The Silent Threat: Understanding Hantavirus
Read the passage carefully. Then answer all twelve questions using only information from the text. Pay close attention to word limits where specified.
AIn recent decades, hantavirus has become a subject of growing concern among public health authorities worldwide, particularly as expanding populations bring communities into ever-closer contact with rural, forested, and semi-arid environments. The virus belongs to a family of single-stranded RNA viruses known as Hantaviridae, distributed across multiple continents, with each strain adapted to a specific rodent reservoir host. While hantavirus remains comparatively rare when measured against more widely publicised infectious diseases, it has attracted sustained scientific attention owing to its notably high fatality rate in certain clinical forms and the complete absence of any licensed vaccine or approved curative treatment available to the general public.
BThe primary route of transmission distinguishes hantavirus sharply from the respiratory and contact-based diseases that dominate public health discourse. Unlike influenza, measles, or SARS-CoV-2, hantavirus cannot spread from one human being to another. Infection occurs exclusively through exposure to infected rodents or, more commonly, to materials contaminated by them. When carrier rodents — most notably the deer mouse in North America and various species of vole in Eurasia — shed the virus through their urine, droppings, or saliva, the particles may become airborne after drying in enclosed or poorly ventilated spaces. A person who inhales these suspended particles while cleaning a long-disused building, working in a grain store, or camping in an area with a dense rodent population may become infected without ever having come into physical contact with the animal itself. This mode of transmission makes prevention heavily reliant on environmental awareness and personal protective behaviour.
CThe clinical manifestation of hantavirus disease varies considerably depending on the geographical region. In North and South America, the dominant form is Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, a condition that targets the respiratory system and can progress with alarming speed. Initial symptoms are misleadingly nonspecific: profound fatigue, fever, and muscle aches that are virtually indistinguishable from influenza in their early stages. Within three to seven days, however, a severe deterioration may occur, with fluid accumulating in the lungs and the patient experiencing acute respiratory distress. The case fatality rate of this syndrome is approximately 38 percent, making it one of the most lethal infectious conditions encountered in clinical settings in the Western Hemisphere. In Asia and Europe, the prevalent form, known as Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome, damages the kidneys rather than the lungs and carries an average fatality rate ranging from less than one to fifteen percent depending on the strain involved.
DAccurate and timely diagnosis presents a substantial clinical challenge. Because the early symptoms closely resemble those of numerous common illnesses, clinicians who have no prior reason to suspect hantavirus exposure may not initiate the appropriate diagnostic pathway. In practice, the most valuable first step is often a thorough patient history, particularly any recent activity in rodent-prone environments such as woodland cabins, agricultural outbuildings, or heavily vegetated areas. Laboratory confirmation typically relies on enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay testing, which detects specific antibodies produced in response to the virus. In rural or under-resourced clinical settings, however, access to such testing may be limited, and delays in reaching a definitive diagnosis can significantly reduce the opportunity for effective supportive intervention.
ENo antiviral medication has been specifically approved for the treatment of hantavirus infection, and medical management therefore remains entirely supportive in nature. Clinical priorities include maintaining adequate oxygen levels, regulating fluid balance, and stabilising blood pressure while the patient's immune system works to contain the infection. In the most severe presentations, mechanical ventilation and intensive care admission are frequently necessary. Researchers have investigated the potential role of ribavirin, a broad-spectrum antiviral agent used in other haemorrhagic fevers, in the management of the kidney-affecting form, with results described as cautiously promising. No equivalent agent has demonstrated clinical efficacy against the lung-targeting syndrome, and the search for targeted therapeutic options remains an active area of research.
FGiven the current absence of a vaccine or curative treatment, prevention is not merely advisable but essential. Public health guidelines emphasise practical measures for individuals in high-risk environments. Structural interventions include sealing gaps in buildings to deny rodents access, storing food in rodent-proof containers, and deploying approved rodenticides where necessary. Personal protective measures centre on wearing fitted gloves and an appropriate respiratory mask when cleaning spaces that may harbour rodent activity. Outdoor recreationists — hikers, campers, and field researchers — are advised to avoid disturbing burrows or nests, to sleep on elevated surfaces rather than on the ground, and to dispose of food waste carefully. Health authorities consistently identify public education as the most cost-effective tool available, since the chain of transmission can be reliably broken through informed and consistent behavioural change.
5. Unlike most respiratory diseases, hantavirus cannot spread from one to another.
6. The early symptoms of Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome are virtually indistinguishable from those of in their initial stages.
7. Clinicians consider a thorough to be the most valuable first step in diagnosing hantavirus.
8. According to paragraph C, which of the following statements about Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome is correct?
