Efficient Reading Skills

T. Eugnio C. Brito
http://www.uefap.com/reading/readfram.htm

Efficient Reading Skills

Skimming to get an overall impression. Skimming is useful when you want to survey a text to get a general idea of what it is about. In skimming you ignore the details and look for the main ideas. Main ideas are usually found in the first sentences of each paragraph and in the first and last paragraphs. It is also useful to pay attention to the organization of the text.

Efficient Reading Skills- Skimming Exercise 1

Read the first sentence of each paragraph in the following text. THE PERSONAL QUALITIES OF A TEACHER Here I want to try to give you an answer to the question: What personal qualities are desirable in a teacher? Probably no two people would draw up exactly similar lists, but I think the following would be generally accepted. First, the teacher's personality should be pleasantly live and attractive. This does not rule out people who are physically plain, or even ugly, because many such have great personal charm. But it does rule out such types as the over-excitable, melancholy, frigid, sarcastic, cynical, frustrated, and over-bearing : I would say too, that it excludes all of dull or purely negative personality. I still stick to what I said in my earlier book: that school children probably 'suffer more from bores than from brutes'. Secondly, it is not merely desirable but essential for a teacher to have a genuine capacity for sympathy - in the literal meaning of that word; a capacity to tune in to the minds and feelings of other people, especially, since most teachers are school teachers, to the minds and feelings of children. Closely related with this is the capacity to be tolerant - not, indeed, of what is wrong, but of the frailty and immaturity of human nature which induce people, and again especially children, to make mistakes. Thirdly, I hold it essential for a teacher to be both intellectually and morally honest. This does not mean being a plaster saint. It means that he will be aware of his intellectual strengths, and limitations, and will have thought about and decided upon the moral principles by which his life shall be guided. There is no contradiction in my going on to say that a teacher should be a bit of an actor. That is part of the technique of teaching, which demands that every now and then a teacher should be able to put on an act - to enliven a lesson, correct a fault, or award praise. Children, especially young children, live in a world that is rather larger than life. A teacher must remain mentally alert. He will not get into the profession if of low intelligence, but it is all too easy, even for people of above-average intelligence, to stagnate intellectually - and that means to deteriorate intellectually. A teacher must be quick to adapt himself to any situation, however improbable and able to improvise, if necessary at less than a moment's notice. (Here I should stress that I use 'he' and 'his' throughout the book simply as a matter of convention and convenience.) On the other hand, a teacher must be capable of infinite patience. This, I may say, is largely a matter of self-discipline and selftraining; we are none of us born like that. He must be pretty resilient; teaching makes great demands on nervous energy. And he should be able to take in his stride the innumerable petty irritations any adult dealing with children has to endure. Finally, I think a teacher should have the kind of mind which always wants to go on learning. Teaching is a job at which one will never be perfect; there is always something more to learn about it. There are three principal objects of study: the subject, or subjects, which the teacher is teaching; the methods by which they can best be taught to the particular pupils in the classes he is teaching; and - by far the most important - the children, young people, or adults to whom they are to be taught. The two cardinal principles of British education today are that education is education of the whole person, and that it is best acquired through full and active co-operation between two persons, the teacher and the learner. (From Teaching as a Career, by H. C. Dent)

