PROFICIENCY RANKING TEST

Name: ____________________

Date: ____________________

Mark: _____




This whole test must be completed in 160 minutes. The
spoken language section will take 15 minutes. Then you
must proceed to the next parts of the test. You may not
stop until you have finished all the activities. There will
be no break.
Spoken Language Understanding

Activity 1
You will watch a video about laughter. For questions 1-8 complete the gaps with no
more than five words. For questions 9-10 give a brief answer in the gap following. You
may watch the video twice.

1. Laughter involves 15 facial muscles, the ____________________ system and the
brains limbic system.
2. Pseudo bulbar affect affects ____________________ and MS patients.
3. The speaker suggests that you laugh more easily when you are
____________________.
4. You will laugh with your friends fall when you assure hes _______________.
5. If you fell down, you would laugh seeing your friend ____________________.
6. People you dont know in the room will probably laugh making fun of your
____________________.
7. Adolescents make fun of almost ____________________.
8. Laughing ____________________ makes you burn as much calories as a 15-minute
bicycle ride.

9. What the speaker considers laughter not to be at the end?
__________________________________________________
10. What one can do in order to learn more of SciShow?
__________________________________________________

Activity 2
You will listen to a recording extract taken from a podcast on contagious laughter. For
questions 1-7 choose the best answer A, B or C. You will hear the recording twice.

1. Where did the laughter at the beginning of the recording come from?
A. The host
B. The guest
C. The laugh box

2. What does the speaker suggest laughter is caused from?
A. Laughter
B. A joke
C. Nothing

3. The incident the speaker refers to happened in
A. 1962
B. A boarding school
C. Kasasha

4. When does the laughter begin?
A. When the teacher gets upset
B. When a girls begun to laugh
C. When two girls begun to laugh

5. Why does the laughter spread to the whole school?
A. Because the teachers are unable to control the situation
B. Because of a girl overhearing someone laughing
C. Because the school was closed

6. When was the medical report written?
A. May 1963
B. 30
th
January 1962
C. Recently

7. For how long did the longest occurrence last?
A. A few minutes
B. A few hours
C. A few days
Written Language Understanding

Activity 3
Read the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap. Use only one word
in each gap. There is an example at the beginning.

Endangered languages, just like endangered animals, are those which could die out. A
language (1) __________ considered to be endangered when very few people speak
it, and those who do are elderly. In North America, for example, there were once
about 300 different languages, (2) __________ which, only half are still used today. It
has been predicted that (3) __________ the middle of this century, there will only be
twenty.
There are many reasons (4) __________ a language disappears. Often parents teach
their children a more useful language than their own. This frequently happens in
countries (5) __________ a dominant language such as English is spoken by most
people. Those who have a different native language may (6) __________ the decision
to teach their children only English as they believe they will then have better
prospects. These children may never learn to read or write their native language, or
even to speak it well. Their children, in turn, may not learn it at (7) __________.
But why does (8) __________ matter if a language disappears? Well, when the last
speaker of a language dies, a (9) __________ deal of knowledge is lost, often (10)
__________ the form of legends, stories and songs.
Fortunately, though, languages can be saved (11) __________ extinction. In 1983, for
instance, only 1,000 people (12) __________ speak Hawaiian. Today, there are over
10,000.

Activity 4
Read each text and find the missing word or phrase.

(1) Passports are no longer checked at the borders between EU countries (with
the exception of the UK and Ireland). __________, if you enter an EU country
from a country which is not a member, the law states you must show a valid
passport.
A. Although
B. Additionally
C. However

(2) The court found the newspaper guilty of invasion of privacy, and ordered it to
pay and additional 500,000 __________.
A. In circulation
B. In compensation
C. In legal fees

(3) You should pray to have a sound mind in a sound body, wrote the Roman
poet Juvenal two millennia ago, and the words still __________ today for any
athlete preparing for competition.
A. Hold true
B. Talk sense
C. Are heard

(4) The value of older books is determined by many of the same criteria as modern
books condition, content and edition. Many people think that just because a
book is old, it is valuable, but a book has no collectible value by __________.
A. Age alone
B. Normal standards
C. Todays collectors

