Month: April 2024

Timekeeper: Invention of Marine Chronometer

A Up to the middle of the 18th century, the navigators were still unable to exactly identify the position at sea, so they might face a great number of risks such as the shipwreck or running out of supplies before arriving at the destination. Knowing one’s position on the earth requires two simple but essential coordinates, one of which is the longitude.

B The longitude is a term that can be used to measure the distance that one has covered from one’s home to another place around the world without the limitations of naturally occurring baseline like the equator. To determine longitude, navigators had no choice but to measure the angle with the naval sextant between Moon centre and a specific star— lunar distance—along with the height of both heavenly bodies. Together with the nautical almanac, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was determined, which could be adopted to calculate longitude because one hour in GMT means 15-degree longitude. Unfortunately, this approach laid great reliance on the weather conditions, which brought great inconvenience to the crew members. Therefore, another method was proposed, that is, the time difference between the home time and the local time served for the measurement. Theoretically, knowing the longitude position was quite simple, even for the people in the middle of the sea with no land in sight. The key element for calculating the distance travelled was to know, at the very moment, the accurate home time. But the greatest problem is: how can a sailor know the home time at sea?

C The simple and again obvious answer is that one takes an accurate clock with him, which he sets to the home time before leaving. A comparison with the local time (easily identified by checking the position of the Sun) would indicate the time difference between the home time and the local time, and thus the distance from home was obtained. The truth was that nobody in the 18th century had ever managed to create a clock that could endure the violent shaking of a ship and the fluctuating temperature while still maintaining the accuracy of time for navigation.

D After 1714, as an attempt to find a solution to the problem, the British government offered a tremendous amount of £20,000, which were to be managed by the magnificently named ‘Board of Longitude’. If timekeeper was the answer (and there could be other proposed solutions, since the money wasn’t only offered for timekeeper), then the error of the required timekeeping for achieving this goal needed to be within 2.8 seconds a day, which was considered impossible for any clock or watch at sea, even when they were in their finest conditions.

E This award, worth about £2 million today, inspired the self-taught Yorkshire carpenter John Harrison to attempt a design for a practical marine clock. In the later stage of his early career, he worked alongside his younger brother James. The first big project of theirs was to build a turret clock for the stables at Brockelsby Park, which was revolutionary because it required no lubrication. Harrison designed a marine clock in 1730, and he travelled to London in seek of financial aid. He explained his ideas to Edmond Halley, the Astronomer Royal, who then introduced him to George Graham, Britain’s first-class clockmaker. Graham provided him with financial aid for his early-stage work on sea clocks. It took Harrison five years to build Harrison Number One or HI. Later, he sought the improvement from alternate design and produced H4 with the giant clock appearance. Remarkable as it was, the Board of Longitude wouldn’t grant him the prize for some time until it was adequately satisfied.

F Harrison had a principal contestant for the tempting prize at that time, an English mathematician called John Hadley, who developed the sextant. The sextant is the tool that people adopt to measure angles, such as the one between the Sun and the horizon, for a calculation of the location of ships or planes. In addition, his invention is significant since it can help determine longitude.

G Most chronometer forerunners of that particular generation were English, but that doesn’t mean every achievement was made by them. One wonderful figure in the history is the Lancastrian Thomas Earnshaw, who created the ultimate form of chronometer escapement—the spring detent escapement—and made the final decision on format and productions system for the marine chronometer, which turns it into a genuine modem commercial product, as well as a safe and pragmatic way of navigation at sea over the next century and half.

Questions 1-5
Reading Passage 1 has seven paragraphs, A-G. Which paragraph contains the following information?
NB You may use any letter more than once.

1. a description of Harrison’s background
2. problems caused by poor ocean navigation
3. the person who gave financial support to Harrison
4. an analysis of the long-term importance of sea clock invention
5. the practical usage of longitude

Questions 6-8
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 6-8 on your answer sheet, write

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

6. In theory, sailors can easily calculate their longitude position at sea.
7. To determine longitude, the measurement of the distance from the Moon to a given star is essential.
8. Greenwich Mean Time was set up by the English navigators.

Questions 9-14
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

Sailors were able to use the position of the Sun to calculate (9)……………………..

An invention that could win the competition would lose no more than (10)………………………..every day.

John and James Harrison’s clock worked accurately without (11)……………………

Harrison’s main competitor’s invention was known as (12)………………………

Hadley’s instrument can use (13)……………………………to make a calculation of location of ships or planes.

The modem version of Harrison’s invention is called the (14)……………………….

The Evolutionary Mystery: Crocodile Survives

A Even though crocodiles have existed for 200 million years, they’re anything but primitive. As crocodiles’ ancestors, crocodilia came to adapt to an aquatic lifestyle. When most of the other contemporary reptiles went extinct, crocodiles were able to make it because their bodies changed and they adapted better to the climate. They witnessed the rise and fall of the dinosaurs, which once ruled the planet, and even the 65 million years of alleged mammalian dominance didn’t wipe them off. Nowadays, the crocodiles and alligators are not that different from their prehistoric ancestors, which proves that they were (and still are) incredibly adaptive.

B The first crocodile-like ancestors came into existence approximately 230 million years ago, and they had many of the features which make crocodiles natural and perfect stealth hunters: streamlined body, long tail, protective armour and long jaws. They are born with four short, webbed legs, but this does not mean that their capacity to move on the ground should ever be underestimated. When they move, they are so fast that you won’t even have any chance to try making the same mistake again by getting too close, especially when they’re hunting.

C Like other reptiles, crocodiles are poikilothermal animals (commonly known as coldblooded, whose body temperature changes with that of the surroundings) and consequently, require exposure to sunlight regularly to raise body temperature. When it is too hot, they would rather stay in water or shade. Compared with mammals and birds, crocodiles have a slower metabolism, which makes them less vulnerable to food shortage. In the most extreme case, a crocodile can slow its metabolism down even further, to the point that it would survive without food for a whole year, enabling them to outlive mammals in relatively volatile environments.

D Crocodiles have a highly efficient way to catch prey. The prey rarely realises there might be a crocodile under the water because the crocodile makes a move without any noise or great vibration when spotting its prey. It only keeps its eyes above the water level. As soon as it feels close enough to the victim, it jerks out of the water with its wide open jaws. Crocodiles are successful because they are capable of switching feeding methods. It chases after fish and snatches birds at the water surface, hides in the waterside bushes in anticipation of a gazelle, and when the chance to ambush presents itself, the crocodile dashes forward, knocks the animal out with its powerful tail and then drags the prey into the water to drown.

E In many crocodilian habitats, the hot season brings drought that dries up their hunting grounds, leaving it harder for them to regulate body temperatures. This actually allowed reptiles to rule. For instance, many crocodiles can protect themselves by digging holes and covering themselves in mud, waiting for months without consuming any food or water until the rains finally return. They transform into a quiescent state called aestivation.

F The majority of crocodilia are thought to go into aestivation during the dry season. In a six-year study by Kennett and Christian, the King Crocodiles, a species of Australian freshwater crocodiles, spent nearly four months a year underground without access to water resources. Doubly labelled water was applied to detect field metabolic rates and water flux, and during some years, plasma fluid samples were taken once a month to keep track of the effects of aestivation regarding the accumulation of nitrogenous wastes and electrolyte concentrations.

G The study discovered that the crocodiles’ metabolic engines function slowly, creating waste and exhausting water and fat reserves. Waste is stored in the urine, becoming more and more concentrated. Nevertheless, the concentration of waste products in blood doesn’t fluctuate much, allowing the crocodiles to carry on their normal functions. Besides, even though the crocodiles lost water reserves and body weight when underground, the losses were proportional; upon emerging, the aestivating animals had no dehydration and displayed no other harmful effects such as a slowed-down growth rate. The two researchers reckon that this capacity of crocodiles to get themselves through the harsh times and the long starvation periods is sure to be the answer to the crocodilian line’s survival throughout history.

Questions 15-21
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G. Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

List of Headings
i The positive impact of drought
ii Research findings into crocodile survival
iii The slow metabolism which makes the crocodile a unique animal
iv The perfectly designed body for a great land roamer
v Shifting eating habits and food intake
vi A project on a special mechanism
vii Regulating body temperature by the surrounding environment
viii Body structure offers underwater aid to a successful predator
ix A history of the supreme survivors
x What makes the crocodile the fastest running animal on land
xi Competition between crocodiles and other animals

15. Paragraph A
16. Paragraph B
17. Paragraph C
18. Paragraph D
19. Paragraph E
20. Paragraph F
21. Paragraph G

Questions 22-27
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Aestivation
In many places inhabited by crocodilians, most types of crocodiles have evolved a successful scheme to survive in the drought brought by a (22)……………………………. According to Kennett and Christian’s six-year study of Australian freshwater crocodiles’ aestivation, they found aestivating crocodiles spent around (23)……………………… of the year underground and had no access to (24)………………………..The amount of water in the body declined proportionately with (25)…………………………; thus there is no sign of (26)………………………..and other health-damaging impact on the crocodiles even after an aestivation period. This super capacity helps crocodiles endure the tough drought without slowing their speed of (27)………………………….

Company Innovation

A In a shabby office in downtown Manhattan, a group of 30 AI (artificial intelligence) programmers from Umagic are attempting to mimic the brains of a famous sexologist, a celebrated dietitian, a popular fitness coach and a bunch of other specialists, Umagic Systems is an up-and-coming firm, which sets up websites that enable their clients to seek advice from the virtual versions of those figures. The users put in all the information regarding themselves and their objectives; then it’s Umagic’s job to give advice, that a star expert would give. Even though the neuroses of American consumers have always been a marketing focus, the future of Umagic is difficult to predict (who knows what it’ll be like in ten years? Asking a computer about your sex life might be either normal or crazy). However, companies such as Umagic are starting to intimidate major American firms, because these young companies regard the half-crazy ‘creative’ ideas as the portal to their triumph in the future.

B Innovation has established itself as the catchword of American business management. Enterprises have realised that they are running out of things that can be outsourced or re-engineered (worryingly, by their competitors too). Winners of today’s American business tend to be companies with innovative powers such as Dell, Amazon and Wal-Mart, which have come up with concepts or goods that have reshaped their industries.

C According to a new book by two consultants from Arthur D. Little, during the last 15 years, the top 20% of firms in Fortune magazine’s annual innovation survey have attained twice as much the shareholder returns as their peers. The desperate search for new ideas is the stimulus for a large part of today’s merger boom. The same goes for the money spent on licensing and purchasing others’ intellectual property. Based on the statistics from Pasadena-based Patent & Licence Exchange, trade volume in intangible assets in America has gone up from $15 billion in 1990 to $100 billion in 1998, with small firms and individuals taking up an increasing share of the rewards.

D And that terrifies big companies: it appears that innovative work is incompatible with them. Some major famous companies that are always known for ‘innovative ideas’, such as 3M, Procter & Gamble, and Rubbermaid, have recently had dry spells. Peter Chernin, who runs the Fox TV and film empire for News Corporation, points out that ‘In the management of creativity, size is your enemy.’ It’s impossible for someone who’s managing 20 movies to be as involved as someone doing 5. Therefore, he has tried to divide the studio into smaller parts, disregarding the risk of higher expenses.

E Nowadays, ideas are more likely to prosper outside big companies. In the old days, when a brilliant scientist came up with an idea and wanted to make money out of it, he would take it to a big company first. But now, with all this cheap venture capital around, he would probably want to commercialise it by himself. So far, Umagic has already raised $5m and is on its way to another $25m. Even in the case of capital-intensive businesses like pharmaceuticals, entrepreneurs have the option to conduct early-stage research and sell out to the big firms when they’re faced with costly, risky clinical trials. Approximately 1/3 of drug firms’ total revenue is now from licensed-in technology.

F Some of the major enterprises such as General Electric and Cisco have been impressively triumphant when it comes to snatching and incorporating small companies’ scores. However, other grants are concerned about the money they have to spend and the way to keep those geniuses who generated the idea. It is the dream of everyone to develop more ideas within their organisations. Proctor & Gamble is currently switching their entire business focus from countries to products; one of the goals is to get the whole company to accept the innovations. In other places, the craving for innovation has caused ‘a frenzy for entrepreneurship’, transferring power by establishing internal idea-workshops and tracking inventory so that the talent will stay.

G Some people don’t believe that this kind of restructuring is sufficient. Clayton Christensen argues in their new book that big firms’ many advantages, such as taking care of their existing customers, can get in the way of the innovative behaviour that is necessary for handling disruptive technologies. That’s why there’s been the trend of cannibalisation, which brings about businesses that will confront and jeopardise the existing ones. For example, Bank One has set up Wingspan, which is an online bank that in fact competes with its actual branches.

H There’s no denying that innovation is a big deal. However, do major firms have to be this pessimistic? According to a recent survey of the top 50 innovations in America by Industry Week, ideas are equally likely to come from both big and small companies. Big companies can adopt new ideas when they are mature enough and the risks and rewards have become more quantifiable.

Questions 28-33
Reading Passage 3 has nine paragraphs, A-I. Which paragraph contains the following information?
NB You may use any letter more than once.

28. an approach to retaining the best employees
29. increasing spending on attaining innovative ideas
30. a certain counter-effect produced by integrating outside firms
31. an example of three famous innovative American companies
32. an example of a company changing its focus
33. an example of a company resolving financial difficulties itself

Questions 34-37
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 34-37 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

34. Umagic is the most successful innovative company in this new field.
35. Amazon and Wal-Mart exchanged their innovation experience.
36. In the past, the originators of new ideas took them to small companies
37. IBM failed to understand Umagic’s proposal of a new idea.

Questions 38-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet.

38. What is the author’s opinion on innovation in paragraph C?
A It only works for big companies.
B Fortune magazine has a globally huge influence.
C It is becoming increasingly important.
D Its effects on American companies are more evident.

39. What is Peter Chemin’s point of view on innovation?
A Small companies are more innovative than big ones.
B Film industry needs more innovation than other industries.
C We need to cut the cost when risks occur.
D New ideas are more likely to go to big companies.

40. What is the author’s opinion on innovation at the end of this passage?
A Umagic’s success lies in the accidental ‘virtual expert’.
B Innovation is easy and straightforward.
C IBM sets a good example on innovation.
D The author’s attitude is uncertain on innovation.

The Innovation of Grocery Stores

A At the very beginning of the 20th century, the American grocery stores offered comprehensive services: the customers would ask help from the people behind the counters (called clerks) for the items they liked, and then the clerks would wrap the items up. For the purpose of saving time, customers had to ask delivery boys or go in person to send the lists of what they intended to buy to the stores in advance and then went to pay for the goods later. Generally speaking, these grocery stores sold only one brand for each item. Such early chain stores as A&P stores, although containing full services, were very time-consuming and inefficient for the purchase.

B Born in Virginia, Clarence Saunders left school at the age of 14 in 1895 to work first as a clerk in a grocery store. During his working in the store, he found that it was very inefficient for people to buy things there. Without the assistance of computers at that time, shopping was performed in a quite backward way. Having noticed that this inconvenient shopping mode could lead to tremendous consumption of time and money, Saunders, with great enthusiasm and innovation, proposed an unprecedented solution—let the consumers do self-service in the process of shopping—which might bring a thorough revolution to the whole industry.

C In 1902, Saunders moved to Memphis to put his perspective into practice, that is, to establish a grocery wholesale cooperative. In his newly designed grocery store, he divided the store into three different areas: A ‘front lobby’ served as an entrance, an exit, and included checkouts at the front. ‘A sales department’ was deliberately designed to allow customers to wander around the aisle and select their needed groceries. In this way, the clerks would not do the unnecessary work but arrange more delicate aisle and shelves to display the goods and enable the customers to browse through all the items. In the gallery above the sales department, supervisors can monitor the customers without disturbing them. ‘Stockroom’, where large fridges were placed to maintain fresh products, is another section of his grocery store only for the staff to enter. Also, this new shopping design and layout could accommodate more customers to go shopping simultaneously and even lead to some unimaginable phenomena: impulse buying and later supermarket.

D On September 6, 1916, Saunders performed the self-service revolution in the USA by opening the first Piggly Wiggly featured by the turnstile at the entrance store at 79 Jefferson Street in Memphis, Tennessee. Quite distinct from those in other grocery stores, customers in Piggly Wiggly chose the goods on the shelves and paid the items all by themselves. Inside the Piggly Wiggly, shoppers were not at the mercy of staff. They were free to roam the store, check out the products and get what they needed by their own hands. There, the items were clearly priced, and no one forced customers to buy the things they did not need. As a matter of fact, the biggest benefit that the Piggly Wiggly brought to customers was the money-saving effect. Self-service was optimistic for the improvement. ‘It is good for both the consumer and retailer because it cuts costs,’ noted George T. Haley, a professor at the University of New Haven and director of the Centre for International Industry Competitiveness, ‘if you look at the way in which grocery stores (previous to Piggly Wiggly and Alpha Beta) were operated, what you can find is that there are a great number of workers involved, and labour is a major expense.’ Fortunately, the chain stores such as Piggly Wiggly cut the fat.

E Piggly Wiggly and this kind of self-service stores soared at that time. In the first year, Saunders opened nine branches in Memphis. Meanwhile, Saunders immediately applied a patent for the self-service concept and began franchising Piggly Wiggly stores. Thanks to the employment of self-service and franchising, the number of Piggly Wiggly had increased to nearly 1,300 by 1923. Piggly Wiggly sold $100 million (worth $1.3 billion today) in groceries, which made it the third-biggest grocery retailer in the nation. After that, this chain store experienced company listing on the New York Stock Exchange, with the stocks doubling from late 1922 to March 1923. Saunders contributed significantly to the perfect design and layout of grocery stores. In order to keep the flow rate smooth, Saunders even invented the turnstile to replace the common entrance mode.

F Clarence Saunders died in 1953, leaving abundant legacies mainly symbolised by Piggly Wiggly, the pattern of which spread extensively and lasted permanently.

Questions 1-5
Reading Passage 1 has six paragraphs, A-F. Which paragraph contains the following information?
NB You may use any letter more than once.

1. layout of Clarence Saunders’ store
2. a reference to a reduction by chain stores in labour costs
3. how Clarence Saunders’ idea had been carried out
4. how people used to shop before Clarence Saunders’ stores opened
5. a description of economic success brought by Clarence Saunders’s stores

Questions 6-10
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Clarence Saunders’ first job was as (6)…………………………in a grocery store. In Clarence Saunders’ store, people should pay for goods in the (7)……………………….Customers would be under surveillance when shopping in the (8)…………………………..Another area in his store was called (9)……………………….., which was only accessible to the internal staff. In Clarence Saunders’ shopping design, much work was done by the (10)………………………

Questions 11-13
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.

11. Why did Clarence Saunders want to propel the improvement of grocery stores at his age?
A He wanted to transfer business to retailing.
B He thought it was profitable.
C He thought this could enable customers’ life to be more convenient.
D He wanted to create a new shop by himself.

12. The Piggly Wiggly store was
A located in Virginia.
B mainly featured self-service.
C initially very unpopular with customers.
D developed with a pessimistic future.

13. Today, the main thing associated with Clarence Saunders is that
A a fully automatic store system opened soon near his first store.
B his Piggly Wiggly store was very popular at that time.
C his name was usually connected with Piggly Wiggly stores.
D his name was printed together with that of his famous store.

The Study of Chimpanzee Culture

A After studying the similarities between chimpanzees and humans for years, researchers have recognised these resemblances run much deeper than anyone first thought in the latest decade. For instance, the nut cracking observed in the Tai Forest is not a simple chimpanzee behaviour, but a separate adaptation found only in that particular part of Africa, as well as a trait which is considered to be an expression of chimpanzee culture by biologists. These researchers frequently quote the word ‘culture’ to describe elementary animal behaviours, like the regional dialects of different species of songbirds, but it turns out that the rich and varied cultural traditions chimpanzees enjoyed rank secondly in complexity only to human traditions.

B During the past two years, the major research group which studies chimpanzees collaborated unprecedentedly and documented some distinct cultural patterns, ranging from animals’ use of tools to their forms of communication and social customs. This emerging picture of chimpanzees affects how human beings ponder upon these amazing creatures. Also, it alters our conception of human uniqueness and shows us the extraordinary ability of our ancient ancestors to create cultures.

C Although we know that Homo sapiens and Pan Troglodytes have coexisted for hundreds of millennia and their genetic similarities surpass 98 per cent, we still knew next to nothing about chimpanzee behaviour in the wild until 40 years ago. All this began to change in the 1960s when Toshisada Nishida of Kyoto University in Japan and renowned British primatologist Jane Goodall launched their studies of wild chimpanzees at two field sites in Tanzania. (Goodall’s research station at Gombe—the first of its kind—is more famous, but Nishida’s site at Mahale is the second oldest chimpanzee research site in the world.)

D During these primary studies, as the chimpanzees became more and more accustomed to close observation, the remarkable discoveries emerged. Researchers witnessed a variety of unexpected behaviours, ranging from fashioning and using tools, hunting, meat eating, food sharing to lethal fights between members of neighbouring communities.

E In 1973, 13 forms of tool use and 8 social activities which appeared to differ between the Gombe chimpanzees and chimpanzee species elsewhere were recorded by Goodall. She speculated that some variations shared what she referred to as a ‘cultural origin’. But what exactly did Goodall mean by ‘culture’? According to the Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary, culture is defined as ‘the customs. . .and achievements of a particular time or people.’ The diversity of human cultures extends from technological variations to marriage rituals, from culinary habits to myths and legends. Of course, animals do not have myths and legends, but they do share the capacity to pass on behavioural traits from one generation to another, not through their genes but via learning. From biologists’ view, this is the fundamental criterion for a cultural trait—something can be learnt by observing the established skills of others and then passed on to following generations.

