Month: May 2024

Spot the Difference

A Taxonomic history has been made this week, at least according In the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). a conservation group. Scientists have described a new species of clouded leopard from the tropical forests of Indonesia with spots (or “clouds”, as they are poetically known; smaller than those of other clouded leopards, with fur a little darker and with a double as opposed to a “partial double” stripe down its back.

B However, no previously unknown beast has suddenly leapt out from the forest. In-stead, some scientists have proposed a change in the official taxonomic accounting system of clouded leopards. Where there were four subspecies there will likely now be two species. A genetic analysis and a closer inspection of museum specimens’ coals published in Current Biology has found no relevant difference between three subspecies described 50 years ago from continental Asia and from the Hainan and Taiwan islands. The 5.000-11,000 clouded leopards on Borneo, the 3,000 -7,000 on Sumatra, and the remaining few on the nearby Batu islands can now, the authors say, claim a more elevated distinction as a species.

C What this actually means is fuzzy and whether it is scientifically important is questionable. In any case, biologists do not agree what species and subspecies are. Creatures are given Latin first and second names (corresponding to a genus and species) according to the convention of Carl von Linné, who was born 300 years ago this May. But Linneaus, as he is more commonly known, thought of species as perfectly discrete units created by God. Darwinism has them as mutable things, generated gradually over time by natural selection. So, delineating when enough variation has evolved to justify a new category is largely a matter of taste.

D Take ants and butterflies. Ant experts have recently been waging a war against all types of species subdivision. Lepidopterists, on the other hand, cling to the double barrel second names from their discipline’s 19th-century tradition, and categorise many local subclasses within species found over wide areas. Thus, it would be futile – if one were so inclined – to attempt to compare the diversity of ant and butterfly populations.

E The traditional way around the problem is to call a species all members of a group that share the same gene pool. They can mate together and produce fertile offspring. Whether Indonesian clouded leopards can make cubs with continental ones remains unknown but seems probable. Instead, the claim this week is that genetics and slight differences in fur patterning are enough to justify rebranding the clouded leopard as two significant types. Genetically, that makes sense if many DNA variations correlate perfectly between members of the two groups. The authors did find some correlation, but they looked for it in only three Indonesian animals. A larger sample would have been more difficult.

F One thing is abundantly clear: conservationists who are trying to stop the destruction of the leopards’ habitat in Borneo and Sumatra see the announcement of a new species of big cat as a means to gain publicity and political capital. Upgrading subspecies to species is a strategy which James Mallet, of University College London, likes to call species inflation. It is a common by-product of genetic analysis, which can reveal differences between populations that the eye cannot. Creating ever more detailed genetic categories means creating smaller and increasingly restricted populations of more species. The trouble is that risks devaluing the importance of the term “species”.

G The problem of redefining species by genetics is the creation of taxonomic confusion, a potentially serious difficulty for conservationists and others. The recent proposal to add the polar bear to the list of animals protected under America’s Endangered Species Act is an example. That seems all well and good. However, study the genetics and it transpires that polar bears are closer to some brown bears, than some brown hears are to each other. Go by the genes and it seems that the polar bear would not count as a species in its own right (and thus might not enjoy the protection afforded to species) but should be labelled a subspecies of the brown bear.

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

Which paragraph contains each of the following pieces of information?

1. How it is generally accepted that different species are named
2. The reason that conservationists are happy with the apparent discovery of a new species of leopard
3. How genes could cause a potential problem for conservationists
4. Some scientists want to change the way clouded leopards are classified into species and subspecies.

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

It is difficult to decide exactly when there is enough (5)………………to say an animal is a new species.

It is (6)……………………..to compare the number of species of ant and butterfly.

Generally, animals of the same species can make (7)…………………together.

Some scientists claim that genetics has led to (8)……………….rather than the actual discovery of new species.

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

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

9. The possible new species of leopard appears different in two ways.
10. Darwinism created a problem with how species are defined.
11. Lepidopterists study ants.
12. Scientists are going to study more clouded leopards in Indonesia.
13. The writer believes that polar bears are not a species in their own right.

The Fertility Bust

A Falling populations – the despair of state pension systems – are often regarded with calmness, even a secret satisfaction, by ordinary people. Europeans no longer need large families to gather the harvest or to look after parents. They have used their good fortune to have fewer children, thinking this will make their lives better. Much of Europe is too crowded as it is. Is this all that is going on? Germans have been agonising about recent European Union estimates suggesting that 30% of German women are, and will remain, childless. The number is a guess: Germany does not collect figures like this. Even if the share is 25%, as other surveys suggest, it is by far the highest in Europe.

B Germany is something of an oddity in this. In most countries with low fertility, young women have their first child late, and stop at one. In Germany, women with children often have two or three, but many have none at all. Germany is also odd in experiencing low fertility for such a long time. Europe is demographically polarised. Countries in the north and west saw fertility fall early, in the 1960s. Recently, they have seen it stabilise or rise back towards replacement level (i.e. 2.1 births per woman). Countries in the south and east, on the other hand, saw fertility rates fall much faster, more recently (often to below 1.3, a rate at which the population falls by half every 45 years). Germany combines both. Its fertility rate fell below 2 in 1971, However, it has stayed low and is still only just above 1.3. This challenges the notion that European fertility is likely to stabilise at tolerable levels. It raises questions about whether the low birth rates of Italy and Poland, say, really are, as some have argued, merely temporary.

C The list of explanations for why German fertility has not rebounded is long. Michael Teitelbaum, a demographer at the Sloan Foundation in New York ticks them off: poor childcare; unusually extended higher education; inflexible labour laws; high youth unemployment; and non-economic or cultural factors. One German writer, Gunter Grass, wrote a novel, “Headbirths”, in 1982, about Harm and Dorte Peters, “a model couple” who disport themselves on the beaches of Asia rather than invest time and trouble in bringing up a baby. “They keep a cat,” writes Mr. Grass, “and still have no child.” The novel is subtitled “The Germans Are Dying Out”. With the exception of this cultural factor, none of these features is peculiar to Germany. If social and economic explanations account for persistent low fertility there, then they may well produce the same persistence elsewhere.

D The reason for hoping otherwise is that the initial decline in southern and eastern Europe was drastic, and may be reversible. In the Mediterranean, demographic decline was associated with freeing young women from the constraints of traditional Catholicism, which encouraged large families. In eastern Europe, it was associated with the collapse in living standards and the ending of pro-birth policies. In both regions, as such temporary factors fade, fertility rates might, in principle, be expected to rise. Indeed, they may already be stabilising in Italy and Spain. Germany tells you that reversing these trends can be hard. There, and elsewhere, fertility rates did not merely fall; they went below what people said they wanted. In 1979, Eurobarometer asked Europeans how many children they would like. Almost everywhere, the answer was two: the traditional two-child ideal persisted even when people were not delivering it. This may have reflected old habits of mind. Or people may really be having fewer children than they claim to want.

E A recent paper suggests how this might come about. If women postpone their first child past their mid-30s, it may be too late to have a second even if they want one (the average age of first births in most of Europe is now 30). If everyone does the same, one child becomes the norm: a one-child policy by example rather than coercion, as it were. If women wait to start a family until they are established at work, they may end up postponing children longer than they might otherwise have chosen. When birth rates began to fall in Europe, this was said to be a simple matter of choice. That was true, but it is possible that fertility may overshoot below what people might naturally have chosen. For many years, politicians have argued that southern Europe will catch up from its fertility decline because women, having postponed their first child, will quickly have a second and third. The overshoot theory suggests there may be only partial recuperation. Postponement could permanently lower fertility, not just redistribute it across time.

F There is a twist. If people have fewer children than they claim to want, how they see the family may change, too. Research by Tomas Sobotka of the Vienna Institute of Demography suggests that, after decades of low fertility, a quarter of young German men and a fifth of young women say they have no intention of having children and think that this is fine. When Eurobarometer repeated its poll about ideal family size in 2001, support for the two-child model had fallen everywhere. Parts of Europe, then, may be entering a new demographic trap. People restrict family size from choice. Social, economic, and cultural factors then cause this natural fertility decline to overshoot. This changes expectations, to which people respond by having even fewer children. That does not necessarily mean that birth rates will fall even more: there may yet be some natural floor, but it could mean that recovery from very low fertility rates proves to be slow or even non-existent.

Questions 14-17
The text has 6 paragraphs (A – F).

Which paragraph does each of the following headings best fit?

14. Even further falls?
15. One-child policy
16. Germany differs
17. Possible reasons

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

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

A Germany has the highest percentage of childless women
B Italy and Poland have high birth rates
C Most of the reasons given by Michael Teitelbaum are not unique to Germany
D Governments in the Eastern Europe encouraged people to have children
E In 1979, most families had one or two children
F European women who have a child later usually have more soon after
G In 2001, people wanted fewer children than in 1979, according to Eurobarometer research
H Here may be a natural level at which birth rates stop declining

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

23. Reasons that ordinary Europeans do not think it is necessary to have as many children include
A less labour needed to farm land
B the feeling that Europe is too crowded
C a general dislike of children

24. Michael Teitelbaum adds the following reasons:
A poor children facilities
B longer working hours
C high unemployment amongst young adults

25. Initial declines in southern and eastern Europe were because (of)
A the reduced influence of the catholic church
B lower standards of living
C governments encouraged smaller families

26. People may have fewer children than they want because
A women are having children at a later age
B they are following the example of other people
C politicians want them to

Teens Try to Change the World, One Purchase at a Time

When classes adjourn here at the Fayerweather Street School, eighth-graders ignore the mall down the street and go straight to the place they consider much cooler: the local natural-foods grocer’s. There, they gather in groups of ten or more sometimes, smitten by a marketing atmosphere that links attractiveness to eating well. When time comes to buy something even as small as a chocolate treat, they feel good knowing a farmer somewhere probably received a good price. “Food is something you need to stay alive,” says eighth-grader Emma Lewis. “Paying farmers well is really important because if we didn’t have any unprocessed food, we’d all be living on candy.”

Eating morally, as some describe it, is becoming a priority for teenagers as well as adults in their early 20s. What began a decade ago as a concern on college campuses to shun clothing made in overseas sweatshops has given birth to a parallel phenomenon in the food and beverage industries. Here, youthful shoppers are leveraging their dollars in a bid to reduce pesticide usage, limit deforestation, and make sure farmers are not left with a pittance on payday. Once again, college campuses are setting the pace. Students at 30 colleges have helped persuade administrators to make sure all cafeteria coffee comes with a “Fair Trade” label, which means bean pickers in Latin America and Africa were paid higher than the going rates. Their peers on another 300 campuses are pushing to follow suit, according to Students United for Fair Trade in Washington, D.C.

Coffee is just the beginning. Bon Appetit, an institutional food-service provider based in California, relies on organic and locally grown produce. In each year since 2001, more than 25 colleges have asked the company to bid on their food-service contracts. Though Bon Appetit intentionally limits its growth, its collegiate client list has grown from 58 to 71 in that period. “It’s really just been in the last five years that we’ve seen students become concerned with where their food was coming from,” says Maisie Ganzler, Bon Appetit’s director of strategic initiatives. “Prior to that, students were excited to be getting sugared cereal.”

To reach a younger set that often does not drink coffee, Fair Trade importer Equal Exchange rolled our a line of cocoa in 2003 and chocolate bars in 2004. Profits in both sectors have justified the project, says Equal Exchange co-president Hob Everts. What is more, dozens of schools have contacted the firm to use its products in fundraisers and as classroom teaching, tools. “Kids often are the ones who agitate in the family’” for recycling and other eco-friendly practices, Mr. Everts says. “So, it’s a ripe audience.”

Concerns of today’s youthful food shoppers seem to reflect in some ways the idealism that inspired prior generations to join boycotts in solidarity with farm workers. Today’s efforts are distinct in that youthful consumers say they do not want to make sacrifices. They want high-quality, competitively priced goods that do not require exploitation of workers or the environment. They will gladly reward companies that deliver. One activist who shares this sentiment and hears it repeatedly from her peers is Summer Rayne Oakes, a recent college graduate and fashion model who promotes stylish Fair Trade clothing. “I’m not going to buy something that can’t stand on its own or looks bad just because it’s socially responsible,” Ms. Oakes says. “My generation has come to terms with the fact that we’re all consumers, and we all buy something. So, if I do have to buy food, what are the consequences?”

Wanting to ameliorate the world’s big problems can be frustrating, especially for those who feel ineffective because they are young. Marketers are figuring out that teenagers resent this feeling of powerlessness and are pushing products that make young buyers feel as though they are making a difference, says Michael Wood, vice president of Teenage Research Unlimited. His example: Ethos Water from Starbucks, which contributes five cents from every bottle sold to water-purification centres in developing countries. “This is a very easy way for young people to contribute. All they have to do is buy bottled water,” Mr. Wood says. “Buying products or supporting companies that give them ways to support global issues is one way for them to get involved, and they really appreciate that.”

Convenience is also driving consumer activism. Joe Curnow, national coordinator of United Students for Fair Trade, says she first got involved about five years ago as a high schooler when she spent time hanging out in cafes. Buying coffee with an eco-friendly label “was a very easy way for me to express what I believed in”, she says. For young teens, consumption is their first foray into activism. At the Fayerweather Street School, Emma Lewis teamed up with classmates Kayla Kleinman and Therese LaRue to sell Fair Trade chocolate, cocoa, and other products at a school fundraiser in November. When the tally reached $8,000, they realised they were striking a chord.

Some adults hasten to point out the limitations of ethical consumption as a tool for doing good deeds and personal growth. Gary Lindsay, director of Children’s Ministries, encourages Fair Trade purchases, but he also organises children to collect toys for foster children and save coins for a playground-construction project in Tanzania. He says it helps them learn to enjoy helping others even when they are not getting anything tangible in return. “When we’re benefiting, how much are we really giving? Is it really sacrifice?” Mr. Lindsay asks of Fair Trade products, he says: “Those things are great when we’re given opportunities like that once in a while, but I think for us to expect that we should get something out of everything we do is a very selfish attitude to have.”

Questions 27-30
Choose the correct letter A, B or C.

27. Trying to change the world through what people purchase began with
A chocolate
B clothing
C coffee

28. Bon Appetit had_______colleges using its services in 2006.
A 25
B 58
C 71

29. Buying Ethos Water helps provide money for
A poor people in Africa.
B poor farmers.
C clean water projects.

30. Joe Curnow first got involved with consumer activism through buying
A coffee
B cocoa
C water

Questions 31-35
Complete the following sentences using NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the text for each answer.

Eighth-graders from Fayerweather Street School go to the natural-foods grocer’s rather than the (31)………….

Bon Appetit limits its growth (32)…………………

Previously, young generations were (33)…………………to make sacrifices.

Young people can feel frustrated and (34)……………..because of their age.

Gary Lindsay (35)………………….people to buy products that make use of Fair Trade.

Questions 36-40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 36 – 40 write:

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

36. Fair Trade coffee is more expensive than usual coffee.
37. Bon Appetit used to sell sugared cereal.
38. Rob Everts thinks that kids do not understand about protecting the environment.
39. Summer Rayne Oakes will wear clothes that do not look so good as long as they promote Fair Trade.
40. Gary Lindsay thinks people should do more than just consume ethically.

Sleepy Students Perform Worse

A Staying up an hour or two past bedtime makes it far harder for kids to learn, say scientists who deprived youngsters of sleep and tested whether their teachers could tell the difference. They could. If parents want their children to thrive academically, “Getting them to sleep on time is as important as getting them to school on time,” said psychologist Gahan Fallone, who conducted the research at Brown Medical School.

B The study, unveiled Thursday at an American Medical Association (AMA) science writers meeting, was conducted on healthy children who had no evidence of sleep- or learning-related disorders. Difficulty paying attention was among the problems the sleepy youngsters faced – raising the question of whether sleep deprivation could prove even worse for people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Fallone now is studying that question, and suspects that sleep problems “could hit children with ADHD as a double whammy”.

C Sleep experts have long warned that Americans of all ages do not get enough shuteye. Sleep is important for health, bringing a range of benefits that, as Shakespeare put it, “knits up the ravelled sleave of care”. Not getting enough is linked to a host of problems, from car crashes as drivers doze off to crippled memory and inhibited creativity. Exactly how much sleep correlates with school performance is hard to prove. So, Brown researchers set out to test whether teachers could detect problems with attention and learning when children stayed up late – even if the teachers had no idea how much sleep their students actually got.

D They recruited seventy-four 6- to 12-year-olds from Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts for the three-week study. For one week, the youngsters went to bed and woke up at their usual times. They already were fairly good sleepers, getting nine to 9.5 hours of sleep a night. Another week, they were assigned to spend no fewer than ten hours in bed a night. The other week, they were kept up later than usual: First -and second-graders were in bed no more than eight hours and the older children no more than 6.5 hours. In addition to parents’ reports, the youngsters wore motiondetecting wrist monitors to ensure compliance.

E Teachers were not told how much the children slept or which week they stayed up late, but rated the students on a variety of performance measures each week. The teachers reported significantly more academic problems during the week of sleep deprivation, the study, which will be published in the journal Sleep in December, concluded. Students who got eight hours of sleep or less a night were more forgetful, had the most trouble learning new lessons, and had the most problems paying attention, reported Fallone, now at the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology.

F Sleep has long been a concern of educators. Potter-Burns Elementary School sends notes to parents reminding them to make sure students get enough sleep prior to the school’s yearly achievement testing. Another school considers it important enough to include in the school’s monthly newsletters. Definitely, there is an impact on students’ performance if they come to school tired. However, the findings may change physician practice, said Dr. Regina Benjamin, a family physician in Bayou La Batre, who reviewed the data at the Thursday’s AMA meeting. “I don’t ask about sleep” when evaluating academically struggling students, she noted. “I’m going to start.”

G So how much sleep do kids need? Recommended amounts range from about ten to eleven hours a night for young elementary students to 8.5 hours for teens. Fallone insists that his own second-grader get ten hours a night, even when it meant dropping soccer – season that practice did not start until 7:30 — too late for her to fit in dinner and time to wind down before she needed to be snoozing. “It’s tough,” he acknowledged, but “parents must believe in the importance of sleep.”

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

Which paragraph contains each of the following pieces of information?

1. Traffic accidents are sometimes caused by lack of sleep.
2. The number of children included in the study
3. How two schools are trying to deal with the problem
4. How the effect of having less sleep was measured

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

Fallone is now studying the sleep patterns of children with (5)………………

The researchers used (6)……………….that show movement to check that children went to bed at the right time.

Students with less sleep had problems with memory, remembering new material, and (7)……………….

Fallone admitted that it was (8)……………….for children to get enough sleep.

