Przykładowe Materiały Egzaminacyjne JĘzyk angielski poziom 3 Czytanie



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Listening 34

Over the last few years, cases of asthma have been on the increase world wide. Accepted scientific wisdom pointed the finger at air pollution in urban areas. But this year, scientists have changed their minds. They now say the culprits may be closer to home. In fact, in the home. Household pests and even household pets. Graham Easten of our science unit explains why the solution for sufferers to get a breadth of fresh air.

As any one who has asthma will know, even a mild attack can be a frightening experience, despite the effectiveness of modern treatments. Severe asthma can be fatal. So, mounting evidence that asthma is on the increase is certainly a cause for concern. In developing countries, a pattern has emerged which provides a clue as to what’s causing all the trouble. Here, asthma often affect people who’ve moved into the city from rural areas. From this many scientists had concluded that outdoor air pollution in city centres was to blame. But experts meeting in London in June overturned that view. And, as professor Steven Holgate from the University of Southampton explains, the results are very clear.

There’s no doubt that in people who have asthma bad air pollution episodes can make their disease worse. But whether the question of increasing new asthma is caused by air pollution, the answer is almost certainly is ‘no’. This is very careful evidence, looking at air pollution trends in relation to asthma trends. For example, the highest increase in asthma occurs in New Zeland, in […], in some parts of Australia where air pollution is minimal if not present at all. And certainly in the United Kingdom, some of the highest figures for asthma are in the […] islands where, of course, air pollution is fairly minimal.

Such evidence has forced scientists to look at elsewhere for the cause, inside the sufferers’ home, where other asthma-causing substances are found. Tomas Plats Mills, professor of medicine at the University of Virginia, explains.

I think that important phenomena are that people are living indoors much more than they ever were before. In the United States, we think people are indoor for twenty-two or twenty-three hours a day. And, when you study these patients, the ones who are getting asthma, most of them are allergic to something in their house.

The scientists have now found suspects indoors.



Listening 35

According to our correspondent in the Philippines, John McLain, one of the more dubious assertions made by some Philippinos is that their country is the third biggest English speaking nation in the world. But in fact, says John, the language is spoken only by a minority of the eighteen million people in the Philippines. And the way they speak it doesn’t guarantee that they would be understood by the rest of the English speaking world.

A diplomat from a Western country newly posted to the Philippines complained to me the other day. “I thought this was supposed to be an English speaking country”, he said. When the United States supplanted Spain as the colonial power here at the end of the nineteenth century, the Americans sent shiploads of teachers across the Pacific to educate the Philippino masses, and that included teaching them English. They had a difficult start. The American teachers’ insistence that ‘A’ is for apple, was of little help for children of a tropical land who’d never seen one. A century later, the masses still have little grasp of English. But it’s become the language of the elite who speak it fluently and confidently. And scorn is poured on those who aspire to join the elite yet who fail to master English. I’ve heard the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court upbraiding a witness who gave an ambiguous answer under cross examination. That’s like saying, ”yes, we have no bananas”, the Chief Justice told the witness. Even so, English in the Philippines has developed its own peculiarities which puzzle the unwary foreigner who learned the language elsewhere and which can sometimes lead to misunderstanding. Many brand names have entered Philippine English as common nouns. Toothpaste here is called colgate no matter who the manufacturer is. In the same way a video cassette player is always a bitamax. Never mind that here and elsewhere the video standard is VHS and hardly anybody uses bitamax. So if you want to buy a video cassette recorder you must ask for a bitmax. Otherwise you won’t be understood and in the end you’ll get a VHS recorder. There’s also a tendency to employ euphemisms. It’s an international phenomenon to use some circumlocution in talking about the toilet, for example. But here they go to the extreme of calling it the comfort room. It’s a ludicrous name. Anybody who’s experienced the horrors of a typical Philippine lavatory will tell you that there is very little comfort to be found there. Perhaps, that’s why Philipinos take their coiness even further by abbreviating comfort room as CR. A similar process is involved in the creation of GRO. GRO stands for guest relations officer. Guest relations officer? It’s a euphemism for hostess in the sense of a woman employed in a bar to chat up male customers, persuade them to buy her drinks for extortional prices and them persuade them to go to bed with her for the usual fee. It’s hard to see the point of all this. If you call somebody’s mother a GRO, and I’ve heard it done, is just as insulting as using a blunter word.