(5) __________ the Bounty Islands on which plant species are limited, the sub-
Antarctic islands constitute a centre of plant diversity, and have the richest
flora in the area. The Snares, Antipodes and two of the Auckland Islands are
remarkable in that their vegetation is essentially unmodified by humans or
introduces animal species.
A. Because of
B. With the exception of
C. Accounting for

(6) I have __________ knowledge of how modern electronic gadgets work but
understanding the instructions and using the controller was very easy.
A. Quite a lot of
B. An adequate
C. Only a basic

(7) Pidgin languages develop groups of people who have no language __________
with which to communicate. This is the reason why pidgins have no native
speakers.
A. To speak of
B. In common
C. Learning skills

(8) Communication is significantly easier when people who use different sign
languages meet than it is for those who use different spoken languages.
Therefore, a signer from Britain would be able to communicate fairly well with
one from Japan, although there is no actual __________.
A. International deaf community
B. Worldwide intercommunication
C. Global sign language

(9) The rent on our flat was getting too expensive. Then the landlord kicked us
out and we had nowhere to go, explained Alison, mother of a 6 year old child.
The thought of not having a roof over our head was a terrible __________
and so frightening for my little girl.
A. Strain
B. Event
C. Wound

(10) As complementary medicine moves towards the mainstream, therapists must
be prepared to answer more critical and discriminating questions such as
Does this treatment work? and What kind of evidence supports it? People
are hungry for a new kind of medicine, but not __________.
A. In any case
B. For this kind
C. At any price
Activity 5
Read the text below and decide which word A, B, C or D best fits each space. There is
an example at the beginning.

Turning on the TV and ordering from shirts or blouses, or a box of soap powder to
wash them, could become an everyday occurrence for millions of people (1)
__________ the country. Sofa shopping has already taken (2)__________ in the US
and accounts for 1.7 billion of the American retail market.
Now a (3) __________ by market analysts Verdict Research, published today,
estimates TV shopping in Britain may (4) __________ become a 300 million-a-year
market.
The report (5) __________ that people will be able to buy a wide (6) __________ of
goods from the (7) __________ of their own home.
US operator QVC it (8) __________ for Quality, Value, Convenience launched TV
shopping in the UK last year (9) __________ satellite television with a service which is
(10) __________ to cable and Sky subscribers.
And mail order giant Freemans has started a trial hoping to be the first of the UK
catalogue groups to (11) __________ in on the act.
Hilary Monk, senior analyst at Verdict Research, believes home shopping groups will
have to adopt new technology to keep (12) __________.

1. A. throughout
2. A. out
3. A. record
4. A. future
5. A. warns
6. A. range
7. A. warmth
8. A. represents
9. A. on
10. A. used
11. A. get
12. A. before

B. during
B. off
B. report
B. next
B. protests
B. series
B. comfort
B. looks
B. at
B. made
B. put
B. forward


C. amongst
C. all
C. speech
C. soon
C. cautions
C. product
C. happiness
C. describes
C. to
C. available
C. let
C. back


D. inside
D. through
D. debate
D. instant
D. predicts
D. content
D. relief
D. stands
D. in
D. offering
D. fit
D. ahead


Activity 6
Read the text below. Use the word given in capitals in brackets to form a word that fits
in the corresponding gap. There is an example at the beginning.

The A1GP racing car is revolutionary (REVOLUTION) in its shape, fuel and material. (1)
__________ (HISTORY), racing cars have been designed to have a shape that causes
wind (2) __________ (RESIST) to press the car down so that it grips the road firmly.
But, (3) __________ (FORTUNE) this shape creates air pockets behind the car which
slow down other drivers. The A1GP has been designed to (4) __________ (MINIMUM)
these undesirable air pockets, thus creating more opportunities for pursuing drivers
to (5) __________ (TAKE). From the spectators viewpoint, this guarantees a much
more exciting race.
The A1GP runs on a bio fuel made from sugar, which means that there are fewer
harmful (6) __________ (EMIT). It is constructed from lightweight, stress-absorbent
materials that help to reduce the physical strain of the driver. Also, the seat and safety
harness in the A1GP have been designed to provide a secure and comparatively
comfortable driving position. Test drivers remarked positively on this.
Finally, the A1GP is an (7) __________ (AFFORD) car. This means that drivers can take
up the sport without the need to (8) __________ (SURE) that they have a virtually (9)
__________ (LIMIT) source of financial support, such as generous levels of corporate
(10) __________ (SPONSOR). So, this is a great advantage.

