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UNIVERSIDAD DE ANDALUCÍA

Prueba de acceso Junio 2002
An Activity sent by María Jose Cabezas

LEGAL DOESN'T MEAN RIGHT

I had a liberal upbringing, growing up in Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s. I was free to go where I pleased, bicycling alone almost everywhere from the age of 12. I was never wamed against drugs, under-age sex, subversive television or dangerous strangers. There was a nun who told us we should never visit a man's room alone after 12 o'clock at night and an aunt who said you shouldn't marry a Protestant because they accept divorce, but apart from that I can scarcely remember being forbidden anything. We lived then in an authoritarian country, where the law did all the forbidding, so our families hardly had to do any. The world has changed since then -in part for the better, in part for the worse- and the opposite is now common for parents raising their children. The culture now is officially liberal, so parents and educationalists have to do all the forbidding, waming against the dangers that await careless young people, from unsafe sex to predatory horrors on the Intemet.

The cannabis law states that those in possession of marijuana will not be prosecuted. This is an example of how this paradox works. Once the law protected us from ourselves: but as the protection of the law decreases, so we have to take more responsibility to be our own inner police. 


(A) COMPREHENSION (4 points)

a) ANSWER THE QUESTIONS ACCORDING TO THE INFORMATION GIVEN IN THE TEXT USE YOUR OWN WORDS (1 point per answer)

    1. What things was the writer wamed against when she was young?
    2. Why do we have to be our own inner police?

b) ARE THESE STATEMENTS TRUE OR FALSE? JUSTIFY YOUR ANSWERS WITH WORDS OR PHRASES FROM THE TEXT. (0,5 points per answer)

3. The writer's parents were very strict.
4.The writer's aunt did not approve of dívorce.
5. In the 1950s and 1960s families had to forbid their children to take drugs. 
6. Nowadays the law protects young people against unsafe sex.


(B) USE OF ENGLISH (3 points)

(7) Give a noun with the same root as FREE (adjective) (line 1). (0.25 points)

(8) Find in the text one synonym for EDUCATION (noun). (0.25 poínts)

(9) Find in the text the word which has the following definition: (0.25 points)
"a member of a religious community of women" (noun)

(10) Give one opposite for INNER (adjective) (line 13). (0.25 points)

(11) Tum the following sentence into reported speech: (0.5 points)
Jenny said: "We have to take more responsibility."

(12) Tum the following sentence into the active voice: (0.5 points)
I was never wamed against drugs.

(13) Give a question for the underlined words. (0.5 points) The law did aII the forbidding

(14) Complete the following sentence:
If I could go anywhere Iliked, (0.5 points)


(C) PRODUCTION (3 points)

Write a COMPOSITION (80-100 words). Choose ONE of the following options:

  1. Strict education versus liberal education.
  2. Do you like being told what to do? Why?

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