MS 1467872995253596 TVXQ

S3276311
Passage Backgrounds
Checkboxes & Related Question Types
S3.
True / False / NG List of Headings
Summary Paragraph Matching
Matching Multiple Choices
Psychology Of New Product Adoption
A In today's hypercompetitive marketplace, companies that successfully introduce new products are
more likely to flourish than those that don't. Businesses spend billions of dollars making better
"mousetraps" only to find consumers roundly rejecting them. Studies show that new products fail at
the stunning rate of between 40% and 90%, depending on the category, and the odds haven't changed
much in the past 25 years. In the U.S. packaged goods industry, for instance, companies introduce
30,000 products every year, but 70% to 90% of them don't stay on store shelves for more than 12
months. Most innovative products - those that create new product categories or revolutionize old
ones - are also unsuccessful. According to one study, 47% of first movers have failed, meaning that
approximately half the companies that pioneered new product categories later pulled out of those
businesses.
B After the fact, experts and novices alike tend to dismiss unsuccessful innovations as bad ideas that
were destined to fail. Why do consumers fail to buy innovative products even when they offer
distinct improvements over existing ones? Why do companies invariably have more faith in new
products than is warranted? Few would question the objective advantages of many innovations over
existing alternatives, but that's often not enough for them to succeed. To understand why new
products fail to live up to companies' expectations, we must delve into the psychology of behavior
change.
C New products often require consumers to change their behavior. As companies know, those
behavior changes entail costs. Consumers incur transaction costs, such as the activation fees they
have to pay when they switch from one cellular service provider to another. They also bear learning
costs, such as when they shift from manual to automatic automobile transmissions. People sustain
obsolescence costs, too. For example, when they switch from VCRs to DVD players, their videotape
collections become useless. All of these are economic switching costs that most companies routinely
anticipate.
D What businesses don't take into account, however, are the psychological costs associated with
behavior change. Many products fail because of a universal, but largely ignored, psychological bias:
People irrationally overvalue benefits they currently possess relative to those they don't. The bias
leads consumers to value the advantages of products they own more than the benefits of new ones. It
also leads executives to value the benefits of innovations they've developed over the advantages of
incumbent products.
E Companies have long assumed that people will adopt new products that deliver more value or
utility than existing ones. Thus, businesses need only to develop innovations that are objectively
superior to incumbent products, and consumers will have sufficient incentive to purchase them. In
the 1960s, communications scholar Everett Rogers called the concept "relative advantage" and
identified it as the most critical driver of new-product adoption. This argument assumes that
companies make unbiased assessments of innovations and of consumers' likelihood of adopting them.
Although compelling, the theory has one major flaw: It fails to capture the psychological biases that
affect decision making.

F In 2002, psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economics for a body of work that
explores why and when individuals deviate from rational economic behavior. One of the
cornerstones of that research, developed with psychologist Amos Tversky, is how individuals value
prospects, or choices, in the marketplace. Kahneman and Tversky showed, and others have
confirmed, that human beings' responses to the alternatives before them have four distinct
characteristics.
G First, people evaluate the attractiveness of an alternative based not on its objective, or actual, value
but on its subjective, or perceived, value. Second, consumers evaluate new products or investments
relative to a reference point, usually the products they already own or consume. Third, people view
any improvements relative to this reference point as gains and treat all shortcomings as losses.
Fourth, and most important, losses have a far greater impact on people than similarly sized gains, a
phenomenon that Kahneman and Tversky called "loss aversion." For instance, studies show that most
people will not accept a bet in which there is a 50% chance of winning $100 and a 50% chance of
losing $100. The gains from the wager must outweigh the losses by a factor of between two and
three before most people find such a bet attractive. Similarly, a survey of 1,500 customers of Pacific
Gas and Electric revealed that consumers demand three to four times more compensation to endure a
power outage - and suffer a loss - than they are willing to pay to avoid the problem, a potential gain.
As Kahneman and Tversky wrote, "losses loom larger than gains."
H Loss aversion leads people to value products that they already possess - those that are part of their
endowment - more than those they don't have. According to behavioral economist Richard Thaler,
consumers value what they own, but may have to give up, much more than they value what they
don't own but could obtain. Thaler called that bias the "endowment effect."
I In a 1990 paper, Thaler and his colleagues describe a series of experiments they conducted to
measure the magnitude of the endowment effect. In one such experiment, they gave coffee mugs to a
group of people, the Sellers, and asked at what price point - from 25 cents to $9.25 - the Sellers
would be willing to part with those mugs. They asked another group - the Choosers - to whom they
didn't give coffee mugs, to indicate whether they would choose the mug or the money at each price
point. In objective terms, all the Sellers and Choosers were in the same situation: They were
choosing between a mug and a sum of money. In one trial of this experiment, the Sellers priced the
mug at $7.12, on average, but the Choosers were willing to pay only $3.12. In another trial, the
Sellers and the Choosers valued the mug at $7.00 and $3.50, respectively. Overall, the Sellers always
demanded at least twice as much to give up the mugs as the Choosers would pay to obtain them.
J Kahneman and Tversky's research also explains why people tend to stick with what they have even
if a better alternative exists. In a 1989 paper, economist Jack Knetsch provided a compelling
demonstration of what economists William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser called the "status
quo bias." Knetsch asked one group of students to choose between an attractive coffee mug and a
large bar of Swiss chocolate. He gave a second group of students the coffee mugs but a short time
later allowed each student to exchange his or her mug for a chocolate bar. Finally, Knetsch gave
chocolate bars to a third group of students but much later allowed each student to exchange his or her
bar for a mug. Of the students given a choice at the outset, 56% chose the mug, and 44% chose the
chocolate bar, indicating a near even split in preferences between the two products. Logically,
therefore, about half of the students to whom Knetsch gave the coffee mug should have traded for the
chocolate bar and vice versa. That didn't happen. Only 11% of the students who had been given the
mugs and 10% of those who had been given the chocolate bars wanted to exchange their products.
To approximately 90% of the students, giving up what they already had seemed like a painful loss
and shrank their desire to trade.
K Interestingly, most people seem oblivious to the existence of the behaviors implicit in the
endowment effect and the status quo bias. In study after study, when researchers presented people
with evidence that they had irrationally overvalued the status quo, they were shocked, skeptical, and
more than a bit defensive. These behavioral tendencies are universal, but awareness of them is not.
Questions 28-31
Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-C) with opinions or deeds below.
Write the appropriate letters A-C in boxes 28-31 on your answer sheet.
A Richard Thaler
B Everett Rogers
C Kahneman and Tversky
28 stated a theory which bears potential fault in application
29 decided the consumers several behavior features when they face other options
30 generalised that customers value more of their possession they are going to abandon for a
purpose than alternative they are going to swap in
31 answered the reason why people don't replace existing products

Questions 32-36
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 32-36 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
32 The products of innovations which beat existing alternatives can guarantee a successful market
share.
33 Few companies calculated the possibility of switching to new products more than in economic
judgment.
34 Gender affects the loss and gain outcome in the real market place.
35 Endowment-effect experiment showed there was a huge gap between seller's anticipation and
the chooser's offer.
36 Customers accept the fact peacefully when they are revealed the status quo bias.
Questions 37-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.
37 What does paragraph A illustrated in business creative venture
A above 70% products stored in warehouse
B only US packaged goods industry affected
C roughly half of new product business failed
D new products have long life span
38 What do specialists and fresher tend to think how a product sold well
A as more products stored on shelf
B being creative and innovative enough
C having more chain stores
D learning from famous company like Webvan
39 According to this passage, a number of products fail because of following reason
A They ignore the fact that people tend to overvalue the product they own.
B They are not confident with their products.
C They are familiar with people's psychology state.
D They forget to mention the advantages of products.
40 What does the experiment of "status quo bias" suggest which conducted by Nobel prize winner
Kahneman and Tversky
A about half of them are willing to change
B student are always to welcome new items
C 90% of both owners in neutral position
D only 10% of chocolate bar owner are willing to swap

APPLYING FOR THE IELTS TESTS ON
2015
S3276311 & Related Question Answers
28 B 29 C 30 A 31 C
32 FALSE 33 TRUE 34 NOT GIVEN 35 TRUE
36 FALSE 37 C 38 B 39 A
40 D
S1240205
Passage Backgrounds
S1.
Traditional Farming System in Africa
A By tradition land in Luapula is not owned by individuals, but as in many other parts of
Africa is allocated by the headman or headwoman of a village to people of either sex,
according to need. Since land is generally prepared by hand, one ulupwa cannot take on
a very large area; in this sense land has not been a limiting resource over large parts of
the province. The situation has already changed near the main townships, and there has
long been a scarcity of land for cultivation in the Valley. In these areas registered
ownership patterns are becoming prevalent.
B Most of the traditional cropping in Luapula, as in the Bemba area to the east, is based
on citemene, a system whereby crops are grown on the ashes of tree branches. As a rule,
entire trees are not felled, but are pollarded so that they can regenerate. Branches are
cut over an area of varying size early in the dry season, and stacked to dry over a rough
circle about a fifth to a tenth of the pollarded area. The wood is fired before the rains and
in the first year planted with the African cereal finger millet (Eleusine coracana).
C During the second season, and possibly for a few seasons more the area is planted to
variously mixed combinations of annuals such as maize, pumpkins (Telflria occidentalis)
and other cucurbits, sweet potatoes, groundnuts, Phaseolus beans and various leafy
vegetables, grown with a certain amount of rotation. The diverse sequence ends with
vegetable cassava, which is often planted into the developing last-but-one crop as a
relay.
D Richards (1969) observed that the practice of citemene entails a definite division of
labour between men and women. A man stakes out a plot in an unobtrusive manner,
since it is considered provocative towards one's neighbours to mark boundaries in an
explicit way. The dangerous work of felling branches is the men's province, and involves
much pride. Branches are stacked by the women, and fired by the men. Formerly women
and men cooperated in the planting work, but the harvesting was always done by the
women. At the beginning of the cycle little weeding is necessary, since the firing of the
branches effectively destroys weeds. As the cycle progresses weeds increase and
nutrients eventually become depleted to a point where further effort with annual crops is
judged to be not worthwhile: at this point the cassava is planted, since it can produce a
crop on nearly exhausted soil. Thereafter the plot is abandoned, and a new area
pollarded for the next citemene cycle.

E When forest is not available - this is increasingly the case nowadays - various ridging
systems (ibala) are built on small areas, to be planted with combinations of maize, beans,
groundnuts and sweet potatoes, usually relayed with cassava. These plots are usually
tended by women, and provide subsistence. Where their roots have year-round access to
water tables mango, guava and oil-palm trees often grow around houses, forming a
traditional agroforestry system. In season some of the fruit is sold by the roadside or in
local markets.
F The margins of dambos are sometimes planted to local varieties of rice during the rainy
season, and areas adjacent to vegetables irrigated with water from the dambo during the
dry season. The extent of cultivation is very limited, no doubt because the growing of
crops under dambo conditions calls for a great deal of skill. Near towns some of the
vegetable produce is sold in local markets.
G Fishing has long provided a much needed protein supplement to the diet of Luapulans,
as well as being the one substantial source of cash. Much fish is dried for sale to areas
away from the main waterways. The Mweru and Bangweulu Lake Basins are the main
areas of year-round fishing, but the Luapula River is also exploited during the latter part
of the dry season. Several previously abundant and desirable species, such as the
Luapula salmon or mpumbu (Labeo activelis) and pale (Sarotherodon machochir) have
all but disappeared from Lake Mweru, apparently due to mismanagement.

H Fishing has always been a far more remunerative activity in Luapula that crop
husbandry. A fisherman may earn more in a week than a bean or maize grower in a
whole season. I sometimes heard claims that the relatively high earnings to be obtained
from fishing induced an 'easy come, easy go' outlook among Luapulan men. On the other
hand, someone who secures good but erratic earnings may feel that their investment in
an economically productive activity is not worthwhile because Luapulans fail to cooperate
well in such activities. Besides, a fisherman with spare cash will find little in the way of
working equipment to spend his money on. Better spend one's money in the bars and
have a good time!
I Only small numbers of cattle or oxen are kept in the province owing to the prevalence
of the tse-tse fly. For the few herds, the dambos provide subsistence grazing during the
dry season. The absence of animal draft power greatly limits peoples' ability to plough
and cultivate land: a married couple can rarely manage to prepare by hand-hoeing. Most
people keep freely roaming chickens and goats. These act as a reserve for bartering, but
may also be occasionally slaughtered for ceremonies or for entertaining important
visitors. These animals are not a regular part of most peoples' diet.
J Citemene has been an ingenious system for providing people with seasonal production
of high quality cereals and vegetables in regions of acid, heavily leached soils.
Nutritionally, the most serious deficiency was that of protein. This could at times be
alleviated when fish was available, provided that cultivators lived near the Valley and
could find the means of bartering for dried fish. The citemene/fishing system was well
adapted to the ecology of the miombo regions and sustainable for long periods, but only
as long as human population densities stayed at low levels. Although population densities
are still much lower than in several countries of South-East Asia, neither the fisheries nor
the forests and woodlands of Luapula are capable, with unmodified traditional practices,
of supporting the people in a sustainable manner.
K Overall, people must learn to intensify and diversify their productive systems while yet
ensuring that these systems will remain productive in the future, when even more people
will need food. Increasing overall production of food, though a vast challenge in itself, will
not be enough, however. At the same time storage and distribution systems must allow
everyone access to at least a moderate share of the total.
Questions 1-4
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
1 In Luapula land allocation is in accordance with .......................
2 The citemene system provides the land with ....................... crops are planted.
3 During the second season, the last planted crop is .......................
4 Under suitable conditions, fruit trees are planted near .......................

