Bộ đề IELTS Reading có đáp án THE STAR TUTORING

Questions 8-13 Answer the question below Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer Write your answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.. If there are thylacines

Classifying societies 3

Tasmanian Tigers 7

Accidental Scientists 14

Ambergris 20

Tackling Hunger in Msekeni 26

Placebo Effect –The Power of Nothing 30

Learning by Examples 36

A New Ice Age 41

The Fruit Book 47

The Mozart Effect 52

The Ant and the Mandarin 57

Music: Language We All Speak 64

Wonder Plant 70

The 2003 Heatwave 76

Talc Powder 81

Review of research on the effects of food promotion to children 88

The bridge that swayed 92

Internal Market: Selling the Brand Inside 97

Going Bananas 103

Coastal Archaeology of Britain 109

Travel Books 115

William Gilbert and Magnetism 122

Children’s Literature 126

Amateur Naturalists 131

How to Spot a Liar? 137

Being Left-handed in a Right-handed World 143

What is a Dinosaur? 151

The Sweet Scent of Success 155

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Mrs Carlill and the Carbolic Smoke Ball 160

Communicating Styles and Conflict 167

New Zealand Seaweed 173

Optimism and Health 177

The Columbian Exchange 182

The Seed Hunters 187

Assessing the Risk 192

The Origins of Laughter 197

The Lost City 202

Designed to Last: Could Better Design Cure Our Throwaway Culture? 207

Alfred Nobel 212

Bird Migration 218

The Ingenuity Gap 222

Man or Machine? 228

California’s Age of Megafires 232

The Rainmaker 238

Health in the Wild 243

The Conquest of Malaria in Italy, 1900-1962 248

Sunset for the Oil Business? 253

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Clan

These are small-scale societies of hunters and gatherers, generally of fewer than 100 people, who move seasonally to exploit wild (undomesticated) food resources Most surviving hunter-gatherer groups are of this kind, such as the Hadza

of Tanzania or the San of southern Africa Clan members are generally kinsfolk, related by descent or marriage Clans lack formal leaders, so there are no marked economic differences or disparities in status among their members

Because clans are composed of mobile groups of hunter-gatherers, their sites consist mainly of seasonally occupied camps, and other smaller and more specialized sites Among the latter are kill or butchery sites –locations where large mammals are killed and sometimes butchered –and work sites, where tools are made or other specific activities carried out The base camp of such a group may give evidence of rather insubstantial dwellings or temporary shelters, along with the debris of residential occupation

Tribe

These are generally larger than mobile hunter-gatherer groups, but rarely number more than a few thousand, and their diet or subsistence is based largely on cultivated plants and domesticated animals Typically, they are settled farmers, but they may be nomadic with a very different, mobile economy based on the intensive exploitation of livestock These are generally multi-community societies, with the individual communities integrated into the larger society through kinship ties Although some tribes have officials and even a “capital” or seat of government, such officials lack the economic based necessary for effective use of power

The typical settlement pattern for tribes is one of settled agricultural homesteads or villages Characteristically, no one settlement dominates any of the others in the region Instead, the archaeologist finds evidence for isolated,

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permanently occupied houses or for permanent villages Such villages may be made

up of a collection of free-standing houses, like those of the first farms of the Danube valley in Europe Or they may be clusters of buildings grouped together, for example, the pueblos of the American Southwest, and the early farming village or small town

of Catalhoyuk in modern Turkey

Chiefdom

These operate on the principle of ranking –differences in social status between people Different lineages (a lineage is a group claiming descent from a common ancestor) are graded on a scale of prestige, and the senior lineage, and hence the society as a whole, is governed by a chief Prestige and rank are determined by how closely related one is to the chief, and there is no true stratification into classes The role of the chief is crucial

Often, there is local specialization in craft products, and surpluses of these and

of foodstuffs are periodically paid as obligation to the chief He uses these to maintain his retainers, and may use them for redistribution to his subjects The chiefdom generally has a center of power, often with temples, residences of the chief and his retainers, and craft specialists Chiefdoms vary greatly in size, but the range is generally between about 5000 and 20,000 persons

Early State

These preserve many of the features of chiefdoms, but the ruler (perhaps a king

or sometimes a queen) has explicit authority to establish laws and also to enforce them by the use of a standing army Society no longer depends totally upon kin relationships: it is now stratified into different classes Agricultural workers and the poorer urban dwellers from the lowest classes, with the craft specialists above, and the priests and kinsfolk of the ruler higher still The functions of the ruler are often separated from those of the priest: palace is distinguished from temple The society is viewed as a territory owned by the ruling lineage and populated by tenants who have

an obligation to pay taxes The central capital houses a bureaucratic administration of officials; one of their principal purposes is to collect revenue (often in the form of taxes and tolls) and distribute it to government, army and craft specialists Many early states developed complex redistribution systems to support these essential services

This rather simple social typology, set out by Elman Service and elaborated by William Sanders and Joseph Marino, can be criticized, and it should not be used unthinkingly, nevertheless, if we are seeking to talk about early societies, we must

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use words and hence concepts to do so Service’s categories provide a good framework to help organize our thoughts

Question 1-7

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 1?

