READING
Exam Practice
Use of English
Read the following texts on ageing. For questions 1-4 answered with a word or short phrase.
You do not need to write complete sentences
Every revolution has a turning point - a time when the original impetus for change has run its course. History shows that this is often a vulnerable time. Opinion on where to go next is sharply divided. Indecision prevails at precisely the moment when decisive action is most essential. The longevity revolution is no exception. We know where we've come from and why, but we don't have a clear plan of where to go now. Ours has been a revolution from - from the terrible waste of life caused by premature death - not a revolution to. We are at our turning point now. The decisions we take in the next few years will have far-reaching consequences for the state of future society.
Two hundred years ago most people died before their time. Well, we fixed that. Rarely has a revolution succeeded so well. What we now experience are the deaths associated with old age, with degenerative conditions. Much of modern medicine is concerned with fighting these, pushing back the frontiers of survival further and further. But suddenly we are not so sure about where we are going and why. Many are the news stories trumpeting that we will soon all live to 130, 200 or 400 years, but what about New Yorker cartoon that showed one old man saying to another "I hope I die before science makes me live to 150."
The ambivalence of our attitudes reflects the confusion of rapid change. Not long ago the attainment of old age was hailed as a success. Ageing today is widely seen as a failure, unless you are as extremely old as Jeanne Calment. I remember being deeply struck by a remark from a former medical colleague whose research was on heart disease: "There is nothing interesting about the ageing of the cardiovascular system," he exclaimed, "it just rots!" What, I wondered, did he feel was the point of his work. What for that matter is the point of mine?
1.Why according to the writer is the “vulnerable time” ( Line 2) of particular significance?
Because it talks about the History and in some point the time was vulnerable and that’s why thing happened.
2.What is meant in the context by the phrase “ The ambivalence of our attitudes” in line 17 ?
It means the way we made things how our attitudes are not always right.
B
Ageing is a physical phenomenon happening to our bodies, so at some point in the future, as medicine becomes more and more powerful, we will inevitably be able to address ageing just as effectively as we address many diseases today. I claim that we are close to that point because of the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) project to prevent and cure ageing. It is not just an idea: it's a very detailed plan to repair all the types of molecular and cellular damage that happen to us over time. And each method to do this is either already working in a preliminary form (in clinical trials) or is based on technologies that already exist and just need to be combined. This means that all parts of the project should be fully working in mice within just 10 years and we might take only another 10 years to get them all working in humans.
When we get these therapies, we will no longer all get frail and decrepit and dependent as we get older, and eventually succumb to the innumerable ghastly progressive diseases of old age. We will still die, of course - from crossing the road carelessly, being bitten by snakes, catching a new flu variant etcetera - but not in the drawn-out way in which most of us die at present.
So, will this happen in time for some people alive today? Probably. Since these therapies repair accumulated damage, they are applicable to people in middle age or older who have a fair amount of that damage. I think the first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already.
1. Which word in the paragraph coveys the writer’s certainty that ageing will be cured?Drawn-out in paragraph one.
2. What opinion does the writer’s use of “ghastly in line 12 convey?
He want to explain how horrible progressive diseases of old age are.
Use of English
Read the following texts on ageing. For questions 1-4 answered with a word or short phrase.
You do not need to write complete sentences
Every revolution has a turning point - a time when the original impetus for change has run its course. History shows that this is often a vulnerable time. Opinion on where to go next is sharply divided. Indecision prevails at precisely the moment when decisive action is most essential. The longevity revolution is no exception. We know where we've come from and why, but we don't have a clear plan of where to go now. Ours has been a revolution from - from the terrible waste of life caused by premature death - not a revolution to. We are at our turning point now. The decisions we take in the next few years will have far-reaching consequences for the state of future society.
Two hundred years ago most people died before their time. Well, we fixed that. Rarely has a revolution succeeded so well. What we now experience are the deaths associated with old age, with degenerative conditions. Much of modern medicine is concerned with fighting these, pushing back the frontiers of survival further and further. But suddenly we are not so sure about where we are going and why. Many are the news stories trumpeting that we will soon all live to 130, 200 or 400 years, but what about New Yorker cartoon that showed one old man saying to another "I hope I die before science makes me live to 150."
The ambivalence of our attitudes reflects the confusion of rapid change. Not long ago the attainment of old age was hailed as a success. Ageing today is widely seen as a failure, unless you are as extremely old as Jeanne Calment. I remember being deeply struck by a remark from a former medical colleague whose research was on heart disease: "There is nothing interesting about the ageing of the cardiovascular system," he exclaimed, "it just rots!" What, I wondered, did he feel was the point of his work. What for that matter is the point of mine?
1.Why according to the writer is the “vulnerable time” ( Line 2) of particular significance?
Because it talks about the History and in some point the time was vulnerable and that’s why thing happened.
2.What is meant in the context by the phrase “ The ambivalence of our attitudes” in line 17 ?
It means the way we made things how our attitudes are not always right.
B
Ageing is a physical phenomenon happening to our bodies, so at some point in the future, as medicine becomes more and more powerful, we will inevitably be able to address ageing just as effectively as we address many diseases today. I claim that we are close to that point because of the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) project to prevent and cure ageing. It is not just an idea: it's a very detailed plan to repair all the types of molecular and cellular damage that happen to us over time. And each method to do this is either already working in a preliminary form (in clinical trials) or is based on technologies that already exist and just need to be combined. This means that all parts of the project should be fully working in mice within just 10 years and we might take only another 10 years to get them all working in humans.
When we get these therapies, we will no longer all get frail and decrepit and dependent as we get older, and eventually succumb to the innumerable ghastly progressive diseases of old age. We will still die, of course - from crossing the road carelessly, being bitten by snakes, catching a new flu variant etcetera - but not in the drawn-out way in which most of us die at present.
So, will this happen in time for some people alive today? Probably. Since these therapies repair accumulated damage, they are applicable to people in middle age or older who have a fair amount of that damage. I think the first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already.
1. Which word in the paragraph coveys the writer’s certainty that ageing will be cured?Drawn-out in paragraph one.
2. What opinion does the writer’s use of “ghastly in line 12 convey?
He want to explain how horrible progressive diseases of old age are.