Month: May 2024

Alexander Henderson

Alexander Henderson was born in Scotland in 1831 and was the son of a successful merchant. His grandfather, also called Alexander, had founded the family business, and later became the first chairman of the National Bank of Scotland. The family had extensive landholdings in Scotland. Besides its residence in Edinburgh, it owned Press Estate, 650 acres of farmland about 35 miles southeast of the city. The family often stayed at Press Castle, the large mansion on the northern edge of the property, and Alexander spent much of his childhood in the area, playing on the beach near Eyemouth or fishing in the streams nearby.

Even after he went to school at Murcheston Academy on the outskirts of Edinburgh, Henderson returned to Press at weekends. In 1849 he began a three-year apprenticeship to become an accountant. Although he never liked the prospect of a business career, he stayed with it to please his family. In October 1855, however, he emigrated to Canada with his wife Agnes Elder Robertson and they settled in Montreal.

Henderson learned photography in Montreal around the year 1857 and quickly took it up as a serious amateur. He became a personal friend and colleague of the Scottish-Canadian photographer William Notman. The two men made a photographic excursion to Niagara Falls in 1860 and they cooperated on experiments with magnesium flares as a source of artificial light in 1865. They belonged to the same societies and were among the founding members of the Art Association of Montreal. Henderson acted as chairman of the association’s first meeting, which was held in Notman’s studio on 11 January 1860.

In spite of their friendship, their styles of photography were quite different. While Notman’s landscapes were noted for their bold realism, Henderson for the first 20 years of his career produced romantic images, showing the strong influence of the British landscape tradition. His artistic and technical progress was rapid and in 1865 he published his first major collection of landscape photographs. The publication had limited circulation (only seven copies have ever been found), and was called Canadian Views and Studies. The contents of each copy vary significantly and have proved a useful source for evaluating Henderson’s early work.

In 1866, he gave up his business to open a photographic studio, advertising himself as a portrait and landscape photographer. From about 1870 he dropped portraiture to specialize in landscape photography and other views. His numerous photographs of city life revealed in street scenes, houses, and markets are alive with human activity, and although his favourite subject was landscape he usually composed his scenes around such human pursuits as farming the land, cutting ice on a river, or sailing down a woodland stream. There was sufficient demand for these types of scenes and others he took depicting the lumber trade, steamboats and waterfalls to enable him to make a living. There was little competing hobby or amateur photography before the late 1880s because of the time-consuming techniques involved and the weight of the equipment. People wanted to buy photographs as souvenirs of a trip or as gifts, and catering to this market, Henderson had stock photographs on display at his studio for mounting, framing, or inclusion in albums.

Henderson frequently exhibited his photographs in Montreal and abroad, in London, Edinburgh, Dublin, Paris, New York, and Philadelphia. He met with greater success in 1877 and 1878 in New York when he won first prizes in the exhibition held by E and H T Anthony and Company for landscapes using the Lambertype process. In 1878 his work won second prize at the world exhibition in Paris.

In the 1870s and 1880s Henderson travelled widely throughout Quebec and Ontario, in Canada, documenting the major cities of the two provinces and many of the villages in Quebec. He was especially fond of the wilderness and often travelled by canoe on the Blanche, du Lievre, and other noted eastern rivers. He went on several occasions to the Maritimes and in 1872 he sailed by yacht along the lower north shore of the St Lawrence River. That same year, while in the lower St Lawrence River region, he took some photographs of the construction of the Intercolonial Railway. This undertaking led in 1875 to a commission from the railway to record the principal structures along the almost-completed line connecting Montreal to Halifax. Commissions from other railways followed. In 1876 he photographed bridges on the Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa and Occidental Railway between Montreal and Ottawa. In 1885 he went west along the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) as far as Rogers Pass in British Columbia, where he took photographs of the mountains and the progress of construction.

In 1892 Henderson accepted a full-time position with the CPR as manager of a photographic department which he was to set up and administer. His duties included spending four months in the field each year. That summer he made his second trip west, photographing extensively along the railway line as far as Victoria. He continued in this post until 1897, when he retired completely from photography.

When Henderson died in 1913, his huge collection of glass negatives was stored in the basement of his house. Today collections of his work are held at the National Archives of Canada, Ottawa, and the McCord Museum of Canadian History, Montreal.

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

1 Henderson rarely visited the area around Press estate when he was younger.
2 Henderson pursued a business career because it was what his family wanted.
3 Henderson and Notman were surprised by the results of their 1865 experiment.
4 There were many similarities between Henderson’s early landscapes and those of Notman.
5 The studio that Henderson opened in 1866 was close to his home.
6 Henderson gave up portraiture so that he could focus on taking photographs of scenery.
7 When Henderson began work for the Intercolonial Railway, the Montreal to Halifax line had been finished.
8 Henderson’s last work as a photographer was with the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Questions 9 – 13
Complete the notes below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.

Alexander Henderson

Early life
• was born in Scotland in 1831 – father was a (9)…………….
• trained as an accountant, emigrated to Canada in 1855

Start of a photographic career
• opened up a photographic studio in 1866
• took photos of city life, but preferred landscape photography
• people bought Henderson’s photos because photography took up considerable time and the (10)…………… was heavy
• the photographs Hederson sold were (11)……………….or souvenirs

Travelling as a professional photographer
• travelled widely in Quebec and Ontario in 1870s and 1880s
• took many trips along eastern rivers in a (12)……………..
• worked for Canadian railways between 1875 and 1897
• worked for CPR in 1885 and photographed the (13)…………….and the railway at Rogers Pass

Back to the future of skyscraper design

A The Recovery of Natural Environments in Architecture by Professor Alan Short is the culmination of 30 years of research and award-winning green building design by Short and colleagues in Architecture, Engineering, Applied Maths and Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge. The crisis in building design is already here,’ said Short. ‘Policy makers think you can solve energy and building problems with gadgets. You can’t. As global temperatures continue to rise, we are going to continue to squander more and more energy on keeping our buildings mechanically cool until we have run out of capacity.’

B Short is calling for a sweeping reinvention of how skyscrapers and major public buildings are designed – to end the reliance on sealed buildings which exist solely via the ‘life support’ system of vast air conditioning units. Instead, he shows it is entirely possible to accommodate natural ventilation and cooling in large buildings by looking into the past, before the widespread introduction of air conditioning systems, which were ‘relentlessly and aggressively marketed’ by their inventors.

C Short points out that to make most contemporary buildings habitable, they have to be sealed and air conditioned. The energy use and carbon emissions this generates is spectacular and largely unnecessary. Buildings in the West account for 40-50% of electricity usage, generating substantial carbon emissions, and the rest of the world is catching up at a frightening rate. Short regards glass, steel and air-conditioned skyscrapers as symbols of status, rather than practical ways of meeting our requirements.

D Short’s book highlights a developing and sophisticated art and science of ventilating buildings through the 19th and earlier-20th centuries, including the design of ingeniously ventilated hospitals. Of particular interest were those built to the designs of John Shaw Billings, including the first Johns Hopkins Hospital in the US city of Baltimore (1873-1889). ‘We spent three years digitally modelling Billings’ final designs,’ says Short. ‘We put pathogens in the airstreams, modelled for someone with tuberculosis (TB) coughing in the wards and we found the ventilation systems in the room would have kept other patients safe from harm.

E ‘We discovered that 19th-century hospital wards could generate up to 24 air changes an hour – that’s similar to the performance of a modern-day, computer-controlled operating theatre. We believe you could build wards based on these principles now. Single rooms are not appropriate for all patients. Communal wards appropriate for certain patients – older people with dementia, for example – would work just as well in today’s hospitals, at a fraction of the energy cost.’ Professor Short contends the mindset and skill-sets behind these designs have been completely lost, lamenting the disappearance of expertly designed theatres, opera houses, and other buildings where up to half the volume of the building was given over to ensuring everyone got fresh air.

F Much of the ingenuity present in 19th-century hospital and building design was driven by a panicked public clamouring for buildings that could protect against what was thought to be the lethal threat of miasmas – toxic air that spread disease. Miasmas were feared as the principal agents of disease and epidemics for centuries, and were used to explain the spread of infection from the Middle Ages right through to the cholera outbreaks in London and Paris during the 1850s. Foul air, rather than germs, was believed to be the main driver of ‘hospital fever’, leading to disease and frequent death. The prosperous steered clear of hospitals. While miasma theory has been long since disproved, Short has for the last 30 years advocated a return to some of the building design principles produced in its wake.

G Today, huge amounts of a building’s space and construction cost are given over to air conditioning. ‘But I have designed and built a series of buildings over the past three decades which have tried to reinvent some of these ideas and then measure what happens. To go forward into our new low-energy, low-carbon future, we would be well advised to look back at design before our high-energy, high-carbon present appeared. What is surprising is what a rich legacy we have abandoned.’

H Successful examples of Short’s approach include the Queen’s Building at De Montfort University in Leicester. Containing as many as 2,000 staff and students, the entire building is naturally ventilated, passively cooled and naturally lit, including the two largest auditoria, each seating more than 150 people. The award-winning building uses a fraction of the electricity of comparable buildings in the UK. Short contends that glass skyscrapers in London and around the world will become a liability over the next 20 or 30 years if climate modelling predictions and energy price rises come to pass as expected.

I He is convinced that sufficiently cooled skyscrapers using the natural environment can be produced in almost any climate. He and his team have worked on hybrid buildings in the harsh climates of Beijing and Chicago – built with natural ventilation assisted by back-up air conditioning – which, surprisingly perhaps, can be switched off more than half the time on milder days and during the spring and autumn. Short looks at how we might reimagine the cities, offices and homes of the future. Maybe it’s time we changed our outlook.

Questions 14 – 18
Reading Passage 2 has nine sections, A-l.
Which section contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-l, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

14 why some people avoided hospitals in the 19th century
15 a suggestion that the popularity of tall buildings is linked to prestige
16 a comparison between the circulation of air in a 19th-century building and modern standards
17 how Short tested the circulation of air in a 19th-century building
18 an implication that advertising led to the large increase in the use of air conditioning

Questions 19 – 26
Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 19-26 on your answer sheet.

Ventilation in 19th-century hospital wards

Professor Alan Short examined the work of John Shaw Billings, who influenced the architectural (19)…………….. of hospitals to ensure they had good ventilation. He calculated that (20)……………in the air coming from patients suffering from (21)……………..would not have harmed other patients. He also found that the air in (22)…………………in hospitals could change as often as in a modern operating theatre. He suggests that energy use could be reduced by locating more patients in (23)……………..areas. A major reason for improving ventilation in 19th-century hospitals was the demand from the (24)……………for protection against bad air, known as (25)………………..These were blamed for the spread of disease for hundreds of years, including epidemics of (26)……………..in London and Paris in the middle of the 19th century.

Why companies should welcome disorder

A Organisation is big business. Whether it is of our lives – all those inboxes and calendars – or how companies are structured, a multi-billion dollar industry helps to meet this need. We have more strategies for time management, project management and self-organisation than at any other time in human history. We are told that we ought to organise our company, our home life, our week, our day and even our sleep, all as a means to becoming more productive. Every week, countless seminars and workshops take place around the world to tell a paying public that they ought to structure their lives in order to achieve this. This rhetoric has also crept into the thinking of business leaders and entrepreneurs, much to the delight of self-proclaimed perfectionists with the need to get everything right. The number of business schools and graduates has massively increased over the past 50 years, essentially teaching people how to organise well.

B Ironically, however, the number of businesses that fail has also steadily increased. Work-related stress has increased. A large proportion of workers from all demographics claim to be dissatisfied with the way their work is structured and the way they are managed. This begs the question: what has gone wrong? Why is it that on paper the drive for organisation seems a sure shot for increasing productivity, but in reality falls well short of what is expected?

C This has been a problem for a while now. Frederick Taylor was one of the forefathers of scientific management. Writing in the first half of the 20th century, he designed a number of principles to improve the efficiency of the work process, which have since become widespread in modern companies. So the approach has been around for a while.

D New research suggests that this obsession with efficiency is misguided. The problem is not necessarily the management theories or strategies we use to organise our work; it’s the basic assumptions we hold in approaching how we work. Here it’s the assumption that order is a necessary condition for productivity. This assumption has also fostered the idea that disorder must be detrimental to organisational productivity. The result is that businesses and people spend time and money organising themselves for the sake of organising, rather than actually looking at the end goal and usefulness of such an effort.

E What’s more, recent studies show that order actually has diminishing returns. Order does increase productivity to a certain extent, but eventually the usefulness of the process of organisation, and the benefit it yields, reduce until the point where any further increase in order reduces productivity. Some argue that in a business, if the cost of formally structuring something outweighs the benefit of doing it, then that thing ought not to be formally structured. Instead, the resources involved can be better used elsewhere.

F In fact, research shows that, when innovating, the best approach is to create an environment devoid of structure and hierarchy and enable everyone involved to engage as one organic group. These environments can lead to new solutions that, under conventionally structured environments (filled with bottlenecks in terms of information flow, power structures, rules, and routines) would never be reached.

G In recent times companies have slowly started to embrace this disorganisation. Many of them embrace it in terms of perception (embracing the idea of disorder, as opposed to fearing it) and in terms of process (putting mechanisms in place to reduce structure). For example, Oticon, a large Danish manufacturer of hearing aids, used what it called a ‘spaghetti’ structure in order to reduce the organisation’s rigid hierarchies. This involved scrapping formal job titles and giving staff huge amounts of ownership over their own time and projects. This approach proved to be highly successful initially, with clear improvements in worker productivity in all facets of the business. In similar fashion, the former chairman of General Electric embraced disorganisation, putting forward the idea of the ‘boundaryless’ organisation. Again, it involves breaking down the barriers between different parts of a company and encouraging virtual collaboration and flexible working. Google and a number of other tech companies have embraced (at least in part) these kinds of flexible structures, facilitated by technology and strong company values which glue people together.

H A word of warning to others thinking of jumping on this bandwagon: the evidence so far suggests disorder, much like order, also seems to have diminishing utility, and can also have detrimental effects on performance if overused. Like order, disorder should be embraced only so far as it is useful. But we should not fear it – nor venerate one over the other. This research also shows that we should continually question whether or not our existing assumptions work.

Questions 27 – 34
Reading Passage 3 has eight sections, A-H.
Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-ix, in boxes 27-34 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i Complaints about the impact of a certain approach
ii Fundamental beliefs that are in fact incorrect
iii Early recommendations concerning business activities
iv Organisations that put a new approach into practice
v Companies that have suffered from changing their approach
vi What people are increasingly expected to do
vii How to achieve outcomes that are currently impossible
viii Neither approach guarantees continuous improvement
ix Evidence that a certain approach can have more disadvantages than advantages

27 Section A
28 Section B
29 Section C
30 Section D
31 Section E
32 Section F
33 Section G
34 Section H

Questions 35 – 37
Complete the sentences below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 35-37 on your answer sheet.

35 Numerous training sessions are aimed at people who feel they are not…………….enough.
36 Being organised appeals to people who regard themselves as………………
37 Many people feel…………….with aspects of their work.

Questions 38 – 40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet, write

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

38 Both businesses and people aim at order without really considering its value.
39 Innovation is most successful if the people involved have distinct roles.
40 Google was inspired to adopt flexibility by the success of General Electric.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CHILDREN’S PLAY

Brick by brick, six-year-old Alice is building a magical kingdom. Imagining fairy-tale turrets and fire-breathing dragons, wicked witches and gallant heroes, she’s creating an enchanting world. Although she isn’t aware of it, this fantasy is helping her take her first steps towards her capacity for creativity and so it will have important repercussions in her adult life.

Minutes later, Alice has abandoned the kingdom in favour of playing schools with her younger brother. When she bosses him around as his ‘teacher’, she’s practising how to regulate her emotions through pretence. Later on, when they tire of this and settle down with a board game, she’s learning about the need to follow rules and take turns with a partner.

‘Play in all its rich variety is one of the highest achievements of the human species,’ says Dr David Whitebread from the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, UK. ‘It underpins how we develop as intellectual, problem-solving adults and is crucial to our success as a highly adaptable species.’

Recognising the importance of play is not new: over two millennia ago, the Greek philosopher Plato extolled its virtues as a means of developing skills for adult life, and ideas about play-based learning have been developing since the 19th century.

But we live in changing times, and Whitebread is mindful of a worldwide decline in play, pointing out that over half the people in the world now live in cities. ‘The opportunities for free play, which I experienced almost every day of my childhood, are becoming increasingly scarce,’ he says. Outdoor play is curtailed by perceptions of risk to do with traffic, as well as parents’ increased wish to protect their children from being the victims of crime, and by the emphasis on ‘earlier is better’ which is leading to greater competition in academic learning and schools.

International bodies like the United Nations and the European Union have begun to develop policies concerned with children’s right to play, and to consider implications for leisure facilities and educational programmes. But what they often lack is the evidence to base policies on.

‘The type of play we are interested in is child-initiated, spontaneous and unpredictable – but, as soon as you ask a five-year-old “to play”, then you as the researcher have intervened,’ explains Dr Sara Baker. ‘And we want to know what the long-term impact of play is. It’s a real challenge.’

Dr Jenny Gibson agrees, pointing out that although some of the steps in the puzzle of how and why play is important have been looked at, there is very little data on the impact it has on the child’s later life.

Now, thanks to the university’s new Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL), Whitebread, Baker, Gibson and a team of researchers hope to provide evidence on the role played by play in how a child develops.

‘A strong possibility is that play supports the early development of children’s self-control,’ explains Baker. ‘This is our ability to develop awareness of our own thinking processes – it influences how effectively we go about undertaking challenging activities.’

In a study carried out by Baker with toddlers and young pre-schoolers, she found that children with greater self-control solved problems more quickly when exploring an unfamiliar set-up requiring scientific reasoning. ‘This sort of evidence makes us think that giving children the chance to play will make them more successful problem-solvers in the long run.’

If playful experiences do facilitate this aspect of development, say the researchers, it could be extremely significant for educational practices, because the ability to self-regulate has been shown to be a key predictor of academic performance.

Gibson adds: ‘Playful behaviour is also an important indicator of healthy social and emotional development. In my previous research, I investigated how observing children at play can give us important clues about their well-being and can even be useful in the diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders like autism.’

Whitebread’s recent research has involved developing a play-based approach to supporting children’s writing. ‘Many primary school children find writing difficult, but we showed in a previous study that a playful stimulus was far more effective than an instructional one.’ Children wrote longer and better-structured stories when they first played with dolls representing characters in the story. In the latest study, children first created their story with Lego , with similar results. ‘Many teachers commented that they had always previously had children saying they didn’t know what to write about. With the Lego building, however, not a single child said this through the whole year of the project.’

Whitebread, who directs PEDAL, trained as a primary school teacher in the early 1970s, when, as he describes, ‘the teaching of young children was largely a quiet backwater, untroubled by any serious intellectual debate or controversy.’ Now, the landscape is very different, with hotly debated topics such as school starting age.

‘Somehow the importance of play has been lost in recent decades. It’s regarded as something trivial, or even as something negative that contrasts with “work”. Let’s not lose sight of its benefits, and the fundamental contributions it makes to human achievements in the arts, sciences and technology. Let’s make sure children have a rich diet of play experiences.’

