Category: Academic Reading Tests

Reading Passage 1

The Department Of Ethnography

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions 1-6

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

In boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet write

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

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

Questions 7-12

Some of the exhibits at the Department of Ethnography are listed below (Questions 7-12).

The writer gives these exhibits as examples of different collection types.

Match each exhibit with the collection type with which it is associated in Reading Passage 1.

Write the appropriate letters in boxes 7-12 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any collection type more than once.

Example

Boats (Answer) AT

7. Bolivian textiles
8. Indian coracles
9. airport art
10. Arctic kayaks
11. necessities of life of an Arabian farmer
12. tents from the Middle East

Collection Types

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

Reading Passage 2

Secrets of the Forest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions 13-15

Reading Passage 2 has six sections A-F.

Choose the most suitable headings for sections A, B and D from the list of headings below.

Write the appropriate numbers i-vii in boxes 13-15 on your answer sheet.

List of headings

1. Amazonia as unable to sustain complex societies
2. The role of recent technology in ecological research in Amazonia
3. The hostility of the indigenous population to North American influences
4. Recent evidence
5. Early research among the Indian Amazons
6. The influence of prehistoric inhabitants on Amazonian natural history
7. The great difficulty of changing local attitudes and practices

Example

Section C (answer) iv

13. Section A
14. Section B
15. Section D

Questions 16-21

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 16-21 on your answer sheet write

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

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

Questions 22-25

22. In 1942 the US anthropology student concluded that the Siriono
    1. were unusually aggressive and cruel
    2. had had their way of life destroyed by invaders
    3. were an extremely primitive society
    4. had only recently made permanent settlements
23. The author believes recent discoveries of the remains of complex societies in Amazonia
    1. are evidence of early indigenous communities
    2. are the remains of settlements by invaders
    3. are the ruins of communities established since the European invasions
    4. show the region has only relatively recently been covered by forest
24. The assumption that the tropical ecosystem of Amazonia has been created solely by natural forces
    1. has often been questioned by ecologists in the past
    2. has been shown to be incorrect by recent research
    3. was made by Peter Feinsinger and other ecologists
    4. has led to some fruitful discoveriesx
25. The application of our new insights into the Amazonian past would
    1. warn us against allowing any development at all
    2. cause further suffering to the Indian communities
    3. change present policies on development in the region
    4. reduce the amount of hunting, fishing, and ‘slash-and-burn’

Reading Passage 3

Highs and Lows

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions 26-28

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

26. Why did the divers perform less well in colder conditions?
    1. They were less able to concentrate
    2. Their body temperature fell too quickly
    3. Their mental functions were immediately affected by the cold
    4. They were used to swimming pool conditions
27. The number of daylight hours
    1. affects the performance of workers in restaurants
    2. influences animal feeding habits
    3. makes animals like hamsters more active
    4. prepares humans for having greater leisure time
28. Human irritability may be influenced by
    1. how nervous and aggressive people are
    2. reaction to certain weather phenomena
    3. the number of ions being generated by machines
    4. the attitude of people to thunderstorms

Questions 29-34

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

In boxes 29-34 on your answer sheet write

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

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

Questions 35-37

According to the text which THREE of the following conditions have been scientifically proved to have a psychological effect on humans?

Choose THREE letters A-G and write them in boxes 35-37 on your answer sheet.

1. lack of negative ions
2. rainy weather
3. food consumption
4. high serotonin levels
5. sunny weather
6. freedom from worry
7. lack of counselling facilities

Questions 38-40

Complete each of the following statements with the best ending from the box below.

Write the appropriate letters A-G in boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet.

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

A daylight                   B hot weather                  C melatonin                 D moderate temperatures

E poor coordination    F time cues                      G impaired performance

Reading Passage 1

A Remarkable Beetle

Some of the most remarkable beetles are the dung beetles, which spend almost their whole lives eating and breeding in dung’.

More than 4,000 species of these remarkable creatures have evolved and adapted to the world’s different climates and the dung of its many animals. Australia’s native dung beetles are scrub and woodland dwellers, specialising in coarse marsupial droppings and avoiding the soft cattle dung in which bush flies and buffalo flies breed.

In the early 1960s George Bornemissza, then a scientist at the Australian Government’s premier research organisation, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), suggested that dung beetles should be introduced to Australia to control dung-breeding flies. Between 1968 and 1982, the CSIRO imported insects from about 50 different species of dung beetle, from Asia, Europe and Africa, aiming to match them to different climatic zones in Australia. Of the 26 species that are known to have become successfully integrated into the local environment, only one, an African species released in northern Australia, has reached its natural boundary.

Introducing dung beetles into a pasture is a simple process: approximately 1,500 beetles are released, a handful at a time, into fresh cow pats in the cow pasture. The beetles immediately disappear beneath the pats digging and tunnelling and, if they successfully adapt to their new environment, soon become a permanent, self-sustaining part of the local ecology. In time they multiply and within three or four years the benefits to the pasture are obvious.

Dung beetles work from the inside of the pat so they are sheltered from predators such as birds and foxes. Most species burrow into the soil and bury dung in tunnels directly underneath the pats, which are hollowed out from within. Some large species originating from France excavate tunnels to a depth of approximately 30 cm below the dung pat. These beetles make sausage-shaped brood chambers along the tunnels. The shallowest tunnels belong to a much smaller Spanish species that buries dung in chambers that hang like fruit from the branches of a pear tree. South African beetles dig narrow tunnels of approximately 20 cm below the surface of the pat. Some surface-dwelling beetles, including a South African species, cut perfectly-shaped balls from the pat, which are rolled away and attached to the bases of plants.

For maximum dung burial in spring, summer and autumn, farmers require a variety of species with overlapping periods of activity. In the cooler environments of the state of Victoria, the large French species (2.5 cms long) is matched with smaller (half this size), temperate-climate Spanish species. The former are slow to recover from the winter cold and produce only one or two generations of offspring from late spring until autumn. The latter, which multiply rapidly in early spring, produce two to five generations annually. The South African ball-rolling species, being a subtropical beetle, prefers the climate of northern and coastal New South Wales where it commonly works with the South African tunnelling species. In warmer climates, many species are active for longer periods of the year.

Dung beetles were initially introduced in the late 1960s with a view to controlling buffalo flies by removing the dung within a day or two and so preventing flies from breeding. However, other benefits have become evident. Once the beetle larvae have finished pupation, the residue is a first-rate source of fertiliser. The tunnels abandoned by the beetles provide excellent aeration and water channels for root systems. In addition, when the new generation of beetles has left the nest the abandoned burrows are an attractive habitat for soil-enriching earthworms. The digested dung in these burrows is an excellent food supply for the earthworms, which decompose it further to provide essential soil nutrients. If it were not for the dung beetle, chemical fertiliser and dung would be washed by rain into streams and rivers before it could be absorbed into the hard earth, polluting water courses and causing blooms of blue-green algae. Without the beetles to dispose of the dung, cow pats would litter pastures making grass inedible to cattle and depriving the soil of sunlight. Australia’s 30 million cattle each produce 10-12 cow pats a day. This amounts to 1.7 billion tonnes a year, enough to smother about 110,000 sq km of pasture, half the area of Victoria.

Dung beetles have become an integral part of the successful management of dairy farms in Australia over the past few decades. A number of species are available from the CSIRO or through a small number of private breeders, most of whom were entomologists with the CSIRO’s dung beetle unit who have taken their specialised knowledge of the insect and opened small businesses in direct competition with their former employer.

Questions 1-5

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

In boxes 1-5 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

1. Bush flies are easier to control than buffalo flies.
2. Four thousand species of dung beetle were initially brought to Australia by the CSIRO.
3. Dung beetles were brought to Australia by the CSIRO over a fourteen-year period.
4. At least twenty-six of the introduced species have become established in Australia.
5. The dung beetles cause an immediate improvement to the quality of a cow pasture.

Questions 6-8

Label the tunnels on the diagram below.

Choose your labels from the box given with the diagram

Reading Passage 2

Section A
The role of governments in environmental management is difficult but inescapable. Sometimes, the state tries to manage the resources it owns, and does so badly. Often, however, governments act in an even more harmful way. They actually subsidise the exploitation and consumption of natural resources. A whole range of policies, from farm- price support to protection for coal-mining, do environmental damage and (often) make no economic sense. Scrapping them offers a two-fold bonus: a cleaner environment and a more efficient economy. Growth and environmentalism can actually go hand in hand, if politicians have the courage to confront the vested interest that subsidies create.

Section B
No activity affects more of the earth’s surface than farming. It shapes a third of the planet’s land area, not counting Antarctica, and the proportion is rising. World food output per head has risen by 4 per cent between the 1970s and 1980s mainly as a result of increases in yields from land already in cultivation, but also because more land has been brought under the plough. Higher yields have been achieved by increased irrigation, better crop breeding, and a doubling in the use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers in the 1970s and 1980s.

Section C
All these activities may have damaging environmental impacts. For example, land clearing for agriculture is the largest single cause of deforestation; chemical fertilisers and pesticides may contaminate water supplies; more intensive farming and the abandonment of fallow periods tend to exacerbate soil erosion; and the spread of mono-Culture and use of high-yielding varieties of crops have been accompanied by the disappearance of old varieties of food plants which might have provided some insurance against pests or diseases in future. Soil erosion threatens the productivity of land in both rich and poor countries. The United States, where the most careful measurements have been done, discovered in 1982 that about one-fifth of its farmland as losing topsoil at a rate likely to diminish the soil’s productivity. The country subsequently embarked upon a program to convert 11 per cent of its cropped land to meadow or forest. Topsoil in India and China is vanishing much faster than in America.

Section D
Government policies have frequently compounded the environmental damage that farming can cause. In the rich countries, subsidies for growing crops and price supports for farm output drive up the price of land. The annual value of these subsidies is immense: about $250 billion, or more than all World Bank lending in the 1980s.To increase the output of crops per acre, a farmer’s easiest option is to use more of the most readily available inputs: fertilisers and pesticides. Fertiliser use doubled in Denmark in the period 1960-1985 and increased in The Netherlands by 150 per cent. The quantity of pesticides applied has risen too; by 69 per cent in 1975-1984 in Denmark, for example, with a rise of 115 per cent in the frequency of application in the three years from 1981.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s some efforts were made to reduce farm subsidies. The most dramatic example was that of New Zealand, which scrapped most farm support in 1984. A study of the environmental effects, conducted in 1993, found that the end of fertiliser subsidies had been followed by a fall in fertiliser use (a fall compounded by the decline in world commodity prices, which cut farm incomes). The removal of subsidies also stopped land-clearing and over-stocking, which in the past had been the principal causes of erosion. Farms began to diversify. The one kind of subsidy whose removal appeared to have been bad for the environment was the subsidy to manage soil erosion.

