Reading Practice 4
Reading Practice 4
Reading Practice 4
Phân tích các từ khóa loại 1 và loại 2 trong các câu hỏi dưới đây. Với các từ khóa
loại 2, bạn hãy đưa ra một vài dự đoán về các cách paraphrase trong passage.
PASSAGE 1
Insects, birds and fish tend to be the creatures that humans feel furthest from. Unlike
many mammals they do not engage in human-like behaviour. The way they swarm or
flock together does not usually get good press coverage either: marching like worker
ants might be a common simile for city commuters, but it's a damning, not positive,
image. Yet a new school of scientific theory suggests that these swarms might have a
lot to teach us.
American author Peter Miller explains, 'I used to think that individual ants knew
where they were going, and what they were supposed to do when they got there. But
Deborah Gordon, a biologist at Stanford University, showed me that nothing an ant
does makes any sense except in terms of the whole colony. Which makes you wonder
if, as individuals, we don't serve a similar function for the companies where we work
or the communities where we live.' Ants are not intelligent by themselves. Yet as a
colony, they make wise decisions. And as Gordon discovered during her research,
there's no one ant making decisions or giving orders.
Take food collecting. No ant decides, 'There's lots of food around today; lots of ants
should go out to collect it.' Instead, some foragers go out, and as soon as they find
food, they pick it up and come back to the nest. At the entrance, they brush past
reserve foragers, sending a 'go out' signal. The faster the foragers come back, the more
food there is and the faster other foragers go out, until gradually the amount of food
being brought back diminishes. An organic calculation has been made to answer the
question, 'How many foragers does the colony need today?' And if something goes
wrong – a hungry lizard prowling around for an ant snack, for instance – then a rush
of ants returning without food sends waiting reserves a 'Don't go out' signal.
Câu hỏi
1. Birds and fish's ways of behaving are not similar to those of people.
2. From her study, Gordon found out that no individual ant has leadership roles.
3. When forager ants have already located food, they take it and return to where they
live.
PASSAGE 2
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 grandfathers 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 tired 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 enrollment 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.
Historically. textile dyes were made from such natural sources as plants and animal
excretions. Some of these, such as the glandular mucus of snails, were difficult to
obtain and outrageously expensive. Indeed, the purple colour extracted from a snail
was once so costly that in society at the time only the rich could afford it. Further,
natural dyes tended to be muddy in hue and fade quickly. It was against this backdrop
that Perkin‘s discovery- was made.
Câu hỏi
1. Perkin soon developed his passions for several subjects when he was a little child.
2. Perkin's lecturer was the person who recognised his ability and dedication as a
student of chemistry.
3. Perkin made the discovery that made him rich and famous subsequent to becoming
an assistant of Hofmann.
6. A well-known person claimed that luck only comes to a person who has worked
hard.
PASSAGE 3
For the Inuit the problem is urgent. They live in precarious balance with one of the
toughest environments on earth. Climate change, whatever its causes, is a direct threat
to their way of life. Nobody knows the Arctic as well as the locals, which is why they
are not content simply to stand back and let outside experts tell them what's
happening. In Canada, where the Inuit people are jealously guarding their hard-won
autonomy in the country's newest territory, Nunavut, they believe their best hope of
survival in this changing environment lies in combining their ancestral knowledge
with the best of modern science. This is a challenge in itself.
The Canadian Arctic is a vast, treeless polar desert that's covered with snow for most
of the year. Venture into this terrain and you get some idea of the hardships facing
anyone who calls this home. Farming is out of the question and nature offers meagre
pickings. Humans first settled in the Arctic a mere 4,500 years ago, surviving by
exploiting sea mammals and fish. The environment tested them to the limits:
sometimes the colonists were successful, sometimes they failed and vanished. But
around a thousand years ago, one group emerged that was uniquely well adapted to
cope with the Arctic environment. These Thule people moved in from Alaska,
bringing kayaks, sleds, dogs, pottery and iron tools. They are the ancestors of today's
Inuit people.
Life for the descendants of the Thule people is still harsh. Nunavut is 1.9 million
square kilometres of rock and ice, and a handful of islands around the North Pole. It's
currently home to 2,500 people, all but a handful of them indigenous Inuit. Over the
past 40 years, most have abandoned their nomadic ways and settled in the territory's
28 isolated communities, but they still rely heavily on nature to provide food and
clothing. Provisions available in local shops have to be flown into Nunavut on one of
the most costly air networks in the world, or brought by supply ship during the few
ice-free weeks of summer. It would cost a family around £7,000 a year to replace meat
they obtained themselves through hunting with imported meat. Economic
opportunities are scarce, and for many people state benefits are their only income.
Câu hỏi
2. When you visit the Canadian Arctic, you can immediately understand the problems
faced by people living in this area.
3. For thousands of years after arriving, they have had to rely on catching marine
species as a means of sustenance.
Odours are also essential cues in social bonding. One respondent to the survey
believed that there is no true emotional bonding without touching and smelling a
loved one. In fact, infants recognise the odours of their mothers soon after birth and
adults can often identify their children or spouses by scent. In one well-known test,
women and men were able to distinguish by smell alone clothing worn by their
marriage partners from similar clothing worn by other people. Most of the subjects
would probably never have given much thought to odour as a cue for identifying
family members before being involved in the test, but as the experiment revealed,
even when not consciously considered, smells register.
In spite of its importance to our emotional and sensory lives, smell is probably the
most undervalued sense in many cultures. The reason often given for the low regard in
which smell is held is that, in comparison with its importance among animals, the
human sense of smell is feeble and undeveloped. While it is true that the olfactory
powers of humans are nothing like as fine as those possessed by certain animals, they
are still remarkably acute. Our noses are able to recognise thousands of smells, and to
perceive odours which are present only in extremely small quantities.
Smell, however, is a highly elusive phenomenon. Odours, unlike colours, for instance,
cannot be named in many languages because the specific vocabulary simply doesn't
exist. 'It smells like ... ,' we have to say when describing an odour, struggling to
express our olfactory experience. Nor can odours be recorded: there is no effective
way to either capture or store them over time In the realm of olfaction, we must make
do with descriptions and recollections. This has implications for olfactory research.
Most of the research on smell undertaken to date has been of a physical scientific
nature. Significant advances have been made in the understanding of the biological
and chemical nature of olfaction, but many fundamental questions have yet to be
answered. Researchers have still to decide whether smell is one sense or two - one
responding to proper odours and the other registering odourless chemicals in the air.
Other unanswered questions are whether the nose is the only part of the body affected
by odours, and how smells can be measured objectively given the nonphysical
components. Questions like these mean that interest in the psychology of smell is
inevitably set to play an increasingly important role for researchers.
Câu hỏi
1. Tests have shown that odours can help people recognise the clothes belonging to
their husbands and wives.
2. Certain linguistic groups may have difficulty describing smell because they lack the
appropriate lexical items.
3. Scientists have yet to discovered if smells only have impacts on the nose.
1. For thousands of years they had to rely on catching ________ and _________ as
a means of sustenance.
Passage:
Humans first settled in the Arctic a mere 4,500 years ago, surviving by exploiting
sea mammals and fish.
2. The territory of Nunavut consists of little more than ice, rock and a few
_________ .
Passage:
Nunavut is 1.9 million square kilometers of rock and ice, and a handful of islands
around the North Pole.
3. In recent years, many of them have been obliged to give up their ________
lifestyle, but they continue to depend mainly on ____________ for their food and
clothes.
Passage:
Over the past 40 years, most have abandoned their nomadic ways and settled in the
territory’s 28 isolated communities, but they still rely heavily on nature to provide
food and clothing.
4. Over two thousand years ago, kites were used in China as weapons, as well as for
sending ___________ .
Passage:
And other ancient civilizations certainly knew about kites; as early as 1250 BC, the
Chinese were using them to deliver messages and dump flaming debris on their
foes.
9. In the late eighties, ___________ were holding back industrial progress in China.
Passage:
Towards the end of the 1980s, China's economy was expanding past the capacity of
the nation's electricity grid, she explains. Power shortages were becoming a serious
obstacle to growth.
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.
During World War I, Marie Curie, with the help of her daughter Irene, devoted herself
to the development of the use of X—radiography, including the mobile units which
came to be known as 'little Curies', used for the treatment of wounded soldiers. In
1918 the Radium Institute, whose staff Irene had joined, began to operate in earnest,
and became a centre for nuclear physics and chemistry. Marie Curie, now at the
highest point of her fame and, from 1922, a member of the Academy of Medicine,
researched the chemistry of radioactive substances and their medical applications.
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.
One of Marie Curie's outstanding achievements was to have understood the need to
accumulate intense radioactive sources, not only to treat illness but also to maintain an
abundant supply for research. The existence in Paris at the Radium Institute of a stock
of grams of radium made a decisive contribution to the success of the experiments
undertaken in the years around 1930. This work prepared the way for the discovery of
the neutron by Sir James Chadwick and, above all, for the discovery in 1934 by Irene
and Frédéric Joliot- Curie of artificial radioactivity. A few months after this discovery,
Marie Curie died as a result of leukaemia caused by exposure to radiation. She had
often carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket, remarking on the
pretty blue-green light they gave off.
Her contribution to physics had been immense, not only in her own work, the
importance of which had been demonstrated by her two Nobel Prizes, but because of
her influence on subsequent generations of nuclear physicists and chemists.
PASSAGE 4
The roots of clog dancing go back several hundred years, and lie in traditional dances
of the Dutch, Native Americans and African-Americans, in which the dancer strikes
the ground with their heel or toes, to produce a rhythm that's audible to everyone
around. In England, clogging is believed to have first developed in the mid-19th
century in the cotton mills of Lancashire, in the north-west, where workers created a
dance that imitated the sound of the machinery. The style quickly spread and
developed a number of regional variations. In Northumberland, it became a recreation
for miners, who danced solo or to the accompaniment of a fiddle.
"The Northumberland style is very distinct from Lancashire clogging," says Laura
Connolly, a virtuoso dancer who worked with Hazlewood on the programme.
"Northumbrian dancing is quite neat and precise with almost no upper-body
movement, whereas the Lancastrian style is more flamboyant."
Whatever the region, clogging remains very much a minority pursuit. Yet at the turn of
the 20th century, clogging was a fully-fledged youth craze. Two famous comic film
actors, Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin, both began their careers as cloggers. But the
dance almost completely died out with the passing of the industrial age. "People
danced in clogs because they were cheap, hardwearing and easily repaired," Connolly
says. "Yet eventually clogs became associated with poverty and people were almost
ashamed to wear them."
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the text for each answer.
Glass, which has been made since the time of the Mesopotamians and Egyptians, is
little more than a mixture of sand, soda ash and lime. When heated to about 1500
degrees Celsius (°C) this becomes a molten mass that hardens when slowly cooled.
The first successful method for making clear and flat glass involved spinning. This
method was very effective as the glass had not touched any surfaces between being
soft and becoming hard, so it stayed perfectly unblemished, with a 'fire finish'.
However, the process took a long time and was labour intensive.
