Read the article about a young inventor who has made a water filter, and then answer the following questions. 1 How old was Rina when the water in her villa...

Exercise 1 tests your ability to find stated facts quickly and to select only the words the question asks for. Questions 1 to 5 each have one short answer written directly in the article, so a word, a number or a short phrase earns the mark. Question 6 is different: it asks for three separate details, so three ideas must be given, not one idea repeated in three ways.

1. Age when the water became a problem: fourteen. [1] The article opens, "When Rina Salcedo was fourteen, the water in her village of Balanan changed colour every time it rained." The common error is to write seventeen, but that is her age at the time of writing, since paragraph 5 says "Three years later Rina, now seventeen". The question asks about the moment the problem began, so the earlier age is the one required.
2. The water in her grandmother's old clay pot always tasted cool and fresh. [1] Rina says, "There was an old clay pot beside the door, and the water in it always tasted cool and fresh," and then, "I began to wonder whether the clay was doing something to the water, and not simply keeping it cold." The taste and freshness of the stored water is the observation that started the idea. An answer such as "her grandmother told her to use clay" is not creditable, because the text never says the grandmother suggested anything.
3. Rice husks. [1] Paragraph 3 states, "She mixed local clay with rice husks and shaped the mixture into deep pots." The husk is the part that matters, because it burns away in the oven and leaves "thousands of tiny holes, far too small for most bacteria to pass through", so writing "rice" alone loses the mark.
4. Around two years. [1] Paragraph 4 says each pot "lasts around two years if it is cleaned every month with a soft brush". Note that the question repeats the condition about monthly cleaning, which is your signal that the figure you need is the one attached to that condition, not the cost of four dollars in the same sentence.
5. The training. [1] Rina "insists that the training matters more than the invention itself", and she explains why: "A filter that nobody knows how to clean is just a heavy pot." An answer naming the workshop is not accepted, because the workshop is the place, while the training is the activity she values.
6. Any three of the following changes in her own life, one mark each. [3]
   • She was invited to speak at a science conference in Manila, in front of six hundred people.
   • A university has offered her a scholarship to study environmental engineering.
   • She runs a small workshop with two neighbours and has trained thirty people to make the pots.
   • Every Saturday morning she meets younger students who are building their own projects.
   Details about the filter itself, such as the four dollar cost or the removal of more than 98 per cent of bacteria, earn nothing here. They describe the invention, not the change in Rina's life, and the question asks "In what ways has life changed for Rina".

Examination point: when a question ends with "Give three details", check that your three answers come from three different sentences and describe three different things. Two rewordings of the same fact will be credited once.