READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on
Reading Passage 1 below.
Plant Scents
A
Everyone is familiar with scented flowers, and many people have heard that floral
odors help the plant attract pollinators. This common notion is mostly correct, but
it is surprising how little scientific proof of it exists. Of course, not all flowers are
pollinated by biological agents – for example, many grasses are wind-pollinated –
but the flowers of the grasses may still emit volatiles. In fact, plants emit organic
molecules all the time, although they may not be obvious to the human nose. As
for flower scents that we can detect with our noses, bouquets that attract moths and
butterflies generally smell “sweet,” and those that attract certain flies seem “rotten”
to us.
B
The release of volatiles from vegetative parts of the plant is familiar, although until
recently the physiological functions of these chemicals were less clear and had
received much less attention from scientists. When the trunk of a pine tree is
injured – for example, when a beetle tries to burrow into it – it exudes a very
smelly resin. This resin consists mostly of terpenes – hydrocarbons with a
backbone of 10, 15 or 20 carbons that may also contain atoms of oxygen. The
heavier C20 terpenes, called diterpenes, are glue-like and can cover and
immobilize insects as they plug the hole. This defense mechanism is as ancient as
it is effective: Many samples of fossilized resin, or amber, contain the remains of
insects trapped inside. Many other plants emit volatiles when injured, and in some
cases the emitted signal helps defend the plant. For example, (Z)-3-hexenyl
acetate, which is known as a “green leaf volatile” because it is emitted by many
plants upon injury, deters females of the moth Heliothis virescens from laying eggs
on injured tobacco plants. Interestingly, the profile of emitted tobacco volatiles is
different at night than during the day, and it is the nocturnal blend, rich in several
(Z)-3-hexen-1-olesters, that is most effective in repelling the night-active H.
virescens moths.
C
Herbivore induced volatiles often serve as indirect defenses. These bulwarks exist
in a variety of plant species, including corn, beans, and the model plant species
Arabidopsis thaliana. Plants not only emit volatiles acutely, at the site where
caterpillars, mites, aphids or similar insects are eating them but also generally from
non-damaged parts of the plant. These signals attract a variety of predatory insects
that prey on the plant-eaters. For example, some parasitic wasps can detect the
volatile signature of a damaged plant and will lay their eggs inside the offending
caterpillar; eventually, the wasp eggs hatch, and the emerging larvae feed on the
caterpillar from the inside hatch, and the emerging larvae feed on the caterpillar
from the inside out. The growth of infected caterpillars is retarded considerably, to
the benefit of the plant. Similarly, volatiles released by plants in response to
herbivore egg laying can attract parasites of the eggs, thereby preventing them
from hatching and avoiding the onslaught of hungry herbivores that would have
emerged. Plant volatiles can also be used as a kind of currency in some very
indirect defensive schemes. In the rainforest understory tree Leonardoxa Africana,
ants of the species Petalomyrmex phylax patrol young leaves and attack any
herbivorous insects that they encounter. The young leaves emit high levels of the
volatile compound methyl salicylate, a compound that the ants use either as a
pheromone or as an antiseptic in their nests. It appears that methyl salicylate is
both an attractant and a reward offered by the tree to get the ants to perform this
valuable deterrent role.
D
Floral scent has a strong impact on the economic success of many agricultural
crops that rely on insect pollinators, including fruit trees such as the bee-pollinated
cherry, apple, apricot and peach, as well as vegetables and tropical plants such as
papaya. Pollination not only affects crop yield, but also the quality and efficiency
of crop production. Many crops require most, if not all, ovules to be fertilized for
optimum fruit size and shape. A decrease in fragrance emission reduces the ability
of flowers to attract pollinators and results in considerable losses for growers,
particularly for introduced species that had a specialized pollinator in their place of
origin. This problem has been exacerbated by recent disease epidemics that have
killed many honeybees, the major insect pollinators in the United States.
E
One means by which plant breeders circumvent the pollination problem is by
breeding self-compatible, or apomictic, varieties that do not require fertilization.
