READING 1 ⇱
Cultural diversity is a vital aspect of any society, and festivals of ethnic groups play an essential role in preserving the cultural identity of a community. Embracing cultural values through festivals is an important way of staying connected with one’s community as well as its history and traditions. The well-known Katê Festival of the Chăm people in Vietnam is an example that illustrates this.
The Katê Festival, also known as Mbăng Katê, is the biggest yearly festival for the Chăm people in Vietnam. It is a special time of year when they honor important figures in their history and the deceased members of their families. The festival takes place on the first day of the seventh month in the Chăm calendar, usually in September or October. It lasts for three days and occurs around three important ancient structures in Ninh Thuân Province: the Po Klaung Yägrai Tower, the Po Romé Tower, and the Po Inú Nagar Temple. All of these locations are significant to Champa culture and history.
On the morning of the first day, Chăm families participate in processions as they travel to the towers and temple, bringing gifts of fruit, meat, and rice. During a special ceremony, the Chăm people receive costumes of the Goddess Po Nagar from the Raglai people, a cultural group closely connected to Champa culture. The Chăm carry these costumes to the temple to celebrate Po Nagar, after which they open the gates. Inside the temple, they bathe the statues of important figures and watch sacred dances. Following these performances, people enjoy lively parties until the evening of the festival's second day.
On the last day, people make special offerings to their gods at community houses in their villages and pray for luck and good health for the coming year. Once this is over, there are traditional music performances, and people engage in fun activities such as playing football and participating in weaving competitions.
The Katê Festival is a popular celebration of the Chăm people's traditional culture and beliefs. It is not only an important event in the Chăm calendar but also a symbol of the Chăm community's unity and rich cultural heritage.
(Adapted from Bright)
READING 2. ⇱
Full-time education in the UK is compulsory from the age of five to sixteen, but this doesn’t have to be in a school. Around 50,000 children are educated at home. This is called ‘home schooling’.
Parents take their children out of school for different reasons, like illness and the need for special care, or because the distance to the nearest school may be too far. Some children are simply unhappy at school. Whatever the reason, they’re allowed to study at home, although inspectors regularly check how they are getting on.
Hayley and Jenny haven’t been to school for two years but they haven’t neglected their studies. Their mother worked out strict timetables for them, with hourly lessons for each day. She’s responsible for teaching them Maths, English, History and French. Their father teaches them Science and Geography. They study all the other school subjects online. ‘We have lessons with Dad in the evenings and at weekends,’ explains Hayley.
The family’s home is in a remote part of Wales. ‘The girls were fine at school but they spent so much time getting to school, they were too tired to learn,’ says their mother, Julia. ‘We had a family conference and in the end we decided to try home schooling. So far, it’s been a big success, but the girls know that if they want to go back to school at any time, we’ll let them. We follow the normal school programme of lessons, and they will take all the normal school exams.’
There are disadvantages too, of course. ‘Social isolation is something I worry about,’ says Julia. They both seem happy and well-adjusted, but they haven’t really got friends who live locally. But in the summer holidays they go away on trips to summer camps, where they have no trouble mixing with people and making friends.’
(Adapted from Focus)
READING 3. ⇱
Today, text-messaging has probably become young people’s most common form of communication. Someleachers think that because of this, young people are not writing correctly at school. They fear that once students get used to it, they will find it hard to switch back to using correct grammar and spelling. How did things begin this way?
It all began with e-mail, online chat rooms, and games. Then step by step young people made sentences, phrases and words shorter. As text-messaging continued to become popular, people invented more and more words. Today, it is like a real language with its own grammar and vocabulary. The growth of text-messaging has raised an important question: As students become fluent in text messaging, do their writing skills suffer?
People have different ideas about the effects of text-messaging on students’ writing skills. Some say that students are losing the ability to write long, correct sentences. Others say that text-messaging is having a good effect on the language students use in then schoolwork. It shows that they are creative and good at expressing themselves. And if students can keep the two systems separate - one for text messaging and one for school - this will help students appreciate reading and writing more.
Some people suggest that one way to reduce the bad effects of text-messaging is to find ways to use technology as a positive learning tool. For example, students can be allowed to type their assignments in a cell phone message and send them to their teachers, but they must type correctly. In this way, students are using the technology that they are familiar with to communicate in a form of language suitable for schoolwork. It shows students that text-messaging is fine for social communication, but correct grammar and spelling are necessary for communication in school. (298 words)
(Adapted from Strategic Reading by Richards and Eckstut-Didier)