Nevertheless, demand for flat glass was very high and glassmakers across the world
were looking for a method of making it continuously. The first continuous ribbon
process involved squeezing molten glass through two hot rollers, similar to an old
mangle. This allowed glass of virtually any thickness to be made non-stop, but the
rollers would leave both sides of the glass marked, and these would then need to be
ground and polished. This part of the process rubbed away around 20 per cent of the
glass, and the machines were very expensive.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Miller explains that he first really understood the impact that swarm behaviour could
have on humans when he read a study of honeybees Tom Seeley, a biologist at Cornell
University. The honeybees choose as a group which new nest to move to. First, scouts
fly off to investigate multiple sites. When they return they do a "waggle dance" for
their spot, and other scouts will then fly off and investigate it. Many bees go out, but
none tries to compare all sites. Each reports back on just one. The more they liked the
nest, the more vigorous and lengthy their waggle dance and the more bees will choose
to visit it. Gradually the volume of bees builds up towards one site; it's a system that
ensures that support for the best site snowballs and that the decision is made in the
most democratic way.
BÀI 5: DẠNG SUMMARY FILLING
PASSAGE 1
Evidence suggests that a key step is to develop a policy on bullying, saying clearly
what is meant by bullying, and giving explicit guidelines on what will be done if it
occurs, what record will be kept, who will be informed, what sanctions will be
employed. The policy should be developed through consultation, over a period of
time-not just imposed from the head teacher's office! Pupils, parents and staff should
feel they have been involved in the policy, which needs to be disseminated and
implemented effectively.
Other actions can be taken to back up the policy. There are ways of dealing with the
topic through the curriculum, using video, drama and literature. These are useful for
raising awareness, and can best be tied in to early phases of development while the
school is starting to discuss the issue of bullying. They are also useful in renewing the
policy for new pupils, or revising it in the tight of experience. But curriculum work
alone may only have short-term effects; it should be an addition to policy work, not a
substitute.
There are also ways of working with individual pupils, or in small groups.
Assertiveness training for pupils who are liable to be victims is worthwhile, and
certain approaches to group bullying such as 'no blame', can be useful in changing the
behaviour of bullying pupils without confronting them directly, although other
sanctions may be needed for those who continue with persistent bullying.
Work in the playground is important, too. One helpful step is to train lunchtime
supervisors to distinguish bullying from playful fighting, and help them break up
conflicts. Another possibility is to improve the playground environment, so that pupils
are less likely to be led into bullying from boredom or frustration.
With these developments, schools can expect that at least the most serious kinds of
bullying can largely be prevented. The more effort put in and the wider the whole
school involvement, the more substantial the results are likely to be. The reduction in
bullying - and the consequent improvement in pupil happiness- is surely a worthwhile
objective.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer
The most important step is for the school authorities to produce a 35 .......................
which makes the school's attitude towards bullying quite clear. It should include
detailed 36 ........................ as to how the school and its staff will react if bullying
occurs. In addition, action can be taken through the 37 ........................... This is
particularly useful in the early part of the process, as a way of raising awareness and
encouraging discussion. On its own, however, it is insufficient to bring about a
permanent solution. Effective work can also be done with individual pupils and small
groups. For example, potential 38 ......................... of bullying can be trained to be
more self-confident. Or again, in dealing with group bullying, a 'no blame' approach,
which avoids confronting the offender too directly, is often effective. Playground
supervision will be more effective if members of staff are trained to recognise the
difference between bullying and mere 39 ......................... .
PASSAGE 2
Others feel there is more of a case for the theory. Harnessing the wind would not have
been a problem for accomplished sailors like the Egyptians. And they are known to
have used wooden pulleys, which could have been made strong enough to bear the
weight of massive blocks of stone. In addition, there is some physical evidence that
the ancient Egyptians were interested in flight. A wooden artefact found on the step
pyramid at Saqqara looks uncannily like a modern glider. Although it dates from
several hundred years after the building of the pyramids, its sophistication suggests
that the Egyptians might have been developing ideas of flight for a long time. And
other ancient civilisations certainly knew about kites; as early as 1250 BC, the
Chinese were using them to deliver messages and dump flaming debris on their foes.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer
The Egyptians had 8........................ which could lift large pieces of 9.................... ,
and they knew how to use the energy of the wind from their skill. The discovery on
one pyramid of an object which resembled a 10........................... suggests they may
have experimented with 11........................ . In addition, over two thousand years ago
kites were used in China as weapons, as well as for sending 12........................ .
PASSAGE 3
What else might the engineer think of? Well, blind humans sometimes seem to have
an uncanny sense of obstacles in their path. It has been given the name 'facial vision',
because blind people have reported that it feels a bit like the sense of touch, on the
face. One report tells of a totally blind boy who could ride his tricycle at good speed
round the block near his home, using facial vision. Experiments showed that, in fact,
facial vision is nothing to do with touch or the front of the face, although the sensation
may be referred to the front of the face, like the referred pain in a phantom limb. The
sensation of facial vision, it turns out, really goes in through the ears. Blind people,
without even being aware of the fact, are actually using echoes of their own footsteps
and of other sounds, to sense the presence of obstacles. Before this was discovered,
engineers had already built instruments to exploit the principle, for example to
measure the depth of the sea under a ship. After this technique had been invented, it
was only a matter of time before weapons designers adapted it for the detection of
submarines. Both sides in the Second World War relied heavily on these devices,
under such codenames as Asdic (British) and Sonar (American), as well as Radar
(American) or RDF (British), which uses radio echoes rather than sound echoes.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Facial Vision
Blind people report that so-called 'facial vision' is comparable to the sensation of
touch on the face. In fact, the sensation is more similar to the way in which pain from
a 6.................... arm or leg might be felt. The ability actually comes from perceiving
7..................... through the ears. However, even before this was understood, the
principle had been applied in the design of instruments which calculated the
8.................... of the seabed. This was followed by a wartime application in devices
for finding 9.......................... .
PASSAGE 4
One of the social needs addressed by conversational flow is the human need for
‘synchrony' - to be ‘in sync' or in harmony with one another Many studies have shown
how people attempt to synchronize with their partners, by coordinating their behavior.
This interpersonal coordination underlies a wide array of human activities, ranging
from more complicated ones like ballroom dancing to simply walking or talking with
friends.
The need to belong has been identified as one of the most basic of human motivations
and plays a role in many human behaviors. That conversational flow is related to
belonging may be most easily illustrated by the consequences of flow disruptions.
What happens when the positive experience of flow is disrupted by, for instance, a
brief silence? We all know that silences can be pretty awkward, and research shows
that even short disruptions in conversational flow can lead to a sharp rise in distress
levels. In movies, silences are often used to signal noncompliance or confrontation
(Piazza, 2006). Some researchers even argue that 'silencing someone' is one of the
most serious forms of exclusion. Group membership is of elementary importance to
our well being and because humans are very sensitive to signals of exclusion, a silence
is generally taken as a sign of rejection. In this way, a lack of flow in a conversation
may signal that our relationship is not as solid as we thought it was.
Another aspect of synchrony is that people often try to validate their opinions to those
of others. That is, people like to see others as having similar ideas or worldviews as
they have themselves, because this informs people that they are correct and their
worldviews are justified. One way in which people can justify their worldviews is by
assuming that, as long as their conversations run smoothly, their interaction partners
probably agree with them. This idea was tested by researchers using video
observations. Participants imagined being one out of three people in a video clip who
had either a fluent conversation or a conversation in which flow was disrupted by a
brief silence. Except tor the silence, the videos were identical After watching the
video, participants were asked to what extent the people in the video agreed with each
other. Participants who watched the fluent conversation rated agreement to be higher
than participants watching the conversation that was disrupted by a silence, even
though participants were not consciously aware of the disruption. It appears that the
subjective feeling of being out of sync informs people of possible disagreements,
regardless of the content of the conversation.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the text for each answer.
Synchrony
From the maze of conflicting statements and heated articles on the subject, three main
positions about the potential of camera art emerged. The simplest, entertained by
many painters and a section of the public, was that photographs should not be
considered ‘art’ because they were made with a mechanical device and by physical
and chemical phenomena instead of by human hand and spirit; to some, camera
images seemed to have more in common with fabric produced by machinery in a mill
than with handmade creations fired by inspiration. The second widely held view,
shared by painters, some photographers, and some critics, was that photographs would
be useful to art but should not be considered equal in creativeness to drawing and
painting. Lastly, by assuming that the process was comparable to other 50 techniques
such as etching and lithography, a fair number of individuals realized that camera
images were or could be as significant as handmade works of art and that they might
have a positive influence on the arts and on culture in general.
In the last 14 years, the National Long-term Health Care Survey has gathered data on
the health and lifestyles of more than 20,000 men and women over 65. Researchers,
now analysing the results of data gathered in 1994, say arthritis, high blood pressure
and circulation problems -the major medical complaints in this age group - are
troubling a smaller proportion every year. And the data confirms that the rate at which
these diseases are declining continues to accelerate. Other diseases of old age -
dementia, stroke, arteriosclerosis and emphysema - are also troubling fewer and fewer
people.
'It really raises the question of what should be considered normal ageing,' says
Kenneth Manton, a demographer from Duke University in North Carolina. He says the
problems doctors accepted as normal in a 65-year-old in 1982 are often not appearing
until people are 70 or 75.
Clearly, certain diseases are beating a retreat in the face of medical advances. But
there may be other contributing factors. Improvements in childhood nutrition in the
first quarter of the twentieth century, for example, gave today's elderly people a better
start in life than their predecessors.
On the downside, the data also reveals failures in public health that have caused surges
in some illnesses. An increase in some cancers and bronchitis may reflect changing
smoking habits and poorer air quality, say the researchers. 'These may be subtle
influences,' says Manton, 'but our subjects have been exposed to worse and worse
pollution for over 60 years. It's not surprising we see some effect.'
One interesting correlation Manton uncovered is that better-educated people are likely
to live longer. For example, 65-year-old women with fewer than eight years of
schooling are expected, on average, to live to 82. Those who continued their education
live an extra seven years. Although some of this can be attributed to a higher income,
Manton believes it is mainly because educated people seek more medical attention.
The survey also assessed how independent people over 65 were, and again found a
striking trend. Almost 80% of those in the 1994 survey could complete everyday
activities ranging from eating and dressing unaided to complex tasks such as cooking
and managing their finances. That represents a significant drop in the number of
disabled old people in the population. If the trends apparent in the United States 14
years ago had continued, researchers calculate there would be an additional one
million disabled elderly people in today's population. According to Manton, slowing
the trend has saved the United States government's Medicare system more than $200
billion, suggesting that the greying of America's population may prove less of a
financial burden than expected.
Research carried out by scientists has shown that the proportion of people over 65
suffering from the most common age-related medical problems is 14.......................
and that the speed of this change is 15............................ . It also seems that these
diseases ere affecting people 16.......................... in life than they did in the past. This
is largely due to developments in 17......................... , but other factors such as
improved 18........................ may also be playing a part. Increases in some other
illnesses may be due to changes in personal habits and to 19............................ The
research establishes a link between levels of 20......................... and life expectancy. It
also shows that there has been a considerable reduction in the number of elderly
people who are 21.......................... which means that the 22........................ involved in
supporting this section of the population may be less than previously predicted.
BÀI 6: TRUE - FALSE - NOT GIVEN
Dạng so sánh 2 thứ A và B trên phương diện C.
Ví dụ:
Trả lời True/False/Not Given.
2. In experiments, rats who ate what they wanted led shorter lives than rats on a low
calorie diet.
Passage:
Scientists first recognized the value of the practice more than 60 years ago, when
they found that rats fed a low-calorie diet lived longer on average than free-feeding
rats and also had a reduced incidence of conditions that become increasingly
common in old age.
4. Private schools in Japan are more modern and spacious than state-run lower
secondary schools.
Passage:
Lower secondary schools in Japan cover three school years, from the seventh grade
(age 13) to the ninth grade (age 15). Virtually all pupils at this stage attend state
schools: only 3 per cent are in the private sector. Schools are usually modern in
design, set well back from the road and spacious inside.
