Month: May 2024

DINING OUT

Questions 1-7
Look at the three restaurant advertisements on the following page. Answer the questions below by writing the letters of the appropriate restaurants (A—C) in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.

Example
It stops serving lunch at 2.30 pm. B

1. It is open for breakfast.
2. It is open every night for dinner.
3. It is only open for lunch on weekdays.
4. It has recently returned to its previous location.
5. It welcomes families.
6. It caters for large groups.
7. It only opens at weekends.

NEW ELECTRICITY ACCOUNT PAYMENT FACILITIES AVAILABLE FROM’ JULY 1998
After 1 July 1998, you may pay your electricity account in any of the following ways:

1. Payments via mail:
A. No receipt required:
Mail payments to: Coastside Power, Locked Bag 2760, Southport NSW 3479
B. Receipt required:
Mail payments to: Coastside Power, PO Box 560, Northbridge NSW 3472

2. Agency payments (payments directly to the bank): Payments can be made at any branch of the Federal Bank by completing the deposit slip attached to your account notice.
NB: This facility is no longer available at South Pacific Bank branches.

3. Payments directly to Coastside Power Office: Payments can be made directly to Coastside Power Office at 78-80 Third Avenue, Northbridge. Office hours are Monday to Friday, 8.30 am to 4.30 pm.

Payment may be by personal cheque, bank cheque or cash.
Note: Payments cannot be made by phone.

Questions 8-13
Read the information given in ‘New Electricity Account Payment Facilities’ on the above page and look at the statements below (Questions 8-13). In boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet write:

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

Example
You must pay your account by mail. FALSE

8. If you want a receipt, you should send your payment to the Southport address.
9. You may pay your account at branches of the Federal Bank.
10. You must pay the full amount, instalments are not permitted.
11. The Coastside Power Office is open on Saturday mornings.
12. You may pay your account by phone using your credit card.
13. There is a reduction for prompt payment.

Central Library

PERSONAL COMPUTERS AVAILABLE FOR PUBLIC TO USE

• 2 personal computers are available, for a fee of $5.00. There is also an ink jet printer attached to each terminal. The library has a number of commercially available programs for word processing and spreadsheets.

• A4 paper can be bought from the desk if you wish to print your work. Alternatively you can bring your own paper. If you wish to store information however, you will need to bring your own floppy disk.

Bookings
Because of high demand, a maximum of one hour’s use per person per day is permitted. Bookings may be made up to three days in advance. Bookings may be made in person at the information desk or by phoning 8673 8901 during normal office hours. If for some reason you cannot keep your appointment, please telephone. If the library is not notified and you are 15 minutes late, your time can be given to someone else. Please sign in the visitors’ book at the information desk when you first arrive to use the computer.

Please note that staff are not available to train people or give a lot of detailed instruction on how to use the programs. Prior knowledge is, therefore, necessary. However, tutorial groups are available for some of the programs and classes are offered on a regular basis. Please see the loans desk for more information about our computer courses.

Section 2

Questions 14-20
Read the passage about personal computers below and look at the statements below (Questions 14-20).

In boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet write

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

14. There are two computers and two printers available for public use at the library.
15. You can buy floppy disks at the information desk.
16. The information desk is closed at weekends.
17. It is essential to reserve a computer three days in advance if you want to use one.
18. If you are more than a quarter of an hour late, you could lose your reservation for the computer.
19. Library employees do not have detailed knowledge of computers.
20. The library runs courses for people who want to learn about computers.

GOOD REASONS FOR CHOOSING ATLAS ENGLISH LANGUAGE COLLEGE

On an English course with Atlas English Language College, you improve your language skills and make friends from all over the world!

A Because Atlas courses start every Monday of the year, there’s bound to be one that fits in with your academic, personal or professional commitments. Whatever your level of language ability, from beginner to advanced, you can choose to study for any length of time, from two weeks to a full year. Courses match a range of individual requirements, from intensive examination preparation to short summer programmes. Most courses commence at 9 am and run till 3 pm.

B If you take an intensive full-time course, we will help you to select the Special Interest Options which best suit your goals. From then on, our teacher will discuss your work with you on a weekly basis. This means that you should develop the language skills you need – and that you are helped to study at your own pace.

C The popularity and success of any language school depend greatly on the quality of the teachers and the methods they employ. All Atlas teachers have specialist qualifications in the teaching of English to foreign students and are all native speakers. We employ only experienced professionals with a proven record of success in the classroom.

D Atlas’s teaching methodology is constantly revised as more is discovered about the process of learning a new language. Our teachers have access to an extensive range of materials, including the very latest in language teaching technology.

E On your first day at school, you will take a test which enables our Director of Studies to place you at the appropriate study level. Your progress will be continuously assessed and, once you have achieved specific linguistic goals, you will move up to a higher level of study.

F Every Atlas course fee includes accommodation in carefully selected homestay families. Breakfast and dinner each day are also included, so you need have no concerns about having to look for somewhere to live once you get to the school.

G On completion of any Intensive, Examination or Summer course, you will receive the Atlas Course Certificate of Attendance. On completion of a four-week course or longer you will also receive the Atlas Academic Record that reflects your ability in every aspect of the language from conversation to writing. Such a record will allow you to present your linguistic credentials to academic institutions or potential employers around the world.

Questions 21-26

The text on Atlas English Language College on the above page has seven paragraphs (A-G).
Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B-G from the list of headings below.

Write the appropriate numbers (i-ix) in boxes 21-26on your answer sheet.
NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use all of them.

List of Headings
i Recognition of your achievements
ii Courses start every week
iii Other services/Pastoral care/Personal arrangements
iv A personal approach
v Two meals every day
vi First-class staff
vii Up-to-date classroom practice
viii Discovering a new language
ix Monitored achievement

21. Paragraph B
22. Paragraph C
23. Paragraph D
24. Paragraph E
25. Paragraph F
26. Paragraph G

ROBOTS AT WORK

A The newspaper production process has come a long way from the old days when the paper was written, edited, typeset and ultimately printed in one building with the journalists working on the upper floors and the printing presses going on the ground floor. These days the editor, subeditors and journalists who put the paper together are likely to find themselves in a totally different building or maybe even in a different city. This is the situation which now prevails in Sydney. The daily paper is compiled at the editorial headquarters, known as the prepress centre, in the heart of the city, but printed far away in the suburbs at the printing centre. Here human beings are in the minority as much of the work is done by automated machines controlled by computers.

B Once the finished newspaper has been created for the next morning’s edition, all the pages are transmitted electronically from the prepress centre to the printing centre. The system of transmission is an update on the sophisticated page facsimile system already in use in many other newspapers. An imagesetter at the printing centre delivers the pages as films. Each page takes less than a minute to produce, although for colour pages four versions, once each for black, cyan, magenta and yellow are sent. The pages are then processed into photographic negatives and the film is used to produce aluminium printing plates ready for the presses.

C A procession of automated vehicles is busy at the new printing centre where the Sydney Morning Herald is printed each day. With lights flashing and warning horns honking, the robots (to give them their correct name, the LGVs or laser guided vehicles) look for all the world like enthusiastic machines from a science fiction movie, as they follow their own random paths around the plant busily getting on with their jobs. Automation of this kind is now standard in all modern newspaper plants. The robots can detect unauthorised personnel and alert security staff immediately if they find an “intruder”; not surprisingly, tall tales are already being told about the machines starting to take on personalities of their own.

D The robots’ principal job, however, is to shift the newsprint (the printing paper) that arrives at the plant in huge reels and emerges at the other end sometime later as newspapers. Once the size of the day’s paper and the publishing order are determined at head office, the information is punched into the computer and the LGVs are programmed to go about their work. The LGVs collect the appropriate size paper reels and take them where they have to go. When the press needs another reel its computer alerts the LGV system. The Sydney LGVs move busily around the press room fulfilling their two key functions to collect reels of newsprint either from the reel stripping stations or from the racked supplies in the newsprint storage area. At the stripping station, the tough wrapping that helps to protect a reel of paper from rough handling is removed. Any damaged paper is peeled off and the reel is then weighed.

E Then one of the four paster-robots moves in. Specifically designed for the job, it trims the paper neatly and prepares the reel for the press. If required the reel can be loaded directly onto the press; if not needed immediately, an LGV takes it to the storage area. When the press computer calls for a reel, an LGV takes it to the reel loading area of the presses. It lifts the reel into the loading position and places it in the correct spot with complete accuracy. As each reel is used up, the press drops the heavy cardboard core into a waste bin. When the bin is full, another LGV collects it and deposits the cores into a shredder for recycling.

F The LGVs move at walking speed. Should anyone step in front of one or get too close, sensors stop the vehicle until the path is clear. The company has chosen a laser guide function system for the vehicles because, as the project development manager says “The beauty of it is that if you want to change the routes, you can work out a new route on your computer and lay it down for them to follow”. When an LGV’s batteries run low, it will take itself offline and go to the nearest battery maintenance point for replacement batteries. And all this is achieved with absolute minimum human input and a much reduced risk of injury to people working in the printing centres.

G The question newspaper workers must now ask, however, is, “how long will it be before the robots are writing the newspapers as well as running the printing centre, churning out the latest edition every morning?”

Section 3

Questions 27-32
The Reading Passage on the above pages has seven paragraphs (A-G). Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs A-B and D-G from the list of headings below.

Write the appropriate numbers (i-ix) in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.

NB There are more headings than paragraphs: so you will not use all of them.

List of Headings
i Robots working together
ii Preparing LGVs for take-over
iii Looking ahead
iv The LGVs’ main functions
v Split location for newspaper production
vi Newspapers superseded by technology
vii Getting the newspaper to the printing centre
viii Controlling the robots
ix Beware of robots!

Example
Paragraph C ix

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

Questions 33 – 40
Complete the flow-chart below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the text for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 33-40 on your answer sheet.

The Production Process
– The newspaper is compiled at the editorial headquarters by the journalists
– The final version of the text is (33) ……… to the printing centre
– The pages arrive by facsimile
– The pages are converted into (34) ………
– (35) ………. are made for use in printing presses
– The LGVs are (36) …….. by computer
– The LGVs collect the reels of paper
– The LGVs remove the (37) ……….. from the reel
– The reel is (38) ………
– The reel is trimmed and prepared by (39) ……..
– The reel is taken to the (40) ………..

Green Wave Washes Over Mainstream Shopping

Research in Britain has shown that ‘green consumers’ continue to flourish as a significant group amongst shoppers. This suggests that politicians who claim environmentalism is yesterday’s issue may be seriously misjudging the public mood.

A report from Mintel, the market research organisation, says that despite recession and financial pressures, more people than ever want to buy environmentally friendly products and a ‘green wave’ has swept through consumerism, taking in people previously untouched by environmental concerns. The recently published report also predicts that the process will repeat itself with ‘ethical’ concerns, involving issues such as fair trade with the Third World and the social record of businesses. Companies will have to be more honest and open in response to this mood.

Mintel’s survey, based on nearly 1,000 consumers, found that the proportion who look for green products and are prepared to pay more for them has climbed from 53 per cent in 1990 to around 60 per cent in 1994. On average, they will pay 13 per cent more for such products, although this percentage is higher among women, managerial and professional groups and those aged 35 to 44.

Between 1990 and 1994 the proportion of consumers claiming to be unaware of or unconcerned about green issues fell from 18 to 10 per cent but the number of green spenders among older people and manual workers has risen substantially. Regions such as Scotland have also caught up with the south of England in their environmental concerns. According to Mintel, the image of green consumerism as associated in the past with the more eccentric members of society has virtually disappeared. The consumer research manager for Mintel, Angela Hughes, said it had become firmly established as a mainstream market. She explained that as far as the average person is concerned environmentalism has not ‘gone off the boil’. In fact, it has spread across a much wider range of consumer groups, ages and occupations.

Mintel’s 1994 survey found that 13 per cent of consumers are ‘very dark green’, nearly always buying environmentally friendly products, 28 per cent are ‘dark green’, trying ‘as far as possible’ to buy such products, and 21 per cent are ‘pale green’ – tending to buy green products if they see them. Another 26 per cent are ‘armchair greens’; they said they care about environmental issues but their concern does not affect their spending habits. Only 10 per cent say they do not care about green issues. Four in ten people are ‘ethical spenders’, buying goods which do not, for example, involve dealings with oppressive regimes. This figure is the same its in 1990, although the number of ‘armchair ethicals’ has risen from 28 to 35 per cent and only 22 per cent say they are unconcerned now, against 30 per cent in 1990. Hughes claims that in the twenty-first century, consumers will be encouraged to think more about the entire history of the products and services they buy, including the policies of the companies that provide them and that this will require a greater degree of honesty with consumers.

Among green consumers, animal testing is the top issue – 48 per cent said they would be deterred from buying a product it if had been tested on animals – followed by concerns regarding irresponsible selling, the ozone layer, river and sea pollution, forest destruction, recycling and factory farming. However, concern for specific issues is lower than in 1990, suggesting that many consumers feel that Government and business have taken on the environmental agenda.

Questions 1-6
Do the fallowing statements agree with the claims of the writer of Reading Passage I? In boxes 1-6 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

1 The research findings report commercial rather than political trends.
2 Being financially better off has made shoppers more sensitive to buying ‘green’.
3 The majority of shoppers are prepared to pay more for the benefit of the environment according to the research findings.
4 Consumers’ green shopping habits are influenced by Mintel’s findings.
5 Mintel have limited their investigation to professional and managerial groups.
6 Mintel undertakes market surveys on an annual basis.

Questions 7-9
Choose the appropriate letters A-D

7 Politicians may have ‘misjudged the public mood’ because
A they are pre-occupied with the recession and financial problems
B there is more widespread interest in the environment agenda than they anticipated
C consumer spending has increased significantly as a result of ‘green’ pressure
D shoppers are displeased with government policies on a range of issues.

8 What is Mintel?
A an environmentalist group
B a business survey organisation
C an academic research team
D political organisation

9 A consumer expressing concern for environmental issues without actively supporting such principles is
A an ethical spender
B a very dark green spender
C an armchair green
D a pale green spender

Questions 10-13
Complete the summary using words from the options given below. Write your answers in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.
NB There are more answers than spaces, so you will not use them all.

The Mintel report suggests that in future companies will be forced to practise greater (10)………………………… in their dealings because of the increased awareness amongst (11)……………………………. of ethical issues. This prediction is supported by the growth in the number of (12)…………………………… identified in the most recent survey published. As a consequence, it is felt that companies will have to think more carefully about their (13)………………………..

Environmental research                    Social awareness                       Consumers

Honesty and openness                     Social record                             Political beliefs

Ethical spenders                                Armchair ethical                        Financial constraints

Politicians                                          Environmentalists

Reading Passage 2

A There is a great concern in Europe and North America about declining standards of literacy in schools. In Britain, the fact that 30 per cent of 16 year olds have a reading age of 14 or less has helped to prompt massive educational changes. The development of literacy has far-reaching effects on general intellectual development and thus anything which impedes the development of literacy is a serious matter for us all. So the hunt is on for the cause of the decline in literacy. The search so far has focused on socio-economic factors, or the effectiveness of ‘traditional’ versus ‘modern’ teaching techniques.

B The fruitless search for the cause of the increase in illiteracy is a tragic example of the saying ‘They can’t see the wood for the trees’. When teachers use picture books, they are simply continuing a long-established tradition that is accepted without question. And for the past two decades, illustrations in reading primers have become increasingly detailed and obtrusive, while language has become impoverished – sometimes to the point of extinction.

C Amazingly, there is virtually no empirical evidence to support the use of illustrations in teaching reading. On the contrary, a great deal of empirical evidence shows that pictures interfere in a damaging way with all aspects of learning to read. Despite this, from North America to the Antipodes, the first books that many school children receive are totally without text.

D A teacher’s main concern is to help young beginner readers to develop not only the ability to recognise words, but the skills necessary to understand what these words mean. Even if a child is able to read aloud fluently, he or she may not be able to understand much of it: this is called ‘barking at text’. The teacher’s task of improving comprehension is made harder by influences outside the classroom. But the adverse effects of such things as television, video games, or limited language experiences at home, can be offset by experiencing ‘rich’ language at school.

E Instead, it is not unusual for a book of 30 or more pages to have only one sentence full of repetitive phrases. The artwork is often marvellous, but the pictures make the language redundant, and the children have no need to imagine anything when they read such books. Looking at a picture actively prevents children younger than nine from creating a mental image, and can make it difficult for older children. In order to learn how to comprehend, they need to practise making their own meaning in response to text. They need to have their innate powers of imagination trained.

F As they grow older, many children turn aside from books without pictures, and it is a situation made more serious as our culture becomes more visual. It is hard to wean children off picture books when pictures have played a major part throughout their formative reading experiences, and when there is competition for their attention from so many other sources of entertainment. The least intelligent are most vulnerable, but tests show that even intelligent children are being affected. The response of educators has been to extend the use of pictures in books and to simplify the language, even at senior levels. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge recently held joint conferences to discuss the noticeably rapid decline in literacy among their undergraduates.

G Pictures are also used to help motivate children to read because they are beautiful and eye-catching. But motivation to read should be provided by listening to stories well read, where children imagine in response to the story. Then, as they start to read, they have this experience to help them understand the language. If we present pictures to save children the trouble of developing these creative skills, then I think we are making a great mistake.

