IELTS WITH MR HÙNG

CUỐN SÁCH NÀY CỦA: …………………………………. LỚP ……

TRƯỜNG ………………………………………………………………….

QUYẾT TÂM ĐẠT ……/13 CHO MỖI BÀI TẬP

MỤC LỤC
EXERCISE 1 ...................................................................................................................................... 3
EXERCISE 2 ...................................................................................................................................... 7
EXERCISE 3 .................................................................................................................................... 11
EXERCISE 4 .................................................................................................................................... 15
EXERCISE 5 .................................................................................................................................... 19
EXERCISE 6 .................................................................................................................................... 23
EXERCISE 7 .................................................................................................................................... 27
EXERCISE 8 .................................................................................................................................... 31
EXERCISE 9 .................................................................................................................................... 35
EXERCISE 10 .................................................................................................................................. 39
EXERCISE 11 .................................................................................................................................. 43
EXERCISE 12 .................................................................................................................................. 47
EXERCISE 13 .................................................................................................................................. 51
EXERCISE 14 .................................................................................................................................. 55
EXERCISE 15 .................................................................................................................................. 59
EXERCISE 16 .................................................................................................................................. 64
EXERCISE 17 .................................................................................................................................. 68
EXERCISE 18 .................................................................................................................................. 72
EXERCISE 19 .................................................................................................................................. 76
EXERCISE 20 .................................................................................................................................. 80
EXERCISE 21 .................................................................................................................................. 84
EXERCISE 22 .................................................................................................................................. 88
EXERCISE 23 .................................................................................................................................. 93
EXERCISE 24 .................................................................................................................................. 98
EXERCISE 25 ................................................................................................................................ 102

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EXERCISE 26 ................................................................................................................................ 106
EXERCISE 27 ................................................................................................................................ 110
EXERCISE 28 ................................................................................................................................ 114

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EXERCISE 1
Why being bored is stimulating – and useful, too
This most common of emotions is turning out to be more interesting than we thought

We all know how it feels – it’s impossible to keep your mind on anything, time stretches out, and all the
things you could do seem equally unlikely to make you feel better. But defining boredom so that it can be
studied in the lab has proved difficult. For a start, it can include a lot of other mental states, such as
frustration, apathy, depression and indifference. There isn’t even agreement over whether boredom is
always a low-energy, flat kind of emotion or whether feeling agitated and restless counts as boredom,
too. In his book, Boredom: A Lively History, Peter Toohey at the University of Calgary, Canada, compares
it to disgust – an emotion that motivates us to stay away from certain situations. ‘If disgust protects
humans from infection, boredom may protect them from “infectious” social situations,’ he suggests.

By asking people about their experiences of boredom, Thomas Goetz and his team at the University of
Konstanz in Germany have recently identified five distinct types: indifferent, calibrating, searching,
reactant and apathetic. These can be plotted on two axes – one running left to right, which measures low
to high arousal, and the other from top to bottom, which measures how positive or negative the feeling is.
Intriguingly, Goetz has found that while people experience all kinds of boredom, they tend to specialise in
one. Of the five types, the most damaging is ‘reactant’ boredom with its explosive combination of high
arousal and negative emotion. The most useful is what Goetz calls ‘indifferent’ boredom: someone isn’t
engaged in anything satisfying but still feels relaxed and calm. However, it remains to be seen whether
there are any character traits that predict the kind of boredom each of us might be prone to.

Psychologist Sandi Mann at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, goes further. ‘All emotions are there
for a reason, including boredom,’ she says. Mann has found that being bored makes us more creative.
‘We’re all afraid of being bored but in actual fact it can lead to all kinds of amazing things,’ she says. In
experiments published last year, Mann found that people who had been made to feel bored by copying
numbers out of the phone book for 15 minutes came up with more creative ideas about how to use a
polystyrene cup than a control group. Mann concluded that a passive, boring activity is best for creativity
because it allows the mind to wander. In fact, she goes so far as to suggest that we should seek out more
boredom in our lives.

Psychologist John Eastwood at York University in Toronto, Canada, isn’t convinced. ‘If you are in a state of
mind-wandering you are not bored,’ he says. ‘In my view, by definition boredom is an undesirable state.’
That doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t adaptive, he adds. ‘Pain is adaptive – if we didn’t have physical
3
pain, bad things would happen to us. Does that mean that we should actively cause pain? No. But even if
boredom has evolved to help us survive, it can still be toxic if allowed to fester.’ For Eastwood, the central
feature of boredom is a failure to put our ‘attention system’ into gear. This causes an inability to focus on
anything, which makes time seem to go painfully slowly. What’s more, your efforts to improve the
situation can end up making you feel worse. ‘People try to connect with the world and if they are not
successful there’s that frustration and irritability,’ he says. Perhaps most worryingly, says Eastwood,
repeatedly failing to engage attention can lead to state where we don’t know what to do any more, and no
longer care.

Eastwood’s team is now trying to explore why the attention system fails. It’s early days but they think that
at least some of it comes down to personality. Boredom proneness has been linked with a variety of
traits. People who are motivated by pleasure seem to suffer particularly badly. Other personality traits,
such as curiosity, are associated with a high boredom threshold. More evidence that boredom has
detrimental effects comes from studies of people who are more or less prone to boredom. It seems those
who bore easily face poorer prospects in education, their career and even life in general. But of course,
boredom itself cannot kill – it’s the things we do to deal with it that may put us in danger. What can we do
to alleviate it before it comes to that? Goetz’s group has one suggestion. Working with teenagers, they
found that those who ‘approach’ a boring situation – in other words, see that it’s boring and get stuck in
anyway – report less boredom than those who try to avoid it by using snacks, TV or social media for
distraction.

Psychologist Francoise Wemelsfelder speculates that our over-connected lifestyles might even be a new
source of boredom. ‘In modern human society there is a lot of overstimulation but still a lot of problems
finding meaning,’ she says. So instead of seeking yet more mental stimulation, perhaps we should leave
our phones alone, and use boredom to motivate us to engage with the world in a more meaningful way.

Questions 14-19

4
Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i-viii, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i The productive outcomes that may result from boredom

ii What teachers can do to prevent boredom

iii A new explanation and a new cure for boredom

iv Problems with a scientific approach to boredom

v A potential danger arising from boredom

vi Creating a system of classification for feelings of boredom

vii Age groups most affected by boredom

viii Identifying those most affected by boredom

14 Paragraph A

15 Paragraph B

16 Paragraph C

17 Paragraph D

18 Paragraph E

19 Paragraph F

Questions 20-23

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Look at the following people (Questions 20-23) and the list of ideas below.

Match each person with the correct idea, A-E.

Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 20-23 on your answer sheet.

20 Peter Toohey

21 Thomas Goetz

22 John Eastwood

23 Francoise Wemelsfelder

List of Ideas

A The way we live today may encourage boredom.

B One sort of boredom is worse than all the others.

C Levels of boredom may fall in the future.

D Trying to cope with boredom can increase its negative effects.

E Boredom may encourage us to avoid an unpleasant experience.

Questions 24-26

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.

Responses to boredom

For John Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is that people cannot 24……………………………, due to
a failure in what he calls the ‘attention system’, and as a result they become frustrated and irritable. His
team suggests that those for whom 25……………………….. is an important aim in life may have problems in
coping with boredom, whereas those who have the characteristic of 26……………………….. can generally
cope with it.

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EXERCISE 2
Oxytocin
The positive and negative effects of the chemical known as the ‘love hormone’

Oxytocin is a chemical, a hormone produced in the pituitary gland in the brain. It was through various
studies focusing on animals that scientists first became aware of the influence of oxytocin. They
discovered that it helps reinforce the bonds between prairie voles, which mate for life, and triggers the
motherly behaviour that sheep show towards their newborn lambs. It is also released by women in
childbirth, strengthening the attachment between mother and baby. Few chemicals have as positive a
reputation as oxytocin, which is sometimes referred to as the ‘love hormone’. One sniff of it can, it is
claimed, make a person more trusting, empathetic, generous and cooperative. It is time, however, to
revise this wholly optimistic view. A new wave of studies has shown that its effects vary greatly depending
on the person and the circumstances, and it can impact on our social interactions for worse as well as for
better.

Oxytocin’s role in human behaviour first emerged in 2005. In a groundbreaking experiments, Markus
Heinrichs and his colleagues at the University of Freiburg, Germany, asked volunteers to do an activity in
which they could invest money with an anonymous person who was not guaranteed to be honest. The
team found the participants who had sniffed oxytocin via a nasal spray beforehand invested more money
than those who received a placebo instead. The study was the start of research into the effects of
oxytocin on human interactions. ‘For eight years, it was quite a lonesome field,’ Heinrichs recalls. ‘Now,
everyone is interested.’ These follow-up studies have shown that after a sniff of the hormone, people
become more charitable, better at reading emotions on others’ faces and at communicating
constructively in arguments. Together, the results fuelled the view that oxytocin universally enhanced the
positive aspects of our social nature.

Then, after a few years, contrasting findings began to emerge. Simone Shamay-Tsoory at the at the
University of Haifa, Israel, found that when volunteers played a competitive game, those who inhaled the
hormone showed more pleasure when they beat other players, and felt more envy when others won.
What’s more, administering oxytocin also has sharply contrasting outcomes depending on a person’s
disposition. Jennifer Bartz from Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, found that it improves
people’s ability to read emotions, but only if they are not very socially adept to begin with. Her research
also shows that oxytocin in fact reduces cooperation in subjects who are particularly anxious or sensitive
to rejection.

7
Another discovery is that oxytocin’s effects vary depending on who we are interacting with. Studies
conducted by Carolyn DeClerck of the University of Antwerp, Belgium, revealed that people who had
received a dose of oxytocin actually became less cooperative when dealing with complete strangers.
Meanwhile, Carsten De Dreu at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands discovered that
volunteers given oxytocin showed favouritism: Dutch men became quicker to associate positive words
with Dutch names than with foreign ones, for example. According to De Dreu, oxytocin drives people to
care for those in their social circles and defend them from outside dangers. So, it appears that oxytocin
strengthens biases, rather than promoting general goodwill, as was previously thought.

There were signs of these subtleties from the start. Bartz has recently shown that in almost half of the
existing research results, oxytocin influenced only certain individuals or in certain circumstances. Where
once researchers took no notice of such findings, now a more nuanced understanding of oxytocin’s
effects is propelling investigations down new lines. To Bartz, the key to understanding what the hormone
does lies in pinpointing its core function rather than in cataloguing its seemingly endless effects. There
are several hypotheses which are not mutually exclusive. Oxytocin could help to reduce anxiety and fear.
Or it could simply motivate people to seek out social connections. She believes that oxytocin acts as a
chemical spotlight that shines on social clues – a shift in posture, a flicker of the eyes, a dip in the voice –
making people more attuned to their social environment. This would explain why it makes us more likely
to look others in the eye and improves our ability to identify emotions. But it could also make things
worse for people who are overly sensitive or prone to interpreting social cues in the worst light.

Perhaps we should not be surprised that the oxytocin story has become more perplexing. The hormone is
found in everything from octopuses to sheep, and its evolutionary roots stretch back half a billion years.
‘It’s a very simple and ancient molecule that has been co-opted for many different functions,’ says Sue
Carter at the University of Illinois, Chicago, USA. ‘It affects primitive parts of the brain like the amygdala,
so it’s going to have many effects on just about everything.’ Bartz agrees. ‘Oxytocin probably does some
very basic things, but once you add our higher-order thinking and social situations, these basic processes
could manifest in different ways depending on individual differences and context.’

8
Questions 14-17

Reading Passage 2 has six section, A-F.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

14 reference to research showing the beneficial effects of oxytocin on people B

15 reasons why the effects of oxytocin are complex F

16 mention of a period in which oxytocin attracted little scientific attention B

17 reference to people ignoring certain aspects of their research data E

Questions 18-20

Look at the following research findings (Questions 18-20) and the list of researchers below.

Match each research finding with the correct researcher, A-F.

Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 18-20 on your answer sheet.

18 People are more trusting when affected by oxytocin.A

19 Oxytocin increases people’s feelings of jealousy.B

20 The effect of oxytocin varies from one type of person to another. C

List of Researchers

A Markus Heinrichs
B Simone Shamay-Tsoory
C Jennifer Bartz
D Carolyn DeClerck
E Carsten De Dreu
F Sue Carter

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Questions 21-26

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet.

Oxytocin research

The earliest findings about oxytocin and bonding came from research involving 21 Animals It
was also discovered that humans produce oxytocin during 22 childbirth An experiment in 2005,
in which participants were given either oxytocin or a 23 placebo, reinforced the belief that the
hormone had a positive effect.

However, later research suggests that this is not always the case. A study at the University of Haifa where
participants took part in a 24 game revealed the negative emotions which oxytocin can
trigger. A study at the University of Antwerp showed people’s lack of willingness to
help 25 strangers while under the influence of oxytocin. Meanwhile, research at the University of
Amsterdam revealed that people who have been given oxytocin consider 26names that are
familiar to them in their own country to have more positive associations than those from other cultures.

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EXERCISE 3
How baby talk gives infant brains a boost
A

The typical way of talking to a baby – high-pitched, exaggerated and repetitious – is a source of
fascination for linguists who hope to understand how ‘baby talk’ impacts on learning. Most babies start
developing their hearing while still in the womb, prompting some hopeful parents to play classical music
to their pregnant bellies. Some research even suggests that infants are listening to adult speech as early
as 10 weeks before being born, gathering the basic building blocks of their family’s native tongue.

Early language exposure seems to have benefits to the brain – for instance, studies suggest that babies
raised in bilingual homes are better at learning how to mentally prioritize information. So how does the
sweet if sometimes absurd sound of infant-directed speech influence a baby’s development? Here are
some recent studies that explore the science behind baby talk.

Fathers don’t use baby talk as often or in the same ways as mothers – and that’s perfectly OK, according
to a new study. Mark VanDam of Washington State University at Spokane and colleagues equipped
parents with recording devices and speech-recognition software to study the way they interacted with
their youngsters during a normal day. ‘We found that moms do exactly what you’d expect and what’s been
described many times over,’ VanDam explains. ‘But we found that dads aren’t doing the same thing. Dads
didn’t raise their pitch or fundamental frequency when they talked to kids.’ Their role may be rooted in
what is called the bridge hypothesis, which dates back to 1975. It suggests that fathers use less familial
language to provide their children with a bridge to the kind of speech they’ll hear in public. ‘The idea is
that a kid gets to practice a certain kind of speech with mom and another kind of speech with dad, so the
kid then has a wider repertoire of kinds of speech to practice,’ says VanDam.

Scientists from the University of Washington and the University of Connecticut collected thousands of
30-second conversations between parents and their babies, fitting 26 children with audio-recording vests
that captured language and sound during a typical eight-hour day. The study found that the more baby
talk parents used, the more their youngsters began to babble. And when researchers saw the same
babies at age two, they found that frequent baby talk had dramatically boosted vocabulary, regardless of
socioeconomic status. ‘Those children who listened to a lot of baby talk were talking more than the
babies that listened to more adult talk or standard speech,’ says Nairán Ramirez-Esparza of the University
of Connecticut. ‘We also found that it really matters whether you use baby talk in a one-on-one context,’
she adds. ‘The more parents use baby talk one-on-one, the more babies babble, and the more they
babble, the more words they produce later in life.’

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E

Another study suggests that parents might want to pair their youngsters up so they can babble more with
their own kind. Researchers from McGill University and Université du Québec à Montréal found that
babies seem to like listening to each other rather than to adults – which may be why baby talk is such a
universal tool among parents. They played repeating vowel sounds made by a special synthesizing device
that mimicked sounds made by either an adult woman or another baby. This way, only the impact of the
auditory cues was observed. The team then measured how long each type of sound held the infants’
attention. They found that the ‘infant’ sounds held babies’ attention nearly 40 percent longer. The baby
noises also induced more reactions in the listening infants, like smiling or lip moving, which
approximates sound making. The team theorizes that this attraction to other infant sounds could help
launch the learning process that leads to speech. ‘It may be some property of the sound that is just
drawing their attention,’ says study co-author Linda Polka. ‘Or maybe they are really interested in that
particular type of sound because they are starting to focus on their own ability to make sounds. We are
speculating here but it might catch their attention because they recognize it as a sound they could
possibly make.’

In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a total of 57 babies from two
slightly different age groups – seven months and eleven and a half months – were played a number of
syllables from both their native language (English) and a non-native tongue (Spanish). The infants were
placed in a brain-activation scanner that recorded activity in a brain region known to guide the motor
movements that produce speech. The results suggest that listening to baby talk prompts infant brains to
start practicing their language skills. ‘Finding activation in motor areas the baby brain is engaged in trying
to talk back right from the start, and suggests that seven-month-olds’ brains are already trying to figure
out how to make interesting finding was that while the seven-month-olds responded to all speech sounds
regardless of language, the brains of the older infants worked harder at the motor activations of non-
native sounds compared to native sounds. The study may have also uncovered a process by which
babies recognize differences between their native language and other tongues.

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Questions 14-17

Look at the following ideas (Questions 14-17) and the list of researchers below.
Match each idea with the correct researcher, A, B or C.

Write the correct letter, A, B or C, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

14 the importance of adults giving babies individual attention when talking to them B

15 the connection between what babies hear and their own efforts to create speech C

16 the advantage for the baby of having two parents each speaking in a different way A

17 the connection between the amount of baby talk babies hear and how much vocalising they do A
themselves

List of Researchers

A Mark VanDam
B Nairán Ramirez-Esparza
C Patricia Kuhl

Questions 18-23

Complete the summary below.

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

Write your answers in boxes 18-23 on your answer sheet.

Research into how parents talk to babies

Researchers at Washington State University used 18…recording devices, together with specialised
computer programs, to analyse how parents interacted with their babies during a normal day. The study
revealed that 19 dads tended not to modify their ordinary speech patterns when interacting
with their babies. According to an idea known as the 20bridge hypothesis, they may use a more adult
type of speech to prepare infants for the language they will hear outside the family home. According to
the researchers, hearing baby talk from one parent and ‘normal’ language from the other expands the
baby’s 21……repertoire…………………… of types of speech which they can practise.

Meanwhile, another study carried out by scientists from the University of Washington and the University
of Connecticut recorded speech and sound using special 22……audio-recording that the babies were
equipped with. When they studies the babies again at age two, the found that those who had heard a lot
of baby talk in infancy had a much larger 23…vocalbulary Than those who had not.

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Questions 24-26

Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

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

24 a reference to a change which occurs in babies’ brain activity before the end of their first year. F

25 an example of what some parents do for their baby’s benefit before birth A

26 a mention of babies’ preference for the sounds that other babies make E

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EXERCISE 4
SAVING THE SOIL
More than a third of the Earth’s top layer is at risk. Is there hope for our planet’s most precious resource?

More than a third of the world’s soil is endangered, according to a recent UN report. If we don’t slow the
decline, all farmable soil could be gone in 60 years. Since soil grows 95% of our food, and sustains
human life in other more surprising ways, that is a huge problem.

Peter Groffman, from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York, points out that soil scientists
have been warning about the degradation of the world’s soil for decades. At the same time, our
understanding of its importance to humans has grown. A single gram of healthy soil might contain 100
million bacteria, as well as other microorganisms such as viruses and fungi, living amid decomposing
plants and various minerals.

That means soils do not just grow our food, but are the source of nearly all our existing antibiotics, and
could be our best hope in the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Soil is also an ally against climate
change: as microorganisms within soil digest dead animals and plants, they lock in their carbon content,
holding three times the amount of carbon as does the entire atmosphere. Soils also store water,
preventing flood damage: in the UK, damage to buildings, roads and bridges from floods caused by soil
degradation costs £233 million every year.

If the soil loses its ability to perform these functions, the human race could be in big trouble. The danger
is not that the soil will disappear completely, but that the microorganisms that give it its special
properties will be lost. And once this has happened, it may take the soil thousands of years to recover.

Agriculture is by far the biggest problem. In the wild, when plants grow they remove nutrients from the
soil, but then when the plants die and decay these nutrients are returned directly to the soil. Humans
tend not to return unused parts of harvested crops directly to the soil to enrich it, meaning that the soil
gradually becomes less fertile. In the past we developed strategies to get around the problem, such as
regularly varying the types of crops grown, or leaving fields uncultivated for a season.

But these practices became inconvenient as populations grew and agriculture had to be run on more
commercial lines. A solution came in the early 20th century with the Haber-Bosch process for
manufacturing ammonium nitrate. Farmers have been putting this synthetic fertiliser on their fields ever
since.