6. People feel more strongly about language education than about small differences
in language usage.
Passage:
Arguments can start as easily over minor points of usage as over major policies of
linguistic education.
9. In 1970s, illiterate women had approximately the same levels of infant mortality
as those who had learnt to read in primary school.
Passage:
In the late 1970s, the infant mortality rate for the children of illiterate mothers was
around 110 deaths per thousand live births. At this point in their lives, those mothers
who later went on to learn to read had a similar level of child mortality (105/1000).
For women educated in primary school, however, the infant mortality rate was
significantly lower, at 80 per thousand.
10. People who talk less often have clearer ideas than those who talk a lot.
Passage:
Consequently, people who do not talk very easily may be incorrectly understood as
being less agreeable than those who have no difficulty keeping up a conversation.
11. A shrinking organisation tends to lose its less skilled employees rather than its
more skilled employees.
Passage:
When an organisation is shrinking, the best and most mobile workers are prone to
leave voluntarily. Unfortunately, they are the ones the organisation can least afford
to lose - those with the highest skills and experience. The minor employees remain
because their job options are limited.
Bài 6b: Chiến thuật chung dạng True-False-Not
Given
Ví dụ:
PASSAGE 1
It has always been a mystery how the bridge was built. Despite its pioneering
technology, no eye-witness accounts are known which describe the iron bridge being
erected - and certainly no plans have survived. However, recent discoveries, research
and experiments have shed new light on exactly how it was built, challenging the
assumptions of recent decades. In 1997 a small watercolour sketch by Elias Martin
came to light in the Swedish capital, Stockholm. Although there is a wealth of early
views of the bridge by numerous artists, this is the only one which actually shows it
under construction.
Up until recently it had been assumed that the bridge had been built from both banks,
with the inner supports tilted across the river. This would have allowed river traffic to
continue unimpeded during construction. But the picture clearly shows sections of the
bridge being raised from a barge in the river. It contradicted everything historians had
assumed about the bridge, and it was even considered that the picture could have been
a fake as no other had come to light. So in2001 a half-scale model of the bridge was
built, in order to see if it could have been constructed in the way depicted in the
watercolor. Meanwhile, a detailed archaeological, historical and photographic survey
was done by the Iron bridge Gorge Museum Trust, along with a 3DCAD
(computer-aided-design) model by English Heritage.
TRUE
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
32. There is no written evidence of how the original bridge was constructed.
33. The painting by Elias Martin is the only one of the bridge when it was new.
34. The painting shows that the bridge was constructed from the two banks.
35. The original bridge and the model took equally long to construct.
PASSAGE 2
We spend a large part of our daily life talking with other people and, consequently, we
are very accustomed to the art of conversing. But why do we feel comfortable in
conversations that have flow, hut get nervous and distressed when a conversation is
interrupted by unexpected silences? To answer this question we will first look at some
of the effects of conversational flow. Then we will explain how flow can serve
different social needs.
The positive consequences of conversational flow show some similarities with the
effects of processing fluency.’ Research has shown that processing fluency - the ease
with which people process information - influences peoples judgments across a broad
range of social dimensions. For instance, people feel that when something is easily
processed, it is more true or accurate. Moreover, they have more confidence in their
judgments regarding information that came to them fluently, and they like things that
are easy to process more than things that are difficult to process. Research indicates
that a speaker is judged to be more knowledgeable when they answer questions
instantly; responding with disfluent speech markers such as ‘uh’ or ‘um’ or simply
remaining silent for a moment too long can destroy that positive image.
YES
NO
NOT GIVEN
28. People assess information according to how readily they can understand it.
As researchers on aging noted recently, no treatment on the market today has been
proved to slow human aging - the build-up of molecular and cellular damage that
increases vulnerability to infirmity as we grow older. But one intervention,
consumption of a low-calorie* yet nutritionally balanced diet, works incredibly well in
a broad range of animals, increasing longevity and prolonging good health. Those
findings suggest that caloric restriction could delay aging and increase longevity in
humans, too.
Unfortunately, for maximum benefit, people would probably have to reduce their
caloric intake by roughly thirty per cent, equivalent to dropping from 2,500 calories a
day to 1, 750. Few mortals could stick to chat harsh a regimen, especially for years on
end. But what if someone could create a pill that mimicked the physiological effects of
eating less without actually forcing people to eat less? Could such a 'caloric-restriction
mimetic', as we call it, enable people to stay healthy longer, postponing age-related
disorders (such as diabetes, arteriosclerosis, heart disease and cancer) until very lace
in life? Scientists first posed this question in the mid-1990s, after researchers came
upon a chemical agent that in rodents seemed to reproduce many of caloric
restriction's benefits. No compound that would safely achieve the same feat in people
has been found yet, but the search has been informative and has fanned hope that
caloricrestriction (CR) mimetics can indeed be developed eventually.
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
28. Studies show drugs available today can delay the process of growing old.
29. There is scientific evidence that eating fewer calories may extend human life.
30. Not many people are likely to find a caloric-restricted diet attractive.
More than two hundred years ago, Russian explorers and fur hunters landed on the
Aleutian Islands, a volcanic archipelago in the North Pacific, and learned of a land
mass that lay farther to the north. The islands' native inhabitants called this land mass
Aleyska. the 'Great Land'; today, we know it as Alaska.
The forty-ninth state to join the United States of America (in 1959), Alaska is fully
onefifth the size of the mainland 48 - states combined. It shares, with Canada, the
second, longest river system in North America and has over half the coastline of the
United States. The rivers feed into the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska - cold,
nutrient-rich waters which support tens of millions of seabirds, and over 400 species
of fish, shellfish, crustaceans, and mollusks. Taking advantage of this rich bounty,
Alaska's commercial fisheries have developed into some of the largest in the world.
Catches have not always been so healthy. Between 1940 and 1959, over fishing led to
crashes in salmon populations so severe that in 1953 Alaska was declared a federal
disaster area. With the onset of statehood, however, the State of Alaska took over
management of its own fisheries, guided by a state constitution which mandates that
Alaska's natural resources be managed on a sustainable basis. At that time, statewide
harvests totaled around 25 million salmon. Over the next few- decades average
catches steadily increased as a result of this policy of sustainable management, until,
during the 1990s, annual harvests were well in excess of 100 million, and on several
occasions over 200 million fish.
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
14. The inhabitants of the Aleutian islands renamed their islands Aleyska.
15. Alaska's fisheries are owned by some of the world's largest companies.
17. Ninety per cent of all Pacific salmon caught are sockeye or pink salmon.
18. More than 320,000 tonnes of salmon were caught in Alaska in 2000.
19. Between 1940 and 1959, there was a sharp decrease in Alaska's salmon
population.
20. During the 1990s, the average number of salmon caught each year was 100
million.
PASSAGE 5
FOR a few weeks in January 1912, Antarctica was full of explorers. Norwegian Roald
Amundsen had reached the South Pole on 14 December and was speeding back to the
coast. On 17 January, Robert Scott and the men of the British Antarctic expedition had
arrived at the pole to find they had been beaten to it. Just then, a third man arrived;
Japanese explorer Nobu Shirase. However, his part in one of the greatest adventure
stories of the 20th century is hardly known outside his own country, even by fellow
explorers. Yet as Scott was nearing the pole and with the rest of the world still
unaware of Amundsen's triumph. Shirase and his team sailed into Antarctica's Bay of
Whales in the smallest ship ever to try its luck in these dangerous waters.
Since boyhood Shirase had dreamed of becoming a polar explorer. Like Amundsen, he
initially set his sights on the North Pole. But after the American Robert Peary claimed
to have reached it; in 1909, both men hastily altered them plans. Instead they would
aim for the last big prize: the South Pole. In January 1910, Shirase put his plans before
Japanese government officials, promising to raise the flag at the South Pole within
three years. For many of them, the question wasn't could he do it but why would it be
worth doing? 15 years earlier the International Geographical Congress had said that as
the last unknown continent the Antarctic offered the chance to add to knowledge in
almost every branch of science. So, like the British, Shirase presented his expedition
as a search for knowledge: he would bring back fossils, make meteorological
measurements and explore unknown parts of the continent.
The response from the government was cool, however, and Shirase struggled to raise
funds. Fortunately, a few months later, Japan's former prime minister Shigenobu
Okuma came to Shirase’s rescue. With Okuma’s backing. Shirase got together just
enough money to buy and equip a small ship. He eventually acquired a scientist, too,
called Terutaro Takeda. At the end of November 1910, his ship the Kainan Maru
finally left Tokyo with 27 men and 28 Siberian dogs on board. Before leaving, Shirase
confidently outlined his plans to the media. He would sail to New Zealand, then reach
Antarctica in February, during the southern summer, and then proceed to the pole the
following spring. This was not to be, however. Bad weather delayed the expedition
and they didn't reach New Zealand until 8 February; Amundsen and Scott had already
been in Antarctica for a month, preparing for winter.
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
2. Since Shirase arrived in Antarctica, smaller ships have also made the journey.
4. Some Japanese officials thought Shirase's intention to travel to the South Pole was
pointless.
5. The British team announced their decision to carry out scientific research in
Antarctica before Shirase.
6. Shirase found it easy to raise the money he needed for his trip to the South Pole.
A new study conducted for the World Bank by Murdoch University's Institute for
Science and Technology Policy (ISTP) has demonstrated that public transport is more
efficient than cars. The study compared the proportion of wealth poured into transport
by thirtyseven cities around the world. This included both the public and private costs
of building, maintaining and using a transport system.
The study found that the Western Australian city of Perth is a good example of a city
with minimal public transport. As a result, 17% of its wealth went into transport costs.
Some European and Asian cities, on the other hand, spent as little as 5%. Professor
Peter Newman, ISTP Director, pointed out that these more efficient cities were able to
put the difference into attracting industry and jobs or creating a better place to live.
Bicycle use was not included in the study but Newman noted that the two most
‘bicycle friendly’ cities considered - Amsterdam and Copenhagen - were very
efficient, even though their public transport systems were ‘reasonable but not special’.
It is common for supporters of road networks to reject the models of cities with good
public transport by arguing that such systems would not work in their particular city.
One objection is climate. Some people say their city could not make more use of
public transport because it is either too hot or too cold. Newman rejects this, pointing
out that public transport has been successful in both Toronto and Singapore and, in
fact, he has checked the use of cars against climate and found ‘zero correlation’.
TRUE
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
6. The ISTP study examined public and private systems in every city of the world.
7. Efficient cities can improve the quality of life for their inhabitants.
10. Cities with high levels of bicycle usage can be efficient even when public transport
is only averagely good.
PASSAGE 7
One of the first great intellectual feats of a young child is learning how to talk, closely
followed by learning how to count. From earliest childhood we are so bound up with
our system of numeration that it is a feat of imagination to consider the problems
faced by early humans who had not yet developed this facility. Careful consideration
of our system of numeration leads to the conviction that, rather than being a facility
that comes naturally to a person, it is one of the great and remarkable achievements of
the human race.
It is impossible to learn the sequence of events that led to our developing the concept
of number. Even the earliest of tribes had a system of numeration that, if not
advanced, was sufficient for the tasks that they had to perform. Our ancestors had little
use for actual numbers; instead their considerations would have been more of the kind
Is this enough? rather than How many? when they were engaged in food gathering, for
example. However, when early humans first began to reflect on the nature of things
around them, they discovered that they needed an idea of number simply to keep their
thoughts in order. As they began to settle, grow plants and herd animals, the need for a
sophisticated number system became paramount. It will never be known how and
when this numeration ability developed, but it is certain that numeration was well
developed by the time humans had formed even semi-permanent settlements.