On your answer sheet please write

1 There’s little economic difference between members of a clan

2 The farmers of a tribe grow a wide range of plants,

3 One settlement is more important than any other settlements in a tribe

4 A member’s status in a chiefdom is determined by how much land he owns

5 There are people who craft goods in chiefdoms

6 The king keeps the order of a state by using an army

7 Bureaucratic officers receive higher salaries than other members

Questions 8-13

Answer the question below

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer

Write your answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet

8 What are made at the clan work sites?

9 What is the other way of life for tribes besides settled farming?

10 How are Catalhoyuk’s housing units arranged?

11 What does a chief give to his subjects as rewards besides crafted good?

12 What is the largest possible population of a chiefdom?

13 Which group of people is at the bottom of an early state but higher than the

farmers?

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READING PASSAGE 2

Tasmanian Tigers

Although it was called tiger, it looked like a dog with black stripes on its back and it was the largest known carnivorous marsupial of modern times Yet, despite its fame for being one of the most fabled animals in the world, it is one of the least understood of Tasmania’s native animals The scientific name for the Tasmanian tiger is Thylacine and it is believed that they have become extinct in the 20th century

Fossils of thylacines dating from about almost 12 million years ago have been dug up at various places in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia They were widespread in Australia 7,000 years ago, but probably been extinct on the continent for 2,000 years This is believed to be because of the introduction of dingoes around 8,000 years ago Because of disease, thylacine numbers may have been declining in Tasmania at the time of European settlement 200 years ago, but the decline was certainly accelerated by the new arrivals The last known Tasmanian Tiger died in Hobart Zoo in 1936 and the animal is officially classified as extinct Technically, this means that it has not been officially sighted in the wild or captivity for 50 years However, there are still unsubstantiated sightings

Hans Naarding, whose study of animals had taken him around the world, was conducting a survey of a species of endangered migratory bird What he saw that night is now regarded as the most credible sighting recorded of thylacine that many believe has been extinct for more than 70 years

“I had to work at night.” Naarding takes up the story “I was in the habit of intermittently shining a spotlight around The beam fell on an animal in front of the vehicle, less than 10m away Instead of risking movement by grabbing for a camera, I decided to register very carefully what I was seeing The animal was about the size of

a small shepherd dog, a very healthy male in prime condition What set it apart from

a dog, though, was a slightly sloping hindquarter, with a fairly thick tail being a straight continuation of the backline of the animal It had 12 distinct stripes on its back, continuing onto its butt I knew perfectly well what I was seeing As soon as I reached for the camera, it disappeared into the tea-tree undergrowth and scrub

The director of Tasmanian’s National Parks at the time, Peter Morrow, decided

in his wisdom to keep Naarding’s sighting of the thylacine secret for two years When the news finally broke, it was accompanied by pandemonium “I was besieged by television crews, including four to five from Japan, and others from the United Kingdom, Germany, New Zealand and South America,” said Naarding

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Government and private search parties combed the region, but no further sightings were made The tiger, as always, had escaped to its lair, a place many insist exists only in our imagination But since then, the thylacine has staged something of a comeback, becoming part of Australian mythology

There have been more than 4,000 claimed sightings of the beast since it supposedly died out, and the average claims each year reported to authorities now number 150 Associate professor of zoology at the University of Tasmania, Randolph Rose, has said he dreams of seeing a thylacine But Rose, who in his 35 years in Tasmanian academia has fielded countless reports of thylacine sightings, is now convinced that his dream will go unfulfilled

“The consensus among conservationists is that, usually, any animal with a population base of less than 1,000 is headed for extinction within 60 years,” says Rose “Sixty years ago, there was only one thylacine that we know of, and that was in Hobart Zoo,” he says

Dr David Pemberton, curator of zoology at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, who PhD thesis was on the thylacine, says that despite scientific thinking that 500 animals are required to sustain a population, the Florida panther is down to a dozen or so animals and, while it does have some inbreeding problems, is still ticking along “I’ll take a punt and say that, if we manage to find a thylacine in the scrub, it means that there are 50-plus animals out there.”

