STUDY CENTRE COURSES

SELF-STUDY TIPS
A
However difficult you find it to arrange
your time, it will pay off in the long run if F
you set aside a certain part of the day for Make use of equipment that is available to
studying - and stick to it. It is best to you. If you find a useful article in the
make a weekly allocation of your time, library, it is best to make a copy of the
making sure that you have enough left for relevant pages before you leave. Then,
recreational activities or simply to be when you get back to your study, you can
'with' yourself: reading a novel or mark the article and make any comments
watching a television programme. that you have in the margin.
B G
As part of your weekly schedule, it is also If you are working on a topic your teacher
advisable to consider exactly what you has set, but finding it hard to concentrate,
have to do in that week, and make sure it may be that you actually need to take
that you tackle the most significant tasks your mind right off it for a period of time.
first, leaving the easier or less urgent 'Airing the mind' can work wonders
areas of your work until later. sometimes. After a period away from the
task, having not thought about it at all,
C you may return to it refreshed and full of
On a physical level, make sure that you ideas.
have an area or space for studying. Don't
do it just anywhere. If you always study in H
the same place, preferably a room of your Similarly, it may help to discuss a topic
own, you will find it easier to adjust with other people, especially if you feel
mentally to the activity when you enter that you have insufficient ideas, or too
that area. You should have everything many disorganised ideas. Bring your topic
that you might need at hand. up in conversations at meal times or with
other students and see what they have to
D say. You don't want to copy their ideas
Make sure that all the physical equipment but listening to what they think about
that you use, such as a desk, chair etc. is something may well help you develop or
at a good height for you. If you use a refine your own thoughts.
personal computer,
there are plenty of guidelines available
from the government on posture, angles,
lighting and the like. Consult these and
avoid the typical student aches and
pains.

E
If you are doing a long essay or research
paper which involves the use of library
books or other articles, it helps to keep
details of the titles and authors on small
cards in a card box. It is also a good idea to
log these alphabetically so that you can
find them easily - rather like keeping
telephone numbers. It's all too easy to read
something and then forget where it came
from.
Questions 1-7
Reading Passage 2 has eight paragraphs, A-H.
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-H from the list of headings below..
Write the correct number i-xii, in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i Consult your teacher

ii Take a break
iii Make a timetable
iv Create a working space
v Sit comfortably
vi Study at home
vii Talk about your work
viii Photocopy important material
ix Catalogue references
x Use the library
xi Prioritise your work
xii Exercise regularly
Example Paragraph A Answer iii
1 Paragraph B
2 Paragraph C
3 Paragraph D
4 Paragraph E
5 Paragraph F
6 Paragraph G
7 Paragraph H

Questions 8-13
Look at the twelve descriptions of courses, A-L, on Reading Passage 2.
For which description are the following statements true?
Write the correct letter, A-L, in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.
8 This course would be useful for dealing with letters of complaint.
9 This course will help you use the libraries.
10 This course will improve your performance at interviews.
11 This course will help you with acknowledging your sources.
12 This course will help you improve your reading skills.
13 This course will help you improve your grammar.
 Solution for: STUDY CENTRE COURSES
Answer Table
1. xi 8. K

2. iv 9. C

3. v 10. I

4. ix 11. H

5. viii 12. G

6. ii 13. L

7. vii
PRIVATE SCHOOLS

Most countries’ education systems have had what you might call educational disasters,
but, sadly, in many areas of certain countries these ‘disasters’ are still evident today.
The English education system is unique due to the fact that there are still dozens of
schools which are known as private schools and they perpetuate privilege and social
division. Most countries have some private schools for the children of the wealthy;
England is able to more than triple the average number globally.
England has around 3,000 private schools and just under half a million children are
educated at them whilst some nine million children are educated at state schools. The
overwhelming majority of students at private schools also come from middle-class
families.
The result of this system is evident and it has much English history embedded within it.
The facts seem to speak for themselves. In the private system almost half the students
go on to University, whilst in the state system only about eight per cent make it to
further education. However, statistics such as these can be deceptive due to the fact
that middle-class children do better at examinations than working class ones, and most
of them stay on at school after 16. Private schools therefore have the advantage over
state schools as they are entirely ‘middle class’, and this creates an environment of
success where students work harder and apply themselves more diligently to their
school work.
Private schools are extortionately expensive, being as much as £18,000 a year at
somewhere such as Harrow or Eton, where Princes William and Harry attended, and at
least £8,000 a year almost everywhere else. There are many parents who are not
wealthy or even comfortably off but are willing to sacrifice a great deal in the cause of
their children’s schooling. It baffles many people as to why they need to spend such
vast amounts when there are perfectly acceptable state schools that don’t cost a
penny. One father gave his reasoning for sending his son to a private school, ‘If my son
gets a five-percent-better chance of going to University then that may be the difference
between success and failure.” It would seem to the average person that a £50,000
minimum total cost of second level education is a lot to pay for a five-percent-better
chance. Most children, given the choice, would take the money and spend it on more
enjoyable things rather than shelling it out on a school that is too posh for its own good
However, some say that the real reason that parents fork out the cash is prejudice: they
don’t want their little kids mixing with the “workers”, or picking up an undesirable
accent. In addition to this, it wouldn’t do if at the next dinner party all the guests were
boasting about sending their kids to the same place where the son of the third cousin of
Prince Charles is going, and you say your kid is going to the state school down the road,
even if you could pocket the money for yourself instead, and, as a result, be able to
serve the best Champagne with the smoked salmon and duck.
It is a fact, however, that at many of the best private schools, your money buys you
something. One school, with 500 pupils, has 11 science laboratories; another school
with 800 pupils, has 30 music practice rooms; another has 16 squash courts, and yet
another has its own beach. Private schools
spend £300 per pupil a year on investment in buildings and facilities; the state system
spends less than £50. On books, the ratio is 3 to 1.
One of the things that your money buys which is difficult to quantify is the appearance
of the school, the way it looks. Most private schools that you will find are set in
beautiful, well-kept country houses, with extensive grounds and gardens. In comparison
with the state schools, they tend to look like castles, with the worst of the state schools
looking like public lavatories, perhaps even tiled or covered in graffiti. Many may even
have an architectural design that is just about on the level of an industrial shed.
Question 1-7
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
1. The English educational system differs from the other ones because
A . it tries to make state and private equal.
B . more students are educated at private schools than state schools
C . it contributes to creating a class system within society.
D . it is more expensive to run
2. There are more private school children who go to university because
A . the lessons and teachers at the private schools are much better.
B . their parents often send their children to private schools
C . they have more teaching hours
D . the school create a successful environment.
3. A lot of parents often send their children to private schools
A .because they are not well-informed.
B . to show how much money they have to their friends
C . to increase their chances of succeeding in the university exams.
D . because of the better sports facilities.
4. It is suggested that some parents of children at private schools are
A . prejudiced and superficial.
B .more intelligent that those with children at state schools.
C .well-brought-up and cultivated.
D . overly protective.
5. Private school
A . always have their own beaches.
B . teach sports that state schools do not.
C . spend more money per student than stateschools.
D . spend more money on hiring good teachers.
6. writer thinks that private-school buildings
A . are very attractive and luxurious.
B .generally do not look very nice.
C . are too big for the amount of students who attend the school.
D . are not built to suit student’s needs.
7. In general, what do you think the writer’s opinion of private schools is?
A . It isn’t fair that those without money can’t attend them.
B . They divide social classes but they offer better facilities and a more creative environment.
C . There is little difference between private and state schools.
D . They have the best teachers.

Questions 8-13
Complete the sentences below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
The fact that there are so many private schools in England, in comparison to other
countries, makes the English educational system 8 Most students in these schools are
from 9...................................families. These students seem to do better at exams although statistics
can be 10....................................One of the advantages of private schools is that they seem to
provide students with a better, more positive environment that encourages them
to 11....................................themselves to their school work with more enthusiasm. A lot of not very
well-off parents make huge sacrifices for their children’s 12......................to help them go to
respectable universities. Unfortunately, many state school buildings sometimes have
the appearance of an industrial 13 ……………………. .
 Solution for: PRIVATE SCHOOLS
Answer Table
1. C 8. unique

2. D 9. middle-class

3. C 10. deceptive

4. A 11. apply

5. C 12. schooling

6. A 13. shed

7. B
Do literate women make better mothers?

Children in developing countries are healthier and more likely to survive past the age of
five when their mothers can read and write. Experts In public health accepted this idea
decades ago, but until now no one has been able to show that a woman's ability to read
in Itself Improves her children’s chances of survival.
Most literate women learnt to read In primary school, and the fact that a woman has
had an education may simply indicate her family’s wealth or that It values Its
children more highly. Now a long-term study carried out In Nicaragua has eliminated
these factors by showing that teaching reading to poor adult women, who would
otherwise have remained Illiterate, has a direct effect on their children’s health and
survival.
In 1979, the government of Nicaragua established a number of social programmes,
including a National Literacy Crusade. By 1985, about 300,000 Illiterate adults from all
over the country, many of whom had never attended primary school, had learnt how to
read, write and use numbers.
During this period, researchers from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the
Central American Institute of Health In Nicaragua, the National Autonomous University
of Nicaragua and the Costa Rican Institute of Health Interviewed nearly 3,000 women,
some of whom had learnt to read as children, some during the literacy crusade and
some who had never learnt at all. The women were asked how many children they had
given birth to and how many of them had died In Infancy. The research teams also
examined the surviving children to find out how well-nourished they were.
The Investigators' findings were striking. In the late 1970s, the infant mortality rate for
the children of Illiterate mothers was around 110 deaths per thousand live births. At this
point In their lives, those mothers who later went on to learn to read had a similar level
Of child mortality (105/1000). For women educated in primary school, however, the
Infant mortality rate was significantly lower, at 80 per thousand.
In 1985, after the National Literacy Crusade had ended, the infant mortality figures for
those who remained illiterate and for those educated In primary school remained more
or less unchanged. For those women who learnt to read through the campaign, the
infant mortality rate was 84 per thousand, an impressive 21 points lower than for those
women who were still Illiterate. The children of the newly-literate mothers were also
better nourished than those of women who could not read.
Why are the children of literate mothers better off? According to Peter Sandiford of the
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, no one Knows for certain. Child health was not on
the curriculum during the women’s lessons, so fie and his colleagues are looking at
other factors. They are working with the same group of 3,000 women, to try to find out
whether reading mothers make better use of hospitals and clinics, opt for smaller
families, exert more control at home, learn modern childcare
techniques more quickly, or whether they merely have more respect for themselves
and their children.
The Nicaraguan study may have important implications for governments and aid
agencies that need to know where to direct their resources. Sandiford says that there is
increasing evidence that female education, at any age, is "an important health
intervention in its own right’. The results of the study lend support to the World Bank's
recommendation that education budgets in developing countries should be increased,
not just to help their economies, but also to improve child health.
'We’ve known for a long time that maternal education is important,’ says John Cleland
of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. ‘But we thought that even if we
started educating girls today, we'd have to wait a generation for the pay off. The
Nicaraguan study suggests we may be able to bypass that.'
Cleland warns that the Nicaraguan crusade was special in many ways, and similar
campaigns elsewhere might not work as well. It is notoriously difficult to teach adults
skills that do not have an immediate impact on their everyday lives, and many literacy
campaigns in other countries have been much less successful. 'The crusade was part of
a larger effort to bring a better life to the people,’ says Cleland. Replicating these
conditions in other countries will be a major challenge for development workers.
Questions 1-5
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-J, below.
Write the correct letter, A-J, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.

The Nicaraguan National Literacy Crusade aimed to teach large

numbers of illiterate 1......to read and write.
Public health experts have known for many years that there is a connection between
child health and 2 …………………..
However, it has not previously been known whether these two factors were directly
linked or not. This question has been investigated by 3 in Nicaragua.
As a result, factors such as 4...........................and attitudes to children have been eliminated, and
it has been shown that 5...........................can in itself improve infant health and survival.

A child literacy B men and women C an international research team

D medical care E mortality F maternal literacy

G adults and children H paternal literacy I a National Literacy Crusade

J family wealth

Questions 6-11
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 6-11 on your answer sheet, write .
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

6 About a thousand of the women interviewed by the researchers had learnt to

read when they were children.
7 Before the National Literacy Crusade, illiterate women had approximately the
same levels of infant mortality as those who had learnt to read in primary school.
8 Before and after the National Literacy Crusade, the child mortality rate for the
illiterate women stayed at about 110 deaths for each thousand live births.
9 The women who had learnt to read through the National Literacy Crusade showed
the greatest change in infant mortality levels.
10 The women who had learnt to read through the National Literacy Crusade had the
lowest rates of child mortality.
11 After the National Literacy Crusade, the children of the women who remained
illiterate were found to be severely malnourished.

Questions 12-13
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Write the correct letters in boxes 12 and 13 on your answer sheet.
Which TWO important implications drawn from the Nicaraguan study are mentioned by the writer of
the passage?

A It is better to educate mature women than young girls.

B Similar campaigns in other countries would be equally successful.
C The effects of maternal literacy programmes can be seen very quickly.
D Improving child health can quickly affect a country’s economy.
E Money spent on female education will improve child health.
Solution for: Do literate women make better mothers?
Answer Table
1. B 8. YES

2. F 9. YES

3. C 10. NO

4. J 11. NOT GIVEN

5. F 12. C, E IN EITHER ORDER

6. NOT GIVEN 13. C, E IN EITHER ORDER

7. NO
Activities for Children

A Twenty-five years ago, children in London walked to school and played in parks and
playing fields after school and at the weekend. Today they are usually driven to school
by parents anxious about safety and spend hours glued to television screens or
computer games. Meanwhile, community playing fields are being sold off to property
developers at an alarming rate. ‘This change in lifestyle has, sadly, meant greater
restrictions on children,’ says Neil Armstrong, Professor of Health and Exercise
Sciences at the University of Exeter. ‘If children continue to be this inactive, they’ll be
storing up big problems for the future.’
B In 1985, Professor Armstrong headed a five-year research project into children’s
fitness. The results, published in 1990, were alarming. The survey, which monitored
700 11-16-year-olds, found that 48 per cent of girls and 41 per cent of boys already
exceeded safe cholesterol levels set for children by the American Heart Foundation.
Armstrong adds, “heart is a muscle and need exercise, or it loses its strength.” It also
found that 13 per cent of boys and 10 per cent of girls were overweight. More
disturbingly, the survey found that over a four-day period, half the girls and one- third
of the boys did less exercise than the equivalent of a brisk 10-minute walk. High levels
of cholesterol, excess body fat and inactivity are believed to increase the risk of
coronary heart disease.
C Physical education is under pressure in the UK – most schools devote little more than
100 minutes a week to it in curriculum time, which is less than many other European
countries. Three European countries are giving children a head start in PE, France,
Austria and Switzerland – offer at least two hours in primary and secondary schools.
These findings, from the European Union of Physical Education Associations, prompted
specialists in children’s physiology to call on European governments to give youngsters
a daily PE programme. The survey shows that the UK ranks 13th out of the 25 countries,
with Ireland bottom, averaging under an hour a week for PE. From age six to
18，British children received, on average, 106 minutes of PE a week. Professor
Armstrong, who presented the findings at the meeting, noted that since the introduction
of the national curriculum there had been a marked fall in the time devoted to PE in UK
schools, with only a minority of pupils getting two hours a week.
D As a former junior football international, Professor Armstrong is a passionate
advocate for sport. Although the Government has poured millions into beefing up sport
in the community, there is less commitment to it as part of the crammed school
curriculum. This means that many children never acquire the necessary skills to thrive
in team games. If they are no good at them, they lose interest and establish an inactive
pattern of behaviour. When this is coupled with a poor diet, it will lead inevitably to
weight gain. Seventy per cent of British children give up all sport when they leave
school, compared with only 20 per cent of French teenagers. Professor Armstrong
believes that there is far too great an emphasis on team games at school. “We need to
look at the time devoted to PE and balance it between individual and pair activities,
such as aerobics and badminton, as well as team sports. “He added that children need
to have the opportunity to take part in a wide variety of individual, partner and team
sports.
E The good news, however, is that a few small companies and children’s activity groups
have reacted positively and creatively to the problem. Take That, shouts Gloria Thomas,
striking a disco pose astride her mini-spacehopper. Take That, echo a flock of toddlers,
adopting outrageous postures astride their space hoppers. ‘Michael Jackson, she shouts,
and they all do a spoof fan- crazed shriek. During the wild and chaotic hopper race
across the studio floor, commands like this are issued and responded to with
untrammelled glee. The sight of 15 bouncing seven-year-olds who seem about to
launch into orbit at every bounce brings tears to the eyes. Uncoordinated, loud, excited
and emotional, children provide raw comedy.
F Any cardiovascular exercise is a good option, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be
high intensity. It can be anything that gets your heart rate up: such as walking the dog,
swimming, miming, skipping, hiking. “Even walking through the grocery store can be
exercise,” Samis-Smith said. What they don’t know is that they’re at a Fit Kids class,
and that the fun is a disguise for the serious exercise plan they’re covertly being taken
through. Fit Kids trains parents to run fitness classes for children. ‘Ninety per cent of
children don’t like team sports,’ says company director, Gillian Gale.
G A Prevention survey found that children whose parents keep in shape are much more
likely to have healthy body weights themselves. “There’s nothing worse than telling a
child what he needs to do and not doing it yourself,” says Elizabeth Ward, R.D., a
Boston nutritional consultant and author of Healthy Foods, Healthy Kids . “Set a good
example and get your nutritional house in order first.” In the 1930s and ’40s, kids
expended 800 calories a day just walking, carrying water, and doing other chores, notes
Fima Lifshitz, M.D., a pediatric endocrinologist in Santa Barbara. “Now, kids in obese
families are expending only 200 calories a day in physical activity,” says Lifshitz,
“incorporate more movement in your family’s lifepark farther away from the stores at
the mall, take stairs instead of the elevator, and walk to nearby friends’ houses instead
of driving.”
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 Health and living condition of children
2 Health organization monitored physical activity
3 Comparison of exercise time between UK and other countries
4 Wrong approach for school activity

Questions 5-8
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 5-8 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
5 According to American Heart Foundation, cholesterol levels of boys are higher than girls’.
6 British children generally do less exercise than some other European countries.
7 Skipping becomes more and more popular in schools of UK.
8 According to Healthy Kids, the first task is for parents to encourage their children
to keep the same healthy body weight.

