The question of whether we are alone in the Universe has haunted humanity for

centuries, but we may now stand poised on the brink of the answer to that
question, as we search for radio signals from other intelligent civilisations. This
search, often known by the acronym SETI (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence),
is a difficult one. Although groups around the world have been searching
intermittently for three decades, it is only now that we have reached the level of
technology where we can make a determined attempt to search all nearby stars
for any sign of life.

A. The primary reason for the search is basic curiosity - the same curiosity about
the natural world that drives all pure science. We want to know whether we are
alone in the Universe. We want to know whether life evolves naturally if given
the right conditions, or whether there is something very special about the Earth
to have fostered the variety of life forms that we see around us on the planet.
The simple detection of a radio signal will be sufficient to answer this most
basic of all questions. In this sense, SETI is another cog in the machinery of
pure science which is continually pushing out the horizon of our knowledge.
However, there are other reasons for being interested in whether life exists
elsewhere. For example, we have had civilisation on Earth for perhaps only a
few thousand years, and the threats of nuclear war and pollution over the last
 few decades have told us that our survival may be tenuous. Will we last
another two thousand years or will we wipe ourselves out? Since the lifetime
of a planet like ours is several billion years, we can expect that, if other
civilisations do survive in our galaxy, their ages will range from zero to several
billion years. Thus any other civilisation that we hear from is likely to be far
older, on average, than ourselves. The mere existence of such a civilisation
will tell us that long-term survival is possible, and gives us some cause for
optimism. It is even possible that the older civilisation may pass on the
benefits of their experience in dealing with threats to survival such as nuclear
war and global pollution, and other threats that we haven't yet discovered.
B. In discussing whether we are alone, most SETI scientists adopt two ground
rules. First, UFOS (Unidentified Flying Objects) are generally ignored since
most scientists don't consider the evidence for them to be strong enough to
bear serious consideration (although it is also important to keep an open mind
in case any really convincing evidence emerges in the future). Second, we
make a very conservative assumption that we are looking for a life form that is
pretty well like us, since if it differs radically from us we may well not recognise
it as a life form, quite apart from whether we are able to communicate with it.
In other words, the life form we are looking for may well have two green heads
and seven fingers, but it will nevertheless resemble us in that it should
communicate with its fellows, be interested in the Universe, live on a planet
orbiting a star like our Sun, and perhaps most restrictively, have a chemistry,
like us, based on carbon and water.
C. Even when we make these assumptions, our understanding of other life forms
is still severely limited. We do not even know, for example, how many stars
have planets, and we certainly do not know how likely it is that life will arise
naturally, given the right conditions. However, when we look at the 100 billion
stars in our galaxy (the Milky Way), and 100 billion galaxies in the observable
Universe, it seems inconceivable that at least one of these planets does not
have a life form on it; in fact, the best educated guess we can make, using the
little that we do know about the conditions for carbon-based life, leads us to
estimate that perhaps one in 100,000 stars might have a life-bearing planet
orbiting it. That means that our nearest neighbours are perhaps 100 light years
away, which is almost next door in astronomical terms.
D. An alien civilisation could choose many different ways of sending information
across the galaxy, but many of these either require too much energy, or else
are severely attenuated while traversing the vast distances across the galaxy.
It turns out that, for a given amount of transmitted power, radio waves in the
frequency range 1000 to 3000 MHz travel the greatest distance, and so all
searches to date have concentrated on looking for radio waves in this
frequency range. So far there have been a number of searches by various
groups around the world, including Australian searches using the radio
telescope at Parkes, New South Wales. Until now there have not been any
detections from the few hundred stars which have been searched. The scale
of the searches has been increased dramatically since 1992, when the US
Congress voted NASA $10 million per year for ten years to conduct a thorough
search for extra-terrestrial life. Much of the money in this project is being spent
on developing the special hardware needed to search many frequencies at
once. The project has two parts. One part is a targeted search using the
world's largest radio telescopes, the American-operated telescope in Arecibo,
Puerto Rico and the French telescope in Nancy in France. This part of the
project is searching the nearest 1000 likely stars with high sensitivity for
signals in the frequency range 1000 to 3000 MHz. The other part of the project
is an undirected search which is monitoring all of space with a lower
sensitivity, using the smaller antennas of NASA’s Deep Space Network.
E. There is considerable debate over how we should react if we detect a signal
from an alien civilisation. Everybody agrees that we should not reply
immediately. Quite apart from the impracticality of sending a reply over such
large distances at short notice, it raises a host of ethical questions that would
have to be addressed by the global community before any reply could be sent.
Would the human race face the culture shock if faced with a superior and
much older civilisation? Luckily, there is no urgency about this. The stars being
searched are hundreds of light years away, so it takes hundreds of years for
their signal to reach us, and a further few hundred years for our reply to reach
them. It's not important, then, if there's a delay of a few years, or decades,
 while the human race debates the question of whether to reply, and perhaps
carefully drafts a reply.

