Friday, 12 February 2016

SUMMARIZE WRITTEN TEST


Read the passage below and summarize it using one sentence. You have 10 minutes to finish this task. Your response will be judged on the quality of your writing and on how well your response presents the key points in the passage.

It has been claimed that everything of importance, that originated in Italy from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, bore the distinctive mark of Fine Arts. Early on, Cimabue and Duccio da Siena were the two masters whose Madonna’s had given the new impulse to painting and brought them immortal fame. They were the heralds of the time when poetry of sentiment, beauty of color, animation and individuality of form replaced Medieval formality and ugliness; a time when the spirit of art revived with an impulse prophetic of its coming glory.

It is important to remember that the art of the Renaissance had, in the beginning, a distinct office to fill in the service of the Church. Later, in historical and decorative painting it served the State, and at length in portrait and landscape painting, in pictures of genre subjects and still-life, abundant opportunity was afforded for all orders of talent, and the generous patronage of art by church, state, and men of rank and wealth made Italy a veritable paradise for artists. Gradually, with the revival of learning, artists were free to give greater importance to secular subjects and an element of worldliness, and even of immorality, invaded the realm of art as it invaded the realms of life and literature. This was an era of change in all departments of life. Chivalry, the great "poetic lie," died with feudalism.



Monday, 8 February 2016

SUMMARIZE WRITTEN TEST

Read the passage below and summarize it using one sentence. You have 10 minutes to finish this task. Your response will be judged on the quality of your writing and on how well your response presents the key points in the passage.

The true reality of life can be known only when we maintain a balance between the mathematical elements of nature, on the one hand, and consciousness and will, on the other. There are two things in nature we have no doubt about; our existence and the outside world. But there is something which makes us aware of these two elements and that is our thought. Whatever we feel, our conclusions, our fears, and aspirations, all revolve around our thinking. Our flesh and bones cannot perceive things in nature. It is the capability of our thoughts alone. Even a physically disabled man with a sane mind gets rational thoughts. So, there is some great power that picks impressions from surroundings, concludes ideas, and gives reasoning and judgment. And that power is the power of thinking. This is the real, “I myself”. This, ‘I myself’, has an existence apart from its physical reality. It is the real self or person who deals with others in society. Its physical body is a medium through which he can verbalize his thoughts. The real person is embodied in the thoughts of the personality. So, judge not a person’s physicality, but his thoughts.


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