GIAO-TRINH-READING-3-AVK46-2024

DALAT UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
READING 3
Selected and compiled by Nguyễn Thị Tú
FOR DLU STUDENTS ONLY, NOT FOR SALE

DALAT- 2022
Áp dụng cho sinh viên từ K45
TABLE OF CONTENTS
UNIT TITLES PAGE
ĐỀ CƯƠNG HỌC PHẦN i
UNIT 1 READING SELECTION 1: 1
Homeless- Anna Quindlen
UNIT 2 PRACTICE 1: 7
Lessons From The Titanic
UNIT 3 PRACTICE 2 15
The Dover Bronze- Age Boat
The Changing Role Of Airports
Is Photography Art?
UNIT 4 READING SELECTION 2: 27
Beneath My House-Louise Erdrich
Affordable Art
Mining technology
High-Tech Crime Fighting Tool
The Flavor of Pleasure
Dawn of the robots
It’s your choice! - Or is it really?
UNIT 7 READING SELECTION 3 55
My Mother Barked Like A Seal- Jean
Marie Coogan
The Human Body
Hot Springs
Migration
Secrets of the swarm
High Speed, High Rise
When conversations flow
Sex, Sigh, And Conversation- Why
Men And Women Can’t
Communicate- Deborah Tannen
Ant Intelligence
Population Movements and Genetics
Forests as natural heritage
Trees in trouble
Whale Strandings
Science in Space
Meaning Of A Word- Gloria Naylor
How the Pauli exclusion principle
regulates the evolution of stars
Envy without reason?
Have you a tea-room?
Why Are Finland’s Schools
Successful?
The Hollywood Film Industry
The Swiffer
REFERENCES 151
UNIT 1: READING SELECTION 1
Homeless
by Anna Quindlen
Anna Quindlen was born in 1952 and graduated from Barnard College in 1974. She
worked as a reporter for the New York Post and the New York Times before taking over
the Time’s “About New York” column, serving as the paper’s deputy metropolitan editor,
and in 1986 creating her own weekly column, “Life in the Thirties.” Many of the essays
from this popular column were collected in Living Out Loud (1988). Between 1989 and
1994 Quindlen wrote a twice-weekly op-ed column for the Times, on social and political
issues. The columns earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, and many of them were
collected in Thinking Out Loud: On the Personal, the Political, the Public, and the
Private (1993). Quindlen has also published two successful novels, Object Lessons (1991)
and One True Thing (1994). Typically for Quindlen, she mongles a reporter’s respect for
details with a passionate regard for life.
1. Her name was Ann, and we met in the Port Authority Bus Terminal several
Januarys ago. I was doing a story on homeless people. She said I was wasting my time
talking to her; she was just passing through, although she’d been passing through for
more than two weeks. To prove to me that this was true, she rummaged through a tote
bag and a manila envelope and finally unfolded a sheet of typing paper and brought
out her photographs.
2. They were not pictures of family, or friends, or even a dog or cat, its eyes brown-red
in the flashbulb’s light. They were pictures of a house. It was like a thousand houses in
a hundred towns, not suburb, not city, but somewhere in between, with aluminum
siding and a chain-link fence, a narrow driveway running up to a one-car garage and a
patch of backyard. The house was yellow. I looked on the back for a date or a name,
but neither was there. There was no need for discussion. I knew what she was trying to
tell me, for it was something I had often felt. She was not adrift, alone, anonymous,
although her bags and her raincoat with the grime shadowing its creases had made me
believe she was. She had a house, or at least once upon a time had had one. Inside
were curtains, a couch, a stove, potholders. You are where you live. She was
somebody.
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3. I’ve never been very good at looking at the big picture, taking the global view, and
I’ve always been a person with an overactive sense of place, the legacy of an Irish
grandfather. So it is natural that the thing that seems most wrong with the world to me
right now is that there are so many people with no homes. I’m not simply talking about
shelter from the elements, or three square meals a day or a mailing address to which
the welfare people can send the check—although I know that all these are important
for survival. I’m talking about a home, about precisely those kinds of feelings that
have wound up in cross-stitch and French knots on samplers over the years.
4. Home is where the heart is. There’s no place like it. I love my home with a ferocity
totally out of proportion to its appearance or location. I love dumb things about it: the
hot-water heater, the plastic rack you drain dishes in, the roof over my head, which
occasionally leaks. And yet it is precisely those dumb things that make it what it is—a
place of certainty, stability, predictability, privacy, for me and for my family. It is
where I live. What more can you say about a place than that? That is everything.
5. Yet it is something that we have been edging away from gradually during my
lifetime and the life times of my parents and grandparents. There was a time when
where you lived often was where you worked and where you grew the food you ate
and even where you were buried. When that era passed, where you lived at least was
where your parents had lived and where you would live with your children when you
became enfeebled. Then suddenly where you lived was where you lived three years,
until you could move on to something else and something else again.
6. And so we have come to something else again, to children who do not understand
what it means to go to their rooms because they have never had a room, to men and
women whose fantasy is a wall they can paint a color of their own choosing, to old
people reduced to sitting on molded plastic chairs, their skin blue-white in the lights of
a bus station, who pull pictures of houses out of their bags. Homes have stopped being
homes. Now they are real estate.
7. People find it curious that those without homes would rather sleep sitting up on
benches or huddled in doorways than go to shelters. Certainly some prefer to do so
because they are emotionally ill, because they have been locked in before and they are
damned if they will be locked in again. Others are afraid of the violence and trouble
they may find there. But some seem to want something that is not available in shelters,
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and they will not compromise, not for a cot, or oatmeal, or a shower with special soap
that kills the bugs. “One room,” a woman with a baby who was sleeping on her sister’s
floor, once told me, “painted blue”. That was the crux of it; not size or location, but
pride of ownership. Painted blue.
8. This is a difficult problem, and some wise and compassionate people are working
hard at it. But in the main I think we work around it, just as we walk around it when it
is lying on the sidewalk or sitting in the bus terminal—the problem, that is. It has been
customary to take people’s pain and lessen our own participation in it by turning it into
an issue, not a collection of human beings. We turn an adjective into a noun: the poor,
not poor people; the homeless, not Ann or the man who lives in the box or the woman
who sleeps on the subway grate.
9. Sometimes I think we would be better off if we forgot about the broad strokes and
concentrated on the details. Here is a woman without a bureau. There is a man with no
mirror, no wall to hang it on. They are not the homeless. They are people who have no
homes. No drawer that holds the spoons. No window to look out upon the world. My
God. That is everything.
A. Vocabulary: Match a word in column A with its definition in column B
A B
1. rummage a. the most important point or element.
2. legacy b. a program of financial aid provided by the government
to people in need
3. enfeebled c. settle a disagreement by making mutual cocessions
4. ferocity d. something handed down from an ancestor or from the
past
5. stability e. aimless, without purpose, without direction
6. welfare f. full of pity, merciful
7. crux g. building which temporarily houses homeless people or
animals
8. compassionate h. a condition of being reliable or permanent.
9. adrift i. deprived of strength; made weak.
10. huddle j. search through
11. shelter k.savagery, fierceness
12. compromise l. crowd together
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B. Answer the following questions:
1. Why did the homeless woman in the subway show the author photos of a house?
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2. In your own opinion, why would some homeless people rather sleep on a bench than
go to a shelter?
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3. How does the author feel about her own home?
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4. The author mentioned loving the "dumb things" about her home. List one of those
silly things.
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5. The author gives us many ideas of what a home is. To one girl, it was a certain color
of paint on the walls. What was that color? Explain this.
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6. Why does the author feel a home is so important?
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7. What does the author imply when she states: “Home is where the heart is.”?
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8. What distinction is the author making in her conclusion with the sentences “They
are not the homeless. They are people who have no homes”?
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9. What is the effect of “My God” in the last paragraph?
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10. What is Anna Quindlen's main reason for writing this essay?
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D. Paraphrasing:
1. I’m not simply talking about shelter from the elements, or three square meals a day
or a mailing address to which the welfare people can send the check—although I know
that all these are important for survival. I’m talking about a home, about precisely
those kinds of feelings that have wound up in cross-stitch and French knots on
samplers over the years.
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2. Home is where the heart is. There’s no place like it. I love my home with a ferocity
totally out of proportion to its appearance or location. I love dumb things about it: the
hot-water heater, the plastic rack you drain dishes in, the roof over my head, which
occasionally leaks
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3. People find it curious that those without homes would rather sleep sitting up on
benches or huddled in doorways than go to shelters. Certainly some prefer to do so
because they are emotionally ill, because they have been locked in before and they are
damned if they will be locked in again. Others are afraid of the violence and trouble
they may find there.
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4. Some seem to want something that is not available in shelters, and they will not
compromise, not for a cot, or oatmeal, or a shower with special soap that kills the
bugs. “One room,” a woman with a baby who was sleeping on her sister’s floor, once
told me, “painted blue”. That was the crux of it; not size or location, but pride of
ownership. Painted blue.
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E. Summarizing: Write a summary of the essay “Homeless” (about 120- 150 words)
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UNIT 2: PRACTICE 1
Lessons from the Titanic
A. From the comfort of our modern lives, we tend to look back at the turn of the
twentieth century as a dangerous time for sea travellers and navigators. With limited
communication facilities, and shipping technology still in its infancy in the early
nineteen hundreds, we consider ocean travel to have been a risky business. But to the
people of the time, it was one of the safest forms of transport. At the time of the
Titanic’s maiden voyage in 1912, there had only been four lives lost in the previous
forty years on passenger ships on the North Atlantic Crossing. And the Titanic was
confidently proclaimed to be unsinkable. She represented the pinnacle of technological
advance at the time. Her builders, crew and passengers had no doubt that she was the
finest ship ever built. But still she did sink on April 14, 1912, taking 1,517 of her
passengers and crew with her.
B. The RMS Titanic left Southampton for New York on April 10, 1912. On board
were some of the richest and most famous people of the time who had paid large sums
of money to sail on the first voyage of the most luxurious ship in the world. Imagine
her placed on her end: she was larger at 269 metres than many of the tallest buildings
of the day. And with nine decks, she was as high as an eleven-storey building. The
Titanic carried 329 first-class, 285 second-class and 710 third-class passengers with
899 crew members, under the care of the very experienced Captain Edward J. Smith.
She also carried enough food to feed a small town, including 40,000 fresh eggs, 36,000
apples, 111,000 lbs of fresh meat and 2,200 lbs of coffee for the five-day journey.
C. The Titanic was believed to be unsinkable because the hull was divided into six-
teen watertight compartments. Even if two of these compartments flooded, the ship
could still float. The ship’s owners could not imagine that, in the case of an accident,
the Titanic would not be able to float until she was rescued. It was largely as a result of
this confidence in the ship and in the safety of ocean travel that the disaster could
claim such a great loss of life.
D. In the ten hours prior to the Titanic’s fatal collision with an iceberg at 11:40 p.m.,
six warnings of icebergs in her path were received by the Titanic’s wireless operator.
Only one of these messages was formally posted on the bridge; the others were in
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various locations across the ship. If the combined information in these messages of
iceberg positions had been plotted, the ice field which lay across the Titanic’s path
would have been apparent. Instead, the lack of formal procedures for dealing with
information from a relatively new piece of technology, the wireless, meant that the
danger was not known until too late. This was not the fault of the Titanic crew.
Procedures for dealing with warnings received through the wireless had not been
formalised across the shipping industry at the time. The fact that the wireless operators
were not even the Titanic crew, but rather contracted workers from a wireless
company, made their role in the ship’s operation quite unclear.
E. Captain Smith’s seemingly casual attitude in increasing the speed on this day to a
dangerous 22 knots or 41 kilometres per hour can then be partly explained by his
ignorance of what was laying ahead. But this only partly accounts for his actions, since
the spring weather in Greenland was known to cause huge chunks of ice to break off
from the glaciers. Captain Smith knew that these icebergs would float southward and
had already acknowledged this danger by taking a more southerly route than at other
times of the year. So why was the Titanic travelling at high speed when he knew, if not
of the specific risk, at least of the general risk of icebergs in her path? As with the
lack of coordination of the wireless messages, it was simply standard operating
procedure at the time. Captain Smith was following the practices accepted on the
North Atlantic, the practices which had coincided with forty years of safe travel. He
believed, wrongly as we now know, that the ship could turn or stop in time if an
iceberg was sighted by the lookouts.
F. There were around two and a half hours between the time the Titanic rammed into
the iceberg and its final submersion. In this time, 705 people were loaded into the
twenty lifeboats. There were 473 empty seats available on lifeboats while over 1,500
people drowned. These figures raise two important issues. Firstly, why there were not
enough lifeboats to seat every passenger and crew member on board. And secondly,
why the lifeboats were not full.
G. The Titanic had sixteen lifeboats and four collapsible boats which could carry just
over half the number of people on board her maiden voyage and only a third of the
Titanic’s total capacity. Regulations for the number of lifeboats required were based
on outdated British Board of Trade regulations written in 1894 for ships a quarter of
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the Titanic’s size, and had never been revised. Under these requirements, the Titanic
was only obliged to carry enough lifeboats to seat 962 people. At design meetings in
1910, the shipyard’s managing director, Alexander Carlisle, had proposed that forty-
eight lifeboats be installed on the Titanic, but the idea had been quickly rejected as too
expensive. Discussion then turned to the ship’s decor, and as Carlisle later described
the incident, "We spent two hours discussing carpet for the first-class cabins and
fifteen minutes discussing lifeboats.’
H. The belief that the Titanic was unsinkable was so strong that the passengers and
crew alike clung to the belief even as she was actually sinking. This attitude was not
helped by Captain Smith, who had not acquainted his senior officers with the full
situation. For the first hour after the collision, the majority of people aboard the
Titanic, including senior crew, were not aware that she would sink, that there were
insufficient lifeboats, or that the nearest ship responding to the Titanic’s distress calls
would arrive two hours after she was on the bottom of the ocean. As a result, the
officers in charge of loading the boats received a very half-hearted response to their
early calls for women and children to board the lifeboats. People felt that they would
be safer, and certainly warmer, aboard the Titanic than perched in a little boat in the
North Atlantic Ocean. Not realising the magnitude of the impending disaster
themselves, the officers allowed several boats to be lowered only half full.
I. Procedures again were at fault, as an additional reason for the officers’ reluctance to
lower the lifeboats at full capacity was that they feared the lifeboats would buckle
under the weight of 65 people. They had not been informed that the lifeboats had been
fully tested prior to departure. Such procedures as assigning passengers and crew to
lifeboats and lifeboat loading drills were simply not part of the standard operation of
ships, nor were they included in crew training at this time.
J. As the Titanic sank, another ship, believed to have been the Californian, was seen
motionless less than twenty miles away. The ship failed to respond to the Titanic’s
eight distress rockets. Although the officers of the Californian tried to signal the
Titanic with their flashing Morse lamp, they did not wake up their radio operator to
listen for a distress call. At this time, communication at sea through wireless was new
and the benefits were not well appreciated, so the wireless on ships was often not
operated around the clock. In the case of the Californian, the wireless operator slept
9
unaware while 1,500 Titanic passengers and crew drowned only a few miles away.
K. After the Titanic sank, investigations were held in both Washington and London. In
the end, both inquiries decided that no one could be blamed for the sinking. However,
they did address the fundamental safety issues which had contributed to the enormous
loss of life. As a result, international agreements were drawn up to improve safety
procedures at sea. The new regulations covered 24-hour wireless operation, crew
training, proper lifeboat drills, lifeboat capacity for all on board and the creation of an
international ice patrol. (1,400 words)
QUESTIONS 1- 5 (Overview Questions)
Chose the heading which best sums up the primary cause of the problem
described in paragraph D, E, G, H and I of the text. Write the appropriate
numbers (i- x)
N.B. There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use all of them
List of Headings
i. Ignorance of the impending disaster
ii. Captain’s orders ignored
iii. Captain’s over- confidence
iv. Rough sea conditions
v. Faulty design
vi. Iceberg locations not plotted
vii. Low priority placed on safety
viii. Number of lifeboats adequate
ix. Inadequate training
x. Ice warning ignored
1. Paragraph D …………………………………………………………………………
2. Paragraph E …………………………………………………………………………
3. Paragraph G …………………………………………………………………………
4. Paragraph H …………………………………………………………………………
5. Paragraph I ………………………………………………………………………….
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QUESTIONS 6- 10 (Gap-Filling Questions)
Complete the sentences below using words taken from the reading passage. Use
NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.
6. …………………did not arouse any response from the Californian.
7. Lifeboats not used …………………. diminished the opportunity of saving lives.
8. One positive outcome was that the enquiries into the Titanic disaster sought to
improve safety procedures by initiating ………………………
9. The Titanic’s safety feature, which convinced most people that she wouldn’t sink,
was her ……………………..
10. Passenger ships across the North Atlantic Ocean had had an excellent safety record
in the …………………….
QUESTIONS 11- 17 (Viewpoint Questions)

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in the reading
passage?
YES if the statement agrees with the writer’s view;
NO if the statement contradicts the writer’s view;
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this.
11. The enormous loss of life on the Titanic was primarily caused by inadequate
equipment, training and procedures.
Answer: ………………………………………..
12. Nobody had thought of installing enough lifeboats to accommodate all the
passengers and crew in the event of an emergency.
Answer: ………………………………………..
13. Captain Smith didn’t inform his officers of the true situation because he didn’t
want to cause a panic.
Answer: ………………………………………..
14. The lifeboats would have buckled if they had been fully loaded.
Answer: ………………………………………..
15. After the Titanic sank, the lifeboats which were not full should have returned to
rescue as many people from the water as they could.
Answer: ………………………………………..
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16. The Captain of the Californian would have brought his ship to the rescue if he had
realized that the Titanic was sinking.
Answer: ………………………………………..
17. The sinking of the Titanic prompted an overhaul of standard operating procedures
which made ocean travel much safer.
Answer: ………………………………………..
QUESTIONS 18- 26 (Summary Questions)

Complete the summary below. Choose your answers from words given in the
table below. There are more words than spaces, so you will not use them all. You
may use any of the words more than once.
List of Words
passengers dangers fast safety
confident excitement sink lifeboats
enormous record advanced inadequate
afloat size worried water
drown float handbook orders
happy ocean procedures
The Finest Ship Ever Built
The North Atlantic Ocean crossing on the Titanic was expected to set a new standard
for 18…………......................travel in terms of comfort and 19.………......................
The shipping industry had an excellent safety 20 .…………...................... On the
North Atlantic Crossing over the previous forty years and the Titanic was the finest
and safest liner ever built. The Titanic combined the greatest technology of the day
with sheer 21…...................... luxury and new safety features. The Titanic’s owners
were 22…………......................that even if the Titanic were letting in 23.
…..................... she would 24 .…………...................... indefinitely until help
arrived. In hindsight, we know that the Titanic was not unsinkable, and that technology
alone could not save lives when facilities were 25 …………...................... and humans
did not follow safe 26…………...................... whether because of arrogance or
ignorance.
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QUESTIONS 27- 36 (Table-Completion Questions)
Complete the table below using the information from the reading passage. Write
NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.
Problems Causes of the problems
Remedial measures taken
after the disaster?
Write Yes, No, or Doesn’t say
Position of icebergs 27 …………… scattered all Doesn’t say
not plotted over the ship
Insufficient lifeboats 28 …………….. regulations 29 …………………………..
Lifeboats not full a. ignorance of the extent of 30 …………………………..
danger
b. fear that lifeboats would 32 …………………………..
31 …………………………
Californian didn’t No 33 …………………….. 34 …………………………..
listen to the distress wireless operation
calls
Titanic travelling at 35 …………………. on the 36 …………………………..
high speed North Atlantic
QUESTIONS 37- 40 (Matching questions)

