READING

Session 2. True/False/NG vs. Yes/No/NG

PART A. TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN
EXERCISE 1 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 1-7 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 more than once.
1. Michael Faraday was the first person to recognize Perkin's ability as a student of chemistry.
2. Michael Faraday suggested Perkin should enrol in the Royal College of Chemistry.
3. Perkin employed August Wilhelm Hofmann as his assistant.
4. Perkin was still young when he made the discovery that made him rich and famous.
5. The trees from which quinine is derived grow only in South America.
6. Perkin hoped to manufacture a drug from a coal tar waste product.
7. Perkin was inspired by the discoveries of the famous scientist Louis Pasteur.
WILLIAM HENRY PERKIN
The man who invented synthetic dyes
William Henry Perkin was born on March 12, 1838, in London, England. As a boy, Perkin’s curiosity
prompted early interests in the arts, sciences, photography, and engineering. But it was a chance
stumbling upon a run-down, yet functional, laboratory in his late grandfather’s home that solidified the
young man’s enthusiasm for chemistry.
As a student at the City of London School, Perkin became immersed in the study of chemistry. His talent
and devotion to the subject were perceived by his teacher, Thomas Hall, who encouraged him to attend a
series of lectures given by the eminent scientist Michael Faraday at the Royal Institution. Those speeches
fired the young chemist’s enthusiasm further, and he later went on to attend the Royal College of
Chemistry, which he succeeded in entering in 1853, at the age of 15.
At the time of Perkin’s enrolment the Royal College of Chemistry was headed by the noted German
chemist August Wilhelm Hofmann. Perkin’s scientific gifts soon caught Hofmann’s attention and, within
two years, he became Hofmann’s youngest assistant, not long after that, Perkin made the scientific
breakthrough that would bring him both fame and fortune.
At the time, quinine was the only viable medical treatment for malaria. The drug is derived from the bark
of the cinchona tree, native to South America and by 1856 demand for the drug was surpassing the
available supply. Thus, when Hofmann made some passing comments about the desirability of a
synthetic substitute for quinine. It was unsurprising that his star pupil was moved to take up the
challenge.
During his vacation in 1856, Perkin spent his time in the laboratory on the top floor of his family's house.
He was attempting to manufacture quinine from aniline, an inexpensive and readily available coal tar
waste product. Despite his best efforts, however, he did not end up with quinine. Instead, he produced a
mysterious dark sludge. Luckily, Perkins scientific training and nature prompted him to investigate the
substance further. Incorporating potassium dichromate and alcohol into the aniline at various stages of
the experimental process, he finally produced a deep purple solution. And, proving the truth of the
famous scientist Louis Pasteur’s words 'chance favors only the prepared mind'. Perkin saw the potential
of his unexpected find. […]
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EXERCISE 2 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet, write:
TRUE it the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
1. Marie Curie's husband was a joint winner of both Marie’s Nobel Prizes.
2. Marie became interested in science when she was a child.
3. Marie was able to attend the Sorbonne because of her sister’s financial contribution.
4. Marie stopped doing research for several years when her children were born.
5. Marie took over the teaching position her husband had held.
6. Marie’s sister Bronia studied the medical uses of radioactivity.
The Life & Work of Marie Curie
Marie Curie is probably the most famous woman scientist
who has ever lived. Born Maria Sklodowska in Poland in 1867,
she is famous for her work on radioactivity, and was twice a
winner of the Nobel Prize. With her husband, Pierre Curie, and
Henri Becquerel, she was awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize for
Physics, and was then sole winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize for
Chemistry. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.
From childhood, Marie was remarkable for her
prodigious memory, and at the age of 16 won a gold medal on
completion of her secondary education. Because her father lost
his savings through bad investment, she then had to take work
as a teacher. From her earnings she was able to finance her
sister Bronia's medical studies in Paris, on the understanding
that Bronia would, in turn, later help her to get an education.
In 1891 this promise was fulfilled and Marie went to Paris and began to study at the Sorbonne (the
University of Paris). She often worked far into the night and lived on little more than bread and butter and
tea. She came first in the examination in the physical sciences in 1893, and in 1894 was placed second in the
examination in mathematical sciences. It was not until the spring of that year that she was introduced to
Pierre Curie.
Their marriage in 1895 marked the start of a partnership that was soon to achieve results of world
significance. Following Henri Becquerel’s discovery in 1896 of a new phenomenon, which Marie later
called 'radioactivity', Marie Curie decided to find out if the radioactivity discovered in uranium was to be
found in other elements. She discovered that this was true for thorium.
Turning her attention to minerals, she found her interest drawn to pitchblende, a mineral whose
radioactivity, superior to that of pure uranium, could be explained only by the presence in the ore of small
quantities of an unknown substance of very high activity. Pierre Curie joined her in the work that she had
undertaken to resolve this problem, and that led to the discovery of the new elements, polonium and radium.
While Pierre Curie devoted himself chiefly to the physical study of the new radiations, Marie Curie
struggled to obtain pure radium in the metallic state. This was achieved with the help of the chemist André-
Louis Debierne, one of Pierre Curie's pupils. Based on the results of this research, Marie Curie received her
Doctorate of Science, and in 1903 Marie and Pierre shared with Becquerel the Nobel Prize for Physics for
the discovery of radioactivity.

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 The births of Marie's two daughters, Irene and Eve, in 1897 and 1904 failed to interrupt her scientific
work. She was appointed lecturer in physics at the École Nor-male Supérieure for girls in Sèvres, France
(1900), and introduced a method of teaching based on experimental demonstrations. In December 1904 she
was appointed chief assistant in the laboratory directed by Pierre Curie.
The sudden death of her husband in 1906 was a bitter blow to Marie Curie, but was also a turning
point in her career: henceforth she was to devote all her energy to completing alone the scientific work that
they had undertaken. On May 19, 1906, she was appointed to the professorship that had been left vacant on
her husband's death, becoming the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne. In 1911 she was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the isolation of a pure form of radium.
[…]
In 1921, accompanied by her two daughters, Marie Curie made a triumphant journey to the United
States to raise funds for research on radium. Women there presented her with a gram of radium for her
campaign. Marie also gave lectures in Belgium. Brazil, Spain and Czechoslovakia and, in addition, had the
satisfaction of seeing the development of the Curie Foundation in Paris, and the inauguration in 1932 in
Warsaw of the Radium Institute, where her sister Bronia became director.
[…]

EXERCISE 3 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
Write answers in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet. Write:
TRUE it the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
1. Examples of ancient stepwells can be found all over the world.
2. Stepwells had a range of functions, in addition to those related to water collection.
3. The few existing stepwells in Delhi are more attractive than those found elsewhere.
4. It took workers many years to build the stone steps characteristic of stepwells.
5. The number of steps above the water level in a stepwell altered during the course of a year.
Stepwells
A millennium ago, stepwells were fundamental to life in the driest parts of India. Although many have been
neglected, recent restoration has returned them to their former glory. Richard Cox travelled to north-
western India to document these spectacular monuments from a bygone era.
During the sixth and seventh centuries, the inhabitants of the modern-day states of Gujarat and Rajasthan
in North-western India developed a method of gaining access to clean, fresh groundwater during the dry
season for drinking, bathing, watering animals and irrigation. However, the significance of this invention –
the stepwell – goes beyond its utilitarian application.
Unique to the region, stepwells are often architecturally complex and vary widely in size and shape.
During their heyday, they were places of gathering, of leisure, of relaxation and of worship for villagers of
all but the lowest castes. Most stepwells are found dotted around the desert areas of Gujarat (where they are
called vav) and Rajasthan (where they are known as baori), while a few also survive in Delhi. Some were
located in or near villages as public spaces for the community; others were positioned beside roads as
resting places for travellers.
As their name suggests, stepwells comprise a series of stone steps descending from ground level to the
water source (normally an underground aquifer) as it recedes following the rains. When the water level was

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high, the user needed only to descend a few steps to reach it; when it was low, several levels would have to
be negotiated.
Some wells are vast, open craters with hundreds of steps paving each sloping side, often in tiers. Others
are more elaborate, with long stepped passages leading to the water via several storeys built from stone and
supported by pillars, they also included pavilions that sheltered visitors from the relentless heat. But perhaps
the most impressive features are the intricate decorative sculptures that embellish many stepwells, showing
activities from fighting and dancing to everyday acts such as women combing their hair and churning butter.
Down the centuries, thousands of wells were constructed throughout northwestern India, but the majority
have now fallen into disuse; many are derelict and dry, as groundwater has been diverted for industrial use
and the wells no longer reach the water table. Their condition hasn’t been helped by recent dry spells:
southern Rajasthan suffered an eight-year drought between 1996 and 2004.
However, some important sites in Gujarat have recently undergone major restoration, and the state
government announced in June last year that it plans to restore the stepwells throughout the state.
[…]
Today, following years of neglect, many of these monuments to medieval engineering have been saved
by the Archaeological Survey of India, which has recognised the importance of preserving them as part of
the country’s rich history. Tourists flock to wells in far-flung corners of northwestern India to gaze in
wonder at these architectural marvels from 1,000 years ago, which serve as a reminder of both the ingenuity
and artistry of ancient civilisations and of the value of water to human existence.