Questions 9-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 9 – 13 write

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

9. The results of the study were first distributed to principals of American schools,
10. Some of the children in the study had previously shown signs of sleeping problems.
11. The study could influence how doctors deal with children’s health problems.
12. Fallone does not let his daughter play soccer.
13. Staying up later is acceptable if the child is doing homework.

The Brains Business

A For those of a certain age and educational background, it is hard to think of higher education without thinking of ancient institutions. Some universities are of a venerable age – the University of bologna was founded in 1088, the University of Oxford in 1096 – and many of them have a strong sense of tradition. The truly old ones make the most of their pedigrees, and those of a more recent vintage work hard to create an aura of antiquity. Yet these tradition-loving (or -creating) institutions are currently enduring a thunderstorm of changes so fundamental that some say the very idea of the university is being challenged. Universities are experimenting with new ways of funding (most notably through student fees), forging partnerships with private companies and engaging in mergers and acquisitions. Such changes ate tugging at the ivy’s toots.

B This is happening for four reasons. The first is the democratisation of higher education – “massification”. in the language of the educational profession. In the rich world, massification has been going on for some time. The proportion of adults with higher educational qualifications in developed countries almost doubled between 1975 and 2000. From 22% to 41%. Most of the rich countries are still struggling to digest this huge growth in numbers. Now massification is spreading to the developing world. China doubled its student population in the late 1990s, and India is trying to follow suit.

C The second reason is the rise of the knowledge economy. The world is in the grips of a “soft revolution” in which knowledge is replacing physical resources as the main driver of economic growth. Between 1985 and 1997, the contribution of knowledge-based industries to total value added increased from 51% to 59% in Germany and from 45% to 51% in Britain. The best companies are now devoting at least a third of their investment to knowledge-intensive intangibles such as R&D, licensing, and marketing. Universities are among the most important engines of the knowledge economy. Not only do they produce the brain workers who man it, they also provide much of its backbone, from laboratories to libraries to computer networks.

D The third factor is globalisation. The death of distance is transforming academia just as radically as it is transforming business. The number of people from developed countries studying abroad has doubled over the past twenty years, to 1.9 million; universities are opening campuses all around the world; and a growing number of countries are trying to turn higher education into an export industry. The fourth is competition. Traditional universities are being forced to compete for students and research grants, and private companies are trying to break into a sector which they regard as “the new health care”. The World Bank calculates that global spending on higher education amounts to $300 billion a year, or 1 % of global economic output. There are more than 80 million students worldwide, and 3.5 million people are employed to teach them or look after them.

E All this sounds as though a golden age for universities has arrived. However, inside academia, particularly in Europe, it. does not feel like it. Academics complain and administrators are locked in bad-tempered exchanges with the politicians who fund them. What has gone wrong? The biggest problem is the role of the state. If more and more governments are embracing massification, few of them are willing to draw the appropriate conclusion from their enthusiasm: that they should either provide the requisite hinds (as the Scandinavian countries do) or allow universities to charge realistic fees. Many governments have tried to square the circle through lighter management, but management cannot make up for lack of resources.

G What, if anything can be done? Techno-utopians believe that higher education is ripe for revolution. The university, they say, is a hopelessly antiquated institution, wedded in outdated practices such as tenure and lectures, and incapable of serving a new world of mass audiences and just-in-time information. “Thirty wars from now the big university campuses will be relics,” says Peter Drucker, a veteran management guru. “I consider the American research university of the past 40 years to be a failure.” Fortunately, in his view, help is on the way in the form of Internet tuition and for-profit universities. Cultural conservatives, on the other hand, believe that the best way forward is backward. They think it is foolish to waste higher education on people who would rather study “Seinfeld” than Socrates, and disingenuous to confuse the pursuit of truth with the pursuit of profit.

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

Which paragraph does each of the following headings best fit?

14. Education for the masses
15. Future possibilities
16. Globalisation and competition
17. Funding problem

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

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

A Some universities are joining with each other
B There are not enough graduates in developed countries
C Most companies in developed countries devote a third of their profits to research and development
D The number of people from developed countries studying outside their home countries has doubled in the last two decades
E Scandinavian governments provide enough money for their universities
F The largest university in the world is in Turkey
G Italian students must have a five minute interview with a professor before being accepted into university
H Peter Drucker foresees the end of university campuses

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

23. Universities are responding to changes by
A constructing new buildings in old styles so they appear old and traditional
B introducing new subjects for study
C charging students higher fees

24. The knowledge economy is
A on the rise most of all in Germany
B not fully appreciated in Britain
C heavily reliant on universities

25. Current problems at universities, especially in Europe, include
A managers arguing with governments
B problems with funding
C poor management

26. Possible solutions put forward by reformists and conservatives include
A greater use of technology
B employing management gurus to teach
C teaching fewer students

Sunday Is a Fun Day for Modern Brits

In a new study, Essex University sociologists have dissected the typical British Sunday, and found we get up later and do fewer chores than we did 40 years ago – and we are far more likely to be out shopping or enjoying ourselves than cooking Sunday lunch. Academics at the university’s Institute of Social and Economic Research asked 10,000 people to keep a detailed diary of how they spent Sundays in 2001. Then they compared the results with 3,500 diaries written in 1961, a treasure trove of information that had been uncovered ‘in two egg boxes and a tea chest’ in the basement of the BBC by ISER’s director, Professor Jonathan Gershuny.

The contrast between the two periods could not be more striking. Forty years ago, Sunday mornings were a flurry of activity as men and women – especially women – caught up on their weekly chores and cooked up a storm in the kitchen. Women rarely allowed themselves any ‘leisure’ until the afternoon, after the dishes were cleaned. In 1961, more than a fifth of all men and women in Britain were sitting at a table by 2 p.m., most likely tucking into a roast with all the trimmings. Then there would be another rush to the table between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. for high tea.

Since the arrival of brunch, the gastropub and the all-you-can-eat Sunday buffet at the local curry house, such institutions have become extinct. Today, we graze the entire day. You only have two free days a week. You don’t want to have to waste one because there is nothing to do but watch TV. Sunday has leapfrogged Saturday in the fun stakes. On Saturdays, you are recovering from the week. Sundays are the last bastion of the weekend – you want to get as much as you can out of the day before you have to go back to work.

According to researchers, the ability to trail around B&Q has made the most dramatic difference to our Sundays. In 1961, adults spent an average of 20 minutes a day shopping; by 2001, it was 50 minutes. ‘Shopping used to be a gender segregated activity that would take place during the week, while the husband was at work. Now it’s as much men as women,’ said Gershuny. We’re all more likely to be relaxing or shopping on a Sunday morning these days than scrubbing the floor or putting up shelves. ‘Men now stay in bed longer, and get up not, as previously, to work around the house, but rather to shop or to pursue other outside leisure activities.’

Men do about the same amount of unpaid work around the house as they used to on a Sunday, but it’s spread throughout the whole day, instead of crammed into the morning. Women do considerably less than 40 years ago. Indeed, men and women were ‘pretty much different species’ in 1961, as far as the way they spent Sundays was concerned, with men far more likely to be out of the house – at the pub or playing football – before lunch. ‘For women, leisure happened only in the afternoon. But by 2001, the shapes of men’s and women’s Sundays were much more similar,’ says the report.

‘Sunday for me is all about holding on to the weekend and trying to stave off Monday. An ideal Sunday would involve getting up and having a nice lunch. Sometimes we cook, but more often I go out to get a roast or bangers and mash at a gastropub. If it is a nice day, there is nothing better than sitting outside in the beer garden, reading the Sunday papers – one tabloid and one broadsheet – with a Guinness, extra cold. Sunday is often a chance to visit other parts of London, as long as it is not too far. I use Sundays to go clothes shopping, or to the cinema. I often go to Camden market, as I love the international foods on offer and hunting for bargains and vintage clothes.’

Jonathan Bentley Atchison (25, Clapham, London, works in communications)

‘I am usually at home making the Sunday lunch. Some friends go out to eat, but my husband Mark loves a roast, so we don’t. After that, I do the washing, like every day, and then I take my daughter Grace to netball and watch her play. Mark potters around – last Sunday, he tidied the garage. He works six days a week, so on Sunday he stays at home. I don’t like shopping on a Sunday because every man and his dog is out. I don’t work, so I can do it in the week. I tend to watch television and chill out. When summer comes, we go to barbecues at family or friends’ houses. When I was growing up, my dad would do the gardening and paint the fences while my mum would do housework.’

Hazel Hallows (42, Manchester, housewife, married with three children)

‘When we were at home, I would get out in the garden, and my late wife Rose would cook the Sunday lunch and do the housework. I was an engineer, and Rose worked full-time as a supermarket manageress. In 1961, we had just moved to Bristol, and I spent Sunday maintaining the new house. The washing and ironing had to be done – it was a working-together atmosphere. We would sometimes go and spend the day with Rose’s sister or other relatives. In 1961, it was the first time I had a new car, so we spent time in the countryside or garden centres. Now, I get up on Sundays and spend a couple of hours reading the newspapers.’

Bryan Jones (79, pensioner, Frampton Cotterell, near Bristol)

Questions 27-30
Choose the correct letter A, B or C.

27. According to the diaries, in 1961, women rarely had free time on Sunday
A mornings.
B afternoons.
C evenings.

28. People want to do more on Sundays because
A more shops are open.
B it is a good day to graze.
C they are tired on Saturdays.

29. Shopping habits have changed since 1961 in that
A people shop less at weekends.
B men shop more than women.
C men do as much shopping as women.

30. Compared with 1961,
A women do far less housework on Sundays.
B men do far less housework on Sundays.
C men and women do far less housework on Sundays.

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

Professor Gershuny discovered thousands of (31)………………..at the BBC.

In 1961, people ate (32)……………….at 5 or 6 o’clock.

In 2001, people spent (33)…………………50 minutes on shopping on Sundays.

Shopping is something that is not as (34)…………………as it was in 1961.

In 1961, men would often go for a drink or be (35)……………..before lunch.

Questions 36-40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 36 – 40 write

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

36. Mr. Atchison usually eats out.
37. Mrs. Hallows’ husband does no household chores on Sundays.
38. Mrs. Hallows thinks the shops are too busy on Sundays.
39. Mr. Jones is a widower.
40. Mr. Jones does household chores on Sundays.

Secret of Thailand’s Success?

A It is a question officials here in Asia are being posed more and more: Why are your economies so vibrant? Answers include young and swelling populations, decreased debt, growing cities, emerging middle-class consumer sectors, evolving markets and, of course, (China’s rise. Add this to that list: Women and their increasing role in Asia’s economies. The idea is that the more opportunities women have, the more vibrant economies are and, consequently, the less need there is to amass a huge public debt to boost growth. It is an idea bolstered by a new survey by MasterCard International Inc., which compares the socio-economic level of women with men in Asia-Pacific nations. The gauge uses four key indicators: participation in the labour force, college education, managerial positions, and above-median income.

B Which Asian nation is doing host when it comes to women’s advancement? Thailand. It scored 92.3 of a possible 100, and according to MasterCard’s index, 100 equals gender equality. The survey was based on interviews with 300 to 350 women in thirteen nations and national statistics. Malaysia came in second with a score of 86.2, while China came in third with 68.4. The average score in Asia was 67.7. At the bottom of the list is South Korea (45.5), followed by Indonesia (52.5), and Japan (54.5). Perhaps it is a bizarre coincidence, yet MasterCard’s findings fit quite neatly with two important issues in Asia: economic leadership and debt. Thailand, Malaysia, and China are three economies widely seen as the future of Asia. Thailand’s economic boom in recent years has prompted many leaders in the region to look at its growth strategy. Malaysia, which has a female central bank governor, is one of Asia’s rising economic powers. China, of course, is the world’s hottest economy, and one that is shaking up trade patterns and business decisions everywhere.

C Something all three economies have in common is an above-average level of female participation. What the three worst ranked economies share are severe long-term economic challenges of high levels of debt and a female workforce that is being neglected. Research in economic history is very conclusive on the role of women in economic growth and development, says Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, an economic adviser to MasterCard. The more extensive women’s participation at all areas of economic activities, the higher the probability for stronger economic growth. That, Hedrick-Wong says, means societies and economies that consistently fail to fully incorporate women’s ability and talent in businesses, and the workplace will suffer the consequences. Take Korea, which has been walking in place economically in recent years. Immediately following the 1997— 1998 Asian financial crisis, Korea became a regional role model as growth boomed and unemployment fell. Yet a massive increase in household debt left consumers overexposed and growth slowed.

D Maybe it is a just coincidence that Korea also ranks low on measures of gender equality published by the United Nations. As of 2003, for example, it ranked below Honduras, Paraguay, Mauritius, and Ukraine in terms of women’s economic and political empowerment. Utilising more of its female workforce would deepen Korea’s labour pool and increase potential growth rates in the economy. The same goes for Japan. The reluctance of Asia’s biggest economy to increase female participation and let more women into the executive suite exacerbates its biggest long-term challenge: a declining birth rate. In 2003, the number of children per Japanese woman fell to a record low of 1.29 versus about. 2 in the early 1970s. Preliminary government statistics suggest the rate declined further in 2004. The trend is nothing short of a crisis for a highly indebted nation of 126 million that has yet to figure out how to fund the national pension system down the road. Yet Japan has been slow to realise that for many women, the decision to delay childbirth is a form of rebellion against societal expectations to have children and become housewives,

E It may be 2005, yet having children is a career-ending decision for millions of bright, ambit ions, and well-educated Japanese, Until corrected, Japan’s birth rate will drop and economic growth will lag, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was absolutely right earlier this month when he said no other policy is as likely to raise economic productivity than the empowerment of women. Here, in Thailand, the government is getting some decent marks in this regard, and the economy’s 6 per cent-plus growth rate may be a direct result. Thailand still has a long way to go. Yet the Bank of Thailand’s deputy governor, Tarisa Watanagase, is a woman, as are seven of nine assistant governors. Then there’s Jada Wattanasiritham, who runs Siam Commercial Bank Plc, Thailand’s fourth-biggest lender. How many female chief executives can you name in Japan or Korea? Looked at broadly in Asia, MasterCard’s survey is on to something. It is that giving women more opportunities to contribute to an economy is not just about fairness, but dollars and sense, too.

Questions 1-4
The text has 5 paragraphs (A – E).

Which paragraph contains each of the following pieces of information?

1. The fact that a woman runs one of Thailand’s biggest banks
2. The number of countries included in the survey
3. The fact that Japan’s birth rate is falling quickly
4. The criteria used to get a score for each country

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

Higher consumption in the (5)…………….sector of the market is one reason that Asia’s economies are doing well.

The scores were decided through a combination of interviews and (6)…………………..

Higher (7)………………..has created an economic problem for Korea.

Japanese politicians have not yet decided how to get money for the (8)……………….

Questions 9-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 9 – 13 write

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

9. Other countries are looking at the example of Thailand to see if its policies can help their economies.
10. Higher female participation in an economy always leads to greater economic growth.
11. Female participation in the economy is lower in Japan than in most other developed economies.
12. Most of the Bank of Thailand’s assistant governors are female.
13. The writer considers ‘fairness’ to be a bad reason for giving women top jobs.

Patients Are a Virtue

A Despite conference jeers, job cuts, and a financial crisis, health secretary Patricia Hewitt may find a reason to smile this week, as the NHS (British National Health Service) was named one of the top places to work by students. Among engineering, science, and IT students, the health service was ranked second in this year’s Universum UK graduate survey of ideal employers, a leap of 54 places from last year. The annual survey, conducted in the UK since 1997, canvassed the opinions of more than 7,700 final and penultimate-year students studying for degrees in business, engineering, science, IT, and the humanities, at 39 universities, between January and March this year.

B Each student was presented with a list of 130 employers, nominated by students through a separate process, from which they selected the five they considered to be ideal employers. The Universum list is based on the frequency of an organisation being selected as an ideal employer, following a weighting process. This year, government departments and public sector organisations dominated the top spots, with the BBC ranked first among humanities, engineering, science, and IT students, retaining its place from last year, and coming third for those studying business. Among humanities students, the BBC was followed closely by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Civil Service fast stream. The Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Defence were not far behind, ranked fifth and sixth respectively. As well as the NHS, engineering, science, and IT students favoured the Environment Agency, which leapt 83 places, from 86 in 2005 to number three this year. Meanwhile, business students voted accountancy giants PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) as their favoured employer, followed by HSBC.

C At a London awards ceremony sponsored by the Guardian, Foluke Ajayi, head of NHS careers at NHS employers, said its success this year reflected the reality of the health service, which is the third largest employer in the world and the largest in Europe. “We employ people in other clinical areas, such as health care. We employ IT managers, engineers, architects,” she said, adding that the health service is no longer seen as a “second choice” career. “People recognise that they can give something back to the community, but still develop a worthwhile career.”

D Sarah Churchman, director of student recruitment and diversity at PwC, said her company’s success is down to a good campus presence, its commitment to invest in its employees and, with offices around the world, the chance to travel, something which just under half of the students polled said was an important factor when it came to looking for work. One of the big four accountancy firms, PwC is not into gimmicks, and it does not offer freebies but, said Churchman, it does offer “a solid foundation” for anyone wanting a career in business. “We sell our people skills, so we are interested in building skills. We’re not selling something, we invest in our people,” she added.

E Further down the rankings, but still with reason to celebrate, was John Lewis, which matched bumper sales this year with a leap from 111th place in 2005 to 26th among this year’s humanities students. Sky found itself in 12th place, up from 104th last year, and the Environment Agency also proved popular among this student group, rising from 138th in 2005 to 7th this year. Among the business fraternity, shell saw a reversal of fortunes, rising to 30th place after last year’s 76th position. There were a few dramatic drops in the rankings. The Bank of England fell from 14th in 2005 to 27th this year among humanities students, although it retained its mid-table position among those studying business. British Airways also saw a slight dip, as did McKinsey & Co, which dropped from 11th to 22nd among business undergraduates.

F Perhaps more surprisingly, this year was the first appearance in the rankings of Teach First, a small charity launched three years ago that aims to create the “leaders of the future” by encouraging top graduates who would not normally consider a career in teaching to commit to work in “challenging” secondary schools for at least two years. The organisation came straight in at number eight among humanities students and was voted 22nd by those studying engineering, science, and IT. James Darley, director of graduate recruitment at Teach First, said he was “bowled over” by the news. “We were not expecting this. We’re a registered charity, only able to physically go to 15 universities.”