Efficient Reading Skills- Skimming Exercise 2

Read the first sentence of each paragraph in the following text. LANGUAGE AS SYMBOLISM Animals struggle with each other for food or for leadership, but they do not, like human beings, struggle with each other for things that stand for food or leadership: such things as our paper symbols of wealth (money, bonds, titles), badges of rank to wear on our clothes, or lownumber licence plates, supposed by some people to stand for social precedence. For animals, the relationship in which one thing stands for something else does not appear to exist except in very rudimentary form. The process by means of which human beings can arbitrarily make certain things standfor other things may be called the symbolic process. Whenever two or more human beings can communicate with each other, they can, by agreement, make anything stand for anything. For example, here are two symbols:X Y We can agree to let X stand for buttons and Y stand for bows: then we can freely change our agreement and let X stand for Chaucer and Y for Shakespeare, X for the CIO and Y for the AFL. We are, as human beings, uniquely free to manufacture and manipulate and assign values to our symbols as we please.Indeed, we can go further by making symbols that stand for symbols. If necessary we can, for instance, let the symbol M stand for all the X's in the above example (buttons, Chaucer, CIO) and let N stand for all the Y's (bows, Shakespeare, AFL). Then we can make another symbol, T, stand for M and N, which would be an instance of a symbol of a symbol of symbols. This freedom to create symbols of any assigned value and to create symbols that stand for symbols is essential to what we call the symbolic process. Everywhere we turn, we see the symbolic process at work. Feathers worn on the head or stripes on the sleeve can be made to stand for military leadership; cowrie shells or rings of brass or pieces of paper can stand for wealth; crossed sticks can stand for a set of religious beliefs; buttons, elks' teeth, ribbons, special styles of ornamental haircutting or tattooing, can stand for social affiliations. The symbolic process permeates human life at the most primitive as well as at the most civilized levels. Of all forms of symbolism, language is the most highly developed, most subtle, and most complicated. It has been pointed out that human beings, by agreement, can make anything stand for anything. Now human beings have agreed, in the course of centuries of mutual dependency, to let the various noises that they can produce with their lungs, throats, tongues, teeth, and lips systematically stand for specified happenings in their nervous systems. We call that system of agreements language. For example, we who speak English have been so trained that, when our nervous systems register the presence of a certain kind of animal, we may make the following noise: 'There's a cat.' Anyone hearing us expects to find that, by looking in the same direction, he will experience a similar event in his nervous system - one that will lead him to make an almost identical noise. Again, we have been so trained that when we are conscious of wanting food we make the noise 'I'm hungry. There is, as has been said, no necessary connection between the symbol and that which is symbolized. Just as men can wear yachting costumes without ever having been near a yacht, so they can make the noise, 'I'm hungry', without being hungry. Furthermore, just as social rank can be symbolized by feathers in the hair, by tattooing on the breast, by gold ornaments on the watch chain, or by a thousand different devices according to the culture we live in, so the fact of being hungry can be symbolized by a thousand different noises according to the culture we live in: 'J'ai faim', or 'Es hungert mich', or 'Ho appetito', or 'Hara ga hetta', and so on. However obvious these facts may appear at first glance, they are actually not so obvious as they seem except when we take special pains to think about the subject. Symbols and things symbolized are independent of each other: nevertheless, we all have a way of feeling as if, and sometimes acting as if, there were necessary con-nections. For example, there is the vague sense we all have that foreign languages are inherently absurd: foreigners have such funny names for things, and why can't they call things by their right names? This feeling exhibits itself most strongly in those English and American tourists who seem to believe that they can make the natives of any country understand English if they shout loud enough. Like the little boy who is reported to have said: 'Pigs are called pigs because they are such dirty animals', they feel that the symbol is inherently connected in some way with the things symbolized. Then there are the people who feel that since snakes are 'nasty, slimy creatures' (incidentally, snakes are not slimy), the word 'snake' is a nasty, slimy word.( From Language in Thought and Action, by S. Hayakawa)

Efficient Reading Skills- Skimming Exercise 3 Read the following text. 'Primitiveness' in Language 'Primitive' is a word that is often used ill-advisedly in discussions of language. So far as we can tell, all human languages are equally complete and perfect as instruments of communication: that is, every language appears to be as well equipped as any other to say the things its speakers want to say. Similarly, we have no reason to doubt that the Eskimo language could be as precise and subtle on the subject of motor manufacture or cricket if these topics formed part of the Eskimos' life. The discussion of 'primitiveness', incidentally, provides us with a good reason for sharply and absolutely distinguishing human language from animal communication, because there is no sign of any intermediate stage between the two. This is not to say that an individual necessarily sounds as pleasant or as effective as he might be, when using his language, but we must not confuse a language with an individual's ability to use it. The more we consider the question, then, the less reasonable does it seem to call any language 'inferior', let alone 'primitive'.