Questions 1 – 8
Complete the notes below. Choose ONLY ONE WORD from the passage for each answer.

Children’s Play

Uses of children’s play
– building a magical kingdom may help develop (1)………………..
– board games involve (2)…………….and turn-taking

Recent changes affecting children’s play
– populations of (3)…………….have grown
– opportunities for free play are limited due to
– fear of (4)……………
– fear of (5)……………
– increased (6)………………in schools

International policies on children’s play
– it is difficult to find (7)…………….to support new policies
– research needs to study the impact of play on the rest of the child’s (8)……………..

Questions 9 – 13

Do the following statements agree with the following information given in the Reading Passage?

In the boxes 9-13 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. Children with good self-control are known to be likely to do well at school later on.
10. The way a child plays may provide information about possible medical problems.
11. Playing with dolls was found to benefit girls’ writing more than boys’ writing.
12. Children had problems thinking up ideas when they first created the story with Lego.
13. People nowadays regard children’s play as less significant than they did in the past.

The growth of bike-sharing schemes around the world

A The original idea for an urban bike-sharing scheme dates back to a summer’s day in Amsterdam in 1965. Provo, the organisation that came up with the idea, was a group of Dutch activists who wanted to change society. They believed the scheme, which was known as the Witte Fietsenplan, was an answer to the perceived threats of air pollution and consumerism. In the centre of Amsterdam, they painted a small number of used bikes white. They also distributed leaflets describing the dangers of cars and inviting people to use the white bikes. The bikes were then left unlocked at various locations around the city, to be used by anyone in need of transport.

B Luud Schimmelpennink, a Dutch industrial engineer who still lives and cycles in Amsterdam, was heavily involved in the original scheme. He recalls how the scheme succeeded in attracting a great deal of attention – particularly when it came to publicising Provo’s aims – but struggled to get off the ground. The police were opposed to Provo’s initiatives and almost as soon as the white bikes were distributed around the city, they removed them. However, for Schimmelpennink and for bike-sharing schemes in general, this was just the beginning. The first Witte Fietsenplan was just a symbolic thing,’ he says. ‘We painted a few bikes white, that was all. Things got more serious when I became a member of the Amsterdam city council two years later.’

C Schimmelpennink seized this opportunity to present a more elaborate Witte Fietsenplan to the city council. ‘My idea was that the municipality of Amsterdam would distribute 10,000 white bikes over the city, for everyone to use,’ he explains. ‘I made serious calculations. It turned out that a white bicycle – per person, per kilometre – would cost the municipality only 10% of what it contributed to public transport per person per kilometre.’ Nevertheless, the council unanimously rejected the plan. They said that the bicycle belongs to the past. They saw a glorious future for the car,’ says Schimmelpennink. But he was not in the least discouraged.

D Schimmelpennink never stopped believing in bike-sharing, and in the mid-90s, two Danes asked for his help to set up a system in Copenhagen. The result was the world’s first large-scale bike-share programme. It worked on a deposit: ‘You dropped a coin in the bike and when you returned it, you got your money back.’ After setting up the Danish system, Schimmelpennink decided to try his luck again in the Netherlands – and this time he succeeded in arousing the interest of the Dutch Ministry of Transport. Times had changed,’ he recalls. ‘People had become more environmentally conscious, and the Danish experiment had proved that bike-sharing was a real possibility.’A new Witte Fietsenplan was launched in 1999 in Amsterdam. However, riding a white bike was no longer free; it cost one guilder per trip and payment was made with a chip card developed by the Dutch bank Postbank. Schimmelpennink designed conspicuous, sturdy white bikes locked in special racks which could be opened with the chip card – the plan started with 250 bikes, distributed over five stations.

E Theo Molenaar, who was a system designer for the project, worked alongside Schimmelpennink. ‘I remember when we were testing the bike racks, he announced that he had already designed better ones. But of course, we had to go through with the ones we had.’ The system, however, was prone to vandalism and theft. ‘After every weekend there would always be a couple of bikes missing,’ Molenaar says. ‘I really have no idea what people did with them, because they could instantly be recognised as white bikes.’ But the biggest blow came when Postbank decided to abolish the chip card, because it wasn’t profitable. That chip card was pivotal to the system,’ Molenaar says. To continue the project we would have needed to set up another system, but the business partner had lost interest.’

F Schimmelpennink was disappointed, but – characteristically – not for long. In 2002 he got a call from the French advertising corporation JC Decaux, who wanted to set up his bike-sharing scheme in Vienna. That went really well. After Vienna, they set up a system in Lyon. Then in 2007, Paris followed. That was a decisive moment in the history of bike-sharing.’ The huge and unexpected success of the Parisian bike-sharing programme, which now boasts more than 20,000 bicycles, inspired cities all over the world to set up their own schemes, all modelled on Schimmelpennink’s. ‘It’s wonderful that this happened,’ he says. ‘But financially I didn’t really benefit from it, because I never filed for a patent.’

G In Amsterdam today, 38% of all trips are made by bike and, along with Copenhagen, it is regarded as one of the two most cycle-friendly capitals in the world – but the city never got another Witte Fietsenplan. Molenaar believes this may be because everybody in Amsterdam already has a bike. Schimmelpennink, however, cannot see that this changes Amsterdam’s need for a bike-sharing scheme. ‘People who travel on the underground don’t carry their bikes around. But often they need additional transport to reach their final destination.’Although he thinks it is strange that a city like Amsterdam does not have a successful bike¬sharing scheme, he is optimistic about the future. ‘In the ’60s we didn’t stand a chance because people were prepared to give their lives to keep cars in the city. But that mentality has totally changed. Today everybody longs for cities that are not dominated by cars.’

Questions 14 – 18
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.

14 a description of how people misused a bike-sharing scheme
15 an explanation of why a proposed bike-sharing scheme was turned down
16 a reference to a person being unable to profit from their work
17 an explanation of the potential savings a bike-sharing scheme would bring
18 a reference to the problems a bike-sharing scheme was intended to solve

Questions 19 and 20

Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Write the correct letters in boxes 19 and 20 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO of the following statements are made in the text about the Amsterdam bike-sharing scheme of 1999?
A It was initially opposed by a government department.
B It failed when a partner in the scheme withdrew support.
C It aimed to be more successful than the Copenhagen scheme.
D It was made possible by a change in people’s attitudes.
E It attracted interest from a range of bike designers.

Questions 21 and 22
Choose TWO letters, A-E
Write the correct letters in boxes 21 and 22 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO of the following statements are made in the text about Amsterdam today?
A The majority of residents would like to prevent all cars from entering the city.
B There is little likelihood of the city having another bike-sharing scheme.
C More trips in the city are made by bike than by any other form of transport.
D A bike-sharing scheme would benefit residents who use public transport.
E The city has a reputation as a place that welcomes cyclists.

Questions 23 – 26
Complete the summary below.Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.

The first urban bike-sharing scheme

The first bike-sharing scheme was the idea of the Dutch group Provo. The people who belonged to this group were (23)……………….They were concerned about damage to the environment and about (24)…………………, and believed that the bike-sharing scheme would draw attention to these issues. As well as painting some bikes white, they handed out (25)………………….that condemned the use of cars. However, the scheme was not a great success: almost as quickly as Provo left the bikes around the city, the (26)………………..took them away. According to Schimmelpennink, the scheme was intended to be symbolic. The idea was to get people thinking about the issues.

Motivational factors and the hospitality industry

A critical ingredient in the success of hotels is developing and maintaining superior performance from their employees. How is that accomplished? What Human Resource Management (HRM) practices should organizations invest in to acquire and retain great employees?

Some hotels aim to provide superior working conditions for their employees. The idea originated from workplaces – usually in the non-service sector – that emphasized fun and enjoyment as part of work-life balance. By contrast, the service sector, and more specifically hotels, has traditionally not extended these practices to address basic employee needs, such as good working conditions.

Pfeffer (1994) emphasizes that in order to succeed in a global business environment, organizations must make investment in Human Resource Management (HRM) to allow them to acquire employees who possess better skills and capabilities than their competitors. This investment will be to their competitive advantage. Despite this recognition of the importance of employee development, the hospitality industry has historically been dominated by underdeveloped HR practices (Lucas, 2002).

Lucas also points out that ‘the substance of HRM practices does not appear to be designed to foster constructive relations with employees or to represent a managerial approach that enables developing and drawing out the full potential of people, even though employees may be broadly satisfied with many aspects of their work’ (Lucas, 2002). In addition, or maybe as a result, high employee turnover has been a recurring problem throughout the hospitality industry. Among the many cited reasons are low compensation, inadequate benefits, poor working conditions and compromised employee morale and attitudes (Maroudas et al., 2008).

Ng and Sorensen (2008) demonstrated that when managers provide recognition to employees, motivate employees to work together, and remove obstacles preventing effective performance, employees feel more obligated to stay with the company. This was succinctly summarized by Michel et al. (2013): ‘[Providing support to employees gives them the confidence to perform their jobs better and the motivation to stay with the organization.’ Hospitality organizations can therefore enhance employee motivation and retention through the development and improvement of their working conditions. These conditions are inherently linked to the working environment.

While it seems likely that employees’ reactions to their job characteristics could be affected by a predisposition to view their work environment negatively, no evidence exists to support this hypothesis (Spector et al., 2000). However, given the opportunity, many people will find something to complain about in relation to their workplace (Poulston, 2009). There is a strong link between the perceptions of employees and particular factors of their work environment that are separate from the work itself, including company policies, salary and vacations.

Such conditions are particularly troubling for the luxury hotel market, where high-quality service, requiring a sophisticated approach to HRM, is recognized as a critical source of competitive advantage (Maroudas et al., 2008). In a real sense, the services of hotel employees represent their industry (Schneider and Bowen, 1993). This representation has commonly been limited to guest experiences. This suggests that there has been a dichotomy between the guest environment provided in luxury hotels and the working conditions of their employees.

It is therefore essential for hotel management to develop HRM practices that enable them to inspire and retain competent employees. This requires an understanding of what motivates employees at different levels of management and different stages of their careers (Enz and Siguaw, 2000). This implies that it is beneficial for hotel managers to understand what practices are most favorable to increase employee satisfaction and retention.

Herzberg (1966) proposes that people have two major types of needs, the first being extrinsic motivation factors relating to the context in which work is performed, rather than the work itself. These include working conditions and job security. When these factors are unfavorable, job dissatisfaction may result. Significantly, though, just fulfilling these needs does not result in satisfaction, but only in the reduction of dissatisfaction (Maroudas et al., 2008).

Employees also have intrinsic motivation needs or motivators, which include such factors as achievement and recognition. Unlike extrinsic factors, motivator factors may ideally result in job satisfaction (Maroudas et al., 2008). Herzberg’s (1966) theory discusses the need for a ‘balance’ of these two types of needs.

The impact of fun as a motivating factor at work has also been explored. For example, Tews, Michel and Stafford (2013) conducted a study focusing on staff from a chain of themed restaurants in the United States. It was found that fun activities had a favorable impact on performance and manager support for fun had a favorable impact in reducing turnover. Their findings support the view that fun may indeed have a beneficial effect, but the framing of that fun must be carefully aligned with both organizational goals and employee characteristics. ‘Managers must learn how to achieve the delicate balance of allowing employees the freedom to enjoy themselves at work while simultaneously maintaining high levels of performance’ (Tews et al., 2013).

Deery (2008) has recommended several actions that can be adopted at the organizational level to retain good staff as well as assist in balancing work and family life. Those particularly appropriate to the hospitality industry include allowing adequate breaks during the working day, staff functions that involve families, and providing health and well-being opportunities.

Questions 27 – 31
Look at the following statements (Questions 27-31) and the list of researchers below. Match each statement with the correct researcher, A-F.
Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.

27 Hotel managers need to know what would encourage good staff to remain.
28 The actions of managers may make staff feel they shouldn’t move to a different employer.
29 Little is done in the hospitality industry to help workers improve their skills.
30 Staff are less likely to change jobs if cooperation is encouraged.
31 Dissatisfaction with pay is not the only reason why hospitality workers change jobs.

List of Researchers
A Pfeffer
B Lucas
C Maroudas et al.
D Ng and Sorensen
E Enz and Siguaw
F Deery

Questions 32 – 35
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 32-35 on your answer sheet, write

YES                           if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO                             if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN          if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

32 One reason for high staff turnover in the hospitality industry is poor morale.
33 Research has shown that staff have a tendency to dislike their workplace.
34 An improvement in working conditions and job security makes staff satisfied with their jobs.
35 Staff should be allowed to choose when they take breaks during the working day.

Questions 36 – 40
Complete the summary below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.

Fun at work

Tews, Michel and Stafford carried out research on staff in an American chain of (36)……………….They discovered that activities designed for staff to have fun improved their (37)………………., and that management involvement led to lower staff (38)……………….They also found that the activities needed to fit with both the company’s (39)……………….and the (40)………………..of the staff. A balance was required between a degree of freedom and maintaining work standards.

Section 1
Read the text below and answer questions 1-7.

New cycle path to Marshbrook Country Park

A A new dual-purpose cycle and pedestrian route has been built from Atherton bus station to the country park’s main entrance at Marshbrook. It avoids the main road into Atherton on the south side, and keeps mainly to less busy roads. Once the path leaves the built-up area, it goes through countryside until it reaches Marshbrook.

B Funding for the cycle path has come largely from the county and town councils, while almost a third of it was raised through crowdfunding. Maintenance of the path is the responsibility of the county council. The cycle path was completed ahead of schedule – partly thanks to perfect weather for construction – and under budget.

C Annie Newcome is the chief executive of Cycle Atherton, the organisation that aims to get people cycling more often and more safely. Cycle Atherton proposed the 12-kilometre-long cycle path initially, and has been active in promoting it, Ms Newcome says she is delighted that all the hard work to achieve the funding proved successful.

D Marshbrook Country Park is a very popular recreational area, and the new path makes it much easier to reach from the town in an environmentally friendly way. At 2.5 metres wide, it is also suitable for users of wheelchairs, mobility scooters and buggies, who have not previously had access to the park without using motor vehicles.

E Although the path is now open, work is continuing to improve the signs along it, such as warnings when the path approaches a road. New hedges and trees will also be planted along stretches of the path, to provide some shelter from the wind and to benefit wildlife.

F Further information and a detailed map of the path including a proposed 5-kilometre extension are available online. The map can easily be downloaded and printed. Visit the county council website and follow the links to Atherton Cycle Path.

Questions 1-7
The text has six paragraphs, A-F. Which paragraph mentions the following? Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 1-7. NB You may use any letter more than once.

1. what still needs to be done
2. the original suggestion for creating the path
3. a reason why the path opened early
4. people who no longer need to get to the park by car
5. the route of the path
6. the length of the path
7. who paid for the path

Read the text below and answer Questions 8-14.

Study dramatic arts at Thornley

If you are hoping for a career in the theatre., Thornley College of Dramatic Arts is the place to come. For fifty years we have been providing top-quality courses for actors, directors, producers, musicians and everyone else who wishes to work professionally in the theatre or related industries. We also have expertise in preparing students for the specialised requirements of TV, film and radio. We’ll make sure you’re thoroughly prepared for the reality of work in your chosen field.

Our college-based tutors all have extensive practical experience in the entertainment industry as well as academic qualifications, and we also collaborate with some of the country’s best directors, writers and actors to create challenging, inspiring and exciting projects with our students.

We are well-known around the world, with our students coming from every continent. Every year, we receive two thousand applications for the one hundred places on our degree courses. Only the most talented get places, and we are proud that over ninety percent of our students gain professional work within a year of graduating – a figure few other drama colleges in the UK can match.

To mark our fiftieth anniversary this year, we are putting on a production of Theatre 500. Written by two staff members especially for this occasion, this multimedia show celebrates five hundred years of drama, and involves all our students in one way or another.

Another major development is that the college is about to move. Our new premises are now under construction in the heart of Thornley, next to the council building, which has won a prize for its architecture. For the last two years, we have been developing designs with Miller Furbank Architects for our new home, and one aim has been to ensure the buildings complement the council offices. Work started on the foundations of the buildings in March last year, and we plan to move to the new site this coming September.

We have also been talking to cultural organisations in the district, and considering how we can bring cost-free benefits to the local community, as well as to our students. As a result, part of the space in the new buildings has been designed to be adaptable, in order to accommodate classes, performances and workshops for different-sized groups of local people.

Questions 8-14
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the text? In boxes 8-14, 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

8. The college has introduced new courses since it opened.
9. The college provides training for work in the film industry.
10. Students have the chance to work with relevant professionals.
11. Many more people apply to study at the college than are accepted.
12. Theatre 500 was created by students.
13. The new building and the council building were designed by the same architects.
14. Local groups will be charged for using college premises.

Section 2

Read the text below and answer Questions 15-20.

How to make your working day more enjoyable

Research shows that work takes up approximately a third of our lives. Most of us get so bogged down with day-to-day tasks though, that we easily forget why we originally applied for the job and what we can get out of it. Here are a few ideas for how to make your working day better.

Physical changes to your work environment can make a massive difference to how you feel. Get some green plants or a family photo for your desk. File all those odd bits of paper or throw them away. All of these little touches can make your work environment feel like it’s yours. Make sure any screens you have are at a suitable height so you’re not straining your neck and shoulders.

Humans need a change of environment every now and then to improve productivity. Go out at lunchtime for a quick walk. If you have the option, it’s a good idea to work from home occasionally. And if there’s a conference coming up, ask if you can go along to it. Not only will you practise your networking skills, but you’ll also have a day away from the office.

Use coffee time to get to know a colleague you don’t usually speak to. There’s no point in getting away from staring at one thing though, only to replace it with another; so leave your mobile alone! Another tip is to try and stay out of office gossip. In the long run it could get you in more trouble than you realise.

When you’re trying to focus on something, hunger is the worst thing, if you can, keep some healthy snacks in your desk because if you have something you can nibble on, it will make you work more effectively and you’ll enjoy it more. Also, if you’re dehydrated, you won’t be able to focus properly. So keep drinking water.

Finally, if you’ve been dreaming about starting up a big project for some time, do it! There are so many different things you can do to get you enjoying work more each day.

Questions 15-20
Complete the sentences below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the text for each answer.

15. Bringing a personal ……………….. to work will make the place feel more homely.
16. It is important to check the position of all ………………… before use to avoid pulling any muscles.
17. Leaving the office in the middle of the day may help to raise ………………. later on.
18. It is advisable to avoid checking a ………………… during breaks.
19. Getting involved in …………………. at work may have negative results.
20. Having a few …………………… available can help people concentrate better at work.

Read the text below and answer Questions 21-27.

How to get promoted

If you’re sitting at your desk wondering whether this will be the year you finally get promoted, here are some tips.

It starts with you. You are perhaps the most important part in the ‘promotion process’, so you need to know what you want – and why you want it. Take an honest look at yourself – your achievements and also your skills, particularly those you could exploit to take on a different role.