H Academic journals ranging from educational research, psychology, language learning, psycholinguistics, and so on cite experiments which demonstrate how detrimental pictures are for beginner readers. Here is a brief selection:

I The research results of the Canadian educationalist Dale Willows were clear and consistent: pictures affected speed and accuracy and the closer the pictures were to the words, the slower and more inaccurate the child’s reading became. She claims that when children come to a word they already know, then the pictures are unnecessary and distracting. If they do not know a word and look to the picture for a clue to its meaning, they may well be misled by aspects of the pictures which are not closely related to the meaning of the word they are trying to understand.

J Jay Samuels, an American psychologist, found that poor readers given no pictures learnt significantly more words than those learning to read with books with pictures. He examined the work of other researchers who had reported problems with the use of pictures and who found that a word without a picture was superior to a word plus a picture. When children were given words and pictures, those who seemed to ignore the pictures and pointed at the words learnt more words than the children who pointed at the pictures but they still learnt fewer words than the children who had no illustrate stimuli at all.

Questions 14-17
Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 14-17.

14 Readers are said to ‘bark’ at a text when
A they read too loudly
B there are too many repetitive words
C they are discouraged from using their imagination
D they have difficulty assessing its meaning

15 The text suggests that
A pictures in books should be less detailed
B pictures can slow down reading progress
C picture books are best used with younger readers
D pictures make modern books too expensive

16 University academics are concerned because
A young people are showing less interest in higher education
B students cannot understand modern academic text
C academic books are too childish for their under graduation
D there has been a significant change in student literature

17 The youngest readers will quickly develop good reading skills if they
A learn to associate the words in a text with pictures
B are exposed to modern teaching techniques
C are encouraged to ignore pictures in the text
D learn the art of telling stories

Questions 18-21
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 18-21 on your answer sheet write

YES                            if the statement agrees with the information
NO                              if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN           if there is no information about this in the passage

18 It is traditionally accepted that children’s books should contain few pictures.
19 Teachers aim to teach both word recognition and word meaning.
20 Older readers are having difficulty in adjusting to texts without pictures.
21 Literacy has improved as a result of recent academic conferences.

Questions 22-25
Reading Passage 2 has ten paragraphs, A-J. Which paragraphs state the following information?

22 The decline of literacy is seen in groups of differing ages and abilities.
23 Reading methods currently in use go against research findings.
24 Readers able to ignore pictures are claimed to make greater progress.
25 Illustrations in books can give misleading information about word meaning.

Question 26
From the list below choose the most suitable title for the whole of Reading Passage 2.

A The global decline in reading levels
B Concern about recent educational developments
C The harm that picture books can cause
D Research carried out on children’s literature
E An examination of modern reading styles

IN SEARCH OF THE HOLY GRAIL

It has been called the Holy Grail of modern biology. Costing more than £2 billion, it is the most ambitious scientific project since the Apollo programme that landed a man on the moon. And it will take longer to accomplish than the lunar missions, for it will not be complete until early next century. Even before it is finished, according to those involved, this project should open up new understanding of, and new treatments for, many of the ailments that afflict humanity. As a result of the Human Genome Project, there will be new hope of liberation from the shadows of cancer, heart disease, auto-immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, and some psychiatric illnesses.

The objective of the Human Genome Project is simple to state, but audacious in scope: to map and analyse every single gene within the double helix of humanity’s DNA. The project will reveal a new human anatomy — not the bones, muscles and sinews, but the complete genetic blueprint for a human being. Those working on the Human Genome Project claim that the new genetical anatomy will transform medicine and reduce human suffering in the twenty-first century. But others see the future through a darker glass, and fear that the project may open the door to a world peopled by Frankenstein’s monsters and disfigured by a new eugenics.

The genetic inheritance a baby receives from its parents at the moment of conception fixes much of its later development, determining characteristics as varied as whether it will have blue eyes or suffer from a life- threatening illness such as cystic fibrosis. The human genome is the compendium of all these inherited genetic instructions. Written out along the double helix of DNA are the chemical letters of the genetic text. It is an extremely long text, for the human genome contains more than 3 billion letters:

On the printed page it would fill about 7,000 volumes. Yet, within little more than a decade, the position of every letter and its relation to its neighbours will have been tracked down, analysed and recorded.

Considering how many letters there are in the human genome, nature is an excellent proof-reader. But sometimes there are mistakes. An error in a single ‘word’ — a gene — can give rise to the crippling condition of cystic fibrosis, the commonest genetic disorder among Caucasians. Errors in the genetic recipe for hemoglobin, the protein that gives blood its characteristic red colour and which carries oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body, give rise to the most common single-gene disorder in the world: thalassemia. More than 4,000 such single-gene defects are known to afflict humanity. The majority of them are fatal; the majority of the victims are children.

None of the single-gene disorders is a disease in the conventional sense, for which it would be possible to administer a curative drug: the defect is pre-programmed into every cell of the sufferer’s body. But there is hope of progress. In 1986, American researchers identified the genetic defect underlying one type of muscular dystrophy. In 1989, a team of American and Canadian biologists announced that they had found the site of the gene which, when defective, gives rise to cystic fibrosis. Indeed, not only had they located the gene, they had analysed the sequence of letters within it and had identified the mistake responsible for the condition. At the least, these scientific advances may offer a way of screening parents who might be at risk of transmitting a single-gene defect to any children that they conceive. Foetuses can be tested while in the womb, and if found free of the genetic defect, the parents will be relieved of worry and stress, knowing that they will be delivered of a baby free from the disorder.

In the mid-1980s, the idea gained currency within the scientific world that the techniques which were successfully deciphering disorder-related genes could be applied to a larger project if science can learn the genetic spelling of cystic fibrosis, why not attempt to find out how to spell ‘human’? Momentum quickly built up behind the Human Genome Project and its objective of ‘sequencing’ the entire genome – writing out all the letters in their correct order.

But the consequences of the Human Genome Project go far beyond a narrow focus on disease. Some of its supporters have made claims of great extravagance – that the Project will bring us to understand, at the most fundamental level, what it is to be human. Yet many people are concerned that such an emphasis on humanity’s genetic constitution may distort our sense of values, and lead us to forget that human life is more than just the expression of a genetic program written in the chemistry of DNA.

If properly applied, the new knowledge generated by the Human Genome Project may free humanity from the terrible scourge of diverse diseases. But if the new knowledge is not used wisely, it also holds the threat of creating new forms of discrimination and new methods of oppression. Many characteristics, such as height and intelligence, result not from the action of genes alone, but from subtle interactions between genes and the environment. What would be the implications if humanity were to understand, with precision, the genetic constitution which, given the same environment, will predispose one person towards a higher intelligence than another individual whose genes were differently shuffled?

Once before in this century, the relentless curiosity of scientific researchers brought to light forces of nature in the power of the atom, the mastery of which has shaped the destiny of nations and overshadowed all our lives. The Human Genome Project holds the promise that, ultimately, we may be able to alter our genetic inheritance if we so choose. But there is the central moral problem: how can we ensure that when we choose, we choose correctly? That such a potential is a promise and not a threat? We need only look at the past to understand the danger.

Questions 27-32
Complete the sentences below (Questions 27—32) with words taken from Reading Passage 3. Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS OR A NUMBER for each answer Write your answers in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.

27 The passage compares the Project in scale to the…………………
28 The possible completion date of the Project is……………..
29 To write out the human genome on paper would require………………………..books.
30 A genetic problem cannot be treated with drugs because strictly speaking it is not a…………………….
31 Research into genetic defects had its first success in the discovery of the cause of one form of……………….
32 The second success of research into genetic defects was to find the cause of……………..

Questions 33-40
Classify the following statements as representing

A the writer’s fears about the Human Genome Project
B other people’s fears about the Project reported by the writer
C the writer’s reporting of facts about the Project
D the writer’s reporting of the long-term hopes for the Project

Write the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 33—40 on your answer sheet.

33 The Project will provide a new understanding of major diseases.
34 All the components which make up DNA are to be recorded and studied.
35 Genetic monsters may be created.
36 The correct order and inter-relation of all genetic data in all DNA will be mapped.
37 Parents will no longer worry about giving birth to defective offspring.
38 Being ‘human’ may be defined solely in terms of describable physical data.
39 People may be discriminated against in new ways.
40 From past experience humans may not use this new knowledge wisely.

ABSENTEEISM IN NURSING: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY

Absence from work is a costly and disruptive problem for any organisation. The cost of absenteeism in Australia has been put at 1.8 million hours per day or $1400 million annually. The study reported here was conducted in the Prince William Hospital in Brisbane, Australia, where, prior to this time, few active steps had been taken to measure, understand or manage the occurrence of absenteeism.

Nursing Absenteeism
A prevalent attitude amongst many nurses in the group selected for study was that there was no reward or recognition for not utilising the paid sick leave entitlement allowed them in their employment conditions. Therefore, they believed they may as well take the days off — sick or otherwise. Similar attitudes have been noted by James (1989), who noted that sick leave is seen by many workers as a right, like annual holiday leave.

Miller and Norton (1986), in their survey of 865 nursing personnel, found that 73 per cent felt they should be rewarded for not taking sick leave, because some employees always used their sick leave. Further, 67 per cent of nurses felt that administration was not sympathetic to the problems shift work causes to employees’ personal and social lives. Only 53 per cent of the respondents felt that every effort was made to schedule staff fairly.

In another longitudinal study of nurses working in two Canadian hospitals, Hackett, Bycio and Guion (1989) examined the reasons why nurses took absence from work. The most frequent reason stated for absence was minor illness to self. Other causes, in decreasing order of frequency, were illness in family, family social function, work to do at home and bereavement.

Method
In an attempt to reduce the level of absenteeism amongst the 250 Registered and Enrolled Nurses in the present study, the Prince William management introduced three different, yet potentially complementary, strategies over 18 months.

Strategy 1: Non-financial (material) incentives
Within the established wage and salary system it was not possible to use hospital funds to support this strategy. However, it was possible to secure incentives from local businesses, including free passes to entertainment parks, theatres, restaurants, etc. At the end of each roster period, the ward with the lowest absence rate would win the prize.

Strategy 2: Flexible fair roistering
Where possible staff were given the opportunity to determine their working schedule within the limits of clinical needs.

Strategy 3: Individual absenteeism and counselling
Each month, managers would analyse the pattern of absence of staff with excessive sick leave (greater than ten days per year for full time employees). Characteristic patterns of potential ‘voluntary absenteeism’ such as absence before and after days off, excessive weekend and night duty absence and multiple single days off were communicated to all ward nurses and then, as necessary, followed up by action.

Results
Absence rates for the six months prior to the incentive scheme ranged from 3.69 percent to 4.32 percent. In the following six months they ranged between 2.87 percent and 3.96 percent. This represents a 20 percent improvement. However, analysing the absence rates on a year-to-year basis, the overall absence rate was 3.60 per cent in the first year and 3.43 per cent in the following year. This represents a 5 per cent decrease from the first to the second year of the study. A significant decrease in absence over the two-year period could not be demonstrated.

Discussion
The non-financial incentive scheme did appear to assist in controlling absenteeism in the short term. As the scheme progressed it became harder to secure prizes and this contributed to the program’s losing momentum and finally ceasing. There were mixed results across wards as well. For example, in wards with staff members who had long-term genuine illness, there was little chance of winning, and to some extent the staff on those wards were disempowered. Our experience would suggest that the long-term effects of incentive awards on absenteeism are questionable.

Over the time of the study, staff were given a larger degree of control in their rosters. This led to significant improvements in communication between managers and staff. A similar effect was found from the implementation of the third strategy. Many of the nurses had not realised the impact their behaviour was having on the organisation and their colleagues but there were also staff members who felt that talking to them about their absenteeism was ‘picking’ on them and this usually had a negative effect on management-employee relationships.

Conclusion
Although there has been some decrease in absence rates, no single strategy or combination of strategies has had a significant impact on absenteeism per se. Notwithstanding the disappointing results, it is our contention that the strategies were not in vain. A shared ownership of absenteeism and a collaborative approach to problem solving has facilitated improved cooperation and communication between management and staff. It is our belief that this improvement alone, while not tangibly measurable, has increased the ability of management to manage the effects of absenteeism more effectively since this study.

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

YES                         if the statement agrees with the information
NO                           if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN        if there is no information on this in the passage

1 The Prince William Hospital has been trying to reduce absenteeism amongst nurses for many years.
2 Nurses in the Prince William Hospital study believed that there were benefits in taking as little sick leave as possible.
3 Just over half the nurses in the 1986 study believed that management understood the effects that shift work had on them.
4 The Canadian study found that ‘illness in the family’ was a greater cause of absenteeism than ‘work to do at home’.
5 In relation to management attitude to absenteeism the study at the Prince William Hospital found similar results to the two 1989 studies.
6 The study at the Prince William Hospital aimed to find out the causes of absenteeism amongst 250 nurses.
7 The study at the Prince William Hospital involved changes in management practices.

Questions 8-13
Complete the notes below. Choose ONE OR TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.

In the first strategy, wards with the lowest absenteeism in different periods would win prizes donated by (8)………………………. In the second strategy, staff were given more control over their (9)……………………….
In the third strategy, nurses who appeared to be taking (10)……………………….. sick leave or (11)…………………… were identified and counselled. Initially, there was a (12)………………………..per cent decrease in absenteeism. The first strategy was considered ineffective and stopped. The second and third strategies generally resulted in better (13)……………………. among staff.

The Motor Car

A There are now over 700 million motor vehicles in the world – and the number is rising by more than 40 million each year. The average distance driven by car users is growing too – from 8 km a day per person in western Europe in 1965 to 25 km a day in 1995. This dependence on motor vehicles has given rise to major problems, including environmental pollution, depletion of oil resources, traffic congestion and safety.

B While emissions from new cars are far less harmful than they used to be, city streets and motorways are becoming more crowded than ever, often with older trucks, buses and taxis, which emit excessive levels of smoke and fumes. This concentration of vehicles makes air quality in urban areas unpleasant and sometimes dangerous to breathe. Even Moscow has joined the list of capitals afflicted by congestion and traffic fumes. In Mexico City, vehicle pollution is a major health hazard.

C Until a hundred years ago, most journeys were in the 20 km range, the distance conveniently accessible by horse. Heavy freight could only be carried by water or rail. The invention of the motor vehicle brought personal mobility to the masses and made rapid freight delivery possible over a much wider area. Today about 90 per cent of inland freight in the United Kingdom is carried by road. Clearly the world cannot revert to the horse-drawn wagon. Can it avoid being locked into congested and polluting ways of transporting people and goods?

D In Europe most cities are still designed for the old modes of transport. Adaptation to the motor car has involved adding ring roads, one-way systems and parking lots. In the United States, more land is assigned to car use than to housing. Urban sprawl means that life without a car is next to impossible. Mass use of motor vehicles has also killed or injured millions of people. Other social effects have been blamed on the car such as alienation and aggressive human behaviour.

E A 1993 study by the European Federation for Transport and Environment found that car transport is seven times as costly as rail travel in terms of the external social costs it entails such as congestion, accidents, pollution, loss of cropland and natural habitats, depletion of oil resources, and so on. Yet cars easily surpass trains or buses as a flexible and conveniept mode of personal transport. It is unrealistic to expect people to give up private cars in favour of mass transit.

F Technical solutions can reduce the pollution problem and increase the fuel efficiency of engines. But fuel consumption and exhaust emissions depend on which cars are preferred by customers and how they are driven. Many people buy larger cars than they need for daily purposes or waste fuel by driving aggressively. Besides, global car use is increasing at a faster rate than the improvement in emissions and fuel efficiency which technology is now making possible.

G One solution that has been put forward is the long-term solution of designing cities and neighbourhoods so that car journeys are not necessary – all essential services being located within walking distance or easily accessible by public transport. Not only would this save energy and cut carbon dioxide emissions, it would also enhance the quality of community life, putting the emphasis aa people instead of cars. Good local government is already bringing this about in some places. But few democratic communities are blessed with the vision – and the capital – to make such profound changes in modern lifestyles.

H A more likely scenario seems to be a combination of mass transit systems for travel into and around cities, with small ‘low emission’ cars for urban use and larger hybrid or lean burn cars for use elsewhere. Electronically tolled highways might be used to ensure that drivers pay charges geared to actual road use. Better integration of transport systems is also highly desirable – and made more feasible by modern computers. But these are solutions for countries which can afford them. In most developing countries, old cars and old technologies continue to predominate.

Questions 14-19
Reading Passage 2 has eight paragraphs (A-H). Which paragraphs concentrate on the following information? Write the appropriate letters (A-H) in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

14 a comparison of past and present transportation methods
15 how driving habits contribute to road problems
16 the relative merits of cars and public transport
17 the writer’s own prediction of future solutions
18 the increasing use of motor vehicles
19 the impact of the car on city development

Questions 20-26
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 20-26 on your answer sheet write

YES                          if the statement agrees with the information
NO                            if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN         if there is no information on this in the passage

20 Vehicle pollution is worse in European cities than anywhere else.
21 Transport by horse would be a useful alternative to motor vehicles.
22 Nowadays freight is not carried by water in the United Kingdom.
23 Most European cities were not designed for motor vehicles.
24 Technology alone cannot solve the problem of vehicle pollution.
25 People’s choice of car and attitude to driving is a factor in the pollution problem.
26 Redesigning cities would be a short-term solution.