Activity 7
Read the passage and answer the questions below. Circle the correct answer A, B or C.
There is an example at the beginning.

Prehistoric Koalas didnt eat gum, study says
Ancient koalas may have enjoyed a more diverse diet than todays koalas, but were
probably just as loud and lazy as their modern cousins.
A team led by Julien Louys, at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) compared
skull fragments of two fossil species Litokoala kutjamarpensis and Nimiokoala
greystanesi to the one living species. Both prehistoric marsupials lived about 20
million years ago. They have been known about for many years, but researchers have
only recently collected enough cranial fossil material to make the study possible.
The new research shows there were significant differences in the teeth, palate and
jaws of prehistoric koalas compared to modern koalas, but the remainder of the skull
were similar. Its not uncommon to see changes in jaw structure impacting on the
ability to hear, Louys says. But in this case such differences dont appear to have had
that impact.
Louys says that over time koalas underwent substantial changes to their facial bones.
The changes allowed koalas to chew with greater force to cope with a new diet
consisting entirely of tough eucalyptus leaves, which are low in nutritional content
and have high levels of tannins.
The paper also suggests that prehistoric koalas already had a sedentary lifestyle and
the ability to communicate over long distances found in koalas today. Similarities in
the size and shape of auditory bullae large bony structures that enclose the middle
and inner ears mean that prehistoric koalas probably shared the ability to produce
the loud, low-frequency bellows of the modern-day koala. These can be heard by
potential mates or competitors nearly a kilometre away.
UNSW palaeontologist Mike Archer says prehistoric koalas may have used the loud
bellows, rather than moving around to communicate which could suggest a
sedentary lifestyle but they were also necessary because the animals were probably
rare and population densities were low.
The study contradicts the claim made by some conservationists that koalas are
endangered and says the fossil record shows that six million years ago, as the
rainforests opened up and eucalypts became more common, the abundance of koalas
increased staggeringly.
Having picked gum trees, they lucked out, he says. Koalas are not one of the
animals you would regard to be endangered. Federal Government studies have
estimated the national koala population in the hundreds of thousands, but the
Australian Koala Foundation has estimated that the population is between 40,000 and
80,000.

0. In total, how many species of koalas were compared in the study?
A. Two
B. Three
C. Unknown
The correct answer is B
1. What is unusual about the way koalas evolved?
A. Changes in their bones did not affect their capacity to do
something.
B. Their energy levels fell due to a change in lifestyle.
C. They changed their mode of interaction.

2. Who attributes the changes in koalas bone structure to what they feed on?
A. Julien Louys
B. Mike Archer
C. Conservationists

3. Prehistoric koalas are similar to koalas today in terms of their
A. Habitat.
B. Teeth.
C. Call.

4. The research suggests that bullae enabled koalas to
A. Produce sounds that were different from other koalas in
their group.
B. Make themselves known to rivals at a distance.
C. Develop an acute sense of hearing.

5. On which subject is there disagreement?
A. The best way to protect koalas.
B. The current population of koalas.
C. The reasons for the continued survival of the koala

Activity 8
Complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning to the first one. Use the
word given in bold and other words to complete each sentence. You must use between
two and five words. Do not change the word given.

1. Paul knows a lot more about it than John does.
John doesnt know ______________________________ Paul does. much
2. I prefer playing basketball to volleyball.
Id ______________________________ basketball than volleyball. rather
3. She is sorry now that she didnt invite him to dinner.
She ______________________________ him to dinner. wishes
4. Vegetables cant possibly grow in such dry ground.
It is ______________________________ in such dry ground. impossible
5. My car needs to be washed.
I ______________________________ car washed. have
6. You broke my radio, Mark! said Jane.
Jane ______________________________ her radio. accused
7. Handicapped people find travelling by bus difficult.
It is difficult ______________________________ by bus. travel
8. She never finds it difficult to get up early in the morning.
She ______________________________ early in the morning. used

Activity 9
Read the two extracts below and then answer the questions related to each one. Do
not use more than nine words for each of your answer.

