Reading Ielts

149
Reading Passage 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on the Academic IELTS
Reading Test 149 Reading Passage Young Adult novels below.
Young Adult Novels

{A} Recent years have seen a barrage of dystopian Young Adult novels grow in popularity almost
overnight- from The Hunger Games to The Maze Runner, Divergent, and The Knife of Never Letting
Go. These novels, set in post-apocalyptic, totalitarian or otherwise ruthless and dehumanizing worlds,
have gained such momentum that the trend has seeped into the film and TV industry as well, with
multimillion-dollar movie adaptations and popular TV series gracing the big and small screen. But
what is it about dystopian stories that make them so appealing to readers and audiences alike?
{B} Dystopias are certainly nothing new. The word “dystopia” itself, meaning “bad place” (from the
Greek dys and topos), has been around since at least the 19th century, and Huxley’s Brave New
World (1932) and Orwell’s 1984 (1949), commonly regarded as the first dystopian novels that fit firmly
into the genre, were published more than 75 years ago. Even the first Young Adult dystopian novel is
older than 20 – Lois Lawry’s The Giver, which came out in 1993. While these are individual examples
from previous decades, however, one would be hard-pressed to find a Young Adult shelf in any
bookstore nowadays that isn’t stocked with dozens of dystopian titles.
{C} According to film critic Dana Stevens, it is the similarities that can be drawn between dystopian
settings and the daily lives of teenagers that make Young Adult dystopian stories so captivating: the
high school experience involves the same social structure as the Hunger Games arena, for example,
or the faction-divided world of Divergent. Teenagers might not literally have to fight each other to the
death or go through horrendous trials to join a virtue-based faction for the rest of their lives, but
there’s something in each story that connects to their own backgrounds. The “cutthroat race for high
school popularity” might feel like an “annual televised fight”, and the pressure to choose a clique at
school bears a strong resemblance to Tris’s faction dilemma in Divergent.
{D} Justin Scholes’s and Jon Ostenson’s 2013 study reports similar findings, identifying themes such
as “inhumanity and isolation”, the struggle to establish an identity and the development of platonic
and romantic relationships as alluring agents. Deconstructing a score of popular Young Adult
dystopian novels released between 2007-2011, Scholes and Ostenson argue that the topics explored
by dystopian literature are appealing to teenagers because they are “an appropriate fit with the
intellectual changes that occur during adolescence”; as teenagers gradually grow into adults, they
develop an interest in social issues and current affairs. Dystopian novels, according to author and
book critic Dave Astor, feel honest in that regard as they do not patronise their readers, nor do they
attempt to sugar-coat reality.
{E} All of this still does not explain why this upsurge in Young Adult dystopian literature is happening
now, though. Bestselling author Naomi Klein offers a different explanation: the dystopian trend, she
says, is a “worrying sign” of times to come. What all these dystopian stories have in common is that
they all assume that “environmental catastrophe” is not only imminent but also completely inevitable.
Moral principles burgeon through these works of fiction, particularly for young people, as they are the
ones who will bear the brunt of climate change. Young Adult author Todd Mitchell makes a similar
point, suggesting that the bleak futures portrayed in modern Young Adult literature are a response to
“social anxiety” brought forth by pollution and overconsumption.
{F} The threat of natural disasters is not the only reason Young Adult dystopian novels are so popular
today, however. As author Claudia Gray notes, what has also changed in recent years is humanity’s
approach to personal identity and young people’s roles in society. Adolescents, she says, are
increasingly dragooned into rigid moulds through “increased standardised testing, increased
homework levels, etc.” Young Adult dystopian novels come into play because they present
protagonists who refuse to be defined by someone else, role models who battle against the status
quo.
{G} So, how long is this Young Adult dystopian trend going to last? If The Guardian is to be believed,
it’s already been replaced by a new wave of “gritty” realism as seen in the likes of The Fault in Our
Stars, by John Green. Profits have certainly dwindled for dystopian film franchises such as Divergent.
This hasn’t stopped film companies from scheduling new releases, however, and TV series such as
The 100 are still on air. Perhaps the market for dystopian novels has stagnated, only time will tell.
One thing is for certain, however: the changes the trend has effected on Young Adult literature are
here to stay.
Questions 8-12
Answer the questions below with words taken from Reading Passage 1. Use NO MORE THAN
THREE WORDS for each answer.
(8) According to the writer, what was the first dystopian novel?
(9) According to the writer, which author initiated the Young Adult dystopian genre?
(10) How does Dave Astor describe dystopian novels?
(11) According to Naomi Klein, which element is present in all dystopian novels?
(12) According to Claudia Gray, things like increased standardised testing and homework levels are a
threat to what?
Question 13
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Question 13 Which is the best title for Reading Passage 1?
(A) A history of Young Adult dystopian literature
(B) The wane of the dystopian phenomenon
(C) How dystopian fiction has shaped the world
(D) The draw of Young Adult dystopian fiction
List of Headings
(I) Teens are increasingly urged to conform F
(II) The dystopian model scrutinized D
(III) Dystopian novels now focus on climate change
(IV) The original dystopias B
(V) Dystopian literature’s accomplishments will outlive it
(VI) A score of dystopian novels has taken over Young Adult shelves A
(VII) The roots of dystopia can be found in teenage experiences C
(VIII) Dystopia is already dead
(IX) Dystopias promote ethical thinking E
(1) Paragraph A
(2) Paragraph B
(3) Paragraph C
(4) Paragraph D
(5) Paragraph E
(6) Paragraph F
(7) Paragraph G
Questions 8-12
Answer the questions below with words taken from Reading Passage 1. Use NO MORE THAN
THREE WORDS for each answer.
(8) According to the writer, what was the first dystopian novel?
(9) According to the writer, which author initiated the Young Adult dystopian genre?
(10) How does Dave Astor describe dystopian novels?
(11) According to Naomi Klein, which element is present in all dystopian novels?
(12) According to Claudia Gray, things like increased standardised testing and homework levels are a
threat to what?
Question 13
Question 13 Which is the best title for Reading Passage 1?
(A) A history of Young Adult dystopian literature
(B) The wane of the dystopian phenomenon
(C) How dystopian fiction has shaped the world
(D) The draw of Young Adult dystopian fiction

Reading Passage 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic
IELTS Reading Test 149 Reading Passage IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE below.
IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE

