100 IELTS Reading Tests

CONTENT
TEST 1 1
TEST 2 15
TEST 3 32
TEST 4 45
TEST 5 60
TEST 6 78
TEST 7 92
TEST 8 104
TEST 9 117
TEST 10 131
TEST 1
SECTION 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading
Passage 1 on the following pages
Natural Pesticide in India

A A dramatic story about cotton farmers in India shows how destructive pesticides can
be for people and the environment; and why today’s agriculture is so dependent on
pesticides. This story also shows that it’s possible to stop using chemical pesticides
without losing a crop to ravaging insects, and it explains how to do it.
B The story began about 30 years ago, a handful of families migrated from the Guntur
district of Andhra Pradesh, southeast India, into Punukula, a community of around 900
people farming plots of between two and 10 acres. The outsiders from Guntur brought
cotton-culture with them. Cotton wooed farmers by promising to bring in more hard cash
than the mixed crops they were already growing to eat and sell: millet, sorghum,
groundnuts, pigeon peas, mung beans, chilli and rice. But raising cotton meant using
pesticides and fertilisers – until then a mystery to the mostly illiterate farmers of the
community. When cotton production started spreading through Andhra Pradesh state.
The high value of cotton made it an exceptionally attractive crop, but growing cotton
required chemical fertilizers and pesticides. As most of the farmers were poor, illiterate,
and without previous experience using agricultural chemicals, they were forced to rely on
local, small-scale agricultural dealers for advice. The dealers sold them seeds, fertilizers,
and pesticides on credit and also guaranteed purchase of their crop. The dealers
themselves had little technical knowledge about pesticides. They merely passed on
promotional information from multinational chemical companies that supplied their
products.
C At first, cotton yields were high, and expenses for pesticides were low because cotton
pests had not yet moved in. The farmers had never earned so much! But within a few
years, cotton pests like bollworms and aphids plagued the fields, and the farmers saw
how rapid insect evolution can be. Repeated spraying killed off the weaker pests, but left
the ones most resistant to pesticides to multiply. As pesticide resistance mounted, the
farmers had to apply more and more of the pesticides to get the same results. At the
same time, the pesticides killed off birds, wasps, beetles, spiders, and other predators that
had once provided natural control of pest insects. Without these predators, the pests
could destroy the entire crop if pesticides were not used. Eventually, farmers were mixing
pesticide “cocktails” containing as many as ten different brands and sometimes having
to spray their cotton as frequently as two times a week. They were really hooked!
D The villagers were hesitant, but one of Punukula’s village elders decided to risk trying
the natural methods instead of pesticides. His son had collapsed with acute pesticide
poisoning and survived but the hospital bill was staggering. SECURE’s staf f coached this
villager on how to protect his cotton crop by using a toolkit of natural methods chat
India’s Center for Sustainable Agriculture put together in collaboration with scientists at
Andhra Pradesh’s state university. They called the toolkit “Non-Pesticide Management”
— or” NPM.”
E The most important resource in the NPM toolkit was the neem tree (Azadirachta indica
) which is common throughout much of India. Neem tree is a broad-leaved evergreen
tree related to mahogany. It protects itself against insects by producing a multitude of
natural pesticides that work in a variety of ways: with an arsenal of chemical defenses that
repel egg-laying, interfere with insect growth, and most important, disrupt the ability of
crop-eating insects to sense their food.
F In fact, neem has been used traditionally in India to protect stored grains from insects
and to produce soaps, skin lotions, and other health products. To protect crops from
insects, neem seeds are simply ground into a powder that is soaked overni ght in water.
The solution is then sprayed onto the crop. Another preparation, neem cake, can be mixed
into the soil to kill pests and diseases in the soil, and it doubles as an organic fertiliser
high in nitrogen. Neem trees grow locally, so the only “cost” is the labor to prepare neem
for application to fields.
G The first farmer’s trial with NPM was a complete success! His harvest was as good as
the harvests of farmers that were using pesticides, and he earned much more because he
did not spend a single rupee on pesticides. Inspired by this success, 20 farmers tried NPM
the next year. SECURE posted two well-trained staff in Punukula to teach and help
everyone in the village, and the village women put pressure on their husbands to stop
using toxic chemicals. Families that were no longer exposing themselves to pesticides
began to feel much better, and the rapid improvements in income, health, and general
wellbeing quickly sold everyone on the value of NPM. By 2000, all the farmers in Punukula
were using NPM, not only for cotton, but for their other crops as well.
H The suicide epidemic came to an end. And with the cash, health, and energy that
returned when they stopped poisoning themselves with pesticides, the villagers were
inspired to start more community and business projects. The women of Punukula created
a new source of income by collecting, grinding, and selling neem seeds for NPM in other
villages. The villagers rescued their indentured children and gave them special six -month
“catch-up’ courses to return to school.
I Fighting against pesticides, and winning, increased village solidarity, self -confidence,
and optimism about the future. When dealers tried to punish NPM users by paying
less for NPM cotton, the farmers united to form a marketing cooperative that found fairer
prices elsewhere. The leadership and collaboration skills that the citizens of Punukula
developed in the NPM struggle have helped them to take on other challenges, like water
purification, building a cotton gin to add value to the cotton before they sell it, and
convincing the state government to support NPM over the objection of multi-national
pesticide corporations.
Questions 1-4
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In
boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
1. Cotton in Andhra Pradesh state could really bring more income to the bcal farmers than
traditional farming.
2. The majority of farmers had used the agricultural pesticides before 30 years ago.
3. The yield of cotton is relatively tower than that of other agricultural crops.
4. The farmers didn’t realize the spread of the pests was so fast.
Questions 5-11
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer, Write your
answers in boxes 5-10 on your answer sheet.
The Making of pesticide protecting crops against insects
The broad-leaved neem tree was chosen, it is a fast-growing and 5 tree

and produces amount of 6 for itself that can be effective like insects
repellent. Firstly, neem seeds need to be crushed into 7 form, which
is left behind 8 in water. Then we need to spray the solution onto
the crop. A special 9 is used when mix with soil in order to eliminate
bugs and bacteria, and its effect 10 when it adds the level of 11 in
this organic fertilizer meanwhile.
Questions 12-14
Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each
answer Write your answers in boxes 12-14 on your answer sheet.
12. In which year did all the farmers use NPM for their crops in Punukula?
13. What gave the women of Punukula a business opportunity to NPMs?
14. Name one project that the citizens of Punukula decide to develope in the NPM.
SECTION 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15 – 27, which are based on
Reading Passage 2 below.
Numeracy: Can animals tell numbers?
A Prime among basic numerical faculties is the ability to distinguish between a larger and
a smaller number, says psychologist Elizabeth Brannon. Humans can do this with ease –
providing the ratio is big enough – but do other animals share this ability? In one
experiment, rhesus monkeys and university students examined two sets of geometrical
objects that appeared briefly on a computer monitor. They had to decide which set
contained more objects. Both groups performed successfully but, importantly, Brannon’s
team found that monkeys, like humans, make more errors when two sets of objects are
close in number. The students’ performance ends up looking just like a monkey’s. It’s
practically identical, ‘she says.
B Humans and monkeys are mammals, in the animal family known as primates. These are
not the only animals whose numerical capacities rely on ratio, however. The same seems
to apply to some amphibians. Psychologist Claudia Uller’s team tempted salamanders
with two sets of fruit flies held in clear tubes. In a series of trials, the researchers noted
which tube the salamanders scampered towards, reasoning that if they had a capacity to
recognise number, they would head for the larger number. The salamanders successfully
discriminated between tubes containing 8 and 16 flies respectively, but not between 3
and 4, 4 and 6, or 8 and 12. So it seems that for the salamanders to discriminate between
two numbers, the larger must be at least twice as big as the smaller. However, they could
differentiate between 2 and 3 flies just as well as between 1 and 2 flies, suggesting they
recognise small numbers in a different way from larger numbers.
C Further support for this theory comes from studies of mosquitofish, which instinctively
join the biggest shoal they can. A team at the University of Padova found that while
mosquitofish can tell the difference between a group containing 3 shoal -mates and a
group containing 4, they did not show a preference between groups of 4 and 5. The team
also found that mosquitofish can discriminate between numbers up to 16, but only if the
ratio between the fish in each shoal was greater than 2:1. This indicates that the fish, like
salamanders, possess both the approximate and precise number systems found in more
intelligent animals such as infant humans and other primates.
D While these findings are highly suggestive, some critics argue that the animals might
be relying on other factors to complete the tasks, without considering the number itself.
‘Any study that’s claiming an animal is capable of representing number should also be
controlling for other factors, ‘ says Brannon. Experiments have confirmed that primates
can indeed perform numerical feats without extra clues, but what about the more
primitive animals?
E To consider this possibility, the mosquito fish tests were repeated, this time using
varying geometrical shapes in place of fish. The team arranged these shapes so that they
had the same overall surface area and luminance even though they contained a different
number of objects. Across hundreds of trials on 14 different fish, the team found they
consistently discriminated 2 objects from 3. The team is now testing whether mosquitofish
can also distinguish 3 geometric objects from 4.
F Even more primitive organisms may share this ability. Entomologist Jurgen Tautz sent a
group of bees down a corridor, at the end of which lay two chambers – one which
contained sugar water, which they like, while the other was empty. To test the bees’
numeracy, the team marked each chamber with a different number of geometrical shapes
– between 2 and 6. The bees quickly learned to match the number of shapes with the
correct chamber. Like the salamanders and fish, there was a limit to the bees’
mathematical prowess – they could differentiate up to 4 hapes, but failed with 5 or 6
shapes.
G These studies still do not show whether animals learn to count through training, or
whether they are born with the skills already intact. If the latter is true, it would suggest
there was a strong evolutionary advantage to a mathematical mind. Proof that this may
be the case has emerged from an experiment testing the mathematical ability of t hree-
and four-day-old chicks. Like mosquitofish, chicks prefer to be around as many of their
siblings as possible, so they will always head towards a larger number of their kin. If chicks
spend their first few days surrounded by certain objects, they become attached to these
objects as if they were family. Researchers placed each chick in the middle of a platform
and showed it two groups of balls of paper. Next, they hid the two piles behind screens,
changed the quantities and revealed them to the chick. This forced the chick to perform
simple computations to decide which side now contained the biggest number of its
“brothers”. Without any prior coaching, the chicks scuttled to the larger quantity at a rate
well above chance. They were doing some very simple arithmetic, claim the researchers.
H Why these skills evolved is not hard to imagine, since it would help almost any animal
forage for food. Animals on the prowl for sustenance must constantly decide which tree
has the most fruit, or which patch of flowers will contain the most nectar. There are also
other, less obvious, advantages of numeracy. In one compelling example, researchers in
America found that female coots) appear to calculate how many eggs they have laid –
and add any in the nest laid by an intruder – before making any decisions about adding
to them. Exactly how ancient these skills are is difficult to determine, however. Only by
studying the numerical abilities of more and more creatures using standardized
procedures can we hope to understand the basic preconditions for the evolution of
number.
Questions 15-21
Answer the table below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each
answer. Write your answers in boxes 15-21 on your answer sheet
Animal Numeracy
Subjects Experiments Results
Mammals and birds
rhesus monkeys and humans looked at two sets of performance of two
geometrical objects on groups is almost
computer screen 15………………………………..
Chicks chose between two sets chicks can do
of calculations in order to
16…………………. which are choose larger group
altered
Coots behaviour of female birds bird seems to have

was observed ability to
17………………….
Amphibians, fish and insects

Salamanders offered clear tubes salamanders distinguish
containing different between numbers over
quantities of four if bigger number is
18………………….. at least two times larger
19 …………….. shown real shoals and subjects know

later artificial ones of difference between two
geometrical shapes; these and three and possibly
are used to check three and four, but not
influence of total between four and five
20…………………. and
brightness
Bees had to learn where could soon choose

21…………………….. correct place
was stored
22 Primates are better at identifying the larger of two numbers if one is much bigger than
the other.
23 Jurgen Tautz trained the insects in his experiment to recognise the shapes of individual
numbers.
24 The research involving young chicks took place over two separate days.
25 The experiment with chicks suggests that some numerical ability exists in newborn
animals.
26 Researchers have experimented by altering quantities of nectar or fruit available to

certain wild animals.
27 When assessing the number of eggs in their nest, coots take into account those of
other birds.
Section 3
Multitasking Debate
Can you do them at the same time?
A Talking on the phone while driving isn’t the only situation where we’re worse at
multitasking than we might like to think we are. New studies have identified a bottleneck
in our brains that some say means we are fundamentally incapable of true multitasking If
experimental findings reflect real-world performance, people who think they are
multitasking are probably just underperforming in all – or at best, all but one – of their
parallel pursuits. Practice might improve your performance, but you will never be as good
as when focusing on one task at a time.
B The problem, according to Rene Marois, a psychologist at Vanderbilt Unive rsity in

Nashville, Tennessee, is that there’s a sticking point in the brain. To demonstrate this,
Marois devised an experiment to locate it. Volunteers watch a screen and when a
particular image appears, a red circle, say, they have to press a key with their index finger.
Different coloured circles require presses from different fingers. Typical response time is
about half a second, and the volunteers quickly reach their peak performance. Then they
learn to listen to different recordings and respond by making a specific sound. For
instance, when they hear a bird chirp, they have to say “ba”; an electronic sound should
elicit a “ko”, and so on. Again, no problem. A normal person can do that in about half a
second, with almost no effort.
C The trouble comes when Marois shows the volunteers an image, and then almost
immediately plays them a sound. Now they’re flummoxed. “If you show an image and
play a sound at the same time, one task is postponed, ” he says. In fact, if the second task
is introduced within the half-second or so it takes to process and react to the first, it will
simply be delayed until the first one is done. The largest dual-task delays occur when the
two tasks are presented simultaneously; delays progressively shorten as the interval
between presenting the tasks lengthens.
D There are at least three points where we seem to get stuck, says Marois. The first is in
simply identifying what I we’re looking at. This can take a few tenths of a second, during
which time we are not able to see and recognise second item. This limitation is known as
the “attentional blink”: experiments have shown that if you’re watching out for a particular
event and a second one shows up unexpectedly any time within this crucial window of
concentration, it may register in your visual cortex but you will be unable to act upon it.
Interestingly, if you don’t expect the first event, you have no trouble responding to the
second. What exactly causes the attentional blink is still a matter for debate.
E A second limitation is in our short-term visual memory. It’s estimated that we can keep
track of about four items at a time, fewer if they are complex. This capacity shortage is
thought to explain, in part, our astonishing inability to detect even huge changes in
scenes that are otherwise identical, so-called “change blindness”. Show people pairs of
near-identical photos – say, aircraft engines in one picture have disappeared in the other
– and they will fail to spot the differences. Here again, though, there is disagreement
about what the essential limiting factor really is. Does it come down to a dearth of storage
capacity, or is it about how much attention a viewer is paying?
F A third limitation is that choosing a response to a stimulus – braking when you see a
child in the road, for instance, or replying when your mother tells you over the phone that
she’ s thinking of leaving your dad – also takes brainpower. Selecting a response to one
of these things will delay by some tenths of a second your ability to respond to the other.
This is called the “response selection bottleneck” theory, first proposed in 1952.
G But David Meyer, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, doesn’t buy
the bottleneck idea. He thinks dual-task interference is just evidence of a strategy used
by the brain to prioritise multiple activities. Meyer is known as something of an optimist
by his peers. He has written papers with titles like “Virtually perfect time -sharing in dual-
task performance: Uncorking the central cognitive bottleneck”. His experiments have
shown that with enough practice – at least 2000 tries – some people can execute two
tasks simultaneously as competently as if they were doing them one after the other. He
suggests that there is a central cognitive processor that coordinates all this and, what’s
more, he thinks it uses discretion sometimes it chooses to delay one task while
completing another.
H Marois agrees that practice can sometimes erase interference effects. He has found that
with just 1 hour of practice each day for two weeks, volunteers show a huge improvement
at managing both his tasks at once. Where he disagrees with Meyer is in what the brain
is doing to achieve this. Marois speculates that practice might give us the chance to find
less congested circuits to execute a task – rather like finding trusty back streets to avoid
heavy traffic on main roads – effectively making our response to the task subconscious.
After all, there are plenty of examples of subconscious multitasking that most of us
routinely manage: walking and talking, eating and reading, watching TV and folding the
laundry.
I It probably comes as no surprise that, generally speaking, we get worse at multitasking

as we age. According to Art Kramer at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign,
who studies how ageing affects our cognitive abilities, we peak in our 20s. Though the
decline is slow through our 30s and on into our 50s, it is there; and after 55, it becomes
more precipitous. In one study, he and his colleagues had both young and old participants
do a simulated driving task while carrying on a conversation. He found that while young
drivers tended to miss background changes, older drivers failed to notice things th at were
highly relevant. Likewise, older subjects had more trouble paying attention to the more
important parts of a scene than young drivers.
J It’s not all bad news for over-55s, though. Kramer also found that older people can
benefit from practice. Not only did they learn to perform better, brain scans showed that
underlying that improvement was a change in the way their brains become active. While
it’s clear that ractice can often make a difference, especially as we age, the basic facts
remain sobering. “We have this impression of an almighty complex brain,” says Marois,
“and yet we have very humbling and crippling limits.” For most of our history, we probably
never needed to do more than one thing at a time, he says, and so we haven’t evolved to
be able to. Perhaps we will in future, though. We might yet look back one day on people
like Debbie and Alun as ancestors of a new breed of true multitasker
Questions 28-32
The reading Passage has ten paragraphs A-J.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter in boxes 28-32 on your answer sheet.
28 A theory explained delay happens when selecting one reaction

29 Different age group responds to important things differently
30 Conflicts happened when visual and audio element emerge simultaneously
31 An experiment designed to demonstrates the critical part in brain for multitasking
32 An viewpoint favors optimistic side of multitask performance
Questions 33-35
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 33-35 on your answer sheet.
33 Which one is correct about experiment conducted by Ren6 Marois?
A participants performed poorly on listening task solely
B volunteers press different key on different color
C participants need use different fingers on different colored object
D they did a better job on Mixed image and sound information
34 Which statement is correct about the first limitation of Marois’s experiment?
A “attentional blink” takes about ten seconds
B lag occurs if we concentrate on one object while second one appears
C we always have trouble in reacting the second one
D first limitation can be avoid by certain measures
35 Which one is NOT correct about Meyer’s experiments and statements?

A just after failure in several attempts can people execute dual -task
B Practice can overcome dual-task interference
C Meyer holds a different opinion on Marois’s theory
D an existing processor decides whether delay another task or not
Questions 36-40
YES if the statement is true
NO if the statement is false
36 Longer gap between two presenting tasks means shorter delay toward the second
one.
37 Incapable in human memory cause people sometimes miss the differences when
presented two similar images.
38 Marois has different opinion on the claim that training removes bottleneck effect.
39 Art Kramer proved there is a correlation between multitasking performance and

genders
40 The author doesn’t believe that effect of practice could bring any variation.
ANSWER KEY FOR IELTS READING ACTUAL TEST
1 NOT GIVEN 2 FALSE 3 NOT GIVEN

4 TRUE 5 Evergreen 6 Natural pesticides
7 Power 8 Overnight 9 Neem cake
10 Doubles 11 Nitrogen 12 In 2000
13 Neem seeds 14 Water purification
Count/ Caculate
15 Identical 16 Balls of paper 17
eggs
18 fruits flies 18 Mosquitofish 20 Surface area
21 sugar water 22 TRUE 23 FALSE
24 NOT GIVEN 25 TRUE 26 NOT GIVEN
27 TRUE
29 I28 F
30 C
31 B
32 G
33 C
34 B
35 A
36 YES
37 YES
38 NO
39 NOT GIVEN
40 NO
TEST 2
SECTION 1
Eco-Resort Management Practices
A Ecotourism is often regarded as a form of nature-based tourism and has become an

important alternative source of tourists. In addition to providing the traditional resort -
leisure product, it has been argued that ecotourism resort management should have a
particular focus on best-practice environmental management, an educational and
interpretive component, and direct and indirect contributions to the conservation of the
natural and cultural environment (Ayala, 1996).
B Couran Cove Island Resort is a large integrated ecotourism-based resort located south
of Brisbane on the Gold Coast, Queensland, and Australia. As the world’s population
becomes increasingly urbanised, the demand for tourist attractions which are
environmentally friendly, serene and offer amenities of a unique nature, has grown
rapidly. Couran Cove Resort, which is one such tourist attractions, is located on South
Stradbroke Island, occupying approximately 150 hectares of the island. South Stradbroke
Island is separated from the mainland by the Broadwater, a stretch of sea 3 kilometers
wide More than a century ago, there was only one Stradbroke Island, and there were at
least four aboriginal tribes living and hunting on the island. Regrettably, most of the
original island dwellers were eventually killed by diseases such as tuberculosis, smallpOx
and influenza by the end of the 19th century. The second ship wreak on the island in 1894,
and the subsequent destruction of the ship (the Cambus Wallace) because it contained
dynamite, caused a large crater in the sandhills on Stradbroke Island. Eventually, the
ocean broke through the weakened land form and Stradbroke became two islands.
Couran Cove Island Resort is built on one of the world’s few naturally -occurring sand
lands, which is home to a wide range of plant communities and one of the largest
remaining remnants of the rare livistona Rainforest left on the Gold Coast. Many
mangrove and rainforest areas and Malaleuca Wetlands on South Stradbroke Island (and
in Queensland), have been cleared, drained or filled for residential, industrial, agricultural
or urban development in the first half of the 20th century. Farmers and graziers finally
abandoned South Stradbroke Island in 1939 because the vegetation and the soil
conditions there were not suitable for agricultural activities.
SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES OF COURAN COVE RESORT
Being located on an offshore island, the resort is only accessible by means of water
transportation. The resort provides hourly ferry service from the marina on the mainland
to and from the island. Within the resort, transport modes include walking trails, bicycle
tracks and the beach train. The reception area is the counter of the shop which has not
changed in 8 years at least. The accommodation is an octagonal “Bure”. These are large
rooms that are clean but! The equipment is tired and in some cases just working. Our
ceiling fan only worked on high speed for example. Beds are hard but clean, there is
television, radio, an old air conditioner and a small fridge. These “Bures” are right on top
of each other and night noises do carry so be careful what you say and do. The only thing
is the mosquitos but if you forget to bring mosquito repellant they sell some on the island.
As an ecotourism-based resort, most of the planning and development of the attraction
has been concentrated on the need to co-exist with the fragile natural environment of
South Stradbroke Island to achieve sustainable development.
WATER AND ENERGY MANAGEMENT
C South Stradbroke Island has groundwater at the centre of the island, which has a
maximum height of 3 metres above sea level. The water supply is recharged by rainfall
and is commonly known as an unconfined freshwater aquifer ( StK/1-) . Couran Cove
Island Resort obtains its water supply by tapping into this aquifer and extracting it via a
bore system. Some of the problems which have threatened the island’s freshwater supply
include pollution, contamination and over-consumption. In order to minimise some of
these problems, all laundry activities are carried out on the mainland. The resort considers
washing machines as onerous to the island’s freshwater supply, and that the detergents
contain a high level of phosphates which are a major source of water pollution. The resort
uses LPG-power generation rather than a diesel-powered plant for its energy supply,
supplemented by wind turbine, which has reduced greenhouse emissions by 70% of
diesel-equivalent generation methods. Excess heat recovered from the g enerator is used
to heat the swimming pool. Hot water in the eco-cabins and for some of the resort’s
vehicles are solar-powered. Water efficient fittings are also installed in showers and
toilets. However, not all the appliances used by the resort are ener gy efficient, such as
refrigerators. Visitors who stay at the resort are encouraged to monitor their water and
energy usage via the in-house television systems, and are rewarded with prizes (such as
a free return trip to the resort) accordingly if their usage level is low.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
D We examined a case study of good management practice and a pro-active sustainable

tourism stance of an eco-resort. In three years of operation, Couran Cove Island Resort
has won 23 international and national awards, including the 2001 Australian Tourism
Award in the 4-Star Accommodation category. The resort has embraced and has
effectively implemented contemporary environmental management practices. It has been
argued that the successful implementation of the principles of sustainability should
promote long-term social, economic and environmental benefits, while ensuring and
enhancing the prospects of continued viability for the tourism enterprise. Couran Cove
Island Resort does not conform to the characteristics of the Resort
DevelopmentSpectrum, as proposed by Prideaux (2000). According to Prideaux, the resort
should be at least at Phase 3 of the model (the National tourism phase), which describes
an integrated resort providing 3-4 star hotel-type accommodation. The primary tourist
market in Phase 3 of the model consists mainly of interstate visitors. However, the number
of interstate and international tourists visiting the resort is small, with the principal locals
and residents from nearby towns and the Gold Coast region. The carrying capacity of
Couran Cove does not seem to be of any concern to the Resort management. Given that
it is a private commercial ecotourist enterprise, regulating the number of visitors to the
resort to minimize damage done to the natural environment on South Stradbroke Island
is not a binding constraint. However, the Resort’s growth will eventually be constrained
by its carrying capacity, and quantity control should be incorporated in the management
strategy of the resort.
Question 1 – 4.
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write your answers in boxes 1 -4 on your

answer sheet.
1 the Stradbroke became two islands
A by an intended destruction of the ship of the Cambus Wallace
B by an explosion of dynamite on a ship and following nature erosion
C by the movement sandhills on Stradbroke Island
D by the volcanic eruption on island
2 Why are laundry activities for the resort carried out on the mainland.
A In order to obtain its water supply via a bore system
B In order to preserve the water and anti-pollution
C In order to save the cost of installing onerous washing machines
D In order to reduce the level of phosphates in water around
3 What is the major water supplier in South Stradbroke Island is by