Questions 18-20

Answer the questions below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the

passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 18-20 on your answer sheet.

1. What is the life expectancy of Earth?

2. What kind of signals from other intelligent civilisations are SETI scientists
searching for?

3. How many stars are the world's most powerful radio telescopes searching?
Questions 21-26

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

In boxes 21-26 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

4. Alien civilisations may be able to help the human race to overcome serious
problems.

5. SETI scientists are trying to find a life form that resembles humans in many
ways.

6. The Americans and Australians have co-operated on joint research projects.

7. So far SETI scientists have picked up radio signals from several stars.

8. The NASA project attracted criticism from some members of Congress.

9. If a signal from outer space is received, it will be important to respond promptly

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Question 27-40, which are based on
Reading Passage 3 below.

The history of the tortoise

If you go back far enough, everything lived in the sea. At various points in
evolutionary history, enterprising individuals within many different animal groups
moved out onto the land, sometimes even to the most parched deserts, taking
their own private seawater with them in blood and cellular fluids. In addition to the
reptiles, birds, mammals and insects which we see all around us, other groups that
have succeeded out of water include scorpions, snails, crustaceans such as
woodlice and land crabs, millipedes and centipedes, spiders and various worms.
And we mustn't forget the plants, without whose prior invasion of the land none of
the other migrations could have happened.

Moving from water to land involved major redesign of every aspect of life, including
breathing and reproduction. Nevertheless, a good number of thorough going land
animals later turned around, abandoned their hard-earned terrestrial re-tooling,
and returned to the water again. Seals have only gone part way back. They show
us what the intermediates might have been like, on the way to extreme cases such
as whales and dugongs. Whales (including the small whales we call dolphins) and
dugongs, with their close cousins the manatees ceased to be land creatures
altogether and reverted to the full marine habits of their remote ancestors. They
don't even come ashore to breed. They do, however, still breathe air, having never
developed anything equivalent to the gills of their earlier marine incarnation.
Turtles went back to the sea a very long time ago and, like all vertebrate returnees
to the water, they breathe air. However, they are, in one respect, less fully given
back to the water than whales or dugongs, for turtles still lay their eggs on
beaches.

There is evidence that all modern turtles are descended from a terrestrial ancestor
which lived before most of the dinosaurs. There are two key fossils called
Proganochelys quenstedti and Palaeochersis talampayensis dating from early
dinosaur times, which appear to be close to the ancestry of all modern turtles and
tortoises. You might wonder how we can tell whether fossil animals lived on land
or in water, especially if only fragments are found. Sometimes it's obvious.
Ichthyosaurs were reptilian contemporaries of the dinosaurs, with fins and
streamlined bodies. The fossils look like dolphins and they surely lived like
dolphins, in the water. With turtles it is a little less obvious. One way to tell is by
measuring the bones of their forelimbs.

Walter Joyce and Jacques Gauthier at Yale University, obtained three

measurements in these particular bones of 71 species of living turtles and
tortoises. They used a kind of triangular graph paper to plot the three
measurements against one another. All the land tortoise species formed a tight
cluster of points in the upper part of the triangle; all the water turtles cluster in the
lower part of the triangular graph. There was no overlap, except when they added
some species that spend time both in water and on land. Sure enough, these
amphibious species show up on the triangular graph approximately half way
between the 'wet cluster’ of sea turtles and the ‘dry cluster’ of land tortoises. The
next step was to determine where the fossils fell. The bones of P. quenstedti and
P. talampayensis leave us in no doubt. Their points on the graph are right in the
thick of the dry cluster. Both these fossils were dry-land tortoise. They come from
the era before our turtles returned to the water.

