Category: Academic Reading Tests

Reading Passage 1

Johnson’s Dictionary

For the century before Johnson’s Dictionary was published in 1775, there had been concern about the state of the English language. There was no standard way of speaking or writing and no agreement as to the best way of bringing some order to the chaos of English spelling. Dr Johnson provided the solution.

There had, of course, been dictionaries in the past, the first of these being a little book of some 120 pages, compiled by a certain Robert Cawdray, published in 1604 under the title A Table Alphabetical of hard usual English words. Like the various dictionaries that came after it during the seventeenth century, Cawdray’s tended to concentrate on ‘scholarly’ words; one function of the dictionary was to enable its student to convey an impression of fine learning.

Beyond the practical need to make order out of chaos, the rise of dictionaries is associated with the rise of the English middle class, who were anxious to define and circumscribe the various worlds to conquer -lexical as well as social and commercial. It is highly appropriate that Dr Samuel Johnson, the very model of an eighteenth-century literary man, as famous in his own time as in ours, should have published his Dictionary at the very beginning of the heyday of the middle class.

Johnson was a poet and critic who raised common sense to the heights of genius. His approach to the problems that had worried writers throughout the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was intensely practical. Up until his time, the task of producing a dictionary on such a large scale had seemed impossible without the establishment of an academy to make decisions about right and wrong usage. Johnson decided he did not need an academy to settle arguments about language; he would write a dictionary himself; and he would do it single-handed. Johnson signed the contract for the Dictionary with the bookseller Robert Dosley at a breakfast held at the Golden Anchor Inn near Holborn Bar on 18 June 1764. He was to be paid £1,575 in instalments, and from this he took money to rent 17 Gough Square, in which he set up his ‘dictionary workshop’.

James Boswell, his biographer described the garret where Johnson worked as ‘fitted up like a counting house’ with a long desk running down the middle at which the copying clerks would work standing up. Johnson himself was stationed on a rickety chair at an ‘old crazy deal table’ surrounded by a chaos of borrowed books. He was also helped by six assistants, two of whom died whilst the Dictionary was still in preparation.

The work was immense; filing about eighty large notebooks (and without a library to hand), Johnson wrote the definitions of over 40,000 words, and illustrated their many meanings with some 114,000 quotations drawn from English writing on every subject, from the Elizabethans to his own time. He did not expel to achieve complete originality. Working to a deadline, he had to draw on the best of all previous dictionaries, and to make his work one of heroic synthesis. In fact, it was very much more. Unlike his predecessors, Johnson treated English very practically, as a living language, with many different shades of meaning. He adopted his definitions on the principle of English common law – according to precedent. After its publication, his Dictionary was not seriously rivalled for over a century.

After many vicissitudes the Dictionary was finally published on 15 April 1775. It was instantly recognised as a landmark throughout Europe. ‘This very noble work;’ wrote the leading Italian lexicographer, will be a perpetual monument of Fame to the Author, an Honour to his own Country in particular, and a general Benefit to the republic of Letters throughout Europe. The fact that Johnson had taken on the Academies of Europe and matched them (everyone knew that forty French academics had taken forty years to produce the first French national dictionary) was cause for much English celebration.

Johnson had worked for nine years, ‘with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow’. For all its faults and eccentricities his two-volume work is a masterpiece and a landmark, in his own words, ‘setting the orthography, displaying the analogy, regulating the structures, and ascertaining the significations of English words’. It is the cornerstone of Standard English, an achievement which, in James Boswell’s words, ‘conferred stability on the language of his country’.

The Dictionary, together with his other writing, made Johnson famous and so well esteemed that his friends were able to prevail upon King George III to offer him a pension. From then on, he was to become the Johnson of folklore.

Questions 1-3

Choose THREE letters A-H. Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.

NB Your answers may be given in any order.

Which THREE of the following statements are true of Johnson’s Dictionary?

1. It avoided all scholarly words.
2. It was the only English dictionary in general use for 200 years.
3. It was famous because of the large number of people involved.
4. It focused mainly on language from contemporary texts.
5. There was a time limit for its completion.
6. It ignored work done by previous dictionary writers.
7. It took into account subtleties of meaning.
8. Its definitions were famous for their originality.

Questions 4-7

Complete the summary.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

In 1764 Dr Johnson accepted the contract to produce a dictionary. Having rented a garret, he took on a number of (4) ……………….. , who stood at a long central desk. Johnson did not have a (5) ……………….. available to him, but eventually produced definitions of in excess of 40,000 words written down in 80 large notebooks. On publication, the Dictionary was immediately hailed in many European countries as a landmark. According to his biographer, James Boswell, Johnson’s principal achievement was to bring (6) ……………….. to the English language. As a reward for his hard work, he was granted a (7) ……………….. by the king.

Questions 8-13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet, write

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

8. The growing importance of the middle classes led to an increased demand for dictionaries.
9. Johnson has become more well known since his death.
10. Johnson had been planning to write a dictionary for several years.
11. Johnson set up an academy to help with the writing of his Dictionary.
12. Johnson only received payment for his Dictionary on its completion.
13. Not all of the assistants survived to see the publication of the Dictionary.

Reading Passage 2

Nature or Nurture?

A A few years ago, in one of the most fascinating and disturbing experiments in behavioural psychology, Stanley Milgram of Yale University tested 40 subjects from all walks of life for their willingness to obey instructions given by a ‘leader’ in a situation in which the subjects might feel a personal distaste for the actions they were called upon to perform. Specifically, Milgram told each volunteer ‘teacher-subject’ that the experiment was in the noble cause of education, and was designed to test whether or not punishing pupils for their mistakes would have a positive effect on the pupils’ ability to learn.

B Milgram’s experimental set-up involved placing the teacher-subject before a panel of thirty switches with labels ranging from ’15 volts of electricity (slight shock)’ to ‘450 volts (danger – severe shock)’ in steps of 15 volts each. The teacher-subject was told that whenever the pupil gave the wrong answer to a question, a shock was to be administered, beginning at the lowest level and increasing in severity with each successive wrong answer. The supposed ‘pupil’ was in reality an actor hired by Milgram to simulate receiving the shocks by emitting a spectrum of groans, screams and writhings together with an assortment of statements and expletives denouncing both the experiment and the experimenter. Milgram told the teacher-subject to ignore the reactions of the pupil, and to administer whatever level of shock was called for, as per the rule governing the experimental situation of the moment.

C As the experiment unfolded, the pupil would deliberately give the wrong answers to questions posed by the teacher, thereby bringing on various electrical punishments, even up to the danger level of 300 volts and beyond. Many of the teacher-subjects balked at administering the higher levels of punishment, and turned to Milgram with questioning looks and/or complaints about continuing the experiment. In these situations, Milgram calmly explained that the teacher-subject was to ignore the pupil’s cries for mercy and carry on with the experiment. If the subject was still reluctant to proceed, Milgram said that it was important for the sake of the experiment that the procedure be followed through to the end. His final argument was, ‘You have no other choice. You must go on.’ What Milgram was trying to discover was the number of teacher-subjects who would be willing to administer the highest levels of shock, even in the face of strong personal and moral revulsion against the rules and conditions of the experiment.

D Prior to carrying out the experiment, Milgram explained his idea to a group of 39 psychiatrists and asked them to predict the average percentage of people in an ordinary population who would be willing to administer the highest shock level of 450 volts. The overwhelming consensus was that virtually all the out teacher-subjects would refuse to obey the experimenter. The psychiatrists felt that ‘most subjects would not go beyond 150 volts’ and they further anticipated that only four per cent would go up to 300 volts. Furthermore, they thought that only a lunatic fringe of about one in 1,000 would give the highest shock of 450 volts. Furthermore, they thought that only a lunatic cringe of about one in 1,000 would give the highest shock of 450 volts.

E What were the actual results? Well, over 60 per cent of the teacher-subjects continued to obey Milgram up to the 450-volt limit! In repetitions of the experiment in other countries, the percentage of obedient teacher-subjects was even higher, reaching 85 per cent in one country. How can we possibly account for this vast discrepancy between what calm, rational, knowledgeable people predict in the comfort of their study and what pressured, flustered, but cooperative teachers’ actually do in the laboratory of real life?