A desalining the sea water
B collecting the rainfall
C transporting from the mainland
D boring ground water
4 What is applied for heating water on Couran Cove Island Resort
A the LPG-power
B a diesel-powered plant
C the wind power
D the solar-power
5 what does, as the managers of resorts believe, the prospective future focus on
A more awards of for resort’s accommodation
B sustainable administration and development in a long run
C Economic and environmental benefits for the tourism enterprise
D successful implementation the Resort Development Spectrum
Questions 6-10
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using no

more than two words from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your
Being located away form the mainland, tourists can attain the resort only by
6…………………………………………………………. in a regular service. Within the resort, transports
include trails for walking or tracks for both 7…………………………………….. and the beach
train. The on-island equipment is old-fashioned which is barely working such as the
8……………………………………………. overhead. There is television, radio, an old
9……………………………………….. and a small fridge. And you can buy the repellant for
10……………………………………………… if you forget to bring some.
Questions 11-13
Choose three correct letters among A-E
What is true as to the contemporary situation of Couran Cove Island Resort in the last
paragraph?
A Couran Cove Island Resort goes for more eco-friendly practices
B the accommodation standard only conforms to the Resort Development Spectrum of

Phase 3
C Couran Cove Island Resort should raise the accommodation build more standard and
build more facilities
D the principal group visiting the resort is international tourists
E its carrying capacity will restrict the future business’ expansion
SECTION 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on question 14-26, which are based on reading
passage 2 on the following pages.
TV Addiction 1
A The amount of time people spend watching television is astonishing. On average,

individuals in the industrialized world devote three hours a day to the pursuit —fully half
of their leisure time, and more than on any single activity save work and sleep. At this
rate, someone who lives to 75 would spend nine years in front of the tube. To some
commentators, this devotion means simply that people enjoy TV and make a conscious
decision to watch it. But if that is the whole story, why do so many people experience
misgivings about how much they view? In Gallup polls in 1992 and 1999, two out of five
adult respondents and seven out of 10 teenagers said they spent too much time watching
TV. Other surveys have consistently shown that roughly 10 percent of adults call
themselves TV addicts
B To study people’s reactions to TV, researchers have experiments in which they have
monitored the brain waves (using an electroencephalograph, or EEG) to track behavior
and emotion in the normal course of life, as opposed to the artificial conditions of the
lab. Participants carried a beeper, and we signaled them six to eight times a day, at
random, over the period of a week; whenever they heard the beep, they wrote down what
they were doing and how they were feeling using a standardized scorecard.
C As one might expect, people who were watching TV when we beeped them reported
feeling relaxed and passive. The EEG studies similarly show less mental stimulation, as
measured by alpha brain-wave production, during viewing than during reading. What is
more surprising is that the sense of relaxation ends when the set is turned off, but the
feelings of passivity and lowered alertness continue. Survey participants say they have
more difficulty concentrating after viewing than before. In contrast, they rarely indi cate
such difficulty after reading. After playing sports or engaging in hobbies, people report
improvements in mood. After watching TV, people’s moods are about the same or worse
than before. That may be because viewers’ vague learned sense that they will feel less
relaxed if they stop viewing. So they tend not to turn the set off. Viewing begets more
viewing which is the same as the experience of habit-forming drugs. Thus, the irony of
TV: people watch a great deal longer than they plan to, even though prolonged viewing
is less rewarding. In our ESM studies the longer people sat in front of the set, the less
satisfaction they said they derived from it. For some, a twinge of unease or guilt that they
aren’t doing something more productive may also accompany and depreciate the
enjoyment of prolonged viewing. Researchers in Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. have found
that this guilt occurs much more among middle-class viewers than among less affluent
ones.
D What is it about TV that has such a hold on us? In part, the attraction seems to spring
from our biological ‘orienting response/ First described by Ivan Pavlov in 1927, the
orienting response is our instinctive visual or auditory reaction to any sudden or novel
stimulus. It is part of our evolutionary heritage, a built-in sensitivity to movement and
potential predatory threats. In 1986 Byron Reeves of Stanford University, Esther Thorson
of the University of Missouri and their colleagues began to study whether the simple
formal features of television—cuts, edits, zooms, pans, sudden noises — activate the
orienting response, thereby keeping attention on the screen. By watching how brain
waves were affected by formal features, the researchers concluded that these stylistic
tricks can indeed trigger involuntary responses and ‘derive their attentional value through
the evolutionary significance of detecting movement…. It is the form, not the content, of
television that is unique.
E The natural attraction to television’s sound and light starts very early in life. Dafna
Lemish of Tel Aviv University has described babies at six to eight weeks attending to
television. We have observed slightly older infants who, when lying on their backs on the
floor, crane their necks around 180 degrees to catch what light through yonder window
breaks. This inclination suggests how deeply rooted the orienting response is.
F The Experience Sampling Method permitted us to look closely at most every domain of
everyday life: working, eating, reading, talking to friends, playing a sport, and so on. We
found that heavy viewers report feeling significantly more anxious and less happy than
light viewers do in unstructured situations, such as doing nothing, daydreaming or
waiting in line. The difference widens when the viewer is alone. Subsequently, Robert D.
Mcllwraith of the University of Manitoba extensively studied those who called themselves
TV addicts on surveys. On a measure called the Short Imaginal Processes Inventory (SIPI),
he found that the self-described addicts are more easily bored and distracted and have
poorer attentional control than the non-addicts. The addicts said they used TV to distract
themselves from unpleasant thoughts and to fill time. Other studies ov er the years have
shown that heavy viewers are less likely to participate in community activities and sports
and are more likely to be obese than moderate viewers or non-viewers.
G More than 25 years ago psychologist Tannis M. MacBeth Williams of the Univ ersity of
British Columbia studied a mountain community that had no television until cable finally
arrived. Over time, both adults and children in the town became less creative in problem
solving, less able to persevere at tasks, and less tolerant of unstr uctured time.
H Nearly 40 years ago Gary A. Steiner of the University of Chicago collected fascinating
individual accounts of families whose set had broken. In experiments, families have
volunteered or been paid to stop viewing, typically for a week or a month. Some fought,
verbally and physically. In a review of these cold-turkey studies, Charles Winick of the City
University of New York concluded: ‘The first three or four days for most persons were the
worst, even in many homes where viewing was minimal and where there were other
ongoing activities. In over half of all the households, during these first few days of loss,
the regular routines were disrupted, family members had difficulties in dealing with the
newly available time, anxiety and aggressions were expressed By the second week, a move
toward adaptation to the situation was common.’ Unfortunately, researchers have yet to
flesh out these anecdotes; no one has systematically gathered statistics on the prevalence
of these withdrawal symptoms.
I Even though TV does seem to meet the criteria for substance dependence, not all
researchers would go so far as to call TV addictive. Mcllwraith said in 1998 that
‘displacement of other activities by television may be socially significant but still fall short
of the clinical requirement of significant impairment.’ He argued that a new category of
‘TV addiction’ may not be necessary if heavy viewing stems from conditions such as
depression and social phobia. Nevertheless, whether or not we formally diagnose
someone as TV-dependent, millions of people sense that they cannot readily control the
amount of television they watch.
Questions 14-18
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage? In
14 Study shows that males are more likely to be addicted to TV than females.
15 Greater improvements in mood are experienced after watching TV than playing

sports.
16 TV addiction works in similar ways as drugs.
17 It is reported that people’s satisfaction is in proportion to the time they spend

watching TV.
18 Middle-class viewers are more likely to feel guilty about watching TV than the poor.
Questions 19-23
Look at the following researchers (Questions 19-23) and the list of statements below.
Match each researcher with the correct statements.
Write the correct letter A-H in boxes 19-23 on your answer sheets.
19 Byron Reeves and Esther Thorson

20 Dafna Lemish
21 Robert D. Mcllwraith
22 Tannis M. MacBeth Williams
23 Charles Winick
List of Statements
A Audiences would get hypnotized from viewing too much television.
B People have been sensitive to the TV signals since a younger age.
C People are less likely to accomplish their work with television.
D A handful of studies have attempted to study other types of media addiction.
E The addictive power of television could probably minimize the problems.
F Various media formal characters stimulate people’s reaction on the screen.
G People who believe themselves to be TV addicts are less likely to join in the group
activities.
H It is hard for people to accept the life without TV at the beginning.
Questions 24-26
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 24 -26 on your
answer sheet.
24 People in the industrialized world
A devote ten hours watching TV on average.

B spend more time on TV than other entertainment.
C call themselves TV addicts.
D working best.
25 When compared with light viewers, heavy viewers
A like playing sport more than reading.
B feel relaxed after watching TV.
C spend more time in daydreaming.
D are more easily bored while waiting in line.
26 Which of the following statements is true about the family experiment?
A Not all the subjects participate in the experiment for free.
B There has been a complete gathered data.
C People are prevented from other activities during the experiment.
D People cannot adapt to the situation until the end
SECTION 3
Music: Language We All Speak
Section A: Music is one of the human specie’s relatively few universal abilities. Without
formal training, any individual, from Stone Age tribesman to suburban teenager has the
ability to recognize music and, in some fashion, to make it. Why this should be so is a
mystery. After all, music isn’t necessary for getting through the day, and if it aids in
reproduction, it does so only in highly indirect ways. Language, by contrast, is also
everywhere- but for reasons that are more obvious. With language, you and the members
of your tribe can organize a migration across Africa, build reed boats and cross the seas,
and communicate at night even when you can’t see each other. Modem culture, in all its
technological extravagance, springs directly from the human talent for manipulating
symbols and syntax. Scientists have always been intrigued by the connection between
music and language. Yet over the years, words and melody have acquired a vastly
different status in the lab and the seminar room. While language has long been
considered essential to unlocking the mechanisms of human intelligence, music is
generally treated as an evolutionary frippery-mere “auditory cheesecake,” as the Harvard
cognitive scientist Steven Pinker puts it.
Section B: But thanks to a decade-long wave of neuroscience research, that tune is

changing. A flurry of recent publications suggests that language and music may equally
be able to tell us who we are and where we’re from – not just emotionally, but biologically.
In July, the journal Nature Neuroscience devoted a special issue to the topic. And in an
article in the August 6 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, David Schwartz, Catherine
Howe, and Dale Purves of Duke University argued that the sounds of music and the
sounds of language are intricately connected. To grasp the originality of this idea, it’s
necessary to realize two things about how music has traditionally been understood. First,
musicologists have long emphasized that while each culture stamps a special identity
onto its music; music itself has some universal qualities. For example, in virtually all
cultures sound is divided into some or all of the 12 intervals that make up the chromatic
scale – that is, the scale represented by the keys on a piano. For centuries, observers have
attributed this preference for certain combinations of tones to the mathematical
properties of sound itself. Some 2,500 years ago, Pythagoras was the first to note a direct
relationship between the harmoniousness of a tone combination and the physical
dimensions of the object that produced it. For example, a plucked string will always play
an octave lower than a similar string half its size, and a fifth lower than a similar string
two-thirds its length. This link between simple ratios and harmony has influenced music
theory ever since.
Section C: This music-is-moth idea is often accompanied by the notion that music
formally speaking at least, exists apart from the world in which it was created. Writing
recently in The New York Review of Books, pianist and critic Charles Rosen discussed the
long-standing notion that while painting and sculpture reproduce at least some aspects
of the natural world, and writing describes thoughts and feelings we are all familiar wit h,
music is entirely abstracted from the world in which we live. Neither idea is right,
according to David Schwartz and his colleagues. Human musical preferences are
fundamentally shaped not by elegant algorithms or ratios but by the messy sounds of
real life, and of speech in particular -which in turn is shaped by our evolutionary heritage.”
The explanation of music, like the explanation of any product of the mind, must be rooted
in biology, not in numbers per se,” says Schwartz.
Schwartz, Howe, and Purves analyzed a vast selection of speech sounds from a variety of
languages to reveal the underlying patterns common to all utterances. In order to focus
only on the raw sound, they discarded all theories about speech and meaning and sliced
sentences into random bites. Using a database of over 100,000 brief segments of speech,
they noted which frequency had the greatest emphasis in each sound. The resulting set
of frequencies, they discovered, corresponded closely to the chromatic scale. In short, the
building blocks of music are to be found in speech
Far from being abstract, music presents a strange analog to the patterns created by the
sounds of speech. “Music, like the visual arts, is rooted in our experience of the natural
world,” says Schwartz. “It emulates our sound environment in the way that visual arts
emulate the visual environment. ” In music we hear the echo of our basic sound -making
instrument- the vocal tract. The explanation for human music is simple; still than
Pythagoras’s mathematical equations. We like the sounds that are familiar to us -
specifically, we like sounds that remind us of us.
This brings up some chicken-or-egg evolutionary questions. It may be that music imitates
speech directly, the researchers say, in which case it would seem that language evolved
first. It’s also conceivable that music came first and language is in effect an Imitation of
song – that in everyday speech we hit the musical notes we especially like. Alternately, it
may be that music imitates the general products of the human sound-making system,
which just happens to be mostly speech. “We can’t know this,” says Schwartz. “What we
do know is that they both come from the same system, and it is this that shapes our
preferences.”
Section D: Schwartz’s study also casts light on the long-running question of whether
animals understand or appreciate music. Despite the apparent abundance of “music” in
the natural world- birdsong, whalesong, wolf howls, synchronized chimpanzee hooting
previous studies have found that many laboratory animals don’t show a great affinity for
the human variety of music making. Marc Hauser and Josh McDermott of Harvard argued
in the July issue of Nature Neuroscience that animals don’t create or perceive music the
way we do. The act that laboratory monkeys can show recognition of human tunes is
evidence, they say, of shared general features of the auditory system, not any specific
chimpanzee musical ability. As for birds, those most musical beasts, they generally
recognize their own tunes – a narrow repertoire – but don’t generate novel melodies like
we do. There are no avian Mozarts.
But what’s been played to the animals, Schwartz notes, is human music. If animals evolve
preferences for sound as we do – based upon the soundscape in which they live – then
their “music” would be fundamentally different from ours. In the same way our scales
derive from human utterances, a cat’s idea of a good tune would derive from yowls and
meows. To demonstrate that animals don’t appreciate sounds the way we do, we’d need
evidence that they don’t respond to “music” constructed from their own sound
environment.
Section E: No matter how the connection between language and music is parsed, what
is apparent is that our sense of music, even our love for it, is as deeply rooted in our
biology and in our brains as language is. This is most obvious with babies, says Sandra
Trehub at the University of Toronto, who also published a paper in the Nature
Neuroscience special issue.
For babies, music and speech are on a continuum. Mothers use musical speech to
“regulate infants’ emotional states.” Trehub says. Regardless of what language they speak,
the voice all mothers use with babies is the same: “something between speech and song.”
This kind of communication “puts the baby in a trance-like state, which may proceed to
sleep or extended periods of rapture.” So if the babies of the world could understand the
latest research on language and music, they probably wouldn’t be very surprised. The
upshot, says Trehub, is that music may be even more of a necessity than we realize.
Question 27 – 31
Reading Passage 3 has five sections A-E.
Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number i-viii in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i. Animal sometimes make music.

ii. Recent research on music
iii. Culture embedded in music
iv. Historical theories review
v. Communication in music with animals
vi. Contrast between music and language
vii. Questions on a biological link with human and music
viii. Music is good for babies.
27 Section A
28 Section B
29 Section C
30 Section D
31 Section E
Questions 32-38
Look at the following people and list of statements below.
Match each person with the correct statement.
Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 32-38 on your answer sheet.
List of statements
A Music exists outside of the world in which it is created
B Music has a common feature though cultural influences affect
C Humans need music
D Music priority connects to the disordered sound around
E Discovery of mathematical musical foundation
F Music is not treat equally well compared with language
G Humans and monkeys have similar traits in perceiving sound
32 Steven Pinker
33 Musicologists
34 Greek philosopher Pythagoras

35 Schwartz, Howe, and Purves
36 Marc Hauser and Josh McDermott
37 Charles Rosen
38 Sandra Trehub
Questions 39-40
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D
39 Why was the study of animal’s music uncertain?
A Animals don’t have the same auditory system as humans.
B Experiments on animal’s music are limited.
C tunes are impossible for animal to make up.
D Animals don’t have spontaneous ability for the tests.
40 What is the main subject of this passage?
A Language and psychology.
B Music formation.
C Role of music in human society.
D Music experiments for animals.

IELTS Reading Recent Actual Test 2 – Answer Key
Section 1
1 B 2 B 3 D
4 D 5 B 6 ferry
7 Bicyle 8 Fan/ceiling fan 9 Air conditioner
/
10 Mosquitos 11 A 12 C
mosquito
13 E
Section 2
14 NOT GIVEN 15 FALSE 16 TRUE

17 FALSE 18 FALSE 19 F
20 B 21 G 22 C
23 H 24 B 25 D
26 A
Section 3
27 Vi 28 iv 29 ii
30 V 31 vii 32 F
33 B 34 E 35 D
36 G 37 A 38 C
39 B 40 C
TEST 3
Section 1
Bamboo, A Wonder Plant
The wonder plant with an uncertain future: more than a billion people rely on bamboo
for either their shelter or income, while many endangered species depend on it for their
survival. Despite its apparent abundance, a new report says that species of bamboo may
be under serious threat.
Section A
Every year, during the rainy season, the mountain gorillas of Central Africa migrates to
the foothills and lower slopes of the Virunga Mountains to graze on bamboo. For the
650 or so that remain in the wild, it’s a vital food source. Although they at almost 150
types of plant, as well as various insects and other invertebrates, at this time of year
bamboo accounts for up to 90 per cent of their diet. Without it, says Ian Redmond,
chairman of the Ape Alliance, their chances of survival would be reduced significantly.
Gorillas aren’t the only locals keen on bamboo. For the people who live close to the
Virungas, it’s a valuable and versatile raw material used for building houses and making
household items such as mats and baskets. But in the past 100 years or so, resources
have come under increasing pressure as populations have exploded and large areas of
bamboo forest have been cleared to make way for farms and commercial plantations.
Section B
Sadly, this isn’t an isolated story. All over the world, the ranges of many bamboo species
appear to be shrinking, endangering the people and animals (that depend upon them.
But despite bamboo’s importance, we know surprisingly little about it. A recent r eport
published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Inter-national Network
for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR) has revealed just how profound is our ignorance of
global bamboo resources, particularly in relation to conservation. There are almost 1,600
recognised species of bamboo, but the report concentrated on the 1,200 or so woody
varieties distinguished by the strong stems, or culms, that most people associate with
this versatile plant. Of these, only 38 ‘priority species’ identified for their commercial
value have been the subject of any real scientific research, and this has focused mostly
on matters relating to their viability as a commodity. This problem isn’t confined to
bamboo. Compared to the work carried out on animals, the science of assess ing the
conservation status of plants is still in its infancy. “People have only started looking hard
at this during the past 10-15 years, and only now are they getting a handle on how to
go about it systematically,” says Dr. Valerie Kapos, one of the r eport’s authors and a
senior advisler in forest ecology and conservation to the UNEP
Section C
Bamboo is a type of grass. It comes in a wide variety of forms, ranging in height from 30
centimetres to more than 40 metres. It is also the world’s fastest-growing woody plant;
some species can grow more than a metre in a day. Bamboo’s ecological rote extends
beyond providing food and habitat for animals. Bamboo tends to grow in stands made
up of groups of individual plants that grow from root systems known as rhizomes. Its
extensive rhizome systems, which tie in predicting the top layers of the soil, are crucial
in preventing soil erosion. And there is growing evidence that bamboo plays an
important part in determining forest structure and dynamics. “Bamboo’s pattern of mass
flowering and mass death leaves behind large areas of dry biomass that attract wildfire,”
says Kapos. “When these bum, they create patches of open ground within the forest far
bigger than would be left by a fallen tree.” Patchiness helps to preserve diversity because
certain plant species do better during the early stages of regeneration when there are
gaps in the canopy.
Section D
However, bamboo’s most immediate significance lies in its economic value. Modem
processing techniques mean that it can be used in a variety of ways, for example, as
flooring and laminates. One of the fastest growing bamboo products is paper -25 per
cent of paper produced in India is made from bamboo fiber and in Brazil, 100,000
hectares of bamboo are grown for its production. Of course, bamboo’s main function
has always been in domestic applications, and as a locally traded commodity it’s worth
about US$4.5billion annually. Because of its versatility, flexibility and strength (its tensile
strength compares to that of some steel), it has traditionally been used in construction.
Today, more than one billion people worldwide live in bamboo houses. Bamboo is often
the only readily available raw material for people in many developing cou ntries, says
Chris Staple-ton, a research associate at the Royal Botanic Gardens. “Bamboo can be
harvested from forest areas or grown quickly elsewhere, and then converted simply
without expensive machinery or facilities,” he says. “In this way, it contrib utes
substantially to poverty alleviation and wealth creation.”
Section E
Given bamboo’s value in economic and ecological terms, the picture painted by the
UNEP report is all the more worrying. But keen horticulturists will spot an apparent
contradiction here. Those who’ve followed the recent vogue for cultivating exotic species
in their gardens will point out that if it isn’t kept in check, bamboo can cause real
problems. “In a lot of places, the people who live with bamboo don’t perceive it as being
endangered in any way,” says Kapos. “In fact, a lot of bamboo species are actually very
invasive if they’ve been introduced.” So why are so many species endangered? There are
two separate issues here, says Ray Townsend, vice president of the British Bamboo
Society and arboretum manager at the Royal Botanic Gardens. “Some plants are
threatened because they can’t survive in the habitat – they aren’t strong enough or there
aren’t enough of them, perhaps. But bamboo can take care of itself – it is strong enough
to survive if left alone. What is under threat is its habitat.” It is the physical disturbance
that is the threat to bamboo, says Kapos. “When forest goes, it is converted into
something else: there isn’t any-where for forest plants such as bamboo to grow if you
create a cattle pasture.”
Section F
Around the world, bamboo species are routinely protected as part of forest eco -systems
in national parks and reserves, but there is next to nothing that protects bamboo in the
wild for its own sake. However, some small steps are being taken to address this situation.
The UNEP-INBAR report will help conservationists to establish effective measures aimed
at protecting valuable wild bamboo species. Towns end, too, sees the UNEP report as an
important step forward in promoting the cause of bamboo conservation. “Until now,
bamboo has been perceived as a second-class plant.
When you talk about places such as the Amazon, everyone always thinks about the
hardwoods. Of course these are significant, but there is a tendency to overlook the plants
they are associated with, which are often bamboo species. In many ways, it is the most
important plant known to man. I can’t think of another plant that is used so much and is
so commercially important in so many countries.” He believes that the most important
first step is to get scientists into the field. “We need to go out there, look at these plants
and see how they survive and then use that information to conserve them for the future.
Questions 1-7
Reading Passage 1 has six sections A-F.
Which section contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-F in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet
NB You may use any letter more than once
1. Limited extent of existing research