After all, animals can be notoriously elusive The strange fish known as the coelacanth, with its “proto-legs”, was thought to have died out along with the dinosaurs 700 million years ago until a specimen was dragged to the surface in a shark net off the south-east coast of South Africa in 1938

Wildlife biologist Nick Mooney has the unenviable task of investigating all

“sightings” of the tiger totaling 4,000 since the mid-1930s, and averaging about 150 a year It was Mooney who was first consulted late last month about the authenticity of digital photographic images purportedly taken by a German tourist while on a recent bushwalk in the state On face value, Mooney says, the account of sighting, and the two photographs submitted as proof, amount to one of the most convincing cases for the species’ survival he has seen

And Mooney has seen it all –the mistakes, the hoaxes, the illusions and the plausible accounts of sightings Hoaxers aside, most people who report sightings end

up believing they have seen a thylacine, and are themselves believable to the point they could pass a lie-detector test, according to Mooney Others, having tabled a

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creditable report, then become utterly obsessed like the Tasmanian who has registered 99 thylacine sightings to date Mooney has seen individuals bankrupted by the obsession, and families destroyed “It is a blind optimism that something is, rather than a cynicism that something isn’t,” Mooney says “If something crosses the road, it’s not a case of ‘I wonder what that was?’ Rather, it is a case of ‘that’s a thylacine!’

It is a bit like a gold prospector’s blind faith, ‘it has got to be there’.”

However, Mooney treats all reports on face value “I never try to embarrass people, or make fools of them But the fact that I don’t pack the car immediately they ring can often be taken as ridicule Obsessive characters get irate that someone in my position is not out there when they think the thylacine is there.”

But Hans Naarding, whose sighting for a striped animal two decades ago was the highlight of “a life of animal spotting”, remains bemused by the time money people waste on tiger searches He says resources would be better applied to saving the Tasmanian devil, and helping migratory bird populations that are declining as a result of shrinking wetlands across Australia

Could the thylacine still be out there? “Sure” Naarding says But he also says any discovery of surviving thylacines would be “rather pointless” “How do you save

a species from extinction? What could you do with it? If there are thylacines out there, they are better off right where they are.”

Questions 14-17

Complete the summary below

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer

Write your answers in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet

The Tasmanian tiger, also called thylacine, resembles the look of a dog and has

14 _ on its fur coat Many fossils have been found, showing that thylacines had existed as early as 15 _ years ago They lived throughout

16 _ before disappearing from the mainland And soon after the 17

_ settlers arrived the size of thylacine population in Tasmania shrunk at a higher speed

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Question 18-23

Match each statement with the correct person A, B, C or D

Write the correct letter A, B, C or D in boxes 18-23 on your answer sheet

NB You may use any letter more than once

18 His report of seeing a live thylacine in the wild attracted international

interest

19 Many eye-witnesses’ reports are not trustworthy

20 It doesn’t require a certain number of animals to ensure the survival of a

species

21 There is no hope of finding a surviving Tasmanian tiger

22 Do not disturb them if there are any Tasmanian tigers still living today

23 The interpretation of evidence can be affected by people’s beliefs

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Questions 24-26

Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D

Write the correct letter in boxes 24-26 on you answer sheet

24 Hans Naarding’s sighting has resulted in

A government and organizations’ cooperative efforts to protect thylacine

B extensive interests to find a living thylacine

C increase of the number of reports of thylacine worldwide

D growth of popularity of thylacine in literature

25 The example of coelacanth is to illustrate

A it lived in the same period with dinosaurs

B how dinosaurs evolved legs

C some animals are difficult to catch in the wild

D extinction of certain species can be mistaken

26 Mooney believes that all sighting reports should be

A given some credit as they claim even if they are untrue

B acted upon immediately

C viewed as equally untrustworthy

D questioned and carefully investigated

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READING PASSAGE 3

Questions 27-32

Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs, A-G

Choose the most suitable heading for paragraphs A-G from the list of heading

below

Write appropriate number (i-x) in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet

List of Headings

i Examples of some scientific discoveries

ii Horace Walpole’s fairy tale

iii Resolving the contradiction

iv What is the Scientific Method

v The contradiction of views on scientific discovery

vi Some misunderstandings of serendipity

vii Opponents of authority

viii Reality doesn’t always match expectation

ix How the word came into being

x Illustration of serendipity in the business sector

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Accidental Scientists

A A paradox lies close to the heart of scientific discovery If you know just what you are looking for, finding it can hardly count as a discovery, since it was fully anticipated But if, on the other hand, you have no notion of what you are looking for, you cannot know when you have found it, and discovery, as such, is out of the question In the philosophy of science, these extremes map onto the purist forms of deductivism and inductivism: In the former, the outcome is supposed to be logically contained in the premises you start with; in the latter, you are recommended to start with no expectations whatsoever and see what turns up

B As in so many things, the ideal position is widely supposed to reside somewhere in between these two impossible-to-realize extremes You want to have a good enough idea of what you are looking for to be surprised when you find something else of value, and you want to be ignorant enough of your end point that you can entertain alternative outcomes Scientific discovery should, therefore, have

an accidental aspect, but not too much of one Serendipity is a word that expresses a position something like that It’s a fascinating word, and the late Robert King Merton –“the father of the sociology of science” –liked it well enough to compose its biography, assisted by the French cultural historian Elinor Barber