The Keyless Society

A Students who want to enter the University of Montreal’s Athletic Complex need more than just a conventional ID card – their identities must be authenticated by an electronic hand scanner. In some California housing estates, a key alone is insufficient to get someone in the door; his or her voiceprint must also be verified. And soon, customers at some Japanese banks will have to present their faces for scanning before they can enter the building and withdraw their money.

B All of these are applications of biometrics, a little-known but fast-growing technology that involves the use of physical or biological characteristics to identify individuals. In use for more than a decade at some high- security government institutions in the United States and Canada, biometrics are now rapidly popping up in the everyday world. Already, more than 10,000 facilities, from prisons to day-care centres, monitor people’s fingerprints or other physical parts to ensure that they are who they claim to be. Some 60 biometric companies around the world pulled in at least $22 million last year and that grand total is expected to mushroom to at least $50 million by 1999.

C Biometric security systems operate by storing a digitised record of some unique human feature. When an authorised user wishes to enter or use the facility, the system scans the person’s corresponding characteristics and attempts to match them against those on record. Systems using fingerprints, hands, voices, irises, retinas and faces are already on the market. Others using typing patterns and even body odours are in various stages of development.

D Fingerprint scanners are currently the most widely deployed type of biometric application, thanks to their growing use over the last 20 years by law-enforcement agencies. Sixteen American states now use biometric fingerprint verification systems to check that people claiming welfare payments are genuine. In June, politicians in Toronto voted to do the same, with a pilot project beginning next year.

E To date, the most widely used commercial biometric system is the handkey, a type of hand scanner which reads the unique shape, size and irregularities of people’s hands. Originally developed for nuclear power plants the handkey received its big break when it was used to control access to the plarftf, the handkey received its big break when it was used to control access to the Olympic Village in Atlanta by more than 65,000 athletes, trainers and support staff. Now there are scores of other applications.

F Around the world, the market is growing rapidly. Malaysia, for example, is preparing to equip all of its airports with biometric face scanners to match passengers with luggage. And Japan’s largest maker of cash dispensers is developing new machines that incorporate iris scanners. The first commercial biometric, a hand reader used by an American firm to monitor employee attendance, was introduced in 1974. But only in the past few years has the technology improved enough for the prices to drop sufficiently to make them commercially viable. ‘When we started four years ago, I had to explain to everyone what a biometric is,’ says one marketing expert. ‘Now, there’s much more awareness out there.’

G Not surprisingly, biometrics raise thorny questions about privacy and the potential for abuse. Some worry that governments and industry will be tempted to use the technology to monitor individual behaviour. ‘If someone used your fingerprints to match your health-insurance records with a credit-card record showing you regularly bought lots of cigarettes and fatty foods,’ says one policy analyst, ‘you would see your insurance payments go through the roof.’ In Toronto, critics of the welfare fingerprint plan complained that it would stigmatise recipients by forcing them to submit to a procedure widely identified with criminals.

H Nonetheless, support for biometrics is growing in Toronto as it is in many other communities. In an increasingly crowded and complicated world, biometrics may well be a technology whose time has come.

Questions 27-33
Reading Passage 3 has eight paragraphs (A-H). Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B-H from the list of headings below. Write the appropriate numbers (i—x) in boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet.
NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use all of them.

List of headings
i. Common objections
ii. Who’s planning what
iii. This type sells best in shops
iv. The figures say it all
v. Early trials
vi. They can’t get in without these
vii. How does it work?
viii. Fighting fraud
ix. Systems to avoid
x. Accepting the inevitable

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

Questions 34-40
Look at the following groups of people (Questions 34-40) and the list of biometric systems (A-F) below. Match the groups of people to the biometric system associated with them in Reading Passage 3. Write the appropriate letters A-F in boxes 34-40 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any biometric system more than once.

34 sports students
35 Olympic athletes
36 airline passengers
37 welfare claimants
38 business employees
39 home owners
40 bank customers

List of Biometric Systems
A fingerprint scanner
B hand scanner
C body odour
D voiceprint
E face scanner
F typing pattern

IMPLEMENTING THE CYCLE OF SUCCESS: A CASE STUDY

Within Australia, Australian Hotels Inc (AHI) operates nine hotels and employs over 2000 permanent full-time staff, 300 permanent part-time employees and 100 casual staff. One of its latest ventures, the Sydney Airport hotel (SAH), opened in March 1995. The hotel is the closest to Sydney Airport and is designed to provide the best available accommodation, food and beverage and meeting facilities in Sydney’s southern suburbs. Similar to many international hotel chains, however, AHI has experienced difficulties in Australia in providing long-term profits for hotel owners, as a result of the country’s high labour-cost structure. In order to develop an economically viable hotel organisation model, AHI decided to implement some new policies and practices at SAH.

The first of the initiatives was an organisational structure with only three levels of management – compared to the traditional seven. Partly as a result of this change, there are 25 per cent fewer management positions, enabling a significant saving. This change also has other implications. Communication, both up and down the organisation, has greatly improved. Decision-making has been forced down in many cases to front-line employees. As a result, guest requests are usually met without reference to a supervisor, improving both customer and employee satisfaction.

The hotel also recognised that it would need a different approach to selecting employees who would fit in with its new policies. In its advertisements, the hotel stated a preference for people with some ‘service’ experience in order to minimise traditional work practices being introduced into the hotel. Over 7000 applicants filled in application forms for the 120 jobs initially offered at SAH. The balance of the positions at the hotel (30 management and 40 shift leader positions) were predominantly filled by transfers from other AHI properties.

A series of tests and interviews were conducted with potential employees, which eventually left 280 applicants competing for the 120 advertised positions. After the final interview, potential recruits were divided into three categories. Category A was for applicants exhibiting strong leadership qualities, Category C was for applicants perceived to be followers, and Category B was for applicants with both leader and follower qualities. Department heads and shift leaders then composed prospective teams using a combination of people from all three categories. Once suitable teams were formed, offers of employment were made to team members.

Another major initiative by SAH was to adopt a totally multi-skilled workforce. Although there may be some limitations with highly technical jobs such as cooking or maintenance, wherever possible, employees at SAH are able to work in a wide variety of positions. A multi-skilled workforce provides far greater management flexibility during peak and quiet times to transfer employees to needed positions. For example, when office staff are away on holidays during quiet period of the year, employees in either food or beverage or housekeeping departments can temporarily fill in.

The most crucial way, however, of improving the labour cost structure at SAH was to find better, more productive ways of providing customer service. SAH management concluded this would first require a process of ‘benchmarking’. The prime objective of the benchmarking process was to compare a range of service delivery processes across a range of criteria using teams made up of employees from different departments within the hotel which interacted with each other. This process resulted in performance measures that greatly enhanced SAH’s ability to improve productivity and quality.

The front office team discovered through this project that a high proportion of AHI Club member reservations were incomplete. As a result, the service provided to these guests was below the standard promised to them as part of their membership agreement. Reducing the number of incomplete reservations greatly improved guest perceptions of service.

In addition, a program modelled on an earlier project called ‘Take Charge’ was implemented. Essentially, Take Charge provides an effective feedback loop from both customers and employees. Customer comments, both positive and negative, are recorded by staff. These are collated regularly to identify opportunities for improvement. Just as importantly, employees are requested to note down their own suggestions for improvement. (AHI has set an expectation that employees will submit at least three suggestions for every one they receive from a customer.)

Employee feedback is reviewed daily and suggestions are implemented within 48 hours, if possible, or a valid reason is given for non-implementation. If suggestions require analysis or data collection, the Take Charge team has 30 days in which to address the issue and come up with recommendations.

Although quantitative evidence of AHI’s initiatives at SAH are limited at present, anecdotal evidence clearly suggests that these practices are working. Indeed AHI is progressively rolling out these initiatives in other hotels in Australia, whilst numerous overseas visitors have come to see how the program works.

Questions 1—5
Choose the appropriate letters A—D and write them in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

1 The high costs of running AHIs hotels are related to their
A management
B size
C staff
D policies

2 SAH’s new organisational structure requires
A 75% of the old management positions
B 25% of the old management positions
C 25% more management positions
D 5% fewer management positions

3 The SAH’s approach to organisational structure required changing practices in
A industrial relations
B firing staff
C hiring staff
D marketing

4 The total number of jobs advertised at the SAH was …
A 70
B 120
C 170
D 280

5 Categories A, B and C were used to select…
A front office staff
B new teams
C department heads
D new managers

Questions 6-13
Complete the following summary of the last four paragraphs of Reading Passage 1 using ONE OR TWO words from the passage.

What they did at SAH
Teams of employees were selected from different hotel departments to participate in a (6)……………………….. exercise. The information collected was used to compare (7)……………………… processes which, in turn, led to the development of (8)………………………… that would be used to increase the hotel’s capacity to improve (9)……………………… as well as quality. Also, an older program known as (10)…………………… was introduced at SAH. In this program, (11)……………………….. is sought from customers and staff. Wherever possible (12)…………………….. suggestions are implemented within 48 hours. Other suggestions are investigated for their feasibility for a period of up to (13)…………………………

READING PASSAGE 2

The discovery that language can be a barrier to communication is quickly made by all who travel, study, govern or sell. Whether the activity is tourism, research, government, policing, business, or data dissemination, the lack of a common language can severely impede progress or can halt it altogether. ‘Common language’ here usually means a foreign language, but the same point applies in principle to any encounter with unfamiliar dialects or styles within a single language. ‘They don’t talk the same language’ has a major metaphorical meaning alongside its literal one.

Although communication problems of this kind must happen thousands of times each day, very few become public knowledge. Publicity comes only when a failure to communicate has major consequences, such as strikes, lost orders, legal problems, or fatal accidents — even, at times, war. One reported instance of communication failure took place in 1970, when several Americans ate a species of poisonous mushroom. No remedy was known, and two of the people died within days. A radio report of the case was heard by a chemist who knew of a treatment that had been successfully used in 1959 and published in 1963. Why had the American doctors not heard of it seven years later? Presumably because the report of the treatment had been published only in journals written in European languages other than English.

Several comparable cases have been reported. But isolated examples do not give an impression of the size of the problem — something that can come only from studies of the use or avoidance of foreign-language materials and contacts in different communicative situations. In the English-speaking scientific world, for example, surveys of books and documents consulted in libraries and other information agencies have shown that very little foreign-language material is ever consulted. Library requests in the field of science and technology showed that only 13 per cent were for foreign language periodicals. Studies of the sources cited in publications lead to a similar conclusion: the use of foreign- language sources is often found to be as low as 10 per cent.

The language barrier presents itself in stark form to firms who wish to market their products in other countries. British industry, in particular, has in recent decades often been criticized for its linguistic insularity — for its assumption that foreign buyers will be happy to communicate in English, and that awareness of other languages is not therefore a priority. In the 1960s, over two-thirds of British firms dealing with non-English-speaking customers were using English for outgoing correspondence; many had their sales literature only in English; and as many as 40 per cent employed no-one able to communicate in the customers’ languages. A similar problem was identified in other English-speaking countries, notably the USA, Australia and New Zealand. And non-English-speaking countries were by no means exempt-although the widespread use of English as an alternative language made them less open to the charge of insularity.

The criticism and publicity given to this problem since the 1960s seems to have greatly improved the situation. Industrial training schemes have promoted an increase in linguistic and cultural awareness. Many firms now have their own translation services; to take just one example in Britain, Rowntree Mackintosh now publish their documents in six languages (English, French, German, Dutch, Italian and Xhosa). Some firms run part-time language courses in the languages of the countries with which they are most involved; some produce their own technical glossaries, to ensure consistency when material is being translated. It is now much more readily appreciated that marketing efforts can be delayed, damaged, or disrupted by a failure to take account of the linguistic needs of the customer.

The changes in awareness have been most marked in English-speaking countries, where the realisation has gradually dawned that by no means everyone in the world knows English well enough to negotiate in it. This is especially a problem when English is not an official language of public administration, as in most parts of the Far East, Russia, Eastern Europe, the Arab world, Latin America and French speaking Africa. Even in cases where foreign customers can speak English quite well, it is often forgotten that they may not be able to understand it to the required level — bearing in mind the regional and social variation which permeates speech and which can cause major problems of listening comprehension. In securing understanding, how ‘we’ speak to ‘them’ is just as important, it appears, as how ‘they’ speak to ‘us’.

Questions 14-17
Complete each of the following statements (Questions 14-17) with words taken from Reading Passage 2.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.

14 Language problems may come to the attention of the public when they have………………………..such as fatal accidents or social problems.
15 Evidence of the extent of the language barrier has been gained from……………………….of materials used by scientists such as books and periodicals.
16 An example of British linguistic insularity is the use of English for materials such as………………….
17 An example of a part of the world where people may have difficulty in negotiating English is………….

Questions 18-20
Choose the appropriate letters A—D and write them in boxes 18-20 on your answer sheet.

18 According to the passage, ‘They don’t talk the same language’ (paragraph 1), can refer to problems in …
A understanding metaphor
B learning foreign languages
C understanding dialect or style
D dealing with technological change

19 The case of the poisonous mushrooms (paragraph 2) suggests that American doctors …
A should pay more attention to radio reports
B only read medical articles if they are in English
C are sometimes unwilling to try foreign treatments
D do not always communicate effectively with their patients

20 According to the writer, the linguistic insularity of British businesses …
A later spread to other countries
B had a negative effect on their business
C is not as bad now as it used to be in the past
D made non-English-speaking companies turn to other markets

Questions 21-24
List the FOUR main ways in which British companies have tried to solve the problems of the language barrier since the 1960s. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.

21……………………………….
22………………………………
23…………………………………
24………………………………..

Questions 25 and 26
Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 25 and 26 on your answer sheet.

25 According to the writer, English-speaking people need to be aware that…
A some foreigners have never met an English-speaking person
B many foreigners have no desire to learn English
C foreign languages may pose a greater problem in the future
D English-speaking foreigners may have difficulty understanding English

26 A suitable title for this passage would be
A Overcoming the language barrier
B How to survive an English-speaking world
C Global understanding – the key to personal progress
D The need for a common language

What is a Port City?

A A port must be distinguished from a harbour. They are two very different things. Most ports have poor harbours, and many fine harbours see few ships. Harbour is a physical concept, a shelter for ships; port is an economic concept, a centre of land-sea exchange which requires good access to a hinterland even more than a sea-linked foreland. It is landward access, which is productive of goods for export and which demands imports, that is critical. Poor harbours can be improved with breakwaters and dredging if there is a demand for a port. Madras and Colombo are examples of harbours expensively improved by enlarging, dredging and building breakwaters.

B Port cities become industrial, financial and service centres and political capitals because of their water connections and the urban concentration which arises there and later draws to it railways, highways and air routes. Water transport means cheap access, the chief basis of all port cities. Many of the world’s biggest cities, for example, London, New York, Shanghai, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Jakarta, Calcutta, Philadelphia and San Francisco began as ports – that is, with land-sea exchange as their major function – but they have since grown disproportionately in other respects so that their port functions are no longer dominant. They remain different kinds of places from non-port cities and their port functions account for that difference.

C Port functions, more than anything else, make a city cosmopolitan. A port city is open to the world. In it races, cultures, and ideas, as well as goods from a variety of places, jostle, mix and enrich each other and the life of the city. The smell of the sea and the harbour, the sound of boat whistles or the moving tides are symbols of their multiple links with a wide world, samples of which are present in microcosm within their own urban areas.

D Sea ports have been transformed by the advent of powered vessels, whose size and draught have increased. Many formerly important ports have become economically and physically less accessible as a result. By-passed by most of their former enriching flow of exchange, they have become cultural and economic backwaters or have acquired the character of museums of the past. Examples of these are Charleston, Salem, Bristol, Plymouth, Surat, Galle, Melaka, Soochow, and a long list of earlier prominent port cities in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.

E Much domestic port trade has not been recorded. What evidence we have that domestic trade was greater at all periods than external trade. Shanghai, for example, did most of its trade with other Chinese ports and inland cities. Calcutta traded mainly with other parts of India and so on. Most of any city’s population is engaged in providing goods and services for the city itself. Trade outside the city is its basic function. But each basic worker requires food, housing, clothing and other such services. Estimates of the ratio of basic to service workers range from 1A to 1:8.

F No city can be simply a port but must be involved in a variety of other activities. The port function of the city draws to it raw materials and distributes them in many other forms. Ports take advantage of the need for breaking up the bulk material where water and land transport meet and where loading and unloading costs can be minimised by refining raw materials or turning them into finished goods. The major examples here are oil refining and ore refining, which are commonly located at ports. It is not easy to draw a line around what is and is not a port function. All ports handle, unload, sort, alter, process, repack, and reship most of what they receive. A city may still be regarded as a port city when it becomes involved in a great range of functions not immediately involved with ships or docks.

