Video Game’s Unexpected Benefits to Human Brain

A. James Paul Gee, professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, played his first video game years ago when his six-year-old son Sam was playing Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When It’s Dark Outside. He wanted to play the game so he could support Sam’s problem solving. Though Pajama Sam is not an “educational game”, it is replete with the types of problems psychologists study when they study thinking and learning. When he saw how well the game held Sam’s attention, he wondered what sort of beast a more mature video game might be.

B. Video and computer games, like many other popular, entertaining and addicting kid’s activities, are looked down upon by many parents as time-wasters, and worse, parents think that these games rot the brain. Violent video games are readily blamed by the media and some experts as the reason why some youth become violent or commit extreme anti-social behavior. Recent content analyses of video games show that as many as 89% of games contain some violent content, but there is no form of aggressive content for 70% of popular games. Many scientists and psychologists, like James Paul Gee, find that video games actually have many benefits - the main one being making kids smart. Video games may actually teach kids high-level thinking skills that they will need in the future.

C. "Video games change your brain," according to University of Wisconsin psychologist Shawn Green. Video games change the brain’s physical structure the same way as do learning to read, playing the piano, or navigating using a map. Much like exercise can build muscle, the powerful combination of concentration and rewarding surges of neurotransmitters like dopamine, which strengthens neural circuits, can build the player’s brain.

D. Video games give your child’s brain a real workout. In many video games, the skills requừed to win involve abstract and high level thinking. These skills are not even taught at school. Some of the mental skills trained by video games include: following instructions, problem solving, logic, hand-eye coordination, fine motor and spatial skills. Research also suggests that people can learn iconic, spatial, and visual attention skills from video games. There have been even studies with adults showing that experience with video games is related to better surgical skills. Jacob Benjamin, doctor from Beth Israel Medical Center NY, found a direct link between skill at video gaming and skill at keyhole or laparoscopic surgery. Also, a reason given by experts as to why fighter pilots of today are more skillful is that this generation’s pilots are being weaned on video games.

E. The players learn to manage resources that are limited, and decide the best use of resources, the same way as in real life. In strategy games, for instance, while developing a city, an unexpected surprise like an enemy might emerge. This forces the player to be flexible and quickly change tactics. Sometimes the player does this almost every second of the game giving the brain a real workout. According to researchers at the University of Rochester, led by Daphne Bavelier, a cognitive scientist, games simulating stressful events such as those found in battle or action games could be a training tool for real-world situations. The study suggests that playing action video games primes the brain to make quick decisions. Video games can be used to train soldiers and surgeons, according to the study. Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture, says gamers must deal with immediate problems while keeping their long-term goals on their horizon. Young gamers force themselves to read to get instructions, follow storylines of games, and get information from the game texts.

F. James Paul Gee, professor of education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that playing a video game is similar to working through a science problem. Like students in a laboratory, gamers must come up with a hypothesis. For example, players in some games constantly try out combinations of weapons and powers to use to defeat an enemy. If one does not work, they change hypothesis and try the next one. Video games are goal-driven experiences, says Gee, which are fundamental to learning. Also, using math skills is important to win in many games that involve quantitative analysis like managing resources. In higher levels of a game, players usually fail the first time around, but they keep on trying until they succeed and move on to the next level.

G. Many games are played online and involve cooperation with other online players in order to win. Video and computer games also help children gain self-confidence and many games are based on history, city building, and governance and so on. Such games indirectly teach children about aspects of life on earth.

H. In an upcoming study in the journal Current Biology, authors Daphne Bavelier, Alexandre Pouget, and C. Shawn Green report that video games could provide a potent training regimen for speeding up reactions in many types of real-life situations. The researchers tested dozens of 18- to 25-year-olds who were not ordinarily video game players. They split the subjects into two groups. One group played 50 hours of the fast-paced action video games "Call of Duty 2" and "Unreal Tournament," and the other group played 50 hours of the slow-moving strategy game "The Sims 2." After this training period, all of the subjects were asked to make quick decisions in several tasks designed by the researchers. The action game players were up to 25 percent faster at coming to a conclusion and answered just as many questions correctly as their strategy game playing peers.

Questions 28-31

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

Write your answers in boxes 28-31 on your answer sheet.

28 What is the main purpose of paragraph ONE?

A. Introduction of professor James Paul Gee.

B. Introduction of the video game: Pajamas Sam.

C. Introduction of types of video games.

D. Introduction of the background of this passage.

29 What does the author want to express in the second paragraph?

A. Video games are widely considered harmful for children’s brain.

B. Most violent video games are the direct reason of juvenile delinquency,

C. Even there is a certain proportion of violence in most video games; scientists and psychologists see its benefits of children’s intellectual abilities.

D Many parents regard video games as time-wasters, which rot children’s brain.

30 What is correctly mentioned in paragraph four?

A Some schools use video games to teach students abstract and high level thinking.

B Video games improves the brain ability in various aspects,

C Some surgeons have better skills because they play more video games.

D Skillful fighter pilots in this generation love to paly video games.

31 What is the expectation of the experiment the three researchers did?

A Gamers have to make the best use of the limited resource.

B Gamers with better math skills will win in the end.

C Strategy game players have better ability to make quick decisions.

D Video games help increase the speed of players’ reaction effectively.