Your boss is the gatekeeper. If you think your boss is likely to be on your side, ask for a meeting to discuss your serious commitment to the organisation and how this could translate into a more defined career plan. If you are less sure about your boss’s view of your prospects and how they may react, start softly with a more deliberate focus on increasing your boss’s understanding of the work you do and the added value you deliver.

Think about how you are perceived at work. In order for you to get your promotion, who needs to know about you? Who would be on the interview panel and whose opinion and input would they seek? And once you’ve got a list of people to impress, ask yourself – do they know enough about you? And I mean really know – what you do day to day at your desk, your contribution to the team, and perhaps most importantly, your potential.

The chances are that those decision-makers won’t know ail they should about you. Raising your profile in your organisation is critical so that when those in charge start looking at that empty office and considering how best to fill it, the first name that pops into their heads is yours. If your firm has a newsletter, volunteer to write a feature to include in it. If they arrange regular client events, get involved in the organisation of them. And so on.

If you think your experience needs enhancing, then look at ways you can continue to improve it. If you are confident in your professional expertise but lack the latest management theory, enrol on some relevant courses that fit around your day job.

So what are you waiting for?

Questions 21-27
Complete the notes below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the text.

Steps to take to achieve a promotion

• First step: examine past successes and any (21) ………………… that would help gain promotion

• Set up a meeting with your boss to talk about:
o how best to use your high level of (22) ………………… in future
o or how much extra (23) ………………… you already bring to the company

• Focus on the important people in the company:
o find out which ones will be members of the (24) ………………… who decide on the promotion
o consider how much they are aware of your (25) ………………… for the future

• Take steps to raise your profile by:
o offering to create a feature for a company publication
o participating in the (26) ……………………… of events for customers

• Work on self-development: take any (27) ……………… that fill in gaps in knowledge

Section 3

Animals can tell right from wrong

Until recently, humans were thought to be the only species to experience complex emotions and have a sense of morality. But Professor Marc Bekoff, an ecologist at University of Colorado, Boulder, US, believes that morals are ‘hard-wired’ into the brains of all mammals and provide the social glue’ that allows animals to live together in groups.

His conclusions will assist animal welfare groups pushing to have animals treated more humanely. Professor Bekoff, who presents his case in his book Wild Justice, said: ‘Just as in humans, the moral nuances of a particular culture or group will be different from another, but they are certainly there. Moral codes are species specific, so they can be difficult to compare with each other or with humans.’ Professor Bekoff believes morals developed in animals to help regulate behaviour in social groups. He claims that these help to limit fighting within the group and encourage co-operative behaviour.

His ideas have met with some controversy in the scientific community. Professor Frans de Waal, who examines the behaviour of primates, including chimpanzees, at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, US, said: ‘I don’t believe animals are moral in the sense we humans are – with a well-developed and reasoned sense of right and wrong – rather that human morality incorporates a set of psychological tendencies and capacities such as empathy, reciprocity, a desire for co-operation and harmony that are older than our species. Human morality was not formed from scratch, but grew out of our primate psychology. Primate psychology has ancient roots and I agree that other animals show many of the same tendencies and have an intense sociality.’

Wolves live in tight-knit social groups that are regulated by strict rules. Wolves also demonstrate fairness. During play, dominant wolves will appear to exchange roles with lower-ranking wolves. They pretend to be submissive and go so far as to allow biting by the lower-ranking wolves, provided it is not too hard. Prof Bekoff argues that without a moral code governing their actions, this kind of behaviour would not be possible. Astonishingly, if an animal becomes aggressive, it will perform a play bow’ to ask forgiveness before play resumes.

In other members of the dog family, play is controlled in a similar way. Among coyotes, cubs which are too aggressive are ignored by the rest of the group and often end up having to leave entirely. Experiments with domestic dogs, where one animal was given some sweets’ and another wasn’t, have shown that they possess a sense of fairness as they allowed their companion to eat some.

Elephants are intensely sociable and emotional animals. Research by Iain Douglas-Hamilton, from the department of zoology at Oxford University, suggests elephants experience compassion and has found evidence of elephants helping injured members of their herd. In 2003, a herd of 11 elephants rescued antelopes which were being held inside an enclosure in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The top female elephant unfastened all of the metal latches holding the gates closed and swung them open, allowing the antelopes to escape. This is thought to be a rare example of animals showing empathy for members of another species – a trait previously thought to be the exclusive preserve of humankind.

A laboratory experiment involved training Diana monkeys to insert a token into a slot to obtain food. A male who had become skilled at the task was found to be helping the oldest female, who had not learned how to do it. On three occasions the male monkey picked up tokens she dropped and inserted them into the slot and allowed her to have the food. As there was no benefit for the male monkey, Professor Bekoff argues that this is a clear example of an animal’s actions being driven by some internal moral compass.

Since chimpanzees are known to be among the most cognitively advanced of the great apes and our closest cousins, it is perhaps not remarkable that scientists should suggest they live by moral codes. A chimpanzee known as Knuckles is the only known captive chimpanzee to suffer from cerebral palsy, which leaves him physically and mentally impaired. What is extraordinary is that scientists have observed other chimpanzees interacting with him differently and he is rarely subjected to intimidating displays of aggression from older males. Chimpanzees also demonstrate a sense of justice and those who deviate from the code of conduct of a group are set upon by other members as punishment.

Experiments with rats have shown that they will not take food if they know their actions will cause pain to another rat. In lab tests, rats were given food which then caused a second group of rats to receive an electric shock. The rats with the food stopped eating rather than see this happen.

Whales have been found to have spindle cells in their brains. These specialised cells were thought to be restricted to humans and great apes, and appear to play a role in empathy and understanding the emotions of others. Humpback whales, fin whales, killer whales and sperm whales have all been found to have spindle cells. They also have three times as many spindle cells as humans and are thought to be older in evolutionary terms. This finding suggests that emotional judgements such as empathy may have evolved considerably earlier in history than formerly thought and could be widespread in the animal kingdom.

Questions 28-32
Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the text for each answer.

Complex social behaviour in wolf packs

Wolves live in packs and it is clear that there are a number of (28) ……………….. concerning their behaviour. Some observers believe they exhibit a sense of (29) ……………….. The stronger, more senior wolves seem to adopt the roles of the junior wolves when they are playing together. They act as if they are (30) …………………. to the juniors and even permit some gentle (31) …………………. What is even more surprising is that when one of the juniors gets too forceful, it bends down begging for (32) ………………. Only when that has been granted will the wolves continue playing.

Questions 33-37
Look at the following animals (Questions 33-37) and the list of descriptions below. Match each animal with the correct description, A-G. Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 33-37.

33. coyotes
34. domestic dogs
35. elephants
36. Diana monkeys
37. rats

List of Descriptions
A often attack peers who fail to follow the moral code
B appear to enjoy playing with members of a different species
C sometimes share treats with a peer
D may assist a peer who is failing to complete a task
E may be driven away by their peers if they do not obey the moral code
F seem unwilling to benefit from something that hurts their peers
G may help a different type of animal which is in difficulty

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

38. What view is expressed by Professor de Waal?
A Apes have advanced ideas about the difference between good and evil.
B The social manners of some animals prove that they are highly moral.
C Some human moral beliefs developed from our animal ancestors.
D The desire to live in peace with others is a purely human quality.

39. Why does Professor Bekoff mention the experiment on Diana monkeys?
A it shows that this species of monkey is not very easy to train.
B It confirms his view on the value of research into certain monkeys.
C It proves that female monkeys are generally less intelligent than males.
D It illustrates a point he wants to make about monkeys and other creatures.

40. What does the writer find most surprising about chimpanzees?
A They can suffer from some of the same illnesses as humans.
B They appear to treat disabled peers with consideration.
C They have sets of social conventions that they follow.
D The males can be quite destructive at times.

Section 1
Read the text below and answer questions 1-7.

Young Fashion Designer UK competition

Young Fashion Designer UK is an exciting national competition which aims to showcase and promote the exceptional work achieved by students studying courses in textile design, product design and fashion throughout the UK.

The competition is designed for students to enter the coursework they are currently working on rather than specifically producing different pieces of work. If you would like to add to your coursework, that is for you and your teacher to decide.

You can apply independently or through your school/college. To enter please ensure you follow these steps:
1. Provide three A3 colour copies from your design folder.
You must include:
– initial ideas about the clothing
– a close-up photograph of the front and back view of the finished clothing.
2. Please label each sheet clearly with your name and school (on the back).
3. Print off a copy of your registration form and attach it to your work.
4. Post your entry to the Young Fashion Designer Centre.

Once the entry deadline has passed, the judges will select the shortlist of students who will be invited to the Finals. You will be notified if you are shortlisted. You will need to bring originals of the work that you entered. Each finalist will have their own stand consisting of a table and tabletop cardboard display panels. Feel free to add as much creativity to your stand as possible. Some students bring tablets/ laptops with slideshows or further images of work but it should be emphasised that these may not necessarily improve your chances of success.

The judges will assess your work and will ask various questions about it. They will look through any supporting information and the work you have on display before coming together as a judging panel to decide on the winners. You are welcome to ask the judges questions. In fact, you should make the most of having experts on hand!

There are 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize winners for each category. The judges can also decide to award special prizes if the work merits this. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners will receive a glass trophy and prize from a kind donor.

Questions 1-7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the text? In boxes 1-7, 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. Participants are required to create a new item of clothing for the Young Fashion Designer UK competition.
2. Participants must send information about the thoughts that led to the item they are entering for the competition.
3. The shortlist will consist of a fixed number of finalists.
4. Finalists can choose how to present their work to the judges on their stand.
5. It is strongly recommended that finalists support their entry with additional photographs.
6. Questions that the students ask the judges may count towards the final decisions.
7. Extra prizes may be awarded depending on the standard of the entries submitted.

Read the text below and answer questions 8-14

Which keyboard should you buy?

It’s worth remembering that a bad keyboard can significantly affect your entire computing experience. So make sure you pick the right keyboard for your needs.

A Logitech K120
Logitech’s K120 offers a number of extra features, it’s spill-resistant, draining small amounts of liquid if you have an accident. It isn’t particularly eye-catching, but it feels very solid. For the price, it’s a tempting choice.

B Cherry MX 3.0 Keyboard
The Cherry MX 3.0 looks simple and neat, thanks to its compact build. It’s solid, durable and you don’t need to push keys all the way down to activate them. It’s also rather loud though, which can take some getting used to.

C Logitech K780
The K780 is a compact, pleasantly modern-looking keyboard. There’s an integrated stand for smartphones and tablets too. It’s quiet to type on, and the circular keys are easy to familiarise yourself with, well-spaced and large enough to hit accurately. For this price though, the lack of backlighting is disappointing.

D Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic
The Sculpt’s curved, strange-looking build serves a purpose, it provides wrist support and lifts your forearms into a relaxed position so you don’t hurt yourself from typing for lengthy periods. It feels weird, but it seems to do the trick.

E Microsoft Universal Bluetooth Keyboard
Microsoft’s Bluetooth keyboard has one very handy feature – you can fold it in half and carry it around in your jacket pocket or bag, and it feels rather like a large wallet. It has generously sized keys, though the two-piece spacebar takes some getting used to. Another useful feature is that you can get up to three months’ use from a single charge.

F Corsair Strafe RGB Keyboard
Corsair’s keyboard is expensive, flashy and extremely impressive. Ail of its keys are programmable, there’s eye-catching backlighting and the buttons are textured for improved grip. All this is because it’s designed for gamers. However, it’s also silent, meaning it is suitable for everyday office work too.

Questions 8-14
Look at the six reviews of computer keyboards A-F. For which keyboard are the following statements true?

8. This keyboard may not suit users who prefer the keys to be almost silent.
9. This keyboard is easily portable because it can be made to fit into a small space.
10. This keyboard includes a special place to put small devices.
11. This keyboard is designed to prevent injury to those who spend a lot of time on the computer.
12. This keyboard offers good value for money.
13. This keyboard is primarily aimed at people who use their computer for entertainment.
14. It should not take long for users to get used to the shape of the keys on this keyboard.

Section 2
Read the text below and answer questions 15-20.

Working for a small company may be better than you think

Recent research shows that many job-seekers believe their ideal position would be in a large company. However, working for a small or medium-sized business has many advantages that are too easily overlooked. Here are just a few of them.

Working in a small organisation with a small workforce means it’s likely to be easy to become part of it. it won’t be long before you’re familiar with the staff and the departments that you need to deal with. This can provide a feeling of comfort that takes much longer to develop in a large company. Departments are likely to be small and have close connections with each other, which helps to make internal communication work well – everyone knows what’s going on. You’ll also gain a better understanding of how your own role fits into the company as a whole.

In a small business you’re likely to have considerable variety in your workload, including opportunities to work in different areas of the company, which will allow you to identify abilities that you didn’t know you had. An introduction to new activities could even lead to a change of career. This variety in your work will help to make it stimulating, so you have a good reason for getting out of bed in the morning.

There will be plenty of opportunities to show initiative, and you’ll also learn to function well as part of a team. Because it’s much harder to overlook someone within a small workforce than a large one, your efforts are more likely to attract the attention of those higher up. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to show what you can do, and to have your potential noticed. The result is very likely to be that promotion comes to you faster.

Small businesses are usually flexible, something that is rarely true of large organisations. This means that if they’re well managed, they can adapt to make the most of changes in the wider economy, which in turn can help you. Don’t dismiss them as a place to work because of the myths about them. Small firms can be ideal places for developing your career.

Questions 15-20
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the passage.

15. In a small business it is easy to become …………………. with colleagues and other departments.
16. You may find you have …………………. you were not aware of.
17. Finding that your work is ………………. will make you enjoy doing it.
18. Other people are likely to realise that you have ………………….
19. Opportunities for …………………… will come sooner than in a larger business.
20. You can benefit from a small company being more ………………….. than a large one.

Read the text below and answer questions 21-27.

Starting a new job

A Make sure you know when and where you are expected to report on your first day. If the route from home is unfamiliar to you, make a practice run first the normal first activity in a new job is a meeting with your boss, and it would be embarrassing to be late. Dress formally until you’re sure of the dress code.

B You should expect to have an induction programme planned for you; a security pass; visits to whatever parts of the organisation you need to understand to do your job properly; meetings with anyone who could affect your success in the role; and someone to show you where everything is and tell you all the real rules of the culture – the ones that are never written down but which everyone is meant to follow.

C It can be a shock to join a new organisation. When you are a newcomer, feeling uncertain and perhaps a little confused, there can be a strong temptation to talk about your old job and organisation as a way of reminding yourself and telling others that you really know what you are doing, because you did it in your previous role. Unfortunately, this will suggest that you have a high opinion of yourself, and that you think your old place was better. It has enormous power to annoy, so don’t do it.

D All employers have a core product or service paid for by customers which justifies their existence. If you are not part of this core activity, remember that your role is to provide a service to the people who are part of it. Understanding their concerns and passions is essential for understanding why your own role exists, and for knowing how to work alongside these colleagues. This is why you must see this product or service in action.

E When I worked for a television company, all of us, whatever our job, were strongly encouraged to visit a studio and see how programmes were made. This was wise. Make sure you do the equivalent for whatever is the core activity of your new employer.

F Don’t try to do the job too soon. This may seem strange because, after all, you have been appointed to get on and do the job. But in your first few weeks your task is to learn what the job really is, rather than immediately starting to do what you assume it is.

G Starting a new job is one of life’s major transitions. Treat it with the attention it deserves and you will find that all your work in preparing and then going through the selection process has paid off magnificently.

Questions 21-27
The text has seven paragraphs A-G. Which paragraph contains the following information?

21. the emotions that new employees are likely to experience at first
22. a warning to be patient at first
23. how colleagues might react to certain behaviour
24. travelling to your new workplace before you start working there
25. an example of observing an activity carried out within an organisation
26. some things that the organisation should arrange for when you begin
27. a division of jobs within an organisation into two categories

Section 3

How animals keep fit

No one would dream of running a marathon without first making a serious effort to train for it. But no matter how well they have stuck to their training regime, contestants will find that running non-stop for 42 kilometres is going to hurt.

Now consider the barnacle goose. Every year this bird carries out a 3000-kilometre migration. So how do the birds prepare for this? Do they spend months gradually building up fitness? That’s not really the barnacle goose’s style. Instead, says environmental physiologist Lewis Halsey, ‘They just basically sit on the water and eat a lot.’

Until recently, nobody had really asked whether exercise is as tightly connected to fitness in the rest of the animal kingdom as it is for us. The question is tied up in a broader assumption: that animals maintain fitness because of the exercise they get finding food and escaping predators.

Halsey points out that this may not necessarily be the case. Take the house cat. Most domestic cats spend much of the day lounging around, apparently doing nothing, rather than hunting for food. But over short distances, even the laziest can move incredibly fast when they want to. Similarly, black and brown bears manage to come out of several months’ hibernation with their muscle mass intact – without having to lift so much as a paw during this time.
Barnacle geese go one better. In the process of sitting around, they don’t just maintain their fitness. They also develop stronger hearts and bigger flight muscles, enabling them to fly for thousands of kilometres in a migration that may last as little as two days.

So, if exercise isn’t necessarily the key to physical strength, then what is? One clue comes from a broader view of the meaning of physical fitness. Biologically speaking, all it means is that the body has undergone changes that make it stronger and more efficient. In animals such as bears these changes appear to be triggered by cues such as falling temperatures or insufficient food. In the months of hibernation, these factors seem to prompt the release of muscle-protecting compounds which are then carried to the bears’ muscles in their blood and prevent muscle loss.

Barnacle geese, Halsey suggests, may be responding to an environmental change such as temperature, which helps their bodies somehow ‘know’ that a big physical challenge is looming. In other bird species, that cue may be something different. Chris Guglielmo, a physiological ecologist, has studied the effect of subjecting migratory songbirds known as yellow-rumped warblers to changing hours of daylight. ‘We don’t need to take little songbirds and train them up to do a 6- or 10-hour flight,’ he says. If they are subjected to the right daylight cycle, ‘we can take them out of the cage and put them in the wind tunnel, and they fly for 10 hours.’

Unlike migratory birds, however, humans have no biological shortcut to getting fit. Instead, pressures in our evolutionary history made our bodies tie fitness to exercise.

Our ancestors’ lives were unpredictable. They had to do a lot of running to catch food and escape danger, but they also needed to keep muscle mass to a minimum because muscle is biologically expensive. Each kilogram contributes about 10 to 15 kilocalories a day to our metabolism when resting — which doesn’t sound like much until you realise that muscles account for about 40 percent of the average person’s body mass. ‘Most of us are spending 20 percent of our basic energy budget taking care of muscle mass,’ says Daniel Lieberman, an evolutionary biologist and marathon runner.

So our physiology evolved to let our weight and fitness fluctuate depending on how much food was available. ‘This makes us evolutionarily different from most other animals,’ says Lieberman. In general, animals merely need to be capable of short bouts of intense activity, whether it’s the cheetah chasing prey or the gazelle escaping. Cats are fast, but they don’t need to run very far. Perhaps a few mad dashes around the house are all it takes to keep a domestic one fit enough for feline purposes. ‘Humans, on the other hand, needed to adapt to run slower, but for longer,’ says Lieberman.

