READING PASSAGE 1 (Test 22)

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on

Reading Passage 1 below.
Voyage of Going: beyond the blue line 2
A ………One feels a certain sympathy for Captain James Cook on the day in 1778
that he “discovered” Hawaii. Then on his third expedition to the Pacific, the
British navigator had explored scores of islands across the breadth of the sea,
from lush New Zealand to the lonely wastes of Easter Island. This latest voyage
had taken him thousands of miles north from the Society Islands to an
archipelago so remote that even the old Polynesians back on Tahiti knew nothing
about it. Imagine Cook’s surprise, then, when the natives of Hawaii came paddling
out in their canoes and greeted him in a familiar tongue, one he had heard on
virtually every mote of inhabited land he had visited. Marvelling at the ubiquity of
this Pacific language and culture, he later wondered in his journal: “How shall we
account for this Nation spreading itself so far over this Vast ocean?”

B ……….Answers have been slow in coming. But now a startling archaeological find
on the island of Éfaté, in the Pacific nation of Vanuatu, has revealed an ancient
seafaring people, the distant ancestors of today’s Polynesians, taking their first
steps into the unknown. The discoveries there have also opened a window into
the shadowy world of those early voyagers. At the same time, other pieces of this
human puzzle are turning up in unlikely places. Climate data gleaned from slow-
growing corals around the Pacific and from sediments in alpine lakes in South
America may help explain how, more than a thousand years later, the second
wave of seafarers beat their way across the entire Pacific.

C………..“What we have is a first- or second-generation site containing the graves

of some of the Pacific’s first explorers,” says Spriggs, professor of archaeology at
the Australian National University and co-leader of an international team
excavating the site. It came to light only by luck. A backhoe operator, digging up
topsoil on the grounds of a derelict coconut plantation, scraped open a grave –
the first of dozens in a burial ground some 3,000 years old. It is the oldest
cemetery ever found in the Pacific islands, and it harbors the bones of an ancient
people archaeologists call the Lapita, a label that derives from a beach in New
Caledonia where a landmark cache of their pottery was found in the 1950s. They
were daring blue-water adventurers who roved the sea not just as explorers but
also as pioneers, bringing along everything they would need to build new lives –
their families and livestock, taro seedlings and stone tools.

D…….Within the span of few centuries, the Lapita stretched the boundaries of
their world from the jungle-clad volcanoes of Papua New Guinea to the loneliest
coral outliers of Tonga, at least 2,000 miles eastward in the Pacific. Along the way
they explored millions of square miles of an unknown sea, discovering and
colonizing scores of tropical islands never before seen by human eyes: Vanuatu,
New Caledonia, Fiji, Samoa.

E……..What little is known or surmised about them has been pieced together from
fragments of pottery, animal bones, obsidian flakes, and such oblique sources as
comparative linguistics and geochemistry. Although their voyages can be traced
back to the northern islands of Papua New Guinea, their language – variants of
which are still spoken across the Pacific – came from Taiwan. And their peculiar
style of pottery decoration, created by pressing a carved stamp into the clay,
probably had its roots in the northern Philippines. With the discovery of the
Lapita cemetery on Éfaté, the volume of data available to researchers has
expanded dramatically. The bones of at least 62 individuals have been uncovered
so far – including old men, young women, even babies – and more skeletons are
known to be in the ground. Archaeologists were also thrilled to discover six
complete Lapita pots. It’s an important find, Spriggs says, for it conclusively
identifies the remains as Lapita. “It would be hard for anyone to argue that these
aren’t Lapita when you have human bones enshrined inside what is unmistakably
a Lapita urn.”

