John Landrø
EN-113
Oral exam November 28th - December 2nd 2005
Texts
1.
This year the United Nations Human Development Report, indeed, ranked this Scandinavian nation as the best place in the world to live. But the case of Benjamin Hermansen, a 15-year-old African-Norwegian boy who was stabbed to death on a sidewalk by neo-Nazis, has offered a disturbing challenge to this tranquil country's vision of itself, raising the question of what it means to be Norwegian and European in a demographically changed continent. The questioning has intensified since the trial of those accused of being his killers began last month. "People realized that Norway is not the country they thought," said Nadeem Butt, the director of the government-financed Center Against Racism. "Most of the people thought racism is not a problem. That has changed quite radically. People do understand now that this is a problem."
2.
About 350 million people use English as a mother tongue. Native speakers of English, about one-tenth of the world’s population, are outnumbered only by speakers of the many varieties of Chinese. Three-quarters of the world’s mail, its telexes and cables are in English. So are more than half the world’s technical and scientific periodicals: it is the language of technology. 80 per cent of the information stored in the world’s computers is in English. Nearly half of all business deals are made in English. It is the language of sports and glamour. English is the official voice of the air, of the sea and of Christianity: it is the language of the World Council of Churches. Five of the largest broadcasting companies in the world transmit in English to audiences that total more than one hundred million people.
3.
Traditionally, schools and universities in Europe – and in many other parts of the world – have taught that variety of English often referred to as ‘British English’ (BE). As far as grammar and vocabulary are concerned, this generally means Standard English as it is normally written and spoken by educated speakers in England and, with minor differences, in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, The Republic of Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. As far as pronunciation is concerned, it means something much more restrictive, for the RP (‘Received Pronunciation’) accent which is taught to foreigners is actually used by only 3-5 per cent of the population of England. The RP accent has its origins in the south-east of England but is currently a social accent associated with the BBC, the Public Schools in England, and with members of the upper-middle and upper classes. It is considered a prestigious accent in the whole of the British Isles and British Commonwealth, but it is for the most part an accent associated only with England.
The other form of Standard English that is widely taught to students of English as a foreign language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL) is English as it is written and spoken by educated speakers in the United States of America and Canada. Normally this form is referred to as ‘American English’ (AE).
4.
The UK is a constitutional monarchy. This implies that the Head of the State is a King or a Queen with little or no political power.
The real power lies in Parliament, in the House of Commons, which is a group of representatives elected by the people.
The British Parliament consists of two Houses, the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
Members of the House of Commons are chosen in General Elections, which must be held within a period of five years after the last election. The members of the House of Lords are not elected representatives, but get their seat either by birth, or because they are bishops or have been made a life peer.
A new law must be supported by both Houses and must be signed by the monarch. However the House of Lords has little real power and can delay, but not stop, new legislation. The reigning monarch has not refused to accept a new law in the centuries that have passed since the system was established.
5.
The queen will build on Norway’s ancient links with Britain, and specially Scotland, during her state visit. She and King Harald share a common ancestor in Queen Victoria; the former King Haakon sought refuge in London during the war, for which his countrymen have yearly thanked the capital with a Christmas tree; Norwegians have long kept Scottish shops in business and Newcastle University in graduates; and centuries ago Sir Patric Spens, the ballad relates, lost his wife setting sail to Norway to fetch home the King’s daughter. Britons have long admired the spirit of the Vikings, the explorations of Thor Heyerdahl, and the beauty of the fjords, the au pairs and the cruise ships. Today the Queen can salute them all.
6.
Almost all the Irish speak English, and about one-fourth also speak Irish, a Gaelic language that is the traditional tongue of Ireland.
Ireland became England’s first colony when Henry II invaded the country in 1171 and proclaimed himself overlord of the entire island. However, the Irish never accepted England’s occupation, and the establishment of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801 did not make matters any better. Irish nationalists continued to oppose the British, and acts of brutality were committed on both sides. The disastrous famine of 1846-51 killed thousands of Irishmen and forced as many as 2 million to emigrate, but it also proved that Ireland would be better off with Home Rule.
The Home Rule Movement grew during the following decades, and the Irish Free State was established in 1921. This gave Ireland the same status within the British Commonwealth as Canada or Australia. However the Irish were far from being content with this minor victory and saw it as just another step in the direction of full independence. In 1937 the nation’s title was changed to Eire, and in 1949 Britain finally accepted the fact that Eire was a fully independent state and no longer a Commonwealth member.
