READING

READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.

Secrets Of The Swarm

Insects, birds and fish tend to be the creatures that humans feel furthest from. Unlike many
mammals they do not engage in humanlike behaviour. The way they swarm or flock together
does not usually get good press coverage either: marching like worker ants might be a
common simile for city commuters, but it’s a damning, not positive, image. Yet a new school
of scientific theory suggests that these swarms might have a lot to teach us.

American author Peter Miller explains, ‘I used to think that individual ants knew where they
were going, and what they were supposed to do when they got there. But Deborah Gordon, a
biologist at Stanford University, showed me that nothing an ant does makes any sense except
in terms of the whole colony. Which makes you wonder if, as individuals, we don’t serve a
similar function for the companies where we work or the communities where we live.’ Ants
are not intelligent by themselves. Yet as a colony, they make wise decisions. And as Gordon
discovered during her research, there’s no one ant making decisions or giving orders.

Take food collecting, for example. No ant decides, ‘There’s lots of food around today; lots of
ants should go out to collect it.’ Instead, some forager ants go out, and as soon as they find
food, they pick it up and come back to the nest. At the entrance, they brush past reserve
foragers, sending a ‘go out’ signal. The faster the foragers come back, the more food there is
and the faster other foragers go out, until gradually the amount of food being brought back
diminishes. An organic calculation has been made to answer the question, ‘How many
foragers does the colony need today?’ And if something goes wrong a hungry lizard prowling
around for an ant snack, for instance then a rush of ants returning without food sends waiting
reserves a ‘Don’t go out’ signal.

But could such decentralised control work in a human organisation? Miller visited a Texas
gas company that has successfully applied formulas based on ant colony behaviour to
‘optimise its factories and route its trucks’. He explains, ‘If ant colonies had worked out a
reliable way to identify the best routes between their nest and food sources, the company
managers figured, why not take advantage of that knowledge?’ So they came up with a
computer model, based on the self-organising principles of an ant colony. Data is fed into the
model about deliveries needing to be made the next day, as well as things like weather
conditions, and it produces a simulation determining the best route for the delivery lorries to
take.
Miller explains that he first really understood the impact that swarm behaviour could have on
humans when he read a study of honeybees by Tom Seeley, a biologist at Cornell University.
The honeybees choose as a group which new nest to move to. First, scouts fly off to
investigate multiple sites. When they return they do a ‘waggle dance’ for their spot, and other
scouts will then fly off and investigate it. Many bees go out, but none tries to compare all
sites. Each reports back on just one. The more they liked their nest, the more vigorous and
lengthy their waggle dance and the more bees will choose to visit it. Gradually the volume of
bees builds up towards one site; it’s a system that ensures that support for the best site
snowballs and the decision is made in the most democratic way.

Humans, too, can make clever decisions through diversity of knowledge and a little friendly
competition. 'The best example of shared decision making that I witnessed during my
research was a town meeting I attended in Vermont, where citizens met face-to-face to debate
their annual budget,’ explains Miller. ‘For group decision making to work well, you need a
way to sort through the various options they propose; and you need a mechanism to narrow
down these options.’ Citizens in Vermont control their municipal affairs by putting forward
proposals, or backing up others’ suggestions, until a consensus is reached through a vote. As
with the bees, the broad sampling of options before a decision is made will usually result in a
compromise acceptable to all. The ‘wisdom of the crowd’ makes clever decisions for the
good of the group and leaves citizens feeling represented and respected.

The Internet is also an area where we are increasingly exhibiting swarm behaviour, without
any physical contact. Miller compares a wiki website, for example, to a termite mound.
Indirect collaboration is the key principle behind information sharing websites, just as it
underlies the complex constructions that termites build. Termites do not have an architect’s
blueprint or a grand construction scheme. They simply sense changes in their environment, as
for example when the mound’s wall has been damaged, altering the circulation of air. They
go to the site of the change and drop a grain of soil. When the next termite finds that grain,
they drop theirs too. Slowly, without any kind of direct decision making, a new wall is built.
A termite mound, in this way, is rather like a wiki website. Rather than meeting up and
talking about what we want to post online, we just add to what someone maybe a stranger on
the other side of the world already wrote. This indirect knowledge and skill sharing is now
finding its way into the corridors of power.

