Bản sao của Week 8 (5.0- - 7.5+)
Bản sao của Week 8 (5.0- - 7.5+)
Bản sao của Week 8 (5.0- - 7.5+)
✅
NỘI DUNG HỌC IELTS Band 5.0->7.5+ WEEK 8
PHẦN II: READING ( GIẢI FULL ĐỀ)
PASSAGE 1:
Some discoveries are so unusual it takes decades and sometimes even centuries to understand their
full significance. One such discovery is the fossil bed known as the Burgess Shale. It was discovered
in the Canadian Rockies over a century ago and was popularised in 1989 in a book, Wonderful Life, by
Stephen Jay Gould, an American paleontologist.
The Burgess Shale fossils were created at a time when the future Canadian landmass was situated near
the Earth's equator. The creatures were preserved when an entire marine ecosystem was buried in mud
that eventually hardened and became exposed hundreds of millions of years later in an outcrop of the
Rocky Mountains. American paleontologist Charles Walcott, following reports of fabulous fossil finds
by construction workers on a Canadian railway who were digging in the mountains in the late 19th
century, is said to have tripped over a block of shale in 1909 that revealed the area's remarkable
supply of specimens. It has long been believed that the curious fauna that lived there vanished in a
series of extinctions because the fossil record ends abruptly. But that no longer appears to be the case.
The Burgess Shale began to form soon after a period known as the Cambrian explosion when most
major groups of complex animals arose over a surprisingly short period. Before 560 million years ago,
most living things were either individual cells or simple colonies of cells. Then, for reasons that
remain a mystery, life massively diversified and became ever more complex as the rate of evolution
increased. An unusual feature of the Burgess Shale is that it is one of the earliest fossil beds to contain
impressions of soft body parts alongside the remains of bones and shells, which is highly unusual.
Although the fossil bed was discovered on a mountain, these animals originally existed below an
ocean, the bed of which was later pushed up to create the Rockies. Nobody knows exactly why they
were so well preserved. One possibility is that the creatures were buried quickly and in conditions that
were hostile to the bacteria that cause decomposition of soft body parts.
Those who first worked on the Burgess Shale, unearthing 65,000 specimens over a 14-year period up
to 1924, assumed that the fossils came from extinct members of groups of animals in existence today.
This turned out to be misleading because many of the creatures are so unusual that they are still
difficult to classify.
One such example is Opabinia, a creature that grew to about 8cm (3 inches), had five eyes, a body
that was a series of lobes, a tail in the shape of a fan, and that ate using a long proboscis. The
proboscis had a set of grasping claws on the end, with which it grabbed food and stuffed it into its
mouth. Nectocaris, meanwhile, could be mistaken for a leech, but with fins and tentacles. Weirdest of
all was Hallucigenia, described by paleontologist Simon Conway Morris, when he re-examined
Walcott's specimens in 1979. With its multiplicity of spines and tentacles, little about Hallucigenia
made sense, but scientists hypothesised that the spines were legs that helped it move and the tentacles
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were for feeding. Like an abstract painting, its orientation is a mystery at first, making it difficult to
work out which way up it went, which hole food went into, and which hole food came out of.
Paleontologists had long thought that many of the Burgess Shale animals were examples of
experiments in evolution. In other words, entirely new forms of life that did not survive or lead to
other groups or species. Hallucigenia, ironically, turned out to be the exception that proved the rule. It
is now thought to be an ancestor of the modern group of arthropods, which includes everything from
flies and butterflies to centipedes and crabs.
Now another misconception has been quashed. Writing in Nature recently, Peter Van Roy of Yale
University in the United States and his colleagues suggest that the sudden absence of such crazy
soft-bodied fossils does not indicate a mass extinction but merely an end to the unusual local
circumstances that caused the creatures to be preserved. In an area of the Atlas Mountains of
Morocco, Van Roy's team of researchers has found another diverse (and sometimes bizarre)
assemblage of soft-bodied organisms from a period after the Burgess Shale was formed. One
discovery includes something that may be a stalked barnacle. This suggests that the evolution of such
complex life went on uninterrupted. For its part, the Burgess Shale continues to produce an
astonishing array of indefinable creatures faster than paleontologists can examine them. The world
still has plenty to learn about this wonderful life.
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:
Questions 6-9
Burgess Shale
Formation:
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● Discovered in 1909
● Charles Walcott learned of the fossil finds from people building a 7 ___________
● The first work on Burgess Shale was undertaken at the start of the century
● A researcher looked at Burgess Shale findings again in 8 ___________
Recent Theories:
● Peter Van Roy believes that discoveries in Morocco show that the 9 ___________ of complex
life forms continued.
Questions 10-13
PASSAGE 2:
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A. Three generations ago, 180 young women wrote essays describing why they wanted to join a
convent (a religious community of nuns). Years later, a team of psychological researchers came across
these autobiographies in the convent’s archives. The researchers were seeking material to confirm
earlier studies hinting at a link between having a good vocabulary in youth and a low risk of
Alzheimer’s disease in old age. What they found was even more amazing. The researchers found that,
although the young women were in their early twenties when they wrote their essays, the emotions
expressed in these writings were predictive of how long they would live: those with upbeat
autobiographies lived more than ten years longer than those whose language was more neutral.