Evidence of early stages of arithmetic and numeration can be readily found. The
indigenous peoples of Tasmania were only able to count one, two, many; those of
South Africa counted one, two, two and one, two twos, two twos and one, and so on.
But in real situations the number and words are often accompanied by gestures to help
resolve any confusion. For example, when using the one, two, many type of system,
the word many would mean, Look at my hands and see how many fingers I am
showing you. This basic approach is limited in the range of numbers that it can
express, but this range will generally suffice when dealing with the simpler aspects of
human existence.
The lack of ability of some cultures to deal with large numbers is not really surprising.
European languages, when traced back to their earlier version, are very poor in
number words and expressions. The ancient Gothic word for ten, tachund, is used to
express the number 100 as tachund tachund. By the seventh century, the word teon
had become interchangeable with the tachund or hund of the Anglo-Saxon language,
and so 100 was denoted as hund teontig, or ten times ten. The average person in the
seventh century in Europe was not as familiar with numbers as we are today. In fact,
to qualify as a witness in a court of law a man had to be able to count to nine!
Perhaps the most fundamental step in developing a sense of number is not the ability
to count, but rather to see that a number is really an abstract idea instead of a simple
attachment to a group of particular objects. It must have been within the grasp of the
earliest humans to conceive that four birds are distinct from two birds; however, it is
not an elementary step to associate the number 4, as connected with four birds, to the
number 4, as connected with four rocks. Associating a number as one of the qualities
of a specific object is a great hindrance to the development of a true number sense.
When the number 4 can be registered in the mind as a specific word, independent of
the object being referenced, the individual is ready to take the first step toward the
development of a notational system for numbers and, from there, to arithmetic.
Traces of the very first stages in the development of numeration can be seen in several
living languages today. The numeration system of the Tsimshian language in British
Columbia contains seven distinct sets of words for numbers according to the class of
the item being counted: for counting flat objects and animals, for round objects and
time, for people, for long objects and trees, for canoes, for measures, and for counting
when no particular object is being numerated. It seems that the last is a later
development while the first six groups show the relics of an older system. This
diversity of number names can also be found in some widely used languages such as
Japanese.
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
32. For the earliest tribes, the concept of sufficiency was more important than the
concept of quantity.
33. Indigenous Tasmanians used only four terms to indicate numbers of objects.
34. Some people with simple number systems use body language to prevent
misunderstanding of expressions of numbers.
35. All cultures have been able to express large numbers clearly.
38. In the Tsimshian language, the number for long objects and canoes is expressed
with the same word.
39. The Tsimshian language contains both older and newer systems of counting.
40. Early peoples found it easier to count by using their fingers rather than a group of
pebbles.
PASSAGE 8
The history of human civilization is entwined with the history of ways we have
learned to manipulate water resources. As towns gradually expanded, water was
brought from increasingly remote sources, leading to sophisticated engineering efforts
such as dams and aqueducts. At the height of the Roman Empire, nine major systems,
with an innovative layout of pipes and well-built sewers, supplied the occupants of
Rome with as much water per person as is provided in many parts of the industrial
world today.
During the industrial revolution and population explosion of the 19th and 20th
centuries, the demand for water rose dramatically. Unprecedented construction of tens
of thousands of monumental engineering projects designed to control floods, protect
clean water supplies, and provide water for irrigation and hydropower brought great
benefits to hundreds of millions of people. Food production has kept pace with soaring
populations mainly because of the expansion of artificial irrigation system that make
possible the growth of 40% of the world's food. Nearly one fifth of all the electricity
generated worldwide is produced by turbines spun by the power of falling water.
Yet there is a dark side to this picture: despite our progress, half of the world's
population still suffers, with water services inferior to those available to the ancient
Greeks and Romans. As the United Nations report on access to water reiterated in
November 2001, more than one billion people lack access to clean drinking water:
some two and half billion do not have adequate sanitation services. Preventable
water-related diseases kill an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 children every day, and the
latest evidence suggests that we are falling behind in efforts to solve their problems.
The consequences of our water policies extend beyond jeopardizing human health.
Tens of millions of people have been forced to move from their homes - often with
little warning or compensation - to make way for the reservoirs behind dams. More
than 20% of all freshwater fish species are now threatened or endangered because
dams and water withdrawals have destroyed the free-flowing river ecosystems where
they thrive. Certain irrigation practices degrade soil quality and reduce agricultural
productivity. Groundwater aquifers* are being pumped down faster than they are
naturally replenished in part of India, China, the USA and elsewhere. And disputes
over shared water resources have led to violence and continue to raise local, national
and even international tensions.
At the outset of the new millennium, however, the way resource planners think about
water is beginning to change. The focus is slowly shifting back to the provision of
basic human and environmental needs as top priority - ensuring 'some for all,' instead
of 'more for some'. Some water experts are now demanding that existing infrastructure
be used in smarter ways rather than building new facilities, which is increasingly
considered the option of last, not first, resort. This shift in philosophy has not been
universally accepted, and it comes with strong opposition from some established water
organizations. Nevertheless, it may be the only way to address successfully the
pressing problems of providing everyone with clean water to drink, adequate water to
grow food and a life free from preventable water-related illness.
Fortunately - and unexpectedly - the demand for water is not rising as rapidly as some
predicted. As a result, the pressure to build now water infrastructures has diminished
over the past two decades. Although population, industrial output and economic
productivity have continued to soar in developed nations, the rate at which people
withdraw water from aquifers, rivers and lacks has slowed. And in a few parts of the
world, demand has actually fallen.
What explains this remarkable turn of events? Two factors: people have figured out
how to use water more efficiently, and communities are rethinking their priorities for
water use. Throughout the first three-quarters of the 20th century, the quantity of
freshwater consumed per person doubled on average; in the USA, water withdrawals
increased tenfold while the population quadrupled. But since 1980, the amount of
water consumed per person has actually decreased, thanks to a range of new
technologies that help to conserve water in homes and industry. In 1965, for instance,
Japan used approximately 13 million gallons* of water to produce $1 million of
commercial output; by 1989 this had dropped to 3.5 million gallons (even accounting
for inflation) - almost a quadrupling of water productivity. In the USA, water
withdrawals have fallen by more than 20% from their peak in 1980.
On the other hand, dams, aqueducts and other kinds of infrastructure will still have to
be built, particularly in developing countries where basic human needs have not been
met. But such projects must be built to higher specifications and with more
accountability to local people and their environment then in the past. And even in
regions where new projects seem warranted, we must find ways to meet demands with
fewer resources, respecting ecological criteria and to smaller budget.
YES
NO
NOT GIVEN
21. Water use per person is higher in the industrial world than it was in Ancient Rome.
23. Modern water systems imitate those of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
25. Modern technologies have led to reduction in the domestic water consumption.
The timbers that closed the recovered end of the boat had been removed in antiquity
when it was abandoned, but much about its original shape could be deduced. There
was also evidence for missing upper side planks. The boat was not a wreck, hut had
been deliberately discarded, dismantled and broken. Perhaps it had been ritually killed'
at the end of its life, like other Bronze-Age objects.
With hindsight, it was significant that the boat was round and studied by mainstream
archaeologists who naturally focused on its cultural context. At the time, ancient boats
were often considered only from a narrower technological perspective, but news about
the Dover boat reached a broad audience. In 2002, on the tenth anniversary of the
discovery, the Dover Bronze-Age Boat Trust hosted a conference, where this meeting
of different traditions became apparent. Alongside technical papers about the boat,
other speakers explored its social and economic contexts and the religious perceptions
of boats in Bronze-Age societies. Many speakers came from overseas, and debate
about cultural connections was renewed.
Within seven years of excavation, the Dover boat had been conserved and displayed,
but it was apparent that there were issues that could not be resolved simply by
studying the old wood. Experimental archaeology seemed to be the solution: a boat
reconstruction, half-scale or full-sized, would permit assessment of the different
hypotheses regarding its build and the missing end. The possibility of returning to
Dover to search for the boat's excavated northern end was explored, but practical and
financial difficulties were insurmountable — and there was no guarantee that the
limbers had survived the previous decade in the changed environment.
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
8. Archaeologists went back to the site to try and find the missing northern end of the
boat.
9. Evidence found in 2004 suggested that the Bronze-Age Boat had been used for
trade.
BÀI 7: MULTIPLE CHOICE
Các ví dụ:
PASSAGE 1
Bramley College now has full electronic information resources in the College Library
to help you in your studies. On CD-ROM in the library we have about fifty databases,
including many statistical sources. Want to know the average rainfall in Tokyo or the
biggest export earner of Vanuatu? It's easy to find out. Whether you are in the School
of Business or the School of Art & Design, it's all here for you.
You can conduct your own CD-ROM search for no charge, and you can print out your
results on the library printers using your library photocopying card. Alternatively, you
can download your results to disk, again for no charge, but bring your own formatted
floppy disk or CD-ROM. If you are not sure how to conduct a search for yourself,
library staff can do it for you, but we charge $20 for this service, no matter how long
or how short a time it takes.
All library workstations have broadband access to the Internet, so you can find the
web-based information you need quickly and easily If you are unfamiliar with using
the Internet, help is available in several ways. You can start with the online tutorial
Netstart; just click on the Netstart Icon on the Main Menu. The tutorial will take you
through the basic steps to using the Internet, at any time convenient to you. If you
prefer, ask one of the librarians for internet advice (best at quiet times between 9.00am
and 11.30am weekdays) or attend one of the introductory group sessions that are held
in the first two weeks of each term. Sign your name on the list on the Library Bulletin
Board to guarantee a place, as they are very popular.
A word of warning: demand for access to library workstations is very high, so you are
strongly advised to book a workstation, and we have to limit your use to a maximum
of one hour at any one time. Make your booking (for which you will receive a receipt)
at the information Desk or at the enquiry desks in the Media Services Area (Level 1).
Also, use of the computers is limited to Bramley students only, so you may be asked
to produce your Student Identification Card to make a booking, or while using the
workstations.
A. a floppy disk
B. correct change in coins
C. a photocopying card
D. their own paper
23. To copy search results to a floppy disk, students pay
A. $20
B. no fee
C. a fee based on actual costs
D. a fee dependent on the time taken
A. $20
B. no fee
C. a fee based on actual costs
D. a fee dependent on the time taken
A. at all times
B. in the first two weeks of term only
C. Monday to Friday only
D. between 9.00am and 11.30am only
26. To ensure efficient access to the library work stations, students should
27. At any one time, students may use a library workstation for
A. half an hour
B. one hour
C. two hours
D. an unlimited time
PASSAGE 2
Bullying can take a variety of forms, from the verbal -being taunted or called hurtful
names- to the physical- being kicked or shoved- as well as indirect forms, such as
being excluded from social groups. A survey I conducted with Irene Whitney found
that in British primary schools up to a quarter of pupils reported experience of
bullying, which in about one in ten cases was persistent. There was less bullying in
secondary schools, with about one in twenty-five suffering persistent bullying, but
these cases may be particularly recalcitrant.
Bullying is clearly unpleasant, and can make the child experiencing it feel unworthy
and depressed. In extreme cases it can even lead to suicide, though this is thankfully
rare. Victimised pupils are more likely to experience difficulties with interpersonal
relationships as adults, while children who persistently bully are more likely to grow
up to be physically violent, and convicted of anti-social offences.