F…………Several lines of evidence also undergird Spriggs’s conclusion that this was
a community of pioneers making their first voyages into the remote reaches of
Oceania. For one thing, the radiocarbon dating of bones and charcoal places them
early in the Lapita expansion. For another, the chemical makeup of the obsidian
flakes littering the site indicates that the rock wasn’t local; instead, it was
imported from a large island in Papua New Guinea’s the Bismarck Archipelago,
the springboard for the Lapita’s thrust into the Pacific. A particularly intriguing
clue comes from chemical tests on the teeth of several skeletons. DNA teased
from these ancient bones may also help answer one of the most puzzling
questions in Pacific anthropology: Did all Pacific islanders spring from one source
or many? Was there only one outward migration from a single point in Asia, or
several from different points? “This represents the best opportunity we’ve had
yet,” says Spriggs, “to find out who the Lapita actually were, where they came
from, and who their closest descendants are today.”

G…………“There is one stubborn question for which archaeology has yet to provide
any answers: How did the Lapita accomplish the ancient equivalent of a moon
landing, many times over? No one has found one of their canoes or any rigging,
which could reveal how the canoes were sailed. Nor do the oral histories and
traditions of later Polynesians offer any insights, for they segue into myth long
before they reach as far back in time as the Lapita.” All we can say for certain is
that the Lapita had canoes that were capable of ocean voyages, and they had the
ability to sail them,” says Geoff Irwin, a professor of archaeology at the University
of Auckland and an avid yachtsman. Those sailing skills, he says, were developed
and passed down over thousands of years by earlier mariners who worked their
way through the archipelagoes of the western Pacific making short crossings to
islands within sight of each other. Reaching Fiji, as they did a century or so later,
meant crossing more than 500 miles of ocean, pressing on day after day into the
great blue void of the Pacific. What gave them the courage to lunch out on such a
risky voyage?

H……….The Lapita’s thrust into the Pacific was eastward, against the prevailing
trade winds, Irwin notes. Those nagging headwinds, he argues, may have been
the key to their success. “They could sail out for days into the unknown and
reconnoiter, secure in the knowledge that if they didn’t find anything, they could
turn about and catch a swift ride home on the trade winds. It’s what made the
whole thing work.” Once out there, skilled seafarers would detect abundant leads
to follow to land: seabirds and turtles, coconuts and twigs carried out to sea by
the tides and the afternoon pileup of clouds on the horizon that often betokens
an island in the distance. Some islands may have broadcast their presence with
far less subtlety than a cloud bank. Some of the most violent eruptions anywhere
on the planet during the past 10,000 years occurred in Melanesia, which sits
nervously in one of the most explosive volcanic regions on Earth. Even less
spectacular eruptions would have sent plumes of smoke billowing into the
stratosphere and rained ash for hundreds of miles. It’s possible that the Lapita
saw these signs of distant islands and later sailed off in their direction, knowing
they would find land. For returning explorers, successful or not, the geography of
their own archipelagoes provided a safety net to keep them from overshooting
their home ports and sailing off into eternity.

I……….2However they did it, the Lapita spread themselves a third of the way
across the Pacific, the called it quits for reasons known only to them. Ahead lay
the vast emptiness of the central Pacific, and perhaps they were too thinly
stretched to venture farther. They probably never numbered more than a few
thousand in total, and in their rapid migration eastward they encountered
hundreds of islands – more than 300 in Fiji alone. Still, more than a millennium
would pass before the Lapita’s descendants, a people we now call the
Polynesians, struck out in search of new territory.
Questions 1-7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage
1?
In boxes  1-7  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 

1   Captain cook once expected Hawaii might speak another language of people
from other pacific islands.
2   Captain cook depicted a number of cultural aspects of Polynesians in his
journal.
3   Professor Spriggs and his research team went to the Efate to try to find the site
of the ancient cemetery.
4   The Lapita completed a journey of around 2,000 miles in a period less than a
centenary.
5   The Lapita were the first inhabitants in many pacific islands.
6   The unknown pots discovered in Efate had once been used for cooking.
7   The um buried in Efate site was plain as it was without any decoration.
Questions 8-10
Summary
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage
Using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 8-10 on your answer sheet. 