Deborah Danner, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky who spearheaded the study, noted that
the results were particularly striking because all members of the convent lived similar lifestyles,
eliminating many variables that normally make it difficult to interpret longevity studies. It was a
phenomenal finding she says. “A researcher gets a finding like that maybe once in a lifetime.
However, she points out that no one has been able to determine why positive emotions might have
such life-extending effects.
B. Barbara Fredrickson, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, believes that part of
the answer is the ‘undo effect’. According to this theory, positive emotions help you live longer by
shutting down the effects of negative ones. Fredrickson’s theory begins with the observation that
negative emotions, like fear and stress, enhance our fight-or-flight response to very real threats.
However, even when the emergency is gone, negative emotions produce lingering effects. Brooks
Gump, a stress researcher at the State University of New York, explains that one of these effects is
excessive cardiovascular reactivity. Behaviourally, Gump says, this reactivity is related to excessive
vigilance: the state of being constantly on guard for potential dangers. Not only is it physically
draining to live in a perpetual state of high vigilance, but high cardiovascular reactivity could be
linked to increased chances of a heart attack.
C. Fredrickson believes positive emotions work their magic by producing a rapid unwinding of
pent-up tension, restoring the system to normal. People who quickly bounce back from stress often
speed the process by harnessing such emotions as amusement, interest, excitement, and happiness, she
says. To test her theory, Fredrickson told a group of student volunteers that they had only a few
minutes to prepare a speech that would be critiqued by experts. After letting the students get nervous
about that, Fredrickson then told them they wouldn’t actually have to deliver their speeches. She
monitored heart rates and blood pressure. Not surprisingly, all students got nervous about their
speeches, but those who viewed the experiment with good-humored excitement saw their heart rates
return to normal much more quickly than those who were angry about being fooled. In a second
experiment, Fredrickson reported that even those who normally were slow to bounce back could be
coached to recover more quickly by being told to view the experiment as a challenge, rather than a
threat.
D. Fredrickson believes that positive emotions make people more flexible and creative. Negative
emotions, she says, give a heightened sense of detail that makes us hypersensitive to minute clues
related to the source of a threat. But that also produces tunnel vision in which we ignore anything
unrelated to the danger. Fredrickson speculated that just as positive emotions can undo the
cardiovascular effects of negative ones, they may also reverse the attention-narrowing effects of
negative feelings: broadening our perspectives.
E. To verify her theory, Fredrickson showed a group of students some film clips – some saw
frightening clips, some saw humorous ones or peaceful ones. They then did a matching test in which
they were shown a simple drawing and asked which of two other drawings it most resembled. The
drawings were designed so that people would tend to give one answer if they focused on details, and
another answer if they focused on the big picture. The results confirmed Fredrickson’s suspicion that
positive emotions affect our perceptions. Students who had seen the humorous or peaceful clips were
more likely to match objects according to broad impressions.
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F. This fits with the role that positive emotions might have played in early human tribes, Fredrickson
says. Negative emotions provided focus, which was important for surviving in life-or-death situations,
but the ability to feel positive emotions was of long-term value because it opened the mind to new
ideas. Humour is a good example of this. She says, ‘The emotions are transient, but the resources are
durable. If you build a friendship through being playful, that friendship is a lasting resource.’ So while
the good feelings may pass, the friendship remains. On an individual level, Fredrickson’s theory also
says that taking time to do things that make you feel happy isn’t simply self-indulgent. Not only are
these emotions good for the individual, but they are also good for society.
G. Other researchers are intrigued by Fredrickson’s findings. Susan Folkman, of the University of
California, has spent two decades studying how people cope with long-term stresses such as
bereavement or caring for a chronically ill child. Contrary to what one might expect, she says, these
people frequently experience positive emotions. ‘It sounds strange,’ she adds. “Mother Nature doesn’t
work that way, I think that they give a person time out from the intense stress to restore their resources
and keep going. This is very consistent with Fredrickson’s work.”
Look at the following statements (Questions 20–23) and the list of researchers below.
Match each statement with the correct researcher, A–D.
Write the correct letter, A–D, in boxes 20–23 on your answer sheet. You may use any letter more than
once.
List of Researchers
A Deborah Danner
B Barbara Fredrickson
C Brooks Gump
D Susan Folkman
20. People whose daily lives are stressful often have surprisingly positive emotions.
21. The body’s reaction to a crisis may trigger a life-threatening event.
22. It is unusual to have a study group whose circumstances were very alike.
23. The reasons for a link between positive emotions and a longer life have not been established.
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Question 24–26
Complete the sentences below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 24–26 on your answer sheet.
24. In early tribes, negative emotions gave humans the __________ that they needed to deal with
emergencies.
25. Fredrickson believes that a passing positive emotion can lead to an enduring asset such as a
__________, which is useful in times to come.
26. Fredrickson also believes that both individuals and __________ benefit from positive
emotions.
PASSAGE 3:
Who studies children's literature and what is it that they study? The answers to this question are
complex and messy because of the many confounding factors that exist in this field.
Firstly, unlike literature for adults, children's literature is not generally written by its own readers.
Adults write for children, and thus adult perceptions of what children are and of what they could and
should become woven into the literature.
Furthermore, some of those who study children's literature (and those who write certain kinds of
children's books) are less interested in literary values than in the kinds of lessons it can teach—either
in terms of creating better children or in terms of serving a particular curriculum. The issue of how a
teacher can use a children's book is often contentious, but even outside the classroom, much material
for children is still didactic.