F What are the implications for chimpanzees themselves? We must place a high value upon the tragic loss of chimpanzees, who are decimated just when finally we are coming to appreciate these astonishing animals more completely. The population of chimpanzees has plummeted and continued to fall due to illegal trapping, logging and, most recently, the bushmeat trade within the past century. The latter is particularly alarming because logging has driven roadways, which are now used to ship wild animal meat—including chimpanzee meat to consumers as far afield as Europe, into forests. Such destruction threatens not only the animals themselves but also a host of fascinatingly different ape cultures.

G However, the cultural richness of the ape may contribute to its salvation. For example, the conservation efforts have already altered the attitudes of some local people. After several organisations showed videotapes illustrating the cognitive prowess of chimpanzees, one Zairian viewer was heard to exclaim, ‘Ah, this ape is so like me, I can no longer eat him.’

H How did an international team of chimpanzee experts perform the most comprehensive survey of the animals ever attempted? Although scientists have been delving into chimpanzee culture for several decades, sometimes their studies contained a fatal defect. So far, most attempts to document cultural diversity among chimpanzees have solely relied upon officially published accounts of the behaviours reported at each research site. But this approach probably neglects a good deal of cultural variation for three reasons.

I First, scientists normally don’t publish an extensive list of all the activities they do not see at a particular location. Yet this is the very information we need to know—which behaviours were and were not observed at each site. Second, there are many reports describing chimpanzee behaviours without expressing how common they are; without this information, we can’t determine whether a particular action was a transient phenomenon or a routine event that should be considered part of its culture. Finally, researchers’ description of potentially significant chimpanzee behaviours often lacks sufficient detail, which makes it difficult for scientists from other spots to report the presence or absence of the activities.

J To tackle these problems, my colleague and I determined to take a new approach. We asked field researchers at each site to list all the behaviours which they suspected were local traditions. With this information, we assembled a comprehensive list of 65 candidates for cultural behaviours.

K Then we distributed our list to team leaders at each site. They consulted with their colleagues and classified each behaviour regarding its occurrence or absence in the chimpanzee community. The major brackets contained customary behaviour (occurs in most or all of the able-bodied members of at least one age or sex class, such as all adult males), habitual (less common than customary but occurs repeatedly in several individuals), present (observed at the site but not habitual), absent (never seen), and unknown.

Questions 14-18
Reading Passage 2 has eleven paragraphs, A-K. Which paragraph contains the following information?

14. an approach to research on chimpanzees’ culture that is only based on official sources
15. mention of a new system designed by two scientists who aim to solve the problem
16. reasons why previous research on ape culture is problematic
17. new classification of data observed or collected
18. an example showing that the cultural traits of chimpanzees can lead to a change in local people’s attitude towards their preservation

Questions 19-23
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 19-23 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

19. The research found that scientists can make chimpanzees possess the same complex culture as human beings.
20. Humans and apes lived together long time ago and shared most of their genetic substance.
21. Even Toshisada Nishida and Jane Goodall’s beginning studies observed many surprising features of civilised behaviours among chimpanzees.
22. Chimpanzees, like humans, have the ability to deliver cultural behaviours mostly from genetic inheritance.
23. For decades, researchers have investigated chimpanzees by data obtained from both unobserved and observed approaches.

Questions 24-27
Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

24. When did the unexpected discoveries of chimpanzee behaviour start?
25. Which country is the researching site of Toshisada Nishida and Jane Goodall?
26. What did the chimpanzee have to get used to in the initial study?
27. What term did Jane Goodall suggest to describe chimpanzees in different regions using different tools in 1973?

Quantitative Research in Education

Many education researchers used to work on the assumption that children experience different phases of development, and that they cannot execute the most advanced level of cognitive operation until they have reached the most advanced forms of cognitive process. For example, one researcher Piaget had a well-known experiment in which he asked the children to compare the amount of liquid in containers with different shapes. Those containers had the same capacity, but even when the young children were demonstrated that the same amount of fluid could be poured between the containers, many of them still believed one was larger than the other. Piaget concluded that the children were incapable of performing the logical task in figuring out that the two containers were the same size even though they had different shapes, because their cognitive development had not reached the necessary phase. Critics on his work, such as Donaldson, have questioned this interpretation. They point out the possibility that the children were just unwilling to play the experimenter’s game, or that they did not quite understand the question asked by the experimenter. These criticisms surely do state the facts, but more importantly, it suggests that experiments are social situations where interpersonal interactions take place. The implication here is that Piaget’s investigation and his attempts to replicate it are not solely about measuring the children’s capabilities of logical thinking, but also the degree to which they could understand the directions for them, their willingness to comply with these requirements, how well the experimenters did in communicating the requirements and in motivating those children, etc.

The same kinds of criticisms have been targeted to psychological and educational tests. For instance, Mehan argues that the subjects might interpret the test questions in a way different from that meant by the experimenter. In a language development test, researchers show children a picture of a medieval fortress, complete with moat, drawbridge, parapets and three initial consonants in it: D, C, and G. The children are required to circle the correct initial consonant for ‘castle’. The answer is C, but many kids choose D. When asked what the name of the building was, the children responded ‘Disneyland’. They adopted the reasoning line expected by the experimenter but got to the wrong substantive answer. The score sheet with the wrong answers does not include in it a child’s lack of reasoning capacity; it only records that the children gave a different answer rather than the one the tester expected.

Here we are constantly getting questions about how valid the measures are where the findings of the quantitative research are usually based. Some scholars such as Donaldson consider these as technical issues, which can be resolved through more rigorous experimentation. In contrast, others like Mehan reckon that the problems are not merely with particular experiments or tests, but they might legitimately jeopardise the validity of all researches of this type.

Meanwhile, there are also questions regarding the assumption in the logic of quantitative educational research that causes can be identified through physical and/or statistical manipulation of the variables. Critics argue that this does not take into consideration the nature of human social life by assuming it to be made up of static, mechanical causal relationships, while in reality, it includes complicated procedures of interpretation and negotiation, which do not come with determinate results. From this perspective, it is not clear that we can understand the pattern and mechanism behind people’s behaviours simply in terms of the casual relationships, which are the focuses of quantitative research. It is implied that social life is much more contextually variable and complex.

Such criticisms of quantitative educational research have also inspired more and more educational researchers to adopt qualitative methodologies during the last three or four decades. These researchers have steered away from measuring and manipulating variables experimentally or statistically. There are many forms of qualitative research, which is loosely illustrated by terms like ‘ethnography’, ‘case study’, ‘participant observation’, ‘life history’, ‘unstructured interviewing’, ‘discourse analysis’ and so on. Generally speaking, though, it has characteristics as follows:

Qualitative researches have an intensive focus on exploring the nature of certain phenomena in the field of education, instead of setting out to test hypotheses about them. It also inclines to deal with ‘unstructured data’, which refers to the kind of data that have not been coded during the collection process regarding a closed set of analytical categories. As a result, when engaging in observation, qualitative researchers use audio or video devices to record what happens or write in detail open-ended field-notes, instead of coding behaviour concerning a pre-determined set of categories, which is what quantitative researchers typically would do when conducting ‘systematic observation’. Similarly, in an interview, interviewers will ask open-ended questions instead of ones that require specific predefined answers of the kind typical, like in a postal questionnaire. Actually, qualitative interviews are often designed to resemble casual conversations.

The primary forms of data analysis include verbal description and explanations and involve explicit interpretations of both the meanings and functions of human behaviours. At most, quantification and statistical analysis only play a subordinate role. The sociology of education and evaluation studies were the two areas of educational research where-criticism of quantitative research and the development of qualitative methodologies initially emerged in the most intense way. A series of studies conducted by Lacey, Hargreaves and Lambert in a boys’ grammar school, a boys’ secondary modem school, and a girls’ grammar school in Britain in the 1960s marked the beginning of the trend towards qualitative research in the sociology of education. Researchers employed an ethnographic or participant observation approach, although they did also collect some quantitative data, for instance on friendship patterns among the students. These researchers observed lessons, interviewed both the teachers and the students, and made the most of school records. They studied the schools for a considerable amount of time and spent plenty of months gathering data and tracking changes over all these years.

Questions 28-32
Look at the following statements or descriptions (Questions 28-32) and the list of people below. Match each statement or description with the correct person or people, A, B, C or D. NB You may use any letter more than once.

Lists of People
A Piaget
B Mehan
C Donaldson
D Lacey, Hargreaves and Lambert

28. A wrong answer indicates more of a child’s different perspective than incompetence in reasoning.
29. Logical reasoning involving in the experiment is beyond children’s cognitive development.
30. Children’s reluctance to comply with the game rules or miscommunication may be another explanation.
31. There is evidence of a scientific observation approach to research.
32. There is a flawed detail in experiments on children’s language development.

Questions 33-36
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

In Piaget’s experiment, he asked the children to distinguish the amount of (33)………………..in different containers.

In response to Mehan’s question, subjects are more inclined to answer with the wrong answer ‘‘(34)…………………..’’ instead of the correct answer C.

Some people criticised the result of Piaget experiment, but Donaldson thought the flaw could be rectified by (35)…………………………….

Most qualitative research conducted by Lacey, Hargreaves and Lambert was done in a (36)…………………………

Questions 37-39
Choose THREE letters, A-F.

The list below includes characteristics of the ‘qualitative research’.

Which THREE are mentioned by the writer of the passage?

A Coding behaviour in terms of a predefined set of categories
B Designing an interview as an essay conversation
C Working with well organised data in a closed set of analytical categories
D Full of details instead of loads of data in questionnaires
E Asking to give open ended answers in questionnaires
F Recording the researching situation and applying note taking

Question 40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in box 40 on your answer sheet.

40. What is the main idea of the passage?
A to prove that quantitative research is most applicable to children’s education
B to illustrate the society lacks of deep comprehension of educational approach
C to explain the ideas of quantitative research and the characteristics of the related criticisms
D to imply qualitative research is a flawless method compared with quantitative one

The Concept Of Childhood In Western Countries

The history of childhood has been a heated topic in social history since the highly influential book Centuries of Childhood’, written by French historian Philippe Aries, emerged in 1960. He claimed that ‘childhood’ is a concept created by modern society.

Whether childhood is itself a recent invention has been one of the most intensely debated issues in the history of childhood. Historian Philippe Aries asserted that children were regarded as miniature adults, with all the intellect and personality that this implies, in Western Europe during the Middle Ages (up to about the end of the 15th century). After scrutinising medieval pictures and diaries, he concluded that there was no distinction between children and adults for they shared similar leisure activities and work; However, this does not mean children were neglected, forsaken or despised, he argued. The idea of childhood corresponds to awareness about the peculiar nature of childhood, which distinguishes the child from adult, even the young adult. Therefore, the concept of childhood is not to be confused with affection for children.

Traditionally, children played a functional role in contributing to the family income in the history. Under this circumstance, children were considered to be useful. Back in the Middle Ages, children of 5 or 6 years old did necessary chores for their parents. During the 16th century, children of 9 or 10 years old were often encouraged or even forced to leave their family to work as servants for wealthier families or apprentices for a trade.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, industrialisation created a new demand for child labour; thus many children were forced to work for a long time in mines, workshops and factories. The issue of whether long hours of labouring would interfere with children’s growing bodies began to perplex social reformers. Some of them started to realise the potential of systematic studies to monitor how far these early deprivations might be influencing children’s development.

The concerns of reformers gradually had some impact upon the working condition of children. For example, in Britain, the Factory Act of 1833 signified the emergence of legal protection of children from exploitation and was also associated with the rise of schools for factory children. Due partly to factory reform, the worst forms of child exploitation were eliminated gradually. The influence of trade unions and economic changes also contributed to the evolution by leaving some forms of child labour redundant during the 19th century. Initiating children into work as ‘useful’ children was no longer a priority, and childhood was deemed to be a time for play and education for all children instead of a privileged minority. Childhood was increasingly understood as a more extended phase of dependency, development and learning with the delay of the age for starting full-time work- Even so, work continued to play a significant, if less essential, role in children’s lives in the later 19th and 20th centuries. Finally, the ‘useful child’ has become a controversial concept during the first decade of the 21st century, especially in the context of global concern about large numbers of children engaged in child labour.

The half-time schools established upon the Factory Act of 1833 allowed children to work and attend school. However, a significant proportion of children never attended school in the 1840s, and even if they did, they dropped out by the age of 10 or 11. By the end of the 19th century in Britain, the situation changed dramatically, and schools became the core to the concept of a ‘normal’ childhood.

It is no longer a privilege for children to attend school and all children are expected to spend a significant part of their day in a classroom. Once in school, children’s lives could be separated from domestic life and the adult world of work. In this way, school turns into an institution dedicated to shaping the minds, behaviour and morals of the young. Besides, education dominated the management of children’s waking hours through the hours spent in the classroom, homework (the growth of ‘after school’ activities), and the importance attached to parental involvement.

Industrialisation, urbanisation and mass schooling pose new challenges for those who are responsible for protecting children’s welfare, as well as promoting their learning. An increasing number of children are being treated as a group with unique needs, and are organised into groups in the light of their age. For instance, teachers need to know some information about what to expect of children in their classrooms, what kinds of instruction are appropriate for different age groups, and what is the best way to assess children’s progress. Also, they want tools enabling them to sort and select children according to their abilities and potential.

Questions 1-7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet, write

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

1. Aries pointed out that children did different types of work to adults during the Middle Ages.
2. Working children during the Middle Ages were generally unloved.
3. Some scientists thought that overwork might damage the health of young children.
4. The rise of trade unions majorly contributed to the protection of children from exploitation in the 19th century.
5. Through the aid of half-time schools, most children went to school in the mid-19th century.
6. In the 20th century, almost all children needed to go to school with a full-time schedule.
7. Nowadays, children’s needs are much differentiated and categorised based on how old they are.

Questions 8-13
Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer:

8. What had not become a hot topic until the French historian Philippe Aries’ book caused great attention?
9. According to Aries, what was the typical image of children in Western Europe during the Middle Ages?
10. What historical event generated the need for a large number of children to work for a long time in the 18th and 19th centuries?
11. What bill was enacted to protect children from exploitation in Britain in the 1800s?
12. Which activities were becoming regarded as preferable for almost all children in the 19th century?
13. In what place did children spend the majority of time during their day in school?

Bestcom – Considerate Computing

‘Your battery is now fully charged,’ announced the laptop to its owner Donald A. Norman in a synthetic voice, with great enthusiasm and maybe even a hint of pride. For the record, humans are not at all unfamiliar with distractions and multitasking. ‘We are used to a complex life that gets constantly interrupted by computer’s attention-seeking requests, as much as we are familiar with procreation,’ laughs Ted Selker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab,

Humanity has been connected to approximately three billion networked telephones, computers, traffic lights and even fridges and picture frames since these things can facilitate our daily lives. That is why we do not typically turn off the phones, shut down the e-mail system, or close the office door even when we have a meeting coming or a stretch of concentrated work. We merely endure the consequences. Countless research reports have confirmed that if people are unexpectedly interrupted, they may suffer a drop in work efficiency, and they are more likely to make mistakes. According to Robert G. Picard from the University of Missouri, it appears to build up the feeling of frustration cumulatively, and that stress response makes it difficult to focus again. It is. not solely about productivity and the pace of life. For some professionals like pilots, drivers, soldiers and doctors, loss of focus can be downright disastrous. ‘If we could find a way to make our computers and phones realise the limits of human attention and memory, they may come off as more thoughtful and courteous,’ says Eric Horvitz of Microsoft Research. Horvitz, Selker and Picard are just a few of a small but prospering group of researchers who are attempting to make computers, phones, cars and other devices to function more like considerate colleagues instead of egocentric oafs.

To do this, the machines need new skills of three kinds: sensing, reasoning and communicating. First, a system must: sense or infer where its owner is and what he or she is doing. Next, it must weigh the value of the messages it wants to convey against the cost of the disruption. Then it has to. choose the best mode and time to interject: Each of these pushes the limits of computer science and raises issues of privacy, complexity or reliability. Nevertheless, ‘Attentive’ Computing Systems, have started to make an appearance in the latest Volvos, and IBM has designed and developed a communications software called WebSphere that comes with an underlying sense of busyness. Microsoft has been conducting extensive in-house tests of a way more sophisticated system since 2003. In a couple of years, companies might manage to provide each office employee with a software version of the personal receptionist which is only available to corner-suite executives today.

However, the truth is that most people are not as busy as they claim to be, which explains why we can often stand interruptions from our inconsiderate electronic paraphernalia. To find out the extent to which such disruption may claim people’s daily time, an IBM Research team led by Jennifer Lai from Carnegie Mellon University studied ten managers, researchers and interns at the workplace. They had the subjects on videotape, and within every period of a specific time, they asked the subjects to evaluate their ‘interruptibility’. The time a worker spent in leave-me-alone state varied from individual to individual and day to day, and the percentage ranged from 10 to 51. Generally, the employees wished to work without interruption for roughly 1/3 of the time. Similarly, by studying Microsoft workers, Horvitz also came to the discovery that they ordinarily spend over 65 per cent of their day in a low-attention mode.

Obviously, today’s phones and computers are probably correct about two-thirds of time by assuming that their users are always available to answer a call, check an email, or click the ‘OK’ button on an alert box. But for the considerate systems to be functional and useful, their accuracy has to be above 65 in sending when their users are about to reach their cognitive limit.

Inspired by Horvitz’s work, Microsoft prototype Bestcom-Enhanced Telephony (Bestcom-ET) digs a bit deeper into every user’s computer to find out clues about what they are dealing with. As I said earlier, Microsoft launched an internal beta test of the system in mid-2003. Horvitz points out that by the end of last October, nearly 3,800 people had been relying on the system to field their incoming calls.

Horvitz is, in fact, a tester himself, and as we have our conversation in his office, Bestcom silently takes care of all the calls. Firstly, it checks if the caller is in his address book, the company directory, or the ‘recent call’ list. After triangulating all these resources at the same time, it attempts to figure out what their relationship is. The calls that get through are from family, supervisors and people he called earlier that day. Other callers will get a message on their screens that say he cannot answer now because he is in a meeting, and will not be available until 3pm. The system will scan both Horvitz’s and the caller’s calendar to check if it can reschedule a callback at a time which works for both of them. Some callers will take that option, while others simply leave a voicemail. The same happens with e-mails. When Horvitz is not in his office, Bestcom automatically offers to transfer selected callers to his cellphone, unless his calendar implies that he is in a meeting.

Questions 14-19
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? Inboxes 14-19 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

14. According to Ted Selker, human reproduction has been disturbed throughout history.
15. If people are interrupted by calls or e-mails, they usually put up with it.
16. Microsoft is now investigating a software which is compatible with ordinary offices.
17. People usually have a misperception about whether they are busy or not.
18. Experts in Carnegie Mellon University conducted a research observing all occupations of IBM.
19. Current phone and computer systems have shortcut keys for people receiving information immediately.

Questions 20-26
Complete the table below. Choose ONLY ONE WORD from the passage for each answer.

Bestcom Working Process

Bestcom system carries out further analysis in order to find (20)……………..about what users are doing.

In the office	In the office	Out of the office
Check the (21)………………….between the caller and the user, whether the caller has contact information of the user such as their family or colleagues	if callers are not in directory, a(n) (22)……………will show up on their screen, saying the user is not available at moment. The system will (23)………………a suitable time for both or callers can choose to leave a(n) (24)…………..to users	Bestcom will provide a solution by transferring your call to the user’s (25)…………..if there is no (26)……………in his or her schedule

Can Hurricanes Be Moderate Or Diverted?

A Each year, massive swirling storms bringing along winds greater than 74 miles per hour wipe across tropical oceans and land on shorelines—usually devastating vast swaths of territory. When these roiling tempests strike densely inhabited territories, they have the power to kill thousands and cause property damage worth of billions of dollars. Besides, absolutely nothing stands in their way. But can we ever find a way to control these formidable forces of nature?

B To see why hurricanes and other severe tropical storms may be susceptible to human intervention, a researcher must first learn about their nature and origins. Hurricanes grow in the form of thunderstorm clusters above the tropical seas. Oceans in low-latitude areas never stop giving out heat and moisture to the atmosphere, which brings about warm, wet air above the sea surface. When this kind of air rises, the water vapour in it condenses to form clouds and precipitation. Condensation gives out heat in the process the solar heat is used to evaporate the water at the ocean surface. This so-called invisible heat of condensation makes the air more buoyant, leading to it ascending higher while reinforcing itself in the feedback process. At last, the tropical depression starts to form and grow stronger, creating the familiar eye — the calm centre hub that a hurricane spins around. When reaching the land, the hurricane no longer has a continuous supply of warm water, which causes it to swiftly weaken.

C Our current studies are inspired by my past intuition when I was learning about chaos theory 30 years ago. The reason why long-range forecasting is complicated is that the atmosphere is highly sensitive to small influences and tiny mistakes can compound fast in the weather-forecasting models. However, this sensitivity also made me realise a possibility: if we intentionally applied some slight inputs to a hurricane, we might create a strong influence that could affect the storms, either by steering them away from densely populated areas or by slowing them down. Back then, I was not able to test my ideas, but thanks to the advancement of computer simulation and remote-sensing technologies over the last 10 years, I can now renew my enthusiasm in large-scale weather control.

