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Level: advancedReadingHere we have an entertaining passage about sheep. The point of the exercise is first of all to practise doing the kind of reading comprehension questions that you often come across in exams. Read the passage silently to yourself and then attempt the seven comprehension questions that follow. A farmer who buys a ram may have to pay as much as $500. For that kind of money he will expect to obtain a sheep with an appetite for sex. However, farmers know that when they make this expensive purchase there is always a risk involved - a risk that when the ram is finally released in the farmer's field it will ignore the hundreds of ewes and only have eyes for the other rams. If the sheep turns out to be gay, it's money down the drain for the farmer. Partly because of the cost to farmers, the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station in Idaho decided to start a research programme into the sexual preference of rams. To begin with, randomly chosen specimens were taken into an arena and given four choices: two ewes in heat and two rams. The four stimulus animals are restrained in stanchions so that they can only be approached from the rear. For 30 minutes, the unrestrained ram does as he pleases while the scientists count how many times he sniffs and mounts each of the four animals. According to the results, 8% of rams have no hesitation in rejecting the ewes and mating with other rams. In addition to the unhesitatingly homosexual rams, there is another 20% who swing both ways. Once they had calculated the size of the problem the researchers turned their attention to trying to account for it. After reviewing other peoples research and conducting their own, this is the conclusion they drew: "Studies have failed to identify any compelling social factors that can predict or explain the variations in sexual partner preferences of rams. However, a number of studies have reported differences in brain structure and function between male-oriented and female-oriented rams, suggesting that sexual partner preferences are neurologically determined. Recently, we identified a sexually dimorphic nucleus (oSDN) in the sheep hypothalamus. The oSDN is larger in female-oriented rams than in male-oriented rams and similar in size in male-oriented rams and ewes." Armed with a few hypotheses about the determinants of sexual preference the researchers were in a position to design experiments to try to manipulate the sexual inclination of the rams. Charles Roselli designed an experiment to determine whether male-oriented preference behaviour can be artificially produced in genetic male sheep by depriving male lamb foetuses of estrogen. In the end this line of research proved to be fruitless, so the scientists turned their attention to developing a test to identify young rams whose preference for males would make them useless for breeding purposes. An organisation called People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has been vociferous in objecting to this line of research. According to PETA it is natural for a certain percentage of animals to exhibit a same-sex preference and our ethical obligation should be to respect that. They are outraged that scientists may be developing ways to eradicate animal homosexuality. Questions
Language extraA. Use the words in bold to transform the following sentences. Do not change the form of the word. You should find the word in the passage if you need to remind yourself how to use it.
B. Use the passage and a good monolingual dictionary to make sure you know how to use these words and phrases, then use your vivid imaginations to come up with your own interesting example sentences. Write them down in your notebooks before sharing them with the rest of the class. turn out Another hot worksheet from www.fullspate.net |
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