Page 84 - DENG103_English - I

Unit 7: Comprehension of Seen and Unseen Passage

Answer the questions in one or two sentences Notes

(i) Why was the old man the last one in the procession ?
(ii) Describe the quilt that the old man carried.
(iii) Why did the old man find it difficult to carry the load ? Give two reasons.
Complete the chart with information from the text

(i) As the old man staggered along
(ii) He strained his eyes so that he could.
PASSAGE 2

Human intelligence is too vast and subtle a phenomenon to be reduced to a trio of digits. It’s
even hard to say what we mean by smart. The world is full of brilliant poets who can’t balance
a cheque book, and genius physicists incapable of driving a manual-shift car. Understanding
social cues, creating works of art and spawning inventions are all crucial mental tasks that bear
little relationship to how well a person can fill a printed test form.
It’s worth remembering too that IQ isn’t quite the same thing as intelligence. As Stephen Jay
Gould pointed out in his 1983 book, The Mismeasure of Man, the mere fact that we can
consistently measure something, in this case, IQ doesn’t mean that it has any significance or
correspondence to any intuitive, man-on-the street concept. By way of analogy, if we measured
everybody’s height and divided it by his or her weight, we could come up with a heaviness
quotient–‘HQ’. After years of research, we might find that Europeans are slimmer than Chinese,
get more exercise or are more robust in some vague, undefined way. Without additional information
we couldn’t tell. Likewise, a person’s measured IQ may relate only indirectly to a layman’s
notion of being smart.
Based on your reading of the above passage, answer the following questions as briefly as
possible :
(a) Why is it difficult to define smartness ?
(b) Give two examples from the passage of work which the author calls ‘Crucial mental
tasks’.

(c) Give in your words Stephen Jay’s view about IQ.
(d) How far is a common man’s notion of intelligence related to IQ ?
(e) Find words from the passage which mean the same as the following :
(i) rarefied (ii) decisive.
Answers

(a) Smartness is a vague term. Some people may be capable of doing great things but
incapable of doing things that many common men can easily do. So it is very difficult
to define smartness.
(b) The two examples are :
(i) creating works of art
(ii) making inventions.

(c) Stephen Jay believes that IQ is not the same thing as the common man’s concept of
intelligence.

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