In less enlightened countries, and in the European Union, the trend has been to reduce rather than eliminate subsidies, and to introduce new payments to encourage farmers to treat their land in environmentally friendlier ways, or to leave it follow. It may sound strange but such payments need to be higher than the existing incentives for farmers to grow food crops. Farmers, however, dislike being paid to do nothing. In several countries they have become interested in the possibility of using fuel produced from crop residues either as a replacement for petrol (as ethanol) or as fuel for power stations (as biomass). Such fuels produce far less carbon dioxide than coal or oil, and absorb carbon dioxide as they grow. They are therefore less likely to contribute to the greenhouse effect. But they die rarely competitive with fossil fuels unless subsidised – and growing them does no less environmental harm than other crops.

Section E
In poor countries, governments aggravate other sorts of damage. Subsidies for pesticides and artificial fertilisers encourage farmers to use greater quantities than are needed to get the highest economic crop yield. A study by the International Rice Research Institute Of pesticide use by farmers in South East Asia found that, with pest-resistant varieties of rice, even moderate applications of pesticide frequently cost farmers more than they saved. Such waste puts farmers on a chemical treadmill: bugs and weeds become resistant to poisons, so next year’s poisons must be more lethal. One cost is to human health, every year some 10,000 people die from pesticide poisoning, almost all of them in the developing countries, and another 400,000 become seriously ill. As for artificial fertilisers, their use world-wide increased by 40 per cent per unit of farmed land between the mid 1970s and late 1980s, mostly in the developing countries. Overuse of fertilisers may cause farmers to stop rotating crops or leaving their land fallow. That, In turn, may make soil erosion worse.

Section F
A result of the Uruguay Round of world trade negotiations is likely to be a reduction of 36 per cent in the average levels of farm subsidies paid by the rich countries in 1986-1990. Some of the world’s food production will move from Western Europe to regions where subsidies are lower or non-existent, such as the former communist countries and parts of the developing world. Some environmentalists worry about this outcome.

It will undoubtedly mean more pressure to convert natural habitat into farmland. But it will also have many desirable environmental effects. The intensity of farming in the rich world should decline, and the use of chemical inputs will diminish. Crops are more likely to be grown up in the environments to which they are naturally suited. And more farmers in poor countries will have the money and the incentive to manage their land in ways that are sustainable in the long run. That is important. To feed an increasingly hungry world, farmers need every incentive to use their soil and water effectively and efficiently.

Questions 14-18

Reading Passage 2 has six sections A-F.

Choose the most suitable headings for sections A-D and F from the list of headings below.

Write the appropriate numbers i-ix in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

1. The probable effects of the new international trade agreement
2. The environmental impact of modern farming
3. Farming and soil erosion
4. The effects of government policy in rich countries
5. Governments and management of the environment
6. The effects of government policy in poor countries
7. Farming and food output
8. The effects of government policy on food output
9. The new prospects for world trade

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

Questions 19-22

Complete the table below using the information in sections B and C of Reading Passage 2.

Choose your answers A-G from the box below the table and write them in boxes 19-22 on your answer sheet.

Questions 23-27

Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 23-27 on your answer sheet.

23. Research completed in 1982 found that in the United States soil erosion
    1. reduced the productivity of farmland by 20 per cent.
    2. was almost as severe as in India and China.
    3. was causing significant damage to 20 per cent of farmland.
    4. could be reduced by converting cultivated land to meadow or forest.
24. By the mid-1980s, farmers in Denmark
    1. used 50 per cent less fertiliser than Dutch farmers.
    2. used twice as much fertiliser as they had in 1960.
    3. applied fertiliser much more frequently than in 1960.
    4. more than doubled the amount of pesticide they used in just 3 years.
25. Which one of the following increased in New Zealand after 1984?
    1. farm incomes
    2. use of fertilizer
    3. over-stocking
    4. farm diversification
26. The writer refers to some rich countries as being ‘less enlightened’ than New Zealand because
    1. they disapprove of paying farmers for not cultivating the land.
    2. their new fuel crops are as harmful as the ones they have replaced.
    3. their policies do not recognise the long-term benefit of ending subsidies.
    4. they have not encouraged their farmers to follow environmentally friendly practices.
27. The writer believes that the Uruguay Round agreements on trade will
    1. encourage more sustainable farming practices in the long term.
    2. do more harm than good to the international environment.
    3. increase pressure to cultivate land in the rich countries.
    4. be more beneficial to rich than to poor countries.

Question 28

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

Write the appropriate letter A-E in box 28 on your answer sheet.

1. Environmental management
2. Increasing the world’s food supply
3. Soil erosion
4. Fertilisers and pesticides – the way forward
5. Farm subsidies

Reading Passage 2

The Concept of role theory

Role set
Any individual in any situation occupies a role in relation to other people. The particular individual with whom one is concerned in the analysis of any situation is usually given the name of focal person. He has the focal role and can be regarded as sitting in the middle of a group of people, with whom he interacts in some way in that situation. This group of people is called his role set. For instance, in the family situation, an individual’s role set might be shown as in Figure 6. The role set should include all those with whom the individual has more than trivial interactions.

Role definition
The definition of any individual’s role in any situation will be a combination of the role expectations that the members of the role set have of the focal role. These expectations are often occupationally denned, sometimes even legally so. The role definitions of lawyers and doctors are fairly clearly defined both in legal and in cultural terms. The role definitions of, say, a film star or bank manager, are also fairly clearly defined in cultural terms, too clearly perhaps.

Individuals often find it hard to escape from the role that cultural traditions have defined for them. Not only with doctors or lawyers is the required role behaviour so constrained that if you are in that role for long it eventually becomes part of you, part of your personality. Hence, there is some likelihood that all accountants will be alike or that all blondes are similar – they are forced that way by the expectations of their role.

It is often important that you make it clear what your particular role is at a given time. The means of doing this are called, rather obviously, role signs. The simplest of role signs is a uniform. The number of stripes on your arm or pips on your shoulder is a very precise role definition which allows you to do certain very prescribed things in certain situations. Imagine yourself questioning a stranger on a dark street at midnight without wearing the role signs of a policeman!

In social circumstances, dress has often been used as a role sign to indicate the nature and degree of formality of any gathering and occasionally the social status of people present. The current trend towards blurring these role signs in dress is probably democratic, but it also makes some people very insecure. Without role signs, who is to know who has what role?

Place is another role sign. Managers often behave very differently outside the office and in it, even to the same person. They use a change of location to indicate a change in role from, say, boss to friend. Indeed, if you wish to change your roles you must find some outward sign that you are doing so or you won’t be permitted to change – the subordinate will continue to hear you as his boss no matter how hard you try to be his friend. In very significant cases of role change, e.g. from a soldier in the ranks to officer, from bachelor to married man, the change of role has to have a very obvious sign, hence rituals. It is interesting to observe, for instance, some decline in the emphasis given to marriage rituals. This could be taken as an indication that there is no longer such a big change in role from single to married person, and therefore no need for a public change in sign.

In organisations, office signs and furniture are often used as role signs. These and other perquisites of status are often frowned upon, but they may serve a purpose as a kind of uniform in a democratic society; roles without signs often lead to confused or differing expectations of the role of the focal person.

Role ambiguity
Role ambiguity results when there is some uncertainty in the minds, either of the focal person or of the members of his role set, as to precisely what his role is at any given time. One of the crucial expectations that shape the role definition is that of the individual, the focal person himself. If his occupation of the role is unclear, or if it differs from that of the others in the role set, there will be a degree of role ambiguity. Is this bad? Not necessarily, for the ability to shape one’s own role is one of the freedoms that many people desire, but the ambiguity may lead to role stress which will be discussed later on. The virtue of job descriptions is that they lessen this role ambiguity. Unfortunately, job descriptions are seldom complete role definitions, except at the lower end of the scale. At middle and higher management levels, they are often a list of formal jobs and duties that say little about the more subtle and informal expectations of the role. The result is therefore to give the individual an uncomfortable feeling that there are things left unsaid, i. e. to heighten the sense of role ambiguity.

Looking at role ambiguity from the other side, from the point of view of the members of the role set, lack of clarity in the role of the focal person can cause insecurity, lack of confidence, irritation and even anger among members of his role set. One list of the roles of a manager identified the following: executive, planner, policy maker, expert, controller of rewards and punishments, counsellor, friend, teacher. If it is not clear, through role signs of one sort or another, which role is currently the operational one, the other party may not react in the appropriate way — we may, in fact, hear quite another message if the focal person speaks to us, for example, as a teacher and we hear her as an executive.

Questions 29-35

Do the following statements reflect the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 29-35 on your answer sheet write

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

29. It would be a good idea to specify the role definitions of soldiers more clearly.
30. Accountants may be similar to one another because they have the same type of job.
31. It is probably a good idea to keep dress as a role sign even nowadays.
32. The decline in emphasis on marriage rituals should be reversed.
33. Today furniture operates as a role sign in the same way as dress has always done.
34. It is a good idea to remove role ambiguity.
35. Job descriptions eliminate role ambiguity for managers.

Questions 36-39

Choose ONE OR TWO WORDS from Reading Passage 3 for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 36-39 on your answer sheet.

36. A new headmaster of a school who enlarges his office and puts in expensive carpeting is using the office as a……………………….
37. The graduation ceremony in many universities is an important……………….
38. The wig which judges wear in UK courts is a………………….
39. The parents of students in a school are part of the headmaster’s………………………

Question 40

Choose the appropriate letter A-D and write it in box 40 on your answer sheet.

This text is taken from

1. a guide for new managers in a company.
2. a textbook analysis of behaviour in organisations.
3. a critical study of the importance of role signs in modern society.
4. a newspaper article about role changes.

Reading Passage 1

THE ROCKET – FROM EAST TO WEST

A The concept of the rocket, or rather the mechanism behind the idea of propelling an object into the air, has been around for well over two thousand years. However, it wasn’t until the discovery of the reaction principle, which was the key to space travel and so represents one of the great milestones in the history of scientific thought that rocket technology was able to develop. Not only did it solve a problem that had intrigued man for ages, but, more importantly, it literally opened the door to exploration of the universe.