Questions 32-35

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 32-35 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE	if the statement is true
FALSE	if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN	if the information is not given in the passage

 

32 Most video games are popular because of their violent content.

33 The action game players minimized the percentage of making mistakes in the experiment.

34 It would be a good idea for schools to apply video games in their classrooms.

35 Those people who are addicted to video games have lots of dopamine in their brains.

 

Questions 36-40

Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-F) with opinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-F in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.

A The writer’s opinion B James Paul Gee C Shawn Green

D Daphne Bavelier E Steven Johnson F Jacob Benjamin

36 Video games as other daily life skills alter the brain’s physical structure.

37 Brain is ready to make decisions without hesitation when players are immersed in playing stressful games.

38 The purpose-motivated experience that video games offer plays an essential role in studying.

39 Players are good at tackling prompt issues with future intensions.

40 It helps children broaden their horizon in many aspects and gain self-confidence.

 

Reading Test 30

Section 1

Lie Detector

A. However much we may abhor it, deception comes naturally to all living things. Birds do it by feigning injury to lead hungry predators away from nesting young. Spider crabs do it by disguise: adorning themselves with strips of kelp and other debris, they pretend to be something they are not-and so escape their enemies. Nature amply rewards successful deceivers by allowing them to survive long enough to mate and reproduce. So it may come as no surprise to learn that human beings-who, according to psychologist Gerald Jellison of the University of South California, are lied to about 200 times a day, roughly one untruth every five minutes—often deceive for exactly the same reasons: to save their own skins or to get something they can't get by other means.

B. But knowing how to catch deceit can be just as important a survival skill as knowing how to tell a lie and get away with it. A person able to spot falsehood quickly is unlikely to be swindled by an unscrupulous business associate or hoodwinked by a devious spouse. Luckily, nature provides more than enough clues to trap dissemblers in then own tangled webs-if you know where to look. By closely observing facial expressions, body language and tone of voice, practically anyone can recognize the telltale signs of lying. Researchers are even programming computers-like those used on Lie Detector-to get at the truth by analyzing the same physical cues available to the naked eye and ear. "With the proper training, many people can learn to reliably detect lies," says Paul Ekman, professor of psychology at the University of California, San Francisco, who has spent the past 15 years studying the secret art of deception.

C. In order to know what kind of lies work best, successful liars need to accurately assess other people's emotional states. Ekman's research shows that this same emotional intelligence is essential for good lie detectors, too. The emotional state to watch out for is stress, the conflict most liars feel between the truth and what they actually say and do.

D. Even high-tech lie detectors don't detect lies as such; they merely detect the physical cues of emotions, which may or may not correspond to what the person being tested is saying. Polygraphs, for instance, measure respiration, heart rate and skin conductivity, which tend to increase when people are nervous as they usually are when lying. Nervous people typically perspire, and the salts contained in perspiration conduct electricity. That's why a sudden leap in skin conductivity indicates nervousness about getting caught, perhaps? -- which might, in turn, suggest that someone is being economical with the truth. On the other hand, it might also mean that the lights in the television studio are too hot-which is one reason polygraph tests are inadmissible in court. "Good lie detectors don't rely on a single sign," Ekman says, "but interpret clusters of verbal and nonverbal clues that suggest someone might be lying."

E. Those clues are written all over the face. Because the musculature of the face is directly connected to the areas of the brain that process emotion, the countenance can be a window to the soul. Neurological studies even suggest that genuine emotions travel different pathways through the brain than insincere ones. If a patient paralyzed by stroke on one side of the face, for example, is asked to smile deliberately, only the mobile side of the mouth is raised. But tell that same person a funny joke, and the patient breaks into a full and spontaneous smile. Very few people-most notably, actors and politicians-are able to consciously control all of their facial expressions. Lies can often be caught when the liar's true feelings briefly leak through the mask of deception. "We don't think before we feel," Ekman says. "Expressions tend to show up on the face before we're even conscious of experiencing an emotion."

F. One of the most difficult facial expressions to fake—or conceal, if it is genuinely felt—is sadness. When someone is truly sad, the forehead wrinkles with grief and the inner comers of the eyebrows are pulled up. Fewer than 15% of the people Ekman tested were able to produce this eyebrow movement voluntarily. By contrast, the lowering of the eyebrows associated with an angry scowl can be replicated at will by almost everybody. "If someone claims they are sad and the inner comers of their eyebrows don't go up," Ekman says, "the sadness is probably false."

G. The smile, on the other hand, is one of the easiest facial expressions to counterfeit. It takes just two muscles-the zygomaticus major muscles that extend from the cheekbones to the comers of the lips-to produce a grin. But there's a catch. A genuine smile affects not only the comers of the lips but also the orbicularis oculi, the muscle around the eye that produces the distinctive "crow's-feet" associated with people who laugh a lot. A counterfeit grin can be unmasked if the lip comers go up, the eyes crinkle but the inner comers of the eyebrows are not lowered, a movement controlled by the orbicularis oculi that is difficult to fake. The absence of lowered eyebrows is one reason why false smiles look so strained and stiff.

Questions 1-5

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE	if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE	if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN	if the information is not given in the passage

1 All living animals can lie.

2 Some people tell lies for self-preservation.

3 The fact of lying is more important than detecting one.

4 Researchers are using equipment to study which part of the brain is responsible for telling lies.

5 To be a good liar, one has to understand other people’s emotions.

Questions 6-9

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

Write the correct letter in box 6-9 on your answer sheet.

6 How does a lie-detector work?

A It analyzes one’s verbal response to a question.

