Reading and Listening Book Answer

International College

Brisbane, Australia

CRICOS No: 00213J

English Language Programs

QCE009 EAP Plus

Reading and Listening Guide

October 2012

Class: __________________

Name: _________________

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Table of Contents

The reading guide ................................................................................................................................ 1

W1 Elements of culture ............................................................................................................ 3

W2 Religious dentistry.............................................................................................................. 9

Valium ............................................................................................................................... 11

The brain .......................................................................................................................... 13

W3 Networking ....................................................................................................................... 18

To MBA or not to MBA? ................................................................................................... 21

Worker poll shows family, fringes gains favour ............................................................... 24

W4 Caring for the customer ................................................................................................... 28

Conspicuous consumption ............................................................................................... 32

Consumerism: Curses and causes .................................................................................... 36

W5 Poverty and health ........................................................................................................... 39

Development without boarders ....................................................................................... 42

Lost tribes, lost knowledge .............................................................................................. 44

W6 Human-powered pumps for African farmers .................................................................. 52

Microbes at the gas pump................................................................................................ 55

Australia’s geothermal resources .................................................................................... 58

W7 An ordinary miracle .......................................................................................................... 62

Dolly’s false legacy ........................................................................................................... 64

Genetic ethics ................................................................................................................... 68

W8 The keyless society ........................................................................................................... 72

The high-tech poisoning of Asia ....................................................................................... 74

Let the bones talk ............................................................................................................. 78

W9 Spain family matters ........................................................................................................ 87

Twins ................................................................................................................................ 90

Love and marriage in China ............................................................................................ 102

W10 Worms put new life into derelict site ............................................................................ 108

It’s ecological ................................................................................................................. 111

Oceans of death ............................................................................................................ 115

W11 SUVs: Profits fuel the ‘highway arms race’ .................................................................... 118

The face of beauty ......................................................................................................... 121

School is bad for children .............................................................................................. 127

W12 Mathematicians learn how to tame Chaos ................................................................... 131

The life cycle of a star .................................................................................................... 134

The influence of junk science and the role of science education ................................. 137

The listening guide ........................................................................................................................... 141

Listening Tips ................................................................................................................................ 142

IELTS Style Listening: Intercultural Communication ........................................................... 143

Listening for Context ........................................................................................................... 144

IELTS Style Listening: Obesity .............................................................................................. 145

IELTS Style Listening: Presenteeism and Absenteeism ....................................................... 147

IELTS Style Listening- Workplace Satisfaction .................................................................... 149

IELTS Style Listening: Advertising ........................................................................................ 151

Julian Treasure: Shh! Sound Health in 8 Steps .................................................................... 152

IELTS Style Listening: The Effects of Tourism ...................................................................... 153

IELTS Style Listening: Presentations .................................................................................... 155

IELTS Style Listening: Hybrid Solar Lighting ........................................................................ 157

IELTS Style Listening: Nuclear Energy ................................................................................. 159

IELTS Style Listening: Homes of the Future......................................................................... 161

IELTS Style Listening: Changes in Car Technology ............................................................... 163

IELTS Style Listening: Bicycle Road Safety ........................................................................... 165

IELTS Style Listening: Hotel Fire Safety ............................................................................... 167

IELTS Style Listening: Women and Work ............................................................................ 169

IELTS Style Listening: Water Shortages in Brisbane ............................................................ 171

IELTS Style Listening: Home Fire Safety .............................................................................. 173

IELTS Style Listening: Water Shortages and Desalination ................................................... 175

IELTS Style Listening: Lighting Design ................................................................................. 177

CRICOS No: 00213J

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The reading guide

Reading and listening are skills that need to be built over time. You cannot cram for a reading or

listening test, nor can you expect to improve your vocabulary and grammar without reading on a

regular basis. You should be reading and listening to a wide variety of texts every week, including

this one, to improve your skills.

How to use this Guide

This Reading and Listening Guide is designed to take you through a variety of readings and

listenings. The readings and listenings differ in terms of topic, question types and degrees of

difficulty. It uses the occasionally IELTS style readings and listening because the question types and

skills used in IETLS are very similar to those used on the EAP tests that you will have. However, it is

heavily supplemented with longer reading texts like the ones you will encounter in faculty.

You should take about 20 – 30 minutes for shorter reading (unless otherwise stated). You

may find some of the readings easier than others, and some will be quite difficult and take

you longer. For the longer reading take as long as you need.

Do not use a dictionary as this will slow down the reading and listening process. It is better

to try and guess the meaning of unknown words. You can look word up once you have

finished the reading.

Read the instructions for each question carefully.

When to use

Your teacher will tell you when each set of readings or listening needs to be done by and when

you will check the answers. It is important to bring this book to class on the day the teacher tells

you.

After you have finished your allocated reading or listening and the answers have been checked

Read back through your readings to look for areas that you did not understand. Check any answers

you got wrong. Try to understand what the problem was: a vocabulary problem? a grammar

problem? a question-type problem? a reading/ listening skill problem?

‘TIP’ boxes

Some sections contain tip boxes (see example).

These are designed to help you with question types. Read

each tip carefully. If you have any questions, ask your

teacher.

All ‘Tips’ from O’Connell, S. (2002). Focus on IELTS. Essex, England: Pearson.

TIP: MATCHING HEADINGS TO

PARAGRAPHS

Be careful not to choose headings which

refer to only part or one aspect of the

paragraph. Some of the headings may

contain words or phrases that appear in

exactly the same form in the reading

passage, so you may at first think they are

correct Remember that an example is

usually given.

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CRICOS No: 00213J

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Jacobus, L. A. (2001). Improving college reading (pp. 361-368, 7th

ed.). Boston, MA: Thomson Heinle. Adapted

from: Light, D. Jr., & Keller, S. (1985). Sociology, (4th

ed.). Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Reprinted by permission of

the publisher.

W1 Elements of culture

Donald Light, Jr. and Suzanne Keller

One of the most surprising things about culture is the way it influences our daily lives without our even

being aware of it. This essay makes clear that, from brushing our teeth in the morning with brush and paste

to having a pillow beneath our head at night, our habitual behaviours are governed by the culture in which

we live.

Q12 “Come alive with Pepsi” proved a winning advertising slogan in the United States. However, some

residents of Taiwan found the translation—”Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead”—

unappealing. General Motors Corporation ran into difficulty in Belgium when the firm promoted its “Body

by Fisher” cars that translated into Flemish as “Corpse by Fisher.” Some car buyers in Spanish- speaking

countries were reluctant to purchase the Chevrolet Nova because nova means “it doesn’t go.” These

examples all demonstrate a failure to understand language differences in a foreign environment.

A somewhat different problem arose in Salt Lake City, Utah, when a man came to purchase a Shetland pony

advertised for sale. The owner asked what the man planned to do with the horse. “For my son’s birthday,”

was the response. Gratified that the pony was going to a child, the owner closed the deal. But then the

buyer took out a two-by-four, clubbed the pony over the head, dumped the carcass in his pickup truck, and

drove off. The horrified seller notified the police. When the police arrived at the buyer’s home, they found

a birthday party underway. The pony was Q5 roasting in a “luau pit.” The buyer, a recent immigrant from

Tonga, a group of Polynesian Islands off New Zealand, explained that the Tongans do not ride horses but

eat them. They had acquired their taste for horse meat from European missionaries who found horses the

only readily available source of meat on the Pacific Islands.

All of the customs, beliefs, values, knowledge, and skills that guide a people’s behaviour along shared paths

are part of their culture. Q6 Culture can be divided into material aspects (the products of a people’s arts

and technology) and nonmaterial aspects (a people’s customs, beliefs, values, and patterns of

communication). People throughout the world have different cultures. Thus, their standards for behaviour

often differ. We tend to assume that certain behaviours have pretty much the same meaning around the

world, and we anticipate that other people will act as we do. Yet this is clearly not the case. When we are

thrust into a different culture, we may find ourselves in situations for which we are unprepared.

Not surprisingly, interaction among peoples of different cultures is often filled with uncertainties and even

difficulties. Take the matter of the “language of space,” identified by the anthropologist Edward T. Hall. He

notes that Arabs tend to get very close to other people, close enough to breathe on them. When Arabs do

not breathe on a person, it means that they are ashamed. However, Americans insist on staying outside the

range of other people’s breath, viewing the odour as distasteful. Arabs ask, “Why are Americans so

ashamed? They withhold their breath.” Americans on the receiving end wonder, “Why are the Arabs so

pushy?” Americans typically back away as an Arab comes close, and the Arab follows. Such differences can

have serious consequences. For example, an Arab business representative may not trust an American who

backs off. On the other hand, the American may distrust the Arab for seeming so pushy.

Q13 Culture is a taken-for-granted aspect of life, one we commonly overlook as we go about our daily

activities. Yet it touches all aspects of our lives. Q8 Alexander Alland, Jr., provides the following analogy for

culture:

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the publisher.

I remember watching a blind student several years ago walking across the campus of a large state

university. He guided himself with a cane, tapping it against the sidewalk which ran in spokes from

building to building. Although he knew the campus well, on that particular occasion he became

distracted for a moment and wandered onto the grass, where he immediately lost all sense of

direction. His movements became disorganized as he searched hopelessly for a bit of cement. He

became visibly panicked until a passing student came up and led him back to the appropriate path.

Once again he was able to continue toward his class unaided.

Q17 I was struck by the similarity of this situation to the situation of all human beings who have

grown up within a particular social milieu. Out of an incredibly large number of possible ways of

living successfully, all normal human beings operate within a narrow framework of convention. The

convention is sometimes limiting and perhaps to certain individuals unsatisfying, but it provides a

set of rules which act as guidelines for action.

The anthropologist Edmund Carpenter confronted a situation similar to that described by Alland when he

went to live among the Aivilik, an Eskimo people:

For months after I first arrived among the Aivilik, I felt empty, clumsy. I never knew what to do,

even where to sit or stand. I was awkward in a busy world, as helpless as a child, yet a grown man. I

felt like a mental defective.

Q16 The map of life that underlies both material and nonmaterial culture includes three elements: norms,

values, and Q18 symbols. Let’s consider what each contributes to social life.

NORMS

In Games People Play Eric Berne describes the greeting ritual of the American:

“Hi!” (Hello, good morning.)

“Hi!” (Hello, good morning.)

“Warm enough forya?” (How are you?)

“Sure is. Looks like rain, though.” (Fine. How are you?)

“Well, take cara yourself.” (Okay.)

“I’ll be seeing you.”

“So long.”

“So long.”

This brief exchange is conspicuously lacking in content. If you were to measure the success of the

conversation in terms of the information conveyed, you would have to rate it zero. Even so, both parties

leave the scene feeling quite satisfied. In using the greeting ritual, they have made social contact and

established a friendly atmosphere.

Norms are the guidelines people are supposed to follow in their relations with one another; they are

shared rules that specify appropriate and inappropriate behaviour. Not only do norms indicate what people

should or should not do in a specific situation, they also enable people to anticipate how others will

interpret and respond to their words and actions. Q2 Norms vary from society to society, from group to

group within societies, and from situation to situation. Polite and appropriate behaviour in one society may

be disgraceful in another. For example:

Among the Ila-speaking peoples of Africa, girls are given houses of their own at harvest time where

they may play at being man and wife with boys of their choice. It is said that among these people

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the publisher.

virginity does not exist beyond the age of ten. [In contrast] among the Tepoztlan Indians of Mexico,

from the time of a girl’s first menstruation, her life becomes “crabbed, cribbed, confined.” No boy

is to be spoken to or encouraged in the least way. To do so would be to court disgrace, to show

oneself to be crazy or mad. [Ember, C. R., & Ember, M. (1977) Anthropology, 2nd ed., Englewood

Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, p. 277.]

Some norms are situational—they apply to specific categories of people in specific settings. We consider it

appropriate for a person to pray to God in church, or to speak to people who have long since “gone to the

other side” during a séance (even if we think the séance is phony). But we usually find a person “peculiar” if

he or she addresses God or invokes spirits on a bus.

Social norms shape our emotions and perceptions. For example, people are supposed to feel sad and be

depressed when a family member dies. Similarly, people are supposed to pay attention to certain things

but not to others. For example, we consider it bad taste to gawk at a couple who is quarrelling bitterly or to

eavesdrop on an intimate conversation, yet we occasionally do both. Thus, Q9 we hold norms, but at times

we violate them.

Most of the time people follow norms more or less automatically; alternatives never occur to them. This is

particularly true of unspoken norms that seem self-evident, such as responding to a person who addresses

you. Q9 People conform because it seems right, because to violate norms would damage their self-image

(or “hurt their conscience”), and because they want approval and fear ridicule, ostracism, or, in some cases,

punishment.

Folkways, mores, and laws

Norms vary in the importance that people assign to them and the leeway they permit violators. Folkways

are everyday habits and conventions people obey without giving much thought to the matter. For example,

Q14 Americans eat three meals a day and call other food “snacks.” We have cereal for breakfast but not for

other meals; we save sweets for the end of dinner. Even though we could easily begin a meal with cherry

pie, we don’t. Other customs we observe are covering our mouths when we yawn, shaking hands when

introduced, closing zippers on pants or skirts, and not wearing evening clothes to class. People who violate

folkways may be labelled eccentrics or slobs, but as a rule they are tolerated.

In contrast, violations of mores provoke intense reactions. Mores are the norms people consider vital to

their well-being and to their most cherished values. Examples are the prohibitions against incest,

cannibalism, and sexual abuse of children. People who violate mores are considered unfit for society and

may be ostracized, beaten, locked up in a prison or a mental hospital, exiled, or executed. (Hence, most

Americans would not condemn an individual who gave a child molester a severe beating.)

Some norms are formalized into laws. A law is a rule enacted by a political body and enforced by the power

of the state. Whereas folkways and mores are typically enforced by the collective and spontaneous actions

of the members of the community, laws are enforced by the police, the military, or some other special

organization. Laws may formalize folkways (as some traffic regulations do) or back up mores (as laws

against murder and treason do). Political authorities may also attempt to introduce new norms by enacting

laws such as those governing the disposal of toxic wastes or the extension of civil rights to various

minorities. In general, the laws that are most difficult to enforce are those that are not grounded in the

folkways or mores—for example, laws against gambling or the use of marijuana.

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the publisher.

Sanctions

Norms are only guides to behaviour; by themselves they have no force. It is sanctions, or socially imposed

rewards and punishments, that compel people to obey norms. Such sanctions may be formal or informal.

Examples of formal sanctions that reward people are promotions, medals of honour, and pay checks.

Formal sanctions that punish people include jail terms, job dismissals, failing grades, and traffic fines.

Informal sanctions are those expressed by behaviour in everyday situations— smiles, frowns, friendly nods,

gossip, praise, insults, and even attention.

Societies vary in their use of sanctions. For instance, Q10 the Amish punish those who violate their norms

with shunning, in which no one is allowed to speak to the offender. Such a punishment is less effective in

the larger American society. In Japan, slurping one’s soup loudly is a positive sanction, indicating to a

hostess that one has greatly enjoyed a meal. In the United States, such slurping is itself disapproved;

instead, Americans are expected to compliment the cook verbally.

VALUES

Norms typically derive from a people’s values. Values are the general ideas that individuals share about

what is good or bad, right or wrong, desirable or undesirable. These notions transcend particular situations

or interactions. Unlike norms (the rules that govern behaviour in actual situations with other people),

values are broad, abstract concepts. As such, they provide the foundation that underlies a people’s entire

way of life. Q11 Even the games they play reflect their values. A good illustration is formed among the

Tangu, a people who live in a remote part of New Guinea and play a game called taketak.

In some respects, taketak resembles bowling. The game is played with a toplilce object fashioned from a

dried fruit and with two groups of coconut stakes that look like bowling pins. The players divide into two

teams. The members of the first team step to the line and take turns throwing the top into their batch of

stakes; every stake they hit they remove. Then the members of the second team toss the top into their

batch of stakes. The object of the game, surprisingly, is not to knock over as many stakes as possible.

Rather, the game continues until both teams have removed the same number of stakes. The Tangu

disapprove of winning while favouring value equivalence. The idea that one individual or group should win

and another lose bothers them, for they believe winning generates ill will. In fact, when Europeans brought

soccer to New Guinea, the Tangu altered the rules so that the object was for two teams to score the same

number of goals. Sometimes their soccer games went on for days! American games, in contrast, are highly

competitive; there are always winners and losers.

Since values entail broad and abstract cultural principles, we frequently have difficulty identifying them.

The sociologist Robin M. Williams, Jr., in an interpretation of American society, identifies fifteen major

value orientations. These include the high value Americans place upon achievement and success, activity

and work, humanitarianism, efficiency and practicality, progress, material comfort, equality, freedom,

conformity, science and rationality, nationalism and patriotism, democracy, individuality, and racial and

ethnic group superiority. Q15 Many of these values tend to be interrelated, including those having to do

with achievement and success, activity and work, material comfort, and individuality. Q15 Others are in

conflict, for example, stressing conformity and individuality or equality and racial and ethnic superiority.

Moreover, Q3 values change. Thus, in recent years many of America’s more overt racist attitudes have

faded. The 1983 annual survey of college freshmen found that, for the first time, a majority supported

busing to achieve racial integration in the schools. In the same year, 69.3 percent of the freshmen said they

believed that being well off was very important; in 1970 the figure stood at 39 percent. The distinct

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the publisher.

characteristics of American values become more apparent when we compare them with the values of

another culture.

The Relation between norms and values

Values assume considerable importance because norms are usually based on them. Even so, there is not a

one-to-one correspondence between norms and values. For instance, some American values favour

individuality and competition, yet some norms run counter to these values. Affirmative-action laws, for

example, have often allowed minorities to be hired in proportion to their numbers as a matter of fairness,

while competitive standards of individual achievement are relaxed. Such a norm attempts to reconcile the

values of individuality and competition with the values of justice and equality. Q15 Thus conflicts in values

are often a source of social change that leads to new norms.

In our daily lives, Q4 we frequently find that more than one value may also be operating in a given

situation. If being honest also means being unkind to another person, we are caught in a conflict of values.

You have probably faced situations where the truth will hurt someone and kindness means lying. Hinting

gently at the truth or surrounding the hurtful truth with kindnesses or saying nothing at all are norms that

attempt to reconcile two conflicting values.

It is important not to confuse norms with values: The distinction is highlighted by a young child’s

obedience: A child obeys the parent because failure to do so may result in punishment or jeopardize

rewards (a norm). But the child as yet does not judge the behaviour as desirable or undesirable in its own

right (a value). Likewise, you may stop at a red light even when there is no traffic, yet you do not attach an

underlying value to stopping for a red light under these circumstances. In sum, norms constitute rules for

behaviour; values provide the criteria or standards we use for evaluating the desirability of behaviour.

LENGTH: 2,637 WORDS

Questions 1 - 15

Retention: Which of the following statements are True (T), False (F), or Not given (NG)?

1. Government sometimes tries to change norms by creating new folkways. T / F / NG

2. Norms vary from situation to situation. T / F / NG

3. The values in a given society remain stable. T / F / NG

4. More than one value can operate at one time. T / F / NG

5. Tongans eat roasted horse meat. T / F / NG

6. Culture can be divided into two aspects, material and nonmaterial. T / F / NG

7. Margaret Mead was one of the first to study courtship rituals among the Polynesians. T / F / NG

8. Seeing a blind student become lost gave one anthropologist an idea of a way to explain culture to

people. T / F / NG

9. Because the influence of norms is so powerful, we cannot bring ourselves to violate them. T / F / NG

10. The Amish tradition of shunning involves refusing to talk to people who are not Amish. T / F / NG

11. Recreational activities such as games may reflect people’ s values. T / F / NG

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the publisher.

12. Because human beings are basically alike, advertisements that work in one country will work well in

most countries. T / F / NG

13. We tend to take our culture for granted. T / F / NG

14. Eating three meals a day is an example of mores. T / F / NG

15. A society’s values are harmonious, working smoothly together to create a conflict-free world. T / F / NG

Question 16

Main Idea: Which of the following statement best represents the main point of the reading? _4__

1. Culture means different things to different people; therefore, we should be careful in how we use the

term.

2. The most important elements of culture are the norms and values that affect our daily lives.

3. The quality of each society can be evaluated on the basis of its cultural norms, mores, laws, and values.

4. Culture is made up of three elements: norms, values, and symbols, each of which quietly shapes our

behaviour.

5. Conformity to one’s culture is necessary for mental health.

Question 17

Interpretation: Which of the following is the best interpretation of a key point in this reading? _5__

1. By setting some limits, conventions free us to live in a large number of possible ways.

2. Although norms vary, the norms of one society will seldom be directly contradictory to those of another.

3. Laws and norms have nothing in common.

4. Norms and values are essentially the same thing.

5. Culture is like a map of life in that it provides guidelines and a sense of direction.

Question 18

Conclusion: Which of the following statements is the best conclusion that can be drawn from the

reading? Choose one statement: _5__

1. People are probably more likely to obey laws not grounded in mores because they are enforced by the

state, not by the members of the community.

2. In their everyday interactions with each other, Americans usually say what they mean without any

alternative meaning.

3. An experienced American advertiser is probably better at designing ads to use in a foreign country than

an experienced foreigner.

4. Because of their studies of many cultures, anthropologists are probably exempt from feeling dislocated

in a new culture.

5. The authors of this article probably went on to a discussion of symbols.

CRICOS No: 00213J

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Sahanaya, W., Lindeck, J. & Stewart, R. (1998). IELTS Preparation and practice: Reading and writing: Academic module (pp. 6-15). Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press.

W2 Religious dentistry

Bali is, without doubt, one of the most culturally rich islands in the world. In fact, its carved

temples, dances and. immaculately manicured rice terraces do all seem too perfect to be true,

even down to the people’s smiles. However, take a closer look at those smiles and the perfect

teeth do seem a bit too perfect, and for good reason. Those flattened teeth are the result of an

important piece of dentistry that every young Balinese man or woman experiences in their life,

known as potong gigi, or tooth filing.

Tooth filing is part of Bali’s religious traditions and is not performed for cosmetic reasons. In fact,

so important is the tooth filing ceremony that Q1 without it, the Balinese believe they may

experience serious social or behavioural problems later in life, or their personality may change

altogether.

Q10 Balinese religious life is surrounded by a belief in a variety of deities — gods and demons that

Q2 inhabit different levels of the cosmic and real worlds. These deities range from the most holy in

the mountains to the lowest that inhabit the ground and the sea. There are gods and goddesses in

every walk of life which have special forces of their own. Q2 They inhabit temple statues, trees,

even fly through the air. They exist together in a dual concept of good and evil, clean and dirty,

etc. As such, both the good and the evil spirits must be appeased, and offerings are thus made at

the myriad temples on the island.

It is not only the good spirits that are worshipped, for Bali has a dark and evil side too. Terrifying

demons and monsters walk the earth and although they are seldom seen, they too must be

appeased. These demons can take over and inhabit the body of an animal or human and wreak

havoc in the community, so it is very important to strike a balance between offerings made to all

spirits that swarm the island. At every stage in a person’s life, he or she is susceptible to influences

of the super- natural — Q3 from demons and layak, to good spirits which may bring luck.

Purification of the body and mind is therefore central to Balinese religious life and the tooth-filing

ceremony represents one such rite of passage from childhood to becoming an adult.

According to the Balinese, long pointed teeth resemble the fangs of animals and these give the

person characteristics of the animal sides of human nature and ferocity. The Balinese believe there

are six of these evil qualities: desire, greed, anger, intoxication, irresoluteness and jealousy. These

are liable to flare up, along with animal instincts, when the canines are still sharp. To prevent this,

Q8 the points of the canines are filed down, together with any prominent points of the lower

teeth in a special potong gigi ceremony. Although this may prevent the person taking on animal

instincts and beautify the smile, it is, unfortunately Q9 offset by early tooth decay since the

protective enamel is removed from the points of the teeth, exposing them to acid decay. The

situation is exacerbated in those who go on to chew betel nuts, since the caustic lime rapidly

attacks the teeth.

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Sahanaya, W., Lindeck, J. & Stewart, R. (1998). IELTS Preparation and practice: Reading and writing: Academic module (pp. 6-15). Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press.

The potong gigi ceremony Q13 usually is undertaken for members of the same family together

since it is a very expensive occasion to host. It is often necessary to wait until the youngest child is

of age. Girls are ready for tooth filing only when they have reached sexual maturity and boys are

usually older, about 17 or at least after puberty. A person must have their teeth filed Q4 before

marriage, and since marriage is early, the ceremony is often undertaken as a Q4 prenuptial event.

The Q11 high priest is consulted first to choose an auspicious day from the Balinese calendar.

Every day has a different function — a best day for rice planting, best day for cremations and other

festivals, as well as tooth-filing days. Q5 The dentist’s chair, so to speak, is specially constructed

for the ceremony from bamboo in the form of a rack covered with coconut leaves, blankets and a

variety of offerings and frangipani flowers. Q5 & 12 Surrounding the platform is food for the

guests and a huge display of skewered suckling pig, fruit, and whole roasted chickens adorn the

entrance to the ceremony room.

Questions 1 – 6 Choose the appropriate letters A – D.

1 The Balinese have their teeth filed

A to have a perfect smile

B for cosmetic reasons

C to avoid problems in life

D to change their personality

2 Balinese spirits

A are usually easily seen B are only found in the mountains

C can all fly through the air D can be found anywhere

3 Layak are probably

A good spirits B evil spirits

C tooth-filing experts D people whose teeth have been filed

4 When do many Balinese have their teeth filed?

A just before getting married B as part of the marriage ceremony

C in early childhood D when the high priest has time

5 Where does tooth filing take place?

A in the dentist’s surgery B at the village temple

C on a special platform D in the family residence

6 What is the most likely source of this passage?

A an undergraduate essay B a scientific journal

C a current affairs news magazine D an airline magazine process of elimination

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Scovell, D., Pastellas, V., & Knobel, M. (2004). 404 Essential tests for IELTS. Academic module (pp. 47-48). Sydney, NSW: Adams and Austen Press.

Valium

In the 1960s, Valium was launched around the world as the new miracle pill. It was prescribed for dozens of

ailments, including stress, panic attacks, back pain, insomnia and calming patients before and after surgery.

Four decades later, many are questioning why the drug is still so popular, given that Q1 doctors and drug

addiction workers believe Valium, and drugs like it, create more health problems than they solve.

Valium — a Latin word meaning “strong and well” — was developed in the early 1960s in the United States (US) by Dr

Leo Sternbach, a Polish chemist working for pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-LaRoche. Approved for use in 1963, Valium

quickly became a favourite among mental heath professionals and general practitioners. Valium was the most

prescribed drug in the US between 1969 and 1982. Q2 At the peak of Valium use in the 1970s, Hoffman LaRoche’s

parent company, the Roche Group, was selling about two billion Valium pills a year, earning the company $US 600

million a year. Valium quickly became a household name, Q3 the drug of choice for millions of people, from the rich

and famous to the stressed executive and the frustrated housewife.

These days Valium is still a popular choice. From 2002-2003, Q4 50% of prescriptions for diazepams (the generic name

for Valium) in Australia were for Valium. Almost two million scripts were issued for diazepam in 2002, costing

consumers and governments more than $13 million.

Diazepams belong to a class of drugs known as benzodiazepines, which include tranquillizers to ease anxiety and

hypnotics to treat insomnia. Q 6 & 7 Valium and other benzodiazepines were marketed as fast acting, non-addictive

and as having no side effects. Initially benzodiazepines were considered to be quite safe, especially compared to other

drugs on the market. For example, barbiturates were also very toxic and a small overdose would be fatal.

One of the great advantages of benzodiazepines over their predecessors was that Q5 even if the patient took many

tablets, they would get very sick and go off to sleep, but they wouldn’t die. It seemed too good to be true. And of

course it was.

Some doctors began to observe alarming facts about benzodiazepines which weren’t well known during the 1960s and

the 1970s, and which are still true today. Q8 They were addictive, even in small doses; they could be safely prescribed

for only a very short period; and the body adapted to the drug within a week, Q9 which usually led the user to take

higher dosages or an increased number of tablets.

In addition to this, what wasn’t well known until the early 1980s is that Q10 a much larger group of people had

become dependent on these benzodiazepines, including Valium, by taking the normal dose. Although they were only

taking 2 mg three times a day, doctors observed that within a week they were becoming dependent. Moreover, they

were becoming very ill if that dose was reduced or withdrawn.

Because the withdrawal from benzodiazepines is brutal, doctors continue to prescribe the medication for fear of the

patient’s health during withdrawal. Doctors believe that there is no point in refusing to prescribe the drug until the

patient is prepared to stop. Q11 Valium has a long half-life, which means that it takes 30-plus hours for the body to

get rid of half of the daily dose. As a result, withdrawals from Valium are just as difficult as withdrawals from other

drugs, including alcohol. Patients who are withdrawing can have fits for five or six days after they have stopped taking

Valium, which is one of the big risks. It usually takes the body five to seven days to detoxify from alcohol and less than

a month for heroin compared to withdrawal from Valium which can take up to six months.

Q12 Many doctors believe that Valium gives people false hope and argue that while many patients feel better when

they initially begin taking the drug, the feelings are short-lived. In the case of benzodiazepines they should only be

taken as part of an overall examination of the patient’s lifestyle.

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Q13 Guidelines have been developed to support the appropriate use by doctors and patients of Valium and other

benzodiazepines. Q14 Doctors need to talk about what is causing the stress and suggest possible alternative

treatment options. The flip side of the coin is that consumers need to take ownership of the medicines that they are

taking. They should talk to their doctor about the impact the medication has on their health. This also helps doctors to

help manage their patient’s health. The emergence of concerns over the use of Valium, originally hailed as the wonder

drug of its day, is a warning for us all to be cautious about the newer drugs. What it all boils down to is that doctors

and patients need to monitor the use of all medicines — this includes prescription medicine as well as over-the-

counter medications.

(Source: The Weekend Australian, Saturday 26 July 2003, “Anxious and Addicted” by Clare Pirani. Copyright: used with

permission.)

Questions 1 - 5

Look at the following statements (Questions 1 - 5). Indicate:

YES if the statement agrees with information in the passage

NO if the statement contradicts information in the passage

NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage

Example: Valium was launched as a new miracle pill. Y / N / NG

1. Valium is of greater risk to users than their original illness. Y / N / NG

2. Valium sales caused business in the Roche Group to peak in the 1970s. Y / N / NG

3. Valium became popular because it seemed to suit a wide range of people. Y / N / NG

4. Valium is part of the group of drugs called diazepams. Y / N / NG

5. A Valium overdose is not fatal. Y / N / NG

Questions 6 - 14

Complete the summary below by using words taken from reading. Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS

OR A NUMBER for each answer.

Initially, doctors believed that Valium was a comparatively 6.safe drug for a number of reasons: it worked

quickly, patients could take it but give it up easily and it did not create any unpleasant 7. side effects.

However, about thirty years ago some disturbing facts became apparent. Doctors found that Valium was

8.addictive in the short term and users needed to 9. increase the dosage in order to get the same effect.

They also found that even users who took a 10. Small/normal dose became addicted very quickly. In

addition to this, one of the most worrying concerns about Valium use was that it was extremely

11.difficult/ hard for users to give up the drug because it had a long half-life. Doctors are now aware that

patients who take Valium merely receive a short lived feeling 12. false hope

Therefore, guidelines have been developed to make sure that it is used only when it is 13. appropriate.

More caution needs to be exercised. Doctors need to talk about patients stress levels and advise them of

14.(possible) alternative treatment (options). Finally, patients need to be more aware of the medications

they take.

CRICOS No: 00213J

13

Jacobus, L. A. (2001). Improving college reading, 361-368 (7th

ed.). Boston, MA: Thomson Heinle. Adapted from: Starr, C. & Taggart, R. (1984). Biology: The university and diversity of life (pp. 375-382, 3

rd ed.).

Wadsworth, Inc. Used by permission of the publisher.

The brain

Cecie Starr and Ralph Taggart

Q16 More complicated than a computer, more fascinating than outer space, the brain is only now

revealing its mysteries to science. As much as we grow in understanding, however, one question

remains: why do people sometimes deliberately destroy with drugs the very part of themselves

that makes them human?

CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE

Our two cerebral hemispheres are strapped together deep inside the cleft between them by a thick tract of

white matter, the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum consists of axons running from one hemisphere to

the other.

Thus you might assume that it functions in communication between the two hemispheres. Indeed,

experiments such as those performed by Roger Sperry and his co-workers showed that this is the case.

They also demonstrated some intriguing differences in perception between the two halves!

Q9 The body’s right and left sides have the same kinds of sensory nerves. These nerves enter the spinal

cord or brainstem, and then run in parallel to the brain. Similarly, sensory nerves from the left eye and ear

run in parallel with sensory nerves from the right eye and ear toward the brain. The signals carried by these

nerves reach the left or right cerebral hemisphere. Q14 But the signals are not all processed on the same

side as the nerves. Instead, much of the information is projected onto the opposite hemisphere. In other

words, many of the nerve pathways leading into and from one hemisphere deal with the opposite side of

the body.

Knowing this, Sperry’s group set out to treat severe cases of epilepsy. Persons afflicted with severe epilepsy

are wracked with seizures, sometimes as often as every half hour of their lives. The seizures have a

neurological basis, analogous to an electrical storm in the brain. What would happen if the corpus callosum

of afflicted persons were cut? Would the electrical storm be confined to one cerebral hemisphere, leaving

at least the other to function normally? Earlier studies of animals and of humans whose corpus callosum

had been damaged suggested that this might be so.

Q4 The surgery was performed. And the electrical storms subsided, in both frequency and intensity.

Apparently, cutting the neural bridge between the two hemispheres put an end to what must have been

positive feedback loops of ever intensified electrical disturbances between them. Beyond this, the “split-

brain” individuals were able to lead what seemed, on the surface, entirely normal lives.

But then Sperry devised some elegant experiments to determine whether the conscious experience of

these individuals was indeed “normal.” After all, the corpus callosum is a tract of no less than 200 million

through-conducting axons; surely something was different. Something was. Q17 “The surgery,” Sperry later

reported, “left these people with two separate minds, that is, two spheres of consciousness. What is

experienced in the right hemisphere seems to be entirely outside the realm of awareness of the left.”

In Sperry’s experiments, the left and right hemispheres of split-brain individuals were presented with

different stimuli. Recall that visual connections to and from one hemisphere are mainly concerned with the

opposite visual field. Sperry projected words—say, COWBOY—onto a screen. He did this in such a way that

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rd ed.).


COW fell only on the left visual field, and BOY fell on the right. The subject reported seeing the word BOY.

(The left hemisphere, which received the word, controls language.) However, when asked to write the

perceived word with the left hand—a hand that was deliberately blocked from view—the subject wrote

COW. The right hemisphere, which “knew” the other half of the word, had directed the left hand’s motor

response. But it couldn’t tell the left hemisphere what was going on because of the severed corpus

callosum. The subject knew that a word was being written but he could not say what it was.

The functioning of our two cerebral hemispheres has been the focus of many more experiments. Taken

together, the results have revealed the following information about our conscious experience:

1. Each cerebral hemisphere can function separately, but it functions in response to signals mainly

from the opposite side of the body.

Q1 2. The main association regions responsible for spoken language skills generally reside in the left

hemisphere.

3. The main association regions responsible for nonverbal skills (music, mathematics, and other

abstract abilities) generally reside in the right hemisphere.

Memory

Conscious experience is far removed from simple reflex action. It entails thinking about things—recalling

objects and events encountered in the past, comparing them with newly encountered ones, and making

rational connections based on the comparison of perceptions. Thus conscious experience entails a capacity

for memory: the storage of individual bits of information somewhere in the brain.

The neural representation of information bits is known as a memory trace, although Q13 no one knows for

sure in what form a memory trace occurs, or where it resides. So far, experiments strongly suggest that

there are at least two stages involved in its formation. One is a short-term formative period, lasting only a

few minutes or so; then, information becomes spatially and temporally organized in neural pathways. The

other is long-term storage; then, information is put in a different neural representation that lasts more or

less permanently.

Observations of people suffering from retrograde amnesia tell us something about memory. These people

can’t remember anything that happened during the half hour or so before experiencing electroconvulsive

shock or before losing consciousness after a severe head blow. Yet memories of events before that time

remain intact! Such disturbances temporarily suppress normal electrical activities in the brain. These

observations may mean that whereas short-term memory is a fleeting stage of neural excitation, long-term

memory depends on chemical or structural changes in the brain.

In addition, information seemingly forgotten can be recalled after being unused for decades. This means

that individual memory traces must be encoded in a form somewhat immune to degradation. Most

molecules and cells in your body are used up, wear out, or age and are constantly being replaced—yet

memories can be retrieved in exquisite detail after many years of such wholesale turnovers. Q7 Nerve cells,

recall, are among the few kinds that are not replaced. You are born with billions, and as you grow older

some 50,000 die off steadily each day. Those nerve cells formed during embryonic development are the

same ones present, whether damaged or otherwise modified, at the time of death.

The part about being “otherwise modified” is tantalizing. There is evidence that neuron structure is not

static, but rather can be modified in several ways. Most likely, such modifications depend on electrical and

chemical interactions with neighbouring neurons. Electron micrographs show that some synapses regress

as a result of disuse. Such regression weakens or breaks connections between neurons. The visual cortex of

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rd ed.).


mice raised without visual stimulation showed such effects of disuse. Similarly, Q18 there is some evidence

that intensively stimulated synapses may form stronger connections, grow in size, or sprout buds or spines

to form more connections! The chemical and physical transformations that underlie changes in synaptic

connections may correspond to memory storage.

SLEEPING AND DREAMING

Q5 Between the mindless drift of coma and total alertness are many levels of conscious experience, known

by such names as sleeping, dozing, meditating, and daydreaming. Through this spectrum of consciousness,

neurons in the brain are constantly chattering among themselves. This neural chatter shows up as wavelike

patterns in an electroencephalogram (EEG). An EEG is an electrical recording of the frequency and strength

of potentials from the brain’s surface. Each recording shows the contribution of thousands of neurons.

EEG Patterns

The prominent wave pattern for someone who is relaxed, with eyes closed, is an alpha rhythm. In this

relaxed state of wakefulness, potentials are recorded in trains of about ten per second. Alpha waves

predominate during the state of meditation. With a transition to sleep, wave trains gradually become

longer, slower, and more erratic. This slow-wave sleep pattern shows up about eighty percent of the total

sleeping time for adults. It occurs when sensory input is low and the mind is more or less idling. Q10

Subjects awakened from slow-wave sleep usually report that they were not dreaming. If anything, they

seemed to be mulling over recent, ordinary events. However, slow-wave sleep is punctuated by brief spells

of REM sleep. The name refers to the Rapid Eye Movements accompanying this pattern (the eyes jerk

about beneath closed lids). Also accompanying REM sleep are irregular breathing, faster heartbeat, and

twitching fingers. Most people who are awakened from REM sleep say that they were experiencing vivid

dreams.

With the transition from sleep (or deep relaxation) into wakefulness, EEG recordings show a shift to low-

amplitude, higher frequency wave trains. Associated with this accelerated brain activity are increased blood

flow and oxygen uptake in the cortex. The transition, called EEG arousal, occurs when individuals make a

conscious effort to focus on external stimuli or even on their own thoughts.

The Reticular Formation

What brain regions govern changing levels of consciousness? Deep in the brainstem, buried within

ascending and descending nerve pathways, lies a mass of nerve cells and processes called the reticular

formation. This mass forms connections with the spinal cord, cerebellum, and cerebrum, as well as back

with itself. It constantly samples messages flowing through the central nervous system. Q2 The flow of

signals along these circuits—and the inhibitory or excitatory chemical changes accompanying them—has a

great deal to do with whether you stay awake or drop off to sleep. For example, when certain areas of the

reticular formation of sleeping animals are electrically stimulated, long, slow alpha rhythms are displaced

by high- frequency potentials associated with arousal. Similarly, damage to the reticular formation leads to

unconsciousness and coma.

Within this formation are neurons collectively called the reticular activating system (RAS). Excitatory

pathways connect the RAS to the thalamus (the forebrain’s switching station). Messages routed from the

RAS arouse the brain and maintain wakefulness.

Also in the reticular formation are sleep centres. One centre contains neurons that release the transmitter

substance serotonin. This chemical has an inhibitory effect on RAS neurons: high serotonin levels are

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rd ed.).


associated with drowsiness and sleep. Another sleep centre, in the part of the reticular formation that lies

in the pons, has been linked to REM sleep. Chemicals released from the second centre counteract the

effects of serotonin. Hence its action allows the RAS to maintain the waking state.

Drug Action on Integration and Control

Each day can bring some minor frustration or disappointment, some pleasure or small triumph—and the

brain responds to the shadings of environmental stimuli with delicate interplays among the activities of

norepinephrine, dopamine, and the like. These interplays translate into changing emotional and

behavioural states. Q15 When stress leads to physical or emotional pain, the brain apparently deploys

other substances—analgesic, or pain relievers that the brain produces itself.

Receptors for natural analgesics have been identified on neural membranes in many parts of the nervous

system, including the spinal cord and limbic system. (The limbic system includes structures bordering the

cerebral hemispheres, at the top of the brainstem.) When bound to receptors, the pain relievers seem to

inhibit neural activity. Endorphins (including enkephalins) are brain analgesics that may have this inhibitory

effect. High concentrations of endorphins (“internally produced morphines”) occur in brain regions

concerned with our emotions and perceptions of pain. Emotional stages—joy, elation, anxiety, depression,

fear, anger—are normal responses to changing conditions in the complex world around us. Sometimes,

through imbalances in transmitter substances, one or another of these states becomes pronounced. For

instance, schizophrenic persons become despairing; they withdraw from the social world and focus

obsessively on themselves. In an extreme form of the disorder (paranoid schizophrenia), afflicted persons

suffer delusions of persecution or grandeur. Yet by administering certain synthetic tranquilizers, the

symptoms can be brought under control. It appears that the tranquilizers affect norepinephrine, dopaniine,

and serotonin levels in the brain, in ways that depress the activity of neurons utilizing these transmitter

substances.

Tranquilizers, opiates, stimulants, hallucinogens—such drugs are known to inhibit, modify, or enhance the

release or action of chemical messengers throughout the brain. Yet research into the effects of drugs on

integration and control is in its infancy. For the most part, we don’t understand much about how any one

drug works. Given the complexity of the brain, it could scarcely be otherwise at this early stage of inquiry.

Despite our ignorance of drug effects, one of the major problems in the modern world is drug use—the

self-destructive use of drugs that alter emotional and behavioural states. The consequences show up in

unexpected places—among seven-year- old heroin addicts; among the highway wreckage left by individuals

whose perceptions were skewed by alcohol or amphetamines; among victims of addicts who steal and

sometimes kill to support their drug habit; Q3 among suicides on LSD trips who were deluded into believing

that they could fly, and who flew off buildings and bridges.

Each of us possesses a body of great complexity. Its architecture, its functioning are legacies of millions of

years of evolution. It is unique in the living world because of its nervous system—a system that is capable

of processing far more than the experience of the individual. One of its most astonishing products is

language— the encoding of shared experiences of groups of individuals in time and space. Through the

evolution of our nervous system, the sense of history was born, and the sense of destiny. Through this

system we can ask how we have come to be what we are, and where we are headed from here. Perhaps

the sorriest consequence of drug abuse is its implicit denial of this legacy—the denial of self when we

cease to ask, and cease to care.

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rd ed.).


Questions 1- 15

Retention: Which of the following statements are True (T), False (F), or Not given (NG)?

1. The main association regions responsible for spoken language skills generally reside in the right

hemisphere. T / F / NG

2. The sleep centres are in the reticular formation. T / F / NG

3. Some people on LSD trips think that they can fly. T / F / NG

4. Cutting the corpus callosum resulted in increased epileptic seizures. T / F / NG

5. Even when we are in a coma, the neurons in our brains are constantly talking with one another. T / F / NG

6. We understand how one stimulant, coffee, works. T / F / NG

7. Nerve cells are among the few kinds of cells that can be replaced. T / F / NG

8. Epileptic seizures can be controlled with drugs. T / F / NG

9. The body’s right and left sides have the same kinds of sensory nerves. T / F / NG

10. Most people who are awakened from slow-wave sleep report that they were experiencing vivid dreams.

T / F / NG

11. Anxiety is a normal response to changing conditions in the world around us. T / F / NG

12. The pituitary gland governs changing levels of consciousness. T / F / NG

13. No one knows for sure in what form a memory trace occurs. T / F / NG

14. Each cerebral hemisphere functions in response to signals from its own part of the body. T / F / NG

15. The brain is actually capable of producing its own pain relievers. T / F / NG

Question 16

Main Idea: Which of the following statements best represents the main point of the reading? 4

1 . The brain consists of two cerebral hemispheres.

2. The brain varies in its activity depending on whether we are asleep or awake, using drugs or not using drugs.

3. The brain, carrier of our conscious and unconscious experiences, is that part of us which makes us distinctly human.

4. The brain is a complex organ whose role and workings we are only beginning to understand.

5. Experimentation on the brain is difficult because of the repercussions involved in terms of the quality of life.

Question 17

Interpretation: Which of the following is the best interpretation of a key point in this reading? 2

1. Whether we are awake or asleep is a result of physical activity and time, not chemicals.

2. When the corpus callosum was cut, people’s brains were to all intents and purposes cut in half, with one side

not knowing what the other side was experiencing.

3. Long-term memory and short-term memory have basically the same structure.

4. Schizophrenia is a result of a normal response to change in our world.

5. REM sleep periods represent a deeper sleep than do sleep periods characterized by alpha waves.

Question 18

Conclusion: Which of the following statements is the best conclusion that can be drawn from the reading? 1

1. If synapses can be strengthened, scientists may be able to improve an individual’s memory by synapse

stimulation.

2. Even if a person were placed in a different environment, the basic relative amounts of the substances put out

by his brain would not change.

3. Cutting a person’s corpus callosum would mean that they would see a word such as backstop as two different

words, each being read separately by one side of the brain.

4. Alcoholism, while self-destructive, is not a form of drug abuse.

5. The author of this article does not believe in evolution.

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McCarter, S., & Ash, J. (2003). IELTS Testbuilder with answer key (pp. 16-18, 55-57). Oxford, UK: Macmillan.

W3 Networking

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

Q5

Q6

Q7

Q8

Q9

Q10

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Example Answer Networking is a concept. Yes

1. Networking is not a modern idea. Y

2. Networking is worn like a badge exclusively in the business world. N

3. People fall into two basic categories. Y

4. A person who shares knowledge and friends makes a better networker than one who does

not. Y

5. The classic networker is physically strong and generally in good health.NG

Q11

Q12

Q13

Q14

Q15

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brings success/ has benefits

jealous/ insecure/envious

block/ stifle

Companies/ businesses/

enterprises

Cooperation and contacts

(the) academic world

(the) stereotypical academic

(around) Cambridge (in England)

culture

Homosapiens

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May, P. (2004). IELTS practice tests (pp. 107-110). London, UK: Oxford University Press.

To MBA or not to MBA?

‘You could be forgiven for thinking just about

every man and Ms dog has an MBA these

days, ‘ says Anthony Hesketh, of Lancaster

University management school. We know

what he means. Such is the worldwide

growth and awareness of the MBA that this

icon of career advancement and high salaries

has almost become synonymous with

postgraduate education in the business

sector.

In reality many postgraduate alternatives to an MBA exist. The total number of MBA programmes

worldwide is around 2,400, while other masters and advanced courses in the whole spectrum of business

education add up to more than 10,000.

Two key distinctions exist in matching what aspiring students want with what the universities offer: first is

generalization versus specialization, and second is pre-experience versus post-experience, and the two

distinctions are interlinked. 6. Carol Blackman, of the University of Westminster school of business,

explains the first distinction. ‘Specialist masters programmes are designed either for career preparation

in a clearly defined type of job or profession, or are intended to develop or enhance professional

competence in individuals who are already experienced. The aim is to increase the depth of their

knowledge in the specialist area. The MBA, on the other hand, is a general management programme

which provides practising managers with an opportunity for personal development with a broadly-based

introduction to all management subject areas and the theory and practice of management’.