Questions 9-13
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.
9. According to paragraph A, what does Professor Neil Armstrong concern about?
A Spending more time on TV affect academic level
B Parents have less time stay with their children
C Future health of British children
D Increasing speed of property’s development
10. What does Armstrong indicate in Paragraph B?
A We need to take a 10 minute walk everyday
B We should do more activity to exercise heart
C Girls’ situation is better than boys
D Exercise can cure many disease
11. What is aim of Fit Kids’ trainning?
A Make profit by running several sessions
B Only concentrate on one activity for each child
C To guide parents how to organize activities for children
D Spread the idea that team sport is better
12. What did Lifshitz suggest in the end of this passage?
A Create opportunities to exercise your body
B Taking elevator saves your time
C Kids should spend more than 200 calories each day
D We should never drive but walk
13. What is main idea of this passage?
A health of the children who are overweight is at risk in the future
B Children in UK need proper exercises
C Government mistaken approach for children
D Parents play the most important role in children’s activity
 Solution for: Activities for Children
Answer Table
1. A 8. FALSE

2. B 9. C

3. C 10. B

4. D 11. C

5. NOT GIVEN 12. A

6. TRUE 13. B

7. NOT GIVEN
Children’s Literature

Stories and poems aimed at children have an exceedingly long history:lullabies, for
example, were sung in Roman times, and a few nursery games and rhymes are almost
as ancient. Yet so far as written-down literature is concerned, while there were stories
in print before 1700 that children often seized on when they had the chance, such as
translations of Aesop’s fables, fairy-stories and popular ballads and romances, these
were not aimed at young people in particular. Since the only genuinely child-oriented
literature at this time would have been a few instructional works to help with reading
and general knowledge, plus the odd Puritanical tract as an aid to morality, the only
course for keen child readers was to read adult literature. This still occurs today,
especially with adult thrillers or romances that include more exciting, graphic detail
than is normally found in the literature for younger readers.
By the middle of the 18th century there were enough eager child readers, andenough
parents glad to cater to this interest, for publishers to specialize in children’s books
whose first aim was pleasure rather than education or morality. In Britain, a London
merchant named Thomas Boreham produced Cajanus, The Swedish Giant in 1742, while
the more famous John Newbery published A Little Pretty Pocket Book in 1744.1ts
contents—rhymes, stories, children’s games plus a free gift (‘A ball and a pincushion’)
——in many ways anticipated the similar lucky-dip contents of children’s annuals this
century. It is a tribute to Newbery’s flair that he hit upon a winning formula quite so
quickly, to be pirated almost immediately in America.
Such pleasing levity was not to last. Influenced by Rousseau, whose Emile(1762)
decreed that all books for children save Robinson Crusoe were a dangerous diversion,
contemporary critics saw to it that children’s literature should be instructive and
uplifting. Prominent among such voices was Mrs. Sarah Trimmer, whose magazine The
Guardian of Education (1802) carried the first regular reviews of children’s books. It was
she who condemned fairy-tales for their violence and general absurdity; her own
stories, Fabulous Histories (1786) described talking animals who were always models of
sense and decorum.
So the moral story for children was always threatened from within, given the way
children have of drawing out entertainment from the sternest moralist. But the greatest
blow to the improving children’s book was to come from an unlikely source indeed:
early 19th century interest in folklore. Both nursery rhymes, selected by James Orchard
Halliwell for a folklore society in 1842, and collection of fairy-stories by the scholarly
Grimm brothers, swiftly translated into English in 1823,soon rocket to popularity with
the young, quickly leading to new editions, each one more child- centered than the
last. From now on younger children could expect stories written for their particular
interest and with the needs of their own limited experience of life kept well to the fore.
What eventually determined the reading of older children was often not the availability
of special children’s literature as such but access to books that contained characters,
such as young people or animals, with whom they could more easily empathize, or
action, such as exploring or fighting, that made few demands on adult maturity or
understanding.
The final apotheosis of literary childhood as something to be protected from unpleasant
reality came with the arrival in the late 1930s of child-centered best-sellers intend on
entertainment at its most escapist. In Britain novelist such as Enid Blyton and Richmal
Crompton described children who were always free to have the most unlikely
adventures, secure in the knowledge that nothing bad could ever happen to them in
the end. The fact that war broke out again during her books’ greatest popularity fails to
register at all in the self-enclosed world inhabited by Enid Blyton’s young characters.
Reaction against such dream-worlds was inevitable after World War II, coinciding with
the growth of paperback sales, children’s libraries and a new spirit of moral and social
concern.
Urged on by committed publishers and progressive librarians, writers slowly began to
explore new areas of interest while also shifting the settings of their plots from the
middle-class world to which their chiefly adult patrons had always previously belonged.
Critical emphasis, during this development, has been divided. For some the most
important task was to rid children’s books of the social prejudice and exclusiveness no
longer found acceptable. Others concentrated more on the positive achievements of
contemporary children’s literature. That writers of these works are now often
recommended to the attentions of adult as well as child readers echoes the 19th-
century belief that children’s literature can be shared by the generations, rather than
being a defensive barrier between childhood and the necessary growth towards adult
understanding.
Questions 1-5
Complete the table below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from Reading Passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

DATE FEATURES AIM EXAMPLE

Before Not aimed at Education
Puritanical tract
1700 young children and morality
By the
Collection
middle of Read for A Little Pretty Pocket Book
of 1..................and
18th pleasure (exported to 2...................)
games
century
To be more
Early Growing interest
children- Nursery rhymes and 4 ………….
19 century in 3 ………….
th

centered
Stories of harm- Enid Blyton and Richarnal Crompton’s
Late 1930s Entertainment
free 5 …………. novels

Questions 6-8
Look at the following people and the list of statements below.
Match each person with the correct statement.
Write the correct letter A-E in boxes 6-8 on your answer sheet.
List of statements

A Wrote criticisms of children’s literature

B Used animals to demonstrate the absurdity of fairy tales
C Was not a writer originally
D Translated a book into English
E Didn’t write in the English language

6 Thomas Boreham
7 Mrs. Sarah trimmer
8 Grimm Brothers

Questions 9-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 9-13 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

9 Children didn’t start to read books until 1700.

10 Sarah Trimmer believed that children’s books should set good examples.
11 Parents were concerned about the violence in children’s books.
12 An interest in the folklore changed the direction of the development of children’s books.
13 Today children’s book writers believe their works should appeal to both children and adults.
 Gifted children and learning

A Internationally, ‘giftedness’ is most frequently determined by a score on a general

intelligence test, known as an IQ test, which is above a chosen cutoff point, usually at
around the top 2-5%. Children’s educational environment contributes to the IQ score
and the way intelligence is used. For example, a very close positive relationship was
found when children’s IQ scores were compared with their home educational provision
(Freeman, 2010). The higher the children’s IQ scores, especially over IQ 130, the better
the quality of their educational backup, measured in terms of reported verbal
interactions with parents, number of books and activities in their home etc. Because IQ
tests are decidedly influenced by what the child has learned, they are to some extent
measures of current achievement based on age-norms; that is, how well the children
have learned to manipulate their knowledge and know-how within the terms of the test.
The vocabulary aspect, for example, is dependent on having heard those words. But IQ
tests can neither identify the processes of learning and thinking nor predict creativity.
B Excellence does not emerge without appropriate help. To reach an exceptionally high
standard in any area very able children need the means to learn, which includes
material to work with and focused challenging tuition -and the encouragement to follow
their dream. There appears to be a qualitative difference in the way the intellectually
highly able think, compared with more average- ability or older pupils, for whom
external regulation by the teacher often compensates for lack of internal regulation. To
be at their most effective in their self-regulation, all children can be helped to identify
their own ways of learning – metacognition – which will include strategies of planning,
monitoring, evaluation, and choice of what to learn. Emotional awareness is also part of
metacognition, so children should be helped to be aware of their feelings around the
area to be learned, feelings of curiosity or confidence, for example.
C High achievers have been found to use self-regulatory learning strategies more often
and more effectively than lower achievers, and are better able to transfer these
strategies to deal with unfamiliar tasks. This happens to such a high degree in some
children that they appear to be demonstrating talent in particular areas. Overviewing
research on the thinking process of highly able children, (Shore and Kanevsky, 1993)
put the instructor’s problem succinctly: ‘If they [the gifted] merely think more quickly,
then .we need only teach more quickly. If they merely make fewer errors, then we can
shorten the practice’. But of course, this is not entirely the case; adjustments have to
be made in methods of learning and teaching, to take account of the many ways
individuals think.
D Yet in order to learn by themselves, the gifted do need some support from their
teachers. Conversely, teachers who have a tendency to ‘overdirect’ can diminish their
gifted pupils’ learning autonomy. Although ‘spoon-feeding’ can produce extremely high
examination results, these are not always followed by equally impressive life successes.
Too much dependence on the teachers risks loss of autonomy and motivation to
discover. However, when teachers o pupils to reflect on their own learning and thinking
activities, they increase their pupils’ self-regulation. For a young child, it may be just
the simple question ‘What have you learned today?’ which helps them to recognise
what
they are doing. Given that a fundamental goal of education is to transfer the control of
learning from teachers to pupils, improving pupils’ learning to learn techniques should
be a major outcome of the school experience, especially for the highly competent.
There are quite a number of new methods which can help, such as child- initiated
learning, ability-peer tutoring, etc. Such practices have been found to be particularly
useful for bright children from deprived areas.
E But scientific progress is not all theoretical, knowledge is a so vital to outstanding
performance: individuals who know a great deal about a specific domain will achieve at
a higher level than those who do not (Elshout, 1995). Research with creative scientists
by Simonton (1988) brought him to the conclusion that above a certain high level,
characteristics such as independence seemed to contribute more to reaching the
highest levels of expertise than intellectual skills, due to the great demands of effort
and time needed for learning and practice. Creativity in all forms can be seen as
expertise se mixed with a high level of motivation (Weisberg, 1993).
F To sum up, learning is affected by emotions of both the individual and significant
others. Positive emotions facilitate the creative aspects of earning and negative
emotions inhibit it. Fear, for example, can limit the development of curiosity, which is a
strong force in scientific advance, because it motivates problem-solving behaviour. In
Boekaerts’ (1991) review of emotion the learning of very high IQ and highly achieving
children, she found emotional forces in harness. They were not only curious, but often
had a strong desire to control their environment, improve their learning efficiency and
increase their own learning resources.
Questions 1-4
Reading Passage has six paragraphs, A-F.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet
NB You may use any letter more than once.
1 a reference to the influence of the domestic background on the gifted child.
2 reference to what can be lost if learners are given too much guidance.
3 a reference to the damaging effects of anxiety.
4 examples of classroom techniques which favour socially-disadvantaged children.

Questions 5-9
Look at the following statements (Questions 5-9) and the list of people below.
Match each statement with the correct person or people, A-E.
Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 5-9 on your answer sheet.
5 Less time can be spent on exercises with gifted pupils who produce accurate work.
6 Self-reliance is a valuable tool that helps gifted students reach their goals.
7 Gifted children know how to channel their feelings to assist their learning.
8 The very gifted child benefits from appropriate support from close relatives.
9 Really successful students have learnt a considerable amount about their subject.

List of People
A Freeman
B Shore and Kanevsky
C Elshout
D Simonton
E Boekaerts

Questions 10-13
Complete the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet
10. One study found a strong connection between children’s IQ and the
availability of 10 at home.
11. Children of average ability seem to need more direction from teachers because
they do not have 11……………. .
12. Meta-cognition involves children understanding their own learning
strategies, as well as developing 12 ……………. .
13. Teachers who rely on what is known as 13...............often produce sets of impressive grades
in class tests.
 Solution for: Gifted children and learning
Answer Table
1. A 8. A

2. D 9. C

3. F 10. books and activities

4. D 11. internal regulation/self-regulation

5. B 12. emotional awareness

6. D 13. spoon-feeding

7. E
 Solution for: Children’s Literature
Answer Table
1. rhymes, stories / stories, rhymes 8. E

2. America 9. FALSE

3. folklore 10. TRUE

4. fairy-tales/fairy-stories 11. NOT GIVEN

5. fairy-tales/fairy-stories 12. TRUE

6. C 13. TRUE

7. A
The Nature of Genius

There has always been ari interest in geniuses and prodigies. The word ‘genius’, from
the Latin gens (= family) and the term ‘genius’, meaning ‘begetter’, comes from the
early Roman cult of a divinity as the head of the family. In its earliest form, genius was
concerned with the ability of the head of the family, the paterfamilias, to perpetuate
himself. Gradually, genius came to represent a person’s characteristics and thence an
individual’s highest attributes derived from his ‘genius’ or guiding spirit.
Today, people still look to stars or genes, astrology or genetics, in the hope of finding
the source of exceptional abilities or personal characteristics.
The concept of genius and of gifts has become part of our folk culture, and attitudes
are ambivalent towards them. We envy the gifted and mistrust them. In the mythology
of giftedness, it is popularly believed that if people are talented in one area, they must
be defective in another, that intellectuals are impractical, that prodigies burn too
brightly too soon and burn out, that gifted people are eccentric, that they are physical
weaklings, that there’s a thin line between genius and madness, that genius runs in
families, that the gifted are so clever they don’t need special help, that giftedness is
the same as having a high IQ, that some races are more intelligent or musical or
mathematical than others, that genius goes unrecognised and unrewarded, that
adversity makes men wise or that people with gifts have a responsibility to use them.
Language has been enriched with such terms as ‘highbrow’, ‘egghead’, ‘blue-stocking’,
‘wiseacre’, ‘know-all’, ‘boffin’ and, for many, ‘intellectual’ is a term of denigration.
The nineteenth century saw considerable interest in the nature of genius, and
produced not a few studies of famous prodigies. Perhaps for us today, two of the most
significant aspects of most of these studies of genius are the frequency with which
early encouragement and teaching by parents and tutors had beneficial effects on the
intellectual, artistic or musical development of the children but caused great difficulties
of adjustment later in their lives, and the frequency with which
abilities went unrecognised by teachers and schools. However, the difficulty with the
evidence produced by these studies, fascinating as they are in collecting together
anecdotes and apparent similarities and exceptions, is that they are not what we would
today call norm-referenced. In other words, when, for instance, information is collated
about early illnesses, methods of upbringing, schooling, etc., we must also take into
account information from other historical sources about how common or exceptional
these were at the time. For instance, infant mortality was high and life expectancy
much shorter than today, home tutoring was common in the families of the nobility and
wealthy, bullying and corporal punishment were common at the best
independent schools and, for the most part, the cases studied were members of
the privileged classes. It was only with the growth of paediatrics and psychology
in the twentieth century that studies could be carried out on a more objective, if
still not always very scientific, basis.
Geniuses, however they are defined, are but the peaks which stand out through the
mist of history and are visible to the particular observer from his or her particular
vantage point. Change the observers and the vantage points, clear away some of the
mist, and a different lot of peaks appear. Genius is a term we apply to those whom we
recognise for their outstanding achievements and who stand near the end of the
continuum of human abilities which reaches back through the mundane and mediocre
to the incapable. There is still much truth in Dr Samuel Johnson’s observation,
The true genius Is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some
particular direction’. We may disagree with the ‘general’, for we doubt if all musicians
of genius could have become scientists of genius or vice versa, but there is no doubting
the accidental determination which nurtured or triggered their gifts into those channels
into which they have poured their powers so successfully. Along the continuum of
abilities are hundreds of thousands of gifted men and women, boys and girls.
What we appreciate, enjoy or marvel at in thè works of genius or the achievements of
prodigies are the manifestations of skills or abilities which are similar to, but so much
superior to, our own. But that their minds are not different from our own is
demonstrated by the fact that the hard-won discoveries of scientists like Kepler or
Einstein become the commonplace knowledge of schoolchildren and the once
outrageous shapes and colours of an artist like Paul Klee so soon appear on the fabrics
we wear. This does not minimise the supremacy of their achievements, which outstrip
our own as the sub-four-minute milers outstrip our jogging.
To think of geniuses and the gifted as having uniquely different brains is only
reasonable If we accept that each human brain is uniquely different. The purpose of
instruction is to make US even more different from one another, and in the process of
being educated we can learn from the achievements of those more gifted than
ourselves. But before we try to emulate geniuses or encourage our children to do so we
should note that some of the things we learn from them may prove unpalatable. We
may envy their achievements and fame, but we should also recognise
the price they may have paid in terms of perseverance, single-mindedness, dedication,
restrictions on their personal lives, the demands upon their energies and time, and how
often they had to display great courage to preserve their integrity or to make their way
to the top.
Genius and giftedness are relative descriptive terms of no real substance. We may, at
best, give them some precision by defining them and placing them in a context but,
whatever we do, we should never delude ourselves into believing that gifted children or
geniuses are different from the rest of humanity, save in the degree to which they have
developed the performance of their abilities.
Questions 1-5
Choose FIVE letters, A-K.
Write the correct letters in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet
NB Your answers may be given in any order.
Below are listed some popular beliefs about genius and giftedness.
Which FIVE of these beliefs are reported by the writer of the text?

