Part 4. Read the article below and answer questions 107-116.

Continental drift
Until the 1960s the most widely accepted geological explanation for the shape of the crust or
surface of the Earth was the so-called rigid Earth theory. This holds that the landscape of the Earth,
with its oceans and continents, has been fixed throughout its history. As the Earth has cooled after
the first fluid eras of its existence, the only change has been the formation of mountains due to the
contractions caused by cooling.

In the 1950s a rather different theory began to take hold. In this explanation the Earth is plastic, the
continents drifting plates in a state of perpetual motion over a vast sea, their movement caused by
the action of extremely slow thermal convection currents originating in the Earth's core. In 1961 the
theory of continental drift first appeared in high school textbooks, and by 1966 the theory had
gained widespread credibility. In 1963, the journal Scientific American published an article by the
eminent geophysicist Professor J.Tuzo Wilson, in part of which he summarized new evidence for
the theory of continental drift:

Convection currents in the mantle now play the leading role in every discussion of the large-scale
and long-term processes that go on in the Earth. It is true that the evidence for their existence is
indirect; the currents flow too deep in the Earth and too slowly—a few centimeters a year—for
direct observation. Nonetheless, their presence is supported by an increasing body of independently
established evidence and by a more rigorous statement of the theory of their behavior. Recently, for
example, S. K. Runcorn of Durham University has shown that to stop convection, the mantle
material would have to be 10,000 times more viscous than the rate of postglacial recoil indicates. It
is, therefore, highly probable that convection currents are flowing in the Earth. Perhaps the
strongest confirmation has come with the discovery of the regions where these currents appear to
ascend toward the Earth s surface. This is the major discovery of the recent period of extraordinary
progress in the exploration of the ocean bottom, and it involves a feature of the Earth's topography
as grand in scale as the continents themselves. Across the floors of all the oceans, for a distance of
40,000 miles, there runs a continuous system of ridges. Over long stretches, as in the mid-Atlantic,
the ridge is faulted and rifted under the tension of forces acting at right angles to the axis of the
ridge. Measurements first undertaken by Sir Edward Bullard of the University of Cambridge show
that the flow of heat is unusually great along these ridges, exceeding by two to eight times the
average flow of a millionth of a calorie per square centimeter per second observed on the continents
and elsewhere on the ocean floor. Such measurements also show that the flow of heat in the
trenches, as in the Acapulco Trench off the Pacific coast of Central America, falls to as little as a
tenth of the average.

Most oceanographers now agree that the ridges form where convection currents rise in the Earth's
mantle add that the trenches are pulled down by the descent of these currents into the mantle. The
possibility of lateral movement of the currents in between is supported by evidence for a slightly
plastic layer—called: the asthenosphere—below the brittle shell of the Earth. Seismic observations
show that the speed of sound in this layer suddenly becomes slower, indicating that the rock is less
dense, hotter and more plastic. These observations have also yielded evidence that the
asthenosphere is a few hundred kilometers thick, somewhat thicker than the crust, and that below it
the viscosity increases again.
Here, then, is a mechanism, in harmony with physical theory and much geologic and geophysical
observation that provides a means for disrupting and moving continents. It is easy to believe that
where the convection currents rise and separate, the surface rocks are broken by tension and pulled
apart, the rift being filled by the altered top of the mantle and by the flow of basalt lavas. In contrast
to earlier theories of continental drift that required the continents to be driven through the crust like
ships through a frozen sea, this mechanism conveys them passively by the lateral movement of the
crust from the source of a convection current to its sink. The continents, having been built up by the
accumulation of lighter and more siliceous materials brought up from below, are not dragged down
at the trenches where the currents descend but pile up there in mountains. The ocean floor, being
essentially altered mantle, can be carried downward; such sediments as have accumulated in the
trenches descend also and, by complicated processes, may add new mountains to the continents.
Since the material near the surface is chilled and brittle, it fractures, causing earthquakes until it is
heated by its descent.

From the physical point of view, the convection cells in the mantle that drive these currents can
assume a variety of sizes and configurations, starting up and slowing down from time to time,
expanding and contracting. The flow of the currents on the world map may therefore follow a single
pattern for a time, but the pattern should also change occasionally because of changes in the output
and transfer of heat from within. It is thus possible to explain the periodicity of mountain-building,
the random and asymmetric distribution of the continents and the abrupt breakup of an ancient
continent.