C The word did not appear in the published literature until the early 19thcentury and did not become well enough known to use without explanation until sometime in the first third of the 20th century Serendipity means a “happy accident”

or “pleasant surprise”, specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful without looking for it The first noted use of “serendipity” in the English language

was by Horace Walpole He explained that it came from the fairy tale, called The

Three Princes of Serendip (the ancient name for Ceylon, or present day Sri Lanka),

whose heroes “were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of”

D Antiquarians, following Walpole, found use for it, as they were always rummaging about for curiosities, and unexpected but pleasant surprises were not unknown to them Some people just seemed to have a knack for that sort of thing, and serendipity was used to express that special capacity The other community that came

to dwell on serendipity to say something important about their practice was that of scientist, and here usages cut to the heart of the matter and were often vigorously contested Many scientists, including the Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon and, later, the British immunologist Peter Medawar, liked to emphasize how much of scientific discovery was unplanned and even accidental One of the examples is Hans Christian Orsted’s discovery of electromagnetism when he unintentionally brought a

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current-carrying wire parallel to a magnetic needle Rhetoric about the sufficiency of rational method was so much hot air Indeed, as Medawar insisted, “There is no such thing as The Scientific Method,” no way at all of systematizing the process of discovery Really important discoveries had a way of showing up when they had a mind to do so and not when you were looking for them Maybe some scientists, like some book collectors, had a happy knack; maybe serendipity described the situation rather than a personal skill or capacity

E Some scientists using the word meant to stress those accidents belonging

to the situation; some treated serendipity as a personal capacity; many other exploited the ambiguity of the notion Yet what Cannon and Medawar took as a benign nose-thumbing at Dreams of Method, other scientists found incendiary To say that science had a significant serendipitous aspect was taken by some as dangerous denigration If scientific discovery were really accidental, then what was the special basis of expert authority? In this connection, the aphorism of choice came from no less an authority

on scientific discovery than Louis Pasteur: “Chance favors the prepared mind.” Accidents may happen, and things may turn up unplanned and unforeseen, as one is looking for something else, but the ability to notice such events, to see their potential bearing and meaning, to exploit their occurrence and make constructive use of them –these are the results of systematic mental preparation What seems like an accident is just another form of expertise On closer inspection, it is insisted, accident dissolves into sagacity

F The context in which scientific serendipity was most contested and had its greatest resonance was that connected with the idea of planned science The serendipitists were not all inhabitants of academic ivory towers As Merton and Barber note, two of the great early-20th-century American pioneers of industrial research –Willis Whitney and Irving Langmuir, both of General Electric -made much play of serendipity, in the course of arguing against overly rigid research planning Langmuir thought that misconceptions about the certainty and rationality of the research process did much harm and that mature acceptance of uncertainty was far more likely to result in productive research policies For his own part, Langmuir said that satisfactory outcomes “occurred as though we were just drifting with the wind These things came about by accident.” If there is no very determinate relationship between cause and effect in research, he said, “then planning does not get us very far.” So, from within the bowels of corporate capitalism came powerful arguments,

by way of serendipity, for scientific spontaneity and autonomy The notion that industry was invariably committed to the regimentation of scientific research just doesn’t wash

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G For Merton himself –who one supposes must have been the senior author –serendipity represented the keystone in the arch of his social scientific work

In 1936, as a very young man, Merton wrote a seminal essay on “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action.” It is, he argued, the nature of social action that what one intends is rarely what one gets: Intending to provide resources for buttressing Christian religion, the natural philosopher of the Scientific Revolution laid the groundwork for secularism; people wanting to be alone with nature in Yosemite Valley wind up crowding one another We just don’t know enough –and we can never know enough –to ensure that the past is an adequate guide to the future: Uncertainty about outcomes, even of our best-laid plans, is endemic All social action, including that undertaken with the best evidence and formulated according to the most rational criteria, is uncertain in its consequences

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Questions 33-37

Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D

Write the correct letter in boxes 33-37 on your answer sheet

33 In paragraph A, the word “inductivism” means

A anticipate results in the beginning

B work with prepared premises

C accept chance discoveries

D look for what you want

34 Medawar says “there is no such thing as The Scientific Method” because

A discoveries are made by people with determined mind

B discoveries tend to happen unplanned

C the process of discovery is unpleasant

D serendipity is not a skill

35 Many scientists dislike the idea of serendipity because

A it is easily misunderstood and abused

B it is too unpredictable

C it is beyond their comprehension

D it devalues their scientific expertise

36 The writer mentions Irving Langmuir to illustrate

A planned science should be avoided

B industrial development needs uncertainty

C people tend to misunderstand the relationship between cause and effect

D accepting uncertainty can help produce positive results

37 The example of Yosemite is to show

A the conflict between reality and expectation

B the importance of systematic planning

C the intention of social action

D the power of anticipation

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Questions 38-40

Answer the questions below

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer

Write your answers in boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet

38 Who is the person that first used the word “serendipity”?

39 What kind of story does the word come from?

40 What is the present name of serendip?

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TEST 2

READING PASSAGE 1

Ambergris

What is it and where does it come from?

