2 Food production in developed countries is expanding much more rapidly than in developing countries.. 3 Developed countries produce more food than developing countries.. A There is more
Trang 11 Reading tasks
Responding to opinions
Task 1
Discuss these questions in small groups
1 Do you think the world is becoming over-populated?
2 Why is the worid’s population increasing?
3 What is the best way to ensure that every person in the world has
enough to eat?
The food crisis
Task 2
In your groups look at the cartoon below It shows two different
points of view about the food crisis
Briefly summanze the two points of view
Discuss which point of view you agree with and why
WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM?
TO INTERFERE WORLD'S RESOURCES BUT Po You CAN'T SUPPORT AN
POPULATION |S
GOING To INCREASE
BY NEARLY 50%
IN TWENTY YEARS? oe
| GOING To DO 2 `
ABOUT IT? =
een —————
= \
I SEE SoIT'S A PROBLEM OF
RESOURCES AS WELL AS PEOPLE ?
SO THE ANSWER \S
RESOURCE CONTROL
AS WELL AS BIRTH CONTROL?
WELL THEN, I DON'T WANT To INTERFERE
BUT Do You REALIZE THAT THE RICH [0% |
OF THE WORLD CONSUME , ;—-
ABOUT 90% OF THE SSS
RESOURCES ? =
WHAT ARE You GOING
\ TODO ABOUT THAT ?
Trang 2
Task 3 Explain what is meant by the terms ‘developed countries’ and
‘developing countries’ Give examples of both
Study the graph below carefully
Population
Food production —— - -
up 49%
up 42%
Food production -
up 39%
Population
up 15%
Where might you expect to find such a graph?
Think of a heading for the graph
Use the information in the graph to decide whether the following statements are true, false or mpossible to tell
1 ‘The population in developed countries 1s increasing more slowly than in developing countnies
2 Food production in developed countries is expanding much more rapidly than in developing countries
3 Developed countries produce more food than developing countries
A There is more food per person available in developed countries than in developing countries
5 In developing countries food production just about keeps up with population growth
6 People are starving in developing countries
The graph was designed to lustrate ‘the food crisis’ Explain what this crisis 1S in your own words
What arguments about dealing with the food crisis could the information in the graph be used to support?
Trang 3Unit 9 65
Task 4
The following are words taken from the passage in Task 5
CriS1S
tragedy
dtsaster
famine
catastrophe
What do the meanings of these words have in common?
What view do you think the writer of the passage takes about the
population increase?
Task 5
Read the passage The real crisis behind the ‘food crisis’ below
List the main arguments used by the writer, and decide to what
extent you agree with these arguments
The real crisis behind the ‘food crisis’
The world as we know it will likely be ruined before the year 2,000 and
the reason for this will be its inhabitants’ failure to comprehend two facts
These facts are:
1 World food production cannot keep pace with the galloping
growth of population
2 Family planning cannot and will not, in the foreseeable future,
check this runaway growth
The momentum toward tragedy is at this moment so great that there is
probably no way of halting it The only hopeful possibility is to reduce the
dimensions of the coming disaster
We are being misled by those who say there is a Serious food shortage
This is not true; world food production this decade is the greatest in
history The problem is too many people The food shortage is simply
evidence of the problem
It makes no difference whatever how much food the world
produces if it produces people faster
Some nations are now on the brink of famine because their populations
have grown beyond the carrying capacity of their lands Population
growth has pushed the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America onto
lands which are only marginally suitable for agriculture No amount of
Scientific wizardry or improved weather will change this situation
For a quarter of a century the United States has been generous with its
food surpluses, now vanished We have given at least 80 billion dollars
worth of food and development aid since World War Il The result? Today,
the developing world is less able to feed itself than it was before the
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massive US aid program began A generation ago, the population of poor countries was increasing by 16 million a year; now it increases by 67 million each year and the imbalance grows
Furthermore, our past generosity has encouraged a do-nothing policy in the governments of some developing nations At the 1974 United Nations meetings in Bucharest and Rome, spokesmen for these nations asserted, incredibly that they had no population problem They defended the twin policy statements:
1 The hungry nations have the rightto produce as many children as they please
2 Others have the responsibility to feed them
We believe that these statements are irresponsible and indefensible Any nation that asserts the right to produce more babies must also assume the responsibility for taking care of them
Some speak optimistically of progress within the hungry nations, as evidenced by the modest acceptance of family planning programs in many countries ‘Family planning will succeed’, they tell us But how is this possible? Family planning advocates, to gain acceptance, insist that parents everywhere may have as many children as they desire If the number of children wanted had always been two (on the average} we would not now have a population problem The crisis exists because parents want more than two children
In Moslem countries, for example, the desired number of progeny per couple is ‘as many as God will send’ This turns out, on the average, to be seven
The country which has spent the most money on family planning over the longest period of time (India, 24 years} has accomplished virtually nothing Its population in 1951 grew by 3.6 million Now it grows 16.2 million each year Mexico adopted family planning only three years ago and the birth rate there has abruptly risen
Yet many people insist that it is our moral obligation not only to continue but to increase our aid, totally overlooking the fact that it is impossible from a practical standpoint Eighty per cent of the world’s grain is not grown in the United States All that we can sell or give away amounts to only 6% of the world’s production and less than three years’ population increase alone would consume this
