IELTS Matching Headings (1)

PASSAGE:

It is tempting to think that the conservation of coral reefs and rainforests is a separate issue from traffic and air pollution. But it is not. Scientists are now confident that rapid changes in the Earth’s climate are already disrupting and altering many wildlife habitats. Pollution from vehicles is a big part of the problem.

• Some negative predictions from one group of experts

• A holistic view of climatic change

• Sustaining car manufacture

The United Nation’s Climate Change Panel has estimated that the global average temperature rise expected by the year 2100 could be as much as 6°C, causing forest fires and dieback on land and coral bleaching in the ocean. Few species, if any, will be immune from the changes in temperature, rainfall and sea levels. The panel believes that if such catastrophic temperature rises are to be avoided, the quantity of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, being released into the atmosphere must be reduced. That will depend on slowing the rate of deforestation and, more crucially, finding alternatives to coal, oil and gas as our principal energy sources.

• Some negative predictions from one group of experts

• Action already taken by the United Nations

• Locating the essential ingredient

Technologies do exist to reduce or eliminate carbon dioxide as a waste product of our energy consumption. Wind power and solar power are both spreading fast, but what are we doing about traffic? Electric cars are one possible option, but their range and the time it takes to charge their batteries pose serious limitations. However, the technology that shows the most potential to make cars climate-friendly is fuel-cell technology. This was actually invented in the late nineteenth century, but because the world’s motor industry put its effort into developing the combustion engine, it was never refined for mass production. One of the first prototype fuel-cell-powered vehicles have been built by the Ford Motor Company. It is like a conventional car, only with better acceleration and a smoother ride. Ford engineers expect to be able to produce a virtually silent vehicle in the future.

• Marketing the hydrogen car

• How the new vehicle technology works

• The history of fuel-cell technology

D

So what’s the process involved – and is there a catch? Hydrogen goes into the fuel tank, producing electricity. The only emission from the exhaust pipe is water. The fuel-cell is, in some ways similar to a battery, but unlike a battery, it does not run down. As long as hydrogen and oxygen are supplied to the cell, it will keep on generating electricity. Some cells work off methane and a few use liquid fuels such as methanol, but fuel-ceils using hydrogen probably have the most potential. Furthermore, they need not be limited to transport. Fuel-cells can be made in a huge range of size, small enough for portable computers or large enough for power stations. They have no moving parts and therefore need no oil. They just need a supply of hydrogen. The big question, then, is where to get it from.

• How the new vehicle technology works

• Locating the essential ingredient

• Making the new technology available worldwide

One source of hydrogen is water. But to exploit the abundant resource, electricity is needed, and if the electricity is produced by a coal-fired power station or other fossil fuel, then the overall carbon reduction benefit of the fuel-cell disappears. Renewable sources, such as wind and solar power, do not produce enough energy for it to be economically viable to use them in the ‘manufacture’ of hydrogen as a transport fuel. Another source of hydrogen is, however, available and could provide a supply pending the development of more efficient and cheaper renewable energy technologies. By splitting natural gas (methane) into its constituent parts, hydrogen and carbon dioxide are produced. One way round the problem of what to do with the carbon dioxide could be to store it back below ground – so-called geological sequestration. Oil companies, such as Norway’s Statoil, are experimenting with storing carbon dioxide below ground in oil and gas wells.

• How the new vehicle technology works

• Making the new technology available worldwide

• Locating the essential ingredient

With freak weather conditions, arguably caused by global warming, frequently in the headlines, the urgent need to get fuel-cell vehicles will be available in most showrooms. Even now, fuel-cell buses are operating in the US, while in Germany a courier company is planning to take delivery of fuel-cell-powered vans in the near future. The fact that centrally-run fleets of buses and vans are the first fuel-cell vehicles identifies another challenge – fuel distribution. The refueling facilities necessary to top up hydrogen-powered vehicles are available only in a very few places at present. Public transport and delivery firms are logical places to start since their vehicles are operated from central depots.

• Making the new technology available worldwide

• Marketing the hydrogen car

• Sustaining car manufacture

Exam Review

How should reading be taught?

How should reading be taught?

By Keith Rayncr a Barbara R Foorman

A

Learning to speak is automatic for almost all children, but learning to read requires elaborate instruction and conscious effort. Well aware of the difficulties, educators have given a great deal of thought to how they can best help children learn to read. No single method has triumphed. Indeed, heated arguments about the most appropriate form of reading instruction continue to polarize the teaching community.

B

Three general approaches have been tried. In one, called whole-word instruction, children learn by rote how to recognise at a glance a vocabulary of 50 to 100 words. Then they gradually acquire other words, often through seeing them used over and over again in the context of a story.

Speakers of most languages learn the relationship between letters and the sounds associated with them (phonemes). That is, children are taught how to use their knowledge of the alphabet to sound out words. This procedure constitutes a second approach to teaching reading – phonics.

