Summarize Written Text

       Most Repeated Real Exam Summarize Written Text 

1.  Benefit of  Honey 

In order to have a competitive edge, athletes often use drugs with high athletic performance. The National Honey Board recently found that honey has the same functions but less negative impact. This clinical trial is the third in a series of studies focusing on the use of honey by athletes. The first study (involving 71 subjects) determined that honey has a milder effect on blood sugar than other popular forms of carbohydrate gel. The second study in the series (with 39 weight trained subjects) investigated the combination of honey with a protein supplement and suggested that honey speeds muscle recovery after a workout. 

2. Columbus 

When Christopher Columbus arrived at Hispaniola during his first transatlantic voyage in the year A.D. 1492, the island had already been settled by Native Americans for about 5,000 years. The occupants in Columbus’s time were a group of Arawak Indians called Tainos who lived by farming, were organized into five chiefdom's, and numbered around half a million (the estimates range from 100,000 to 2,000,000). Columbus initially found them peaceful and friendly, until he and his Spaniards began mistreating them. Unfortunately for the Tainos, they had gold, which the Spanish coveted but didn’t want to go to the work of mining themselves. Hence the conquerors divided up the island and its Indian population among individual Spaniards, who put the Indians to work as virtual slaves, accidentally infected them with Eurasian diseases, and murdered them. By the year 1519, 27 years after Columbus’s arrival, that original population of half a million had been reduced to about 11,000, most of whom died that year of smallpox to bring the population down to 3,000. 

3. Overqualified employees 

If your recruiting efforts attract job applicants with too much experience a near certainty in this weak labor market you should consider a response that runs counter to most hiring managers’ MO: Don’t reject those applicants out of hand. Instead, take a closer look. New research shows that overqualified workers tend to perform better than other employees, and they don’t quit any sooner. Furthermore, a simple managerial tactic empowerment can mitigate any dissatisfaction they may feel. The prejudice against too-good employees is pervasive. Companies tend to prefer an applicant who is a “perfect fit” over someone who brings more intelligence, education, or experience than needed. On the surface, this bias makes sense: Studies have consistently shown that employees who consider themselves overqualified exhibit higher levels of discontent. For example, over-qualification correlated well with job dissatisfaction in a 2008 study of 156 call-center reps by Israeli researchers Saul Fine and Baruch Nevo. And unlike discrimination based on age or gender, declining to hire overqualified workers is perfectly legal. But even before the economic downturn, a surplus of overqualified candidates was a global problem, particularly in developing economies, where rising education levels are giving workers more skills than are needed to supply the growing service sectors. If managers can get beyond the conventional wisdom, the growing pool of too-good applicants is a great opportunity. Berrin Erdogan and Talya N. Bauer of Portland State University in Oregon found that overqualified workers’ feelings of dissatisfaction can be dissipated by giving them autonomy in decision making. At stores where employees didn’t feel empowered, “overeducated” workers expressed greater dissatisfaction than their colleagues did and were more likely to state an intention to quit. But that difference vanished where self-reported autonomy was high.

 4. American English 

American English is, without doubt, the most influential and powerful variety of English in the world today. There are many reasons for this. First, the United States is, at present, the most powerful nation on earth and such power always brings with it influence. Indeed, the distinction between a dialect and a language has frequently been made by reference to power. As has been said, a language is a dialect with an army. Second, America’s political influence is extended through American popular culture, in particular through the international reach of American films (movies, of course) and music. As Kahane has pointed out, the internationally dominant position of a culture results in a forceful expansion of its language... the expansion of language contributes... to the prestige of the culture behind it. Third, the international prominence of American English is closely associated with the extraordinarily quick development of communications technology. Microsoft is owned by an American, Bill Gates. This means a computer’s default setting for language is American English, although of course this can be changed to suit one’s own circumstances. In short, the increased influence of American English is caused by political power and the resultant diffusion of American culture and media, technological advance, and the rapid development of communications technology. 

