Which is the correct alternative?

On yer bikes

Nov 13th 2009

Jennifer Quigley-Jones: editorial assistant, The World in 2010

London follows the cycles-for-hire fad

In 2010 Boris Johnson will give London cyclists something to smile about.

The mayor plans to launch a bicycle-hire system modelled on similar ones in Paris, Barcelona and a growing number of other cities around the world. With some 6,000 bikes and 400 docking stations, the scheme, at first covering about 17 square miles (44 square kilometres) of central London, should allow quick and relatively cheap access to rental bikes.

There will be difficulties to overcome. Securing land for bike stations in the busiest parts of London will need strong collaboration between Transport for London (TfL), which is commissioning the scheme, the Royal Parks and the nine boroughs involved. Then there’s the cost: £140m ($229m) over six years. The aim is that over time the project will pay for itself.

BIXI, the company which will provide the bikes and run the programme, has assured TfL that its lab-tested bikes have withstood the equivalent of 15 years’ use; it is offering a five-year or 40,000-mile guarantee. To deter theft, they are fitted with a security gizmo and users will have to pay a credit-card deposit.

A bigger worry may be safety. The bikes will encourage large numbers of new, tentative cyclists to ride—or wobble—onto some of London’s busiest roads. The scheme is expected to generate an extra 40,000 journeys a day.

TfL is supporting numerous cycle-training and safety initiatives throughout London. Plans to have 12 “cycle superhighways” by the end of 2012 should help eventually. Oddly, the rate of accidents appears to decrease as the number of cyclists rises: since 2000 London has had a 107% increase in the number of cycle journeys and a 21% drop in casualties. But drivers in the capital can still reckon on close shaves galore with inexperienced cyclists.

Despite the worries, the goal is to provide a green and healthy way of getting around London—an alternative to the all too frequent misery of the tube and traffic jams. Londoners may agree with President John Kennedy that “Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride.”

Source: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14742214

The alternative that presents a definition for wobble is

All the statements below can be said to be problems for MT, with the exception

On yer bikes

Nov 13th 2009

Jennifer Quigley-Jones: editorial assistant, The World in 2010

London follows the cycles-for-hire fad

In 2010 Boris Johnson will give London cyclists something to smile about.

The mayor plans to launch a bicycle-hire system modelled on similar ones in Paris, Barcelona and a growing number of other cities around the world. With some 6,000 bikes and 400 docking stations, the scheme, at first covering about 17 square miles (44 square kilometres) of central London, should allow quick and relatively cheap access to rental bikes.

There will be difficulties to overcome. Securing land for bike stations in the busiest parts of London will need strong collaboration between Transport for London (TfL), which is commissioning the scheme, the Royal Parks and the nine boroughs involved. Then there’s the cost: £140m ($229m) over six years. The aim is that over time the project will pay for itself.

BIXI, the company which will provide the bikes and run the programme, has assured TfL that its lab-tested bikes have withstood the equivalent of 15 years’ use; it is offering a five-year or 40,000-mile guarantee. To deter theft, they are fitted with a security gizmo and users will have to pay a credit-card deposit.

A bigger worry may be safety. The bikes will encourage large numbers of new, tentative cyclists to ride—or wobble—onto some of London’s busiest roads. The scheme is expected to generate an extra 40,000 journeys a day.

TfL is supporting numerous cycle-training and safety initiatives throughout London. Plans to have 12 “cycle superhighways” by the end of 2012 should help eventually. Oddly, the rate of accidents appears to decrease as the number of cyclists rises: since 2000 London has had a 107% increase in the number of cycle journeys and a 21% drop in casualties. But drivers in the capital can still reckon on close shaves galore with inexperienced cyclists.

Despite the worries, the goal is to provide a green and healthy way of getting around London—an alternative to the all too frequent misery of the tube and traffic jams. Londoners may agree with President John Kennedy that “Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride.”

Source: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14742214

In the text, the expression close shaves on line, means

The giant neighbours are more rivals than partners

Feb 4th 2010

China and India: Prospects for Peace. By Jonathan Holslag. Columbia University Press

For a book about two countries whose most recent war was five decades ago, “Prospects for Peace” seems a quirky subtitle. Jonathan Holslag, a Brussels-based think-tanker, argues that, since China’s swift and bloody humiliation of India in 1962, the neighbours have “tottered at least five times on the verge of war”. But the last time troops massed on the border was in 1986. Bilateral trade has boomed, and hundreds of thousands of Indians and Chinese now visit the other country each year, including a succession of senior politicians toasting a beautiful friendship.

