Equality and the Future — Test Answers

What is the most ethical course of action the reporter could take?

Which statements best describe this advertisement? Choose three correct answers.

Read the excerpt from act 3 of A Doll’s House. Nora: In all these eight years—longer than that—from the very beginning of our acquaintance, we have never exchanged a word on any serious subject. Helmer: Was it likely that I would be continually and forever telling you about worries that you could not help me to bear? Nora: I am not speaking about business matters. I say that we have never sat down in earnest together to try and get at the bottom of anything. Helmer: But, dearest Nora, would it have been any good to you? Nora: That is just it; you have never understood me. I have been greatly wronged, Torvald—first by papa and then by you. How does the conflict in the text best connect to the views of society in the late 1800s?

How should this excerpt be edited to make it more objective?

Read the excerpt from act 2 of A Doll’s House. Nurse: Oh well, young children easily get accustomed to anything. Nora: Do you think so? Do you think they would forget their mother if she went away altogether? Nurse: Good heavens!—went away altogether? Nora: Nurse, I want you to tell me something I have often wondered about—how could you have the heart to put your own child out among strangers? Nurse: I was obliged to, if I wanted to be little Nora's Nurse. Nora: Yes, but how could you be willing to do it? Nurse: What, when I was going to get such a good place by it? A poor girl who has got into trouble should be glad to. Besides, that wicked man didn't do a single thing for me. What evidence from the text best supports the theme that society can put mothers in impossible situations?

Read the passage from A Room of One’s Own . She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother's perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew and not moon about with books and papers . They would have spoken sharply but kindly, for they were substantial people who knew the conditions of life for a woman and loved their daughter. Which rhetorical devices are used in the underlined portion of this text? Choose two correct answers.

Read the passage from A Room of One’s Own . Publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it, as Alf, Bert or Chas. must do in obedience to their instinct, which murmurs if it sees a fine woman go by, or even a dog, Ce chien est a moi. And, of course, it may not be a dog, I thought, remembering Parliament Square, the Sieges Allee and other avenues; it may be a piece of land or a man with curly black hair. What text structure is used in this passage?

Read the passage from A Room of One’s Own . And one gathers from this enormous modern literature of confession and self-analysis that to write a work of genius is almost always a feat of prodigious difficulty. Everything is against the likelihood that it will come from the writer's mind whole and entire. Generally material circumstances are against it. Dogs will bark; people will interrupt; money must be made; health will break down . What is the purpose of the rhetorical device used in the underlined sentence?

Which headline best matches the subject and language of the article?

How do these two advertisements demonstrate that public service campaigns have changed over time?

Read the excerpt from act 2 of A Doll's House . Nora: How should you understand it? A wonderful thing is going to happen! Mrs. Linde: A wonderful thing? Nora: Yes, a wonderful thing! But it is so terrible, Christine; it mustn't happen, not for all the world. Mrs. Linde: I will go at once and see Krogstad. Nora: Don't go to him; he will do you some harm. Mrs. Linde: There was a time when he would gladly do anything for my sake. Nora: He? Mrs. Linde: Where does he live? What evidence from the text supports the prediction that Mrs. Linde will get back together with Krogstad?

How are these ads similar?

Read the passage from A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen. Helmer: To desert your home, your husband and your children! And you don't consider what people will say! Nora: I cannot consider that at all. I only know that it is necessary for me. Helmer: It's shocking. This is how you would neglect your most sacred duties. Read the passage from A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. That refuge she would have sought certainly. It was the relic of the sense of chastity that dictated anonymity to women even so late as the nineteenth century. Currer Bell, George Eliot, George Sand, all the victims of inner strife as their writings prove, sought ineffectively to veil themselves by using the name of a man. Thus they did homage to the convention, which if not implanted by the other sex was liberally encouraged by them (the chief glory of a woman is not to be talked of, said Pericles, himself a much-talked-of man), that publicity in women is detestable. What literary elements do the authors use to support and develop the central idea of women's autonomy?

The author is thinking of adding one of these sentences to the end of the passage. Which sentence contains a fallacy?

Read the passage from A Doll’s House . Helmer: [calls out from his room]. Is that my little lark twittering out there? Nora: [busy opening some of the parcels]. Yes, it is! Helmer: Is it my little squirrel bustling about? Nora: Yes! Helmer: When did my squirrel come home? Nora: Just now. [Puts the bag of macaroons into her pocket and wipes her mouth.] Come in here, Torvald, and see what I have bought. Helmer: Don't disturb me. [A little later, he opens the door and looks into the room, pen in hand.] Bought, did you say? All these things? Has my little spendthrift been wasting money again? Nora: Yes but, Torvald, this year we really can let ourselves go a little. This is the first Christmas that we have not needed to economize. How do the stage directions in brackets affect the meaning of the text?