The advent of the 24-hour news channel and the instant access the Internet provides
us with has utterly changed the way we view the news. It would at first glance seem
to be a good thing to be able to find out in a moment what has happened on the other
side of the globe, but the problem is that the first glance is all we get. The moment a
new story breaks, all attention switches away from the old one, and nothing is heard
of it again.
With competing news channels all covering the latest big event, another worrying
trend emerges: sensationalism. The only way to get viewers to watch your show is by
shouting the loudest; the most lurid story gets the headlines, and the serious but dull
is relegated to the news in brief section, if it is mentioned at all. A good example of
this is the oil spill in the Mexican Gulf, which was on the screen all day every day until
it was plugged. But where is the coverage of the extent of the contamination, the lives
it has affected, the compensation payments and the clean-up? For the 24-hour news
cycle, it is as if the oil simply disappeared without leaving a trace.

1. When does a piece of news become old?
__________________________________________________
2. What encourages sensationalism in reporting?
__________________________________________________
3. What news stories do not receive the attention they deserve?
__________________________________________________
4. Which environmental aspects of the oil spill have not been covered?
__________________________________________________


Why is it that you in the Western world are so terrified of looking in the mirror and
spotting your first grey hair? This shrewd question was posed by a university student
from Turkmenistan named Rashid, as I interviewed him for my new book, Growing
Old.
My people never have that fear, he went on. It may be true that Western societies
provide a high level of medical and social care, but this alone does not eliminate the
problems faced by the elderly. It seems to me that in this part of the world the young
and able-bodied are so wrapped-up in their own lives that older people are often left
without any relatives who are prepared to care for them.
By now Rashid was becoming quite animated. In my culture, grandparents are not
considered a burden. Their contribution to the family unit is highly valued and, being
the most experienced family members, their advice is always taken into consideration.
It simply stands to reason that anyone who has lived that long can provide a unique
insight into lifes problems.
It seems we have a lot to learn from the people of Turkmenistan.

5. What is readily available to the elderly in Western countries?
__________________________________________________
6. According to Rashid, what are younger people in the West reluctant to do?
__________________________________________________
7. What word describes how Rashid thinks Westerners view the elderly?
__________________________________________________
8. What enables elderly people to offer sound advice?
__________________________________________________


Activity 10
Choose the correct answer A, B, C or D.

1. If it doesnt make a profit soon, this company is _______ having to declare
bankruptcy.
A. Danger of
B. At danger
C. With danger to
D. In danger of

2. Many nations urge their citizens _____ in elections.
A. Vote
B. To vote
C. On voting
D. Voting

3. Have you submitted your application yet? No, I havent _____ had the chance
to start it.
A. Even
B. Much
C. Often
D. Just

4. I remember _____ at the restaurant when I was a child.
A. Have eaten
B. Having eaten
C. To eat
D. To have eaten

5. The part _____ repair the car was ordered today.
A. Needing
B. Needing to
C. Needs to
D. Needed to

6. _____ odd as it sounds, I would rather not go out tonight.
A. Though
B. However
C. As
D. While

7. I know Jenny can win the race. She just has to believe _____.
A. In her
B. In herself
C. Herself
D. Her

8. Professor Wilson, Im surprised you still remember me. Well, even though
Ive been teaching _____, there are some students that I will always remember.
A. For a long period like mine
B. For as long as I have
C. During the long time for me
D. Since a long time that I have

9. Marks parents wouldnt buy him the jeans he wanted, so he had to _____ them
himself.
A. Save it up for
B. Save up for
C. Be saving up to
D. Have saved up to

10. We ought to _____ about the change in schedule.
A. Notify
B. Get notified
C. Have notified
D. Have been notified


11. He got the job even though his skills were _____ to those of the other
applicants.
A. Insignificant
B. Inferior
C. Indifferent
D. Imperfect

12. When choosing the new chairperson, _____ that the past three have all come
from the accounting department.
A. See to it
B. Look out for
C. Keep in mind
D. Ask around

13. The government _____ the use of seat belts in all cars.
A. Prevails
B. Provokes
C. Mediates
D. Mandates

14. I think Kim would be great for the job. Her work record is _____.
A. Impeccable
B. Enriched
C. Rudimentary
D. Tarnished

15. John will likely _____ as head of the department when the semester ends.
A. Resign
B. Conclude
C. Install
D. Expire

16. The company that John works for is _____ with an automotive company, so he
can get a discount on a new car.
A. Correlated
B. Parallel
C. Affiliated
D. Accounted