15
But over the past few decades, it has become clear this wasn’t such a bright idea. Chemical fertilisers
can release polluting nitrous oxide into the atmosphere and excess is often washed away with the rain,
releasing nitrogen into rivers. More recently, we have found that indiscriminate use of fertilisers hurts the
soil itself, turning it acidic and salty, and degrading the soil they are supposed to nourish.

One of the people looking for a solution to his problem is Pius Floris, who started out running a tree-care
business in the Netherlands, and now advises some of the world’s top soil scientists. He came to realise
that the best way to ensure his trees flourished was to take care of the soil, and has developed a cocktail
of beneficial bacteria, fungi and humus* to do this. Researchers at the University of Valladolid in Spain
recently used this cocktail on soils destroyed by years of fertiliser overuse. When they applied Floris’s mix
to the desert-like test plots, a good crop of plants emerged that were not just healthy at the surface, but
had roots strong enough to pierce dirt as hard as rock. The few plants that grew in the control plots, fed
with traditional fertilisers, were small and weak

However, measures like this are not enough to solve the global soil degradation problem. To assess our
options on a global scale we first need an accurate picture of what types of soil are out there, and the
problems they face. That’s not easy. For one thing, there is no agreed international system for classifying
soil. In an attempt to unify the different approaches, the UN has created the Global Soil Map project.
Researchers from nine countries are working together to create a map linked to a database that can be
fed measurements from field surveys, drone surveys, satellite imagery, lad analyses and so on to provide
real-time data on the state of the soil. Within the next four years, they aim to have mapped soils
worldwide to a depth of 100 metres, with the results freely accessible to all.

But this is only a first step. We need ways of presenting the problem that bring it home to governments
and the wider public, says Pamela Chasek at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, in
Winnipeg, Canada. ‘Most scientists don’t speak language that policy-makers can understand, and vice
versa.’ Chasek and her colleagues have proposed a goal of ‘zero net land degradation’. Like the idea of
carbon neutrality, it is an easily understood target that can help shape expectations and encourage
action.

For soils on the brink, that may be too late. Several researchers are agitating for the immediate creation of
protected zones for endangered soils. One difficulty here is defining what these areas should conserve:
areas where the greatest soil diversity is present? Or areas of unspoilt soils that could act as a future
benchmark of quality?

Whatever we do, if we want our soils to survive, we need to take action now.

16
Questions 14-17

Complete the summary below.

Write ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

Why soil degradation could be a disaster for humans

Healthy soil contains a large variety of bacteria and other microorganisms, as well as plant remains
and 14 minerals nIt provides us with food and also with antibiotics, and its function in
storing 15 soil has a significant effect on the climate. In addition, it prevents damage to
property and infrastructure because it holds 16 water

If these microorganisms are lost, soil may lose its special properties. The main factor contributing to soil
degradation is the 17agriculture carried out by humans.

Questions 18-21

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

Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 18-21 on your answer sheet.

18 Nutrients contained in the unused parts of harvested crops C

19 Synthetic fertilisers produced with Haber-Bosch process E

20 Addition of a mixture developed by Pius Floris to the soil A

21 The idea of zero net soil degradation D

A may improve the number and quality of plants growing there.

B may contain data from up to nine countries.

C may not be put back into the soil.

D may help governments to be more aware of soil-related issues.

E may cause damage to different aspects of the environment.

F may be better for use at a global level.

17
Questions 22-26

Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Which section contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

22 a reference to one person’s motivation for a soil-improvement project E

23 an explanation of how soil stayed healthy before the development of farming C

24 examples of different ways of collecting information on soil degradation F

25 a suggestion for a way of keeping some types of soil safe in the near future G

26 a reason why it is difficult to provide an overview of soil degradation F

18
EXERCISE 5
The growth of bike-sharing schemes around the world
How Dutch engineer Luud Schimmelpennink helped to devise urban bike-sharing schemes

The original idea for an urban bike-sharing scheme dates back to a summer’s day in Amsterdam in 1965.
Provo, the organization that came up with the idea, was a group of Dutch activists who wanted to change
society. They believed the scheme, which was known as the Witte Fietsenplan, was an answer to the
perceived threats of air pollution and consumerism. In the centre of Amsterdam, they painted a small
number of used bikes white. They also distributed leaflets describing the dangers of cars and inviting
people to use the white bikes. The bikes were then left unlocked at various locations around the city, to
be used by anyone in need of transport.

Luud Schimmelpennink, a Dutch industrial engineer who still lives and cycles in Amsterdam, was heavily
involved in the original scheme. He recalls how the scheme succeeded in attracting a great deal of
attention – particularly when it came to publicising Provo’s aims – but struggled to get off the ground. The
police were opposed to Provo’s initiatives and almost as soon as the white bikes were distributed around
the city, they removed them. However, for Schimmelpennink and for bike-sharing schemes in general,
this was just the beginning. ‘The first Witte Fietsenplan was just a symbolic thing,’ he says. ‘We painted a
few bikes white, that was all. Things got more serious when I became a member of the Amsterdam city
council two years later.’

Schimmelpennink seized this opportunity to present a more elaborate Witte Fietsenplan to the city
council. ‘My idea was that the municipality of Amsterdam would distribute 10,000 white bikes over the
city, for everyone to use,’ he explains. ‘I made serious calculations. It turned out that a white bicycle – per
person, per kilometer – would cost the municipality only 10% of what it contributed to public transport
per person per kilometer.’ Nevertheless, the council unanimously rejected the plan. ‘They said that the
bicycle belongs to the past. They saw a glorious future for the ca r,’ says Schimmelpennink. But he was not
in the least discouraged.

Schimmelpennink never stopped believing in bike-sharing, and in the mid-90s, two Danes asked for his
help to set up a system in Copenhagen. The result was the world’s first large-scale bike-share
programme. It worked on a deposit: ‘You dropped a coin in the bike and when you returned it, you got your
money back.’ After setting up the Danish system, Schimmelpennink decided to try his luck again in the
Netherlands – and this time he succeeded in arousing the interest of the Dutch Ministry of Transport.
‘Times had changed,’ he recalls. ‘People had become more environmentally conscious, and the Danish
19
experiment had proved that bike-sharing was a real possibility.’ A new Witte Fietsenplan was launched in
1999 in Amsterdam. However, riding a white bike was no longer free; it cost one guilder per trip and
payment was made with a chip card developed by the Dutch bank Postbank. Schimmelpennink designed
conspicuous, sturdy white bikes locked in special racks which could be opened with the chip card – the
plan started with 250 bikes, distributed over five stations.

Theo Molenaar, who was a system designer for the project, worked alongside Schimmelpennink. ‘I
remember when we were testing the bike racks, he announced that he had already designed better ones.
But of course, we had to go through with the ones we had.’ The system, however, was prone to vandalism
and theft. ‘After every weekend there would always be a couple of bikes missing,’ Molenaar says. ‘I really
have no idea what people did with them, because they could instantly be recognised as white bikes.’ But
the biggest blow came when Postbank decided to abolish the chip card, because it wasn’t profitable.
‘That chip card was pivotal to the system,’ Molenaar says. ‘To continue the project we would have needed
to set up another system, but the business partner had lost interest.’

Schimmelpennink was disappointed, but – characteristically – not for long. In 2002 he got a call from the
French advertising corporation JC Decaux, who wanted to set up his bike-sharing scheme in Vienna. ‘That
went really well. After Vienna, they set up a system in Lyon. Then in 2007, Paris followed. That was a
decisive moment in the history of bike-sharing.’ The huge and unexpected success of the Parisian bike-
sharing programme, which now boasts more than 20,000 bicycles, inspired cities all over the world to set
up their own schemes, all modelled on Schimmelpennink’s. ‘It’s wonderful that this happened,’ he says.
‘But financially I didn’t really benefit from it, because I never filed for a patent.’

In Amsterdam today, 38% of all trips are made by bike and, along with Copenhagen, it is regarded as one
of the two most cycle-friendly capitals in the world – but the city never got another Witte Fietsenplan.
Molenaar believes this may be because everybody in Amsterdam already has a bike. Schimmelpennink,
however, cannot see that this changes Amsterdam’s need for a bike-sharing scheme. ‘People who travel
on the underground don’t carry their bikes around. But often they need additional transport to reach their
final destination.’ Although he thinks it is strange that a city like Amsterdam does not have a successful
bike-sharing scheme, he is optimistic about the future. ‘In the ‘60s we didn’t stand a chance because
people were prepared to give their lives to keep cars in the city. But that mentality has totally changed.
Today everybody longs for cities that are not dominated by cars.’

20
Questions 14-18

Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

14 a description of how people misused a bike-sharing scheme E

15 an explanation of why a proposed bike-sharing scheme was turned down C

16 a reference to a person being unable to profit their work F

17 an explanation of the potential savings a bike-sharing scheme would bring C

18 a reference to the problems a bike-sharing scheme was intended to solve A

Questions 19-20

Choose TWO letters, A-E

Write the correct letters in boxes 19 and 20 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO of the following statements are made in the text about the Amsterdam bike-sharing scheme
of 1999?

A It was initially opposed by a government department.

B It failed when a partner in the scheme withdrew support.

C It aimed to be more successful than the Copenhagen scheme.

D It was made possible by a change in people’s attitudes.

E It attracted interest from a range of bike designers.

21
 Questions 21-22

Choose TWO letters, A-E

Write the correct letters in boxes 21 and 22 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO of the following statements are made in the text about Amsterdam today?

A The majority of residents would like to prevent all cars from entering the city.

B There is little likelihood of the city having another bike-sharing scheme.

C More trips in the city are made by bike than by any other form of transport.

D A bike-sharing scheme would benefit residents who use public transport.

E The city has a reputation as a place that welcomes cyclists.

Questions 23-26

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.

The first urban bike-sharing scheme

The first bike-sharing scheme was the idea of the Dutch group Provo. The people who belonged to this
group were 23……… activists……………….. They were concerned about damage to the environment and
about 24 ……… consumerism ………………….., and believed that the bike-sharing scheme would draw
attention to these issues. As well as painting some bikes white, they handed out 25 ……… … leaflets…………..
that condemned the
use of cars.

However, the scheme was not a great success: almost as quickly as Provo left the bikes around the city,
the 26 ……… police ………………. Took them away. According to Schimmelpennink, the scheme was intended to
be symbolic. The idea was to get people thinking about the issues.

22
EXERCISE 6
Back to the future of skyscraper design
Answers to the problem of excessive electricity use by skyscrapers and large public buildings can be
found in ingenious but forgotten architectural designs of the 19th and early-20th centuries

The Recovery of Natural Environments in Architecture by Professor Alan Short is the culmination of 30
years of research and award-winning green building design by Short and colleagues in Architecture,
Engineering, Applied Maths and Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge.

‘The crisis in building design is already here,’ said Short. ‘Policy makers think you can solve energy and
building problems with gadgets. You can’t. As global temperatures continue to rise, we are going to
continue to squander more and more energy on keeping our buildings mechanically cool until we have
run out of capacity.’

Short is calling for a sweeping reinvention of how skyscrapers and major public buildings are designed –
to end the reliance on sealed buildings which exist solely via the ‘life support’ system of vast air
conditioning units.

Instead, he shows it is entirely possible to accommodate natural ventilation and cooling in large buildings
by looking into the past, before the widespread introduction of air conditioning systems, which were
‘relentlessly and aggressively marketed’ by their inventors.

Short points out that to make most contemporary buildings habitable, they have to be sealed and air
conditioned. The energy use and carbon emissions this generates is spectacular and largely
unnecessary. Buildings in the West account for 40-50% of electricity usage, generating substantial
carbon emissions, and the rest of the world is catching up at a frightening rate. Short regards glass, steel
and air-conditioned skyscrapers as symbols of status, rather than practical ways of meeting our
requirements.

Short’s book highlights a developing and sophisticated art and science of ventilating buildings through
the 19th and earlier-20th centuries, including the design of ingeniously ventilated hospitals. Of particular
interest were those built to the designs of John Shaw Billings, including the first Johns Hopkins Hospital in
the US city of Baltimore (1873-1889).

‘We spent three years digitally modelling Billings’ final designs,’ says Short. ‘We put pathogens* in the
airstreams, modelled for someone with tuberculosis (TB) coughing in the wards and we found the
ventilation systems in the room would have kept other patients safe from harm.
23
—————-
* pathogens: microorganisms that can cause disease

‘We discovered that 19th-century hospital wards could generate up to 24 air changes an hour – that’s
similar to the performance of a modern-day, computer-controlled operating theatre. We believe you
could build wards based on these principles now.

Single rooms are not appropriate for all patients. Communal wards appropriate for certain patients –
older people with dementia, for example – would work just as well in today’s hospitals, at a fraction of the
energy cost.’

Professor Short contends the mindset and skill-sets behind these designs have been completely lost,
lamenting the disappearance of expertly designed theatres, opera houses, and other buildings where up
to half the volume of the building was given over to ensuring everyone got fresh air.

Much of the ingenuity present in 19th-century hospital and building design was driven by a panicked
public clamouring for buildings that could protect against what was thought to be the lethal threat of
miasmas – toxic air that spread disease. Miasmas were feared as the principal agents of disease and
epidemics for centuries, and were used to explain the spread of infection from the Middle Ages right
through to the cholera outbreaks in London and Paris during the 1850s. Foul air, rather than germs, was
believed to be the main driver of ‘hospital fever’, leading to disease and frequent death. The prosperous
steered clear of hospitals.

While miasma theory has been long since disproved, Short has for the last 30 years advocated a return to
some of the building design principles produced in its wake.

Today, huge amounts of a building’s space and construction cost are given over to air conditioning. ‘But I
have designed and built a series of buildings over the past three decades which have tried to reinvent
some of these ideas and then measure what happens.

‘To go forward into our new low-energy, low-carbon future, we would be well advised to look back at
design before our high-energy, high-carbon present appeared. What is surprising is what a rich legacy we
have abandoned.’

Successful examples of Short’s approach include the Queen’s Building at De Montfort University in
Leicester. Containing as many as 2,000 staff and students, the entire building is naturally ventilated,
passively cooled and naturally lit, including the two largest auditoria, each seating more than 150 people.
The award-winning building uses a fraction of the electricity of comparable buildings in the UK.

24
Short contends that glass skyscrapers in London and around the world will become a liability over the
next 20 or 30 years if climate modelling predictions and energy price rises come to pass as expected.

He is convinced that sufficiently cooled skyscrapers using the natural environment can be produced in
almost any climate. He and his team have worked on hybrid buildings in the harsh climates of Beijing and
Chicago – built with natural ventilation assisted by back-up air conditioning – which, surprisingly perhaps,
can be switched off more than half the time on milder days and during the spring and autumn.

Short looks at how we might reimagine the cities, offices and homes of the future. Maybe it’s time we
changed our outlook.

25
Questions 14-18

Reading Passage 2 has nine section, A-I

Which section contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

14 why some people avoided hospitals in the 19th century F

15 a suggestion that the popularity of tall buildings is linked to prestige C

16 a comparison between the circulation of air in a 19th-century building and modern standards E

17 how Short tested the circulation of air in a 19th-century building D

18 an implication that advertising led to the large increase in the use of air conditioning B

Questions 19-26

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 19-26 on your answer sheet.

Ventilation in 19th-century hospital wards

Professor Alan Short examined the work of John Shaw Billings, who influenced the
architectural 19 … design…………………… of hospitals to ensure they had good ventilation. He calculated
that 20 …pathogens…………………….. in the air coming from patients suffering form 21…
tuberculosis…………………… would not
have harmed other patients. He also found that the air in 22…… wards……………………. In hospitals could
change as often as in a modern operating theatre. He suggests that energy use could be reduced by
locating more patients in 23 … communal……………………. areas.

A major reason for improving ventilation in 19th-century hospitals was the demand from
the 24 ……… public………………….. for protection against bad air, known as 25 ………miamass……………………
These were
blamed for the spread of disease for hundreds of years, including epidemics of 26………
clolera…………………… in
London and Paris in the middle of the 19th century.

26
EXERCISE 7
Saving bugs to find new drugs
Zoologist Ross Piper looks at the potential of insects in pharmaceutical research

More drugs than you might think are derived from, or inspired by, compounds found in living things.
Looking to nature for the soothing and curing of our ailments is nothing new – we have been doing it for
tens of thousands of years. You only have to look at other primates – such as the capuchin monkeys who
rub themselves with toxin-oozing millipedes to deter mosquitoes, or the chimpanzees who use noxious
forest plants to rid themselves of intestinal parasites – to realise that our ancient ancestors too probably
had a basic grasp of medicine.

Pharmaceutical science and chemistry built on these ancient foundations and perfected the extraction,
characterization, modification and testing of these natural products. Then, for a while, modern
pharmaceutical science moved its focus away from nature and into the laboratory, designing chemical
compounds from scratch. The main cause of this shift is that although there are plenty of promising
chemical compounds in nature, finding them is far from easy. Securing sufficient numbers of the
organism in question, isolating and characterizing the compounds of interest, and producing large
quantities of these compounds are all significant hurdles.

Laboratory-based drug discovery has achieved varying levels of success, something which has now
prompted the development of new approaches focusing once again on natural products. With the ability
to mine genomes for useful compounds, it is now evident that we have barely scratched the surface of
nature’s molecular diversity. This realization, together with several looming health crises, such as
antibiotic resistance, has put bioprospecting – the search for useful compounds in nature – firmly back
on the map.

Insects are the undisputed masters of the terrestrial domain, where the occupy every possible niche.
Consequently, they have a bewildering array of interactions with other organisms, something which has
driven the evolution of an enormous range of very interesting compounds for defensive and offensive
purposes. Their remarkable diversity exceeds that of every other group of animals on the planet
combined. Yet even though insects are far and away the most diverse animals in existence, their potential
as sources of therapeutic compounds is yet to be realised.

27
From the tiny proportion of insects that have been investigated, several promising compounds have been
identified. For example, alloferon, an antimicrobial compound produced by blow fly larvae, is used as an
antiviral and antitumor agent in South Korea and Russia. The larvae of a few other insect species are
being investigated for the potent antimicrobial compounds they produce. Meanwhile, a compound from
the venom of the wasp Polybia paulista has potential in cancer treatment.

Why is it that insects have received relatively little attention in bioprospecting? Firstly, there are so many
insects that, without some manner of targeted approach, investigating this huge variety of species is a
daunting task. Secondly, insects are generally very small, and the glands inside them that secrete
potentially useful compounds are smaller still. This can make it difficult to obtain sufficient quantities of
the compound for subsequent testing. Thirdly, although we consider insects to be everywhere, the reality
of this ubiquity is vast numbers of a few extremely common species. Many insect species are
infrequently encountered and very difficult to rear in captivity, which, again, can leave us with insufficient
material to work with.

My colleagues and I at Aberystwyth University in the UK have developed an approach in which we use our
knowledge of ecology as a guide to target our efforts. The creatures that particularly interest us are the
many insects that secrete powerful poison for subduing prey and keeping it fresh for future consumption.
There are even more insects that are masters of exploiting filthy habitats, such as faeces and carcasses,
where they are regularly challenged by thousands of micro-organisms. These insects have many
antimicrobial compounds for dealing with pathogenic bacteria and fungi, suggesting that there is
certainly potential to find many compounds that can serve as or inspire new antibiotics.

Although natural history knowledge points us in the right direction, it doesn’t solve the problems
associated with obtaining useful compounds from insects. Fortunately, it is now possible to snip out the
stretches of the insect’s DNA that carry the codes for the interesting compounds and insert them into cell
lines that allow larger quantities to be produced. And although the road from isolating and characterizing
compounds with desirable qualities to developing a commercial product is very long and full of pitfalls,
the variety of successful animal-derived pharmaceuticals on the market demonstrates there is a
precedent here that is worth exploring.

With every bit of wilderness that disappears, we deprive ourselves of potential medicines. As much as I’d
love to help develop a groundbreaking insect-derived medicine, my main motivation for looking at insects
in this way is conservation. I sincerely believe that all species, however small and seemingly insignificant,
have a right to exist for their own sake. If we can shine a light on the darker recesses of nature’s medicine
cabinet, exploring the useful chemistry of the most diverse animals on the planet, I believe we can make
people think differently about the value of nature.
28
Questions 14-20

Reading Passage 2 has nine paragraphs, A-I

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.

14 mention of factors driving a renewed interest in natural medicinal compounds.

15 how recent technological advances have made insect research easier

16 examples of animals which use medicinal substances from nature

17 reasons why it is challenging to use insects in drug research

18 reference to how interest in drug research may benefit wildlife

19 a reason why nature-based medicines fell out of favour for a period

20 an example of an insect-derived medicine in use at the moment

Questions 21-22

Choose TWO letters, A-E

Write the correct letters in boxes 21 and 22 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO of the following make insects interesting for drug research?