Specialist knowledge, however, is not everything when it comes to finding a job. 1. Surveys by the UK’S

Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) repeatedly confirm that what employers seek, and continue to

find scarce, are the personal skills that will make graduates valuable employees. In fact, when recruiting

new graduates, most employers considered these skills more important than specialist knowledge. What

employers seek most from new graduates are enthusiasm and self- motivation, interpersonal skills, team

working and good oral communication. Of the nineteen skills considered important in AGR’S 2002 survey,

just three require specialist education — numeracy, computer Literacy and foreign languages — and these

are low on the list.

4. Nunzio Quacquarelli, chief executive of topcareers.net takes this further. 2 ‘Clearly, salary differentials

for those with a second degree, but no significant work experience, do not match those of a good MBA

and a number of years in the workplace. According to the AGR research, 4. about 14% of employers

offered a better salary to those new graduates with a masters — or even a doctorate. In my view the

salary improvement of I0% to 15% largely reflects the recruit’s age and earning expectancy rather than

the increase in human capital perceived by the employer. Contrast this with our latest topmba.com MBA

Recruiters Survey results which shows 2. that the average salary paid to an MBA with good work

experience in the US and Europe is US$80,000 — around two and a half times the average starting salary

for a young postgraduate.

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5. & 7 Anthony Hesketh poses the question whether holding a second degree may even be a disadvantage.

7. ‘I have seen many reports over the years suggesting that employers view postgraduates as eminently

less employable than those with a first degree. Drive, motivation and career focus, not to mention ability,

are what employers value and are prepared to pay for. 5. A postgraduate immediately has an uphill task

explaining an additional year or three years of study’.

This view may seem cynical, but if you are about to graduate and are considering a further degree, you

should take the realities into account and ask yourself some hard questions:

Is the qualification I am considering going to impress employers?

Is it going to give me the edge over less qualified candidates?

Is my consideration of a second degree because I am not sure of my career direction?

Will employers consider that I lack drive and ambition because I have deferred my attempts to find

a worthwhile job?

Many postgraduate options exist that can help you to acquire the personal skills that employers in the

world of business are seeking. Consider, for example, the offerings of Strathclyde and Durham universities.

According to 7. Dr Nic Beech, of the University of Strathclyde graduate school of business: ‘The MSc in

business management (MBM), offered at USGSB is suitable for students with a good first degree —

particularly a non-business first degree — but little or no business experience. Our MBM offers these

graduates the opportunity to combine the specialization of their first degree with a general management

qualification — something employers recognize produces a well-rounded individual.

Graduates tell us that the MBM allows them to access sectors previously out of reach. It is designed to

develop the business knowledge1 practical experience and personal skills which employers are seeking’.

At the University of Durham business school, Sheena Maberly is careers development officer; she too sees

high value in qualifications such as the Durham MA in management (DMAM). She says:

‘Whatever your first degree, from anthropology to zoology a postgraduate business degree can help you

gain a competitive edge in an over-crowded 9. job market. If you’re just starting out in your career, a

business masters degree like the DMAM will enable you to develop 10. skills directly relevant to employers’

needs. So, extending your studies into management can make you better equipped to ‘hit the ground

running’ — and that’s what employers expect Recruiters are highly selective and a vocational qualification

is additional evidence of 11. motivation.’

Before committing yourself to postgraduate study, weigh up the 12. options. Perhaps the best route

might be to take a job now and plan to do an MBA a few years down the line? Try to get sponsorship from a

13. company. Or go for a well researched and thoroughly thought through masters that will help you land a

good job. Ultimately the choice is yours, but focus on the future, and on your target employer’s

expectations.

Questions 1-3

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the reading passage?

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

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1. British employers are more interested in what potential recruits can do than what they know.

T / F / NG

2. A recruit with a specialist masters usually earns as much as an experienced employee with a good MBA.

T / F / NG

3. The writer claims that undergraduates often plan to do a masters because they can’t decide what career to follow.

T / F / NG

Questions 4-8

The text quotes various individuals. Match the four people A—D with the four points made in Questions

4-8. You may use any of the people more than once.

4. Employees with postgraduate qualifications earn more because they are older and expect more.

__C____

5. It can be difficult to convince an employer that the extra time spent at university was necessary.

__A____

6. One type of course focuses on a particular aspect of business, whereas the other is more general in approach.

__B____

7. Graduates who have neither worked in nor studied business are suited to our programme. __D____

8. There is evidence that companies may prefer to employ people without a masters degree. __A____

List of people A. Anthony Hesketh B. Carol Blackman C. Nunzio Quacquarelli D. Nic Beech

Questions 9-14

Complete the summary below. Choose ONE word from the reading passage for each answer.

According to Sheena Maberly, a second degree can improve the 9. job prospects of graduates in any subject.

Taking a management MA gives them the 10. skills companies are looking for, and lets them get straight on with

the job as soon as they start work. It also shows they have the 11. motivation that companies seek.

First, however, it is important to consider the 12. options whether to start right away on a carefully chosen

postgraduate course or to do so after a few years’ work, preferably with financial assistance from the 13.

Company. Whichever they decide, they should think about the 14. future and what the company wants.

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Adapted from Gardener, P.S. (2000). New directions: An integrated approach to reading, writing and critical

thinking (pp. 177-181). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Worker poll shows family, fringes gains favour

American workers are sacrificing higher pay and fast promotion for 1. more fun on the job and 2. more time

with their families, according to a 30. major survey of life in the American workplace. Three in five

employees say they feel 23.“used up” by the end of the day: a day that piles up an average of 8 hours at

work and 6 more hours of commuting, chores and children. A similar majority say they have seen a co-

worker lose a job in recent years, and are deeply nervous about the economy and their own job security.

The survey of 3,381 workers nationwide, by the New York-based Families and Work Institute, confirms

some trends that have been chronicled informally for years. Managers with families of their own, for

instance, are far more patient with employees who lose job time because of child-related problems.

Furthermore, when it comes to cooking, cleaning, shopping, and child care, women in two-income couples

are four times more likely than men to carry the load. However, the most profound finding, labour

specialists and workers say, is that most employees say they prefer 3. a decent supervisor and a chance at a

4. home life over big money and responsibility

The pattern makes sense to Anne McGrath, a 39-year-old data analyst with Hale & Dorr in Boston. She said

she could easily earn more than her $30,000 a year as an executive secretary in another office. However,

the law firm’s 24. fringe benefits, which include emergency on-site day care, flexible work hours and a

computer terminal in the home, have kept her in place for seven years.“Let’s face it: data analysis is pretty

dry” she said. “I used to be a career-first person: I wanted to be a flight attendant, but I’ve changed. I seek

fulfilment from family.”

Punctuating the changes in McGrath’s life was the survey’s finding that 87 percent of American workers live

with at least one family member (4 percent have roommates and just 9 percent live alone). According to

the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of workers who live with family members is 15 percent higher

than it was in a 1990 survey, before recession and downsizing rippled through the American workforce,

forcing many children and parents to live together to cut costs.

A result, the survey said, is that finding time for spouses, children, parents 8 or partners is becoming a

priority. “It’s a profound new path after 15 turbulent years in the workplace,” said Ellen Galinsky, who

directed the survey. “For years, people were living and breathing their careers. Now they’re saying, ‘I just

won’t put aside my family life.”

Fandi Pleskow of Needham, a 35-year-old mother of three who trained as a paediatric surgeon, says she

took the path of fewer hours despite her original ambitions of becoming well-known, even famous, in the

field of 25. gastroenterology. “I guess I fit the bill exactly,” said Pleskow, who now works a flexible schedule

as a researcher at the New England Medical Center in Boston. “I turned my whole career around: I could

earn twice the money in a less joyful atmosphere; I’ve put my ambitions aside in favour of my 5. family life,

and my husband . . . he’s wonderful, but I’m the one who sweeps the house.”

MOMENTUM GROWING

The survey found that the family-first trend is gaining momentum among 6. younger men. About one-third

of men under 40 said they would consider giving up both promotions and pay increases in favour of a

better home life, twice the number of men who felt that way five years ago.“I used to think I’d put up with

endless hours forever,” said 7. John Costello, 8. an engineer with Polaroid Corp. in Waltham who has

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declined offers of better pay from other companies. “I once saw myself as a manager. Now I manage my

family”

Costello, 38, says he took the job at Polaroid for reasons big and small. The office is within biking distance

of his Belmont home, and the company even installed new showers. More importantly, he said, his bosses

have children and never scowl when he needs a morning off. “I took a half-day last week,” he said. “It’s

viewed more positively here, and believes me I’ve seen it viewed negatively elsewhere. It’s not that I’ve

dropped my career. I’m doing well here and the fringe benefits are great. But family is first.”

According to the survey, that view is gaining among managers, but is not as universal as workers would like.

Forty percent of the working parents questioned said they still felt they were breaking unspoken rules of

the workplace by taking time off from the job to care for their children.

A MORALE-BOOSTER

“I wouldn’t say all 9. employers have caught on to this,” said Whit Browne, a Wakefield 26. consultant who

helps businesses with employee needs. “But the ones who listen are learning that simple things like 10. on-

site child care work wonders for morale.”

In day care, at least, companies seem to be coming around. The survey noted that parents with youngsters

tend to miss a week more each year due to 27.absenteeism than workers without children. As a result,

more and more companies are investing in day care. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts yesterday

opened its first day-care centre, in Quincy, with spaces for 20 children. The company said it received nearly

70 applications and hopes to expand to 60 spaces in the next few weeks. “Sure it’s a response,” said Susan

Leahy, a spokeswoman for the giant health insurer. “Our workers tell us what they need.”

Specialists said the survey’s results offer other insights into a work force where the presence of 11. women

has risen from 40 percent to 48 percent in 15 years. Not since the Department of Labor’s Quality of

Employment Survey, conducted in 1977, they say, has such a 28. broad-based survey been conducted of

workers’ lives. The discoveries included changes in the work environment. Workers are crediting their

employers with more flexibility and with trying to make the workplace more open and comfortable.

OPEN DIALOGUE PRAISED

Asked why they had taken their most recent jobs, 65 percent of those surveyed cited 12. open

communications; 60 percent cited 13. the effect on family life; and 59 percent 14. management quality.

Only 35 percent of workers rated salary as very important. “A lot of this stems from the psychologists—

that total-quality and team- management stuff,” said Browne. “If people buy into it then they have huge

motivational rewards. They feel like they’ve practically signed the products they’ve made.”

It was that kind of environment that drew Michael Berry, a Cambridge father of two, to Thinking Machines

Corp., a high-tech firm near his home that tries to keep the mood light. Like many workers in the survey,

Berry said he did not give up the urge to get ahead. He just took his ambition to a new setting.“I took a pay

cut—very willingly—to work in a 15. friendly environment,” he said. “I’ve had fun, but I don’t feel like I gave

up all the traditional rewards. I can get those here.”He also gets to enjoy a bit of 29. quirkiness. Like the

day a co-worker raised a French flag in the lunchroom and declared one of the tables a French-only zone.

Even the food was French. “It’s the kind of thing that adds extra appeal,” he said.

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MORE EMPLOYEE CONTROL

Browne said this type of workplace approach, which can give employees control over their own hours, work

teams and even their spots on the assembly line, has angered 16.unions. “The survey points up the weakened

position of unions,” he said, noting that they now represent only 15 percent of the labour force. “They’re ceding

almost everything to managers.”

Still, the heart of the survey was its focus on the way employees balance 17. work and 18. family concerns.

Despite the big changes in the office place, 66 percent of employed parents with young children surveyed said

they still lacked time at home with their children.

Deirdre Mailing, a dental hygienist in Medway and new mother, said her key was finding a likable place and a

liveable schedule, and not worrying too much about advancement above all else.“I’ve been told that I could

make more money elsewhere,” she said. ‘But we have a great group of girls here and we work well together. We

make time for our 19. kids. Who needs anything else?”

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Questions 1-19

Read the text and complete the gap fill summary.

US workers are seeking 1. more fun on the job and 2. more time with families rather than more income or

opportunities for advancement, claims a US workplace survey. In fact, most employees surveyed claim that

they would rather have a 3. decent supervisor and more chances to have a better 4. home life . Anne

McGrath and Fandi Pleskow are examples as they too value their 5. family life above all else. The text

suggests that another group, 6. younger men , is giving more priority to families. A person who is an

example of this group is 7. John Costello, who works as an 8. engineer . Another group that is beginning to

view families as more important is 9. employers . Evidence of this is the provision of 10. child care at some

workplaces.

One major factor driving this change is the rise in the number of 11. women in the workforce. As a result,

the top three criteria for selecting jobs are 12. open communications , 13. effect on family life and 14.

management quality . One happy employee, Michael Berry, describes his work environment as 15. friendly

. According to the article, one group that is not happy with the trend is 16. unions.

The article argues that employees wish to create a balance between 17. work and 18. family (concerns)

and cites Deirdre Mailing as an example of someone who wants more time to spend with her 19. kids.

Questions 20-22

The following questions relate to the two bar graphs.

20. What were the top three priorities for workers according to the first graph?

open communications, effect on personal/family life and management quality

21. Are these the same priorities mentioned in the article? YES

22. Who does most of the housework according to the second bar graph? women

Questions 23-30

Vocabulary in context. Please answer the following questions without looking in dictionaries.

23. “used up” in paragraph 1 means tired, exhausted

24. “fringe benefits” in paragraph 3 means

extra items paid for by employers e.g. on-site day care, flexible hours, a computer at home

25. From the context you can tell that “gastroenterology” (paragraph 6) is a field of medicine

26. What do “consultants” (paragraph 10) do? help people (in this case employers)

27. What is “absenteeism” (paragraph 11)? missing work

28. What is a “broad-based survey” (paragraph 12)? a set of questions that many people answered

29. What is “quirkiness” (paragraph 14)? something odd and funny

30. The purpose of the article was to report on and discuss the results of a

survey about life in American workplaces

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Miller, M. (2004). QUTIC Resource. Adapted from: New Scientist 6 March 1999

W4 Caring for the customer

A damning new report claims that tobacco giants possessed the technology to make cigarette

smoking safer, but didn’t use it.

Cigarette manufacturers abandoned dozens of technologies that could have reduced the death toll

from their products, according to a new report from two leading British anti-smoking groups. It

claims that tobacco barons feared that marketing a ‘safer’ cigarette would amount to an

admission that smoking is dangerous.

The report, from Action On Smoking and Health (ASH) and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund,

details 58 patented methods for cutting levels of toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke.(Q1) None

has yet seen the light of day.( Q16)

These include a catalytic method to remove carbon monoxide and nitric oxide from smoke (Q2A)

(US 412348), registered by British American Tobacco (BAT) in 1980. Philip Morris filed a similar

patent (US 4301817) (Q10) in 1981, which also describes a process to cut levels of hydrogen

cyanide.(Q2B)

The cost of implementing these technologies (Q3A) may have been one of the reasons they were

abandoned. But ASH believes concerns about the legal difficulties in admitting the dangers posed

by existing products were far more significant. (Q3B)

RISING TOLL

Smoking-related deaths in developed countries

Men Women

1955 447 000 26 000

1965 793 000 70 000

1975 1 119 000 165 000

1985 1 369 000 317 000

1995 1 442 000 476 000

“Marketing a cigarette on the basis it had less of a tasteless gas like ( Q11) carbon monoxide

would effectively mean admitting the product was bad for you,’(Q4) says Clive Bates, director of

ASH. “Then you would move into the area of product liability with the smoker who has had heart

disease made worse by inhaling carbon monoxide.’(Q17)

Although cigarette manufacturers have promoted lower-tar brands for decades,( Q 12) Bates

says that the industry has been careful not to claim these are safer. Instead, they have been

marketed as tasting milder.

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Bates also points to a confidential memo written in 1986 by Patrick Sheehy, then chief executive

of BAT, uncovered last year during litigation in the US. It states: “In attempting to develop a ‘safe’

cigarette you are, by implication, in danger of being interpreted as accepting that the current

product is unsafe and this is not a position I think we should take.”( Q18)

Chris Proctor, head of science and regulatory affairs at BATs London headquarters, disputes

Bates’s claims. He says that many of the technologies were not developed because they might in

theory increase Ievels of other toxic chemicals.(Q5)(Q19) But Proctor could not confirm whether

BAT had conducted tests to exclude this possibility.

It is unclear to what extent the shelved patents could have cut premature deaths. But Bates says:

“If you could make cigarettes 10 per cent less dangerous, that’s 12 000 lives saved each year in the

UK alone.”

Among the most dangerous substances in cigarette smoke (Q 13)are carcinogens called

nitrosamines. The new report lists six patented processes for reducing or eliminating these

chemicals from cigarette smoke.( Q20) The tobacco giants have never implemented any of them,

but a small company called Star Scientific of Petersburg, Virginia, hopes to introduce nitrosamine-

free cigarettes next year. (Q14) In 1998, the company patented a method (US 5803081) of

microwaving tobacco to kill the bacteria that create the right chemical environment for the

production of nitrosamines. (Q6)

“If their process is effective, it should be applied to cigarette manufacturing everywhere,” says

John Slade, a specialist in nicotine addiction at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New

Jersey in Newark. “But it might require legislation”.( Q21)

The report will be seized upon by sick smokers who are trying to sue tobacco firms for damages.(

Q15) They have been experiencing mixed fortunes. Last week in Britain, for example, 46 smokers

abandoned their action against Gallaher and Imperial Tobacco after a judge ruled they had waited

too long after contracting lung cancer before launching their suit. (Q7)(Q22)

However, Richard Daynard, a law professor at North-eastern University in Boston and founder of

the Tobacco Products Liability Project advocacy group, believes the report could precipitate

further lawsuits. (Q8) “The companies knew how to make changes that would mean many fewer

deaths, but they continued to make cigarettes as they are. This is criminal level of

negligence.”(Q9)(Q23)

Proctor rejects this charge: “l firmly believe that BAT has been very responsible.” Philip Morris

would not comment on the report.

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Read the text and answer the following questions.

1. What did the new report on smoking list?

58 Patented methods for cutting levels of toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke

2. Provide two examples of the patented methods reduce toxicity in cigarettes.

A catalytic method to remove carbon monoxide and nitric oxide from smoke

A process to cut levels of hydrogen cyanide.

3. What two factors could have contributed to these technologies not being used?

Cost of the technologies

Concerns about the legal difficulties in admitting the dangers posed by existing products.

4. According to Sheehy, what does stating you are developing a safer cigarette imply?

It would effectively mean admitting the product was bad for you.

5. Why does Proctor believe the development of the technologies wasn't furthered?

He says that many of the technologies were not developed because they might in theory

increase levels of other toxic chemicals.

6. How does microwaving tobacco affect it?

It kills the bacteria that create the right chemical environment for the production of

nitrosamines.

7. What caused the approximately fifty British smokers to stop their court action?

The judge’s ruling that they had waited too long after contracting lunvh cancer before launching

their suit.

8. What does Daynard believe the new report might lead to?

Further lawsuits.

9. In what way does he support this?

The companies knew how to make changes but didn’t. He believes this is criminal negligence.

True or false?

10. US Patent 4301817 is a duplicate of Patent 4182348. T F

11. Having less carbon dioxide means the cigarette has less taste. T F

12. Cigarettes with less tar have been advertised for more than ten years. T F

13. Nitrosamines are the most dangerous chemicals in cigarettes. T F

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14. Star Scientific will start selling nitrosamine-less cigarettes next year. T F

15. People who want to take cigarette companies to court will use the report to help them. T F

Who said it? Write the initials of the person/ group below who made the following statements.

Clive Bates

(CB)

Chris Proctor

(CP)

Action on Smoking and Health

(ASH)

. "

Patrick Sheehy

(PS)

A judge

(J)

Richard Daynard

(RD)

Philip Morris

(PM)

John Slade

(JS)

16. None of the methods to reduce the levels of toxicity in cigarettes has been implemented.

ASH

17. Admitting cigarettes were bad for you would have led to people believing cigarette companies

were liable for smokers having heart problems.

CB

18. BAT should not state we have developed a safe cigarette due to the fact it could mean our

current cigarettes are dangerous.

PS

19. I’m not sure if BAT undertook experiments to see if the technologies would make the levels of

other dangerous chemicals increase.

CP

20. The fact that there are six patented processes.

ASH

21. They could need to make new laws.

JS

22. You should have sued before this point in time.

J

23. The tobacco companies have behaved like criminals.

RD

Complete the following sentences by adding the cause or effect as outlined in the article.

24. Tobacco barons didn't want to introduce new smoking technologies because they were afraid

that marketing a “safer” cigarette would amount to an admission that smoking is dangerous.

25. The tobacco companies are the same as criminals due to the fact they cigarette the same as

they are even though they knew how to make changes that would have meant fewer

26. The manufacture of less dangerous cigarettes by a factor of 10% could lead to 12,000 lives

saved every year.

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Bertacco, L. (2012) QUTIC Resource. Adapted from Nash, H. (2011). Conspicuous consumption. In J. Mansvelt, & P. Robbins (Eds.), Green consumerism: An A-to-Z guide. (pp. 68-70). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. doi: 10.4135/9781412973809.n26

Conspicuous consumption

Pre reading vocabulary questions

1. What does ‘conspicuous’ mean? Look it up in a dictionary and write the definition here:

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________

2. What is the opposite of conspicuous? _________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________

First published in 1899, The Theory of the Leisure Class, written by Norwegian American sociologist and economist Thorstein Bunde Veblen, introduced the concept of conspicuous consumption. Q1 Conspicuous consumption is the term that describes the tendency of individuals to purchase expensive products as an outward display of wealth and a means of enhancing their status in society. Veblen (1994) used the term to describe the phenomena of gaining and holding the esteem of others in society through the evidential display of wealth. In this way, an individual is attempting to prove that they have the financial means to afford a particular product. Conspicuous consumption is therefore closely linked to demonstrating status, success, and achievement.

It has long been considered that material possessions, capable of being observed in society, Q2 carry social meanings and are used as a communicator to signal a person's wealth, status, and identity. In Plato's The Republic, Book II, Adeimantus declares to Socrates: “since… appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to appearance I must devote myself” (2007, p. 42). Through consumption behaviour and product choices, consumers can send signals to society. Products and brands displayed conspicuously (overtly) have the ability to indicate to others in a particular society one's image identity, as well as wealth. Q3 Consuming conspicuously cannot be achieved without the presence of others and the visual display of that consumption. Therefore, those who consume conspicuously rely on other people's understanding the “signalling by consuming” and evaluating the person on the basis of their choices, known as the spectator's view. O'Cass and McEwen (2004) defined “conspicuous consumption” as the tendency for individuals to enhance their image through overt consumption of possessions, which communicates status to others. It is through consumption decisions that an individual can benefit not only from the direct effects of their choice but also from the indirect and social effects emanating from society's observation of their choice. Q4 Private or fundamental utility is the theoretical framework that refers to the individual's evaluation of their own satisfaction from consuming certain goods. In this way, product styles and cost, rather than utility, determine how consumers are perceived by others.

Not all individuals desire conspicuous goods. The level of conspicuous consumption prevalent depends on one of a number of factors. Firstly, Q5 the prevailing norms, values, customs, beliefs, and laws in a society may all be part of sociocultural context that underlies consumption patterns. In this case, conspicuous consumption occurs where the visibility of such behaviour can be understood by those within the society. It is not only

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Western industrialized countries that can be characterized by conspicuous consumption. Belk (1988) argues that even in Q6 less economically developed countries people are often attracted to and indulge in aspects of conspicuous consumption before they have adequate food, clothing, and shelter. Secondly, an individual's social network or reference group can influence their consumption patterns. Thirdly, psychological variables, that is, the way in which an individual regulates their own behaviour, otherwise referred to as “self-monitoring,” plays a role in conspicuous consumption. According to O'Cass and McEwen (2004), high self-monitors tend to place more importance on the overt self and be concerned with maintaining their appearance and overall image as a means of compensating for a lack of security in their own identity. Braun and Wicklund (1989) argue that people who are committed to an identity and who evidence incompleteness with respect to that identity will be more prone to exaggerate the prestige value of whatever symbols they have at hand. Q7 Last, gender has been found to also increase susceptibility to conspicuous consumption. Auty and Elliot observe that females use clothing and apparel more than males to tell others who they are and how much status they have.

In these ways, Veblen's theory implies a positive relationship between wealth and conspicuous consumption, in which the more costly the item, the greater the demand, although the utility remains the same as a similar item at a lower price. The rationale for this has been explained by Brehm (as cited in Burke, Lake, & Paine, 2008) in his theory of psychological reactance. A higher-priced product is more attractive because the affordability of the item decreases, which precludes the majority from obtaining the product. Intrinsically linked to the higher price of a product is the prestige value and status that intensify a product's attractiveness to consumers on the basis of exclusivity. Q9 It follows, then, that certain brand dimensions and associations can lead to increased marketplace recognition and economic success, although researchers have found that with greater utility and uptake of more expensive products, the prestige and symbolism of wealth can dissipate, as can be observed with the Burberry label.

Today, Q10 conspicuous consumption not only refers to the wealthy obtaining expensive

and relatively exclusive goods not for their utility but for the prestige value, as Veblen

described, but it also has come to be regarded as a broader term to explain the

phenomenon of expenditures made by an individual from any socioeconomic background

for the purpose of ostentatiously displaying wealth, status, image, or a certain identity that

will be perceived by their particular social networks and reference groups. However, with

the global economic crisis, there has been a distinct reduction in support for conspicuous

consumption. Instead, Western societies in particular are focusing increasingly on

inconspicuous consumption. This theory, adopted by scholars in 1980, provides the

antithesis of Veblen's conspicuous consumption. Inconspicuous consumption is

characterized by consumers buying cheaper items than they need to avoid Q11 ostentation.

The underlying motivation of the inconspicuous consumer is either to Q12 avoid

embarrassing others by their wealth or to discourage them from asking for Q13 financial

support. So, although higher-priced items continue to be bought, many individuals,

described as “furtive shoppers,” are now choosing discretion over demonstrable,

conspicuous goods.

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References

Auty, S., & Elliott, R. (1998). Social identity and the meaning of fashion brands. In B. G. Englis, and A. Olofsson, (Eds.), European advances in consumer research, Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research.

Belk, R.W. (1988) Possessions and the extended self. Journal of Consumer Research 15(2), 139-168. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/stable/2489522

Braun, O. L., & Wicklund, R. A. (1989). Psychological antecedents of conspicuous consumption. Journal of Economic Psychology 10(2), 161–187. Retrieved from: http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/science/article/pii/0167487089900184

Brehm, J. W. (1966) A theory of psychological reactance. In Burke, W. W., Lake, D. G., & Paine. J.W. (Eds) (2008). Organisation change: A comprehensive reader (pp. 377-390). London, UK: Josey Bass Wiley.

O'Cass, A., & McEwen, H. (2004). Exploring consumer status and conspicuous consumption. Journal of Consumer Behaviour 4(1), 25–39. Retrieved from: http://dx.doi.org.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/10.1002/cb.155

Plato. (2007).). The republic. MobileReference.com. [EBL version] Retrieved from:

http://reader.eblib.com.au.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/%28S%28tfjj5khmxuwrla0efytwv

gyt%29%29/Reader.aspx?p=370170&o=96&u=Sxsv%2blrc58hEflXyseNHig%3d%3d&t=

1349831521&h=D4D3B6144A126245AA228BE09464446643291365&s=6951472&ut=2

45&pg=1&r=img&c=-1&pat=n

Veblen, T. B. (1994). The theory of the leisure class. New York, NY: Penguin.

http://www.jstor.org.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/stable/2489522

http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/science/article/pii/0167487089900184

http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/science/article/pii/0167487089900184

http://dx.doi.org.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/10.1002/cb.155

http://reader.eblib.com.au.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/%28S%28tfjj5khmxuwrla0efytwvgyt%29%29/Reader.aspx?p=370170&o=96&u=Sxsv%2blrc58hEflXyseNHig%3d%3d&t=1349831521&h=D4D3B6144A126245AA228BE09464446643291365&s=6951472&ut=245&pg=1&r=img&c=-1&pat=n




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Bertacco, L. (2012) QUTIC Resource. Adapted from Nash, H. (2011). Conspicuous consumption. In J. Mansvelt, & P. Robbins (Eds.), Green consumerism: An A-to-Z guid. (pp. 68-70). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. doi: 10.4135/9781412973809.n26

Questions 1-3

Circle the best answer, A, B, or C.

1. The term conspicuous consumption refers to:

a) Someone purchasing an expensive item to display their wealth, and boost their social

standing

b) Someone purchasing a high quality item to be associated with its designer

c) Someone purchasing an expensive item to display their wealth, so that people will envy them

2. We use the ways we consume and the products we choose, to send out signals about our:

a) Status

b) Appearance

c) Society

3. To consume conspicuously, it must occur:

a) In private

b) In a shopping mall

c) In front of others

Questions 4-9

Read the statement and decide if it True, False or Not Given.

4. A person is judged on how useful their product is not by its style or cost. T F NG

5. The sociocultural context determines patterns of consumption. T F NG

6. In developing countries some people may put aspects of conspicuous consumption before their

basic needs. T F NG

7. Sex does not influence an individual’s vulnerability to conspicuous consumption. T F NG

8. Low self monitors also buy brand name products. T F NG

9. Burberry is an example of a brand whose increased economic success has meant that their social

status has diminished. T F NG

Summary 10-13

This is a summary of the final paragraph. Complete the gaps in the summary with three words or

less from the paragraph. You may need to change some of the word forms.

These days the term Q10 conspicuous consumption has come to refer to the ways that people from

different backgrounds use products to convey their financial status, and image to their peers.

However, the global financial crisis has seen a shift towards less Q11 ostentatious displays of wealth

in harsh economic times to Q12 avoid embarrassing others or deter people from seeking Q13

financial support. This shift has been termed inconspicuous consumption.

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Healy, J. (2012). Adapted from: Wolff, R. (2008). http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2008/wolff300408.html

Consumerism: Curses and causes

By Rick Wolff 1. US consumerism, citizens driven excessively to buy goods and services and accumulate consumable wealth, is cursed almost everywhere. Many environmentalists blame it for global warming. Critics of the current economic disasters often point to home-buying gluttony as the cause. Many see consumerism behind the borrowing that makes the US the world's greatest debtor nation today. Moralists of otherwise diverse motivations agree on attacking consumerist materialism as against spiritual values. Educators blame it for distracting young people's interest from learning. Psychologists attribute mass loneliness and depression to unrealizable expectations of what commodities can deliver to consumers. Physicians decry the diseases, stress, and exhaustion linked to excessive work driven by desire for excessive consumption. Yet, for a long time, exhortations by all such folks have mostly failed to slow, let alone reverse, US consumerism.

2. The reasons for the emergence of consumerism are not so obvious. 10. The cause is not advertising, since that begs the question of why that industry should have been so successful in the US and grown to such influence. Nor is it plausible to attribute some national personality flaw to our citizens.

3. A big part of the explanation lies in the unique history of US business. 11. From 1820 to 1970, over every decade, 15. average real wages rose enabling a rising standard of consumption. These 150 years rooted workers' beliefs that the USA was a "chosen" place where every generation would live better than its parents. This was "the good news" of US capitalism for the workers. The "bad news" was that the average 13. worker's productivity, the amount of output each worker produced for his/her employer to sell, rose even faster. This was because workers were relentlessly driven by employers to work harder, faster, and 13. with ever more (and more complicated) machinery. Thus, alongside rising workers' wages, faster 14. rising productivity brought even bigger gains for employers.

4. An unspoken, historic deal defined the US economy for those 150 years. 16.Businesses paid rising wages to enable rising working class consumption; while the 16. workers had to provide rising work effort, rising profitability, and thus the even faster rise of profits. As the rise in workers consumption was slower than the rise of their productivity, the output that they delivered to employers, the gap between workers and employers widened across US history. A fundamentally unequal society emerged, one that forever mocked, challenged, and undermined the ideological claims of the US to be the land of equality and opportunity. The working class labored ever harder, consumed more, and yet fell ever further behind the minority who lived off the growing difference between what workers produced and their wages.

This deal might have collapsed at any time if US workers rebelled against the organization of production in the US. This could have occurred if rising wages did not suffice to make them ignore the growing inequality of US life, or if they rejected subordination to ever more automated, exhausting work disciplines, or if they refused to deliver ever more wealth to ever fewer corporate boards of directors of immense corporations ever further removed from them in power, wealth, and access to culture. For that deal to survive, for the US economy to have been "successful" for so long, something had to emerge in US society that prevented any of these deal-breakers from happening. Enter consumerism!

5. The idea settled into US culture that consumption was the proper goal of work and the measure of personal worth, of one's "success" in life. 17. Business boosters and ideologues pushed that idea, but they were hardly alone. 17. Advertisers made it their constant message. 17. Trade unions focused also on raising wages and consumption, just what US capitalism could and did deliver, rather than challenging the organization of production. 17. Economists did their part by building modern economics on the unquestioned axiom that labor was a burden for which consumption enabled by wages was the compensation. This definition of economics required banishing any alternative economic theories from

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schools. 17. The mass media proceeded as if it were likewise obvious common sense that all any employee really cared about was the size of his/her wage/salary. Of course, some dissident voices rejected these ideas and this capital/labor deal, but consumerism usually all but drowned them out.

6. Consumerism's deep roots in the psyche of US workers explains their reactions when real wages stopped rising in the 1970s and since. They simply kept on 18. buying more commodities. To pay for them, 19. workers took on more hours of labor and 20. borrowed vast sums. Worker exhaustion rose accordingly, likewise the number of family members sent out to 21. work (straining "family values" to the breaking point). Anxiety intensified over frightening family debt levels. In this situation, the huge scandal of 22. sub-prime mortgages was a predictable disaster waiting to happen.

7. The 150 year deal has been broken. The business side no longer needs it; it has not since the 1970s. That is why real wages stopped rising. Most workers just postponed facing that reality and its implications: by having more family members do more work and by heavy borrowing. Meanwhile, able and willing laborers 23. abroad who accept 24. wages far lower than in the US beckon. US corporations are moving to produce there. They will ship 25. "home" the goods and services they produce abroad so long as US citizens can afford them. When that no longer pays, they will redirect shipments to the rest of the 26. world market.

8. Consumerism was a necessary component of US business from the 1820s to the 1970s. As an ideology uniquely suited to that economic system, it was articulated, cultivated, and supported by different social groups. Whatever fun comedians and critics poke at consumerism, it was not some lovable human foible, nor some quirk of our culture. It was the 27. glue holding the US economy together for a long time. Even more important, business dissolved that glue in the 1970s, and now US workers have exhausted ways to postpone the results of that dissolution. 28. Storms are rising.

Questions 1-8

Read the text and decide which of the sentences in the box belong in the gaps marked in the text

above. Write your answers in the spaces provided under the box.

A. Consumerism was a necessary component of US business from the 1820s to the 1970s. B. The idea settled into US culture that consumption was the proper goal of work and the measure

of personal worth, of one's "success" in life. C. A big part of the explanation lies in the unique history of US business. D. US consumerism, citizens driven excessively to buy goods and services and accumulate

consumable wealth, is cursed almost everywhere. E. The 150 year deal has been broken. F. Consumerism's deep roots in the psyche of US workers explains their reactions when real wages

stopped rising in the 1970s and since. G. An unspoken, historic deal defined the US economy for those 150 years. H. The reasons for the emergence of consumerism are not so obvious.

1. D 2. H 3. C 4. G

5. B 6. F 7. E 8. A

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Questions 9-12

True/ False/ Not Given Circle the correct answer.

9. US consumerism is blamed for many of the world’s key problems. T/ F/ NG

10. Advertising was one factor causing consumerism. T/ F/ NG

11. Real wages in the US kept rising until 1972. T/ F/ NG

12. Profits rose slightly faster than wages. T/ F/ NG

Questions 13-15

Match the following causes and results in the text. Write the letter for each result opposite the

correct cause.

Results: a. higher consumption, b. higher productivity, c. higher profits

13. more and better machinery → b

14. higher productivity → c

15. higher real wages → a

Questions 16-17

16. The deal referred to in paragraph 4 was between which two parties?

business and workers

17. Name three groups that promoted the consumerist concept.

Any three of the following: business boosters/ideologues, advertisers, economists,

trade unions, the mass media.

Questions 18-28

Complete the summary of the last three paragraphs by using no more than three words from the

passage. Most answers are only one word. Some words may need to be altered grammatically.

Despite the new trend that began in the 1970s, US employees did not change their behaviour but

continued to 18. buy more goods. In order to do this they 19. worked longer, 20. borrowed huge

amounts of money and more of them went to 21. work. A huge catastrophe, known as the 22.

sub-prime mortgage scandal resulted.

Now US companies are planning to manufacture goods 23. abroad as many overseas workers are

happy to accept 24. (far) lower wages. They will transport these products 25. “home” as

Americans can 26. afford them, but when that is no longer profitable, they will sell them to the

remainder of the 26. world market.

The author concludes that consumerism 27. glued the American economy together for an

extended period. As a result, 28. storms are rising.

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W5 Poverty and health

The link between health and economic outcomes has always been a central issue for both economists and

sociologists. Most experts believe that there is a strong causal link between health and economic

prosperity. For example, 1. those earning higher incomes have more money to invest in human capital

such as improving and maintaining health. This means that their standard of living improves as their

earning power increases and they are able to invest in better diets, improved sanitation and better health

care. 2 & 3 A healthy worker is less likely to contract disease, and this means productivity at work improves

with the resultant opportunity to command higher earnings.

9. A clear example of the link between economic productivity and poor

health is Uganda, which is situated in the east of central Africa. Recent

surveys have indicated that 46% of the population is forced to live on less

than $1.00 per day. 4. Only 49% of households in Uganda have access to

health care facilities. The current average life expectancy is 48 years from

birth, which is estimated to be about 45 for males and 50.5 years for

females. An assessment of the burden of disease in Uganda in 1995

demonstrated that 5. 75% of life years lost as a result of premature death

were due to entirely preventable diseases: perinatal and maternal conditions accounted for 20% ; malaria

for 1 5.4% ; acute lower respiratory tract infections 10.5%; AIDS 9. 1 %; diarrhoea 8.4%. In addition, 38% of

under five year olds are stunted, 6. 25% are underweight and 5% wasted. These factors accounted for the

extremely high mortality rate experienced in this age-group.

10. A recent report from Healthcare Worldwide makes the clearest and strongest case yet that 10.disease

has a fundamental and disastrous effect on the economies of countries and, in the long run, at the global

level. The report concludes that funding increases for health from affluent and poorer countries alike are

vital. Although the extra expenditure from poorer countries would be difficult to find, the report concluded

that the benefits received would be worth it. It is estimated that this injection of funds into the healthcare

systems of the poorer countries would result in a significant increase in productivity because people would

be healthier and more able to work. 10. The report also urges a focus on the biggest killers, from childbirth

and AIDS, and on medical care at a local clinic level rather than in prestigious hospitals.

To this end, the Ugandan government has pursued a comprehensive poverty reduction strategy which has

addressed the issues of access to appropriate and adequate health care by utilising the existing political

structure of the country. This strategy has resulted in the incidence of poverty in Uganda falling from 56%

in 1992 to 35% in 2000. 7. The Multinational Finance Corporation (MFCJ has praised the East African

country for the progress it has made towards reducing poverty 7. and has just announced its approval of a

staggered $21 million loan which will be made available in three equal parts over three years beginning in

2002.

This incentive means that Uganda has become the first country this year to benefit from a 11. Poverty

Reduction Support Credit (PRSC). This is a new approach to World Bank lending, 11. available exclusively to

low-income countries with strong policy and institutional reform programs, which allows poverty reduction

strategies to be carried out.

However, the MFC notes that although the 8. Ugandan economy has performed relatively well during 2001-

2002 in achieving a 5.5% growth, Uganda would still continue to rely heavily on donor assistance. The

United Nations Human Development Report for 2002 ranks Uganda as 1 50th out of 1 73 countries, and

reports it is 8. “far behind” in its attempts to gain the anticipated 1 0% increase. It may also be unable to

reach the hoped for Millennium Development goal of halving the proportion of people suffering from

hunger by 2015.

Q9

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The Ugandan government is also dedicated to the control of AIDS through the Uganda AIDS Commission. In

1993, Uganda reported the highest rate of AIDS cases per population in Africa and, therefore, the world.

12. HIV, the name given to the preliminary stages of AIDS, and AIDS, the fully developed form of the

disease, are still one of the leading causes of death in Uganda. Currently, about 2.4 million people in the

country are 12. HIV positive while another 0.9 million have the fully developed form. To make matters

worse, the majority of those affected with the disease are within the 1 5 and 40 year age group, which is

where the majority of the labour force comes from. Therefore the economy suffers. 12. However, since the

introduction of the Uganda AIDS Commission, there has been a major decrease in the incidence of the

disease.

The struggle to maintain adequate and appropriate levels of health care in underdeveloped countries will

continue to represent a major challenge to organizations such as Healthcare Worldwide and UNICEF. 13.

However, through the involvement of the more affluent countries and the development of a global fund set

up by the United Nations, hope is present and there is an air of optimism about the future.

Questions 4 – 8

Complete the following table using information taken from Reading Passage 1.

Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS OR A NUMBER for each answer.

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Questions 9 — 13 Choose the correct letter from A – D.

9. Poor health amongst Ugandans

A. results from insufficient access to healthcare facilities.

B. can be attributed to poor economic conditions.

C. has resulted in increased mortality rates.

D. All of the above.

10. Healthcare Worldwide recommends

A. spending more money on health worldwide.

B. investigating the incidence of death due to childbirth and AIDS.

C. making health care facilities accessible at a local level.

D. All of the above.

11. The Poverty Reduction Support Credit

A. was first offered to Uganda.

B. is a department of the World Bank.

C. only helps certain low-income countries.

D. None of the above.

12. HIV/AIDS in Uganda

A is not as prevalent as it used to be. (“major decrease in the incidence of the disease”)

B causes the highest rate of death in the world.

C targets those who no longer work.

D occurs in 2.4 million of the population.

13. The writer of this article

A believes Uganda’s situation will ultimately improve.

B thinks that developed countries do not help Uganda enough.

C is optimistic about the future in general.

D is sympathetic to poorer countries.

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Ackley, K. A. (2009). Perspectives on contemporary issues. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Development without borders

Kofi Annan

Kofi Annan of Ghana is the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, the first to be elected

from the ranks of the United Nations staff. He joined the United Nations in the early 197Os and has

held many positions, including Assistant Secretary-General for Program Planning; Budget and

Finance; Head of Human Resources; Director of the Budget; Chief of Personnel for the High

Commissioner for Refugees; Administrative Officer for the Economic Commission for Africa; and

Under Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations. Kofi Annan and the United Nations were

awarded the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. This paper was published in the Summer 2001 issue of the

Harvard International Review.

What is globalization? More than ever before, groups and individuals are interacting directly across borders

without involving the state. This happens partly due to technology and partly because states have found

that prosperity is better secured by releasing the creative energies of their people than by restricting them.

The benefits of globalization are obvious: faster growth, higher standards of Iiving, and new opportunities.

However globalization’s benefits are vey unequally distributed; the global market is not yet underpinned by

shared social objectives, and if all of today’s poor follow the same path that brought the rich to prosperity,

the earth resources will soon be exhausted The challenge we face is to ensure that globalization becomes a

positive force for all people instead of leaving billions in squalor.

If we are to get the most out of globalization, we must learn how to provide better governance at the local,

national, and international levels. We must think afresh about how we manage our joint activities and our

shared interests, since so many challenges that we confront today are beyond the reach of any state acting

on its own.

This should not be seen as a future of world government or the eclipse of nation states. On the contrary,

states will draw strength from each other by acting together within the framework of common institutions

based on shared rules and values. Governments must work together to make these changes possible, but

governments alone cannot make them happen. Much of the heavy lifting will be done by private

investment and charitable foundations.

The best ideas, however will come from nongovernmental sources; from academic researchers, non-profit

organizations, business, the media, and the arts. These elements compose civil society and they have a vital

role to play.

At the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000, world leaders resolved to halve three figures: the

number of people whose income is less than one US dollar a day; the proportion of people who suffer from

hunger; the proportion of people who are unable to reach or afford safe drinking water. They resolved to

accomplish these goals by 2015. History will judge this generation by what it did to fulfil that pledge.

Success in achieving sustained growth depends on expanding access to the opportunities of globalization.

That in turn depends in large measure on the quality of governance a country enjoys. Countries can only

compete in the global market if their people benefit from the rule of law, effective state institutions,

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Ackley, K. A. (2009). Perspectives on contemporary issues. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

transparency and accountability in the management of public affairs, and respect for human rights. Their

people must have a say in the decisions that affect their lives.

If developing countries succeed in creating the right economic and social environment, new technology can

put many opportunities within their reach. That is especially true of information technology, which does

not require vast amounts of hardware, financial capital, or even energy, and which is relatively

environment-friendly. What information technology does require is brain power - the one commodity that

is equally distributed among the peoples of the world. So for a relatively small investment, for example, an

investment in basic education, we can bring all kinds of knowledge within reach of the world’s poor and

enable poor countries to leapfrog some of the long and painful stages of development that other nations

had to go through.

In short, there is much that poor countries can do to help themselves. But rich countries have an

indispensable role to play. For wealthy nations to preach the virtues of open markets to developing

countries is mere hypocrisy if they do not open their own markets to those countries’ products or stem the

flooding of the world market with subsidized food exports that make it impossible for farmers in developing

countries to compete. Nor can they expect developing countries to protect the global environment, unless

they are ready to alter their own irresponsible patterns of production and consumption.

Developing countries must be helped to export their way to prosperity. Everyone now agrees that the

burden of debt must be lifted from the poorest countries, but developed countries have not yet come

forward with sufficient resources to alleviate this burden. Nations, whether in debt or not, need help to

reach the stage where they can produce goods and services the rest of the world wants to buy. Many also

need help in resolving destructive conflicts and rebuilding a peaceful, productive society.

Long ago, all members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development committed 7

percent of their gross domestic product to development aid. Very few made good on that commitment.

Private companies, as well as governments, have an obligation to consider the interests of the poor when

making investment choices and when pricing their products. Companies are the largest beneficiaries of

globalization; it is in their interest to make this trend sustainable, by helping it work for all. Only when the

lives of ordinary men, women, and children in cities and villages around the world are made better will we

know that globalization is becoming inclusive, allowing everyone to share in its opportunities. This is the

key to eliminating world poverty.

PERSONAL RESPONSE

Prepare your own written response to these questions. You will discuss your responses in class.

1. Do you agree that the developed countries have an obligation to help developing countries?

2. How well does Annan support his statement that “the benefits of globalization are obvious” but that

they “are very unequally distributed” (paragraph2)?

3. Do you think it possible for world leaders to achieve the goals resolved upon at the UN Millennium

Summit (paragraph 6)?

4. What do you think they will have to do to accomplish these goals?

5. Discuss ways in which rich or strong nations could help developing countries enhance their brainpower.

6. Explain the extent to which you agree with this statement: ‘Private companies, as well as governments,

have an obligation to consider the interests of the poor when making investment choices and when

pricing their products’.

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from: Time, September 1991.

Lost tribes, lost knowledge

Eugene Linden

Everyone knows about the many species of animals that are endangered by human beings’ predation

or by the destruction of habitats in many parts of the world. But little has been said about the

dangers to groups of peoples who have lived lives remote from the rest of the world. Some of these

people possess priceless knowledge about the natural world and their environment. Modernization

robs us of this knowledge. Eugene Linden tells us how serious the losses may be.

One horrible day 1,600 years ago, the wisdom of many centuries went up in flames. The great library in

Alexandria burned down, a catastrophe at the time and a symbol for all ages of the vulnerability of human

knowledge. The tragedy forced scholars to grope to reconstruct a grand literature and science that once lay

neatly catalogued in scrolls.