The search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
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
extraterrestrial 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 civilization 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 civilizations do survive
in our galaxy, their ages will range from zero to several billion years. Thus any other civilization that
we hear from is likely to be far older, on average, than ourselves. The mere existence of such a
civilization will tell us that long-term survival is possible, and gives us some cause for optimism. It is
even possible that the older civilization 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, UFQs
(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 nevertheess resembe 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 civilization 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 extraterrestrial 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
civilization. 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 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.
149 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.
(18) What is the life expectancy of Earth?
(19) What kind of signals from other intelligent civilisations are SETI scientists searching for?
(20) 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 writer
NO if the statement does not agree with the writer
NOT GIVEN if there is no information about this in the passage
(21) Alien civilisations may be able to help the human race to overcome serious problems.
(22) SETI scientists are trying to find a life form that resembles humans in many ways.
(23) The Americans and Australians have cooperated on joint research projects.
(24) So far SETI scientists have picked up radio signals from several stars.
(25) The NASA project attracted criticism from some members of Congress.
(26) 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 Questions 27-40, which are based on the IELTSFever
Academic IELTS Reading Test 149 Reading Passage Endangered Languages below.
Endangered Languages
{A}. ‘Never mind whales, save the languages’, says Peter Monaghan, a graduate of the Australian
National University Worried about the loss of rainforests and the ozone. At linguistics meetings in the
US, where is the layer? Well, neither of those is doing any worse than the endangered-language
issue has of late been a large majority of the 6,000 to 7,000 languages that are something of a flavour
of the month, they remain in use on Earth. One-half of the survivors will show growing evidence that
not all approaches to the almost certainly be gone by 2050, while 40% more preservation of
languages will be particularly will probably be well on their way out. In their place, helpful. Some
linguists are boasting, for example, almost all humans will speak one of a handful of more and more
sophisticated means of capturing mega languages – Mandarin, English, Spanish.
{B}. Linguists know what causes languages to disappear, but less often remarked is what happens
on the way to disappearance: languages’ vocabularies, grammars and expressive potential all
diminish as one language is replaced by another. ‘Say a community goes over from speaking a
traditional Aboriginal language to speaking a creole*,’ says Australian Nick Evans, a leading authority
on Aboriginal languages, ‘you leave behind a language where there’s a very fine vocabulary for the
landscape. All that is gone in a creole. You’ve just got a few words like ‘gum tree’ or whatever. As
speakers become less able to express the wealth of knowledge that has filled ancestors’ lives with
meaning over millennia, it’s no wonder that communities tend to become demoralized.’
{C}. If the losses are so huge, why are relatively few linguists combating the situation? Australian
linguists, at least, have achieved a great deal in terms of preserving traditional languages. Australian
governments began in the 1970s to support an initiative that has resulted in good documentation of
most of the 130 remaining Aboriginal languages. In England, another Australian, Peter Austin, has
directed one of the world’s most active efforts to limit language loss, at the University of London.
Austin heads a programme that has trained many documentary linguists in England as well as in
language-loss hotspots such as West Africa and South America.
{D}. At linguistics meetings in the US, where the endangered-language issue has of late been
something of a flavour of the month, there is growing evidence that not all approaches to the
preservation of languages will be particularly helpful. Some linguists are boasting, for example, of
more and more sophisticated means of capturing languages: digital recording and storage, and
internet and mobile phone technologies. But these are encouraging the ‘quick dash’ style of recording
trip: fly-in, switch on a digital recorder, fly home, download to the hard drive, and store gathered
material for future research. That’s not quite what some endangered-language specialists have been
seeking for more than 30 years. Most loud and untiring has been Michael Krauss, of the University of
Alaska. He has often complained that linguists are playing with non-essentials while most of their raw
data is disappearing.
{E}. Who is to blame? That prominent linguist Noam Chomsky, Krauss and many others. Or, more
precisely, they blame those linguists who have been obsessed with his approaches. Linguists who go
out into communities to study, document and describe languages, argue that theoretical linguists,
who draw conclusions about how languages work, have had so much influence that linguistics has
largely ignored the continuing disappearance of languages. Chomsky, from his post at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been the great man of theoretical linguistics for far longer
than he has been known as a political commentator. His landmark work of 1957 argues that all
languages exhibit certain universal grammatical features, encoded in the human mind. American
linguists, in particular, have focused largely on theoretical concerns ever since, even while doubts
have mounted about Chomsky’s universal.
{F}. Austin and Co. are in no doubt that because languages are unique, even if they do tend to have
common underlying features, creating dictionaries and grammar requires prolonged and dedicated
work. This requires that documentary linguists observe not only languages’ structural subtleties, but
also related social, historical and political factors. Such work calls for persistent funding of field
scientists who may sometimes have to venture into harsh and even hazardous places. Once there,
they may face difficulties such as community suspicion. As Nick Evans says, a community that speak
an endangered language may have reasons to doubt or even oppose efforts to preserve it. They may
have seen support and funding for such work come and go. They may have given up using the
language with their children, believing they will benefit from speaking a more widely understood one.
Plenty of students continue to be drawn to the intellectual thrill of linguistics fieldwork. That’s all the
more reason to clear away barriers, contend, Evans, Austin and others.
{G}. The highest barrier, they agree, is that the linguistics profession’s emphasis on theory gradually
wears down the enthusiasm of linguists who work in communities. Chomsky disagrees. He has
recently begun to speak in support of language preservation. But his linguistic, as opposed to
humanitarian, argument is, let’s say, unsentimental: the loss of a language, he states, ‘is much more
of a tragedy for linguists whose interests are mostly theoretical, like me, than for linguists who focus
on describing specific languages, since it means the permanent loss of the most relevant data for
general theoretical work’. At the moment, few institutions award doctorates for such work, and that’s
the way it should be, he reasons. In linguistics, as in every other discipline, he believes that good
descriptive work requires thorough theoretical understanding and should also contribute to building
new theories. But that’s precisely what documentation does, objects Evans. The process of
immersion in a language, to extract, analyse and sum it up, deserves a PhD because it is ‘the most
demanding intellectual task a linguist can engage in’.
Questions 27-32
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer In Reading Passage 3?
(27). By 2050 only a small number of languages will be flourishing.

(28). Australian academics’ efforts to record existing Aboriginal languages have been too limited.
(29). The use of technology In language research is proving unsatisfactory in some respects.
(30). Chomsky’s political views have overshadowed his academic work.
(31). Documentary linguistics studies require long-term financial support.
(32). Chomsky’s attitude to disappearing languages is too emotional.
Questions 33-36
Question 33. The writer mentions rainforests and the ozone layer
(A). because he believes anxiety about environmental issues is unfounded.
(B). to demonstrate that academics in different disciplines share the same problems.
(C). because they exemplify what is wrong with the attitudes of some academics.
(D). to make the point that the public should be equally concerned about languages.
Question 34. What does Nick Evans say about speakers of a creole?
(A). They lose the ability to express ideas that are part of their culture.
(B). Older and younger members of the community have difficulty communicating.
(C). They express their ideas more clearly and concisely than most people.
(D). Accessing practical information causes problems for them.
Question 35. What is similar about West Africa and South America, from the linguist’s point of
view?
(A). The English language is widely used by academics and teachers.
(B). The documentary linguists who work there were trained by Australians.
(C). Local languages are disappearing rapidly in both places.
(D). There are now only a few undocumented languages there.
Question 36. Michael Krauss has frequently pointed out that
(A). Linguists are failing to record languages before they die out.
(B). Linguists have made poor use of improvements in technology.
(C). Linguistics has declined in popularity as an academic subject.
(D). Linguistics departments are underfunded in most universities.
Questions 37-40
Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-G below.
Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.
(37). Linguists like Peter Austin believe that every language is unique
(38). Nick Evans suggests a community may resist attempts to save its language
(39). Many young researchers are interested in doing practical research
(40). Chomsky supports work in descriptive linguistics
(A). even though it is in danger of disappearing.

(B). provided that it has a strong basis in theory.
(C). although it may share certain universal
characteristics
(D). because there is a practical advantage to it
(E). so long as the drawbacks are clearly understood.
(F). in spite of the prevalence of theoretical linguistics.
(G). until they realize what is involved
Reading Passage 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on the IELTS Academic IELTS
Reading Test 148 Reading Passage LAND OF THE RISING SUN below.
LAND OF THE RISING SUN
{A} Japan has a significantly better record in terms of average mathematical attainment than England
and Wales. Large sample international comparisons of pupils’ attainments since the 1960s have
established that not only did Japanese pupils at age 13 have better scores of average attainment, but
there was also a larger proportion of ‘low’ attainers in England, where, incidentally, the variation in
attainment scores was much greater. The percentage of Gross National Product spent on education is
reasonably similar in the two countries, so how is this higher and more consistent attainment in maths
achieved?
{B} Lower secondary schools in Japan cover three school years, from the seventh grade (age 13) to the
ninth grade (age 15). Virtually all pupils at this stage attend state schools: only 3 per cent are in the
private sector. Schools are usually modem in design, set well back from the road and spacious inside.
Classrooms are large and pupils sit at single desks in rows. Lessons last for a standardised 50 minutes
and are always followed by a 10-minute break, which gives the pupils a chance to let off steam.
Teachers begin with a formal address and mutual bowing and then concentrate on whole-class
teaching. Classes are large – usually, about 40 – and are unstreamed. Pupils stay in the same class for
all lessons throughout the school and develop considerable class identity and loyalty. Pupils attend the
school in their own neighbourhood, which in theory removes ranking by the school. In practice in
Tokyo, because of the relative concentration of schools, there is some competition to get into the
‘better’ school in a particular area.
{C} Traditional ways of teaching form the basis of the lesson and the remarkably quiet classes take
their own notes of the points made and the examples demonstrated. Everyone has their own copy of the
textbook supplied by the central education authority, Monbusho, as part of the concept of free
compulsory education up to the age of 15. These textbooks are, on the whole, small, presumably
inexpensive to produce, but well set out and logically developed. (One teacher was particularly keen to
introduce colour and pictures into maths textbooks: he felt this would make them more accessible to
pupils brought up in a cartoon culture.) Besides approving textbooks, Monbusho also decides the
highly centralised national curriculum and how it is to be delivered.
{D} Lessons all follow the same pattern. At the beginning, the pupils put solutions to the homework on
the board, then the teachers comment, correct or elaborate as necessary. Pupils mark their own
homework: this is an important principle in Japanese schooling as it enables pupils to see where and
why they made a mistake, so that these can be avoided in future. No ‘One minds mistakes or ignorance
as long as you are prepared to learn from them. After the homework has been discussed, the teacher
explains the topic of the lesson, slowly and with a lot of repetition and elaboration. Examples are
demonstrated on the board; questions from the textbook are worked through first with the class, and
then the class is set questions from the textbook to do individually. Only rarely are supplementary
worksheets distributed in a maths class. The impression is that the logical nature of the textbooks and
their comprehensive coverage of different types of examples, combined with the relative homogeneity
of the class, renders worksheets unnecessary. At this point, the teacher would circulate and make sure
that all the pupils were coping well.
{E} It is remarkable that large, mixed-ability classes could be kept together for maths throughout all
their compulsory schooling from 6 to 15. Teachers say that they give individual help at the end of a
lesson or after school, setting extra work if necessary. In observed lessons, any strugglers would be
assisted by the teacher or quietly seek help from their neighbour. Carefully fostered class identity
makes pupils keen to help each other – anyway, it is in their interests since the class progresses
together. This scarcely seems adequate help to enable slow learners to keep up. However, the Japanese
attitude towards education runs along the lines of ‘if you work hard enough, you can do almost
anything. Parents are kept closely informed of their children’s progress and will play a part in helping
their children to keep up with the class, sending them to ‘Juku’ (private evening tuition) if extra help is
needed and encouraging them to work harder. It seems to work, at least for 95 per cent of the school
population.
{F} So what are the major contributing factors in the success of maths teaching? Clearly, attitudes are
important. Education is valued greatly in Japanese culture; maths is recognised as an important
compulsory subject throughout schooling; and the emphasis is on hard work coupled with a focus on
accuracy. Other relevant points relate to the supportive attitude of a class towards slower pupils, the
lack of competition within a class, and the positive emphasis on learning for oneself and improving
one’s own standard. And the view of repetitively boring lessons and learning the facts by heart, which
is sometimes quoted in relation to Japanese classes, may be unfair and unjustified. No poor maths
lessons were observed. They were mainly good and one or two were inspirational.
Questions 1-5:
Reading Passage 1 has six sections, A-F.
Choose the correct heading for sections B-F from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-ix, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
(i)The influence of Monbusho