A the huge number of individual insects in the world

B the variety of substances insects have developed to protect themselves

C the potential to extract and make use of insects’ genetic codes

D the similarities between different species of insect

E the manageable size of most insects

29
Questions 23-26

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.

Research at Aberystwyth University

Ross Piper and fellow zoologists at Aberystwyth University are using their expertise
in 23………………………… when undertaking bioprospecting with insects. They are especially interested in
the compounds that insects produce to overpower and preserve their 24…………………………. They are
also interested in compounds which insects use to protect themselves from pathogenic bacteria and
fungi found in their 25………………………… Piper hopes that these substances will be useful in the
development of drugs such as 26……………………………..

30
EXERCISE 8
Why zoos are good

Scientist David Hone makes the case for zoos

In my view, it is perfectly possible for many species of animals living in zoos or wildlife parks to have a
quality of life as high as, or higher than, in the wild. Animals in good zoos get a varied and high-quality diet
with all the supplements required, and any illnesses they might have will be treated. Their movement
might be somewhat restricted, but they have a safe environment in which to live, and they are spared
bullying and social ostracism by others of their kind. They do not suffer from the threat or stress of
predators, or the irritation and pain of parasites or injuries. The average captive animal will have a greater
life expectancy compared with its wild counterpart, and will not die of drought, of starvation or in the jaws
of a predator. A lot of very nasty things happen to truly ‘wild’ animals that simply don’t happen in good
zoos, and to view a life that is ‘free’ as one that is automatically ‘good’ is, I think, an error. Furthermore,
zoos serve several key purposes.

Firstly, zoos aid conservation. Colossal numbers of species are becoming extinct across the world, and
many more are increasingly threatened and therefore risk extinction. Moreover, some of these collapses
have been sudden, dramatic and unexpected, or were simply discovered very late in the day. A species
protected in captivity can be bred up to provide a reservoir population against a population crash or
extinction in the wild. A good number of species only exist in captivity, with many of these living in zoos.
Still more only exist in the wild because they have been reintroduced from zoos, or have wild populations
that have been boosted by captive bred animals. Without these efforts there would be fewer species alive
today. Although reintroduction successes are few and far between, the numbers are increasing, and the
very fact that species have been saved or reintroduced as a result of captive breeding proves the value of
such initiatives.

Zoos also provide education. Many children and adults, especially those in cities, will never see a wild
animal beyond a fox or pigeon. While it is true that television documentaries are becoming ever more
detailed and impressive, and many natural history specimens are on display in museums, there really is
nothing to compare with seeing a living creature in the flesh, hearing it, smelling it, watching what it does
and having the time to absorb details. That alone will bring a greater understanding and perspective to
many, and hopefully give them a greater appreciation for wildlife, conservation efforts and how they can
contribute.

31
In addition to this, there is also the education that can take place in zoos through signs, talks and
presentations which directly communicate information to visitors about the animals they are seeing and
their place in the world. This was an area where zoos used to be lacking, but they are now increasingly
sophisticated in their communication and outreach work. Many zoos also work directly to educate
conservation workers in other countries, or send their animal keepers abroad to contribute their
knowledge and skills to those working in zoos and reserves, thereby helping to improve conditions and
reintroductions all over the world.

Zoos also play a key role in research. If we are to save wild species and restore and repair ecosystems we
need to know about how key species live, act and react. Being able to undertake research on animals in
zoos where there is less risk and fewer variables means real changes can be effected on wild
populations. Finding out about, for example, the oestrus cycle of an animal of its breeding rate helps us
manage wild populations. Procedures such as capturing and moving at-risk or dangerous individuals are
bolstered by knowledge gained in zoos about doses for anaesthetics, and by experience in handling and
transporting animals. This can make a real difference to conservation efforts and to the reduction of
human-animal conflicts, and can provide a knowledge base for helping with the increasing threats of
habitat destruction and other problems.

In conclusion, considering the many ongoing global threats to the environment, it is hard for me to see
zoos as anything other than essential to the long-term survival of numerous species. They are vital not
just in terms of protecting animals, but as a means of learning about them to aid those still in the wild, as
well as educating and informing the general population about these animals and their world so that they
can assist or at least accept the need to be more environmentally conscious. Without them, the world
would be, and would increasingly become, a much poorer place.

32
Questions 14-17

Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

14 a reference to how quickly animal species can die out

15 reasons why it is preferable to study animals in captivity rather than in the wild

16 mention of two ways of learning about animals other than visiting them in zoos

17 reasons why animals in zoos may by healthier than those in the wild

Questions 18-22

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

In boxes 18-22 on you answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

18 An animal is likely to live longer in a zoo than in the wild

19 There are some species in zoos which can no longer be found in the wild.

20 Improvements in the quality of TV wildlife documentaries have resulted in increased numbers of zoo
visitors.

21 Zoos have always excelled at transmitting information about animals to the public.

22 Studying animals in zoos is less stressful for the animals than studying them in the wild.

33
Questions 23 and 24

Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Write the correct letters in boxes 23 and 24 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO of the following are stated about zoo staff in the text?

A Some take part in television documentaries about animals

B Some travel to overseas locations to join teams in zoos.

C Some get experience with species in the wild before taking up zoo jobs.

D Some teach people who are involved with conservation projects.

E Some specialise in caring for species which are under threat.

Questions 25 and 26

Choose TWO letters, A-E

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

Which TWO of these beliefs about zoos does the writer mention in the text?

A They can help children overcome their fears of wild animals.

B They can increase public awareness of environmental issues.

C They can provide employment for a range of professional people.

D They can generate income to support wildlife conservation projects.

E They can raise animals which can later be released into the wild.

34
EXERCISE 9
Driverless cars
A

The automotive sector is well used to adapting to automation in manufacturing. The implementation of
robotic car manufacture from the 1970s onwards led to significant cost savings and improvements in the
reliability and flexibility of vehicle mass production. A new challenge to vehicle production is now on the
horizon and, again, it comes from automation. However, this time it is not to do with the manufacturing
process, but with the vehicles themselves.

Research projects on vehicle automation are not new. Vehicles with limited self-driving capabilities have
been around for more than 50 years, resulting in significant contributions towards driver assistance
systems. But since Google announced in 2010 that it had been trialling self-driving cars on the streets of
California, progress in this field has quickly gathered pace.

There are many reasons why technology is advancing so fast. One frequently cited motive is safety;
indeed, research at the UK’s Transport Research Laboratory has demonstrated that more than 90 percent
of road collisions involve human error as a contributory factor, and it is the primary cause in the vast
majority. Automation may help to reduce the incidence of this.

Another aim is to free the time people spend driving for other purposes. If the vehicle can do some or all
of the driving, it may be possible to be productive, to socialise or simply to relax while automation
systems have responsibility for safe control of the vehicle. If the vehicle can do the driving, those who are
challenged by existing mobility models – such as older or disabled travellers – may be able to enjoy
significantly greater travel autonomy.

Beyond these direct benefits, we can consider the wider implications for transport and society, and how
manufacturing processes might need to respond as a result. At present, the average car spends more
than 90 percent of its life parked. Automation means that initiatives for car-sharing become much more
viable, particularly in urban areas with significant travel demand. If a significant proportion of the
population choose to use shared automated vehicles, mobility demand can be met by far fewer vehicles.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology investigated automated mobility in Singapore, finding that
fewer than 30 percent of the vehicles currently used would be required if fully automated car sharing
could be implemented. If this is the case, it might mean that we need to manufacture far fewer vehicles
to meet demand. However, the number of trips being taken would probably increase, partly because
empty vehicles would have to be moved from one customer to the next.

35
Modelling work by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute suggests automated
vehicles might reduce vehicle ownership by 43 percent, but that vehicles’ average annual mileage double
as a result. As a consequence, each vehicle would be used more intensively, and might need replacing
sooner. This faster rate of turnover may mean that vehicle production will not necessarily decrease

Automation may prompt other changes in vehicle manufacture. If we move to a model where consumers
are tending not to own a single vehicle but to purchase access to a range of vehicle through a mobility
provider, drivers will have the freedom to select one that best suits their needs for a particular journey,
rather than making a compromise across all their requirements.

Since, for most of the time, most of the seats in most cars are unoccupied, this may boost production of
a smaller, more efficient range of vehicles that suit the needs of individuals. Specialised vehicles may
then be available for exceptional journeys, such as going on a family camping trip or helping a son or
daughter move to university.

There are a number of hurdles to overcome in delivering automated vehicles to our roads. These include
the technical difficulties in ensuring that the vehicle works reliably in the infinite range of traffic, weather
and road situations it might encounter; the regulatory challenges in understanding how liability and
enforcement might change when drivers are no longer essential for vehicle operation; and the societal
changes that may be required for communities to trust and accept automated vehicles as being a
valuable part of the mobility landscape.

It’s clear that there are many challenges that need to be addressed but, through robust and targeted
research, these can most probably be conquered within the next 10 years. Mobility will change in such
potentially significant ways and in association with so many other technological developments, such as
telepresence and virtual reality, that it is hard to make concrete predictions about the future. However,
one thing is certain: change is coming, and the need to be flexible in response to this will be vital for those
involved in manufacturing the vehicles that will deliver future mobility.

36
Questions 14-18

Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Which section contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

14 reference to the amount of time when a car is not in use

15 mention of several advantages of driverless vehicles for individual road-users

16 reference to the opportunity of choosing the most appropriate vehicle for each trip

17 an estimate of how long it will take to overcome a number of problems

18 a suggestion that the use of driverless cars may have no effect on the number of vehicles
manufactured

Questions 19-22

Complete the summary below.

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

Write your answers in boxes 19-22 on your answer sheet.

The impact of driverless cars

Figures from the Transport Research Laboratory indicate that most motor accidents are partly due
to 19……………………., so the introduction of driverless vehicles will result in greater safety. In addition to
the direct benefits of automation, it may bring other advantages. For example, schemes
for 20………………………. will be more workable, especially in towns and cities, resulting in fewer cars on
the road.

According to the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, there could be a 43 percent
drop in 21…………………….. of cars. However, this would mean that the yearly 22…………………….. of each
car would, on average, be twice as high as it currently is. this would lead to a higher turnover of vehicles,
and therefore no reduction in automotive manufacturing.

37
Questions 23 and 24

Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Write the correct letters in boxes 23 and 24 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO benefits of automated vehicles does the writer mention?

A Car travellers could enjoy considerable cost savings.

B It would be easier to find parking spaces in urban areas.

C Travellers could spend journeys doing something other than driving.

D People who find driving physically difficult could travel independently.

E A reduction in the number of cars would mean a reduction in pollution.

Questions 25 and 26

Choose TWO letters, A-E.

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

Which TWO challenges to automated vehicle development does the writer mention?

A making sure the general public has confidence in automated vehicles

B managing the pace of transition from conventional to automated vehicles

C deciding how to compensate professional drivers who become redundant

D setting up the infrastructure to make roads suitable for automated vehicles

E getting automated vehicles to adapt to various different driving conditions

38
EXERCISE 10
Should we try to bring extinct species back to life?
A

The passenger pigeon was a legendary species. Flying in vast numbers across North America, with
potentially many millions within a single flock, their migration was once one of nature’s great spectacles.
Sadly, the passenger pigeon’s existence came to an end on 1 September 1914, when the last living
specimen died at Cincinnati Zoo. Geneticist Ben Novak is lead researcher on an ambitious project which
now aims to bring the bird back to life through a process known as ‘de-extinction’. The basic premise
involves using cloning technology to turn the DNA of extinct animals into a fertilised embryo, which is
carried by the nearest relative still in existence – in this case, the abundant band-tailed pigeon – before
being born as a living, breathing animal. Passenger pigeons are one of the pioneering species in this field,
but they are far from the only ones on which this cutting-edge technology is being trialled.

In Australia, the thylacine, more commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger, is another extinct creature
which genetic scientists are striving to bring back to life. ‘There is no carnivore now in Tasmania that fills
the niche which thylacines once occupied,’ explains Michael Archer of the University of New South
Wales. He points out that in the decades since the thylacine went extinct, there has been a spread in a
‘dangerously debilitating’ facial tumour syndrome which threatens the existence of the Tasmanian devils,
the island’s other notorious resident. Thylacines would have prevented this spread because they would
have killed significant numbers of Tasmanian devils. ‘If that contagious cancer had popped up previously,
it would have burned out in whatever region it started. The return of thylacines to Tasmania could help to
ensure that devils are never again subjected to risks of this kind.’

If extinct species can be brought back to life, can humanity begin to correct the damage it has caused to
the natural world over the past few millennia? ‘The idea of de-extinction is that we can reverse this
process, bringing species that no longer exist back to life,’ says Beth Shapiro of University of California
Santa Cruz’s Genomics Institute. ‘I don’t think that we can do this. There is no way to bring back
something that is 100 per cent identical to a species that went extinct a long time ago.’ A more practical
approach for long-extinct species is to take the DNA of existing species as a template, ready for the
insertion of strands of extinct animal DNA to create something new; a hybrid, based on the living species,
but which looks and/or acts like the animal which died out.

This complicated process and questionable outcome begs the question: what is the actual point of this
technology? ‘For us, the goal has always been replacing the extinct species with a suitable replacement,’
explains Novak. ‘When it comes to breeding, band-tailed pigeons scatter and make maybe one or two

39
nests per hectare, whereas passenger pigeons were very social and would make 10,000 or more nests in
one hectare.’ Since the disappearance of this key species, ecosystems in the eastern US have suffered,
as the lack of disturbance caused by thousands of passenger pigeons wrecking trees and branches
means there has been minimal need for regrowth. This has left forests stagnant and therefore
unwelcoming to the plants and animals which evolved to help regenerate the forest after a disturbance.
According to Novak, a hybridized band-tailed pigeon, with the added nesting habits of a passenger
pigeon, could, in theory, re-establish that forest disturbance, thereby creating a habitat necessary for a
great many other native species to thrive.

Another popular candidate for this technology is the woolly mammoth. George Church, professor at
Harvard Medical School and leader of the Woolly Mammoth Revival Project, has been focusing on cold
resistance, the main way in which the extinct woolly mammoth and its nearest living relative, the Asian
elephant, differ. By pinpointing which genetic traits made it possible for mammoths to survive the icy
climate of the tundra, the project’s goal is to return mammoths, or a mammoth-like species, to the area.
‘My highest priority would be preserving the endangered Asian elephant,’ says Church, ‘expanding their
range to the huge ecosystem of the tundra. Necessary adaptations would include smaller ears, thicker
hair, and extra insulating fat, all for the purpose of reducing heat loss in the tundra, and all traits found in
the now extinct woolly mammoth.’ This repopulation of the tundra and boreal forests of Eurasia and North
America with large mammals could also be a useful factor in reducing carbon emissions – elephants
punch holes through snow and knock down trees, which encourages grass growth. This grass growth
would reduce temperature, and mitigate emissions from melting permafrost.

While the prospect of bringing extinct animals back to life might capture imaginations, it is, of course, far
easier to try to save an existing species which is merely threatened with extinction. ‘Many of the
technologies that people have in mind when they think about de-extinction can be used as a form of
“genetic rescue”,’ explains Shapiro. She prefers to focus the debate on how this emerging technology
could be used to fully understand why various species went extinct in the first place, and therefore how
we could use it to make genetic modifications which could prevent mass extinctions in the future. ‘I
would also say there’s an incredible moral hazard to not do anything at all,’ she continues. ‘We know that
what we are doing today is not enough, and we have to be willing to take some calculated and measured
risks.’

40
Questions 14-17

Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

14 a reference to how further disappearance of multiple species could be avoided.

15 explanation of a way of reproducing an extinct animal using the DNA of only that species

16 reference to a habitat which has suffered following the extinction of a species

17 mention of the exact point at which a particular species became extinct

Questions 18-22

Complete the summary below.

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

Write your answers in boxes 18-22 on your answer sheet.

The woolly mammoth revival project

Professor George Church and his team are trying to identify the 18…………………… which enabled
mammoths to live in the tundra. The findings could help preserve the mammoth’s close relative, the
endangered Asian elephant.

According to Church, introducing Asian elephants to the tundra would involve certain physical
adaptations to minimise 19…………………… To survive in the tundra, the species would need to have the
mammoth-like features of thicker hair, 20………………….. of a reduced size and more 21……………………..

Repopulating the tundra with mammoths or Asian elephant/mammoth hybrids would also have an
impact on the environment, which could help to reduce temperatures and decrease 22……………………

41
Questions 23-26

Look at the following statements (Questions 23-26) and the list of people below.

Match each statement with the correct person, A, B or C.

Write the correct letter, A, B or C, in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

23 Reintroducing an extinct species to its original habitat could improve the health of a particular
species living there.

24 It is important to concentrate on the causes of an animal’s extinction.

25 A species brought back from extinction could have an important beneficial impact on the vegetation
of its habitat.

26 Our current efforts at preserving biodiversity are insufficient.

List of People

A Ben Novak

B Michael Archer

C Beth Shapiro

42
EXERCISE 11
The Desolenator: producing clean water
A

Travelling around Thailand in the 1990s, William Janssen was impressed with the basic rooftop solar
heating systems that were on many homes, where energy from the sun was absorbed by a plate and then
used to heat water for domestic use. Two decades later Janssen developed that basic idea he saw in
Southeast Asia into a portable device that uses the power from the sun to purify water.

The Desolenator operates as a mobile desalination unit that can take water from different places, such as
the sea, rivers, boreholes and rain, and purify it for human consumption. It is particularly valuable in
regions where natural groundwater reserves have been polluted, or where seawater is the only water
source available.

Janssen saw that there was a need for a sustainable way to clean water is both the developing and the
developed countries when he moved to the United Arab Emirates and saw large-scale water processing. ‘I
was confronted with the enormous carbon footprint that the Gulf nations have because of all of the
desalination that they d o,’ he says.

The Desolenator can produce 15 litres of drinking water per day, enough to sustain a family for cooking
and drinking. Its main selling point is that unlike standard desalination techniques, it doesn’t require a
generated power supply: just sunlight. It measures 120 cm by 90 cm, and it easy to transport, thanks to
its two wheels. Water enters through a pipe, and flows as a thin film between a sheet of double glazing
and the surface of a solar panel, where it is heated by the sun. the warm water flows into a small boiler
(heated by a solar-powered battery) where it is converted to steam. When the steam cools, it becomes
distilled water. The device has a very simple filter to trap particles, and this can easily be shaken to
remove them. There are two tubes for liquid coming out: one for the waste – salt from seawater, fluoride,
etc. – and another for the distilled water. The performance of the unit is shown on an LCD screen and
transmitted to the company which provides servicing when necessary.

A recent analysis found that at least two-thirds of the world’s population lives with severe water scarcity
for at least a month every year. Janssen says that be 2030 half of the world’s population will be living with
water stress – where the demand exceeds the supply over a certain period of time. ‘It is really important
that a sustainable solution is brought to the market that is able to help these people,’ he says. Many
countries ‘don’t have the money for desalination plants, which are very expensive to build. They don’t
have the money to operate them, they are very maintenance intensive, and they don’t have the money to
buy the diesel to run the desalination plants, so it is a really bad situation.’
43
E

The device is aimed at a wide variety of users – from homeowners in the developing world who do not
have a constant supply of water to people living off the grid in rural parts of the US. The first commercial
versions of the Desolenator are expected to be in operation in India early next year, after field tests are
carried out. The market for the self-sufficient devices in developing countries is twofold – those who
cannot afford the money for the device outright and pay through microfinance, and middle-income
homes that can lease their own equipment. ‘People in India don’t pay for a fridge outright; they pay for it
over six months. They would put the Desolenator on their roof and hook it up to their municipal supply
and they would get very reliable drinking water on a daily basis,’ Janssen says. In the developed world, it is
aimed at niche markets where tap water is unavailable – for camping, on boats, or for the military, for
instance.

Prices will vary according to where it is bought. In the developing world, the price will depend on what
deal aid organisations can negotiate. In developed countries, it is likely to come in at $1,000 (£685) a unit,
said Janssen. ‘We are a venture with a social mission. We are aware that the product we have envisioned
is mainly finding application in the developing world and humanitarian sector and that this is the way we
will proceed. We do realise, though, that to be a viable company there is a bottom line to keep in mind,’ he
says.

