Model Questions for UPSC PRE CSAT PAPER SET - 23
Passage
Studies of the factors governing reading development in young children have
achieved a remarkable degree of consensus over the past two decades. The
consensus concerns the causal role of ‘phonological skills’ in young children’s
reading progress. Children who have good phonological skills, or good
‘phonological awareness’ become good readers and good spellers. Children with
poor phonological skills progress more poorly. In particular, those who have a
specific phonological deficit are likely to be classified as dyslexic by the
time they are 9 or 10 years old.
Phonological skills in young children can be measured at a number of different
levels. The term phonological awareness is a global one, and refers to a deficit
in recognising smaller units of sound within spoken words. Development work has
shown that this deficit can be at the level of syllables, of onsets and rimes,
or phonemes. For example, a 4-year old child might have difficulty in
recognising that a word like valentine has three syllables, suggesting a lack of
syllabic awareness. A five-year-old might have difficulty in recognising that
the odd word out in the set of words fan, cat, hat, mat is fan. This task
required an awareness of the sub-syllabic units of the onset and the rime. The
onset corresponds to any initial consonants in a syllable and the rime
corresponds to the vowel and to any following consonants. Rimes correspond to
rhyme in single-syllable words, and so the rime in fan differs from the rime in
cat, hat and mat. In longer words, rime and rhyme may differ. The onsets in
valentine are /v/ and /t/ and the rimes correspond to the spelling patterns
‘al’, ‘en’ and ‘me’.
A six-year-old might have difficulty in recognising that plea and pray begin
with the same initial sound. This is a phonemic judgement. Although the initial
phoneme /p/ is shared between the two words, in plea it is part of the onset
‘pl’ and in pray it is part of the onset ‘pr’. Until children can segment the
onset (or the rime), such phonemic judgements are difficult for them to make. In
fact, a recent survey of different developmental studies has shown that the
different levels of phonological awareness appear to emerge sequentially. The
awareness of syllables, onsets, and rimes appears to merge at around the ages of
3 and 4, long before most children go to school. The awareness of phonemes, on
the other hand, usually emerges at around the age of 5 or 6, when children have
been taught to read for about a year. An awareness of onsets and rimes thus
appears to be a precursor of reading, whereas an awareness of phonemes at every
serial position in a word only appears to develop as reading is taught. The
onset-rime and phonemic levels of phonological structure, however, are not
distinct. Many onsets in English are single phonemes, and so are some rimes
(e.g. sea, go, zoo).
The early availability of onsets and rimes is supported by studies that have
compared the development of phonological awareness of onsets, rimes, and
phonemes in the same subjects using the same phonological awareness tasks. For
example, a study by Treiman and Zudowski used a same/different judgement task
based on the beginning or the end sounds of words. In the beginning-sound task,
the words either began with the same onset, as in plea and plank, or shared only
the initial phoneme, as in plea and pray.
In the end-sound task, the words either shared the entire rime, as in spit and
wit, or shared only the final phoneme, as in rat and wit. Treiman and Zudowski
showed that four-and five-year-old children found the onset-rime version of the
same/different task significantly easier than the version based on phonemes.
Only the six-year-olds, who had been learning to read for about a year, were
able to perform both versions of the tasks with an equal level of success.
1. According to the passage which of the following statements is true?
(a) A mono-syllabic word can have only one onset
(b) A mono-syllabic word can have only one rhyme but more than one rime
(c) A mono-syllabic word can have only one phoneme
(d) All of the above
2. Which of the following is likely to emerge last in the cognitive
development of a child?
(a) Rhyme
(b) Rime
(c) Onset
(d) Phoneme
3. A phonological deficit in which of the following is likely to be
classified as dyslexia?
(a) Onset judgement
(b) Rime judgement
(c) Phonemic judgement
(d) Anyone or more of the above
4. The Treiman and Zudowski experiment found evidence to support which of
the following conclusions?