A Truly gifted people are talented in all areas.

B The talents of geniuses are soon exhausted.
C Gifted people should use their gifts.
D A genius appears once in every generation.
E Genius can be easily destroyed by discouragement.
F Genius is inherited.
G Gifted people are very hard to live with.
H People never appreciate true genius.
I Geniuses are natural leaders.
J Gifted people develop their greatness through difficulties.
K Genius will always reveal itself.

Questions 6-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 6-13 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
6 Nineteenth-century studies of the nature of genius failed to take into account the
uniqueness of the person’s upbringing.
7 Nineteenth-century studies of genius lacked both objectivity and a proper scientific approach.
8 A true genius has general powers capable of excellence in any area.
9 The skills of ordinary individuals are in essence the same as the skills of prodigies.
10 The ease with which truly great ideas are accepted and taken for granted fails to
lessen their significance.
11 Giftedness and genius deserve proper scientific research into their true nature so
that all talent may be retained for the human race.
12 Geniuses often pay a high price to achieve greatness.
13 To be a genius is worth the high personal cost.
 Solution for: The Nature of Genius
Answer Table
1. B, C, F, H, J IN ANY ORDER 8. FALSE

2. B, C, F, H, J IN ANY ORDER 9. TRUE

3. B, C, F, H, J IN ANY ORDER 10. TRUE

4. B, C, F, H, J IN ANY ORDER 11. NOT GIVEN

5. B, C, F, H, J IN ANY ORDER 12. TRUE

6. TRUE 13. NOT GIVEN

7. TRUE
Children Tested to Destruction?

English primary school pupils subjected to more tests than in any other country
English primary school pupils have to deal with unprecedented levels of pressure as
they face tests more frequently, at a younger age, and in more subjects than children
from any other country, according to one of the biggest international education
inquiries in decades. The damning indictment of England’s primary education system
revealed that the country’s children are now the most tested in the world. From their
very earliest days at school they must navigate a set-up whose trademark is’high
stakes’testing, according to a recent report
Parents are encouraged to choose schools for their children based on league tables of
test scores. But this puts children under extreme pressure which could damage their
motivation and self-esteem, as well as encouraging schools to’teach to the test’at the
expense of pupils’wider learning, the study found. The findings are part of a two-year
inquiry – led by Cambridge University – into English primary schools. Other parts of the
UK and countries such as France, Norway and Japan used testing but it was,’less
intrusive, less comprehensive, and considerably less frequent’, Cambridge’s Primary
Review concluded.
England was unique in using testing to control what is taught in schools, to monitor
teaching standards and to encourage parents to choose schools based on the results of
the tests, according to Kathy Flail, from the National University of Ireland in Cork, and
Kamil Ozerk, from the University of Oslo, who conducted the research. ‘Assessment in
England, compared to our other reviewed countries, is pervasive, highly consequential,
and taken by officialdom and the public more generally to portray objectively the actual
quality of primary education in schools,’their report concluded.
Teachers’leaders said the testing regime was ‘past its sell-by date’and called for a
fundamental review of assessment.
Steve Sinnott, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said England’s
testing system was having a’devastating’impact on schools.’Uniquely, England is a
country where testing is used to police schools and control what is taught,’ he said.
‘When it comes to testing in England, the tail wags the dog. It is patently absurd that
even the structure and content of education is shaped by the demands of the tests. I
call on the Government to initiate a full and independent review of the impact of the
current testing system on schools and on children’s learning and to be prepared to
dismantle a system which is long past its sell-by date.’
John Dunford, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders,
warned that the tests were having a damaging effect on pupils. The whole testing
regime is governed by the need to produce league tables,’ he said. ‘It has more to do
with holding schools to account than helping pupils to progress.’
The fear that many children were suffering intolerable stress because of the tests was
voiced by Mick Brookes, General Secretary of the National Association of Head
Teachers. There are schools that start rehearsing for key stage two SATs [Standard
Assessment Tests] from the moment the children arrive in September. That’s just
utterly ridiculous,’he said. There are other schools that rehearse SATs during Christmas
week.These are young children we are talking about They should be having the time of
their lives at school not just worrying about tests. It is the breadth and richness of the
curriculum that suffers. The consequences for schools not reaching their targets are
dire – heads can lose their jobs and schools can be closed down. With this at stake it’s
not surprising that schools let the tests take over’.
David Laws, the Liberal Democrat schools spokesman, said:The uniquely high stakes
placed on national tests mean that many primary schools have become too exam
focused.’ However, the Government rejected the criticism. The idea that children are
over-tested is not a view that the Government accepts,’a spokesman said. The reality
is that children spend a very small percentage of their time in school being tested.
Seeing that children leave school up to the right standard in the basics is the highest
priority of the Government.’
In another child-centred initiative, both major political parties in the UK – Labour and the
Conservatives – have announced plans to make Britain more child-friendly following a
report by UNICEF which ranked the UK the worst place to be a child out of 21 rich
nations.
Parents were warned that they risked creating a generation of’battery-farmed children’
by always keeping them indoors to ensure their safety. The family’s minister, Kevin
Brennan, called for an end to the’cotton wool’culture and warned that children would
not learn to cope with risks if they were never allowed to play outdoors.
Questions 1-5
Complete the sentences.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
1 According to the inquiry, the amount of testing puts a lot of on young children
2 The education report describes testing in England as
3 Parents often select their childrens schools after studying test results in
4 Kathy Hall and Kamil Ozerk believe testing in England is also used to evaluate in schools.
5 The major political parties have promised to make Britain in view of the UNICEF report.

Questions 5-9
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? 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

6 Steve Sinnott says what is taught at school should be more tightly controlled.
7 According to John Dunford, children would make more progress with much shorter
and easier tests.
8 Mick Brookes wants to see earlier student preparation for SATs.
9 David Laws agrees with the opinions of Mick Brookes.

Questions 10-13
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
10 What does the government argue?
A There is not enough testing at present.
B Tests at primary school are too easy.
C Tests are not given too frequently.
D Teachers should take more tests.
11 The government spokesman
A is extremely critical of the way exams are written.
B accepts many of the points made by the teachers’ leaders.
C thinks education is what the government is most interested in.
D argues it is the teachers’ fault that students are tested so much.
12 According to UNICEF, children in the UK
A often spend too much time in the worst kind of places.
B are not so well behaved as in other countries.
C are not as rich as children in 21 other countries.
D could be having much more fulfilling childhoods.
13 What is the point Kevin Brennan makes?
A Children use too many electrical devices.
B Children would learn by being outside more.
C Its too risky for children to be outside on their own.
D The most important thing is childrens safety.
 Solution for: Children Tested to Destruction?
Answer Table
1. pressure 8. FALSE

2. high stakes 9. TRUE

3. league tables 10. C

4. teaching standards 11. C

5. more child-friendly 12. D

6. FALSE 13. B

7. NOT GIVEN
 Nurturing talent within the family

What do we mean by being ‘talented’ or ‘gifted’? The most obvious way is to look at the
work someone does and if they are capable of significant success, label them as
talented. The purely quantitative route - ‘percentage definition’ - looks not at
individuals, but at simple percentages, such as the top five per cent of the population,
and labels them - by definition - as gifted. This definition has fallen from favour, eclipsed
by the advent of IQ tests, favoured by luminaries such as Professor Hans Eysenck,
where a series of written or verbal tests of general intelligence leads to a score of
intelligence.
The IQ test has been eclipsed in turn. Most people studying intelligence and creativity
in the new millennium now prefer a broader definition, using a multifaceted approach
where talents in many areas are recognised rather than purely concentrating on
academic achievement. If we are therefore assuming that talented, creative or gifted
individuals may need to be assessed across a range of abilities, does this mean
intelligence can run in families as a genetic or inherited tendency? Mental dysfunction -
such as schizophrenia - can, so is an efficient mental capacity passed on from parent to
child?
Animal experiments throw some light on this question, and on the whole area of
whether it is genetics, the environment or a combination of the two that allows for
intelligence and creative ability. Different strains of rats show great differences in
intelligence or ‘rat reasoning’. If these are brought up in normal conditions and then mn
through a maze to reach a food goal, the ‘bright’ strain make far fewer wrong turns that
the ‘dull’ ones. But if the environment is made dull and boring the number of errors
becomes equal. Return the rats to an exciting maze and the discrepancy returns as
before - but is much smaller. In other words, a dull rat in a stimulating environment will
almost do as well as a bright rat who is bored in a normal one. This principle applies to
humans too - someone may be
born with innate intelligence, but their environment probably has the final say over
whether they become creative or even a genius.
Evidence now exists that most young children, if given enough opportunities and
encouragement, are able to achieve significant and sustainable levels of academic or
sporting prowess. Bright or creative children are often physically very active at the
same time, and so may receive more parental attention as a result - almost by default -
in order to ensure their safety. They may also talk earlier, and this, in turn, breeds
parental interest. This can sometimes cause problems with other siblings who may feel
jealous even though they themselves may be bright. Their creative talents may be
undervalued and so never come to fruition. Two themes seem to run through famously
creative families as a result. The first is that the parents were able to identify the
talents of each child, and nurture and encourage these accordingly but in an even-
handed manner. Individual differences were encouraged, and friendly sibling rivalry was
not seen as a particular problem. If the father is, say, a famous actor, there is no undue
pressure for his children to follow him onto the boards, but instead
their chosen interests are encouraged. There need not even by any obvious talent in
such a family since there always needs to be someone who sets the family career in
motion, as in the case of the Sheen acting dynasty.
Martin Sheen was the seventh of ten children born to a Spanish immigrant father and
an Irish mother. Despite intense parental disapproval he turned his back on entrance
exams to university and borrowed cash from a local priest to start a fledgling acting
career. His acting successes in films such as Badlands and Apocalypse Now made him
one of the most highly-regarded actors of the 1970s. Three sons - Emilio Estevez,
Ramon Estevez and Charlie Sheen - have followed him into the profession as a
consequence of being inspired by his motivation and enthusiasm.
A stream seems to run through creative families. Such children are not necessarily
smothered with love by their parents. They feel loved and wanted, and are secure in
their home, but are often more surrounded by an atmosphere of work and where
following a calling appears to be important. They may see from their parents that it
takes time and dedication to be master of a craft, and so are in less of a hurry to
achieve for themselves once they start to work.
The generation of creativity is complex: it is a mixture of genetics, the environment,
parental teaching and luck that determines how successful or talented family members
are. This last point - luck - is often not mentioned where talent is concerned but plays
an undoubted part. Mozart, considered by many to be the finest composer of all time,
was lucky to be living in an age that encouraged the writing of music. He was brought
up surrounded by it, his father was a musician who encouraged him to the point of
giving up his job to promote his child genius, and he learnt musical composition with
frightening speed - the speed of a genius. Mozart himself simply wanted to create the
finest music ever written but did not necessarily view himself as a genius - he could
write sublime music at will, and so often preferred to lead a hedonistic lifestyle that he
found more exciting than writing music to order.
Albert Einstein and Bill Gates are two more examples of people whose talents have
blossomed by virtue of the times they were living in. Einstein was a solitary, somewhat
slow child who had affection at home but whose phenomenal intelligence emerged
without any obvious parental input. This may have been partly due to the fact that at
the start of the 20th Century a lot of the Newtonian laws of physics were being
questioned, leaving a fertile ground for ideas such as his to be developed. Bill Gates
may have had the creative vision to develop Microsoft, but without the new computer
age dawning at the same time he may never have achieved the position on the world
stage he now occupies.
Questions 1-2
Complete the notes, which show how the approaches to defining 'talent*have changed.
Choose ONE or TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer
Write your answers in boxes 1-2 on your answer sheet.

‘percentage definition’

Questions 3-5
Which THREE of the following does the writer regard as a feature of creative families?
Write the appropriate letters A-F in boxes 3-5 on your answer sheet.
A a higher than average level of parental affection
B competition between brothers and sisters
C parents who demonstrate vocational commitment
D strong motivation to take exams and attend university
E a patient approach to achieving success
F the identification of the most talented child in the family

Questions 6-7
Choose the appropriate letters A—D and write them in boxes 6-7 on your answer sheet.
6. The rat experiment was conducted to show that
A certain species of rat are more intelligent than others.
B intelligent rats are more motivated than ‘dull’ rats.
C a rat’s surroundings can influence its behaviour.
D a boring environment has little impact on a ‘bright’ rat.
7. The writer cites the story of Martin Sheen to show that
A he was the first in a creative line.
B his parents did not have his creative flair.
C he became an actor without proper training.
D his sons were able to benefit from his talents.

Questions 8-12
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 8-12 on your answer sheet write
YES if the statement agrees with the writer s claims
NO if the statement contradicts the writers claims
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
8 Intelligence tests have now been proved to be unreliable.
9 The brother or sister of a gifted older child may fail to fulfil their own potential.
10 The importance of luck in the genius equation tends to be ignored.
11 Mozart was acutely aware of his own remarkable talent.
12 Einstein and Gates would have achieved success in any era.

Questions 13
From the list below choose the most suitable title for the whole of Reading Passage 3.
Write the appropriate letter A-D in box 13 on your answer sheet.
A Geniuses in their time
B Education for the gifted
C Revising the definition of intelligence
D Nurturing talent within the family
 Solution for: Nurturing talent within the family
Answer Table
1. IQ/intelligence 8. NOT GIVEN

2. multi-faceted approach 9. YES

3. B, C, E IN EITHER ORDER 10. YES

4. B, C, E IN EITHER ORDER 11. NO

5. B, C, E IN EITHER ORDER 12. NO

6. C 13. D

7. A
What’s the purpose of gaining knowledge?

A
‘I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any subject' That
was the founders motto for Cornell University, and it seems an apt characterization of
the different university, also in the USA, where I currently teach philosophy. A student
can prepare for a career in resort management, engineering, interior design,
accounting, music, law enforcement, you name it. But what would the founders of these
two institutions have thought of a course called Arson for Profit’? I kid you not: we have
it on the books. Any undergraduates who have met the academic requirements can sign
up for the course in our program in 'fire science’.
B
Naturally, the course is intended for prospective arson investigators, who can learn all
the tricks of the trade for detecting whether a fire was deliberately set, discovering who
did it, and establishing a chain of evidence for effective prosecution in a court of law.
But wouldn’t this also be the perfect course for prospective arsonists to sign up for? My
point is not to criticize academic programs in fire science: they are highly welcome as
part of the increasing professionalization of this and many other occupations. However,
it’s not unknown for a firefighter to torch a building. This example suggests how
dishonest and illegal behavior, with the help of higher education, can creep into every
aspect of public and business life.
C
I realized this anew when I was invited to speak before a class in marketing, which is
another of our degree programs. The regular instructor is a colleague who appreciates
the kind of ethical perspective I can bring as a philosopher. There are endless ways I
could have approached this assignment, but I took my cue from the title of the course:
'Principles of Marketing’. It made me think to ask the students, 'Is marketing principled?’
After all, a subject matter can have principles in the sense of being codified, having
rules, as with football or chess, without being principled in the sense of being ethical.
Many of the students immediately assumed that the answer to my question about
marketing principles was obvious: no. Just look at the ways in which everything under
the sun has been marketed; obviously it need not be done in a principled (=ethical)
fashion.
D
Is that obvious? I made the suggestion, which may sound downright crazy in light of the
evidence, that perhaps marketing is by definition principled. My inspiration for this
judgement is the philosopher
Immanuel Kant, who argued that any body of knowledge consists of an end (or purpose)
and a means.
E
Let us apply both the terms 'means' and ‘end' to marketing. The students have signed
up for a course in order to learn how to market effectively. But to what end? There
seem to be two main attitudes toward that question. One is that the answer is obvious:
the purpose of marketing is to sell things and to make money. The other attitude is that
the purpose of marketing is irrelevant: Each person comes to the program and course
with his or her own plans, and these need not even concern the acquisition of
marketing expertise as such. My proposal, which I believe would also be Kant's, is that
neither of these attitudes captures the significance of the end to the means for
marketing. A field of knowledge or a professional endeavor is defined by both the
means and the end;hence both deserve scrutiny. Students need to study both how to
achieve X, and also what X is.
F
It is at this point that ‘Arson for Profit’ becomes supremely relevant. That course is
presumably all about means: how to detect and prosecute criminal activity. It is
therefore assumed that the end is good in an ethical sense. When I ask fire science
students to articulate the end, or purpose, of their field, they eventually generalize to
something like, ‘The safety and welfare of society,’ which seems right. As we have
seen, someone could use the very same knowledge of means to achieve a much less
noble end, such as personal profit via destructive, dangerous, reckless activity. But we
would not call that firefighting. We have a separate word for it: arson. Similarly, if you
employed the ‘principles of marketing’ in an unprincipled way, you would not be doing
marketing. We have another term for it: fraud. Kant gives the example of a doctor and
a poisoner, who use the identical knowledge to achieve their divergent ends. We would
say that one is practicing medicine, the other, murder.
Questions 1-6
Reading Passage has six sections, A-F.
Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-viii, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.
1 Section A
2 Section B
3 Section C
4 Section D
5 Section E
6 Section F

List of Headings

Courses that require a high level of commitment

i

A course title with two meanings

ii

The equal importance of two key issues

iii

iv Applying a theory in an unexpected context

v The financial benefits of studying

vi A surprising course title

vii Different names for different outcomes

viii The possibility of attracting the wrong kind of student

Questions 7-10
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet.