2. Comparison of bamboo with other plant species
3. Commercial application of bamboo
4. Example of an animal which rely on bamboos for survival
5. Human activity that damaged large areas of bamboo
6. The approaches used to study bamboo
7. Bamboo helps the survival of a range of plants
Questions 8-11
Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-D) with opinions or
deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-d in boxes 8-11 on your answer sheet.
NB you may use any letter more than once
A Ian Redmond B
Valerie Kapos C
Ray Townsend D
Chris Stapleton
8. Destroying bamboo jeopardizes to wildlife.
9. People have very confined knowledge of bamboo.
10. Some people do not think that bamboo is endangered.
11. Bamboo has loads of commercial potentials.
Questions 12-13
Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage
for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 12-13 on your answer sheet
12. What problem does the bamboo’s root system prevent?
13. Which bamboo product is experiencing market expansion
SECTION 2
Biodiversity
A It seems biodiversity has become a buzzword beloved of politicians, conservationists,

protesters and scientists alike. But what exactly is it? The Convention on Biological
Diversity, an international agreement to conserve and share the planet’s biological riches,
provides a good working definition: biodiversity comprises every form of life, from the
smallest microbe to the largest animal or plant, the genes that give them their specific
characteristics and the ecosystems of which they are a part.
B In October, the World Conservation Union (also known as the IUCN) published its
updated Red List of Threatened Species, a roll call of 11,167 creatures facing extinction
– 121 more than when the list was last published in 2000. But the new figures almost
certainly underestimate the crisis. Some 1.2 million species of animal and 270,000 species
of plant have been classified, but the well-being of only a fraction has been assessed.
The resources are simply not available. The RJCN reports that 5714 plants are threatened,
for example, but admits that only 4 per cent of known plants have been assessed. And,
of course, there are thousands of species that we have yet to discover. Many of these
could also be facing extinction.
C It is important to develop a picture of the diversity of life on Earth now, so that

comparisons can be made in the future and trends identified. But it isn’t necessary to
observe every single type of organism in an area to get a snapshot of the health of the
ecosystem. In many habitats there are species that are particularly susceptible to shifting
conditions, and these can be used as indicator species
D In the media, it is usually large, charismatic animals such as pandas, elephants, tigers
and whales that get all the attention when loss of biodiversity is discussed. However,
animals or plants far lower down the food chain are often the ones vital for preserving
habitats – in the process saving the skins of those more glamorous species. These are
known as keystone species.
E By studying the complex feeding relationships within habitats, species can be identified
that have a particularly important impact on the environment. For example, the members
of the fig family are the staple food for hundreds of different species in many different
countries, so important that scientists sometimes call figs “jungle burgers”. A whole
range of animals, from tiny insects to birds and large mammals, feed on everything from
the tree’s bark and leaves to its flowers and fruits. Many fig species have very specific
pollinators. There are several dozen species of fig tree in Costa Rica, and a different type
of wasp has evolved to pollinate each one. Chris Lyle of the Natural History Museum in
London – who is also involved in the Global Taxonomy Initiative of the Convention on
Biological Diversity – points out that if fig trees are affected by global warming, pollution,
disease or any other catastrophe, the loss of biodiversity will be enormous.
F Similarly, sea otters play a major role in the survival of giant kelp forests along the
coasts of California and Alaska. These “marine rainforests” provide a home for a wide
range of other species. The kelp itself is the main food of purple and red sea urchins and
in turn the urchins are eaten by predators, particularly sea otters. They detach an urchin
from the seabed then float to the surface and lie on their backs with the urchin shell on
their tummy, smashing it open with a stone before eating the contents. Urchins that are
not eaten tend to spend their time in rock crevices to avoid the predators. This allows
the kelp to grow – and it can grow many centimetres in a day. As the forests form, bits
of kelp break off and fall to the bottom to provide food for the urchins in their crevices.
The sea otters thrive hunting for sea urchins in the kelp, and many other fish and
invertebrates live among the fronds. The problems start when the sea otter population
declines. As large predators they are vulnerable – their numbers are relatively small so
disease or human hunters can wipe them out. The result is that the sea urchin population
grows unchecked and they roam the sea floor eating young kelp fronds. This tends to
keep the kelp very short and stops forests developing, which has a huge impact on
biodiversity.
G Conversely, keystone species can also make dangerous alien species: they can wreak
havoc if they end up in the wrong ecosystem. The cactus moth, whose caterpillar is a
voracious eater of prickly pear was introduced to Australia to control the rampant cacti.
It was so successful that someone thought it would be a good idea to introduce it to
Caribbean islands that had the same problem. It solved the cactus menace, but
unfortunately some of the moths have now reached the US mainland – borne on winds
and in tourists’ luggage – where they are devastating the native cactus populations of
Florida.
H Organisations like the Convention on Biological Diversity work with groups such as
the UN and with governments and scientists to raise awareness and fund research. A
number of major international meetings – including the World Summit on Sustainable
Development in Johannesburg this year – have set targets for governments around the
world to slow the loss of biodiversity. And the CITES meeting in Santiago last month
added several more names to its list of endangered species for which trade is controlled.
Of course, these agreements will prove of limited value if some countries refuse to
implement them.
I There is cause for optimism, however. There seems to be a growing understanding of

the need for sustainable agriculture and sustainable tourism to conserve biodiversity.
Problems such as illegal logging are being tackled through sustainable forestry
programmes, with the emphasis on minimising the use of rainforest hardwoods in the
developed world and on rigorous replanting of whatever trees are harvested. CITES is
playing its part by controlling trade in wood from endangered tree species. In the same
way, sustainable farming techniques that minimise environmental damage and avoid
monoculture
J Action at a national level often means investing in public education and awareness.
Getting people like you and me involved can be very effective. Australia and many
European countries are becoming increasingly efficient at recycling much of their
domestic waste, for example, preserving natural resources and reducing the use of fossil
fuels. This in turn has a direct effect on biodiversity by minimising pollution, and an
indirect effect by reducing the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from incinerators
and landfill sites. Preserving ecosystems intact for future generations to enjoy is
obviously important, but biodiversity is not some kind of optional extra. Variety may be
“the spice of life”, but biological variety is also our life-support system.
Questions 14-20
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2 In
14 The term “biodiversity” consists of living creatures and environment that they live in.
15 There are species that have not been researched because it’s unnecessary to study
all creatures.
16 It is not necessary to investigate all creatures in a certain place.
17 The press more often than not focuses on animals well-known.
18 There is a successful case that cactus moth plays a positive role in the US.
19 Usage of hardwoods is forbidden in some European countries.
20 Agriculture experts advise farmers to plant single crops in the field in terms of
sustainable farming
Questions 21-26
Summary
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using no

more than two words from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in
boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet.
Because of the ignorance brought by media, people tend to neglect significant

creatures called 21 ………………. .Every creature has diet connections with others, such as
22 ………………. which provide a majority of foods for other species. In some states of
America, decline in number of sea otters leads to the boom of 23 ………………. An
impressing case is that imported 24 ………………successfully tackles the plant cacti in 25
………………. However, the operation is needed for the government to increase their
financial support in 26 ………………. .
SECTION 3
Sunset for the Oil Business
The world is about to run out of oil. Or perhaps not. It depends whom you believe…
A Members of the Department Analysis Centre (ODAC) recently met in London and
presented technical data that support their grim forecast that the world is perilously
close to running out of oil. Leading lights of this moment, including the geologists Colin
Campbell, rejected rival views presented by American geological survey and the
international energy agency that contradicted their findings. Dr. Campbell even decried
the amazing display of ignorance, denial and obfuscation by government, industry and
academics on this topic.
B So is the oil really running out? The answer is easy: Yes. Nobody seriously disputes the
notion that oil is, for all practical purposes, a non-renewable resource that will run out
some day, be that years or decades away. The harder question is determining when
precisely oil will begin to get scarce. And answering that question involves scaling
Hubbert’s peak.
C M. King Hubbert, a Shell geologist of legendary status among depletion experts,

forecast in 1956 that oil production in the United States would peak in the early 1970s
and then slowly decline, in something resembling a bell-shaped curve. At the time, his
forecast was controversial, and many rubbished it. After 1970, however, empirical
evidence proved him correct: oil production in America did indeed peak and has been in
decline ever since.
D Dr Hubbert’s analysis drew on the observation that oil production in a new area
typically rises quickly at first, as the easiest and cheapest reserves are tapped. Over tim e,
reservoirs age and go into decline, and so lifting oil becomes more expensive. Oil from
that area then becomes less competitive in relation to other fuels, or to oil from other
areas. As a result, production slows down and usually tapers off and decline s. That, he
argued, made for a bell-shaped curve.
E His successful prediction has emboldened a new generation of geologists to apply his
methodology on a global scale. Chief among them are the experts at ODAC, who worry
that the global peak in production will come in the next decade. Dr Campbell used to
argue that the peak should have come already; he now thinks it is just round the comer.
A heavyweight has now joined this gloomy chorus. Kenneth Deffeyes of Princeton
University argues in a lively new book (“The View from Hubbert’s Peak”) that global oil
production could peak as soon as 2004.
F That sharply contradicts mainstream thinking. America’s Geological Survey prepared

an exhaustive study of oil depletion last year (in part to rebut Dr Campbell’s arguments)
that put the peak of production some decades off. The IEA has just weighed in with its
new “World Energy Outlook”, which foresees enough oil to comfortably meet demand
to 2020 from remaining reserves. Rene Dahan, one of ExxonMobil’s top managers, goes
further: with an assurance characteristic of the world’s largest energy company, he insists
that the world will be awash in oil for another 70 years.
G Who is right? In making sense of these wildly opposing views, it is useful to look back
at the pitiful history of oil forecasting. Doomsters have been predicting dry wells since
the 1970s, but so far the oil is still gushing. Nearly all the predictions for 2000 made after
the 1970s oil shocks were far too pessimistic. America’s Department of Energy thought
that oil would reach $150 a barrel (at 2000 prices); even Exxon predicted a price of $ 100.
H Michael Lynch of DRI-WEFA, an economic consultancy, is one of the few oil forecasters
who has got things generally right. In a new paper, Dr Lynch analyses those historical
forecasts. He finds evidence of both bias and recurring errors, which suggests that
methodological mistakes (rather than just poor data) were the problem. In particular, he
faults forecasters who used Hubbert-style analysis for relying on fixed estimates of how
much “ultimately recoverable” oil there really is below ground, in the industry’s jargon:
that figure, he insists, is actually a dynamic one, as improvements in infrastructure,
knowledge and technology raise the amount of oil which is recoverable.
I That points to what will probably determine whether the pessimists or the optimists are
right: technological innovation. The first camp tends to be dismissive of claims of
forthcoming technological revolutions in such areas as deep-water drilling and enhanced
recovery. Dr Deffeyes captures this end-of-technology mindset well. He argues that
because the industry has already spent billions on technology development, it makes it
difficult to ask today for new technology, as most of the wheels have already been
invented.
J Yet techno-optimists argue that the technological revolution in oil has only just begun.
Average recovery rates (how much of the known oil in a reservoir can actually be brought
to the surface) are still only around 30-35%. Industry optimists believe that new
techniques on the drawing board today could lift that figure to 50-60% within a decade.
K Given the industry’s astonishing track record of innovation, it may be foolish to bet
against it. That is the result of adversity: the nationalisations of the 1970s forced Big Oil
to develop reserves in expensive, inaccessible places such as the North Sea and Alaska,
undermining Dr Hubbert’s assumption that cheap reserves are developed first. The
resulting upstream investments have driven down the cost of finding and developing
wells over the last two decades from over $20 a barrel to around $6 a barrel. The cost of
producing oil has fallen by half, to under $4 a barrel.
L Such miracles will not come cheap, however, since much of the world’s oil is now
produced in ageing fields that are rapidly declining. The IEA concludes that global oil
production need not peak in the next two decades if the necessary investments are ma de.
So how much is necessary? If oil companies are to replace the output lost at those ageing
fields and meet the world’s ever-rising demand for oil, the agency reckons they must
invest $ 1 trillion in non-OPEC countries over the next decade alone. That’s quite a figure.
Questions 27-31
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3 In
YES if the statement agrees with the information
NO if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
27 Hubbert has a high-profile reputation amongst ODAC members.
28 Oil is likely to last longer than some other energy sources.
29 The majority of geologists believe that oil will start to run out some time this
decade.
30 Over 50 percent of the oil we know about is currently being recovered.
31 History has shown that some of Hubbet’s principles were mistaken.
Question 32-35
Complete the notes below
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in
Many people believed Hubbert’s theory was 32…………….. when it was originall
presented.
The recovery of the oil gets more 34 ………………..as the reservoir gets older
When an aild field is 33……….. , it is easy to………………… .
The oil field can’t be as 35…………………… as other area
Questions 36-40
Look at the following statements (questions 36-40) and the list ofpeople below. Match
each statement with correct person, A-E.
Write the correct letter, A-E in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
36 has found fault in geological research procedure
37 has provided the longest-range forecast regarding oil supply
38 has convinced others that oil production will follow a particular model
39 has accused fellow scientists of refusing to see the truth
40 has expressed doubt over whether improved methods of extracting oil are possible.
List of People
A Colin Campbell
B M. King Hubbert
C Kenneth Deffeyes
D Rene Dahan
E Michael Lynch
IELTS Reading Recent Actual Test 3 – Answer Key
Section 1
1 B 2 E 3 D
4 D 5 A 6 B
7 C 8 A 9 B
10 B 11 D 12 Soil erosion
13 Paper
Section 2
14 TRUE 15 FALSE 16 TRUE

17 TRUE 18 FALSE 19 NOT GIVEN
20 NOT GIVEN 21 Keystone 22 Fig family/ figs
Sea urchins(
23 24 Cactus moth 25 Australia
urchins)
26 Public education
Section 3
27 YES 28 NOT GIVEN 29 NO

30 NO 31 YES 32 controversial
33 Tapped/( new) 34 Expensive 35 Competitive
36 E 37 D 38 B
39 A 40 C
TEST 4
SECTION 1
Organic farming and chemical fertilisers
A The world’s population continues to climb. And despite the rise of high-tech agriculture,
800 millionpeople don’t get enough to eat. Clearly it’s time to rethink the food we eat
and where it comes from. Feeding 9 billion people will take more than the same old
farming practices, especially if we want to do it without felling rainfo rests and planting
every last scrap of prairie. Finding food for all those people will tax predicting farmers’ —
and researchers’—ingenuity to the limit. Yet already, precious aquifers that provide
irrigation water for some of the world’s most productive farmlands are drying up or filling
with seawater, and arable land in China is eroding to create vast dust storms that redden
sunsets as far away as North America. “Agriculture must become the solution to
environmental problems in 50 years. If we don’t have systems that make the environment
better~not just hold the fort-then we’re in trouble,” says Kenneth Cassman, an
agronomist at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. That view was echoed in January by
the Curry report, a government panel that surveyed the future of farming and food in
Britain.
B It’s easy to say agriculture has to do better, but what should this friendly farming of the
future look like? Concerned consumers come up short at this point, facing what appears
to be an ever-widening ideological divide. In one corner are the techno-optimists who
put their faith in genetically modified crops, improved agrochemicals and computer -
enhanced machinery; in the other are advocates of organic farming, who reject artificial
chemicals and embrace back-to-nature techniques such as composting. Both sides cite
plausible science to back their claims to the moral high ground, and both bring enough
passion to the debate for many people to come away thinking we’re faced with a stark
choice between two mutually incompatible options.
C Not so. If you take off the ideological blinkers and simply ask how the world can
produce the food it needs with the least environmental cost, a new middle way opens.
The key is sustainability: whatever we do must not destroy the capital of soil and water
we need to keep on producing. Like today’s organic farming, the intelligent farming of
the future should pay much more attention to the health of its soil and the ecosystem it’s
part of. But intelligent farming should also make shrewd and locally appropriate use of
chemical fertilisers and pesticides. The most crucial ingredient in this new style of
agriculture is not chemicals but information about what’s happening in each field and
how to respond. Yet ironically, this key element may be the most neglected today.
D Clearly, organic farming has all the warm, fuzzy sentiment on its side. An approach that
eschews synthetic chemicals surely runs no risk of poisoning land and water. And its
emphasis on building up natural ecosystems seems to be good for everyone. Perhaps
these easy assumptions explain why sales of organic food across Europe are increasing
by at least 50 per cent per year.
E Going organic sounds idyllic-but it’s naive, too. Organic agriculture has its own suite of
environmental costs, which can be worse than those of conventional farming, especially
if it were to become the world norm. But more fundamentally, the organic versus-
chemical debate focuses on the wrong question. The issue isn’t what yo u put into a farm,
but what you get out of it, both in terms of crop yields and pollutants, and what condition
the farm is in when you’re done.
F Take chemical fertilisers, which deliver nitrogen, an essential plant nutrient, to crops
along with some phosphorus and potassium. It is a mantra of organic farming that these
fertilisers are unwholesome, and plant nutrients must come from natural sources. But in
fact the main environmental damage done by chemical fertilisers as opposed to any other
kind is through greenhouse gases-carbon dioxide from the fossil fuels used in their
synthesis and nitrogen oxides released by their degradation. Excess nitrogen from
chemical fertilisers can pollute groundwater, but so can excess nitrogen from organic
manures.
G On the other hand, relying solely on chemical fertilisers to provide soil nutrients without
doing other things to build healthy soil is damaging. Organic farmers don’t use chemical
fertilisers, so they are very good at building soil fertility by working crop residues and
manure into the soil, rotating with legumes that fix atmospheric nitrogen, and other
techniques.
H This generates vital soil nutrients and also creates a soil that is richer in organic matter,
so it retains nutrients better and is hospitable to the crop’s roots and creatures such as
earthworms that help maintain soil fertility. Such soil also holds water better and therefore
makes more efficient use of both rainfall and irrigation water. And organic matter ties up
C02 in the soil, helping to offset emissions from burning fossil fuels and reduce global
warming.
I Advocates of organic farming like to point out that fields managed in this way can
produce yields just as high as fields juiced up with synthetic fertilisers. For example, Bill
Liebhardt, research manager at the Rodale Institute in Kutztown, Pennsylvania recently
compiled the results of such comparisons for corn, wheat, soybeans and tomatoes in the
US and found that the organic fields averaged between 94 and 100 per cent of the y ields
of nearby conventional crops.
J But this optimistic picture tells only half the story. Farmers can’t grow such crops every
year if they want to maintain or build soil nutrients without synthetic fertilisers. They need
to alternate with soil-building crops such as pasture grasses and legumes such as alfalfa.
So in the long term, the yield of staple grains such as wheat, rice and com must go down.
This is the biggest cost of organic farming. Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba in
Winnipeg, Canada, estimates that if farmers worldwide gave up the 80 million tonnes of
synthetic fertiliser they now use each year, total grain production would fall by at least
half. Either farmers would have to double the amount of land they cultivate- at
catastrophic cost to natural habitat –or billions of people would starve.
K That doesn’t mean farmers couldn’t get by with less fertilizer. Technologically advanced
farmers in wealthy countries, for instance, can now monitor their yields hectare by hectare,
or even more finely, throughout a huge field. They can then target their fertiliser to the
parts of the field where it will do the most good, instead of responding to average
conditions. This increases yield and decreases fertiliser use. Eventually, farmers may -
incorporate long-term weather forecasts into their planning as well, so that they can cut
back on fertiliser use when the weather is likely to make harvests poor anyway, says Ron
Olson, an agronomist with CargillFertilizer in Tampa, Florida.
L Organic techniques certainly have their benefits, especially for poor farmers. But
stric”organic agriculture”, which prohibits certain technologies and allows others, isn’t
always better for the environment. Take herbicides, for example. These can leach into
waterways and poison both wildlife and people. Just last month, researchers led by Tyrone
Hayes at the University of California at Berkeley found that even low concentrations of
atrazine, the most commonly used weedkiller in the US, can prevent frog tadpoles from
developing properly.
Questions 1 – 4
Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-D) with opinions or
deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.
A Vaclav Smil
B Bill Liebhardt
C Kenneth Cassman
D Ron Olson
1 Use of chemical fertilizer can be optimised by combining weather information.
2 Organic framing yield is nearly equal to traditional ones.
3 Better agricultural setting is a significant key to solve environmental tough nut.
4 Substantial production loss would happen in case all farmers shifted from using
synthetic fertiliser.
Questions 5 – 9
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1 In
YES if the statement agrees with the information
NO if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
5 Increasing population, draining irrigation, eroding farmland push agricultu ral industry
to extremity.
6 There are only two options for farmers; they use chemical fertiliser or natural
approach.
7 Chemical fertilizer currently are more expensive than the natural fertilisers.
8 In order to keep nutrient in the soil, organic farmers need to rotate planting method.
9 “organic agriculture” is the way that environment-damaging technologies are all

strictly forbidden.
Questions 10-13
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using no more
than two words from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes
10-13 on your answer sheet.
Several 10 …………………… approaches need to be applied in order that global population

wouldn’t go starved. A team called 11…………………… repeated the viewpoint of a scholar
by a survey in British farming. More and more European farmers believe in
12……………………farming these years. The argument of organic against
13……………………seems in an inaccurate direction.
SECTION 2
Passage 1 on the following pages.
The Pearl
A Throughout history, pearls have held a unique presence within the wealthy and
powerful. For instance, the pearl was the favored gem of the wealthy during the Roman
Empire. This gift from the sea had been brought back from the orient by the Roman
conquests. Roman women wore pearls to bed so they could be reminded of their wealth
immediately upon waking up. Before jewelers learned to cut gems, the pearl was of
greater value than the diamond. In the Orient and Persia Empire, pearls were ground into
powders to cure anything from heart disease to epilepsy, with possible aphrodisiac uses
as well. Pearls were once considered an exclusive privilege for royalty. A law in 1612 drawn
up by the Duke of Saxony prohibited the wearing of pearls by nobility, professors, doctors
or their wives in an effort to further distinguish royal appearance. American Indians also
used freshwater pearls from the Mississippi River as decorations and jewelry.
B There are essentially three types of pearls: natural, cultured and imitation. A natural
pearl (often called an Oriental pearl) forms when an irritant, such as a piece of sand, works
its way into a particular species of oyster, mussel, or clam. As a defense mechanism, the
mollusk secretes a fluid to coat the irritant. Layer upon layer of this coating is deposited
on the irritant until a lustrous pearl is formed.
C The only difference natural pearls and cultured pearls is that the irritant is a surgically
implanted bead or piece of shell called Mother of Pearl. Often, these shells are ground
oyster shells that are worth significant amounts of money in their own right as irritant -
catalysts for quality pearls. The resulting core is, therefore, much larger than in a natural
pearl. Yet, as long as there are enough layers of nacre (the secreted fluid covering the
irritant) to result in a beautiful, gem-quality pearl, the size of the nucleus is of no
consequence to beauty or durability.
D Pearls can come from either salt or freshwater sources. Typically, saltwater pearls tend
to be higher quality, although there are several types of freshwater pearls that are
considered high in quality as well. Freshwater pearls tend to be very irregular in shape,
with a puffed rice appearance the most prevalent. Nevertheless, it is each individual pearls
merits that determines value more than the source of the pearl. Saltwater pearl oysters
are usually cultivated in protected lagoons or volcanic atolls. However, most freshwater
cultured pearls sold today come from China. Cultured pearls are the response of the shell
to a tissue implant. A tiny piece of mantle tissue from a donor shell is transplanted into a
recipient shell. This graft will form a pearl sac and the tissue will precipitate calcium
carbonate into this pocket. There are a number of options for producing cultured pearls:
use freshwater or seawater shells, transplant the graft into the mantle or into the gonad,
add a spherical bead or do it non-beaded. The majority of saltwater cultured pearls are
grown with beads.
E Regardless of the method used to acquire a pearl, the process usually takes several
years. Mussels must reach a mature age, which can take up to 3 years, and then be
implanted or naturally receive an irritant. Once the irritant is in place, it can take up to
another 3 years for the pearl to reach its full size. Often, the irritant may be rejec ted, the
pearl will be terrifically misshapen, or the oyster may simply die from disease or countless
other complications. By the end of a 5 to 10 year cycle, only 50% of the oysters will have
survived. And of the pearls produced, only approximately 5% are of substantial quality for
top jewelry makers. From the outset, a pearl farmer can figure on spending over $100 for
every oyster that is farmed, of which many will produce nothing or die.
F Imitation pearls are a different story altogether. In most cases, a glass bead is dipped
into a solution made from fish scales. This coating is thin and may eventually wear off.
One can usually tell an imitation by biting on it. Fake pearls glide across your teeth, while
the layers of nacre on real pearls feel gritty. The Island of Mallorca (in Spain) is known for
its imitation pearl industry. Quality natural pearls are very rare jewels. The actual value of
a natural pearl is determined in the same way as it would be for other “precious” gems.
The valuation factors include size, shape, and color, quality of surface, orient and luster.
In general, cultured pearls are less valuable than natural pearls, whereas imitation pearls
almost have no value. One way that jewelers can determine whether a pearl is cultured or
natural is to have a gem lab perform an x-ray of the pearl. If the x-ray reveals a nucleus,
the pearl is likely a bead-nucleated saltwater pearl. If no nucleus is present, but irregular
and small dark inner spots indicating a cavity are visible, combined with conc entric rings
of organic substance, the pearl is likely a cultured freshwater. Cultured freshwater pearls
can often be confused for natural pearls which present as homogeneous pictures which
continuously darken toward the surface of the pearl. Natural pearls will often show larger
cavities where organic matter has dried out and decomposed. Although imitation pearls
look the part, they do not have the same weight or smoothness as real pearls, and their
luster will also dim greatly. Among cultured pearls, Akoya pearls from Japan are some of
the most lustrous. A good quality necklace of 40 Akoya pearls measuring 7mm in
diameter sells for about $1,500, while a super- high quality strand sells for about $4,500.
Size on the other hand, has to do with the age of the oyster that created the pearl (the
more mature oysters produce larger pearls) and the location in which the pearl was
cultured. The South Sea waters of Australia tend to produce the larger pearls; probably
because the water along the coast line is supplied with rich nutrients from the ocean floor.
Also, the type of mussel common to the area seems to possess a predilection for
producing comparatively large pearls
G Historically, the world’s best pearls came from the Persian Gulf, especially around what
is now Bahrain. The pearls of the Persian Gulf were natural created and collected by
breath-hold divers. The secret to the special luster of Gulf pearls probably derived from
the unique mixture of sweet and salt water around the island. U nfortunately, the natural
pearl industry of the Persian Gulf ended abruptly in the early 1930’s with the discovery of
large deposits of oil. Those who once dove for pearls sought prosperity in the economic
boom ushered in by the oil industry. The water pollution resulting from spilled oil and
indiscriminate over-fishing of oysters essentially ruined the once pristine pearl producing
waters of the Gulf. Today, pearl diving is practiced only as a hobby. Still, Bahrain remains
one of the foremost trading centers for high quality pearls. In fact, cultured pearls are
banned from the Bahrain pearl market, in an effort to preserve the location’s heritage.
Nowadays, the largest stock of natural pearls probably resides in India. Ironically, much
of India’s stock of natural pearls came originally from Bahrain. Unlike Bahrain, which has
essentially lost its pearl resource, traditional pearl fishing is still practiced on a small scale
in India.
Questions 14-17
Reading Passage 1 has seven paragraphs, A-G. Which paragraph contains the following
information?
Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.
14 ancient stories around the pearl and customers
15 Difficulties in cultivating process.
16 Factors can decide the value of natural pearls.
17 Different growth mechanisms that distinguish the cultured pearls from natural ones.
Questions 18 – 23
Complete the summary below
Choose letter from A-K for each answer. Write them in boxes 5-10 on your answer
sheet.
In ancient history, pearls have great importance within the rich and rulers, which was
treated as gem for women in 18……………….. And pearls were even used as medicine and
sex drug for people in 19……………….. There are essentially three types of pearls: natural,
cultured and imitation. Most freshwater cultured pearls sold today come from China
while the 20……………….. is famous for its imitation pearl industry. The country
21…………………… usually manufactures some of the glitteriest cultured ones while the
nation such as 22……………….. produces the larger sized pearl due to the favorable
environment along the coast line. In the past, one country of 23 ……………….. in Gulf
produced the world’s best pearls. Nowadays, the maJor remaining suppliers of the
natural pearls belongs to India
A America B Ancient Rome C Australia