Although this solution is adequate, its drawbacks include near genetic uniformity
and consequent susceptibility to pathogens. Some growers have attempted to
enhance honeybee foraging by spraying scent compounds on orchard trees, but this
approach was costly, had to be repeated, had potentially toxic effects on the soil or
local biota, and, in the end, proved to be inefficient. The poor effectiveness of this
strategy probably reflects inherent limitations of the artificial, topically applied
compounds, which clearly fail to convey the appropriate message to the bees. For
example, general spraying of the volatile mixture cannot tell the insects where
exactly the blossoms are. Clearly, a more refined strategy is needed. The ability to
enhance existing floral scent, which could all be accomplished by genetic
engineering, would allow us to manipulate the types of insect pollinators and the
frequency of their visits. Moreover, the metabolic engineering of fragrance could
increase crop protection against pathogens and pests.
F
Genetic manipulation of the scent will also benefit the floriculture industry.
Ornamentals, including cut flowers, foliage and potted plants, play an important
aesthetic role in human life. Unfortunately, traditional breeding has often produced
cultivars with improved vase life, shipping characteristics, color and shape while
sacrificing desirable perfumes. The loss of scent among ornamentals, which have a
worldwide value of more than $30 billion, makes them important targets for the
genetic manipulation of flower fragrance. Some work has already begun in this
area, as several groups have created petunia and carnation plants that express the
linalool synthase gene from C. Breweri. These experiments are still preliminary:
For technical reasons, the gene was expressed everywhere in the plant, and
although the transgenic plants did create small amounts of linalool, the level was
below the threshold of detection for the human nose. Similar experiments in
tobacco used genes for other monoterpene synthases, such as the one that produces
limonene, but gave similar results.
G
The next generation of experiments, already in progress, includes sophisticated
schemes that target the expression of scent genes specifically to flowers or other
organs – such as special glands that can store antimicrobial or herbivore-repellent
compounds.

Questions 1-4
The Reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-G, in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.
1 Substance released to help plants themselves.
2 Scent helps plant’s pollination.
3 Practice on genetic experiment of fragrance.
4 Plant’s scent attracts herbivore’s enemy for protection.
Questions 5-8
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage
1?
In boxes 5-8 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
5 We have few evidence to support the idea that scent attracts pollinators.
6 Heliothis virescens won’t eat those tobacco leaves on which they laid eggs.
7 Certain ants are attracted by volatiles to guard plants in rainforest.
8 Pollination only affects fruit trees’ production rather than other crop trees.
Questions 9-13
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.
9 How do wasps protect plants when they are attracted by scents according to the
passage?
A plants induce wasps to prey herbivore.
B wasps lay eggs into caterpillars.
C wasps laid eggs on plants to expel herbivore.
D offending caterpillars and wasp eggs coexist well.
10 What reason caused a number of honeybees decline in the United States.
A pollination process
B spread illness
C crop trees are poisonous
D grower’s overlook
11 Which of the following drawbacks about artificial fragrance
is NOT mentioned in the passage?
A it’s very expensive
B it can’t tell correct information to pollinators.
C it needs massive manual labour
D it poisons local environment
12 The number of $30 billion quoted in the passage is to illustrate the fact that:
A favorable perfumes are made from ornamental flowers.
B traditional floriculture industry needs reform.
C genetic operation on scent can make a vast profit.
D Scent plays a significant role in Ornamental industry.
13 What is weakness of genetic experiments on fragrance?
A Linalool level is too low to be smelt by nose
B no progress made in linalool emission.
C experiment on tobacco has a better result
D transgenic plants produce intense scent
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on
Reading Passage 2 below.
We have Star performers!