The company itself is based at Imperial College London, although Janssen, its chief executive, still lives in
the UAE. It has raised £340,000 in funding so far. Within two years, he says, the company aims to be
selling 1,000 units a month, mainly in the humanitarian field. They are expected to be sold in areas such
as Australia, northern Chile, Peru, Texas and California.

44
Questions 14-20

Reading Passage 2 has nine paragraphs, A-H

Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below

Write the correct number, i-x, in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i Getting the finance for production

ii An unexpected benefit

iii From initial inspiration to new product

iv The range of potential customers for the device

v What makes the device different from alternatives

vi Cleaning water from a range of sources

vii Overcoming production difficulties

viii Profit not the primary goal

ix A warm welcome for the device

x The number of people affected by water shortages

14 Section A

15 Section B

16 Section C

17 Section D

18 Section E

19 Section F

20 Section G

45
Questions 21-26

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet.

How the Desolenator works

The energy required to operate the Desolenator comes from sunlight. The device can be used in different
locations, as it has 21……wheels…………… . Water is fed into a pipe, and a 22…film……………….. of water
flows over a
solar panel. The water then enters a boiler, where it turns into steam. Any particles in the water are
caught in a 23……filter…………… . The purified water comes out through one tube, and all types
of 24……waste…………… come out through another. A screen displays the 25……performance …………… of
the device, and
transmits the information to the company so that they know when the Desolenator
requires 26…… servicing ……………. .

46
EXERCISE 12
Silbo Gomero – the whistle ‘language’ of the Canary Islands
La Gomera is one of the Canary Islands situated in the Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of Africa.
This small volcanic island is mountainous, with steep rocky slopes and deep, wooded ravines, rising to
1,487 metres at its highest peak. It is also home to the best known of the world’s whistle ‘languages’, a
means of transmitting information over long distances which is perfectly adapted to the extreme terrain
of the island.

This ‘language’, known as ‘Silbo’ or ‘Silbo Gomero’ – from the Spanish word for ‘whistle’ – is now shedding
light on the language-processing abilities of the human brain, according to scientists. Researchers say
that Silbo activates parts of the brain normally associated with spoken language, suggesting that the
brain is remarkably flexible in its ability to interpret sounds as language.

‘Science has developed the idea of brain areas that are dedicated to language, and we are starting to
understand the scope of signals that can be recognised as language,’ says David Corina, co-author of a
recent study and associate professor of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Silbo is a substitute for Spanish, with individual words recoded into whistles which have high- and low-
frequency tones. A whistler – or silbador – puts a finger in his or her mouth to increase the whistle’s pitch,
while the other hand can be cupped to adjust the direction of the sound. ‘There is much more ambiguity
in the whistled signal than in the spoken signal,’ explains lead researcher Manuel Carreiras, psychology
professor at the University of La Laguna on the Canary island of Tenerife. Because whistled ‘words’ can
be hard to distinguish, silbadores rely on repetition, as well as awareness of context, to make themselves
understood.

The silbadores of Gomera are traditionally shepherds and other isolated mountain folk, and their novel
means of staying in touch allows them to communicate over distances of up to 10 kilometres. Carreiras
explains that silbadores are able to pass a surprising amount of information via their whistles. ‘In daily life
they use whistles to communicate short commands, but any Spanish sentence could be whistled.’ Silbo
has proved particularly useful when fires have occurred on the island and rapid communication across
large areas has been vital.

The study team used neuroimaging equipment to contrast the brain activity of silbadores while listening
to whistled and spoken Spanish. Results showed the left temporal lobe of the brain, which is usually
associated with spoken language, was engaged during the processing of Silbo. The researchers found
that other key regions in the brain’s frontal lobe also responded to the whistles, including those activated
in response to sign language among deaf people. When the experiments were repeated with non-
whistlers, however, activation was observed in all areas of the brain.

‘Our results provide more evidence about the flexibility of human capacity for language in a variety of
forms,’ Corina says. ‘These data suggest that left-hemisphere language regions are uniquely adapted for
communicative purposes, independent of the modality of signal. The non-Silbo speakers were not
47
recognising Silbo as a language. They had nothing to grab onto, so multiple areas of their brains were
activated.’

Carreiras says the origins of Silbo Gomero remain obscure, but that indigenous Canary Islanders, who
were of North African origin, already had a whistled language when Spain conquered the volcanic islands
in the 15th century. Whistled languages survive today in Papua New Guinea, Mexico, Vietnam, Guyana,
China, Nepal, Senegal, and a few mountainous pockets in southern Europe. There are thought to be as
many as 70 whistled languages still in use, though only 12 have been described and studied scientifically.
This form of communication is an adaptation found among cultures where people are often isolated from
each other, according to Julien Meyer, a researcher at the Institute of Human Sciences in Lyon, France.
‘They are mostly used in mountains or dense forests,’ he says. ‘Whistled languages are quite clearly
defined and represent an original adaptation of the spoken language for the needs of isolated human
groups.’

But with modern communication technology now widely available, researchers say whistled languages
like Silbo are threatened with extinction. With dwindling numbers of Gomera islanders still fluent in the
language, Canaries’ authorities are taking steps to try to ensure its survival. Since 1999, Silbo Gomero
has been taught in all of the island’s elementary schools. In addition, locals are seeking assistance from
the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). ‘The local authorities are
trying to get an award from the organisation to declare [Silbo Gomero] as something that should be
preserved for humanity,’ Carreiras adds.

48
Questions 14-19

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

In boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

14 La Gomera is the most mountainous of all the Canary Islands.

15 Silbo is only appropriate for short and simple messages.

16 In the brain-activity study, silbadores and non-whistlers produced different results.

17 The Spanish introduced Silbo to the islands in the 15th century.

18 There is precise data available regarding all of the whistle languages in existence today.

19 The children of Gomera now learn Silbo.

49
Questions 18-22

Complete the notes below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 20-26 on your answer sheet.

Silbo Gomero

How Silbo is produced

● high- and low-frequency tones represent different sounds in Spanish 20……………

● pitch of whistle is controlled using silbador’s 21……………

● 22………….. is changed with a cupped hand

How Silbo is used

● has long been used by shepherds and people living in secluded locations

● in everyday use for the transmission of brief 23……………

● can relay essential information quickly, e.g. to inform people about 24……………

The future of Silbo

● future under threat because of new 25……………

● Canaries’ authorities hoping to receive a UNESCO 26……………. to help preserve it

50
EXERCISE 13
The Step Pyramid of Djoser
A

The pyramids are the most famous monuments of ancient Egypt and still hold enormous interest for
people in the present day. These grand, impressive tributes to the memory of the Egyptian kings have
become linked with the country even though other cultures, such as the Chinese and Mayan, also built
pyramids. The evolution of the pyramid form has been written and argued about for centuries. However,
there is no question that, as far as Egypt is concerned, it began with one monument to one king designed
by one brilliant architect: the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara.

Djoser was the first king of the Third Dynasty of Egypt and the first to build in stone. Prior to Djoser’s reign,
tombs were rectangular monuments made of dried clay brick, which covered underground passages
where the deceased person was buried. For reasons which remain unclear, Djoser’s main official, whose
name was Imhotep, conceived of building a taller, more impressive tomb for his king by stacking stone
slabs on top of one another, progressively making them smaller, to form the shape now known as the
Step Pyramid. Djoser is thought to have reigned for 19 years, but some historians and scholars attribute a
much longer time for his rule, owing to the number and size of the monuments he built.

The Step Pyramid has been thoroughly examined and investigated over the last century, and it is now
known that the building process went through many different stages. Historian Marc Van de Mieroop
comments on this, writing ‘Much experimentation was involved, which is especially clear in the
construction of the pyramid in the center of the complex. It had several plans … before it became the first
Step Pyramid in history, piling six levels on top of one another … The weight of the enormous mass was a
challenge for the builders, who placed the stones at an inward incline in order to prevent the monument
breaking u p.’

When finally completed, the Step Pyramid rose 62 meters high and was the tallest structure of its time.
The complex in which it was built was the size of a city in ancient Egypt and included a temple,
courtyards, shrines, and living quarters for the priests. It covered a region of 16 hectares and was
surrounded by a wall 10.5 meters high. The wall had 13 false doors cut into it with only one true entrance
cut into the south-east corner; the entire wall was then ringed by a trench 750 meters long and 40 meters
wide. The false doors and the trench were incorporated into the complex to discourage unwanted visitors.
If someone wished to enter, he or she would have needed to know in advance how to find the location of
the true opening in the wall. Djoser was so proud of his accomplishment that he broke the tradition of
having only his own name on the monument and had Imhotep’s name carved on it as well.

51
E

The burial chamber of the tomb, where the king’s body was laid to rest, was dug beneath the base of the
pyramid, surrounded by a vast maze of long tunnels that had rooms off them to discourage robbers. One
of the most mysterious discoveries found inside the pyramid was a large number of stone vessels. Over
40,000 of these vessels, of various forms and shapes, were discovered in storerooms off the pyramid’s
underground passages. They are inscribed with the names of rulers from the First and Second Dynasties
of Egypt and made from different kinds of stone. There is no agreement among scholars and
archaeologists on why the vessels were placed in the tomb of Djoser or what they were supposed to
represent. The archaeologist Jean-Philippe Lauer, who excavated most of the pyramid and complex,
believes they were originally stored and then give a ‘proper burial’ by Djoser in his pyramid to honor his
predecessors. There are other historians, however, who claim the vessels were dumped into the shafts as
yet another attempt to prevent grave robbers from getting to the king’s burial chamber.

Unfortunately, all of the precautions and intricate design of the underground network did not prevent
ancient robbers from finding a way in. Djoser’s grave goods, and even his body, were stolen at some point
in the past and all archaeologists found were a small number of his valuables overlooked by the thieves.
There was enough left throughout the pyramid and its complex, however, to astonish and amaze the
archaeologists who excavated it.

Egyptologist Miroslav Verner writes, ‘Few monuments hold a place in human history as significant as that
of the Step Pyramid in Saqqara … It can be said without exaggeration that this pyramid complex
constitutes a milestone in the evolution of monumental stone architecture in Egypt and in the world as a
whole.’ The Step Pyramid was a revolutionary advance in architecture and became the archetype which
all the other great pyramid builders of Egypt would follow.

52
Questions 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, i-ix, in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i The areas and artefacts within the pyramid itself

ii A difficult task for those involved

iii A king who saved his people

iv A single certainty among other less definite facts

v An overview of the external buildings and areas

vi A pyramid design that others copied

vii An idea for changing the design of burial structures

viii An incredible experience despite the few remains

ix The answers to some unexpected questions

14 Paragraph A

15 Paragraph B

16 Paragraph C

17 Paragraph D

18 Paragraph E

19 Paragraph F

20 Paragraph G

53
Questions 21-24

Complete the notes below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 21-24 on your answer sheet.

The Step Pyramid of Djoser

The complex that includes the Step Pyramid and its surroundings is considered to be as big as an
Egyptian 21 ………………….. of the past. The area outside the pyramid included accommodation that was
occupied by 22 ………………….., along with many other buildings and features.

A wall ran around the outside of the complex and a number of false entrances were built into this. In
addition, a long 23 ………………….. encircled the wall. As a result, any visitors who had not been invited
were cleverly prevented from entering the pyramid grounds unless they knew the 24 ………………….. of the
real entrance.

Questions 25-26

Choose TWO letters, A-E.

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

Which TWO of the following points does the writer make about King Djoser?

A Initially he had to be persuaded to build in stone rather than clay.

B There is disagreement concerning the length of his reign.

C He failed to appreciate Imhotep’s part in the design of the Step Pyramid.

D A few of his possessions were still in his tomb when archaeologists found it.

E He criticised the design and construction of other pyramids in Egypt.

54
EXERCISE 14
I contain multitudes
Wendy Moore reviews Ed Yong’s book about microbes

Microbes, most of them bacteria, have populated this planet since long before animal life developed and
they will outlive us. Invisible to the naked eye, they are ubiquitous. They inhabit the soil, air, rocks and
water and are present within every form of life, from seaweed and coral to dogs and humans. And, as
Yong explains in his utterly absorbing and hugely important book we mess with them at our peril.

Every species has its own colony of microbes, called a ‘microbiome’, and these microbes vary not only
between species but also between individuals and within different parts of each individual. What is
amazing is that while the number of human cells in the average person is about 30 trillion, the number of
microbial ones is higher – about 39 trillion. At best, Yong informs us, we are only 50 per cent human.
Indeed, some scientists even suggest we should think of each species and its microbes as a single unit,
dubbed a ‘holobiont’.

In each human there are microbes that live only in the stomach, the mouth or the armpit and by and large
they do so peacefully. So ‘bad’ microbes are just microbes out of context. Microbes that sit contentedly in
the human gut (where there are more microbes than there are stars in the galaxy) can become deadly if
they find their way into the bloodstream. These communities are constantly changing too. The right hand
shares just one sixth of its microbes with the left hand. And, of course, we are surrounded by microbes.
Every time we eat, we swallow a million microbes in each gram of food; we are continually swapping
microbes with other humans, pets and the world at large.

It’s a fascinating topic and Yong, a young British science journalist, is an extraordinarily adept guide.
Writing with lightness and panache, he has a knack of explaining complex science in terms that are both
easy to understand and totally enthralling. Yong is on a mission. Leading us gently by the hand, he takes
us into the world of microbes – a bizarre, alien planet – in a bid to persuade us to love them as much as he
does. By the end, we do.

For most of human history we had no idea that microbes existed. The first man to see these
extraordinarily potent creatures was a Dutch lens-maker called Antony van Leeuwenhoek in the 1670s.
Using microscopes of his own design that could magnify up to 270 times, he examined a drop of water
from a nearby lake and found it teeming with tiny creatures he called ‘animalcules’. It wasn’t until nearly
two hundred years later that the research of French biologist Louis Pasteur indicated that some microbes
caused disease. It was Pasteur’s ‘germ theory’ that gave bacteria the poor image that endures today.

Yong’s book is in many ways a plea for microbial tolerance, pointing out that while fewer than one
hundred species of bacteria bring disease, many thousands more play a vital role in maintaining our
health. The book also acknowledges that our attitude towards bacteria is not a simple one. We tend to
see the dangers posed by bacteria, yet at the same time we are sold yoghurts and drinks that supposedly
nurture ‘friendly’ bacteria. In reality, says Yong, bacteria should not be viewed as either friends or foes,
55
villains or heroes. Instead we should realise we have a symbiotic relationship, that can be mutually
beneficial or mutually destructive.

What then do these millions of organisms do? The answer is pretty much everything. New research is now
unravelling the ways in which bacteria aid digestion, regulate our immune systems, eliminate toxins,
produce vitamins, affect our behaviour and even combat obesity. ‘They actually help us become who we
are,’ says Yong. But we are facing a growing problem. Our obsession with hygiene, our overuse of
antibiotics and our unhealthy, low-fibre diets are disrupting the bacterial balance and may be responsible
for soaring rates of allergies and immune problems, such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

The most recent research actually turns accepted norms upside down. For example, there are studies
indicating that the excessive use of household detergents and antibacterial products actually destroys
the microbes that normally keep the more dangerous germs at bay. Other studies show that keeping a
dog as a pet gives children early exposure to a diverse range of bacteria, which may help protect them
against allergies later.

The readers of Yong’s book must be prepared for a decidedly unglamorous world. Among the less
appealing case studies is one about a fungus that is wiping out entire populations of frogs and that can
be halted by a rare microbial bacterium. Another is about squid that carry luminescent bacteria that
protect them against predators. However, if you can overcome your distaste for some of the
investigations, the reasons for Yong ’s enthusiasm become clear. The microbial world is a place of
wonder. Already, in an attempt to stop mosquitoes spreading dengue fever – a disease that infects 400
million people a year – mosquitoes are being loaded with a bacterium to block the disease. In the future,
our ability to manipulate microbes means we could construct buildings with useful microbes built into
their walls to fight off infections. Just imagine a neonatal hospital ward coated in a specially mixed
cocktail of microbes so that babies get the best start in life.

56
Questions 14-16

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

Write the correct letter in boxes 14-16 on your answer sheet.

14 What point does the writer make about microbes in the first paragraph?

A They adapt quickly to their environment.

B The risk they pose has been exaggerated.

C They are more plentiful in animal life than plant life.

D They will continue to exist for longer than the human race.

15 In the second paragraph, the writer is impressed by the fact that

A each species tends to have vastly different microbes.

B some parts of the body contain relatively few microbes.

C the average individual has more microbial cells than human ones.

D scientists have limited understanding of how microbial cells behave.

16 What is the writer doing in the fifth paragraph?

A explaining how a discovery was made

B comparing scientists’ theories about microbes

C describing confusion among scientists

D giving details of how microbes cause disease

57
Questions 17-20

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

Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 17-20 on your answer sheet.

We should be more tolerant of microbes

Yong’s book argues that we should be more tolerant of microbes. Many have a beneficial effect, and only
a relatively small number lead to 17 ………………… . And although it is misleading to think of microbes as
‘friendly’, we should also stop thinking of them as the enemy. In fact, we should accept that our
relationship with microbes is one based on 18 ………………… .

New research shows that microbes have numerous benefits for humans. Amongst other things, they aid
digestion, remove poisons, produce vitamins and may even help reduce obesity. However, there is a
growing problem. Our poor 19 …………………, our overuse of antibiotics, and our excessive focus
on 20 ………………… are upsetting the bacterial balance and may be contributing to the huge increase in
allergies and immune system problems.

A solution B partnership C destruction

D exaggeration E cleanliness F regulations

G illness H nutrition

Questions 21-26

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

In boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

21 It is possible that using antibacterial products in the home fails to have the desired effect.

22 It is a good idea to ensure that children come into contact with as few bacteria as possible.

23 Yong’s book contains more cause studies than are necessary.

24 The case study about bacteria that prevent squid from being attacked may have limited appeal.

25 Efforts to control dengue fever have been surprisingly successful

26 Microbes that reduce the risk of infection have already been put inside the walls of some hospital
wards.

58
EXERCISE 15
Climate change reveals ancient artefacts in Norway’s glaciers
A

Well above the treeline in Norway’s highest mountains, ancient fields of ice are shrinking as Earth’s
climate warms. As the ice has vanished, it has been giving up the treasures it has preserved in cold
storage for the last 6,000 years – items such as ancient arrows and skis from Viking Age* traders. And
those artefacts have provided archaeologists with some surprising insights into how ancient Norwegians
made their livings.

———–

*Viking Age: a period of European history from around 700 CE to around 1050 CE when Scandinavian
Vikings migrated throughout Europe by means of trade and warfare

Organic materials like textiles and hides are relatively rare finds at archaeological sites. This is because
unless they’re protected from the microorganisms that cause decay, they tend no to last long. Extreme
cold is one reliable way to keep artefacts relatively fresh for a few thousand years, but once thawed out,
these materials experience degradation relatively swiftly.

With climate change shrinking ice cover around the world, glacial archaeologists need to race the clock
to find newly revealed artefacts, preserve them, and study them. If something fragile dries and is
windblown it might very soon be lost to science, or an arrow might be exposed and then covered again by
the next snow and remain well-preserved. The unpredictability means that glacial archaeologists have to
be systematic in their approach to fieldwork.

Over a nine-year period, a team of archaeologists, which included Lars Pilø of Oppland County Council,
Norway, and James Barrett of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, surveyed patches of
ice in Oppland, an area of south-central Norway that is home to some of the country’s highest
mountains. Reindeer once congregated on these ice patches in the later summer months to escape
biting insects, and from the late Stone Age**, hunters followed. In addition, trade routes threaded through
the mountain passes of Oppland, linking settlements in Norway to the rest of Europe.

The slow but steady movement of glaciers tends to destroy anything at their bases, so the team focused
on stationary patches of ice, mostly above 1,400 metres. That ice is found amid fields of frost-weathered
boulders, fallen rocks, and exposed bedrock that for nine months of the year is buried beneath snow.

‘Fieldwork is hard work – hiking with all our equipment, often camping on permafrost – but very
rewarding. You’re rescuing the archaeology, bringing the melting ice to wider attention, discovering a
unique environmental history and really connecting with the natural environment,’ says Barrett.
59
—————

**The Stone Age: a period in early history that began about 3.4 million years ago

At the edges of the contracting ice patches, archaeologists found more than 2,000 artefacts, which
formed a material record that ran from 4,000 BCE to the beginnings of the Renaissance in the 14th
century. Many of the artefacts are associated with hunting. Hunters would have easily misplaced arrows
and they often discarded broken bows rather than take them all the way home. Other items could have
been used by hunters traversing the high mountain passes of Oppland: all-purpose items like tools, skis,
and horse tack.