D Bahrain E China F Japan G India
H Korea I Mexico J Persia K Spain
Questions 24 – 27
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage
1? In boxes 11-14 on your answer sheet, write
24 Often cultured pearl’s centre is significantly larger than in a natural pearl.
25 Cultivated cultured pearls are generally valued the same much as natural ones.
26 The size of pearls produced in Japan is usually of smaller size than those came from
Australia.
27 Akoya pearls from Japan Glows more deeply than the South Sea pearls of Australia
SECTION 3
Scent of success
A Innovation and entrepreneurship, in the right mix, can bring spectacular results and
propel a business ahead of the pack. Across a diverse range of commercial successes,
from the Hills Hoist clothes line to the Cochlear ear implant, it is har d to generalize
beyond saying the creators tapped into something consumers could not wait to get their
hands on. However, most ideas never make it to the market. Some ideas that innovators
are spruiking to potential investors include new water-saving shower heads, a keyless
locking system, ping-pong balls that keep pollution out of rainwater tanks, making teeth
grow from stem cells inserted in the gum, and technology to stop LPG tanks from
exploding. Grant Kearney, chief executive of the Innovation Xchange, which connects
businesses to innovation networks, says he hears of great business ideas that he knows
will never get on the market. “Ideas by themselves are absolutely useless,” he says. “An
idea only becomes innovation when it is connected to the right r esources and
capabilities.”
B One of Australia’s latest innovation successes stems from a lemon-scented bath-room

cleaner called Shower Power, the formula for which was concocted in a factory in Yatala,
Queensland. In 1995, Tom Quinn and John Heron bought a struggling cleaning products
business, OzKleen, for 250,000. It was selling 100 different kinds of cleaning products,
mainly in bulk. The business was in bad shape, the cleaning formulas were ineffective and
environmentally harsh, and there were few regular clients. Now Shower Power is claimed
to be the top-selling bathroom cleaning product in the country. In the past 12 months,
almost four million bottles of OzKleen’s Power products have been sold and the company
forecasts 2004 sales of 10 million bottles. The company’s, sales in2003 reached $11
million, with 700k of business being exports. In particular, Shower Power is making big
inroads on the British market.
C OzKleen’s turnaround began when Quinn and Heron hired an industrial chemist to
revitalize the product line. Market research showed that people were looking for a better
cleaner for the bathroom, universally regarded as the hardest room in the home to clean.
The company also wanted to make the product formulas more environmentally friendly
One of Tom Quinn’s sons, Peter, aged 24 at the time, began working with the chemist on
the formulas, looking at the potential for citrus-based cleaning products. He detested all
the chlorine-based cleaning products that dominated the market. “We didn’t want to use
chlorine, simple as that,” he says. “It offers bad working conditions and there’s no money
in it.” Peter looked at citrus ingredients, such as orange peel, to replace the petroleum by -
products in cleaners. He is credited with finding the Shower Power formula. “The head,”
he says. The company is the recipe is in a vault somewhere and in my sole owner of the
intellectual property.
D To begin with, Shower Power was sold only in commercial quantities but Tom Quinn
decided to sell it in 750ml bottles after the constant “raves” from customers at their retail
store at Beenleigh, near Brisbane. Customers were travel- ling long distances to buy
supplies. Others began writing to OzKleen to say how good Shower Power was. “We did
a dummy label and went to see Woolworths,” Tom Quinn says. The Woolworths buyer
took a bottle home and was able to remove a stain from her basin that had been
impossible to shift. From that point on, she championed the product and OzKleen had its
first super¬market order, for a palette of Shower Power worth $3000. “We were over the
moon,” says OzKleen’s financial controller, Belinda McDonnell.
E Shower Power was released in Australian supermarkets in 1997 and became the top-
selling product in its category within six months. It was all hands on deck at the factory,
labeling and bottling Shower Power to keep up with demand. OzKleen ditched all other
products and rebuilt the business around Shower Power. This stage, recall s McDonnell,
was very tough. “It was hand-to-mouth, cash flow was very difficult,” she says. OzKleen
had to pay new-line fees to supermarket chains, which also squeezed margins.
F OzKleen’s next big break came when the daughter of a Coles Myer executive 1 used the
product while on holidays in Queensland and convinced her father that Shower Power
should be in Coles supermarkets. Despite the product success, Peter Quinn says the
company was wary of how long the sales would last and hesitate to spend money on
upgrading the manufacturing process. As a result, he remembers long periods of working
around the clock to keep up with orders. Small tanks were still being used so batches
were small and bottles were labeled and filled manually The privately owned OzKlee n
relied on cash-flow to expand. “The equipment could not keep up with demand,” Peter
Quinn says. Eventually a new bottling machine was bought for $50,000 in the hope of
streamlining production, but he says: “We got ripped off.” Since then he has been
developing a new automated bottling machine that can control the amount of foam
produced in the liquid, so that bottles can be filled more effectively – “I love coming up
with new ideas.” The machine is being patented.
G Peter Quinn says OzKleen’s approach to research and development is open slather. “If
I need it, I get I it. It is about doing something simple that no one else is doing. Most of
these things are just sitting in front of people … it’s just seeing the opportunities.” With a
tried and tested product, OzKleen is expanding overseas and developing more Power-
brand household products. Tom Quinn, who previously ran a real estate agency, says: “We
are competing with the same market all over the world; the (cleaning) products are sold
everywhere.” Shower Power, known as Bath Power in Britain, was launched four years ago
with the help of an export development grand from the Federal Government. “We wanted
to do it straight away because we realized we had the same opportunities worldwide.”
OzKleen is already number three in the British market, and the next stop is France. The
Power range includes cleaning products for carpets, kitchens and pre-wash stain removal.
The Quinn and Heron families are still involved. OzKleen has been approached with offers
to buy the company, but Tom Quinn says he is happy with things as they are. “We’re
having too much fun.”
Questions 28-34
Reading Passage 1 has six paragraphs, A—G.
Write the correct letter A-G, in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.
28 Description of one family member persuading another of selling cleaning products
29 An account of the cooperation of all factory staff to cope with sales increase
30 An account of the creation of the formula of Shower Power
31 An account of buying the original OzKleen company
32 Description of Shower Power’s international expansion
33 The reason of changing the packaging size of Shower Power
34 An example of some innovative ideas
Questions 35 – 38
Look at the following people and list of statements below.
Match each person with the correct statement
Write the correct letter A-E in boxes 8-11 on your answer sheet.
35 Grant Keamey
36 Tom Quinn
37 PeterQuinn
38 BelindaMcDonnell
List of Statement
A Described his story of selling his product to a chain store
B Explained there was a shortage of money when sales suddenly increased
C Believe innovations need support to succeed
D Believes new products like Shower Power may incur risks
E Says business won’t succeed with innovations
Questions 39 – 40
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
39 Tom Quinn changed the bottle size to 750ml to make Shower Power
A Easier to package.
B Appealing to individual customers.
C Popular in foreign markets.
D Attractive to supermarkets.
40 Why did Tom Quinn decide not to sell OzKleen?
A No one wanted to buy OzKleen.
B New products were being developed in OzKleen.
C He couldn’t make an agreement on the price with the buyer.
D He wanted to keep things unchanged.

ANSWER KEY
SECTION 1
1 D 2 B 3 C
4 A 5 YES 6 NO
7 NOT GIVEN 8 YES 3 NO
10 Farming 11 Curry 12 Natural/ organic
13 Chemical
SECTION 2
14 A 15 E 16 F
17 C 18 B 19 J
20 K 21 F 22 C
23 D 24 TRUE 25 FALSE
26 TRUE 27 NOT GIVEN
SECTION 3
28 F 29 E 30 C
31 B 32 G 33 D
34 A 35 C 36 A
37 D 38 B 39 B
40 D
TEST 5
SECTION 1
Copy your neighbor
A THERE’S no animal that symbolises rainforest diversity quite as spectacularly as the

tropical butterfly. Anyone lucky enough to see these creatures flitting between patches
of sunlight cannot fail to be impressed by the variety of their patterns. But why do they
display such colourful exuberance? Until recently, this was almost as pertinent a question
as it had been when the 19th-century naturalists, armed only with butterfly nets and
insatiable curiosity, battled through the rainforests. These early explorers soon realised
that although some of the butterflies’ bright colours are there to attract a mate, others
are warning signals. They send out a message to any predators: “Keep off, we’re predicting
poisonous.” And because wearing certain patterns affords protection, other species copy
them. Biologists use the term mimicry rings for these clusters of impostors and their
evolutionary idol.
B But here’s the conundrum. “Classical mimicry theory says that only a single ring should
be found in any one area,” explains George Beccaloni of the Natural History Museum,
London. The idea is that in each locality there should be just the one pattern that best
protects its wearers. Predators would quickly learn to avoid it and eventually all mimetic
species in a region should converge upon it. “The fact that this is patently not the case
has been one of the major problems in mimicry research,” says Beccaloni. In pursuit of a
solution to the mystery of mimetic exuberance, Beccaloni set off for one of the
megacentres for butterfly diversity, the point where the western edge of the Amazon
basin meets the foothills of the Andes in Ecuador. “It’s exceptionally rich, but
comparatively well collected, so I pretty much knew what was there, says Beccaloni.” The
trick was to work out how all the butterflies were organised and how this related to
mimicry.”
C Working at the Jatun Sacha Biological Research Station on the banks of the Rio Napo,
Beccaloni focused his attention on agroup of butterflies called ithomiines. These distant
relatives of Britain’s Camberwell Beauty are abundant throughout Central and South
America and the Caribbean. They are famous for their bright colours, toxic bodies and
complex mimetic relationships. “They can comprise up to 85 per cent of the individuals
in a mimicry ring and their patterns are mimicked not just by butterflies, but by other
insects as diverse as damselflies and true bugs,” says Philip DeVries of the Milwaukee
Public Museum’s Center for Biodiversity Studies.
D Even though all ithomiines are poisonous, it is in their interests to evolve to look like
one another because predators that learn to avoid one species will also avoid ot hers that
resemble it. This is known as Mullerian mimicry. Mimicry rings may also contain insects
that are not toxic, but gain protection by looking likes a model species that is: an
adaptation called Batesian mimicry. So strong is an experienced predator’ s avoidance
response that even quite inept resemblance gives some protection. “Often there will be a
whole series of species that mimic, with varying degrees of verisimilitude, a focal or model
species,” says John Turner from the University of Leeds. “The results of these deceptions
are some of the most exquisite examples of evolution known to science.” In addition to
colour, many mimics copy behaviours and even the flight pattern of their model species.
E But why are there so many different mimicry rings? One idea is that species flying at the
same height in the forest canopy evolve to look like one another. “It had been suggested
since the 1970s that mimicry complexes were stratified by flight height,” says DeVries. The
idea is that wing colour patterns are camouflaged against the different patterns of light
and shadow at each level in the canopy, providing a first line of defence, against
predators.” But the light patterns and wing patterns don’t match very well,” he says. And
observations show that the insects do not shift in height as the day progresses and the
light patterns change. Worse still, according to DeVries, this theory doesn’t explain why
the model species is flying at that particular height in the first place
F “When I first went out to Ecuador, I didn’t believe the flight height hypothesis and set
out to test it,” says Beccaloni.”A few weeks with the collecting net convinced me
otherwise. They really flew that way.” What he didn’t accept, however, was the explanation
about light patterns. “I thought, if this idea really is true, and I can work out why, it could
help explain why there are so many different warning patterns in any one place. Then we
might finally understand how they could evolve in such a complex way.” The job was
complicated by the sheer diversity of species involved at Jatun Sacha. Not only were there
56 ithomiine butterfly species divided among eight mimicry rings, there were also 69
other insect species, including 34 day-flying moths and a damselfly, all in a 200-hectare
study area. Like many entomologists before him, Beccaloni used a large bag-like net to
capture his prey. This allowed him to sample the 2.5 metres immediately above the forest
floor. Unlike many previous workers, he kept very precise notes on exactly where he
caught his specimens
G The attention to detail paid off. Beccaloni found that the mimicry rings were flying at
two quite separate altitudes. “Their use of the forest was quite distinctive,” he recalls. “For
example, most members of the clear¬winged mimicry ring would fly close to the forest
floor, while the majority of the 12 species in the tiger-winged ring fly high up.” Each
mimicry ring had its own characteristic flight height.
H However, this being practice rather than theory, things were a bit fuzzy. “They’d spend
the majority of their time flying at a certain height. But they’d also spend a smaller
proportion of their time flying at other heights,” Beccaloni admits. Species weren’t stacked
rigidly like passenger jets waiting to land, but they did appear to have a preferred airspace
in the forest. So far, so good, but he still hadn’t explained what causes the various groups
of ithomiines and their chromatic consorts to fly in formations at these particular heights.
I Then Beccaloni had a bright idea. “I started looking at the distribution of ithomiine larval
food plants within the canopy,” he says. “For each one I’d record the height to which the
host plant grew and the height above the ground at which the eggs or larvae were found.
Once I got them back to the field station’s lab, it was just a matter of keeping them alive
until they pupated and then hatched into adults which I could identify.”
Questions 1 – 5
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-I.
Write the correct letter A-I, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
1 Criticism against flight height theory of butterfly
2 Explained why Beccaloni carried out research in Ecuador.
3 Different mimicry ring flies at different height
4 The method of catching butterfly by Beccaloni
5 Not all Mimicry patterns are toxic information sent out from insects.
Questions 6-11
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1
In boxes 6-11 on your answer sheet, write
6 All butterflies’ colour of wing reflect the sense of warning to other predator.
7 Insects may imitate butterflies’ wing pattern as well.

8 Flying Altitude of butterfly is determined by their food.
9 Beccaloni agreed with flight height hypothesis and decide to reassure its validity.
10 Jatun Sacha has the riches diversity of breeds in the world.
11 Beecaloni has more detailed records on the location of butterfly collection than
others.
Questions 12-13
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D
12 Which is correct about butterflies flight altitude ?
A Flight height theory already established
B Butterfly always flies at a certain height
C It is like the airplane’s flying phenomenon
D Each butterfly has its own favorable height
13 Which is correct about Beccaloni next investigation after flight height?
A Some certain statistics have already been collected
B Try to find connections between larval height and adult ones
C It’s very difficult to raise butterfly larval
D Different larval favors different kinds of trees

SECTION 2
What are you laughing at?
A We like to think that laughing is the height of human sophistication. Our big brains let
us see the humour in a strategically positioned pun, an unexpected plot twist or a clever
piece of word play. But while joking and wit are uniquely human inventions, laughter
certainly is not. Other creatures, including chimpanzees, gorillas and even rats, chuckle.
Obviously, they don’t crack up at Homer Simpson or titter at the boss’s dreadful jokes,
but the fact that they laugh in the first place suggests that sniggers and chortles have
been around for a lot longer than we have. It points the way to the origins of laught er,
suggesting a much more practical purpose than you might think.
B There is no doubt that laughing typical involves groups of people. ‘Laughter evolved as
a signal to others – it almost disappears when we are alone,’ says Robert Provine, a
neuroscientist at the University of Maryland. Provine found that most laughter comes as
a polite reaction to everyday remarks such as ‘see you later’, rather than anything
particularly funny. And the way we laugh depends on the company we’re keeping. Men
tend to laugh longer and harder when they are with other men, perhaps as a way of
bonding. Women tend to laugh more and at a higher pitch when men are present,
possibly indicating flirtation or even submission.
C To find the origins of laughter, Provine believes we need to look at play. He points out
that the masters of laughing are children, and nowhere is their talent more obvious than
in the boisterous antics, and the original context is play,’ he say. Well-known primate
watchers, including Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, have long argued that chimps laugh
while at play. The sound they produce is known as a pant laugh. It seems obvious when
you watch their behavior – they even have the same ticklish spots as we do. But remove
the context, and the parallel between human laughter and a chimp’s characteristic pant
laugh is not so clear. When Provine played a tape of the pant laughs to 119 of his students,
for example, only two guessed correctly what it was.
D These findings underline how chimp and human laughter vary. When we laugh the
sound is usually produced by chopping up a single exhalation into a series of shorter with
one sound produced on each inward and outward breath. The question is: does this pant
laughter have the same source as our own laughter? New research lends weight to the
idea that it does. The findings come from Elke Zimmerman, head of the Institute for
Zoology in Germany, who compared the sounds made by babies and chimpanzees in
response to tickling during the first year of their life. Using sound spectrographs to reveal
the pitch and intensity of vocalizations, she discovered that chimp and human baby
laughter follow broadly the same pattern. Zimmerman believes the closeness of baby
laughter to chimp laughter supports the idea that laughter was around long before
humans arrived on the scene. What started simply as a modification of breathing
associated with enjoyable and playful interactions has acquired a symbolic meaning as
an indicator of pleasure.
E Pinpointing when laughter developed is another matter. Humans and chimps share a
common ancestor that lived perhaps 8 million years ago, but animals might have been
laughing long before that. More distantly related primates, including gorillas, laugh, and
anecdotal evidence suggests that other social mammals nay do too. Scientists are
currently testing such stories with a comparative analysis of just how common laughter is
among animals. So far, though, the most compelling evidence for laughter beyond
primates comes from research done by Jaak Panksepp from Bowling Green State
University, Ohio, into the ultrasonic chirps produced by rats during play and in response
to tickling.
F All this still doesn’t answer the question of why we laugh at all. One idea is that f laughter
and tickling originated as a way of sealing the relationship between mother and child.
Another is that the reflex response to tickling is protective, alerting us to the presence of
crawling creatures that might harm us or compelling us to defend the parts of our bodies
that are most vulnerable in hand-to-hand combat. But the idea that has gained most
popularity in recent years is that laughter in response to tickling is a way for two
individuals to signal and test their trust in one another. This hypothesis starts from the
observation that although a little tickle can be enjoyable, if it goes on too long it can be
torture. By engaging in a bout of tickling, we put ourselves at the mercy of another
individual, and laughing is a signal that we laughter is what makes it a reliable signal of
trust according to Tom Flamson, a laughter researcher at the University of California, Los
Angeles. ‘Even in rats, laughter, tickle, play and trust are linked. Rats chirp a lot when they
play, ‘syas Flamson. ‘These chirps can be aroused by tickling. And they get bonded to us
as a result, which certainly seems like a show of trust.’
G We’ll never know which animal laughed the first laugh, or why. But we can be sure it
wasn’t in response to a prehistoric joke. The funny thing is that while the origins of
laughter are probably quite serious, we owe human laughter and our language -based
humor to the same unique skill. While other animals pant, we alone can control our breath
well enough to produce the sound of laughter. Without that control there would also be
no speech – and no jokes to endure.
Questions 14 – 19
Look at the following research findings (questions 1-6) and the list of people below.
Match each finding with the correct person, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter, A, B, C or D, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.
A Tom Flamson
B Elke Zimmerman
C Robert Provine
D Jaak Panksepp
14 Babies and chimps produce similar sounds of laughter .
15 Primates are not the only animals who produce laughter Pan
16 Laughter also suggests that we feel safe and easy with others.
17 Laughter is a response to polite situation instead of humour.
18 Animal laughter evolved before human laughter
19 Laughter is a social activity.
Questions 20 – 23
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-K, below. Write the correct letter, A-K,
in boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet.
Some researchers believe that laughter first evolved out of 20…………………… .

Investigation has revealed that human and chimp laughter may have the same
21 …………………… . Besides, scientists have been aware that 22…………………… laugh,
however, it now seems that laughter might be more widespread than once we thought.
Although the reasons why humans started to laugh are still unknown, it seems that
laughter may result from the 23…………………… we feel with another person
A evolution B chirps C origins D voice

E confidence F rats G primates H response
I play J children K tickling
Questions 24 – 26
24 Both men and women laugh more when they are with members of the same sex.
25 Primates lack sufficient breath control to be able to produce laughs the way humans
do.
26 Chimpanzees produce laughter in a wider range of situations than rats do
SECTION 3
Memory Decoding
Try this memory test: Study each face and compose a vivid image for the person’s first
and last name Rose Leo, for example, could be a rosebud and a lion. Fill in the blanks on
the next page. The Examinations School at Oxford University is an austere building of oak-
paneled rooms, large Gothic windows, and looming portraits of eminent dukes and earls.
It is where generations of Oxford students have tested their memory on final exams, and
it is where, last August, 34 contestants gathered at the World Memory Championships to
be examined in an entirely different manner.
A In timed trials, contestants were challenged to took at and then recite a two -page poem,
memorize rows of 40-digit numbers, recall the names of 110 people after looking at their
photographs, and perform seven other feats of extraordinary retention. Some tests took
just a few minutes; others lasted hours. In the 14 years since the World Memory
Championships was founded, no one has memorized the order of a shuffled deck of
playing cards in less than 30 seconds. That nice round number has become the four -
minute mile of competitive memory, a benchmark that the world’s best “mental athletes,”
as some of them like to be called are closing in on. Most contestants claim to have just
average memories, and scientific testing confirms that they’re not just being modest. Their
feats are based on tricks that capitalize on how the human brain encodes information.
Anyone can learn them.
B Psychologists Elizabeth Valentine and John Wilding, authors of the monograph Superior
Memory, recently teamed up with Eleanor Maguire, a neuroscientist at University College
London to study eight people, including Karsten, who had finished near the top of the
World Memory Championships. They wondered if the contestants’ brains were different
in some way. The researchers put the competitors and a group of control subjec ts into an
MRI machine and asked them to perform several different memory tests while their brains
were being scanned When it came to memorizing sequences of three-digit numbers, the
difference between the memory contestants and the control subjects was, as expected
immense. However, when they were show photographs of magnified snowflakes, images
that the competitors had never tried to memorize before, the champions did no better
than the control group. When the researchers analyzed the brain scans, they found that
the memory champs were activating some brain regions that were different from those
the control subjects were using. These regions, which included the right posterior
hippocampus, are known to be involved in visual memory and spatial navigation.
C It might seem odd that the memory contestants would use visual imagery and spatial
navigation to remember numbers, but the activity makes sense when their techniques are
revealed Cooke, a 23-year-old cognitive-science graduate student with a shoulder-length
mop of curly hair, is a grand master of brain storage. He can memorize the order of 10
decks of playing cards in less than an hour or one deck of cards in less than a minute. He
is closing in on the 30-second deck. In the Lamb and Flag, Cooke pulled out a deck of
cards and shuffled it. He held up three cards—the 7 of spades, the queen of clubs, and
the 10 of spades. He pointed at a fireplace and said “Destiny’s Child is whacking Franz
Schubert with handbags.” The next three cards were the king of hearts, the king of spades,
and the jack of clubs.
D
How did he do it? Cooke has already memorized a specific person, verb, and object that
he associates with each card in the deck. For example, for the 7 of spades, the person (or,
in this case, persons) is always the singing group Destiny’s Child the action is surviving a
storm, and the image is a dinghy. The queen of clubs is always his friend Henrietta, the
action is thwacking with a handbag, and the image is of wardrobes filled with designer
clothes. When Cooke commits a deck to memory, he does it three cards at a time. Every
three-card group forms a single image of a person doing something to an object. The
first card in the triplet becomes the person, the second the verb, the third the object. He
then places those images along a specific familiar route, such as the one he took through
the Lamb and Flag. In competitions, he uses an imaginary route that he has designed to
be as smooth and downhill as possible. When it comes time to recall Cooke takes a mental
walk along his route and translates the images into cards. That’s why the MRIs of the
memory contestants showed activation in the brain areas associated with visual imagery
and spatial navigation.
E The more resonant the images are, the more difficult they are to forget. But even
meaningful information is hard to remember when there’s a lot of it. That’s why
competitive memorizers place their images along an imaginary route. That technique,
known as the toci method reportedly originated in 477 B.C. with the Greek poet Simonides
of Ceos. Simonides was the sole survivor of a roof collapse that killed all the other guests
at a royal banquet. The bodies were mangled beyond recognition, but Simonides was
able to reconstruct the guest list by closing his eyes and recalling each individual around
the dinner table. What he had discovered was that our brains are exceptionally good at
remembering images and spatial information. Evolutionary psychologists have offered an
explanation: Presumably our ancestors found it important to recall where they found their
last meal or the way back to the cave. After Simonides’ discovery, the loci method became
popular across ancient Greece as a trick for memorizing speech es and texts. Aristotle
wrote about it, and later a number of treatises on the art of memory were published in
Rome. Before printed books, the art of memory was considered a staple of classical
education, on a par with grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
F The most famous of the naturals was the Russian journalist S. V. Shereshevski, who could
recall long lists of numbers memorized decades earlier, as well as poems, strings of
nonsense syllables, and just about anything else he was asked to remember. “The capaci ty
of his memory had no distinct limits,” wrote Alexander Luria, the Russian psychologist
who studied Shereshevski from the 1920s to the 1950s. Shereshevski also had synesthesia,
a rare condition in which the senses become intertwined For example, every number may
be associated with a color or every word with a taste. Synesthetic reactions evoke a
response in more areas of the brain, making memory easier.
G K. Anders Ericsson, a Swedish-born psychologist at Florida State University, thinks

anyone can acquire Shereshevski’s skills. He cites an experiment with S. F., an
undergraduate who was paid to take a standard test of memory called the digit span for
one hour a day, two or three days a week. When he started, he could hold, like most
people, only about seven digits in his head at any given time (conveniently, the length of
a phone number). Over two years, S. F. completed 250 hours of testing. By then, he had
stretched his digit span from 7 to more than 80. The study of S. F. led Ericsson to believe
that innately superior memory doesn’t exist at alL When he reviewed original case studies
of naturals, he found that exceptional memorizers were using techniques —sometimes
without realizing it—and lots of practice. Often, exceptional memory was only for a single
type of material, like digits. “If we look at some of these memory tasks, they’re the kind
of thing most people don’t even waste one hour practicing, but if they wasted 50 hours,
they’d be exceptional at it,” Ericsson says. It would be remarkable, he adds, to find a
“person who is exceptional across a number of tasks. I don’t think that there’s any
compelling evidence that there are such people.”
Questions 27-31
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter A-G, in
27 The reason why competence of super memory is significant in academic settings
28 Mention of a contest for extraordinary memory held in consecutive years
29 An demonstrative example of extraordinary person did an unusual recalling game
30 A belief that extraordinary memory can be gained though enough practice
31 A depiction of rare ability which assist the extraordinary memory reactions
Questions 32-36
than three words from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in
Using visual imagery and spatial navigation to remember numbers are investigated and
explained. A man called Ed Cooke in a pub, spoke a string of odd words when he held 7
of the spades (the first one of the any cards group) was remembered as he encoded it
to a 32 and the card deck to memory are set to be one time of a order of 33
; When it comes time to recall, Cooke took a 34 along his way and
interpreted the imaginary scene into cards. This superior memory skill can be traced
back to Ancient Greece, the strategy was called 35 which had been an major
subject was in ancient 36 .
Questions 37-38
Choose TWO correct letter, A-E
According to World Memory Championships, what activities need good memory?
A order for a large group of each digit
B recall people’s face
C resemble a long Greek poem
D match name with pictures and features E recall what people ate and did yesterday
Questions 39-40
Choose TWO correct letter, A-E
What is the result of Psychologists Elizabeth Valentine and John Wilding‘s MRI
Scan experiment find out?
A the champions ‘ brains is different in some way from common people
B difference in brain of champions’ scan image to control subjects are shown when
memorizing sequences of three-digit numbers
C champions did much worse when they are asked to remember photographs
D the memory-champs activated more brain regions than control subjects
E there is some part in the brain coping with visual and spatial memory
ANSWER KEY
SECTION 1
1 E 2 B 3 G
4 F 5 D 6 FALSE
7 TRUE 8 NOT GIVEN 9 FALSE
10 NOT GIVEN 11 TRUE 12 D