B An intellectual breakthrough, brilliant though it may be, does not automatically ensure that the transition is made from theory to practice. Despite the fact that rockets had been used sporadically for several hundred years, they remained a relatively minor artefact of civilisation until the twentieth century. Prodigious efforts, accelerated during two world wars, were required before the technology of primitive rocketry could be translated into the reality of sophisticated astronauts. It is strange that the rocket was generally ignored by writers of fiction to transport their heroes to mysterious realms beyond the Earth, even though it had been commonly used in fireworks displays in China since the thirteenth century. The reason is that nobody associated the reaction principle with the idea of travelling through space to a neighbouring world.

C A simple analogy can help us to understand how a rocket operates. It is much like a machine gun mounted on the rear of a boat. In reaction to the backward discharge of bullets, the gun, and hence the boat, move forwards. A rocket motor’s ‘bullets’ are minute, high-speed particles produced by burning propellants in a suitable chamber. The reaction to the ejection of these small particles causes the rocket to move forwards. There is evidence that the reaction principle was applied practically well before the rocket was invented. In his Noctes Atticae or Greek Nights, Aulus Gellius describes ‘the pigeon of Archytas’, an invention dating back to about 360 BC. Cylindrical in shape, made of wood, and hanging from string, it was moved to and fro by steam blowing out from small exhaust ports at either end. The reaction to the discharging steam provided the bird with motive power.

D The invention of rockets is linked inextricably with the invention of ‘black powder’. Most historians of technology credit the Chinese with its discovery. They base their belief on studies of Chinese writings or on the notebooks of early Europeans who settled in or made long visits to China to study its history and civilisation. It is probable that, some time in the tenth century, black powder was first compounded from its basic ingredients of saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur. But this does not mean that it was immediately used to propel rockets. By the thirteenth century, powder-propelled fire arrows had become rather common. The Chinese relied on this type of technological development to produce incendiary projectiles of many sorts, explosive grenades and possibly cannons to repel their enemies. One such weapon was the ‘basket of fire’ or, as directly translated from Chinese, the ‘arrows like flying leopards’. The 0.7 metre-long arrows, each with a long tube of gunpowder attached near the point of each arrow, could be fired from a long, octagonal-shaped basket at the same time and had a range of 400 paces. Another weapon was the ‘arrow as a flying sabre’, which could be fired from crossbows. The rocket, placed in a similar position to other rocket-propelled arrows, was designed to increase the range. A small iron weight was attached to the 1.5m bamboo shaft, just below the feathers, to increase the arrow’s stability by moving the centre of gravity to a position below the rocket. At a similar time, the Arabs had developed the ‘egg which moves and burns’. This ‘egg’ was apparently full of gunpowder and stabilised by a 1.5m tail. It was fired using two rockets attached to either side of this tail.

E It was not until the eighteenth century that Europe became seriously interested in the possibilities of using the rocket itself as a weapon of war and not just to propel other weapons. Prior to this, rockets were used only in pyrotechnic displays. The incentive for the more aggressive use of rockets came not from within the European continent but from far-away India, whose leaders had built up a corps of rocketeers and used rockets successfully against the British in the late eighteenth century. The Indian rockets used against the British were described by a British Captain serving in India as ‘an iron envelope about 200 millimetres long and 40 millimetres in diameter with sharp points at the top and a 3m-long bamboo guiding stick’. In the early nineteenth century the British began to experiment with incendiary barrage rockets. The British rocket differed from the Indian version in that it was completely encased in a stout, iron cylinder, terminating in a conical head, measuring one metre in diameter and having a stick almost five metres long and constructed in such a way that it could be firmly attached to the body of the rocket. The Americans developed a rocket, complete with its own launcher, to use against the Mexicans in the mid-nineteenth century. A long cylindrical tube was propped up by two sticks and fastened to the top of the launcher, thereby allowing the rockets to be inserted and lit from the other end. However, the results were sometimes not that impressive as the behaviour of the rockets in flight was less than predictable.

F Since then, there have been huge developments in rocket technology, often with devastating results in the forum of war. Nevertheless, the modern day space programs owe their success to the humble beginnings of those in previous centuries who developed the foundations of the reaction principle. Who knows what it will be like in the future?

Questions 1-4

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

Write the appropriate numbers (i-ix) in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

1. How the reaction principle works
2. The impact of the reaction principle
3. Writers’ theories of the reaction principle
4. Undeveloped for centuries
5. The first rockets
6. The first use of steam
7. Rockets for military use
8. Developments of fire
9. What’s next?

1. Paragraph B
2. Paragraph C
3. Paragraph D
4. Paragraph E

Question 5 and 6

Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 5 and 6 on your answer sheet.

5. The greatest outcome of the discovery of the reaction principle was that
   1. rockets could be propelled into the air
   2. space travel became a reality
   3. a major problem had been solved
   4. bigger rockets were able to be built
6. According to the text, the greatest progress in rocket technology was made
   1. from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries
   2. from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries
   3. from the early nineteenth to the late nineteenth century
   4. from the late nineteenth century to the present day

Questions 7-10

From the information in the text, indicate who FIRST invented or used the items in the list below.

Write the appropriate letters A-E in boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

7. black powder ……………….. .
8. rocket-propelled arrows for fighting ……………….. .
9. rockets as war weapons ……………….. .
10. the rocket launcher ……………….. .

FIRST invented or used by

1. the Chinese
2. the Indians
3. the British
4. the Arabs
5. the Americans

Questions 11-14

Look at the drawings of different projectiles below, A-H, and the names of types of projectiles given in the Reading Passage 1, Questions 11-14.

Write the appropriate letters A-H in boxes 11-14 on your answer sheet.

11. The Chinese ‘basket of fire’ …………………
12. The Arab ‘egg which moves and burns’ …………………
13. The Indian rocket …………………
14. The British barrage rocket …………………

Reading Passage 2

THE RISKS OF CIGARETTE SMOKE

Discovered in the early 1800s and named ‘nicotianine’, the oily essence now called nicotine is the main active ingredient of tobacco. Nicotine, however, is only a small component of cigarette smoke, which contains more than 4,700 chemical compounds, including 43 cancer-causing substances. In recent times, scientific research has been providing evidence that years of cigarette smoking vastly increases the risk of developing fatal medical conditions.

In addition to being responsible for more than 85 per cent of lung cancers, smoking is associated with cancers of, amongst others, the mouth, stomach and kidneys, and is thought to cause about 14 per cent of leukemia and cervical cancers. In 1990, smoking caused more than 84,000 deaths, mainly resulting from such problems as pneumonia, bronchitis and influenza. Smoking, it is believed, is responsible for 30 per cent of all deaths from cancer and clearly represents the most important preventable cause of cancer in countries like the United States today.

Passive smoking, the breathing in of the side-stream smoke from the burning of tobacco between puffs or of the smoke exhaled by a smoker, also causes a serious health risk. A report published in 1992 by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) emphasized the health dangers, especially from side-stream smoke. This type of smoke contains more smaller particles and is therefore more likely to be deposited deep in the lungs. On the basis of this report, the EPA has classified environmental tobacco smoke in the highest risk category for causing cancer.

As an illustration of the health risks, in the case of a married couple where one partner is a smoker and one a non-smoker, the latter is believed to have a 30 per cent higher risk of death from heart disease because of passive smoking. The risk of lung cancer also increases over the years of exposure and the figure jumps to 80 per cent if the spouse has been smoking four packs a day for 20 years. It has been calculated that 17 per cent of cases of lung cancer can be attributed to high levels of exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke during childhood and adolescence.

A more recent study by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) has shown that second-hand cigarette smoke does more harm to non-smokers than to smokers. Leaving aside the philosophical question of whether anyone should have to breathe someone else’s cigarette smoke, the report suggests that the smoke experienced by many people in their daily lives is enough to produce substantial adverse effects on a person’s heart and lungs.

The report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (AMA), was based on the researchers’ own earlier research but also includes a review of studies over the past few years. The American Medical Association represents about half of all US doctors and is a strong opponent of smoking. The study suggests that people who smoke cigarettes are continually damaging their cardiovascular system, which adapts in order to compensate for the effects of smoking. It further states that people who do not smoke do not have the benefit of their system adapting to the smoke inhalation. Consequently, the effects of passive smoking are far greater on non-smokers than on smokers.

This report emphasizes that cancer is not caused by a single element in cigarette smoke; harmful effects to health are caused by many components. Carbon monoxide, for example, competes with oxygen in red blood cells and interferes with the blood’s ability to deliver life-giving oxygen to the heart. Nicotine and other toxins in cigarette smoke activate small blood cells called platelets, which increases the likelihood of blood clots, thereby affecting blood circulation throughout the body.

The researchers criticize the practice of some scientific consultants who work with the tobacco industry for assuming that cigarette smoke has the same impact on smokers as it does on non-smokers. They argue that those scientists are underestimating the damage done by passive smoking and, in support of their recent findings, cite some previous research which points to passive smoking as the cause for between 30,000 and 60,000 deaths from heart attacks each year in the United States. This means that passive smoking is the third most preventable cause of death after active smoking and alcohol-related diseases.

The study argues that the type of action needed against passive smoking should be similar to that being taken against illegal drugs and AIDS (SIDA). The UCSF researchers maintain that the simplest and most cost-effective action is to establish smoke-free work places, schools and public places.

Questions 15-17

Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 15-17 on your answer sheet.

15. According to information in the text, leukaemia and pneumonia
    1. are responsible for 84,000 deaths each year
    2. are strongly linked to cigarette smoking
    3. are strongly linked to lung cancer
    4. result in 30 per cent of deaths per year
16. According to information in the text, intake of carbon monoxide
    1. inhibits the flow of oxygen to the heart
    2. increases absorption of other smoke particles
    3. inhibits red blood cell formation
    4. promotes nicotine absorption
17. According to information in the text, intake of nicotine encourages
    1. blood circulation through the body
    2. activity of other toxins in the blood
    3. formation of blood clots
    4. an increase of platelets in the blood

Questions 18-21

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

• 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. Thirty per cent of deaths in the United States are caused by smoking-related diseases.
19. If one partner in a marriage smokes, the other is likely to take up smoking.
20. Teenagers whose parents smoke are at risk of getting lung cancer at some time during their lives.
21. Opponents of smoking financed the UCSF study.

Questions 22-24

Choose ONE phrase from the list of phrases A-J below to complete each of the following sentences.

22. Passive smoking ……………….. .
23. Compared with a non-smoker, a smoker ……………….. .
24. The American Medical Association ……………….. .

1. includes reviews of studies in its reports.
2. argues for stronger action against smoking in public places.
3. is one of the two most preventable causes of death.
4. is more likely to be at risk from passive smoking diseases.
5. is more harmful to non-smokers than to smokers.
6. is less likely to be at risk of contracting lung cancer.
7. is more likely to be at risk of contracting various cancers.
8. opposes smoking and publishes research on the subject.
9. is just as harmful to smokers as it is to non-smokers.
10. reduces the quantity of blood flowing around the body.