EXERCISE 4 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
Write answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet. Write:
TRUE it the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
8. China’s transport system was not suitable for industry in the 18th century.
9. Tea and beer both helped to prevent dysentery in Britain.
10. Roy Porter disagrees with Professor Macfarlane’s findings.
11. After 1740，there was a reduction in population in Britain.
12. People in Britain used to make beer at home.
13. The tax on malt indirectly caused a rise in the death rate.
Tea and the Industrial Revolution
A Cambridge professor says that a change in drinking habits was the reason for the Industrial Revolution in
Britain. Anjana Abuja reports.
A. Alan Macfarlane, professor of anthropological science at King’s College, Cambridge has, like other
historians, spent decades wrestling with the enigma of the Industrial Revolution. Why did this particular
Big Bang – the world-changing birth of industry-happen in Britain? And why did it strike at the end of
the 18th century?
B. Macfarlane compares the puzzle to a combination lock. ‘There are about 20 different factors and all of
them need to be present before the revolution can happen,’ he says. For industry to take off, there needs
to be the technology and power to drive factories, large urban populations to provide cheap labour, easy
transport to move goods around, an affluent middle-class willing to buy mass-produced objects, a
market-driven economy and a political system that allows this to happen. While this was the case for
England, other nations, such as Japan, the Netherlands and France also met some of these criteria but
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 were not industrialising. All these factors must have been necessary. But not sufficient to cause the
revolution, says Macfarlane. ‘After all, Holland had everything except coal while China also had many
of these factors. Most historians are convinced there are one or two missing factors that you need to
open the lock.’
C. The missing factors, he proposes, are to be found in almost even kitchen cupboard. Tea and beer, two of
the nation’s favourite drinks, fuelled the revolution. The antiseptic properties of tannin, the active
ingredient in tea, and of hops in beer – plus the fact that both are made with boiled water – allowed
urban communities to flourish at close quarters without succumbing to water-borne diseases such as
dysentery. The theory sounds eccentric but once he starts to explain the detective work that went into his
deduction, the scepticism gives way to wary admiration. Macfarlane’s case has been strengthened by
support from notable quarters – Roy Porter, the distinguished medical historian, recently wrote a
favourable appraisal of his research.
D. Macfarlane had wondered for a long time how the Industrial Revolution came about. Historians had
alighted on one interesting factor around the mid-18th century that required explanation. Between about
1650 and 1740，the population in Britain was static. But then there was a burst in population growth.
Macfarlane says: ‘The infant mortality rate halved in the space of 20 years, and this happened in both
rural areas and cities, and across all classes. People suggested four possible causes. Was there a sudden
change in the viruses and bacteria around? Unlikely. Was there a revolution in medical science? But this
was a century before Lister’s revolution*. Was there a change in environmental conditions? There were
improvements in agriculture that wiped out malaria, but these were small gains. Sanitation did not
become widespread until the 19th century. The only option left is food. But the height and weight
statistics show a decline. So the food must have got worse. Efforts to explain this sudden reduction in
child deaths appeared to draw a blank.’
E. This population burst seemed to happen at just the right time to provide labour for the Industrial
Revolution. ‘When you start moving towards an industrial revolution, it is economically efficient to
have people living close together,’ says Macfarlane. ‘But then you get disease, particularly from human
waste.’ Some digging around in historical records revealed that there was a change in the incidence of
water-borne disease at that time, especially dysentery. Macfarlane deduced that whatever the British
were drinking must have been important in regulating disease. He says, ‘We drank beer. For a long
time, the English were protected by the strong antibacterial agent in hops, which were added to help
preserve the beer. But in the late 17th century a tax was introduced on malt, the basic ingredient of beer.
The poor turned to water and gin and in the 1720s the mortality rate began to rise again. Then it
suddenly dropped again. What caused this?’
[…]

EXERCISE 5 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
Write answers in boxes 5-10 on your answer sheet. Write:
TRUE it the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
5. The largest employment figures in the world are found in the travel and tourism industry.
6. Tourism contributes over six per cent of the Australian gross national product.
7. Tourism has a social impact because it promotes recreation.

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8. Two main features of the travel and tourism industry make its economic significance difficult
to ascertain.
9. Visitor spending is always greater than the spending of residents in tourist areas.
10. It is easy to show statistically how tourism affects individual economies.
The Context, Meaning and Scope of Tourism
A. Travel has existed since the beginning of time, when primitive man set out, often traversing
great distances in search of game, which provided the food and clothing necessary for his survival.
Throughout the course of history, people have travelled for purposes of trade, religious
conviction, economic gain, war, migration and other equally compelling motivations. In the Roman era,
wealthy aristocrats and high government officials also travelled for pleasure. Seaside resorts located at
Pompeii and Herculaneum afforded citizens the opportunity to escape to their vacation villas in order to
avoid the summer heat of Rome. Travel, except during the Dark Ages, has continued to grow and,
throughout recorded history, has played a vital role in the development of civilisations and their
economies.
B. Tourism in the mass form as we know it today is a distinctly twentieth-century phenomenon. Historians
suggest that the advent of mass tourism began in England during the industrial revolution with the rise
of the middle class and the availability of relatively inexpensive transportation. The creation of the
commercial airline industry following the Second World War and the subsequent development of the jet
aircraft in the 1950s signalled the rapid growth and expansion of international travel. This growth led to
the development of a major new industry: tourism. In turn, international tourism became the concern of
a number of world governments since it not only provided new employment opportunities but also
produced a means of earning foreign exchange.
C. Tourism today has grown significantly in both economic and social importance. In most industrialised
countries over the past few years the fastest growth has been seen in the area of services. One of the
largest segments of the service industry, although largely unrecognised as an entity in some of these
countries, is travel and tourism. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (1992),Travel and
tourism is the largest industry in the world on virtually any economic measure including value-added
capital investment, employment and tax contributions. In 1992, the industry’s gross output was
estimated to be $3.5 trillion, over 12 per cent of all consumer spending. The travel and tourism industry
is the world’s largest employer the almost 130 million jobs, or almost 7 per cent of all employees. This
industry is the world’s leading industrial contributor, producing over 6 per cent of the world’s national
product and accounting for capital investment in excess of $422 billion m direct indirect and personal
taxes each year. Thus, tourism has a profound impact both on the world economy and, because of the
educative effect of travel and the effects on employment, on society itself.
D. However, the major problems of the travel and tourism industry that have hidden, or obscured, its
economic impact are the diversity and fragmentation of the industry itself. The travel industry includes:
hotels, motels and other types of accommodation; restaurants and other food services; transportation
services and facilities; amusements, attractions and other leisure facilities; gift shops and a large number
of other enterprises. Since many of these businesses also serve local residents, the impact of spending by
visitors can easily be overlooked or underestimated. In addition, Meis (1992) points out that the tourism
industry involves concepts that have remained amorphous to both analysts and decision makers.
Moreover, in all nations this problem has made it difficult for the industry to develop any type of
reliable or credible tourism information base in order to estimate the contribution it makes to regional,
national and global economies. However, the nature of this very diversity makes travel and tourism
ideal vehicles for economic development in a wide variety of countries, regions or communities.
E. Once the exclusive province of the wealthy, travel and tourism have become an institutionalised way of
life for most of the population. In fact, McIntosh and Goeldner (1990) suggest that tourism has become

6
 the largest commodity in international trade for many nations and, for a significant number of other
countries, it ranks second or third. For example, tourism is the major source of income in Bermuda,
Greece, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and most Caribbean countries. In addition, Hawkins and Ritchie,
quoting from data published by the American Express Company, suggest that the travel and tourism
industry is the number one ranked employer in the Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, France, (the former) West
Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.
However, because of problems of definition, which directly affect statistical measurement, it is not
possible with any degree of certainty to provide precise, valid or reliable data about the extent of world-
wide tourism participation or its economic impact. In many cases, similar difficulties arise when
attempts are made to measure domestic tourism.

EXERCISE 6 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
Write answers in boxes 7-13 on your answer sheet. Write:
TRUE it the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
7. The amount of open space in California has diminished over the last ten years.
8. Many experts believe California has made little progress in readying itself to fight fires.
9. Personnel in the past have been criticised for mishandling fire containment.
10. California has replaced a range of firefighting tools.
11. More firefighters have been hired to improve fire-fighting capacity.
12. Citizens and government groups disapprove of the efforts of different states and agencies working
together.
13. Randy Jacobs believes that loss of life from fires will continue at the same levels, despite changes made.
The megafires of California
Drought, housing expansion, and oversupply of tinder make for bigger, hotter fires in the western United
States
[…]
In California, where population growth has averaged more than 600,000 a year for at least a decade,
more residential housing is being built. ‘What once was open space is now residential homes providing fuel
to make fires burn with greater intensity,’ says Terry McHale of the California Department of Forestry
firefighters' union. ‘With so much dryness, so many communities to catch fire, so many fronts to fight, it
becomes an almost incredible job.'
That said, many experts give California high marks for making progress on preparedness in recent
years, after some of the largest fires in state history scorched thousands of acres, burned thousands of
homes, and killed numerous people. Stung in the past by criticism of bungling that allowed fires to spread
when they might have been contained, personnel are meeting the peculiar challenges of neighborhood - and
canyon- hopping fires better than previously, observers say.
State promises to provide more up-to-date engines, planes, and helicopters to fight fires have been
fulfilled. Firefighters’ unions that in the past complained of dilapidated equipment, old fire engines, and
insufficient blueprints for fire safety are now praising the state's commitment, noting that funding for
firefighting has increased, despite huge cuts in many other programs. ‘We are pleased that the current state

7
administration has been very proactive in its support of us, and [has] come through with budgetary support
of the infrastructure needs we have long sought,' says Mr. McHale of the firefighters’ union.
Besides providing money to upgrade the fire engines that must traverse the mammoth state and wind
along serpentine canyon roads, the state has invested in better command-and-control facilities as well as in
the strategies to run them. ‘In the fire sieges of earlier years, we found that other jurisdictions and states
were willing to offer mutual-aid help, but we were not able to communicate adequately with them,’ says
Kim Zagaris, chief of the state's Office of Emergency Services Fire and Rescue Branch.
After a commission examined and revamped communications procedures, the statewide response ‘has
become far more professional and responsive,’ he says. There is a sense among both government officials
and residents that the speed, dedication, and coordination of firefighters from several states and jurisdictions
are resulting in greater efficiency than in past ‘siege fire’ situations.
In recent years, the Southern California region has improved building codes, evacuation procedures,
and procurement of new technology. ‘I am extraordinarily impressed by the improvements we have
witnessed,’ says Randy Jacobs, a Southern California- based lawyer who has had to evacuate both his home
and business to escape wildfires. ‘Notwithstanding all the damage that will continue to be caused by
wildfires, we will no longer suffer the loss of life endured in the past because of the fire prevention and
firefighting measures that have been put in place,’ he says.