F One’s first inclination might be to argue that there must be some sort of built-in animal aggression instinct that was activated by the experiment, and that Milgram’s teacher-subjects were just following a genetic need to discharge this pent-up primal urge onto the pupil by administering the electrical shock. A modern hard-core sociobiologist might even go so far as to claim that this aggressive instinct evolved as an advantageous trait, having been of survival value to our ancestors in their struggle against the hardships of life on the plains and in the caves, ultimately finding its way into our genetic make-up as a remnant of our ancient animal ways.

G An alternative to this notion of genetic programming is to see the teacher-subjects’ actions as a result of the social environment under which the experiment was carried out. As Milgram himself pointed out, ‘Most subjects in the experiment see their behaviour in a larger context that is benevolent and useful to society – the pursuit of scientific truth. The psychological laboratory has a strong claim to legitimacy and evokes trust and confidence in those who perform there. An action such as shocking a victim, which in isolation appears evil, acquires a completely different meaning when placed in this setting.’

H Thus, in this explanation the subject merges his unique personality and personal and moral code with that of larger institutional structures, surrendering individual properties like loyalty, self-sacrifice and discipline to the service of malevolent systems of authority.

I Here we have two radically different explanations for why so many teacher-subjects were willing to forgo their sense of personal responsibility for the sake of an institutional authority figure. The problem for biologists, psychologists and anthropologists is to sort which of these two polar explanations is more plausible. This, in essence, is the problem of modern sociobiology – to discover the degree to which hard-wired genetic programming dictates, or at least strongly biases, the interaction of animals and humans with their environment, that is, their behaviour. Put another way, sociobiology is concerned with elucidating the biological basis of all behaviour.

Questions 14-19

Reading Passage 2 has nine paragraphs, A-I.

Write the correct letter A-I in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

14. a biological explanation of the teacher-subjects’ behaviour
15. the explanation Milgram gave the teacher-subjects for the experiment
16. the identity of the pupils
17. the expected statistical outcome
18. the general aim of sociobiological study
19. the way Milgram persuaded the teacher-subjects to continue

Questions 20-22

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

Write your answers in boxes 20-22 on your answer sheet.

20. The teacher-subjects were told that they were testing whether
    1. a 450-volt shock was dangerous
    2. punishment helps learning
    3. the pupils were honest
    4. they were suited to teaching
21. The teacher-subjects were instructed to
    1. stop when a pupil asked them to
    2. denounce pupils who made mistakes
    3. reduce the shock level after a correct answer
    4. give punishment according to a rule
22. Before the experiment took place the psychiatrists
    1. believed that a shock of 150 volts was too dangerous
    2. failed to agree on how the teacher-subjects would respond to instructions
    3. underestimated the teacher-subjects’ willingness to comply with experimental procedure
    4. thought that many of the teacher-subjects would administer a shock of 450 volts

Questions 23-26

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet, write

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

23. Several of the subjects were psychology students at Yale University.
24. Some people may believe that the teacher-subjects’ behaviour could be explained as a positive survival mechanism.
25. In a sociological explanation, personal values are more powerful than authority.
26. Milgram’s experiment solves an important question in sociobiology.

Reading Passage 3

The Truth About the Environment

For many environmentalists, the world seems to be getting worse. They have developed a hit-list of our main fears: that natural resources are running out; that the population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat; that species are becoming extinct in vast numbers, and that the planet’s air and water are becoming ever more polluted.

But a quick look at the facts shows a different picture. First, energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not less so, since the book ‘The limits to Growth’ was published in 1972 by a group of scientists. Second, more food is now produced per head of the world’s population than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving. Third, although species are indeed becoming extinct, only about 0.7% of them are expelled to disappear in the next 50 years, not 25-50%, as has so often been predicted. And finally, most forms of environmental pollution either appear to have been exaggerated, or are transient – associated with the early phases of industrialisation and therefore best cured not by restricting economic growth, but by accelerating it. One form of pollution – the release of greenhouse gases that causes global warming – does appear to be a phenomenon that is going to extend well into our future, but its total impact is unlikely to pose a devastating problem. A bigger problem may well turn out to be an inappropriate response to it.

Yet opinion polls suggest that many people nurture the belief that environmental standards are declining and four factors seem to cause this disjunction between perception and reality.

One is the lopsidedness built into scientific research. Scientific funding goes mainly to areas with many problems. That may be wise policy but it will also create an impression that many more potential problems exist than is the case.

Secondly, environmental groups need to be noticed by the mass media. They also need to keep the money rolling in. Understandably, perhaps, they sometimes overstate their arguments. In 1997, for example, the World Wide Fund for Nature issued a press release entitled: ‘Two thirds of the world’s forests lost forever’. The truth turns out to be nearer 20%.

Though these groups are run overwhelmingly by selfless folk, they nevertheless share many of the characteristics of other lobby groups. That would matter less if people applied the same degree of scepticism to environmental lobbying as they do to lobby groups in other fields. A trade organisation arguing for, say, weaker pollution control is instantly seen as self-interested. Yet a green organisation opposing such a weakening is seen as altruistic, even if an impartial view of the controls in question might suggest they are doing more harm than good.

A third source of confusion is the attitude of the media. People are dearly more curious about bad news than good. Newspapers and broadcasters are there to provide what the public wants. That, however, can lead to significant distortions of perception. An example was America’s encounter with EI Nino in 1997 and 1998. This climatic phenomenon was accused of wrecking tourism, causing allergies, melting the ski-slopes, and causing 22 deaths. However, according to an article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the damage it did was estimated at US$4 billion but the benefits amounted to some US$19 billion. These came from higher winter temperatures (which saved an estimated 850 lives, reduced heating costs and diminished spring floods caused by meltwaters).

The fourth factor is poor individual perception. People worry that the endless rise in the amount of stuff everyone throws away will cause the world to run out of places to dispose of waste. Yet, even if America’s trash output continues to rise as it has done in the past, and even if the American population doubles by 2100, all the rubbish America produces through the entire 21st century will still take up only one-12,000th of the area of the entire United States.

So what of global warming? As we know, carbon dioxide emissions are causing the planet to warm. The best estimates are that the temperatures will rise by 2-3°C in this century, causing considerable problems, at a total cost of US$5,000 billion.

Despite the intuition that something drastic needs to be done about such a costly problem, economic analyses dearly show it will be far more expensive to cut carbon dioxide emissions radically than to pay the costs of adaptation to the increased temperatures. A model by one of the main authors of the United Nations Climate Change Panel shows how an expected temperature increase of 2.1 degrees in 2100 would only be diminished to an increase of 1.9 degrees. Or to put it another way, the temperature increase that the planet would have experienced in 2094 would be postponed to 2100.

So this does not prevent global warming, but merely buys the world six years. Yet the cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, for the United States alone, will be higher than the cost of solving the world’s single, most pressing health problem: providing universal access to clean drinking water and sanitation. Such measures would avoid 2 million deaths every year, and prevent half a billion people from becoming seriously ill.

It is crucial that we look at the facts if we want to make the best possible decisions for the future. It may be costly to be overly optimistic – but more costly still to be too pessimistic.

Questions 27-32

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet, write

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

27. Environmentalists take a pessimistic view of the world for a number of reasons.
28. Data on the Earth’s natural resources has only been collected since 1972.
29. The number of starving people in the world has increased in recent years.
30. Extinct species are being replaced by new species.
31. Some pollution problems have been correctly linked to industrialisation.
32. It would be best to attempt to slow down economic growth.

Questions 33-37

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

Write your answers in boxes 33-37 on your answer sheet.

33. What aspect of scientific research does the writer express concern about in paragraph 4?
    1. the need to produce results
    2. the lack of financial support
    3. the selection of areas to research
    4. the desire to solve every research problem
34. The writer quotes from the Worldwide Fund for Nature to illustrate how
    1. influential the mass media can be
    2. effective environmental groups can be
    3. the mass media can help groups raise funds
    4. environmental groups can exaggerate their claims
35. 35 What is the writer’s main point about lobby groups in paragraph 6?
    1. Some are more active than others
    2. Some are better organised than others
    3. Some receive more criticism than others
    4. Some support more important issues than others
36. The writer suggests that newspapers print items that are intended to
    1. educate readers
    2. meet their readers’ expectations
    3. encourage feedback from readers
    4. mislead readers
37. What does the writer say about America’s waste problem?
    1. It will increase in line with population growth
    2. It is not as important as we have been led to believe
    3. It has been reduced through public awareness of the issues
    4. It is only significant in certain areas of the country

Questions 38-40

Complete the summary with the list of words A-I below.

Write the correct letter A-I in boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet.