The reading passage describes a number of cause-and-effect relationships. Match
each cause in List A with its effect (A-H) in List B. There are more effects in List
B than you will need, so you will not use all of them. You may use any effect more
than once if you wish
List A- Causes List B-Effects
37. Outdated regulations designed for A. Lack of lifeboat training and drills
much smaller ships B. More than two of the watertight
Answer: ……….............. compartments filled with water
38. Captain Smith’s failure to C. Locations of icebergs received in ice
communicate sufficient information to warnings were not plotted
officers D. Half full lifeboats did not return to
Answer: ……….............. rescue people
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39. No requirements for 24-hour-a-day E. Nearby ship did not come to Titanic’s
wireless operation rescue
Answer: ……….............. F. Not enough lifeboats
40. Lack of procedures for dealing with G. Passengers panicked
wireless messages H. Lifeboats were not fully loaded
Answer: ………..............
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UNIT 3: PRACTICE 2
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.
The Dover Bronze- Age Boat
A beautifully preserved boat, made around 3,000 years ago and discovered by chance
in a muddy hole, has had a profound impact on archaeological research.
It was 1992. In England, workmen were building a new road through the heart of
Dover, to connect the ancient port and the Channel Tunnel, which, when it opened just
two years later, was to be the first land link between Britain and Europe for over
10,000 years. A small team from the Canterbury Archaeological Trust (CAT) worked
alongside the workmen, recording new discoveries brought to light by the machines.
At the base of a deep shaft six metres below the modem streets a wooden structure was
revealed. Cleaning away the waterlogged site overlying the timbers, archaeologists
realised its true nature. They had found a prehistoric boat, preserved by the type of
sediment in which it was buried. It was then named the Dover Bronze-Age Boat.
About nine metres of the boat’s length was recovered; one end lay beyond the
excavation and had to be left. What survived consisted essentially of four intricately
carved oak planks: two on the bottom, joined along a central seam by a complicated
system of wedges and timbers, and two at the side, curved and stitched to the others.
The seams had been made watertight by pads of moss, fixed by wedges and yew
stitches.
The timbers that closed the recovered end of the boat had been removed in antiquity
when it was abandoned, but much about its original shape could be deduced. There
was also evidence for missing upper side planks. The boat was not a wreck, but had
been deliberately discarded, dismantled and broken. Perhaps it had been ‘ritually
killed’ at the end of its life, like other Bronze-Age objects.
With hindsight, it was significant that the boat was found and studied by mainstream
archaeologists who naturally focused on its cultural context. At the time, ancient boats
were often considered only from a narrower technological perspective, but news about
the Dover boat reached a broad audience. In 2002, on the tenth anniversary of the
discovery, the Dover Bronze-Age Boat Trust hosted a conference, where this meeting
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of different traditions became apparent. Alongside technical papers about the boat,
other speakers explored its social and economic contexts, and the religious perceptions
of boats in Bronze-Age societies. Many speakers came from overseas, and debate
about cultural connections was renewed.
Within seven years of excavation, the Dover boat had been conserved and displayed,
but it was apparent that there were issues that could not be resolved simply by
studying the old wood. Experimental archaeology seemed to be the solution: a boat
reconstruction, half-scale or full-sized, would permit assessment of the different
hypotheses regarding its build and the missing end. The possibility of returning to
Dover to search for the boat’s unexcavated northern end was explored, but practical
and financial difficulties were insurmountable - and there was no guarantee that the
timbers had survived the previous decade in the changed environment.
Detailed proposals to reconstruct the boat were drawn up in 2004. Archaeological
evidence was beginning to suggest a Bronze-Age community straddling the Channel,
brought together by the sea, rather than separated by it. In a region today divided by
languages and borders, archaeologists had a duty to inform the general public about
their common cultural heritage.
The boat project began in England but it was conceived from the start as a European
collaboration. Reconstruction was only part of a scheme that would include a major
exhibition and an extensive educational and outreach programme. Discussions began
early in 2005 with archaeological bodies, universities and heritage organisations either
side of the Channel. There was much enthusiasm and support, and an official launch of
the project was held at an international seminar in France in 2007. Financial support
was confirmed in 2008 and the project then named BOAT 1550BC got under way in
June 2011.
A small team began to make the boat at the start of 2012 on the Roman Lawn outside
Dover museum. A full-scale reconstruction of a mid-section had been made in 1996,
primarily to see how Bronze- Age replica tools performed. In 2012, however, the hull
shape was at the centre of the work, so modem power tools were used to carve the oak
planks, before turning to prehistoric tools for finishing.
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It was decided to make the replica half-scale for reasons of cost and time, and
synthetic materials were used for the stitching, owing to doubts about the seeding and
tight timetable.
Meanwhile, the exhibition was being prepared ready for opening in July 2012 at the
Castle Museum in Boulogne-sur-Mer. Entitled ‘Beyond the Horizon: Societies of the
Channel & North Sea 3,500 years ago’, it brought together for the first time a
remarkable collection of Bronze-Age objects, including many new discoveries for
commercial archaeology and some of the great treasure of the past. The reconstructed
boat, as a symbol of the maritime connections that bound together the communities
either side of the Channel, was the centrepiece.
QUESTIONS 1-5
Complete the flow-chart below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the text for
each answer.
Key events
1992 - the boat was discovered during the construction of a 1………………………….
↓
2002 - an international 2 ………………………………..was held to gather information
↓
2004 – 3 …………………………………………for the reconstruction were produced
↓
2007-the 4………………………………………………..of BOAT 1550BC took place
↓
2012 - the Bronze-Age 5……………………………featured the boat and other objects
QUESTIONS 6-9
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the text? In boxes 6-9
on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
6. Archaeologists realised that the boat had been damaged on purpose.
7. Initially, only the technological aspects of the boat were examined.
17
8. Archaeologists went back to the site to try and find the missing northern end of the
boat.
9. Evidence found in 2004 suggested that the Bronze-Age Boat had been used for
trade.
QUESTIONS 10-13
Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS
AND/OR A NUMBER from the text for each answer.
10. How far under the ground was the boat found?
11. What natural material had been secured to the boat to prevent water entering?
12. What aspect of the boat was the focus of the 2012 reconstruction?
13. Which two factors influenced the decision not to make a full-scale reconstruction
of the boat?
18
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on
Reading Passage 2 below.
The changing role of airports
Airports continue to diversify their role in an effort to generate income. Are business
meeting facilities the next step? Nigel Halpern, Anne Graham and Rob Davidson
investigate.
A. In recent times developing commercial revenues has become more challenging for
airports due to a combination of factors, such as increased competition from Internet
shopping, restrictions on certain sales, such as tobacco, and new security procedures
that have had an impact on the dwell time of passengers. Moreover, the global
economic downturn has caused a reduction in passenger numbers while those that are
travelling generally have less money to spend. This has meant that the share of
revenue from non-aeronautical revenues actually peaked at 54% at the turn of the
century and has subsequently declined slightly. Meanwhile, the pressures to control
the level of aeronautical revenues are as strong as ever due to the poor financial health
of many airlines and the rapid rise of the low-cost carrier sector.
B. Some of the more obvious solutions to growing commercial revenues, such as
extending the merchandising space or expanding the variety of shopping opportunities,
have already been tried to their limit at many airports. A more radical solution is to
find new sources of commercial revenue within the terminal, and this has been
explored by many airports over the last decade or so. As a result, many terminals are
now much more than just shopping malls and offer an array of entertainment, leisure,
and beauty and wellness facilities. At this stage of facilities provision, the airport also
has the possibility of taking on the role of the final destination rather than merely a
facilitator of access.
C. At the same time, airports have been developing and expanding the range of
services that they provide specifically for the business traveller in the terminal. This
includes offering business centres that supply support services, meeting or conference
rooms and other space for special events. Within this context, Jarach (2001) discusses
how dedicated meetings facilities located within the terminal and managed directly by
the airport operator may be regarded as an expansion of the concept of airline lounges
19
or as a way to reconvert abandoned or underused areas of terminal buildings.
Previously it was primarily airport hotels and other facilities offered in the surrounding
area of the airport that had the potential to take on this role and become active as a
business space [McNeill, 2009).
D. When an airport location can be promoted as a business venue, this may increase
the overall appeal of the airport and help it become more competitive in both attracting
and retaining airlines and their passengers. In particular, the presence of meeting
facilities could become one of the determining factors taken into consideration when
business people are choosing airlines and where they change their planes. This
enhanced attractiveness itself may help to improve the airport operator’s financial
position and future prospects, but clearly this will be dependent on the competitive
advantage that the airport is able to achieve in comparison with other venues.
E. In 2011, an online airport survey was conducted and some of the areas investigated
included the provision and use of meeting facilities at airports and the perceived role
and importance of these facilities in generating income and raising passenger numbers.
In total, there were responses from staff at 1 54 airports and 68% of these answered
'yes’ to the question: Does your airport own and have meetings facilities available for
hire?
The existence of meeting facilities therefore seems high at airports. In addition, 28%
of respondents that did not have meeting facilities stated that they were likely to invest
in them during the next five years. The survey also asked to what extent respondents
agreed or disagreed with a number of statements about the meeting facilities at their
airport. 49% of respondents agreed that they have put more investment into them
during recent years; 41% agreed that they would invest more in the immediate future.
These are fairly high proportions considering the recent economic climate.
F. The survey also asked airports with meeting facilities to estimate what proportion of
users are from the local area, i.e. within a 90-minute drive from the airport, or from
abroad. Their findings show that meeting facilities provided by the majority of
respondents tend to serve local versus non-local or foreign needs. 63% of respondents
estimated that over 60% of users are from the local area. Only 3% estimated that over
80% of users are from abroad. It is therefore not surprising that the facilities are of
limited importance when it comes to increasing use of flights at the airport: 16% of
20
respondents estimated that none of the users of their meeting facilities use flights when
travelling to or from them, while 56% estimated that 20% or fewer of the users of their
facilities use flights.
G. The survey asked respondents with meeting facilities to estimate how much
revenue their airport earned from its meeting facilities during the last financial year.
Average revenue per airport was just $1 2,959. Meeting facilities are effectively a non-
aeronautical source of airport revenue. Only 1% of respondents generated more than
20% non-aeronautical revenue from their meetings facilities; none generated more
than 40%. Given the focus on local demand, it is not surprising that less than a third of
respondents agreed that their meeting facilities support business and tourism
development in their home region or country.
H. The findings of this study suggest that few airports provide meetings facilities as a
serious commercial venture. It may be that, as owners of large property, space is
available for meeting facilities at airports and could play an important role in serving
the needs of the airport, its partners, and stakeholders such as government and the local
community. Thus, while the local orientation means that competition with other
airports is likely to be minimal, competition with local providers of meetings facilities
is likely to be much greater.
QUESTIONS 14- 18
The text has eight paragraphs, A-H. Which paragraph contains the following
information? You may use any letter more than once.
14. evidence that a significant number of airports provide meeting facilities. ……….
15. a statement regarding the fact that no further developments are possible in some
areas of airport trade. ……….
16. reference to the low level of income that meeting facilities produce for airports.
……….
17. mention of the impact of budget airlines on airport income ……….
18. examples of airport premises that might be used for business purposes ……….
QUESTIONS 19-22
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the
text for each answer.
21
19. The length of time passengers spend shopping at airports has been affected by
updated………………………………..
20. Airports with a wide range of recreational facilities can become a
…………………… for people rather than a means to travel.
21. Both passengers and……………………………….may feel encouraged to use and
develop a sense of loyalty towards airports that market their business services.
22. Airports that supply meeting facilities may need to develop
a………………………… over other venues.
QUESTIONS 23-26
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from
the text for each answer.
Survey Findings
Despite financial constraints due to the 23……………………………., a significant
percentage of airports provide and wish to further support business meeting facilities.
Also, just under 30% of the airports surveyed plan to provide these facilities within
24…………………..
However, the main users of the facilities are 25……………………and as many as
16% of respondents to the survey stated that their users did not take any
26………………..at the airport.
22
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40
Is photography art?
1. This may seem a pointless question today. Surrounded as we are by thousands of
photographs, most of us take for granted that, in addition to supplying information and
seducing customers, camera images also serve as decoration, afford spiritual
enrichment, and provide significant insights into the passing scene. But in the decades
following the discovery of photography, this question reflected the search for ways to
fit the mechanical medium into the traditional schemes of artistic expression.
2. The much-publicized pronouncement by painter Paul Delaroche that the
daguerreotype* signalled the end of painting is perplexing because this clever artist
also forecast the usefulness of the medium for graphic artists in a letter written in
1839. Nevertheless, it is symptomatic of the swing between the outright rejection
and qualified acceptance of the medium that was fairly typical of the artistic
establishment. Discussion of the role of photography in art was especially spirited in
France, where the internal policies of the time had created a large pool of artists, but it
was also taken up by important voices in England. In both countries, public interest in
this topic was a reflection of the belief that national stature and achievement in the
arts were related.
3. From the maze of conflicting statements and heated articles on the subject, three
main positions about the potential of camera art emerged. The simplest, entertained by
many painters and a section of the public, was that photographs should not be
considered ‘art’ because they were made with a mechanical device and by physical
and chemical phenomena instead of by human hand and spirit; to some, camera images
seemed to have more in common with fabric produced by machinery in a mill than
with handmade creations fired by inspiration. The second widely held view, shared by
painters, some photographers, and some critics, was that photographs would be useful
to art but should not be considered equal in creativeness to drawing and painting.
Lastly, by assuming that the process was comparable to other techniques such as
etching and lithography, a fair number of individuals realized that camera images were
or could be as significant as handmade works of art and that they might have a positive
influence on the arts and on culture in general.
23
4. Artists reacted to photography in various ways. Many portrait painters - miniaturists
in particular - who realized that photography represented the ‘handwriting on the wall’
became involved with daguerreotyping or paper photography in an effort to save their
careers; some incorporated it with painting, while others renounced painting
altogether.
Still other painters, the most prominent among them the French painter, Jean-
Auguste-Dominique Ingres, began almost immediately to use photography to make a
record of their own output and also to provide themselves with source material for
poses and backgrounds, vigorously denying at the same time its influence on their
vision or its claims as art.
5. The view that photographs might be worthwhile to artists was enunciated in
considerable detail by Lacan and Francis Wey. The latter, an art and literary critic,
who eventually recognised that camera images could be inspired as well as
informative, suggested that they would lead to greater naturalness in the graphic
depiction of anatomy, clothing, likeness, expression, and landscape. By studying
photographs, true artists, he claimed, would be relieved of menial tasks and become
free to devote themselves to the more important spiritual aspects of their work.
6. Wey left unstated what the incompetent artist might do as an alternative, but
according to the influential French critic and poet Charles Baudelaire, writing in
response to an exhibition of photography in 1859, lazy and untalented painters would
become photographers. Fired by a belief in art as an imaginative embodiment of
cultivated ideas and dreams, Baudelaire regarded photography as ‘a very humble
servant of art and science’; a medium largely unable to transcend ‘external reality’. For
this critic, photography was linked with ‘the great industrial madness’ of the time,
which in his eyes exercised disastrous consequences on the spiritual qualities of life
and art.
7. Eugene Delacroix was the most prominent of the French artists who welcomed
photography as help-mate but recognized its limitations. Regretting that ‘such a
wonderful invention’ had arrived so late in his lifetime, he still took lessons in
daguerreotyping, and both commissioned and collected photographs. Delacroix’s
enthusiasm for the medium can be sensed in a journal entry noting that if photographs
24
were used as they should be, an artist might ‘raise himself to heights that we do not yet
know’.
8. The question of whether the photograph was document or art aroused interest in
England also. The most important statement on this matter was an unsigned article that
concluded that while photography had a role to play, it should not be ‘constrained’ into
‘competition’ with art; a more stringent viewpoint led critic Philip Gilbert Hamerton to
dismiss camera images as ‘narrow in range, emphatic in assertion, telling one truth for
ten falsehoods’.
9. These writers reflected the opposition of a section of the cultural elite in England
and France to the ‘cheapening of art’ which the growing acceptance and purchase of
camera pictures by the middle class represented. Technology made photographic
images a common sight in the shop windows of Regent Street and Piccadilly in
London and the commercial boulevards of Paris. In London, for example, there were at
the time some commercial establishments where portraits, landscapes, and
photographic reproductions of works of art could be bought. This appeal to the middle
class convinced the elite that photographs would foster a desire for realism instead of
idealism, even though some critics 140 recognized that the work of individual
photographers might display an uplifting style and substance that was consistent with
the defining characteristics of art.
* the name given to the first commercially successful photographic images
Questions 27- 30
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D
27. What is the writer’s main point in the first paragraph?
A. Photography is used for many different purposes.
B. Photographers and artists have the same principal aims.
C. Photography has not always been a readily accepted art form
D. Photographers today are more creative than those of the past
28. What public view about artists was shared by the French and the English?
A. that only artists could reflect a culture’s true values
B. that only artists were qualified to judge photography
C. that artists could lose work as a result of photography
D. that artistic success raised a country’s international profile
25
29. What does the writer mean in line 59 by ‘the handwriting on the wall’?
A. an example of poor talent
B. a message that cannot be trusted
C. an advertisement for something new
D. a signal that something bad will happen
30. What was the result of the widespread availability of photographs to the middle
classes?
A. The most educated worried about its impact on public taste.
B. It helped artists appreciate the merits of photography.
C. Improvements were made in photographic methods.
D. It led to a reduction in the price of photographs.
QUESTIONS 31- 34
Complete the summary of Paragraph 3 using the list of words, A-G, below.
A. inventive C. beneficial E. mixed G. inferior
B. similar D. next F. justified
Camera art
In the early days of photography, opinions on its future were 31………, but three clear
views emerged. A large number of artists and ordinary people saw photographs as
32………to paintings because of the way they were produced. Another popular view
was that photographs could have a role to play in the art world, despite the
photographer being less 33…………Finally, a smaller number of people suspected
that the impact of photography on art and society could be 34…………
QUESTIONS 35-40
Look at the following statements and the list of people, A-E, below. Match each
statement with the correct person.
35. He claimed that photography would make paintings more realistic.
36. He highlighted the limitations and deceptions of the camera.
37. He documented his production of artwork by photographing his works.
38. He noted the potential for photography to enrich artistic talent.
39. He based some of the scenes in his paintings on photographs.
40. He felt photography was part of the trend towards greater mechanisation.
A. Jean-Auguste- Dominique Ingres B Francis Wey
C. Charles Baudelaire D. Eugene Delacroix E. Philip Gilbert Hamerton
26
Beneath My House
By Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich is one of the most celebrated novelists of her generation. She was born in
Little Falls, Minnesota in 1954, to a Chippewa Indian mother, and German-American
father. Her interest in writing can be traced to her childhood, for Erdrich and her six
siblings were surrounded by master storytellers: "People in [Native American] families
make everything into a story," she has said. "People just sit and the stories start coming,
one after another. I suppose that when you grow up constantly hearing the stories risc,
break, and fall, it gets into you somehow." Erdrich's many books include the best-selling
novels Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, Tracks, The Bingo Palace, Tales of Burning Love,
and The Antelope's Wife. She is also the author of The Blue Jay's Dance, a work of
nonfiction, several volumes of poetry, and stories for children.
1. It was as if the house itself had given birth. One day the floor cried where I stepped
on it, and I jumped back. I was near a heating vent, and when I bent and pried the
cover off and thrust my hand in, I briefly grabbed a ball of fur that hissed and spat. I
heard the kitten scrambling away, the tin resounding like small thunder along the
length of its flight.
2. I went down to the basement, looking for it with a flashlight, but, of course, at my
step the untamed creature fled from the concrete-floored area and off into the earthen
crawl space -- draped with spider webs as thick as cotton, a place of unpeeled log
beams, the underside of the house. I put out milk in a saucer. I crouched on the other
side of the furnace, and I waited until I fell half-asleep. But the kitten was too young to
drink from a dish and never came. Instead, she set up, from just beyond where I could
catch her, a piteous crying that I could hardly stand to hear.
3. I went after her. The earth was moldy, a dense clay. No sun had fallen here for over
two centuries. I climbed over the brick retaining wall and crawled toward the sound of
the kitten. As I neared, as it sensed my presence was too large to be its mother, it went
silent and scrabbled away from the reach of my hand. I brushed fur, though, and that
slight warmth filled me with what must have been a mad calm because when the
creature squeezed into a bearing wall of piled stones, I inched forward on my stomach.
My back was now scraping along the beams that bore the weight of the whole house
27
above me. Tons and tons of plaster, boards, appliances, and furniture. This was no
crawl space anymore. I could hardly raise my shoulders to creep forward, could move
only by shifting my hips up and down. On the edge of panic -I had never before been
in a space so tight- one thought pressed in: if I heard the house creak, if it settled very
suddenly upon my back, my last crushed words would be, "I don't even like cats."
Because I don't like cats, just find their silken ways irresistible.
4. Its face popped out right in front of me, and vanished. How far back did the piled
rock go? If I moved a rock, would the whole house fall on me? I reached for the kitten,
missed, reached again, missed. I tried to breathe, to be patient. Then, after a time, the
kitten backed toward me, away from a clump of dirt I managed to throw at the far
wall. Its tail flicked through a space in the rocks, and I snatched it. Held it, drew it
toward me. Out it came with a squeak of terror, a series of panting comic hisses, and a
whirl of claws and teeth, tiny needles it didn't yet know how to use.
5. She is a pretty cat, a calico marbled evenly with orange and black. Rocky. She sits
near as I write, leaps into the warmth of my chair when I leave, and is jealous of the
baby.
6. The night after I pulled her from the house, the darkness pressed down on me until I
woke. I'd swum weightlessly into a smaller and smaller space. What the body
remembers of birth it anticipates as death. In the house of my dreams the basement is
the most fearful: the awful place filled with water, the place of both comfort and death.
I fear in particular the small space, the earth closing in on me, the house like a mother
settling its cracked bones and plumbing.
7. That afternoon, from underneath, I had heard the house all around me like an old
familiar body. I hadn't told anybody else that I was going after the kitten, so nobody
knew I was below. The normal sounds of my family's daily life were magnified. Their
steps trailed and traveled around me, boomed in my ears. Their voices jolted me, their
words loud but meaningless, warped by their travel through the walls and beams.
Water flowed through invisible pipes around me, hitched and gurgled. It was like being
dead, or unborn. I hadn't thought about it then, but now I could dearly see part of me, the
husk of myself, still buried against the east wall: a person sacrificed to ensure the good
luck of a temple, a kind of house god, a woman lying down there, still, an empty double.
28
I. VOCABULARY: Match a word in column A with its definition in column B
A B
1. resounding a. enlarged
2. piteous b. flowed with a burbling noisy sound
3. scrabble c. made shock
4. irresistible d. arousing compassion
5. vanished e. smoothly
6. evenly f. echoing
7. magnified g. disappeared
8. jolted h. scratch
9. gurgled i. worthless remain
10. husk j. charming, fascination
II. Answer the following questions:

1. The first line of this essay is “It was as if the house itself had given birth.” What
does this metaphor refer to? Where does it reappear in the essay? How does it change?
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2. Why does the writer decide to follow the kitten?
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. In paragraph 3, the writer describes herself as filled with “mad calm”. What does
this contradictory image mean in this context?
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29
4. What does the writer mean when she says her “empty double” is still lying
underneath her house? (para. 7)
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. If you don’t know what a “retaining wall” is (para.3), look it up. What is significant
about the writer’s going over the retaining wall to follow the kitten?
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III. Paraphrasing:
1. One day the floor cried where I stepped on it, and I jumped back. I was near a
heating vent, and when I bent and pried the cover off and thrust my hand in, I briefly
grabbed a ball of fur that hissed and spat. I heard the kitten scrambling away, the tin
resounding like small thunder along the length of its flight.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. She is a pretty cat, a calico marbled evenly with orange and black. Rocky. She sits
near as I write, leaps into the warmth of my chair when I leave, and is jealous of the
baby.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. In the house of my dreams the basement is the most fearful: the awful place filled
with water, the place of both comfort and death. I fear in particular the small space, the
earth closing in on me, the house like a mother settling its cracked bones and
plumbing.
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30
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
V. Summarizing:
Write a summary (about 120 – 150 words) for the essay.
31
UNIT 5: PRACTICE 3
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.
Affordable Art
Art prices have fallen drastically. The art market is being flooded with good material,
much of it from big-name artists, including Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. Many
pieces sell for less than you might expect, with items that would have made £20,000
two years ago fetching only £5,000 to £10,000 this autumn, according to Philip
Hoffman, chief executive of the Fine Art Fund. Here, we round up what is looking
cheap now, with a focus on works in the range of £500 to £10,000.
Picasso is one of the most iconic names in art; yet, some of his ceramics and
lithographs fetched less than £1,000 each at Bonhams on Thursday. The low prices are
because he produced so many of them. However, their value has increased steadily and
his works will only become scarcer as examples are lost.
Nic McElhatton, the chairman of Christie's South Kensington, says that the biggest
'affordable' category for top artists is 'multiples' - prints such as screenprints or
lithographs in limited editions. In a Christie's sale this month, examples by Picasso,
Matisse, Miró and Steinlen sold for less than £5,000 each.
Alexandra Gill, the head of prints at the auction house, says that some prints are
heavily hand-worked, or often coloured, by the artist, making them personalised.
'Howard Hodgkin's are a good example,' she says. 'There's still prejudice against
prints, but for the artist, it was another, equal, medium.'
Mr Hoffman believes that these types of works are currently about as 'cheap as they
can get' and will hold their value in the long run - though he admits that their sheer
number means prices are unlikely to rise any time soon.
It can be smarter to buy really good one-offs from lesser-known artists, he adds. A
limited budget will not run to the blockbuster names you can obtain with multiples, but
it will buy you work by Royal Academicians (RAs) and others whose pieces are held
32
in national collections and who are given long write-ups in the art history books. For
example, the Christie's sale of art from the Lehman Brothers collection on Wednesday
will include Valley with cornflowers in oil by Anthony Gross (22 of whose works are
held by the Tate), at £1,000 to £1,500. There is no reserve on items with estimates of
£1,000 or less, and William Porter, who is in charge of the sale, expects some lots to
go for 'very little'. The sale also has oils by the popular Mary Fedden (whose works are
often reproduced on greetings cards), including Spanish House and The White
Hyacinth, at £7,000 to £10,000 each.
Large works by important Victorian painters are available in this sort of price range,
too. These are affordable because their style has come to be considered 'uncool', but
they please a large traditionalist following nonetheless. For example, the sale of 19th-
century paintings at Bonhams on Wednesday has a Hampstead landscape by Frederick
William Watts, at £6,000 to £8,000, and a study of three Spanish girls by John
Bagnold Burgess, at £4,000 to £6,000. There are proto-social realist works depicting
poverty, too, such as Uncared For by Augustus Edwin Mulready, at £10,000 to
£15,000.
Smaller auction houses offer a mix of periods and media. Tuesday's sale at Chiswick
Auctions in West London includes a 1968 screenprint of Campbell's Tomato Soup by
Andy Warhol, at £6,000 to £8,000, and 44 sketches by Augustus John, at £200 to £800
each.
The latter have been restored after the artist tore them up. Meanwhile, the paintings
and furniture sale at Duke's of Dorchester on Thursday has a coloured block print of
Acrobats at Play by Marc Chagall, at £100 to £200, and a lithograph of a mother and
child by Henry Moore, at £500 to £700. A group of five watercolour landscape studies
by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot is up at £1,500 to £3,000.
Affordable works from lesser-known artists and younger markets are less safe, but
they have the potential to offer greater rewards if you catch an emerging trend.
Speculating on such trends is high-risk, so is worthwhile only if you like what you buy
(you get something beautiful to keep, whatever happens), can afford to lose the capital
and enjoy the necessary research.
33
A trend could be based on a country or region. China has rocketed, but other Asian and
Middle Eastern markets have yet to really emerge. Mr Horwich mentions some 1970s
Iraqi paintings that he sold this year in Dubai. 'They are part of a sophisticated scene
that remains little-known.' Mr Hoffman tips Turkey and the Middle East. Meanwhile,
the Sotheby's Impressionist and modern art sale in New York features a 1962 oil by
the Vietnamese Vu Cao Dam; a graduate of Hanoi's Ecole des Beaux Arts de
I'lndochine and friend of Chagall, at $8,000 to $12,000 (£5,088 to £7,632). The
painting shows two girls boating in traditional ao dai dresses.
A further way of making money is to try to spot talent in younger artists. The annual
Frieze Art Fair in Regent's Park provides a chance to buy from 170 contemporary
galleries. Or you could gamble on the future fame trajectory of an established artist’s
subject. For example, a Gerald Laing screenprint of The Kiss (2007) showing Amy
Winehouse and her ex-husband is up for £4,700 at the Multiplied fair.
QUESTIONS 1-5
Use information from the passage to complete the table below. Use NO MORE
THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each space.
Example of artist Name of work/ type of art Reason for low price
form
1……………………… ceramics and lithograph He produced many
2……………………… Valley with cornflowers 3…………………………..
John Bagnold Burgess a study of three Spanish girls 4…………………………..
Vu Cao Dam 5……………………………… Asian region (except

China) is not popular at the
moment.
34
QUESTIONS 6-9
Choose one of the endings (i-viii) from the List of Endings to complete each
sentence below. Write the appropriate letters next to questions 6-9. The
information in the completed sentences should accurately reflect what is said in
the text. There are more endings (i-viii) than sentence beginnings, so you will not
need to use them all. You may use each ending once only.
6. 'Multiples' are ……………………………..
7. Prints are...........................
8. Gross and Fedden are ………………….
9. Victorian painters are ………………….
List of Endings
i. artists that have never been popular at all.
ii. hand-made and personal art works.
iii. items that are not really popular with buyers but good value for money.
vi. artists that seem to like real life topics.
v. top artists that sell many works.
vi. artists who have used a particular type of material.
vii. relatively cheap limited editions prints.
viii. artists whose work is not often seen by the wider public.
QUESTIONS 10-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information.
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information.
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this in the passage.
10. Picasso, Warhol, Matisse, Miro and Steinlen are big-name artists. ………………...
11. It is possible to buy a painting by Picasso for less than £5,000. ……………………
12. Greeting cards can sell for up to £10,000 each. ……………………
13. It is not worth investing in new artists or markets because there is a great risk of
losing all your money……………………
35
READING PASSAGE 2
Passage 2 below.
A. The race to reach 33 miners entombed for 64 days 700m (2,300ft) below the bare
brown mountains of the Atacama Desert in Chile could be completed as early as
tonight. The chief engineer said this afternoon that within 24 hours, the chamber will
have been reached. He added that bringing the miners out could begin in three days'
time. Three giant drills were boring rescue shafts down through the layers of rock,
Laurence Golborne, the Mining Minister, had announced yesterday. How quickly the
miners can be extracted once the shafts have reached the men depends on a careful
inspection of the shaft, 70cm (28in) wide, by video cameras. If the rock walls are
deemed stable, the miners could be brought out, one by one, within another two or
three days. It is estimated that it will take between 36 and 48 hours to bring them all
out.
B. The miners have been trapped underground since August 5, more than twice as long
as any other known survivor of a mining accident. A stream of rescue vehicles,
satellite television trucks and vehicles carrying journalists from around the world are
heading up to the shallow bowl in this lunar landscape that will be a centre of attention
over the next few days. In the past 48 hours, a specially-trained 16-man rescue team,
three slim metal rescue capsules, a giant crane, winches and much other equipment
have been delivered to Camp Esperanza, as the makeshift settlement is known.
C. Once the shaft is safe, two volunteers, a mining expert from Codelco, the state-
owned mining conglomerate, and Sergeant Roberto Rios Seguel, 34, a naval medic
and commando, will act as human guinea pigs, descending to where the miners are in
the Phoenix - a steel capsule specially made by the Chilean Navy and designed by
them together with NASA engineers. It has been painted in the red, white, and blue
colours of the Chilean flag. The Phoenix is named for the mythical bird that rose from
its ashes, and is the biggest of three custom-built capsules that will be used. It weighs
420kg. Its interior height is 6 feet, 4 inches (1.9 metres). The miners have been
36
restricted to a diet of 2,000 calories a day to ensure that they can fit into the capsule,
which is 53cm wide. The capsule has oxygen tanks in the bottom part. It also has a
camera, its own lighting system and a sound system. It has two sets of retractable
wheels around it, one near the top and one near the bottom, to help it travel up and
down the rescue shaft. The roof of the capsule contains LED lights. If something goes
wrong during the rescue, the top part of the capsule can be released and the bottom
two thirds of the capsule would then be lowered back down. Should the capsule
become jammed, the occupant can open the escape hatch in the base and go back down
the shaft.
D. The capsule will be lowered by a large crane at a speed of up to 3ft (91cm) per
second. The miners will be wearing a suit with a harness over it, which will allow
them to be strapped to the centre of the cylinder in an upright position for the
estimated twenty- minute journey to the surface. They will also wear an oxygen mask,
a pair of dark glasses to protect their eyes from exposure to the desert sunlight, and a
helmet which is specially adapted with a microphone and a wired headset to enable
them to communicate with the surface. Doctors will monitor the miners’ vital signs
using information gathered from a biometric belt. They will conduct a preliminary
assessment of the miners’ mental and physical health. The miners will then be divided
into three groups. The strongest will be the first to make the hazardous ascent to
freedom, in case the capsule hits problems, then the weakest. They will be winched up
one by one in the slender capsule, rising at just under a metre a second, meaning that
each ascent will take about 15 minutes. The entire rescue is expected to take 30 to 40
hours.
E. As each man finally emerges, he will be taken to the nearby field hospital wearing
Californian-made sunglasses that filter out all UV rays to protect his eyes. There, the
men will be given a thorough check-up and, if strong enough, they will be allowed to
meet three relatives designated in advance. The miners will then be flown by
helicopter to the hospital in Copiapo, where a whole floor has been set aside for them.
They are expected to remain there for at least two days.
37
QUESTIONS 14-15
Reading Passage 2 has five paragraphs A-E. Which paragraphs state the
following information? Write the appropriate letters A-E. There are more
paragraphs than summaries, so you will not use them all.
14. The miners’ situation is of global interest ……....
15. The length of the operation will be determined by the stability of the physical
environment.............
QUESTIONS 16-20
Complete the summary below.
Choose your answers from the box below the summary and write them into
spaces 16-20. You can only use each answer once.
NB There are more words than spaces, so you will not use them all.
However, if all goes well, they could be 16 ………………… by