Today, with little notice, more vast archives of knowledge and expertise are spilling into oblivion, leaving

humanity in danger of losing its past and perhaps jeopardizing its future as well. Stored in the memories of

elders, healers, midwives, farmers, fishermen and hunters in the estimated 15,000 cultures remaining on

earth is an enormous trove of wisdom.

This largely undocumented knowledge base is humanity’s lifeline to a time when people accepted nature’s

authority and learned through trial, error and observation. But the world’s tribes are dying out or being

absorbed into modern civilization. As they vanish, so does their irreplaceable knowledge.

Q19 Over the ages, indigenous peoples have developed innumerable technologies and arts. They have

devised ways to farm deserts without irrigation and produce abundance from the rain forest without

destroying the delicate balance that maintains the ecosystem; they have learned how to navigate vast

distances in the Pacific using their knowledge of currents and the feel of intermittent waves that bounce off

distant islands; they have explored the medicinal properties of plants; and they have acquired an

understanding of the basic ecology of flora and fauna. Q2 If this knowledge had to be duplicated from

scratch, it would beggar the scientific resources of the West. Much of this expertise and wisdom has already

disappeared, and if neglected, most of the remainder could be gone within the next generation.

Q3 Until quite recently, few in the developed world cared much about this cultural holocaust. The prevailing

attitude has been that Western science, with its powerful analytical tools, has little to learn from tribal

knowledge. Q20 The developed world’s disastrous mismanagement of the environment has somewhat

humbled this arrogance, however, and some scientists are beginning to recognize that the world is losing an

enormous amount of basic research as indigenous peoples lose their culture and traditions. Scientists may

someday be struggling to reconstruct this body of wisdom to secure the developed world’s future.

A Voluntary Crisis

Indigenous peoples have been threatened for centuries as development encroaches on their lands and

traditions. What is different about the present situation, however, is that it goes beyond basic questions of

native land rights into more ambiguous issues, such as the prerogative of individuals to decide between

traditional and modern ways. Indigenous knowledge disappears when natives are stripped of their lands, but

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in many parts of the globe, knowledge also disappears because the young who are in contact with the

outside world have embraced the view that traditional ways are illegitimate and irrelevant.

The most intractable aspect of the crisis is that it is largely voluntary. Entranced by images of the wealth and

power of the First World, the young turn away from their elders, breaking an ancient but fragile chain of oral

traditions. For the elders, it is difficult to persuade an ambitious young native that he is better off hunting

boar with blowpipes than reaching for the fruits of “civilization,” even if those fruits might translate into a

menial job in a teeming city. For the well-fed, well-educated visiting scientist to make that argument can

seem both hypocritical and condescending.

The pace of change is startling. According to Harrison Ngau, a member of the Malaysian Parliament

concerned with the rights of tribes on the island of Borneo, as many as 10,000 members of the Penan tribe

still led the semi-nomadic life of hunting and gathering at the beginning of the 1980s. But the logging

industry has been destroying their woodlands, and the Malaysian government has encouraged them to move

to villages. Now fewer than 500 Penans live in the forest. When they settle into towns, their expertise in the

ways of the forest slips away. Villagers know that their elders used to watch for the appearance of a certain

butterfly, which always seemed to herald the arrival of a herd of boar and the promise of good hunting.

These days, most of the Penans cannot remember which butterfly to look for.

Q4 The number of different tribes around the world makes it impossible to record or otherwise preserve

more than a tiny percentage of the knowledge being lost. Since 1900, 90 of Brazil’s 270 Indian tribes have

completely disappeared, while scores more have lost their lands or abandoned their ways. More than two-

thirds of the remaining tribes have populations of fewer than 1,000. Some might disappear before anyone

notices.

Q5 A recent study by M.I.T. linguist Ken Hale estimates that 3,000 of the world’s 6,000 languages are

doomed because no children speak them. Researchers estimate that Africa alone has 1,800 languages,

Indonesia 672 and New Guinea 800. Q21 If a language disappears, traditional knowledge tends to vanish with

it, since individual language groups have specialized vocabularies reflecting native people’s unique solutions

to the challenges of food gathering, healing and dealing with the elements in their particular ecological niche.

Hale estimates that only 300 languages have a secure future.

The Price of Forgetting

The most immediate tragedy in the loss of knowledge and traditions is for the tribes themselves. They do not

always die out, but the soul of their culture withers away. Often left behind are people “who are shadows of

what they once were, and shadows of what we in the developed world are,” as one Peace Corps volunteer

put it. The price is real as well as psychological when native peoples lose their grip on traditional knowledge.

At the Catholic mission in Yalisele in equatorial Zaire, for instance, nurses and missionaries have encountered

patients brought in with burns or perforations of the lower intestine. Investigation revealed that those

afflicted had been treated for a variety of ailments with traditional medicines delivered in suppository form.

Q22 The problem was not the medicines but the dosages. Q14 As the old healers died off, people would try

to administer traditional medicines themselves or turn to healers who had only a partial understanding of

what their elders knew. This problem is likely to get worse because Western medicines and trained nurses

are becoming ever more scarce in Zaire’s economically beleaguered society.

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In the island nation of Papua New Guinea, in the Coral Sea, jobless people returning to highland villages from

the cities often lack the most rudimentary knowledge necessary to survive, such as which rot-resistant trees

to use to build huts or which poisonous woods to avoid when making fires for cooking. Many of the youths,

alienated from their villages by schooling and exposure to the West, become marauding “rascals,” who have

made Papua New Guinea’s cities among the most dangerous in the world.

The global haemorrhage of indigenous knowledge even fuels the population explosion as people ignore

taboos and forget traditional methods of birth control. In many parts of Africa, tribal women who used to

bear, on average, five or six children now often have more than ten.

The Young Drift Away

It is difficult for an outsider to imagine the degree to which novel ideas and images assault the minds of tribal

adolescents moving into the outside world. They get glimpses of a society their parents never encountered

and cannot explain. Students who leave villages for schooling in Papua New Guinea learn that people, not

the spirits of their ancestors, created the machines, dams and other so-called cargo of the modern world.

Q23 Once absorbed, this realization undermines the credibility and authority of elders.

Father Frank Mihalic, a Jesuit missionary in New Guinea since 1948, views with sadness the degree to which

education has alienated the young from their “one talks,” as kinsmen are called. “They don’t like history

because history is embarrassing,” he says. “They wince when I talk about the way their dad or their mom

lived.” Mihalic and other members of his order have intervened to prevent the government from burning

spirit houses, used during tribal initiation rites. But other missionaries often tell the young people that their

customs are primitive and barbaric. Relatives who have left villages for the city and return to show off their

wealth and status also influence the young. Girls encounter educated women who work as clerks and are

exempt from the backbreaking hauling done by their mothers’ generation. How can these youngsters resist

the allure of modern life? How can they make an informed judgment about which of the old ways should be

respected and maintained?

John Maru, who works in Papua New Guinea’s Ministry for Home Affairs and Youth recalls how during his

schooling he came to see the endless gift exchanges and other traditions that marked his youth in the Sepik

region as a waste of time and money and a drag on individual initiative. Now, however, he sees that such

customs serve to seal bonds among families and act as a barrier to poverty and loneliness.

Sadly, tribal peoples often realize they are losing something of value too late to save it. In the village of TaI, in

the Ivory Coast, three brothers from a prosperous family have tried to balance respect for the practices of

their Guéré tribe with careers in the modem economy. Yet their mother, an esteemed healer, has not been

able to pass on her learning. One brother said he wanted to know about the plants she used but was afraid

to ask because she would think he had foreseen her death— the traditional time to pass on knowledge.

Another brother would go into the forest with her but hesitated to ask what she was doing because he

feared the power of her medicines; while the third, pursuing a successful engineering career, assumed that

others would acquire her learning. Now with each passing year, it is more likely her knowledge will die with

her.

Western Contempt

Q13 If the developed world is to help indigenous peoples preserve their heritage, it must first recognize that

this wisdom has value. Q7 Western science is founded on the belief that knowledge inexorably progresses:

Q6 &

Q17

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the new and improved inevitably drive out the old and fallible. Western science also presumes to be

objective and thus more rigorous than other systems of thought.

Guided by these conceits, scientists have often failed to notice traditional technologies even, for instance,

when they are on display in the U.S. Several Andean artefacts made the rounds of American museums in the

1980s as examples of hammered gold. Then Heather Lechtman, an M.I.T. archaeologist interested in ancient

technologies, examined the metal and discovered that it represented a far more sophisticated art.

Lechtman’s analysis revealed that the artefacts had been gilded with an incredibly thin layer of gold using a

Q10 chemical technique that achieved the quality of modem electroplating. No one had previously suspected

that these Indians had the know-how to create so subtle a technology.

Nor is it only the West that has scorned traditional learning. When communist China imposed tight control

over Tibet in 1959, the aggressors tried to eradicate the captive country’s culture. In particular, the

communists denounced Tibetan medicine as feudal superstition, and the number of doctors practicing the

2,000-year-old, herb-based discipline shrank from thousands to 500. Q12 But since the Chinese began to

relent on this issue in recent years, Tibetans have returned to their traditional medicines, which they often

find more effective and less harsh than Western drugs.

Q8 Even in the Third World, governments have tended to look at their indigenous cultures as an impediment

to development and nationhood. In Papua New Guinea, for instance, European administrators, influenced by

colonial practices in Africa, sought to discourage tribalism by consolidating power and commerce in cities far

away from the villages that are the centres of tribal life. According to John Waiko, director of Papua New

Guinea’s National Research Institute, this decision has fuelled instability by making government seem remote

and arbitrary. Among dozens of nations and regions with substantial native populations, only Greenland and

Botswana stand out for their efforts to accommodate the culture and interests of these people.

Growing Appreciation

Attitudes are beginning to change, however. Scientists are learning to look past the myth, superstition and

ritual that often conceal the hard-won insights of indigenous peoples. Sometimes the lessons have come in

handy: during the gulf war, European doctors treated some wounds with a sugar paste that traces back to

Egyptian battlefield medicine of 4,000 years ago.

Michael Balick, director of the New York Botanical Garden’ s Institute of Economic Botany, notes that only

1,100 of the earth’s 265,000 species of plants have been thoroughly studied by Western scientists, but as

many as 40,000 may have medicinal or undiscovered nutritional value for humans. Q9 Many are already used

by tribal healers, who can help scientists greatly focus their search for plants with useful properties.

Balick walks tropical forests with shamans in Latin America as part of a study, sponsored by the National

Cancer Institute, designed to uncover plants useful in the treatment of AIDS and cancer. The 5,000 plants

collected so far, says the NCI’s Gordon Cragg, have yielded some promising chemicals. If any of them turn out

to be useful as medicines, the country from which the plant came would get a cut of the profits.

In the past decade, researchers in developed countries have realized that they have much to learn from

traditional agriculture. Formerly, such farming was often viewed as inefficient and downright destructive.

“Slash and burn” agriculture, in particular, was viewed with contempt. Following this method, tribes burn

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down a section of forest, farm the land until it is exhausted and then move on to clear another patch of

trees. This strategy has been blamed for the rapid loss of tropical rain forests.

Now, however, researchers have learned that if practiced carefully, the method is environmentally benign.

The forests near Chiapas, Mexico, for instance, are not threatened by native Lacandon practices but by the

more commercial agricultural practices of encroaching peasants, according to James Nations of Conservation

In international in Washington. Many indigenous farmers in Asia and South America manage to stay on one

patch of land for as long as 50 years. As nutrients slowly disappear from the soil, the farmers keep switching

to hardier crops and thus do not have to clear an adjacent stretch of forest.

Westerners have also come to value traditional farmers for the rich variety of crops they produce. By

cultivating numerous strains of corn, legumes, grains and other foods, they are ensuring that botanists have

a vast genetic reservoir from which to breed future varieties. The genetic health of the world’s potatoes, for

example, depends on Quechua Indians, who cultivate more than 50 diverse strains in the high plateau

country around the Andes Mountains in South America. If these natives switched to modern crops, the global

potato industry would lose a crucial line of defence against the threat of insects and disease.

Anthropologists studying agricultural and other traditions have been surprised to find that people sometimes

retain valuable knowledge long after they have dropped the outward trappings of tribal culture. In one

community in Peru studied by Christine Padoch of the Institute of Economic Botany, peasants employed all

manner of traditional growing techniques, though they were generations removed from tribal life. Padoch

observed almost as many combinations of crops and techniques as there were households. Similarly, a study

of citified Aboriginal children in Australia revealed that they had far more knowledge about the species and

habits of birds than did white children in the same neighbourhood. Somehow their parents had passed along

this knowledge, despite their removal from their native lands. Still, the amount of information in jeopardy

dwarfs that being handed down.

Lending a Hand

There is no way that concerned scientists can move fast enough to preserve the world’s traditional

knowledge. While some can be gathered in interviews and stored on tape, much information is seamlessly

interwoven with a way of life. Boston anthropologist Jason Clay therefore insists that knowledge is best kept

alive in the culture that produced it. Clay’s solution is to promote economic incentives that also protect the

ecosystems where natives live. Toward that end, Cultural Survival, an advocacy group in Cambridge, Mass.,

that Clay helped establish, encourages traditional uses of the Amazon rain forest by sponsoring a project to

market products found there.

Clay believes that in 20 years, demand for the Amazon’ s nuts, oils, medicinal plants and flowers could add up

to a $15 billion-a-year retail market—enough so that governments might decide it is worthwhile to leave the

forests standing. The Amazon’s Indians could earn perhaps $1 billion a year from the sales. That could pay

legal fees to protect their lands and provide them with cash for buying goods from the outside world.

American companies are also beginning to see economic value in indigenous knowledge. In 1989 a group of

scientists formed Shaman Pharmaceuticals, a California company that aims to commercialize the

pharmaceutical uses of plants. Among its projects is the development of an antiviral agent for respiratory

diseases and herpes infections that is used by traditional healers in Latin America.

Q1

Q15

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An indigenous culture can in itself be a marketable commodity if handled with respect and sensitivity. In

Papua New Guinea, Australian Peter Barter, who first came to the island in 1965, operates a tour service that

takes travellers up the Sepik River to traditional villages. The company pays direct fees to villages for each

visit and makes contributions to a foundation that help cover school fees and immunization costs in the

region. Barter admits, however, that the 7,000 visitors a year his company brings through the region disrupt

local culture to a degree. Among other things, native carvers adapt their pieces to the tastes of customers,

adjusting their size to the requirements of luggage. But the entrepreneur argues that the visits are less

disruptive than the activities of missionaries and development officials.

There are other perils to the commercial approach. Money is an alien and destabilizing force in many native

villages. A venture like Barter’s could ultimately-destroy the integrity of the cultures it exhibits if, for

example, rituals become performances tailored to the tourist business. Some villages in New Guinea have

begun to permit tourists to visit spirit houses that were previously accessible only to initiated males. In Africa

villages on bus routes will launch into ceremonial dances at the sound of an approaching motor. Forest-

product concerns like those encouraged by Cultural Survival run the risk of promoting overexploitation of

forests, and if the market for these products takes off, the same settlers who now push aside natives to mine

gold might try to take over new enterprises as well.

Still, economic incentives already maintain traditional knowledge in some parts of the world. John and

Terese Hart, who have spent 18 years in contact with Pygmies in north-eastern Zaire, note that other tribes

and villagers rely on Pygmies to hunt meat and collect foods and medicines from the forests, and that this

economic incentive keeps their knowledge alive. According to John Hart, the Pygmies have an uncanny ability

to find fruits and plants they may not have used for years. Says Hart: “If someone wants to buy something

that comes from the forest, the Pygmies will know where to find it.”

Restoring Respect

Preserving tribal wisdom is as much an issue of restoring respect for traditional ways as it is of creating

financial incentives. The late Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy put his prestige behind an attempt to convince

his countrymen that their traditional mud-brick homes are cooler in the summer, warmer in the winter and

cheaper than the prefabricated, concrete dwellings they see as modern status symbols.

Balick has made it part of his mission to enhance the status of traditional healers within their own

communities. He and his colleagues hold ceremonies to honour shamans, most of whom are religious men

who value respect over material reward. In one community in Belize, the local mayor was so impressed that

American scientists had come to learn at the feet of an elderly healer that he asked them to give a lecture so

that townspeople could learn about their own medical tradition. Balick recalls that this healer had more than

200 living descendants, but that none as yet had shown an interest in becoming an apprentice. The lecture,

though, was packed. “Maybe,” says Balick, “seeing the respect that scientists showed to this healer might

inspire a successor to come forward.”

Such deference represents a dramatic change from past scientific expeditions, which tended to treat village

elders as living museum specimens. Balick and others like him recognize that communities must decide for

themselves what to do with their traditions. Showing respect for the wisdom keepers can help the young of

Q11

Q16

Q18

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various tribes better weigh the value of their culture against blandishments of modernity. If young

apprentices begin to step forward, the world might see a slowing of the slide toward oblivion.

LENGTH: 3,558 WORDS

Questions 1 - 10

Retention: Which of the following are Facts (F), Opinions (0), or False statements (X)?

1. If scientists are unable to reconstruct tribal knowledge, the developed world’s future will certainly

become insecure. F / O / X

Modern scientists would probably find it very difficult to duplicate the knowledge of tribal peoples. F / O / X

3. In the past, Western science had little to learn from tribal knowledge. F / O / X

4. Since 1900, ninety of Brazil’s 200 Indian tribes have completely disappeared. F / O / X

5. Linguist, Ken Hale, states that all of the world’s 6,000 languages have a secure future. F / O / X

6. Many tribal rituals have no purpose in the modern world and are a waste of time, money, and individual

initiative. F / O / X

7. Western science is founded on the belief that knowledge progresses. F / O / X

8. Fortunately, Third World governments respect tribal cultures much more than the governments of the

developed world. F / O / X

9. Botanist, Michael Balick, states that the medicinal and nutritive value of many plant species are currently

known only to tribal healers. F / O / X

10. Andean Indians once used a chemical gilding technique that produced the same quality as modern gold

electroplating. F / O / X

Questions 11 - 18

Inferences: Which four of the following eight statements, based on the reading, are most probably true?

11. Tourism has little effect on the rituals of indigenous peoples. T / F

12. The Chinese government has come to respect Tibetan folk medicine. T / F

13. The developed world won’t be able to help tribal peoples preserve their cultures, unless it recognizes the

value of those cultures. T / F

14. The amount of valuable tribal knowledge people retain when they leave their native lands for modern

living is not significant enough to preserve tribal legacy. T / F

15. Though tribal cultures have much to contribute to the field of medicine, they have little to contribute to

the field of plant genetics. T / F

16. Unless carefully managed, financial incentives to preserving traditional ways can be as harmful as they

are helpful. T / F

17. Exposure to Western affluence and technology causes tribal youths to more fully appreciate their own

cultures. T / F

18. It may be less possible to forever preserve tribal cultures than to slow down their disappearance. T / F

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Questions 19 - 23

Application: Choose the best answer for each question.

19. Linden cites that indigenous peoples have devised ways to farm deserts without irrigation in order to

illustrate the fact that:

a. tribal peoples have always been excellent farmers.

b. tribal peoples have developed many sophisticated technologies.

c. irrigation is important in both the traditional and the civilized world.

d. the desert can be a good place to live if one knows how.

20. The arrogance of Western scientists has been humbled to some degree by their:

a. recognition of the developed world’s terrible mismanagement of the environment.

b. desire to serve the constructive aims of multiculturalism.

c. inability to cure cancer on their own.

d. recognition that science doesn’t have all the answers.

21. Traditional knowledge tends to vanish with a language because:

a. individual language groups lose the specialized vocabularies that reflect specific tribal knowledge.

b. instead of transferring knowledge to the young, tribal elders spend all their free time learning the

new language.

c. knowledge can’t be passed on when people can’t speak.

d. tribal groups usually haven’t written anything down.

22. Indigenous peoples have been harmed by incomplete knowledge of tribal medicine primarily because

they:

a. sometimes can’t tell curative from poisonous plants.

b. they lack the service of trained nurses. -

c. don’t remember the correct dosages.

d. don’t understand modern chemistry.

23. The credibility of tribal elders can be undermined when youths receive education in the outside world

because they learn that:

a. disrespect for one’ s elders is a normal attitude in modern society.

b. modern education is typically more entertaining than tribal education.

c. adolescents should differentiate from their elders.

d. from a scientific perspective, their elders’ mythical explanations of the industrial world are inaccurate.

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W6 Human-powered pumps for African farmers The plight of many African farmers and families in their search for water is well publicised in terms of

disaster relief. Yet in many areas, there are small dispersed sources of shallow ground water, which

constitute a considerable resource. 28. This is often not acknowledged by government agencies which

think only in terms of large dams and perennial rivers.

African farmers are both ingenious and knowledgeable, and the work described here builds on these

indigenous skills. The provision of effective and affordable human powered pumps transforms the

possibilities of water supply for both small scale irrigation and domestic use. 30. The field work was carried

out predominantly in Zimbabwe, although more recently the pumps described here have been

introduced in Kenya.

The need for water

An adequate supply of domestic water is vital for human health and hygiene. Despite the great progress

made in this recent decade, the achievement of the goal of clean water for all is still a long way off. An

adequate water supply is also vital for the production of food. In many parts of Africa, rainfall is a very

unreliable provider of such water. 31. E For example, in Zimbabwe, Mupawose (1984) states that

unreliable rainfall and the incidence of midseason drought represent the single most critical uncertainty

facing the Zimbabwean farmer today.

While staple foods such as maize and rice produced during the rainy season can be stored for consumption

in the dry season, the same is not true of vegetables and fruit which are essential for good nutrition. Since

the early part of this century, the answer to the problem of inadequate rainfall has been through the

provision of conventional irrigation schemes.

32. B The failure of such schemes in many parts of Africa is well-documented

(Morris and Thom, 1990) and there is little hope of significant expansion in this

sector.

Most of these irrigation schemes depend on the utilization of surface water

resources, principally through the construction of dams. 33. A There is grave concern

over the use of such dams because of their adverse impact on health, their

displacement of successful farmers and the severe limitations on their useful life

due to siltation (Wright, 1986; Arlosoroff et al. 1984; Bell et al, 1987).

In order to develop groundwater resources, a suitable water lifting technology must be employed.34. H

While much work has been done on the development of power sources for water pumping (Hofkes and

Visscher, 1986), 35. D for many people in rural Africa the use of human energy remains the only practical

option (Lambert and Faulkner, 1991). In recent years, there have been significant improvements in the

design of handpumps for community use. However, community water points still suffer breakdowns and

attempts to remedy this, through community managed pump maintenance schemes, are still far from

universally successful.

The problems of community management could be avoided through the promotion of household supplies,

where these are feasible. An example of such a strategy in Zimbabwe is 36. G the program of upgrading

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family wells (Mtero and Chimbunde, 1991). However, most of the pumps developed for community use

are either not available to individual households or are too expensive.

In recognition of the need for simple water-lifting technology, research was carried out to identify suitable

water-lifting devices. Almost all existing human powered pumps tested could not supply water at more

than about 0.3 litres per second, which is not sufficient for irrigation. Two designs were finally selected as

the most promising for further development, the rope-washer and the treadle (Lambert and Faulkner,

1991).

Questions 28-30

Read the following statements. According to the information in the reading passage, if the statement is

true, write T, if the statement is false, write F, and if there is no information about the statement in the

reading passage, write NI.

Example: The difficulty in finding water in Africa is highly publicised. Answer: T

List of statements

28. Government agencies only consider dams and rivers as sources of water.

29. The pumps will help African villages develop small industrial projects.

30. Most of the experimental work had been done in Zimbabwe and Kenya.

Questions 31—36

In the section after the subheading, The need for water, there are 7 references cited. Questions 31—36 list 6

of the references. Below is a list of statements A—K which are supported by the references. Match each

reference (Questions 31—36) with its corresponding statement.

Write the answers A—K. One has been done for you as an example.

There are more statements than references so you won’t use them

all.

31. Mupawose, 1984

32. Morris and Thom, 1990

33. Wright, 1986; Arlosoroff et al, 1984; Bell et al, 1987

34. Hofkes and Visscher, 1986

35. Lambert and Faulkner, 1991

36. Mtero and Chimbunde, 1991

A Dams usually take up a lot of land so that farmers have to move somewhere else.

B There has been little success with irrigation projects.

C It is important to have an adequate water supply.

D Human power is still cheaper and more readily available.

E Rainfall is too little and too irregular when most needed.

F Building dams has helped improve health.

G There is a plan to improve individual domestic wells.

H Experiments have been done, to provide energy to pump water.

I Most families cannot afford to buy pumps.

Example: Lambert and Faulkner, 1991 Answer: K

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J The design of hand pumps has improved lately.

K The rope washer and treadle will help solve the problem.

Questions 37—43 Below is a paragraph explaining the design and development of the water pump. There are some words missing from the paragraph. From the list of words below, select ONE correct word for each space.

Pump design and development

The principle of the rope-washer pump is very old, dating back to ancient Rome and China. A pipe extends

from the surface down to below the water 37.level. A loop of rope with washers attached is pulled by a 38.

pulley up through the pipe, and returns down to the water outside the pipe. Attached to the rope at

intervals are washers whose 39. diameter is slightly less than that of the pipe. As the rope and washers

travel up 40. inside the pipe, they draw water with them which discharges at the top of the pipe.

Historically, the pulley was fashioned from wood or steel with teeth to 41. grip the washers on the rope.

Considerable 42. skill was needed to make a pulley capable of pulling a wet and slippery rope which was

under tension from the 43. weight of water in the pipe.

List of words

grip height level length inside diameter skill weight tension centre pulley handle size depth over strength middle pump

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Healy, J. & Marcel, A. (2010). QUTIC Resource. Adapted from Cutraro, J. (2006). Microbes at the gas pump., April 12, 2006 http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2006/04/microbes-at-the-gas-pump-3/

Microbes at the gas pump

Jennifer Cutraro

The following text has the first sentences removed. Read the text and then answer the following questions.

1. G. Scientists searching for an Earth-friendly alternative to gasoline are looking in some of the weirdest

places—termite guts, cow stomachs, and rotting logs. These researchers are hunting for bacteria and fungi that can help turn plant waste into a liquid fuel called ethanol.

2.- C. Many vehicles run on fuels made of a blend of gasoline and ethanol. Experts at the U.S.

Department of Energy say that using more ethanol would help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

To produce enough ethanol to meet our energy needs, researchers are developing methods to

turn plant parts into ethanol. They are members of a growing movement to use renewable

resources, such as plants, to provide energy.

3. J. "There's leftover plant material everywhere," says Jared Leadbetter. "There are rice hulls, sawdust,

wood chips—plant material that's full of energy." Leadbetter is a microbiologist at the California

Institute of Technology in Pasadena. To tap this energy supply, scientists and engineers are

turning to microbes to convert huge amounts of waste plant material into ethanol for cars.

Breaking down sugars

4. A.When tiny organisms such as yeast break down sugars to obtain energy, they produce ethanol. This

process is called fermentation. Scientists and engineers have been using fermentation for years to make ethanol from kernels of corn. But there's a lot more to a corn plant than just the kernel. Corn plants include stalks, leaves, and the cob that's left behind after the kernels are removed.

5. K.The trouble is that stalks, leaves, and other plant parts contain a complex molecule called cellulose. It is a tough molecule to break down. In fact, our bodies cannot even digest it. However, breaking down cellulose into sugar molecules is a key step in making ethanol from the nearly 430 million tons of plant waste produced on farmland every year. Fortunately, some organisms make compounds called enzymes that can digest, or break down, cellulose. Scientists hope to use such enzymes to produce ethanol.

Termite stomachs

6.- D. Scientists are looking for these cellulose-busting enzymes in unusual places—termite stomachs, for

example. Most people think of termites as pests because of the damage that they do to homes

and other structures. But termites harbour more than 100 species of bacteria in their guts—

bacteria that may help us make ethanol from plant waste. These microbes digest cellulose and

other complex molecules in wood. Without their bacteria, termites wouldn't be able to survive

on their woody diet.

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7. - H. Leadbetter and his co-workers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute are

studying the genes of microbes that produce wood-digesting enzymes. Made up of molecules called

DNA, genes determine such traits as the shape of a plant leaf, the colour of an animal's coat, or

the texture of a person's hair. "We are making a toolbox of wood-degrading enzymes and we

want to tap it to obtain enzymes for making ethanol," Leadbetter says. Once they find the

genes that control the enzymes that digest wood and those that produce ethanol, Leadbetter

and his team hope to genetically modify bacteria to do both steps.

Cow stomachs

8.- E. The dark depths of a cow's stomach are home to cellulose-munching microbes as well, says Paul

Weimer. He is a research scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Dairy Forage Centre

in Madison, Wis. "Cows are natural processors," Weimer says. "They make their living by

eating plants, and bacteria carry out their fibre digestion." Weimer says that the bacteria in a

cow's stomach produce many different enzymes that break down the cellulose in grass and

other plants in a cow's diet. These bacteria hold cellulose-digesting enzymes on their cell

surfaces in a structure called a cellulosome. What is more, the bacteria attach themselves to

cellulose fibres in the cow's stomach and digest them on the spot. "The bacteria basically glue

themselves to the fibre and begin digesting it," Weimer says. "It works like a disassembly line

that takes apart the cell wall."

9. I. Right now, making ethanol from cellulose is expensive. Enzymes are costly to make, and current

methods for breaking down cellulose require a lot of energy. "If we could re-create the activity

of the cellulosome," Weimer says, "we could greatly increase the efficiency and improve the

economics of digesting cellulose."

Increasing production

10. F. Another common wood digester is a fungus called Trichoderma reesei. By producing cellulose-

digesting enzymes, this fungus breaks down logs in the forest and causes "jungle rot," which

ruins tents and other fabrics in the tropics. At least one company has developed strains of this

fungus that can churn out huge quantities of enzymes.

11. B. Advances in ethanol production cannot come soon enough. A few years ago, President Bush

signed a law requiring 7.5 billion gallons of biofuels such as ethanol to be blended with gasoline

by 2012. That's almost twice the amount of ethanol that we produce from corn today. By the

time the teenagers of today get their driver's licenses, they may be filling up at an ethanol

pump.

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SECTION ONE: Which topic sentences go in which gaps? A. When tiny organisms such as yeast break down sugars to obtain energy, they produce

ethanol.

B. Advances in ethanol production cannot come soon enough.

C. Many vehicles run on fuels made of a blend of gasoline and ethanol.

D. Scientists are looking for these cellulose-busting enzymes in unusual places—termite stomachs, for example.

E. The dark depths of a cow's stomach are home to cellulose-munching microbes as well, says Paul Weimer.

F. Another common wood digester is a fungus called Trichoderma reesei.

G. Scientists searching for an Earth-friendly alternative to gasoline are looking in some of the weirdest places—termite guts, cow stomachs, and rotting logs.

H. Leadbetter and his co-workers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute are studying the genes of microbes that produce wood-digesting enzymes.

I. Right now, making ethanol from cellulose is expensive.

J. "There's leftover plant material everywhere," says Jared Leadbetter.

K. The trouble is that stalks, leaves, and other plant parts contain a complex molecule called cellulose.

SECTION TWO: True/ False/ Not Given Circle the correct answer.

12. Interest in ethanol has resulted from a desire to replace petrol in motor vehicles. T/ F/ NG (para2)

13. Scientists hope to stop using microbes to produce ethanol from plant waste. T/ F/ NG (para 3)

14. Conversion of cellulose molecules to sugar is crucial in Leadbetter’s studies. T/ F/ NG (para 5)

15. Producing ethanol from cellulose needs to be cheaper to be economic. T/ F/ NG (para 9)

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Healy, J. (2006). Adapted from Clarke, R. (2006). Wilderness Society Newsletter 6/12/06.

Australia’s geothermal resources Renfrey Clarke

Choose the most suitable headings from sections A-I from the list of headings below. Write the appropriate

numbers 1-14 below. The first one has been done for you as an example.

(1) Cheapest clean energy

(2) On the Internet too

(3) Not being considered by government?

(4) Stock exchange interested

(5) High potential

(6) Read the Australian

(7) Proven technology

(8) Not lucrative

(9) Clean green energy

(10) Plenty of energy

(11) Size of underground reserves

(12) Profits at every stage

(13) Investors interested

(14) Cheap and reliable

1. paragraph A Heading __1___

2. paragraph B Heading ______

3. paragraph C Heading ______

4. paragraph D Heading ______

5. paragraph E Heading ______

6. paragraph F Heading ______

7. paragraph G Heading ______

8. paragraph H Heading ______

The federal government’s Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy Review, released on

November 21, provided the government with arguments in favour of nuclear energy. It did not discuss

Australia’s most spectacular renewable energy resource, the “hot dry rock” geothermal energy of the

Cooper Basin and other regions.

A Q1 A1 “Nuclear power is the least-cost low-emission technology”, the review boldly asserted. There was

no sign that the review panel had seriously researched the alternatives. Under its terms of reference, it was

not even required to do so. However, armed with its assumption that no lower-cost renewable alternative

to nuclear energy was even in prospect, the panel went on to urge that 25 nuclear power plants be built in

Australia by 2050, in close proximity to major cities.

B Actually, if review chief Ziggy Switkowski and his team had wanted to inform themselves on the real

potential of Australia’s prime renewable energy source, all they needed to do was to read the Australian. In

an optimistic article on September 9, the newspaper detailed howQ2 A10 the potentially recoverable

geothermal energy in the Cooper Basin, in South Australia’s far north-east, equates to Australia’s current

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electricity consumption for 450 years.

C A little more web-browsing would have convinced the panel members that Q3 A7 exploiting the “hot dry

rock” geothermal resource in the Cooper Basin was not just a technological dream. The basic “hot dry rock”

concept was demonstrated to work in 2004 at the Soultz-sous-Forêt geothermal prospect in northern

France. Testing at this site in the period since has yielded encouraging results. Now that the concept has

been shown to be feasible, the argument that the technology involved is unproven is out-of-date. With few

exceptions, the techniques used are borrowed from the oil industry, where they are quite familiar.

D In Australia, investors are impressed enough with the potential of geothermal energy to have committed

some $500 million to fund exploration and development work by no fewer than 14 companies. Drilling at

several sites, including in the Cooper Basin, has revealed Q4 A5 natural conditions markedly more

favourable than those in France.

E Once producing, Australia’s geothermal resources will release no greenhouse gases or other pollutants.

Unlike wind or solar, they will provide continuous, dependable base-load power. In other words,

geothermal energy can produce aQ5 A14 reliable and continuous supply of electricity twenty-four hours a

day. Moreover, and contradicting Switkowski’s report, the electricity it produces will be cheap, probably

about half the total cost of power from nuclear plants. Modelling by energy companies suggests that the

cost will be about 4 cents per kilowatt hour, similar to natural gas and only marginally more than coal.

F When the stock exchange is talking about the promise of geothermal energy, it is hard to believe that

news of this potential is completely unknown to government advisers. Perhaps the reason why

Switkowski’s panel argued as it did is that Australia’s hot rock richesQ6 A3 do not interest the government

very much.

G Some large Australian corporations can seeQ7 A12 future profits from the full nuclear cycle. This goes

from uranium mining, through uranium enrichment and nuclear power plants, to reprocessing and storing

the world’s reactor wastes.

H Developing geothermal energy might promise to give Australia one of the world’s cleanest, greenest

power generation industries. On the other hand, at the end of the nuclear road lies something far more

enticing for the energy companies, decade upon decade of large nuclear industry profits. In comparison,

the money to be made at the most lucrative points of the nuclear cycle, Q8 A8 geothermal power is not

very profitable.

Energy extraction

I Australia’s geothermal resources are huge. Across large stretches of Australia, granites containing

radiogenic elements such as uranium, thorium and potassium occur at depths from three to six kilometres,

and are overlain by thick deposits of sedimentary rocks that have low thermal conductivity. Q9 A YES The

slow decay of the radioactive elements in the granites produces heat, which is kept from escaping by the

insulating rocks higher up. In the Cooper Basin, an area of 1000 square kilometres has an average

temperature of 270°C at a depth of five kilometres.

J Like most rocks, the granites contain natural fissures which can be expanded using an oil industry

technique known as fracturing. Q10 A YES A bore is sunk into the granites and water at very high pressure is

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pumped in. Numerous mini-earthquakes are set off and when the pressure is released the result is a

permanent, many-fold increase in the permeability of the fracture systems.

K Other bores can then be drilled as far as a kilometre away, and the process repeated. If the geologists

have calculated correctly, the fracture zones interconnect. Water pumped down one bore will emerge from

others as superheated steam, which can be used to generate electricity; the steam can then be condensed

and recycled. Although the heat has its origins in radioactive decay, the granites are virtually insoluble and,

essentially, Q11 A NO no radioactive material reaches the surface.

L Over a period of perhaps 20 years, the temperature of the rocks in the underground “heat exchanger”

falls to the point where extraction of further heat becomes uneconomic. Q12 A NO But if the process is

halted for several decades, the temperatures build up again.

M As already indicated, the technologies used in “hot dry rock” energy extraction of deep drilling, rock

fracturing, and managing hot fluids are already well developed. The fact that so much use is made of

established technologies suggests that the timelines for bringing sizable geothermal plants on stream

should be reasonably short, shorter, in all likelihood, than for nuclear power. As with all deep drilling, there

are risk factors that mean particular holes can be expensive “duds”.

Lower risk

N Nevertheless, the presence of granites at the required temperatures can be predicted with a high degree

of certainty, and this means that Q14 A YES the business risks involved in developing geothermal energy

should be relatively low. They are much less, for example, than in the case of drilling for new oilfields,

provided that the power generated can be delivered to consumers. Australia’s largest geothermal

prospects are 500 kilometres or more from the nearest electrical grid connection.

O Q15 A NO These distances are not extreme by world standards, and with modern transmission

technology, the losses of current en route to consumers would be surprisingly small. In any case, Australia’s

geothermal prospects are not all in the remote inland. The project that is probably closest to commercial

operation, at Paralana in the North Flinders region of South Australia, is only 130 kilometres from the grid.

Other prospects are near the border between South Australia and Victoria, and in the Hunter Valley region

of New South Wales.

P Also, the building of transmission lines to remote generating plants would allow the development of

resources along the way. In South Australia, a number of promising mineral deposits lie along the so-called

Moomba-Adelaide corridor.

Q Nevertheless, Q16 A YES the cost of building and upgrading the infrastructure needed to make

geothermal energy a prime supplier of Australia’s future energy needs would be massive. It could be as

much as $800 million for a grid connection to the Cooper Basin. Development on this scale requires huge

financial resources, along with an ability to plan over decades. It is thus a legitimate function of

governments, rather than of private investors.

R The federal government, in particular, needs to commit itself to making an exhaustive, open investigation

of geothermal energy as the bedrock of eastern Australia’s future electricity supplies. If the potential is

realised, as the evidence suggests it will, private developers could be taken over, and the necessary funds

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could be put into the coordinated development of publicly-owned energy systems based on renewable

power sources.

S The government’s plans are, of course, diametrically different. The more the federal government locks

Australia into the nuclear option, the more potential investors in geothermal energy will conclude that the

really big money will not be coming their direction. Plans will be put on hold, then scrapped. Politicians will

continue to talk about greenhouse gas reduction, but will argue that the commitment to nuclear energy is

too entrenched to allow a shift to alternatives. Unless, that is, masses of people demonstrate, and go on to

organise and campaign to compel a change of course.

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the passage?

For questions 9-16 write

YES if the statement agrees with the information

NO if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this in the passage

9. The heat comes from radiation. Y / N /NG

(para I)

10. High pressure pumping causes small earthquakes. Y / N /NG

(para J)

11. Radioactivity is a problem. Y / N /NG

(para K)

12. After 20 years the process is finished. Y / N /NG

(para L)

13. Geothermal energy can be developed quickly. Y / N /NG

(see para M)

14. The risk to investors is low. Y / N /NG

(para N)

15. Distance is a major issue. Y / N /NG

(para O)

16. Building geothermal plants will be expensive. Y / N /NG

(para Q)

9.

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O'Connell, S. (2002). Focus on IELTS (pp. 173-181). Harlow: Longman.

W7 An ordinary miracle

Bigger harvests, without pesticides or genetically modified crops? Farmers can make it happen by letting

weeds do the work.

Across East Africa, thousands of farmers are planting weeds in their maize fields. Bizarre as it sounds, their

technique is actually raising yields by giving the insect pests something else to chew on besides maize. “It’s

better than pesticides, and a lot cheaper,” said Ziadin Khan, whose idea it is, as he showed me round his

demonstration plots at the Mbita Point research station on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya. “And it has

raised farm yields round here by 60 to 70 per cent.”

His novel way of fighting pests is one of a host of low-tech innovations boosting production by 100 per cent

or more on millions of poor Third World farms in the past decade. This “sustainable agriculture” just

happens to be the biggest movement in Third World farming today, dwarfing the tentative forays into

genetic manipulation.

In East Africa, maize fields face two major pests, and Khan has a solution to both. The first is an insect called

the stem borer, whose larvae eat their way through a third of the region’s maize most years. But Khan

discovered that the borer is even fonder of a local weed, napier grass. By planting napier grass in their

fields, farmers can lure the stem borer away from the maize — and into a honey-trap. For the grass

produces a sticky substance that traps and kills stem borer larvae. The second pest is Striga, a parasitic

plant that wrecks $10 billion worth of maize crops every year, threatening the livelihoods of 100 million

Africans. “Weeding Striga is one of the most time-consuming activities for millions of African women

farmers,” says Khan. However, he has an antidote: another weed called Desmodium. “It seems to release

another sort of chemical that Striga doesn’t like. At any rate, where farmers plant Desmodium between

rows of maize, Striga won’t grow.”

“The success of sustainable agriculture is dispelling the myth that modern techno-farming is the most

productive method,” says Miguel Altieri of the University of California, Berkeley. “In Mexico, it takes 1.73

hectares of land planted with maize to produce as much food as one hectare planted with a mixture of

maize, squash and beans. “The difference,” he says, “comes from the reduction of losses due to weeds,

insects and diseases and a more efficient use of the available resources of water, light and nutrients.

Monocultures breed pests and waste resources,” he says.

Researchers from the Association Tefy Saina, a Madagascan group working for local farmers, were looking

for ways to boost rice yields on small farms. They decided to make the best use of existing strains rather

than track down a new breed of super-rice. Through trial and error, a new system was developed that

raises typical rice yields from three to twelve tonnes per hectare. The trick is to transplant seedlings earlier

and in smaller numbers so that more survive; to keep paddies unflooded for much of the growing period;

and to help the plants grow using compost rather than chemical fertilisers. The idea has grown like wildfire,

and 20,000 have adopted the idea in Madagascar alone.

Few countries have switched wholesale to sustainable agriculture. But Cuba has. The collapse of the Soviet

Union in 1990 cut off cheap supplies of grain, tractors and agrochemicals. Pesticide use halved overnight, as

did the calorie intake of its citizens. The cash-strapped country was forced to embrace low-input farming or

starve. “Today,” says Fernando Funes of the Country’s Pasture and Fodder Research Institute, “teams of

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O'Connell, S. (2002). Focus on IELTS (pp. 173-181). Harlow: Longman.

oxen replace the tractors, and farmers have adapted organic methods, mixing maize with beans and cassava

and doubling yields in the process, helping average calorie intake per person rise back to pre-1990 levels.”

Worldwide, one of the most widely adopted sustainable techniques has been to throw away the plough, the ultimate

symbol of the farmer. Ploughing aerates the soil, helping rot weeds and crop residues. However, it can also damage

soil fertility and increase erosion. Now millions of Latin American farmers have decided it isn’t worth the effort. A third

of Argentina’s farms no longer use the plough. Instead, they fight weeds by planting winter

crops, such as black oats, or by spraying a biodegradable herbicide such as glyphosate. “The

farmers saw results in a short time — reduced costs, richer soils, bigger grain yields and

increased income,” says Lauro Bassi of EPAGRI, the agricultural research institute in Santa

Catarina state, southern Brazil, which has been promoting the idea.

Zero-tillage also benefits the planet in general. Unploughed soils hang on to carbon that

would otherwise escape into the air as carbon dioxide when organic matter rots. “A one-

hectare field left unploughed can absorb up to a tonne of carbon every year,” says Pretty,

“making soils a vital element in preventing global warming.”

Sustainable agriculture is no magic bullet for feeding the world. It is an approach rather than a blueprint. Small farms

with low yields stand to gain the most and agribusiness the least. Yet it does offer an alternative for the millions of

small farms that have plenty of hands to work the land, but not the skills or financial resources to adopt conventional

mechanised farming.

Complete each of the following statements with the best ending A-I from the box below.

13. Napier grass G 16. Ploughing the land B

14. The plant called Striga C 17. Sowing black oats E

15. Growing single crops I

List of Endings

A reduces losses due to plant diseases F helps to retain carbon dioxide

B can lead to soil erosion G destroys harmful insect larvae

C causes major financial losses H helps prevent global warming

D increases soil fertility

E discourages the growth of weeds

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Area Strategy Benefits to farmers

East Africa 17. planting weeds with food crop Lower costs Higher yields

19. Mexico Growing mixed crops together Higher yields

Madagascar Transplanting seedlings earlier. Leaving paddy fields unflooded Replacing chemical fertilisers with 20. compost

Higher yields

Cuba Reducing 21. pesticide use/use of pesticides Using 22. (teams of) oxen instead of farm vehicles Growing mixed crops together

Yields doubled Citizen’s 23. (average) calorie intake increased

Latin America Zero tillage Lower costs Improved 24. Soil(s) Higher yields Higher/Increased 25. Income/earnings

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Sewell, H. QUTIC Resource. Adapted from Ackley, K. A. (2009). Perspectives on contemporary issues. Boston,

MA : Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Dolly’s false legacy

Ian Wilmut

Ian Wilmut is the Scottish embryologist whose team of researchers, in 1996, was the first to clone a

mammal from fully differentiated adult mammary cells. Wilmut holds a Ph.D. in animal genetic

engineering from Darwin College, University of Cambridge, and has been a researcher at the Animal

Research Breeding Station (now known as the Roslin Institute) in Edinburgh, Scotland, since 1974.

He is co-author of The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control. (2000). and has

been editor of the Journal of Reproduction Fertility since 1993. This essay appeared in the January

11th, 1999, issue of Time magazine.

Overlooked in the arguments about the morality of artificially reproducing life is the fact that, at present,

cloning is a very inefficient procedure. Q10 The incidence of death among fetuses and offspring produced

by cloning is much higher than it is through natural reproduction—roughly 10 times as high as normal

before birth and three times as high after birth in our studies at Roslin. Distressing enough for those

working with animals, Q1 these failure rates surely render unthinkable the notion of applying such

treatment to humans.

Even if the technique were perfected, however, we must ask ourselves what practical value whole being

cloning might have. What exactly would be the difference between a “cloned” baby and a child born

naturally—and why would we want one?

The cloned child would be a genetically identical twin of the original, and thus physically very similar, far

more similar than a natural parent and child. Human personality, however, emerges from both the effects

of the genes we inherit (nature) and environmental factors (nurture). The two clones would develop

distinct personalities, just as twins develop unique identities. Q2 And because the copy would often be

born in a different family, cloned twins would be less alike in personality than natural identical twins.

Why “copy” people in the first place? Couples unable to have children might choose to have a copy of one

of them rather than accept the intrusion of genes from a donor. My wife and I have two children of our

own and an adopted child, but I find it helpful to consider what might have happened in my own marriage if

a copy of me had been made to overcome infertility. My wife and I met in high school. Q3a How would she

react to a physical copy of the young man she fell in love with? How would any of us find living with

ourselves? Surely Q3b the older clone - I, in this case - would believe that he understood how the copy

should behave and so be even more likely than the average father to impose expectations upon his child.

Above all, Q3c how would a teenager cope with looking at me, a balding, aging man, and seeing the

physical future ahead of him?