Questions 1-6
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the text?
In boxes 1-6 on your answer, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
 1 Commuters are often compared favourably with worker ants.
2 Some ants within a colony have leadership roles.
3 Forager ants tell each other how far away the food source is.
4 Forager ants are able to react quickly to a dangerous situation.
5 Termite mounds can be damaged by the wind.
6 Termites repair their mounds without directly communicating with each other.

Questions 7-9
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below.
Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 7-9 on your answer sheet.
7 Managers working for a Texas gas company
8 Citizens in an annual Vermont meeting
9 Some Internet users

A provide support for each other's ideas in order to reach the best outcome.
B use detailed comments to create large and complicated systems.
C use decision-making strategies based on insect communities to improve their service.
D communicate with each other to decide who the leader will be.
E contribute independently to the ideas of others they do not know.
F repair structures they have built without directly communicating with each other.
Questions 10-13
Complete the flow-chart below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the text for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.

How honeybees choose a new nest

Honeybee 10__________explore possible nest sites

they perform what is known as a 11____________on their return

other bees go out and report back

enthusiasm and 12___________increase for one particular site

a final choice is reached using a 13____________process

READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading
Passage 2 below.
Fatal Attraction
Evolutionist Charles Darwin first marvelled at flesh-eating plants in the mid-19th century.
Today, biologists, using 21st-century tools to study cells and DNA, are beginning to
understand how these plants hunt, eat and digest – and how such bizarre adaptations arose
in the first place.
A
The leaves of the Venus flytrap plant are covered in hairs. When an insect brushes
against them, this triggers a tiny electric charge, which travels down tunnels in the leaf and
opens up pores in the leaf’s cell membranes. Water surges from the cells on the inside of the
leaf to those on the outside, causing the leaf to rapidly flip in shape from convex to concave,
like a soft contact lens. As the leaves flip, they snap together, trapping the insect in their
sharp-toothed jaws.
B
The bladderwort has an equally sophisticated way of setting its underwater trap. It pumps
water out of tiny bag-like bladders, making a vacuum inside. When small creatures swim
past, they bend the hairs on the bladder, causing a flap to open. The low pressure sucks water
in, carrying the animal along with it. In one five-hundredth of a second, the door swings shut
again. The Drosera sundew, meanwhile, has a thick, sweet liquid oozing from its leaves,
which first attracts insects, then holds them fast before the leaves snap shut. Pitcher plants use
yet another strategy, growing long tube-shaped leaves to imprison their prey. Raffles’ pitcher
plant, from the jungles of Borneo, produces nectar that both lures insects and forms a slick
surface on which they can’t get a grip. Insects that land on the rim of the pitcher slide on the
liquid and tumble in.
C
Many carnivorous plants secrete enzymes to penetrate the hard exoskeleton of insects so they
can absorb nutrients from inside their prey. But the purple pitcher plant, which lives in bogs
and infertile sandy soils in North America, enlists other organisms to process its food. It is
home to an intricate food web of mosquito larvae, midges and bacteria, many of which can
survive only in this unique habitat. These animals shred the prey that fall into the pitcher, and
the smaller organisms feed on the debris. Finally, the plant absorbs the nutrients released.
D
While such plants clearly thrive on being carnivorous, the benefits of eating flesh are not the
ones you might expect. Carnivorous animals such as ourselves use the carbon in protein and
the fat in meat to build muscles and store energy. Carnivorous plants instead draw nitrogen,
phosphorus, and other critical nutrients from their prey in order to build light-harvesting
enzymes. Eating animals, in other words, lets carnivorous plants do what all plants do: carry
out photosynthesis, that is, grow by harnessing energy directly from the sun.
E
Carnivorous plants are, in fact, very inefficient at converting sunlight into tissue. This is
because of all the energy they expend to make the equipment to catch animals – the enzymes,
the pumps, and so on. A pitcher or a flytrap cannot carry out much photosynthesis because,
unlike plants with ordinary leaves, they do not have flat solar panels that can grab lots of
sunlight. There are, however, some special conditions in which the benefits of being
carnivorous do outweigh the costs. The poor soil of bogs, for example, offers little nitrogen
and phosphorus, so carnivorous plants enjoy an advantage over plants that obtain these
nutrients by more conventional means. Bogs are also flooded with sunshine, so even an
inefficient carnivorous plant can photosynthesise enough light to survive.
F
Evolution has repeatedly made this trade-off. By comparing the DNA of carnivorous plants
with other species, scientists have found that they evolved independently on at least six
separate occasions. Some carnivorous plants that look nearly identical turn out to be only
distantly related. The two kinds of pitcher plants – the tropical genus Nepenthes and the
North American Sarracenia – have, surprisingly, evolved from different ancestors, although
both grow deep pitcher-shaped leaves and employ the same strategy for capturing prey.
G
In several cases, scientists can see how complex carnivorous plants evolved from simpler
ones. Venus flytraps, for example, share an ancestor with Portuguese sundews, which only
catch prey passively, via ‘flypaper’ glands on their stems. They share a more recent ancestor
with Drosera sundews, which can also curl their leaves over their prey. Venus flytraps appear
to have evolved an even more elaborate version of this kind of trap, complete with jaw-like
leaves.
H
Unfortunately, the adaptations that enable carnivorous plants to thrive in marginal
habitats also make them exquisitely sensitive. Agricultural run-off and pollution from power
plants are adding extra nitrogen to many bogs in North America. Carnivorous plants are so
finely tuned to low levels of nitrogen that this extra fertilizer is overloading their systems, and
they eventually burn themselves out and die.
I
Humans also threaten carnivorous plants in other ways. The black market trade in
exotic carnivorous plants is so vigorous now that botanists are keeping the location of some
rare species a secret. But even if the poaching of carnivorous plants can be halted, they will
continue to suffer from other assaults. In the pine savannah of North Carolina, the increasing
suppression of fires is allowing other plants to grow too quickly and outcompete the flytraps
in their native environment. Good news, perhaps, for flies. But a loss for all who, like
Darwin, delight in the sheer inventiveness of evolution
Question 14-18
Complete the note below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

