NPAT 27th June 2021 Shift 1

Question Label : Comprehension
Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.

Decades of research have shown that spending time in green spaces is good for our physical and mental health - including boosting our emotional states and attention spans and improving our longevity. Even a little goes a long way: a study in the 1980s showed that post-surgery patients assigned to hospital rooms with greenery outside recovered faster than those who didn't have such accommodations.

Yet in many cities, outdoor space -whether your own or in terms of proximity to parks - comes at a premium. According to a study, one in eight British households had no access to a green space at home, whether a private or shared space. T hat inequity was starker among ethnic groups: in England, black people are almost four times more likely than white people to have no access to private outdoor space. Access to public outdoor space can be a challenge, too: "There are about 100 million people in the US who don't live within 10 minutes of a park or green s Kimberly Burrowes, who works with an organization that studies cities. And the poorer an area is, the worse the park quality, even if a park is close by.

"People view nature as an amenity, not as an essential," says Lorien Nesbitt, an assistant professor of urban forestry at the University of British Columbia in Canada. "I think we don't always view urban nature as important as running water, housing, that kind of thing."

Question Label : Comprehension
Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.

Like many writers, rm a supreme expert at procrastination. When I ought to be working on an assignment, with the clock ticking towards my deadline, I'll sit there watching pointless political interviews or boxing highlights on You Tube. According to traditional thinking, still espoused by university counselling centres around the world, I, along with my fellow procrastinators, have a time management problem. By this view rm not paying enough attention to how much time I'm currently wasting on 'cyber loafing'. With better scheduling and a better grip on time, so the logic goes, I will stop procrastinating and get on with my work.

Increasingly, however, psychologists are realising this is wrong. Experts have proposed that procrastination is an issue with managing our emotions, not our time. The task we're putting off is making us feel bad - perhaps it's boring, too difficult or we're worried about failing - and to make ourselves feel better in the moment, we start doing something else, like watching videos.

This fresh perspective on procrastination is beginning to open up exciting new approaches to reducing the habit; it could even help you improve your own approach to work. "Self-change of any of sort is not a simple thing, and it typically follows the old adage of two steps forward and one step back," says Pychyl , a psychologist. "All of this said, I am confident that anyone can learn to stop procrastinating."