Quizz: Airbus crisis over

Quizz: Airbus Crisis Over

Reading Comprehension: Airbus crisis over

Airbus crisis over

Instructions: Read through the text below, answer the questions that follow, then click on 'Grade Me!' to view your score.

Airbus says it has turned the corner after a crisis connected to production problems and turmoil in the boardroom at its A380 super-jumbo project that has gone on for the past year. Speaking at the Paris air show, Louis Gallois, CEO of the European planemaker, said, "Airbus is back."

Airbus, which announced a raft of orders on the first day of the show, is competing with Boeing, its American rival, for the title of the largest planemaker in the world.

Boeing is expected to reveal the numbers of orders for its 787 Dreamliner soon. Airbus orders unveiled on Monday included Qatar Airways confirming a $16bn order for 80 A350 Airbus planes and ordering three A380 super-jumbos for about $750m.

Boeing and Airbus are also competing for orders from aircraft leasing firms. Orders from these companies - who rank highly among the biggest global buyers of aircraft - are often regarded as an indication of how successful a model will be in the long term.

Airbus also secured orders from US Airways that are worth $10bn for 22 of its A350 jets, 60 A320s and ten of its A330-200 wide-body planes.

Reading comprenhension: Travel and Tourism

Read the following text about Explora Patagonia Lodge

How to get there:

            Upon arrival at the airport in Santiago, Chile,  take a connecting flight to the city of Punta Arenas which lasts around four hours. At the airport in Punta Arenas, our staff will be waiting for you and will drive you in our comfortable minibus to Hotel Salto Chico where you can relax or go on an exciting Patagonia adventure tour.

            The minibus journey is just under four and a half hours: The journey from Punta Arenas to Llanuras de Diana, along 200 kilometers (124 miles) of paved road takes two and a quarter hours. From there, the 190 kilometers (118 miles) to Torres del Paine National Park takes two hours and 20 minutes.

Rooms:

            Our lodge has 50 comfortable rooms, all with captivating views, silence and privacy. The sophisticated design incorporates native lenga wood (nothofagus pumilio) and cypress brought from the Guaitecas Archipelago, while the floor is made of almond wood. Each room has a small living area, hydro massage bath and beds designed for deep, pleasurable sleep after a day of exploration. Finally, we provide you with a unique treat: the rooms are television-free.

Reading Comprehension: Sport and Health

What Happened When Hitler Hosted the Olympics 80 Years Ago

The Summer Olympic Games serve as a grand podium for the belief that a nation’s best athletes can bolster its sense of pride and honor for another four years—setting the stage for real-world superheroes who defy the odds and challenge the capabilities of the human body. It’s a tradition the globe is unlikely to kick.

But 80 years ago, when the Summer Olympics opened on Aug. 1, 1936, in Berlin, that creed nearly crumbled. That year, it became increasingly clear that Germany only wanted to see its superheroes in one light: the stars of the Aryan race, superior for their genetic makeup rather than their athleticism, says Barbara Burstin, history lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University.

“It provided Hitler with a showcase,” Burstin says. “It was a propaganda bonanza for him.”

Adolf Hilter, who had effectively become Germany’s dictator in 1933, had instituted an “Aryans-only” policy throughout all German athletic organizations, sparking global outrage, especially among American athletes. Only one German-Jewish athlete was permitted to play in the games—fencer Helene Mayer—because only her father was Jewish. Even her position wasn’t guaranteed; TIME reported in 1935 that Charles Hitchcock Sherrill, a U.S. member of the International Olympic Committee, had traveled to Germany prior to the Olympics to ensure Mayer would receive her rightful spot on the team.

Reading Comprehension: History of TV

Televisions show sounds and pictures. They get data from cables, discs, or over-the-air signals. They turn this data into sounds and images. People watch news and shows on them. You probably call them TVs. John Baird made the first TV in 1925. It had one color. It could only show 30 lines. This was just enough room for a face. It didn't work well, but it was a start.

The first TV station was set up in 1928. It was in New York. Few people had TVs. The broadcasts were not meant to be watched. They showed a Felix the Cat doll for two hours a day. The doll spun around on a record player. They were experimenting. It took many years to get it right. By the end of the 1930s, TVs were working well. America got its first taste at the 1939 World's Fair. This was one of the biggest events ever. There were 200 small, black and white TVs set up around the fair. The U.S. President gave a speech over the TVs. The TVs were only five inches big but the people loved it. They wanted TVs. But World War II was going on during this time. Factories were busy making guns and bombs. When the war was over, TV spread across the country.

Reading Comprehension: How to Learn a Second Language

How to Learn a Second Language

Robert DeKeyser, a professor of second language acquisition at the University of Maryland says: “The only way to learn a language is to make quite a bit of effort on a daily basis.”