G Cities which began as ports retain the chief commercial and administrative centre of the city close to the waterfront. The centre of New York is in lower Manhattan between two river mouths, the City of London is on the Thames, Shanghai along the Bund. This proximity to water is also true of Boston, Philadelphia, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Yokohama, where the commercial, financial, and administrative centres are still grouped around their harbours even though each city has expanded into a metropolis. Even a casual visitor cannot mistake them as anything but port cities.

Questions 27-30
Reading passage 3 has seven paragraphs A-G. From the list of headings below choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B-E. Write the appropriate numbers (i-viii) in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.
NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use them all.

List of Headings
i. A truly international environment
ii. Once a port city, always a port city
iii. Good ports make huge profits
iv. How the port changes a city’s infrastructure
v. Reasons’ for the decline of ports
vi. Relative significance of trade and service industry
vii. Ports and harbours
viii. The demands of the oil industry

27 Paragraph B
28 Paragraph C
29 Paragraph D
30 Paragraph E

Questions 31-34
Look at the following descriptions of some port cities mentioned in the passage. Match the pairs of cities (A-H) listed below with the descriptions. Write the appropriate letters A-H in boxes 31-34. NB There are more pairs of port cities than descriptions so you will not use them all.

31 required considerable harbor development
32 began as ports but other facilities later dominated
33 lost their prominence when large ships could not be accommodated
34 maintain their business centres near the port waterfront

A Bombay and Buenos Aires
B Hong Kong and Salem
C Istanbul and Jakarta
D Madras and Colombo
E New York and Bristol
F Plymouth and Melaka
G Singapore and Yokohama
H Surat and London

Question 35-40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 35-40 on your answer sheet write

YES                           if the statement agrees with the information
NO                             if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN          if there is no information on this in the passage

35 Cities cease to be port cities when other functions dominate.
36 In the past, many port cities did more trade within their own country than with overseas ports.
37 Most people in a port city are engaged in international trade and finance.
38 Ports attract many subsidiary and independent industries.
39 Ports have to establish a common language of trade.
40 Ports often have river connections.

Airports on Water

River deltas are difficult places for map makers. The river builds them up, the sea wears them down; their outlines are always changing. The changes in China’s Pearl River delta, however, are more dramatic than these natural fluctuations. An island six kilometres long and with a total area of 1248 hectares is being created there. And the civil engineers are as interested in performance as in speed and size. This is a bit of the delta that they want to endure.

The new island of Chek Lap Kok, the site of Hong Kong’s new airport, is 83% complete. The giant dumper trucks rumbling across it will have finished their job by the middle of this year and the airport itself will be built at a similarly breakneck pace.

As Chek Lap Kok rises, however, another new Asian island is sinking back into the sea. This is a 520-hectare island built in Osaka Bay, Japan, that serves as the platform for the new Kansai airport. Chek Lap Kok was built in a different way, and thus hopes to avoid the same sinking fate.

The usual way to reclaim land is to pile sand rock on to the seabed. When the seabed oozes with mud, this is rather like placing a textbook on a wet sponge: the weight squeezes the water out, causing both water and sponge to settle lower. The settlement is rarely even: different parts sink at different rates. So buildings, pipes, roads and so on tend to buckle and crack. You can engineer around these problems, or you can engineer them out. Kansai took the first approach; Chek Lap Kok is taking the second.

The differences are both political and geological. Kansai was supposed to be built just one kilometre offshore, where the seabed is quite solid. Fishermen protested, and the site was shifted a further five kilometres. That put it in deeper water (around 20 metres) and above a seabed that consisted of 20 metres of soft alluvial silt and mud deposits. Worse, below it was a not-very- firm glacial deposit hundreds of metres thick.

The Kansai builders recognised that settlement was inevitable. Sand was driven into the seabed to strengthen it before the landfill was piled on top, in an attempt to slow the process; but this has not been as effective as had been hoped. To cope with settlement, Kansai’s giant terminal is supported on 900 pillars. Each of them can be individually jacked up, allowing wedges to be added underneath. That is meant to keep the building level. But it could be a tricky task.

Conditions are different at Chek Lap Kok. There was some land there to begin with, the original little island of Chek Lap Kok and a smaller outcrop called Lam Chau. Between them, these two outcrops of hard, weathered granite make up a quarter of the new island’s surface area. Unfortunately, between the islands there was a layer of soft mud, 27 metres thick in places.

According to Frans Uiterwijk, a Dutchman who is the project’s reclamation director, it would have been possible to leave this mud below the reclaimed land, and to deal with the resulting settlement by the Kansai method. But the consortium that won the contract for the island opted opted for a more aggressive approach It scrambled the world’s largest lot of dredgers, which sucked up 150m cubic metres of clay mud and dumped it in deeper waters. At the same time sand was dredged from the waters and piled on top of the layer of stiff clay that the massive dredging had laid bare.

Nor was the sand the only thing used. The original granite island which had hills up to 120 metres high was drilled and blasted into boulders no bigger than two metres in diameter. This provided 70m cubic metres of granite to add to the island’s foundations. Because the heap of boulders does not fill the space perfectly, this represents the equivalent of 105m cubic metres of landfill. Most of the rock will become the foundations for the airport’s runways and its taxiways. The sand dredged from the waters will also be used to provide a two-metre capping layer over the granite platform. This makes it easier for utilities to dig trenches – granite is unyielding stuff. Most of the terminal buildings will be placed above the site of the existing island. Only a limited amount of pile-driving is needed to support building foundations above softer areas.

The completed island will be six to seven metres above sea level. In all, 350m cubic metres of material will have been moved. And much of it, like the overloads, has to be moved several times before reaching its final resting place. For example, there has to be a motorway capable of carrying 150-tonne dump-trucks; and there has to be a raised area for the 15,000 construction workers. These are temporary; they will be removed when the airport is finished.

The airport, though, is here to stay. To protect it, the new coastline is being bolstered with a formidable twelve kilometres of sea defences. The brunt of a typhoon will be deflected by the neighbouring island of Lantau; the sea walls should guard against the rest. Gentler but more persistent bad weather – the downpours of the summer monsoon – is also being taken into account. A mat-like material called geotextile is being laid across the island to separate the rock and sand layers. That will stop sand particles from being washed into the rock voids, and so causing further settlement. This island is being built never to be sunk.

Questions 1-5
Classify the following statements as applying to

A Chek Lap Kok airport only
B Kansai airport only
C Both airports

1 having an area of over 1000 hectares
2 built in a river delta
3 built in the open sea
4 built by reclaiming land
5 built using conventional methods of reclamation

Questions 6-9
Complete the labels on Diagram below. Choose your answers from the box below the diagram and write them in boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet.

Questions 10-13

Complete the summary below. Choose your answers from the options given below. NB there are more words than spares so you will not use them all.

Example: When the new Chek Lap Kok airport has been completed the raised area and the………..will be removed.

Answer: motorway

The island will be partially protected from storms by (10)……………….and also by (11)…………….. Further settlement caused by (12)……………..will be prevented by the use of (13)……………..

Options

Construction workers                  Sea walls                 Rocky and sand                    Motorway

Geotextile                                    Coastline                 Typhoons                              Rock voids

Rainfall                                         Lantau Island          Dump-trucks

Changing Our Understanding of Health

A The concept of health holds different meanings for different people and groups. These meanings of health have also changed over time. This change is no more evident than in Western society today, when notions of health and health promotion are being challenged and expanded in new ways.

B For much of recent Western history, health has been viewed in the physical sense only. That is, good health has been connected to the smooth mechanical operation of the body, while ill health has been attributed to a breakdown in this machine. Health in this sense has been defined as the absence of disease or illness and is seen in medical terms. According to this view, creating health for people means providing medical care to treat or prevent disease and illness. During this period, there was an emphasis on providing clean water, improved sanitation and housing.

C In the late 1940s the World Health Organisation challenged this physically and medically oriented view of health. They stated that ‘health is a complete state of physical, mental and social well-being and is not merely the absence of disease’ (WHO, 1946). Health and the person were seen more holistically (mind/body/spirit) and not just in physical terms.

D The 1970s was a time of focusing on the prevention of disease and illness by emphasizing the importance of the lifestyle and behaviour of the individual. Specific behaviours which were seen to increase risk of disease, such as smoking, lack of fitness and unhealthy eating habits, were targeted. Creating health meant providing not only medical health care, but health promotion programs and policies which would help people maintain healthy behaviours and lifestyles. While this individualistic healthy lifestyles approach to health worked for some (the wealthy members of society), people experiencing poverty, unemployment, underemployment or little control over the conditions of their daily lives benefited little from this approach.

This was largely because both the healthy lifestyles approach and the medical approach to health largely ignored the social and environmental conditions affecting the health of people.

E During the 1980s and 1990s there has been a growing swing away from lifestyle risks as the root cause of poor health. While lifestyle factors still remain important, health is being viewed also in terms of the social, economic environmental contexts in which people live. This broad approach to health is called the socio-ecological view of health. The broad socio-ecological view of health was endorsed at the first International Conference of Health Promotion held in 1986, Ottawa, Canada, where people from 38 countries agreed and declared that:

The fundamental conditions and resources for health are peace, shelter, education, food, a viable income, a stable eco-system, sustainable resources, social justice and equity. Improvement in health requires a secure foundation in these basic requirements. (WHO, 1986)

It is clear from this statement that the creation of health is about much more than encouraging healthy individual behaviours and lifestyles and providing appropriate medical care. Therefore, the creation of health must include addressing issues such as poverty, pollution, urbanisation, natural resource depletion, social alienation and poor working conditions. The social, economic and environmental contexts which contribute to the creation of health do not operate separately or independently of each other. Rather, they are interacting and interdependent, and it is the complex interrelationships between them which determine the conditions that promote health. A broad socio-ecological view of health suggests that the promotion of health must include a strong social, economic and environmental focus.

F At the Ottawa Conference in 1986, a charter was developed which outlined new directions for health promotion based on the socio-ecological view of health. This charter, known as the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, remains as the backbone of health action today. In exploring the scope of health promotion it states that:

Good health is a major resource for social, economic and personal development and an important dimension of quality of life. Political, economic, social, cultural, environmental, behavioural and biological factors can all favour health or be harmful to it. (WHO, 1986)

The Ottawa Charter brings practical meaning and action to this broad notion of health promotion. It presents fundamental strategies and approaches in achieving health for all. The overall philosophy of health promotion which guides these fundamental strategies and approaches is one of ‘enabling people to increase control over and to improve their health’ (WHO, 1986).

Questions 14-18
Reading passage 2 has six paragraphs A-F. Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B-F from the list of headings below. Write the appropriate numbers (i-ix) in boxed 14-18 on your answer sheet.
NB There are more headings than paragraphs so you will not use them all.

List of Headings
i. Ottawa International Conference on Health Promotion
ii. Holistic approach to health
iii. The primary importance of environmental factors
iv. Healthy lifestyles approach to health
v. Changes in concepts of health in Western society
vi. Prevention of diseases and illness
vii. Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion
viii. Definition of health in medical terms
ix. Socio-ecological view of health

14 Paragraph B
15 Paragraph C
16 Paragraph D
17 Paragraph E
18 Paragraph F

Questions 19-22
Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage answer the following questions.

19 In which year did the World Health Organisation define health in terms of mental, physical and social well-being?
20 Which members of society benefited most from the healthy lifestyles approach to health?
21 Name the three broad areas which relate to people’s health, according to the socio-ecological view of health.
22 During which decade were lifestyle risks seen as the major contributors to poor health?

Questions 23-27
Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage 2?

YES                            if the statement agrees with the information
NO                              if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN           if there is no information on this in the passage

23 Doctors have been instrumental in improving living standards in Western society.
24 The approach to health during the 1970s included the introduction of health awareness programs.
25 The socio-ecological view of health recognises that lifestyle habits and the provision of adequate health care are critical factors governing health.
26 The principles of the Ottawa Charter are considered to be out of date in the 1990s.
27 In recent years a number of additional countries have subscribed to the Ottawa Charter.

Children’s Thinking

One of the most eminent of psychologists, Clark Hull, claimed that the essence of reasoning lies in the putting together of two ‘behaviour segments’ in some novel way, never actually performed before, so as to reach a goal.

Two followers of Clark Hull, Howard and Tracey Kendler, devised a test for children that was explicitly based on Clark Hull’s principles. The children were given the task of learning to operate a machine so as to get a toy. In order to succeed they had to go through a two-stage sequence. The children were trained on each stage separately. The stages consisted merely of pressing the correct one of two buttons to get a marble; and of inserting the marble into a small hole to release the toy.

The Kendlers found that the children could learn the separate bits readily enough. Given the task of getting a marble by pressing the button they could get the marble; given the task of getting a toy when a marble was handed to them, they could use the marble. (All they had to do was put it in a hole.) But they did not for the most part ‘integrate’, to use the Kendlers’ terminology. They did not press the button to get the marble and then proceed without further help to use the marble to get the toy. So the Kendlers concluded that they were incapable of deductive reasoning.

The mystery at first appears to deepen when we learn, from another psychologist, Michael Cole, and his colleagues, that adults in an African culture apparently cannot do the Kendlers’ task either. But it lessens, on the other hand, when we learn that a task was devised which was strictly analogous to the Kendlers’ one but much easier for the African males to handle.

Instead of the button-pressing machine, Cole used a locked box and two differently coloured match-boxes, one of which contained a key that would open the box. Notice that there are still two behaviour segments – ‘open the right match-box to get the key’ and ‘use the key to open the box’ – so the task seems formally to be the same. But psychologically it is quite different. Now the subject is dealing not with a strange machine but with familiar meaningful objects; and it is clear to him what he is meant to do. It then turns out that the difficulty of ‘integration’ is greatly reduced.

Recent work by Simon Hewson is of great interest here for it shows that, for young children, too, the difficulty lies not in the inferential processes which the task demands, but in certain perplexing features of the apparatus and the procedure. When these are changed in ways which do not at all affect the inferential nature of the problem, then five-year-old children solve the problem as well as college students did in the Kendlers’ own experiments.

Hewson made two crucial changes. First, he replaced the button-pressing mechanism in the side panels by drawers in these panels which the child could open and shut. This took away the mystery from the first stage of training. Then he helped the child to understand that there was no ‘magic’ about the specific marble which, during the second stage of training, the experimenter handed to him so that he could pop it in the hole and get the reward.

A child understands nothing, after all, about how a marble put into a hole can open a little door. How is he to know that any other marble of similar size will do just as well? Yet he must assume that if he is to solve the problem. Hewson made the functional equivalence of different marbles clear by playing a ‘swapping game’ with the children.

The two modifications together produced a jump in success rates from 30% to 90% for five year olds and from 35% to 72.5% for four year olds. For three year olds, for reasons that are still in need of clarification, no improvement – rather a slight drop in performance – resulted from the change.

We may conclude then, that children experience very real difficulty when faced with the Kendler apparatus, but this difficulty cannot be taken as proof that they are incapable of deductive reasoning.

Questions 28-35
Classify the following descriptions as referring to

CH Clark Hull
HTK Howard and Tracey Kendler
MC Michael Cole and colleagues
SH Simon Hewson

Write the appropriate letters in boxes 28-35 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any answer more than once.

28………….is cited as famous in the field of psychology.
29…………demonstrated that the two stage experiment involving button pressing and inserting a marble into a hole poses problems for certain adults as well as children.
30………..devised an experiment that investigated deductive reasoning without the use of any marbles.
31………..appears to have proved that a change in the apparatus dramatically improves the performance of children of certain ages.
32………..used a machine to measure inductive reasoning that replaced button pressing with drawer opening.
33………..experimented with things that the subjects might have been expected to encounter in everyday life, rather than with a machine.
34………..compared the performance of five year olds with college students using the same apparatus with both sets of subjects.
35………..is cited as having demonstrated that earlier experiments into children’s ability to reason deductively may have led to the wrong conclusions.

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

YES                           if the statement agrees with the information
NO                             if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN          if there is no informal ion on this in the passage

36 Howard and Tracey Kendler studied under Clark Hull.
37 The Kendlers trained their subjects separately in the two stages of their experiment, but not in how to integrate the two actions.
38 Michael Cole and his colleagues demonstrated that adult performance on inductive reasoning tasks depends on features of the apparatus and procedure.
39 All Hewson’s experiments used marbles of the same size.
40 Hewson’s modifications resulted in a higher success rate for children of all ages.

SECTION 1

Questions 1- 4
Read the information on The Medicine in the passage below.
Do the following statements agree with the information in the passage? In boxes 1- 4 on your answer sheet write.

YES                            if the statement agrees with the information
NO                              if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN           if there is no information about this in the passage

Example
You must shake the bottle before you take the medicine.       YES

The Medicine
• This medicine must be taken as directed.
• Before using, shake the bottle.
• Dose: 50ml to be taken twice daily after the midday and evening meals.

Instructions
• Do not take this medicine on an empty stomach or immediately before lying down.
• If any of the following occur, discontinue taking the medicine and contact your doctor: dizziness, vomiting, blurred vision.
• This medicine is not available without a prescription and is not suitable for children under 5 years.
• Once you have begun to take this medicine you must continue to take it until the bottle is empty, unless advised otherwise by your doctor.
• Only one course of this medicine should be taken in a period of six months.
• Expiry date: 16 February 2004.