He argues that long ago on the African savannah, natural selection made us into ‘supremely adapted’ endurance athletes, capable of running prey into the ground and ranging over long distances with unusual efficiency. But only, it appears, if we train. Otherwise we quickly degenerate into couch potatoes.

As for speed, even those animals that do cover impressive distances don’t have to be the fastest they can possibly be. Barnacle geese needn’t set world records when crossing the North Atlantic; they just need to be able to get to their destination. ‘And,’ says exercise physiologist Ross Tucker, ‘humans may be the only animal that actually cares about reaching peak performance.’ Other than racehorses and greyhounds, both of which we have bred to race, animals aren’t directly competing against one another. ‘I don’t know that all animals are the same, performance-wise … and we don’t know whether training would enhance their ability,’ he says.

Questions 28-30
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.

28. The writer discusses marathon runners and barnacle geese to introduce the idea that
A marathon runners may be using inefficient training methods.
B the role of diet in achieving fitness has been underestimated.
C barnacle geese spend much longer preparing to face a challenge.
D serious training is not always necessary for physical achievement.

29. The writer says that human muscles
A use up a lot of energy even when resting.
B are heavier than other types of body tissue.
C were more efficiently used by our ancestors.
D have become weaker than they were in the past.

30. The writer says that in order to survive, early humans developed the ability to
A hide from their prey.
B run long distances.
C adapt their speeds to different situations.
D predict different types of animal movements.

Questions 31-35
Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage.

What is the key to physical fitness?

In biological terms, when an animal is physically fit, its body changes, becoming more powerful and (31) …………….. For bears, this change may be initially caused by colder weather or a lack of (32) …………………, which during (33) ………………….. causes certain compounds to be released into their (34) ………………… and to travel around the body. These compounds appear to prevent muscle loss. In the case of barnacle geese, the change may be due to a variation in (35) …………………..

Questions 36-40
Look at the following statements (Questions 36-40) and the list of researchers below. Match each statement with the correct researcher, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter, A, B, C or D, in boxes 36-40. NB You may use any letter more than once.

36. One belief about how animals stay fit is possibly untrue.
37. It may not be possible to train all animals to improve their speed.
38. One type of bird has demonstrated fitness when exposed to a stimulus in experimental conditions.
39. Human energy use developed in a different way from that of animals.
40. One type of bird may develop more strength when the weather becomes warmer or cooler.

List of Researchers
A Lewis Halsey
B Chris Guglielmo
C Daniel Lieberman
D Ross Tucker

Section 1
Read the text below and answer questions 1-6.

Consumer Advice

If something you’ve ordered hasn’t arrived, you should contact the seller to find out where it is. It’s their legal responsibility to make sure the item is delivered to you. They should chase the delivery company and let you know what’s happened to your item. If your item wasn’t delivered to the location you agreed (e.g. if it was left with your neighbour without your consent), it’s the seller’s legal responsibility to sort out the issue.

If the item doesn’t turn up, you’re legally entitled to a replacement or refund. You can ask for your money back if you don’t receive the item within 30 days of buying it. If the seller refuses, you should put your complaint in writing. If that doesn’t work, you could contact their trade association – look on their website for this information, or contact them to ask.

You might also be able to get your money back through your bank or payment provider – this depends on how you paid.

• If you paid by debit card, contact your bank and say you want to use the ‘chargeback’ scheme. If the bank agrees, they can ask the seller’s bank to refund the money to your account. Many bank staff don’t know about the scheme, so you might need to speak to a supervisor or manager. You should do this within 120 days of when you paid.
• If you paid by credit card and the item cost less than £100, you should contact your credit card company and say you want to use the ‘chargeback’ scheme. There’s no time limit for when you need to do this. If the item cost more than £100 but less than £30,000, contact your credit card company and say that you want to make a ‘section 75’claim.
• If you paid using PayPal, use PayPal’s online resolution centre to report your dispute. You must do this within 180 days of paying.

Questions 1-6
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the text? In boxes 1-6, 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. You will receive a card telling you if an item has been left with a neighbour.
2. It may be quicker to get a refund than a replacement for a non-delivered item.
3. You are entitled to a refund if the item fails to arrive by a certain time.
4. There is a time limit when using the ‘chargeback’ scheme for a debit card payment.
5. You can use the ‘chargeback’ scheme for a credit card payment of more than £100.
6. PayPal’s online resolution centre has a good reputation for efficiency.

Read the text below and answer questions 7-14.

Rice Cookers

A Ezy Rice Cooker
This has a 1.8 litre pot and a stainless steel exterior. It has a separate glass lid, and the handle on the lid stays cool. It produces perfectly cooked white rice, but tends to spit when cooking brown rice. There are slight dirt traps around the rim of the lid, and neither the pot nor the lid is dishwasher safe.

B Family Rice Cooker
This has a plastic exterior and a flip-top lid. The lid locks when closed and becomes a secure handle to carry the cooker. The aluminium interior pot is quite difficult to clean, and it can’t be put in a dishwasher. It’s programmed to adjust the temperature once the rice is done so that it stops cooking but doesn’t get cold.

C Mini Rice Cooker
This has a flip-top lid and a 0.3 litre capacity. The interior pot is made of non-stick aluminium and is dishwasher safe. This rice cooker is ideal when cooking for one. However it does not have any handles at the side, and water sometimes overflows when cooking brown rice.

D VPN Rice Cooker
This has a painted steel exterior with a handle on each side and a steel inner pot. It has a lift-off lid and comes with a booklet including a range of ideas for rice dishes. However, the keep-warm setting must be manually selected and the handles are tricky to grip.

E S16 Rice cooker
This is simple to use, not spitting or boiling over even when cooking brown rice. The exterior stays cool when in use, so there’s no danger of burning your hand. However, the lack of handles is a nuisance, and a recipe book would have been useful.

Questions 7-14
Look at the five reviews of rice cookers, A-E. For which rice cooker are the following statements true? Write the correct letter; A-E, in boxes 7-14 sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.

7. The handles at the side are hard to use.
8. It cooks brown rice without making a mess.
9. It automatically switches setting to keep the rice warm when cooked.
10. It’s difficult to get the removable top really clean.
11. A selection of recipes is provided with the cooker.
12. It has a handle at the top for carrying the cooker safely.
13. The outside of the cooker doesn’t get too hot.
14. You can put the pot in the dishwasher.

Section 2
Read the text below and answer questions 15-22.

Safety when working on roofs

A fall from height is the most serious hazard associated with roof work. Preventing falls from roofs is a priority for WorkSafe New Zealand. Investigations by WorkSafe into falls that occur while working at height show that more than 50 percent of falls are from under three metres, and most of these are from ladders and roofs. The cost of these falls is estimated to be $24 million a year – to say nothing of the human costs that result from these falls. More injuries happen on residential building sites than any other workplace in the construction sector.

In order to prevent such injuries, a hazard assessment should be carried out for all work on roofs to assess potential dangers. It is essential that the hazards are identified before the work starts, and that the necessary equipment, appropriate precautions and systems of work are provided and implemented. Hazard identification should be repeated periodically or when there is a change in conditions, for example, the weather or numbers of staff onsite.

The first thing to be considered is whether it is possible to eliminate this hazard completely, so that workers are not exposed to the danger of falling. This can sometimes be done at the design, construction planning, and tendering stage. If the possibility of a fail cannot be eliminated, some form of edge protection should be used to prevent workers from falling. It may be possible to use the existing scaffolding as edge protection. If this is not practicable, then temporary work platforms should be used. In cases where such protection is not possible, then steps should be taken to minimise the likelihood of any harm resulting. This means considering the use of safety nets and other similar systems to make it less likely that injury will be caused if a fall does occur.

Ladders should only be employed for short-duration maintenance work such as touching up paint. People using ladders should be trained and instructed in the selection and safe use of ladders. There should be inspection of all ladders on a regular basis to ensure they are safe to use.

Questions 15-22
Complete the notes below. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/ OR A NUMBER from the passage.

Safety when working on roofs
Investigations show that
• over half of falls are from less than (15) …………………
• most falls are from ladders and roofs
• falls cost $24 million per year
• the majority of falls occur on (16) ……………….

Hazard identification should be carried out
• before the work starts
• when conditions such as the weather or worker numbers change

Controls
• (17) ……………….. the hazard at the planning stage before the work begins if possible
• prevent a fall by using edge protection e.g. scaffolding or (18) ……………

Ladders
• these should only be used for (20) ……………….. which does not take a long time
• training should be provided in their (21) …………….. and use
• regular (22) ………………. of ladders is required

Read the text below and answer questions 23-27.

Maternity allowance for working women

You can claim Maternity Allowance once you’ve been pregnant for 26 weeks. Payments start 11 weeks before the date on which your baby is due.

The amount you can get depends on your eligibility. You could get either:
• £140.98 a week or 90% of your average weekly earnings (whichever is less) for 39 weeks
• £27 a week for 14 weeks

Maternity Allowance for 39 weeks
You might get Maternity Allowance for 39 weeks if one of the following applies:
• you’re employed
• you’re self-employed and pay Class 2 National Insurance (including voluntary National Insurance)
• you’ve recently stopped working

You may still qualify even if you’ve recently stopped working. It doesn’t matter if you had different jobs, or periods when you were unemployed.

Maternity Allowance for 14 weeks
You might get Maternity Allowance for 14 weeks if for at least 26 weeks in the 66 weeks before your baby is due:
• you were married or in a civil partnership
• you were not employed or self-employed
• you took part in the business of your self-employed spouse or civil partner

How to claim
You’ll need an MA1 claim form, available online. You can print this and fill it in, or fill it in online. You also need to provide a payslip or a Certificate of Small Earnings Exemption as proof of your income, and proof of the baby’s due date, such as a doctor’s letter.

You should get a decision on your claim within 24 working days.

You should report any changes to your circumstances, for example, if you go back to work, to your local Jobcentre Plus as they can affect how much allowance you get.

Questions 23-27
Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/ OR A NUMBER from the passage.

23. The maximum amount of money a woman can get each weak is £
24. Being ………………… for a time does not necessarily mean that a woman will not be eligible for Maternity Allowance.
25. In order to claim, a woman must send a …………….. or a Small Earnings Exemption Certificate as evidence of her income.
26. In order to claim, a woman may need to provide a ………………….. as evidence of the due date.
27. Payment may be affected by differences in someone’s ………………… such as a return to work, and the local Jobcenter Plus must be informed.

Section 3

The California Gold Rush of 1849

A On January 24, 1848, James Wilson Marshal!, a carpenter, found small flakes of gold in the American River near Coloma, California. At the time, Marshall was working to build a water-powered sawmill for businessman John Sutter. As it happens, just days after Marshall’s discovery, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, ending the Mexican-American War and transferring California, with its mineral deposits, into the ownership of the United States. At the time, the population of the territory consisted of 6,500 Californios {people of Spanish or Mexican descent); 700 foreigners (primarily Americans); and 150,000 Native Americans.

B Though Marshall and Sutter tried to keep news of the discovery quiet, word got out, and by mid-March 1848 at least one newspaper was reporting that large quantities of gold were being found. Though the initial reaction in San Francisco was disbelief, storekeeper Sam Brannan set off a frenzy when he paraded through town displaying a small bottle containing gold from Sutter’s Creek. By mid-June, some three-quarters of the male population of San Francisco had left town for the gold mines, and the number of miners in the area reached 4,000 by August.

C As news spread of the fortunes being made in California, the first migrants to arrive were those from lands accessible by boat, such as Oregon, the Sandwich Islands {now Hawaii), Mexico, Chile, Peru and even China. Only later would the news reach the East Coast, where press reports were initially skeptical. Throughout 1849, thousands of people around the United States (mostly men) borrowed money, mortgaged their property or spent their life savings to make the arduous journey to California. In pursuit of the kind of wealth they had never dreamed of, they left their families and local areas; in turn, their wives had no option but to shoulder different responsibilities such as running farms or businesses, and many made a real success of them.

By the end of the year, the non-native population of California was estimated at 100,000 {as compared with 20,000 at the end of 1848 and around 800 in March 1848). To accommodate the needs of the ’49ers, as the gold miners were known, towns had sprung up all over the region, complete with shops and other businesses seeking to make their own Gold Rush fortune. The overcrowded chaos of the mining camps and towns grew ever more lawless. San Francisco, for its part, developed a bustling economy and became the central metropolis of the new frontier.

D How did all these would-be miners search for gold? Panning was the oldest way. The basic procedure was to place some gold-bearing materials, such as river gravel, into a shallow pan, add some water, and then carefully swirl the mixture around so the water and light material spilled over the side. If all went well, the heavier gold nuggets or gold dust would settle to the bottom of the pan. Gold panning was slow even for the most skillful miner. On a good day, one miner could wash about 50 pans in the usual 12-hour workday.

E Another way was to use what was called a ‘rocker’. Isaac Humphrey is said to have introduced it to the California gold fields. It was simply a rectangular wooden box, set at a downward angle and mounted on a rocking mechanism. The dirt and rock was dumped into the top, followed by a bucket of water. The box was rocked by hand to agitate the mixture. The big rocks were caught in a sieve at the top, the waste exited the lower end with the water, and the heavy gold fell to the bottom of the box.

The rocker had advantages and disadvantages. The advantages were that it was easily transportable; it did not require a constant source of water; and, most importantly, a miner could process more dirt and rock than with a pan. The primary disadvantage was that the rocker had difficulty in trapping the smallest particles of gold, commonly known as ‘flour’. Some miners added small amounts of mercury to the bottom of the rocker. Due to its chemical composition, it had a facility to trap fine gold. Periodically, the miners would remove and heat it. As it vaporized, it would leave gold behind.

F After 1850, the surface gold in California had largely disappeared, even as miners continued to reach the gold fields. Mining had always been difficult and dangerous labor, and striking it rich required good luck as much as skill and hard work. Moreover, the average daily pay for an independent miner had by then dropped sharply from what it had been in 1848. As gold became more and more difficult to reach, the growing industrialization of mining drove more and more miners from independence into wage labor. The new technique of hydraulic mining, developed in 1853, brought enormous profits, but destroyed much of the region’s landscape.

G Though gold mining continued throughout the 1850s, it had reached its peak by 1852, when gold worth some $81 million was pulled from the ground. After that year, the total take declined gradually, leveling off to around $45 million per year by 1857. Settlement in California continued, however, and by the end of the decade the state’s population was 380,000.

Questions 28-31
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.

28. The writer suggests that Marshall’s discovery came at a good time for the US because
A the Mexican-American War was ending so there were men needing work.
B his expertise in water power would be useful in gold mining.
C the population of California had already begun to increase rapidly.
D the region was about to come under the control of the US.

29. What was the reaction in 1848 to the news of the discovery of gold?
A The press played a large part in convincing the public of the riches available.
B Many men in San Francisco left immediately to check it out for themselves.
C People needed to see physical evidence before they took it seriously,
D Men in other mines in the US were among the first to respond to it.

30. What was the result of thousands of people moving to California?
A San Francisco could not cope with the influx of people from around the world.
B Many miners got more money than they could ever have earned at home.
C Some of those who stayed behind had to take on unexpected roles.
D New towns were established which became good places to live.

31. What does the writer say about using pans and rockers to find gold?
A Both methods required the addition of mercury.
B A rocker needed more than one miner to operate it.
C Pans were the best system for novice miners to use.
D Miners had to find a way round a design fault in one system.

Questions 32-36
The text has seven sections A-G. Which section contains the following information?

32. a reference to ways of making money in California other than mining for gold
33. a suggestion that the gold that was found did not often compensate for the hard work undertaken
34. a mention of an individual who convinced many of the existence of gold in California
35. details of the pre-Gold Rush population of California
36. a contrast between shrinking revenue and increasing population

Questions 37-40
Complete the summary below. Write NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the passage.

Basic techniques for extracting gold

The most basic method used by many miners began with digging some (37) …………………….out of a river and hoping it might contain gold. Small amounts were put in a pan with water. The pan was spun round, causing the liquid and less heavy contents of the pan to come out. Gold dust, which weighed more, remained in the pan or, if the miners were very lucky, there might even be some (38) ………………..too. It was, however, a very laborious method.

The rocker was also used. A miner would put some earth and rock into the higher end, together with some water. He would then shake the rocker. Larger stones stuck in the (39) …………………… , while gold dropped to the bottom. Unfortunately, the rocker was not designed to catch what was called flour. However, a process was introduced involving (40) …………………… to ensure no gold was washed out in the water.

The Return Of The Huarango

The south coast of Peru is a narrow, 2,000-kilometre-long strip of desert squeezed between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean. It is also one of the most fragile ecosystems on Earth. It hardly ever rains there, and the only year-round source of water is located tens of metres below the surface. This is why the huarango tree is so suited to life there: it has the longest roots of any tree in the world. They stretch down 50-80 metres and, as well as sucking up water for the tree, they bring it into the higher subsoil, creating a water source for other plant life.

Dr David Beresford-Jones, archaeobotanist at Cambridge University, has been studying the role of the huarango tree in landscape change in the Lower lea Valley in southern Peru. He believes the huarango was key to the ancient people’s diet and, because it could reach deep water sources, it allowed local people to withstand years of drought when their other crops failed. But over the centuries huarango trees were gradually replaced with crops. Cutting down native woodland leads to erosion, as there is nothing to keep the soil in place. So when the huarangos go, the land turns into a desert. Nothing grows at all in the Lower lea Valley now.

For centuries the huarango tree was vital to the people of the neighbouring Middle lea Valley too. They grew vegetables under it and ate products made from its seed pods. Its leaves and bark were used for herbal remedies, while its branches were used for charcoal for cooking and heating, and its trunk was used to build houses. But now it is disappearing rapidly. The majority of the huarango forests in the valley have already been cleared for fuel and agriculture – initially, these were smallholdings, but now they’re huge farms producing crops for the international market.

‘Of the forests that were here 1,000 years ago, 99 per cent have already gone,’ says botanist Oliver Whaley from Kew Gardens in London, who, together with ethnobotanist Dr William Milliken, is rumiing a pioneering project to protect and restore the rapidly disappearing habitat. In order to succeed, Whaley needs to get the local people on board, and that has meant overcoming local prejudices. ‘Increasingly aspirational communities think that if you plant food trees in your home or street, it shows you are poor, and still need to grow your own food,’ he says. In order to stop the Middle lea Valley going the same way as the Lower lea Valley, Whaley is encouraging locals to love the huarangos again. ‘It’s a process of cultural resuscitation,’ he says. He has already set up a huarango festival to reinstate a sense of pride in their eco-heritage, and has helped local schoolchildren plant thousands of trees.

‘In order to get people interested in habitat restoration, you need to plant a tree that is useful to them,’ says Whaley. So, he has been working with local families to attempt to create a sustainable income from the huarangos by turning their products into foodstuffs. ‘Boil up the beans and you get this thick brown syrup like molasses. You can also use it in drinks, soups or stews.’ The pods can be ground into flour to make cakes, and the seeds roasted into a sweet, chocolatey ‘coffee’. ‘It’s packed full of vitamins and minerals,’ Whaley says.