(a) At age six reading instruction helps children perform both the
same/different judgement tasks
(b) The development of onset-rime awareness precedes the development of an
awareness of phonemes .
(c) At age four to five children find onset -rime version of the same/different
task significantly easier
(d) The development of onset-rime awareness is a necessary and sufficient
condition for the development of an awareness of phonemes
Passage
The lithosphere or outer shell of the earth is made up of about a dozen rigid
plates that move with respect to one another. New lithosphere is created at
mid-ocean ridges by the upwelling and cooling of magma from the earth’s’
interior. Since new lithosphere is continuously being created and the earth is
not expanding to any appreciable extent, the question arises: What happens to
the “old” lithosphere?
The answer came in the late. 1960s as the last major link in the theory of
sea-floor spreading and plate tectonics that has revolutionised our
understanding of tectonic processes, or structural deformation in the earth and
ha: provided a unifying theme for many diverse observations, the earth sciences.
The old lithosphere is subducted, or pushed down, into the earth’s mantle the
thick shell of. red-hot rock beneath the earth’s thin, cooler crust and abo.ve
its metallic(partly melted) core. As the formerly rigid plate descends, it
slowly heats up and over period of millions of years, it is absorbed into the
general circulation of the earth’s mantle.
The subduction of the lithosphere is perhaps the most significant phenomenon in
global tectonics. Subduction no only explains what happens to old lithosphere
but also accounts for many of the geologic processes that shape the earth’s
surface. Most of the’ world’s volcanoes anti earthquakes are associated with
descending lithospheric plates. The prominent island arcs-chains of islands such
a the Aleutians, the Kuriles, the Marianas, and the islands (Japan-are surface
expressions of the subduction process The deepest trenches of the world’s
oceans, including the Java and Tonga trenches and all others associated wit
island arcs, mark the seaward boundary of subduction zones. Major mountain
belts, such as the Andes and the Himalayas, have resulted from the convergence
an subduction of lithospheric plates.
To understand the subduction process, it is necessary to look at the thermal
regime of the earth. The temperature within the earth at first increase rapidly
with depth reaching about 1,200 degrees Celsius at a depth of 100 kilometres.
Then they increase more gradually approaching 2,000 degrees C at about 500
kilometres. The minerals in peridolite, the major constituent of the upper
mantle, start to melt at about 1,200 C or typically at a depth of 100 kilometres.
Under the oceans, the upper mantle fairly soft and may contain some molten
material at depth as shallow as 80 kilometres. The soft region of the mantle
over which the rigid lithospheric plate normally moves, is the asthenosphere. It
appears that in certain areas, convection currents in the asthenosphere may
drive the plates and that in other regions, the plate motions may drive the
convection currents.
Several factors contribute to the heating of the lithosphere as it descends into
the mantle.
First, heat simply flows into the cooler lithosphere from the surrounding warmer
mantle. Since the conductivity of the rock increases with temperature, the
conductive heating becomes mc efficient with increasing depth.
Second, as the lithospheric slab descends, it is subjected to increasing
pressure, which introduces heat of compression.
Third, the slab is heated the radioactive decay of uranium, thorium and
potassium which are present in the earth’s crust and add heat at constant rate
to the descending material.
Fourth, heat provided by the energy released when the minerals in t lithosphere
change to denser phases, or more compact crystal structures, as they are
subjected to higher pressure during descent.
Finally, heat is generated by friction, shear stresses and the dissipation of
viscous motions at boundaries between the moving lithospheric plate and 1
surrounding mantle. Among all these sources, the first a fourth contribute the
most toward the heating of 1 descending lithosphere.
5. According to the passage, which of the following statements is/are true
of the earth’s mantle?
I. It is in a state of flux.
II. Its temperature far exceeds that of the lithosphere.
III. It eventually incorporates the subducted lithosphere.
(a) I only
(b) I and III
(c) II only
(d) I, II and III