G The scheme, based on one run in the US, has the backing of more than 80 businesses, including Deloitte and HSBC. During their two years, candidates undertake leadership training and emerge from the programme with a range of skills and experiences. “We hope in the long term they will be our ambassadors, as we call them, in politics, industry, charities, who will have done it and continue to support the educationally disadvantaged,” adds Darley. This year, 260 graduates are expected to take up the Teach First challenge in schools in London and Manchester, more are expected over the coming years, as the scheme expands to Birmingham and three other cities by 2008. Of the first set of recruits to complete the programme, half have gone on to work for “some amazing companies”, while the other half have chosen to stay on in their schools for a further year – 20% in leadership roles.

H While more than half of students were concerned about achieving a good work life balance, a third said they wanted a job that would challenge them. Although male Students tended to focus more on the practical aspects of work, such as “building a sound financial base”, women, particularly those studying for humanities degrees, had a more idealistic outlook, saying making a contribution to society was a key career goal. Almost half of all students said that paid overtime was a key part of any company compensation package, However, business students said that the most important compensation, apart from salary, was performance-related bonuses, while important considerations for humanities students were retirement plans. Working overseas also scored highly among those surveyed this year, with 45% of business students, and 44% of humanities students, listing it as a priority. Ethical considerations and corporate social responsibilities were also mentioned, with a large percentage of humanities and engineering, science and IT students saying it was a key consideration when it came to choosing an employer.

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

Which paragraph does each of the following headings best fit?

14. Most popular employers for different students
15. Students’ expectations
16. Give and develop with the NHS
17. Reason for the NHS to be happy

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

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

A In the survey students could only rate employers on a given list
B The Environment Agency rose the most places in this year’s survey
C The NHS offers a variety of careers outside health care
D British Airways fell in popularity amongst business students
E James Darley was surprised by his organisation’s performance in the survey
F Most Teach First teachers continue in a teaching career after two years
G Most students want to achieve a good work life balance
H Most business students were concerned about working for an ethical company

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

23. The survey covered students
A from all British universities
B studying a variety of subjects
C who were in their last year of studies only

24. The BBC
A was first choice in most categories
B was unpopular with business students
C employs more graduates than most other organisations and companies

Questions 25-26
According to the information given in the text, choose the correct answers from the choices given.

Sarah Churchman says PwC did well in the survey because it
A often goes to universities to meet students
B provides many scholarships for students
C offers many opportunities to travel

Rise of the Robots

If you are into technology, you are living in wonderful times. Things are developing in leaps and bounds, especially gadgets. Let us look at the technology that is set to break through.

CELESTRON SKYSCOUT
Backyard stargazing goes seriously hi-tech with the Celestron SkyScout, which was judged to be the Best of Innovations at the New York Consumer Electronics Show press preview event in November. It is not difficult to see why. The SkyScout is a hand-held viewing device that is capable of finding and identifying more than 6,000 celestial objects visible to the naked eye, thus transforming the night sky into your own personal planetarium. Using GPS technology and a substantial celestial database, the camcorder-sized SkyScout enables stargazers to point the device at any visible object in the sky, press a button, and then listen to a commentary. For the truly celestially challenged, if you want to view a star or planet but do not have a clue which bit of the heavens to look in, do not despair; the SkyScout’s “locate” feature will guide you to it using illuminated arrows in the viewfinder.

NOKIA N91
This amazing mobile jukebox is due out early in 2006. Nokia’s N91 looks set to be in a class of its own as a multimedia mobile phone. It will play music, take photos, surf the web and download videos, store contact details, and generally organise your life. The robust little phone, resplendent in its stainless steel case, is the first Nokia to be equipped with a hard drive (4Gb), which means that it can store up to 3,000 songs. The N91, which has a hi-fi quality headset and remote control, supports a wide range of digital music formats, including MP3, Real, WAV, and WMA. It uses wireless technology to allow users to find and buy music from the operator’s music store. You can also drag and drop music from your PC to the N91 and manage and share playlists. If you can find the time, you can get on the blower, too.

SEIKO SPECTRUM E-PAPER WATCH
The Seiko Spectrum is no ordinary wristwatch. At first glance, it is an attractive and futuristic bracelet-style watch. Look closer, however, and you will notice that its display is unlike any you have seen before. Rather than the usual LCD screen, the display is made of “e-paper” – from the electronic paper pioneers E Ink Corp – and shows a constantly changing mosaic pattern along with the time. Because e-paper is so flexible and thin, it allows the display to curve round the wrist along with the watch band – something conventional liquid-crystal displays cannot do, as they have to be flat. Seiko says the e-paper display not only produces far better contrast than an LCD screen, but requires no power to retain an image, so the batteries last longer. Seiko is releasing only 500 of the watches next month, priced at about £1,250 – so you’d better lose no time.

HIGH-DEFINITION TV
HDTV, already available in the United States, Japan, and Australia, will hit the UK in 2006. When you watch a programme filmed in the HD format, you will see a much sharper, clearer and more vibrant image. This is due partly to the way a programme is filmed, but also to the high-definition TV set itself, which uses either 720 or 1,080 visible rows of pixels (depending on which format the individual HDTV uses) to display images, compared to the 576 rows of pixels used in current sets.

ELECTROLUX TRILOBITE 2.0 ROBOT VACUUM CLEANER
Next time you are expecting visitors, do not bother to vacuum first – wait until they arrive, and then entertain them with this little gadget. The Electrolux Trilobite 2.0 is a robotic vacuum cleaner that navigates its way around your floors using ultrasound, just like a bat. It pings out ultrasound vibrations at surfaces to create a map of the room, which it remembers for future cleaning assignments. The Trilobite has no problem avoiding collision with things placed on the floor. Special magnetic strips are placed in doorways, near stairs and other openings. These act as a wall, keeping the Trilobite in the room. You can also programme it to glide round when you’re at work or after you’ve gone to bed. When Electrolux introduced the original Trilobite in 2001, it was voted among the 100 most innovative designs (though whether the judges were dedicated couch potatoes, and thus biased, we were not aide to discover). The name comes from the hard-shelled sea creature from the Paleozoic era (between 250 million and 560 million years ago) that roamed the ocean floor feeding on particles and small animals.

HONDA ASIMO ROBOT
Need an extra pair of hands around the office? Look no further; this mouth, the Honda Motor Company showcased its second-generation humanoid robot, Asimo. The machine has come a long way since its first incarnation five years ago. The 1.3 metre-tall droid is now capable of performing a variety of office tasks, including reception duties, serving drinks and acting as an information guide, as well as making deliveries. Using multiple sensors, Asimo has the ability to recognise the surrounding environment and interact with people using integrated circuit tags. It can walk and run at a fair pace, and push a cart. Honda plans to start using Asimo’s receptionist functions at its Wako Building in Japan early in 2006, and it is hoped it will become available for leasing afterwards. It could soon be pushing a cart at an office near you.

Questions 27-30
Choose the correct letter A, B or C.

27. The Celestron SkyScout can
A tell you information about the stars
B tell you where in the world you are
C find objects in the sky that are not normally visible

28. The Seiko Spectrum e-paper watch
A cannot be sent
B can be used for surfing the internet
C is being produced as a limited edition

29. The Electrolux Trilobite 2.0 robot vacuum cleaner
A asks permission before moving from room to room
B uses lasers to help it avoid objects
C is programmable

30. The Honda Asimo robot
A has two pairs of hands
B uses lasers to help it recongise its surroundings
C can run

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

The SkyScout uses GPS and (31)………………….to help you find a star.

The Seiko Spectrum does not need batteries to power the (32)………………

HDTV uses more (33)………………….than conventional TV.

The Trilobite 2.0 could be used to (34)……………..guests.

Asimo first appeared (35)…………..

Questions 36-40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 36 – 40 write

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

36. The Nokia N91 is strong.
37. E-paper can be torn easily.
38. HDTV is filmed differently to conventional TV.
39. The Trilobite 2.0 looks just like the original design.
40. Asimo is available for export.

Money Transfers by Mobile

A The ping of a text message has never sounded so sweet. In what is being touted as a world first, Kenya’s biggest mobile operator is allowing subscribers to send cash to other phone users by SMS. Known as M-Pesa, or mobile money, the service is expected to revolutionise banking in a country where more than 80% of people are excluded from the formal financial sector. Apart from transferring cash – a service much in demand among urban Kenyans supporting relatives in rural areas – customers of the Safaricom network will be able to keep up to 50,000 shillings (£370) in a “virtual account” on their handsets.

B Developed by Vodafone, which holds a 35% share in Safaricom, M-Pesa was formally launched in Kenya two weeks ago. More than 10,000 people have signed up for the service, with around 8 million shillings transferred so far, mostly in tiny denominations. Safaricom’s executives are confident that growth will be strong in Kenya, and later across Africa. “We are effectively giving people ATM cards without them ever having to open a real bank account,” said Michael Joseph, chief executive of Safaricom, who called the money transfer concept the “next big thing” in mobile telephony.

C M-Pesa’s is simple. There is no need for a new handset or SIM card. To send money, you hand over the cash to a registered agent – typically a retailer – who credits your virtual account. You then send between 100 shillings (74p) and 35,000 shillings (£259) via text message to the desired recipient – even someone on a different mobile network – who cashes it at an agent by entering a secret code and showing ID. A commission of up to 170 shillings (£1.25) is paid by the recipient but it compares favourably with fees levied by the major banks, whose services are too expensive for most of the population.

D Mobile phone growth in Kenya, as in most of Africa, has been remarkable, even among the rural poor. In June 1999, Kenya had 15,000 mobile subscribers. Today, it has nearly 8 million out of a population of 35 million, and the two operators’ networks are as extensive as the access to banks is limited. Safaricom says it is not so much competing with financial services companies as filling a void. In time, M-Pesa will allow people to borrow and repay money, and make purchases. Companies will be able to pay salaries directly into workers’ phones – something that has already attracted the interest of larger employers, such as the tea companies, whose workers often have to be paid in cash as they do not have bank accounts. There are concerns about security, but Safaricom insists that even if someone’s phone is stolen, the PIN system prevents unauthorised withdrawals. Mr. Joseph said the only danger is sending cash to the wrong mobile number and the recipient redeeming it straight away.

E The project is being watched closely by mobile operators around the world as a way of targeting the multibillion pound international cash transfer industry long dominated by companies such as Western Union and Moneygram. Remittances sent from nearly 200 million migrant workers to developing countries totalled £102 billion last year, according to the World Bank. The GSM Association, which represents more than 700 mobile operators worldwide, believes this could quadruple by 2012 if transfers by SMS become the norm. Vodafone has entered a partnership with Citigroup that will soon allow Kenyans in the UK to send money home via text message. The charge for sending £50 is expected to be about £3, less than a third of what some traditional services charge.

SECTION 1: Questions 1-4

The text has 5 paragraphs (A – E).

Which paragraph contains each of the following pieces of information?

1. A possible security problem
2. The cost of M-Pesa
3. An international service similar to M-Pesa
4. The fact that most Kenyans do not have a bank account

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

Safaricom is the (5)………………mobile phone company in Kenya. An M-Pesa account needs to be credited by (6)………………..

(7)…………………….companies are particularly interested in using M-Pesa. Companies like Moneygram and Western Union have (8)……………….the international money transfer market.

Questions 9-13
Do the statements below agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 9 – 13 write

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

9. Most Kenyans working in urban areas have relatives in rural areas.
10. So far, most of the people using M-Pesa have used it to send small amounts of money.
11. M-Pesa can only be used by people using one phone network.
12. M-Pesa can be used to buy products and services.
13. The GSM Association is a consumer organisation.

Park the Car Permanently

A More than a million people are likely to be disappointed by their experience of the Government’s attempts to improve the democratic process. They may have signed an online petition against road pricing, but ministers are determined to push ahead with plans to make it more expensive to drive. The Government is convinced that this is the only way to reduce congestion and the environmental damage caused by motoring.

B Why wait until you are forced off the road by costly charges? You may enjoy the convenience of your car, but the truth is that for huge numbers of people, owning a car makes little financial sense. You’d be far better off giving it up and relying on other forms of transport. “I’m 47 and I’ve never owned a car, despite having a job that requires me to travel all over the South-East to visit clients,” says Donnachadh McCarthy, an environmental expert who specialises in advising people how to be greener. “A car is a huge financial commitment, as well as being a psychological addiction. Not owning a vehicle is far more practical than most people realise.”

C It may seem as if cars have never been cheaper. After all, it is now possible to buy a brand new car for less than £4,800 – the Perodua Kelisa, if you’re interested. There are plenty of decent vehicles you can buy straight from the showroom for between £5,000 and £7,000. Of course, if you buy second-hand, the prices will be even lower. However, the falling purchase price of cars masks the fact that it has never been more expensive to own and run a vehicle. The estimate is that the cost of running a car rose by more than ten per cent last year alone. The annual cost of running your own vehicle is put at an average of £5,539, or £107 a week. While drivers who do less or more than the average mileage each year will spend correspondingly less or more, many of the costs of ear ownership are fixed – and therefore unavoidable.

D Depreciation – the fact that your vehicle loses a large chunk of its resale value each year – is one problem, accounting for £2,420 a year. The cost of finance packages, which most people have to resort to pay for at least part of the price of a new car, has also been rising – to an average of £1,040 a year. Then there’s insurance, maintenance, tax, and breakdown insurance, all of which will cost you broadly the same amount, however many miles you do. Only fuel costs are truly variable. While petrol prices are the most visible indicator of the cost of running a car, for the typical driver they account for less than one fifth of the real costs each year. In other words, leaving aside all the practical and psychological barriers to giving up your car, in financial terms, doing so makes sense for many people.

E Take the cost of public transport, for example. In London, the most expensive city in the UK, the most expensive annual travel card, allowing travel in any zone at any time, costs just over £1,700. You could give up your car and still have thousands of pounds to spare to spend on occasional car hire. In fact, assuming that you have the most expensive travel card in London, you could hire a cheap car from a company, such as easyCar for about 30 weeks a year, and still be better off overall than if you own your own vehicle. Not that car hire is necessarily the most cost-effective option for people who are prepared to do without a car but may still need to drive occasionally.

F Streetcar, one of several “car clubs” with growing numbers of members, reckons that using its vehicles twice a week, every week, for a year, would cost you just £700. Streetcar’s model works very similarly to those of its main rivals, Citycarclub and Whizzgo. These three companies, which now operate in 20 of Britain’s towns and cities, charge their members a refundable deposit – £150 at Streetcar – and then provide them with an electronic smart card. This enables members to get into the vehicles, which are left parked in set locations, and the keys are then found in the glove compartment. Members pay an hourly rate for the car – £4.95 is the cost at Streetcar – and return it to the same spot, or to a different designated parking place.

G Car sharing is an increasingly popular option for people making the same journeys regularly – to and from work, for example. Many companies run schemes that help colleagues who live near to each other and work in the same place to contact each other so they can share the journey to work. Liftshare and Carshare are two national organisations that maintain online databases of people who would be prepared to team up. Other people may be able to replace part or all of their journey to work – or any journeys, for that matter – with low-cost transport such as a bicycle, or even by just walking. The more you can reduce your car use, however you gain access to it, the more you will save.

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

Which paragraph does each of the following headings best fit?

14. Don’t wait!
15. Team up
16. Join a club
17. Use public transport

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

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

A McCarthy claims people can become addicted to using cars
B The cost of using a car rose by over ten per cent last year
C Most British people borrow money to help buy cars
D Many people need cars to drive in London occasionally
E Streetcar operates in over 20 cities in Britain
F Streetcar’s car must be left at specific locations
G Car sharing is becoming more popular with people who live and work near each other
H The government wants to encourage people to go to work on foot or by bicycle

Questions 23-26

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

23. The government has decided
A not to follow protestors’ suggestions
B to become more democratic
C to go ahead with charging drivers to use roads

24. Cars are often
A relatively cheap in Britain
B relatively expensive to operate in Britain
C sold second-hand in Britain

25. Fuel costs
A make up about 20% of the cost of running a car
B are related to the amount drivers pay for their cars
C depend on how far you drive

26. Using public transport
A will save money for British motorists except in London
B and renting a car part of the time can save money
C costs Londoners about £1,700 a year

Low-Cost Lamps Light Rural India

Until three months ago, life in this humble village without electricity would come to a halt after sunset. Inside his mud-and-clay home, Ganpat Jadhav’s three children used to study in the dim, smoky glow of a kerosene lamp, when their monthly fuel quota of four litres dried up in just a fortnight, they had to strain their eyes using the light from a cooking fire. That all changed with the installation of low-cost, energy-efficient lamps that are powered entirely by the sun. The lights were installed by the Grameen Surya Bijli Foundation (GSBF), an Indian non-governmental organisation focused on bringing light to rural India. Some 100,000 Indian villages do not yet have electricity. The GSBF lamps use LEDs – light emitting diodes – that are four times more efficient than a normal bulb. After a $55 installation cost, solar energy lights the lamp free of charge. LED lighting, like cell phones, is another example of a technology whose low cost could allow the rural poor to leap into the 21st century.

As many as 1.5 billion people – nearly 80 million in India alone – light their houses using kerosene as the primary lighting media. The fuel is dangerous, dirty, and – despite being subsidised – consumes nearly four per cent of a typical rural Indian household’s budget. A recent report by the Intermediate Technology Development Group suggests that indoor air pollution from such lighting media results in 1.6 million deaths worldwide every year. LED lamps, or more specifically white LEDs, are believed to produce nearly 200 times more useful light than a kerosene lamp and almost 50 times the amount of useful light of a conventional bulb. “This technology can light an entire rural village with less energy than that used by a single conventional 100-watt light bulb,” says Dave Irvine-Halliday, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Calgary, Canada and the founder of Light up the World Foundation (LUTW). Founded in 1997, LUTW has used LED technology to bring light to nearly 10,000 homes in remote and disadvantaged corners of some 27 countries like India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bolivia, and the Philippines.

The technology, which is not yet widely known in India, faces some scepticism here. “LED systems are revolutionising rural lighting, but this isn’t a magic solution to the world’s energy problems,” says Ashok Jhunjhunwala, head of the electrical engineering department at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. In a scenario in which nearly 60 per cent of India’s rural population uses 180 million tons of biomass per year for cooking via primitive wood stoves – which are smoky and provide only 10-15 per cent efficiency in cooking -Jhunjhunwala emphasises the need for a clean energy source, not just for lighting but for other domestic purposes as well. The Indian government in April launched an ambitious project to bring electricity to 112,000 rural villages in the next decade. However, the remote locations of the village will make reaching this goal difficult. A. K. Lakhina, the chairman of India’s Rural Electrification Corporation, says the Indian government recognises the potential of LED lighting powered by solar technology, but expressed reservations about its high costs. “If only LEDs weren’t imported but manufactured locally,” he says, “and in bulk.”

