READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Question 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 on page 2 and
3.
The Blockbuster Phenomenon: a new museum trend

Museums in Australia, like other pleasure-giving public organizations, are adapting their activities so that
they more closely reflect the marketplace.
A Since the 1980s, the term "blockbuster' has become the fashionable word for spectacular, high-
profile museum exhibitions that have the ability to attract large crowds. A blockbuster is a “large-scale loan
exhibition that people who normally don't go to museums will stand in line for hours to see" (Elsen, 1984).
Once the museum that created the exhibition has shown it to their local market, it can be offered to other
organizations for a fee. This means that you can boost your own door takings and make money from
boosting someone else's door takings.
B While partaking of the excitement of the blockbuster, visitors thus lured are likely to stay longer at
the museum. Betty Churcher, when Director of the Australian National Gallery, summed up the new
blockbuster creed as follows: The bonus of the blockbuster exhibitions is that people come to see the
blockbuster, and they stay to look at the permanent collection, so you are getting broader exposure for your
collection.
C Museums across the UK, USA, Canada and Australia currently operate under a system of plural
funding: revenue raised through contributions by federal, state and/or local governments, combined with
revenue raised through admission charges and other activities. Maintaining and increasing visitor levels is
this paramount and involves not only creating or hiring blockbuster exhibitions but providing regular
exhibition changes and innovations. In addition, the visiting public have become known as customers rather
than visitors, and the skills that are valued in museums to keep the new customers coming through the door
have changed. Curators are now administrators and being a museum director no longer requires an arts
degree - but public relations skills are essential if the museum is going to compete with other museums to
stage traveling exhibition which draw huge crowds.
D The convergence of museums, the heritage industry, tourism, profit-making and pleasure-giving has
resulted in the new "museology". This has given rise to much debate about whether it is appropriate to see
museums primarily as tourist attractions. In literature from both UK and USA, the words that are starting to
appear in some descriptions of blockbusters are "less scholarly","non-elitist" and "popularist", while others
extol the virtues of encouraging scholars to co-operate on projects, and to provide exhibitions that cater for a
broad selection of community rather than an elite sector. Whatever commentators may think, manager of
museums worldwide are looking for artful ways to blend culture and commerce, and blockbuster exhibitions
are at the top of the list.
E But do blockbusters held in public institutions really create a surplus to fund other activities? If the
bottom line is profit, then according to the records of many major museums blockbusters do make money.
For museums in some countries, it may be the money that they require to replace parts of their collections or
to fix buildings that are in need of attention. For some museums in Australia, it may be the opportunity to
illustrate that they are attempting to pay their way by recovering part of their operating costs. Also, creating
or hiring a blockbuster has many positive spin-offs: blockbusters mean crowds, and crowds are good for the
local economy, provide increased trade for shops, hotels, restaurants, the transport industry and retailers.
The arrangement that the arts provide sustained economic benefits has been well illustrated in impact studies
in the USA and UK.
F However, blockbusters require large capital expenditure, and draw on resources across all branches
of an organization, and the costs don't end there. There is a Human Resource Management cost in addition
to a measurable "real" dollar cost. Receiving a touring exhibition draws resources from across functional
management structures in project management style. Everyone, from general labourers to building services,
front of house, technical, promotional, educational and administrative staff, is required to perform additional
tasks. Furthermore, as an increasing number of institutions try their hand at increasing visitor numbers and
memberships (and therefore revenue) by staging blockbuster exhibitions, it may be less likely that
blockbusters will continue to provide a surplus to subsidize other activities due to the competitive nature of
the market.
G It has been illustrated in both the UK and USA that the blockbuster ideology has resulted in the
false expectation that the momentum required to stage blockbusters can be maintained continually. Creating,
mounting or hiring blockbusters is exhausting, with the real costs throughout an institution difficult to
calculate. Secondly, as some analysts have argued, the "shop keeping" mentality and cost-benefit analysis
and a pure concentration on the bottom line, can squeeze substance out of an exhibition. Taking out
substance can be a recipe for blockbuster failure and therefore financial failure.
H Perhaps the best pathway to take is one that balances both blockbusters and regular exhibitions.
However, this easy middle ground may only work if you have enough space and have alternate sources of
funding to continue to support the regular, less exciting fare Perhaps the advice should be to make sure that
your regular activities and exhibitions are more enticing and find out what your local community wants from
you. The question (trend) now at most museums and science centers is “What blockbusters can we tour to
overseas venues and will it be cost-effective?”
Questions 1 4
Reading Passage One has eight paragraphs A-H
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-H, in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once