Ambergris was used to perfume cosmetics in the days of ancient Mesopotamia and almost every civilization on the earth has a brush with Ambergris Before 1,000

AD, the Chinese names ambergris as lung sien hiang, “dragon’s spittle perfume,” as

they think that it was produced from the drooling of dragons sleeping on rocks at the

edge of a sea The Arabs knew ambergris as anbar who believed that it is produced

from springs near seas It also gets its name from here For centuries, this substance has also been used as a flavoring for food

During the Middle Ages, Europeans used ambergris as a remedy for headaches,

colds, epilepsy, and other ailments In the 1851 whaling novel Moby-Dick, Herman

Melville claimed that ambergris was “largely used in perfumery.” But nobody ever knew where it really came from Experts were still guessing its origin thousands of years later, until the long ages of guesswork ended in the 1720’s, when Nantucket whalers found gobs of the costly material inside the stomachs of sperm whales Industrial whaling quickly burgeoned By 20th century ambergris is mainly recovered from inside the carcasses of sperm whales

Through countless ages, people have found pieces of ambergris on sandy

beaches It was names grey amber to distinguish it from golden amber, another rare

treasure Both of them were among the most sought-after substances in the world, almost as valuable as gold (Ambergris sells for roughly $20 a gram, slightly less than gold at $30 a gram.) Amber floats in salt water, and in old times the origin of both these substances was mysterious But it turned out that amber and ambergris have little in common Amber is a fossilized resin from trees that was quite familiar to Europeans long before the discovery of the New World, and prized for jewelry Although considered a gem, amber is a hard, transparent, wholly-organic material derived from the resin of extinct species of trees, mainly pines

To the earliest Western chroniclers, ambergris was variously thought to come from the same bituminous sea founts as amber, from the sperm of fishes or whales, from the droppings of strange sea birds (probably because of confusion over the include beaks of squid) or from the large hives of bees living near the sea Marco

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Polo was the first Western chronicler who correctly attributed ambergris to sperm whales and its vomit

As sperm whales navigate in the oceans, they often dive down to 2 km or more below the sea level to prey on squid, most famously the Giant Squid It’s commonly accepted that ambergris forms in the whale’s gut or intestines as the creature attempts

to “deal” with squid beaks Sperm whales are rather partial to squid, but seemingly struggle to digest the hard, sharp, parrot-like beaks It is thought their stomach juices become hyper-active trying to process the irritants, and eventually hard, resinous lumps are formed around the beaks, and then expelled from their innards by vomiting When a whale initially vomits up ambergris, it is soft and has a terrible smell Some marine biologists compare it to the unpleasant smell of cow dung But after floating on the salty ocean for about a decade, the substance hardens with air and sun into a smooth, waxy, usually rounded piece of nostril heaven The dung smell

is gone, replaced by a sweet, smooth, musky and pleasant earthy aroma

Since ambergris is derived from animals, naturally a question of ethics arises, and in the case of ambergris, it is very important to consider Sperm whales are an endangered species, whose populations started to decline as far back as the 19thcentury due to the high demand for their highly emollient oil, and today their stocks

still have not recovered During the 1970’s, the Save the Whales movement brought

the plight of whales to international recognition Many people now believe that whales are “saved” This couldn’t be further from the truth All around the world, whaling still exists Many countries continue to hunt whales, in spite of international treaties to protect them Many marine researchers are concerned that even the trade in naturally found ambergris can be harmful by creating further incentives to hunt whales of this valuable substance

One of the forms ambergris is used today is as a valuable fixative in perfumes

to enhance and prolong the scent But nowadays, since ambergris is rare and expensive, and big fragrance suppliers that make most of the fragrances on the market today do not deal in it for reasons of cost, availability and murky legal issues, most perfumeries prefer to add a chemical derivative which mimics the properties of ambergris As a fragrance consumer, you can assume that there is no natural ambergris in your perfume bottle, unless the company advertises this fact and unless you own vintage fragrances created before the 1980s If you are wondering if you have been wearing a perfume with this legendary ingredient, you may want to review your scent collection Here are a few of some of the top ambergris containing perfumes: Givenchy Amarige, Chanel No 5, and Gucci Guilty

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Questions 1-6

Classify the following information as referring to

A ambergris only

B amber only

C both ambergris and amber

D neither ambergris nor amber

Write the correct letter A, B C or D in boxes 1-6 on you answer sheet

1 Being expensive

2 Adds flavor to food

3 Used as currency

4 Being see-through

5 Referred to by Herman Melville

6 Produces sweet smell

Questions 7-9

Complete the sentences below with NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the

passage

Write your answer in boxes 7-9 on your answer sheet

7 Sperm whales can’t digest the _ of the squids

8 Sperm whales drive the irritants out of their intestines by _

9 The vomit of sperm whale gradually _ on contact of air before

having pleasant smell

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Question 10-13

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 1?