Thirdly, while almost all literature is currently promoted within a strong commercial matrix, children's
literature is often especially targeted for marketing initiatives. This fact means that readers are often
recruited with a message that is negligibly literary and significantly oriented to ideas of consumption.
Daniel Hade (2002) has raised useful questions about whether children's experience of reading is
altered when their books are part of a larger marketing framework involving the movie, the game, and
the toy of a popular children's book. How children perceive and respond to their stories in this new
context is an important question.
It is also important to note that texts in an ever-increasing range of new media compete with print
media for the attention of the child reader, and create definitional issues for scholars. Does the term
'literature' exclusively imply a verbal text? If not, where are the limits? Could a literary computer
game ever be considered a work of literature? If not, what kind of attention should be paid to it, since
children themselves undoubtedly perceive their print literature as part of a broader continuum? The
internet provides one forum through which children now communicate with each other. (In 2003, the
internet search engine Google listed 7,920,000 sites relating to the Harry Potter novels, even allowing
for duplication and dead ends, that is a number with revolutionary implications.)
Finally, in the context of the higher education institutions where the formal study of children's
literature is often located, at least three disciplinary frameworks (English, education, and
librarianship) fragment the focus of scholarly study of children's literature.
How is the value of the imaginative encounter with the work of literature sustained and honored
among such a welter of conflicting interests? One route through this maze is to ask the child readers
for help. As David Lewis (2001) has perceptively noted, what children think of reading is not usually
the same as what adults think, whether teachers or parents. As Lewis points out, children 'sometimes
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see more and they often see differently'. If those who study reading can explore children's perceptions
as well as those of adults, their understanding of the nature of reading will be enhanced.
Lewis makes a further valid point when he adds that exploring children's perceptions is usually
justified for educational reasons: "It is true that a better understanding of how children read and how
they learn to read is a prerequisite to improved approaches to teaching. However, it can also be
argued, as Lewis rightly does, that when children's responses to literature are accessed and interpreted,
they frequently lead to an understanding of how picture books appeal to young people's accounts of
what and how they read also enable a more sophisticated description of many of the complex
processes involved in reading. All descriptions of reading run the risk of solipsism: i.e. this is how I
read so this is what reading is for everyone. Asking other readers how they read, however, reduces
that risk. For example, if I am a strong visualizer as I read, I may consider that visualization is a key
component of successful reading and I may judge books by their capacity to evoke a vivid visual
response. Other readers, however, may help me to realize that not everyone reads with mental
pictures. Some readers respond to the patterns of the words, 'hearing them inaudibly like a subliminal
radio program. Others respond to the patterns of feelings in the story, responding with an emotional
connection. Talking to competent readers, of all ages, provides a better understanding of reading
experiences.
Children's insights are even more important when it comes to understanding the significance of print
literature as one aspect of literary culture. Too often adults assume that reading any book at all is a
more worthwhile experience than playing a digital game of any kind. A humbler approach would
include asking why the game appeals to the player. Many adults will probably never develop the
automatic skills to process a game as readily as they can read a book. This does not indicate that a
book is better, but that a particular set of skills is absent. Non-players must acknowledge that some
fictional universes are thus closed to them, and a logical response would be to find someone who can
guide them to the pleasures and challenges of the gaming world. Games need to be judged
individually just as books do, and any evaluative framework needs to take this into account.
Questions 27-29
Choose the correct letter A, B, C, or D. Write the correct answer on boxes 27-29 on your answer
sheet.
27. Which of the following best summarises the writer's argument in the second paragraph?
28. In the third paragraph, what does the writer say is the main interest of some people who study
children's literature?
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29. The main point of the writer's argument in the fifth paragraph is to
Questions 30-34
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
30. Children tend to make a clear distinction between print literature and electronic media.
31. The study of children's literature at higher education institutions is restricted to one subject area.
32. Exploring children's perceptions of reading will assist parents to choose suitable books for
children.
33. Adults may appreciate the appeal of illustrated stories better, if they have more information on
how children read.
34. Children should be asked what features they would like digital games to include.
Questions 35-39
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-H, below. Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes
35-39 on your answer sheet.
List of endings
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QUESTION 40
● A. to evaluate how the process of reading fits into children's literature studies
● B. to discuss the impact of the increasing commercial influence on children's literature studies
● C. to review the challenges in the field of children's literature studies and suggest how to
proceed
● D. to provide arguments in favor of including computerized forms of children's literature
studies
HOMEWORK WEEK 8:
Full Test 1: Vol 5 Test 10
READING PASSAGE 1
It was Jacob Hodes' first day at college. He recalls enjoying an afternoon being shown around campus
by a second-year student named Daniel Byrne, who happened to be from his hometown. Jacob then
spent the rest of the year ignoring him, saying, “I never saw him again.” He explains, “Well, I’m sure
I walked past him plenty of times, but I just didn’t see him.” This behavior wasn’t intentional. Jacob
just couldn’t recollect what his fellow student looked like. He had had the same trouble all his life.
Friends and relatives would greet him, and he would have no idea who they were.
It wasn’t until five years ago that it all made sense. That was when Hodes was diagnosed with
prosopagnosia, a condition that means he is unable to recognize faces. According to researchers, he is
far from alone. In fact, the condition is not that uncommon, but until a few years ago, only a few
dozen cases had ever been described, all caused by brain injury. Recently, researchers identified a
second form of face blindness—developmental prosopagnosia, which is either present from birth or
develops very early in life.