Until recently, not much was known about the topic, and little help was available to
teachers to deal with bullying. Perhaps as a consequence, schools would often deny
the problem. 'There is no bullying at this school' has been a common refrain, almost
certainty untrue. Fortunately more schools are now saying: There is not much bullying
here, but when it occurs we have a clear policy for dealing with it.'
Three factors are involved in this change. First is an awareness of the severity of the
problem. Second, a number of resources to help tackle bullying have become available
in Britain. For example, the Scottish Council for Research in Education produced a
package of materials, Action Against Bullying, circulated to all schools in England
and Wales as well as in Scotland in summer 1992, with a second pack, Supporting
Schools Against Bullying, produced the following year. In Ireland, Guidelines on
Countering Bullying Behaviour in Post-Primary Schools was published in 1993.
Third, there is evidence that these materials work, and that schools can achieve
something. This comes from carefully conducted 'before and after I evaluations of
interventions in schools, monitored by a research team. In Norway, after an
intervention campaign was introduced nationally, an evaluation of forty-two schools
suggested that, over a twoyear period, bullying was halved. The Sheffield
investigation, which involved sixteen primary schools and seven secondary schools,
found that most schools succeeded in reducing bullying.
A. there was more bullying than had previously been the case.
B. there was less bullying than in primary schools.
C. cases of persistent bullying were very common.
D. indirect forms of bullying were particularly difficult to deal with.
33. The writer thinks that the declaration 'There is no bullying at this school'
Traditional ways of teaching form the basis of the lesson and the remarkably quiet
classes take their owe notes of the points made and the examples demonstrated.
Everyone has their own copy of the textbook supplied by the central education
authority, Monbusho, as part of the concept of free compulsory education up to the
age of 15. These textbooks are, on the whole, small, presumably inexpensive to
produce, but well set out and logically developed. (One teacher was particularly keen
to introduce colour and pictures into maths textbooks: he felt this would make them
more accessible to pupils brought up in a cartoon culture.) Besides approving
textbooks, Monbusho also decides the highly centralised national curriculum and how
it is to be delivered.
Lessons all follow the same pattern. At the beginning, the pupils put solutions to the
homework on the board, then the teachers comment, correct or elaborate as necessary.
Pupils mark their own homework: this is an important principle in Japanese schooling
as it enables pupils to see where and why they made a mistake, so that these can be
avoided in future. No one minds mistakes or ignorance as long as you are prepared to
learn from them. After the homework has been discussed, the teacher explains the
topic of the lesson, slowly and with a lot of repetition and elaboration. Examples are
demonstrated on the board; questions from the textbook are worked through first with
the class, and then the class is set questions from the textbook to do individually. Only
rarely are supplementary worksheets distributed in a maths class. The impression is
that the logical nature of the textbooks and their comprehensive coverage of different
types of examples, combined with the relative homogeneity of the class, renders work
sheets unnecessary. At this point, the teacher would circulate and make sure that all
the pupils were coping well.
It is remarkable that large, mixed-ability classes could be kept together for maths
throughout all their compulsory schooling from 6 to 15. Teachers say that they give
individual help at the end of a lesson or after school, setting extra work if necessary. In
observed lessons, any strugglers would be assisted by the teacher or quietly seek help
from their neighbour. Carefully fostered lass identity makes pupils keen to help each
other — anyway, it is in their interests since the class progresses together. This
scarcely seems adequate help to enable slow learners to keep up. However, the
Japanese attitude towards education runs along the lines of 'if you work hard enough,
you can do almost anything'. Parents are kept closely informed of their children's
progress and will play a part in helping their children to keep up with class, sending
them to 'Juku' (private evening tuition) if extra help is needed and encouraging them
to work harder. It seems to work, at least for 95 per cent of the school population.
So what are the major contributing factors in the success of maths teaching? Clearly,
attitudes are important. Education is valued greatly in Japanese culture; maths is
recognised as an important compulsory subject throughout schooling; and the
emphasis is on hard work coupled with a focus on accuracy. Other relevant points
relate to the supportive attitude of a class towards slower pupils, the lack of
competition within a class, and the positive emphasis on learning for oneself and
improving one's own standard. And the view of repetitively boring lessons and
learning the facts by heart, which is sometimes quoted in relation to Japanese lasses,
may be unfair and unjustified. No poor maths lessons were observed. They were
mainly good and one or two were inspirational.
The conviction that historical relics provide infallible testimony about the past is
rooted in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when science was regarded as
objective and value free. As one writer observes: 'Although it is now evident that
artifacts are as easily altered as chronicles, public faith in their veracity endures: a
tangible relic seems ipso facto real! Such conviction was, until recently, reflected in
museum displays. Museums used to look — and some still do — much like storage
rooms of objects packed together in showcases: good for scholars who wanted to
study the subtle differences in design, but not for the ordinary visitor. to whom lt all
looked alike. Similarly, the information accompanying the objects often made little
sense to the lay visitor. The content and format of explanations dated back to a time
when the museum was the exclusive domain of the scientific researcher.
Recently, however, attitudes towards history and the way it should be presented have
altered. The key word in heritage display is now 'experience the more exciting the
better and, if possible, involving all the senses. Good examples of this approach in the
UK are the Jorvik Centre in York; the National Museum of Photography, Elm and
Television in Bradford; and the imperial War Museum in London. In the US the trend
emerged much earlier. Williamsburg has been a prototype for many heritage
developments in other parts of the world. No one can predict where the process will
end. On so called heritage sites the re-enactment of historical events is increasingly
popular, and computers will soon provide virtual reality experiences, which will
present visitors with a vivid image of the period of their choice, in which they
themselves can act as if part of the historical environment. Such developments have
been criticised as an intolerable vulgarisation. but the success of many historical
theme parks and similar locations suggests that the majority of the public does not
share this opinion.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
33. The writer says that museums, heritage sites and theme parks
34. The writer says that in preparing exhibits for museums, experts
36. The passage ends by noting that our view of history is biased because
A. we fail to use our imagination.
B. only very durable objects remain from the past.
C. we tend to ignore things that displease us.
D. museum exhibits focus too much on the local area.
PASSAGE 5
The continuous and reckless use of synthetic chemicals for the control of pests which
pose a threat to agricultural crops and human health is proving to be
counterproductive. Apart from engendering widespread ecological disorders,
pesticides have contributed to the emergence of a new breed of chemical-resistant,
highly lethal superbugs.
According to a recent study by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), more
than 300 species of agricultural pests have developed resistance to a wide range of
potent chemicals. Not to be left behind are the disease-spreading pests, about 100
species of which have become immune to a variety of insecticides now in use.
The havoc that the `treadmill syndrome' can bring about is well illustrated by what
happened to cotton farmers in Central America. In the early 1940s, basking in the
glory of chemical based intensive agriculture, the farmers avidly took to pesticides as
a sure measure to boost crop yield. The insecticide was applied eight times a year in
the mid1940s, rising to 28 in a season in the mid-1950s, following the sudden
proliferation of three new varieties of chemical-resistant pests.
By the mid-1960s, the situation took an alarming turn with the outbreak of four more
new pests, necessitating pesticide spraying to such an extent that 50% of the financial
outlay on cotton production was accounted for by pesticides. In the early 1970s, the
spraying frequently reached 70 times a season as the farmers were pushed to the wall
by the invasion of genetically stronger insect species.
17. By the mid-1960s, cotton farmers in Central America found that pesticides
PASSAGE 1
What is the potential for robots and computers in the near future? 'The fact is we still
have a way to go before real robots catch up with their science fiction counterparts.’
Gates says. So what are the stumbling blocks? One key difficulty is getting robots to
know their place. This has nothing to do with class or etiquette, but concerns the
simple issue of positioning. Humans orient themselves with other objects in a room
very easily. Robots find the task almost impossible. 'Even something as simple as
telling the difference between an open door and a window can be tricky tor a robot,’
says Gates. This has, until recently, reduced robots to fairly static and cumbersome
roles.
For a long time, researchers tried to get round the problem by attempting to recreate
the visual processing that goes on in the human cortex. However, that challenge has
proved to be singularly exacting and complex. So scientists have turned to simpler
alternatives: 'We have become far more pragmatic in our work,’ says Nello Cristianini,
Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bristol in England and
associate editor of the journal of Artificial Intelligence Research,' We are no longer
trying to recreate human functions. Instead, we are looking for simpler solutions with
basic electronic sensors, for example.' This approach is exemplified by vacuuming
robots such as the Electrolux Trilobite. The Trilobite scuttles around homes emitting
ultrasound signals to create maps of rooms, which are remembered for future cleaning.
Technology like this is now changing the face of robotics, says philosopher Ron
Chrisley, director of the Centre for Research in Cognitive Science at the University of
Sussex in England.
Last year, a new Hong Kong restaurant, Robt Kitchen, opened with a couple of
sensor-laden humanoid machines directing customers to their seats. Each possesses a
touch-screen on which orders can be keyed in. The robot then returns with the correct
dishes. In Japan, University of Tokyo researchers recently unveiled a kitchen 'android’
that could wash dishes, pour tea and make a few limited meals. The ultimate aim is to
provide robot home helpers for the sick and the elderly, a key concern in a country
like Japan where 22 per cent of the population is 65 or older. Over US$1 billion a year
is spent on research into robots that will be able to care for the elderly. 'Robots first
learn basic competence - how to move around a house without bumping into things.
Then we can think about teaching them how to interact with humans,’ Chrisley said.
Machines such as these take researchers into the field of socialised robotics: how to
make robots act in a way that does not scare or offend individuals, 'We need to study
how robots should approach people, how they should appear. That is going to be a key
area for future research,’ adds Chrisley.
A. Bill Gates
B. Nello Cristianini
C. Ron Chrisley
20. An important concern for scientists is to ensure that robots do not seem
frightening.
21. We have stopped trying to enable robots to perceive objects as humans do.
22. It will take considerable time for modern robots to match the ones we have created
in films and books.
23. We need to enable robots to move freely before we think about trying to
communicate with them.
PASSAGE 2
The literature on goal-setting theory suggests that managers should ensure that all
employees have specific goals and receive comments on how well they are doing in
those goals. For those with high achievement needs, typically a minority in any
organisation, the existence of external goals is less important because high achievers
are already internally motivated. The next factor to be determined is whether the goals
should be assigned by a manager or collectively set in conjunction with the
employees. The answer to that depends on perceptions the culture, however, goals
should be assigned. If participation and the culture are incongruous, employees are
likely to perceive the participation process as manipulative and be negatively affected
by it.
The way rewards ore distributed should be transparent so that employees perceive that
rewards or outcomes are equitable and equal to the inputs given. On a simplistic level,
experience, abilities, effort and other obvious inputs should explain differences in pay,
responsibility and other obvious outcomes. The problem, however, is complicated by
the existence of dozens of inputs and outcomes and by the fact that employee groups
place different degrees of importance on them. For instance, a study comparing
clerical and production workers identified nearly twenty inputs and outcomes. The
clerical workers considered factors such as quality of work performed and job
knowledge near the top of their list, but these were at the bottom of the production
workers' list. Similarly, production workers thought that the most important inputs
were intelligence and personal involvement with task accomplishment, two factors
that were quite low in the importance ratings of the clerks. There were also important,
though less dramatic, differences on the outcome side. For example, production
workers rated advancement very highly, whereas clerical workers rated advancement
in the lower third of their list. Such findings suggest that one person's equity is
another's inequity, so an ideal should probably weigh different inputs and outcomes
according to employee group.