The lamps installed in nearly 300 homes by GSBF cost nearly half the price of other solar lighting systems. Jasjeet Singh Chaddha, the founder of the NGO, currently imports his LEDs from China. He wants to set up an LED manufacturing unit and a solar panel manufacturing unit in India. If manufactured locally, the cost of his LED lamp could plummet to $22, as they will not incur heavy import duties. “We need close to $5 million for this,” he says. Mr. Chaddha says he has also asked the government to exempt the lamps from such duties, but to no avail. An entrepreneur who made his money in plastics, Chaddha, has poured his own money into the project, providing the initial installations free of charge. As he looks to make the project self-sustainable, he recognises that it is only urban markets -which have also shown an avid interest in LED lighting – that can pay. The rural markets in India cannot afford it, he says, until the prices are brought down. The rural markets would be able to afford it, says Mr. Irvine-Halliday, if they had access to microcredit. He says that in Tembisa, a shanty town in Johannesburg, he found that almost 10,000 homes spent more than $60 each on candles and paraffin every year. As calculations revealed, these families can afford to purchase a solid state lighting system in just over a year of paying per week what they would normally spend on candles and paraffin – if they have access to microcredit. LUTW is in the process of creating such a microcredit facility for South Africa.

In villages near Khadakwadi, the newly installed LED lamps are a subject of envy, even for those connected to the grid. Those connected to the grid have to face power cuts up to 6 or 7 hours a day. Constant energy shortages and blackouts are a common problem due to a lack of power plants, transmission, and distribution losses caused by old technology and illegal stealing of electricity from the grid. LED systems require far less maintenance, a longer life, and as villagers jokingly say, “no electricity bills”. The lamps provided by GSBF have enough power to provide just four hours of light a day. However, that is enough for people to get their work done in the early hours of the night, and is more reliable than light generated off India’s electrical grid. Villagers are educated by GSBF officials to make the most of the new lamps. An official from GSBF instructs Jadhav and his family to clean the lamp regularly. “Its luminosity and life will diminish if you let the dust settle on it,” he warns them.

Questions 27-30
Choose the correct letter A, B or C.

27. The GSBF lamps
A provide light for 100,000 Indian villages
B are very expensive to install
C are powered by the sun

28. More than half of India’s population uses
A kerosene as a cooking fuel
B biomass as a cooking fuel
C solar power as a cooking fuel

29. In India, the GSBF lamps are too expensive for most people
A in rural areas
B in urban areas
C in all areas

30. The GSBF lamps
A are not as reliable as electricity from the national power grid
B require skill to use
C only provide four hours of light a day

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

Another example of cheap technology helping poor people in the countryside is (31)…………….

Kerosene lamps and conventional bulbs give off less (32)……………….than GSBF lamps.

It is unlikely that the Indian government will achieve its aim of connecting 112,000 villages to electricity because many villages are (33)……………………

GSBF lamps would be cheaper if it weren’t for (34)………………..

Users need to wipe (35)…………………from the LED in order to keep it working well.

Questions 36-40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 36 – 40 write

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

36. Ganpat Jadhav’s monthly ration of kerosene was insufficient.
37. Kerosene causes many fires in homes in developing countries.
38. LED systems could solve the world’s energy problems.
39. Chaddha has so far funded the GSBF lamp project himself.
40. Microcredit would help to get more people to use LED lamps.

The Construction Of Roads And Bridges

Roads
Although there were highway links in Mesopotamia from as early as 3500 bc, the Romans were probably the first road-builders with fixed engineering standards. At the peak of the Roman Empire in the first century ad, Rome had road connections totalling about 85,000 kilometres. Roman roads were constructed with a deep stone surface for stability and load-bearing. They had straight alignments and therefore were often hilly. The Roman roads remained the main arteries of European transport for many centuries, and even today many roads follow the Roman routes. New roads were generally of inferior quality, and the achievements of Roman builders were largely unsurpassed until the resurgence of road-building in the eighteenth century.

With horse-drawn coaches in mind, eighteenth-century engineers preferred to curve their roads to avoid hills. The road surface was regarded as merely a face to absorb wear, the load-bearing strength being obtained from a properly prepared and well-drained foundation. Immediately above this, the Scottish engineer John McAdam (1756-1836) typically laid crushed stone, to which stone dust mixed with water was added, and which was compacted to a thickness of just five centimetres, and then rolled. McAdam’s surface layer – hot tar onto which a layer of stone chips was laid – became known as ‘tarmacadam’, or tarmac. Roads of this kind were known as flexible pavements.

By the early nineteenth century – the start of the railway age – men such as John McAdam and Thomas Telford had created a British road network totalling some 200,000 km, of which about one sixth was privately owned toll roads called turnpikes. In the first half of the nineteenth century, many roads in the US were built to the new standards, of which the National Pike from West Virginia to Illinois was perhaps the most notable. In the twentieth century, the ever-increasing use of motor vehicles threatened to break up roads built to nineteenth-century standards, so new techniques had to be developed.

On routes with heavy traffic, flexible pavements were replaced by rigid pavements, in which the top layer was concrete, 15 to 30 centimetres thick, laid on a prepared bed. Nowadays steel bars are laid within the concrete. This not only restrains shrinkage during setting, but also reduces expansion in warm weather. As a result, it is, possible to lay long slabs without danger of cracking.

The demands of heavy traffic led to the concept of high-speed, long-‘distance roads, with access – or slip-lanes – spaced widely apart. The US Bronx River Parkway of 1925 was followed by several variants – Germany’s autobahns and the Pan American Highway. Such roads – especially the intercity autobahns with their separate multi-lane carriageways for each direction – were the predecessors of today’s motorways.

Bridges
The development by the Romans of the arched bridge marked the beginning of scientific bridge-building; hitherto, bridges had generally been crossings in the form of felled trees or flat stone blocks. Absorbing the load by compression, arched bridges are very strong. Most were built of stone, but brick and timber were also used. A fine early example is at Alcantara in Spain, built of granite by the Romans in AD 105 to span the River Tagus. In modern times, metal and concrete arched bridges have been constructed. The first significant metal bridge, built of cast iron in 1779, still stands at Ironbridge in England.

Steel, with its superior strength-to-weight ratio, soon replaced iron in metal bridge-work. In the railway age, the truss (or girder) bridge became popular. Built of wood or metal, the truss beam consists of upper and lower horizontal booms joined by vertical or inclined members.

The suspension bridge has a deck supported by suspenders that drop from one or more overhead cables. It requires strong anchorage at each end to resist the inward tension of the cables, and the deck is strengthened to control distortion by moving loads or high winds. Such bridges are nevertheless light, and therefore the most suitable for very long spans. The Clifton Suspension Bridge in the UK, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunei (1806—59) to span the Avon Gorge in England, is famous both for its beautiful setting and for its elegant design. The 1998 Akashi Kaikyo Bridge in Japan has a span of 1,991 metres, which is the longest to date.

Cantilever bridges, such as the 1889 Forth Rail Bridge in Scotland, exploit the potential of steel construction to produce a wide clearwater space. The spans have a central supporting pier and meet midstream. The downward thrust, where the spans meet, is countered by firm anchorage of the spans at their other ends. Although the suspension bridge can span a wider gap, the cantilever is relatively stable, and this was important for nineteenth-century railway builders. The world’s longest cantilever span – 549 metres – is that of the Quebec rail bridge in Canada, constructed in 1918.

Questions 1-3
Label the diagram below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

Questions 4-7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? Write

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

4. Road construction improved continuously between the first and eighteenth centuries.
5. In Britain, during the nineteenth century, only the very rich could afford to use toll roads.
6. Nineteenth-century road surfaces were inadequate for heavy motor traffic.
7. Traffic speeds on long-distance highways were unregulated in the early part of the twentieth century.

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

Type of bridge	Features	Examples
Arched bridge	– introduced by the (8)………………… – very strong – usually made of (9)………………..	Alcantara, Spain, Ironbridge, UK
Truss bridge	– made of wood or metal – popular for railways
Suspension bridge	– has a suspended deck – strong but (10)………………..	Clifton, UK, Akashi Kaikyo, Japan (currently the (11)………………Spain)
Cantilever bridge	– made of (12)…………….. – more (13)………………than the suspension bridge	Quebec, Canada

Neanderthals And Modern Humans

A The evolutionary processes that have made modern humans so different from other animals are hard to determine without an ability to examine human species that have not achieved similar things. However, in a scientific masterpiece, Svante Paabo and his colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, have made such a comparison possible. In 2009, at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, they made public an analysis of the genome of Neanderthal man.

B Homo neanderthalensis, to give its proper name, lived in Europe and parts of Asia from 400,000 years ago to 30,000 years ago. Towards the end of this period it shared its range with interlopers in the form of Homo sapiens, who were spreading out from Africa. However, the two species did not settle down to a stable cohabitation. For reasons which are as yet unknown, the arrival of Homo sapiens in a region was always quickly followed by the disappearance of Neanderthals.

C Before 2009, Dr Paabo and his team had conducted only a superficial comparison between the DNA of Neanderthals and modern humans. Since then, they have performed a more thorough study and, in doing so, have shed a fascinating light on the intertwined history of the two species. That history turns out to be more intertwined than many had previously believed.

D Dr Paabo and his colleagues compared their Neanderthal genome (painstakingly reconstructed from three bone samples collected from a cave in Croatia) with that of five living humans from various parts of Africa and Eurasia. Previous genetic analysis, which had only examined DNA passed from mother to child in cellular structures called mitochondria, had suggested no interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans. The new, more extensive examination, which looks at DNA in the cell nucleus rather than in the mitochondria, shows this conclusion is wrong. By comparing the DNA in the cell nucleus of Africans (whose ancestors could not have crossbred with Neanderthals, since they did not overlap with them) and various Eurasians (whose ancestors could have crossbred with Neanderthals), Dr Paabo has shown that Eurasians are between one percent and four percent Neanderthal.

E That is intriguing. It shows that even after several hundred thousand years of separation, the two species were inter-fertile. It is strange, though, that no Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA has turned up in modern humans, since the usual pattern of invasion in historical times was for the invaders’ males to mate with the invaded’s females. One piece of self-knowledge, then – at least for non-Africans – is that they have a dash of Neanderthal in them. But Dr Paabo’s work also illuminates the differences between the species. By comparing modem humans, Neanderthals, and chimpanzees, it is possible to distinguish genetic changes which are shared by several species of human in their evolution away from the great-ape lineage, from those which are unique to Homo sapiens.

F More than 90 percent of the ‘human accelerated regions’ that have been identified in modem people are found in Neanderthals too. However, the rest are not. Dr Paabo has identified 212 parts of the genome that seem to have undergone significant evolution since the species split. The state of genome science is still quite primitive, and it is often unclear what any given bit of DNA is actually doing. But an examination of the 20 largest regions of DNA that have evolved in this way shows that they include several genes which are associated with cognitive ability, and whose malfunction causes serious mental problems. These genes therefore look like good places to start the search for modern humanity’s essence.

G The newly evolved regions of DNA also include a gene called RUNX2, which controls bone growth. That may account for differences in the shape of the skull and the rib cage between the two species. By contrast an earlier phase of the study had already shown that Neanderthals and moderns share the same version of a gene called FOXP2, which is involved in the ability to speak, and which differs in chimpanzees. It is all, then, very promising – and a second coup in quick succession for Dr Paabo. Another of his teams has revealed the existence of a hitherto unsuspected species of human, using mitochondrial DNA found in a little-finger bone. If that species, too, could have its full genome read, humanity’s ability to know itself would be enhanced even further.

Questions 14-18
Look at the following characteristics (Questions 14-18) and the list of species below. Match each feature with the correct species, A, B or C. NB You may use any letter more than once.

14. Once lived in Europe and Asia.
15. Originated in Africa.
16. Did not survive long after the arrival of immigrants.
17. Interbred with another species.
18. Appears not to have passed on mitochondrial DNA to another species.

List of species
A Homo neanderthalensis
B Homo sapiens
C both Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens

Questions 19-23
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G. Which paragraph contains the following information?

19. an account of the rejection of a theory
20. reference to an unexplained link between two events
21. the identification of a skill-related gene common to both Neanderthals and modern humans
22. the announcement of a scientific breakthrough
23. an interesting gap in existing knowledge

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

The nature of modern humans

Recent work in the field of evolutionary anthropology has made it possible to compare modern humans with other related species. Genetic analysis resulted in several new findings.

First, despite the length of time for which Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis had developed separately, (24)……………………..did take place.

Secondly, genes which evolved after modern humans split from Neanderthals are connected with cognitive ability and skeletal (25)…………………….

The potential for this line of research to shed light on the nature of modern humans was further strengthened when analysis of a (26)………………….led to the discovery of a new human species.

The Future Of Fish

The face of the ocean has changed completely since the first commercial fishers cast their nets and hooks over a thousand years ago. Fisheries intensified over the centuries, but even by the nineteenth century it was still felt, justifiably, that the plentiful resources of the sea were for the most part beyond the reach of fishing, and so there was little need to restrict fishing or create protected areas. The twentieth century heralded an escalation in fishing intensity that is unprecedented in the history of the oceans, and modern fishing technologies leave fish no place to hide. Today, the only refuges from fishing are those we deliberately create. Unhappily, the sea trails far behind the land in terms of the area and the quality of protection given.

For centuries, as fishing and commerce have expanded, we have held onto the notion that the sea is different from the land. We still view it as a place where people and nations should be free to come and go at will, as well as somewhere that should be free for us to exploit. Perhaps this is why we have been so reluctant to protect the sea. On land, protected areas have proliferated as human populations have grown. Here, compared to the sea, we have made greater headway in our struggle to maintain the richness and variety of wildlife and landscape. Twelve percent of the world’s land is now contained in protected areas, whereas the corresponding figure for the sea is but three-fifths of one percent. Worse still, most marine protected areas allow some fishing to continue. Areas off-limits to all exploitation cover something like one five-thousandth of the total area of the world’s seas.

Today, we are belatedly coming to realise that ‘natural refuges’ from fishing have played a critical role in sustaining fisheries, and maintaining healthy and diverse marine ecosystems. This does not mean that marine reserves can rebuild fisheries on their own – other management measures are also required for that. However, places that are off-limits to fishing constitute the last and most important part of our package of reform for fisheries management. They underpin and enhance all our other efforts. There are limits to protection though.

Reserves cannot bring back what has died out. We can never resurrect globally extinct species, and restoring locally extinct animals may require reintroductions from elsewhere, if natural dispersal from remaining populations is insufficient. We are also seeing, in cases such as northern cod in Canada, that fishing can shift marine ecosystems into different states, where different mixes of species prevail. In many cases, these species are less desirable, since the prime fishing targets have gone or are much reduced in numbers, and changes may be difficult to reverse, even with a complete moratorium on fishing. The Mediterranean sailed by Ulysses, the legendary king of ancient Greece, supported abundant monk seals, loggerhead turtles and porpoises. Their disappearance through hunting and overfishing has totally restructured food webs, and recovery is likely to be much harder to achieve than their destruction was. This means that the sooner we act to protect marine life, the more certain will be our success.

To some people, creating marine reserves is an admission of failure. According to their logic, reserves should not be necessary if we have done our work properly in managing the uses we make of the sea. Many fisheries managers are still wedded to the idea that one day their models will work, and politicians will listen to their advice. Just give the approach time, and success will be theirs. How much time have we got? This approach has been tried and refined for the last 50 years. There have been few successes which to feather the managers’ caps, but a growing litany of failure. The Common Fisheries Policy, the European Union’s instrument for the management of fisheries and aquaculture, exemplifies the worst pitfalls: flawed models, flawed advice, watered-down recommendations from government bureaucrats and then the disregard of much of this advice by politicians. When it all went wrong, as it inevitably had to, Europe sent its boats to other countries in order to obtain fish for far less than they were actually worth.

We are squandering the wealth of oceans. If we don’t break out of this cycle of failure, humanity will lose a key source of protein, and much more besides. Disrupting natural ecosystem processes, such as water purification, nutrient cycling, and carbon storage, could have ramifications for human life itself. We can go a long way to avoiding this catastrophic mistake with simple common sense management. Marine reserves lie at the heart of the reform. But they will not be sufficient if they are implemented only here and there to shore up the crumbling edifice of the ‘rational fisheries management’ envisioned by scientists in the 1940s and 1950s. They have to be placed centre stage as a fundamental underpinning for everything we do in the oceans. Reserves are a first resort, not a final resort when all else fails.

Questions 27-31
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3? 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

27. It is more than a thousand years since people started to catch fish for commercial use.
28. In general, open access to the oceans is still regarded as desirable.
29. Sea fishing is now completely banned in the majority of protected areas.
30. People should be encouraged to reduce the amount of fish they eat.
31. The re-introduction of certain mammals to the Mediterranean is a straightforward task.

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

32. What does the writer mean with the question, ‘How much time have we got?’ in the fifth paragraph?
A Fisheries policies are currently based on uncertain estimates.
B Accurate predictions will allow governments to plan properly.
C Fisheries managers should provide clearer information.
D Action to protect fish stocks is urgently needed

33. What is the writer’s comment on the Common Fisheries Policy?
A Measures that it advocated were hastily implemented.
B Officials exaggerated some of its recommendations.
C It was based on predictions which were inaccurate.
D The policy makers acquired a good reputation

34. What is the writer’s conclusion concerning the decline of marine resources?
A The means of avoiding the worst outcomes needs to be prioritised.
B Measures already taken to avoid a crisis are probably sufficient.
C The situation is now so severe that there is no likely solution.
D It is no longer clear which measures would be most effective.

Questions 35-40
Complete the summary using the list of words/phrases, A-J, below.

Measures to protect the oceans

Up till the twentieth century the world’s supply of fish was sufficient for its needs.

It was unnecessary to introduce (35)………………….of any kind, because large areas of the oceans were inaccessible.

However, as (36)……………….improved, this situation changed, and in the middle of the twentieth century, policies were introduced to regulate (37)…………………..

These policies have not succeeded. Today, by comparison with (38)………………….the oceans have very little legal protection.

Despite the doubts that many officials have about the concept of (39)……………………., these should be at the heart of any action taken.

The consequences of further (40)…………………..are very serious, and may even affect our continuing existence.

A action
B controls
C failure
D fish catches
E fish processing
F fishing techniques
G large boats
H marine reserves
I the land
J the past

Trends in the Indian fashion and textile industries

During the 1950s, the Indian fashion scene was exciting, stylish and very graceful. There were no celebrity designers or models, nor were there any labels that were widely recognised. The value of a garment was judged by its style and fabric rather than by who made it. It was regarded as perfectly acceptable, even for high-society women, to approach an unknown tailor who could make a garment for a few rupees, providing the perfect fit, finish and style. They were proud of getting a bargain, and of giving their own name to the end result.