17…………emergency workers in the next few days. Preparations are already under
way. As soon as the miners have been 18 ……………..the real rescue operation can
start: a specially 19 …………... capsule wilt be sent down to retrieve them one by one.
It is 20 ………….. that bringing all of the men back up will take up to forty hours.
trapped made safe designed estimated
trained freed completed known
reached guessed carried restricted
38
QUESTIONS 21-26
Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage to complete each
blank in the diagram below
The Phoenix
This is fitted with 23…………………………….
These are 26 ………………………………
The Phoenix is made out of 21 ......................................
This contains the 24 ………………………… and

the 25 ……………………………
Width: 22 ………………………………..
QUESTION 27
From the list below, choose the most suitable title for the whole Reading Passage
2. Write the appropriate letter A-D
A. Mine rescue on verge of breakthrough
B. Journalists and rescuers race to Chile
C. Engineers save the day
D. The Phoenix will rise
39
READING PASSAGE 3
Passage 3 below.
High-tech crime-fighting tools

A. Crime-fighting technology is getting more sophisticated and rightly so. The police
need to be equipped for the 21 st century. In Britain, we've already got the world's
biggest DNA database. By next year, the state will have access to the genetic data of
4.25m people: one British-based person in 14. Hundreds of thousands of those on the
database will never have been charged with a crime.
B. Britain is also reported to have more than £4 million CCTV (closed circuit
television) cameras. There is a continuing debate about the effectiveness of CCTV.
Some evidence suggests that it is helpful in reducing shoplifting and car crime. It has
also been used to successfully identify terrorists and murderers. However, many claim
that better lighting is just as effective to prevent crime and that cameras could displace
crime. An internal police report said that only one crime was solved for every 1,000
cameras in London in 2007. In short, there is conflicting evidence about the
effectiveness of cameras; so, it is likely that the debate will continue.
C. Professor Mike Press, who has spent the past decade studying how design can
contribute to crime reduction, said that, in order for CCTV to have any effect, it must
be used in a targeted way. For example, a scheme in Manchester records every licence
plate at the entrance of a shopping complex and alerts police when one is found to
belong to an untaxed or stolen car. This is an effective example of monitoring, he said.
Most schemes that simply record city centres continually - often not being watched -
do not produce results. CCTV can also have the opposite effect of that intended, by
giving citizens a false sense of security and encouraging them to be careless with
property and personal safety. Professor Press said: All the evidence suggests that
CCTV alone makes no positive impact on crime reduction and prevention at all. The
weight of evidence would suggest the investment is more or less a waste of money
unless you have lots of other things in place.' He believes that much of the increase is
driven by the marketing efforts of security companies who promote the crime-reducing
benefits of their products. He described it as a 'lazy approach to crime prevention’ and
40
said that authorities should instead be focusing on how to alter the environment to
reduce crime.
D. But in reality, this is not what is happening. Instead, police are considering using
more technology. Police forces have recently begun experimenting with cameras in
their helmets. The footage will be stored on police computers, along with the footage
from thousands of CCTV cameras and millions of pictures from numberplate
recognition cameras used increasingly to check up on motorists.
E. And now another type of technology is being introduced. It's called the Microdrone
and it's a toy-sized remote-control craft that hovers above streets or crowds to film
what's going on beneath. The Microdrone has already been used to monitor rock
festivals, but its supplier has also been in discussions to supply it to the Metropolitan
Police, and SOCA, the Serious Organised Crime Agency. The drones are small enough
to be unnoticed by people on the ground when they are flying at 350ft. They contain
high- resolution video surveillance equipment and an infrared night vision capability,
so even in darkness they give their operators a bird's eye view of locations while
remaining virtually undetectable
F. The worrying thing is, who will get access to this technology? Merseyside police
are already employing two of the devices as part of a pilot scheme to watch football
crowds and city parks looking for antisocial behaviour. It is not just about crime
detection: West Midlands fire brigade is about to lease a drone, for example, to get a
better view of fire and flood scenes and aid rescue attempts; the Environment Agency
is considering their use for monitoring of illegal fly-tipping and oil spills. The
company that makes the drone says it has no plans to license the equipment to
individuals or private companies, which hopefully will prevent private security firms
from getting their hands on them. But what about local authorities? In theory, this
technology could be used against motorists. And where will the surveillance society
end? Already, there are plans to introduce 'smart water' containing a unique DNA code
identifier that when sprayed on a suspect will cling to their clothes and skin and allow
officers to identify them later. As long as high-tech tools are being used in the fight
against crime and terrorism, fine. But if it's another weapon to be used to invade our
privacy, then we don't want it.
41
Glossary
drone: a remote-controlled pilotless aircraft
350ft: about 107 metres
bird's eye view: a view from above
fly-tipping: illegally dumping waste [British English}]
QUESTIONS 28-32
Reading Passage 3 has six paragraphs A-F. Choose the most suitable headings
for paragraphs B-F from the list of headings below. Write the appropriate
numbers (i-x) in spaces 28-32.
NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use them all.
List of Headings
i. The spy in the sky
ii. The spread of technology
iii. The limitations of cameras
iv. The cost of cameras
v. Robots solving serious crimes
vi. Lack of conclusive evidence
vii. Cars and cameras
viii. Advantages and disadvantages
ix. A natural progression
x. A feeling of safety
Example Answer
Paragraph A ix
28. Paragraph B ……………………
29. Paragraph C ……………………
30. Paragraph D ……………………
31. Paragraph E ……………………
32. Paragraph F ……………………
QUESTIONS 33- 35
Choose the appropriate letters A-D to finish sentences 33-35.
33. Britain has already got
A. four million CCTV cameras.
42
B. more data about DNA than any other country.
C. the most sophisticated crime-fighting technology.
D. access to the genetic data of one in fourteen people living in Britain.
34. Professor Press
A. works at the University of Manchester.
B. studies car-related crime.
C. is concerned about the negative impact of the use of CCTV.
D. feels that some marketing departments lie about the crime-reducing benefits of
CCTV.
35. The Microdrone is
A. A type of toy in a shape of a plane.
B. being used by the Metropolitan Police.
C. being used by the government.
D. able to film in the dark
QUESTIONS 36- 37
Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage, answer the following
questions.
36. Give examples of 2 events where technology is used to watch crowds.
……………………………
37. According to the passage, who do we not want to use the Microdrone?
……………………………
QUESTIONS 38- 40
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
Write:
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer.
NO if the statement contradicts what the writer thinks.
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to know what the writer’s point of view is.
38. The British authors use too much technology to monitor their citizens.
…………….
39. Microdrone is currently not used to check drivers. ……………………
40. Technology should not be used to check on people’s private affairs.
……………………
43
UNIT 6: PRACTICE 4
READING PASSAGE 1
Passage 1 below.
The Flavor of Pleasure
When it comes to celebrating the flavor of food, our mouth gets all the credit. But in
truth, it is the nose that knows.
1. No matter how much we talk about tasting our favorite flavors, relishing them really
depends on a combined input from our senses that we experience through mouth, tongue
and nose. The taste, texture, and feel of food are what we tend to focus on, but most
important are the slight puffs of air as we chew our food - what scientists call 'retronasal
smell'.
2. Certainly, our mouths and tongues have taste buds, which are receptors for the five
basic flavors: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami, or what is more commonly referred to
as savory. But our tongues are inaccurate instruments as far as flavor is concerned. They
evolved to recognise only a few basic tastes in order to quickly identify toxins, which in
nature are often quite bitter or acidly sour.
3. All the complexity, nuance, and pleasure of flavor come from the sense of smell
operating in the back of the nose. It is there that a kind of alchemy occurs when we
breathe up and out the passing whiffs of our chewed food. Unlike a hound's skull with its
extra long nose, which evolved specifically to detect external smells, our noses have
evolved to detect internal scents. Primates specialise in savoring the many millions of
flavor combinations that they can create for their mouths.
4. Taste without retronasal smell is not much help in recognising flavor. Smell has been
the most poorly understood of our senses, and only recently has neuroscience, led by Yale
University's Gordon Shepherd, begun to shed light on its workings. Shepherd has come up
with the term 'neurogastronomy' to link the disciplines of food science, neurology,
psychology, and anthropology with the savory elements of eating, one of the most enjoyed
of human experiences.
5. In many ways, he is discovering that smell is rather like face recognition. The visual
system detects patterns of light and dark and, building on experience, the brain creates a
spatial map. It uses this to interpret the interrelationship of the patterns and draw
44
conclusions that allow us to identify people and places. In the same way, we use patterns
and ratios to detect both new and familiar flavors. As we eat, specialised receptors in the
back of the nose detect the air molecules in our meals. From signals sent by the receptors,
the brain understands smells as complex spatial patterns. Using these, as well as input
from the other senses, it constructs the idea of specific flavors.
6. This ability to appreciate specific aromas turns out to be central to the pleasure we get
from food, much as our ability to recognise individuals is central to the pleasures of social
life. The process is so embedded in our brains that our sense of smell is critical to our
enjoyment of life at large. Recent studies show that people who lose the ability to smell
become socially insecure, and their overall level of happiness plummets.
7. Working out the role of smell in flavor interests food scientists, psychologists, and
cooks alike. The relatively new discipline of molecular gastronomy, especially, relies on
understanding the mechanics of aroma to manipulate flavor for maximum impact. In this
discipline, chefs use their knowledge of the chemical changes that take place during
cooking to produce eating pleasures that go beyond the 'ordinary'.
8. However, whereas molecular gastronomy is concerned primarily with the food or
'smell' molecules, neurogastronomy is more focused on the receptor molecules and the
brain's spatial images for smell. Smell stimuli form what Shepherd terms 'odor objects',
stored as memories, and these have a direct link with our emotions. The brain creates
images of unfamiliar smells by relating them to other more familiar smells. Go back in
history and this was part of our survival repertoire; like most animals, we drew on our
sense of smell, when visual information was scarce, to single out prey.
9. Thus the brain's flavor-recognition system is a highly complex perceptual mechanism
that puts all five senses to work in various combinations. Visual and sound cues
contribute, such as crunching, as does touch, including the texture and feel of food on our
lips and in our mouths. Then there are the taste receptors, and finally, the smell, activated
when we inhale. The engagement of our emotions can be readily illustrated when we
picture some of the wide- ranging facial expressions that are elicited by various foods -
many of them hard-wired into our brains at birth. Consider the response to the sharpness
of a lemon and compare that with the face that is welcoming the smooth wonder of
chocolate.
10. The flavor-sensing system, ever receptive to new combinations, helps to keep our
brains active and flexible. It also has the power to shape our desires and ultimately our
45
bodies. On the horizon we have the positive application of neurogastronomy:
manipulating flavor to curb our appetites.
QUESTIONS 1-5
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from
1. According to scientists, the term ………………………characterises the most
critical factor in appreciating flavour.
2. ‘Savoury’ is a better-known word for……………………………..
3. The tongue was originally developed to recognise the unpleasant taste of
……………………
4. Human nasal cavities recognize……………………much better than external ones.
5. Gordon Shepherd uses the word ‘neurogastronomy’ to draw together a number of
……………………..related to the enjoyment of eating.
QUESTIONS 6-9
Complete the notes below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the
Face patterns of dark and light the brain facial recognition
recognition are used to put together a → identifies faces faces is key to
6…………………………. our enjoyment of
7…………………
Smell receptor recognize the the brain smell is key to our
8………………….in food → identifies enjoyment of food
certain
9…………
QUESTIONS 10-13
Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the
10. In what form does the brain store ‘odor objects’?
11. When seeing was difficult, what did we use our sense of smell to find?
12. Which food item illustrates how flavour and positive emotion are linked?
13. What could be controlled in the future through flavour manipulation?
46
READING PASSAGE 2
Passage 2 on the following pages.
QUESTIONS 14-19
The text on the following pages has six paragraphs, A-F. Choose the correct
heading for each paragraph from the list of headings (i-ix) below.
List of Headings
i Tackling the issue using a different approach
ii A significant improvement on last time
iii How robots can save human lives
iv Examples of robots at work
V Not what it seemed to be
vi Why timescales are impossible to predict
vii The reason why robots rarely move
viii Following the pattern of an earlier development
ix The ethical issues of robotics
14 Paragraph A ……………
15 Paragraph B ……………
16 Paragraph C ……………
17 Paragraph D ……………
18 Paragraph E ……………
19 Paragraph F ……………
Dawn of the robots
They're already here - driving cars, vacuuming carpets and feeding hospital patients.
They may not be walking, talking, human-like sentient beings, but they are clever...
and a little creepy.
A. At first sight it looked like a typical suburban road accident. A Land Rover
approached a Chevy Tahoe estate car that had stopped at a kerb; the Land Rover
pulled out and tried to pass the Tahoe just as it started off again. There was a crack of
fenders and the sound of paintwork being scraped, the kind of minor mishap that
occurs on roads thousands of times every day. Normally drivers get out, gesticulate,
exchange insurance details and then drive off. But not on this occasion. No one got out
47
of the cars for the simple reason that they had no humans inside them; the Tahoe and
Land Rover were being controlled by computers competing in November's DARPA
(the U.S. Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) Urban Challenge.
B. The idea that machines could perform to such standards is startling. Driving is a
complex task that takes humans a long time to perfect. Yet here, each car had its on-
board computer loaded with a digital map and route plans, and was instructed to
negotiate busy roads; differentiate between pedestrians and stationary objects;
determine whether other vehicles were parked or moving off; and handle various
parking manoeuvres, which robots turn out to be unexpectedly adept at. Even more
striking was the fact that the collision between the robot Land Rover, built by
researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Tahoe, fitted out by
Cornell University Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts, was the only scrape in the entire
competition. Yet only three years earlier, at DARPA's previous driverless car race,
every robot competitor - directed to navigate across a stretch of open desert - either
crashed or seized up before getting near the finishing line.
C. It is a remarkable transition that has clear implications for the car of the future.
More importantly, it demonstrates how robotics sciences and Artificial Intelligence
have progressed in the past few years - a point stressed by Bill Gates, the Microsoft
boss who is a convert to these causes. The robotics industry is developing in much the
same way the computer business did 30 years ago,' he argues. As he points out,
electronics companies make toys that mimic pets and children with increasing
sophistication. 'I can envision a future in which robotic devices will become a nearly
ubiquitous part of our day-to-day lives,' says Gates. 'We may be on the verge of a new
era, when the PC will get up off the desktop and allow us to see, hear, touch and
manipulate objects in places where we are not physically present.'
D. What is the potential for robots and computers in the near future? The fact is we
still have a way to go before real robots catch up with their science fiction
counterparts/ Gates says. So what are the stumbling blocks? One key difficulty is
getting robots to know their place. This has nothing to do with class or etiquette, but
concerns the simple issue of positioning. Humans orient themselves with other objects
in a room very easily. Robots find the task almost impossible. 'Even something as
simple as telling the difference between an open door and a window can be tricky for a
48
robot,' says Gates. This has, until recently, reduced robots to fairly static and
cumbersome roles.
E. For a long time, researchers tried to get round the problem by attempting to re-
create the visual processing that goes on in the human cortex. However, that challenge
has proved to be singularly exacting and complex. So scientists have turned to simpler
alternatives: 'We have become far more pragmatic in our work,' says Nello Cristianini,
Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bristol in England and associate
editor of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. 'We are no longer trying to re-
create human functions. Instead, we are looking for simpler solutions with basic
electronic sensors, for example.' This approach is exemplified by vacuuming robots
such as the Electrolux Trilobite. The Trilobite scuttles around homes emitting
ultrasound signals to create maps of rooms, which are remembered for future cleaning.
Technology like this is now changing the face of robotics, says philosopher Ron
Chrisley, director of the Centre for Research in Cognitive Science at the University of
Sussex in England.
F. Last year, a new Hong Kong restaurant, Robot Kitchen, opened with a couple of
sensor-laden humanoid machines directing customers to their seats. Each possesses a
touch-screen on which orders can be keyed in. The robot then returns with the correct
dishes. In Japan, University of Tokyo researchers recently unveiled a kitchen 'android'
that could wash dishes, pour tea and make a few limited meals. The ultimate aim is to
provide robot home helpers for the sick and the elderly, a key concern in a country like
Japan where 22 per cent of the population is 65 or older. Over US$1 billion a year is
spent on research into robots that will be able to care for the elderly. 'Robots first learn
basic competence - how to move around a house without bumping into things. Then
we can think about teaching them how to interact with humans,' Chrisley said.
Machines such as these take researchers into the field of socialised robotics: how to
make robots act in a way that does not scare or offend individuals. 'We need to study
how robots should approach people, how they should appear. That is going to be a key
area for future research,' adds Chrisley.
49
QUESTIONS 20-23
Look at the following statements (Questions 20-23) and the list of people below.
Match each statement with the correct person, A, B or C. You may use any letter
more than once.
A. Bill Gates B. Nello Cristianini C. Ron Chrisley
20. An important concern for scientists is to ensure that robots do not seem
frightening.
21. We have stopped trying to enable robots to perceive objects as humans do.
22. It will take considerable time for modern robots to match the ones we have created
in films and books.
23. We need to enable robots to move freely before we think about trying to
communicate with them.
QUESTIONS 24-26
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the text for each answer.
Robot features
DARPA race cars: 24………………………provides maps and plans for
route.
Electrolux Trilobite: builds an image of a room by sending out 25……………
Robot Kitchen humanoids: have a 26………………………….to take orders
50
READING PASSAGE 3
Passage 3 below.
It’s your choice! - Or is it really?
As we move from the industrial age to the information age, societal demands on our
mental capabilities are no less taxing ...
We are constantly required to process a wide range of information to make decisions.
Sometimes, these decisions are trivial, such as what marmalade to buy. At other times,
the stakes are higher, such as deciding which symptoms to report to the doctor.
However, the fact that we are accustomed to processing large amounts of information
does not mean that we are better at it (Chabris & Simons, 2009). Our sensory and
cognitive systems have systematic ways of failing of which we are often, perhaps
blissfully, unaware.
Imagine that you are taking a walk in your local city park when a tourist approaches
you asking for directions. During the conversation, two men carrying a door pass
between the two of you. If the person asking for directions had changed places with
one of the people carrying the door, would you notice? Research suggests that you
might not. Harvard psychologists Simons and Levi (1998) conducted a field study
using this exact set-up and found that the change in identity went unnoticed by 7
(46.6%) of the 15 participants.
This phenomenon has been termed 'change blindness'and refers to the difficulty that
observers have in noticing changes to visual scenes (e.g. the person swap), when the
changes are accompanied by some other visual disturbance (e.g. the passing of the
door).
Over the past decade, the change blindness phenomenon has been replicated many
times. Especially noteworthy is an experiment by Davies and Hine (2007) who studied
whether change blindness affects eyewitness identification. Specifically, participants
were presented with a video enactment of a burglary. In the video, a man entered a
house, walking through the different rooms and putting valuables into a knapsack.
However, the identity of the burglar changed after the first half of the film while the
initial burglar was out of sight.
51
Out of the 80 participants, 49 (61%) did not notice the change of the burglar's identity,
suggesting that change blindness may have serious implications for criminal
proceedings.
To most of us, it seems bizarre that people could miss such obvious changes while
they are paying active attention. However, to catch those changes, attention must be
targeted to the changing feature. In the study described above, participants were likely
not to have been expecting the change to happen, and so their attention may have been
focused on the valuables the burglar was stealing, rather than the burglar.
Drawing from change blindness research, scientists have come to the conclusion that
we perceive the world in much less detail than previously thought (Johansson, Hall, &
Sikstrom, 2008). Rather than monitoring all of the visual details that surround us, we
seem to focus our attention only on those features that are currently meaningful or
important, ignoring those that are irrelevant to our current needs and goals.Thus at any
given time, our representation of the world surrounding us is crude and incomplete,
making it possible for changes or manipulations to go undetected (Chabris & Simons,
2010).
Given the difficulty people have in noticing changes to visual stimuli, one may wonder
what would happen if these changes concerned the decisions people make. To examine
choice blindness, Hall and colleagues (2010) invited supermarket customers to sample
two different kinds of jams and teas. After participants had tasted or smelled both
samples, they indicated which one they preferred. Subsequently, they were purportedly
given another sample of their preferred choice. On half of the trials, however, these
were samples of the non-chosen jam or tea. As expected, only about one-third of the
participants detected this manipulation. Based on these findings, Hall and colleagues
proposed that choice blindness is a phenomenon that occurs not only for choices
involving visual material, but also for choices involving gustatory and olfactory
information.
Recently, the phenomenon has also been replicated for choices involving auditory
stimuli (Sauerland, Sagana, & Otgaar, 2012). Specifically, participants had to listen to
three pairs of voices and decide for each pair which voice they found more
sympathetic or more criminal. The voice was then presented again; however, the
outcome was manipulated for the second voice pair and participants were presented
52
with the non-chosen voice. Replicating the findings by Hall and colleagues, only 29%
of the participants detected this change.
Merckelbach, Jelicic, and Pieters (2011) investigated choice blindness for intensity
ratings of one's own psychological symptoms. Their participants had to rate the
frequency with which they experienced 90 common symptoms (e.g. anxiety, lack of
concentration, stress, headaches etc.) on a 5-point scale. Prior to a follow-up interview,
the researchers inflated ratings for two symptoms by two points. For example, when
participants had rated their feelings of shyness, as 2 (i.e. occasionally), it was changed
to 4 (i.e. all the time). This time, more than half (57%) of the 28 participants were
blind to the symptom rating escalation and accepted it as their own symptom intensity
rating.This demonstrates that blindness is not limited to recent preference selections,
but can also occur for intensity and frequency.
Together, these studies suggest that choice blindness can occur in a wide variety of
situations and can have serious implications for medical and judicial outcomes. Future
research is needed to determine how, in those situations, choice blindness can be
avoided.
QUESTIONS 27-31
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in the text?
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
27. Doctors make decisions according to the symptoms that a patient describes.
28. Our ability to deal with a lot of input material has improved over time.
29. We tend to know when we have made an error of judgement.
30. A legal trial could be significantly affected by change blindness.
31. Scientists have concluded that we try to take in as much detail as possible from our
surroundings.
QUESTIONS 32-36
Complete the table below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the
53
Experiments in change blindness
Researchers Purpose of Situation for Focus of Percentage
experiment participants participants’ unaware of
attention identity
change
Simons & to illustrate giving the movement of 46.6%
Levi, 1998 change blindness 33……………to 34…………
caused by a a stranger
32……………,
such as an object
Davies & to assess the watching a the collection of 61%
Hine, 2007 impact of change burglary 36……………….
blindness on
35……………..by
eyewitnesses
QUESTIONS 37-38
Choose TWO letters, A-E. Which TWO statements are true for both the
supermarket and voice experiments?
A. The researchers focused on non-visual material.
B. The participants were asked to explain their preferences.
C. Some of the choices made by participants were altered.
D. The participants were influenced by each other’s choices.
E. Percentage results were surprisingly low.
QUESTIONS 39-40
Choose TWO letters, A-E. Which TWO statements are true for the psychology
experiment conducted by Merckelbach, Jelicic, and Pieters?
A. The participants had to select their two most common symptoms.
B. The participants gave each symptom a 1-5 rating.
C. Shyness proved to be the most highly rated symptom.
D. The participants changed their minds about some of their ratings.
E. The researchers focused on the strength and regularity of symptoms.
54
My Mother Barked Like a Seal

