REWARDING CHILDREN
Cash rewards are a common form of _____________________ used by parents MOTIVATE
with high ____________________ to encourage their children to work hard EXPECT
at exam time. Some youngsters receive ___________________ of as much as PAY
£100 for each A grade they obtain at GCSE. But should such ‘bribes’ be based on
exam ________________________ or should they, as many parents and teachers PERFORM
feel, be offered in ______________________ of a child’s effort, regardless of
RECOGNIZE
results? The latter approach would solve the problem of how parents reward
children with different levels of ____________________; imagine, for example, ABLE
a family with one child who is ______________________ gifted and another who ACADEMIC
has learning ______________________. The dangers of result-related incentives DIFFICULT
for the second child are clear; with little hope of obtaining the higher grades, the
withholding of promised ________________________ rewards would only FINANCIAL
compound the child’s feeling of ___________________. However, some leading FAIL
educational psychologists believe that parents should rely on their own
______________________ in such matters. They maintain that if parents know JUDGE
that money will motivate their child, then they should not be condemned for operating
a system of cash payouts.
CAN YOU TRUST THE INTERNET?
Most would agree that the golden age of the library has well and _______________ TRUE
passed and that the internet has overtaken as provider of ____________________ GLOBE
information. At the same time, there is growing awareness and ________________ SUSPECT
that online articles which seem to be based on thorough research, evidence and
academic study, are not as ___________________ as they claim. Online, a writer FACT
has the kind of ____________________ powers that no ordinary journalist or author EDIT
would ever have, and the reader is forced to distinguish between what is actually
__________________ or what is mere opinion. And even sites which were once OBJECT
thought to be ____________________now suffer from attacks carried out by RELY
internet vandals intending to cause deliberate _____________________ with ACCURATE
statistics, or publish personal abuse against a well-known person, for example.
Another ____________________ issue is that of writers claiming to have academic
CONTROVERSY
backgrounds or ____________________ in an area when they do not. In 2007 EXPERT
online encyclopedia Wikipedia admitted that one of their editors, a professor of
religious studies who other editors believed to be entirely ____________________, TRUST
was actually a 24-year-old student called Ryan Jordan. Before he was unmasked,
Jordan had made over 20,000 alterations to the entries people had posted on the
encyclopedia.
AMNESIACS STRUGGLE TO IMAGINE FUTURE EVENTS
People with amnesia have difficulty imagining future events which any ____________ RICH
of detail and emotion, according to Eleanor Maguire at the Welcome Trust Centre for
Neuroimaging in London, UK. She studied five patients who suffered from classic
amnesia. The patients had all suffered ____________________ that had damaged a INFECT
brain region called the hippocampus. The damage left the subjects with no recollection
of past events, and all sorts of important and precious memories were ______________ FORTUNE
lost forever. Researchers asked the _____________________- and a control group
PARTICIPATE
without amnesia- to imagine several future scenarios, such as visiting a beach, and to
describe what the experience would be like. They then carried out an _____________ ANALYSE
of the subjects’ descriptions, scoring each statement based on whether it involved
references to ___________________ relationships, emotions or specific objects. SPACE
All but one of the amnesiacs were worse at ____________________ future events VISUAL
than those without amnesia. The way they saw future events was not as a ‘whole
image’ where all the images fitted together and made sense, but was more likely to be
___________________, meaning they just saw a collection of very separate images. ORGANIZE
And in _____________________ with their control counterparts, most amnesiacs said COMPARE
little about how they felt in the __________________ scenario. Although there is FICTION
some anecdotal evidence to suggest that amnesiacs have problems picturing
future events, Maguire is the first to study it _____________________. ‘The results SYSTEM
show that amnesia patients are really stuck in the present’, she says.
WHAT A PAIN!
We’ve all felt pain at some time or other, but what is its function and how can we
________________ it in our lives? MINIMUM
According to the International Association for the Study of Pain, the ______________ DEFINE
of pain is as follows: an unpleasant sensory and ________________ experience EMOTION
associated with actual or potential tissue damage.
Our understanding of pain is influenced by a ___________________ of factors VARY
including our ____________________ state, memories of past pains, and how
PSYCHOLOGY
our cultural __________________ affect our lives. Some people believe that BELIEVE
women should ___________________ have a much greater __________________ THEORY /
TOLERATE
for pain than men, since they are capable of giving birth, which can be intensely
painful. However, one study conducted at the University of Bath in the UK involving
men and women submerging their arms in iced water, actually discovered that the
women found the pain more _____________________ than the men did. BEAR
If the ____________________ of time in which a person suffers pain is greater than LONG
six months, this kind of pain is referred to as chronic, Acute pain does not usually
last as long and it generally ____________________ illness, injury or surgery. COMPANY
MOTHS COUNT!
Renowned conservationist Sir David Attenborough is launching a campaign today
called ‘Moths Count’, to halt the ____________________ declining number of DRASTIC
Britain’s native moths and improve their poor image. A report _________________ TITLE
‘The State of Britain’s Larger Moths’ revealed last year that in many urban and
southern areas, the moth population has almost ___________________ since 1968. HALF
And another alarming ____________________ of the long-term study showed that FIND
there has been a national decrease of up to 32% in 300 larger moth species. This
has led the charity 0Butterfly Conservation’, of which Sir David is president, to develop
a new strategy which will provide opportunities for real ____________________ to
ENTHUSIASM
broaden their ____________________ and also generate appreciation among the
wider public. Moths, he insists, play an essential role in the environment. Their
loss _____________________ the species of birds, bats and small mammals that THREAT
feed on them, and the plants they pollinate. ‘Moths Count’ campaigner Richard Fox
says ‘Currently there’s an image problem, partly because there’s a _______________ PERCEIVE
that moths are night creatures, although many are day-flying and only about half a
dozen of Britain’s 2,500 species damage clothes.’ Reasons for their decline include
climate change and loss of habitat linked to intensive farming. Although the
____________________ of moths has increased with the ____________________ DIVERSE /
ESTABLISH
of new species in Britain, overall their numbers have dropped, and for some,
extinction now seems sadly ____________________. AVOID
