Eindexamen Engels vmbo-gl/tl 2019, tijdvak 2: vragen en antwoorden

Bird has flown Sesame Street, the classic children’s television programme, has found a new home on HBO, the network behind The Sopranos and Game of Thrones, bolstering its kids’ programming at a time when young viewers are abandoning traditional TV for digital alternatives.

The deal is a boon to the non-profit Sesame Workshop, giving it access to HBO’s deep pockets and allowing it to produce more new episodes of Sesame Street.

PBS, the public broadcaster that has been the home of Sesame Street for

45 years, will continue to air the programme, with new episodes appearing after HBO’s nine-month exclusive window.

Sesame Street and the broader world of children’s programming has taken an economic hit from the rise of streaming video options on smartphones, tablets and internet-connected televisions. Children and teenagers are showing increasing preference for on-demand viewing, and many parents prefer the advertising-free environs of subscription services, such as HBO.

PBS has contributed less than 10 per cent of the show’s production costs, meaning Sesame Workshop has been reliant on DVD sales and licensing to cover the rest.

Financial Times, 2015

Coasting to success

A modern mug that promises to rid furniture of coffee rings once and for all has the humble banana to thank for its clever design. It is the product of months of hard work by financial analyst Dumi Ndlovu and post office worker Tigere Chiriga, both 34, who grew up together in Harare, Zimbabwe. They dreamed up the Floating Mug

• which comes with its own built-in coaster
• after spotting bananas hanging on a hook. The twist is that the handle bends round underneath to form a coaster to collect any drips that could form stains on tables and worktops. The pair say it will revolutionise the way tea and coffee drinkers think about mugs
• and expect one to be in every home soon. They turned to crowdfunding and within days of listing the project it had received almost £25,000. The mug is now available from Floatingmug.com for £22.

The Times, 2013

Fashion goes high-tech

1 A model walked down the runway during Paris Fashion Week in September with a clutch bag that changed colour from white to black, then to greyish gradations as it responded to her movements. The gradual colour change was generated by “electronic paper”, a high-tech display device used as one of the materials in the bag. It is just one of several fashion items to debut recently, featuring advanced digital technologies.

2 …

3 …

4 …

The Straits Times, 2017

Lights, Camera, Action

1 South London social enterprise Chocolate Films runs education and outreach programmes aiming to inspire young people from all sorts of backgrounds to voice their opinions and discover their inner creative talents. It uses digital media in innovative ways to offer over 2,000 youngsters a hands-on opportunity to sample the fascinating world of filmmaking every year. It employs 10 staff and works with hundreds of schools, youth groups, museums, galleries, festivals and youth offending teams

• to name but a few
• to encourage individuals to 4 .

2 For London teenager Georgina Cross it was joining up with the production company’s education project that really opened the 16-year- old’s eyes to her inventive streak. “I never saw myself as a creative person until I got involved with Chocolate Films just over two years ago,” says sixth-form pupil Georgina. “I had my head in books plenty but I had no idea about filming, editing or anything like that. And it’s not just the production side either, I have learned a lot of problem-solving skills and about teamwork.”

3 Founder and director Mark Currie says: “Our goal is to make films about good people and also to help teach people how to make them with skilled professionals and top equipment. It is also about going into communities where people might not have the opportunity to learn about how to make digital media.”

4 The majority of Chocolate Films’ participants are children and young people like Southwark youngster Georgina, with tailor-made courses for different age groups enabling all users to get the best out of the experience. Georgina has relished the challenge of learning about this field, something that was a completely new experience.

5 A loan from Big Issue Invest has allowed Chocolate Films to continue to support their projects. Mark says: “This money has gone a long way for us. It’s very difficult these days for a small independent company like us to get any sort of loan.”

6 Aside from education, Chocolate Films also specialises in making factual films about social, cultural and environmental issues, largely for charities and arts organisations. The production company prides itself on developing the skills of its students but there has also been no shortage of talent offering a hand to the company, with stars including Daniel Radcliffe and Jo Brand getting involved.