Each of us can imagine hypothetical families created by the introduction of a cloned child—a copy of one

partner in a homosexual relationship or of a single parent, for example. What is missing in all this is

consideration of what’s in the interests of the cloned child. Because there is no form of infertility that could

be overcome only by cloning, I do not find these proposals acceptable. Q4 My concerns are not on religious

grounds or on the basis of a perceived intrinsic ethical principle. Rather, my judgment is that it would be

difficult for families created in this way to provide an appropriate environment for the child.

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Cloning is also suggested as a means of bringing back a relative, usually a child, killed tragically. Any parent

can understand that wish, but it must first be recognized that the copy would be a new baby and not the

lost child. Herein lies the difficulty, for the grieving parents are seeking not a new baby but a return of the

dead one. Since the original would be fondly remembered as having particular talents and interests, Q5

would not the parent expect the copy to be the same? It is possible, however, that the copy would develop

quite differently. Is it fair to the new child to place it in a family with such unnatural expectations?

What if the lost child was very young? Q6 The shorter the life, the fewer the expectations parents might

place on the substitute, right? If a baby dies within a few days of birth and there is no reason to think that

death was caused by an inherited defect, would it then be acceptable to make a copy? Q7 Is it practical to

frame legislation that would prevent copying of adults or older children, but allow copying of infants? At

what age would a child be too old to be copied in the event of death?

Copying is also suggested as a means by which parents can have the child of their dreams. Couples might

choose to have a copy of a film star, baseball player or scientist, depending on their interests. But because

personality is only partly the result of genetic inheritance, Q8a conflict would be sure to arise if the cloned

child failed to develop the same interests as the original. What if the copy of Einstein shows no interest in

science? Or the football player turns to acting? Q8b Success also depends upon fortune. What of the child

who does not live up to the hopes and dreams of the parent simply because of bad luck?

Every child should be wanted for itself as an individual. In making a copy of oneself or some famous person,

a parent is deliberately specifying the way he or she wishes that child to develop. In recent years,

particularly in the U.S., much importance has been placed on the right of individuals to reproduce in ways

that they wish. Q9 I suggest that there is a greater need to consider the interests of the child and to reject

these proposed uses of cloning.

By contrast, human cloning could, in theory be used to obtain tissues needed to treat disorders such as

Parkinson’s disease and diabetes. These diseases are associated with cell types that do not repair or replace

themselves, but suitable cells will one day be grown in culture. These uses cannot be justified now; nor are

they likely to be in the near future.

Moreover, there is a lot we do not know about the effects of cloning, especially in terms of aging. As we

grow older, changes occur in our cells that reduce the number of times they can reproduce. This clock of

age is reset by normal reproduction during the production of sperm and eggs; that is why children of each

new generation have a full life span. It is not yet known whether aging is reversed during cloning or if the

clone’s natural life is shortened by the years its parent has already lived. Then there is the problem of the

genetic errors that accumulate in our cells. There are systems to seek out and correct such errors during

normal reproduction; it is not known if that can occur during cloning. Q10 Research with animals is urgently

required to measure the life span and determine the cause of death of animals produced by cloning.

Important questions also remain on the most appropriate means of controlling the development and use of

these techniques. It is taken for granted that the production and sale of drugs will be regulated by

governments, but this was not always the case. Q11 A hundred years ago, the production and sale of drugs

in the U.S. was unregulated. Unscrupulous companies took the opportunity to include in their products

substances, like cocaine, that were likely to make the patients feel better even if they offered no treatment

for the original condition. After public protest, championed by publications such as the Ladies’ Home

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Journal, a federal act was passed in 1906. An enforcement agency, known now as the FDA, was established

in 1927. An independent body similar to the FDA is now required to assess all the research on cloning.

There is much still to be learned about the biology associated with cloning. The time required for this

research, however, will also provide an opportunity for each society to decide how it wishes the technique

to be used. At some point in the future, cloning will have much to contribute to human medicine, but we

must use it cautiously.

Questions:

1: Why, according to Wilmut, is cloning for humans unthinkable?

Due to the high incidence of death among fetuses and offspring produced by cloning.______

2: Why are identical twins born naturally more likely to have similar personalities?

Because they are generally brought up in the same family._____________________________

3: What does Wilmut consider troublesome when imagining he and his wife had a cloned child?

a) his wife would have a son identical to the man she fell in love with

b) the older clone will impose expectations on the younger clone

c) the younger clone will see his/her physical future__________________________________

4: Wilmut disagrees with cloning on the basis that it is unethical? T / F

5: Why does Wilmut feel it problematic for parents to bring back and relative or child through

cloning?

a) It is a return of a dead child

b) The parents are grieving and it is difficult

c) The new child is more talented

d) It is unfair to the child due to the unrealistic expectations of the parents

6: Wilmut is more accepting of the idea of cloning a child born from the genes of a child who died

when he/she was young. This answer is arguable T / F

7: On what basis does Wilmut think that the above situation is problematic?

It is hard to decide on an age limit for the cloning of infants___________________________

8: What two things does Wilmut see as problems when parents copy the “child of their dreams”.

a) the child may not develop the same interests as the original

b) the child may not be as fortunate as the ____________________________________________

9: Wilmut feels the rights of a couple to reproduce are more important than the rights of a child?

T / F

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10: It appears there are no problems with cloned people living to a full life? T / F

11: Why was the FDA established? It was established in response to the lack of regulation of

drugs, which led to protests about unethical companies, including ineffective substances in

drugs_________________________________________________________________________

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Roseberry, R. L. & Weinstock, R. (1992). Reading etc, 177-185. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Genetic ethics

The promises of genetic engineering seem almost limitless. In only a few years scientists have developed

methods for improving agricultural yields, producing valuable new substances and materials, and predicting

which diseases a person is likely to get in later life. Even more remarkably, medical researchers have been

able to locate the genes responsible for nearly six hundred genetic diseases (Mallovy, 1988, p. 17). Q1

Locating these genes is the first step toward repairing or replacing them and thus preventing the diseases

they cause. As Louis Siminovitch, director of Toronto’s Mt. Sinai Research Institute, observes,

We are in the midst of a golden age of biological and medical research. Advances are occurring with amazing rapidity, and the opportunities and challenges are unprecedented. The developments are having an impact on the whole spectrum of life processes, including forestry, agriculture, dentistry and medicine (Mallovy, 1988, pp. 16-47)

Together with the many benefits of genetic research, however, are the dangers and risks involved

whenever scientists tamper with the basic structures of bile. In the early days of recombinant DNA

technology, many books and movies appeared that warned of the dangers of genetic experiments gone

wrong. They depicted creatures that were half-human and half- animal, gigantic mutant insects, and new

strains of deadly viruses that resisted all treatment. Nor was this fear of genetic havoc restricted to the

science fiction of the twentieth century. As early 1818 Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein the book that

became the most famous genetic horror story of all time. In it, a genetically created human monster attacks

and destroys his own creator. Q1 All technologies have the capacity to produce evil as well as good, and

genetic engineering is no exception. In an attempt to limit the dangers of genetic research, Q3 scientists

from all over the world have drafted a list of guide lines for recombinant DNA experiments They have

agreed to work only with relatively harmless substances and to develop strains of bacteria that cannot exist

outside laboratory conditions. In this way they have prevented early fears from becoming reality. There can

be no doubt, however, that the potential for danger exists in this, as in every technological endeavour.

Together with benefits, genetic engineering brings with it a number of dangers and risks, and some of these

lead to fundamental ethical concerns.

One of the most significant risks of genetic agriculture, for example, is the possibility that genetically

engineered species will mix with natural species. Q4 Scientists are not able to predict the results of such a

mixing, which could cause a fundament change in the definition of life. Many genetically engineered

species have already been produced, so the danger of such mixing is high (Gooderham, 1989, p. A14). For

example, scientists have successfully engineered a new species of carp, a fish that is popular in many parts

of the world. This new species contains a growth gene from another kind of fish, the rainbow trout. The

new kind of carp grows twenty percent faster than ordinary carp. The same kind of technology can be used

on many different species of fish, perhaps allowing scientists to turn entire bays, or even oceans, into

mariculture farms (Schneider, 1989). What does the future hold for such “improved” species? Will they

destroy all the other fish in the oceans? And when only the engineered species are left, will these die out

from some genetic weakness that scientists had not foreseen? Clearly, it is dangerous to play such games

with nature.

At least three serious objections may be raised against genetically altered species. First, the new species

could force many farmers and fishermen out of business. Next, the existence of such species could have a

harmful effect on the balance of nature. Finally, genetic techniques could cause animals to suffer. An

experiment in the United States that demonstrates some of these objections is the injection of an

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engineered growth hormone into cows to make them produce more milk. These cows regularly produce

three times as much milk as normal cows. If the government permits this technique to be used

commercially, however, fewer cows will be needed and many dairy farmers will lose their businesses. There

are also indications that the technique may be harmful to the cows themselves and possibly even to the

people who drink the milk that these cows produce (Schneider, 1988)

Another major user of genetic engineering techniques is the manufacturing industry. Genetic

manufacturing, however, could pose even more serious threats than genetic agriculture. In agriculture,

clearly identifiable species such as cows and carp are altered to make them more profitable. Q5 In

manufacturing, on the other hand, microorganisms -very small forms of life-are altered so that they will

produce desired substances or perform desired functions. Because these creatures are too small to be seen

without microscopes, and because they tend to reproduce rapidly, their potential for creating hazards is

great. Therefore, governments of such countries as the United States, where much genetic research is

taking place, are establishing guidelines and appointing panels to control such research. Meanwhile, critics

are questioning the efficacy of these guidelines and are pointing to the potential harm that genetically

altered microbes might cause if they are released into the environment. One of the greatest dangers of

modified microorganisms, the critics point out, is their tendency to undergo spontaneous mutations. When

organisms Q6 mutate spontaneously, they change into different organisms without any outside influence.

The changed organisms may be much more dangerous than the original, genetically altered ones. Some

critics worry that mutating organisms, created by science, could get out of control, spreading new,

incurable diseases or destroying agricultural crops (Field Test, 1989).

The area of greatest concern to critics of genetic engineering is, of course, medical science, for genetic

medicine would affect people directly by altering human genes. Even critics who are not greatly concerned

about the genetic manipulation of livestock or bacteria are likely to be worried about the possible effects of

genetic engineering on people. Q7a Algeny, the use of genetic engineering to cure or prevent disease, is a

new science, but there is no doubt that it will soon come of age. How will algeny affect medical practice

and medical ethics? Two examples will illustrate some of the dangers and ethical concerns involved.

One of the fastest growing fields of medicine is transplant surgery, in which an organ from one person is

placed into the body of another. Transplant surgery involving many different organs is now possible, and

can often extend the patient’s lifespan and improve the quality of life. As a result, there is a large demand

for replacement organs. However, relatively few such organs are available. The shocking evidence suggests

that in some countries children are being kidnapped and killed in order to provide an illegal source of

organs. At the same time, to get desperately needed money, poor people in some Third World countries

are selling spare organs, such as kidneys, from their own bodies (Taylor, 1989). Obviously, there are serious

social, economic, and ethical concerns surrounding these activities. These concerns will be complicated by

algeny and genetic engineering For one thing, genetic techniques will enable doctors to predict the kinds of

diseases that a person is likely to experience later in life. People will be able, therefore, to plan for these

diseases. But even more remarkably, genetic engineering will eventually enable scientists to Q7b create

humanoids that could be used as a source of spare organs. These creatures may contain human hearts,

kidneys, lungs, and other organs. Such genetically produced sources of human organs could eliminate the

illegal trade in body parts of children and the poor; however, this use of humanoids would present a

completely different set of ethical problems to be debated and resolved.

Another example of a genetic technique that may soon have implications for genetic ethics is

amniocentesis, a procedure for determining the sex of a foetus. In some Third World societies in which

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boys are prized more highly than girls, mothers who do not want to give birth to a girl occasionally use this

technique to determine Q7b whether or not to have an abortion. As a consequence, some governments

have outlawed amniocentesis. However, nothing prevents the expectant mothers from going elsewhere to

have the test performed (Weisman, 1988) It is likely that algeny will soon provide a solution to this problem

by Q7b allowing parents to decide what sex the baby should have. By changing the genes on a single

chromosome, the sex of a baby could be changed while it is still in the womb. Again, however, this

practice would present serious ethical concerns that must be dealt with before such a procedure could be

permitted.

In dealing with the ethical concerns of algeny and genetic engineering, Jeremy Fakin (1983) points to the

branch of recombinant DNA technology called eugenics. Q7cEugenics is concerned with using

biotechnology to remove biologically undesirable characteristics and to make genetic changes that will

improve an organism or species. Rifkin refers to the eugenics movement in the United States early in this

century, long before genetic engineering was born. In the 1920s some federal and state laws were

instituted that identified certain racial and genetic traits as being inferior to others. Under these laws,

thousands of American citizens were required to be sterilised so that they could not pass on these traits

(Rifkin, 1983, p. 229). An even more drastic eugenics program was imposed by the government of Nazi

Germany in the 1930s and l940s. Millions of Jews and others were treated as being racially inferior and

were imprisoned and killed (Rifkin, 1983, p. 230) In addition, unspeakable medical experiments were

performed on many of these prisoners. In recent years, according to Rifkin, eugenics has once again

become a popular idea. This new interest in eugenics is apparently more commercial than racial, however,

and is directed at improved economic performance and quality of life (Rifkin, 1983, p. 231). It seems that

every age and society has its own ideas about what is desirable and good. And if we do not know what

perfection is, what will our moral obligations be when it lies within our power to alter the human species?

Rifkin asks, for example, whether a parent will have the right to refuse genetic engineering of his or her

unborn children. Q8 Will the parent be guilty of a crime if the children get a genetic disease that could have

been prevented by biotechnology (Rifkin, 1983, p. 232)?

Soon, as medical writer Robin Marantz Henig (1989) points out, doctors will be able to give us a list of all

our genetic weaknesses In other words, they will be able to tell us what genetic diseases we are most likely

to get and how we will probably die Even before biotechnology provides us with treatments for these

diseases, however, we will have ethical choices to make. Most importantly, society will have to decide who

is allowed to use personal genetic information and for which purposes this information may be used. Henig

(1989, p. 20) asks, “Will the presence of a faulty gene be enough to prevent full access to schooling, health

care, employment and the other rights and privileges of society?” She notes further that genetic

information about individuals poses two important concerns. “The first is whether knowledge of the

information is itself potentially hazardous to the individual; the second, whether institutions will misuse

that knowledge to foster their own dominance and control.” There is a very real fear that in the near future

employers will demand to know the genetic profiles of their workers. They may fire or refuse to hire people

with certain genetic weaknesses. Insurance companies may not sell insurance to people who have a high

genetic risk of getting cancer or some other serious disease. Schools may refuse to admit children whose

genetic profiles indicate behavioural problems or learning disabilities. Henig points out that such

discrimination already exists. In one case, an insurance company refused to renew the policy of a driver

whose genetic profile indicated the possibility of getting a rare nervous disease in later life. At the time, the

insurance policy was revoked; the driver had no symptoms of illness and had been driving for twenty years

without accidents or tickets (Henig, 1989, p 22).

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In view of these and other ethical considerations involving eugenics, Rifkin asks society to consider

seriously whether science should be thinking about genetic engineering of human beings at all. He wonders

whether we have misplaced our values about life and have forgotten that being human means more than

being a well engineered machine (Rifkin, 1983, p. 233). In an attempt to ensure that bioengineering can

continue without posing a threat to people and societies, Suzuki and Knudtson (1988, pp 345348) have

proposed ten ethical principles for dealing with genetic engineering. Among these principles are the need

for understanding genes and what they do, the possible applications and misapplications of genetic

techniques, and the need for privacy concerning an individual’s genetic profile. In addition, they stress the

importance of the diversity of living species, and insist that the genes that define a species and determine

genetic traits are not the property of individuals and must not be changed without the consent of all

members of the society. Above all, they indicate that we must always be ready to receive new ideas about

life, ethics and humanity, not only from science, but also from art, philosophy, and religion. And We must

look for these ideas not only in our own culture but also in all other cultures and throughout all periods of

history.

Checking Your Comprehension

1. Why do geneticists want to locate the genes that are responsible for a number of diseases? First step

towards repairing or replacing them, and thus preventing the disease they cause.

2. How do the early fictional treatments of genetic engineering relate to the problems that we currently

face? All technologies have the capacity to produce evil as well as good.

3. What have scientists done to combat the dangers of genetic experiments? Drafted a list of guidelines

for recombinant DNA

4. What are the prima dangers inherent in creating new species and altering existing species? Results not

predictable – they could alter the definition of life

5. How could genetic manufacturing be more dangerous than genetic agriculture? Very small forms of life

cannot be seen without a microscope &, therefore, reproduce rapidly.

6. What are spontaneous mutations, and how could such mutations pose a threat? Change into different

organisms without outside influence & changed organisms may be much more dangerous

7. What is algeny, and what kinds of ethical concerns would it present? Explain the relationship of algeny

to eugenics. a) Algeny = use of genetic engineering to cure/prevent disease. b) humanoids for organs;

abortion; deciding sex of baby. c) Algeny for curing/preventing disease but eugenics for removing

characteristics or improving a species

8. Describe the main ethical concerns of transplant surgery and amniocentesis. Indicate what new

concerns could arise as a result of genetic engineering. See text

For Discussion

1. In your view, what steps should be taken to protect society from the possibly harmful effects of

genetic research?

2. Suppose that you or a Ioved one were dying from a disease for which genetic engineering might

soon provide a cure. Would this change you last answer? How?

3. If you were an employer, what would be your attitude towards hiring people with genetic defects?

4. Do you think public money should be used to educate people who are going to die shortly after

they finish school?

5. Which of the ethical problems discussed in this essay seems most serious to you? Why?

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72

W8 The keyless society

A Students who want to enter the University of Montreal’s Athletic Complex need more than just

a conventional ID card - their identities must be authenticated by an electronic hand scanner. In

some California housing estates, a key alone is insufficient to get someone in the door; his or

her voiceprint must also be verified. And soon, customers at some Japanese banks will have to

present their faces for scanning before they can enter the building and withdraw their money.

B All of these are applications of biometrics, a little-known but fast-growing technology that

involves the use of physical or biological characteristics to identify individuals. In use for more

than a decade at some high- security government institutions in the United States and Canada,

biometrics are now rapidly popping up in the everyday world. Already, more than 10,000

facilities, from prisons to day-care centres, monitor people’s fingerprints or other physical

parts to ensure that they are who they claim to be. Some 60 biometric companies around the

world pulled in at least $22 million last year and that grand total is expected to mushroom to

at least $50 million by 1999.

C Biometric security systems operate by storing a digitised record of some unique human feature.

When an authorised user wishes to enter or use the facility, the system scans the person’s

corresponding characteristics and attempts to match them against those on record. Systems

using fingerprints, hands, voices, irises, retinas and faces are already on the market. Others

using typing patterns and even body odours are in various stages of development.

D Fingerprint scanners are currently the most widely deployed type of biometric application,

thanks to their growing use over the last 20 years by law-enforcement agencies. Sixteen

American states now use biometric fingerprint verification systems to check that people

claiming welfare payments are genuine. In June, politicians in Toronto voted to do the same,

with a pilot project beginning next year.

E To date, the most widely used biometric system is the handkey, a type of hand scanner which

reads the unique shape, size and irregularities of people’s hands. Originally developed for

nuclear power plants, the handkey received its big break when it was used to control access to

the Olympic Village in Atlanta by more than 65,000 athletes, trainers and support staff. Now

there are scores of other applications.

F Around the world, the market is growing rapidly. Malaysia, for example, is preparing to equip

all of its airports with biometric face scanners to match passengers with luggage. And Japan’s

largest maker of cash dispensers is developing new machines that incorporate iris scanners.

The first commercial biometric, a hand reader used by an American firm to monitor employee

attendance, was introduced in 1974. But only in the past few years has the technology

improved enough for the prices to drop sufficiently to make them commercially viable.

‘When we started four years ago, I had to explain to everyone what a biometric is,’ says one

marketing expert. ‘Now, there’s much more awareness out there.’

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G Not surprisingly, biometrics raise thorny questions about privacy and the potential for abuse. Some worry that governments and industry will be tempted to use the technology to monitor individual behaviour. ‘If someone used your fingerprints to match your health-insurance records with a credit-card record showing you regularly bought lots of cigarettes and fatty foods,’ says one policy analyst, ‘you would see your insurance payments go through the roof.’ In Toronto, critics of the welfare fingerprint plan complained that it would stigmatise recipients by forcing them to submit to a procedure widely identified with criminals.

H Nonetheless, support for biometrics is growing in Toronto as it is in many other communities.

In an increasingly crowded and complicated world, biometrics may well be a technology whose

time has come.

Questions 1-7

The reading text has eight paragraphs (A—H). Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B—H

from the list of headings below. NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not

use all of them.

List of Headings Paragraphs

i. Common objections 1. B iv

ii. Who’s planning what 2. C vii

iii. This type sells best in the shops 3. D viii

iv. The figures say it all 4. E iii

v. Early trials 5. F ii

vi. They can’t get in without these 6. G i

vii. How does it work? 7. H x

viii. Fighting fraud

ix. Systems to avoid

x. Accepting the inevitable

Questions 8 - 14

Look at the following groups of people and the list of biometric systems (A—F) below. Match

the groups of people to the biometric system associated with them in the reading text. NB You

may use any biometric system more than once.

List of Biometric Systems Groups of people

A. Fingerprint scanner 8. sports students B

B. Hand scanner 9. Olympic athletes B

C. Body colour 10. airline passengers E

D. Voiceprint 11. welfare claimants A

E. Face scanner 12. business employees B

F. Typing pattern 13. home owners D

14. bank customers E

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Healy, J. (2003). Adapted from: Green, J. (2002). Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia. GLW, May 8,

2002. http://www.ban.org> and <http://www.svtc.org

The high-tech poisoning of Asia

Jim Green



1. A sustainability revolution

2. Less landfill and incineration

3. Worse than the situation in China

4. Poor nations on the receiving end

5. Harmful component recycling?

6. Amazing risks

7. Unsatisfactory working conditions

8. Rapidly-growing quantities of rubbish

9. The affluent’s effluent flood

10. A glamorous waste stream

11. Report shows the reality

12. A Chinese dumping ground

13. An optimistic myth

14. An undesirable choice

17. paragraph A Heading __1___

18. paragraph B Heading ___13___

19. paragraph C Heading ___11___

20. paragraph D Heading ___8___

21. paragraph E Heading ___4___

22. paragraph F Heading ___12__

23. paragraph G Heading ___6___

24. paragraph H Heading ___3___

25. paragraph I Heading ___14___

A The Australian Conservation Foundation argued in its 2000 Blueprint for a Sustainable Australia, “The

digital revolution is merely the first taste of a complete industrial revolution, a sustainability revolution”.

The ACF did not have much else to say about this “revolution”, but we can sketch out the parameters

nonetheless. The benefits of the digital revolution are taken as given — such as the internet, the ability to

take your work home to make your boss even richer, and so on.

B As for the “sustainability revolution”, a growing computer recycling industry means that fewer old

computers are going to become landfill or incinerated. Recycling of computers, estimated to be growing at

18% annually, is being promoted by widespread bans on the dumping or incineration of old computers.

Export of old computers to Third World countries is creating jobs in the recycling industry, and is helping to

bridge the North-South “digital divide”. Too good to be true? I'm afraid so. The realpolitik of the “new”

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digital economy is every bit as irrational, exploitative and environmentally unsustainable as the “old”

economy.

C A report released in February by two US-based organisations, the Basel Action Network and the Silicon

Valley Toxics Coalition, provides a sobering reality-check. The report, Exporting Harm: The High-Tech

Trashing of Asia, reveals that huge quantities of hazardous “e-wastes” (such as computer monitors, circuit

boards, printers and mobile phones, which contain lead, beryllium, mercury, cadmium, brominated flame

retardants and many other toxic chemicals) are being exported for recycling to China, Pakistan and India.

The recycling of these components is extremely harmful to human health and the environment.

E-waste

D Exporting Harm states: “Just beneath the glamorous surface of the benefits and the wealth created by

the information technology revolution looms a darker reality. Vast resource consumption and waste

generation are increasing at alarming rates. The electronics industry is the world's largest and fastest

growing manufacturing industry, and as a consequence of this growth, combined with rapid product

obsolescence, discarded electronics or e-waste, is now the fastest growing waste stream in the

industrialised world.”

E Third World countries are targeted for these recycling industries — which in the West are prohibited by

public pressure and regulations — for familiar reasons: low labour costs; lax environmental protection and

occupational health and safety regulations are not well enforced.

F Exporting Harm focuses on the Guiyu area in Guangdong province, China, where about 100,000 poor

migrant workers are employed to break apart and process obsolete computers imported primarily from

North America. Men, women and children work under appalling conditions, unaware of the health and

environmental hazards involved. Many tonnes of e-waste are being dumped along rivers, in open fields

and beside irrigation canals in the rice-growing Guiyu area. Already, well water is no longer drinkable and

water has to be trucked in from 30 kilometres away.

G The Basel Action Network (BAN) found extraordinary levels of contaminants in Guiyu: river sediment

samples had lead levels 212 times higher than liquid that would be treated as hazardous waste in the

Netherlands; barium at levels in the soil were almost 10 times higher than the threshold for environmental

risk in the US; tin levels were 152 times the US threshold; and chromium in one sample was at levels 1338

times the US threshold.

H The BAN's preliminary investigation of the situation in India and Pakistan revealed conditions even worse

than those found in China. In Pakistan, circuit boards are de-soldered with blow-torches with no ventilation

fans and acid operations take place indoors with less ventilation. In India, the report noted, open burning

of circuit boards in the middle of New Delhi neighbourhoods is routine. The employment of child labour is

widespread.

I Poor people in the Third World are forced to choose between more poison or more poverty. Exporting

Harm states: “E-waste exports to Asia are motivated entirely by brute global economics. Market forces, if

left unregulated, dictate that toxic waste will always run `downhill' on an economic path of least resistance.

If left unchecked, the toxic effluent of the affluent will flood towards the world's poorest countries where

labour is cheap, and occupational and environmental protections are inadequate. A free trade in

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hazardous wastes leaves the poorer peoples of the world with an untenable choice between poverty and

poison – a choice that nobody should have to make.”

Sold a green pup

J Clearly, the green gloss of “recycling” doesn't match the reality. Consumers are being sold a green pup:

“Manufacturers refuse to eliminate hazardous materials or design for disassembly. Second, government

policies fail to hold manufacturers responsible for end-of-life management of their products. Thus, finally,

consumers are the unwitting recipients of a toxic product abandoned by those with the greatest ability to

prevent problems. Left with few choices, consumers readily will turn to recycling. But it appears that too

often, this apparent solution simply results in more problems, particularly when the wastes are toxic.”

K The BAN and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition are calling for the problem to be dealt with “upstream”

though legislation forces the electronics industry to: initiate “take-back” recycling programs for computers

and other electronic equipment; phase-out of toxic products in electronic products: and improve designs to

ensure equipment has a long life, is upgradeable and can be safely and easily recycled.

L These demands feed off one another, for example, computer manufacturers required to take back their

products will have a much greater incentive to improve the design of their products. Conversely, as

Exporting Harm notes, the “escape valve” of Third World dumping exacerbates the problem.

M Computer manufacturers fiercely resist calls for take-back programs or the phase-out of toxic chemicals,

and little improvement has been made even in the case of measures that hardly impact on corporate

profits, such as designing computers for easy disassembly.

N Yet only upstream solutions are sufficient. Recycling dangerous products, dumping as landfill,

incineration and disposal in the Third-World are all dangerous and environmentally unacceptable.

O Exporting Harm argues: “While there are efforts to divert e-waste from landfills, via `recycling',

electronics `recycling' is a misleading characterisation of many disparate practices — including de-

manufacturing, dismantling, shredding, burning, exporting etc — that is mostly unregulated and often

creates additional hazards itself. `Recycling' of hazardous wastes, even under the best of circumstances,

has little environmental benefit; it simply moves the hazards into secondary products that eventually have

to be disposed of.

P “Unless the goal is to redesign the product to use non-hazardous materials, such recycling is a false

solution. Current market conditions and manufacturing methods and inputs discourage environmentally

sound electronic recycling practices, so most e-waste that is currently being ‘recycled' is actually being

exported, dismantled in prisons or shredded in processes where there is some material recovery followed

by the discard of the remaining materials.”

Planned obsolescence

Q Computer manufacturers use various means to encourage consumers to replace computers at frequent

intervals, such as limiting the supply of spare parts or making new products incompatible with old ones (or

with competitors' products). This is fantastic for profits, but it greatly adds to the toxic waste stream.

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R Exporting Harm states: “Due to the extreme rates of obsolescence, e-waste produces much higher

volumes of waste in comparison to other consumer goods. Where once consumers purchased a stereo

console or television set with the expectation that it would last for a decade or more, the increasingly rapid

evolution of technology combined with rapid product obsolescence has rendered everything disposable.

Consumers now rarely take broken electronics to a repair shop, as replacement is now often easier and

cheaper than repair. The average lifespan of a computer has shrunk from four or five years to two years.

Part of this rapid obsolescence is the result of a rapidly evolving technology. But it is also clear that such

obsolescence and the throw-away ethic results in a massive increase in corporate profits, particularly when

the electronics industry does not have to bear the financial burden of downstream costs.”

S While e-waste dumped in the Third World is sourced from many countries, the US is the largest single

source. The US government is by far the most irresponsible. The US is the only developed country in the

world not to have ratified the Basel Convention on Hazardous Wastes, a United Nations treaty banning the

export of hazardous wastes from developed countries to developing countries.

T Moreover, a string of exemptions have been added to US legislation to encourage the dumping of e-

waste in the Third World. These exemptions are explained away with the excuse that the material is

destined for recycling, not dumping.

U Exporting Harm states: “The current US policy of encouraging the quick and dirty route of export, hidden

under the green cloak of the word `recycling', is not only an affront to environmental justice but also to the

principles of producer responsibility, clean production and pollution prevention.”






26. People are being told lies Y paragraph J

27. Changes in the production process are definitely necessary Y paragraph K

28. Computer manufacturers are willing to change technologies to solve the problems N para. M

29. There are few environmental advantages in recycling e-waste now Y paragraph O

30. Incompatibility of components makes buyers look for new products Y paragraph Q

31. Electronic repairs are cheap & common N paragraph R

32. Manufacturers have to pay for recycling costs N paragraph R

33. Rapid modernising electronics products cause sizable environmental problems Y paragraph R

34. Obsolescence increases profitability Y paragraph R

35. The US government has helped, but its efforts are inadequate N paragraph S & T

36. Throwing away old products is undesirable Y whole passage

A documentary film has also been produced and is available from the organisation.

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from: Royte, E. (1996). Smithsonian, May 1996.

Let the bones talk

Elizabeth Royte

These days a person examining a collection of bones may be trying to identify a missing person or

solve a crime, usually a crime whose trail ran cold sometime before. But the interesting thing is that

for the forensic scientist bones can talk. They can tell a great deal about the person who once used

them as well as the reasons for which that person no longer needs them.

It is late on a Thursday afternoon before Douglas Owsley can turn his attention to the cardboard box on his

office floor. He shoves it toward a table and casually lifts the lid. He reaches into wrinkled white sheets and

a blanket and pulls out a waxy brown skull.

Bone by bone, Owsley transfers the skeleton to his examination table. “Heavy brow, large mastoid

processes, well-defined nuchal [nape of the neck] area,” he murmurs, turning the skull this way and that.

“Narrow nasal width, pronounced nasal spine. Definitely white, definitely male”. But it doesn’t take a

physical anthropologist to deduce this much information. A medical examiner had supplied the man’s

identity. What the local pathologist wants Owsley to determine is whether this man, who had disappeared

from a nursing home, had suffered any kind of trauma. The bones had been found in a wooded area near

the home. It appeared that the gentleman had simply wandered off. Or had he?

Douglas Owsley works as a forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural

History. Strong, compact and encircled by a tooled Western belt, he’s the kind of person who doesn’t

hesitate to get down onto his bare office floor, if that’s where the next box of bones lies. His scholarly work

involves prehistoric and pioneer bones in the Great Plains and more recent bones in the East. But he also

does forensic work. Police departments and medical examiners across the country routinely enlist Owsley’s

services. They come upon bones and want to know: Who is it? What happened? A forensic pathologist—in

the mode of television’s Quincy—asks similar questions, but Owsley’s work picks up where Quincy’s leaves

off.

Q1 Most of his cases originate in rural areas, because bodies that come to rest in cities are usually found

before soft tissues rot away. Dogs discover a fair number of bodies. So do hunters, in the woods after the

leaves have dropped, and drivers, in any season, who stop to relieve themselves in wooded sites along

roadways.

Owsley works in a cluttered suite of offices on the third floor of the museum. Scientific journals line his

shelves, photographs of his buddies exhuming graves hang on the walls. Outside his door, the corridors are

institutionally lighted and lined with drawer after wooden drawer, stacked 14 feet high. Here the skeletons

of 30,000 people are carefully arranged and catalogued. The bones—of people ranging in age from prenatal

to 90, who died between 10,000 years ago and one—hail from as far as Ecuador and Iraq, and as near as

Bethesda, Maryland.

A forensic investigation usually begins with the opening of a package. Some- times Owsley can resolve a

case without even sitting down.

Police officer: Is this bone human?

Owsley: No, it’s pig.

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Officer: Thank you, goodbye.

More often, the inquiry will take weeks or months to play out. Owsley recently finished the case of a

Baltimore police officer who denied any involvement in the slaying of his girlfriend. But investigators

vacuumed up tiny bone chips—about the size of pencil points—from the back floor of his pickup. Owsley

examined the chips under a stereozoom microscope and determined they belonged to somebody whose

skull became fragmented perimortem—at or around the time of death. He found traces of soot, lead and

blood on the fragments, features consistent, as they say, with those of a bullet fired at close range. “But it’s

the tiny traces of blood on the bone chips that helped nail him,” Owsley says. “It shows up as red rust stains

under the microscope.” The officer was eventually sentenced to life plus 20 years.

Meanwhile, Nursing Home Man lies on the table, his hand bones in one pile, his foot bones in another.

Owsley sorts through the ribs, arranging 12 on the right and 11 on the left. “Hmmm,” he says, not overly

concerned. Then he picks up a short bone, ”rabbit,” he says, and sets it aside. Q4 It’s not unusual to find

animal bones with human: Q20 the dog that finds bones and buries them under the back porch is not

discriminating.

Owsley starts to calculate the man’s height, based on the length of his leg and arm bones. He looks at the

points where muscles were attached to bone, to get an idea of his build. A creative forensic anthropologist

may look at, for example, Q2 the ridges where muscles attach on finger bones and wonder if this

unidentified skeleton once played the flute, but he’d never include such speculation in a final report. “The

science on that is a little flaky,” says Douglas Ubelaker, who, as the other forensic anthropologist at the

museum, works about 40 law-enforcement cases a year. (He also teaches at George Washington

University.) “It could lead investigators to look for missing flute players and rule out all others.”

Ubelaker and Owsley are both infuriatingly cautious. “Let the bones talk to you” is their motto. Scientists to

the core, they make conclusions based solely on the evidence at hand. “You can’t go on your gut feelings,”

says Ubelaker, sober, mustachioed and, on a summer day when the air conditioning is not working, dressed

in sandals, a blue polo shirt and pleated slacks. Q23 “A prosecutor comes in, he’s convinced it’s this guy,

and he says, ‘Doc, what do you think?’ There’s a subtle pressure to support his opinion. But you must

divorce yourself from that. I’m not an advocate for the FBI or the defense but a spokesman for the victim.” I

ask if he’s ever been wrong. “I don’t recall ever being very wrong in a forensic case, considering the

evidence available at the time.” Though he sounds smug, he is not. He is stating a fact. “You shouldn’t be

wrong on a report. Q9 I won’t say it’s the skeleton of a person 37 years old, but I will say with 90 percent

certainty he’ s between 30 and 38.”

Sixty years ago, the use of anthropology to solve crimes was virtually unheard of. The law-enforcement

community didn’t recognize that skeletons contained clues that were inaccessible through conventional

forensic examinations, and anthropologists, for their part, were reluctant to get involved in police work. Q7

Applied science—using anthropology to achieve an immediately tangible result—was somehow less pure

than basic research, went the thinking.

Today, forensic anthropology is an accepted science. The American Board of Forensic Anthropology

certifies new diplomates each year (Ubelaker is the current president). Q3 At the Smithsonian, forensic

anthropology began in the 1930s when the Federal Bureau of Investigation moved in across the street on

Constitution Avenue. Ales Hrdlicka, director of the Division of Physical Anthropology from 1903 until 1943,

Q19

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formalized the relationship, and in 1942 Hrdlicka’s student and successor, T. Dale Stewart, began to consult

regularly for the FBI. In the 1950s Stewart helped in the identification of Korean War dead. But it was the

bow-tied, cigar smoking Larry Angel (Smithsonian, February 1977), who worked so many cases in the 1970s

that the press started calling him “Sherlock Bones.”

Other Smithsonian scientists also are taking on forensic missions. Roxie Laybourne, an ornithologist [March

1982], has taught several graduate students about identifying feathers found at plane crashes and murder

scenes. And there are practitioners of forensic geology and entomology. Q6 Geologists can often tell from

dirt particles in a victim’s clothing where a murder actually happened. Q24 Entomologists can tell by what

insects are present on a body how long the person has been dead.

Even now it’s not all smooth sailing within the scientific community. “Some anthropologists still think it’s

technical, not research oriented,” says Owsley, heatedly, “but it is research oriented! The information we

derive immeasurably improves our work on older skeletons. We look at Civil War digs, at whites versus

blacks, old versus young, urban versus rural, rich versus poor, and we see changes in health trends. We can

follow health trends through time. We see the results not only of bone cancer, but breast cancer, which

metastasizes and perforates bone. We can now track the evolution of warfare among Plains Indians for

6,000 years by bone pathology”.

Owsley and Ubelaker enjoy their law-enforcement cases but they both favour historical work—Owsley

studying the bones of Colonial villagers and Native Americans, Ubelaker working in Ecuador and in museum

collections in Europe, tracing the history of diseases. In studying ancient bones, Q5 physical anthropologists

are less interested in individuals—how a man fractured his pelvis and why he was buried with his dog—

than in documenting what happened to communities over time and space: what they ate, how and where

they lived, what diseases afflicted them, how their life expectancy changed as they abandoned the nomadic

life for agriculture.

Says Owsley, Q8 “We apply what we learn from archaeological excavations to criminal cases, and vice

versa. The information flows both ways.” Owsley’s work with the victims of a prehistoric war who had been

dismembered immediately after death proved to be invaluable experience when he worked on the case

involving Jeffrey Dahmer’s first victim. He analysed hundreds of bone and tooth fragments that Dahmer

had crushed with a heavy implement and scattered over a two-acre site examined each for cut marks and

determined the age and sex of the victim. The Smithsonian’s Ralph Chapman clinched the identification by

digitizing bitewing x-rays taken by a dentist so they could be scaled to match images from the remains. A

second molar root was identical to a 90 percent probability.

Douglas Owsley grew up in a small Wyoming town, the son of a fish and game warden He entered the

University of Wyoming as a zoology major, planning on a career in medicine, or perhaps dentistry. That

changed when he volunteered one summer to help George Gill, a charismatic anthropology professor work

a thousand-year-old burial site in Mexico. They mucked around mangrove swamps all day and ate huge

shrimp cocktails at night “I said to myself, ‘This is the life,’” recalls Owsley, grinning. “I got completely

caught up in it.” He switched his major, earned his doctorate in physical anthropology under Gill at the

University of Tennessee, then began teaching at Louisiana State University in 1980. The crime rate around

Baton Rouge and the preponderance of bayous for dumping bodies meant plenty of hands-on forensic

cases. In 1987 the Smithsonian sent out a call for a new physical anthropologist and Owsley applied. Today,

Q10

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Gill and Owsley continue their work together, most recently in the analysis of late prehistoric and historic

period skeletons from Easter Island.

Douglas Ubelaker also slipped into anthropology after accepting, as a lark, a summer job on a dig. He was a

premed student at the University of Kansas when an anthropology professor noted his muscles and invited

him on a dig in the Dakotas. The keen-eyed professor was William Bass of the University of Tennessee, who

has trained the majority of the forensic anthropologists in the country. To Ubelaker, the prospect of

studying centuries-old remains held a “distinct element of romance”. He, too, was instantly hooked, and by

the end of the summer the Ubelakers knew there would not be another doctor in the family.

Drafted in 1968, just after graduating from college, Ubelaker was assigned to a military hospital lab in

Washington, D.C. He spent his spare time working in the Smithsonian’ 5 collections, incidentally forging the

alliances that would secure him a job at the museum after he earned his doctorate in Kansas.

Both Ubelaker and Owsley appreciate the mystery in their law-enforcement cases, but they try not to get

too involved: the bones come and go, and often they don’t find out what becomes of a case once their

role—pin-pointing the age of a bone’s owner or suggesting a probable murder weapon—is finished.

Knowing a victim’s vocation and personal habits could prejudice their investigations. Working on

decomposing bodies at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, Ubelaker didn’t want to know

which cult members were still unaccounted for. Along with FBI agents, Texas Rangers and staff from the

medical examiner’s office, he sorted through hundreds of bones, which they first had to excavate from

under the rubble and unexploded ordnance. He and Owsley were part of the team that then listed probable

ages and sexes and matched what they could with skeletal x-rays. Keeping their minds open to any and all

possibilities was essential.

Such work affects a forensic anthropologist’s personal life. Investigations and testifying at trials mean time

away from home. Even at home the work intrudes. Q22 At Ubelaker’s Christmas tree farm in Virginia he

pokes scraps of plastic and other compounds into fires just to see how they’ll emerge. Burned dry wall, it

turns out can resemble bone. So can garden hose. “You do develop a special interest in tire icons,” he adds

“I can‘t go into an auto supply store without evaluating the differences between them.”

Promoting accuracy in mysteries

Sometimes, fiction overtakes fact in the museum’s anthropology department Best selling crime novelist

Patricia Cornwell consulted with Ubelaker as she worked on All That Remains, about a serial killer in

Virginia. Cornwell spent a day with Ubelaker, looking at slides of damaged bones and trying to figure out

what cut marks on a hand phalanx, a finger bone, would look like. “I asked him what a serrated knife would

do,” Cornwell says, “Doug told me that with a slice it’s impossible to tell, because the points of the blade

would cover their own tracks. Q21 Only if the bone was hacked could you tell.” In her book, the heroine—

Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner—is able to determine that a bone has been hacked, a wound incurred

when the victim tried to defend herself. And Ubelaker was the inspiration for the character Dr Alex Vessey,

the Smithsonian’ s expert bone man.

Nursing Home Man, after several hours on the table, smells warm and mammally. His bones feel greasy,

which isn’t unpleasant, but they’re also flecked with bits of dried tissue and a waxy, light brown

substance—adipocere, a by-product of fat decomposition in moist conditions. Owsley isn’t wearing gloves,

so I make up my mind to be brave, as well. In grad school, Owsley was assigned to work on an extremely fat

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woman who was found dead and in an advanced state of decomposition in the Smoky Mountains. Her

body, says Owsley, was actually foaming with adipocere, and the odour was intense. “I worked for ten

minutes, threw up for ten minutes, worked for ten minutes, threw up for ten” And then he never threw up

again.

Owsley now looks for any “inclusions” in the cardboard box—bullets, rings, documents, a shoe. Save for the

rabbit bone, the box contains only human parts. He notes taphonomic evidence, that is, any changes that

affected the body after death. Such evidence may include vegetation that grew on a body as it lay under a

porch, silt that settled in bone cracks when the skeleton was later dragged toward a river, a snail shell that

lodged between vertebrae as the spine drifted downstream “One of the great things about the

Smithsonian,” says Owsley, “is that I can pick up the phone and Q18 call a botanist to analyse the algae, a

geologist for the silt and an invertebrate zoologist for the snail. Forensic anthropology combines a lot of

disciplines”

Owsley holds a femur in the air. “See that lipping [bone extensions] on the end? Arthritis,” he says. Q17 I

pick up a fingernail from among pelvic bones and move it up to the hand pile. It’s long and yellowed and

thick, and it gives me more of the creeps than anything else arrayed on the table, even the equine-looking

teeth.

As Owsley examines the ribs, I open a yellow envelope that came with the box. It’s full of hair. “Hey,” I say.

“This hair is kind of dark” Owsley stops and looks over.

“No gray?”

“No, and there’s plenty of it—for an old guy”

“Well,” he says, “he wasn’t really an old guy” The plot thickens; Owsley knows more than he is letting on.

He continues, “Actually, this guy was 45.” I nod.

“His wife put him in the nursing home because of his diminishing mental capabilities. They suspect she was

poisoning him, perhaps even while he was in the nursing home”.

Now I know that we aren’t looking at an elderly man with Alzheimer’s who’d wandered away gotten lost in

the woods and died of a heart attack, exposure or starvation. Q15 The bones, come to think of it, do look

pretty strong, despite the arthritis. Owsley tells me that toxicologists will be working up his bone marrow

looking for evidence of poisoning. Still, he’s got to examine each bone for signs of trauma. Had the dead

man been in a fistfight? The nose does not appear broken. Q13 The hyoid, a fragile bone in the throat, is

intact, but strangulation can’t be ruled out. Had he battled an attacker? The ulna—one of the forearm

bones, a common spot for a parry fracture—shows no sign of trauma. Nor do the ribs, all 23 of them.

Without a major bullet hole to offer immediate gratification, I can imagine this inventory becoming tedious.

But Owsley doesn’t let up. “You have to go all out on each case,” he says. “Each person is equally

important. Someone cared about him.”

Sometimes, the person who cares doesn’t get satisfaction for a long, long time. In January of 1978, in a

small Midwestern town, the trailer home of a family named Morris caught fire. Mrs. Morris reported that

there had been an explosion and that her husband had rescued her 6-year-old son from the flames, and a

neighbour had rescued her 9-year-old. Her husband, Donald Morris, she said, threw her out of the trailer,

then attempted to rescue her 5-year-old. But the two never made it out. The fire chief, brand-new on the

job, ruled out arson. The medical examiner declared the deaths accidental and did not perform autopsies.

Q14

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Morris’ brother, however, told the chief of detectives that the entire case smelled fishy to him. Dan

D’Annunzio, the newest detective on the staff, was assigned to the case. D’Annunzio brought in one arson

investigator who said the fire had been set. A second expert concurred. D’Annunzio asked to have the

bodies exhumed, but the medical examiner refused.

For the next 15 years D’Annunzio worked on the case whenever time allowed. In 1993, he thought he had

enough to reopen the case. The county attorney told him that if he could come up with one more piece of

evidence, he would do it. D’Annunzio then found the older son in a prison. The son told him that he had

woken that winter night and seen his mother hit his stepfather over the head with an ashtray and then stab

him repeatedly in the back as he lay on the floor.

From a high shelf in the hall, Owsley retrieves Donald Morris, neatly arranged among crisp white sheets in a

large cardboard box. Owsley sits cross-legged on the floor and takes out the bones. Morris’ skull is badly

burned, covered with dry patches of black and white that resemble lichen. Owsley holds up a femur. “This

case really talks to you. Look at how strong he was—you can see where the ham- strings were attached

Powerful man; you can just imagine him throwing his wife out the window” “Now look at this vertebra.” He

holds up another one. “See the cut mark?” I do: there is an angular end on the transverse process (an

extension to the side) of this lumbar vertebra. I can see the sharp cuts of a knife or machete. Owsley shows

me several ribs with the same markings, clear evidence of multiple stab wounds.

“This skeleton says so much,” Owsley says, again. He’s excited now, remembering the case, holding up

bones left and right. “Look at the pelvis—it was cracked and then healed. Look at the nose, it’s been

broken. When I met Morris’ brother in the courtroom he said “It is just like Donald is here—you know so

much about him”. Partly on the basis of Owsley’s work, a jury convicted Mrs. Morris of two counts of

murder and one of arson.

