READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1.
The dugong: Sea cow
Dugongs are herbivorous mammals that spend their entire lives in the sea. Their close relatives the
manatees also venture into or live in freshwater. Together dugongs and manatees make up the order
Sirenia or sea cows, so-named because dugongs and manatees are thought to have given rise to the
myth of the mermaids or sirens of the sea.
A The dugong, which is a large marine mammal which, together with the manatees, looks rather
like a cross between a rotund dolphin and a walrus. Its body, flippers and fluke resemble those of a
dolphin but it has no dorsal fin. Its head looks somewhat like that of a walrus without the long tusks.
B Dugongs, along with other Sirenians whose diet consists mainly of sea-grass; and the distribution
of dugongs very closely follows that of these marine flowering plants. As seagrasses grow rooted in the
sediment, they are limited by the availability of light. Consequently they are found predominantly in
shallow coastal waters, and so too are dugongs. But, this is not the whole story. Dugongs do not eat all
species of seagrass, preferring seagrass of higher nitrogen and lower fibre content.
C Due to their poor eyesight, dugongs often use smell to locate edible plants. They also have a
strong tactile sense, and feel their surroundings with their long sensitive bristles. They will dig up an entire
plant and then shake it to remove the sand before eating it. They have been known to collect a pile of
plants in one area before eating them. The flexible and muscular upper lip is used to dig out the plants.
When eating they ingest the whole plant, including the roots, although when this is impossible they will
feed on just the leaves. A wide variety of seagrass has been found in dugong stomach contents, and
evidence exists they will eat algae when seagrass is scarce. Although almost completely herbivorous,
they will occasionally eat invertebrates such as jellyfish, sea squirts, and shellfish.
D A heavily grazed seagrass bed looks like a lawn mown by a drunk. Dugongs graze apparently at
random within a seagrass bed, their trails meandering in all directions across the bottom. This is rather an
inefficient means of removing seagrass that results in numerous small tufts remaining. And this is where
the dugongs derive some advantage from their inefficiency. The species that recover most quickly from
this disturbance, spreading out vegetatively from the remaining tufts, are those that dugongs like to eat. In
addition, the new growth found in these areas tends to be exactly what hungry dugongs like.
E Dugongs are semi-nomadic, often travelling long distances in search of food, but staying within a
certain range their entire life. Large numbers often move together from one area to another. It is thought
that these movements are caused by changes in seagrass availability. Their memory allows them to
return to specific points after long travels. Dugong movements mostly occur within a localised area of
seagrass beds, and animals in the same region show individualistic patterns of movement.
F Recorded numbers of dugongs are generally believed to be lower than actual numbers, due to a
lack of accurate surveys. Despite this, the dugong population is thought to be shrinking, with a worldwide
decline of 20 per cent in the last 90 years. They have disappeared from the waters of Hong Kong,
Mauritius, and Taiwan, as well as parts of Cambodia, Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam. Further
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disappearances are likely. (In the late 1960s, herds of up to 500 dugongs were observed off the coast of
East Africa and nearby islands. However, current populations in this area are extremely small, numbering
50 and below, and it is thought likely they will become extinct. The eastern side of the Red Sea is the
home of large populations numbering in the hundreds, and similar populations are thought to exist on the
western side. In the 1980s, it was estimated there could be as many as 4,000 dugongs in the Red Sea.
The Persian Gulf has the second-largest dugong population in the world, inhabiting most of the southern
coast, and the current population is believed to be around 7,500. Australia is home to the largest
population, stretching from Shark Bay in Western Australia to Moreton Bay in Queensland. The
population of Shark Bay is thought to be stable with over 10,000 dugongs.)
