Organizing Information

Exercise 1.10.A

Read the passages and answer each question based on what is stated or implied in that passage.

Passage 1

THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND ROMANTICISM

The Romantic Movement in music and literature was a reaction against the Enlightenment philosophy that had dominated much of the eighteenth century. Enlightenment ideals held that human society could reach perfection through rational thought, while Romantic philosophy reveled in the beauty and unpredictable power of Nature. The Enlightenment gloried in civilization and believed in princely rule of a benevolent kind. Romanticism believed in democracy and the common people, reviving folk traditions, ballads, and medieval sagas that made heroes of rural characters. Artistically, the Enlightenment condemned excess and dictated that the discipline of formal structure was beneficial to artistic expression. Romanticism, on the other hand, celebrated emotions and the senses, believing that the emotional demands of a particular work should dictate its form. While the Enlightenment believed in a generally positive approach to life and the abandonment of superstition, Romanticism found inspiration in death as an “other kingdom” and in the supernatural; hence, literature developed a “Gothic” streak that eventually found its way into music.

Passage 2

VALLEY FLOORS

1                          The floor of a river valley develops in one of two ways: as a rock–floored valley bottom or as an accumulation valley floor. A rock–floored valley is formed by a stream that no longer incises by cutting downward but rather erodes laterally in a course that winds from side to side across the valley floor. In a rock–floored valley, the valley slopes are undercut and steepened by the sideways erosion. The floor of the river channel lies in the bedrock, and on either side of the channel it is covered by only a thin layer of gravel and sand. As the stream swings across the valley floor, it deposits material on the insides of the bends in the channel.

2                         The second type of valley bottom, the accumulation floor, cannot easily be distinguished from a rock–floored valley on its surface. An accumulation valley floor is created by the continuous deposition of gravel and sand in an existing incised valley where the accumulation of material has replaced the cutting action. Both the channel floor and the floodplain—the part of the valley floor flooded frequently at high water—are composed entirely of these gravel and sand deposits. An accumulation floor is much less resistant to erosion than a rock floor since the gravel and sand of its channel bed have already been transported and may easily be removed during the next flood.

Passage 3

ANIMALS AND PLANTS

1                        We can distinguish animals from plants by looking at their contrasting modes of nutrition. Unlike plants, animals cannot manufacture their own food. Animals cannot construct organic molecules from inorganic chemicals as plants can during photosynthesis. Animals must take pre–formed organic molecules into their bodies. Most animals do this by ingestion—that is, by eating other organisms or organic material. Animals store their food reserves as glycogen, whereas plants store their food as starch.

2                       Animal cells lack the cell walls that characterize plant cells, and animal cells have unique types of junctions between them. In most animals, cells are successively organized into tissues, organs, and organ systems. Animals have two types of tissues that plants do not have. The first is nervous tissue, for the conduction of electrical impulses, and the other is muscle tissue, for movement. Nerves and muscles, which control active behavior, are unique to animals.

3                       Animal life began in the Precambrian seas with the evolution of multi–cellular forms that lived by eating other organisms. This new way of life led to an evolutionary explosion of diverse forms. Early animals populated the seas, fresh water, and eventually the land. The diversity of animal life on Earth today is the result of over half a billion years of evolution from those first ancestors that consumed other life forms.

Exercise 1.10.B

Read the passages and answer each question based on what is stated or implied in that passage.

Passage 4

COMMERCIAL ARCHITECTURE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

1                              Arcades were built in Paris as early as 1799 and in London in 1816, but these were primarily arched passages through buildings to connect institutions. American arcades, by contrast, were not just passages to some other destination but the entire focus of large commercial blocks, and were, in effect, prototypical shopping malls. The Providence Arcade (1829) in Rhode Island’s capital illustrates the American transformation of the arcade into a temple of shopping. The Arcade’s pitched glass roof sheltered a large open space surrounded by tiered shops. The Arcade was set at the edge of Providence’s business district, making it a focal point for future growth. On the two street sides, six huge granite columns modeled on a Greek temple dominated the building’s facades.