GLOBAL WARMING
The writer admits that global warming is a (38) ……………….. challenge, but says that it will not have a catastrophic impact on our future, if we deal with it in the (39) ……………….. way. If we try to reduce the levels of greenhouse gases, he believes that it would only have a minimal impact on rising temperatures. He feels it would be better to spend money on the more (40) ……………….. health problem of providing the world’s population with clean drinking water.

A unrealistic               B agreed              C expensive                D right               E long-term
F usual                       G surprising          H personal                 I urgent

IELTS Academic Reading Passage 1 Johnson’s Dictionary Answers

1. D
2. E
3. G
4. copying clerks
5. library
6. stability
7. pension
8. true
9. false
10. not given
11. false
12. false
13. true

IELTS Academic Reading Passage 2 Nature or Nurture? Answers

14. F
15. A
16. B
17. D
18. E
19. C
20. B
21. D
22. C
23. not given
24. true
25. false
26. false

IELTS Academic Reading Passage 3 Nature or Nurture? Answers

27. yes
28. not given
29. no
30. not given
31. yes
32. no
33. C
34. D
35. C
36. B
37. B
38. E
39. D
40. I

Reading Passage 1

Early Childhood Education

A ‘Education To Be More’ was published last August. It was the report of the New Zealand Government’s Early Childhood Care and Education Working Group. The report argued for enhanced equity of access and better funding for childcare and early childhood education institutions. Unquestionably, that’s a real need; but since parents don’t normally send children to pre-schools until the age of three, are we missing out on the most important years of all?

B A 13-year study of early childhood development at Harvard University has shown that, by the age of three, most children have the potential to understand about 1000 words – most of the language they will use in ordinary conversation for the rest of their lives.

Furthermore, research has shown that while every child is born with a natural curiosity, it can be suppressed dramatically during the second and third years of life. Researchers claim that the human personality is formed during the first two years of life, and during the first three years children learn the basic skills they will use in all their later learning both at home and at school. Once over the age of three, children continue to expand on existing knowledge of the world.

C It is generally acknowledged that young people from poorer socio-economic backgrounds tend to do less well in our education system. That’s observed not just in New Zealand, but also in Australia, Britain and America. In an attempt to overcome that educational under-achievement, a nationwide programme called ‘Headstart’ was launched in the United States in 1965. A lot of money was poured into it. It took children into pre-school institutions at the age of three and was supposed to help the children of poorer families succeed in school.

Despite substantial funding, results have been disappointing. It is thought that there are two explanations for this. First, the programme began too late. Many children who entered it at the age of three were already behind their peers in language and measurable intelligence. Second, the parents were not involved. At the end of each day, ‘Headstart’ children returned to the same disadvantaged home environment.

D As a result of the growing research evidence of the importance of the first three years of a child’s life and the disappointing results from ‘Headstart’, a pilot programme was launched in Missouri in the US that focused on parents as the child’s first teachers. The ‘Missouri’ programme was predicated on research showing that working with the family, rather than bypassing the parents, is the most effective way of helping children get off to the best possible start in life.

The four-year pilot study included 380 families who were about to have their first child and who represented a cross-section of socio-economic status, age and family configurations. They included single-parent and two-parent families, families in which both parents worked, and families with either the mother or father at home.

The programme involved trained parent-educators visiting the parents’ home and working with the parent, or parents, and the child. Information on child development, and guidance on things to look for and expect as the child grows were provided, plus guidance in fostering the child’s intellectual, language, social and motor-skill development. Periodic check-ups of the child’s educational and sensory development (hearing and vision) were made to detect possible handicaps that interfere with growth and development. Medical problems were referred to professionals.

Parent-educators made personal visits to homes and monthly group meetings were held with other new parents to share experience and discuss topics of interest. Parent resource centres, located in school buildings, offered learning materials for families and facilitators for child care.

E At the age of three, the children who had been involved in the ‘Missouri’ programme were evaluated alongside a cross-section of children selected from the same range of socio-economic backgrounds and family situations, and also a random sample of children that age. The results were phenomenal. By the age of three, the children in the programme were significantly more advanced in language development than their peers, had made greater strides in problem solving and other intellectual skills, and were further along in social development. In fact, the average child on the programme was performing at the level of the top 15 to 20 per cent of their peers in such things as auditory comprehension, verbal ability and language ability.

Most important of all, the traditional measures of ‘risk’, such as parents’ age and education, or whether they were a single parent, bore little or no relationship to the measures of achievement and language development. Children in the programme performed equally well regardless of socio-economic disadvantages. Child abuse was virtually eliminated. The one factor that was found to affect the child’s development was family stress leading to a poor quality of parent-child interaction. That interaction was not necessarily bad in poorer families.

F These research findings are exciting. There is growing evidence in New Zealand that children from poorer socio-economic backgrounds are arriving at school less well developed and that our school system tends to perpetuate that disadvantage. The initiative outlined above could break that cycle of disadvantage. The concept of working with parents in their homes, or at their place of work, contrasts quite markedly with the report of the Early Childhood Care and Education Working Group. Their focus is on getting children and mothers access to childcare and institutionalized early childhood education. Education from the age of three to five is undoubtedly vital, but without a similar focus on parent education and on the vital importance of the first three years, some evidence indicates that it will not be enough to overcome educational inequity.

Questions 1-4

Reading Passage 1 has six sections, A-F.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-F in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

1. details of the range of family types involved in an education programme
2. reasons why a child’s early years are so important
3. reasons why an education programme failed
4. a description of the positive outcomes of an education programme

Questions 5-10

Classify the following features as characterising

1. the ‘Headstart’ programme
2. the ‘Missouri’ programme
3. both the ‘Headstart’ and the ‘Missouri’ programmes
4. neither the `Headstart’ nor the ‘Missouri’ programme

Write the correct letter A, B, C or D in boxes 5-10 on your answer sheet.

5. was administered to a variety of poor and wealthy families
6. continued with follow-up assistance in elementary schools
7. did not succeed in its aim
8. supplied many forms of support and training to parents
9. received insufficient funding
10. was designed to improve pre-schoolers’ educational development

Questions 11-13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet, write

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

11. Most ‘Missouri’ programme three-year-olds scored highly in areas such as listening, speaking, reasoning and interacting with others.
12. ‘Missouri’ programme children of young, uneducated, single parents scored less highly on the tests.
13. The richer families in the ‘Missouri’ programme had higher stress levels.

Reading Passage 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 on the following pages.

Disappearing Delta

A The fertile land of the Nile delta is being eroded along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast at an astounding rate, in some parts estimated at 100 metres per year. In the past, land scoured away from the coastline by the currents of the Mediterranean Sea used to be replaced by sediment brought dawn to the delta by the River Nile, but this is no longer happening.

B Up to now, people have blamed this loss of delta land on the two large dams at Aswan in the south of Egypt, which hold back virtually all of the sediment that used to flow down the river. Before the dams were built, the Nile flowed freely, carrying huge quantities of sediment north from Africa’s interior to be deposited on the Nile delta. This continued for 7,000 years, eventually covering a region of over 22,000 square kilometres with layers of fertile silt. Annual flooding brought in new, nutrient-rich soil to the delta region, replacing what had been washed away by the sea, and dispensing with the need for fertilizers in Egypt’s richest food-growing area. But when the Aswan dams were constructed in the 20th century to provide electricity and irrigation, and to protect the huge population centre of Cairo and its surrounding areas from annual flooding and drought, most of the sediment with its natural fertilizer accumulated up above the dam in the southern, upstream half of Lake Nasser, instead of passing down to the delta.

C Now, however, there turns out to be more to the story. It appears that the sediment-free water emerging from the Aswan dams picks up silt and sand as it erodes the river bed and banks on the 800-kilometre trip to Cairo. Daniel Jean Stanley of the Smithsonian Institute noticed that water samples taken in Cairo, just before the river enters the delta, indicated that the river sometimes carries more than 850 grams of sediment per cubic metre of water – almost half of what it carried before the dams were built. ‘I’m ashamed to say that the significance of this didn’t strike me until after I had read 50 or 60 studies,’ says Stanley in Marine Geology. ‘There is still a lot of sediment coming into the delta, but virtually no sediment comes out into the Mediterranean to replenish the Coastline. So this sediment must be trapped on the delta itself.’

