Month: April 2024

Fix it with Flavour

A Gabriele Dionisi, a ’38-year-old Italian computer wizard living in London, is a true individualist when it comes to food. He has been known to live for days on dry toast and mashed potato. He’s also very fond of tinned mackerel with biscuits, washed down with, say, an apple-and-tomato milkshake. For some unfathomable reason, he sometimes has problems with his guts. Then he makes himself a hot cup of camomile tea with honey and half a spoonful of chilli flakes. “It’s an old Italian recipe,” he says. “Ms- grandmother taught me to make it. It’s very good for the digestion.”

B Spices such as chilli have been used for medicinal purposes in Europe for centuries. Medieval herbalists believed that spices could be used to treat a range of pains, diseases, and ailments. Sometimes they got it right; sometimes they were way off the end of the spice rack. For example, they used to pound up cloves to extract the oil, which was used to treat toothache. Sensible move: modern scientists know that cloves contain eugenol, a chemical which is an effective local anaesthetic. Cloves also contain salicylic acid, the basis of aspirin.

C Ginger was held to be good for stomach upsets, and it is now known to have anti-nausea properties. It is also believed to have a painkilling effect, which is being studied at the University of Arizona. Unfortunately, those muddled medieval medics also believed that ginger was a cure for the Black Death – it isn’t – and that eating borage would give you courage, just because the words rhymed.

D Doctors in India have long used spices as medicines. They understood that spices could be used as remedies. Their motto was: Let food be thy medicine. The Indian chef’s favourite medical spice is turmeric, the yellow ingredient used in almost all Indian cookery. Turmeric is an antiseptic and disinfectant, and it is used widely not so much for its taste but for its antibacterial properties.

E Turmeric is used in Indian homes as a first-aid treatment. For example, if you had a small cut on your finger, you’d run it under the tap and then dust the wound with turmeric. It is also supposed to be a cure for arthritis, and scientists are now researching its potential ability to suppress the growth of cancer cells.

F In 2002, staff at the oncology department of Leicester University noticed that of 500 patients with colon cancer, only two were Asian, despite the fact that 20 per cent of the population in Leicester is Asian. The scientists believed this was due to their spicy diet. And, in America, researchers at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons are investigating Zyflamend, a herbal treatment for arthritis, which contains turmeric and ginger. Zyflamend has shown an ability to reduce prostate cancer cell proliferation by as much as 78% and induce cancer cell death.

G Studies at the Indian Institute of Science, in Bangalore, suggest that curcumin, the chemical that gives turmeric its yellow colour, might also help to treat malaria. Mice were infected with the malaria parasite Plasmodium berghei and given five daily doses orally. After 20 days, a third of the treated mice were alive, whereas the untreated animals all died by day 13.

H If you want to know what chillies do to the body, cut open a fresh chilli and hold it on the back of your hand for 15 or 20 minutes. It will make the hand red and sore. It you eat it in excess, it can give you gastric problems. However, in small doses, chilli can aid digestion. Chilli contains vitamins A and E and is a good source of potassium, beta carotene, and folic acid. Also, chilli contains twice as much vitamin C as an orange, and it really can help to protect the body from colds and flu. One chilli contains 100mg of vitamin C more than the daily recommended amount, and capsaicin, the chemical in chillies that gives them heat, is also a natural decongestant.

I The pleasure of chillies comes from the pain of eating them. Literally, the burning sensation in the mouth triggers the release of endorphins, an opiate-like painkilling chemical, in the brain. This makes you feel good; so good, in fact, that it is possible to become a chilli junkie. In the light of this, perhaps the late Signora Dionisi should have taught her favourite grandson how lo make something oilier than chilli camomile tea.

Questions 1-4
The text has 9 paragraphs (A -I).

Which paragraph contains each of the following pieces of information?

1. The reason that turmeric is yellow
2. How turmeric is used by Indians
3. A medieval cure for stomach aches
4. The method Gabriele Dionisi uses to solve stomach aches

Questions 5-8
Complete the following sentences using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the text for each gap.

The article refers to medieval herbalists as (5)………………………because they didn’t always use herbs properly.

The article provides no support for the suggestion that turmeric can help to deal with (6)…………………..though this is being investigated.

A single chilli provides more (7)………………………than a person needs in a day.

Eating chillies creates a feeling of (8)………………………..thanks to the release of endorphins.

Questions 9-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 9 -13 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

9. Cloves are used to make aspirin.
10. Turmeric is not used in Indian cooking because of its taste.
11. Zyflamend can kill cancer cells.
12. Chillies help prevent colds because they contain capsaicin.
13. Signora Dionisi taught her favourite grandson many traditional Italian recipes.

Clicks, Bricks, and Bargains

A It’s a new phenomenon called “Cyber Monday”. On November 28, millions of Americans returned to work after the Thanksgiving holiday and fired up their office computers to take advantage of high-speed Internet links and continue the arduous task of hunting for Christmas presents. Visits to some retail websites more than doubled, and Visa reported that online spending by its cardholders grew by 26% compared with the same day a year ago. Despite concerns about a fall in consumer confidence putting the brake on store sales, online purchases are soaring in most countries, Something else is happening, too. Increasingly, the websites run by conventional retailers – once considered dinosaurs of the bricks-and-mortar age – are growing the fastest. Indeed, on Thanksgiving Day itself, the number of visitors to Wal-Mart’s website exceeded those visiting Amazon – the first time that has ever happened, says Hitwise, which monitors Internet usage.

B Online sales in America (excluding travel) are expected to grow to more than $19 billion in the crucial two months running up to Christmas – 24% more than the same period last year – according to comScore Networks, a research firm. Online sales of toys, computer games, clothing, and jewellery are all more than 30% higher. In many countries, the websites run by eBay and Amazon get the most visitors. Both are considered “pure Internet plays”, since they have no physical shops. Their business models have changed markedly, and they now resemble online versions of vast department stores, where thousands of big and small third-party merchants also offer their wares. During Thanksgiving in 2004, Amazon for the first time sold more consumer electronics than it sold books.

C Amazon was the company that proved online retailing could be a huge business – and it still leads the pack. Things are changing quickly. The online rise of mighty Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, is being closely followed by its chief supermarket rival, Target, which now operates the fourth most popular retail website in America. In Britain, Argos, a catalogue merchant, is the third most popular retail site, followed by Tesco, the country’s biggest supermarket chain. Europeans are surfing the web in record numbers and almost half now visit retail websites, especially those of traditional merchants. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, the leading retail websites in Europe include Germany’s Tchibo, a diversified chain; OTTO, a German mail-order specialist; and Fnac, a French high-street favourite.

D Far from wrecking retailers’ businesses, the web plays to their strengths. Shopping comparison sites, including America’s Shopzilla and Ciao in Europe, are among the fastest growing destinations on the web. These sites allow users to compare products, read reviews – and most important of all – see who is offering the lowest prices. They make money from advertising or charging retailers when users click on a link to the retailers’ website. With huge economies of scale, it is hardly surprising that giants such as Wal-Mart often emerge as the vendor offering the cheapest prices. Besides attracting an online purchase, shopping comparison searches can also be used by ordinary retailers as a relatively cheap way to advertise and attract consumers to their physical stores.

E The traditional retailers are finding many other advantages in expanding their stores online. One is that in cyberspace, even the biggest super-centre is unconstrained by planning laws or dogged by protests, as Wal-Mart often is when it tries to expand offline. Both Wal-Mart and Target also use the web to test the market for certain \ products before they send them to their stores. Conventional shopkeepers might be late coming to the Internet, but they now realise that they can offer more to their customers online, and that the technology required to do so is relatively easy to use, says Michael Silverstein of the Boston Consulting Group. “Retailers are starting to recognise that their most profitable customers … find the convenience of an online offering complementary to an in-store experience,” he says. As examples of successful exponents of this in America, Mr. Silverstein points to Neiman Marcus, which has taken a lead in online top-end fashion, Victoria’s Secret in lingerie, and Circuit City in consumer electronics.

F Circuit City was a pioneer of the “pick-up in-store” option, which is proving increasingly popular with Internet shoppers. Around half the customers buying goods online from Circuit City collect their purchases at a shop. For this holiday season, the company is offering what it calls a “24/24 Pick-up Guarantee”: if goods ordered online or over the telephone are not available for collection at a local store within 24 minutes of purchase, the customer can claim a $24 gift voucher. Apart from instant consumer gratification, why would someone want the convenience of buying online only to trek to a store to take delivery? There are, it appears, many reasons. Some people want to examine items before they accept them; some want to save on delivery costs; others want to avoid hanging around for the delivery man to call. For many, the chief reason is that they trust a big retailing brand with a local store – not least because they will know where goods can be returned if there is a problem. With more than 3,700 stores in America alone, this hands Wal-Mart another big advantage. It is developing services that link the web with its stores, such as e-mailing digital pictures and picking up the prints.

G Does this mean retailing giants will come to dominate the web just as they do the high street? Some might carve out large chunks of cyberspace. Tesco, for instance, has a huge 30% share of the British grocery market. Online it is even more popular: Nielsen//NetRatings says almost 70% of online shoppers plan to buy groceries this Christmas from tesco.com. Even the big traditional retailers still face competition online. For instance, Wal-Mart may have more than five times the annual sales of Target, but Target’s website is growing faster and, according to some analysts, the average value of an online sale at Target is roughly three times more than one made online at Wal-Mart. This is one reason why Wal-Mart is now offering more upmarket goods on its website, including diamond rings. So, should Amazon have stuck to books? Jeff Bezos, its founder and chief executive, does not think so and likes to plug his site, with its growing army of other traders, as offering “earth’s biggest selection”. Nevertheless, he is spreading his bets. These days, Amazon also sells its e-commerce experience, helping to run the websites of big, traditional retailers such as Target and Britain’s Marks & Spencer.

Questions 14-17
The text has 7 paragraphs (A – G).

Which paragraph does each of the following headings best fit?

14. Compare prices on the Net
15. Buy online, collect at the store
16. Street and web domination
17. In the footsteps of Amazon

Questions 18-22
According to the text, FIVE of the following statements are true.

Write the corresponding letters in answer boxes 18 to 22 in any order.

A websites operated by traditional retailers are the fastest growing ones
B online sales grew by over $19 billion last year
C Amazon is the biggest online retailer
D Shopzila allows people to compare prices in different stores
E Michael Silverstein says the best customers like to mix online and traditional shopping
F Circuit city was one of the first businesses of its kind
G Tesco has the biggest share of Britain’s retail market
H Target sells less than Wal-Mart

Questions 23-24
According to the information given in the text, choose the correct answer or answers from the choices given.

23. “Cyber Monday” is
A the busiest day for online shopping in America.
B when Americans begin shopping for Christmas.
C the first time visits to the Wal-Mart website exceeded visits to the Amazon website.

24. eBay and Amazon are considered to be “pure Internet plays” because
A you cannot visit their shops.
B they are like big stores.
C third-party agents can sell things there.

Questions 25-26

According to the information given in the text, choose the correct answer or answers from the choices given.

25. Problems that traditional retailers have when expanding include
A the busiest day for online shopping in America
B when Americans begin shopping for Christmas
C the first time visits to the Wal-Mart website exceeded visits to the Amazon website

26. People buy online then go to the store to collect their purchases because they
A you cannot visit their shops
B they are like big stores
D third party agents can sell things there

Can You Charm Your Way into Oxbridge?

It s Oxbridge season again, and thousands of applicants are anxiously waiting to be called to interview. Independent schools will be putting the final polish on candidates who may well have already had a year’s intensive preparation. Candidates, if they are lucky, might get a five-minute mock interview with one of their teachers. At the Cotswold School, in Bourton-on-the-Water, a Gloucestershire comprehensive, it’s a different story. Here, the eight Oxbridge candidates, all boys, are being given intensive social grooming courtesy of Rachel Holland, a former independent-school maths teacher and housemistress, who has clipped along in her high heels and smart, pink linen two-piece to give them a morning’s tuition in the lost arts of sitting, standing, walking, making small talk, dressing well, and handing round canapés. It might sound the sort of thing that would have sceptical teenagers lolling in their chairs and rolling their eyes skywards, but Rachel Holland is warm, engaging, funny, and direct. People, she tells the boys bluntly, always judge others within a few seconds of meeting them, which is why first impressions are so vital.

Step by step she takes the group through a good “meet and greet” how to smile, make eye contact, and give a firm handshake. Lolling in chairs is a no-no, she says, even when you’re waiting outside an interview room. “And don’t sit with your legs really far apart, either.” How do you enter an interview room? Rachel Holland demonstrates, miming closing the door quietly behind her, smiling warmly, walking confidently across the carper, and shaking each interviewer’s hand as she says her name. Then the boys do it, over and over again “head up, don’t rush it, turn and sit down, but remember, don’t sit down until you’re invited to. Imagine your interviewers have had a bad day. You need to brighten it up for them. You need to announce to them that you’re here. What you’re saying when you come in like this is: ‘Here I am, I’m so-and-so, and I’m really pleased to see you. Pay attention to me. I want my place, and you should give it to me!’”

Rachel Holland set up Rachel Holland Associates to teach social skills after realising the popularity of the workshops she devised for the pupils of Millfield, the school where she was working. Her courses range from a three-hour workshop on basic manners for 7- to 10-year-olds, to a one-term course for school leavers on etiquette and life skills, which covers all aspens of modern life including how to walk in high heels, accept a compliment, write a thank-yon letter, and know when not to use a mobile phone, “livery child, no matter what their background, needs to he given social skills,” she says. ’Everyone needs to know how to he polite and well mannered.”

Once upon a time teaching these things was considered a parents’ job, but today’s parents, she says, are often as confused as their offspring. “They ask me, ‘What should my child wear to interview?’ Then I get lots of questions about eating. Young people say ‘If there’s lots of cutlery, what should I do?’ They find the idea of, say, eating, a meal with a future employer very intimidating. I think social skills need to be taught as a proper subject in schools, not an add-on, although it helps that I’m coming in from outside and am not their maths or physics teacher.” So far, she has taken her new company into four independent schools and has now come to the Cotswold School to try out her skills in the state sector by working with this small Oxbridge group, and running a larger workshop for 11-year-olds.

The headmistress, Ann Holland, came across her work through a family connection – Rachel Holland is her husband’s niece and thought: “If they’re doing this, why shouldn’t my children have some of it, too?” Neither she, nor the boys, think for a minute that knowing how to hand round canapés is the key to getting into Oxbridge. Nevertheless, the effect of the workshop is astonishing. Over the course of the morning, the candidates are transformed from amiable, lounging schoolboys into young men with palpable presence who both charm and command your attention. Holland, watching the action, straightens her back in her chair. “This is really, really practical stuff. I only wish someone had told me all this when I was young.”

The boys, who come from a wide span of social backgrounds, soak up the non-stop stream of tips, ask lots of questions, and haw fun swaggering up and down to music, trying to inject more confidence and authority into the way they walk. However, they find learning how to make small talk in twos, and then threes, a tricky business. “It’s hard work,” agrees Rachel Holland. “You’ve got to store some questions in your head. You’ve got to fake it. You’ve got to look relaxed and confident. And remember the most important thing smile!” After a break, she turns to clothes. The boys are told to buy the best quality they can afford, to know their measurements – a tape measure is whipped out, and they are all measured for sleeve length and neck sice – and “always to try and buy a suit with vents at the back. It allows you to move. It really makes a difference.” They are told when people wear evening dress, what “smart casual” consists of, and how “come as you are” invitations tend not to mean what they say.

“When would you wear a morning suit?” Rachel Holland asks them. “In the morning?” they volunteer, hopefully. Aspects of the workshop, like knowing when to wear a top hat, are clearly not relevant to their young lives, but they like being told what’s what and. during a break, wax enthusiastic. Alex Green, 17, who is applying to read geography at Cambridge, says the morning has boosted his confidence. “I feel more assured of myself. I feel I know how to control myself in an interview. The little things about things like posture are really helpful.” “It’s really like acting. It’s gelling your image across,” says Alex Bexon, 17, another geographer, who is applying to Oxford.

Questions 27-30
For each question, only ONE of the choices is correct.

27. Rachel Holland’s advice does not include how to
A pass exams
B eat correctly.
C talk about non-academic subjects.

28. Rachel Holland believes parents don’t teach many things to their children because they
A have so little time.
B don’t know how to do such things.
C haven’t been well educated.

29. Making small talk well involves
A remembering what people say.
B walking correctly.
C asking questions.

30. Alex Green says he feels
A more confident.
B healthier.
C more energetic.

Questions 31-35
Complete the following sentences using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the text for each gap.

Rachel Holland used to teach (31)…………………..

The boys are taught to say their names as they (32)…………………

One of Rachel’s courses involves teaching (33)…………………..to younger children.

Cotswold School is a (34)…………………..school.

Rachel teaches the boys how to put more (35)…………………….into their walking.

Questions 36-40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 36 — 40 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

36. All of the Oxbridge candidates at Cotswold School are receiving coaching from Rachel Holland.
37. Some of Rachel’s courses include tips on writing.
38. Rachel thinks her job would be more difficult if she was teaching the boys.
39. The skills Rachel teaches are the key to getting an Oxbridge place.
40. The boys are not interested in things that are not relevant to them.

Coming of Age

A Three striking facts highlight the dramatic shift in recent years in the relative economic balance of “first-world” and “third-world” economies. Last year, according to our estimates, emerging economies produced slightly more than half of world output measured at purchasing-power parity. Second, they also accounted for more than half of the increase in global GDP in current-dollar terms. And third, perhaps most striking of all, the 32 biggest emerging economies grew in both 2004 and 2005. Every previous year during the past three decades saw at least one country in recession – if not a deep crisis. Some economies will inevitably stumble over the coming years, but, thanks to sounder policies, most can look forward to rapid long-term growth. The young emerging economies have grown up in more ways than one.

B Such happenings are part of the biggest shift in economic strength since the emergence of the United States more than a century ago. As developing countries and the former Soviet block have embraced market-friendly economic reforms and opened their borders to trade and investment, more countries are industrialising than ever before – and more quickly. During their industrial revolutions, America and Britain took 50 years to double their real incomes per head; today China is achieving that in a single decade. In an open world, it is much easier to catch up by adopting advanced countries’ technology than it is to be an economic leader that has to invent new technologies in order to keep growing. The shift in economic power towards emerging economies is therefore likely to continue. This is returning the world to the sort of state that endured throughout most of its history. People forget that, until the late 19th century, China and India were the world’s two biggest economies and today’s “emerging economies” accounted for the bulk of world production.

C Many bosses, workers, and politicians in the rich world fear that the success of these newcomers will be at their own expense. However, rich countries will gain more than they lose from the enrichment of others. Fears that the third world will steal rich-world output and jobs are based on the old fallacy that an increase in one country’s output must be at the expense of another’s. But more exports give developing countries more money to spend on imports – mainly from developed economies. Faster growth in poor countries is therefore more likely to increase the output of their richer counterparts than to reduce it. The emerging economies are helping to lift world GDP growth at the very time when the rich world’s ageing populations would otherwise cause growth to slow.