B It records the changes in one’s facial expression,

C It illustrates the reasons about the emotional change when one is tested.

D It monitors several physical reactions in the person undergoing the test.

7 Why couldn’t lie detectors be used in a court of law?

A because the nonverbal clues are misleading.

B because there could be other causes of a certain change in the equipment,

C because the lights are too hot.

D because the statistic data on the lie detectors are not accurate.

8 The writer quotes from the paralyzed patients

A to exemplify people’s response to true feelings.

B to show the pathways for patients to recover,

C to demonstrate the paralyzed patient’s ability to smile.

D to emphasize that the patient is in a state of stroke.

9 According to the passage, politicians

A can express themselves clearly.

B are good at masking their emotions,

C are conscious of the surroundings.

D can think before action.

 

Questions 10-13

Classify the following facial traits as referring to

A Happiness 

B Anger

C Sadness

Write the correct letter A, B, C or D in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.

--------------

10 Lines formed above eyebrows

11 Movement from muscle that orbits the eye

12 Eyebrows down

13 Inner comer of eyebrows raised

Section 2

Leaf-Cutting Ants and Fungus

A. The ants and then agriculture have been extensively studied over the years, but the recent research has uncovered intriguing new findings about the fungus they cultivate, how they domesticated it and how they cultivate it and preserve it from pathogens. For example, the fungus farms, which the ants were thought to keep free of pathogens, turn out to be vulnerable to a devastating mold, found nowhere else but in ants' nests. To keep the mold in check, the ants long ago made a discovery that would do credit to any pharmaceutical laboratory

B. Leaf-cutting ants and then fungus farms are a marvel of nature and perhaps the best known example of symbiosis, the mutual dependence of two species. The ants' achievement is remarkable - the biologist Edward o. Wilson has called it "one of the major breakthroughs in animal evolution" — because it allows them to eat, courtesy of their mushroom's digestive powers, the otherwise poisoned harvest of tropical forests whose leaves are laden with terpenoids, alkaloids and other chemicals designed to sicken browsers.

C. Fungus growing seems to have originated only once in evolution, because all gardening ants belong to a single tribe, the descendants of the first fungus farmer. There are more than 200 known species of the attine ant tribe, divided into 12 groups, or genera. The leaf-cutters use fresh vegetation; the other groups, known as the lower attines because their nests are smaller and their techniques more primitive, feed their gardens with detritus like dead leaves, insects and feces.

D. The leaf-cutters' fungus was indeed descended from a single strain, propagated clonally, or just by budding, for at least 23 million years. But the lower attine ants used different varieties of the fungus, and in one case a quite separate species, the four biologists discovered. The pure strain of fungus grown by the leaf-cutters, it seemed to Mr. Currie, resembled the monocultures of various human crops, that are very productive for a while and then succumb to some disastrous pathogen, such as the Irish potato blight. Monocultures, which lack the genetic diversity to respond to changing environmental threats, are sitting ducks for parasites. Mr.

Currie felt there had to be a parasite in the ant-fungus system. But a century of ant research offered no support for the idea. Textbooks describe how leaf-cutter ants scrupulously weed their gardens of all foreign organisms. "People kept telling me, 'You know the ants keep then gardens free of parasites, don't you?'" Mr. Currie said of his efforts to find a hidden interloper.

E. But after three years of sifting through attine ant gardens, Mr. Currie discovered they are far from free of infections. In last month's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he and two colleagues, Dr. Mueller and David Mairoch, isolated several alien organisms, particularly a family of parasitic molds called Escovopsis.

F. Escovopsis turns out to be a highly virulent pathogen that can devastate a fungus garden in a couple of days. It blooms like a white cloud, with the garden dimly visible underneath. In a day or two the whole garden is enveloped. "Other ants won't go near it and the ants associated with the garden just starve to death," Dr. Rehner said. "They just seem to give up, except for those that have rescued their larvae." The deadly mold then turns greenish-brown as it enters its spore-forming stage.

G. Evidently the ants usually manage to keep Escovopsis and other parasites under control. But with any lapse in control, or if the ants are removed, Escovopsis will quickly burst forth. Although new leaf-cutter gardens start off free of Escovopsis, within two years some 60 percent become infected. The discovery of Escovopsis's role brings a new level of understanding to the evolution of the attine ants. "In the last decade, evolutionary biologists have been increasingly aware of the role of parasites as driving forces in evolution," Dr. Schultz said. There is now a possible reason to explain why the lower attine species keep changing the variety of fungus in their mushroom gardens, and occasionally domesticating new ones — to stay one step ahead of the relentless Escovopsis.

H. Interestingly, Mr. Currie found that the leaf-cutters had in general fewer alien molds in their gardens than the lower attines, yet they had more Escovopsis infections. It seems that the price they pay for cultivating a pure variety of fungus is a higher risk from Escovopsis. But the leaf-cutters may have little alternative: they cultivate a special variety of fungus which, unlike those grown by the lower attines, produces nutritious swollen tips for the ants to eat.