D Once north of Cairo, most of the Nile water is diverted into more than 10,000 kilometres of irrigation canals and only a small proportion reaches the sea directly through the rivers in the delta. The water in the irrigation canals is still or very slow-moving and thus cannot carry sediment, Stanley explains.

E The farms on the delta plains and fishing and aquaculture in the lagoons account for much of Egypt’s food supply. But by the time the sediment has come to rest in the fields and lagoons it is laden with municipal, industrial and agricultural waste from the Cairo region, which is home to more than 40 million people. ‘Pollutants are building up faster and faster’ says Stanley.

Based on his investigations of sediment from the delta lagoons, Frederic Siegel of George Washington University concurs. ‘In Manzalah Lagoon, for example, the increase in mercury, lead, copper and zinc coincided with the building of the High Dam at Aswan, the availability of cheap electricity, and the development of major power-based industries,’ he says. Since that time the concentration of mercury has increased significantly. Lead from engines that use leaded fuels and from other industrial sources has also increased dramatically. These poisons can easily enter the food chain, affecting the productivity of Fishing and Farming. Another problem is that agricultural wastes include fertilizers which stimulate increases in plant growth in the lagoons and upset the ecology of the area, with serious effects on the fishing industry.

F According to Siegel, international environmental organisations are beginning to pay closer attention to the region, partly because of the problems of erosion and pollution of the Nile delta, but principally because they fear the impact this situation could have on the whole Mediterranean coastal ecosystem. But there are no easy solutions. In the immediate Future, Stanley believes that one solution would be to make artificial floods to flush out the delta waterways, in the same way that natural floods did before the construction of the dams. He says, however, that in the long term an alternative process such as desalination may have to be used to increase the amount of water available, ‘In my view, Egypt must devise a way to have more water running through the river and the delta,’ says Stanley. Easier said than done in a desert region with a rapidly growing population.

Questions 14-17

Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F.

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B and D-F from the list of headings below.

List of Headings

1. Effects of irrigation on sedimentation
2. The danger of flooding the Cairo area
3. Causing pollution in the Mediterranean
4. Interrupting a natural process
5. The threat to food production
6. Less valuable sediment than before
7. Egypt’s disappearing coastline
8. Looking at the long-term impact

Example) Paragraph A                  vii
14) Paragraph B
Example) Paragraph C                  vi

15) Paragraph D
16) Paragraph E
17) Paragraph F

Questions 18-23

Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 18-23 on your answer sheet, write

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

18. Coastal erosion occurred along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast before the building of the Aswan dams.
19. Some people predicted that the Aswan dams would cause land loss before they were built.
20. The Aswan dams were built to increase the fertility of the Nile delta.
21. Stanley found that the levels of sediment in the river water in Cairo were relatively high.
22. Sediment in the irrigation canals on the Nile delta causes flooding.
23. Water is pumped from the irrigation canals into the lagoons.

Questions 24-26

Complete the summary of paragraphs E and F with the list of words A-H below.

Write the correct letter A-H in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.

1. artificial floods
2. desalination
3. delta waterways
4. natural floods
5. nutrients
6. pollutants
7. population control
8. sediment

In addition to the problem of coastal erosion, there has been a marked increase in the level of (24) ……………….. contained in the silt deposited in the Nile delta. To deal with this, Stanley suggests the use of (25) ……………….. in the short term, and increasing the amount of water available through (26) ……………….. in the longer term.

Reading Passage 3

The Return of Artificial Intelligence

A After years in the wilderness, the term ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) seems poised to make a comeback. AI was big in the 1980s but vanished in the 1990s. It re-entered public consciousness with the release of Al, a movie about a robot boy. This has ignited public debate about AI, but the term is also being used once more within the computer industry. Researchers, executives and marketing people are now using the expression without irony or inverted commas. And it is not always hype. The term is being applied, with some justification, to products that depend on technology that was originally developed by AI researchers. Admittedly, the rehabilitation of the term has a long way to go, and some firms still prefer to avoid using it. But the fact that others are starting to use it again suggests that AI has moved on from being seen as an over-ambitious and under-achieving field of research.

B The field was launched, and the term ‘artificial intelligence’ coined, at a conference in 1956 by a group of researchers that included Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, Herbert Simon and Alan Newell, all of whom went on to become leading figures in the field. The expression provided an attractive but informative name for a research programme that encompassed such previously disparate fields as operations research, cybernetics, logic and computer science. The goal they shared was an attempt to capture or mimic human abilities using machines. That said, different groups of researchers attacked different problems, from speech recognition to chess playing, in different ways; AI unified the field in name only. But it was a term that captured the public imagination.

C Most researchers agree that AI peaked around 1985. A public reared on science-fiction movies and excited by the growing power of computers had high expectations. For years, AI researchers had implied that a breakthrough was just around the corner. Marvin Minsky said in 1967 that within a generation the problem of creating ‘artificial intelligence’ would be substantially solved. Prototypes of medical-diagnosis programs and speech recognition software appeared to be making progress. It proved to be a false dawn. Thinking computers and household robots failed to materialise, and a backlash ensued. ‘There was undue optimism in the early 1980s,’ says David Leaky, a researcher at Indiana University. ‘Then when people realised these were hard problems, there was retrenchment. By the late 1980s, the term AI was being avoided by many researchers, who opted instead to align themselves with specific sub-disciplines such as neural networks, agent technology, case-based reasoning, and so on.’

D Ironically, in some ways AI was a victim of its own success. Whenever an apparently mundane problem was solved, such as building a system that could land an aircraft unattended, the problem was deemed not to have been AI in the first plate. ‘If it works, it can’t be AI,’ as Dr Leaky characterises it. The effect of repeatedly moving the goal-posts in this way was that AI came to refer to ‘blue-sky’ research that was still years away from commercialisation. Researchers joked that AI stood for ‘almost implemented’. Meanwhile, the technologies that made it onto the market, such as speech recognition, language translation and decision-support software, were no longer regarded as AI. Yet all three once fell well within the umbrella of AI research.

E But the tide may now be turning, according to Dr Leake. HNC Software of San Diego, backed by a government agency, reckon that their new approach to artificial intelligence is the most powerful and promising approach ever discovered. HNC claim that their system, based on a cluster of 30 processors, could be used to spot camouflaged vehicles on a battlefield or extract a voice signal from a noisy background – tasks humans can do well, but computers cannot. ‘Whether or not their technology lives up to the claims made for it, the fact that HNC are emphasising the use of AI is itself an interesting development,’ says Dr Leaky.

F Another factor that may boost the prospects for AI in the near future is that investors are now looking for firms using clever technology, rather than just a clever business model, to differentiate themselves. In particular, the problem of information overload, exacerbated by the growth of e-mail and the explosion in the number of web pages, means there are plenty of opportunities for new technologies to help filter and categorise information – classic AI problems. That may mean that more artificial intelligence companies will start to emerge to meet this challenge.

G The 1969 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, featured an intelligent computer called HAL 9000. As well as understanding and speaking English, HAL could play chess and even learned to lipread. HAL thus encapsulated the optimism of the 1960s that intelligent computers would be widespread by 2001. But 2001 has been and gone, and there is still no sign of a HAL-like computer. Individual systems can play chess or transcribe speech, but a general theory of machine intelligence still remains elusive. It may be, however, that the comparison with HAL no longer seems quite so important, and AI can now be judged by what it can do, rather than by how well it matches up to a 30-year-old science-fiction film. ‘People are beginning to realise that there are impressive things that these systems can do,’ says Dr Leake hopefully.

Questions 27-31

Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

27. how AI might have a military impact
28. the fact that AI brings together a range of separate research areas
29. the reason why AI has become a common topic of conversation again
30. how AI could help deal with difficulties related to the amount of information available electronically
31. where the expression AI was first used

Questions 32-37

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 32-37 on your answer sheet, write

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

32. The researchers who launched the field of AI had worked together on other projects in the past.
33. In 1985, AI was at its lowest point.
34. Research into agent technology was more costly than research into neural networks.
35. Applications of AI have already had a degree of success.
36. The problems waiting to be solved by AI have not changed since 1967.
37. The film 2001: A Space Odyssey reflected contemporary ideas about the potential of AI computers.

Questions 38-40

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

Write your answers in boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet.