D Although stronger growth in emerging economies will make developed count lies as a whole better off, not everybody will be a winner. Globalisation is causing the biggest shift in relative prices (of labour, capital, commodities, and goods) for a century, and this in turn is causing a significant redistribution of income. Low-skilled workers in developed economies are losing out relative to skilled workers. And owners of capital are-grabbing a bigger slice of the cake relative to workers as a whole.

E As a result of China, India, and the former Soviet Union embracing market capitalism, the global labour force has doubled in size. To the extent that this has made labour more abundant, and capital relatively scarcer, it has put downward pressure on wages relative to the return on capital. Throughout the rich world, profits have surged to record levels as a share of national income, while the workers’ slice has fallen. Hence, Western workers as a whole do not appear to have shared fully in the fruits of globalisation; many low-skilled ones may even be worse off. However, this is only part of the story. Workers’ wages may be squeezed, but as consumers they benefit from lower prices. As shareholders and future pensioners, they stand to gain from a more efficient use of global capital. Competition from emerging economies should also help to spur rich-world productivity growth and thus average incomes,

F To the extent that rich economies as a whole gain from the new wealth of emerging ones, governments have more scope to compensate losers. Governments have another vital role to play, too. The intensifying competition from emerging economies makes flexible labour and product markets even more imperative, so as to speed up the shift from old industries to new ones. That is why Europe and Japan cannot afford to drag their heels over reform or leave workers ill-equipped to take up tomorrow’s jobs. Developed countries that are quick to abandon declining industries and move upmarket into new industries and services will fare best as the emerging economies come of age. Those that resist change can look forward to years of relative decline. Those that embrace it can best share in the emerging economies’ astonishing new wealth.

Questions 1-4
The text has 6 paragraphs (A – F).

Which paragraph contains each of the following pieces of information?

1. Advice for developed countries
2. The reason that it is faster to develop nowadays
3. The fact that in the 30 years before 2004, not all large developing economies grew
4. The fact that domination of the global economy by Western countries is unusual in global history

Questions 5-8
Complete the following sentences using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the text for each gap.

Developing economies can catch up with developed ones faster because they don’t have to (5)………………..

Growth in developing countries helps developed economies because of spending (6)………………..

Capital is being used more efficiently because it is (7)………………….

Economic (8)…………………..is required in many developed economies.

Questions 9-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 9 – 13 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

9. Large developing economies should not have any problems in the future.
10. If one country increases production, another country will have to reduce its production.
11. Globalisation is causing greater differences in income.
12. Low-skilled workers in developed economies are earning less.
13. Japan is not spending enough on education.

British Universities Seek Quantity and Quality

A Pity the poor British professor. Once upon a time in the halcyon 1960s, his students were a privileged few, an academic elite drawn from the top four per cent of the population. New university arrivals were literate and numerate; crimes against grammar were the exception rather than the rule. According to a new comprehensive survey of British university faculty and staff, all that has changed. “They [incoming students] don’t know how to write essays they just assemble bits from the Internet,” commented a disgruntled Oxford tutor. Even the cream of candidates do not necessarily know how to use an apostrophe,” added another.

B The decline in student competence parallels a dramatic increase in British university and college enrolment over the past decade, spurred in recent years by Prime Minister Tony Blair’s push to get half of all young Britons a university degree. As professors and business owners alike decry the quality of university students and graduates, more than a few observers are questioning the wisdom of packing ivory towers with the masses. Students themselves may begin to question whether higher education is overvalued, with tuition rales set to rise steeply next fall.

C British universities and colleges are teeming with almost 2.5 million young adults, a 12- fold increase of 1960s numbers, and up almost fifty per cent over the past decade alone. A report published last month for the Association of Graduate Recruiters found that almost half of the top 200 employers of university graduates were unhappy with the calibre of candidates. The recent survey, conducted by Oxford University and Universities & Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), listed a catalogue of complaints about freshmen which had led in some cases to year long courses being deferred by a year.

D “You are getting students going to higher education now who wouldn’t have done so 20 years ago, and in some ways that’s a good thing, as it widens opportunity,” says Geoff Hayward, lecturer at Oxford University’s educational studies department. There were, he adds, “genuine concerns about young people and their capacity to benefit from higher education”. Part of the problem, Mr. Hayward says, lies in the way teenagers are taught in school, prepped assiduously for exams at the expense of broader understanding. Despite the students’ academic failings, the Oxford/UCAS survey did find they were more tech-savvy and better at oral communication than their predecessors.

E Nevertheless, concerns about the state of Britain’s university system are deepening this year as its funding faces one of its biggest shake-ups in decades. Following the lead of America, Australia, and New Zealand among others, universities will introduce a new annual £3,000 ($6,000) tuition fee for students next year – nearly triple the current fee. The charge, brought in by the government to drum up cash for a perennially under-funded sector, is expected to saddle graduates with debts of at least £12,000 ($24,000), according to the National Union of Students (NUS), making some think twice about whether to study. Already, official figures show the number of university applicants fell this year for the first time in six years, by 3.4 per cent.

F “We’ve said all along that this policy will deter prospective students from going to university,” says Julian Nicholds, NUS vice president for education. “About 13,000 fewer prospective students have applied this year, and that is only attributable to the threat of debt in the future.” For the government, the fall in applicants is slightly awkward. Tony Blair’s Labour administration has committed itself to boosting the number of young people in higher education to fifty per cent by 2010. That might prove tricky if teenagers – and their parents – are deterred by the burgeoning cost of study.

G Alison Wolf, an expert at King’s College London and author of a book called “Does Education Matter,” concedes that the added fees might make students think twice but says the price increase won’t turn them away. “When a degree has become as important as ours, all the evidence is that fees will not have an impact because it’s still economically worthwhile to get a degree,” says Ms. Wolf. Estimates suggest graduates will still earn as much as £400,000 ($800,000) more over a lifetime than non- graduates: A little debt will be worth it in the long run, she says.

H Bill Rammell, higher education minister, says Blair’s target of fifty per cent enrolment is “an economic and social necessity”. He also points out that by 2012, an estimated 6.8 million graduate jobs will have been created, requiring increasing numbers of university- educated workers. “It is therefore crucial that we are able to produce sufficient numbers of highly skilled, employable graduates to fill those posts,” says Mr. Rammell. “Most industrialised countries have targets to expand university numbers.”

I However, Wolf says the government’s fifty per cent target is “nuts”. “There is no evidence that it is important for economic growth,” she contends. “Switzerland is the richest country in Europe and has one of the lowest numbers of graduates.” A market based society, she says, is capable of working out what kind of workers it needs without government-mandated quotas, which may end up encouraging people to go to university who might do better pursuing vocational endeavours. “It would make more sense for society if lots of people didn’t go to university for the wrong reasons,” she says, “but as long as employers continue to use degrees as a filter device for screening candidates, demand for degrees will remain high.”

Questions 14-17
The text has 9 paragraphs (A -I).

Which paragraph does each of the following headings best fit?

14. Higher fees
15. Many employers unhappy
16. Government’s push for numbers
17. Paying is worth it.

Questions 18-22
According to the text, FIVE of the following statements are true.

A higher education is overvalued
B certain students have had to postpone taking courses
C students nowadays are better at using technology
D the number of university applications has declined this year
E the government wants 50% of young people in higher education
F Alison Wolf agrees with Julian Nichols
G Bill Rammell agrees with Tony Blair
H Switzerland is following Britain’s example

Questions 23-26
According to the information given in the text, choose the correct answer or answers from the choices given.

23. University students nowadays are criticised for their lack of
A mathematical ability
B essay writing ability
C criminal behavior

24. Geoff Hayward is concerned about
A the quality of students
B the ability of students to communicate properly
C there being too much focus on examinations at shcools

25. Bill Rammell points out that
A Britain does not have enough graduates
B there are 6.8 million graduates in Britain
C other countries want to increase the number of graduates

26. Wolf believes
A Switzerland is better than Britain
B market forces should determine how many people go to university
C employers use degrees to shorten lists of applicants

Are You Experienced?

How we spend our money is changing. In the new “experience economy”, we pay to do things, not have things. Trevor Beattie, the advertising supremo, has earned millions by devising original and controversial publicity campaigns. His agency assembled the arresting FCUK logo for French Connection. However, he doesn’t believe in amassing expensive emblems of success, instead lavishing his fortune on such ephemeral things as flights in a MiG jet, or flying his mum on Concorde. He says that buying a Porsche is the saddest thing in the history of money.

Beattie is not alone in prizing memories above materialism. For a truly special birthday party, a Ferrari in a ribbon will no longer cut it. What the super-rich really want is their own private . Rolling Stones concert (cost: £2 million) or a trip into space (£100,000, courtesy of Virgin Galactic). Even the rest of us don’t particularly want stuff any more: we’d rather enjoy a day at the races, a massage, a ride in a hot-air balloon, or a weekend cookery course run by a Michelin-starred chef. These are all symptomatic of the growing “experience economy”, which has evolved out of a culture of mass affluence. With our basic needs satisfied – the disposable income of Britons is double what it was in 1980 – we are becoming increasingly choosy about how we spend our money.

Rather than upgrading our car or television, we’ll spend the cash in coffee shops, hotels, restaurants, sports clubs, and theme parks. We’ll splash out on European city breaks or walking the Inca Trail. Experiences, in other words, the amount that British people spend on retail goods as a proportion of consumer spending has gone down in the past ten years. That money has migrated to restaurants, leisure and budget travel, as well as mobile phone calls.

Even that most acquisitional of pursuits, shopping, has had to wake up to the experience economy. Shopping malls such as Bluewater have acknowledged the arrival of the experience economy by restyling themselves as destinations for a family day out. You can browse, dine, and take in a film; the shopping is optional. Companies such as Marks & Spencer recognise the trend, which is why they’ve started putting coffee shops and bookshops in their stores. The experience of shopping is just as important to us as what we end up taking home.

The “experience economy” was first predicted in a 1998 article in the Harvard Business Review by James Gilmore, an American business consultant who advocates, among other things, sleep deprivation as an idea booster. The idea was later expanded into The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage. Written with B. Joseph Pine, the book posits that we are in the middle of a profound economic shift. Just as we moved from a goods to a service economy, now we are shifting from a service to an experience economy.

Accordingly, to stand out in the marketplace, companies need to offer not just goods and services but experiences. Companies are no longer mere suppliers but stagers of events designed to be experienced. The newest retail stores prove the point: the flagship Toys “R” Us’ shop in Times Square in New York is no “pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap” emporium. Visitors are immersed in the Toys “R” Us experience as soon as they encounter the Ferris wheel at the front door. Other attractions include two floors designed as a Barbie house, and an animatronic dinosaur. Shoppers are called guests.

The idea is to foster an emotional attachment between company and consumer, and hope that “guests” will want to acquire a memento that reminds them of the warm fuzzy feelings they had during the experience. The hippest companies of the moment – Starbucks, Apple and, on a smaller scale, the drinks company Innocent – are all admired within the business industry for their ability to connect emotionally with their consumers and for proving that people will pay a premium to buy into their world. An Innocent fruit smoothie, for example, costs about £2, much more than a non-branded smoothie. Magazine reviews of the Apple iPod, which always criticise its battery life and exorbitant price tag, are inevitably forgiving because of the iPod’s iconic design and an enduring affection for the company’s perceived ability to do things differently. Visitors to Apple’s six British stores are encouraged to use an “online concierge” to help them to plan their trip, showing that progressive companies have bought in fully to the hospitality concept.

The conveyor belt of business publishing also attests to the increasing importance of the customer experience. Pine and Gilmore’s groundbreaking offering was followed by such tomes as Priceless: Turning Ordinary Products into Extraordinary Experiences (which became required reading at IBM, Estee Lauder and Pizza Hut) and Making Meaning: How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Customer Experiences. They all preach the same gospel: that, contrary to what companies think, not all consumers are focused on bagging the cheapest product. The buying experience is critical (which is why we have not all switched to Internet shopping or no-frills airlines).

The most notable aspect of the experience economy is how much we are prepared to pay for a purely non-material experience, such as a day in a spa or a trip to Prague. A collision of social trends is responsible. This era is unique in the coming together of various trends such as globalism, multiculturalism, and a demographic shift in terms of longevity. There are more leisure activities around today than twenty years ago. We are aware of these other activities and cultures, and we now have the money to experience them. Now that we are living longer, we have more time to try different things.

Questions 27-30
For each question, only ONE of the choices is correct.

27. Trevor Beattie is least likely to
A think of a good way of advertising something.
B fly in a military plane.
C buy a nice, fast car.

28. An “experience economy” has grown in Britain because
A most people have enough things.
B people like new ideas.
C buying things has become too expensive.

29. Shopping malls such as Bluewater
A are changing the way they present themselves.
B have been slow to recognise changes in consumer behaviour.
C are unhappy with the idea of an “experience economy”.

30. Retailers focusing more on “experiences” still aim to make sales through
A better marketing techniques.
B calling customers “guests”.
C selling customers things that remind them of their experiences.

Questions 31-35
Complete the following sentences using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the text for each gap.

James Gilmore thinks that people become more creative when subjected to (31)……………..

Starbucks is a company that has managed to develop an (32)…………………..with its customers.

Pine and Gilmore’s books suggest that not all consumers focus on buying the (33)…………………

Internet shopping lacks the (34)…………………….

People have time for more experiences partly because they are (35)…………………

Questions 36-40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 36 – 40 on your answer sheet, write:

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

36. In Britain, the total amount of money spent on buying things has gone down in the last ten years.
37. Some shopping malls have a cinema to enhance people’s shopping experience.
38. iPods are often criticised for being too expensive.
39. Apple is considered to be a creative company.
40. Companies believe there is a clear limit to how much people will pay for “experience.

Climate Change: Instant Expert

A Climate change is with us. A decade ago, it was conjecture. Now the future is unfolding before our eyes. Canada’s Inuit see it in disappearing Arctic ice and permafrost. The shantytown dwellers of Latin America and Southern Asia see it in lethal storms and floods. Europeans see it in disappearing glaciers, forest fires and fatal heat waves. Scientists see it in tree rings, ancient coral and bubbles trapped in ice cores. These reveal that the world has not been as warm as it is now for a millennium or more. The three warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998; 19 of the warmest 20 since 1980. And Earth has probably never warmed as fast as in the past 30 years–a period when natural influences on global temperatures, such as solar cycles and volcanoes should have cooled us down.

B Climatologists reporting for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) say we are seeing global warming caused by human activities. People are causing the change by burning nature’s vast stores of coal, oil and natural gas. This releases billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) every year, although the changes may actually have started with the dawn of agriculture, say some scientists. The physics of the “greenhouse effect” has been a matter of scientific fact for a century. CO2 is a greenhouse gas that traps the Sun’s radiation within the troposphere, the lower atmosphere. It has accumulated along with other manmade greenhouse gases, such as methane and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Some studies suggest that cosmic rays may also be involved in warming.

C If current trends continue, we will raise atmospheric CO2concentrations to double pre-industrial levels during this century. That will probably be enough to raise global temperatures by around 2℃ to 5℃. Some warming is certain, but the degree will be determined by cycles involving melting ice, the oceans, water vapour, clouds and changes to vegetation. Warming is bringing other unpredictable changes. Melting glaciers and precipitation are causing some rivers to overflow, while evaporation is emptying others. Diseases are spreading. Some crops grow faster while others see yields slashed by disease and drought. Clashes over dwindling water resources may cause conflicts in many regions.

D As natural ecosystems – such as coral reefs – are disrupted, biodiversity is reduced. Most species cannot migrate fast enough to keep up, though others are already evolving in response to warming. Thermal expansion of the oceans, combined with melting ice on land, is also raising sea levels. In this century, human activity could trigger an irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet. This would condemn the world to a rise in sea level of six metres – enough to flood land occupied by billions of people.

E The global warming would be more pronounced if it were not for sulphur particles and other pollutants that shade us, and because forests and oceans absorb around half of the CO2 we produce. But the accumulation rate of atmospheric CO2 has doubled since 2001, suggesting that nature’s ability to absorb the gas could now be stretched to the limit. Recent research suggests that natural CO2 “sinks”, like peat bogs and forests, are actually starting to release CO2.

F At the Earth Summit in 1992, the world agreed to prevent “dangerous” climate change. The first step was the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which came into force during 2005. It will bring modest emission reductions from industrialised countries. Many observers say deeper cuts are needed and developing nations, which have large and growing populations, will one day have to join in. Some, including the US Bush administration, say the scientific uncertainty over the pace of climate change is grounds for delaying action. The US and Australia have reneged on Kyoto. Most scientists believe we are under-estimating the dangers.

G In any case, according to the IPCC, the world needs to quickly improve the efficiency of its energy usage and develop renewable non-carbon fuels like: wind, solar, tidal, wave and perhaps nuclear power. It also means developing new methods of converting this clean energy into motive power, like hydrogen fuel cells for cars. Other less conventional solutions include ideas to stave off warming by “mega-engineering” the planet with giant mirrors to deflect the Sun’s rays, seeding the oceans with iron to generate algal blooms, or burying greenhouse gases below the sea. The bottom line is that we will need to cut CO2 emissions by 70% to 80% simply to stabilise atmospheric CO2 concentrations–and thus temperatures. The quicker we do that, the less unbearably hot our future world will be.

Questions 1-4
The text has 7 paragraphs (A-G).

Which paragraph contains each of the following pieces of information?

1. The effects of global warming on animals.
2. The ways in which ordinary people can see the global climate is changing.
3. The science behind global warming.
4. Possible solutions to global warming.

Questions 5-8
Complete the following sentences using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the text.

Wars could be fought over reduced (5)…………………….

Certain pollutants actually protect us from (6)…………………….

(7)…………………………..countries were not required to make cuts in emissions under the Kyoto Protocol.

Algal blooms feed on (8)………………….

Questions 9-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

9. Volcanoes can influence the global climate.
10. Billions of people live near the sea.
11. Peat bogs never release CO2.
12. Improving energy efficiency can be done quickly.
13. Burying greenhouse gases under the sea is not possible.

Britain’s canals – the solution to overcrowded roads?

A It’s hard to imagine that only a decade or so ago many of the nation’s canals were little more than the last resting place for abandoned shopping trolleys. There’s still work to be done, but their transformation has been remarkable. Projects such as Castlefield in Manchester and Brindley Place in Birmingham have transformed city-centre canals from stagnant reminders of a fading industrial past to the epitome of urban cool. However, 21st-century priorities dictate that the rehabilitation of this 18th-century motorway system cannot stop there. Canals and navigable rivers form a major transport network, in need of only piecemeal investment, and with the spare capacity to take away the need for hundreds of thousands of lorry journeys. In the second half of the 18th century, canals drove the industrial revolution. Today, authorities want them to drive congestion off the roads. Last month, for example, the European Commission proposed a seven-year plan to shift large amounts of freight from roads to inland waterways.

B Europe’s enthusiasm comes as no surprise. Freight traffic is expected to grow by a third in the next decade. The cost of pollution and congestion is set to swallow one per cent of Europe’s entire GDP by 2010. “With a fleet of 11000 vessels and a capacity equalling 10000 trains or 440000 trucks, inland waterways can make transport in Europe more efficient, reliable and environmental friendly,” says Jacques Barrot, vice-president of the European Commission in charge of transport. “Europe cannot afford to leave that potential untapped.”