Scientific Evident found in Efate site

Tests show the human remains and the charcoal found in the buried um are from
the start of the Lapita period. Yet The 8…………………… covering many of the Efate
sites did not come from that area. Then examinations carried out on
the 9…………………… discovered at Efate site reveal that not everyone buried there
was a native living in the area. In fact, DNA could identify the Lapita’s
nearest 10…………………… present-days.
Questions 11-13
Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage
for each answer.

11   What did the Lapita travel in when they crossed the oceans?
12   In Irwins’s view, what would the Lapita have relied on to bring them fast back
to the base?
13   Which sea creatures would have been an indication to the Lapita of where to
find land?
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27 which are based on
Reading Passage 2 below. 
European Heat Wave
 A
IT WAS the summer, scientists now realise, when felt. We knew that summer
2003 was remarkable; global warming, at last, made itself unmistakably Britain
experienced its record high temperature and continental Europe saw forest fires
raging out of control, great rivers drying of a trickle and thousands of heat-related
deaths. But just how remarkable is only now becoming clean.
B
The three months of June, July and August were the warmest ever recorded in
western and central Europe, with record national highs in Portugal, Germany and
Switzerland as well as Britain. And they were the warmest by a very long way
Over a great rectangular block of the earth stretching from west of Paris to
northern Italy, taking in Switzerland and southern Germany, the average
temperature for the summer months was 3.78°C above the long-term norm, said
the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in Norwich,
which is one of the world’s leading institutions for the monitoring and analysis of
temperature records.
C
That excess might not seem a lot until you are aware of the context – but then
you realise it is enormous. There is nothing like this in previous data, anywhere. It
is considered so exceptional that Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director, is
prepared to say openly – in a way few scientists have done before – that the 2003
extreme may be directly attributed, not to natural climate variability, but to global
warming caused by human actions.
D
Meteorologists have hitherto contented themselves with the formula that recent
high temperatures are consistent with predictions of climate. For the great block
of the map – that stretching between 35-50N and 0-20E – the CRU has reliable
temperature records dating back to 1781. Using as a baseline the average
summer temperature recorded between 1961 and 1990, departures from the
temperature norm, or ‘anomalies’: over the area as a whole can easily be plotted.
As the graph shows, such as the variability of our climate that over the past 200
years, there have been at least half a dozen anomalies, in terms of excess
temperature – the peaks on the graph denoting very hot years – approaching, or
even exceeding, 20°C. But there has been nothing remotely like 2003 when the
anomaly is nearly four degrees.
E
“This is quite remarkable,” Professor Jones told The Independent. “It’s very
unusual in a statistical sense. If this series had a normal statistical distribution, you
wouldn’t get this number. There turn period “how often it could be expected to
recur” would be something like one in a thou-sand years. If we look at an excess
above the average of nearly four degrees, then perhaps nearly three degrees of
that is natural variability, because we’ve seen that in past summers. But the final
degree of it is likely to be due to global warming, caused by human actions.
F
The summer of 2003 has, in a sense, been one that climate scientists have long
been expecting. Until now, the warming has been manifesting itself mainly in
winters that have been less cold than in summers that have been much hotter.
Last week, the United Nations predicted that winters were warming so quickly
that winter sports would die out in Europe’s lower-level ski resorts. But sooner or
later the unprecedentedly hot summer was bound to come, and this year it did.
G
One of the most dramatic features of the summer was the hot nights, especially in
the first half of August. In Paris, the temperature never dropped below 230°C
(73.40°F) at all between 7 and 14 August, and the city recorded its warmest-ever
night on 11-12 August, when the mercury did not drop below 25.50°C (77.90°F).
Germany recorded its warmest-ever night at Weinbiet in the Rhine valley with the
lowest figure of 27.60°C (80.60°F) on 13 August, and similar record-breaking
night-time temperatures were recorded in Switzerland and Italy.
H
The 15,000 excess deaths in France during August, compared with previous years,
have been related to the high night-time temperatures. The number gradually
increased during the first 12 days of the month, peaking at about 2,000 per day
on the night of 12-13 August, the fell off dramatically after 14 August when the
minimum temperatures fell by about 50C. The elderly were most affected, with a
70 per cent increase in mortality rate in those aged 75-94.
I
For Britain, the year as a whole is likely to be the warmest ever recorded, but
despite the high-temperature record on 10 August, the summer itself – defined as
the June, July and August period – still comes behind 1976 and 1955, when there
were long periods of intense heat. At the moment, the year is on course to be the
third-hottest ever in the global temperature record, which goes back to 1856,
behind 1988 and 2002 but when all the records for October, November and
December are collated, it might move into second place, Professor Jones said. The
10 hottest years in the record have all now occurred since 1990. Professor Jones is
in no doubt about the astonishing nature of the European summer of 2003. “The
temperatures recorded were out of all proportion to the previous record,” he
said. “It was the warmest summer in the past 500 years and probably way beyond
what it was enormously exceptional.”
J
His colleagues at the University of East Anglia’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change
Research are now planning a special study of it. “It was a summer that has not:
been experienced before, either in terms of the temperature extremes that were
reached, or the range and diversity of the impacts of the extreme heat,” said the
centre’s executive director, Professor Mike Hulme. “It will certainly have left its
mark on a number of countries, as to how they think and plan for climate change
in the future, much as the 2000 floods have revolutionised the way the
Government is thinking about flooding in the UK. “The 2003 heatwave will have
similar repercussions across Europe.”
  