17. Vacation policies continue to be a source of _____ between management and
the workers.
A. Disturbance
B. Resistance
C. Contraction
D. Friction

18. I can tolerate olive oil, but I just _____ olives.
A. Distort
B. Perjure
C. Abhor
D. Feign

19. The customer upset many of the restaurants staff.
A. Intuitive
B. Prodigious
C. Belligerent
D. Abundant

20. The lecturer restated his main point, _____ that the current approach has been
a failure.
A. Namely
B. Largely
C. Incidentally
D. Exclusively


Activity 11
Read the following signs (1-5) and decide at which place (A-F) each one could be seen.
Each option (A-F) must be used only once. There is one option you do not need to use.

A. A park
B. A library
C. A hospital
D. An airport
E. A school
F. A bakery

1. Those wishing to board now may come to the check-in desk. ____
2. People are asked to remain silent here in order not to disturb the ailing. ____
3. You have the right to ask for a receipt. ____
4. Children of the lower classes are not allowed to enter the playground. ____
5. To borrow most of the items, bring them to the circulation desk and show your
card to an attendant. ____

Activity 12
Fill in the missing words in the text below. The first letter of each word is provided and
the dashes correspond to the missing letters.

What makes us laugh and why do we laugh? Scientists attempting to answer these
questions have found that people who are perceived us witty, clever and funny will be
more (1) s _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ in work and relationships.
A sense of humour may be that missing ingredient to (2) t _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ a romantic
attraction into a flourishing long-term relationship. But whereas women say they want
someone who makes them laugh, men say they want someone (3) w _ _ _ they can
make laugh. In another recent survey, 91 percent of top executives surveyed
considered humour important to career advancement.
Whats more, scientists report that a strong sense of humour speeds healing and
reduces the risk of suicide, depression and heart disease. It is humanitys ultimate
coping mechanism, smoothing the difficulties of (4) m _ _ _ _ _ life.
Laughter societies hold annual conventions (5) d _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ to researching why we
laugh. To them, laughter is much more than a neutral-path action triggering the
involuntary expulsion of air and sound.
Activity 13
Read the text and choose the best answer A, B or C for items 1-2.

Humour is infectious. The sound of roaring laughter is far more contagious than any
cough, sniffle, or sneeze. When laughter is shared, it binds people together and
increases happiness and intimacy. Laughter also triggers healthy physical changes in
the body. Humour and laughter strengthen your immune system, boost your energy,
diminish pain, and protect you from the damaging effects of stress. Best of all, this
priceless medicine is fun, free, and easy to use.
Your sense of humour is one of the most powerful tools you have to make certain
that your daily mood and emotional state support good health.
Paul E. McGhee, Ph.D.
Laughter is a powerful antidote to stress, pain, and conflict. Nothing works faster to
bring your mind and body back into balance than a good laugh. Humour lightens your
burdens, inspires hopes, connects you to others, and keeps you grounded, focused,
and alert.
With so much power to heal and renew, the ability to laugh easily and frequently is a
tremendous resource for surmounting problems, enhancing your relationships, and
supporting both physical and emotional health.
Laughter makes you feel good. And the good feeling that you get when you laugh
remains with you even after the laughter subsides. Humour helps you keep a positive,
optimistic outlook through difficult situations, disappointments, and loss.
More than just a respite from sadness and pain, laughter gives you the courage and
strength to find new sources of meaning and hope. Even in the most difficult of times,
a laughor even simply a smilecan go a long way toward making you feel better.
And laughter really is contagiousjust hearing laughter primes your brain and readies
you to smile and join in the fun.

1. What is the main purpose of the article?
A. To give general information on laughter
B. To highlight the beneficial side of laughing
C. To inform an academic student on his medical research

2. Where this article could be found?
A. On a various-topics website
B. On a medical journal
C. On an entertainment magazine

Now read the text again and choose the best answer A, B or C for items 3-5

3. Laughter
A. Strengthens your immune system
B. Makes you cough, sniffle or sneeze
C. Is the most powerful tool you have

4. Due to laughters power it can
A. Heal and renew
B. Reduce stress, pain and conflict
C. Surmount problems

5. Laughter most importantly
A. Gives people hope
B. Is contagious
C. Diminishes pain and sadness


Activity 14
Read the text and choose the best answer A, B or C for items 1-10.