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In May, a team from Harvard University in the US and University College London (UCL) announced
the results of a web survey of 1,600 people, suggesting that up to 2% of people have some degree of
face blindness. Then in August, Martina Gruter and colleagues at the Institute for Human Genetics in
Munster, Germany, similarly reported that 2.5% of 700 secondary school pupils they had tested had
trouble recognizing faces. The results of the survey took everyone by surprise.
It seems that if you have never known what it is to recognize a face, you don’t necessarily know that
you are supposed to be able to. Prosopagnosics almost always know that they have trouble
recognizing people, but they often don’t realize that other people have better recognition skills than
they do, says Brad Duchaine, a researcher at UCL.
Despite these issues, the majority of developmental prosopagnosics possess strategies that allow them
to get around their difficulty. For instance, by recognizing hair, clothing, or a person’s way of
speaking, unless they see a familiar person out of context with a new hairstyle or in different clothes,
they can recognize people just fine. Even so, the discovery of developmental prosopagnosia has
attracted attention from neuroscientists keen to discover what is different about the brain of face-blind
people. This difference, they believe, could help solve the problem of how the brain deals with
information in general: not just visual data. In other words, it may show whether the brain has
specialised parts for specific tasks or is more of a general-purpose information process.
One issue, however, that will present challenges for researchers is that no two prosopagnosics are the
same. Some have problems only with faces, while others have trouble with ordinary everyday objects
and, so it turns out, animals which would normally be familiar as well. Some prosopagnosics can train
themselves to recognize specific faces; others can’t even recognize their own in a mirror. When some
have been tested, they could identify the emotion which was conveyed on another’s face, even though
the face itself seemed unfamiliar, while for other subjects this was an impossibility. Some cannot
recognize the faces of old friends or fellow students but have no trouble telling whether a particular
face from such groups would be attractive to most people. Because of this diversity, working out the
cause of prosopagnosia will not be easy.
In Martina Gruter’s study, the prosopagnosics who agreed to have their parents and relatives tested
reported at least one with the condition. Having looked at 38 cases in seven families, the German team
believes they have good evidence that a single gene could be responsible. Duchaine also has some
evidence that face blindness could be inherited but thinks other factors might be more significant. He
refers to studies of babies born with a condition that means the eye’s lens is not clear, and when it’s
the left one, being unable to see through this eye during the first two months of life is a major risk
factor for prosopagnosia.
Whatever the cause, what most prosopagnosics want to know is whether they can do anything to
improve their face recognition skills. Joseph Degutis, a graduate student at the University of
California, recently reported successfully training a severe developmental prosopagnosic to recognize
faces during tests carried out in the laboratory. The subject also reported that recognizing faces in
everyday life became easier due to the training. Duchaine now plans to attempt to train sufferers to
recognize the five people that they most need to know, maybe their immediate family, for example,
and essential colleagues. Thomas Gruter, Martina Gruter’s husband, who also works on her team, is
not convinced it will work. “I don’t know how you can have more training than you have already
had,” he says. “Humans already spend all day looking at faces.” He also points out that cheating is a
possibility during tests and provides an example. One person they studied said that when she was
doing the face-recognition test, she memorized the distance between the nose and upper lip. She
wasn’t the only one. “So you can perform well in the test and not do so well in real life.”
Question 1-7
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Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet, write:
Questions 8-13
Differences in prosopagnosics
As well as being unable to recognize facial features, prosopagnosics may also have problems
recognizing
Some prosopagnosics can recognize that people are regarded as attractive by others.
Causes of prosopagnosia
Prosopagnosia may be caused by
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Duchaine’s training may allow prosopagnosics to recognize faces belonging to family and workmates.
Thomas Gruter doubts that train will work and mentions that 13. ____________ by some subjects can
affect research results.
PASSAGE 2:
MAMMOTH KILL
What led to the disappearance of the giant mammals? Kate Wong examines the theories.
Although it’s hard to imagine in this age of urban sprawl and automobiles, North America once
belonged to huge, elephant-like mammoths, camels, bear-sized beavers, and other giant beasts,
collectively known as "megafauna." Some 11,000 years ago, however, these large-bodied
mammals—about 70 species in all—disappeared. Their demise coincided roughly with the arrival of
humans in this land and dramatic climate change factors that have inspired several theories about the
die-off. Yet despite decades of scientific investigation, the exact cause remains a mystery. Now new
findings offer support to one of these controversial hypotheses: that human hunting drove these huge
"megafauna" species to extinction.
This belief resulted in the overkill model, which emerged in the 1960s, when it was put forth by Paul
S. Martin of the University of Arizona. Since then, critics have charged that no archaeological remains
exist to support the idea that the first Americans hunted to the extent necessary to cause these
extinctions. But at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Mexico City in
October 1999, specialist John Alroy of the University of California at Santa Barbara argued that in
fact, hunting-driven extinction is not only plausible, it was unavoidable. He has determined, using a
computer simulation, that even a very modest amount of hunting would have wiped out these animals.
Assuming an initial human population of 100 people that grew no more than two percent annually,
Alroy determined that if each band of, say, 50 people killed 15 to 20 large animals a year, humans
could have eliminated the animal populations within 1,000 years. Large mammals, in particular,
would have been vulnerable to the pressure because they have longer gestation periods than smaller
mammals and their young require extended care.
