LCLT III YEAR SAMPLE PAPER - NEW EXAM FORMAT

Please note that  the new exam  format replaces Paper 2. Paper1, a series of passages in Italian to  put into English, remains the same.

Communications
1.
If a language is a truly international medium, it is going to be most apparent in those services which deal directly with the task of communication – the postal and telephone systems and the electronic networks. Information about the use of English in these domains is not easy to come by, however. No one monitors the language in which we write our letters; there is no one noting the language we use when we talk on the phone. Only on the Internet, where messages and data can be left for indefinite periods of time, is it possible to develop an idea of how much of the world’s everyday communications (at least, between computer-owners) is actually in English.
2.
There are various indirect methods of calculation, of course. We can draw up a list of those countries where English has special status, and look at the pieces of mail sent, or the number of telephone calls made. Data of this kind are available, though hedged in with many qualifications. For example, using the information compiled in the 2002 Britannica Yearbook, it transpires that about 63 per cent of the world’s mail in 2001 was being handled by English-status countries. However, information is not available for thirty-two countries, and those countries which have provided totals arrived at them in a variety of ways.
3.
One fact is plain: the amount of mail sent through just the US postal system that year (some 197 thousand million pieces) was larger than the total for all the non-English-speaking countries put together. Indeed, if the USA is matched against all other countries, it accounts for nearly half of the world’s volume of postal traffic. Even if we assume that the proportion of the US population which speaks other languages (about 15 per cent) never writes in English, we must still conclude that 40 per cent of the world’s mail is in English, from the USA alone.
4.
A widely quoted statistic is that three-quarters of the world’s mail is in English. It is certainly possible to arrive at this figure if we make guesses about the number of people in different countries who are involved in organizations which use English as an official language, or which rely on English for correspondence. When scientists from any country write to each other, for example, the language they use is almost always going to be English. The figures for international mail are likely to reflect those for international associations cited above, where again English is widespread. But there are no precise calculations.
5.
Another widely quoted statistic is that about 80 per cent of the world’s electronically stored information is currently in English. Figures of this kind relate to two kinds of data: information stored privately by individual firms and organizations, such as commercial businesses, libraries and security forces; and information made available through the Internet, whether for sending and receiving electronic mail, participating in discussion groups, or providing and accessing databases and data pages. Statistics of this kind have to be cautiously interpreted. They seem to be little more than extrapolations from computer sales and distribution patterns – and thus simply reflect the pioneering role of the USA in developing and marketing computational hardware and software. In particular, given the American origins of the Internet (as ARPANET, the Advanced Research Projects Agency network devised in the late 1960s), it is not surprising that most Internet hosts – 64 per cent, according to a Business Week survey – are to be found in the USA. A further 12.7 per cent were thought to be in other English-speaking countries. But there is no easy way of predicting the language of Internet users or documents from the location of their hosts.
6.
It is important for the theme of this book to see how English came to have such a dominant position on the Internet. ARPANET was conceived as a decentralized national network, its aim being to link important American academic and government institutions in a way which would survive local damage in the event of a major war. Its language was, accordingly, English; and when people in other countries began to form links with this network, it proved essential for them to use English. The dominance of this language was then reinforced when the service was opened up in the 1980s to private and commercial organizations, most of which were already communicating chiefly in English.
©David Crystal, English as a global language
LT3 June 2017 PAPER 2
COGNOME:------------------------NOME:------------------------------- N° MATRIC.:------------------------
Lingue/Mediazione (cerchiare)
Prof. esame orale:
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Crediti -------------------------------
Laureanda: SI/NO
Paper 2: INSTRUCTIONS:
● You have 120 minutes to complete this exam
● Please spend 50 minutes on questions 1-2 and 60 minutes on question 3
● Allow 10 minutes at the end to proof read your work
● No use of dictionaries allowed
● No speaking allowed.
1.Read the text and answer these questions in your own words:
a) Why is it difficult to establish how much English is used worldwide according to the writer?
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b) Which country probably produces the most mail in English and why?
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c) Why is it not reliable to calculate English output based on internet usage?
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d) What was the purpose of ARPANET?
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2. Find the synonyms for these words in the text. The paragraph is provided to guide you.
i) ‘find’ (para.1)
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ii) ‘accept’ (para.2)
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iii) ‘general’ (para.4)
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iv) ‘created’ (para.5)
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v) ‘therefore’ (para.6)
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3. Write a summary of approximately 120-150 words of the article in your own words on the paper provided.
Comprehension
1
2
3
4
5
Lexis
1
2
3
4
5
UoE
1
2
3
4
5
Complexity
1
2
3
4
5
Discourse
1
2
3
4
5
Task achievement
1
2
3
4
5
TOTAL
NOTES