25. high achievers
26. clerical workers
27. production workers
List of Descriptions
Maintaining a level of daily physical activity may help mental functioning, says Carl
Cotman, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Irvine. He found that rats
that exercise on a treadmill have raised levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor
coursing through their brains. Cotman believes this hormone, which keeps neurons
functioning, may prevent the brains of active humans from deteriorating.
As part of the same study, Teresa Seeman, a social epidemiologist at the University of
Southern California in Los Angeles, found a connection between self-esteem and
stress in people over 70. In laboratory simulations of challenging activities such as
driving, those who felt in control of their lives pumped out lower levels of stress
hormones such as cortisol. Chronically high levels of these hormones have been
linked to heart disease.
But independence can have drawbacks. Seeman found that elderly people who felt
emotionally isolated maintained higher levels of stress hormones even when asleep.
The research suggests that older people fare best when they feel independent but know
they can get help when they need it.
23. Home medical aids
24. Regular amounts of exercise
25. Feelings of control over life
26. Feelings of loneliness
PASSAGE 4
However, when fully autonomous systems take to the field, they'll look nothing like
tractors. With their enormous size and weight, today’s farm machines have significant
downsides: they compact the soil, reducing porosity and killing beneficial life,
meaning crops don’t grow so well. Simon Blackmore, who researches agricultural
technology at Harper Adams University College in England believes that fleets of
lightweight autonomous robots have the potential to solve this problem and that
replacing brute force with precision is key. ‘A seed only needs one cubic centimeter of
soil to grow. If we cultivate just that we only put tiny amounts of energy in and the
plants still grow nicely.’ There is another reason why automation may be the way
forward according to Eldert van Henten, a robotics researcher at Wageningen
University in the Netherlands, ‘ While the population is growing and needs to be fed,
a rapidly shrinking number of people are willing to work in agriculture', he points out.
Other researchers such as Linda Calvin, an economist at the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, and Philip Martin at the University of California, Davis, have studied
trends in mechanization to predict how US farms might fare. Calvin and Martin have
observed how rising employment costs have led to the adoption of labour-saving farm
technology in the past, citing the raising industry as an example. In 2000, a bumper
harvest crashed prices and, with profits squeezed, farmers looked for a solution. With
labour one of their biggest costs - 42 percent of production expenses on U.S. farms, on
average -they started using a mechanical harvester adapted from a machine used by
wine makers. By 2007, almost half of California's raisins were mechanically harvested
and a labour force once numbering 50,000 had shrunk to 30,000.
As well as having an impact on the job market, the widespread adaption of agribots
might bring changes at the supermarket. Lewis Holloway, who studies agriculture at
the University of Hull UK, says that robotic milking is likely to influence the genetics
of dairy herds as farmers opt for robot-friendly' cows, with udder shape, and oven
attitudes, suited to automated milking. Similarly, he says, ifs conceivable that agribots
could influence what fruit or vegetable varieties get to the shops, since farmers may
prefer to grow those with, say, leaf shapes that are easier for their robots to
discriminate from weeds. Almost inevitably, these machines will eventually alter the
landscape, too. The real tipping point for robot agriculture will come when farms are
being designed with agribots in mind, says Salah Sukkarieh, a robotics researcher at
the Australian Center for Field Robotics, Sydney. This could mean a return to smaller
fields, with crops planted in grids rather than rows and fruit trees pruned into two
dimensional shapes to make harvesting easier. This alien terrain tended by robots is
still a while away, he says 'but it will happen.'
22. Simon Blackmore
List of Findings
A. The use of automation might impact on the development of particular animal and
plant species.
B. We need to consider the effect on employment that increased automation will have.
E. New machinery may require more investment than certain farmers can afford.
H. Economic factors are often the driving force behind the development of machinery.
PASSAGE 5
According to archaeological evidence, at least 5, 000 years ago, and long before the
advent of the Roman Empire, the Babylonians began to measure time, introducing
calendars to co-ordinate communal activities, to plan the shipment of goods and, in
particular, to regulate planting and harvesting. They based their calendars on three
natural cycles: the solar day, marked by the successive periods of light and darkness as
the earth rotates on its axis; the lunar month, following the phases of the moon as it
orbits the earth; and the solar year, defined by the changing seasons that accompany
our planet's revolution around the sun.
Before the invention of artificial light, the moon had greater social impact. And, for
those living near the equator in particular, its waxing and waning was more
conspicuous than the passing of the seasons. Hence, the calendars that were developed
at the lower latitudes were influenced more by the lunar cycle than by the solar year.
In more northern climes, however, where seasonal agriculture was practised, the solar
year became more crucial. As the Roman Empire expanded northward, it organised its
activity chart for the most part around the solar year.
Centuries before the Roman Empire, the Egyptians had formulated a municipal
calendar having 12 months of 30 days, with five days added to approximate the solar
year. Each period of ten days was marked by the appearance of special groups of stars
called decans. At the rise of the star Sirius just before sunrise, which occurred around
the all-important annual flooding of the Nile, 12 decans could be seen spanning the
heavens. The cosmic significance the Egyptians placed in the 12 decans led them to
develop a system in which each interval of darkness (and later, each interval of
daylight) was divided into a dozen equal parts. These periods became known as
temporal hours because their duration varied according to the changing length of days
and nights with the passing of the seasons. Summer hours were long, winter ones
short; only at the spring and autumn equinoxes were the hours of daylight and
darkness equal. Temporal hours, which were first adopted by the Greeks and then the
Romans, who disseminated them through Europe, remained in use for more than 2,
500 years.
D
In order to track temporal hours during the day, inventors created sundials, which
indicate time by the length or direction of the sun's shadow. The sundial's counterpart,
the water clock, was designed to measure temporal hours at night. One of the first
water clocks was a basin with a small hole near the bottom through which the water
dripped out. The falling water level denoted the passing hour as it dipped below hour
lines inscribed on the inner surface. Although these devices performed satisfactorily
around the Mediterranean, they could not always be depended on in the cloudy and
often freezing weather of northern Europe.
The advent of the mechanical clock meant that although it could be adjusted to
maintain temporal hours, it was naturally suited to keeping equal ones. With these,
however, arose the question of when to begin counting, and so, in the early 14th
century, a number of systems evolved. The schemes that divided the day into 24 equal
parts varied according to the start of the count: Italian hours began at sunset,
Babylonian hours at sunrise, astronomical hours at midday and 'great clock' hours,
used for some large public clocks in Germany, at midnight. Eventually these were
superseded by 'small clock', or French, hours, which split the day into two 12-hour
periods commencing at midnight.
5. They devised a civil calendar in which the months were equal in length.
List of Nationalities
A. Babylonians
B. Egyptians
C. Greeks
D. English
E. Germans
F French
PASSAGE 6
It is impossible to learn the sequence of events that led to our developing the concept
of number. Even the earliest of tribes had a system of numeration that, if not
advanced, was sufficient for the tasks that they had to perform. Our ancestors had little
use for actual numbers; instead their considerations would have been more of the kind
Is this enough? rather than How many? when they were engaged in food gathering, for
example. However, when early humans first began to reflect on the nature of things
around them, they discovered that they needed an idea of number simply to keep their
thoughts in order. As they began to settle, grow plants and herd animals, the need for a
sophisticated number system became paramount. It will never be known how and
when this numeration ability developed, but it is certain that numeration was well
developed by the time humans had formed even semi-permanent settlements.
Evidence of early stages of arithmetic and numeration can be readily found. The
indigenous peoples of Tasmania were only able to count one, two, many; those of
South Africa counted one, two, two and one, two twos, two twos and one, and so on.
But in real situations the number and words are often accompanied by gestures to help
resolve any confusion. For example, when using the one, two, many type of system,
the word many would mean, Look at my hands and see how many fingers I am
showing you. This basic approach is limited in the range of numbers that it can
express, but this range will generally suffice when dealing with the simpler aspects of
human existence.
The lack of ability of some cultures to deal with large numbers is not really surprising.
European languages, when traced back to their earlier version, are very poor in
number words and expressions. The ancient Gothic word for ten, tachund, is used to
express the number 100 as tachund tachund. By the seventh century, the word teon
had become interchangeable with the tachund or hund of the Anglo-Saxon language,
and so 100 was denoted as hund teontig, or ten times ten. The average person in the
seventh century in Europe was not as familiar with numbers as we are today. In fact,
to qualify as a witness in a court of law a man had to be able to count to nine!
Perhaps the most fundamental step in developing a sense of number is not the ability
to count, but rather to see that a number is really an abstract idea instead of a simple
attachment to a group of particular objects. It must have been within the grasp of the
earliest humans to conceive that four birds are distinct from two birds; however, it is
not an elementary step to associate the number 4, as connected with four birds, to the
number 4, as connected with four rocks. Associating a number as one of the qualities
of a specific object is a great hindrance to the development of a true number sense.
When the number 4 can be registered in the mind as a specific word, independent of
the object being referenced, the individual is ready to take the first step toward the
development of a notational system for numbers and, from there, to arithmetic.
Traces of the very first stages in the development of numeration can be seen in several
living languages today. The numeration system of the Tsimshian language in British
Columbia contains seven distinct sets of words for numbers according to the class of
the item being counted: for counting flat objects and animals, for round objects and
time, for people, for long objects and trees, for canoes, for measures, and for counting
when no particular object is being numerated. It seems that the last is a later
development while the first six groups show the relics of an older system. This
diversity of number names can also be found in some widely used languages such as
Japanese.
PASSAGE 1
Questions 27-30
Reading Passage 153 has six sections,
Choose the correct heading for sections A-D from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-vii, in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.
______________________________________________________
List of Headings
27 Section A
28 Section B
29 Section C
30 Section D
Persistent bullying is one of the worst experiences a
child can face. How can it be prevented?
A
Bullying can take a variety of forms, from the verbal -being taunted or called hurtful
names- to the physical- being kicked or shoved- as well as indirect forms, such as
being excluded from social groups. A survey I conducted with Irene Whitney found
that in British primary schools up to a quarter of pupils reported experience of
bullying, which in about one in ten cases was persistent. There was less bullying in
secondary schools, with about one in twenty-five suffering persistent bullying, but
these cases may be particularly recalcitrant.
Bullying is clearly unpleasant, and can make the child experiencing it feel unworthy
and depressed. In extreme cases it can even lead to suicide, though this is thankfully
rare. Victimised pupils are more likely to experience difficulties with interpersonal
relationships as adults, while children who persistently bully are more likely to grow
up to be physically violent, and convicted of anti-social offences.
Until recently, not much was known about the topic, and little help was available to
teachers to deal with bullying. Perhaps as a consequence, schools would often deny
the problem. 'There is no bullying at this school' has been a common refrain, almost
certainty untrue. Fortunately more schools are now saying: There is not much bullying
here, but when it occurs we have a clear policy for dealing with it.'
Three factors are involved in this change. First is an awareness of the severity of the
problem. Second, a number of resources to help tackle bullying have become available
in Britain. For example, the Scottish Council for Research in Education produced a
package of materials, Action Against Bullying, circulated to all schools in England
and Wales as well as in Scotland in summer 1992, with a second pack, Supporting
Schools Against Bullying, produced the following year. In Ireland, Guidelines on
Countering Bullying Behaviour in Post-Primary Schools was published in 1993.
Third, there is evidence that these materials work, and that schools can achieve
something. This comes from carefully conducted 'before and after I evaluations of
interventions in schools, monitored by a research team. In Norway, after an
intervention campaign was introduced nationally, an evaluation of forty-two schools
suggested that, over a two-year period, bullying was halved. The Sheffield
investigation, which involved sixteen primary schools and seven secondary schools,
found that most schools succeeded in reducing bullying.