Questions 25-28

Classify the following statements as being

1. a finding of the UCSF study
2. an opinion of the UCSF study
3. a finding of the EPA report
4. an assumption of consultants to the tobacco industry

25. Smokers’ cardiovascular systems adapt to the intake of environmental smoke.
26. There is a philosophical question as to whether people should have to inhale others’ smoke.
27. Smoke-free public places offer the best solution.
28. The intake of side-stream smoke is more harmful than smoke exhaled by a smoker.

Reading Passage 3

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

A ‘Hypotheses,’ said Medawar in 1964, ‘are imaginative and inspirational in character’; they are ‘adventures of the mind’. He was arguing in favour of the position taken by Karl Popper in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1972, 3rd edition) that the nature of scientific method is hypothetico-deductive and not, as is generally believed, inductive.

B It is essential that you, as an intending researcher, understand the difference between these two interpretations of the research process so that you do not become discouraged or begin to suffer from a feeling of ‘cheating’ or not going about it the right way.

C The myth of scientific method is that it is inductive: that the formulation of scientific theory starts with the basic, raw evidence of the senses – simple, unbiased, unprejudiced observation. Out of these sensory data – commonly referred to as ‘facts’ — generalisations will form. The myth is that from a disorderly array of factual information an orderly, relevant theory will somehow emerge. However, the starting point of induction is an impossible one.

D There is no such thing as an unbiased observation. Every act of observation we make is a function of what we have seen or otherwise experienced in the past. All scientific work of an experimental or exploratory nature starts with some expectation about the outcome. This expectation is a hypothesis. Hypotheses provide the initiative and incentive for the inquiry and influence the method. It is in the light of an expectation that some observations are held to be relevant and some irrelevant, that one methodology is chosen and others discarded, that some experiments are conducted and others are not. Where is, your naive, pure and objective researcher now?

E Hypotheses arise by guesswork, or by inspiration, but having been formulated they can and must be tested rigorously, using the appropriate methodology. If the predictions you make as a result of deducing certain consequences from your hypothesis are not shown to be correct then you discard or modify your hypothesis. If the predictions turn out to be correct then your hypothesis has been supported and may be retained until such time as some further test shows it not to be correct. Once you have arrived at your hypothesis, which is a product of your imagination, you then proceed to a strictly logical and rigorous process, based upon deductive argument — hence the term ‘hypothetico-deductive’.

F So don’t worry if you have some idea of what your results will tell you before you even begin to collect data; there are no scientists in existence who really wait until they have all the evidence in front of them before they try to work out what it might possibly mean. The closest we ever get to this situation is when something happens by accident; but even then the researcher has to formulate a hypothesis to be tested before being sure that, for example, a mould might prove to be a successful antidote to bacterial infection.

G The myth of scientific method is not only that it is inductive (which we have seen is incorrect) but also that the hypothetico-deductive method proceeds in a step-by-step, inevitable fashion. The hypothetico-deductive method describes the logical approach to much research work, but it does not describe the psychological behaviour that brings it about. This is much more holistic — involving guesses, reworkings, corrections, blind alleys and above all inspiration, in the deductive as well as the hypothetic component -than is immediately apparent from reading the final thesis or published papers. These have been, quite properly, organised into a more serial, logical order so that the worth of the output may be evaluated independently of the behavioural processes by which it was obtained. It is the difference, for example between the academic papers with which Crick and Watson demonstrated the structure of the DNA molecule and the fascinating book The Double Helix in which Watson (1968) described how they did it. From this point of view, ‘scientific method’ may more usefully be thought of as a way of writing up research rather than as a way of carrying it out.

Questions 29-30

Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs A-G.

Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs C-G from the list of headings below.

Write the appropriate numbers i-x in boxes 29-33 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
Eunbiased researcher

29. Paragraph C
30. Paragraph D
31. Paragraph E
32. Paragraph F
33. Paragraph G

Questions 34 and 35

In which TWO paragraphs in Reading Passage 3 does the writer give advice directly to the reader?

Write the TWO appropriate letters (A-G) in boxes 34 and 35 on your answer sheet.

34. …………………
35. ………………

Questions 36-39

Do the following statements reflect the opinions of the writer in Reading Passage 3.

In boxes 36-39 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

36. Popper says that the scientific method is hypothetico-deductive ……………….. .
37. If a prediction based on a hypothesis is fulfilled, then the hypothesis is confirmed as true ……………….. .
38. Many people carry out research in a mistaken way ……………….. .
39. The ‘scientific method’ is more a way of describing research than a way of doing it ……………….. .

Question 40

Choose the appropriate letter A-D and write it in box 40 on your answer sheet.

Which of the following statements best describes the writer’s main purpose in Reading Passage 3?

1. to advise Ph.D students not to cheat while carrying out research
2. to encourage Ph.D students to work by guesswork and inspiration
3. to explain to Ph.D students the logic which the scientific research paper follows
4. to help Ph.D students by explaining different conceptions of the research process

Reading Passage 1

How much higher? How much faster?

Since the early years of the twentieth century, when the International Athletic Federation began keeping records, there has been a steady improvement in how fast athletes run, how high they jump and how far they are able to hurl massive objects, themselves included, through space. For the so-called power events –that require a relatively brief, explosive release of energy, like the 100-metre sprint and the long jump-times and distances have improved ten to twenty percent. In the endurance events the results have been more dramatic. At the 1908 Olympics, John Hayes of the U.S. team ran to marathon in a time of 2:55:18. In 1999, Morocco’s Khalid Khannouchi set a new world record of 2:05:42, almost thirty percent faster.

No one theory can explain improvements in performance, but the most important factor has been genetics. ‘The athlete must choose his parents carefully,’ says Jesus Dapena, a sports scientist at Indiana University, invoking an oft-cited adage. Over the past century, the composition of the human gene pool has not changed appreciably, but with increasing global participation in athletics-and greater rewards to tempt athletes-it is more likely that individuals possessing the unique complement of genes for athletic performance can be identified early. ‘Was there someone like [sprinter] Michael Johnson in the 1920s?’ Dapena asks. ‘I’m sure there was, but his talent was probably never realized.’

Identifying genetically talented individuals is only the first step. Michael Yessis, an emeritus professor of Sports Science at California State University at Fullerton, maintains that ‘genetics only determines about one third of what an athlete can do. But with the right training we can go much further with that one third than we’ve been going.’ Yesis believes that U.S. runners, despite their impressive achievements, are ‘running on their genetics’. By applying more scientific methods, ‘they’re going to go much faster’. These methods include strength training that duplicates what they are doing in their running events as well as plyometrics, a technique pioneered in the former Soviet Union.

Whereas most exercises are designed to build up strength or endurance, plyometrics focuses on increasing power-the rate at which an athlete can expend energy. When a sprinter runs, Yesis explains, her foot stays in contact with the ground for just under a tenth of a second, half of which is devoted to landing and the other half to pushing off. Plyometric exercises help athletes make the best use of this brief interval.

Nutrition is another area that sports trainers have failed to address adequately. ‘Many athletes are not getting the best nutrition, even though supplements,’ Yessis insists. Each activity has its own nutritional needs. Few coaches, for instance, understand how deficiencies in trace minerals can lead to injuries.

Focused training will also play a role in enabling records to be broken. ‘If we applied the Russian training model to some of the outstanding runners we have in this country,’ Yessis asserts, ‘they would be breaking records left and right.’ He will not predict by how much, however: ‘Exactly what the limits are it’s hard to say, but there will be increases even if only by hundredths of a second, as long as our training continues to improve.’

One of the most important new methodologies is biomechanics, the study of the body in motion. A biomechanic films an athlete in action and then digitizes her performance, recording the motion of every joint and limb in three dimensions. By applying Newton’s law to these motions, ‘we can say that this athlete’s run is not fast enough; that this one is not using his arms strongly enough during take-off,’ says Dapena, who uses these methods to help high jumpers. To date, however, biomechanics has made only a small difference to athletic performance.

Revolutionary ideas still come from the athletes themselves. For example, during the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, a relatively unknown high jumper named Dick Fosbury won the gold by going over the bar backwards, in complete contradiction of all the received high-jumping wisdom, a move instantly dubbed the Fosbury flop. Fosbury himself did not know what he was doing. That understanding took the later analysis of biomechanics specialists. Who put their minds to comprehending something that was too complex and unorthodox ever to have been invented through their own mathematical simulations. Fosbury also required another element that lies behind many improvements in athletic performance: an innovation in athletic equipment. In Fosbury’s case, it was the cushions that jumpers land on. Traditionally, high jumpers would land in pits filled with sawdust. But by Fosbury’s time, sawdust pits had been replaced by soft foam cushions, ideal for flopping.

In the end, most people who examine human performance are humbled by the resourcefulness of athletes and the powers of the human body. ‘Once you study athletics, you learn that it’s a vexingly complex issue,’ says John S.Raglin, a sports psychologist at Indiana University. ‘Core performance is not a simple or mundane thing of higher, faster, longer. So many variables enter into the equation, and our understanding in many cases is fundamental. We’re got a long way to go.’ For the foreseeable future, records will be made to be broken.

Questions 1-6

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

In boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet write

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

1. Modern official athletic records date from about 1900.
2. There was little improvement in athletic performance before the twentieth century,
3. Performance has improved most greatly in events requiring an intensive burst of energy.
4. Improvements in athletic performance can be fully explained by genetics.
5. The parents of top athletes have often been successful athletes themselves.
6. The growing international importance of athletics means that gifted athletes can be recognised at a younger age.

Questions 7-10

Complete the sentences below with words taken from Reading Passage 1.

Use ONE WORD for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet.

7. According to Professor Yessis, American runners are relying for their current success on………………..
8. Yessis describes a training approach from the former Soviet Union that aims to develop an athlete’s…………
9. Yessis links an inadequate diet to…………………
10. Yessis claims that the key to setting new records is better……………..

Questions 11-13

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

Write your answers in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.