(ii) Helping less successful students
(iii) The success of compulsory education
(iv) Research findings concerning achievements in maths
(v) The typical format of a maths lesson
(vi) Comparative expenditure on maths education
(vii) Background to middle-years education in Japan
(viii) The key to Japanese successes in maths education
(ix) The role of homework correction
Example Answer
Section A iv
(1) Section B
(2) Section c
(3) Section D
(4) Section E
(5) Section F
Questions 6-9:
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 17
(6) There is a wider range of achievement amongst English pupils studying maths than amongst their
Japanese counterparts.
(7) The percentage of Gross National Product spent on education generally reflects the level of
attainment in mathematics.
(8) Private schools in Japan are more modern and spacious than state-run lower secondary schools.
(9) Teachers mark homework in Japanese schools.
IELTS Academic IELTS Reading Test 148 Questions 10-13:
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 10-13
Question 10 Maths textbooks in Japanese schools are
(A) cheap for pupils to buy.
(B) well organised and adapted to the needs of the pupils.
(C) written to be used in conjunction with TV programmes.
(D) not very popular with many Japanese teachers.
Question 11 When a new maths topic is introduced,

(A) students answer questions on the board.
(B) students rely entirely on the textbook.
(C) it is carefully and patiently explained to the students.
(D) it is usual for students to use extra worksheets.
Question 12 How do schools deal with students who experience difficulties?

(A) They are given appropriate supplementary tuition.
(B) They are encouraged to copy from other pupils.
(C) They are forced to explain their slow progress.
(D) They are placed in a mixed-ability class.
Question 13 Why do Japanese students tend to achieve relatively high rates of success in maths?
(A) It is a compulsory subject in Japan.
(B) They are used to working without help from others.
(C) Much effort is made and correct answers are emphasised.
(D) There is a strong emphasis on repetitive learning.
Reading Passage 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on the IELTS Academic
IELTS Reading Test 148 Reading Passage The robots are coming below.
The robots are coming
What is the current state of play in Artificial Intelligence?
{A}. Can robots advance so far that they become the ultimate threat to our existence? Some scientists
say no, and dismiss the very idea of Artificial Intelligence. The human brain, they argue, is the most
complicated system ever created, and any machine designed to reproduce human thought is bound to
fail. Physicist Roger Penrose of Oxford University and others believe that machines are physically
incapable of human thought. Colin McGinn of Rutgers University backs this up when he says that
Artificial Intelligence ‘is like sheep trying to do complicated psychoanalysis. They just don’t have the
conceptual equipment they need in their limited brains’.
{B}. Artificial Intelligence, or Al, is different from most technologies in that scientists still understand
very little about how intelligence works. Physicists have a good understanding of Newtonian
mechanics and the quantum theory of atoms and molecules, whereas the basic laws of intelligence
remain a mystery. But a sizable number of mathematicians and computer scientists, who are specialists
in the area, are optimistic about the possibilities. To them, it is only a matter of time before a thinking
machine walks out of the laboratory. Over the years, various problems have impeded all efforts to
create robots. To attack these difficulties, researchers tried to use the ‘top-down approach, using a
computer in an attempt to program all the essential rules onto a single disc. By inserting this into a
machine, it would then become self-aware and attain human-like intelligence.
{C}. In the 1950s and 1960s, great progress was made, but the shortcomings of these prototype robots
soon became clear. They were huge and took hours to navigate across a room. Meanwhile, a fruit fly,
with a brain containing only a fraction of the computing power, can effortlessly navigate in three
dimensions. Our brains, like the fruit fly’s, unconsciously recognize what we see by performing
countless calculations. This unconscious awareness of patterns is exactly what computers are missing.
The second problem is the robots’ lack of common sense. Humans know that water is wet and that
mothers are older than their daughters. But there is no mathematics that can express these truths.
Children learn the intuitive laws of biology and physics by interacting with the real world. Robots
know only what has been programmed into them.
{D}. Because of the limitations of the top-down approach to Artificial Intelligence, attempts have been
made to use a ‘bottom-up’ approach instead – that is, to try to imitate evolution and the way a baby
learns. Rodney Brooks was the director of MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, famous for its
lumbering ‘top-down’ walking robots. He changed the course of research when he explored the
unorthodox idea of tiny ‘insectoid’ robots that learned to walk by bumping into things instead of
computing mathematically the precise position of their feet. Today many of the descendants of Brooks’
insectoid robots are on Mars gathering data for NASA (The National Aeronautics and Space
Administration), running across the dusty landscape of the planet. For all their successes in mimicking
the behaviour of insects, however, robots using neural networks have performed miserably when their
programmers have tried to duplicate in them the behaviour of higher organisms such as mammals.
MIT’s Marvin Minsky summarises the problems of Al: ‘The history of Al is sort of funny because the
first real accomplishments were beautiful things, like a machine that could do well in a maths course.
But then we started to try to make machines that could answer questions about simple children’s
stories. There’s no machine today that can do that.’
{E}. There are people who believe that eventually there will be a combination between the top down
and bottom-up, which may provide the key to Artificial Intelligence. As adults, we blend the two
approaches. It has been suggested that our emotions represent the quality that most distinguishes us as
human, that it is impossible for machines ever to have emotions. Computer expert Hans Moravec
thinks that in the future robots will be programmed with emotions such as fear to protect themselves so
that they can signal to humans when their batteries are running low, for example. Emotions are vital in
decision-making. People who have suffered a certain kind of brain injury lose the ability to experience
emotions and become unable to make decisions. Without emotions to guide them, they debate endlessly
over their options. Moravec points out that as robots become more intelligent and are able to make
choices, they could likewise become paralyzed with indecision. To aid them, robots of the future might
need to have emotions hardwired into their brains.
{F}. There is no universal consensus as to whether machines can be conscious, or even, in human
terms, what consciousness means. Minsky suggests the thinking process in our brain is not localised
but spread out, with different centres competing with one another at any given time. Consciousness
may then be viewed as a sequence of thoughts and images issuing from these different, smaller
‘minds’, each one competing for our attention. Robots might eventually attain a ‘silicon
consciousness’. Robots, in fact, might one day embody an architecture for thinking and processing
information that is different from ours-but also indistinguishable. If that happens, the question of
whether they really ‘understand’ becomes largely irrelevant. A robot that has perfect mastery of syntax,
for all practical purposes, understands what is being said.
148 Questions 14-20
Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs A-F.
Write the correct letter A-F in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once. Which paragraph contains the following information?
(14). An insect that proves the superiority of natural intelligence over Artificial Intelligence
(15). Robots being able to benefit from their mistakes
(16). Many researchers not being put off believing that Artificial Intelligence will eventually be
developed
(17). An innovative approach that is having limited success
(18).The possibility of creating Artificial Intelligence being doubted by some academics
(19). No generally accepted agreement of what our brains do
(20). Robots not being able to extend the* intelligence in the same way as humans
Questions 21-23
Look at the following people (Questions 21-23) and the list of statements below.
Match each person with the correct statement A-E
Write the correct letter A-E in boxes 21-23 on your answer sheet.
(21). Colin McGinn
(22). Marvin Minsky
(23). Hans Moravec
(A). Artificial Intelligence may require something equivalent to feelings in order to succeed.
(B). Different kinds of people use different parts of the brain.
(C). Tests involving fiction have defeated Artificial Intelligence so far.
(D). People have intellectual capacities which do not exist in computers.
(E). People have no reason to be frightened of robots.
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.
When will we have a thinking machine?
Despite some advances, early robots had certain weaknesses. They were given the information
they needed on a 24………………… This was known as the ‘top-down approach and enabled
them to do certain tasks but they were unable to recognise 25……………………. Nor did they
have any intuition or ability to make decisions based on experience. Rodney Brooks tried a
different approach. Robots similar to those invented by Brooks are to be found
on 26………………. where they are collecting information.
Reading Passage 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on the IELTS Academic
IELTS Reading Test 148 Reading Passage Quiet roads ahead below.
Quiet roads ahead
The roar of passing vehicles could soon be a thing of the past
{A} The noise produced by busy roads is a growing problem. While vehicle designers have worked
hard to quieten engines, they have been less successful elsewhere. The sound created by the tyres on
the surface of the road now accounts for more than half the noise that vehicles create, and as road
building and car sales continue to boom – particularly in Asia and the US – this is turning into a global
issue.
{B} According to the World Health Organization, exposure to noise from road traffic over long periods
can lead to stress-related health problems. And where traffic noise exceeds a certain threshold, road
builders have to spend money erecting sound barriers and installing double glazing in blighted homes.
Houses become harder to sell where environmental noise is high, and people are not as efficient or
productive at work.
{C} Already, researchers in the Netherlands – one of the most densely populated countries in the world
– are working to develop techniques for silencing the roads. In the next five years, the Dutch
government aims to have reduced noise levels from the country’s road surfaces by six decibels overall.
Dutch mechanical engineer Ard Kuijpers has come up with one of the most promising, and radical,
ideas. He set out to tackle the three most important factors: surface texture, hardness and ability to
absorb sound.
{D} The rougher the surface, the more likely it is that a tyre will vibrate and create noise. Road builders
usually eliminate bumps on freshly laid asphalt with heavy rollers, but Kuijpers has developed a
method of road building that he thinks can create the ultimate quiet road. His secret is a special mould 3
metres wide and 50 metres long. Hot asphalt, mixed with small stones, is spread into the mould by a
rail-mounted machine that flattens the asphalt mix with a roller. When it sets, the 10-millimetre-thick
sheet has a surface smoother than anything that can be achieved by conventional methods.
{E} To optimise the performance of his road surface – to make it hard-wearing yet soft enough to snuff
out vibrations – he then adds another layer below the asphalt. This consists of a 30-millimetre-thick
layer of rubber, mixed with stones that are larger than those in the layer above. ‘It’s like a giant mouse
mat, making the road softer,’ says Kuijpers.
{F} The size of the stones used in the two layers is important since they create pores of a specific size
in the road surface. Those used in the top layer are just 4 or 5 millimetres across, while the ones below
are approximately twice that size – about 9 millimetres. Kuijpers says the surface can absorb any air
that is passing through a tyre’s tread (the indentations or ridges on the surface of a tyre), damping
oscillations that would otherwise create noise. And in addition, they make it easier for the water to
drain away, which can make the road safer in wet weather.
{G} Compared with the complex manufacturing process, laying the surface is quite simple. It emerges
from the factory rolled, like a carpet, onto a drum 1.5 metres in diameter. On site, it is unrolled and
stuck onto its foundation with bitumen. Even the white lines are applied in the factory.
{H} The foundation itself uses an even more sophisticated technique to reduce noise further. It consists
of a sound-absorbing concrete base containing flask-shaped slots up to 10 millimetres wide and 30
millimetres deep that are open at the top and sealed at the lower end. These cavities act like Helmholtz
resonators – when sound waves of specific frequencies enter the top of a flask, they set up resonances
inside and the energy of the sound dissipates into the concrete as heat. The cavities play another
important role: they help to drain water that seeps through from the upper surface. This flow will help
flush out waste material and keep the pores in the outer layers clear.
{I} Kuijpers can even control the sounds that his resonators absorb, simply by altering their
dimensions. This could prove especially useful since different vehicles produce noise at different
frequencies. Car tyres peak at around 1000 hertz, for example, but trucks generate lower-frequency
noise at around 600 hertz. By varying the size of the Kuijpers resonators, it is possible to control which
frequencies the concrete absorbs. On large highways, trucks tend to use the inside lane, so resonators
here could be tuned to absorb sounds at around 600 hertz while those in other lanes could deal with
higher frequency noise from cars.
{J} Kuijpers believes he can cut noise by five decibels compared to the quietest of today’s roads. He
has already tested a 100-metre-long section of his road on a motorway near Apeldoorn, and Dutch
construction company Heijmans is discussing the location of the next roll-out road with the country’s
government. The success of Kuijpers’ design will depend on how much it eventually costs. But for
those affected by traffic noise there is hope of quieter times ahead.
Questions 27-32
Reading Passage 3 has ten paragraphs labelled A-J
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-Jin boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.
(27) a description of the form in which Kuijpers’ road surface is taken to its destination
(28) an explanation of how Kuijpers makes a smooth road surface
(29) something that has to be considered when evaluating Kuijpers’ proposal
(30) various economic reasons for reducing road noise
(31) a generalisation about the patterns of use of vehicles on major roads
(32) a summary of the different things affecting levels of noise on roads
148 Questions 33-35
Label the diagram below.
Choose NO MORE THAN ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
IELTS Academic IELTS Reading Test 148 Questions 36-40
Complete the table below using the list of words (A-K) from the box below.
Write the correct letters in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.
Kuijpers’ noise-reducing road: components and function
Layer Component Function
upper and • reduce oscillations caused by 36 ……………………