There can be no moral obligation to do the impossible
No one really likes triage — the selection of those nations most likely to survive and the concentration of our available food aid on them The question can only arise if we should reach the point where the world population outruns food resources When such a situation arises, some people will die no matter what the disposition of the inadequate food supply will be In that event, some hard decisions will have to be made
Trang 5Unit 9
At some point, we in the United States are going to find that we
cannot provide for the world any more than we can police it
In summary, our position is this: The sovereign right of each nation to
control its own reproduction creates the reciprocal responsibility to care
for its own people The US can help and will — to the limits of our
available resources
The belief that the crisis results from a ‘shortage’ of food leads to
disaster Attempting to deal with this by producing and distributing more
food, while doing nothing about population 's incubating disaster
We must not permit our aid to underwrite the failure of some nations to
take care of their own When aid-dependent nations understand that
there are limits to our food resources, there is hope that they will tackle
their population problems in earnest
We owe it to posterity -— ours and that of the rest of the world — to
promote policies that lead to solutions instead of catastrophe
This statement has been endorsed by
Isaac Asimov
Assaciate Professor of Biochemistry
Boston University
School of Medicine
William S Bernard
Chairman, Committee on Integration
American imnugration and
Citizenship Conference
Justin Blackwelder
President
The Environmental Fund
Zbigniew Brzezinsky
Director
The Trilateral Commission
lvan Chermayeff
Partner Chermayeff and Geisman
New York, New York
C W Cook
Chairman, Executive Committee
General Foods Corporation
Robert C Cook
Former President
Population Reference Bureau
Malcolm Cowley
American Academy of
Arts and Letters
James E Davis
Chairman,
Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc
Edward J Dwyer
Chairman ESB incorporated
Paul R Ehrlich
Professor of Biology
tanford University
Robert S Elegant
Author, Journalist
Clifton Fadiman Writer, Board of Editors
Encyclopedia 8ntannica
Eari W Foell
Managing Editor
Boston, Massachusetts Emerson Foote Former Pres:dent McCann Erickson, Inc
J Paul Getty
Guildford, Surrey
England Harry D Gideonse Chancellor
The New School
for Sccial Research
R Burt Gookin Vice Chairman and CEO
H J Heinz Company Garrett Hardin Professor of Human Ecology University of California Philip M Hauser Director Population Research Center University of Chicago
RL Hennebach President, ASARCC
Sidney Hook Professor Emeritus of Piosophy New York University Milton R Konvitz
Professor of Law Industrial and Labor Re:ations
Cornell University Henry Luce Il!
Vice President, Time Inc
Archibald Macleish Poet
Conway, Massachusetts Kenneth Monfort President Montfert of Colorado
Franklin O Murphy Chairman Times—Mirror Company
F Taylor Ostrander
Assistant to ihe Chairman AMAX Inc
William C Paddock Plant Pathologist and Consultant
in Tropicai Agricuiture
WR Persons
Chairman, Executive Committee Emerson Electric
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William G Phillips Chairman International Multifoods Corp
Adolph W Schmidt
Former President
The A W Mellon Educational
and Charitable Trust
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
MD, PhD, Prix Nobei
Edward L Tatum
Professor Rockefeller University Heath Wakelee Vice President
Ampex Corporation
Byron H Waksman Professor of Pathology
Yale University
DeWitt Wallace Publisher, Ret
Reader's Digest
E P Wigner Princeton University
Leonard Woodcock President In:ernational Union, UAW
Trang 6Task 6
1 What ts the best description of this text?
a
LÌ A reasoned case for improving birth control in developing countries
A plea for more help for developing countries
A plain statement of the facts about the food crisis
An impassioned argument in favour of population control in developing countries
2 Whodo you think wrote this text?
3 Is the text
an article in a magazine?
an advertisement?
an editorial in a newspaper?
a letter to a newspaper?
Find examples in the text of sentences in bold print and words in italics Explain why these are printed in this way
œ1 What is meant by “This statement has been endorsed by’?
Why is this endorsement included?
Why is the affiliation of each person in the list included?
Task 7 Use the list of arguments you prepared in Task 5 to decide whether each of the statements below is frue according to the passage
1
2
3
_ ©
There is a serious shortage of food in the world today The world’s population is growing more rapidly than food production
Every country has the ability to feed its people if it improves its agriculture
The best way to control the growth in population 1s through family planning
One of the main causes of over-population in the developing world has been free food-handouts from the USA
Every nation has the right to produce as many children as its people want
It is the responsibility of richer nations to help feed poorer nations
The main solution to the problem of over-population is to produce more food
It is inevitable that people will die as a result of insufficient food for the size of population
The United States should select those nations most likely to survive and concentrate food aid on them
Trang 7Unit 9 69
L ] 11 Developing countries must be made to tackle their
population problems by the United States refusing to give
them food aid
Check your answers by reading through the passage a second time
You may find that some of the statements are partly true according to
the passage Rewrite these to give an accurate account of the
writer's Views
Go through the statements again This time decide whether they are
true or false according to your own opinion
Write out statements to reflect any additional opinions you have
about solving the food crisis
Task 8
The writer argues that developing countries have to cut back on their
population growth, but he also gives examples of where their
attempts to do so through family planning have failed
What suggestions does the writer make about how population growth
can be restricted?