EXERCISE 7 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
Write answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet. Write:
TRUE it the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
8. Methods for predicting the Earth's population have recently changed.
9. Human beings are responsible for some of the destruction to food-producing land.
10. The crops produced in vertical farms will depend on the season.
11. Some damage to food crops is caused by climate change.
12. Fertilisers will be needed for certain crops in vertical farms.
13. Vertical farming will make plants less likely to be affected by infectious diseases.
Crop-growing skyscrapers
By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the Earth's population will live in urban centres. Applying the most
conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about three
billion people by then. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% larger than Brazil) will be needed
to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming methods continue as they are practised today. At
present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use. Historically,
some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management practices. What can be done to ensure enough
food for the world's population to live on?
The concept of indoor farming is not new, since hothouse production of tomatoes and other produce
has been in vogue for some time. What is new is the urgent need to scale up this technology to
accommodate another three billion people. Many believe an entirely new approach to indoor farming is
required, employing cutting-edge technologies. One such proposal is for the `Vertical Farm'. The concept is
of multi-storey buildings in which food crops are grown in environmentally controlled conditions. Situated
in the heart of urban centres, they would drastically reduce the amount of transportation required to bring
food to consumers. Vertical farms would need to be efficient, cheap to construct and safe to operate. If
8
successfully implemented, proponents claim, vertical farms offer the promise of urban renewal, sustainable
production of a safe and varied food supply (through year-round production of all crops), and the eventual
repair of ecosystems that have been sacrificed for horizontal farming.
It took humans 10,000 years to learn how to grow most of the crops we now take for granted. Along
the way we despoiled most of the land we worked, often turning verdant, natural ecozones into semi-arid
deserts. Within that same time frame, we evolved into an urban species, in which 60% of the human
population now lives vertically in cities. This means that, for the majority, we humans have shelter from the
elements, yet we subject our food-bearing plants to the rigours of the great outdoors and can do no more
than hope for a good weather year. However, more often than not now, due to a rapidly changing climate
that is not what happens. Massive floods, long droughts, hurricanes and severe monsoons take their toll each
year, destroying millions of tons of valuable crops.
The supporters of vertical farming claim many potential advantages for the system. For instance, crops
would be produced all year round, as they would be kept in artificially controlled, optimum growing
conditions. There would be no weather-related crop failures due to droughts, floods or pests. All the food
could be grown organically, eliminating the need for herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers. The system would
greatly reduce the incidence of many infectious diseases that are acquired at the agricultural interface.
Although the system would consume energy, it would return energy to the grid via methane generation from
composting nonedible parts of plants. It would also dramatically reduce fossil fuel use, by cutting out the
need for tractors, ploughs and shipping.
[…]

EXERCISE 8 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
Write answers in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet. Write:
TRUE it the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
22. Halley observed one transit of the planet Venus.
23. Le Gentil managed to observe a second Venus transit.
24. The shape of Venus appears distorted when it starts to pass in front of the Sun.
25. Early astronomers suspected that the atmosphere on Venus was toxic.
26. The parallax principle allows astronomers to work out how far away distant stars are from the Earth.
Venus in transit
June 2004 saw the first passage, known as a 'transit` of the planet Venus across the face of the
Sun in 122 years. Transits have helped shape our view of the whole Universe, as Heather
Cooper and Nigel Henbest explain
A […]
B […]
C Halley was aware that the AU was one of the most fundamental of all astronomical
measurements. Johannes Kepler, in the early 17th century, had shown that the distances of the
planets from the Sun governed their orbital speeds, which were easily measurable. But no-one
had found a way to calculate accurate distances to the planets from the Earth. The goal was to
measure the AU; then, knowing the orbital speeds of all the other planets round the Sun, the
scale of the Solar System would fall into place. However, Halley realized that Mercury was so
far away that its parallax angle would be very difficult to determine. As Venus was closer to the
9
 Earth, its parallax angle would be larger and Halley worked out that by using Venus it would be
possible to measure the Sun’s distance to 1 part in 500. But there was as problem: transits of
Venus, unlike those of Mercury, are rare, occurring in pairs roughly eight years apart every
hundred or so years. Nevertheless, he accurately predicted that Venus would cross the face of
the Sun in both 1761 and 1769 - though he didn`t survive to see either.
D Inspired by Halley's suggestion of a way to pin down the scale of the Solar System, teams of
British and French astronomers set out on expeditions to places as diverse as India and Siberia.
But things weren’t helped by Britain and France being at war. The person who deserves most
sympathy is the French astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil. He was thwarted by the fact that the
British were besieging his observation site at Pondicherry in India. Fleeing on a French warship
crossing the Indian Ocean, Le Gentil saw a wonderful transit - but the ship`s pitching and
rolling ruled out any attempt at making accurate observations. Undaunted, he remained south of
the equator, keeping himself busy by studying the islands of Mauritius and Madagascar before
setting off to observe the next transit in the Philippines. Ironically after travelling nearly 50,000
kilometres, his view was clouded out at the last moment, a very dispiriting experience.
E While the early transit timings were as precise as instruments would allow the measurements
were dogged by the 'black drop' effect. When Venus begins to cross the Sun's disc, it looks
smeared not circular - which makes it difficult to establish timings. This is due to diffraction of
light. The second problem is that Venus exhibits a halo of light when it is seen just outside the
Sun's disc. While this showed astronomers that Venus was surrounded by a thick layer of gases
refracting sunlight around it, both effects made it impossible to obtain accurate timings.
F But astronomers labored hard to analyze the results of these expeditions to observe Venus
transits. Jonathan Franz Encke, Director of the Belin Observatory, finally determined a value
for the AU based on all these parallax measurements: 153,340,000 km. Reasonably accurate for
the time, that is quite close to today’s value of 149,597,870 km, determined by radar, which has
now superseded transits and all other methods in accuracy. The AU is a cosmic measuring rod,
and the basis of how we scale the Universe today The parallax principle can be extended to
measure the distances to the stars. If we look at a star in January - when Earth is at one point in
its orbit - it will seem to be in a different position from where it appears six months later.
Knowing the width of Earth’s orbit, the parallax shift lets astronomers calculate the distance.
G June 2004’s transit of Venus was thus more of an astronomical spectacle than a scientifically
important event. But such transits have paved the way for what might prove to be one of the
most vital breakthroughs in the cosmos - detecting Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars.

EXERCISE 9 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
Write answers in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet. Write:
TRUE it the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
22. The need for transport is growing, despite technological developments.
23. To reduce production costs, some industries have been moved closer to their relevant consumers.
24. Cars are prohibitively expensive in some EU candidate countries.
25. The Gothenburg European Council was set up 30 years ago.
26. By the end of this decade, CO2 emissions from transport are predicted to reach 739 billion tonnes.

10
 EUROPEAN TRANSPORT SYSTEMS 1990-2010
What have been the trends and what are the prospects for European transport systems?
A. It is difficult to conceive of vigorous economic growth without an efficient transport system. Although
modern information technologies can reduce the demand for physical transport by facilitating
teleworking and teleservices, the requirement for transport continues to increase. There are two key
factors behind this trend. For passenger transport, the determining factor is the spectacular growth in car
use. The number of cars on European Union (EU) roads saw an increase of three million cars each year
from 1990 to 2010, and in the next decade the EU will see a further substantial increase in its fleet.
B. As far as goods transport is concerned, growth is due to a large extent to changes in the European
economy and its system of production. In the last 20 years, as internal frontiers have been abolished, the
EU has moved from a “stock” economy to a “flow” economy. This phenomenon has been emphasised
by the relocation of some industries, particularly those which are labour intensive, to reduce production
costs, even though the production site is hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away from the final
assembly plant or away from users.
C. The strong economic growth expected in countries which are candidates for entry to the EU will also
increase transport flows, in particular road haulage traffic. In 1998, some of these countries already
exported more than twice their 1990 volumes and imported more than five times their 1990 volumes.
And although many candidate countries inherited a transport system which encourages rail, the
distribution between modes has tipped sharply in favour of road transport since the 1990s. Between
1990 and 1998，road haulage increased by 19.4%, while during the same period rail haulage decreased
by 43.5%, although – and this could benefit the enlarged EU – it is still on average at a much higher
level than in existing member states.
D. However, a new imperative – sustainable development – offers an opportunity for adapting the EU’s
common transport policy. This objective, agreed by the Gothenburg European Council, has to be
achieved by integrating environmental considerations into Community policies, and shifting the balance
between modes of transport lies at the heart of its strategy. The ambitious objective can only be fully
achieved by 2020, but proposed measures are nonetheless a first essential step towards a sustainable
transport system which will ideally be in place in 30 years’ time, that is by 2040.
E. In 1998 ， energy consumption in the transport sector was to blame for 28% of emissions of CO2 the
leading greenhouse gas. According to the latest estimates, if nothing is done to reverse the traffic growth
trend, CO2 emissions from transport can be expected to increase by around 50% to 1,113 billion tonnes
by 2020，compared with the 739 billion tonnes recorded in 1990. Once again, road transport is the main
culprit since it alone accounts for 84% of the CO2 emissions attributable to transport. Using alternative
fuels and improving energy efficiency is thus both an ecological necessity and a technological challenge.
[…]

EXERCISE 10 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
Write answers in boxes 23-25 on your answer sheet. Write:
TRUE it the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
23. It is likely that the red pigments help to protect the leaf from freezing temperatures.
24. The ‘light screen’ hypothesis would initially seem to contradict what is known about chlorophyll.
25. Leaves which turn colours other than red are more likely to be damaged by sunlight.