Listening 36

Human rights workers have, in a new report, accused the Burmese army of rounding up men and boys for forced military service. The report by the New York based human rights watch Asia says over a fifth of Burma’s army’s under the age of eighteen. One of the report’s authors Jo Backer explains how the children are recruited.



  • Children, as young as eleven, are typically picked up from public places. They are on the street, they’re at festivals, market places, at railway stations, at bus stations. They’re typically approached by recruiters and essentially threatened with going to jail or joining the army. Sometimes they are physically beaten if they try and resist. They’re given no opportunities to contact their families, and they’re sent off to training camps where they learn to handle guns, lay land mines and learn military strategy.

Miss Backer says the Burmese army’s estimated to have 350 thousand troops. She says it’s expanded rapidly, doubling in size since 1998.

  • At the same time, the military has been committing increasing human rights abuses against civilians making it a increasing unpopular choice for young men seeking a career. As a result, the Burmese military has had to resort to forced recruitment for most of its soldiers. And recruiters have found that children are most vulnerable, and least able to withstand threats and intimidation.

  • Jo Backer who says, in effect, that children are easy prey for recruiters.



Listening 37
Jamaicans go to the polls today with the ruling People’s National Party hoping to win a fourth successive term in office. Most of the latest polls show that the People’s National Party led by P.J. Pateson has a narrow lead with Edward Seaga’s Jamaica Labour Party gaining ground in recent days. Our correspondent, Nick Miles, reports from the Jamaican capital Kingston.

Some of the recent polls have given hope to the Jamaica Labour Party which has been in opposition since 1989. Two gave the ruling party the PNP a wafer-thin lead, but a further poll published just hours before the start of voting showed the gap starching to ten points. Prime Minister P.J. Paterson has campaigned on what he sees as the achievements of his party’s three terms in office. He says he’s managed to bring inflation down and create the right environment for investors. He’s also pointed to recent successes in the fight against crime. This year, the murder rate, while still high, has fallen by fourteen percent on the same time last year. The Jamaica Labour Party leader, Edward Seaga, who was Prime Minister for two terms during the nineteen eighties, has offered the electorate the character-free secondary education, if his party is voted into power. His campaign focussed on what he says is the stagnation of the country’s tourism and manufacturing sectors under PNP rule. Security is tight ahead of today’s vote. Jamaica has a history of fighting between rival political supporters. The Jamaican police and armed forces are out on the streets, particularly in five Kingston constituencies which are seen as potential flash points. Meanwhile, residents in many areas have set up barricades on roads entering their communities to reduce the risk of intimidation or attacks from rival factions.



Listening 38

You’re listening to Science in Action on the BBC World Service. I’m Garreth Mitchel. And on the programmes in recent moths we’ve talked about missions to Mars and last week we mourned demise of the Galileo prove that’s told us so much about Jupiter. But there’s still much to be found out about our closest neighbour in space – the Moon, which is the reason why there’s a mission due to launch for there this weekend. Unlike those early Apollo missions when astronauts walked on the Moon, there will be no one on board this time. But in many ways it will be a giant leap for space-craft kind as the craft includes an innovative propulsion system and an instrument that’ll map the lunar surface. If it all goes to plan, this first European mission to the moon should finally enable scientists to determine how our nearest neighbour was formed, as Richard Holingam now reports.

Hear, at the Relafoot Apleton laboratory, near Oxford in southern England, engineers have been making their final preparations for the launch of Smart 1. This is one of the labs, and I’m surrounded by assorted electronics in various states of construction, and deconstruction. There’s a model here of an instrument which will shortly be on its way to the Moon. The real thing is packed up and ready to go. Professor Manuel Granday heads up the British part of the project.

This is Europe’s first smaller, faster mission. And it’s also its first mission to the Moon, and it’s also its first solar-powered space-craft. So this is really a lot of firsts.