13 B
SECTION 2
14 B 15 D 16 A
17 C 18 B 19 C
20 I 21 C 22 G
23 E 24 NOT GIVEN 25 TRUE

26 NOT GIVEN
SECTION 3
27 E 28 A 29 C
30 G 31 F 32 Specific person
33 Three cards/ 3 cards 34 Mental walk 35 Loci method

36 Education 37 A 38 D
39 B 40 E
TEST 6
SECTION 1
Coastal Archaeology of Britain
A The recognition of the wealth and diversity of England’s coastal archaeology has been
one of the most important developments of recent years. Some elements of this
enormous resource have long been known. The so-called ‘submerged forests’ off the
coasts of England, sometimes with clear evidence of human activity, had attracted the
interest of antiquarians since at least the eighteenth century but serious and systematic
attention has been given to the archaeological potential of the coast only since the early
1980s.
B It is possible to trace a variety of causes for this concentration of effort and interest In
the 1980s and 1990s scientific research into climate change and its environmental impact
spilled over into a much broader public debate as awareness of these issues grew; the
prospect of rising sea levels over the next century, and their impact on current coastal
environments, has been a particular focus for concern. At the same time archaeologists
were beginning to recognize that the destruction caused by natural processes of coastal
erosion and by human activity was having an increasing impact on the archaeological
resource of the coast.
C The dominant process affecting the physical form of England in the post- glacial period
has been the rise in the altitude of sea level relative to the land, as the glaciers melted
and the landmass readjusted. The encroachment of the sea, the loss of huge areas of
land now under the North Sea and the English Channel, and especially the loss of the
land bridge between England and France, which finally made Britain an island, must have
been immensely significant factors in the lives of our prehistoric ancestors. Yet the way
in which prehistoric communities adjusted to these environmental changes has seldom
been a major theme in discussions of the period. One factor contributing to this has been
that, although the rise in relative sea level is comparatively well documented, we know
little about the constant reconfiguration of the coastline. This was affected by many
processes, mostly quiet, which have not yet been adequately researched. The detailed
reconstruction of coastline histories and the changing environments available for human
use will be an important theme for future research.
D So great has been the rise in sea level and the consequent regression of the coast that
uch of the archaeological evidence now exposed in the coastal zone, whether being
eroded or exposed as a buried land surface, is derived from what was originally terres -
trial occupation. Its current location in the coastal zone is the product of later unrelated
processes, and it can tell us little about past adaptations to the sea. Estimates of its
significance will need to be made in the context of other related evidence from dry land
sites. Nevertheless, its physical environment means that preservation is often excellent,
for example in the case of the Neolithic structure excavated at the Stumble in Essex.
E In some cases these buried land surfaces do contain evidence for human exploitation
of what was a coastal environment, and elsewhere along the modem coast there is
similarevidence. Where the evidence does relate to past human exploitation of the
resources and the opportunities offered by the sea and the coast, it is both diverse and
as yet little understood. We are not yet in a position to make even preliminary estimates
of answers to such fundamental questions as the extent to which the sea and the coast
affected human life in the past, what percentage of the population at any time lived
within reach of the sea, or whether human settlements in coastal environments showed
a distinct character from those inland.
F The most striking evidence for use of the sea is in the form of boats, yet we still have
much to learn about their production and use. Most of the known wrecks around our
coast are not unexpectedly of post-medieval date, and offer an unparalleled opportunity
for research which has as yet been little used. The prehistoric sewn-plank boats such as
those from the Humber estuary and Dover all seem to belong to the second millennium
BC; after this there is a gap in the record of a millennium, which cannot yet be explained,
before boats reappear, but built using a very different technology. Boatbuilding must
have been an extremely important activity around much of our coast, yet we know almost
nothing about it, Boats were some of the most complex artefacts produced by pre -
modem societies, and further research on their production and use make an important
contribution to our understanding of past attitudes to technology and technological
change.
G Boats needed landing places, yet here again our knowledge is very patchy In many
cases the natural shores and beaches would have sufficed, leaving little or no
archaeological trace, but especially in later periods, many ports and harbors, as welJ as
smaller facilities such as quays, wharves, and jetties, were built. Despite a growth of
interest in the waterfront archaeology of some of our more important Roman and
medieval towns, very little attention has been paid to the multitude of smaller landing
places. Redevelopment of harbor sites and other development and natural pressures
along the coast are subject- ing these important locations to unprecedented threats, yet
few surveys of such sites have been undertaken.
H One of the most important revelations of recent research has been the extent
ofindustrial activity along the coast. Fishing and salt production are among the better
documented activities, but even here our knowledge is patchy Many forms of fishing will
eave little archaeological trace, and one of the surprises of recent survey has been the
extent of past investment in facilities for procuring fish and shellfish. Elaborate wooden
fish weirs, often of considerable extent and responsive to aerial photography in shallow
water, have been identified in areas such as Essex and the Severn estuary. The production
of salt, especially in the late Iron Age and early Roman periods, has been recognized for
some time, especially in the Thames estuary and around the Solent and Poole Harbor,
but the reasons for the decline of that industry and the nature of later coastal salt
working are much less well understood. Other industries were also located along the
coast, either because the raw materials outcropped there or for ease of working and
transport: mineral resources such as sand, gravel, stone, coal, ironstone, and alum were
all exploited. These industries are poorly documented, but their mains are sometimes
extensive and striking.
I Some appreciation of the variety and importance of the archaeological remains

preserved in the coastal zone, albeit only in preliminary form, can thus be gained from
recent work, but the complexity of the problem of managing that resource is also being
realised. The problem arises not only from the scale and variety of the archaeological
remains, but also from two other sources: the very varied natural and human threats to
the resource, and the complex web of organisations with authority over, or interests in,
the coastal zone. Human threats include the redevelopment of historic towns and old
dockland areas, and the increased importance of the coast for the leisure and tourism
industries, resulting in pressure for the increased provision of facilities such as marinas.
The larger size of ferries has also caused an increase in the damage caused by their wash
to fragile deposits in the intertidal zone. The most significant natural threat is the
predicted rise in sea level over the next century especially in the south and east of
England. Its impact on archaeology is not easy to predict, and though it is likely to be
highly localised, it will be at a scale much larger than that of most archaeological sites.
Thus protecting one site may simply result in transposing the threat to a point further
along the coast. The management of the archaeological remains will have to be
considered in a much longer time scale and a much wider geographical scale than is
common in the case of dry land sites, and this will pose a serious challenge for
archaeologists.
Questions 1-3
1. What has caused public interest in coastal archaeology in recent years?
A Golds and jewelleries in the ships that have submerged
B The rising awareness of climate change
C Forests under the sea
D Technological advance in the field of sea research
2. What does the passage say about the evidence of boats?

A We have a good knowledge of how boats were made and what boats were for
prehistorically
B Most of the boats discovered were found in harbors
C The use of boats had not been recorded for a thousand years
D The way to build boats has remained unchanged throughout human history
3. What can be discovered from the air?
A Salt mines
B Shellfish
C Ironstones
D Fisheries
Questions 4-10

4. England lost much of its land after the ice-age due to the rising sea level.
5. The coastline of England has changed periodically.
6. Coastal archaeological evidence may be well-protected by sea water.
7. The design of boats used by pre-modem people was very simple.
8. Similar boats were also discovered in many other European countries
9. There are few documents relating to mineral exploitation.
10. Large passenger boats are causing increasing damage to the seashore.
Questions 11-13
Choose THREE letters J-G Write your answer in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet Which
THREE of the following statements are mentioned in the passage?
A Our prehistoric ancestors adjusted to the environmental change caused by the rising
sea level by moving to higher lands
B It is difficult to understand how many people lived close to the sea.
C Human settlements in coastal environment were different from those inland.
D Our knowledge of boat evidence is limited.
E The prehistoric boats were built mainly for collecting sand from the river.
F Human development threatens the archaeological remains.
G The reason for the decline of salt industry was the shortage of laborers.
SECTION 2
Activities for Children
A Twenty-five years ago, children in London walked to school and played in parks and
playing fields after school and at the weekend. Today they are usually driven to school
by parents anxious about safety and spend hours glued to television screens or computer
games. Meanwhile, community playing fields are being sold off to property developers
at an alarming rate. ‘This change in lifestyle has, sadly, meant greater restrictions on
children,’ says Neil Armstrong, Professor of Health and Exercise Sciences at the University
of Exeter. ‘If children continue to be this inactive, they’ll be storing up big problems for
the future.’
B In 1985, Professor Armstrong headed a five-year research project into children’s

fitness. The results, published in 1990, were alarming. The survey, which monitored 700
11-16-year-olds, found that 48 per cent of girls and 41 per cent of boys already exceeded
safe cholesterol levels set for children by the American Heart Foundation. Armstrong
adds, “heart is a muscle and need exercise, or it loses its strength. ” It also found that 13
per cent of boys and 10 per cent of girls were overweight. More disturbingly, the survey
found that over a four-day period, half the girls and one-third of the boys did less
exercise than the equivalent of a brisk 10-minute walk. High levels of cholesterol, excess
body fat and inactivity are believed to increase the risk of coronary heart disease.
C Physical education is under pressure in the UK – most schools devote little more than
100 minutes a week to it in curriculum time, which is less than many other European
countries. Three European countries are giving children a head start in PE, France, Austria
and Switzerland – offer at least two hours in primary and secondary schools. These
findings, from the European Union of Physical Education Associations, prompted
specialists in children’s physiology to call on European governments to give youngsters
a daily PE programme. The survey shows that the UK ranks 13th out of the 25 countries,
with Ireland bottom, averaging under an hour a week for PE. From age six to 18，British
children received, on average, 106 minutes of PE a week. Professor Armstrong, who
presented the findings at the meeting, noted that since the introduction of the national
curriculum there had been a marked fall in the time devoted to PE in UK schools, with
only a minority of pupils getting two hours a week.
D As a former junior football international, Professor Armstrong is a passionate advocate

for sport. Although the Government has poured millions into beefing up sport in the
community, there is less commitment to it as part of the crammed school curriculum.
This means that many children never acquire the necessary skills to thrive in team games.
If they are no good at them, they lose interest and establish an inactive pattern of
behaviour. When this is coupled with a poor diet, it will lead inevitably to weight gain.
Seventy per cent of British children give up all sport when they leave school, compared
with only 20 per cent of French teenagers. Professor Armstrong believes that there is far
too great an emphasis on team games at school. “We need to look at the time devoted
to PE and balance it between individual and pair activities, such as aerobics and
badminton, as well as team sports. “He added that children need to have the opportunity
to take part in a wide variety of individual, partner and team sports.
E The good news, however, is that a few small companies and children’s activity groups
have reacted positively and creatively to the problem. Take That, shouts Gloria Thomas,
striking a disco pose astride her mini-spacehopper. Take That, echo a flock of toddlers,
adopting outrageous postures astride their space hoppers. ‘Michael Jackson, she shouts,
and they all do a spoof fan-crazed shriek. During the wild and chaotic hopper race across
the studio floor, commands like this are issued and responded to with untrammelled
glee. The sight of 15 bouncing seven-year-olds who seem about to launch into orbit at
every bounce brings tears to the eyes. Uncoordinated, loud, excited and emotional,
children provide raw comedy.
F Any cardiovascular exercise is a good option, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be high
intensity. It can be anything that gets your heart rate up: such as walking the dog,
swimming, miming, skipping, hiking. “Even walking through the grocery store can be
exercise,” Samis-Smith said. What they don’t know is that they’re at a Fit Kids class, and
that the fun is a disguise for the serious exercise plan they’re covertly being taken
through. Fit Kids trains parents to run fitness classes for children. ‘Ninety per cent of
children don’t like team sports,’ says company director, Gillian Gale.
G A Prevention survey found that children whose parents keep in shape are much more
likely to have healthy body weights themselves. “There’s nothing worse than telling a
child what he needs to do and not doing it yourself,” says Elizabeth Ward, R.D., a Boston
nutritional consultant and author of Healthy Foods, Healthy Kids . “Set a good example
and get your nutritional house in order first.” In the 1930s and ’40s, kids expended 800
calories a day just walking, carrying water, and doing other chores, notes Fima Lifshitz,
M.D., a pediatric endocrinologist in Santa Barbara. “Now, kids in obese families are
expending only 200 calories a day in physical activity,” says Lifshitz, “incorporate more
movement in your family’s lifepark farther away from the stores at the mall, take stairs
instead of the elevator, and walk to nearby friends’ houses instead of driving.”
Questions 14 -17
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G.
Write the correct letter A-G, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.
14. Health and living condition of children
15. Health organization monitored physical activity
16. Comparison of exercise time between UK and other countries
17. Wrong approach for school activity
Questions 18-21
18. According to American Heart Foundation, cholesterol levels of boys are higher than
girls’.
19. British children generally do less exercise than some other European countries.
20. Skipping becomes more and more popular in schools of UK.
21. According to Healthy Kids, the first task is for parents to encourage their children to
keep the same healthy body weight.
Questions 22-26
22. According to paragraph A, what does Professor Neil Armstrong concern about?
A Spending more time on TV affect academic level
B Parents have less time stay with their children
C Future health of British children
D Increasing speed of property’s development
23. What does Armstrong indicate in Paragraph B?
A We need to take a 10 minute walk everyday
B We should do more activity to exercise heart
C Girls’ situation is better than boys
D Exercise can cure many disease
24.What is aim of First Kids’ trainning?
A Make profit by running several sessions
B Only concentrate on one activity for each child
C To guide parents how to organize activities for children
D Spread the idea that team sport is better
25. What did Lifshitz suggest in the end of this passage?
ACreate opportunities to exercise your body

B Taking elevator saves your time
C Kids should spend more than 200 calories each day
D We should never drive but walk
26. What is main idea of this passage?
A health of the children who are overweight is at risk in the future
B Children in UK need proper exercises
C Government mistaken approach for children
D Parents play the most important role in children’s activity
SECTION 3
Mechanisms of Linguistic Change
A The changes that have caused the most disagreement are those in pronunciation. We
have various sources of evidence for the pronunciations of e arlier times, such as the
spellings, the treatment of words borrowed from other languages or borrowed by them,
the descriptions of contemporary grammarians and spelling-reformers, and the modern
pronunciations in all the languages and dialects concerned From the middle of the
sixteenth century, there are in England writers who attempt to describe the position of
the speech-organs for the production of English phonemes, and who invent what are in
effect systems of phonetic symbols. These various kinds of evidence, combined with a
knowledge of the mechanisms of speech-production, can often give us a very good idea
of the pronunciation of an earlier age, though absolute certainty is never possible.
B When we study the pronunciation of a language over any period of a few generations
or more, we find there are always large-scale regularities in the changes: for example,
over a certain period of time, just about all the long [a:] vowels in a language may change
into long [e:] vowels, or all the [b] consonants in a certain position (for example at the
end of a word) may change into [p] consonants. Such regular changes are often called
sound laws. There are no universal sound laws (even though sound laws often reflect
universal tendencies), but simply particular sound laws for one given language (or
dialect) at one given period
C It is also possible that fashion plays a part in the process of change. It certainly plays a
part in the spread of change: one person imitates another, and people with the most
prestige are most likely to be imitated, so that a change that takes place in one social
group may be imitated (more or less accurately) by speakers in another group. When a
social group goes up or down in the world, its pronunciation of Russian, whi ch had
formerly been considered desirable, became on the contrary an undesirable kind of
accent to have, so that people tried to disguise it. Some of the changes in accepted
English pronunciation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have been shown to
consist in the replacement of one style of pronunciation by another style already existing,
and it is likely that such substitutions were a result of the great social changes of the
period: the increased power and wealth of the middle classes, and their steady infiltration
upwards into the ranks of the landed gentry, probably carried elements of middle -class
pronunciation into upper-class speech.
D A less specific variant of the argument is that the imitation of children is imperfect:
they copy their parents’ speech, but never reproduce it exactly. This is true, but it is also
true that such deviations from adult speech are usually corrected in later childhood.
Perhaps it is more significant that even adults show a certain amount of random variation
in their pronunciation of a given phoneme, even if the phonetic context is kept
unchanged. This, however, cannot explain changes in pronunciation unless it can be
shown that there is some systematic trend in the failures of imitation: if they are merely
random deviations they will cancel one another out and there will be no net change in
the language.
E One such force which is often invoked is the principle of ease, or minimization of effort.
The change from fussy to fuzzy would be an example of assimilation, which is a very
common kind of change. Assimilation is the changing of a sound under the influence of
a neighbouring one. For example, the word scant was once skamt, but the /m/ has been
changed to /n/ under the influence of the following /t/. Greater effi ciency has hereby
been achieved, because /n/ and /t/ are articulated in the same place (with the tip of the
tongue against the teeth-ridge), whereas /m/ is articulated elsewhere (with the two lips).
So the place of articulation of the nasal consonant has been changed to conform with
that of the following plosive. A more recent example of the same kind of thing is the
common pronunciation of football as football.
F Assimilation is not the only way in which we change our pronunciation in order to
increase efficiency. It is very common for consonants to be lost at the end of a word: in
Middle English, word-final [-n] was often lost in unstressed syllables, so that baken ‘to
bake’ changed from [‘ba:kan] to [‘ba:k3],and later to [ba:k]. Consonant -clusters are often
simplified. At one time there was a [t] in words like castle and Christmas, and an
initial [k] in words like knight and know. Sometimes a whole syllable is dropped out when
two successive syllables begin with the same consonant (haplology): a rece nt example is
temporary, which in Britain is often pronounced as if it were tempory.
Questions 27-30
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
The pronunciation of living language undergo changes throughout thousands of years.

Large scale regular Changes are usually called
27 . There are three reasons for these changes. Firstly, the influence of one
language on another; when one person imitates another pronunciation(the most
prestige’s), the imitation always partly involving factor of 28 . Secondly, the
1
imitation of children from adults language sometimes are 29 , and may
also contribute to this change if there are insignificant deviations tough later they may
be corrected Finally, for those random variations in pronunciation, the deeper evidence
lies in the 30 or minimization of effort.
Questions 31-37
Do the following statements agree with the information give n in Reading Passage 3? In

31. it is impossible for modern people to find pronunciation of words in an earlier age
32. The great change of language in Russian history is related to the rising status and
fortune of middle classes.
33. All the children learn speeches from adults white they assume that certain language
is difficult to imitate exactly.
34. Pronunciation with causal inaccuracy will not exert big influence on language
changes.
35. The link of can be influenced being pronounced as ‘nf’
36. The [g] in gnat not being pronounced will not be spelt out in the future.
37. The sound of ‘temporary’ cannot wholly present its spelling.
Questions 38-40
Look at the following sentences and the list of statements below. Match each statement
with the correct sentence, A-D.
Write the correct letter, A-D, in boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet
A Since the speakers can pronounce it with less effort
B Assimilation of a sound under the influence of a neighbouring one
C It is a trend for changes in pronunciation in a large scale in a given period
D Because the speaker can pronounce [n] and [t] both in the same time
38. As a consequence, ‘b’ will be pronounced as
39. The pronunciation of [mt] changed to [nt]
40. The omit of ‘f in the sound of Christmas

ANSWER KEYS
1B2C3D
4 TRUE 5 FALSE 6 TRUE
7 FALSE 8 NOT GIVEN 9 TRUE 10 TRUE
11 B 12 D 13 F
14 A 15 B 16 C 17 D
18 NOT GIVEN 19 TRUE
20 NOT GIVEN 21 FALSE
22 C 23 B 24 C 25 A 26 B
27 Sound laws 28 Fashion 29 Imperfect 30 Principle of
31 FALSE 32 FALSE
33 NOT GIVEN 34 TRUE
35 TRUE 36 NOT GIVEN 37 TRUE
38 C 39 B 40 A
TEST 7
SECTION 1
California’s age of Megafires
A There’s a reason fire squads now battling more than a dozen blazes in southern
California are having such difficulty containing the flames, despite better preparedness
than ever and decades of experience fighting fires fanned by the notorious Santa Ana
winds. The wildfires themselves, experts say, generally are hotter, move faster, and spread
more erratically than in the past.
B The short-term explanation is that the region, which usually has dry summers, has had
nine inches less rain than normal this year. Longer term, climate change across the West
is leading to hotter days on average and longer fire seasons. Experts say this is likely to
yield more megafires like the conflagrations that this week forced evacuations of at least
300,000 resident in California’s southland and led President Bush to declare a disaster
emergency in seven counties on Tuesday.
C Megafires, also called “siege fires,” are the increasingly frequent blazes that bum
500,000 acres or more – 10 times the size of the average forest fire of 20 years ago. One
of the current wildfires is the sixth biggest in California ever, in terms of acreage burned,
according to state figures and news reports. The trend to more superhot fires, experts say,
has been driven by a century-long policy of the US Forest Service to stop wildfires as
quickly as possible. The unintentional consequence was to halt the natural eradication of
underbrush, now the primary fuel for megafires. Three other factors contribute to the
trend, they add. First is climate change marked by a 1 -degree F. rise in average yearly
temperature across the West. Second is a fire season that on average is 78 days longer
than in the late 1980s. Third is increased building of homes and other structures in
wooded areas.
D “We are increasingly building our homes … in fire-prone ecosystems,” says Dominik
Kulakowski, adjunct professor of biology at Clark University Graduate School of
Geography in Worcester, Mass. Doing that “in many of the forests of the Western US … is
like building homes on the side of an active volcano.” In California, where population
growth has averaged more than 600,000 a year for at least a decade, housing has pushed
into such areas. “What once was open space is now residential homes providing fuel to
make fires bum with greater intensity,” says Terry McHale of the California Department of
Forestry firefighters union. “With so much dryness, so many communities to catch fire, so
many fronts to fight, it becomes an almost incredible job.”
E That said, many experts give California high marks for making progress on preparedness
since 2003, when the largest fires in state history scorched 750,000 acres, burned 3,640
homes, and killed 22 people. Stung then by criticism of bungling that allowed fires to
spread when they might have been contained, personnel are meeting the peculiar
challenges of neighborhood- and canyon-hopping fires better than in recent years,
observers say.
F State promises to provide newer engines, planes, and helicopters have been fulfilled.
Firefighters unions that then complained of dilapidated equipment, old fire engines, and
insufficient blueprints for fire safety are now praising the state’s commitment, noting that
funding for firefighting has increased despite huge cuts in many other programs. “We are
pleased that the Schwarzenegger administration has been very proactive in its support of
us and come through with budgetary support of the infrastructure needs we have long
sought,” says Mr. McHale with the firefighters union.
G Besides providing money to upgrade the fire engines that must traverse the mammoth
state and wind along serpentine canyon roads, the state has invested in better command-
and-control facilities as well as the strategies to run them. “In the fire sieges of earlier
years, we found out that we had the willingness of mutual-aid help from other
jurisdictions and states, but we were not able to communicate adequately with them,”
says Kim Zagaris, chief of the state’s Office of Emergency Services, fire and rescue branch.
After a 2004 blue-ribbon commission examined and revamped those procedures, the
statewide response “has become far more professional and responsive,” he says.
H Besides ordering the California National Guard on Monday to make 1,500 guardsmen
available for firefighting efforts, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked the Pentagon to send
all available Modular Airborne Fighting Systems to the area. The military Lockheed C- 130
cargo/utility aircraft carry a pressurized 3,000-gallon tank that can eject fire retardant or
water in fewer than five seconds through two tubes at the rear of the plane. This load can
cover an area 1/4- mile long and 60 feet wide to create a fire barrier. Governor
Schwarzenegger also directed 2,300 inmate firefighters and 170 custody staff from the
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to work hand in hand with state
and local firefighters.
I Residents and government officials alike are noting the improvements with gratitude,
even amid the loss of homes, churches, businesses, and farms. By Tuesday morning, the
fires had burned 1,200 homes and businesses and set 245,957 acres — 384 square miles
— ablaze. Despite such losses, there is a sense that he speed, dedication, and coordination
of firefighters from several states and jurisdictions are resulting in greater efficiency than
in past “siege fire” situations.
J “I am extraordinarily impressed by the improvements we have witnessed between the

last big fire and this,” says Ross Simmons, a San Diego-based lawyer who had to evacuate
both his home and business on Monday, taking up residence at a Hampton Inn 30 miles
south of his home in Rancho Bernardo. After fires consumed 172,000 acres there in 2003,
the San Diego region turned communitywide soul-searching into improved building
codes, evacuation procedures, and procurement of new technology. Mr. Simmons and
neighbors began receiving automated phone calls at 3:30 a.m. Monday morning telling
them to evacuate. “Nothwithstanding all the damage that will be caused by this, we will
not come close to the loss of life because of what we have … put in place since then,” he
says.
Questions 1-6
Sumary
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage，using no more

than two words from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes
Experts point out that blazes in California are having more heat, faster speed and they
1 more unpredictably compared with former ones. One explanation is that
California’s summer is dry, 2 is below the average point. Another long
term explanation is that hotter and longer potential days occur due to
3 . Nowadays, Megafires burn 4 the size of forest area
caused by an ordinary fire of 20 years ago. The serious trend is mainly caused by well -
grown underbrush, which provides 5 for the siege fires. Other contributors
are climate change and extended _6 .
Questions 7-9
7. What is expert’s attitude towards California’s performance after 2003 megafire?
A They could have done better
B Blamed them on casualties
C Improvement made on preparation
D Serious criticism
8. According to Governor Schwarzenegger, which one is CORRECT about his effort

for firefighting?
A Schwarzenegger requested successfully for military weapons
B Schwarzenegger led many prison management staff to work together with local fire
fighters
C Schwarzenegger acted negatively in recent megafire in California
D Schwarzenegger ordered 1,500 office clerks to join firefighting scene.