Efficient Reading Skills- Skimming Exercise 3

Here is the whole text !!!!

'Primitiveness' in Language 'Primitive' is a word that is often used ill-advisedly in discussions of language. Many people think that 'primitive' is indeed a term to be applied to languages, though only to some languages, and not usually to the language they themselves speak. They might agree in calling 'primitive' those uses of language that concern greetings, grumbles and commands, but they would probably insist that these were especially common in the socalled 'primitive languages'. These are misconceptions that we must quickly clear from our minds. So far as we can tell, all human languages are equally complete and perfect as instruments of communication: that is, every language appears to be as well equipped as any other to say the things its speakers want to say. It may or may not be appropriate to talk about primitive peoples or cultures, but that is another matter. Certainly, not all groups of people are equally competent in nuclear physics or psychology or the cultivation of rice or the engraving of Benares brass. But this is not the fault of their language. The Eskimos can speak about snow with a great deal more precision and subtlety than we can in English, but this is not because the Eskimo language (one of those sometimes mis-called 'primitive') is inherently more precise and subtle than English. This example does not bring to light a defect in English, a show of unexpected 'primitiveness'. The position is simply and obviously that the Eskimos and the English live in different environments. The English language would be just as rich in terms for different kinds of snow, presumably, if the environments in which English was habitually used made such distinction important. Similarly, we have no reason to doubt that the Eskimo language could be as precise and subtle on the subject of motor manufacture or cricket if these topics formed part of the Eskimos' life. For obvious historical reasons, Englishmen in the nineteenth century could not talk about motorcars with the minute discrimination which is possible today: cars were not a part of their culture. But they had a host of terms for horse-drawn vehicles which send us, puzzled, to a historical dictionary when we are reading Scott or Dickens. How many of us could distinguish between a chaise, a landau, a victoria, a brougham, a coupe, a gig, a diligence, a whisky, a calash, a tilbury, a carriole, a phaeton, and a clarence? The discussion of 'primitiveness', incidentally, provides us with a good reason for sharply and absolutely distinguishing human language from animal communication, because there is no sign of any intermediate stage between the two. Whether we examine the earliest records of any language, or the present-day language of some small tribe in a far-away place, we come no nearer to finding a stage of human language more resembling animal communication and more 'primitive' than our own. In general, as has been said, any language is as good as any other to express what its speakers want to say. An East African finds Swahili as convenient, natural and complete as an East Londoner finds English. In general the Yorkshire Dalesman's dialect is neither more nor less primitive or ill-fitted to its speaker's wants than Cockney is for the Londoner's. We must always beware the temptation to adopt a nave parochialism which makes us feel that someone else's language is less pleasant or less effective an instrument than our own. This is not to say that an individual necessarily sounds as pleasant or as effective as he might be, when using his language, but we must not confuse a language with an individual's ability to use it. Nor are we saying that one language has no deficiencies as corn-pared with another. The English words 'home' and 'gentleman' have no exact counterparts in French, for example. These are tiny details in which English may well be thought to have the advantage over French, but a large-scale comparison would not lead to the conclusion that English was the superior language, since it would reveal other details in which the converse was true. Some years ago it came as something of a shock to us that we had no exact word for translating the name that General de Gaulle had given to his party - Rassemblement du Peuple Francais. The B.B.C. for some time used the word 'rally', and although this scarcely answers the purpose it is a rather better translation of 'rassemblement' than either of the alternatives offered by one well-known French - English dictionary, 'muster' and 'mob'. The more we consider the question, then, the less reasonable does it seem to call any language 'inferior', let alone 'primitive'. The Sanskrit of the Rig-Veda four thousand years ago was as per-fect an instrument for what its users wanted to say as its modern descendant, Hindi, or as English.
(From The Use of English by Randolph Quirk.)