You might think, therefore, that modern land tortoises have probably stayed on
land ever since those early terrestrial times, as most mammals did after a few of
them went back to the sea. But apparently not. If you draw out the family tree of all
modern turtles and tortoises, nearly all the branches are aquatic. Today's land
tortoises constitute a single branch, deeply nested among branches consisting of
aquatic turtles. This suggests that modern land tortoises have not stayed on land
continuously since the time of P. quenstedti and P. talampayensis. Rather, their
ancestors were among those who went back to the water, and they then re-
emerged back onto the land in (relatively) more recent times.

Tortoises therefore represent a remarkable double return. In common with all

mammals, reptiles and birds, their remote ancestors were marine fish and before
that various more or less worm-like creatures stretching back, still in the sea, to
the primeval bacteria. Later ancestors lived on land and stayed there for a very
large number of generations. Later ancestors still evolved back into the water and
became sea turtles. And finally they returned yet again to the land as tortoises,
some of which now live in the driest of deserts.

Questions 27-30

Answer the questions below.

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

Write your answers in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

10. What had to transfer from sea to land before any animals could migrate?
11. Which TWO processes are mentioned as those in which animals had to make
big changes as they moved onto land?
12. Which physical feature, possessed by their ancestors, do whales lack?
13. Which animals might ichthyosaurs have resembled?

Questions 31-33

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

In boxes 31-33 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. Turtles were among the first group of animals to migrate back to the sea.
15. It is always difficult to determine where an animal lived when its fossilised
remains are incomplete.
16. The habitat of ichthyosaurs can be determined by the appearance of their
fossilised remains.

Questions 34-39

Complete the flow-chart below

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage
for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 34-39 on your answer sheet.

Method of determining where the ancestors of

turtles and tortoises come from

Step 1

71 species of living turtles and tortoises were examined and a total of 34…………..
….

were taken from the bones of their forelimbs.

Step 2

The data was recorded on a 35………….…….. (necessary for comparing the

information).

Outcome: Land tortoises were represented by a dense 36………………… of points

towards the top.

Sea turtles were grouped together in the bottom part.

Step 3

The same data was collected from some living 37……...…………. species and
added to the other results.

Outcome: The points for these species turned out to be positioned about
38………..…….. up the triangle between the land tortoises and the sea turtles.

Outcome: The position of the points indicated that both these ancient creatures
were 39………………...….

Question 40

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

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

According to the writer, the most significant thing about tortoises is that

A. they are able to adapt to life in extremely dry environments.

B. their original life form was a kind of primeval bacteria.
C. they have so much in common with sea turtles.
D. they have made the transition from sea to land more than once.
WRITING
section
 Test 3
Writing 60 Minutes
WRITING TASK 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.

The two maps below show an island, before and after the construction of
some tourist facilities.

Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features,

and make comparisons where relevant.

Write at least 150 words.

WRITING TASK 2
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Write about the following topic:

Some experts believe that it is better for children to begin learning a

foreign language at primary school rather than secondary school.

Do the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own
knowledge or experience.

Write at least 250 words.

Speaking
section
 Test 4
Speaking 20 minutes
PART 1

The examiner asks the candidate about him/herself, his/her home, work or studies
and other familiar topics.

Games

● What games are popular in your country? [Why?]

● Do you play any games? [Why/Why not?

● How do people learn to play games in your country?

● Do you think it's important for people to play games? [Why/Why not?]

PART 2

Describe an open-air or street market which you enjoyed visiting.

You should say:

where the market is

what the market sells

how big the market is

and explain why you enjoyed visiting this market.

You will have to talk about the topic for one to two minutes. You have one minute
to think about what you are going to say. You can make some notes to help you if
you wish.
PART 3

Discussion topics:

Shopping at markets

Do people in your country enjoy going to open-air markets that sell things like food
or clothes or old objects? Which type of market is more popular? Why?

Do you think markets are more suitable places for selling certain types of things?
Which ones? Why do you think this is?

Do you think young people feel the same about shopping at markets as older
people? Why is that?

Shopping in general

What do you think are the advantages of buying things from shops rather than
markets?

How does advertising influence what people choose to buy? Is this true for
everyone?

Do you think that any recent changes in the way people live have affected general
shopping habits? Why is this?