A classic tale of the quintessentially embarrassing mom
By Jeanmarie Coogan
(Reader’s Digest, May 1994)
1 My mother was a great handicap to me when I was little. She was different. I
learned this very early, when I first began going to other children’s houses. There,
when the mother opened the door, she said something sensible, like “Wipe your feet”
or “You’re not bringing that junk in here.”
2 At our house, however, when you rang the bell, the letter slot would open, and a
little high voice would pipe out, “I’m the chief troll here. Is that you, Bill Goat
Grufff?” Or a syrupy falsetto would sing the first few lines of Barnacle Bill the Sailor:
“Who’s that knocking at my door?”
3 Other times the door would open a slit and my mother, crouched down to our eye
level, would say, “I’m the new little girl here. Wait a minute, I’ll call my mother.”
Then the door would close for a second, reopen, and there would be my mother –
regular size. “Oh, hello, girls,” she’d say. “I didn’t know your were there.”
4 In that awful moment when my new friend would turn to me with a “what kind of
place is this” look, I knew how it felt to open a closet and have the family skeleton
sprawl all over you. “Mo-ther,” I would bawl, but my mother would never admit to
being the little girl who had opened the door. “You girls are kidding me,” she’d say.
We’d wind up protesting that a little girl had opened the door, when what we really
meant was that no little girl had opened the door.
5 It was all very confusing. And different. That was the hard part. She was different
from other mothers.
6 Like the seal in the basement. When we were outside while my mother was
washing or ironing in the basement, we would often hear a cheerful barking coming
from down there. Mother’s explanation was that it was our seal. Every Friday, she
made a great show of unwrapping the fish (which eventually wound up on the dinner
table) for the seal. And though the kids made countless dashes down to the basement
55
trying to catch the creature, he had always “just gone for a ride in the bakery truck” or
“was taking his swimming lesson at the Y.”
7 This seal was smart and would answer questions by barking, once for “yes” and
twice for “no.” His reputation soon spread. Children came from blocks around to ask
the seal questions at our basement window. The seal was always good for a few barks.
8 I was mortified to be pointed out as the girl with the seal, but my mother was equal
to the occasion. Often when a crowd of little boys huddled at our window, waiting for
a bark, my mother would open the door and call out gaily, “Hello, little girls.”
9 My mother was no different with grownups. She often greeted an acquaintance by
poking a finger in his back and growling, “Stick ’em up.” The fact that adults liked my
mother was no comfort to me. It was easy for them. She wasn’t their mother.
10 Furthermore, they didn’t have to put up with the “Interested Observer.” My mother
often carried on conservations about us with this invisible person.
11 “Would you look at the kitchen floor,” my mother would say.
12 “Mud all over it and you just finished scrubbing it,” the Interested Observer would
say with sympathy. “Didn’t you tell them to use the basement door?”
13 “Twice!”
14 “Don’t they care how hard you work?” the I.O. wanted to know.
15 “I guess they’re just forgetful.”
16 “Well, if they’ll get the clean rags under the sink and wipe it up, it’ll help them to
remember in the future,” the I.O. would advise.
17 Immediately, we’d get the rags and go to work.
18 The Interested Observer’s tone was so impartial nobody ever questioned his
presence. He was so plainly there, observing family life and its problems, that friends
never asked, “Who’s your mother talking to?” but rather, “Who’s that talking to your
mother?”
19 I never found a suitable answer.
20 Luckily my mother improved with age. Not hers––mine. I was about ten the first
time I ever realized that having a “different” mother could be a good thing.
21 The playground at the end of our street had a cluster of formidably high trees. To
be caught climbing them brought out every mother for blocks, shrieking “Come down!
You’ll break your necks!”
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22 One day, when a bunch of us were dizzily swaying in the top branches, my mother
passed and caught sight of us silhouetted against the sky. We froze, but her face as she
looked up was dazzling. “I didn’t know you could climb so high,” she shouted. “That’s
terrific! Don’t fall!” And off she went. We watched in silence until she was out of
sight. Then one boy spoke for us all. “Wow,” he said softly. “Wow.”
23 From that day on, I began to notice how my classmates stopped at our house; how
club meetings were always held in our kitchen; how friends, silent in their own homes,
laughed and joked with my mother. Later, my friend and I came to rely on my
mother’s lighthearted good humor as a support against adolescent crises. And when I
began dating, it was wonderful to have a mother whom boys immediately adopted and
a home where teenagers’ craziness was not just tolerated, but enjoyed.
24 Everyone who knew my mother liked her. Many people loved her. All have said
kind things about her. But I think the one who best described my mother was that boy,
high in the tree, long ago.
25 “Wow,” he said softly.
26 And I echoed, “Wow.”
I. Vocabulary: Match a word in column A with its definition in column B:
A B
1. handicap ---- a. represented

2. ‘Wipe your feet’--- b. family bones
3. troll --- c. wash your feet
4. syrupy falsetto ---- d. humiliated
5. family skeleton ---- e. attach them up
6. mortified ---- f. supernatural being
7. ‘Stick’em up’ ---- g. family secret
8. silhouetted --- h. remove dirt by rubbing
i. hands up
j. deficiency or disability
k. overly sweet high-pitched singing voice
l. embarrassment
m. outlined
57
II. Comprehension questions:
A. Circle the correct answer:
1. The cheerful barking coming from the basement was made by…
a. a seal b. a little girl
c. the writer’s mother d.a family pet
2. The fish which was unwrapped every Friday night was
a. dinner for the family b. dinner for the seal
c. a show for the children d. none of the above
3. The “Interested Observer” was
a. an impartial judge in the family b. an imaginary creation
c. an advisor to the writer’s mother d. a sympathetic family helper
4. When the writer was a young girl, she
a. loved her mother very much b. was embarrassed by her mother’s
actions
c. thought she was handicapped d. thought her mother was very sensible
5. None of the children were able to see the seal in the basement because
a. It would go for a ride in the bakery truck
b. It was afraid of children
c. It was an imaginary creation of the mother
d. It had gone swimming at the Y
6. The seal would communicate with the family by
a. nodding its head b. barking
c. answering yes or no d. all of the above
7. The relationship between the mother and child began to improve when
a. the mother became old b. the child grew older
c. the child was about 14 years old d. the mother changed her unusual
actions
8. When the children were climbing the trees, the writer’s mother
a. yelled at them to go down at once
b. worried that they would break their necks.
c. did not see them and walked by without saying nothing.
d. praised them for climbing so high.
58
9. The writer and her friends relied on her mother because
a. She had a good sense of humor.
b. She was tolerant of teenager’s behavior.
c. She was easy to talk and joke with.
d. All of the above.
10. The writer’s home was
a. similar to the homes of most her friends.
b. stricter than the homes of her friends.
c. very different from the homes of her friends.
d. none of the above.
1. What were the mother’s interesting ways of answering the door and welcoming the
children? Of greeting her adult friends?
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2. What did the mother barked like a seal for, do you think?
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Who was the Interested Observer? What can we infer his part in the family was?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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4. Explain how the writer’s sentiment to her mother changed over the time? How did
she think of / feel about her mother when she was a child? A teenager?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Explain the last sentence: “And I echo, wow”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
59
III. Paraphrasing:
1. My mother was a great handicap to me when I was little. She was different. I
learned this very early, when I first began going to other children’s houses. There,
when the mother opened the door, she said something sensible, like “Wipe your feet”
or “You’re not bringing that junk in here.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. In that awful moment when my new friend would turn to me with a “what kind of
place is this” look, I knew how it felt to open a closet and have the family skeleton
sprawl all over you. “Mo-ther,” I would bawl, but my mother would never admit to
being the little girl who had opened the door.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. One day, when a bunch of us were dizzily swaying in the top branches, my mother
passed and caught sight of us silhouetted against the sky. We froze, but her face as she
looked up was dazzling. “I didn’t know you could climb so high,” she shouted. “That’s
terrific! Don’t fall!” And off she went. We watched in silence until she was out of
sight. Then one boy spoke for us all. “Wow,” he said softly. “Wow.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. From that day on, I began to notice how my classmates stopped at our house; how
club meetings were always held in our kitchen; how friends, silent in their own homes,
laughed and joked with my mother. Later, my friend and I came to rely on my
mother’s lighthearted good humor as a support against adolescent crises. And when I
began dating, it was wonderful to have a mother whom boys immediately adopted and
a home where teenagers’ craziness was not just tolerated, but enjoyed.
60
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IV. Summarizing:
Write a summary of the narrative essay. Focus on the change of the writer’s feelings
when she was a little girl and when she became older.
61
UNIT 8: PRACTICE 5
READING PASSAGE 1
The Human Body

1. Human beings are probably the most complex organisms on the planet Earth. The
human body is only a single structure, but it is made up of billions of smaller
structures beginning with the cell, which is the smallest and simplest unit of any living
matter. It can reproduce itself. In fact, the complex human body begins as a single
fertilized cell that multiplies again and again. As the cells multiply, some specialize
into cells for a particular part of the body or a specific function. Similar cells organize
themselves into tissues. Four basic groups of them help the body's organs and systems
function properly: epithelial tissue, which forms the surface of the skin; connective
tissue, which gives support and protection to the soft parts of the body including
cartilage and bone; muscle tissue, which contracts and provides energy and mobility;
and nerve tissue, which transmits information from one part of the body to another.
2. The more complex units of the body are the organs and the bodily systems. An
organ is composed of both cells and tissues and does a particular function. The
stomach, heart, lungs, liver and brain are all organs. Internal organs often called
viscera refer to the organs that are inner parts of the body. The most elaborate of all the
component units of the human body are the systems. A system is a group of different
organs of the body that work together and perform diverse functions. The human body
has ten major systems: skeletal, muscular, nervous, endocrine, cardiovascular,
lymphatic, respiratory, digestive, urinary and reproductive. One system, the
cardiovascular or circulatory system, includes the heart, blood and blood vessels. It has
the major role of bringing needed substances to every part of the body, carrying away
wastes, conveying white blood cells of the immune system and helping regulate body
temperature. Every system of the body possesses the same level of intricacy as the
cardiovascular system.
3. Aside from major groups and systems, the human body has what is known as
regional groups. 9A There are seven of them in total: head, neck, upper limb, thorax,
abdomen, pelvis and lower limb. 9B Each of the groups can be subdivided into small
parts, and each group contributes to the proper operating of the body in many ways.
62
The upper limb, for example, includes the hand, wrist, forearm, elbow and shoulder.
9C The facial parts enable a person to see, hear, smell and taste. However, in anatomy,
the neck and head are regarded as one regional group. The neck serves to support the
head and allows the individual to turn his or her head and flex it in all directions. 9D
Glossary:
Elaborate: marked by intricate and complex detail
1. What is the main idea of the passage?
A. A single fertilized cell has the capacity to make an entire complex organism.
B. The major parts of the human body are the cells and tissues.
C. The human body is an intricate structure made of smaller, elaborate structures.
D. The parts of the human body cannot survive without tissues that provide support.
2. The word multiply in the passage is closest in meaning to
A. introduce
B. realize
C. generate
D. invent
3. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true of the cell?
A. It has the ability to make another cell.
B. It is the smallest part of the human body.
C. It numbers in the billions in a single human.
D. It is the most complex entity on earth.
4. Which of the following does the author mention about tissues?
A. They serve to connect the body's organs and systems together.
B. Their purpose is to assist in the proper functioning of organs and systems.
C. They coordinate communication between the various cells of the body.
D. They function to form specialized cells that the body needs to make organs.
5. The word them in the passage refers to
A. cells
B. human beings
C. body's organs
D. tissues
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6. The author discusses the cardiovascular system in order to
A. give an example of a system that consists of several organs
B. point out which system is the most complex
C. explain the components of a system and what it does
D. describe the differences between organs and systems
7. Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the
highlighted sentence in the passage? Incorrect choices change the meaning in
important ways or leave out essential information.
A. The cardiovascular system is more complex than the body's other systems.
B. All of the body's systems are as complex as the cardiovascular system.
C. The cardiovascular system is the most complicated part of the body.
D. The body contains very elaborate systems that are functional.
8. What can be inferred about regional groups in paragraph 3?
A. They are not as essential as the inner organs.
B. They are composed of external parts of the body.
C. They are linked to a body system.
D. They affect the way the body systems function.
9. Look at the four squares [■] that indicate where the following sentence could be
added to the passage.
The head houses the brain and comprises the eyes, ears, nose and mouth that
make up a person's face.
Where would the sentence best fit?
10. Directions: Select the appropriate phrases from the answer choices and match
them to the component of the human body to which they relate. TWO of the answer
choices will NOT be used.
Tissues Systems
- -
- -
- -
- -
64
Answer Choices
A. Number in the billions
B. Consist of ten main ones
C. Are capable of multiplying
D. Comprise four major groups
E. May help protect the body
F. Are made up of organs
G. Include skeletal and respiratory
H. Can send information from one part of the body to another
I. Are organization of interconnected cells
65
READING PASSAGE 2
Hot Springs
1. Hot springs are found on every continent and on the ocean floors of the earth. 14A They
are produced by the powerful emergence of heated groundwater from a fissure in the
Earth's crust. Water from the hot springs of the Yellowstone National Park, a volcanic
zone, is likely heated when it comes into contact with molten rocks. 14B On the ocean
floor, the phenomenon is called a hydrothermal vent. The water that issues is warmed by
the heat from the interior of the earth: this is known as geothermal heat. 14C Scientists
believe that the temperature of rocks within the earth increases as they go deeper. The
increase is about 3 to 5°F and results from the natural radioactive decay of elements such
as potassium, uranium and thorium. 14D
2. In some areas where hot springs exist, it is not certain what the exact source of heat is.
These areas are non-volcanic zones, and any molten material that existed in the ancient
past would have cooled, so it is not likely to be a source of heat. Scientists theorize that
the water is heated by convective circulation: groundwater, which moves downwards to a
depth of a kilometer or more, is warmed by the hotter rock and then moves back upwards.
They base the origin of the groundwater on two alternatives: water rising from hot magma
in the depths of the earth, or rainwater percolating deep into the crust and becoming
heated. The second alternative is more probable. Scientific tests have shown that the water
of hot springs contains the elements of hydrogen and oxygen in similar forms, known as
isotopes. By determining the abundance of isotopes in the hot spring water and comparing
these with data collected from different kinds of water around the world, scientists have
conjectured that the water is rainwater that rained on the earth some 4,000 years ago.
3. Several definitions of hot springs exist and none of which are universally accepted.
Some scientists accept hot springs to be any geothermally-heated spring, others say that
any spring with a water temperature higher than its surroundings should be considered a
hot spring, and still others insist that the temperature of the water must be higher than
98°F. The hottest hot springs are over 120°F. The temperature of some hot springs is high
enough to have various applications of geothermal energy developed. The water may
become so hot that it erupts above the surface of the earth in a geyser. Some people who
have jumped into a hot spring without knowing the temperature have been killed.
Glossary:
Percolate: to cause something liquid to pass through small holes, filter
66
11. What is the main idea of the passage?
A. Scientific interest in hot springs has centered on their heat and water sources.
B. Hot springs are located in virtually every place around the world.
C. Hydrothermal vents are a type of hot springs found under the ocean.
D. Hot springs are defined according to the temperature of the water.
12. The word fissure in the passage is closest in meaning to
A. volcano
B. metal
C. crack
D. element
13. The word it in the passage refers to
A. the Earth's crust
B. the Yellowstone National Park
C. water
D. a volcanic zone
Another cause of the increase in heat is the compression of the planet's interior by
gravitational forces.
A. Scientists postulate that water is heated by heat transmission: groundwater picks up
heat one kilometer beneath the earth's crust.
B. Scientists suppose that groundwater will be heated only if it is one kilometer deep.
C. Scientists speculate that groundwater is heated in a circular way: going deep down,
being warmed, then going up again.
D. Scientists hypothesize that the only mechanism by which groundwater is heated is
through its movement through the rocks beneath the earth.
16. What can be inferred about the origin of groundwater?
A. It likely comes from deep inside the earth.
67
B. It is not one hundred percent certain where it comes from.
C. It may come from a source that scientists are unaware of.
D. It can be determined what the origin is.
17. All of the following have been given as definitions of hot springs EXCEPT that
A. it is a spring that is heated geothermally.
B. it is a spring that must be at least 98°F.
C. it is a spring which erupts above ground level.
D. it is a spring whose temperature is higher than that of the area around.
18. Why does the author mention a geyser?
A. To illustrate how hot a hot spring can be
B. To compare two types of springs
C. To give an example of a hot spring
D. To provide another definition of hot springs
19. According to paragraph 3, which of the following is true of hot springs?
A. They are normally over 120°F.
B. They can be harnessed for use as power.
C. Swimming is banned in some hot springs.
D. They may contain poisonous substances.
20. Directions: An introductory sentence for a brief summary of the passage is
provided below. Complete the summary by selecting the THREE answer choices that
express the most important ideas in the passage.
Hot springs are openings on the earth's land surface or ocean floor from which
hot water spews.
Answer Choices
A. The hot springs of the Yellowstone National Park are heated by very hot liquid
rocks.
B. Groundwater from hot springs is heated geothermally.
C. The source of the heat may be molten rocks or rocks that are at least one kilometer
beneath the crust.
D. Various types of water around the world contain isotopes.
E. Hot springs are hot enough to kill any organism that enters them.
F. Definitions of hot springs could vary in the temperature requirement.

68
READING PASSAGE 3
Migration
1. The migration of large numbers of humans began about a million years ago when
homo sapiens began ranging the continent of Africa and settling its various regions.
They then spread across Eurasia and Australia, with migrations to the Americas.
Migrations from one side of Europe to the other were exploratory in nature. The
Germanic peoples, Slavs and Turks charted Europe, and as countries were established
by groups of people, migrations then took place for economic, political, religious and
climatic reasons. Europeans began colonizing discovered land and building empires
during the Age of Exploration.
2. In 1846, and for 100 years after, mass migrations occurred on a worldwide basis. It
is estimated that more than 57 million Europeans and Asians traversed the seas to
reach the Americas, with the United States receiving a majority of them. Although
some of these millions of people willingly migrated, most were forced to leave their
own countries. Some were coerced to leave due to nation-state formation: authoritarian
regimes utilized social control to drive away their own citizens. In some countries,
ethnic cleansing and political and religious persecution made refugees of people who
left by the boatload in search of a place where they could live life undisturbed. As
many as 100 million people in Asia, particularly from India, Russia, Japan and China,
migrated to the southern and northern parts of Asia during the same period. These
migrations began dwindling in the 1930s when immigration restrictions were
established by receiving countries. 27A In modern times, military persecution and
famine are the primary reasons why people move, but very often migrations are
voluntary and generally involve what are known as the push-and-pull factors. 27B
People are pushed to move due to the lack of adequate medical care, insufficient work
opportunities, mistreatment, natural disasters and the inability to practice a religion.
27C The pull factors include better job opportunities, satisfactory living standards,
education, security and family links. 27D Since industrialization encouraged
migration, transnational migratory movements have been occurred from
underdeveloped countries to advanced countries.
69
3. Large migration flows impact countries in a number of ways. For instance, the
system of government in the United States was influenced not only by various
European traditions but also by the social behaviors of the people. It was largely
patterned after the English parliament in the early days of colonization, but the
growing spirit of independence and pioneering in the people paved the way for a
federation, a representative democracy that was defined by the Constitution. Positive
effects of large migration flows include cultural experience and new knowledge, but it
must be understood that the negative impacts are just enormous, and they include
discrimination, high crime rates and economic problems.
A. Over 57 million Europeans and Asians migrated to the Americas, settling mostly in
the United States.
B. The Europeans and Asians who traveled to the United States increased up to 57
million.
C. The United States accepted 57 million travelers who left Europe and Asia.
D. It is believed that most of the 57 million people who went to the Americas preferred
to live in the United States.
22. The word coerced in the passage is closest in meaning to
A. tested
B. interrupted
C. impelled
D. authorized
23. The word dwindling in the passage is closest in meaning to
A. starting
B. combing
C. decreasing
D. traveling
24. Which of the following was mentioned about the migrations that took place in the
mid-19th to the early 20th century?
A. Those who migrated were lured by attractive opportunities in other countries.
70
B. Immigrants were not given land to build their own homes.
C. A large number of immigrants were forced by their own governments.
D. Many of those who immigrated returned to their home countries.
25. What reason did the author mention for the decline in migrations in the 1930s?
A. Religious persecution in the receiving countries
B. Limits set on the number of people entering a country
C. Better standard of living in home countries
D. Improved political circumstances in home countries
26. What can be inferred about migrations in modern times?
A. They are a result of early 20th century migrations.
B. They occur more often because of push reasons.
C. They do not make an individual's life better.
D. They are generally for individual reasons.
For both types of factors, internal migrations in the 20th century have generally
been a movement from rural areas to urban areas.
28. Which of the following statements best expresses the author's opinion about large
migration flows?
A. There were significant advantages but there were also problems.
B. Individuals who went to the United States benefited most.
C. England had a influence on large migration flows.
D. The spirit of independence bred migration problems.
29. Why does the author mention the system of government in the United States?
A. To compare the differences between European and American governments
B. To explain how the Constitution defined government in the U.S.
C. To give an example of how migrations influenced society
D. To demonstrate that migrations have only positive benefits
30. Directions: Select the appropriate phrases from the answer choices and match
them to the migration to which they relate. TWO of the answer choices will NOT be
used.
71
Early Migration Modern Migration
- -
- -
- -
- -
Answer Choices
A. Territorial expansion as a primary reason
B. Personal reasons as an impetus for migration
C. Russia, India, Japan and China leading receiving countries
D. European countries formed by Germans, Slavs and Turks
E. People prevented from leaving by autocratic regimes
F. Lack of food as a reason for migration
G. Spirit of pioneering a motivation for moving
H. The desire to be with family as an important factor
I. Political persecution as a reason large numbers migrate
72
UNIT 9: PRACTICE 6
READING PASSAGE 1
Passage 1 below.
Secrets of the swarm
1. Insects, birds and fish tend to be the creatures that humans feel furthest from. Unlike
many mammals they do not engage in human-like behaviour. The way they swarm or
flock together does not usually get good press coverage either: marching like worker
ants might be a common simile for city commuters, but it’s a damning, not positive,
image. Yet a new school of scientific theory suggests that these swarms might have a
lot to teach us.
2. American author Peter Miller explains, 'I used to think that individual ants knew
where they were going, and what they were supposed to do when they got there. But
Deborah Gordon, a biologist at Stanford University, showed me that nothing an ant
does makes any sense except in terms of the whole colony. Which makes you wonder
if, as individuals, we don’t serve a similar function for the companies where we work
or the communities where we live.’ Ants are not intelligent by themselves. Yet as a
colony, they make wise decisions. And as Gordon discovered during her research,
there’s no one ant making decisions or giving orders.
3. Take food collecting, for example. No ant decides, ‘There’s lots of food around
today; lots of ants should go out to collect it.’ Instead, some forager ants go out, and as
soon as they find food, they pick it up and come back to the nest. At the entrance, they
brush past reserve foragers, sending a ‘go out’ signal. The faster the foragers come
back, the more food there is and the faster other foragers go out, until gradually the
amount of food being brought back diminishes. An organic calculation has been made
to answer the question, ‘How many foragers does the colony need today?’ And if
something goes wrong - a hungry lizard prowling around for an ant snack, for instance
- then a rush of ants returning without food sends waiting reserves a ‘Don’t go out’
signal.
4. But could such decentralised control work in a human organisation? Miller visited a
Texas gas company that has successfully applied formulas based on ant colony
behaviour to ‘optimise its factories and route its trucks’. He explains, ‘If ant colonies
73
had worked out a reliable way to identify the best routes between their nest and food
sources, the company managers figured, why not take advantage of that knowledge?’
So they came up with a computer model, based on the self-organising principles of an
ant colony. Data is fed into the model about deliveries needing to be made the next
day, as well as things like weather conditions, and it produces a simulation
determining the best route for the delivery lorries to take.
5. Miller explains that he first really understood the impact that swarm behaviour
could have on humans when he read a study of honeybees by Tom Seeley, a biologist
at Cornell University. The honeybees choose as a group which new nest to move to.
First, scouts fly off to investigate multiple sites. When they return they do a ‘waggle
dance’ for their spot, and other scouts will then fly off and investigate it. Many bees go
out, but none tries to compare all sites. Each reports back on just one. The more they
liked their nest, the more vigorous and lengthy their waggle dance and the more bees
will choose to visit it. Gradually the volume of bees builds up towards one site; it’s a
system that ensures that support for the best site snowballs and the decision is made in
the most democratic way.
Humans, too, can make clever decisions through diversity of knowledge and a little
friendly competition. 'The best example of shared decision-making that I witnessed
during my research was a town meeting I attended in Vermont, where citizens met
face-to-face to debate their annual budget,’ explains Miller. ‘For group decision-
making to work well, you need a way to sort through the various options they propose;
and you need a mechanism to narrow down these options.’ Citizens in Vermont
control their municipal affairs by putting forward proposals, or backing up others’
suggestions, until a consensus is reached through a vote. As with the bees, the broad
sampling of options before a decision is made will usually result in a compromise
acceptable to all. The ‘wisdom of the crowd’ makes clever decisions for the good of
the group - and leaves citizens feeling represented and respected.
6. The Internet is also an area where we are increasingly exhibiting swarm behaviour,
without any physical contact. Miller compares a wiki website, for example, to a
termite mound. Indirect collaboration is the key principle behind information-sharing
web sites, just as it underlies the complex constructions that termites build. Termites
do not have an architect’s blueprint or a grand construction scheme. They simply sense
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changes in their environment, as for example when the mound’s wall has been
damaged, altering the circulation of air. They go to the site of the change and drop a
grain of soil. When the next termite finds that grain, they drop theirs too. Slowly,
without any kind of direct decision-making, a new wall is built.
7. A termite mound, in this way, is rather like a wiki website. Rather than meeting up
and talking about what we want to post online, we just add to what someone - maybe a
stranger on the other side of the world - already wrote. This indirect knowledge and
skill-sharing is now finding its way into the corridors of power.
QUESTIONS 1-6
Do the following statements agree with the information in the text
1. Commuters are often compared favourably with worker ants.
2. Some ants within a colony have leadership roles.
3. Forager ants tell each other how far away the food source is.
4. Forager ants are able to react quickly to a dangerous situation.
5. Termite mounds can be damaged by the wind.
6. Termites repair their mounds without directly communicating with each other.
QUESTIONS 7-9
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below.
7. Managers working for a Texas gas company
8. Citizens in an annual Vermont meeting
9. Some Internet users
A. provide support for each other’s ideas in order to reach the best outcome.
B. use detailed comments to create large and complicated systems.
C. use decision-making strategies based on insect communities to improve their
service.
D. communicate with each other to decide who the leader will be.
E. contribute independently to the ideas of others they do not know.
F. repair structures they have built without directly communicating with each other.
QUESTIONS 10-13
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Complete the flow-chart below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the
How honeybees choose a new nest
READING PASSAGE 2
Passage 2 on the following pages.
QUESTIONS 14-18
The text on the following pages has five paragraphs, A-E. Choose the correct heading
for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
List of Headings
i. A joint business project Other engineering achievements
ii Examining the overall benefits
V A building like no other
V Some benefits of traditional methods
vi A change of direction
vii Examples of similar global brands
viii From factory to building site
14 Paragraph A ……………
15 Paragraph B ……………
16 Paragraph C ……………
17 Paragraph D ……………
18 Paragraph E ……………
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High Speed, High Rise
A Chinese entrepreneur has figured out a way to manufacture 30-story, earthquake-
proof skyscrapers that snap together in just 15 days.
A. Zhang Yue is founder and chairman of Broad Sustainable Building (otherwise
known as 'Broad') who, on 1 January, 2012, released a time-lapse video of its 30-story
achievement. It shows construction workers buzzing around like gnats while a clock in
the corner of the screen marks the time. In just 360 hours, a 100-metre-tall tower
called the T30 rises from an empty site to overlook Hunan's Xiang River. At the end of
the video, the camera spirals around the building overhead as the Broad logo appears
on the screen: a lowercase b that wraps around itself in an imitation of the @ symbol.
The company is in the process of franchising its technology to partners in India, Brazil,
and Russia. What it is selling is the world's first standardized skyscraper and with it,
Zhang aims to turn Broad into the McDonald's of the sustainable building industry.
When asked why he decided to start a construction company, Zhang replies, 'It's not a
construction company. It's a structural revolution.'
B. So far, Broad has built 16 structures in China, plus another in Cancun. They are
fabricated at two factories in Hunan, roughly an hour's drive from Broad Town, the
sprawling headquarters. The floors and ceilings of the skyscrapers are built in sections,
each measuring 15.6 by 3.9 meters with a depth of 45 centimeters. Pipes and ducts for
electricity, water and waste are threaded through each floor module while it is still in
the factory. The client's choice of flooring is also pre-installed on top. Standardized
truckloads carry two modules each to the site with the necessary columns, bolts and
tools to connect them stacked on top of each other. Once they arrive at the location,
each section is lifted by crane directly to the top of the building, which is assembled
like toy Lego bricks. Workers use the materials on the module to quickly connect the
pipes and wires. The unique column design has diagonal bracing at each end and tabs
that bolt into the floors above and below. In the final step, heavily insulated exterior
walls and windows are slotted in by crane. The result is far from pretty but the method
is surprisingly safe - and phenomenally fast.
C. Zhang attributes his success to his creativity and to his outsider perspective on
technology. He started out as an art student in the 1980s, but in 1988, Zhang left the art
world to found Broad. The company started out as a maker of non¬pressurized boilers.
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His senior vice-president, Juliet Jiang, says, 'He made his fortune on boilers. He could
have kept doing this business, but ... he saw the need for nonelectric air-conditioning.'
Towards the end of the decade, China's economy was expanding past the capacity of
the nation's electricity grid, she explains. Power shortages were becoming a serious
obstacle to growth. Large air-conditioning (AC) units fueled by natural gas could help
companies ease their electricity load, reduce overheads, and enjoy more reliable
climate control into the bargain. Today, Broad has units operating in more than 70
countries, in some of the largest buildings and airports on the planet.
D. For two decades, Zhang's AC business boomed. But a couple of events conspired to
change his course. The first was that Zhang became an environmentalist. The second
was the earthquake that hit China's Sichuan Province in 2008, causing the collapse of
poorly constructed buildings. Initially, he says, he tried to convince developers to refit
existing buildings to make them both more stable and more sustainable, but he had
little success. So Zhang drafted his own engineers and started researching how to build
cheap, environmentally friendly structures that could also withstand an earthquake.
Within six months of starting his research, Zhang had given up on traditional methods.
He was frustrated by the cost of hiring designers and specialists for each new structure.
The best way to cut costs, he decided, was to take building to the factory. But to create
a factory-built skyscraper, Broad had to abandon the principles by which skyscrapers
are typically designed. The whole load-bearing structure had to be different. To reduce
the overall weight of the building, it used less concrete in the floors; that in turn
enabled it to cut down on structural steel.
E. Around the world, prefabricated and modular buildings are gaining in popularity.
But modular and prefabricated buildings elsewhere are, for the most part, low- rise.
Broad is alone in applying these methods to skyscrapers. For Zhang, the environmental
savings alone justify the effort. According to Broad's numbers, a traditional high-rise
will produce about 3,000 tons of construction waste, while a Broad building will
produce only 25 tons. Traditional buildings also require 5,000 tons of water onsite to
build, while Broad buildings use none. The building process is also less dangerous.
Elevator systems - the base, rails, and machine room - can be installed at the factory,
eliminating the risk of injury. And instead of shipping an elevator car to the site in
pieces, Broad orders a finished car and drops it into the shaft by crane. In the future,
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elevator manufacturers are hoping to preinstall the doors, completely eliminating any
chance that a worker might fall. 'Traditional construction is chaotic,' he says. 'We took
construction and moved it into the factory.' According to Zhang, his buildings will
help solve the many problems of the construction industry and what's more, they will
be quicker and cheaper to build.
QUESTION 19- 22
Label the diagram below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the text for each answer.
pipes and ducts installed section contain less
while 19……………….. 22……………than
conventional buildings
20. …………………chosen by customer