Efficient Reading Skills- Skimming Exercise 4

Read the first and the last paragraphs in the following text. What Is Anthropology? Anthropology is the study of humankind, especially of Homo sapiens, the biological species to which we human beings belong. It is the study of how our species evolved from more primitive organisms; it is also the study of how our species developed a mode of communication known as language and a mode of social life known as culture. It is the study of how culture evolved and diversified. And finally, it is the study of how culture, people, and nature Interact wherever human beings are found. This book is an Introduction to general anthropology, which is an amalgam of four fields of study traditionally found within departments of anthropology at major universities. The four fields are cultural anthropology (sometimes called social anthropology), archaeology, anthropological linguistics, and physical anthropology. The collaborative effort of these four fields is needed in order to study our species in evolutionary perspective and in relation to diverse habitats and cultures. Cultural anthropology deals with the description and analysis of the forms and styles of social life of past and present ages. Its subdiscipline, ethnography,systematically describes contemporary societies and cultures. Comparison of these descriptions provides the basis for hypotheses and theories about the causes of human lifestyles. Archaeology adds a crucial dimension to this endeavor. By digging up the remains of cultures of past ages, archaeology studies sequences of social and cultural evolution under diverse natural and cultural conditions. In the quest for understanding the present-day characteristics of human existence, for validating or invalidating proposed theories of historical causation, the great temporal depth of the archaeological record is indispensable. Anthropological linguistics provides another crucial perspective: the study of the totality of languages spoken by human beings. Linguistics attempts to reconstruct the historical changes that have led to the formation of individual languages and families of languages. More fundamentally, anthropological linguistics is concerned with the nature of language and Its functions and the way language Influences and is Influenced by other aspects of cultural life. Anthropological linguistics is concerned with the origin of language and the relationship between the evolution of language and the evolution of Homo sapiens. And finally, anthropological linguistics is concerned with the relationship between the evolution of languages and the evolution and differentiation of human cultures. Physical anthropology grounds the work of the other anthropological fields in our animal origins and our genetically determined nature. Physical anthropology seeks to reconstruct the course of human evolution by studying the fossil remains of ancient human and infrahuman species. Physical anthropology seeks to describe the distribution of hereditary variations among contemporary populations and to sort out and measure the relative contributions made by heredity, environment, and culture to human biology. Because of Its multidisciplinary, comparative, and diachronic perspective, anthropology holds the key to many fundamental questions of recurrent and contemporary relevance. It lies peculiarly within the competence of general anthropology to explicate our species' animal heritage, to define what is distinctively human about human nature, and to differentiate the natural and the cultural conditions responsible for competition, conflict, and war. General anthropology is also strategically equipped to probe the significance of racial factors in the evolution of culture and in the conduct of contemporary human affairs. General anthropology holds the key to an understanding of the origins of social inequality - of racism, exploitation, poverty, and underdevelopment. Overarching all of general anthropology's contributions is the search for the causes of social and cultural differences and similarities. What is the nature of the determinism that operates in human history, and what are the consequences of this determinism for individual freedom of thought and action? To answer these questions is to begin to understand the extent to which we can increase humanity's freedom and well-being by conscious intervention in the processes of cultural evolution. Adapted from http://www.uefap.com/reading/exercise/skim/anthrop.htm