Barrett’s team radiocarbon-dated 153 of the artefacts and compared those dates to the timing of major
environmental changes in the region – such as periods of cooling or warming – and major social and
economic shifts – such as the growth of farming settlements and the spread of international trade
networks leading up to the Viking Age. They found that some periods had produced lots of artefacts,
which indicates that people had been pretty active in the mountains during those times. But there were
few or no signs of activity during other periods.

What was surprising, according to Barrett, was the timing of these periods. Oppland’s mountains present
daunting terrain and in periods of extreme cold, glaciers could block the higher mountain passes and
make travel in the upper reaches of the mountains extremely difficult. Archaeologists assumed people
would stick to lower elevations during a time like the Late Antique Little Ice Age, a short period of deeper-
than-usual cold from about 536-600 CE. But it turned out that hunters kept regularly venturing into the
mountains even when the climate turned cold, based on the amount of stuff they had apparently
dropped there.

‘Remarkably, though, the finds from the ice may have continued through this period, perhaps suggesting
that the importance of mountain hunting increased to supplement failing agricultural harvests in times of
low temperatures,’ says Barrett. A colder turn in the Scandinavian climate would likely have meant
widespread crop failures, so more people would have depended on hunting to make up for those losses.

Many of the artefacts Barrett’s team recovered date from the beginning of the Viking Age, the 700s
through to the 900s CE. Trade networks connecting Scandinavia with Europe and the Middle East were
expanding around this time. Although we usually think of ships when we think of Scandinavian expansion,
these recent discoveries show that plenty of goods travelled on overland routes, like the mountain passes
of Oppland. And growing Norwegian towns, along with export markets, would have created a booming
demand for hides to fight off the cold, as well as antlers to make useful things like combs. Business must
have been good for hunters.
60
H

Norway’s mountains are probably still hiding a lot of history – and prehistory – in remote ice patches.
When Barrett’s team looked at the dates for their sample of 153 artefacts, they noticed a gap with almost
no artefacts from about 3,800 to 2,200 BCE. In fact, archaeological finds from that period are rare all over
Norway. The researchers say that could be because many of those artefacts have already disintegrated or
are still frozen in the ice. That means archaeologists could be extracting some of those artefacts from
retreating ice in years to come.

Questions 14-19

Reading Passage 2 has eight sections, A-H.

Which section contains the following information?

Write the correct number, A-H, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

14 an explanation for weapons being left behind in the mountains

15 a reference to the physical difficulties involved in an archaeological expedition

16 an explanation of why less food may have been available

17 a reference to the possibility of future archaeological discoveries

18 examples of items that would have been traded

19 a reference to the pressure archaeologists are under to work quickly

61
Questions 20-22

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

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

Interesting finds at an archaeological site

Organic materials such as animal skins and textiles are not discovered very often at archaeological sites.
They have little protection against 20 …………………, which means that they decay relatively quickly. But
this is not always the case. If temperatures are low enough, fragile artefacts can be preserved for
thousands of years.

A team of archaeologists have been working in the mountains in Oppland in Norway to recover artefacts
revealed by shrinking ice cover. In the past, there were trade routes through these mountains
and 21 ………………… gathered there in the summer months to avoid being attacked by 22 …………………
on lower ground. The people who used these mountains left things behind and it is those objects that are
of interest to archaeologists.

Questions 23 and 24

Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Write the correct letters in boxes 23 and 24 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO of the following statements does the writer make about the discoveries of Barrett’s team?

A Artefacts found in the higher mountain passes were limited to skiing equipment.

B Hunters went into the mountains even during periods of extreme cold.

C The number of artefacts from certain time periods was relatively low.

D Radiocarbon dating of artefacts produced some unreliable results.

E More artefacts were found in Oppland than at any other mountain site.

62
Questions 25 and 26

Choose TWO letters, A-E.

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

Which TWO of the following statements does the writer make about the Viking Age?

A Hunters at this time benefited from an increased demand for goods.

B The beginning of the period saw the greatest growth in the wealth of Vikings.

C Vikings did not rely on ships alone to transport goods.

D Norwegian towns at this time attracted traders from around the world.

E Vikings were primarily interested in their trading links with the Middle East.

63
EXERCISE 16
Changes in reading habits
What are the implications of the way we read today?

Look around on your next plane trip. The iPad is the new pacifier for babies and toddlers. Younger school-
aged children read stories on smartphones; older kids don’t read at all, but hunch over video games.
Parents and other passengers read on tablets or skim a flotilla of email and news feeds. Unbeknown to
most of us, an invisible, game-changing transformation links everyone in this picture: the neuronal circuit
that underlies the brain’s ability to read is subtly, rapidly changing and this has implications for everyone
from the pre-reading toddler to the expert adult.

As work in neurosciences indicates, the acquisition of literacy necessitated a new circuit in our species’
brain more than 6,000 years ago. That circuit evolved from a very simple mechanism for decoding basic
information, like the number of goats in one’s herd, to the present, highly elaborated reading brain. My
research depicts how the present reading brain enables the development of some of our most important
intellectual and affective processes: internalized knowledge, analogical reasoning, and inference;
perspective-taking and empathy; critical analysis and the generation of insight. Research surfacing in
many parts of the world now cautions that each of these essential ‘deep reading’ processes may be
under threat as we move into digital-based modes of reading.

This is not a simple, binary issue of print versus digital reading and technological innovations. As MIT
scholar Sherry Turkle has written, we do not err as a society when we innovate but when we ignore what
we disrupt or diminish while innovating. In this hinge moment between print and digital cultures, society
needs to confront what is diminishing in the expert reading circuit, what our children and older students
are not developing, and what we can do about it.

We know from research that the reading circuit is not given to human beings through a genetic blueprint
like vision or language; it needs an environment to develop. Further, it will adapt to that environment’s
requirements – from different writing systems to the characteristics of whatever medium is used. If the
dominant medium advantages processes that are fast, multi-task oriented and well-suited for large
volumes of information, like the current digital medium, so will the reading circuit. As UCLA psychologist
Patricia Greenfield writes, the result is that less attention and time will be allocated to slower, time-
demanding deep reading processes.

Increasing reports from educators and from researchers in psychology and the humanities bear this out.
English literature scholar and teacher Mark Edmundson describes how many college students actively
avoid the classic literature of the 19th and 20th centuries in favour of something simpler as they no longer
have the patience to read longer, denser, more difficult texts. We should be less concerned with students’
‘cognitive impatience’, however, than by what may underlie it: the potential inability of large numbers of
students to read with a level of critical analysis sufficient to comprehend the complexity of thought and
argument found in more demanding texts.

64
Multiple studies show that digital screen use may be causing a variety of troubling downstream effects on
reading comprehension in older high school and college students. In Stavanger, Norway, psychologist
Anne Mangen and colleagues studied how high school students comprehend the same material in
different mediums. Mangen’s group asked subjects questions about a short story whose plot had
universal student appeal; half of the students read the story on a tablet, the other half in paperback.
Results indicated that students who read on print were superior in their comprehension to screen-
reading peers, particularly in their ability to sequence detail and reconstruct the plot in chronological
order.

Ziming Liu from San Jose State University has conducted a series of studies which indicate that the ‘new
norm’ in reading is skimming, involving word-spotting and browsing through the text. Many readers now
use a pattern when reading in which they sample the first line and then word-spot through the rest of the
text. When the reading brain skims like this, it reduces time allocated to deep reading processes. In other
words, we don’t have time to grasp complexity, to understand another’s feelings, to perceive beauty, and
to create thoughts of the reader’s own.

The possibility that critical analysis, empathy and other deep reading processes could become the
unintended ‘collateral damage’ of our digital culture is not a straightforward binary issue about print
versus digital reading. It is about how we all have begun to read o various mediums and how that changes
not only what we read, but also the purposes for which we read. Nor is it only about the young. The subtle
atrophy of critical analysis and empathy affects us all equally. It affects our ability to navigate a constant
bombardment of information. It incentivizes a retreat to the most familiar stores of unchecked
information, which require and receive no analysis, leaving us susceptible to false information and
irrational ideas.

There’s an old rule in neuroscience that does not alter with age: use it or lose it. It is a very hopeful
principle when applied to critical thought in the reading brain because it implies choice. The story of the
changing reading brain is hardly finished. We possess both the science and the technology to identify and
redress the changes in how we read before they become entrenched. If we work to understand exactly
what we will lose, alongside the extraordinary new capacities that the digital world has brought us, there
is as much reason for excitement as caution.

65
Questions 14-17

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

Write the correct letter in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

14 What is the writer’s main point in the first paragraph?

A Our use of technology is having a hidden effect on us.

B Technology can be used to help youngsters to read.

C Travellers should be encouraged to use technology on planes.

D Playing games is a more popular use of technology than reading.

15 What main point does Sherry Turkle make about innovation?

A Technological innovation has led to a reduction in print reading.

B We should pay attention to what might be lost when innovation occurs.

C We should encourage more young people to become involved in innovation.

D There is a difference between developing products and developing ideas.

16 What point is the writer making in the fourth paragraph?

A Humans have an inborn ability to read and write.

B Reading can be done using many different mediums.

C Writing systems make unexpected demands on the brain.

D Some brain circuits adjust to whatever is required of them.

17 According to Mark Edmundson, the attitude of college students

A has changed the way he teaches.

B has influenced what they select to read.

C does not worry him as much as it does others.

D does not match the views of the general public.

66
Questions 18-22

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

Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 18-22 on your answer sheet.

Studies on digital screen use

There have been many studies on digital screen use, showing some 18 ………………… trends. Psychologist
Anne Mangen gave high-school students a short story to read, half using digital and half using print
mediums. Her team then used a question-and-answer technique to find out how 19 ………………… each
group’s understanding of the plot was. The findings showed a clear pattern in the responses, with those
who read screens finding the order of information 20 ………………… to recall.

Studies by Ziming Liu show that students are tending to read 21 ………………… words and phrases in a text
to save time. This approach, she says, gives the reader a superficial understanding of the 22 …………………
content of material, leaving no time for thought.

A fast B isolated C emotional D worrying

E many F hard G combined H thorough

Questions 23-26

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

In boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the views of the writer

FALSE if the statement contradicts the views of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

23 The medium we use to read can affect our choice of reading content.

24 Some age groups are more likely to lose their complex reading skills than others.

25 False information has become more widespread in today’s digital era.

26 We still have opportunities to rectify the problems that technology is presenting.

67
EXERCISE 17
Stadiums: past, present and future
A

Stadiums are among the oldest forms of urban architecture: vast stadiums where the public could watch
sporting events were at the centre of western city life as far back as the ancient Greek and Roman
Empires, well before the construction of the great medieval cathedrals and the grand 19th- and 20th-
century railway stations which dominated urban skylines in later eras.

Today, however, stadiums are regarded with growing scepticism. Construction costs can soar above £1
billion, and stadiums finished for major events such as the Olympic Games or the FIFA World Cup have
notably fallen into disuse and disrepair.

But this need not be the cause. History shows that stadiums can drive urban development and adapt to
the culture of every age. Even today, architects and planners are finding new ways to adapt the mono-
functional sports arenas which became emblematic of modernisation during the 20th century.

The amphitheatre* of Arles in southwest France, with a capacity of 25,000 spectators, is perhaps the best
example of just how versatile stadiums can be. Built by the Romans in 90 AD, it became a fortress with
four towers after the fifth century, and was then transformed into a village containing more than 200
houses. With the growing interest in conservation during the 19th century, it was converted back into an
arena for the staging of bullfights, thereby returning the structure to its original use as a venue for public
spectacles.

Another example is the imposing arena of Verona in northern Italy, with space for 30,000 spectators,
which was built 60 years before the Arles amphitheatre and 40 years before Rome’s famous Colosseum.
It has endured the centuries and is currently considered one of the world’s prime sites for opera, thanks
to its outstanding acoustics.

The area in the centre of the Italian town of Lucca, known as the Piazza dell’ Anfiteatro, is yet another
impressive example of an amphitheatre becoming absorbed into the fabric of the city. The site evolved in
a similar way to Arles and was progressively filled with buildings from the Middle Ages until the 19th
century, variously used as houses, a salt depot and a prison. But rather than reverting to an arena, it
became a market square, designed by Romanticist architect Lorenzo Nottolini. Today, the ruins of the
amphitheatre remain embedded in the various shops and residences surrounding the public square.

There are many similarities between modern stadiums and the ancient amphitheatres intended for
games. But some of the flexibility was lost at the beginning of the 20th century, as stadiums were
68
developed using new products such as steel and reinforced concrete, and made use of bright lights for
night-time matches.

Many such stadiums are situated in suburban areas, designed for sporting use only and surrounded by
parking lots. These factors mean that they may not be as accessible to the general public, require more
energy to run and contribute to urban heat.

But many of today’s most innovative architects see scope for the stadium to help improve the city. Among
the current strategies, two seem to be having particular success: the stadium as an urban hub, and as a
power plant.

There’s a growing trend for stadiums to be equipped with public spaces and services that serve a function
beyond sport, such as hotels, retail outlets, conference centres, restaurants and bars, children’s
playgrounds and green space. Creating mixed-use developments such as this reinforces compactness
and multi-functionality, making more efficient use of land and helping to regenerate urban spaces.

This opens the space up to families and a wider cross-section of society, instead of catering only to
sportspeople and supporters. There have been many examples of this in the UK: the mixed-use facilities
at Wembley and Old Trafford have become a blueprint for many other stadiums in the world.

The phenomenon of stadium as power stations has arisen from the idea that energy problems can be
overcome by integrating interconnected buildings by means of a smart grid, which is an electricity supply
network that uses digital communications technology to detect and react to local changes in usage,
without significant energy losses. Stadiums are ideal for these purposes, because their canopies have a
large surface area for fitting photovoltaic panels and rise high enough (more than 40 metres) to make use
of micro wind turbines.

Freiburg Mage Solar Stadium in Germany is the first of a new wave of stadiums as power plants, which
also includes the Amsterdam Arena and the Kaohsiung Stadium. The latter, inaugurated in 2009, has
8,844 photovoltaic panels producing up to 1.14 GWh of electricity annually. This reduces the annual
output of carbon dioxide by 660 tons and supplies up to 80 percent of the surrounding area when the
stadium is not in use. This is proof that a stadium can serve its city, and have a decidedly positive impact
in terms of reduction of CO2 emissions.

Sporting arenas have always been central to the life and culture of cities. In every era, the stadium has
acquired new value and uses: from military fortress to residential village, public space to theatre and
most recently a field for experimentation in advanced engineering. The stadium of today now brings
together multiple functions, thus helping cities to create a sustainable future.

—————-

69
* amphitheatre: (especially in Greek and Roman architecture) an open circular or oval building with a
central space surrounded by tiers of seats for spectators, for the presentation of dramatic or sporting
events

Questions 14-17

Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Which section contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

14 a mention of negative attitudes towards stadium building projects

15 figures demonstrating the environmental benefits of a certain stadium

16 examples of the wide range of facilities available at some new stadiums

17 reference to the disadvantages of the stadiums built during a certain era

Questions 18-22

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 18-22 on your answer sheet.

Roman amphitheatres

The Roman stadium of Europe have proved very versatile. The amphitheatre of Arles, for example, was
converted first into a 18 ……………………, then into a residential area and finally into an arena where
spectators could watch 19 …………………… . Meanwhile, the arena in Verona, one of the oldest Roman
amphitheatres, is famous today as a venue where 20 …………………… is performed. The site of Lucca’s
amphitheatre has also been used for many purposes over the centuries, including the storage
of 21 …………………… . It is now a market square with 22 …………………… and homes incorporated into the
remains of the Roman amphitheatre.

70
Questions 23-24

Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Write the correct letters in boxes 23 and 24 on your answer sheet.

When comparing twentieth-century stadiums to ancient amphitheatres in Section D,

which TWO negative features does the writer mention?

A They are less imaginatively designed.

B They are less spacious.

C They are in less convenient locations.

D They are less versatile.

E They are made of less durable materials

Questions 25-26

Choose TWO letters, A-E.

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

Which TWO advantages of modern stadium design does the writer mention?

A offering improved amenities for the enjoyment of sports events

B bringing community life back into the city environment

C facilitating research into solar and wind energy solutions

D enabling local residents to reduce their consumption of electricity

E providing a suitable site for the installation of renewable power generators

71
EXERCISE 18
A second attempt at domesticating the tomato
A

It took at least 3,000 years for humans to learn how to domesticate the wild tomato and cultivate it for
food. Now two separate teams in Brazil and China have done it all over again in less than three years. And
they have done it better in some ways, as the re-domesticated tomatoes are more nutritious than the
ones we eat at present.

This approach relies on the revolutionary CRISPR genome editing technique, in which changes are
deliberately made to the DNA of a living cell, allowing genetic material to be added, removed or altered.
The technique could not only improve existing crops, but could also be used to turn thousands of wild
plants into useful and appealing foods. In fact, a third team in the US has already begun to do this with a
relative of the tomato called the groundcherry.

This fast-track domestication could help make the world’s food supply healthier and far more resistant to
diseases, such as the rust fungus devastating wheat crops.

‘This could transform what we eat,’ says Jorg Kudla at the University of Munster in Germany, a member of
the Brazilian team. ‘There are 50,000 edible plants in the world, but 90 percent of our energy comes from
just 15 crops.’

‘We can now mimic the known domestication course of major crops like rice, maize, sorghum or others,’
says Caixia Gao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. ‘Then we might try to domesticate plants
that have never been domesticated.’

Wild tomatoes, which are native to the Andes region in South America, produce pea-sized fruits. Over
many generations, peoples such as the Aztecs and Incas transformed the plant by selecting and breeding
plants with mutations* in their genetic structure, which resulted in desirable traits such as larger fruit.

But every time a single plant with a mutation is taken from a larger population for breeding, much genetic
diversity is lost. And sometimes the desirable mutations come with less desirable traits. For instance, the
tomato strains grown for supermarkets have lost much of their flavour.

By comparing the genomes of modern plants to those of their wild relatives, biologists have been working
out what genetic changes occurred as plants were domesticated. The teams in Brazil and China have
now used this knowledge to reintroduce these changes from scratch while maintaining or even
enhancing the desirable traits of wild strains.

72
Kudla’s team made six changes altogether. For instance, they tripled the size of fruit by editing a gene
called FRUIT WEIGHT, and increased the number of tomatoes per truss by editing another called
MULTIFLORA.

While the historical domestication of tomatoes reduced levels of the red pigment lycopene – thought to
have potential health benefits – the team in Brazil managed to boost it instead. The wild tomato has twice
as much lycopene as cultivated ones; the newly domesticated one has five times as much.

‘They are quite tasty,’ says Kudla. ‘A little bit strong. And very aromatic.’

The team in China re-domesticated several strains of wild tomatoes with desirable traits lost in
domesticated tomatoes. In this way they managed to create a strain resistant to a common disease
called bacterial spot race, which can devastate yields. They also created another strain that is more salt
tolerant – and has higher levels of vitamin C.

Meanwhile, Joyce Van Eck at the Boyce Thompson Institute in New York state decided to use the same
approach to domesticate the groundcherry or goldenberry (Physalis pruinosa) for the first time. This fruit
looks similar to the closely related Cape gooseberry (Physalis peruviana).

Groundcherries are already sold to a limited extent in the US but they are hard to produce because the
plant has a sprawling growth habit and the small fruits fall off the branches when ripe. Van Eck’s team has
edited the plants to increase fruit size, make their growth more compact and to stop fruits dropping.
‘There’s potential for this to be a commercial crop,’ says Van Eck. But she adds that taking the work
further would be expensive because of the need to pay for a licence for the CRISPR technology and get
regulatory approval.

This approach could boost the use of many obscure plants, says Jonathan Jones of the Sainsbury Lab in
the UK. But it will be hard for new foods to grow so popular with farmers and consumers that they
become new staple crops, he thinks.

The three teams already have their eye on other plants that could be ‘catapulted into the mainstream’,
including foxtail, oat-grass and cowpea. By choosing wild plants that are drought or heat tolerant, says
Gao, we could create crops that will thrive even as the planet warms.

But Kudla didn’t want to reveal which species were in his team’s sights, because CRISPR has made the
process so easy. ‘Any one with the right skills could go to their lab and do this.’

———————-

* mutations: changes in an organism’s genetic structure that can be passed down to later generations

73
Questions 14-18

Reading Passage 2 has five paragraphs, A-E.

Which section contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

14 a reference to a type of tomato that can resist a dangerous infection.

15 an explanation of how problems can arise from focusing only on a certain type of tomato plant.

16 a number of examples of plants that are not cultivated at present but could be useful as food
sources.