How a Venus flytrap traps an insect

 Insect touches 14 ………………… on leaf of plant.
 Small 15 ………………… passes through leaf.
 16………………… in cell membrane open.
 Outside cells of leaves fill with 17…………………
 Leaves change so that they have a 18………………… shape and snap shut.

Questions 19-22

Look at the following statements (Questions 19-22) and the list of plants.
Match each statement with the correct plant, A, B, C, D or E.
Write the correct letter, A, B, C, D or E, in boxes 19-22 on your answer sheet.
19 It uses other creatures to help it digest insects.
20 It produces a slippery substance to make insects fall inside it.
21 It creates an empty space into which insects are sucked.
22 It produces a sticky substance which traps insects on its surface.

List of plants

A Venus flytrap

B bladderwort

C Drosera sundew

D Raffles’ pitcher plant

E purple pitcher plant

Questions 23-26

Reading Passage 2 has nine paragraphs, A-I.

Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.

23 A mention of a disadvantage of the leaf shape of some carnivorous plants

24 An example of an effort made to protect carnivorous plants
25 Unexpected information about the origins of certain carnivorous plants
26 An example of environmental changes that shorten the life cycles of carnivorous
plants
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading
Passage 3 on the following pages.
Question 27-32
Reading Passage 3 has six paragraghs, A-F.
Choose the corrent heading for paragraghs A-F from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-vii, on boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i Differences between languages highlight their impressiveness
ii The way in which a few sounds are organised to convey a huge range
of meaning
iii Why the sounds used in different languages are not identical
iv Apparently incompatible characteristics of language
v Even silence can be meaningful
vi Why language is the most important invention of all
vii The universal ability to use language

27 Paragraph A

28 Paragraph B

29 Paragraph C

30 Paragraph D

31 Paragraph E

32 Paragraph F
 ‘This Marvellous Invention’
A Of all mankind’s manifold creations, language must take pride of place. Other inventions -the
wheel, agriculture, sliced bread – may have transformed our material existence, but the
advent of language is what made us human. Compared to language, all other inventions pale
in significance, since everything we have ever achieved depends on language and originates
from it. Without language, we could never have embarked on our ascent to unparalleled
power over all other animals, and even over nature itself.