G Experience from various parts of northern Australia suggests that Extreme weather such as
cyclones and floods can destroy hundreds of square kilometres of seagrass meadows, as well as
washing dugongs ashore. The recovery of seagrass meadows and the spread of seagrass into new areas,
or areas where it has been destroyed, can take over a decade. For example, about 900 km2 of seagrass
was lost in Hervey Bay in 1992, probably because of murky water from flooding of local rivers, and run-off
turbulence from a cyclone three weeks later. Such events can cause extensive damage to seagrass
communities through severe wave action, shifting sand and reduction in saltiness and light levels. Prior to
the 1992 floods, the extensive seagrasses in Hervey Bay supported an estimated 1750 dugongs. Eight
months after the floods the affected area was estimated to support only about 70 dugongs. Most animals
presumably survived by moving to neighbouring areas. However, many died attempting to move to
greener pastures, with emaciated carcasses washing up on beaches up to 900km away.
H If dugongs do not get enough to eat they may calve later and produce fewer young. Food
shortages can be caused by many factors, such as a loss of habitat, death and decline in quality of
seagrass, and a disturbance of feeding caused by human activity. Sewage, detergents, heavy metal,
hypersaline water, herbicides, and other waste products all negatively affect seagrass meadows. Human
activity such as mining, trawling, dredging, land-reclamation, and boat propeller scarring also cause an
increase in sedimentation which smothers seagrass and prevents light from reaching it. This is the most
significant negative factor affecting seagrass. One of the dugong’s preferred species of seagrass,
Halophila ovalis, declines rapidly due to lack of light, dying completely after 30 days.
I Despite being legally protected in many countries, the main causes of population decline remain
anthropogenic and include hunting, habitat degradation, and fishing-related fatalities. Entanglement in
fishing nets has caused many deaths, although there are no precise statistics. Most issues with industrial
fishing occur in deeper waters where dugong populations are low, with local fishing being the main risk in
shallower waters. As dugongs cannot stay As dugongs cannot stay underwater for a very long period,
they are highly prone to deaths due to entanglement. The use of shark nets has historically caused large
numbers of deaths, and they have been eliminated in most areas and replaced with baited hooks.
Hunting has historically been a problem too, although in most areas they are no longer hunted, with the
exception of certain indigenous communities. In areas such as northern Australia, hunting remains the
greatest impact on the dugong population
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Questions 1-4
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using NO MORE THAN TWO
WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.
Dugongs are herbivorous mammals that spend their entire lives in the sea. Yet Dugongs are picky on
their feeding Seagrass, and only chose seagrass with higher 1_________ nitrogen and lower fibre. To
compensate for their poor eyesight, they use their 2 _________ to feel their surroundings.
sensitive bristles
It is like Dugongs are “farming” seagrass. They often leave 3 _________
TRAILs randomly in all directions across
the sea bed. Dugongs prefer eating the newly grew seagrass recovering from the tiny 4 _________
tufts left
behind by the grazing dugongs.
Questions 5-9
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 5-9 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement is True
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN If the information is not given in the passage
T 5 The dugong will keep eating up the plant completely when they begin to feed.
NG6 It takes more than ten years for the re-growth of seagrass where it has been grazed by Dugongs.
ng7 Even in facing food shortages, the strong individuals will not compete with the weak small ones for food.
f 8 It is thought that the dugong rarely returns to the old habitats when they finished the plant.
ng 9 Coastal industrial fishing poses the greatest danger to dugongs which are prone to be killed due to
entanglement.
Questions 10-13
Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
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10 What is Dugong in resemblance to yet as people can easily tell them apart from the manatees by its
tail?
dolphin
11 What is the major reason Dugongs traveled long distances in herds from one place to another? Sea grass
12
availability
What number, has estimated to be, of dugong’s population before the 1992 floods in Hervey Bay took
place?
1750
13 What is thought to be the lethal danger when dugongs were often trapped in? fishing net
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2.
Are Artist Liars?
A Shortly before his death, Marlon Brando was working on a series of instructional videos about
acting, to he called “Lying for a Iiving”. On the surviving footage, Brando can he seen dispensing gnomic
advice on his craft to a group of enthusiastic, if somewhat bemused, Hollywood stars, including Leonardo
Di Caprio and Sean Penn. Brando also recruited random people from the Los Angeles street and
persuaded them to improvise (the footage is said to include a memorable scene featuring two dwarves
and a giant Samoan). “If you can lie, you can act.” Brando told Jod Kaftan, a writer for Rolling Stone and
one of the few people to have viewed the footage. “Are you good at lying?” asked Kaftan. “Jesus.” said
Brando, “I’m fabulous at it”.