lower stones
• create pores which help 37 ……………………
• convert 38 …………………… to heat
• help to remove 39 ……………………
foundation slots • can be adapted to absorb
different 40 ……………………
(A) frequencies (D) resonators (G) sound energy (J) drainage
(B) the engine (E) air flow (H) pores (K) sources
(C) rubbish (F) dissipation (I) lanes

PASSAGE
Scientists are unlocking the medical potential of venom.
A Michael decided to go for a swim. He was on vacation with his family in Guerrero, Mexico, and it was hotter
than blazes. He grabbed his swimming trunks from where they’d been drying on a chair, slid them on, and
jumped into the pool. Instead of cool relief, a burning pain ripped through the back of his thigh. Tearing off his
trunks, he leaped naked from the pool, his leg on fire. Behind him a small, ugly, yellow creature was treading
water. He scooped it into a Tupperware container, and the caretaker of the house rushed him to the local Red
Cross facility, where doctors immediately identified his attacker: a bark scorpion, Centruroides sculpturatus,
one of the most venomous species in North America. The fierce pain from a sting is typically followed by what
feels like electric shocks racking the body. Occasionally victims die.
B Luckily for Michael (who asked me not to give his Ml name), the bark scorpion is common in the area, and
antivenom was readily available. He had an injection and was released a few hours later. In about 30 hours the
pain was gone. What happened next could not have been predicted. For eight years Michael had endured a
condition called ankylosing spondylitis, a chronic autoimmune disease of the skeleton, a sort of spinal arthritis.
No one knows what triggers it. In the worst cases the spine may fuse, leaving the patient forever stooped and in
anguish. “My back hurt every morning, and during bad flare-ups it was so horrible I couldn’t even walk,” he
says.
C But days after the the scorpion sting, the pain went away, and now, two years later, he remains essentially
pain free and off most of his medications. As a doctor himself, Michael is cautious about overstating the role of
the scorpion’s venom in his remission. Still, he says, “if my pain came back, I’d let that scorpion sting me
again.” Venom-the stuff that drips from the fangs and stingers of creatures lurking on the hiking trail or hiding
in the cellar or under the woodpile—is nature’s most efficient killer. Venom is exquisitely honed to stop a body
in its tracks. The complex soup swirls with toxic proteins and peptides——short strings of amino acids similar
to proteins. The molecules may have different targets and effects, but they work synergistically for the mightiest
punch. Some go for the nervous system, paralyzing by blocking messages between nerves and muscle. Some eat
away at molecules so that cells and tissues collapse. Venom can kill by clotting blood and stopping the heart or
by preventing clotting and triggering a killer bleed.
D All venom is multifaceted and multitasking. (The difference between venom and poison is that venom is
injected, or dibbled, into victims by way of specialized body parts, and poison is ingested.) Dozens, even
hundreds, of toxins can be delivered in a single bite, some with redundant jobs and others with unique ones. In
the evolutionary arms race between predator and prey, weapons and defenses are constantly tweaked.
Drastically potent concoctions can result: Imagine administering poison to an adversary, then jabbing him with
a knife, then finishing him off with a bullet to the head. That’s venom at work.
E Ironically, the properties that make venom deadly are also what make it so valuable for medicine. Many
venom toxins target the same molecules that need to be controlled to treat diseases. Venom works fast and is
highly specific. Its active components—those peptides and proteins, working as toxins diabetes have been
derived from venom. New treatments for autoimmune diseases, cancer, and pain could be available within a
decade.
F “We aren’t talking just a few novel drugs but entire classes of drugs,” says National Geographic Society
Emerging Explorer Zoltan Takacs, a toxinologist and herpetologist. So far, fewer than a thousand toxins have
been scrutinized for medicinal value, and a dozen or so major drugs have made it to market. “There could be
upwards of 20 million venom toxins out there waiting to be screened,” Takacs says. “It’s huge. Venom has
opened up whole new avenues of pharmacology.” Toxins from venom and poison sources are also giving us a
clearer picture of how proteins that control many of the body’s crucial cellular functions work. Studies of the
deadly poison tetrodotoxin (TTX) from puffer fish, for instance, have revealed intricate details about the way
nerve cells communicate.
G “We ’re motivated to look for new compounds to lessen human suffering,” Angel Yanagihara of the
University of Hawaii told me. “But while doing that, you may uncover things you don’t expect.” Driven in part
out of revenge for a box jellyfish sting she endured 15 years ago, Yanagihara discovered a potential wound-
healing agent within the tubules that contain jellyfish venom. “It had nothing to do with the venom itself,” she
said. “By getting intimate with a noxious animal, I’ve been informed way beyond my expectations.”
H More than 100,000 animals have evolved to produce venom, along with the glands to house it and the
apparatuses to expel it: snakes, scorpions, spiders, a few lizards, bees, sea creatures such as octopuses,
numerous species of fish, and cone snails. The male duck-billed platypus, which carries venom inside ankle
spurs, is one of the few venomous mammals. Venom and its components emerged independently, again and
again, in different animal groups. The composition of the venom of a single snake species varies from place to
place and between adults and their young. An individual snake’s venom may even change with its diet.
I Although evolution has been fine-tuning these compounds for more than a hundred million years, venom’s
molecular architecture has been in place much longer. Nature repurposes key molecules from around the body
—the blood, brain, digestive tract, and elsewhere—to serve animals for predation or protection. “It makes sense
for nature to steal the scaffolds already in place,” Takacs says. “To make a toxin to wreck the nervous system,
it’s most efficient to take a template from the brain that already works in that system, make some tiny changes,
and there you have it: Now it’s a toxin.” Not all venom kills, of course—bees have it as a nonlethal defense, and
the male platypus uses it to show rival males who’s boss during mating season. But mostly it’s for killing, or at
least immobilizing, an animal’s next meal. Humans are often accidental victims. The World Health
Organization estimates that every year some five million bites kill 100,000 people, although the actual number
is presumed to be much higher. In rural areas of developing countries, where most bites occur, victims may not
be able to get treatment or may instead choose traditional therapies and are therefore not counted.
QUESTIONS
Questions 1-9 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage？ In boxes 1-
9 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 Michael was unluckily hit by electric shocks and nearly lost his life during his vacation.
2 The disease Michael had suffered from for eight years was caused by an accident
3 Michael is grateful for the bark scorpion bite because it helped him recover from the ankylosing spondylitis.
4 No venom is just responsible for one job.
5 There is no difference between venom and poison.
6 Venom can kill while it can also be used as medicine to save.
7 New treatments for cancer are now available in the market.
8 So far 20 million venom toxins have been checked for medical use.
9 The majority of mammals carry venom inside their bodies.
Questions 10-14 Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO words from the Reading
Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 10-14 on your answer sheet.
10 The way how venom works is compared to that of .
11 A venom source such as has helped to present complex facts about how nerve cells convey information to
each other.
12 Tens of thousands of animals have developed and which are respectively responsible for storing and letting
out venom.
13 The makeup of venom of a snake may change with places, ages and .
14 Some animal uses venom to warn of its exclusive power during the mating season.
TASMANIAN TIGER
PASSAGE
A. Although it was called tiger, it looked like a dog with black stripes on its hack and it was the largest known
carnivorous marsupial of modern times. Yet, despite its fame for being one of the most fabled animals in the
world, it is one of the least understood of Tasmania’s native animals. The scientific name for the Tasmanian
tiger is Thylacine and it is believed that they have become extinct in the 20th century.
B. Fossils of thylacines dating from about almost 12 million years ago have been dug up at various places in
Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. They were widespread in Australia 7,000 years ago, but have
probably been extinct on the continent for 2,000 years ago. This is believed to be because of the introduction of
dingoes around 8,000 years ago.
Because of disease, thylacine numbers may have been declining in Tasmania at the time of European settlement
200 years ago, but the decline was certainly accelerated by the new arrivals. The last known Titsmanijin Tiger
died in I lobar! Zoo in 193fi and the animal is officially classified as extinct. Technically, this means that it has
not been officially sighted in the wild or captivity for 50 years. However, there are still unsubstantiated
sightings.
C. Hans Naarding, whose study of animals had taken him around the world, was conducting a survey of a
species of endangered migratory bird. The cat he saw that night is now regarded as the most credible sighting
recorded of thylacine that many believe has been extinct for more than 70 years.
D. “I had to work at night.” Naarding takes up the story. “I was in the habit of intermittently shining a spotlight
around. The beam fell on an animal in front of the vehicle, less than 10m away. Instead of risking movement by
grabbing for a camera, I decided to register very carefully what I was seeing. The animal was about the size of a
small shepherd dog, a very healthy male in prime condition.
What set it apart from a dog, though, was a slightly sloping hindquarter, with a fairly thick tail being a straight
continuation of the backline of the animal. It had 12 distinct stripes on its back, continuing onto its butt. I knew
perfectly well what I was seeing. As soon as I reached for the camera, it disappeared into the tea-tree
undergrowth and scrub.”
E. The director of Tasmania’s National Parks at the time, Peter Morrow, decided in his wisdom to keep
Naarding’s sighting of the thylacine secret for two years. When the news finally broke, it was accompanied by
pandemonium. “I was besieged by television crews, including four to five from Japan, and others from the
United Kingdom, Germany, New Zealand and South America,” said Naarding.
F. Government and private search parties combed the region, but no further sightings were made. The tiger, as
always, had escaped to its lair, a place many insist exists only in our imagination. But since then, the thylacine
has staged something of a comeback, becoming part of Australian mythology.
G. There have been more than 4,000 claimed sightings of the beast since it supposedly died out, and the average
claims each year reported to authorities now number 150. Associate professor of zoology at the University of
Tasmania, Randolph Rose, has said he dreams of seeing a thylacine. But Rose, who in his 35 years in
Tasmanian academia has fielded countless reports of thylacine sightings, is now convinced `
H. “The consensus among conservationists is that usually; any animal with a population base of less than 1,000
is headed for extinction within 60 years,” says Rose. “Sixty years ago, there was only one thylacine that we
know of, and that was in Hobart Zoo,” he says.
I. Dr. David Pemberton, curator of zoology at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, whose PhD thesis was
on the thylacine, says that despite scientific thinking that 500 animals are required to sustain a population, the
Florida panther is down to a dozen or so animals and, while it does have some inbreeding problems, is still
ticking along. “I’ll take a punt and say that, if we manage to find a thylacine in the scrub, it means that there are
50-plus animals out there.”
J. After all, animals can be notoriously elusive. The strange fish is known as the coelacanth’ with its “proto-
legs”, was thought to have died out along with the dinosaurs 700 million years ago until a specimen was
dragged to the surface in a shark net off the south-east coast of South Africa in 1938.
K. Wildlife biologist Nick Mooney has the unenviable task of investigating all “sightings” of the tiger totaling
4,000 since the mid-1980s, and averaging about 150 a year. It was Mooney who was first consulted late last
month about the authenticity of digital photographic images purportedly taken by a German tourist while on a
recent bushwalk in the state. On face value, Mooney says, the account of the sighting, and the two photographs
submitted as the proof amount to one of the most convincing cases for the species’ survival he has seen.
L. And Mooney has seen it all – the mistakes, the hoaxes, the illusions and the plausible accounts of sightings.
Hoaxers aside, most people who report sightings end up believing they have been a thylacine, and are
themselves believable to the point they could pass a lie-detector test, according to Mooney. Others, having
tabled a creditable report, then become utterly obsessed like the Tasmanian who has registered 99 thylacine
sightings to date.
Mooney has seen individuals bankrupted by the obsession, and families destroyed. “It is a blind optimism that
something is, rather than a cynicism that something isn’t,” Mooney says. “If something crosses the road, it’s not
a case of ‘I wonder what that was?’ Rather, it is a case of ‘that’s a thylacine!’ It is a bit like a gold prospector’s
blind faith, ‘it has got to be there’.”
M. However, Mooney treats all reports on face value. “I never try to embarrass people or make fools of them.
But the fact that I don’t pack the car immediately they ring can often be taken as ridicule. Obsessive characters
get irate that someone in my position is not out there when they think the thylacine is there.”
N. But Hans Naarding, whose sighting of a striped animal two decades ago was the highlight of “a life of
animal spotting”, remains bemused by the time and money people waste on tiger searches. He says resources
would be better applied to save the Tasmanian devil, and helping migratory bird populations that are declining
as a result of shrinking wetlands across Australia.
O. Could the thylacine still be out there? “Sure,” Naarding says. But he also says any discovery of surviving
thylacines would be “rather pointless”. “How do you save a species from extinction? What could you do with
it? If there are thylacines out there, they are better off right where they are.”
QUESTIONS
Questions 14-17
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
The Tasmanian tiger, also called thylacine, resembles the look of a dog and has 14……………………… on its
fur coat. Many fossils have been found, showing that thylacines had existed as early
as 15………………………. years ago. They lived throughout 16…………………………. before disappearing
from the mainland. And soon after the 17………………………… settlers arrived the size of the thylacine
population in Tasmania shrunk at a higher speed.
QUESTIONS 18-23
Look at the following statements (Questions 18-23) and the list of people below, match each statement with the
correct person A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter A, B, C or D in boxes 18-23 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
List of People
A. Hans Naarding
B. Randolph Rose
C. David Pemberton
D. Nick Mooney
18. His report of seeing a live thylacine in the wild attracted international interest.
19. Many eye-witnesses’ reports are not trustworthy.
20. It doesn’t require a certain number of animals to ensure the survival of a species.
21. There is no hope of finding a surviving Tasmanian tiger.
22. Do not disturb them if there are any Tasmanian tigers still living today.
23. The interpretation of evidence can be affected by people’s beliefs.
QUESTIONS 24-26
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.
24. Hans Naarding’s sighting has resulted in
A. government and organisations’ cooperative efforts to protect
B. thylacine extensive interests to find a living thylacine.
C. increase in the number of reports of thylacine worldwide.
D. growth of popularity of thylacine in literature.
25. The example of the coelacanth is to illustrate

A. it lived in the same period with dinosaurs.
B. has dinosaurs evolved legs.
C. some animals are difficult to catch in the wild.
D. extinction of certain species can be mistaken.
26. Mooney believes that all sighting reports should be

