Reading

1. | GW. Read the paragraphs about personality. Choose a sentence from 1-6 that fits each gap a-e. There is an extra sentence which you don't need to use.

What is personality?

Many people define personality as a person’s usual manner or style of behavior. These patterns of behavior tend to be predictable throughout a person’s lifetime. Some people are introverts, others are extraverts.

(a)_____. Their emotions are usually under control: they don’t get extremely angry about little things. Others, at the other end of the personality spectrum*, are more emotional, experiencing higher highs and lower lows. Most people’s personalities, however, don’t fall at the extreme ends but rather fall somewhere in-between.

Where do we get our personality?

For hundreds of years, psychologists have been debating this fascinating question. (b)_____. The people who believe in this theory say that babies are not born with a personality and it’s the environment that forms, each child’s nature. This is called the nurture school. (c)_______. These people consider that personality is not determined by the environment, but rather by genetics and that each baby is born with a personality.

The nature-nurture controversy?

“The nature-nurture controversy” is a very old issue. (d) _____. However, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to conduct research on real people with real lives. There’s just no way to put people in a laboratory and watch them develop. For this reason, there’s no scientific way to settle the nature-nurture controversy. Recently, however, most researchers have come to believe that both the environment and the genes - nurture and nature - work together and are both important. (e)____________. It seems that everyone has an opinion.

*spectrum - a range o f different colours, as seen in a rainbow