Vol 1 – Test 1 – Passage 1

No Answer Where it is located

1 white When silk was first discovered in China over 4,500 years
ago, it was reserved exclusively for the use of the emperor,
his close relations and the very highest of his dignitaries.
Within the palace, the emperor is believed to have worn a
robe of white silk; outside, he, his principal wife, and the
heir to the throne wore yellow, the colour of the earth.
2 paper Gradually silk came into more general use, and the various
classes of Chinese society began wearing tunics of silk. As
well as being used for clothing and decoration, silk was quite
quickly put to industrial use, and rapidly became one of the
principal elements of the Chinese economy. It was used in
the production of musical instruments, as string for fishing,
and even as the world's first luxury paper. Eventually even
the common people were able to wear garments of silk.
3 taxes During the Han dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), silk ceased to be
a mere fabric and became a form of currency. Farmers paid
their taxes in grain and silk, and silk was used to pay civil
servants and to reward subjects for outstanding services.
Values were calculated in lengths of silk as they had
previously been calculated in weight of gold.

4 gold Values were calculated in lengths of silk as they had

previously been calculated in weight of gold. Before long,
silk became a currency used in trade with foreign countries,
which continued into the Tang dynasty (616-907 AD).

5 foreign Values were calculated in lengths of silk as they had

previously been calculated in weight of gold. Before long,
silk became a currency used in trade with foreign countries,
which continued into the Tang dynasty (616-907 AD).

6 mummy An Egyptian mummy with a silk thread in her hair, dating

from 1070 BC, has been discovered in the village of Deir el
Medina near the Valley of the Kings, and is probably the
earliest evidence of the silk trade. During the second century
BC, the Chinese emperor Han Wu Di's ambassadors
travelled as far west as Persia and Mesopotamis, bearing
gifts including silks.

7 caves One of the most dramatic of these finds was some Tang silk
discovered in 1900. It is believed that around 1015 AD
Buddhist monks, possibly alarmed by the threat of invasion
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 by Tibetan people, had sealed more than ten thousand
manuscripts and silk paintings, silk banners and textiles in
caves near Dunhuang, a trading station on the Silk Road in
north-west China.

8 True Some historians believe the first Europeans to set eyes upon
the fabulous fabric were the Roman legions of Marcus
Licinius Crassus, Governor of Syria. According to certain
accounts of the period, at an important battle near the
Euphrates River in 53 BC, the Roman soldiers were so
startled by the bright silken banners of the enemy that they
fled in panic…

9 Not Yet, within decades Chinese silks were widely worn by the
given rich and noble families of Rome. The Roman legions of
Marcus Licinius Crassus (218-222 AD) wore nothing but
silk. By 380 AD, the Roman historian Marcellinnus
Ammianus reported that.
10 False Around 550 AD silk production reached the Middle East.
Records indicate that two monks from Constantinople
(modern-day Istanbul), capital of the Byzantine Empire,
appeared at their emperor's court with silkworm eggs which
they had obtained secretly, and hidden in their hollow
bamboo walking sticks. Under their supervision the eggs
hatched into worms, and the worms spun silk threads…

11 False However, high quality silk textiles, woven in China

especially for the Middle Eastern market, continued to
achieve high prices in the West, and trade along the Silk
Road continued as before.

12 True By the sixth century the Persians, too, had mastered the art
of silk weaving, developing their own rich patterns and
techniques. But it wasn't until the 13th century that Italy
began silk production, with the introduction of 2,000
skilled silk weavers from Constantinople.
13 False World silk production has approximately doubled during
the last 30 years in spite of manmade fibres replacing
certain uses of silk.

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 Vol 1 – Test 1 – Passage 2
No Answer Where it is located
14 D Fisher was particularly excited about one specific part of
Lyuba's anatomy: her milk tusks. Through his career, Fisher
has taken hundreds of tusk samples. Most of these came
from the Great Lakes region of North America, and his
research showed that these animals continued to thrive,
despite the late Pleistocene* temperature change. On the
other hand, to Fisher the tusks often revealed telltale
evidence of human hunting. His samples frequently came
from animals that had died in the autumn, when they should
have been at their peak after summer grazing, and less
likely to die of natural causes, but also when humans would
have been most eager to stockpile meat for the coming
winter. He has done limited work in Siberia, but his
analysis of tusks from Wrangel Island, off the coast of
Siberia, suggests the same conclusion.