The ‘Arson for Profit’ course

This is a university course intended for students who are undergraduates and who are
studying 7…………… . The expectation is that they will become 8.........specialising in arson.
The course will help them to detect cases of arson and find 9........of criminal intent, leading
to successful 10....................in the courts.

Questions 11-14
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage?
In boxes 11-14 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

11 It is difficult to attract students onto courses that do not focus on a career.

12 The ‘Arson for Profit’ course would be useful for people intending to set fire to buildings.
13 Fire science courses are too academic to help people to be good at the job of firefighting.
14 The writer’s fire science students provided a detailed definition of the purpose of their studies.
 Solution for: What’s the purpose of gaining
knowledge?
Answer Table
1. vi 8. investigators

2. viii 9. evidence

3. ii 10. prosecution

4. iv 11. NOT GIVEN

5. iii 12. YES

6. vii 13. NO

7. fire science 14. NO

 Communicating Styles and Conflict

Knowing your communication style and having a mix of styles on your team can provide a positive
force for resolving conflict.
A As far back as Hippocrates’ time (460-370B.C.), people have tried to understand
other people by characterizing them according to personality type or
temperament.Hippocrates believed there were four different body fluids that
influenced four basic types of temperament. His work was further developed 500
years later by Galen. These days there are any number of self-assessment tools that
relate to the basic descriptions developed by Galen, although we no longer believe the
source to be the types of body fluid that dominate our systems.
B The values in self-assessments that help determine personality style. Learning
styles, communication styles, conflict-handling styles, or other aspects of individuals is
that they help depersonalize conflict in interpersonal relationships. The
depersonalization occurs when you realize that others aren’t trying to be difficult, but
they need different or more information than you do.
They’re not intending to be rude: they are so focused on the task they forget about
greeting people. They would like to work faster but not at the risk of damaging the
relationships needed to get the job done. They understand there is a job to do. But it
can only be done right with the appropriate information, which takes time to collect.
When used appropriately, understanding communication styles can help resolve
conflict on teams. Very rarely are conflicts true personality issues. Usually they are
issues of style, information needs, or focus.
C Hippocrates and later Galen determined there were four basic temperaments:
sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic and choleric. These descriptions were developed
centuries ago and are still somewhat apt, although you could update the wording. In
today’s world, they translate into the four fairly common communication styles
described below:
D The sanguine person would be the expressive or spirited style of communication.
These people speak in pictures. They invest a lot of emotion and energy in their
communication and often speak quickly. Putting their whole body into it. They are
easily sidetracked onto a story that may or may not illustrate the point they are trying
to make. Because of their enthusiasm, they are great team motivators. They are
concerned about people and relationships. Their high levels of energy can come on
strong at times and their focus is usually on the bigger picture, which means they
sometimes miss the details or the proper order of things. These people find conflict or
differences of opinion invigorating and love to engage in a spirited discussion. They
love change and are constantly looking for new and exciting adventures.
E Tile phlegmatic person - cool and persevering - translates into the technical or
systematic communication style. This style of communication is focused on facts and
technical details. Phlegmatic people have an orderly methodical way of approaching
tasks, and their focus is very
much on the task, not on the people, emotions, or concerns that the task may evoke.
The focus is also more on the details necessary to accomplish a task. Sometimes the
details overwhelm the big picture and focus needs to be brought back to the context of
the task. People with this style think the facts should speak for themselves, and they
are not as comfortable with conflict. They need time to adapt to change and need to
understand both the logic of it and the steps involved.
F Tile melancholic person who is soft hearted and oriented toward doing things for
others translates into the considerate or sympathetic communication style. A person
with this communication style is focused on people and relationships. They are good
listeners and do things for other people- sometimes to the detriment of getting things
done for themselves. They want to solicit everyone’s opinion and make sure everyone
is comfortable with whatever is required to get the job done. At times this focus on
others can distract from the task at hand. Because they are so concerned with the
needs of others and smoothing over issues, they do not like conflict. They believe that
change threatens the status quo and tends to make people feel uneasy, so people with
this communication style, like phlegmatic people need time to consider the changes in
order to adapt to them.
G The choleric temperament translates into the bold or direct style of communication.
People with this style are brief in their communication - the fewer words the better.
They are big picture thinkers and love to be involved in many things at once. They are
focused on tasks and outcomes and often forget that the people involved in carrying
out the tasks have needs. They don’t do detail work easily and as a result can often
underestimate how much time it takes to achieve the task. Because they are so direct,
they often seem forceful and can be very intimidating to others. They usually would
welcome someone challenging them. But most other styles are afraid to do so. They
also thrive on change, the more the better.
H A well-functioning team should have all of these communication styles for true
effectiveness. All teams need to focus on the task, and they need to take care of
relationships in order to achieve those tasks. They need the big picture perspective or
the context of their work, and they need the details to be identified and taken care of
for success. We all have aspects of each style within us. Some of us can easily move
from one style to another and adapt our style to the needs of the situation at hand-
whether the focus is on tasks or relationships. For others, a dominant style is very
evident, and it is more challenging to see the situation from the perspective of another
style. The work environment can influence communication styles either by the type of
work that is required or by the predominance of one style reflected in that
environment. Some people use one style at work and another at home.
The good news about communication styles is that we have the ability to develop
flexibility in our styles. The greater the flexibility we have, the more skilled we usually
are at handling possible and actual conflicts. Usually it has to be relevant to us to do so,
either because we think it is important or because there are incentives in our
environment to encourage it. The key is that we have to want to become flexible with
our communication style. As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or you can’t,
you’re right!”

Questions 1-8
Reading Passage has eight sections A-H.
Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number i-x in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i Summarising personality types
ii Combined styles for workplace
iii Physical explanation
iv A lively person who encourages
v Demanding and unsympathetic personality
vi Lazy and careless personality
vii The benefits of understanding communication styles
viii Cautious and caring
ix Factual and analytical personality
x Self-assessment determines one’s temperament

1 Section A
2 Section B
3 Section C
4 Section D
5 Section E
6 Section F
7 Section G
8 Section H

Questions 9-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 9-13 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
9 It is believed that sanguine people dislike variety.
10 Melancholic and phlegmatic people have similar characteristics.
11 Managers often select their best employees according to personality types.
12 It is possible to change one’s personality type.
13 Workplace environment can affect which communication style is most effective.

Question 14
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in box 14 on your answer sheet.

14. The writer believes using self-assessment tools can

A help to develop one’s personality.
B help to understand colleagues’ behaviour.
C improve one’s relationship with the employer.
D directly resolve conflicts.
 Solution for: Communicating Styles and Conflict
Answer Table
1. iii 8. ii

2. vii 9. FALSE

3. i 10. TRUE

4. iv 11. NOT GIVEN

5. ix 12. TRUE

6. viii 13. TRUE

7. v 14. B
The Benefits of Being Bilingual

A
According to the latest figures, the majority of the world’s population is now bilingual or
multilingual, having grown up speaking two or more languages. In the past, such
children were considered to be at a disadvantage compared with their monolingual
peers. Over the past few decades, however, technological advances have allowed
researchers to look more deeply at how bilingualism interacts with and changes the
cognitive and neurological systems, thereby identifying several clear benefits of being
bilingual.
B
Research shows that when a bilingual person uses one language, the other is active at
the same time. When we hear a word, we don’t hear the entire word all at once: the
sounds arrive in sequential order. Long before the word is finished, the brain’s
language system begins to guess what that word might be. If you hear ‘can’, you will
likely activate words like ‘candy’ and ‘candle’ as well, at least during the earlier stages
of word recognition. For bilingual people, this activation is not limited to a single
language; auditory input activates corresponding words regardless of the language to
which they belong. Some of the most compelling evidence for this phenomenon, called
‘language co-activation’, comes from studying eye movements. A Russian-English
bilingual asked to ‘pick up a marker’ from a set of objects would look more at a stamp
than someone who doesn’t know Russian, because the Russian word for ‘stamp’,
marka, sounds like the English word he or she heard, ‘marker’. In cases like this,
language co-activation occurs because what the listener hears could map onto words in
either language.
C
Having to deal with this persistent linguistic competition can result in difficulties,
however. For instance, knowing more than one language can cause speakers to name
pictures more slowly, and can increase ‘tip-of-the-tongue states’, when you can almost,
but not quite, bring a word to mind. As a result, the constant juggling of two languages
creates a need to control how much a person
accesses a language at any given time. For this reason, bilingual people often perform
better on tasks that require conflict management. In the classic Stroop Task, people see
a word and are asked to name the colour of the word’s font. When the colour and the
word match (i., the word ‘red’ printed in red), people correctly name the colour more
quickly than when the colour and the word don’t match (i., the word ‘red’ printed in
blue). This occurs because the word itself (‘red’) and its font colour (blue) conflict.
Bilingual people often excel at tasks such as this, which tap into the ability to ignore
competing perceptual information and focus on the relevant aspects of the input.
Bilinguals are also better at switching between two tasks; for example, when bilinguals
have to switch from categorizing objects by colour (red or green) to categorizing them
by shape (circle or triangle), they do so more quickly than monolingual people,
reflecting better cognitive control when having to make rapid changes of strategy.
D
It also seems that the neurological roots of the bilingual advantage extend to brain
areas more traditionally associated with sensory processing. When monolingual and
bilingual adolescents listen to simple speech sounds without any intervening
background noise, they show highly similar brain stem responses. When researchers
play the same sound to both groups in the presence of background noise, however, the
bilingual listeners’ neural response is considerably larger, reflecting better encoding of
the sound’s fundamental frequency, a feature of sound closely related to pitch
perception.
E
Such improvements in cognitive and sensory processing may help a bilingual person to
process information in the environment, and help explain why bilingual adults acquire a
third language better than monolingual adults master a second language. This
advantage may be rooted in the skill of focussing on information about the new
language while reducing interference from the languages they already know.
F
Research also indicates that bilingual experience may help to keep the cognitive
mechanisms sharp by recruiting alternate brain networks to compensate for those that
become damaged during aging. Older bilinguals enjoy improved memory relative to
monolingual people, which can lead to real-world health benefits. In a study of over 200
patients with Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative brain disease, bilingual patients
reported showing initial symptoms of the disease an average of five years later than
monolingual patients. In a follow-up study, researchers compared the brains of bilingual
and monolingual patients matched on the severity of Alzheimer’s symptoms.
Surprisingly, the bilinguals’ brains had more physical signs of disease than their
monolingual counterparts, even though their outward behaviour and abilities were the
same. If the brain is an engine, bilingualism may help it to go farther on the same
amount of fuel.
G
Furthermore, the benefits associated with bilingual experience seem to start very early.
In one study, researchers taught seven-month-old babies growing up in monolingual or
bilingual homes that when they heard a tinkling sound, a puppet appeared on one side
of a screen. Halfway through the study, the puppet began appearing on the opposite
side of the screen. In order to get a reward, the infants had to adjust the rule they’d
learned; only the bilingual babies were able to successfully learn the new rule. This
suggests that for very young children, as well as for older people, navigating a
Questions 1-5
Complete the table below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

Test Findings

Observing
Bilingual people engage both
the 1......................of
languages simultaneously: a
Russian- English bilingual
mechanism known as
people when asked to select
2 ……………
certain objects

A test called Bilingual people are more

the 3......................, focusing able to handle tasks involving
on naming colours a skill called 4……………

When changing strategies,

A test involving switching
bilingual people have
between tasks
superior 5 ……………

Questions 6-10
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage?
In boxes 6-10 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
6 Attitudes towards bilingualism have changed in recent years.
7 Bilingual people are better than monolingual people at guessing correctly
what words are before they are finished.
8 Bilingual people consistently name images faster than monolingual people.
9 Bilingual people’s brains process single sounds more efficiently than monolingual
people in all situations.
10 Fewer bilingual people than monolingual people suffer from brain disease in old age.

Questions 11-14
Reading Passage has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 11-14 on your answer sheet.

11 an example of how bilingual and monolingual people’s brains respond differently

to a certain type of non-verbal auditory input
12 a demonstration of how a bilingual upbringing has benefits even before we learn to speak
13 a description of the process by which people identify words that they hear
14 reference to some negative consequences of being bilingual
 Solution for: The Benefits of Being Bilingual
Answer Table
1. eye movements 8. NO

2. language co-activation 9. NO

3. Stroop Task 10. NOT GIVEN

4. conflict management 11. D

5. cognitive control 12. G

6. YES 13. B

7. NOT GIVEN 14. C

Early Childhood Education

New Zealand's National Party spokesman on education, Dr Lockwood Smith, recently visited
the US and Britain. Here he reports on the findings of his trip and what they could mean for
New Zealand's education policy
A
‘Education To Be More' was published last August. It was the report of the New Zealand
Government's Early Childhood Care and Education Working Group. The report argued
for enhanced equity of access and better funding for childcare and early childhood
education institutions.
Unquestionably, that's a real need; but since parents don't normally send children to
pre-schools until the age of three, are we missing out on the most important years of
all?
B
A 13 year study of early childhood development at Harvard University has shown that,
by the age of three, most children have the potential to understand about 1000 words
- most of the language they will use in ordinary conversation for the rest of their lives.
Furthermore, research has shown that while every child is born with a natural curiosity,
if can be suppressed dramatically during the second and third years of life. Researchers
claim that the human personality is formed during the first two years of life, and during
the first three years children learn the basic skills they will use in all their later learning
both at home and at school. Once over the age of three, children continue to expand on
existing knowledge of the world.
C
It is generally acknowledged that young people from poorer socio-economic
backgrounds fend to do less well in our education system. That's observed not just in
New Zealand, but also in Australia, Britain and America. In an attempt to overcome that
educational under-achievement, a nationwide programme called 'Headstart' was
launched in the United Slates in 1965. A lot of money was poured into it. It took children
into pre-school institutions at the age of three and was supposed to help the children of
poorer families succeed in school.
Despite substantial funding, results have been disappointing. It is thought that there are
two explanations for this. First, the programme began too late. Many children who
entered it at the age of three were already behind their peers in language and
measurable intelligence. Second, the parents were not involved. At the end of each day,
'Headstart' children returned to the same disadvantaged home environment.
D
As a result of the growing research evidence of the importance of the first three years
of a child's life and the disappointing results from 'Headstart', a pilot programme was
launched in Missouri in the US that focused on parents as the child's first teachers. The
'Missouri' programme was predicated on research showing that working with the family,
rather than bypassing the parents, is the most effective way of helping children get off
to the best possible start in life. The four-year pilot study included 380 families who
were about to have their first child and who represented a cross-section of socio-
economic status, age and family configurations. They included single-parent and two-
parent families, families in which both parents worked, and families with either the
mother or father at home.
The programme involved trained parent- educators visiting the parents' home and
working with tire parent, or parents, and the child. Information on child development,
and guidance on things to look for and expect as the child grows were provided, plus
guidance in fostering the child's intellectual, language, social and motor-skill
development. Periodic check-ups of the child's educational and sensory development
(hearing and vision) were made to detect possible handicaps that interfere with growth
and development. Medical problems were referred to professionals.
Parent-educators made personal visits to homes and monthly group meetings were
held with other new parents to share experience and discuss topics of interest. Parent
resource centres, located in school buildings, offered learning materials for families
and facilitators for child core.
E
At the age of three, the children who had been involved in the 'Missouri' programme
were evaluated alongside a cross-section of children selected from the same range of
socio-economic backgrounds and family situations, and also a random sample of
children that age. The results were phenomenal. By the age of three, the children in
the programme were significantly more advanced in language development than their
peers, had made greater strides in problem solving and other intellectual skills, and
were further along in social development, tn fact, the average child on the programme
was performing at the level of the top 15 to 20 per cent of their peers in such things as
auditory comprehension, verbal ability and language ability.
Most important of all, the traditional measures of 'risk', such as parents' age and
education, or whether they were a single parent, bore little or no relationship to the
measures of achievement and language development. Children in the programme
performed equally well regardless of socio- economic disadvantages. Child abuse was
virtually eliminated. The one factor that was found to affect the child's development
was family stress leading to a poor quality of parent-child interaction. That interaction
was not necessarily bad in poorer families.
F
These research findings are exciting. There is growing evidence in New Zealand that
children from poorer socio-economic backgrounds are arriving at school less well
developed and that our school system tends to perpetuate that disadvantage. The
initiative outlined above could break that cycle of disadvantage. The concept of
working with parents in their homes, or at their place of work, contrasts quite markedly
with the report of the Early Childhood Care and Education Working Group. Their focus is
on getting children and mothers access to childcare and institutionalised early
childhood education. Education from the age of three to five is undoubtedly vital, but
without a similar focus on parent education and on the vital importance of the first
three years, some evidence indicates that it will not be enough to overcome
educational inequity.
Questions 1-4
Reading Passage has six sections, A-F.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-F in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

1 details of the range of family types involved in an education programme

2 reasons why a child’s early years are so important
3 reasons why an education programme failed
4 a description of the positive outcomes of an education programme

Questions 5-10
Classify the following features as characterising
A the ' Headstart' programme
B the 'Missouri' programme
C both the 'Headstart' and the 'Missouri' programmes
D neither the 'Headstart' nor the 'Missouri’programme
Write the correct letter A. B, C or D in boxes 5-10 on your answer sheet.