1. You should lie down after you have taken the medicine.
2. You must stop taking the medicine if your eyesight is affected.
3. You must stop taking the medicine when you feel better.
4. This medicine is suitable for a person of any age.

Questions 5-9
Look at the notice below.
Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER answer the following questions.

Write your answers in boxes 5-9 on your answer sheet.

Example
What has been found in some Fancy Foods products?        pieces of metal

5. Where can you find the batch number on the jars?
6. How much will you receive for an opened jar of contaminated Chicken Curry?
7. If you have eaten Chicken Curry from a jar with one of the batch numbers listed, whom should you contact?
8. What information do they ask you to provide about the jar of Chicken Curry you ate?
9. What is the maximum reward Fancy Foods is offering for information about who contaminated their product?

IMPORTANT NOTICE: PRODUCT RETURN

Fancy Foods wishes to inform the public that pieces of metal have been found in some jars of Fancy Foods Chicken Curry (Spicy). The batches of the Jars involved have numbers from J6617 to J6624.The batch number is printed on the bottom of each jar.

If you have any jars with these batch numbers, please return them (preferably unopened) to the supermarket where you purchased them. You can also return them to the factory (Fancy Foods Retailers, Blacktown). Fancy Foods will pay $10 for each jar returned unopened and $5 for each jar already opened.

No payment will be made for empty jars, which do not need to be returned. However, the company’s Retailing Manager will be interested to hear from people who have consumed chicken curry from any of the above batch numbers. In particular, it will be helpful if they can give information about the place of purchase of the product.

Jars of Fancy Foods Chicken Curry (Coconut) and Fancy Foods Chicken Curry (Mango) have not been affected and do not need to be returned.

REWARD
Fancy Foods will pay a reward of $ 10,000 to $50,000 for information which leads to the conviction of any person found guilty of placing metal pieces in its products. If you have such information, please contact the Customer Relations Manager, Fancy Foods Retailers, Blacktown.

Questions 10-13
Look at the extract from a brochure on the following page.
From the list of headings below, choose the most suitable headings for Sections C-F.
Write the appropriate numbers i-viii in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.

Example 
Section A vii
10. Section C
11. Section D
12. Section E
13. Section F

List of Headings
i Payment options
ii Save money by not paying interest
iii Choosing your style of furniture
iv Free advice on furnishing your home
V Location of stores
vi Applying for a card
vii Ordering furniture from home
viii A wide range of furniture

Fabulous Furniture

Section A
Have you ever wanted to buy a small bedside table? Or a dinner table for 20 people? If you want it, we’ve got it! Fabulous Furniture has Australia’s widest choice of furniture.

Section B
If you visit a Fabulous Furniture store, you can have your furniture – right now – using our Fabulous Furniture Credit Card. When you see something you really want, you can have it straight away, and pay later.

Section C
Unlike most cards, the Fabulous Furniture Credit Card offers a full 60-day interest-free period on every Fabulous purchase – no matter when you make your purchase. This leaves you with more money to spend on other things.

Section D
• You may choose to pay the full amount within 60 days. In this case, you pay no interest.
• You may spread your payments over a longer period. In this case, interest will be charged after the initial 60-day interest-free period.

Section E
Application is absolutely free! Nor are there any annual fees or administration fees. Just fill in the application form and bring it to your nearest Fabulous Furniture store. Your application will be processed promptly and you can begin making purchases immediately after your application is approved.

Section F
We have stores in every major city, so you’re never far away from a Fabulous Furniture store. For our addresses, just check in your local telephone directory.

SECTION 2

Questions 14-17
Read the notice on the following page about Student Clubs and Societies.
The notice has four main paragraphs A-D. Choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
Write the appropriate numbers i-x in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i English Society
ii Education Club
iii Film Appreciation Society
iv Drama Society
v Music Club
vi Games Society
vii Women’s Club
viii Debating Club
ix United Nations Student Club
x Technical Students’ Club

14. Paragraph A
15. Paragraph B
16. Paragraph C
17. Paragraph D

Questions 18 and 19
Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS, answer the following questions.
Write your answers in boxes 18 and 19 on your answer sheet.

18. How do you let the CAS President know you are interested in joining a club?
19. How often is the CAS Ball held?

STUDENT CLUBS AND SOCIETIES

Desperate to find friends with common interests?
Urgently in need of student contacts around college?
Looking for different cultural and religious experiences?
Wanting some good discussion?
Don’t look any further!
JOIN A CLUB OR SOCIETY AND HAVE FUN!

A. This club was first started by a group of friends who enjoyed going to the cinema. When our trips became more frequent we realised that there must be others who also shared our love of movies. This club is for those people. Membership gives wide access to other activities like basketball and football as well as barbeques and other social functions. We don’t just enjoy movies.

B. The association has many opportunities to debate and we are a non-political unbiased international organisation which aims to promote international awareness on campus. We establish links and access to the organisation’s agencies and other internationalist organisations and their resources. Our plans this year include discussion groups, guest speakers and to build a model of the UN General Assembly.

C. Whether for fun or debating experience, we discuss everything from personal experience, future society or feminism. This year we plan an internal competition, weekly debates and beginners’ lessons as well as chances to compete nationally. Whether it be to improve your verbal or social skills the society provides both!

D. Want to be a movie star? Then go somewhere else! On the other hand, want to work really hard for great rewards? Then come and join the club where the interesting theatre is created. We usually put on three productions each year. So if you like to write, paint, act, direct or do anything in the theatre, come and put your name down with us.

If you are interested in joining any of these clubs, you can leave a message for the President at the CAS Office in the Student Union Building. And don’t forget the CAS Ball is an annual event! This year it’s being held on 22 December!

It is possible for some students in Higher Education in Britain to borrow money through a government scheme. These loans are called ‘student loans’ and are described in the passage.

Questions 20-27

Read the passage and answer the questions 20-27 below.

In boxes 20-27 on your answer sheet write-

YES                                if the answer to the question is ‘yes’
NO                                  if the answer to the questions is ‘no’
NOT GIVEN              if the information is not given in the passage

20. I’m taking a month’s cookery course at a local college. It’s a private catering college. I’m going a couple of evenings a week, after work. I get a diploma at the end of it. Can I get some help with a student loan?

21. I’m starting a foundation course in September. It’s full time and after a year I hope to get on to a degree course. The fees for the actual course are being paid for by my Local Authority. Am I eligible for a student loan?

22. I finish my first degree in July. I’ve got a place on a Postgraduate Certificate in Education course to start in September. Will the Local Authority pay the tuition fees for this course?

23. Now all her children are grown up my mother says she’d like to finish the studies she was forced to give up earlier in life. She’s 48 now and her course is full-time for a year. Is she too old to get a student loan?

24. I’ve already been given a small scholarship to cover some of my tuition fees. Can I still get a student loan?

25. I’m actually staying with my aunt while I’m at college. Will the Student Loans Company want to know how much she earns?

26. I owed the bank rather a lot of money a few years ago. It’s all paid back now but they won’t lend me any more. Will this disqualify me from getting a student loan?

27. I took a course a couple of years ago, got a student loan, but had to withdraw half-way through. I’ve kept up all my payments on my loan. Am I eligible for a second loan?

STUDENT LOANS

The Government has been funding a loans scheme for students in Higher Education since September 1990.

These loans are available as a ‘top up’ to the standard grant. Although the loan is intended to supplement the grant for living costs, eligibility for a student loan is not restricted to those who receive a maintenance grant. The decision whether or not to take the loan is yours.

Eligibility
You are eligible for a student loan if you are a UK resident and are attending a full-time Higher Education course, below postgraduate level, or a Postgraduate Certificate in Education course, provided you start your course before your 50th birthday. Full-time courses last at least one academic year and include sandwich courses which combine time at college with time spent in a workplace.

Eligible courses are offered by colleges, universities, the Scottish grant-aided colleges and other publicly funded institutions providing Higher Education courses.
In general, eligible courses include first-degree courses or their equivalents and any other courses for which your Local Authority will pay your tuition fees.

Your financial circumstances
Students who want loans are not ‘means tested’ or ‘credit vetted’ – all those eligible will obtain a loan. This means that:
• The amount of your maintenance grant or tuition fees does not matter.
• Other income, if any, is not taken into account.
• Any previous student loans are not taken into account.
• The income of your parents, spouse, partner or other relatives is not taken into account.
• Your previous financial record is not a consideration.

When to apply for a loan
If you would like more information on how to apply for a student loan in readiness for your entry to Higher Education in Autumn 2003, then you should contact The Student Loans Company from June 2003 onwards. Once in Higher Education, you can apply for a loan at any time in the academic year.

SECTION 3

FIRST IMPRESSIONS COUNT

A Traditionally uniforms were — and for some industries still are — manufactured to protect the worker. When they were first designed, it is also likely that all uniforms made symbolic sense – those for the military, for example, were originally intended to impress and even terrify the enemy; other uniforms denoted a hierarchy – chefs wore white because they worked with flour, but the main chef wore a black hat to show he supervised.

B The last 30 years, however, have seen an increasing emphasis on their role in projecting the image of an organisation and in uniting the workforce into a homogeneous unit — particularly in ‘customer facing” industries, and especially in financial services and retailing. From uniforms and workwear has emerged ‘corporate clothing’. “The people you employ are your ambassadors,” says Peter Griffin, managing director of a major retailer in the UK. “What they say, how they look, and how they behave is terribly important.” The result is a new way of looking at corporate workwear. From being a simple means of identifying who is a member of staff, the uniform is emerging as a new channel of marketing communication.

C Truly effective marketing through visual cues such as uniforms is a subtle art, however. Wittingly or unwittingly, how we look sends all sorts of powerful subliminal messages to other people. Dark colours give an aura of authority while lighter pastel shades suggest approachability. Certain dress style creates a sense of conservatism, others a sense of openness to new ideas. Neatness can suggest efficiency but, if it is overdone, it can spill over and indicate an obsession with power. “If the company is selling quality, then it must have quality uniforms. If it is selling style, its uniforms must be stylish. If it wants to appear innovative, everybody can’t look exactly the same. Subliminally we see all these things,” says Lynn Elvy, a director of image consultants House of Colour.

D But translating corporate philosophies into the right mix of colour, style, degree of branding and uniformity can be a fraught process. And it is not always successful. According to Company Clothing magazine, there are 1000 companies supplying the workwear and corporate clothing market. Of these, 22 account for 85% of total sales – £380 million in 1994.

E A successful uniform needs to balance two key sets of needs. On the one hand, no uniform will work if staff feel uncomfortable or ugly. Giving the wearers a choice has become a key element in the way corporate clothing is introduced and managed. On the other, it is pointless if the look doesn’t express the business’s marketing strategy. The greatest challenge in this respect is time. When it comes to human perceptions, first impressions count. Customers will size up the way staff look in just a few seconds, and that few seconds will colour their attitudes from then on. Those few seconds can be so important that big companies are prepared to invest years, and millions of pounds, getting them right.

F In addition, some uniform companies also offer rental services. “There will be an increasing specialisation in the marketplace,” predicts Mr Blyth, Customer Services Manager of a large UK bank. The past two or three years have seen consolidation. Increasingly, the big suppliers are becoming ‘managing agents’, which means they offer a total service to put together the whole complex operation of a company’s corporate clothing package – which includes reliable sourcing, managing the inventory, budget control and distribution to either central locations or to each staff member individually. Huge investments have been made in new systems, information technology and amassing quality assurance accreditations.

G Corporate clothing does have potentials for further growth. Some banks have yet to introduce a full corporate look; police forces are researching a completely new look for the 21st century. And many employees now welcome a company wardrobe. A recent survey of staff found that 90 per cent welcomed having clothing which reflected the corporate identity.

Questions 28-33
The passage First Impressions Count has seven paragraphs A—G. Which paragraphs discuss the following points?
Write the appropriate letters A-G in boxes 28-33 on your answer sheet.

Example
the number of companies supplying the corporate clothing market       D

28 different types of purchasing agreement
29 the original purposes of uniforms
30 the popularity rating of staff uniforms
31 involving employees in the selection of a uniform
32 the changing significance of company uniforms
33 perceptions of different types of dress

Questions 34-40
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer of the passage? In boxes 34-40 on your answer sheet write

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

34 Uniforms were more carefully made in the past than they are today.
35 Uniforms make employees feel part of a team.
36 Using uniforms as a marketing tool requires great care.
37 Being too smart could have a negative impact on customers.
38 Most businesses that supply company clothing are successful.
39 Uniforms are best selected by marketing consultants.
40 Clothing companies are planning to offer financial services in the future.

Section 1

Questions 1 – 8

Look at the five advertisements, A-E.
Write the correct letter, A-E , in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.

A International Language Centre
B Global Language Learning Centre
C Tafe International
D Club Francais
E University of Canberra

Which advertisement mentions
1. up-to-date teaching systems?
2. that the institution has been established for a significant time?
3. examination classes?
4. that arrangements can be made for activities outside class?
5. the availability of courses for school students?
6. language teaching for special purposes?

Which TWO advertisement mentions
7. a wide variety of language choices?
8. evening classes?

Questions 9-13
Read the notice about road works below. In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet write:

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

9. The road will be closed for two days and not re-opened until Monday.
10. The road will be open as far as Little Street.
11. Work on the road will continue each weekend for the next month.
12. Temporary traffic lights will operate at intersections with Main Street.
13. There will be bus services to the university throughout the weekend.

MAIN STREET, GATTON RE-DEVELOPMENT

ROAD WIDENING TO AFFECT WEEKEND TRAFFIC AND BUS SERVICES TO THE UNIVERSITY CAMPUS

The next stage in the re-development of the roads in the town of Gatton will mean that Main Street will be closed between Little and Denning Streets from 6am on Saturday, 12 August to 6pm on Sunday, 13 August. The intersections of these streets with Main Street will not be affected.

We expect that the work will be completed at this time without further disruption to traffic.

Motorists should note that Main Street will be closed over the weekend during the hours indicated.

No university bus services will operate through the area between Little and Denning Streets. However, alternative services will operate on bus routes 566 and 45 between Gatton Road, the town centre and the university.

The Transport and Roads Department apologises for any inconvenience caused while improvements are in progress.

Section 2

Questions 14-19
Read the enrolment details for Ashwood College on the following page and look at the statements below.
In boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet write.

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

Example 
Overseas students may enroll for a course at the college from their home country            TRUE

14. Overseas students must pay a deposit when they apply for a course at the college.
15. Outstanding fees are payable by the end of the first week of the course.
16. Classes are organised according to ability level.
17. There is a break between each lesson.
18. Students may change courses at any time during the term.
19. Any student is permitted to take a week’s holiday during a 12-week course.

Questions 20-26

Read the information on the Language Institute on the following page.

Complete the summary of information below:

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR NUMBERS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 20-26 on your answer sheet.

Example
Overseas students who study at ….. may choose to spend more of their free time.        Totara Language Institute

SUMMARY
with local students by applying for a room in the ……20…… Places are available here even for students enrolled on the minimum length course of ……21…….Class sizes for each course range from ……22……students and all the class teachers are well qualified; many of them teach on graduate programmes in areas such as applied linguistics. As a member of the Language Institute, you will automatically be able to join the ……23…… . Hamilton can offer students a wide range of social activities. The city itself lies on either side of the ……24…… which results in some very ……25…… views and enjoyable walks in the gardens. The Institute employs an activities coordinator who can help you organise your free time and you may also wish to make use of this service for planning your ……26…… when you leave New Zealand. Remember that a student permit is not valid when you have finished your studies.

THE TOTARA LANGUAGE INSTITUTE NEW ZEALAND

Study English in a national university with students from many countries.
• 4-week blocks
• 5 hours’ tuition each day
• Examination preparation
• University entry (with appropriate academic and English requirements)
Choice of accommodation for all students – homestays with local families or in Halls of Residence with New Zealand students.

The Totara Language Institute is part of the University of Waikato in the city of Hamilton, in New Zealand’s North Island. Intensive English classes are taught in four-week blocks throughout the year and students may enrol for as many blocks as they wish. Classes are for 5 hours each day, Monday to Friday, and include preparation for several international English language examinations. All the courses are taught by highly qualified teachers, many of whom also teach on Language Institute graduate programmes in second language teaching and applied linguistics. Classes are small, usually from 10-12 students with a maximum number of 15, and normally contain a mix of students from a wide range of countries. Students who study English at the Language Institute become international members of the Waikato Students’ Union. The option is available to move on to university study if students meet the English language and academic entry levels for their choice of programme. The Language Institute provides student support, welfare and activities services. Students are met at Auckland airport on arrival and accommodation is provided with local families or in University Halls of Residence with New Zealand students.

Hamilton, one of New Zealand’s fastest growing cities, is ideally located for a wide range of leisure and cultural activities. The Waikato river, the longest river in New Zealand, flows through the centre of the city, providing a picturesque and park-like setting of riverside walks and gardens. The Waikato region is a diverse agricultural area, rich in historic sites, arts and crafts, hot springs, native forests, mountains and rivers. Within easy reach is an unspoilt coastline; the wild and rugged west coast beaches famous for surfing, and the more peaceful east coast resorts are only a short drive from Hamilton. Further afield the mountains of the central North Island, 3 hours’ drive away, provide superb ski facilities in winter and hiking country in summer.