38. According to researchers, in the late 1980s there was a feeling that
    1. a general theory of AI would never be developed.
    2. original expectations of AI may not have been justified.
    3. a wide range of applications was close to fruition.
    4. more powerful computers were the key to further progress.
39. In Dr Leake’s opinion, the reputation of AI suffered as a result of
    1. changing perceptions
    2. premature implementation
    3. poorly planned projects
    4. commercial pressures
40. The prospects for AI may benefit from
    1. existing AI applications
    2. new business models.
    3. orders from Internet-only companies
    4. new investment priorities

Reading Passage 1 Early Childhood Education Answers

1. D
2. B
3. C
4. E
5. B
6. D
7. A
8. B
9. D
10. C
11. true
12. false
13. not given

Reading Passage 2 Disappearing Delta Answers

14. iv
15. i
16. v
17. viii
18. yes
19. not given
20. no
21. yes
22. not given
23. yes
24. pollutants
25. artificial floods
26. desalination

Reading Passage 3 The Return of Artificial Intelligence Answers

27. E
28. B
29. A
30. F
31. B
32. not given
33. false
34. not given
35. true
36. false
37. true
38. B
39. A
40. D

Reading passage 1

Adults and children are frequently confronted with statements about the alarming rate of loss of tropical rainforests. For example, one graphic illustration to which children might readily relate is the estimate that rainforests are being destroyed at a rate equivalent to one thousand football fields every forty minutes – about the duration of a normal classroom period. In the face of the frequent and often vivid media coverage, it is likely that children will have formed ideas about rainforests – what and where they are, why they are important, what endangers them – independent of any formal tuition. It is also possible that some of these ideas will be mistaken.

Many studies have shown that children harbour misconceptions about ‘pure’, curriculum science. These misconceptions do not remain isolated but become incorporated into a multifaceted, but organised, conceptual framework, making it and the component ideas, some of which are erroneous, more robust but also accessible to modification. These ideas may be developed by children absorbing ideas through the popular media. Sometimes this information may be erroneous. It seems schools may not be providing an opportunity for children to re-express their ideas and so have them tested and refined by teachers and their peers.

Despite the extensive coverage in the popular media of the destruction of rainforests, little formal information is available about children’s ideas in this area. The aim of the present study is to start to provide such information, to help teachers design their educational strategies to build upon correct ideas and to displace misconceptions and to plan programmes in environmental studies in their schools.

The study surveys children’s scientific knowledge and attitudes to rainforests. Secondary school children were asked to complete a questionnaire containing five open-form questions. The most frequent responses to the first question were descriptions which are self-evident from the term ‘rainforest’. Some children described them as damp, wet or hot. The second question concerned the geographical location of rainforests. The commonest responses were continents or countries: Africa (given by 43% of children), South America (30%), Brazil (25%). Some children also gave more general locations, such as being near the Equator.

Responses to question three concerned the importance of rainforests. The dominant idea, raised by 64% of the pupils, was that rainforests provide animals with habitats. Fewer students responded that rainforests provide plant habitats, and even fewer mentioned the indigenous populations of rainforests. More girls (70%) than boys (60%) raised the idea of rainforest as animal habitats.

Similarly, but at a lower level, more girls (13%) than boys (5%) said that rainforests provided human habitats. These observations are generally consistent with our previous studies of pupils’ views about the use and conservation of rainforests, in which girls were shown to be more sympathetic to animals and expressed views which seem to place an intrinsic value on non-human animal life.

The fourth question concerned the causes of the destruction of rainforests. Perhaps encouragingly, more than half of the pupils (59%) identified that it is human activities which are destroying rainforests, some personalising the responsibility by the use of terms such as ‘we are’. About 18% of the pupils referred specifically to logging activity.

One misconception, expressed by some 10% of the pupils, was that acid rain is responsible for rainforest destruction; a similar proportion said that pollution is destroying rainforests. Here, children are confusing rainforest destruction with damage to the forests of Western Europe by these factors. While two fifths of the students provided the information that the rainforests provide oxygen, in some cases this response also embraced the misconception that rainforest destruction would reduce atmospheric oxygen, making the atmosphere incompatible with human life on Earth.

In answer to the final question about the importance of rainforest conservation, the majority of children simply said that we need rainforests to survive. Only a few of the pupils (6%) mentioned that rainforest destruction may contribute to global warming. This is surprising considering the high level of media coverage on this issue. Some children expressed the idea that the conservation of rainforests is not important.

The results of this study suggest that certain ideas predominate in the thinking of children about rainforests. Pupils’ responses indicate some misconceptions in basic scientific knowledge of rainforests’ ecosystems such as their ideas about rainforests as habitats for animals, plants and humans and the relationship between climatic change and destruction of rainforests.

Pupils did not volunteer ideas that suggested that they appreciated the complexity of causes of rainforest destruction. In other words, they gave no indication of an appreciation of either the range of ways in which rainforests are important or the complex social, economic and political factors which drive the activities which are destroying the rainforests. One encouragement is that the results of similar studies about other environmental issues suggest that older children seem to acquire the ability to appreciate, value and evaluate conflicting views. Environmental education offers an arena in which these skills can be developed, which is essential for these children as future decision – makers.

Questions 1-8

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1.

In boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet, write

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

1. The plight of the rainforests has largely been ignored by the media.
2. Children only accept opinions on rainforests that they encounter in their classrooms.
3. It has been suggested that children hold mistaken views about the ‘pure’ science that they study at school.
4. The fact that children’s ideas about science form part of a larger framework of ideas means that it is easier to change them.
5. The study involved asking children a number of yes/no questions such as ‘Are there any rainforests in Africa?’
6. Girls are more likely than boys to hold mistaken views about the rainforests’ destruction.
7. The study reported here follows on from a series of studies that have looked at children’s understanding of rainforests.
8. A second study has been planned to investigate primary school children’s ideas about rainforests.

Questions 9-13

The box below gives a list of responses A–P to the questionnaire discussed in Reading Passage 1.

Answer the following questions by choosing the correct responses A-P.

Write your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.

List of Responses

1. There is a complicated combination of reasons for the loss of the rainforests.
2. The rainforests are being destroyed by the same things that are destroying the forests of Western Europe.
3. Rainforests are located near the Equator.
4. Brazil is home to the rainforests.
5. Without rainforests some animals would have nowhere to live.
6. Rainforests are important habitats for a lot of plants.
7. People are responsible for the loss of the rainforests.
8. The rainforests are a source of oxygen.
9. Rainforests are of consequence for a number of different reasons.
10. As the rainforests are destroyed, the world gets warmer.
11. Without rainforests there would not be enough oxygen in the air.
12. There are people for whom the rainforests are home.
13. Rainforests are found in Africa.
14. Rainforests are not really important to human life.
15. The destruction of the rainforests is the direct result of logging activity.
16. Humans depend on the rainforests for their continuing existence.

9. What was the children’s most frequent response when asked where the rainforests were?
10. What was the most common response to the question about the importance of the rainforests?
11. What did most children give as the reason for the loss of the rainforests?
12. Why did most children think it important for the rainforests to be protected?
13. Which of the responses is cited as unexpectedly uncommon, given the amount of time spent on the issue by the newspapers and television?

Question 14

Choose the best answer A, B, C, D or E.

Which of the following is the most suitable title for Reading Passage 1?

1. The development of a programme in environmental studies within a science curriculum
2. Children’s ideas about the rainforests and the implications for course design
3. The extent to which children have been misled by the media concerning the rainforests.
4. How to collect, collate and describe the ideas of secondary school children.
5. The importance of the rainforests and the reasons for their destruction.

Reading Passage 2

what do whales feel?

Some of the senses that we and other terrestrial mammals take for granted are either reduced or absent in cetaceans or fail to function well in water. For example, it appears from their brain structure that toothed species are unable to smell. Baleen species, on the other hand, appear to have some related brain structures but it is not known whether these are functional. It has been speculated that, as the blowholes evolved and migrated to the top of the head, the neural pathways serving sense of smell may have been nearly all sacrificed. Similarly, although at least some cetaceans have taste buds, the nerves serving these have degenerated or are rudimentary.

The sense of touch has sometimes been described as weak too, but this view is probably mistaken. Trainers of captive dolphins and small whales often remark on their animals’ responsiveness to being touched or rubbed, and both captive and freeranging cetacean individuals of all species (particularly adults and calves, or members of the same subgroup) appear to make frequent contact. This contact may help to maintain order within a group, and stroking or touching are part of the courtship ritual in most species. The area around the blowhole is also particularly sensitive and captive animals often object strongly to being touched there.