1 the reason why museum directors need to constantly alter and update their exhibits
2 mention of the length of time people will queue up to see a blockbuster
3 terms that people have used when referring to blockbusters
4 the various ways that institutions like museums get financial support

Questions 5-8
Complete the sentences below
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
While your answers in boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet

5 These days, museum visitors tend to be referred to as........................

6 Museum curators now need.....................rather than academic qualifications
7 The linking of a range of public institutions that entertain the public is known as…........…….
8 There is discussion about whether museums can be regarded in the same way as other....................

Questions 9 and 10
Choose TWO letters, A-E
Write the correct letters in boxes 9 and 10 on your answer sheet.

Which Two of the following are mentioned by the writer as advantages of blockbusters?

A Some of the money they raise can be used for structural repairs.
B They can provide funds to help support amateur artists.
 C Local services benefit from the extra business they bring about.
D They encourage overseas workers into the local area.
E They raise employee performance levels.

Question 11-13

Chooses THREE letters, A-G

Write the correct letters in boxes 1-13 on you answer sheet.
Which THREE of the following are mentioned by the writer as disadvantages of blockbusters?

A they do not suit museum management styles

B Specialist business advice has to be paid for
C They involve an increased workload for personnel
D They do not increase overall annual visitor numbers
E They are very tiring to put on
F What is popular in one country may not be popular in another
G The content can be weakened through fiancial pressure.
 Saving the Bittern
A The bittern, a British waterbird, does not have a good record as far as survival is concerned. By
1886, habitat destruction and other pressures had pushed it close to extinction. Fortunately, it recovered a
few decades later, and in 1950, the numbers of nature male bitterns rose to a peak of about 70. By the 1980s,
however, it was clear that the bird was in trouble again. The bittern needs extensive wet reedbeds to survive,
and long periods of drainage, pollution and lack of management had destroyed most of its habitat. By 1997,
it again faced imminent extinction. To prevent this, the British government set up a plan for the bittern,
aiming to establish a population of 50 males by 2010. However, this target was reached six years early, a
rate of recovery faster than anyone had dared hope for. We at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
(RSPB) now claim the bittern as one of Britain's greatest wildlife success stories, since figures reveal that
the number of these rare birds has increased fivefold in just seven years.
B Bitterns have feathers that help them to conceal themselves and a shy nature; they usually remain
hidden within the cover of reedbed vegetation. Our first challenge was to develop standard methods to
monitor their numbers. The booming call 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 allowed us to be much more certain of the number of booming males in the UK,
but also enabled us to estimate local survival of males from one year to the next.
C Our first direct understanding of what breeding bitterns require in their ideal habitat came from
comparisons of reedbed sits that had lost their male birds with those that retained them. This research
showed that bitterns had been retained in reedbeds where the natural process of 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 a European Union (EU) wildlife fund to
manage 13 sites within the core breeding range.
D To refine these recommendations and provide fine-scale, quantitative habitat prescriptions on the
bitterns' preferred feeding habitat, we started radio-tracking male bitterns on the RSPB's Minsmere and
Leighton Moss reserves. This showed clear preferences for feeding in the wetter reedbed areas, particularly
within 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 indication of the area of reedbed necessary 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
requirements 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 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, male bittern numbers gradually increased from one to ten following reedbed
lowering, a management technique designed to halt the drying out process. After a low point of 11 mature
males in 1997, bittern numbers in Britain responded to all the habitat management work and started to
increase for the first time since 1950.
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
fledging, when they begin to fly, and beyond. Many chicks did not survive to this stage, and starvation was
found to be the most likely reason for their demise. The fish prey fed to chicks was mainly those species
penetrating into the reed edge. So, an important element of recent studies has been development of
recommendations on habitat and water conditions to promote native fish populations. 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-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.
G By 2004, the number of booming male bitterns in the UK had increased to 55. Almost all of the
increase occurred on those sites undertaking management based on advice derived from our research. What
rescuing the bittern, the work has helped a range of other spectacular wetland species such as otters.
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 very drastic, management to secure the future of this wetland species in the UK.

