READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1.
Early Childhood Education
Question Number | Answer | Keywords | Location in the Passage | Text Associated with Answer |
1 | D | Families, first child | Part D, Para 1 | "The Four-year pilot study included 380 Families who were about to have their First child and who represented a cross-section of socioeconomic status, age and Family configurations. They included single-parent and twoparent Families, Families in which both parents worked, and families with either the mother or lather at home." |
2 | B | children, language | Part B, Para 1 | "at Harvard University has shown that, by the age at three, most children have the potential to understand about 1000 words — most of the language they will use in ordinary conversation tor the rest of their lives." |
3 | C | disappointing, parents | Part C, Para 2 | "disappointing. It is thought that there are two explanations tor this. First, the programme began too late. Many children who entered it at the age of three were already behind their peers in language and measurable intelligence. Second, the parents were not involved. At the and oi each day, ‘Headstart‘ children returned to the some disadvantaged home environment." |
4 | E | social development | Part E, Para 1 | "further along in social development. In fact, the average child on the programme was performing at the level of the top 15 to 20 percent of their peers in such things as auditory comprehension, verbal ability and language ability" |
5 | B | Families, first child | Part D, Para 1 | "The Four-year pilot study included 380 Families who were about to have their First child and who represented a cross-section oi socio-economic status, age and Family configurations. They" |
6 | D | - | - | - |
7 | A | funding, disappointing | Part C, Para 2 | "Despite substantial funding, results have been disappointing. it is thought that there are two" |
8 | B | parent-educators | Part D, Para 2 | "The programme involved trained parent- educators visiting the parents‘ home and working with the parent, or parents, and the child. Parent-educators made personal visits to homes and monthly group meetings were held with other new parents to share experience and discuss topics oi interest. Parent resource centres" |
9 | D | - | - | - |
10 | C | pro-school institutions | Part C, Para 1 | "money was poured into it. It took children into pro-school institutions at the a e at three and was supposed to help the children of poorer Families succeed in school." |
11 | TRUE | language development | Part E, Para 1 | "random sample at children that age. The results were phenomenal. By the age of three, the children in the programme were significantly more advanced in language development than their Peers, had made greater strides in problem solving and other intellectual skills, and were further along in social development. In fact, the" |
12 | FALSE | parents' age, education | Part E, Para 2 | "Most important at all, tie traditional measures at 'risk', such as parents' age and education, or whether they were a single parent, bore little or no relationship to the measures at achievement and language development. Children in the" | |
Question Number | Answer | Keywords | Location in the Passage | Text Associated with Answer |
13 | NOT GIVEN | - | - | - |
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14–26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 .
Disappearing Delta
Question Number | Answer | Keywords | Location in the Passage | Text Associated with Answer |
14 | iv | loss of delta land, blamed, dams, Aswan | Part B, First 4 lines | "Up to now, people have blamed this loss oi delta land on the two large dams at Aswan in the south of Egypt" |
15 | i | Nile water, diverted, irrigation canals | Part D, First 7 lines | "Once north of Cairo, most oi the Nile water is diverted into more than l0,000 kilometres of irrigation canals" |
16 | v | agricultural wastes, fishing industry | Part E, Para 2, Last 7 lines | "Another problem is that agricultural wastes include fertilizers which stimulate increases in plant growth in the lagoons and upset the ecology of the area, with serious effects on the fishing industry" |
17 | viii | erosion, pollution, impact, Mediterranean | Part F, First 7 lines | "According to Siegel, international environmental organisations are beginning to pay closer attention to the region, partly because of the problems of erosion and pollution of the Nile delta, but principally because they fear the impact this situation could have on the whole Mediterranean coastal ecosystem" |
18 | YES | fertile land, eroded, 100 metres per year | Part A | "The fertile land oi the Nile delta is being eroded along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast at an astounding rate, in some parts estimated at 100 metres per year" |
19 | NOT GIVEN | - | - | - |
20 | NO | Aswan dams, sediment accumulation | Part B, Last 9 lines | "But when the Aswan dams were constructed in the 20th century... most of the sediment with its natural fertilizer accumulated up above the dam in the southern, upstream half of Lake Nasser, instead of passing down to the delta" |
21 | YES | water samples, sediment | Part C, Line 6-11 | "of the Smithsonian Institute noticed that water samples taken in Cairo... indicated that the river sometimes carries more than 850 grams oi sediment per cubic metre of water" |
22 | NOT GIVEN | - | - | - |
23 | YES | sediment, bottom of canals, fields, lagoons | Part D, Line 7-10 | "sediment, Stanley explains. The sediment sinks to the bottom oi the canals and then is added to fields by farmers or pumped with the water into the tour large freshwater lagoons" |
24 | F- | pollutants, building up | Part E, Para 1, Line 3-8 | "Egypt’s Food supply. But by the time the sediment has come to rest in the fields and lagoons it is laden with municipal, industrial and agricultural waste from the Cairo region" |
25 | A - | artificial flood, flush out | Part F, Line 8-10 | "are no easy solutions. ln the immediate future, Stanley believes that one solution would be to make artificial Hoods to flush out the delta" |
26 | B - | desalination, increase water | Part F, Line 13-15 | Then, right after that, the writer says again, “ . .. He says, however, that in the long term an alternative process such as desalination may have to be used to increase the amount of water available. .. ..” Here, in the long term = long-term solution, |
26 | B - | desalination, increase water | Part F, Line 13-15 | "however, that in the long term an alternative process such as desalination may have to be used to increase the amount of water available" |
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27–40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 .