Programs designed to mimic the learning methods of children are also a waste of time and money, says DeKeyser. “You cannot expect to just absorb language the way that a child does,” he says. “Children are good at learning the underlining system of all the language input they get because they can infer the underlying patterns without understanding the rules. Adults must be conscientious of the rules of the language. Their implicit learning doesn’t work all that well.”

Lisa Davidson, an associate professor of linguistics at New York University, says one major difference in the language learning process between adults and children involves interference from a native tongue. “When you’re a kid all you’re working at is acquiring a language, and you don’t have anything to get in the way of that,” she says. “When you’re an adult and you already have a language, the one you already know filters sounds and you get substantial interference from it.”

 Before the age of one, infants are able to differentiate between sounds that their parents cannot (a notable exambple is the inability of native Japanese-speaking adults to distinguish between the "r" and "l" sounds). The ability can be reactivated with the proper amount of language input right up until puberty; a stage linguists refer to as the critical perios. And then comes adulthood, and with it many more hurdles.

Many experts agree that the ideal learning method for adults really depends on the individual. “Find the method that works for you and stick with it,” says Richard Simcott, a polyglot who has professionally worked in over 14 languages at once for the British Foreign Service. “The main thing is to do a bit every day and to not get discouraged if you miss a day. If audio works for you, do audio. If it’s classes, do classes. But find whatever it is and be consistent.”

But not all adults are created equal. There are several factors that contribute to the success of one student over another. “First of all you need aptitude for language learning,” says DeKeyser. “People vary in their aptitude like they do in learning math or in playing basketball.”

These biological differences in aptitude do not mean that individuals with a knack for languages can just move to Japan and passively await fluency. “Motivation is a key part of learning a language,” says Davidson. “The more time that you spend during the day speaking your second language, the better at it you’re going to be.”

Learning from multiple people is another key to success, especially when attempting to cultivate a native accent. “When you are exposed to a lot of people you get a much better sense of what the sound of a word is supposed to be,” says Davidson. “You avoid exposing yourself to what could be idiosyncrasies in one individual’s speech patterns.”

Once an individual masters one language, experts say learning additional foreign tongues can be much easier for a number of reasons. Individuals with previous experience know what’s involved in the learning process and are more adept at cultivating strategies for communicating with limited comprehension. “And no matter how different the two languages are, there are some sounds or words that can be carried over,” says DeKeyser.

The tricks to maintaining foreign fluency are very similar to the methods used to achieve it–you have to practice. “Maintaining a language is a matter of dedicating enough time to it,” says DeKeyser. “You need to interact with native speakers. Make every possible effort to speak the learned language on a daily basis.”

Simcott recommends continually challenging yourself even after you’ve reached fluency. “Sign up for political, science or philosophy classes where you will be tested beyond asking things like ‘how much is the bread?’ This will help you understand the culture and the people infinitely better as well.”

Source: Forbes

Reading Comprehension: Crocodiles and Palm Trees in the Artic?

Crocodiles and Palm Trees in the Artic?

In even the bleakest climate change scenarios for the end of this century, science has offered hope that global warming would eventually slow down. But a new study published Monday eliminates such hope, projecting temperatures that rise lockstep with carbon emissions until the last drops of oil and lumps of coal are used up. Global temperatures will increase on average by 8 degrees Celsius (14.4 degrees F) over preindustrial levels by 2300 if all of Earth’s fossil fuel resources are burned, In the Arctic, average temperatures would rise by 17 degrees C (30.6 degrees F). If these temperatures do become reality, greenhouse gases would transform Earth into a place where food is scarce, parts of the world are uninhabitable for humans, and many species of animals and plants are wiped out, experts say.

"It would be as unrecognizable to us as a fully glaciated world," says Mylles Allen, head of a climate dynamics group at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Allen was not involved in the new study, but his research has focused on carbon’s cumulative impacts on climate. It also would heat the world to a level approaching that of the early Eocene period, 52 million to 56 million years ago, when palm trees grewas far North as Alaska and crocodiles swam in the Arctic.

Mammals survived Eocene temperatures; this is when early primates appeared. Some horses, however, shrank to the size of house cats, adjusting through evolution to a diet altered either by heat or carbon. Today's organisms and ecosystems may not be able to adapt to warming over the next 200 to 300 years—an instant on the geological time scale, says Scott Wing, the Smithsonian Institution’s curator of fossil plants.
Allen says not only could tropical rain forest systems collapse, but drought in southern Europe and the United States would be "completely catastrophic for agriculture." Wealthy nations might maintain food supply, but not places like southern Africa. "A lot of people would have to leave, or a lot of people would die," Allen says.