DIRECTIONS FOR TEACHERS LISTENING SECTION COMPREHENSIVE EXAMINATION IN ENGLISH Tuesday, January 27, 2009 — 1:15 to 4:15 p.m., only BE SURE THAT THE LISTENING SECTION IS ADMINISTERED TO EVERY STUDENT. 1 Before the start of the examination period, say: 2 Distribute one examination booklet and one essay booklet to each student. 3 After each student has received an examination booklet and an essay booklet, say: 4 After the students have filled in all headings on their answer sheets and essay booklets, say: 5 Now read the passage aloud, including the attribution at the end. Read with appropriate expression, but without added comment.Do not open the examination booklet until you are instructed to do so. Tear off the answer sheet, which is the last page of the examination booklet, and fill in its heading. Now circle “Session One” and fill in the heading on each page of your essay booklet. Look at page 2 of your examination booklet and follow along while I read the Overview and The Situation. Overview: For this part of the test, you will listen to an account about food choices, answer some multiple-choice questions, and write a response based on the situation described below. You will hear the account twice. You may take notes on the next page anytime you wish during the readings. The Situation: Your health class is preparing a newsletter on nutrition to distribute to high school students. For your contribution to the newsletter, you have decided to write an article about how people make food choices. In preparation for writing your article, listen to an account by dietitian Cynthia Sass about food choices. Then use relevant information from the account to write your article. Now I will read the passage aloud to you for the first time. SESSION ONE[2] Listening Passage When I met my husband Jack nine years ago, he was three sizes larger (XXL) than he is now. On one of our first dates, I watched in silent horror as he inhaled a huge slice of pizza piled with pepperoni, sausage and extra cheese—washing it down with Dr. Pepper. I was (still am) a vegetarian and a registered dietitian who teaches people how to eat well. I soon discovered that, more than pizza, Jack loved deep-fried tacos. He rarely touched fruit. Most of the vegetables he ate were battered and fried…. Even after we eloped four months later and began eating most meals together, I had no motives to make over Jack’s diet. I kept eating the foods I preferred: whole grains, vegetables and fruits (and chocolate). For a time, Jack stuck to his familiar favorites. At home, we prepared separate meals and ate them together. When we dined out, we chose restaurants that met both our needs (i.e., enchiladas for Jack; black bean soup and a salad for me). I always offered Jack tastes of whatever I was eating. Little by little, he started exploring new foods. He tasted a bite of my veggie (soy) burger, said it wasn’t bad, and eventually, he tried a whole one. Later, when he learned that edamame was soy, too, he gave it a go—and liked it. Eventually, he moved on to tofu, which now, stir-fried with vegetables, is one of his staple lunches…. I’ve been thrilled by my husband’s eating evolution, but I had never really stopped to consider how a man who had eaten one way for over 30 years successfully pulled off a dietary one-eighty. Then a few months ago at a nutrition conference, I attended a lecture on taste preferences by Julie Mennella, Ph.D., a scientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. “What we like to eat is shaped by both biology and experience,” Dr. Mennella explained. Jack’s diet transformation was starting to make sense. There are five distinct tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami, which means “savory” in Japanese and is associated with meats and cheeses. When we eat, chemicals in our food are sensed by the thousands of taste buds on the bumpy projections (fungiform papillae) of our tongues. The chemicals attach to receptors in the buds, sending signals to the brain, which registers taste perceptions. Receptors also respond to the temperature of foods and chemicals that create physical sensations (think of chili with fiery jalapeños). Smell plays into one’s flavor experiences, too: foods release chemicals that travel up the nose to olfactory receptors, triggering a chain reaction of signals that amplify taste perceptions. (Prove this to yourself by holding your nose and sampling a jelly bean: you’ll taste sweet, but won’t get a burst of “flavor”—the term used to refer to taste plus smell—until you unplug your nose.) To a degree, taste preferences are hard-wired. Across cultures, people generally prefer foods that taste sweet and dislike bitter ones—which makes evolutionary sense. Sweetness is associated with foods that provide energy needed for survival (e.g., mother’s milk). Bitterness often signals the presence of a toxin. How much a person prefers sweet, and dislikes bitter, tastes depends partly upon the number of taste buds and the type of taste receptors he or she inherits. “We know that some people live in a more ‘pastel’ taste world and others, a more ‘neon’ one,” says Valerie B. Duffy, professor of Allied Health Sciences at the University of Connecticut. One of the most studied genetic factors affecting taste involves one’s ability to detect bitter compounds. Some people inherit genes for taste receptors that are acutely sensitive to bitterness. Other people, born with genes for receptors that make for less-intense taste experiences, often aren’t able to detect subtle bitter compounds. One can gauge a person’s bitterness sensitivity with a simple test: a slip of paper containing a small amount of a compound known to stimulate bitter-sensing receptors is placed on the tongue. The taster perceives bitterness only if his receptors are the sensitive kind….Luckily, inheriting an ultra-sensitive bitter-detection system doesn’t mean that your diet is doomed. “You can temper the bitterness in foods by pairing them with other sweeter foods or cooking them in ways that bring out their natural sweetness,” says Duffy. “Salt and strong spices, such as garlic, chiles or ginger, also can make bitter foods more palatable.” Jack and I do a lot of this sort of thing at home: we sauté spinach with sweet red peppers and enhance asparagus with garlic and a sprinkle of sea salt…. As kids transition from infancy to the toddler years, “nurture” overtakes “nature” in respect to developing eating patterns. “Children learn the rules of eating from their caregivers,” says Mennella. Adult role models teach kids what constitutes food and how foods should be prepared. They set rules about when certain foods should or should not be eaten…. During early childhood one begins to associate both positive and negative experiences with particular foods. Offering a child a certain food as part of a fun celebration or ritual (e.g., birthday cake) enhances his preference for that food. On the other hand, insisting that a child eat something in order to get a reward—“finish your peas and then you can watch television”—usually creates a negative food association. “These ‘contingency’ strategies are effective in the short run: they do get a kid to eat peas,” says [Dr. Jennifer Orlet] Fisher. “But over the long haul, they tend to backfire.” In other words, bribing a child to eat something tends to reinforce the negative associations with that food…. Sometimes, education and social support motivate positive dietary changes. “When people discover the benefits of healthy foods and learn that it may not be so difficult to implement new ways of eating, they generally want to change,” says [Dr. David] Himmelgreen [former president of the Council on Nutritional Anthropology]…. — excerpted from “Retrain Your Taste Buds,” Eating Well, January/February 2007 [3] 6 After reading the passage aloud once, say: 7 Read the passage a second time. 8 After the second reading, say: You may take a few minutes to look over The Situation and your notes. (Pause) Now I will read the passage aloud a second time. Now turn to page 4 of your examination booklet, read the directions, and answer the multiple-choice questions. Be sure to follow all the directions given in your examination booklet and your essay booklet. You may now begin.