B2 Reading Practice Test 2

Augusta Ada Byron was born in London in December 1815, the only legitimate child of the famous poet Lord Byron. She never really knew him; her parents separated within weeks of her birth, and he left England for good soon afterwards. Her mother, Annabella, who loved mathematics, was determined that her daughter should not inherit her father's restless, poetic temperament. As a result, Ada was educated in mathematics and science, subjects rarely offered to girls in the early nineteenth century. The strategy worked better than her mother may have expected. Ada was an eager learner, and she had the good fortune to be taught by capable tutors, including the scientist and writer Mary Somerville. Her imagination, however, remained as active as her father's. Even as a teenager, she drew plans for a flying machine after studying the anatomy of birds. In 1833, at a social gathering, Ada was introduced to the mathematician Charles Babbage, who showed her a small working part of his Difference Engine, a mechanical calculator. She was fascinated, and the two began a long correspondence. By then Babbage was designing something far more ambitious, the Analytical Engine, which could be given instructions on punched cards. It was never completed in his lifetime, but its plan contained many ideas found in modern computers. The achievement for which Ada is best remembered came in 1843. She translated an article about the Analytical Engine, written in French by an Italian engineer, and added her own notes. These notes were about three times longer than the article itself. In them she described, step by step, how the engine could calculate a sequence of numbers known as Bernoulli numbers, which many historians regard as the first published computer program. More remarkable than the program was her vision. Ada realised that the engine might handle not only numbers but any information that could be expressed in symbols. In principle, she wrote, it might even compose music. At the same time she was careful to add that the machine could only do what it was told to do; it could not originate anything by itself, a point still debated in discussions about artificial intelligence. Her work was largely forgotten for a century. When early computer scientists rediscovered it, her reputation grew, and in the late 1970s a programming language was named Ada in her honour.

Few topics divide students, parents and teachers as reliably as school uniforms. In Turkey, pupils have worn them for generations, though the rules have changed over the years; in many countries, such as Germany or the Netherlands, they are almost unknown. Two students were asked for their opinions. Elif, 16, studies in İzmir and supports uniforms. "Mornings are already stressful enough," she says. "When everybody wears the same thing, nobody has to decide what to wear, and nobody feels judged for what their family can or cannot afford. I have seen how quickly clothes turn into a competition: who has the newest trainers, who wears a particular brand. A uniform removes that pressure. It also makes the school feel like a community. If you walk into a room full of people in the same colours, you feel as though you belong to something. And, from a practical point of view, a basic uniform is often cheaper over the course of a year than a wardrobe of fashionable clothes." Tom, 17, attends a school in Leeds where uniforms are compulsory, and he is far from convinced. "Nobody denies that brands can be a problem," he says, "but I do not believe that identical clothes solve it. Students find other ways to show off, and the uniform itself can be expensive when the school insists on a particular supplier. More importantly, young people are learning to express who they are. If we are never given the chance to choose, how are we supposed to develop our own taste or judgement? Some students also struggle with items that do not suit their body or comfort, and rules about hair, jewellery or shoes can end up creating more arguments than the clothes solve." Researchers have not settled the matter. Studies have linked uniforms to better behaviour and attendance in some schools, but other studies have found no clear effect on results once other factors are taken into account. The consequences appear to depend on how the rules are applied: flexible policies, which allow reasonable choices, seem to cause far fewer complaints than strict ones. Perhaps the real question is not whether students should wear uniforms, but who should decide. A policy discussed openly with students and parents, with room for compromise, is far more likely to succeed than one handed down without explanation.

When Ms Aydın announced that the school hiking club would climb Uludağ in late October, nobody was more excited than Mert. He had the best boots, the lightest backpack and, as he reminded us every ten minutes, the most advanced navigation app money could buy. I had a paper map, a small compass and a sandwich that had been squashed since breakfast. The first two hours were glorious. The pine forest smelled of resin, the path was dry, and Mert strode ahead, glancing at his phone and calling out our height above sea level. Ms Aydın had asked us to stay within sight of the person in front, but by the time we reached the open slopes above the trees, Mert, Aylin and I were a good distance ahead of the rest of the group. Then the fog came. It rolled across the mountain so quickly that within a minute I could not see the end of my own arm. Mert held up his phone triumphantly, then frowned. "No signal," he muttered. "The app won't load the map." He shook it as if that might help. Aylin looked at me. I would have preferred to be somewhere else, because I am not someone who normally takes the lead. But I remembered the lesson Ms Aydın had given us in September, when we had practised with maps in the school garden. "We stop here," I said, surprised by how steady my voice sounded. "She told us that if visibility drops, we should stay at the last marker and wait." Mert opened his mouth to argue, then looked at the grey wall around us and closed it again. We sat behind a rock, shared my flattened sandwich three ways, and blew the emergency whistle on Aylin's keyring every few minutes. Mert had gone remarkably quiet. It took about forty minutes for the first torch beam to appear through the mist. Ms Aydın was carrying two torches and the calm expression of someone who had been through this before. "Well done," she said simply. "Anyone can read a screen when it works. What matters is knowing what to do when it doesn't." On the way down, Mert walked beside me. "Can you show me how the compass works?" he asked, without looking at me. I handed it over. It was, I thought, the best moment of the whole trip.