Questions 5-8
Classify the following items with the correct description.
A fish
B oxen
C goats
5 be used in some unusual occasions, such as celebrations.
6 cannot thrive for being affected by the pests.
7 be the largest part of creating profit.
8 be sold beyond the local area.
Questions 9-12
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage ?

9 People rarely use animals to cultivate land.
10 When it is a busy time, children usually took part in the labor force.
11 The local residents eat goats on a regular time.
12 Though citemene has been a sophisticated system, it could not provide enough protein
Question 13
Write the correct letter in the box 13 on your answer sheet.
What is the writer's opinion about the traditional ways of practices
A They can supply the nutrition that people need.
B They are not capable of providing adequate support to the population.
C They are productive systems that need no more improving.
D They will be easily modified in the future.

2015
1 need 2 (the) ashes 3 (vegetable) cassava 4 houses
5 C 6 B 7 A 8 A
9 TRUE 10 NOT GIVEN 11 FALSE 12 TRUE
13 B
S3254106
Passage Backgrounds
S3.
Language Strategy In Multinational

Company
A The importance of language management in multinational companies has never been
greater than today. Multinationals are becoming ever more conscious of the importance
of global coordination as a source of competitive advantage and language remains the
ultimate barrier to aspirations of international harmonization. Before attempting to
consider language management strategies, companies will have to evaluate the
magnitude of the language barrier confronting them and in doing so they will need to
examine it in three dimensions: the Language Diversity, the Language Penetration and
the Language Sophistication. Companies next need to turn their attention to how they
should best manage language. There is a range of options from which MNCs can
formulate their language strategy.

B Lingua Franca: The simplest answer, though realistic only for English speaking
companies, is to rely on ones native tongue. As recently as 1991 a survey of British
exporting companies found that over a third used English exclusively in dealings with
foreign customers. This attitude that "one language fits all" has also been carried
through into the Internet age. A survey of the web sites of top American companies
confirmed that over half made no provision for foreign language access, and another
found that less than 10% of leading companies were able to respond adequately to
emails other than in the companys language. Widespread though it is however, reliance
on a single language is a strategy that is fatally flawed. It makes no allowance for the
growing trend in Linguistic Nationalism whereby buyers in Asia, South America and the
Middle East in particular are asserting their right to "work in the language of the
customer". It also fails to recognize the increasing vitality of languages such as Spanish,
Arabic and Chinese that overtime are likely to challenge the dominance of English as a
lingua franca. In the IT arena it ignores the rapid globalization of the Internet where the
number of English-language e-commerce transactions, emails and web sites, is rapidly
diminishing as a percentage of the total. Finally, the total reliance on a single language
puts the English speaker at risk in negotiations. Contracts, rules and legislation are
invariably written in the local language, and a company unable to operate in that
language is vulnerable.
C Functional Multilingualism: Another improvised approach to Language is to rely on
what has been termed "Functional Multilingualism". Essentially what this means is to
muddle through, relying on a mix of languages, pidgins and gestures to communicate by

whatever means the parties have at their disposal. In a social context such a shared
effort to make one another understand might be considered an aid to the bonding
process with the frustration of communication being regularly punctuated by moments
of absurdity and humor. However, as the basis for business negotiations it appears very
hit-and-nuts. And yet Hagen's recent study suggests that 16% of international business
transaction are conducted in a "cocktail of languages." Functional Multilingualism shares
the same defects as reliance on a lingua franca and increases the probability of cognitive
divergence between the parties engaged in the communication.
D External Language Resources: A more rational and obvious response to the language
barrier is to employ external resources such as translators and interpreters, and
certainly there are many excellent companies specialized in these fields. However, such
a response is by no means an end to the language barrier. For a start these services can
be very expensive with a top Simultaneous Interpreter, commanding daily rates as high
as a partner in an international consulting company. Secondly, any good translator or
interpreter will insist that to be fully effective they must understand the context of the
subject matter. This is not always possible. In some cases it is prohibited by the
complexity or specialization of the topic. Sometimes by lack of preparation time but
most often the obstacle is the reluctance of the parties to explain the wider context to an
'outsider'. Another problem is that unless there has been considerable pre-explaining
between the interpreter and his clients, it is likely that there will be ambiguity and
cultural overtones in the source messages the interpreter has to work with. They will of
course endeavour to provide a hi-fidelity translation but in this circumstance the

interpreter has to use initiative and guess work. This clearly injects a potential source of
misunderstanding into the proceedings. Finally while a good interpreter will attempt to
convey not only the meaning but also the spirit of any communication, there can be no
doubt that there is a loss of rhetorical power when communications go through a third
party. So in situations requiring negotiation, persuasion, humor etc., the use of an
interpreter is a poor substitute for direct communication.
E Training: The immediate and understandable reaction to any skills-shortage in a
business is to consider personnel development and certainly the language training
industry is well developed. Offering programs at almost every level and in numerous
languages. However, without doubting the value of language training no company
should be deluded into believing this to be assured of success. Training in most
companies is geared to the economic cycle. When times are good, money is invested in
training. When belts get tightened training is one of the first "luxuries" to be pared down.
In a study conducted across four European countries, nearly twice as many companies
said they needed language training in coming years as had conducted training in past
years. This disparity between "good intentions" and "actual delivery", underlines the
problems of relying upon training for language skills. Unless the company is totally
committed to sustaining the strategy even though bad times, it will fail.
F One notable and committed leader in the field of language training has been the
Volkswagen Group. They have developed a language strategy over many years and in
many respects can be regarded as a model of how to manage language professionally.

However, the Volkswagen approach underlines that language training has to be
considered a strategic rather than a tactical solution. In their system to progress from
"basics" to "communications competence in a language requires the completion of 6
language stages each one demanding approximately 90 hours of refresher course,
supported by many more hours of self-study, spread over a 6-9 month period. The
completion of each stage is marked by a post-stage achievement test, which is a
pre-requisite for continued training. So even this professionally managed program
expects a minimum of three years of fairly intensive study to produce an accountant.
Engineer, buyer or salesperson capable of working effectively in a foreign language.
Clearly companies intending to pursue this route need to do so with realistic
expectations and with the intention of sustaining the program over many years. Except
in terms of "brush-up" courses for people who were previously fluent in a foreign
language, training cannot be considered a quick fix.

Questions 27-32
Complete the following summary of the whole Paragraphs of Reading Passage, choosing A-L words from
the following options.
MNCs often encounter language barrier in their daily strategy, then they seek several approaches to solve
such problems. First, native language gives them a realistic base in a different language speaking country,
but problem turned up when they deal with oversea 27......................... . For example, operation on translation
of some key 28........................, it is inevitable to generate differences by rules from different countries.
Another way is to rely on a combination of spoken language and 29........................, yet a report written that
over one-tenth business 30........................ processed in a party language setting. Third way: hire translators.
However, firstly it is 31........................, besides if they are not well-prepared, they have to resort to his/her
own 32........................ work.
A gestures B clients C transaction D understanding and assumption
E accurate F documents G managers H body language
I long-term J effective K rivals L costly

Questions 33-39
Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
33 What understandable reaction does Training pay attention to according to the author?
34 In what term does the writer describe training during economy depression?
35 What contribution does Volkswagen Group set up for multinational companies?
36 What does Volkswagen Group consider language training as in their company?
37 How many stages are needed from basic course to advanced in training?
38 How long does a refresher course (single stage) need normally?
39 At least how long is needed for a specific professional to acquire a foreign language?
Questions 40
Write your answers in boxes 40 on your answer sheet.
40 What is the main function of this passage
A To reveal all kinds of language problems that companies may encounter.
B To exhibits some well known companies successfully dealing with language difficulties.
C To evaluate various approaches for language barrier in multinational companies.
D To testify that training is only feasible approach to solve language problem.

2015
27 B 28 F 29 A 30 C
31 L 32 D 33 personnel 34 (the first) luxury
development
35 (developed/set) 36 (a)strategic 37 6 stages 38 90 hours (for one single
a language solution stage)
strategy
39 three years 40 C
S2200115
Passage Backgrounds
S2.
The Dugong: Sea Cow
cow
Dugongs are herbivorous mammals that spend their
entire lives in the sea. Their close relatives the
manatees also venture into or live in fresh water.
Together dugongs and manatees make up the order
Sirenia ( ) or sea cows, so-named because
dugongs and manatees are thought to have given
rise to the myth of the mermaids or sirens () of the sea.
A The dugong is a large marine mammal which, together with the manatees, looks rather like a cross
between a rotund dolphin and a walrus. Its body, flippers and fluke resemble those of a dolphin but it
has no dorsal fin. Its head looks somewhat like that of a walrus without the long tusks.
B Dugongs, along with other Sirenians whose diet consists mainly of sea-grass; and the distribution
of dugongs very closely follows that of these marine flowering plants. As seagrasses grow rooted in
the sediment, they are limited by the availability of light. Consequently they are found predominantly
in shallow coastal waters, and so too are dugongs. But, this is not the whole story. Dugongs do not eat
all species of seagrass, preferring seagrass of higher nitrogen and lower fibre content.
C Due to their poor eyesight, dugongs often use smell to locate edible plants. They also have a strong
tactile sense, and feel their surroundings with their long sensitive bristles. They will dig up an entire
plant and then shake it to remove the sand before eating it. They have been known to collect a pile of
plants in one area before eating them. The flexible and muscular upper lip is used to dig out the plants.
When eating they ingest the whole plant, including the roots, although when this is impossible they
will feed on just the leaves. A wide variety of seagrass has been found in dugong stomach contents,
and evidence exists they will eat algae when seagrass is scarce. Although almost completely
herbivorous, they will occasionally eat invertebrates such as jellyfish, sea squirts, and shellfish.
D A heavily grazed seagrass bed looks like a lawn mown by a drunk. Dugongs graze apparently at
random within a seagrass bed, their trails meandering in all directions across the bottom. This is
rather an inefficient means of removing seagrass that results in numerous small tufts remaining. And
this is where the dugongs derive some advantage from their inefficiency. The species that recover
most quickly from this disturbance, spreading out vegetatively from the remaining tufts, are those that
dugongs like to eat. In addition, the new growth found in these areas tends to be exactly what hungry
dugongs like.
E Dugongs are semi-nomadic, often travelling long distances in search of food, but staying within a
certain range their entire life. Large numbers often move together from one area to another. It is
thought that these movements are caused by changes in seagrass availability. Their memory allows
them to return to specific points after long travels. Dugong movements mostly occur within a localized
area of seagrass beds, and animals in the same region show individualistic patterns of movement.
F Recorded numbers of dugongs are generally believed to be lower than actual numbers, due to a lack
of accurate surveys. Despite this, the dugong population is thought to be shrinking, with a worldwide
decline of 20 per cent in the last 90 years. They have disappeared from the waters of Hong Kong,
Mauritius, and Taiwan, as well as parts of Cambodia, Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam. Further
disappearances are likely. (In the late 1960s, herds of up to 500 dugongs were observed off the coast
of East Africa and nearby islands. However, current populations in this area are extremely small,
numbering 50 and below, and it is thought likely they will become extinct. The eastern side of the Red
Sea is the home of large populations numbering in the hundreds, and similar populations are thought
to exist on the western side. In the 1980s, it was estimated there could be as many as 4,000 dugongs
in the Red Sea. The Persian Gulf has the second-largest dugong population in the world, inhabiting
most of the southern coast, and the current population is believed to be around 7,500. Australia is
home to the largest population, stretching from Shark Bay in Western Australia to Moreton Bay in
Queensland. The population of Shark Bay is thought to be stable with over 10,000 dugongs.)
G Experience from various parts of northern Australia suggests that extreme weather such as
cyclones and floods can destroy hundreds of square kilometres of seagrass meadows, as well as
washing dugongs ashore. The recovery of seagrass meadows and the spread of seagrass into new
areas, or areas where it has been destroyed, can take over a decade. For example, about 900 km2 of
seagrass was lost in Hervey Bay in 1992, probably because of murky water from flooding of local
rivers, and run-off turbulence from a cyclone three weeks later. Such events can cause extensive
damage to seagrass communities through severe wave action, shifting sand and reduction in saltiness
and light levels. Prior to the 1992 floods, the extensive seagrasses in Hervey Bay supported an
estimated 1750 dugongs. Eight months after the floods the affected area was estimated to support
only about 70 dugongs. Most animals presumably survived by moving to neighbouring areas. However,
many died attempting to move to greener pastures, with emaciated carcasses washing up on beaches
up to 900km away.
H If dugongs do not get enough to eat they may calve later and produce fewer young. Food shortages
can be caused by many factors, such as a loss of habitat, death and decline in quality of seagrass, and a
disturbance of feeding caused by human activity. Sewage, detergents, heavy metal, hypersaline water,
herbicides, and other waste products all negatively affect seagrass meadows. Human activity such as
mining, trawling, dredging, land-reclamation, and boat propeller scarring also cause an increase in
sedimentation which smothers seagrass and prevents light from reaching it. This is the most
significant negative factor affecting seagrass. One of the dugong's preferred species of seagrass,
Halophila ovalis, declines rapidly due to lack of light, dying completely after 30 days.
I Despite being legally protected in many countries, the main causes of population decline remain
anthropogenic and include hunting, habitat degradation, and fishing-related fatalities. Entanglement
in fishing nets has caused many deaths, although there are no precise statistics. Most issues with
industrial fishing occur in deeper waters where dugong populations are low, with local fishing being
the main risk in shallower waters. As dugongs cannot stay underwater for a very long period, they are
highly prone to deaths due to entanglement. The use of shark nets has historically caused large
numbers of deaths, and they have been eliminated in most areas and replaced with baited hooks.
Hunting has historically been a problem too, although in most areas they are no longer hunted, with
the exception of certain indigenous communities. In areas such as northern Australia, hunting remains
the greatest impact on the dugong population.