Although Smart 1 will be launched on a conventional rocket, once in space, it’ll travel to the Moon using the power of the Sun to generate electricity for the so-called ion-propulsion system. A beam of charged particles or irons will push the space-craft forward. It’ll take fifteen months to reach lunar orbit. But once there, it’ll be able to examine previously unexplored areas.

If you look up at the Moon at night, you see two colours – you see a silvery colour and you see a grey colour. The grey colour is the moria – the seas – and those are the flat places where the Apollo astronauts landed. The original material of the Moon is the silvery staff – the highlands. And that was much less well sampled by the Apollo astronauts. And that, of course, if you want to answer the question where the Moon came form, is one of your targets.

It’s perhaps surprising that the question of the Moon’s formation remains unresolved. But Robin Catchpool from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich says even the accepted explanation is only a theory.

We now believe that the Moon was once part of the Earth, and that very early in the history of the solar system there was an enormous collision with a planetary body that threw enough of the material off the Earth into space, that it eventually coagulated to form the Moon that we see today.



Listening 39


  • Time is running for the Italian state-controlled airline, Alitalia. It’s making big losses and management says the airline only has enough cash to keep operating until the end of September. With me now is Manuela Saragosa, of our business staff. Well, is Alitalia in bad trouble?

  • It’s in very bad trouble and it’s unlikely to survive in its present form. It’s gonna have to really slim down its operation and change pretty dramatically. There are suggestions that up to a third of the airline’s 20 000 employees could be declared surplus by management. At…, in it’s latest plan to reorganise the company. That plan is what is being discussed with the unions today. And for the first time it has to be said there are signs that union leaders might be prepared to consider job losses.

  • In the past the government might have stepped in. That can’t happen this time, can it?

  • No, the government has offered a 400 million euro bridging loan. But that loan is contingent on management and union agreeing on a cost-cutting plan by September 15. That has to be done under European Union laws on helping a company out. If anything, what the government is doing at the moment is putting pressure Alitalia and the unions there because it’s threatened to put the whole company into administration, effectively bankruptcy proceedings if management and the unions don’t come up with an agreement, a plan out of this mess, by the middle of September.

  • It’s not the only airline that has had similar problems and there are many throughout Europe that have been suffering. But Ryan Air, the low-cost European carrier, has come up with a different way of dealing with things, hasn’t it?

  • Yes, Ryan Air just doesn’t talk to the unions. It doesn’t negotiate with them. And what’s happened as a result of that is that unions from several countries across Europe are now joining forces to, in their words, protect the rights of workers at Ryan Air. The International Transport Workers’ Federation is launching a website today where Ryan Air staff can discuss their work conditions and post their complaints. Ryan Air in response has said it pays its employees more than most other airlines.


Listening 40





  • Oh!

  • No problem.

  • How have you been over the last week or so?

  • I feel much better.

  • See? I would like to have a look at what’s going on now. So, we’ll just remove the bandage. Can you just help me a bit there? Thank you.

  • Paul’s doctor is Niels Iskie, chief physician at the centre for the diabetic foot whose research laboratory is working on a digital alternative to the face to face consultation.

  • Just having moved away from Paul and the clinical setting, it’s important to say that it would be ideal for Paul, would he not have to come into hospital quite as often as he’s doing now. And with this time working at modern technologies that would help us to monitor him at home and to let us know how his condition is.

  • And what are you working towards?

  • Ideally, this will come in years. I think we’re working towards an intelligent bandage.

  • An intelligent bandage?

  • Bandage, as we know it now but with sensors built into it that would allow us to get information about temperature, humidity, and perhaps even bacteria and types of bacteria in the bandage. This would allow the bandage to stay on for much longer and that would save quite a bit of money not having nurses come out to change bandages and the patient would perhaps not even have to come into hospital as often as now.

  • How important is it for people with diabetes to monitor their foot health constantly?

  • Very important for any person with diabetes of some duration. And it’s, of course, extremely important for the diabetic person with an ulcer to have his or her foot monitored daily, ideally. But as it is now, we do it perhaps once a week or every other week.

  • And if they don’t monitor their feet?

  • The great danger is still nowadays amputation although the frequency of amputation has dropped to about half of what it was fifteen, twenty years ago.

  • So, it’s that serious?

  • It’s very serious.