5 was administered to a variety of poor and wealthy families

6 continued with follow-up assistance in elementary schools
7 did not succeed in its aim
8 supplied many forms of support and training to parents
9 received insufficient funding
10 was designed to improve pre-schoolers’ educational development

Questions 11-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 11-13 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
11 Most ‘Missouri’ programme three-year-olds scored highly in areas such as
listening, speaking, reasoning and interacting with others.
12 Missouri’ programme children of young, uneducated, single parents scored less
highly on the tests.
13 The richer families in the ‘Missouri’ programme had higher stress levels.
Solution for: Early Childhood Education
Answer Table
1. D 8. B

2. B 9. D

3. C 10. C

4. E 11. TRUE

5. B 12. FALSE

6. D 13. NOT GIVEN

7. A
Persistent bullying is one of the worst experiences a
child can face

How can it be prevented? Peter Smith, Professor of Psychology at the University of Sheffield,
directed the Sheffield Anti-Bullying Intervention Project, funded by the Department for
Education
Here he reports on his findings.
A
Bullying can take a variety of forms, from the verbal - being taunted or called hurtful
names - to the physical - being kicked or shoved - as well as indirect forms, such as
being excluded from social groups. A survey I conducted with Irene Whitney found that
in British primary schools up to a quarter of pupils reported experience of bullying,
which in about one in ten cases was persistent. There was less bullying in secondary
schools, with about one in twenty-five suffering persistent bullying,
but these cases may be particularly recalcitrant.
B
Bullying is clearly unpleasant, and can make the child experiencing it feel unworthy
and depressed. In extreme cases it can even lead to suicide, though this is thankfully
rare. Victimised pupils are more likely to experience difficulties with interpersonal
relationships as adults, while children who persistently bully are more likely to grow up
to be physically violent, and convicted of anti-social offences.
C
Until recently, not much was known about the topic, and little help was available to
teachers to deal with bullying. Perhaps as a consequence, schools would often deny
the problem. ‘There is no bullying at this school’ has been a common refrain, almost
certainly untrue. Fortunately more schools are now saying: There is not much bullying
here, but when it occurs we have a clear policy for dealing with it.’
D
Three factors are involved in this change. First is an awareness of the severity of the
problem. Second, a number of resources to help tackle bullying have become available
in Britain. For example, the Scottish Council for Research in Education produced a
package of materials, Action Against Bullying, circulated to all schools in England and
Wales as well as in Scotland in summer
1992, with a second pack, Supporting Schools Against Bullying, produced the
following year. In Ireland, Guidelines on Countering Bullying Behaviour in Post-
Primary Schools was published in 1993. Third, there is evidence that these materials
work, and that schools can achieve something. This comes from carefully conducted
‘before and after’ evaluations of interventions in
schools, monitored by a research team. In Norway, after an intervention campaign was
introduced nationally, an evaluation of forty-two schools suggested that, over a two-
year period, bullying was halved. The Sheffield investigation, which involved sixteen
primary schools and seven secondary schools, found that most schools succeeded in
reducing bullying.
E
Evidence suggests that a key step is to develop a policy on bullying, saying clearly
what is meant by bullying, and giving explicit guidelines on what will be done if it
occurs, what records will be kept, who will be informed, what sanctions will be
employed. The policy should be developed through consultation, over a period of time -
not just imposed from the head teacher’s office! Pupils, parents and staff should feel
they have been involved in the policy, which needs to be disseminated
and implemented effectively.
Other actions can be taken to back up the policy. There are ways of dealing with the
topic through the curriculum, using video, drama and literature. These are useful for
raising awareness, and can best be tied in to early phases of development, while the
school is starting to discuss the issue of bullying. They are also useful in renewing the
policy for new pupils, or revising it in the light of experience. But curriculum work alone
may only have short-term effects; it should be an addition to policy work, not a
substitute.
There are also ways of working with individual pupils, or in small groups. Assertiveness
training for pupils who are liable to be victims is worthwhile, and certain approaches to
group bullying such as 'no blame’, can be useful in changing the behaviour of bullying
pupils without confronting them directly, although other sanctions may be needed for
those who continue with persistent bullying.
Work in the playground is important, too. One helpful step is to train lunchtime
supervisors to distinguish bullying from playful fighting, and help them break up
conflicts. Another possibility is to improve the playground environment, so that pupils
are less likely to be led into bullying from boredom or frustration.
F
With these developments, schools can expect that at least the most serious kinds of
bullying can largely be prevented. The more effort put in and the wider the whole
school involvement, the more substantial the results are likely to be. The reduction in
bullying - and the consequent improvement in pupil happiness - is surely a worthwhile
objective.
Questions 1-4
Reading Passage 3 has six sections, A-F.
Choose the correct heading for sections A-D from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-vii, in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i The role of video violence
ii The failure of government policy
iii Reasons for the increased rate of bullying
iv Research into how common bullying is in British schools
v The reaction from schools to enquiries about bullying
vi The effect of bullying on the children involved
vii Developments that have led to a new approach by schools

1 Section A

2 Section B

3 Section C

4 Section D

Questions 5-8
Choose the coned Idler, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet.

5 A recent survey found that in British secondary schools

A there was more bullying than had previously been the case.
B there was less bullying than in primary schools.
C cases of persistent bullying were very common.
D indirect forms of bullying were particularly difficult to deal with.

6 Children who are bullied

A are twice as likely to commit suicide as the average person.
B find it more difficult to relate to adults.
C are less likely to be violent in later life.
D may have difficulty forming relationships in later life.

7 The writer thinks that the declaration ‘There is no bullying at this school’
A is no longer true in many schools.
B was not in fact made by many schools.
C reflected the school’s lack of concern.
D reflected a lack of knowledge and resources.

8 What were the findings of research carried out in Norway?

A Bullying declined by 50% after an anti-bullying campaign.
B Twenty-one schools reduced bullying as a result of an anti-bullying campaign.
C Two years is the optimum length for an anti-bullying campaign.
D Bullying is a less serious problem in Norway than in the UK.

Questions 9-13
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.

What steps should schools take to reduce bullying?

The most important step is for the school authorities to produce a 9 which makes the
school's attitude towards bullying quite clear.
It should include detailed 10 as to how the school and its staff will react if
bullying occurs. In addition, action can be taken through the 11
This is particularly useful in the early part of the process, as a way of raising awareness
and encouraging discussion.
On its own, however, it is insufficient to bring about a permanent
solution. Effective work can also be done with individual pupils
and small groups.
For example, potential 12 of bullying can be trained to be more self-confident.
Or again,in dealing with group bullying, a 'no blame' approach, which avoids confronting
the offender too directly, is often effective.
Playground supervision will be more effective if members of staff are trained to
recognise the difference between bullying and mere 13
Questions 14
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in box 14 on your answer sheet.
Which of the following is the most suitable title for Reading Passage 3?

A Bullying: what parents can do

B Bullying: arc the media to blame?
C Bullying: the link with academic failure
D Bullying: from crisis management to prevention
 Solution for: Persistent bullying is one of the worst
experiences a child can face
Answer Table
1. iv 8. A

2. vi 9. policy

3. v 10. (explicit) guidelines

4. vii 11. (school) curriculum

5. B 12. victims

6. D 13. playful fighting

7. D 14. D
 What is speed reading, and why do we need it?

A
Speed reading is not just about reading fast. It is also about how much information you
can remember when you have finished reading. The World Championship Speed-
Reading Competition says that its top competitors average between 1,000 and 2,000
words a minute. But they must remember at least 50 percent of this in order to qualify
for the competition.
B
Nowadays, speed reading has become an essential skill in any environment where
people have to master a large volume of information. Professional workers need reading
skills to help them get through many documents every day, while students under
pressure to deal with assignments may feel they have to read more and read faster all
the time.
C
Although there are various methods to increase reading speed, the trick is deciding
what information you want first. For example, if you only want a rough outline of an
issue, then you can skim the material quickly and extract the key facts. However, if you
need to understand every detail in a document, then you must read it slowly enough to
understand this.
D
Even when you know how to ignore irrelevant detail, there are other improvements you
can make to your reading style which will increase your speed. For example, most
people can read much faster if they read silently. Reading each word aloud takes time
for the information to make a complete circuit in your brain before being pronounced.
Some researchers believe that as long as the first and last letters are in place, the brain
can still understand the arrangement of the other letters in the word because it logically
puts each piece into place.
E
Chunking is another important method. Most people learn to read either letter by letter
or word by word. As you improve, this changes. You will probably find that you are
fixing your eyes on a block of words, then moving your eyes to the next block of words,
and so on. You are reading blocks of words at a time, not individual words one by one.
You may also notice that you do not always go from one block to the next: sometimes
you may move back to a previous block if you are unsure about something.
F
A skilled reader will read a lot of words in each block. He or she will only look at each
block for an instant and will then move on. Only rarely will the reader’s eyes skip back
to a previous block of words. This reduces the amount of work that the reader’s eyes
have to do. It also increases the volume of information that can be taken in over a given
period of time.
G
On the other hand, a slow reader will spend a lot of time reading small blocks of words.
He or she will skip back often, losing the flow and structure of the text, and muddling
their overall understanding of the subject. This irregular eye movement quickly makes
the reader tired. Poor readers tend to dislike reading because they feel it is difficult to
concentrate and comprehend written information.
H
The best tip anyone can have to improve their reading speed is to practise. In order to
do this effectively, a person must be engaged in the material and want to know more. If
you find yourself constantly having to re-read the same paragraph, you may want to
switch to reading material that grabs your attention. If you enjoy what you are reading,
you will make quicker progress.
Questions 1-6
The reading passage has seven paragraphs, A-H.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-H.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
1 the types of people who need to read more quickly
2 the fastest reading speeds
3 how a reader can become confused
4 why reading material should be interesting
5 a definition of speed reading
6 what you should consider before you start reading

Questions 7-13
Complete the table below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Chunking
Type
of Reading method Effect of method on reader
reader

• many 7..........................in • reader’s 8...........................do less

skilled work
a block
reader
• reader hardly ever goes back • more 9............................is processed

• small blocks • reader

easily gets 12 ………………
10 •
reader 11............................goes • finds it hard
back to 13............................on passage
 Solution for: What is speed reading, and why do we
need it?
Answer Table
1. B 8. eyes

2. A 9. information

3. G 10. slow reader

4. H 11. often

5. A 12. tired

6. C 13. concentrate

7. words
 Learning by Examples

A Learning Theory is rooted in the work of Ivan Pavlov, the famous scientist who
discovered 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 conditioning. 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 to 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 behaviours.
B Role models are a popular notion for guiding child development, but in recent years
very interesting research has been done on learning by examples 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
(1996).
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 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 experienced cone strippers. However, infants of urban mothers cross-
fostered by 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 work out how to use once
someone has shown you how to switch it on. In the 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 Behaviour by Bednekoff and Baida, provides a different view
of the adaptiveness of social learning. It concerns the seed caching behaviour of Clark's
Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana) and the Mexican Jay (Aphelocoma ultramarina). The
former is a specialist, caching 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 the Nutcracker but also
the less specialised 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 1 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 rats’ learning 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
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 5-8 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
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 seeds, the Jay relies 9........on caching food and
is thus less specialised in this ability, but more 10..............To study their behaviour 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.

less social remembered Nutcracke

r
more cacher watched
solitary observer Jay
 Solution for: Learning by Examples
Answer Table
1. D 8. FALSE

2. A 9. less

3. C 10. social

4. E 11. watched

5. FALSE 12. observer

6. TRUE 13. Nutcracker

7. TRUE
LAND OF THE RISING SUN

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

Example Answer

Section A iv
1 Section B
2 Section C
3 Section D
4 Section E
5 Section F

Questions 6-9
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
6 There is a wider range of achievement amongst English pupils studying maths
than amongst their Japanese counterparts.
7 The percentage of Gross National Product spent on education generally reflects
the level of attainment in mathematics.
8 Private schools in Japan are more modern and spacious than state-run lower
secondary schools.
9 Teachers mark homework in Japanese schools.

Questions 10-13
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.
10 Maths textbooks in Japanese schools are
A cheap for pupils to buy.
B well organised and adapted to the needs of the pupils.
C written to be used in conjunction with TV programmes.
D not very popular with many Japanese teachers.

11 When a new maths topic is introduced,

A students answer questions on the board.
B students rely entirely on the textbook.
C it is carefully and patiently explained to the students.
D it is usual for students to use extra worksheets.

12 How do schools deal with students who experience difficulties?

A They are given appropriate supplementary tuition.
B They are encouraged to copy from other pupils.
C They are forced to explain their slow progress.
D They are placed in a mixed-ability class.