QUESTIONS 23-26
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the
23. Zhang refers to his business as a……………………………
24. The first products Broad manufactured were………………………
25. In the late eighties, …………………..were holding back industrial progress in
China.
26. In addition to power and cost benefits, Broad’s AC units improve
…………………..
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READING PASSAGE 3
Passage 3 below.
When conversations flow
1. We spend a large part of our daily life talking with other people and, consequently,
we are very accustomed to the art of conversing. But why do we feel comfortable in
conversations that have flow, but get nervous and distressed when a conversation is
interrupted by unexpected silences? To answer this question we will first look at some
of the effects of conversational flow. Then we will explain how flow can serve
different social needs.
2. The positive consequences of conversational flow show some similarities with the
effects of ‘processing fluency’. Research has shown that processing fluency - the ease
with which people process information - influences people’s judgments across a broad
range of social dimensions. For instance, people feel that when something is easily
processed, it is more true or accurate. Moreover, they have more confidence in their
judgments regarding information that came to them fluently, and they like things that
are easy to process more than things that are difficult to process. Research indicates
that a speaker is judged to be more knowledgeable when they answer questions
instantly; responding with disfluent speech markers such as ‘uh’ or ‘um’ or simply
remaining silent for a moment too long can destroy that positive image.
3. One of the social needs addressed by conversational flow is the human need for
‘synchrony’ - to be ‘in sync’ or in harmony with one another. Many studies have
shown how people attempt to synchronize with their partners, by coordinating their
behavior. This interpersonal coordination underlies a wide array of human activities,
ranging from more complicated ones like ballroom dancing to simply walking or
talking with friends.
4. In conversations, interpersonal coordination is found when people adjust the
duration of their utterances and their speech rate to one another so that they can enable
turn-taking to occur, without talking over each other or experiencing awkward
silences. Since people are very well-trained in having conversations, they are often
able to take turns within milliseconds, resulting in a conversational flow of smoothly
meshed behaviors. A lack of flow is characterized by interruptions, simultaneous
80
speech or mutual silences. Avoiding these features is important for defining and
maintaining interpersonal relationships.
The need to belong has been identified as one of the most basic of human motivations
and plays a role in many human behaviors. That conversational flow is related to
belonging may be most easily illustrated by the consequences of flow disruptions.
5. What happens when the positive experience of flow is disrupted by, for instance, a
brief silence? We all know that silences can be pretty awkward, and research shows
that even short disruptions in conversational flow can lead to a sharp rise in distress
levels. In movies, silences are often used to signal non-compliance or confrontation
(Piazza, 2006). Some researchers even argue that ‘silencing someone is one of the
most serious forms of exclusion. Group membership is of elementary importance to
our wellbeing and because humans are very sensitive to signals of exclusion, a silence
is generally taken as a sign of rejection. In this way, a lack of flow in a conversation
may signal that our relationship is not as solid as we thought it was.
6. Another aspect of synchrony is that people often try to validate their opinions to
those of others. That is, people like to see others as having similar ideas or worldviews
as they have themselves, because this informs people that they are correct and their
worldviews are justified. One way in which people can justify their worldviews is by
assuming that, as long as their conversations run smoothly, their interaction partners
probably agree with them. This idea was tested by researchers using video
observations. Participants imagined being one out of three people in a video clip who
had either a fluent conversation or a conversation in which flow was disrupted by a
brief silence. Except for the silence, the videos were identical.
7. After watching the video, participants were asked to what extent the people in the
video agreed with each other. Participants who watched the fluent conversation rated
agreement to be higher than participants watching the conversation that was disrupted
by a silence, even though participants were not consciously aware of the disruption. It
appears that the subjective feeling of being out of sync informs people of possible
disagreements, regardless of the content of the conversation.
8. Because people are generally so well- trained in having smooth conversations, any
disruption of this flow indicates that something is wrong, either interpersonally or
within the group as a whole. Consequently, people who do not talk very easily may be
81
incorrectly understood as being less agreeable than those who have no difficulty
keeping up a conversation. On a societal level, one could even imagine that a lack of
conversational flow may hamper the integration of immigrants who have not
completely mastered the language of their new country yet. In a similar sense, the
ever- increasing number of online conversations may be disrupted by
misinterpretations and anxiety that are produced by insuperable delays in the Internet
connection. Keeping in mind the effects of conversational flow for feelings of
belonging and validation may help one to be prepared to avoid such misunderstandings
in future conversations.
QUESTIONS 27-32
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in the text?
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
27. Conversation occupies much of our time.
28. People assess information according to how readily they can understand it.
29. A quick response to a question is thought to show a lack of knowledge.
30. Video observations have often been used to assess conversational flow.
31. People who talk less often have clearer ideas than those who talk a lot.
32. Delays in online chat fail to have the same negative effect as disruptions that occur
in natural conversation.
QUESTIONS 33-40
Synchrony
There is a human desire to co-ordinate 33…………………. in an effort to be ‘in
harmony’. This co-ordination can be seen in conversations when speakers alter the
speed and extent of their speech in order to facilitate 34………………….. This is
often achieved within milliseconds: only tiny pauses take place when a conversation
flows; when it doesn’t, there are 35……………..and silences, or people talk at the
same time.
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Our desire to 36…………………is also an important element of conversation flow.
According to research, our 37………………..increase even if silences are brief.
Humans have a basic need to be part of a group, and they experience a sense of
38…………..if silences exclude them.
People also attempt to co-ordinate their opinions in conversation. In an experiment,
participants’ judgement of the overall 39……………..among speakers was tested
using videos of a fluent and a slightly disrupted conversation. The results showed that
the 40…………….of the speakers’ discussion was less important than the perceived
synchrony of the speakers.
83
Sex, Sighs, and Conversation
Why Men and Women Can’t Communicate
By Deborah Tannen
Deborah Tannen is best known as the author of You Just Don't
Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, which was on
The New York Times Best Seller list for nearly four years,
including eight months as No. 1, and has been translated into
24 languages. The book brought gender differences in
communication style to the forefront of public awareness.
Among the topics on which she has published books and
articles are spoken and written language, doctor-patient communication, cross-
cultural communication, Modern Greek discourse, the poetics of everyday
conversation, and the relationship between conversational and literary discourse. Her
sixteenth book, The Argument Culture, was published by Random House in March,
1999.
An internationally recognized scholar, she is University Professor and Professor of
Linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Dr. Tannen is Associate
Editor of Language in Society and Discourse Processes, and is on the editorial boards
of many other journals. She is also an advisory editor of the book series, Oxford
Studies in Sociolinguistics.
In addition to her linguistic research and writing, she has published poetry, short
stories, and personal essays. Her first play, “An Act of Devotion,” is included in The
Best American Short Plays: 1993–1994. It was produced, together with her play
“Sisters,” by Horizons Theater in Arlington, VA, May–June 1995.
84
1. A man and a woman were seated in a car that had been circling the same area for a
half hour. The woman was saying, “Why don’t we just ask someone?” The man was
saying, not for the first time, “I’m sure it’s around here somewhere. I’ll just try this
street.”
2. Why are so many men reluctant to ask directions? Why aren’t women? And why
can’t women understand why men don’t want to ask? The explanation, for this and for
countless minor and major frustrations that women and men may have when they talk
to each other, lies in the different ways that they use language––differences that begin
with how girls and boys use language as children when they grow up in different
worlds.
3. Anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists have found that little girls play in
small groups or in pairs; they have a best friend, with whom they spend a lot of time
talking. It’s the telling of secrets that makes them best friends. They learn to use
language to care––to make connections and feel close to each other.
4. Boys, on the other hand, tend to play competitive games in larger groups made up of
smaller social groups, in which high-status boys give orders, and low-status boys are
pushed around. So boys learn to use language to gain independence and find their way
up, trying to get all the attention, challenge and resist challenges, display knowledge
and other skills.
5. These divergent assumptions about the purpose of language persist into adulthood,
where they affect cross-gender conversations, sometimes causing puzzlement or grief.
In the case of asking for directions, here is an explanation: From a woman’s
perspective, you ask for help, you get it, and you get to where you’re going. A fleeting
connection is made with a stranger, which is fundamentally pleasant. But a man is
aware that by admitting ignorance and asking for information, he positions himself
below someone else. Far from pleasant, this is humiliating. So it makes sense for him
to keep his independence and self-esteem at the cost of a little extra travel time.
6. Here is another scene from the drama of the differences in men’s and women’s ways
of talking. A woman and a man return home from work. She tells everything that
happened during the day: what she did, whom she met, what they said, what they made
her think. Then she turns to him and asks, “How was your day?” He says, “Same old
rat race.” She feels locked out: “You don’t tell me anything.” He protests, “Nothing
85
happened at work.” They have different assumptions about “anything” to tell. To her,
telling life’s daily events and impressions means she’s not alone in the world. Such
talk is the essence of intimacy––evidence that she and her partner are best friends.
Since he never spent time talking in this way with his friends, best or otherwise, he
doesn’t expect it, doesn’t know how to do it, and doesn’t miss it when it isn’t there.
7. Another source of mutual frustration is the difference in women’s and men’s
understanding about “trouble talk.” She begins to talk about a problem; he offers a
solution; she dismisses it, feeling upset. He feels upset, too: “She complains, but she
doesn’t want to do anything to solve her problems.” Indeed, all she wants is to talk.
She is frustrated because his solution stops her talk and implies she shouldn’t be
wasting time talking about it.
8. The female search for connection and the male concern with hierarchy is evident
here, too. When a woman tells another woman about a problem, her friend typically
explores the problem (“And then what did he say?” “What do you think you might
do?”); shows understanding (“I know how you feel.”); or offers a similar experience
(“It’s like the time I....”). All these responses show support and bring them closer. But
offering a solution makes the problem-solver look better than others. This creates
distance, just the opposite of what she wants when she brings up the conversation.
9. A similar mismatch of expectations occurs when a woman complains about her
boss, and a man tries to be helpful by explaining the boss’ point of view. She perceives
this as an attack, and a lack of loyalty to her. One man told me, incredulously, “My
girlfriend just wants to talk about her point of view.” He feels that offering opposing
views is obviously a more constructive conversational contribution. But conversations
among women are usually characterized by mutual support and exploration.
Alternative views may be introduced, but they are phrased as suggestions and
questions, not as direct challenges. This is one of the many ways that men value
oppositional stances, whereas women value harmonious ones.
10. A woman was hurt when she heard her husband telling the guests at a dinner party
about an incident with his boss that he hadn’t told her. She felt this proved that he
hadn’t been honest when he’d said nothing happened at work. But he didn’t think of
this experience as a story to tell until he needed to come up with material to show that
he’s in charge at the dinner party.
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11. Thus, it isn’t that women always talk more, while men are taciturn and succinct.
Women talk more at home, since talk, for them, is a way of creating close feelings.
Since men regard talk as a means to show they are in charge, they often see no need to
talk at home. But they talk more in “public” situations with people they know less
well. At a meeting, when questions are asked from the floor, it is almost always a man
who speaks first. When the phones are opened on a radio talk show, the vast majority
of calls are from men, who are more likely to speak more to explain their questions (if
they have any) and address many different topics.
12. Generalizing about groups of people makes many of us nervous. We like to think
of ourselves as unique individuals, not representatives of stereotypes. But it is more
dangerous to ignore patterns that to articulate them.
13. If women and men have different ways of talking (and my research, and that of
others, show that they do), then expecting us to be the same leads to disappointment
and conflicts. Unaware of conversational style differences, we tend to blame each
other: “You go on and on talking about nothing.” “You don’t listen to me.”
14. Realizing that a partner’s behavior is not his or her individual failing, but a normal
expression of gender, lifts this burden of blame and disappointment. Surprisingly,
years together can make the relationship worse, rather than better. After 57 years of
marriage, my parents are still having problems understanding each other. When my
mother read my book, she said, “You mean it isn’t just Daddy? I always thought he
was the only one.”
15. Understanding gender differences in ways of talking is the first step toward
changing. Because some people do not know that people of the other gender have
different ways of talking, people assume they are doing things right and their partners
are doing things wrong. Then no one wants to change; if your partner is accusing you
of wrong behavior, changing would be tantamount to admitting fault. But when they
think of the differences as cross-cultural, people find that they and their partners are
willing, even eager, to make small adjustments that will please their partners and
improve the relationship.
87
I. VOCABULARY: Choose the best answer:
1. Why are men reluctant to ask directions?

a. eager b. hesitant c. lazy
a. similar b. different c. false
3. Adulthood, where they affect cross-gender conversations, sometimes …….
a. male and female b. male and male c. female and female
a. sadness b. depression c. confusion
5. From a woman’s perspective, you ask for help, you get it, and you get to where
you’re going. A fleeting connection is made with a stranger, which is fundamentally
pleasant.
a. happy b. brief c. strong
6. But a man is aware that by admitting ignorance and asking for information he
positions himself below someone else.
a. his lack of knowledge b. his wealth of knowledge c. his course scores
7. One man told me, incredulously, “My girlfriend just wants to talk about her point of
view.”
a. in joy b. in disbelief c. in confidence
8. Thus, it isn’t that women always talk more, while men are taciturn (not outspoken)
and succinct.
a. to the point b. boring c. stupid
9. If your partner is accusing you of wrong behavior, changing would be tantamount to
admitting fault.
a. mountainous b. different c. the same as
10. But when people think of the differences as cross-cultural, people find that they
and their partners are willing, even eager, to make small adjustments that will please
their partners and improve the relationship (p.14)
a. gifts b. changes c. sacrifices
II. Comprehension questions
1. What is the text about? State the main idea of the article in one sentence.
In this article, the writer discusses about the differnces betwwen men and women in
communication as well as offers suggestions for improving their relationship.
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2. How differently do little girls and little boys use the language?
Little girls use language for caring (showing their consideration), making relationship
and feeling friendly (intimate) to each other.
Little boys use language for achieving independence, drawing people’s attention and
struggling against challenges as well as shwing their knowledge and power.
3. Who are more willing to talk about their days? Men or women? Why so?
Women talk more about their day because they want to confirm that they have a best
friend to share and they want to be sure that they are not alnone in their life.
4. How different are men and women when talking about their problems?
Men: analyze the boss’s point of views, show their constructional contribution, offer
solutions.
Women: their main porpose is talking and sharing, exploring the problems, showing
their sympathy, rejecting solutions (they think when men offer solutions, that means
they lose their chance of talking)
5. Who talk more in “public” situations with people they know less well? Why so?
Men talk more in public because they want to confirm that they are in charge, they
have a definite position or status in public
6. What does the writer advise that men and women should do to feel less frustrated
because of their different ways in using the language?
- Undersanding the gender differences in their way of commnucation.
- Making small changes (adjustment) day by day.
III. Answer the question in your own words
Sex, Sighs and Conversation is an example of an expository essay. What is being
explained?
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IV. Paraphrasing:
1. Why are so many men reluctant to ask directions? Why aren’t women? And why
can’t women understand why men don’t want to ask? The explanation, for this and for
countless minor and major frustrations that women and men may have when they talk
to each other, lies in the different ways that they use language––differences that begin
89
with how girls and boys use language as children when they grow up in different
worlds.
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists have found that little girls play in
small groups or in pairs; they have a best friend, with whom they spend a lot of time
talking. It’s the telling of secrets that makes them best friends. They learn to use
language to care––to make connections and feel close to each other.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Boys, on the other hand, tend to play competitive games in larger groups made up of
smaller social groups, in which high-status boys give orders, and low-status boys are
pushed around. So boys learn to use language to gain independence and find their way
up, trying to get all the attention, challenge and resist challenges, display knowledge
and other skills.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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4. Understanding gender differences in ways of talking is the first step toward
changing. Because some people do not know that people of the other gender have
different ways of talking, people assume they are doing things right and their partners
are doing things wrong.
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V. Summarizing:
Relying on the answers for the questions on part I, write a summary (about 120 – 150
words) for the essay.
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UNIT 11: PRACTICE 7
READING PASSAGE 1
Passage 1 below.
Ant intelligence
When we think of intelligent members of the animal kingdom, the creatures that spring
immediately to mind are apes and monkeys. But in fact the social lives of some
members of the insect kingdom are sufficiently complex to suggest more than a hint of
intelligence.
Among these, the world of the ant has come in for considerable scrutiny lately, and the
idea that ants demonstrate sparks of cognition has certainly not been rejected by those
involved in these investigations.
Ants store food, repel attackers and use chemical signals to contact one another in case
of attack. Such chemical communication can be compared to the human use of visual
and auditory channels (as in religious chants, advertising images and jingles, political
slogans and martial music) to arouse and propagate moods and attitudes. The biologist
Lewis Thomas wrote, Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment.
They farm fungi, raise aphids* as livestock, launch armies to war, use chemical sprays
to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labour, exchange
information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.’
However, in ants there is no cultural transmission - everything must be encoded in the
genes - whereas in humans the opposite is true. Only basic instincts are carried in the
genes of a newborn baby, other skills being learned from others in the community as
the child grows up. It may seem that this cultural continuity gives us a huge advantage
over ants. They have never mastered fire nor progressed. Their fungus farming and
aphid herding crafts are sophisticated when compared to the agricultural skills of
humans five thousand years ago but have been totally overtaken by modem human
agribusiness.
Or have they? The farming methods of ants are at least sustainable. They do not ruin
environments or use enormous amounts of energy. Moreover, recent evidence suggests
that the crop farming of ants may be more sophisticated and adaptable than was
thought.
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Ants were farmers fifty million years before humans were. Ants can't digest the
cellulose in leaves - but some fungi can. The ants therefore cultivate these fungi in
their nests, bringing them leaves to feed on, and then use them as a source of food.
Farmer ants secrete antibiotics to control other fungi that might act as 'weeds’, and
spread waste to fertilise the crop.
It was once thought that the fungus that ants cultivate was a single type that they had
propagated, essentially unchanged from the distant past. Not so. Ulrich Mueller of
Maryland and his colleagues genetically screened 862 different types of fungi taken
from ants' nests. These turned out to be highly diverse: it seems that ants are
continually domesticating new species. Even more impressively, DNA analysis of the
fungi suggests that the ants improve or modify the fungi by regularly swapping and
sharing strains with neighbouring ant colonies.
Whereas prehistoric man had no exposure to urban lifestyles - the forcing house of
intelligence - the evidence suggests that ants have lived in urban settings for close on a
hundred million years, developing and maintaining underground cities of specialised
chambers and tunnels.
When we survey Mexico City, Tokyo, Los Angeles, we are amazed at what has been
accomplished by humans. Yet Hoelldobler and Wilson's magnificent work for ant
lovers, The Ants, describes a supercolony of the ant Formica yessensis on the Ishikari
Coast of Hokkaido. This ‘megalopolis’ was reported to be composed of 360 million
workers and a million queens living in 4,500 interconnected nests across a territory of
2.7 square kilometres.
Such enduring and intricately meshed levels of technical achievement outstrip by far
anything achieved by our distant ancestors. We hail as masterpieces the cave paintings
in southern France and elsewhere, dating back some 20,000 years. Ant societies
existed in something like their present form more than seventy million years ago.
Beside this, prehistoric man looks technologically primitive. Is this then some kind of
intelligence, albeit of a different kind?
Research conducted at Oxford, Sussex and Zurich Universities has shown that when
desert ants return from a foraging trip, they navigate by integrating bearings and
distances, which they continuously update in their heads. They combine the evidence
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of visual landmarks with a mental library of local directions, all within a framework
which is consulted and updated. So ants can learn too.
And in a twelve-year programme of work, Ryabko and Reznikova have found
evidence that ants can transmit very complex messages. Scouts who had located food
in a maze returned to mobilise their foraging teams. They engaged in contact sessions,
at the end of which the scout was removed in order to observe what her team might do.
Often the foragers proceeded to the exact spot in the maze where the food had been.
Elaborate precautions were taken to prevent the foraging team using odour clues.
Discussion now centres on whether the route through the maze is communicated as a
‘left- right’ sequence of turns or as a ‘compass bearing and distance' message.
During the course of this exhaustive study, Reznikova has grown so attached to her
laboratory ants that she feels she knows them as individuals - even without the paint
spots used to mark them. It’s no surprise that Edward Wilson, in his essay, ‘In the
company of ants’, advises readers who ask what to do with the ants in their kitchen to:
‘Watch where you step. Be careful of little lives.
QUESTIONS 1- 6
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1
1. Ants use the same channels of communication as humans do.__________
2. City life is one factor that encourages the development of intelligence. __________
3. Ants can build large cities more quickly than humans do. __________
4. Some ants can find their way by making calculations based on distance and position.
___________
5. In one experiment, foraging teams were able to use their sense of smell to find food.
__________
6. The essay, ‘In the company of ants’, explores ant communication. __________
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QUESTIONS 7- 13
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-O, below