However, not everyone agrees with Alroy’s assessment. For one thing, the results depend on
population size estimates for the extinct animals—estimates that are not necessarily reliable. But a
more specific criticism comes from mammal expert Ross D. E. MacPhee of the American Museum of
Natural History in New York City, who points out that the relevant archaeological record contains
barely a dozen examples of stone points embedded in mammoth bones (and none, it should be noted,
are known from other megafaunal remains)—hardly what one might expect if hunting drove these
animals to extinction. Furthermore, some of these species had a vast range, covering the whole
continent—the Jefferson’s Ground Sloth, for example, lived as far north as the Yukon and as far south
as Mexico—which would have made hunting them in numbers sufficient to cause their extinction
rather unlikely, he says.
MacPhee agrees that humans most likely brought about these extinctions (as well as others around the
world that coincided with human arrival), but not directly. Rather than through hunting, he suggests
that people may have introduced a deadly disease, perhaps through their dogs or accompanying
vermin, which then spread wildly among the native species because of their low resistance to the new
introductions. Repeated outbreaks of a deadly disease could thus quickly drive them to the point of no
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return. So far, MacPhee does not have empirical evidence for this theory, and it will not be easy to
come by: such disease would kill far too quickly to leave its signature on the bones themselves. But he
hopes that analyses of tissue and DNA from the most recent animal remains will eventually reveal the
microbes responsible.
The third explanation for what brought on this North American extinction does not involve human
beings. Instead, its proponents blame the loss on the climate. The Pleistocene epoch in question
witnessed considerable climate instability, explains Russell W. Graham of the Denver Museum of
Nature and Science. As a result, their regular habitats disappeared, and species that had once formed
communities split apart. For some animals, this brought opportunity. For much of the megafauna,
however, the increasingly uniform terrain left them with shrinking geographical ranges—a death
sentence for large animals, which need correspondingly large ranges. Although these creatures
managed to maintain viable populations through most of the Pleistocene period, the final major
climate fluctuation pushed them over the edge, Graham says.
For his part, Alroy is still convinced that human hunters were the destroyers of the giant animals. The
overkill model explains everything the disease and climate scenarios explain, he asserts, and in
addition makes accurate predictions about which species would eventually become extinct.
Questions 14-20
Three theories have been put forward to explain the disappearance of the different species of
large mammals that inhabited 14. ____________ 11,000 years ago. The 15. ____________ model,
proposed around fifty years ago by Paul S. Martin, blames 16. ____________ by people for mass
extinction. Computer calculations seem to support this explanation, but critics question the reliability
of the figures they are based on.
The second theory suggests that humans introduced a 17. ____________ which wiped out the large
mammals. However, so far this theory also lacks any 18. ____________.
The final theory suggests that this period experienced significant 19. ____________, which eventually
led to the loss of habitat and to the division of the 20. ____________ that some of the large mammals
had organized.
Questions 21-26
Look at the following statements (Questions 21-26) and the list of people below.
Match each statement with the correct person, A, B or C.
Write the correct letter, A, B, or C, in boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet.
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List of People
● A John Alroy
● B Ross D. E. MacPhee
● C Russell W. Graham
Reading Passage 3
A. Fun is becoming a tricky issue for ride designers. In order to increase excitement, they have been
ramping up the accelerations to create the most dizzying forces possible. But getting it right is far
from easy. Err on the side of caution, and people won’t bother with a second ride. Go too far, however,
and they may not be able to. Experts realize we are now at the limit of how much acceleration a
human body can take, and designers are finding it hard to think up ways of keeping the public coming
back for more. The problem is that true innovation has been lacking for a while, and fairground rides
have become more about survival than actual enjoyment. So if our thrill-seeking bodies can rally take
no more, what’s going to keep dragging us back to amusement parks? Creating something new and
exciting, yet safe, is going to take some careful thought.
B. When the Disney Corporation asked German designer Walter Stengel to design a giant loop ride for
them in the 1970s, he went to NASA, the aeronautics and space foundation, to discover the effects of
sustained acceleration on the pilots. NASA’s research suggests that the maximum level we can endure
is 9 g.g., being the standard unit of acceleration due to gravity. Go much beyond that, and pilots pass
out. Go further still, and they suffer serious internal damage. So Stengel decided that the maximum
vertical acceleration for the public should be 6 g, and then only for a second or so. What’s more, he
put firm restrictions on the rate at which acceleration can increase—you’ll never go down a 45-degree
ramp into a tight circular loop, for instance.
C. But stricter safety limits only intensify the need to search for novel ways to thrill customers. Part of
the problem is that no matter how exciting an attraction is after a few so, the passengers will have
some idea of what to expect. The next stage in designing rides, however, could throw predictability
out of the window. This step has already been taken in the most recent waltzer's or tea-cup rides. Ride
a waltzer, and you’ll sit in a car that spins on its own axis. The car is on a huge platform that also
rotates. In the past, you could take comfort from the fact that the spin was tightly controlled by gears
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that turned your car at a rate determined by the rotation speed of the whole ride. But the latest
generation of waltzer cars spins freely at a rate determined by the weight and position of the people in
them. So you never have the same experience twice. “People seem to like these ‘chaotic rides,” says
Stengel.