Do you have any ideas about how to reduce the population growth?
Task 9
What difficulties, if any, did you have when you read through the
passage in Task 5?
How did you try to deal with these difficulties?
Form a group, and compare your reading difficulties and solutions
with those of other people in the group Make a note of any solutions
to reading problems that you would like to try for yourself tn the
future
2 Skills training
Recognizing counter arguments
Task 1
Read this account of how to recognize counter arguments
One way that a writer can develop an argument is by putting forward an
opinion that they don't support, and then dismissing this opinion They
can then go on to put forward their own opinion Here is an example
from The real crisis behind the ‘food crisis’:
‘We are being misled by those who Say there is a serious food
shortage This is not true; world food production this decade is the
greatest in history The problem is too many people.’
Trang 8The writer develops the argument like this:
Le food crisis
argument argument
¬— _
“a
> correction -~
First, they put forward one possible cause of the food crisis, namely that there is a food shortage They then correct this by saying that there is no food shortage Finally, they give what they consider the real cause, too many people
This writer signals to the reader that the first argument is a false one by beginning:
‘We are being misled ' and then by telling us directly that it’s false:
‘This is not true ’
However, not all ‘false arguments’ are signalled so clearly
These are some of the ways that writers signal a ‘false argument’
It is often said that
Some people claim that
One commonly held view is that
We are constantly being told that
You will hear it said that
Task 2 Here are some ‘corrections’ of statements made in The real crisis behind the ‘food crisis’ Find the statements in the passage that are being corrected
1 Every year the world produces more than enough food to give every person on Earth the same calorie intake as the average European or North American In addition, it is estimated that only half of the world’s potential agricultural land is now being cultivated
2 Population growth is not running away There is already evidence to show that the rate of world population growth is beginning to slow down
3 Because enough food is now being grown to feed everyone in the world adequately and because much more food could be grown with existing land and technology, the problem of food shortages cannot simply be put down to ‘too many people’
4 tis true that millions of people are now cultivating marginal lands such as desert fringes, but it is not true to say that they have been pushed there by pressures of increasing population
5 The United States has provided large amounts of food as aid, but it did so in order to dispose of its surplus grain and most of the food did not go to nations hard hit by hunger
Trang 9Unit 9 71
6 It is inevitable that poor people will seek to have large numbers of
children, as children are the only security in periods of
unemployment, illness and old age, and children can help out with
the hard work that needs to be done
7 India’s family planning programme has not been a failure It has
succeeded in slowing down the rate of population growth there
8 The United States has 5% of the world’s population and consumes
more than 30% of the world’s resources The real question is whether
the world can continue to produce for the United States
Task 3
For each of the statements below
e decide whether the writer 1s in favour or against the argument
e carry on the arguments by adding a ‘correction’ and a ‘counter
argument’
1 Opponents of corporal punishment will tell you that using violence
only encourages a child to accept violence as a legitimate response
to a problem
2 It is often argued that physical pain Is a language that children
understand, and that corporal punishment is therefore an effective
deterrent against bad behaviour
3 We often hear it argued these days that women should dress for
themselves not for men
4 Weare constantly being told that eating fatty, red meat is bad for our
health
5 Some people claim that children suffer when their mothers go out to
work
Task 4
Choose one of the topics below and develop an argument consisting
of:
e a ‘false argument’
e a correction
e a counter argument
National service
Immigration
Ban on cigarette advertising
Violence in television programmes
Football hooliganism
Trang 10
The Great
Gatsby
Understanding characterization 1n a novel Task 1
Below is a list of some of the different types of characters found in novels
tragic comic tragicomic legendary realistic fantastic three-dimensional one-dimensional heroic
everyday Give a brief description of each type Use a dictionary if you need to Try to give an example of each type of character from books you have read
Make a list of any other character types you can think of
Task 2 Read the ‘blurb’ below for The Great Gatsby, by F Scott Fitzgerald What kind of character do you think Gatsby is?
No one ever rightly knew who Gatsby was Some said that he had been a German spy, others that he was related to one of Europe's royal families Despite this, nearly everyone took advantage of his fabulous hospitality And it really was fabulous On his superb Long Island home he gave the most amazing parties, and not the least remarkable thing about them was the fact that few people could recognize their host
He seemed to be a person without background, without history, without
a home Yet the irony of this bright and brittle facade was that he had created it not to impress the world and his wife, but to impress just one person — a girl he had loved and had had to leave; a girl who had loved him but was now married to a rich, good-for-nothing; a girl whom he had dreamed about for over four years
Task 3 Answer the following questions according to the information given in the ‘blurb’ above