The Big Issue, 2013

Exotic invaders

1 DNA tests have confirmed that three Nile crocodiles have been found living in Florida’s swamps. It is not known for certain how they reached the US. “They didn’t swim from Africa,” said University of Florida herpetologist Kenneth Krysko. One likely possibility was that they were brought in illegally by unlicensed collectors. Owners sometimes fail to keep them secured or set them free on purpose, Mr Krysko told the Associated Press news agency.

2 The Nile species can grow to up to 6m (20ft), significantly larger than local alligators, which commonly grow up to 4m. They are known to prey on shrimp, fish, insects, birds and mammals, including humans. They are also known to attack livestock. Florida wildlife experts are concerned that the African species will unbalance the state’s ecosystem if they breed in the Everglades wetlands.

3 Alien wildlife can severely damage an unprepared ecosystem. The Burmese python was first sighted in the Everglades in the 1980s and there is now an established population of the snake. When the Burmese python turned up far from home in the Florida Everglades it bred fast, sustaining its reproduction by feasting on endangered local wildlife, including alligators. There are now thought to be about 30,000 of the formidable snakes in the area.

4 But invading species aren’t always large. The Indian Silverleaf

• or Sweetpotato
• whitefly, even though it is just a millimetre long, is estimated to have seriously damaged crops across California, Texas and Arizona in the 1980s.

5 Sometimes the species don’t even have to invade, they are invited. Cane toads, native to South and Central America, were introduced to Australia in the 1930s in an attempt to keep the grey-backed cane beetle in check, which was destroying cane crops. But with no natural predator, the poisonous toads spread like wildfire, killing native species as they went.

6 And invasive species aren’t always obviously menacing either. In 1859, Thomas Austin had 24 ordinary rabbits shipped to Australia for hunting purposes. “The introduction of a few rabbits could do little harm,” he reportedly said at the time. But Austin underestimated the habit of rabbits to reproduce like, well, rabbits. Soon there were tens of millions and they killed off local plant species, having a devastating effect on Australia’s ecosystem.

bbc.com, 2016

Spy chiefs try to recruit Jane Bonds adapted from an article by Kate McCann

1 British intelligence agencies MI5, MI6 and GCHQ have all used Mumsnet to find new female spies, dubbed Jane Bonds. It marks the first time the intelligence agencies have admitted to using female- friendly websites to recruit more women.

2 A new report on plans to rebalance the intelligence workforce states that the security services are looking for women with “high emotional intelligence, rather than focusing on standard qualifications” and are keen to demonstrate the family- friendly nature of working as a spy. Flexible working and allowing women with new babies to bring their children to so- called ‘keep-in-touch’ days in the office are part of plans to boost the number of female spies.

3 A recommendation sent to intelligence bosses in 2015 states: “The agencies should explore groups other than graduates. Women or mothers in middle-age or midcareer, who may have taken some years out to bring up children, may offer an untapped recruitment pool.” Middle-aged women working in social or care professions or who do not work at all are being targeted, because they have valuable life experience which could lend itself to working in the secret agencies. Recruiters are also being given ‘unconscious bias training’ to prevent them from sidelining older women or those who may be considering children, as part of plans to stop women ending up in administration jobs.

4 Gisela Stuart MP, a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, told The Telegraph: “These kinds of jobs require highly specialist skills but the broader the base from which they recruit, the more likely it is they get the best people, so it’s important that’s widened. Half the population are women so this is a recognition that the intelligence services must respond to the population within which they operate. But I would also hope that with that target comes recognition that women need to be fairly represented at all levels of the organisation because in order to have institutional change you need critical mass and determination by management to make it happen.”