Questions 1-4
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage.
Using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.
Dugongs are herbivorous mammals that spend their entire lives in the sea. Yet Dugongs are
picky on their feeding Seagrass, and only chose seagrass with higher 1... and lower
fibre. To compensate for their poor eyesight, they use their 2....... to feel their
surroundings. It is like Dugongs are "farming" seagrass. They often leave 3
randomly in all directions across the sea bed. Dugongs prefer eating the newly grew
seagrass recovering from the tiny 4..... left behind by the grazing dugongs.
Questions 5-9
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
TRUE if the statement is true

FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
5 The dugong will keep eating up the plant completely when they begin to feed.
6 It takes more than ten years for the re-growth of seagrass where it has been grazed by Dugongs.
7 Even in facing food shortages, the strong individuals will not compete with weak small ones for food.
8 It is thought that the dugong rarely return to the old habitats when they finished plant.
9 Coastal industrial fishing poses the greatest danger to dugongs which are prone to be killed due to
entanglement.
Questions 10-13
Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
10 What is Dugong in resemblance to yet as people can easily tell them apart from the manatees by the
fins in its tail?
11 What is the major reason as Dugongs travelled long distances in herds from one place to another?
12 What number, has estimated to be, of dugong' population before the 1992 floods in Hervey Bay took
place?
13 What is thought to be the lethal danger when dugongs were often trapped in?

2015
1 Nitrogen 2 sensitive bristles 3 trails 4 tufts
5 TRUE 6 FALSE 7 NOT GIVEN 8 FALSE
9 NOT GIVEN 10 Dolphin 11 Seagrass availability/Food 12 1750
(shortage)/seagrass shortage
13 Fishing net
S1282203
Passage Backgrounds
S1.
Eco-Resort Management Practices

A Ecotourism is often regarded as a form of nature-based tourism and has become an important alternative source of
tourists. In addition to providing the traditional resort-leisure product, it has been argued that ecotourism resort
management should have a particular focus on best-practice environmental management, an educational and
interpretive component, and direct and indirect contributions to the conservation of the natural and cultural
environment (Ayala, 1996).
B Couran Cove Island Resort is a large integrated ecotourism-based resort located south of Brisbane on the Gold
Coast, Queensland, Australia. As the world's population becomes increasingly urbanised, the demand for tourist
attractions which are environmentally friendly, serene and offer amenities of a unique nature, has grown rapidly.
Couran Cove Resort, which is one such tourist attractions, is located on South Stradbroke Island, occupying
approximately 150 hectares of the island. South Stradbroke Island is separated from the mainland by the Broadwater,
a stretch of sea 3 kilometers wide. More than a century ago, there was only one Stradbroke Island, and there were at
least four aboriginal tribes living and hunting on the island. Regrettably, most of the original island dwellers were
eventually killed by diseases such as tuberculosis, smallpox and influenza by the end of the 19th century. The second
ship wreak on the island in 1894, and the subsequent destruction of the ship (the Cambus Wallace) because it
contained dynamite, caused a large crater in the sandhills on Stradbroke Island. Eventually, the ocean broke through
the weakened land form and Stradbroke became two islands. Couran Cove Island Resort is built on one of the
world's few naturally-occurring sand lands, which is home to a wide range of plant communities and one of the
largest remaining remnants of the rare livistona rainforest left on the Gold Coast. Many mangrove and rainforest
areas, and Malaleuca Wetlands on South Stradbroke Island (and in Queensland), have been cleared, drained or filled
for residential, industrial, agricultural or urban development in the first half of the 20th century. Farmer and graziers
finally abandoned South Stradbroke Island in 1939 because the vegetation and the soil conditions there were not
suitable for agricultural activities.
SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES OF COURAN COVE RESORT
Being located on an offshore island, the resort is only accessible by means of water transportation. The resort
provides hourly ferry service from the marina on the mainland to and from the island. Within the resort, transport
modes include walking trails, bicycle tracks and the beach train. The reception area is the counter of the shop which
has not changed in 8 years at least. The accommodation is an octagonal "Bure". These are large rooms that are clean
but! The equipment is tired and in some cases just working. Our ceiling fan only worked on high speed for example.
Beds are hard but clean, there is television, radio, an old air conditioner and a small fridge. These "Bures" are right on
top of each other and night noises do carry so be careful what you say and do. The only thing is the mosquitos but if
you forget to bring mosquito repellant they sell some on the island.
As an ecotourism-based resort, most of the planning and development of the attraction has been concentrated on the
need to co-exist with the fragile natural environment of South Stradbroke Island to achieve sustainable
development.
WATER AND ENERGY MANAGEMENT
C South Stradbroke Island has groundwater at the centre of the island, which has a maximum height of 3 metres
above sea level. The water supply is recharged by rainfall and is commonly known as an unconfined freshwater
aquifer. Couran Cove Island Resort obtains its water supply by tapping into this aquifer and extracting it via a bore
system. Some of the problems which have threatened the island's freshwater supply include pollution, contamination
and over-consumption. In order to minimise some of these problems, all laundry activities are carried out on the
mainland. The resort considers washing machines as onerous to the island's freshwater supply, and that the
detergents contain a high level of phosphates which are a major source of water pollution. The resort uses
LPG-power generation rather than a diesel-powered plant for its energy supply, supplemented by wind turbine,
which has reduced greenhouse emissions by 70% of diesel-equivalent generation methods. Excess heat recovered
from the generator is used to heat the swimming pool. Hot water in the eco-cabins and for some of the resort's
vehicles are solar-powered. Water efficient fittings are also installed in showers and toilets. However, not all the
appliances used by the resort are energy efficient, such as refrigerators. Visitors who stay at the resort are encouraged
to monitor their water and energy usage via the in-house television system, and are rewarded with prizes (such as a
free return trip to the resort) accordingly if their usage level is low.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
D We examined a case study of good management practice and a pro-active sustainable tourism stance of an
eco-resort. In three years of operation, Couran Cove Island Resort has won 23 international and national awards,
including the 2001 Australian Tourism Award in the 4-Star Accommodation category. The resort has embraced and
has effectively implemented contemporary environmental management practices. It has been argued that the
successful implementation of the principles of sustainability should promote long-term social, economic and
environmental benefits, while ensuring and enhancing the prospects of continued viability for the tourism enterprise.
Couran Cove Island Resort does not conform to the characteristics of the Resort Development Spectrum, as
proposed by Prideaux (2000). According to Prideaux, the resort should be at least at Phase 3 of the model (the
National tourism phase), which describes an integrated resort providing 3-4 star hotel-type accommodation. The
primary tourist market in Phase 3 of the model consists mainly of interstate visitors. However, the number of
interstate and international tourists visiting the resort is small, with the principal visitor markets comprising locals and
residents from nearby towns and the Gold Coast region. The carrying capacity of Couran Cove does not seem to be
of any concern to the Resort management. Given that it is a private commercial ecotourist enterprise, regulating the
number of visitors to the resort to minimize damage done to the natural environment on South Stradbroke Island is
not a binding constraint. However, the Resort's growth will eventually be constrained by its carrying capacity, and
quantity control should be incorporated in the management strategy of the resort.

Questions 1-5
Write your answers in boxes 1-5 on your answers sheet.
1 The Stradbroke became two islands
A by an intended destruction of the ship of the Cambus Wallace
B by an explosion of dynamite on a ship and following nature erosion
C by the movement sandhills on Stradbroke Island
D by the volcanic eruption on island
2 Why are laundry activities for the resort carried out on the mainland
A In order to obtain its water supply via a bore system
B In order to preserve the water and anti-pollution
C In order to save the cost of installing onerous washing machines
D In order to reduce the level of phosphates in water around
3 What is the major water supplier in South Stradbroke Island is by
A desalinizing the sea water
B collecting the rainfall
C transporting from the mainland
D boring ground water

4 What is applied for heating water on Couran Cove Island Resort
A the LPG-power
B a diesel-powered plant
C the wind power
D the solar-power
5 What does, as the managers of resorts believe, the prospective future focus on
A more awards of for resort's accommodation
B sustainable administration and development in a long run
C Economic and environmental benefits for the tourism enterprise
D successful implementation the Resort Development Spectrum
Questions 6-10
Complete the following summary of the Reading Passage, using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the
Reading Passage for each answer.
Being located away from the mainland, tourists can attain the resort only by 6........................ in a regular service.
Within the resort, transports include trails for walking or tracks for both 7........................ and the beach train. The
on-island equipment is old-fashioned which is barely working such as the 8........................ overhead. There is
television, radio, an old 9........................ and a small fridge. And you can buy the repellant for 10........................ if you
forget to bring some.

Questions 11-13
Choose THREE correct letters among, A-E.
What is true as to the contemporary situation of Couran Cove Island R in the last paragraph
A Couran Cove Island Resort goes for more eco-friendly practices.
B The accommodation standard only conforms to the Resort Development Spectrum of Phase 3.
C Couran Cove Island Resort should raise the accommodation standard and build more facilities.
D The principal group visiting the resort is international tourists.
E Its carrying capacity will restrict the future business' expansion.

2015
1 B 2 B 3 D 4 D
5 B 6 ferry 7 bicycle 8 fan/ceiling fan
9 air conditioner 10 mosquitos/mosquito 11 A 12 C
13 E
S1320404
Passage Backgrounds
S1.
Grey workers
A Given the speed at which their workers are growing greyer, employers know surprisingly little about how productive
they are. The general assumption is that the old are paid more in spite of, rather than because of, their extra productivity.
That might partly explain why, when employers are under pressure to cut costs, they persuade the 55-year-olds to take
early retirement. Earlier this year, Sun Life of Canada, an insurance company, announced that it was offering redundancy
to all its British employees aged 50 or over "to bring in new blood".
B In Japan, says Mariko Fujiwara, an industrial anthropologist who runs a think-tank for Hakuhodo, Japan's second-largest
advertising agency, most companies are bringing down the retirement age from the traditional 57 to 50 or thereabouts -
and in some cases, such as Nissan, to 45. More than perhaps anywhere else, pay in Japan is linked to seniority. Given that
the percentage of workers who have spent more than 32 years with the same employer rose from 11% in 1980 to 42% by
1994, it is hardly surprising that seniority-based wage costs have become the most intractable item on corporate
profit-and-loss accounts.
C In Germany, Patrick Pohl, spokesman for Hoechst, expresses a widely held view: "The company is trying to lower the
average age of the workforce. Perhaps the main reason for replacing older workers is that it makes it easier to defrost' the
corporate culture. Older workers are less willing to try a new way of thinking. Younger workers are cheaper and more
flexible." Some German firms are hampered from getting rid of older workers as quickly as they would like. At SGL Carbon,
a graphite producer, the average age of workers has been going up not down. The reason, says the company's Ivo Lingnau,
is not that SGL values older workers more. It is collective bargaining: the union agreement puts strict limits on the
proportion of workers that may retire early.
D Clearly, when older people do heavy physical work, their age may affect their productivity. But other skills may increase
with age, including many that are crucial for good management, such as an ability to handle people diplomatically, to run
a meeting or to spot a problem before it blows up. Peter Hicks, who co-ordinates OECD work on the policy implications of
ageing, says that plenty of research suggests older people are paid more because they are worth more.
E And the virtues of the young may be exaggerated. "The few companies that have kept on older workers find they have
good judgment and their productivity is good," says Mr Peterson. "Besides, their education standards are much better
than those of today's young high-school graduates." Companies may say that older workers are not worth training,
because they are reaching the end of their working lives: in fact, young people tend to switch jobs so frequently that they
offer the worst returns on training. "The median age for employer-driven training is the late 40s and early 50s," says Mr
Hicks. "It goes mainly to managers."
F Take away those seniority-based pay scales, and older workers may become a much more attractive employment
proposition. But most companies (and many workers) are uncomfortable with the idea of reducing someone's pay in later
life - although workers on piece-rates often earn less over time. So retaining the services of older workers may mean
employing them in new ways.
G One innovation, described in Mr Walker's report on combating age barriers, was devised by IBM Belgium. Faced with
the need to cut staff costs, and having decided to concentrate cuts on 55-60-year-olds, IBM set up a separate company
called SkillTeam, which re-employed any of the early retired who wanted to go on working up to the age of 60. An
employee who joined SkillTeam at the age of 55 on a five-year contract would work for 58% of his time, over the full
period, for 88% of his last IBM salary. The company offered services to IBM, thus allowing it to retain access to some of
the intellectual capital it would otherwise have lost.