B But language is foremost not just because it came first. In its own right it is a tool of
extraordinary sophistication, yet based on an idea of ingenious simplicity: ‘this marvellous
invention of composing out of twenty-five or thirty sounds that infinite variety of expressions
which, whilst having in themselves no likeness to what is in our mind, allow us to disclose to
others its whole secret, and to make known to those who cannot penetrate it all that we
imagine, and all the various stirrings of our soul’ This was how, in 1660, the renowned
French grammarians of the Port-Royal abbey near Versailles distilled the essence of
language, and no one since has celebrated more eloquently the magnitude of its achievement.
Even so, there is just one flaw in all these hymns of praise, for the homage to languages
unique accomplishment conceals a simple yet critical incongruity. Language is mankind s
greatest invention – except, of course, that it was never invented. This apparent paradox is at
the core of our fascination with language, and it holds many of its secrets.

C Language often seems so skillfully drafted that one can hardly imagine it as anything other
than the perfected handiwork of a master craftsman. How else could this instrument make so
much out of barely three dozen measly morsels of sound? In themselves, these configurations
of mouth p,f,b,v,t,d,k,g,sh,a,e and so on – amount to nothing more than a few haphazard spits
and splutters, random noises with no meaning, no ability to express, no power to explain. But
run them through the cogs and wheels of the language machine, let it arrange them in some
very special orders, and there is nothing that these meaningless streams of air cannot do: from
sighing the interminable boredom of existence to unravelling the fundamental order of the
universe.

D The most extraordinary thing about language, however, is that one doesn’t have to be a
genius to set its wheels in motion. The language machine allows just about everybody from
pre-modern foragers in the subtropical savannah, to post-modern philosophers in the
suburban sprawl – to tie these meaningless sounds together into an infinite variety of subtle
senses, and all apparently without the slightest exertion. Yet it is precisely this deceptive ease
which makes language a victim of its own success, since in everyday life its triumphs are
usually taken for granted. The wheels of language run so smoothly that one rarely bothers to
stop and think about all the resourcefulness and expertise that must have gone into making it
tick. Language conceals art.
E Often, it is only the estrangement of foreign tongues, with their many exotic and outlandish
features, that brings home the wonder of languages design. One of the showiest stunts that
some languages can pull off is an ability to build up words of breath-breaking length, and
thus express in one word what English takes a whole sentence to say. The Turkish
word çehirliliçtiremediklerimizdensiniz, to take one example, means nothing less than ‘you
are one of those whom we can’t turn into a town-dweller’. (In case you were wondering, this
monstrosity really is one word, not merely many different words squashed together – most ol
its components cannot even stand up on their own.)

F And if that sounds like some one-off freak, then consider Sumerian, the language spoken on
the banks of the Euphrates some 5,000 years ago by the people who invented writing and thus
enabled the documentation of history. A Sumerian word like munintuma’a (‘when he had
made it suitable for her’) might seem rather trim compared to the Turkish colossus above.
What is so impressive about it, however, is not its lengthiness but rather the reverse – the
thrifty compactness of its construction. The word is made up of different slots, each
corresponding to a particular portion of meaning. This sleek design allows single sounds to
convey useful information, and in fact even the absence of a sound has been enlisted to
express something specific. If you were to ask which bit in the Sumerian word corresponds to
the pronoun ‘it’ in the English translation ‘when he had made it suitable for her’, then the
answer would have to be nothing. Mind you, a very particular kind of nothing: the nothing
that stands in the empty slot in the middle. The technology is so fine-tuned then that even a
non-sound, when carefully placed in a particular position, has been invested with a specific
function. Who could possibly have come up with such a nifty contraption?
Questions 33-36

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

Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 33-36 on your answer sheet.

The importance of language

The wheel is one invention that has had a major impact on 33……………… aspects
of life, but no impact has been as 34………………. as that of language. Language is
very 35…………………, yet composed of just a small number of sounds.

Language appears to be 36………………… to use. However, its sophistication is

often overlooked.

A difficult B complex C original

D admired E material F easy

G fundamental

Questions 37-40

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer

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

37 Human beings might have achieved their present position without language.

38 The Port-Royal grammarians did justice to the nature of language.

39 A complex idea can be explained more clearly in a sentence than in a single word.

40 The Sumerians were responsible for starting the recording of events.