B Brando was not the first person to note that the line between an artist and a liar is a line one. If art
is a kind of lying, then lying is a form of art, albeit of a lower order-as Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain have
observed. Indeed, lying and artistic storytelling spring from a common neurological root-one that is
exposed in the cases of psychiatric patients who suffer from a particular kind of impairment. Both liars
and artists refuse to accept the tyranny of reality. Both carefully craft stories that are worthy of belief – a
skill requiring intellectual sophistication, emotional sensitivity and physical self-control (liars are writers
and performers of their own work). Such parallels are hardly coincidental, as I discovered while
researching my book on lying.
C A case study published in 1985 by Antonio Damasio, a neurologist, tells the story of a middle-
aged woman with brain damage caused by a series of strokes. She retained cognitive abilities, including
coherent speech, but what she actually said was rather unpredictable. Checking her knowledge of
contemporary events, Damasio asked her about the Falklands War. In the language of psychiatry, this
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woman was “confabulating”. Chronic confabulation is a rare type of memory problem that affects a small
proportion of brain damaged people. In the literature it is defined as “the production of fabricated,
distorted or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention to
deceive”. Whereas amnesiacs make errors of omission, there are gaps in their recollections they find
impossible to fill – confabulators make errors of commission: they make tilings up. Rather than forgetting,
they are inventing. Confabulating patients are nearly always oblivious to their own condition, and will
earnestly give absurdly implausible explanations of why they’re in hospital, or talking to a doctor. One
patient, asked about his surgical sear, explained that during the Second World War he surprised a
teenage girl who shot him three times in the head, killing him, only for surgery to bring him back to life.
The same patient, when asked about his family, described how at various times they had died in his arms,
or had been killed before his eyes. Others tell yet more fantastical tales, about trips to the moon, fighting
alongside Alexander in India or seeing Jesus on the Cross. Confabulators aren’t out to deceive. They
engage in what Morris Moseovitch, a neuropsychologist, calls “honest lying”. Uncertain and obscurely
distressed by their uncertainty, they are seized by a “compulsion to narrate”: a deep-seated need to
shape, order and explain what they do not understand. Chronic confabulators are often highly inventive at
the verbal level, jamming together words in nonsensical but suggestive ways: one patient, when asked
what happened to Queen Marie Antoinette of France, answered that she had been “suicided” by her
family. In a sense, these patients are like novelists, as described by Henry James: people on whom
“nothing is wasted”. Unlike writers, however, they have little or no control over their own material.
D The wider significance of this condition is what it tells us about ourselves. Evidently, there is a
gushing river of verbal creativity in the normal human mind, from which both artistic invention and lying
are drawn. We are born storytellers, spinning, narrative out of our experience and imagination, straining
against the leash that keeps us tethered to reality. This is a wonderful thing; it is what gives us out ability
to conceive of alternative futures and different worlds. And it helps us to understand our own lives through
the entertaining stories of others. But it can lead us into trouble, particularly when we try to persuade
others that our inventions are real. Most of the time, as our stories bubble up to consciousness, we
exercise our cerebral censors, controlling which stories we tell, and to whom. Yet people lie for all sorts of
reasons, including the fact that confabulating can be dangerously fun.
E During a now-famous libel case in 1996, Jonathan Aitken, a former cabinet minister, recounted a
tale to illustrate the horrors he endured after a national newspaper tainted his name. The case, which
stretched on for more than two years, involved a series of claims made by the Guardian about Aitken’s
relationships with Saudi arms dealers, including meetings he allegedly held with them on a trip to Paris
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while he was a government minister. Whitt amazed many in hindsight was the sheer superfluity of the lies
Aitken told during his testimony. Aitken’s case collapsed in June 1997, when the defence finally found
indisputable evidence about his Paris trip. Until then, Aitken’s charm, fluency and flair for theatrical
displays of sincerity looked as if they might bring him victory, they revealed that not only was Aitken’s
daughter not with him that day (when he was indeed doorstepped), but also that the minister had simply
got into his car and drove off, with no vehicle in pursuit.
