READING PRACTICE MATERIALS
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
ONE WHO HOPES
A Language lovers, just like music lovers, enjoy a variety. For the latter, there’s Mozart, The Rolling
Stones and Beyonce. For the former, there’s English, French, Swahili, Urdu… the list is endless. But
what about those poor overworked students who find learning difficult, confusing languages a drudge?
Wouldn’t it put a smile on their faces if there were just one simple, the easy-to-learn tongue that would
cut their study time by years? Well, of course, it exists. It’s called Esperanto, and it’s been around for
more than 120 years. Esperanto is the most widely spoken artificially constructed international
language. The name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof
first published his Unua Libro in 1887. The phrase itself means ‘one who hopes’. Zamenhof’s goal was
to create an easy and flexible language as a universal second language to promote peace and
international understanding.
B Zamenhof, after ten years of developing his brain-child from the late 1870s to the early 1880s, had the
first Esperanto grammar published in Warsaw in July 1887. The number of speakers grew rapidly over
the next few decades, at first primarily in the Russian Empire and Eastern Europe, then in Western
Europe and the Americas, China, and Japan. In the early years, speakers of Esperanto kept in contact
primarily through correspondence and periodicals, but since 1905 world congresses have been held on
five continents every year except during the two World Wars. Latest estimates for the numbers of
Esperanto speakers are around 2 million. Put in percentage terms, that’s about 0.03% of the world’s
population – no staggering figure, comparatively speaking. One reason is that Esperanto has no official
status in any country, but it is an optional subject on the curriculum of several state education systems.
It is widely estimated that it can be learned in anywhere between a quarter to a twentieth of the time
required for other languages.
C As a constructed language, Esperanto is not genealogically related to any ethnic language. Whilst it is
described as ‘a language lexically predominantly Romanic’, the phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and
semantics are based on the western Indo-European languages. For those of us who are not naturally
predisposed to tucking languages under our belts, it is an easy language to learn. It has 5 vowels and 23
consonants. It has one simple way of conjugating all of its verbs. Words are often made from many
other roots, making the number of words which one must memorise much smaller. The language is
phonetic, and the rules of pronunciation are very simple so that everyone knows how to pronounce a
written word and vice-versa, and word order follows a standard, logical pattern. Through prefixing and
suffixing, Esperanto makes it easy to identify words as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, direct objects
and so on, by means of easy-to-spot endings. All this makes for easy language learning. What’s more,
several research studies demonstrate that studying Esperanto before another foreign language speeds
up and improves the learning of the other language. This is presumably because learning subsequent
foreign languages is easier than learning one’s first, while the use of a grammatically simple and
culturally flexible language like Esperanto softens the blow of learning one’s first foreign language. In
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READING PRACTICE MATERIALS
one study, a group of European high school students studied Esperanto for one year, then French for
three years, and ended up with a significantly better command of French than a control group who had
studied French for all four years.
D Needless to say, the language has its critics. Some point to the Eastern European features of the
language as being harsh and difficult to pronounce and argue that Esperanto has an artificial feel to it,
without the flow of a natural tongue, and that by nature of its artificiality, it is impossible to become
emotionally involved with the language. Others cite its lack of cultural history, indigenous literature –
“no one has ever written a novel straight into Esperanto” – together with its minimal vocabulary and its
inability to express all the necessary philosophical, emotional and psychological concepts.
E The champions of Esperanto – Esperantists – disagree. They claim that it is a language in which a
great body of world literature has appeared in translation: in poetry, novels, literary journals, and, to
rebut the accusation that it is not a ‘real’ language, point out that it is frequently used at international
meetings which draw hundreds and thousands of participants. Moreover, on an international scale, it is
most useful – and fair – for neutral communication. That means that communication through Esperanto
does not give advantages to the members of any particular people or culture, but provides an ethos of
equality of rights, tolerance and true internationalism.
F Esperantists further claim that Esperanto has the potential – was it universally taught for a year or two
throughout the world – to empower ordinary people to communicate effectively worldwide on a scale
that far exceeds that which is attainable today by only the most linguistically brilliant among us. It
offers the opportunity to improve communication in business, diplomacy, scholarship and other fields
so that those who speak many different native languages will be able to participate fluently in
international conferences and chat comfortably with each other after the formal presentations are made.
Nowadays that privilege is often restricted to native speakers of English and those who have special
talents and opportunities for learning English as a foreign language.
G What Esperanto does offer in concrete terms is the potential of saving billions of dollars which are now
being spent on translators and interpreters, billions which would be freed up to serve the purposes of
governments and organisations that spend so much of their resources to change words from one
language into the words of others. Take, for example, the enormously costly conferences, meetings and
documentation involved in the European Union parliamentary and administrative procedures – all
funded, essentially, by taxpayers. And instead of the World Health Organisation, and all NGOs for that
matter, devoting enormous sums to provide interpreters and translations, they would be able to devote
those huge amounts of money to improve the health of stricken populations throughout the world.
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READING PRACTICE MATERIALS
Questions 14-19
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-G from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number i-ix in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.
i A non-exclusive language
ii Fewer languages, more results
iii Language is personal
iv What’s fashionable in language
v From the written word to the spoken word
vi A real language
vii Harmony through language
viii The mechanics of a language
ix Lost in translation
Example Answer
Paragraph A vii
14 Paragraph B ……………
15 Paragraph C ……………
16 Paragraph D ……………
17 Paragraph E ……………
18 Paragraph F ……………
19 Paragraph G ……………
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READING PRACTICE MATERIALS
Questions 20-22
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
Write your answer in box 20-22 on your answer sheet.
20 What advantage is there to learning Esperanto as one’s first foreign language?
A Its pronunciation rules follow those of most European languages.
B There are no grammar rules to learn.
C It can make the learning of other foreign languages less complicated.
D Its verbs are not conjugated.
21 What do its critics say of Esperanto?
A It is only used in artificial situations.
B It requires emotional involvement.
C It cannot translate works of literature.
D It lacks the depth of expression.
22 How could Esperanto help on a global level?
A It would eliminate the need for conferences.
B More aid money would reach those who need it.
C The world population would be speaking only one language.
D More funds could be made available for learning foreign languages.
Questions 23-26
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the information
NO if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
23 Supporters of Esperanto say it gives everyone an equal voice.
24 Esperanto is the only artificially-constructed language.
25 Esperanto can be learned as part of a self-study course.
26 Esperanto can be used equally in formal and casual situations.
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