7.
President George Bush yesterday marked the fourth anniversary of the September 11 attacks by flying to New Orleans in an effort to restore national unity after the political and physical devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.
After observing a moment's silence on the White House lawn for the victims of the 2001 attacks, Mr Bush left for New Orleans, where he was immediately helicoptered aboard a naval assault ship, the USS Iwo Jima, docked in the city centre. He is due to venture forth into the streets today in a military Humvee to inspect the damage and the reconstruction, before flying on to Mississippi.
Yesterday - proclaimed as Patriot Day - provided a bridge between two disasters which could ultimately define the Bush presidency. Mr Bush sought to recall the nation's fighting spirit immediately after 9/11, the peak of his popularity, as an antidote to the apparent confusion and bungling that characterised his administration's reaction to Katrina.
8.
Norwegian businesses are reporting earnings that collectively are more than double the amount earned the year before. Fresh accounts from 114,000 companies suggest business is booming, and not just for oil- and gas-related firms.
Low interest rates are fuelling much of the profit growth. Financing costs are low and consumers are willing to borrow and spend, since they are not saddled with high financing costs either.
Operating profits for the 114,329 non oil- and gas-related companies reporting their results to the national registry in Brønnøysund were collectively up 43.9 per cent, according to newspaper Aftenposten.
The report shows that Norwegian business is earning money like never before, with growth occurring across most sectors.
9.
Skiing was invented in Norway. There are few sports that are more enjoyable than skiing. Mountains, fresh air, hurtling down slopes with abandon. Very nice, except that it was not this type of skiing that Norway invented. Norwegians prefer cross-country skiing, at which they regularly thrash all comers. It is a demanding sport which often involves tiring slopes uphill. It’s not all hard work, though. Sometimes you get to ski on level ground, for miles and miles, in a straight line. An early Norwegian hero was Fridtjof Nansen, who crossed Greenland on skis. Not content with cross-country skiing, Norway also invented telemark skiing, a complicated technique involving bending the knees so far that they almost touch the snow. It was left to the loucher nations of Britain, Germany and Austria to invent alpine skiing as we know it.
10.
Police said Naess died on impact at about 12.30pm and was on his own when the incident occurred. He was staying on a farm owned by Johannes Rupert, son of tycoon Anton Rupert.
Friends who were on holiday with Naess were worried when he hadn’t returned by midday and alerted Metro control, which dispatched a rescue team and a helicopter.
But when rescue team members reached Naess he was already dead. His body was airlifted to a nearby ambulance.
Naess was a well-respected shipping magnate and hailed from Oslo in Norway.
He was also a philosopher and had published several of his works worldwide. His theory of “deep ecology, which essentially emerges through deep experience, deep questioning and deep commitment to one’s natural surroundings” has evoked interest among intellectuals and environmentalists.
11.
Smokers run double the risk of contracting heart disease, several times the risk of suffering from chronic bronchitis and at least 25 times the risk of lung cancer, as compared to non-smokers. Despite extensive press campaigns (especially in the past 20 years), which have regularly told smokers and car drivers the grave risks they are running, the number of smokers and seat belt wearers has remained much the same. Although the number of deaths from road accidents and smoking are well publicised, they have aroused little public interest.
If we give smokers the real figures, will it alter their views on the dangers of smoking? Unfortunately not. Many of the ‘real figures’ are in the form of probabilistic estimates and evidence shows that people are very bad at processing and understanding this kind of information.
12.
Now, in the latest assault on the pro-life lobby, crossbench peer Lord Joffe is attempting to steer a private member's bill legalising assisted dying through the House of Lords. Under Joffe's proposals voluntary euthanasia would be made available to patients who have less than six months to live and who are in 'unbearable pain'. Their decision to hasten an end to their life would be accepted only after they had undergone psychiatric and medical examinations and had been given a 'cooling-off' period to allow them to change their mind. Tory peers vehemently oppose the bill which had attracted 100,000 submissions when its consultation process was completed earlier this month.
Few think Joffe's bill will make it to law. But it may come to be seen as an important step towards legalised euthanasia in Britain.
13.