H The best way to tempt the old to go on working may be to build on such "bridge" jobs: part-time or temporary
employment that creates a more gradual transition from full-time work to retirement. Mr Quinn, who has studied the
phenomenon, finds that, in the United States, nearly half of all men and women who had been in full-time jobs in middle
age moved into such "bridge" jobs at the end of their working lives. In general, it is the best-paid and worst-paid who
carry on working: "There are", he says, "two very different types of bridge job-holders - those who continue working
because they have to and those who continue working because they want to, even though they could afford to retire."
I If the job market grows more flexible, the old may find more jobs that suit them. Often, they will be self-employed.
Sometimes, they may start their own businesses: a study by David Storey of Warwick University found that, in Britain,
70% of businesses started by people over 55 survived, compared with an average of only 19%. To coax the old back into
the job market, work will not only have to pay. It will need to be more fun than touring the country in an Airstream trailer,
or seeing the grandchildren, or playing golf. Only then will there be many more Joe Clarks.
Questions 1-4
Do the following statement agree with the information given in reading passage?
TURE if the statement agrees with the information

1 Insurance company Sun Life of Canada made decision that it would hire more Canadian employees
rather than British ones in order to get fresh staffs.
2 Unlike other places, employees in Japan get paid according to the years they are employed.
3 Elder workers are laid off by some German companies which are refreshing corporate culture.
4 According to Peter Hicks, companies pay older people more regardless of the contribution of they
make.
Questions 5-6
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, D, E.
According to the passage there are several advantages to hire elder people, please choose TWO from below.
A their productivity are more superior than the young.
B paid less compared with younger ones.
C run fast when there is a meeting.
D have better inter-person relationship.
E identify problems in an advanced time.
Questions 7-8
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, D, E.
According to Mr. Peterson, compared with elder employees, young graduates have several weaknesses in
workplace, please choose TWO of them below.
A They are not worth training.
B Their productivity is lower than counterparts.
C They change work more often.
D Their academic criteria is some way behind elders'.
E They are normally high school graduates.

Questions 9-13
9 According to paragraph F, the firms and workers still hold the opinion that
A Older workers are more likely to attract other staff.
B People are not happy if pay gets lower in retiring age.
C Older people have more retaining motivation than young people.
D Young people often earn less for their piece-rates salary.
10 SkillTeam that has been founded by IBM conducted which of following movement
A Ask all the old worker to continue their job on former working hours basis
B carry on the action of cutting off the elder's proportion of employment
C Ask employees to work more hours in order to get extra pay
D Re-hire old employees and kept the salary a bit lower
11 Which of the followings is correct according to the research of Mr Quinn
A About 50% of all employees in America switched into 'bridge' jobs.
B Only the worst-paid continue to work.
C More men than women fell into the category of 'bridge' work.
D Some old people keep working for their motive rather than economic incentive.
12 Which of the followings is correct according to David Storey
A 70% business are successful if hire more older people.
B Average success of self-employed business is getting lower.
C Self-employed elder people are more likely to survive.
D Older people's working hours are more flexible.
13 What is the main purpose of the author in writing this passage
A There must be a successful retiring program for the old.
B Older people should be correctly valued in employment.
C Old people should offer more helping young employees grow.
D There are more jobs in the world that only employ older people.

2015
S1320404 & Question Answers
1 NOT GIVEN 2 TRUE 3 TRUE 4 FALSE
5 D 6 E 7 C 8 D
9 B 10 D 11 D 12 C
13 B
S1251404
Passage Backgrounds
S1.
Ambergris
What is it and where does it come from?
A Ambergris was used to perfume cosmetics in the days of ancient Mesopotamia and almost every
civilization on the earth has a brush with ambergris. Before 1,000 AD, the Chinese names ambergris as
lung stun hang "dragon's spittle perfume," as they think that it was produced from the drooling of dragons
sleeping on rocks at the edge of a sea. The Arabs knew ambergris as anbar, believing that it is produced
from springs near seas. It also gets its name from here. For centuries, this substance has also been used as a
flavouring for food.
B During the Middle Ages, Europeans used ambergris as a remedy for headaches, colds, epilepsy, and
other ailments. In the 1851 whaling novel Moby-Dick, Herman Melville claimed that ambergris was
"largely used in perfumery." But nobody ever knew where it really came from. Experts were still guessing
its origin thousands of years later, until the long ages of guesswork ended in the 1720's, when Nantucket
whalers found gobs of the costly material inside the stomachs of sperm whales. Industrial whaling quickly
burgeoned. By 20th century ambergris is mainly recovered from inside the carcasses of sperm whales.
C Through countless ages, people have found pieces of ambergris on sandy beaches. It was named grey
amber to distinguish it from golden amber, another rare treasure. Both of them were among the most
sought-after substances in the world, almost as valuable as gold. (Ambergris sells for roughly $20 a gram,
slightly less than gold at $30 a gram.) Amber floats in salt water, and in old times the origin of both these
substances was mysterious. But it turned out that amber and ambergris have little in common. Amber is a
fossilized resin from trees that was quite familiar to Europeans long before the discovery of the New
World, and prized as jewelry. Although considered a gem, amber is a hard, transparent, wholly-organic
material derived from the resin of extinct species of trees, mainly pines.
D To the earliest Western chroniclers, ambergris was variously thought to come from the same bituminous
sea founts as amber, from the sperm of fishes or whales, from the droppings of strange sea birds (probably
because of confusion over the included beaks of squid) or from the large hives of bees living near the sea.
Marco Polo was the first Western chronicler who correctly attributed ambergris to sperm whales and its
vomit.
E As sperm whales navigate in the oceans, they often dive down to 2 km or more below the sea level to
prey on squid, most famously the Giant Squid. It's commonly accepted that ambergris forms in the whale's
gut or intestines as the creature attempts to "deal" with squid beaks. Sperm whales are rather partial to
squid, but seemingly struggle to digest the hard, sharp, parrot-like beaks. It is thought their stomach juices
become hyper-active trying to process the irritants, and eventually hard, resinous lumps are formed around
the beaks, and then expelled from their innards by vomiting. When a whale initially vomits up ambergris,
it is soft and has a terrible smell. Some marine biologists compare it to the unpleasant smell of cow dung.
But after floating on the salty ocean for about a decade, the substance hardens with air and sun into a
smooth, waxy, usually rounded piece of nostril heaven. The dung smell is gone, replaced by a sweet,
smooth, musky and pleasant earthy aroma.
F Since ambergris is derived from animals, naturally a question of ethics arises, and in the case of
ambergris, it is very important to consider. Sperm whales are an endangered species, whose populations
started to decline as far back as the 19th century due to the high demand for their highly emollient oil, and
today their stocks still have not recovered. During the 1970's, the Save the Whales movement brought the
plight of whales to international recognition. Many people now believe that whales are "saved". This
couldn't be further from the truth. All around the world, whaling still exists. Many countries continue to
hunt whales, in spite of international treaties to protect them. Many marine researchers are concerned that
even the trade in naturally found ambergris can be harmful by creating further incentives to hunt whales
for this valuable substance.
G One of the forms ambergris is used today is as a valuable fixative in perfumes to enhance and prolong
the scent. But nowadays, since ambergris is rare and expensive, and big fragrance suppliers that make most
of the fragrances on the market today do not deal in it for reasons of cost, availability and murky legal
issues, most perfumeries prefer to add a chemical derivative which mimics the properties of ambergris. As
a fragrance consumer, you can assume that there is no natural ambergris in your perfume bottle, unless the
company advertises this fact and unless you own vintage fragrances created before the 1980s. If you are
wondering if you have been wearing a perfume with this legendary ingredient, you may want to review
your scent collection. Here are a few of some of the top ambergris containing perfumes: Givenchy
Amarige, Chanel No. 5, and Gucci Guilty.

Questions 1-6
Classify the following information as referring to
A ambergris only
B amber only
C both ambergris and amber
D neither ambergris nor amber
Write the correct letter, A, B, C, or D, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.
1 being expensive
2 adds flavor to food
3 used as currency
4 being see-through
5 referred to by Herman Melville
6 produces sweet smell
Questions 7-9
Complete the sentences below with NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the passage.
7 Sperm whales can't digest the ........................ of the squids.
8 Sperm whales drive the irritants out of their intestines by .........................
9 The vomit of sperm whale gradually ........................ on contact of air before having pleasant smell.
Questions 10-13

10 Most ambergris comes from the dead whales today.
11 Ambergris is becoming more expensive than before.
12 Ambergris is still the most frequently used ingredient in perfume production today.
13 New uses of ambergris have been discovered recently.

2015
1 C 2 A 3 D 4 B
5 A 6 A 7 beaks 8 vomiting
9 hardens 10 TRUE 11 NOT GIVEN 12 FALSE
13 NOT GIVEN
S2220110
Passage Backgrounds
S2.
Agriculture and Tourism
A Linkages between the Agri-Food Sector and Tourism offer significant opportunities for the development of
both sectors within the region. These linkages could lead to ensuring the sustainability () of the region's
tourism product thus ensuring it preservation. Agriculture and tourism - two of Wisconsin's most industries - are
teaming up in southwestern Wisconsin ( , ). A pilot project has found that tourists, rural
communities, and some farmers could benefit from stronger efforts to promote and market agricultural tourism
there. In 1990, agricultural tourism project members surveyed 290 visitors to the annual Monroe Cheese Festival
and 164 visitors to the Picnic on the Farm, a one-time event held in Platteville in conjunction with the Chicago
Bears summer training camp. More than one-half of those surveyed responded favorably to a proposed tour,
saying they would be interested in participating in some type of agricultural tour in southwestern Wisconsin.
Survey respondents reported that they would prefer to visit cheese factories, sausage processing plants, dairy farms,
and historical farm sites, as well as enjoy an old-fashioned picnic dinner. The study also found strong interest in
visiting specialty farms (strawberries, cranberries, poultry, etc.). More than 75 percent of the Cheese Day visitors
planned ahead for the trip, with 37 percent planning at least two months in advance.
B More than 40 percent of the visitors came to Monroe for two- or three-day visits. Many stopped at other
communities on way to Cheese Days. Visitors at both events indicated that they were there to enjoy themselves
and were willing to spend money on food and arts and crafts. They also wanted the opportunity to experience the
"country" while there. The study found that planning around existing events should take into account what
brought visitors to the area and provide additional attractions that will appeal to them. For example, visitors to
Cheese Days said they were on a holiday and appeared to be more open to various tour proposals. Picnic visitors
came specifically to see the Chicago Bears practice. They showed less interest in a proposed agricultural tour than
Cheese Day visitor, but more interest in a picnic dinner.
C The study identified three primary audiences for agricultural tourism; 1) elderly people who take bus tours to
see the country; 2) families interested in tours that could be enjoyed by both parents and children; and 3) persons
already involved in agriculture, including international visitors. Agricultural tourism can serve to educate urban
tourists about the problems and challenges facing farmer, says Andy Lewis, Grant county community
development agent. While agriculture is vital to Wisconsin, more and more urban folk are becoming isolated
from the industry. In fact, Lewis notes, farmers are just as interested in educational aspects of agricultural tours as
they are in an financial returns.
D "Farmers feel that urban consumers are out of touch with farming," Lewis says. "If tourists can be educated on
issues that concern farmers, those visits could lead to policies more favorable to agriculture." Animal rights and the
environment are examples of two issues that concern both urban consumers and farmers. Farm tours could help
consumers and farmer's perspective on these issues, Lewis notes. Several Wisconsin farms already offer some type
of learning experience for tourists. However, most agricultural tourism enterprises currently market their
businesses independently, leading to a lack of a concerted effort to promote agricultural tourism as an industry.
E Lewis is conducting the study with jean Murphy, assistant community development agent. Other participants
include UW-Platteville Agricultural Economist Bob Acton, the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems,
UW-Extension Recreation Resources Center, the Wisconsin Rural Development Center, and Hidden Valleys, a
Southwestern Wisconsin regional tourism organization. This past fall, Murphy organized several workshops with
some Green and Grant County farmers, local business leaders, and motor coach tour operators to discuss how
best to organize and put on farm tours. Committees were formed to look at the following: tour site evaluations,
inventory of the area's resources, tour marking and familiarization of tours. The fourth committee is organizing
tours for people such as tout bus guides and local reporters to help better educate them about tourism. Green
County farmers already have experience hosting visitors during the annual Monroe Cheese Days. Green county
Tourism Director Larry Lindgren says these farmers are set to go ahead with more formal agriculture tours next
year. The tours will combine a farm visit with a visit to a local cheese factory and picnic lunch.
F Another farm interested in hosting an organized tour is Sinsinawa, a 200-acre Grant County farm devoted to
sustainable agriculture and run by the Dominican Sisters. Education plays a major role at the farm, which has an
orchard, dairy and beef cows, and hogs. Farm tours could be combined with other activities in the area such as
trips to the Mississippi Raver and/or visits to historical towns or landmarks, Lewis says, the project will help
expose farmers to the tourism industry and farm vacations as a way to possibly supplement incomes, he adds.
While farm families probably wouldn't make a lot of money through farm hours, they would be compensated for
their time, says Lewis.
G Farmers could earn additional income through the sale of farm products, crafts and recreational activities.
Below are results form the 1990 survey of Mnoroe Cheese Days and Picnic on the Farm visitors......
Questions 1-4
The reading passage has seven paragraphs A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-G, in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.
1 About half of all the tourists would spend several days in Mnroe
2 Most visitors responded positively to a survey project on farm tour
3 Cooperation across organisations in research for agriculture tours has been carried out
4 Agriculture tour assist tourists to understand more issues concerning animal and environment
Questions 5-9
Look at the following visitors (listed A-C) and findings
Match each visitors with the correct finding.
NB You may use any researcher more than once.
A Cheese Festival visitors B Picnic visitors C Both of them
5 have focused destination
6 majority prepare well before going beforehand
7 were comparably less keen on picnic meal
8 show interest in activities such as visiting factory tour and fruit
9 are willing to accept a variety of tour recommendation

Questions 10-14
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage.
Using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.
Trough farm tour, visitors can better understand significant issues such as
10 and environment. In autumn, Murphy organised 11 and
bring other participants together to develop local tour market. Larry
Lindgren said the farmers already had experience of farm tours with factory
visiting and a 12 in Sinsinawa, a large area of the farm land contains
an orchard, cow etc which is managed and operated by 13 Lewis said
the project will probably bring extra 14 for local farmers.