The Return of Artificial Intelligence
Answers | Keywords | Location | Explanation |
27. E | AI, military impact | P A | HNC claim that their system, based on a duster of 30 processors, could be used to spot camouflaged vehicles on a battlefield or extract a voice signal from a noisy background. · military = camouflaged vehicles, battlefield |
28. B | AI, together, separate research areas | P B | The expression provided an attractive but informative name for a research programme that encompassed such previously disparate fields as operations research, cybernetics, logic and computer science · brings together a range of separate research areas = encompassed such previously disparate fields as operation research |
29. A | reason, common topic, conversation | PA | It re-entered public consciousness with the release of Al, a movie about a robot boy. This has ignited public debate about AI, but the term is also being used once more within the computer industry. · became a topic of conversation again = re-entered public consciousness |
30. F | deal with, difficulties, amount of information | P F | In particular, the problem of information overload, exacerbated by the growth of e-mail and the explosion in the number of web pages, means there are plenty of opportunities for new technologies to help filter and categorise information – classic Al problems. · difficulties = problems · amount of information available = information overload |
31. B | expression, first, used | P B | The field was launched, and the term ‘artificial intelligence’ coined, at a conference in 1956,,by a group of researchers that included Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, · first used = coined · the expression AI = the term „Artificial intelligence‟ |
32. NOT GIVEN | researchers, AI, worked together, other projects | P B | It means that a lot of researchers working on different problems and in different ways worked together in the field of AI, but we do not know if they had worked together on other projects before. |
33. FALSE | P C | Most researchers agree that Al peaked around 1985. · lowest point is opposite to peaked | |
34. NOT GIVEN | agent, technology, costly, neural | P C | The writer gives no information about the cost comparison between research into agent technology and research into neural networks. |
35. TRUE | AI, degree of success | P D | Ironically, in some ways Al was a victim of its own success. · success= progress |
36. FALSE | problems, solved, not changed, 1967 | P C and D | First, in paragraph C, the author of the passage says in lines 3-5, “ .. .. Marvin Minsky said in 1967 that within a generation the problem of creating ‘artificial intelligence’ would be substantially solved. . .. In paragraph D, the author says in lines 6-8, .” Meanwhile, the technologies that made it once the market, such as speech recognition, language translation and decision-support software, were no longer regarded as Al. · were no longer regarded as Al= they changed |
37. TRUE | 2001: A space Odyssey, reflected, | P G | The 1969 film, 2001:A Space Odyssey, featured an intelligent computer called HAL 9000. · reflected contemporary ideas = encapsulated the optimism |
38. B | original, expectations,AI | P C | By the late 1980s, the term Al was being avoided by many researchers, who opted instead to align themselves with specific sub-disciplines such as neural networks, agent technology, case-based reasoning, and so on. · original expectations of AI = overdue optimism in the early 1980s · overdue optimism= boyond justification= not justified |
39. A | Dr Leake’s | P C | In lines 8-11 in paragraph C, where we find the opinion of Dr. Leake, “‘Then when people realised there were hard problems, there was retrenchment. By the late 1980s, the term AI was being avoided by many researchers, who opted instead to align themselves with specific sub-disciplines such as neural networks, agent technology, case-based reasoning, and so on.’” · Here, people realised there were hard problems, = people’s perception about AI changed, retrenchment / AI was being avoided= the reputation of AI suffered, |
40. D | AI, benefits | P F | In paragraph F, in lines 1-3Another factor that may boost the prospects for Al in the near future is that investors are now looking for firms using clever technology, rather than just a clever business model, to differentiate themselves. · benefit from = factor that may boost. |
Fantastic effort!