D To find out whether the sensitivity of the atmospheric system could be exploited to adjust such robust atmospheric phenomena as hurricanes, our research team ran simulation experiments on computers for a hurricane named Iniki that occurred in 1992. The current forecasting technologies were far from perfect, so it took us by surprise that our first simulation turned out to be an immediate success. With the goal of altering the path of Iniki in mind, we first picked the spot where we wanted the storm to stop after six hours. Then we used this target to generate artificial observations and put these into the computer model.

E The most significant alteration turned out to be the initial temperatures and winds. Usually, the temperature changes across the grid were only tenths of a degree, but the most noteworthy change, which was an increase of almost two degrees Celsius, took place in the lowest model layer to the west of the storm centre. The calculations produced wind-speed changes of two or three miles per hour. However, in several spots, the rates shifted by as much as 20 mph due to minor redirections of the winds close to the storm’s centre. In terms of structure, the initial and altered versions of Hurricane Iniki seemed almost the same, but the changes in critical variables were so substantial that the latter one went off the track to the west during the first six hours of the simulation and then travelled due north, leaving Kauai untouched.

F Future earth-orbiting solar power stations, equipped with large mirrors to focus the sun’s rays and panels of photovoltaic cells to gather and send energy to the Earth, might be adapted to beam microwaves which turn to be absorbed by water vapour molecules inside or around the storm. The microwaves would cause the water molecules to vibrate and heat up the surrounding air, which then leads to the hurricane slowing down or moving in a preferred direction.

G Simulations of hurricanes conducted on a computer have implied that by changing the precipitation, evaporation and air temperature, we could make a difference to a storm’s route or abate its winds. Intervention could be in many different forms: exquisitely targeted clouds bearing silver iodide or other rainfall-inducing elements might deprive a hurricane of the water it needs to grow and multiply from its formidable eyewall, which is the essential characteristic of a severe tropical storm.

Questions 27-33
Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs, A-G. Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

List of Headings
i Hurricanes in history
ii How hurricanes form
iii How a laboratory exercise re-routed a hurricane
iv Exciting ways to utilise future technologies
v Are hurricanes unbeatable?
vi Re-visiting earlier ideas
vii How lives might have been saved
viii A range of low-tech methods

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

Questions 34-38
Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Hurricanes originate as groups of (34)……………………….over the tropical oceans. Low-latitude seas continuously provide heat and moisture to the atmosphere, producing warm, humid air above the sea surface. When this air rises, the water vapour in it condenses to form clouds and precipitation. (35)……………………….releases heat—the solar heat it took to evaporate the water at the ocean surface. This so-called latent (36)……………………..of condensation makes the air more buoyant, causing it to ascend still higher in a self-reinforcing feedback process. Eventually, the tropical depression begins to organise and strengthen, forming the familiar (37)…………………….—the calm central hub around which a hurricane spins. On passing over (38)…………………….the hurricane’s sustaining source of warm water is cut off, which leads to the storm’s rapid weakening.

Questions 39-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

39. What encouraged the writer to restart researching hurricane control?
A the huge damage hurricane trigger
B the developments in computer technologies
C the requirement of some local people
D the chaos theory learnt as a student

40. What was the writer’s reaction after their first experiment?
A surprised that their intervention had not achieved a lot
B ecstatic with the achievement the first experiment had
C surprised that their intervention had the intended effect
D regretful about the impending success

Reading Passage 1

A Americans today choose among more options in more parts of life than has ever been pos­sible before. To an extent, the opportunity to choose enhances our lives. It is only logical to think that if some choices are good, more is better; people who care about having infinite options will benefit from them, and those who do not can always just ignore the 273 versions of cereal they have never tried. Yet recent research strongly suggests that, psychologically, this assumption is wrong, with 5% lower percentage announcing they are happy. Although some choices are undoubtedly better than none, more is not always better than less.

B Recent research offers insight into why many people end up unhappy rather than pleased when their options expand. We began by making a distinction between “maximizers” (those who always aim to make the best possible choice) and “satisficers” (those who aim for “good enough,” whether or not better selections might be out there).

C In particular, we composed a set of statements—the Maximization Scale—to diagnose peo­ple’s propensity to maximize. Then we had several thousand people rate themselves from 1 to 7 (from “completely disagree” to “completely agree”) on such statements as “I never settle for second best.” We also evaluated their sense of satisfaction with their decisions. We did not define a sharp cutoff to separate maximizers from satisficers, but in general, we think of individuals whose average scores are higher than 4 (the scale’s midpoint) as maxi- misers and those whose scores are lower than the midpoint as satisficers. People who score highest on the test—the greatest maximizers—engage in more product comparisons than the lowest scorers, both before and after they make purchasing decisions, and they take longer to decide what to buy. When satisficers find an item that meets their standards, they stop looking. But maximizers exert enormous effort reading labels, checking out consumer magazines and trying new products. They also spend more time comparing their purchas­ing decisions with those of others.

D We found that the greatest maximizers are the least happy with the fruits of their efforts. When they compare themselves with others, they get little pleasure from finding out that they did better and substantial dissatisfaction from finding out that they did worse. They are more prone to experiencing regret after a purchase, and if their acquisition disappoints them, their sense of well-being takes longer to recover. They also tend to brood or ruminate more than satisficers do.

E Does it follow that maximizers are less happy in general than satisficers? We tested this by having people fill out a variety of questionnaires known to be reliable indicators of well­being. As might be expected, individuals with high maximization scores experienced less satisfaction with life and were less happy, less optimistic and more depressed than people with low maximization scores. Indeed, those with extreme maximization ratings had depression scores that placed them in the borderline of clinical range.

F Several factors explain why more choice is not always better than less, especially for maxi­misers. High among these are “opportunity costs.” The quality of any given option cannot be assessed in isolation from its alternatives. One of the “costs” of making a selection is losing the opportunities that a different option would have afforded. Thus, an opportunity cost of vacationing on the beach in Cape Cod might be missing the fabulous restaurants in the Napa Valley. Early Decision Making Research by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed that people respond much more strongly to losses than gains. If we assume that opportunity costs reduce the overall desirability of the most preferred choice, then the more alternatives there are, the deeper our sense of loss will be and the less satisfaction we will derive from our ultimate decision.

G The problem of opportunity costs will be better for a satisficer. The latter’s “good enough” philosophy can survive thoughts about opportunity costs. In addition, the “good enough” standard leads to much less searching and inspection of alternatives than the maximizer’s “best” standard. With fewer choices under consideration, a person will have fewer opportu­nity costs to subtract.

H Just as people feel sorrow about the opportunities they have forgone, they may also suffer regret about the option they settled on. My colleagues and I devised a scale to measure proneness to feeling regret, and we found that people with high sensitivity to regret are less happy, less satisfied with life, less optimistic and more depressed than those with low sensitivity. Not surprisingly, we also found that people with high regret sensitivity tend to be maximizers. Indeed, we think that worry over future regret is a major reason that individuals become maximizers. The only way to be sure you will not regret a decision is by making the best possible one. Unfortunately, the more options you have and the more opportunity costs you incur, the more likely you are to experience regret.

I In a classic demonstration of the power of sunk costs, people were offered season subscrip­tions to a local theatre company. Some were offered the tickets at full price and others at a discount. Then the researchers simply kept track of how often the ticket purchasers actu­ally attended the plays over the course of the season. Full-price payers were more likely to show up at performances than discount payers. The reason for this, the investigators argued, was that the full-price payers would experience more regret if they did not use the tickets because not using the more costly tickets would constitute a bigger loss. To increase sense of happiness, we can decide to restrict our options when the decision is not crucial. For example, make a rule to visit no more than two stores when shopping for clothing.

Questions 1-4
Look at the following descriptions or deeds (Questions 1-4) and the list of catego­ries below. Match each description or deed with the correct category, A-D. Write the correct letter, A-D, in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

A maximizers
B satisficers
C neither “maximizers” nor “satisficers”
D both “maximizers” and “satisficers”

1. rated to the Maximization Scale of making choice
2. don’t take much time before making a decision
3. are likely to regret about the choice in the future
4. choose the highest price in the range of purchase

Questions 5-8
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 5-8 on you 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

5. In today’s world, since the society is becoming wealthier, people are happier.
6. In society, there are more maximisers than satisficers.
7. People tend to react more to loses than gains.
8. Females and males acted differently in the study of choice making.

Questions 9-13
Choose the correct letter. A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.

9. The Maximization Scale is aimed to
A know the happiness when they have more choices.
B measure how people are likely to feel after making choices.
C help people make better choices.
D reduce the time of purchasing.

10. According to the text, what is the result of more choices?
A People can make choices more easily
B Maximizers are happier to make choices.
C Satisficers are quicker to make wise choices.
D People have more tendency to experience regret.

11. The example of theatre ticket is to suggest that
A they prefer to use more money when buying tickets.
B they don’t like to spend more money on theatre.
C higher-priced things would induce more regret if not used properly
D full-price payers are real theatre lovers.

12. How to increase the happiness when making a better choice?
A use less time
B make more comparisons
C buy more expensive products
D limit the number of choices in certain situations

13. What is the best title for Reading Passage 1?
A Reasoning of Worse Choice Making
B Making Choices in Today’s World
C The Influence of More Choices
D Complexity in Choice Making

Implication of False Belief Experiments

A A considerable amount of research since the mid 1980s has been concerned with what has been termed children’s theory of mind. This involves children’s ability to understand that people can have different beliefs and representations of the world– a capacity that is shown by four years of age. Furthermore, this ability appears to be absent in children with autism. The ability to work out that another person is thinking is clearly an important aspect of both cognitive and social development. Furthermore, one important explanation for autism is that children suffering from this condition do not have a theory of mind(TOM). Consequently, the development of children’s TOM has attracted considerable attention.

B Wimmer and Perner devised a ‘false belief task’ to address this question. They used some toys to act out the following story. Maxi left some chocolate in a blue cupboard before he went out. When he was away his mother moved the chocolate to a green cupboard. Children were asked to predict where Maxi willlook for his chocolate when he returns. Most children under four years gave the incorrect answer, that Maxi will look in the green cupboard. Those over four years tended to give the correct answer, that Maxi will look in the blue cupboard. The incorrect answers indicated that the younger children did not understand that Maxi’s beliefs and representations no longer matched the actual state of the world, and they failed to appreciate that Maxi will act on the basis of his beliefs rather than the way that the world is actually organised.

C A simpler version of the Maxi task was devised by Baron-Cohen to take account of criticisms that younger children may have been affected by the complexity and too much information of the story in the task described above. For example, the child is shown two dolls, Sally and Anne, who have a basket and a box， respectively. Sally also has a marble, which she places in her basket，and then leaves to take a walk. While she is out of the room, Anne takes the marble from the basket, eventually putting it in the box. Sally returns，and child is then asked where Sally will look for the marble. The child passes the task if she answers that Sally will look in the basket, where she put the marble; the child fails the task if she answers that Sally will look in the box，where the child knows the marble is hidden， even though Sally cannot know, since she did not see it hidden there. In order to pass the task, the child must be able to understand that another’s mental representation of the situation is different from their own, and the child must be able to predict behavior based on that understanding. The results of research using false-belief tasks have been fairly consistent: most normally-developing children are unable to pass the tasks until around age four.

D Leslie argues that, before 18 months, children treat the world in a literal way and rarely demonstrate pretence. He also argues that it is necessary for the cognitive system to distinguish between what is pretend and what is real. If children were not able to do this, they would not be able to distinguish between imagination and reality. Leslie suggested that this pretend play becomes possible because of the presence of a de-coupler that copies primary representations to secondary representations. For example, children, when pretending a banana is a telephone, would make a secondary representation of a banana. They would manipulate this representation and they would use their stored knowledge of ‘telephone’ to build on this pretence.

E There is also evidence that social processes play a part in the development of TOM. Meins and her colleagues have found that what they term mind mindedness in maternal speech to six-month old infants is related to both security of attachment and to TOM abilities. Mind Mindedness involves speech that discusses infants’ feelings and explains their behaviour in terms of mental stages (e.g_ ‘you1 re feeling hungry’)

F Lewis investigated older children living in extended families in Crete and Cyprus. They found that children who socially interact with more adults，who have more friends. And who have more older siblings tend to pass TOM tasks at a slightly earlier age than other children. Furthermore, because young children are more likely to talk about their thoughts and feelings with peers than with their mothers, peer interaction may provide a special impetus to the development of a TOM. A similar point has been made by Dunn, who argues that peer interaction is more likely to contain pretend play and that it is likely to be more challenging because other children, unlike adults, do not make large adaptations to the communicative needs of other children.

G In addition, there has been concern that some aspects of the TOM approach underestimate children’s understanding of other people. After all，infants will point to objects apparently in an effort to change a person’s direction of gaze and interest; they can interact quite effectively with other people; they will express their ideas in opposition to the wishes of others; and they will show empathy for the feeling of others. Schatz studied the spontaneous speech of three-year-olds and found that these children used mental terms，and used them in circumstances where there was a contrast between, for example, not being sure where an object was located and finding it, or between pretending and reality. Thus the social abilities of children indicate that they are aware of the difference between mental states and external reality at ages younger than four.

H A different explanation has been put forward by Harris. He proposed that children use ‘simulation’. This involves putting yourself in the other person’s position, and then trying to predict what the other person would do. Thus success on false belief tasks can be explained by children trying to imagine what they would do if they were a character in the stories, rather than children being able to appreciate the beliefs of other people. Such thinking about situations that do not exist involves what is termed counterfactual reasoning.

I A different explanation has been put forward by Harris. He proposed that children use “simulation”. This involves putting yourself in the other person’s position, and then trying to predict what the other person would do. Thus, success on false belief tasks can be explained by children trying to imagine what they would do if they were a character in the stories, rather than children being able to appreciate the beliefs of other people. Such thinking about situations that do not exist involves what is termed counterfactual reasoning.

Questions 14-20
Look at the following statements (Questions 14-20) and the list of researchers below. Match each statement with the correct researcher, A-G. Write the correct letter. A-G. in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.

List of Researchers
A Baron-Cohen
B Meins
C Wimmer and Pemer
D Lewis E Dunn F Schatz G Harris
E Dunn
F Schatz
G Harris

14. gave an alternative explanation that children may not be understanding other’s belief
15. found that children under certain age can tell difference between reality and mentality
16. conducted a well-known experiment and drew conclusion that young children were unable to comprehend the real state of the world
17. found that children who get along with adults often comparatively got through the test more easily
18. revised an easier experiment to rule out the possibility that children might be influenced by sophisticated reasoning
19. related social factor such as mother-child communication to capability act in TOM
20. explained children are less likely to tell something interactive to their mother than to their friends

Questions 21-26
Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

In 1980s, research studies were designed to test the subject called Theory of Mind that if children have the ability to represent the reality. First experiments were carried out on this subject on a boy. And questions had been made on where the boy can find the location of the (21)……………………. But it was accused that it had excessive (22)……………………………. So second modified experiment was can­ ducted involving two dolls, and most children passed the test at the age of (23)………………………………. Then Lewis and Dunn researched (24)………………….. children in a certain place, and found children who have more interaction such as more con­versation with (25)…………………………….have better performance in the test, and peer interaction is (26)………………………….. because of consisting pretending elements.

What is Meaning

The end, product of education, yours and mine and everybody’s, is the total pattern of reactions and possible reactions we have inside ourselves. If you did not have within you at this moment the pattern of reactions that we call “the ability to read.” you would see here only meaningless black marks on paper. Because of the trained patterns of response, you are (or are not) stirred to patriotism by martial music, your feelings of reverence are aroused by symbols of your religion, you listen more respectfully to the health advice of someone who has “MD” after his name than to that of someone who hasn’t. What I call here a “pattern of reactions”, then, is the sum total of the ways we act in response to events, to words, and to symbols.

Our reaction patterns or our semantic habits, are the internal and most important residue of whatever years of education or miseducation we may have received from our parents’ conduct toward us in childhood as well as their teachings, from the formal education we may have had, from all the lectures we have listened to, from the radio programs and the movies and televi­sion shows we have experienced, from all the books and newspapers and comic strips we have read, from the conversations we have had with friends and associates, and from all our experi­ences. If, as the result of all these influences that make us what we are, our semantic habits are reasonably similar to those of most people around us, we are regarded as “normal,” or perhaps “dull.” If our semantic habits are noticeably different from those of others, we are regarded as “individualistic” or “original.” or, if the differences are disapproved of or viewed with alarm, as “crazy.”

Semantics is sometimes defined in dictionaries as “the science of the meaning of words”— which would not be a bad definition if people didn’t assume that the search for the meanings of words begins and ends with looking them up in a dictionary. If one stops to think for a moment, it is clear that to define a word, as a dictionary does, is simply to explain the word with more words. To be thorough about defining, we should next have to define the words used in the definition, then define the words used in defining the words used in the definition and so on. Defining words with more words, in short, gets us at once into what mathemati­cians call an “infinite regress”. Alternatively, it can get us into the kind of run-around we sometimes encounter when we look up “impertinence” and find it defined as “impudence,” so we look up “impudence” and find it defined as “impertinence.” Yet—and here we come to another common reaction pattern—people often act as if words can be explained fully with more words. To a person who asked for a definition of jazz, Louis Armstrong is said to have replied, “Man. when you got to ask what it is, you’ll never get to know,” proving himself to be an intuitive semanticist as well as a great trumpet player.

Semantics, then, does not deal with the “meaning of words” as that expression is commonly understood. P. W. Bridgman, the Nobel Prize winner and physicist, once wrote, “The true meaning of a term is to be found by observing what a man does with it, not by what he says about it.” He made an enormous contribution to science by showing that the meaning of a scientific term lies in the operations, the things done, that establish its validity, rather than in verbal definitions.

Here is a simple, everyday kind of example of “operational” definition. If you say, “This table measures six feet in length,” you could prove it by taking a foot rule, performing the operation of laying it end to end while counting, “One…two…three…four…” But if you say—and revolu­tionists have started uprisings with just this statement “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains!”—what operations could you perform to demonstrate its accuracy or inaccuracy?

But let us carry this suggestion of “operationalism” outside the physical sciences where Bridgman applied it, and observe what “operations” people perform as the result of both the language they use and the language other people use in communicating to them. Here is a personnel manager studying an application blank. He comes to the words “Education: Harvard University,” and drops the application blank in the wastebasket (that’s the “operation”) because, as he would say if you asked him, “I don’t like Harvard men.” This is an instance of “meaning” at work—but it is not a meaning that can be found in dictionaries.

If I seem to be taking a long time to explain what semantics is about, it is because I am trying, in the course of explanation, to introduce the reader to a certain way of looking at human behavior. I say human responses because, so far as we know, human beings are the only creatures that have, over and above that biological equipment which we have in common with other creatures, the additional capacity for manufacturing symbols and systems of symbols. When we react to a flag, we are not reacting simply to a piece of cloth, but to the meaning with which it has been symbolically endowed. When we react to a word, we are not reacting to a set of sounds, but to the meaning with which that set of sounds has been symbolically endowed.

A basic idea in general semantics, therefore, is that the meaning of words (or other symbols) is not in the words, but in our own semantic reactions. If I were to tell a shockingly obscene story in Arabic or Hindustani or Swahili before an audience that understood only English, no one would blush or be angry; the story would be neither shocking nor obscene-induced, it would not even be a story. Likewise, the value of a dollar bill is not in the bill, but in our social agreement to accept it as a symbol of value. If that agreement were to break down through the collapse of our government, the dollar bill would become only a scrap of paper. We do not understand a dollar bill by staring at it long and hard. We understand it by observing how people act with respect to it. We understand it by understanding the social mechanisms and the loyalties that keep it meaningful. Semantics is therefore a social study, basic to all other social studies.

Questions 27-31
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.

27. What point is made in the first paragraph?
A The aim of education is to teach people to read
B Everybody has a different pattern of reactions.
C Print only carries meaning to those who have received appropriate ways to respond.
D The writers should make sure their works satisfy a variety of readers.

28. According to the second paragraph, people are judged by
A the level of education.
B the variety of experience.
C how conventional their responses are.
D complex situations.

29. What point is made in the third paragraph?
A Standard ways are incapable of defining words precisely.
B A dictionary is most scientific in defining words.
C A dictionary should define words in as few words as possible.
D Mathematicians could define words accurately.

30. What does the writer suggest by referring to Louis Armstrong?
A He is an expert of language.
B Music and language are similar.
C He provides insights to how words are defined.
D Playing trumpet is easier than defining words.

31. What does the writer intend to show about the example of “personnel manager”?
A Harvard men are not necessarily competitive in the job market.
B Meaning cannot always be shared by others.
C The idea of operationalism does not make much sense outside the physical science.
D Job applicants should take care when filling out application forms.

Questions 32-35
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 32-35 on you 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

32. Some statements are incapable of being proved or disproved.
33. Meaning that is personal to individuals is less worthy to study than shared meanings.
34. Flags and words are eliciting responses of the same reason.
35. A story can be entertaining without being understood.

Questions 36-40
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-H, below. Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.

36. A comic strip
37. A dictionary
38. Bridgman
39. A story in a language the audience cannot understand
40. A dollar bill

A is meaningless.
B has lasting effects on human behaviors.
C is a symbol that has lost its meaning.
D can be understood only in its social context.
E can provide inadequate explanation of meaning.
F reflects the variability of human behaviors.
G emphasizes the importance of analyzing how words were used.
H suggests that certain types of behaviors carry more meanings than others.

The Connection Between Culture and Thought

A The world’s population has surpassed 7 billion and continues to grow. Across the globe, humans have many differences. These differences can be influenced by factors such as geography, climate, politics, nationality, and many more. Culture is one such aspect that can change the way people behave.