Precisely because Morris’ skeleton was so expressive, Owsley asked the family if the Smithsonian could

have it for its collections, to use for teaching. They agreed.

That case was closed. Q11 & 16 Nursing Home Man was proving more intractable. Owsley finished

examining the remains. He found no evidence of trauma, and the toxicologists found not a trace of poison

in his bone marrow. The man’s wife may have committed the perfect crime but it’s still too soon to tell.

Owsley has started on another dozen cases—an unidentified skeleton from Northern Virginia, a young girl

with cut marks on her cervical vertebrae—but Q16 he hasn’t closed the book on Nursing Home Man quite

yet. He’s got a more powerful microscope down the hall, and he plans to look at each of the 205 bones

once again.

Questions 1-10


1. Most of Owsley’s cases originate in rural areas. F / O / X

2. The ridges where muscles once attached to the finger bones indicate that Nursing Home Man used to

play a flute. F / O / X

3. Forensic anthropology began at the Smithsonian after the Korean War. F / O / X

4. It isn’t unusual to find animal bones among human bones. F / O / X

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5. Physical anthropologists are more interested in individuals than in what happened to human

communities over time. F / O / X

6. Geologists often can determine where a crime took place by examining dirt particles in a victim’s

clothing. F / O / X

7. Sixty years ago anthropologists were reluctant to get involved in police work because applied science is

less pure than research. F / O / X

8. Anthropologists can apply what they learn from archaeological excavations to criminal cases and vice

versa. F / O / X

9. Owsley and Ubelaker can determine an individual’s exact age by his or her bones. F / O / X

10. Owsley’s work on prehistoric war dead helped him identify one of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims. F / O / X

Questions 11-18

Inferences: Which of the following statements, based on the selection, are most probably true?

11. Nursing Home Man was poisoned by his wife. T / F

12. Despite a lack of preliminary evidence, Nursing Home Man may have been murdered. T / F

13. Because his hyoid bone is intact, Nursing Home Man definitely was not strangled. T / F

14. The fact that Nursing Home Man was 45 at the time of his death is partially indicated by his abundance

of dark hair. T / F

15. Nursing Home Man’s bones indicate that he was in perfect health at the time of his death. T / F

16. Despite the toxicologist’s report, Owsley may find evidence of poisoning or trauma by examining

Nursing Home Man’s bones under a powerful microscope. T / F

17. Along with his skeleton, Nursing Home Man’s long, thick, yellow fingernail suggests his body lay

undiscovered for a fairly long time. T/F?

18. Animal bones found among human bones do not provide forensic anthropologists with any significant

information. T / F

Questions 19 - 22


19. The idea that forensic anthropologists “let the bones talk” is supported by their unwillingness to:

a. consider evidence offered by other scientists.

b. draw conclusions based on opinion or speculation.

c. examine any evidence found among human remains.

d. discuss their findings with outsiders.

20. Owsley isn’t surprised to find a rabbit bone among Nursing Home Man’s bones because:

a. rabbits are known to feed on human remains.

b. rabbits occasionally use human bones to barricade their warrens.

c. dogs often bury animal and human bones together indiscriminately.

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d. dogs typically bury rabbit with human bones.

21. Forensic anthropologists can determine that a victim was stabbed by examining:

a. blood traces on a victim’s bones.

b. traces of stainless steel on a victim’s bones.

c. a victim’s broken bones.

d. cut or hack marks on a victim’ s bones.

22. Determining which manufactured items—like drywall or garden hose— resemble human bone when

burned probably helps Ubelaker:

a. distinguish human from manufactured remains in arson cases.

b. determine the cause of fire in arson cases.

c. better understand how fire alters the chemistry of human bone.

d. determine the age of a burn victim.

23. Owsley and Ubelaker resist the influence of police officers and FBI agents because forensic

anthropologists:

a. know from experience that police and FBI theories are often incorrect.

b. don’t want their scientific objectivity clouded by human prejudice.

c. have a traditionally hostile relationship with law enforcement officials.

d. must serve the interests of the victims’ families.

24. The appearance of fly eggs and maggots on a human skeleton can help scientists determine:

a. the season in which a person died.

b. the hygiene of a person at the time of death.

c. how long a person has been dead.

d. where a person died.

Questions 24 - 33 Vocabulary Choose the best definition for each underlined word. 24. Physical anthropologists are less interested in individuals than in documenting what happened to

human communities over time. a. archeologists who perform physical therapy b. scientists who study the physical, cultural, social, and racial attributes of humankind c. scientists who study the social habits of humankind d. scientists who study human bones

25. A forensic pathologist asks questions in the manner of television’s Quincy. a. scientist who uses a knowledge of insects to solve crimes b. scientist who uses a knowledge of skeletal remains to address questions of civil and criminal law c. scientist who uses a knowledge of soil chemistry to solve crimes d. scientist who uses a knowledge of disease and unnatural death to address questions of civil and

criminal law

26. Owsley’s office walls display photos of his buddies exhuming graves. a. unearthing b. fumigating c. refilling d. decorating

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27. Owsley’ s claim that he’s never been wrong in a forensic case is accurate not smug.

a. humble b. conceited c. hasty d. inaccurate

28. He studied zoology at the University of Wyoming. a. the science of animal life b. the science of zoo-keeping c. the science of aquatic mammals d. the science of dinosaur remains

29. A charismatic professor changed Owsley’s life. a. pleasantly demanding b. extremely interesting c. dynamically appealing d. strangely mysterious

30. Around Baton Rouge, there is a preponderance of bayous for dumping bodies.

a. considerable number of sand pits

b. large number of swampy waterways

c. famous group of sink holes

d. growing number of landfills

31. Ubelaker spent his spare time forging the alliances that eventually secured his job at the Smithsonian.

a. establishing the relationships

b. developing the skills

c. creating the programs

d. seeking the contacts

32. After the Waco disaster, Ubelaker excavated hundreds of bones from beneath unexploded ordnance.

a. dynamite

b. munitions

c. firecrackers

d. gunpowder

33. Nursing Home Man’s skull displays equine-looking teeth.

a. shark-like

b. discoloured

c. horse-like

d. jagged

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Forsyth, A. (2009). Adapted from: Time, Feb 27th

2008.

W9 Spain family matters

Jeff Israely

NEW ARRIVALS, OLD VALUES: Peruvian

immigrant Vinazza, at center, opposes gay

marriage and worries that the traditional

Spanish family is changing for the worse

Photograph for TIME by Xavier Cervera /

Panos

Federico Carrasco faces the typical demands

of a divorced father of two: what to do with

his sons every other weekend; what to tell his own mother when she insists it's time he got remarried; how

to explain to his childless partner that, for him, two kids are enough. What makes this 40-year-old different

from millions of other hard-working Spanish fathers is that his partner is a man. One issue, at least, appears

to be resolved: Carrasco says he and Javier Dorca, his boyfriend of eight years, plan to tie the knot next year

under Spain's landmark 2005 gay-marriage legislation. "Javier has always wanted to get married," says the

Barcelona hairdresser, who split up with his wife 10 years ago after finally acknowledging — to himself and

others — that he's gay. "Emotionally I don't need marriage. But it's my right, so I will exercise it."

Carrasco represents a new twist on what family now means in this once rigidly traditional Catholic land. But

gay marriage and adoption rights are only the most recent and controversial changes. Until 1975, the

Spanish family was the iconic, idealized centrepiece of society. That homogeneous model is now being

supplanted by a mosaic of family types. Spanish families are ever more urban and transient, and ever less

grounded in faith and marriage. In 1975, 10,895 Spanish children were born out of wedlock; by 2006, it was

137,041. "Spanish family patterns have changed beyond recognition," says María del Mar González, a

professor of educational psychology at the University of Seville. "Spain came late to democracy, but we

have lost no time catching up." The effects of this new and evolving family structure are reshaping Spain's

economic and social future.

The New and the Old

Certainly, Spain's next generation is less likely than any before to be reared within the traditional family

structure. Noelia Posse, 29, says she always wanted to be a parent. But by the time her son Pablo was born

two years ago, Posse's live-in boyfriend had already moved out. "We were in love, and decided to have a

child. Sometimes things don't work out," says the city councillor in Móstoles, southwest of Madrid. "But I

would have had a child even if I'd had to go to a sperm bank. My family is Pablo and me, and I don't feel like

I'm missing anything."

The sweeping agenda of progressive social policy is what has truly marked Prime Minister Jose Luis

Rodriguez Zapatero's 1st term. He pushed through major women's-rights legislation, equal-pay provisions,

and a comprehensive anti-domestic-violence law in a country still suffering the ill effects of machismo. An

"express divorce" law was passed to make ending a marriage quicker and easier. Zapatero also signed a far-

reaching amnesty for illegal immigrants and their families.

Along with an influx of practicing Catholics from Latin America, Spain has seen the arrival of an estimated 1

million Muslims in the past two decades, mostly from North Africa. Moroccan-born Abdul Aziz, 42, is

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2008.

likewise sceptical of gay marriage, and the ease with which many native Spaniards jettison the traditional

family unit. "There are so many people not married, with no children. For me, this is not life. Life should be

a mother, father, children," says the unemployed construction worker and father of two. He says Islam is a

regular part of his life, even as he becomes more and more Catalan: "It helps to preserve the traditions. It is

not a good thing if you lose roots. Religion remains a constant through the changes of history."

Pope Benedict XVI made it clear that he was not pleased with the changes in Spain, "The family is a unique

institution in God's plan." Spanish bishops have organized huge rallies in Madrid to protest Zapatero's new

laws, but polls continue to show that the reforms have broad support.

Such doctrinal concerns don't exist for Rocío Martínez-Sampere and Jordi Domenech, for both of them,

marriage is out of the question and careers are important. But, at 33, they are expecting their second son

this spring. Not surprisingly, the young couple supports the new laws that recognize a rainbow of different

family models. But they depend too on the traditional boon of having two grandmothers nearby, who do

regular babysitting duties. "The extended family still exists," says Martínez-Sampere. "And it works."

VOCABULARY

Match the vocabulary from the text with the synonym.

1. Resolved F 2. Rigidly J 3. Idealised N 4. Homogenous B 5. Supplanted A 6. Mosaic O 7. Transient C 8. grounded in E 9. sweeping M 10. progressive I 11. machismo H 12. amnesty G 13. influx K 14. jettison D 15. doctrinal L

A. replaced B. same C. momentary/temporary D. discard E. based on F. solved G. forgiveness H. masculine pride I. modern J. strictly/inflexibly K. rush/flood L. beliefs (religious or political) M. broad N. glorified O. many/varied/colourful

COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS

1. Do the following people support (S), oppose (O) or have a neutral (N) opinion regarding changes to the

traditional Spanish family structures?

1) Vinazza O

2) Federico Carrasco S

3) Maria del Mar Gonzalez N

4) Noeli Posse S

5) Prime Minister Zapatero S

6) Abdul Aziz O

7) Pope Benedict O

8) Jordi Domenech S

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2008.

2. True or False

1) Federic Carrasco situation is unusual because he is divorced. F (unusual because he is in a

same sex marriage)

2) Faith has been a major influence in the past on family structures. T

3) Religion is still has a major influence on immigrant communities in Spain. T

4) Recent changes are not broadly supported in Spanish society. F

3. Identify the variety of family models mentioned in the text (5-6)

divorced/step family/same sex marriage/ adoption/ homogeneous/nuclear/single

parent/live in unmarreid couples/extended family

4. Name three new social policies that Prime Minister Jose Zapatero has introduced and discuss how you

think these new laws affect traditional family structures.

gay marriage – same sex couples now accepted as norm

adoption rights – allowing those previously unable or unwilling to have their own children

(gays/singles/older couples/infertile couples) to start families.

equal pay provisions – women receiving more pay may no longer need the support of a

husband to survive/succeed

‘express divorce’- making it easier for unhappy couples to

Also women’s rights legislation and anti-domestic violence laws.

5. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1) Describe some of the modern family structures in your country.

2) How has this changed from past generations?

3) What factors have influenced these changes? (consider religious/socio-

political/cultural/economic factors and technological/medical advances)

4) What have been some of the negative and positive consequences?

5) Are single parent families, unmarried couples, divorce and same sex marriages accepted or

legal in your country?

6) How do you imagine your family in 5/10/20 years?

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Rosemond, G. & Sarac, V. (2012). QUTIC Resource. Adapted from: Miller, P. (2012). National Georgraphic.

Twins

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q5

Q4

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Q28

Q28

Q28

Q29

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Q30

sim

Q30

diff

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INTRODUCTION

Questions 1-6: True/ False/ Not Given Circle the correct answer. 1. The festival in Twinsburg, Ohio is a new event for Dave and Don Wolf to attend. T / F / NG

2. The Fenton brothers have different jobs but share the same interests. T / F / NG

3. Two outdoor activities they both enjoy are hunting and fishing. T / F / NG

4. Dave and Don Wolf are fraternal twins (born from two different eggs from the mother). T / F / NG

5. Twinsburg, Ohio is a town located northeast of Cleveland. T / F / NG

NATURE AND NURTURE

Questions 7-12: Gap fill In 7_1939_ the Springer twins were put up for adoption and raised by different couples. The

Springer brothers reconnected 8_.39_ years later. Both men were 9__6_ feet tall and weighed

180 pounds. Both boys had a 10_dogs__ as a pet. Both men worked as 11_part-time_ - sheriffs.

One different feature of the Jim Twins was how they wore their 12_hair.

Questions 13-17: Multiple Choice

13. The feature Thomas Bouchard first noticed about the Jim Twins was:

a. teeth

b. fingernails

c. feet

14. Bouchard’s Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart tested for:

a. mental skills

b. physical functions

c. both of the above

15. Heritability is a trait which measures the extent to which differences among members of a

population can be explained by differences in:

a. nature

b. environmental factors

c. genetics

16. Twins who are raised in the same culture with the same opportunities show differences in IQ

reflected in:

a. training

b. education

c. inheritance

17. An identical twin with a criminal co-twin is more than how many times as likely to break the

law as a fraternal twin in the same situation:

a. one and three quarters

b. one and a half

c. one and one quarter

SHARED TRAITS

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Questions 18 - 21: True/ False/ Not Given Circle the correct answer. 18. Rheumatoid arthritis is more common in fraternal rather than identical twins. T / F / NG

19. Schizophrenia is more than twice as common in identical than fraternal twins. T / F / NG

20. The two most common disorders found in identical twins are autism and reading disability.

T / F / NG

21. More than 50% of identical twins share Alcoholism as a disorder. T / F / NG

SAME GENES, DIFFERENT PEOPLE

Questions 22 -26: Gap fill

Two factors which can cause differences in identical twins in growing older are 22_stress_ and

23_nutrition_. Tags (chemical mechanisms) which can activate or suppress genes can be

24_nutrition_ but do not change DNA. Tagging is caused by diet or 25 inherited_ which may

change the expression of a gene. The same 26_DNA_ is found within identical twins.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH

Questions 27-31: Write short answers to the following questions:

27. Since 2000 the Shaw and MacLeod families have been raising identical twins sisters “in a

kind of accidental science experiment” How?

Twins separated by 275 miles, chance to see how they develop when not living together

28. Both families were misinformed about their prospective daughters before arriving in China.

What information before and after meeting the girls supported the idea that they were

twins?

See text

29. What were both families worried would happen to the twins if they did not each adopt

one?

See text

30. Make brief notes about some of the similarities between Lily and Gillian’s life? Have their

also been differences in their development?

See text

31. Summarise in one or two sentences the key idea about nature or nurture in the final

paragraph of this section.

The parents feel they may be having a bigger influence over their daughters than

genetics, but their daughter’s mannerisms etc. remind them that this may not be the

case.

THE THIRD COMPONENT

Questions 32-35: Answer the following questions.

32. What is the ‘third component’ after nature and nurture that scientists are studying at John

Hopkins University? What effect does this process have on DNA? epigenetic processes

which influence how our DNA is expressed e.g. whether gene is turned off/on

strengthened/weakened

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33. This section contains a number of analogies to make some complex scientific terms more

easily understood. Write the analogy used next to the scientific term:

Our DNA - analogy: a large piano keyboard.

Our genes - analogy: the keys

Our whole genetic makeup -analogy: a combination of keys

The epigenetic process – analogy: when/how each key is played

34. John or Sam?

(a) Has more severe symptoms of autism spectrum disorder. J

(b) Loves to find facts and information. S

(c) Has a lack of social skills. S

(d) Would appear to be less affectionate than his brother. J

(e) Cannot remain still. J

35. Check the second half of this section then match the beginning of each sentence with its

ending:

(Beginnings)

1. The study of epigenetics is changing our understanding of biology d

2. Feinberg’s research is being carried out b

3. Scientists are just starting a

4. Researchers have discovered it is possible c

(Endings)

(a) ...... to realise the way that complex disorders like autism are linked to the epigenetic

process.

(b) ..to find out if different methylation profiles are found in people with severe autism.

(c) ... to change some epigenetic processes meaning in future it may be possible to reverse

epigenetic mistakes.

(d) ...by showing scientists a process: how the environment has an influence on our

genes.

WRITING IN PEN OR PENCIL

Questions 36 - 40: True/ False/ Not Given Circle the correct answer. 36. According to Danielle Reed, the study of epigenetics has led to a better understanding of

similarities and differences in twins. T / F / NG

37. It is believed that poor lifestyle causes health problems such as alcoholism and heart

disease. until 50 year old= true T / F / NG

38. Scientific research on twins has enabled scientists to think about the influence of both

genetic and the environment on a person. T / F / NG

39. John is learning to say more from Sam and his mother. T / F / NG

40. Sam broke a bone while trying to imitate something he read in a Greek myth. T / F / NG

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ed.). Boston, MA: Thomson Heinle.

Love and marriage in China

Alice P. Lin

Until a few short decades ago, the notion that love between a man and a woman would lead to marriage

was as alien a concept to the Chinese as the assumption that women had any control over whom they

would marry. Q3 Marrying, according to the traditional Chinese view, was a family business, not the

couple’s affair. Having a daughter was considered a “money-losing proposition,” given the lack of return on

the investment. After raising a daughter, to marry her off required a dowry and losing her permanently to

another family, for once married, the daughter’s identity was with her husband’s family. A woman was

taught from birth that she must prepare herself for lifelong servitude, to serve her parents and elders while

at home, her husband and in-laws once married, and her own sons after the death of her husband. The

only redeeming hope for a woman was to become a mother-in-law herself so the cycle could go on.

Such was the typical course of life for a young woman ready for matrimony in the old China. It is no small

wonder that I do not remember any stories of happy brides. Q1 Brides, in my memory, were inevitably

linked to separation, tears, fear, and uncertainty about the future. My mother, who was close to her elder

sister, my first aunt, and with whom she had shared a bedroom, followed my first aunt’s wedding carriage

out of the door, crying and calling her name, so distraught that she fell down and got a bad cut that left a

scar on her left eyebrow that she carries to this day.

Whether one married “up” or “down,” the expectations for the new bride varied little. Until she became a

mother, preferably of a son, she occupied the lowest rank in the family hierarchy, even lower than that of

the unmarried sister of her husband. Any harmony between herself and her new husband was purely by

chance. Usually the two barely knew each other before the wedding.

The matchmakers might occasionally provide an opportunity for “viewing” each other before the couple

was married, Q24 usually under the scrutiny of both families and from a distance. Tales about how the

bride might camouflage her physical shortcomings from a cursory and distant viewing made up interesting

after-dinner conversations while I was growing up. The viewing of the potential mate was a custom

practiced even in modern China in some regions. If the impressions of the viewing were favourable, with

again the families having more to say than the couple, and if the other conditions were met, the couple

would be considered “spoken.”

Under such circumstances, romantic attachments before marriage were rare. If emotional bonding

between husband and wife were ever established, it occurred only after the marriage. This phenomenon

largely explained Q8 the relatively few literary works devoted to the celebration of romantic love. Most

literary works have described friendship among men, men in relationship with nature, and filial loyalty.

There have been some exceptions to the rule. The famous and talented poet Li Qing Zhao from the Song

Dynasty wrote about missing her husband far away:

The west wind curls back the curtain,

I am more fragile than the golden chrysanthemum.

Another Song poet wrote about how much he enjoyed helping his wife make up her eyebrows in the

morning, but such references to the marital relationship are extremely rare in classical Chinese poetry.

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A young woman was brought up to accept her destiny in a subservient role in marriage. As a general rule

from age seven on, a girl was segregated from members of the opposite sex, except for her immediate

male relatives. Indeed, all contact with the outside world was limited to the immediate household. In this

closed and controlled setting, a young woman learned obedience and tolerance for an uncertain future.

The alternative of remaining single was not available. Custom decreed that a woman must marry. The

stigma attached to spinsterhood was severe enough to strongly discourage staying single.

The young woman was taught to value two essential virtues for a married woman: patience and self-denial.

To navigate the myriad relationships in an extended family required patience. To fulfill the daily demands of

others required self- sacrifice. Q11 Both patience and self-sacrifice were considered necessary to maintain

harmony in the new household, and harmony was the ideal state of married life. Q18 These values were

not defined by the individual, but by the family as a unit, and a woman’s needs took a back seat to those of

others.

A young man was brought up with different lessons. He was taught to be worthy of carrying a male

ancestor’s name by achieving a certain position in society, supporting his family, and being loyal to his

parents. Even supporting the family, a universal expectation for men in a male-dominant society, did not

need to be a burden solely for the Chinese man. If he were unemployed or fell on hard times he could turn

to his wife for support, particularly if the available jobs were distasteful to him. Q5 It was not unusual for

the wife to go out to do menial labor to support the family while the husband waited at home for more

suitable employment. Q19 Public sympathy, however, was not with the woman, who was presumed merely

to be fulfilling her wifely duties in serving her husband and her family.

In the traditional Chinese family a male, the head of the household, always had, at least titular, supreme

power over the others. In actual practice, however, power was often more widely distributed. Q15 Chinese

women learned long ago how to gain influence in the family. In financial affairs, for example, women had

the primary responsibility and made the decisions in running the household. The more well-off families

hired a family treasurer, an employee who over time might gain the status of an accepted family member

but who deferred in major decisions to the lady of the house. In most families the wife took care of

budgeting and bookkeeping, following the doctrine that men should mind business outside and women

inside the home. My grandmother Li held the purse strings in the family. My mother and all her sisters

managed their own families’ budgets. My mothers’ friends all enjoyed this responsibility. The husbands

would regularly turn over their earnings to their wives, keeping a small allowance for themselves. Even the

exceptional case of a husband managing the family finances was attributed to the individual ineptitude of

the wife in financial affairs, rather than the preferred choice for a man. For larger, more complicated

households, the wife and concubines—particularly the concubines—would hoard some “secret house

money” for rainy days, unbeknownst to their husband and master.

Traditional Chinese women participated actively in educating the young, especially during the children’s

formative years. Depending on the economic status of the family, a wet nurse might become the mothering

figure for the young child. A child might have more contact with the wet nurse than with his own biological

mother.

Q20 The traditional function of a Chinese marriage, and for many it still is today, was to extend the family

bloodline. Men and women married in order to procreate. A secondary function was social and economic.

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Q6 Marriage was the basic social support for the individual, since most social activities took place within

the family and the family unit provided the basic economic means of caring for the young. Marriage, then,

in traditional as well as in modern China, was never perceived as a romantic union between a man and a

woman, but as a social and economic family affair. Modern men and women do indeed fall in love before

the wedding, but love is not considered the primary requisite for a successful marriage.

Q17 In fact, even for Chinese men, romantic love did not occupy an important place. The main function of

sex was to carry on the family line. Q9 A second wife might be taken simply because the first wife had not

borne any sons.

The relationships among the husband and his several wives were always intriguing. Chinese women in the

same household evidently learned to be tolerant of one another. I remember my close relationship as a

teenager with an elderly gentleman who, over sixty, was living with his third wife. She was in her early

thirties and had borne him a son and a daughter. The first wife would come to visit, chatting amicably with

the third wife showing sisterly affection without a shred of jealousy. The first wife, herself in her sixties,

told me she had taken up Buddhism and was no longer interested in sex and it was just as well for the old

man to find it elsewhere in the family, rather than outside the home.

I gathered the old man was not as interested in having a younger wife for sex as in her bearing him another

son to carry on his name. However, I suspected things were not always harmonious in their household

when one day the third wife showed up at our house with her two young children. She asked for temporary

shelter, for she was planning to elope. Somehow she had found my address and decided to take a chance

with the first outsider who had entered her closely controlled family environment, though we were really

strangers. Shocked and concerned, I had little advice for her; being a child myself, except to turn to my

parents for help. My parents were torn between protecting her and feeling obligated to notify her husband.

Luckily for all of us, she had left enough clues for her husband to trace her and take her home. After the

storm was over I had the occasion to discuss this episode with the elderly gentleman. He was totally baffled

about why his third wife, who seemed to have all the material comforts and his undivided attention for

their son, would choose to leave him. He even showed me the large bank account and real estate holdings

he had accumulated on behalf of this son borne by the third wife. Little did he understand the stirrings of

discontent in a woman in such a repressed environment.

Before Liberation it was always assumed that a man was free to choose more than one wife. In Taiwan, the

ambiguous attempt to discourage polygamy Q23/Q2 by limiting formal legal status and legal rights to the

first wife only did not deter men from continuing to bring other women into the household. One of my high

school classmates, a girl from a prominent literary Taiwanese family, lived with her traditional father, who

had three wives: the first legal wife who was the mother of my class- mate; the second wife, originally their

chambermaid, whose plain looks made it apparent that her sole function in the household continued to be

serving the others; and the third wife, a sexy, flamboyant woman who had been a leading singer of Chinese

opera. Despite her standing as the legal wife, my friend’s mother was often in silent pain. I visited her

house often and was struck by the emotional trauma inevitably created by such an arrangement.

After the death of her husband a woman’s life might become even more unpleasant. Q4 Widowhood was

accepted only if the widow never married again. Local communities would set up monuments for widows

who remained chaste until they died. In old China it was considered better still if a wife died along with her

husband, by committing suicide. Although probably very rare, this was the saintly and noble ideal for the

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loyal bereaved wife. A widower, on the other hand, Q21 was expected to marry again, and the sooner the

better. He needed a woman to run his household and look after his children. None of the widows that I

personally knew ever remarried—my first aunt, Grandmother Li, my mother-in-law, and several other

aunts, all of whom became widows at a relatively young age.

It was always a mystery to me what a married woman did to meet her own needs. Given the total cultural

taboo against any interest in men other than her husband, there was little opportunity for a woman to

wander too far. Should infidelity be committed, a married woman could be stoned to death in certain

communities.Q7 It was also grounds for termination of the marriage contract, disgracing the woman’s

family forever. Not that Chinese women never developed any extra-marital relationships, they did so in

utter secrecy and in constant fear of discovery. The husband whose wife had wandered was usually

described as “wearing a green hat”; becoming a cuckold.

Since Liberation the status of married women has changed profoundly, both in the mainland and

elsewhere. Chinese views on marriage have, however, remained doggedly practical. During the Cultural

Revolution my cousin Zhenli married a man with a Q22 “pure ideology” and a farm background, both

considered good standards for choosing a marriage partner at that time. She married without developing

any preliminary bond with her future husband, having just broken off her long-standing relationship with a

man whose political background was considered questionable. Years later, after the end of the Cultural

Revolution, Zhenli ran into her former boyfriend again. Both were now working in the same city.

Zhenli recalled her own mixed emotions upon seeing her friend who by now was also married and

successful in his occupation. Zhenli told me she had a sense of regret that she had allowed the political

pressures of the times to dictate her own choice of a marriage partner. “Knowing what you know now,” I

asked, “would you have done anything differently?” Zhenli looked at me quizzically. “Probably not,” she

sighed. “You don’t really expect a Chinese to ignore the practical side of marriage, do you?” I said nothing.

Then Zhenli added, “You know romance has nothing to do with marriage.”

LENGTH: 2,362 WORDS

Questions 1 - 10


1. In Lin’s memory, brides in the old China were linked to separation, tears, fears, and uncertainty about

the future. F / O / X

2. In Taiwan, the limiting of formal legal status and rights to the first wife deterred men from choosing

more than one wife. F / O / X

3. Marrying, according to the traditional Chinese view, was primarily a family business, not the couple’s

affair. F / O / X

4. Widowhood in the old China was only acceptable if the widow never married again. F / O / X

5. It was highly unusual for a wife in old China to go out to do menial labor to support the family while the

husband waited at home for more suitable employment. F / O / X

6. Marriage was the basic social support for the individual, since most social activities took place within the

family. F / O / X

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7. Infidelity, on the part of a married woman, was not sufficient grounds for the termination of the

marriage contract. F / O / X

8. In the old China, many literary works were devoted to the celebration of romantic love. F / O / X

9. A man might take a second wife because his first had not borne any sons. F / O / X

10. Marriage based on romantic love is obviously preferable to the old Chinese marriage based on a

family’s genealogical, economic, and social interests. F / O / X

Questions 11 - 18

Inferences: Which four of the following eight statements, based on the selection, are most probably true?

11. The husband’s family unit demands considerable loyalty from a married couple. T / F

12. Most families looked for signs of romance in the couple whose marriage was being arranged. T / F

13. Additional wives in a household were welcomed by the official wife because they meant more hands

doing work. T / F

14. Despite the prohibitions and care the family took, most Chinese marriages turned out well and happily. T / F ?

15. Wives used traditional methods of financial control to establish their authority in the family. T / F

16. In general, the public was always more sympathetic to a wronged wife in matters of a domestic dispute. T / F

17. Lin implies that couples in a traditional marriage had sexual expectations that were sometimes

frustrated. T / F

18. The wife’s self-sacrifice is an important key to establishing harmony in a marriage. T / F

Questions 19 -24


19. When a wife did menial labor to support an out-of-work husband:

a. the husband’s family took her pay.

b. the neighbors sympathized with her.

c. people assumed that was her duty.

d. the husband did the housework.

20. The traditional function of a Chinese marriage is:

a. to provide harmony between men and women.

b. both religious and political in nature.

c. complicated by the practice of polygamy.

d. based on increasing the family.

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21. When a man’s wife died, he was expected to:

a. marry again almost immediately.

b. give his children to his wife’s family.

c. his wife’s dowry within a few years.

d. remain chaste until he died.

22. Among the practical considerations affecting Zhenli’s marriage was:

a. the age of her husband.

b. her husband’s work.

c. her husband’s family background.

d. her husband’s politics.

23. After Liberation the husband could have:

a. one legal wife.

b. no more than two legal wives.

c. any number of legal wives, but no illegal wives.

d. no illegal wives.

24. Sometimes before marriage a couple might:

a. talk with one another in the presence of their families.

b. see one another from a distance with their families present.

c. the chance of meeting the family they were to marry into.

d. establish a lengthy correspondence to see if they were compatible.

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McCarter, S., & Ash, J. (2003). IELTS Testbuilder with answer key (pp. 16-18, 55-57). Oxford: Macmilliam.

W10 Worms put new life into derelict site Poisoned soil at an old steelworks is being cleansed by thousands of worms, writes Mimi

Chakraborty.

THOUSANDS of deep-burrowing earthworms are going to help turn the Q1 long-derelict site of a steelworks

into woodland and a renewable energy park.

As part of a pioneering low-cost plan to reclaim the site of the former *Hallside steelworks at Cambuslang

near Glasgow, Scotland, worms are being used to accelerate the process of soil regeneration and to

transform the land, over time, into an attractive and financially productive site.

Hallside’s closure in 1979 put an end to more than 100 years of steel production. The surrounding land had

become heavily compacted and Q2 was too contaminated with heavy metals such as chromium, cadmium

and lead to support any kind of brick and mortar development.

The site’s 30 hectares were left abandoned until 1990, when a rescue plan put together by Q3 local

landscaping and earthmoving company, HL Banks, and the regional developer, Scottish Greenbelt, was

approved by local authorities.

Now the site has been covered by a two-metre layer of partially treated sewage material which has been

mixed with colliery waste. This will be converted into usable soil by about 21, 000 Q4 Lubricus terrestris

(garden lobworms) and Aporrectodea longa (blackheaded worms) that have been let loose on the site.

The specially raised hermaphrodites, which are self-impregnating, will spend the Q5 next five to ten years

chewing their way through the topping layer to create a soil structure able to sustain long-term plant

growth. Without them, the process could take up to 60 years.

Researchers at Bell College of Technology in nearby Hamilton examined the use of earthworms in land

regrading, and found that even in the hostile mixture of coal-tip waste and partially treated sewage,

earthworms were able to speed up the process of Q6 soil recomposition.

They selected different varieties of deeper-burrowing earthworm species, whose bulk feeding and casting

actions, as well as their ability to improve the mineral content of soil, would increase the rate of Q6

reformulation much faster than the Q7 natural processes.

Sean Ince, of Bell’s department of biology, says: ‘The idea is that earthworms will contribute in a cumulative

way to further soil binding, and that they will aerate and add Q8 nitrogen to the soil covering the Hallside

site.’

At the same time, Scottish Greenbelt has begun planting the area with Q9 250,000 trees — including willow

and alder - specially selected for their ability to grow on degraded land. These will have the dual function of

extracting contaminants from the soil through their root systems, and being harvested for wood burning or

chipboard manufacture. By using the cash raised from wood harvesting, David Craven, director of Scottish

Greenbelt, says he expects Hallside to be self-financing.

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‘The first tranche of trees was planted in April and they are now over six feet tall, despite dry weather

through the summer’ he says. ‘The fields are being planted on a four-year rotation basis and will be used to

help us meet our costs.’

Craven says the cost of land bio-remediation — the labour-intensive process of removing soil for chemical

and bacterial cleansing — could have been more than £30 million.

At Bell College, Ince says: ‘There’s a whole legacy of toxic soil contamination going back many years. There

is physical degradation of the soil as well as contamination from metals, including lead, chromium and

arsenic.’

Sampling of the soil at regular intervals over the next few years will give an indication of the level of

contaminants. Within less than 20 years the land could be re-integrated into the community. Hopes of a

successful outcome at Hallside have paved the way for similar regeneration plans for the nearby *Gartoosh

steelworks and at Glengarnock in Ayrshire.

__TIP__________________________________________________________________________

*Remember: Words with capital letters signal either the beginning of a sentence, or a name. e.g.,

Hallside and Gartoosh are names of steelworks.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Questions 1—5 Choose the appropriate letters A—D.

1 The Hallside site has been

A turned into a steelworks from a woodland and an energy park.

B in use as an energy park.

C disused for a long period of time.

D disused for a short period of time.

2 After more than one hundred years of steel production at Hallside,

A the land could not be used for anything.

B it was impossible to use the land to build on.

C the land could then be built on.

D the land could be used for any purpose.

3 The plan to reclaim Hallside was proposed by

A Scottish Greenbelt and the regional developer.

B local authorities.

C a local landscaping company and HL Banks.

D Scottish Greenbelt and HL Banks.

4 In the conversion of the soil at the Hallside site,

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A two types of worms are being used.

B three types of worms are being used.

C many types of worms are being used.

D thousands of different types of worms are being used.

5 The soil regeneration at the Hallside site will take

A 60 years.

B between 5 and 10 years.

C up to 60 years.

D less than five years.

Questions 6—9: Choose ONE OR TWO WORDS from Reading Passage 3 for each answer.

6 In research at Bell College, worms were used that quickened soil reformulation (or composition). 7 The Bell researchers chose worms that would convert contaminated soil more rapidly than the natural processes. 8 The soil at HalIside will be enriched by adding air and nitrogen. 9 Contaminants will be removed from the soil by selected trees.

Questions 10—13: Choose ONE phrase from the list of phrases A—H in the box below to

complete each of the following sentences 10—13.

10 The Hallside site is expected to…G

11 Bio-remediation at Hallside could…E

12 Within 20 years, the land at Hallside could…B

13 Similar regeneration plans may…D

A still be contaminated. B be in use again by the community. C work better elsewhere. D take place at other steelworks. E have cost millions of pounds. F have been labour intensive. G pay for itself. H cost more than bio-remediation.

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.Jakeman, V. & McDowell, C. (2001). IELTS Practice Tests Plus (pp. 98-108). Harlow, UK: Pearson Education.

It’s ecological Planning an eco-friendly holiday can be confusing for the well-meaning traveller, says Steve

Watkins. But help is now at hand.

If there were awards for tourism phrases that have been hijacked, diluted and misused, then Q14

‘ecotourism’ would earn top prize. The term first surfaced in the early 1980s, reflecting a surge in

environmental awareness and a realisation by tour operators that many travellers wanted to

believe their presence abroad would not have a negative impact. It rapidly became the hottest

way to market a holiday.

These days, the ecotourism label is used to cover anything from a two-week tour living with

remote Indonesian tribes, to a one-hour motorboat trip through an Australian gorge. In fact, any

tour that involves cultural interaction, natural beauty spots, wildlife or a bit of soft adventure is

likely to be included as ecotourism. Q15 There is no doubt the original motives behind the

movement were honourable attempts to provide a way for those who cared to make informed

choices, but the lack of regulations and a standard industry definition left Q18 many travellers lost

in an ecotourism jungle.

It is easier to understand why the ecotourism market has become so overcrowded when we look

at its wider role in the world economy. According to World Tourism Organisation figures,

ecotourism is worth US$20 billion a year and makes up one-fifth of all international tourism. Add

to this an annual growth rate of around five per cent and the pressure for many operators, Q17

both in developed and developing countries, to join in is compelling. Without any widely

recognised accreditation system, the consumer has been left to investigate the credentials of an

operator themselves. This is a time-consuming process and many travellers usually take what an

operator says as true, only adding to the proliferation of fake eco-tours.

However, there are several simple questions that will provide qualifying evidence of a company’s

commitment to minimise its impact on the environment and maximise the benefits to the tourism

area’s local community. For example, does the company use recycled or stainable, locally

harvested materials to build its tourist properties? Do they pay fair wages to all employees? Do

they offer training to employees? It is common for city entrepreneurs to own tour companies in

country areas, which can mean the money you pay ends up in the city rather than in the

community being visited. By taking a little extra time to investigate the ecotourism options, it is

not only possible to guide your custom to worthy operators but you will often find that the

experience they offer is far more rewarding.

The ecotourism business is still very much in need of change and a standardised approach. There

are a few organisations that have sprung up in the last ten years or so that endeavour to educate

travellers and operators about the benefits of responsible ecotourism. Founded in 1990, the Q20

Ecotourism Society (TES) is a non-profit organisation of travel industry, conservation and

ecological professionals, which aims to make ecotourism a genuine tool for conservation and

Q25

Q26

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sustainable development. Helping to create inherent economic value in wilderness environments

and threatened cultures has undoubtedly been one of the ecotourism movement’s most notable

achievements. Q21 TES organises an annual initiative to further aid development of the

ecotourism industry. This year it is launching ‘Your Travel Choice Makes a Difference’, an

educational campaign aimed at helping consumers understand the potential positive and negative

impacts of their travel decisions. TES also offers guidance on the choice of eco-tour and Q22 has

established a register of approved ecotourism operators around the world.

A leading ecotourism operator in the United Kingdom is Tribes, which won the 1999 Tourism

Concern and Independent Traveller’s World ‘Award for Most Responsible Tour Operator’. Amanda

Marks, owner and director of Tribes, believes that the ecotourism industry still has some way to go

to get its house in order. Until now, no ecotourism accreditation scheme has really worked,

principally because there has been no systematic way of checking that accredited companies

actually comply with the code of practice. Amanda believes that the most promising system is the

Q27 recently re-launched Green Globe 21 scheme. The Green Globe 21 award is based on the

sustainable development standards contained in Agenda 21 from the 1992 Earth Summit and was

originally coordinated by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC). Q23 The scheme is now an

independent concern, though the WTTC still supports it. Until recently, tour companies became

affiliates and could use the Green Globe logo merely on payment of an annual fee, hardly a

suitable qualifying standard. However, in November 1999 Green Globe 21 introduced an annual,

independent check on operators wishing to use the logo.

Miriam Cain, from the Green Globe 21 marketing development, explains that current and new

affiliates will now have one year to ensure that their operations comply with Agenda 21 standards.

If they fail the first inspection, they can only reapply once. The inspection process is not a cheap

option, especially for large companies, but the benefits of having Green Globe status and the

potential operational cost savings that complying with the standards can bring should be

significant. ‘We have joint ventures with organisations around the world, including Australia and

the Caribbean, that will allow us to effectively check all affiliate operators,’ says Miriam. Q24 The

scheme also allows destination communities to become Green Globe 21 approved.

For a relatively new industry, it is not surprising that ecotourism has undergone

teething pains. However, there are signs that things are changing for the better.

With a committed and unified approach by the travel industry, local

communities, travellers and environmental experts could make ecotourism a tag

to be proud of and trusted.

http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://blog.yackiemobile.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/ecologo4.jpg&imgrefurl=http://blog.yackiemobile.com/?p=155&usg=__hlhSjBbXPOq-cOOuGqmiqHaL1X0=&h=248&w=275&sz=21&hl=en&start=1&zoom=1&tbnid=1cQOFtyx2i_cTM:&tbnh=103&tbnw=114&ei=GXltTsSUM8zrmAW5mbAv&prev=/search?q=ecotourism&hl=en&sa=X&tbm=isch&prmd=ivnsb&itbs=1

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Y

Y

NG

N

N

NG

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TIP: SHORT-ANSWER QUESTIONS

These are generally straightforward questions requiring short, factual answers taken from the text. For example, you may have to give a name, a year or quantity. You may need to write up to three words. METHOD

Check the instructions to see exactly what kind of answer

is required (for e.g., no more than one word, no more

than three words or a number)

Use skimming skills to find the relevant section and then

scan the text to find the information you need.

Make sure that you don’t write more than three words. If

your answer is too long, look for words that can be

omitted (e.g., articles, propositions, etc.)

World Tourism Organisation

City entrepreneurs

(the) 1992 Earth Summit

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Roseberry, R. L. & Weinstock, R. (1992). Reading etc. (pp. 108-114). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Oceans of death

The pollution of the earth’s soil and water has become an issue of great concern. Until recently, most of

that concern has focused on the land portion of the planet, where pollution directly affects people in their

daily lives. Now, however, we have begun to realize that marine pollution is equally important. According

to Patin (1982, pp. 3-4), marine pollution is the condition that results when people introduce into the seas

substances harmful to life, health, resources, activities, or comforts.

Marine pollution is far from new. For over a million years, people have thought of the sea as a convenient

place to throw their garbage. And it is true that Q2. the sea has a great capacity for absorbing organic

wastes. Some of these wastes are eaten directly by the larger fishes. Others quickly decompose in sea

water, i.e., they dissolve into a kind of organic soup that provides food to countless species of single-celled

plant and animal life.

As civilizations grew, more and different pollutants were dumped into the seas. Still, this pollution did not

really threaten the marine environment. The seas seemed capable of coping with anything that people

could throw at them. This situation changed abruptly, Q2. however, with the onset of the Industrial

Revolution. Suddenly, factories began dumping enormous quantities of materials into the seas. Especially

in some coastal areas near large cities, ocean pollution began to threaten marine life. For the first time, the

oceans began to fail in their ability to recycle humanity’s waste.

It is becoming clear that marine pollution is a threat not only to marine life but to human life as well. As we

have seen, one of the major ways we pollute the seas is to throw into them various types of waste and

materials foreign to the marine environment. It is important to identify these different types of pollutants

and to understand the effects of each on marine and human life.

Q1. Marine pollutants fall into two major categories: bio degradable and non-biodegradable substances.

Q3. Biodegradable substances are materials that can be taken apart by natural processes within a short

time. Such materials are usually not very harmful. One common biodegradable pollutant in the oceans is

Q1. human waste from sewage. Marine biologist John L Culliney (p. 11) explains that in small quantities, it

does not threaten the environment. In larger quantities, however it provides a habitat for bacteria, which

use up all the available oxygen in the area. As a result, all the fish in the region die. Sewage also contains

viruses that are harmful to humans. Shellfish, particularly clams and oysters, accumulate these viruses in

large quantities. When people eat shellfish, they increase their chances of getting certain diseases. One

such disease is polio, a viral disease causing paralysis and sometimes death. Another is hepatitis, a serious

disease of the liver.

A greater threat to marine life and eventually to human life is Q1. various types of non-biodegradable

substances. Q3. These are materials that cannot be quickly broken down into basic natural parts. One

such material comes from Q1. plastic containers that are dropped overboard in large quantities from cruise

ships. These containers break into tiny particles in the surf. Q4. The particles get stuck in the digestive

systems of baby fish and one-celled creatures called plankton. By preventing the food from entering the

bodies of these creatures, the small particles cause them to die (Culliney, 1979, pp. 12425). Q4.This has an

effect on larger marine animals that depend on plankton for their food.

Another group of non-biodegradable pollutants mentioned by Culliney consists of the Q1. toxic chemicals

that are dumped into the sea as wastes from factory production. Among these chemicals are the insecticide

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DDT and a class of industrial chemicals called PCB’s. All these chemicals have been closely linked with

cancers in humans. In addition, small quantities of these chemicals affect the growth rate of many species

and also make them less adaptable to normal environmental changes. In time, these effects could kill off

entire species. In larger quantities, these toxic chemicals cause immediate death. Furthermore, the

chemical poisoning of marine species can result indirectly in the poisoning of human beings. Some one-

celled marine organisms readily absorb dangerous chemicals. As Culliney (1979, p 193) observes, “In

laboratory experiments, 98 percent of the DDT or PCB stirred into a jar of seawater was absorbed by

plankton in six seconds”. At first glance, the poisoning of plankton may not seem a cause of concern for

humans, however, the very important process of food magnification is at work in the seas as elsewhere. In

this process, the smallest forms of life, such as plankton, absorb dangerous chemicals from the sea. Larger

animals eat the plankton over a wide area. These animals are in turn eaten by still larger predators over a

much wider area. And the process continues right up the food chain to humans, who catch and eat the

larger fishes. Any one of these fishes may contain poisons that were originally spread over many hectares

of the ocean (Culliney, I99 p 194). In this way, toxic chemicals in the seas may be even more dangerous to

people than to marine plants and animals. Furthermore, two or more toxic substances, when acting

together, produce more harmful effects than they can produce individually. Hence, the many thousands of

poisonous materials already in the oceans can lead to countless hazards (Culliney, 1979, p. 204).

A third type of non-biodegradable substance that causes serious pollution is Q1. oil. Although oil leaks

naturally into the sea from sources beneath the ocean bottoms, the quantities produced by this natural

leakage are small. Humans, however, are responsible for the dumping of ten times as much oil into the seas

(Culliney, 1979, pp. 256-257). Some areas, such as the Gulf of Mexico and the waters off the coast of

southern California, have become badly polluted as a result of offshore oil drilling. Also, major oil spills,

such as the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in March 1989, have destroyed entire ecosystems. These may

take decades or even centuries to recover As Culliney (1979, pp. 268-269) points out, oil can seriously

weaken fish, especially at critical periods in their lives. In addition, oil can change the normal behaviours of

fish and thus reduce the chances for survival. There is also a limit to the amount of oil fish can tolerate

without dying.

Still another category of non-biodegradable pollutants is Q1. heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury, and

lead (Palm, 1982, pp 5661). This type of marine pollution has had the most immediate and devastating

effects on people. Kelp, a seaweed eaten by the Japanese, can concentrate cadmium in huge amounts.

Cadmium has been linked to a degenerative bone disease in Japan. In Japanese, the disease is called itai-

itai, meaning “ouch-ouch,” because of the extreme pain it causes (Culliney, 1979, p. 281). And in 1965, six

people in Nigata, Japan, were killed and forty one were crippled from eating fish that contained mercury.

Of course, these metals affect fishes as well. Even low levels of heavy metal pollution appear to be harmful

to almost all species of marine life (Patin, 1982, p. 148).