Questions 14-19
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage
2?
In boxes  14-19  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

14   The average summer temperature in 2003 is approximately four degrees

higher than that of the past.
15   Jones believes the temperature statistic is within the normal range.
16   The human factor is one of the reasons that caused the hot summer.
17   In a large city, people usually measure temperature twice a day.
18   Global warming has an obvious effect of warmer winter instead of hotter
summer before 2003.
19   New ski resorts are to be built on a high-altitude spot.
 
Questions 20-21
Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR
NUMBERS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 20-21 on your answer sheet.

20   What are the two hottest years in Britain besides 2003?

21   What will affect UK government policies besides climate change according to
Hulme?
Questions 22-26
Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the
passage.
Write your answers in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet 

In the summer of 2003, thousands of extra death occurred in the country

of 22…………………….. Moreover, world-widely, the third record of hottest summer
date from 23…………………………., after the year of 24………………………….. According
to Jones, all the 10 hottest years happened from 25……………………….. However, the
summer of 2003 was at the peak of the previous 26………………………… years,
perhaps even more.
Question 27
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D
Write your answer in box 27  on your answer sheet.

27   Which one can be best served as the title of this passage in the following
options?
A   Global Warming effect
B   Global Warming in Europe
C   The Effects of hot temperature
D   Hottest summer in Europe
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 28-13 which are based on
Reading Passage 3 below.
The Concept of Childhood in Western Countries
The history of childhood has been a heated topic in social history since the highly
influential book Centuries of Childhood’, written by French historian Philippe Aries,
emerged in 1960. He claimed that ‘childhood’ is a concept created by modern
society.
Whether childhood is itself a recent invention has been one of the most intensely
debated issues in the history of childhood. Historian Philippe Aries asserted that
children were regarded as miniature adults, with all the intellect and personality
that this implies, in Western Europe during the Middle Ages (up to about the end
of the 15th century). After scrutinising medieval pictures and diaries, he
concluded that there was no distinction between children and adults for they
shared similar leisure activities and work; However, this does not mean children
were neglected, forsaken or despised, he argued. The idea of childhood
corresponds to awareness about the peculiar nature of childhood, which
distinguishes the child from adult, even the young adult. Therefore, the concept
of childhood is not to be confused with affection for children.

