eupeimproveenglish

Text 1 Compulsive shopping A new illness, the Compulsive Buying Disorder, has been diagnosed. Its symptoms are frequent thoughts of shopping, experiencing senseless impulses to purchase unneeded items, and overspending to the extent that it harms relationships or job performance. A recent survey has found that one in twenty American adults buy things they may not even want or need. In today’s world of consumerism, where we are constantly bombarded by ads, this is perhaps not unusual. But more surprising is a further finding that runs counter to the conventional and rather stereotyped view that compulsive buying is very much a “woman's disease”: men are just as likely as women to suffer from compulsive buying. Gone seem to be the days when women dragged their bored men around shopping malls. Researchers say that the number of men who indulge in unnecessary shopping has rocketed. Experts claim that past trends and figures may have been unfairly distorted as male obsessive ...

Do you think you can recycle? Then you must meet the villagers of Kamikatsu, in Japan! Not long ago life in Kamikatsu centred on cultivating rice. Now the tiny village in the densely wooded mountains of Shikoku Island in south-west Japan has a new obsession: rubbish. Kamikatsu’s aim is to end its dependence on incineration, and become Japan’s first zero-waste community. An hour’s drive from the nearest city, the village was forced to change the way it managed its waste in 2000 when new regulations on dioxin emissions forced it to shut down its two incinerators. “We were no longer able to burn our rubbish, so we thought the best policy was not to produce any” said Sonoe Fujii of the village’s Zero Waste Academy, a non-profit organisation that controls the scheme. Household waste must be separated into no fewer than 34 categories before being taken to a recycling centre where volunteers reprimand firmly, but politely, anyone who forgets to remove the lid from a plastic bott...

Make room for the robots When world-famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma announced that he would be playing with the Detroit Symphony, every seat was sold. However, Yo-Yo Ma’s performance was not the only thing that amazed the audience. The conductor did too. The conductor stepped onto the stage and lifted both arms to direct the musicians who played the song "The Impossible Dream." Until recently, that is exactly what this performance would have been. This is because ASIMO, the conductor, is only eight years old and 1.2 meters tall. It is also a robot. The scientists who built ASIMO equipped it with many abilities such as climbing stairs, recognizing faces, or even helping musicians make beautiful music. Since the 1960s, robots have been doing jobs that are too boring or dangerous for humans. These industrial robots, unlike ASIMO, do not have a humanoid appearance. But now that robots are moving into our homes, many are starting to look more like us. One company has built a dish-wa...

OPTION A: “Bullying at school” For some time, Johnny, a quiet 13-year-old, was a human toy for some of his classmates. He was constantly forced to give them his money, and beaten up in the toilets. When Johnny’s torturers were interrogated about the bullying, they said they abused him because “it was fun”. Unfortunately, bullying among schoolchildren is certainly an old phenomenon, and most adults have experienced some form of mild abuse in their schooldays; but this was not considered such a big problem, and therefore authorities did not think that measures had to be taken. It was only in the early 1970s that it began to be made the object of systematic research. A broad definition of bullying is when a student is repeatedly exposed to negative actions on the part of one or more other students. These negative actions can take the form of physical contact, verbal abuse, or making faces and rude gestures. Spreading rumours and excluding the victim from a group are also common forms....