I. Discovery of a third partner in the ant-fungus symbiosis raises the question of how the attine ants, especially the leaf-cutters, keep this dangerous interloper under control. Amazingly enough, Mr. Currie has again provided the answer. "People have known for a hundred years that ants have a whitish growth on the cuticle," said Dr. Mueller, referring to the insects' body surface. "People would say this is like a cuticular wax. But Cameron was the first one in a hundred years to put these things under a microscope. He saw it was not inert wax. It is alive." Mr. Currie discovered a specialized patch on the ants' cuticle that harbors a particular kind of bacterium, one well known to the pharmaceutical industry, because it is the source of half the antibiotics used in medicine. From each of 22 species of attine ant studied, Mr. Cameron and colleagues isolated a species of Streptomyces bacterium, they reported in Nature in April. The Streptomyces does not have much effect on ordinary laboratory funguses. But it is a potent poisoner of Escovopsis, inhibiting its growth and suppressing spore formation. It also stimulates growth of the ants' mushroom fungus. The bacterium is carried by virgin queens when they leave to establish new nests, but is not found on male ants, playboys who take no responsibility in nest-making or gardening.

J. Because both the leaf-cutters and the lower attines use Streptomyces, the bacterium may have been part of their symbiosis for almost as long as the Escovopsis mold. If so, some Alexander Fleming of an ant discovered antibiotics millions of years before people did. Even now, the ants are accomplishing two feats beyond the powers of human technology. The leaf-cutters are growing a monocultural crop year after year without disaster, and they are using an antibiotic apparently so wisely and prudently that, unlike people, they are not provoking antibiotic resistance in the target pathogen.

Questions 14-19

 

Use the information in the passage to match the options (listed A-C) with activities or features of ants below. Write the appropriate letters A-C in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

 

NB: you may use any letter more than once

14 Build small nests and live with different foreign fungus.

15 Use toxic leaves to feed fungus o

16 Raise fungus which don't live with other foreingers.

17 Use substance to fight against escovopsis.

18 Use dead vegetable to feed fungus.

19 Are free of parasites explained previously.

 

Questions 20-24

The reading Passage has ten paragraphs A-J.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-J, in boxes 20-24 on your answer sheet.

20 Dangerous outcome of Escovopsis.

21 Disadvantage of growing single fungus.

22 Comparison of features of two different nests.

23 Two achievements made by ants earlier than human.

24 Advantage of growing new breed of fungus.

Questions 25-26

 

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

Write your answers in boxes 25-26 on your answer sheet.

25 How does author think of Currie's opinion?

A. his viewpoint was verified later.

B. earlier study has sufficient evidence,

C. no details mentioned in article.

D his opinion was proved to be wrong.

26 What did scientists find on the skin of ants under microscope?

A. some white cloud mold embed in their skin 

B. that Wax is all over their skin,

C. a substance which is useful to humans.

D. a substance which suppresses growth of fungus. 

Section3

Save Endangered Language

"Obviously we must do some serious rethinking of our priorities, lest linguistics go down in history as the only science that presided obviously over the disappearance of 90 percent of the very field to which It is dedicated." - Michael Krauss, The World’s Languages in Crisis "

A. Ten years ago Michael Krauss sent a shudder through the discipline of linguistics with his prediction that half the 6,000 or so languages spoken in the world would cease to be uttered within a century. Unless scientists and community leaders directed a worldwide effort to stabilize the decline of local languages, he warned, nine tenths of the linguistic diversity of humankind would probably be doomed to extinction. Krauss’s prediction was little more than an educated guess, but other respected linguists had been clanging out similar alarms. Keneth L. Hale of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology noted in the same journal issue that eight languages on which he bad done fieldwork had since passed into extinction. A 1990 survey in Australia found that 70 of the 90 surviving Aboriginal languages were no longer used regularly by all age groups. The same was true for all but 20 of the 175 Native American languages spoken or remembered in the US., Krauss told a congressional panel in 1992.

B. Many experts in the field mourn the loss of rare languages, for several reasons. To start, there is scientific self-interest; some of the most basic questions in linguistics have to do with the limits of human speech, which are far from fully explored. Many researchers would like to know which structural elements of grammar and vocabulary—if any—are truly universal and probably therefore hardwired into the human brain. Other scientists try to reconstruct ancient migration patterns by comparing borrowed words that appear in otherwise unrelated  languages, in each of these cases, the wider the portfolio of languages you study, the more likely you are to get the right answers.

C. Despite the near constant buzz in linguistics about endangered languages over the past 10 years, the field has accomplished depressingly little. “You would think that there would be some organized response to this dire situation’ some attempt to determine which language can be saved and which should be documented before they disappear, says Sarah G. Thomason, a linguist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. “But there isn’t any such effort organized in the profession. It is only recently that it has become fashionable enough to work on endangered languages.” Six years ago, recalls Douglas H. Whalen of Yale University, “when I asked linguists who was raising money to deal with these problems, I mostly got blank stares.” So Whalen and a few other linguists founded the Endangered Languages Fund. In the five years to 2001 they were able to collect only $80,000 for research grants. A similar foundation in England, directed by Nicholas Ostler, has raised just $8,000 since 1995.

D. But there are encouraging signs that the field has turned a comer. The Volkswagen Foundation, a German charity, just issued its second round of grants totaling more than $2 million. It has created a multimedia archive at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands that can house recordings, grammars, dictionaries and other data on endangered languages. To fill the archive, the foundation has dispatched field linguists to  document Aweti (100 or so speakers in Brazil), Ega (about 300 speakers in Ivory Coast), Waima’a (a few hundred speakers in East Timor), and a dozen or so other languages unlikely to survive the century. The Ford Foundation has also edged into the arena. Its contributions helped to reinvigorate a master-apprentice program created in 1992 by Leanne Hinton of Berkeley and Native Americans worried about the imminent demise of about 50 indigenous languages in California. Fluent speakers receive $3,000 to teach a younger relative (who is also paid) their native tongue through 360 hours of shared activities, spread over six months. So far about 5 teams have completed the program, Hinton says, transmitting at least some knowledge of 25 languages. “It’s too early to call this language revitalization,” Hinton admits. “In California the death rate of elderly speakers will always be greater than the recruitment rate of young speakers. But at least we prolong the survival of the language.” That will give linguists more time to record these tongues before they vanish.