B Your culture may influence your clothing, your language, and many aspects of your life. But is culture influential enough to change the way an individual thinks? It has long been believed that people from different cultures would think differently. For example, a young boy from a farm would talk about cows while a boy from New York will talk about cars. If two young children from different countries are asked about their thoughts about a painting, they would answer differently because of their cultural backgrounds.

C In recent years, there has been new research that changed this long-held belief; However, this new research is not the first to explore the idea that culture can change the way we think. Earlier research has provided valuable insight to the question. One of the earliest research projects was carried out in the Soviet Union. This project was designed to find out whether culture would affect peopled way of thought processing. The researchers focused on how living environment and nationality might influence how people think. The experiment led by Bessett aimed to question such awareness of cognitive psychology. Bessett conducted several versions of the experiment to test different cognitive processes.

D One experiment led by Bessett and Masuku showed an animated video picturing a big fish swimming among smaller fish and other sea creatures. Subjects were asked to describe the scene. The Japanese participants tended to focus on the aquatic background, such as the plants and colour of the water, as well as the relationship between the big and small fish. American participants tended to focus on individual fishes, mainly the larger, more unique looking fish. The experiment suggested that members of Eastern cultures focus more on the overall picture, while members of Western culture focus more on the individuals.

E In another experiment performed by Bessett and Choi, the subjects were presented with some very convincing evidence for a position. Both the Korean and the American showed strong support. And after they were given some evidence opposing the position, the Korean started to modified or decreased their support. However, the American began to give more support to the former argument. This project suggested that in Korean culture, support for arguments is based on context. Ideas and conclusions are changeable and flexible, so an individual may be more willing to change his or her mind. For Americans, they were less willing to change their original conclusion.

F Bessett and Ara devised an experiment to test the thought processing of both oriental and occidental worlds. Test subject was given an argument “All animals with furs hibernate. Rabbit has fur. Therefore, rabbit hibernate”. People from the eastern world questioned the argument as not being logical, because in their knowledge some furry animals just don’t hibernate. But the American think the statement is right. They assume the logic deduction is based on a correct argument, thus the conclusion is right since the logic is right.

G From these early experiments in the Soviet Union, one might conclude that our original premise— that culture can impact the way we think—was still correct. However, recent research criticises this view, as well as Bessett’s early experiments. Though these experiments changed the original belief on thought processing, how much does it result from all factors needs further discussion. Fischer thinks Bessett’s experiments provide valuable information because his research only provides qualitative descriptions, not results from controlled environment. Chang partly agrees with him, because there are some social factors that might influence the results.

H Another criticism of Bessett’s experiments is that culture was studied as a sub-factor of nationality. The experiments assumed that culture would be the same among all members of a nationality. For example, every American that participated in the experiments could be assumed to have the same culture. In reality, culture is much more complicated than nationality. These early experiments did not control for other factors, such as socioeconomic status, education, ethnicity, and regional differences in culture. All of these factors could have a big effect on the individual’s response.

I A third criticism of Bessett’s experiment is that the content itself should have been more abstract, such as a puzzle or an IQ test. With objective content, such as nature and animals, people from different countries of the world might have different pre-conceived ideas about these animals. Prior knowledge based on geographic location would further complicate the results. A test that is more abstract, or more quantitative, would provide a more controlled study of how cognitive processing works for different groups of people.

J The research on culture’s effect on cognitive processing still goes on today, and while some criticisms exist of Bessett’s early studies, the projects still provide valuable insight. It is important for future research projects to control carefully for the variables, such as culture. Something like culture is complex and difficult to define. It can also be influenced by many other variables, such as geography or education styles. When studying a variable like culture, it is critical that the researcher create a clear definition for what is—and what is not—considered culture.

K Another important aspect of modern research is the ethical impact of the research. A researcher must consider carefully whether the results of the research will negatively impact any of the groups involved. In an increasingly globalised job economy, generalisations made about nationalities can be harmful to prospective employees. This information could also impact the way tests and university admissions standards are designed, which would potentially favor one group or create a disadvantage for another. When conducting any research about culture and nationality, researchers should consider all possible effects, positive or negative, that their conclusions may have when published for the world to see.

Questions 1-5
Reading Passage 1 has eleven paragraphs, A-K. Which paragraph contains the following information?
NB You may use any letter more than once.

1. All people have the same reaction to a certain point of view.
2. Qualitative descriptions are valuable in exploring thought processing.
3. Different cultures will affect the description of the same scene.
4. We thought of young people as widely different at different geographical locations.
5. Eastern people are less likely to stick to their argument.

Questions 6-9
Look at the following statements (Questions 6-9) and the list of researchers below. Match each statement with the correct researcher, A-C. Write the correct letter, A-C, in boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.

A Bessett & Masuku
B Bessett & Choi
C Bessett & Ara

6. Geographical location affects people’s position on certain arguments.
7. Animated images reveal different process strategies.
8. Eastern people challenge a deduction because they knew it is not true.
9. Eastern people find more difficulty when asked to identify the same object.

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

Researchers in the Soviet Union wanted to find out how (10)……………………and nationality will control the way people think.

Bessett and Ara’s experiment shows, for Americans, so long as the logic deduction is based on a correct argument, the (11)………………………….should be right.

Fischer thinks Bessett’s research is quite valuable because it is conducted in a (12)……………………way rather than in controlled environment.

Future researchers on culture’s effect on cognitive processing should start with a (13)……………………of culture as a variable.

Eco-Resort Management Practices

Ecotourism is often regarded as a form of nature-based tourism and has become an important alternative source of tourists. In addition to providing the traditional resort-leisure product, it has been argued that ecotourism resort management should have a particular focus on best-practice environmental management. an educational and interpretive component, and direct and indirect contributions to the conservation of the natural and cultural environment (Ayala. I996).

Conran Cove Island Resort is a large integrated ecotourism-based resort located south of Brisbane on the Gold Coast, Queensland. Australia. As the world’s population becomes increasingly urbanised, the demand for tourist attractions which are environmentally friendly, serene and offer amenities of a unique nature has grown rapidly. Couran Cove Resort, which is one such tourist attractions, is located on South Stradbroke Island, occupying approximately 150 hectares of the island. South Stradbroke Island is separated from die mainland by the Broadwater, a stretch of sea.’ kilometres wide. More than a century ago. there was only one Stradbroke Island, and there were at least four Aboriginal tribes living and limiting on the island. Regrettably, most of the original island dwellers were eventually killed by diseases such as tuberculosis, smallpox and influenza by the end of the 19th century. The second ship wrecked on the island in 1894, and the subsequent destruction of the ship (the Cambus Wallace) because it contained dynamite, caused a large crater in the sandhills on Stradbroke Island. Eventually. the ocean bloke through the weakened land form and Stradbroke became two islands. Conran Cove Island Resort is built on one of the world’s lew naturally -occurring sand lands, which is home to a wide range of plant communities and one of the largest remaining remnants of the rare livistona rainforest left on the Gold Coast. Many mangrove and rainforest areas, and Malaleuca Wetlands on South Stradbroke Island (and in Queensland), have been cleared, drained or filled for residential, industrial, agricultural or urban development in the first half of the 20th century. Farmers and graziers finally abandoned South Stradbroke Island in 1959 because the vegetation and the soil conditions there were not suitable for agricultural activities.

SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES OF COUKAN COVE RESORT
Being located on an offshore island, the resort is only accessible by means of water transport. The resort provides hourly ferry service from the marina on the mainland to and from the island. Within the resort. transport modes include walking trails, bicycle tracks and the beach train. The reception area is the counter of the shop which has not changed for 8 years at least. The accommodation is an octagonal “Bure’’. These are large rooms that are clean but the equipment is tiled and in some cases just working. Our ceiling fan only worked on high speed for example. Beds are hard but clean. There is a television, a radio, an old air conditioner and a small fridge. These “Bures” are right on top of each other and night noises do carry. So he careful what you say and do. The only tiling is the mosquitoes, but if you forget to bring mosquito repellent they sell some oil the island. As an ecotourism-based resort most of the planning and development of the attraction lies been concentrated on the need to co-exist with the fragile natural environment of South Stradbroke Island to achieve sustainable development.

WATER AND ENERGY MANAGEMENT
South Stradbroke Island has groundwater at the centre of the island, which has a maximum height of 3 metres above sea level. The water supply is recharged by rainfall and is commonly known as an unconfined freshwater aquifer. Couran Cove Island Resort obtains its water supply by tapping into this aquifer and extracting it via a bore system. Some of the problems which have threatened the island’s freshwater supply include pollution, contamination and over-consumption. In order to minimise some of these problems, all laundry activities are carried out on the mainland. The resort considers washing machines as onerous to the island’s freshwater supply, and that the detergents contain a high level of phosphates which are a major source of water pollution. The resort uses LPG-power generation rather than a diesel-powered plant for its energy supply, supplemented by wind turbine, which has reduced greenhouse emissions by 70% of diesel-equivalent generation methods. Excess heat recovered from the generator is used to heat the swimming pool. Hot water in the eco-cabins and for some of the resort’s vehicles are solar-powered. Water efficient fittings are also installed in showers and toilets. However, not all the appliances used by the resort arc energy efficient, such as refrigera­tors. Visitors who stay at the resort are encouraged to monitor their water and energy usage via the in-house television systems, and are rewarded with prizes (such as a free return trip to the resort) accordingly if their usage level is low.

CONCLUDING REMARKS
We examined a case study of good management practice and a pro-active sustainable tourism stance of an eco-resort. In three years of operation, Couran Cove Island Resort has won 23 international and national awards, including the 2001 Australian Tourism Award in the 4-Star Accommodation category. The resort has embraced and has effectively implemented contem­porary environmental management practices. It has been argued that the successful implemen­tation of the principles of sustainability should promote long-term social, economic and envi­ronmental benefits, while ensuring and enhancing the prospects of continued viability for the tourism enterprise. Couran Cove Island Resort does not conform to the characteristics of the Resort Development Spectrum, as proposed by Pridcaux (2000). According to Pridcaux. the resort should be at least at Phase 3 of the model (the National tourism phase), which describes an integrated resort providing 3-4 star hotel-type accommodation. The primary tourist market in Phase 3 of the model consists mainly of interstate visitors. However, the number of interstate and international tourists visiting the resort is small, with the principal visitor markets com­prising locals and residents front nearby towns and the Gold Coast region. The carrying capacity of Couran Cove does not seem to be of any concern to the Resort management. Given that it is a private commercial ecotourist enterprise, regulating the number of visitors to the resort to minimise damage done to the natural environment on South Stradbrokc Island is not a binding constraint. However, the Resort’s growth will eventually be constrained by its carrying capacity, and quantity control should be incorporated in the management strategy of the resort.

Questions 14-18
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

14. The Stradbroke became two islands
A by an intended destruction of the ship of the Cambus Wallace.
B by an explosion of dynamite on a ship and following nature erosion.
C by the movement sandhills on Stradbroke Island.
D by the volcanic eruption on island.

15. Why are laundry activities for the resort carried out on the mainland?
A to obtain its water supply via a bore system
B to preserve the water and anti-pollution
C to save the cost of installing onerous washing machines
D to reduce the level of phosphates in water around

16. The major water supplier in South Stradbroke Island is by
A desalining the sea water.
B collecting the rainfall.
C transporting from the mainland.
D boring ground water.

17. What is applied for heating water on Couran Cove Island Resort?
A the LPG-power
B a diesel-powered plant
C the wind power
D the solar-power

18. What does, as the managers of resorts believe, the prospective future focus on?
A more awards for resort’s accommodation
B sustainable administration and development in a long run
C economic and environmental benefits for the tourism enterprise
D successful implementation of the Resort Development Spectrum

Questions 19-23
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 19-23 on your answer sheet.

Being located away from the mainland, tourists can attain the resort only by (19)……………………in a regular service provided by the resort itself. Within the resort, transports include trails for walking or tracks for both (20)……………………………and the beach train. The on-island equipment is old-fashioned which is barely working such as the (21)………………………overhead. There is television, radio, an old (22)……………………..and a small fridge. And you can buy the repellent for (23)………………………..if you forget to bring some.

Questions 24-26
Choose THREE letters, A-E.

Write the correct letters in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.

Which THREE of the following statements are true as to the contemporary situation of Couran Cove Island Resort in the last paragraph?

A Couran Cove island resort goes for more eco friendly practices
B The accommodation standard only conforms to the Resort Development Spectrum of phase 3
C Couran Cove island resort should raise the accommodation standard and build more facilities
D The principal group visiting the resort is international tourists
E Its carrying will restrict the future businesses’ expansion

The future of the World’s Language

Of the world’s 6,500 living languages, around half are expected to the out by the end of this century, according to UNESCO. Just 11 are spoken by more than half of the earth’s population, so it is little wonder that those used by only a few are being left behind as we become a more homogenous, global society. In short, 95 percent of the world’s languages are spoken by only five percent of its population—a remarkable level of linguistic diversity stored in tiny pockets of speakers around the world. Mark Turin, a university professor, has launched WOLP (World Oral Language Project) to prevent the language from the brink of extinction.

He is trying to encourage indigenous communities to collaborate with anthropologists around the world to record what he calls “oral literature” through video cameras, voice recorders and other multimedia tools by awarding grants from a £30,000 pot that the project has secured this year. The idea is to collate this literature in a digital archive that can be accessed on demand and will make the nuts and bolts of lost cultures readily available.

For many of these communities, the oral tradition is at the heart of their culture. The stories they tell are creative as well as communicative. Unlike the languages with celebrated written traditions, such as Sanskrit, Hebrew and Ancient Greek, few indigenous communities have recorded their own languages or ever had them recorded until now.

The project suggested itself when Turin was teaching in Nepal. He wanted to study for a PhD in endangered languages and, while discussing it with his professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands, was drawn to a map on his tutor’s wall. The map was full of pins of a variety of colours which represented all the world’s languages that were completely undocumented. At random, Turin chose a “pin” to document. It happened to belong to the Thangmi tribe, an indigenous community in the hills east of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. “Many of the choices anthropologists and linguists who work on these traditional field-work projects are quite random,” he admits.

Continuing his work with the Thangmi community in the 1990s, Turin began to record the language he was hearing, realising that not only was this language and its culture entirely undocumented, it was known to few outside the tiny community. He set about trying to record their language and myth of origins. “I wrote 1,000 pages of grammar in English that nobody could use—but I realised that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough for me, it wasn’t enough for them. It simply wasn’t going to work as something for the community. So then I produced this trilingual word list in Thangmi, Nepali and English.”

In short, it was the first ever publication of that language. That small dictionary is still sold in local schools for a modest 20 rupees, and used as part of a wider cultural regeneration process to educate children about their heritage and language. The task is no small undertaking: Nepal itself is a country of massive ethnic and linguistic diversity, home to 100 languages from four different language families. What’s more, even fewer ethnic Thangmi speak the Thangmi language. Many of the community members have taken to speaking Nepali, the national language taught in schools and spread through the media, and community elders are dying without passing on their knowledge.

Despite Turin’s enthusiasm for his subject, he is baffled by many linguists’ refusal to engage in the issue he is working on. “Of the 6,500 languages spoken on Earth, many do not have written traditions and many of these spoken forms are endangered,” he says. “There are more linguists in universities around the world than there are spoken languages—but most of them aren’t working on this issue. To me it’s amazing that in this day and age, we still have an entirely incomplete image of the world’s linguistic diversity. People do PhDs on the apostrophe in French, yet we still don’t know how many languages are spoken.”

“When a language becomes endangered, so too does a cultural world view. We want to engage with indigenous people to document their myths and folklore, which can be harder to find funding for if you are based outside Western universities.”

Yet, despite the struggles facing initiatives such as the World Oral Literature Project, there are historical examples that point to the possibility that language restoration is no mere academic pipe dream. The revival of a modern form of Hebrew in the 19th century is often cited as one of the best proofs that languages long dead, belonging to small communities, can be resurrected and embraced by a large number of people. By the 20th century, Hebrew was well on its way to becoming the main language of the Jewish population of both Ottoman and British Palestine. It is now spoken by more than seven million people in Israel.

Yet, despite the difficulties these communities face in saving their languages, Dr Turin believes that the fate of the world’s endangered languages is not sealed, and globalisation is not necessarily the nefarious perpetrator of evil it is often presented to be. “I call it the globalisation paradox: on the one hand globalisation and rapid socio-economic change are the things that are eroding and challenging diversity But on the other, globalisation is providing us with new and very exciting tools and facilities to get to places to document those things that globalisation is eroding. Also, the communities at the coal-face of change are excited by what globalisation has to offer.”

In the meantime, the race is on to collect and protect as many of the languages as possible, so that the Rai Shaman in eastern Nepal and those in the generations that follow him can continue their traditions and have a sense of identity. And it certainly is a race: Turin knows his project’s limits and believes it inevitable that a large number of those languages will disappear. “We have to be wholly realistic. A project like ours is in no position, and was not designed, to keep languages alive. The only people who can help languages survive are the people in those communities themselves. They need to be reminded that it’s good to speak their own language and I think we can help them do that—becoming modem doesn’t mean you have to lose your language.”

Questions 27-31
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-J, below. Write the correct letter, A-J, in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.

Of the world’s 6,500 living languages, about half of them are expected to be extinct. Most of the world’s languages are spoken by a (27)…………………of people. However, Professor Turin set up a project WOLP to prevent (28)……………….of the languages. The project provides the community with (29)………………….to enable people to record their endangered languages. The oral tradition has great cultural (30)……………….. An important (31)………………..between languages spoken by few people and languages with celebrated written documents existed in many communities.

A similarity
B significance
C funding
D minority
E education
F difference
G education
H diversity
I majority
J disappearance

Questions 32-35
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 32-35 on you 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

32. Turin argued that anthropologists and linguists usually think carefully before selecting an area to research.
33. Turin concluded that the Thangmi language had few similarities with other languages.
34. Turin has written that 1000-page document was inappropriate for Thangmi community;
35. Some Nepalese schools lack resources to devote to language teaching.

Questions 36-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.

36. Why does Turin say people do PhDs on the apostrophe in French?
A He believes that researchers have limited role in the research of languages.
B He compares the methods of research into languages.
C He thinks research should result in a diverse cultural outlook.
D He holds that research into French should focus on more general aspects.

37. What is discussed in the ninth paragraph?
A Forces driving people to believe endangered languages can survive.
B The community where people distrust language revival.
C The methods of research that have improved language restoration.
D Initiatives the World Oral Literature Project is bringing to Israel.

38. How is the WOLP’s prospect?
A It would not raise enough funds to achieve its aims.
B It will help keep languages alive.
C It will be embraced by a large number of people.
D It has chance to succeed to protect the engendered languages.

39. What is Turin’s main point of globalisation?
A Globalisation is the main reason for endangered language.
B Globalisation has both advantages and disadvantages.
C We should have a more critical view of globalisation.
D We should foremost protect our identity in face of globalisation.

40. What does Turin suggest that community people should do?
A Learn other languages.
B Only have a sense of identity.
C Keep up with the modem society without losing their language.
D Join the race to protect as many languages as possible but be realistic.

The “Extinct” Grass in Britain

A The British grass interrupted brome was said to be extinct, just like the Dodo. Called interrupted brome because of its gappy seed-head, this unprepossessing grass was found nowhere else in the world, Gardening experts from the Victorian lira were first to record it. In the early 20th century, it grew far and wide across southern England. But it quickly vanished and by 1972 was nowhere to be found. Even the seeds stored at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden as an insurance policy were dead, having been mistakenly kept at room temperature. Fans of the glass were devastated.

B However, reports of its decline were not entirely correct. Interrupted brome has enjoyed a revival, one that’s not due to science. Because of the work of one gardening enthusiast, interrupted brome is thriving as a pot plant. The relaunching into the wild of Britain’s almost extinct plant has excited conservationists everywhere.

C Originally, Philip Smith didn’t know that he had the very unusual grass at his own home. When he heard about the grass becoming extinct, he wanted to do something surprising. He attended a meeting of the British Botanical Society in Manchester in 1979, and seized His opporlunity. He said that it was so disappointing to hear about the demise of the interrupted brome. “What a pity we didn’t research it further!” he added. Then. all of a sudden he displayed his pots with so called “extinct grass” lot all to see.

D Smith had kept the seeds from the last stronghold of the grass, Pamisford in 1963. It was then when the grass stalled to disappear from the wild. Smith cultivated the grass, year after year. Ultimately, it was his curiosity in the plant that saved it. not scientific or technological projects that

E For now, the bromes future is guaranteed. The seeds front Smith’s plants have beet, securely stored in the cutting edge facilities of Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst Place in Sussex. And living plants thrive at the botanic gardens at Kew, Edinburgh and Cambridge. This year, seeds are also saved at sites all across the country and the grass now nourishes at several public gardens too.

F The grass will now be reintroduced to the British countryside. As a part of the Species Recovery Project, the organisation English Nature will re-introduce interrupted brome into the agricultural landscape, provided willing farmers are found. Alas, the grass is neither beautiful not practical. it is undoubtedly a weed, a weed that nobody cares for these days. The brome wax probably never widespread enough to annoy farmers and today, no one would appreciate its productivity or nutritious qualities. As a grass, it leaves a lot to be desired by agriculturalists.

G Smith’s research has attempted to answer the question of where the grass came from. His research points to mutations from other weedy grasses as the most likely source. So close is the relationship that interrupted brome was originally deemed to be a mere variety of soil brome by the great Victorian taxonomist Professor Hackel. A botanist from the 19th century, Druce. had taken notes on the grass and convinced his peers that the grass deserved its own status as a species. Despite Druce growing up in poverty and his self-taught profession, he became the leading botanist of his time.