As Mr. Holslag explains, however, the relationship is still marked as much by unremitting strategic mistrust as by burgeoning co-operation. His contribution to a recent flurry of India-China books attempts to reconcile these contradictory trends. His conclusions are rather unsettling.

Most of the other books on the area concentrate inevitably on the implications of the two countries’ economic rise. The simultaneous emergence into the global economy of two countries containing nearly two-fifths of the world’s people is after all an unprecedented phenomenon. Moreover, China’s dominance of global manufacturing seems matched by India’s arrival as an important provider of information-technology and other services. Mr. Holslag quotes Zhu Rongji, a former Chinese prime minister: “You are number one in software. We are number one in hardware…Together we are the world’s number one.” That is India’s misfortune. Hundreds of thousands of Indians work in IT* services whereas manufacturing for export provides China with tens of millions of jobs. Mr. Holslag predicts that India will challenge China’s role as the world’s manufacturer, but that seems far-fetched.

This complementarity has been accompanied by a number of alliances of convenience, most notably in resisting pressure from the rich world to agree to fixed targets for limiting carbon emissions. There was even an agreement in 2006 to work together to avoid bidding up the prices of energy resources in third countries.

The limited effect of that pact, however, is one reason to believe Mr.

Holslag’s prognosis of a “fiercer economic rivalry and more aggressive regional diplomacy”. Another is what Lalit Mansingh, a former Indian diplomat, calls “the ghost at the banquet”: China’s increasing diplomatic and military influence in Asia—and India’s fear of it.

As Mr. Holslag notes, the defeat in 1962 has left a deep suspicion of China in India’s political, academic and diplomatic circles, which is reflected in public opinion. India claims an area of Chinese-held territory in Kashmir the size of Switzerland, while China claims an area three times larger in what is now Indian Arunachal Pradesh. The border dispute remains unresolved. What had lazily been assumed to be the obvious solution—the status quo, in which each country keeps large swathes of territory claimed by the other—seems, if anything, further away than ever. The political difficulties of selling such a deal in India have long been obvious. But China’s renewed harping on its claim in recent years suggests that it in fact does want more than it already has.

* IT – Information Technology.

In the text, quirky means

On yer bikes

Nov 13th 2009

Jennifer Quigley-Jones: editorial assistant, The World in 2010

London follows the cycles-for-hire fad

In 2010 Boris Johnson will give London cyclists something to smile about.

The mayor plans to launch a bicycle-hire system modelled on similar ones in Paris, Barcelona and a growing number of other cities around the world. With some 6,000 bikes and 400 docking stations, the scheme, at first covering about 17 square miles (44 square kilometres) of central London, should allow quick and relatively cheap access to rental bikes.

There will be difficulties to overcome. Securing land for bike stations in the busiest parts of London will need strong collaboration between Transport for London (TfL), which is commissioning the scheme, the Royal Parks and the nine boroughs involved. Then there’s the cost: £140m ($229m) over six years. The aim is that over time the project will pay for itself.

BIXI, the company which will provide the bikes and run the programme, has assured TfL that its lab-tested bikes have withstood the equivalent of 15 years’ use; it is offering a five-year or 40,000-mile guarantee. To deter theft, they are fitted with a security gizmo and users will have to pay a credit-card deposit.

A bigger worry may be safety. The bikes will encourage large numbers of new, tentative cyclists to ride—or wobble—onto some of London’s busiest roads. The scheme is expected to generate an extra 40,000 journeys a day.

TfL is supporting numerous cycle-training and safety initiatives throughout London. Plans to have 12 “cycle superhighways” by the end of 2012 should help eventually. Oddly, the rate of accidents appears to decrease as the number of cyclists rises: since 2000 London has had a 107% increase in the number of cycle journeys and a 21% drop in casualties. But drivers in the capital can still reckon on close shaves galore with inexperienced cyclists.

Despite the worries, the goal is to provide a green and healthy way of getting around London—an alternative to the all too frequent misery of the tube and traffic jams. Londoners may agree with President John Kennedy that “Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride.”

Source: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14742214

The sentence “There will be difficulties to overcome”, means

The statements below are all intended to be about Stephen Krashen's Monitor Model as reviewed in Larsen-Freeman and Long (1991). There is one statement, however, that does not conform to Krashen's Monitor Model. Which is it?

Consider the statements below about the text, in order to answer question 21.

I. This system should allow cyclists to pick up one of 6,000 bikes at the 400 docking stations planned for the capital by 2010.

II. The docking stations will be built around 300 meters apart so that potential cyclists are never too far from being able to borrow and lock-up hired bikes.

