Ministerul Educaţiei, Cercetării şi Inovării

Centrul Naţional pentru Curriculum şi Evaluare în Învăţământul Preuniversitar

Examenul de bacalaureat 2009
Proba E/F
Proba scrisă la Limba engleză
L1 - Bilingv

• Toate subiectele sunt obligatorii. Se acordă 10 puncte din oficiu.

• Timpul efectiv de lucru este de 3 ore.

SUBIECTUL I (30 de puncte) Varianta 075

Read the text below and complete the following tasks.

Kanzi is quite different from all other chimpanzees that have been taught to use symbols to
express their thoughts. For one thing, he understands spoken English. Kanzi’s trainers have even
tested him with words produced by a speech synthesizer, one that produces a sound for every
letter of the alphabet and comes out with a very weird, flat, clipped, monotonous kind of speech,
only two-thirds of which is understandable by adult humans. (1) … The emotional content,
unintentional stresses on words and any of the other cues that might have tipped him to the
meaning of the words spoken by his trainers cannot explain his understanding of speech.
There is also evidence that he can comprehend grammatically complicated commands, as
long as they’re precise. So if there’s an orange sitting in front of Kanzi, and he’s told, ‘Go to the
sitting room and get the orange,’ he hesitates (is he thinking ‘Which orange’?). (2) … Even though
there’s that complicated (for a chimp) phrase in the middle, ‘that’s in the.’ In fact at age eight Kanzi
was better at understanding such sentences than a two-year-old girl who was being asked the
same sorts of questions. However even a brilliant performance by Kanzi is going to be treated with
caution by the sceptics. (3) … It has been argued that because Kanzi switches from one meaning
to another for a given symbol depending on the context, the symbols cannot mean the same thing
to him as a word means to a child. For instance, Kanzi will use ‘juice’ to refer to the ‘drink’, the
place where he gets the drink or the act of going to that place. But when tested for his vocabulary,
he links the symbol ‘juice’ with the picture of a glass of juice. Critics use this evidence to claim that
Kanzi just uses the symbol as a means of solving different problems in different circumstances and
has no idea that it means ‘juice’ all the time. This sounds like a tricky argument. (4) … But the
critics say that children rarely use a word for two different kinds of things, like using ‘table’ to mean
both the thing in the kitchen and breakfast, whereas Kanzi does.
We cannot talk with animals as we can with human beings, yet we can communicate with
them on mental and emotional levels. They should, however, be accorded equality in that they
should receive both compassion and respect; it is unworthy of us to exploit them in any way.

1. Four sentences have been removed from the text. Select the appropriate sentence for
each gap in the text. There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use. 4 points

A. Kanzi understands about two-thirds of this kind of speech as well.

B. Kanzi is a chimpanzee.
C. But if the sentence is rearranged: ‘Get the orange that’s in the sitting room,’ he has no
trouble.
D. There has already been some doubt cast on exactly what the symbols on the board mean to
Kanzi.
E. Because children do what appears to be the same sort of thing, like pointing to the chair and
saying ‘Daddy’.

2. Give antonyms for the following words. 6 points

1. weird
2. sceptics
3. respect
 Ministerul Educaţiei, Cercetării şi Inovării
Centrul Naţional pentru Curriculum şi Evaluare în Învăţământul Preuniversitar

3. Sum up the text in about 50 words. 10 points

4. For the following questions, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which fits according to the
text. 6 points

1. What does the experiment with the speech synthesizer suggest?

A. The way words are stressed plays a vital part in the understanding of them.
B. Chimpanzees are better at understanding certain types of sound than others.
C. Kanzi is really capable of understanding speech in English.
D. Kanzi is unable to understand speech that has an emotional content.

2. What does the example of the orange suggest, according to the writer?
A. Certain tasks are more appealing to Kanzi than others.
B. Kanzi is unable to make any sense of certain instructions.
C. Researchers often make mistakes in this kind of research.
D. Kanzi understands the meaning of sentences from their structures.

3. People who are doubtful about Kanzi’s language ability believe that …
A. he gives the same word too many meanings.
B. it is right to compare his ability with that of a child.
C. the symbols have been created to make him seem intelligent.
D. children connect objects with places more accurately than he does.

5. Comment on the following in about 100 words: We cannot talk with animals as we can with
human beings, yet we can communicate with them on mental and emotional levels.
4 points