17 a comparison between the early domestication of the tomato and more recent research

18 a personal reaction to the flavour of a tomato that has been genetically edited

Questions 19-23

Look at the following statements (Questions 19-23) and the list of researchers below.

Match each statement with the correct researcher, A-D.

Write the correct letter, A-D, in boxes 19-23 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

19 Domestication of certain plants could allow them to adapt to future environmental challenges.

20 The idea of growing and eating unusual plants may not be accepted on a large scale.

21 It is not advisable for the future direction of certain research to be made public.

22 Present efforts to domesticate one wild fruit are limited by the costs involved.

23 Humans only make use of a small proportion of the plant food available on Earth.

List of Researchers

A Jorg Kudla

B Caixia Gao

C Joyce Van Eck

D Jonathan Jones

74
Questions 24-26

Complete the sentences below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.

24 An undesirable trait such as loss of ……………………… may be caused by a mutation in a tomato gene.

25 By modifying one gene in a tomato plant, researchers made the tomato three times its
original ………………………

26 A type of tomato which was not badly affected by ………………………, and was rich in vitamin C, was
produced by a team of researchers in China.

75
EXERCISE 19
Palm oil
A

Palm oil is an edible oil derived from the fruit of the African oil palm tree, and is currently the most
consumed vegetable oil in the world. It’s almost certainly in the soap we wash with in the morning, the
sandwich we have for lunch, and the biscuits we snack on during the day. Why is palm oil so attractive for
manufacturers? Primarily because its unique properties – such as remaining solid at room temperature –
make it an ideal ingredient for long-term preservation, allowing many packaged foods on supermarket
shelves to have ‘best before’ dates of months, even years, into the future.

Many farmers have seized the opportunity to maximise the planting of oil palm trees. Between 1990 and
2012, the global land area devoted to growing oil palm trees grew from 6 to 17 million hectares, now
accounting for around ten percent of total cropland in the entire world. From a mere two million tonnes of
palm oil being produced annually globally 50 years ago, there are now around 60 million tonnes produced
every single year, a figure looking likely to double or even triple by the middle of the century.

However, there are multiple reasons why conservationists cite the rapid spread of oil palm plantations as
a major concern. There are countless news stories of deforestation, habitat destruction and dwindling
species populations, all as a direct result of land clearing to establish oil palm tree monoculture on an
industrial scale, particularly in Malaysia and Indonesia. Endangered species – most famously the
Sumatran orangutan, but also rhinos, elephants, tigers, and numerous other fauna – have suffered from
the unstoppable spread of oil palm plantations.

‘Palm oil is surely one of the greatest threats to global biodiversity,’ declares Dr Farnon Ellwood of the
University of the West of England, Bristol. ‘Palm oil is replacing rainforest, and rainforest is where all the
species are. That’s a problem.’ This has led to some radical questions among environmentalists, such as
whether consumers should try to boycott palm oil entirely.

Meanwhile Bhavani Shankar, Professor at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, argues, ‘It’s
easy to say that palm oil is the enemy and we should be against it. It makes for a more dramatic story, and
it’s very intuitive. But given the complexity of the argument, I think a much more nuanced story is closer to
the truth.’

One response to the boycott movement has been the argument for the vital role palm oil plays in lifting
many millions of people in the developing world out of poverty. Is it desirable to have palm oil boycotted,
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replaced, eliminated from the global supply chain, given how many low-income people in developing
countries depend on it for their livelihoods? How best to strike a utilitarian balance between these
competing factors has become a serious bone of contention.

Even the deforestation argument isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Oil palm plantations produce at
least four and potentially up to ten times more oil per hectare than soybean, rapeseed, sunflower or other
competing oils. That immensely high yield – which is predominantly what makes it so profitable – is
potentially also an ecological benefit. If ten times more palm oil can be produced from a patch of land
than any competing oil, then ten times more land would need to be cleared in order to produce the same
volume of oil from that competitor.

As for the question of carbon emissions, the issue really depends on what oil palm trees are replacing.
Crops vary in the degree to which they sequester carbon – in other words, the amount of carbon they
capture from the atmosphere and store within the plant. The more carbon a plant sequesters, the more it
reduces the effect of climate change. As Shankar explains: ‘[Palm oil production] actually sequesters
more carbon in some ways than other alternatives. […] Of course, if you’re cutting down virgin forest it’s
terrible – that’s what’s happening in Indonesia and Malaysia, it’s been allowed to get out of hand. But if it’s
replacing rice, for example, it might actually sequester more carbon.’

The industry is now regulated by a group called the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO),
consisting of palm growers, retailers, product manufacturers, and other interested parties. Over the past
decade or so, an agreement has gradually been reached regarding standards that producers of palm oil
have to meet in order for their product to be regarded as officially ‘sustainable’. The RSPO insists upon no
virgin forest clearing, transparency and regular assessment of carbon stocks, among other criteria. Only
once these requirements are fully satisfied is the oil allowed to be sold as certified sustainable palm oil
(CSPO). Recent figures show that the RSPO now certifies around 12 million tonnes of palm oil annually,
equivalent to roughly 21 percent of the world’s total palm oil production.

There is even hope that oil palm plantations might not need to be such sterile monocultures, or ‘green
deserts’, as Ellwood describes them. New research at Ellwood’s lab hint at one plant which might make
all the difference. The bird’s nest fern (Asplenium nidus) grows on trees in an epiphytic fashion (meaning
it’s dependent on the tree only for support, not for nutrients), and is native to many tropical regions,
where as a keystone species it performs a vital ecological role. Ellwood believes that reintroducing the
bird’s nest fern into oil palm plantations could potentially allow these areas to recover their biodiversity,
providing a home for all manner of species, from fungi and bacteria, to invertebrates such as insects,
amphibians, reptiles and even mammals.

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Questions 14-20

Reading Passage 2 has eight paragraphs, A-H.

Which section contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.

14 examples of a range of potential environmental advantages of oil palm tree cultivation

15 description of an organisation which controls the environmental impact of palm oil production

16 examples of the widespread global use of palm oil

17 reference to a particular species which could benefit the ecosystem of oil palm plantations

18 figures illustrating the rapid expansion of the palm oil industry

19 an economic justification for not opposing the palm oil industry

20 examples of creatures badly affected by the establishment of oil palm plantations

Questions 21 and 22

Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Write the correct letters in boxes 21 and 22 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO statements are made about the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)?

A Its membership has grown steadily over the course of the last decade.

B It demands that certified producers be open and honest about their practices.

C It took several years to establish its set of criteria for sustainable palm oil certification.

D Its regulations regarding sustainability are stricter than those governing other industries.

E It was formed at the request of environmentalists concerned about the loss of virgin forests.

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Questions 23-26

Complete the sentences below.

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

Write your answers in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.

23 One advantage of palm oil for manufacturers is that it stays ……………………… even when not
refrigerated.

24 The ……………………… is the best known of the animals suffering habitat loss as a result of the spread
of oil palm plantations.

25 As one of its criteria for the certification of sustainable palm oil, the RSPO insists that growers
check ……………………… on a routine basis.

26 Ellwood and his researchers are looking into whether the bird’s nest fern could
restore ……………………… in areas where oil palm trees are grown.

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EXERCISE 20
Does education fuel economic growth?
A

Over the last decade, a huge database about the lives of southwest German villagers between 1600 and
1900 has been compiled by a team led by Professor Sheilagh Ogilvie at Cambridge University’s Faculty of
Economics. It includes court records, guild ledgers, parish registers, village censuses, tax lists and – the
most recent addition – 9,000 handwritten inventories listing over a million personal possessions
belonging to ordinary women and men across three centuries. Ogilvie, who discovered the inventories in
the archives of two German communities 30 years ago, believes they may hold the answer to a
conundrum that has long puzzled economists: the lack of evidence for a causal link between education
and a country’s economic growth.

As Ogilvie explains, ‘Education helps us to work more productively, invent better technology, and earn
more … surely it must be critical for economic growth? But, if you look back through history, there’s no
evidence that having a high literacy rate made a country industrialise earlier.’ Between 1600 and 1900,
England had only mediocre literacy rates by European standards, yet its economy grew fast and it was the
first country to industrialise. During this period, Germany and Scandinavia had excellent literacy rates,
but their economies grew slowly and they industrialised late. ‘Modern cross-country analyses have also
struggled to find evidence that education causes economic growth, even though there is plenty of
evidence that growth increases education,’ she adds.

In the handwritten inventories that Ogilvie is analysing are the belongings of women and men at marriage,
remarriage and death. From badger skins to Bibles, sewing machines to scarlet bodices – the villagers’
entire worldly goods are included. Inventories of agricultural equipment and craft tools reveal economic
activities; ownership of books and education-related objects like pens and slates suggests how people
learned. In addition, the tax lists included in the database record the value of farms, workshops, assets
and debts; signatures and people’s estimates of their age indicate literacy and numeracy levels; and
court records reveal obstacles (such as the activities of the guilds*) that stifled industry.

Previous studies usually had just one way of linking education with economic growth – the presence of
schools and printing presses, perhaps, or school enrolment, or the ability to sign names. According to
Ogilvie, the database provides multiple indicators for the same individuals, making it possible to analyse
links between literacy, numeracy, wealth, and industriousness, for individual women and men over the
long term.

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Ogilvie and her team have been building the vast database of material possessions on top of their full
demographic reconstruction of the people who lived in these two German communities. ‘We can follow
the same people – and their descendants – across 300 years of educational and economic change,’ she
says. Individual lives have unfolded before their eyes. Stories like that of the 24-year-olds Ana Regina and
Magdalena Riethmüllerin, who were chastised in 1707 for reading books in church instead of listening to
the sermon. ‘This tells us they were continuing to develop their reading skills at least a decade after
leaving school,’ explains Ogilvie. The database also reveals the case of Juliana Schweickherdt, a 50-year-
old spinster living in the small Black Forest community of Wildberg, who was reprimanded in 1752 by the
local weavers’ guild for ‘weaving cloth and combing wool, counter to the guide ordinance’. When Juliana
continued taking jobs reserved for male guild members, she was summoned before the guild court and
told to pay a fine equivalent to one third of a servant’s annual wage. It was a small act of defiance by
today’s standards, but it reflects a time when laws in Germany and elsewhere regulated people’s access
to labour markets. The dominance of guilds not only prevented people from using their skills, but also
held back even the simplest industrial innovation.

The data-gathering phase of the project has been completed and now, according to Ogilvie, it is time ‘to
ask the big questions’. One way to look at whether education causes economic growth is to ‘hold wealth
constant’. This involves following the lives of different people with the same level of wealth over a period
of time. If wealth is constant, it is possible to discover whether education was, for example, linked to the
cultivation of new crops, or to the adoption of industrial innovations like sewing machines. The team will
also ask what aspect of education helped people engage more with productive and innovative activities.
Was it, for instance, literacy, numeracy, book ownership, years of schooling? Was there a threshold level
– a tipping point – that needed to be reached to affect economic performance?

Ogilvie hopes to start finding answers to these questions over the next few years. One thing is already
clear, she says: the relationship between education and economic growth is far from straightforward.
‘German-speaking central Europe is an excellent laboratory for testing theories of economic growth,’ she
explains. Between 1600 and 1900, literacy rates and book ownership were high and yet the region
remained poor. It was also the case that local guilds and merchant associations were extremely powerful
and legislated against anything that undermined their monopolies. In villages throughout the region,
guilds blocked labour migration and resisted changes that might reduce their influence.

‘Early findings suggest that the potential benefits of education for the economy can be held back by other
barriers, and this has implications for today,’ says Ogilvie. ‘Huge amounts are spent improving education
in developing countries, but this spending can fail to deliver economic growth if restrictions block people
– especially women and the poor – from using their education in economically productive ways. If
economic institutions are poorly set up, for instance, education can’t lead to growth.’

——————–

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* guild: an association of artisans or merchants which oversees the practice of their craft or trade in a
particular area

Questions 14-18

Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F.

Which section contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

14 an explanation of the need for research to focus on individuals with a fairly consistent income

15 examples of the sources the database has been compiled from

16 an account of one individual’s refusal to obey an order

17 a reference to a region being particularly suited to research into the link between education and
economic growth

18 examples of the items included in a list of personal possessions

Questions 19-22

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 19-22 on your answer sheet.

Demographic reconstruction of two German communities

The database that Ogilvie and her team has compiled sheds light on the lives of a range of individuals, as
well as those of their 19 …………………, over a 300-year period. For example, Ana Regina and Magdalena
Riethmüllerin were reprimanded for reading while they should have been paying attention to
a 20 ………………… .

There was also Juliana Schweickherdt, who came to the notice of the weavers’ guild in the year 1752 for
breaking guild rules. As a punishment, she was later given a 21 ………………… . Cases like this illustrate
how the guilds could prevent 22 ………………… and stop skilled people from working

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Questions 23 and 24

Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Write the correct letters in boxes 23 and 24 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO of the following statements does the writer make about literacy rates in Section B?

A Very little research has been done into the link between high literacy rates and improved earnings.

B Literacy rates in Germany between 1600 and 1900 were very good.

C There is strong evidence that high literacy rates in the modern world result in economic growth.

D England is a good example of how high literacy rates helped a country industrialise.

E Economic growth can help to improve literacy rates.

Questions 25 and 26

Choose TWO letters, A-E.

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

Which TWO of the following statements does the writer make in Section F about guilds in German-
speaking Central Europe between 1600 and 1900?

A They helped young people to learn a skill.

B They were opposed to people moving to an area for work.

C They kept better records than guilds in other parts of the world.

D They opposed practices that threatened their control over a trade.

E They predominantly consisted of wealthy merchants.

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EXERCISE 21
Forest management in Pennsylvania, USA
How managing low-quality wood (also known as low-use wood) for bioenergy can encourage sustainable
forest management

A tree’s ‘value’ depends on several factors including its species, size, form, condition, quality, function,
and accessibility, and depends on the management goals for a given forest. The same tree can be valued
very differently by each person who looks at it. A large, straight black cherry tree has high value as timber
to be cut into logs or made into furniture, but for a landowner more interested in wildlife habitat, the real
value of that stem (or trunk) may be the food it provides to animals. Likewise, if the tree suffers from black
knot disease, its value for timber decreases, but to a woodworker interested in making bowls, it brings an
opportunity for a unique and beautiful piece of art.

In the past, Pennsylvania landowners were solely interested in the value of their trees as high-quality
timber. The norm was to remove the stems of highest quality and leave behind poorly formed trees that
were not as well suited to the site where they grew. This practice, called ‘high-grading’, has left a legacy of
‘low-use wood’ in the forests. Some people even call these ‘junk trees’, and they are abundant in
Pennsylvania. These trees have lower economic value for traditional timber markets, compete for growth
with higher-value trees, shade out desirable regeneration and decrease the health of a stand leaving it
more vulnerable to poor weather and disease. Management that specifically targets low-use wood can
help landowners manage these forest health issues, and wood energy markets help promote this.

Wood energy markets can accept less expensive wood material of lower quality than would be suitable
for traditional timber markets. Most wood used for energy in Pennsylvania is used to produce heat or
electricity through combustion. Many schools and hospitals use wood boiler systems to heat and power
their facilities, many homes are primarily heated with wood, and some coal plants incorporate wood into
their coal streams to produce electricity. Wood can also be gasified for electrical generation and can
even be made into liquid fuels like ethanol and gasoline for lorries and cars. All these products are made
primarily from low-use wood. Several tree- and plant-cutting approaches, which could greatly improve
the long-term quality of a forest, focus strongly or solely on the use of wood for those markets.

One such approach is called a Timber Stand Improvement (TSI) Cut. In a TSI Cut, really poor-quality tree
and plant material is cut down to allow more space, light, and other resources to the highest-valued
stems that remain. Removing invasive plants might be another primary goal of a TSI Cut. The stems that
are left behind might then grow in size and develop more foliage and larger crowns or tops that produce
84
more coverage for wildlife; they have a better chance to regenerate in a less crowded environment. TSI
Cuts can be tailored to one farmer’s specific management goals for his or her land.

Another approach that might yield a high amount of low-use wood is a Salvage Cut. With the many pests
and pathogens visiting forests including hemlock wooly adelgid, Asian longhomed beetle, emerald ash
borer, and gypsy moth, to name just a few, it is important to remember that those working in the forests
can help ease these issues through cutting procedures. These types of cut reduce the number of sick
trees and seek to manage the future spread of a pest problem. They leave vigorous trees that have stayed
healthy enough to survive the outbreak.

A Shelterwood Cut, which only takes place in a mature forest that has already been thinned several
times, involves removing all the mature trees when other seedlings have become established. This then
allows the forester to decide which tree species are regenerated. It leaves a young forest where all trees
are at a similar point in their growth. It can also be used to develop a two-tier forest so that there are two
harvests and the money that comes in is spread out over a decade or more.

Thinnings and dense and dead wood removal for fire prevention also center on the production of low-use
wood. However, it is important to remember that some retention of what many would classify as low-use
wood is very important. The tops of trees that have been cut down should be left on the site so that their
nutrients cycle back into the soil. In addition, trees with many cavities are extremely important habitats
for insect predators like woodpeckers, bats and small mammals. They help control problem insects and
increase the health and resilience of the forest. It is also important to remember that not all small trees
are low-use. For example, many species like hawthorn provide food for wildlife. Finally, rare species of
trees in a forest should also stay behind as they add to its structural diversity.

—–

*Stand – An area covered with trees that have common features (e.g. size)

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Questions 14-18

Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

14 bad outcomes for a forest when people focus only on its financial reward

15 reference to the aspects of any tree that contribute to its worth

16 mention of the potential use of wood to help run vehicles

17 examples of insects that attack trees

18 an alternative name for trees that produce low-use wood

Questions 19-21

Look at the following purposes (Questions 18-21) and the list of timber cuts below.

Match each purpose with the correct timber cut, A, B or C.

Write the correct letter, A, B or C, in boxes 19-21 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

19 to remove trees that are diseased

20 to generate income across a number of years

21 to create a forest whose trees are close in age

List of Timber Cuts

A a TSI Cut

B a Salvage Cut

C a Shelterwood Cut

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Questions 22-26

Complete the sentences below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

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

22 Some dead wood is removed to avoid the possibility of ………………. .

23 The ………………. from the tops of cut trees can help improve soil quality.

24 Some damaged trees should be left, as their ………………. provide habitats for a range of creatures.

25 Some trees that are small, such as ………………., are a source of food for animals and insects.

26 Any trees that are ………………. should be left to grow, as they add to the variety of species in the
forest.

87
EXERCISE 22
Living with artificial intelligence
Powerful artificial intelligence (AI) needs to be reliably aligned with human values, but
does this mean AI will eventually have to
police those values?

This has been the decade of AI, with one astonishing feat after another. A chess-playing AI that can defeat
not only all human chess players, but also all previous human-programmed chess machines, after
learning the game in just four hours? That’s yesterday’s news, what’s next? True, these prodigious
accomplishments are all in so-called narrow AI, where machines perform highly specialised tasks. But
many experts believe this restriction is very temporary. By mid-century, we may have artificial general
intelligence (AGI) – machines that can achieve human-level performance on the full range of tasks that
we ourselves can tackle.

If so, there’s little reason to think it will stop there. Machines will be free of many of the physical
constraints on human intelligence. Our brains run at slow biochemical processing speeds on the power
of a light bulb, and their size is restricted by the dimensions of the human birth canal. It is remarkable
what they accomplish, given these handicaps. But they may be as far from the physical limits of thought
as our eyes are from the incredibly powerful Webb Space Telescope.

Once machines are better than us at designing even smarter machines, progress towards these limits
could accelerate. What would this mean for us? Could we ensure a safe and worthwhile coexistence with
such machines? On the plus side, AI is already useful and profitable for many things, and super AI might
be expected to be super useful and super profitable. But the more powerful AI becomes, the more
important it will be to specify its goals with great care. Folklore is full of tales of people who ask for the
wrong thing, with disastrous consequences- King Midas, for example, might have wished that everything
he touched turned to gold, but didn’t really intend this to apply to his breakfast.

So we need to create powerful AI machines that are ‘human-friendly’- that have goals reliably aligned
with our own values. One thing that makes this task difficult is that we are far from reliably human-
friendly ourselves. We do many terrible things to each other and to many other creatures with whom we
share the planet. If superintendent machines don’t do a lot better than us, we’ll be in deep trouble. We’ll
have powerful new intelligence amplifying the dark sides of our own fallible natures.