D. Although seemingly a passport to endless thrills, chaos does have one rather obvious
drawback—it’s unpredictable. Despite complex calculations, designers can never be completely sure
that something odd won’t happen, especially since freely turning systems occasionally hit a resonance
frequency. For example, if pushed at a particular frequency, a child on a swing would go over the top
of the swing's frame. Similarly, if you drive a revolving waltzer car at its resonance frequency, it could
speed up uncontrollably. This could be very hazardous, according to Stengel. H a ride is subjected to
unforeseen stresses, no one can guarantee that it will be able to cope.
E. No one even knows what the safe limits of rotational force are, let alone its effect on the human
body. Stengel has worked with the German Air Force, rotating volunteers head over heels while
making them cartwheel or pirouette like a ballet dancer. It emerged that if the pilots were turned on all
three axes simultaneously, they became so nauseous they almost blacked out, and when they got off,
they couldn’t walk. But what Stengel found particularly puzzling was that they also developed
headaches and other problems about two days later. Since these effects aren’t understood, he ties to
limit how people on his rides are rotated. We want to provide fun, not pain.
F. With that goal in mind, Stengel feels that flinging people around in ever more chaotic machines is
no longer the way forward. He believes that the sequence of accelerations, not their size, is what
counts and that the way to make rides more fun is to put people through a carefully designed
succession of relatively small accelerations. Other experts in this field agree, and it seems likely that
designers could formulate profiles even for existing attractions that would lead to higher amusement
value. Recent experiments testing the tolerances of Dutch military plot o a range of accelerations have
shown that tumbling around in machines doesn’t have to be unpleasant. When the force is kept low,
the subjects actually enjoy the experience.
G. The fun seems to come from the unforeseen, particularly when an effect called the Coriolis Illusion
comes into play. This is an agreeable tumbling feeling that occurs, for example, when the head is
suddenly tilted while the subject is spinning with eyes closed. It appears that a roll which includes, for
instance, an unexpected change of acceleration from a small negative g to a feeling of weightlessness
to a small positive—a slight crushing sensation—has an extraordinary effect on people. If the theories
of Stengel and other experts really do work, fairground fun might one day be measured in smiles, not
screams.
Questions 27-32
Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-G from the list of headings below.
List of Headings
i. Less is more
ii. Research can't guarantee safety
iii. Unexplained symptoms
iv. Setting the limits of acceleration
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Example
Paragraph A - vii
Answers
27. Paragraph B -
28. Paragraph C -
29. Paragraph D -
30. Paragraph E -
31. Paragraph F -
32. Paragraph G -
Questions 33-37
Complete the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each
answer.
33. Some attractions such as the new type of waltzes depend on both the weight and
…………….. of their passengers in order to create a variety of ride experiences.
34. Designers need to be aware that a “chaotic” ride could accelerate at a violent rate if it reaches
its ……………...
35. Research has shown that people will begin to feel ill if they are subjected to movement on all
…………….. at the same time.
36. Volunteers in Stengel's rotation tests suffered delayed reactions such as……………...
37. A phenomenon known as the …………….. produced a pleasurable sensation in test subjects.
Questions 38-40
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer of Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet, 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
38. There is still a lot to be learned about the rates of acceleration which people can withstand.
39. Children enjoy funfairs more than adults.
40. Current rides could probably be adapted to become more enjoyable.
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Museums in Australia, like other pleasure-giving public organizations, are adapting their activities so
that they more closely reflect the marketplace.
A Since the 1980s, the term "blockbuster" has become the fashionable word for spectacular,
high-profile museum exhibitions that have the ability to attract large crowds. A blockbuster is a
"large-scale loan exhibition that people who normally don’t go to museums will stand in line for hours
to see" (Elsen 1984). Once the museum that created the exhibition has shown it to their local market,
it can be offered to other organizations for a fee. This means that you can boost your own door takings
and make money from boosting someone else’s door takings.
B While partaking of the excitement of the blockbuster, visitors thus lured are likely to stay longer at
the museum. Betty Churcher, when Director of the Australian National Gallery, summed up the new
blockbuster creed as follows: The bonus of the blockbuster exhibitions is that people come to see the
blockbuster, and they stay to look at the permanent collection, so you are getting broader exposure for
your collection.
C Museums across the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia currently operate under a system of plural
funding: revenue raised through contributions by federal, state, and/or local governments, combined
with revenue raised through admission charges and other activities. Maintaining and increasing visitor
levels is thus paramount and involves not only creating or hiring blockbuster exhibitions, but
providing regular exhibition changes and innovations. In addition, the visiting public have become
known as customers rather than visitors, and the skills that are valued in museums to keep the new
customers coming through the door have changed. Curators are now administrators and being a
museum director no longer requires an Arts degree—but public relations skills are essential if the
museum is going to compete with other museums to stage traveling exhibitions which draw huge
crowds.
D The convergence of museums, the heritage industry, tourism, profit-making, and pleasure-giving
has resulted in the new "museology." This has given rise to much debate about whether it is
appropriate to see museums primarily as tourist attractions. In literature from both UK and USA, the
words that are starting to appear in some descriptions of blockbusters are "less scholarly",
"non-elitist," and "popularist," while others extol the virtues encouraging scholars to cooperate on
projects and to provide exhibitions that cater for a broad selection of community rather than an elite
sector. Whatever commentators may think, managers of museums worldwide are looking for artful
ways to blend culture and commerce, and blockbuster exhibitions are at the top of the list.