15 B The extinctions also coincided, however, with the arrival of

modern humans. In addition to exploiting mammoths for
food, they used their bones and tusks to make weapons,
tools, and even dwellings. Some scientists believe humans
were as much to blame as the temperature rise for the great
die-off. Some say they caused it

16 E Six months later, in a laboratory in St Petersburg, Suzuki,

Tikhonov and other colleagues began a three-day series of
tests on Lyuba. During these, Fisher noted a dense mix of
clay and sand in her trunk, mouth and throat, which had
been indicated earlier by the scan. In fact, the sediment in
Lyuba's trunk was packed so tightly that Fisher saw it as a
possible explanation for the dent above her trunk. If she
was frantically fighting for breath and inhaled
convulsively, perhaps a partial vacuum was created in
the base of her trunk, which would have flattened
surrounding soft tissue. To Fisher, the circumstances of
Lyuba's death were clear: she had asphyxiated. Suzuki,
however, proposed a different interpretation, seeing more
evidence for drowning than asphyxiation.

17 A On a May morning in 2007, on the Yamal Peninsula in

northwestern Siberia, a Nenets reindeer herder named Yuri
Khudi stood on a sandbar on the Yuribey River, looking
carefully at a diminutive corpse. Although he'd never

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 seen such an animal before, Khudi had seen many
mammoth tusks, the thick corkscrew shafts that his
people found each summer, and this persuaded him the
corpse was a baby mammoth. It was eerily well preserved.
Apart from its missing hair and toenails, it was perfectly
intact…

18 C According to Tikhonov, Khudi had rescued ‘the best

preserved mammoth to come down to US from the Ice
Age’, and he gratefully named her Lyuba, after Khudi's
wife. Tikhonov knew that no-one would be more excited by
the find than Dan Fisher, an American colleague at the
University of Michigan who had spent 30 years researching
the lives of mammoths. Tikhonov invited Fisher, along with
Bernard Buigues, a French mammoth hunter, to come and
view the baby mammoth. Fisher and Buigues had examined
other specimens together, including infants, but these had
been in a relatively poor state. Lyuba was another story
entirely. Other than the missing hair and toenails, the only
flaw in her pristine appearance was a curious dent above the
trunk.

19 C 'We have strong evidence that the temperature rise

played a significant part in their extinction.' says Adrian
Lister, a palaeontologist and mammoth expert at London's
Natural History Museum.
20 E Studies are ongoing, but Lyuba has begun to shed the
secrets of her short life and some clues to the fate of her
kind. Her good general health was shown in the record of
her dental development, a confirmation for Fisher that
dental research is useful for evaluating health and thus key
to investigating the causes of mammoth extinction.
21 D The body of the baby mammoth was eventually sent to
the St Petersburg Zoological Museum in Russia. Alexei
Tikhonov, the museum's director, was one of the first
scientists to view the baby, a female. According to
Tikhonov, Khudi had rescued ‘the best preserved
mammoth to come down to US from the Ice Age’, and he
gratefully named her Lyuba, after Khudi's wife. Tikhonov
knew that no-one would be more excited by the find than
Dan Fisher, an American colleague at the University of
Michigan who had spent 30 years researching the lives of
mammoths…

22 A It was eerily well preserved. Apart from its missing hair and
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 toenails, it was perfectly intact. Khudi realised the find
might be significant and he knew he couldn't just return
home and forget all about it.
23 E Most of these came from the Great Lakes region of North
America, and his research showed that these animals
continued to thrive, despite the late Pleistocene*
temperature change. On the other hand, to Fisher the tusks
often revealed telltale evidence of human hunting. His
samples frequently came from animals that had died in
the autumn, when they should have been at their peak
after summer grazing, and less likely to die of natural
causes,
24 vegetation Mammoths became extinct between 14,000 and 10.000
years ago and since the extinctions coincided with the end
of the most recent Ice age, many researchers believe that
the primary cause of the great die-off was the sharp rise in
temperature, which dramatically altered the vegetation.