Read the excerpt from act 1 of A Doll's House . Helmer: Nora! [Goes up to her and takes her playfully by the ear.] The same little featherhead! Suppose, now, that I borrowed fifty pounds today, and you spent it all in the Christmas week, and then on New Year's Eve a slate fell on my head and killed me, and— Nora: [putting her hands over his mouth]. Oh! don't say such horrid things. Helmer: Still, suppose that happened, —what then? Nora: If that were to happen, I don't suppose I should care whether I owed money or not. Helmer: Yes, but what about the people who had lent it? Nora: They? Who would bother about them? I should not know who they were. Helmer: That is like a woman! But seriously, Nora, you know what I think about that. No debt, no borrowing. There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt. We two have kept bravely on the straight road so far, and we will go on the same way for the short time longer that there need be any struggle. Nora: [moving towards the stove]. As you please, Torvald. How does the interaction between Helmer and Nora advance the plot?

Read the excerpt from act 3 of A Doll's House . Mrs. Linde: We have a great deal to talk about. Krogstad: I shouldn't have thought so. Mrs. Linde: No, you have never properly understood me. Krogstad: Was there anything else to understand except what was obvious to all the world—a heartless woman jilts a man when a more lucrative chance turns up? Mrs. Linde: Do you believe I am as absolutely heartless as all that? And do you believe that I did it with a light heart? Krogstad: Didn't you? Mrs. Linde: Nils, did you really think that? Krogstad: If it were as you say, why did you write to me as you did at the time? Mrs. Linde: I could do nothing else. As I had to break with you, it was my duty also to put an end to all that you felt for me. Krogstad [wringing his hands] : So that was it. And all this—only for the sake of money! Mrs. Linde: You must not forget that I had a helpless mother and two little brothers. We couldn't wait for you, Nils; your prospects seemed hopeless then. Krogstad: That may be so, but you had no right to throw me over for anyone else's sake. Mrs. Linde: Indeed, I don't know. Many a time did I ask myself if I had the right to do it. How does Ibsen use dramatic irony to heighten suspense in this scene?

Read the excerpt from "Social Media Made the Arab Spring, But Couldn't Save It" by Jessi Hempel. Five years ago this week, massive protests toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, marking the height of the Arab Spring. Empowered by access to social media sites like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, protesters organized across the Middle East, starting in December 2010 in Tunisia, and gathered together to speak out against oppression, inspiring hope for a better, more democratic future. Commentators, comparing these activists to the US peace protesters of 1968, praised the effort as a democratic dawn for an area that had long been populated by autocracies. In a photo collection published by the New York Times a few months later, Irish writer Colum McCann wrote: "The light from the Arab Spring rose from the ground up; the hope is now that the darkness doesn’t fall.” The darkness has fallen. Half a decade later, the Middle East is roiling in violence and repression. Activists are being intimidated into restraint by governments that are, with the exception of Tunisia, more totalitarian than those they replaced, if any government as such really exists at all. Meanwhile, militants have harnessed the same technology to organize attacks and recruit converts, catapulting the world into instability. Instead of new robust democracies, we have a global challenge with no obvious solution. The Arab Spring carried the promise that social media and the Internet were going to unleash a new wave of positive social change. But the past five years have shown that liberty isn't the only end toward which these tools can be turned. Activists were able to organize and mobilize in 2011 partly because authoritarian governments didn’t yet understand very much about how to use social media. They didn’t see the potential, says NYU professor of politics Joshua Tucker, a [principal] investigator at the Social Media and Political Participation Lab at New York University. "There are a lot of reasons the people in power were slow to pick up on this,” he adds. "One of the things about not have a free press is it is harder to learn what was going on in the world.” Which statement best evaluates the evidence in this excerpt?

Read the excerpt from "Social Media Made the Arab Spring, But Couldn't Save It" by Jessi Hempel. Even when activists are able to get their messages out, they have trouble galvanizing people to actually take action. The sentiments that gain the largest audiences often contain religious elements, according to Mansour Al-hadj, who is a director at the Middle East Media Research Institute. "The message by itself without any religious element in it, wouldn’t work in the long run,” he says. "The activists’ accounts on Twitter and Facebook are very active and they have a lot of followers, but they cannot drive masses,” he says, because their sentiments are more moderate. Laced through media coverage of the Arab Spring was what turned out to be the naïve hope that people were inherently, unequivocally good and that unleashing their collective consciousness via social media would naturally result in good things happening. But it turns out that consciousness was not so collective after all. The tools that catalyzed the Arab Spring, we've learned, are only as good or as bad as those who use them. And as it turns out, bad people are also very good at social media. Militant groups like the Islamic State have been reported to recruit converts using Facebook and Twitter and use encrypted communications technology to coordinate attacks. What reasons does the author give to support the claim that it is difficult for a message to move people to take action? Choose two correct answers.

Read the excerpt from "Social Media Made the Arab Spring, But Couldn't Save It" by Jessi Hempel. Today, governments take an aggressive hand in shutting down digital channels people use to organize against them. In Egypt, for example, where 26 million people are on Facebook (up from 4.7 million people in 2011), security forces arrested three people who administered nearly two dozen Facebook pages, according to Egyptian media reports. It also detained activists who had been involved in prior protests. And at the end of December, the government shut down Facebook's Free Basics service, which had offered free Internet services to Egyptians on mobile phones. More than 3 million people had signed up for the program in just two months, according to Facebook. Meanwhile Turkey has made 805 requests for tweets to be removed since 2012, according to Twitter's most recent transparency report; more than half were made last year. Which quotations from the excerpt provide evidence to support the claim that governments have responded to criticism delivered through social media? Choose three correct answers.