The sense of vision is developed to different degrees in different species. Baleen species studied at close quarters underwater – specifically a grey whale calf in captivity for a year, and free-ranging right whales and humpback whales studied and filmed off Argentina and Hawaii – have obviously tracked objects with vision underwater, and they can apparently see moderately well both in water and in air. However, the position of the eyes so restricts the field of vision in baleen whales that they probably do not have stereoscopic vision.

On the other hand, the position of the eyes in most dolphins and porpoises suggests that they have stereoscopic vision forward and downward. Eye position in freshwater dolphins, which often swim on their side or upside down while feeding, suggests that what vision they have is stereoscopic forward and upward. By comparison, the bottlenose dolphin has extremely keen vision in water. Judging from the way it watches and tracks airborne flying fish, it can apparently see fairly well through the air–water interface as well. And although preliminary experimental evidence suggests that their in-air vision is poor, the accuracy with which dolphins leap high to take small fish out of a trainer’s hand provides anecdotal evidence to the contrary.

Such variation can no doubt be explained with reference to the habitats in which individual species have developed. For example, vision is obviously more useful to species inhabiting clear open waters than to those living in turbid rivers and flooded plains. The South American boutu and Chinese beiji, for instance, appear to have very limited vision, and the Indian susus are blind, their eyes reduced to slits that probably allow them to sense only the direction and intensity of light.

Although the senses of taste and smell appear to have deteriorated, and vision in water appears to be uncertain, such weaknesses are more than compensated for by cetaceans’ well-developed acoustic sense. Most species are highly vocal, although they vary in the range of sounds they produce, and many forage for food using echolocation. Large baleen whales primarily use the lower frequencies and are often limited in their repertoire. Notable exceptions are the nearly song-like choruses of bowhead whales in summer and the complex, haunting utterances of the humpback whales. Toothed species in general employ more of the frequency spectrum, and produce a wider variety of sounds, than baleen species (though the sperm whale apparently produces a monotonous series of high-energy clicks and little else). Some of the more complicated sounds are clearly communicative, although what role they may play in the social life and ‘culture’ of cetaceans has been more the subject of wild speculation than of solid science.

Questions 15-21

Complete the table below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Reading Passage 2 for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 15-21 on your answer sheet.

Sense	Species	Ability	Comments
Taste	some types	poor	nerves linked to their (15)…………………..are underdeveloped
Vision	(16)…………….	yes	probably do not have stereoscopic vision
Vision	dolphins, porpoises	yes	probably have stereoscopic vision (17)…………………and………………….
Vision	(18)………………….	yes	probably have stereoscopic vision forward and upward
Vision	bottlenose dolphin	yes	exceptional in (19)…………………and good in air water interface
Vision	boutu and beiji	poor	have limited vision
Vision	Indian sus	no	probably only sense direction and intensity of light
Hearing	most large baleen	yes	usually are (20)…………………repertoire limited
Hearing	(21)………………whales and …………… whales	yes	song like
Hearing	toothed	yes	use more of frequency spectrum; have wider repertoire

Questions 22-26

Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet.

22. Which of the senses is described here as being involved in mating?
23. Which species swims upside down while eating?
24. What can bottlenose dolphins follow from under the water?
25. Which type of habitat is related to good visual ability?
26. Which of the senses is best developed in cetaceans?

Reading Passage 3

visual symbols and the blind

Part 1
From a number of recent studies, it has become clear that blind people can appreciate the use of outlines and perspectives to describe the arrangement of objects and other surfaces in space. But pictures are more than literal representations. This fact was drawn to my attention dramatically when a blind woman in one of my investigations decided on her own initiative to draw a wheel as it was spinning. To show this motion, she traced a curve inside the circle (Fig. 1). I was taken aback. Lines of motion, such as the one she used, are a very recent invention in the history of illustration. Indeed, as art scholar David Kunzle notes, Wilhelm Busch, a trend-setting nineteenth-century cartoonist, used virtually no motion lines in his popular figures until about 1877.

When I asked several other blind study subjects to draw a spinning wheel, one particularly clever rendition appeared repeatedly: several subjects showed the wheel’s spokes as curved lines. When asked about these curves, they all described them as metaphorical ways of suggesting motion. Majority rule would argue that this device somehow indicated motion very well. But was it a better indicator than, say, broken or wavy lines – or any other kind of line, for that matter? The answer was not clear. So I decided to test whether various lines of motion were apt ways of showing movement or if they were merely idiosyncratic marks. Moreover, I wanted to discover whether there were differences in how the blind and the sighted interpreted lines of motion.

To search out these answers, I created raised-line drawings of five different wheels, depicting spokes with lines that curved, bent, waved, dashed and extended beyond the perimeter of the wheel. I then asked eighteen blind volunteers to feel the wheels and assign one of the following motions to each wheel: wobbling, spinning fast, spinning steadily, jerking or braking. My control group consisted of eighteen sighted undergraduates from the University of Toronto.

All but one of the blind subjects assigned distinctive motions to each wheel. Most guessed that the curved spokes indicated that the wheel was spinning steadily; the wavy spokes, they thought, suggested that the wheel was wobbling; and the bent spokes were taken as a sign that the wheel was jerking. Subjects assumed that spokes extending beyond the wheel’s perimeter signified that the wheel had its brakes on and that dashed spokes indicated the wheel was spinning quickly.

In addition, the favoured description for the sighted was the favoured description for the blind in every instance. What is more, the consensus among the sighted was barely higher than that among the blind. Because motion devices are unfamiliar to the blind, the task I gave them involved some problem solving. Evidently, however, the blind not only figured out meanings for each line of motion, but as a group they generally came up with the same meaning at least as frequently as did sighted subjects.

Part 2
We have found that the blind understand other kinds of visual metaphors as well. One blind woman drew a picture of a child inside a heart – choosing that symbol, she said, to show that love surrounded the child. With Chang Hong Liu, a doctoral student from China, I have begun exploring how well blind people understand the symbolism behind shapes such as hearts that do not directly represent their meaning.

We gave a list of twenty pairs of words to sighted subjects and asked them to pick from each pair the term that best related to a circle and the term that best related to a square. For example, we asked: What goes with soft? A circle or a square? Which shape goes with hard?

All our subjects deemed the circle soft and the square hard. A full 94% ascribed happy to the circle, instead of sad. But other pairs revealed less agreement: 79% matched fast to slow and weak to strong, respectively. And only 51% linked deep to circle and shallow to square. (See Fig. 2.) When we tested four totally blind volunteers using the same list, we found that their choices closely resembled those made by the sighted subjects. One man, who had been blind since birth, scored extremely well. He made only one match differing from the consensus, assigning ‘far’ to square and ‘near’ to circle. In fact, only a small majority of sighted subjects – 53% – had paired far and near to the opposite partners. Thus, we concluded that the blind interpret abstract shapes as sighted people do.

Questions 27-29

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write your answers in boxes 27-29 on your answer sheet.

27. In the first paragraph the writer makes the point that blind people
    1. may be interested in studying art.
    2. can draw outlines of different objects and surfaces.
    3. can recognise conventions such as perspective.
    4. can draw accurately.
28. 28 The writer was surprised because the blind woman
    1. drew a circle on her own initiative.
    2. did not understand what a wheel looked like.
    3. included a symbol representing movement.
    4. was the first person to use lines of motion.
29. From the experiment described in Part 1, the writer found that the blind subjects
    1. had good understanding of symbols representing movement.
    2. could control the movement of wheels very accurately.
    3. worked together well as a group in solving problems.
    4. got better results than the sighted undergraduates.

Questions 30-32

Look at the following diagrams (Questions 30–32), and the list of types of movement below.

Match each diagram to the type of movement A-E generally assigned to it in the experiment.

Choose the correct letter A-E and write them in boxes 30-32 on your answer sheet.

Questions 33-39

Complete the summary below using words from the box.

Write your answers in boxes 33-39 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any word more than once.

In the experiment described in Part 2, a set of word (33) ……………….. was used to investigate whether blind and sighted people perceived the symbolism in abstract (34) ……………….. in the same way. Subjects were asked which word fitted best with a circle and which with a square. From the (35) ……………….. volunteers, everyone thought a circle fitted ‘soft’ while a square fitted ‘hard’. However, only 51% of the (36) ……………….. volunteers assigned a circle to (37) ………………… When the test was later repeated with (38) ……………….. volunteers, it was found that they made (39) ……………….. choices.

associations	blind	deep	hard	hundred
identical	pairs	shapes	sighted	similar
shallow	soft	words

Question 40

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

Which of the following statements best summarises the writer’s general conclusion?