For safety’s sake, then, we want the machines to be ethically as well as cognitively superhuman. We want
them to aim for the moral high ground, not for the troughs in which many of us spend some of our time.
Luckily they’ll be smart enough for the job. If there are routes to the moral high ground, they’ll be better
than us at finding them, and steering us in the right direction.

However, there are two big problems with this utopian vision. One is how we get the machines started on
the journey, the other is what it would mean to reach this destination. The ‘getting started’ problem is that
we need to tell the machines what they’re looking for with sufficient clarity that we can be confident they
88
will find it – whatever ‘it’ actually turns out to be. This won’t be easy, given that we are tribal creatures and
conflicted about the ideals ourselves. We often ignore the suffering of strangers, and even contribute to
it, at least indirectly. How then, do we point machines in the direction of something better?

As for the ‘destination’ problem, we might, by putting ourselves in the hands of these moral guides and
gatekeepers, be sacrificing our own autonomy – an important part of what makes us human. Machines
who are better than us at sticking to the moral high ground may be expected to discourage some of the
lapses we presently take for granted. We might lose our freedom to discriminate in favour of our own
communities, for example.

Loss of freedom to behave badly isn’t always a bad thing, of course: denying ourselves the freedom to put
children to work in factories, or to smoke in restaurants are signs of progress. But are we ready for ethical
silicon police limiting our options? They might be so good at doing it that we won’t notice them; but few of
us are likely to welcome such a future.

These issues might seem far-fetched, but they are to some extent already here. AI already has some input
into how resources are used in our National Health Service (NHS) here in the UK, for example. If it was
given a greater role, it might do so much more efficiently than humans can manage, and act in the
interests of taxpayers and those who use the health system. However, we’d be depriving some humans
(e.g. senior doctors) of the control they presently enjoy. Since we’d want to ensure that people are treated
equally and that policies are fair, the goals of AI would need to be specified correctly.

We have a new powerful technology to deal with- itself, literally, a new way of thinking. For our own safety,
we need to point these new thinkers in the right direction, and get them to act well for us. It is not yet clear
whether this is possible, but if it is, it will require a cooperative spirit, and a willingness to set aside self-
interest.

Both general intelligence and moral reasoning are often thought to be uniquely human capacities. But
safety seems to require that we think of them as a package: if we are to give general intelligence to
machines, we’ll need to give them moral authority, too. And where exactly would that leave human
beings? All the more reason to think about the destination now, and to be careful about what we wish for.

89
Questions 14-19

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

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

14 What point does the writer make about AI in the first paragraph?

A It is difficult to predict how quickly AI will progress.

B Much can be learned about the use of AI in chess machines.

C The future is unlikely to see limitations on the capabilities of AI.

D Experts disagree on which specialised tasks AI will be able to perform.

15 What is the writer doing in the second paragraph?

A explaining why machines will be able to outperform humans

B describing the characteristics that humans and machines share

C giving information about the development of machine intelligence

D indicating which aspects of humans are the most advanced

16 Why does the writer mention the story of King Midas?

A to compare different visions of progress

B to illustrate that poorly defined objectives can go wrong

C to emphasise the need for cooperation

D to point out the financial advantages of a course of action

17 What challenge does the writer refer to in the fourth paragraph?

A encouraging humans to behave in a more principled way

B deciding which values we want AI to share with us

C creating a better world for all creatures on the planet

D ensuring AI is more human-friendly than we are ourselves

18 What does the writer suggest about the future of AI in the fifth paragraph?

A The safety of machines will become a key issue.

B It is hard to know what impact machines will have on the world.

C Machines will be superior to humans in certain respects.

D Many humans will oppose machines having a wider role.

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19 Which of the following best summarises the writer’s argument in the sixth paragraph?

A More intelligent machines will result in greater abuses of power.

B Machine learning will share very few features with human learning.

C There are a limited number of people with the knowledge to program machines.

D Human shortcomings will make creating the machines we need more difficult.

Questions 20-23

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

In boxes 20-23 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

20 Machines with the ability to make moral decisions may prevent us from promoting the interests of our
communities.

21 Silicon police would need to exist in large numbers in order to be effective.

22 Many people are comfortable with the prospect of their independence being restricted by machines.

23 If we want to ensure that machines act in our best interests, we all need to work together.

91
Questions 24-26

Complete the summary using the list of phrases, A-F, below.

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

Using AI in the UK health system

AI currently has a limited role in the way 24…………………. are allocated in the health service. The positive
aspect of AI having a bigger role is that it would be more efficient and lead to patient benefits. However,
such a change would result, for example, in certain 25…………………. not having their current level
of 26…………………. . It is therefore important that AI goals are appropriate so that discriminatory
practices could be avoided.

A medical practitioners B specialised tasks

C available resources D reduced illness

E professional authority F technology experts

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EXERCISE 23
The steam car
The successes and failures of the Doble brothers and their steam cars

When primitive automobiles first began to appear in the 1800s, their engines were based on steam
power. Steam had already enjoyed a long and successful career in the railways, so it was only natural that
the technology evolved into a miniaturized version which was separate from the trains. But these early
cars inherited steam’s weaknesses along with its strengths. The boilers had to be lit by hand, and they
required about twenty minutes to build up pressure before they could be driven. Furthermore, their water
reservoirs only lasted for about thirty miles before needing replenishment. Despite such shortcomings,
these newly designed self-propelled carriages offered quick transportation, and by the early 1900s it was
not uncommon to see such machines shuttling wealthy citizens around town.

But the glory days of steam cars were few. A new technology called the Internal Combustion Engine soon
appeared, which offered the ability to drive down the road just moments after starting up. At first, these
noisy gasoline cars were unpopular because they were more complicated to operate and they had
difficult hand-crank starters, which were known to break arms when the engines backfired. But in 1912
General Motors introduced the electric starter, and over the following few years steam power was
gradually phased out.

Even as the market was declining, four brothers made one last effort to rekindle the technology. Between
1906 and 1909, while still attending high school, Abner Doble and his three brothers built their first steam
car in their parents’ basement. It comprised parts taken from a wrecked early steam car but reconfigured
to drive an engine of their own design. Though it did not run well, the Doble brothers went on to build a
second and third prototype in the following years. Though the Doble boys’ third prototype, nicknamed the
Model B, still lacked the convenience of an internal combustion engine, it drew the attention of
automobile trade magazines due to its numerous improvements over previous steam cars. The Model B
proved to be superior to gasoline automobiles in many ways. Its high-pressure steam drove the engine
pistons in virtual silence, in contrast to clattering gas engines which emitted the aroma of burned
hydrocarbons. Perhaps most impressively, the Model B was amazingly swift. It could accelerate from zero
to sixty miles per hour in just fifteen seconds, a feat described as ‘remarkable acceleration’
by Automobile magazine in 1914.

The following year Abner Doble drove the Model B from Massachusetts to Detroit in order to seek
investment in his automobile design, which he used to open the General Engineering Company. He and
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his brothers immediately began working on the Model C, which was intended to expand upon the
innovations of the Model B. The brothers added features such as a key-based ignition in the cabin,
eliminating the need for the operator to manually ignite the boiler. With these enhancements, the Dobles’
new car company promised a steam vehicle which would provide all of the convenience of a gasoline car,
but with much greater speed, much simpler driving controls, and a virtually silent powerplant. By the
following April, the General Engineering Company had received 5,390 deposits for Doble Detroits, which
were scheduled for delivery in early 1918.

Later that year Abner Doble delivered unhappy news to those eagerly awaiting the delivery of their
modem new cars. Those buyers who received the handful of completed cars complained that the
vehicles were sluggish and erratic, sometimes going in reverse when they should go forward. The new
engine design, though innovative, was still plagued with serious glitches.

The brothers made one final attempt to produce a viable steam automobile. In early 1924, the Doble
brothers shipped a Model E to New York City to be road-tested by the Automobile Club of America. After
sitting overnight in freezing temperatures, the car was pushed out into the road and left to sit for over an
hour in the frosty morning air. At the turn of the key, the boiler lit and reached its operating pressure inside
of forty seconds. As they drove the test vehicle further, they found that its evenly distributed weight lent it
surprisingly good handling, even though it was so heavy. As the new Doble steamer was further
developed and tested, its maximum speed was pushed to over a hundred miles per hour, and it achieved
about fifteen miles per gallon of kerosene with negligible emissions.

Sadly, the Dobles’ brilliant steam car never was a financial success. Priced at around $18,000 in 1924, it
was popular only among the very wealthy. Plus, it is said that no two Model Es were quite the same,
because Abner Doble tinkered endlessly with the design. By the time the company folded in 1931, fewer
than fifty of the amazing Model E steam cars had been produced. For his whole career, until his death in
1961, Abner Doble remained adamant that steam-powered automobiles were at least equal to gasoline
cars, if not superior. Given the evidence, he may have been right. Many of the Model E Dobles which have
survived are still in good working condition, some having been driven over half a million miles with only
normal maintenance. Astonishingly, an unmodified Doble Model E runs clean enough to pass the
emissions laws in California today, and they are pretty strict. It is true that the technology poses some
difficult problems, but you cannot help but wonder how efficient a steam car might be with the benefit of
modem materials and computers. Under the current pressure to improve automotive performance and
reduce emissions, it is not unthinkable that the steam car may rise again.

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Questions 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, i-viii, in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i A period in cold conditions before the technology is assessed

ii Marketing issues lead to failure

iii Good and bad aspects of steam technology are passed on

iv A possible solution to the issues of today

v Further improvements lead to commercial orders

vi Positive publicity at last for this quiet, clean, fast vehicle

vii A disappointing outcome for customers

viii A better option than the steam car arises

14 Paragraph A

15 Paragraph B

16 Paragraph C

17 Paragraph D

18 Paragraph E

19 Paragraph F

20 Paragraph G

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Questions 21-23

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

Write the correct letter in boxes 21-23 on your answer sheet.

21 What point does the writer make about the steam car in Paragraph B?

A Its success was short-lived.

B Not enough cars were made.

C Car companies found them hard to sell.

D People found them hard to drive.

22 When building their first steam car, the Doble brothers

A constructed all the parts themselves.

B made written notes at each stage of the construction.

C needed several attempts to achieve a competitive model.

D sought the advice of experienced people in the car industry.

23 In order to produce the Model C, the Doble brothers

A moved production to a different city.

B raised financial capital.

C employed an additional worker.

D abandoned their earlier designs.

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Questions 24-26

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ANDIOR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.

The Model E
The Model E was road-tested in 1924 by the Automobile Club of America. They found it easy to drive,
despite its weight, and it impressed the spectators. A later version of the Model E raised its 24………………,
while keeping its emissions extremely low.

The steam car was too expensive for many people and its design was constantly being altered.
Under 25……………… cars were produced before the company went out of business. However, even today,
there are Model Es on the road in the US. They are straightforward to maintain, and they satisfy
California’s 26……………… emissions laws. Perhaps today’s technology and materials would help us
revive the steam car.

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EXERCISE 24
The growth mindset
Over the past century, a powerful idea has taken root in the educational landscape. The concept of
intelligence as something innate has been supplanted by the idea that intelligence is not fixed, and that,
with the right training, we can be the authors of our own cognitive capabilities. Psychologist Alfred Binet,
the developer of the first intelligence tests, was one of many 19th-century scientists who held that earlier
view and sought to quantify cognitive ability. Then, in the early 20th century, progressive thinkers revolted
against the notion that inherent ability is destiny. Instead, educators such as John Dewey argued that
every child’s intelligence could be developed, given the right environment.

‘Growth mindset theory’ is a relatively new – and extremely popular – version of this idea. In many schools
today you will see hallways covered in motivational posters and hear speeches on the mindset of great
sporting heroes who simply believed their way to the top. A major focus of the growth mindset in schools
is coaxing students away from seeing failure as an indication of their ability, and towards seeing it as a
chance to improve that ability. As educationalist Jeff Howard noted several decades ago: ‘Smart is not
something that you just are, smart is something that you can get.’

The idea of the growth mindset is based on the work of psychologist Carol Dweck in California in the
1990s. In one key experiment, Dweck divided a group of 10- to 12-year-olds into two groups. All were told
that they had achieved a high score on a test but the first group were praised for their intelligence in
achieving this, while the others were praised for their effort. The second group – those who had been
instilled with a ‘growth mindset’ – were subsequently far more likely to put effort into future tasks.
Meanwhile, the former took on only those tasks that would not risk their sense of worth. This group had
inferred that success or failure is due to innate ability, and this ‘fixed mindset’ had led them to fear of
failure and lack of effort. Praising ability actually made the students perform worse, while praising effort
emphasised that change was possible.

One of the greatest impediments to successfully implementing a growth mindset, however, is the
education system itself: in many parts of the world, the school climate is obsessed with performance in
the form of constant testing, analysing and ranking of students – a key characteristic of the fixed mindset.
Nor is it unusual for schools to create a certain cognitive dissonance, when they applaud the benefits of a
growth mindset but then hand out fixed target grades in lessons based on performance.

Aside from the implementation problem, the original growth mindset research has also received harsh
criticism. The statistician Andrew Gelman claims that ‘their research designs have enough degrees of
freedom that they could take their data to support just about any theory at all’. Professor of Psychology
Timothy Bates, who has been trying to replicate Dweck’s work, is finding that the results are repeatedly
null. He notes that: ‘People with a growth mindset don’t cope any better with failure … Kids with the
growth mindset aren’t getting better grades, either before or after our intervention study.’

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Much of this criticism is not lost on Dweck, and she deserves great credit for responding to it and
adapting her work accordingly. In fact, she argues that her work has been misunderstood and misapplied
in a range of ways. She has also expressed concerns that her theories are being misappropriated in
schools by being conflated with the self-esteem movement: ‘For me the growth mindset is a tool for
learning and improvement. It’s not just a vehicle for making children feel good.’

But there is another factor at work here. The failure to translate the growth mindset into the classroom
might reflect a misunderstanding of the nature of teaching and learning itself. Growth mindset supporters
David Yeager and Gregory Walton claim that interventions should be delivered in a subtle way to
maximise their effectiveness. They say that if adolescents perceive a teacher’s intervention as conveying
that they are in need of help, this could undo its intended effects.

A lot of what drives students is their innate beliefs and how they perceive themselves. There is a strong
correlation between self-perception and achievement, but there is evidence to suggest that the actual
effect of achievement on self-perception is stronger than the other way round. To stand up in a classroom
and successfully deliver a good speech is a genuine achievement, and that is likely to be more powerfully
motivating than vague notions of ‘motivation’ itself.

Recent evidence would suggest that growth mindset interventions are not the elixir of student learning
that its proponents claim it to be. The growth mindset appears to be a viable construct in the lab, which,
when administered in the classroom via targeted interventions, doesn’t seem to work. It is hard to
dispute that having faith in the capacity to change is a good attribute for students. Paradoxically, however,
that aspiration is not well served by direct interventions that try to instil it.

Motivational posters and talks are often a waste of time, and might well give students a deluded notion of
what success actually means. Teaching concrete skills such as how to write an effective introduction to
an essay then praising students’ effort in getting there is probably a far better way of improving
confidence than telling them how unique they are, or indeed how capable they are of changing their own
brains. Perhaps growth mindset works best as a philosophy and not an intervention.

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Questions 14-16

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

Write the correct letter in boxes 14-16 on your answer sheet

14 What can we learn from the first paragraph?

A where the notion of innate intelligence first began

B when ideas about the nature of intelligence began to shift

C how scientists have responded to changing views of intelligence

D why thinkers turned away from the idea of intelligence being fixed

15 The second paragraph describes how schools encourage students to

A identify their personal ambitions.

B help each other to realise their goals.

C have confidence in their potential to succeed.

D concentrate on where their particular strengths lie.

16 In the third paragraph, the writer suggests that students with a fixed mindset

A tend to be less competitive.

B generally have a low sense of self-esteem.

C will only work hard if they are given constant encouragement.

D are afraid to push themselves beyond what they see as their limitations.

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Questions 17-22

Look at the following statements (Questions 17-22) and the list of people below.

Match each statement with the correct person or people, A-E.

Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 17-22 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

17 The methodology behind the growth mindset studies was not strict enough.

18 The idea of the growth mindset has been incorrectly interpreted.

19 Intellectual ability is an unchangeable feature of each individual.

20 The growth mindset should be promoted without students being aware of it.

21 The growth mindset is not simply about boosting students’ morale.

22 Research shows that the growth mindset has no effect on academic achievement.

List of People

A Alfred Binet

B Carol Dweck

C Andrew Gelman

D Timothy Bates

E David Yeager and Gregory Walton

Questions 23-26

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

In boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

23 Dweck has handled criticisms of her work in an admirable way.

24 Students’ self-perception is a more effective driver of self-confidence than actual achievement is.

25 Recent evidence about growth mindset interventions has attracted unfair coverage in the media.

26 Deliberate attempts to encourage students to strive for high achievement may have a negative effect.
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EXERCISE 25
The pirates of the ancient Mediterranean
In the first and second millennia BCE, pirates sailed around the Mediterranean, attacking ships and
avoiding pursuers

When one mentions pirates, an image springs to most people’s minds of a crew of misfits, daredevils and
adventurers in command of a tall sailing ship in the Caribbean Sea. Yet from the first to the third
millennium BCE, thousands of years before these swashbucklers began spreading fear across the
Caribbean, pirates prowled the Mediterranean, raiding merchant ships and threatening vital trade routes.
However, despite all efforts and the might of various ancient states, piracy could not be stopped. The
situation remained unchanged for thousands of years. Only when the pirates directly threatened the
interests of ancient Rome did the Roman Republic organise a massive fleet to eliminate piracy. Under the
command of the Roman general Pompey, Rome eradicated piracy, transforming the Mediterranean into
‘Mare Nostrum’ (Our Sea).

Although piracy in the Mediterranean is first recorded in ancient Egypt during the reign of Pharaoh
Amenhotep III (c 1390–1353 BCE), it is reasonable to assume it predated this powerful civilisation. This is
partly due to the great importance the Mediterranean held at this time, and partly due to its geography.
While the Mediterranean region is predominantly fertile, some parts are rugged and hilly, even
mountainous. In the ancient times, the inhabitants of these areas relied heavily on marine resources,
including fish and salt. Most had their own boats, possessed good seafaring skills, and unsurpassed
knowledge of the local coastline and sailing routes. Thus, it is not surprising that during hardships, these
men turned to piracy. Geography itself further benefited the pirates, with the numerous coves along the
coast providing places for them to hide their boats and strike undetected. Before the invention of ocean-
going caravels* in the 15th century, ships could not easily cross long distances over open water. Thus, in
the ancient world most were restricted to a few well-known navigable routes that followed the coastline.
Caught in a trap, a slow merchant ship laden with goods had no other option but to surrender. In addition,
knowledge of the local area helped the pirates to avoid retaliation once a state fleet arrived.

————————————-
* caravel: a small, highly manoeuvrable sailing ship developed by the Portuguese

One should also add that it was not unknown in the first and second millennia BCE for governments to
resort to pirates’ services, especially during wartime, employing their skills and numbers against their
opponents. A pirate fleet would serve in the first wave of attack, preparing the way for the navy. Some of
the regions were known for providing safe harbours to pirates, who, in return, boosted the local economy.

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D

The first known record of a named group of Mediterranean pirates, made during the rule of ancient
Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten (c 1353–1336 BCE), was in the Amarna Letters. These were extracts of
diplomatic correspondence between the pharaoh and his allies, and covered many pressing issues,
including piracy. It seems the pharaoh was troubled by two distinct pirate groups, the Lukka and the
Sherden. Despite the Egyptian fleet’s best efforts, the pirates continued to cause substantial disruption
to regional commerce. In the letters, the king of Alashiya (modern Cyprus) rejected Akhenaten’s claims of
a connection with the Lukka (based in modern-day Turkey). The king assured Akhenaten he was prepared
to punish any of his subjects involved in piracy.

The ancient Greek world’s experience of piracy was different from that of Egyptian rulers. While Egypt’s
power was land-based, the ancient Greeks relied on the Mediterranean in almost all aspects of life, from
trade to warfare. Interestingly, in his works the Iliad and the Odyssey, the ancient Greek writer Homer not
only condones, but praises the lifestyle and actions of pirates. The opinion remained unchanged in the
following centuries. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides, for instance, glorified pirates’ daring attacks
on ships or even cities. For Greeks, piracy was a part of everyday life. Even high-ranking members of the
state were not beyond engaging in such activities. According to the Greek orator Demosthenes, in 355
BCE, Athenian ambassadors made a detour from their official travel to capture a ship sailing from Egypt,
taking the wealth found onboard for themselves! The Greeks’ liberal approach towards piracy does not
mean they always tolerated it, but attempts to curtail piracy were hampered by the large number of
pirates operating in the Mediterranean.