E. But the master-apprentice approach hasn’t caught on outside the U.S., and Hinton’s effort is a drop in the sea. At least 440 languages have been reduced to a mere handful of elders, according to the Ethnologue, a catalogue of languages produced by the Dallas-based group SIL International that comes closest to global coverage. For the vast majority of these languages, there is little or no record of their grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation or use in daily life. Even if a language has been fully documented, all that remains once it vanishes from active use is a fossil skeleton, a scattering of features that the scientist was lucky and astute enough to capture. Linguists may be able to sketch an outline of the forgotten language and fix its place on the evolutionary tree, but little more. “How did people start conversations and talk to babies? How did husbands and wives converse?” Hinton asks. “Those are the first things you want to learn when you want to revitalize the language.”

F. But there is as yet no discipline of “conservation linguistics,” as there is for biology. Almost every strategy tried so far has succeeded in some places but failed in others, and there seems to be no way to predict with certainty what will work where. Twenty years ago in New Zealand, Maori speakers set up “language nests,” in which preschoolers were immersed in the native language. Additional Maori-only classes were added as the children progressed through elementary and secondary school. A similar approach was tried in Hawaii, with some success—the number of native speakers has stabilized at 1,000 or so, reports Joseph E. Grimes of SIL International, who is working on Oahu. Students can now get instruction in Hawaiian all the way through university.

G One factor that always seems to occur in the demise of a language is that the speakers begin to have collective doubts about the usefulness of language loyalty. Once they start regarding their own language as inferior to the majority language, people stop using it for all situations. Kids pick up on the attitude and prefer the dominant language. In many cases, people don’t notice until they suddenly realize that their kids never speak the language, even at home. This is how Cornish and some dialects of Scottish Gaelic is still only rarely used for daily home life in Ireland, 80 years after the republic was founded with Irish as its first official language.

H. Linguists agree that ultimately, the answer to the problem of language extinction is multilingualism. Even uneducated people can learn several languages, as long as they start as children. Indeed, most people in the world speak more than one tongue, and in places such as Cameroon (279 languages), Papua New Guinea (823) and India (387) it is common to speak three or four distinct languages and a dialect or two as well. Most Americans and Canadians, to the west of Quebec, have a gut reaction that anyone speaking another language in front of them is committing an immoral act. You get the same reaction in Australia and Russia. It is no coincidence that these are the areas where languages are disappearing the fastest. The first step in saving dying languages is to persuade the world’s majorities to allow the minorities among them to speak with theft own voices.

Questions 27-33

The reading passage has eight paragraphs, A-H

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-H from the list below.

Write the correct number, i-xi, in boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i data consistency needed for language

ii consensus on an initiative recommendation for saving dying out languages

iii positive gains for protection

iv minimum requirement for saving a language

v Potential threat to minority language

vi a period when there was absent of real effort made.

vii native language programs launched

viii Lack in confidence in young speakers as a negative factor

ix Practise in several developing countries

x Value of minority language to linguists. xi government participation in language field

---------------
27 Paragraph A

28 Paragraph B

Example: Paragraph C vi

29 Paragraph D

30 Paragraph E

31 Paragraph F

32 Paragraph G

33 Paragraph H

Questions 34-38

 

Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-F) with opinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-F in boxes 34-38 on your answer sheet.

A Nicholas Ostler 

B Michael Krauss

C Joseph E. Grimes

D Sarah G. Thomason

E Keneth L. Hale

F Douglas H. Whalen

----------------

34 Reported language conservation practice in Hawaii

35 Predicted that many languages would disappear soon

36 Experienced process that languages die out personally

37 Raised language fund in England

38 Not enough effort on saving until recent work

 

Questions 39-40

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

Write your answers in boxes 39-40 on your answer sheet.

39 What is real result of master-apprentice program sponsored by The Ford Foundation?

A Teach children how to speak

B Revive some endangered languages in California

C postpone the dying date for some endangered languages

D Increase communication between students

40 What should majority language speakers do according to the last paragraph?

A They should teach their children endangered language in free lessons

B They should learn at least four languages

C They should show their loyalty to a dying language

D They should be more tolerant to minority language speaker

 

Reading Test 31

Section 1

Food for thought 2

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

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

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

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

E. When a school takes in a horde of extra students from the poorest homes, you would expect standards to drop. Anywhere in the world, poor kids tend to perform worse than their better-off classmates. When the influx of new pupils is not accompanied by any increase in the number of teachers, as was the case at Msekeni, you would expect standards to fall even further. But they have not Pass rates at Msekenl improved dramatically, from 30% to 65%. Although this was an exceptional example, the nationwide results of school feeding programmes were still pretty good. On average, after a Malawian school started handing out free food it attracted 38% more girls and 24% more boys. The pass rate for boys stayed about die same, while for girls it improved by 93%.

