Text 3 Every profession or trade, every art, and every science has its technical vocabulary, the function of which is partly to refer to things or processes which have no names in ordinary English, and partly to secure greater exactness in expression. Such special dialects, or jargon, are necessary in technical discussion of any kind. Being universally understood by the devotees of the particular science or art, they have the precision of a mathematical formula. Besides, they save time, for it is much more economical to name a process than to describe it. Thousands of these technical terms are very properly included in every large dictionary, yet, as a whole, they are rather on the outskirts of the English language than actually within its borders. Different occupations, however, differ widely in the character of their special vocabularies. In trades and handicrafts and other occupations, such as farming and fishing, that have occupied great numbers of men from remote times, the technical vocabulary is very old. It consists largely of native words, or of borrowed words that have worked themselves into the very fibre of our language. Hence, though highly technical in many particulars, these vocabularies are more familiar in sound, and more generally understood than most other technicalities. The special dialects of law, medicine, and philosophy have also become pretty familiar to cultivated person, and have contributed much to the popular vocabulary. Yet, every vocation still possesses a large body of technical terms that remain essentially foreign, even to educated speech. And the proportion has been much increased in the last fifty years, particularly in the various departments of natural and political sciences and in the mechanic arts. Hence new terms are coined with the greatest freedom, and abandoned with indifference when they have served their turn. Most of the new coinages are confined to special discussions and seldom get into general literature or conversation. Yet no profession is nowadays, as all professions once were, a closed guild. The lawyer, the physician, the man of science, and the cleric associates freely with his fellow creatures, and does not meet them in a merely professional way. Furthermore, what is called popular science makes everybody acquainted with modem views and recent discoveries. Any important experiment, though made in a remote or provincial laboratory, is at once reported in the newspapers, and every body is soon talking about it as in the case of the Roentgen rays and wireless telegraphy. Thus, our common speech is always taking up new technical terms and making them commonplace. What may be the best title of this passage
A. The Benefits of Some Jobs
B. Professions and Their Terms
C. Different Occupations
D. The Development of the English Language
Text 2 A very important world problem — in fact, I think it may be the most important of all the great world problems which face us at the present time — is the rapidly increasing pressure of population on the land. The population of the world today is about 4,000,000,000. That is an enormous number, yet it is known quite accurately, because there are very few parts of the world which have not carried out a modem census. The important thing is not so much the actual population of twenty million — about six months’ increase in world population. Take Australia for example, there are ten million people in Australia. So it takes the world about three months to add to itself a population which peoples that vast country. Let us take our own crowded country, England and Wales — forty-five to fifty million people. This is just about a year’s supply. By this time tomorrow, and every day, there will be added to the earth about 120,000 extra people — just about the population of the city of York. I am not talking about birth rate. This is net increase. To give you some idea of birth rate, look at the second hand of your watch. Every second, three babies are born somewhere in the world. Another baby! Another baby! You cannot speak quickly enough to keep up with the birth rate. This enormous increase of population will create immense problems. By AD2000, unless something terrible happens, there will be as many as 7,000,000,000 people on the surface of the Earth! So this is a problem which you are going to see in your lifetime. The population of the world today is about ______.
A. 40 million
B. 4 billion
C. 400 million
D. 40 billion