Ants as farmers
Ants have sophisticated methods of farming, including herding livestock and growing
crops, which are in many ways similar to those used in human agriculture. The ants
cultivate a large number of different species of edible fungi which convert 7
…………………… into a form which they can digest. They use their own natural 8
…………………… as weed-killers and also use unwanted materials as 9
……………………Genetic analysis shows they constantly upgrade these fungi by
developing new species and by 10 ……………………species with neighbouring ant
colonies. In fact, the farming methods of ants could be said to be more advanced than
human agribusiness, since they use 11 ……………………methods, they do not affect
the 12 …………………… and do not waste 13 ……………………
A. aphids B. agricultural C. cellulose D. exchanging
E. energy F. fertilizers G. food H. fungi
I. growing J. interbreeding K. natural L. other species
M. secretions N. sustainable O. environment
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READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14—26, which are based on Reading
Passage 2 below
Population movements and genetics

A. Study of the origins and distribution of human populations used to be based on
archaeological and fossil evidence. A number of techniques developed since the
1950s, however, have placed the study of these subjects on a sounder and more
objective footing. The best information on early population movements is now being
obtained from the 'archaeology of the living body', the clues to be found in genetic
material.
B. Recent work on the problem of when people first entered the Americas is an
example of the value of these new techniques. North-east Asia and Siberia have long
been accepted as the launching ground for the first human colonisers of the New
World. But was there one major wave of migration across the Bering Strait into the
Americas, or several? And when did this event, or events, take place? In recent years,
new clues have come from research into genetics, including the distribution of genetic
markers in modern Native Americans.
C. An important project, led by the biological anthropologist Robert Williams, focused
on the variants (called Gm allotypes) of one particular protein - immunoglobin G -
found in the fluid portion of human blood. All proteins 'drift', or produce variants, over
the generations, and members of an interbreeding human population will share a set of
such variants. Thus, by comparing the Gm allotypes of two different populations (e.g.
two Indian tribes), one can establish their genetic 'distance', which itself can be
calibrated to give an indication of the length of time since these populations last
interbred.
D. Williams and his colleagues sampled the blood of over 5,000 American Indians in
western North America during a twenty- year period. They found that their Gm
allotypes could be divided into two groups, one of which also corresponded to the
genetic typing of Central and South American Indians. Other tests showed that the
Inuit (or Eskimo) and Aleut3 formed a third group. From this evidence it was deduced
that there had been three major waves of migration across the Bering Strait. The first,
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Paleo-lndian, wave more than 15,000 years ago was ancestral to all Central and South
American Indians. The second wave, about 14,000-12,000 years ago, brought Na-
Dene hunters, ancestors of the Navajo and Apache (who only migrated south from
Canada about 600 or 700 years ago). The third wave, perhaps 10,000 or 9,000 years
ago, saw the migration from North-east Asia of groups ancestral to the modern Eskimo
and Aleut.
E. How far does other research support these conclusions? Geneticist Douglas Wallace
has studied mitochondrial DNA in blood samples from three widely separated Native
American groups: Pima- Papago Indians in Arizona, Maya Indians on the Yucatán
peninsula, Mexico, and Ticuna Indians in the Upper Amazon region of Brazil. As
would have been predicted by Robert Williams's work, all three groups appear to be
descended from the same ancestral (Paleo-lndian) population.
F. There are two other kinds of research that have thrown some light on the origins of
the Native American population; they involve the study of teeth and of languages. The
biological anthropologist Christy Turner is an expert in the analysis of changing
physical characteristics in human teeth. He argues that tooth crowns and roots have a
high genetic component, minimally affected by environmental and other factors.
Studies carried out by Turner of many thousands of New and Old World specimens,
both ancient and modern, suggest that the majority of prehistoric Americans are linked
to Northern Asian populations by crown and root traits such as incisor 6 shoveling (a
scooping out on one or both surfaces of the tooth), single-rooted upper first premolars
and triple-rooted lower first molars.
According to Turner, this ties in with the idea of a single Paleo-lndian migration out of
North Asia, which he sets at before 14,000 years ago by calibrating rates of dental
micro-evolution. Tooth analyses also suggest that there were two later migrations of
Na-Denes and Eskimo- Aleut.
G. The linguist Joseph Greenberg has, since the 1950s, argued that all Native
American languages belong to a single 'Amerind' family, except for Na-Dene and
Eskimo-Aleut - a view that gives credence to the idea of three main migrations.
Greenberg is in a minority among fellow linguists, most of whom favour the notion of
a great many waves of migration to account for the more than 1,000 languages spoken
at one time by American Indians. But there is no doubt that the new genetic and dental
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evidence provides strong backing for Greenberg's view. Dates given for the migrations
should nevertheless be treated with caution, except where supported by hard
archaeological evidence.
QUESTIONS 14-19
Reading Passage 2 has seven sections, A-G. Choose the correct headings for
sections A-F from the list of headings below.
List of Headings
i. The results of the research into blood-variants
ii. Dental evidence
iii. Greenberg’s analysis of the dental and linguistic evidence
iv. Developments in the methods used to study early population
movements
v. Indian migration from Canada to the USA
vi. Further genetic evidence relating to the three-wave theory
vii. Long-standing questions about prehistoric migration to America
viii. Conflicting view of the three-wave theory, based on non-genetic
evidence
ix. Questions about the causes of prehistoric migration to America
x. How analysis of blood-variants measures the closeness of the
relationship between different populations
14. Section A …………………..
15. Section B …………………..
16. Section C …………………..
17. Section D …………………..
18. Section E …………………..
19. Section F …………………..
Example Answer
Section G viii
QUESTIONS 20 and 21
The discussion of Williams’s research indicates the periods at which early people
are thought to have migrated along certain routes. There are six routes, A-F,
marked on the map below. Complete the table below.
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Route Period (number of years ago)
20 ……………… 15,000 or more
21 ……………… 600 to 700
QUESTIONS 22- 25
Reading Passage 2 refers to the three-wave theory of early migration to the

Americas. It also suggests in which of these three waves the ancestors of various
groups of modern native Americans first reached the continent.
Classify the groups named in the table below as originating from:
A. the first wave
B. The second wave
C. The third wave
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Name of group Wave number
Inuit 22 ……………………
Apache 23 ……………………
Pima-Papago 24 ……………………
Ticuna 25 ……………………
QUESTION 26
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Christy Turner’s research involved the examination of
A. teeth from both prehistoric and modem Americans and Asians.
B. thousands of people who live in either the New or the Old World.
C. dental specimens from the majority of prehistoric Americans.
D. the eating habits of American and Asian populations.
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READING PASSAGE 3
Forests as natural heritage
Passage 3
Forests are one of the main elements of our natural heritage. The decline of Europe's
forests over the last decade and a half has led to an increasing awareness and
understanding of the serious imbalances which threaten them. European countries are
becoming increasingly concerned by major threats to European forests, threats which
know no frontiers other than those of geography or climate: air pollution, soil
deterioration, the increasing number of forest fires and sometimes even the
mismanagement of our woodland and forest heritage. There has been a growing
awareness of the need for countries to get together to co-ordinate their policies. In
December 1990, Strasbourg hosted the first Ministerial Conference on the protection
of Europe's forests. The conference brought together 31 countries from both Western
and Eastern Europe. The topics discussed included the co-ordinated study of the
destruction of forests, as well as how to combat forest fires and the extension of
European research programs on the forest ecosystem. The preparatory work for the
conference had been undertaken at two meetings of experts. Their initial task was to
decide which of the many forest problems of concern to Europe involved the largest
number of countries and might be the subject of joint action. Those confined to
particular geographical areas, such as countries bordering the Mediterranean or the
Nordic countries therefore had to be discarded. However, this does not mean that in
future they will be ignored.
As a whole, European countries see forests as performing a triple function: biological,
economic and recreational. The first is to act as a 'green lung' for our planet; by means
of photosynthesis, forests produce oxygen through the transformation of solar energy,
thus fulfilling what for humans is the essential role of an immense, non-polluting
power plant. At the same time, forests provide raw materials for human activities
through their constantly renewed production of wood. Finally, they offer those
condemned to spend five days a week in an urban environment an unrivalled area of
freedom to unwind and take part in a range of leisure activities, such as hunting, riding
and hiking. The economic importance of forests has been understood since the dawn of
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man - wood was the first fuel. The other aspects have been recognised only for a few
centuries but they are becoming more and more important. Hence, there is a real
concern throughout Europe about the damage to the forest environment which
threatens these three basic roles.
The myth of the 'natural' forest has survived, yet there are effectively no remaining
'primary' forests in Europe. All European forests are artificial, having been adapted
and exploited by man for thousands of years. This means that a forest policy is vital,
that it must transcend national frontiers and generations of people, and that it must
allow for the inevitable changes that take place in the forests, in needs, and hence in
policy. The Strasbourg conference was one of the first events on such a scale to reach
this conclusion. A general declaration was made that 'a central place in any
ecologically coherent forest policy must be given to continuity over time and to the
possible effects of unforeseen events, to ensure that the full potential of these forests is
maintained'
That general declaration was accompanied by six detailed resolutions to assist national
policymaking. The first proposes the extension and systématisation of surveillance
sites to monitor forest decline. Forest decline Is still poorly understood but leads to the
loss of a high proportion of a tree's needles or leaves. The entire continent and the
majority of species are now affected: between 30% and 50% of the tree population.
The condition appears to result from the cumulative effect of a number of factors, with
atmospheric pollutants the principal culprits. Compounds of nitrogen and sulphur
dioxide should be particularly closely watched. However, their effects are probably
accentuated by climatic factors, such as drought and hard winters, or soil imbalances
such as soil acidification, which damages the roots. The second resolution concentrates
on the need to preserve the genetic diversity of European forests. The aim is to reverse
the decline in the number of tree species or at least to preserve the 'genetic material' of
all of them. Although forest fires do not affect all of Europe to the same extent, the
amount of damage caused the experts to propose as the third resolution that the
Strasbourg conference consider the establishment of a European databank on the
subject. All information used in the development of national preventative policies
would become generally available. The subject of the fourth resolution discussed by
the ministers was mountain forests. In Europe, it is undoubtedly the mountain
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ecosystem which has changed most rapidly and is most at risk. A thinly scattered
permanent population and development of leisure activities, particularly skiing, have
resulted in significant long-term changes to the local ecosystems. Proposed
developments include a preferential research program on mountain forests. The fifth
resolution relaunched the European research network on the physiology of trees, called
Eurosilva. Eurosilva should support joint European research on tree diseases and their
physiological and biochemical aspects. Each country concerned could increase the
number of scholarships and other financial support for doctoral theses and research
projects in this area. Finally, the conference established the framework for a European
research network on forest ecosystems. This would also involve harmonising activities
in individual countries as well as identifying a number of priority research topics
relating to the protection of forests. The Strasbourg conference's main concern was to
provide for the future. This was the initial motivation, one now shared by all 31
participants representing 31 European countries. Their final text commits them to on-
going discussion between government representatives with responsibility for forests.
QUESTIONS 27-33
27. Forest problems of Mediterranean countries are to be discussed at the next meeting
of experts.
28. Problems in Nordic countries were excluded because they are outside the European
Economic Community.
29. Forests are a renewable source of raw material.
30. The biological functions of forests were recognised only in the twentieth century.
31. Natural forests still exist in parts of Europe.
32. Forest policy should be limited by national boundaries.
33. The Strasbourg conference decided that a forest policy must allow for the
possibility of change.
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QUESTIONS 34-39
Look at the following statements issued by the conference. Which six of the
following statements, A-J, refer to the resolutions that were issued? Match the
statements with the appropriate resolutions.
A. All kinds of species of trees should be preserved.
B. Fragile mountain forests should be given priority in research programs.
C. The surviving natural forests of Europe do not need priority treatment.
D. Research is to be better co-ordinated throughout Europe.
E. Information on forest fires should be collected and shared.
F. Loss of leaves from trees should be more extensively and carefully monitored.
G. Resources should be allocated to research into tree diseases.
H. Skiing should be encouraged in thinly populated areas.
I. Soil imbalances such as acidification should be treated with compounds of nitrogen
and sulphur.
J. Information is to be systematically gathered on any decline in the condition of
forests
34. Resolution 1
35. Resolution 2
36. Resolution 3
37. Resolution 4
38. Resolution 5
39. Resolution 6
QUESTION 40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
40. What is the best title for Reading Passage 3?
A. The biological, economic and recreational role of forests
B. Plans to protect the forests of Europe
C. The priority of European research into ecosystems
D. Proposals for a world-wide policy on forest management
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UNIT 12: PRACTICE 8
READING PASSAGE 1
Passage 1 in the following page:
QUESTIONS 1-7
Reading Passage 1 has seven paragraphs, A-G. Choose the correct heading for
each paragraph from the list of headings below.
List of Headings
i How deforestation harms isolated trees How other plants can cause harm
ii Which big trees support the most diverse species
V Impact of big tree loss on the wider environment
V Measures to prevent further decline in big tree populations
vi How wildlife benefits from big trees
vii Risk from pests and infection
viii Ways in which industry uses big tree products
ix How higher temperatures slow the rate of tree growth
x Factors that enable trees to grow to significant heights
1. Paragraph A ……………
2. Paragraph B ……………
3. Paragraph C ……………
4. Paragraph D ……………
5. Paragraph E ……………
6. Paragraph F ……………
7. Paragraph G ……………
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Trees in trouble
What is causing the decline of the world’s giant forests?
A. Big trees are incredibly important ecologically. For a start, they sustain countless
other species. They provide shelter for many animals, and their trunks and branches
can become gardens, hung with green ferns, orchids and bromeliads, coated with
mosses and draped with vines. With their tall canopies* basking in the sun, they
capture vast amounts of energy. This allows them to produce massive crops of fruit,
flowers and foliage that sustain much of the animal life in the forest.
B. Only a small number of tree species have the genetic capacity to grow really big.
The mightiest are native to North America, but big trees grow all over the globe, from
the tropics to the boreal forests of the high latitudes. To achieve giant stature, a tree
needs three things: the right place to establish its seedling, good growing conditions
and lots of time with low adult mortality*. Disrupt any of these, and you can lose your
biggest trees.
C. In some parts of the world, populations of big trees are dwindling because their
seedlings cannot survive or grow. In southern India, for instance, an aggressive non-
native shrub, Lantana camara, is invading the floor of many forests. Lantana grows so
thickly that young trees often fail to take root. With no young trees to replace them, it
is only a matter of time before most of the big trees disappear. Across much of
northern Australia, gamba grass from Africa is overrunning native savannah
woodlands. The grass grows up to four metres tall and burns fiercely, creating super-
hot fires that cause catastrophic tree mortality.
D. Without the right growing conditions trees cannot get really big, and there is some
evidence to suggest tree growth could slow in a warmer world, particularly in
environments that are already warm. Having worked for decades at La Selva
Biological Station in Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui, Costa Rica, David and Deborah Clark
and colleagues have shown that tree growth there declines markedly in warmer years.
“During the day, their photosynthesis* shuts down when it gets too warm, and at night
they consume more energy because their metabolic rate increases, much as a reptile’s
would when it gets warmer,” explains David Clark. With less energy produced in
warmer years and more being consumed just to survive, there is even less energy
available for growth.
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E. The Clarks’ hypothesis, if correct, means tropical forests would shrink over time.
The largest, oldest trees would progressively die off and tend not to be replaced.
According to the Clarks, this might trigger a destabilisation of the climate; as older
trees die, forests would release some of their stored carbon into the atmosphere,
prompting a vicious cycle of further warming, forest shrinkage and carbon emissions.
F. Big trees face threats from elsewhere. The most serious is increasing mortality,
especially of mature trees. Across much of the planet, forests of slow-growing ancient
trees have been cleared for human use. In western North America, most have been
replaced by monocultures of fast-growing conifers. Siberia’s forests are being logged
at an incredible rate. Logging in tropical forests is selective but the timber cutters
usually prioritise the biggest and oldest trees. In the Amazon, my colleagues and I
found the mortality rate for the biggest trees had tripled in small patches of rainforest
surrounded by pasture land. This happens for two reasons. First, as they grow taller,
big trees become thicker and less flexible: when winds blow across the surrounding
cleared land, there is nothing to stop their acceleration. When they hit the trees, the
impact can snap them in half. Second, rainforest fragments dry out when surrounded
by dry, hot pastures and the resulting drought can have devastating consequences: one
four-year study has shown that death rates will double for smaller trees but will
increase 4.5 times for bigger trees.
G. Particular enemies to large trees are insects and disease. Across vast areas of
western North America, increasingly mild winters are causing massive outbreaks of
bark beetle. These tiny creatures can kill entire forests as they tunnel their way through
the inside of trees. In both North America and Europe, fungus-causing diseases such as
Dutch elm disease have killed off millions of stately trees that once gave beauty to
forests and cities. As a result of human activity, such enemies reach even the remotest
corners of the world, threatening to make the ancient giants a thing of the past.
Glossary
a canopy: leaves and branches that form a cover high above the ground
mortality: the number of deaths within a particular group
photosynthesis: a process used by plants to convert the light energy from the sun into
chemical energy that can be used as food
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QUESTIONS 8-13
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from
the passage for each answer.
8. The biggest trees in the world can be found in………………………
9. Some trees in northern Australia die because of………………… made worse by
gamba grass.
10. The Clarks believe that the release of…………………… from dead trees could
lead to the death of more trees.
11. Strong………………………. are capable of damaging tall trees in the Amazon.
12. ……………………..has a worse impact on tall trees than smaller ones.
13. In western Northern America, a species of……………………………. has
destroyed many trees.
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READING PASSAGE 2
Passage 2 below.
Whale Strandings
Why do whales leave the ocean and become stuck on beaches?
1. When the last stranded whale of a group eventually dies, the story does not end
there. A team of researchers begins to investigate, collecting skin samples for instance,
recording anything that could help them answer the crucial question: why? Theories
abound, some more convincing than others. In recent years, navy sonar has been
accused of causing certain whales to strand. It is known that noise pollution from
offshore industry, shipping and sonar can impair underwater communication, but can it
really drive whales onto our beaches?
2. In 1998, researchers at the Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute, a Greek non-profit
scientific group, linked whale strandings with low- frequency sonar tests being carried
out by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). They recorded the stranding of
12 Cuvier’s beaked whales over 38.2 kilometres of coastline. NATO later admitted it
had been testing new sonar technology in the same area at the time as the strandings
had occurred. ‘Mass’ whale strandings involve four or more animals. Typically they
all wash ashore together, but in mass atypical strandings (such as the one in Greece),
the whales don't strand as a group; they are scattered over a larger area.
3. For humans, hearing a sudden loud noise might prove frightening, but it does not
induce mass fatality. For whales, on the other hand, there is a theory on how sonar can
kill. The noise can surprise the animal, causing it to swim too quickly to the surface.
The result is decompression sickness, a hazard human divers know all too well. If a
diver ascends too quickly from a high-pressure underwater environment to a lower-
pressure one, gases dissolved in blood and tissue expand and form bubbles. The
bubbles block the flow of blood to vital organs, and can ultimately lead to death.
4. Plausible as this seems, it is still a theory and based on our more comprehensive
knowledge of land-based animals. For this reason, some scientists are wary. Whale
expert Karen Evans is one such scientist. Another is Rosemary Gales, a leading expert
on whale strandings. She says sonar technology cannot always be blamed for mass
strandings. "It’s a case-by-case situation. Whales have been stranding for a very long
109
time - pre-sonar.” And when 80% of all Australian whale strandings occur around
Tasmania, Gales and her team must continue in the search for answers.
5. When animals beach next to each other at the same time, the most common cause
has nothing to do with humans at all. "They're highly social creatures,” says Gales.
"When they mass strand - it’s complete panic and chaos. If one of the group strands
and sounds the alarm, others will try to swim to its aid, and become stuck themselves.”
6. Activities such as sonar testing can hint at when a stranding may occur, but if
conservationists are to reduce the number of strandings, or improve rescue operations,
they need information on where strandings are likely to occur as well. With this in
mind, Ralph James, physicist at the University of Western Australia in Perth, thinks he
may have discovered why whales turn up only on some beaches. In 1986 he went to
Augusta, Western Australia, where more than 100 false killer whales had beached. “I
found out from chatting to the locals that whales had been stranding there for decades.
So I asked myself, what is it about this beach?” From this question that James
pondered over 20 years ago, grew the university's Whale Stranding Analysis Project.
7. Data has since revealed that all mass strandings around Australia occur on gently
sloping sandy beaches, some with inclines of less than 0.5%. For whale species that
depend on an echolocation system to navigate, this kind of beach spells disaster.
Usually, as they swim, they make clicking noises, and the resulting sound waves are
reflected in an echo and travel back to them. Flowever, these just fade out on shallow
beaches, so the whale doesn’t hear an echo and it crashes onto the shore.
8. But that is not all. Physics, it appears, can help with the when as well as the where.
The ocean is full of bubbles. Larger ones rise quickly to the surface and disappear,
whilst smaller ones - called microbubbles - can last for days. It is these that absorb
whale 'clicks! "Rough weather generates more bubbles than usual,” James adds. So,
during and after a storm, echolocating whales are essentially swimming blind.
9. Last year was a bad one for strandings in Australia. Can we predict if this - or any
other year - will be any better? Some scientists believe we can. They have found trends
which could be used to forecast ‘bad years’ for strandings in the future. In 2005, a
survey by Klaus Vanselow and Klaus Ricklefs of sperm whale strandings in the North
Sea even found a correlation between these and the sunspot cycle, and suggested that
changes in the Earth’s magnetic field might be involved. But others are sceptical.
110
“Their study was interesting ... but the analyses they used were flawed on a number of
levels,” says Evans. In the same year, she co-authored a study on Australian strandings
that uncovered a completely different trend. “We analysed data from 1920 to 2002 ...
and observed a clear periodicity in the number of whales stranded each year that
coincides with a major climatic cycle.” To put it more simply, she says, in the years
when strong westerly and southerly winds bring cool water rich in nutrients closer to
the Australia coast, there is an increase in the number of fish. The whales follow.
10. So what causes mass strandings? “It's probably many different components,” says
James. And he is probably right. But the point is we now know what many of those
components are.
QUESTIONS 14-17
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
14. What do researchers often take from the bodies of whales? .................................
15. What do some industries and shipping create that is harmful to whales?
.................................
16. In which geographical region do most whale strandings in Australia happen?
.................................
17. Which kind of whale was the subject of a study in the North Sea?
.................................
QUESTIONS 18-21
Label the diagram below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the
passage for each answer.
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QUESTIONS 22-26
22. The aim of the research by the Pelagos Institute in 1998 was to prove that navy
sonar was responsible for whale strandings.
23. The whales stranded in Greece were found at different points along the coast.
24. Rosemary Gales has questioned the research techniques used by the Greek
scientists.
25. According to Gales, whales are likely to try to help another whale in trouble.
26. There is now agreement amongst scientists that changes in the Earth’s magnetic
fields contribute to whale strandings.
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READING PASSAGE 3
Passage 3 below.
Science in Space
How will NASA transform the International Space Station from a building site into a
cutting-edge research laboratory?
1. A premier, world-class laboratory in low Earth orbit. That was how the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration agency (NASA) sold the International Space
Station (ISS) to the US Congress in 2001.Today no one can doubt the agency’s
technological ambition.The most complex engineering project ever attempted has
created an enormous set of interlinked modules that orbits the planet at more than
27,000 kilometres per hour. It might be travelling fast but, say critics, as a lab it is
going nowhere. So far, it has gone through $150 billion.
2. So where should its future priorities lie? This question was addressed at the recent
1st annual ISS research and development conference in Colorado.Among the
presenters was Satoshi Iwase of Aichi Medical University in Japan who has spent
several years developing an experiment that could help solve one of the key problems
that humans will face in space: keeping our bodies healthy in weightlessness. One
thing that physiologists have learned is that without gravity our bodies begin to lose
strength, leaving astronauts with weakened bones, muscles and cardiovascular
systems.To counter these effects on a long-duration mission to, say, Mars, astronauts
will almost certainly need to create their own artificial gravity.This is where Iwase
comes in. He leads a team designing a centrifuge for humans. In their preliminary
design, an astronaut is strapped into the seat of a machine that resembles an exercise
bike. Pedalling provides a workout for the astronaut’s muscles and cardiovascular
system, but it also causes the seat to rotate vertically around a central axis so the rider
experiences artificial gravity while exercising.
3. The centrifuge project highlights the station’s potential as a research lab. Similar
machines have flown in space aboard NASA’s shuttles, but they couldn’t be tested for
long enough to prove whether they were effective. It’s been calculated that to properly
assess a centrifuge’s impact on human physiology, astronauts would have to ride it for
30 minutes a day for at least two months. The only way to test this is in
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weightlessness, and the only time we have to do that is on the space station,’ says
Laurence Young, a space medicine expert at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology.
4. There are certainly plenty of ideas for other experiments: but many projects have yet
to fly. Even if the centrifuge project gets the green light, it will have to wait another
five years before the station’s crew can take a spin. Lengthy delays like this are one of
the key challenges for NASA, according to an April 201 I report from the US National
Academy of Sciences. Its authors said they were ‘deeply concerned’ about the state of
NASA’s science research, and made a number of recommendations. Besides
suggesting that the agency reduces the time between approving experiments and
sending them into space, it also recommended setting clearer research priorities.
5. NASA has already begun to take action, hiring management consultants ProOrbis to
develop a plan to cut through the bureaucracy. And Congress also directed NASA to
hire an independent organisation, the Centre for the Advancement of Science in Space
(CASIS), to help manage the station’s US lab facilities. One of CASIS’s roles is to
convince public and private investors that science on the station is worth the spend
because judged solely by the number of papers published, the ISS certainly seems poor
value: research on the station has generated about 3,100 papers since 1998.The Hubble
Space Telescope, meanwhile, has produced more than I 1,300 papers in just over 20
years, yet it cost less than one-tenth of the price of the space station.
6. Yet Mark Uhran, assistant associate administrator for the ISS, refutes the criticism
that the station hasn’t done any useful research. He points to progress made on a
salmonella vaccine, for example. To get the ISS research back on track, CASIS has
examined more than 100 previous microgravity experiments to identify promising
research themes. From this, it has opted to focus on life science and medical research,
and recently called for proposals for experiments on muscle wasting, osteoporosis and
the immune system. The organisation also maintains that the ISS should be used to
develop products with commercial application and to test those that are either close to
or already on the market. Investment from outside organisations is vital, says Uhran,
and a balance between academic and commercial research will help attract this.
7. The station needs to attract cutting-edge research, yet many scientists seem to have
little idea what goes on aboard it. Jeanne DiFrancesco at ProOrbis conducted more
than 200 interviews with people from organisations with potential interests in low
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gravity studies. Some were aware of the ISS but they didn t know what’s going on up
there, she says. ‘Others know there’s science, but they don’t know what kind.’
8. According to Alan Stern, planetary scientist, the biggest public relations boost for
the ISS may come from the privately funded space flight industry. Companies like
SpaceX could help NASA and its partners when it comes to resupplying the ISS, as it
suggests it can reduce launch costs by two-thirds. Virgin Atlantic’s SpaceShipTwo or
Zero2lnfinity's high- altitude balloon could also boost the space station’s fortunes.
They might not come close to the ISS’s orbit, yet Stern believes they will revolutionise
the way we, the public, see space. Soon everyone will be dreaming of interplanetary
travel again, he predicts. More importantly, scientists are already queuing for seats on
these low-gravity space-flight services so they can collect data during a few minutes of
weightlessness. This demand for low-cost space flight could eventually lead to a
service running on a more frequent basis, giving researchers the chance to test their
ideas before submitting a proposal for experiments on the ISS. Getting flight
experience should help them win a slot on the station, says Stern.
QUESTIONS 27- 30
27. What does the writer state about the ISS in the first paragraph?
A. Its manufacture has remained within the proposed budget.
B. It is a great example of technological achievement.
C. There are doubts about the speed it has attained.
D. NASA should have described its purpose more accurately.
28. What are we told about Satoshi Iwase’s experimental machine?
A. It is based on conventional exercise equipment.
B. It was originally commissioned by NASA.
C. It is designed only to work in low-gravity environments.
D. It has benefits that Iwase did not anticipate.
29. The writer refers to the Hubble Space Telescope in order to
A. show why investment in space technology has decreased.
B. highlight the need to promote the ISS in a positive way.
C. explain which kind of projects are more likely to receive funding.
D. justify the time required for a space project to produce results.
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30. In the sixth paragraph, we are told that CASIS has
A. rejected certain applications for experiments on the ISS.
B. expressed concern about testing products used for profit.
C. questioned the benefits of some of the projects currently on the ISS.
D. invited researchers to suggest certain health-based projects.
QUESTIONS 31- 35
Look at the following opinions (Questions 31-35) and the list of people below.
Match each opinion with the correct person, A, B, C or D. You may use any letter
more than once.
31. The ISS should be available for business-related ventures.
32. There is general ignorance about what kinds of projects are possible on the ISS.
33. The process of getting accepted projects onto the ISS should be speeded up.
34. Some achievements of the ISS are underrated.
35. To properly assess new space technology, there has to be an absence of gravity.
List of people
A Laurence Young
B Authors of the US National Academy of Sciences report
C Mark Uhran
D Jeanne DiFrancesco
QUESTIONS 36- 39
Complete the summary using the lists of words, A-H, below.
The influence of commercial space flight on the ISS
According to Alan Stern, private space companies could affect the future of the ISS.
He believes they could change its image; firstly because sending food and equipment
there
would be more 36………………. if a commercial craft were used, and secondly,
because
commercial flights might make the whole idea of space exploration seem
37………………… to ordinary people. Another point is that as the demand for space
flights increases, there is a chance of them becoming more 38…………………And by
working on a commercial flight first, scientists would be more 39………………… if
an ISS position came up.
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A safe B competitive C flexible D real
E rapid F regular G suitable H economical
QUESTION 40
Choose the correct letter, A, B. C or D
40. The writer’s purpose in writing this article is to
A. promote the advantages of space flight in general.
B. illustrate how the ISS could become more effective.
C. criticise the ISS for its narrow-minded attitude.
D. contrast useful and worthless space projects.
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The Meanings of a Word
By Gloria Naylor
(New York Times, 1986)
Gloria Naylor describes herself as “just a girl from Queens who
can turn a sentence,” but she is well known for bringing African
American women vividly within the fold of American literature.
She was born in 1950 in New York City and served for some years
as missionary for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, working “for better
world conditions.” While in college she made her living as a
telephone operator. She graduated from Brooklyn College in 1981 and received an
M.A. in African American Literature from Yale University in 1983. While teaching at
several universities and publishing numerous stories and essays, Naylor has written
four interconnected novels: The Women of Brewster Place (1982), Linden Hills
(1985), Mama Day (1988), and Bailey’s Café (1992). The Women of Brewster Place
won the American Book Award for best first novel, and Naylor has also received
fellowships from the National Endowments for the Arts and the Guggenheim
Foundation. She lives in New York City.
When she was in third grade, Naylor was stung by a word that seemed new. Only later
did she realize she’d been hearing the word all her life, but in an entirely different
context. “The Meanings of a Word” first appeared in the New York Times in 1986.
1 Language is the subject. It is the written form with which I’ve managed to keep the
wolf away from the door and, in diaries, to keep my sanity. In spite of this, I consider
the written word inferior to the spoken, and much of the frustration experienced by
novelists is the awareness that whatever we manage to capture in even the most
transcendent passages falls far short of the richness of life. Dialogue achieves its
power in the dynamics of a fleeting moment of sight, sound, smell, and touch.
2 I’m not going to enter the debate here about whether it is language that shapes
reality or vice versa. That battle is doomed to be waged whenever we seek intermittent
reprieve from the chicken and egg dispute. I will simply take the position that the
spoken word, like the written word, amounts to a nonsensical arrangement of sounds
118
or letters without a consensus that assigns “meaning.” And building from the meanings
of what we hear, we order reality. Words themselves are innocuous; it is the consensus
that gives them true power.
3 I remember the first time I heard the word nigger. In my third-grade class, our
math tests were being passed down the rows, and as I handed the papers to a little boy
in back of me, I remarked that once again he had received a much lower mark than I
did. He snatched his test from me and spit out that word. Had he called me a
nymphomaniac or a necrophiliac, I couldn’t have been more puzzled. I didn’t know
what a nigger was, but I knew that whatever it meant, it was something he shouldn’t
have called me. This was verified when I raised my hand, and in a loud voice repeated
what he had said and watched the teacher scold him for using a “bad” word. I was later
to go home and ask the inevitable question that every black parent must face––
“Mommy, what does nigger mean?”
4 And what exactly did it mean? Thinking back, I realize that this could not have
been the first time the word was used in my presence. I was part of a large extended
family that had migrated from the rural South after World War II and formed a close-
knit network that gravitated around my maternal grandparents. Their ground-floor
apartment in one of the buildings they owned in Harlem was a weekend mecca for my
immediate family, along with countless aunts, uncles, and cousins who brought along
assorted friends. It was a bustling and open house with assorted neighbors and tenants
popping in and out to exchange bits of gossip, pick up an old quarrel, or referee the
ongoing checkers game in which my grandmother cheated shamelessly. They were all
there to let down their hair and put up their feet after a week of labor in the factories,
laundries, and shipyards of New York.
5 Amid the clamor, which could reach deafening proportions––two or three
conversations going on simultaneously, punctuated by the sound of a baby’s crying
somewhere in the back rooms or out on the street––there was still a rigid set of rules
about what was said and how. Older children were sent out of the living room when it
was time to get into the juicy details about “you-know-who” up on the third floor who
had gone and gotten herself “p-r-e-g-n-a-n-t!” But my parents, knowing that I could
spell well beyond my years, always demanded that I follow the others out to play.
Beyond sexual misconduct and death, everything else was considered harmless for our
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young ears. And so among the anecdotes of the triumphs and disappointments in the
various workings of their lives, the word nigger was used in my presence, but it was
set within contexts and inflections that caused it to register in my mind as something
else.
6 In the singular, the word was always applied to a man who had distinguished
himself in some situation that brought their approval for his strength, intelligence, or
drive:
7 “Did Johnny do that?”
8 “I’m telling you, that nigger pulled in $ 6,000 of overtime last year. Said he got
enough for a down payment on a house.”
9 When used with a possessive adjective by a woman––“my nigger”––it became a
term of endearment for her husband or boyfriend. But it could be more than just a term
applied to a man. In their mouths it became the pure essence of manhood––a
disembodied force that channeled their past history of struggle and present survival
against the odds into a victorious statement of being: “Yeah, that old foreman found
out quick enough––you don’t mess with a nigger.”
10 In the plural, it became a description of some group within the community that had
overstepped the bounds of decency as my family defined it. Parents who neglected
their children, a drunken couple who fought in public, people who simply refused to
look for work, those with excessively dirty mouths or unkempt households were all
“trifling niggers.” This particular circle could forgive hard times, unemployment, the
occasional bout of depression––they had gone through all of that themselves––but the
unforgivable sin was a lack of self-respect.
11 A woman could never be a “nigger” in the singular, with its connotations of
confirming worth. The noun girl was its closest equivalent in that sense, but only when
used in direct address and regardless of the gender doing the addressing. Girl was a
token of respect for a woman. The one-syllable word was drawn out to sound like
three in recognition of the extra ounce of wit, nerve, or daring that the woman had
shown in the situation under discussion.
12 “G-i-r-l, stop. You mean you said that to his face?”
13 But if the word was used in a third-person reference or shortened so that it almost
snapped out of the mouth, it always involved some element of communal disapproval.
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And age became an important factor in these exchanges. It was only between
individuals of the same generation, or from any older person to a younger (but never
the other way around), that girl would be considered a compliment.
14 I don’t agree with the argument that use of the word nigger at this social stratum of
the black community was an internalization of racism. The dynamics were the exact
opposite: the people in my grandmother’s living room took a word that whites used to
signify worthlessness or degradation and rendered it impotent. Gathering there
together, they transformed nigger to signify the varied and complex human beings
they knew themselves to be. If the word was to disappear totally from the mouths of
even the most liberal of white society, no one in that room was naive enough
to believe it would disappear from white minds.
15 Meeting the word head-on, they proved it had absolutely nothing to do with the
way they were determined to live their lives.
16 So there must have been dozens of times that nigger was spoken in front of me
before I reached the third grade. But I didn’t “hear” it until it was said by a small pair
of lips that had already learned it could be a way to humiliate me. That was the word I
went home and asked my mother about. And since she knew that I had to grow up in
America, she took me in her lap and explained.
A. Vocabulary: Match a word in column A with its definition in column B
A B
1. inferior a. proved to be true by demonstration or evidence
2. transcendent b. an opinion held by all or most
3. intermittent c. harmless
4. reprieve d. lower in order or status
5. consensus e. stopping and starting again at intervals; periodic
6. innocuous f. certain to happen
7. verified g. going beyond the limits of; exceed or surpass
8. inevitable h. give temporary relief to
9. gravitated i. unimportant.
10. mecca j. a loud outcry; uproar
11. clamor k. a place visited by many people
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12. inflections l. not tidy; messy
13. endearment m. ineffective or powerless
14. disembodied n. attracted toward
15. unkempt o. tones
16. trifling p. be free from bodily existence
17. stratum q. any of the socioeconomic groups of a society
18. degradation r. pronounced or declared
19. rendered s. being lower in quality, moral character or dignity
20. impotent t. a word or act expressing affection
1. Why does Naylor think that written language is inferior to spoken language?
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2. In paragraph 15, Naylor says that although the word nigger had been used in her
presence many times, she didn’t really “hear” the word until a mean little boy said it.
How do you explain this contradiction?
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3. Naylor said that “the people in my grandmother’s living room…transformer nigger”
How?
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4. What is Naylor’s primary purpose in this essay?
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5. In her first two paragraphs, Naylor discusses language in the abstract (or
theoretical). How are these paragraphs connected to her stories about the word nigger?
Why does she begin her essay this way?
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6. Do you think this type of introduction is effective or not? Why?
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7. Go through Naylor’s essay and note which paragraphs discuss the racist uses of
nigger and which discuss the non-racist uses. How do Naylor’s organization and the
spaces she devotes to each use help her make her point?
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D. Paraphrasing:
1. Language is the subject. It is the written form with which I’ve managed to keep the
wolf away from the door and, in diaries, to keep my sanity. In spite of this, I consider
the written word inferior to the spoken, and much of the frustration experienced by
novelists is the awareness that whatever we manage to capture in even the most
transcendent passages falls far short of the richness of life. Dialogue achieves its
power in the dynamics of a fleeting moment of sight, sound, smell, and touch.
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123
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2. Had he called me a nymphomaniac or a necrophiliac, I couldn’t have been more
puzzled. I didn’t know what a nigger was, but I knew that whatever it meant, it was
something he shouldn’t have called me. This was verified when I raised my hand, and
in a loud voice repeated what he had said and watched the teacher scold him for using
a “bad” word. I was later to go home and ask the inevitable question that every black
parent must face––”Mommy, what does nigger mean?”
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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3. In the singular, the word was always applied to a man who had distinguished
himself in some situation that brought their approval for his strength, intelligence, or
drive. When used with a possessive adjective by a woman––“my nigger”––it became a
term of endearment for her husband or boyfriend. But it could be more than just a term
applied to a man.
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4. In the plural, it became a description of some group within the community that had
overstepped the bounds of decency as my family defined it. Parents who neglected
their children, a drunken couple who fought in public, people who simply refused to
look for work, those with excessively dirty mouths or unkempt households were all
“trifling niggers.”
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124
E. Summarizing:
The expository essay focuses on the definition of the word “nigger” used in different
contexts. Through the essay, Gloria Naylor states her main purpose through skillful
ways of writing. Write a summary to describe best what she wants to convey to the
readers through the definition of the word “nigger”.
125
UNIT 14: PRACTICE 9
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14, which are based on Passage 1
below.
How The Pauli Exclusion Principle Regulates The Evolution Of Stars
1. All stars (like plants and animals) evolve, with each one following the same general
pattern of evolution. Their journey along the evolutionary path, and ultimate fate at
stellar death, is determined by their initial mass, which is measured in multiples of the
solar mass of our own Sun.
2. Perturbations of nebulous interstellar clouds in space result in gravitational