Questions 31-34
Choose the correct letter. A. B. C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 31-34 on your answer sheet.
A There was more bullying than had previously been the case.
B there was less bullying than in primary schools.
C cases of persistent bullying were very common.
D indirect forms of bullying were particularly difficult to deal with.
33. The writer thinks that the declaration 'There is no bullying at this school'
A sense of ‘self’ develops in young children by degrees. The process can usefully be
thought of in terms of the gradual emergence of two somewhat separate features: the
self as a subject, and the self as an object. William James introduced the distinction in
1892, and contemporaries of his, such as Charles Cooley, added to the developing
debate. Ever since then psychologists have continued building on the theory.
According to James, a child’s first step on the road to self-understanding can be seen
as the recognition that he or she exists. This is an aspect of the self that he labeled
‘self-as-subject’, and he gave it various elements. These included an awareness of
one’s own agency (i.e. one’s power to act) and an awareness of one’s distinctiveness
from other people. These features gradually emerge as infants explore their world and
interact with caregivers. Cooley (1902) suggested that a sense of the self-as-subject
was primarily concerned with being able to exercise power. He proposed that the
earliest examples of this are an infants attempts to control physical objects, such as
toys or his or her own limbs. This is followed by attempts to affect the behavior of
other people. For example, infants learn that when they cry or smile someone
responds to them.
Another powerful source of information for infants about the effects they can have on
the world around them is provided when others mimic them. Many parents spend a lot
of time, particularly in the early months, copying their infant’s vocalizations and
expressions in addition, young children enjoy looking in mirrors, where the
movements they can see are dependent upon their own movements.This is not to say
that infants recognize the reflection as their own image (a later development).
However, Lewis and Brooks-Gunn (1979) suggest that infants’ developing
understanding that the movements they see in the mirror are contingent on their own,
leads to a growing awareness that they are distinct from other people. This is because
they, and only they can change the reflection in the mirror.
D
Once Children have acquired a certain level of self-awareness, they begin to place
themselves in a whole series of categories, which together play such an important part
in defining them uniquely as ‘themselves’. This second step in the development of a
full sense of self is what lames called the ‘self-as-object’. This has been seen by many
to be the aspect of the self which is most influenced by social elements, since it is
made up of social roles (such as student, brother; colleague) and characteristics which
derive their meaning from comparison or interaction with other people (such as
trustworthiness, shyness, sporting ability).
Cooley and other researchers suggested a close connection between a person’s own
understanding of their identity and other people’s understanding of it. Cooley believed
that people build up their sense of identity from the reactions of others to them, and
from the view, they believe others have of them He called the self- as-object the
’looking-glass self’, since people come to see themselves as they are reflected in
others. Mead (1934) went even further, and saw the self and the social world as
inextricably bound together. The self is essentially a social structure, and it arises in
social experience. It is impossible to conceive of a self-arising outside of social
experience.’
16 the age at which children can usually identify a static image of themselves
List of Findings
● A James
● B Cooley
● C Lewis and Brooks-Gunn
● D Mead
● E Bronson
20 A sense of identity can never be formed without relationships with other people.
21 A child’s awareness of self is related to a sense of mastery over things and people.
The conviction that historical relics provide infallible testimony about the past is
rooted in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when science was regarded as
objective and value free. As one writer observes: ‘Although it is now evident that
artifacts are as easily altered as chronicles, public faith in their veracity endures: a
tangible relic seems ipso facto real! Such conviction was, until recently, reflected in
museum displays. Museums used to look — and some still do — much like storage
rooms of objects packed together in showcases: good for scholars who wanted to
study the subtle differences in design, but not for the ordinary visitor. to whom lt all
looked alike. Similarly, the information accompanying the objects often made little
sense to the lay visitor. The content and format of explanations dated back to a time
when the museum was the exclusive domain of the scientific researcher.
Recently, however, attitudes towards history and the way lt should be presented have
altered. The key word in heritage display is now ‘experience the more exciting the
better and, if possible, involving all the senses. Good examples of this approach ln the
UK are the Jorvik Centre in York; the National Museum of Photography, Elm and
Television in Bradford; and the imperial War Museum in London. In the US the trend
emerged much earlier. Williamsburg has been a prototype for many heritage
developments in other parts of the world. No one can predict where the process will
end. On so-called heritage sites, the re-enactment of historical events is increasingly
popular, and computers will soon provide virtual reality experiences, which will
present visitors with a vivid image of the period of their choice, in which they
themselves can act as if part of the historical environment. Such developments have
been criticised as an intolerable vulgarisation, but the success of many historical
theme parks and similar locations suggests that the majority of the public does not
share this opinion.
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 ln 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.
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 fullfil, 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 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 ln 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.
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.
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.
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-E from the list of headings below.
List of Headings
Paragraph B
Paragraph C
Paragraph D
Paragraph E
EUROPEAN TRANSPORT SYSTEMS 1990-2010
What have been the trends and what are the prospects for European transport
systems?
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
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.
At the same time greater efforts must be made to achieve a modal shift. Such a change
cannot be achieved overnight, all the less so after over half a century of constant
deterioration in favour of road. This has reached such a pitch that today rail freight
services are facing marginalisation, with just 8% of market share, and with
international goods trains struggling along at an average speed of 18km/h. Three
possible options have emerged.
The first approach would consist of focusing on road transport solely through pricing.
This option would not be accompanied by complementary measures in the other
modes of transport. In the short term it might curb the growth in road transport
through the better loading ratio of goods vehicles and occupancy rates of passenger
vehicles expected as a result of the increase in the price of transport. However, the
lack of measures available to revitalise other modes of transport would make it
impossible for more sustainable modes of transport to take up the baton.
H
The second approach also concentrates on road transport pricing but is accompanied
by measures to increase the efficiency of the other modes (better quality of services,
logistics, technology). However, this approach does not include investment in new
infrastructure, nor does it guarantee better regional cohesion. It could help to achieve
greater uncoupling than the first approach, but road transport would keep the lion’s
share of the market and continue to concentrate on saturated arteries, despite being the
most polluting of the modes. It is therefore not enough to guarantee the necessary shift
of the balance.
The third approach, which is not new, comprises a series of measures ranging from
pricing to revitalising alternative modes of transport and targeting investment in the
trans-European network. This integrated approach would allow the market shares of
the other modes to return to their 1998 levels and thus make a shift of balance. It is far
more ambitious than it looks, bearing in mind the historical imbalance in favour of
roads for the last fifty years, but would achieve a marked break in the link between
road transport growth and economic growth, without placing restrictions on the
mobility of people and goods.
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-E and G-I from the list of headings
below.
Write the correct number, i-xi, in boxes 14-21 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
Example Answer
Paragraph F vii
Paragraph A
Paragraph B
Paragraph C
Paragraph D
Paragraph E
Paragraph G
Paragraph H
Paragraph I
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 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.
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.
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.
Authority doesn’t have to inhibit innovation but it often does. The wrong kind of
leadership will lead to what Cialdini calls ‘captainitis, the regrettable tendency of team
members to opt out of team responsibilities that are properly theirs’. He calls it
captainitis because, he says, ‘crew members of multipilot aircraft exhibit a sometimes
deadly passivity when the flight captain makes a clearly wrong-headed decision’. This
behaviour is not, he says, unique to air travel, but can happen in any workplace where
the leader is overbearing.
At the other end of the scale is the 1980s Memphis design collective, a group of young
designers for whom ‘the only rule was that there were no rule’. This environment
encouraged a free interchange of ideas, which led to more creativity with form,
function, colour and materials that revolutionised attitudes to furniture design.
Many theorists believe the ideal boss should lead from behind, taking pride in
collective accomplishment and giving credit where it is due. Cialdini says: ‘Leaders
should encourage everyone to contribute and simultaneously assure all concerned that
every recommendation is important to making the right decision and will be given full
attention.’ The frustrating thing about innovation is that there are many approaches,
but no magic formula. However, a manager who wants to create a truly innovative
culture can make their job a lot easier by recognising these psychological realities.
Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 31-35 on your answer sheet
A take chances.
C become competitive.
D get promotion.
E avoid risk.
31 Employees whose values match those of their employers are more likely to
33 If people are aware of what they might lose, they will often
An accident that occurred in the skies over the Grand Canyon in 1956 resulted in the
establishment of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to regulate and oversee
the operation of aircraft in the skies over the United States, which were becoming
quite congested. The resulting structure of air traffic control has greatly increased the
safety of flight in the United States, and similar air traffic control procedures are also
in place over much of the rest of the world.
Rudimentary air traffic control (АТС) existed well before the Grand Canyon disaster.
As early as the 1920s, the earliest air traffic controllers manually guided aircraft in the
vicinity of the airports, using lights and flags, while beacons and flashing lights were
placed along cross-country routes to establish the earliest airways. However, this
purely visual system was useless in bad weather, and, by the 1930s, radio
communication was coming into use for АТС. The first region to have something
approximating today's АТС was New York City, with other major metropolitan areas
following soon after.
In the 1940s, АТС centres could and did take advantage of the newly developed radar
and improved radio communication brought about by the Second World War, but the
system remained rudimentary. It was only after the creation of the FAA that full-scale
regulation of America's airspace took place, and this was fortuitous, for the advent of
the jet engine suddenly resulted in a large number of very fast planes, reducing pilots'
margin of error and practically demanding some set of rules to keep everyone well
separated and operating safely in the air.
Many people think that АТС consists of a row of controllers sitting in front of their
radar screens at the nation's airports, telling arriving and departing traffic what to do.
This is a very incomplete part of the picture. The FAA realised that the airspace over
the United States would at any time have many different kinds of planes, flying for
many different purposes, in a variety of weather conditions, and the same kind of
structure was needed to accommodate all of them.
To meet this challenge, the following elements were put into effect. First, АТС
extends over virtually the entire United States. In general, from 365m above the
ground and higher, the entire country is blanketed by controlled airspace. In certain
areas, mainly near airports, controlled airspace extends down to 215m above the
ground, and, in the immediate vicinity of an airport, all the way down to the surface.
Controlled airspace is that airspace in which FAA regulations apply. Elsewhere, in
uncontrolled airspace, pilots are bound by fewer regulations. In this way, the
recreational pilot who simply wishes to go flying for a while without all the
restrictions imposed by the FAA has only to stay in uncontrolled airspace, below
365m, while the pilot who does want the protection afforded by АТС can easily enter
the controlled airspace.
Controlled airspace is divided into several different types, designated by letters of the
alphabet. Uncontrolled airspace is designated Class F, while controlled airspace below
5,490m above sea level and not in the vicinity of an airport is Class E. All airspace
above 5,490m is designated Class A. The reason for the division of Class E and Class
A airspace stems from the type of planes operating in them. Generally, Class E
airspace is where one finds general aviation aircraft (few of which can climb above
5,490m anyway), and commercial turboprop aircraft. Above 5,490m is the realm of
the heavy jets, since jet engines operate more efficiently at higher altitudes. The
difference between Class E and A airspace is that in Class A, all operations are IFR,
and pilots must be instrument-rated, that is, skilled and licensed in aircraft
instrumentation. This is because АТС control of the entire space is essential. Three
other types of airspace, Classes D, С and B, govern the vicinity of airports. These
correspond roughly to small municipal, medium-sized metropolitan and major
metropolitan airports respectively, and encompass an increasingly rigorous set of
regulations. For example, all a VFR pilot has to do to enter Class С airspace is
establish two-way radio contact with АТС. No explicit permission from АТС to enter
is needed, although the pilot must continue to obey all regulations governing VFR
flight. To enter Class В airspace, such as on approach to a major metropolitan airport,
an explicit АТС clearance is required. The private pilot who cruises without
permission into this airspace risks losing their license.