And some farmers are already planting huarangos. Alberto Benevides, owner of lea Valley’s only certified organic farm, which Whaley helped set up, has been planting the tree for 13 years. He produces syrup and flour, and sells these products at an organic farmers’ market in Lima. His farm is relatively small and doesn’t yet provide him with enough to live on, but he hopes this will change. ‘The organic market is growing rapidly in Peru,’ Benevides says. ‘I am investing in the future.’

But even if Whaley can convince the local people to fall in love with the huarango again, there is still the threat of the larger farms. Some of these cut across the forests and break up the corridors that allow the essential movement of mammals, birds and pollen up and down the narrow forest strip. In the hope of counteracting this, he’s persuading farmers to let him plant forest corridors on their land. He believes the extra woodland will also benefit the farms by reducing their water usage through a lowering of evaporation and providing a refuge for bio-control insects.

‘If we can record biodiversity and see how it all works, then we’re in a good position to move on from there. Desert habitats can reduce down to very little,’ Whaley explains. ‘It’s not like a rainforest that needs to have this huge expanse. Life has always been confined to corridors and islands here. If you just have a few trees left, the population can grow up quickly because it’s used to exploiting water when it arrives.’ He sees his project as a model that has the potential to be rolled out across other arid areas around the world. ‘If we can do it here, in the most fragile system on Earth, then that’s a real message of hope for lots of places, including Africa, where there is drought and they just can’t afford to wait for rain.’

Questions 1-5
Complete the notes below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

The importance of the huarango tree
• its roots can extend as far as 80 metres into the soil
• can access (1) …………….. deep below the surface
• was a crucial part of local inhabitants’ (2) …………… a long time ago
• helped people to survive periods of (3) ………………..
• prevents (4) ………………. of the soil
• prevents land from becoming a (5) ……………..

Questions 6-8
Complete the table below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Traditional Uses Of The Huarango Tree

Part of tree	Traditional use
(6)……………………	Fuel
(7)……………………and…………………..	Medicine
(8)…………………….	Construction

Questions 9-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 9-13, 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. Local families have told Whaley about some traditional uses of huarango products.
10. Farmer Alberto Benevides is now making a good profit from growing huarangos.
11. Whaley needs the co-operation of farmers to help preserve the area’s wildlife.
12. For Whaley’s project to succeed, it needs to be extended over a very large area.
13. Whaley has plans to go to Africa to set up a similar project.

Silbo Gomero – The Whistle ‘Language’ Of The Canary Islands

La Gomera is one of the Canary Islands situated in the Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of Africa. This small volcanic island is mountainous, with steep rocky slopes and deep, wooded ravines, rising to 1,487 metres at its highest peak. It is also home to the best known of the world’s whistle languages’, a means of transmitting information over long distances which is perfectly adapted to the extreme terrain of the island.

This ‘language’, known as ‘Silbo’ or ‘Silbo Gomero’ – from the Spanish word for ‘whistle’ – is now shedding light on the language-processing abilities of the human brain, according to scientists. Researchers say that Silbo activates parts of the brain normally associated with spoken language, suggesting that the brain is remarkably flexible in its ability to interpret sounds as language.

‘Science has developed the idea of brain areas that are dedicated to language, and we are starting to understand the scope of signals that can be recognised as language,’ says David Corina, co-author of a recent study and associate professor of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Silbo is a substitute for Spanish, with individual words recoded into whistles which have high- and low-frequency tones. A whistler – or silbador – puts a finger in his or her mouth to increase the whistle’s pitch, while the other hand can be cupped to adjust the direction of the sound. ‘There is much more ambiguity in the whistled signal than in the spoken signal,’ explains lead researcher Manuel Carreiras, psychology professor at the University of La Laguna on the Canary island of Tenerife. Because whistled ‘words’ can be hard to distinguish, silbadores rely on repetition, as well as awareness of context, to make themselves understood.

The silbadores of Gomera are traditionally shepherds and other isolated mountain folk, and their novel means of staying in touch allows them to communicate over distances of up to 10 kilometres. Carreiras explains that silbadores are able to pass a surprising amount of information via their whistles. ‘In daily life they use whistles to communicate short commands, but any Spanish sentence could be whistled.’ Silbo has proved particularly useful when fires have occurred on the island and rapid communication across large areas has been vital.

The study team used neuroimaging equipment to contrast the brain activity of silbadores while listening to whistled and spoken Spanish. Results showed the left temporal lobe of the brain, which is usually associated with spoken language, was engaged during the processing of Silbo. The researchers found that other key regions in the brain’s frontal lobe also responded to the whistles, including those activated in response to sign language among deaf people. When the experiments were repeated with non-whistlers, however, activation was observed in all areas of the brain.

‘Our results provide more evidence about the flexibility of human capacity for language in a variety of forms,’ Gorina says. ‘These data suggest that left-hemisphere language regions are uniquely adapted for communicative purposes, independent of the modality of signal. The non- Silbo speakers were not recognising Silbo as a language. They had nothing to grab onto, so multiple areas of their brains were activated.’

Carreiras says the origins of Silbo Gomero remain obscure, but that indigenous Canary Islanders, who were of North African origin, already had a whistled language when Spain conquered the volcanic islands in the 15th century Whistled languages survive-today in Papua New Guinea, Mexico, Vietnam, Guyana, China, Nepal, Senegal, and a few mountainous pockets in southern Europe. There are thought to be as many as 70 whistled languages still in use, though only 12 have been described and studied scientifically. This form of communication is an adaptation found among cultures where people are often isolated from each other, according to Julien Meyer, a researcher at the Institute of Human Sciences in Lyon, France. ‘They are mostly used in mountains or dense forests,’ he says. ‘Whistled languages are quite clearly defined and represent an original adaptation of the spoken language for the needs of isolated human groups.’

But with modern communication technology now widely available, researchers say whistled languages like Silbo are threatened with extinction. With dwindling numbers of Gomera islanders still fluent in the language, Canaries’ authorities are taking steps to try to ensure its survival. Since 1999, Silbo Gomero has been taught in all of the island’s elementary schools. In addition, locals are seeking assistance from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). ‘The local authorities are trying to get an award from the organisation to declare (Silbo Gomero) as something that should be preserved for humanity,’ Carreiras adds.

Questions 14-19
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 14-19, 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. La Gomera is the most mountainous of all the Canary Islands.
15. Silbo is only appropriate for short and simple messages.
16. In the brain-activity study, silbadores and non-whistlers produced different results.
17. The Spanish introduced Silbo to the islands in the 15th century.
18. There is precise data available regarding all of the whistle languages in existence today.
19. The children of Gomera now learn Silbo.

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

Silbo Gomero

How Silbo is produced
• high- and low-frequency tones represent different sounds in Spanish (20) ………………
• pitch of whistle is controlled using silbador’s (21) ………………
• (22) ……………… is changed with a cupped hand

How Silbo is used
• has long been used by shepherds and people living in secluded locations
• in everyday use for the transmission of brief (23) ……………..
• can relay essential information quickly, e.g. to inform people about (24) ……………..

The future of Silbo
• future under threat because of new (25) ………………
• Canaries’ authorities hoping to receive a UNESCO (26) ………………. to help preserve it

Environmental Practices Of Big Businesses

The environmental practices of big businesses are shaped by a fundamental fact that for many of us offends our sense of justice. Depending on the circumstances, a business may maximize the amount of money it makes, at least in the short term, by damaging the environment and hurting people. That is still the case today for fishermen in an unmanaged fishery without quotas, and for international logging companies with short-term leases on tropical rainforest land in places with corrupt officials and unsophisticated landowners. When government regulation is effective, and when the public is environmentally aware, environmentally clean big businesses may out-compete dirty ones, but the reverse is likely to be true if government regulation is ineffective and if the public doesn’t care.

It is easy for the rest of us to blame a business for helping itself by hurting other people. But blaming alone is unlikely to produce change. It ignores the fact that businesses are not charities but profit-making companies, and that publicly owned companies with shareholders are under obligation to those shareholders to maximize profits, provided that they do so by legal means. US laws make a company’s directors legally liable for something termed ‘breach of fiduciary responsibility’ if they knowingly manage a company in a way that reduces profits. The car manufacturer Henry Ford was in fact successfully sued by shareholders in 1919 for raising the minimum wage of his workers to $5 per day: the courts declared that, while Ford’s humanitarian sentiments about his employees were nice, his business existed to make profits for its stockholders.

Our blaming of businesses also ignores the ultimate responsibility of the public for creating the conditions that let a business profit through destructive environmental policies. In the long run, it is the public, either directly or through its politicians, that has the power to make such destructive policies unprofitable and illegal, and to make sustainable environmental policies profitable.

The public can do that by suing businesses for harming them, as happened after the Exxon Valdez disaster, in which over 40,000 m3 of oil were spilled off the coast of Alaska. The public may also make their opinion felt by preferring to buy sustainably harvested products; by making employees of companies with poor track records feel ashamed of their company and complain to their own management; by preferring their governments to award valuable contracts to businesses with a good environmental track record; and by pressing their governments to pass and enforce laws and regulations requiring good environmental practices.

In turn, big businesses can exert powerful pressure on any suppliers that might ignore public or government pressure. For instance, after the US public became concerned about the spread of a disease known as BSE, which was transmitted to humans through infected meat, the US government’s Food and Drug Administration introduced rules demanding that the meat industry abandon practices associated with the risk of the disease spreading. But for five years the meat packers refused to follow these, claiming that they would be too expensive to obey. However, when a major fast-food company then made the same demands after customer purchases of its hamburgers plummeted, the meat industry complied within weeks. The public’s task is therefore to identify which links in the supply chain are sensitive to public pressure: for instance, fast-food chains or jewelry stores, but not meat packers or gold miners.

Some readers may be disappointed or outraged that I place the ultimate responsibility for business practices harming the public on the public itself. I also believe that the public must accept the necessity for higher prices for products to cover the added costs, if any, of sound environmental practices. My views may seem to ignore the belief that businesses should act in accordance with moral principles even if this leads to a reduction in their profits. But I think we have to recognize that, throughout human history, in all politically complex human societies, government regulation has arisen precisely because it was found that not only did moral principles need to be made explicit, they also needed to be enforced.

To me, the conclusion that the public has the ultimate responsibility for the behavior of even the biggest businesses is empowering and hopeful, rather than disappointing. My conclusion is not a moralistic one about who is right or wrong, admirable or selfish, a good guy or a bad guy. In the past, businesses have changed when the public came to expect and require different behavior, to reward businesses for behavior that the public wanted, and to make things difficult for businesses practicing behaviors that the public didn’t want. I predict that in the future, just as in the past, changes in public attitudes will be essential for changes in businesses’ environmental practices.

Questions 27-31
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-I, below.

Big businesses

Many big businesses today are prepared to harm people and the environment in order to make money, and they appear to have no (27) …………………. Lack of (28) ……………….by governments and lack of public (29)……………….. can lead to environmental problems such as (30) …………….. or the destruction of (31)……………

A funding
B trees
C rare species
D moral standards
E control
F involvement
G flooding
H overfishing
I worker support

Questions 32-34
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

32. The main idea of the third paragraph is that environmental damage
A requires political action if it is to be stopped.
B is the result of ignorance on the part of the public.
C could be prevented by the action of ordinary people.
D can only be stopped by educating business leaders.

33. In the fourth paragraph, the writer describes ways in which the public can
A reduce their own individual impact on the environment.
B learn more about the impact of business on the environment.
C raise awareness of the effects of specific environmental disasters.
D influence the environmental policies of businesses and governments.

34. What pressure was exerted by big business in the case of the disease BSE?
A Meat packers stopped supplying hamburgers to fast-food chains.
B A fast-food company forced their meat suppliers to follow the law.
C Meat packers persuaded the government to reduce their expenses.
D A fast-food company encouraged the government to introduce legislation.

Questions 35-39
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 35-39, write

YES                     if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO                       if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN     if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

35. The public should be prepared to fund good environmental practices.
36. There is a contrast between the moral principles of different businesses.
37. It is important to make a clear distinction between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.
38. The public have successfully influenced businesses in the past.
39. In the future, businesses will show more concern for the environment.

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

40. What would be the best subheading for this passage?
A Will the world survive the threat caused by big businesses?
B How can big businesses be encouraged to be less driven by profit?
C What environmental dangers are caused by the greed of businesses?
D Are big businesses to blame for the damage they cause the environment?

Henry Moore (1898-1986)

Henry Moore was born in Castleford, a small town near Leeds in the north of England. He was the seventh child of Raymond Moore and his wife Mary Baker. He studied at Castleford Grammar School from 1909 to 1915, where his early interest in art was encouraged by his teacher Alice Gostick. After leaving school, Moore hoped to become a sculptor, but instead he complied with his father’s wish that he train as a schoolteacher. He had to abandon his training in 1917 when he was sent to France to fight in the First World War.

After the war, Moore enrolled at the Leeds School of Art, where he studied for two years. In his first year, he spent most of his time drawing. Although he wanted to study sculpture, no teacher was appointed until his second year. At the end of that year, he passed the sculpture examination and was awarded a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London. In September 1921, he moved to London and began three years of advanced study in sculpture.

Alongside the instruction he received at the Royal College, Moore visited many of the London museums, particularly the British Museum, which had a wide-ranging collection of ancient sculpture. During these visits, he discovered the power and beauty of ancient Egyptian and African sculpture. As he became increasingly interested in these ‘primitive’ forms of art, he turned away from European sculptural traditions.

After graduating, Moore spent the first six months of 1925 travelling in France. When he visited the Trocadero Museum in Paris, he was impressed by a cast of a Mayan”‘ sculpture of the rain spirit. It was a male reclining figure with its knees drawn up together, and its head at a right angle to its body. Moore became fascinated with this stone sculpture, which he thought had a power and originality that no other stone sculpture possessed. He himself started carving a variety of subjects in stone, including depictions of reclining women, mother-and-child groups, and masks.

Moore’s exceptional talent soon gained recognition, and in 1926 he started work as a sculpture instructor at the Royal College. In 1933, he became a member of a group of young artists called Unit One. The aim of the group was to convince the English public of the merits of the emerging international movement in modem art and architecture.

Around this time, Moore moved away from the human figure to experiment with abstract shapes. In 1931, he held an exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in London. His work was enthusiastically welcomed by fellow sculptors, but the reviews in the press were extremely negative and turned Moore into a notorious figure. There were calls for his resignation from the Royal College, and the following year, when his contract expired, he left to start a sculpture department at the Chelsea School of Art in London.

Throughout the 1930s, Moore did not show any inclination to please the British public. He became interested in the paintings of the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, whose work inspired him to distort the human body in a radical way. At times, he seemed to abandon the human figure altogether. The pages of his sketchbooks from this period show his ideas for abstract sculptures that bore little resemblance to the human form.

In 1940, during the Second World War, Moore stopped teaching at the Chelsea School and moved to a farmhouse about 20 miles north of London. A shortage of materials forced him to focus on drawing. He did numerous small sketches of Londoners, later turning these ideas into large coloured drawings in his studio. Tn 1942, he returned to Castleford to make a series of sketches of the miners who worked there.

In 1944, Harlow, a town near London, offered Moore a commission for a sculpture depicting a family. The resulting work signifies a dramatic change in Moore’s style, away from the experimentation of the 1930s towards a more natural and humanistic subject matter. He did dozens of studies in clay for the sculpture, and these were cast in bronze and issued in editions of seven to nine copies each. In this way, Moore’s work became available to collectors all over the world. The boost to his income enabled him to take on ambitious projects and start working on the scale he felt his sculpture demanded.

Critics who had begun to think that Moore had become less revolutionary were proven wrong by the appearance, in 1950, of the first of Moore’s series of standing figures in bronze, with their harsh and angular pierced forms and distinct impression of menace. Moore also varied his subject matter in the 1950s with such works as Warrior with Shield and Falling Warrior. These were rare examples of Moore’s use of the male figure and owe something to his visit to Greece in 1951, when he had the opportunity to study ancient works of art.

In his final years, Moore created the Henry Moore Foundation to promote art appreciation and to display his work. Moore was the first modern English sculptor to achieve international critical acclaim and he is still regarded as one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century.

Questions 1-7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 1-7, 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. On leaving school, Moore did what his father wanted him to do.
2. Moore began studying sculpture in his first term at the Leeds School of Art.
3. When Moore started at the Royal College of Art, its reputation for teaching sculpture was excellent.
4. Moore became aware of ancient sculpture as a result of visiting London museums.
5. The Trocadero Museum’s Mayan sculpture attracted a lot of public interest.
6. Moore thought the Mayan sculpture was similar in certain respects to other stone sculptures.
7. The artists who belonged to Unit One wanted to make modern art and architecture more popular.

Questions 8-13
Complete the notes below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Moore’s career as an artist

1930s
• Moore’s exhibition at the Leicester Galleries is criticised by the press
• Moore is urged to offer his (8) …………….. and leave the Royal College

1940s
• Moore turns to drawing because (9) ……………….. for sculpting are not readily available
• While visiting his hometown, Moore does some drawings of (10) ………………
• Moore is employed to produce a sculpture of a (11) ………………
• (12) ………………… start to buy Moore’s work
• Moore’s increased (13) …………….. makes it possible for him to do more ambitious sculptures

1950s
• Moore’s series of bronze figures marks a further change in his style

The Desolenator: producing clean water

A Travelling around Thailand in the 1990s, William Janssen was impressed with the basic rooftop solar heating systems that were on many homes, where energy from the sun was absorbed by a plate and then used to heat water for domestic use. Two decades later Janssen developed that basic idea he saw in Southeast Asia into a portable device that uses the power from the sun to purify water.

B The Desolenator operates as a mobile desalination unit that can take water from different places, such as the sea, rivers, boreholes and rain, and purify it for human consumption. It is particularly valuable in regions where natural groundwater reserves have been polluted, or where seawater is the only water source available. Janssen saw that there was a need for a sustainable way to clean water in both the developing and the developed countries when he moved to the United Arab Emirates and saw large-scale water processing. ‘1 was confronted with the enormous carbon footprint that the Gulf nations have because of all of the desalination that they do,’ he says.

C The Desolenator can produce 15 litres of drinking water per day, enough to sustain a family for cooking and drinking. Its main selling point is that unlike standard desalination techniques, it doesn’t require a generated power supply: just sunlight. It measures 120 cm by 90 cm, and is easy to transport, thanks to its two wheels. Water enters through a pipe, and flows as a thin film between a sheet of double glazing and the surface of a solar panel, where it is heated by the sun. The warm water flows into a small boiler (heated by a solar-powered battery) where it is converted to steam. When the steam cools, it becomes distilled water. The device has a very simple filter to trap particles, and this can easily be shaken to remove them. There are two tubes for liquid coming out: one for the waste – salt from seawater, fluoride, etc. – and another for the distilled water. The performance of the unit is shown on an LCD screen and transmitted to the company which provides servicing when necessary.

D A recent analysis found that at least two-thirds of the world’s population lives with severe water scarcity for at least a month every year. Janssen says that by 2030 half of the world’s population will be living with water stress – where the demand exceeds the supply over a certain period of time. ‘It is really important that a sustainable solution is brought to the market that is able to help these people,’ he says. Many countries ‘don’t have the money for desalination plants, which are very expensive to build. They don’t have the money to operate them, they are very maintenance intensive, and they don’t have the money to buy the diesel to run the desalination plants, so it is a really bad situation.’