The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) was established in 1926 by a Royal Charter, and it began the world’s first television service in 1936. While TV broadcasting was more or less closed down during the War, BBC radio established itself as a reliable and accurate source of information. In these years, the “wireless” became a symbol of unity and strength, boosting the British morale both home and away. But in the early 1950s the television revolution really began. In the “age of affluence”, a television set was regarded an important commodity and TV broadcasts took over much of the media attention, changing the role of the radio. The BBC has, over the years, more or less set the standards for broadcasting all over the world, and the ethos and public service image of the BBC have been imitated by many countries. The BBC was created as a public corporation, answerable to and financed via Parliament on the basis of licence fees.
The Prince of Wales warned an audience of newspaper editors and proprietors today that public sector workers were often targets of unfair, cynical criticism by the press.
14.
The prince attacked a "culture of complaining" in Britain and called for more recognition of the work done by doctors, nurses, teachers and the police.
In a robust speech to mark the 300th anniversary of the launch of the first British daily newspaper, the Daily Courant, the prince laid part of the blame for the cynicism corroding public life on the press for sometimes being "too ready" to assume the worst case scenario.
He described the culture of cynicism as being like an "acid that eats away unseen" at the valuable qualities of the British that are respected by other nations.
Acknowledging the irony of his position as the subject of many newspaper stories himself, Prince Charles said that over 300 years the press had been "awkward, cantankerous, cynical, bloody-minded, at times intrusive, at times inaccurate and at times deeply unfair and harmful to individuals and to institutions".
15.
Almost half the secondary school students in England, Scotland and Wales admit to having broken the law, according to a survey of 11- to 16-year-olds published today.
After confidentially questioning a representative sample of 14,000 pupils, it found that 48.5% said they had committed a crime at least once.
Nearly one in four young men aged 15 and 16 said they had carried a knife or other weapon during the past year, and one in five admitted attacking someone with the intention of hurting them seriously.
The survey, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, was the first of its kind and there was no indication whether criminality among young people was increasing or decreasing.
16.
Higher education is a source of controversial debate in Britain. The university sector, currently consisting of 108 universities, has been expanded since 1992 by upgrading the old polytechnics and other colleges to university status. Government policies to increase the number of young people in higher education (one-third of 18-year-olds) have resulted in a very large growth in the student population. But critics argue that the government has not increased its university funding (which is supposedly dependant on student numbers) to cope with such expansion.
Academic resources have been squeezed and university teachers are claiming higher salaries. They argue that they are underpaid, their pay scales have long been neglected and they have slipped behind comparable groups by up to a third. A graduate entering school teaching is paid £1,000 more than the starting salary for university lecturers and British academics are paid half the salaries obtainable in the USA. A lack of qualified academics could seriously threaten the expansion and quality of higher education. A 'brain drain' would operate as graduates move to better jobs in other countries.
17.
On February 16, one of the most controversial treaties in decades becomes part of international law. It has been heralded as a breakthrough in the fight against dangerous climate change and a triumph for international diplomacy - despite the fact that the US, the world's greatest emitter of greenhouse gases, refuses to take part.
The protocol, an addition to the Climate Change Convention negotiated at the Earth Summit in 1992, is the first legally binding international treaty on the environment. The convention placed an obligation on every country that signed it to reduce man-made greenhouse gas emissions but did not give any targets - so everyone agreed another agreement was needed.
Kyoto gives each of the industrialised countries of the world an individual limit to the greenhouse gas emissions they can make. The reductions overall are tiny compared with the cuts that scientists say are necessary to stabilise the climate. So will Kyoto really make a difference to whether global warming is contained; can it save the planet from the potential of runaway global warming that is being debated this week at the Hadley Centre for Climate Change in Exeter?
18.
Thor Heyerdahl has always been dedicated attempting to prove his theories on contacts of prehistoric societies with the aid of traditional boats types. In 1969 he built the reed ship RA after models of traditional boat types in Egypt. He and his international crew crossed the Atlantic Ocean in this vessel, but due to mal-construction it dissolved just before reaching the Caribbean. Then – he set his mind to make another try. With RA II he set out from Safi in Marocco in 1970 and came ashore on Barbados 57 days later.In 1977 Heyerdahl constructed still another reed ship. It was built in Iraq and named Tigris.He sailed with an international crew during 5 months in the Persian and Arabian Sea with the goal to end up in Egypt to prove that the great ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia, IndusValley and Egypt had contact by sea. Actions of war in the area stopped the voyage and in protest Heyerdahl burnt his ship.