A. given some credit as they claim even if they are untrue.
B. acted upon immediately.
C. viewed as equally untrustworthy.
D. questioned and carefully investigated.
Book review on Musiccophilia

Norman M. Weinberger reviews the latest work of Oliver Sacks
A. Music and the brain are both endlessly fascinating subjects, and as a neuroscientist specializing in auditory
learning and memory, I find them especially intriguing. So I had high expectations of Musicophilia, the latest
offering from neurologist and prolific author Oliver Sacks. And I confess to feeling a little guilty reporting that
my reactions to the book are mixed.
B. Sacks himself is the best part of Musicophilia. He richly documents his own life in the book and reveals
highly personal experiences. The photograph of him on the cover of the book-which shows him wearing
headphones, eyes closed, clearly enchanted as he listens to Alfred Brendel perform Beethoven’s Pathetique
Sonata-makes a positive impression that is home out by the contents of the book. Sacks’s voice throughout is
steady and erudite but never pontifical. He is neither self-conscious nor self-promoting.
C. The preface gives a good idea of what the book will deliver. In it Sacks explains that he wants to convey the
insights gleaned from the “enormous and rapidly growing body of work on the neural underpinnings of musical
perception and imagery, and the complex and often bizarre disorders to which these are prone.” He also stresses
the importance of “the simple art of observation” and “the richness of the human context.” He wants to combine
“observation and description with the latest in technology,” he says, and to imaginatively enter into the
experience of his patients and subjects. The reader can see that Sacks, who has been practicing neurology for 40
years, is tom between the ‘ old-fashioned path o observation and the new fangled, high-tech approach: He
knows that he needs to take heed of the latter, but his heart lies with the former.
D. The book consists mainly of detailed descriptions of cases, most of them involving patients whom Sacks has
seen in his practice. Brief discussions of contemporary neuroscientific reports are sprinkled liberally throughout
the text. Part, “Haunted by Music,” begins with the strange case of Tony Cicoria, a nonmusical, middle-aged
surgeon who was consumed by a love of music after being hit by lightning. He suddenly began to crave
listening to piano music, which he had never cared for in the past. He started to play the piano and then to
compose music, which arose spontaneously in his mind in a “torrent” of notes. How could this happen? Was the
cause psychological? (He had had a near-death experience when the lightning struck him.) Or was it the direct
result of a change in the auditory regions of his cerebral cortex? Electroencephalography (EEG) showed his
brain waves to be normal in the mid-1990s, just after his, trauma and subsequent “conversion” to music. There
are now more sensitive tests, but Cicoria, has declined to undergo them; he does not want to delve into the
causes of his musicality. What a shame!
E. Part II, “A Range of Musicality,” covers a wider variety of topics, but unfortunately, some of the chapters
offer little or nothing that is new. For example, chapter 13, which is five pages long, merely notes that the blind
often have better hearing than the sighted. The most interesting chapters are those that present the strangest
cases. Chapter 8 is about “amusia,” an inability to hear sounds as music, and “dysharmonia,” a highly specific
impairment of the ability to hear harmony, with the ability to understand melody left intact. Such specific
“dissociations” are found throughout the cases Sacks recounts.
F. To Sacks’s credit, part III, “Memory, Movement and Music,” brings US into the under appreciated realm of
music therapy. Chapter 16 explains how “melodic intonation therapy” is being used to help expressive aphasic
patients (those unable to express their thoughts verbally following a stroke or other cerebral incident) once
again become capable of fluent speech. In chapter 20, Sacks demonstrates the near-miraculous power of music
to animate Parkinson’s patients and other people with severe movement disorders, even those who are frozen
into odd postures. Scientists cannot yet explain how music achieves this effect
G. To readers who are unfamiliar with neuroscience and music behavior, Musicophilia may be something of a
revelation. But the book will not satisfy those seeking the causes and implications of the phenomena Sacks
describes. For one thing, Sacks appears to be more at ease discussing patients than discussing experiments. And
he tends to be rather uncritical in accepting scientific findings and theories.
H. It’s true that the causes of music-brain oddities remain poorly understood. However, Sacks could have done
more to draw out some of the implications of the careful observations that he and other neurologists have made
and of the treatments that have been successful. For example, he might have noted that the many specific
dissociations among components of music comprehension, such as loss of the ability to perceive harmony but
not melody, indicate that there is no music center in the brain. Because many people who read the book are
likely to believe in the brain localisation of all mental functions, this was a missed educational opportunity.
I. Another conclusion one could draw is that there seem to be no “cures” for neurological problems involving
music. A drug can alleviate a symptom in one patient and aggravate it in another, or can have both positive and
negative effects in the same patient. Treatments mentioned seem to be almost exclusively antiepileptic
medications, which “damp down” the excitability of the brain in general; their effectiveness varies widely.
J. Finally, in many of the cases described here the patient with music-brain symptoms is reported to have
“normal” EEG results. Although Sacks recognises the existence of new technologies, among them far more
sensitive ways to analyze brain waves than the standard neurological EEG test, he does not call for their use. In
fact, although he exhibits the greatest compassion for patients, he conveys no sense of urgency about the pursuit
of new avenues in the diagnosis and treatment of music-brain disorders. This absence echoes the book’s
preface, in which Sacks expresses fear that “the simple art of observation may be lost” if we rely too much on
new technologies. He does call for both approaches, though, and we can only hope that the neurological
community will respond.
QUESTIONS
Questions 27-30
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet
27 Why does the writer have a mixed feeling about the book?
A. The guilty feeling made him so.
B. The writer expected it to be better than it was.
C. Sacks failed to include his personal stories in the book.
D. This is the only book written by Sacks.
28. What is the best part of the book?

A. the photo of Sacks listening to music
B the tone of voice of the book
C the autobiographical description in the book
D the description of Sacks ’s wealth
29 In the preface, what did Sacks try to achieve?

A. make a herald introduction of the research work and technique applied
B. give detailed description of various musical disorders
C. explain how people understand music
D. explain why he needs to do away with simple observation
30 What is disappointing about Tony Cicoria’s case?

A. He refuses to have further tests.
B. He can’t determine the cause of his sudden musicality.
C. He nearly died because of the lightening.
D. His brain waves were too normal to show anything.
Questions 31-36
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 31-36 on your
answer sheet write
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts with the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
31. It is difficult to give a well-reputable writer a less than totally favorable review.
32. Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata is a good treatment for musical disorders.
33. Sacks believes technological methods is of little importance compared with traditional observation when
studying his patients.
34. It is difficult to understand why music therapy is undervalued
35. Sacks held little skepticism when borrowing other theories and findings in describing reasons and notion for
phenomena he depicts in the book.
36. Sacks is in a rush to use new testing methods to do treatment for patients.
Questions 37-40
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below.
Write correct letter, A-F, in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet
37. The content covered dissociations in understanding between harmony and melody
38. The study of treating musical disorders
39. The EEG scans of Sacks’s patients
40. Sacks believes testing based on new technologies
—————
A. show no music-brain disorders.