C Mainland Europe has never, in fairness, left it completely untapped. The canals of the low countries and the rivers of central and eastern Europe buzzed with the sound of freight barges long after British industry had thrown in its lot with railways and roads. Attempts to revive freight on British canals have been hampered by the fact that their heyday lasted barely 60 years, and they were first considered obsolete 150 years ago. For much of the intervening period, many have simply been left to rot. “Our network was in decline for a long time compared to much of Europe,” says Eugene Baston of British Waterways. “Whereas other countries developed road and rail transport but carried on using their waterways as well, our canals were neglected. In fact many European countries actually enlarged their canals 100 years ago.”

D That decline in Britain has been reversed, first by leisure seekers and more recently by industry. Boaters, anglers, walkers and cyclists now benefit from around 4000 miles of navigable waterways and the paths and trails that run alongside them. Waterside living is fashionable, and city-centre canals have been a focus for urban renewal, And, despite our obsession with road transport, environmental considerations are forcing government and business to mm the clock back 200 years and–at least in a minor way–get our waterways working again.

E In fact, industrial goods such as coal, steel, aggregates and petroleum have never completely disappeared from large rivers and designated commercial waterways. Barges on the river Severn have recently started carrying the equivalent of 34000 lorry loads of aggregates each year, the first freight traffic on the river for a decade. British Waterways, which owns about half of the country’s navigable inland waterways, carded the equivalent of 64000 25-ton lorry loads of freight in 2004. The organisation says these figures are certain to increase as new schemes start, and environmentalists hope they will. Carrying freight by water uses about a quarter of the energy of an equivalent road journey. In comparison to lorries, barges produce low emissions, low noise and are visually unobtrusive. “We think that anything that can take freight off the roads needs to be fully explored,” says Tony Bosworth, transport campaigner for Friends of the Earth. “Canals can do that. They can help cut the pollution that causes climate change.”

F There is a limit to what canals can carry. The slow pace of water travel does not fit well with the limited shelf-life of fresh produce. If supermarkets won’t trust their cherry tomatoes to water, they might trust the waste paper and plastic that protects them. Many of the proposals to utilise Britain’s waterways are based around waste management and recycling schemes. For example, a pilot scheme in Hackney, east London, has seen municipal waste collected by truck and transferred to barge for transportation to a reprocessing plant. In the future, the scheme could remove 300000 dustcart miles from the borough’s streets every year. Current arrangements could be just the tip of the iceberg.

G Planning permission has been given for a Powerday recycling plant at Willesden Junction, a site that sits on the intersection of road, rail and canal networks. “The plant will have the capacity to handle a million and a half tons of waste every year, but the amount carried by road will be capped at 500000 tons,” says Ed Fox of British Waterways London. “If they want to grow the business, they will have to work with us.” Fox says getting freight back on the canals has been “a nice idea” for 50 years, but until recently little more than an idea. “The Powerday project, on the other hand, is proof of what really can be done.”

H Though details have yet to be decided, British Waterways believes the most appropriate way to transport some of the building materials destined for London’s giant Olympic construction project is by the network of waterways that links the Thames and east London. The Olympic Delivery Authority says: “It’s being looked at and the final solution could well involve some transportation by water. What exactly we do will be based on a range of factors, but one of those will be sustainability.” Their gentle pace will always make canals a niche player in a busy world, but after 200 years of neglect, the tide is starting to turn.

Questions 14-17
The text has 8 paragraphs (A-H).

Which paragraph does each of the following headings best fit?

14. Olympic transport
15. The decline of British canals
16. Modern leisure uses
17. Energy efficient

Questions 18-22
According to the text, FIVE of the following statements are true.

Choose the corresponding letters in answer boxes 18-22.

A canals were important in the industrial revolution in britain
B the use of canals in Europe is expected to grow by a third over the next ten years
C Britain was the only European country to let its canal decline
D Canals in Britain have become a focus for city centre renewal
E barges are less polluting that lorries
F in London most waste is transported on canals
G the amount of waste that can be taken to the Powerday plant by road is limited
H canals will not become a major form of transport in the world

Questions 23-26

23. Canals will require
A relatively little investment.
B considerable investment.
C investment equal to 1% of Europe’s transport budget.

24. The European canal network
A transported most of Europe’s goods for 60 years.
B was built mostly about 150 years ago.
C has actually been expanded in some countries over the last hundred years.

25. Suitable products for transportation by canal include
A fresh fruit and vegetables.
B fuel
C cereal

26. How much waste can Powerday recycling plant treat in one year?
A 1.5 million tons
B 500 tons
C 15 million tons

Are You Being Served?

The world’s factory, it turns out, has a sizeable canteen attached, not to mention an office block and shopping mall. Last month’s official revision of China’s gross domestic product revealed an economy worth 16 trillion yuan (＄1.9 trillion) in 2004, 17% more than previously thought. Some ＄265 billion of the increase – 93% of it – was ascribed to the services sector. As a result, services’ share of the economy has jumped by nine percentage points, to 41%, compared with 46% for manufacturing and 13% for primary industries (mainly agriculture and mining).

Where has all this extra activity come from? The bulk of it is obvious to any traveller in China. As people grow wealthier, they want more restaurants and bars, clothes stores, car dealerships, bookshops, private hospitals, English language classes and beauty salons. In many of these businesses, however, turnover and profits have not previously been captured by a statistical system geared to measuring factory production. The small, often private, companies that dominate these areas have also often been at pains to escape notice – and therefore taxes.

Li Deshui, commissioner of China’s National Bureau of Statistics, confirms that most of the newly unearthed GDP comes from three categories. The first is wholesale, retail and catering; the second, transport, storage, post and telecommunications. While postal and telecoms services are still state-controlled and thus readily measured, more than a million small tracking and removal companies are not. The third activity is real estate, booming particularly in the coastal cities and increasingly inland too, leading to an influx of private money – not least from overseas speculators. Property development has, in turn, boosted demand for architects, decorators, do-it-yourself stores and other building services.

There is more to China’s services boom than dishing up stir-fries, shipping boxes and fitting out apartments. Recent years have seen a surge in media and technology services, including the internet; in financial services such as leasing; and in education and leisure. In a small way, for example, China is starting to rival India as an outsourcing hub: less for call-centres that require excellent English than for such tasks as preparing reports and patent filings. In October Microsoft took a stake in a Chinese software firm in Dalian, a city in north-east China with a thriving outsourcing industry preparing tax returns and software for companies from Japan and South Korea.

China’s rapid economic growth is fuelling demand for accountants, lawyers, bankers and all manner of consultants, as Chinese companies expand and restructure. Specialists in marketing, advertising and public relations advise on the relatively new area of marketing products and developing brands. The new wealth has other consequences, too. China now has nearly a million security guards. It can offer its new rich everything from cosmetic surgeons to pet salons.

Meanwhile, a huge new market is opening up for private education–fuelled by the combination of a poor public system, the preoccupation of middle-class parents with giving their (often) only child the best chances, and demand from business. Chinese families spend more on education than on anything except housing – the market for courses, books and materials more than doubled from 2002 levels, to ＄90 billion in 2005. Richer households have also caused a tourism boom, which is still chiefly domestic, though more mainlanders are venturing overseas as visa restrictions are lifted. The World Travel & Tourism Council predicts that China’s annual tourism market will more than triple to ＄300 billion within a decade.

China’s services sector, on this basis, is well-developed and roughly as large as those of Japan and South Korea were at a similar stage of development, notes the HSBC bank. In reality, it is bigger still, since the GDP revision cannot capture activities such as kerbside lending and tax-dodging cash transactions in property or entertainment–all of which Dong Tao, chief Asia economist at CSFB, another bank, reckons add another ＄220 billion to the economy. Even so, the 41% of GDP claimed by services in China remains below the 60-75% typical in developed countries. It is smaller even than India’s 52%.

One reason for this is a bias towards manufacturing–“China’s ‘real-men-make-stuff’ attitude,” as Gordon Orr of McKinsey’s Shanghai office puts it. This has led to a plethora of ill-thought-through regulations for services, made worse by China’s continuing suspicion of private business, which is mostly concentrated in the services sector. The lack of a national trucking licence, for example, means hauliers must get approval from each province to move goods across the country and unload them on to different trucks at each border–delaying delivery and increasing spoilage and pilfering. In retailing, local governments often maintain inefficient supply chains, in part to protect local jobs. David Wei, head of B&Q in China, says his 48 do-it-yourself stores on the mainland are served by 1800 suppliers, compared with 600 suppliers in Britain for more than 300 stores.

Worse, though China took an early decision to invite foreign direct investment into manufacturing, it has been reluctant to open up services. Diana Farrell, director of the McKinsey Global Institute, the consultancy’s think-tank, argues that allowing more foreign investment in services could bring not just capital and technology but a competitive dynamic. The presence of Carrefour and Wal-Mart has led to domestic copycats, creating innovation and productivity growth.

Questions 27-30
For each question, only ONE of the choices is correct.

27. “The world’s factory” refers to
A the total mount of goods produced in the world.
B China.
C the United States.

28. It is not easy to measure the finances of
A large state-owned companies.
B foreign companies.
C numerous small companies.

29. Real estate has helped increase the size of the service economy because
A real estate is a service industry.
B it involves a lot of investment from abroad.
C developing real estate requires services.

30. The largest portion of household spending in China goes towards
A education.
B accommodation.
C travel.

Questions 31-35
Complete the following sentences using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the text.

China is not really a rival to India in the role of an (31)……………………..

Most tourism in China is (32)……………………..

Many transactions in the real estate and leisure industries are in cash and that leads to (33)………………….

Most private business in China is (34)………………………in the service sector.

China has brought far less (35)……………………….into services, slowing development of that sector.

Questions 36-40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

36. Officially, the largest sector in China is the service sector.
37. Some of the newly-discovered GDP comes from the education sector.
38. Dalian is a successful outsourcing center for Japan and Korea.
39. As visa restrictions are lowered, Chinese people are expected to spend more than＄300 billion on tourism.
40. China’s services sector is about the same size as Japan’s and South Korea’s.

Fordlandia

Natural latex, or rubber, comes from the sap of rubber trees. Native to the Amazon region of South America, they had long been a Brazilian monopoly, and the boom in wild rubber had made many remote jungle towns rich, until thousands of seeds of the tree were smuggled out by an entrepreneurial Brit, Henry Wickham. These were used to start plantations throughout British East-Asia, where the trees, facing none of their natural insect or fungal enemies, thrived. Thus, the Brazilian rubber boom crashed, leaving control of the world’s supplies with the plantation owners in Malaysia (where to this day, most of the world’s natural rubber is still produced).

But in the late 1920s, the automobile tycoon, Henry Ford, had a vision. He believed in vertical integration—that is, a supply chain of car parts and products united through his ownership. With his factories producing hundreds of thousands of cars, each of them needing rubber tyres, Ford wanted his own source of rubber and resented dealing with the British plantation interests. He therefore decided to buy a huge tract of Amazonian rainforest, where he would transplant his American workers and lifestyle, in order to make the largest rubber plantation on the planet. It would be called Fordlandia — ambitious, grandiose, and doomed from the beginning.

The first mistake was to hire a rather untrustworthy Brazilian to scout for the best location in the Amazon, This man recommended a damp, rocky, and infertile series of hillsides near the Tapajos river, a tributary of the wide and mighty Amazon. In 1928, Ford blindly acquired a 10,000-square-kilometre concession and immediately ordered an immense amount of infrastructure to be built—at huge cost. To this end, earth-moving equipment arrived, tractors, stump-pullers, trains, prefabricated living quarters, and food-making equipment. The surface jungle was cleared, scores of Ford’s employees were relocated, and out of this wilderness sprang an instant slice of America, complete with a modern hospital, library, hotels, ice cream makers, and row upon row of prefabricated houses positioned along nicely paved streets.

The second big mistake was that, incredibly, Ford never thought to consult trained horticulturists. He naively assumed that his own company engineers, who had proven their worth in the production of cars, would prove equally adept at this agricultural endeavour. Thus, they planted the rubber trees thickly together, believing that they would nourish in their home environment. However, in the Amazonian jungle, wild rubber trees are actually few and far between — a defence against the prodigious insect life which chews, drills, sucks, and bites. In such environments, monocultural farming approaches are dubious at best. Ford’s young rubber trees had no sooner appeared from the ground than they were attacked by caterpillars, ants, red spiders, and most significantly, South American leaf blight, which, to this day, limits the number of rubber plantations in this, the tree’s native land.

The next problem was based on cultural differences. The newly planted fields needed hundreds of local workers, who, although well paid, were expected to follow Ford’s patronising vision of a healthy lifestyle. Instead of the local custom of working before and after the roastingly hot middle of the day, Ford’s workers were forced to do the standard company 9-to-5 shift. Similarly, they had to eat American food and take part in weekend activities considered sufficiently wholesome, such as poetry reading and square-dancing. Alcohol was strictly forbidden at work, in the housing estates, or within Fordlandia’s sphere of influence. After a year denied their local customs, the disgruntled workers had had enough, and a riot followed, leaving the hapless American staff scurrying into the jungle to escape injury. It was all finally quelled with the arrival of the Brazilian army.

After three years, and no significant quantity of rubber to show for it all, Ford did what he should have done from the beginning—hired a trained horticulturist, who ultimately concluded that, in whatever manner the rubber trees were planted, the land was not appropriate for their cultivation. With such humiliating news, anyone less stubborn would have given up, yet Ford purchased another tract of land some fifty miles downstream of the Tapajos river—flatter, drier, better drained, and more suitable for machinery — and started all over again. This time, Ford imported blight-resistant Malaysian rubber trees, and much more horticultural expertise. Still, 10 years later, in 1942, the operation could only produce a paltry 750 tons of latex rubber. Ford’s factories were hoping for almost 40,000.

The final nail in the coffin was the development of synthetic rubber, and in 1945, it was time to admit defeat, although it was not Ford who did so. By that time he was old and ill and had relinquished control of his company to his grandson, Henry Ford II, who closed down the entire rubber operation. The holdings were sold back to the Brazilian government for a pittance, leaving a loss of over $20 million (which would be over 10 times that much in today’s terms) — a complete and utter financial disaster.

Questions 1-4
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage One?

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

1. Henry Wickham destroyed the Brazilian rubber boom.
2. Rubber trees are well suited to Malaysia.
3. The Tapajos river is very wide.
4. Fordlandia may have succeeded.

Questions 5-10
Complete the table. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

	Fordlandia’s problems	Result of these
One	first piece of land not (5)………………….for rubber trees	no (6)……………of rubber produced
Two	(7)…………………were unfamiliar with farming	an unwise (8)………………approach
Three	not following (9)…………………..	a (10)…………………

Questions 11-13
Complete the sentences. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

The natural enemy of rubber trees is (11)……………………..

Plantations definitely need the skills of (12)……………………..

Fordlandia closed down upon the invention of (13)………………………..

Shakespeare: The Authorship Question

If one were asked to name the greatest writer in the English language, few would hesitate in answering, ‘William Shakespeare’. Although he dabbled in poetry, his central claim to fame is his plays, almost 40 of them. Extensively studied, constantly performed, adapted, and reinterpreted into modern contexts, Shakespeare’s plays remain as popular as ever. But did he write them, that is the question?

The immediate reaction is to wonder why anyone would even ask this. Although there is little documentary evidence of Shakespeare’s life, what does exist unequivocally identifies him as the author of the plays. His name appears on title pages of a few publications, printing orders, and theatrical documents, and is mentioned by contemporary commentators and a fellow playwright, both publicly and in private memoirs, in every case in a way that is consistent with Shakespeare being the author. Consequently, for hundreds of years, no one held any doubts whatsoever on the matter.

There it would have remained, had Shakespeare’s post-humous reputation not reached such lofty heights. With the widespread acceptance of his dramatic genius, apparent inconsistencies were perceived. Chief among these was how such literature could originate from, as viewed by some, a humble ill-educated country bumpkin and bawdy stage entrepreneur, about whom so little was known. Details of Shakespeare’s schooling and upbringing in the small market town of Stratford-Upon-Avon are non-existent, but among his surviving children there is no evidence of strong education or even basic literacy skills. No original written texts have ever been found, and Shakespeare’s six surviving signatures are all unsteady, showing inconsistent style and spelling.

Most tellingly for some are the circumstances of Shakespeare’s death. Firstly, there is his will, a commonplace and unpoetic document, making no mention whatsoever of the considerable body of papers, reference books, and miscellaneous plays, poetry, and writings that one would expect a playwright of Shakespeare’s stature to possess. Apparently he was unconcerned about the rights to both his own plays (many of which remained unpublished at that time) and his own literary heritage. The second fact is that, upon his death, there were no eulogies, mourning notices, or testimonies from those who knew him. All this seems very perplexing for a playwright and poet who, whilst not necessarily considered the most polished, professional, or learned by his peers, had nevertheless achieved considerable wealth, respect, and fame, even in his own lifetime.

Such thoughts first became public in the mid-19th century — and have never really slopped, developing the grand title, ‘The Shakespeare authorship question”, and dividing those interested into two sides: the Stratfordians: those who support Shakespeare as the author, and the anti-Stratfordians: those who do not. For the latter body, the only way to overcome the documentary evidence in support of Shakespeare’s authorship is to assume a conspiracy existed among a select group of people, perhaps including Shakespeare himself, in order to protect the real author’s identity. So who was he (and in those times, it goes without saying that it could not be a ‘she’)?

The anti-Stratfordians search for a university-educated, upper-class candidate — someone who would inevitably have had knowledge of aristocratic manners and mores, and familiarity with the proceedings and politics of the royal court, all of which so often appear in the plays themselves. The reason for the conspiracy is that producing such works, full with themes of royal revenge and murder, intrigue and assassination, mob rule and rebellion, could render a nobleman liable to the dangerous charge of subversion. Some have also argued that, at that time, it was considered socially unacceptable for the upper-class to publish creative literature for monetary gain, being instead confined to circulating their writings among their peers, or seeing them performed among courtly audiences.

There are four leading contenders. Sir Francis Bacon was the first nominated, and certainly had the best intellectual credentials, being well-versed in law, philosophy, essay writing, and science. However, since the 1920s, Edward de Vere, an aristocratic earl who patronised and sponsored actors and the arts, has become the leading contender. Only slightly less favoured is a fellow playwright, Christopher Marlowe. Born into the same social class as Shakespeare, he at least went to university, although his early death in a tavern brawl presents difficulties — unless one assumes his demise was fabricated to allow him to continue writing under Shakespeare’s name. Finally, there is William Stanley, another aristocratic earl. Contemporary accounts attest to the fact that he wrote plays for the common people, and throughout his life he displayed interest and support for the theatre.

And the evidence? Mere historical and literary conjecture, vague similarities in writing styles, and loose coincidences between the lives and travels of these contenders when compared to the scenes and settings of many of the plays in question. In other words, nothing solid at all. The case is so flimsy that reputable scholars barely discuss it, and rightly so. Although capable of attracting public interest and selling books, unless some real evidence emerges, I would say that the authorship question is not questionable at all.

Questions 14-17
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage Two?

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

14. Shakespeare’s name appears on many documents.
15. He was considered a genius even in his lifetime.
16. He was well-educated.
17. When he died, not all the plays had been published.

Questions 18-21
Complete the sentences. Choose ONE WORD from the passage for each answer.