E But do blockbusters held in public institutions really create a surplus to fund other activities? If the
bottom line is profit, then according to the records of many major museums, blockbusters do make
money. For museums in some countries, it may be the money that they require to replace parts of their
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collections or to fix buildings that are in need of attention. For some museums in Australia, it may be
the opportunity to illustrate that they are attempting to pay their way by recovering part of their
operating costs. Also, creating or hiring a blockbuster has many positive spin-offs: blockbusters mean
crowds, and crowds are good for the local economy, provide increased trade for shops, hotels,
restaurants, the transport industry, and retailers. The arrangement that the arts provide sustained
economic benefits has been well illustrated in impact studies in the USA and UK.
F However, blockbusters require large capital expenditure and draw on resources across all branches
of an organization, and the costs don’t end there. There is a Human Resource Management cost in
addition to a measurable "real" dollar cost. Receiving a touring exhibition draws resources from
across functional management structures in project management style. Everyone, from general
laborers to building services, front of house, technical, promotional, educational, and administrative
staff, is required to perform additional tasks. Furthermore, as an increasing number of institutions try
their hand at increasing visitor numbers and memberships (and therefore revenue) by staging
blockbuster exhibitions, it may be less likely that blockbusters will continue to provide a surplus to
subsidize other activities due to the competitive nature of the market.
G It has been illustrated in both the UK and USA that the blockbuster ideology has resulted in the
false expectation that the momentum required to stage blockbusters can be maintained continually.
Creating, mounting, or hiring blockbusters is exhausting, with the real costs throughout an institution
difficult to calculate. Secondly, as some analysts have argued, the "shop keeping" mentality and
cost-benefit analysis and a pure concentration on the bottom line can squeeze substance out of an
exhibition. Taking out substance can be a recipe for blockbuster failure and therefore financial failure.
H Perhaps the best pathway to take is one that balances both blockbusters and regular exhibitions.
However, this easy middle ground may only work if you have enough space and have alternate
sources of funding to continue to support the regular, less exciting fare. Perhaps the advice should be
to make sure that you find out what your local community wants from you and make sure that your
regular activities and exhibitions are more engaging.
1. the reason why museum directors need to constantly alter and update their exhibits
2. mention of the length of time people will queue up to see a blockbuster
3. terms that people have used when referring to blockbusters
4. the various ways that institutions like museums get financial support
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Which Two of the following are mentioned by the writer as advantages of blockbusters?
● A. Some of the money they raise can be used for structural repairs.
● B. They can provide funds to help support amateur artists.
● C. Local services benefit from the extra business they bring about.
● D. They encourage overseas workers into the local area.
● E. They raise employee performance levels.
Questions 11-13
Choose THREE letters, A-G.
Write the correct letters in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.
Which THREE of the following are mentioned by the writer as disadvantages of blockbusters?
The bittern, a British waterbird, has a troubled history regarding its survival. By 1886, habitat
destruction and other pressures nearly led to its extinction. Fortunately, it recovered a few decades
later, and by 1950 the male bittern population reached about 70. However, the 1980s saw a decline
again, pushing the species to the brink of extinction. In response, the British government developed a
plan in 1997 to boost the population to 50 males by 2010. Surprisingly, this target was achieved six
years ahead of schedule. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) regards the bittern as
one of Britain’s greatest conservation success stories, with the population of these birds increasing
fivefold in just seven years.
Bitterns possess feathers that allow them to blend into their reedbed habitat, helping them remain
hidden. Their shy nature, along with this camouflage, posed challenges for counting them. A
breakthrough was made by recording the unique booming calls of the males during the breeding
season, which allowed more accurate population monitoring.
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Initial research into the bittern's breeding habitat requirements compared sites where male birds had
vanished with those where they were still present. This led to recommendations for reedbed
management, supported by funding from the European Union (EU) to manage 13 critical breeding
sites within the bird's core range.
To fine-tune these management techniques, radio-tracking of male bitterns began on RSPB reserves,
showing their preference for wet reedbed areas near large open pools. The average home range size of
male bitterns, approximately 20 hectares, provided insight into the area needed for reedbed
restoration. Studies also focused on female bitterns, revealing their nesting habits in dense vegetation
during the breeding season.
The success of these habitat management strategies was remarkable. The population of male bitterns
in Britain grew steadily from one to ten following reedbed management interventions designed to
prevent habitat drying. By 1997, bittern numbers began to rise again for the first time since 1950.
The final phase of the research involved understanding the diet, survival, and dispersal of young
bitterns. Using radio tags, the movements of chicks were monitored from hatching to fledging,
identifying starvation as the primary cause of death. Habitat recommendations were updated to
promote native fish populations as food sources, while tagged young bitterns were observed seeking
out new breeding sites.
By 2004, the number of booming male bitterns had risen to 55, with most of the increase coming from
sites that implemented habitat management based on this research. Rescuing the bittern also benefited
other wetland species, such as otters, and was seen as a major conservation success.
Reading Passage 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-25, which are based on Reading Passage 2.