H Where the grass came from may be clear, but the timing of its birth may be tougher to find out. A clue lies in its penchant for growing as a weed in fields shared with a fodder crop, in particular nitrogen-fixing legumes such as sainfoin, lucerne or clover. According to agricultural historian Joan Thirsk. the humble sainfoin and its company were first noticed in Britain in the early 17th century. Seeds brought in from the Continent were sown in pastures to feed horses and other livestock. However, back then, only a few enthusiastic gentlemen were willing to use the new crops for their prized horses.

I Not before too long though, the need to feed the parliamentary armies in Scotland, England and behind was more pressing than ever. farmers were forced to produce more bread, cheese and beer. And by 1650 the legumes were increasingly introduced into arable rotations, to serve as green nature to boost grain yields. A bestseller of its day, Nathaniel Fiennes’s Sainfoin Improved, published in 1671, helped to spread the word. With the advent of sainfoin, clover and lucerne. Britain’s very own rogue grass had suddenly at rivet.

J Although the credit for the discovery of interrupted brome goes to a Miss A. M. Barnard, who collected the first specimens at Odsey, Bedfordshire, in 1849, the grass had probably lurked undetected in the English countryside for at least a hundred years. Smith thinks the plant- the world’s version of the Dodo probably evolved in the late 17th or early 18th century, once sainfoin became established. Due mainly to the development of the motor car and subsequent decline of fodder crops for horses, the brome declined rapidly over the 20th century. Today, sainfoin has almost disappeared from the countryside, though occasionally its colourful flowers are spotted in lowland nature reserves. More recently artificial fertilizers have made legume rotations unnecessary.

K The close relationship with out-of-fashion crops spells trouble for those seeking to re-establish interrupted brome in today’s countryside. Much like the once common arable weeds, such as the corncockle, its seeds cannot survive long in the soil. Each spring, the brome relied on farmers to resow its seeds; in the days before weed killers and advanced seed sieves, an ample supply would have contaminated supplies of crop seed. However fragile seeds are not the brome’s only problem: this species is also unwilling to release its seeds as they ripen. According to Smith. The grass will struggle to survive even in optimal conditions. It would be very difficult to thrive amongst its more resilient competitors found in today’s improved agricultural landscape

L Nonetheless, interrupted brome’s reluctance to thrive independently may have some benefits. Any farmer willing to foster this unique contribution to the world’s flora can rest assured that the grass will never become an invasive pest. Restoring interrupted brome to its rightful home could bring other benefits too, particularly if this strange species is granted recognition as a national treasure. Thanks to British farmers, interrupted brome was given the chance to evolve in the first place. Conservationists would like to see the grass grow once again in its natural habitat and perhaps, one day, seeing the grass become a badge of honour for a new generation of environmentally conscious farmers.

Questions 1-8
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 1-8 on you 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

1. The name of interrupted brome came from the unprepossessing grass disappeared from places in the world for a period.
2. Interrupted brome seeds cannot sprout because they were kept accidentally at unsuitable temperature.
3. Philip Smith works at University of Manchester.
4. Kew Botanic Gardens will operate English Nature.
5. Interrupted brome grew unwantedly at the sides of sainfoin.
6. Legumes were used for feeding livestock and enriching the soil.
7. The spread of seeds of interrupted brome depends on the harvesting of the farmers.
8. Only the weed killers can stop interrupted brome from becoming an invasive pest.

Questions 9-13
Look at the following opinions or deeds (Questions 9-13) and the list of people below. Match each opinion or deed with the correct person, A-F.

9. identified interrupted brome as another species of brome.
10. convinced others about the status of interrupted brome in the botanic world.
11. said that sainfoin was first found more than 300 years ago.
12. helped farmers know that sainfoin is useful for enriching the soil.
13. collected the first sample of interrupted brome.

A A. M. Barnard
B Philip Smith
C George Claridge Druce
D Joan Thirsk
E Professor Hackel
F Nathaniel Fiennes

Keep the Water Away

A Last winter’s floods on the rivers of central Europe were among the worst since the Middle Ages, and as winter storms return, the spectre of floods is returning too. Just weeks ago, the river Rhone in south-east France burst its banks, driving 15,000 people from their homes, and worse could be on the way. Traditionally, river engineers have gone for Plan A: get rid of the water fast, draining it off the land and down to the sea in tall-sided rivers re-engineered as high-performance drains. But however big they dug city drains, however wide and straight they made the rivers, and however high they built the banks, the floods kept coming back to taunt them, from the Mississippi to the Danube. Arid when the floods came, they seemed to be worse than ever. No wonder engineers are turning to Plan B: sap the water’s destructive strength by dispersing it into fields, forgotten lakes, flood plains and aquifers.

B Back in the days when rivers took a more tortuous path to the sea, flood waters lost impetus and volume while meandering across flood plains and idling through wetlands and inland deltas. But today the water tends to have an unimpeded journey to the sea. And this means that when it rains in the uplands, the water comes down all at once. Worse, whenever we close off more flood plains, the river’s flow farther downstream becomes more violent and uncontrollable. Dykes are only as good as their weakest link—-and the water will unerringly find it. By trying to turn the complex hydrology of rivers into the simple mechanics of a water pipe, engineers have often created danger where they promised safety, and intensified the floods they meant to end. Take the Rhine, Europe’s most engineered river. For two centuries, German engineers have erased its backwaters and cut it off from its flood plain.

C Today, the river has lost 7 percent of its original length and runs up to a third faster. When it rains hard in the Alps, the peak flows from several tributaries coincide in the main river, where once they arrived separately. And with four-fifths of the lower Rhine’s flood plain barricaded off, the waters rise ever higher. The result is more frequent flooding that does ever-greater damage to the homes, offices and roads that sit on the flood plain. Much the same has happened in the US on the mighty Mississippi, which drains the world’s second largest river catchment into the Gulf of Mexico.

D The European Union is trying to improve rain forecasts and more accurately model how intense rains swell rivers. That may help cities prepare, but it won’t stop the floods. To do that, say hydrologists, you need a new approach to engineering not just rivers, but the whole landscape. The UK’s Environment Agency -which has been granted an extra £150 million a year to spend in the wake of floods in 2000 that cost the country £1 billion- puts it like this: “The focus is now on working with the forces of nature. Towering concrete walks are out, and new wetlands : are in.” To help keep London’s feet dry, the agency is breaking the Thames’s banks upstream and reflooding 10 square kilometres of ancient flood plain at Otmoor outside Oxford. Nearer to London it has spent £100 million creating new wetlands and a relief channel across 16 kilometres of flood plain to protect the town of Maidenhead, as well as the ancient playing fields of Eton College. And near the south coast, the agency is digging out channels to reconnect old meanders on the river Cuckmere in East Sussex that were cut off by flood banks 150 years ago.

E The same is taking place on a much grander scale in Austria, in one of Europe’s largest river restorations to date. Engineers are regenerating flood plains along 60 kilometres of the river Drava as it exits the Alps. They are also widening the river bed and channelling it back into abandoned meanders, oxbow lakes and backwaters overhung with willows. The engineers calculate that the restored flood plain can now store up to 10 million cubic metres of flood waters and slow storm surges coming out of the Alps by more than an hour, protecting towns as far downstream as Slovenia and Croatia.

F “Rivers have to be allowed to take more space. They have to be turned from flood-chutes into flood-foilers,” says Nienhuis. And the Dutch, for whom preventing floods is a matter of survival, have gone furthest. A nation built largely on drained marshes and seabed had the fright of its life in 1993 when the Rhine almost overwhelmed it. The same happened again in 1995, when a quarter of a million people were evacuated from the Netherlands. But a new breed of “soft engineers” wants our cities to become porous, and Berlin is their shining example. Since reunification, the city’s massive redevelopment has been governed by tough new rules to prevent its drains becoming overloaded after heavy rains. Harald Kraft, an architect working in the city, says: “We now see rainwater as a resource to be kept rather than got rid of at great cost.” A good illustration is the giant Potsdamer Platz, a huge new commercial redevelopment by Daimler Chrysler in the heart of the city.

G Los Angeles has spent billions of dollars digging huge drains and concreting river beds to carry away the water from occasional intense storms. The latest plan is to spend a cool $280 million raising the concrete walls on the Los Angeles river by another 2 metres. Yet many communities still flood regularly. Meanwhile this desert city is shipping in water from hundreds of kilometres away in northern California and from the Colorado river in Arizona to fill its taps and swimming pools, and irrigate its green spaces. It all sounds like bad planning. “In LA we receive half the water we need in rainfall, and we throw it away. Then we spend hundreds of millions to import water,” says Andy Lipkis, an LA environmentalist, along with citizen groups like Friends of the Los Angeles River and Unpaved LA, want to beat the urban flood hazard and fill the taps by holding onto the city’s flood water. And it’s not just a pipe dream. The authorities this year launched a $100 million scheme to road-test the porous city in one flood-hit community in Sun Valley. The plan is to catch the rain that falls on thousands of driveways, parking lots and rooftops in the valley. Trees will soak up water from parking lots. Homes and public buildings will capture roof water to irrigate gardens and parks. And road drains will empty into old gravel pits and other leaky places that should recharge the city’s underground water reserves. Result: less flooding and more water for the city. Plan B says every city should be porous, every river should have room to flood naturally and every coastline should be left to build its own defences. It sounds expensive and utopian, until you realise how much we spend trying to drain cities and protect our watery margins -and how bad we are at it.

Questions 14-19
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G. Which paragraph contains the following information?

14. a new approach carried out in the UK
15. the reason why twisty path and dykes failed
16. illustration of an alternative plan in LA which seems much unrealistic
17. traditional way of tackling flood
18. efforts made in Netherlands and Germany
19. one project on a river that benefits three nations

Questions 20-23
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 20-23 on you 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

20. In the ancient times, the people in Europe made their efforts to improve the river banks, so the flood was becoming less severe than before.
21. Flood makes river shorter than it used to be, which means faster speed and more damage to the constructions on flood plain.
22. The new approach in the UK is better than that in Austria.
23. At least 300,000 people left from Netherlands in 1995.

Questions 24-26
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

UK’s Environment Agency carried out one innovative approach: a wetland is generated not far from the city of (24)……………………………to protect it from flooding, (25)…………………………..suggested that cities should be porous, and Berlin set a good example.

Another city devastated by heavy storms casually is (26)……………………….though government pours billions of dollars each year in order to solve the problem.

What Do Babies Know?

As Daniel Haworth is settled into a high chair and wheeled behind a black screen, a sudden look of worry furrows his 9-month-old brow. His dark blue eyes dart left and right in search of the familiar reassurance of his mother’s face. She calls his name and makes soothing noises, but Daniel senses something unusual is happening. He sucks his fingers for comfort, but, finding no solace, his month crumples, his body stiffens, and he lets rip an almighty shriek of distress. This is the usual expression when babies are left alone or abandoned. Mom picks him up, reassures him, and two minutes later, a chortling and alert Daniel returns to the darkened booth behind the screen and submits himself to baby lab, a unit set up in 2005 at the University of Manchester in northwest England to investigate how babies think.

Watching infants piece life together, seeing their senses, emotions and motor skills take shape, is a source of mystery and endless fascination—at least to parents and developmental psychologists. We can decode their signals of distress or read a million messages into their first smile. But how much do we really know about what’s going on behind those wide, innocent eyes? How much of their understanding of and response to the world comes preloaded at birth? How much is built from scratch by experience? Such are the questions being explored at baby lab. Though the facility is just 18 months old and has tested only 100 infants, it’s already challenging current thinking on what babies know and how they come to know it.

Daniel is now engrossed in watching video clips of a red toy train on a circular track. The train disappears into a tunnel and emerges on the other side. A hidden device above the screen is tracking Daniel’s eyes as they follow the train and measuring the diametre of his pupils 50 times a second. As the child gets bored—or “habituated”, as psychologists call the process— his attention level steadily drops. But it picks up a little whenever some novelty is introduced. The train might be green, or it might be blue. And sometimes an impossible thing happens— the train goes into the tunnel one color and comes out another.

Variations of experiments like this one, examining infant attention, have been a standard tool of developmental psychology ever since the Swiss pioneer of the field, Jean Piaget, started experimenting on his children in the 1920s. Piaget’s work led him to conclude that infants younger than 9 months have no innate knowledge of how the world works or any sense of “object permanence” (that people and things still exist even when they’re not seen). Instead, babies must gradually construct this knowledge from experience. Piaget’s “constructivist” theories were massively influential on postwar educators and psychologist, but over the past 20 years or so they have been largely set aside by a new generation of “nativist” psychologists and cognitive scientists whose more sophisticated experiments led them to theorise that infants arrive already equipped with some knowledge of the physical world and even rudimentary programming for math and language. Baby lab director Sylvain Sirois has been putting these smart-baby theories through a rigorous set of tests. His conclusions so far tend to be more Piagetian: “Babies,” he says, “know nothing.”

What Sirois and his postgraduate assistant Lain Jackson are challenging is the interpretation of a variety of classic experiments begun in the mid-1980s in which babies were shown physical events that appeared to violate such basic concepts as gravity, solidity and contiguity. In one such experiment, by University of Illinois psychologist Renee Baillargeon, a hinged wooden panel appeared to pass right through a box. Baillargeon and M.I.T’s Elizabeth Spelke found that babies as young as 3 1/2 months would reliably look longer at the impossible event than at the normal one. Their conclusion: babies have enough built-in knowledge to recognise that something is wrong.

Sirois does not take issue with the way these experiments were conducted. “The methods are correct and replicable,” he says, “it’s the interpretation that’s the problem.” In a critical review to be published in the forthcoming issue of the European Journal of Developmental Psychology, he and Jackson pour cold water over recent experiments that claim to have observed innate or precocious social cognition skills in infants. His own experiments indicate that a baby’s fascination with physically impossible events merely reflects a response to stimuli that are novel. Data from the eye tracker and the measurement of the pupils (which widen in response to arousal or interest) show that impossible events involving familiar objects are no more interesting than possible events involving novel objects. In other words, when Daniel had seen the red train come out of the tunnel green a few times, he gets as bored as when it stays the same color. The mistake of previous research, says Sirois, has been to leap to the conclusion that infants can understand the concept of impossibility from the mere fact that they are able to perceive some novelty in it. “The real explanation is boring,” he says.

So how do babies bridge the gap between knowing squat and drawing triangles—a task Daniel’s sister Lois, 2 1/2, is happily tackling as she waits for her brother? “Babies have to learn everything, but as Piaget was saying, they start with a few primitive reflexes that get things going,” said Sirois. For example, hardwired in the brain is an instinct that draws a baby’s eyes to a human face. From brain imaging studies we also know that the brain has some sort of visual buffer that continues to represent objects after they have been removed—a lingering perception rather than conceptual understanding. So when babies encounter novel or unexpected events, Sirois explains, “there’s a mismatch between the buffer and the information they’re getting at that moment. And what you do when you’ve got a mismatch is you try to clear the buffer. And that takes attention.” So learning, says Sirois, is essentially the laborious business of resolving mismatches. “The thing is, you can do a lot of it with this wet sticky thing called a brain. It’s a fantastic, statistical-learning machine”. Daniel, exams ended, picks up a plastic tiger and, chewing thoughtfully upon its heat, smiles as if to agree.

Questions 27-32
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 27-32 on you 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

27. Baby’s behavior after being abandoned is not surprising.
28. Parents are over-estimating what babies know.
29. Only 100 experiments have been done but can prove the theories about what we know.
30. Piaget’s theory was rejected by parents in 1920s.
31. Sylvain Sirois’s conclusion on infant’s cognition is similar to Piaget’s.
32. Sylvain Sirois found serious flaws in the experimental designs by Baillargeon and Elizabeth Spelke.

Questions 33-37
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-E, below. Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 33-37 on your answer sheet.

33. Jean Piaget thinks infants younger than 9 months won’t know something existing
34. Jean Piaget thinks babies only get the knowledge
35. Some cognitive scientists think babies have the mechanism to learn a language
36. Sylvain Sirois thinks that babies can reflect a response to stimuli that are novel
37. Sylvain Sirois thinks babies’ attention level will drop

A before they are born.
B before they learn from experience.
C when they had seen the same thing for a while.
D when facing the possible and impossible events.
E when the previous things appear again in the lives.

Questions 38-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet.

38. What can we know about Daniel in the third paragraph?
A Daniel’s attention level rose when he saw a blue train.
B Kid’s attention fell when he was accustomed to the changes.
C Child’s brain activity was monitored by a special equipment.
D Size of the train changed when it came out of the tunnel.

39. What can we know from the writer in the fourth paragraph?
A The theories about what baby knows changed over time.
B Why the experiments that had been done before were rejected.
C Infants have the innate knowledge to know the external environment.
D Piaget’s “constructivist” theories were massively influential on parents.

40. What can we know from the argument of the experiment about the baby in the sixth paragraph?
A Infants are attracted by various colours of the trains all the time.
B Sylvain Sirois accuses misleading approaches of current experiments.
C Sylvain Sirois indicates that only impossible events make children interested.
D Sylvain Sirois suggests that novel things attract baby’s attention.

Radiocarbon Dating – The Profile of Nancy Athfield

Have you ever picked up a small stone off the ground and wondered how old it was? Chances are, that stone has been around many more years than your own lifetime. Many scientists share this curiosity about the age of inanimate objects like rocks, fossils and precious stones. Knowing how old an object is can provide valuable information about our prehistoric past. In most societies, human beings have kept track of history through writing. However, scientists are still curious about the world before writing, or even the world before humans. Studying the age of objects is our best way to piece together histories of our pre-historic past. One such method of finding the age of an object is called radiocarbon dating. This method can find the age of any object based on the kind of particles and atoms that are found inside of the object. Depending on what elements the object is composed of, radiocarbon can be a reliable way to find an object’s age. One famous specialist in this method is the researcher Nancy Athfield. Athfield studied the ancient remains found in the country of Cambodia. Many prehistoric remains were discovered by the local people of Cambodia. These objects were thought to belong to some of the original groups of humans that first came to the country of Cambodia. The remains had never been scientifically studied, so Nancy was greatly intrigued by the opportunity to use modern methods to discover the true age of these ancient objects.

Athfield had this unique opportunity because her team, comprised of scientists and filmmakers, were in Cambodia working on a documentary. The team was trying to discover evidence to prove a controversial claim in history: that Cambodia was the resting place for the famous royal family of Angkor. At that time, written records and historic accounts conflicted on the true resting place. Many people across the world disagreed over where the final resting place was. For the first time, Athfield and her team had a chance to use radiocarbon dating to find new evidence. They had a chance to solve the historic mystery that many had been arguing over for years.

Athfield and her team conducted radiocarbon dating of many of the ancient objects found in the historic site of Angkor Wat. Nancy found the history of Angkor went back to as early as 1620. According to historic records, the remains of the Angkor royal family were much younger than that, so this evidence cast a lot of doubt as to the status of the ancient remains. The lesearch ultimately raised more questions. If the remains were not of the royal family, then whose remains were being kept in the ancient site? Athfield’s team left Cambodia with more questions unanswered. Since Athfield’s team studied the remains, new remains have been unearthed at the ancient site of Angkor Wat, so it is possible that these new remains could be the true remains of the royal family. Nancy wished to come back to continue her research one day.

In her early years, the career of Athfield was very unconventional. She didn’t start her career as a scientist. At the beginning, she would take any kind of job to pay her bills. Most of them were low-paying jobs or brief Community service opportunities. She worked often but didn’t know what path she would ultimately take. But eventually, her friend suggested that Athfield invest in getting a degree. The friend recommended that Athfield attend a nearby university. Though doubtful of her own qualifications, she applied and was eventually accepted by the school. It was there that she met Willard Libby, the inventor of radiocarbon dating. She took his class and soon had the opportunity to complete hands-on research. She soon realised that science was her passion. After graduation, she quickly found a job in a research institution.

After college, Athfield’s career in science blossomed. She eventually married, and her husband landed a job at the prestigious organisation GNN. Athfield joined her husband in the same organisation, and she became a lab manager in the institution. She earned her PhD in scientific research, and completed her studies on a kind of rat when it first appeared in New Zealand. There, she created original research and found many flaws in the methods being used in New Zealand laboratories. Her research showed that the subject’s diet led to the fault in the earlier research. She was seen as an expert by her peers in New Zealand, and her opinion and expertise were widely respected. She had come a long way from her old days of working odd jobs. It seemed that Athfield’s career was finally taking off.

But Athfield’s interest in scientific laboratories wasn’t her only interest. She didn’t settle down in New Zealand. Instead, she expanded her areas of expertise. Athfield eventually joined the field of Anthropology, the study of human societies, and became a well-qualified archaeologist. It was during her blossoming career as an archaeologist that Athfield became involved with the famous Cambodia project. Even as the filmmakers ran out of funding and left Cambodia, Athfield continued to stay and continue her research.

In 2003, the film was finished in uncertain conclusions, but Nancy continued her research on the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat. This research was not always easy. Her research was often delayed by lack of funding, and government paperwork. Despite her struggles, she committed to finishing her research. Finally, she made a breakthrough. Using radiocarbon dating, Athfield completed a database for the materials found in Cambodia. As a newcomer to Cambodia, she lacked a complete knowledge of Cambodian geology, which made this feat even more difficult. Through steady determination and ingenuity, Athfield finally completed the database. Though many did not believe she could finish, her research now remains an influential and tremendous contribution to geological sciences in Cambodia. In the future, radiocarbon dating continues to be a valuable research skill. Athfield will be remembered as one of the first to bring this scientific method to the study of the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat.

