SUMMARIZE WRITTEN TEXT
Read the passage below and summarize it using one sentence. You have 10 minutes to finish this task. Your response will be judged on the quality of your writing and on how well your response presents the key points in the passage.
Question 1
For those political analysts whose main interest remains class divisions in society the biggest split these days is that between those who control and work with informational technology (IT) and those we might still call blue-collar workers. The old divisions of class have become a lot more difficult to apply, if not completely outdated. There’s no escaping the enormous impact of information technology in the late 2Q1h and, even more, the early 2151 centuries, both economically and socially.
During the scientific revolution of the 17’h and 18’11 centuries, the spirit of experiment was in the air, and those involved were practical people working to practical ends – often on their own or with a small group of trusted friends. Secrecy was important as there was money to be made in new inventions. What interested them were results, not theories. Most modern technological advances, however, were developed as theories first, and then made reality by large teams of scientists and experts in the field. What we have now is that more and more of this type of expertise is being used to analyse and find solutions to all kinds of business and social problems, thus creating – in the eyes of the political analysts mentioned above – a whole large new economic and social class.
Question 2
The English have the reputation of being a nation of tea drinkers, but this wasn’t always the case. By the end of the l71h century, the English were the biggest coffee drinkers in the Western world, and coffee houses became the places to be seen. As well as gossip, you could pick up talk of the latest intellectual developments in science, politics, and so on, in this age of scientific discovery and progress. At first coffee houses were very basic; a room with a bar at one end and a few plain tables and chairs. Customers paid a penny for a bowl – not a cup – of coffee. A polite young woman was usually in charge of the bar because it was thought her presence would ensure that the customers didn’t use bad language or cause any trouble. An added attraction was that coffee houses provided free newspapers and journals.
But people didn’t go to the coffee houses just to drink coffee. They went to talk. They soon developed from simple cafes, where anyone with a penny could go for a drink and a chat, into clubs. People started to go to coffee houses where they would find other people who had the same jobs or who shared their interests and ideas, to talk and conduct business. The great popularity of coffee houses lasted about a hundred years. In the later 18th century, increased trade with other countries made such luxuries as coffee cheaper and more easily available to the ordinary person. As a result people started to drink it at home. Also at this time more tea was imported from abroad, and the century of the coffee house was replaced by the domestic tea-party as the typical English social occasion.