F Of course, unlike Aitken, actors, playwrights and novelists are not literally attempting to deceive
us, because the rules are laid out in advance: come to the theatre, or open this book, and we’ll lie to you.
Perhaps this is why we fell it necessary to invent art in the first place: as a safe space into which our lies
can be corralled, and channeled into something socially useful. Given the universal compulsion to tell
stories, art is the best way to refine and enjoy the particularly outlandish or insight till ones. But that is not
the whole story. The key way in which artistic “lies” differ from normal lies, and from the “honest lying” of
chronic confabulators, is that they have a meaning and resonance beyond their creator. The liar lies on
behalf of himself; the artist tell lies on behalf of everyone. If writers have a compulsion to narrate, they
compel themselves to find insights about the human condition. Mario Vargas Llosa has written that novels
“express a curious truth that can only he expressed in a furtive and veiled fashion, masquerading as what
it is not.” Art is a lie whose secret ingredient is truth.
Questions 14-19
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 Unsuccessful deceit
ii Biological basis between liars and artists
iii How to lie in an artistic way
iv Confabulations and the exemplifiers
v The distinction between artists and common liars
vi The fine line between liars and artists
vii The definition of confabulation
viii Creativity when people lie
14 Paragraph A vi
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15 Paragraph B ii
16 Paragraph C iv
17 Paragraph D viii
18 Paragraph E i
19 Paragraph F
v
Questions 20-21
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Write the correct letters in boxes 20-21 on your answer sheet.
Which TWO of the following statements about people suffering from confabulation are true?
A They have lost cognitive abilities.
B They do not deliberately tell a lie.
C They are normally aware of their condition
D They do not have the impetus to explain what they do not understand.
E They try to make up stories.
Questions 22-23
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Write the correct letters in boxes 22-23 on your answer sheet.
Which TWO of the following statements about playwrights and novelists are true?
A They give more meaning to the stories.
B They tell lies for the benefit of themselves.
C They have nothing to do with the truth out there.
D We can be misled by them if not careful.
E We know there are lies in the content.
Questions 24-26
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.
national newspaper
A 24………………………. accused Jonathan Aitken, a former cabinet minister, who was selling and
arms dealers Aitken’s case collapsed in June 1997, when the defence finally found
buying with 25………………………
victory
indisputable evidence about his Paris trip. He was deemed to have his 26…………………….. They
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revealed that not only was Aitken’s daughter not with him that day, but also that the minister had simply
got into his car and drove off, with no vehicle in pursuit.
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3
Inside the mind of a fan
How watching sport affects the brain
A At about the same time that the poet Homer invented the epic here, the ancient Greeks started a
festival in which men competed in a single race, about 200 metres long. The winner received a branch of
wild olives. The Greeks called this celebration the Olympics. Through the ancient sprint remains, today
the Olympics are far more than that. Indeed, the Games seem to celebrate the dream of progress as
embodied in the human form. That the Games are intoxicating to watch is beyond question. During the
Athens Olympics in 2004, 3.4 billion people, half the world, watched them on television. Certainly, being a
spectator is a thrilling experience: but why?
B In 1996, three Italian neuroscientists, Giacomo Rizzolatti, Leonardo Forgassi and Vittorio Gallese,
examined the premotor cortex of monkeys. The discovered that inside these primate brains there were
groups of cells that ‘store vocabularies of motor actions’. Just as there are grammars of movement. These
networks of cells are the bodily ‘sentences’ we use every day, the ones our brain has chosen to retain
and refine. Think, for example, about a golf swing. To those who have only watched the Master’s
Tournament on TV, golfing seems easy. To the novice, however, the skill of casting a smooth arc with a
lop-side metal stick is virtually impossible. This is because most novices swing with their consciousness,
using an area of brain next to the premotor cortex. To the expert, on the other hand, a perfectly balanced
stroke is second nature. For him, the motor action has become memorized, and the movements are
embedded in the neurons of his premotor cortex. He hits the ball with the tranquility of his perfected
autopilot.
