READING PRACTICE

Reading Passage 1:
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3
below.
Beyond the blue horizon
Ancient voyagers who settled the far-flung islands of the Pacific Ocean
An important archaeological discovery on the island of Efate in the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu
has revealed traces of an ancient seafaring people, the distant ancestors of todays, Polynesians. The site
came to light only by chance. An agricultural worker, digging in the grounds of a derelict plantation,
scraped open a grave – the first of dozens in a burial ground some 3,000 years old. It is the oldest
cemetery ever found in the Pacific islands, and it harbors the remains of an ancient people archaeologists
call the Lapita.
They were daring blue-water adventurers who used basic canoes to rove across the ocean. But they
were not just explorers. They were also pioneers who carried with them everything they would need to
build new lives – their livestock, taro seedlings and stone tools. Within the span of several centuries, the
Lapita stretched the boundaries of their world from the jungle-clad volcanoes of Papua New Guinea to
the loneliest coral outliers of Tonga.
The Lapita left precious few clues about themselves, but Efate expands the volume of data available
to researchers dramatically. The remains of 62 individuals have been uncovered so far, and
archaeologists were also thrilled to find six complete Lapita pots. Other items included a Lapita burial
urn with modeled birds arranged on the rim as though peering down at the human remains sealed inside.
‘It’s an important discovery,’ says Matthew Spriggs, professor of archaeology at the Australian National
University and head of the international team digging up the site, ‘for it conclusively identifies the
remains as Lapita.’
DNA teased from these human remains may help answer one of the most puzzling questions in
Pacific anthropology: did all Pacific islanders spring from one source or many? Was there only one
outward migration from a single point in Asia, or several from different points? ‘This represents the best
opportunity we’ve had yet,’ says Spriggs, ‘to find out who the Lapita actually were, where they came
from, and who their closest descendants are today.’
There is one stubborn question for which archaeology has yet to provide any answers: how did the
Lapita accomplish the ancient equivalent of a moon landing, many times over? No-one has found one of
their canoes or any rigging, which could reveal how the canoes were sailed. Nor do the oral histories and
traditions of later Polynesians offer any insights, for they turn into myths long before they reach as far
back in time as the Lapita.
‘All we can say for certain is that the Lapita had canoes that were capable of ocean voyages, and
they had the ability to sail them,’ says Geoff Irwin, a professor of archaeology at the University of
Auckland. Those sailing skills, he says, were developed and passed down over thousands of years by
earlier mariners who worked their way through the archipelagoes of the western Pacific, making short
crossings to nearby islands. The real adventure didn’t begin, however, until their Lapita descendants
sailed out of sight of land, with empty horizons on every side. This must have been as difficult for them
as landing on the moon is for us today. Certainly it distinguished them from their ancestors, but what
gave them the courage to launch out on such risky voyages?
The Lap it as thrust into the Pacific was eastward, against the prevailing trade winds, Irwin notes.
Those nagging headwinds, he argues, may have been the key to their success. ‘They could sail out for
days into the unknown and assess the area, secure in the knowledge that if they didn’t find anything,
they could turn about and catch a swift ride back on the trade winds. This is what would have made the
whole thing work.’ Once out there, skilled seafarers would have detected abundant leads to follow to
land: seabirds, coconuts and twigs carried out to sea by the tides, and the afternoon pile-up of clouds on
the horizon which often indicates an island in the distance.
For returning explorers, successful or not, the geography of their own archipelagoes would have
provided a safety net. Without this to go by, overshooting their home ports, getting lost and sailing off
into eternity would have been all too easy. Vanuatu, for example, stretches more than 500 miles in a
northwest-southeast trend, its scores of inrervisible islands forming a backstop for mariners riding the
trade winds home.
 All this presupposes one essential detail, says Atholl Anderson, professor of prehistory at the
Australian National University: the Lapita had mastered the advanced art of sailing against the wind.
‘And there’s no proof they could do any such thing,’ Anderson says. ‘There has been this assumption
they did, and people have built canoes to re-create those early voyages based on that assumption. But
nobody has any idea what their canoes looked like or how they were rigged.’
Rather than give all the credit to human skill, Anderson invokes the winds of chance. El Nino, the
same climate disruption that affects the Pacific today, may have helped scatter the Lapita, Anderson
suggests. He points out that climate data obtained from slow-growing corals around the Pacific indicate
a series of unusually frequent El Ninos around the time of the Lapita expansion. By reversing the regular
east-to-west flow of the trade winds for weeks at a time, these super El Ninos might have taken the
Lapita on long unplanned voyages.
However they did it, the Lapita spread themselves a third of the way across the Pacific, then called it
quits for reasons known only to them. Ahead lay the vast emptiness of the central Pacific and perhaps
they were too thinly stretched to venture farther. They probably never numbered more than a few
thousand in total, and in their rapid migration eastward they encountered hundreds of islands – more
than 300 in Fiji alone.