11
 Autumn leaves
Canadian writer Jay Ingram investigates the mystery of why leaves turn red in the fall
A. […]
B. […]
C. […]
D. Some theories about anthocyanins have argued that they might act as a chemical defence against attacks
by insects or fungi, or that they might attract fruit-eating birds or increase a leaf's tolerance to freezing.
However, there are problems with each of these theories, including the fact that leaves are red for such a
relatively short period that the expense of energy needed to manufacture the anthocyanins would
outweigh any anti-fungal or anti-herbivore activity achieved.* photosynthesis: the production of new
material from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide.
E. [...]
F. Perhaps the most plausible suggestion as to why leaves would go to the trouble of making anthocyanins
when they’re busy packing up for the winter is the theory known as the ‘light screen’ hypothesis. It
sounds paradoxical, because the idea behind this hypothesis is that the red pigment is made in autumn
leaves to protect chlorophyll, the light-absorbing chemical, from too much light. Why does chlorophyll
need protection when it is the natural world’s supreme light absorber? Why protect chlorophyll at a time
when the tree is breaking it down to salvage as much of it as possible?
G. Chlorophyll, although exquisitely evolved to capture the energy of sunlight, can sometimes be
overwhelmed by it, especially in situations of drought, low temperatures, or nutrient deficiency.
Moreover, the problem of oversensitivity to light is even more acute in the fall, when the leaf is busy
preparing for winter by dismantling its internal machinery. The energy absorbed by the chlorophyll
molecules of the unstable autumn leaf is not immediately channelled into useful products and processes,
as it would be in an intact summer leaf. The weakened fall leaf then becomes vulnerable to the highly
destructive effects of the oxygen created by the excited chlorophyll molecules.
H. Even if you had never suspected that this is what was going on when leaves turn red, there are clues out
there. One is straightforward: on many trees, the leaves that are the reddest are those on the side of the
tree which gets most sun. Not only that, but the red is brighter on the upper side of the leaf. It has also
been recognised for decades that the best conditions for intense red colours are dry, sunny days and cool
nights, conditions that nicely match those that make leaves susceptible to excess light. And finally, trees
such as maples usually get much redder the more north you travel in the northern hemisphere. It’s colder
there, they’re more stressed, their chlorophyll is more sensitive and it needs more sunblock.
I. […]

EXERCISE 11 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
Write answers in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet. Write:
TRUE it the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
14. The Falkirk Wheel has linked the Forth & Clyde Canal with the Union Canal for the first time in their
history.
15. There was some opposition to the design of the Falkirk Wheel at first.
16. The Falkirk Wheel was initially put together at the location where its components were manufactured.
17. The Falkirk Wheel is the only boat lift in the world which has steel sections bolted together by hand.
18. The weight of the gondolas varies according to the size of boat being carried.
12
19. The construction of the Falkirk Wheel site took into account the presence of a nearby ancient
monument.
The Falkirk Wheel
A unique engineering achievement
The Falkirk Wheel in Scotland is the world's first and only rotating boat lift. Opened in 2002, it is
central to the ambitious £84.5m Millennium Link project to restore navigability across Scotland by
reconnecting the historic waterways of the Forth & Clyde and Union Canals.
The major challenge of the project lays in the fact that the Forth & Clyde Canal is situated 35 metres
below the level of the Union Canal. Historically, the two canals had been joined near the town of Falkirk by
a sequence of 11 locks - enclosed sections of canal in which the water level could be raised or lowered - that
stepped down across a distance of 1.5 km. This had been dismantled in 1933, thereby breaking the link.
When the project was launched in 1994, the British Waterways authority were keen to create a dramatic
twenty-first-century landmark which would not only be a fitting commemoration of the Millennium, but
also a lasting symbol of the economic regeneration of the region.
Numerous ideas were submitted for the project, including concepts ranging from rolling eggs to tilting
tanks, from giant seesaws to overhead monorails. The eventual winner was a plan for the huge rotating steel
boat lift which was to become The Falkirk Wheel. The unique shape of the structure is claimed to have been
inspired by various sources, both manmade and natural, most notably a Celtic double headed axe, but also
the vast turning propeller of a ship, the ribcage of a whale or the spine of a fish.
The various parts of The Falkirk Wheel were all constructed and assembled, like one giant toy building
set, at Butterley Engineering's Steelworks in Derbyshire, some 400 km from Falkirk. A team there carefully
assembled the 1,200 tonnes of steel, painstakingly fitting the pieces together to an accuracy of just 10 mm to
ensure a perfect final fit. In the summer of 2001, the structure was then dismantled and transported on 35
lorries to Falkirk, before all being bolted back together again on the ground, and finally lifted into position
in five large sections by crane. The Wheel would need to withstand immense and constantly changing
stresses as it rotated, so to make the structure more robust, the steel sections were bolted rather than welded
together. Over 45,000 bolt holes were matched with their bolts, and each bolt was hand-tightened.
The Wheel consists of two sets of opposing axe-shaped arms, attached about 25 metres apart to a fixed
central spine. Two diametrically opposed water-filled 'gondolas', each with a capacity of 360,000 litres, are
fitted between the ends of the arms. These gondolas always weigh the same, whether or not they are
carrying boats. This is because, according to Archimedes' principle of displacement, floating objects
displace their own weight in water. So when a boat enters a gondola, the amount of water leaving the
gondola weighs exactly the same as the boat. This keeps the Wheel balanced and so, despite its enormous
mass, it rotates through 180° in five and a half minutes while using very little power. It takes just 1.5
kilowatt-hours (5.4 MJ) of energy to rotate the Wheel -roughly the same as boiling eight small domestic
kettles of water.
Boats needing to be lifted up enter the canal basin at the level of the Forth & Clyde Canal and then enter
the lower gondola of the Wheel. Two hydraulic steel gates are raised, so as to seal the gondola off from the
water in the canal basin. The water between the gates is then pumped out. A hydraulic clamp, which
prevents the arms of the Wheel moving while the gondola is docked, is removed, allowing the Wheel to
turn. In the central machine room, an array of ten hydraulic motors then begins to rotate the central axle.
The axle connects to the outer arms of the Wheel, which begin to rotate at a speed of 1/8 of a revolution per
minute. As the wheel rotates, the gondolas are kept in the upright position by a simple gearing system. Two
eight-metre-wide cogs orbit a fixed inner cog of the same width, connected by two smaller cogs travelling in
the opposite direction to the outer cogs - so ensuring that the gondolas always remain level. When the
gondola reaches the top, the boat passes straight onto the aqueduct situated 24 metres above the canal basin.
The remaining 11 metres of lift needed to reach the Union Canal is achieved by means of a pair of locks.
The Wheel could not be constructed to elevate boats over the full 35-metre difference between the two
canals, owing to the presence of the historically important Antonine Wall, which was built by the Romans in
13
the second century AD. Boats travel under this wall via a tunnel, then through the locks, and finally on to
the Union Canal.

EXERCISE 12 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
Write answers in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet. Write:
TRUE it the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
14. Local gulls and migrating arctic terns behave in the same way when offered food.
15. Experts’ definitions of migration tend to vary according to their area of study.
16. Very few experts agree that the movement of aphids can be considered migration.
17. Aphids’ journeys are affected by changes in the light that they perceive.
18. Dingle's aim is to distinguish between the migratory behaviours of different species.
Great Migrations
Animal migration, however it is defined, is far more than just the movement of animals. It can loosely
be described as travel that takes place at regular intervals - often in an annual cycle - that may involve many
members of a species, and is rewarded only after a long journey. It suggests inherited instinct. The biologist
Hugh Dingle has identified five characteristics that apply, in varying degrees and combinations, to all
migrations. They are prolonged movements that carry animals outside familiar habitats; they tend to be
linear, not zigzaggy; they involve special behaviours concerning preparation (such as overfeeding) and
arrival; they demand special allocations of energy. And one more: migrating animals maintain an intense
attentiveness to the greater mission, which keeps them undistracted by temptations and undeterred by
challenges that would turn other animals aside.
An arctic tern, on its 20,000 km flight from the extreme south of South America to the Arctic circle,
will take no notice of a nice smelly herring offered from a bird-watcher's boat along the way. While local
gulls will dive voraciously for such handouts, the tern flies on. Why? The arctic tern resists distraction
because it is driven at that moment by an instinctive sense of something we humans find admirable: larger
purpose. In other words, it is determined to reach its destination. The bird senses that it can eat, rest and
mate later. Right now it is totally focused on the journey; its undivided intent is arrival.
Reaching some gravelly coastline in the Arctic, upon which other arctic terns have converged, will
serve its larger purpose as shaped by evolution: finding a place, a time, and a set of circumstances in which
it can successfully hatch and rear offspring.
But migration is a complex issue, and biologists define it differently, depending in part on what sorts
of animals they study. Joel Berger, of the University of Montana, who works on the American pronghorn
and other large terrestrial mammals, prefers what he calls a simple, practical definition suited to his beasts:
'movements from a seasonal home area away to another home area and back again'. Generally, the reason
for such seasonal back-and-forth movement is to seek resources that aren't available within a single area
year-round.
But daily vertical movements by zooplankton in the ocean - upward by night to seek food, downward
by day to escape predators - can also be considered migration. So can the movement of aphids when, having
depleted the young leaves on one food plant, their offspring then fly onward to a different host plant, with
no one aphid ever returning to where it started.
Dingle is an evolutionary biologist who studies insects. His definition is more intricate than Berger's,
citing those five features that distinguish migration from other forms of movement. They allow for the fact
that, for example, aphids will become sensitive to blue light (from the sky) when it's time for takeoff on
14
their big journey, and sensitive to yellow light (reflected from tender young leaves) when it's appropriate to
land. Birds will fatten themselves with heavy feeding in advance of a long migrational flight. The value of
his definition, Dingle argues, is that it focuses attention on what the phenomenon of wildebeest migration
shares with the phenomenon of the aphids, and therefore helps guide researchers towards understanding
how evolution has produced them all.
[…]