The 1960s was an era full of mischievousness and celebration in the arts, music and cinema. The period was characterised by freedom from restrictions and, in the fashion world, an acceptance of innovative types of material such as plastic and coated polyester. Tight-fitting kurtas and churidars and high coiffures were a trend among women.

The following decade witnessed an increase in the export of traditional materials, and the arrival in India of international fashion. Synthetics became trendy, and the disco culture affected the fashion scene.

It was in the early 80s when the first fashion store ‘Ravissant’ opened in Mumbai. At that time garments were retailed for a four-figure price tag. American designers like Calvin Klein became popular. In India too, contours became more masculine, and even the salwar kameez was designed with shoulder pads.

With the evolution of designer stores came the culture of designer fashion, along with its hefty price tags. Whatever a garment was like, consumers were convinced that a higher price tag signified elegant designer fashion, so garments were sold at unbelievable prices. Meanwhile, designers decided to get themselves noticed by making showy outfits and associating with the right celebrities. Soon, fashion shows became competitive, each designer attempting to out-do the other in theme, guest list and media coverage.

In the last decade of the millennium, the market shrank and ethnic wear made a comeback. During the recession, there was a push to sell at any cost. With fierce competition the inevitable occurred: the once hefty price tags began their downward journey, and the fashion-show industry followed suit. However, the liveliness of the Indian fashion scene had not ended – it had merely reached a stable level.

At the beginning of the 21st century, with new designers and models, and more sensible designs, the fashion industry accelerated once again. As far as the global fashion industry is concerned, Indian ethnic designs and materials are currently in demand from fashion houses and garment manufacturers. India is the third largest producer of cotton, the second largest producer of silk, and the fifth largest producer of man-made fibres in the world.

The Indian garment and fabric industries have many fundamental advantages, in terms of a cheaper, skilled work force, cost-effective production, raw materials, flexibility, and a wide range of designs with sequins, beadwork, and embroidery. In addition, that India provides garments to international fashion houses at competitive prices, with a shorter lead time, and an effective monopoly on certain designs, is accepted the whole world over. India has always been regarded as the default source in the embroidered garments segment, but changes in the rate of exchange between the rupee and the dollar has further depressed prices, thereby attracting more buyers. So the international fashion houses walk away with customised goods, and craftwork is sold at very low rates.

As far as the fabric market is concerned, the range available in India can attract as well as confuse the buyer. Much of the production takes place in the small town of Chapa in the eastern state of Bihar, a name one might never have heard of. Here fabric-making is a family industry; the range and quality of raw silks churned out here belie the crude production methods and equipment. Surat in Gujarat, is the supplier of an amazing set of jacquards, moss crepes and georgette sheers – all fabrics in high demand. Another Indian fabric design that has been adopted by the fashion industry is the ‘Madras check’, originally utilised for the universal lungi, a simple lower-body wrap worn in southern India. This design has now found its way on to bandannas, blouses, home furnishings and almost anything one can think of. Ethnic Indian designs with batik and hand-embroidered motifs have also become popular across the world. Decorative bead work is another product in demand in the international market. Beads are used to prepare accessory items like belts and bags, and beadwork is now available for haute couture evening wear too.

Questions 1-7
Complete the notes below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Indian fashion: 1950-2000

1950s
• No well-known designers, models or (1)……………….
• Elegant clothing cost little
• Women were pleased to get clothes for a (2)………………price

1960s
• New materials, e.g. (3)………………..and polyester
• Fitted clothing and tall hairstyles

1970s
• Overseas sales of (4)………………….fabrics rose
• Influence of international fashion

1980s
• Opening of fashion store in Mumbai
• Popularity of American designers
• Clothing had a (5)………………..shape
• Designers tried to attract attention by presenting (6)……………….clothes and mixing with stars

1990s
• Fall in demand for expensive fashion wear
• Return to (7)…………………….clothing

Questions 8-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? Write

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

8. At the start of the 21st century, key elements in the Indian fashion industry changed.
9. India now exports more than half of the cotton it produces.
10. Conditions in India are generally well suited to the manufacture of clothing.
11. Indian clothing exports have suffered from changes in the value of its currency.
12. Modern machinery accounts for the high quality of Chapa’s silk.
13. Some types of Indian craftwork which are internationally popular had humble origins.

Sustainable growth at Didcot The outline of a report by South Oxfordshire District Council

A The UK Government’s South East Plan proposes additional housing growth in the town of Didcot, which has been a designated growth area since 1979. We in South Oxfordshire District Council consider that, although Didcot does have potential for further growth, such development should be sustainable, well-planned, and supported by adequate infrastructure and community services.

B Recent experience in Didcot has demonstrated that large greenfield [1] developments cannot resource all the necessary infrastructure and low-cost housing requirements. The ensuing compromises create a legacy of local transport, infrastructure and community services deficits, with no obvious means of correction. We wish to ensure that there is greater recognition of the cost attached to housing growth, and that a means is found to resource the establishment of sustainable communities in growth areas.

C Until the 1950s, the development of job opportunities in the railway industry, and in a large, military ordnance depot, was the spur to Didcot’s expansion. Development at that time was geared to providing homes for the railway and depot workers, with limited investment in shopping and other services for the local population. Didcot failed to develop Broadway as a compact town centre, and achieved only a strip of shops along one side of the main street hemmed in by low density housing and service trade uses.

D From the 1970s, strategic planning policies directed significant new housing development to Didcot. Planners recognised Didcot’s potential, with rapid growth in local job opportunities and good rail connections for those choosing to work farther afield. However, the town is bisected by the east-west railway, and people living in Ladygrove, the urban extension to the north which has been built since the 1980s, felt, and still feel, cut off from the town and its community.

E Population growth in the new housing areas failed to spark adequate private-sector investment in town centre uses, and the limited investment which did take place – Didcot Market Place development in 1982, for instance – did not succeed in delivering the number and range of town centre uses needed by the growing population. In 1990, public-sector finance was used to buy the land required for the Orchard Centre development, comprising a superstore, parking and a new street of stores running parallel to Broadway. The development took 13 years to complete.

F The idea that, by obliging developers of new housing to contribute to the cost of infrastructure and service requirements, all the necessary finance could be raised, has proved unachievable. Substantial public finance was still needed to deliver major projects such as the new link road to the A34 on the outskirts of the town at Milton, the improved railway crossing at Marsh Bridge and new schools. Such projects were delayed due to difficulties in securing public finance. The same problem also held back expansion of health and social services in the town.

G In recent years, government policy, in particular the requirement for developers that forty percent of the units in a new housing development should be low cost homes, has had a major impact on the economics of such development, as it has limited the developers’ contribution to the costs of infrastructure. The planning authorities are facing difficult choices in prioritising the items of infrastructure which must be funded by development, and this, in turn, means that from now on public finance will need to provide a greater proportion of infrastructure project costs.

H The Government’s Sustainable Communities Plan seeks a holistic approach to new urban development in which housing, employment, services and infrastructure of all kinds are carefully planned and delivered in a way which avoids the infrastructure deficits that have occurred in places like Didcot in the past. This report, therefore, is structured around the individual components of a sustainable community, and shows the baseline position for each component.

I Didcot has been identified as one of the towns with which the Government is working to evaluate whether additional growth will strengthen the economic potential of the town, deliver the necessary infrastructure and improve environmental standards. A programme of work, including discussions with the local community about their aspirations for the town as well as other stakeholders, will be undertaken over the coming months, and will lead to the development of a strategic master plan. The challenge will be in optimising scarce resources to achieve maximum benefits for the town.

Questions 14-19
Reading Passage 2 has 9 paragraphs, A-l. Which paragraph contains the following information?

14. reference to the way the council’s report is organised
15. the reason why inhabitants in one part of Didcot are isolated
16. a statement concerning future sources of investment
17. the identification of two major employers at Didcot
18. reference to groups who will be consulted about a new development plan
19. an account of how additional town centre facilities were previously funded

Questions 20-23
Look at the following places and the list of statements below. Match each place with the correct statement, A-F.

20. Broadway
21. Market Place
22. Orchard Centre
23. Marsh Bridge

List of statements
A It provided extra facilities for shopping and cars.
B Its location took a long time to agree
C Its layout was unsuitable.
D Its construction was held up due to funding problems.
E It was privately funded.
F It failed to get Council approval at first.

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

A certain proportion of houses in any new development now have to be of the (24)…………………type.

The government is keen to ensure that adequate (25)………………..will be provided for future housing developments.

The views of Didcot’s inhabitants and others will form the basis of a (26)…………………for the town.

Language diversity

One of the most influential ideas in the study of languages is that of universal grammar (UG). Put forward by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s, it is widely interpreted as meaning that all languages are basically the same, and that the human brain is born language-ready, with an in-built programme that is able to interpret the common rules underlying any mother tongue. For five decades this idea prevailed, and influenced work in linguistics, psychology and cognitive science. To understand language, it implied, you must sweep aside the huge diversity of languages, and find their common human core.

Since the theory of UG was proposed, linguists have identified many universal language rules. However, there are almost always exceptions. It was once believed, for example, that if a language had syllables that begin with a vowel and end with a consonant (VC), it would also have syllables that begin with a consonant and end with a vowel (CV). This universal lasted until 1999, when linguists showed that Arrernte, spoken by Indigenous Australians from the area around Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, has VC syllables but no CV syllables.

Other non-universal universals describe the basic rules of putting words together. Take the rule that every language contains four basic word classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Work in the past two decades has shown that several languages lack an open adverb class, which means that new adverbs cannot be readily formed, unlike in English where you can turn any adjective into an adverb, for example ‘soft’ into ‘softly’. Others, such as Lao, spoken in Laos, have no adjectives at all. More controversially, some linguists argue that a few languages, such as Straits Salish, spoken by indigenous people from north-western regions of North America, do not even have distinct nouns or verbs. Instead, they have a single class of words to include events, objects and qualities.

Even apparently indisputable universals have been found lacking. This includes recursion, or the ability to infinitely place one grammatical unit inside a similar unit, such as ‘Jack thinks that Mary thinks that … the bus will be on time’. It is widely considered to be the most essential characteristic of human language, one that sets it apart from the communications of all other animals. Yet Dan Everett at Illinois State University recently published controversial work showing that Amazonian Piraha does not have this quality.

But what if the very diversity of languages is the key to understanding human communication? Linguists Nicholas Evans of the Australian National University in Canberra, and Stephen Levinson of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, believe that languages do not share a common set of rules. Instead, they say, their sheer variety is a defining feature of human communication – something not seen in other animals. While there is no doubt that human thinking influences the form that language takes, if Evans and Levinson are correct, language in turn shapes our brains. This suggests that humans are more diverse than we thought, with our brains having differences depending on the language environment in which we grew up. And that leads to a disturbing conclusion: every time a language becomes extinct, humanity loses an important piece of diversity.

If languages do not obey a single set of shared rules, then how are they created? ‘Instead of universals. you get standard engineering solutions that languages adopt again and again, and then you get outliers.’ says Evans. He and Levinson argue that this is because any given language is a complex system shaped by many factors, including culture, genetics and history. There- are no absolutely universal traits of language, they say, only tendencies. And it is a mix of strong and weak tendencies that characterises the ‘bio-cultural’ mix that we call language.

According to the two linguists, the strong tendencies explain why many languages display common patterns. A variety of factors tend to push language in a similar direction, such as the structure of the brain, the biology of speech, and the efficiencies of communication. Widely shared linguistic elements may also be ones that build on a particularly human kind of reasoning. For example, the fact that before we learn to speak we perceive the world as a place full of things causing actions (agents) and things having actions done to them (patients) explains why most languages deploy these grammatical categories.

Weak tendencies, in contrast, are explained by the idiosyncrasies of different languages. Evans and Levinson argue that many aspects of the particular natural history of a population may affect its language. For instance, Andy Butcher at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, has observed that indigenous Australian children have by far the highest incidence of chronic middle-ear infection of any population on the planet, and that most indigenous Australian languages lack many sounds that are common in other languages, but which are hard to hear with a middle-ear infection. Whether this condition has shaped the sound systems of these languages is unknown, says Evans, but it is important to consider the idea.

Levinson and Evans are not the first to question the theory of universal grammar, but no one has summarised these ideas quite as persuasively, and given them as much reach. As a result, their arguments have generated widespread enthusiasm, particularly among those linguists who are tired of trying to squeeze their findings into the straitjacket of ‘absolute universals’. To some, it is the final nail in UG’s coffin. Michael Tomasello, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has been a long-standing critic of the idea that all languages conform to a set of rules. ‘Universal grammar is dead,’ he says.

Questions 27-32
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3? 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

27. In the final decades of the twentieth century, a single theory of language learning was dominant.
28. The majority of UG rules proposed by linguists do apply to all human languages.
29. There is disagreement amongst linguists about an aspect of Straits Salish grammar.
30. The search for new universal language rules has largely ended.
31. If Evans and Levinson are right, people develop in the same way no matter what language they speak.
32. The loss of any single language might have implications for the human race.

Questions 33-37
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

33. Which of the following views about language are held by Evans and Levinson?
A Each of the world’s languages develops independently.
B The differences between languages outweigh the similarities.
C Only a few language features are universal.
D Each language is influenced by the characteristics of other languages.

34. According to Evans and Levinson, apparent similarities between languages could be due to
A close social contact.
B faulty analysis.
C shared modes of perception.
D narrow descriptive systems.

35. In the eighth paragraph, what does the reference to a middle-ear infection serve as?
A A justification for something.
B A contrast with something.
C The possible cause of something.
D The likely result of something.

36. What does the writer suggest about Evans’ and Levinson’s theory of language development?
A It had not been previously considered.
B It is presented in a convincing way.
C It has been largely rejected by other linguists.
D It is not supported by the evidence.

37. Which of the following best describes the writer’s purpose?
A To describe progress in the field of cognitive science.
B To defend a long-held view of language learning.
C To identify the similarities between particular languages.
D To outline opposing views concerning the nature of language.

Questions 38-40
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-E, below.

38. The Arrernte language breaks a ‘rule’ concerning
39. The Lao language has been identified as lacking
40. It has now been suggested that Amazonia Piraha does not have

A words of a certain grammatical type.
B a sequence of sounds predicted by UG.
C words which can have more than one meaning.
D the language feature regarded as the most basic.
E sentences beyond a specified length.

The economic importance of coral reefs

A lot of people around the world are dependent, or partly dependent, on coral reefs for their livelihoods. They often live adjacent to the reef, and their livelihood revolves around the direct extraction, processing and sale of reef resources such as shell fish and seaweeds. In addition, their homes are sheltered by the reef from wave action.

Reef flats and shallow reef lagoons are accessible on foot, without the need for a boat, and so allow women, children and the elderly to engage directly in manual harvesting, or ‘reef-gleaning’. This is a significant factor distinguishing reef-based fisheries from near-shore sea fisheries. Near-shore fisheries are typically the domain of adult males, in particular where they involve the use of boats, with women and children restricted mainly to shore-based activities. However, in a coral-reef fishery the physical accessibility of the reef opens up opportunities for direct participation by women, and consequently increases their independence and the importance of their role in the community. It also provides a place for children to play, and to acquire important skills and knowledge for later in life. For example, in the South West Island of Tobi, in the Pacific Ocean, young boys use simple hand lines with a loop and bait at the end to develop the art of fishing on the reef. Similarly, in the Surin Islands of Thailand, young Moken boys spend much of their time playing, swimming and diving in shallow reef lagoons, and in doing so build crucial skills for their future daily subsistence.

Secondary occupations, such as fish processing and marketing activities, are often dominated by women, and offer an important survival strategy for households with access to few other physical assets (such as boats and gear), for elderly women, widows, or the wives of infirm men. On Ulithi Atoll in the western Pacific, women have a distinct role and rights in the distribution of fish catches. This is because the canoes, made from mahogany logs from nearby Yap Island, are obtained through the exchange of cloth made by the women of Ulithi. Small-scale reef fisheries support the involvement of local women traders and their involvement can give them greater control over the household income, and in negotiating for loans or credit. Thus their role is not only important in providing income for their families, it also underpins the economy of the local village.

Poor people with little access to land, labour and financial resources are particularly reliant on exploiting natural resources, and consequently they are vulnerable to seasonal changes in availability of those resources. The diversity of coral reef fisheries, combined with their physical accessibility and the protection they provide against bad weather, make them relatively stable compared with other fisheries, or land-based agricultural production.

In many places, the reef may even act as a resource bank, used as a means of saving food for future times of need. In Manus, Papua New Guinea, giant clams are collected and held in walled enclosures on the reef, until they are needed during periods of rough weather. In Palau, sea cucumbers are seldom eaten during good weather in an effort to conserve their populations for months during which rough weather prohibits good fishing.

Coral reef resources also act as a buffer against seasonal lows in other sectors, particularly agriculture. For example, in coastal communities in northern Mozambique, reef harvests provide key sources of food and cash when agricultural production is low, with the peak in fisheries production coinciding with the period of lowest agricultural stocks. In Papua New Guinea, while agriculture is the primary means of food production, a large proportion of the coastal population engage in sporadic subsistence fishing.

In many coral-reef areas, tourism is one of the main industries bringing employment, and in many cases is promoted to provide alternatives to fisheries-based livelihoods, and to ensure that local reef resources are conserved. In the Caribbean alone, tours based on scuba-diving have attracted 20 million people in one year. The upgrading of roads and communications associated with the expansion of tourism may also bring benefits to local communities. However, plans for development must be considered carefully. The ability of the poorer members of the community to access the benefits of tourism is far from guaranteed, and requires development guided by social, cultural and environmental principles. There is growing recognition that sustainability is a key requirement, as encompassed in small-scale eco-tourism activities, for instance. Where tourism development has not been carefully planned, and the needs and priorities of the local community have not been properly recognised, conflict has sometimes arisen between tourism and local, small-scale fishers.

Questions 1-7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? Write

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

1. In most places, coral-reef gleaning is normally carried out by men.
2. Involvement in coral-reef-based occupations raises the status of women.
3. Coral reefs provide valuable learning opportunities for young children.
4. The women of Ulithi Atoll have some control over how fish catches are shared out.
5. Boats for use by the inhabitants of Ulithi are constructed on Yap Island.
6. In coral reef fisheries, only male traders can apply for finance.
7. Coral reefs provide a less constant source of income than near-shore seas.