13 Why do Japanese students tend to achieve relatively high rates of success in maths?
A It is a compulsory subject in Japan.
B They are used to working without help from others.
C Much effort is made and correct answers are emphasised.
D There is a strong emphasis on repetitive learning.
 Solution for: LAND OF THE RISING SUN
Answer Table
1. vii 8. NOT GIVEN

2. i 9. NO

3. v 10. B

4. ii 11. C

5. viii 12. A

6. YES 13. C

7. NO
Greying population stays in the pink

Elderly people are growing healthier, happier and more independent, say American
scientists. The results of a 14-year study to be announced later this month reveal that
the diseases associated with old age are afflicting fewer and fewer people and when
they do strike, it is much later in life.
In the last 14 years, the National Long-term Health Care Survey has gathered data on
the health and lifestyles of more than 20,000 men and women over 65. Researchers,
now analysing the results of data gathered in 1994, say arthritis, high blood pressure
and circulation problems - the major medical complaints in this age group - are
troubling a smaller proportion every year. And the data confirms that the rate at which
these diseases are declining continues to accelerate. Other diseases of old age -
dementia, stroke, arteriosclerosis and emphysema - are also troubling fewer and fewer
people.
'It really raises the question of what should be considered normal ageing,' says Kenneth
Manton, a demographer from Duke University in North Carolina. He says the problems
doctors accepted as normal in a 65-year-old in 1982 are often not appearing until
people are 70 or 75.
Clearly, certain diseases are beating a retreat in the face of medical advances. But
there may be other contributing factors. Improvements in childhood nutrition in the
first quarter of the twentieth century, for example, gave today's elderly people a
better start in life than their predecessors.
On the downside, the data also reveals failures in public health that have caused
surges in some illnesses. An increase in some cancers and bronchitis may reflect
changing smoking habits and poorer air quality, say the researchers. 'These may be
subtle influences,' says Manton, 'but our subjects have been exposed to worse and
worse pollution for over 60 years. It's not surprising we see some effect.'
One interesting correlation Manton uncovered is that better-educated people are likely
to live longer. For example, 65-year-old women with fewer than eight years of schooling
are expected, on average, to live to 82. Those who continued their education live an
extra seven years. Although some of this can be attributed to a higher income, Manton
believes it is mainly because educated people seek more medical attention.
The survey also assessed how independent people over 65 were, and again found a
striking trend. Almost 80% of those in the 1994 survey could complete everyday
activities ranging from eating and dressing unaided to complex tasks such as cooking
and managing their finances. That represents a significant drop in the number of
disabled old people in the population. If the trends apparent in the United States 14
years ago had continued,
researchers calculate there would be an additional one million disabled elderly people in
today's population. According to Manton, slowing the trend has saved the United States
government's Medicare system more than $200 billion, suggesting that the greying of
America's population may prove less of a financial burden than expected.
The increasing self-reliance of many elderly people is probably linked to a massive
increase in the use of simple home medical aids. For instance, the use of raised toilet
seats has more than doubled since the start of the study, and the use of bath seats has
grown by more than 50%. These developments also bring some health benefits,
according to a report from the MacArthur Foundation's research group on successful
ageing. The group found that those elderly people who were able to retain a sense of
independence were more likely to stay healthy in old age.
Maintaining a level of daily physical activity may help mental functioning, says Carl
Cotman, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Irvine. He found that rats
that exercise on a treadmill have raised levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor
coursing through their brains. Cotman believes this hormone, which keeps neurons
functioning, may prevent the brains of active humans from deteriorating.
As part of the same study, Teresa Seeman, a social epidemiologist at the University of
Southern California in Los Angeles, found a connection between self-esteem and stress
in people over 70. In laboratory simulations of challenging activities such as driving,
those who felt in control of their lives pumped out lower levels of stress hormones such
as cortisol. Chronically high levels of these hormones have been linked to heart disease.
But independence can have drawbacks. Seeman found that elderly people who felt
emotionally isolated maintained higher levels of stress hormones even when asleep.
The research suggests that older people fare best when they feel independent but know
they can get help when they need it.
'Like much research into ageing, these results support common sense,' says Seeman.
They also show that we may be underestimating the impact of these simple factors.
'The sort of thing that your grandmother always told you turns out to be right on target,'
she says.
Questions 1-9
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-Q, below.
Write the correct letter, A-Q, in boxes 1-9 on your answer sheet.
Research carried out by scientists in the United States has shown that the proportion of
people over 65 suffering from the most common age-related medical problems is 1
...............................................................................................................................................and that the
speed
of this change is 2 …………. .
It also seems that these diseases are affecting people 3.......in life than they did in the past.
This is largely due to developments in 4..........but other factors such
as improved 5.................may also be playing a part.
Increases in some other illnesses may be due to changes in personal habits and to 6
…………. . The research establishes a link between levels of 7 and life
expectancy.
It also shows that there has been a considerable reduction in the number of elderly
people who are 8 …………. which means that the 9 involved in supporting this
section of the
population may be less than previously predicted.

A cost B falling C technology

D undernourished E earlier F later

G disabled H more I increasing

J nutrition K education L constant

M medicine N pollution O environmental

P health Q independent

Questions 10-13
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-H, below.
Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.
A may cause heart disease.
B can be helped by hormone treatment.
C may cause rises in levels of stress hormones.
D have cost the United States government more than $200 billion.
E may help prevent mental decline.
F may get stronger at night.
G allow old people to be more independent.
H can reduce stress in difficult situations.

10 Home medical aids

11 Regular amounts of exercise
12 Feelings of control over life
13 Feelings of loneliness
 Solution for: Greying population stays in the
pink Answer Table
1. B 8. G

2. I 9. A

3. F 10. G

4. M 11. E

5. J 12. H

6. N 13. C

7. K
 Twist in the Tale

Fears that television and computers would kill children’s desire to read couldn’t have been
more wrong. With sales roaring, a new generation of authors are publishing’s newest and
unlikeliest literary stars
A Less than three years ago, doom merchants were predicting that the growth in video
games and the rise of the Internet would sound the death knell for children’s literature.
But contrary to popular myth, children are reading more books than ever. A recent
survey by Books Marketing found that children up to the age of 11 read on average for
four hours a week, particularly girls.
B Moreover, the children’s book market, which traditionally was seen as a poor cousin
to the more lucrative and successful adult market, has come into its own. Publishing
houses are now making considerable profits on the back of new children’s books and
children’s authors can now command significant advances. ‘Children’s books are going
through an incredibly fertile period,’ says Wendy Cooling, a children’s literature
consultant. ‘There’s a real buzz around them. Book clubs are happening, sales are good,
and people are much more willing to listen to children’s authors.’
C The main growth area has been the market for eight to fourteen-year-olds, and there
is little doubt that the boom has been fuelled by the bespectacled apprentice, Harry
Potter. So influential has J. K. Rowling’s series of books been that they have helped to
make reading fashionable for pre-teens. ‘Harry made it OK to be seen on a bus reading
a book,’ says Cooling. ‘To a child, that is important.’ The current buzz around the
publication of the fourth Harry Potter beats anything in the world of adult literature.
D ‘People still tell me, “Children don’t read nowadays”,’ says David Almond, the award-
winning author of children’s books such as Skellig. The truth is that they are skilled,
creative readers. When 1 do classroom visits, they ask me very sophisticated questions
about use of language, story structure, chapters and dialogue.’ No one is denying that
books are competing with other forms of entertainment for children’s attention but it
seems as though children find a special kind of mental nourishment within the printed
page.
E ‘A few years ago, publishers lost confidence and wanted to make books more like
television, the medium that frightened them most,’ says children’s book critic Julia
Eccleshare. ‘But books aren’t TV, and you will find that children always say that the
good thing about books is that you can see them in your head. Children are demanding
readers,’ she says. ‘If they don’t get it in two pages, they’ll drop it.’
F No more are children’s authors considered mere sentimentalists or failed adult
writers. 'Some feted adult writers would kill for the sales,’ says Almond, who sold 42,392
copies of Skellig in 1999 alone. And advances seem to be growing too: UK publishing
outfit Orion recently negotiated a six-figure sum from US company Scholastic for The
Seeing Stone, a children's novel by Kevin Crossley- Holland, the majority of which will
go to the author.
G It helps that once smitten, children are loyal and even fanatical consumers. Author
Jacqueline Wilson says that children spread news of her books like a bushfire. 'My
average reader is a girl of ten,’ she explains. ‘They’re sociable and acquisitive. They
collect. They have parties - where books are a good present. If they like something, they
have to pass it on.’ After Rowling, Wilson is currently the best-selling children’s writer,
and her sales have boomed over the past three years. She has sold more than three
million books, but remains virtually invisible to adults, although most ten- year-old girls
know about her.
H Children’s books are surprisingly relevant to contemporary life. Provided they are
handled with care, few topics are considered off-limits for children. One senses that
children’s writers relish the chance to discuss the whole area of topics and language.
But Anne Fine, author of many award- winning children’s books is concerned that the
British literati still ignore children’s culture. ‘It’s considered worthy but boring,’ she
says.
I T think there’s still a way to go,’ says Almond, who wishes that children’s books were
taken more seriously as literature. Nonetheless, he derives great satisfaction from his
child readers. ‘They have a powerful literary culture,’ he says. ‘It feels as if you’re able
to step into the store of mythology and ancient stories that run through all societies
and encounter the great themes: love and loss and death and redemption.’
J At the moment, the race is on to find the next Harry Potter. The bidding for new
books at Bologna this year - the children’s equivalent of the Frankfurt Book Fair - was
as fierce as anything anyone has ever seen. All of which bodes well for the long-term
future of the market - and for children’s authors, who have traditionally suffered the
lowest profile in literature, despite the responsibility of their role.
Questions 1-7
Look at the following list of people A-E and the list of statements (Questions 1-7).
Match each statement with one of the people listed.
Write the appropriate letters A-E in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.
1 Children take pleasure in giving books to each other.
2 Reading in public is an activity that children have not always felt comfortable about doing.
3 Some well-known writers of adult literature regret that they earn less
than popular children’s writers.
4 Children are quick to decide whether they like or dislike a book.
5 Children will read many books by an author that they like.
6 The public do not realise how much children read today.
7 We are experiencing a rise in the popularity of children’s literature.
A Wendy Cooling
B David Almond
C Julia Eccleshare
D Jacqueline Wilson
E Anne Fine

Questions 8-10
Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS taken from the reading passage, answer the following
questions.
Write your answers in boxes 8-10 on your answer sheet.
8 For which age group have sales of books risen the most?
9 Which company has just invested heavily in an unpublished children’s book?
10 Who is currently the best-selling children’s writer?

Questions 11-14
Reading Passage 1 has ten paragraphs A-J.
Which paragraph mentions the following (Questions 11-14)?
Write the appropriate letters (A-J) in boxes 11-14 on your answer sheet.
11 the fact that children are able to identify and discuss the important elements of fiction
12 the undervaluing of children’s society
13 the impact of a particular fictional character on the sales of children’s books
14 an inaccurate forecast regarding the reading habits of children
 Solution for: Twist in the Tale
Answer Table
1. D 8. 8-14 years/yrs/ (year-olds)

2. A 9. Orion

3. B 10. J.K. Rowling

4. C 11. D

5. D 12. H

6. B 13. C

7. A 14. A
Learning color words

Young children struggle with color concepts, and the reason for this may have something to do with
how we use the words that describe them.
A In the course of the first few years of their lives, children who are brought up in
English- speaking homes successfully master the use of hundreds of words. Words for
objects, actions, emotions, and many other aspects of the physical world quickly
become part of their infant repertoire. For some reason, however, when it comes to
learning color words, the same children perform very badly. At the age of four months,
babies can distinguish between basic color categories. Yet it turns out they do this in
much the same way as blind children. "Blue" and "yellow" appear in older children's
expressive language in answer to questions such as "What color is this?", but their
mapping of objects to individual colors is haphazard and interchangeable. If shown a
blue cup and asked about its color, typical two-year-olds seem as likely to come up with
"red" as "blue." Even after hundreds of training trials, children as old as four may still
end up being unable to accurately sort objects by color.
B In an effort to work out why this is, cognitive scientists at Stanford University in
California hypothesized that children's incompetence at color-word learning may be
directly linked to the way these words are used in English. While word order for color
adjectives varies, they are used overwhelmingly in pre-nominal position (e.g. "blue
cup"); in other words, the adjective comes before the noun it is describing. This is in
contrast to post-nominal position (e.g. "The cup is blue") where the adjective comes
after the noun. It seems that the difficulty children have may not be caused by any
unique property of color, or indeed, of the world. Rather, it may simply come down to
the challenge of having to make predictions from color words to the objects they refer
to, instead of being able to make predictions from the world of objects to the color
words.
To illustrate, the word "chair" has a meaning that applies to the somewhat varied set of
entities in the world that people use for sitting on. Chairs have features, such as arms
and legs and backs, that are combined to some degree in a systematic way; they turn
up in a range of chairs of different shapes, sizes, and ages. It could be said that children
learn to narrow down the set of cues that make up a chair and in this way they learn the
concept associated with that word. On the other hand, color words tend to be unique
and not bound to other specific co-occurring features; there is nothing systematic about
color words to help cue their meaning. In the speech that adults direct at children, color
adjectives occur pre-nominally ("blue cup") around 70 percent of the time. This
suggests that most of what children hear from adults will, in fact, be unhelpful in
learning what color words refer to.
C To explore this idea further, the research team recruited 41 English children aged
between 23 and 29 months and carried out a three- phase experiment. It consisted of a
pre-test, followed by training
in the use of color words, and finally a post-test that was identical to the pre-test. The
pre- and post- test materials comprised six objects that were novel to the children.
There were three examples of each object in each of three colors—red, yellow, and
blue. The objects were presented on trays, and in both tests, the children were asked to
pick out objects in response to requests in which the color word was either a prenominal
("Which is the red one?") or a post-nominal ("Which one is red?").
In the training, the children were introduced to a "magic bucket" containing five sets of
items familiar to 26-month-olds (balls, cups, crayons, glasses, and toy bears) in each of
the three colors. The training was set up so that half the children were presented with
the items one by one and heard them labelled with color words used pre-nominally
("This is a red crayon"), while the other half were introduced to the same items
described with a post-nominal color word ("This crayon is red"). After the training, the
children repeated the selection task on the unknown items in the post-test. To assess
the quality of children's understanding of the color words, and the effect of each type
of training, correct choices on items that were consistent across the pre- and post-tests
were used to measure children's color knowledge.
D Individual analysis of pre- and post-test data, which confirmed parental vocabulary
reports, showed the children had at least some knowledge of the three colour words:
they averaged two out of three correct choices in response to both pre- and post-
nominal question types, which, it has been pointed out, is better than chance. When
children's responses to the question types were assessed independently, performance
was at its most consistent when children were both trained and tested on post-nominal
adjectives, and worst when trained on pre-nominal adjectives and tested on post-
nominal adjectives. Only children who had been trained with post- nominal color-word
presentation and then tested with post-nominal question types were significantly more
accurate than chance.
Comparing the pre- and post-test scores across each condition revealed a
significant decline in performance when children were both pre- and post-tested
with questions that placed the color words pre-nominally.
As predicted, when children are exposed to color adjectives in post-nominal position,
they learn them rapidly (after just five training trials per color); when they are
presented with them pre- nominally, as English overwhelmingly tends to do, children
show no signs of learning.
Questions 1-4
The Reading Passage has four sections A-D.
Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below.
List of Headings
i A possible explanation
ii Why names of objects are unhelpful
iii Checking out the theory
iv A curious state of affairs
v The need to look at how words are formed
vi How age impacts on learning colours
vii Some unsurprising data

1 Section A
2 Section B
3 Section C
4 Section D

Questions 5-9
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

The Hypothesis
Children learn many words quite quickly, but their ability to learn colour words takes
longer than expected.
In fact, despite 5...................many four-year olds still struggle to arrange objects into colour
categories.
Scientists have hypothesised that this is due to the 6..........of the adjectives in a phrase or
sentence and the challenges this presents.
While objects consist of a number of 7...............that can be used to recognise other similar
objects, the 8......................of a colour cannot be developed using the same approach. As a
consequence, the way colour words tend to be used in English may be 9.......to children.
Questions 10-11
Which TWO of the following statements about the experiment are true?
A The children were unfamiliar with the objects used in the pre- and post-test.
B The children had to place the pre- and post-test objects onto coloured trays.
C The training was conducted by dividing the children into two groups.
D Pre-nominal questions were used less frequently than post-nominal questions in the training.
E The researchers were looking for inconsistencies in children's knowledge ot word order.