Efficient Reading Skills- Skimming Exercise 5

The Origin of the Earth The origin of the earth has puzzled man since ancient times. This problem is astronomical as well as geological, for the origin of the earth cannot be divorced from that of the component members of our solar system. (...) NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. The first theory of the origin of the earth based upon astronomical observation was proposed by the French astronomer Laplace in 1796. It was probably suggested by the rings now present about the planet Saturn. According to this hypothesis our solar system was originally a vast nebula of highly heated gas, extending beyond the orbit of the outermost planet and rotating in the same direction as the planets now revolve. As this nebula, which was more than five billion miles in extent, lost heat, it contracted. Due to contraction the speed of rotation increased and resulted in flattening at the poles and a bulging at the equator. As further contraction continued, the speed of rotation increased until the centrifugal force at the equator of the spheroid was equal to the force of gravity and a ring of particles was left behind. The process continued until 10 successive rings were formed and the central mass became the sun. (...) PLANETESIMAL HYPOTHESIS. In 1905 Chamberlin and Moulton announced the planetesimal hypothesis in which our solar system is considered to have originated from a spiral nebula. Astronomic photography records many of these nebulae, each consisting of a central nucleus with two curved arms on opposite sides composed of masses of matter or knots separated by dark areas. Spectroscopic study indicates they are composed of solid or liquid particles. Because it was assumed that these particles revolved about the center of the nebula in elliptical orbits like planets, the name planetesimal was given to the hypothesis. The spiral arms were formed by explosive forces within the ancestral sun and by the tidal force of a passing star that approached closely enough to exert a pull on the gases shot out from the sun. Solar prominences in which gases rise above the sun's surface thousands of miles are evidence of the explosive forces within our modern sun. During such explosions a star passed close enough to the ancestral sun to pull out irregular bolts of gas as it reached critical positions. One bolt was shot out for each planet and one for the planetoids. The light material forming the large planets was drawn from the near side of the sun and carried farther away from the sun. The four smaller planets and the planetoids were formed from the tidal bulge on the opposite side of the sun. The amount of material disrupted to form the planets is calculated at a fraction of one per cent of the sun's mass. At no time was the passing star close enough to attract and capture any of the disrupted material. Its approach served to spread out the material far enough away from the sun that the planetesimals could start revolving in elliptical orbits without being drawn back into the sun. At this stage the erupted material arranged in two arms partly wound about the central mass may have resembled a spiral nebula, but on a much smaller scale. Later, the central mass formed the sun, the larger masses in the arms formed the planets, and smaller ones the satellites and the planetoids. (...) TIDAL-DISRUPTION HYPOTHESIS. Certain features of the planetesimal hypothesis were retained and others completely changed by Sir James Jeans, astronomer, and Harold Jeffreys, geophysicist, of England, in developing the tidal-disruption hypothesis. They assumed that the passing star causing our solar system approached nearer to our ancestral sun than Chamberlin postulated. The disruption of our sun was due entirely to the tidal force of the passing star and was aided in no way by explosive action of the sun. (...) ORIGIN OF MATTER. It is evident from these brief statements that one limitation applies to each of the hypotheses considered. None is complete in itself, for it does not explain the original matter of the universe from which the planets evolved. The question of the origin of the nebulae or stars taken as the starting point in these hypotheses remains unanswered. Scientists and philosophers have pondered over it. The best answer that has been offered is that it represents the work of an eternal God, who knows no beginning or end and who controls the orderly arrangement of the Universe. Adapted from http://www.uefap.com/reading/exercise/skim/origin.htm

Efficient Reading Skills

Scanning to locate specifically required information. When you look for a telephone number or a name in an index, your eyes move quickly over the words until you find the particular information you are looking for. You ignore everything except the specific information you want. Scanning is directed and purposeful and should be extremely fast.