EXERCISE 13 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
Write answers in boxes 19-23 on your answer sheet. Write:
TRUE it the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
19. Audiences are likely to be surprised if a film lacks background music.
20. Background music may anticipate a development in a film.
21. Background music has more effect on some people than on others.
22. Background music may help the audience to make certain connections within the film.
23. Audiences tend to be aware of how the background music is affecting them.
An Introduction to Film Sound
Though we might think of film as an essentially visual experience, we really cannot afford to
underestimate the importance of film sound. A meaningful sound track is often as complicated as the image
on the screen, and is ultimately just as much the responsibility of the director. The entire sound track
consists of three essential ingredients: the human voice, sound effects and music. These three tracks must be
mixed and balanced so as to produce the necessary emphases which in turn create desired effects. Topics
which essentially refer to the three previously mentioned tracks are discussed below. They include dialogue,
synchronous and asynchronous sound effects, and music.
[...]
Asynchronous sound effects, on the other hand, are not matched with a visible source of the sound on
screen. Such sounds are included so as to provide an appropriate emotional nuance, and they may also add
to the realism of the film. For example, a film-maker might opt to include the background sound of an
ambulance's siren while the foreground sound and image portrays an arguing couple. The asynchronous
ambulance siren underscores the psychic injury incurred in the argument; at the same time, the noise of the
siren adds to the realism of the film by acknowledging the film's city setting.
We are probably all familiar with background music in films, which has become so ubiquitous as to be
noticeable in its absence. We are aware that it is used to add emotion and rhythm. Usually not meant to be
noticeable, it often provides a tone or an emotional attitude toward the story and /or the characters depicted.
In addition, background music often foreshadows a change in mood. For example, dissonant music may be
used in film to indicate an approaching (but not yet visible) menace or disaster.
Background music may aid viewer understanding by linking scenes. For example, a particular musical
theme associated with an individual character or situation may be repeated at various points in a film in
order to remind the audience of salient motifs or ideas.
Film sound comprises conventions and innovations. We have come to expect an acceleration of music
during car chases and creaky doors in horror films. Yet, it is important to note as well that sound is often
brilliantly conceived. The effects of sound are often largely subtle and often are noted by only our
subconscious minds. We need to foster an awareness of film sound as well as film space so as to truly
appreciate an art form that sprang to life during the twentieth century - the modern film.
15
EXERCISE 14 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 31-33 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 more than once.
31. Turtles were among the first group of animals to migrate back to the sea.
32. It is always difficult to determine where an animal lived when its fossilized remains are incomplete.
33. The habitat of ichthyosaurs can be determined by the appearance of their fossilized remains.
The history of the tortoise
[...]
Moving from water to land involved a major redesign of every aspect of life, including breathing and
reproduction. Nevertheless, a good number of thoroughgoing land animals later turned around,
abandoned their hard-earned terrestrial re-tooling, and returned to the Water Seals have only gone part
way back. They show us what the intermediates might have been like, on the way to extreme cases such
as whales and dugongs. Whales (including the small whales we call dolphins) and dugongs, with their
close cousins the manatees, ceased to be land creatures altogether and reverted to the full marine habits
of their remote ancestors. They don‘t even come ashore to breed. They do, however, still breathe air,
having never developed anything equivalent to the gills of their earlier marine incarnation. Turtles went
back to the sea a very long time ago and, like all vertebrate returnees to the water, they breathe air.
However, they are, in one respect, less fully given back to the water than whales or dugongs, for turtles
still lay their eggs on beaches.
There is evidence that all modem turtles are descended from a terrestrial ancestor which lived before
most of the dinosaurs. There are two key fossils called Proganochelys quenstedti and Palaeochersis
talampayensis dating from early dinosaur times, which appear to be close to the ancestry of all modem
turtles and tortoises. You might wonder how we can tell whether fossil animals lived on land or in water,
especially if only fragments are found. Sometimes it’s obvious. Ichthyosaurs were reptilian
contemporaries of the dinosaurs, with fins and streamlined bodies. The fossils look like dolphins and they
surely lived like dolphins, in the water. With turtles it is a little less obvious. One way to tell is by
measuring the bones of their forelimbs.
Walter Joyce and Jacques Gauthier, at Yale University, obtained three measurements in these particular
bones of 71 species of living turtles and tortoises. They used a kind of triangular graph paper to plot the
three measurements against one another. All the land tortoise species formed a tight cluster of points in
the upper part of the triangle; all the water turtles cluster in the lower part of the triangular graph. There
was no overlap, except when they added some species that spend time both in water and on land. Sure
enough, these amphibious species show up on the triangular graph approximately half way between the
‘wet cluster' of sea turtles and the ‘dry cluster' of land tortoises. 'The next step was to determine where
the fossil fell. The bones of P quenstedti and P. talampayensis leave us in no doubt. Their points on the
graph are right in the thick of the dry cluster. Both these fossils were dry-land tortoises. They come from
the era before our turtles returned to the water.
You might think, therefore, that modem land tortoises have probably stayed on land ever since those
early terrestrial times, as most mammals did after a few of them went back to the sea. But apparently not.
If you draw out the family tree of all modern turtles and tortoises, nearly all the branches are aquatic.
Today’s land tortoises constitute a single branch, deeply nested among branches consisting of aquatic
turtles. This suggests that modern land tortoises have not stayed on land continuously since the time of P.
quenstedti and P. talampayensis. Rather, their ancestors were among those who went back to the water,
and they then re-emerged back onto the land in (relatively) more recent times.
16
Tortoises therefore represent a remarkable double return. In common with all mammals, reptiles and
binds, their remote ancestors were marine fish and before that various more or less worm-like creatures
stretching back, still in the sea, to the primeval bacteria. Later ancestors lived on land and stayed there for
a very large number of generations. Later ancestors still evolved back into the water and became sea
turtles. And finally they returned yet again to the land as tortoises, some of which now live in the driest
of deserts.

EXERCISE 15 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 38-40 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
38. The concept of describing something as true or false was the starting point for Shannon in his attempts
to send messages over distances.
39. The amount of information that can be sent in a given time period is determined with reference to the
signal strength and noise level.
40. Products have now been developed which can convey more information than Shannon had anticipated as
possible.
Information Theory- the Big Data
Information theory lies at the heart of everything - from DVD players and the genetic code of DNA to
the physics of the universe at its most fundamental. It has been central to the development of the science
of communication, which enables data to be sent electronically and has therefore had a major impact on
our lives.
A […]
B […]
C This all seems light years away from the down to-earth uses Shannon originally had for his
work, which began when he was a 22-year-old graduate engineering student at the prestigious
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1939. He set out with an apparently simple aim: to pin
down the precise meaning of the concept of ‘information'. The most basic form of information,
Shannon argued, is whether something is true or false - which can be captured in the binary
unit, or 'bit', of the form 1 or 0. Having identified this fundamental unit, Shannon set about
defining otherwise vague ideas about information and how to transmit it from place to place. In
the process he discovered something surprising: it is always possible to guarantee information
will get through random interference - ‘noise' - intact.
D Noise usually means unwanted sounds which interfere with genuine information. Information
theory generalizes this idea via theorems that capture the effects of noise with mathematical
precision. In particular, Shannon showed that noise sets a limit on the rate at which information
can pass along communication channels while remaining error-free. This rate depends on the
relative strengths of the signal and noise travelling down the communication channel, and on its
capacity (its' bandwidth'). The resulting limit, given in units of bits per second, is the absolute
maximum rate of error-free communication given signal strength and noise level. The trick,
Shannon showed, is to find ways of packaging up - ‘coding' - information to cope with the
ravages of noise, while staying within the information carrying capacity ‘bandwidth' - of the
communication system being used.
17
E Over the years scientists have devised many such coding methods, and they have proved crucial
in many technological feats. The Voyager spacecraft transmitted data using codes which added
one extra bit for every single bit of information; the result was an error rate of just one bit in
10,000 — and stunningly clear pictures of the planets. Other codes have become part of
everyday life - such as the Universal Product Code, or bar code, which uses a simple error-
detecting system that ensures supermarket check-out lasers can read the price even on, say, a
crumpled bag of crisps. As recently as 1993, engineers made a major breakthrough by
discovering so-called turbo codes - which come very close to Shannon’s ultimate limit for the
maximum rate that data can be transmitted reliably, and now play a key role in the mobile
videophone revolution.
F Shannon also laid the foundations of more efficient ways of storing information, by stripping
out superfluous (‘redundant') bits from data which contributed little real information. As mobile
phone text messages like 'l CN C U' show, it is often possible to leave out a lot of data without
losing much meaning, As with error correction, however, there's a limit beyond which
messages become too ambiguous. Shannon showed how to calculate this limit, opening the way
to the design of compression methods that cram maximum information into the minimum
space.

EXERCISE 16 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 37-40 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
37. Consumers prefer theme parks which avoid serious issues.
38. More people visit museums than theme parks.
39. The boundaries of Leyden have changed little since the seventeenth century.
40. Museums can give a false impression of how life used to be.
The Development of Museums
A […]
B […]
C In a related development, the sharp distinction between museum and heritage sites on the one hand,
and theme parks on the other, is gradually evaporating. They already borrow ideas and concepts from
one another. For example, museums have adopted storylines for exhibitions, sites have accepted
“theming” as a relevant tool, and theme parks are moving towards more authenticity and research-
based presentations in zoos, animals are no longer kept in cages, but in great spaces, either in the
open air or in enormous greenhouses, such as the jungle and desert environments in Burgers’ Zoo in
Holland. This particular trend is regarded as one of the major developments in the presentation of
natural history in the twentieth century.
D Theme parks are undergoing other changes, too, as they try to present more serious social and
cultural issues, and move away from fantasy. This development is a response to market forces and,
although museums and heritage sites have a special, rather distinct, role to fulfill, they are also
operating in a very competitive environment, where visitors make choices on how and where to
spend their free time. Heritage and museum experts do not have to invent stories and recreate
historical environments to attract their visitors: their assets are already in place. However, exhibits
18
 must be both based on artefacts and facts as we know them, and attractively presented. Those who
are professionally engaged in the art of interpreting history are thus in a difficult position, as they
must steer a narrow course between the demands of “evidence” and “attractiveness”, especially given
the increasing need in the heritage industry for income-generating activities.
E It could be claimed that in order to make everything in heritage more ‘real’ historical accuracy must
be increasingly altered. For example, Pithecanthropus erectus is depicted in an Indonesian museum
with Malay facial features, because this corresponds to public perceptions. Similarly, in the Museum
of Natural History in Washington, Neanderthal man is shown making a dominant gesture to his wife.
Such presentations tell us more about contemporary perceptions of the world than about our
ancestors. There is one compensation, however, for the professionals who make these interpretations:
If they did not provide the interpretation, visitors would do it for themselves, based on their own
ideas, misconceptions and prejudices. And no matter how exciting the result, it would contain a lot
more bias than the presentations provided by experts.
F Human bias is inevitable, but another source of bias in the representation of history has to do with the
transitory nature of the materials themselves. The simple fact is that not everything from history
survives the historical process. Castles, palaces and cathedrals have a longer lifespan than the
dwellings of ordinary people. The same applies to the famishing and other contents of the premises.
In a town like Leyden in Holland, which in the seventeenth century was occupied by approximately
the same number of inhabitants as today, people lived within the walled town, an area more than five
times smaller than modern Leyden. In most of the houses several families lived together in
circumstances beyond our imagination. Yet In museums, line period rooms give only an image of the
lifestyle of the upper class of that era. No wonder that people who stroll around exhibitions are filled
with nostalgia; the evidence in museums indicates that life was so much better in the past. This
notion is induced by the bias in its representation in museums and heritage centers.

