential books in human history. Quercus Editions, 2014 (adapted).
Judge the following according to the text presented
For the author, history shows that books are effective in changing the world.
How can we ever change the world? Military
leaders have certainly managed to change large parts of it;
scientists devising cures and vaccines for disease can
spread a more benign influence across whole continents;
[5] the thoughts of religious leaders or philosophers can sweep
through generations like fire. But books?
Reading books is generally a solitary pastime:
bookishness is the very antithesis of the man-of-action
qualities that seem to shake the world. The pen may boast
[10] of being mightier than the sword, but it is generally the
sword that wins in the short term. It is that phrase, though,
which gives the game away: in the short term, writers can
be imprisoned or executed, their work censored, and their
books burned, but over history, it is books and the ideas
[15] expressed within them that have transformed the world.
But which books can be said to have changed the
world? There are few better ways of starting an argument
than producing a list, and I have no doubt that not
everyone will be happy about the books I included in my
[20] list. About some, like the Bible, Shakespeare’s First Folio
and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, there can be little
argument - but what about Euclid’s Elements, Thomas
Paine’s Rights of Man or A Vindication of the Rights of
Women by Mary Wollstonecraft? The answer is that any
[25] list can only be subjective.
Andrew Taylor. Books that changed the world: the 50 most influential books in human history. Quercus Editions, 2014 (adapted).
Judge the following according to the text presented
In the first paragraph, the text states that military actions, scientific development, religious beliefs, and philosophical thoughts have less influence on the world than books.
How can we ever change the world? Military
leaders have certainly managed to change large parts of it;
scientists devising cures and vaccines for disease can
spread a more benign influence across whole continents;
[5] the thoughts of religious leaders or philosophers can sweep
through generations like fire. But books?
Reading books is generally a solitary pastime:
bookishness is the very antithesis of the man-of-action
qualities that seem to shake the world. The pen may boast
[10] of being mightier than the sword, but it is generally the
sword that wins in the short term. It is that phrase, though,
which gives the game away: in the short term, writers can
be imprisoned or executed, their work censored, and their
books burned, but over history, it is books and the ideas
[15] expressed within them that have transformed the world.
But which books can be said to have changed the
world? There are few better ways of starting an argument
than producing a list, and I have no doubt that not
everyone will be happy about the books I included in my
[20] list. About some, like the Bible, Shakespeare’s First Folio
and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, there can be little
argument - but what about Euclid’s Elements, Thomas
Paine’s Rights of Man or A Vindication of the Rights of
Women by Mary Wollstonecraft? The answer is that any
[25] list can only be subjective.
Andrew Taylor. Books that changed the world: the 50 most influential books in human history. Quercus Editions, 2014 (adapted).
Judge the following according to the text presented
In the second paragraph, the author answers the question “But books?” (ℓ.6) by explaining why books and words change the world.
How can we ever change the world? Military
leaders have certainly managed to change large parts of it;
scientists devising cures and vaccines for disease can
spread a more benign influence across whole continents;
[5] the thoughts of religious leaders or philosophers can sweep
through generations like fire. But books?
Reading books is generally a solitary pastime:
bookishness is the very antithesis of the man-of-action
qualities that seem to shake the world. The pen may boast
[10] of being mightier than the sword, but it is generally the
sword that wins in the short term. It is that phrase, though,
which gives the game away: in the short term, writers can
be imprisoned or executed, their work censored, and their
books burned, but over history, it is books and the ideas
[15] expressed within them that have transformed the world.
But which books can be said to have changed the
world? There are few better ways of starting an argument
than producing a list, and I have no doubt that not
everyone will be happy about the books I included in my
[20] list. About some, like the Bible, Shakespeare’s First Folio
and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, there can be little
argument - but what about Euclid’s Elements, Thomas
Paine’s Rights of Man or A Vindication of the Rights of
Women by Mary Wollstonecraft? The answer is that any
[25] list can only be subjective.
Andrew Taylor. Books that changed the world: the 50 most influential books in human history. Quercus Editions, 2014 (adapted).
Judge the following according to the text presented
The examples of books mentioned in the third paragraph are limited to religious and political ones.
How can we ever change the world? Military
leaders have certainly managed to change large parts of it;
scientists devising cures and vaccines for disease can
spread a more benign influence across whole continents;
[5] the thoughts of religious leaders or philosophers can sweep
through generations like fire. But books?
Reading books is generally a solitary pastime:
bookishness is the very antithesis of the man-of-action
qualities that seem to shake the world. The pen may boast
[10] of being mightier than the sword, but it is generally the
sword that wins in the short term. It is that phrase, though,
which gives the game away: in the short term, writers can
be imprisoned or executed, their work censored, and their
books burned, but over history, it is books and the ideas
[15] expressed within them that have transformed the world.
But which books can be said to have changed the
world? There are few better ways of starting an argument
than producing a list, and I have no doubt that not
everyone will be happy about the books I included in my
[20] list. About some, like the Bible, Shakespeare’s First Folio
and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, there can be little
argument - but what about Euclid’s Elements, Thomas
Paine’s Rights of Man or A Vindication of the Rights of
Women by Mary Wollstonecraft? The answer is that any
[25] list can only be subjective.
Andrew Taylor. Books that changed the world: the 50 most influential books in human history. Quercus Editions, 2014 (adapted).
Judge the following according to the text presented
The word “mightier” (ℓ.10) expresses a comparison and could be correctly replaced by more powerful.