5 The report follows speculation that Gillian Anderson, the actress famous for her role as Scully in the X-Files, could be the next 007 in the famous James Bond franchise. Fans mocked up a picture of the actress posing as the next Bond character amid calls for the films to cast a woman in the leading role after Daniel Craig revealed he will not continue in the job.

telegraph.co.uk, 2016

Screen Strain

based on an article by Kate Gammon

1 The grocery-line screen flashes its cooking tips, and my baby twists his neck, owl-style, to gawk at the chefs making crab cakes. Screens are everywhere: not just in our homes, but our roads, planes, cars and restaurants. So what’s a parent to do, when the Academy of Pediatrics recommends zero screen time for children under two?

2 20 the warning from pediatricians, research shows that three-quarters of kids under two are exposed to screens, and a lot of screens: the average infant or toddler watches 1.5 hours of television directly, and is exposed to 5.5 hours of background TV. Since infants are only awake for about 9 hours per day, that means that more than half of their waking hours somehow involve the television.

3 “We’re technologizing childhood today in a way that’s unprecedented,” says sociologist and pediatrician Nicholas Christakis. He found that while television time under 3 raised the likelihood of attention problems later in life, that risk didn’t exist if the young kids were watching slow-based educational programs rather than frenetic entertainment or violent programs, which have even quicker cuts and pacing than cartoons. The typical newborn brain is 333 grams in size

• and it triples during the first two years of life. That astounding brain growth doesn’t happen at any other point in human life
• making those early years particularly crucial.

4 Other researchers 22 what’s on the screen is more important than screen time itself. Researchers at the Children’s Media Lab at the University of Iowa reported that some types of television can actually help increase vocabulary and language skills. They found that kids who watched shows that moved slowly through a story with characters had larger vocabularies than those who watched other types of programming, including “educational” shows like Sesame Street. The problem with some educational programs is that they are filled with “an enormous amount of information coming at them quickly,” according to researcher Deborah Linebarger.

5 All those hours in front of screens may lead kids to develop slower in their emotional understanding of the world. Another study found that sixth- graders who went five days without exposure to technology were significantly better at reading human emotions than kids who had regular access to phones, televisions and computers.

popsci.com, 2012

Barking Dogs

adapted from an article by Guy Walters

1 You can picture the scene. The sun has finally come out, and the weather looks set fair. You plan to spend the day outside, but your peace is shattered. It’s the dog next door, and it’s barking. Not just a few woofs, but an incessant and high- pitched yapping. Perhaps it will soon stop, you think, but it does not. In fact, it barks for a further four hours until its owner gets home, by which time your day in the sun has been ruined. But what makes it worse is that you know it is going to happen all over again tomorrow, and the day after that.

2 Constant exposure to the sound of barking really can induce extreme physical and psychological distress. The reason for this lies in your autonomic nervous system (ANS), which controls core body functions such as your heart rate and breathing. When you hear a sudden, sharp noise, the sound waves are transmitted to the brain, which interprets them as a potential threat. The brain then sends signals to the ANS, and we start to feel tense

• leading, typically, to an increased heart rate and higher blood pressure. If a dog barks once or twice, there is no harm done. Our heart rate and blood pressure return to normal. But if the noise is continual, every time that dog barks, your ANS repeatedly fires up. It is causing you not only to feel anxious, but also immensely angry.

3 Dogs do not bark to make us angry: they are vocal for any number of reasons, but the most common reasons are boredom and loneliness. Dogs are 26 creatures, and if their waking hours are spent without human company, they voice their anxiety. The truth is that more and more of us have working lifestyles which make us unsuitable to be dog owners. It is simply not fair to leave these creatures alone for hours. The over- riding reason for their bark is to attract attention. The problem is that, over the centuries, humans have bred a loud bark into domestic pets because it made them better guard dogs.