19
 PART B. YES / NO / NOT GIVEN
EXERCISE 1. Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage?
In boxes 1-8 in your answer sheet, write:
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
1. There are understandable reasons why arguments occur about language.
2. People feel more strongly about language education than about small differences in language usage.
3. Our assessment of a person’s intelligence is affected by the way he or she uses language.
4. Prescriptive grammar books cost a lot of money to buy in the 18th century.
5. Prescriptivism still exists today.
6. According to descriptivist it is pointless to try to stop language change.
7. Descriptivism only appeared alter the 18th century.
8. Both descriptivists and prescriptivists have been misrepresented.
Attitudes to language
It is not easy to be systematic and objective about language study. Popular linguistic debate regularly
deteriorates into invective and polemic. Language belongs to everyone, so most people feel they have a right
to hold an opinion about it. And when opinions differ, emotions can run high. Arguments can start as easily
over minor points of usage as over major policies of linguistic education.
Language, moreover, is a very public behavior so it is easy for different usages to be noted and
criticized. No part of society or social behavior is exempt: linguistic factors influence how we judge
personality, intelligence, social status, educational standards, job aptitude, and many other areas of identity
and social survival. As a result, it is easy to hurt, and to be hurt, when language use is unfeelingly attacked.
[…]
All the main languages have been studied prescriptively, especially in the 18th century approach to the
writing of grammars and dictionaries. The aims of these early grammarians were threefold: (a) they wanted
to codify the principles of their languages, to show that there was a system beneath the apparent chaos of
usage. (b) they wanted a means of settling disputes over usage, and (c) they wanted to point out what they
felt to be common errors, in order to ‘improve’ the language. The authoritarian nature of the approach is
best characterized by its reliance on 'rules' of grammar. Some usages are prescribed; to be learnt and
followed accurately; others are proscribed to be avoided. In this early period, there were no half-measures:
usage was either right or wrong, and it was the task of the grammarian not simply to record alliterative but
to pronounce judgement upon them.
These attitudes are still with us, and they motivate a widespread concern that linguistic standards
should be maintained. Nevertheless, there is an alternative point of view that is concerned less with
standards than with the facts of linguistic usage. This approach is summarized in the statement that it is the
task of the grammarian to describe not prescribe to record the facts of linguistic diversity, and not to attempt
the impossible tasks evaluating language variation or halting language change. In the second half of the 18th
century, we already find advocates of this view, such as Joseph Priestley, whose Rudiments of English
Grammar (1761) insists that ‘the custom of speaking is the original and only just standard of any language.
`Linguistic issues, it is argued, cannot be solved by logic and legislation. And this view has become the
tenet of the modem linguistic approach to grammatical analysis.

20
 In our own time, the opposition between ‘descriptivists’ and 'prescriptivists' has often become
extreme, with both sides painting unreal pictures of the other. Descriptive grammarians have been presented
as people who do not care about standards, because of the way they see all forms of usage as equally valid.
Prescriptive grammarians have been presented as blind adherents to a historical tradition. The opposition
has even been presented in quasi-political terms - of radical liberalism vs. elitist conservatism.

EXERCISE 2 Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage?
In boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the information
NO if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this more than once.
21. Alien civilizations may be able to help the human race to overcome serious problems.
22. SETI scientists are trying to find a life form that resembles humans in many ways.
23. The Americans and Australians have co-operated on joint research projects.
24. So far SETI scientists have picked up radio signals from several stars.
25. The NASA project attracted criticism from some members of Congress.
26. If a signal from outer space is received, it will be important to respond promptly.
IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?
The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence
The question of whether we are alone in the Universe has haunted humanity
for centuries, but we may now stand poised on the brink of the answer to that
question, as we search for radio signals from other intelligent civilizations.
This search often known by the acronym SETI [search for extra-terrestrial intelligence], is a difficult one.
Although groups around the world have been searching intermittently for three decades, it is only now that
we have reached the level of technology where we can make a determined attempt to search all nearby stars
for any sign of life.
A
The primary reason for the search is basic curiosity - the same curiosity about the natural world that
drives all pure science. We want to know whether we are alone in the Universe. We want to know
whether life evolves naturally if given the right conditions, or whether there is something very special
about the Earth to have fostered the variety of life forms that we see around us on the planet. The simple
detection of a radio signal will be sufficient to answer this most basic of all questions. In this sense, SETI
is another cog in the machinery of pure science which is continually pushing out the horizon of our
knowledge. However, there are other reasons for being interested in whether life exists elsewhere. For
example, we have had civilization on Earth for perhaps only a few thousand years, and the threats of
nuclear war and pollution over the last few decades have told us that our survival may be tenuous. Will
we last another two thousand years or will we wipe ourselves out? Since the lifetime of a planet like ours

21
is several billion years, we can expect that if other civilizations do survive in our galaxy, their ages will
range from zero to several billion years. Thus any other civilization that we hear from is likely to be far
older on average than ourselves. The mere existence of such a civilization will tell of that long term
survival is possible, and gives us some cause for optimism. It is even possible that the older civilization
may pass on the benefits of their experience in dealing with threats to survival such as nuclear war and
global pollution, and other threats that we haven't yet discovered.
B
In discussing whether we are alone, most SETI scientists adopt two ground rules. First. UFOs
[Unidentified Flying objects] are generally ignored since most scientists don`t consider the evidence for
them to be strong enough to bear serious consideration (although it is also important to keep an open
mind in casa any really convincing evidence emerges in the future). Second, we make a very
conservative assumption that we are looking for a life form that is pretty well like us, since if it differs
radically from us we may well not recognize it as a life form, quite apart from whatever we are able to
communicate with it. In other words, the life form we are looking for may well have two green heads and
seven fingers, but it will nevertheless resemble us in that it should communicate with its fellows. Be
interested in the Universe, Live on a planet orbiting a star like our Sun, and perhaps most restrictively
have chemistry, like us, based on carbon and water.
C
[…]
D
An alien civilization could choose many different ways of sending information across the galaxy, but
many of these either require too much energy, or else are severely attenuated while traversing the vast
distances across the galaxy. It turns out that, for a given amount of transmitted power: radio waves in the
frequency range 1000 to 3000 MHz travel the greatest distance, and so all searches to date have
concentrated on looking for radio waves in this frequency range. So far there have been a number of
searches by various groups around the world, including Australian searches using the radio telescope at
Parkes, New South Wales. Until now there have not been any detections from the few hundred stars
which have been searched. The scale of the searches has been increased dramatically since 1992, when
the US Congress voted NASA $10 million per year for ten years to conduct a thorough search for extra-
terrestrial life. Much of the money in this project is being spent on developing the special hardware
needed to search many frequencies et once. The project has two parts. One part is a targeted search using
the world's largest radio telescopes. The American-operated telescope in Arecibo. Puerto Rico and the
French telescope in Nancy in France. This part of the project is searching the nearest 1000 likely stars
with high sensibility for signals in the frequency range 1000 to 3000 MHz. The other part of the project
is an undirected search which is monitoring all of space with a lower using the smaller antennas of
NASA’s Deep Space Network.
E
There is considerable debate over how we should react if we detect a signal from an alien civilization.
Everybody agrees that we should not reply immediately. Quite apart from the impracticality of sending a
reply over such large distances at short notice, it raises a host of ethical questions that would have to be
addressed by the global community before any reply could be sent. Would the human race face the
culture shock if faced with a superior and much older civilization? Luckily, there is no urgency about
this. The stars being searched are hundreds of light years away, so it takes hundreds of years for their
signal to reach us, and a further few hundred years for our reply to reach them. It's not important, then, if
22
 there’s a delay of a few years, or decades, while the human race debates the question of whether to reply
and perhaps carefully drafts a reply.

EXERCISE 3 Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage?
In boxes 32-37 on your answer sheet, write:
YES it the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO it the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
32. Exposure to different events forces the brain to think differently.
33. Iconoclasts are unusually receptive to new experiences.
34. Most people are too shy to try different things.
35. If you think in an iconoclastic way, you can easily overcome tear.
36. When concern about embarrassment matters less, other fears become irrelevant.
37. Fear of public speaking is a psychological illness.
A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently
In the last decade a revolution has occurred in the way that scientists think about the brain. We now
know that the decisions humans make can be traced to the firing patterns of neurons in specific parts of the
brain. These discoveries have led to the field known as neuroeconomics, which studies the brain’s secrets to
success in an economic environment that demands innovation and being able to do things differently from
competitors. A brain that can do this is an iconoclastic one. Briefly, an iconoclast is a person who does
something that others say can't be done.
This definition implies that iconoclasts are different from other people, but more precisely, it is their
brains that are different in three distinct ways: perception, fear response, and social intelligence. Each of
these three functions utilizes a different circuit in the brain. Naysayers might suggest that the brain is
irrelevant, that thinking in an original, even revolutionary, way is more a matter of personality than brain
function. But the field of neuroeconomics was born out of the realization that the physical workings of the
brain place limitations on the way we make decisions. By understanding these constraints, we begin to
understand why some people march to a different drumbeat.
The first thing to realize is that the brain suffers from limited resources. It has a fixed energy budget,
about the same as a 40 watt light bulb, so it has evolved to work as efficiently as possible. This is where
most people are impeded from being an iconoclast. For example, when confronted with information
streaming from the eyes, the brain will interpret this information in the quickest way possible. Thus it will
draw on both past experience and any other source of information, such as what other people say, to make
sense of what it is seeing. This happens all the time. The brain takes shortcuts that work so well we are
hardly ever aware of them. We think our perceptions of the world are real, but they are only biological and
electrical rumblings. Perception is not simply a product of what your eyes or ears transmit to your brain.
More than the physical reality of photons or sound waves, perception is a product of the brain.
Perception is central to iconoclasm. Iconoclasts see things differently to other people. Their brains do
not fall into efficiency pitfalls as much as the average person’s brain. Iconoclasts, either because they were
born that way or through learning, have found ways to work around the perceptual shortcuts that plague
most people. Perception is not something that is hardwired into the brain. It is a learned process, which is
both a curse and an opportunity for change. The brain faces the fundamental problem of interpreting
physical stimuli from the senses.