Traditionally, children played a functional role in contributing to the family

income in the history. Under this circumstance, children were considered to be
useful. Back in the Middle Ages, children of 5 or 6 years old did necessary chores
for their parents. During the 16th century, children of 9 or 10 years old were often
encouraged or even forced to leave their family to work as servants for wealthier
families or apprentices for a trade.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, industrialisation created a new demand for child
labour; thus many children were forced to work for a long time in mines,
workshops and factories. The issue of whether long hours of labouring would
interfere with children’s growing bodies began to perplex social reformers. Some
of them started to realise the potential of systematic studies to monitor how far
these early deprivations might be influencing children’s development.

The concerns of reformers gradually had some impact upon the working condition
of children. For example, in Britain, the Factory Act of 1833 signified the
emergence of legal protection of children from exploitation and was also
associated with the rise of schools for factory children. Due partly to factory
reform, the worst forms of child exploitation were eliminated gradually. The
influence of trade unions and economic changes also contributed to the evolution
by leaving some forms of child labour redundant during the 19th century.
Initiating children into work as ‘useful’ children was no longer a priority, and
childhood was deemed to be a time for play and education for all children instead
of a privileged minority. Childhood was increasingly understood as a more
extended phase of dependency, development and learning with the delay of the
age for starting full-time work- Even so, work continued to play a significant, if
less essential, role in children’s lives in the later 19th and 20th centuries. Finally,
the ‘useful child’ has become a controversial concept during the first decade of
the 21st century, especially in the context of global concern about large numbers
of children engaged in child labour.

The half-time schools established upon the Factory Act of 1833 allowed children
to work and attend school. However, a significant proportion of children never
attended school in the 1840s, and even if they did, they dropped out by the age of
10 or 11. By the end of the 19th century in Britain, the situation changed
dramatically, and schools became the core to the concept of a ‘normal’ childhood.
It is no longer a privilege for children to attend school and all children are
expected to spend a significant part of their day in a classroom. Once in school,
children’s lives could be separated from domestic life and the adult world of
work. In this way, school turns into an institution dedicated to shaping the minds,
behaviour and morals of the young. Besides, education dominated the
management of children’s waking hours through the hours spent in the
classroom, homework (the growth of ‘after school’ activities), and the importance
attached to parental involvement.

Industrialisation, urbanisation and mass schooling pose new challenges for those
who are responsible for protecting children’s welfare, as well as promoting their
learning. An increasing number of children are being treated as a group with
unique needs, and are organised into groups in the light of their age. For instance,
teachers need to know some information about what to expect of children in
their classrooms, what kinds of instruction are appropriate for different age
groups, and what is the best way to assess children’s progress. Also, they want
tools enabling them to sort and select children according to their abilities and
potential.
Questions 28-34
Do the following statements agree with the information give in Reading Passage
1?
In boxes 1-7 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 
28   Aries pointed out that children did different types of work to adults during
the Middle Ages.
29  Working children during the Middle Ages were generally unloved.
30   Some scientists thought that overwork might damage the health of young
children.
31   The rise of trade unions majorly contributed to the protection of children
from exploitation in the 19th century.
32   the aid of half-time schools, most children went to school in the mid-19th
century.
33   the 20th century, almost all children needed to go to school with a full-time
schedule.
34   Nowadays, children’s needs are much differentiated and categorised based
on how old they are.
Questions 35-40
Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.
35   What had not become a hot topic until the French historian Philippe Aries’
book caused great attention?
36   According to Aries, what was the typical image of children in Western Europe
during the Middle Ages?
37   What historical event generated the need for a large number of children to
work for a long time in the 18th and 19th centuries?
38   What bill was enacted to protect children from exploitation in Britain in the
1800s?
39   Which activities were becoming regarded as preferable for almost all children
in the 19th century?
40   In what place did children spend the majority of time during their day in
school?