5. Vividness of TV and Newspaper 

To understand the final reason why the news marketplace of ideas dominated by television is so different from the one that emerged in the world dominated by the printing press, it is important to distinguish the quality of vividness experienced by television viewers from the “vividness” experienced by readers. I believe that the vividness experienced in the reading of words is automatically modulated by the constant activation of the reasoning centers of the brain that are used in the process of concerting the representation of reality the author has intended. By contrast, the visceral vividness portrayed on television has the capacity to trigger instinctual responses similar to those triggered by reality itself and without being modulated by logic, reason, and reflective thought. The simulation of reality accomplished in the television medium is so astonishingly vivid and compelling compared with the representations of reality conveyed by printed words that it signifies much more than an incremental change in the way people consume information. Books also convey compelling and vivid representations of reality, of course. But the reader actively participates in the conjuring of the reality the book’s author Is attempting to depict. Moreover, the parts of the human brain that are central to the reasoning process are continually activated by the very act of reading printed words: Words are composed of abstract symbols—letters—that have no intrinsic meaning themselves until they are strung together into recognizable sequences. 

6. Skipping breakfast 

Skipping breakfast seems a simple way of losing weight or saving time while getting the children ready for school or rushing off to work. But it can also be a sign of an unhealthy lifestyle with potentially dangerous consequences, including a higher risk of premature death. According to a study, adults and teenagers who miss the first meal of the day are less likely to look after their health. They tend to smoke more, drink more alcohol and take less exercise than those who do eat. Those who skip food in the morning are also more likely to be fatter and less well-educated, meaning they find it harder to get a job. Researcher Dr. Anna Keski-Rahkonen said: Smoking, infrequent exercise, a low level of education, frequent alcohol use and a high body mass index were all associated with skipping breakfast in adults and adolescents. Our findings suggest this association exists throughout adulthood. Individuals who skip breakfast may care less about their health than those who eat breakfast. Previously, experts assumed that missing breakfast often called the most important meal of the day was simply the marker of a hectic life or a way to try to lose weight. But Dr. Keski-Rahkonen, who led the study at Helsinki University, said the results revealed starting the day without food suggests an unhealthy lifestyle. 

7. Wine industry 

In 1920, the eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution created yet another setback for the American wine industry. The National Prohibition Act, also known as the Volstead Act, prohibited the manufacture, sale, transportation, importation, delivery, or possession of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes. Prohibition, which continued for thirteen years, nearly destroyed what had become a thriving and national industry. One of the loopholes in the Volstead Act allowed for the manufacture and sale of sacramental wine, medicinal wines for sale by pharmacists with a doctor’s prescription, and medicinal wine tonics (fortified wines) sold without prescription. Perhaps more important, prohibition allowed anyone to produce up to two hundred gallons yearly of fruit juice or cider. The fruit juice, which was sometimes made into concentrate, was ideal for making wine. People would buy grape concentrate from California and have it shipped to the East Coast. The top of the container was stamped in big bold letters: caution: do not add sugar or yeast or else fermentation will take place! Some of this yield found its way to bootleggers throughout America who did just that. But not for long, because the government stepped in and banned the sale of grape juice, preventing illegal wine production. Vineyards stopped being planted, and the American wine industry came to a halt. 

8. Beauty contest 

Since Australians Jennifer Hawkins and Lauryn Eagle were crowned Miss Universe and Miss Teen International respectively, there has been a dramatic increase in interest in beauty pageants in this country. These wins have also sparked a debate as to whether beauty pageants are just harmless reminders of old fashioned values or a throwback to the days when women were respected for how good they looked. Opponents argue that beauty pageants, whether Miss Universe or Miss Teen International, are demeaning to women and out of sync with the times. They say they are nothing more than symbols of decline. In the past few decades Australia has taken a real step toward treating women with dignity and respect. Young women are being brought up knowing that they can do anything, as shown by inspiring role models in medicine such as 2003 Australian of the Year Professor Fiona Stanley. Almost all of the pageant victors are wafer thin, reinforcing the message that thin equals beautiful. This ignores the fact that men and women come in all sizes and shapes. In a country where up to 60% of young women are on a diet at any one time and 70% of school girls say they want to lose weight, despite the fact that most have a normal BMI, such messages are profoundly hazardous to the mental health of young Australians.

Most Repeated Items. 

(PTE Student)