23
 Everything the brain sees, hears, or touches has multiple interpretations. The one that is ultimately
chosen is simply the brain's best theory. In technical terms, these conjectures have their basis in the
statistical likelihood of one interpretation over another and are heavily influenced by past experience and,
importantly for potential iconoclasts what other people say.
The best way to see things differently to other people is to bombard the brain with things it has never
encountered before. Novelty releases the perceptual process from the chains of past experience and forces
the brain to make new judgments. Successful iconoclasts have an extraordinary willingness to be exposed to
what is fresh and different. Observation of iconoclasts shows that they embrace novelty while most people
avoid things that are different.
The problem with novelty, however, is that it tends to trigger the brain's fear system. Fear is a major
impediment to thinking like an iconoclast and stops the average person in his tracks. There are many types
of fear, but the two that inhibit iconoclastic thinking and people generally find difficult to deal with are fear
of uncertainty and fear of public ridicule. These may seem like trivial phobias. But fear of public speaking,
which everyone must do from time to time, afflicts one third of the population. This makes it too common to
be considered a mental disorder. It is simply a common variant of human nature, one which iconoclasts do
not let inhibit their reactions.
Finally, to be successful iconoclasts, individuals must sell their ideas to other people. This is where
social intelligence comes in. Social intelligence is the ability to understand and manage people in a business
setting. In the last decade there has been an explosion of knowledge about the social brain and how the brain
works when groups coordinate decision making. Neuroscience has revealed which brain circuits are
responsible for functions like understanding what other people think, empathy, fairness, and social identity.
These brain regions play key roles in whether people convince others of their ideas. Perception is important
in social cognition too. The perception of someone's enthusiasm, or reputation, can make or break a deal.
Understanding how perception becomes intertwined with social decision making shows why successful
iconoclasts are so rare.
Iconoclasts create new opportunities in every area from artistic expression to technology to business.
They supply creativity and innovation not easily accomplished by committees. Rules aren't important to
them. Iconoclasts face alienation and failure, but can also be a major asset to any organization. It is crucial
for success in any field to understand how the iconoclastic mind works.

EXERCISE 4 Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage?
In boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet, write:
YES it the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO it the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
36. The physical surroundings in which a person works play a key role in determining their creativity.
37. Most people have the potential to be creative.
38. Teams work best when their members are of equally matched intelligence.
39. It is easier for smaller companies to be innovative.
40. A manager’s approval of an idea is more persuasive than that of a colleague.
The psychology of innovation
Why are so few companies truly innovative?
Innovation is key to business survival, and companies put substantial resources into inspiring
employees to develop new ideas. There are, nevertheless, people working in luxurious, state-of-the-art
24
centres designed to stimulate innovation who find that their environment doesn’t make them feel at all
creative. And there are those who don’t have a budget, or much space, but who innovate successfully.
For Robert B. Cialdini, Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, one reason that
companies don’t succeed as often as they should is that innovation starts with recruitment. Research shows
that the fit between an employee’s values and a company’s values makes a difference to what contribution
they make and whether, two years after they join, they’re still at the company. Studies at Harvard Business
School show that, although some individuals may be more creative than others, almost every individual can
be creative in the right circumstances.
One of the most famous photographs in the story of rock’n’roll emphasises Ciaidini’s views. The 1956
picture of singers Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis jamming at a piano in Sun
Studios in Memphis tells a hidden story. Sun’s ‘million-dollar quartet’ could have been a quintet. Missing
from the picture is Roy Orbison’ a greater natural singer than Lewis, Perkins or Cash. Sam Phillips, who
owned Sun, wanted to revolutionise popular music with songs that fused black and white music, and country
and blues. Presley, Cash, Perkins and Lewis instinctively understood Phillips’s ambition and believed in it.
Orbison wasn’t inspired by the goal, and only ever achieved one hit with the Sun label.
The value fit matters, says Cialdini, because innovation is, in part, a process of change, and under that
pressure we, as a species, behave differently, ‘ When things change, we are hard-wired to play it safe .’
Managers should, therefore, adopt an approach that appears counterintuitive -they should explain what
stands to be lost if the company fails to seize a particular opportunity. Studies show that we invariably take
more gambles when threatened with a loss than when offered a reward.
Managing innovation is a delicate art. It’s easy for a company to be pulled in conflicting directions as
the marketing, product development, and finance departments each get different feedback from different
sets of people. And without a system which ensures collaborative exchanges within the company, it’s also
easy for small ‘pockets of innovation‟ to disappear. Innovation is a contact sport. You can’t brief people just
by saying, ‘We’re going in this direction and I’m going to take you with me.’
Cialdini believes that this ‘follow-the-leader syndrome, is dangerous, not least because it encourages
bosses to go it alone. ‘It’s been scientifically proven that three people will be better than one at solving
problems, even if that one person is the smartest person in the field.’ To prove his point, Cialdini cites an
interview with molecular biologist James Watson. Watson, together with Francis Crick, discovered the
structure of DNA, the genetic information carrier of all living organisms. ‘When asked how they had
cracked the code ahead of an array of highly accomplished rival investigators, he said something that
stunned me. He said ” he and Crick had succeeded because they were aware that they weren’t the most
intelligent of the scientists pursuing the answer. The smartest scientist was called Rosalind Franklin who,
Watson said, “was so intelligent she rarely sought advice”.’
Teamwork taps into one of the basic drivers of human behaviour. ‘The principle of social proof is so
pervasive that we don’t even recognise it,’ says Cialdini. ‘If your project is being resisted, for example, by a
group of veteran employees, ask another old-timer to speak up for it.’ Cialdini is not alone in advocating this
strategy. Research shows that peer power, used horizontally not vertically, is much more powerful than any
boss’s speech.
Writing, visualising and prototyping can stimulate the flow of new ideas. Cialdini cites scores of
research papers and historical events that prove that even something as simple as writing deepens every
individual’s engagement in the project. It is, he says, the reason why all those competitions on breakfast
cereal packets encouraged us to write in saying, in no more than 10 words: ‘I like Kellogg’s Com Flakes
because… .’ The very act of writing makes us more likely to believe it.
[…]

25
 IELTS 6.5 /
EXERCISE Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage?
26
In boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet, write:
YES it the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO it the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
36. Art history should focus on discovering the meaning of art using a range of media.
37. The approach of art historians conflicts with that of art museums.
38. People should be encouraged to give their opinions openly on works of art.
39. Reproductions of fine art should only be sold to the public if they are of high quality.
40. In the future, those with power are likely to encourage more people to enjoy art.
Museums of fine art and their public
The fact that people go to the Louvre museum in Paris to see the original painting Mona Lisa when they can
see a reproduction anywhere leads us to question some assumptions about the role of museums of fine art in
today’s world.
One of the most famous works of art in the world is Leonardo da Vinci’s
Mona Lisa. Nearly everyone who goes to see the original will already be familiar
with it from reproductions, but they accept that fine art is more rewardingly viewed
in its original form.
[…]
The visitor may then be struck by the strangeness of seeing such diverse
paintings, drawings and sculptures brought together in an environment for which
they were not originally created. This ‘displacement effect’ is further heightened by
the sheer volume of exhibits. In the case of a major collection, there are probably
more works on display than we could realistically view in weeks or even months.
This is particularly distressing because time seems to be a vital factor in the
appreciation of all art forms. A fundamental difference between paintings and other
art forms is that there is no prescribed time over which a painting is viewed. By contrast, the audience
encourages an opera or a play over a specific time, which is the duration of the performance. Similarly,
novels and poems are read in a prescribed temporal sequence, whereas a picture has no clear place at which
to start viewing, or at which to finish. Thus artworks themselves encourage us to view them superficially,
without appreciating the richness of detail and labour that is involved.
Consequently, the dominant critical approach becomes that of the art historian, a specialised academic
approach devoted to ‘discovering the meaning’ of art within the cultural context of its time. This is in
perfect harmony with the museum's function, since the approach is dedicated to seeking out and conserving
‘authentic’, original, readings of the exhibits. Again, this seems to put paid to that spontaneous, participators
criticism which can be found in abundance in criticism of classic works of literature, but is absent from most
art history.
The displays of art museums serve as a warning of what critical practices can emerge when
spontaneous criticism is suppressed. The museum public, like any other audience, experience art more
rewardingly when given the confidence to express their views. If appropriate works of fine art could be
rendered permanently accessible to the public by means of high-fidelity reproductions, as literature and
music already are, the public may feel somewhat less in awe of them. Unfortunately, that may be too much
to ask from those who seek to maintain and control the art establishment.

26
 IELTS 6.5 /
EXERCISE Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage?
27
In boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet, write:
YES it the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO it the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
36. It is now clear that the Lapita could sail into a prevailing wind.
37. Extreme climate conditions may have played a role in Lapita migration.
38. The Lapita learnt to predict the duration of El Ninos.
39. It remains unclear why the Lapita halted their expansion across the Pacific.
40. It is likely that the majority of Lapita settled on Fiji.

