Advanced English Reading and Comprehension

124 practice makes perfect Advanced English Reading and Comprehension

5. “Naysayers claim that solar energy is prohibitively expensive.”


6. “In the irst quarter of 2012, solar panel installations increased 85 percent over the
   previous year’s irst quarter... .”


7. “... by 1897, nearly a third of the homes in Pasadena, California, had installed a solar
   water heating system.”


8. “Buildings that take advantage of passive solar heating can cut their heating costs
   in half.”


9. “... commitment to solar energy has luctuated with the price of oil, particularly
   in North America, where government energy policy is strongly inluenced by oil
   companies.”


10. “Interest in [solar water heating] systems revived in the late 1970s, but in the
    mid-1980s, their popularity declined with energy prices and the expiration
    of a federal tax credit.”

Reading strategies

Paraphrasing: Changing voice

Reading texts about technology often use the passive voice. One way to paraphrase sentences

is to change the passive voice to the active. Here’s an example:

PASSIVE VOICE In the late 1950s, solar cells were adopted by NASA to power satellites.

ACTIVE VOICE In the late 1950s, NASA adopted solar cells to power satellites.

The active voice is shorter and more direct than the passive voice. There can be a problem,

however, if the agent (in the example above, NASA) is unknown or if the agent is very general

or indeinite (for example, people, they, or someone), as in the following example:

PASSIVE VOICE The irst water heater was patented in the United States in 1891.

In this example, the name of the inventor is not known; therefore, an active sentence would

not be an improvement.

Remember that it is not enough to simply change the order of the words in a sentence—

you must also use your own words. The irst example above might be written as follows:

NASA began using solar cells to run satellites at the end of the 1950s.

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EXERCISE

Changing voice Convert each of the following passive sentences from the

reading text to the active voice. The subject for each active-voice sentence is given

in parentheses.

1. “Throughout human history, the sun has been worshipped as a symbol of life and power.”
   (people)