On Jan. 30, 1962, three schoolgirls started
giggling in a boarding school classroom in
the north-eastern corner of what is now
Tanzaniaand touched off a very strange
epidemic. The three couldnt stop
laughingand soon the uncontrollable
cackles spread to their classmates. The
laughing attacks lasted from a few minutes
up to a few hours; one poor girl reportedly
experienced symptoms for 16 straight days.
Victims couldnt focus on their schoolwork,
and would lash out if others tried to restrain
them.
When 95 of the schools 159 pupils had
come down with what came to be known
as omuneepo, the Swahili word for laughing
disease, the school shut down. The students
returned to their villages, taking
omuneepo with them. The affliction spread
from person to person, school to school,
village to village. The education of the
children is being seriously interfered with
and there is considerable fear among the
village communities, noted local medical
officers in a 1963 report in the Central
African Journal of Medicine. They could find
no explanation for the matter. When the
epidemic finally died down months later,
roughly a thousand people had been struck
by the laughing disease.
As part of our effort to understand what
makes people laugh, we travelled to north-
eastern Tanzania, tracing omuneepos
spread across the region more than a half-
century ago. We tracked down teachers,
students, and medical experts who
experienced the phenomenon first-hand.
We learned there was nothing funny at all
about the situation at the time. The religious
boarding school where the laughter began
was marked by strict rules, windowless
dorms, and devilishly uncomfortably chairs
designed to promote correct posture.
Investigators found similar conditions at
other locations where the omuneepo later
erupted: Serious overcrowding, poor food
quality.
Its a form of complaint, Kroeber
Rugliyama, a long-time local psychiatrist
said of the mysterious laughter. They had
no alternative form of expression.
Laughter is a vexing subject even when its
not spreading through the countryside like a
virulent disease. Take the work of Robert
Provine, a neuroscientist and psychology
professor at the University of Maryland,
Baltimore County. For his book, Laughter: A
Scientific Investigation, Provine engaged in
what he called sidewalk neuroscience,
tracking and observing real-world laughter.
He and his collaborators used tape
recorders to capture more than a thousand
laugh episodes in bars, shopping malls,
cocktail parties, and class reunions. And he
had dozens of student volunteers note in a
laugh log the circumstances around every
time they tittered, chuckled, or guffawed.
The results were surprising, even to Provine:
Less than 20 percent of the real-world
laughter incidents he catalogued were in
response to anything resembling something
funny. Far more often, people were giggling
or chuckling at innocuous statements such
as Ill see you guys later, I see your point,
and Look, its Andre! Whats more, in all of
these cases, the person who produced the
laugh-provoking statement was 46 percent
more likely to be the one chuckling than the
person listening. And while laughter might
seem like something that can erupt at any
point in response to something funny, in
only eight of the 1,200 laugh episodes
Provine catalogued did the laughter
interrupt what somebody was saying.
Instead, 99.9 percent of the time, laughter
occurred in tidy, natural breaks in the
conversation, punctuating the speech like a
period or exclamation point.
Provine discovered that the laughter of our
everyday lives isnt for the most part in
response to anything resembling jokes.
Instead, most of it occurs in conversations
that, out of context, dont seem funny at all.
Provines discoveries suggest that laughter
is inherently social, that at its core its a form
of communication and not just a by-product
of finding something funny. Sure enough,
when Provine went through the laugh logs
hed collected, he found his participants
were 30 times more likely to laugh in the
presence of others than when they were
alone. Among the few solitary instances of
laughter, nearly all occurred in response to
TV shows or other mediathat is, electronic
proxies for other people. When people
noted in their journals that they were truly
alone, they hardly recorded any laughter at
all.
So why would we have evolved the odd and
powerful vocal mannerism of laughter? Why
do we have an innate need to share what we
find funny with others, and why can it can
resemble an out-of-control disease?
Evolutionary theory is rife with possible
explanations, but one of the most
compelling was put forward in a
2005 Quarterly Review of Biology article by
an undergrad named Matthew Gervais and
his adviser, evolutionary biologist David
Sloan Wilson. Its based on the efforts of a
quirky 19
th
-century French physician named
Guillaume Duchenne, who went around
zapping peoples faces with electrodes.
Luckily for Duchenne, he worked at an old
womans hospice, so he had access to a lot
of prone bodies. He must have been quite
the charmer. According to articles on
Duchenne, all the ladies wanted to be
electrocuted by the little old man with his
mischief box.
Applying the prongs of his box to peoples
faces, Duchenne evoked one kind of
smilingthe voluntary kind, the type of
expression we produce when we a grin to be
polite. This mannerism, he discovered,
involves the faces zygomatic major muscles
raising the corners of the mouth. But
Duchenne discovered there was a second
variety of smiling and laughing, one that
occurs when we find something truly
entertaining or funny. This expression was
more complex, utilizing both the zygomatic
major muscles and the orbicularis oculi
muscles that form crows feet around your
eyes. Its why people say a real smile is in the
eyes. Duchenne was never able to
reproduce with his electrodes this second
form of expressionnow known as a
Duchenne smile or Duchenne laughterand
he came to believe it was only put at play
by the sweet emotion of the soul.
More than a century later, Gervais and
Wilson saw Duchennes discovery as
evidence that laughter evolved at two
different points in human development.
First, they posited, at a point sometime
between 2 million and 4 million years ago,
came Duchenne laughter, the kind triggered
by something funny. An outgrowth of the
breathy panting emitted by primates during
play fighting, it likely appeared before the
emergence of language. This sort of laughter
was a signal that things at the moment were
OK, that danger was low and basic needs
were met, and now was as good a time as
any to explore, to play, to socialize. What
the humour is indexing and the laughter is
signalling is, this is an opportunity for
learning, Gervais told us. It signals this is
a non-serious novelty, and recruits others to
play and explore cognitively, emotionally
and socially with the implications of this
novelty.
But then, sometime in the hundreds of
thousands of years after that, theorized
Gervais and Wilson, the other sort of
laughter emergedthe non-Duchenne sort,
the kind that isnt dependent on something
being funny. As people developed
cognitively and behaviourally, they learned
to mimic the spontaneous behaviour of
laughter to take advantage of its effects.
They couldnt get it rightthey couldnt
simulate the eye-muscle movements of real
laughter and smilingbut it was close.
Mimicked laughter was a way to manipulate
otherssometimes for mutually beneficial
purposes, sometimes for more devious
reasons. As Gervais and Wilson put it in their
paper, non-Duchenne laughter came to
occur in aggressive, nervous, or hierarchical
contexts, functioning to signal, to appease,
to manipulate, to deride, or to subvert.
Laughter, in other words, is more than just a
response to humour. Its a primal human
tool, one of the building blocks of society. It
taps into the core of what we are as social
creatures, expressing from one person to
another what often cannot be said in any
other way: either that everything is in good
funor, as in the case of omuneepo, that
something is very, very wrong.