On your answer sheet please write

10 Most ambergris comes from the dead whales today

11 Ambergris is becoming more expensive than before

12 Ambergris is still popular ingredient in perfume production today

13 New uses of ambergris have been discovered recently

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Questions 14-20

Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of heading below

Write appropriate number (i-xi) in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet

List of Headings

i Why better food helps students’ learning

ii Becoming the headmaster of Msekeni

iii Surprising use of school premises

iv Global perspective

v Why students were undernourished

vi Surprising academic outcome

vii An innovative program to help girls

viii How food program is operated

ix How food program affects school attendance

x None of the usual reasons

xi How to maintain academic standard

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Tackling Hunger in Msekeni

A There are not enough classrooms at the Msekeni primary school, so half the lessons take place in the shade of yellow-blossomed acacia trees Given this shortage, it might seem odd that one of the school’s purpose-built classrooms has been emptied of pupils and turned into a storeroom for sacks of grain But it makes sense Food matters more than shelter

B Msekeni is in one of the poorer parts of Malawi, a landlocked southern African country of exceptional beauty and great poverty No war lays waster Malawi, nor is the land unusually crowded or infertile, but Malawians still have trouble finding enough to eat Half of the children under five are underfed to the point of stunting Hunger blights most aspects of Malawian life, so the country is as good a place as any to investigate how nutrition affects development, and vice versa

C The headmaster at Msekeni, Bernard Kumanda, has strong views on the subject He thinks food is a priceless teaching aid Since 1999, his pupils have received free school lunches Donors such as the World Food Programme (WFP) provide the food: those sacks of grain (mostly mixes maize and soyabean flour, enriched with vitamin A) in that converted classroom Local volunteers do the cooking –turning the dry ingredients into a bland but nutritious slop, and spooning it out on to plastic plates The children line up in large crowds, cheerfully singing a song called “We are getting porridge”

D When the school’s feeding programme was introduced, enrolment as Msekeni doubled Some of the pupils had switched from nearby schools that did not give out free porridge, but most were children whose families had previously kept them at home to work These families were so poor that the long-term benefits of education seemed unattractive when set against the short-term gain of sending children out to gather firewood or help in the fields One plate of porridge a day completely altered the calculation A child fed at school will not howl so plaintively for food at home Girls, who are more likely than boys to be kept out of school, are given extra snacks to take home

E When a school takes in a horde of extra students from the poorest homes, you would expect standards to drop Anywhere in the world, poor kids tend to perform worse than their better-off classmates When the influx of new pupils is not accompanied by any increase in the number of teachers, as was the case at Msekeni, you would expect standards to fall even further But they have not Pass rates at Msekeni improved dramatically, from 30% to 85% Although this was an exceptional example, the nationwide results of school feeding programmes were still pretty good

On average, after a Malawian school started handing out free food it attracted 38%

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more girls and 24% more boys The pass rate for boys stayed about the same, while for girls it improved by 9.5%

F Better nutrition makes for brighter children Most immediately, well-fed children find it easier to concentrate It is hard to focus the mind on long division when your stomach is screaming for food Mr Kumanda says that it used to be easy

to spot the kids who were really undernourished “They were the ones who stared into space and didn’t respond when you asked them questions,” he says More crucially, though, more and better food helps brains grow and develop Like any other organ in the body, the brain needs nutrition and exercise But if it is starved of the necessary calories, proteins and micronutrients, it is stunted, perhaps not as severely as a muscle would be, but stunted nonetheless That is why feeding children at schools works so well And the fact that the effect of feeding was more pronounced on girls than on boys gives a clue to who eats first in rural Malawian households It isn’t the girls

G On the global scale, the good news is that people are eating better than ever before Homo sapiens has grown 50% bigger since the industrial revolution Three centuries ago, chronic malnutrition was more or less universal Now, it is extremely rare in rich countries In developing countries, where most people live, plates and rice bowls are also fuller than ever before The proportion of children under five in the developing world who are malnourished to the point of stunting fell from 39% in 1990 to 30% in 2000, says the World Health Organization (WHO) In other places, the battle against hunger is steadily being won Better nutrition is making people cleverer and more energetic, which will help them grow more prosperous And when they eventually join the ranks of the well-off, they can start fretting about growing too fat

Questions 21-24

Complete the sentence below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS/ OR A

NUMBER from the passage

Write your answer in boxes 21-24 on your answer sheet

21 In Kumanda’s school _ are given to girls after the end of the

school day

22 Many children from poor families were sent to collect _ from

the field

23 Thanks to the free food program, _ of students passed the test

24 The modern human is _ bigger than before after the industrial

revolution

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Questions 25-26

Choose TWO letters, A-F

Write the correct letters in boxes 25 and 26 on your answer sheet

Which TWO of the following statements are true?