9. What happened to Ross Simmon on the day of megafire break out?
A He was sleeping till morning
B He was doing business at Hampton Inn
C He suffered employee death on that morning
D He was alarmed by machine calls
Questions 10-13

10. The area of open space in California has declined during the past decade.
11. Fire squad wants to recruit more firefighters this year.
12. Firefighters union declared that firefighters have had more improved and supportive
facility by the local government.
13. Before the year of 2004, well coordination and communication between California and
other states already existed in fire siege.
SECTION 2
European Heat Wave
A It was the summer, scientists now realise, when felt. We knew that summer 2003 was
remarkable: global warming at last made itself unmistakably Britain experienced its record
high temperature and continental Europe saw forest fires raging out of control, great
rivers drying of a trickle and thousands of heat-related deaths. But just how remarkable
is only now becoming clean
B The three months of June, July and August were the warmest ever recorded in western
and central Europe, with record national highs in Portugal, Germany and Switzerland as
well as Britain. And they were the warmest by a very long way Over a great rectangular
block of the earth stretching from west of Paris to northern Italy, taking in Switzerland
and southern Germany, the average temperature for the summer months was 3.78°C
above the long-term norm, said the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East
Anglia in Norwich, which is one of the world’s lending institutions for the monitoring
and analysis of temperature records.
C That excess might not seem a lot until you are aware of the context – but then you
realise it is enormous. There is nothing like this in previous data, anywhere. It is considered
so exceptional that Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director, is prepared to say openly – in
a way few scientists have done before – that the 2003 extreme may be directly attributed,
not to natural climate variability, but to global wanning caused by human actions.
D Meteorologists have hitherto contented themselves with the formula that recent high
temperatures are consistent with predictions” of climate change. For the great block of
the map 一 that stretching between 3 5-5 ON and 0-20E – the CRU has reliable
temperature records dating back to 1781. Using as a baseline the average summer
temperature recorded between 1961 and1990, departures from the temperature norm, or
“anomalies’: over the area as a whole can easily be plotted. As the graph shows, such is
the variability of our climate that over the past 200 years, there have been at least half a
dozen anomalies, in terms of excess temperature – the peaks on the graph denoting very
hot years – approaching, or even exceeding, 20 °C. But there has been nothing remotely
like 2003, when the anomaly is nearly four degrees.
E “This is quite remarkable,” Professor Jones told The Independent. “It’s very unusual in a
statistical sense. If this series had a normal statistical distribution, you wouldn’t get this
number. There turn period “how often it could be expected to recur” would be something
like one in a thou-sand years. If we look at an excess above the average of nearly four
degrees, then perhaps nearly three degrees of that is natural variability, because we’ve
seen that in past summers. But the final degree of it is likely to be due to global warming,
caused by human actions.
F The summer of 2003 has, in a sense, been one that climate scientists have long been
expecting. Until now, the warming has been manifesting itself mainly in winters that have
been less cold than in summers that have been much hotter. Last week, the United
Nations predicted that winters were warming so quickly that winter sports would die out
in Europe’s lower-level ski resorts. But sooner or later the unprecedented hot summer was
bound to come, and this year it did.
G One of the most dramatic features of the summer was the hot nights, esp ecially in the
first half of August. In Paris, the temperature never dropped below 230°C (73.40°F) at all
between 7 and 14 August, and the city recorded its warmest-ever night on 11-12 August,
when the mercury did not drop below 25.50°C (77.90°F). Germany recorded its warmest-
ever night at Weinbiet in the Rhine valley with a lowest figure of 27.60°C (80.60°F) on 13
August, and similar record-breaking night-time temperatures were recorded in
Switzerland and Italy.
H The 15,000 excess deaths in France during August, compared with previous years, have
been related to the high night-time temperatures. The number gradually increased during
the first 12days of the month, peaking at about 2,000 per day on the night of 12 -13
August, then fell off dramatically after 14 August when the minimum temperatures fell by
about 50C. The elderly were most affected, with a 70 per cent increase in mortality rate in
those aged 75-94.
I For Britain, the year as a whole is likely to be the warmest ever recorded, but despite the
high temperature record on 10 August, the summer itself – defined as the June, July and
August period – still comes behind 1976 and 1995，when there were longer periods of
intense heat. At the moment, the year is on course to be the third-hottest ever in the
global temperature record, which goes back to 1856, behind 1998 and 2002 but when all
the records for October, November and December are collated, it might move into second
place, Professor Jones said. The 10 hottest years in the record have all now occurred since
1990. Professor Jones is in no doubt about the astonishing nature of European summer
of 2003.”The temperatures recorded were out of all proportion to the previous record,”
he said. “It was the warmest summer in the past 500 years and probably way beyond that
It was enormously exceptional.”
J His colleagues at the University of East Anglia’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change
Research are now planning a special study of it. “It was a summer that has not: been
experienced before, either in terms of the temperature extremes that were reached, or
the range and diversity of the impacts of the extreme heat,” said the centre’s executive
director, Professor Mike Hulme. “It will certainly have left its mark on a number of
countries, as to how they think and plan for climate change in the future, much as the
2000 floods have revolutionised the way the Government is thinking about flooding in
the UK. “The 2003 heat wave will have similar repercussions across Europe.”
Questions 14-19
14. The average summer temperature in 2003 is approximately four degrees higher than
that of the past.
15. Jones believes the temperature statistic is within the normal range.
16. Human factor is one of the reasons that caused hot summer.
17. In large city, people usually measure temperature twice a day.
18. Global warming has obvious effect of warmer winter instead of hotter summer before
2003.
19. New ski resorts are to be built on a high-altitude spot.
Questions 20-21
Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR NUMBERS
from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 20-21 on your answer
sheet
20. What are the two hottest years in Britain besides 2003?
21. What will affect UK government policies besides climate change according to Hulme?
Questions 22-26
Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.
Write your answers in boxes 22-26 On your answer sheet
In the summer of 2003, thousands of extra death occurred in the country of

22 . Moreover, world-widely, the third record of hottest summer date from
23 , after the year of 24 . According to Jones, all the 10
hottest years happened from 25 . However, summer of 2003 was at the
peak of previous 26 years, perhaps even more.
Question 27
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D
Write your answer in box 27 on your answer sheet
27. Which one can be best served as the title of this passage in the following
options?
A Global Warming effect
B Global Warming in Europe
C The Effects of hot temperature

D Hottest summer in Europe
SECTION 3
The concept of childhood in the western countries
The history of childhood has been a topic of interest in social history since the highly
influential 1960 book Centuries of Childhood, written by French historian Philippe Aries.
He argued that “childhood” is a concept created by modern society.
A One of the most hotly debated issues in the history of childhood has been whether
childhood is itself a recent invention. The historian Philippe Aries argued that in Western
Europe during the Middle Ages (up to about the end of the fifteenth century) children
were regarded as miniature adults, with all the intellect and personality that this implies.
He scrutinized medieval pictures and diaries, and found no distinction between children
and adults as they shared similar leisure activities and often the same type of work. Aries,
however, pointed out that this is not to suggest that children were neglected, forsaken or
despised. The idea of childhood is not to be confused with affection for children; it
corresponds to an awareness of the particular nature of childhood, that particular nature
which distinguishes the child from the adult, even the young adult.
B There is a long tradition of the children of the poor playing a functional role in
contributing to the family income by working either inside or outside the home. In this
sense children are seen as ‘useful. Back in the Middle Ages, children as young as 5 or 6
did important chores for their parents and, from the sixteenth century, were often
encouraged (or forced) to leave the family by the age of 9 or 10 to work as servants for
wealthier families or to be apprenticed to a trade.
C With industrialization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a new demand for
child labour was created, and many children were forced to work for long hours, in mines,
workshops and factories. Social reformers began to question whether labouring long
hours from an early age would harm children’s growing bodies. They began to recognize
the potential of carrying out systematic studies to monitor how far these early
deprivations might be affecting children’s development.
D Gradually, the concerns of the reformers began to impact on the working conditions of
children. In Britain, the Factory Act of 1833 signified the beginning of legal protection of
children from exploitation and was linked to the rise of schools for factory children. The
worst forms of child exploitation were gradually eliminated, partly through factory reform
but also through the influence of trade unions and economic changes during the
nineteenth century which made some forms of child labour redundant. Childhood was
increasingly seen as a time for play and education for all children, not just for a privileged
minority. Initiating children into work as ‘useful’ children became less of a priority. As the
age for starting full-time work was delayed, so childhood was increasingly understood as
a more extended phase of dependency, development and learning. Even so, work
continued to play a significant, if less central role in children’s lives throughout the later
nineteenth and twentieth century. And the ‘useful child, has become a controversial image
during the first decade of the twenty-first century especially in the context of global
concern about large numbers of the world’s children engaged in child labour .
E The Factory Act of 1833 established half-time schools which allowed children to work
and attend school. But in the 1840s, a large proportion of children never went to school,
and if they did, they left by the age of 10 or11. The situation was very different by the end
of the nineteenth century in Britain. The school became central to images of 7a normal
childhood .
F Attending school was no longer a privilege and all children were expected to spend a
significant part of their day in a classroom. By going to school, children’s lives were now
separated from domestic life at home and from the adult world of work. School became
an institution dedicated to shaping the minds, behaviour and morals of the young.
Education dominated the management of children’s waking hours, not just through the
hours spent in classrooms but through /home/ work, the growth of after school 7 activities
and the importance attached to ‘parental involvement.
GIndustrialization, urbanization and mass schooling also set new challenges for those
responsible for protecting children’s welfare, and promoting their learning. Increasingly,
children were being treated as a group with distinctive needs and they were organized
into groups according to their age. For example, teachers needed to know what to expect
of children in their classrooms, what kinds of instruction were appropriate for different
age groups and how best to assess children’s progress. They also wanted tools that could
enable them to sort and select children according to their abilities and potential.
Questions 28-34
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading P assage 3?

28. Aries pointed out that children did different types of work as adults during the Middle
Age.
29. During the Middle Age, going to work necessarily means children were unloved
indicated by Aries.
30. Scientists think that overworked labour damages the health of young children
31. the rise of trade union majorly contributed to the protection children from
exploitation in 19 th century
32. By the aid of half-time schools, most children went to school in the mid of 19 century.
33. In 20 century almost all children need to go to school in full time schedule.
34. Nowadays, children’s needs were much differentiated and categorised based on how
old they are
Questions 35-40
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
35. what is the controversial topic arises with the French historian Philippe Aries’s concept
36. what image for children did Aries believed to be like in Western Europe during the
Middle Ages
37. what historical event generated the need for great amount child labour to work long
time in 18 and 19 century
38. what legal format initiated the protection of children from exploitation in
19th centenary
39. what the activities were more and more regarded as being preferable for almost all
children time in 19 th centenary
40. where has been the central area for children to spend largely of their day as people’s
expectation in modern society
ANSWER KEYS
1 Spread 2 Rain/ rainfall 9 Climate change

4 10 times 5 Primary fuel 6 Fire season
7C8B9D
10 TRUE 11 NOT GIVEN 12 TRUE 13 FALSE
14 True 15 False 16 True

17 Not Given 18 True 19 Not Given
20 1976 and 1995 21 2000 floods 22 France
23 1956 24 1998 and 2002 25 1990 26 500 27 D
28 FALSE 29 TRUE 30 TRUE

31 NOT GIVEN 32 FALSE 33 NOT GIVEN 34 TRUE
35 History of childhood 36 (as) miniature adults

37 ( with the) industrialization 38 The factory Act
39 Play and education 40 Classroom

TEST 8
SECTION 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-25, which are based
on Reading Passage 2 below
Ancient Chinese Chariots
A The Shang Dynasty or Yin Dynasty, according to traditional historiography, ruled in the
Yellow River valley in the second millennium Archaeological work at the Ruins of Yin
(near modern-day Anyang), which has been identified as the last Shang capital,
uncovered eleven major Yin royal tombs and the foundations of palaces and ritual sites,
containing weapons of war and remains from both animal and human sacrifices.
B The Tomb of Fu Hao is an archaeological site at Yinxu, the ruins of the ancient Shang
Dynasty capital Yin, within the modem city of Anyang in Henan Province, China.
Discovered in 1976，it was identified as the final resting place of the queen and military
general Fu Hao. The artifacts unearthed within the grave included jade objects, bone
objects, bronze objects etc. These grave goods are confirmed by the oracle texts, which
constitute almost all of the first hand written record we possess of the Shang Dynasty.
Below the corpse was a small pit holding the remains of six sacrificial dogs and along
the edge lay the skeletons of human slaves, evidence of human sacrifice.
C The Terracotta Army was discovered on 29 March 1974 to the east of Xi’an in Shaanxi.
The terracotta soldiers were accidentally discovered when a group of local farmers was
digging a well during a drought around 1.6 km (I mile) east of the Qin Emperors tomb
around at Mount Li (Lishan), a region riddled with underground springs and
watercourses. Experts currently place the entire number of soldiers at 8,000 — with 130
chariots (130 cm long), 530 horses and 150 cavalry horses helping to ward of any dangers
in the afterlife. In contrast, the burial of Tutank ham un yielded six complete but
dismantled chariots of unparalleled richness and sophistication. Each was designed for
two people (90 cm long) and had its axle sawn through to enable it to be brought along
the narrow corridor into the tomb.
D Excavation of ancient Chinese chariots has confirmed the descriptions of them in the
earliest texts. Wheels were constructed from a variety of woods: elm provided the hub,
rose-wood the spokes and oak the felloes. The hub was drilled through to form an empty
space into which the tampering axle was fitted，the whole being covered with leather
to retain lubricating oil. Though the number of spokes varied, a wheel by the fourth
century BC usually had eighteen to thirty-two of them. Records show how elaborate was
the testing of each completed wheel: flotation and weighing were regarded as the best
measures of balance, but even the empty spaces in the assembly were checked with
millet grains. One outstanding constructional asset of the ancient Chinese wheel was
dishing. Dishing refers to the dishlike shape of an advanced wooden wheel, which looks
rather like a flat cone. On occasion they chose to strengthen a dished wheel with a pair
of struts running from rim to rim on each of the hub. As these extra suppor ts were
inserted separately into the felloes, they would have added even greater strength to the
wheel. Leather wrapped up the edge of the wheel aimed to retain bronze.
E Within a millennium, however, Chinese chariot-makers had developed a vehicle with

shafts, the precursor of the true carriage or cart. This design did not make its appearance
in Europe until the end of the Roman Empire. Because the shafts curved upwards, and
the harness pressed against a horse’s shoulders, not his neck, the shaft chariot w as
incredibly efficient. The halberd was also part of chariot standard weaponry. This halberd
usually measured well over 3 metres in length, which meant that a chariot warrior
wielding it sideways could strike down the charioteer in a passing chariot. The speed of
chariot which was tested on the sand was quite fast. At speed these passes were very
dangerous for the crews of both chariots.
F The advantages offered by the new chariots were not entirely missed. They could see
how there were literally the warring states, whose conflicts lasted down the Qin
unification of China. Qin Shi Huang was buried in the most opulent tomb complex ever
constructed in China, a sprawling, city-size collection of underground caverns containing
everything the emperor would need for the afterlife. Even a collection of terracotta
armies called Terra- Cotta Warriors was buried in it. The ancient Chinese, along with
many cultures including ancient Egyptians, believed that items and even people buried
with a person could be taken with him to the afterlife
Questions 1-4
boxes 1-4 on you answer sheet, write

1. when discovered, the written records of the grave goods proved to be accurate.
2. Human skeletons in Anyang tomb were identified ad soldiers who were killed in the
war.
3. The Terracotta Army was discovered by people lived nearby by chance.

4. The size of the King Tutankhamen’s tomb is bigger than that of in Qin Emperors’ tomb.
Questions 5-10
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 5 -
10 on your answer sheet
5. The hub is made wood from the tree of………………….
6. The room through the hub was to put tempering axle in which is wrapped up by leather
aiming to retain………………….
7. The number of spokes varied from…………………….to ………………….
8. The shape of wheel resembles a…………………….
9. Two was used to strengthen the wheel…………………….
10. Leather wrapped up the edge of the wheel aimed to remain………………………..
Questions 11-13
answer.
11. What body part of horse was released the pressure from to the shoulder
12. what kind road surface did the researchers measure the speed of the chariot ?
13. What part of his afterlife palace was the Emperor Qin Shi Huang buried?
SECTION 2
Saving the British Bitterns
A Breeding bitterns became extinct in the UK by 1886 but, following re-colonisation early
last century, numbers rose to a peak of about 70 booming (singing) males in the 1950s,
falling to fewer than 20 by the 1990s. In the late 1980s it was clear that the bittern was
in trouble, but there was little information on which to base recovery actions.
B Bitterns have cryptic plumage and a shy nature, usually remaining hidden within the
cover of reedbed vegetation. Our first challenge was to develop standard methods to
monitor their numbers. The boom of the male bittern is its most distinctive feature during
the breeding season, and we developed a method to count them using the sound
patterns unique to each individual. This not only allows us to be much more certain of
the number of booming males in the UK, but also enables us to estimate local survival
of males from one year to the next
C Our first direct understanding of the habitat needs of breeding bitterns came from
comparisons of reedbedsites that had lost their booming birds with those that retained
them. This research showed that bitterns had been retained in reedbeds where the
natural process of succession, or drying out, had been slowed through management.
Based on this work, broad recommendations on how to manage
and rehabilitate reedbeds for bitterns were made, and funding was provided through
the EU LIFE Fund to manage 13 sites within the core breeding range. This project, though
led by the RSPB, involved many other organisations.
D To refine these recommendations and provide fine-scale, quantitative habitat

prescriptions on the bitterns 7 preferred feeding habitat, we radio-tracked male bitterns
on the RSPB’s Minsmere and Leighton Moss reserves. This showed clear preferences for
feeding in the wetter reedbed margins, particularly within the reedbed next to larger
open pools. The average home range sizes of the male bitterns we followed (about 20
hectares) provided a good indication of the area of reedbed needed when managing or
creating habitat for this species. Female bitterns undertake all the incubation and care of
the young, so it was important to understand their needs as well. Over the course of our
research, we located 87 bittern nests and found that female bitterns preferred to nest in
areas of continuous vegetation, well into the reedbed, but where water was still present
during the driest part of the breeding season.
E The success of the habitat prescriptions developed from this research has been
spectacular. For instance, at Minsmere, booming bittern numbers gradually increased
from one to 10 following reedbed lowering, a management technique designed to halt
the drying out process. After a low point of 11 booming males in 1997, bittern numbers
in Britain responded to all the habitat management work and started to increase for the
first time since the 1950s.
F The final phase of research involved understanding the diet, survival and dispersal of
bittern chicks. To do this we fitted small radio tags to young bittern chicks in the nest, to
determine their fate through to fledgingand beyond. Many chicks did not survive to
fledging and starvation was found to be the most likely reason for their demise. The fish
prey fed to chicks was dominated by those species penetrating into the reed edge. So,
an important element of recent studies (including a PhD with the University of Hull) has
been the development of recommendations on habitat and water conditions to promote
healthy native fish populations
G Once independent, radio-tagged young bitterns were found to seek out new sites
during their first winter; a proportion of these would remain on new sites to breed if the
conditions were suitable. A second EU LIFE funded project aims to provide these suitable
sites in new areas. A network of 19 sites developed through this partnership project will
secure a more sustainable UK bittern population with successful breeding outside of the
core area, less vulnerable to chance events and sea level rise.
H By 2004, the number of booming male bitterns in the UK had increased to 55, with
almost all of the increase being on those sites undertaking management based on advice
derived from our research. Although science has been at the core of the bittern story,
success has only been achieved through the trust, hard work and dedication of all the
managers, owners and wardens of sites that have implemented, in some cases v ery
drastic, management to secure the future of this wetland species in the UK. The
constructed bunds and five major sluices now control the water level over 82 ha, with a
further 50 ha coming under control in the winter of 2005/06. Reed establishment has
principally used natural regeneration or planted seedlings to provide small core areas
that will in time expand to create a bigger reed area. To date nearly 275,000 seedlings
have been planted and reed cover is extensive. Over 3 km of new ditches have been
formed, 3.7 km of existing ditch have been re-profiled and 2.2 km of old meander (former
estuarine features) has been cleaned out.
I Bitterns now regularly winter on the site some indication that they are staying longer
into the spring. No breeding has yet occurred but a booming male was present in the
spring of 2004. A range of wildfowl breed, as well as a good number of reedbed
passerines including reed bunting, reed, sedge and grasshopper warblers. Numbers of
wintering shoveler have increased so that the site now holds a UK important wintering
population. Malltraeth Reserve now forms part of the UK network of key sites for water
vole (a UK priority species) and 12 monitoring transects has been established. Otter and
brown-hare occur on the site as does the rare plant. Pillwort.
Questions 14-20
The reading passage has seven paragraphs, A-H
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-Hfrom the list below. Write the correct
number, i-viii, in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i. research findings into habitats and decisions mad