Reading Passage 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-25, which are based on Reading Passage 2 on page 7
and 8
Question 14-20
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs A-G
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, in boxes 14-20 on you answer sheet.

List of Headings

I Fluctuations in bittern numbers over time

II Research findings on habitat needs of aduIt bitterns

III Predators in the natural world

IV The importance in the natural world

V Initial habitat investigation and decisions

VI The need for co-operation to ensure nature preservation

VII Impressive results of initial intervention

VIII determining how many bitterns there are

IX Education as the key to preserving wildlife

14 Paragraph A
15 Paragraph B
16 Paragraph C
17 Paragraph D
18 Paragraph E
19 Paragraph F
20 Paragraph G
Question 21-25

Choose ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 21-25 on your answer sheet.

21 When was the bittern population largest?
22 What word is used in the passage to describe the bittern's character?
23 What is probably the main cause of death of bittern chicks?
24 What food supply do bittern chicks depend on?
25 What other creatures mentioned in the passage have also benefited from improvement made to the
bittern's habitat?

Question 26
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D
Write the correct letter in box on your answer sheet.
26 What is the main theme of Reading Passage
A how one species may be helped at the expense of another
B disagreement among environmentalists on methods to protect species from extinction
C fighting the destruction of wetland reedbeds
D how research and good management can save an endangered species