F. Better nutrition makes for brighter children. Most immediately, well-fed children find it easier to concentrate. It is hard to focus the mind on long division when your stomach is screaming for food. Mr Kumanda says that it used to be easy to spot the kids who were really undernourished. "They were the ones who stared into space and didn?t respond when you asked them questions," he says. More crucially, though, more and better food helps brains grow and develop. Like any other organ in the body, the brain needs nutrition and exercise. But if it is starved of the necessary calories, proteins and micronutrients. It Is stunted, perhaps not as severely as a muscle would be, but stunted nonetheless. That is why feeding children at schools works so well. And the fact that the effect of feeding was more pronounced on girls than on boys gives a clue to who eats first In rural Malawian households. It isn't the girls.

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

Questions 1-7

 

The reading passage has seven paragraphs, A-G

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-G from the list below. Write the correct number, i-xi, in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i Why better food helps students’ learning

ii A song for getting porridge

iii Surprising use of school premises

iv Global perspective

V Brains can be starved

vi Surprising academics outcome

vii Girls are specially treated in the program

viii How food program is operated

ix How food program affects school attendance X None of the usual reasons

xi How to maintain academic standard

---------------------------------

1 Paragraph A

2 Paragraph B

3 Paragraph c

4 Paragraph D

5 Paragraph E

6 Paragraph F

7 Paragraph G

Questions 8-11

Complete the sentences below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage?

Write your answers in boxes 8-11 on your answer sheet

8 _______are exclusively offered to girls in the feeding programme.

9 Instead of going to school, many children in poverty are sent to collect _______in the fields.

10 The pass rate at Msekeni has risen to ______with the help of the feeding programme.

11 Since the industrial revolution, the size of the modern human has grown by_______

 

Questions 12-13

Choose TWO letters, A-F.

Write your answers in boxes 12 and 13 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO of the following statements are true?

A Some children are taught in the open air.

B Malawi have trouble to feed its large population.

C. No new staffs were recruited when attendance rose.

D Girls enjoy a higher status than boys in the family 

E Boys and girls experience the same improvement in the pass rate.

F WHO has cooperated with WFP to provide grain to the school at Msekeni.

Section 2

Saving the British Bitterns

A. Breeding bitterns became extinct in the UK by 1886 but, following re-colonisation early last century, numbers rose to a peak of about 70 booming (singing) males in the 1950s, falling to fewer than 20 by the 1990s. In the late 1980s it was clear that the bittern was in trouble, but there was little information on which to base recovery actions.

B. Bitterns have cryptic plumage and a shy nature, usually remaining hidden within the cover of reedbed vegetation. Our first challenge was to develop standard methods to monitor their numbers. The boom of the male bittern is its most distinctive feature during the breeding season, and we developed a method to count them using the sound patterns unique to each individual. This not only allows US to be much more certain of the number of booming males in the UK, but also enables us to estimate local survival of males from one year to the next.

C. Our first direct understanding of the habitat needs of breeding bitterns came from comparisons of reedbedsites that had lost their booming birds with those that retained them. This research showed that bitterns had been retained in reedbeds where the natural process of succession, or drying out, had been slowed through management. Based on this work, broad recommendations on how to manage and rehabilitate reedbeds for bitterns were made, and funding was provided through the EU LIFE Fund to manage 13 sites within the core breeding range. This project, though led by the RSPB, involved many other organisations.

D. To refine these recommendations and provide fine-scale, quantitative habitat prescriptions on the bitterns' preferred feeding habitat, we radio-tracked male bitterns on the RSPB's Minsmere and Leighton Moss reserves. This showed clear preferences for feeding in the wetter reedbed margins, particularly within the reedbed next to larger open pools. The average home range sizes of the male bitterns we followed (about 20 hectares) provided a good indication of the area of reedbed needed when managing or creating habitat for this species. Female bitterns undertake all the incubation and care of the young, so it was important to understand then needs as well. Over the course of our research, we located 87 bittern nests and found that female bitterns preferred to nest in areas of continuous vegetation, well into the reedbed, but where water was still present during the driest part of the breeding season.

E. The success of the habitat prescriptions developed from this research has been spectacular. For instance, at Minsmere, booming bittern numbers gradually increased from one to 10 following reedbed lowering, a management technique designed to halt the drying out process. After a low point of 11 booming males in 1997, bittern numbers in Britain responded to all the habitat management work and started to increase for the first time since the 1950s.

F. The final phase of research involved understanding the diet, survival and dispersal of bittern chicks. To do this we fitted small radio tags to young bittern chicks in the nest, to determine their fate through to fledgingand beyond. Many chicks did not survive to fledging and starvation was found to be the most likely reason for their demise. The fish prey fed to chicks was dominated by those species penetrating into the reed edge. So, an important element of recent studies (including a PhD with the University of Hull) has been the development of recommendations on habitat and water conditions to promote healthy native fish populations.

G. Once independent, radio-tagged young bitterns were found to seek out new sites during their first winter; a proportion of these would remain on new sites to breed if the conditions were suitable. A second EU LIFE funded project aims to provide these suitable sites in new areas. A network of 19 sites developed through this partnership project will secure a more sustainable UK bittern population with successful breeding outside of the core area, less vulnerable to chance events and sea level rise.