A Some children are taught in the open air

B Bernard Kumanda became the headmaster in 1991

C No new staffs were recruited when attendance rose

D Girls are often treated equally with boys in Malawi

E Scientists have devised ways to detect the most underfed students in

school

F WHO is worried about malnutrition among kids in developing countries

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READING PASSAGE 3

Placebo Effect –The Power of Nothing

Want to devise a new form of alternative medicine? No problem Here’s the recipe Be warm, sympathetic, reassuring and enthusiastic Your treatment should involve physical contact, and each session with your patients should last at least half

an hour Encourage your patients to take an active part in their treatment and understand how their disorders relate to the rest of their lives Tell them that their own bodies possess the true power to heal Make them pay you out of their own pockets Describe your treatment in familiar words, but embroidered with a hint of mysticism: energy fields, energy flows, energy blocks, meridians, forces, auras, rhythms and the like Refer to the knowledge of an earlier age: wisdom carelessly swept aside by the rise and rise of blind, mechanistic science Oh, come off it, you’re saying Something invented off the top of your head couldn’t possibly work, could it?

Well yes, it could –and often well enough to earn you a living A good living if you are sufficiently convincing, or better still, really believe in your therapy Many illnesses get better on their own, so if you are lucky and administer your treatment at just the right time you will get the credit But that’s only part of it Some of the improvement really would be down to you Not necessarily because you’d recommended ginseng rather than camomile tea or used this crystal as opposed to that pressure point Nothing so specific Your healing power would be the outcome of a paradoxical force that conventional medicine recognizes but remains oddly ambivalent about: the placebo effect

Placebos are treatments that have no direct effect on the body, yet still work because the patient has faith in their power to heal Most often the term refers to a dummy pill, but it applies just as much as any device or procedure, from a sticking plaster to a crystal to an operation The existence of the placebo effect implies that even quackery may confer real benefits, which is why any mention of placebo is a touchy subject for many practitioners of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), who are likely to regard it as tantamount to a charge of charlatanism In fact, the placebo effect is a powerful part of all medical care, orthodox or otherwise, though its role is often neglected or misunderstood

One of the great strengths of CAM may be its practioners’ skill in deploying the placebo effect to accomplish real healing “Complementary practitioners are miles better at producing non-specific effects and good therapeutic relationships,” says Edzard Ernst, professor of CAM at Exeter University The question is whether CAM

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could be integrated into conventional medicine, as some would like, without losing much of this power

At one level, it should come as no surprise that our state of mind can influence our physiology: anger opens the superficial blood vessels of the face; sadness pumps the tear glands But exactly how placebos work their medical magic is still largely unknown Most of the scant research done so far has focused on the control of pain, because it’s one of the commonest complaints and lends itself to experimental study Here, attention has turned to the endorphins, natural counterparts of morphine that are known to help control pain “Any of the neurochemicals involved in transmitting pain impulses or modulating them might also be involved in generating the placebo response,” says Don Price, an oral surgeon at the University of Florida who studies the placebo effect in dental pain

“But endorphins are still out in front.” That case has been strengthened by the recent work of Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin, who showed that the placebo effect can be abolished by a drug, naloxone, which blocks the effects of endorphins Benedetti induced pain in human volunteers by inflating a blood-pressure cuff on the forearm He did this several times a day for several days, using morphine each time to control the pain On the final day, without saying anything, he replaced the morphine with a saline solution This still relieved the subjects’ pain: a placebo effect But when he added naloxone to the saline the pain relief disappeared Here was direct proof that placebo analgesia is mediated, at least in part, by these natural opiates

Still, no one knows how belief triggers endorphin release, or why most people can’t achieve placebo pain relief simply by willing it Though scientists don’t know exactly how placebos work, they have accumulated a fair bit of knowledge about how

to trigger the effect A London rheumatologist found, for example, that red dummy capsules made more effective painkillers than blue, green or yellow ones Research

on American students revealed that blue pills make better sedatives than pink, a color more suitable for stimulants Even branding can make a difference: if Aspro or Tylenol are what you like to take for a headache, their chemically identical generic equivalents may be less effective

It matters, too, how the treatment is delivered Decades ago, when the major tranquillizer chlorpromazine was being introduced, a doctor in Kansas categorized his colleagues according to whether they were keen on it, openly sceptical of its benefits,

or took a “let’s try and see” attitude His conclusion: the more enthusiastic the doctor, the better the drug performed And this year Ernst surveyed published studies that

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compared doctors’ bedside manners The studies turned up one consistent finding:

“Physicians who adopt a warm, friendly and reassuring manner,” he reported, “are more effective than those whose consultations are formal and do not offer reassurance.”