11. Biomechanics films are proving particularly useful because they enable trainers to
    1. highlight areas for improvement in athletes
    2. assess the fitness levels of athletes
    3. select top athletes
    4. predict the success of athletes
12. Biomechanics specialists used theoretical models to
    1. soften the Fosbury flop
    2. create the Fosbury flop
    3. correct the Fosbury flo
    4. explain the Fosbury flop.
13. John S. Raglin believes our current knowledge of athletics is
    1. mistaken
    2. basic
    3. diverse
    4. theoretical

Reading Passage 2

The Nature and Aims of Archaeology

Archaeology is partly the discovery of treasures of the past, partly the work of the scientific analyst, partly the exercise of the creative imagination. It is toiling in the sun on an excavation in the Middle East, it is working with living Inuit in the snows of Alaska, and it is investigating the sewers of Roman Britain. But it is also the painstaking task of interpretation, so that we come to understand what these things mean for the human story. And it is the conservation of the world’s cultural heritage against looting and careless harm.

Archaeology, then, is both a physical activity out in the field, and an intellectual pursuit in the study or laboratory. That is part of its great attraction. The rich mixture of danger and detective work has also made it the perfect vehicle for fiction writers and film-makers, from Agatha Christie with Murder in Mesopotamia to Stephen Spielberg with Indiana Jones. However far from reality such portrayals are, they capture the essential truth that archaeology is an exciting quest – the quest for knowledge about ourselves and our past.

But how does archaeology relate to other disciplines such as anthropology and history that are also concerned with the human story? Is archaeology itself a science? And what are the responsibilities of the archaeologist in today’s world?

Anthropology, at its broadest, is the study of humanity- our physical characteristics as animals and our unique non-biological characteristics that we call culture. Culture in this sense includes what the anthropologist, Edward Tylor, summarised in 1871 as ‘knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’. Anthropologists also use the term ‘culture’ in a more restricted sense when they refer to the ‘culture’ of a particular society, meaning the non-biological characteristics unique to that society, which distinguish it from other societies. Anthropology is thus a broad discipline – so broad that it is generally broken down into three smaller disciplines: physical anthropology, cultural anthropology and archaeology.

Physical anthropology, or biological anthropology as it is called, concerns the study of human biological or physical characteristics and how they evolved. Cultural anthropology – or social anthropology – analyses human culture and society. Two of its branches are ethnography (the study at first hand of individual living cultures) and ethnology (which sets out to compare cultures using ethnographic evidence to derive general principles about human society).

Archaeology is the ‘past tense of cultural anthropology’. Whereas cultural anthropologists will often base their conclusions on the experience of living within contemporary communities, archaeologists study past societies primarily through their material remains – the buildings, tools, and other artefacts that constitute what is known as the material culture left over from former societies.

Nevertheless, one of the most important tasks for the archaeologist today is to know how to interpret material culture in human terms. How were those pots used? Why are some dwellings round and others square. Here the methods of archaeology and ethnography overlap. Archaeologists in recent decades have developed ‘ethnoarchaeology’ where, like ethnographers, they live among contemporary communities, but with the specific purpose of learning how such societies use material culture – how they make their tools and weapons, why they build their settlements where they do, and so on. Moreover, archaeology has a role to play in the field of conservation. Heritage studies constitute a developing field, where it is realised that the world’s cultural heritage is a diminishing resource which holds different meanings for different people.

If, then, archaeology deals with the past, in what way does it differ from history? In the broadest sense, just as archaeology is an aspect of anthropology, so too is it a part of history – where we mean the whole history of humankind from its beginnings over three million years ago. Indeed, for more than ninety-nine percent of that huge span of time, archaeology – the study of past material culture – is the only significant source of information. Conventional historical sources begin only with the introduction of written records around 3,000 BC in western Asia, and much later in most other parts in the world.

A commonly drawn distinction is between pre-history, i.e. the period before written records – and history in the narrow sense, meaning the study of the past using written evidence. To archaeology, which studies all cultures and periods, whether with or without writing, the distinction between history and pre-history is a convenient dividing line that recognises the importance of the written word, but in no way lessens the importance of the useful information contained in oral histories.

Since the aim of archaeology is the understanding of humankind, it is a humanistic study, and since it deals with the human past, it is a historical discipline. But is differs from the study of written history in a fundamental way. The material the archaeologist finds does not tell us directly what to think. Historical records make statements, offer opinions and pass judgements. The objects the archaeologists discover, on the other hand, tell us nothing directly in themselves. In this respect, the practice of the archaeologist is rather like that of the scientist, who collects data, conducts experiments, formulates a hypothesis tests the hypothesis against more data, and then, in conclusion, devises a model that seems best to summarise the pattern observed in the data. The archaeologist has to develop a picture of the past, just as the scientist has to develop a coherent view of the natural world.

Questions 14-19

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

In boxes 14-19 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

14. Archaeology involves creativity as well as investigative work.
15. Archaeologist must be able to translate texts from ancient languages.
16. Movies give a realistic picture of the work of archaeologists.
17. Anthropologist define culture in more than one way.
18. Archaeology is a more demanding field of study than anthropology.
19. The history of Europe has been documented since 3,000 BC.

Questions 20 and 21

Choose TWO letters A-E. Write your answer in boxes 20 and 21 on your answer sheet.

The list below gives some statements about anthropology.

Which TWO statements are mentioned by the writer of the text?

1. It is important for government planners
2. It is a continually growing field of study
3. It often involves long periods of fieldwork
4. It is subdivided for study purposes
5. It studies human evolutionary patterns

Questions 22 and 23

Choose TWO letters A-E. Write your answer in boxes 22 and 23 on your answer sheet.

The list below gives some of the tasks of an archaeologist.

Which TWO of these tasks are mentioned by the writer of the text?

1. examining ancient waste sites to investigate diet
2. studying cave art to determine its significance
3. deducing reasons for the shape of domestic buildings
4. investigating the way different cultures make and use objects
5. examining evidence for past climate changes

Questions 24-27

Complete the summary of the last two paragraphs of Reading Passage 2.

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

Much of the work of archaeologists can be done using written records, but they find (24) ………………………… equally valuable. The writer describes archaeology as both a (25) …………………………. and a (26) …………………… However, as archaeologists do not try to influence human behaviour, the writer compares their style of working to that of a (27) ……………..

Reading Passage 3

The Problem of Scarce Resources

Section A
The problem of how health-care resources should be allocated or apportioned, so that they are distributed in both the most just and most efficient way, is not a new one. Every health system in an economically developed society is faced with the need to decide (either formally or informally) what proportion of the community’s total resources should be spent on health-care; how resources are to be apportioned; what diseases and disabilities and which forms of treatment are to be given priority; which members of the community are to be given special consideration in respect of their health needs; and which forms of treatment are the most cost-effective.

Section B
What is new is that, from the 1950s onwards, there have been certain general changes in outlook about the finitude of resources as a whole and of health-care resources in particular, as well as more specific changes regarding the clientele of health-care resources and the cost to the community of those resources. Thus, in the 1950s and 1960s, there emerged an awareness in Western societies that resources for the provision of fossil fuel energy were finite and exhaustible and that the capacity of nature or the environment to sustain economic development and population was also finite. In other words, we became aware of the obvious fact that there were ‘limits to growth’. The new consciousness that there were also severe limits to health-care resources was part of this general revelation of the obvious. Looking back, it now seems quite incredible that in the national health systems that emerged in many countries in the years immediately after the 1939-45 World War, it was assumed without question that all the basic health needs of any community could be satisfied, at least in principle; the ‘in visible hand’ of economic progress would provide.

Section C
However, at exactly the same time as this new realization of the finite character of health-care resources was sinking in, an awareness of a contrary kind was developing in Western societies: that people have a basic right to health-care as a necessary condition of a proper human life. Like education, political and legal processes and institutions, public order, communication, transport and money supply, health-care came to be seen as one of the fundamental social facilities necessary for people to exercise their other rights as autonomous human beings. People are not in a position to exercise personal liberty and to be self-determining if they are poverty-stricken, or deprived of basic education, or do not live within a context of law and order. In the same way, basic health-care is a condition of the exercise of autonomy.

Section D
Although the language of ‘rights’ sometimes leads to confusion, by the late 1970s it was recognized in most societies that people have a right to health-care (though there has been considerable resistance in the United Sates to the idea that there is a formal right to health-care). It is also accepted that this right generates an obligation or duty for the state to ensure that adequate health-care resources are provided out of the public purse. The state has no obligation to provide a health-care system itself, but to ensure that such a system is provided. Put another way, basic health-care is now recognized as a ‘public good’, rather than a ‘private good’ that one is expected to buy for oneself. As the 1976 declaration of the World Health Organisation put it: ‘The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition’. As has just been remarked, in a liberal society basic health is seen as one of the indispensable conditions for the exercise of personal autonomy.

Section E
Just at the time when it became obvious that health-care resources could not possibly meet the demands being made upon them, people were demanding that their fundamental right to health-care be satisfied by the state. The second set of more specific changes that have led to the present concern about the distribution of health-care resources stems from the dramatic rise in health costs in most OECD countries, accompanied by large-scale demographic and social changes which have meant, to take one example, that elderly people are now major (and relatively very expensive) consumers of health-care resources. Thus in OECD countries as a whole, health costs increased from 3.8% of GDP in 1960 to 7% of GDP in 1980, and it has been predicted that the proportion of health costs to GDP will continue to increase. (In the US the current figure is about 12% of GDP, and in Australia about 7.8% of GDP.)

As a consequence, during the 1980s a kind of doomsday scenario (analogous to similar doomsday extrapolations about energy needs and fossil fuels or about population increases) was projected by health administrators, economists and politicians. In this scenario, ever-rising health costs were matched against static or declining resources.

Questions 28-31

Reading Passage 3 has five sections A-E.

Write the correct number i-viii in boxes 28-31 on your answer sheet.

Choose the correct heading for section A and C-E from the list of headings below.

List of Headings

1. The connection between health-care and other human rights
2. The development of market-based health systems.
3. The role of the state in health-care
4. A problem shared by every economically developed country
5. The impact of recent change
6. The views of the medical establishment
7. The end of an illusion
8. Sustainable economic development

Example

Section B  (answer) viii

28. Section A
29. Section C
30. Section D
31. Section E

Questions 32-35

Classify the following as first occurring

1. between 1945 and 1950
2. between 1950 and 1980
3. after 1980

32. the realisation that the resources of the national health system were limited
33. a sharp rise in the cost of health-care.
34. a belief that all the health-care resources the community needed would be produced by economic growth
35. an acceptance of the role of the state in guaranteeing the provision of health-care.

Questions 36-40

Do the following statements agree with the view of the writer in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet write:

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

36. Personal liberty and independence have never been regarded as directly linked to health-care.
37. Health-care came to be seen as a right at about the same time that the limits of health-care resources became evident.
38. IN OECD countries population changes have had an impact on health-care costs in recent years.
39. OECD governments have consistently underestimated the level of health-care provision needed.
40. In most economically developed countries the elderly will to make special provision for their health-care in the future.