B. indicates that medication can have varied results,
C. is key for the neurological community to unravel the mysteries.
D. should not be used in Isolation
E. indicate that not everyone can receive good education.
F. show a misconception that there is function centre localized in the brain
Activating the
A In 1937 the great neuroscientist Sir Charles Scott Sherrington of the University of Oxford laid out what
would become a classic description of the brain at work. He imagined points of light signaling the activity of
nerve cells and their connections. During deep sleep, he proposed, only a few remote parts of the brain would
twinkle, giving the organ the appearance of a starry night sky. But at awakening, “it is as if the Milky Way
entered upon some cosmic dance,” Sherrington reflected. “Swiftly the head-mass becomes an enchanted loom
where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an
abiding one; a shifting harmony of subpatterns.”
B Although Sherrington probably did not realize it at the time, his poetic metaphor contained an important
scientific idea: that of the brain revealing its inner workings optically. Understanding how neurons work
together to generate thoughts and behavior remains one of the most difficult open problems in all of biology,
largely because scientists generally cannot see whole neural circuits in action. The standard approach of probing
one or two neurons with electrodes reveals only tiny fragments of a much bigger puzzle, with too many pieces
missing to guess the full picture. But if one could watch neurons communicate, one might be able to deduce
how brain circuits are laid out and how they function. This alluring notion has inspired neuroscientists to
attempt to realize Sherrington’s vision.
C Their efforts have given rise to a nascent field called optogenetics, which combines genetic engineering with
optics to study specific cell types. Already investigators have succeeded in visualizing the functions of various
groups of neurons. Furthermore, the approach has enabled them to actually control the neurons remotely simply
by toggling a light switch. These achievements raise the prospect that optogenetics might one day lay open the
brain’s circuitry to neuroscientists and perhaps even help physicians to treat certain medical disorders.
D Enchanting the Loom Attempts to turn Sherrington’s vision into reality began in earnest in the 1970s. Like
digital computers, nervous systems run on electricity; neurons encode information in electrical signals, or action
potentials. These impulses, which typically involve voltages less than a tenth of those of a single AA battery,
induce a nerve cell to release neurotransmitter molecules that then activate or inhibit connected cells in a circuit.
In an effort to make these electrical signals visible, Lawrence B. Cohen of Yale University tested a large
number of fluorescent dyes for their ability to respond to voltage changes with changes in color or intensity. He
found that some dyes indeed had voltagesensitive optical properties. By staining neurons with these dyes,
Cohen could observe their activity under a microscope.
E Dyes can also reveal neural firing by reacting not to voltage changes but to the flow of specific charged
atoms, or ions. When a neuron generates an action potential, membrane channels open and admit calcium ions
into the cell. This calcium influx stimulates the release of neurotransmitters. In 1980 Roger Y. Tsien, now at the
University of California, San Diego, began to synthesize dyes that could indicate shifts in calcium concentration
by changing how brightly they fluoresced. These optical reporters have proved extraordinarily valuable,
opening new windows on information processing in single neurons and small networks.
F Synthetic dyes suffer from a serious drawback, however. Neural tissue is composed of many different cell
types. Estimates suggest that the brain of a mouse, for example, houses many hundreds of types of neurons plus
numerous kinds of support cells. Because interactions between specific types of neurons form the basis of
neural information processing, someone who wants to understand how a particular circuit works must be able to
identify and monitor the individual players and pinpoint when they turn on (fire an action potential) and off. But
because synthetic dyes stain all cell types indiscriminately, it is generally impossible to trace the optical signals
back to specific types of cells.
G Optogenetics emerged from the realization that genetic manipulation might be the key to solving his problem
of indiscriminate staining. An individual’s cells all contain the same genes, but hat makes two cells different
from each other is that different mixes of genes get turned on or off in them. Neurons that release the
neurotransmitter dopamine when they fire, for instance, need the enzymatic machinery for making and
packaging dopamine. The genes encoding the protein components of this machinery are thus switched on in
dopamine producing (dopaminergic) neurons but stay off in other, non-dopaminergic neurons. In theory, if a
biological switch that turned a dopamine-making gene on was linked to a gene encoding a dye and if the switch-
and-dye unit were engineered into the cells of an animal, the animal would make the dye only in dopaminergic
cells. If researchers could peer into the brains of these creatures (as is indeed possible), they could see
dopaminergic cells functioning in virtual isolation from other cell types. Furthermore, they could observe these
cells in the intact, living brain. Synthetic dyes cannot perform this type of magic, because their production is not
controlled by genetic switches that flip to on exclusively in certain kinds of cells. The trick works only when a
dye is encoded by a gene—that is, when the dye is a protein.
H The first demonstrations that genetically encoded a decade ago, from teams led independently by Tsien, Ehud
Y. Isacoff of the University of California, Berkeley with James E. Rothman, now at Yale University. In all
cases, the gene for the dye was borrowed from a luminescent marine organism, typically a jellyfish that makes
the so-called green fluorescent protein .Scientists tweaked the gene so that its protein product could detect and
reveal the changes in voltage or calcium that underlie signaling within a cell, as well as the release of
neurotransmitters that enable signaling between cells.
QUESTIONS
Questions 1-5 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 1-
5 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 Sherrington’s imaginary picture triggered scientists’ enthusiasm of discovering how the whole set of neurons
operates.
2 A jumped-up domain optogenetic is a pure unexpected accident.
3 Electric tension is one key component to realize the communication between neurons.
4 The variations of voltages is the sole response that the coloration of related neurons could provide when
neural discharge takes place.
5 The vital defect synthetic dyes possess is the most challenging obstacle for researchers to overcome .
Questions 6-10 The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-H. Which paragraph contains the following
information? Write the correct letter A-H, in boxes 6-10 on your answer sheet.
6 a sea creature producing light triggered by certain genes
7 first attempts to make a great idea come true
8 the reason to explain the failure of synthetic dyes
9 difficulty in observing how the whole set of neurons works
10 visual indicators to show how information is handled in and between cells in the Brain
Questions 11-13 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 11-13 on your answer
sheet.
Summary
Synthesized by enzymatic machinery , 11 ……………….. plays as vehicle for the information flow between
cells. Protein is the ingredient of the enzymatic machinery, so first it needs genes in charge of encoding the
required protein 12 ……………….. before the neutron transimitter is produced. This 13 ……………….. can be
used to differentiate the dopaminergic neurons from the no dopaminergic counterparts with a premise that the
dye is a protein after a transfer process.
ELECTRIC DREAMS
PASSAGE
A. The days of the internal-combustion are numbered, and the fuel cell represents the future of automotive
transport, says PETER BREWER. A. Some of the world’s greatest inventions have been
discovered by accident. One such accident led to the discovery of the fuel cell and another led to its
commercialization. And in around 30 years, when most of the energy analysts have predicted the oil wells will
run dry, motorists will be thankful for both these strange twists of fate. Why? Simply because without the fuel
cell to replace the combustion engine, private motoring as we all know it would be restricted to only those who
could afford the high price.
B. The exact date of the discovery of the fuel cell is not known, but historians agree it most likely occurred
around 1938 in the laboratories of British physicist Sir William Grove, who one day disconnected a simple
electrolytic cell (in which hydrogen and oxygen are produced when water contacts an electric current running
through a platinum wire) and reversed the flow of current. As author records in his book Powering the Future,
Grove realized that just as he could use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen it should be possible
to generate electricity by combining these two gases.
C. The principle behind the fuel cell is simple. Hydrogen and oxygen, two of the most common elements in the
world, are a very explosive combination. But separate them with a sophisticated platinum coated barrier and an
electro chemical reaction takes place, where positively charged hydrogen ions react with oxygen and leave the
hydrogen electrons behind. It is this reaction, the excess electrons on one side of the barrier and the deficit of
electrons on the other that creates electrical energy.
D. The early development of the fuel cell was fraught with problems and high cost. But by 1954 US giant
General Electric had produced a prototype that proved sufficiently effective to interest NASA. The Gemini
space programme proved the viability of the fuel cell to provide electrical power. The spacecraft used six stacks
of cells with three cells in each stack. The electrical power output from each stack was quite modest – just one
kilowatt and as a byproduct, produced half a litre of water for each kilowatt hour of operation. But the Gemini
Cells were very unstable and required constant monitoring.
E. At this time if anyone had suggested to Canadian Scientist Geoffrey Ballard that he would become a world
leader in fuel cell technology, he would have laughed. Ballard’s scientific background was actually geophysics,
but during the oil-crisis of 1973, the US government asked the Canadian to explore alternative forms of energy.
Ballard threw himself into the project enthusiastically but soon became disillusioned by the politics of the
programme. Energy systems take a long time to develop, Ballard said. The short-term vision of politicians, who