A
The difference between companies is people. With capital and technology in
plentiful supply, the critical resource for companies in the knowledge era will be
human talent. Companies full of achievers will, by definition, outperform
organisations of plodders. Ergo, compete ferociously for the best people. Poach
and pamper stars; ruthlessly weed out second-raters. This, in essence, has been the
recruitment strategy of the ambitious company of the past decade. The ‘talent
mindset’ was given definitive form in two reports by the consultancy McKinsey
famously entitled The War for Talent. Although the intensity of the warfare
subsequently subsided along with the air in the internet bubble, it has been
warming up again as the economy tightens: labour shortages, for example, are the
reason the government has laid out the welcome mat for immigrants from the new
Europe.
B
Yet while the diagnosis – people are important – is evident to the point of
platitude, the apparently logical prescription – hire the best – like so much in
management is not only not obvious: it is in fact profoundly wrong. The first
suspicions dawned with the crash to earth of the dotcom meteors, which showed
that dumb is dumb whatever the IQ of those who perpetrate it. The point was
illuminated in brilliant relief by Enron, whose leaders, as a New Yorker article
called ‘The Talent Myth’ entertainingly related, were so convinced of their own
cleverness that they never twigged that collective intelligence is not the sum of a
lot of individual intelligence. In fact, in a profound sense, the two are opposites.
Enron believed in stars, noted author Malcolm Gladwell, because they didn’t
believe in systems. But companies don’t just create: ‘they execute and compete and
coordinate the efforts of many people, and the organisations that are most
successful at that task are the ones where the system is the star’. The truth is that
you can’t win the talent wars by hiring stars – only lose it. New light on why this
should be so is thrown by an analysis of star behaviour in this months’ Harvard
Business Review. In a study of the careers of 1,000 star-stock analysts in the
1990s, the researchers found that when a company recruited a star performer, three
things happened.
C
First, stardom doesn’t easily transfer from one organisation to another. In many
cases, performance dropped sharply when high performers switched employers and
in some instances never recovered. More of success than commonly supposed is
due to the working environment – systems, processes, leadership, accumulated
embedded learning that are absent in and can’t be transported to the new firm.
Moreover, precisely because of their past stellar performance, stars were unwilling
to learn new tricks and antagonised those (on whom they now unwittingly
depended) who could teach them. So they moved, upping their salary as they did –
36 per cent moved on within three years, fast even for Wall Street. Second, group
performance suffered as a result of tensions and resentment by rivals within the
team. One respondent likened hiring a star to an organ transplant. The new organ
can damage others by hogging the blood supply, other organs can start aching or
threaten to stop working or the body can reject the transplants altogether, he said.
‘You should think about it very carefully before you do a transplant to a healthy
body.’ Third, investors punished the offender by selling its stock. This is ironic
since the motive for importing stars was often a suffering share price in the first
place. Shareholders evidently believe that the company is overpaying, the hiree is
cashing in on a glorious past rather than preparing for a glowing present, and a
spending spree is in the offing.
D
The result of mass star hirings as well as individual ones seems to confirm such
doubts. Look at County NatWest and Barclays de Zoete Wedd, both of which hired
teams of stars with loud fanfare to do great things in investment banking in the
1990s. Both failed dismally. Everyone accepts the cliche that people make the
organisation – but much more does the organisation make the people. When
researchers studied the performance of fund managers in the 1990s, they
discovered that just 30 per cent of the variation in fund performance was due to the
individual, compared to 70 per cent to the company-specific setting.
E
That will be no surprise to those familiar with systems thinking. W Edwards
Deming used to say that there was no point in beating up on people when 90 per
cent of performance variation was down to the system within which they worked.
Consistent improvement, he said, is a matter not of raising the level of individual
intelligence, but of the learning of the organisation as a whole. The star system is
glamorous – for the few. But it rarely benefits the company that thinks it is
working it. And the knock-on consequences indirectly affect everyone else too. As
one internet response to Gladwell’s New Yorker article put it: after Enron, ‘the rest
of corporate America is stuck with overpaid, arrogant, underachieving, and
relatively useless talent.’