Reading Passage 1

Doctoring Sales

Pharmaceuticals is one of the most profitable industries in North America. But do the drugs industry’s sales and marketing strategies go too far?

1. few months ago Kim Schaefer, sales representative of a minor global pharmaceutical company, walked into a medical center in New York to bring information and free samples of her company’s latest products. That day she was lucky- a doctor was available to see her. ‘The last rep offered me a trip to Florida. What do you have?’ the physician asked. He was only half joking.
2. What was on offer that day was a pair of tickets for a New York musical. But on any given day what Schaefer can offer is typical for today’s drugs rep -a car trunk full of promotional gifts and gadgets, a budget that could buy lunches and dinners for a small county, hundreds of free drug samples and the freedom to give a physician $200 to prescribe her new product to the next six patients who fit the drug’s profile. And she also has a few $ 1,000 honoraria to offer in exchange for doctors’ attendance at her company’s next educational lecture.
3. Selling Pharmaceuticals is a daily exercise in ethical judgment. Salespeople like Schaefer walk the line between the common practice of buying a prospect’s time with a free meal, and bribing doctors to prescribe their drugs. They work in an industry highly criticized for its sales and marketing practices, but find themselves in the middle of the age-old chicken-or-egg question – businesses won’t use strategies that don’t work, so are doctors to blame for the escalating extravagance of pharmaceutical marketing? Or is it the industry’s responsibility to decide the boundaries?
4. The explosion in the sheer number of salespeople in the Reid- and the amount of funding used to promote their causes- forces close examination of the pressures, influences and relationships between drug reps and doctors. Salespeople provide much-needed information and education to physicians. In many cases the glossy brochures, article reprints and prescriptions they deliver are primary sources of drug education for healthcare givers. With the huge investment the industry has placed in face-to-face selling, sales people have essentially become specialists in one drug or group of drugs – a tremendous advantage in getting the attention of busy doctors in need of quick information.
5. But the sales push rarely stops in the office. The flashy brochures and pamphlets left by the sales reps are often followed up with meals at expensive restaurants, meetings in warm and sunny places, and an inundation of promotional gadgets. Rarely do patients watch a doctor write with a pen that isn’t emblazoned with a drug’s name, or see a nurse use a tablet not bearing a pharmaceutical company’s logo. Millions of dollars are spent by pharmaceutical companies on promotional products like coffee mugs, shirts, umbrellas, and golf balls. Money well spent? It’s hard to tell. I’ve been the recipient of golf balls from one company and I use them, but it doesn’t make me prescribe their medicine,’ says one doctor.’ I tend to think I’m not influenced by what they give me.’
6. Free samples of new and expensive drugs might be the single most effective way of getting doctors and patients to become loyal to a product. Salespeople hand out hundreds of dollars’ worth of samples each week-$7.2 billion worth of them in one year. Though few comprehensive studies have been conducted, one by the University of Washington investigated how drug sample availability affected what physicians prescribe. A total of 131 doctors self-reported their prescribing patterns-the conclusion was that the availability of samples led them to dispense and prescribe drugs that differed from their preferred drug choice.
7. The bottom line is that pharmaceutical companies as a whole invest more in marketing than they do in research and development. And patients are the ones who pay-in the form of sky-rocketing prescription prices for every pen that’s handed out, every free theatre ticket, and every steak dinner eaten. In the end, the fact remains that pharmaceutical companies have every right to make a profit and will continue to find new ways to increase sales. But as the medical world continues to grapple with what’s acceptable and what’s not, it is clear that companies must continue to be heavily scrutinized for their sales and marketing strategies.

Questions 1-7

Reading Passage 1 has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Write the correct number, i-x, in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

List of Headings

1. Not all doctors are persuaded
2. Choosing the best offers
3. Who is responsible for the increase in promotions?
4. Fighting the drug companies
5. An example of what doctors expect from drug companies
6. Gifts include financial incentives
7. Research shows that promotion works
8. The high costs of research
9. The positive side of drugs promotion
10. Who really pays for doctors’ free gifts?

1. Paragraph A
2. Paragraph B
3. Paragraph C
4. Paragraph D
5. Paragraph E
6. Paragraph F
7. Paragraph G

Questions 8-13

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet, write

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

8. Sales representatives like Kim Schaefer work to a very limited budget.
9. Kim Schaefer’s marketing technique may be open to criticism on moral grounds.
10. The information provided by drug companies is of little use to doctors.
11. Evidence of drug promotion is clearly visible in the healthcare environment.
12. The drug companies may give free drug samples to patients without doctors’ prescriptions
13. It is legitimate for drug companies to make money.

Reading Passage 2

Do Literate Women Make Better Mothers?

Children in developing countries are healthier and more likely to survive past the age of five when their mothers can read and write. Experts In public health accepted this idea decades ago, but until now no one has been able to show that a woman’s ability to read in Itself Improves her children’s chances of survival.

Most literate women learnt to read In primary school, and the fact that a woman has had an education may simply indicate her family’s wealth or that It values Its children more highly. Now a long-term study carried out In Nicaragua has eliminated these factors by showing that teaching reading to poor adult women, who would otherwise have remained Illiterate, has a direct effect on their children’s health and survival.

In 1979, the government of Nicaragua established a number of social programmes, including a National Literacy Crusade. By 1985, about 300,000 Illiterate adults from all over the country, many of whom had never attended primary school, had learnt how to read, write and use numbers.

During this period, researchers from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the Central American Institute of Health In Nicaragua, the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua and the Costa Rican Institute of Health Interviewed nearly 3,000 women, some of whom had learnt to read as children, some during the literacy crusade and some who had never learnt at all. The women were asked how many children they had given birth to and how many of them had died In Infancy. The research teams also examined the surviving children to find out how well-nourished they were.

The Investigators’ findings were striking. In the late 1970s, the infant mortality rate for the children of Illiterate mothers was around 110 deaths per thousand live births. At this point In their lives, those mothers who later went on to learn to read had a similar level Of child mortality (105/1000). For women educated in primary school, however, the Infant mortality rate was significantly lower, at 80 per thousand.

In 1985, after the National Literacy Crusade had ended, the infant mortality figures for those who remained illiterate and for those educated In primary school remained more or less unchanged. For those women who learnt to read through the campaign, the infant mortality rate was 84 per thousand, an impressive 21 points lower than for those women who were still Illiterate. The children of the newly-literate mothers were also better nourished than those of women who could not read.

Why are the children of literate mothers better off? According to Peter Sandiford of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, no one Knows for certain. Child health was not on the curriculum during the women’s lessons, so fie and his colleagues are looking at other factors. They are working with the same group of 3,000 women, to try to find out whether reading mothers make better use of hospitals and clinics, opt for smaller families, exert more control at home, learn modern childcare techniques more quickly, or whether they merely have more respect for themselves and their children.

The Nicaraguan study may have important implications for governments and aid agencies that need to know where to direct their resources. Sandiford says that there is increasing evidence that female education, at any age, is “an important health intervention in its own right’. The results of the study lend support to the World Bank’s recommendation that education budgets in developing countries should be increased, not just to help their economies, but also to improve child health.

We’ve known for a long time that maternal education is important,’ says John Cleland of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. ‘But we thought that even if we started educating girls today, we’d have to wait a generation for the pay off. The Nicaraguan study suggests we may be able to bypass that.’

Cleland warns that the Nicaraguan crusade was special in many ways, and similar campaigns elsewhere might not work as well. It is notoriously difficult to teach adults skills that do not have an immediate impact on their everyday lives, and many literacy campaigns in other countries have been much less successful. ‘The crusade was part of a larger effort to bring a better life to the people,’ says Cleland. Replicating these conditions in other countries will be a major challenge for development workers.

Questions 14-18

Complete the summary using the list of words, A-J, below.

Write the correct letters, A-J, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

The Nicaraguan National Literacy Crusade aimed to teach large numbers of illiterate (14) ……………… to read and write. Public health experts have known for many years that there is a connection between child health and (15)……………… However, it has not previously been known whether these two factors were directly linked or not. This question has been investigated by (16)……………….. in Nicaragua. As a result, factors such as (17) …………………. and attitudes to children have been eliminated, audit has been shown that 18……………. can in itself improve infant health and survival.

Questions 19-24

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

In boxes 19-24 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

19. About a thousand or the women interviewed by the researchers had learnt to read they were children.
20. Before the National Literacy Crusade, illiterate women had approximately the same levels of infant mortality as those who had learnt to read in primary school.
21. Before and after the National Literacy Crusade, the child mortality rate for the illiterate women stayed at about 110 deaths for each thousand live births.
22. The women who had learnt to read through the National Literacy Crusade showed the greatest change in infant mortality levels.
23. The women who had learnt to read through the National Literacy Crusade had the lowest rates of child mortality.
24. After the National Literacy Crusade, the children of the women who remained illiterate were found to be severely malnourished.

Questions 25 and 26

Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Write the correct letters in boxes 25 and 26 on your answer sheet

Which TWO important implications drawn from the Nicaraguan study are mentioned by the writer of the passage?

1. It is better to educate mature women than young girls
2. Similar campaigns in other countries would be equally successful.
3. The effects of maternal literacy programmes can be seen very quickly
4. Improving child health can quickly affect a country’s economy.
5. Money spent on female education will improve child health.

Reading Passage 3

Persistent bullying is one of the worst experiences

Persistent bullying is one of the worst experiences a child can face. How can it be prevented? Peter Smith, Professor of Psychology at the University of Sheffield, directed the Sheffield Anti-Bullying Intervention Project, funded by the Department for Education. Here he reports on his findings.