Question 20-26
Do the following statements agree with the given information of the reading passage?
In boxes 20-26 on your answer sheet, write:
20. The FAA was created as a result of the introduction of the jet engine.
21. Air traffic control started after the Grand Canyon crash in 19 56.
22. Beacons and flashing lights are still used by the ATC today.
23. Some improvements were made in radio communication during World War II.
24. Class F airspace is airspace which is below 365m and not near airports.
Questions 14-18
Reading Passage 149 contains six Key Points.
Choose the correct heading for Key Points TWO to SIX from the list of headings
below. Write the correct number, i-viii, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.
_____________________________________________
List of Headings
vii Establish targets and give feedback viii Ensure employees are suited to their jobs
_______________________________________________
Example
Answer Key Point One viii
Morale also surfers during decline. People fear they may be the next to be made
redundant. Productivity often suffers, as employees spend their time sharing rumours
and providing one another with moral support rather than focusing on their jobs. For
those whose jobs are secure, pay increases are rarely possible. Pay cuts, unheard of
during times of growth, may even be imposed. The challenge to management is how
to motivate employees under such retrenchment conditions. The ways of meeting this
challenge can be broadly divided into six Key Points, which are outlined below.
The literature on goal-setting theory suggests that managers should ensure that all
employees have specific goals and receive comments on how well they are doing in
those goals. For those with high achievement needs, typically a minority in any
organisation, the existence of external goals is less important because high achievers
are already internally motivated. The next factor to be determined is whether the goals
should be assigned by a manager or collectively set in conjunction with the
employees. The answer to that depends on perceptions the culture, however, goals
should be assigned. If participation and the culture are incongruous, employees are
likely to perceive the participation process as manipulative and be negatively affected
by it.
Since employees have different needs, what acts as a reinforcement far one may not
for another. Managers could use their knowledge of each employee to personalise the
rewards over which they have control. Some of the more obvious rewards that
managers allocate include pay, promotions, autonomy, job scope and depth, and the
opportunity lo participate in goal-setting and decision-making.
The way rewards ore distributed should be transparent so that employees perceive that
rewards or outcomes are equitable and equal to the inputs given. On a simplistic level,
experience, abilities, effort and other obvious inputs should explain differences in pay,
responsibility and other obvious outcomes. The problem, however, is complicated by
the existence of dozens of inputs and outcomes and by the fact that employee groups
place different degrees of importance on them. For instance, a study comparing
clerical and production workers identified nearly twenty inputs and outcomes. The
clerical workers considered factors such as quality of work performed and job
knowledge near the top of their list, but these were at the bottom of the production
workers' list. Similarly, production workers thought that the most important inputs
were intelligence and personal involvement with task accomplishment, two factors
that were quite low in the importance ratings of the clerks. There were also important,
though less dramatic, differences on the outcome side. For example, production
workers rated advancement very highly, whereas clerical workers rated advancement
in the lower third of their list. Such findings suggest that one person's equity is
another's inequity, so an ideal should probably weigh different inputs and outcomes
according to employee group.
Questions 19-24
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage
149?
In boxes 19-24 on your answer sheet, write:
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
19. A shrinking organisation tends to lose its less skilled employees rather than its
more skilled employees.
22. Some employees can feel manipulated when asked to participate in goal-setting.
PASSAGE 1
So ordinary and routine has this become to us that it takes a determined leap of
imagination to grasp the impact of those first moving images. But it is worth trying,
for to understand the initial shock of those images is to understand the extraordinary
power and magic of cinema, the unique, hypnotic quality that has made film the most
dynamic, effective art form of the 20th century.
One of the Lumière Brothers’ earliest films was a 30-second piece which showed a
section of a railway platform flooded with sunshine. A train appears and heads straight
for the camera. And that is all that happens. Yet the Russian director Andrei
Tarkovsky, one of the greatest of all film artists, described the film as a ‘work of
genius’. ‘As the train approached,’ wrote Tarkovsky, ’panic started in the theatre:
people jumped and ran away. That was the moment when cinema was born. The
frightened audience could not accept that they were watching a mere picture. Pictures
were still, only reality moved; this must, therefore, be reality. In their confusion, they
feared that a real train was about to crush them.’
Early cinema audiences often experienced the same confusion. In time, the idea of
film became familiar, the magic was accepted- but it never stopped being magic. Film
has never lost its unique power to embrace its audience and transport them to a
different world. For Tarkovsky, the key to that magic was the way in which cinema
created a dynamic image of the real flow of events. A still picture could only imply
the existence of time, while time in a novel passed at the whim of the reader. But in
cinema, the real, objective flow of time was captured.
One effect of this realism was to educate the world about itself. For cinema makes the
world smaller. Long before people travelled to America or anywhere else, they knew
what other places looked like; they knew how other people worked and lived.
Overwhelmingly, the lives recorded-at least in film fiction- have been American.
From the earliest days of the industry, Hollywood has dominated the world film
market. American imagery -the cars, the cities, the cowboys - became the primary
imagery of film. Film carried American life and values around the globe.
And, thanks to film, future generations will know the 20th century more intimately
than any other period. We can only imagine what life was like in the 14th century or in
classical Rome. But the life of the modern world has been recorded on film in massive
encyclopaedic detail. We shall be known better than any preceding generations.
The 'star' was another natural consequence of cinema. The cinema star was effectively
born in 1910. Film personalities have such an immediate presence that inevitably, they
become super-real. Because we watch them so closely and because everybody in the
world seems to know who they are, they appear more real to us than we do ourselves.
The star as magnified human self is one of cinema's most strange and enduring
legacies.
Cinema has also given a new lease of life to the idea of the story. When the Lumiere
Brothers and other pioneers began showing off this new invention, it was by no means
obvious how it would be used. All that mattered at first was the wonder of movement.
Indeed, some said that, once this novelty had worn off, cinema would fade away. It
was no more than a passing gimmick, a fairground attraction.
I
Cinema might, for example, have become primarily a documentary form. Or it might
have developed like television -as a strange noisy transfer of music, information and
narrative. But what happened was that it became, overwhelmingly, a medium for
telling stories. Originally these were conceived as short stories- early producers
doubted the ability of audiences to concentrate for more than the length of a reel.
Then, in 1912, an Italian 2-hour film was hugely successful, and Hollywood settled
upon the novel-length narrative that remains the dominant cinematic convention of
today.
And it has all happened so quickly. Almost unbelievably, it is a mere 1000 years since
that train arrived and the audience screamed and fled, convinced by the dangerous
reality of what they saw, and, perhaps, suddenly aware that the world could never be
the same again -that, maybe, it could be better, brighter, more astonishing, more real
than reality.
Questions 1-5
Reading Passage 148 has ten paragraphs, A-J.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-J. in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
7. The Lumiere Brothers' film about the train was one of the greatest films ever made.
Questions 10-13
Choose the correct letter. A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.
10. The writer refers to the film of the train in order to demonstrate
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.
On 8 June 2004, more than half the population of the world were treated to a rare
astronomical event. For over six hours, the planet Venus steadily inched its way over
the surface of the Sun. This “transit` of Venus was the first since 6 December l882. On
that occasion, the American astronomer Professor Simon Newcomb led a party to
South Africa to observe the event. They were based at a girls' school, where - if is
alleged – the combined forces of three schoolmistresses outperformed the
professionals with the accuracy of their observations.
For centuries, transits of Venus have drawn explorers and astronomers alike to the four
corners of the globe. And you can put it all down to the extraordinary polymath
Edmond Halley. In November 1677, Halley observed a transit of the innermost planet
Mercury, from the desolate island of St Helena in the South Pacific. .He realized that
from different latitudes, the passage of the planet across the Suns disc would appear to
differ. By timing the transit from two widely-separated locations, teams of
astronomers could calculate the parallax angle - the apparent difference in position of
an astronomical body due to a difference in the observers position. Calculating this
angle would allow astronomers to measure what was then the ultimate goal; the
distance of the Earth from the Sun. This distance is known as the 'astronomical unit' or
AU.
Halley was aware that the AU was one of the most fundamental of all astronomical
measurements. Johannes Kepler, in the early 17*h 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 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.
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.
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: 153340,000
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.
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.
Questions 14-17
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-G, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.
14. examples of different ways in which the parallax principle has been applied
16. a statement about potential future discoveries leading on from transit observations
17. a description of physical states connected with Venus which early astronomical
instruments failed to overcome
Questions 18-21
Look at the following statements (Questions 18-21) and the list of people below
Match each statement with the correct person, A, B, C or D.
18. He calculated the distance of the Sun from the Earth based on observations of
Venus with a fair degree of accuracy.
19. He understood that the distance of the Sun from the Earth could be worked out by
comparing observations of a transit.
20. He realized that the time taken by a planet to go round the Sun depends on its
distance from the Sun.
21. He witnessed a Venus transit but was unable to make any calculations.
Questions 22-26
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
Write answers in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet, write:
In April 2002 an event took place which demonstrated one of the many applications of
information theory. The space probe, Voyager I, launched in 1977, had sent back
spectacular images of Jupiter and Saturn and then soared out of the Solar System on a
one-way mission to the stars. After 25 years of exposure to the freezing temperatures
of deep space, the probe was beginning to show its age, Sensors and circuits were on
the brink of failing and NASA experts realized that they had to do something or lose
contact with their probe forever. The solution was to get a message to Voyager I to
instruct it to use spares to change the failing parts. With the probe 12 billion
kilometers from Earth, this was not an easy task. By means of a radio dish belonging
to NASA’s Deep Space Network, the message was sent out into the depths of space.
Even travelling at the speed of light, it took over II hours to reach its target, far beyond
the orbit of Pluto. Yet, incredibly, the little probe managed to hear the faint call from
its home planet, and successfully made the switchover.
It was the Iongest-distance repair job in history, and a triumph for the NASA
engineers. But it also highlighted the astonishing power of the techniques developed
by American communications engineer Claude Shannon, who had died just a year
earlier. Born in 1916 in Petoskey, Michigart, Shannon showed an early talent for
maths and for building gadgets, and made breakthroughs in the foundations of
computer technology when still a student. While at Bell laboratories, Shannon
developed information theory, but shunned the resulting acclaim. In the 1940s. he
singlehandedly created an entire science of communication which has since inveigled
its way into a host of applications, from DVDs to satellite communication to bar codes
- any area, in short, where data has to be conveyed rapidly yet accurately.
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. ln
the process he discovered something surprising: it is always possible to guarantee
information will gel through random interference - ‘noise' — intact.
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.
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
socalled 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.
Questions 27-32
Reading Passage 56 has six paragraphs, A-F.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-E in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.
Questions 33-37
Complete the notes below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer
Write your answers in boxes 33—37 on your answer sheet.
The Voyager l Space Probe The probe transmitted pictures of both 33 ................... and
................ , then left the 34 ................ The freezing temperatures were found to have a
negative effect on parts of the space probe. Scientists feared that both the 35 .............
and .............. were about to stop working. The only hope was to tell the probe to
replace them with 36 ................ - but distance made communication with the probe
difficult. A 37 ................ was used to transmit the message at the speed of light. The
message was picked up by the probe and the switchover took place.
Questions 38-40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in
Reading Passage 37 in boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet, write
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.