Questions 8-13
Complete the notes below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

How coral-reef-based resources protect people during difficult times

Coral reefs can provide
• a resource bank, e.g. for keeping clams and (8)……………………
• a seasonal back-up, when (9)…………………products are insufficient
• e.g. in northern Mozambique, a tourist attraction, e.g. (10)……………….tours in the Caribbean.

Benefits for local people include:
• The creation of jobs.
• Improvements to roads and (11)…………………

Important considerations:
• Development must be based on appropriate principles.
• Need for (12)……………

Poorly-planned development can create (13)………………..with local fishers.

Acquiring the principles of mathematics and science

A It has been pointed out that learning mathematics and science is not so much learning facts as learning ways of thinking. It has also been emphasised that in order to learn science, people often have to change the way they think in ordinary situations. For example, in order to understand even simple concepts such as heat and temperature, ways of thinking of temperature as a measure of heat must be abandoned and a distinction between ‘temperature’ and ‘heat’ must be learned. These changes in ways of thinking are often referred to as conceptual changes. But how do conceptual changes happen? How do young people change their ways of thinking as they develop and as they learn in school?

B Traditional instruction based on telling students how modern scientists think does not seem to be very successful. Students may learn the definitions, the formulae, the terminology, and yet still maintain their previous conceptions. This difficulty has been illustrated many times, for example, when instructed students are interviewed about heat and temperature. It is often identified by teachers as a difficulty in applying the concepts learned in the classroom; students may be able to repeat a formula but fail to use the concept represented by the formula when they explain observed events.

C The psychologist Piaget suggested an interesting hypothesis relating to the process of cognitive change in children. Cognitive change was expected to result from the pupils’ own intellectual activity. When confronted with a result that challenges their thinking – that is, when faced with conflict – pupils realise that they need to think again about their own ways of solving problems, regardless of whether the problem is one in mathematics or in science. He hypothesised that conflict brings about disequilibrium, and then triggers equilibration processes that ultimately produce cognitive change. For this reason, according to Piaget and his colleagues, in order for pupils to progress in their thinking they need to be actively engaged in solving problems that will challenge their current mode of reasoning. However, Piaget also pointed out that young children do not always discard their ideas in the face of contradictory evidence. They may actually discard the evidence and keep their theory.

D Piaget’s hypothesis about how cognitive change occurs was later translated into an educational approach which is now termed ‘discovery learning’. Discovery learning initially took what is now considered the Tone learner’ route. The role of the teacher was to select situations that challenged the pupils’ reasoning; and the pupils’ peers had no real role in this process. However, it was subsequently proposed that interpersonal conflict, especially with peers, might play an important role in promoting cognitive change. This hypothesis, originally advanced by Perret-Clermont (1980) and Doise and Mugny (1984), has been investigated in many recent studies of science teaching and learning.

E Christine Howe and her colleagues, for example, have compared children’s progress in understanding several types of science concepts when they are given the opportunity to observe relevant events. In one study, Howe compared the progress of 8 to 12-year-old children in understanding what influences motion down a slope. In order to ascertain the role of conflict in group work, they created two kinds of groups according to a pre-test: one in which the children had dissimilar views, and a second in which the children had similar views. They found support for the idea that children in the groups with dissimilar views progressed more after their training sessions than those who had been placed in groups with similar views. However, they found no evidence to support the idea that the children worked out their new conceptions during their group discussions, because progress was not actually observed in a post-test immediately after the sessions of group work, but rather in a second test given around four weeks after the group work.

F In another study, Howe set out to investigate whether the progress obtained through pair work could be a function of the exchange of ideas. They investigated the progress made by 12-15-year-old pupils in understanding the path of falling objects, a topic that usually involves conceptual difficulties. In order to create pairs of pupils with varying levels of dissimilarity in their initial conceptions, the pupils’ predictions and explanations of the path of falling objects were assessed before they were engaged in pair work. The work sessions involved solving computer-presented problems, again about predicting and explaining the paths of falling objects. A post-test, given to individuals, assessed the progress made by pupils in their conceptions of what influenced the path of falling objects.

Questions 14-19
Reading Passage 2 has SIX paragraphs, A-F. Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-F from the list of headings below.

List of Headings
i A suggested modification to a theory about learning.
ii The problem of superficial understanding.
iii The relationship between scientific understanding and age.
iv The rejection of a widely held theory.
v The need to develop new concepts in daily life.
vi The claim that a perceived contradiction can assist mental development.
vii Implications for the training of science teachers.
viii An experiment to assess the benefits of exchanging views with a partner.
ix Evidence for the delayed benefits of disagreement between pupils.

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

Questions 20-21
Choose TWO letters, A-E.

The list below contains some possible statements about learning.

Which TWO of these statements are attributed to Piaget by the writer of the passage?
A teachers can assist learning by explaining difficult concepts
B mental challenge is a stimulus to learning
C repetition and consistency of input aid cognitive development
D children sometimes reject evidence that conflicts with their preconceptions
E children can help each other make cognitive progress

Questions 22-23
Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Which TWO of these statements describe Howe’s experiment with 8-12-year-olds?
A the children were assessed on their ability to understand a scientific problem
B all the children were working in mixed ability groups
C the children who were the most talkative made the least progress
D the teacher helped the children to understand a scientific problem
E the children were given a total of three tests at different times

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

How children learn

Piaget proposed that learning takes place when children encounter ideas that do not correspond to their current beliefs. The application of this theory gave rise to a teaching method known as (24)……………..

At first this approach only focused on the relationship between individual pupils and their (25)…………………

Later, researchers such as Perret-Clermont became interested in the role that interaction with (26)………………might also play in a pupil’s development.

Learning lessons from the past

Many past societies collapsed or vanished, leaving behind monumental ruins such as those that the poet Shelley imagined in his sonnet, Ozymandias. By collapse, I mean a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time. By those standards, most people would consider the following past societies to have been famous victims of full-fledged collapses rather than of just minor declines: the Anasazi and Cahokia within the boundaries of the modern US, the Maya cities in Central America, Moche and Tiwanaku societies in South America, Norse Greenland, Mycenean Greece and Minoan Crete in Europe, Great Zimbabwe in Africa, Angkor Wat and the Harappan Indus Valley cities in Asia, and Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean.

The monumental ruins left behind by those past societies hold a fascination for all of us. We marvel at them when as children we first learn of them through pictures. When we grow up, many of us plan vacations in order to experience them at first hand. We feel drawn to their often spectacular and haunting beauty, and also to the mysteries that they pose. The scales of the ruins testify to the former wealth and power of their builders. Yet these builders vanished, abandoning the great structures that they had created at such effort. How could a society that was once so mighty end up collapsing?

It has long been suspected that many of those mysterious abandonments were at least partly triggered by ecological problems: people inadvertently destroying the environmental resources on which their societies depended. This suspicion of unintended ecological suicide (ecocide) has been confirmed by discoveries made in recent decades by archaeologists, climatologists, historians, paleontologists, and palynologists (pollen scientists). The processes through which past societies have undermined themselves by damaging their environments fall into eight categories, whose relative importance differs from case to case: deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems, water management problems, overhunting, overfishing, effects of introduced species on native species, human population growth, and increased impact of people.

Those past collapses tended to follow somewhat similar courses constituting variations on a theme. Writers find it tempting to draw analogies between the course of human societies and the course of individual human lives – to talk of a society’s birth, growth, peak, old age and eventual death. But that metaphor proves erroneous for many past societies: they declined rapidly after reaching peak numbers and power, and those rapid declines must have come as a surprise and shock to their citizens. Obviously, too, this trajectory is not one that all past societies followed unvaryingly to completion: different societies collapsed to different degrees and in somewhat different ways, while many societies did not collapse at all.

Today many people feel that environmental problems overshadow all the other threats to global civilisation. These environmental problems include the same eight that undermined past societies, plus four new ones: human-caused climate change, build up of toxic chemicals in the environment, energy shortages, and full human utilisation of the Earth’s photosynthetic capacity. But the seriousness of these current environmental problems is vigorously debated. Are the risks greatly exaggerated, or conversely are they underestimated? Will modern technology solve our problems, or is it creating new problems faster than it solves old ones? When we deplete one resource (e.g. wood, oil, or ocean fish), can we count on being able to substitute some new resource (e.g. plastics, wind and solar energy, or farmed fish)? Isn’t the rate of human population growth declining, such that we’re already on course for the world’s population to level off at some manageable number of people?

Questions like this illustrate why those famous collapses of past civilisations have taken on more meaning than just that of a romantic mystery. Perhaps there are some practical lessons that we could learn from all those past collapses. But there are also differences between the modern world and its problems, and those past societies and their problems. We shouldn’t be so naive as to think that study of the past will yield simple solutions, directly transferable to our societies today. We differ from past societies in some respects that put us at lower risk than them; some of those respects often mentioned include our powerful technology (i.e. its beneficial effects), globalisation, modern medicine, and greater knowledge of past societies and of distant modern societies. We also differ from past societies in some respects that put us at greater risk than them: again, our potent technology (i.e., its unintended destructive effects), globalisation (such that now a problem in one part of the world affects all the rest), the dependence of millions of us on modern medicine for our survival, and our much larger human population. Perhaps we can still learn from the past, but only if we think carefully about its lessons.

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

27. When the writer describes the impact of monumental ruins today, he emphasises
A the income they generate from tourism.
B the area of land they occupy.
C their archaeological value.
D their romantic appeal

28. Recent findings concerning vanished civilisations have
A overturned long-held beliefs.
B caused controversy amongst scientists.
C come from a variety of disciplines.
D identified one main cause of environmental damage.

29. What does the writer say about ways in which former societies collapsed?
A The pace of decline was usually similar.
B The likelihood of collapse would have been foreseeable.
C Deterioration invariably led to total collapse.
D Individual citizens could sometimes influence the course of events.

Questions 30-34
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3? 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

30. It is widely believed that environmental problems represent the main danger faced by the modern world.
31. The accumulation of poisonous substances is a relatively modern problem.
32. There is general agreement that the threats posed by environmental problems are very serious.
33. Some past societies resembled present-day societies more closely than others.
34. We should be careful when drawing comparisons between past and present.

Questions 35-39
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below.

35. Evidence of the greatness of some former civilisations
36. The parallel between an individual’s life and the life of a society
37. The number of environmental problems that societies face
38. The power of technology
39. A consideration of historical events and trends

A is not necessarily valid.
B provides grounds for an optimistic outlook.
C exists in the form of physical structures.
D is potentially both positive and negative.
E will not provide direct solutions for present problems.
F is greater now than in the past.

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

40. What is the main argument of Reading Passage 3?
A There are differences as well as similarities between past and present societies.
B More should be done to preserve the physical remains of earlier civilisations.
C Some historical accounts of great civilisations are inaccurate.
D Modern societies are dependent on each other for their continuing survival.

Geoff Brash

Geoff Brash, who died in 2010, was a gregarious Australian businessman and philanthropist who encouraged the young to reach their potential. Born in Melbourne to Elsa and Alfred Brash, he was educated at Scotch College. His sister, Barbara, became a renowned artist and printmaker. His father, Alfred, ran the Brash retail music business that had been founded in 1862 by his grandfather, the German immigrant Marcus Brasch, specialising in pianos. It carried the slogan ‘A home is not a home without a piano.’

In his young days, Brash enjoyed the good life, playing golf and sailing, and spending some months travelling through Europe, having a leisurely holiday. He worked for a time at Myer department stores before joining the family business in 1949, where he quickly began to put his stamp on things. In one of his first management decisions, he diverged from his father’s sense of frugal aesthetics by re-carpeting the old man’s office while he was away. After initially complaining of his extravagance, his father grew to accept the change and gave his son increasing responsibility in the business.

After World War II (1939-1945), Brash’s had begun to focus on white goods, such as washing machines and refrigerators, as the consumer boom took hold. However, while his father was content with the business he had built, the younger Brash viewed expansion as vital. When Geoff Brash took over as managing director in 1957, the company had two stores, but after floating it on the stock exchange the following year, he expanded rapidly and opened suburban stores, as well as buying into familiar music industry names such as Allans, Palings and Suttons. Eventually, 170 stores traded across the continent under the Brash’s banner.

Geoff Brash learned from his father’s focus on customer service. Alfred Brash had also been a pioneer in introducing a share scheme for his staff, and his son retained and expanded the plan following the float.

Geoff Brash was optimistic and outward looking. As a result, he was a pioneer in both accessing and selling new technology, and developing overseas relationships. He sourced and sold electric guitars, organs, and a range of other modern instruments, as well as state-of-the-art audio and video equipment. He developed a relationship with Taro Kakehashi, the founder of Japan’s Roland group, which led to a joint venture that brought electronic musical devices to Australia.

In 1965, Brash and his wife attended a trade fair in Guangzhou, the first of its kind in China; they were one of the first Western business people allowed into the country following Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. He returned there many times, helping advise the Chinese in establishing a high quality piano factory in Beijing; he became the factory’s agent in Australia. Brash also took leading jazz musicians Don Burrows and James Morrison to China, on a trip that reintroduced jazz to many Chinese musicians.

He stood down as Executive Chairman of Brash’s in 1988, but under the new management debt became a problem, and in 1994 the banks called in administrators. The company was sold to Singaporean interests and continued to trade until 1998, when it again went into administration. The Brash name then disappeared from the retail world. Brash was greatly disappointed by the collapse and the eventual disappearance of the company he had run for so long. But it was not long before he invested in a restructured Allan’s music business.

Brash was a committed philanthropist who, in the mid-1980s, established the Brash Foundation, which eventually morphed, with other partners, into the Soundhouse Music Alliance. This was a not-for-profit organisation overseeing and promoting multimedia music making and education for teachers and students. The Soundhouse offers teachers and young people the opportunity to get exposure to the latest music technology, and to use this to compose and record their own music, either alone or in collaboration. The organisation has now also established branches in New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland, as well as numerous sites around Australia.

Questions 1-5
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? Write

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

1. The Brash business originally sold pianos.
2. Geoff Brash’s first job was with his grandfather’s company.
3. Alfred Brash thought that his son wasted money.
4. By the time Geoff Brash took control, the Brash business was selling some electrical products.
5. Geoff Brash had ambitions to open Brash stores in other countries.

Questions 6-10
Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

6. Which arrangement did Alfred Brash set up for his employees?
7. Which Japanese company did Geoff Brash collaborate with?
8. What type of event in China marked the beginning of Geoff Brash’s relationship with that country?
9. What style of music did Geoff Brash help to promote in China?
10. When did the Brash company finally stop doing business?

Questions 11-13
Complete the notes below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Soundhouse Music Alliance

Grew out of the Brash Foundation.

A non-commercial organisation providing support for music and music (11)…………………

Allows opportunities for using up-to-date (12)………………………..

Has (13)…………………..in several countries.

Early occupations around the river Thames

A In her pioneering survey, Sources of London English, Laura Wright has listed the variety of medieval workers who took their livings from the river Thames. The baillies of Queenhithe and Billingsgate acted as customs officers. There were conservators, who were responsible for maintaining the embankments and the weirs, and there were the garthmen who worked in the fish garths (enclosures). Then there were galleymen and lightermen and shoutmen, called after the names of their boats, and there were hookers who were named after the manner in which they caught their fish. The searcher patrolled the Thames in search of illegal fish weirs, and the tideman worked on its banks and foreshores whenever the tide permitted him to do so.

B All of these occupations persisted for many centuries, as did those jobs that depended upon the trade of the river. Yet, it was not easy work for any of the workers. They carried most goods upon their backs, since the rough surfaces of the quays and nearby streets were not suitable for wagons or large carts; the merchandise characteristically arrived in barrels which could be rolled from the ship along each quay. If the burden was too great to be carried by a single man, then the goods were slung on poles resting on the shoulders of two men. It was a slow and expensive method of business.

C However, up to the eighteenth century, river work was seen in a generally favourable light. For Langland, writing in the fourteenth century, the labourers working on river merchandise were relatively prosperous. And the porters of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were, if anything, aristocrats of labour, enjoying high status. However, in the years from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, there was a marked change in attitude. This was in part because the working river was within the region of the East End of London, which in this period acquired an unenviable reputation. By now, dockside labour was considered to be the most disreputable, and certainly the least desirable form of work.

D It could be said that the first industrial community in England grew up around the Thames. With the host of river workers themselves, as well as the vast assembly of ancillary trades such as tavern-keepers and laundresses, food-sellers and street-hawkers, shopkeepers and marine store dealers – there was a workforce of many thousands congregated in a relatively small area. There were more varieties of business to be observed by the riverside than, in any other part of the city. As a result, with the possible exception of the area known as Seven Dials, the East End was also the most intensively inhabited region of London.

E It was a world apart, with its own language and its own laws. From the sailors in the opium dens of Limehouse to the smugglers on the malarial flats of the estuary, the workers of the river were not part of any civilised society. The alien world of the river had entered them. That alienation was also expressed in the slang of the docks, which essentially amounted to backslang, or the reversal of ordinary words. This backslang also helped in the formulation of Cockney rhyming slang*, so that the vocabulary of Londoners was directly’affected by the life of the Thames.

F The reports in the nineteenth-century press reveal a heterogeneous world of dock labour, in which the crowds of casuals waiting for work at the dock gates at 7.45 a.m. include penniless refugees, bankrupts, old soldiers, broken-down gentlemen, discharged servants, and ex-convicts. There were some 400-500 permanent workers who earned a regular wage and who were considered to be the patricians of dockside labour. However, there were some 2,500 casual workers who were hired by the shift. The work for which they competed fiercely had become ever more unpleasant. Steam power could not be used for the cranes, for example, because of the danger of fire. So the cranes were powered by treadmills. Six to eight men entered a wooden cylinder and, laying hold of ropes, would tread the wheel round. They could lift nearly 20 tonnes to an average height of 27 feet (8.2 metres), forty times in an hour. This was part of the life of the river unknown to those who were intent upon its more picturesque aspects.

Questions 14-19
Reading Passage 2 has SIX paragraphs, A-F. Choose the correct heading, A-F, from the list of headings below.

List of Headings
i A mixture of languages and nationalities
ii The creation of an exclusive identity
iii The duties involved in various occupations
iv An unprecedented population density
v Imports and exports transported by river
vi Transporting heavy loads manually
vii Temporary work for large numbers of people
viii Hazards associated with riverside work
ix The changing status of riverside occupations

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

Questions 20-21
Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Which TWO statements are made about work by the River Thames before the eighteenth century?

A goods were transported from the river by cart
B the workforce was very poorly paid
C occupations were specialised
D workers were generally looked down upon
E physical strength was required

Questions 22-23
Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Which TWO statements are made about life by the River Thames in the early nineteenth century?