4 Some people consider buying a second dog to keep the first dog company, but this is not a reliable way to stop dogs barking. Your neighbours may end up having to endure twice the noise if the two set each other off! Rather, if you are a dogowner, consider getting your dog company in the form of a dog walker or a sitter when you are away. Also, make sure that your dog has plenty of exercise and enough to eat. A well-

fed, physically tired dog is much more likely to be a quiet dog. If it’s dark, leave a light on

• and consider leaving on a TV or radio, as the sound of humans, even recorded voices, is known to make dogs more relaxed.

5 Dogs can be trained to be silent. To understand how to do this, you have to get inside the mind of a dog. Most owners shout ‘shut up’ when dogs bark to get attention

• giving them the very attention they crave, and encouraging them to bark even more. The answer is to 28 the dog when it is barking, turn your back on it, walk away and reward it with attention (and a treat) only when it stops. It will eventually learn that barking deprives it of attention.

Daily Mail, 2015

March of the machines adapted from an article by James Dean

1 The secrets of human life are quietly being transferred to the digital brains of machines. Every second, they learn more about our foibles by quietly digesting the vast amounts of personal information we put online. Social networks, smartphone apps and countless internet-connected services are helping machines to learn about us so quickly that by 2025 we will be able to talk to artificially intelligent personal assistants as if they were humans.

2 The evolution is being accelerated by a process known as “machine learning”, whereby a computer is fed huge amounts of data from which it is able to draw its own meanings, says Peter Donnelly, professor of statistical science at the University of Oxford. “Twenty years ago, a computer programmer would have to work out a problem and then type out the code that allowed the computer to solve it,” he explains. “With machine learning, they programme the steps that allow the computer to learn the solution to the problem.” He added that the expansion of the internet and the increased power of computers had revolutionised the field and that ten years from now we would be using and relying on complex apps beyond our current imagination.

3 Zoubin Ghahramani, a professor of information engineering at the University of Cambridge, said: “There are all sorts of forms of robot intelligence already affecting our lives. Every aspect of your activity on Facebook is controlled by this intelligence

• what appears in your news

feed, what adverts it shows you. Your smartphone knows things about you

• your priorities, what it should remind you about, clear recommendations it could make.”

4 There will be 32 the progress, however. Paul Newman, principal investigator at the University of Oxford’s mobile robotics group, said: “We’re not going to have something that helps us around the house. I don’t see generalist robots coming for a long time. Intelligent robots will first appear in places where they have a clearly defined role

• that’s why there are already so many robots on car production lines. We have evolved extraordinary capabilities as humans, but look at how long it took us to evolve. The idea of a humanoid robot is distorted by science fiction, and at the moment, it is just that.”

The Times, 2015

Chinese school sets up ‘marks bank’

adapted from an article by Tessa Wong

1 A Chinese high school has come up with an innovative way to help struggling students

• a ‘marks bank’. The Nanjing Number One Secondary School has rolled out a scheme where students can ‘borrow’ marks to top up low scores so they can pass their tests. The school said it was aimed at reducing the stress of taking exams. The scheme has become a talking point in China which has seen rising concern over an education system still reliant on high-pressure examinations.

2 According to media reports this week, the school introduced the scheme in November last year for 49 students in an elite programme aimed at grooming them for entry into US colleges. So far, 13 students have taken part in the scheme. They incur a debt when they ‘borrow’ marks, and are expected to repay it with marks scored in subsequent tests. To encourage students to improve in their subjects, they can be charged ‘interest’ if they do not repay their loans quickly enough. Students can also be ‘blacklisted’ from borrowing if they fail to repay their loans on time. And just like in a real bank, the students will be given ‘credit scores’, based on their behaviour records, school attendance and fulfilment of classroom cleaning duties.

3 Director Huang Kan said in interviews with Chinese media that the scheme was aimed at changing China’s exam culture and exploring a new evaluation system. “In past exams, scores have become everything, and the pressure on students has become immense,” she said. “The purpose of an examination is to measure, give feedback, correct, and elevate standards

• and not to make things difficult, punish or damage a student’s enthusiasm.” She added that the scheme would encourage students to have greater responsibility and a greater aptitude for learning.