Questions 12-13
Which TWO of the following outcomes are reported in the passage?
A Average results contradicted parental assessment of children’s knowledge.
B Children who were post-tested using post-nominal adjectives performed well,
regardless of the type of training.
C Greatest levels of improvement were achieved by children who were trained and
post-tested using post-nominal adjectives.
D Some children performed less well in the post-test than in the pre-test.
E Some children were unable to accurately name any of the colours in the pre- and post-tests.
 Solution for: Learning color
words Answer Table
1. iv 8. meaning

2. i 9. unhelpful

3. iii 10. A OR C IN EITHER ORDER

4. vii 11. A OR C IN EITHER ORDER

5. training trials 12. C OR D IN EITHER ORDER

6. post-nominal position 13. C OR D IN EITHER ORDER

7. features
Learning color words

Young children struggle with color concepts, and the reason for this may have something to do with
how we use the words that describe them.
A In the course of the first few years of their lives, children who are brought up in
English- speaking homes successfully master the use of hundreds of words. Words for
objects, actions, emotions, and many other aspects of the physical world quickly
become part of their infant repertoire. For some reason, however, when it comes to
learning color words, the same children perform very badly. At the age of four months,
babies can distinguish between basic color categories. Yet it turns out they do this in
much the same way as blind children. "Blue" and "yellow" appear in older children's
expressive language in answer to questions such as "What color is this?", but their
mapping of objects to individual colors is haphazard and interchangeable. If shown a
blue cup and asked about its color, typical two-year-olds seem as likely to come up with
"red" as "blue." Even after hundreds of training trials, children as old as four may still
end up being unable to accurately sort objects by color.
B In an effort to work out why this is, cognitive scientists at Stanford University in
California hypothesized that children's incompetence at color-word learning may be
directly linked to the way these words are used in English. While word order for color
adjectives varies, they are used overwhelmingly in pre-nominal position (e.g. "blue
cup"); in other words, the adjective comes before the noun it is describing. This is in
contrast to post-nominal position (e.g. "The cup is blue") where the adjective comes
after the noun. It seems that the difficulty children have may not be caused by any
unique property of color, or indeed, of the world. Rather, it may simply come down to
the challenge of having to make predictions from color words to the objects they refer
to, instead of being able to make predictions from the world of objects to the color
words.
To illustrate, the word "chair" has a meaning that applies to the somewhat varied set of
entities in the world that people use for sitting on. Chairs have features, such as arms
and legs and backs, that are combined to some degree in a systematic way; they turn
up in a range of chairs of different shapes, sizes, and ages. It could be said that children
learn to narrow down the set of cues that make up a chair and in this way they learn the
concept associated with that word. On the other hand, color words tend to be unique
and not bound to other specific co-occurring features; there is nothing systematic about
color words to help cue their meaning. In the speech that adults direct at children, color
adjectives occur pre-nominally ("blue cup") around 70 percent of the time. This
suggests that most of what children hear from adults will, in fact, be unhelpful in
learning what color words refer to.
C To explore this idea further, the research team recruited 41 English children aged
between 23 and 29 months and carried out a three- phase experiment. It consisted of a
pre-test, followed by training in the use of color words, and finally a post-test that was
identical to the pre-test. The pre- and post- test materials comprised six objects that
were novel to the children. There were three examples of each object in each of three
colors—red, yellow, and blue. The objects were presented on trays, and in both tests,
the children were asked to pick out objects in response to requests in which the color
word was either a prenominal ("Which is the red one?") or a post-nominal ("Which one is
red?").
In the training, the children were introduced to a "magic bucket" containing five sets of
items familiar to 26-month-olds (balls, cups, crayons, glasses, and toy bears) in each of
the three colors. The training was set up so that half the children were presented with
the items one by one and heard them labelled with color words used pre-nominally
("This is a red crayon"), while the other half were introduced to the same items
described with a post-nominal color word ("This crayon is red"). After the training, the
children repeated the selection task on the unknown items in the post-test. To assess
the quality of children's understanding of the color words, and the effect of each type
of training, correct choices on items that were consistent across the pre- and post-tests
were used to measure children's color knowledge.
D Individual analysis of pre- and post-test data, which confirmed parental vocabulary
reports, showed the children had at least some knowledge of the three colour words:
they averaged two out of three correct choices in response to both pre- and post-
nominal question types, which, it has been pointed out, is better than chance. When
children's responses to the question types were assessed independently, performance
was at its most consistent when children were both trained and tested on post-nominal
adjectives, and worst when trained on pre-nominal adjectives and tested on post-
nominal adjectives. Only children who had been trained with post- nominal color-word
presentation and then tested with post-nominal question types were significantly more
accurate than chance.
Comparing the pre- and post-test scores across each condition revealed a
significant decline in performance when children were both pre- and post-tested
with questions that placed the color words pre-nominally.
As predicted, when children are exposed to color adjectives in post-nominal position,
they learn them rapidly (after just five training trials per color); when they are
presented with them pre- nominally, as English overwhelmingly tends to do, children
show no signs of learning.
Questions 1-4
The Reading Passage has four sections A-D.
Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below.
List of Headings
i A possible explanation
ii Why names of objects are unhelpful
iii Checking out the theory
iv A curious state of affairs
v The need to look at how words are formed
vi How age impacts on learning colours
vii Some unsurprising data

1 Section A
2 Section B
3 Section C
4 Section D

Questions 5-9
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

The Hypothesis
Children learn many words quite quickly, but their ability to learn colour words takes
longer than expected.
In fact, despite 5................many four-year olds still struggle to arrange objects into colour
categories.
Scientists have hypothesised that this is due to the 6........of the adjectives in a phrase or
sentence and the challenges this presents.
While objects consist of a number of 7............that can be used to recognise other similar
objects, the 8...................of a colour cannot be developed using the same approach. As a
consequence, the way colour words tend to be used in English may be 9....to children.

Questions 10-11
Which TWO of the following statements about the experiment are true?
A The children were unfamiliar with the objects used in the pre- and post-test.
B The children had to place the pre- and post-test objects onto coloured trays.
C The training was conducted by dividing the children into two groups.
D Pre-nominal questions were used less frequently than post-nominal questions in the training.
E The researchers were looking for inconsistencies in children's knowledge ot word order.

Questions 12-13
Which TWO of the following outcomes are reported in the passage?
A Average results contradicted parental assessment of children’s knowledge.
B Children who were post-tested using post-nominal adjectives performed well,
regardless of the type of training.
C Greatest levels of improvement were achieved by children who were trained and
post-tested using post-nominal adjectives.
D Some children performed less well in the post-test than in the pre-test.
E Some children were unable to accurately name any of the colours in the pre- and post-tests.
 Solution for: Learning color
words Answer Table
1. iv 8. meaning

2. i 9. unhelpful

3. iii 10. A OR C IN EITHER ORDER

4. vii 11. A OR C IN EITHER ORDER

5. training trials 12. C OR D IN EITHER ORDER

6. post-nominal position 13. C OR D IN EITHER ORDER

7. features
The MIT factor: celebrating 150 years of maverick
genius

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has led the world into the future for 150 years with
scientific innovations.
The musician Yo-Yo Ma’s cello may not be the obvious starting point for a journey into
one of the world’s great universities. But, as you quickly realise when you step inside
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there’s precious little going on that you
would normally see on a university campus. The cello, resting in a corner of MIT’s
celebrated media laboratory — a hub of creativity — looks like any other electric
classical instrument. But it is much more. Machover, the composer, teacher and
inventor responsible for its creation, calls it a ‘hyperinstrument’, a sort of thinking
machine that allows Ma and his cello to interact with one another and make music
together. ‘The aim is to build an instrument worthy of a great musician like Yo-Yo Ma
that can understand what he is trying to do and respond to it,’ Machover says. The cello
has numerous sensors across its body and by measuring the pressure, speed and angle
of the virtuoso’s performance it can interpret his mood and engage with it, producing
extraordinary new sounds. The virtuoso cellist frequently performs on the instrument as
he tours around the world.
Machover’s passion for pushing at the boundaries of the existing world to extend and
unleash human potential is not a bad description of MIT as a whole. This unusual
community brings highly gifted, highly motivated individuals together from a vast
range of disciplines, united by a common desire: to leap into the dark and reach for the
unknown.
The result of that single unifying ambition is visible all around. For the past 150 years,
MIT has been leading the world into the future. The discoveries of its teachers and
students have become the common everyday objects that we now all take for granted.
The telephone, electromagnets, radars, high-speed photography, office photocopiers,
cancer treatments, pocket calculators, computers, the Internet, the decoding of the
human genome, lasers, space travel ... the list of innovations that involved essential
contributions from MIT and its faculty goes on and on.
From the moment MIT was founded by William Barton Rogers in 1861, it was clear what
it was not. While Harvard stuck to the English model of a classical education, with its
emphasis on Latin and Greek, MIT looked to the German system of learning based on
research and hands-on experimentation. Knowledge was at a premium, but it had to be
useful.
This down-to-earth quality is enshrined in the school motto, Mens et manus - Mind and
hand - as well as its logo, which shows a gowned scholar standing beside an
ironmonger bearing a hammer
and anvil. That symbiosis of intellect and craftsmanship still suffuses the institute’s
classrooms, where students are not so much taught as engaged and inspired.
Take Christopher Merrill, 21, a third-year undergraduate in computer science. He is
spending most of his time on a competition set in his robotics class. The contest is to
see which student can most effectively program a robot to build a house out of blocks
in under ten minutes. Merrill says he could have gone for the easiest route - designing
a simple robot that would build the house quickly. But he wanted to try to master an
area of robotics that remains unconquered — adaptability, the ability of the robot to
rethink its plans as the environment around it changes, as would a human.
‘I like to take on things that have never been done before rather than to work in an
iterative way just making small steps forward,’ he explains.
Merrill is already planning the start-up he wants to set up when he graduates in a
year’s time. He has an idea for an original version of a contact lens that would augment
reality by allowing consumers to see additional visual information. He is fearful that he
might be just too late in taking his concept to market, as he has heard that a Silicon
Valley firm is already developing something similar. As such, he might become one of
many MIT graduates who go on to form companies that fail. Alternatively, he might
become one of those who go on to succeed in spectacular fashion. And there are many
of them. A survey of living MIT alumni* found that they have formed 25,800 companies,
employing more than three million people, including about a quarter of the workforce
of Silicon Valley. What MIT delights in is taking brilliant minds from around the world in
vastly diverse disciplines and putting them together. You can see that in its sparkling
new David Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, which brings scientists,
engineers and clinicians under one roof.
Or in its Energy Initiative, which acts as a bridge for MIT’s combined work across all its
five schools, channelling huge resources into the search for a solution to global
warming. It works to improve the efficiency of existing energy sources, including
nuclear power. It is also forging ahead with alternative energies from solar to wind and
geothermal, and has recently developed the use of viruses to synthesise batteries that
could prove crucial in the advancement of electric cars.
In the words of Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who invented the World Wide Web, ‘It’s not
just another university.
Even though I spend my time with my head buried in the details of web technology, the
nice thing is that when I do walk the corridors, I bump into people who are working in
other fields with their students that are fascinating, and that keeps me intellectually
alive.’
Questions 1-5
Do the following statements agree with the information in the reading passage?
Write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
1 The activities going on at the MIT campus are like those at any other university.
2 Harvard and MIT shared a similar approach to education when they were founded.
3 The school motto was suggested by a former MIT student.
4 MIT’s logo reflects the belief that intellect and craftsmanship go together.
5 Silicon Valley companies pay higher salaries to graduates from MIT.

Questions 6-9
Complete the notes below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Christopher Merrill - student at MIT

Degree subject: 6 ……………..
Competition: to 7.......................the automated construction of a house
Special focus on: the 8.......................of robots
Future plans: to develop new type of 9 ……………..

Questions 10-13
Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
10 What proportion of workers at Silicon Valley are employed in companies set
up by MIT graduates?
11 What problem does MIT’s Energy Initiative aim to solve?
12 Which ‘green’ innovation might MIT’s work with viruses help improve?
13 In which part of the university does Tim Berners-Lee enjoy stimulating
conversations with other MIT staff?
 Solution for: The MIT factor: celebrating 150
years of maverick genius

Answer Table
1. FALSE 8. adaptability

2. FALSE 9. contact lens

3. NOT GIVEN 10. one quarter

4. TRUE 11. global warming

5. NOT GIVEN 12. electric cars

6. computer science 13. corridors

7. program
 Language diversity

One of the most influential ideas in the study of languages is that of universal grammar
(UG). Put forward by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s, it is widely interpreted as meaning
that all languages are basically the same, and that the human brain is born language-
ready, with an in-built programme that is able to interpret the common rules
underlying any mother tongue. For five decades this idea prevailed, and influenced
work in linguistics, psychology and cognitive science. To understand language, it
implied, you must sweep aside the huge diversity of languages, and find their common
human core.
Since the theory of UG was proposed, linguists have identified many universal language
rules. However, there are almost always exceptions. It was once believed, for example,
that if a language had syllables[1] that begin with a vowel and end with a consonant
(VC), it would also have syllables that begin with a consonant and end with a vowel
(CV). This universal lasted until 1999, when linguists showed that Arrernte, spoken by
Indigenous Australians from the area around Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, has
VC syllables but no CV syllables.
Other non-universal universals describe the basic rules of putting words together. Take
the rule that every language contains four basic word classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives
and adverbs. Work in the past two decades has shown that several languages lack an
open adverb class, which means that new adverbs cannot be readily formed, unlike in
English where you can turn any adjective into an adverb, for example ‘soft’ into ‘softly’.
Others, such as Lao, spoken in Laos, have no adjectives at all. More controversially,
some linguists argue that a few languages, such as Straits Salish, spoken by indigenous
people from north-western regions of North America, do not even have distinct nouns or
verbs. Instead, they have a single class of words to include events, objects and
qualities.
Even apparently indisputable universals have been found lacking. This includes
recursion, or the ability to infinitely place one grammatical unit inside a similar unit,
such as ‘Jack thinks that Mary thinks that ... the bus will be on time’. It is widely
considered to be the most essential characteristic of human language, one that sets it
apart from the communications of all other animals. Yet Dan Everett at Illinois State
University recently published controversial work showing that Amazonian Piraha does
not have this quality.
But what if the very diversity of languages is the key to understanding human
communication? Linguists Nicholas Evans of the Australian National University in
Canberra, and Stephen Levinson of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in
Nijmegen, the Netherlands, believe that languages do not share a common set of rules.
Instead, they say, their sheer variety is a defining feature of human communication -
something not seen in other animals. While there is no doubt that human thinking
influences the form that language takes, if Evans and Levinson are correct, language in
turn shapes our brains. This suggests that humans are more diverse than we thought,
with our brains
having differences depending on the language environment in which we grew up. And
that leads to a disturbing conclusion: every time a language becomes extinct, humanity
loses an important piece of diversity.
If languages do not obey a single set of shared rules, then how are they created?
‘Instead of universals. you get standard engineering solutions that languages adopt
again and again, and then you get outliers.' says Evans. He and Levinson argue that this
is because any given language is a complex system shaped by many factors, including
culture, genetics and history. There- are no absolutely universal traits of language, they
say, only tendencies. And it is a mix of strong and weak tendencies that characterises
the ‘bio-cultural’ mix that we call language.
According to the two linguists, the strong tendencies explain why many languages
display common patterns. A variety of factors tend to push language in a similar
direction, such as the structure of the brain, the biology of speech, and the efficiencies
of communication. Widely shared linguistic elements may also be ones that build on a
particularly human kind of reasoning. For example, the fact that before we learn to
speak we perceive the world as a place full of things causing actions (agents) and
things having actions done to them (patients) explains why most languages deploy
these grammatical categories.
Weak tendencies, in contrast, are explained by the idiosyncrasies of different
languages. Evans and Levinson argue that many aspects of the particular natural
history of a population may affect its language. For instance, Andy Butcher at Flinders
University in Adelaide, South Australia, has observed that indigenous Australian children
have by far the highest incidence of chronic middle-ear infection of any population on
the planet, and that most indigenous Australian languages lack many sounds that are
common in other languages, but which are hard to hear with a middle-ear infection.
Whether this condition has shaped the sound systems of these languages is unknown,
says Evans, but it is important to consider the idea.
Levinson and Evans are not the first to question the theory of universal grammar, but
no one has summarised these ideas quite as persuasively, and given them as much
reach. As a result, their arguments have generated widespread enthusiasm, particularly
among those linguists who are tired of trying to squeeze their findings into the
straitjacket of ‘absolute universals’. To some, it is the final nail in UG’s coffin. Michael
Tomasello, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in
Leipzig, Germany, has been a long-standing critic of the idea that all languages conform
to a set of rules. ‘Universal grammar is dead,’ he says.
[1] a unit of sound
Questions 1-6
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
Write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
1 In the final decades of the twentieth century, a single theory of language
learning was dominant.
2 The majority of UG rules proposed by linguists do apply to all human languages.
3 There is disagreement amongst linguists about an aspect of Straits Salish grammar.
4 The search for new universal language rules has largely ended.
5 If Evans and Levinson are right, people develop in the same way no matter
what language they speak.
6 The loss of any single language might have implications for the human race.

Questions 7-11
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
7 Which of the following views about language are held by Evans and Levinson?
A Each of the world’s languages develops independently.
B The differences between languages outweigh the similarities.
C Only a few language features are universal.
D Each language is influenced by the characteristics of other languages.
8 According to Evans and Levinson, apparent similarities between languages could be due to
A close social contact.
B faulty analysis.
C shared modes of perception.
D narrow descriptive systems.
9 In the eighth paragraph, what does the reference to a middle-ear infection serve as?
A A justification for something.
B A contrast with something.
C The possible cause of something.
D The likely result of something.
10 What does the writer suggest about Evans’ and Levinson’s theory of language development?
A It had not been previously considered.
B It is presented in a convincing way.
C It has been largely rejected by other linguists.
D It is not supported by the evidence.
11 Which of the following best describes the writer’s purpose?
A To describe progress in the field of cognitive science.
B To defend a long-held view of language learning.
C To identify the similarities between particular languages.
D To outline opposing views concerning the nature of language.