9. What does paragraph E say about ribavirin?
10. Hantavirus particles can become airborne when dried rodent droppings are disturbed in poorly ventilated spaces.
11. The fatality rate of Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome is higher than that of Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome.
12. A licensed vaccine against hantavirus is expected to receive regulatory approval within the next five years.
Artificial Intelligence in the Classroom: Opportunity or Threat?
Read the passage carefully. Then answer all twelve questions using only information from the text. For Yes/No/Not Given questions, base your answers on the writer's views and claims, not factual statements alone.
AThe incorporation of artificial intelligence into formal education has accelerated dramatically since the early 2020s, driven by rapid advances in natural language processing and machine learning. Tools capable of generating coherent essays, solving complex mathematical problems, and engaging in sustained tutoring dialogues are now freely accessible to students across the globe. This unprecedented accessibility has prompted urgent and often contentious debate among educators, policymakers, and researchers about the appropriate role of such technologies in learning environments. The conversation has moved well beyond the question of whether AI belongs in education at all; the far more pressing issue is how its integration should be structured and governed to serve genuine educational objectives rather than to undermine them.
BAdvocates of AI in education point primarily to the potential for personalisation at a scale no human institution has previously achieved. Traditional classroom instruction, even when delivered by experienced and dedicated teachers, is constrained by the realities of group dynamics: a teacher managing thirty students cannot simultaneously attend to each individual's pace, knowledge gaps, and areas of particular difficulty. AI tutoring systems, by contrast, can monitor a learner's responses in real time, identify specific and recurring patterns of error, and adjust the complexity and sequencing of exercises accordingly. A student who consistently struggles with a particular grammatical structure, for example, will receive targeted and repeated practice without delay, rather than waiting for a teacher to notice the pattern through marked assignments. Proponents argue that this responsive, individualised approach has the potential to raise attainment across the full ability range, including among students who have historically been underserved by standardised, one-size-fits-all instruction.
CCritics raise a fundamentally different set of concerns, centred not on whether AI can teach effectively, but on what may be lost in the process. The central worry is that the convenience of AI assistance may systematically erode the cognitive faculties that education is specifically designed to develop. Writing, for instance, is valued in academic settings not merely as a means of communication but as a discipline that compels students to organise their thinking, evaluate competing evidence, and construct sustained, logically coherent arguments. When a student substitutes AI-generated prose for their own, they may produce an output that meets the surface requirements of the task while entirely bypassing the cognitive effort it was intended to generate. A 2023 study conducted by researchers at Stanford University found that students who regularly used AI writing assistants performed measurably worse on independent writing assessments compared to peers who had not used such tools during the same period, suggesting that short-term gains in output quality may carry significant long-term costs for intellectual development.
DA third and increasingly influential position rejects the framing of this debate as a binary choice between embracing and resisting AI. Professor Diana Laurillard of University College London has argued that the most educationally productive model is one in which the distinct capabilities of human and artificial intelligence are deliberately allocated to different pedagogical functions. In Laurillard's framework, AI tools are best suited to the provision of routine practice, immediate corrective feedback, and scalable content delivery, while human teachers retain responsibility for the dimensions of learning that require empathy, ethical reasoning, and authentic intellectual dialogue. This model, she contends, is not a compromise forced by circumstances but a genuine pedagogical improvement, provided that teachers are given adequate training and institutional support to implement it with the necessary degree of thoughtfulness and rigour.
EThe question of governance has emerged as one of the most contentious aspects of the debate. Institutional responses have varied considerably, ranging from outright prohibition to wholesale, largely unmonitored adoption. Neither approach has attracted broad support among educational specialists. Schools and universities that prohibit AI tools entirely have been criticised for leaving students ill-prepared for workplaces already saturated with these technologies. Conversely, institutions that have permitted unrestricted use without clear pedagogical guidelines have been accused of effectively endorsing academic dishonesty, since the boundaries between legitimate AI-assisted learning and the submission of AI-generated work as one's own remain poorly defined in most existing assessment frameworks. The absence of a coherent, evidence-based policy consensus represents one of the most significant challenges facing educational institutions at every level.
FThe deeper question underlying this entire debate may be less about technology than about the fundamental purpose of education itself. If the primary objective of formal schooling is to produce graduates equipped with marketable skills and the operational fluency required to function in a technology-saturated economy, then the case for integrating AI tools is compelling. If, however, education is understood as a process of intellectual and moral formation — concerned above all with developing the capacity for independent thought, ethical discernment, and critical engagement with the world — then the uncritical adoption of AI assistance raises objections that no efficiency gain can straightforwardly resolve. Most thoughtful educators would argue that these two purposes are not inherently contradictory, but achieving both simultaneously, in a landscape where AI capabilities are advancing faster than institutional frameworks can adapt, may represent the defining pedagogical challenge of the coming decade.