E The device is aimed at a wide variety of users – from homeowners in the developing world who do not have a constant supply of water to people living off the grid in rural parts of the US. The first commercial versions of the Desolenator are expected to be in operation in India early next year, after field tests are carried out. The market for the self-sufficient devices in developing countries is twofold – those who cannot afford the money for the device outright and pay through microfinance, and middle- income homes that can lease their own equipment. ‘People in India don’t pay for a fridge outright; they pay for it over six months. They would put the Desolenator on their roof and hook it up to their municipal supply and they would get very reliable drinking water on a daily basis,’ Janssen says. In the developed world, it is aimed at niche markets where tap water is unavailable – for camping, on boats, or for the military, for instance.

F Prices will vary according to where it is bought. In the developing world, the price will depend on what deal aid organisations can negotiate. In developed countries, it is likely to come in at $1,000 (£685) a unit, said Janssen. ‘We are a venture with a social mission. We are aware that the product we have envisioned is mainly finding application in the developing world and humanitarian sector and that this is the way we will proceed. We do realise, though, that to be a viable company there is a bottom line to keep in mind,’ he says.

G The company itself is based at Imperial College London, although Janssen, its chief executive, still lives in the UAE. It has raised £340,000 in funding so far. Within two years, he says, the company aims to be selling 1,000 units a month, mainly in the humanitarian field. They are expected to be sold in areas such as Australia, northern Chile, Peru, Texas and California.

Questions 14-20
Reading Passage 2 has seven sections, A-G. Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below. Write the correct number, i-x, in boxes 14-20.

List of Headings
i Getting the finance for production
ii An unexpected benefit
iii From initial inspiration to new product
iv The range of potential customers for the device
v What makes the device different from alternatives
vi Cleaning water from a range of sources
vii Overcoming production difficulties
viii Profit not the primary goal
ix A warm welcome for the device
x The number of people affected by water shortages

14. Section A
15. Section B
16. Section C
17. Section D
18. Section E
19. Section F
20. Section G

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

How the Desolenator works

The energy required to operate the Desolenator comes from sunlight. The device can be used in different locations, as it has (21) …………………. Water is fed into a pipe, and a (22) ……………… of water flows over a solar panel. The water then enters a boiler, where it turns into steam. Any particles in the water are caught in a (23) …………………. The purified water comes out through one tube, and all types of (24) ………………… come out through another. A screen displays the (25) …………………. of the device, and transmits the information to the company so that they know when the Desolenator requires (26) …………………

Why fairy tales are really scary tales

People of every culture tell each other fairy tales but the same story often takes a variety of forms in different parts of the world. In the story of Little Red Riding Hood that European children are familiar with, a young girl on the way to see her grandmother meets a wolf and tells him where she is going. The wolf runs on ahead and disposes of the grandmother, then gets into bed dressed in the grandmother’s clothes to wait for Little Red Riding Hood. You may think you know the story – but which version? In some versions, the wolf swallows up the grandmother, while in others it locks her in a cupboard. In some stories Red Riding Hood gets the better of the wolf on her own, while in others a hunter or a woodcutter hears her cries and comes to her rescue.

The universal appeal of these tales is frequently attributed to the idea that they contain cautionary messages: in the case of Little Red Riding Hood, to listen to your mother, and avoid talking to strangers. ‘It might be what we find interesting about this story is that it’s got this survival-relevant information in it,’ says anthropologist Jamie Tehrani at Durham University in the UK. But his research suggests otherwise. ‘We have this huge gap in our knowledge about the history and prehistory of storytelling, despite the fact that we know this genre is an incredibly ancient one,’ he says. That hasn’t stopped anthropologists, folklorists* and other academics devising theories to explain the importance of fairy tales in human society. Now Tehrani has found a way to test these ideas, borrowing a technique from evolutionary biologists. To work out the evolutionary history, development and relationships among groups of organisms, biologists compare the characteristics of living species in a process called ‘phylogenetic analysis’. Tehrani has used the same approach to compare related versions of fairy tales to discover how they have evolved and which elements have survived longest.

Tehrani’s analysis focused on Little Red Riding Hood in its many forms, which include another Western fairy tale known as The Wolf and the Kids. Checking for variants of these two tales and similar stories from Africa, East Asia and other regions, he ended up with 58 stories recorded from oral traditions. Once his phylogenetic analysis had established that they were indeed related, he used the same methods to explore how they have developed and altered over time.

First he tested some assumptions about which aspects of the story alter least as it evolves, indicating their importance. Folklorists believe that what happens in a story is more central to the story than the characters in it – that visiting a relative, only to be met by a scary animal in disguise, is ‘Folklorists: those who study traditional stories more fundamental than whether the visitor is a little girl or three siblings, or the animal is a tiger instead of a wolf.

However, Tehrani found no significant difference in the rate of evolution of incidents compared with that of characters. ‘Certain episodes are very stable because they are crucial to the story, but there are lots of other details that can evolve quite freely,’ he says. Neither did his analysis support the theory that the central section of a story is the most conserved part. He found no significant difference in the flexibility of events there compared with the beginning or the end.

But the really big surprise came when he looked at the cautionary elements of the story. ‘Studies on hunter-gatherer folk tales suggest that these narratives include really important information about the environment and the possible dangers that may be faced there – stuff that’s relevant to survival,’ he says. Yet in his analysis such elements were just as flexible as seemingly trivial details. What, then, is important enough to be reproduced from generation to generation?

The answer, it would appear, is fear – blood-thirsty and gruesome aspects of the story, such as the eating of the grandmother by the wolf, turned out to be the best preserved of all. Why are these details retained by generations of storytellers, when other features are not? Tehrani has an idea: ‘In an oral context, a story won’t survive because of one great teller. It also needs to be interesting when it’s told by someone who’s not necessarily a great storyteller.’ Maybe being swallowed whole by a wolf, then cut out of its stomach alive is so gripping that it helps the story remain popular, no matter how badly it’s told.

Jack Zipes at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, is unconvinced by Tehrani’s views on fairy tales. ‘Even if they’re gruesome, they won’t stick unless they matter,’ he says. He believes the perennial theme of women as victims in stories like Little Red Riding Hood explains why they continue to feel relevant. But Tehrani points out that although this is often the case in Western versions, it is not always true elsewhere. In Chinese and Japanese versions, often known as The Tiger Grandmother, the villain is a woman, and in both Iran and Nigeria, the victim is a boy.

Mathias Clasen at Aarhus University in Denmark isn’t surprised by Tehrani’s findings. ‘Habits and morals change, but the things that scare us, and the fact that we seek out entertainment that’s designed to scare us – those are constant,’ he says. Clasen believes that scary stories teach us what it feels like to be afraid without having to experience real danger, and so build up resistance to negative emotions.

Questions 27-31
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below. Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 27-31.

27. In fairy tales, details of the plot
28. Tehrani rejects the idea that the useful lessons for life in fairy tales
29. Various theories about the social significance of fairy tales
30. Insights into the development of fairy tales
31. All the fairy tales analysed by Tehrani

A may be provided through methods used in biological research.
B are the reason for their survival.
C show considerable global variation.
D contain animals which transform to become humans.
E were originally spoken rather than written.
F have been developed without factual basis.

Questions 32-36
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-l, below. Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 32-36.

Phylogenetic analysis of Little Red Riding Hood

Tehrani used techniques from evolutionary biology to find out if (32) ………………. existed among 58 stories from around the world. He also wanted to know which aspects of the stories had fewest (33) ……………….., as he believed these aspects would be the most important ones. Contrary to other beliefs, he found that some (34) ………………… that were included in a story tended to change over time, and that the middle of a story seemed no more important than the other parts. He was also surprised that parts of a story which seemed to provide some sort of (35) ……………………. were unimportant. The aspect that he found most important in a story’s survival was (36) ……………….

A ending
B events
C warning
D links
E records
F variations
G horror
H people
I plot

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

37. What method did Jamie Tehrani use to test his ideas about fairy tales?
A He compared oral and written forms of the same stories.
B He looked at many different forms of the same basic story.
C He looked at unrelated stories from many different countries.
D He contrasted the development of fairy tales with that of living creatures.

38. When discussing Tehrani’s views, Jack Zipes suggests that
A Tehrani ignores key changes in the role of women.
B stories which are too horrific are not always taken seriously.
C Tehrani overemphasises the importance of violence in stories.
D features of stories only survive if they have a deeper significance.

39. Why does Tehrani refer to Chinese and Japanese fairy tales?
A to indicate that Jack Zipes’ theory is incorrect
B to suggest that crime is a global problem
C to imply that all fairy tales have a similar meaning
D to add more evidence for Jack Zipes’ ideas

40. What does Mathias Clasen believe about fairy tales?
A They are a safe way of learning to deal with fear.
B They are a type of entertainment that some people avoid.
C They reflect the changing values of our society.
D They reduce our ability to deal with real-world problems.

Could urban engineers learn from dance?

A The way we travel around cities has a major impact on whether they are sustainable. Transportation is estimated to account for 30% of energy consumption in most of the world’s most developed nations, so lowering the need for energy-using vehicles is essential for decreasing the environmental impact of mobility. But as more and more people move to cities, it is important to think about other kinds of sustainable travel too. The ways we travel affect our physical and mental health, our social lives, our access to work and culture, and the air we breathe. Engineers are tasked with changing how we travel round cities through urban design, but the engineering industry still works on the assumptions that led to the creation of the energy-consuming transport systems we have now: the emphasis placed solely on efficiency, speed, and quantitative data. We need radical changes, to make it healthier, more enjoyable, and less environmentally damaging to travel around cities.

B Dance might hold some of the answers. That is not to suggest everyone should dance their way to work, however healthy and happy it might make us, but rather that the techniques used by choreographers to experiment with and design movement in dance could provide engineers with tools to stimulate new ideas in city-making. Richard Sennett, an influential urbanist and sociologist who has transformed ideas about the way cities are made, argues that urban design has suffered from a separation between mind and body since the introduction of the architectural blueprint.

C Whereas medieval builders improvised and adapted construction through their intimate knowledge of materials and personal experience of the conditions on a site, building designs are now conceived and stored in media technologies that detach the designer from the physical and social realities they are creating. While the design practices created by these new technologies are essential for managing the technical complexity of the modern city, they have the drawback of simplifying reality in the process.

D To illustrate, Sennett discusses the Peachtree Center in Atlanta, USA, a development typical of the modernist approach to urban planning prevalent in the 1970s. Peachtree created a grid of streets and towers intended as a new pedestrian-friendly downtown for Atlanta. According to Sennett, this failed because its designers had invested too much faith in computer-aided design to tell them how it would operate. They failed to take into account that purpose-built street cafes could not operate in the hot sun without the protective awnings common in older buildings, and would need energy-consuming air conditioning instead, or that its giant car park would feel so unwelcoming that it would put people off getting out of their cars. What seems entirely predictable and controllable on screen has unexpected results when translated into reality.

E The same is true in transport engineering, which uses models to predict and shape the way people move through the city. Again, these models are necessary, but they are built on specific world views in which certain forms of efficiency and safety are considered and other experiences of the city ignored. Designs that seem logical in models appear counter-intuitive in the actual experience of their users. The guard rails that will be familiar to anyone who has attempted to cross a British road, for example, were an engineering solution to pedestrian safety based on models that prioritise the smooth flow of traffic. On wide major roads, they often guide pedestrians to specific crossing points and slow down their progress across the road by using staggered access points to divide the crossing into two – one for each carriageway. In doing so they make crossings feel longer, introducing psychological barriers greatly impacting those that are the least mobile, and encouraging others to make dangerous crossings to get around the guard rails. These barriers don’t just make it harder to cross the road: they divide communities and decrease opportunities for healthy transport. As a result, many are now being removed, causing disruption, cost, and waste.

F If their designers had had the tools to think with their bodies – like dancers – and imagine how these barriers would feel, there might have been a better solution. In order to bring about fundamental changes to the ways we use our cities, engineering will need to develop a richer understanding of why people move in certain ways, and how this movement affects them. Choreography may not seem an obvious choice for tackling this problem. Yet it shares with engineering the aim of designing patterns of movement within limitations of space. It is an art form developed almost entirely by trying out ideas with the body, and gaining instant feedback on how the results feel. Choreographers have deep understanding of the psychological, aesthetic, and physical implications of different ways of moving.

G Observing the choreographer Wayne McGregor, cognitive scientist David Kirsh described how he ‘thinks with the body’. Kirsh argues that by using the body to simulate outcomes, McGregor is able to imagine solutions that would not be possible using purely abstract thought. This land of physical knowledge is valued in many areas of expertise, but currently has no place in formal engineering design processes. A suggested method for transport engineers is to improvise design solutions and get instant feedback about how they would work from their own experience of them, or model designs at full scale in the way choreographers experiment with groups of dancers. Above all, perhaps, they might learn to design for emotional as well as functional effects.

Questions 1-6
Reading Passage 1 has seven paragraphs, A-G. Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 1-6.

1. reference to an appealing way of using dance that the writer is not proposing
2. an example of a contrast between past and present approaches to building
3. mention of an objective of both dance and engineering
4. reference to an unforeseen problem arising from ignoring the climate
5. why some measures intended to help people are being reversed
6. reference to how transport has an impact on human lives

Questions 7-13
Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Guard rails

Guard rails were introduced on British roads to improve the (7) ………………… of pedestrians, while ensuring that the movement of (8) …………………. Is not disrupted. Pedestrians are led to access points, and encouraged to cross one (9) ……………… at a time. An unintended effect is to create psychological difficulties in crossing the road, particularly for less (10) …………………….. people. Another result is that some people cross the road in a (11) …………………. way. The guard rails separate (12) ………………., and make it more difficult to introduce forms of transport that are (13) …………………

Should we try to bring extinct species back to life?

A The passenger pigeon was a legendary species. Flying in vast numbers across North America, with potentially many millions within a single flock, their migration was once one of nature’s great spectacles. Sadly, the passenger pigeon’s existence came to an end on 1 September 1914, when the last living specimen died at Cincinnati Zoo. Geneticist Ben Novak is lead researcher on an ambitious project which now aims to bring the bird back to life through a process known as ‘de-extinction’. The basic premise involves using cloning technology to turn the DNA of extinct animals into a fertilised embryo, which is carried by the nearest relative still in existence – in this case, the abundant band-tailed pigeon – before being born as a living, breathing animal. Passenger pigeons are one of the pioneering species in this field, but they are far from the only ones on which this cutting-edge technology is being trialled.

B In Australia, the thylacine, more commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger, is another extinct creature which genetic scientists are striving to bring back to life. There is no carnivore now in Tasmania that fills the niche which thylacines once occupied,’ explains Michael Archer of the University of New South Wales. He points out that in the decades since the thylacine went extinct, there has been a spread in a ‘dangerously debilitating’ facial tumour syndrome which threatens the existence of the Tasmanian devils, the island’s other notorious resident. Thylacines would have prevented this spread because they would have killed significant numbers of Tasmanian devils. ‘If that contagious cancer had popped up previously, it would have burned out in whatever region it started. The return of thylacines to Tasmania could help to ensure that devils are never again subjected to risks of this kind.’

C If extinct species can be brought back to life, can humanity begin to correct the damage it has caused to the natural world over the past few millennia? The idea of de-extinction is that we can reverse this process, bringing species that no longer exist back to life,’ says Beth Shapiro of University of California Santa Cruz’s Genomics Institute. ‘I don’t think that we can do this. There is no way to bring back something that is 100 per cent identical to a species that went extinct a long time ago.’ A more practical approach for long-extinct species is to take the DNA of existing species as a template, ready for the insertion of strands of extinct animal DNA to create something new; a hybrid, based on the living species, but which looks and/or acts like the animal which died out.

D This complicated process and questionable outcome begs the question: what is the actual point of this technology? ‘For us, the goal has always been replacing the extinct species with a suitable replacement,’ explains Novak. ‘When it comes to breeding, band-tailed pigeons scatter and make maybe one or two nests per hectare, whereas passenger pigeons were very social and would make 10,000 or more nests in one hectare.’ Since the disappearance of this key species, ecosystems in the eastern US have suffered, as the lack of disturbance caused by thousands of passenger pigeons wrecking trees and branches means there has been minimal need for regrowth. This has left forests stagnant and therefore unwelcoming to the plants and animals which evolved to help regenerate the forest after a disturbance. According to Novak, a hybridised band-tailed pigeon, with the added nesting habits of a passenger pigeon, could, in theory, re-establish that forest disturbance, thereby creating a habitat necessary for a great many other native species to thrive.

E Another popular candidate for this technology is the woolly mammoth. George Church, professor at Harvard Medical School and leader of the Woolly Mammoth Revival Project, has been focusing on cold resistance, the main way in which the extinct woolly mammoth and its nearest living relative, the Asian elephant, differ. By pinpointing which genetic traits made it possible for mammoths to survive the icy climate of the tundra, the project’s goal is to return mammoths, or a mammoth- like species, to the area. ‘My highest priority would be preserving the endangered Asian elephant,’ says Church, ‘expanding their range to the huge ecosystem of the tundra. Necessary adaptations would include smaller ears, thicker hair, and extra insulating fat, all for the purpose of reducing heat loss in the tundra, and all traits found in the now extinct woolly mammoth.’ This repopulation of the tundra and boreal forests of Eurasia and North America with large mammals could also be a useful factor in reducing carbon emissions – elephants punch holes through snow and knock down trees, which encourages grass growth. This grass growth would reduce temperatures, and mitigate emissions from melting permafrost.

F While the prospect of bringing extinct animals back to life might capture imaginations, it is, of course, far easier to try to save an existing species which is merely threatened with extinction. ‘Many of the technologies that people have in mind when they think about de-extinction can be used as a form of ‘‘genetic rescue”,’ explains Shapiro. She prefers to focus the debate on how this emerging technology could be used to fully understand why various species went extinct in the first place, and therefore how we could use it to make genetic modifications which could prevent mass extinctions in the future. ‘I would also say there’s an incredible moral hazard to not do anything at all,’ she continues. ‘We know that what we are doing today is not enough, and we have to be willing to take some calculated and measured risks.’

Questions 14-17
Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F. Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 14-17. NB You may use any letter more than once.

14. a reference to how further disappearance of multiple species could be avoided
15. explanation of a way of reproducing an extinct animal using the DNA of only that species
16. reference to a habitat which has suffered following the extinction of a species
17. mention of the exact point at which a particular species became extinct

Questions 18-22
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

The woolly mammoth revival project

Professor George Church and his team are trying to identify the (18) …………………..which enabled mammoths to live in the tundra. The findings could help preserve the mammoth’s close relative, the endangered Asian elephant. According to Church, introducing Asian elephants to the tundra would involve certain physical adaptations to minimise (19) ……………….. To survive in the tundra, the species would need to have the mammoth-like features of thicker hair, (20) …………………. of a reduced size and more (21) ………………. Repopulating the tundra with mammoths or Asian elephant/mammoth hybrids would also have an impact on the environment, which could help to reduce temperatures and decrease (22) ……………….