Questions 12-14
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-E, below.
Write the correct letter, A-E.
12 The Arrernte language breaks a ‘rule’ concerning
13 The Lao language has been identified as lacking
14 It has now been suggested that Amazonia Piraha does not have
A words of a certain grammatical type.
B a sequence of sounds predicted by UG.
C words which can have more than one meaning.
D the language feature regarded as the most basic.
E sentences beyond a specified length.
 Solution for: Language diversity
Answer Table
1. YES 8. C

2. NO 9. C

3. YES 10. B

4. NOT GIVEN 11. D

5. NO 12. B

6. YES 13. A

7. A 14. D
Overcoming the language barrier

The discovery that language can be a barrier to communication is quickly made by all
who travel, study, govern or sell. Whether the activity is tourism, research,
government, policing, business, or data dissemination, the lack of a common language
can severely impede progress or can halt it altogether. 'Common language' here
usually means a foreign language, but the same point applies in principle to any
encounter with unfamiliar dialects or styles within a single language. 'They don't talk
the same language' has a major metaphorical meaning alongside its literal one.
Although communication problems of this kind must happen thousands of times each
day, very few become public knowledge. Publicity comes only when a failure to
communicate has major consequences, such as strikes, lost orders, legal problems, or
fatal accidents - even, at times, war. One reported instance of communication failure
took place in 1970, when several Americans ate a species of poisonous mushroom. No
remedy was known, and two of the people died within days. A radio report of the case
was heard by a chemist who knew of a treatment that had been successfully used in
1959 and published in 1963. Why had the American doctors not heard of it seven years
later? Presumably because the report of the treatment had been published only in
journals written in European languages other than English.
Several comparable cases have been reported. But isolated examples do not give an
impression of the size of the problem — something that can come only from studies of
the use or avoidance of foreign-language materials and contacts in different
communicative situations. In the English- speaking scientific world, for example,
surveys of books and documents consulted in libraries and other information agencies
have shown that very little foreign-language material is ever consulted. Library
requests in the field of science and technology showed that only 13 per cent were for
foreign language periodicals. Studies of the sources cited in publications lead to a
similar conclusion: the use of foreign- language sources is often found to be as low as
10 per cent.
The language barrier presents itself in stark form to firms who wish to market their
products in other countries. British industry, in particular, has in recent decades often
been criticised for its linguistic insularity — for its assumption that foreign buyers will be
happy to communicate in English, and that awareness of other languages is not
therefore a priority. In the 1960s, over two-thirds of British firms dealing with • non-
English-speaking customers were using English for outgoing correspondence; many had
their sales literature only in English; and as many as 40 per cent employed no-one able
to communicate in the customers' languages. A similar problem was identified in other
English- speaking countries, notably the USA, Australia and New Zealand. And non-
English-speaking
countries were by no means exempt - although the widespread use of English as an
alternative language made them less open to the charge of insularity.
The criticism and publicity given to this problem since the 1960s seems to have greatly
improved the situation, industrial training schemes have promoted an increase in
linguistic and cultural awareness. Many firms now have their own translation services;
to take just one example in Britain, Rowntree Mackintosh now publish their documents
in six languages (English, French, German, Dutch, Italian and Xhosa). Some firms run
part-time language courses in the languages of the countries with which they are most
involved; some produce their own technical glossaries, to ensure consistency when
material is being translated. It is now much more readily appreciated that marketing
efforts can be delayed, damaged, or disrupted by a failure to take account of the
linguistic needs of the customer.
The changes in awareness have been most marked in English-speaking countries,
where the realisation has gradually dawned that by no means everyone in the world
knows English well enough to negotiate in it. This is especially a problem when English
is not an official language of public administration, as in most parts of the Far East,
Russia, Eastern Europe, the Arab world, Latin America and French- speaking Africa.
Even in cases where foreign customers can speak English quite well, it is often
forgotten that they may not be able to understand it to the required level - bearing in
mind the regional and social variation which permeates speech and which can cause
major problems of listening comprehension. In securing understanding, how 'we' speak
to 'them' is just as important, it appears, as how 'they' speak to 'us'.
Questions 1-4
Complete each of the following statements (Questions 1-4) with words taken from Reading Passage
2.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

1 Language problems may come to the attention of the public when they have ,
such as fatal accidents or social problems.
2 Evidence of the extent of the language barrier has been gained from of
materials used by scientists such as books and periodicals.
3 An example of British linguistic insularity is the use of English for materials such as
4 An example of a part of the world where people may have difficulty in negotiating English is

Questions 5-7
Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 5-7 on your answer sheet.

5 According to the passage, 'They don't talk the same language' (paragraph 1),
can refer to problems in ...
A understanding metaphor.
B learning foreign languages.
C understanding dialect or style.
D dealing with technological change.

6 The case of the poisonous mushrooms (paragraph 2) suggests that American doctors .
A should pay more attention to radio reports.
B only read medical articles if they are in English.
C are sometimes unwilling to try foreign treatments.
D do not always communicate effectively with their patients.

7 According to the writer, the linguistic insularity of British businesses ...

A later spread to other countries.
B had a negative effect on their business.
C is not as bad now as it used to be in the past.
D made non-English-speaking companies turn to other markets.

Questions 8-11
LIST the four main ways in which British companies have tried to solve the problem of the language
barrier since the 1960s.
WRITE NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 8-11 on your answer sheet.

8
9
10
11

Questions 12-13
Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 12 and 13 on your answer sheet.

12 According to the writer, English-speaking people need to be aware that...

A some foreigners have never met an English-speaking person.
B many foreigners have no desire to learn English.
C foreign languages may pose a greater problem in the future.
D English-speaking foreigners may have difficulty understanding English.

13 A suitable title for this passage would be ...

A Overcoming the language barrier
B How to survive an English-speaking world
C Global understanding - the key to personal progress
D The need for a common language
 Solution for: Overcoming the language barrier
Answer Table
1. major consequences 8. (industrial) training (schemes)\\
translation services\\(part-time) language
courses\\(technical) glossaries

2. surveys 9. (industrial) training (schemes)\\

translation services\\(part-time) language
courses\\(technical) glossaries

3. sales literature 10. (industrial) training (schemes)\\

translation services\\(part-time) language
courses\\(technical) glossaries

4. Eastern Europe//Far East//Russia//Arab 11. (industrial) training (schemes)\\

world//Latin America//French-speaking translation services\\(part-time) language
Africa courses\\(technical) glossaries

5. C 12. D

6. B 13. A

7. C
 SAVING LANGUAGE

For the first time, linguists have put a price on language. To save a language from extinction
isn’t cheap - but more and more people are arguing that the alternative is the death of
communities
There is nothing unusual about a single language dying. Communities have come and
gone throughout history, and with them their language. But what is happening today is
extraordinary, judged by the standards of the past. It is language extinction on a
massive scale. According to the best estimates, there are some 6,000 languages in the
world. Of these, about half are going to die out in the course of the next century: that’s
3,000 languages in 1,200 months. On average, there is a language dying out
somewhere in the world every two weeks or so.
How do we know? In the course of the past two or three decades, linguists all over the
world have been gathering comparative data. If they find a language with just a few
speakers left, and nobody is bothering to pass the language on to the children, they
conclude that language is bound to die out soon. And we have to draw the same
conclusion if a language has less than 100 speakers. It is not likely to last very long. A
1999 survey shows that 97 per cent of the world’s languages are spoken by just four
per cent of the people.
It is too late to do anything to help many languages, where the speakers are too few or
too old, and where the community is too busy just trying to survive to care about their
language. But many languages are not in such a serious position. Often, where
languages are seriously endangered, there are things that can be done to give new life
to them. It is called revitalisation.
Once a community realises that its language is in danger, it can start to introduce
measures which can genuinely revitalise. The community itself must want to save its
language. The culture of which it is a part must need to have a respect for minority
languages. There needs to be funding, to support courses, materials, and teachers. And
there need to be linguists, to get on with the basic task of putting the language down on
paper. That’s the bottom line: getting the language documented - recorded, analysed,
written down. People must be able to read and write if they and their language are to
have a future in an increasingly computer- literate civilisation.
But can we save a few thousand languages, just like that? Yes, if the will and funding
were available. It is not cheap, getting linguists into the field, training local analysts,
supporting the community with language resources and teachers, compiling grammars
and dictionaries, writing materials for use in schools. It takes time, lots of it, to revitalise
an endangered language. Conditions vary so much that it is difficult to generalise, but a
figure of $ 100,000 a year per language cannot be far from the truth. If we devoted that
amount of effort over three years for each of 3,000 languages, we would be talking
about some $900 million.
There are some famous cases which illustrate what can be done. Welsh, alone among
the Celtic languages, is not only stopping its steady decline towards extinction but
showing signs of real growth. Two Language Acts protect the status of Welsh now, and
its presence is increasingly in evidence wherever you travel in Wales.
On the other side of the world, Maori in New Zealand has been maintained by a system
of so- called ‘language nests’, first introduced in 1982. These are organisations which
provide children under five with a domestic setting in which they are intensively
exposed to the language. The staff are all Maori speakers from the local community.
The hope is that the children will keep their Maori skills alive after leaving the nests,
and that as they grow older they will in turn become role models to a new generation of
young children. There are cases like this all over the world. And when the reviving
language is associated with a degree of political autonomy, the growth can be
especially striking, as shown by Faroese, spoken in the Faroe Islands, after the islanders
received a measure of autonomy from Denmark.
In Switzerland, Romansch was facing a difficult situation, spoken in five very different
dialects, with small and diminishing numbers, as young people left their community for
work in the German- speaking cities. The solution here was the creation in the 1980s of
a unified written language for all these dialects. Romansch Grischun, as it is now called,
has official status in parts of Switzerland, and is being increasingly used in spoken form
on radio and television.
A language can be brought back from the very brink of extinction. The Ainu language of
Japan, after many years of neglect and repression, had reached a stage where there
were only eight fluent speakers left, all elderly. However, new government policies
brought fresh attitudes and a positive interest in survival. Several ‘semispeakers’ -
people who had become unwilling to speak Ainu because of the negative attitudes by
Japanese speakers - were prompted to become active speakers again. There is fresh
interest now and the language is more publicly available than it has been for years.
If good descriptions and materials are available, even extinct languages can be
resurrected. Kaurna, from South Australia, is an example. This language had been
extinct for about a century, but had been quite well documented. So, when a strong
movement grew for its revival, it was possible to reconstruct it. The revised language is
not the same as the original, of course. It lacks the range that the original had, and
much of the old vocabulary. But it can nonetheless act as a badge of present- day
identity for its people. And as long as people continue to value it as a true marker of
their identity, and are prepared to keep using it, it will develop new functions and new
vocabulary, as any other living language would do.
It is too soon to predict the future of these revived languages, but in some parts of the
world they are attracting precisely the range of positive attitudes and grass roots
support which are the preconditions for language survival. In such unexpected but
heart-warming ways might we see the grand total of languages in the world minimally
increased.
Questions 1-5
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet write
YES if the statement agrees with the writer s views
NO if the statement contradicts the writer s views
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
1 The rate at which languages are becoming extinct has increased.
2 Research on the subject of language extinction began in the 1990s.
3 In order to survive, a language needs to be spoken by more than 100 people.
4 Certain parts of the world are more vulnerable than others to language extinction.
5 Saving language should be the major concern of any small community whose
language is under threat.

Questions 6-8
The list below gives some of the factors that are necessary to assist the revitalisation of a language
within a community.
Which THREE of the factors are mentioned by the writer of the text?
Write the appropriate letters A-G in boxes 6-8 on your answer sheet.
A the existence of related languages
B support from the indigenous population
C books tracing the historical development of the language
D on-the-spot help from language experts
E a range of speakers of different ages
F formal education procedures
G a common purpose for which the language is required

Questions 9-13
Match the languages A-F with the statements below (Questions 9-13) which describe how a
language was saved.
Write your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.
Languages
A Welsh
B Maori
C Faroese
D Romansch
E Ainu
F Kauma

9 The region in which the language was spoken gained increased independence.
10 People were encouraged to view the language with less prejudice.
11 Language immersion programmes were set up for sectors of the population.
12 A merger of different varieties of the language took place.
13 Written samples of the language permitted its revitalisation.
Solution for: SAVING LANGUAGE
Answer Table
1. YES 8. B OR D OR F IN EITHER ORDER

2. NO 9. C

3. YES 10. E

4. NOT GIVEN 11. B

5. NO 12. D

6. B OR D OR F IN EITHER ORDER 13. F

7. B OR D OR F IN EITHER ORDER
The meaning of volunteering

A
Volunteering, as some people consider mistakenly is a plethora of people from all walk
of life as well as activities, but data from the other side of the world suggest otherwise.
For example, a survey on who participated in volunteering by the Office for National
Statistics (ONS) in the United
Kingdom (UK) showed that people in higher income households are more likely than
others to volunteer. In England and Wales, 57% of adults with gross annual household
incomes of £75.000 or more, have volunteered formally In the 12 months prior to the
survey date. They were almost twice more likely to have done so than those living in
households with as annual income under £10.000.
B
As well as having high household incomes, volunteers also tend to have higher
academic qualifications, be in higher socio-economic groups and be in
employment. Among people with a degree or postgraduate qualification, 79 per
cent had volunteered informally and 57 per cent had volunteered formally in the
previous 12 months. For people with no qualifications the corresponding
proportions were 52 per cent and 23 per cent at all. However, voluntary work is
certainly not the exclusive preserve of the rich. Does the answer not lie perhaps in
the fact that the rich tend to have money to allow them the time to be become
involved in voluntary work compared to less well-off people?
C
A breakdown in the year 2000 of the range of volunteering activities taken from The
Australia Bureau of Statistics gives an idea of the scale of activities in which people are
typically involved.
Eleven sectors are given ranging from Community and Welfare, which accounted
for just over a quarter of the total hours volunteered in Australia, to Law/ justice/
politics with 1.2 percent at the other and of the scale. Other fields included sport/
recreation, religious activities and education, following at 21/1 per cent, 16.9 and
14.3 per cent of the total hours. The data here also seem to point to a cohort of
volunteers with expertise and experience.
D
The knock-on effect of volunteering on the lives of individuals can be profound.
Voluntary work helps foster independence and imparts the ability to deal with different
situations, often simultaneously, thus teaching people how to work their way through
different systems. It therefore brings people into touch with the real world; and, hence,
equips them for the future.
E
Initially, young adults in their late teens might not seem to have the expertise or
knowledge to impart to others that say a teacher or agriculturalist or nurse would have,
but they do have many skills that can help others. And in the absence of any particular
talent, their energy and enthusiasm can
be harnessed for the benefit of their fellow human beings, and ultimately themselves.
From all this, the gain to any community no matter how many volunteers are involved is
immeasurable.
F
Employers will generally look favorably on people who have shown an ability to work as
part of a team. It demonstrates a willingness to learn and an independent spirit, which
would be
desirable qualities in any employee. So to satisfy employers’ demands for experience
when applying for work, volunteering can act as a means of gaining experience that
might otherwise elude would- be workers and can ultimately lead to paid employment
and the desired field.
G
But what are the prerequisites for becoming a volunteer? One might immediately think
of attributes like kindness, selflessness, strength of character, ability to deal with
others,
determination, adaptability and flexibility and a capacity to comprehend the ways of
other people. While offering oneself selflessly, working as a volunteer makes further
demands on the individual. It requires a strength of will, a sense of moral responsibility
for one’s fellow human beings, and an ability to fit into the ethos of an organization. But
it also requires something which in no way detracts from valuable work done by
volunteers and which may seem at first glance both contradictory and surprising: self
interest.
H
Organizations involved in any voluntary work have to be realistic about this. If
someone, whatever the age is going to volunteer and devote their time without money,
they do need to receive something from it for themselves. People who are unemployed
can use volunteer work as a stepping-stone to employment or as a means of finding
out whether they really like the field the plan to enter or as a way to help them find
themselves.
I
It is tempting to use some form of community work as an alternative to national
service or as punishment for petty criminals by making the latter for example
clean up parks, wash away graffiti, work with victims of their own or other people.
Thus may be acceptable, but it does not constitute volunteer work, two cardinal
rules of which are the willingness to volunteer without coercion and working
unpaid. .
Questions 1-6
Reading Passage 3 has nine paragraphs A -I
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the letter, A-l, in boxes 1-6 on your Answer Sheet
1 a description of what does not satisfy the criteria for volunteer work
2 the impact of voluntary work on the development of individuals
3 the requirement for both selflessness and self-interest in volunteers
4 various areas in which people volunteer
5 the benefit of voluntary work for the young
6 a mistaken view of volunteering

Questions 7-10
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet.

7 The ONS survey was done to find out

A why people undertook volunteering.
B how many people participated in volunteering.
C how many rich people did volunteer work.
D which people were involved in volunteering.

8 The ONS survey found that people with university qualification were
A as likely to volunteer as those with no qualifications.
B more likely to volunteer than those with no qualifications.
C less likely to volunteer than those with no qualifications.
D the only group likely to do formal volunteer work.

9 It is suggested that rich people volunteer as a result of having

A clearer goals.
B fewer children.
C more spare time.
D greater guilt.
10 Volunteer work benefits people by teaching them how to
A function in system.
B communicate clearly.
C deal with failure.
D overcome shyness.

Questions 11-13
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F below.
Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 11-13 on your Answer Sheet.

11 One of the requirements of being a volunteer is being able to

12 Volunteering can be used as a way for the unemployed to
13 Employers in general tend to

A consider workers with volunteer work experience an asset.

B gain a very well paid job.
C gain access to a job in a field of interest.
D benefit most from volunteer work.
E understand how people behave.
F want much younger workers.
 Solution for: The meaning of volunteering
Answer Table
1. I 8. B

2. D 9. C

3. G 10. A

4. C 11. E

5. E 12. C

6. A 13. A

7. D