input: Make use of the article to answer the questions. OK, I admit it: emoticons are popular. Some people even think they are fun. Many seem unable to get through an e-mail or Instant Message chat sentence without using one. Some feel that they add feeling and character to otherwise cold digital communications.

Some people, such as a Hollywood scriptwriter John Blumenthal, however, _ the use of emoticons as "infantile just like the people who use them". He believes that words themselves should be enough. "If you're funny, happy or sad, that should be apparent from the comment that goes before the emoticons," he argues.

In the eyes of Blumenthal, the use of emoticons is a gender issue. "Men don't use emoticons very much. Maybe not at all," he said, "Teenage girls and women seem to use them a lot. Maybe there's an emoticon gene."

It's an interesting opinion, but it is not shared by all.

In an interview with The New York Times, Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the University of California, said that emoticons are popular because our brains are programmed "to seek out representations of humanity". He believes that they are popular not because they are shortcuts for the lazy, but because they bring in something beyond language. They satisfy our needs to be with and communicate with people.

All of these arguments may be somehow right. Each one of us will choose to communicate in our own way. I tried to use one once and felt like I was stealing into a primary school class that I had no place being in. I'd rather let my words do the talking.

Friends, however, send me messages and e-mails full of emoticons. I have no problem with this. I don't regard any of my friends as lazy or immature. It's just a question of individuality. 1. What are popular?
2. Do people think they are boring?
3. Why do people use them?
4. Who is John Blumenthal?
5. What does he think about using them?
6. What does he think?
7. Who does he say uses them?
8. Does everyone think the same as he does?
9. Who is Dacher Keltner?
10. Where?
11. Why do they think it is common to use them?
12. Does he think it's because we are lazy?
13. Then why?
14. What else does he say?
15. When did he say this?
16. What does he say it's a question of?
17. Do enemies use these?
18. Do men use them according to Blumenthal?
19. What need do the satisfy?
20. Are both arguments right?
numbered_answers: 1. emoticons
2. No
3. to add feeling and character to otherwise cold digital communications.
4. a Hollywood scriptwriter
5. infantile
6. that words themselves should be enough
7. Teenage girls and women
8. no
9. professor of psychology
10. University of California,
11. because our brains are programmed "to seek out representations of humanity"
12. No
13. because they bring in something beyond language.
14. They satisfy our needs to be with and communicate with people.
15. In an interview with The New York Times
16. individuality.
17. No
18. No
19. to be with and communicate with people.
20. Yes

input: Make use of the article to answer the questions. Chapter Twenty-Four: Troston

I doubt if the name of this small Suffolk village, remote from towns and railroads, will have any literary associations for the reader, unless he be a person of exceptionally good memory, who has taken a special interest in the minor poets of the last century; or that it would help him if I add the names of Honington and Sapiston, two other small villages a couple of miles from Troston, with the slow sedgy Little Ouse, or a branch of it, flowing between them. Yet Honington was the birthplace of Robert Bloomfield, known as "the Suffolk poet" in the early part of the last century (although Crabbe was living then and was great, as he is becoming again after many years); while at Sapiston, the rustic village on the other side of the old stone bridge, he acquired that love of nature and intimate knowledge of farm life and work which came out later in his Farmer's Boy. Finally, Troston, the little village in which I write, was the home of Capel Lofft, a person of importance in his day, who discovered Bloomfield, found a publisher for his poems, and boomed it with amazing success.

I dare say it will only provoke a smile of amusement in readers of literary taste when I confess that Bloomfield's memory is dear to me; that only because of this feeling for the forgotten rustic who wrote rhymes I am now here, strolling about in the shade of the venerable trees in Troston Park-the selfsame trees which the somewhat fantastic Capel knew in his day as "Homer," "Sophocles," "Virgil," "Milton," and by other names, calling each old oak, elm, ash, and chestnut after one of the immortals. 1. Where was Robert Bloomfield born?
2. How did he feel about nature?
3. How far is Sapiston from Troston?
4. What waterway ran between the towns?
5. What was Bloomfield's nickname?
6. What kind of bridge led to Sapiston?
7. What work did Bloomfield publish later?
8. Did his poems do well?
9. Who discovered him?
10. Is Sapiston near a railroad?
11. Was Bloomfield a major poet?
12. Where was Capel from?
numbered_answers:
1. Honington
2. love of nature
3. a couple of miles from Troston
4. Little Ouse
5. "the Suffolk poet"
6. old stone bridge
7. Farmer's Boy
8. amazing success
9. Capel Lofft
10. unknown
11. amazing success
12. Troston