25 human Fisher was particularly excited about one specific part of

hunting Lyuba's anatomy: her milk tusks. Through his career, Fisher
has taken hundreds of tusk samples. Most of these came
from the Great Lakes region of North America, and his
research showed that these animals continued to thrive,
despite the late Pleistocene* temperature change. On the
other hand, to Fisher the tusks often revealed telltale
evidence of human hunting…

26 North Analysis of her wellpreserved DNA has revealed that she

America belonged to a distinct population of Mammuthus
primigenius and that, soon after her time, another
population migrating to Siberia from North America
would take their place. Finally, Lyuba's premolars and tusks
revealed that she had been born in late spring and was only
a month old when she died.

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 No Answer Where it is located
1 white When silk was first discovered in China over 4,500 years
ago, it was reserved exclusively for the use of the emperor,
his close relations and the very highest of his dignitaries.
Within the palace, the emperor is believed to have worn a
robe of white silk; outside, he, his principal wife, and the
heir to the throne wore yellow, the colour of the earth.

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 Vol 1 – Test 1 – Passage 3
No Answer Where it is located
27 C Talent can be defined as something that originates in genetic
structures and that is identifiable by trained people who can
recognize its existence before a person has achieved
exceptional levels of performance. The emphasis on early
identification means that to investigate it, we study the
development of skills in children.

28 C Gottfried Schlaug at Harvard collected brain scans of

individuals with absolute pitch* (AP) and showed that a
region in the brain called the planum temporale is larger in
these people than in others. This suggests that the planum is
involved in AP, but it's not clear if it starts out larger in
people who eventually acquire AP, or if the acquisition of
AP makes the planum increase in size.

29 A Results of research into the areas of the brain involved in

skilled motor movement are more conclusive. Studies of
violin players have shown that the region of the brain
responsible for controlling the movement of the left hand
(the hand that requires greater precision in violin playing)
increases in size as a result of practice. We do not know
yet if the propensity for increase pre-exists in some peopled
not others.

30 A Like experts in mathematics, chess, or sports, experts in

music require lengthy periods of instruction and practice. In
several studies, the very best music students were found to
have practiced more than twice as much as the others. In
another study, students were secretly divided into two
groups based on teachers' perceptions of their talent. Several
years later, it was found that the students who achieved the
highest performance ratings had practiced the most,
irrespective of which talent group they had been assigned
to suggesting that practice does not merely correlate with
achievement, but causes it.

31 Not Anders Ericsson, at Florida State University, approaches

given the topic of musical expertise as a general problem in
cognitive psychology.
32 Yes that we can learn about musical expertise by studying expert
chess players, athletes, artists, mathematicians, as well as
the musicians themselves. The emerging picture from such

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 studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required
to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a
world-class expert - in anything. In study after study, of
composers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players
and master criminals, this number comes up again and
again. Someone would do this amount of practice if they
practiced, for example, roughly 20 hours a week for ten
years...

33 Not Someone would do this amount of practice if they practiced,

given for example, roughly 20 hours a week for ten years. Of
course, this does not address why some people do not seem
to get anywhere when they practice, and why some people
get more out of their practice sessions than others.
34 No Of course, this does not address why some people do not
seem to get anywhere when they practice, and why some
people get more out of their practice sessions than others.
35 No The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand
hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery
associated with being a world-class expert - in anything…
But no-one has yet found a case in which true world-class
expertise was accomplished in less time
36 Yes is consistent with what we know about how the brain
learns. Learning requires the assimilation and consolidation
of information in neural tissue. The more experiences we
have with something, the stronger the memory/learning trace
for that experience becomes. Although people differ in how
long it takes them to consolidate information neutrally, it
remains true that increased practice leads to a greater
number of neural traces, which create stronger memory
representation.

37 E And Mozart had an expert teacher in his father, who was

renowned as a teacher of musicians all over Europe. We do
not know how much Mozart practiced, but if he started at
age two and wo
38 D The classic rebuttal to this theory goes something like this:
39 A What about Mozart? I hear that he composed his first
symphony at the age of four! First, there is a factual error
here: Mozart did not write it until he was eight. Still, this is
unusual, to say the least. However, this early work received
little acclaim and was not performed very often…

40 G We do not know how much Mozart practiced, but if he

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 started at age two and worked thirty-two hours a week (quite
possible, given that his father was a stern taskmaster) he
would have made his ten thousand hours by the time he
composed his first symphony. This does not mean that there
are no genetic factors involved in Mozart's greatness, but
that inborn traits may not be the only cause.

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