voted to fund such projects in the desire for quick results to bolster their re-election chances, were frustrating
for the scientists. However, since the US government lacked the vision for the job, he decided to tackle it
himself.
F. The big breakthrough on Ballard’s fuel cell came by accident in the search for cheaper materials. Up until
late 1986, Ballard’s team had worked with only one type of fuel cell membrane manufactured by DuPont, but
Dow Chemical had also developed a similar membrane, which had not been released for sale. Ballard’s team
tracked down an experimental sample of the Dow material, put it into a fuel cell and set up a standard test.
Within a few minutes the fuel cell was generating so much electricity on the test bench that it had melted
through the power-output cable.
G. Ballard immediately knew he had a saleable product. The problem was: Should he aim his fuel cell at small
markets like military field generators, wheelchairs and golf carts, or try to sell it as a full blown alternative to
the combustion engine? “It was so needed and the world was ready for it,” Ballard said. “Los Angeles is dying;
Vancouver is going to be eaten alive by its own pollution very shortly. It seemed like a time to go for broke.”
Ballard Power Systems first built a small bus to demonstrate the technology, and then an even bigger bus.
H. As a result a number of multinational motor manufacturers, such as General Motors, Mitsubishi and
Daimler-Benz all tested Ballard’s cells. Finally, Daimler formed an alliance with Ballard that has yielded some
impressive prototypes, including a fully driveable fuel cellpowered A-class Mercedes-Benz compact car, known
as Necar 4. Daimler Chlysler, as the merged Daimler- Benz and Chlysler Corporation is now known, says the
fuel cell represents the future of automotive transport. “The significance of this technological advancement ( the
fuel cell) is comparable to the impact the microchip had on computer technology when it replaced the
transistor,” said Dr Ferdinand Panik, the head of Daimler Chlysler’s fuel cell development team.
QUESTIONS
QUESTIONS 14-21
There are 8 paragraphs numbered A-H in Reading Passage 2.
From the list below numbered i- x, choose a suitable heading for the paragraphs.
There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use all the headings.
14. Paragraph A
15. Paragraph B
16. Paragraph C
17. Paragraph D
18. Paragraph E
19. Paragraph F
20. Paragraph G
21. Paragraph H
i. A conflict of interest’s
ii. Science is sometimes a question of luck
iii. Using the fuel cell in different ways
iv. How does it work?
v. Deciding how to exploit the new product
vi. Using the fuel cell to be the first in the space race
vii. A key stage in the development of fuel cell
viii. A first step on the road to a new source of energy
ix. Applying the new technology on a global scale
x. The first fuel cell is tested
QUESTIONS 22-24
Choose the most appropriate letter A, B, C or D.
22. The fuel cell generates electricity because
A. hydrogen and oxygen can be used to create controlled explosions
B. of the reaction which occurs when hydrogen and oxygen are separated
C. hydrogen and oxygen are both gases
D. hydrogen and oxygen both contain electrons
23. The Gemini space programme demonstrated that
A. The fuel cell was too difficult to use in space programs
B. The fuel cell can only work with pure oxygen
C. Generating a substantial amount of electricity requires many fuel cells
D. The fuel cell could be used successfully
24. The US government asked Ballard to carry out fuel cell research because
A. He was an expert in his field
B. supplies of oil were running out
C. They wanted to find new sources of energy
D. He offered to work completely independently.
QUESTIONS 25-27
Complete the sentences below by taking words from the passage. Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS.
25. The key step in the development of fuel cell occurred completely _________________.
26. Ballard decided that the fuel cell could be used to reduce ____________in large cities.
27. In an attempt to produce a more ecological car, Ballard _____________with a major automobile
corporation.
Pottery production in ancient Akrotiri
A. Excavations at the site of prehistoric Akrotiri, on the coast of the Aegean Sea, have revealed much about the
technical aspects of pottery manufacture, indisputably one of the basic industries of this Greek city. However,
considerably less is known about the socio-economic context and the way production was organized.
B. The bulk of pottery found at Akrotiri is locally made, and dates from the late fifteenth century BC. It clearly
fulfilled a vast range of the settlement’s requirements: more than fifty different types of pots can be
distinguished. The pottery found includes a wide variety of functional types like storage jars, smaller containers,
pouring vessels, cooking pots, drinking vessels and so on, which all relate to specific activities and which would
have been made and distributed with those activities in mind. Given the large number of shapes produced and
the relatively high degree of standardization, it has generally been assumed that most, if not all, of Akrotiri
pottery was produced by specialized craftsmen in a non-domestic context. Unfortunately neither the potters’
workshops nor kilns have been found within the excavated area. The reason may be that the ceramic workshops
were located on the periphery of the site, which has not yet been excavated. In any event, the ubiquity of the
pottery, and the consistent repetition of the same types in different sizes, suggest production on an industrial
scale.
C. The Akrotirian potters seem to have responded to pressures beyond their households, namely to the
increasing complexity of regional distribution and exchange systems. We can imagine them as full-time
craftsmen working permanently in a high production-rate craft such as pottery manufacture, and supporting
themselves entirely from the proceeds of then craft. In view of the above, one can begin to speak in terms of
mass-produced pottery and the existence of organized workshops of craftsmen during the period 1550— 1500
BC. Yet, how pottery production was organized at Akrotiri remains an open question, as there is no real
documentary evidence. Our entire knowledge comes from the ceramic material itself, and the tentative
conclusions which can be drawn from it.
D. The invention of units of quantity and of a numerical system to count them was of capital importance for an
exchange-geared society such as that of Akrotiri. In spite of the absence of any written records, the
archaeological evidence reveals that concepts of measurements, both of weight and number, had been
formulated. Standard measures may already have been in operation, such as those evidenced by a graduated
series of lead weights— made in disc form— found at the site. The existence of units of capacity in Late Bronze
Age times is also evidenced, by the notation of units of a liquid measure for wine on excavated containers.
E. It must be recognized that the function of pottery vessels plays a very important role in determining then
characteristics. The intended function affects the choice of clay, the production technique, and the shape and the
size of the pots. For example, large storage jars (pithoi) would be needed to store commodities, whereas smaller
containers would be used for transport. In fact, the length of a man’s arm limits the size of a smaller pot to a
capacity of about twenty lines; that is also the maximum a man can comfortably carry.
F. The various sizes of container would thus represent standard quantities of a commodity, which is a
fundamental element in the function of exchange. Akrotirian merchants handling a commodity such as wine
would have been able to determine easily the amount of wine they were transporting film the number of
containers they carried in then ships, since the capacity of each container was known to be 14-18 liters. (We
could draw a parallel here with the current practice in Greece of selling oil in 17 kilogram tins.)
G. We may therefore assume that the shape, capacity, and, sometimes decoration of vessels are indicative of the
commodity contained by them. Since individual transactions would normally involve different quantities of a
given commodity, a range of ‘standardized’ types of vessel would be needed to meet traders’ requirements.
H. In trying to reconstruct systems of capacity by measuring the volume of excavated pottery, a rather generous
range of tolerances must be allowed. It seems possible that the potters of that time had specific sizes of vessel in
mind, and tried to reproduce them using a specific type and amount of clay. However, it would be quite difficult
for them to achieve the exact size required every time, without any mechanical means of regulating symmetry
and wall thickness, and some potters would be more skilled than others. In addition, variations in the repetition
of types and size may also occur because of unforeseen circumstances during the throwing process. For
instance, instead of destroying the entire pot if the clay in the rim contained a piece of grit, a potter might
produce a smaller pot by simply cutting off the rim. Even where there is no noticeable external difference
between pots meant to contain the same quantity of a commodity, differences in their capacity can actually
reach one or two liters. In one case the deviation from the required size appears to be as much as 10-20 percent.
I. The establishment of regular trade routes within the Aegean led to increased movement of goods;
consequently a regular exchange of local, luxury and surplus goods, including metals, would have become
feasible as a result of the advances in transport technology. The increased demand for standardized exchanges,
inextricably linked to commercial transactions, might have been one of the main factors which led to the
standardization of pottery production. Thus, the whole network of ceramic production and exchange would have
depended on specific regional economic conditions, and would reflect the socio-economic structure of
prehistoric Akrotiri.
QUESTIONS
Questions 27-28
Choose the correct letter, A, B. c or D.
27. What does die writer say about items of pottery excavated at Akrotiri?
A. There was very little duplication.
B. They would have met a big variety of needs.
C. Most of them had been imported from other places.
D. The intended purpose of each piece was unclear.
28. The assumption that pottery from Akrotiri was produced by specialists is partly ‘ based on
A. The discovery of kilns.
B. The central location of workshops.
C. The sophistication of decorative patterns.
D. The wide range of shapes represented.
Questions 29-32
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below.
Write the correct letter, A-F.
29. The assumption that standard units of weight were in use could be based on
30. Evidence of the use of standard units of volume is provided by
31. The size of certain types of containers would have been restricted by
32. Attempts to identify the intended capacity of containers are complicated by
———————
A. The discovery of a collection of metal discs.