interaction, with the consequent contraction of gaseous matter to create protostars,
which are much larger than the stars they will finally become. As the temperature
increases, the gas becomes completely ionised to form plasma and gravitational
contraction of the core then takes place. The onset of hydrogen-burning happens at a
core temperature of several million degrees, and converts hydrogen to helium through
nuclear fusion. The greater part of a star’s evolutionary lifetime is spent hydrogen-
burning and, during this period, it is said to be on the Main Sequence. The end of
hydrogen-burning is marked by the evolution of a star into a red giant, when it is said
to leave the Main Sequence. Burning ceases completely in the core, which undergoes
gravitational contraction to maintain mechanical equilibrium.
3. Now, the Pauli Exclusion Principle states that ‘no two identical particles can occupy
the same quantum state’ (Kaufmann, 1994): that is, loosely, they cannot have the same
spatial location and momentum. This principle is important in determining the ultimate
fate of stars. Consider low Main Sequence mass stars (that is, stars of less than three
solar masses) which have passed through the hydrogen-burning phase to helium-
burning. Such bodies require extreme compression of the core to raise their tem-
perature sufficiently for the onset of helium-burning. Increasing density of electrons
occurs, so that they are squashed into close proximity with each other, until a limit is
reached when they resist any further compression. This phenomenon is called de-
generacy, and is a manifestation of the Pauli Exclusion Principle. Resistance to further
compression results in degenerate-electron pressure which supports the core, prevent-
126
ing its contraction. However, this pressure is independent of temperature, and remains
constant while the temperature continues to increase. Helium ignition takes place and
the thermonuclear reaction proceeds at an increasing rate until a helium-flash occurs.
The temperature is so great that degeneracy cannot be maintained: the core suddenly
expands with a corresponding decrease in temperature that abruptly ends the helium-
flash. This cycle may be repeated until all the core helium is converted to carbon.
4. More massive stars do not undergo a helium-flash. Moreover, their cores are suffi-
ciently massive for further element-burning to occur, until they, too, reach a limit im-
posed by degeneracy. That is, as the product of each phase of element-burning is al-
ways nuclei of greater mass, it requires even greater compression of the core remnant
in order to raise the temperature sufficiently high enough to initiate the next phase.
Such compression can only occur until the degenerate condition is achieved.
5. Stellar death comes about when the core cannot carry out further element-burning,
because of its degenerate nature. Stars of Main Sequence mass less than seven solar
masses become white dwarfs. The stability of a white dwarf is only maintained if its
final (post-Main Sequence) mass does not exceed the Chandrasekhar Limit of 1.4 solar
masses. Degenerate-electron pressure supports the core against collapse, thereby
conforming to the Principle.
6. Neutron stars are the stellar corpses of stars whose Main Sequence mass is between
seven and twenty solar masses. Before death, these stars have undergone some further
element-burning and the final core mass exceeds the Chandrasekhar Limit. This is too
great for degenerate-electron pressure to prevent collapse of the core: electrons and
protons are crushed together to form neutrons and neutrinos. Gravitational collapse
continues until degeneracy equilibrium is achieved once more. It is degenerate-
neutron pressure that halts the collapse, and, thereby, upholds the Principle.
7. The most massive stars have completed burning to obtain an iron core, and have a
Ma Sequence mass exceeding twenty solar masses. This is so great that degenerate-
neutron pressure cannot support it, and rapid collapse ensues. Since density is in-
versely proportional to volume and the mass is vast, then, as the volume dwindles, the
density tends to infinity and a Black Hole is formed.
127
8. Black Holes are a violation of Pauli’s Exclusion Principle. If the Principle did not
regulate the evolution of stars, nothing would prevent the inexorable collapse of an
interstellar cloud from its initial disturbance into a massive Black Hole.
QUESTIONS 1- 7
The flow chart below summaries paragraph 2. Complete the chart with the
information from the passage
128
QUESTIONS 8- 11
Choose the appropriate letters A-D
8. What can be said about degeneracy?
A. It violates the Pauli Exclusion Principle.
B. It is not dependent upon temperature.
C. It is the point where the core of a star withstands further compression.
D. It happens to most, but not all stars.
9. According to the Pauli Exclusion Principle...
A. no two stars are the same.
B. low mass stars do not degenerate.
C. it is not possible for two identical particles to be in the same space at the same time.
D. when a star is compressed, the temperature and the pressure rise.
10. Which of the following is true of the largest stars, but not of smaller ones?
A. Compression of their core is halted by degeneracy.
B. Their core becomes iron.
C. Their fate is stellar death.
D. They undergo a helium flash.
11. What affects the development of all stars?
A. Their stellar death.
B. Their evolutionary path.
C. Their mass when they are first formed.
D. Their size when compared to our own Sun.
QUESTIONS 12- 14
Use information from the passage to complete the table below. Use NO MORE THAN
TWO WORDS for each space.
Stars with main sequence mass of turn into

Less than 7 12 ………………………………….
Between 7-20 13 ………………………………….
20+ 14 ………………………………….
129
READING PASSAGE 2
Envy Without Reason?

A. Do you come from a culture which places emphasis on the emotion of envy?
Without a doubt, envy is something that we all feel at some time in our lives. The
Concise Oxford Dictionary lists envy as ‘resentful or admiring contemplation of more
fortunate person’. Instead of sharing in the joy of a new job, car or party dress, a friend
either pretends she or he has not noticed the fantastic new BMW or says ‘Mercedes are
better’. But does it matter? In many parts of the world, the personal satisfaction felt by
those who prosper is tinged with concerns about the ill-will which success provokes in
friends, and even family members. Envy becomes something to be feared, for it may
have the power to cause harm.
B.The Swahili people of Coastal East Africa take envy very seriously. They frequently
feel the need to hide or minimise personal success. Hence, boasting can be a dangerous
pastime. Envy emanates from neighbours, friends and family. After all, a stranger does
not care if you have managed to replace your thatched roof with corrugated iron. But
those Swahili who have struggled to build houses which are a little better than their
neighbours often paint on the front of their houses the slogan, hasidi hana saba- bu\
this means ‘envy without reason’. The slogan seems to be a forlorn attempt to remind
neighbours and any envious passers-by that the apparent good fortune indicated by a
superior house has been earned. The message is that there is no reason for envy, and
that those harbouring ill-will should control their feelings. The successful are pleading
to be allowed to succeed.
C. In Swahili culture, and many others, envy emanates from the eye of the beholder.
The Evil Eye, as a source of harm to those who fall under its gaze, is reported
throughout much of the world. Indeed, according to Brian Spooner, an expert on the
various ways used to keep envy at bay, the idea of the Evil Eye is so widespread that it
can be regarded as a universal phenomenon. In the parts of Europe that border the
Mediterranean, in the Middle East and North Africa, the wearing of pendants depicting
one large eye is a popular way of repelling envy.
130
D. Ideas about the Evil Eye moved from the Mediterranean to the New World of
America. Atwood Gaines has traced the origin of beliefs about the Evil Eye as a cause
of sickness from Spain to Mexico, Haiti and Puerto Rica. The illnesses caused by the
Evil Eye are given specific names such as susto. In such cases, the Evil Eye is
suspected after an illness or misfortune has already occurred.
E. Marcia Inhorn has written about the Evil Eye in Egypt. There, women may attribute
infertility and other health problems to the envy of neighbours or friends. But in the
Middle East, as elsewhere, envy can occur in many settings. Hence, at the end of an
important meeting to discuss a research study, the head of the project noticed that her
best silk suit had white marks on both the jacket and skirt. It was ruined. She worked
out that after the sumptuous lunch, which had preceded the meeting, the table had been
cleaned with bleach. She had then brushed against the table. Nobody else’s clothes
were damaged. Her Palestinian colleague suggested that envy, harboured by an
unknown acquaintance, had ruined her suit. The grounds for envy were either her
beautiful clothes or her powerful position within the research team.
F. Some social scientists argue that envy is widespread in societies where resources
are scarce and one person’s gain is considered another’s loss. The reasoning behind
this theory of envy is that, when people are poor and in competition with each other,
they believe that there is not enough good food, good fortune or good jobs to go
around. GM Foster studied peasant society in Latin America and propounded ‘the
image of limited good’. According to his theory, when somebody from a family or
village prospers, they use up part of a stock of limited good and reduce the chances of
the success of others. Foster sees the ‘image of limited good’ as operating in peasant
societies where people know and compete with each other in adverse economic
conditions. However, the theory may hold good for many other social and economic
contexts. Take scholarships, for example. There are only so many to go round. If your
best friend gets the scholarship, your chances of getting one too may be greatly
reduced.
G. Western psychoanalysts have also studied envy. Melanie Klein sees envy as an
emotion felt by the breastfeeding infant towards its mother’s breast. Although the
infant feels love and gratitude towards its mother, it also wants the goodness of the
131
milk for itself. Some of these scholars, unlike everyday speakers of English, are
careful to distinguish between envy and jealousy. Swahili people make the same
distinction. Jealousy is a triangular relationship. For example, two friends spend all
their free time together until one takes a lover. The neglected friend grows jealous of
the affection lavished on the new lover. When there is jealousy, three people are
involved. Envy, on the other hand, is more straightforward: one person envies
another’s achievement, quality or possession. While most English people do not take
envy seriously, it remains a matter of concern to people worldwide. It makes ambition
and the pursuit of success more difficult, and some would say, dangerous. Many seek
ways to avoid falling victim to envy. How do you deal with it?
QUESTIONS 15- 20
Reading Passage 2 above has seven paragraphs (A-G).
Choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph from the List of Headings
below. Paragraph D has been done for you as an example. Please note that you
may use each heading only once.
List of Headings viii. Envy and illness
i. Breastfeeding and envy ix. Envy where resources are limited
ii. A victim of envy x. The Swahili in Africa
iii. A global remedy for envy xi. The work of social scientists
iv. What is envy? xii. Envy in relation to other emotions
v. The Evil Eye in Europe xiii. A dictionary definition of envy
vi. Sharing success xiv. A universal phenomenon
vii. No grounds for envy xv. Envy in poor societies
15. Paragraph A …………….. 18. Paragraph E ……………..