The rising power of ancient Rome required the Roman Republic to deal with piracy in the Mediterranean.
While piracy was a serious issue for the Republic, Rome profited greatly from its existence. Pirate raids
provided a steady source of slaves, essential for Rome’s agriculture and mining industries. But this
arrangement could work only while the pirates left Roman interests alone. Pirate attacks on grain ships,
which were essential to Roman citizens, led to angry voices in the Senate, demanding punishment of the
culprits. Rome, however, did nothing, further encouraging piracy. By the 1st century BCE, emboldened
pirates kidnapped prominent Roman dignitaries, asking for a large ransom to be paid. Their most famous
hostage was none other than Julius Caesar, captured in 75 BCE.

By now, Rome was well aware that pirates had outlived their usefulness. The time had come for
concerted action. In 67 BCE, a new law granted Pompey vast funds to combat the Mediterranean
menace. Taking personal command, Pompey divided the entire Mediterranean into 13 districts, assigning
a fleet and commander to each. After cleansing one district of pirates, the fleet would join another in the
next district. The process continued until the entire Mediterranean was free of pirates. Although
thousands of pirates died at the hands of Pompey’s troops, as a long-term solution to the problem, many

103
more were offered land in fertile areas located far from the sea. Instead of a maritime menace, Rome got
productive farmers that further boosted its economy.

Questions 14–19

Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A–G.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A–G, in boxes 14–19 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

14 a reference to a denial of involvement in piracy

15 details of how a campaign to eradicate piracy was carried out

16 a mention of the circumstances in which states in the ancient world would make use of pirates

17 a reference to how people today commonly view pirates

18 an explanation of how some people were encouraged not to return to piracy

19 a mention of the need for many sailing vessels to stay relatively close to land

Questions 20 and 21

Choose TWO letters, A–E.

Write the correct letters in boxes 20 and 21 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO of the following statements does the writer make about inhabitants of the Mediterranean
region in the ancient world?

A They often used stolen vessels to carry out pirate attacks.

B They managed to escape capture by the authorities because they knew the area so well.

C They paid for information about the routes merchant ships would take.

D They depended more on the sea for their livelihood than on farming.

E They stored many of the goods taken in pirate attacks in coves along the coastline.

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Questions 22 and 23

Choose TWO letters, A–E.

Write the correct letters in boxes 22 and 23 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO of the following statements does the writer make about piracy and ancient Greece?

A The state estimated that very few people were involved in piracy.

B Attitudes towards piracy changed shortly after the Iliad and the Odyssey were written.

C Important officials were known to occasionally take part in piracy.

D Every citizen regarded pirate attacks on cities as unacceptable.

E A favourable view of piracy is evident in certain ancient Greek texts.

Questions 24–26

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 24–26 on your answer sheet.

Ancient Rome and piracy

Piracy was an issue ancient Rome had to deal with, but it also brought some benefits for Rome. For
example, pirates supplied slaves that were important for Rome’s industries. However, attacks on vessels
transporting 24………………… to Rome resulted in calls for 25…………………for the pirates responsible.
Nevertheless, piracy continued, with some pirates demanding a 26………………… for the return of the
Roman officials they captured.

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EXERCISE 26
Athletes and stress
A

It isn’t easy being a professional athlete. Not only are the physical demands greater than most people
could handle, athletes also face intense psychological pressure during competition. This is something
that British tennis player Emma Raducanu wrote about on social media following her withdrawal from the
2021 Wimbledon tournament. Though the young player had been doing well in the tournament, she
began having difficulty regulating her breathing and heart rate during a match, which she later attributed
to ‘the accumulation of the excitement and the buzz’.

For athletes, some level of performance stress is almost unavoidable. But there are many different
factors that dictate just how people’s minds and bodies respond to stressful events. Typically, stress is
the result of an exchange between two factors: demands and resources. An athlete may feel stressed
about an event if they feel the demands on them are greater than they can handle. These demands
include the high level of physical and mental effort required to succeed, and also the athlete’s concerns
about the difficulty of the event, their chance of succeeding, and any potential dangers such as injury.
Resources, on the other hand, are a person’s ability to cope with these demands. These include factors
such as the competitor’s degree of confidence, how much they believe they can control the situation’s
outcome, and whether they’re looking forward to the event or not.

Each new demand or change in circumstances affects whether a person responds positively or
negatively to stress. Typically, the more resources a person feels they have in handling the situation, the
more positive their stress response. This positive stress response is called a challenge state. But should
the person feel there are too many demands placed on them, the more likely they are to experience a
negative stress response – known as a threat state. Research shows that the challenge states lead to
good performance, while threat states lead to poorer performance. So, in Emma Raducanu’s case, a
much larger audience, higher expectations and facing a more skilful opponent, may all have led her to
feel there were greater demands being placed on her at Wimbledon – but she didn’t have the resources to
tackle them. This led to her experiencing a threat response.

Our challenge and threat responses essentially influence how our body responds to stressful situations,
as both affect the production of adrenaline and cortisol – also known as ‘stress hormones’. During a
challenge state, adrenaline increases the amount of blood pumped from the heart and expands the
blood vessels, which allows more energy to be delivered to the muscles and brain. This increase of blood
and decrease of pressure in the blood vessels has been consistently related to superior sport

106
performance in everything from cricket batting, to golf putting and football penalty taking. But during a
threat state, cortisol inhibits the positive effect of adrenaline, resulting in tighter blood vessels, higher
blood pressure, slower psychological responses, and a faster heart rate. In short, a threat state makes
people more anxious – they make worse decisions and perform more poorly. In tennis players, cortisol
has been associated with more unsuccessful serves and greater anxiety.

That said, anxiety is also a common experience for athletes when they’re under pressure. Anxiety can
increase heart rate and perspiration, cause heart palpitations, muscle tremors and shortness of breath,
as well as headaches, nausea, stomach pain, weakness and a desire to escape in more extreme cases.
Anxiety can also reduce concentration and self-control and cause overthinking. The intensity with which
a person experiences anxiety depends on the demands and resources they have. Anxiety may also
manifest itself in the form of excitement or nervousness depending on the stress response. Negative
stress responses can be damaging to both physical and mental health – and repeated episodes of anxiety
coupled with negative responses can increase risk of heart disease and depression.

But there are many ways athletes can ensure they respond positively under pressure. Positive stress
responses can be promoted through the language that they and others – such as coaches or parents —
use. Psychologists can also help athletes change how they see their physiological responses – such as
helping them see a higher heart rate as excitement, rather than nerves. Developing psychological skills,
such as visualisation, can also help decrease physiological responses to threat. Visualisation may
involve the athlete recreating a mental picture of a time when they performed well, or picturing
themselves doing well in the future. This can help create a feeling of control over the stressful event.
Recreating competitive pressure during training can also help athletes learn how to deal with stress. An
example of this might be scoring athletes against their peers to create a sense of competition. This would
increase the demands which players experience compared to a normal training session, while still
allowing them to practise coping with stress.

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Questions 14–18

Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A–F.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A–F, in boxes 14–18 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

14 reference to two chemical compounds which impact on performance

15 examples of strategies for minimising the effects of stress

16 how a sportsperson accounted for their own experience of stress

17 study results indicating links between stress responses and performance

18 mention of people who can influence how athletes perceive their stress responses

Questions 19–22

Complete the sentences below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 19–22 on your answer sheet.

19 Performance stress involves many demands on the athlete, for example, coping with the possible risk
of ……………………… .

20 Cortisol can cause tennis players to produce fewer good ……………………… .

21 Psychologists can help athletes to view their physiological responses as the effect of a positive
feeling such as ……………………… .

22 ……………………… is an example of a psychological technique which can reduce an athlete’s stress

responses.

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Questions 23 and 24

Choose TWO letters, A–E.

Write the correct letters in boxes 23 and 24 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO facts about Emma Raducanu’s withdrawal from the Wimbledon tournament are mentioned
in the text?

A the stage at which she dropped out of the tournament

B symptoms of her performance stress at the tournament

C measures which she had taken to manage her stress levels

D aspects of the Wimbledon tournament which increased her stress levels

E reactions to her social media posts about her experience at Wimbledon

Questions 25 and 26

Choose TWO letters, A–E.

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

Which TWO facts about anxiety are mentioned in Paragraph E of the text?

A the factors which determine how severe it may be

B how long it takes for its effects to become apparent

C which of its symptoms is most frequently encountered

D the types of athletes who are most likely to suffer from it

E the harm that can result if athletes experience it too often

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EXERCISE 27
The global importance of wetlands
A

Wetlands are areas where water covers the soil, or is present either at or near the surface of the soil, for
all or part of the year. These are complex ecosystems, rich in unique plant and animal life. But according
to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWFN), half of the world’s wetlands have disappeared since 1990 –
converted or destroyed for commercial development, drainage schemes and the extraction of minerals
and peat*. Many of those that remain have been damaged by agricultural pesticides and fertilizers,
industrial pollutants, and construction works.

—————————
* peat: a brown deposit formed by the partial decomposition of vegetation in wet acidic conditions, often
cut out and dried for use as fuel

Throughout history, humans have gathered around wetlands, and their fertile ecosystems have played an
important part in human development. Consequently, they are of considerable religious, historical and
archaeological value to many communities around the world. ‘Wetlands directly support the livelihoods
and well-being of millions of people,’ says Dr Matthew McCartney, principal researcher and hydrologist at
the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). ‘In many developing countries, large numbers of
people are dependent on wetland agriculture for their livelihoods.’

They also serve a crucial environmental purpose. ‘Wetlands are one of the key tools in mitigating climate
change across the planet,’ says Pieter van Eijk, head of Climate Adaptation at Wetlands International
(WI), pointing to their use as buffers that protect coastal areas from sea-level rise and extreme weather
events such as hurricanes and flooding. Wetland coastal forests provide food and water, as well as
shelter from storms, and WI and other agencies are working to restore those forests which have been
lost. ‘It can be as simple as planting a few trees per hectare to create shade and substantially change a
microclimate,’ he says. ‘Implementing climate change projects isn’t so much about money.’

The world’s wetlands are, unfortunately, rich sources for in-demand commodities, such as palm oil and
pulpwood. Peatlands – wetlands with a waterlogged organic soil layer – are particularly targeted. When
peatlands are drained for cultivation, they become net carbon emitters instead of active carbon stores,
and, according to Marcel Silvius, head of Climate-smart Land-use at WI, this practice causes six per cent
of all global carbon emissions. The clearance of peatlands for planting also increases the risk of forest
fires, which release huge amounts of CO₂. ‘We’re seeing huge peatland forests with extremely high
biodiversity value being lost for a few decades of oil palm revenues,’ says Silvius.
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E

The damage starts when logging companies arrive to clear the trees. They dig ditches to enter the peat
swamps by boat and then float the logs out the same way. These are then used to drain water out of the
peatlands to allow for the planting of corn, oil palms or pulpwood trees. Once the water has drained
away, bacteria and fungi then break down the carbon in the peat and turn it into CO₂ and methane.
Meanwhile, the remainder of the solid matter in the peat starts to move downwards, in a process known
as subsidence. Peat comprises 90 per cent water, so this is one of the most alarming consequences of
peatland clearances. ‘In the tropics, peat subsides at about four centimetres a year, so within half a
century, very large landscapes on Sumatra and Borneo will become flooded as the peat drops below
water level,’ says Silvius. ‘It’s a huge catastrophe that’s in preparation. Some provinces will lose 40 per
cent of their landmass.’

And while these industries affect wetlands in ways that can easily be documented, Dr Dave Tickner of the
WWFN believes that more subtle impacts can be even more devastating. ‘Sediment run-off and fertilizers
can be pretty invisible,’ says Tickner. ‘Over-extraction of water is equally invisible. You do get shock stories
about rivers running red, or even catching fire, but there’s seldom one big impact that really hurts a
wetland.’ Tickner does not blame anyone for deliberate damage, however. ‘I’ve worked on wetland issues
for 20 years and have never met anybody who wanted to damage a wetland,’ he says. ‘It isn’t something
that people generally set out to do. Quite often, the effects simply come from people trying to make a
living.’

Silvius also acknowledges the importance of income generation. ‘It’s not that we just want to restore the
biodiversity of wetlands – which we do – but we recognise there’s a need to provide an income for local
people.’ This approach is supported by IWMI. ‘The idea is that people in a developing country will only
protect wetlands if they value and profit from them,’ says McCartney. ‘For sustainability, it’s essential that
local people are involved in wetland planning and decision making and have clear rights to use wetlands.’

The fortunes of wetlands would be improved, Silvius suggests, if more governments recognized their
long-term value. ‘Different governments have different attitudes,’ he says, and goes on to explain that
some countries place a high priority on restoring wetlands, while others still deny the issue. McCartney is
cautiously optimistic, however. ‘Awareness of the importance of wetlands is growing,’ he says. ‘It’s true
that wetland degradation still continues at a rapid pace, but my impression is that things are slowly
changing.’

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Questions 14–17

Reading Passage 2 has eight paragraphs, A–H.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A–H, in boxes 14–17 on your answer sheet.

14 reference to the need to ensure that inhabitants of wetland regions continue to benefit from them

15 the proportion of wetlands which have already been lost

16 reference to the idea that people are beginning to appreciate the value of wetlands

17 mention of the cultural significance of wetlands

Questions 18–22

Complete the sentences below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 18–22 on your answer sheet.

18 Peatlands which have been drained begin to release …………………… instead of storing it.

19 Once peatland areas have been cleared, …………………… are more likely to occur.

20 Clearing peatland forests to make way for oil palm plantations destroys the …………………… of the
local environment.

21 Water is drained out of peatlands through the …………………… which are created by logging
companies.

22 Draining peatlands leads to …………………… : a serious problem which can eventually result in coastal
flooding and land loss.

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Questions 23–26

Look at the following statements (Questions 23–26) and the list of experts below.

Match each statement with the correct expert, A–D.

Write the correct letter, A–D, in boxes 23–26 on your answer sheet.

23 Communities living in wetland regions must be included in discussions about the future of these
areas.

24 Official policies towards wetlands vary from one nation to the next.

25 People cause harm to wetlands without having any intention to do so.

26 Initiatives to reserve environmental damage need to be complex.

List of Experts

A Matthew McCartney

B Pieter van Eijk

C Marcel Silvius

D Dave Tickner

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EXERCISE 28
Deep-sea mining
Bacteria from the ocean floor can beat superbugs and cancer. But habitats are at risk from the hunger for
marine minerals

When Professor Mat Upton found that a microbe from a deep-sea sponge was killing pathogenic bugs in
his laboratory, he realised it could be a breakthrough in the light against antibiotic-resistant superbugs,
which are responsible for thousands of deaths a year in the UK alone. Further tests confirmed that an
antibiotic from the sponge bacteria, found living more than 700 metres under the sea at the Rockall
trough in the north-east Atlantic, was previously unknown to science, boosting its potential as a life-
saving medicine. But Upton, and other scientists who view the deep ocean and its wealth of unique and
undocumented species as a prospecting ground for new medicines, fear such potential will be lost in the
rush to exploit the deep sea’s equally rich metal and mineral resources.

‘We’re looking at the bioactive potential of marine resources, to see if there are any more medicines or
drugs down there before we destroy it for ever,’ says Upton, a medical microbiologist at the University of
Plymouth. He is among many scientists urging a halt to deep-sea mining, asking for time to weigh up the
pros and cons. ‘In sustainability terms, this could be a better way of exploiting the economic potential of
the deep sea,’ he argues. Oceanographers using remotely operated vehicles have spotted many new
species. Among them have been sea cucumbers with tails allowing them to sail along the ocean floor,
and a rare ‘Dumbo’octopus, found 3,000 metres under the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California. Any
one of these could offer lifesaving potential. Upton estimates it could take up to a decade for a newly
discovered antibiotic to become a medicine – but the race towards commercial mining in the ocean
abyss has already begun.

The deep sea contains more nickel, cobalt and rare earth metals than all land reserves combined,
according to the US Geological Survey. Mining corporations argue that deep-sea exploration could help
diversify the supply of metals and point to the fact that demand for resources such as copper, aluminum,
cobalt for electric car batteries and other metals to power technology and smartphones, is soaring. They
say that deep-sea mining could yield far superior ore to land mining with little, if any, waste. Different
methods of extraction exist, but most involve employing some form of converted machinery previously
used in terrestrial mining to excavate materials from the sea floor, at depths of up to 6,000 meters, then
drawing a seawater slurry, containing rock and other solid particles, from the sea floor to ships on the
surface. The slurry is then ‘de-watered ’ and transferred to another vessel for shipping. Extracted
seawater is pumped back down and discharged close to the sea floor.

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D

But environmental and legal groups have urged caution, arguing there are potentially massive and
unknown ramifications for the environment and for nearby communities, and that the global regulatory
framework is not yet drafted. ‘Despite arising in the last half century, the “new global gold rush” of deep-
sea mining shares many features with past resource scrambles – including a general disregard for
environmental and social impacts, and the marginalisation of indigenous peoples and their rights,’ a
paper, written by Julie Hunter and Julian Aguon, from Blue Ocean Law, and Pradeep Singh, from the
Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, Bremen, argues. The authors say that knowledge of the deep
seabed remains extremely limited. ‘The surface of the Moon, Mars and even Venus have all been mapped
and studied in much greater detail, leading marine scientists to commonly remark that, with respect to
the deep sea, “We don’t yet know what we need to know”.’

Scientific research – including a recent paper in Marine Policy journal has suggested the deep seabed,
and hydrothermal vents, which are created when seawater meets volcanic magma, have crucial impacts
upon biodiversity and the global climate. The mineral-rich vents and their surrounds are also home to
many well-known animals including crustaceans, tubeworms, clams, slugs, anemones and fish. ‘It is
becoming increasingly clear that deep-sea mining poses a grave threat to these vital seabed functions,’
the paper says. ‘Extraction methods would produce large sediment plumes and involve the discharge of
waste back into the ocean, significantly disturbing seafloor environments,’ the paper continues. ‘On deep
sea vents, scientists are clear,’ says Dr Jon Copley of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton:
‘We don’t want mining on them.’

The oceans occupy around 70% of the planet and are relatively unexplored, says Mike Johnston, chief
executive of Nautilus, a Canadian underwater exploration company: ‘It makes sense to explore this
untapped potential in an environmentally sustainable way, instead of continually looking at the fast
depleting land resources of the planet to meet society’s rising needs.’ Those leading the global rush to
place giant mining machines thousands of metres below the sea surface say the environmental impacts
will be far lower than on land. But critics say exotic and little-known ecosystems in the deep oceans
could be destroyed and must be protected. ‘Mining will be the greatest assault on deep-sea ecosystems
ever inflicted by humans,’ according to hydrothermal vent expert Verena Tunnicliffe, at the University of
Victoria in Canada. She argues that active vents must be off-limits for mining to protect the new
knowledge and biotechnology spin-offs they can deliver, and that strict controls must be in place
elsewhere.

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Questions 14–17

Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A–F.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A–F, in boxes 14–17 on your answer sheet.

14 reference to the rapidly increasing need for one raw material in the transport industry

15 a rough estimate of the area of the Earth covered by the oceans

16 how a particular underwater habitat, where minerals and organisms co-exist, is formed

17 reference to the fact that the countries of the world have yet to agree on rules for the exploration of
the seabed

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Questions 18–23

Look at the following statements (Questions 18–23) and the list of people below.

Match each statement with the correct person or people, A-E.

Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 18–23 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

18 A move away from the exploration of heavily mined reserves on land is a good idea.

19 The negative effects of undersea exploration on local areas and their inhabitants are being ignored.

20 There are more worthwhile things to extract from the sea than minerals.

21 No other form of human exploration will have such a destructive impact on marine life as deep-sea
mining.

22 More is known about outer space than about what lies beneath the oceans.

23 There is one marine life habitat where experts agree mining should not take place.

List of People

A Professor Mat Upton

B Julie Hunter, Julian Aguon and Pradeep Singh

C Dr Jon Copley

D Mike Johnston

E Verena Tunnicliffe

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Questions 24–26

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 24–26 on your answer sheet.

Mining the sea floor

Mining corporations believe that the mineral resources lying under the sea may be superior to those
found in the earth. They also say that these can be removed without producing much 24………………… .

The extraction is often done by adapting the 25………………… that has already been used to work on land.
The method of excavation involves removing the seawater from the slurry that is brought up to ships and
returning it to the seabed. However, concerned groups strongly believe that 26………………… is necessary
due to the possible number of unidentified consequences.

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