Read the texts again and answer questions 1-4 with a word or short phrase. You do not need to write complete sentences.

1 Explain in your own words what ‘their most powerful weapon in the fight to sell’ refers to.

(HINT: This question tests your understanding of the world ‘weapon’, which is used metaphorically here. What subject would you normally expect for the verb ‘is sitting’ in this context?)

2 Explain in your own words exactly what it is that the child cannot yet appreciate at the age of six.

(HINT: At six, the child can understand the difference between an advert and a TV programme. What can’t he understand: Remember you have to explain this in your own words.)

Text 2

A growing number of senior figures in advertising are rebelling against the official industry line that ‘if it’s legal to sell, it should be legal to advertise’. They are prepared to say in public what they have hitherto only said in private: that advertisers deliberately encourage children to pester their parents to buy products they don’t need and can’t afford. Peter Mead, chairman of one of the UK’s biggest advertising agencies, is one of them. ‘It’s a personal decision, ’ he said. ‘I remember once watching a child nagging his father for a present he clearly couldn’t afford and felt how painful that must be.’

Much of the debate about advertising to children centres on whether or not they are able to work out that the advertiser is working to an agenda, and not merely spreading the good news about a toy or fizzy drink as a matter of public service. Many in the industry are now prepared to argue that this is expecting too much, even of the media-wise 21^st-century brat.

‘I believe in commercial freedom. But it is obvious that children are not able to strike a free and informed bargain with advertisers, which is why I personally believe they need extra protection, ’ says one account director.

But Lional Stanbrook, legal affairs adviser at the advertising association, doesn’t agree. ‘Pester power is not a real issue. It has been manufactured by special interest groups. It is insulting to suggest that children can’t deal with ads, ’ he says.

3 Who and what is referred to in the phrase ‘how painful that must be’?

(HINT: This is a reference question. You need to work out what ‘that’ refers to, and who is implied to be feeling pain.)

4 Explain in your own words what the writer means by ‘children are not able to strike a free and informed bargain with advertisers’.

(HINT: Read further in the text for a simpler expression of the same idea, but remember you must explain the ideas in the quoted section in your own words.)

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