2                             Nineteenth–century urban Americans flocked to another ancestor of the contemporary shopping mall, the department store, a controlled indoor world where an array of goods were organized under a single management. The origins of the department store were in Cincinnati, where in 1829, a new kind of building was dedicated to trade, business, and culture. This building, called the Bazaar, featured a four–story rotunda beneath a huge dome that meant to unite multiple functions under one symbolic roof. Unfortunately, however, the Bazaar was short–lived. A more successful commercial and architectural prototype was the department store known as the Marble Palace, which opened in New York in 1846. Monumental in style, the building’s impressive facade of Corinthian columns, with large plate glass display windows between them, easily lured in the city’s wealthy customers.

Passage 5

RESEARCH DESIGNS

1                              In the fields of psychology and sociology, a crucial decision for researchers is which research design to use. When the subject of the study is how people change or develop over time, two designs are frequently used: the cross–sectional design and the longitudinal design.

2                            Cross–sectional studies look at a cross–section of subjects and compare their responses. The essential characteristics of the design are that it includes groups of subjects at different age levels, and that each subject is tested or interviewed only once. For example, researchers may give a memory test to adults in their twenties through seventies, select the youngest group as a standard, and then compare each older group to that norm. Cross–sectional studies are relatively quick to do and can provide information about possible age differences. However, they do not reveal anything about individual change over time, since each subject is tested only once.

3                            Longitudinal studies differ from cross–sectional studies because they test or interview the same subjects over time and therefore allow us to look at consistency or change within the same individual. The typical procedure is to select a relatively small group of subjects who are all about the same age at the beginning of the study and then look at them repeatedly over a period of time. Short–term longitudinal studies cover several years and are common in research on both children and adults. Long–term longitudinal studies follow subjects from childhood into adulthood, from early to middle adulthood, or from middle adulthood to old age. One advantage of longitudinal studies is that any changes found are real changes, not just age–group differences.

Passage 6

PROXIMATE AND ULTIMATE CAUSATION

1                          Behavioral biologists ask two basic types of questions about animal behavior: how animals behave and why they behave as they do. The “how” questions seek to understand the proximate or immediate causes underlying a behavior at a particular time and place. For example, a biologist might want to explain the singing of a male white–throated sparrow in the spring in terms of hormonal or neural mechanisms. Such physiological causes of behavior are proximate factors. Alternatively, another biologist might ask what purpose singing serves the sparrow, and then attempt to understand events in the evolution of birds that led to springtime singing. These are “why” questions that focus on ultimate causation, the evolutionary origin and purpose of behavior. These two types of questions are very independent approaches to behavior. 2                         Questions about proximate causation examine how animals perform their various functions at the molecular, cellular, organismal, and population levels. The biological sciences that address proximate causes are known as experimental sciences because they use the experimental method of: (1) predicting how a system will respond to a disturbance, (2) making the disturbance, and (3) comparing the observed results with the predictions. Researchers repeat the experimental conditions many times to eliminate chance results that might lead to false conclusions. 3                         Questions about ultimate causation ask what produced biological systems and their distinctive properties through evolutionary time. The sciences dealing with ultimate causes are known as evolutionary sciences, and they mainly use the comparative method rather than experimentation. Researchers compare characteristics of molecular biology, cell biology, anatomy, development, and ecology among related species to identify patterns of variation.

Check your answers

How to Score 3–Point Question

Answers Correct	Points Earned
5	3
4	2
3	1
0 – 2	0

How to Score 4–Point Question

Answers Correct	Points Earned
7	4
6	3
5	2
4	1
0-3	0

Extension

1

Outside of class, select an article from a magazine or journal or part of a chapter from a university textbook. Do the following activity as an individual or small–group exercise, making as many photocopies of the article as necessary. Read the article and think about its organization and purpose. Answer the following questions:

a. What is the function of the article? Why did the author write it?

b. How are the ideas and information organized?

c. What is the purpose of each paragraph or division?

d. What are the major ideas and most important information in the article?

Make a table or chart of the article. Show the article’s major divisions and the most important ideas and information in each division.