Efficient Reading Skills- Scanning Exercise 1

Exercise 1 Read the following text quickly and fill in the table. What do the numbers given in the table refer to? 1% 2% 6% 13% 16% 30% 3/4 86% Spoon-fed feel lost at the cutting edge Before arriving at university students will have been powerfully influenced by their school's approach to learning particular subjects. Yet this is only rarely taken into account by teachers in higher education, according to new research carried out at Nottingham University, which could explain why so many students experience problems making the transition.Historian Alan Booth says there is a growing feeling on both sides of the Atlantic that the shift from school to university-style learning could be vastly improved. But little consensus exists about who or what is at fault when the students cannot cope. "School teachers commonly blame the poor quality of university teaching, citing factors such as large first-year lectures, the widespread use of inexperienced postgraduate tutors and the general lack of concern for students in an environment where research is dominant in career progression," Dr Booth said.Many university tutors on the other hand claim that the school system is failing to prepare students for what will be expected of them at university. A-level history in particular is seen to be teacher-dominated, creating a passive dependency culture.But while both sides are bent on attacking each other, little is heard during such exchanges from the students themselves, according to Dr Booth, who has devised a questionnaire to test the views of more than 200 first-year history students at Nottingham over a three-year period. The students were asked about their experience of how history is taught at the outset of their degree programme. It quickly became clear that teaching methods in school were pretty staid.About 30 per cent of respondents claimed to have made significant use of primary sources (few felt very confident in handling them) and this had mostly been in connection with project work. Only 16 per cent had used video/audio; 2 per cent had experienced field trips and less than 1 per cent had engaged in role-play.Dr Booth found students and teachers were frequently restricted by the assessment style which remains dominated by exams. These put obstacles in the way of more adventurous teaching and active learning, he said. Of the students in the survey just 13 per cent felt their A-level course had prepared them very well for work at university. Three-quarters felt it had prepared them fairly well.One typical comment sums up the contrasting approach: "At A-level we tended to be spoon-fed with dictated notes and if we were told to do any background reading (which was rare) we were told exactly which pages to read out of the book".To test this further the students were asked how well they were prepared in specific skills central to degree level history study. The answers reveal that the students felt most confident at taking notes from lectures and organising their notes. They were least able to give an oral presentation and there was no great confidence in contributing to seminars, knowing how much to read, using primary sources and searching for texts. Even reading and taking notes from a book were often problematic. Just 6 per cent of the sample said they felt competent at writing essays, the staple A level assessment activity.The personal influence of the teacher was paramount. In fact individual teachers were the centre of students' learning at A level with some 86 per cent of respondents reporting that their teachers had been more influential in their development as historians than the students' own reading and thinking.The ideal teacher turned out to be someone who was enthusiastic about the subject; a good clear communicator who encouraged discussion. The ideal teacher was able to develop students involvement and independence. He or she was approachable and willing to help. The bad teacher, according to the survey, dictates notes and allows no room for discussion. He or she makes students learn strings of facts; appears uninterested in the subject and fails to listen to other points of view.No matter how poor the students judged their preparedness for degree-level study, however, there was a fairly widespread optimism that the experience would change them significantly, particularly in terms of their open mindedness and ability to cope with people.But it was clear, Dr Booth said, that the importance attached by many departments to third-year teaching could be misplaced. "Very often tutors regard the third year as the crucial time, allowing postgraduates to do a lot of the earlier teaching. But I am coming to the conclusion that the first year at university is the critical point of intervention". Alison Utley, Times Higher Education Supplement. February 6th, 1998.

Efficient Reading Skills- Scanning Exercise 2

Read the following text quickly and answer the questions. When were X-rays discovered? Who discovered them? What are the four characteristics of X-rays? The Discovery of X-rays Except for a brief description of the Compton effect, and a few other remarks, we have postponed the discussion of X-rays until the present chapter because it is particularly convenient to treat X-ray spectra after treating optical spectra. Although this ordering may have given the reader a distorted impression of the historical importance of X-rays, this impression will be corrected shortly as we describe the crucial role played by X-rays in the development of modern physics.X-rays were discovered in 1895 by Roentgen while studying the phenomena of gaseous discharge. Using a cathode ray tube with a high voltage of several tens of kilovolts, he noticed that salts of barium would fluoresce when brought near the tube, although nothing visible was emitted by the tube. This effect persisted when the tube was wrapped with a layer of black cardboard. Roentgen soon established that the agency responsible for the fluorescence originated at the point at which the stream of energetic electrons struck the glass wall of the tube. Because of its unknown nature, he gave this agency the name X-rays. He found that X-rays could manifest themselves by darkening wrapped photographic plates, discharging charged electroscopes, as well as by causing fluorescence in a number of different substances. He also found that X-rays can penetrate considerable thicknesses of materials of low atomic number, whereas substances of high atomic number are relatively opaque. Roentgen took the first steps in identifying the nature of X-rays by using a system of slits to show that (1) they travel in straight lines, and that (2) they are uncharged, because they are not deflected by electric or magnetic fields.The discovery of X-rays aroused the interest of all physicists, and many joined in the investigation of their properties. In 1899 Haga and Wind performed a single slit diffraction experiment with X-rays which showed that (3) X-rays are a wave motion phenomenon, and, from the size of the diffraction pattern, their wavelength could be estimated to be 10-8 cm. In 1906 Barkla proved that (4) the waves are transverse by showing that they can be polarized by scattering from many materials.There is, of course, no longer anything unknown about the nature of X-rays. They are electromagnetic radiation of exactly the same nature as visible light, except that their wavelength is several orders of magnitude shorter. This conclusion follows from comparing properties 1 through 4 with the similar properties of visible light, but it was actually postulated by Thomson several years before all these properties were known. Thomson argued that X-rays are electromagnetic radiation because such radiation would be expected to be emitted from the point at which the electrons strike the wall of a cathode ray tube. At this point, the electrons suffer very violent accelerations in coming to a stop and, according to classical electromagnetic theory, all accelerated charged particles emit electromagnetic radiations. We shall see later that this explanation of the production of X-rays is at least partially correct.In common with other electromagnetic radiations, Xrays exhibit particle-like aspects as well as wave-like aspects. The reader will recall that the Compton effect, which is one of the most convincing demonstrations of the existence of quanta, was originally observed with electromagnetic radiation in the X-ray region of wavelengths.

