Unit 1
The cloze procedure originated in the 1950s as a means of assessing the difficulty of a reading text for native speakers, but within three years its originator was suggesting that it could be used for assessing the progress of second and foreign language learners. The principle is that single words are taken out of a text at regular intervals, leaving gaps which students have to complete with appropriate “fillers,” one only for each gap. In order to do this the student has to refer to the text or either side of the gap so that he can judge what an appropriate filler might be, taking into account bothtoday meaning and structure.
There are two types of gap: “function” gaps (such as conjunctions, preposition, articles) which have only one correct filler, and “semantic” gaps (such as nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs) that can be filled with any one of number of alternatives.
The variation in acceptable filler leads to two main systems of marking: “exact” and “acceptable.” The first of these means that only the original word is counted as correct, and since there is only one right answer, the marking is objective and can be done quickly. In “a
cceptable” marking, decisions must be made about whether a student’s offering is good enough to be counted as correct or not. It has been shown, however, that the two systems of marking produce very similar result, in the sense that the students are sorted into roughly the same rank order.
Unit 2
At the bottom of the world lies a mighty continent still wrapped in the Ice Age and, until recent times, unknown to man. Most of the continent is a complete blank on our maps. A 1,000-mile stretch of the coastline has never been reached by any ship. Man has explored, on foot, less than one per cent of its area.
Antarctica differs fundamentally from the Arctic regions. The Arctic is an ocean, covered with drifting ice and surrounded by the land masses of Europe, Asia, and North America. The Antarctic is a continent almost as large as Europe and Australia combined centered roughly on the South Pole and surrounded by the most unobstructed water areas of the world – the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.
The continental ice sheet is more than two miles deep in its center; thus the air over the Antarctic is much colder than it is over the Arctic regions. More than a million persons live within 2,000 miles of the North Pole in an area that includes most of Alaska, Siberia, and Scandinavia – a region rich in forest and mining industries. Apart from a handful of weather stations, within the same distance of the South Pole there is not a single tree, industry or settlement.
Unit 3
Of all UNHCR programs involving internally displaced persons (IDPs), former Yugoslavia has perhaps been the most problematic. When UNHCR was asked by the Secretary- General to take the lead humanitarian role in the region in late 1991, few imagined that the conflict would grow so big, that the victims would eventually number so many, and that within months the program would be costing UNHCR so much – nearly $1 million a day.
From an agency long used to protecting and assisting refugees once they had reached th
e relative safety of an asylum country, UNHCR soon found itself in the middle of a war zone in the worst refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. UNHCR humanitarian staff suddenly found themselves caught in the crossfire while trying to help, not refuges, but millions of IDPs and other “war affected” people in communities like Sarajevo, Gorazde and Bihac. Twelve were killed in UNHCR operations, and dozens were wounded. By 1993, UNHCR found itself, for the first time in its 40-year-history, in the midst of a conflict that the international community appeared powerless to stop. There seemed to be no way out.
Unit 4
Information and education programs against smoking have been intensified in France. Tobacco taxes have also been increased regularly, and in 1991, France adopted a comprehensive tobacco control law. This law, which was phased in and came fully into force in 1993, bans tobacco advertising, fixes maximum tar yields, and requires strong health warnings on both the front and back of the package. Besides/Moreover the law als
o controls smoking in transport, public places and workplaces by either banning it altogether or limiting it to just a few smoking areas. A non-governmental organization, the National Committee Against Tobacco Use, has been especially active in encouraging strict observance of the tobacco advertising ban. Early attempts to find ways around the law let the National Committee Against Tobacco Use to bring charges against the alleged violators. These resulted in a number of successful convictions, which, in turn, have led to near-total observance of France’s strict ban on direct and indirect tobacco advertising. By 1995, tobacco consumption had fallen by 7.3% since 1991 when the comprehensive tobacco control law was adopted.

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