Task 1: Complete the summary using the list of words and phrases, A-J, below.
The Efate burial site
A 3,000-year-old burial ground of a seafaring people called the Lapita has been found on an abandoned
1. ____________ on the Pacific island of Efate. The cemetery, which is a significant 2. ____________,
was uncovered accidentally by an agricultural worker. The Lapita explored and colonised many Pacific
islands over several centuries. They took many things with them on their voyages including 3.
____________ and tools.
The burial ground increases the amount of information about the Lapita available to scientists. A team of
researchers, led by Matthew Spriggs from the Australian National University, are helping with the
excavation of the site. Spriggs believes the 4. ____________ which was found at the site is very
important since it confirms that the 5. ____________ found inside are Lapita.

A proof B plantation C harbor D bones E data

Task 2: Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage?
Write
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

6. It is now clear that the Lapita could sail into a prevailing wind.
7. Extreme climate conditions may have played a role in Lapita migration.
8. The Lapita learnt to predict the duration of El Ninos.
9. It remains unclear why the Lapita halted their expansion across the Pacific.
10. It is likely that the majority of Lapita settled on Fiji.

Reading Passage 2:
PIAGET’S COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT THEORY
The   famous   Swiss   psychologist   Jean   Piaget   (1896­1980)   proposed   an   important   theory   of
cognitive development.  Piaget’s theory  states that children actively construct their understanding of
the world and go through four stages of cognitive development. Two processes underlie this cognitive
construction of the world: organization and adaptation. To make sense of our world, we organize our
experiences. For example, we separate important ideas from less important ideas. We connect one idea
to another. But not only do we organize our observations and experiences, we also adapt our thinking to
include new ideas because additional information furthers understandings. Piaget (1954) believed that
we adapt in two ways: assimilation and accommodation.
  Assimilation  occurs   when   individuals   incorporate   new   information   into   their   existing
knowledge.  Accommodation  occurs   when   individuals   adjust   to   new   information.  Consider   a
circumstance in which a 9­year­old girl is given a hammer and nails to hang a picture on the wall. She
has never used a hammer, but from observation and vicarious experience she realizes that a hammer is
an object to be held, that it is swung by the handle to hit the nail, and that it is usually swung a number
of times. Recognizing each of these things, she fits her behavior into the information she already has
(assimilation). However, the hammer is heavy, so she holds it near the top. She swings too hard and the
nail bends, so she  adjusts  the  pressure of her  strikes. These adjustments  reveal  her ability to  alter
slightly her conception of the world (accommodation).
Piaget thought that assimilation and accommodation operate even in the very young infant’s life.
Newborns reflexively suck everything that touches their lips (assimilation), but, after several months of
experience, they construct their understanding of the world differently. Some objects, such as fingers
and   the   mother’s   breast,   can   be   sucked,   but   others,   such   as   fuzzy   blankets,   should   not   be   sucked
(accommodation).
Piaget also believed that we go through four stages in understanding the world. Each of the
stages is age­related and consists of disparage ways of thinking. Remember, it is the different way of
understanding the world that makes one stage more advanced than another; knowing more information
does not make the child’s thinking more advanced, in the Piagetian view. This is what Piaget meant
when he said the child’s cognition is  qualitatively  different in one stage compared to another (Vidal,
2000). [A] What are Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development like?