H. By 2004, the number of booming male bitterns in the UK had increased to 55, with almost all of the increase being on those sites undertaking management based on advice derived from our research. Although science has been at the core of the bittern story, success has only been achieved through the trust, hard work and dedication of all the managers, owners and wardens of sites that have implemented, in some cases very drastic, management to secure the future of this wetland species in the UK. The constructed bunds and five major sluices now control the water level over 82 ha, with a further 50 ha coming under control in the winter of 2005/06. Reed establishment has principally used natural regeneration or planted seedlings to provide small core areas that will in time expand to create a bigger reed area. To date nearly 275,000 seedlings have been planted and reed cover is extensive. Over 3 km of new ditches have been formed, 3.7 km of existing ditch have been re-profiled and 2.2 km of old meander (former estuarine features) have been cleaned out.

I. Bitterns now regularly winter on the site with some indication that they are staying longer into the spring. No breeding has yet occurred but a booming male was present in the spring of 2004. A range of wildfowl breed, as well as a good number of reedbed passerines including reed bunting, reed, sedge and grasshopper warblers. Numbers of wintering shoveler have increased so that the site now holds a UK important wintering population. Malltraeth Reserve now forms part of the UK network of key sites for water vole (a UK priority species) and 12 monitoring transectshave been established. Otter and brown-hare occur on the site as does the rare plant, pillwort.

Questions14-20

 

The reading passage has seven paragraphs, A-H

List of Headings

i research findings into habitats and decisions made

ii fluctuation in bittern number

iii protect the young bittern

iv international cooperation works

v Began in calculation of the number

vi importance of food

vii Research has been successful.

viii research into the reedbed

ix reserve established holding bittern in winter

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-Hfrom the list below. Write the correct number, i-viii, in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.

14 Paragraph A

15 Paragraph B

16 Paragraph C

17 Paragraph D

18 Paragraph F

19 Paragraph G

20 Paragraph H

Questions 21-26

 

Answer the questions below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

21 When did the bird of bitten reach its peak of number?

22 What does the author describe the bittern's character?

23 What is the main cause for the chick bittern's death?

24 What is the main food for chick bittern?

25 What system does it secure the stability for bittern's population?

26 Besides bittern and rare vegetation, what mammal does the protection plan benefit?

Questions 27

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

Write your answers in boxes 27 on your answer sheet.

27 What is the main purpose of this passage?

A Main characteristic of a bird called bittern.

B Cooperation can protect an endangered species,

C The difficulty of access information of bittern's habitat and diet.

D To save wetland and reedbed in UK.

 

Section 3

E- training

A. E-leaming is the unifying term to describe the fields of online learning, web-based training, and technology-delivered instruction, which can be a great benefit to corporate e-learning. IBM, for instance, claims that the institution of its e-training program, Basic Blue, whose purpose is to train new managers, saved the company in the range of $200 million in 1999. Cutting the travel expenses required to bring employees and instructors to a central classroom accounts for the lion's share of the savings. With an online course, employees can learn from any Internet-connected PC, anywhere in the world. Ernst and Young reduced training costs by 35 percent while improving consistency and scalability.

B. In addition to generally positive economic benefits, other advantages such as convenience, standardized delivery, self-paced learning, and variety of available content, have made e-learning a high priority for many corporations. E-learning is widely believed to offer flexible "any time, any place" learning. The claim for "any place" is valid in principle and is a great development. Many people can engage with rich learning materials that simply were not possible in a paper or broadcast distance learning era. For teaching specific information and skills, e-training holds great promise. It can be especially effective at helping employees prepare for IT certification programs. E-learning also seems to effectively address topics such as sexual harassment education,’ safety training and management training — all areas where a clear set of objectives can be identified. Ultimately, training experts recommend a "blended" approach that combines both online and in-person framing as the instruction requires. E-learning is not an end-all solution. But if it helps decrease costs and windowless classrooms filled with snoring students, it definitely has its advantages.

C. Much of the discussion about implementing e-learning has focused on the technology, but as Driscoll and others have reminded us, e-learning is not just about the technology, but also many human factors. As any capable manager knows, teaching employees new skills is critical to a smoothly run business. Having said that, however, the traditional route of classroom instruction runs the risk of being expensive, slow and, often times, ineffective. Perhaps the classroom's greatest disadvantage is the fact that it takes employees out of their jobs. Every minute an employee is sitting in a classroom training session is a minute they're not out on the floor working. It now looks as if there is a way to circumvent these traditional training drawbacks. E-training promises more effective teaching techniques by integrating audio, video, animation, text and interactive materials with the intent of teaching each student at his or her own pace. In addition to higher performance results, there are other immediate benefits to students such as increased time on task, higher levels of motivation, and reduced test anxiety for many learners. A California State University Northridge study reported that e-learners performed 20 percent better than traditional learners. Nelson reported a significant difference between the mean grades of 406 university students earned in traditional and distance education classes, where the distance learners outperformed the traditional learners.