Effects of convection currents, schematized in the two illustrations on this page, provide one
possible means of accounting for the formation of median ridges, lateral ridges, mountain ranges
and earthquake belts. Rising and separating currents (arrows at right) could break the crustal rock
and pull it apart; the rift would be filled by altered mantle material and lava flows, forming a
median ridge. Sinking currents (left) could pull the ocean floor down.

Drifting continent may be piled up, where it meets sinking currents, to form mountains like those of
the Andes (left). Since continents are lighter than the mantle material of the ocean floor, they cannot
sink but tend to be pushed over sinking currents, marked by deep earth quakes. Volcanoes continue
to form over rising currents, but drift may carry these volcanic piles away to either side of the ridge.
Separated from their source, the inactive cones form one or two lateral ridges.
QUESTIONS 107-116
Complete this summary by choosing the correct phrase from the list in the box below.
There are more phrases in the list than you need. You will see that there is an example
which has been done for you. Mark your answers on the separate answer sheet.

A. dilation in the Earth’s mantle

B. mid-ocean ridges and trenches
C. continental drift
D. lava and altered surface substances
E. the appearance of the Earth.
F. a mercurial existence
G. the propulsion of the currents in the same area
H. shrinkage in the cooling procedure
I. a scorching and whimsical nature
J. a unyielding pattern at an early date.
K. the gradual drop in temperatures and formation of the continents
L. the rigidity of the continents
M. soar of the currents to the surface
N. the cascade of the currents down into the Earth’s core
O. faulted and rifted forces

There are two main divisions among geologists in explaining………….…….E………………

As far as the obsolete hypothesis is concerned, (107)______________of the Earth was
discernible and (108)_____________was thought to sow the seeds of mountains. In another
attempt to expound the contours of the continents, due to the dissipation of Earth’s fluid nature
and subsequently the rise of its cooling process, this has resulted in (109)_____________.
When it comes to the standpoint of continental drift, the (110)_____________have attested the
support for the Earth as (111)_____________with constant cycles of regions colliding,
breaking up and reuniting. According to the theory, the rise of currents to the surface
engenders the formation of ridges, at which points the crust is dismantled while the gap is
progressively impregnated with (112)__________ so as to generate the ridge. Eventually, the
trenches are created given (113)_____________.

QUESTIONS 114-116
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the reading passage?
Write
TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
114.The cascade of the convection current precipitates the lowering of the continents at the
point called the ocean trench.
115. The subsidence of convection currents will instigate the incident of earthquakes
116. The far- flung location of lava flows from their provenance can be ascribed to the
influence of convection currents on continents.

READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage
2 below.
One Who Hopes
A
Language lovers, just like music lovers, enjoy a variety. For the latter, there’s Mozart, The
Rolling Stones and Beyonce. For the former, there’s English, French, Swahili, Urdu… the list
is endless. But what about those poor overworked students who find learning difficult,
confusing languages a drudge? Wouldn’t it put a smile on their faces if there were just one
simple, the easy-to-learn tongue that would cut their study time by years? Well, of course, it
exists. It’s called Esperanto, and it’s been around for more than 120 years. Esperanto is the
most widely spoken artificially constructed international language. The name derives from
Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof first published his Unua
Libro in 1887. The phrase itself means ‘one who hopes’. Zamenhof’s goal was to create an
easy and flexible language as a universal second language to promote peace and international
understanding.
B
Zamenhof, after ten years of developing his brain-child from the late 1870s to the early 1880s,
had the first Esperanto grammar published in Warsaw in July 1887. The number of speakers
grew rapidly over the next few decades, at first primarily in the Russian Empire and Eastern
Europe, then in Western Europe and the Americas, China, and Japan. In the early years,
speakers of Esperanto kept in contact primarily through correspondence and periodicals, but
since 1905 world congresses have been held on five continents every year except during the
two World Wars. Latest estimates for the numbers of Esperanto speakers are around 2 million.
Put in percentage terms, that’s about 0.03% of the world’s population – no staggering figure,
comparatively speaking. One reason is that Esperanto has no official status in any country, but
it is an optional subject on the curriculum of several state education systems. It is widely
estimated that it can be learned in anywhere between a quarter to a twentieth of the time
required for other languages.
C
As a constructed language, Esperanto is not genealogically related to any ethnic language.
Whilst it is described as ‘a language lexically predominantly Romanic’, the phonology,
grammar, vocabulary, and semantics are based on the western Indo-European languages. For
those of us who are not naturally predisposed to tucking languages under our belts, it is an
easy language to learn. It has 5 vowels and 23 consonants. It has one simple way of
conjugating all of its verbs. Words are often made from many other roots, making the number
of words which one must memorise much smaller. The language is phonetic, and the rules of
pronunciation are very simple so that everyone knows how to pronounce a written word and
vice-versa, and word order follows a standard, logical pattern. Through prefixing and
suffixing, Esperanto makes it easy to identify words as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs,
direct objects and so on, by means of easy-to-spot endings. All this makes for easy language
learning. What’s more, several research studies demonstrate that studying Esperanto before
another foreign language speeds up and improves the learning of the other language. This is
presumably because learning subsequent foreign languages is easier than learning one’s first,
while the use of a grammatically simple and culturally flexible language like Esperanto
softens the blow of learning one’s first foreign language. In one study, a group of European
high school students studied Esperanto for one year, then French for three years, and ended up
with a significantly better command of French than a control group who had studied French
for all four years.
D
Needless to say, the language has its critics. Some point to the Eastern European features of
the language as being harsh and difficult to pronounce and argue that Esperanto has an
artificial feel to it, without the flow of a natural tongue, and that by nature of its artificiality, it
is impossible to become emotionally involved with the language. Others cite its lack of
cultural history, indigenous literature – “no one has ever written a novel straight into
Esperanto” – together with its minimal vocabulary and its inability to express all the necessary
philosophical, emotional and psychological concepts.
E
The champions of Esperanto – Esperantists – disagree. They claim that it is a language in
which a great body of world literature has appeared in translation: in poetry, novels, literary
journals, and, to rebut the accusation that it is not a ‘real’ language, point out that it is
frequently used at international meetings which draw hundreds and thousands of participants.
Moreover, on an international scale, it is most useful – and fair – for neutral communication.
That means that communication through Esperanto does not give advantages to the members
of any particular people or culture, but provides an ethos of equality of rights, tolerance and
true internationalism.
F
Esperantists further claim that Esperanto has the potential – was it universally taught for a year
or two throughout the world – to empower ordinary people to communicate effectively
worldwide on a scale that far exceeds that which is attainable today by only the most
linguistically brilliant among us. It offers the opportunity to improve communication in
business, diplomacy, scholarship and other fields so that those who speak many different
native languages will be able to participate fluently in international conferences and chat
comfortably with each other after the formal presentations are made. Nowadays that privilege
is often restricted to native speakers of English and those who have special talents and
opportunities for learning English as a foreign language.
G
What Esperanto does offer in concrete terms is the potential of saving billions of dollars which
are now being spent on translators and interpreters, billions which would be freed up to serve
the purposes of governments and organisations that spend so much of their resources to
change words from one language into the words of others. Take, for example, the enormously
costly conferences, meetings and documentation involved in the European Union
parliamentary and administrative procedures – all funded, essentially, by taxpayers. And
instead of the World Health Organisation, and all NGOs for that matter, devoting enormous
sums to provide interpreters and translations, they would be able to devote those huge amounts
of money to improve the health of stricken populations throughout the world.

Questions 14-19
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-G from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number i-ix in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.
i A non-exclusive language
ii Fewer languages, more results
iii Language is personal
iv What’s fashionable in language
v From the written word to the spoken word
vi A real language
vii Harmony through language
viii The mechanics of a language
ix Lost in translation
Example Paragraph A Answer vii
14 Paragraph B
15 Paragraph C
16 Paragraph D
17 Paragraph E
18 Paragraph F
19 Paragraph G

Questions 20-22
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
Write your answer in box 20-22 on your answer sheet.
20 What advantage is there to learning Esperanto as one’s first foreign language?
A Its pronunciation rules follow those of most European languages.
B There are no grammar rules to learn.
C It can make the learning of other foreign languages less complicated.
D Its verbs are not conjugated.
21 What do its critics say of Esperanto?
A It is only used in artificial situations.
B It requires emotional involvement.
C It cannot translate works of literature.
D It lacks the depth of expression.
22 How could Esperanto help on a global level?
A It would eliminate the need for conferences.
B More aid money would reach those who need it.
C The world population would be speaking only one language.
D More funds could be made available for learning foreign languages.

Questions 23-26
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the information
NO if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
23 Supporters of Esperanto say it gives everyone an equal voice.
24 Esperanto is the only artificially-constructed language.
25 Esperanto can be learned as part of a self-study course.
26 Esperanto can be used equally in formal and casual situations.