F
Football is another illustration of the star vs systems strategic choice. As with
investment banks and stockbrokers, it seems obvious that success should ultimately
be down to money. Great players are scarce and expensive. So the club that can
afford more of them than anyone else will win. But the performance of Arsenal and
Manchester United on one hand and Chelsea and Real Madrid on the other proves
that it’s not as easy as that. While Chelsea and Real have the funds to be
compulsive star collectors – as with Juan Sebastian Veron – they are less
successful than Arsenal and United which, like Liverpool before them, have put
much more emphasis on developing a setting within which stars-in-the-making can
flourish. Significantly, Thierry Henry, Patrick Veira and Robert Pires are much
bigger stars than when Arsenal bought them, their value (in all senses) enhanced
by the Arsenal system. At Chelsea, by contrast, the only context is the stars
themselves – managers with different outlooks come and go every couple of
seasons. There is no settled system for the stars to blend into. The Chelsea context
has not only not added value, but it has also subtracted it. The side is less than the
sum of its exorbitantly expensive parts. Even Real Madrid’s galacticos, the most
extravagantly gifted on the planet, are being outperformed by less talented but
better-integrated Spanish sides. In football, too, stars are trumped by systems.
G
So if not by hiring stars, how do you compete in the war for talent? You grow your
own. This worked for investment analysts, where some companies were not only
better at creating stars but also at retaining them. Because they had a much more
sophisticated view of the interdependent relationship between star and system, they
kept them longer without resorting to the exorbitant salaries that were so
destructive to rivals.

Questions 14-17
The Reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G
Which paragraph 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 One example from non-commerce/business settings that better system wins
bigger stars
15 One failed company that believes stars rather than the system
16 One suggestion that the author made to acquire employees than to win the
competition nowadays
17 One metaphor to human medical anatomy that illustrates the problems of
hiring stars.
Questions 18-21
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage
2?
In boxes 18-21 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the information
NO if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
18 McKinsey who wrote The War for Talent had not expected the huge influence
made by this book.
19 Economic condition becomes one of the factors which decide whether or not a
country would prefer to hire foreign employees.
20 The collapse of Enron is caused totally by an unfortunate incident instead of
company’s management mistake.
21 Football clubs that focus making stars in the setting are better than simply
collecting stars
Questions 24-26
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 22-26 on your answer sheet.
An investigation carried out on 1000 22…………………………. Participants of a
survey by Harvard Business Review found a company hire
a 23………………………… has negative effects. For instance, they behave
considerably worse in a new team than in the 24………………………. that they
used to be. They move faster than wall street and increase
their 25…………………………. Secondly, they faced rejections or refuse from
those 26……………………….. within the team. Lastly, the one who made
mistakes had been punished by selling his/her stock share.
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on
Reading Passage 3 below.
Memory Decoding
Try this memory test: Study each face and compose a vivid image for the person’s
first and last name. Rose Leo, for example, could be a rosebud and a lion. Fill in
the blanks on the next page. The Examinations School at Oxford University is an
austere building of oak-paneled rooms, large Gothic windows, and looming
portraits of eminent dukes and earls. It is where generations of Oxford students
have tested their memory on final exams, and it is where, last August, 34
contestants gathered at the World Memory Championships to be examined in an
entirely different manner.
A
In timed trials, contestants were challenged to look at and then recite a two-page
poem, memorize rows of 40-digit numbers, recall the names of 110 people after
looking at their photographs, and perform seven other feats of extraordinary
retention. Some tests took just a few minutes; others lasted hours. In the 14 years
since the World Memory Championships was founded, no one has memorized the
order of a shuffled deck of playing cards in less than 30 seconds. That nice round
number has become the four-minute mile of competitive memory, a benchmark
that the world’s best “mental athletes,” as some of them like to be called, is closing
in on. Most contestants claim to have just average memories, and scientific testing
confirms that they’re not just being modest. Their feats are based on tricks that
capitalize on how the human brain encodes information. Anyone can learn them.