1. Bullying can take a variety of forms, from the verbal -being taunted or called hurtful names- to the physical- being kicked or shoved- as well as indirect forms, such as being excluded from social groups. A survey I conducted with Irene Whitney found that in British primary schools up to a quarter of pupils reported experience of bullying, which in about one in ten cases was persistent. There was less bullying in secondary schools, with about one in twenty-five suffering persistent bullying, but these cases may be particularly recalcitrant.
2. Bullying is clearly unpleasant and can make the child experiencing it feel unworthy and depressed. In extreme cases, it can even lead to suicide, though this is thankfully rare. Victimised pupils are more likely to experience difficulties with interpersonal relationships as adults, while children who persistently bully are more likely to grow up to be physically violent, and convicted of anti-social offences.
3. Until recently, not much was known about the topic, and little help was available to teachers to deal with bullying. Perhaps as a consequence, schools would often deny the problem. ‘There is no bullying at this school’ has been a common refrain, almost certainly all true. Fortunately, more schools are now saying: There is not much bullying here, but when it occurs we have a clear policy for dealing with it.
4. Three factors are involved in this change. First is an awareness of the severity of the problem. Second, a number of resources to help tackle bullying have become available in Britain. For example, the Scottish Collllcil for Research in Education produced a package of materials, Action Against Bullying, circulated to all schools in England and Wales as well as in Scotland in summer 1992, with a second pack, Supporting Schools Against Bullying, produced the following year. In Ireland, Guidelines on Countering Bullying Behaviour in Post-Primary Schools was published in 1993. Third, there is evidence that these materials work and that schools can achieve something. This comes from carefully conducted ‘before and after” evaluations of interventions in schools, monitored by a research team. In Norway, after an intervention campaign was introduced nationally, an evaluation of forty-two schools suggested that, over a two-year period, bullying was halved. The Sheffield investigation, which involved sixteen primary schools and seven secondary schools, found that most schools succeeded in reducing bullying.
5. Evidence suggests that a key step is to develop a policy on bullying, saying clearly what is meant by bullying, and giving explicit guidelines on what will be done if it occurs, what record will be kept, who will be informed, what sanctions will be employed. The policy should be developed through consultation, over a period of time- not just imposed from the head teacher’s office! Pupils, parents and staff should feel they have been involved in the policy, which needs to be disseminated and implemented effectively. Other actions can be taken to back up the policy. There are ways of dealing with the topic through the curriculum, using video, drama and literature. These are useful for raising awareness, and can best be tied into early phases of development while the school is starting to discuss the issue of bullying. They are also useful in renewing the policy for new pupils or revising it in the light of experience. But curriculum work alone may only have short-term effects; it should be an addition to policy work, not a substitute. There are also ways of working with individual pupils, or in small groups. Assertiveness training for pupils who are liable to be victims is worthwhile, and certain approaches to group bullying such as ‘no blame’, can be useful in changing the behaviour of bullying pupils without confronting them directly, although other sanctions may be needed for those who continue with persistent bullying. Work in the playground is important, too. One helpful step is to train lunchtime supervisors to distinguish bullying from playful fighting and help them break up conflicts. Another possibility is to improve the playground environment so that pupils are less likely to be led into bullying from boredom or frustration.
6. With these developments, schools can expect that at least the most serious kinds of bullying can largely be prevented. The more effort put in and the wider the whole school involvement, the more substantial the results are likely to be. The reduction in bullying – and the consequent improvement in pupil happiness- is surely a worthwhile objective.

Questions 27-30

Reading Passage 3 has six sections.

Choose the correct heading for sections A-D from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i-vii, in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

1. The role of video violence
2. The failure of government policy
3. Reasons for the increased rate of bullying
4. Research into how common bullying is in British schools
5. The reaction from schools to enquiries about bullying
6. The effect of bullying on the children involved
7. Developments that have led to a new approach by schools

27. Section A
28. Section B
29. Section C
30. Section D

Questions 31-34

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

Write the correct letter in boxes 31-34 on your answer sheet.

31. A recent survey found that in British secondary schools
    1. there was more bullying than had previously been the case.
    2. there was less bullying than in primary schools.
    3. cases of persistent bullying were very common.
    4. indirect forms of bullying were particularly difficult to deal with.
32. Children who are bullied
    1. are twice as likely to commit suicide as the average person.
    2. find it more difficult to relate to adults.
    3. are less likely to be violent in later life.
    4. may have difficulty forming relationships in later life.
33. The writer thinks that the declaration ‘There is no bullying at this school’
    1. is no longer true in many schools.
    2. was not in fact made by many schools.
    3. reflected the school’s lack of concern.
    4. reflected a lack of knowledge and resources.
34. What were the findings of research carried out in Norway?
    1. Bullying declined by 50% after an anti-bullying campaign.
    2. Twenty-one schools reduced bullying as a result of an anti-bullying campaign
    3. Two years is the optimum length for an anti-bullying campaign.
    4. Bullying is a less serious problem in Norway than in the UK.

Questions 35-39

Complete the summary below.

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

Write your answers in boxes 35-39 on your answer sheet.

What steps should schools take to reduce bullying?The most important step is for the school authorities to produce a (35) ………………….. which makes the school’s attitude towards bullying quite clear. It should include detailed 36 …………………… as to how the school and its staff will react if bullying occurs. In addition, action can be taken through the (37) ……………………… This is particularly useful in the early part of the process, as a way of raising awareness and encouraging discussion On its own, however, it is insufficient to bring about a permanent solution. Effective work can also be done with individual pupils and small groups. For example, potential (38) ……………………. of bullying can be trained to be more self-confident. Or again, in dealing with group bullying, a ‘no blame’ approach, which avoids confronting the offender too directly, is often effective. Playground supervision will be more effective if members of staff are trained to recognise the difference between bullying and mere (39) ……………………. .

Question 40

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

Write the correct letter in box 40 on your answer sheet.

Which of the following is the most suitable title for Reading Passage 3?

1. Bullying: what parents can do
2. Bullying: are the media to blame?
3. Bullying: the link with academic failure
4. Bullying: from crisis management to prevention

Reading Passage 1

BAKELITE – The birth of modern plastics

In 1907, Leo Hendrick Baekeland, a Belgian scientist working in New York, discovered and patented a revolutionary new synthetic material. His invention, which he named ‘Bakelite’, was of enormous technological importance, and effectively launched the modern plastics industry.

The term ‘plastic’ comes from the Greek plassein, meaning ‘to mould’. Some plastics are derived from natural sources, some are semi-synthetic (the result of chemical action on a natural substance), and some are entirely synthetic, that is, chemically engineered from the constituents of coal or oil. Some are ‘thermoplastic’, which means that, like candlewax, they melt when heated and can then be reshaped. Others are ‘thermosetting’: like eggs, they cannot revert to their original viscous state, and their shape is thus fixed for ever, Bakelite had the distinction of being the first totally synthetic thermosetting plastic.

The history of today’s plastics begins with the discovery of a series of semi-synthetic thermoplastic materials in the mid-nineteenth century. The impetus behind the development of these early plastics was generated by a number of factors – immense technological progress in the domain of chemistry, coupled with wider cultural changes, and the pragmatic need to find acceptable substitutes for dwindling supplies of ‘luxury’ materials such as tortoiseshell and ivory.

Baekeland’s interest in plastics began in 1885 when, as a young chemistry student in Belgium, he embarked on research into phenolic resins, the group of sticky substances produced when phenol (carbolic acid) combines with an aldehyde (a volatile fluid similar to alcohol). He soon abandoned the subject, however, only returning to it some years later. By 1905 he was a wealthy New Yorker, having recently made his fortune with the invention of a new photographic paper. While Baekeland had been busily amassing dollars, some advances had been made in the development of plastics. The years 1899 and 1900 had seen the patenting of the first semi-synthetic thermosetting material that could be manufactured on an industrial scale. In purely scientific terms, Baekeland’s major contribution to the field is not so much the actual discovery of the material to which he gave his name, but rather the method by which a reaction between phenol and formaldehyde could be controlled, thus making possible its preparation on a commercial basis. On 13 July 1907, Baekeland took out his famous patent describing this preparation, the essential features of which are still in use today.

The original patent outlined a three-stage process, in which phenol and formaldehyde (from wood or coal) were initially combined under vacuum inside a large egg-shaped kettle. The result was a resin known as Novalak, which became soluble and malleable when heated. The resin was allowed to cool in shallow trays until it hardened, and then broken up and ground into powder. Other substances were then introduced: including fillers, such as woodflour, asbestos or cotton, which increase strength and. moisture resistance, catalysts (substances to speed up the reaction between two chemicals without joining to either) and hexa, a compound of ammonia and formaldehyde which supplied the additional formaldehyde necessary to form a thermosetting resin. This resin was then left to cool and harden, and ground up a second time. The resulting granular powder was raw Bakelite, ready to be made into a vast range of manufactured objects. In the last stage, the heated Bakelite was poured into a hollow mould of the required shape and subjected to extreme heat and pressure; thereby ‘setting’ its form for life.

The design of Bakelite objects, everything from earrings to television sets, was governed to a large extent by the technical requirements of the moulding process. The object could not be designed so that it was locked into the mould and therefore difficult to extract. A common general rule was that objects should taper towards the deepest part of the mould, and if necessary the product was moulded in separate pieces. Moulds had to be carefully designed so that the molten Bakelite would flow evenly and completely into the mould. Sharp corners proved impractical and were thus avoided, giving rise to the smooth, ‘streamlined’ style popular in the 1930s. The thickness of the walls of the mould was also crucial: thick walls took longer to cool and harden, a factor which had to be considered by the designer in order to make the most efficient use of machines.

Baekeland’s invention, although treated with disdain in its early years, went on to enjoy an unparalleled popularity which lasted throughout the first half of the twentieth century. It became the wonder product of the new world of industrial expansion -‘the material of a thousand uses’. Being both non-porous and heat-resistant, Bakelite kitchen goods were promoted as being germ-free and sterilisable. Electrical manufacturers seized on its insulating: properties, and consumers everywhere relished its dazzling array of shades, delighted that they were now, at last, no longer restricted to the wood tones and drab browns of the pre-plastic era. It then fell from favour again during the 1950s, and was despised and destroyed in vast quantities. Recently, however, it has been experiencing something of a renaissance, with renewed demand for original Bakelite objects in the collectors’ marketplace, and museums, societies and dedicated individuals once again appreciating the style and originality of this innovative material.

Questions 1-3

Complete the summary.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.

Some plastics behave in a similar way to (1) ……………….. in that they melt under heat and can be moulded into new forms. Bakelite was unique because it was the first material to be both entirely (2) ……………….. in origin, and thermosetting. There were several reasons for the research into plastics in the nineteenth century, among them the great advances that had been made in the field of (3) ……………….. and the search for alternatives to natural resources like ivory.

Questions 4-8

Complete the flow-chart.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 4-8 on your answer sheet.

Questions 9-10

Write your answers in boxes 9 and 10 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO of the following factors influencing the design of Bakelite objects are mentioned in the text?

1. the function which the object would serve
2. the ease with which the resin could fill the mould
3. the facility with which the object could be removed from the mould
4. the limitations of the materials used to manufacture the mould
5. the fashionable styles of the period

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. Modern-day plastic preparation is based on the same principles as that patented in 1907.
12. Bakelite was immediately welcomed as a practical and versatile material.
13. Bakelite was only available in a limited range of colours.