Questions 23-26
Match each statement with the correct person, A, B or C. Write the correct letter, A, B or C, in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.

23. Reintroducing an extinct species to its original habitat could improve the health of a particular species living there.
24. It is important to concentrate on the causes of an animal’s extinction.
25. A species brought back from extinction could have an important beneficial impact on the vegetation of its habitat.
26. Our current efforts at preserving biodiversity are insufficient.

List of People
A Ben Novak
B Michael Archer
C Beth Shapiro

Having a laugh

Humans start developing a sense of humour as early as six weeks old, when babies begin to laugh and smile in response to stimuli. Laughter is universal across all human cultures and even exists in some form in rats, chimps, and bonobos. Like other human emotions and expressions, laughter and humour provide psychological scientists with rich resources for studying human psychology, ranging from the development of language to the neuroscience of social perception.

Theories focusing on the evolution of laughter point to it as an important adaptation for social communication. Take, for example, the recorded laughter in TV comedy shows. Back in 1950, US sound engineer Charley Douglass hated dealing with the unpredictable laughter of live audiences, so started recording his own ‘laugh tracks’. These were intended to help people at home feel like they were in a social situation, such as a crowded theatre. Douglass even recorded various types of laughter, as well as mixtures of laughter from men, women, and children. In doing so, he picked up on a quality of laughter that is now interesting researchers: a simple ‘haha’ communicates a remarkable amount of socially relevant information.

In one study conducted in 2016, samples of laughter from pairs of English-speaking students were recorded at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A team made up of more than 30 psychological scientists, anthropologists, and biologists then played these recordings to listeners from 24 diverse societies, from indigenous tribes in New Guinea to city-dwellers in India and Europe. Participants were asked whether they thought the people laughing were friends or strangers. On average, the results were remarkably consistent: worldwide, people’s guesses were correct approximately 60% of the time.

Researchers have also found that different types of laughter serve as codes to complex human social hierarchies. A team led by Christopher Oveis from the University of California, San Diego, found that high-status individuals had different laughs from low-status individuals, and that strangers’ judgements of an individual’s social status were influenced by the dominant or submissive quality of their laughter. In their study, 48 male college students were randomly assigned to groups of four, with each group composed of two low-status members, who had just joined their college fraternity group, and two high-status members, older students who had been active in the fraternity for at least two years. Laughter was recorded as each student took a turn at being teased by the others, involving the use of mildly insulting nicknames. Analysis revealed that, as expected, high-status individuals produced more dominant laughs and fewer submissive laughs relative to the low-status individuals. Meanwhile, low-status individuals were more likely to change their laughter based on their position of power; that is, the newcomers produced more dominant laughs when they were in the ‘powerful’ role of teasers. Dominant laughter was higher in pitch, louder, and more variable in tone than submissive laughter.

A random group of volunteers then listened to an equal number of dominant and submissive laughs from both the high- and low-status individuals, and were asked to estimate the social status of the laugher. In line with predictions, laughers producing dominant laughs were perceived to be significantly higher in status than laughers producing submissive laughs. ‘This was particularly true for low-status individuals, who were rated as significantly higher in status when displaying a dominant versus submissive laugh,’ Oveis and colleagues note. ‘Thus, by strategically displaying more dominant laughter when the context allows, low-status individuals may achieve higher status in the eyes of others.’ However, high-status individuals were rated as high-status whether they produced their natural dominant laugh or tried to do a submissive one.

Another study, conducted by David Cheng and Lu Wang of Australian National University, was based on the hypothesis that humour might provide a respite from tedious situations in the workplace. This ‘mental break’ might facilitate the replenishment of mental resources. To test this theory, the researchers recruited 74 business students, ostensibly for an experiment on perception. First, the students performed a tedious task in which they had to cross out every instance of the letter ‘e’ over two pages of text. The students then were randomly assigned to watch a video clip eliciting either humour, contentment, or neutral feelings. Some watched a clip of the BBC comedy Mr. Bean, others a relaxing scene with dolphins swimming in the ocean, and others a factual video about the management profession.

The students then completed a task requiring persistence in which they were asked to guess the potential performance of employees based on provided profiles, and were told that making 10 correct assessments in a row would lead to a win. However, the software was programmed such that it was nearly impossible to achieve 10 consecutive correct answers. Participants were allowed to quit the task at any point. Students who had watched the Mr. Bean video ended up spending significantly more time working on the task, making twice as many predictions as the other two groups.

Cheng and Wang then replicated these results in a second study, during which they had participants complete long multiplication questions by hand. Again, participants who watched the humorous video spent significantly more time working on this tedious task and completed more questions correctly than did the students in either of the other groups.

‘Although humour has been found to help relieve stress and facilitate social relationships, the traditional view of task performance implies that individuals should avoid things such as humour that may distract them from the accomplishment of task goals,’ Cheng and Wang conclude. ‘We suggest that humour is not only enjoyable but more importantly, energising.’

Questions 27-31
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

27. When referring to laughter in the first paragraph, the writer emphasises
A its impact on language.
B its function in human culture.
C its value to scientific research.
D its universality in animal societies.

28. What does the writer suggest about Charley Douglass?
A He understood the importance of enjoying humour in a group setting.
B He believed that TV viewers at home needed to be told when to laugh.
C He wanted his shows to appeal to audiences across the social spectrum.
D He preferred shows where audiences were present in the recording studio.

29. What makes the Santa Cruz study particularly significant?
A the various different types of laughter that were studied
B the similar results produced by a wide range of cultures
C the number of different academic disciplines involved
D the many kinds of people whose laughter was recorded

30. Which of the following happened in the San Diego study?
A Some participants became very upset.
B Participants exchanged roles.
C Participants who had not met before became friends.
D Some participants were unable to laugh.

31. In the fifth paragraph, what did the results of the San Diego study suggest?
A It is clear whether a dominant laugh is produced by a high- or low-status person.
B Low-status individuals in a position of power will still produce submissive laughs.
C The submissive laughs of low- and high-status individuals are surprisingly similar.
D High-status individuals can always be identified by their way of laughing.

Questions 32-36
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-H, below.

The benefits of humour

In one study at Australian National University, randomly chosen groups of participants were shown one of three videos, each designed to generate a different kind of (32) ……………….. When all participants were then given a deliberately frustrating task to do, it was found that those who had watched the (33) …………………video persisted with the task for longer and tried harder to accomplish the task than either of the other two groups. A second study in which participants were asked to perform a particularly (34) ……………….. task produced similar results. According to researchers David Cheng and Lu Wang, these findings suggest that humour not only reduces (35) ………………………. and helps build social connections but it may also have a (36) …………….. effect on the body and mind.

A laughter
B relaxing
C boring
D anxiety
E stimulating
F emotion
G enjoyment
H amusing

Questions 37-40
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 37-40 write

YES                               if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO                                 if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN              if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

37. Participants in the Santa Cruz study were more accurate at identifying the laughs of friends than those of strangers.
38. The researchers in the San Diego study were correct in their predictions regarding the behaviour of the high-status individuals.
39. The participants in the Australian National University study were given a fixed amount of time to complete the task focusing on employee profiles.
40. Cheng and Wang’s conclusions were in line with established notions regarding task performance.

Nutmeg – A Valuable Spice

The nutmeg tree, Myristica fragrans, is a large evergreen tree native to Southeast Asia. Until the late 18th century, it only grew in one place in the world: a small group of islands in the Banda Sea, part of the Moluccas – or Spice Islands – in northeastern Indonesia. The tree is thickly branched with dense foliage of tough, dark green oval leaves, and produces small, yellow, bell-shaped flowers and pale yellow pear-shaped fruits. The fruit is encased in a fleshy husk. When the fruit is ripe, this husk splits into two halves along a ridge running the length of the fruit. Inside is a purple-brown shiny seed, 2-3 cm long by about 2cm across, surrounded by a lacy red or crimson covering called an ‘aril’. These are the sources of the two spices nutmeg and mace, the former being produced from the dried seed and the latter from the aril.

Nutmeg was a highly prized and costly ingredient in European cuisine in the Middle Ages, and was used as a flavouring, medicinal, and preservative agent. Throughout this period, the Arabs were the exclusive importers of the spice to Europe. They sold nutmeg for high prices to merchants based in Venice, but they never revealed the exact location of the source of this extremely valuable commodity. The Arab-Venetian dominance of the trade finally ended in 1512, when the Portuguese reached the Banda Islands and began exploiting its precious resources.

Always in danger of competition from neighbouring Spain, the Portuguese began subcontracting their spice distribution to Dutch traders. Profits began to flow into the Netherlands, and the Dutch commercial fleet swiftly grew into one of the largest in the world. The Dutch quietly gained control of most of the shipping and trading of spices in Northern Europe. Then, in 1580, Portugal fell under Spanish rule, and by the end of the 16th century the Dutch found themselves locked out of the market. As prices for pepper, nutmeg, and other spices soared across Europe, they decided to fight back.

In 1602, Dutch merchants founded the VOC, a trading corporation better known as the Dutch East India Company. By 1617, the VOC was the richest commercial operation in the world. The company had 50,000 employees worldwide, with a private army of 30,000 men and a fleet of 200 ships. At the same time, thousands of people across Europe were dying of the plague, a highly contagious and deadly disease. Doctors were desperate for a way to stop the spread of this disease, and they decided nutmeg held the cure. Everybody wanted nutmeg, and many were willing to spare no expense to have it. Nutmeg bought for a few pennies in Indonesia could be sold for 68,000 times its original cost on the streets of London. The only problem was the short supply. And that’s where the Dutch found their opportunity.

The Banda Islands were ruled by local sultans who insisted on maintaining a neutral trading policy towards foreign powers. This allowed them to avoid the presence of Portuguese or Spanish troops on their soil, but it also left them unprotected from other invaders. In 1621, the Dutch arrived and took over. Once securely in control of the Bandas, the Dutch went to work protecting their new investment. They concentrated all nutmeg production into a few easily guarded areas, uprooting and destroying any trees outside the plantation zones. Anyone caught growing a nutmeg seedling or carrying seeds without the proper authority was severely punished. In addition, all exported nutmeg was covered with lime to make sure there was no chance a fertile seed which could be grown elsewhere would leave the islands. There was only one obstacle to Dutch domination. One of the Banda Islands, a sliver of land called Run, only 3 Ion long by less than 1 km wide, was under the control of the British. After decades of fighting for control of this tiny island, the Dutch and British arrived at a compromise settlement, the Treaty of Breda, in 1667. Intent on securing their hold over every nutmeg-producing island, the Dutch offered a trade: if the British would give them the island of Run, they would in turn give Britain a distant and much less valuable island in North America. The British agreed. That other island was Manhattan, which is how New Amsterdam became New York. The Dutch now had a monopoly over the nutmeg trade which would last for another century.

Then, in 1770, a Frenchman named Pierre Poivre successfully smuggled nutmeg plants to safety in Mauritius, an island off the coast of Africa. Some of these were later exported to the Caribbean where they thrived, especially on the island of Grenada. Next, in 1778, a volcanic eruption in the Banda region caused a tsunami that wiped out half the nutmeg groves. Finally, in 1809, the British returned to Indonesia and seized the Banda Islands by force. They returned the islands to the Dutch in 1817, but not before transplanting hundreds of nutmeg seedlings to plantations in several locations across southern Asia. The Dutch nutmeg monopoly was over.

Today, nutmeg is grown in Indonesia, the Caribbean, India, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Sri Lanka, and world nutmeg production is estimated to average between 10,000 and 12,000 tonnes per year.

Questions 1-4
Complete the notes below. Write ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

The nutmeg tree and fruit
• The leaves of the tree are (1) ……………….. in shape
• The (2) ………………. surrounds the fruit and breaks open when the fruit is ripe
• The (3) ………………. is used to produce the spice nutmeg
• The covering known as the aril is used to produce (4) ………………

Questions 5-7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 5-7, 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 the Middle Ages, most Europeans knew where nutmeg was grown.
6. The VOC was the world’s first major trading company.
7. Following the Treaty of Breda, the Dutch had control of all the islands where nutmeg grew.

Questions 8-13
Complete the table below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage.

Middle ages	Nutmeg was brought to Europe by the (8)………………..
16th century	European nations took control of the nutmeg trade
17th century	Demand for nutmeg grew, as it was believed to be effective against the disease known as the (9)…………… The Dutch – took control of the Banda Islands – restricted nutmeg production to a few areas – put (10)……………..on nutmeg to avoid it being cultivated outside the islands – finally obtained the island of (11)………………from the British
Late 18th century	1770 – nutmeg plants were secretly taken to (12)…………….. 1778 – half the Banda Islands’ nutmeg plantations were destroyed by a (13)………………..

Driverless Cars

A The automotive sector is well used to adapting to automation in manufacturing. The implementation of robotic car manufacture from the 1970s onwards led to significant cost savings and improvements in the reliability and flexibility of vehicle mass production. A new challenge to vehicle production is now on the horizon and, again, it comes from automation. However, this time it is not to do with the manufacturing process, but with the vehicles themselves.

Research projects on vehicle automation are not new. Vehicles with limited self-driving capabilities have been around for more than 50 years, resulting in significant contributions towards driver assistance systems. But since Google announced in 2010 that it had been trialling self-driving cars on the streets of California, progress in this field has quickly gathered pace.

B There are many reasons why technology is advancing so fast. One frequently cited motive is safety; indeed, research at the UK’s Transport Research Laboratory has demonstrated that more than 90 percent of road collisions involve human error as a contributory factor, and it is the primary cause in the vast majority. Automation may help to reduce the incidence of this.

Another aim is to free the time people spend driving for other purposes. If the vehicle can do some or all of the driving, it may be possible to be productive, to socialise or simply to relax while automation systems have responsibility for safe control of the vehicle. If the vehicle can do the driving, those who are challenged by existing mobility models – such as older or disabled travellers – may be able to enjoy significantly greater travel autonomy.

C Beyond these direct benefits, we can consider the wider implications for transport and society, and how manufacturing processes might need to respond as a result. At present, the average car spends more than 90 percent of its life parked. Automation means that initiatives for car-sharing become much more viable, particularly in urban areas with significant travel demand. If a significant proportion of the population choose to use shared automated vehicles, mobility demand can be met by far fewer vehicles.

D The Massachusetts Institute of Technology investigated automated mobility in Singapore, finding that fewer than 30 percent of the vehicles currently used would be required if fully automated car sharing could be implemented. If this is the case, it might mean that we need to manufacture far fewer vehicles to meet demand. However, the number of trips being taken would probably increase, partly because empty vehicles would have to be moved from one customer to the next.

Modelling work by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute suggests automated vehicles might reduce vehicle ownership by 43 percent, but that vehicles’ average annual mileage would double as a result. As a consequence, each vehicle would be used more intensively, and might need replacing sooner. This faster rate of turnover may mean that vehicle production will not necessarily decrease.

E Automation may prompt other changes in vehicle manufacture. If we move to a model where consumers are tending not to own a single vehicle but to purchase access to a range of vehicles through a mobility provider, drivers will have the freedom to select one that best suits their needs for a particular journey, rather than making a compromise across all their requirements.

Since, for most of the time, most of the seats in most cars are unoccupied, this may boost production of a smaller, more efficient range of vehicles that suit the needs of individuals. Specialised vehicles may then be available for exceptional journeys, such as going on a family camping trip or helping a son or daughter move to university.

F There are a number of hurdles to overcome in delivering automated vehicles to our roads. These include the technical difficulties in ensuring that the vehicle works reliably in the infinite range of traffic, weather and road situations it might encounter; the regulatory challenges in understanding how liability and enforcement might change when drivers are no longer essential for vehicle operation; and the societal changes that may be required for communities to trust and accept automated vehicles as being a valuable part of the mobility landscape.

G It’s clear that there are many challenges that need to be addressed but, through robust and targeted research, these can most probably be conquered within the next 10 years. Mobility will change in such potentially significant ways and in association with so many other technological developments, such as telepresence and virtual reality, that it is hard to make concrete predictions about the future. However, one thing is certain: change is coming, and the need to be flexible in response to this will be vital for those involved in manufacturing the vehicles that will deliver future mobility.

Questions 14-18
Reading Passage 2 has seven sections, A-G. Which section contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 14-18.

14. reference to the amount of time when a car is not in use
15. mention of several advantages of driverless vehicles for individual road-users
16. reference to the opportunity of choosing the most appropriate vehicle for each trip
17. an estimate of how long it will take to overcome a number of problems
18. a suggestion that the use of driverless cars may have no effect on the number of vehicles manufactured

Questions 19-22
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

The impact of driverless cars

Figures from the Transport Research Laboratory indicate that most motor accidents are partly due to (19) ……………., so the introduction of driverless vehicles will result in greater safety. In addition to the direct benefits of automation, it may bring other advantages. For example, schemes for (20) ………………… will be more workable, especially in towns and cities, resulting in fewer cars on the road. According to the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, there could be a 43 percent drop in (21) ……………..of cars. However, this would mean that the yearly (22) …………………. of each car would, on average, be twice as high as it currently is. This would lead to a higher turnover of vehicles, and therefore no reduction in automotive manufacturing.

Questions 23 and 24
Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Which TWO benefits of automated vehicles does the writer mention?
A Car travellers could enjoy considerable cost savings.
B It would be easier to find parking spaces in urban areas.
C Travellers could spend journeys doing something other than driving.
D People who find driving physically difficult could travel independently.
E A reduction in the number of cars would mean a reduction in pollution.

Questions 25 and 26
Choose TWO letters, A~E.

Which TWO challenges to automated vehicle development does the writer mention?
A making sure the general public has confidence in automated vehicles
B managing the pace of transition from conventional to automated vehicles
C deciding how to compensate professional drivers who become redundant
D setting up the infrastructure to make roads suitable for automated vehicles
E getting automated vehicles to adapt to various different driving conditions

What Is Exploration?

We are all explorers. Our desire to discover, and then share that new-found knowledge, is part of what makes us human – indeed, this has played an important part in our success as a species. Long before the first caveman slumped down beside the fire and grunted news that there were plenty of wildebeest over yonder, our ancestors had learnt the value of sending out scouts to investigate the unknown. This questing nature of ours undoubtedly helped our species spread around the globe, just as it nowadays no doubt helps the last nomadic Penan maintain their existence in the depleted forests of Borneo, and a visitor negotiate the subways of New York.

Over the years, we’ve come to think of explorers as a peculiar breed – different from the rest of us, different from those of us who are merely ‘well travelled’, even; and perhaps there is a type of person more suited to seeking out the new, a type of caveman more inclined to risk venturing out. That, however, doesn’t take away from the fact that we all have this enquiring instinct, even today; and that in all sorts of professions – whether artist, marine biologist or astronomer – borders of the unknown are being tested each day.

Thomas Hardy set some of his novels in Egdon Heath, a fictional area of uncultivated land, and used the landscape to suggest the desires and fears of his characters. He is delving into matters we all recognise because they are common to humanity. This is surely an act of exploration, and into a world as remote as the author chooses. Explorer and travel writer Peter Fleming talks of the moment when the explorer returns to the existence he has left behind with his loved ones. The traveller ‘who has for weeks or months seen himself only as a puny and irrelevant alien crawling laboriously over a country in which he has no roots and no background, suddenly encounters his other self, a relatively solid figure, with a place in the minds of certain people’.