We have six examples of Shakespeare’s (18)………………………

He used ordinary language in his (19)…………………….

The lack of public grieving upon his death is (20)………………………

Those who believe Shakespeare was not the author are called (21)………………….

Questions 22-24
Complete the flowchart. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Questions 25-26
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

25. Which sentence was mentioned in the reading passage?
A Sir Francis Bacon was the smartest of the candidates.
B Edward de Vere was in the same social class as Shakespeare.
C Christopher Marlowe is the prime candidate.
D William Stanley wrote plays for courtly audiences.

26. The author believes that Shakespeare
A did not write the plays.
B may not have written the plays.
C probably wrote the plays.
D certainly wrote the plays.

The Immunisation Controversy

A Carl Sagan once said, ‘Science loses ground to pseudo-science because the latter seems to offer more comfort.’ Yes, hard science, proven facts, and indisputable logic are often not sufficiently consoling, and thus routinely eliminated from the equation. Never, though, has this been more distressing than with the so-called ‘anti-vaccination’ movement. The end result has been the needless death of very young children, the most helpless of bystanders, and yet it seems there is no end in sight.

B It is strange to believe that vaccination, with such a long and distinguished track record, is now under assault. Smallpox, for example, had killed over half a billion human beings throughout history but was eradicated — completely removed from the face of the Earth — via immunisation programs. Similarly, polio, rubella, whooping cough, measles, and a slew of other diseases which routinely decimated the youth are now, virtually, things of the past. The days of high infant mortality, short life spans, and nasty brutish lives are indeed long gone, and we owe it all to this crucial insight into disease prevention.

C And this is part of the problem. With the once terrible epidemics lying outside of human memory, a growing number of people are convinced that vaccinations are no longer necessary, and that the small risk of adverse effects outweighs the benefits. One reason for this belief is that many genetic disorders related to brain impairment often emerge at around two years of age — that is, the same period in which babies receive vaccinations. If one in a hundred babies is destined to develop autism among a vaccinated group, then observable symptoms of the problem will likely appear after a vaccination shot, leading distraught parents to link one event to the other.

D This misattribution is compounded by the Internet, which now hosts a sprawling forum of anti-vaccination lobby groups and their websites, full with unsubstantiated claims, fraudulent research, anecdotal evidence, and the passionate tirades of multitudes, firmly convinced of the correctness of their case. Authority is undermined, statistics ignored, and hard science excluded. Is it so surprising? If creationists and alternative medicine practitioners can gain respectability and widespread public and political support, so too can the pseudo-science of the anti-vaccinationists. When faced with this wave of propaganda, it would be hard for many parents, motivated by the intense desire to protect their children, not to be influenced.

E At this point, it must be clarified that there is no credible evidence whatsoever to support the anti-vaccinationists’ claims. Over a score of peer-reviewed studies have found nothing to link the MMR (measles/mumps/rubella) vaccine to autism, or even the more subtle neurological problems, and every reason to continue with vaccinations. The so-called increase in autism so often attributed to vaccinations merely results from more accurate diagnoses. Children who in the past would have been labeled as ‘retarded’ or ‘slow’ are now identified as having one of the three main grades of autism (which is probably genetically determined). Yet this argument falls on deaf ears, and the counter-claimants have succeeded in reducing vaccination rates among certain communities to the extent that outbreaks of preventable childhood illnesses (such as polio, meningitis, and measles) are occurring.

F The MMR controversy is a sad case. In 1998, a high-profile paper linked this vaccine to autism. It was later shown that the author was receiving funds from various groups engaged in a lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers, and that the study was both ethically and methodologically faulty. Data had been manipulated, and results misreported. Similar studies found no link whatsoever, and in 2004, the medical journal which hosted the original article formally retracted its conclusion. Yet vaccination rates in the UK. had dropped to 80% in the subsequent years. In late 1999, a measles outbreak occurred in North Dublin (which had vaccination rates as low as 60%), resulting in 100 hospitalisations and three deaths.

G One of the key arguments of the anti-vaccinationists is that they have the right to choose their medication. These people attack what they see as the impersonal, intrusive, and uncaring edifice of modern medical science. However, the success of immunisation programs depends on a sufficiently high number of the population being immune, which forces the disease to die out through lack of carriers. If there are enough susceptible individuals to provide a chain of disease transmission, safety is compromised for all, and this is why free choice should not be an issue, particularly when the hard evidence presents an overwhelming case. Personally, I would have thought that when children started dying from preventable diseases, the anti-vaccinationists’ case would die also.

H But there are other agendas at play. Anti-vaccinationists can posture as moral crusaders, dismissing those who support immunisation as being in the payment of big pharmaceutical companies, whom they see as dishonest and immoral. Talk show hosts, women’s magazines, paid ‘experts’, lawyers, and media celebrities, all benefit from creating controversy when none existed, while alternative medicine practitioners and snake-oil salesmen all oppose vaccination, believing that their own slew of pills, potions, and unproven expensive treatments do the job better. Against all this, how can rational science prevail?

Questions 27-33
Reading Passage Three has seven paragraphs, A-H. Choose the correct heading for Paragraphs B-H from the list of headings.

List of Headings
i Easy publicity
ii Increasing outbreaks of disease
iii Some real reasons
iv All or nothing
v Autism on the rise
vi Past successes
vii A sad consequence
viii An unfortunate coincidence
ix A simple explanation
x Some dubious evidence

Example Answer Paragraph A vii

27. Paragraph B
28. Paragraph C
29. Paragraph D
30. Paragraph E
31. Paragraph F
32. Paragraph G
33. Paragraph H

Questions 34-36
Choose THREE answers from the list and write the correct letter, A-G, next to the questions.

For which THREE reasons, A-G, do anti-vaccinationists oppose vaccinations?

A believing they cause problems
B wanting to save money
C wanting freedom of choice
D not believing drug manufacturers
E the pain of vaccinations
F the influence of creationists
G preferring alternative medicine

Questions 37-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

37. Autism is
A sometimes caused by vaccinations.
B a very subtle neurological disorder.
C most likely inherited.
D increasing.

38. The 1998 paper was
A the cause of falling vaccination rates.
B defended by the medical journal.
C verified by other studies.
D funded by patients.

39. Vaccinations
A have removed most smallpox from the world.
B are supported by solid evidence.
C are defended on some websites.
D are no longer necessary.

40. Alternative medicine practitioners
A believe vaccinations are generally good.
B can be impersonal and uncaring.
C are often supported by politicians.
D are often quite cheap.

Family Names

Any specific study of words and language almost invariably has an obscure name, and that includes the study of people’s names themselves. This science is called anthroponomastics (anthropos being man, and onoma being name) but do not expect that word to be useful in your life. Yet all people possess names, and most possess several. With respect to the apparently random family name, if one traces back far enough in time, there is inevitably a formative logic that warrants some reflection. After all, that is the name people will carry their whole lives (name changes aside), and pass on to their descendants.

Considering early Britain, populations at that time lived in small farming hamlets, where they generally stayed their whole lives, and people had one name only. Being the only person named ‘John’ in the village allowed that single name to sufficiently distinguish that person from all others. If another John did exist, one could simply add some description to the name: ‘John the carpenter’ versus ‘John near the hill’, and a third could be ‘John, Peter’s son’. Such additions were mostly short-lived and not passed down to descendants. But of course, life was not destined to remain that simple.

With townships increasing in population, people becoming more mobile, and invading armies flowing to and fro, complications set in. In England, the process of adopting family names (or ‘surnames’ or ‘second names’) did not happen suddenly, but if one had to pick a fixed date, 1379 would be a good start. This was when the government introduced a poll tax, the administration of which required a list of the names of every adult in the kingdom. Suddenly, there were too many Johns to deal with. To resolve this issue, the later Additions Statute (1413) insisted that all names also come with the bearers’ occupation and place of residence. With such increasing bureaucracy, fixed and heritable family names would eventually become a necessity.

There were many methods by which these names were decided. The most obvious was to use that place of residence, although this method did come with the obvious problem that all residents of, say, Wickham, could not take the family name ‘Wickham’ without causing obvious confusion. Still, jumping to Italy, this did not prevent Leonardo da Vinci (from Vinci) becoming the town’s most famous export. Moving back to England, family names could also derive from personal beliefs (resulting in Mope, Christian, Godley, and others) or physical attributes, giving us Armstrong, Short, Brown, and others. Such names are often disguised by their original Gaelic derivation. Guilfoyle means ‘follower of (Saint) Paul’; Kennedy means ‘ugly head’.

Quite common also was to be named from the trade or profession carried out, resulting in names such as Smith, Butcher, and Carpenter. Many of these refer to professions long made redundant, such as Fletcher (arrow maker), Cooper (barrel maker), or Heyward (fence maintainer). Also common was to be named from geographic features, often ones near where the name-bearer lived. And so there is Hill, Bush, Underwood (‘under the wood’), Eastlake, Bridges, and many others. Finally, names often showed the relationships among families, where ‘son of Peter’ became ‘Peter’s son’, in turn becoming ‘Peterson’. Similarly, there is Johnson, Harrison, and Robertson. In Scots, ‘Mac’ was used, giving MacDonald, MacPherson, and others.

With the mixing of populations from different countries (especially in America), the original foreign names often suffered. This was either due to mispronunciation, which saw names such as Pfoersching become Pershing, or deliberate modifications to accommodate English pronunciation and spelling. Thus, Krankheit became Cronkite, and Wistinghausen became Westinghouse. Yet even the most English of family names is often historically knocked around a fair bit in terms of spelling and pronunciation before settling into its final form. Old English spellings, for example, were often lost in favour of phonetic intelligibility, making the determination of exact meaning difficult. .

All this study of family names might lead one to believe that using them is universal. Far from it, and the technical word for a single name only is a mononym. Parts of Africa, India, Central Asia, and Indonesia, as well as many indigenous or aboriginal groups use single names only. In the developed world, such names are usually stage names, reserved for celebrities, artists, singers, or film stars. The entertainment industry in Japan is replete with examples: Mana, Ayaka, and Ichiro, while Korea, China, and Hong Kong, have followed suit. Moving to the West, some will invent names (Bono, Sting, Prince), or just use family names (Liberace, Morrisey), or their first names (Shakira, Cher). Contrasting this, the musician Bjork uses a mononym in accordance with her own culture. As with all Icelanders, she has no family name.

A final point of interest is that in European and Western cultures, the family name is usually given after the first name (in both speaking and writing) — hence the terms ‘first’ and ‘last’ name. Contrasting this, in Asian cultures it is the other way round, reflecting the greater emphasis placed on family relationships. Since many of these cultures have vertical writing, what to the West is a ‘last name’ is in the East, an ‘upper name’.

Questions 1-4
Answer the questions. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

1. What aspect of family names should make us think more about them?
2. Originally, what was needed to distinguish two same first names?
3. What legislation began the process of using family names?
4. What made family names, in time, necessary?

Questions 5-9
Write the correct letter, A—F, next to the questions.

What system was used for the formation of the following names?

A Personal belief
B Place of residence
C Mistake
D Mononym
E Profession
F Geographic feature

5. Bono
6. da Vinci
7. Pershing
8. Heyward
9. Guilfoyle

Questions 10-13
Complete the sentences. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

‘Mac’ in Scottish means (10)……………………..

In order to be easier to write, foreign names often had (11)…………………….

Spelling changes in names can make it hard to know their (12)………………..

The term ‘upper name’ is used because of Asia’s (13)………………….

Sampling Bias

Our primitive ancestors left many paintings on the walls inside caves. Additionally, inside and near these places there is evidence of fire pits, and refuse and burial sites. However, one could equally imagine this same evidence of daily life on exposed cliffs or hillsides, on trees or animals skins, and beside rivers and coastlines. Such evidence, if it existed, would have long been washed, eroded, or rotted away. Thus, prehistoric people are characterised as ‘cavemen’, presumed to have a predilection for dwelling in these places only because that is where most evidence is taken. This ‘caveman effect’ is an example of what is known as ‘sampling bias’ — one of the biggest problems when conducting any form of statistical data gathering.

Surveys, for example, are popular because they are easy to administer and relatively cost-effective, particularly if conducted remotely through technical means, such as telephone, mail, email, or the Internet. Surveys also lend themselves to obtaining particularly large numbers of respondents, which, in theory, allows a greater chance of sampling all the variations of the target population. They can also be standardised with fixed questions and responses (such as ‘tick the box’ or ‘closed-ended’ questions). This allows easy collation, analysis, and presentation of results, all with the air of precision that mathematics brings. Such surveys, however, have proven notoriously unreliable because of the difficulty in obtaining representative samples. In other words, the sampling is biased, or skewed in favour of certain outcomes.

Let us look at some examples. If one calls people on cellphones, it immediately excludes those who favour landlines, and thus the sample of respondents may be those who are more technically-conversant, skewing data based on, say, technical issues (‘How often do you use the Internet?’). If one rings domestic homes during the daytime, most of those who work during the day will be excluded. Those that answer will more likely be the unemployed, disabled, elderly, and retired, skewing data based on, say, work-related issues (‘How important is work in your life?’). No matter how large the sampling size is, sampling bias can immediately invalidate the results.

One of the more subtle of sampling biases is known as self-selection. No matter how rigorously the respondents are chosen to be random and characteristic of the target population, those who choose to respond will be different to those who do not. Generally, respondents who are willing to invest time in giving answers obviously want to say something, whereas those who choose not to answer probably do not. Thus, any survey in which many respondents do not answer, do not give clear answers, or only give cursory or unthinking answers, is immediately invalidated, since opinionated perspectives are disproportionately represented.

The latter is such an immediate and obvious problem that it has given rise to techniques to maximise the possibility of garnering responses. One of the more effective is to give the respondents advanced warning (often through the mail), highlighting the time, the nature of the survey, and the mode of delivery, as well as expressing appreciation for the assistance. The interviewers themselves must be sufficiently trained in correct question-asking techniques, and, with cranks, salespeople, and scam-artists abounding, interviewers must provide introductions about themselves, their company, and the nature of the interview, fully and with evident sincerity, in order to gain the trust of those they are talking to.

Even with this, sampling bias can easily arise due to the number of variables in place, since it only takes one to skew the data. If taking samples from a specific location — say, a street corner—then it may be that this location is in the business district, excluding ordinary workers from the sample. It may be that it is near a restaurant district, excluding those who cook more often for themselves. If there is a health club nearby, the majority of respondents may be much healthier than the average of the population. If it is on a university campus, designed to poll university students, is it near the engineering or the arts faculty? The part-time or full-time schools? Are they rich or poor? Male or female? What about race, colour, gender, religion, socio-economic background, and first language? The list goes on and on.

One method to deal with this is to make sure all targeted groups are represented, if only a little, and make mathematical extrapolations to correct the bias. For this to work, the degree of underrepresentation needs to be quantified exactly, and one needs to assume the under-represented respondents are indeed typical of their kind. If, for example, one aims to find the opinion of the population regarding the outcome of an election, but could only, for whatever reasons, interview one woman for every four men, the responses of the women could be multiplied by four, and thus, one can assume (guardedly and with many provisos), that the sampling bias from gender has been corrected. But that does assume all the other variables which introduce bias have been excluded — often a very problematic assumption to make.

Questions 14-18
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage Two?

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

14. Cavemen were often very good artists.
15. Surveys can be done cheaply by telephone.
16. Surveys can usually give reliable information.
17. The elderly and disabled people are often at home during the day.
18. Larger survey samples can reduce sampling bias.

Questions 19-24
Complete the flowchart. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Questions 25-26
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

25. The number of sampling variables
A is usually not so large.
B can result in important input being lost.
C means many locations need to be used.
D can result in lists being necessary.

26. Mathematical extrapolation
A can yield confident results.
B requires responses from both men and women.
C needs exact ratios.
D needs many respondents.

The Biggest Impact

A In 1980 a team of researchers were analysing soil samples at what was then known as the KT boundary. The K is misleading, as it actually refers to the cretaceous era, while the T refers to the tertiary era. What made geologists originally place a division in that distant time, some 65 million years ago, was the mass extinction which then occurred, seeing over two thirds of all land and sea life disappear, including the dinosaurs — or more strictly, all non-birdlike dinosaurs (since birds are now considered dinosaurs’ descendants). Whilst this was not the biggest extinction of all, it is definitely the most famous. But what caused it?

B The researchers discovered that sedimentary layers at the KT boundary contained a concentration of iridium many times higher than what normally occurs — up to 120 times. Most iridium disappeared when the Earth was molten, sinking into its metallic core. However, this element is abundant in asteroids and comets, which led to an intriguing hypothesis — that an asteroid or comet had struck the Earth, causing the mass extinction. The object would have vaporised almost immediately upon impact, throwing its iridium-rich contents into the atmosphere, from where it eventually settled across the entire planet. The problem was, an asteroid large enough to do this would have left traces of its impact in the Earth’s crust, and at that time there were no known signs. Or were there?

C In actual feet, in the 1960s, a contractor named Baltosser working for a Mexican state-owned oil company had looked at a gravity map of the Yucatán Peninsula, near the Gulf of Mexico. He noticed a large arc-shape, showing a symmetry that was impossible to naturally occur. Company policy forbade him from releasing his findings, and so the secret lay until 1978, when two geophysicists, Camargo and Penfield, working for the same company, discovered it again. In the search for possible oil-drilling sites, they had been examining magnetic surveys in the Gulf of Mexico, which revealed an underwater arc. The two arcs, sea-based and land-based, matched perfectly, showing a circle 180 kilometers wide, centred on the coastal village of Chicxulub, and so it became known as the Chicxulub Crater.

D In 1981, Camargo and Penfield released their findings, but the world was not listening. It took over ten years, and much more evidence (rock samples, drilling cores, and dating of the seabed rocks to the magic figure of 65 million years), before scientists began to accept the findings, although widespread skepticism existed, and still remains, to some extent, today. It is occasionally argued that the impact was not the sole reason for the mass extinction, or that there were other contemporaneous impacts, or that extensive volcanism or climate and sea-level change were the real causes. It was perhaps this that led, in 2010, to an international panel of over 40 scientists being convened in order to specifically address the evidence. They concluded that an asteroid impact, as evidenced by the Chicxulub Crater, was indeed the cause of the mass extinction.

E Trying to picture that event, the most powerful ever in the Earth’s history, strains the imagination. It begins with a 10-15 kilometer wide rock appearing from nowhere, almost instantaneously vaporising, and releasing over two million times the energy of an atomic bomb. The most immediate effect is a cloud of super-heated dust, ash, and steam expanding outwards, igniting fires, and broiling everything in its path. A split second later follows a series of shock waves, traveling across the surface of the globe, triggering earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Next there is a ‘mega-tsunami’, thousands of meters high, ripping coastlines apart and stirring up the oceans. Then, in the next few weeks, the huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the vaporisation of carbonate rock heats the Earth, but with the atmosphere choked with dust for years, sunlight is blocked, killing off plants, ultimately plunging the Earth into winter and the entire biosphere into absolute chaos.