B
Psychologists Elizabeth Valentine and John Wilding, authors of the monograph
Superior Memory, recently teamed up with Eleanor Maguire, a neuroscientist at
University College London to study eight people, including Karsten, who had
finished near the top of the World Memory Championships. They wondered if the
contestants’ brains were different in some way. The researchers put the
competitors and a group of control subjects into an MRI machine and asked them
to perform several different memory tests while their brains were being scanned.
When it came to memorizing sequences of three-digit numbers, the difference
between the memory contestant and the control subjects was, as expected,
immense. However, when they were shown photographs of magnified snowflakes,
images that the competitors had never tried to memorize before, the champions did
no better than the control group. When the researchers analyzed the brain scans,
they found that the memory champs were activating some brain regions that were
different from those the control subjects were using. These regions, which included
the right posterior hippocampus, are known to be involved in visual memory and
spatial navigation.
C
It might seem odd that the memory contestants would use visual imagery and
spatial navigation to remember numbers, but the activity makes sense when their
techniques are revealed. Cooke, a 23-year-old cognitive-science graduate student
with a shoulder-length mop of curly hair, is a grand master of brain storage. He can
memorize the order of 10 decks of playing cards in less than an hour or one deck of
cards in less than a minute. He is closing in on the 30-second deck. In the Lamb
and Flag, Cooke pulled out a deck of cards and shuffled it. He held up three cards –
the 7 of spades, the queen of clubs, and the 10 of spades. He pointed at a fireplace
and said, “Destiny’s Child is whacking Franz Schubert with handbags.” The next
three cards were the king of hearts, the king of spades, and the jack of clubs.
D
How did he do it? Cooke has already memorized a specific person, verb, and
object that he associates with each card in the deck. For example, for the 7 of
spades, the person (or, in this case, persons) is always the singing group Destiny’s
Child, the action is surviving a storm, and the image is a dinghy. The queen of
clubs is always his friend Henrietta, the action is thwacking with a handbag, and
the image is of wardrobes filled with designer clothes. When Cooke commits a
deck to memory, he does it three cards at a time. Every three-card group forms a
single image of a person doing something to an object. The first card in the triplet
becomes the person, the second the verb, the third the object. He then places those
images along a specific familiar route, such as the one he took through the Lamb
and Flag. In competitions, he uses an imaginary route that he has designed to be as
smooth and downhill as possible. When it comes time to recall, Cooke takes a
mental walk along his route and translates the images into cards. That’s why the
MRIs of the memory contestants showed activation in the brain areas associated
with visual imagery and spatial navigation.
E
The more resonant the images are, the more difficult they are to forget. But even
meaningful information is hard to remember when there’s a lot of it. That’s why
competitive memorizers place their images along an imaginary route. That
technique, known as the loci method, reportedly originated in 477 B.C. with the
Greek poet Simonides of Ceos. Simonides was the sole survivor of a roof collapse
that killed all the other guests at a royal banquet. The bodies were mangled beyond
recognition, but Simonides was able to reconstruct the guest list by closing his eyes
and recalling each individual around the dinner table. What he had discovered was
that our brains are exceptionally good at remembering images and spatial
information. Evolutionary psychologists have offered an explanation: Presumably,
our ancestors found it important to recall where they found their last meal or the
way back to the cave. After Simonides’ discovery, the loci method became popular
across ancient Greece as a trick for memorizing speeches and texts. Aristotle wrote
about it, and later a number of treatises on the art of memory were published in
Rome. Before printed books, the art of memory was considered a staple of classical
education, on a par with grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
F
The most famous of the naturals was the Russian journalist S.V. Shereshevski, who
could recall long lists of numbers memorized decades earlier, as well as poems,
strings of nonsense syllables, and just about anything else he was asked to
remember. “The capacity of his memory had no distinct limits,” wrote Alexander
Luria, the Russian psychologist who studies Shereshevski also had synesthesia, a
rare condition in which the senses become intertwined. For example, every number
may be associated with a color or every word with a taste. Synesthetic reactions
evoke a response in more areas of the brain, making memory easier.