1. For how long did the laughter epidemic last?
A. From some minutes up to a few hours
B. For 16 days
C. For several months

2. What was happening at the school at the time omuneepo erupted?
A. There were strict rules
B. There was something funny
C. There was overcrowding and poor food quality

3. How Provine studied the phenomenon?
A. He recorded people laughing
B. He wrote a book
C. He made a psychology experiment using students as volunteers

4. When people would laugh mainly?
A. When something was funny
B. At innocuous statements
C. When they made a statement

5. Which word can best replace rife in bold?
A. Spread
B. Abundant
C. Confound

6. People can understand which smile is real because
A. It is more complex
B. It involves the zygomatic muscles
C. It also uses a type of muscles near the eyes

7. Duchenne laughter
A. Started because something was funny
B. Was technically a low panting
C. Indicated danger

8. What are the common intentions of non-Duchenne laughter?
A. Imitation
B. Mutuality
C. Manipulation

9. Laughter serves as
A. Response to humour
B. Social foundation
C. A way of communication

10. What would be the best title for the article?
A. Omuneepo: A laughter tradegy in Tanzania.
B. Why do humans laugh? The evolutionary biology of laughter.
C. In search for our lost humour.
Activity 15
Write an article on laughter. Include information about why people laugh, in which
way laughter is beneficial to people and the reasons why humour in our time appears
to have been lost. You can take information from the texts and activities on laughter
appearing all over the exam, and also from the notes you made at the listening
activities. The text below will help you. Write more than 350 words.



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