B. The size and type of the sailing ships in use.
C. Variations in the exact shape and thickness of similar containers.
D. The physical characteristics of workmen.
E. Marks found on wine containers.
F. The variety of commodities for which they would have been used.
Questions 33-38
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3? 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
33. There are plans to excavate new areas of the archaeological site in the near future.
34. Some of the evidence concerning pottery production in ancient Akrotiri comes from written records.
35. Pots for transporting liquids would have held no more than about 20 litres.
36. It would have been hard for merchants to calculate how much wine was on their ships.
37. The capacity of containers intended to hold the same amounts differed by up to 20 percent.
38. Regular trading of goods around the Aegean would have led to the general standardisation of quantities.
Question 39-40
Choose the correct letter, A. B, C or D
39. What does the writer say about the standardisation of container sizes?
A. Containers which looked the same from the outside often varied in capacity.
B. The instruments used to control container size were unreliable.
C. The unsystematic use of different types of clay resulted in size variations.
D. Potters usually discarded containers which were of a non-standard size.
40. What is probably the main purpose of Reading Passage 3?
A. To evaluate the quality of pottery containers found in prehistoric Akrotiri.
B. To suggest how features of pottery production at Akrotiri reflected other developments in the region.
C. To outline the development of pottery-making skills in ancient Greece.

D. To describe methods for storing and transporting household goods in prehistoric societies.

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Young Adult Novels

IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE

YES if the statement agrees with the writer

NO if the statement does not agree with the writer

NOT GIVEN if there is no information about this in the passage

NO if the statement does not agree with the writer

NOT GIVEN if there is no information about this in the passage

(27). By 2050 only a small number of languages will be flourishing.

(A). even though it is in danger of disappearing.

(i)The influence of Monbusho

NO if the statement does not agree with the writer

NOT GIVEN if there is no information about this in the passage

Question 11 When a new maths topic is introduced,

Question 12 How do schools deal with students who experience difficulties?

upper and • reduce oscillations caused by 36 ……………………

(A) frequencies (D) resonators (G) sound energy (J) drainage

(B) the engine (E) air flow (H) pores (K) sources

(C) rubbish (F) dissipation (I) lanes

25. The example of the coelacanth is to illustrate

26. Mooney believes that all sighting reports should be

Book review on Musiccophilia

C. Sacks failed to include his personal stories in the book.

D. This is the only book written by Sacks.

28. What is the best part of the book?

B the tone of voice of the book

C the autobiographical description in the book

D the description of Sacks ’s wealth

29 In the preface, what did Sacks try to achieve?

B. give detailed description of various musical disorders

C. explain how people understand music

D. explain why he needs to do away with simple observation

30 What is disappointing about Tony Cicoria’s case?

B. He can’t determine the cause of his sudden musicality.

C. He nearly died because of the lightening.

D. His brain waves were too normal to show anything.

A. show no music-brain disorders.

A. The discovery of a collection of metal discs.

C. To outline the development of pottery-making skills in ancient Greece.

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