Recognizing the types of marine pollution and understanding their effects on marine and human life are

essential. The next step is to identify areas where marine pollution disasters are most likely to occur.

According to chemist and oceanographer Edward D Goldberg (1976, pp. 142-146), the greatest risks will be

in countries with large populations and large ratios of gross national product to area. Chances are even

greater for island countries or for countries where most of the population lives near the ocean. It is no

surprise, therefore, that the most serious ocean poisoning incidents to date have occurred in Japan and the

United States. Other high-risk areas include Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Netherlands. At the bottom of

the list are the developing countries of the Third World.

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All nations, but especially high-risk countries, must consider how to solve the problem of marine pollution.

Their solutions may determine the fate not only of marine plants and animals but of all humankind. In his

book After man: A zoology of the future, Dixon (1983) used his scientific knowledge and artistic imagination

to picture the earth millions of years from now. His world consists of a wonderful variety of plants and

animals that have evolved far beyond their ancestors that are living today. Only one animal is missing from

the scene: people. Why did our species finally vanish from the earth? Was there a nuclear war or a

worldwide epidemic of some deadly, uncontrollable disease? According to Dixon, the extinction of our

species was unavoidable and without glory. Our descendants died from a lack of the resources that they

had wasted and from the poisons of their own garbage and pollution

References

Culliney, J. L. (1979). The forests of the sea. New York, NY: Anchor Books. Dixon, D. (1983). After man: A zoology of the future. New York, NY: St Martin’s Press Goldberg, E. D. (1976). The health of the oceans. Paris, France: The Unesco Press Gross, M. G., & Palmer, H. D. (1979). Waste disposal and dredging activities: The geological perspective In H

D Palmer & M. G. Gross (Eds.). Ocean dumping and marine pollution (pp. 1-7). Stroudsburg, PA: Dowden, Hutchinson & Ross.

Patin, S. A. (1982). Pollution and the biological resources of the oceans. Translated by Freund Publishing House. London. Butterworth

* NB: Most answers are found in several different parts of the text.*

Checking Your Comprehension

1. List the main marine pollutants. Biodegradable (eg. sewage) & non-biodegradable (plastic containers,

toxic chemicals, oil & heavy metals).

2. Why was ocean pollution not a serious problem before advanced technology? After the Industrial

Revolution, the ocean could no longer cope with the quantity of waste dumped in the sea.

3. What is the difference between biodegradable and non-biodegradable pollution? Biodegradable

pollutants break down fast naturally, but non-biodegradable cannot.

4. From what you have read here, can you think of a way to use a living species to test the degree of

pollution in water? eg. By testing plankton or creatures that eat them, scientists could ascertain the

amount of chemicals and/ or plastic in the sea.

Analyzing the Structure

1. Which paragraphs in the reading passage contain the introduction, the body, and the conclusion?

Introduction: Paras 1-4; Body Paragraphs: 5-9; Conclusion: 10

2. Identify the thesis statement of the passage. In what way does the passage fulfil the requirements of the

thesis statement? Paragraphs 5-8 classify the types of pollutants and describe their effects.

3. Rewrite the definition of the word itai-itai in one sentence, including the class and characteristics. eg:

Itai-itai is the Japanese name for a degenerative bone disease caused by a concentration of cadmium

found in seaweed that is eaten, and is characterised by extreme pain, crippling or death.

For Discussion

1. What are some steps that individuals could take to help reduce ocean pollution?

2. Discuss the statement, “There is only one pollution . . . people”.

3. What human activities would be affected by extreme pollution of the oceans?

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Healy, J. (2003). Adapted from: Bradsher, K. (2002). High and mighty: SUVs - The world's most dangerous

vehicles and how they got that way. In GLW, March 12th

, 2003. Public Affairs Press.

W11 SUVs: Profits fuel the ‘highway arms race’

Phil Shannon



(1) Menacing fuel-burner

(2) Many standards escaped

(3) A disproportionate death toll

(4) Nader agrees

(5) Profit motive provides stimulus

(6) The most significant risk for SUVs

(7) Roll-overs from stationary objects

(8) Dangerous competition

(9) Most paralysis cases & many deaths

(10) Staggering increase

(11) Missing crumple zones

(12) Escaping controls

(13) Bigger & better

(14) Collisions kill & injure other cars’ occupants

paragraph A 1. Menacing fuel-burner paragraph B _10___ paragraph C _8___ paragraph D _5___ paragraph E _12___ paragraph F _2___ paragraph G _14___ paragraph H _6___ paragraph I _3___

A Explorer, Patrol, Land Cruiser, Discovery, Range Rover, Jackaroo — the names say it all: a car for adventure, for taming the wild and, with their menacing appearance, for taming the other critters out there in the jungle that is modern-day urban traffic. Q1 “Mess with me and you die”, announces the heavy, tall, petrol-guzzling, bullbar-toting four-wheel drive (or sports utility vehicle — SUV — as it is known in the US).

B Q2 The rise of the SUV, from one in every 100 new cars sold in the US in 1982 to one in six today, is documented in motoring journalist Keith Bradsher's High and Mighty, which has been enthusiastically endorsed by consumers' rights advocate and US Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader.

C Bradsher convincingly shows how these environment-mangling, global-warming, killing machines have become so dominant and dangerous, Q3 fuelling a “highway arms race” of bigger and more powerful SUVs.

D Q4 The desire of the “Big Three” car manufacturers — General Motors, Ford and Daimler-Chrysler — for a new and highly profitable vehicle, their strategic control of a domestic SUV market sheltering behind a 25% tariff wall on imports, and regulatory inaction by US governments committed to protecting the profits of the car industry, have resulted in 20 million SUVs (10%, and rising, of the US car population) roaming

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America's cities, a long way from the places where a four-wheel drive is useful (only 1% of US owners use their SUV for off-road driving).

E Q5 In the US, the SUV has long been exempted from safety, pollution and fuel economy regulations because car manufacturers, with a nod and a wink from Washington, have classified it as a light truck rather than a car. Regulations for cars are much stricter.

F Q6 SUVs are allowed longer stopping distances and less durable tires. They are exempt from bumper height standards (making SUVs a significant danger to occupants in cars hit by them). There are no standards for the two main safety problems with SUVs — stability (proneness to rollover) and “crash compatibility” (damage caused to other vehicles in collisions).

G The taller, heavier, stiff-frame SUVs — with their high front ends and minimal crumple zones — ensure that it is car occupants who die in SUV-car collisions. Q7 SUVs are safer for their occupants in crashes with cars but deadly to the “other guy”. There are still no relevant “crash compatibility” safety tests which SUVs must pass before being allowed onto the market.

H Q8 While SUV occupants are safer than car occupants in SUV-car collisions, there is an increased risk of a rollover — 62% of all SUV fatalities are from rollovers. Rollovers occur when vehicles are tripped or flipped over by striking another object, particularly fixed objects like guardrails. The SUV's high centre of gravity and off-road tyres make manoeuvrability and balance much more difficult in an emergency.

I SUVs rollover at three times the rate of cars and were responsible for 12,000 US deaths during the 1990s. Q9 Rollovers are extremely dangerous — although they account for only 1% of crashes in the US, they produce 25% of all traffic deaths. They place tremendous strains on the occupants' neck and spine, and SUV rollovers account for 75% of all traffic accident paralysis cases.

J Q10 Regulations to improve stability and to strengthen roofs to protect from rollover death and injury have been hotly opposed by the car manufacturers. Efforts by the government safety regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Authority, to set stability standards have been fought so successfully that all that remains is a requirement to place an rollover warning sticker on SUVs' sun visors and a SUV “rollover rating” (compromised by being based on only one occupant when a fully loaded SUV has an even higher centre of gravity and greater proneness to rollover).

K SUVs are also harmful on the environmental front. Q11 SUVs and light trucks can emit 5.5 times more smog-causing gases than cars. They are required to average only 20.7 miles per gallon in the US compared with 27.5 mpg for cars. The Environmental Protection Authority does nothing about this, being under the control of a White House averse to tightening fuel economy measures for SUVs.

L Alleged eco-friendly Democrats, like former president Bill Clinton, are just as culpable as the anti-regulation Republicans like George Bush. Q12 At his nomination in 1992, Clinton promised to raise light truck fuel economy standards; he immediately backed off once elected.

M Q13 The SUV gas gluttons now use up an extra 280,000 barrels of fuel each day than they would if they were classed as cars and subject to car fuel economy standards. Watch out Alaska Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, here come the drilling rigs! Watch out Iraq, here come the marines!

N The result for the car manufacturers of all this loving kindness from the government? Q14 Boomtime for share prices and executive salaries, and a return to the profit margin heydays of the 1960s. Ford was so flush from SUV profits (the Ford Explorer has been the top-selling SUV in the US every year since 1991) that it was able to buy Volvo in 1999 and the British Land Rover company in 2000.

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O Q15 There is mutual government and manufacturer joy over this outcome. Both share a commitment to “free enterprise”, that is profit-making free from regulations which would force expenditure on safety and fuel efficiency standards thus cutting into sales and profits.

P Governments ensure their (under-resourced) traffic safety regulators stay close to the car makers — Q16 there is often a traffic jam at the revolving door as senior regulators become executives at the companies they are supposed to regulate, and vice versa. As a lawyer for rollover victims said, “as long as big business runs the government of the United States, regulation is not going to be effective”.

Q SUVs are bad news for planet Earth and its people. The US still accounts for two-thirds of the world's SUV sales, Q17 but the rest of the world is catching up. In Australia, four-wheel drives, with the Ford Explorer leading the way, now make up 13% of the new car market (close to the 17% of the US) and, like the US, Australia allows SUVs to emit more polluting gases than cars.

R Bradsher conservatively estimates that, by substituting for cars, SUVs currently cause an excess 3000 deaths a year in the US — Q18 1000 extra deaths from rollovers, 1000 more from occupants hit by SUVs and Q19 1000 more from respiratory deaths from the extra smog caused by polluting gases emitted by SUVs. These are “3000 needless deaths a year in the United States — as many people annually as died in the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11, 2001”.

S No crusade is being waged by the Bush administration to avenge the victims of the car manufacturers' fanatical pursuit of profits. Q20 After all, the manufacture of unsafe products, deceptive and cynical marketing, the failure to act on known problems and government laxity on safety and environmental regulation — these are all part of capitalism and the sorry SUV saga is just another chapter in this system's human and environmental cost.






10. Automobile makers actively lobby governments Y / N/ NG

11. SUVs pollute five and a half times as much as other cars Y / N/ NG

12. Politicians are frightened of car makers Y / N/ NG

13. SUVs waste huge amounts of fuel Y / N/ NG

14. Automobile companies are making higher profits nowadays Y / N/ NG

15. Governments are very concerned about SUVs Y / N/ NG

16. Many car industry managers become transport officials Y / N/ NG

17. Australia refuses to follow the US lead Y / N/ NG

18. There are three thousand extra deaths from rollovers Y / N/ NG

19. SUV pollution kills about one thousand extra people annually in the US Y / N/ NG

20. The government & producers know SUVs are unsafe Y / N/ NG

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from: Ackerman, D. (1990). A natural history of the senses. Random House, Inc.

The face of beauty

Diane Ackerman

The one thing Diane Ackerman tells us here is that beauty is more than skin deep, it is part of our

emotional lives. Therefore, both men and women have, from early times, devised cosmetic means of

improving their appearance. Plastic surgery in our time is one alternative that has proved popular

among people in many cultures as a means of improving appearances. Beyond personal beauty is

beauty in nature and in nature’s products, such as brilliant jewels.

In a study in which men were asked to look at photographs of pretty women, it was found they greatly

preferred pictures of women whose pupils were dilated. Such pictures caused the pupils of the men’s eyes

to dilate as much as 30 percent. Of course, this is old news to women of the Italian Renaissance and

Victorian England alike, who used to drop belladonna (a poisonous plant in the nightshade family, whose

name means “beautiful woman”) into their eyes to enlarge their pupils before they went out with

gentlemen. Our pupils expand involuntarily when we’re aroused or excited; thus, just seeing a pretty

woman with dilated pupils signalled the men that she found them attractive, and that made their pupils

begin a body-language tango in reply. When I was on shipboard recently, travelling through the ferocious

winds and waves of Drake Passage and the sometimes bouncy waters around the Antarctic Peninsula, the

South Orkneys, South Georgia, and the Falklands, I noticed that many passengers wore a scopolamine

patch behind one ear to combat seasickness. Greatly dilated pupils, a side effect of the patch, began to

appear a few days into the trip; everybody one met had large, welcoming eyes, which no doubt encouraged

the feeling of immediate friendship and camaraderie. Some people grew to look quite zombielike, as they

drank in wide gulps of light, but most seemed especially open and warm. Had they checked, the women

would have discovered that their cervixes were dilated, too. In professions where emotion or sincere

interests need to be hidden, such as gambling or jade-dealing, people often wear dark glasses to hide

intentions visible in their telltale pupils.

We may pretend that beauty is only skin deep, but Aristotle was right when he observed that “beauty is a

far greater recommendation than any letter of introduction.” Q1 The sad truth is that attractive people do

better in school, where they receive more help, better grades, and less punishment; at work, where they

are rewarded with higher pay, more prestigious jobs, and faster promotions; in finding mates, where they

tend to be in control of the relationships and make most of the decisions; and among total strangers, who

assume them to be interesting, honest, virtuous, and successful. After all, Q12 in fairy tales, the first stories

most of us hear, the heroes are handsome, the heroines are beautiful, and the wicked sots are ugly.

Children learn implicitly that good people are beautiful and bad people are ugly, and society restates that

message in many subtle ways as they grow older. So perhaps s not surprising that handsome cadets at

West Point achieve a higher rank by the time they graduate, Q33 or that a judge is more likely to give an at-

tractive criminal a shorter sentence. In a 1968 study conducted in the New York City prison system, men

with scars, deformities, and other physical defects were divided into three groups. The first group received

cosmetic surgery, the second intensive counselling and therapy, and the third no treatment at all. A year

later, when the researchers checked to see how the men were doing, they discovered that those who had

received cosmetic surgery had adjusted the best and were less likely to return to prison. In experiments

conducted by corporations, when different photos were attached to the same résumé, the more attractive

person was hired. Prettier babies are treated better than homelier ones, not just by strangers but by the

baby’s parents as well. Mothers snuggle, kiss, talk to, play more with their baby if it’s cute; and fathers of

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cute babies are also more involved with them. Q2 Attractive children get higher grades on their

achievement tests, probably because their good looks win praise, attention, and encouragement from

adults. In a 1975 study, teachers were asked to evaluate the records of an eight-year-old who had a low IQ

and poor grades. Every teacher saw the same records, but to some the photo of a pretty child was

attached, and to others that of a homely one. The teachers were more likely to recommend that the

homely child be sent to a class for retarded children. The beauty of another can be a valuable accessory.

One particularly interesting study asked people to look at a photo of a man and a woman, and to evaluate

only the man. As it turned out, if the woman on the man’s arm was pretty, the man was thought to be

more intelligent and successful than if the woman was unattractive.

Shocking as the results of these and similar experiments might be, they confirm what we’ve known for

ages: Like it or not, a woman’s face has always been to some extent a commodity. A beautiful woman is

often able to marry her way out of a lower class and poverty. We remember legendary beauties like

Cleopatra and Helen of Troy as symbols of how beauty can be powerful enough to cause the downfall of

great leaders and change the career of empires. American women spend millions on makeup each year; in

addition, there are the hairdressers, the exercise classes, the diets, the clothes. Handsome men do better

as well, but for a man the real commodity is height. One study followed the professional lives of 17,000

men. Those who were at least six feet tall did much better—received more money, were promoted faster,

rose to more prestigious positions. Q5 Perhaps tall men trigger childhood memories of looking up to

authority—only our parents and other adults were tall, and they had all the power to punish or protect, to

give absolute love, set our wishes in motion, or block our hopes.

Q4 The human ideal of a pretty face varies from culture to culture, of course, and over time, as Abraham

Cowley noted in the seventeenth century:

Beauty, thou wild fantastic ape

Who dost in every country change thy shape!

But in general what we are probably looking for is a combination of mature and immature looks—the big

eyes of a child, which make us feel protective, the high cheekbones and other features of a fully developed

woman or man, which make us feel sexy. In an effort to look sexy, we pierce our noses, elongate our

earlobes or necks, tattoo our skin, bind our feet, corset our ribs, dye our hair, have the fat liposuctioned

from our thighs, and alter our bodies in countless other ways. Throughout most of western history, Q11

women were expected to be curvy, soft, and voluptuous, real earth mothers radiant with sensuous fertility.

It was a preference with a strong evolutionary basis: A plump woman had a greater store of body fat and

the nutrients needed for pregnancy, was more likely to survive during times of hunger, and would be able

to protect her growing foetus and breast-feed it once it was born. Q6 In many areas of Africa and India, fat

is considered not only beautiful but prestigious for both men and women. In the United States, in the

Roaring Twenties and also in the Soaring Seventies and Eighties, when ultrathin was in, Q11 men wanted

women to have the figures of teenage boys, and much psychological hay could be made from how this

reflected the changing role of women in society and the work place. These days, most men I know prefer

women to have a curvier, reasonably fit body, although most women I know would still prefer to be “too”

thin.

But the face has always attracted an admirer’s first glances, especially the eyes, which can be so smoldery

and eloquent, and throughout the ages people have emphasized their facial features with makeup.

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Archaeologists have found evidence of Egyptian perfumeries and beauty parlours dating to 4,000 B.C., and

makeup paraphernalia going back to 6,000 B.C. The ancient Egyptians preferred green eye shadow topped

with a glitter made from crushing the iridescent carapaces of certain beetles; kohl eye liner and mascara;

blue-black lipstick; red rouge; and fingers and feet stained with henna. They shaved their eyebrows and

drew in false ones. A fashionable Egyptian woman of those days outlined the veins on her breasts in blue

and coated her nipples with gold. Her nail polish signalled social status, red indicating the highest. Men also

indulged in elaborate potions and beautifiers; and not only for a night out: Tutankhamen’s tomb included

jars of makeup and beauty creams for his use in the afterlife. Roman men adored cosmetics, and

commanders had their hair coiffed and perfumed and their nails lacquered before they went into battle.

Cosmetics appealed even more to Roman women, to one of whom Martial wrote in the first century A.D.,

“While you remain at home, Galla, your hair is at the hairdresser’s; you take out your teeth at night and

sleep tucked away in a hundred cosmetic boxes—Q21 even your face does not sleep with you. Then you

wink at men under an eyebrow you took out of a drawer that same morning.” A second-century Roman

physician invented cold cream, the formula for which has changed little since then. We may remember

from the Old Testament that Queen Jezebel painted her face before embarking on her wicked ways, a

fashion she learned from the high-toned Phoenicians in about 850 B.C. In the eighteenth century, European

women were willing to eat Arsenic Complexion Wafers to make their skin whiter; it poisoned the

haemoglobin in the blood so that they developed a fragile, lunar whiteness. Rouges often contained such

dangerous metals as lead and mercury, and when used as lip-stain they went straight into the bloodstream.

Seventeenth-century European women and men sometimes wore beauty patches in the shape of hearts,

suns, moons, and stars, applying them to their breasts and face, to draw an admirer’s eye away from any

imperfections, which, in that era, too often included smallpox scars.

Studies conducted recently at the University of Louisville asked college men what they considered to be the

ideal components in a woman’ s face, and fed the results into a computer. They discovered that their ideal

woman had wide cheek-bones; eyes set high and wide apart; a smallish nose; high eyebrows; a small neat

chin; and a smile that could fill half of the face. On faces deemed “pretty,” each eye was one-fourteenth as

high as the face, and three-tenths its width; the nose didn’t occupy more than five percent of the face; the

distance from the bottom lip to the chin was one fifth the height of the face, and the distance from the

middle of the eye to the eyebrow was one-tenth the height of the face. Superimpose the faces of many

beautiful women onto these computer ratios, and none will match up. What this geometry of beauty boils

down to is a portrait of Q11 an ideal mother—a young, healthy woman. A mother had to be fertile, healthy,

and energetic to protect her young and continue to bear lots of children, many of whom might die in

infancy. Men drawn to such women had a stronger chance of their genes surviving. Capitalizing on the

continuing subtleties of that appeal, plastic surgeons sometimes advertise with extraordinary bluntness. A

California surgeon, Dr. Vincent Forshan, once ran an eight-page colour ad in Los Angeles magazine showing

a gorgeous young woman with a large, high bosom, flat stomach, high, tight buttocks, and long sleek legs

posing beside a red Ferrari. The headline over the photo ran: “Automobile by Ferrari ... body by Forshan.”

Question: What do those of us who aren’t tall, flawlessly sculpted adolescents do? Answer: Console

ourselves with how relative beauty can be. Q7 Although it wins our first praise and the helpless gift of our

attention, it can curdle before our eyes in a matter of moments. I remember seeing Omar Sharif in Doctor

Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia, and thinking him astoundingly handsome. When I saw him being

interviewed on television some months later, and heard him declare that his only interest in life was playing

bridge, which is how he spent most of his spare time, to my great amazement he was transformed before

my eyes into an unappealing man. Suddenly his eyes seemed rheumy and his chin stuck out too much and

none of the pieces of his anatomy fell together in the right proportions. I’ve watched this alchemy work in

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reverse, too, when a not-particularly-attractive stranger opened his mouth to speak and became ravishing.

Q15 Thank heavens for the arousing qualities of zest, intelligence, wit, curiosity, sweetness, passion, talent,

and grace. Thank heavens that, though good looks may rally one’s attention, a lasting sense of a person’s

beauty reveals itself in stages. Thank heavens, as Shakespeare puts it in A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.”

We are not just lovers of one another’s features, of course, but also of nature’s. Our passion for beautiful

flowers we owe entirely to insects, bats, and birds, since these pollinators and flowers evolved together;

flowers use colour to attract birds and insects that will pollinate them. We may breed flowers to the pitch

of sense pounding colour and smell we prefer, and we’ve greatly changed the look of nature by doing so,

Q13 but there is a special gloriousness we find only in nature at its most wild and untampered with. In our

“sweet spontaneous earth,” as E.E. Cummings calls it, we find startling and intimate beauties that fill us

with ecstasy. Perhaps, like him, we

notice the convulsed orange inch of moon

perching on this silver minute of evening

and our pulse suddenly charges like cavalry, or our eyes close in pleasure and, in a waking faint, we sigh

before we know what’ s happening. The scene is so beautiful it deflates us. Moonlight can reassure us that

there will be light enough to find our way over dark plains, or to escape a night-prowling beast. Sunset’s

fiery glow reminds us of the warmth in which we thrive. The gushing colours of flowers signal springtime

and summer, when food is plentiful and all life is radiantly fertile. Brightly coloured birds turn us on,

sympathetically, with their sexual flash and dazzle, because we’re atavists at heart and any sex pantomime

reminds us of our own. Q8 Still, the essence of natural beauty is novelty and surprise. In Cummings’s poem,

it is an unexpected “convulsed orange inch of moon” that awakens one’s notice. When this happens, our

sense of community widens—we belong not just to one another but to other species, other forms of

matter. “That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone,” John Berger writes in

The Sense of Sight, “that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would

lead us to believe.” Naturalists often say that they never tire of seeing the same mile of rain forest, or of

strolling along the same paths through the savannah. But, if you press them, they inevitably add that there

is always something new to behold, that it is always different. As Berger puts it, “beauty is always an

exception, always in despite of. This is why it moves us.” And yet we also respond passionately to the highly

organized way of beholding life we call art. To some extent Art is like trapping nature inside a paperweight.

Q16 Suddenly a locale, or an abstract emotion, is viewable at one’s leisure, falls out of flux, can be rotated

and considered from different vantage points, becomes as fixed and to that extent as holy as the landscape.

As Berger puts it:

All the languages of art have been developed as an attempt to transform the instantaneous into

the permanent. Art supposes that beauty is not an exception—is not in despite of—but is the basis

for an order.... Art is an organized response to what nature allows us to glimpse occasionally. . . .

the transcendental face of art is always a form of prayer.

Art is more complex than that, of course. Intense emotion is stressful, and Q9 we look to artists to feel for

us, to suffer and rejoice, to describe the heights of their passionate response to life so that we can enjoy

them from a safe distance, and get to know better what the full range of human experience really is. We

may not choose to live out the extremes of consciousness we find in Jean Genet or Edvard Munch, but it’s

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wonderful to peer into them. We look to artists to stop time for us, to break the cycle of birth and death

and temporarily put an end to life’s processes. It is too overwhelming for any one person to face up to

without going into sensory overload. Artists, on the other hand, court that intensity. We ask artists to fill

our lives with a cavalcade of fresh sights and insights, the way life was for us when we were children and

everything was new. In time, much of life’s spectacle becomes a polite blur, because if we stop to consider

every speckle-throated lily we will never get our letters filed or pomegranates bought.

Unbeautiful things often delight our eyes, too. Gargoyles, glitz, intense slabs of colour, organized tricks of

light. Sparklers and fireworks are almost painful to watch, but we call them beautiful. A flawless seven-carat

marquise diamond is pure scintillation, which we also call beautiful. Throughout history, people have

crafted nature’s rudest rocks into exquisite jewellery, obsessed with the way in which light penetrates a

crystal. We may find diamonds and other gems visually magnificent, but seeing them the way we do is a

recent innovation. It was only in the eighteenth century that the newly improved art of gem-cutting

produced the glittery stones full of fire and dazzle we admire. Before that, even the crown jewels appeared

dull and listless. But in the eighteenth century faceted cuts became fashionable, along with plunging

necklines. In fact, women often wore jewels pinned to the necklines of their gowns so that each might draw

attention to the other. Why should a gem strike us as beautiful? A diamond acts like a bunched prism. Light

entering a diamond ricochets around inside it, reflects from the back of it, and spreads out its colours more

ebulliently than through an ordinary glass prism. A skilled diamond cutter enables light to streak along

inside the stone’s many facets and shoot out of the jewel at angles. Turn the diamond in your hand, and

you see one pure colour followed by another. Variety is the pledge that matter makes to living things. We

find life’s energy, motion, and changing colours trapped in the small, dead space of a diamond, which one

moment glitters like neon and the next spews out sabers of light. Our sense of wonder ignites, things are in

the wrong place, a magical bonfire has been lit, the nonliving comes to life in an unexpected flash and

begins a small, brief dance among the flames. Watching faces or fireworks or a spaceship launch, the dance

is slower, but the colours and lights grow achingly intense as they surround and upstage us in a fantasia of

pure visual ecstasy.

LENGTH: 3,458 WORDS

Questions 1 – 10


1. Attractive people tend to do better in school, at work, in social situations, and in relationships

than less attractive people. F / O / X

2. Attractive children get higher grades on achievement tests because their good looks win praise,

attention, and encouragement from adults. F / O / X

3. Judges are likely to give attractive criminals shorter prison sentences. F / O / X

4. One consistent ideal of human beauty survives over time and across cultures. F / O / X

5. Tall men are favoured in the workplace because they trigger childhood memories of looking up to

authority. F / O / X

6. Everywhere across the globe, fat men and women are considered ugly. F / O / X

7. The attractions of physical beauty quickly disintegrate if unsupported by qualities such as intelligence,

wit, sweetness. F / O / X

8. Ackerman and Berger argue that the essence of natural beauty is novelty, surprise, and exception. F / O / X

9. Ackerman argues that by engaging intense emotions themselves, artists enable us to enjoy a range of

passionate human experience from a safe distance. F / O / X

10. Ackerman and Berger argue that the essence of artistic beauty is novelty, surprise, and exception. F / O / X

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Questions 11-17

Inferences: Which four of the following seven statements, based on the reading, are most probably true?

11. Given that beauty suggests good health, there is probably a genetic and evolutionary basis for the human

response to beauty. T / F

12. Attractive people will always accrue more advantages and be more successful than unattractive people. T / F

13. Given a choice between a formal garden and a meadow, most human beings would prefer the former. T / F

14. The desire of men and women for different forms of self-decoration appears to be both global and

timeless. T / F

15. Social and professional success probably seldom depends upon physical beauty alone. T / F

16. The discovery of beauty in art is completely subjective, based on no objective criteria. T / F

17. Throughout history, there have been instances where women seek beauty at the expense of their

health. T / F

Questions 18 - 21


18. When Ackerman states that in the fairy tales we hear as children, good people are beautiful and bad

people are ugly, she is making the point that:

a. more politically correct versions of fairy tales need to be written.

b. adults behave much like the characters in fairy stories.

c. fairy tales are dangerous for children.

d. the personal traits we associate with beauty may be culturally conditioned.

19. If attractive children are higher achievers because they receive better treatment than unattractive

children, we can conclude that:

a. unattractive children treated equally as well as attractive children would show similarly high

achievement.

b. having beauty is the single most important key to success.

c. unattractive children will never go very far in life.

d. children born with beauty are also born with intelligence and personality.

20. In one study involving two photographs, a man shown accompanying an attractive woman was deemed

more intelligent by viewers than a man shown accompanying an unattractive woman. This suggests

that:

a. the man in the first photograph was probably also very tall.

b. society is very hard on men who fall in love with unattractive women.

c. being associated with physically attractive people may be just as valuable as being attractive oneself.

d. photographs never lie.

21. When Martial writes of Galla in the first century A.D., “you take out your teeth at night and sleep

tucked away in a hundred cosmetic boxes,” he is:

a. criticizing denture wearers.

b. praising the power of cosmetics.

c. criticizing artificially created beauty.

d. praising Galla’ s ingenuity.

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Gardner, P. S. (1998). New directions: An integrated approach to reading, writing, and critical thinking (pp.

191-196). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

School is bad for children

John Holt

John Holt (1923—1985), an American teacher for many years at the elementary and secondary school levels,

was a vocal critic of the educational system in the United States. In addition to lecturing nationally and

internationally about educational reform, he wrote a number of books, including How Children Fail (1964),

How Children Learn (1967), Instead of Education (1976), and Learning All the Time (1989). The following essay

first appeared in the magazine the Saturday Evening Post in February 1969.

Almost every child, on the first day he sets foot in a school building, is smarter, more curious, less afraid of

what he doesn’t know, better at finding and figuring things out, more confident, resourceful, persistent and

independent than he will ever be again in his schooling or, unless he is very unusual and very lucky, for rest

of his life. Already, by paying close attention to and interacting with the world and people around him, and

without any school-type formal instruction, he has done a task far more difficult, complicated and abstract

than anything he will be asked to do in school, or than any of his teachers has done for years. He has solved

the mystery of language. He has discovered it. Babies don’t even know that language exists and he has

found out how it works and learned to use it. He has done it by exploring, by experimenting, by developing

his own model of the grammar of language, by trying it out and seeing whether it works, by gradually

changing it and refining it until it does work. And while he has been doing this, he has been learning other

things as well, including many of the “concepts” that the schools think only they can teach him, and many

that are more complicated than the ones they do try to teach him.

In he comes, this curious, patient, determined, energetic, skilful learner. We sit him down at a desk, and

what do we teach him? Many things. First, that learning is separate from living “You come to school to

learn’ we tell him, as if the child hadn’t been learning before, as if living were out there and learning was in

here, and there were no connections between the two. Secondly, that he cannot be trusted to learn and is

no good at it. Everything we teach about reading, a task far simpler than many that the child has already

mastered, says to him, “If we don’t make you read, you won’t, and if you don’t do it exactly the way we tell

you, you can’t.” In short, he comes to feel that learning is a passive process, something that someone else

does to you, instead of something you do for yourself.

In a great many other ways he learns that he is worthless, untrustworthy, fit only to take other people’s

orders, a blank sheet for other people to write on. Oh, we make a lot of nice noises in school about respect

for the child and individual differences, and the like. But our acts, as opposed to our talk, say to the child,

“Your experience, your concerns, your curiosities, your needs, what you know, what you want, what you

wonder about, what you hope for, what you fear, what you like and dislike, what you are good at or not so

good at—all this is of not the slightest importance, it counts for nothing. What counts here, and the only

thing that counts, is what we know, what we think is important, what we want you to do, think and be” The

child soon learns not to ask questions—the teacher isn’t there to satisfy his curiosity having learned to hide

his curiosity, he later learns to be ashamed of it. Given no chance to find out who he is—and to develop

that person, whoever it is—he soon comes to accept the adults’ evaluation of him.

He learns many other things. He learns that to be wrong, uncertain, confused, is a crime. Right Answers are

what the school wants, and he learns countless strategies for prying these answers out of the teacher, for

conning her into thinking he knows what he doesn’t know. He learns to dodge, bluff, fake, and cheat. He

learns to be lazy. Before he came to school, he would work for hours on end, on his own, with no thought

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of reward, at the business of making sense of the world and gaining competence in it. In school he learns,

like every buck private, how to goldbrick, how not to work when the sergeant isn’t looking, how to know

when he is looking, how to make him think you are working even when he is looking. He learns that in real

life you don’t do anything unless you are bribed, bullied or conned into doing it, that nothing is worth doing

for its own sake, or that if it is, you can’t do it in school. He learns to be bored, to work with a small part of

his mind, to escape from the reality around him into daydreams and fantasies—but not like the fantasies of

his preschool years, in which he played a very active part.

The child comes to school curious about other people, particularly other children, and the school teaches

him to be indifferent. The most interesting thing in the classroom—often the only interesting thing in it—is

the other children, but he has to act as if these other children, all about him, only a few feet away, are not

really there. He cannot interact with them, talk with them, smile at them. In many schools he can’t talk to

other children in the halls between classes; in more than a few and some of these in stylish suburbs, he

can’t even talk to them at lunch. Splendid training for a world in which, when you’re not studying the other

person to figure out how to do him in, you pay no attention to him.

MT Q3 In fact, he learns how to live without paying attention to anything going on around him. You might

say that school is a long lesson in how to turn yourself off, which may be one reason why so many young

people, seeking the awareness of the world and responsiveness to it they had when they were little, think

they can only find it in drugs. Aside from being boring, the school is almost always ugly, cold, inhuman—

even the most stylish, glass-windowed, $20-a-square-foot schools.

And so, in this dull and ugly place, where nobody ever says anything very truthful, where everybody is

playing a kind of role, as in a charade, where the teachers are no more free to respond honestly to the

students than the students are free to respond to the teachers or each other, where the air practically

vibrates with suspicion and anxiety, the child learns to live in a daze, saving his energies for those small

parts of his life that are too trivial for the adults to bother with, and thus remain his. It is a rare child who

can come through his schooling with much left of his curiosity, his independence or his sense of his own

dignity competence and worth.

So much for criticism. What do we need to do? Many things. Some are easy -we can do them right away.

Some are hard, and may take some time. Take a hard one first. We should abolish compulsory school

attendance. At the very least we should modify it, perhaps by giving children every year a large number of

authorized absences. Our compulsory school-attendance laws once served a humane and useful purpose.

They protected children’s right to some schooling, against those adults who would otherwise have denied it

to them in order to exploit their labor, in farm, store, mine or factory. Today the laws help nobody, not the

schools, not the teachers, not the children. DI Q1a To keep kids in school who would rather not be there

costs the schools an enormous amount of time and trouble to say nothing of what it costs to repair the

damage that these angry and resentful prisoners do every time they get a chance. Every teacher knows that

DIQ1b any kid in class who, for whatever reason, would rather not be there not only doesn’t learn anything

himself but makes it a great deal tougher for anyone else. As far as protecting the children from

exploitation, the chief and indeed only exploiters of children these days are the schools. Kids caught in the

college rush more often than not work 70 hours or more a week, most of it on paper busywork. DIQ1c For

kids who aren’t going to college, school is just a useless time waster, preventing them from earning some

money or doing some useful work, or even doing some true learning.

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Objections. “If kids didn’t have to go to school, they’d all be out in the streets.” No they wouldn’t. In the

first place, even if schools stayed the same way, children would spend at least some time there because

that’s where they’d be likely to find friends; it’s a natural meeting place for children. In the second place,

schools wouldn’t stay the way they are, they’d get better because we would have to start making them

what they ought to be right now - places where children would want to be. In the third place, those

children who did not want to go to school could find, particularly if we stirred up our brains and gave them

a little help, other things to do--the things many children now do during their summers and holidays.

There is something easier we could do. MT Q4 We need to get kids out of the school buildings, give them a

chance to learn about the world at first hand. It is a very recent idea, and a crazy one, that the way to teach

our young people about the world they live in is to take them out of it and shut them up in brick boxes.

Fortunately, educators are beginning to realize this. In Philadelphia and Portland, Oregon, to pick only two

places I happen to have heard about, plans are being drawn up for public schools that won’t have any

school buildings at all, that will take the students out into the city and help them to use it and its people as

a learning resource. In other words, students, perhaps in groups, perhaps independently, will go to

libraries, museums, exhibits, courtrooms, legislatures, radio and TV stations, meetings, businesses and

laboratories to learn about their world and society at first hand. A small private school in Washington is

already doing this. It makes sense. We need more of it.

As we help children get out into the world, to do their learning there, we can get more of the world into the

schools. Aside from their parents, most children never have any close contact with any adults except

people whose sole business is children. No wonder they have no idea what adult life or work is like. We

need to bring a lot more people who are not full-time teachers into the schools, and into contact with the

children. In New York City, under the Teachers and Writers Collaborative, real writers, working writers—

novelists, poets, playwrights—come into the schools, read their work, and talk to the children about the

problems of their craft. The children eat it up. In another school I know of a practicing attorney from a

nearby city comes in every month or so and talks to several classes about the law. Not the law as it is in

books but as he sees it and encounters it in his cases, his problems, his work. And the children love it, It is

real, grown-up, true, not My Weekly Reader, not “social studies,” not lies and baloney.

Something easier yet would be to let children work together, help each other, learn from each other and

each other’s mistakes. We now know from the experience of many schools, both rich-suburban and poor-

city, that children are often the best teachers of other children. What is more important, we know that

when a fifth- or sixth-grader who has been having trouble with reading starts helping a first-grader, his own

reading sharply improves. A number of schools are beginning to use what some call Paired Learning. This

means that you let children form partnerships with other children, do their work, even including their tests,

together, and share whatever marks or results this work gets-just like grownups in the real world. It seems

to work.

Let the children learn to judge their own work. A child learning to talk does not learn by being corrected all

the time if corrected too much, he will stop talking. He compares, a thousand times a day, the difference

between language as he uses it and as those around him use it. Bit by bit, he makes the necessary changes

to make his language like other people’s. In the same way, kids learning to do all the other things they learn

without adult teachers—to walk, run, climb, whistle, ride a bike, skate, play games, jump rope - compare

their own performance with what more skilled people do, and slowly make the needed changes. But in

school we never give a child a chance to detect his mistakes, let alone correct them. We do it all for him.

We act as if we thought he would never notice a mistake unless it was pointed out to him, or correct it

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unless he was made to. Soon he becomes dependent on the expert. We should let him do it himself. Let

him figure out, with the help of other children if he wants it, what this word says, what is the answer to

that problem, whether this is a good way of saying or doing this or that. If right answers are involved, as in

some math or science, give him the answer book, let him correct his own papers. Why should we teachers

waste time on such donkey work? Our job should be to help the kid when he tells us that he can’t find a

way to get the right answer. DI Q3 Let’s get rid of all this nonsense of grades, exams, marks. We don’t know

now and we never will know, how to measure what another person knows or understands. We certainly

can’t find out by asking him questions. All we find out is what he doesn’t know—which is what most tests

are for, anyway. Throw it all out, and let the child learn what every educated person must someday learn,

how to measure his own understanding, how to know what he knows or does not know.

We could also abolish the fixed, required curriculum. People remember only what is interesting and useful

to them, what helps them make sense of the world, or helps them get along in it. All else they quickly

forget, if they ever learn it at all. The idea of a “body of knowledge,” to be picked up in school and used for

the rest of one’s life, is nonsense in a world as complicated and rapidly changing as ours. Anyway, the most

important questions and problems of our time are not in the curriculum, not even in the hotshot

universities, let alone the schools.

Children want more than they want anything else, and even after years of miseducation, to make sense of

the world, themselves and other human beings. Let them get at this job, with our help if they ask for it in

the way that makes most sense to them.

Meaning and technique

The following questions and activities will help you understand the main ideas in the essay and the manner in

which it was written.

1. In one or two sentences, write down the main point you think Holt is making in the essay. Use your own

words. Placing children into schools to learn via curriculum is unnatural and, therefore, detrimental to the

learning process, as well as to children’s social and emotional development.

2. Describe the structure of the essay. What are its major divisions?

Problem & Critique + Solution (s)

3. What does Holt mean when he says that “school is a long lesson in how to turn yourself off” (par. 6)?

That school teaches children to stop being interested in teh people and the world around them.

4. Why does Holt think students should have more contact with the world outside the classroom?

To learn, first hand, about the ‘real’ world around them – something that would benefit their education

greater than classrooms.

Drawing inferences

1. Summarize Holt’s argument in favour of abolishing compulsory school attendance. To what extent do you

agree with him? It costs the school time; it can have a detrimental effect on motivated students; it prevents

uninterested students from doing something more productive.

2. In paragraph 10, Holt supports the notion of schools without school buildings. Do you see any drawbacks to

these “schools without walls,” as some people call them? Students’ own answers (suggestions = ss may not

spend time productively; difficult for teachers to supervise ss)

3. Why does Holt believe schools should get rid of exams and grades? Do you think this is a good idea? Why or

why not? Because we cannot accurately ascertain how much a student knows; exams and grades merely

indicate how much a student doesn’t know

4. Think of a question of your own to ask your classmates about an issue raised in Holt’s essay. Students’ own

answers

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Gibson, C., Rusek, W., & Swan, A. (1994). The ABC of IELTS. Practice tests in reading and writing (pp. 5-8). Adelaide, South Australia: University of South Australia.

W12 Mathematicians learn how to tame Chaos

A. For the past two years, mathematicians at the University of Maryland, led by Troy Shinbrot, have been

developing theoretical methods* of controlling chaotic systems, of which the weather is a particularly

complicated example. This month, they published the first demonstration of their ability to fully control

chaos in the real world. They ‘tamed’ a strip of magnetic tape flapping chaotically in a magnetic field. They

say the technique might be extended to more complicated examples of chaos.

B. ‘I think in some circumstances it will be possible to shape weather patterns,’ says Shinbrot. ‘I do not think

you will be able to say “I do not want it to rain on the East End of London on 3 June”. But we hope to be

able to tackle the more general problem of generating patterns such as mini cyclones in turbulent systems.’

C. Chaotic systems are characterised by being

extremely sensitive to small perturbations—a

butterfly flapping its wings in China can, weeks later,

trigger a thunderstorm in Glasgow. This ‘butterfly

effect’ is at the root of the unpredictability in chaotic

systems, but Shinbrot exploits it to bring chaos under

control.

D. In the Maryland experiment, the researchers

clamped a piece of magnetic tape at one end so that

it was held pointing upwards. They then put the tape

in a horizontal magnetic field with two components, a

field of constant strength and one that varied

regularly. Left to itself, the magnetism forced the

tape to repeatedly buckle and stiffen in an

unpredictable and strictly chaotic way.

E. In theory, the tape had several cycles of behaviour-patterns of buckling and stiffening—which could

repeat themselves indefinitely. However, the tape was so sensitive to tiny knocks, from small breaths of air

for example, that it was easily bumped out of a cycle. The tape hopped between cycles so quickly that its

behaviour was random.

F. The experimenters’ aim was to shift the tape into a particular cycle and keep it there. To do this, they

‘nudged’ the tape by varying the constant part of the magnetic field. A laser monitored the position of the

tape. Once a second, the result was fed into a computer which calculated how to adjust the magnetic field.

When controlled in this way, the ribbon reached the target cycle 25 times as fast as if it had been left to

itself. Once the ribbon had reached the target cycle, the researchers were able to keep it there. According

to Edward Ott, one of Shinbrot’s colleagues, ‘You start nowhere near where you want to be. If you make

the alterations sensitively and cleverly, you can direct the system from A to B.’

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Questions 1—4

Answer questions 1—4, using one word selected from Reading Passage 1 for each answer.

1. Give an example of a complicated system. __weather__

2. What kind of tape was used in the experiment? __magnetic___

3. How long could the cycles of behaviour continue? __infidelity__

4. What was used to follow the position of the tape? ___laser___

Questions 5—9

Read the statements numbered 5—9 below. According to the information given in the reading write T, if the

statement is true, F, if the statement is not true, and NG, if there is no information given.

5. Theoretically, the cycle of behaviour of the tape can continue forever. T / F / NG

6. The magnetic tape was clamped to a pointer. T / F / NG

7. The movement of the tape could not be followed. T / F / NG

8. The tape could not be moved from its cyclic pattern. T / F / NG

9. The experiment shows that all behaviour is predictable. T / F / NG

Questions 10—14

Reading Passage 1 has six paragraphs. From the list of paragraph headings (i-xi) choose the heading most

suitable for each paragraph and write the corresponding letter in the spaces numbered 10—14.

There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use all the headings listed.

Ex: Paragraph A __i___

10. Paragraph B __iii___

11. Paragraph C __xi___

12. Paragraph D __x___

13. Paragraph E __vi___

14. Paragraph F __ii___

List of headings

i A technique for controlling chaotic systems

ii How the tape was controlled

iii The possibility of controlling some weather patterns

iv The value of the butterfly effect

V How butterflies cause thunderstorms

Vi How the tape behaved in the experiment

vii The possibility of making rain

viii The value of butterflies

ix A description of the experiment

x The effect of magnetism on the tape

xi The character of chaotic systems

TIP: MATCHING HEADINGS TO PARAGRAPHS

Be careful not to choose headings which refer to only part or

one aspect of the paragraph. Some of the headings may

contain words or phrases that appear in exactly the same form

in the reading passage, so you may at first think they are

correct Remember that an example is usually given. Check

carefully to see which paragraph has been done for you so that

you do not waste valuable time searching for a heading that

you do not need.

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Questions 15—21

The summary of key points below is based on information from the reading. Choose the best phrase (A—N) from the

list at the bottom of the page to complete the summary (Questions 15—21). Write the correct letter (A—N) in spaces

numbered 15—21. There are more phrases (A—N) than sentences, so you will not use all of the phrases listed.

Example: For the last two years mathematicians have been developing theories about how to _A_

SUMMARY

An article has been published which demonstrates that 15 D this can be done. While this experiment

involved controlling 16 C a small strip of magnetic tape , the experimenters claim that in the future it

17 I may be possible to manage extreme weather patterns. A characteristic of chaotic systems, like

the weather, is that they are 18 B sensitive to extremely small systems, such as 19 J the delicate

movement of butterfly wings. That is why the unpredictability of chaotic systems is referred to as ‘the

butterfly effect’. In the experiment, a laser was used to note H the rapid movement of the tape. This

information was fed into a computer, so that the experimenters would know when to nudge the tape into

the movement pattern they wanted. In this way, they believe they have shown that they can control the

movement of systems in spite of their 21 G chaotic characteristics

List of phrases

A control chaotic systems

B sensitive to extremely small systems

C a small strip of magnetic tape

D this can be done

E a magnetic field

F may be possible to control the rain

G chaotic characteristics

H the rapid movement

I may be possible to manage extreme weather patterns

J the delicate movement of butterfly wings

K speed

L this often happens

TIP: Summary completion

The summary will be a completion of part of all or the passage so check carefully which part the summary refers to

The words used in the summary may not always be the same as those in the original phrase. Look for synonyms of key words in the text.

All the words which you need are in the original text, but their grammatical form may need to be changed.

METHOD: 1. First, read through the whole summary for general understanding 2. Read it again carefully, studying the words before and after each gap and thinking about

the general meaning 3. Find the relevant section of text and re-read carefully to find the answer 4. Make sure your answers fit logically and grammatically

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Scovell, D., Pastellas, V., & Knobel, M. (2004). 404 Essential tests for IELTS. Academic Module (pp. 28-30). Sydney, NSW: Adams and Austen Press.

