Here are Top 3 frequently asked Retell Lecture questions in recent PTE Academic test (February 2020).

1.Edmund Wilson

Retell Lecture - Soot Emission

Wilson came from a different world. And he became the focal point of a board mainstream. American culture that thought that modern literature and wanted modern literature to be able to be read and appreciated by ordinary people. They were not modernists in an abstract sense. And certainly, some of them like TS Eliot and Faulkner were too difficult for some of their writings to be read by ordinary people. But this was a world before the division between the brows or between a lead or whatever had established itself as a part of our consciousness. Wilson was a major player in the successful effort of his generation to establish at the heart of American life and innovative literature that would equal the great cultures of Europe. And he knew that the great cultures of Europe were there. He was not a product of a narrow American Studies kind of training at all. He joined a high artistic standard with an openness to all experience and a belief that literature was as much of a part of life for everyone as conversation. He thought the Proust and Joyce and Yeats and Eliot could and should be read by ordinary Americans and helped that to happen. Wilson was a very various man. Over a period of almost 50 years, he was a dedicated, a literary journalist, and an investigative reporter, a brilliant memoirist, and dedicated journal keeper.

Sample Answer

Wilson came from a different world. He became the focus of mainstream American board culture. He wanted modern literature to be able to be read and appreciated by ordinary people. He was also successful in equaling the great cultures of Europe in American life. He believed that literature was as much of a part of life for everyone as conversation. Wilson was also a very various man.

2.Soot Emission

Sometimes it’s the little things that can make big things happen. Fleas and the plague, atoms and nuclear bombs. Diminutive leaders in world history. Soot is one of these little things. Soot also known as black carbon is released when you burn dung, coal, diesel fuel and wood. From Los Angeles to Mumbai, soot causes respiratory illnesses like lung cancer and asthma and contributes to one point six million premature deaths every year. Mostly among the poor. And it gets worse. Atmospheric currents carry soot thousands of miles from where it is produced, to the Himalayas and the Arctic. Black carbon being black, absorbs sunlight, so even a little soot on snow makes it melt faster. And when snow melts global sea levels rise, threatening our freshwater indigenous communities and polar bears who hunt on the Arctic ice. Climate Change has been a big thing for a while and carbon dioxide has been its main cause. Scientists estimate that soot causes twenty five percent of human-caused global warming. It’s the second leading cause of Arctic warming after carbon dioxide. Let’s not underestimate the impact of this tiny particle. But there’s good news, reducing black carbon may be the fastest way to slow global warming. Buy time for the Arctic. Yes even more so than changing a light bulb. Since black carbon only stays in the atmosphere for a couple of weeks, reducing it will produce results immediately. Of course, reducing soot alone won’t solve global warming, but solving our soot problem now will help buy time for the Arctic and allow us to deal with the bigger problem of carbon dioxide. We have the cleaner industries, cook stoves, and diesel now we have to use them. In developed nations, we’ve significantly reduced our black carbon, but we still have much more to do. We need to tighten our standards at home and invest in cleaner technologies in developing nations. In a world going on seven billion people, you might feel rather little yourself. But if you urge the US government and the European Union to take the lead on black carbon reduction, you can make a big difference.

Key Points

Soot is also known as black carbon. It is released when you burn down coal, diesel fuel and wood.
Soot contributes to global warming, but does not accumulate in the atmosphere like CO2.
Reduction in soot has immediate but not long term effects on global warming.
So if we want to stabilize the climate system, we need to focus on greenhouse gases such as CO2.

3.Early Robots

This is a kind of object that you’re probably all familiar with When you had the term robot, but I’m goanna show you the very, very first robots. These were the very first robots. They were characters in a play in the 1920s called Rossum’s Universal Robots, and they…, the play was written by Czech writer called Karle Capek. And basically, these robots, you know, people tend to think of robots as kind of cute cuddly toys or, you know, Hollywood depictions kind of devoid of politics. But the first robots were actually created and imagined in a time of absolute political turmoil. You just had the First World War, you know, it finished and had a devastating impact across Europe and so people will kind…and people are kind of reflecting on “What does it mean to be human”, “what makes us human” those kinds of question. And this kind of context is what inspired Capek to kind of write this play. And interestingly, these robots being human, they are actually in the play assembled on a production line, a bit like the Ford manufacturing production line. So even though they are human, they are assembled and these robots are designed to labor and that is their primary purpose in society.

Sample Answer

These early robots were characters in a play written in the 1920s. People usually think of robots as cute, cuddly toys as Hollywood depictions. The first robots were created and imagined in the time of political turmoil after First World War. People reflected on what does it mean to be a human. The early robots were assembled on production line and their primary purpose is labor in society.