D. On the other hand, nobody said E-training technology would be cheap. E-training service providers, on the average, charge from $10,000 to $60,000 to develop one hour of online instruction. This price varies depending on the complexity of the training topic and the media used. HTML pages are a little cheaper to develop while streaming-video presentations or flash animations cost more. Course content is just the starting place for cost. A complete e-learning solution also includes the technology platform (the computers, applications and network connections that are used to deliver the courses). This technology platform, known as a learning management system (LMS), can either be installed onsite or outsourced. Add to that cost the necessary investments in network bandwidth to deliver multimedia courses, and you're left holding one heck of a bill. For the LMS infrastructure and a dozen or so online courses, costs can top $500,000 in the first year. These kinds of costs mean that custom e-training is, for the time being, an option only for large organizations. For those companies that have a large enough staff, the e-training concept pays for itself. Aware of this fact, large companies are investing heavily in online training. Today, over half of the 400-plus courses that Rockwell Collins offers are delivered instantly to its clients in an e-learning format/ a change that has reduced its annual training costs by 40%. Many other success stories exist

E. E-learning isn't expected to replace the classroom entirely. For one thing, bandwidth limitations are still an Issue in presenting multimedia over the Internet Futhermore, e-training isn't suited to every mode of instruction or topic. For instance, it's rather ineffective impasting cultural values or building teams. If your company has a unique corporate culture it would be difficult to convey that to first time employees through a computer monitor. Group training sessions are more ideal for these purposes. In addition, there is a perceived loss of research time because of the work involved in developing and teaching online classes. Professor Wallin estimated that It required between 500 and 1000 person-hours, that is, Wallin-hours, to keep the course at the appropriate level of currency and usefulness, (Distance learning instructors often need technical skills, no matter how advanced the courseware system.) That amounts to between a quarter and half of a person-year. Finally, teaching materials require computer literacy and access to equipment Any e-Learning system Involves basic equipment and a minimum level of computer knowledge in order to perform the tasks required by the system. A student that does not possess these skills, or have access to these tools, cannot succeed in an e-Learning program.

F. While few people debate the obvious advantages of e-learning, systematic research is needed to confirm that learners are actually acquiring and using -the skills that are being taught online, and that e-learning is the best way to achieve the outcomes in a corporate environment. Nowadays, a go-between style of the Blended learning, which refers to a mixing of different learning environments, is gaining popularity. It combines traditional face-to-face classroom methods with more modem computer-mediated activities. According to its proponents, the strategy creates a more integrated approach for both instructors and learners. Formerly, technology-based materials played a supporting role to face-to-face instruction. Through a blended learning approach, technology will be more important

Questions 28-33

 

The reading passage has seven paragraphs, A-F.  

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-F from the list below. Write the correct number, i-xi, in boxes 28-33 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i overview of the benefits for the application of E-training

ii IBM's successful choice of training

iii Future direction and a new style of teaching

iv learners' achievement and advanced teaching materials

v limitations when E-training compares with traditional class

vi multimedia over the Internet can be a solution

vii technology can be a huge financial burden

viii the distance learners outperformed the traditional university learners in worldwide

ix other advantages besides economic consideration

x Training offered to help people learn using computers

 

----------

28 Paragraph A

29 Paragraph B

30 Paragraph c

31 Paragraph D

32 Paragraph E

33 Paragraph F

Questions 34-37

 

The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-F.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-F, in boxes 35-37 on your answer sheet.

34 Projected Basic Blue in IBM achieved a great success.

35 E-learning wins as a priority for many corporations as its flexibility.

36 The combination of the traditional and c-training environments may prevail.

37 Example of a fast electronic delivery for a company’s products to its customers.

 

Questions 38-40

Choose Three correct letters, among A-E

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

A. Technical facilities are hardly obtained.

B. Presenting multimedia over the Internet is restricted due to the bandwidth limit,

C. It is ineffective imparting a unique corporate value to fresh employees.

D. Employees need block a long time leaving their position attending training.

E. More preparation time is needed to keep the course at the suitable level.

 

Reading Test 32

Section 1

Animal minds: Parrot Alex

A. In 1977 Irene Pepperberg, a recent graduate of Harvard University, did something very bold. At a time when animals still were considered automatons, she set out to find what was on another creature's mind by talking to it. She brought a one-year-old African gray parrot she named Alex into her lab to teach him to reproduce the sounds of the English language. "I thought if he learned to communicate, I could ask him questions about how he sees the world."

B. When Pepperberg began her dialogue with Alex, who died last September at the age of 31, many scientists believed animals were incapable of any thought. They were simply machines, robots programmed to react to stimuli but lacking the ability to think or feel. Any pet owner would disagree. We see the love in our dogs' eyes and know that, of course, they has thoughts and emotions. But such claims remain highly controversial. Gut instinct is not science, and it is all too easy to project human thoughts and feelings onto another creature. How, then, does a scientist prove that an animal is capable of thinking—that it is able to acquire information about the world and act on it? "That's why I started my studies with Aex," Pepperberg said. They were seated—she at her desk, he on top of his cage—in her lab, a windowless room about the size of a boxcar, at Brandeis University. Newspapers lined the floor; baskets of bright toys were stacked on the shelves. They were clearly a team—and because of their work, the notion that animals can think is no longer so fanciful.

C. Certain skills are considered key signs of higher mental abilities: good memory, a grasp of grammar and symbols, self-awareness, understanding others' motives, imitating others, and being creative. Bit by bit, in ingenious experiments, researchers have documented these talents in other species, gradually chipping away at what we thought made human beings distinctive while offering a glimpse of where our own abilities came from. Scrub jays know that other jays are thieves and that stashed food can spoil; sheep can recognize faces; chimpanzees use a variety of tools to probe termite mounds and even use weapons to hunt small mammals; dolphins can imitate human postures; the archerfish, which stuns insects with a sudden blast of water, can learn how to aim its squirt simply by watching an experienced fish perform the task. And Alex the parrot turned out to be a surprisingly good talker.