7. The debate about AI in education has now moved beyond the question of whether it should be present in schools at all.
8. AI tutoring systems are superior to human teachers across all dimensions of the educational process.
9. National governments should take primary responsibility for funding AI integration programmes in all secondary schools.
Taiwan Travelogue and the Globalisation of Taiwanese Literature
Read the passage carefully. Then answer all twelve questions using only information from the text. For Yes/No/Not Given questions, base your answers on the writer's views and claims, not factual statements alone.
AWhen Yang Shuang-zi's novel Taiwan Travelogue was awarded the 2026 International Booker Prize in London, it became the first work of Taiwanese fiction to claim one of the literary world's most coveted honours. The announcement, made at a ceremony held at the Tate Modern, marked a watershed moment not only for Yang and her English translator Lin King, but for the broader project of bringing Taiwanese literary voices to global audiences. The prize is awarded annually to a work of fiction translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. Its recognition of a Taiwanese novel signals a growing international appetite for literature that emerges from beyond the dominant centres of world publishing.
BFirst published in Mandarin in 2020, Taiwan Travelogue is set against the backdrop of 1938, during the period of Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan. The novel traces the evolving relationship between a Japanese writer and her Taiwanese interpreter as the two women undertake a culinary and railway journey across the island. Their travels become a vehicle for exploring broader questions of cultural exchange, imperial power, and belonging. The chair of the judging panel, novelist Natasha Brown, described the work as simultaneously a romance and a work of postcolonial inquiry, one that asks whether love is capable of overcoming the imbalances inherent in colonial relationships. The novel's careful rendering of Taiwanese food, landscape, and language was cited by the judges as evidence of exceptional literary craftsmanship.
CFor Yang, the novel's success opened a wider conversation about the meaning of Taiwanese identity itself. In remarks delivered following the ceremony, Yang reflected that discussions of Taiwanese literature inevitably return to the question of what it means to be Taiwanese — a question she regards as permanently and necessarily open. In her view, Taiwanese identity cannot be reduced to ethnicity, bloodline, religion, or cultural ritual. It resides instead in the shared decision of people from diverse origins to inhabit the island together and to collectively determine the direction of their future. She suggested that shared experiences — whether political milestones, sporting achievements, or moments of international cultural recognition such as the Booker Prize — serve to continuously shape and renew that collective identity.
DLin King's path to translating Taiwan Travelogue was shaped in part by events occurring far from Taiwan's shores. Reflecting on her decision to commit exclusively to translating Taiwanese literature, King described how the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict prompted several of her Ukrainian acquaintances to reassert their connection to the Ukrainian language as an act of cultural resistance. This prompted her to examine her own choices: although she had grown up in Taiwan, she had concentrated her earlier translation work on other Chinese-language literature rather than on Taiwanese stories specifically. The parallel between Ukraine's cultural struggle and Taiwan's own position in global discourse led her to redirect her professional focus entirely. She has since devoted herself to rendering Taiwanese literary works into English for international audiences.
EBoth Yang and King resisted the idea that a single prize-winning novel could stand as a representative expression of Taiwanese literature as a whole. King argued that Taiwan's literary culture is characterised by an extraordinary multiplicity of voices, reflecting the island's layered history of indigenous cultures, Han migration, periods of Dutch and Spanish contact, Japanese colonial administration, and post-war emigration from mainland China. She suggested that Taiwan's modest geographic scale and population belie the richness and complexity of its literary output. The task of international translation, in her view, is not to identify a single defining voice but to enable as many distinct voices as possible to reach global audiences. A growing community of translators, both within Taiwan and internationally, is working towards precisely that objective.
FKing also drew attention to a recurring pattern in international media coverage of Taiwan. She observed that reporting on the island tends to frame it almost exclusively within the context of geopolitical tension — specifically the relationship between the United States and China and the prospect of conflict across the Taiwan Strait — while Taiwan's own cultural production, literary traditions, and social evolution receive comparatively little attention. The success of Taiwan Travelogue at the International Booker Prize represents, in this light, something more than a literary achievement. It is an assertion that Taiwan possesses a rich interior cultural life deserving recognition on its own terms, independent of the geopolitical narratives that so often define it in the international imagination.
7. The writer suggests that Yang believes the question of Taiwanese identity will one day have a clear and settled answer.
8. According to the writer, international media coverage of Taiwan presents an incomplete picture of the island's cultural life.
9. The writer believes the International Booker Prize should give preference to literature from politically vulnerable nations.
10. In what year was Taiwan Travelogue first published?
11. At which London venue was the 2026 International Booker Prize ceremony held?
12. According to paragraph E, what does King argue is the true purpose of international translation for Taiwanese literature?