2015
1 B 2 A 3 E 4 D
5 B 6 A 7 A 8 C
9 A 10 Animal rights 11 workshops 12 picnic (lunch)
13 Dominican Sisters 14 incomes

S2290705
Passage Backgrounds
S2.
European Heat Wave
A It was the summer, scientists now realise, when global warming at last made itself unmistakably felt. We knew
that summer 2003 was remarkable: Britain experienced its record high temperature and continental Europe saw
forest fires raging out of control, great rivers drying to a trickle and thousands of heat-related deaths. But just
how remarkable is only now becoming clear.
B The three months of June, July and August were the warmest ever recorded in western and central Europe,
with record national highs in Portugal, Germany and Switzerland as well as in Britain. And they were the
warmest by a very long way. Over a great rectangular block of the earth stretching from west of Paris to
northern Italy, taking in Switzerland and southern Germany, the average temperature for the summer months
was 3.78C above the long-term norm, said the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia
in Norwich, which is one of the world's leading institutions for the monitoring and analysis of temperature
records.
C That excess might not seem a lot until you are aware of the context - but then you realise it is enormous.
There is nothing like this in previous data, anywhere. It is considered so exceptional that Professor Phil Jones,
the CRU's director, is prepared to say openly - in a way few scientists have done before - that the 2003 extreme
may be directly attributed, not to natural climate variability, but to global warming caused by human actions.
D Meteorologists have hitherto contented themselves with the formula that recent high temperatures are
"consistent with predictions" of climate change. For the great block of the map - that stretching between
35-50N and 0-20E - the CRU has reliable temperature records dating back to 1781. Using as a baseline the
average summer temperature recorded between 1961 and 1990, departures from the temperature norm, or
"anomalies", over the area as a whole can easily be plotted. As the graph shows, such is the variability of our
climate that over the past 200 years, there have been at least half a dozen anomalies, in terms of excess
temperature - the peaks on the graph denoting very hot years - approaching, or even exceeding, 2C. But there
has been nothing remotely like 2003, when the anomaly is nearly four degrees.
E "This is quite remarkable," Professor Jones told The Independent. "It's very unusual in a statistical sense. If this
series had a normal statistical distribution you wouldn't get this number. The return period [how often it could
be expected to recur] would be something like one in a thousand years. "If we look at an excess above the
average of nearly four degrees, then perhaps nearly three degrees of that is natural variability, because we've seen
than in past summers. But the final degree of it is likely to be due to global warming, caused by human action."
F The summer of 2003 has, in a sense, been one that climate scientists have long been expecting. Until now, the
warming has been manifesting itself mainly in winters that have been less cold than in summers that have been
much more hot. Last week, the United Nations predicted that winters were warming so quickly that winter
sports would die out in Europe's lower-level ski resorts. But sooner or later the unprecedented hot summer was
bound to come, and this year it did.
G One of the most dramatic features of the summer was the hot nights, especially in the first half of August. In
Paris, the temperature never dropped below 23C (73.4) at all between 7 and 14 August, and the city recorded
its warmest-ever night on 11-12 August, when the mercury did not drop below 25.5C (77.9F). Germany
recorded its warmest-ever night at Weinbiet in the Rhine valley with a lowest figure of 27.6C (80.6F) on 13
August, and similar record-breaking night-time temperatures were recorded in Switzerland and Italy.
H The 15,000 excess deaths in France during August, compared with previous years, have been related to the
high night-time temperatures. The numbers gradually increased during the first 12 days of the month, peaking
at about 2000 per day on the night of 12-13 August, then fell off dramatically after 14 August when the
minimum temperatures fell by about 5C. The elderly were most affected, with a 70 per cent increase in
mortality rate in those aged 75-94.
I For Britain, the year as a whole is likely to be the warmest ever recorded, but despite the high temperature
record on 10 August, the summer itself - defined as the June, July and August period - still comes behind 1976
and 1995, when there were longer periods of intense heat. At the moment, the year is on course to be the
third-hottest ever in the global temperature record, which goes back to 1856, behind 1998 and 2002, but when
all the records for October, November and December are collated, it might move into second place, Professor
Jones said. The 10 hottest years in the record have all now occurred since 1990. Professor Jones is in no doubt
about the astonishing nature of European summer of 2003. "The temperatures recorded were out of all
proportion to the previous record," he said. "It was the warmest summer in the past 500 years and probably way
beyond that. It was enormously exceptional."
J His colleagues at the University of East Anglia's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research are now
planning a special study of it. "It was a summer that has not been experienced before, either in terms of the
temperature extremes that were reached, or the range and diversity of the impacts of the extreme heat," said the
centre's executive director, Professor Mike Hulme. "It will certainly have left its mark on a number of countries,
as to how they think and plan for climate change in the future, much as the 2000 floods here revolutionised the
way the Government is thinking about flooding in the UK." "The 2003 heatwave will have similar repercussions
across Europe."
Questions 14-19

14 The average summer temperature in 2003 is approximately four degrees higher than that of the past.
15 Jones believes the temperature statistic is within the normal range.
16 Human factor is one of the reasons that caused hot summer.
17 In large city, people usually measure temperature twice a day.
18 Global warming has obvious effect of warmer winter instead of hotter summer before 2003.
19 New ski resorts are to be built on a high-altitude spot.
Questions 20-21
Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR NUMBERS from the
passage for each answer.
20 What are the two hottest years in Britain besides 2003?
21 What will affect UK government policies besides climate change according to Hulme?
Questions 22-26
Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage. Write your answers
in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet.
In the summer of 2003, thousands of extra death occurred in the country of 22......................... . Moreover,
world-widely, the third record of hottest summer date from 23........................, after the year of 24......................... .
According to Jones, all the 10 hottest years happened from 25......................... . However, summer of 2003 was at
the peak of previous 26........................ years, perhaps even more.
Question 27
Write your answer in box 27 on your answer sheet.
27 Which one can be best served as the title of this passage in the following options
A Global Warming effect
B Global Warming in Europe
C The Effects of hot temperature
D Hottest summer in Europe

2015
14 TURE 15 FALSE 16 TRUE 17 NOT GIVEN
18 TRUE 19 NOT GIVEN 20 1976 and 1995 21 2000 floods
22 France 23 1856 24 1998 and 2002 25 1990
26 500 27 D
S2210107
Passage Backgrounds
S2.
The Adolescents
A The American Academy of Pediatrics recognizes three stages of adolescence. These are early,
middle and late adolescence, and each has its own developmental tasks. Teenagers move through
these tasks at their own speed depending on their physical development and hormone levels.
Although these stages are common to all teenagers, each child will go through them in his or her
own highly individual ways.
B During the early years young people make the first attempts to leave the dependent, secure role
of a child and to establish themselves as unique individuals, independent of their parents. Early
adolescence is marked by rapid physical growth and maturation. The focus of adolescents'
self-concepts are thus often on their physical self and their evaluation of their physical acceptability.
Early adolescence is also a period of intense conformity to peers. 'Getting along,' not being
different, and being accepted seem somehow pressing to the early adolescent. The worst
possibility, from the view of the early adolescent, is to be seen by peers as 'different'.
C Middle adolescence is marked by the emergence of new thinking skills. The intellectual world of
the young person is suddenly greatly expanded. Their concerns about peers are more directed
toward their opposite sexed peers. It is also during this period that the move to establish
psychological independence from one's parents accelerates. Delinquency behavior may emerge
since parental views are no longer seen as absolutely correct by adolescents. Despite some
delinquent behavior, middle adolescence is a period during which young people are oriented
toward what is right and proper. They are developing a sense of behavioral maturity and learning to
control their impulsiveness.
D Late adolescence is marked be the final preparations for adult roles. The developmental
demands of late adolescence often extend into the period that we think of as young adulthood.
Late adolescents attempt to crystallize their vocational goals and to establish sense of personal
identity. Their needs for peer approval are diminished and they are largely psychologically
independent from their parents. The shift to adulthood is nearly complete.
E Some years ago, Professor Robert Havighurst of the University of Chicago proposed that stages
in human development can best be thought of in terms of the developmental tasks that are part
of the normal transition. He identified eleven developmental tasks associated with the adolescent
transition. One developmental task an adolescent needs to achieve is to adjust to a new physical
sense of self. At no other time since birth does an individual undergo such rapid and profound
physical changes as during early adolescence. Puberty is marked by sudden rapid growth in height
and weight. Also, the young person experiences the emergence and accentuation of those physical
traits that make him or her a boy or girl. The effect of this rapid change is that the young
adolescent often becomes focused on his or her body.
F Before adolescence, children's thinking is dominated by a need to have a concrete example for
any problem that they solve. Their thinking is constrained to what is real and physical. During
adolescence, young people begin to recognize and understand abstractions. The adolescent must
adjust to increased cognitive demands at school. Adults see high school in part as a place where
adolescents prepare for adult roles and responsibilities and in part as preparatory for further
education. School curricula are frequently dominated by inclusion of more abstract, demanding
material, regardless of whether the adolescents have achieved formal thought. Since not all
adolescents make the intellectual transition at the same rate, demands for abstract thinking prior to
achievement of that ability may be frustrating.
G During adolescence, as teens develop increasingly complex knowledge systems and a sense of
self, they also adopt an integrated set of values and morals. During the early stages of moral
development, parents provide their child with a structured set of rules of what is right and wrong,
what is acceptable and unacceptable. Eventually the adolescent must assess the parents' values as
they come into conflict with values expressed by peers and other segments of society. To reconcile
differences, the adolescent restructures those beliefs into a personal ideology.
H The adolescent must develop expanded verbal skills. As adolescents mature intellectually, as they
face increased school demands, and as they prepare for adult roles, they must develop new verbal
skills to accommodate more complex concepts and tasks. Their limited language of childhood is no
longer adequate. Adolescents may appear less competent because of their inability to express
themselves meaningfully.
I The adolescent must establish emotional and psychological independence from his or her parents.
Childhood is marked by strong dependence on one's parents. Adolescents may yearn to keep that
safe, secure, supportive, dependent relationship. Yet, to be an adult implies a sense of
independence, of autonomy, of being one's own person. Adolescents may vacillate between their
desire for dependence and their need to be independent. In an attempt to assert their need for
independence and individuality, adolescents may respond with what appears to be hostility and
lack of cooperation.
J Adolescents do not progress through these multiple developmental tasks separately. At any given
time, adolescents may be dealing with several. Further, the centrality of specific developmental
tasks varies with early, middle, and late periods of the transition.
Questions 1-6
Match the following characteristics with the correct stages of the adolescent.
Write the correct letter, A, B or C, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.
A early adolescence
B middle adolescence
C later adolescence
1 interested in the opposite sex
2 exposure to danger
3 the same as others
4 beginning to form individual thinking without family context
5 less need approval of friends
6 intellectual booming
Questions 7-10
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below.
Write the correct letters, A-F, in boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet.
7 One of Havighurst's research
8 High school courses
9 Adolescence is time when young people
10 The developmental speed of thinking patterns
List of the statements
A form personal identity with a set of moral and values
B develops a table and productive peer relationships
C are designed to be more challenging than some can accept
D varies from people to people
E focuses on creating self image
F become an extension of their parents

Questions 11-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? Write your answers in
boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet

11 The adolescent lacks the ability of thinking abstractly.
12 Adolescents may have deficit in their language ability.
13 The adolescent experiences a transition from reliance on his parents to independence.