1. The blind represent some aspects of reality differently from sighted people.
2. The blind comprehend visual metaphors in similar ways to sighted people.
3. The blind may create unusual and effective symbols to represent reality.
4. The blind may be successful artists if given the right training.

Academic Reading Passage 2 Adults and children are frequently confronted with statements about the alarming rate of loss of tropical rainforests Answers

1. false
2. false
3. true
4. true
5. false
6. not given
7. true
8. not given
9. M
10. E
11. G
12. P
13. J

Academic Reading Passage 2 what do whales feel? Answers

14. B
15. taste buds
16. baleen whales
17. forward and downward
18. freshwater dolphins
19. water
20. lower frequencies
21. bowhead and humpback
22. touch of sense
23. freshwater dolphins
24. airborne flying fish
25. clear waters
26. acoustic sense

Academic Reading Passage 3 visual symbols and the blind Answers

27. C
28. C
29. A
30. E
31. C
32. A
33. pairs
34. shapes
35. sighted
36. sighted
37. deep
38. blind
39. similar
40. B

Reading Passage 1

Green Wave Washes Over Mainstream Shopping

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions 1-6

Do the fallowing statements agree with the claims of the writer of Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet write

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

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

Questions 7-9

Choose the appropriate letters A-D

7. Politicians may have ‘misjudged the public mood’ because
   1. they are pre-occupied with the recession and financial problems
   2. there is more widespread interest in the environment agenda than they anticipated
   3. consumer spending has increased significantly as a result of ‘green’ pressure
   4. shoppers are displeased with government policies on a range of issues.
8. What is Mintel?
   1. an environmentalist group
   2. a business survey organisation
   3. an academic research team
   4. political organisation
9. A consumer expressing concern for environmental issues without actively supporting such principles is
   1. an ethical spender
   2. a very dark green spender
   3. an armchair green
   4. a pale green spender

Questions 10-13

Complete the summary using words from the options given below.

Write your answers in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.

NB There are more answers than spaces, so you will not use them all.

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

Environmental research                    Social awareness                       Consumers

Honesty and openness                     Social record                             Political beliefs

Ethical spenders                                Armchair ethical                        Financial constraints

Politicians                                          Environmentalists

Reading Passage 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions 14-17

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

14. Readers are said to ‘bark’ at a text when
    1. they read too loudly
    2. there are too many repetitive words
    3. they are discouraged from using their imagination
    4. they have difficulty assessing its meaning
15. The text suggests that
    1. pictures in books should be less detailed
    2. pictures can slow down reading progress
    3. picture books are best used with younger readers
    4. pictures make modern books too expensive
16. University academics are concerned because
    1. young people are showing less interest in higher education
    2. students cannot understand modern academic text
    3. academic books are too childish for their under graduation
    4. there has been a significant change in student literature
17. The youngest readers will quickly develop good reading skills if they
    1. learn to associate the words in a text with pictures
    2. are exposed to modern teaching techniques
    3. are encouraged to ignore pictures in the text
    4. learn the art of telling stories

Questions 18-21

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 18-21 on your answer sheet write

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

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

Questions 22-25

Reading Passage 2 has ten paragraphs, A-J.

Which paragraphs state the following information?

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

Question 26

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

1. The global decline in reading levels
2. Concern about recent educational developments
3. The harm that picture books can cause
4. Research carried out on children’s literature
5. An examination of modern reading styles

Reading Passage 3

In Search Of The Holy Grail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions 27-32

Complete the sentences below (Questions 27-32) with words taken from Reading Passage 3.

Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS OR A NUMBER for each answer Write your answers in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.

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

Questions 33-40

Classify the following statements as representing

1. the writer’s fears about the Human Genome Project
2. other people’s fears about the Project reported by the writer
3. the writer’s reporting of facts about the Project
4. the writer’s reporting of the long-term hopes for the Project

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

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

Reading Passage 1 Green Wave Washes Over Mainstream Shopping Answers

1. yes
2. no
3. yes
4. not given
5. no
6. not given
7. B
8. B
9. C
10. honesty and openess
11. consumers
12. armchair ethical
13. social record

Reading Passage 2 There is a great concern in Europe and North America about declining standards of literacy in schools Answers

14. D
15. B
16. D
17. C
18. no
19. yes
20. yes
21. not given
22. F
23. C
24. J
25. I
26. C

Reading Passage 3 IN SEARCH OF THE HOLY GRAIL Answers

27. Apollo (space) programme
28. (early) next century
29. 7,000
30. disease
31. muscular dystrophy
32. cystic fibrosis
33. D
34. C
35. B
36. C
37. D
38. B
39. A
40. A

Reading Passage 1

Absenteeism In Nursing: A Longitudinal Study

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions 1-7

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

In boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet write

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

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

Questions 8-13

Complete the notes below.

Choose ONE OR TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.

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

Reading Passage 2

The Motor Car

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions 14-19

Reading Passage 2 has eight paragraphs (A-H).

Which paragraphs concentrate on the following information?

Write the appropriate letters (A-H) in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

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

Questions 20-26

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 20-26 on your answer sheet write

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

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

Reading Passage 3

The Keyless Society

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions 27-33

Reading Passage 3 has eight paragraphs (A-H).

Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B-H from the list of headings below.

Write the appropriate numbers (i-x) in boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet.

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

List of headings

1. Common objections
2. Who’s planning what
3. This type sells best in shops
4. The figures say it all
5. Early trials
6. They can’t get in without these
7. How does it work?
8. Fighting fraud
9. Systems to avoid
10. Accepting the inevitable

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

Questions 34-40

Look at the following groups of people (Questions 34-40) and the list of biometric systems (A-F) below.

Match the groups of people to the biometric system associated with them in Reading Passage 3.

Write the appropriate letters A-F in boxes 34-40 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any biometric system more than once.

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

List of Biometric Systems

1. fingerprint scanner
2. hand scanner
3. body odour
4. voiceprint
5. face scanner
6. typing pattern

Reading Passage 1 ABSENTEEISM IN NURSING: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY Answers

1. no
2. no
3. no
4. yes
5. not given
6. no
7. not given
8. (local) businesses
9. schedule/ rostering
10. excessive
11. voluntary absence
12. 20
13. communication

Reading Passage 2 The Motor Car Answers

14. C
15. F
16. E
17. H
18. A
19. D
20. not given
21. no
22. not given
23. yes
24. yes
25. yes
26. no

Reading Passage 3 The Keyless Society Answers

27. iv
28. vii
29. viii
30. iii
31. ii
32. i
33. x
34. B
35. B
36. E
37. A
38. B
39. D
40. E

Reading Passage 1

Implementing The Cycle Of Success: A Case Study

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions 1-5

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

1. The high costs of running AHIs hotels are related to their
   1. management
   2. size
   3. staff
   4. policies
2. SAH’s new organisational structure requires
   1. 75% of the old management positions
   2. 25% of the old management positions
   3. 25% more management positions
   4. 5% fewer management positions
3. The SAH’s approach to organisational structure required changing practices in
   1. industrial relations
   2. firing staff
   3. hiring staff
   4. marketing
4. The total number of jobs advertised at the SAH was …
   1. 70
   2. 120
   3. 170
   4. 2805
5. Categories A, B and C were used to select…
   1. front office staff
   2. new teams
   3. department heads
   4. new managers

Questions 6-13

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

What they did at SAH

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

READING PASSAGE 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions 14-17

Complete each of the following statements (Questions 14-17) with words taken from Reading Passage 2.

Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.

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

Questions 18-20

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

18. According to the passage, ‘They don’t talk the same language’ (paragraph 1), can refer to problems in …
    1. understanding metaphor
    2. learning foreign languages
    3. understanding dialect or style
    4. dealing with technological change
19. The case of the poisonous mushrooms (paragraph 2) suggests that American doctors …
    1. should pay more attention to radio reports
    2. only read medical articles if they are in English
    3. are sometimes unwilling to try foreign treatments
    4. do not always communicate effectively with their patients
20. According to the writer, the linguistic insularity of British businesses …
    1. later spread to other countries
    2. had a negative effect on their business
    3. is not as bad now as it used to be in the past
    4. made non-English-speaking companies turn to other markets

Questions 21-24

List the FOUR main ways in which British companies have tried to solve the problems of the language barrier since the 1960s.

Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.