Reading Passage 2

John McCrone reviews recent research on humour

The joke comes over the headphones: ‘Which side of a dog has the most hair? The left.’ No, not funny. Try again. ‘Which side of a dog has the most hair? The outside.’ Hah! The punchline is silly yet fitting, tempting a smile, even a laugh. Laughter has always struck people as deeply mysterious, perhaps pointless. The writer Arthur Koestler dubbed it the luxury reflex: ‘unique in that it serves no apparent biological purpose’.

Theories about humour have an ancient pedigree. Plato expressed the idea that humour is simply a delighted feeling of superiority over others. Kant and Freud felt that joke-telling relies on building up a psychic tension which is safely punctured by the ludicrousness of the punchline. But most modern humour theorists have settled on some version of Aristotle’s belief that jokes are based on a reaction to or resolution of incongruity, when the punchline is either a nonsense or, though appearing silly, has a clever second meaning.

Graeme Ritchie, a computational linguist in Edinburgh, studies the linguistic structure of jokes in order to understand not only humour but language understanding and reasoning in machines. He says that while there is no single format for jokes, many revolve around a sudden and surprising conceptual shift. A comedian will present a situation followed by an unexpected interpretation that is also apt.

So even if a punchline sounds silly, the listener can see there is a clever semantic fit and that sudden mental ‘Aha!’ is the buzz that makes us laugh. Viewed from this angle, humour is just a form of creative insight, a sudden leap to a new perspective.

However, there is another type of laughter, the laughter of social appeasement and it is important to understand this too. Play is a crucial part of development in most young mammals. Rats produce ultrasonic squeaks to prevent their scuffles turning nasty. Chimpanzees have a ‘play-face’ – a gaping expression accompanied by a panting ‘ah, ah’ noise. In humans, these signals have mutated into smiles and laughs. Researchers believe social situations, rather than cognitive events such as jokes, trigger these instinctual markers of play or appeasement. People laugh on fairground rides or when tickled to flag a play situation, whether they feel amused or not.

Both social and cognitive types of laughter tap into the same expressive machinery in our brains, the emotion and motor circuits that produce smiles and excited vocalisations. However, if cognitive laughter is the product of more general thought processes, it should result from more expansive brain activity.

Psychologist Vinod Goel investigated humour using the new technique of ‘single event’ functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRl). An MRI scanner uses magnetic fields and radio waves to track the changes in oxygenated blood that accompany mental activity. Until recently, MRI scanners needed several minutes of activity and so could not be used to track rapid thought processes such as comprehending a joke. New developments now allow half-second ‘snapshots’ of all sorts of reasoning and problem-solving activities.

Although Goel felt being inside a brain scanner was hardly the ideal place for appreciating a joke, he found evidence that understanding a joke involves a widespread mental shift. His scans showed that at the beginning of a joke the listener’s prefrontal cortex lit up, particularly the right prefrontal believed to be critical for problem solving. But there was also activity in the temporal lobes at the side of the head (consistent with attempts to rouse stored knowledge) and in many other brain areas. Then when the punchline arrived, a new area sprang to life -the orbital prefrontal cortex. This patch of brain tucked behind the orbits of the eyes is associated with evaluating information.

Making a rapid emotional assessment of the events of the moment is an extremely demanding job for the brain, animal or human. Energy and arousal levels may need, to be retuned in the blink of an eye. These abrupt changes will produce either positive or negative feelings. The orbital cortex, the region that becomes active in Goel’s experiment, seems the best candidate for the site that feeds such feelings into higher-level thought processes, with its close connections to the brain’s sub-cortical arousal apparatus and centres of metabolic control.

All warm-blooded animals make constant tiny adjustments in arousal in response to external events, but humans, who have developed a much more complicated internal life as a result of language, respond emotionally not only to their surroundings, but to their own thoughts. Whenever a sought-for answer snaps into place, there is a shudder of pleased recognition. Creative discovery being pleasurable, humans have learned to find ways of milking this natural response. The fact that jokes tap into our general evaluative machinery explains why the line between funny and disgusting, or funny and frightening, can be so fine. Whether a joke gives pleasure or pain depends on a person’s outlook.

Humour may be a luxury, but the mechanism behind it is no evolutionary accident. As Peter Derks, a psychologist at William and Mary College in Virginia, says: ‘I like to think of humour as the distorted mirror of the mind. It’s creative, perceptual, analytical and lingual. If we can figure out how the mind processes humour, then we’ll have a pretty good handle on how it works in general.

Questions 14-20

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

In boxes 14-20 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

14. Arthur Koestler considered laughter biologically important in several ways.
15. Plato believed humour to be a sign of above-average intelligence.
16. Kant believed that a successful joke involves the controlled release of nervous energy.
17. Current thinking on humour has largely ignored Aristotle’s view on the subject.
18. Graeme Ritchie’s work links jokes to artificial intelligence.
19. Most comedians use personal situations as a source of humour.
20. Chimpanzees make particular noises when they are playing.

Questions 21-23

The diagram below shows the areas of the brain activated by jokes.

Label the diagram.

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

Questions 24-27

Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-G below.

Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 24-27 on your answer sheet.

1. react to their own thoughts.
2. helped create language in humans.
3. respond instantly to whatever is happening.
4. may provide valuable information about the operation of the brain.
5. cope with difficult situations.
6. relate to a person’s subjective views.
7. led our ancestors to smile and then laugh.
   24. One of the brain’s most difficult tasks is to
   25. Because of the language they have developed, humans
   26. Individual responses to humour
   27. Peter Derks believes that humour

Reading Passage 3

The Birth of Scientific English

World science is dominated today by a small number of languages, including Japanese, German and French, but it is English which is probably the most popular global language of science. This is not just because of the importance of English-speaking countries such as the USA in scientific research; the scientists of many non-English-speaking countries find that they need to write their research papers in English to reach a wide international audience. Given the prominence of scientific English today, it may seem surprising that no one really knew how to write science in English before the 17th century. Before that, Latin was regarded as the lingua franca for European intellectuals.

The European Renaissance (c. 14th-16th century) is sometimes called the ‘revival of learning’, a time of renewed interest in the ‘lost knowledge’ of classical times. At the same time, however, scholars also began to test and extend this knowledge. The emergent nation states of Europe developed competitive interests in world exploration and the development of trade. Such expansion, which was to take the English language west to America and east to India, was supported by scientific developments such as the discovery of magnetism (and hence the invention of the compass), improvements in cartography and – perhaps the most important scientific revolution of them all – the new theories of astronomy and the movement of the Earth in relation to the planets and stars, developed by Copernicus (1473-1543).

England was one of the first countries where scientists adopted and publicised Copernican ideas with enthusiasm. Some of these scholars, including two with interests in language -John Wall’s and John Wilkins – helped Found the Royal Society in 1660 in order to promote empirical scientific research.

Across Europe similar academies and societies arose, creating new national traditions of science. In the initial stages of the scientific revolution, most publications in the national languages were popular works, encyclopaedias, educational textbooks and translations. Original science was not done in English until the second half of the 17th century. For example, Newton published his mathematical treatise, known as the Principia, in Latin, but published his later work on the properties of light – Opticks – in English.

There were several reasons why original science continued to be written in Latin. The first was simply a matter of audience. Latin was suitable for an international audience of scholars, whereas English reached a socially wider, but more local, audience. Hence, popular science was written in English.

A second reason for writing in Latin may, perversely, have been a concern for secrecy. Open publication had dangers in putting into the public domain preliminary ideas which had not yet been fully exploited by their ‘author’. This growing concern about intellectual property rights was a feature of the period – it reflected both the humanist notion of the individual, rational scientist who invents and discovers through private intellectual labour, and the growing connection between original science and commercial exploitation.

There was something of a social distinction between ‘scholars and gentlemen’ who understood Latin, and men of trade who lacked a classical education. And in the mid-17th century it was common practice for mathematicians to keep their discoveries and proofs secret, by writing them in cipher, in obscure languages, or in private messages deposited in a sealed box with the Royal Society. Some scientists might have felt more comfortable with Latin precisely because its audience, though international, was socially restricted. Doctors clung the most keenly to Latin as an ‘insider language’.

A third reason why the writing of original science in English was delayed may have been to do with the linguistic inadequacy of English in the early modern period. English was not well equipped to deal with scientific argument. First, it lacked the necessary technical vocabulary. Second, it lacked the grammatical resources required to represent the world in an objective and impersonal way, and to discuss the relations, such as cause and effect, that might hold between complex and hypothetical entities.

Fortunately, several members of the Royal Society possessed an interest in language and became engaged in various linguistic projects. Although a proposal in 1664 to establish a committee for improving the English language came to little, the society’s members did a great deal to foster the publication of science in English and to encourage the development of a suitable writing style. Many members of the Royal Society also published monographs in English. One of the first was by Robert Hooke, the society’s first curator of experiments, who described his experiments with microscopes in Micrographia (1665). This work is largely narrative in style, based on a transcript of oral demonstrations and lectures.

In 1665 a new scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions, was inaugurated. Perhaps the first international English-language scientific journal, it encouraged a new genre of scientific writing, that of short, focused accounts of particular experiments.

The 17th century was thus a formative period in the establishment of scientific English. In the following century much of this momentum was lost as German established itself as the leading European language of science. It is estimated that by the end of the 18th century 401 German scientific journals had been established as opposed to 96 in France and 50 in England. However, in the 19th century scientific English again enjoyed substantial lexical growth as the industrial revolution created the need for new technical vocabulary, and new, specialised, professional societies were instituted to promote and publish in the new disciplines.

Questions 28-34

Complete the summary.

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

Write your answers in boxes 28-34 on your answer sheet.

In Europe modem science emerged at the same time as the nation state. At first, the scientific language of choice remained (28) ……………….. It allowed scientists to communicate with other socially privileged thinkers while protecting their work from unwanted exploitation. Sometimes the desire to protect ideas seems to have been stronger than the desire to communicate them, particularly in the case of mathematicians and (29) ……………….. In Britain, moreover, scientists worried that English had neither the (30) ……………….. nor the (31) ……………….. to express their ideas.This situation only changed after 1660 when scientists associated with the (32) ……………….. set about developing English. An early scientific journal fostered a new kind of writing based on short descriptions of specific experiments. Although English was then overtaken by (33) ……………….. it developed again in the 19th century as a direct result of the (34) …………………

Questions 35-37

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

In boxes 35-37 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

35. There was strong competition between scientists in Renaissance Europe.
36. The most important scientific development of the Renaissance period was the discovery of magnetism.
37. In 17th-century Britain, leading thinkers combined their interest in science with an interest in how to express ideas.

Questions 38-40

Complete the table.

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