ii. fluctuation in bittern number
iii. protect the young bittern
iv. international cooperation works
v. Began in calculation of the number
vi. importance of food
vii. Research has been successful.
viii. research into the reedbed
ix. reserve established holding bittern in winter
14. Paragraph A
15. Paragraph B
16. Paragraph C
17. Paragraph D
18. Paragraph F
19. Paragraph G
20. Paragraph H
Example Paragraph E vii
Questions 21-26
answer.
21. When did the bird of bitten reach its peak of number?
22. What does the author describe the bittern’s character?
23. What is the main cause for the chick bittern’s death?
24. What is the main food for chick bittern?
25. What system does it secure the stability for bittern’s population?
26. Besides bittern and rare vegetation, what mammal does the plan benefit?
Questions 27
Write your answers in boxes 27 on your answer sheet.
27. What is the main purpose of this passage?
A Main characteristic of a bird called bittern.
B Cooperation can protect an endangered species.
C The difficulty of access information of bittern’s habitat and diet.
D To save wetland and reedbed in UK.
SECTION 3
E-training
A E-learning is the unifying term to describe the fields of online learning, web-based
training, and technology-delivered instruction, which can be a great benefit to corporate
e-learning. IBM, for instance, claims that the institution of its e-training program, Basic
Blue, whose purpose is to train new managers, saved the company in the range of $200
million in 1999. Cutting the travel expenses required to bring employees and instructors
to a central classroom accounts for the lion’s share of the savings. With an online course,
employees can learn from any Internet-connected PC, anywhere in the world. Ernst and
Young reduced training costs by 35 percent while improving consistency and scalability.
B In addition to generally positive economic benefits, other advantages such as
convenience, standardized delivery, self-paced learning, and variety of available content,
have made e-learning a high priority for many corporations. E-learning is widely believed
to offer flexible “any time, any place” learning. The claim for “any place” is valid in
principle and is a great development. Many people can engage with rich
learning materials that simply were not possible in a paper or broadcast d istance
learning era. For teaching specific information and skills, e-training holds great promise.
It can be especially effective at helping employees prepare for IT certification programs.
E-learning also seems to effectively address topics such as sexu al harassment
education,5 safety training and management training — all areas where a clear set of
objectives can be identified. Ultimately, training experts recommend a “blended”
approach that combines both online and in-person training as the instruction requires. E-
learning is not an end-all solution. But if it helps decrease costs and windowless
classrooms filled with snoring students, it definitely has its advantages.
C Much of the discussion about implementing e-learning has focused on the technology,
but as Driscoll and others have reminded us, e-learning is not just about the technology,
but also many human factors. As any capable manager knows, teaching employees new
skills is critical to a smoothly run business. Having said that, however, the trad itional
route of classroom instruction runs the risk of being expensive, slow and, often times,
ineffective. Perhaps the classroom’s greatest disadvantage is the fact that it takes
employees out of their jobs. Every minute an employee is sitting in a classroom training
session is a minute they’re not out on the floor working. It now looks as if there is a way
to circumvent these traditional training drawbacks. E-training promises more effective
teaching techniques by integrating audio, video, animation, text and
interactive materials with the intent of teaching each student at his or her own pace. In
addition to higher performance results, there are other immediate benefits to students
such as increased time on task, higher levels of motivation, and reduced test anxiety for
many learners. A California State University Northridge study reported that e-learners
performed 20 percent better than traditional learners. Nelson reported a significant
difference between the mean grades of 406 university students earned in traditional and
distance education classes, where the distance learners outperformed the traditional
learners.
D On the other hand, nobody said E-training technology would be cheap. E-training
service providers, on the average, charge from $10,000 to $60,000 to develop one hour
of online instruction. This price varies depending on the complexity of the training topic
and the media used. HTML pages are a little cheaper to develop while streaming -video
(presentations or flash animations cost more. Course content is just the starting place for
cost. A complete e-learning solution also includes the technology platform (the
computers, applications and network connections that are used to deliver the courses).
This technology platform, known as a learning management system (LMS), can either be
installed onsite or outsourced. Add to that cost the necessary investments in network
bandwidth to deliver multimedia courses, and you’re left holding one heck of a bill. For
the LMS infrastructure and a dozen or so online courses, costs can top $500,000 in the
first year. These kinds of costs mean that custom e-training is, for the time being, an
option only for large organizations. For those companies that have a large enough s taff,
the e-training concept pays for itself. Aware of this fact, large companies are investing
heavily in online training. Today, over half of the 400-plus courses that Rockwell Collins
offers are delivered instantly to its clients in an e-leaming format, a change that has
reduced its annual (training costs by 40%. Many other success stories exist.
E E-learning isn71 expected to replace the classroom entirely. For one thing, bandwidth
limitations are still an issue in presenting multimedia over the Internet. Furthermore, e-
training isn,t suited to every mode of instruction or topic. For instance, it’s rather
ineffective imparting cultural values or building teams. If your company has a unique
corporate culture it would be difficult to convey that to first time employees through a
computer monitor. Group training sessions are more ideal for these purposes. In
addition, there is a perceived loss of research time because of the work involved in
developing and teaching online classes. Professor Wallin estimated that it required
between 500 and 1,000 person-hours, that is, Wallin-hours, to keep the course at the
appropriate level of currency and usefulness. (Distance learning instructors often need
technical skills, no matter how advanced the courseware system.) That amounts to
between a quarter and half of a person-year. Finally, teaching materials require computer
literacy and access to equipment. Any e-Learning system involves basic equipment and
a minimum level of computer knowledge in order to perform the tasks required by the
system. A student that does not possess these skills, or have access to these tools, cannot
succeed in an e-Learning program.
F While few people debate the obvious advantages of e-learning, systematic research is
needed to confirm that learners are actually acquiring and using the skills that are being
taught online, and that e-learning is the best way to achieve the outcomes in a corporate
environment. Nowadays, a go-between style of the Blended learning, which refers to a
mixing of different learning environments, is gaining popularity. It combines traditional
face-to-face classroom methods with more modem computer-mediated activities.
According to its proponents, the strategy creates a more integrated approach for both
instructors and learners. Formerly, technology-based materials played a supporting role
to face-to-face instruction. Through a blended learning approach, technology will be
more important
Questions 28-33
The reading passage has seven paragraphs，A-F. Choose the correct heading for
paragraphs A-F from the list below. Write the correct number, i-xi in boxes 28-33 on your
answer sheet.
List of Headings
i overview of the benefits for the application of E-training
ii IBM’s successful choice of training
iii Future direction and a new style of teaching
iv learners 7 achievement and advanced teaching materials
v limitations when E-training compares with traditional class
vi multimedia over the Internet can be a solution
vii technology can be a huge financial burden
viii the distance learners outperformed the traditional university
learners in worldwide
ix other advantages besides economic consideration
x Training offered to help people learn using computers
28. Paragraph A
29. Paragraph B
30. Paragraph C
31. Paragraph D
32. Paragraph E
33. Paragraph F
Questions 34-37
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-F.
Write the correct letter A-F, in boxes 35-37 on your answer sheet.
34. Projected Basic Blue in IBM achieved a great success.
35. E-learning wins as a priority for many corporations as its flexibility.
36. The combination of the traditional and e-training environments may prevail.
37. Example of a fast electronic delivery for a company’s products to its customers.
Questions 38-40
Choose Three correct letters, among A-E
A Technical facilities are hardly obtained.
B Presenting multimedia over the Internet is restricted due to the bandwidth limit.
C It is ineffective imparting a unique corporate value to fresh employees.
D Employees need block a long time leaving their position attending training.
E More preparation time is needed to keep the course at the suitable level.
ANSWER KEYS
1 TRUE 8 FALSE 3 TRUE 4 NOT GIVEN
5 Elm 6 Lubricating oil

7 Dish 8 18 – 32 9 Struts
10 Bronze 11 Neck 12 Sand
13 Tomb complex
14 ii 15 v 16 i 17 viii 18 vi 19 iii 20 iv
21 1950s 22 (being) shy/ shyness

23 Starvation 24 Native(fish)
25 Partnership project/ network(of sites)/ partnership project network

26 Otter and brown – hare 27 B
28 i 29 ix 30 iv
31 vii 32 V 33 iii
34 A 35 B 36 F
37 D 38 B 39 C 40 E
TEST 9
SECTION 1
SOSUS： Listening to the Ocean
A The oceans of Earth cover more than 70 percent of the planet’s surface, yet, until quite
recently, we knew less about their depths than we did about the surface of the Moon.
Distant as it is, the Moon has been far more accessible to study because astronomers long
have been able to look at its surface, first with the naked eye and then with the telescope -
both instruments that focus light. And, with telescopes tuned to different wavelengths of
light, modem astronomers can not only analyze Earth’s atmosphere, but also determine
the temperature and composition of the Sun or other stars many hundreds of light -years
away. Until the twentieth century, however, no analogous instruments were available for
the study of Earth’s oceans: Light, which can travel trillions of miles through the vast
vacuum of space, cannot penetrate very far in seawater.
B Curious investigators long have been fascinated by sound and the way it travels in
water. As early as 1490, Leonardo da Vinci observed: “If you cause your ship to stop and
place the head of a long tube in the water and place the outer extremity to your ear, you
will hear ships at a great distance from you.” In 1687, the first mathematical theory of
sound propagation was published by Sir Isaac Newton in his Philosophiae Naturalis
Principia Mathematica, Investigators were measuring the speed of sound in air beginning
in the mid seventeenth century, but it was not until 1826 that Daniel Colladon, a Swiss
physicist, and Charles Sturm, a French mathematician, accurately measured its speed in
water. Using a long tube to listen underwater (as da Vinci had suggested), they recorded
how fast the sound of a submerged bell traveled across Lake Geneva. Their result -1,435
meters (1,569 yards) per second in water of 1.8 degrees Celsius (35 degrees Fahrenheit)-
was only 3 meters per second off from the speed accepted today. What these
investigators demonstrated was that water – whether fresh or salt- is an excellent medium
for sound, transmitting it almost five times faster than its speed in air
C In 1877 and 1878，the British scientist John William Strutt, third Baron Rayleigh,
published his two-volume seminal work, The Theory of Sound, often regarded as marking
the beginning of the modem study of acoustics. The recipient of the Nobel Prize for
Physics in 1904 for his successful isolation of the element argon, Lord Rayleigh made key
discoveries in the fields of acoustics and optics that are critical to the theory of wave
propagation in fluids. Among other things, Lord Rayleigh was the first to describe a sound
wave as a mathematical equation (the basis of all theoretical work on acoustics) and the
first to describe how small particles in the atmosphere scatter certain wavelengths of
sunlight, a principle that also applies to the behavior of sound waves in water.
D A number of factors influence how far sound travels underwater and how long it lasts.
For one, particles in seawater can reflect, scatter, and absorb certain frequencies of sound
– just as certain wavelengths of light may be reflected, scattered, and absorbed by specific
types of particles in the atmosphere. Seawater absorbs 30 times the amount of sound
absorbed by distilled water, with specific chemicals (such as magnesium sulfate and boric
acid) damping out certain frequencies of sound. Researchers also learned that low
frequency sounds, whose long wavelengths generally pass over tiny particles, tend to
travel farther without loss through absorption or scattering. Further work on the effects
of salinity, temperature, and pressure on the speed of sound has yielded fascinating
insights into the structure of the ocean. Speaking generally, the ocean is divided into
horizontal layers in which sound speed is influenced more greatly by temperature in the
upper regions and by pressure in the lower depths. At the surface is a sun -warmed upper
layer, the actual temperature and thickness of which varies with the season. At mid-
latitudes, this layer tends to be isothermal, that is， the temperature tends to be uniform
throughout the layer because the water is well mixed by the action of waves, winds, and
convection currents; a sound signal moving down through this layer tends to travel at an
almost constant speed. Next comes a transitional layer called the thermocline, in which
temperature drops steadily with depth; as temperature falls, so does the speed of sound.
E The U.S. Navy was quick to appreciate the usefulness of low-frequency sound and the
deep sound channel in extending the range at which it could detect submarines. In great
secrecy during the 1950s，the U.S. Navy launched a project that went by the code name
Jezebel; it would later come to be known as the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS). The
system involved arrays of underwater microphones, called hydrophones, that were placed
on the ocean bottom and connected by cables to onshore processing centers. With
SOSUS deployed in both deep and shallow waters along both coasts of North America
and the British West Indies, the U.S. Navy not only could detect submarines in much of
the northern hemisphere, it also could distinguish how many propellers a submarine had,
whether it was conventional or nuclear, and sometimes even the class of sub.
F The realization that SOSUS could be used to listen to whales also was made by
Christopher Clark, a biological acoustician at Cornell University, when he first visited a
SOSUS station in 1992. When Clark looked at the graphic representations of sound,
scrolling 24 hours day, every day, he saw the voice patterns of blue, finback, minke, and
humpback whales. He also could hear the sounds. Using a SOSUS receiver in the West
Indies, he could hear whales that were 1,770 kilometers (1,100 miles) away. Whales are
the biggest of Earth’s creatures. The blue whale, for example, can be 100 feet long and
weigh as many tons. Yet these animals also are remarkably elusive. Scientists wish to
observe blue time and position them on a map. Moreover, they can track not just one
whale at a time, but many creatures simultaneously throughout the North Atlantic and
the eastern North Pacific. They also can learn to distinguish whale calls. For example, Fox
and colleagues have detected changes in the calls of finback whales during different
seasons and have found that blue whales in different regions of the Pacific ocean have
different calls. Whales firsthand must wait in their ships for the whales to surface. A few
whales have been tracked briefly in the wild this way but not for very great distances, and
much about them remains unknown. Using the SOSUS stations, scientists can track the
whales in real time and position them on a map. Moreover, they can track not just one
whale at a time, but many creatures simultaneously throughout the North Atlantic and
the eastern North Pacific. They also can learn to distinguish whale calls. For example, Fox
and colleagues have detected changes in the calls of finback whales during different
seasons and have found that blue whales in different regions of the Pacific Ocean have
different calls.
G SOSUS, with its vast reach, also has proved instrumental in obtaining information
crucial to our understanding of Earth’s weather and climate. Specifically, the system has
enabled researchers to begin making ocean temperature measurements on a global scale
– measurements that are keys to puzzling out the workings of heat transfer between the
ocean and the atmosphere. The ocean plays an enormous role in determining air
temperature the heat capacity in only the upper few meters of ocean is thought to be
equal to all of the heat in the entire atmosphere. For sound waves traveling horizontally
in the ocean, speed is largely a function of temperature. Thus, the travel time of a wave
of sound between two points is a sensitive indicator of the average temperature along its
path. Transmitting sound in numerous directions through the deep sound channel can
give scientists measurements spanning vast areas of the globe. Thousands of sound paths
in the ocean could be pieced together into a map of global ocean temperatures and, by
repeating measurements along the same paths over times, scientists could track changes
in temperature over months or years.
H Researchers also are using other acoustic techniques to monitor climate.

Oceanographer Jeff Nystuen at the University of Washington, for example, has explored
the use of sound to measure rainfall over the ocean. Monitoring changing global rainfall
patterns undoubtedly will contribute to understanding major climate change as well as
the weather phenomenon known as El Nino. Since 1985, Nystuen has used hydrophones
to listen to rain over the ocean, acoustically measuring not only the rainfall rate but also
the rainfall type, from drizzle to thunderstorms. By using the sound of rain underwater as
a “natural” rain gauge, the measurement of rainfall over the oceans will become available
to climatologists.
Questions 1-4

1. In the past, difficulties of research carried out on Moon were much easier than that of
2. The same light technology used on investigation of moon can be employed in the field
of ocean.
3. Research on the depth of ocean by method of sound wave is more time-consuming.
4. Hydrophones technology is able to detect the category of precipitation.
Questions 5-8
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-H.
Write the correct letter A-H, in boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once
5. Elements affect sound transmission in the ocean.
6. Relationship between global climate and ocean temperature
7. Examples of how sound technology help people research ocean and creatures in it
8. Sound transmission under water is similar to that of light in any condition.
Questions 9-13
Choose the correct letter, A，B，C or D.
9. Who of the followings is dedicated to the research of rate of sound?
A Leonardo da Vinci
B Isaac Newton
C John William Strutt
D Charles Sturm
10. Who explained that the theory of light or sound wavelength is significant in water?
A Lord Rayleigh
B John William Strutt
C Charles Sturm
D Christopher Clark
11. According to Fox and colleagues, in what pattern does the change of finback
whale calls happen
A Change in various seasons
B Change in various days
C Change in different months
D Change in different years
12. In which way does the SOSUS technology inspect whales?
A Track all kinds of whales in the ocean
B Track bunches of whales at the same time
C Track only finback whale in the ocean
D Track whales by using multiple appliances or devices
13. what could scientists inspect via monitoring along a repeated route ?
A Temperature of the surface passed
B Temperature of the deepest ocean floor
C Variation of temperature
D Fixed data of temperature
SECTION 2
Monkeys and Forests

AS AN EAST WIND blasts through a gap in the Cordillera de Tilaran, , a rugged mountain
range that splits northern Costa Rica in half, a female mantled howler monkey moves
through the swaying trees of the forest canopy.
A Ken Glander, a primatologist from Duke L University, gazes into the canopy, tracking
the female’s movements. Holding a dart gun, he waits with infinite patience for the right
moment to shoot. With great care, Glander aims and fires. Hit in the rump, the monkey
wobbles. This howler belongs to a population that has lived for decades at Hacienda La
Pacifica, a working cattle ranch in Guanacaste province. Other native primates — white-
faced capuchin monkeys and spider monkeys — once were common in this area, too, but
vanished after the Pan-American Highway was built nearby in the 1950s. Most of the
surrounding land was clear-cut for pasture.
B Howlers persist at La Pacifica, Glander explains, because they are leaf -eaters. They eat
fruit, when it’s available but, unlike capuchin and spider monkeys, do not depend on large
areas of fruiting trees. “Howlers can survive anyplace you have half a dozen trees, because
their eating habits are so flexible” he says. In forests, life is an arms race between trees
and the myriad creatures that feed on leaves. Plants have evolved a variety of chemical
defenses, ranging from bad-tasting tannins, which bind with plant-produced nutrients,
rendering them indigestible, to deadly poisons, such as alkaloids and cyanide.
C All primates, including humans, have some ability to handle plant toxins. “We can
detoxify a dangerous poison known as caffeine, which is deadly to a lot of animals:’
Glander says. For leaf-eaters, long-term exposure to a specific plant toxin can increase
their ability to defuse the poison and absorb the leaf nutrients. The leaves that grow in
regenerating forests, like those at La Pacifica, are actually more howler friendly than those
produced by the undisturbed, centuries-old trees that survive farther south, in the
Amazon Basin. In younger forests, trees put most of their limited energy into growing
wood, leaves and fruit, so they produce much lower levels of toxin than do well-
established, old-growth trees.
D The value of maturing forests to primates is a subject of study at Santa Rosa National
Park, about 35 miles northwest of Hacienda La Pacifica. The park hosts populations not
only of mantled howlers but also of white-faced capuchins and spider monkeys. Yet the
forests there are young, most of them less than 50 years old. Capuchins were the first to
begin using the reborn forests, when the trees were as young as 14 ye ars. Howlers, larger
and heavier than capuchins, need somewhat older trees, with limbs that can support their
greater body weight. A working ranch at Hacienda La Pacifica also explain their
population boom in Santa Rosa. “Howlers are more resilient than ca puchins and spider
monkeys for several reasons, Fedigan explains. “They can live within a small home range,
as long as the trees have the right food for them. Spider monkeys, on the other hand，
occupy a huge home range, so they can’t make it in fragmented habitat”
E Howlers also reproduce faster than do other monkey species in the area. Capuchins
don’t bear their first young until about 7 years old, and spider monkeys do so even later,
but howlers give birth for the first time at about 3.5 years of age. Also, while a female
spider monkey will have a baby about once every four years, well-fed howlers can produce
an infant every two years.
F The leaves howlers eat hold plenty of water, so the monkeys can survive away from
open streams and water holes. This ability gives them a real advantage over capuchin and
spider monkeys, which have suffered during the
long, ongoing drought in Guanacaste.
G Growing human population pressures in Central and South America have led to
persistent destruction of forests. During the 1990s, about 1.1 million acres of Central
American forest were felled yearly. Alejandro Estrada, an ecologist at Estacion de Biologia
Los Tuxtlas in Veracruz, Mexico, has been exploring how monkeys survive in a landscape
increasingly shaped by humans. He and his colleagues recently studied the ecology of a
groupof mantled howler monkeys that thrive in a habitat completely altered by humans:
a cacao plantation in Tabasco, Mexico. Like many varieties of coffee, cacao plant s need
shade to grow, so 40 years ago the landowners planted fig, monkey pod and other tall
trees to form a protective canopy over their crop. The howlers moved in about 25 years
ago after nearby forests were cut. This strange habitat, a hodgepodge of cultivated native
and exotic plants, seems to support about as many monkeys as would a same-sized patch
of wild forest. The howlers eat the leaves and fruit of the shade trees, leaving the valuable
cacao pods alone, so the farmers tolerate them
H Estrada believes the monkeys bring underappreciated benefits to such farms,

dispersing the seeds of fig and other shade trees and fertilizing the soil with feces. He
points out that howler monkeys live in shade coffee and cacao plantations in Nicaragua
and Costa Rica as well as in Mexico. Spider monkeys also forage in such plantations,
though they need nearby areas of forest to survive in the long term. He hopes that farmers
will begin to see the advantages of associating with wild monkeys, which includes
potential ecotourism projects.
“Conservation is usually viewed as a conflict between agricultural practices and the need
to preserve nature,” Estrada says. “We’re moving away from that vision and beginning to
consider ways in which agricultural activities may become a tool for the conservation of
primates in human-modified landscapes.”
Questions 14-19
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-I.

Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter U, in boxes
14. a reference of reduction in Forest inhabitant
15. Only one species of monkey survived while other two species were vanished
16. a reason for howler Monkey of choosing new leaves
17. mention to howler Monkey’s nutrient and eating habits
18. a reference of asking farmers’ changing attitude toward wildlife
19. the advantage for howler Monkey’s flexibility living in a segmented habitat
Questions 20-22
Look at the following places and the list of descriptions below.
Match each description with the correct place, A-E.
Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 20-22 on your answer sheet.
List of places
A Hacienda La Pacifica
B Santa Rosa National Park
C a cacao plantation in Tabasco, Mexico
D Estacion de Biologia Los Tuxtlas in

Veracruz, Mexico
E Amazon Basin
20. howler Monkey’s benefit to the local region’s agriculture
21. Original home for all three native monkeys
22. A place where Capuchins monkey comes for a better habitat
Questions 23-27
Complete the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your
The reasons for Howlers monkey survive better
in focal region than other two species
Howlers in La Pacifica since they can feed themselves with leaf when 23………………………is
not easily found
Howlers has better ability to alleviate the 24………………………. which old and young trees
used to protect themselves)
When compared to that of spider monkeys and capuchin monkeys, the 25 …………….. the
rate of Howlers is relatively faster (round for just every 2 years).
The monkeys can survive away from open streams and water holes as the leaves howlers
eat hold high content of 26………………………………. which ensure them to resist to
continuous 27………………………………………. in Guanacaste
SECTION 3
A While it may not be possible to completely age-proof our brains, a bravenew world of
anti-aging research shows that our gray matter may be far more flexible than we thought.
So no one, no matter how old, has to lose their mind. The brain has often been called the
three-pound universe. It’s our most powerful and mysterious organ, the seat of the self,
laced with as many billions of neurons as the galaxy has stars. No wonder the mere notion
of an aging, failing brain——and the prospect of memory loss, confusion, and the
unraveling of our personality——is so terrifying. As Mark Williams, M.D., author of The
American Geriatrics Society’s Complete Guide to Aging and Health, says, “The fear of
dementia is stronger than the fear of death itself.” Yet the degeneration of the brain is far
from inevitable. ” Its design features are such that it should continue to function for a
lifetime,” says Zaven Khachaturian, Ph.D., director of the Alzheimer1s Association1s
Ronald and Nancy Reagan Research Institute. “There’s no reason to expect it to
deteriorate with age, even though many of us are living longer lives.” In fact, scientists ‘
view of the brain1s potential is rapidly changing, according to Stanford University
neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D.
“Thirty-five years ago we thought Alzheimer1 s disease was a dramatic version of normal
aging. Now we realize it1s a disease with a distinct pathology. In fact, some people simply
don’t experience any mental decline, so we’ve begun to study them.” Antonio Damasio,
M.D., Ph.D., head of the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa and author of
Descartes’ Error, concurs. “Older people can continue to have extremely rich and healthy
mental lives.’
B The seniors were tested in 1988 and again in 1991. Four factors were found to be related
to their mental fitness: levels of education and physical activity, lung function, and feelings
of self-efficacy “Each of these elements alters the way our brain functions, “ says Marilyn
Albert, Ph.D. , of Harvard Medical School, and colleagues from Yale, Duke, and Brandeis
Universities and the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, who hypothesizes that regular exercise
may actually stimulate blood flow to the brain and nerve growth, both of which create
more densely branched neurons, rendering the neurons stronger and better able to resist
disease. Moderate aerobic exercise, including long brisk walks and frequently climbing
stairs, will accomplish this.
C Education also seems to enhance brain function. People who have challenged
themselves with at least a college education may actually stimulate the neurons in their
brains. Moreover, native intelligence may protect our brains. It’s possible that smart
people begin life with a greater number of neurons, a nd therefore have a greater reserve
to fall back on if some begin to fail. “If you have a lot of neurons and keep them busy,
you may be able to tolerate more damage to your brain before it shows,” says Peter
Davies, M.D., of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York. Early
linguistic ability also seems to help our brains later in life. A recent study in the New
England Journal of Medicine looked at 93 elderly nuns and examined the autobiographies
they had written 60 years earlier, just as they were joining a convent. The nuns whose
essays were complex and dense with ideas remained sharp into their eighties and nineties.
D Finally, personality seems to play an important role in protecting our mental prowess.
A sense of self-efficacy may protect our brain, buffeting it from the harmful effects of
stress. According to Albert, there’ s evidence that elevated levels of stress hormones may
harm brain cells and cause the hippocampus——a small seahorse-shaped organ that1s a
crucial moderator of memory——to atrophy. A sense that we can effectively chart our
own course in the world may retard the release of stress hormones and protect us as we
age. “It’ s not a matter of whether you experience stress or not, ” Albert concludes , “it’s
your attitude toward it. ” Reducing stress by meditating on a regular basis may buffer the
brain as well. It also increases the activity of the brain’ s pineal gland, the source of the
antioxidant hormone melatonin, which regulates sleep and may retard the aging process.
Studies at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and the University of Western
Ontario found that people who meditated regularly had higher levels of melatonin than
those who took 5-milligram supplements Another study, conducted jointly by Maharishi
international University, Harvard University, and the University of Maryland, found that
seniors who meditated for three months experienced dramatic improvements in their
psychological well-being, compared to their non-meditative peers.
E Animal studies confirm that both mental and physical activity boost brain fitness. At the
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology in Urbana, Illinois，
psychologist William Greenough, Ph. D., let some rats play with a profusion of toys. These
rodents developed about 25 percent more connections between their neurons than did
rats that didn’t get any mentally stimulating recreation. In addition, rats that exercised on
a treadmill developed more capillaries in specific parts of their brains than did their
sedentary counterparts. This increased the blood flow to their brains. “Clearly the message
is to do as many different flyings as possible,” Greenough says.
F It’s not just scientists who are catching anti-aging fever. Walk into any health food store,
and you111 find nutritional formulas ——with names like Brainstorm and Smart ALEC—
—that claim to sharpen mental ability. The book Smart Drugs & Nutrients, by Ward Dean,
M.D., and John Morgenthaler, was self-published in 1990 and has sold over 120,000 copies
worldwide. It has also spawned an underground network of people tweaking their own
brain chemistry with nutrients and drugs——the latter sometimes obtained from Europe
and Mexico. Sales of ginkgo ——an extract from the leaves of the 200-mill ion-year-old
ginkgo tree, which has been shown in published studies to increase oxygen in the brain
and ameliorate symptoms of Alzheimer ‘ s disease——are up by 22 percent in the last six
months alone, according to Paddy Spence, president of SPINS, a San Francisco -based
market research firm. Indeed, products that increase and preserve mental performance
are a small but emerging segment of the supplements industry, says Linda Gilb ert,
president of Health Focus, a company that researches consumer health trends. While
neuroscientists like Khachaturian liken the use of these products to the superstition of
tossing salt over your shoulder, the public is nevertheless gobbling up nutrien ts that
promise cognitive enhancement.
Questions 28-31
Choose the Four correct letters among A-G
Which of the FOUR situations or conditions assisting the Brains’ function?
A Preventive treatment against Alzheimer’s disease
B Doing active aerobic exercise and frequently climbing stairs
C High levels of education
D Early verbal or language competence training
E Having more supplements such as ginkgo tree