2015
1 B 2 B 3 A 4 A
5 C 6 B 7 E 8 C
9 A 10 D 11 FALSE 12 TRUE
13 TRUE
S1296108
Passage Backgrounds
S1.
Learning By Examples
A Learning theory is rooted in the work of Ivan Pavlov, the famous scientist who discover and documented the
principles governing how animals (humans included) learn in the 1900s. Two basic kinds of learning or
conditioning occur, one of which is famously known as the classical condition. Classical conditioning happens
when an animal learns to associate a neutral stimulus (signal) with a stimulus that has intrinsic meaning based
on how closely in time the two stimuli are presented. The classic example of classical conditioning is a dog's
ability to associate the sound of a bell (something that originally has no meaning to the dog) with the
presentation of food (something that has a lot of meaning for the dog) a few moments later. Dogs are able to
learn the association between bell and food, and will salivate immediately after hearing the bell once this
connection has been made. Years of learning research have led to the creation of a highly precise learning
theory that can be used to understand and predict how and under what circumstances most any animal will
learn, including human beings, and eventually help people figure out how to change their behaviors.
B Role models are a popular notion for guiding child development, but in recent years very interesting
research has been done on learning by example in other animals. If the subject of animal learning is taught
very much in terms of classical or operant conditioning, it places too much emphasis on how we allow animals
to learn and not enough on how they are equipped to learn. To teach a course of mine I have been dipping
profitably into a very interesting and accessible compilation of papers on social learning in mammals,
including chimps and human children, edited by Heyes and Galef.
C The research reported in one paper started with a school field trip to Israel to a pine forest where many pine
cones were discovered, stripped to the central core. So the investigation started with no weighty theoretical
intent, but was directed at finding out what was eating the nutritious pine seeds and how they managed to get
them out of the cones. The culprit proved to be the versatile and athletic black rat (Rattus) and the technique
was to bite each cone scale off at its base, in sequence from base to tip following the spiral growth pattern of
the cone.
D Urban black rats were found to lack the skill and were unable to learn it even if housed with experiences
cone strippers. However, infants of urban mothers cross fostered to stripper mothers acquired the skill,
whereas infants of stripper mothers fostered by an urban mother could not. Clearly the skill had to be learned
from the mother. Further elegant experiments showed that naive adults could develop the skill if they were
provided with cones from which the first complete spiral of scales had been removed, rather like our new
photocopier which you can word out how to use once someone has shown you how to switch it on. In case of
rats, the youngsters take cones away from the mother when she is still feeding on them, allowing them to
acquire the complete stripping skill.
E A good example of adaptive bearing we might conclude, but let's see the economies. This was determined by
measuring oxygen uptake of a rat stripping a cone in a metabolic chamber to calculate energetic cost and
comparing it with the benefit of the pine seeds measured by calorimeter. The cost proved to be less than 10%
of the energetic value of the cone. An acceptable profit margin.
F A paper in 1996 Animal Behavior by Bednekoff and Balda provides a different view of the adaptiveness of
social learning. It concerns the seed catching behavior of Clark's nutcracker (Nucifraga Columbiana) and the
Mexican jay (Aphelocoma ultramarine). The former is a specialist, catching 30,000 or so seeds in scattered
locations that it will recover over the months of winter, the Mexican jay will also cache food but is much less
dependent upon this than the nutcracker. The two species also differ in their social structure, the nutcracker
being rather solitary while the jay forages in social groups.
G The experiment is to discover not just whether a bird can remember where it hid a seed but also if it can
remember where it saw another bird hide a seed. The design is slightly comical with a cacher bird wandering
about a room with lots of holes in the floor hiding food in some of the holes, while watched by an observer
bird perched in a cage. Two days later cachers and observers are tested for their discovery rate against an
estimated random performance. In the role of cacher, not only nutcracker but also the less specialized jay
performed above chance; more surprisingly, however, jay observers were as successful as jay cachers whereas
nutcracker observers did no better than chance. It seems that, whereas the nutcracker is highly adapted at
remembering where it hid its own seeds, the social living Mexican jay is more adept at remembering, and so
exploiting, the caches of others.
Questions 1 - 4
Reading Passage has seven paragraphs, A - G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A - G, in boxes 1 - 4 on your answer sheet.
1 a comparison between ratslearning and human learning
2 a reference to the earliest study in animal learning
3 the discovery of who stripped the pine cone
4 a description of a cost-effectiveness experiment

Questions 5 - 8
In boxes 5 - 8 on your answer sheet write

5 The field trip to Israel was to investigate how black rats learn to strip pine cones.
6 The pine cones were stripped from bottom to top by black rats.
7 It can be learned from other relevant experiences to use a photocopier.
8 Stripping the pine cones is an instinct of the black rats.

Questions 9 - 13
Complete the summary below using words from the box.
Write your answers in boxes 9 - 13 on your answer sheet.
While the Nutcracker is more able to cache see, the Jay relies 9........................on caching food and is thus less
specialized in this ability, but more 10......................... To study their behavior of caching and finding their caches,
an experiment was designed and carried out to test these two birds for their ability to remember where they hid
the seeds.
In the experiment, the cacher bird hid seeds in the ground while the other 11......................... As a result, the
Nutcracker and the Mexican Jay showed different performance in the role of 12........................ at finding the
seeds---the observing 13........................ didn't do as well as its counterpart.
A less B more C solitary D social
E cacher F observer G remembered H watched
I Jay J Nutcracker

2015
1 D 2 A 3 C 4 E
5 FALSE 6 TRUE 7 TRUE 8 FALSE
9 less 10 social 11 watched 12 observer
13 Nutcracker
S1312706
Passage Backgrounds
S1.
Going Bananas
A The world's favourite fruit could disappear forever in 10 years' time. The banana is among the world's oldest crops.
Agricultural scientists believe that the first edible banana was discovered around ten thousand years ago. It has been at an
evolutionary standstill ever since it was first propagated in the jungles of South-East Asia at the end of the last ice age. Normally
the wild banana, a giant jungle herb called Musa acuminata, contains a mass of hard seeds that make the fruit virtually inedible.
But now and then, hunter-gatherers must have discovered rare mutant plants that produced seedless, edible fruits. Geneticists
now know that the vast majority of these soft-fruited plants resulted from genetic accidents that gave their cells three copies of
each chromosome instead of the usual two. This imbalance prevents seeds and pollen from developing normally, rendering the
mutant plants sterile. And that is why some scientists believe the world's most popular fruit could be doomed. It lacks the genetic
diversity to fight off pests and diseases that are invading the banana plantations of Central America and the small-holdings of
Africa and Asia alike.
B In some ways, the banana today resembles the potato before blight brought famine to Ireland a century and a half ago. But "it
holds a lesson for other crops, too", says Emile Frison, top banana at the International Network for the Improvement of Banana
and Plantain in Montpellier, France. "The state of the banana", Frison warns, "can teach a broader lesson: the increasing
standardisation of food crops round the world is threatening their ability to adapt and survive."
C The first Stone Age plant breeders cultivated these sterile freaks by replanting cuttings from their stems. And the
descendants of those original cuttings are the bananas we still eat today. Each is a virtual clone, almost devoid of
genetic diversity. And that uniformity makes it ripe for disease like no other crop on Earth. Traditional varieties of
sexually reproducing crops have always had a much broader genetic base, and the genes will recombine in new
arrangements in each generation. This gives them much greater flexibility in evolving responses to disease - and far
more genetic resources to draw on in the face of an attack. But that advantage is fading fast, as growers increasingly
plant the same few, high-yielding varieties. Plant breeders work feverishly to maintain resistance in these
standardized crops. Should these efforts falter, yields of even the most productive crop could swiftly crash. "When
some pest or disease comes along, severe epidemics can occur," says Geoff Hawtin, director of the Rome-based
International Plant Genetic Resources Institute.
D The banana is an excellent case in point. Until the 1950s, one variety, the Gros Michel, dominated the world's
commercial banana business. Found by French botanists in Asian the 1820s, the Gros Michel was by all accounts a
fine banana, richer and sweeter than today's standard banana and without the latte's bitter aftertaste when green. But
it was vulnerable to a soil fungus that produced a wilt known as Panama disease. "Once the fungus gets into the soil
it remains there for many years. There is nothing farmers can do. Even chemical spraying won't get rid of it," says
Rodomiro Ortiz, director of the Inter-national Institute for Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria. So plantation
owners played a running game, abandoning infested fields and moving to "clean" land - until they ran out of clean
land in the 1950s and had to abandon the Gros Michel. Its successor, and still the reigning commercial king, is the
Cavendish banana, a 19th-century British discovery from southern China. The Cavendish is resistant to Panama
disease and, as a result, it literally saved the international banana industry. During the 1960s, it replaced the Gros
Michel on supermarket shelves. If you buy a banana today, it is almost certainly a Cavendish. But even so, it is a
minority in the world's banana crop.
E Half a billion people in Asia and Africa depend on bananas. Bananas provide the largest source of calories and are eaten daily. Its
name is synonymous with food. But the day of reckoning may be coming for the Cavendish and its indigenous kin. Another
fungal disease, black Sigatoka, has become a global epidemic since its first appearance in Fiji in 1963. Left to itself, black Sigatoka -
which causes brown wounds on leaves and premature fruit ripening - cuts fruit yields by 50 to 70 per cent and reduces the
productive lifetime of banana plants from 30 years to as little as 2 or 3. Commercial growers keep Sigatoka at bay by a massive
chemical assault. Forty sprayings of fungicide a year is typical. But despite the fungicides, diseases such as black Sigatoka are getting
more and more difficult to control. "As soon as you bring in a new fungicide, they develop resistance," says Frison. "One thing we
can be sure of is that the Sigatoka won't lose in this battle." Poor farmers, who cannot afford chemicals, have it even worse. They
can do little more than watch their plants die. "Most of the banana fields in Amazonia have already been destroyed by the disease,"
says Luadir Gasparotto, Brazil's leading banana pathologist with the government research agency EMBRAPA. Production is
likely to fall by 70 percent as the disease spreads, he predicts. The only option will be to find a new variety.
F But how? Almost all edible varieties are susceptible to the diseases, so growers cannot simply change to a different banana. With
most crops, such a threat would unleash an army of breeders, scouring the world for resistant relatives whose traits they can breed
into commercial varieties. Not so with the banana. Because all edible varieties are sterile, bringing in new genetic traits to help
cope with pests and diseases is nearly impossible. Nearly, but not totally. Very rarely, a sterile banana will experience a genetic
accident that allows an almost normal seed to develop, giving breeders a tiny window for improvement. Breeders at the
Honduran Foundation of Agricultural Research have tried to exploit this to create disease-resistant varieties. Further
backcrossing with wild bananas yielded a new seedless banana resistant to both black Sigatoka and Panama disease.
G Neither Western supermarket consumers nor peasant growers like the new hybrid. Some accuse it of tasting more like an
apple than a banana. Not surprisingly, the majority of plant breeders have till now turned their backs on the banana and got to
work on easier plants. And commercial banana companies are now washing their hands of the whole breeding effort, preferring
to fund a search for new fungicides instead. "We supported a breeding programme for 40 years, but it wasn't able to develop an
alternative to Cavendish. It was very expensive and we got nothing back," says Ronald Romero, head of research at Chiquita,
one of the Big Three companies that dominate the international banana trade.
H Last year, a global consortium of scientists led by Frison announced plans to sequence the banana genome within five years. It
would be the first edible fruit to be sequenced. Well, almost edible. The group will actually be sequencing inedible wild bananas
from East Asia because many of these are resistant to black Sigatoka. If they can pinpoint the genes that help these wild varieties to
resist black Sigatoka, the protective genes could be introduced into laboratory tissue cultures of cells from edible varieties. These
could then be propagated into new, resistant plants and passed on to farmers.
I It sounds promising, but the big banana companies have, until now, refused to get involved in GM research for fear of
alienating their customers. "Biotechnology is extremely expensive and there are serious questions about consumer acceptance,"
says David McLaughlin, Chiquita's senior director for environmental affairs. With scant funding from the companies, the banana
genome researchers are focusing on the other end of the spectrum. Even if they can identify the crucial genes, they will be a long
way from developing new varieties that smallholders will find suitable and affordable. But whatever biotechnology's academic
interest, it is the only hope for the banana. Without banana production worldwide will head into a tailspin. We may even see the
extinction of the banana as both a lifesaver for hungry and impoverished Africans and as the most popular product on the world's
supermarket shelves.
Question 1-3
Complete the sentences below with NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage.
Banana was first eaten as a fruit by humans almost 1........................ years ago.
Banana was first planted in 2........................ .
Wild banana's taste is adversely affected by its 3........................ .

Question 4-10
Look at the following statements (Questions 4-10) and the list of people below.
Match each statement with the correct person, A-F.
Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 4-10 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
4 A Pest invasion may seriously damage banana industry.
5 The effect of fungal infection in soil is often long-lasting.
6 A commercial manufacturer gave up on breeding bananas for disease resistant species.
7 Banana disease may develop resistance to chemical sprays.
8 A banana disease has destroyed a large number of banana plantations.
9 Consumers would not accept genetically altered crop.
10 Lessons can be learned from bananas for other crops.
List of people
A Rodomiro
B David Mclaughlin
C Emile Frison
D Ronald Romero
E Luadir Gasparotto
F Geoff Hawtin
Question 11-13
TURE if the statement agrees with the information

11 Banana is the oldest known fruit.
12 Gros Michel is still being used as a commercial product.
13 Banana is a main food in some countries.