[B] The sensorimotor stage, which lasts from birth to about 2 years of age, is the first Piagetian
stage. In this stage, infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences
(such as seeing and hearing) with physical, motoric actions—hence the term sensorimotor. [C] At the
end of the stage, 2­year­olds have sophisticated sensorimotor patterns and are beginning to operate with
primitive symbols. [D]
[Paragraph 6]   The preoperational stage, which lasts from approximately 2 to 7 years of age, is the
second Piagetian stage. In this stage, children begin to represent the world with words, images, and
drawings.   Symbolic   thought   goes   beyond   simple   connections   of   sensory   information   and   physical
action. However, although preschool children can symbolically represent the world, according to Piaget,
they still lack the ability to perform operations, the Piagetian term for internalized mental actions that
allow children to do mentally what they previously did physically.
[Paragraph 7]  The concrete operational stage, which lasts from approximately 7 to 11 years of age,
is the third Piagetian stage. In this stage, children can perform operations, and logical reasoning replaces
intuitive thought as long as reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete examples. For instance,
concrete operational thinkers cannot imagine the steps necessary to complete an algebraic equation,
which is too abstract for thinking at this stage of development.
[Paragraph 8]   The  formal operational stage, which appears between the ages of 11 and 15, is the
fourth and final Piagetian stage. In this stage, individuals move beyond concrete experiences and think
in abstract and more logical terms. As part of thinking more abstractly, adolescents develop images of
ideal circumstances. They might think about what an ideal parent is like and compare their parents to
this ideal standard. They begin to entertain possibilities for the future and are fascinated with what they
can be. In solving problems, formal operational thinkers are more systematic, developing hypotheses
about why something is happening the way it is, then testing these hypotheses in a deductive manner.
1. Which of the sentences below best expresses the information in the highlighted statement  in the
passage? The other choices change the meaning or leave out important information.
A. Our new experiences require that we adjust in order to understand information 
that we have never seen.
B. Understanding new ideas is easier if we include observations and personal 
experiences.
C. We engage in both organization of what we see and experience and adaptation of 
novel ideas.
D. Thinking must include direct observation and experiences in order to organize the
information.
2. Why does the author mention a hammer in paragraph 2? 
A. To explain the concepts of assimilation and accommodation
B. To demonstrate how a 9­year­old girl responds to a new experience
C. To prove that a young child cannot engage in problem solving
D. To provide an example of the first stage of cognitive development
3. The word disparage in the passage is closest in meaning to
A. new
B. simple
C. different
D. exact
4. The word primitive in the passage is closest in meaning to
A. limited
B. basic 
C. proximal 
D. handy 
5. Based   on   the   information   in   paragraph   6,   which   of   the   following   best   explains   the   term
“operations"?
A. symbolic thought
B. mental actions
C. physical activity
D. abstract reasoning
6. According to paragraph 7, why would a 10­year­old be unable to solve algebra problems?
A. Algebra requires concrete operational thinking.
B. A 10­year­old has not reached the formal operational stage.
C. A child of 10 does not have logical reasoning abilities.
D. An algebra problem has too many steps in order to solve it.
7. In paragraph 8, the author mentions parents because
A. teenagers are already thinking about their roles in the future 
 B. parents are very important teachers during the final stage of development
C. the comparison of real and ideal parents is an example of abstract thinking
D. adolescents tend to be critical of their parents as part of their development
8. What can be inferred from the passage about people who are older than 15 years of age?
A. They must have completed all of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development.
B. They are probably in the formal operational state of development.
C. They have mastered deductive reasoning and are beginning to learn intuitively.
D. They may still not be able to solve problems systematically.
9. All of the following refer to Piaget’s theory EXCEPT
A. Even very young infants may engage in constructing the way that they understand the
world.
B. Both assimilation and accommodation are processes that we can use to help us adapt to
new information.
C. When   children   learn   more   information,   then   their   thinking   is   at   a   higher   stage   of
development.
D. Operations require a more advanced stage of development than symbolic representation.
10. Look at the four squares [A], [B], [C] and [D] that show where the following sentence could 
be inserted in the passage.
At the beginning of this stage, newborns have little more than reflexive patterns with which to
work.
Where could the sentence best be added?
A. [A]
B. [B]
C. [C]
D. [D]
KEY
PASSAGE 1:
1. B
2. F
3. I
4. G
5. D
6. NO
7. YES
8. NOT GIVEN
9. YES
10. NOT GIVEN

KEY PASSAGE 2
1. C
2. A
3. C
4. B
5. B
6. B
7. C
8. A
9. C
10. C