The Language Institute activities coordinator can assist students to arrange any sport and leisure activities. Assistance is also available for ongoing travel arrangements for students. Students on a visitor visa or work permit may study for a maximum of 3 months. Courses of longer duration require a student permit which is issued for the length of study only.

Section 3

Questions 27- 40
Read the passage below and answer the questions from 27-40.

Question 27
From the list below choose the most suitable title for the whole of the Reading Passage. Write the
appropriate letter A-D in box 27 on your answer sheet.

A Pollution control in coal mining
B The greenhouse effect
C The coal industry and the environment
D Sustainable population growth

Questions 28-31
The Reading Passage has four sections A-D.

Choose the most suitable heading for each section from the list of headings below.
Write the appropriate numbers i-viii in boxes 28-31 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i Global warming
ii The dangers of the coal industry
iii Superclean coal
iv Environment protection measures
v Coal as an energy source
vi Coal and the enhanced greenhouse effect
vii Research and development
viii Mining site drainage

28 Section A
29 Section B
30 Section C
31 Section D

A Coal is expected to continue to account for almost 27 per cent of the world’s energy needs. However, with growins international awareness of pressures on the environment and the need to achieve sustainable development of energy resources, the way in which the resource is extracted, transported and used is critical.

A wide range of pollution control devices and practices is in place at most modern mines and significant resources are spent on rehabilitating mined land. In addition, major research and development programmes are being devoted to lifting efficiencies and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases during coal consumption. Such measures are helping coal to maintain its status as a major supplier of the world’s energy needs.

B The coal industry has been targeted by its critics as a significant contributor to the greenhouse effect. However, the greenhouse effect is a natural phenomenon involving the increase in global surface temperature due to the presence of greenhouse gases – water vapour, carbon dioxide, tropospheric ozone, methane and nitrous oxide – in the atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, the earth’s average surface temperature would be 33-35 degrees C lower, or -15 degrees C. Life on earth, as we know it today, would not be possible.

There is concern that this natural phenomenon is being altered by a greater build-up of gases from human activity, perhaps giving rise to additional warming and changes in the earth’s climate. This additional build-up and its forecast outcome has been called the enhanced greenhouse effect. Considerable uncertainty exists, however, about the enhanced greenhouse effect, particularly in relation to the extent and timing of any future increases in global temperature.

Greenhouse gases arise from a wide range of sources and their increasing concentration is largely related to the compound effects of increased population, improved living standards and changes in lifestyle. From a current base of 5 billion, the United Nations predicts that the global population may stabilise in the twenty-first century between 8 and 14 billion, with more than 90 per cent of the projected increase taking place in the world’s developing nations. The associated activities to support that growth, particularly to produce the required energy and food, will cause further increases in greenhouse gas emissions. The challenge, therefore, is to attain a sustainable balance between population, economic growth and the environment.

The major greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are the only major contributor to the greenhouse effect that does not occur naturally, coming from such sources as refrigeration, plastics and manufacture. Coal’s total contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is thought to be about 18 per cent, with about half of this coming from electricity generation.

C The world-wide coal industry allocates extensive resources to researching and developing new technologies and ways of capturing greenhouse gases. Efficiencies are likely to be improved dramatically, and hence CO2 emissions reduced, through combustion and gasification techniques which are now at pilot and demonstration stages.

Clean coal is another avenue for improving fuel conversion efficiency. Investigations are under way into superclean coal (3-5 per cent ash) and ultraclean coal (less than 1 per cent ash). Superclean coal has the potential to enhance the combustion efficiency of conventional pulverised fuel power plants. Ultraclean coal will enable coal to be used in advanced power systems such as coal-fired gas turbines which, when operated in combined cycle, have the potential to achieve much greater efficiencies.

D Defendants of mining point out that, environmentally, coal mining has two important factors in its favour. It makes only temporary use of the land and produces no toxic chemical wastes. By carefully pre-planning projects, implementing pollution control measures, monitoring the effects of mining and rehabilitating mined areas, the coal industry minimises the impact on the neighbouring community, the immediate environment and long-term land capability.

Dust levels are controlled by spraying roads and stockpiles, and water pollution is controlled by carefully separating clean water runoff from runoff which contains sediments or salt from mine workings. The latter is treated and re-used for dust suppression. Noise is controlled by modifying equipment and by using insulation and sound enclosures around machinery.

Since mining activities represent only a temporary use of the land, extensive rehabilitation measures are adopted to ensure that land capability after mining meets agreed and appropriate standards which, in some cases, are superior to the land’s pre-mining condition. Where the mining is underground, the surface area can be simultaneously used for forests, cattle grazing and crop raising, or even reservoirs and urban development, with little or no disruption to the existing land use. In all cases, mining is subject to stringent controls and approvals processes.

In open-cut operations, however, the land is used exclusively for mining but land rehabilitation measures generally progress with the mine’s development. As core samples are extracted to assess the quality and quantity of coal at a site, they are also analysed to assess the ability of the soil or subsoil material to support vegetation. Topsoils are stripped and stockpiled prior to mining for subsequent dispersal over rehabilitated areas. As mining ceases in one section of the open-cut, the disturbed area is reshaped. Drainage within and off the site is carefully designed to make the new land surface as stable as the local environment allows: often dams are built to protect the area from soil erosion and to serve as permanent sources of water. Based on the soil requirements, the land is suitably fertilised and revegetated.

Questions 32-36
Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 32-36 on your answer sheet.

32 The global increase in greenhouse gases has been attributed to
A industrial pollution in developing countries.
B coal mining and electricity generation.
C reduced rainfall in many parts of the world.
D trends in population and lifestyle.

33 The proportion of all greenhouse gases created by coal is approximately
A 14 per cent.
B 18 per cent.
C 27 per cent.
D 90 per cent.

34 Current research aims to increase the energy-producing efficiency of coal by
A burning it at a lower temperature.
B developing new gasification techniques.
C extracting CO2 from it.
D recycling greenhouse gases.

35 Compared with ordinary coal, new, ‘clean’ coals may generate power
A more cleanly and more efficiently.
B more cleanly but less efficiently.
C more cleanly but at higher cost.
D more cleanly but much more slowly.

36 To control dust at mine sites, mining companies often use
A chemicals which may be toxic.
B topsoil taken from the site before mining.
C fresh water from nearby dams.
D runoff water containing sediments.

Questions 37-40
Do the following statements reflect the opinions of the writer in the Reading Passage?
In boxes 37—40 on your answer sheet write:

YES                               if the statement reflects the opinion of the writer
NO                                 if the statement contradicts the writer
NOT GIVEN              if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

37. The coal industry should be abandoned in favour of alternative energy sources because of the environmental damage it causes.
38. The greatest threats to the environment are the gases produced by industries which support the high standard of living of a growing world population.
39. World population in the twenty-first century will probably exceed 8 billion.
40. CFC emissions have been substantially reduced in recent years.

Section 1

Questions 1 – 8

Look at the five advertisements, A-E.
Write the correct letter, A-E , in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.

A International Language Centre
B Global Language Learning Centre
C Tafe International
D Club Francais
E University of Canberra

Which advertisement mentions
1. up-to-date teaching systems?
2. that the institution has been established for a significant time?
3. examination classes?
4. that arrangements can be made for activities outside class?
5. the availability of courses for school students?
6. language teaching for special purposes?

Which TWO advertisement mentions
7. a wide variety of language choices?
8. evening classes?

Questions 9-13
Read the notice about road works below. In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet write:

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

9. The road will be closed for two days and not re-opened until Monday.
10. The road will be open as far as Little Street.
11. Work on the road will continue each weekend for the next month.
12. Temporary traffic lights will operate at intersections with Main Street.
13. There will be bus services to the university throughout the weekend.

MAIN STREET, GATTON RE-DEVELOPMENT

ROAD WIDENING TO AFFECT WEEKEND TRAFFIC AND BUS SERVICES TO THE UNIVERSITY CAMPUS

The next stage in the re-development of the roads in the town of Gatton will mean that Main Street will be closed between Little and Denning Streets from 6am on Saturday, 12 August to 6pm on Sunday, 13 August. The intersections of these streets with Main Street will not be affected.

We expect that the work will be completed at this time without further disruption to traffic.

Motorists should note that Main Street will be closed over the weekend during the hours indicated.

No university bus services will operate through the area between Little and Denning Streets. However, alternative services will operate on bus routes 566 and 45 between Gatton Road, the town centre and the university.

The Transport and Roads Department apologises for any inconvenience caused while improvements are in progress.

Section 2

Questions 14-19
Read the enrolment details for Ashwood College on the following page and look at the statements below.
In boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet write.

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

Example 
Overseas students may enroll for a course at the college from their home country            TRUE

14. Overseas students must pay a deposit when they apply for a course at the college.
15. Outstanding fees are payable by the end of the first week of the course.
16. Classes are organised according to ability level.
17. There is a break between each lesson.
18. Students may change courses at any time during the term.
19. Any student is permitted to take a week’s holiday during a 12-week course.

Questions 20-26

Read the information on the Language Institute on the following page.

Complete the summary of information below:

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR NUMBERS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 20-26 on your answer sheet.

Example
Overseas students who study at ….. may choose to spend more of their free time.        Totara Language Institute

SUMMARY
with local students by applying for a room in the ……20…… Places are available here even for students enrolled on the minimum length course of ……21…….Class sizes for each course range from ……22……students and all the class teachers are well qualified; many of them teach on graduate programmes in areas such as applied linguistics. As a member of the Language Institute, you will automatically be able to join the ……23…… . Hamilton can offer students a wide range of social activities. The city itself lies on either side of the ……24…… which results in some very ……25…… views and enjoyable walks in the gardens. The Institute employs an activities coordinator who can help you organise your free time and you may also wish to make use of this service for planning your ……26…… when you leave New Zealand. Remember that a student permit is not valid when you have finished your studies.

THE TOTARA LANGUAGE INSTITUTE NEW ZEALAND

Study English in a national university with students from many countries.
• 4-week blocks
• 5 hours’ tuition each day
• Examination preparation
• University entry (with appropriate academic and English requirements)
Choice of accommodation for all students – homestays with local families or in Halls of Residence with New Zealand students.

The Totara Language Institute is part of the University of Waikato in the city of Hamilton, in New Zealand’s North Island. Intensive English classes are taught in four-week blocks throughout the year and students may enrol for as many blocks as they wish. Classes are for 5 hours each day, Monday to Friday, and include preparation for several international English language examinations. All the courses are taught by highly qualified teachers, many of whom also teach on Language Institute graduate programmes in second language teaching and applied linguistics. Classes are small, usually from 10-12 students with a maximum number of 15, and normally contain a mix of students from a wide range of countries. Students who study English at the Language Institute become international members of the Waikato Students’ Union. The option is available to move on to university study if students meet the English language and academic entry levels for their choice of programme. The Language Institute provides student support, welfare and activities services. Students are met at Auckland airport on arrival and accommodation is provided with local families or in University Halls of Residence with New Zealand students.

Hamilton, one of New Zealand’s fastest growing cities, is ideally located for a wide range of leisure and cultural activities. The Waikato river, the longest river in New Zealand, flows through the centre of the city, providing a picturesque and park-like setting of riverside walks and gardens. The Waikato region is a diverse agricultural area, rich in historic sites, arts and crafts, hot springs, native forests, mountains and rivers. Within easy reach is an unspoilt coastline; the wild and rugged west coast beaches famous for surfing, and the more peaceful east coast resorts are only a short drive from Hamilton. Further afield the mountains of the central North Island, 3 hours’ drive away, provide superb ski facilities in winter and hiking country in summer.

The Language Institute activities coordinator can assist students to arrange any sport and leisure activities. Assistance is also available for ongoing travel arrangements for students. Students on a visitor visa or work permit may study for a maximum of 3 months. Courses of longer duration require a student permit which is issued for the length of study only.

Section 3

Questions 27- 40
Read the passage below and answer the questions from 27-40.

Question 27
From the list below choose the most suitable title for the whole of the Reading Passage. Write the
appropriate letter A-D in box 27 on your answer sheet.

A Pollution control in coal mining
B The greenhouse effect
C The coal industry and the environment
D Sustainable population growth

Questions 28-31
The Reading Passage has four sections A-D.

Choose the most suitable heading for each section from the list of headings below.
Write the appropriate numbers i-viii in boxes 28-31 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i Global warming
ii The dangers of the coal industry
iii Superclean coal
iv Environment protection measures
v Coal as an energy source
vi Coal and the enhanced greenhouse effect
vii Research and development
viii Mining site drainage

28 Section A
29 Section B
30 Section C
31 Section D

A Coal is expected to continue to account for almost 27 per cent of the world’s energy needs. However, with growins international awareness of pressures on the environment and the need to achieve sustainable development of energy resources, the way in which the resource is extracted, transported and used is critical.

A wide range of pollution control devices and practices is in place at most modern mines and significant resources are spent on rehabilitating mined land. In addition, major research and development programmes are being devoted to lifting efficiencies and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases during coal consumption. Such measures are helping coal to maintain its status as a major supplier of the world’s energy needs.

B The coal industry has been targeted by its critics as a significant contributor to the greenhouse effect. However, the greenhouse effect is a natural phenomenon involving the increase in global surface temperature due to the presence of greenhouse gases – water vapour, carbon dioxide, tropospheric ozone, methane and nitrous oxide – in the atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, the earth’s average surface temperature would be 33-35 degrees C lower, or -15 degrees C. Life on earth, as we know it today, would not be possible.

There is concern that this natural phenomenon is being altered by a greater build-up of gases from human activity, perhaps giving rise to additional warming and changes in the earth’s climate. This additional build-up and its forecast outcome has been called the enhanced greenhouse effect. Considerable uncertainty exists, however, about the enhanced greenhouse effect, particularly in relation to the extent and timing of any future increases in global temperature.

Greenhouse gases arise from a wide range of sources and their increasing concentration is largely related to the compound effects of increased population, improved living standards and changes in lifestyle. From a current base of 5 billion, the United Nations predicts that the global population may stabilise in the twenty-first century between 8 and 14 billion, with more than 90 per cent of the projected increase taking place in the world’s developing nations. The associated activities to support that growth, particularly to produce the required energy and food, will cause further increases in greenhouse gas emissions. The challenge, therefore, is to attain a sustainable balance between population, economic growth and the environment.

The major greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are the only major contributor to the greenhouse effect that does not occur naturally, coming from such sources as refrigeration, plastics and manufacture. Coal’s total contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is thought to be about 18 per cent, with about half of this coming from electricity generation.

C The world-wide coal industry allocates extensive resources to researching and developing new technologies and ways of capturing greenhouse gases. Efficiencies are likely to be improved dramatically, and hence CO2 emissions reduced, through combustion and gasification techniques which are now at pilot and demonstration stages.

Clean coal is another avenue for improving fuel conversion efficiency. Investigations are under way into superclean coal (3-5 per cent ash) and ultraclean coal (less than 1 per cent ash). Superclean coal has the potential to enhance the combustion efficiency of conventional pulverised fuel power plants. Ultraclean coal will enable coal to be used in advanced power systems such as coal-fired gas turbines which, when operated in combined cycle, have the potential to achieve much greater efficiencies.

D Defendants of mining point out that, environmentally, coal mining has two important factors in its favour. It makes only temporary use of the land and produces no toxic chemical wastes. By carefully pre-planning projects, implementing pollution control measures, monitoring the effects of mining and rehabilitating mined areas, the coal industry minimises the impact on the neighbouring community, the immediate environment and long-term land capability.

Dust levels are controlled by spraying roads and stockpiles, and water pollution is controlled by carefully separating clean water runoff from runoff which contains sediments or salt from mine workings. The latter is treated and re-used for dust suppression. Noise is controlled by modifying equipment and by using insulation and sound enclosures around machinery.

Since mining activities represent only a temporary use of the land, extensive rehabilitation measures are adopted to ensure that land capability after mining meets agreed and appropriate standards which, in some cases, are superior to the land’s pre-mining condition. Where the mining is underground, the surface area can be simultaneously used for forests, cattle grazing and crop raising, or even reservoirs and urban development, with little or no disruption to the existing land use. In all cases, mining is subject to stringent controls and approvals processes.

In open-cut operations, however, the land is used exclusively for mining but land rehabilitation measures generally progress with the mine’s development. As core samples are extracted to assess the quality and quantity of coal at a site, they are also analysed to assess the ability of the soil or subsoil material to support vegetation. Topsoils are stripped and stockpiled prior to mining for subsequent dispersal over rehabilitated areas. As mining ceases in one section of the open-cut, the disturbed area is reshaped. Drainage within and off the site is carefully designed to make the new land surface as stable as the local environment allows: often dams are built to protect the area from soil erosion and to serve as permanent sources of water. Based on the soil requirements, the land is suitably fertilised and revegetated.

Questions 32-36
Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 32-36 on your answer sheet.

32 The global increase in greenhouse gases has been attributed to
A industrial pollution in developing countries.
B coal mining and electricity generation.
C reduced rainfall in many parts of the world.
D trends in population and lifestyle.

33 The proportion of all greenhouse gases created by coal is approximately
A 14 per cent.
B 18 per cent.
C 27 per cent.
D 90 per cent.

