Article: Just as the English language has changed quickly in the previous century, so has the use of it. After the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was founded in 1927, the particular style of speech of the BBC announcers was recognized as standard English or Received Pronunciation (RP) English. Now, most people still consider that the pronunciation and delivery of BBC announcers is the clearest and most understandable spoken English. English has had a strong relationship with classes and social positions. However, since the Second World War there has been a clear change of attitude towards speech snobbery , and marks of class distinction such as styles of speech have been gradually diminishing, especially in the younger generation. By the end of the 1960s, it had become clear that it was not necessary to speak standard English or even correct grammar to become popular, successful and rich. The fashionable speech of the day was no longer the special right of a special class but rather a defiant expression of classlessness. The greatest single influence of the shaping of the English language in modern times is the American English. Over the last 25 years the English used by many people, particularly by those in the media, advertising and show business, has become more and more mid-Atlantic in style, delivery and accent. In the 1970s, fashion favored careless pronunciation and a language full of jargon, slang and "in" words, a great quantity of which couldn't be understood by the outside world. What is considered modern and fashionable in Britain today is often not the kind of English taught in schools and colleges. Question: It can be concluded from the passage that _ . Yes or no, is the answer "there has been a great change in the English language in the previous century"?
No
------
Article: One of Britain's bravest women told yesterday how she helped to catch suspected police killer David Bieber-and was thanked with flowers by the police. It was also said that she could be in line for a share of up to PS 30,000 reward money. Vicki Brown, 30, played a very important role in ending the nationwide manhunt. Vicki, who has worked at the Royal Hotel for four years, told of her terrible experience when she had to steal into Bieber's bedroom and to watch him secretly. Then she waited alone for the hours while armed police prepared to storm into the building. She said: "I was very nervous. But when I opened the hotel door and saw 20 armed policemen lined up in the car park I was so glad they were there." The alarm had been raised because Vicki became suspicious of the guest who checked in at 3 pm the day before New year's Eve with little luggage and wearing sunglasses and a hat pulled down over his face. She said: "He didn't seem to want to talk too much and make any eye contact ." Vicki, the only employee on duty, called her bosses Margaret, 64, and husband Stall McKale, 65, who phoned the police at 11 pm. Officers from Northumbria Police called Vicki at the hotel in Dunston, Gatesheed, at about 11:30 pm to make sure that this was the wanted man. Then they kept in touch by phoning Vicki every 15 minutes. "It was about ten past two in the morning when the phone went again and a policeman said 'Would you go and make yourself known to the armed officers outside?' My heart missed a beat." Vicki quietly showed eight armed officers through passages and staircases to the top floor room and handed over the key. "I realized that my bedroom window overlooks that part of the hotel, so I went to watch. I could not see into the man's room, but I could see the passage. The police kept shouting at the man to come out with his hands showing. Then suddenly he must have come out because they shouted for him to lie down while he was handcuffed . Question: Vicki became suspicious of David Bieber because _ . Yes or no, is the answer "he looked very strange"?
No
------
Article: England has been the birthplace of most of the great English-language theater written throughout history. Most of the plays in England that are truly famous have something in common. They usually come from a playwright with several famous plays. Shakespeare William Shakespeare is considered the most famous British playwright. Shakespeare has a large catalog of tragedies, comedies and history plays, and each category is home to some of the most famous plays ever written. _ are all tragedies and performed in theaters around the world every year. Famous comedies include A Midsummer Night's Dream and Much Ado About Nothing. In the history category, Richard III and Henry V are very famous. Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw Several hundred years after Shakespeare, English people began to enjoy the works of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. Wilde's plays are still popular now, and The Importance of Being Earnest is both performed and studied extremely frequently. A Woman of No Importance and An Ideal Husband are among his other famous works. Shaw and Wilde were born within a few years of each other, but Shaw was a much more productive writer. His most famous plays include Pygmalion and Candida. Shaw's plays are loved so much that an entire theater company is devoted to performing his work in Niagara-on-the-Lake in southern Ontario. Harold Pinter The plays of Harold Pinter certainly have an international presence. His writing was so widely recognized for its importance that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2005. Pinter is especially known for his style of writing. Many of his plays such as Betrayal, The Dumb Waiter and his first play, The Room, are extremely well known. Question: Which of the following plays were most probably written in the same period of time? Yes or no, is the answer "An Ideal Husband and Candida."?
No
------
Article: At dawn on Friday, May 19, 1780, farmers in New England stopped to wonder at the pink color of the sun. By noon the sky had darkened to midnight blackness, causing Americans, still in the painful struggle of a prolonged war of independence, to light candles and tremble at thoughts of the Last Judgment. As the birds quieted and no storm accompanied the darkness, men and women crowded into churches, where one minister commented that "The people were very attentive." John Greenleaf Whittier later wrote that "Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp . . ." A recent study of researchers, led by Richard Guyette from the University of Missouri's Tree Ring Laboratory, has shown that vast forest fires in the Algonquin Highlands of southern Ontario and elsewhere in Canada brought this event upon New England. The scientists have discovered "fire scars" on the rings for that year, left when the heat of a wildfire has killed a part of a tree's cambium . Evidence collected also points to a drought that year. An easterly wind and low barometric pressure helped force smoke into the upper atmosphere. "The record fits pretty close," says Guyette. "We had the right fuel, the drought. The conditions were all there." Lacking the ability to communicate quickly over long distances, Americans in 1780 remained in the dark about the event, which had disappeared by the next day. Over the next several months, the papers carried heated debates about what brought the darkness. Some were the voices of angry prediction, such as one Massachusetts farmer who wrote, "Oh! Backsliding New-England, attend now to the things which belong to your peace before they are forever hid from your eyes." Others gave different answers. One stated that a "flaming star" had passed between the earth and the sun. Ash, argued another commentator. The debate, carried on throughout New England, where there were no scientific journals or academies yet, reflected an unfolding culture of scientific enquiry already sweeping the Western world, a revolution... Question: What can be the best title for the text? Yes or no, is the answer "New England's dark day."?
Yes
------