A the area was very crowded
B there was an absence of crime
C casual work was in great demand
D several different languages were in use
E inhabitants were known for their friendliness

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

In the nineteenth century, only a minority of dock workers received a (24)……………………

Cranes were operated manually because (25)………………..created a risk of fire.

Observers who were unfamiliar with London’s docks found the River Thames (26)…………….

Video game research

Although video games were first developed for adults, they are no longer exclusively reserved for the grown ups in the home. In 2006, Rideout and Hamel reported that as many as 29 percent of preschool children (children between two and six years old) in the United States had played console video games, and 18 percent had played hand-held ones. Given young children’s insatiable eagerness to learn, coupled with the fact that they are clearly surrounded by these media, we predict that preschoolers will both continue and increasingly begin to adopt video games for personal enjoyment. Although the majority of gaming equipment is still designed for a much older target audience, once a game system enters the household it is potentially available for all family members, including the youngest. Portable systems have done a particularly good job of penetrating the younger market.

Research in the video game market is typically done at two stages: some time close to the end of the product cycle, in order to get feedback from consumers, so that a marketing strategy can be developed; and at the very end of the product cycle to ‘fix bugs’ in the game. While both of those types of research are important, and may be appropriate for dealing with adult consumers, neither of them aids in designing better games, especially when it comes to designing for an audience that may have particular needs, such as preschoolers or senior citizens. Instead, exploratory and formative research has to be undertaken in order to truly understand those audiences, their abilities, their perspective, and their needs. In the spring of 2007, our preschool-game production team at Nickelodeon had a hunch that the Nintendo DS – with its new features, such as the microphone, small size and portability, and its relatively low price point – was a ripe gaming platform for preschoolers. There were a few games on the market at the time which had characters that appealed to the younger set, but our game producers did not think that the game mechanics or design were appropriate for preschoolers. What exactly preschoolers could do with the system, however, was a bit of a mystery. So we set about doing a study to answer the query: What could we expect preschoolers to be capable of in the context of hand-held game play, and how might the child development literature inform us as we proceeded with the creation of a new outlet for this age group?

Our context in this case was the United States, although the games that resulted were also released in other regions, due to the broad international reach of the characters. In order to design the best possible DS product for a preschool audience we were fully committed to the ideals of a ‘user-centered approach’, which assumes that users will be at least considered, but ideally consulted during the development process. After all, when it comes to introducing a new interactive product to the child market, and particularly such a young age group within it, we believe it is crucial to assess the range of physical and cognitive abilities associated with their specific developmental stage.

Revelle and Medoff (2002) review some of the basic reasons why home entertainment systems, computers, and other electronic gaming devices, are often difficult for preschoolers to use. In addition to their still developing motor skills (which make manipulating a controller with small buttons difficult), many of the major stumbling blocks are cognitive. Though preschoolers are learning to think symbolically, and understand that pictures can stand for real-life objects, the vast majority are still unable to read and write. Thus, using text-based menu selections is not viable. Mapping is yet another obstacle since preschoolers may be unable to understand that there is a direct link between how the controller is used and the activities that appear before them on screen. Though this aspect is changing, in traditional mapping systems real life movements do not usually translate into game-based activity.

Over the course of our study, we gained many insights into how preschoolers interact with various platforms, including the DS. For instance, all instructions for preschoolers need to be in voice-over, and include visual representations, and this has been one of the most difficult areas for us to negotiate with respect to game design on the DS. Because the game cartridges have very limited memory capacity, particularly in comparison to console or computer games, the ability to capture large amounts of voice-over data via sound files or visual representations of instructions becomes limited. Text instructions take up minimal memory, so they are preferable from a technological perspective. Figuring out ways to maximise sound and graphics files, while retaining the clear visual and verbal cues that we know are critical for our youngest players, is a constant give and take. Another of our findings indicated that preschoolers may use either a stylus, or their fingers, or both although they are not very accurate with either. One of the very interesting aspects of the DS is that the interface, which is designed to respond to stylus interactions, can also effectively be used with the tip of the finger. This is particularly noteworthy in the context of preschoolers for two reasons. Firstly, as they have trouble with fine motor skills and their hand-eye coordination is still in development, they are less exact with their stylus movements; and secondly, their fingers are so small that they mimic the stylus very effectively, and therefore by using their fingers they can often be more accurate in their game interactions.

Questions 27-31
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3? 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

27. Video game use amongst preschool children is higher in the US than in other countries.
28. The proportion of preschool children using video games is likely to rise.
29. Parents in the US who own gaming equipment generally allow their children to play with it.
30. The type of research which manufacturers usually do is aimed at improving game design.
31. Both old and young games consumers require research which is specifically targeted

Questions 32-36
Complete the summary using the list of words/phrases, A-l, below.

Problems for preschool users of video games

Preschool children find many electronic games difficult, because neither their motor skills nor their (32)……………are sufficiently developed.

Certain types of control are hard for these children to manipulate, for example, (33)……………………can be more effective than styluses.

Also, although they already have the ability to relate (34)………………..to real-world objects, preschool children are largely unable to understand the connection between their own (35)……………….and the movements they can see on the screen. Finally, very few preschool children can understand (36)………………..

A actions
B buttons
C cognitive skills
D concentration
E fingers
F pictures
G sounds
H spoken instructions
I written menus

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

37. In 2007, what conclusion did games producers at Nickelodeon come to?
A The preschool market was unlikely to be sufficiently profitable.
B One of their hardware products would probably be suitable for preschoolers.
C Games produced by rival companies were completely inappropriate for preschoolers.
D They should put their ideas for new games for preschoolers into practice.

38. The study carried out by Nickelodeon
A was based on children living in various parts of the world.
B focused on the kinds of game content which interests preschoolers.
C investigated the specific characteristics of the target market.
D led to products which appealed mainly to the US consumers.

39. Which problem do the writers highlight concerning games instructions for young children?
A Spoken instructions take up a lot of the available memory.
B Written instructions have to be expressed very simply.
C The children do not follow instructions consistently.
D The video images distract attention from the instructions.

40. Which is the best title for Reading Passage 3?
A An overview of video games software for the preschool market
B Researching and designing video games for preschool children
C The effects of video games on the behaviour of young children
D Assessing the impact of video games on educational achievement

The Rufous Hare-Wallaby

The Rufous Hare-Wallaby is a species of Australian kangaroo, usually known by its Aboriginal name, ‘mala’. At one time, there may have been as many as ten million of these little animals across the arid and semi-arid landscape of Australia, but their populations, like those of so many other small endemic species, were devastated when cats and foxes were introduced – indeed, during the 1950s it was thought that the mala was extinct. But in 1964, a small colony was found 450 miles northwest of Alice Springs in the Tanami Desert. And 12 years later, a second small colony was found nearby. Very extensive surveys were made throughout historical mala range – but no other traces were found.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, scientists from the Parks and Wildlife Commission of the Northern Territory monitored these two populations. At first it seemed that they were holding their own. Then in late 1987, every one of the individuals of the second and smaller of the wild colonies was killed. From examination of the tracks in the sand, it seemed that just one single fox had been responsible. And then, in October 1991, a wild-fire destroyed the entire area occupied by the remaining colony. Thus the mala was finally pronounced extinct in the wild.

Fortunately, ten years earlier, seven individuals had been captured, and had become the founders of a captive breeding programme at the Arid Zone Research Institute in Alice Springs; and that group had thrived. Part of this success is due to the fact that the female can breed when she is just five months old and can produce up to three young a year. Like other kangaroo species, the mother carries her young – known as a joey – in her pouch for about 15 weeks, and she can have more than one joey at the same time.

In the early 1980s, there were enough mala in the captive population to make it feasible to start a reintroduction programme. But first it was necessary to discuss this with the leaders of the Yapa people. Traditionally, the mala had been an important animal in their culture, with strong medicinal powers for old people. It had also been an important food source, and there were concerns that any mala returned to the wild would be killed for the pot. And so, in 1980, a group of key Yapa men was invited to visit the proposed reintroduction area. The skills and knowledge of the Yapa would play a significant and enduring role in this and all other mala projects.

With the help of the local Yapa, an electric fence was erected around 250 acres of suitable habitat, about 300 miles’ northwest of Alice Springs so that the mala could adapt while protected from predators. By 1992, there were about 150 mala in their enclosure, which became known as the Mala Paddock. However, all attempts to reintroduce mala from the paddocks into the unfenced wild were unsuccessful, so in the end the reintroduction programme was abandoned. The team now faced a situation where mala could be bred, but not released into the wild again.

Thus, in 1993, a Mala Recovery Team was established to boost mala numbers, and goals for a new programme were set: the team concentrated on finding suitable predator-free or predator-controlled conservation sites within the mala’s known range. Finally, in March 1999, twelve adult females, eight adult males, and eight joeys were transferred from the Mala Paddock to Dryandra Woodland in Western Australia. Then, a few months later, a second group was transferred to Trimouille, an island off the coast of western Australia. First, it had been necessary to rid the island of rats and cats – a task that had taken two years of hard work.

Six weeks after their release into this conservation site, a team returned to the island to find out how things were going. Each of the malas had been fitted with a radio collar that transmits for about 14 months, after which it falls off. The team was able to locate 29 out of the 30 transmitters – only one came from the collar of a mala that had died of unknown causes. So far the recovery programme had gone even better than expected. Today, there are many signs suggesting that the mala population on the island is continuing to do well.

Questions 1-5
Complete the flow chart below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

The Wild Australian mala

• Distant past: total population of up to (1)……………………..in desert and semi-desert regions
• Populations of malas were destroyed by (2)…………………….
• 1964/1976: two surviving colonies were discovered
• Scientists (3)……………………….the colonies
• 1987: one of the colonies was completely destroyed
• 1991: the other colony was destroyed by (4)………………………
• The wild mala was declared (5)………………..

Questions 6-9
Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

6. At what age can female malas start breeding?
7. For about how long do young malas stay inside their mother’s pouch?
8. Apart from being a food source, what value did malas have for the Yapa people?
9. What was the Yapa’s lasting contribution to the mala reintroduction programme?

Questions 10-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? Write

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

10. Natural defences were sufficient to protect the area called Mala Paddock.
11. Scientists eventually gave up their efforts to release captive mala into the unprotected wild.
12. The mala population which was transferred to Dryandra Woodland quickly increased in size.
13. Scientists were satisfied with the initial results of the recovery programme.

Measures to combat infectious disease in tsarist Russia

A In the second half of the seventeenth century, Russian authorities began implementing controls at the borders of their empire to prevent the importation of plague, a highly infectious and dangerous disease. Information on disease outbreak occurring abroad was regularly reported to the tsar’s court through various means, including commercial channels (travelling merchants), military personnel deployed abroad, undercover agents, the network of Imperial Foreign Office embassies and representations abroad, and the customs offices. For instance, the heads of customs offices were instructed to question foreigners entering Russia about possible epidemics of dangerous diseases in their respective countries.

B If news of an outbreak came from abroad, relations with the affected country were suspended. For instance, foreign vessels were not allowed to dock in Russian ports if there was credible information about the existence of epidemics in countries from whence they had departed. In addition, all foreigners entering Russia from those countries had to undergo quarantine. In 1665, after receiving news about a plague epidemic in England, Tsar Alexei wrote a letter to King Charles II in which he announced the cessation of Russian trade relations with England and other foreign states. These protective measures appeared to have been effective, as the country did not record any cases of plague during that year and in the next three decades. It was not until 1692 that another plague outbreak was recorded in the Russian province of Astrakhan. This epidemic continued for five months and killed 10,383 people, or about 65 percent of the city’s population. By the end of the seventeenth century, preventative measures had been widely introduced in Russia, including the isolation of persons ill with plague, the imposition of quarantines, and the distribution of explanatory public health notices about plague outbreaks.

C During the eighteenth century, although none of the occurrences was of the same scale as in the past, plague appeared in Russia several times. For instance, from 1703 to 1705, a plague outbreak that had ravaged Istanbul spread to the Podolsk and Kiev provinces in Russia, and then to Poland and Hungary. After defeating the Swedes in the battle of Poltava in 1709, Tsar Peter I (Peter the Great) dispatched part of his army to Poland, where plague had been raging for two years. Despite preventive measures, the disease spread among the Russian troops. In 1710, the plague reached Riga (then part of Sweden, now the capital of Latvia), where it was active until 1711 and claimed 60,000 lives. During this period, the Russians besieged Riga and, after the Swedes had surrendered the city in 1710, the Russian army lost 9.800 soldiers to the plague. Russian military chronicles of the time note that more soldiers died of the disease after the capture of Riga than from enemy fire during the siege of that city.

D Tsar Peter I imposed strict measures to prevent the spread of plague during these conflicts. Soldiers suspected of being infected were isolated and taken to areas far from military camps. In addition, camps were designed to separate divisions, detachments, and smaller units of soldiers. When plague reached Narva (located in present-day Estonia) and threatened to spread to St. Petersburg, the newly built capital of Russia, Tsar Peter I ordered the army to cordon off the entire boundary along the Luga River, including temporarily halting all activity on the river. In order to prevent the movement of people and goods from Narva to St Petersburg and Novgorod, roadblocks and checkpoints were set up on all roads. The tsar’s orders were rigorously enforced, and those who disobeyed were hung.

E However, although the Russian authorities applied such methods to contain the spread of the disease and limit the number of victims, all of the measures had a provisional character: they were intended to respond to a specific outbreak, and were not designed as a coherent set of measures to be implemented systematically at the first sign of plague. The advent of such a standard response system came a few years later.

F The first attempts to organise procedures and carry out proactive steps to control plague date to the aftermath of the 1727- 1728 epidemic in Astrakhan. In response to this, the Russian imperial authorities issued several decrees aimed at controlling the future spread of plague. Among these decrees, the ‘Instructions for Governors and Heads of Townships’ required that all governors immediately inform the Senate – a government body created by Tsar Peter I in 1711 to advise the monarch – if plague cases were detected in their respective provinces. Furthermore, the decree required that governors ensure the physical examination of all persons suspected of carrying the disease and their subsequent isolation. In addition, it was ordered that sites where plague victims were found had to be encircled by checkpoints and isolated for the duration of the outbreak. These checkpoints were to remain operational for at least six weeks. The houses of infected persons were to be burned along with all of the personal property they contained, including farm animals and cattle. The governors were instructed to inform the neighbouring provinces and cities about every plague case occurring on their territories. Finally, letters brought by couriers were heated above a fire before being copied.

G The implementation by the authorities of these combined measures demonstrates their intuitive understanding of the importance of the timely isolation of infected people to limit the spread of plague.

Questions 14-19
Reading Passage 2 has SEVEN sections, A-G. Choose the correct heading for sections A-F from the list of headings below.

List of Headings
i Outbreaks of plague as a result of military campaigns.
ii Systematic intelligence-gathering about external cases of plague.
iii Early forms of treatment for plague victims.
iv The general limitations of early Russian anti-plague measures.
v Partly successful bans against foreign states affected by plague.
vi Hostile reactions from foreign states to Russian anti-plague measures.
vii Various measures to limit outbreaks of plague associated with war.
viii The formulation and publication of preventive strategies.

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

Questions 20-21
Choose TWO letters, A—E.

Which TWO measures did Russia take in the seventeenth century to avoid plague outbreaks?
A cooperation with foreign leaders
B spying
C military campaigns
D restrictions on access to its ports
E expulsion of foreigners

Questions 22-23
Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Which TWO statements are made about Russia in the early eighteenth century?
A plague outbreaks were consistently smaller than before
B military casualties at Riga exceeded the number of plague victims
C the design of military camps allowed plague to spread quickly
D the tsar’s plan to protect St Petersburg from plague was not strictly implemented
E anti-plague measures were generally reactive rather than strategic

Questions 24-26
Complete the sentences below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

An outbreak of plague in (24)…………………….prompted the publication of a coherent preventative strategy.

Provincial governors were ordered to burn the (25)………………….and possessions of plague victims.

Correspondence was held over a (26)…………………….prior to copying it.

Recovering a damaged reputation

In 2009, it was revealed that some of the information published by the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in the UK, concerning climate change, had been inaccurate. Furthermore, it was alleged that some of the relevant statistics had been withheld from publication. The ensuing controversy affected the reputation not only of that institution, but also of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), with which the CRU is closely involved, and of climate scientists in general. Even if the claims of misconduct and incompetence were eventually proven to be largely untrue, or confined to a few individuals, the damage was done. The perceived wrongdoings of a few people had raised doubts about the many.

The response of most climate scientists was to cross their fingers and hope for the best, and they kept a low profile. Many no doubt hoped that subsequent independent inquiries into the IPCC and CRU would draw a line under their problems. However, although these were likely to help, they were unlikely to undo the harm caused by months of hostile news reports and attacks by critics.

The damage that has been done should not be underestimated. As Ralph Cicerone, the President of the US National Academy of Sciences, wrote in an editorial in the journal Science: ‘Public opinion has moved toward the view that scientists often try to suppress alternative hypotheses and ideas and that scientists will withhold data and try to manipulate some aspects of peer review to prevent dissent.’ He concluded that ‘the perceived misbehavior of even a few scientists can diminish the credibility of science as a whole.’

An opinion poll taken at the beginning of 2010 found that the proportion of people in the US who trust scientists as a source of information about global warming had dropped from 83 percent, in 2008, to 74 percent. Another survey carried out by the British Broadcasting Corporation in February 2010 found that just 26 percent of British people now believe that climate change is confirmed as being largely human-made, down from 41 percent in November 2009.

Regaining the confidence and trust of the public is never easy. Hunkering down and hoping for the best – climate science’s current strategy – makes it almost impossible. It is much better to learn from the successes and failures of organisations that have dealt with similar blows to their public standing. In fact, climate science needs professional help to rebuild its reputation. It could do worse than follow the advice given by Leslie Gaines-Ross, a ‘reputation strategist’ at Public Relations (PR) company Webef Shandwick, in her recent book Corporate Reputation: 12 Steps to Safeguarding and Recovering Reputation. Gaines-Ross’s strategy is based on her analysis of how various organisations responded to crises, such as desktop-printer firm Xerox, whose business plummeted during the 1990s, and the USA’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) after the Columbia shuttle disaster in 2003.

The first step she suggests is to ‘take the heat – leader first’. In many cases, chief executives who publicly accept responsibility for corporate failings can begin to reverse the freefall of their company’s reputations, but not always. If the leader is held at least partly responsible for the fall from grace, it can be almost impossible to convince critics that a new direction can be charted with that same person at the helm.
This is the dilemma facing the heads of the IPCC and CRU. Both have been blamed for their organisations’ problems, not least for the way in which they have dealt with critics, and both have been subjected to public calls for their removal. Yet both organisations appear to believe they can repair their reputations without a change of leadership.