34 Current research aims to increase the energy-producing efficiency of coal by
A burning it at a lower temperature.
B developing new gasification techniques.
C extracting CO2 from it.
D recycling greenhouse gases.

35 Compared with ordinary coal, new, ‘clean’ coals may generate power
A more cleanly and more efficiently.
B more cleanly but less efficiently.
C more cleanly but at higher cost.
D more cleanly but much more slowly.

36 To control dust at mine sites, mining companies often use
A chemicals which may be toxic.
B topsoil taken from the site before mining.
C fresh water from nearby dams.
D runoff water containing sediments.

Questions 37-40
Do the following statements reflect the opinions of the writer in the Reading Passage?
In boxes 37—40 on your answer sheet write:

YES                               if the statement reflects the opinion of the writer
NO                                 if the statement contradicts the writer
NOT GIVEN              if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

37. The coal industry should be abandoned in favour of alternative energy sources because of the environmental damage it causes.
38. The greatest threats to the environment are the gases produced by industries which support the high standard of living of a growing world population.
39. World population in the twenty-first century will probably exceed 8 billion.
40. CFC emissions have been substantially reduced in recent years.

Reading Passage One

Part One
A Air pollution is increasingly becoming the focus of government and citizen concern around the globe. From Mexico City and New York, to Singapore and Tokyo, new solutions to this old problem are being proposed, Mailed and implemented with ever increasing speed. It is feared that unless pollution reduction measures are able to keep pace with the continued pressures of urban growth, air quality in many of the world’s major cities will deteriorate beyond reason.

B Action is being taken along several fronts: through new legislation, improved enforcement and innovative technology. In Los Angeles, state regulations are forcing manufacturers to try to sell ever cleaner cars: their first of the cleanest, titled “Zero Emission Vehicles’, hove to be available soon, since they are intended to make up 2 per cent of sales in 1997. Local authorities in London are campaigning to be allowed to enforce anti-pollution laws themselves; at present only the police have the power to do so, but they tend to be busy elsewhere. In Singapore, renting out toad space to users is the way of the future.

C When Britain’s Royal Automobile Club monitored the exhausts of 60,000 vehicles, it found that 12 per cent of them produced more than half the total pollution. Older cars were the worst offenders; though a sizeable number of quite new cars were also identified as gross polluters, they were simply badly tuned. California has developed a scheme to get these gross polluters off the streets: they offer a flat $700 for any old, run-down vehicle driven in by its owner. The aim is to remove the heaviest-polluting, most decrepit vehicles from the roads.

D As part of a European Union environmental programme, a London council is resting an infra-red spectrometer from the University of Denver in Colorado. It gauges the pollution from a passing vehicle – more useful than the annual stationary rest that is the British standard today – by bouncing a beam through the exhaust and measuring what gets blocked. The councils next step may be to link the system to a computerised video camera able to read number plates automatically.

E The effort to clean up cars may do little to cut pollution if nothing is done about the tendency to drive them more. Los Angeles has some of the world’s cleanest cars – far better than those of Europe – but the total number of miles those cars drive continues to grow. One solution is car-pooling, an arrangement in which a number of people who share the same destination share the use of one car. However, the average number of people in a car on the freeway in Los Angeles, which is 1.0, has been falling steadily. Increasing it would be an effective way of reducing emissions as well as easing congestion. The trouble is, Los Angeleians seem to like being alone in their cars.

F Singapore has for a while had a scheme that forces drivers to buy a badge if they wish to visit a certain part of the city. Electronic innovations make possible increasing sophistication: rates can vary according to road conditions, time of day and so on. Singapore is advancing in this direction, with a city-wide network of transmitters to collect information and charge drivers as they pass certain points. Such road-pricing, however, can be controversial. When the local government in Cambridge, England, considered introducing Singaporean techniques, it faced vocal and ultimately successful opposition.

Part Two
The scope of the problem facing the world’s cities is immense. In 1992, the United Nations Environmental Programme and the World Health Organisation (WHO) concluded that all of a sample of twenty megacities – places likely to have more than ten million inhabitants in the year 2000 – already exceeded the level the WHO deems healthy in at least one major pollutant. Two-thirds of them exceeded the guidelines for two, seven for three or more.

Of the six pollutants monitored by the WHO – carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulphur dioxide, lead and particulate matter – it is this last category that is attracting the most attention from health researchers. PM10, a sub-category of particulate matter measuring ten-millionths of a metre across, has been implicated in thousands of deaths a year in Britain alone. Research being conducted in two counties of Southern California is reaching similarly disturbing conclusions concerning this little- understood pollutant.

A world-wide rise in allergies, particularly asthma, over the past four decades is now said to be linked with increased air pollution. The lungs and brains of children who grow up in polluted air offer further evidence of its destructive power the old and ill, however, are the most vulnerable to the acute effects of heavily polluted stagnant air. It can actually hasten death, as it did in December 1991 when a cloud of exhaust fumes lingered over the city of London for over a week.

The United Nations has estimated that in the year 2000 there will be twenty-four mega-cities and a further eighty-five cities of more than three million people. The pressure on public officials, corporations and urban citizens to reverse established trends in air pollution is likely to grow in proportion with the growth of cities themselves. Progress is being made. The question, though, remains the same: ‘Will change happen quickly enough?

Questions 1-5
Look at the following solutions (Questions 1-5) and locations. Match each solution with one location. Write the appropriate locations in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any location more than once.

SOLUTIONS
1 Manufacturers must sell cleaner cars.
2 Authorities want to have power to enforce anti-pollution laws.
3 Drivers will be charged according to the roads they use.
4 Moving vehicles will be monitored for their exhaust emissions.
5 Commuters are encouraged to share their vehicles with others.

Locations
Singapore
Tokyo
London
New York
Mexico City
Cambridge
Los Angeles

Questions 6-10
Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 6-10 on your answer sheet write

YES                           if the statement reflects 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

6 According to British research, a mere twelve per cent of vehicles tested produced over fifty per cent of total pollution produced by the sample group.
7 It is currently possible to measure the pollution coming from individual vehicles whilst they are moving.
8 Residents of Los Angeles are now tending to reduce the yearly distances they travel by car.
9 Car-pooling has steadily become more popular in Los Angeles in recent years.
10 Charging drivers for entering certain parts of the city has been successfully done in Cambridge, England.

Questions 11-13
Choose the appropriate letters A—D and write them in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.

11 How many pollutants currently exceed WHO guidelines in all megacities studied?
A one
B two
C three
D seven

12 Which pollutant is currently the subject of urgent research?
A nitrogen dioxide
B ozone
C lead
D particulate matter

13 Which of the following groups of people are the most severely affected by intense air pollution?
A allergy sufferers
B children
C the old and ill
D asthma sufferers

Votes for Women

The suffragette movement, which campaigned for votes for women in the early twentieth century, is most commonly associated with the Pankhurst family and militant acts of varying degrees of violence. The Museum of London has drawn on its archive collection to convey a fresh picture with its exhibition.

The name is a reference to the colour scheme that the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) created to give the movement a uniform, nationwide image. By doing so, it became one of the first groups to project a corporate identity, and it is this advanced marketing strategy, along with the other organisational and commercial achievements of the WSPU, to which the exhibition is devoted.

Formed in 1903 by the political campaigner Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia, the WSPU began an educated campaign to put women’s suffrage on the political agenda. New Zealand, Australia and parts of the United States had already enfranchised women, and growing numbers of their British counterparts wanted the same opportunity.

With their slogan ‘Deeds not words’, and the introduction of the colour scheme, the WSPU soon brought the movement the cohesion and focus it had previously lacked.

Membership grew rapidly as women deserted the many other, less directed, groups and joined it. By 1906 the WSPU headquarters, called the Women’s Press Shop, had been established in Charing Cross Road and in spite of limited communications (no radio or television, and minimal use of the telephone) the message had spread around the country, with members and branch officers stretching to as far away as Scotland.

The newspapers produced by the WSPU, first Votes for Women and later The Suffragette, played a vital role in this communication. Both were sold throughout the country and proved an invaluable way of informing members of meetings, marches, fund-raising events and the latest news and views on the movement.

Equally importantly for a rising political group, the newspaper returned a profit. This was partly because advertising space was bought in the paper by large department stores such as Selfridges, and jewellers such as Mappin & Webb. These two, together with other like- minded commercial enterprises sympathetic to the cause, had quickly identified a direct way to reach a huge market of women, many with money to spend.

The creation of the colour scheme provided another money-making opportunity which the WSPU was quick to exploit. The group began to sell playing cards, board games, Christmas and greeting cards, and countless other goods, all in the purple, white and green colours. In 1906 such merchandising of a corporate identity was a new marketing concept.

But the paper and merchandising activities alone did not provide sufficient funds for the WSPU to meet organisational costs, so numerous other fund-raising activities combined to fill the coffers of the ‘war chest’. The most notable of these was the Woman’s Exhibition, which took place in 1909 in a Knightsbridge ice-skating rink, and in 10 days raised the equivalent of £250,000 today.

The Museum of London’s exhibition is largely visual, with a huge number of items on show. Against a quiet background hum of street sounds, copies of The Suffragette, campaign banners and photographs are all on display, together with one of Mrs. Pankhurst’s shoes and a number of purple, white and green trinkets.

Photographs depict vivid scenes of a suffragette’s life: WSPU members on a self- proclaimed ‘monster’ march, wearing their official uniforms of a white frock decorated with purple, white and green accessories; women selling The Suffragette at street corners, or chalking up pavements with details of a forthcoming meeting.

Windows display postcards and greeting cards designed by women artists for the movement, and the quality of the artwork indicates the wealth of resources the WSPU could call on from its talented members.

Visitors can watch a short film made up of old newsreels and cinema material which clearly reveals the political mood of the day towards the suffragettes. The programme begins with a short film devised by the ‘antis’ – those opposed to women having the vote -depicting a suffragette as a fierce harridan bullying her poor, abused husband.
Original newsreel footage shows the suffragette Emily Wilding Davison throwing herself under King George V’s horse at a famous race.

Although the exhibition officially charts the years 1906 to 1914, graphic display boards outlining the bills of enfranchisement of 1918 and 1928, which gave the adult female populace of Britain the vote, show what was achieved. It demonstrates how advanced the suffragettes were in their thinking, in the marketing of their campaign, and in their work as shrewd and skillful image-builders. It also conveys a sense of the energy and ability the suffragettes brought to their fight for freedom and equality. And it illustrates the intelligence employed by women who were at that time deemed by several politicians to have ‘brains too small to know how to vote’.

Questions 14 and 15
Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 14 and 15 on your answer sheet.

14 What is the main aspect of the suffragette movement’s work to which the exhibition at the Museum of London is devoted?
A the role of the Pankhurst family in the suffrage movement
B the violence of the movement’s political campaign
C the success of the movement’s corporate image
D the movement’s co-operation with suffrage groups overseas

15 Why was the WSPU more successful than other suffrage groups?
A Its leaders were much better educated
B It received funding from movements abroad.
C It had access to new technology
D It had a clear purpose and direction

Question 16
Choose TWO letters A-E and write them in box 16 on your answer sheet.

In which TWO of the following years were laws passed allowing British women to vote?
A 1906
B 1909
C 1914
D 1918
E 1928

Questions 17-19
Complete the notes below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Reading Passage 2 for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 17-19 on your answer sheet.

Three ways in which the WSPU raised money:
• the newspapers: mainly through selling (17)…………………
• merchandising activities: selling a large variety of goods produced in their (18)……………….
• additional fund-raising activities: for example, (19)…………………….

Questions 20-26
Do the following statements reflect the situation as described by the writer in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 20-26 on your answer sheet write

YES                              if the statement reflects the situation as described by the writer
NO                                if the statement contradicts the writer
NOT GIVEN             if it is impossible to know what the situation is from the passage

20 In 1903 women in Australia were still not allowed to vote.
21 The main organs of communication for the WSPU were its two newspapers.
22 The work of the WSPU was mainly confined to London and the south.
23 The WSPU’s newspapers were mainly devoted to society news and gossip.
24 The Woman’s Exhibition in 1909 met with great opposition from Parliament.
25 The Museum of London exhibition includes some of the goods sold by the movement.
26 The opponents of the suffragettes made films opposing the movement.

Question 27
Choose the appropriate letter A-D and write it in box 27 on your answer sheet.

The writer of the article finds the exhibition to be
A misleading
B exceptional
C disappointing
D informative

Measuring Organisational Performance

There is clear-cut evidence that, for a period of at least one year, supervision which increases the direct pressure for productivity can achieve significant increases in production. However, such short-term increases are obtained only at a substantial and serious cost to the organisation.

To what extent can a manager make an impressive earnings record over a short period of one to three years by exploiting the company’s investment in the human organisation in his plant or division? To what extent will the quality of his organisation suffer if he does so? The following is a description of an important study conducted by the Institute for Social Research designed to answer these questions.

The study covered 500 clerical employees in four parallel divisions. Each division was organised in exactly the same way, used the same technology, did exactly the same kind of work, and had employees of comparable aptitudes.

Productivity in all four of the divisions depended on the number of clerks involved. The work entailed the processing of accounts and generating of invoices. Although the volume of work was considerable, the nature of the business was such that it could only be processed as it came along. Consequently, the only way in which productivity could be increased was to change the size of the workgroup.

The four divisions were assigned to two experimental programmes on a random basis. Each programme was assigned at random a division that had been historically high in productivity and a division that had been below average in productivity. No attempt was made to place a division in the programme that would best fit its habitual methods of supervision used by the manager, assistant managers, supervisors and assistant supervisors.

The experiment at the clerical level lasted for one year. Beforehand, several months were devoted to planning, and there was also a training period of approximately six months. Productivity was measured continuously and computed weekly throughout the year. The attitudes of employees and supervisory staff towards their work were measured just before and after the period.

Turning now to the heart of the study, in two divisions an attempt was made to change the supervision so that the decision levels were pushed down and detailed supervision of the workers reduced. More general supervision of the clerks and their supervisors was introduced. In addition, the managers, assistant managers, supervisors and assistant supervisors of these two divisions were trained in group methods of leadership, which they endeavoured to use as much as their sill would permit during the experimental year.

For easy reference, the experimental changes in these two divisions will be labelled the ‘participative programme!

In the other two divisions, by contrast, the programme called for modifying the supervision so as to increase the closeness of supervision and move the decision levels upwards. This will be labelled the ‘hierarchically controlled programme’. These changes were accomplished by a further extension of the scientific management approach. For example, one of the major changes made was to have the jobs timed and to have standard times computed. This showed that these divisions were overstaffed by about 30%. The general manager then ordered the managers of these two divisions to cut staff by 25%. This was done by transfers without replacing the persons who left; no one was to be dismissed.

Results of the Experiment

Changes in productivity
Figure 1 shows the changes in salary costs per unit of work, which reflect the change in productivity that occurred in the divisions. As will be observed, the hierarchically controlled programmes increased productivity by about 25%. This was a result of the direct orders from the general manager to reduce staff by that amount. Direct pressure produced a substantial increase in production.

A significant increase in productivity of 20% was also achieved in the participative programme, but this was not as great an increase as in the hierarchically controlled programme. To bring about this improvement, the clerks themselves participated in the decision to reduce the size of the work group. (They were aware of course that productivity increases were sought by management in conducting these experiments.) Obviously, deciding to reduce the size of a work group by eliminating some of its members is probably one of the most difficult decisions for a work group to make. Yet the clerks made it. In fact, one division in the participative programme increased its productivity by about the same amount as each of the two divisions in the hierarchically controlled programme. The other participative division, which historically had been the poorest of all the divisions, did not do so well and increased productivity by only 15%.

Changes in attitude
Although both programmes had similar effects on productivity, they had significantly different results in other respects. The productivity increases in the hierarchically controlled programme were accompanied by shifts in an adverse direction in such factors as loyalty, attitudes, interest, and involvement in the work. But just the opposite was true in the participative programme.

For example, Figure 2 shows that when more general supervision and increased participation were provided, the employees’ feeling of responsibility to see that the work got done increased. Again, when the supervisor was away, they kept on working. In the hierarchically controlled programme, however, the feeling of responsibility decreased, and when the supervisor was absent, work tended to stop.

As Figure 3 shows, the employees in the participative programme at the end of the year felt that their manager and assistant manager were ‘closer to them’ than at the beginning of the year. The opposite was true in the hierarchical programme. Moreover, as Figure 4 shows, employees in the participative programme felt that their supervisors were more likely to ‘pull’ for them, or for the company and them, and not be solely interested in the company, while in the hierarchically controlled programme, the opposite trend occurred.

Questions 28-30
Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 28-30 on your answer sheet.

28 The experiment was designed to
A establish whether increased productivity should be sought at any cost
B show that four divisions could use the same technology
C perfect a system for processing accounts
D exploit the human organisation of a company in order to increase profits

29 The four divisions
A each employed a staff of 500 clerks
B each had equal levels of productivity
C had identical patterns of organization
D were randomly chosen for the experiment

30 Before the experiment
A the four divisions were carefully selected to suit a specific programme
B each division was told to reduce its level of productivity
C the staff involved spent a number of months preparing for the study
D the employees were questioned about their feelings towards the study

Questions 31-36
Complete the summary below. Choose ONE word from Reading Passage 3 for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 31-36 on your answer sheet.

