"A MOTORBIKE KNOCKED TED DOWN" - " "A. HOW TERRIFIC...

9. "A motorbike knocked Ted down" - " "

A. How terrific! B. What a motorbike! C. What is it now? D. Poor him!

Read the following passage and mark the letter A,B,C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the

correct answer to each of the questions from 10 to 16.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, almost nothing was written about the

contributions of women during the colonial period and the early history of the newly formed United

States. Lacking the right to vote and absent from the seats of power, women were not considered an

important force in history. Anne Bradstreet wrote some significant poetry in the seventeenth century,

Mercy Otis Warren produced the best contemporary history of the American Revolution, and

Abigail Adams penned important letters showing she exercised great political influence over her

husband, John, the second President of the United States. But little or no notice was taken of these

contributions. During these centuries, women remained invisible in history books.

Throughout the nineteenth century, this lack of visibility continued, despite the efforts of

female authors writing about women. These writers, like most of their male counterparts, were

amateur historians. Their writings were celebratory in nature, and they were uncritical in their

selection and use of sources.

During the nineteenth century, however, certain feminists showed a keen sense of history by

keeping records of activities in which women were engaged. National, regional, and local women's

organizations compiled accounts of their doings. Personal correspondence, newspaper clippings, and

souvenirs were saved and stored. These sources from the core of the two greatest collections of

women's history in the United States one at the Elizabeth and Arthur Schlesinger Library at

Radcliffe College, and the other the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College. Such sources have

provided valuable materials for later Generations of historians.

Despite the gathering of more information about ordinary women during the nineteenth Century,

most of the writing about women conformed to the "great women" theory of History, just as much of

mainstream American history concentrated on "great men." To demonstrate that women were

making significant contributions to American life, female authors singled out women leaders and

wrote biographies, or else important women produced their autobiographies. Most of these leaders

were involved in public life as reformers, activists working for women's right to vote, or authors, and

were not representative at all of the great of ordinary woman. The lives of ordinary people

continued, generally, to be untold in the American histories being published.