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READING
READING
PASSAGE 1
You
should
spend
about
20
minutes
on
Questions
1-14
which
are
based
on Reading Passage 1 below.
Adults and children are frequently
confronted with statements
about
the
alarming
rat
of
loss
of
tropical
rainforests.
For
example,
one
graphic
illustration to
which
children
might
readily relate
is
the
estimate
that
rainforests
are
being
destroyed
at
a
rate
equivalent to one
thousand football fields every forty minutes
–
about
the
duration
of
a
normal
classroom
period.
In
the
face
of
the
frequent
and
often
vivid
media
coverage,
it
is
likely
that
children
will
have
formed
ideas
about
rainforests
–
what
and
where
they
are,
why
they are important, what endangers them
–
independent of any
formal tuition. It is also possible
that some of these ideas will
be
mistaken.
Many studies have
shown that children harbor misconceptions
about ‘pure’, curriculum science. These
misconceptions do not
remain isolated
but become incorporated into a multifaceted, but
organized,
conceptual
framework,
making
it
and
the
component
ideas,
some of which are erroneous, more
robust but also accessible to
modification. These ideas may be
developed by children absorbing
ideas
through
the
popular
media.
Sometimes
this information
may
be
erroneous.
It
seems
schools
may
not
be
providing
an
opportunity
for
children to re-express
their ideas and so have them tested and
refined by teachers and their peers.
Despite the extensive
coverage in the popular media of the
destruction
of
rainforests,
little
formal
information
is
available
about children’s ideas in this area,
the aim of the present study
is to
start to provide such information, to help
teachers design
their educational
strategies to build upon correct ideas and to
displace
misconceptions
and
to
plan
programs
in
environmental
studies in
their schools.
The
study
surveys
children’s
scientific
knowledge
and
attitudes to rainforests.
Secondary
school
children
were
asked
to
complete
a
questionnaire
containing
five
open-form
questions.
The
most
frequent
responses to the first question were descriptions
which
are
self-
evident
from
the
term
‘rainforest’.
Some
children
described them as
damp, wet or hot. The second question concerned
the geographical location of
rainforests. The commonest responses
were continents or countries: Africa
(given by 43% of children),
South
America (30%), Brazil (25%). Some children also
gave more
general locations, such as
being near the Equator.
Responses
to
question
three
concerned
the
importance
of
rainforests. The dominant idea, raised
by 64% of the pupils, was
that
rainforests
provide
animals
with
habitats.
Fewer
students
responded that
rainforests provide plant habitats, and even fewer
(60%) raised the idea of rainforest as
animal habitats.
Similarly,
but
at
a
lower
level,
more
girls
(13%)
than
boys
(5%)
said
that rainforests provided human habitats. These
observations
are
generally
consistent
with
our
previous
studied
of
pupils’
views
about the use and conservation of
rainforests, in which girls were
shown
to be more sympathetic to animals and expressed
views which
seem to place an intrinsic
value on non-human animal life.
The
fourth
question
concerned
the
causes
of
the
destruction
of
rainforests.
Perhaps
encouragingly,
more
than
half
of
the
pupil
(59%)
identified
that
it
is
human
activities
which
are
destroying
rainforests, some
personalizing the responsibility by the use of
terms
such
as
‘we
are’.
About
18%
of
the
pupils
referred
specifically to logging activity.
One misconception,
expressed by some 1) % of the pupils, was
that
acid
rain
is
responsible
for
rainforest
destruction;
a
similar
proportion said that
pollution is destroying rainforests. Here,
children are confusing rainforest
destruction with damage to the
forests
of
Western
Europe
by
these
factors.
While
two
fifths
of
the
students
provided
the
information
that
the
rainforests
provide
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