G
K. Anders Ericsson, a Swedish-born psychologist at Florida State University,
thinks anyone can acquire Shereshevski’s skills. He cites an experiment with S. F.,
an undergraduate who was paid to take a standard test of memory called the digit
span for one hour a day, two or three days a week. When he started, he could hold,
like most people, only about seven digits in his head at any given time
(conveniently, the length of a phone number). Over two years, S. F. completed 250
hours of testing. By then, he had stretched his digit span from 7 to more than 80.
The study of S. F. led Ericsson to believe that innately superior memory doesn’t
exist at all. When he reviewed original case studies of naturals, he found that
exceptional memorizers were using techniques – sometimes without realizing it –
and lots of practice. Often, exceptional memory was only for a single type of
material, like digits. “If we look at some of these memory tasks, they’re the kind of
thing most people don’t even waste one-hour practicing, but if they wasted 50
hours, they’d be exceptional at it,” Ericsson says. It would be remarkable, he adds,
to find a “person who is exceptional across a number of tasks. I don’t think that
there’s any compelling evidence that there are such people.”

Questions 27-31
The Reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-G, in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.
27 The reason why the competence of super memory is significant in academic
settings
28 Mention of a contest for extraordinary memory held in consecutive years
29 A demonstrative example of extraordinary person did an unusual recalling
game
30 A belief that extraordinary memory can be gained through enough practice
31 A depiction of the rare ability which assists the extraordinary memory
reactions
Questions 32-36
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage.
Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the Reading Passage for each
answer.
Write your answers in boxes 32-36 on your answer sheet.
Using visual imagery and spatial navigation to remember numbers are investigated
and explained. A man called Ed Cooke in a pub, spoke a string of odd words when
he held 7 of the spades (the first one of any cards group) was remembered as he
encoded it to a 32………………………. and the card deck to memory are set to be
one time of an order of 33………………………..; When it comes time to recall,
Cooke took a 34………………………….. along his way and interpreted the
imaginary scene into cards. This superior memory skill can be traced back to
Ancient Greece, the strategy was called 35……………………… which had been a
major subject was in ancient 36………………………..

Questions 37-38
Choose TWO correct letters, A-E.
Write your answers in boxes 37-38 on your answer sheet.
According to World Memory Championships, what activities need good memory?
A order for a large group of each digit
B recall people’s face
C resemble a long Greek poem
D match name with pictures and features
E recall what people ate and did yesterday

Questions 39-40
Choose TWO correct letters, A-E.
Write your answers in boxes 39-40 on your answer sheet.
What is the result of Psychologists Elizabeth Valentine and John Wilding’s MRI
Scan experiment find out?
A the champions’ brains are different in some way from common people
B difference in the brain of champions’ scan image to control subjects are shown
when memorizing sequences of three-digit numbers
C champions did much worse when they are asked to remember photographs
D the memory-champs activated more brain regions than control subjects
E there is some part in the brain coping with visual and spatial memory

Reading Passage

The Pyramid of Cestius

A 2000-year-old pyramid in the city of Rome has been restored by archaeologists.
Though Rome draws tourists from around the world to its many impressive sites,
one notable monument there has never attracted nearly as much interest: The
Pyramid of Cestius. But why would there be a pyramid in Italy? After the Roman
conquest of Egypt in 30 B.C., Egyptian architectural style became the fashion in
Rome.
Though obelisks and other monuments inspired by Egypt’s great pyramids sprung
up around the city, only two actual pyramids are known to have been built. The
only one left standing, the Pyramid of Cestius, was designed as the burial pyramid
for a Roman politician named Caius Cestius, who ordered that the building work
be completed within a period of 330 days.
Construction took place at some point between 18 B.C. and 12 B.C. Cestius'
pyramid had a layer of white Carrara marble on the outside and was constructed
from brick held together by cement on the inside. One of the things that strikes you
when you look at the pyramid is how steep it is, making its shape quite unlike that
of typical Egyptian pyramids. This difference could have resulted from inaccurate
information sent back to Rome by soldiers who saw the pyramids in person in
Egypt. Alternatively, Roman builders could have drawn inspiration from the
pyramids in Nubia, a region in present-day northern Sudan and southern Egypt.