2015
1 ten thousand 2 South-East Asia 3 hard seeds/seeds 4 F
5 A 6 D 7 C 8 E
9 B 10 C 11 NOT GIVEN 12 FAISE
13 TRUE
S2230101
Passage Backgrounds
S2.
Italian Architect
A new exhibition celebrates Palladio's architecture 500 years on.
A VICENZA is a pleasant, prosperous city in the Veneto, 60km west of Venice. Its grand families
settled and farmed the area from the 16th century. But its principal claim to fame is Andrea
Palladio, who is such an influential architect that a neoclassical style is known as Palladian. The
city is a permanent exhibition of some of his finest buildings, and as he was born - in Padua, to be
precise - 500 years ago, the International Centre for the Study of Palladio's Architecture has an
excellent excuse for mounting la grande mostra, the big show.
B The exhibition has the special advantage of being held in one of Palladio's buildings, Palazzo
Barbaran da Porto. Its bold faade is a mixture of rustication and decoration set between two
rows of elegant columns. On the second floor the pediments are alternately curved or pointed, a
Palladian trademark. The harmonious proportions of the atrium at the entrance lead through to a
dramatic interior of fine fireplaces and painted ceilings. Palladio's design is simple, clear and not
over-crowded. The show has been organised on the same principles, according to Howard Burns,
the architectural historian who co-curated it.
C Palladio's father was a miller who settled in Vicenza, where the young Andrea was apprenticed
to a skilled stonemason. How did a humble miller's son become a world renowned architect? The
answer in the exhibition is that, as a young man, Palladio excelled at carving decorative
stonework on columns, doorways and fireplaces. He was plainly intelligent, and lucky enough to
come across a rich patron, Gian Giorgio Trissino, a landowner and scholar, who organised his
education, taking him to Rome in the 1540s, where he studied the masterpieces of classical
Roman and Greek architecture and the work of other influential architects of the time, such as
Donato Bramante and Raphael.
D Mr Burns argues that social mobility was also important. Entrepreneurs, prosperous from
agriculture in the Veneto, commissioned the promising local architect to design their country
villas and their urban mansions. In Venice the aristocracy were anxious to co-opt talented artists,
and Palladio was given the chance to design the buildings that have made him famous - the
churches of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Redentore, both easy to admire because they can be
seen from the city's historical centre across a stretch of water.
E He tried his hand at bridges - his unbuilt version of the Rialto Bridge was decorated with the
large pediment and columns of a temple - and, after a fire at the Ducal Palace, he offered an
alternative design which bears an uncanny resemblance to the Banqueting House in Whitehall in
London. Since it was designed by Inigo Jones, Palladio's first foreign disciple, this is not as
surprising as it sounds.
F Jones, who visited Italy in 1614, bought a trunk full of the master's architectural drawings; they
passed through the hands of the Dukes of Burlington and Devonshire before settling at the Royal
Institute of British Architects in 1894. Many are now on display at Palazzo Barbaran. What they
show is how Palladio drew on the buildings of ancient Rome as models. The major theme of both
his rural and urban building was temple architecture, with a strong pointed pediment supported
by columns and approached by wide steps.
G Palladio's work for rich landowners alienates unreconstructed critics on the Italian left, but
among the papers in the show are designs for cheap housing in Venice. In the wider world,
Palladio's reputation has been nurtured by a text he wrote and illustrated, "Quattro Libri
dell'Architettura". His influence spread to St Petersburg and to Charlottesville in Virginia, where
Thomas Jefferson commissioned a Palladian villa he called Monticello.
H Vicenza's show contains detailed models of the major buildings and is leavened by portraits of
Palladio's teachers and clients by Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto; the paintings of his Venetian
buildings are all by Canaletto, no less. This is an uncompromising exhibition; many of the
drawings are small and faint, and there are no sideshows for children, but the impact of
harmonious lines and satisfying proportions is to impart in a viewer a feeling of benevolent calm.
Palladio is history's most therapeutic architect.
I "Palladio, 500 Anni: La Grande Mostra" is at Palazzo Barbaran da Porto, Vicenza, until January
6th 2009. The exhibition continues at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, from January 31st to
April 13th, and travels afterwards to Barcelona and Madrid.

Questions 1-7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? Write your answers in
boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet

1 the building where the exhibition is staged has been newly renovated
2 Palazzo Barbaran da Porto typically represent the Palladio's design
3 Palladio's father worked as an architect
4 Palladio's family refused to pay for his architectural studies
5 Palladio's alternative design for the Ducal Palace in Venice was based on an English building
6 Palladio designed both wealthy and poor people
7 the exhibition includes painting of people by famous artists

Questions 8-13
Answer the question below
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
8 What job was Palladio's training for before he became an architect?
9 Who arranged Palladio's architectural studies?
10 Who was the first non-Italian architect influenced by Palladio?
11 What type of Ancient Roman building most heavily influenced Palladio's work?
12 What did Palladio write that strengthened his reputation?
13 In the writer's opinion, what feeling will visitors to the exhibition experience?

2015
1 NOT GIVEN 2 TRUE 3 FALSE 4 NOT GIVEN
5 TRUE 6 TRUE 7 TRUE 8 Stonemason
9 Gian Giorgio 10 Inigo Jones 11 Temple 12 Quattro Libri
Trissino dell Architettura
13 Benevolent calm
S1286910
Passage Backgrounds
S1.
Organic Farming and Chemical Fertilisers
A The world's population continues to climb. And despite the rise of high-tech agriculture, 800 million
people don't get enough to eat. Clearly it's time to rethink the food we eat and where it comes from.
Feeding 9 billion people will take more than the same old farming practices, especially if we want to do
it without felling rainforests and planting every last scrap of prairie. Finding food for all those people will
tax farmers' and researchers' ingenuity to the limit. Yet already, precious aquifers that provide irrigation
water for some of the world's most productive farmlands are drying up or filling with seawater, and
arable land in China is eroding to create vast dust storms that redden sunsets as far away as North
America. "Agriculture must become the solution to environmental problems in 50 years. If we don't
have systems that make the environment better - not just hold the fort - then we're in trouble," says
Kenneth Cassman, an agronomist at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. That view was echoed in
January by the Curry report, a government panel that surveyed the future of farming and food in
Britain.
B It's easy to say agriculture has to do better, but what should this friendly farming of the future look like?
Concerned consumers come up short at this point, facing what appears to be an ever-widening
ideological divide. In one corner are the techno-optimists who put their faith in genetically modified
crops, improved agrochemicals and computer-enhanced machinery; in the other are advocates of
organic farming, who reject artificial chemicals and embrace back-to-nature techniques such as
composting. Both sides cite plausible science to back their claims to the moral high ground, and both
bring enough passion to the debate for many people to come away thinking we're faced with a stark
choice between two mutually incompatible options.
C Not so. If you take off the ideological blinkers and simply ask how the world can produce the food it
needs with the least environmental cost, a new middle way opens. The key is sustainability: whatever
we do must not destroy the capital of soil and water we need to keep on producing. Like today's organic
farming, the intelligent farming of the future should pay much more attention to the health of its soil
and the ecosystem it's part of. But intelligent farming should also make shrewd and locally appropriate
use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. The most crucial ingredient in this new style of agriculture is
not chemicals but information about what's happening in each field and how to respond. Yet ironically,
this key element may be the most neglected today.
D Clearly, organic farming has all the warm, fuzzy sentiment on its side. An approach that eschews
synthetic chemicals surely runs no risk of poisoning land and water. And its emphasis on building up
natural ecosystems seems to be good for everyone. Perhaps these easy assumptions explain why sales of
organic food across Europe are increasing by at least 50 per cent per year.
E Going organic sounds idyllic - but it's naive, too. Organic agriculture has its own suite of
environmental costs, which can be worse than those of conventional farming, especially if it were to
become the world norm. But more fundamentally, the organic versus-chemical debate focuses on the
wrong question. The issue isn't what you put into a farm, but what you get out of it, both in terms of
crop yields and pollutants, and what condition the farm is in when you're done.
F Take chemical fertilisers, which deliver nitrogen, an essential plant nutrient, to crops along with some
phosphorus and potassium. It is a mantra of organic farming that these fertilisers are unwholesome, and
plant nutrients must come from natural sources. But in fact the main environmental damage done by
chemical fertilisers as opposed to any other kind is through greenhouse gases-carbon dioxide from the
fossil fuels used in their synthesis and nitrogen oxides released by their degradation. Excess nitrogen from
chemical fertilisers can pollute groundwater, but so can excess nitrogen from organic manures.
G On the other hand, relying solely on chemical fertilisers to provide soil nutrients without doing other
things to build healthy soil is damaging. Organic farmers don't use chemical fertilisers, so they are very
good at building soil fertility by working crop residues and manure into the soil, rotating grain with
legumes that fix atmospheric nitrogen, and other techniques.
H This generates vital soil nutrients and also creates a soil that is richer in organic matter, so it retains
nutrients better and is hospitable to the crop's roots and creatures such as earthworms that help maintain
soil fertility. Such soil also holds water better and therefore makes more efficient use of both rainfall and
irrigation water. And organic matter ties up C02 in the soil, helping to offset emissions from burning
fossil fuels and reduce global warming.
I Advocates of organic farming like to point out that fields managed in this way can produce yields just
as high as fields juiced up with synthetic fertilisers. For example, Bill Liebhardt, research manager at the
Rodale Institute in Kutztown, Pennsylvania recently compiled the results of such comparisons for corn,
wheat, soybeans and tomatoes in the US and found that the organic fields averaged between 94 and 100
per cent of the yields of nearby conventional crops.
J But this optimistic picture tells only half the story. Farmers can't grow such crops every year if they
want to maintain or build soil nutrients without synthetic fertilisers. They need to alternate with
soil-building crops such as pasture grasses and legumes such as alfalfa. So in the long term, the yield of
staple grains such as wheat, rice and corn must go down. This is the biggest cost of organic farming.
Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, estimates that if farmers worldwide
gave up the 80 million tonnes of synthetic fertiliser they now use each year, total grain production
would fall by at least half. Either farmers would have to double the amount of land they cultivate - at
catastrophic cost to natural habitat - or billions of people would starve.
K That doesn't mean farmers couldn't get by with less fertiliser. Technologically advanced farmers in
wealthy countries, for instance, can now monitor their yields hectare by hectare, or even more finely,
throughout a huge field. They can then target their fertiliser to the parts of the field where it will do the
most good, instead of responding to average conditions. This increases yield and decreases fertiliser use.
Eventually, farmers may incorporate long-term weather forecasts into their planning as well, so that they
can cut back on fertiliser use when the weather is likely to make harvests poor anyway, says Ron Olson,
an agronomist with Cargill Fertilizer in Tampa, Florida.
L Organic techniques certainly have their benefits, especially for poor farmers. But strict "organic
agriculture", which prohibits certain technologies and allows others, isn't always better for the
environment. Take herbicides, for example. These can leach into waterways and poison both wildlife
and people. Just last month, researchers led by Tyrone Hayes at the University of California at Berkeley
found that even low concentrations of atrazine, the most commonly used weedkiller in the US, can
prevent frog tadpoles from developing properly.

Questions 1-4
Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-D) with opinions or deeds below.
Write the appropriate letters, A-D, in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.
A Vaclav Smil
B Bill Liebhardt
C Kenneth Cassman
D Ron Olson
1 Use of chemical fertilizer can be optimised by combining weather information.
2 Organic farming yield is nearly equal to traditional ones.
3 Better agricultural setting is a significant key to solve environmental tough nut.
4 Substantial production loss would happen in case all farmers shifted from using synthetic
fertiliser.
Questions 5-9
YES if the statement is true

NO if the statement is false
5 Increasing population, draining irrigation, eroding farmland push agricultural industry to
extremity.
6 There are only two options for farmers; they use chemical fertiliser or natural approach.
7 Chemical fertilizer currently are more expensive than the natural fertilisers.
8 In order to keep nutrient in the soil, organic farmers need to rotate planting method.
9 "organic agriculture" is the way that environment-damaging technologies are all strictly
forbidden.
Questions 10-13
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using NO MORE THAN
TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.
Write your answer in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.
Several 10........................ approaches need to be applied in order that global population wouldn't go
starved. A team called 11........................ repeated the viewpoint of a scholar by a survey in British
farming. More and more European farmers believe in 12........................ farming these years. The
argument of organic 13........................ seems in an inaccurate direction.