 Answers
1895 Roentgen 1. they travel in straight lines 2. they are uncharged 3. they are a wave motion phenomenon 4. the waves are transverse

Efficient Reading Skills

Using the title Reading is an interactive process - it is two-way. This means you have to work at constructing the meaning from the marks on the paper. You need to be active all the time when you are reading. It is useful, therefore, before you start reading to try to actively remember what you know, and do not know, about the subject and then formulate questions based on the information you have. You can then read to answer these questions.

The Autonomous House - Design and Planning for Self-sufficiency

Read the text

Excerpt from "The Autonomous House - design and planning for self-sufficiency" by Brenda and Robert Vale The autonomous house on its site is defined as a house operating independently of any inputs except those of its immediate environment. The house is not linked to the mains services of gas, water, electricity or drainage, but instead uses the income-energy sources of sun, wind and rain to service itself and process its own wastes. (...) Although the self-serviced house provides a useful starting-point for experiments in autonomy, as it forms a small unit that can be designed, built and tested within a relatively short time, the idea can be expanded to include selfsufficiency in food, the use of on-site materials for building and the reduction of the building and servicing technology to a level where the techniques can be understood and equipment repaired by a person without recourse to specialized training. Although it is possible to survive with pre-industrial technology, this is not what is proposed by autonomous living. At present, however, technology appears to be exploited for its own sake, without thought to its benefits, uses or effects on people or the external environment. (...) What are essentials for the American way of life (full central heating, air conditioning, a car per person) are considered, albeit less so now, as luxuries for Europeans, and what are considered necessary for a satisfactory European life (enough to eat, a home and fuel to heat it, access to transport) would be luxuries for the 'third world'. (...) The autonomous house is not seen as a regressive step. It is not simply a romantic vision of 'back to the land', with life again assuming a rural pace and every man dependent upon himself and his immediate environment for survival. (...) Stability would be an obvious goal were it not for the fact that society is so geared to growth in every sense. A stable population, making only what it actually needs, with each article being considered with regard to the material it is made of and what is to be done with it once its useful life is over, and finding all its power from what can be grown or from the sun, would give man back a true place in the world's system. The autonomous house would only form a very small part of this total picture, but it is an object that can be grasped and realized in material terms at present. Any acceptance of the desirability of autonomy can only be based on faith. If you believe that it is important for man to be part of his natural ecology, to know how survival is accomplished, to be in control of his own life, then autonomy is a logical outcome. If, however, you believe that mankind has always solved every problem that arises, that eventually some way will be found for dealing with nuclear waste after a given number of years of research and that the benefits of cheap nuclear power outweigh the possible dangers, then there is no case for autonomy and the status quo will be maintained.