In this book about the exploration of the earth’s surface, I have confined myself to those whose travels were real and who also aimed at more than personal discovery. But that still left me with another problem: the word ‘explorer’ has become associated with a past era. We think back to a golden age, as if exploration peaked somehow in the 19th century – as if the process of discovery is now on the decline, though the truth is that we have named only one and a half million of this planet’s species, and there may be more than 10 million – and that’s not including bacteria. We have studied only 5 per cent of the species we know. We have scarcely mapped the ocean floors, and know even less about ourselves; we fully understand the workings of only 10 per cent of our brains.

Here is how some of today’s ‘explorers’ define the word. Ran Fiennes, dubbed the ‘greatest living explorer’, said, ‘An explorer is someone who has done something that no human has done before – and also done something scientifically useful.’ Chris Bonington, a leading mountaineer, felt exploration was to be found in the act of physically touching the unknown: ‘You have to have gone somewhere new.’ Then Robin Hanbury-Tenison, a campaigner on behalf of remote so-called ‘tribal’ peoples, said, ‘A traveller simply records information about some far-off world, and reports back; but an explorer changes the world.’ Wilfred Thesiger, who crossed Arabia’s Empty Quarter in 1946, and belongs to an era of unmechanised travel now lost to the rest of us, told me, ‘If I’d gone across by camel when I could have gone by car, it would have been a stunt.’ To him, exploration meant bringing back information from a remote place regardless of any great self-discovery.

Each definition is slightly different – and tends to reflect the field of endeavour of each pioneer. It was the same whoever I asked: the prominent historian would say exploration was a thing of the past, the cutting-edge scientist would say it was of the present. And so on. They each set their own particular criteria; the common factor in their approach being that they all had, unlike many of us who simply enjoy travel or discovering new things, both a very definite objective from the outset and also a desire to record their findings.

I’d best declare my own bias. As a writer, I’m interested in the exploration of ideas. I’ve done a great many expeditions and each one was unique. I’ve lived for months alone with isolated groups of people all around the world, even two ‘uncontacted tribes’. But none of these things is of the slightest interest to anyone unless, through my books, I’ve found a new slant, explored a new idea. Why? Because the world has moved on. The time has long passed for the great continental voyages – another walk to the poles, another crossing of the Empty Quarter. We know how the land surface of our planet lies; exploration of it is now down to the details – the habits of microbes, say, or the grazing behaviour of buffalo. Aside from the deep sea and deep underground, it’s the era of specialists. However, this is to disregard the role the human mind has in conveying remote places; and this is what interests me: how a fresh interpretation, even of a well-travelled route, can give its readers new insights.

Questions 27-32
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

27. The writer refers to visitors to New York to illustrate the point that
A exploration is an intrinsic element of being human.
B most people are enthusiastic about exploring.
C exploration can lead to surprising results.
D most people find exploration daunting.

28. According to the second paragraph, what is the writer’s view of explorers?
A Their discoveries have brought both benefits and disadvantages.
B Their main value is in teaching others.
C They act on an urge that is common to everyone.
D They tend to be more attracted to certain professions than to others.

29. The writer refers to a description of Egdon Heath to suggest that
A Hardy was writing about his own experience of exploration.
B Hardy was mistaken about the nature of exploration.
C Hardy’s aim was to investigate people’s emotional states.
D Hardy’s aim was to show the attraction of isolation.

30. In the fourth paragraph, the writer refers to ‘a golden age’ to suggest that
A the amount of useful information produced by exploration has decreased.
B fewer people are interested in exploring than in the 19th century.
C recent developments have made exploration less exciting.
D we are wrong to think that exploration is no longer necessary.

31. In the sixth paragraph, when discussing the definition of exploration, the writer argues that
A people tend to relate exploration to their own professional interests.
B certain people are likely to misunderstand the nature of exploration.
C the generally accepted definition has changed over time.
D historians and scientists have more valid definitions than the general public.

32. In the last paragraph, the writer explains that he is interested in
A how someone’s personality is reflected in their choice of places to visit.
B the human ability to cast new light on places that may be familiar.
C how travel writing has evolved to meet changing demands.
D the feelings that writers develop about the places that they explore.

Questions 33-37
Look at the following statements (Questions 33-37) and the list of explorers below. Match each statement with the correct explorer, A-E. Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 33-37. NB You may use any letter more than once.

33. He referred to the relevance of the form of transport used.
34. He described feelings on coming back home after a long journey.
35. He worked for the benefit of specific groups of people.
36. He did not consider learning about oneself an essential part of exploration.
37. He defined exploration as being both unique and of value to others.

List of Explorers
A Peter Fleming
B Ran Fiennes
C Chris Bonington
D Robin Hanbury-Tenison
E Wilfred Thesiger

Questions 38-40
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

The writer’s own bias

The writer has experience of a large number of (38) …………………. , and was the first stranger that certain previously (39) …………………… people had encountered. He believes there is no need for further exploration of Earth’s (40) …………………, except to answer specific questions such as how buffalo eat.

Section 1
Read the text below and answer questions 1-8.

The best hiking boots

Whether you’re climbing a mountain or walking in the country, be sure to buy the right boots, writes Sian Lewis

A Hanwag Tatra Boots
These boots are expensive but will give you a lifetime of wear. They are a wide fit and offer excellent ankle support. They passed our waterproof test when worn on long, rainy walks, although they are a bit heavy.

B Scarpa Peak Gore-tex Boots
These are good all-round boots that have kept our feet dry in heavy rain, snow and mud. They are warm and comfortable to wear straight out of the box and continue to be so even after many kilometres. A great choice for all seasons.

C Keen Terradora Ethos
These are meant for spring and summer walks and for putting in your backpack for treks in hot climates. They will never weigh you down. Their soles grip well and despite not being waterproof, they are quick-drying when they get wet.

D Danner Jag
Danner’s retro boots are one of the heavier ones we reviewed. They take a week or two for your feet to get used to them, but we found them waterproof even in heavy rain. These are boots for the style conscious, but still suitable for demanding walks.E Merrell Siren Sport Q2 Mid Boots
We’ve worn these boots in freezing cold conditions and our feet felt comfortable. Remember to pull the laces firmly when you put these boots on as they are rather wide around the ankles.

F Teva Arrowood Mid WP
The soft leather might not be tough enough for extreme environments, but these boots get top marks for comfort. They’re waterproof, but we found this wore off after about 20 wet walks. You can, however, get round this problem by using a protective spray on them.

G Regatta Clydebank Mid Boots
These boots are reasonably priced and they performed well in heavy rain. They don’t grip the ground as well as some other boots and aren’t very warm in cold winter weather so we’d say they’re best for country walks in spring and summer.

Questions 1-8
Look at the seven reviews of hiking boots, A-G. For which hiking boots are the following statements true?
Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.

1. These boots are a good choice for people who want to look smart when they are walking.
2. People do not need to spend time getting their feet accustomed to these boots.
3. These boots should last for many years.
4. People find these boots useful when travelling as they are not heavy.
5. One feature of these boots does not continue to be effective for very long.
6. These boots do not keep the rain out.
7. It is important to make sure these boots are done up tightly before starting a walk.
8. These boots should suit people who don’t want to spend a lot.

Read the text below and answer Questions 9-14.

Beekeeping workshop at Elm Farm

If you’ve ever wanted to keep bees and have your own delicious honey, there’s no better time to begin!

Whether you’re keen to learn everything you need to know to get you started, or simply extremely interested in the idea of keeping bees, this one-day interactive workshop will teach you the fascinating secrets of the honeybee and how to care for and keep bees.

Our day begins here on the farm, getting to know about the honeybee, specifically the kind we keep here, and their fascinating history. You will find out about and try for yourself the equipment beekeepers use to care for their bees and discover the many different types of hives bee colonies live in and their different uses. You’ll learn about the life cycle of a colony, disease prevention and caring for bees and of course how to harvest honey for your personal use or for sale.

Then it’s time to try on your bee suit and meet our bees. We’ll teach you how to open the hive, recognise the different bees in it (including how to spot the queen!) and explain what they’re doing in different parts of the hive.

What’s included in the price?

We’ll provide everything you need, including unlimited organic tea or coffee, lunch cooked in our outdoor, wood-fired oven and beekeeping suits for the day. Just bring a pair of thick boots with you. You’ll leave with plenty of notes and resources, including a packet of bee-friendly wildflower seeds and, courtesy of BJ Sherriff, the leading supplier of beekeeping clothing, an exclusive 25% discount for anything in their online store.

We like to run our workshops fairly and honestly. Your booking secures a very limited place, so is non-refundable – if you can’t make it, you can send a friend or colleague instead though. If at the end of any of our workshops, you don’t believe that it has helped you to achieve what it set out to, we will gladly provide a full refund.
Places are strictly limited so please do book early to avoid disappointment.

Questions 9-14
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the text? In boxes 9-14 on your answer sheet, write

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

9. The workshop is only suitable for people who already keep their own bees.
10. Participants will meet people who are involved in selling honey to the public.
11. Vegetarian refreshments are available if requested in advance.
12. Participants will need to pay extra to hire appropriate clothes for the workshop.
13. Protective footwear will be required during the workshop.
14. If someone has to cancel before the workshop, the fee will be repaid.

Section 2
Read the text below and answer Questions 15-20.

Should you pay someone to write your CV?

In my view, the belief that the individual is the best person to write their own CV is not always true. Although many people can write their own CVs, and do it well, others struggle with a variety of problems initially, such as not knowing how to structure a CV or how to highlight their most relevant strengths.

Through in-depth consultation, a professional CV writer can help identify exactly what is necessary for a particular role, cut out unnecessary or irrelevant details, and pinpoint what makes the individual stand out. This level of objectivity is one of the major benefits of working with a professional writer. It’s often difficult to stand back from your own career history to assess what’s relevant or not, or to choose the most appropriate qualities.

If you do choose to work with a professional CV writer, here are some tips:

Ask for a CV writer who has experience in your sector. HR professionals and recruiters with relevant experience can also have valuable insights into what companies are looking for.

Look for someone who’s prepared to take the time to find out your core qualities, who can choose exactly the right words for maximum impact and who understands what and where to edit. Ask to see samples of their work or use personal recommendations before you choose a CV writing service.

You’ll probably need to answer an in-depth email questionnaire or be interviewed before any writing actually starts. The more you can give your CV writer to work with, the better, so the promise of a quick turnaround time isn’t always going to result in the best possible CV. Take the time to think about and jot down your career aims, your past successes, and the value you bring, before you start the whole process. Your CV will probably be used as a springboard for questions at interview, so you need to make sure you feel happy with the way it’s being written and with the choice of words. Being involved in the writing process means your CV sounds authentic.

Questions 15-20
Complete the sentences below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the text for each answer.

15. Some jobseekers have difficulty with their CV because they have not learnt which qualities they should………
16. Professional CV writers know which………………are best left out of the CV.
17. CV writers with knowledge of a particular field of work often provide useful………………about the skills firms expect from job applicants.
18. It is advisable to request……………….of what a professional CV writer has previously produced.
19. Professional CV writers often ask jobseekers to work through a………………as a first step.
20. If the jobseeker assists the professional writer, the tone of the CV will be……………..

Read the text below and answer Questions 21-27.

Starting a new job

First impressions really do last, so it’s important you perform well on your first day in the new job. Here are our top tips that will help you sail through your first day with ease. A new job is a great opportunity to hit the reset button. If you got into the habit of skipping breakfast at your last job, fit it in now or experiment with getting a workout in before going to the office. Having a routine you like and sticking to it definitely impacts on your overall happiness.

You’ve probably already been into the office for an interview, so you’ll have some idea of what the dress code is. While you definitely want to feel comfortable, it’s best to play it safe, leaning towards a smarter and more polished look on your first day.

You don’t want to be late, but getting to the office way too early can also potentially upset not only your schedule but other people’s too. A good rule of thumb is to try and arrive 15 minutes ahead of the agreed start time. Accepting an invite to lunch with your boss and co-workers will allow you to get to know the people you’ll be working with on a more personal level. It will also help you get a handle on personalities and work styles. To ensure the lunch goes well, have a few conversation starters in mind. That way, if the talk dries up, you can get it going again.

One of the big outcomes of going through a job search is you learn loads about yourself. In particular, you learn what you want and don’t want, and what skills you bring to the table. With this new-found understanding, take some time over the initial period to think about what goals you have for your new role. In identifying these early on, you’ll be one step closer to positioning yourself for success.

It’s important that you approach your new job with an open mind, and that you’re ready to soak it all in. Be patient with yourself as you figure out how you fit in, and make sure you understand the way things are done before rushing into giving suggestions on improvements. Remember they hired you for a reason, so smile, relax a little and enjoy the first day of your next big thing.

Questions 21-27
Complete the notes below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the text on page for each answer.

How best to tackle a new job

The first day
• Before arriving at work
o Try out a different morning (21)………………..that will create a sense of well-being
o Make sure your chosen outfit conforms to the company’s (22)…………
• If you eat with colleagues at midday:
o It will provide information on their (23)……………….and the way they operate
o It may be wise to prepare some (24)………………to help the interaction flow

During the first few weeks
• Work out some (25)………………and how to go about fulfilling them
• Try to keep a completely (26)……………..as you settle into the post
• Avoid making proposals at (27)……………….too soon

Section 3
Read the text below and answer questions 28-40.

History of women’s football in Britain

Womens’ football In Britain has deeper roots than might be expected. In one town in 18th- century Scotland, single women played an annual match against their married counterparts, though the motives behind the contest were not purely sporting. Some accounts say that the games were watched by a crowd of single men, who hoped to pick out a potential bride based on her footballing ability.

By the late 19th century, with the men’s game spreading across Britain like wildfire, women also began to take up association football. Early pioneers included Nettie J Honeyball, who founded the British Ladies’ Football Club (BLFC) in 1895. Honeyball was an alias: like many of the middle- and upper-class women who played in the late 19th century, she was not keen to publicise her involvement with a contact sport played on muddy fields. We know more about Lady Florence Dixie, who was appointed president of the BLFC in 1895 and who was an ardent believer in equality between the sexes.

The BLFC arranged games between teams representing the north and the south of England, where money would be raised for those in need. These initially attracted healthy numbers of supporters although early newspaper reports were not particularly generous, with one reporter suggesting ‘when the novelty has worn off, I do not chink women’s football will attract the crowds’. And crowds did drop off as the growing popularity of the men’s game came to dominate public interest. In a country where women were not yet allowed to vote, it would take extraordinary circumstances for their efforts on the football pitch to attract widespread attention.

Those circumstances arose in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War. With many men leaving their jobs to join the army, women started to work in factories and just as men had done before them, they began to play informal games of football during their lunch breaks. After some initial uncertainty, their superiors came to see these games as a means to boost morale and thus increase productivity. Teams soon formed and friendly matches were arranged.

In the town of Preston in the north of England, the female workers at a manufacturing company called Dick, Kerr & Co showed a particular aptitude for the game. Watching from a window above the yard where they played, office worker Alfred Frankland spotted their talent and he set about forming a team. Under Frankland’s management, they soon drew significant crowds to see their games. Known as Dick, Kerr’s Ladies, they beat rival factory Arundel Coulthard 4-0 on Christmas Day 1917, with 10,000 watching at Preston stadium.

After the war ended in 1918 the Dick, Kerr’s side and other women’s teams continued to draw large crowds. In 1920 there were around 150 women’s sides in England and Dick, Kerr’s Ladies packed 53,000 into Everton’s Goodison Park stadium. The same year, the team found their one true genius: Lily Parr. Parr grew up playing football with her brothers, and began her career with her town’s ladies’ team at the age of 14. When they played against the Dick, Kerr’s side, she caught Frankland’s eye and was offered a job at the factory – as well as a spot on the team. Close to six-feet tall and with jet-black hair, she had a ferocious appetite and a fierce left foot. She is credited with 43 goals during her first season playing for Dick, Kerr’s Ladies and around 1,000 in total.

By 1921 Dick, Kerr’s Ladies were regularly attracting crowds in the tens of thousands. But the year ended in catastrophe for the women’s game. The Football Association (FA) – officially the governing body for the sport as a whole, but really only concerned with men’s competitions — had always taken a poor view of female participation. Women’s football was tolerated during the war, but in the years that followed, driven by the fear that the women’s game could affect Football League attendances, the FA sought to assert itself.

Its solution was decisive and brutal. On 5 December 1921, the FA banned its members from allowing women’s football to be played at its grounds, saying that football was ‘quite unsuitable for females’. The FA also forbade its members from acting as referees at women’s games. To all intents and purposes, women’s football in England was outlawed.

The FA also suggested that an excessive proportion of the gate receipts were absorbed in expenses and an inadequate percentage devoted to charity. No such obligation to donate profits existed for men’s clubs and no proof of financial mismanagement was presented, but there was little the women’s clubs could do in response. There was outrage from players, with the captain of Plymouth Ladies remarking that the FA was ‘a hundred years behind the times’ and calling its decision ‘purely sex prejudice’.

It was not until 1966 that serious efforts to revive the women’s game began, but progress remained painfully slow. It took pressure from the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), to finally force the FA to end restrictions on women’s football in 1971. By this time, half a century of progress had been lost.

Questions 28-31
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

28. In the first paragraph, the writer says that in 18th-century Scotland
A only unmarried women were allowed to play football.
B women’s football was more common than men’s football.
C women were sometimes forbidden to watch football matches.
D skill at football might be considered when choosing a wife.

29. The writer says that Nettie J Honeyball was unwilling to
A take an active part in team sports.
B mix with people she considered lower class.
C let the public know of her involvement in football.
D take a leadership role in the British Ladies’ Football Club.

30. The writer suggests that in Britain, between 1895 and 1914,
A society was not yet ready for women’s football.
B there were false reports of the decline of women’s football.
C the media felt that women’s football should not be allowed.
D women’s football mainly attracted people because it was unusual.

31. After the First World War broke out in 1914, factory managers
A were initially unwilling to employ women.
B played in matches against female employees.
C allowed extra time for their employees to play football.
D decided that women’s football might have positive effects.

Questions 32-37
Look at the following statements (Questions 32-37) and the list of football organisations below. Match each statement with the correct organisation, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter, A, B, C or D, in boxes 32-37 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.

32. It felt threatened by the rise of women’s football.
33. It was established by a male office worker.
34. It donated money from football matches to good causes.
35. It called for the ending of the ban on women’s football in Britain.
36. it was accused of being old-fashioned.
37. It was led by a believer in women’s rights.

List of Football Organisations
A the British Ladies’ Football Club (BLFC)
B the Dick, Kerr’s Ladies team
C the Football Association (FA)
D the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA)

Questions 38-40
Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the text for each answer.

A catastrophic year for women’s football

At the end of 1921, women’s football teams were forbidden to use the (38)…………….of the Football Association, and were not allowed to have Football Association members as (39)……………….The FA said that women’s clubs did not give enough to charity, and that there had been mismanagement of funds. Female workers accused the FA of (40)…………………..against women, but the ban continued until 1971.