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

Questions 25 and 26

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

25. According to the writer, English-speaking people need to be aware that…
    1. some foreigners have never met an English-speaking person
    2. many foreigners have no desire to learn English
    3. foreign languages may pose a greater problem in the future
    4. English-speaking foreigners may have difficulty understanding English
26. A suitable title for this passage would be
    1. Overcoming the language barrier
    2. How to survive an English-speaking world
    3. Global understanding – the key to personal progress
    4. The need for a common language

Reading Passage 3

What is a Port City?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions 27-30

Reading passage 3 has seven paragraphs A-G.

From the list of headings below choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B-E.

Write the appropriate numbers (i-viii) in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

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

List of Headings

1. A truly international environment
2. Once a port city, always a port city
3. Good ports make huge profits
4. How the port changes a city’s infrastructure
5. Reasons’ for the decline of ports
6. Relative significance of trade and service industry
7. Ports and harbours
8. The demands of the oil industry

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

Questions 31-34

Look at the following descriptions of some port cities mentioned in the passage.

Match the pairs of cities (A-H) listed below with the descriptions.

Write the appropriate letters A-H in boxes 31-34.

NB There are more pairs of port cities than descriptions so you will not use them all.

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

1. Bombay and Buenos Aires
2. Hong Kong and Salem
3. Istanbul and Jakarta
4. Madras and Colombo
5. New York and Bristol
6. Plymouth and Melaka
7. Singapore and Yokohama
8. Surat and London

Question 35-40

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 35-40 on your answer sheet write

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

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

Reading Passage 1 IMPLEMENTING THE CYCLE OF SUCCESS: A CASE STUDY Answers

1. C
2. A
3. C
4. B
5. B
6. benchmarking
7. service delivery
8. (performance) measures
9. productivity
10. take charge
11. feedback
12. employee
13. 30 days

Reading Passage 2 The discovery that language can be a barrier to communication Answers

14. major consequences
15. surveys
16. sales literature
17. eastern europe
18. C
19. B
20. C
21. training
22. translation services
23. language course
24. glossaries
25. D
26. A

Reading Passage 3 What is a Port City? Answers

27. ii
28. i
29. v
30. vi
31. D
32. C
33. F
34. G
35. no
36. yes
37. no
38. yes
39. not given
40. yes

Reading Passage 1

Airports on Water

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions 1-5

Classify the following statements as applying to

1. Chek Lap Kok airport only
2. Kansai airport only
3. Both airports

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

Questions 6-9

Complete the labels on Diagram below.

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

Questions 10-13

Complete the summary below.

Choose your answers from the options given below.

NB there are more words than spares so you will not use them all.

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

Answer: motorway

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

Options

Construction workers	Sea walls	Rock
Motorway	Rocky and sand	Lantau Island
Geotextile	Coastline	Rainfall
Typhoons	voids	Dump-trucks

Reading Passage 2

Changing Our Understanding of Health

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions 14-18

Reading passage 2 has six paragraphs A-F.

Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B-F from the list of headings below.

Write the appropriate numbers (i-ix) in boxed 14-18 on your answer sheet.

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

List of Headings

1. Ottawa International Conference on Health Promotion
2. Holistic approach to health
3. The primary importance of environmental factors
4. Healthy lifestyles approach to health
5. Changes in concepts of health in Western society
6. Prevention of diseases and illness
7. Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion
8. Definition of health in medical terms
9. Socio-ecological view of health

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

Questions 19-22

Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage answer the following questions.

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

Questions 23-27

Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage 2?

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

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

Reading Passage 3

Children’s Thinking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions 28-35

Classify the following descriptions as referring to

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

Write the appropriate letters in boxes 28-35 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any answer more than once.

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

Questions 36-40

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet write

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

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

Reading Passage 1 Airports on Water Answers

1. A
2. A
3. B
4. C
5. B
6. runways and taxiways
7. terminal building site
8. sand
9. stiff clay
10. lantau island
11. sea walls
12. rainfall
13. geotextile

Reading Passage 2 Changing Our Understanding of Health Answers

14. viii
15. ii
16. iv
17. ix
18. vii
19. 1946
20. wealthy of society
21. social, economic, environmental
22. 1970s
23. not given
24. yes
25. no
26. no

Reading Passage 3 Children’s Thinking Answers

27. not given
28. CH
29. MC
30. MC
31. SH
32. SH
33. MC
34. HTK
35. SH
36. not given
37. yes
38. yes
39. not given
40. no

Reading Passage One

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions 1-5

Look at the following solutions (Questions 1-5) and locations.

Match each solution with one location. Write the appropriate locations in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any location more than once.

SOLUTIONS

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

Locations

• Singapore
• Tokyo
• London
• New York
• Mexico City
• Cambridge
• Los Angeles

Questions 6-10

Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 6-10 on your answer sheet write

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

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

Questions 11-13

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

11. How many pollutants currently exceed WHO guidelines in all megacities studied?
    1. one
    2. two
    3. three
    4. seven
12. Which pollutant is currently the subject of urgent research?
    1. nitrogen dioxide
    2. ozone
    3. lead
    4. particulate matter
13. Which of the following groups of people are the most severely affected by intense air pollution?
    1. allergy sufferers
    2. children
    3. the old and ill
    4. asthma sufferers

Reading Passage 2

Votes for Women

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions 14 and 15

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

14. What is the main aspect of the suffragette movement’s work to which the exhibition at the Museum of London is devoted?
    1. the role of the Pankhurst family in the suffrage movement
    2. the violence of the movement’s political campaign
    3. the success of the movement’s corporate image
    4. the movement’s co-operation with suffrage groups overseas
15. Why was the WSPU more successful than other suffrage groups?
    1. Its leaders were much better educated
    2. It received funding from movements abroad.
    3. It had access to new technology
    4. It had a clear purpose and direction

Question 16

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

In which TWO of the following years were laws passed allowing British women to vote?

1. 1906
2. 1909
3. 1914
4. 1918
5. 1928

Questions 17-19

Complete the notes below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Reading Passage 2 for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 17-19 on your answer sheet.

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

Questions 20-26

Do the following statements reflect the situation as described by the writer in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 20-26 on your answer sheet write

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

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

Question 27

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

The writer of the article finds the exhibition to be

1. misleading
2. exceptional
3. disappointing
4. informative

Reading Passage 3

Measuring Organisational Performance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Results of the Experiment

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

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

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

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

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

Questions 28-30

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

28. The experiment was designed to
    1. establish whether increased productivity should be sought at any cost
    2. show that four divisions could use the same technology
    3. perfect a system for processing accounts
    4. exploit the human organisation of a company in order to increase profits
29. The four divisions
    1. each employed a staff of 500 clerks
    2. each had equal levels of productivity
    3. had identical patterns of organization
    4. were randomly chosen for the experiment
30. Before the experiment
    1. the four divisions were carefully selected to suit a specific programme
    2. each division was told to reduce its level of productivity
    3. the staff involved spent a number of months preparing for the study
    4. the employees were questioned about their feelings towards the study

Questions 31-36

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE word from Reading Passage 3 for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 31-36 on your answer sheet.

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

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

Questions 37-40

Look at Figures 1, 2, 3 and 4 in Reading Passage 3.

Choose the most appropriate label, A-I, for each Figure from the box below.

Write your answers in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.

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

1. Employees’ interest in the company
2. Cost increases for the company
3. Changes in productivity
4. Employees’ feelings of responsibility towards completion of work
5. Changes in productivity when supervisor was absent
6. Employees’ opinion as to extent of personal support from management
7. Employees feel closer to their supervisors
8. Employees’ feelings towards increased supervision
9. Supervisors’ opinion as to closeness of work group

Reading Passage 1 Air pollution is increasingly becoming the focus of government and citizen Answers

1. Los Angeles
2. London
3. Singapore
4. London
5. Los Angeles
6. yes
7. yes
8. no
9. no
10. no
11. A
12. D
13. C

Reading Passage 2 Votes for Women Answers

14. C
15. D
16. D, E
17. advertising (space)
18. color scheme
19. woman’s exhibition
20. no
21. yes
22. no
23. no
24. not given
25. yes
26. yes

Reading Passage 3 Measuring Organisational Performance Answers

27. D
28. A
29. C
30. C
31. supervision/ leadership
32. productivity
33. reduced/ cut
34. leadership
35. overstaffed
36. reduced/ vut
37. C
38. D
39. G
40. F