Welcome to your English Placement Test
Passage 1: Someone you can look up to: Christina Morin
Christina Morin is an amazing young woman with an inspiring story. When she was 17, Christina went on a safari to Kenya with her parents. During her trip, she spent four days with the local Samburu tribespeople, who were suffering from a devastating drought after several months without rain and had very little food. Christina wanted to help. She started by teaching art classes to the Samburu children, who had never painted before. Christina was amazed at their wonderful drawings, and began to think. If she made their pictures into note cards, would she be able to sell them when she went home and raise money for food? She bought samples of the children’s artwork with her own money, which paid for two weeks’ worth of food for the tribe. Soon after she got home, the Samburu Project was born. Christina set up a program to sell tribal arts and crafts in local stores, with all profits going to the tribespeople in Kenya. She was able to build a dam, which was her original goal, as well as build several wells, buy animals and food, pay medical bills, and build a crafts center.
Based on the paragraph above, choose the right answer.
Passage 2: What are businesses doing about global warming?
The issue of climate change has been discussed in scientific and business circles for over two decades. However, only in recent years has there been agreement that it is crucial something be done to reduce the carbon emissions that cause global warming, and that businesses – as well as governments and individual citizens – must act. The main problem is the rising level of carbon dioxide, which has been shown to warm the earth’s atmosphere, and which is still being produced in damaging quantities by power plants and motor vehicles. A few forward-thinking companies are investing in renewable energy, reducing their use of oil and coal, recycling more, and consuming less in order to reduce their "carbon footprint" (their total amount of carbon emissions). Although companies like these are preparing to live in a reduced-carbon world, most businesses have been slow in reducing their negative impact on the environment. They might be encouraged to finally start changing their environmental policies through a combination of legal, political, and business pressures. Laws on carbon emissions are likely to be affected by changes in government policy. In addition, the effects of new weather patterns involving high winds, hurricanes, fires, and floods are making insurance companies look seriously at climate change as more and more money is continually being paid out for the damage caused by these events. Companies are being forced by their insurers to think of such environmental damage as a significant business risk.