F The surprising fact is not that so many creatures became extinct, but that so many survived! With global disruption to plant communities, the herbivorous dinosaurs died quickly, and their predators soon followed. Sea-based life suffered disastrously, and all giant marine reptiles disappeared, yet the ancestors of the crocodile survived. It is theorised that, like modern crocodiles, they were semi-aquatic and thus were able to shelter in the water from fires and blast damage, and yet could scavenge on land amongst the abundance of dead animals for years afterwards. Similarly, insects, worms, and molluscs could all feed on dead plant and animal matter, allowing those that fed on these creatures to survive. Consequently, insectivores, scavengers, or those with omnivorous eating habits, including mammals and smaller bird-like reptiles, were preserved.

G Thus, the dinosaurs as we know them, after 135 million years as the dominant land animal, were all but gone. This allowed mammals, then only small burrowing cat-like creatures (attributes which had also helped ensure their survival throughout the disaster), to emerge from the undergrowth, diversity, and eventually rule the land. In an ironic consequence, that class of animal ultimately led to species Homo sapiens, or human beings. So, were it not for that disastrous extinction 65 million years ago, we would not be here today.

Questions 27-32
Reading Passage Three has seven paragraphs, A-G.

List of Heading
i The situation in the sea
ii The first piece of evidence
iii A fortunate consequence
iv Preservation strategies
v Company procedures
vi The mystery of the border
vii A first-hand view
viii An unexpected element
ix A final decision
x Heated debate

Example Answer Paragraph A vi

27. Paragraph B
28. Paragraph C
29. Paragraph D
30. Paragraph E
31. Paragraph F
32. Paragraph G

Questions 33-37
Complete the summary of the first half of the passage. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Baltosser, a contractor, was the first to identify the (33)……………….., but could not reveal this information because of (34)……………….Years later, the discovery of (35)………………………at the KT boundary added further evidence, after which Camargo and Penfield finally showed the world Baltosser’s discovery. Nevertheless, they had to overcome (36)………………………….until an international commission confirmed this event as the real reason for the (37)…………………………which followed.

Questions 38-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

38. After the asteroid struck the Earth:
A the shock wave was followed by the object’s vaporisation.
B the Earth warmed before going cold.
C the tsunami caused earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
D the eruptions plunged the atmosphere into chaos.

39. In the aftermath of the asteroid strike
A all the dinosaurs died.
B all reptiles died.
C the dead animals were important.
D the water allowed shelter for mammals.

40. Mammals of that time survived because they
A consumed dead animals and plant
B were large and strong.
C lived in the shadows of trees.
D were a special class of animals.

If You Can Get Used To The Tastes

There is a formal word for it: entomophagy. It means the consumption of insects by us, human beings. Okay, we are not insectivores (eaters of insects), although, it must be admitted, our primate cousins regularly feast on insects. Sure, but those relatives live in trees, and swing from branches, and we don’t. Okay, you say, snails, those slimy garden pests, are relished as a gourmet food, most famously by the French, who are otherwise not interested in garden life. But, I counter, snails are not insects. They are mollusks, and I’d like to think that makes a difference.

What I’m talking about is eating true insects, those with six legs, three body parts, hard exoskeleton, and two antennae. We can extend this definition to our eight-legged arachnids (spiders and scorpions), as well. These are creatures people just don’t eat. At least, that was what I thought, until I met a personally as well as ecologically-friendly young man, Peter Ferguson, who advocates insects as the ultimate in culinary delight. Why? Peter explains, ‘For a start, there are many insects, about 10 million species, and a huge biomass of high quality calories, and we just ignore them. In a world having trouble feeding itself, that doesn’t make sense.’n

Ignore them we do, at least in Western culture, where we have long had much better alternatives. Animal husbandry has characterised our societies, giving us pork, poultry, and cattle, upon which we regularly feast. Yet other cultures don’t have it so lucky, in Africa, in Asia, and among aboriginal or ethnic groups in Oceania, insects have an equally long history as an important dietary supplement, from butterflies and moths, to bees and wasps, cockroaches and ants, beetle grubs or larvae, caterpillars and worms, scorpions (a delicacy in southern China) and tarantulas. Even the Christian Bible states that John the Baptist lived on locusts and wild honey, locusts being grasshoppers in their swarming stage. These same insects, incidentally, are commonly eaten in Thailand, where a visit to a market there will reveal multitudes, deep-fried in glistening piles for the delectation of passing shoppers.

Consider the African mopane worm, for example. To begin with, the name is a misnomer. The creature is actually a large colourful caterpillar, which, in the fullness of time, turns into a rather dull-looking moth, although most never reach that stage. The hairy yellow- striped creatures are eagerly sought after, hand-picked from trees in the wild, pinched by the tail-end to squeeze out the slimy green intestinal tract, after which they are most often sun-dried or smoked, thereafter ready for consumption. Tins of mopane worms in brine, or in tomato or chili sauce are common in supermarkets. They can be eaten straight from the can. fried into crunchy snacks, or added as an ingredient to conventional dishes. The harvest and sale of wild mopane worms is now a multi-million dollar industry, feeding millions of people, mostly indigenous Africans.

Peter is enthusiastically telling me why he does it. ‘Insects have protein, and all the vitamins, minerals, and fat you could want.’ When I remain skeptical, Peter holds up a fried grasshopper. ‘This has lots of calcium’. Then comes the (you guessed it) termite paste, a black smear with the look, smell, and consistency, of an industrial solvent. ‘Iron. Very rich.’ Then comes the grublike larvae of some form of moth. ‘Essential trace elements such as zinc and copper.’ Anything else? ‘Insects don’t produce greenhouse gases, and don’t need antibiotics.’ Peter even cites my mopane worm example. ‘Three kilograms of mopane leaves will feed a kilogram of worms—-a 30% payback. With cattle, it’s less than 10%. Insects are cheap to buy, cheap to breed, and easy to manage.’

One can’t argue with that. The phenomenal rate at which insects breed is well known, and more than makes up for their small size. A female cricket might be a fraction of the weight of a huge beef cow, but lays up to 1,500 eggs a month, converted into food at 20 times the rate of beef, whilst using only a fraction of the space and water. The ecological argument for entomophagy is undeniable, although there are significant concerns about internal parasites, and the accumulation of pesticides and toxins inside many wild insects. Allergic reactions have also been reported. Cooking insects well is recommended, and their consumption should, of course, be avoided, after intensive pesticide use or commercial spraying of local agricultural lands.

But what about the taste? Here, Peter hesitates. He finally comes out with a suspicious, ‘You get used to it.’ When I nod skeptically, he comes out with a far more confident, ‘Actually, you’re eating insects already, all the time.’ Yes, apparently, insects find their way into the human food chain, whether we like it or not. For example, most of those who eat rice (as I do) are inadvertently eating not just a few rice weevil larvae, and probably benefited by this, given the additional vitamins these larvae supply. Whole insects, insect parts, insect detritus, larvae, and excrement, appear in all our food, but in such small quantities that they are basically unnoticed and insignificant. Peter smiles. ‘In that sense, we’re already insectivores. We’ve just got to take the next logical step.’

Questions 1-4
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage One?

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

1. The French are well known for eating insects.
2. Peter Ferguson is a nature-friendly person.
3. Insect eating by people is a modern phenomenon.
4. Some insects are used for religious purposes.

Questions 5-10
Complete the table. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Insect	One fact	Another fact
Grasshopers	contains (5)…………………	popular in (6)……………….
Mopane worms	primarily eaten by (7)…………….	eat (8)………………
Scorpions	are popular in (9)………………	are a type of (10)……………….

Questions 11-13
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

11. Mopane worms
A are appropriately named.
B usually reach their moth form.
C are extensively raised for profit.
D are usually treated before being eaten.

12. Insects
A multiply quickly.
B are best eaten raw.
C are mostly safe to eat.
D produce small amounts of greenhouse gas.

13. The author
A likes snails.
B probably eats mopane worms.
C believes insects can taste good.
D probably eats rice weevil larvae.

AC or DC: The War of Currents

Electricity can be delivered in either alternating current (AC), or direct current (DC), and in the late 1880s in America, with electricity delivery in its infancy, it initially seemed clear which system was superior. Thomas Edison, a home-grown American inventor, heavily favoured DC from the start. Yet the limitations of his system would become increasingly obvious, as would the advantages of AC, and despite Edison’s best efforts, his crusade would ultimately be lost.

In 1879, Edison’s team at Menlo Park had improved the electric light bulb, but Edison needed an efficient electricity distribution system to capitalise on this. Thus, in 1880, he founded the Edison Illuminating Company and constructed a generating station providing 110 volts of direct current. Yet such a system has drawbacks. Due to the low voltage, there Hows correspondingly higher current, meaning that the electrical resistance of the transmission wires significantly reduces the voltage as it travels further afield. Whatever thickness of wire is used, there is a natural limitation in the distance over which the electricity can be economically transmitted.

There are, however, benefits to using DC. It can allow storage batteries to be directly connected to the electricity grid, giving extra power to meet sudden short-term peaks of demand, or backup during breakdown of supply. Furthermore, during Edison’s time, there were no practical AC motors, only DC ones. Also, most of the load consisted of incandescent light bulbs, which ran well on DC. Perhaps most importantly, Edison had the patents (legal rights) to many associated DC devices which he and his team had invented, such as meters, telegraphic devices, and household machinery. Thus, the widespread adoption of DC across America would see him gain considerably from patent royalties.

Still, all such inventions were somewhat useless when DC electricity could only be delivered to customers within a few kilometers of the generating source. To overcome this problem, the best answer is to transform, or step-up, the voltage to very high levels for transmission, and then transform it down to safe levels for customer use. This also allows thinner and less expensive wires, but there is no low-cost technology to transform voltage — unless one uses AC, and it was the brilliant physicist and prolific inventor, Nikola Tesla, who had extensively researched this system.

Tesla, a penniless immigrant from Serbia, worked for a year at Edison’s Menlo lab. He had actually proposed the AC system to Edison, but Edison, an empirical experimenter with little formal education, dismissed it as impractical. Tesla, with the mathematical training and formal theoretical knowledge, was able to understand AC’s potential, even inventing an AC polyphase electric induction motor. Tesla soon felt he was not being given due credit or enough financial compensation from Edison, and a direct confrontation led to him immediately resigning, after which he was reduced to working as a labourer for a few years to make ends meet.

But Tesla was not the first to advocate AC. The system was being trialed in many European countries, with considerable success. One of the converts to the cause was a university-trained electrical engineer named George Westinghouse, and he was willing to invest in the idea. He formed a company and purchased the patents to AC-based transformer technology from its European inventors, as well those to Tesla’s AC polyphase electric motor, among others. This eventually led to him hiring Tesla himself to help commercialise AC, and promote it as a better system. A bitter feud, known as the ‘War of Currents’ was set to begin.

Edison first strike was to claim that high-voltage systems were too dangerous to use. Certainly they were dangerous, but Westinghouse countered that such risks could be minimised and were considerably outweighed by the benefits. Edison’s next strike was to use his influence on various American state governments to limit power transmission to low voltages, effectively eliminating AC from the competition. When this failed, Edison was prepared to conduct public electrocutions of animals by AC — even on a rogue elephant no longer wanted by its circus owners. In the battle of public opinion, this was even filmed.

The next logical step was to show AC’s deadliness on human beings themselves. Edison, realising that he was losing the war, again used his influence on government, this time to promote the use of AC for the execution of prisoners. Thus, in 1890, the first ‘electric chair’ was constructed in anticipation of an impending death sentence. Westinghouse countered by hiring the best lawyers of the day to defend the prisoner in question, as well as to prevent the system of execution. Although he failed in both respects, the results were unexpected. Despite a botched execution and the horror of the spectators, the electric chair would remain, but AC would not be stigmatised as the killer Edison’s had hoped.

Meanwhile, AC’s range and efficiency saw Westinghouse being given high prestige engineering projects, such as the Ames Hydro-electric Generating Plant (1891), and another one on Niagara Falls, culminating in the greatest public relations victory in 1893: the contract to illuminate the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Here, Tesla and Westinghouse showed the wonders of AC power with various electrical exhibits, such as fluorescent lamps and Tesla’s AC motors, to an awestruck audience and widespread press attention. After that, the war was effectively won, and AC would take over almost completely.

Questions 14-17
Complete the table. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

DIRECT CURRENT

Advantages	Disadvantages
Supply can be supplemented with (14)……………..	wire resistance lowers the (15)………………
Could power (16)………………..motors (only sort available then)	supply distance is limited
Gave Edison income	wires used are thick and (17)………………

Questions 18-20
Choose THREE answers from the list and write the correct letter, A-F, next to the questions.

Which THREE strategies, A-F, did Edison use to discredit AC current?

A hired lawyers
B pressured politicians
C invented many DC devices
D used movie cameras
E scared people
F invented the electric chair

Questions 21-26
Answer the questions. Choose the correct letter, A, B, or C.

A Edison and Tesla
B Edison and Westinghouse
C Tesla and Westinghouse

Who

21. favoured AC?
22, started a company?
23. had a face-to-face fight?
24. invented many devices?
25. owned many patents?
26. was well educated?

The International Space Station

Just before sunrise, on a clear night, look up, and you may be able to see it travelling steadily across the dark starry sky. It will take about four minutes to pass — too fast to be a planet, too slow to be a shooting star. What is it, then? It is the International Space Station (ISS), on one of its 15 orbits per day. The sun’s light has lit it up while you still remain in night’s darkness, but don’t discount that white dot as something inconsequential. About $100 billion has been spent on it so far, and it will need much more money by the time it ceases operation, sometime after 2025.

This enormous cost could not, of course, be paid by one nation. The ISS was necessarily a joint effort by no less than five different space agencies: America’s NASA, Russia’s RKA, Canada’s CSA, Japan’s JAXA, and the European equivalent, ESA. Similarly, with the difficulty in ferrying payloads into this environment, a project of the scale of the ISS could not be a ready-made station (such as the earliest varieties). The ISS was built module by module, each flown into space and then intricately connected—eventually becoming in appearance an awkward conglomeration, yet when viewed with our planet Earth in the background, a grand and inspiring monument to humankind’s ingenuity.

Such a construction would immediately break to pieces under the influence of any gravity — but, of course, being in orbit, this force is not felt. The station is constantly freefalling under Earth’s gravitational pull, yet never hitting the planet due to the station’s lateral velocity. This will, however, not continue forever. With its low-earth trajectory, there is an aerodynamic drag from the faint atmosphere through which the station continually ploughs. This results in a small yet steady and perceptible loss of speed, and consequent orbital decay. Contributing to this loss are, surprisingly, tidal forces. Being so large and loosely connected, the parts of the ISS further from the Earth flex more than the parts closer, using up energy.

The largest component of the ISS is the Truss Structure, a non-pressurised ten-segment spine, upon which are connected the station’s extensive solar arrays at one end, and thermal radiators towards the centre. Perpendicular to this are the pressurised modules. The station actually began with one of these: Zarya, first launched in 1998. Only two weeks later, Unity was directly attached to this, its most notable feature being the protruding Cupola — a large seven-windowed viewing room, absolutely essential for the psychological wellbeing of the crew. It took almost two more years before Zvezda was attached to Zarya’s opposite end. Later, the Truss Structure was fixed to the Unity Module, followed by the Harmony Module beyond that.

The station’s interior is no less complicated, and with a six-member crew staying onboard for up to six months, the life-support systems are crucial. Being in the airless and deadly vacuum of space, it goes without saying that atmospheric control — that is, maintaining a stable Earth-like atmosphere — is the most important element. This has, in fact, always presented the greatest challenge in spacecraft design. In 1967, the Apollo 1 craft experimented with pure oxygen, to its regret. Although this allowed a lower air pressure (better from an engineering standpoint), it more easily fuels combustion. A random spark started a fire which raced through the craft, killing all three crew members, after which the experiment has never been tried again.

The ISS’s main source of oxygen is the ‘ Elektron’ system, which uses an electric current to break apart water molecules. The oxygen produced is vented into the pressurised modules, while the other by-product, hydrogen, is vented into space. This system generates enough supplies for a six-member crew, although it has proven notoriously unreliable, so much that the emergency backups have been regularly required: bottled oxygen (ferried up by unmanned supply craft), a solid-fuel oxygen generator, and a chemical one, in the Zvezda and Zarya Modules, respectively. Their output is circulated with strong (and noisy) fans, without which the air around immobile astronauts would stagnate. A bubble of their own exhaled carbon dioxide would form, leaving them oxygen-deprived and struggling to breathe.

This indicates that life on the ISS is no pleasure cruise. The close and cramped quarters, the awkward and uncomfortable facilities, the strict eating, hygiene, and two-hour-per-day exercise protocols, the dizziness and fatigue induced in that weightless environment, and the long workday of maintenance and scientific experiments, all create a difficult life. It is this, and the human isolation, that can particularly strain relationships and aggravate tensions. And if this was not enough, there is a direct physical risk from solar radiation due to the periodic flares that erupt from the sun’s surface. As one returning crew member said, “It’s an interesting place for a visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.”

Questions 27-31
Answer the questions. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

27. What does the ISS physically look like from Earth?
28. What does the ISS physically look like from space?
29. What forced the five space agencies to work together on the ISS?
30. What were the original space stations like?
31. What stops the ISS from striking the Earth?

Questions 32-37
Label the diagram with specific terms. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Questions 38-40
Complete the table by giving cause of each effect or incident. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each cause.

Effect/ incident	One cause	Another cause
ISS slowing down	aerodynamic drag	(38)………………
Apollo 1 fire	(39)………………….	random spark
ISS crew-member stress	difficult life	(40)………………..

An Essential Intermediary

There is a strange irony about the blue whale. With fully grown adults reaching up to 30 metres long, and weighing in at almost 200 tons, it is not only the largest animal in the world, but also the largest to have ever existed. Yes, not even the most imposing of the dinosaurs from the Jurassic era can match this sleek streamlined aquatic mammal in scale. So, where is the irony? It lies in the fact that this huge beast feeds primarily on one of the smallest life forms in the oceans, a tiny crustacean known as krill.

Krill live in every ocean of the world. They thus come in many varieties, although all sporting a similar shrimp-like appearance, with an exoskeleton divided into three parts, and with two large antennae at the front, and pairs of legs running down the underside. These creatures are distinguishable from shrimp by their gills, which are externally mounted, and resemble rows of fibrous combs alongside their bodies. Another oddity is that their exoskeleton is usually transparent. This, and their small size, lead to the deceptive conclusion that they are an insubstantial presence, of little importance, until one is informed that an adult blue whale can consume almost 40 million krill, with a total weight of 3,600 kilograms, in just one day.

It is this, their huge numbers, which makes these mysterious ghost-like crustaceans so important. Just looking at one species, the Antarctic krill, their collective weight (or bio-mass) is estimated to be about 500 million tons. Putting this another way, that is over twice the weight of all human beings currently on Earth. Some scientists estimate that, each year, as much as half of this is eaten by whales, seals, penguins, squid, and fish, illustrating that krill constitute an enormous food resource for other animals. The question is whether humans can get in on the act.

Antarctic krill are the largest species, at six centimeters. Most other species are about two centimeters, and this makes them awkward to catch. Very fine fishing nets are needed, but these are difficult to drag through the water, quickly clogged, and easily broken. In addition, when lifted in large piles, the delicate krill crush each other, forcing out their internal fluids. They must also be peeled due to the dangerously high levels of fluoride in their exoskeleton, and finally, they must be quickly prepared and frozen due to the strong enzymes in their gut, which would otherwise cause rapid putrefaction. It is problems such as these which have limited processed krill to being mostly used as fish food in aquariums or aquaculture, or bait in commercial fishing operations, but otherwise very much out of the public’s mind.