 

Many schools have adopted a different approach: the whole-language method. The strategy here relies on the child’s experience with the language. For example, students are offered engaging books and are encouraged to guess the words that they do not know by considering the context of the sentence or by looking for clues in the storyline and illustrations, rather than trying to sound them out.

Many teachers adopted the whole-language approach because of its intuitive appeal. Making reading fun promises to keep children motivated, and learning to read depends more on what the student does than on what the teacher does. The presumed benefits of whole-language instruction – and the contrast to the perceived dullness of phonics – led to its growing acceptance across American during the 1990s and a movement away from phonics.

• A controversial approach

• The roots of the debate

• Methods of teaching reading

However, many linguists and psychologists objected strongly to the abandonment of phonics in American schools. Why was this so? In short, because research had clearly demonstrated that understanding how letters related to the component sounds in words is critically important in reading. This conclusion rests, in part, on knowledge of how experienced readers make sense of words on a page. Advocates of whole-language instruction have argued forcefully that people often derive meanings directly from print without ever determining the sound of the word. Some psychologists today accept this view, but most believe that reading is typically a process of rapidly sounding out words mentally. Compelling evidence for this comes from experiments which show that subjects often confuse homophones (words that sound the same, such as Jrose and ‘rows5). This supports the idea that readers convert strings of letters to sounds.

• A debate amongst educators

• The roots of the debate

• Disagreement about the reading process

Exam Review

How should reading be taught?

How should reading be taught?

By Keith Rayncr a Barbara R Foorman

A

Learning to speak is automatic for almost all children, but learning to read requires elaborate instruction and conscious effort. Well aware of the difficulties, educators have given a great deal of thought to how they can best help children learn to read. No single method has triumphed. Indeed, heated arguments about the most appropriate form of reading instruction continue to polarize the teaching community.

B

Three general approaches have been tried. In one, called whole-word instruction, children learn by rote how to recognise at a glance a vocabulary of 50 to 100 words. Then they gradually acquire other words, often through seeing them used over and over again in the context of a story.

Speakers of most languages learn the relationship between letters and the sounds associated with them (phonemes). That is, children are taught how to use their knowledge of the alphabet to sound out words. This procedure constitutes a second approach to teaching reading – phonics.

 

Many schools have adopted a different approach: the whole-language method. The strategy here relies on the child’s experience with the language. For example, students are offered engaging books and are encouraged to guess the words that they do not know by considering the context of the sentence or by looking for clues in the storyline and illustrations, rather than trying to sound them out.

Many teachers adopted the whole-language approach because of its intuitive appeal. Making reading fun promises to keep children motivated, and learning to read depends more on what the student does than on what the teacher does. The presumed benefits of whole-language instruction – and the contrast to the perceived dullness of phonics – led to its growing acceptance across American during the 1990s and a movement away from phonics.

C

However, many linguists and psychologists objected strongly to the abandonment of phonics in American schools. Why was this so? In short, because research had clearly demonstrated that understanding how letters related to the component sounds in words is critically important in reading. This conclusion rests, in part, on knowledge of how experienced readers make sense of words on a page. Advocates of whole-language instruction have argued forcefully that people often derive meanings directly from print without ever determining the sound of the word. Some psychologists today accept this view, but most believe that reading is typically a process of rapidly sounding out words mentally. Compelling evidence for this comes from experiments which show that subjects often confuse homophones (words that sound the same, such as Jrose and ‘rows5). This supports the idea that readers convert strings of letters to sounds.

D

In order to evaluate different approaches to teaching reading, a number of experiments have been carried out, firstly with college students, then with school pupils. Investigators trained English-speaking college students to read using unfamiliar symbols such as Arabic letters (the phonics approach), while another group learned entire words associated with certain strings of Arabic letters (whole-word). Then both groups were required to read a new set of words constructed from the original characters. In general, readers who were taught the rules of phonics could read many more new words than those trained with a whole-word procedure.

Classroom studies comparing phonics with either whole-word or whole-language instruction are also quite illuminating. One particularly persuasive study compared two programmes used in 20 first-grade classrooms. Half the students were offered traditional reading instruction, which included the use of phonics drills and applications. The other half were taught using an individualised method that drew from their experiences with languages; these children produce their own booklets of stories and developed sets of words to be recognised (common components of the whole-language approach). This study found that the first group scored higher at year’s end on tests of reading and comprehension.

• Inconclusive research

• Research with learners

• A debate amongst educators

If researchers are so convinced about the need for phonics instruction, why does the debate continue? Because the controversy is enmeshed in the philosophical differences between traditional and progressive (or new) approaches, differences that have divided educators for years. The progressive challenge the results of laboratory tests and classroom studies on the basis of a broad philosophical skepticism about the values of such research. They champion student-centred learned and teacher empowerment. Sadly, they fail to realise that these very admirable educational values are equally consistent with the teaching of phonics.

• Allowing teachers more control

•     A debate amongst educators

• The roots of the debate