C These neurons in the premotor cortex, besides explaining why certain athletes seem to possess
almost unbelievable levels of skill, have an even more amazing characteristic, one that caused Rizzolatti,
Fogassi and Gallese to give them the lofty title ‘mirror neurons’. They note, The main functional
characteristic of mirror neurons is that they become active both when the monkey performs a particular
action (for example, grasping an object or holding it) and, astonishingly, when it sees another individual
performing a similar action.’ Humans have an even more elaborate mirror neuron system. These peculiar
cells mirror, inside the brain, the outside world: they enable us to internalize the actions of another. In
order to be activated, though, these cells require what the scientists call ‘goal-orientated movements’. If
we are staring at a photograph, a fixed image of a runner mid-stride, our mirror neurons are totally silent.
They only fire when the runner is active: running, moving or sprinting.
D What these electrophysiological studies indicate is that when we watch a golfer or a runner in
action, the mirror neurons in our own premotor cortex light up as if we were the ones competing. This
phenomenon of neural mirror was first discovered in 1954, when two French physiologists, Gastaut and
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Berf, found that the brains of humans vibrate with two distinct wavelengths, alpha and mu. The mu
system is involved in neural mirroring. It is active when your bodies are still, and disappears whenever we
do something active, like playing a sport or changing the TV channel. The surprising fact is that the mu
signal is also quiet when we watch someone else being active, as on TV, these results are the effect of
mirror neurons.
E Rizzolatti, Fogassi and Gallese call the idea for mirror neurons the ‘direct matching hypothesis’.
They believe that we only understand the movement of sports stars when we ‘map the visual
representation of the observed action onto our motor representation of the same action’. According to this
theory, watching an Olympic athlete ‘causes the motor system of the observer to resonate. The “motor
knowledge” of the observer is used to understand the observed action.’ But mirror neurons are more than
just the neural basis for our attitude to sport. It turns out that watching a great golfer makes us better
golfers, and watching a great sprinter actually makes us run faster. This ability to learn by watching is a
crucial skill. From the acquisition of language as infants to learning facial expressions, mimesis (copying)
is an essential part of being conscious. The best athletes are those with a premotor cortex capable of
imagining the movements of victory, together with the physical properties to make those movements real.
F But how many of us regularly watch sports in order to be a better athlete? Rather, we watch sport
for the feeling, the human drama. This feeling also derives from mirror neurons. By letting spectators
share in the motions of victory, they also allow us to share in its feelings. This is because they are directly
connected to the amygdale, one of the main brain regions involved in emotion. During the Olympics, the
mirror neurons of whole nations will be electrically identical, their athletes causing spectators to feel, just
for a second or two, the same thing. Watching sports brings people together. Most of us will never run a
mile in under four minutes, or hit a home run. Our consolation comes in watching, when we gather around
the TV, we all feel, just for a moment, what it is to do something perfectly.
Questions 27-32
Reading Passage 3 has six paragraphs, A-F.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
f 27 an explanation of why watching sport may be emotionally satisfying
b 28 an explanation of why beginners find sporting tasks difficult
e 29 a factor that needs to combine with mirroring to attain sporting excellence
c 30 a comparison of human and animal mirror neurons
31 the first discovery of brain activity related to mirror neurons
d
32 a claim linking observation to improvement in performance
e
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Questions 33-35
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 33-35 on your answer sheet.
33 The writer uses the term ‘grammar of movement’ to mean
A a level of sporting skill.
B a system of words about movement.
C a pattern of connected cells.
D a type of golf swing.
34 The writer states that expert players perform their actions
A without conscious thought.
B by planning each phase of movement.
C without regular practice.
D by thinking about the actions of others.
35 The writer states that the most common motive for watching sport is to
A improve personal performance.
B feel linked with people of different nationalities.
C experience strong positive emotions.
D realize what skill consists of.
Questions 36-40
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement is true
NO if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
36 Inexpert sports players are too aware of what they are doing.
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37 Monkeys have a more complex mirror neuron system than humans.
38 Looking at a photograph can activate mirror neurons.
39 Gastaut and Bert were both researchers and sports players.
40 The mu system is at rest when we are engaged in an activity.
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