Beyond the blue horizon

Ancient voyagers who settled the far-flung islands of the Pacific Ocean
An important archaeological discovery on the island of Efate in the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu has
revealed traces of an ancient seafaring people, the distant ancestors of todays, Polynesians. The site came to
light only by chance. An agricultural worker, digging in the grounds of a derelict plantation, scraped open a
grave – the first of dozens in a burial ground some 3,000 years old. It is the oldest cemetery ever found in
the Pacific islands, and it harbors the remains of an ancient people archaeologists call the Lapita.
[…]
For returning explorers, successful or not, the geography of their own archipelagoes would have
provided a safety net. Without this to go by, overshooting their home ports, getting lost and sailing off into
eternity would have been all too easy. Vanuatu, for example, stretches more than 500 miles in a northwest-
southeast trend, its scores of inrervisible islands forming a backstop for mariners riding the trade winds
home.
All this presupposes one essential detail, says Atholl Anderson, professor of prehistory at the
Australian National University: the Lapita had mastered the advanced art of sailing against the wind. ‘And
there’s no proof they could do any such thing,’ Anderson says. ‘There has been this assumption they did,
and people have built canoes to re-create those early voyages based on that assumption. But nobody has any
idea what their canoes looked like or how they were rigged.’
Rather than give all the credit to human skill, Anderson invokes the winds of chance. El Nino, the
same climate disruption that affects the Pacific today, may have helped scatter the Lapita, Anderson
suggests. He points out that climate data obtained from slow-growing corals around the Pacific indicate a
series of unusually frequent El Ninos around the time of the Lapita expansion. By reversing the regular east-
to-west flow of the trade winds for weeks at a time, these super El Ninos might have taken the Lapita on
long unplanned voyages.
However they did it, the Lapita spread themselves a third of the way across the Pacific, then called it
quits for reasons known only to them. Ahead lay the vast emptiness of the central Pacific and perhaps they
were too thinly stretched to venture farther. They probably never numbered more than a few thousand in
total, and in their rapid migration eastward they encountered hundreds of islands – more than 300 in Fiji
alone.

27
 IELTS 6.5 /
EXERCISE 7 Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage?
In boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet, write:
YES it the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO it the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
37. Wagner was the first person to do research on South American lizards.
38. Wagner believes that Bachia lizards with toes had toeless ancestors.
39. The temporary occurrence of long-lost traits in embryos is rare.
40. Evolutionary throwbacks might be caused by developmental problems in the womb.
When evolution runs backwards
Evolution isn’t supposed to run backwards - yet an increasing number of examples show that it does and
that it can sometimes represent the future of a species.
The description of any animal as an ‘evolutionary throwback’ is controversial. For the better part of a
century, most biologists have been reluctant to use those words, mindful of a principle of evolution that says
‘evolution cannot run backwards. But as more and more examples come to light and modern genetics enters
the scene, that principle is having to be rewritten. Not only are evolutionary throwbacks possible, they
sometimes play an important role in the forward march of evolution.
The technical term for an evolutionary throwback is an ‘atavism’, from the Latin atavus, meaning
forefather. The word has ugly connotations thanks largely to Cesare Lombroso, a 19th-century Italian medic
who argued that criminals were born not made and could be identified by certain physical features that were
throwbacks to a primitive, sub-human state.
[…]
More recently, however, examples have been reported that break the time limit, suggesting that silent
genes may not be the whole story. In a paper published last year, biologist Gunter Wagner of Yale
University reported some work on the evolutionary history of a group of South American lizards called
Bachia. Many of these have minuscule limbs; some look more like snakes than lizards and a few have
completely lost the toes on their hind limbs. Other species, however, sport up to four toes on their hind legs.
The simplest explanation is that the toed lineages never lost their toes, but Wagner begs to differ. According
to his analysis of the Bachia family tree, the toed species re-evolved toes from toeless ancestors and, what is
more, digit loss and gain has occurred on more than one occasion over tens of millions of years.
So what’s going on? One possibility is that these traits are lost and then simply reappear, in much the
same way that similar structures can independently arise in unrelated species, such as the dorsal fins of
sharks and killer whales. Another more intriguing possibility is that the genetic information needed to make
toes somehow survived for tens or perhaps hundreds of millions of years in the lizards and was reactivated.
These atavistic traits provided an advantage and spread through the population, effectively reversing
evolution.
But if silent genes degrade within 6 to million years, how can long-lost traits be reactivated over
longer timescales? The answer may lie in the womb. Early embryos of many species develop ancestral
features. Snake embryos, for example, sprout hind limb buds. Later in development these features disappear
thanks to developmental programs that say ‘lose the leg’. If for any reason this does not happen, the
ancestral feature may not disappear, leading to an atavism.

28
 IELTS 6.5 /
EXERCISE 8 Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage?
In boxes 34-39 on your answer sheet, write:
YES it the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO it the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
34. Forsythe’s findings contradicted previous beliefs on the function of ‘fractals’ in art.
35. Certain ideas regarding the link between ‘mirror neurons’ and art appreciation require further
verification.
36. People’s taste in paintings depends entirely on the current artistic trends of the period.
37. Scientists should seek to define the precise rules which govern people’s reactions to works of art.
38. Art appreciation should always involve taking into consideration the cultural context in which an artist
worked.
39. It is easier to find meaning in the field of science than in that of art.
Neuroaesthetics
An emerging discipline called neuroaesthetics is seeking to bring scientific objectivity to the study of
art, and has already given us a better understanding of many masterpieces. The blurred imagery of
Impressionist paintings seems to stimulate the brain's amygdala, for instance. Since the amygdala plays a
crucial role in our feelings, that finding might explain why many people find these pieces so moving.
Could the same approach also shed light on abstract twentieth-century pieces, from Mondrian's
geometrical blocks of colour, to Pollock's seemingly haphazard arrangements of splashed paint on canvas?
Sceptics believe that people claim to like such works simply because they are famous. We certainly do have
an inclination to follow the crowd. When asked to make simple perceptual decisions such as matching a
shape to its rotated image, for example, people often choose a definitively wrong answer if they see others
doing the same. It is easy to imagine that this mentality would have even more impact on a fuzzy concept
like art appreciation, where there is no right or wrong answer.
[…]
It is also intriguing that the brain appears to process movement when we see a handwritten letter, as if
we are replaying the writer's moment of creation. This has led some to wonder whether Pollock's works feel
so dynamic because the brain reconstructs the energetic actions the artist used as he painted. This may be
down to our brain's 'mirror neurons', which are known to mimic others' actions. The hypothesis will need to
be thoroughly tested, however. It might even be the case that we could use neuroaesthetic studies to
understand the longevity of some pieces of artwork. While the fashions of the time might shape what is
currently popular, works that are best adapted to our visual system may be the most likely to linger once the
trends of previous generations have been forgotten.
It's still early days for the field of neuroaesthetics - and these studies are probably only a taste of what
is to come. It would, however, be foolish to reduce art appreciation to a set of scientific laws. We shouldn't
underestimate the importance of the style of a particular artist, their place in history and the artistic
environment of their time. Abstract art offers both a challenge and the freedom to play with different
interpretations. In some ways, it's not so different to science, where we are constantly looking for systems
and decoding meaning so that we can view and appreciate the world in a new way.

29
 IELTS 6.5 /
EXERCISE 9 Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage?
In boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet, write:
YES it the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO it the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
37. Human beings might have achieved their present position without language.
38. The Port-Royal grammarians did justice to the nature of language.
39. A complex idea can be explained more clearly in a sentence than in a single word.
40. The Sumerians were responsible for starting the recording of events.
This Marvellous Invention
A. Of all mankind’s manifold creations, language must take pride of place. Other inventions -the wheel,
agriculture, sliced bread - may have transformed our material existence, but the advent of language is
what made us human. Compared to language, all other inventions pale in significance, since everything
we have ever achieved depends on language and originates from it. Without language, we could never
have embarked on our ascent to unparalleled power over all other animals, and even over nature itself.
B. But language is foremost not just because it came first. In its own right it is a tool of extraordinary
sophistication, yet based on an idea of ingenious simplicity: ‘this marvellous invention of composing
out of twenty-five or thirty sounds that infinite variety of expressions which, whilst having in
themselves no likeness to what is in our mind, allow us to disclose to others its whole secret, and to
make known to those who cannot penetrate it all that we imagine, and all the various stirrings of our
soul’ This was how, in 1660, the renowned French grammarians of the Port-Royal abbey near Versailles
distilled the essence of language, and no one since has celebrated more eloquently the magnitude of
its achievement. Even so, there is just one flaw in all these hymns of praise, for the homage to languages
unique accomplishment conceals a simple yet critical incongruity. Language is mankind s greatest
invention - except, of course, that it was never invented. This apparent paradox is at the core of our
fascination with language, and it holds many of its secrets.
C. […]
D. […]
E. Often, it is only the estrangement of foreign tongues, with their many exotic and outlandish features,
that brings home the wonder of languages design. One of the showiest stunts that some languages can
pull off is an ability to build up words of breath-breaking length, and thus express in one word what
English takes a whole sentence to say. The Turkish word çehirliliçtiremediklerimizdensiniz, to take one
example, means nothing less than ‘you are one of those whom we can’t turn into a town-dweller’. (In
case you were wondering, this monstrosity really is one word, not merely many different words
squashed together - most of its components cannot even stand up on their own.)
F. And if that sounds like some one-off freak, then consider Sumerian, the language spoken on the banks
of the Euphrates some 5,000 years ago by the people who invented writing and thus enabled the
documentation of history. A Sumerian word like munintuma'a (‘when he had made it suitable for her’)
might seem rather trim compared to the Turkish colossus above. What is so impressive about it,
however, is not its lengthiness but rather the reverse - the thrifty compactness of its construction. The
word is made up of different slots, each corresponding to a particular portion of meaning. This sleek
design allows single sounds to convey useful information, and in fact even the absence of a sound has
been enlisted to express something specific. If you were to ask which bit in the Sumerian word
corresponds to the pronoun ‘it’ in the English translation ‘when he had made it suitable for her’, then
the answer would have to be nothing. Mind you, a very particular kind of nothing: the nothing that
stands in the empty slot in the middle. The technology is so fine-tuned then that even a non-sound, when
carefully placed in a particular position, has been invested with a specific function. Who could possibly
have come up with such a nifty contraption?

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