4 The ‘marks bank’ has generated intense interest in Chinese media and online. While some believe it is a good move, others have questioned whether it may inadvertently send the wrong message to students. “Exams may lose their rigour. If you don’t do well in a test you can just

take it again. But life often doesn’t give you second chances,” said one critic. Beijing News quoted an education expert as saying that the scheme was a ‘double-edged sword’ as some students may take exams less seriously and end up developing ‘inertia’.

5 But Ms Huang Kan has defended the idea. “The ‘marks bank’ is not a charitable institution aimed at giving out marks to lazy students, rather it is a nurturing cradle aimed at giving opportunities to diligent students,” she explained.

bbc.com, 2017

When driving verges on the dangerous

by Neil Lancefield

The risk of traffic accidents is being increased because of long grass and tall weeds blocking drivers’ views, the Automobile Association (AA) says. Four out of ten of drivers have experienced overgrown vegetation obscuring their sight- lines at junctions, a poll of 21,877 AA members found. More than a third said road signs such as speed limits and low bridge heights were hidden by foliage, while a similar percentage reported that direction signs have been masked, making it difficult for drivers on unfamiliar routes. AA president Edmund King said: “A mixture of warm and wet spring weather has caused grass and trees to grow so quickly that it has put drivers at risk when making routine journeys. Due to budget cutbacks, councils are struggling with controlling the fast growth…and that is increasing the likelihood of collisions.”

Iweekend, 2016

Happiness book club

Vanessa King recommends a book every month to improve our happiness levels.

Happiness doesn’t just happen

• it comes from planning and pursuing things that are important to us. Research shows that setting and working towards goals can contribute to happiness. I love Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals by Heidi Grant Halvorson (Plume, £11.99). One of the main ideas of the book is focusing on getting better rather than expecting to be brilliant straight away. Many of us believe that our intelligence, personality, and physical aptitudes are 40 ; that no matter what we do, we won’t improve. Research suggests that this belief is wrong; abilities of all kinds are profoundly adjustable. People whose goals are about getting better take difficulty in their stride, and appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

Psychologies Magazine, 2016

Burning question: Why do paper cuts hurt so much?

Skin expert Dr Hayley Goldbach believes the pain is partly because fingertips are one of the most sensitive areas of the body. This sensitivity is caused by nerve endings that can warn the brain, through pain, of any danger

• for example, the risk of being burnt by hot things. Another possible reason why paper cuts hurt so much is because they are not usually deep enough for the body’s healing mechanisms (such as scabbing) to be triggered. This means that the nerves are left exposed for longer and keep sending danger messages to the brain. In addition, the edges of paper aren’t often as smooth as they look
• they can actually be quite rough, which means that they do more damage than you’d expect. Finally, your hands are often in use, meaning the cut is pulled and stretched. This means it can take longer to heal than if it were elsewhere on your body.

The Week Junior, 2017

Compulsory Cooking Classes English teenagers are to receive compulsory cooking lessons in schools. Cooking was once regarded as an integral part of education in England

• even if it was mainly aimed at girls. In recent decades cooking has progressively become a marginal activity in schools. But the rising level of obesity has led to a rethink about the food that children are given and the skills they should be taught. What’s more, it’s feared that basic cooking and food preparation skills are being lost as parents turn to ready meals and pre-prepared convenience foods.

The well-known cookery writer, Prue Leith, applauds the initiative. “If we’d done this thirty years ago we might not have the crisis we’ve got now about obesity and lack of knowledge about food and so on. Besides, every child should know how to cook, not just so that they’ll be healthy, but because it’s a life skill which is a real pleasure and we deny children that pleasure.”

The renewed interest in cooking is primarily a response to the level of obesity in Britain which is amongst the highest in Europe, and according to government figures half of all Britons will be obese in 25 years if current trends are not halted.

bbc.com, 2014

►►► ν