Listening 41

Four years ago, a British woman named Adel Price check in at Manchester Airport in the north of England for an Air France flight to New York. She’d flown many times, so it was no big deal. But it turns out it was. Adel happens to have been born without limbs because her mother took the drug Validamy before she was born and she uses a wheelchair. But she had a doctor’s certificate saying she was fit to fly and the airline had been warned in advance. So imagine her shock when she was told by an airline employee ‘validamiders’ are banned because they would fall out of their seats. Well she says sae was told she needed to find a paramedic to fly with her. She did and, eventually, flew next day but at a large financial cost to herself. There were more problems when she finally got to New York. Adel is now suing the airline in the States and is calling on the aviation authorities to impose common standards for disabled passengers around the world. Well, Air France have given us the following statement. They say Adel was not sufficiently physically independent to comply with basic safety regulations on the aircraft such as unfastening her seatbelts and putting on an oxygen mask, and therefore couldn’t be accepted to travel. The general manager in the States, Marie Josef Mall, said Air France took seriously and investigated any claims of discriminatory or improper conduct by their staff. Well, joining me now David Liemount of the aviation magazine Flight International.



  • David, Adel wants, among other things, common rules on disabled passengers around the world. Is that possible? Is she gonna get that?

  • Unfortunately, I don’t think she is to start with. I have to struggle to put aside, sort of, natural human reactions to this particular case in order to try and be dispassionate. But no. If she takes this to court in the USA, any ruling that US court comes to will actually will only be applicable in the USA. That’s assuming it rules in her favour. And it would not necessarily be enforce…, enforceable by the USA on foreign airlines like Air France that operate there. That’s just the way that, you know, world air transport system works. There’s a treaty that all countries that have airlines sing up to have common standards. But this actual area has not really been broached. It’s, sort of, rules of the air and safety standards for aircraft that really they cover.

  • It’s quite different. Is there likelihood that airlines might be perhaps shamed into treating disabled passengers better through publicity?

  • I think it’s very important actually that, you know, that if she’s successful in this particular case this will be influential. It won’t change, you know, it won’t change much to start with. But it will, nevertheless, set a precedent which other countries will take note of. And, as I just said, although America couldn’t actually enforce any positive judgment on Air France, it could put an awful lot of pressure on France and on other countries if it adopts this kind of standard for its own airlines.

  • And very briefly. I mean, would carrying someone like Adel on a flight conflict with safety standards?

  • Well, yes. There is an argument for that. And that is that in the event of an emergency evacuation, and there are all sorts of non-fatal situations or situations which shouldn’t be fatal where you do have to get out very fast, and she would take away one member of cabin crew who should be helping everybody.

  • David, thank you for that. David Liemount of Flight International in the case of the disabled woman who’s suing an airline.



Listening 42
The murder of a Dutch film maker Tail Vangog, last November alerted Europe to the danger of home-grown Islamic extremism. Today, the man who confessed to killing him, a 27-year old Muslim radical, Mohamed Bujeri, was given a life prison sentence for the murder of Tail Vangog. John Line examines the lessons of the attack.

The murder of Tail Vangog was all the more shocking coming in one of Europe’s most liberal countries. The immediate response was a backlash against Islam with a number of attacks on Muslim buildings across the country. But Holland also began a more measured reassessment of relations with the approximately 1 million Muslims who live there. For years Dutch politicians had failed to address issues of concern to Muslims. “We had ignored the social-cultural issues and in that sense we left the Islamic minorities to the radical Muslims and to the exposure of radical propaganda from the Middle-East through the Internet, through the Satellite dishes. And I think that something that we now should change or that’s going to change. And you hear now from the Liberal Party but also from other political parties that more emphasis is put on education and especially socialisation through education.” Specifically, the Dutch government has begun to look more closely about what is taught in Mosques. It’s trying to limit the number of foreign imam and encourage those in Holland to speak Dutch and preach moderation. Dutch universities, even some with close links to the protestant Church have began new courses in Islamic theology. It’s an approach that has brought ridicule from some Islamic groups who warn it’ll take years to train new imams and change attitudes. But exactly this debate is starting in Britain, following the London bombings, also apparently carried out by home-grown Islamic radicals.






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