ELF – Engelsk läsförståelse (HPVAR2018P2)

In the following text there are gaps which indicate that something has been left out. Look at the four alternatives that correspond to each gap and decide which one best fits the gap. Then mark your choice on your answer sheet.

The Birth Order Effect

The order we’re born in – first, middle or youngest child – is outside our control. So it can make us uncomfortable to think that our birth order can play a significant part in our success, our personality – the direction of our life. Surely, these things are not set before we even get started?

And __1__, we all know a ‘typical middle child’ and we recognise ‘classic only-child behaviour’. And the over-achievement of the first-born is one of the most consistent findings in child psychology. So how big a role does birth order play?

The importance of birth order was first __2__ by the Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler. Michael Grose, an Adlerian-trained parenting expert, explains the basics. ‘We’re in a Darwinian struggle from the moment we’re born, fighting for scarce resources within a family – our parents’ time, love and affection,’ he says. Through human evolution, birth order has determined who inherits power (the first-born) and who is sent to war (the youngest as he was the ‘spare’). Grose admits, __3__, that the effects of birth order can vary according to different factors, including temperament, gender and age gap.

Historically, first-borns have been less likely to die in infancy, are less susceptible to disease and, as adults, more likely to reproduce. They are thought to be conscientious and achievement-oriented. A study of Norwegians born between 1912 and 1975 found that educational achievement was highest in first-borns and diminished the further down the birth order you got, despite little difference in IQ.

On the negative side, first-borns are the only ones who experience having their parents all to themselves, then having to share them. For this reason, they are thought to be anxious, emotionally intense, defensive and __4__ jealous rages. Another characteristic is caution and aversion to risk. Many theorists group only children amongst first-borns – __5__ they never experience the frictions, fights or fondness that comes with siblings.

Anna Moore, Psychologies Magazine

Globalisation

A review of 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann

Globalisation is commonly seen as a distinctly modern state of the world, resulting from air travel and free trade. In 1493, Charles Mann shows this is not so – we have been interconnected for a very long time indeed.

Our perception of a local and pristine bygone world is in fact an imagined version of the past. Trade and exchange have linked Europe and the Americas since Europeans first sailed beyond their shores. In this wonderfully entertaining and subtly balanced book, Mann traces some of these linkages, telling familiar stories mixed with fascinating new takes.

Plants are a familiar example of one such link. Of all the things that have moved with people around the world, food and drug plants top the list. We take our ideas of the world for granted – how could there be Chinese or Indian cooking without chilli peppers, or Irish stew without potatoes? But these plants came from the Americas, and relatively recently at that – post-1493!

Mann focuses on the chains forged by the Spanish galleon trade, largely because Spain was the first European country to have a truly global enterprise. People, plants and minerals all travelled around the world in a complex web, with fascinating cause and effect – from the collapse of the Chinese Qing dynasty to the Irish potato famine to the translocation of millions of African people to the Americas as part of the slave trade. One might quibble that other narratives of exploitation and trade are ignored, but this focus allows Mann to explore the ramifications of actions in a more detailed way.

Colonisation of the Americas has previously been contrasted by degree of exploitation – the English went to cultivate and the Spanish to extract. But Mann convincingly paints a picture of extraction by all European colonists, whether exhausting the land along the eastern seaboard of what is now the US by planting tobacco or by mining silver in the Bolivian Andes.

Mann also explores how the flood of silver from Bolivian mines into Europe not only caused financial volatility and ultimately the bankruptcy of the Spanish state, but also fuelled unrest in China. Using material from recently available archives, the story of China’s interactions with Europe enriches the narrative.

The complexities of interconnections are in essence the theme of the book, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the discussion of the iniquitous trade in humans, which completely changed our species. What makes this book compulsive reading is not the stance it takes, but instead the detailed humanity with which Mann tells the story, and the way in which he illustrates the paradoxical nature of the ecological effects linking the world. What our ancestors did had unexpected effects; what we do today will, too.

Sandra Knapp, New Scientist