The life cycle of a star

It has been conservatively estimated that there are some 10,000 billion, billion stars in the universe. It is

difficult to know the exact age of a star (astronomers have identified stars as young as 25,000 years old and

others are thought to be over 10 billion years old), but what astronomers do know is that there are many

different kinds. How each star is formed, and its mass, influences its type and longevity.

A star is born in a nebula, which is a giant cloud of gas and dust. The larger the amount of matter that is in

the nebula, the greater the mass of the star that is created. Inside these nebulae are dense areas of gas,

which, due to their density, have a stronger gravitational pull than the rest of the nebula. Gradually, gravity

drags the gas in the nebula together and it begins to spin and become increasingly hotter. Once the

temperature reaches 15,000,000°C, nuclear fusion occurs in the centre of the cloud, and it begins to glow

brightly. It stabilizes at this temperature, contracts slightly and becomes what is known as a main sequence

star (an example of this is our own Sun). It can remain in this stage for millions or billions of years.

As it glows, hydrogen in the centre (through the nuclear fusion) becomes helium. Eventually the hydrogen

supply in the core diminishes and the core of the star becomes unstable, contracting more. However, the

outer parts of the star (which are still mainly hydrogen) expand and cool, and in doing so, the star starts to

glow red. It is at this stage that the star becomes a red giant. It is anticipated that it will take the Sun

another 5 billion years to reach this stage. By then it will have grown large enough to engulf the three

closest planets (Mercury, Venus and Earth) and glow 2,000 times brighter than it currently does.

Exactly how a star will react in the red giant phase depends on its mass. Throughout the red giant phase,

the hydrogen in the outer parts carries on burning, and the centre gets hotter and hotter. On reaching

200,000,000°C, the helium atoms fuse forming carbon atoms. The remainder of the hydrogen explodes and

forms a ring around the core called a planetary nebula.

With medium-sized stars, once the final helium atoms have fused into carbon atoms, the star starts to die.

The gravitational pull leads to the last of the star’s matter collapsing inwards and compacting to become

extremely dense. A star like this is called a white dwarf. It will shine white-hot until the remaining energy

(thermal energy trapped in its interior) has been exhausted after which it will no longer emit light. This can

take in excess of several billion years. It is then termed a black dwarf (a cold, dark star, perhaps replete with

diamonds) and remains in that stage forever.

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When the larger red giants (massive stars) collapse, which happens in an instant, so much planetary nebula

is created that this gas and dust can be used as building material for planets in developing solar systems. In

addition, with massive stars, as the temperature increases, the carbon atoms get pulled together to form

increasingly heavier elements like oxygen, nitrogen and finally iron. Once this happens, fusion ceases and

the iron atoms begin absorbing energy. At some point in the future, this energy is released in a huge

explosion called a supernova. A supernova can have a core temperature of up to 1,000,000,000°C and the

explosion can light up the sky for weeks, outshining an entire galaxy. Astronomers believe that Earth is

made up of elements formed from the inside of stars, in particular red giants that exploded as supernovas.

These massive stars have an average life span of one million years.

After becoming a supernova, the remaining core of a massive star that is 1.5 to 4 times as massive as the

Sun becomes a neutron star. It starts to spin and often emits radio waves. If these waves occur in pulses,

the neutron star is referred to as a pulsar. When a massive star has eight or more times the mass of the

Sun, it will remain massive after the supernova. It has no nuclear fusion supporting the core and becomes

engulfed by its own gravity. This results in a black hole, which sucks in any matter or energy that passes

close to it. The gravitational field of a black hole is powerful enough to prevent the escape of light and is so

dense that it cannot be measured. The phrase ‘black hole’ originated from the physicist John Archibald

Wheeler; before this, black holes were known as ‘frozen stars.’ Wheeler came up with this name two years

before the proof of the existence of the first black hole, X-ray binary star Cygnus X-1, in 1971. Astronomers

think that there may be a black hole at the centre of each galaxy.

The life cycle of a star is really that — the materials from an exploded star mix with the hydrogen of the

universe. This mixture in turn will be the starting point of the next star. The Sun is a case in point,

containing the debris from numerous other stars that exploded long before the Sun was born.

Questions 1 - 6

Different stages and types of stars are mentioned in the reading. Choose ONE of the types or stages (A - H)

from the box below which best matches the descriptions (Questions 1 - 6 ).

NOTE: you may use any answer more than once.

A nebula

B main sequence star

C red giant

D white dwarf

E black dwarf

F supernova

G neutron star

H black hole

Answer

Example: hottest, brightest point of a star ___F___

1. the Sun ___B____

2. birthplace of a star ___A____

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3. a dying star ___D____

4. sometimes has pulsating waves ___G____

5. its size is immeasurable ___H____

6. its supply of energy has run out ___E____

Questions 7 - 13

Complete the sentences using NO MORE THAN THREE words for each answer.

7. Hydrogen will turn to helium after _nuclear fusion__ occurs.

8. The colour of the red giant is formed as the __core__ becomes smaller and the outer areas cool.

9. At 200,000,000°C the star’s helium atoms fuse into carbon atoms, and then the star _starts to die__

10. Unlike small and medium-sized stars, large stars _explode/collapse_ quickly.

11. A black hole’s _gravity/ gravitational field_ stops light from being emitted.

12. Astronomers knew about __black holes_ before they were able to confirm their existence.

13. Planets and stars are likely to consist of _debris/materials_ from exploded celestial bodies.

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Adapted from: Ackley, K. A. (2009). Perspectives on contemporary issues (pp. 547-550). Boston, MA:

Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

The influence of junk science and the role of science

education Lee Ann Fisher Baron

Lee Ann Fisher Baron is Professor of Natural Science at Hillsdale College, where she has taught since

1989. Recipient of many awards for her teaching and work in science education, Baron has

developed programs to interest middle—school girls in scientific careers and written laboratory

study guides for high—school summer science camps, among other things. This essay is based on a

presentation Baron did for a seminar on “junk science” held at Hillsdale College, and it was

published in Imprimis inFebruary200l.

Science is exciting partly because single discoveries can change the course of history. Think of the effects on

human health and longevity of the discovery of antibiotics, the multi-faceted impact on our lives of the

discovery of polymers, or the far-reaching importance of the Human Genome Project. Unfortunately,

however, most of the “revolutionary discoveries” made throughout history have turned out to be wrong.

Error is a regular part of science. That is why reports of new findings or discoveries, no matter where or

how widely they are reported, should be regarded with Q1 healthy scepticism. The proper scientific

approach to such claims involves a set of procedures called the scientific method. This method requires the

design of tests or experiments that can be repeated with the same results by anyone. These tests must also

contain controls to ensure that the results are statistically significant.

Let me illustrate the importance of controls by describing briefly an experiment in which my daughter

participated as a subject some years ago at the University of Michigan Medical School. Its purpose was to

determine whether the vaccine for tuberculosis could lengthen the interval during which newly-diagnosed

type 1 diabetics do not experience severe high or low blood sugar. The subjects were divided into a group

of those who received the vaccine and a control group of those who received a placebo. The subjects did

not low who got the vaccine and, just as importantly, neither did the researchers—a type of control

referred to as a Q2 “double-blind”. By using two groups, the researchers were able to measure the

“placebo effect” a phenomenon in which patients improve because they falsely believe that they are

receiving medicine. And by keeping themselves ignorant of the breakdown of the groups, the researchers

were prevented from reading their hypotheses into the results.

Junk Science

Most erroneous conclusions by scientists are discovered during the process of Q3 publishing their research.

Other scientists review submitted articles, often repeating any relevant tests or experiments and ways

evaluating the conclusions that have been drawn from them. So-called ‘junk science” basses this system of

Q3 peer review. Presented directly to the public by people variously described as “experts” or “activists,”

often with life or no Q4 supporting evidence, this “junk science undermines the ability of elected

representatives, jurists, and others—including everyday consumers make rational decisions.

An example of “junk science’ I like to use with my students is the myth of Q5a ‘fat free foods’ invented by

the food industry with the help of federal regulators. By regulatory definition, these foods may contain

monoglycerides and diglycerides, but not triglycerides. From the point of view of solid science this

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definition makes Q5a no practical sense, given that the body metabolises mono-, di- and triglycerides in

essentially the same way. Meanwhile unwary consumers take the “fat-free” label as a license to eat these

foods to excess, and Americans are more obese now than ever before.

A more amusing example is Q5b “Vitamin O,” a wonder supplement advertised to ‘maximize your

nutrients, purify your blood stream, and eliminate toxins and poisons, in other words, [to supply] all the

processes necessary to prevent disease and promote health”. It was described on its label as “stabilized

oxygen molecules in a solution of distilled water and sodium chloride”. In other words, the 60,000

consumers purchasing “Vitamin O”—to the tune of $20 a month—were taking Q5b salt water! Although

this product was legally exempted from certain FDA requirements by virtue of its status as a “natural” diet

supplement, the FTC was able to file a complaint against it in 1999, based on Q5b false claims by its

promoters that it was being used by NASA astronauts. Otherwise “Vitamin 0” would still be one of the

world’s best- selling placebos.

The potential lasting power of “junk science” is demonstrated by the story of German physician Samuel

Hahnemann, who took quinine back in 1776 to investigate its use against malaria. After taking the quinine

he experienced chills and fever, which are the symptoms of malaria. For this he concluded, wrongly, that

Q5c “likes cure likes,” i.e., that diseases should be treated with medicines that produce similar symptoms to

the diseases. In the course of testing this theory with other herbal remedies, Hahnemann discovered that

many Q5c “natural” herbs are toxic and made his patients worse. To reduce the toxic effects, he diluted the

remedies until they seemed to be working. On that basis he formulated a “law of infinitesimals” stating that

higher dilutions of herbal cures increase their medicinal benefits To be fair, Hahnemann conducted these

experiments more than 70 years before scientists understood that a dilution weaker than one part in 6.02 X

1023 may not contain even a single molecule of the dissolved substance. Thus he did not realize that upon

administering to his patients 30x preparations—dilutions of one part herb to 1030 parts water—the Q5c

placebo effect was that was really left to measure.

Incredibly, Q5d homeopathic medicine today still relies on Hahnemann’s theories. Not only does it often

come in 30X preparations, it comes in 200c dilutions—solutions of one part herb to 100 parts of water 200

times, resulting in one molecule of the herb per 10400 molecules of water! Modern homeopathists

obviously can’t deny that such preparations are beyond the dilution limit, but they insist that the Q5d

dilutions still work because their water or alcohol water mixtures somehow “remember” the herbs. Despite

its Q5d preposterous claim, the market for these remedies is Q5d enormous.

Just as many homeopathic preparations are diluted to the point that they are nothing but water, many Q5e

“natural” herbs on the market contain drugs and chemicals which interact with the human body like Q5e

prescription drugs For example, Echinacea stimulates the immune system, which could prove harmful to

people with type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, or other autoimmune diseases. It is therefore unwise, to

put it gently, to take herbal remedies or supplements of any kind without consulting a doctor and/or the

Physicians’ desk reference for herbal medicines, but many Americans do so, equating Q5e nature with

‘harmless’ and ‘good’.

Cause and Solution

I have addressed here the corrupting influence of “junk science” in the area of consumer foods, vitamins

and diet supplements. The same dynamic increasingly affects other aspects of our individual and collective

lives as well. However, I believe the root cause is the same: Americans are losing the common-sense

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scepticism toward scientific claims that animates the scientific method itself. And one of the reasons for

this is a slow but steady Q6 degradation of our educational system. In short, as Charles J. Sykes explains in

Q7 Dumbing Down Our Kids, theories such as “outcome-based education,” “cooperative learning,” and

“maximization of self-esteem” are fast replacing reading, writing, and arithmetic as the goals of education.

Q7 Anecdotal evidence of this trend is vast and compelling. For instance, when average SAT math scores

fell from 500 to 424, the College Board responded by allowing the use of calculators. When that didn’t

work, they Q7a “recentered” the test by adding approximately 20 points to the math scores (while also

adding 80 points on the verbal side, for a total of 100), regardless of achievement. At the state level, many

high school competency exams are written at an eighth-grade level. And colouring for credit in elementary-

level math classes is now fairly common. Is it any wonder that so many of the kids we now graduate from

high school enter the workforce unable to add in their heads or make correct change, or arrive at college

incapable of solving the simplest equations?

The situation is no better in the sciences. Students at a Seattle middle school spend two weeks studying the

Q7b eating habits of birds by trying to pick up Cheerios with tongue depressors, toothpicks, spoons, and

clothespins between their teeth. “Educationists” call this creative and engaging. But it doesn’t create useful

or important knowledge. And surely it is not true that such activity is more engaging than learning about

Newton’s Laws or DNA.

A popular high school chemistry book moves from “Supplying Our Water Needs,” which includes a

discussion of acid rain, to “Chemistry and the Atmosphere,” which addresses the ozone layer. This

approach would not be all bad if the chemistry behind these issues was rigorously taught and if important

topics unrelated to social controversies were so included. Unfortunately they are not. When I called the

American Chemical Society, which, sadly, produced this textbook, one of those responsible justified its

approach by pointing out that most high school graduates don’t pursue science in college. Furthermore, he

said, students introduced to chemistry in this way enjoy it more and find it easier to handle, resulting in

higher self-esteem. I asked if it had occurred to him that perhaps students don’t pursue college science

because they don’t obtain the requisite skills or knowledge in high school. Regardless, when the American

Chemical Society endorses a high school science text that doesn’t even list the Q7c scientific method in its

index, we shouldn’t be surprised that so many Americans gorge themselves on “fat-free foods” throw their

money at “Vitamin 0,” or risk their health by taking “natural” herbs without investigating their effects.

The solution to the problem I have outlined is easy o see, and is by no means impossible to accomplish.

Individually, we must be care to take our bearings from the scientific method when confronted with

scientific claims, employing Q8 healthy scepticism and asking questions before believing what we hear or

read. Together, we must work diligently to revive real standards in primary and secondary science

education.

Questions 1-9

Sentence completion: Fill in the gaps with words form the reading.

1. Reports of new discoveries should be regarded with healthy scepticism______________

2. One common type of controlled medical research is a double-blind ________ study.

3. Most questionable conclusions of scientists (and researchers in other areas) are revealed

during a process peer review before publication.

4. Junk science may seem plausible but has little or no supporting evidence.

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5. Examples of junk science:

a. Fat free foods

The regulatory definition makes no practical sense

b. Vitamin O

A 1999 complaint was based on false claims

It is just salt water

c. likes cures likes

Many “natural” herbs are toxic .

The only remaining measurable effect was the placebo effect.

d. Homeopathic evidence insists that dilutions work

The claim is preposterous but the market is enormous

e. natural= harmless = good

Many “natural” herbs interact with the body like prescription drugs

6. Why is common sense scepticism being lost? Degradation of education

7. Anecdotal evidence of dumbing down.

a. Mathematics the test was “recentered”.

b. Science students studied the eating habits of birds.

c. A high school Chemistry book did not mention the scientific method

8. The solution is to have an attitude of healthy scepticism and to ask questions before

believing what we hear or read.

Discussion Questions

1. Baron begins with the statement, “Science is exciting” and then goes on to add that science is exciting

in part because of discoveries that change humans’ lives. Do you find science exciting? What discovery

or breakthrough would you like to see scientists make that would change our lives significantly?

2. How does Baron illustrate the difference between “junk science” and proper science? Are you satisfied

with her explanation of “the scientific method” (paragraph 2)?

3. Comment on the examples of junk science that Baron gives. Why do you think people so readily accept

what they hear and read about such things? Were you surprised by her examples of homeopathic

medicine and herbal remedies and supplements? Many people are firm believers in their benefits.

What is your viewpoint on them?

4. Baron blames Americans’ lack of commonsense scepticism in part on the content of high-school science

classes and textbooks. Discuss your own high-school science classes and the textbooks you used. Were

your experiences similar or different from the ones she describes?

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Source: http://esl.about.com/od/englishlistening/a/listen_tips_2.htm Accessed 05/10/2011

The listening guide Listening Tips If you have problems with listening, remember that you are not alone. Listening comprehension

may be the most difficult task for almost all learners of English as a second language.

The most important thing is to practise listening, and that means as often as possible. Make sure

you do the allocated listening on a weekly basis – don’t just cram near exam time. In addition,

practice speaking with others as much as you can. Lastly, improving your pronunciation can have

a good effect on your listening ability – if you can’t pronounce something yourself, it’s very hard to

understand it from someone else.

Strategies

Once you have begun to listen on a regular basis, you might still be frustrated by limited

understanding. What should you do?

Here is some advice:

Accept the fact that you are not going to understand everything.

Stay relaxed when you do not understand - even if you continue to

not understand for a long time. Remember: there is usually

repetition in speaking, particularly when you are speaking to

someone face-to-face. Listen for repeated information.

Do not translate into your native language. This creates a barrier

between the listener and speaker, and often results in confusion.

Listen for the gist (general idea) first. Don't concentrate on details until you have understood

the main ideas. Use key words to help you understand the gist.

Don’t forget to sometimes listen to something you enjoy (e.g., songs, movies, etc).

Listen for context – who is speaking, where, and for what reason?

Summary

Understanding spoken English is something to work towards, to have as a goal. It is not you should

expect of yourself now. Listening needs a great amount of practice and patience. Do not become

nervous when you do not understand, and you will be surprised by how quickly you do begin to

understand.

Remember, listening as often as possible is the most important way to improve your listening

skills. Finally, don’t forget to relax.

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Source: http://esl.about.com/od/englishlistening/a/listen_tips_2.htm Accessed 05/10/2011

Listening Tips

If you have problems with listening, remember that you are not alone. Listening comprehension

may be the most difficult task for almost all learners of English as a second language.

The most important thing is to practise listening, and that means as often as possible. Make sure

you do the allocated listening on a weekly basis – don’t just cram near exam time. In addition,

practice speaking with others as much as you can. Lastly, improving your pronunciation can have

a good effect on your listening ability – if you can’t pronounce something yourself, it’s very hard to

understand it from someone else.

Strategies

Once you have begun to listen on a regular basis, you might still be frustrated by limited

understanding. What should you do?

Here is some advice:

Accept the fact that you are not going to understand everything.

Stay relaxed when you do not understand - even if you continue to

not understand for a long time. Remember: there is usually

repetition in speaking, particularly when you are speaking to

someone face-to-face. Listen for repeated information.

Do not translate into your native language. This creates a barrier

between the listener and speaker, and often results in confusion.

Listen for the gist (general idea) first. Don't concentrate on details until you have understood

the main ideas. Use key words to help you understand the gist.

Don’t forget to sometimes listen to something you enjoy (e.g., songs, movies, etc).

Listen for context – who is speaking, where, and for what reason?

Summary

Understanding spoken English is something to work towards (to have as a goal) and not to expect

of yourself now. Listening needs a great amount of practice and patience. Do not become nervous

when you do not understand, and you will be surprised by how quickly you do begin to

understand.

Remember, listening as often as possible is the most important way to improve your listening

skills. Finally, don’t forget to relax.

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Miller, M. (2004) QUTIC Resource.

IELTS Style Listening: Intercultural Communication Instructions

Listen to the tape and answer the questions on what you hear. You should answer on THIS paper.

The test is divided into 4 sections. You will hear each section only once. You will be given time to

read the questions before you listen to each section and time to check your answers after each section.

You will be given 2 minutes at the end of the test to go over your answers.

Section I

In the first section of the test you are going to hear a lecture on Intercultural Communication. The lecturer is Lesley Chiu. You now have 30 seconds to read questions 1 – 8.

Now listen to Section 1 and answer the questions as you listen. __________________________________________________________________________Lesley discusses intercultural communication.

1. It is important to be aware of intercultural communication skills to avoid

embarrassment, confusion or even _____________________

2. Lesley will explain two different aspects in her lecture.

a) __________________________________________________________

b) strategies that help when dealing with people from cultural backgrounds.

3. Culture involves all aspects of the way we live and includes the way we

________________________

4. As we grow and continue to interact with our families and the other people around us we

become____________________

5. The process of _________________develops our sense of cultural identity.

6. Intercultural communication involves a willingness to ______________ethno-centricism.

7. Becoming _______________________involves actually learning another culture that is not

your native culture.

You now have 30 seconds to look over your answers for this section.

Section II Listen to Section II of the lecture where Lesley is talking about language.

You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section. Now listen to Section II and answer the questions as you listen

8. What colour does Lesley use as an example?

________________

9. All cultures use idioms and ___________________.

10. “A little cabbage” is a French term of __________________

11. What rules do you have to learn to avoid giving or taking

offence?___________________

12. A lack of eye contact in Australia implies________________________.

13. What two things do Australians do to show they are listening ?

13. _____________and 14 ___________________

You now have 30 seconds to look over your answers.

Section III

In this section Lesley discusses teaching and learning styles. This time you are given 5 statements. Read them and say whether they are True (T) or False (F) according to what you hear. Indicate whether you think the statement is True or False by circling T or F.

You now have 30 seconds to read the statements.

Now listen to Section III and answer the questions as you listen.

15. Teaching and learning styles are culturally determined. T F

16. In Australia the teaching/ learning process is highly interactive. T F

17. You are expected to be right all the time in Australia. T F

18. Being constructively involved is most important. T F

19. “Have a go” is a saying in Australia. T F


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Section IV

Now you will hear a conversation between Sue (a student) and Lesley (the lecturer).Sue has some

questions to ask the lecturer about her lecture.

Listen and answer the following questions by filling in the gaps in the text with what you hear. Put only

one word in each gap.

You will now have 30 seconds to look at the questions. Now listen and fill in the gaps.

A: Sue asks why it is important to be aware of intercultural communication ?

Lesley: * to avoid (20) ____________ (21) _____________ and even (22) ____________.

B: Sue asks what influences the teacher’s intentions and my interpretation.

Lesley: * they are (23) ____________________.

C: Sue asks about the three ways to ask a question.

Lesley: * involves changing the tone of (24)_____________adding an extra (25)________

* changing the word (26) ___________

D: Sue asks what else learners are expected to do after the teacher has provided the core of

information.

Lesley: * your own (27) ________________ * (28) _____________ and

(29) ________________________

E: Sue asks will misunderstandings still occur.

Lesley: * (30) ________

* You now have 30 seconds to look over your answers

Listening for Context

It is important to always pay attention to context when you are listening; not just the words you hear, but how they are said, who says them and the environment in which they are said. This will not only help you to understand the content but also help you distinguish between ideas. Listening for context includes listening for setting, interrelationships, mood, attitude and tone.

Richard St. John's 8 Secrets of Success Ted Videos, February 2005, http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_st_john_s_8_secrets_of_success.html

Watch the presentation carefully, and answer the following questions:

1. Where do you think this discussion is taking place?

2. What kinds of people are in the audience?

3. What is being discussed?

4. Why is this topic being discussed?

5. Do you think that the topic is suitable for this audience?

6. Do you think the presenter was convincing, or successful in delivering

his message?

7. What techniques does the presenter use to deliver his message?

8. Do you think this presentation would be suitable for other kinds of

audiences?

9. What did you like most about this presentation?

10. What did you dislike about this presentation?

http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_st_john_s_8_secrets_of_success.html

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IELTS Style Listening: Obesity Instructions

Listen to the tape and answer the questions on what you hear. You should answer on THIS paper. The test is divided into 4 sections. You will hear each section only once. You will be given time to read the questions before you listen to each section and time to check your answers after each section.


Section I

In the first section of the listening test you are going to hear part of a lecture on Childhood Obesity in Different Parts of the World. The lecturer is Professor Nelson. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section.

Now listen to Section 1 and answer the questions as you listen.

Questions 1 – 4: Circle the correct answer.

1. An obese person weighs ________________ than the average person. A. less than B. the same as C. a little more than D. a lot more than

2. What percentage of adult Americans are overweight or obese? A. 0.65% B. 6.5% C. 16.5% D. 65%

3. How many countries around the world have obesity problems? A. Far less than 50% B. Around 50% C. Over 50% D. All countries

4. How many children around the world under the age of 5 are obese? A. 1.76 million B. 17.6 million C. 70.6 million D. 176 million

Questions 5 – 10: Fill in the notes using no more than three words.

5. The average weight of a 10 year old boy rose by around ________________ between 1963 and 2002.

6. In Australia, there was a ________________ rise from 10.6% to 16% in the number of overweight girls between 1985 and 2005.

7. It is not just junk food but a variety of things that ________________ how much a child weighs.

8. A child’s chance of being overweight decreases if their ________________ are not obese.

9. Children with ________________ parents are less likely to be overweight.

1. There is concern about obesity in all ________________ or developing countries. You now have 30 seconds to look over your answers

Section II

In this section of the lecture, Professor Nelson will talk about childhood obesity in China. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section.

Now listen to Section II and answer the questions as you listen.

Questions 11 – 15: Circle the 5 statements from A – H that agree with what is stated in the lecture.

A. The main cause of obesity in China is overeating. B. The Chinese obesity rate has greatly increased in the last decade. C. The obesity rate of 2.6% includes all Chinese. D. The increase in obesity for Beijing is mostly due to a larger fat intake. E. Male children living in country areas have a lower fat intake than male children living in cities. F. An increase in prosperity is the major cause of a rise in obesity in cities. G. The people enjoyed eating cabbage in winter. H. The amount of dietary fat consumed by Chinese is higher than that recommended by the World Health Organisation.

Questions 16 – 20: Fill in the following notes from the lecture using no more than three words.

Changes in Physical Activity

Use of cars increased so far fewer people ________________ (16).

Role of ________________ (17) and Social Custom

Because they didn’t have much to eat, many Chinese ________________ (18) their children.

An overweight baby was a good luck ________________ (19).

Changes in Eating Patterns

Many young Chinese do not eat with their family but now buy ________________ (20).

You now have 30 seconds to look over your answers

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Section III

In this section of the lecture, Professor Nelson will talk about childhood obesity in Japan.



Questions 21 – 30: Read the statements and indicate whether you think the statement is True or False by circling T or F.

21. Most people think the Japanese diet by eating fish, rice and vegetables. T F 22. The increase in the rate of obesity for women is lower than that of men. T F 23. While the amount of dietary fat has increased, total energy intake has not. T F 24. The number of obese boys in rural areas has increased mainly due to an increase in indoor entertainment. T F 25. Japanese girls living in cities are not getting fatter. T F 26. The Japanese government has reduced the number of health education programs for girls. T F 27. In almost all cases, Japanese children skip meals or overeat because of exam pressures. T F 28. While Japanese children may eat unhealthy food for their main meal they usually eat healthy snacks. T F 29. The Japanese government initiatives are not only for children. T F 30. Because of its popularity people have always had to wait to do the Health and Sports classes. T F


Section IV

Now you will hear a conversation between Rex (a student) and Professor Nelson (the lecturer). Rex has some questions to ask the lecturer about childhood obesity in Australia.

You will now have 30 seconds to look at the questions.

Now listen and answer the following questions.


Australian Data

4.2% boys/ 5.1% girls overweight

Which groups?

(31) ________________ Australians/ Aboriginal Australians/ European and Middle-Eastern Australians

Main Factors

Energy intake (32) ________________ by 15% (boys)/ 12% (girls)

More children watching TV/ playing video games instead of (33) ________________

Parents work more

Effects of being Obese

Lack of confidence/ bullying

Short-term - A rise in physical problems that lead to (34) ________________/ asthma/ problems with limbs/ stomach

Long-term – Obese children become (35) ________________

Government Campaigns

Asks children to exercise more and get school canteens to supply good, healthy food that is not (36) ________________

How Parents Can Help

(37) ________________ children to eat well; don’t nag them Remove junk food and (38) ________________ like cordial

If you ask kids to cook you need to give them (39) ________________

Buy low-fat dairy products; read (40) ________________ on cans; and don’t buy white bread or rice


You now have 2 minutes to look over your work.

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IELTS Style Listening: Presenteeism and Absenteeism Instructions

Listen to the tape and answer the questions on what you hear. You should answer on THIS paper. The test is divided into 4 sections. You will hear each section only once. You will be given time to read the questions before you listen to each section and time to check your answers after each section.


Section 1

In the first section of the listening test you are going to hear part of a lecture on changes in workplace conditions. The lecturer is Professor Potter. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section. Now listen to Section 1 and answer the questions as you listen. _______________________________________________________________________________


1. According to the lecturer, a full-time worker works - A. less than 35 hours a week. B. exactly 35 hours a week. C. a minimum of 35 hours a week. D. around 35 hours a week. 2. In 2005, the percentage of men in full-time work had dropped to - A. 85 per cent B. 8.5 per cent C. 18.5 per cent D. 85 per cent 3. What is one possible reason for the rate of full-time employment dropping for 15 to 24 year-olds? A. They like studying more now. B. They want a better education. C. They don’t want to work. D. Part-time work pays more. 4. Why has the overall number of working hours per week dropped? A. The economy is not as strong as before. B. More workers working full- time. C. There aren’t as many full-time jobs. D. There are fewer people looking for full-time work. Questions 5 – 10: Fill in the notes using no more than three words.

5. The rate of people working over 50 hours per week increased from 22 to ___________________. 6. Industries like Mining, _______________________and Finance have fewer part-time workers. 7. Supermarket employees were ____________________ required to work less than average hours. 8. One reason for the increase in the number of women working is _________________________ . 9. A factor in the decrease in men working is more men are becoming _______________________. 10. In 2004, ____________________women were employed.


Section II In this section of the lecture, Professor Potter will talk about absenteeism. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section

Now list Listen to Section II and answer the questions as you listen.

Questions 11 – 15: Circle five letters from A- H. Which five of the following statements agree with what the lecturer states? A. The term absenteeism is used for people who do not go to work because they are ill.

B. The majority of absenteeism happens on Mondays and Fridays.

C. Very few workers are absent after a sporting event.

D. Most Australians claim sick leave when they are genuinely ill.

E. Absenteeism only affects companies.

F. The rate of absenteeism has been increasing in most companies.

G. Australians are spending more time at work.

H. Fewer Australians work a 40-hour week.


Increase in Work Stress

Not only hours of work

Because of technology, workers can be(16)________________at any time

Higher workload

Response by (17) ____________________ to absenteeism

Pickfords employees must call a (18) ________________________when sick

Tesco will (19) ________________workers that are sick for less than 3 days

Other ways to reduce absenteeism

More flexible leave

Some companies now allow workers time off when (20) ________________ members are ill.


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Section III In this section of the lecture, Professor Potter will discuss presenteeism. You now have 30 seconds to read the statements. Now listen to Section III and answer the questions as you listen. _________________________________________________________________________________ Questions 21 – 30: Read the statements and indicate whether you think the statement is True or False by circling T or F. 21. The cost of presenteeism is around 4 times higher than that of absenteeism. T F

22. One definite cause of presenteeism is workers are scared they will lose their job if they don’t go to work. T F

23. Almost half of American workers must come to work when they are sick otherwise they won’t get paid. T F

24. Most Americans and Germans believe presenteeism is caused by increased medical costs. T F

25. The percentage of families with both parents working has doubled since 1970. T F

26. Only the work rate of the person who is ill is affected by their coming to work. T F

27. Because they might affect other workers, a lot of companies ask ill workers not to come to work. T F

28. The elderly are more likely to die from the flu. T F

29. If a company wants a wellness program they are told they must offer sick leave. T F

30. Taking sick leave will make you a happier person. T F

Section IV Now you will hear a conversation between Robert (a student) and Professor Potter (the lecturer). Robert has some questions to ask the lecturer about presenteeism in Australia. You now have 30 seconds to look at the questions. Now listen and answer the following questions. Questions 31 – 40: Fill in the following notes from the lecture using no more than three words.

Cost of presenteeism to the Australian economy

25.7 billion dollars per year

Average 6 (31) ________________ lost for every worker

68 per cent is a company cost because workers can’t do their job properly

Remaining 32 per cent was cost to the (32) _______________________

Illnesses and how they contribute to presenteeism

Colds and flu do not have the greatest effect

(33) _________________ problems are the greatest cost e.g.

o Unhealthy lifestyles

o Chronic illnesses

o Poor work-life balance

Chronic illnesses are difficult to treat

o (34) ____________________ take 12 – 18 months

o Have to go to work to pay bills so work in pain

o Because it is expensive, people (35)_________________ back pain

o Want to use leave on short-term illnesses

Affects on work performance

o 78 per cent could not think (36) ______________________

o Two-thirds made errors

o 64 per cent knew they could do more work when not ill

o 62 per cent needed more (37) ________________________

Medibank recommendations

Conduct (38) __________________________

Data only used to identify future problems

Offer (39)_________________ services to workers and their families

Wellness programs can help employees with a (40) ________________________

problem

Other help like cheap health insurance


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IELTS Style Listening- Workplace Satisfaction Instructions


The test is divided into 4 sections. You will hear each section only once. You will be given time to

read the questions before you listen to each section and time to check your answers after each

section.


Section I

In the first section of the listening test you are going to hear a lecture on Workplace Satisfaction. The

lecturer is Lisa Simpson. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions.


_____________________________________________________________________________

The lectures on workplace satisfaction have been looking at to what extent people feel

(1) _______________ and fulfilled with their work. Australia decided to do the survey for two

reasons. The first was to (2) _______________ their results with other countries like France, New

Zealand and America. The second was to discover if the (3) _______________ of satisfaction had

changed from thirty years ago. There are four parts to the lecture. These are the (4)

_______________; the (5) _______________; the results; and the (6) _______________. 1,000

people were surveyed in big cities and regional (7) _______________. The questionnaire had

several question types. These included scales and multi-choice questions but did not include (8)

_______________ -answer questions.

* You now have 30 seconds to look over your answers.

Section ll

Listen to Section II of the lecture.

You have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section.

Now Listen to Section II and answer the questions as you listen.

________________________________________________________________________________

For the first question, only (9) _______________ per cent of professional workers were satisfied with

their salaries whereas 75 per cent of other workers were satisfied. This could be because of either

the (10) _______________ of health and education workers or the fact that professionals had greater

expectations in regards to the salaries they (11) _______________.

For the second and third questions, professionals were (12) _______________ trusting of

management and (13) _______________ per cent were dissatisfied with the ratio of work and time at

home. This was (14) _______________ as high as the other occupations.


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Section III

In this section you are given statements. Read them and say whether they are True (T) or False (F)

according to what you hear. Indicate whether you think the statement is True or False by circling T

or F.



15. Exactly 75% of professionals thought their job was mainly interesting.

T F

16. Non-professionals may feel their work never changes.

T F

17. Professionals do not receive as much ongoing training as non-professionals.

T F

18. Both professionals and non-professionals thought their job was not secure.

T F

19. The proportion of time spent travelling is higher for professionals than non-professionals.

T F


Section IV Now you will hear a conversation between Michael (a student) and Lisa (the lecturer). Michael has some questions to ask the lecturer about her lecture. Listen and answer the following questions by filling in the gaps in the text with what you hear. Put only one word in each gap. You will now have 30 seconds to look at the questions. Now listen and fill in the gaps.

1. Michael asks Lisa why there is more dissatisfaction now than before.

Lisa: (20) ___________ have higher stress levels; work (21) ___________ are higher; and more

information is (22) ___________.

2. Michael asks how we can reduce the causes of unhappiness in a company.

Lisa: The (23) ___________ of unhappiness at one company may not be the same as at

another.

3. Michael asks why it is important to understand changes in workplace happiness.

Lisa: (24) ___________, in particular, need to address the imbalance between work and home.

Furthermore, it is important to gain a historical (25) ___________. Lastly, it can help (26)

___________ the government to bring change if excessive (27) ___________ are placed on

workers.

4. Michael asks whether Lisa believes governments really act to change workplace conditions.

Lisa: Historically, (28) ___________ by unions helped bring about change. These days the

government prefers to let the (29) ___________ decide if they will stay at a company.

Governments believe it is the (30) ___________ way of balancing conditions in the workplace.


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IELTS Style Listening: Advertising Instructions

Listen and answer the questions on what you hear. The test is divided into 4 sections. You will hear each section only once. You will be given time to read the questions before you listen to each section and time to check your answers after each section. You will be given 2 minutes at the end of the test to go over your answers.

Section 1. In the first section of the listening test, you are going to hear a lecture on issues in advertising. The lecturer is Ian McGregor. You now have 30 seconds to read questions 1 – 7.


Ian discusses issues in advertising. 1. & 2. Advertising can (1) ______________ or (2) ____________ people.

3. Who do advertisers use to play the part of “real” people?

________________________________

4. One criticism of advertising is that it leads to ________________ .

5. Studies show that advertising stimulates price – it actually ___________ prices for consumers.

6. In what year were opticians allowed to advertise? _____________________

7. When opticians began advertising prices for glasses fell by ________________ percent.


Section II

Listen to Section II of the lecture where Ian continues his talk on advertising.

You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section. Now listen to Section II and answer the questions as you listen.

When consumers buy a product they are really buying

(8) _________________ and (9) ___________________.

10. What product example is used ? ___________________

11. One of the advertising messages states that if you buy an elegant

fountain pen, people will (11) _____________ and

(12) _____________ you.

13. Image advertising may not sell a product but it does influence

consumers’ ____________ _____________ to the product.

14. When advertisers were advertising the car , did they actually use a car in their advertisements?

________________________ * You now have 30 seconds to look over your answers.

Section III In this section, Ian discusses the research behind advertising. This time you are given 5 statements. Read them and say whether they are True (T) or False (F) according to what you hear. Indicate whether you think the statement is True or False by circling T or F. You now have 30 seconds to read the statements. Now listen to Section III and answer the questions as you listen. 15. The target market for snack foods is very large. T F 16. Advertisers do not do a great deal of research on the consumers in the target market. T F

17. Consumers sometimes have to complete a questionnaire when they buy a product. T F

18. Advertisers never offer free samples to consumers. T F

19. It seems that advertising and advertising research is inescapable these days. T F

*You now have 30 seconds to look over your answers for this section

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Section IV

Now you will hear a conversation between Sue (a student) and Ian (the lecturer). Sue has some questions to ask Ian about his lecture. Listen and answer the following questions by filling in the gaps in the text with what you hear. Put only one word in each gap. Now listen and fill in the gaps. A: Sue asks about when false advertising was common. Ian: (20) early _______________ century. B: Sue asks about why advertisers stopped making false claims. Ian: because of (21) ___________________ regulations. C: Sue asks about materialism and marketers’ counter argument. Ian: Marketers assert that children learn materialism from (22) _______________ and (23) ______________ . D: Sue asks about an informed purchase decision.

Ian: consumers or buyers (24) ____________ about the product. * Consumers choose products that are best for their

(25) ____________ and (26) _______________. E: Sue asks what the four main areas are that advertisers try to discover when doing market research. Ian: (27) consumers’ ____________ (28) __________________ (29) _______________________ (30) _________________ behaviour


Julian Treasure: Shh! Sound Health in 8 Steps This 7:15 min talk gives a brief overview of listening skills and effects of noise on health. Watch it on TED Talks: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ julian_treasure_shh_sound_health_in_8_steps.html and take notes. This is a great example of a presentation, especially watch his body language and use of power point. After you have finished taking notes, use these follow up questions to check your comprehension. All the questions ask about main ideas and if you have taken good notes, they should be easy to answer. 1. What are the two “listening positions”? 2. What are the problems with head phone use? 3. What are three ways to protect your hearing? 4. What are some examples of healthy sounds? 5. What are the eight ways sound can improve health?

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IELTS Style Listening: The Effects of Tourism Instructions


The test is divided into 4 sections. You will hear each section only once. You will be given time to read the questions before you listen to each section and time to check your answers after each section.


Section I In the first section of the listening test you are going to hear part of a lecture on tourism. The lecturer is Professor DeVere. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section.


Questions 1 – 3: Circle the correct answer. 1. According to the lecturer, tourists coming to Australia spent __________________ dollars in 2003.

A. 17.3 million B. 173 million C. 17.3 billion D. 173 billion

2. How many people were employed in the tourism industry in 2003?

A. 53,600 B. 536,000 C. 5,360,000 D. 536,000,000

3. Circle the top three places tourists come from

A. Asia B. the UK C. New Zealand D. Europe

E. Japan F. Australia G. the Ukraine H. the U.S.

Questions 4 – 5: Fill in the following table on how much money is spent in Australia.

Country

(4) _____________

Japan

NZ

USA

Amount Spent ($B)

2.79

2.06

1.77

(5) ______________

Questions 6 – 10: Fill in the following notes using no more than three words.

Sydney was the most popular place to stay in Australia with 52% of tourists staying an

(6)_____________________ of 16 nights; followed by Melbourne at 25% staying 19 nights; and Brisbane

with (7)_____________________ stopping for 11 nights. The most popular activity for tourists was

(8)_____________________ (90%). This was followed by shopping for pleasure (85%). Going to the beach

was third (62%); followed by the (9) _____________________ (52%). Tourism is

(10)_____________________ important to Australia.


Section II

In this section of the lecture, Professor DeVere will talk about some of the negative impacts of tourism. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section.


Questions 11 - 13

Read the statements and indicate whether you think the statement is True, False or Not Given by circling T, F or NG.

11. Tourism causes negative impacts only when the development of tourist resorts is uncontrolled. T F NG

12. British tourists use double the water while on holiday in Spain than they do at home. T F NG

13. Golf courses are the main reason tourists are attracted to Thailand. T F NG

Questions 14 – 16 Fill in the notes using no more than three words.

14. Saltwater entering the underground water system can make it __________________.

15. Production of food can be a problem during __________________.

16. Wealthy tourists and high demand mean local people cannot afford to buy food they _______________ could.

Questions 17 - 20

Circle four letters from A - G.

Which four of the following statements agree with what the lecturer states?

A. Local populations of animals are usually greatly reduced.

B. The balance of local ecosystems can be affected.

C. Tourists will probably cause pollution when they travel due to the transport used.

D. Tourism numbers were four times larger in 1994 than in 1972.

E. A return flight from New York to London uses the equivalent amount of energy that a person uses

yearly.

F. Snowmobiles are easier to use than cars in Yellowstone National Park.

G. You can hear snowmobiles all the time in certain parts of Yellowstone National Park.


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Section III

In this section of the lecture, Professor DeVere will talk about the physical impacts of tourism.




Resorts are often built on transition zones next to lakes or the ocean or on mountaintops because they are

(21) _____________________ areas. The water between Hinchinbrook Island and the (22)

_____________________ has rare plants and animals. Plans to remove mangrove trees and build a resort

there will cost the (23) _____________________ $5,000,000 as well as harming birds, fish and other

animals.

The plan to have boat trips will affect (24) _____________________ animals like the dugong, turtle and

crocodile. Additionally, plans for an airport will (25) _____________________ birds and could impact on how

many young birds are born. The (26) ____________________ from the planes could harm both the birds

and marine animals.

Because the location of the airport may also cause problems including larger animals eating smaller

animals, and animals being hit when planes land and take-off some animals could

(27) ___________________.

A rise in the numbers of tourists is affecting landmarks like the (28) _____________________. The main

damage is caused by tourists walking through the mostly sandstone buildings as sandstone is a

(29) _____________________. Another problem comes from photography as the

(30) __________________ is causing colour to be lost.


SECTION IV

Now you will hear a conversation between David (a student) and Professor DeVere (the lecturer). David has some questions to ask the lecturer about the negative economic impacts of tourism.



Questions 31 - 33 Read the statements and indicate whether you think the statement is True, False or Not Given by circling T, F or NG. 31. The majority of people have little understanding of how resorts negatively affect the environment. T F NG 32. ‘Leakage’ is the term used to describe international companies making a large profit. T F NG 33. ‘Leakage’ always results in people losing their jobs. T F NG Questions 34 – 40

Fill in the notes using no more than three words.

‘Import leakage’ is used to describe when resorts in countries that are poor need to buy food for tourists from (34) __________________. ‘Export leakage’, on the other hand, is when a foreign owned company does not leave the (35) __________________ in the country where the resort is located but takes it back to their own country.

A holiday where everything is (36) __________________ and a tourist spends all their time and money in one place is called ‘enclave tourism’. An example of this is a Pacific cruise because you spend almost all your time on the (37) __________________. Enclave tour companies tightly (38) __________________ how much time tourists can be outside the tour.

Shops visited by enclave tourism companies are often owned by the same company or pay the company a (39) __________________ of money spent for taking the customer to their business. Research in Jamaica shows that enclave tourism (40) __________________ far less than other tourism.

You now have 30 seconds to look over your answers to this section.

You now have 2 minutes to look over your paper.

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IELTS Style Listening: Presentations Instructions

Listen to the tape and answer the questions on what you hear. You should answer on THIS paper. The test is divided into 4 sections. You will hear each section only once. You will be given time to read the questions before you listen to each section and time to check your answers after each section. You will be given 2 minutes at the end of the test to go over your answers. Now put your name on the paper.

In the first section of the listening test you are going to hear a lecture on how to give an effective oral presentation. The lecturer is Lesley Chiu. You now have 30 seconds to read questions 1-8.


Lesley discusses presentations, which may be either formal or informal. 1. Your purpose in giving an oral presentation could be to inform, persuade or to

__________________________________. 2. Lesley has divided the lecture to discuss two different aspects of a presentation. What are

they? (2) ________________________________________ (3)_____________________________________________

4. You need to prepare your topic well and have some idea of your audience’s interest area and

level of __________________________. 5. You will need to organise your material in a ___________________ way with a clear

introduction, body and conclusion. 6. In the introduction of the presentation, you need to arouse your audience’s interest and make

it clear what the ___________________ of the rest of the speech will be. 7. In the body of the presentation, you expand on this outline and provide

______________________ evidence and examples to support your case. 8. In the conclusion, you summarise and repeat the main points to make sure the

_____________________ is clear.


Section II Listen to Section II of the lecture where Lesley is talking about the need for visual aids

in oral presentations.

You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section. Now listen to Section II and answer the questions as you listen. 9. Why do visual aids have the most impact? _________________________________________________________ 10. PowerPoint slides and overhead transparencies are 2 examples of visual aids to be used

in oral presentations. What are 2 more that can be used? (10)_________________________ and (11) ______________________ 12. Why should you turn your visual aids off or put them aside when you are not using them? __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________


Section III In this section Lesley discusses the non-verbal or physical aspects of a presentation.

This time you are given 5 statements. Read them and say whether they are True (T) or False (F) according to what you hear. Indicate whether you think the statement is True or False by circling T or F. You now have 30 seconds to read the statements. Now listen to Section III and answer the questions as you listen.

13. Visual aids can be considered part of non-verbal T F

communication.

14. Expensive clothing always makes a favourable impression. T F

15. Regular eye contact with different members of the T F

audience should be avoided.

16. “Inclusive” language makes your audience feel involved T F

in the presentation

17. Capturing your audience’s attention in an oral presentation T F

depends on both what you say and how you say it.

* You now have 30 seconds to look over your answers for this section

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SECTION IV Now you will hear a conversation between Liz (a student) and Lesley (the lecturer).

Liz has some questions to ask the lecturer about her lecture. Listen and answer the following questions (18-30) by filling in the gaps in the text with what you hear. Put only one word in each gap. You will now have 30 seconds to look at the questions. Now listen and fill in the gaps. A) Liz asks the meaning of “inclusive language”? Lesley: - Make frequent use of personal pronouns especially (18) ___________________________.

- This makes the audience feel (19) _______________ in your presentation.

B) Liz asks about what she should do to alleviate her “stage fright”? Lesley: - (20) _____________________ deeply.

- Glance at your notes, only headings and dot points, this will help refresh your memory and help you regain your (21)____________________.

- Remember, audience is on your side, in the end, you need only do your (22) _______________________.

C) Liz asks what she should and shouldn’t include on her overhead transparencies. Lesley: - One idea per (23) _______________________. - Use short words and phrases.

- Avoid complete (24) _____________________ unless absolutely necessary.

- Maximise number of lines on chart to six (25) _____________. - Use large, sharp (26) ____________________ so that people at back of

room can see clearly. D) Liz asks for advice on how to answer questions after an oral presentation. Lesley: - Look at the speaker and (27) __________________ the question to clarify it.

- Give simple answer first before (28) ________________ into more detail.