Seafood-loving Japan is the only country in the world in which some krill end up on the table. The boiled, peeled, then frozen tail-meat is sold on the market, and there is some lower-grade krill-paste used as a food flavouring or colouring agent. These products originate from the small North-Pacific krill, yet it is the large Antarctic species which would seem to offer the best commercial prospects, and perhaps a more appetising meal. The majority of krill trawlers thus target the waters around coastal Antarctica, but it is a remote region, subject to harsh weather conditions, making operations there difficult and expensive, as well as raising issues of the ecological consequences, especially given the importance of krill as the basis of the food chain in that pristine and untouched environment.

Yet to explore this food chain fully, one must go smaller still. Krill themselves are filter feeders, using very fine comb-like appendages on the front of their bodies to extract microscopic organisms known as phytoplankton. These live in almost every body of water in the world, but only in the well-lit surface layers, since these organisms need exposure to sunlight, from which they obtain their energy. In the same way that plants on land are ultimately the basis of all food chains there, so too are phytoplankton in the oceans. Since krill exist in such large numbers, logically then, their primary food source must be even more numerous. There is, in fact, so much phytoplankton that their collective photosynthesis accounts for up to half of the oxygen produced in the world.

However, as with krill, the vast numbers of phytoplankton live unnoticed and unobserved. Their presence can only be indirectly deduced when they are pressed together by currents, where there can be correspondingly high concentrations of krill feeding on them. This can similarly result in the usually solitary blue whales being found together, and revealing one of the most remarkable and elusive food chains in nature: from phytoplankton, to krill, to the blue whale. In other words, from the tiniest elements in nature, in two short steps leading to a mighty and awe-inspiring leviathan of the deep, the largest animal that has ever existed. And the small ghostly krill are the essential intermediary in this wondrous process.

Questions 1-4
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage One?

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

1. Some dinosaurs were bigger than the blue whale.
2. The blue whale does not only eat krill.
3. Some krill are smaller than shrimp.
4. There are about 500 million tons of krill in the ocean.

Questions 5-9
Complete the diagram. Choose ONE WORD from the passage for each answer.

Questions 10-13
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

10. Fishing for krill is
A not too difficult.
B mostly done in Antarctic waters.
C mostly done in Japanese waters.
D done with large fishing nets.

11. Krill
A move like ghosts.
B are processed soon after capture.
C are mostly used for human consumption.
D come in two varieties.

12. Phytoplankton
A outnumber krill.
B produce over half of the oxygen in the world.
C can be seen with the naked eye.
D can live anywhere in the ocean.

13. Blue whales
A are a very large species offish.
B can weigh 200 tons.
C prefer to be alone.
D are in the middle of a food chain.

A Meat-Eater’s Counter

A You might be forgiven sometimes for thinking that vegetarians are somehow superior human beings. In today’s climate of New Age spiritualism, animal rights, and Mother Earth naturalism, confirmed meat-eaters must necessarily be categorised as selfish, environmentally-irresponsible, spiritually-deprived gluttons, whose dietary desire is akin to cannibalism. Each lamb chop, carving of roast beef, or chicken drumstick, signifies a brutal execution of a sentient animal, to whose suffering we remain callously indifferent. Here, I would like to offer some arguments to counter the more extreme claims of the bean-sprout crowd.

B Vegetarians’ first justification is that eating meat is cruel to animals. But when pondering cruelty, it may pay to reflect on how animals fare in the wild. I was recently watching a documentary concerning herbivores on the African plains — where the parasite and insect-tormented herds lead lives of hair-raising and nerve-jittering bolts and dashes as they are constantly stalked by a range of predators. Now, compare this to the animals munching grass in our domestic pastures. Our four-legged friends, watered, well-fed, and attended to when sick, have an essentially stress-free and easy existence.

C But, the vegetarians claim, our slaughterhouses deal out brutal deaths. Brutal? Let us reflect again on that documentary. At one point, it showed an injured zebra, an animal which was quickly spotted by a pack of hyenas. The rest was a display of such cruelty and barbarity that it would make vegetarians think twice before intoning the mantra that ‘nature is good’. Yet being viciously torn to pieces by snapping jaws is more or less the inevitable end of most animals in the wild. It is simply a fact that they do not expire peacefully — they face, instead, brutalising and painful exits. If not becoming another animal’s dinner, they starve to death, or are victims of floods, droughts, and other merciless acts of nature. Compared to this, the relatively quick and clean death that we humans deliver to our cud-chewing cousins must be considered a privileged way to go.

D So, eating meat is not ‘cruel’ — at least, not compared to the natural world, and in fact can even allow the animals in question a certain quality of life that they would almost certainly never enjoy in the wild. But the vegetarians counter that, we, the human species, have a higher awareness, and should avail ourselves of other forms of food, rather than causing the deaths of living creatures. Yet it is worth realising that for tens of thousands of years our species did not have this luxury of choice. Killing animals was essential in staying alive. It is only very recently (in terms of human history), that society has reached a stage of affluence whereby a sufficiently high amount of non-animal nutrition can be obtained, and then only by a privileged and small percentage of the world’s population. Thus, the argument from moral high ground is, at best, an arbitrary one.

E But then the vegetarians come out with their next core claim to superiority — that their diet is healthier. Eating meat is going to have such nasty consequences for the heart, lungs, kidneys, and immune system that we will end up in an early grave. One can agree that this may be true for people who eat too much meat, but is it true for those who eat meat in proportion with an otherwise balanced diet? So many dubious facts and figures are produced to ‘prove’ the vegetarians’ viewpoint that I would recommend a quick read of a well-known book entitled, ‘How to lie with statistics’. This emphasises two foundations for statistical validity: gaining truly representative samples, and eliminating outside variables, both of which the green-eaters ignore.

F It is the second point I would like to look at. The lean and fit, health-conscious vegetarian doing his daily yoga and nightly guitar-strumming will certainly live much longer, on average, than the meat-eating, chain-smoking, beer-swilling, donut-chomping couch potatoes of this world, but not necessarily due (or in any way related) to the former’s abstinence from meat. It is not hard to deduce that those cigarettes, beer, donuts, and sedentary lifestyle are almost certainly responsible for the meat-eater’s diminished life expectancy. For a true comparison, one must compare lean and fit, health-conscious vegetarians with lean and fit, health-conscious non-vegetarians, the latter of whom mix moderate amounts of meat in their diet.

G And this is the point. It is almost impossible in this complex, mixed, and multi-faceted modern society to find enough people who can constitute a truly representative sample, while eliminating the many outside variables. Any assertion that statistics ‘prove’ vegetarians live longer must note that these vegetarians have already made (compared to the average sofa sprouts) a very rigorous and disciplined health-enhancing lifestyle change, which is probably accompanied with many other similar choices, all of which are almost certainly the real cause of any statistical trends. Factor these into the equation, and so far there is no convincing statistical evidence that vegetarianism is better for the health.

Questions 14-19
Reading Passage Two has seven paragraphs, A-G. Choose the correct heading for Paragraphs B-G from the list of headings.

List of Headings
i Animals attack
ii Needless killing countered
iii Better people?
iv A need for statistics
v The real cause of longer lives
vi Untrustworthy numbers
vii Cruel killing countered
viii Comparing lives
ix Quick efficient killing
x The real cause of early deaths

Example Answer Paragraph A iii

14. Paragraph B
15. Paragraph C
16. Paragraph D
17. Paragraph E
18. Paragraph F
19. Paragraph G

Questions 20-23
Complete the table. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

	Domestic animals	Wild animals
Life is	(20)………………….	threatened by numerous (21)……………………
Death is	(22)……………….	brutalising and painful
They	have some (23)………………	are unlikely to have this easy existence

Questions 24-26
Complete the table. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each term.

Find two interesting terms used in the text to refer to

	One term	Another term
Vegetarians	bean-sprout crowd	(24)……………………
Sheep and cattle	(25)…………………	cud-chewing cousins
Lazy people	couch potatoes	(26)…………………

Cubism

When the name of Picasso is spoken, the concept of ‘Cubism’ usually springs to mind. That this happens indicates just how deep and long-lasting has been its influence on the world, yet although many people know of the name ‘Cubism’, few can speak about it with any degree of conversancy. It is Georges Braque who is now credited as an equal pioneer in this revolutionary art movement, but claiming that these two artists alone created cubism oversimplifies a very complex issue.

Defining Cubism itself is difficult. At its simplest, the three-dimensional object being painted can be considered broken into pieces, sometimes square or cube-shaped (hence the name). These are reassembled in less than coherent order, and often at different angles. They can overlap, and sometimes more than one view is presented at the same time, moving beyond the limits of a fixed observer. The terms ‘multiple viewpoints’ and ‘mobile perspectives’ are often used — that is, the subject is captured from different angles, at different times, with the corresponding images fused into a single picture.

Braque’s pre-war paintings began experimenting with this idea, which inevitably led to an association with Picasso, who had been dabbling also in rendering three-dimensional views into two-dimensional geometric shapes — for example, in his painting Young Ladies of Avignon — often labelled ‘proto-cubist’. Some even consider this painting to be the true beginning of Cubism itself, as it inspired Braque to follow the lead, developing the movement towards its trademark features.

Yet both artists were influenced by earlier painters, in particular, the later works of Cezanne. Cezanne was one of the first to divide the canvas into several views, as well as to begin presenting natural objects in geometric figures.

Paul Cezanne had died in 1906, but a year later several museums exhibited his paintings in a retrospective of the artist’s life. Inevitably, young painters in the Parisian art scene, including Picasso and Braque, would have seen these. Whilst not yet fractured into facets or cubes, Cezanne occasionally implanted an underlying geometry—for example, in one of his most famous (and unfinished) paintings, The Bathers. This work breaks tradition in its unflattering portrait of the women, whose naked forms are rendered in sharp symmetry, also forming a triangular pattern with the river and trees. It is said to have inspired Picasso’s very similarly styled work, mentioned previously.

Moving beyond those early years of Cubism, many other artists were exploring the same idea, but taking it in individual directions. They are often unfairly considered as having played less significant roles simply because they did not adhere to the strict perspectives of Braque or Picasso. Yet, conceivably they could have evolved their own awareness of Cubism more from Cezanne’s pervading and almost universal influence on the Parisian art scene of that day, meaning that they must now be considered true innovators in their own right. Juan Gris, for example, produced many interesting works, yet now remains little regarded. Interestingly, being a compatriot of Picasso, the two artists became personally acquainted, to the extent that Gris painted his well-known Portrait of Picasso, now regarded as one of the best examples of the Cubist style.

Gris ventured beyond the monochromatic (or single family of colours) employed by Picasso and Braque. He combined vibrant hues in interesting and sometimes unusual combinations, such as in his still life, Newspaper and Fruit Dish. Similarly exploratory were the Orphic Cubists (as they would later become known), who moved further towards abstraction, but with Gris’s similar use of bright colours. These were used to convey meaning but blended in a way that went beyond the physical subject. Its main proponent was the Frenchman, Robert Delaunay, who, together with his wife, regularly exhibited in Parisian salons with increasingly non-representational forms. His Simultaneous Windows is barely recognisable as a window—just a blend of prismatic hues with one prominent square, giving a hint of three-dimensionality.

Léger also followed a more personal form of Cubism. As with most of his generation, he had seen the Cezanne 1907 retrospective, which enkindled interest in experimentation with geometric forms. This eventually led to the completely abstract, in which tubes, cones, and cubes, are all splayed on the canvas in bold primary colours — seen, for example, in his Railway Crossing. Merc, in spite of its non-representational quality, is the suggestion of the harsh mechanisation and alienation of modern life, a theme which the artist’s experiences in World War One only accentuated, and which pre-dates similar trends (such as pop art) by decades.

Clearly, Cubism was a complex art movement, and names such as Analytical, Synthetic, and Orphic Cubism are constructs which were invented long after the events and artworks which they

attempt to describe. These names appear to give a coherent order to what was actually a collective movement in which many individuals contributed. Among all this confusion, one does not doubt that the early years of last century were a fascinating period in the Parisian art scene.

Questions 27-31
Answer the questions. Choose the correct letter, A-F, for each answer.

Which painter

A Braque
B Cezanne
C Delaunay
D Gris
E Léger
F Picasso

27. led a new abstraction movement?
28. was the most influential?
29. was affected by a global conflict?
30. is inevitably linked with an art movement?
31. was married?

Questions 32-37
Answer the questions. Choose the correct letter, A-F, for each answer. NB You can use an answer ONLY once.

A Newspaper and Fruit Dish
B Portrait of Picasso
C Railway Crossing
D Simultaneous Windows
E The Bathers
F Young Ladies of Avignon

Which painting is

32. a confusing abstraction in many colours?
33. a darker view, ahead of its time?
34. probably the first of its kind?
35. an intriguing and multi-chromatic view?
36. very representative of its type?
37. an early painting which influenced another?

Questions 38-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

38. The Cezanne Retrospective
A was attended by Cezanne.
B showed his Cubist paintings.
C was attended by very many people.
D influenced an artist to move to non-representational style.

39. Many Cubist innovators
A preferred still-life paintings.
B favoured monochrome.
C invented names for their styles.
D were not adequately recognised.

40. Cubism
A is fairly easily explained.
B has cubes in incoherent order.
C shows different views of a subject.
D was created by Picasso and Braque.

---

The King of Fruits

A One fact is certain: you’ll smell it before you see it. The scent (or should that be odour?) is overpowering (or should that be nauseating?). One inhales it with delight, or shrinks back in disgust. Is it sweet almonds with vanilla custard and a splash of whiskey? Or old socks garnished with rotten onion and a sprinkling of turpentine? Whatever the description, it wafts from what must be considered the most singular fruit on the planet—the durian, a Southeast Asian favourite, commonly called the ‘king of fruits’.

B Its title is, in many ways, deserved. As fruits go, it is huge and imposing. As big as a basketball, up to three kilograms heavy, and most noticeably, covered with a thick and tough thorn-covered husk, it demands a royal respect. The thorns are so sharp that even holding the massive object is difficult. In supermarkets, they are usually put into mesh bags to ease handling, while extracting the flesh itself requires the wearing of thick protective gloves, a delicate and dextrous use of a large knife, and visible effort. One can see why it is increasingly popular, in western markets, to have that flesh removed, wrapped up, and purchased directly.

C This leads one to wonder why nature designed such a smelly fruit in such an inconvenient package. Nature is, however, cleverer than one might think. For a start, that pungent odour allows easier detection by animals in the thick tropical forests of Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia, where the wild durian originates. When the pod falls, and the husk begins to crack open, wild deer, pigs, orangutans, and elephants, are easily drawn forth, navigating from hundreds of meters away directly to the tree. The second clever fact is that, since the inner seeds are rather large, the durian tree needs correspondingly larger animals to eat, ingest, and transport these seeds away, hence the use of that tough spiny cover. Only the largest and strongest animals can get past that.

D And what are they seeking? Upon prising open the large pod, one is presented with white fibrous pith in which are nestled pockets of soft yellowish flesh, divided into lobes. Each lobe holds a large brown seed within. Although these seeds themselves can be cooked and eaten, it is the surrounding flesh over which all the fuss is made. One of the best descriptions comes from the British naturalist, Alfred Wallace. Writen in 1856, his experience is typical of many, and certainly of mine. At first, he struggled hard to overcome the ‘disagreeable aroma’, but upon ‘eating it out of doors’ found the flesh to have a ‘rich glutinous smoothness, neither acid nor sweet nor juicy; yet it wants neither of these qualities, for it is in itself perfect’. He ‘at once became a confirmed durian eater’. Exactly!

E In actual fact, the flavour can vary considerably depending on the stage of ripeness and methods of storage. In Southern Thailand, the people prefer younger durian, with firmer texture and milder flavour, whereas in Malaysia, the preference is to allow the durian to fall naturally from the tree, then further ripen during transport. This results in a buttery texture and highly individual aroma, often slightly fermented. Whatever the case, it is this soft creamy consistency which easily allows durian to blend with other Southeast Asian delicacies, from candy and cakes, to modern milkshakes and ice cream. It can also appear in meals, mixed with vegetables or chili, and lower-grade durian (otherwise unfit for human consumption) is fermented into paste, used in a variety of local rice dishes.

F Such popularity has seen the widespread cultivation of durian, although the tree will only respond to tropical climates’—for example, only in the very northern parts of Australia, where it was introduced in the early 1960s. Since that time, modern breeding and cultivating techniques have resulted in the introduction of hundreds of cultivars (subspecies bred, and maintained by propagation, for desirable characteristics). They produce different degrees of odour, seed size, colour, and texture of flesh. The tree itself is always very large, up to 50 metres, and given that the heavy thorny pods can hang from even the highest branches, and will drop when ripened, one does not walk within a durian plantation without a hardhat—or at least, not without risking serious injury.

G Thailand, where durian remains very popular, now exports most of this fruit, with five cultivars in large-scale commercial production. The market is principally other Asian nations, although interest is growing in the West as Asian immigrants take their tastes and eating preferences with them — for example, in Canada and Australia. The fruit is seasonal, and local, sale of durian pods is usually done by weight. These can fetch high prices, particularly in the more affluent Asian countries, and especially when one considers that less than one third of that heavy pod contains the edible pulp. In the true spirit of Alfred Wallace, there are certainly a large and growing number of ‘confirmed durian eaters’ out there.

Questions 1-4
Reading Passage 1 has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Which paragraph gives a reason for durian’s

1. spread outside of Asia?
2. variety of forms?
3. variety of food uses?
4. defining characteristics?

Questions 5-7
Label the diagram. Choose ONE WORD from the passage for each answer.

Questions 8-10
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage One?

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

8. The seeds can be eaten.
9. Durian trees are grown in many parts of Australia.
10. Thailand consumes the most durians.

Questions 11-13
Answer the questions. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

11. What can help to carry durians around?
12. Which sort of durian is usually fermented into paste?
13. What should one wear when walking among durian trees?

Esperanto

Cu vi paroli Esperanlon? Ne? Can you understand this? Should you be expected to? Depending on who you ask, somewhere from 10,000 to two million people in places all over the world could understand this sentence, and presumably reply in this same language. And it is not one that ever evolved through any natural process. To give it its technical name, it is a ‘constructed auxiliary language’. More specifically, it is ‘Esperanto’, and out of the several attempts throughout modern history to create artificial languages, Esperanto remains the most widely spoken.

‘Widely spoken’ is a relative term here. Compared to any natural language, the number of Esperanto speakers remains pitiably small — a far cry from the high hopes of its inventor, Dr. Ludwig Zamenhof, who was an eye doctor growing up in the racially divided Eastern-European town of Bialystok. In this complex and uneasy mixture of Poles, Jews, Russians, and Germans, each speaking their own language, a high-minded Zamenhof lamented how these languages so obviously categorised the city’s residents into different, and often hostile, groups. He resolved to create an easily learnt and politically neutral language, one that would transcend nationality, ethnicity, race, colour, and creed. It would be a universal second language, and his first book detailing this idea was published in 1887.