Question 14-20
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below. Write the correct
number in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings:
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14 - Paragraph A
15 - Paragraph B
16 - Paragraph C
17 - Paragraph D
18 - Paragraph E
19 - Paragraph F
20 - Paragraph G
Question 21-25
Choose ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
Question 26
Want to devise a new form of alternative medical treatment? No problem. Here’s the recipe. As a
practitioner, be warm, sympathetic, reassuring, and enthusiastic. Your treatment should involve
physical contact, and each session with your patients should take at least half an hour. Encourage your
patients to take an active part in their treatment and understand how their disorders relate to the rest of
their lives. Tell them that their own bodies possess the true power to heal. Get them to pay you well.
Describe your treatment in familiar words, but embroidered with a hint of mysticism: energy fields,
energy flows, energy blocks, meridians, forces, auras, rhythms, and the like. Refer to the knowledge
of an early age: wisdom carelessly swept aside by the rise of blind mechanistic science. Oh, come off
it, you’re saying. Something like that couldn’t possibly work, could it?
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Well yes, it could—and often well enough to earn you a living. And a very good living if you are
sufficiently convincing or, better still, really believe in your therapy. Many illnesses get better on their
own, so if you are lucky and administer your treatment at just the right time, you’ll get the credit. But
that’s only part of it. Some of the improvement really would be down to you. Not necessarily because
you’d recommended ginseng rather than chamomile tea or used this crystal instead of that pressure
point. Nothing so specific. Your healing power would be the outcome of a paradoxical force that
conventional medicine recognizes but remains oddly ambivalent about: the placebo effect.
Placebos are treatments that have no direct effect on the body, yet still work because the patient has
faith in their power to heal. Most often the term refers to a dummy pill, but it applies just as much to
any device or procedure, from a sticking plaster to a crystal. The existence of the placebo effect
implies that even a complete fraud could make a difference to someone’s health, which is why some
practitioners of alternative medicine are sensitive about any mention of the subject. In fact, the
placebo is a powerful part of all medical care, orthodox or otherwise, though its role is often neglected
and misunderstood.
At one level, it should come as no surprise that our state of mind can influence our physiology: anger
opens the superficial blood vessels of the face; sadness pumps the tear glands. But exactly how
placebos work their medical magic is still largely unknown. Most of the scant research to date has
focused on the control of pain because it’s one of the commonest complaints and lends itself to
experimental study. Here, attention has turned to the endorphins, natural substances produced in the
brain that are known to help control pain. Any of the neurochemicals involved in transmitting pain
impulses or modulating them might also be involved in generating the placebo response, says Don
Price, an oral surgeon at the University of Florida.
That case has been strengthened by the recent work of Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin,
who showed that the placebo effect can be abolished by a drug, naloxone, which blocks the effects of
endorphins. Benedetti induced pain in a pressure cuff on the forearm. He did this several times a day
for several days, using morphine each time to control the pain. On the final day, without saying
anything, he replaced the morphine with a saline solution. This still relieved the subjects’ pain: a
placebo effect. But when he added naloxone to the saline and blocked the endorphins, the pain relief
disappeared. Here was direct proof that the relief of pain by a placebo is carried out, at least in part, by
these natural opiates.
Though scientists don’t know exactly how placebos work, they have accumulated a fair bit of
knowledge about how to trigger the effect. A London rheumatologist found, for example, that red
dummy capsules made more effective painkillers than blue, green, or yellow ones. Research on
American students revealed that blue pills make better tranquilizers than pink, a color more suitable
for stimulants. Even branding can make a difference: if Aspro or Tylenol are what you like to take for
a headache, their chemically identical generic equivalents may be less effective.
It matters too how the treatment is delivered. Decades ago, when the major tranquilizer
chlorpromazine was being introduced, a doctor in Kansas categorized his colleagues according to
whether they were keen on it, openly skeptical of its benefits, or took a let’s try and see attitude. His
conclusion: the more enthusiastic the doctor, the better the drug performed. A recent survey by Ernst
on doctors’ bedside manners turned up one consistent finding: Physicians who adopt a warm, friendly,
reassuring manner are more effective than those whose consultations are formal and do not offer
reassurance.
Warm, friendly, and reassuring are precisely what alternative treatment is all about, of course. Many
of the ingredients of that opening recipe—the physical contact, the generous swaths of time, the
strong hints of supernormal healing power—are just the kind of thing likely to impress patients. It’s
hardly surprising then that complementary practitioners are generally best at mobilizing the placebo
effect, says Arthur Kleinman, professor of social anthropology at Harvard University.
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Questions 27-31
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-H below. Write the correct letter, A-H, in
boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.
Questions 32-34
Choose the correct letter A, B, C, or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 32-34 on your answer
sheet.
32. In the third paragraph, the writer says that the placebo effect
A. works best in tablet form.
B. is a new type of medical treatment.
C. is trusted more by some patients than others.
D. has a significant role in both alternative and conventional medicine.
33. A reference is made to anger and sadness in order to show that
A. personal feelings can alter our physical condition.
B. some human behavior has no clear explanation.
C. placebos, like emotions, are experienced by everyone.
D. people find some physical reactions hard to control.
Questions 35-40
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading passage 3? In boxes
35-40 on your answer sheet, 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
35. Scientists now have enough information to understand how the placebo effect becomes active
in people
36. As a result of experiments, some painkillers have been taken off the market.
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37. Individual preference can have an impact on the effectiveness of different brands of headache
tablet
38. Doctors expressed a range of views on the drug chlorpromazine when it was first introduced.
39. Ernst’s study had a big influence on doctor’s behavior with patients
40. Alternative practitioners work in a way that is likely to trigger the placebo effect
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