- If you don’t know the answer, offer to direct them to a (29)_________________ after the (30)________________.


Then you will be given 2 minutes to look over your work before you hand in your paper.

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IELTS Style Listening: Hybrid Solar Lighting Instructions




Section 1

In the first section of the listening test you are going to hear part of a lecture on the history of lighting. The lecturer is Professor Marshall. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section.



1. What did humans originally use lighting for? A. Protection only B. Safety only C. Protection and safety D. Reading

2. What else did lighting help humans with in later times? A. Communication B. Studies C. Working D. All three

3. The section of the lecture on the history of lighting will be - A. in depth. B. Detailed C. short D. complicated


4. Humans first used ____________________ as a source of lighting.

5. Humans then developed _____________________.

6. To make a candle a person needed either hardened fat or oil, and just like a lamp, a _____________________.

7. Gas lighting became more common in the _____________________ century.

8. The first problem with early types of lighting was the _____________________.

9. Some oils could cost as much as _____________________.

10. Early forms of lighting could not be used when the wind was _____________________.


Section II

In this section of the lecture, Professor Marshall will talk about electrical lighting. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section.


Question 11:Circle the correct answer.

1. The development of the electric light bulb was the work of - A. An unknown person B. Thomas Edison C. Humphrey Davy D. A number of people

Questions 12 – 16: Label the parts of the light bulb correctly according to the description by the lecturer using one or two words.

Parts of the Electric Light Bulb


17. All light bulbs break easily. T F

18. The efficiency of short-life bulbs is not as good as long-life bulbs. T F

19. People who work under artificial light can suffer from SDA. T F

20. According to the lecturer, using electricity is definitely causing global warming. T F


___________________

_

____________________

Tungsten ________________

________ Fuse

Enclosure

Glass Bulb

Inert _____________

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Section III

In this section of the lecture, Professor Marshall will talk about hybrid solar lighting. You now have 30 seconds to read the statements. Now listen to Section III and answer the questions as you listen.


21. The hybrid solar system is made by joining the current _____________________ with a solar lighting system.

22. Natural light is collected by a special _____________________.

23. Electrical lights are used only on _____________________ days or at night.

24. Solar lighting systems do not _____________________ heat and air-conditioners are used less.

25. By 2020, savings from hybrid systems could be US _____________________ dollars per year.

Questions 26 – 31: Fill in the gaps in the sentences using one or two words only.

The size of the hybrid solar collector needs to be only 2 per cent of the size of the

(26) _____________________ of the building. Furthermore, it can be installed in existing buildings as it

uses fibre-optic (27) __________________.

This technology will be used in shopping centres and (28) ___________________ because those

spaces are usually used in the day. The system is also good for those kind of spaces as they have areas

where (29) _____________________ cannot reach.

One negative point of hybrid solar lighting is the need for (30) _____________________ equipment.

Another disadvantage is that cheaper cables cannot carry the light for more than

(31) __________________.


Section IV

Now you will hear a conversation between Marianna (a student) and Professor Marshall (the lecturer). Marianna has some questions to ask the lecturer about hybrid solar lighting.




32. 50 percent of sunlight is utilised by hybrid solar lighting. T F

33. The filament is the cause of most of the energy used in light bulbs being lost. T F

34. Clouds and outside temperature affect the performances of both solar panels and hybrid solar lighting systems.

T F


Safety and health Unlike light bulbs which get hot, hybrid solar lighting cannot (35) __________________ young people or workers.

Hybrid solar lighting has a more (36) __________________ than light bulbs, which produce only part of the natural light colour range.

Workers feel more comfortable and their eyes do not get (37) __________________.

Business The (38) __________________ of sales in a shopping centre increased by 40 per cent.

Cost Currently hybrid solar lighting costs around (39) __________________ for 930 square metres.

Companies that (40) __________________ solar hybrid lighting will save a lot of money.

Future plans A council in the United States plans to build special (41) __________________ energy houses by 2007 that also use hybrid solar lighting. They are hoping there will be 14, 000 of these houses by 2015.


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IELTS Style Listening: Nuclear Energy Instructions




Section 1

In the first section of the listening test you are going to hear a lecture on Nuclear Energy. The lecturer is Claire Clarkson. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions.


Questions 1 – 6: Answer using no more than five words.

1. The lecture is about ________________________________.

Give two examples of where radiation can come from. 2. ________________________________3. ________________________________

When was nuclear energy first used as a power source? 4. ________________________________

5. The first part of the lecture is the ____________________of nuclear energy.

6. The third part will cover the various ____________________ associated with uranium mining.

Questions 7 – 13: Fill in the blanks using only one word.

The first advantage of nuclear energy is it is (7) ____________________ than fossil fuels like coal, even

though the initial construction costs of the facilities are (8) ____________________. Furthermore,

nuclear energy is also both an abundant and (9) ___________________ energy source, different to

solar and (10) ____________________ power. Solar power, for example, can only be used (11)

________________________ the day.

The only time that nuclear energy causes a lot of (12) ____________________ is when there is a

nuclear accident. It only produces approximately 2,000 tonnes of waste (13) ____________________,

unlike fossil fuels which produce around 100,000,000 tonnes.


Section II

Listen to Section II of the lecture.

You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section.


Questions 14 – 15: Circle one of the following answers:

14. When did the accident at Three Mile Island occur? A. The beginning of 1979 B. The middle of 1979 C. The end of 1979 D. All through 1979

15. According to the American government, how many people died in the accident? A. 5,000 B. 50,000 C. None D. No

Questions 16 – 19: Complete the information below about the second accident using no more than two words.

16. It occurred at Chernobyl, ____________________.

17. More than ____________________ people died.

18. People were not aware of the disaster until the ____________________ authorities discovered high levels of radioactivity.

19. The ____________________ of Chernobyl will cause health problems for children for generations.

Questions 20 – 21: Circle the two ways in which countries dispose of radioactive material that are mentioned on the tape.

A. Placing it in lakes.

B. Burying it in garbage dumps.

C. Dumping it into the ocean.

D. Digging it into the ground containers.

E. Putting it inside cement containers.

F. Laying it in plastic containers.


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Section III

In this section you are given statements. Read them and say whether they are True (T) or False (F) according to what you hear. Indicate whether you think the statement is True or False by circling T or F. You now have 30 seconds to read the statements. Now listen to Section III and answer the questions as you listen.

22. Private companies and organisations donate money to nuclear research.

T F

23. A great rise in the amount of medical equipment has occurred over the last thirty years.

T F

24. Companies want to invest in nuclear science because they can make a huge profit.

T F

25. The USSR and the USA used nuclear weapons to protect their countries.

T F

26. Uranium is found near the cities in Australia.

T F

27. Most Australians are happy with the government’s decision to have nuclear waste storage facilities.

T F

You now have 30 seconds to look over your answers for this section

Section IV Now you will hear a conversation between Michael (a student) and Claire (the lecturer). Michael has some questions to ask the lecturer about her lecture. Listen and answer the following questions by filling in the gaps in the text with what you hear. Put only one word in each gap. You will now have 30 seconds to look at the questions. Now listen and fill in the gaps.

Nuclear Science

Nuclear science was started in (28) __________________. Five years later it was first used to help

British soldiers when (29) __________________ helped to locate bullets. Following Madam Curie’s 1898

discovery of polonium and radium, X-rays were also used to diagnose (30)

__________________disease in 1927. Nuclear science became available to (31) __________________

for the first time in August 1946.

Nuclear Weapons

Hahn and Straussman, two German (32) __________________, showed people how nuclear fission

worked in 1938. Because of this work, the American (33) __________________ was contacted by Albert

Einstein because he realised they wanted to make a (34) __________________. The Americans tested

a bomb in New Mexico in July 1945 and followed that by dropping bombs on (35) __________________.

After the Second World War, because America produced many bombs, the Russians did as well – this

started the period of history called the (36) __________________ War.

Nuclear Energy

Nuclear power was first (37) __________________ in December, 1951, at the National Reactor Station.

Then, in July 1955, the first (38) __________________, Arco, Idaho, was supplied with nuclear energy.

The first civilian (39) __________________ of nuclear power took place in 1957 – in the same year there

was a nuclear (40) __________________ at Windscale, England.


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IELTS Style Listening: Homes of the Future Instructions

Listen and answer the questions on what you hear. The test is divided into 4 sections. You will hear each section only once. You will be given time to read the questions before you listen to each section, and time to check your answers after each section. You will be given 2 minutes at the end of the test to go over your answers. Section 1 In the first section of the listening test, you are going to hear part of a lecture on Homes of the Future. The lecturer is Professor Murray. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section. Now listen to Section 1 and answer the questions as you listen.

Questions 1 – 3: Circle the correct answer. 1. People’s concept of ‘home’ is

A. imaginative B. different C. changing D. the same

2. What percentage of the population lives in apartments in Singapore?

A. 78% B. 99% C. 70% D. 90%

3. Australian houses have changed in

A. size B. materials C. design D. all of the

above


4. One of the reasons for the changes was ____________________ in technology.

5. Prediction by experts has the ___________________________levelling out at

approximately 10 billion.

6. Due to there being less space, houses will need to be _____________________ .

7. It may not be necessary for couples to___________________if they start a family.

8. Furniture that is more adaptable such as sofa beds and _____________________will

become more common.

9. _____________________ can help ensure a constant indoor temperature.

10. Because of future flooding, homes may be lifted using _______________________.


Section II In this section of the lecture, Professor Murray will talk about improvements in technology. You

now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section.



11. Coloured or opaque glass can be made from clear glass by running

___________________________ through it.

12. When privacy is required, clear glass can be made ___________________.

13. The minimisation of air-conditioning and _________________ of lighting can be achieved

while the view is kept.

14. Technology using __________________ will be used for cleaning.

15. Rivers will have less water removed from them and there will be less_________________ for water

storage dams.

Questions 16 – 18; Circle three letters from A- G. Which three uses does the lecturer give for computer technology in the kitchen? A. sweeping B. shopping C. recipe suggestion

D. vermin reduction E. cooking F. vacuuming

G. self-stacking dishwasher

Questions 19 – 20: Read the statements and indicate whether you think the statement is True, False or Not Given by circling T, F or NG. 19. It won’t be necessary to take out the garbage. T F NG 20. Odours will be removed when the toilet seat is put down. T F NG


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Section III: In this section of the lecture, Professor Murray will talk about building materials and energy efficiency. You now have 30 seconds to read the statements. Now listen to Section III and answer the questions as you listen.


21. Over the last century, wood and stone became more difficult to find and

________________________________ . 22. The problem with skyscrapers is they are not

_________________________ as such a large amount of natural materials is utilised to

build them. 23. The most widely used human-made material is ______________________.

24. Syndecrete is a new material _____________________ to concrete. 25. Syndecrete is more advantageous as it has half the weight and

_____________________

the strength of concrete,

Questions 26 – 30: Fill in the gaps in the sentences using one or two words only. Another popular new material is (26) __________________, which costs only of fraction of

what traditional wood does.

Smartwrap can be used in the construction of (27) ___________________ due to its

strength. Another advantage is the possibility for Smartwrap to be (28)

_____________________ .

The introduction of new materials provides a (29) __________________ challenge for

designers.

The use of modular construction means the environment is (30) ________________for

workers.


SECTION IV Now you will hear a conversation between Chris (a student) and Professor Murray (the lecturer). Chris has some questions to ask the lecturer about the lecture. You will now have 30 seconds to look at the questions. Now listen and answer the following questions. __________________________________________________________________________ Questions 31 – 33: Read the statements and indicate whether you think the statement is True or False by circling T or F. 31. Sustainable building technologies help us reduce our consumption of energy, waste and materials. T F 32. Taking timber from forests is an instance of unsustainable building technology. T F 33. It is necessary to use paints with high levels of poisonous gases. T F Questions 34 – 40 Fill in the notes using no more than three words. Fuel consumption: Two of the ways for fuel consumption to be reduced are efficient hot water heating and (34) __________________ windows. Lighting: Being exposed to natural light makes people happier as well as (35) __________________ . Water: Water use can be restricted in the garden by using (36) __________________ . Cleaner rivers provide a better habitat for (37) _______________________ . Environmental Responsibility: Building materials need to be (38) __________________ to reduce the environmental impact of building houses. Costs: By utilising sustainable technologies and ensuring the incorporation of good design we can reduce (39) __________________ of future renovation . Over the lifetime of a product, costs can be considerably less due to lower (40) __________________ costs.

You now have 2 minutes to look over your work before you check your answers.

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IELTS Style Listening: Changes in Car Technology Instructions

Listen to the tape and answer the questions on what you hear. You should answer on THIS paper. The test is divided into 4 sections. You will hear each section only once. You will be given time to read the questions before you listen to each section and time to check your answers after each section.You will be given 2 minutes at the end of the test to go over your answers. Now put your name on the paper. Section 1In the first section of the listening test you are going to hear part of a lecture on changes in car technologies. The lecturer is Professor High. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section. Now listen to Section 1 and answer the questions as you listen. Questions 1 – 4 Circle the correct answer. 1. According to the lecturer, when was the first car reportedly invented? A. 1678 B. 1769 C. In the late 19

th century D. in the early 19

th century

2. What did the law introduced by the British government to restrict the speed of cars to a walking speed require? A. a person walking in front of the car B. a person holding a flag C. a person blowing a horn D. All three – A, B, and C 3. Approximately when were the first petrol powered engines introduced? A. 1880 - 1882 B. 1883 - 1886 C. 1887 – 1889 D. 1888 4. Circle the incorrect reason for why people thought cars were only expensive toys? A. They regularly broke down B. It wasn’t easy to buy petrol C. There weren’t many improvements D. Most were worthless after one year. Questions 5 – 10 Fill in the notes using no more than three words. 5. The world’s first mass produced car, introduced by Ford in 1908, was very ______________________. 6. Ford introduced assembly lines and designed the car so a lot of ______________________ could be interchanged. 7. Because of a variety of reasons including people becoming richer, cars have become a common ______________________ today. 8. Attempts to ____________________.to be more responsible have only been partially

successful.

9. The problem of pollution from cars is not ______________________.

10. One area the lecturer will talk about is why hybrid cars have become

______________________.


Section IIIn this section of the lecture, Professor High will talk about some of the changes in car

technologies. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section.

Now listen to Section II and answer the questions as you listen. Questions 11 – 15 Circle five letters from A- H. Which five of the following statements agree with what the lecturer states? A. There has not been much progress with cars using alternative fuels.

B. Fuel consumption has improved in recent years.

C. Driving style has caused a drop in fuel efficiency.

D. In the 60s, it was believed hydrogen cars would be a success.

E. Producing hydrogen makes more pollution because we use fossil fuels to produce it.

F. Solar cars can be made to survive an accident.

G. Solar cars are too small to carry 4 or 5 people and their luggage.

H. There is a lot of talk about the commercial production of solar cars.

Questions 16 – 20 Fill in the following notes from the lecture using no more than three words.

Electric Cars

Cannot travel far

Takes (16) ______________________ to recharge the batteries

Biofuel Cars

Fuel comes from sugar cane

Not possible to fully (17) ______________________ petrol

Currently replaces 1/10th of petrol in some (18) ______________________

New Fuel-Efficient Cars

More expensive but mass production will result in (19) ______________________

Hybrid cars have two or more (20) ______________________


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Section III

In this section of the lecture, Professor High will discuss hybrid cars and compare two models on the Australian market. You now have 30 seconds to read the statements. Now listen to Section III and answer the questions as you listen.

Questions 21 – 30 Read the statements and indicate whether you think the statement is True or False by circling T or F. 21. The first hybrid Hondas and Toyotas failed for the same reasons. T F 22. The hybrids were reintroduced when they used less than half the petrol of a normal car. T F 23. At low speeds the Toyota only uses an electric motor. T F 24. Both the Toyota and Honda only run on one cylinder when going down long hills. T F 25. Unlike the Toyota, the Honda does not always turn the engine off at traffic lights. T F 26. The Toyota Prius uses half the petrol of a Toyota Camry. T F 27. The Toyota is extremely quiet at all times and this always confuses drivers. T F 28. As they have problems with their hearing many pedestrians get hit or nearly hit by the Toyota. T F 29. If you start the car when the engine is warm the petrol engine will not start immediately. T F 30. The Honda’s engine always turns off and on at the lights. T F


SECTION IV Now you will hear a conversation between Vic (a student) and Professor High (the lecturer). Vic has some questions to ask the lecturer about the lecture he attended. You will now have 30 seconds to look at the questions. Now listen and answer the following questions. Questions 31 – 40 Fill in the following notes from the lecture using no more than three words.

Aggressive Driving

Use 2.5 times more fuel city traffic

Use 4 times more (31) ________________ conditions

Driving Steadily

¼ greenhouse gases in some conditions

Engine, tires, other (32) ________________ of car – less wear and tear

Driver Education

Australians like 6/8 cylinder cars; hybrids no power

Companies educate drivers but difficult to stop (33) ________________ driving habits

Effects of High Fuel Prices

Until 2005 people bought 4WD but an increase in fuel prices started a (34)

________________ in small cars

Aggressive Driving factors

(35) ________________/ age/ emergency/ belief they can save time

Aggressive Driving and Time Savings

Time savings – only 1 per cent

(36) ________________ of peak hour travel at 0 – 10 kph so it only changes your speed a

little

Drivers make many (37) ________________ so don’t know if they are moving quickly

Other influencing factors – other drivers/ (38) ________________/ accidents/ breakdowns

Public Transport

Need to (39) ________________ and improve public transport system

People using a bus can reduce petrol consumption (40) ________________


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IELTS Style Listening: Bicycle Road Safety Instructions

Listen to the audio and answer the questions on what you hear.


You will be given 2 minutes at the end of the test to go over your answers. Section I In the first section of the listening test you are going to hear a lecture on the differences in road systems in Holland and Australia. The lecturer is Professor John Eales. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section.



1. Australia had 30.4 deaths per 100,000 people in A. 1907 B. 1970 C. 1977 D. 1997

2. Which country/ies were able to reduce the number of deaths on roads? A. Holland B. Australia C. Neither D. Both

3. Australia’s road system focuses on A. cars, bicycles and pedestrians B. cars and bicycles C. bicycles and pedestrians D. cars

Questions 4 – 10: Fill in the notes on Holland’s road system using no more than three words.

Holland’s government has focused on road safety for the last (4) _____________________.

A 12 kph limit is placed on (5) _____________________.

(6) _____________________ bicycle and pedestrian paths have been created.

The amount of (7) _____________________ in relation to bicycles and pedestrians has been increased.

‘Green’ taxes have made the prices of (8) _____________________ more expensive.

Because roads are safe, a lot of (9) _____________________ either walk or ride bicycles.

The (10) _____________________ distance travelled by bicycle has increased by 810%.


Section II

In this section of the lecture, Professor Eales will talk about Australia’s road system and its problems. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section.


Questions 11 – 15: Complete the following notes about changes to Australia’s road systems using no more than three words.

Highways:

Length of highways increased 26,000 kilometres.

Sydney – (11) _____________________ 12 highways constructed.

Widened – 70% of the Pacific highway changed to (12) _____________________.

Increased traffic lights/ monitoring of traffic:

Adjusting lights helps peak hour traffic (13) _____________________.

Increased penalties:

Increase of 73% over last decade.

Drink-drivers can be (14) ___________________ or sent to (15) ___________________

Questions 16– 19: Circle the correct answer.

16. The speaker feels the needs of bicycle riders and pedestrians

A. have been very well addressed B. have been fairly well addressed

C. have been largely ignored D. have been totally ignored

17. The numbers of children in Sydney riding bicycles to school A. didn’t change B. dropped by approximately 10%

C. dropped by exactly 10% D. dropped by more than 10%

18. In 1981, a quarter of cyclists rode their bicycle A. less than once a week B. only once a week

C. a minimum of once a week D. more than once a week

Question 19: Complete the following sentence using only one word.

The difference in the effect of the road system becomes (19) _____________________ when we

compare the number of bicycle trips made in both countries.


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Section III

In this section of the lecture, Professor Eales will tell you what recommendations have been made to improve Australia’s road system. You now have 30 seconds to read the statements. Now listen to Section III and answer the questions as you listen.

Questions 20 – 29: Read the statements and indicate whether you think the statement is True or False by circling T or F. 20. The increased petrol taxes would only be used to extend the bicycle and pedestrian networks. T F 21. The $200 million dollars should be used in three ways to get people to use bicycles and walk. T F 22. Increasing the amount of driver training in Australia has been effective in reducing deaths. T F 23. Young children should have more driver training. T F 24. The limit for cars and bicycles is the lowest of the three proposed speed limits mentioned. T F Questions 25 – 30: Fill in the gaps in the sentences using one word only. The first recommendation in regards to encouraging greater use of public transport is to remove the

(25) _____________________ tax. It is also necessary to (26) __________________ the system as it

has not been fixed due to the government favouring (27) ___________________ over the last two

decades. The final recommendation is to (28) _____________________ the bike, pedestrian and rail

systems, resulting in a (29) _____________________ in journey times.


Section IV Now you will hear a conversation between Victoria (a student) and Professor Eales (the lecturer). Victoria has some questions to ask the lecturer about the effects of Australia’s road system on health. You will now have 30 seconds to look at the questions. Now listen and answer the following questions.

Questions 30 – 32: Complete the following notes about changes to Australia’s road systems using no more than three words.

The different (30) _____________________ in Holland and Australia have a direct effect on health. A

World Health Organisation study discovered that exercising regularly decreased the risk of

(31) _____________________ by half. This is also true for adult diabetes. The most significant finding,

however, was that walking or cycling to school helps to reduce the chance of childhood

(32) _____________________.


33. The number of families with one car is higher in Australia than Holland T F

34. Holland produces 50% of the carbon dioxide Australia does. T F

Questions 35 – 38: Answer the following questions.

35. What effect does living in apartments have for the people of Holland?

________________________________________________________________________

36. What do the town planners in Australia need to change?

________________________________________________________________________

37. What effect does the cost of fuel have?

________________________________________________________________________

38. What did the government of Holland reduce to encourage people to use LPG?

________________________________________________________________________


You now have 2 minutes to look over your work before you check your answers.

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IELTS Style Listening: Hotel Fire Safety Instructions

Listen to the audio and answer the questions on what you hear.



Section 1

In the first section of the listening test you are going to hear part of a lecture on the history of urban fires. The lecturer is Professor Watson. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section.

Now listen to Section 1 and answer the questions as you listen. ___________________________________________________________________________________


1. According to the lecturer, fire has always been __________________ to humans. A. a friend B. an enemy C. a friend and an enemy D. neither friend nor enemy

2. When did the Great Fire of London take place? A. 1616 B. 1666 C. 1916 D. 1966

3. The Great Fire of London began because a baker __________________. A. burnt some bread B. was getting some water C. spread the fire from the oven D. left an oven unattended


4. A fire occurred in the __________________ in South Korea in 2003.

5. 140 people __________________ in the fire.

6. The fire in Paraguay started in the __________________ section of a shopping centre.

7. People couldn’t escape as the shop owners had locked the __________________.

8. Over 10 fires are reported every day in the __________________.

9. The talk will focus on __________________.

10. Governments want to improve __________________ to make hotels safer.


Section II

In this section of the lecture, Professor Watson will talk about two large hotel fires. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section.


Questions 11 – 15: Fill in the notes about the Paris Opera Hotel fire using no more than three words.

11. Of the 24 people killed, 11 were __________________.

12. The fire started on the __________________ and spread through the hotel.

13. A neighbour rescued some people with a __________________.

14. As well as being overcrowded, there was only one __________________ in the hotel.

15. The fire started when __________________ were thrown onto a candle.

Questions 16 – 18: Circle three letters from A- G. Which three reasons does the lecturer give for the many deaths in the Childers fire?

A. There was no fire alarm.

B. There were no fire extinguishers.

C. Petrol caused the fire to spread quickly.

D. Too many people were sleeping on the top floor of the hotel.

E. The fire was difficult to stop because the building was made of wood.

F. Guests had barred the windows.

G. A door was blocked by bunk beds.

Questions 19 – 20: Read the statements and indicate whether you think the statement is True, False or Not Given by circling T, F or NG.

19. Hotel fires caused more damage in 2005 than in 2002. T F NG

20. According to the lecturer, fires in guest rooms are only started by smoking, cooking, candles or sparks from electrical appliances. T F NG


Section III

In this section of the lecture, Professor Watson will talk about design principles.You now have 30

Section IV Now you will hear a conversation between Stella (a student) and Professor Watson (the lecturer). Stella

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seconds to read the statements.

Now listen to Section III and answer the questions as you listen. __________________________________________________________________________________

Questions 20 – 30: Fill in the notes using no more than three words. Fire Compartments

Fire compartments are used to stop the (20) _____________________ of a fire to other rooms in a

building. The walls have to be fire-resistant for (21) _____________________ 4 hours; use non-

combustible materials; and be resistant to shock. Depending on the use of the building, the size of the

fire-resistant rooms will (22) _____________________. The Empire State Building is a good example of

such a building. It was hit by an aircraft in 1945, (23) _____________________ petrol that caused a

large fire, however, there were very few deaths.

Escape Routes

Escape routes, used in an (24) ___________________ need to be designed carefully. They are usually

fully-enclosed, made from non-combustible materials, and have special (25) _____________________

doors, which stop smoke from spreading. These doors create problems for building designers as people

using the stairways need both fresh air and normal levels of (26) ________________________.

Alarms and Materials

Early warning systems can help by closing doors, sounding alarms, alerting fire-fighters and starting

(27) ___________________. Early warning systems also send local fire services a

(28) _____________________ when a fire is detected. American research has shown that having such

a system (29) _____________________ average loss by between 54 and 62%. It is recommended that

fire-resistant materials be used to slow fires in a number of areas including wall linings, floors, (30)

__________________ and furnishings.


has some questions to ask the lecturer about hotel fire safety. You will now have 30 seconds to look at the questions. Now listen and answer the following questions.

Questions 31 – 33: Read the statements and indicate whether you think the statement is True or False by circling T or F. 31. Hotels in European countries are generally not as safe as American hotels. T F 32. Large hotel groups in America definitely have better equipment than smaller ones. T F 33. There are two reasons why it is safer to stay on the second floor of a hotel. T F Questions 34 – 40: Fill in the notes using no more than three words.

The first thing you should do after checking in is (34) __________________ the fire exits and stairways.

You should also check the doors are not locked, and count the number of doors to the exit. In your room,

check the (35) __________________ using the test button. If there is a fire, leave the room but take the

room key and a (36) __________________ in case you need to return. You should check door knobs for

heat. If you need to go to the roof, keep the stairway (37) __________________ by opening the door and

wait for the fire-fighters. If you are in your room, use (38) __________________ towels to stop smoke

entering. Towels can also be used to help you (39) __________________. If someone catches on fire

you can use a (40) __________________ to put the fire out.


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IELTS Style Listening: Women and Work Instructions

Listen to the tape and answer the questions on what you hear. You should answer on THIS paper. The test is divided into 4 sections. You will hear each section only once. You will be given time to read the questions before you listen to each section and time to check your answers after each section. You will be given 2 minutes at the end of the test to go over your answers. Section I In the first section of the listening test you are going to hear a lecture on Women and Work in Australia. The lecturer is Claire Clarkson. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions. Now listen to Section 1 and answer the questions as you listen.

Questions 1 – 5 Answer using no more than five words. Give two examples of areas in which women’s lives have changed over the last 100 years. 1. ________________________________2. ________________________________

3. The first part of the lecture will focus on the working conditions for women ______________ World War Two.

4. The second part of the lecture will explain the ______________ of World War Two.

5. The third part will cover the various ______________ that occurred after World War Two.

6. What area couldn’t women work in before World War Two? _____________________________________________________________________

7. Name one type of work in which women received less money than men for the same work. _____________________________________________________________________

8. When did women earn only half the wage of a man? _____________________________________________________________________

9/10. What two true professions were open to women? _____________________________________________________________________

11. When were women expected to stop working? _____________________________________________________________________

12. How could a woman reach the top of her profession? _____________________________________________________________________

13. What work did Marie Byles do? _____________________________________________________________________


Section II Listen to Section II of the lecture. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section. Now listen to Section II and answer the questions as you listen.

Questions 14 - 15 Circle one of the following answers: 14. Which of the following places did Australian soldiers not go to?

E. Africa F. Europe G. America H. Asia

15. The government campaigned for women to enter the workforce because - E. women could do the job better than men F. women were needed to fight G. women were needed to support the war effort H. women were needed to send gifts to their husbands

Questions 16 – 19 Complete the information below about the changes brought about by World War two using no more than two words. 16. The government made a lot of ____________________ about how women were supporting the war effort. 17. The ____________________ did not talk about the low wages for women in their firms. 18. ____________________ the war, many women continued to work either because their husbands had died or they wanted to receive 19.____________________. Questions 20 – 21 Circle the two reasons mentioned on the tape why Australian employers wanted women to continue working post World War Two.

G. Women worked very hard. H. Women were smarter than men. I. Women worked for less money. J. The Australian economy was very weak. K. The Australian economy was very strong. L. The Australian economy was steady.


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Section III In this section you are given statements. Read them and say whether they are True (T) or False (F) according to what you hear. Indicate whether you think the statement is True or False by circling T or F. You now have 30 seconds to read the statements. Now listen to Section III and answer the questions as you listen. Questions 22 – 28 22. The first call for change took place outside Australia. T F 23. The equal pay for equal work principle was introduced in 1948. T F 24. The Australian government wanted to introduce changes but couldn’t. T F 25. Equal pay for equal work became a reality before 1972. T F 26. Women who had children after 1979 could receive money from their company. T F 27. All women have trouble both working and taking care of their family. T F 28. The childcare system has had no effect on reducing role conflict. T F


Section IV Now you will hear a conversation between Jack (a student) and Claire Clarkson (the lecturer). Jack has some questions to ask the lecturer about her lecture. Listen and answer the following questions by filling in the gaps in the text with what you hear. Put only one word in each gap. You will now have 30 seconds to look at the questions. Now listen and fill in the gaps.

According to Professor Clarkson, there are several reasons why there is still a lack of equality in the

workplace in Australia. She believes (29) _____________ sex roles are the main reason for inequality

because many people think women should stay at home and

(30) _____________ should provide money for their family.

To overcome this, the (31) _____________ introduced the new Equal Opportunities Act in the 1990’s.

There are also new (32) _____________ harassment laws to protect women in the workplace. Because

they support this idea, many large (33) _____________ have employees who only deal with equal

opportunity problems.

Professor Clarkson believes that constant (34) _____________ of people is needed because the

government is trying to change the way people have thought for hundreds of

(35) _____________. Some changes have occurred as a result of these laws, but change has been slow,

and could take up to two or three (36) _____________.

The last factor she mentions is the difference in the amount of (37) _____________ women and men have

received in the past. While both girls and boys went to school, girls usually

(38) _____________ studying before boys because they were expected to become housewives.

From the (39) _____________, the number of women studying at university started to increase because

their (40) _____________ in life had changed. More girls finish high school than boys, and there are huge

numbers of women studying at university these days.


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IELTS Style Listening: Water Shortages in Brisbane Instructions




Section 1 In the first section of the listening test you are going to hear part of a lecture on water shortages. The lecturer is Professor Rank. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section.


Questions 1 – 3 Circle the correct answer. 1. According to the lecturer, __________________ humans have no safe water to drink. A. 1, 100 B. 11 thousand C. 1.1million D. 1.1 billion 2. The lecturer takes out __________________ of saltwater. A. .195 litres B. 1.95 litres C.19.5 litres D. 195 litres 3. Circle the three reasons mentioned why the remaining 125ml of water can’t be used. A. It is under the ground. B. It is ice. C. It is in places people don’t live. D. It is affected by pollution. Questions 4 – 10 Fill in the notes using no more than three words. 4. There is less fresh water every year because of a number of ______________________.

5. Global warming is changing the world’s ______________________.

6. Not everybody has ______________________ access to water.

7. People who have to travel to get water only collect __________________ 2 – 5 litres per day.

8. Having no clean drinking water means the number of people affected by diseases

____________________.

9. The cost of water in poorer parts of cities is ______________________ 60 times the real cost of water. 10. One area the lecturer will talk about is where water is ______________________.


Section II

In this section of the lecture, Professor Rank will talk about some of the reasons for water shortages. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section. Now listen to Section II and answer the questions as you listen.

Questions 11 – 15 Fill in the notes about the availability of water using no more than three words.

11. There is enough fresh water to support a __________________ three times greater

than it is now.

12. Australia has the __________________ rainfall.

13. 70% of the water in the world is used in __________________.

Questions 14 – 17 Circle four letters from A- G. Which four of the following statements agree with what the lecturer states? A. An increase in population means a decrease in food.

B. The water needed to produce a kilogram of potatoes is low compared to other foods.

C. The amount of water used to raise animals is always higher than that used to grow vegetables.

D. Beef requires the most water.

E. There is no relationship between the amount of money people have and the water they get.

F. The people of Britain are among the highest users of water.

G. The people of Gambia can just survive on the amount of water they drink every day.

Questions 18 – 20 Read the statements and indicate whether you think the statement is True, False or Not Given by circling T, F or NG.

18. There are huge amounts of water underground. T F NG

19. Country people use groundwater more than city people. T F NG

20. According to the lecturer, the replacement of underground water supplies often requires just over

one hundred years. T F NG


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Section III

In this section of the lecture, Professor Rank will talk about some solutions to water shortages in Brisbane, Australia. You now have 30 seconds to read the statements. Now listen to Section III and answer the questions as you listen.


Problems

Every week approximately fifteen hundred people are moving to Brisbane, Queensland’s

(20) _____________________ city. This, combined with the worst drought in a long time, has seen

the water levels at very low levels. Currently, the dams are at approximately 1/3 of their (21)

_____________________.

Plans to address the problems

The first measure, water (22) _____________________, has reduced water use by approximately 3

per cent every year. The second measure the council has taken has been to request (23)

_____________________ and businesses to reduce their consumption of water. Some businesses,

like the Brisbane Convention Centre, have done so by recycling water. When they clean their roof

and walls, the water is collected and (24) _____________________.

Another measure has been to provide money to (25) _____________________ a rainwater tank.

Brisbane City council also plans to build two new dams, and (26)____________________ existing

ones.

Criticisms of the dams

The first complaint is that the existence of the lungfish, which has (27) ___________________ since

the time of the dinosaurs is in danger as one of the dams is to be located on the

(28) _____________________ river they live in. Complaints also come from the plan to sell

(29) _____________________ government companies as people believe jobs will be lost and the

price of (30) __________________ will increase.


SECTION IV Now you will hear a conversation between Joan (a student) and Professor Rank (the lecturer). Joan has some questions to ask the lecturer about water issues in Toowoomba, Australia. You will now have 30 seconds to look at the questions. Now listen and answer the following questions.

Questions 31 – 33 Read the statements and indicate whether you think the statement is True, False or Not Given by circling T, F or NG. 31. The lecturer talked about water recycling for Brisbane City in his lecture. T F NG 32. Toowoomba has had very little rain for fifteen years. T F NG 33. They will filter the water to clean it. T F NG


Water and sewage have been separated for many years so people don’t like the idea of drinking

recycled water. However, there is a greater risk of (34) __________________ from other things.

Some people believe that a man may not be able to have children because

(35) __________________ can’t be filtered from the water.

However, to be affected a person would have to drink a lot of untreated water and, in Toowoomba,

the water will be (36) __________________ with dam water.

The Government has not built a recycling plant in Australia before because of the political (37)

__________________. Singapore only recycles 1 per cent of its water because the

(38) __________________ of people do not want to pay for it.

Results from a recent survey show that slightly over (39) __________________ of people would use

recycled water. Most people also believe it should be used in public toilets and on

(40) __________________.


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IELTS Style Listening: Home Fire Safety Instructions

Listen to the tape and answer the questions on what you hear. You should answer on THIS paper. The test is divided into 4 sections. You will hear each section only once. You will be given time to read the questions before you listen to each section and time to check your answers after each section. You will be given 2 minutes at the end of the test to go over your answers. Section I In the first section of the listening test you are going to hear a lecture on Home Fire Safety. The lecturer is Kathy McNally. Listen and answer by filling in the gaps in the table with what you hear. Use no more than three words in each gap. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section. Now listen to Section 1 and answer the questions as you listen. Questions 1 - 10

Number of deaths between 1991 and 2000

Example 175

Home fires mainly happen because of

(1) ________________ error

Percentage of fires which occurred -

A. In the kitchen

B. In the bedroom

C. In the lounge room

(2) ____________________%

(3) ____________________%

(4) ____________________%

To prevent fires in the kitchen, you should

A. never leave the stove unattended when

B. make sure things are not left near the

(5) _____________________

(6) _____________________

The main dangers in the bedroom are –

A. incorrect use of

B. people

C. people not turning off

(7) ________________ globes

(8) _____________________

(9) _____________________

Candles and oil burners are dangerous in the

(10) ____________________


Section II

In this section of the lecture, Professor McNally will talk about protecting your home against fire. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section. Now listen to Section II and answer the questions as you listen.

Questions 11 – 13 Answer questions 11 to 13 by circling the correct answer. Fire Alarms 11. The ionisation type fire alarm is best used in

A. living areas B. bedrooms

C. sunrooms D. kitchens

12. The photoelectric type fire alarm is most effective with

A. fast-burning fires with little smoke B. fast-burning fires with a great deal of smoke C. slow-burning fires with little smoke D. slow-burning fires with a great deal of smoke

13. Batteries need replacing

A. every month B. every year

C. every two years D. never

Questions 14 – 20 Complete the notes using no more than three words. Home Exit Plans Step 1

Draw a (14) _____________________________ of your home. Make sure all the people know more than (15) __________________________ to leave a room.

Step 2

It is important to (16) _____________________________ Practise with the (17) _____________________________, and then with the lights out. Crawl out because the (18) _____________________________ near the floor. Organise a (19) _____________________________ such as the letterbox or back fence.

Security versus Safety Place spare keys near (20) _____________________________.


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Section III

In this section of the lecture, Professor McNally will tell you what to do if there is a fire in your home. You now have 30 seconds to read the statements. Now listen to Section III and answer the questions as you listen.

Questions 21 – 30 Read the statements and indicate whether you think the statement is True or False by circling T or F. 21. The majority of dangerous chemicals in a fire are near the top of a room.

T F 22. Smoke from house fires has been responsible for only a few deaths.

T F 23. Rolling on the ground is dangerous if your clothes catch on fire.

T F 24. The emergency number for the fire brigade is 000.

T F 25. A neighbour will have called the fire brigade by the time you escape a fire.

T F Questions 26 – 30 Fill in the gaps in the sentences using one word only. When you see there is a fire, (26) _____________ the emergency services number. You should ask for

the type of emergency service you need when the (27) _____________ answers the phone. After you

have been connected to the correct service, tell the operator what the emergency is. The operator will

then ask you the (28) _____________. Then you need to state whether someone is (29)

_____________ or hurt. When you hang up, go outside and wait to (30) _____________ the fire-

fighters.


SECTION IV Now you will hear a conversation between Jack (a student) and Professor McNally (the lecturer). Jack has some questions to ask the lecturer about children and fire safety. You will now have 30 seconds to look at the questions. Now listen and answer the following questions. 31. Jack visits Professor McNally because he is worried about ______________________

________________________________________________________________________

32. What should parents make sure doesn’t happen to children?

________________________________________________________________________

Write three reasons why children light fires.

33. _____________________________________________________________________

34. _____________________________________________________________________

35. _____________________________________________________________________

36. How many children develop an unhealthy interest in fire?

________________________________________________________________________

True or false?

37. Childrens’ interest in fire safety can be increased by involving them in a home safety plan.

T F 38. Putting matches in a high cupboard is the safest way to stop children getting them.

T F 39. Getting children to get matches for you teaches them to be responsible.

T F 40. If you find matches in your child’s pockets you should talk to them straight away as this may stop it

happening again.

T F


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IELTS Style Listening: Water Shortages and Desalination Instructions

Listen to the tape and answer the questions on what you hear. You should answer on THIS paper. The test is divided into 4 sections. You will hear each section only once. You will be given time to read the questions before you listen to each section and time to check your answers after each section. You will be given 2 minutes at the end of the test to go over your answers. Now put your name on the paper. Section 1 In the first section of the listening test you are going to hear part of a lecture on the solutions to water problems around the world. The lecturer is Professor Allblack. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section. Now listen to Section 1 and answer the questions as you listen.

Questions 1 – 4 Circle the correct answer. 1. What percentage of the world’s water is salt water? A. 9.7% B. 97% C. 0.97% D. .097% 2. According to the lecturer, where can humans easily obtain fresh water? A. The North and South Poles B. Glaciers C. Rivers D. All three 3. Why are there problems with water supply? A. There is more fresh water. B. The United Nations. C. Thirty years. D. The world’s population has increased. Questions 4 – 7 Fill in the notes on the world’s water problems using no more than three words. 4. 20% of the world’s people did not have water that was safe to ____________________. 5. Polluted water kills _____________________ children every year. 6. In 29 countries, 450 million people do not have _____________________ water. 7. Two-thirds of the world’s people will have water problems by _____________________. Questions 8 - 9 8. What is three-quarters of the world’s water used for? ________________________________________________________________________ 9. What would reduce the problems the world has with water? ________________________________________________________________________


Section II

In this section of the lecture, Professor Allblack will talk about what desalination is, its history, how it is done, and its positives. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section. Now listen to Section II and answer the questions as you listen.

Questions 10 – 14 Complete the following notes about the process and history of desalination using no more than three words.

Desalination

A process where water and (10) _____________________ are separated.

Used by (11) _____________________ for many centuries.

In the past, the only place that equipment was needed was on

(12) _____________________.

Nowadays, over 7,500 desalination plants have been built (13) _____________________.

The largest desalination plant makes (14) _____________________ litres of fresh water every day.

Questions 15 - 19 Read the statements and indicate whether you think the statement is True or False by circling T or F. 15. Only two methods of desalination are used. T F

16. There are 3 basic steps in the distillation method. T F

17. The filter used in the RO method cannot clean all the water. T F

18. The cost of building a desalination plant is only one-quarter

of the cost of building a dam. T F

19. Desalination plants will only be built in cities. T F


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Section III

In this section of the lecture, Professor Allblack will talk about problems with desalination. You now have 30 seconds to read the statements. Now listen to Section III and answer the questions as you listen.

Questions 20 – 30 Answer the questions with short answers using no more than five words. At what two stages can animals and fish be killed by desalination plants? When the water is (20) ______________________________________________.

When the water is (21) ______________________________________________. 22. What can dead animals in the water lead to in the local environment? ________________________________________________________________________ 23. What can be killed by high levels of salt in the water? ________________________________________________________________________ 24. How much electricity do desalination plants use? ________________________________________________________________________ 25. What can the increase in gases cause? ________________________________________________________________________ Questions 26 – 30 Fill in the gaps in the sentences using one word only. Rainwater that is stored could be used either for toilets or (26) _____________________. Water is

wasted because of broken or leaking water (27) __________________. Recycling could save water but

Australians believe it is (28) ___________________. In Europe, water can be recycled up to (29)

_____________________ times. The negative points of desalination need to be (30)

_____________________ before it is used widely.


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IELTS Style Listening: Lighting Design Instructions

Listen to the tape and answer the questions on what you hear. You should answer on THIS paper. The test is divided into 4 sections. You will hear each section only once. You will be given time to read the questions before you listen to each section and time to check your answers after each section. Section I In the first section of the listening test you are going to hear a lecture on lighting design. The lecturer is Professor Martin Beaker. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section. Now listen to Section 1 and answer the questions as you listen.

Questions 1 – 4: Fill in the notes as you listen using one word.

Lighting Talk

Crucial:

Building can become a (1) _____________________ or terrible place to work.

Three areas of talk:

Steps to (2) _____________________ lighting for clients and the environment.

How to (3) _____________________ a project.

(4) _____________________ external factors.

Questions 5 – 6; Circle the correct answer. 5. Companies and people are concerned about energy

A. supply B. supply and price

C. supply, price and waste D. supply, price, waste, and design

6. The use of modern lighting methods can save

A. less than 25% of energy B. 25% of energy

C. more than 25% of energy D. approximately 25% of energy

Questions 7 – 12: Fill in the notes using no more than three words. The first important thing is to assess the current situation by (7) _____________________ how much

light is produced. It is also necessary to check the natural light levels as natural light should be used

wherever (8) _____________________.

Occupancy control systems turn (9) _____________________ on or off when people leave the room.

Other modern systems have controls which change the light level in a room as the (10)

_____________________ increases or decreases.

Diffuse light is free and can reduce costs. Workers and students are affected positively because of its

(11) _____________________ impact. Studies of companies have shown a reduction in energy costs

and an increase in (12) _____________________ productivity.


Section II

In this section of the lecture, Professor Beaker will talk about modern lighting methods. You now have 30 seconds to read the questions for this section. Now listen to Section II and answer the questions as you listen.

Question 13 Circle four of the following which are mentioned by the lecturer as factors of the quality of light in a building. A. the space’s architecture B. the light bulb used

C. what the users prefer D. what the users can afford

E. what the users need F. the light source used

Questions 14 – 16 Answer the following questions.

14. Provide one reason why RE lamps are recommended.

________________________________________________________________________

15. What helps to make a space seem larger?

________________________________________________________________________

16. Why does a lighter colour paint make your lighting more efficient?

________________________________________________________________________

Questions 17 – 20 Complete the following notes using no more than three words.

Why designers choose daylight:

1. Best colour balance.

2. Provides a connection to the (17) _____________________.

3. Promotes good health/ motivation.

Make it visually interesting:

Highlight (18) _____________________, ceilings and features.

Take advantage of the (19) _____________________ of the room.

The mind can stay (20) _____________________.


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Section III

In this section of the lecture, Professor Beaker will tell you how to begin a lighting project. You now have

30 seconds to read the statements. Now listen to Section III and answer the questions as you listen.

Questions 21 – 25.

Circle whether the following statements are true or false according to the lecture.

21. Selection of the light is the beginning of the lighting design process.

T F

22. You need to find out whether the client has special lights.

T F

23. Restaurants often require layers of light.

T F

24. Task lighting provides general light.

T F

25. Good task lighting helps a company increase profits.

T F

26. The ambient light source should always be adjustable.

T F

27. It is recommended to start your design with the accent lighting.

T F

28. It is necessary to check how much energy the bulb uses.

T F

29. A bathroom mirror light should be placed in front of someone.

T F

30. The lecturer defines fixture as meaning light bulb.

T F


SECTION IV Now you will hear a conversation between Megan (a student) and Professor Beaker (the lecturer).

Megan has some questions to ask the lecturer about the effects of lighting on learning. You will now have

30 seconds to look at the questions. Now listen and answer the following questions.

Questions 31 – 32 31. Who does Megan work for? ________________________________________________________________________

32. Circle four things included in the Indoor Air Quality reports. A. Natural lighting B. Air conditioning

C. External design D. Fixed windows

E. Heat control F. Building materials

G. Floor plans

Questions 33 - 36 Fill in the missing notes using no more than three words.

Elizabethtown College:

o Saved (33) _____________________ per year.

o Temperature complaints down 75%.

o Maintenance down 25%.

o (34) _____________________ down by 15%.

Pacific Gas and Electric Report:

o 21,000 students/ 3 school districts.

o Classrooms with lots of light – (35) ______________________ up by 20 to 26%.

o Large window area 15 to 23% better results.

o Classrooms with (36) _____________________ had 6 to 7% higher scores.

Questions 37 – 40 Fill in the blanks using no more than three words. Sunshine helps the body to produce the vitamins (37) _____________________ as well as assisting the

immune system. People in the northern hemisphere can suffer from SAD because of the long (38)

_____________________. This causes a lack of light, resulting in psychological and (39)

_____________________ problems. Exposure to natural light helps as people feel they are more in

contact with (40) _____________________.


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CRICOS No: 00213J

Reading and Listening Book Answer

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Transcript of Reading and Listening Book Answer