Surprisingly perhaps, the concept quickly gained acceptance and a loyal following. It seems that in a linguistically divided Eastern Europe, many people possessed the same idealism which drove Zamenhof. From there, then to the West, then into the Americas and Asia, Esperanto journals, magazines, and clubs, were formed, ultimately leading to the first world congress of Esperanto speakers in France, in 1905. These congresses have been held every year since then, apart from when world wars delayed proceedings. And today, Esperanto is still present, although very much under the radar. Whilst not yet having achieved the status of being an official language of any state or governing body, it is, at least, occasionally taught at schools and educational institutions on an informal or experimental basis.

What actually keeps Esperanto going is the motivation of those who become interested. Language books, journals, and various online and video-based self-learning technologies exist, as well as an active speaking community, but the key question remains: whether it is worth investing the time in acquiring the language. In other words, does it have any innate advantages over other languages or equip its speakers with a useful skill in life? The first question can be promptly answered. Proponents explain that, by being so simple and internally consistent, Esperanto is easy to learn, being able to be mastered in a fraction of the lime needed for any conventional language.

While we may accept that, the second question is far more problematic and raises further issues, the main one being whether the language is even necessary. Would international communication indeed be better if we all spoke Esperanto? Are there not other factors involved? And why cannot the English language take that role (which it virtually has)? Why divert state funds to support what may always remain a marginalised speech community, especially when there exists so many other languages spoken by far more people, and of far greater utility? The answers are emotional, complex, and confusing.

One problem with Esperanto is that it is culturally European. Its vocabulary and internal rules of construction derive from European languages, making it difficult for Asian learners. There is also a large and imposing vocabulary, with many nouns rather idiosyncratically chosen, and a certain unnecessary complexity which Zamenhof (who was not a professional linguist) had not realised. In 1894, he suggested a ‘reformed Esperanto’; however, the Esperanto speakers of that day were loathe to alter a language which they had already mastered, rejecting Zamenhof’s proposals, and also those of a special French committee formed 13 years later to discuss the adoption of a standard international language.

In the meantime, another artificial language had emerged. Called ‘Ido’, it was a product of various academics who embedded the changes that Esperanto was thought to have needed. This new language, sharing the same lofty goals, divided the support base of Esperanto. A large number defected to Ido, which then underwent further changes through committee after committee, and eventually the formation of an independent academy. However, Ido suffered substantial decline when its best-known advocate was killed in a car accident, and with the advent of World War One. After the war, its most vocal proponent published his own constructed language, ‘Novial’, making the schism all too confusing, such that the original Esperanto quickly became the predominant language of its type.

Esperanto may lead the field, but it falls far short of the aim of both its creator and many of its speakers — that of a truly global second language uniting all in mutual understanding. This high-minded goal, almost universally shared in the early days of the language, has mellowed among many followers, who are now content just to have a special language and its culture and community with whom they can interact. The unlikelihood of achieving more than this was even admitted in an Esperanto convention in 1980, although many still cling to the pracelo, the ‘original goal’, of an official status and worldwide use. Will this ever be achieved? All I can say is estus agrable pensas tiel, sed preshau certe ne estos.

Questions 14-17
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage Two?

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

14. The number of Esperanto speakers is quite large.
15. Zamenhof spoke many languages.
16. Esperanto is easier to learn than other languages.
17. Esperanto World Congresses have been held every year since 1905.

Questions 18-21
Complete the sentences. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

The different ethnic groups in Zamenhof s hometown were frequently (18)……………………

The first Esperanto speakers shared Zamenhofs (19)……………………

English now essentially provides the means of (20)……………………..

Official support of Esperanto could be considered a waste of (21)…………………..

Questions 22-26
Answer the questions. Choose the correct letter, E, I, or B.

E Esperanto
I Ido
B Both

Which language

22. had many stages in its development?
23. had its development affected by World War One?
24. has some strange words?
25. was designed by many people?
26. has never achieved its aim?

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The Year Without a Summer

1816 was a strange year indeed. In America, in midsummer, a ‘dry log’ covered the land so thickly that snow fell, and large parts of the country were gripped by an intense and lingering cold front. The situation was no better in Great Britain and Europe, where cool temperatures and wet weather persisted for months. Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, while holidaying in Switzerland, complained of ‘incessant rainfall’, a feeling which may have put her in the mood for writing her most famous work. But there were to be far more significant effects of what become known as the ‘year without a summer”.

But where did the summer go? The main culprit, surprisingly, was a volcano on the other side of the planet: Mount Tamhora. in Indonesia, whose eruption of the year before was of such colossal magnitude that it altered global climate. In the years leading to this, the mountain had experienced minor eruptions, but the 18.15 event was the culmination — a huge explosive outburst of the central volcanic vent with subsequent caldera collapse. Over 70,000 people in the vicinity were killed from lava flows, tsunamis, and pumice and ash falls. But more significantly, the eruption — now acknowledged as the largest in recorded history —ejected huge amounts of dust into the stratosphere. This atmospheric layer is the highest and most static, and least affected by rainfall, which means that it takes relatively long periods for volcanic dust to be washed out. If these dust particles are of fine composition, they are quickly blown around the globe, to remain there for years.

On a somewhat benign note, this air-borne ash resulted in beautiful pastel-coloured sunsets and extended twilights in Northern Europe. However, on a (quite literally) darker note, it set into motion a ‘volcanic winter’ due to the filtering of the sun’s rays, and the increased reflectivity of the atmosphere, where heat and sunlight are bounced back into space. But what is intriguing in this case is that even without the Tambora explosion, the period 1790 to 1830 was already one of the coldest on record. This period has officially become known as the ‘Dalton Minimum’, after John Dalton, a London-based meteorologist who noted that the sun at that time did not seem as active in its production of sunspots and solar flares. Whether there is a correlation between this and the average amount of solar radiation emitted is still unclear. If this does exist, the effect would be small—a fraction of a percent less, but, arguably, significant to our small planet orbiting so far away.

Adding further complexity to the issue, there had been other significant volcanic eruptions in the years prior to Tambora — in the Caribbean, Japan, and the Philippines — in which massive dust clouds were the characterising feature. Looking at the Philippino example, 1814 saw the most destructive eruption of Mt Mayon ever. Killing thousands, burying whole towns and villages, the volcano spewed out millions of tons of ash and rock into the high atmosphere. When we put all these factors together, the sequence is thus clearer. With the world already suffering from lower temperatures due to natural variations in the sun’s surface action, a series of severe volcanic eruptions occurred. As a result, the accumulation of ash in the stratosphere rose to a historic high, to which the mammoth Tambora explosion substantially added, sending a savage cold spike throughout the already cooler globe.

The consequences were dire. With the dramatic temperature swings, falling to near-freezing within hours, and with the sudden summer frosts and sustained drenching rainfall, all across the Northern Hemisphere, staple crops such as maize and wheat failed to mature, and much livestock were killed. With agricultural production already low due to the cooler preceding years, and with the rudimentary road systems of those times rendering the importation and distribution of emergency food supplies limited, this final blow was devastating. It resulted in widespread malnutrition, starvation, and outbreaks of diseases such as typhus and cholera. It created streams of starving refugees, large shifts of population, riots, looting of food warehouses, and other breakdowns of civic order. 100,000 people were thought to have died in Ireland alone, with many times that figure on the European continent. There was such mortality that the famine is now considered the worst of that century.

The question then is whether it could happen again. And the answer is, since it has happened many times before in geological history, a definite yes. The most extreme case occurred about 70,000 years ago, when the world’s largest known eruption took place at Lake Toba (relatively close to Tambora). This is thought to have plunged the planet into a decade-long volcanic winter, and triggered the onset of the last ice age, a deep freeze of the planet which lasted many tens of thousands of years, all of which, some speculate, just about wiped out the human race. We can rest in the assurance, however, that such events are extremely few and far between. You will certainly be able to enjoy your summer holidays, for a long time to come.

Questions 27-34
Complete the flowchart. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

A Year without a summer

Questions 35-40
Answer the questions.

Which location saw

A America
B Lake Toba
C London
D Northern Europe
E Philippines
F Switzerland
G Tambora

35. a positive effect of a volcanic eruption?
36. the biggest volcanic eruption?
37. scientific observation?
38. a series of eruptions?
39. buildings destroyed?
40. a book written?

The Search for Colour

We seldom reflect on the artificial colour of modern merchandise. A blue car is blue; a red chair, red; a green bicycle, green. But why does it have colour? Answer, because its surface contains pigment. If this was originally dissolved in a carrier liquid to transfer the colour, it is known as a dye, but whatever the case, since colour is the most visible element in all objects we desire, pigments can be said to be the basis of customer choice, and therefore of almost all hard trade and transactions. Consequently, production of this substance is big business, now accounting for over twenty billion dollars annually in global sales—yet there was a time when none of it existed.

Going back into the mists of prehistory, objects, tools, and clothing were all earthen and bland, without anything except their natural colours. The first pigments used were of mineral origin — from natural clays tinted by the presence of iron-oxides. The best known examples are the gold colour of ochre, the brown of umber, and the yellow of sienna. These were ground up and mixed with fat to create paint, used, for example, in the earliest European cave paintings. Ash, as well as charcoal (derived from heating wood in the absence of oxygen), were also used to provide black, but in the search for colour, it was soon discovered that biological matter, such as plants, animal waste, mollusks, and insects, could yield more interesting results.

Crimson —a bright red colour—is a good example. It was extracted from kermes, a small insect found on Southern-European oak trees. The pigment is a constituent of the carminic acid produced inside the creature’s body, used to discourage predation by birds or other insects. However, with the trees being large and bushy, and the sap-feeding insects few and far between, pigment production was a meticulous and time-consuming process. This increased the price of the product, the end result being that, in Northern Europe, pure crimson long remained a luxury colour for clothing and textiles.

Interestingly, across the Pacific Ocean, people were producing the same colour from the same chemical within another insect. They were called cochineals: small scaly creatures which breed in abundant clusters on the fleshy leaves of a commonly occurring cactus. These insects have many advantages over kermes. Being so prolific and so easily seen by predators, they need to produce higher concentrations of carminic acid for protection, up to a quarter of their body weight. The pigment which results is also stronger and longer-lasting. Finally, the insects are far more easily obtained, being simply scrapped or knocked off the cactus leaves, Thus, after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, cochineals replaced kermes almost completely, becoming a lucrative Central American export for the next few centuries.

The lure of crimson was only exceeded by the vivid ‘Tyrian purple’ — a colour which had ranked in highest favour since antiquity. Its source was the medium-sized Murex sea snail. With a range around the coastal Mediterranean, early civilisations there soon realised that the mucus the snail secretes when poked and prodded could be treated to produce a purplish-blue dye which did not fade with time. However, by needing thousands of sea snails and using a complicated (and still little known) process, all for the production of only small amounts of pigment, the colour was so expensive it could only be afforded by the ruling classes. This led to purple becoming associated with royalty. Roman emperors traditionally wore clothing of this colour.

For a less durable blue, suitable for dyeing clothes, the indigo plant was discovered. Its leaves were fermented, and then left to age, and the sediment eventually produced was dried, treated, then reduced to a blue powder. This pigment can, in fact, be said to be the oldest used to colour fabric. It is one reason jeans were originally blue, and remain so to this day, indigo being the dye used to colour them. However, it was not suitable for painting or artistic purposes. For that, European artists used a mixture derived from the grinding up of lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone, whose only known source was in far Afghanistan. Consequently, this colour was very costly, and many artists avoided it altogether. Others, however, were deliberately extravagant in its use, producing proportionally more expensive paintings.

The cost of this paint resulted in much experimentation during the Industrial Revolution in search of chemical-based alternatives. This eventually led to the first modern synthetic pigment, Prussian Blue. Discovered in Germany in the early 18thcentury, it was put into rapid production and exportation, giving artists around the world the first cheap, yet stable, blue pigment. Other chemists were making similar breakthroughs. The vivid purple of the Murex snail was accidentally produced by an English chemist, William Perkins, who soon put ‘mauveine’ into commercial production. With such efforts, affordable pigments were soon found in all colours.

Mass production followed, bringing industrial prosperity to Northern Europe, but decline in many parts of the world where traditional organic pigments were still under production. In the Americas, for example, the crimson of cochineals, having long been a Spanish monopoly and rich source of export income, went into steady decline. However, all was not lost. In this modern age, there has been a shift back towards naturalness, even in pigments, and this has seen a resurgence in the popularity of cochineals. The pigment is now commercially produced in several countries, with Peru being the largest exporter.

Questions 1-4
Complete the sentences. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Ultimately, pigments are important because they are so (1)………………………..

Umber and sienna are examples of (2)……………………….

Originally, more unusual colours were derived from (3)……………………

Generally, predators of insects do not like the taste of (4)………………………

Questions 5-8
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage One?

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

5. Kermes were easy to collect.
6. Kermes produce better pigment than cochineals.
7. Kermes are bigger than cochineals.
8. Cochineals are still a valuable crop.

Questions 9-13
Complete the summary of the second half of the passage. Choose ONE WORD from the passage for each answer.

The best purple originally came from the (9)……………………of sea snails, although the oldest pigment for clothing was from the (10)………………………..of indigo. The blue for picture-painting originated from a (11)………………………costing so much that an artificial replacement. Prussian Blue, was eventually produced, being not only inexpensive but also (12)……………………….Ironically, the prized purple colour was discovered (13)………………….

The Most Dangerous Insect in the World

If asked to name the deadliest insect in the world, most people would search their minds for some sinister-looking spiders or scorpions, or exotic garden pests. However, if we define ‘deadly’ in terms of the number of people who die directly as a result of the insect, one of them leads the field, by far: the mosquito. As a blood-sucking pest, it transmits diseases to over 700 million people a year, killing a fair proportion of them in the process. No other insect comes even close to this.

Although all mosquitoes are nectar feeders, the females also need protein from a blood meal in order to produce eggs. To find this, they have a keen sense of smell, detecting the sweat and other organic compounds of mammals, such as the carbon dioxide they exhale. Scientific tests have proven that some people attract more mosquitoes than others, presumably having a better ‘scent profile’ — in fact, so adept are female mosquitoes at following these trails, they can infiltrate buildings through pipeways and air-conditioning ducts as they move inexorably towards their victims. Upon biting, they inject an anti-coagulating saliva into the flesh, and it is this fluid (and not their blood) which may contain the range of viral and parasitical nasties for which mosquitoes are notorious.

Yet even without such diseases, mosquitoes are an irritating nuisance which can occasionally cause serious injury. Upon being bitten, the body’s immune system is activated, and subsequent bites trigger antibodies which cause inflammation and itching, particularly with young children. More bites can increase such sensitivity, resulting in pronounced swelling and blistering — wounds which can occasionally become infected, particularly when scratched. Two famous victims of infected mosquito bites are Lord Carnarvon, the Egyptologist who played a role in the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb, and the British poet, Rupert Brooke, passing away in Egypt and Greece, respectively.

But the real danger will always be mosquito-borne diseases. Dengue fever, West Nile virus, and several encephalitis-type diseases are all modern day killers. A less deadly but more insidious example is filariasis, a disease named from the thread-like parasites which migrate to the body’s lymphatic system, causing parts of the body to permanently swell to grotesque proportions. Yet, as distressing as all this is, in terms of its death toll, the worst disease is undoubtedly malaria. Carried by the Anopheles mosquito, this parasite causes fever, shivering, joint pains, vomiting, and, if left untreated, a painful death. It infects over two million people a year, most of them children, killing over one quarter in the process.

The Aedes Aepypti mosquito is the species responsible for that other great killer: yellow fever. This is a viral disease, but limited to tropical areas, primarily in Africa, but also Central and South America. After high lever, nausea, and joint pains, the virus attacks the liver, causing the host’s skin to turn yellow (hence the name), with death following some days later. Its toll is much smaller than malaria, with about 200,000 infections and 30,000 deaths every year, mostly in Africa. Unlike malaria, there exists a vaccine, and extensive vaccination programs sponsored by the WHO have had some success, whilst travelers to disease-prone areas are usually similarly protected.

With such a death toll, it took a surprisingly long time before the link between mosquitoes and disease was realised. This is exemplified in the construction of the Panama Canal — that ambitious project to excavate a passageway for ships through that narrow Central-American nation. In the 1880s, the French struggled for eight years in insect-infested jungle, but the death toll from malaria and yellow fever made it very difficult to maintain an experienced work force. After the loss of 22,000 lives, work was abandoned, yet shortly afterwards, a British doctor in India, Ronald Ross, deduced the means of disease transmission, identifying the malaria parasite in the gastrointestinal tract of mosquitoes. He also realised that mosquito numbers could be reduced by limiting their access to water, providing two crucial insights which laid the foundations for controlling the disease.

Thus, in 1904, when America resumed work on the Panama Canal, they instituted a multi-million dollar mosquito-abatement program, consisting of many strategies. Houses for workers were built with screens on the windows, buildings harbouring mosquitoes were fumigated, and sick workers were isolated behind nets. Stagnant pools of water (where mosquitoes breed) were sprayed with oil and insecticide, and roads were paved to eliminate puddles. For this same reason, swamps were drained, and proper piping was used for the transmission of drinking and waste water. All this reduced the number of deaths from disease over the ten-year construction phase to less than 6,000 — a considerable number, but still considered a major success.

To this day, reducing the incidence of stagnant pools of water, however small, remains very cost-effective in combatting mosquito-borne diseases in urban areas. Many of the most dangerous species breed in incidental ditches, flowerpots, or discarded containers into which rainwater has pooled. By eliminating such sites, the insects’ numbers fall greatly, limiting bites to those mosquitoes which come from further afield, yet since they cannot travel far, the likelihood of being bitten (and infected) is greatly reduced.

Questions 14-18
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage Two?

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

14. Mosquito blood transmits disease.
15. Mosquitoes have good vision.
16. Rupert Brooke died in Greece.
17. Malaria kills over half a million people per year.
18. There is a vaccine for malaria.

Questions 19-22
Answer the questions. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

19. What can cause mosquito bites to become inflamed?
20. Which disease causes the body to change shape?
21. Which organ does yellow fever affect?
22. In which parts of a country is removing exposed water a particularly cheap way to reduce mosquito numbers?

Questions 23-26
Complete the summary. Choose ONE WORD from the passage for each answer.

The Panama Canal
This large undertaking took place in (23)……………………..full with insects. The number of workers was greatly reduced by disease, but after the malaria (24)……………………..was discovered, all exposed water was removed or (25)……………………………..to deny breeding sites. The relatively low number of deaths which followed is attributed to these (26)…………………….

Waterfalls

Waterfalls are places where rivers or streams direct their flow over vertical drops. They have always been a lure for their scenic beauty or, in the case of the biggest, their ability to showcase nature’s might and majesty. Niagara Falls, on the border of Canada and America (discharging the most water of all), is a magnet for visitors, as is Victoria Falls, also straddling an international boundary between Zimbabwe and Zambia, and presenting the single largest sheet of falling water in the world. Similarly, the remoteness and inaccessibility of the highest waterfall, Angel Falls, located deep in the middle of the Venezuelan jungle, has not stopped it from becoming one of the country’s top tourist attractions.