Questions 1-7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 1-7 on you 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

1. Nancy Athfield first discovered the ancient remains in Cambodia.
2. The remains found in the Cambodia was in good condition.
3. Nancy took some time off from her regular work to do research in Cambodia.
4. The Cambodia government asked Nancy to radiocarbon the remains.
5. The filmmakers aimed to find out how the Angkor was rebuilt.
6. Nancy initially doubted whether the royal family was hidden in Cambodia.
7. Nancy disproved the possibility that the remains belonged to the Angkor royal family.

Questions 8-13
Complete the flow-chart below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.

The Career of Nancy Athfield

• During her mid-teens, Nancy wasn’t expected to attend (8)……………………
• Willard Billy later helped Nancy to find that she was interested in science.
• Her PhD degree was researching when a kind of (9)…………………. first went into New Zealand.
• Her research showed that the subject’s (10)……………………..accounted for the fault in the earlier research.
• She was a professional (11)………………………before she went back to Cambodia in 2003.
• When she returned Cambodia, the lack of (12)………………………. was a barrier for her research.
• Then she compiled the (13)……………………….of the Cambodia radiocarbon dating of the ancients.
• After that, the lack of a detailed map of the geology of Cambodia became a hindrance of her research.

Stress of Workplace

A How busy is too busy? For some it means having to miss the occasional long lunch; for others it means missing lunch altogether. For a few, it is hot being able to take a “sickie” once a month. Then there is a group of people for whom working every evening and weekend is normal, and franticness is the tempo of their lives. For most senior executives, workloads swing between extremely busy and frenzied. The vice-president of the management consultancy AT Kearney and its head of telecommunications for the Asia-Pacific region, Neil Plumridge, says his work weeks vary from a “manageable” 45 hours to 80 hours, but average 60 hours.

B Three warning signs alert Plumridge about his workload: sleep, scheduling and family. He knows he has too much on when he gets less than six hours of sleep for three consecutive nights; when he is constantly having to reschedule appointments; “and the third one is on the family side”, says Plumridge, the father of a three-year-old daughter, and expecting a second child in October. “If I happen to miss a birthday or anniversary, I know things are out of control.” Being “too busy” is highly subjective. But for any individual, the perception of being too busy over a prolonged period can start showing up as stress: disturbed sleep, and declining mental and physical health. National workers’ compensation figures show stress causes the most lost time of any workplace injury. Employees suffering stress are off work an average of 16.6 weeks. The effects of stress are also expensive. Comcare, the Federal Government insurer, reports that in 2003-04, claims for psychological injury accounted for 7% of claims but almost 27% of claim costs. Experts say the key to dealing with stress is not to focus on relief—a game of golf or a massage-—but to reassess workloads. Neil Plumridge says he makes it a priority to work out what has to change; that might mean allocating extra resources to a job, allowing more time or changing expectations. The decision may take several days. He also relies on the advice of colleagues, saying his peers coach each other with business problems. “Just a fresh pair of eyes over an issue can help,” he says.

C Executive stress is not confined to big organisations. Vanessa Stoykov has been running her own advertising and public relations business for seven years, specialising in work for financial and professional services firms. Evolution Media has grown so fast that it debuted on the BRW Fast 100 list of fastest-growing small enterprises last year—just after Stoykov had her first child. Stoykov thrives on the mental stimulation of running her own business. “Like everyone, I have the occasional day when I think my head’s going to blow off,” she says. Because of the growth phase the business is in, Stoykov has to concentrate on short-term stress relief—weekends in the mountains, the occasional “mental health” day—rather than delegating more work. She says: “We’re hiring more people, but you need to train them, teach them about the culture and the clients, so it’s actually more work rather than less.”

D Identify the causes: Jan Eisner, Melbourne psychologist who specialises in executive coaching, says thriving on a demanding workload is typical of senior executives and other high-potential business adrenalin periods followed by quieter patches, while others thrive under sustained pressure. “We could take urine and blood hormonal measures and pass a judgement of whether someone’s physiologically stressed or not,” she says. “But that’s not going to give us an indicator of what their experience of stress is, and what the emotional and cognitive impacts of stress are going to be.”

E Eisner’s practice is informed by a movement known as positive psychology, a school of thought that argues “positive” experiences—feeling engaged, challenged, and that one is making a contribution to something meaningful—do not balance out negative ones such as stress; instead, they help people increase their resilience over time. Good stress, or positive experiences of being challenged and rewarded, is thus cumulative in the same way as bad stress. Eisner says many of the senior business people she coaches are relying more on regulating bad stress through methods such as meditation and yoga. She points to research showing that meditation can alter the biochemistry of the brain and actually help people “retrain” the way their brains and bodies react to stress. “Meditation and yoga enable you to shift the way that your brain reacts, so if you get proficient at it you’re in control.”

F Recent research, such as last year’s study of public servants by the British epidemiologist Sir Michael Marmot, shows the most important predictor of stress is the level of job control a person has. This debunks the theory that stress is the prerogative of high-achieving executives with type-A personalities and crazy working hours. Instead, Marmot’s and other research reveals they have the best kind of job: one that combines high demands (challenging work) with high control (autonomy). “The worst jobs are those that combine high demands and low control. People with demanding jobs but little autonomy have up to four times the probability of depression and more than double the risk of heart disease,” LaMontagne says. “Those two alone count for an enormous part of chronic diseases, and they represent a potentially preventable part.” Overseas, particularly in Europe, such research is leading companies to redesign organisational practices to increase employees’ autonomy, cutting absenteeism and lifting productivity.

G The Australian vice-president of AT Kearney, Neil Plumridge says, “Often stress is caused by our setting unrealistic expectations of ourselves. I’ll promise a client I’ll do something tomorrow, and then [promise] another client the same thing, when I really know it’s not going to happen. I’ve put stress on myself when I could have said to the clients: Why don’t I give that to you in 48 hours?’ The client doesn’t care.” Overcommitting is something people experience as an individual problem. We explain it as the result of procrastination or Parkinson’s law: that work expands to fdl the time available. New research indicates that people may be hard-wired to do it.

H A study in the February issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology shows that people always believe they will be less busy in the future than now. This is a misapprehension, according to the authors of the report, Professor Gal Zauberman, of the University of North Carolina, and Professor John Lynch, of Duke University. “On average, an individual will be just as busy two weeks or a month from now as he or she is today. But that is not how it appears to be in everyday life,” they wrote. “People often make commitments long in advance that they would never make if the same commitments required immediate action. That is, they discount future time investments relatively steeply.” Why do we perceive a greater “surplus” of time in the future than in the present? The researchers suggest that people underestimate completion times for tasks stretching into the future, and that they are bad at imagining future competition for their time.

Questions 14-18
Look at the following statements (Questions 14-18) and the list of people below. Match each statement with the correct person, A-D.

Write the correct letter, A-D, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.

14. Work stress usually happens in the high level of a business.
15. More people involved would be beneficial for stress relief.
16. Temporary holiday sometimes doesn’t mean less work.
17. Stress leads to a wrong direction when trying to satisfy customers.
18. It is commonly accepted that stress at present is more severe than in the future.

List of People
A Jan Eisner
B Vanessa Stoykov
C Gal Zauberman
D Neil Plumridge

Questions 19-21
Choose the correct letter, A,B,C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 19-21 on your answer sheet.

19. Which of the following workplace stress is NOT mentioned according to Plumridge in the following options?
A not enough time spent on family
B unable to concentrate on work
C inadequate time of sleep
D alteration of appointment

20. Which of the following solution is NOT mentioned in helping reduce the work pressure according to Plumridge?
A allocate more personnels
B increase more time
C lower expectation
D do sports and massage

21. What is the point of view of Jan Eisner towards work stress?
A Medical test can only reveal part of the data needed to cope with stress
B Index of body samples plays determined role.
C Emotional affection is superior to physical one.
D One well designed solution can release all stress.

Questions 22-26
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

Statistics from National worker’s compensation indicate stress plays the most important role in (22)………………Staffs take about (23)………………………..for absence from work caused by stress. Not just time is our main concern but great expenses generated consequently. An official insurer wrote sometime that about (24)………………………..of all claims were mental issues whereas nearly 27% costs in all claims. Sports such as (25)…………………………as well as (26)……………………….could be a treatment to release stress; However, specialists recommended another practical way out, analyse workloads once again.

Robert Louis Stevenson

A Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer, Robert Louis Stevenson was born at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, on 13 November 1850. It has been more than 100 years since his death. Stevenson was a writer who caused conflicting opinions about his works. On one hand, he was often highly praised for his expert prose and style by many English-language critics. On the other hand, others criticised the religious themes in his works, often misunderstanding Stevenson’s own religious beliefs. Since his death a century before, critics and biographers have disagreed on the legacy of Stevenson’s writing. Two biographers, KF and CP , wrote a biography about Stevenson with a clear focus. They chose not to criticise aspects of Stevenson’s personal life. Instead, they focused on his writing, and gave high praise to his writing style and skill.

The literary pendulum has swung these days. Different critics have different opinions towards Robert Louis Stevenson’s works. Though today, Stevenson is one of the most translated authors in the world, his works have sustained a wide variety of negative criticism throughout his life. It was like a complete reversal of polarity—from highly positive to slightly less positive to clearly negative; after being highly praised as a great writer, he became an example of an author with corrupt ethics and lack of moral. Many literary critics passed his works off as children’s stories or horror stories, and thought to have little social value in an educational setting. Stevenson’s works were often excluded from literature curriculum because of its controversial nature. These debates remain, and many critics still assert that despite his skill, his literary works still lack moral value.

One of the main reasons why Stevenson’s literary works attracted so much criticism was due to the genre of his writing. Stevenson mainly wrote adventure stories, which was part of a popular and entertaining writing fad at the time. Many of us believe adventure stories are exciting, offers engaging characters, action, and mystery but ultimately can’t teach moral principles. The plot points are one-dimensional and rarely offer a deeper moral meaning, instead focusing on exciting and shocking plot twists and thrilling events. His works were even criticised by fellow authors. Though Stevenson’s works have deeply influenced Oscar Wilde, Wilde often joked that Stevenson would have written better works if he wasn’t born in Scotland. Other authors came to Stevenson’s defence, including Galsworthy who claimed that Stevenson is a greater writer than Thomas Hardy.

Despite Wilde’s criticism, Stevenson’s Scottish identity was an integral part of his written works. Although Stevenson’s works were not popular in Scotland when he was alive, many modern Scottish literary critics claim that Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson are the most influential writers in the history of Scotland. While many critics exalt Sir Walter Scott as a literary genius because of his technical ability, others argue that Stevenson deserves the same recognition for his natural ability to capture stories and characters in words. Many of Scott’s works were taken more seriously as literature for their depth due to their tragic themes, but fans of Stevenson praise his unique style of story-telling and capture of human nature. Stevenson’s works, unlike other British authors, captured the unique day to day life of average Scottish people. Many literary critics point to this as a flaw of his works. According to the critics, truly important literature should transcend local culture and stories. However, many critics praise the local taste of his literature. To this day, Stevenson’s works provide valuable insight to life in Scotland during the 19th century.

Despite much debate of Stevenson’s writing topics, his writing was not the only source of attention for critics. Stevenson’s personal life often attracted a lot of attention from his fans and critics alike. Some even argue that his personal life eventually outshone his writing. Stevenson had been plagued with health problems his whole life, and often had to live in much warmer climates than the cold, dreary weather of Scotland in order to recover. So he took his family to a south pacific island Samoa, which was a controversial decision at that time. However, Stevenson did not regret the decision. The sea air and thrill of adventure complimented the themes of his writing, and for a time restored his health. From there, Stevenson gained a love of travelling, and for nearly three years he wandered the eastern and central Pacific. Much of his works reflected this love of travel and adventure that Stevenson experienced in the Pacific islands. It was as a result of this biographical attention that the feeling grew that interest in Stevenson’s life had taken the place of interest in his works. Whether critics focus on his writing subjects, his religious beliefs, or his eccentric lifestyle of travel and adventure, people from the past and present have different opinions about Stevenson as an author. Today, he remains a controversial yet widely popular figure in Western literature.

Questions 27-31
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.

27. Stevenson’s biographers KF and CP
A underestimated the role of family played in Stevenson’s life.
B overestimated the writer’s works in the literature history.
C exaggerated Stevenson’s religious belief in his works.
D elevated Stevenson’s role as a writer.

28. The main point of the second paragraph is
A the public give a more fair criticism to Stevenson’s works.
B recent criticism has been justified.
C the style of Stevenson’s works overweigh his faults in his life.
D Stevenson’s works’ drawback is lack of ethical nature.

29. According to the author, adventure stories
A do not provide plot twists well.
B cannot be used by writers to show moral values.
C are more fashionable art form.
D can be found in other’s works but not in Stevenson’s.

30. What does the author say about Stevenson’s works?
A They describe the life of people in Scotland.
B They are commonly regarded as real literature.
C They were popular during Stevenson’s life.
D They transcend the local culture and stories.

31. The lifestyle of Stevenson
A made his family envy him so much.
B should be responsible for his death.
C gained more attention from the public than his works.
D didn’t well prepare his life in Samoa.

Questions 32-35
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 32-35 on you 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

32. Although Oscar Wilde admired Robert Louis Stevenson very much, he believed Stevenson could have written greater works.
33. Robert Louis Stevenson encouraged Oscar Wilde to start writing at first.
34. Galsworthy thought Hardy is greater writer than Stevenson is.
35. Critics only paid attention to Robert Louis Stevenson’s writing topics.

Questions 36-40
Complete the notes using the list of words, A-I, below. Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.

Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson

A lot of people believe that Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson are the most influential writer in the history of Scotland, but Sir Walter Scott is more proficient in (36)…………………….. while Stevenson has better (37)………………………….Scott’s books illustrate (38)……………………….especially in terms of tragedy, but a lot of readers prefer Stevenson’s (39)……………………What’s more, Stevenson’s understanding of (40)…………………… made his works have the most unique expression of Scottish people.

A natural ability
B romance
C colorful language
D critical acclaim
E humor
F technical control
G storytelling
H depth
I human nature

The Extraordinary Watkin Tench

At the end of 18th century, life for the average British citizen was changing. The population grew as health and industrialization took hold of the country. However, land and resources were limited. Families could not guarantee jobs for all of their children. People who were poor or destitute had little option. To make things worse, the rate of people who turned to crime to make a living increased. In Britain, the prisons were no longer large enough to hold the convicted people of this growing criminal class. Many towns and governments were at a loss as to what to do. However, another phenomenon that was happening in the 18th century was I exploration of other continents. There were many ships looking for crew members who would risk a month-long voyage across a vast ocean. This job was risky and dangerous, so few would willingly choose it. However, with so many citizens without jobs or with criminal convictions, they had little choice. One such member of this new lower class of British citizens was Watkin Tench. Between 1788 and 1868, approximately 161,700 convicts were transported to the Australian colonies of New South Wales, Van Diemen’s land and Western Australia. Tench was one of these unlucky convicts to sign onto a dangerous journey. When his ship set out in 1788, he signed a three years’ service to the First Fleet.

Apart from his years in Australia, people knew little about his life back in Britain. It was said he was born on 6 October 1758 at Chester in the county of Cheshire in England. He came from a decent background. Tench was a son of Fisher Tench, a dancing master who ran a boarding school in the town and Margaritta Tarleton of the Liverpool Tarletons. He grew up around a finer class of British citizens, and his family helped instruct the children of the wealthy in formal dance lessons. Though we don’t know for sure how Tench was educated in this small British town, we do know that he was well educated. His diaries from his travels to Australia are written in excellent English, a skill that not everyone was lucky to possess in the 18th century. Aside from this, we know little of Tench’s beginnings. We don’t know how he ended up convicted of a crime. But after he started his voyage, his life changed dramatically.

During the voyage, which was harsh and took many months, Tench described landscape of different places. While sailing to Australia, Tench saw landscapes that were unfamiliar and new to him. Arriving in Australia, the entire crew was uncertain of what was to come in their new life. When they arrived in Australia, they established a British colony. Governor Philip was vested with complete authority over the inhabitants of the colony. Though still a young man, Philip was enlightened for his age. From stories of other British colonies, Philip learnt that conflict with the original peoples of the land was often a source of strife and difficulties. To avoid this, Philip’s personal intent was to establish harmonious relations with local Aboriginal people. But Philip’s job was even more difficult considering his crew. Other colonies were established with middle-class merchants and craftsmen. His crew were convicts, who had few other skills outside of their criminal histories. Along with making peace with the Aboriginal people, Philip also had to try to reform as well as discipline the convicts of the colony.

From the beginning, Tench stood out as different from the other convicts. During his initial time in Australia, he quickly rose in his rank, and was given extra power and responsibility over the convicted crew members. However, he was also still very different from the upper-class rulers who came to rule over the crew. He showed humanity towards the convicted workers. He didn’t want to treat them as common criminals, but as trained military men. Under Tench’s authority, he released the convicts’ chains which were used to control them during the voyage. Tench also showed mercy towards the Aboriginal people. Governor Philip often pursued violent solutions to conflicts with the Aboriginal peoples. Tench disagreed strongly with this method. At one point, he was unable to follow the order given by the Governor Philip to punish the ten Aboriginals.

When they first arrived, Tench was fearful and contemptuous towards the Aboriginals, because the two cultures did not understand each other. However, gradually he got to know them individually and became close friends with them. Tench knew that the Aboriginal people would not cause them conflict if they looked for a peaceful solution. Though there continued to be conflict and violence, Tench’s efforts helped establish a more peaceful negotiation between the two groups when they settled territory and land-use issues.

Meanwhile, many changes were made to the new colony. The Hawkesbury River was named by Governor Philip in June 1789. Many native bird species to the river were hunted by travelling colonists. The colonists were having a great impact on the land and natural resources. Though the colonists had made a lot of progress in the untamed lands of Australia, there were still limits. The convicts were notoriously ill-informed about Australian geography, as was evident in the attempt by twenty absconders to walk from Sydney to China in 1791, believing: “China might be easily reached, being not more than a hundred miles distant, and separated only by a river.” In reality, miles of ocean separated the two.

Much of Australia was unexplored by the convicts. Even Tench had little understanding of what existed beyond the established lines of their colony. Slowly, but surely, the colonists expanded into the surrounding area. A few days after arrival at Botany Bay, their original location, the fleet moved to the more suitable Port Jackson where a settlement was established at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788. This second location was strange and unfamiliar, and the fleet was on alert for any kind of suspicious behaviors. Though Tench had made friends in Botany Bay with Aboriginal peoples, he could not be sure this new land would be uninhabited. He recalled the first time he stepped into this unfamiliar ground with a boy who helped Tench navigate. In these new lands, he met an old Aboriginal.

Questions 1-6
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 1-6 on you 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

1. There was a great deal of information available about the life of Tench before he arrived in Australia.
2. Tench drew pictures to illustrate different places during the voyage.
3. Other military personnel in New South Wales did not TREAT convicts in the same way as Tench did.
4. Tench’s view towards the Aboriginals remained unchanged during his time in Australia.
5. An Aboriginal gave him gifts of food at the first time they met.
6. The convicts had a good knowledge of Australian geography.

Questions 7-13
Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

7. What could be a concrete proof of Tench’s good education?
8. How many years did Tench sign the contract to the First Fleet?
9. What was used to control convicts during the voyage?
10. Who gave the order to punish the Aboriginals?
11. When did the name of Hawkesbury River come into being?
12. Where did the escaped convicts plan to go?
13. In which place did Tench feel unaccustomed?

Are Artists Liars?

A Shortly before his death, Marlon Brando was working on a series of instructional videos about acting, to he called “Lying for a Iiving”. On the surviving footage, Brando can he seen dispensing gnomic advice on his craft to a group of enthusiastic, if somewhat bemused, Hollywood stars, including Leonardo Di Caprio and Sean Penn. Brando also recruited random people from the Los Angeles street and persuaded them to improvise (the footage is said to include a memorable scene featuring two dwarves and a giant Samoan). “If you can lie, you can act.” Brando told Jod Kaftan, a writer for Rolling Stone and one of the few people to have viewed the footage. “Are you good at lying?” asked Kaftan. “Jesus.” said Brando, “I’m fabulous at it”.

B Brando was not the first person to note that the line between an artist and a liar is a line one. If art is a kind of lying, then lying is a form of art, albeit of a lower order-as Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain have observed. Indeed, lying and artistic storytelling spring from a common neurological root-one that is exposed in the cases of psychiatric patients who suffer from a particular kind of impairment. Both liars and artists refuse to accept the tyranny of reality. Both carefully craft stories that are worthy of belief – a skill requiring intellectual sophistication, emotional sensitivity and physical self-control (liars are writers and performers of their own work). Such parallels are hardly coincidental, as I discovered while researching my book on lying.

