This section measures your ability to use writing to communicate in an academic environmen
t. There will be two writing tasks.
For the first writing task, you will read a passage and listen to a lecture and then answer a question based on what you have read and heard. For the second writing task, you will answer a question based on your own knowledge and experience.
Now listen to the directions for the first writing task.
Integrated Writing Directions
For this task, you will first have three minutes to read a passage about an academic topic: You may take notes on the passage if you wish. The passage will then be removed and you will listen to a lecture about the same topic. While you listen, you may also take notes.
Then you will have 20 minutes to write a response to a question that asks you about the relationship between the lecture you heard and the reading passage. Try to answer the question as completely as possible using information from the reading passage and the lecture. The question does not ask you to express your personal opinion. You will be able to see the reading passage again when it is time for you to write. You may use your notes to help you answer the question.
Typically, an effective response will be 150 to 225 words long. Your response will be judged on the quality of your writing and on the completeness and accuracy of the content. If you finish your response before time is up, you may Clink on Next to go on to the second writing task.
Now you will see the reading passage for three minutes. Remember it will be available to you again when you write immediately after the reading time ends. The lecture will begin, so keep your headset on until the lecture is over.
What our society suffers from most today is the absence of consensus about what it should be; such consensus cannot be gained from society's present stage, or from fantasies about what it ought to be. The present is too close and too diversified, and the future is too uncertain to make reliable claims about it. A present consensus can be achieved only through a shared understanding of the past, as Homer's epics informed those who lived centuries later what it meant to be Greek, and by what images and ideals they were to live their lives and organize their societies.
Most societies derive consensus from a long history, a language all their own, a common religion, common ancestry. The myths by which they live are based on all of these. But the United States is a country of immigrants, coming from a great variety of nations. Lately, it has been emphasized that a social, narcissistic personality has become characteristic of Americans, and that it is this type of personality that makes for the lack of well-being, because it prevents us from achieving consensus that would counteract a tendency to withdraw into private worlds. In this study of narcissism, Christopher Lash says that modern man, "tortured by self-consciousness, turns to new therapies not to free himself of his personal worries but to find meaning and purpose in life, to find something to live for." There is widespread distress because national morale has declined, and we have lost an earlier sense of national vision and purpose.
Now listen to part of a lecture on the topic you just read about.
Question: Summarize the points made in the lecture, being sure to specifically explain how they support the explanations in the reading passage.