READING TEXT 1 - HOMEWORK - 3 OCTOBER

BETTER HEARING THROUGH BLUETOOTH
Adapted from The New York Times

You are going to read part of an article about a new kind of hearing aid. For gaps 1-7 choose the answer (A-D) which best fits each gap. Only ONE answer is correct.

Like many men of his generation, Larry Faust, 61, of Seattle, went to a lot of rock concerts in his youth. And like many men of his generation, his hearing isn’t what it used to be.

 “My wife has been bugging me for several years to do something about my hearing,” said Mr.Faust. “I spent part of the summer of 1969 at Woodstock Festival and that probably didn’t help.”

_____1_____ of going the traditional route — buying hearing aids through an audiologist or licensed hearing aid dispenser — Mr. Faust purchased a device that is classified as a personal sound amplifier product, or P.S.A.P., _____2_____ is designed to amplify sounds in a recreational environment.

_____3_____ hearing aids, P.S.A.P.’s are exempt from Food and Drug Administration supervision and can be sold as electronic devices directly to consumers, with no need to see a physician before buying one. They come with a range of features and vary widely in price.

And _____4_____ some hearing professionals have long cautioned against the devices, citing their unreliability and poor quality, many _____5_____ say that a new generation of P.S.A.P.s that utilize the latest wireless technology are offering promising alternatives for some people with hearing loss.

The device Mr. Faust bought, the CS10 from a Chicago-based company called Sound World Solutions, cost $299.99, thousands of dollars cheaper than most digital hearing aids. While it has many of the same features that high-end hearing aids have, it has one capability that hearing aids and other devices on the market _____6_____ don’t have. It comes with software that enables consumers to program it themselves, a feature made possible in part by the adoption of the widely
available Bluetooth wireless technology. _____7_____ having to visit an audiologist to program the device, something that hearing aid users must do, CS10 customers can program it themselves by downloading the app to an Android phone or a computer (an iPhone version is under development). This self-programming feature may make the CS10 especially useful for consumers in developing countries, where there is no formal distributional model for hearing aids and “no audiologists,” said Stavros Basseas, the company’s co-founder.

1. ·   A.Despite             B.Except      C.Instead      D.While
2. ·   A. that                  B.what         C.which        D.who
3. ·   A.Although          B.As            C.Like           D.Unlike
4. ·   A.as                      B.since        C.when          D.while
5. ·   A.also                   B.as well     C.however     D.too
6. ·   A.consequently    B.currently  C.lately          D.recently
7. ·   A.After                 B.Before     C.Instead       D.Rather than