C A case study published in 1985 by Antonio Damasio, a neurologist, tells the story of a middle-aged woman with brain damage caused by a series of strokes. She retained cognitive abilities, including coherent speech, but what she actually said was rather unpredictable. Checking her knowledge of contemporary events, Damasio asked her about the Falklands War. In the language of psychiatry, this woman was “confabulating”. Chronic confabulation is a rare type of memory problem that affects a small proportion of brain damaged people. In the literature it is defined as “the production of fabricated, distorted or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention to deceive”. Whereas amnesiacs make errors of omission, there are gaps in their recollections they find impossible to fill – confabulators make errors of commission: they make tilings up. Rather than forgetting, they are inventing. Confabulating patients are nearly always oblivious to their own condition, and will earnestly give absurdly implausible explanations of why they’re in hospital, or talking to a doctor. One patient, asked about his surgical sear, explained that during the Second World War he surprised a teenage girl who shot him three times in the head, killing him, only for surgery to bring him back to life. The same patient, when asked about his family, described how at various times they had died in his arms, or had been killed before his eyes. Others tell yet more fantastical tales, about trips to the moon, fighting alongside Alexander in India or seeing Jesus on the Cross. Confabulators aren’t out to deceive. They engage in what Morris Moseovitch, a neuropsychologist, calls “honest lying”. Uncertain and obscurely distressed by their uncertainty, they are seized by a “compulsion to narrate”: a deep-seated need to shape, order and explain what they do not understand. Chronic confabulators are often highly inventive at the verbal level, jamming together words in nonsensical but suggestive ways: one patient, when asked what happened to Queen Marie Antoinette of France, answered that she had been “suicided” by her family. In a sense, these patients are like novelists, as described by Henry James: people on whom “nothing is wasted”. Unlike writers, however, they have little or no control over their own material.

D The wider significance of this condition is what it tells us about ourselves. Evidently, there is a gushing river of verbal creativity in the normal human mind, from which both artistic invention and lying are drawn. We are born storytellers, spinning, narrative out of our experience and imagination, straining against the leash that keeps us tethered to reality. This is a wonderful thing; it is what gives us out ability to conceive of alternative futures and different worlds. And it helps us to understand our own lives through the entertaining stories of others. But it can lead us into trouble, particularly when we try to persuade others that our inventions are real. Most of the time, as our stories bubble up to consciousness, we exercise our cerebral censors, controlling which stories we tell, and to whom. Yet people lie for all sorts of reasons, including the fact that confabulating can be dangerously fun.

E During a now-famous libel case in 1996, Jonathan Aitken, a former cabinet minister, recounted a tale to illustrate the horrors he endured after a national newspaper tainted his name. The case, which stretched on for more than two years, involved a series of claims made by the Guardian about Aitken’s relationships with Saudi arms dealers, including meetings he allegedly held with them on a trip to Paris while he was a government minister. Whitt amazed many in hindsight was the sheer superfluity of the lies Aitken told during his testimony. Aitken’s case collapsed in June 1997, when the defence finally found indisputable evidence about his Paris trip. Until then, Aitken’s charm, fluency and flair for theatrical displays of sincerity looked as if they might bring him victory, they revealed that not only was Aitken’s daughter not with him that day (when he was indeed doorstepped), but also that the minister had simply got into his car and drove off, with no vehicle in pursuit.

F Of course, unlike Aitken, actors, playwrights and novelists are not literally attempting to deceive us, because the rules are laid out in advance: come to the theatre, or open this book, and we’ll lie to you. Perhaps this is why we fell it necessary to invent art in the first place: as a safe space into which our lies can be corralled, and channeled into something socially useful. Given the universal compulsion to tell stories, art is the best way to refine and enjoy the particularly outlandish or insight till ones. But that is not the whole story. The key way in which artistic “lies” differ from normal lies, and from the “honest lying” of chronic confabulators, is that they have a meaning and resonance beyond their creator. The liar lies on behalf of himself; the artist tells lies on behalf of everyone. If writers have a compulsion to narrate, they compel themselves to find insights about the human condition. Mario Vargas Llosa has written that novels “express a curious truth that can only he expressed in a furtive and veiled fashion, masquerading as what it is not.” Art is a lie whose secret ingredient is truth.

Questions 14-19
Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F. Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below. Write the correct number, i-viii, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

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

List of Headings
i Unsuccessful deceit
ii Biological basis between liars and artists
iii How to lie in an artistic way
iv Confabulations and the exemplifiers
v The distinction between artists and common liars
vi The fine line between liars and artists
vii The definition of confabulation
viii Creativity when people lie

Questions 20-21
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Write the correct letters in boxes 20-21 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO of the following statements about people suffering from confabulation are true?

A They have lost cognitive abilities
B They do not deliberately tell a lie
C They are normally aware of their condition
D They do not have the impetus to explain what they do not understand
E They try to make up stories

Questions 22-23
Choose TWO letters, A-E. Write the correct letters in boxes 22-23 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO of the following statements about playwrights and novelists are true?

A They give more meaning to the stories
B They tell lies for the benefit of themselves
C They have nothing to do with the truth out there
D We can be misled by them if not careful
E We know there are lies in the content

Questions 24-26
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

A (24)……………………accused Jonathan Aitken, a former cabinet minister, who was selling and buying with (25)………………………….Aitken’s case collapsed in June 1997, when the defence finally found indisputable evidence about his Paris trip. He was deemed to have his (26)……………………….They revealed that not only was Aitken’s daughter not with him that day, but also that the minister had simply got into his car and drove off, with no vehicle in pursuit.

Theory or Practice? —What is the point of research carried out by biz schools?

Students go to universities and other academic institutions to prepare for their future. We pay tuition and struggle through classes in the hopes that we can find a fulfilling and exciting career. But the choice of your university has a large influence on your future. How can you know which university will prepare you the best for your future? Like other academic institutions, busi­ness schools are judged by the quality of the research carried out by their faculties. Professors must both teach students and also produce original research in their own field. The quality of this research is assessed by academic publications. At the same time, universities have another responsibility to equip their students for the real world, however that is defined. Most students learning from professors will not go into academics themselves—so how do academics best prepare them for their future careers, whatever that may be? Whether academic research actually produces anything that is useful to the practice of business, or even whether it is its job to do so, are questions that can provoke vigorous arguments on campus.

The debate, which first flared during the 1950s, was reignited in August, when AACSB Interna­tional. the most widely recognised global accrediting agency for business schools, announced it would consider changing the way it evaluates research. The news followed rather damning criti­cism in 2002 from Jeffrey Pfefler. a Stanford professor, and Christina Fong of Washington Uni­versity, which questioned whether business education in its current guise was sustainable. The study found that traditional modes of academia were not adequately preparing students for the kind of careers they faced in current times. The most controversial recommendation in AACSB’s draft report (which was sent round to administrators for their comment) is that the schools should be required to demonstrate the value of their faculties’ research not simply by listing its citations in journals, but by demonstrating the impact it has in the professional world. New qualifiers, such as average incomes, student placement in top firms and business collaborations would now be considered just as important as academic publications.

AACSB justifies its stance by saying that it wants schools and faculty to play to their strengths, whether they be in pedagogy, in the research of practical applications, or in scholarly endeavor. Traditionally, universities operate in a pyramid structure. Everyone enters and stays in an attempt to be successful in their academic field. A psychology professor must publish competi­tive research in the top neuroscience journals. A Cultural Studies professor must send graduate students on new field research expeditions to be taken seriously. This research is the core of a university’s output. And research of any kind is expensive—AACSB points out that business schools in America alone spend more than $320m a year on it. So it seems legitimate to ask for,’what purpose it is undertaken?

If a school chose to specialise in professional outputs rather than academic outputs, it could use such a large sum of money and redirect it into more fruitful programs. For example, if a business school wanted a larger presence of employees at top financial firms, this money may be better spent on a career center which focuses on building the skills of students, rather than paying for more high-level research to be done through the effort of faculty. A change in evaluation could also open the door to inviting more professionals from different fields to teach as adjuncts. Stu­dents could take accredited courses from people who are currently working in their dream field. The AACSB insists that universities answer the question as to why research is the most critical component of traditional education.

On one level, the question is simple to answer. Research in business schools, as anywhere else, is about expanding the boundaries of knowledge; it thrives on answering unasked questions. Surely this pursuit of knowledge is still important to the university system. Our society progresses because we learn how to do things in new ways, a process which depends heavily on research and academics. But one cannot ignore the other obvious practical uses of research publications. Research is also about cementing schools’ and professors’ reputations. Schools gain kudos from their faculties’ record of publication: which journals publish them, and how often. In some cases, such as with government-funded schools in Britain, it can affect how much money they receive. For professors, the mantra is often “publish or perish”. Their careers depend on being seen in the right journals.

But at a certain point, one has to wonder whether this research is being done for the benefit of the university or for the students the university aims to teach. Greater publications will attract greater funding, which will in turn be spent on better publications. Students seeking to enter pro­fessions out of academia find this cycle frustrating, and often see their professors as being part of the “Ivory Tower” of academia, operating in a self-contained community that has little influ­ence on the outside world.

The research is almost universally unread by real-world managers. Part of the trouble is that the journals labour under a similar ethos. They publish more than 20,000 articles each year. Most of the research is highly quantitative, hypothesis-driven and esoteric. As a result, it is almost univer­sally unread by real-world managers. Much of the research criticises other published research. A paper in a 2006 issue of Strategy & Leadership commented that “research is not designed with managers’ needs in mind, nor is it communicated in the journals they read. For the most part, it has become a self-referential closed system irrelevant to corporate performance.” The AACSB demands that this segregation must change for the future of higher education. If students must invest thousands of dollars for an education as part of their career path, the academics which serve the students should be more fully incorporated into the professional world. This means that uni­versities must focus on other strengths outside of research, such as professional networks, tech­nology skills, and connections with top business firms around the world. Though many universi­ties resisted the report, today’s world continues to change. The universities which prepare students for our changing future have little choice but to change with new trends and new standards.

Questions 27-29
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

27. In the second paragraph, the recommendation given by AACSB is
A to focus on listing research paper’s citation only.
B to consider the quantity of academic publications.
C to evaluate how the paper influences the field.
D to maintain the traditional modes of academia.

28. Why does AACSB put forward the recommendation?
A to give full play to the faculties’ advantage.
B to reinforce the play to the pyramid structure of universities.
C to push professors to publish competitive papers.
D to reduce costs of research in universities.

29. Why does the author mention the Journal Strategy & Leadership?
A to characterize research as irrelevant to company performance
B to suggest that managers don’t read research papers.
C to describe students’ expectation for universities.
D to exemplify high-quality research papers.

Questions 30-31
Choose TWO letters, A-E. Write the correct letters in boxes 30-31 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO choices are in line with Jeffrey Pfeffer and Christina Fong’s idea?

A Students should pay less to attend universities
B Business education is not doing their job well
C Professors should not focus on writing papers
D Students are ill-prepared for their career from universities
E Recognized accrediting agency can evaluate research well

Questions 32-36
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 32-36 on you 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

32. The debate about the usefulness of academic research for business practices is a recent one.
33. AACSB’s draft report was not reviewed externally.
34. Business schools in the US spend more than 320 million dollars yearly on research.
35. Many universities pursue professional outputs.
36. Greater publications benefit professors and students as well.

Questions 37-40
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-E, below. Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.

37. Most professors support academic research because
38. Schools support academic research because
39. Our society needs academic research because
40. Universities resisting the AACSB should change because

A it progresses as we learn innovative ways of doing things.
B the trends and standards are changing.
C their jobs depend on it.
D they care about their school rankings and government funds.
E it helps students to go into top business firms.

What the Managers Really Do?

When students graduate and first enter the workforce, the most common choice is to find an entry-level position. This can be a job such as an unpaid internship, an assistant, a secretary, or a junior partner position. Traditionally, we start with simpler jobs and work our way up. Young professionals start out with a plan to become senior partners, associates, or even managers of a workplace. However, these promotions can be few and far between, leaving many young professionals unfamiliar with management experience. An important step is understanding the role and responsibilities of a person in a managing position. Managers are organisational members who are responsible for the work performance of other organisational members. Managers have formal authority to use organisational resources and to make decisions. Managers at different levels of the organisation engage in different amounts of time on the four managerial functions of planning, organising, leading, and controlling.

However, as many professionals already know, managing styles can be very different depending on where you work. Some managing styles are strictly hierarchical. Other managing styles can be more casual and relaxed, where the manager may act more like a team member rather than a strict boss. Many researchers have created a more scientific approach in studying these different approaches to managing. In the 1960s, researcher Henry Mintzberg created a seminal organisational model using three categories. These categories represent three major functional approaches, which are designated as interpersonal, informational and decisional.

Introduced Category 1: INTERPERSONAL ROLES. Interpersonal roles require managers to direct and supervise employees and the organisation. The figurehead is typically a top of middle manager. This manager may communicate future organisational goals or ethical guidelines to employees at company meetings. They also attend ribbon-cutting ceremonies, host receptions, presentations and other activities associated with the figurehead role. A leader acts as an example for other employees to follow, gives commands and directions to subordinates, makes decisions, and mobilises employee support. They are also responsible for the selection and training of employees. Managers must be leaders at all levels of the organisation; often lower-level managers look to top management for this leadership example. In the role of liaison, a manager must coordinate the work of others in different work units, establish alliances between others, and work to share resources. This role is particularly critical for middle managers, who must often compete with other managers for important resources, yet must maintain successful working relationships with them for long time periods.

Introduced Category 2: INFORMATIONAL ROLES. Informational roles are those in which managers obtain and transmit information. These roles have changed dramatically as technology has improved. The monitor evaluates the performance of others and takes corrective action to improve

that performance. Monitors also watch for changes in the environment and within the company that may affect individual and organisational performance. Monitoring occurs at all levels of management. The role of disseminator requires that managers inform employees of changes that affect them and the organisation. They also communicate the company’s vision and purpose.

Introduced Category 3: DECISIONAL ROLES. Decisional roles require managers to plan strategy and utilise resources. There are four specific roles that are decisional. The entrepreneur role requires the manager to assign resources to develop innovative goods and services, or to expand a business. The disturbance handler corrects unanticipated problems facing the organisation from the internal or external environment. The third decisional role, that of resource allocator, involves determining which work units will get which resources. Top managers are likely to make large, overall budget decisions, while middle managers may make more specific allocations. Finally, the negotiator works with others, such as suppliers, distributors, or labor unions, to reach agreements regarding products and services.

Although Mintzberg’s initial research in 1960s helped categorise manager approaches, Mintzberg was still concerned about research involving other roles in the workplace. Minstzberg considered expanding his research to other roles, such as the role of disseminator, figurehead, liaison and spokesperson. Each role would have different special characteristics, and a new categorisation system would have to be made for each role to understand it properly.

While Mintzberg’s initial research was helpful in starting the conversation, there has since been criticism of his methods from other researchers. Some criticisms of the work were that even though there were multiple categories, the role of manager is still more complex. There are still many manager roles that are not as traditional and are not captured in Mintzberg’s original three categories. In addition, sometimes, Mintzberg’s research was not always effective. The research, when applied to real-life situations, did not always improve the management process in real-life practice.

These two criticisms against Mintzberg’s research method raised some questions about whether or not the research was useful to how we understand “managers” in today’s world. However, even if the criticisms against Mintzberg’s work are true, it does not mean that the original research from the 1960s is completely useless. Those researchers did not say Mintzberg’s research is invalid. His research has two positive functions to the further research.

The first positive function is Mintzberg provided a useful functional approach to analyse management. And he used this approach to provide a clear concept of the role of manager to the researcher. When researching human behavior, it is important to be concise about the subject of the research. Mintzberg’s research has helped other researchers clearly define what a “manager” is, because in real-life situations, the “manager” is not always the same position title. Mintzberg’s definitions added clarity and precision to future research on the topic.

The second positive function is Mintzberg’s research could be regarded as a good beginning to give a new insight to further research on this field in the future. Scientific research is always a gradual process. Just because Mintzberg’s initial research had certain flaws, does not mean it is useless to other researchers. Researchers who are interested in studying the workplace in a systematic way have older research to look back on. A researcher doesn’t have to start from the very beginning— older research like Mintzberg’s have shown what methods work well and what methods are not as appropriate for workplace dynamics. As more young professionals enter the job market, this research will continue to study and change the way we think about the modern workplace.

Questions 1-6
Look at the following descriptions or deeds (Questions 1-6) and the list of categories below.

Match each description or deed with the correct category, A, B or C. Write the correct letter, A, B, or C, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.

A INTERPERSONAL ROLES
B INFORMATIONAL ROLES
C DECISIONAL ROLES

1. the development of business scheme
2. presiding at formal events
3. using employees and funds
4. getting and passing message on to related persons
5. relating the information to employees and organisation
6. recruiting the staff

Questions 7-8
Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Write the correct letters in boxes 7-8 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO positive functions about Mintzberg’s research are mentioned in the last two paragraphs?

A offers waterproof categories of managers
B provides a clear concept to define the role of a manager
C helps new graduates to design their career
D suggests ways for managers to do their job better
E makes fresh way for further research

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

In boxes 9-13 on you 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. Young professionals can easily know management experience in the workplace.
10. Mintzberg’s theory broke well-established notions about managing styles.
11. Mintzberg got a large amount of research funds for his contribution.
12. All managers do the same work.
13. Mintzberg’s theory is valuable for future studies.

How Well Do We Concentrate?

A Do you read while listening to music? Do you like to watch TV while finishing your homework? People who have these kinds of habits are called multi-taskers. Multitaskers are able to complete two tasks at the same time by dividing their focus. However, Thomas Lehman, a researcher in Psychology, believes people never really do multiple things simultaneously. Maybe a person is reading while listening to music, but in reality, the brain can only focus on one task. Reading the words in a book will cause you to ignore some of the words of the music. When people think they are accomplishing two different tasks efficiently, what they are really doing is dividing their focus. While listening to music, people become less able to focus on their surroundings. For example, we all have experience of times when we talk with friends and they are not responding properly. Maybe they are listening to someone else talk, or maybe they are reading a text on their smart phone and don’t hear what you are saying. Lehman called this phenomenon “email voice”

B the world has been changed by computers and its spin offs like smart-phones or cellphones. Now that most individuals have a personal device, like a smart-phone or a laptop, they are frequently reading, watching or listening to virtual information. This raises the occurrence of multitasking in our day to day life. Now when you work, you work with your typewriter, your cellphone, and some colleagues who may drop by at any time to speak with you. In professional meetings, when one normally focuses and listens to one another, people are more likely to have a cell phone in their lap, reading or communicating silently with more people than ever, liven inventions such as the cordless phone has increased multitasking. In the old days, a traditional wall phone would ring, and then the housewife would have to stop her activities to answer it. When it rang, the housewife will sit down with her legs up. and chat, with no laundry or sweeping or answering the door. In the modern era, our technology is convenient enough to not interrupt our daily tasks.

C Earl Miller, an expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studied the prefrontal cortex, which controls the brain while a person is multitasking. According to his studies, the size of this cortex varies between species, He found that for humans, the size of this part constitutes one third of the brain, while it is only 4 to 5 percent in dogs, and about 15% in monkeys. Given that this cortex is larger on a human, it allows a human to be more flexible and accurate in his or her multitasking.. However, Miller wanted to look further into whether the cortex was truly processing information about two different tasks simultaneously. He designed an experiment where he presents visual stimulants to his subjects in a wax that mimics multi-tasking. Miller then attached sensors to the patients ” heads to pick up the electric patterns of the brain. This sensor would show if ” the brain particles, called neurons, were truly processing two different tasks. What he found is that the brain neurons only lit up in singular areas one at a time, and never simultaneously.

D Davis Meyer, a professor of University of Michigan, studied the young adults in a similar experiment. He instructed them to simultaneously do math problems and classify simple words into different categories. For this experiment. Meyer found that when you think you are doing several jobs at the same time, you are actually switching between jobs. Even though the people tried to do the tasks at the same time, and both tasks were eventually accomplished, overall, the task look more time than if the person focused on a single task one at a time.

E People sacrifice efficiency when multitasking, Gloria Mark set office workers as his subjects. He found that they were constantly multitasking. He observed that nearly every 11 minutes people at work were disrupted. He found that doing different jobs at the same time may actually save time. However, despite the fact that they are faster, it does not mean they are more efficient. And we are equally likely to self-interrupt as be interrupted by outside sources. He found that in office nearly every 12 minutes an employee would stop and with no reason at all, cheek a website on their computer, call someone or write an email. If they concentrated for more than 20 minutes, they would feel distressed. He suggested that the average person may suffer from a short concentration span. This short attention span might be natural, but others suggest that new technology may be the problem. With cellphones and computers at our sides at all times, people will never run out of distractions. The format of media, such as advertisements, music, news articles and TV shows are also shortening, so people are used to paying attention to information for a very short time.

F So even though focusing on one single task is the most efficient way for our brains to work, it is not practical to use this method in real life. According to human nature, people feel more comfortable and efficient in environments with a variety of tasks, Edward Hallowell said that people are losing a lot of efficiency in the workplace due to multitasking, outside distractions and self-distractions. As a matter of fact, the changes made to the workplace do not have to be dramatic. No one is suggesting we ban e-mail or make employees focus on only one task. However, certain common workplace tasks, such as group meetings, would be more efficient if we banned cell-phones, a common distraction. A person can also apply these tips to prevent self-distraction. Instead of arriving to your office and checking all of your e-mails for new tasks, a common workplace ritual, a person could dedicate an hour to a single task first thing in the morning. Self-timing is a great way to reduce distraction and efficiently finish tasks one by one, instead of slowing ourselves down with multi-tasking.

Questions 14-18
Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

14. a reference to a domestic situation that does not require multitasking
15. a possible explanation of why we always do multitask together
16. a practical solution to multitask in work environment
17. relating multitasking to the size of prefrontal cortex
18. longer time spent doing two tasks at the same time than one at a time

Questions 19-23
Look at the following statements (Questions 19-23) and the list of scientists below. Match each statement with the correct scientist, A-E.

Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 19-23 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.

