PTE summarize written text passages
Read the passages below and summarize them using one sentence in not more than 75 words(30-35 words). Type your response in the comment section at the bottom of the screen. You have 10 minutes to finish each passage. Your response will be judged on the quality of your writing and on how well your response presents the key points in the passage.
1.
As many as 60,000 small farmers in the region of Andhra Pradesh, southern India, have taken to farming cotton instead of food crops. Some 20 of them have recently committed suicide by eating lethal doses of pesticide.Most of the farmers are extremely poor. Attracted by cheap loans from pesticides traders and the prospect of a quick buck, they borrowed heavily to raise cotton on small plots of land.Whitefly, boll weevils and caterpillars multiplied and destroyed their crops, despite the constant application of pesticides. The average yield of cotton fields in Andhra Pradesh fell by more than half in just one year. Now the farmers are in no position to repay the loans or feed their families.
The suicide of Samala Mallaiah in Nagara village grabbed media headlines. He owned one acre of land, leased two more and grew cotton on all three. After making a loss in the first year, he leased yet more land in an attempt to recover. Confronted with falling prices, mounting debts and pest attacks, he committed harakiri. ‘Cotton has given us shattered dreams,’ said one old farmer in Nagara village.Nearly half the pesticides used in India go into protecting cotton, the most important commercial crop in the country. However, pests have shown increased immunity to a range of pesticides. Last year there were heavy crop losses due to leaf-curl, which is caused by the dreaded whitefly. This nondescript, milky-white fly sucks sap from the cotton leaves, making them curl and dry up. The fly struck first in Pakistan and north-western India. Then it turned south.According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the crop losses and destruction in Andhra Pradesh arose from the repeated application of excessive amounts of chemicals – a practice actively encouraged by pesticides traders.
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2.
Gases are made up of particles which move with rapid random motion. The size of the particles and any intermolecular forces can be ignored unless the particles are close together at high pressure or at low temperature.
In liquids, the particles are in a state of order intermediate between that of a gas and that of a solid. At any instant in time the arrangement of particles resembles a somewhat disordered solid. Over a period of time the disordered regions allow all the particles in the liquid to move through the liquid. The particles are held together by forces similar to those in a solid.
In solids, the particles remain in fixed positions, about which they can vibrate. The forces which hold the particles together can be ionic attractions, covalent bonds, metallic bonds, hydrogen bonds, dipole-dipole forces or van der Waals’ forces. Heat energy is required to change a solid into a liquid at its melting point. The energy is used to loosen the forces which hold the particles together. This heat energy is called the enthalpy of fusion.
More energy is needed to change phase from a liquid into a gas than to change from a solid into a liquid. The energy is used to overcome the forces which hold the particles together so that the particles can be completely separated. This heat energy is called the enthalpy of vaporization.
PTE summarize written text passages
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