F Participate in more physical activity involving in stimulating tasks
G Personality and feelings of self-fulfillment
Questions 32-39
Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-G) with opinions or
deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-G in boxes 32-39 on your answer sheet.
NB you may use any latter more than once
A Zaven Khachaturian
B William Greenough
C Marilyn Albert
D Robert Sapolsky
E Linda Gilbert
F Peter Davies
G Paddy Spence
32. Alzheimer’s was probably a kind of disease rather than a normal aging process.
33. Keeping neurons busy, people may be able to endure more harm to your brain
34. Regular exercises boost blood flow to the brain and increase anti-disease disability.
35. Significant increase of Sales of ginkgo has been shown.
36. More links between their neurons are found among stimulated animals.
37. Effectiveness of the use of brains supplements products can be of little scientific proof.
38. Heightened levels of stress may damage brain cells and cause part of brain to
deteriorate.
39. Products that upgrade and preserve mental competence are still a newly developing
industry.
Questions 40
Choose the correct letters among A-D
Write your answers in box 40 on your answer sheet.
According the passage, what is the most appropriate title for this passage?
A Making our minds last a lifetime
B amazing pills of the ginkgo
C how to stay healthy in your old hood
D more able a brain and neurons

ANSWER KEYS
1 TRUE 8 FALSE 3 NOT GIVEN

4 TRUE 5 D 6 G
7 F 8 D 9 D
10 A 11 A 12 B
13 C
14 G 15 A 16 C
17 B 18 I 19 D
20 C 21 A 22 B
Plant toxins/ Reproduction/
23 Fruits 24 25
toxin reproduce
26 Water 27 drought
28 C 29 D 30 F
31 G 32 D 33 F
34 C 35 G 36 B
37 A 38 C 39 E
40 A
TEST 10
SECTION 1
Dirty river but clean water
Floods can occur in rivers when the flow rate exceeds the capacity of the river channel,
particularly at bends or meanders in the waterway. Floods often cause damage to homes
and businesses if they are in the natural flood plains of rivers. While riverine flood damage
can be eliminated by moving away from rivers and other bodies of water, people have
traditionally lived and worked by rivers because the land is usually flat and fertile and
because rivers provide easy travel and access to commerce and industry.
A FIRE and flood are two of humanity’s worst nightmares. People have, therefore, always
sought to control them. Forest fires are snuffed out quickly. The flow of rivers is regulated
by weirs and dams. At least，that is how it used to be. But foresters have learned that
forests need fires to clear out the brush and even to get seeds to germinate. And a similar
revelation is now dawning on hydrologists. Rivers 一 and the ecosystems they support —
need floods. That is why a man-made torrent has been surging down the Grand Canyon.
By Thursday March 6th it was running at full throttle, which was expected to be sustained
for 60 hours.
B Floods once raged through the canyon every year. Spring Snow from as far away as
Wyoming would melt and swell the Colorado river to a flow that averaged around 1,500
cubic metres (50,000 cubic feet) a second. Every eight years or so, that figure rose to
almost 3,000 cubic metres. These floods infused the river with sediment, carved its
beaches and built its sandbars.
C However, in the four decades since the building of the Glen Canyon dam, just upstream
of the Grand Canyon, the only sediment that it has collected has come from tiny,
undammed tributaries. Even that has not been much use as those tributaries are not
powerful enough to distribute the sediment in an ecologically valuable way.
D This lack of flooding has harmed local wildlife. The humpback chub, for example,
thrived in the rust-red waters of the Colorado. Recently, though, its population has
crashed. At first sight, it looked as if the reason was that the chub were being eaten by
trout introduced for sport fishing in the mid-20th century. But trout and chub co-existed
until the Glen Canyon dam was built, so something else is going on. Steve Gloss, of the
United States’ Geological Survey (USGS), reckons that the chub’s decline is the result of
their losing their most valuable natural defense, the Colorado’s rusty sediment. The chub
were well adapted to the poor visibility created by the thick, red water which gave the
river its name, and depended on it to hide from predators. Without the cloudy water the
chub became vulnerable.
E And the chub are not alone. In the years since the Glen Canyon dam was built, several
species have vanished altogether. These include the Colorado pike-minnow, the
razorback sucker and the roundtail chub. Meanwhile, aliens including fathead minnows,
channel catfish and common carp, which would have been hard， put to survive in the
savage waters of the undammed canyon, have moved in.
F So flooding is the obvious answer. Unfortunately, it is easier said than done. Floods were
sent down the Grand Canyon in 1996 and 2004 and the results were mixed. In 1996 the
flood was allowed to go on too long. To start with, all seemed well. The floodwaters built
up sandbanks and infused the river with sediment. Eventually, however, the continued
flow washed most of the sediment out of the canyon. This problem was avoided in 2004
，but unfortunately, on that occasion, the volume of sand available behind the dam was
too low to rebuild the sandbanks. This time, the USGS is convinced that things will be
better. The amount of sediment available is three times greater than it was in 2004. So if
a flood is going to do some good, this is the time to unleash one.
G Even so, it may turn out to be an empty gesture. At less than 1,200 cubic metres a
second, this flood is smaller than even an average spring flood, let alone one of the
mightier deluges of the past. Those glorious inundations moved massive quantities of
sediment through the Grand Canyon, wiping the slate dirty, and making a muddy mess
of silt and muck that would make modem river rafters cringe.
Questions 1-7

1. Damage caused by fire is worse than that caused by flood.
2. The flood peaks at almost 1500 cubic meters every eight years.
3. Contribution of sediments delivered by tributaries has little impact.
4. Decreasing number of chubs is always caused by introducing of trout since mid-20th
5. It seemed that the artificial flood in 1996 had achieved success partly at the very
beginning
6. In fact, the yield of artificial flood water is smaller than an average natural flood at
present.
7. Mighty floods drove fast moving flows with clean and high quality water.
Questions 8-13
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
The Eco- Impact of the Canyon Dam
Floods are peopled nightmare. In the past, canyon was raged by flood every year. The
snow from far Wyoming would melt in the season of 8………………. and caused a flood flow
peak in Colorado river. In the four decades after people built the Glen Canyon dam, it
only could gather 9…………………………………. together from tiny, undammed tributaries.
humpback chub population reduced, why?
Then, several species disappeared including Colorado pike-minnow, 10 ………………… and

the round-tail chub. Meanwhile, some moved in such as fathead minnows, channel catfish
and 11………………………………The non-stopped flow leaded to the washing away of the
sediment out of the canyon, which poses great threat to the chubs because it has poor
12……………………… away from predators. In addition, the volume of 13……………………
available behind the dam was too tow to rebuild the bars and flooding became more
serious.
SECTION 2
Smell and Memory
SMELLS LIKE YESTERDAY
Why does the scent of a fragrance or the mustiness of an old trunk trigger such powerful
memories of childhood? New research has the answer, writes Alexandra Witze.
A You probably pay more attention to a newspaper with your eyes than with your nose.
But lift the paper to your nostrils and inhale. The smell of newsprint might carry you back
to your childhood, when your parents perused the paper on Sunday mornings. Or maybe
some other smell takes you back- the scent of your mother’s perfume, the pungency of a
driftwood campfire. Specific odours can spark a flood of reminiscences. Psychologists call
it the “Proustian phenomenon “，after French novelist Marcel Proust. Near the beginning
of the masterpiece In Search of Lost Time, Proust’s narrator dunks a madeleine cookie
into a cup of tea – and the scent and taste unleash a torrent of childhood memories for
3000 pages.
B Now, this phenomenon is getting the scientific treatment. Neuroscientists Rachel Herz,
a cognitive neuroscientist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island ， have
discovered, for instance, how sensory memories are shared across the brain, with different
brain regions remembering the sights, smells, tastes and sounds of a particular
experience. Meanwhile, psychologists have demonstrated that memories triggered by
smells can be more emotional, as well as more detailed, than memories not related to
smells. When you inhale, odour molecules set brain cells dancing within a region known
as the amygdala，a part of the brain that helps control emotion. In contrast, the other
senses, such as taste or touch, get routed through other parts of the brain before reaching
the amygdala. The direct link between odours and the amygdala may help explain the
emotional potency of smells. “There is this unique connection between the sense of smell
and the part of the brain that processes emotion,” says Rachel Herz.
C But the links don’t stop there. Like an octopus reaching its tentacles outward, the
memory of smells affects other brain regions as well. In recent experiments,
neuroscientists at University College London (UCL) asked 15 volunteers to look at pictures
while smelling unrelated odours. For instance, the subjects might see a photo of a duck
paired with the scent of a rose, and then be asked to create a story linking the two. Brain
scans taken at the time revealed that the volunteers’ brains were particularly active in a
region known as the olfactory cortex, which is known to be involved in processing smells.
Five minutes later, the volunteers were shown the duck photo again, but without the rose
smell. And in their brains, the olfactory cortex lit up again, the scientists reported recently.
The fact that the olfactory cortex became active in the absence of the odour suggests that
people’s sensory memory of events is spread across different brain regions. Imagine
going on a seaside holiday, says UCL team leader, Jay Gottfried. The sight of the waves
becomes stored in one area, whereas the crash of the surf goes elsewhere, and the smell
of seaweed in yet another place. There could be advantages to having memories spread
around the brain. “You can reawaken that memory from any one of the sensory triggers ,”
says Gottfried. ’’Maybe the smell of the sun lotion, or a particular sound from that day, or
the sight of a rock formation.” Or – in the case of an early hunter and gatherer ( out on a
plain – the sight of a lion might be trigger the urge to flee, rather than having to wait for
the sound of its roar and the stench of its hide to kick in as well.
D Remembered smells may also carry extra emotional baggage, says Herz. Her research
suggests that memories triggered by odours are more emotional than memories
triggered by other cues. In one recent study, Herz recruited five volunteers who had vivid
memories associated with a particular perfume, such as opium for Women and Juniper
Breeze from Bath and Body Works. She took images of the volunteers’ brains as they
sniffed that perfume and an unrelated perfume without knowing which was which. (They
were also shown photos of each perfume bottle.) Smelling the specified perfume
activated the volunteers brains the most，particularly in the amygdala, and in a region
called the hippocampus，which helps in memory formation. Herz published the work
earlier this year in the journal Neuropsychologia.
E But she couldn’t be sure that the other senses wouldn’t also elicit a strong response.
So in another study Herz compared smells with sounds and pictures. She had 70 people
describe an emotional memory involving three items – popcorn, fresh-cut grass and a
campfire. Then they compared the items through sights，sounds and smells. For instance,
the person might see a picture of a lawnmower， then sniff the scent of grass and finally
listen to the lawnmower’s sound. Memories triggered by smell were more evocative than
memories triggered by either sights or sounds.
F Odour-evoked memories may be not only more emotional, but more detailed as well.
Working with colleague John Downes，psychologist Simon Chu of the University of
Liverpool started researching odour and memory partly because of his grandmother’s
stories about Chinese culture. As generations gathered to share oral histories, they would
pass a small pot of spice or incense around; later, when they wanted to remember the
story in as much detail as possible, they would pass the same smell around again . “It’s
kind of fits with a lot of anecdotal evidence on how smells can be really good reminders
of past experiences,” Chu says. And scientific research seems to bear out the anecdotes.
In one experiment, Chu and Downes asked 42 volunteers to tell a life story, then tested
to see whether odours such as coffee and cinnamon could help them remember more
detail in the story. They could.
G Despite such studies, not everyone is convinced that Proust can be scientifically
analysed. In the June issue of Chemical Senses, Chu and Downes exchanged critiques with
renowned perfumer and chemist J. Stephan Jellinek. Jellinek chided the Liverpool
researchers for, among other things, presenting the smells and asking the volunteers to
think of memories, rather than seeing what memories were spontaneously evoked by the
odours. But there’s only so much science can do to test a phenomenon that’s inherently
different for each person, Chu says. Meanwhile, Jellinek has also been collecting anecdotal
accounts of Proustian experiences, hoping to find some there is a case to be made that
surprise may be a major aspect of the Proust phenomenon,” he says. “That’s why people
are so struck by these memories” No one knows whether Proust ever experienced such a
transcendental moment. But his notions of memory, written as fiction nearly a century
ago, continue to inspire scientists of today.
Questions 14-18
Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-C) with opinions or
deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A- C in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet. NB
you may use any letter more than once
A Rachel Herz
B Simon Chu
C Jay Gottfried
14. Found pattern of different sensory memories stored in various zones of a brain.
15. Smell brings detailed event under a smell of certain substance.
16. Connection of smell and certain zones of brain is different with that of other senses.
17. Diverse locations of stored information help us keep away the hazard.
18. There is no necessary correlation between smell and processing zone of brain.
Questions 19-22
Choose the correct letter, A, B，C or D.
19. What does the experiment conducted by Herz show?
A Women are more easily addicted to opium medicine
B Smell is superior to other senses in connection to the brain
C Smell is more important than other senses
D Amygdala is part of brain that stores processes memory
20. What does the second experiment conducted by Herz suggest?
A Result directly conflicts with the first one
B Result of her first experiment is correct
C Sights and sounds trigger memories at an equal level

D Lawnmower is a perfect example in the experiment
21. What is the outcome of experiment conducted by Chu and Downes?
A smell is the only functional under Chinese tradition
B half of volunteers told detailed stories
C smells of certain odours assist story tellers
D odours of cinnamon is stronger than that of coffee
22. What is the comment of Jellinek to Chu and Downers in the issue of Chemical Senses:
A Jellinek accused their experiment of being unscientific
B Jellinek thought Liverpool is not a suitable place for experiment
C Jellinek suggested that there was no further clue of what specific memories aroused
D Jellinek stated that experiment could be remedied
Questions 23-26
Summary
than three words from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes
In the experiments conducted by UCL, participants were asked to look at a picture with a
scent of a flower, then in the next stage, everyone would have to ............................ 23…………..
for a connection.
A method called……………… 24…………. suggested that specific area of

brain named……………. 25…………. were quite active. Then in an another paralleled
experiment about Chinese elders, storytellers could recall detailed anecdotes when
smelling bowl of…………… 26……………… or incense around.
SECTION 3
Soviet’s new working week

Historian investigates how Stalin changed the calendar to keep the Soviet people
continually at work.
A “There are no fortresses that Bolsheviks cannot storm”. With these words, Stalin
expressed the dynamic self-confidence of the Soviet Union’s Five Year Plan: weak and
backward Russia was to turn overnight into a powerful modem industrial country.
Between 1928 and 1932，production of coal, iron and steel increased at a fantastic rate,
and new industrial cities sprang up, along with the world’s biggest dam. Everyone’s life
was affected, as collectivised farming drove millions from the land to swell the industrial
proletariat. Private enterprise disappeared in city and country, leaving the State supreme
under the dictatorship of Stalin. Unlimited enthusiasm was the mood of the day, with the
Communists believing that iron will and hard-working manpower alone would bring
about a new world.
B Enthusiasm spread to time itself, in the desire to make the state a huge efficient
machine, where not a moment would be wasted, especially in the workplace. Lenin had
already been intrigued by the ideas of the American Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856 -
1915), whose time-motion studies had discovered ways of stream-lining effort so that
every worker could produce the maximum. The Bolsheviks were also great admirers of
Henry Ford’s assembly line mass production and of his Fordson tractors that were
imported by the thousands. The engineers who came with them to train their users helped
spread what became a real cult of Ford. Emulating and surpassing such capitalist models
formed part of the training of the new Soviet Man, a heroic figure whose unlimited
capacity for work would benefit everyone in the dynamic new society. All this culminated
in the Plan, which has been characterized as the triumph of the machine, where workers
would become supremely efficient robot-like creatures.
C Yet this was Communism whose goals had always included improving the lives of the
proletariat. One major step in that direction was the sudden announcement in 1927 that
reduced the working day from eight to seven hours. In January 1929, all Indus-tries were
ordered to adopt the shorter day by the end of the Plan. Workers were also to have an
extra hour off on the eve of Sundays and holidays. Typically though, the state took away
more than it gave, for this was part of a scheme to increase production by establishing a
three-shift system. This meant that the factories were open day and night and that many
had to work at highly undesirable hours.
D Hardly had that policy been announced, though, than Yuri Larin, who had been a close
associate of Lenin and architect of his radical economic policy, came up with an idea for
even greater efficiency. Workers were free and plants were closed on Sundays. Why not
abolish that wasted day by instituting a continuous work week so that the machines could
operate to their full capacity every day of the week? When Larin presented his idea to the
Congress of Soviets in May 1929, no one paid much attention. Soon after, though, he got
the ear of Stalin, who approved. Suddenly, in June, the Soviet press was filled with articles
praising the new scheme. In August, the Council of Peoples’ Commissars ordered that the
continuous work week be brought into immediate effect, during the height of enthusiasm
for the Plan, whose goals the new schedule seemed guaranteed to forward.
E The idea seemed simple enough, but turned out to be very complicated in practice.
Obviously, the workers couldn’t be made to work seven days a week, nor should their
total work hours be increased. The Solution was ingenious: a new five-day week would
have the workers on the job for four days, with the fifth day free; holidays would be
reduced from ten to five, and the extra hour off on the eve of rest days would be
abolished. Staggering the rest-days between groups of workers meant that each worker
would spend the same number of hours on the job, but the factories would be working a
full 360 days a year instead of 300. The 360 divided neatly into 72 five-day weeks. Workers
in each establishment (at first factories，then stores and offices) were divided into five
groups, each assigned a colour which appeared on the new Uninterrupted Work Week
calendars distributed all over the country. Colour-coding was a valuable mnemonic
device, since workers might have trouble remembering what their day off was going to
be, for it would change every week. A glance at the colour on the calendar would reveal
the free day, and allow workers to plan their activities. This system, however, did not apply
to construction or seasonal occupations, which followed a six-day week, or to factories or
mines which had to close regularly for maintenance: they also had a six-day week, whether
interrupted (with the same day off for everyone) or continuous. In all cases, though,
Sunday was treated like any other day.
F Official propaganda touted the material and cultural benefits of the new sche me.
Workers would get more rest; production and employment would increase (for more
workers would be needed to keep the factories running continuously); the standard of
living would improve. Leisure time would be more rationally employed, for cultural
activities (theatre, clubs, sports) would no longer have to be crammed into a weekend,
but could flourish every day, with their facilities far less crowded. Shopping would be
easier for the same reasons. Ignorance and superstition, as represented by organized
religion, would suffer a mortal blow, since 80 per cent of the workers would be on the job
on any given Sunday. The only objection concerned the family, where normally more than
one member was working: well, the Sov
Questions 27-34
Reading Passage 2 has nine paragraphs A-I.
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below. Write the
correct number i-xii in boxes 27-34 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i Benefits of the new scheme and its resistance
ii Making use of the once wasted weekends
iii Cutting work hours for better efficiency
iv Optimism of the great future
v Negative effects on production itself
vi Soviet Union’s five year plan
vii The abolishment of the new work-week scheme
viii The Ford model
ix Reaction from factory workers and their families
x The color-coding scheme
xi Establishing a three-shift system
xii Foreign inspiration
27. Paragraph A
28. Paragraph B
29. Paragraph D
30. Paragraph E
31. Paragraph F
32. Paragraph G
33. Paragraph H
33. Paragraph I
Example Answer
Paragraph C iii
Questions 35-37
Choose the correct letter A，B，C or D.
35. According to paragraph A, Soviet’s five year plan was a success because
A Bolsheviks built a strong fortress.
B Russia was weak and backward.
C industrial production increased.
D Stalin was confident about Soviet’s potential.
36. Daily working hours were cut from eight to seven to
A improve the lives of all people.
B boost industrial productivity.
C get rid of undesirable work hours.
D change the already establish three-shift work system.
37. Many factory managers claimed to have complied with the demands of the new
work week because
A they were pressurized by the state to do so.
B they believed there would not be any practical problems.
C they were able to apply it.
D workers hated the new plan.

Questions 38-40
Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for
each answer.
38. Whose idea of continuous work week did Stalin approve and helped to implement?
39. What method was used to help workers to remember the rotation of their off days?
40. What was the most resistant force to the new work week scheme?
ANSWER KEYS
1 NOT GIVEN 2 FALSE 3 NOT GIVEN

4 FALSE 5 TRUE 6 TRUE
7 NOT GIVEN 8 Spring 3 Sediment
10 Razorback sucker 11 Common carp 12 Visibility
13 sand
14 A 15 B 16 A
17 C 18 C 19 D
20 B 21 C 22 C
23 Create a story 24 Brain scans 25 Olfactory cortex
26 Spice
27 iv 28 Xii 29 ii
30 x 31 I 32 ix
33 v 34 Vii 35 C
36 B 37 A 38 Yuri Larin
Colour – coding/
39 40 Family
colour

100 IELTS Reading Tests

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

100 IELTS Reading Tests

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

100 IELTS Reading Tests

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

CONTENT

Natural Pesticide in India

TRUE if the statement is true

FALSE if the statement is false

NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage

Complete the summary below.

The broad-leaved neem tree was chosen, it is a fast-growing and 5 tree

Answer the questions below.

13. What gave the women of Punukula a business opportunity to NPMs?

Numeracy: Can animals tell numbers?

Answer the table below.

Coots behaviour of female birds bird seems to have

Amphibians, fish and insects

19 …………….. shown real shoals and subjects know

Bees had to learn where could soon choose

TRUE if the statement is true

FALSE if the statement is false

NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage

26 Researchers have experimented by altering quantities of nectar or fruit available to

Can you do them at the same time?

B The problem, according to Rene Marois, a psychologist at Vanderbilt Unive rsity in

I It probably comes as no surprise that, generally speaking, we get worse at multitasking

The reading Passage has ten paragraphs A-J.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter in boxes 28-32 on your answer sheet.

28 A theory explained delay happens when selecting one reaction

30 Conflicts happened when visual and audio element emerge simultaneously

31 An experiment designed to demonstrates the critical part in brain for multitasking

32 An viewpoint favors optimistic side of multitask performance

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

Write your answers in boxes 33-35 on your answer sheet.

33 Which one is correct about experiment conducted by Ren6 Marois?

A participants performed poorly on listening task solely

B volunteers press different key on different color

C participants need use different fingers on different colored object

D they did a better job on Mixed image and sound information

34 Which statement is correct about the first limitation of Marois’s experiment?

A “attentional blink” takes about ten seconds

B lag occurs if we concentrate on one object while second one appears

C we always have trouble in reacting the second one

D first limitation can be avoid by certain measures

35 Which one is NOT correct about Meyer’s experiments and statements?

B Practice can overcome dual-task interference

C Meyer holds a different opinion on Marois’s theory

D an existing processor decides whether delay another task or not

YES if the statement is true

NO if the statement is false

NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage

39 Art Kramer proved there is a correlation between multitasking performance and

1 NOT GIVEN 2 FALSE 3 NOT GIVEN

Eco-Resort Management Practices

A Ecotourism is often regarded as a form of nature-based tourism and has become an

SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES OF COURAN COVE RESORT

WATER AND ENERGY MANAGEMENT

D We examined a case study of good management practice and a pro-active sustainable

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write your answers in boxes 1 -4 on your

1 the Stradbroke became two islands

A by an intended destruction of the ship of the Cambus Wallace

B by an explosion of dynamite on a ship and following nature erosion