The second step outlined by Gaines-Ross is to ‘communicate tirelessly’. Yet many climate researchers have avoided the media and the public, at least until the official enquiries have concluded their reports. This reaction may be understandable, but it has backfired. Journalists following the story have often been unable to find spokespeople willing to defend climate science. In this case, ‘no comment’ is commonly interpreted as an admission of silent, collective guilt.

Remaining visible is only a start, though; climate scientists also need to be careful what they say. They must realise that they face doubts not just about their published results, but also about their conduct and honesty. It simply won’t work for scientists to continue to appeal to the weight of the evidence, while refusing to discuss the integrity of their profession. The harm has been increased by a perceived reluctance to admit even the possibility of mistakes or wrongdoing.

The third step put forward by Gaines-Ross is ‘don’t underestimate your critics and competitors’. This means not only recognising the skill with which the opponents of climate research have executed their campaigns through Internet blogs and other media, but also acknowledging the validity of some of their criticisms. It is clear, for instance, that climate scientists need better standards of transparency, to allow for scrutiny not just by their peers, but also by critics from outside the world of research.

It is also important to engage with those critics. That doesn’t mean conceding to unfounded arguments which are based on prejudice rather than evidence, but there is an obligation to help the public understand the causes of climate change, as well as the options for avoiding and dealing with the consequences.

To begin the process of rebuilding trust in their profession, climate scientists need to follow these three seeps. But that is just the start. Gaines-Ross estimates that it typically takes four years for a company to rescue and restore a broken reputation. Winning back public confidence is a marathon, not a sprint, but you can’t win at all if you don’t step up to the starting line.

Questions 27-32
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3? 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

27. If a majority of scientists at the CRU were cleared of misconduct, the public would be satisfied.
28. In the aftermath of the CRU scandal, most scientists avoided attention.
29. Journalists have defended the CRU and the IPCC against their critics.
30. Ralph Cicerone regarded the damage caused by the CRU as extending beyond the field of climate science.
31. Since 2010, confidence in climate science has risen slightly in the US.
32. Climate scientists should take professional advice on regaining public confidence.

Questions 33-36
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

33. In accordance with Gaines-Ross’s views, the heads of the CRU and IPCC should have
A resigned from their posts.
B accepted responsibility and continued in their posts.
C shifted attention onto more junior staff.
D ignored the criticisms directed at them.

34. Which mistake have staff at the CRU and IPCC made?
A They have blamed each other for problems.
B They have publicly acknowledged failings.
C They have avoided interviews with the press.
D They have made conflicting public statements.

35. People who challenge the evidence of climate change have generally
A presented their case poorly.
B missed opportunities for publicity.
C made some criticisms which are justified.
D been dishonest in their statements.

36. What does the reference to ‘a marathon’ indicate in the final paragraph?
A The rate at which the climate is changing.
B The competition between rival theories of climate change.
C The ongoing need for new climate data.
D The time it might take for scientists to win back confidence

Questions 37-40
Complete the summary using the list of words/phrases, A-H, below.

Controversy about climate science

The revelation, in 2009, that scientists at the CRU had presented inaccurate information and concealed some of their (37)………………………….had a serious effect on their reputation. In order to address the problem, the scientists should turn to experts in (38)…………………………..

Leslie Gaines-Ross has published (39)……………………based on studies of crisis management in commercial and public-sector organisations. Amongst other things, Gaines-Ross suggests that climate scientists should confront their (40)…………………….

A critics
B corruption
C statistics
D guidelines
E managers
F public relations
G sources
H computer modelling

Sport Science in Australia

The professional career paths available to graduates from courses relating to human movement and sport science are as diverse as the graduate’s imagination. However, undergraduate courses with this type of content, in Australia as well as in most other Western countries, were originally designed as preparation programmes for Physical Education (PE) teachers. The initial programmes commenced soon after the conclusion of World War II in the mid-1940s. One of the primary motives for these initiatives was the fact that, during the war effort, so many of the men who were assessed for military duty had been declared unfit. The government saw the solution in the providing of Physical Education programmes in schools, delivered by better prepared and specifically educated PE teachers.

Later, in the 1970s and early 1980s, the surplus of Australians graduating with a PE degree obliged institutions delivering this qualification to identify new employment opportunities for their graduates, resulting in the first appearance of degrees catering for recreation professionals. In many instances, this diversity of programme delivery merely led to degrees, delivered by physical educators, as a sideline activity to the production of PE teachers.

Whilst the need to produce Physical Education teachers remains a significant social need, and most developed societies demand the availability of quality leisure programmes for their citizens, the career options of graduates within this domain are still developing. The two most evident growth domains are in the area of the professional delivery of sport, and the role of a physical lifestyle for community health.

The sports industry is developing at an unprecedented rate of growth. From a business perspective, sport is now seen as an area with the potential for high returns. It is quite significant that the businessman Rupert Murdoch broadened his business base from media to sport, having purchased an American baseball team and an Australian Rugby League competition, as well as seeking opportunities to invest in an English football club. No business person of such international stature would see fit to invest in sport unless he was satisfied that this was a sound business venture with ideal revenue-generating opportunities.

These developments have confirmed sport as a business with professional management structures, marketing processes, and development strategies in place. They have indicated new and developing career paths for graduates of human movement science, sport science, exercise science and related degrees. Graduates can now visualise career paths extending into such diverse domains as sport management, sport marketing, event and facility management, government policy development pertaining to sport, sport journalism, sport psychology, and sport or athletic coaching.

Business leaders will only continue their enthusiasm for sport if they receive returns for their money. Such returns will only be forthcoming if astute, enthusiastic and properly educated professionals are delivering the programs that earn appropriate financial returns. The successful universities of the 21st century will be those that have responded to this challenge by delivering such degrees.

A second professional growth area for this group of graduates is associated with community health. The increasing demand for government expenditure within health budgets is reaching the stage where most governments are simply unable to function in a manner that is satisfying their constituents. One of the primary reasons for this problem is the unhelpful emphasis on treatment in medical care programmes. Governments have traditionally given their senior health official the title of ‘Minister for Health’, when in fact this officer has functioned as ‘Minister for Sickness and the Construction of Hospitals’. Government focus simply has to change. If the change is not brought about for philosophical reasons, it will occur naturally, because insufficient funding will be available to address the ever-increasing costs of medical support.

Graduates of human movement, exercise science and sport science have the potential to become major players in this shift in policy focus. It is these graduates who already have the skills, knowledge and understanding to initiate community health education programmes to reduce cardio-vascular disease, to reduce medical dependency upon diabetes, to improve workplace health leading to increased productivity, to initiate and promote programmes of activity for the elderly that reduce medical dependency, and to maintain an active lifestyle for the unemployed and disadvantaged groups in society. This is the graduate that governments will be calling upon to shift the community focus from medical dependency to healthy lifestyles in the decades ahead.

The career paths of these graduates are developing at a pace that is not evident in other professions. The contribution that these graduates can make to society, and the recognition of this contribution is at an unprecedented high, and all indications are that it will continue to grow.

Questions 1-5
Complete the flow chart below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

The history of sports and physical science in Australia

• A lot of people identified as being (1)……………….
• Introduction of PE to (2)………………….
• Special training programmes for (3)…………………
• (4)……………….. of PE graduates
• Identification of alternative (5)…………………
• Diversification of course delivery

Questions 6-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? Write

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

6. Sport is generally regarded as a profitable area for investment.
7. Rupert Murdoch has a personal as well as a business interest in sport.
8. The range of career opportunities available to sport graduates is increasing.
9. The interests of business and the interests of universities are linked.
10. Governments have been focusing too much attention on preventative medicine.
11. It is inevitable that government priorities for health spending will change.
12. Existing degree courses are unsuitable for careers in community health.
13. Funding for sport science and related degrees has been increased considerably.

An assessment of micro-wind turbines

A In terms of micro-renewable energy sources suitable for private use, a 15-kilowatt (kW) turbine is at the biggest end of the spectrum. With a nine metre diameter and a pole as high as a four-storey house, this is the most efficient form of wind micro­turbine, and the sort of thing you could install only if you had plenty of space and money. According to one estimate, a 15-kW micro-turbine (that’s one with the maximum output), costing £41,000 to purchase and a further £9,000 to install, is capable of delivering 25,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh)’ of electricity each year if placed on a suitably windy site.

B I don’t know of any credible studies of the greenhouse gas emissions involved in producing and installing turbines, so my estimates here are going to be even more broad than usual. However, it is worth trying. If turbine manufacture is about as carbon intensive per pound sterling of product as other generators and electrical motors, which seems a reasonable assumption, the carbon intensity of manufacture will be around 640 kilograms (kg) per £1,000 of value. Installation is probably about as carbon intensive as typical construction, at around 380 kg per £1,000. That makes the carbon footprint (the total amount of greenhouse gases that installing a turbine creates) 30 tonnes.

C The carbon savings from wind-powered electricity generation depend on the carbon intensity of the electricity that you’re replacing. Let’s assume that your generation replaces the coal-fuelled part of the country’s energy mix. In other words, if you live in the UK, let’s say that rather than replacing typical grid electricity, which comes from a mix of coal, gas, oil and renewable energy sources, the effect of your turbine is to reduce the use of coal-fired power stations. That’s reasonable, because coal is the least preferable source in the electricity mix. In this case the carbon saving is roughly one kilogram per kWh, so you save 25 tonnes per year and pay back the embodied carbon in just 14 months – a great start.

D The UK government has recently introduced a subsidy for renewable energy that pays individual producers 24p per energy unit on top of all the money they save on their own fuel bill, and on selling surplus electricity back to the grid at approximately 5p per unit. With all this taken into account, individuals would get back £7,250 per year on their investment. That pays back the costs in about six years. It makes good financial sense and, for people who care about the carbon savings for their own sake, it looks like a fantastic move. The carbon investment pays back in just over a year, and every year after that is a 25-tonne carbon saving. (It’s important to remember that all these sums rely on a wind turbine having a favourable location)

E So, at face value, the turbine looks like a great idea environmentally, and a fairly good long-term investment economically for the person installing it. However, there is a crucial perspective missing from the analysis so far. Has the government spent its money wisely? It has invested 24p per unit into each micro-turbine. That works out at a massive £250 per tonne of carbon saved. My calculations tell me that had the government invested its money in offshore wind farms, instead of subsidising smaller domestic turbines, they would have broken even after eight years. In other words, the micro-turbine works out as a good investment for individuals, but only because the government spends, and arguably wastes, so much money subsidising it. Carbon savings are far lower too.

F Nevertheless, although the micro-wind turbine subsidy doesn’t look like the very best way of spending government resources on climate change mitigation, we are talking about investing only about 0.075 percent per year of the nation’s GDP to get a one percent reduction in carbon emissions, which is a worthwhile benefit. In other words, it could be much better, but it could be worse. In addition, such investment helps to promote and sustain developing technology.

G There is one extra favourable way of looking at the micro-wind turbine, even if it is not the single best way of investing money in cutting carbon. Input- output modelling has told us that it is actually quite difficult to spend money without having a negative carbon impact. So if the subsidy encourages people to spend their money on a carbon-reducing technology such as a wind turbine, rather than on carbon-producing goods like cars, and services such as overseas holidays, then the reductions in emissions will be greater than my simple sums above have suggested.

Questions 14-20
Reading Passage 2 has SEVEN paragraphs, A-G. Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

List of Headings
i A better use for large sums of money.
ii The environmental costs of manufacture and installation.
iii Estimates of the number of micro-turbines in use.
iv The environmental benefits of running a micro-turbine.
v The size and output of the largest type of micro-turbine.
vi A limited case for subsidising micro-turbines.
vii Recent improvements in the design of micro-turbines.
viii An indirect method of reducing carbon emissions.
ix The financial benefits of running a micro-turbine.

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

Questions 21-22
Choose TWO letters, A-E.

The list below contains some possible statements about micro wind-turbines.

Which TWO of these statements are made by the writer of the passage?

A in certain areas permission is required to install them
B their exact energy output depends on their position
C they probably take less energy to make than other engines
D the UK government contributes towards their purchase cost
E they can produce more energy than a household needs

Questions 23-26
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

(23)………………………would be a more effective target for government investment than micro-turbines.

An indirect benefit of subsidising micro-turbines is the support it provides for (24)……………………..

Most spending has a (25)……………………..effect on the environment.

If people buy a micro-turbine, they have less money to spend on things like foreign holidays and (26)……………..

Pottery production in ancient Akrotiri

Excavations at the site of prehistoric Akrotiri, on the coast of the Aegean Sea, have revealed much about the technical aspects of pottery manufacture, indisputably one of the basic industries of this Greek city. However, considerably less is known about the socio-economic context and the way production was organised.

The bulk of pottery found at Akrotiri is locally made, and dates from the late fifteenth century BC. It clearly fulfilled a vast range of the settlement’s requirements: more than fifty different types of pots can be distinguished. The pottery found includes a wide variety of functional types like storage jars, smaller containers, pouring vessels, cooking pots, drinking vessels and so on, which all relate to specific activities and which would have been made and distributed with those activities in mind. Given the large number of shapes produced and the relatively high degree of standardisation, it has generally been assumed that most, if not all, of Akrotiri pottery was produced by specialised craftsmen in a non­domestic context. Unfortunately neither the potters’ workshops nor kilns have been found within the excavated area. The reason may be that the ceramic workshops were located on the periphery of the site, which has not yet been excavated. In any event, the ubiquity of the pottery, and the consistent repetition of the same types in different sizes, suggests production on an industrial scale.

The Akrotirian potters seem to have responded to pressures beyond their households, namely to the increasing complexity of regional distribution and exchange systems. We can imagine them as full­time craftsmen working permanently in a high production-rate craft such as pottery manufacture, and supporting themselves entirely from the proceeds of their craft. In view of the above, one can begin to speak in terms of mass-produced pottery and the existence of organised workshops of craftsmen during the period 1550-1500 BC. Yet, how pottery production was organised at Akrotiri remains an open question, as there is no real documentary evidence. Our entire knowledge comes from the ceramic material itself, and the tentative conclusions which can be drawn from it.

The invention of units of quantity and of a numerical system to count them was of capital importance for an exchange-geared society such as that of Akrotiri. In spite of the absence of any written records, the archaeological evidence reveals that concepts of measurements, both of weight and number, had been formulated. Standard measures may already have been in operation, such as those evidenced by a graduated series of lead weights – made in disc form – found at the site. The existence of units of capacity in Late Bronze Age times is also evidenced by the notation of units of a liquid measure for wine on excavated containers.

It must be recognised that the function of pottery vessels plays a very important role in determining their characteristics. The intended function affects the choice of clay, the production technique, and the shape and the size of the pots. For example, large storage jars (pithoi) would be needed to store commodities, whereas smaller containers would be used for transport. In fact, the length of a man’s arm limits the size of a smaller pot to a capacity of about twenty litres; that is also the maximum a man can comfortably carry.

The various sizes of container would thus represent standard quantities of a commodity, which is a fundamental element in the function of exchange. Akrotirian merchants handling a commodity such as wine would have been able to determine easily the amount of wine they were transporting from the number of containers they carried in their ships, since the capacity of each container was known to be 14-18 litres. (We could draw a parallel here with the current practice in Greece of selling oil in 17 kilogram tins)

We may therefore assume that the shape, capacity, and, sometimes decoration of vessels are indicative of the commodity contained by them. Since individual transactions would normally involve different quantities of a given commodity, a range of ‘standardised’ types of vessel would be needed to meet traders’ requirements.

In trying to reconstruct systems of capacity by measuring the volume of excavated pottery, a rather generous range of tolerances must be allowed. It seems possible that the potters of that time had specific sizes of vessel in mind, and tried to reproduce them using a specific type and amount of clay. However, it would be quite difficult for them to achieve the exact size required every time, without any mechanical means of regulating symmetry and wall thickness, and some potters would be more skilled than others. In addition, variations in the repetition of types and size may also occur because of unforeseen circumstances during the throwing process. For instance, instead of destroying the entire pot if the clay in the rim contained a piece of grit, a potter might produce a smaller pot by simply cutting off the rim. Even where there is no noticeable external difference between pots meant to contain the same quantity of a commodity, differences in their capacity can actually reach one or two litres. In one case the deviation from the required size appears to be as much as 10-20 percent.

The establishment of regular trade routes within the Aegean led to increased movement of goods; consequently a regular exchange of local, luxury and surplus goods, including metals, would have become feasible as a result of the advances in transport technology. The increased demand for standardised exchanges, inextricably linked to commercial transactions, might have been one of the main factors which led to the standardisation of pottery production. Thus, the whole network of ceramic production and exchange would have depended on specific regional economic conditions, and would reflect the socio-economic structure of prehistoric Akrotiri.

Questions 27-28
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

27. What does the writer say about items of pottery excavated at Akrotiri?
A There was very little duplication.
B They would have met a big variety of needs.
C Most of them had been imported from other places.
D The intended purpose of each piece was unclear.

28. The assumption that pottery from Akrotiri was produced by specialists is partly based on
A the discovery of kilns.
B the central location of workshops.
C the sophistication of decorative patterns.
D the wide range of shapes represented.

Questions 29-32
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below.

29. The assumption that standard units of weight were in use could be based on
30. Evidence of the use of standard units of volume is provided by
31. The size of certain types of containers would have been restricted by
32. Attempts to identify the intended capacity of containers are complicated by

A the discovery of a collection of metal discs.
B the size and type of the sailing ships in use.
C variations in the exact shape and thickness of similar containers.
D the physical characteristics of workmen.
E marks found on wine containers.
F the variety of commodities for which they would have been used.

Questions 33-38
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3? 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

33. There are plans to excavate new areas of the archaeological site in the near future.
34. Some of the evidence concerning pottery production in ancient Akrotiri comes from written records.
35. Pots for transporting liquids would have held no more than about 20 litres.
36. It would have been hard for merchants to calculate how much wine was on their ships.
37. The capacity of containers intended to hold the same amounts differed by up to 20 percent.
38. Regular trading of goods around the Aegean would have led to the general standardisation of quantities.

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

39. What does the writer say about the standardisation of container sizes?
A Containers which looked the same from the outside often varied in capacity.
B The instruments used to control container size were unreliable.
C The unsystematic use of different types of clay resulted in size variations.
D Potters usually discarded containers which were of a non-standard size.

40. What is probably the main purpose of Reading Passage 3?
A To evaluate the quality of pottery containers found in prehistoric Akrotiri.
B To suggest how features of pottery production at Akrotiri reflected other developments in the region.
C To outline the development of pottery-making skills in ancient Greece.
D To describe methods for storing and transporting household goods in prehistoric societies.