16. Paragraph B …………….. 19. Paragraph F ………………..
17. Paragraph C …………….. 20. Paragraph G ………………..
Example: Paragraph D Answer: viii
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QUESTIONS 21- 24
Use the information in the text to match the people listed (21-24) with the
Concepts (i-vii). Note that there are more concepts than names, so you will not
use all of them.
21. Brian Spooner
22. GM Foster
23. Melanie Klein
24. Atwood Gaines
Concepts
i. the idea that there is only so much good to go round in any one community
ii. that there is a relationship between the Evil Eye and illness
iii. the theory that the Evil Eye influences infertility
iv. keeping envy at bay
v. the concept of the Evil Eye being a universal phenomenon
vi. the distinction between jealousy and envy
vii. that babies envy their mothers’ milk.
QUESTIONS 25- 28
Complete the following sentences with information from the passage. Use NO
MORE THAN THREE WORDS to fill in each blank space.
25. …………………………… people in society are often the victims of envy.
26. The Evil Eye is a …………………………… to those who come within its range.
27. Among the Swahili, boasting is a …………………………… .
28. The Swahili on the East African coast often feel they have to conceal or
……..…………………………..
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READING PASSAGE 3
Have you a tea-room?

We have all walked through modern office blocks where the workers are busily
tapping away at keyboards. They have their mugs of tea, or coffee, as they work. Some
have a packet of something to nibble in the drawer; but how do they manage to make
one packet of chocolate digestives last one whole week? There is an area by the wall
somewhere with a water geyser perpetually on the boil, and a stack of mugs. There is a
palpable air of activity. Productivity must be booming, one thinks. But is it?
How many of these people work late of their own volition, want to obtain a result
before going home, and will beaver away happily until well after dark to achieve it?
Damned few! Yes! It may seem wonderful to have a constant flow of liquid
refreshment at the desk, not to need a tea, or coffee, break - because the whole
working day is a tea break. Yet, who wants the tea when the ambience, all too often, is
that of a concentration camp?
Why not escape from the desk with a cup of tea from time to time? Perhaps, take your
break in a comfortable chair, talk about last night’s football results or discuss work,
seek or offer advice, arrange a game of squash, play bridge. Or, network and enjoy
some refreshment at the same time!
What will the Boss say, however? If he has any sense, he will also come and join you.
Perhaps, he supports another team? You can discuss the merits of the players and show
him how competently you can present a case. He will realise that the tea-room is an
ideal place for informal meetings with his staff, where any number of day-to-day
problems can be sorted out over a cup of tea, and where anyone who needs a tender
warning about something can be quietly given it without the march to The Office. If,
as a consequence, the communication process improves, the boss may even dispense
with a layer of middle management ‘twixt you and himself’. He will then no longer
need to have expensive Off-site Meetings, where his middle managers experience
Free Expression. He can spend some of the savings on light refreshments for his staff
to enjoy!
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If you, or a colleague, have a problem with some aspect of work, share it with everyone in
the tea-room. One of your colleagues will, doubtless, have had similar difficulties in the
past and will have discovered a ridiculously simple solution. To your surprise, you will
find he is more than happy to share his experience and answers with you over a cup of tea.
Both of you will then go back to your desks with added commitment and make a positive
contribution to the work of the group.
Every team has its ‘specialists’. They are normal people in their everyday lives, but there
are those special situations where they seem to excel all the time. It may be that they
format new documentation with consummate ease. Maybe, they can bake excellent butter
sponge cakes decorated as fax machines . . . . The true specialist can train anyone to fulfill
his role.
Who will be trained? Keen, eager people: the raw recruits. Released from the inhibitions
of the office environment in the relaxed atmosphere of a tea-room, they have the
confidence to ask dumb questions. This is, in fact, the best place to find solutions to
problems; and conduct training. In the tea-room, old hands, freed temporarily from the
modern technologies they often do not fully understand, will invariably offer advice.
These people, who know all about the way things happen and what the final product
should look like, will give free information communicated with an honest confidence.
Why have lots of knowledge, if you cannot share it effectively with others? The Boss
should observe the information flow between these people.
Situations like these occur in tea-rooms worldwide every day. These are all natural human
interactions. There is much that can be said for the idea of fixed tea times during the
working day away from one’s precise place of work. Suggesting this will make Asset
Managers cringe. This room is only being used 4 hours a day!
But let us say we allow staff to enjoy staggered breaks. The morning coffee is between
10:00 and 11:00. Lunch is sometime between 12:00 and 2:00. Afternoon tea is between
3:00 and 4:00. The tea-room can then be used by time-conscious executives to have their
meetings. And, since the room is required for refreshment, these meetings must never
overrun, unless they are scheduled after afternoon tea.... Who wants to work late anyway?
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QUESTIONS 29- 33
Reading Passage 3 describes a number of Implications for the working
environment provided certain Conditions are met. Match each Condition (29-33)
in List A with its Implication (A-I) in List B. There are more Implications in List
B than you will need, so you will not use all of them.
List A: Conditions List B: Implications
29. Provided people share and solve A. the tendency for meetings to overrun is
problems together, avoided.
30. If the atmosphere in the tea-room is B. the employer will recognise the
totally relaxed, positive contribution to team-work.
31. Should bosses relax with their C. they will work harder as part of a team.
employees, D. a layer of management will perhaps be
32. When tea-rooms are used as a multi- removed.
purpose venue, E. some executives will be able to work
33. If communication between boss and later.
staff is improved, F. more experienced staff will have an
opportunity to train the more
inexperienced staff.
G. they will see tea-rooms as an informal
opportunity to meet staff and solve
problems.
H. there will be more off-site meetings for
middle managers.
I. the boss will see how information is
exchanged between staff members.
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QUESTIONS 34- 38
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
34. A variety of snacks should be provided in tea-rooms ___________
35. It is surprising that office workers make a packet of chocolate digestives last for a
week. ___________
36. The writer suggests workers could, at times, change the setting for their tea breaks.
___________
37. Specialists excel in their everyday lives. ___________
38. Tea-rooms are the best places to ask facile questions. ___________
QUESTION 39- 42
Using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage, answer the questions
below.
39. How many people voluntarily work late? ……………………
40. On what can the money saved by avoiding off-site meetings be spent?
……………………
41. What would Asset Managers do if the tea-room were used only 4 hours per day?
……………………
42. What do older and experienced people not always understand? ……………………
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UNIT 15: PRACTICE 10
READING PASSAGE 1
Passage 1 below
QUESTIONS 1-6
Reading Passage 1 has six paragraphs, A-F. Choose the correct heading for each
paragraph from the list of headings below
List of Headings
i A business-model approach to education
ii The reforms that improved education in Finland
iii Educational challenges of the future
iv Ways in which equality is maintained in the Finnish education system
v The benefits of the introduction of testing
vi An approach that helped a young learner
vii Statistical proof of education success
viii Support for families working and living in Finland
ix The impact of the education system on Finland’s economy
1. Paragraph A …………………
2. Paragraph B …………………
3. Paragraph C …………………
4. Paragraph D …………………
5. Paragraph E …………………
6. Paragraph F …………………
Why Are Finland’s Schools Successful?

The country’s achievements in education have other nations doing their homework
A. At Kirkkojarvi Comprehensive School in Espoo, a suburb west of Helsinki, Kari

Louhivuori, the school’s principal, decided to try something extreme by Finnish
standards. One of his sixth-grade students, a recent immigrant, was falling behind,
resisting his teacher’s best efforts. So he decided to hold the boy back a year.
Standards in the country have vastly improved in reading, math and science literacy
over the past decade, in large part because its teachers are trusted to do whatever it
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takes to turn young lives around. ‘I took Besart on that year as my private student,'
explains Louhivuori. When he was not studying science, geography and math, Besart
was seated next to Louhivuori's desk, taking books from a tall stack, slowly reading
one, then another, then devouring them by the dozens. By the end of the year, he had
conquered his adopted country’s vowel-rich language and arrived at the realization
that he could, in fact, learn.
B.This tale of a single rescued child hints at some of the reasons for Finland’s amazing
record of education success. The transformation of its education system began some
40 years ago but teachers had little idea it had been so successful until 2000. In this
year, the first results from the Programme for International Student Assessment
(PISA), a standardized test given to 15-year-olds in more than 40 global venues,
revealed Finnish youth to be the best at reading in the world. Three years later, they
led in math. By 2006, Finland was first out of the 57 nations that participate in science.
In the latest PISA scores, the nation came second in science, third in reading and sixth
in math among nearly half a million students worldwide.
C. In the United States, government officials have attempted to improve standards by

introducing marketplace competition into public schools. In recent years, a group of
Wall Street financiers and philanthropists such as Bill Gates have put money behind
private-sector ideas, such as charter schools, which have doubled in number in the past
decade. President Obama, too, apparently thought competition was the answer. One
policy invited states to compete for federal dollars using tests and other methods to
measure teachers, a philosophy that would not be welcome in Finland. ‘I think, in fact,
teachers would tear off their shirts,’ said Timo Heikkinen, a Helsinki principal with 24
years of teaching experience. ‘If you only measure the statistics, you miss the human
aspect.’
D. There are no compulsory standardized tests in Finland, apart from one exam at the
end of students’ senior year in high school. There is no competition between students,
schools or regions. Finland’s schools are publicly funded. The people in the
government agencies running them, from national officials to local authorities, are
educators rather than business people or politicians. Every school has the same
national goals and draws from the same pool of university-trained educators. The
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result is that a Finnish child has a good chance of getting the same quality education
no matter whether he or she lives in a rural village or a university town.
E. It’s almost unheard of for a child to show up hungry to school. Finland provides
three years of maternity leave and subsidized day care to parents, and preschool for all
five-year-olds, where the emphasis is on socializing. In addition, the state subsidizes
parents, paying them around 150 euros per month for every child until he or she turns
17. Schools provide food, counseling and taxi service if needed. Health care is even
free for students taking degree courses.
F. Finland’s schools were not always a wonder. For the first half of the twentieth
century, only the privileged got a quality education. But In 1963, the Finnish
Parliament made the bold decision to choose public education as the best means of
driving the economy forward and out of recession. Public schools were organized into
one system of comprehensive schools for ages 7 through 16. Teachers from all over
the nation contributed to a national curriculum that provided guidelines, not
prescriptions, for them to refer to. Besides Finnish and Swedish (the country’s second
official language), children started learning a third language (English is a favorite)
usually beginning at age nine. The equal distribution of equipment was next, meaning
that all teachers had their fair share of teaching resources to aid learning. As the
comprehensive schools improved, so did the upper secondary schools (grades 10
through 12). The second critical decision came in 1979, when it was required that
every teacher gain a fifth-year Master’s degree in theory and practice, paid for by the
state. From then on, teachers were effectively granted equal status with doctors and
lawyers. Applicants began flooding teaching programs, not because the salaries were
so high but because autonomous decision¬making and respect made the job desirable.
And as Louhivuori explains, ‘We have our own motivation to succeed because we love
the work.’
QUESTIONS 7-13
Complete the notes below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A
NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
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The school system in Finland
PISA tests
• In the most recent tests, Finland’s top subject was 7………………………..
History
1963:
• A new school system was needed to improve Finland’s 8…………………….
• Schools followed 9………………………that were created partly by teachers.
• Young pupils had to study an additional 10……………………..
• All teachers were given the same 11………………………to use.
1979:
• Teachers had to get a 12………………….but they did not have to pay for this.
• Applicants were attracted to the 13………………….. that teaching received.
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READING PASSAGE 2:
Passage 2 below:
QUESTIONS 14-19
Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F. Choose the correct heading for each
paragraph from the list of headings below.
List of Headings
i. The power within each studio
ii. The movie industry adapts to innovation
iii. Contrasts between cinema and other media of the time
iv. The value of studying Hollywood’s Golden Age
v. Distinguishing themselves from the rest of the market
vi. A double attack on film studios’ power
vii. Gaining control of the industry
viii. The top movies of Hollywood’s Golden Age
14. Paragraph A …………………
15. Paragraph B …………………
16. Paragraph C …………………
17. Paragraph D …………………
18. Paragraph E …………………
19. Paragraph F …………………
The Hollywood Film Industry
A. This chapter examines the ‘Golden Age’ of the Hollywood film studio system and
explores how a particular kind of filmmaking developed during this period in US film
history. It also focuses on the two key elements which influenced the emergence of the
classic Hollywood studio system: the advent of sound and the business ideal of vertical
integration. In addition to its historical interest, inspecting the growth of the studio
system may offer clues regarding the kinds of struggles that accompany the growth of
any new medium. It might, in fact, be intriguing to examine which changes occurred
during the growth of the Hollywood studio, and compare those changes to
contemporary struggles in which production companies are trying to define and
control emerging industries, such as online film and interactive television.
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B. The shift of the industry away from ‘silent’ films began during the late 1920s.
Warner Bros.’ 1927 film The Jazz Singer was the first to feature synchronized speech,
and with it came a period of turmoil for the industry. Studios now had proof that
‘talkie’ films would make them money, but the financial investment this kind of
filmmaking would require, from new camera equipment to new projection facilities,
made the studios hesitant to invest at first. In the end, the power of cinematic sound to
both move audiences and enhance the story persuaded studios that talkies were worth
investing in. Overall, the use of sound in film was well-received by audiences, but
there were still many technical factors to consider. Although full integration of sound
into movies was complete by 1930, it would take somewhat longer for them to regain
their stylistic elegance and dexterity. The camera now had to be encased in a big,
clumsy, unmovable soundproof box. In addition, actors struggled, having to direct
their speech to awkwardly-hidden microphones in huge plants, telephones or even
costumes.
C. Vertical integration is the other key component in the rise of the Hollywood studio
system. The major studios realized they could increase their profits by handling each
stage of a film’s life: production (making the film), distribution (getting the film out to
people) and exhibition (owning the theaters in major cities where films were shown
first). Five studios, ‘The Big Five’, worked to achieve vertical integration through the
late 1940s, owning vast real estate on which to construct elaborate sets. In addition,
these studios set the exact terms of films’ release dates and patterns. Warner Bros.,
Paramount, 20th Century Fox, MGM and RKO formed this exclusive club. ‘The Little
Three’ studios - Universal, Columbia and United Artists - also made pictures, but each
lacked one of the crucial elements of vertical integration. Together these eight
companies operated as a mature oligopoly, essentially running the entire market.
D. During the Golden Age, the studios were remarkably consistent and stable
enterprises, due in large part to long-term management heads - the infamous ‘movie
moguls’ who ruled their kingdoms with iron fists. At MGM, Warner Bros, and
Columbia, the same men ran their studios for decades. The rise of the studio system
also hinges on the treatment of stars, who were constructed and exploited to suit a
studio’s image and schedule. Actors were bound up in seven-year contracts to a single
studio, and the studio boss generally held all the options. Stars could be loaned out to
143
other production companies at any time. Studio bosses could also force bad roles on
actors, and manipulate every single detail of stars’ images with their mammoth in-
house publicity departments.
Some have compared the Hollywood studio system to a factory, and it is useful to
remember that studios were out to make money first and art second.
E. On the other hand, studios also had to cultivate flexibility, in addition to consistent
factory output. Studio heads realized that they couldn’t make virtually the same film
over and over again with the same cast of stars and still expect to keep turning a profit.
They also had to create product differentiation. Examining how each production
company tried to differentiate itself has led to loose characterizations of individual
studios’ styles. MGM tended to put out a lot of all-star productions while Paramount
excelled in comedy and Warner Bros, developed a reputation for gritty social realism.
20th Century Fox forged the musical and a great deal of prestige biographies, while
Universal specialized in classic horror movies.
F. In 1948, struggling independent movie producers and exhibitors finally triumphed
in their battle against the big studios’ monopolistic behavior. In the United States
versus Paramount federal decree of that year, the studios were ordered to give up their
theaters in what is commonly referred to as ‘divestiture’ - opening the market to
smaller producers. This, coupled with the advent of television in the 1950s, seriously
compromised the studio system’s influence and profits. Hence, 1930 and 1948 are
generally considered bookends to Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Questions 20-23
20. After The Jazz Singer came out, other studios immediately began making movies
with synchronized sound.
21. There were some drawbacks to recording movie actors’ voices in the early 1930s.
22. There was intense competition between actors for contracts with the leading
studios.
23. Studios had total control over how their actors were perceived by the public.
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Questions 24-26
the passage for each answer.
The Hollywood Studios
Throughout its Golden Age, the Hollywood movie industry was controlled by a
handful of studios. Using a system known as 24…………………….. , the biggest
studios not only made movies, but handled their distribution and then finally showed
them in their own theaters. These studios were often run by autocratic bosses - men
known as 25…………………. , who often remained at the head of organisations
for decades. However, the domination of the industry by the leading studios came to
an end in 1948, when they were forced to open the market to smaller producers - a
process known as 26………………………
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READING PASSAGE 3
Passage 3 below.
The Swiffer
1. For a fascinating tale about creativity, look at a cleaning product called the Swiffer
and how it came about, urges writer Jonah Lehrer. In the story of the Swiffer, he
argues, we have the key elements in producing breakthrough ideas: frustration,
moments of insight and sheer hard work. The story starts with a multinational
company which had invented products for keeping homes spotless, and couldn't come
up with better ways to clean floors, so it hired designers to watch how people cleaned.
Frustrated after hundreds of hours of observation, they one day noticed a woman do
with a paper towel what people do all the time: wipe something up and throw it away.
An idea popped into lead designer Harry West's head: the solution to their problem
was a floor mop with a disposable cleaning surface. Mountains of prototypes and years
of teamwork later, they unveiled the Swiffer, which quickly became a commercial
success.
2. Lehrer, the author of Imagine, a new book that seeks to explain how creativity
works, says this study of the imagination started from a desire to understand what
happens in the brain at the moment of sudden insight. 'But the book definitely spiraled
out of control,' Lehrer says. 'When you talk to creative people, they'll tell you about the
'eureka'* moment, but when you press them they also talk about the hard work that
comes afterwards, so I realised I needed to write about that, too. And then I realised I
couldn't just look at creativity from the perspective of the brain, because it's also about
the culture and context, about the group and the team and the way we collaborate.'
3. When it comes to the mysterious process by which inspiration comes into your head
as if from nowhere, Lehrer says modern neuroscience has produced a 'first draft'
explanation of what is happening in the brain. He writes of how burnt-out American
singer Bob Dylan decided to walk away from his musical career in 1965 and escape to
a cabin in the woods, only to be overcome by a desire to write. Apparently 'Like a
Rolling Stone' suddenly flowed from his pen. 'It's like a ghost is writing a song,' Dylan
has reportedly said. 'It gives you the song and it goes away.' But it's no ghost,
according to Lehrer.
146
4. Instead, the right hemisphere of the brain is assembling connections between past
influences and making something entirely new. Neuroscientists have roughly charted
this process by mapping the brains of people doing word puzzles solved by making
sense of remotely connecting information. For instance, subjects am given three words
such as 'age', 'mile' and 'sand' - and asked to come up with a single word that can
precede or follow each of them to form a compound word. (It happens to be 'stone'.)
Using brain-imaging equipment, researchers discovered that when people get the
answer in an apparent flash of insight, a small fold of tissue called the anterior superior
temporal gyrus suddenly lights up just beforehand. This stays silent when the word
puzzle is solved through careful analysis. Lehrer says that this area of the brain lights
up only after we've hit the wall on a problem. Then the brain starts hunting through the
'filing cabinets of the right hemisphere' to make the connections that produce the right
answer.
5. Studies have demonstrated it's possible to predict a moment of insight up to eight
seconds before it arrives. The predictive signal is a steady rhythm of alpha waves
emanating from the brain's right hemisphere, which are closely associated with
relaxing activities. 'When our minds are at ease-when those alpha waves are rippling
through the brain - we're more likely to direct the spotlight of attention towards that
stream of remote associations emanating from the right hemisphere,' Lehrer writes. 'In
contrast, when we are diligently focused, our attention tends to be towards the details
of the problems we are trying to solve.' In other words, then we are less likely to make
those vital associations. So, heading out for a walk or lying down are important phases
of the creative process, and smart companies know this. Some now have a policy of
encouraging staff to take time out during the day and spend time on things that at first
glance are unproductive (like playing a PC game), but day-dreaming has been shown
to be positively correlated with problem-solving. However, to be more imaginative,
says Lehrer, it's also crucial to collaborate with people from a wide range of
backgrounds because if colleagues are too socially intimate, creativity is stifled.
6. Creativity, it seems, thrives on serendipity. American entrepreneur Steve Jobs
believed so. Lehrer describes how at Pixar Animation, Jobs designed the entire
workplace to maximise the chance of strangers bumping into each other, striking up
conversations and learning from one another. He also points to a study of 766 business
147
graduates who had gone on to own their own companies. Those with the greatest
diversity of acquaintances enjoyed far more success. Lehrer says he has taken all this
on board, and despite his inherent shyness, when he's sitting next to strangers on a
plane or at a conference, forces himself to initiate conversations. As for predictions
that the rise of the Internet would make the need for shared working space obsolete,
Lehrer says research shows the opposite has occurred; when people meet face-to-face,
the level of creativity increases. This is why the kind of place we live in is so
important to innovation. According to theoretical physicist Geoffrey West, when
corporate institutions get bigger, they often become less receptive to change. Cities,
however, allow our ingenuity to grow by pulling huge numbers of different people
together, who then exchange ideas. Working from the comfort of our homes may be
convenient, therefore, but it seems we need the company of others to achieve our finest
'eureka' moments.
Glossary: Eureka: In ancient Greek, the meaning was ‘I have found!’. Now it can be used
when people suddenly find the solution to a difficult problem and want to celebrate
QUESTIONS 27-30
27. What are we told about the product called a ‘Swiffer’?
A. Its designers had little experience working with household objects.
B. Once the idea for it was conceived, it did not take long to develop.
C. It achieved profits beyond the manufacturer’s expectations.
D. Its design was inspired by a common housework habit.
28. When Jonah Lehrer began writing his book,
A. he had not intended to focus on creativity.
B. he ended up revising his plans for the content.
C. he was working in a highly creative environment.
D. he was driven by his own experience of the ‘eureka’ moment.
29. Lehrer refers to the singer Bob Dylan in order to
A. illustrate how ideas seem spontaneous.
B. exemplify ways in which we might limit our inventiveness.
C. contrast different approaches to stimulating the imagination.
D. propose particular approaches to regaining lost creativity.
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30. What did neuroscientists discover from the word puzzle experiment?
A. Memories are easier to retrieve when they are more meaningful.
B. An analytical approach to problem-solving is not necessarily effective.
C. One part of the brain only becomes active when a connection is made
suddenly.
D. Creative people tend to take a more instinctive approach to solving language
problems.
QUESTIONS 31-34
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-G, below.
31. Scientists know a moment of insight is coming _________
32. Mental connections are much harder to make _________
33. Some companies require their employees to stop working _________
34. A team will function more successfully _________
A. when people are not too familiar with one another.
B. because there is greater activity in the right side of the brain.
C. if people are concentrating on the specifics of a problem.
D. so they can increase the possibility of finding answers.
E. when people lack the experience required for problem-solving.
F. when the brain shows strong signs of distraction.
G. when both hemispheres of the brain show activity.
QUESTIONS 35-39
Complete the notes below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each
answer.
How other people influence our creativity

• Steve Jobs
- made changes to the 35………………..to encourage interaction at Pixar.
• Lehrer
- company owners must have a wide range of 36……………… to do well.
- it’s important to start 37……………….. with new people
- the 38…………………….has not replaced the need for physical contact.
• Geoffrey West
- living in 39…………………..encourages creativity.
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QUESTION 40
Choose the correct letter; A, B. C or D
40. Which of the following is the most suitable title for Reading Passage 3?
A. Understanding what drives our moments of inspiration
B. Challenging traditional theories of human creativity
C. Creative solutions for enhancing professional relationships
D. How the future is shaped by innovative ideas and inspired people
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Dalat.
http://www.American short stories.com
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GIAO-TRINH-READING-3-AVK46-2024

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DALAT UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

FOR DLU STUDENTS ONLY, NOT FOR SALE

QUESTIONS 1- 5 (Overview Questions)

QUESTIONS 11- 17 (Viewpoint Questions)

QUESTIONS 18- 26 (Summary Questions)

QUESTIONS 37- 40 (Matching questions)

II. Answer the following questions:

1……………………… ceramics and lithograph He produced many

2……………………… Valley with cornflowers 3…………………………..

John Bagnold Burgess a study of three Spanish girls 4…………………………..

Vu Cao Dam 5……………………………… Asian region (except

12. Greeting cards can sell for up to £10,000 each. ……………………

14. The miners’ situation is of global interest ……....

Complete the summary below.

However, if all goes well, they could be 16 ………………… by

This is fitted with 23…………………………….

These are 26 ………………………………

The Phoenix is made out of 21 ......................................

This contains the 24 ………………………… and

High-tech crime-fighting tools

My Mother Barked Like a Seal

1. handicap ---- a. represented

The Human Body

F. Definitions of hot springs could vary in the temperature requirement.

20. …………………chosen by customer

1. Why are men reluctant to ask directions?

Complete the summary using the list of words, A-O, below

A. aphids B. agricultural C. cellulose D. exchanging

E. energy F. fertilizers G. food H. fungi

I. growing J. interbreeding K. natural L. other species

M. secretions N. sustainable O. environment

Population movements and genetics

Reading Passage 2 refers to the three-wave theory of early migration to the

Christy Turner’s research involved the examination of

A. teeth from both prehistoric and modem Americans and Asians.

C. dental specimens from the majority of prehistoric Americans.

D. the eating habits of American and Asian populations.

2. Perturbations of nebulous interstellar clouds in space result in gravitational

Stars with main sequence mass of turn into

Envy Without Reason?

15. Paragraph A …………….. 18. Paragraph E ……………..

Have you a tea-room?

Why Are Finland’s Schools Successful?

A. At Kirkkojarvi Comprehensive School in Espoo, a suburb west of Helsinki, Kari

C. In the United States, government officials have attempted to improve standards by

How other people influence our creativity

Clarke, M. A and Dobson, B. K (1996). Choice Readings. Michigan: The University

Gey, E. V. (2011). Reading for IELTS. UK. HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

http://www.American short stories.com

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