There are many possible causes of waterfalls, but a common one is differences in rock type. When a river flows over a resistant rock bed, erosion is slow, but with the complex geological faulting of the Earth’s surface, softer patches of rock can be exposed. The water cuts into this, resulting in a minor turbulence at the boundary, stirring up pebbles and grit from the riverbed, which increases the erosive capacity of the current. And so a process begins whereby the river takes on two tiers, or levels, and a waterfall is born. Other more abrupt causes of waterfalls are earthquakes or landslides, which create fault lines in the land, or divert watercourses, respectively. Additionally, during past ice ages, glaciers scoured out many deep basins. These glaciers may have disappeared, but their feeder rivers can continue to flow as waterfalls into the remaining depressions.

Obviously then, waterfalls come in a variety of shapes and sizes, as different as the local geology in which they are found, and this has resulted in an abundance of descriptive terms. The word ‘cataract’ refers simply to a large powerful waterfall, while a ‘cascade’ descends a series of rock steps. If these steps are very distinct, it is a ‘tiered waterfall’, and if each step is larger still, of approximately the same size, and with a significant pool of water at each base, it is known as a multi-step waterfall’. If the falling water engages with the rock face, it often widens, to be called a ‘horsetail waterfall’, while if it does not touch the rock face at all, it is a ‘plunge waterfall’ — often the most picturesque.

Regardless of such differences, all waterfalls have in common a vertical height and average flow of water. These features, taken together, are a measure of the waterfall’s power, quantified using a ten-point logarithmic scale. Giant falls, such as Niagara, are graded at the very top of this scale, find smaller falls, which may occur in town creeks, at the bottom. Another common feature of larger falls is a ‘plunge pool’. This is caused by the rubble at the base of the falls, which is stirred and broken into smaller pieces. In the never-ending eddies and whirlpools, these pieces scour out a deep underwater basin. An interesting consequence is that such falls are in the process of retreat, since the softer material at the lower face suffers undercutting. This gives rise to rock shelters behind the falling water, which steadily become larger until the roof collapses, and the waterfall retreats significantly backward into the Earth.

Of course, to people at large, a waterfall seems fixed and forever. Erosion is indeed a slow process; however, given a sufficiently powerful waterfall and the right sort of rock, the retreat can be over a meter a year. This would be clearly observable over a person’s life time, and a fast-motion view, spanning several decades, would see an essentially unchanged height of falling water burrowing backwards with surprising evenness. Since this motion is towards higher elevations or through more hilly terrain, a host of geological features can be laid in the waterfall’s retreating path. Victoria Falls are a prime example, with its lower reaches characterised by spectacular islands, gorges, and rock formations.

This retreat occasionally causes problems, as can be seen with Niagara Falls. In just over ten millennia, the falls have moved almost 11 kilometres upstream. Since the Niagara river marks the border of Canada and America, as agreed in 1819, the detectable retreat of these falls since that time technically means that the Canadian frontier has advanced forward at the expense of America, although this argument has obviously caused dispute. More practically, with so much infrastructure, such as hotels, roads, bridges, and scenic viewpoints, all rigidly established, it remains important to limit the erosion. For this reason, the exposed ridges of the falls have been extensively strengthened, and underwater barriers installed to divert the more erosive of river currents.

The most ambitious erosion-control measure took place in 1969 on Niagara’s American Falls, whose retreat was nibbling away at American territory. The branch of the Niagara river which feeds these subsidiary falls was dammed, allowing the main Horseshoe Falls to absorb the excess flow. The then-completely-dry-and-exposed river bottom and cliff face allowed a team of US-army engineers to use bolts, cement, and brackets, to strengthen any unstable rock. Five months later, the temporary dam was destroyed with explosives, returning water to the falls, but with the inexorable erosion process having been slowed considerably.

Questions 27-31
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage Three?

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

27. Niagara, Victoria, and Angel Falls are on international boundaries.
28. Landslides can create waterfalls faster than erosion.
29. Glaciers have produced the most waterfalls.
30. A tiered waterfall has the largest steps.
31. Niagara is a Grade Ten waterfall.

Questions 32-36
Complete the diagrams. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Questions 37-40
Answer the questions. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

37. What are gorges and rock formations examples of?
38. Who has benefited from the erosion at Niagara Falls?
39. What is used to control some of Niagara’s water movements?
40. On what geological parts of American Falls did the 1969 project focus?

It’s Dynamite

In 1866, an American railroad company was constructing a tunnel through the Sierra Nevada mountains. They encountered particularly hard rock, and ordered three crates of the only blasting explosive that could do the job: nitroglycerine. The first of these crates arrived in a postal centre in San Francisco, and upon being accidentally dropped, promptly exploded, killing all 15 people present. The point was taken. ‘Nitro’ was dangerously shock sensitive. Its transportation was soon banned, and from then on, it had to be manufactured by on-site laboratories – an expensive and still quite dangerous task, as the number of deadly explosions would demonstrate.

The history of nitroglycerine is full of such sad events. It was first synthesised in 1847 by Ascanio Sobrero, an Italian chemist, and he was so frightened by his discovery that he did not immediately publish his findings. He was also the first to caution the world against its use, in both private letters and a journal article, arguing that it was impossible to handle the substance safely. However, it was soon discovered that when frozen (at about five degress), nitro was much less sensitive to shock. The problem was then in thawing it back into liquid form, at which point it became even more unstable. Again, a mounting death toll would testify to this fact.

Yet nitroglycerine always remained in demand, being the first practical mining explosive produced. Prior to this, gunpowder was used, but this was limited and clumsy. Gupowder is a ‘low’ explosive, meaning that it ‘burns’ from layer to layer, producing gases which expand at less than the speed of sound. Nitro is a ‘high’ explosive, meaning that it ‘detonates’ – that is, is triggered to react by the virtually instrantancous shock wave, producing gases which expand at more than the speed of sound. Gunpowder could not efficiently shatter rock (although it was suitable for bullets and artillery shells). Only nitro could really do the job, and a Swedish chemist, Alfred Nobel, became interested.

Nobel’s companies were moving from primarily iron and steel production to the almost exclusive manufacture of cannons, armaments, and gunpowder, and he saw the commercial value in making nitroglycerine manageable. He began experimenting – at considerable cost. In 1864, his younger brother and several workers were killed in a factory explosion. Undererred, Nobel built a new factory in the remote hills of Germany, determined to find the answer. He first tried combining nitro with conventional gunpowder, marketing the final product as ‘blasting oil’, yet accidental explosions continued. His factory was destroyed yet again, on two occasions!

The breakthrough finally came when Nobel’s company mixed liquid nitroglycerine with an inert absorbent silicate sand, known as ‘diatomaccous earth’. This was produced by grinding down diatomite, a rock found around the local hills. It is similar to volcanic pumice, being very light and highly porous, yet it is actually the fossilised remains of diatoms, a hard-shelled alga. This combination immediately made nitro less dangerous to handle, and by being solid, more convenient to package and transport. Nobel patented his invention in 1867 under the name of ‘dynamite’, based on ‘dyna’ the Greek word for ‘power’.

In its best-known form, dynamite was made in short paper-wrapped sticks consisting of three quarters intro to one quarter diatomaccous earth, but it would always remain dangerous to manufacture, store, and use. Over time, the nitro can seep out, crystallising on the outside of the sticks or pooling at the bottom of storage boxes, with all the consequent instability that raw nitro possesses. Nevertheless, in an age of extensive railroad and tunnel construction, the product would earn Nobel a great fortune. Yet, while high explosives serve a commendable purpose in peacetime engineering projects, Nobel’s fortune was also based on weapons of death and destruction, and the public knew it.

Nobel himself was to become greatly perturbed, especially given the events which occurred when his brother Ludvig died. The French newspapers mistakenly thought it was the death of Alfred himself, and published an obituary. Alfred happened to be in France at the time, and one can only wonder at his reaction upon reading about his own death! Yet the obituary was harsh and condemning, calling Nobel the ‘merchant of death’, someone who ‘became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before’. It was certainly this event which influenced him, in 1895, to write a new last will and testament, one year before he died. It would astonish everyone, and change the course of history.

When Alfred Nobel died, single and childless, at age 63, he specified that, apart from some minor bequests, his vast fortune (about 200 million dollars in today’s money) be set aside for the establishment of the Nobel Prizes. These would be awarded annually for those who confer the ‘greatest benefit on mankind’ in physics, chemistry, peace, medicine, and literature. Nobel’s strategy worked, as the Nobel Prizes are now considered among the most prestigious in the world. Few consider that all that money comes from nitroglycerine, dynamite, gunpowder, and armament manufacture, the indirect cause of incalculable human carnage.

Questions 1-5
Complete the summary of the first three paragraphs. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Nitroglycerine could explode with even a small (1)……………………, thus it was the cause of a growing (2)…………………..It was able to (3)………………………..since, in contrast to gunpowder, it (4)………………………..When (5)………………………………., nitro could be handled more safely, yet deaths continued.

Questions 6-9
Answer the questions. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

6. What were the two products that Nobel’s companies originally manufacture?
7. What was the first nitroglycerine product called?
8. What rock does diatomite resemble?
9. In what field was dynamite used most beneficially?

Questions 10-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage One?

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

10. Dynamite is safer than nitroglycerine.
11. The French newspaper condemned Alfred Nobel because of his wealth.
12. Nobel’s will leave some money to his friends.
13. Many now condemn Nobel for his production of weapons.

Single-Gender Education: A Case Made?

A All modern democracies, instilled as they are with the ethics of freedom and equality of the sexes, nevertheless offer the option of single-sex education. This separates the genders into their own classrooms, buildings, and often schools. Traditionally, women had to fight hard and long to achieve equal opportunities in education, and the single-gender controversy is mostly in relation to them. The question is whether this educational system advances or retards their cause, and there are supporters on both sides, each convinced that the case is made.

B Given that the word ‘segregation’ has such negative connotations, the current interest in single-gender schooling is somewhat surprising. In the same way that a progressive society would never consider segregation on the basis of skin colour, income, or age, it seems innately wrong to do this on gender. Yet in the real world and the society in which we live, segregation of some sort happens all the time. Clubs inevitably form – for example, of clerical workers, of lawyers, of the academically gifted, and of those skilled in music or the arts. Exclusionary cliques, classes, and in-groups, are all part of everyday life. Thus, it may simply be an idealistic illusion to condemn single-gender settings on that basis alone, as do many co-educational advocates.

C This suggests that single-gender education must necessarily be condemned on other grounds, yet the issue is complicated, and research often sinks into a morass of conflicting data. and. occasionally, emotional argument. Thus, one study comes out with strong proof of the efficacy of single-gender schooling, causing a resurgence of interest and positive public sentiment, only to be later met with a harshly-titled article. ‘Single-Sex Schooling: The Myth and the Pseudoscience’, published and endorsed by several respected magazines. Similarly, the arguments on both sides have apparent validity and often accord, on the surface at least, with common sense and personal observation. What then can parents do?

D Proponents of separating the genders often argue that it promotes better educational results, not only in raw academic scores but also behaviour. The standard support for this is the claim of innate gender differences in the manner in which boys and girls learn and behave in educational settings. Separation allows males to be taught in a ‘male way’ and in accordance with the ‘male’ developmental path, which is said to be very different to the female one. Such claims demand hard evidence, but this is difficult to come by. since statistics are notoriously unreliable and subject to varying interpretations.

E Of course, one of the key factors that leads to superior performance at single-gender schools is often the higher quality of the teachers, the better resources at hand, and the more motivated students, often coming as they do from wealthier or more privileged backgrounds. Single-gender schools are often the most prestigious in society, demanding the highest entry marks from their new students, who, in turn, receive more deference and respect from society. When taking these factors into account, large-scale studies, as well as the latest findings of neuroscientists, do not support the claims of superior results or persistent gender differences, respectively. Those who make such claims are accused of emphasising favourable data, and drawing conclusions based more on anecdotal evidence and gender stereotyping.

F Yet the single-sex educationalists come out with other positives. One of the most common is that girls are free from the worry of sexual harassment or negative behaviour originating from the presence of boys. Girls are said to develop greater self-confidence, and a preparedness to study subjects, such as engineering and mathematics, which were once the exclusive province of males. Conversely, boys can express a greater interest in the arts, without the possible jibe, ‘That’s a girls’ subject’. But logically, one senses such stereotyping could equally come in single-gender settings, since it is the society outside of school, with all its related expectations, which has the greatest influence.

G Among this welter of conflicting argument, one can, at least, fall back on one certainty – that the real world is co-gendered, and each side often misunderstands the other. Supporters of co-education argue that positive and co-operative interaction between the genders at school reduces such divisions by de-emphasising gender as a factor of concern. In theory, stereotypes are broken down, and inclusion is emphasised, providing benefits for society as a whole. But such sentiments, admittedly, do sound as if we are retreating into self-promotional propaganda. In other words, these statements are just glib and unreal assertions, rather than a reflection of what actually happens in the co-educational classroom.

H The key point is whether the interaction in co-educational settings is indeed positive and co-operative. Some would say it could equally be the opposite, and surely it must occasionally be so (if we abandon the rosy picture painted in the previous paragraph). But I would say that that interaction, whether good or bad, whether academically enhancing or retarding, still constitutes education, and of a vital nature. It presents exactly the same subset of challenges that students, male or female, will ultimately have to deal with in the real world. This is the most important point, and would determine my choice regarding in which educational setting I would place my children.

Questions 14-19
Reading Passage Two has eight paragraphs, A-H.

Choose the correct heading for Paragraphs B-E and G-H from the list of headings.

List of Headings
i Another argument in favour
ii Conflicting evidence
iii Negatives are positives
iv An emotional argument
v Does it help or not?
vi Looking at the other side
vii A counter-argument
viii It’s happening anyway
ix The problems with genders
x An argument in favour

Example

Paragraph A v

Paragraph F i

14. Paragraph B
15. Paragraph c
16. Paragraph D
17. Paragraph E
18. Paragraph G
19. Paragraph H

Questions 20-24
Complete the sentences with the correct ending, A-E.

A have some strong views
B think boys and girls are similar
C often have idealistic views
D are surprising in some ways
E often receive much respect

20. Neuroscientists
21. The magazines
22. Students from single-gender schools
23. People in society
24. Supporters of co-education

Questions 25-26
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

25. The author believes co-education has
A clear statistical support.
B less stereotyping.
C much positive interaction.
D generally lower-quality teaching (compared to single-gender schools).

26. The author believes
A single-gender schooling is better.
B co-educational schooling is preferable.
C we cannot say which sort of schooling is better.
D more evidence is needed.

The Mother of All Languages

In 1786, William Jones, a British judge stationed in India, made what must be ranked as one of the most amazing discoveries of all time, yet it is little known outside of linguistic circles. Jones was studying Sanskrit, a long dead Indian language only used in classic or liturgical texts. Upon examining many of the words, he was struck by their similarity to the two most ancient languages known at that time: Greek and Latin. He would later write that Sanskrit has ‘a stronger affinity’ with these other languages ‘than could possibly have been produced by accident’.

Jones drew the conclusion that Greek and Latin, and even the Germanic languages (including English), were all related to Sanskrit, and thus, logically, all of them must necessarily have evolved from a single earlier language. Subsequent scholars were able to confirm this, adding to this linguistic family all of the Romance languages (French, Spanish, and others), Slavic languages (Russian, Czech, and many others), and Indo-lranian (Persian, Afghan, and many others). There are, in fact, hundreds of languages and dialects all over Europe, Iran, and South Asia, which can now trace their ancestry to an original Indo-European language, now called Proto-Indo-European, or PIE for short.

According to linguistic theory, proto-languages are usually spoken over relatively limited geographical areas, over a short time span, and by a tightly-knit community. The implication is simple, but also stunning that some single ancient tribe which spoke this mother of languages eventually took over most of the middle and western Eurasian landmass, spreading their language with them. This subsequently evolved into many others over the course of time, creating a language family which now has the greatest number of speakers in the world. The big question concerns who these Proto-Indo-Europeans were, and where their ancestral homeland lay.

Archaeologists have examined many sites of European prehistory, occasionally identifying these as the homeland of the PIE population. This is often done with nationalistic overtones, raising the anger of others in this field, and there still remains controversy over each claim. It is linguistic evidence which provides, perhaps, more definite clues. The similarities in vocabulary between all PIE’s daughter languages have allowed linguists to deduce a probable grammar and fairly extensive vocabulary. It is irresistible not to read into this a tentative lifestyle and location, with the quaint proviso that it remains ‘at best, highly speculative’.

Looking at just one example, there are PIE words for the temperate trees of the Northern Hemisphere, but not tropical or Mediterranean varieties. This indicates a northern European location, with a cold climate. And so, with such detailed linguistic analysis, the most widely accepted theory places the PIE origin in the Caspian Steppe – a vast region of temperate grass and shrub-land north of the Black Sea, across present-day Ukraine, Southern Russia, and Kazakhstan. Their language was spoken around 4000 BC (plus or minus a millennium, since exact dates are impossible at such an early stage in European pre-history).

What then enabled this single tribe to advance outwards and take over Eurasia? Some geneticists have suggested that it was the domestication of the horse, perhaps giving that tribe a thitherto unheard-of military superiority (as would the Huns and the Mongols possess many thousands of years later). Some of them have also suggested that the discovery of farming was the impetus of this tribe’s advance, as with a stable and steady food supply at hand, their numbers could increase at the expense of the other fragmented hunter-gathering tribes roaming the wilds of Eurasia. Perhaps then, PIE simply moved alongside the outward wave of the implementation of agriculture, together with a rapidly expanding and interbreeding population.

But even PIE must have evolved from some earlier language, and audacious linguists are digging deeper into the past. PIE gave birth to a large family of languages, but there exists other families, such as Afro-Asiatic (which includes Arabic), Dravidian (comprising the many languages of Southern India), and Altaic (which includes Mongolian and Japanese). It has been proposed that these themselves may all belong to a ‘macro-family’, sometimes called Proto-Nostratic. Most linguists maintain that, although it is theoretically possible that such an original language existed, it is next to impossible to prove, since resemblances among languages can also be due to chance, and thus they remain skeptical over such a claim.

Still, the implications are mind-boggling that perhaps almost every single language on Earth can ultimately be traced back to a single source possessed by a small group of individuals. This language is sometimes called Proto-Human, the mother of all languages. One interesting theory posited by geologists is that a huge catastrophe occurred in the not-so-distant past some 70,000 years ago, linked to the volcanic eruption of Mount Toba in Indonesia. This reduced the world population to a small band of survivors, and theirs is the Proto-Human from which all languages subsequently evolved. If this is true, it is intriguing to think that had that catastrophe not occurred, we would all be speaking totally different languages today.

Questions 27-30
Complete the sentences. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

William Jones’s findings are mostly known within (27)……………………

A community which speaks a proto-language is (28)……………………

Proto-Indo-Europeans might have come from the (29)………………

Mount Toba was the site of a (30)…………………..

Questions 31-35
Write the correct letter, A-E. NB You can use an answer one time only.

A Archaeologists
B Geneticists
C Geologists
D Linguists
E Scholars

Which people

31. believe that reliable nutrition may be the answer?
32. have categorised very many languages?
33. often face anger and controversy?
34. are skeptical about some issues?
35. have speculated about a disaster?

Questions 36-39
Complete the flow chart. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Question 40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

40. The author thinks the subject is
A complicated.
B controversial.
C interesting.
D fascinating.