III. Offering Londoners access to cheap bike hire would provide a greener and healthier alternative to driving and also would help cut congestion, carbon emissions and air pollution in the capital.

IV. Both drivers and cyclists believe the number of traffic accidents in the City of London will drop with the construction of the cycle superhighways.

Letting herself breathe easy now, Pecola covered her head with the quilt. The sick feeling, which she had tried to prevent by holding in her stomach, came quickly in spite of her precaution. There surged in her the desire to heave, but as always, she knew she would not.

“Please, God,” she whispered into the palm of her hand. “Please make me disappear.” She squeezed her eyes shut. Little parts of her body faded away. Now slowly, now with a rush. Slowly again. Her fingers went, one by one; then her arms disappeared all the way to the elbow. Her feet now. Yes, that was good. The legs all at once. It was hardest above the thighs. She had to be real still and pull. Her stomach would not go. But finally it, too, went away. Then her chest, her neck. The face was hard, too. Almost done, almost. Only her tight, tight eyes were left. They were always left.

Try as she might, she could never get her eyes to disappear. So what was the point? They were everything. Everything was there, in them. All of those pictures, all of those faces. She had long ago given up the idea of running away to see new pictures, new faces, as Sammy had so often done. He never took her, and he never thought about his going ahead of time, so it was never planned. It wouldn't have worked anyway. As long as she looked the way she did, as long as she was ugly, she would have to stay with these people. Somehow she belonged to them. Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike. She was the only member of her class who sat alone at a double desk. The first letter of her last name forced her to sit in the front of the room always. But what about Marie Appolonaire? Marie was in front of her, but she shared a desk with Luke Angelino. Her teachers had always treated her this way. They tried never to glance at her, and called on her only when everyone was required to respond.

She also knew that when one of the girls at school wanted to be particularly insulting to a boy, or wanted to get an immediate response from him, she could say, ‘Bobby loves Pecola Breedlove! Bobby loves Pecola Breedlove!’ and never fail to get peals of laughter from those in earshot, and mock anger from the accused.

It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights – if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different. Her teeth were good, and at least her nose was not big and flat like some of those who were thought so cute. If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove, too.

Maybe they'd say, “Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn't do bad things in front of those pretty eyes. “

Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes. Fervently, for a year she had prayed. Although somewhat discouraged, she was not without hope. To have something as wonderful as that happen would take a long, long time. Thrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would see only what there was to see: the eyes of other people.

She climbs four wooden steps to the door of Yacobowski's Fresh Veg. Meat and Sundries Store. A bell tinkles as she opens it. Standing before the counter, she looks at the array of candies. All Mary Janes, she decides. Three for a penny. The resistant sweetness that breaks open at last to deliver peanut butter – the oil and salt which complement the sweet pull of caramel. A peal of anticipation unsettles her stomach.

She pulls off her shoe and takes out the three pennies. The grey head of Mr.

Yacobowski looms up over the counter. He urges his eyes out of his thoughts to encounter her. Blue eyes. Blear-dropped. Slowly, like Indian summer moving imperceptibly toward fall, he looks toward her. Somewhere between retina and object, between vision and view, his eyes draw back, hesitate and hover. At some fixed point in time and space he senses that he need not waste the effort of a glance.

He does not see her, because for him there is nothing to see. How can a fifty-two-year-old white immigrant storekeeper with the taste of potatoes and beer in his mouth, his mind honed on the doe-eyed Virgin Mary, his sensibilities blunted by a permanent awareness of loss, see a little black girl? Nothing in his life even suggested that the feat was possible, not to say desirable or necessary.

Edited from Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. Book of the Month Club,

Inc 1998, pages 35-36.

According to the text, implicit in Pecola's desire to have blue eyes was

Taking the above excerpt into consideration, decide which of the statements below can correctly be internal commentaries to the theory, showing a strong understanding of the theory's assumptions:

I. Omission of any reference to three of the five “hypotheses” in the “summary” shows that MT consists de facto of just one causal statement involving two variables: Comprehensible Input (CI) and a “low affective filter” which are necessary and sufficient for second language acquisition.

II. Comprehensible Input is not the essential ingredient for second language acquisition. There are still some other fundamental factors thought to encourage or cause second language acquisition and which work towards contributing to CI, such as instruction and the affective filter.

III. MT is really much more powerful than Krashen's statement above would suggest, since an even more “essential ingredient” in MT is actually a language-specific innate endowment: Chomsky's Universal Grammar. It is this, not CI, which should make second language acquisition possible.