Reading Passage 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on reading passage 3 on page 10
and 11.
The Placebo Effect
With the right encouragement, your mind can convince the body to heal itself.
What is the mysterious force that can do this?
Want to devise a new form of alternative medical treatment? No problem. Here's the recipe. As a
practitioner, be warm, sympathetic, reassuring and enthusiastic. Your treatment should involve physical
contact, and each session with your patients should take at least half an hour. Encourage your patients to
take an active part in their treatment and understand how their disorders relate to the rest of their lives. Tell
them that their own bodies possess the true power to heal. Get them to pay you well. Describe your
treatment in familiar words but embroidered with a hint of mysticism: energy fields, energy flows, energy
blocks, meridians, forces, auras, rhythms and the like. Refer to the knowledge of an early age: wisdom
carelessly swept aside by the rise of blind mechanistic science. Oh, come off it, you’re saying. Something
like that couldn't possibly work, could it?
Well, yes, it could - and often well enough to earn you a living and a very good living if you are
sufficiently convincing or, better still, really believe in your therapy. Many illnesses get better on their own,
so if you are lucky and administer your treatment at just the right time, you'll get the credit. But that's only
part of it. Some of the improvement really would be down to you. Not necessarily because you'd
recommended ginseng rather than chamomile tea or used this crystal as opposed to that pressure point.
Nothing so specific. Your healing power would be the outcome of a paradoxical force that conventional
medicine recognizes but remains oddly ambivalent about: the placebo effect.
 Placebos are treatments that have no direct effect on the body, yet still work because the patient has
faith in their power to heal. Most often, the term refers to a dummy pill, but it applies just as much to any
device or procedure, from a sticking plaster to a crystal. The existence of the placebo effect implies that
even a complete fraud could make a difference to someone's health, which is why some practitioners of
alternative medicine are sensitive about any mention of the subject. In fact, the placebo is a powerful part of
all medical care, orthodox or otherwise, though its role is often neglected and misunderstood.
At one level, it should come as no surprise that our state of mind can influence our physiology: anger
opens the superficial blood vessels of the face; sadness pumps the tear glands. But exactly how placebos
work their medical magic is still largely unknown. Most of the scant research to date has focused on the
control of pain because it's one of the commonest complaints and lend itself to experimental study. Here,
attention has turned to the endorphins, natural substances produced in the brain that are known to help
control pain. Any of the neurochemicals involved in transmitting pain impulses or modulating them might
also be involved in generating the placebo response; says Don Price, an oral surgeon at the University of
Florida.
That case has been strengthened by the recent work of Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin,
who showed that the placebo effect can be abolished by a drug, naloxone, which blocks the effects of
endorphins. Benedetti induced pain in pressure cuff on the forearm. He did this several times a day for
several days, using morphine each time to control the pain. On the final day, without saying anything, he
replaced the morphine with a saline solution. This still relieved the subjects' pain: a placebo effect. But when
he added naloxone to the saline, and blocked the endorphins, the pain relief disappeared. Here was direct
proof that the relief of pain by a placebo is carried out, at least in part, by these natural opiates.
Though scientists don't know exactly how placebos work, they have accumulated a fair bit of
knowledge about how to trigger the effect. A London rheumatologist found, for example, that red dummy
capsules made more effective painkillers than blue, green or yellow ones. Research on American students
revealed that blue pills make better tranquiliser than pink, a colour more suitable for stimulants. Even
branding can make a difference: if Aspro or Tylenol are what you like to take for a headache, their
chemically identical generic equivalents may be less effective.
It matters too how the treatment is delivered. Decades ago, when the major tranquilliser chlorpromazine
was being introduced, a doctor in Kansas categorized his colleague according to whether they were keen on
it, openly skeptical of its benefits, or took a ‘let's try and see’ attitude. His conclusion: the more enthusiastic
the doctor, the better the drug performed. A recent survey by Ernst on doctor's bedside manners turned up
one consistent finding: Physicians who adopt a warm, friendly, reassuring manner are more effective than
those whose consultations are formal and do not offer reassurance.
Warm, friendly and reassuring are precisely what alternative treatment is all about, of course. Many of
the ingredients of that opening recipe - the physical contact, the generous swaths of time, the strong hints of
supernormal healing power - are just the kind of thing likely to impress patients. It's hardly surprising then,
that complementary practitioners are generally best at mobilizing, the placebo effect, says Arthur Kleinman,
professor of social anthropology at Harvard University.

Questions 27-31
Complete each sentence with the correct ending. A-H below.
Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.
27 An appointment with an alternative practitioner
28 An alternative practitioner’s explanation of their treatment
29 If alternative practitioners have faith in their treatment, they
30 Quite often, a patient's illness
31 Conventional doctors are aware of the placebo effect and they

A Should be easy to understand

B can improve without treatment

C can cost the patient less

D ought to last a minimum length of time

E can require a range of different products

F can be described as serious

G should give it greater recognition

Questions 32-34
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D
Write the correct letter in boxes 32-34 on your answer sheet.
32 In the third paragraph, the writer 32-34 says that the placebo effect
A works best in tablet form.
B is a new type of medical treatment.
C is trusted more by some patients than others.
D has a significant role in both alternative and conventional medicine.
33 A reference is made to anger and sadness in order to show that
A personal feelings can alter our physical condition
B some human behavior has no clear explanation
C placebos, like emotions, are experienced by everyone.
D people find some physical reactions hard to control

Questions 35-40
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading passage 3?In boxes 35-40 on
your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contracts with the claims of the writer
NO GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
35 Scientists now have enough information to understand how the placebo effect becomes active in people
36 As a result of experiments, some painkillers have been taken off the market.
37 Individual preference can have an impact on the effectiveness of different brands of headache tablet
38 Doctors expressed a range of views on the drug chlorpromazine when it was first introduced.
39 Emst's study had a big influence on doctor's behavior with patients
40 Alternative practitioners work in a way that is likely to trigger the placebo effect