2015
1 D 2 B 3 C 4 A
5 YES 6 NO 7 NOT GIVEN 8 YES
9 NO 10 farming 11 curry 12 natural/organic
13 chemical
S3298602
Passage Backgrounds
S3.
Mechanisms of Linguistic Change
A The changes that have caused the most disagreement are those in pronunciation. We have
various sources of evidence for the pronunciations of earlier times, such as the spellings, the
treatment of words borrowed from other languages or borrowed by them, the descriptions of
contemporary grammarians and spelling-reformers, and the modern pronunciations in all the
languages and dialects concerned. From the middle of the sixteenth century, there are in England
writers who attempt to describe the position of the speech-organs for the production of English
phonemes, and who invent what are in effect systems of phonetic symbols. These various kinds of
evidence, combined with a knowledge of the mechanisms of speech-production, can often give us
a very good idea of the pronunciation of an earlier age, though absolute certainty is never possible.
B When we study the pronunciation of a language over any period of a few generations or more,
we find there are always large-scale regularities in the changes: for example, over a certain period
of time, just about all the long [a:] vowels in a language may change into long [e:] vowels, or all the
[b] consonants in a certain position (for example at the end of a word) may change into [p]
consonants. Such regular changes are often called sound laws. There are no universal sound laws
(even though sound laws often reflect universal tendencies), but simply particular sound laws for
one given language (or dialect) at one given period.
C It is also possible that fashion plays a part in the process of change. It certainly plays a part in
the spread of change: one person imitates another, and people with the most prestige are most
likely to be imitated, so that a change that takes place in one social group may be imitated (more or
less accurately) by speakers in another group. When a social group goes up or down in the world,
its pronunciation may gain or lose prestige. It is said that, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, the
upper-class pronunciation of Russian, which had formerly been considered desirable, became on
the contrary an undesirable kind of accent to have, so that people tried to disguise it. Some of the
changes in accepted English pronunciation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have been
shown to consist in the replacement of one style of pronunciation by another style already existing,
and it is likely that such substitutions were a result of the great social changes of the period: the
increased power and wealth of the middle classes, and their steady infiltration upwards into the
ranks of the landed gentry, probably carried elements of middle-class pronunciation into
upper-class speech.
D A less specific variant of the argument is that the imitation of children is imperfect: they copy
their parents' speech, but never reproduce it exactly. This is true, but it is also true that such
deviations from adult speech are usually corrected in later childhood. Perhaps it is more
significant that even adults show a certain amount of random variation in their pronunciation
phoneme, even if the phonetic context is kept unchanged. This, however, cannot explain changes
in pronunciation unless it can be shown that there is some systematic trend in the failures of
imitation: if they are merely random deviations they will cancel one another out and there will be
no net change in the language.
E One such force which is often invoked is the principle of ease, or minimization of effort. The
change from fussy to fuzzy would be an example of assimilation, which is a very common kind of
change. Assimilation is the changing of a sound under the influence of a neighbouring one. For
example, the word scant was once skamtbut the /m/ has been changed to /n/ under the influence
of the following /t/. Greater efficiency has hereby been achieved, because /n/ and /t/ are articulated
in the same place (with the tip of the tongue against the teeth-ridge), whereas /m/ is articulated
elsewhere (with the two lips). So the place of articulation of the nasal consonant has been changed
to conform with that of the following plosive. A more recent example of the same kind of thing is
the common pronunciation of football as foopball.
F Assimilation is not the only way in which we change our pronunciation in order to increase
efficiency. It is very common for consonants to be lost at the end of a word: in Middle English,
word-final [-n] was often lost in unstressed syllables, so that baken "to bake" changed from
['ba:kn] to ['ba:K], and later to [ba:k]. Consonant-clusters are often simplified. At one time there
was a [t] in words like castle and Christmas, and an initial [k] in words like knight and know.
Sometimes a whole syllable is dropped out when two successive syllables begin with the same
consonant (haplology): a recent example is temporary, which in Britain is often pronounced as if it
were temporary.
Questions 27-30
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
The pronunciation of living language undergo changes throughout thousands of years. Large scale
regular Changes are usually called 27......................... . There are three reasons for these changes.
Firstly, the influence of one language on another; when one person imitates another pronunciation
(the most prestige's), the imitation always partly involving factor of 28........................ . Secondly, the
imitations of children from adults' language sometimes are 29........................, and may also contribute
to this change if there are insignificant deviations tough later they may be corrected. Finally, for
those random variations in pronunciation, the deeper evidence lies in the 30........................ or
minimization of effort.
Questions 31-37

31 It is impossible for modern people to find pronunciation of words in an earlier age.
32 The great change of language in Russian history is related to the rising status and fortune of
middle classes.
33 All the children learn speeches from adults while they assume that certain language is difficult
to imitate exactly.
34 Pronunciation with causal inaccuracy will not exert big influence on language changes.
35 The link of 'mt' can be influenced being pronounced as 'nt'.
36 The [g] in gnat not being pronounced will not be spelt out in the future.
37 The sound of 'temporary' cannot wholly present its spelling.

Questions 38-40
Look at the following sentences and the list of statements below.
Match each statement with the correct sentence, A-D.
Write the correct letter, A-D, in boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet.
A since the speakers can pronounce it with less effort.
B assimilation of a sound under the influence of a neighbouring one.
C it is a trend for changes in pronunciation in a large scale in a given period.
D because the speaker can pronounce [n] and [t] both in the same time.
38 As a consequence, 'b' will be pronounced as 'p'
39 The pronunciation of [mt] changed to [nt]
40 The omit of 't' in the sound of Christmas

2015
27 sound laws 28 fashion 29 imperfect 30 principle of ease
31 FALSE 32 FALSE 33 NOT GIVEN 34 TRUE
35 TRUE 36 NOT GIVEN 37 TRUE 38 C
39 B 40 A
S2200109
Passage Backgrounds
S2.
The beginning of intelligence
A No one doubts that intelligence develops as children grow older. Yet the concept of intelligence has
proved both quite difficult to define in unambiguous terms and unexpectedly controversial in some
respects. Although, at one level, there seem to be almost as many definitions of intelligence as people
who have tried to define it, there is broad agreement on two key features. That's, intelligence
involves the capacity not only to learn from experience but also to adapt to one's environment.
However, we cannot leave the concept there. Before turning to what is known about the development
of intelligence, it is necessary to consider whether we are considering the growth of one or many
skills. That question have been tackled in rather in rather different ways by psychometricians (
) and by developmentalists.
B The former group has examined the issue by determining how children's abilities on a wide range
of tasks intercorrelate, or go together. Statistical techniques have been used to find out whether the
patterns are best explained by one broad underlying capacity, general intelligence, or by a set of
multiple, relatively separate, special skills in domains such as verbal and visuospatial ability. While it
cannot be claimed that everyone agrees on what the results mean, most people now accept that for
practical purposes it is reasonable to suppose that both are involved. In brief, the evidence in favour
of some kind of general intellectual capacity is that people who are superior (or inferior) on one type
of task tend to be also superior (or inferior) on others. Moreover, general measures of intelligence
tend to have considerable powers to predict a person's performance on a wide range of tasks
requiring special skills. Nevertheless, it is plain that it is not at all uncommon for individuals to be
very good at some sorts of task and yet quite poor at some others.
C Furthermore the influences that affect verbal skills are not quite the same as those that affect other
skills. This approach to investigating intelligence is based on the nature of the task involved, but
studies of age-related changes show that this is not the only, or necessarily the most important,
approach. For instance, some decades ago, Horn and Cattell argued for differentiation between what
they termed 'fluid' and crysatallised' intelligence. Fluid abilities are best assessed by tests that
require mental manipulation of abstract symbols. Crystallised abilities, by contrast, reflect
knowledge of the environment in which we live and past experience of similar tasks; they may be
assessed by tests of comprehension and information. It seems that fluid abilities peak in early adult
life, whereas crystallised abilities increase up to advanced old age.
D Developmental studies also show that the interconnections between different skills vary with age.
Thus in the first year of life an interest in perceptual patterns is a major contributor to cognitive
abilities, whereas verbal abilities are more important later on. These findings seemed to suggest a
substantial lack of continuity between infancy and middle childhood. However, it is important to
realise that the apparent discontinuity will vary according to which of the cognitive skills were
assessed in infancy. It has been found that tests of coping with novelty do predict later intelligence.
These findings reinforce the view that young children's intellectual performance needs to be
assessed from their interest in and curiosity about the environment, and the extent to which this is
applied to new situations, as well as by standardized intelligence testing.

E These psychometric approaches have focused on children's increase in cognitive skills as they grow
older. Piaget ( ) brought about a revolution in the approach to cognitive
development through his arguments (backed up by observations) that the focus should be on the
thinking processes involved rather than on levels of cognitive achievement. These ideas of Piaget
gave rise to an immense body of research and it would be true to say that subsequent thinking has
been heavily dependent on his genius in opening up new ways of thinking about cognitive
development. Nevertheless, most of his concepts have had to be so radically revised, or rejected, that
his theory no longer provides an appropriate basis for thinking about cognitive development .To
appreciate why that is so, we need to focus on some rather different elements of Piaget's theorising.
F The first element, which has stood the test of time, is his view that the child is an active agent of
learning and of the importance of this activity in cognitive development. Numerous studies have
shown how infants actively scan their environment; how they prefer patterned to non-patterned
objects, how they choose novel over familiar stimuli, and how they explore their environment as if to
see how it works. Children's questions and comments vividly illustrate the ways in which they are
constantly constructing schemes of what they know and trying out their ideas of how to fit new
knowledge into those schemes or deciding that the schemes need modification. Moreover, a variety
of studies have shown that active experiences have a greater effect on learning than comparable
passive experiences. However, a second element concerns the notion that development proceeds
through a series of separate stages that have to be gone through step-by-step, in a set order, each of
which is characterized by a particular cognitive structure. That has turned out to be a rather
misleading way of thinking about cognitive development, although it is not wholly wrong.
Questions 27-30
Write the correct letter in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.
27 Most researchers accept that one feature of intelligence is the ability to
A change our behaviour according to our situation.
B react to others' behaviour patterns
C experiment with environmental features.
D cope with unexpected setbacks.
28 What have psychometricians used statistics for
A to find out if cooperative tasks are a useful tool in measuring certain skills
B to explore whether several abilities are involved in the development of intelligence
C to demonstrate that mathematical models can predict test results for different skills
D to discover whether common sense is fundamental to developing children' s abilities
29 Why are Horn and Cattell mentioned
A They disagreed about the interpretation of different intelligence tests.
B Their research concerned both linguistic and mathematical abilities.
C They were the first to prove that intelligence can be measured by testing a range of special skills.
D Their work was an example of research into how people's cognitive skills vary with age.
30 What was innovative about Piaget's research
A He refused to accept that children developed according to a set pattern.
B He emphasised the way children thought more than how well they did in tests.
C He used visually appealing materials instead of traditional intelligence tests.
D He studied children of all ages and levels of intelligence

Questions 31-36
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? Write your answers
in boxes 31-36 on your answer sheet
YES if the statement is true

NO if the statement is false
31 A surprising number of academics have come to the same conclusion about what the term intelligence
means.
32 A general test of intelligence is unlikely to indicate the level of performance in every type of task.
33 The elderly perform less well on comprehension tests than young adults.
34 We must take into account which skills are tested when comparing intelligence at different ages.
35 Piaget's work influenced theoretical studies more than practical research.
36 Piaget's emphasis on active learning has been discredited by later researchers.

Questions 37-40
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-I, below.
Researchers investigating the development of intelligence have shown that 37
skills become more significant with age. One good predictor of 38 intelligence is
the degree to which small children are 39 about their surroundings and how much
interest they show on finding themselves in an 40 setting.
A adult B practical C verbal
D spatial E inquisitive F uncertain
G academic H plentiful I unfamiliar

2015
27 A 28 B 29 D 30 B
31 NO 32 YES 33 NO 34 YES
35 NOT GIVEN 36 NO 37 C 38 A
39 E 40 I

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S3276311

Summary Paragraph Matching

Matching Multiple Choices

Psychology Of New Product Adoption

affect decision making.

As Kahneman and Tversky wrote, "losses loom larger than gains."

and shrank their desire to trade.

C Kahneman and Tversky

28 stated a theory which bears potential fault in application

purpose than alternative they are going to swap in

31 answered the reason why people don't replace existing products

In boxes 32-36 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

the chooser's offer.

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write your answers in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.

37 What does paragraph A illustrated in business creative venture

A above 70% products stored in warehouse

B only US packaged goods industry affected

C roughly half of new product business failed

D new products have long life span

A as more products stored on shelf

B being creative and innovative enough

C having more chain stores

D learning from famous company like Webvan

39 According to this passage, a number of products fail because of following reason

B They are not confident with their products.

C They are familiar with people's psychology state.

D They forget to mention the advantages of products.

Kahneman and Tversky

A about half of them are willing to change

B student are always to welcome new items

C 90% of both owners in neutral position

D only 10% of chocolate bar owner are willing to swap

S3276311 & Related Question Answers

32 FALSE 33 TRUE 34 NOT GIVEN 35 TRUE

Summary Paragraph Matching

Matching Multiple Choices

Traditional Farming System in Africa

Africa is allocated by the headman or headwoman of a village to people of either sex,

ownership patterns are becoming prevalent.

variously mixed combinations of annuals such as maize, pumpkins (Telflria occidentalis)

since it is considered provocative towards one's neighbours to mark boundaries in an

pollarded for the next citemene cycle.

vegetable produce is sold in local markets.

all but disappeared from Lake Mweru, apparently due to mismanagement.

an economically productive activity is not worthwhile because Luapulans fail to cooperate

have a good time!

may also be occasionally slaughtered for ceremonies or for entertaining important

of supporting the people in a sustainable manner.

everyone access to at least a moderate share of the total.

Write your answers in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

1 In Luapula land allocation is in accordance with .......................

3 During the second season, the last planted crop is .......................

4 Under suitable conditions, fruit trees are planted near .......................

Classify the following items with the correct description.

Write your answers in boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet.

5 be used in some unusual occasions, such as celebrations.

6 cannot thrive for being affected by the pests.

7 be the largest part of creating profit.

8 be sold beyond the local area.

In boxes 9-12 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information