List of Scientists
A Thomas Lehman
B Earl Miller
C David Meyer
D Gloria Mark
E Edward Hallowell

19. When faced multiple visual stimulants, one can only concentrate on one of them.
20. Doing two things together may be faster but not better.
21. People never really do two things together even if you think you do.
22. The causes of multitask lie in the environment.
23. Even minor changes in the workplace will improve work efficiency.

Questions 24-26
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.

A term used to refer to a situation when you are reading a text and cannot focus on your surroundings is (24)…………………….

The (25)…………………………part of the brain controls multitasking.

The practical solution of multitask in work is not to allow use of cellphone in (26)………………

Improving Patient Safety

Packaging
One of the most prominent design issues in pharmacy is that of drag packaging and patient information leaflets (Pits). Many letters have appeared in The Journal’s letters pages over the years from pharmacists dismayed at the designs of packaging that are “accidents waiting to happen”.

Packaging design in the pharmaceutical industry is handled by either in-house teams or design agencies. Designs for over-the-counter medicines, where characteristics such as attractiveness and distinguish-ability are regarded as significant, are usually commissioned from design agencies. A marketing team will prepare a brief and the designers will come up with perhaps six or seven designs. These are whittled down to two or three that might be tested on a consumer group. In contrast, most designs for prescription-only products are created in-house. In some cases, this may simply involve applying a company’s house design (ie, logo, colour, font, etc). The chosen design is then handed over to design engineers who work out how the packaging will be produced.

Design considerations
The author of the recently published “Information design for patient safety,” Thea Swayne, tracked the journey of a medicine from manufacturing plant, through distribution warehouses, pharmacies and hospital wards, to patients’ homes. Her book highlights a multitude of design problems with current packaging, such as lookalikes and soundalikes, small type sizes and glare on blister foils. Situations in which medicines are used include a parent giving a cough medicine to a child in the middle of the night and a busy pharmacist selecting one box from hundreds. It is argued that packaging should be designed for moments such as these. “Manufacturers are not aware of the complex situations into which products go. As designers, we are interested in not what is supposed to happen in hospital wards, but what happens in the real world,” Ms Swayne said.

Incidents where vein has been injected intrathecally instead of spine are a classic example of how poor design can contribute to harm. Investigations following these tragedies have attributed some blame to poor typescript.

Safety and compliance
Child protection is another area that gives designers opportunities to improve safety. According to the Child Accident Prevention Trust, seven out of 10 children admitted to hospital with suspected poisoning have swallowed medicines. Although child-resistant closures have reduced the number of incidents, they are not: fully child-proof. The definition of such a closure is one that not more than 15 percent of children aged between 42 and 51 months can open within five minutes. There is scope for improving what is currently available, according to Richard Mawle, a freelance product designer. “Many child-resistant packs are based on strength. They do not necessarily prevent a child from access, but may prevent people with a disability,” he told The Journal. “The legal requirements are there for a good reason, but they are not good enough in terms of the users,” he said. “Older people, especially those with arthritis, may have the same level of strength as a child,” he explained, and suggested that better designs could rely on cognitive skills (eg, making the opening of a container a three-step process) or be based on the physical size of hands.

Mr. Mawle worked with GlaxoSmithKline on a project to improve compliance through design, which involved applying his skills to packaging and PILs. Commenting on the information presented, he said: “There can be an awful lot of junk at the beginning of PILs. For example, why are company details listed towards the beginning of a leaflet when what might be more important for the patient is that the medicine should not be taken with alcohol?”

Design principles and guidelines
Look-alike boxes present a potential for picking errors and an obvious solution would be to use colours to highlight different strengths. However, according to Ms.Swayne, colour differentiation needs to be approached with care. Not only should strong colour contrasts be used, but designating a colour to a particular strength (colour coding) is not recommended because this could lead to the user not reading the text on a box.

Design features can provide the basis for lengthy debates. For example, one argument is that if all packaging is white with black lettering, people would have no choice but to read every box carefully. The problem is that trials of drug packaging design are few—common studies of legibility and comprehensibility concern road traffic signs and visual display units. Although some designers take results from such studies into account, proving that a particular feature is beneficial can be difficult. For example, EU legislation requires that packaging must now include the name of the medicine in Braille but, according to Karel van der Waarde, a design consultant to the pharmaceutical industry, “it is not known how much visually impaired patients will benefit nor how much the reading of visually able patients will be impaired”.

More evidence might, however, soon be available. EU legislation requires PILs to reflect consultations with target patient groups to ensure they are legible, clear and easy to use. This implies that industry will have to start conducting tests. Dr. van der Waarde has performed readability studies on boxes and PILs for industry. A typical study involves showing a leaflet or package to a small group and asking them questions to test understanding. Results and comments are used to modify the material, which is then tested on a larger group. A third group is used to show that any further changes made are an improvement. Dr. van der Waarde is, however, sceptical about the legal requirements and says that many regulatory authorities do not have the resources to handle packaging information properly. “They do not look at the use of packaging in a practical context—they only see one box at a time and not several together as pharmacists would do,” he said.

Innovations
The RCA innovation exhibition this year revealed designs for a number of innovative objects. “The popper”, by Hugo Glover, aims to help arthritis sufferers remove tablets from blister packs, and “pluspoint”, by James Cobb, is an adrenaline auto-injector that aims to overcome the fact that many patients do not carry their auto-injectors due to their prohibitive size. The aim of good design, according Roger Coleman, professor of inclusive design at the RCA, is to try to make things more user-friendly as well as safer. Surely, in a patient-centred health system, that can only be a good thing. “Information design for patient safety” is not intended to be mandatory. Rather, its purpose is to create a basic design standard and to stimulate innovation. The challenge for the pharmaceutical industry, as a whole, is to adopt such a standard.

Questions 27-32
Look at the following statements (Questions 27-32) and the list of people or organisation below. Match each statement with the correct person or organisation, A-D.

Write the correct letter, A-D, in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.

A Thea Swayne
B Children Accident Prevention Trust
C Richard Mawle
D Karel van der Waarde

27. Elderly people may have the same problem with children if the lids of containers require too much strength to open.
28. Adapting packaging for the blind may disadvantage the sighted people.
29. Specially designed lids cannot eliminate the possibility of children swallowing pills accidentally.
30. Container design should consider situations, such as drug used at home.
31. Governing bodies should investigate many different container cases rather than individual ones.
32. Information on the list of a leaflet hasn’t been in the right order.

Questions 33-37
Complete the notes using the list of words, A-G, below. Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 33-37 on your answer sheet.

Packaging in pharmaceutical industry Designs for over-the-counter medicines

First, (33)………………… make the proposal, then pass them to the (34)……………………….Finally, these designs will be tested by (35)……………………………….

Prescription-only

First, the design is made by (36)…………………………and then subjected to (37)…………………….

A consumers
B marketing teams
C pharmaceutical industry
D external designers
E in-house designers
F design engineers
G pharmacist

Questions 38-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet.

38. What may cause the accident in “design container”?
A a print error
B style of print
C wrong label
D the shape of the bottle

39. What do people think about the black and white only print?
A Consumers dislike these products.
B People have to pay more attention to the information.
C That makes all products looks alike.
D Sighted people may feel it more helpful.

40. Why does the writer mention “popper” and “pluspoint”?
A to show that container design has made some progress
B to illustrate an example of inappropriate design which can lead to accidents
C to show that the industry still needs more to improve
D to point out that consumers should be more informed about the information

GOING NOWHERE FAST

THIS is ludicrous! ‘We can talk to people anywhere in the world or fly to meet them in a few hours. e can even send probes to other planets. But when it comes to getting around our cities, we depend on systems that have scarcely changed since the days of Gottlieb Daimler.

In recent years, the pollution belched out by millions of vehicles has dominated the debate about transport. The problem has even persuaded California – that home of car culture – to curb traffic growth. But no matter how green they become, cars are unlikely to get us around crowded cities any faster. And persuading people to use trains and buses w ill always be an uphill struggle. Cars, after all, are popular for very good reasons, as anyone with small children or heavy shopping knows.

So politicians should be trying to lure people out of their cars, not forcing them out. There’s certainly no shortage of alternatives. Perhaps the most attractive is the concept known as personal rapid transit (PRT), independently invented in the US and Europe in the 1950s.

The idea is to go to one of many stations and hop into a computer-controlled car, which can whisk you to your destination along a network of guideways. You wouldn’t have to share your space with strangers, and with no traffic lights, pedestrians or parked cars to slow things down, PRT guideways can carry far more traffic, non stop, than any inner city road.

It’s a wonderful vision, but the odds are stacked against PRT for a number of reasons. The first cars ran on existing roads, and it was only after they became popular — and after governments started earning revenue from them-that a road network designed specifically for motor vehicles was built. With PRT, the infrastructure would have to come first-and that would cost megabucks. What’s more, any transport system that threatened the car’s dominance would be up against all those with a stake in maintaining the status quo, from private car owners to manufacturers and oil multinationals. Even if PRTs were spectacularly successful in trials, it might not make much difference. Superior technology doesn’t always triumph, as the VHS versus Betamax and Windows versus Apple Mac battles showed.

But “dual-mode” systems might just succeed where PRT seems doomed to fail. The Danish RUF system envisaged by Palle Jensen, for example, resembles PRT but with one key difference: vehicles have wheels as well as a slot allowing them to travel on a monorail, so they can drive off the rail onto a normal road. Once on a road, the occupant would take over from the computer, and the RUF vehicle – the term comes from a Danish saying meaning to “go fast” – would become an electric car.

Build a fast network of guideways in a busy city centre and people would have a strong incentive not just to use public RUF vehicles, but also to buy their own dual-mode vehicle. Commuters could drive onto the guideway, sit back and read as they are chauffeured into the city. At work, they would jump out, leaving their vehicles to park themselves. Unlike PRT, such a system could grow organically, as each network would serve a large area around it and people nearby could buy into it. And a dual-mode system might even win the support of car manufacturers, who could easily switch to producing dual-mode vehicles.

Of course, creating a new transport system will not be cheap or easy. But unlike adding a dedicated bus lane here or extending the underground railway there, an innovative system such as Jensen’s could transform cities.

And it’s not just a matter of saving a few minutes a day. According to the Red Cross, more than 30 million people have died in road accidents in the past century-three times the number killed in the First World War-and the annual death toll is rising. And what’s more, the Red Cross believes road accidents will become the third biggest cause of death and disability by 2020, ahead of diseases such as AIDS and tuberculosis. Surely we can find a better way to get around?

Questions 1-6
DO the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage

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. City transport developed slower than other means of communication.
2. The pollution caused by city transport has been largely ignored.
3. Most states in America have taken actions to reduce vehicle growth.
4. Public transport is particularly difficult to use on steep hills.
5. Private cars are much more convenient for those who tend to buy a lot things during shopping.
6. Government should impose compulsory restrictions on car use.

Questions 7-12
Classify the following descriptions as referring to

A PRT only
B RUF only
C both PRT and RUF

Write the correct letter, A, B, or C in boxes 7-12 on your answer sheet.

7. It is likely to be resisted by both individuals and manufacturers.
8. It can run at high speed in cities.
9. It is not necessary to share with the general public.
10. It is always controlled by a computer.
11. It can run on existing roads.
12. It can be bought by private buyers.

Question 13
Choose THREE letters, A-G.

Which THREE of the following are advantages of the new transport system?

A. economy
B. space
C. low pollution
D. suitability for families
E. speed
F. safety
G. suitability for children

The Seedhunters

A With quarter of the world’s plants set to vanish within the next 50 years, Dough Alexander reports on the scientists working against the clock the preserve the Earth’s botanical heritage. They travel the four comers of the globe, scouring jungles, forests and savannas. But they’re not looking for ancient artefacts, lost treasure or undiscovered tombs. Just pods. It may lack the romantic allure of archaeology, or the whiff of danger that accompanies going after big game, but seed hunting is an increasingly serious business. Some seek seeds for profit—hunters in the employ of biotechnology firms, pharmaceutical companies and private corporations on the lookout for species that will yield the drugs or crops of the future. Others collect to conserve, working to halt the sad slide into extinction facing so many plant species.

B Among the pioneers of this botanical treasure hunt was John Tradescant, an English royal gardener who brought back plants and seeds from his journeys abroad in the early 1600s. Later, the English botanist Sir Joseph Banks-who was the first director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and travelled with Captain James Cook on his voyages near the end of the 18th century—was so driven to expand his collections that he sent botanists around the world at his own expense.

C Those heady days of exploration and discovery may be over, but they have been replaced by a pressing need to preserve our natural history for the future. This modem mission drives hunters such as Dr Michiel van Slageren, a good-natured Dutchman who often sports a wide-brimmed hat in the field—he could easily be mistaken for the cinematic hero Indiana Jones. He and three other seed hunters work at the Millennium Seed Bank, an 80 million [pounds sterling] international conservation project that aims to protect the world’s most endangered wild plant species

D The group’s headquarters are in a modem glass-and-concrete structure on a 200-hectare Estate at Wakehurst Place in the West Sussex countryside. Within its underground vaults are 260 million dried seeds from 122 countries, all stored at -20 Celsius to survive for centuries. Among the 5，100 species represented are virtually all of Britain’s 1,400 native seed-bearing plants, the most complete such collection of any country’s flora.

E Overseen by the Royal botanic gardens, the Millennium Seed Bank is the world’s largest wild-plant depository. It aims to collect 24,000 species by 2010. The reason is simple: thanks to humanity’s efforts, an estimated 25 per cent of the world’s plants are on the verge of extinction and may vanish within 50 years. We’re currently responsible for habitat destruction on an unprecedented scale, and during the past 400 years, plant species extinction rates have been about 70 times greater than those indicated by the geological record as being ’normal’. Experts predict that during the next 50 years a further one billion hectares of wilderness will be converted to farmland in developing countries alone.

F The implications of this loss are enormous. Besides providing staple food crops, plants are a source of many machines and the principal supply of fuel and building materials in many parts of the world. They also protect soil and help regulate the climate. Yet, across the globe, plant species are being driven to extinction before their potential benefits are discovered.

G The world Conservation Union has listed 5,714 threatened species is sure to be much higher. In the UK alone, 300 wild plant species are classified as endangered. The Millennium Seed Bank aims to ensure that even if a plant becomes extinct in the wild，it won’t be lost forever. Stored seeds can be used the help restore damaged or destroyed environment or in scientific research to find new benefits for society- in medicine, agriculture or local industry- that would otherwise be lost.

H Seed banks are an insurance policy to protect the world’s plant heritage for the future, explains Dr Paul Smith, another Kew seed hunter. “Seed conservation techniques were originally developed by farmers/’ he says. “Storage is the basis what we do, conserving seeds until you can use them-just as in farming.” Smith says there’s no reason why any plant species should become extinct, given today’s technology. But he admits that the biggest challenge is finding, naming and _ categorising all the world’s plants. And someone has to gather these seeds before it’s too late. “There aren’t a lot of people out there doing this,” he says” The key is to know the flora from a particular area, and that knowledge takes years to acquire.”

I There are about 1,470 seed banks scattered around the globe, with a combined total of 5.4 million samples, of which perhaps two million are distinct non-duplicates. Most preserve genetic material for agriculture use in order to ensure crop diversity; others aim to conserve wild species, although only 15 per cent of all banked plants are wild.

J Imperial College, London, examined crop collections from 151 countries and found that while the number of plant samples had increased in two thirds of the countries, budget had been cut in a quarter and remained static in another 35 per cent. Th UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research has since set up the Global Conservation Trust, which aims to raise US $260 million to protect seed banks in perpetuity.

Questions 14-18
Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the Reading Passage.

Some people collect seeds for the purpose of protecting certain species from (14)_________ ; others collect seeds for their ability to produce (15)_____________ . They are called seed hunters. The (16)_____________ of them included both gardeners and botanists,such as (17)_____________ ，who financially supported collectors out of his own pocket. The seeds collected are usually stored in seed banks, one of which is the famous millennium seed bank, where seeds are all stored in the (18)___________ at a low temperature.

Questions 19-24
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? 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

19. The reason to collect seeds is different from the past.
20. The Millennium Seed Bank is one of the earliest seed banks.
21. A major reason for plant species extinction is farmland expansion.
22. The method scientists use to store seeds is similar to that used by farmers.
23. Technological development is the only hope to save plant species.
24. The works of seed conservation are often limited by insufficient financial resources.

Questions 25-26
Choose the correct letter, A-E.

Which TWO of the followings are provided by plants to the human ?
A food
B fuels
C clothes
D energy
E commercial products

Assessing the Risk

As a title for a supposedly unprejudiced debate on scientific progress, “Panic attack: interrogating our obsession with risk” did not bode well. Held last week at the Royal Institution in London, the event brought together scientists from across the world to ask why society is so obsessed with risk and to call for a “more rational” approach. “We seem to be organising society around the grandmotherly maxim of ‘better safe than sorry’,” exclaimed Spiked, the online publication that organised the event. “What are the consequences of this overbearing concern with risks?”

The debate was preceded by a survey of 40 scientists who were invited to describe how awful our lives would be if the “precautionary principle” had been allowed to prevail in the past. Their response was: no heart surgery or antibiotics, and hardly any drugs at all; no aeroplanes, bicycles or high-voltage power grids; no pasteurisation, pesticides or bio-technology; no quantum mechanics; no wheel; no “discovery” of America. In short, their message was: no risk, no gain.

They have absolutely missed the point. The precautionary principle is a subtle idea. It has various forms, but all of them generally include some notion of cost- effectiveness. Thus the point is not simply to ban things that are not known to be absolutely safe. Rather, it says: “Of course you can make no progress without risk. But if there is no obvious gain from taking the risk, then don’t take it.”

Clearly, all the technologies listed by the 40 well-chosen savants were innately risky at their inception, as all technologies are. But all of them would have received the green light under the precautionary principle because they all had the potential to offer tremendous benefits — the solutions to very big problems — if only the snags could be overcome.

If the precautionary principle had been in place, the scientists tell us, we would not have antibiotics. But of course we would — if the version of the principle that sensible people now understand had been applied. When penicillin was discovered in the 1920s, infective bacteria were laying waste to the world. Children died from diphtheria and whooping cough, every open drain brought the threat of typhoid, and any wound could lead to septicaemia and even gangrene.

Penicillin was turned into a practical drug during the Second World War, when the many pestilences that result from war threatened to kill more people than the bombs. Of course antibiotics were a priority. Of course the risks, such as they could be perceived, were worth taking.

And so with the other items on the scientists’ list: electric light bulbs, blood transfusions, CAT scans, knives, the measles vaccine — the precautionary principle would have prevented all of them, they tell us. But this is just plain wrong. If the precautionary principle had been applied properly, all these creations would have passed muster, because all offered incomparable advantages compared to the risks perceived at the time.

Section 2
Another issue is at stake here. Statistics are not the only concept people use when weighing up risk. Human beings, subtle and evolved creatures that we are, do not survive to threescore years and ten simply by thinking like pocket calculators. A crucial issue is consumer’s choice. In deciding whether to pursue the development of a new technology, the consumer’s right to choose should be considered alongside considerations of risk and benefit. Clearly, skiing is more dangerous than genetically modified tomatoes. But people who ski choose to do so; they do not have skiing thrust upon them by portentous experts of the kind who now feel they have the right to reconstruct our crops. Even with skiing, there is the matter of cost effectiveness to consider: skiing, I am told, is exhilarating. Where is the exhilaration in GM soya?

Indeed, in contrast to all the other items on Spiked’s list, GM crops stand out as an example of a technology whose benefits are far from clear. Some of the risks can at least be defined. But in the present economic climate, the benefits that might accrue from them seem dubious. Promoters of GM crops believe that the future population of the world cannot be fed without them. That is untrue. The crops that really matter are wheat and rice, and there is no GM research in the pipeline that will seriously affect the yield of either. GM is used to make production cheaper and hence more profitable, which is an extremely questionable ambition.

The precautionary principle provides the world with a very important safeguard. If it had been in place in the past, it might, for example, have prevented insouciant miners from polluting major rivers with mercury. We have come to a sorry pass when scientists, who should above all be dispassionate scholars, feel they should misrepresent such a principle for the purposes of commercial and political propaganda. People at large continue to mistrust science and the high technologies it produces, partly because they doubt the wisdom of scientists. On such evidence as this, these doubts are fully justified.

Questions 27-32
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?

TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage

27. The title of the debate is not unbiased.
28. All the scientists invited to the debate were from the field of medicine.
29. The message those scientists who conducted the survey were sending was people shouldn’t take risks.
30. All the 40 listed technologies are riskier than other technologies.
31. It was worth taking the risks to invent antibiotics.
32. All the other inventions on the list were also judged by the precautionary principle.

Questions 33-39
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 33-39 on your answer sheet.

When applying precautionary principle to decide whether to invent a new technology, people should also consideration of the……………. 33…………….. ，along with the usual consideration of…………………… 34……………….. For example, though risky and dangerous enough, people still enjoy …………………… 35…………….. for the excitement it provides. On the other hand, experts believe that future population desperately needs………………… 36……………… in spite of their undefined risks. However，the researches conducted so far have not been directed towards increasing the yield of…………………… 37…………….. ，but to reduce the cost of ………………. 38…………… and to bring more profit out of it. In the end, such selfish use of precautionary principle for business and political gain has often led people to ………………….. 39…………….. science for they believe scientists are not to be trusted.

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

40 What is the main theme of the passage?
A people have right to doubt science and technologies
B the precautionary principle could have prevented the development of science and technology
C there are not enough people who truly understand the precautionary principle
D the precautionary principle bids us to take risks at all costs