At the time of its construction, a strict Roman law prohibited tombs within the city,
so the Pyramid of Cestius would have stood in countryside. Rome grew
enormously over the next two centuries, and by the 3rd century A.D., the pyramid
would have been surrounded by buildings. We also know that in the 3rd century
A.D., the Pyramid of Cestius was hidden behind a high wall on the orders of
Emperor Aurelian; this likely helped it survive through the centuries, even as other
ancient monuments disappeared.
By the Middle Ages, the pyramid was covered in vegetation and dirt, and a popular
myth suggested that it might be the tomb of Romulus or Remus, the legendary
founders of Rome. Cestius’ actual tomb and an inscription identifying the pyramid
were not rediscovered until the 1660s, when the pyramid underwent restoration.
During excavations, workers cleared away trees and plants and found two marble
bases in front of the pyramid, as well as fragments of bronze statues that once
stood on either side. However, they did not find the urn containing Cestius'
remains, but they did discover a tunnel, suggesting that robbers might have looted
the tomb long ago. Though some features no longer exist, at least the pyramid
itself has survived.
Today, the Pyramid of Cestius stands near a busy intersection, making it easy for
tourists and residents to overlook its full height of 119 feet. Across the intersection
is Pirámide station, located on Line B of the Rome Metro.
In 2011, Japanese entrepreneur Yuzo Yagi, president of Yagi Tsusho Ltd,
announced his intention to fund a major renovation of the Pyramid of Cestius. He
described it as “an act of gratitude” to Italy, a country that contributed to his
company's success. Work began shortly after he signed an agreement with the
Special Superintendency for the Archaeological Heritage of Rome, and thanks to
his 2-million-euro donation, the project was completed ahead of schedule.
As archaeologist Leonardo Guarnieri explained, officials now conduct tours of the
newly renovated pyramid twice a month by reservation. Visitors can walk through
a narrow corridor to reach the burial chamber, where they can admire frescoes,
including four images of the winged Roman goddess Victoria, as well as vases
used for rituals and purification. Some frescoes have disappeared over time, but
historical records confirm their existence.
Only one issue remains after the restoration: the white exterior of the Pyramid of
Cestius needs to be cleaned regularly due to urban pollution. A team of free-
climbers will handle the task to avoid placing scaffolding around the newly
restored monument.
Questions
1. Questions 1-7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the reading
passage?
In boxes 1-7 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
1. The Pyramid of Cestius has always been one of Rome's most popular tourist
attractions.
2. The construction of the Pyramid was completed before Cestius' death.
3. In the Middle Ages, people thought an original founder of Rome was buried in
the Pyramid of Cestius.
4. Today the height of the Pyramid is something that tourists and residents
immediately notice.
5. Japanese businessman Yuzo Yagi was an admirer of both Italian and Egyptian
architecture.
6. The restoration of the Pyramid of Cestius, which was funded by Yuzo Yagi,
finished earlier than expected.
7. Most of the original frescoes inside Cestius’ tomb have survived to this day.

2. Questions 8-13
Complete the notes below .

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer .

Write your answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.

History of the Pyramid of Cestius
Construction of Cestius' pyramid
• It was made from 8_________________________________marble and cement.
• Its 9________________________is different from the pyramids found in Egypt.
• It was originally built in the 10__________as tombs in the city were forbidden.
• Emperor Aurelian ordered that a wall be built around it.
Restoration of Cestius' pyramid in the 1660s
• In the 1660s, some broken 11_______________________were found next to it.
• The 12_________________inside the tomb suggests that robbers had been there.
• The frescoes show mythological scenes and images of vases.
Restoration of Cestius' pyramid today
• A Japanese businessman paid for its restoration .
• Climbers are helping to remove signs of 13 _______________.