This experiment involved an organisation comprising four divisions, which were divided into two programmes: the
hierarchically controlled programme and the participative programme. For a period of one year a different method
of (31)……………………. was used in each programme. Throughout this time (32)…………………………. was calculated on a weekly basis. During the course of the experiment the following changes were made in an attempt to improve performance.

In the participative programme:
• supervision of all workers was (33)……………………..
• supervisory staff were given training in (34)…………………….
In the hierarchically controlled programme:
• supervision of all workers was increased.
• work groups were found to be (35)…………………. by 30%.
• the work force was (36)………………………… by 25%.

Questions 37-40
Look at Figures 1, 2, 3 and 4 in Reading Passage 3. Choose the most appropriate label, A—I, for each Figure from the box below. Write your answers in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.

37 Figure 1…………..
38 Figure 2…………
39 Figure 3…………
40 Figure 4………….

A Employees’ interest in the company
B Cost increases for the company
C Changes in productivity
D Employees’ feelings of responsibility towards completion of work
E Changes in productivity when supervisor was absent
F Employees’ opinion as to extent of personal support from management
G Employees feel closer to their supervisors
H Employees’ feelings towards increased supervision
I Supervisors’ opinion as to closeness of work group

THE DEPARTMENT OF ETHNOGRAPHY

The Department of Ethnography was created as a separate deportment within the British Museum in 1946, offer 140 years of gradual development from the original Department of Antiquities. If is concerned with the people of Africa, the Americas, Asia, the Pacific and parts of Europe. While this includes complex kingdoms, as in Africa, and ancient empires, such as those of the Americas, the primary focus of attention in the twentieth century has been on small-scale societies. Through its collections, the Department’s specific interest is to document how objects are created and used, and to understand their importance and significance to those who produce them. Such objects can include both the extraordinary and the mundane, the beautiful and the banal.

The collections of the Department of Ethnography include approximately 300,000 artefacts, of which about half are the product of the present century. The Department has a vital role to play in providing information on non-Western cultures to visitors and scholars. To this end, the collecting emphasis has often been less on individual objects than on groups of material which allow the display of a broad range of a society’s cultural expressions.

Much of the more recent collecting was carried out in the field, sometimes by Museum staff working on general anthropological projects in collaboration with a wide variety of national governments and other institutions. The material collected includes great technical series – for instance, of textiles from Bolivia, Guatemala, Indonesia and areas of West Africa – or of artefact types such as boats. The latter include working examples of coracles from India, reed boars from Lake Titicaca in the Andes, kayaks from the Arctic, and dug-out canoes from several countries. The field assemblages, such as those from the Sudan, Madagascar and Yemen, include a whole range of material culture representative of one people. This might cover the necessities of life of an African herdsman or on Arabian farmer, ritual objects, or even on occasion airport art. Again, a series of acquisitions might represent a decade’s fieldwork documenting social experience as expressed in the varieties of clothing and jewellery styles, tents and camel trappings from various Middle Eastern countries, or in the developing preferences in personal adornment and dress from Papua New Guinea. Particularly interesting are a series of collections which continue to document the evolution of ceremony and of material forms for which the Department already possesses early (if nor the earliest) collections formed after the first contact with Europeans.

The importance of these acquisitions extends beyond the objects themselves. They come from the Museum with documentation of the social context, ideally including photographic records. Such acquisitions have multiple purposes. Most significantly they document for future change. Most people think of the cultures represented in the collection in terms of the absence of advanced technology. In fact, traditional practices draw on a continuing wealth of technological ingenuity. Limited resources and ecological constraints are often overcome by personal skills that would be regarded as exceptional in the West. Of growing interest is the way in which much of what we might see as disposable is, elsewhere, recycled and reused.

With the Independence of much of Asia and Africa after 1945, it was assumed that economic progress would rapidly lead to the disappearance or assimilation of many small-scale societies. Therefore, it was felt that the Museum should acquire materials representing people whose art or material culture, ritual or political structures were on the point of irrevocable change. This attitude altered with the realisation that marginal communities can survive and adapt in spite of partial integration into a notoriously fickle world economy. Since the seventeenth century, with the advent of trading companies exporting manufactured textiles to North America and Asia, the importation of cheap goods has often contributed to the destruction of local skills and indigenous markets. On the one hand modern imported goods may be used in an everyday setting, while on the other hand other traditional objects may still be required for ritually significant events. Within this context trade and exchange attitudes are inverted. What are utilitarian objects to a Westerner may be prized objects in other cultures – when transformed by local ingenuity – principally for aesthetic value. In the some way, the West imports goods from other peoples and in certain circumstances categorizes them as ‘art’.

Collections act as an ever-expanding database, nor merely for scholars and anthropologists, bur for people involved in a whole range of educational and artistic purposes. These include schools and universities as well as colleges of art and design. The provision of information about non-Western aesthetics and techniques, not just for designers and artists but for all visitors, is a growing responsibility for a Department whose own context is an increasingly multicultural European society.

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

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

1 The twentieth-century collections come mainly from mainstream societies such as the US and Europe.
2 The Department of Ethnography focuses mainly on modern societies.
3 The Department concentrates on collecting single unrelated objects of great value.
4 The textile collection of the Department of Ethnography is the largest in the world.
5 Traditional societies are highly inventive in terms of technology.
6 Many small-scale societies have survived and adapted in spite of predictions to the contrary.

Questions 7-12
Some of the exhibits at the Department of Ethnography are listed below (Questions 7-12). The writer gives these exhibits as examples of different collection types. Match each exhibit with the collection type with which it is associated in Reading Passage 1. Write the appropriate letters in boxes 7-12 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any collection type more than once.

Example: Boats (Answer) AT
7 Bolivian textiles
8 Indian coracles
9 airport art
10 Arctic kayaks
11 necessities of life of an Arabian farmer
12 tents from the Middle East

Collection Types
AT Artefact Types
EC Evolution of Ceremony
FA Field Assemblages
SE Social Experiences
TS Technical Series

Secrets of the Forest

A In 1942 Allan R Holmberg, a doctoral student in anthropology from Yale University, USA, ventured deep into the jungle of Bolivian Amazonia and searched out an isolated band of Siriono Indians. The Siriono, Holmberg later wrote, led a “strikingly backward” existence. Their villages were little more than clusters of thatched huts. Life itself was a perpetual and punishing search for food: some families grew manioc and other starchy crops in small garden plots cleared from the forest, while other members of the tribe scoured the country for small game and promising fish holes. When local resources became depleted, the tribe moved on. As for technology, Holmberg noted, the Siriono “may be classified among the most handicapped people of the world”. Other than bows, arrows and crude digging sticks, the only tools the Siriono seemed to possess were “two machetes worn to the size of pocket- knives”.

B Although the lives of the Siriono have changed in the intervening decades, the image of them as Stone Age relics has endured. Indeed, in many respects the Siriono epitomize the popular conception of life in Amazonia. To casual observers, as well as to influential natural scientists and regional planners, the luxuriant forests of Amazonia seem ageless, unconquerable, a habitat totally hostile to human civilization. The apparent simplicity of Indian ways of life has been judged an evolutionary adaptation to forest ecology, living proof that Amazonia could not – and cannot – sustain a more complex society. Archaeological traces of far more elaborate cultures have been dismissed as the ruins of invaders from outside the region, abandoned to decay in the uncompromising tropical environment.

C The popular conception of Amazonia and its native residents would be enormously consequential if it were true. But the human history of Amazonia in the past 11,000 years betrays that view as myth. Evidence gathered in recent years from anthropology and archaeology indicates that the region has supported a series of indigenous cultures for eleven thousand years; an extensive network of complex societies – some with populations perhaps as large as 100,000 – thrived there for more than 1,000 years before the arrival of Europeans. (Indeed, some contemporary tribes, including the Siriono, still live among the earthworks of earlier cultures.) Far from being evolutionarily retarded, prehistoric Amazonian people developed technologies and cultures that were advanced for their time. If the lives of Indians today seem “primitive”, the appearance is not the result of some environmental adaptation or ecological barrier; rather it is a comparatively recent adaptation to centuries of economic and political pressure. Investigators who argue otherwise have unwittingly projected the present onto the past.

D The evidence for a revised view of Amazonia will take many people by surprise. Ecologists have assumed that tropical ecosystems were shaped entirely by natural forces and they have focused their research on habitats they believe have escaped human influence. But as the University of Florida ecologist, Peter Feinsinger, has noted, an approach that leaves people out of the equation is no longer tenable. The archaeological evidence shows that the natural history of Amazonia is to a surprising extent tied to the activities of its prehistoric inhabitants.

E The realization comes none too soon. In June 1992 political and environmental leaders from across the world met in Rio de Janeiro to discuss how developing countries can advance their economies without destroying their natural resources. The challenge is especially difficult in Amazonia. Because the tropical forest has been depicted as ecologically unfit for large-scale human occupation, some environmentalists have opposed development of any kind.

Ironically, one major casualty of that extreme position has been the environment itself. While policy makers struggle to define and implement appropriate legislation, development of the most destructive kind has continued apace over vast areas.

F The other major casualty of the “naturalism” of environmental scientists has been the indigenous Amazonians, whose habits of hunting, fishing, and slash-and-burn cultivation often have been represented as harmful to the habitat. In the clash between environmentalists and developers, the Indians, whose presence is in fact crucial to the survival of the forest, have suffered the most. The new understanding of the pre-history of Amazonia, however, points toward a middle ground. Archaeology makes clear that with judicious management selected parts of the region could support more people than anyone thought before. The long- buried past, it seems, offers hope for the future.

Questions 13-15
Reading Passage 2 has six sections A-F. Choose the most suitable headings for sections A, B and D from the list of headings below. Write the appropriate numbers i-vii in boxes 13-15 on your answer sheet.

List of headings

i Amazonia as unable to sustain complex societies
ii The role of recent technology in ecological research in Amazonia
iii The hostility of the indigenous population to North American influences
iv Recent evidence
v Early research among the Indian Amazons
vi The influence of prehistoric inhabitants on Amazonian natural history
vii The great difficulty of changing local attitudes and practices

Example: Section C iv
13 Section A
14 Section B
15 Section D

Questions 16-21
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 16—21 on your answer sheet write

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

16 The reason for the simplicity of the Indian way of life is that Amazonia has always been unable to support a more complex society.
17 There is a crucial popular misconception about the human history of Amazonia.
18 There are lessons to be learned from similar ecosystems in other parts of the world.
19 Most ecologists were aware that the areas of Amazonia they were working in had been shaped by human settlement.
20 The indigenous Amazonian Indians are necessary to the well-being of the forest.
21 It would be possible for certain parts of Amazonia to support a higher population.

Questions 22-25

22 In 1942 the US anthropology student concluded that the Siriono
A were unusually aggressive and cruel
B had had their way of life destroyed by invaders
C were an extremely primitive society
D had only recently made permanent settlements

23 The author believes recent discoveries of the remains of complex societies in Amazonia
A are evidence of early indigenous communities
B are the remains of settlements by invaders
C are the ruins of communities established since the European invasions
D show the region has only relatively recently been covered by forest

24 The assumption that the tropical ecosystem of Amazonia has been created solely by natural forces
A has often been questioned by ecologists in the past
B has been shown to be incorrect by recent research
C was made by Peter Feinsinger and other ecologists
D has led to some fruitful discoveriesx

25 The application of our new insights into the Amazonian past would
A warn us against allowing any development at all
B cause further suffering to the Indian communities
C change present policies on development in the region
D reduce the amount of hunting, fishing, and ‘slash-and-burn’

HIGHS and LOWS

Hormone levels – and hence our moods -may be affected by the weather. Gloomy weather can cause depression, but sunshine appears to raise the spirits. In Britain, for example, the dull weather of winter drastically cuts down the amount of sunlight that is experienced which strongly affects some people. They become so depressed and lacking in energy that their work and social life are affected. This condition has been given the name SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Sufferers can fight back by making the most of any sunlight in winter and by spending a few hours each day under special, full-spectrum lamps. These provide more ultraviolet and blue-green light than ordinary fluorescent and tungsten lights. Some Russian scientists claim that children learn better after being exposed to ultraviolet light. In warm countries, hours of work are often arranged so that workers can take a break, or even a siesta, during the hottest part of the day. Scientists are working to discover the links between the weather and human beings’ moods and performance.

It is generally believed that tempers grow shorter in hot, muggy weather. There is no doubt that crimes against the person rise in the summer, when the weather is hotter and fall in the winter when the weather is colder. Research in the United States has shown a relationship between temperature and street riots. The frequency of riots rises dramatically as the weather gets warmer, hitting a peak around 27-30°C. But is this effect really due to a mood change caused by the heat? Some scientists argue that trouble starts more often in hot weather merely because there are more people in the street when the weather is good.

Psychologists have also studied how being cold affects performance. Researchers compared divers working in icy cold water at 5°C with others in water at 20°C (about swimming pool temperature). The colder water made the divers worse at simple arithmetic and other mental tasks. But significantly, their performance was impaired as soon as they were put into the cold water – before their bodies had time to cool down. This suggests that the low temperature did not slow down mental functioning directly, but the feeling of cold distracted the divers from their tasks.

Psychologists have conducted studies showing that people become less sceptical and more optimistic when the weather is sunny. However, this apparently does not just depend on the temperature. An American psychologist studied customers in a temperature-controlled restaurant. They gave bigger tips when the sun was shining and smaller tips when it wasn’t, even though the temperature in the restaurant was the same. A link between weather and mood is made believable by the evidence for a connection between behaviour and the length of the daylight hours. This in turn might involve the level of a hormone called melatonin, produced in the pineal gland in the brain.

The amount of melatonin falls with greater exposure to daylight. Research shows that melatonin plays an important part in the seasonal behaviour of certain animals. For example, food consumption of stags increases during the winter, reaching a peak in February/ March. It falls again to a low point in May, then rises to a peak in September, before dropping to another minimum in November. These changes seem to be triggered by varying melatonin levels.

In the laboratory, hamsters put on more weight when the nights are getting shorter and their melatonin levels are falling. On the other hand, if they are given injections of melatonin, they will stop eating altogether. It seems that time cues provided by the changing lengths of day and night trigger changes in animals’ behaviour – changes that are needed to cope with the cycle of the seasons. People’s moods too, have been shown to react to the length of the daylight hours. Sceptics might say that longer exposure to sunshine puts people in a better mood because they associate it with the happy feelings of holidays and freedom from responsibility. However, the belief that rain and murky weather make people more unhappy is borne out by a study in Belgium, which showed that a telephone counselling service gets more telephone calls from people with suicidal feelings when it rains.

When there is a thunderstorm brewing, some people complain of the air being ‘heavy’ and of feeling irritable, moody and on edge. They may be reacting to the fact that the air can become slightly positively charged when large thunderclouds are generating the intense electrical fields that cause lightning flashes. The positive charge increases the levels of serotonin (a chemical involved in sending signals in the nervous system). High levels of serotonin in certain areas of the nervous system make people more active and reactive and, possibly, more aggressive. When certain winds are blowing, such as the Mistral in southern France and the Fohn in southern Germany, mood can be affected – and the number of traffic accidents rises. It may be significant that the concentration of positively charged particles is greater than normal in these winds. In the United Kingdom, 400,000 ionizers are sold every year. These small machines raise the number of negative ions in the air in a room. Many people claim they feel better in negatively charged air.

Questions 26-28
Choose the appropriate letters A—D and write them in boxes 26—28 on your answer sheet.

26 Why did the divers perform less well in colder conditions?
A They were less able to concentrate
B Their body temperature fell too quickly
C Their mental functions were immediately affected by the cold
D They were used to swimming pool conditions

27 The number of daylight hours
A affects the performance of workers in restaurants
B influences animal feeding habits
C makes animals like hamsters more active
D prepares humans for having greater leisure time

28 Human irritability may be influenced by
A how nervous and aggressive people are
B reaction to certain weather phenomena
C the number of ions being generated by machines
D the attitude of people to thunderstorms

Questions 29-34
Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 29-34 on your answer sheet write

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

29 Seasonal Affective Disorder is disrupting children’s education in Russia.
30 Serotonin is an essential cause of human aggression.
31 Scientific evidence links ‘happy associations with weather’ to human mood.
32 A link between depression and the time of year has been established.
33 Melatonin levels increase at certain times of the year.
34 Positively charged ions can influence eating habits.

Questions 35-37
According to the text which THREE of the following conditions have been scientifically proved to have a psychological effect on humans? Choose THREE letters A—G and write them in boxes 35—37 on your answer sheet.

A lack of negative ions
B rainy weather
C food consumption
D high serotonin levels
E sunny weather
F freedom from worry
G lack of counselling facilities

Questions 38-40
Complete each of the following statements with the best ending from the box below. Write the appropriate letters A-G in boxes 38—40 on your answer sheet.

38 It has been established that social tension increases significantly in the United States during
39 Research has shown that a hamster’s bodyweight increases according to its exposure to
40 Animals cope with changing weather and food availability because they are influenced by

A daylight                   B hot weather                  C melatonin                 D moderate temperatures

E poor coordination    F time cues                      G impaired performance