Warm, friendly and reassuring are precisely CAM’S strong suits, of course Many of the ingredients of that opening recipe—the physical contact, the generous swathes of time, the strong hints of supernormal healing power –are just the kind of thing likely to impress patients It’s hardly surprising, then, that complementary practitioners are generally best at mobilizing the placebo effect, says Arthur Kleinman, professor of social anthropology at Harvard University

Questions 27-32

Complete the following sentences with the correct ending Choose the correct

letter, A-H for each sentence below

A should be easy to understand

B ought to improve by itself

C should not involve any mysticism

D ought to last a minimum length of time

E needs to be treated at the right time

F should give more recognition

G can earn high income

H do not rely on any specific treatment

27 Appointments with alternative practitioner

28 An alternative practitioner’s description of treatment

29 An alternative practitioner who has faith in what he does

30 The illness of patients convinced of alternative practice

31 Improvements of patients receiving alternative practice

32 Conventional medical doctors

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Questions 33-35

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

Write your answers in boxes 33-35 on your answer sheet

33 In the fifth paragraph, the writer uses the example of anger and sadness

to illustrate that:

A People’s feeling could affect their physical behavior

B How placebo achieves its effect is yet to be understood

C Scientists don’t understand how the mind influences the body

D Research on the placebo effect is very limited

34 Research on pain control attracts most of the attention because

A Only a limited number of researchers have been conducted so far

B Scientists have discovered that endorphins can help to reduce pain

C Pain reducing agents might also be involved in placebo effect

D Patients often experience pain and like to complain about it

35 Fabrizio Benedetti’s research on endorphins indicates that

A They are widely used to regulate pain

B They can be produced by willful thoughts

C They can be neutralized by introducing naloxone

D Their pain-relieving effects do not last long enough

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Question 36-40

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 36-40 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

36 There is enough information for scientists to fully understand the placebo effect

37 A London based researcher discovered that red pills should be taken off the market

38 People’s preference on brands would also have effect on their healing

39 Medical doctors have a range of views of the newly introduced drug of chlopromazine

40 Alternative practitioners are seldom known for applying placebo effect

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to associate the sound of a bell (something that originally has no meaning to the dog) with the presentation of food (something that has a lot of meaning for the dog) a few moments later Dogs are able to learn the association between bell and food, and will salivate immediately after hearing the bell once this connection has been made Years

of learning research have led to the creation of a highly precise learning theory that can be used to understand and predict how and under what circumstances most any animal will learn, including human beings, and eventually help people figure out how

to change their behaviors

B Role models are a popular notion for guiding child development, but in recent years very interesting research has been done on learning by 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 experiences cone strippers However, infants of urban mothers cross-fostered by stripper mothers acquired the skill, whereas infants of stripper

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mothers fostered by an urban mother could not Clearly the skill had to be learned from the mother Further elegant experiments showed that naive adults could develop the skill if they were provided with cones from which the first complete spiral of scales had been removed, rather like our new photocopier which you can word out how to use once someone has shown you how to switch it on In case of rats, the youngsters take cones away from the mother when she is still feeding on them, allowing them to acquire the complete stripping skill

E A good example of adaptive bearing we might conclude, but let’s see the economies This was determined by measuring oxygen uptake of a rat stripping a cone in a metabolic chamber to calculate energetic cost and comparing it with the benefit of the pine seeds measured by calorimeter The cost proved to be less than 10% of the energetic value of the cone An acceptable profit margin

F A paper in 1996, Animal Behavior by Bednekoff and Balda provides a

different view of the adaptiveness of social learning It concerns the seed catching behavior of Clark’s Nutcracker (Nucifraga Columbiana) and the Mexican Jay (Aphelocoma ultramarine) The former is a specialist, catching 30,000 or so seeds in scattered locations that it will recover over the months of winter, the Mexican Jay will also cache food but is much less dependent upon this than the Nutcracker The two species also differ in their social structure, the Nutcracker being rather solitary while the Jay forages in social groups

G The experiment is to discover not just whether a bird can remember where it hid a seed but also if it can remember where it saw another bird hide a seed The design is slightly comical with a cacher bird wandering about a room with lots of holes in the floor hiding food in some of the holes, while watched by an observer bird perched in a cage Two days later cachers and observers are tested for their discovery rate against an estimated random performance In the role of cacher, not only the Nutcracker but also the less specialized Jay performed above chance; more surprisingly, however, jay observers were as successful as jay cachers whereas nutcracker observers did no better than chance It seems that, whereas the Nutcracker

is highly adapted at remembering where it hid its own seeds, the social living Mexican Jay is more adept at remembering, and so exploiting, the caches of others

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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 claims of the writer in Reading Passage 1?

On your answer sheet please write

5 The field trip to Israel was to investigate how black rats learn to strip pine cones

6 The pine cones were stripped from bottom to top by black rats

7 It can be learned from other relevant experiences to use a photocopier

8 Stripping the pine cones is an instinct of the black rats

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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 specialized in this ability, but more 10

_ To study their behavior of caching and finding their caches, an experiment was designed and carried out to test these two birds for their ability to remember where they hid the seeds

In the experiment, the cacher bird hid seeds in the ground while the other 11

_ As a result, the Nutcracker and the Mexican Jay showed different

performance in the role of 12 _ at finding the seeds – the observing 13

_ didn’t do as well as its counterpart

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