Bamboo's Importance and Conservation Challenges
Bamboo's Importance and Conservation Challenges
Questions 1-10
Complete the table below.
Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.
Beatle 3 bedrooms, a a nearby restaurant Internet and $2 _______ The garden is too big
Road bathroom, a utilities to be cleaned up.
1_____________
Oakington 3 bedrooms, a Shared living room, Living room $340 - $400 Due to some shared
Avenue kitchen, a living bathroom, kitchen furniture facilities, it seems 4
room and 3 ___________ _________________
Questions 11-20
Complete the form below.
Write ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.
Waste disposal The garbage disposal plant is situated in an 16 ________________ space or field.
The waste is disposed of at least once every 17 ____________________
The dustbin should be cleared at night because of 18 ___________________
The waste is mainly produced by 19 ______________, industry, retail, and offices.
Please do not dispose of 20 ____________________ in any of the bins.
Questions 21-24
Complete the sentences below.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.
The research topic should come from one of the headings in the 21 ________________________
At least one reference needs to be from 22 __________________________
The data Julie found on past experiments is in 23 _____________________
Ricky has pointed out that aside from journals, he can also use 24 ___________________ about scientific
experiments.
Questions 25-30
Choose the correct letter A, B or C.
25. How should the essay be written?
● A single-spaced
● B double-spaced
● C double spaces
● A italic
● B underlined
● C bold
● A handwritten
● B typed
● C both ways are acceptable
● A 325 pixels
● B 3.25 pixels
● C 3.25 centimeter
Questions 31-38
Complete the sentences below.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.
This paper pertains to one major concern about water for people everywhere - that is a 31 ________________
source of water.
Australia is a dry continent and thus water is very 32 ______________________
We utilise the most water for 33 ______________________
We discover the purest water in rivers, creeks, 34 _______________________
Rainfall is a useful source of water unless there is significant 35 ___________________
People in the West wish the water to be 36 _________________
Water is highly prone to 37 ______________________
In the home, one of the most important uses of water is for 38 _____________________
Questions 39-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, or C.
39. The mechanisms for water management are
● A inadequate
● B nearly adequate
● C admirable
● A caused a concern.
● B is unreliable.
● C is inconclusive
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
A Wonder Plant
The wonder plant with an uncertain future: more than a billion people rely on bamboo for either their shelter or income,
while many endangered species depend on it for their survival. Despite its apparent abundance, a new report says that
species of bamboo may be under serious threat.
Every year, during the rainy season, the mountain gorillas of Central Africa migrate to the foothills and lower slopes of
the Virunga Mountains to graze on bamboo. For the 650 or so that it remains in the wild, it’s a vital food source.
Although there are at almost 150 types of plant, as well as various insects and other invertebrates, bamboo accounts for up
to 90 percent of their diet at this time of year. Without it, says Ian Redmond, chairman of the Ape Alliance, their chances
of survival would be reduced significantly. Gorillas aren’t the only locals keen on bamboo. For the people who live close
to the Virungas, it’s a valuable and versatile raw material used for building houses and making household items such as
mats and baskets. But in the past 100 years or so, resources have come under increasing pressure as populations have
exploded and large areas of bamboo forest have been cleared to make way for farms and commercial plantations.
Sadly, this isn’t an isolated story. All over the world, the ranges of many bamboo species appear to be shrinking,
endangering the people and animals that depend upon them. But despite bamboo’s importance, we know surprisingly
little about it. A recent report published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Inter-national Network for
Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR) has revealed just how profound is our ignorance of global bamboo resources, particularly in
relation to conservation. There are almost 1,600 recognized species of bamboo, but the report concentrated on the 1,200
or so woody varieties distinguished by the strong stems, or culms, that most people associate with this versatile plant. Of
these, only 38 ‘priority species’ identified for their commercial value have been the subject of any real scientific research,
and this has focused mostly on matters relating to their viability as a commodity. This problem isn’t confined to bamboo.
Compared to the work carried out on animals, the science of assessing the conservation status of plants is still in its
infancy. “People have only started looking hard at this during the past 10-15 years, and only now are they getting a handle
on how to go about it systematically,” says Dr. Valerie Kapos, one of the report’s authors and a senior adviser in forest
ecology and conservation to the UNEP.
Bamboo is a type of grass. It comes in a wide variety of forms, ranging in height from 30 centimeters to more than 40
meters. It is also the world’s fastest-growing woody plant; some species can grow more than a meter in a day. Bamboo’s
ecological role extends beyond providing food and habitat for animals. Bamboo tends to grow in stands made up of
groups of individual plants that grow from root systems known as rhizomes. Its extensive rhizome systems, which tie in
the top layers of the soil, are crucial in preventing soil erosion. And there is growing evidence that bamboo plays an
important part in determining forest structure and dynamics. “Bamboo’s pattern of mass flowering and mass death leaves
behind large areas of dry biomass that attract wildfire,” says Kapos. “When these burn, they create patches of open
ground within the forest far bigger than would be left by a fallen tree.”Patchiness helps to preserve diversity because
certain plant species do better during the early stages of regeneration when there are gaps in the canopy.
However, bamboo’s most immediate significance lies in its economic value. Modern processing techniques mean that it
can be used in a variety of ways, for example, as flooring and laminates. One of the fastest growing bamboo products is
paper-25 percent of paper produced in India is made from bamboo fiber, and in Brazil, 100,000 hectares of bamboo are
grown for its production. Of course, bamboo’s main function has always been in domestic applications, and as a locally
traded commodity it’s worth about $4.5billion annually. Because of its versatility, flexibility and strength (its tensile
strength compares to that of some steel), it has traditionally been used in construction. Today, more than one billion
people worldwide live in bamboo houses. Bamboo is often the only readily available raw material for people in many
developing countries, says Chris Stapleton, a research associate at the Royal Botanic Gardens. “Bamboo can be harvested
from forest areas or grown quickly elsewhere, and then converted simply without expensive machinery or facilities,” he
says. “In this way, it contributes substantially to poverty alleviation and wealth creation.”
Given bamboo’s value in economic and ecological terms, the picture painted by theUNEP report is all the more worrying.
But keen horticulturists will spot an apparent contradiction here. Those who’ve followed the recent vogue for cultivating
exotic species in their gardens will point out that if it isn’t kept in check, bamboo can cause real problems. “In a lot of
places, the people who live with bamboo don’t perceive it as being endangered in any way,” says Kapos. “In fact, a lot of
bamboo species are actually very invasive if they’ve been introduced.”So why are so many species endangered? There are
two separate issues here, says Ray Townsend, vice president of the British Bamboo Society and arboretum manager at the
Royal Botanic Gardens. “Some plants are threatened because they can’t survive in the habitat-they aren’t strong enough
or there aren’t enough of them, perhaps. But bamboo can take care of itself-it is strong enough to survive if left alone.
What is under threat is its habitat.”It is the physical disturbance that is the threat to bamboo, says Kapos. “When forest
goes, it is converted into something else: there isn’t anywhere for forest plants such as bamboo to grow if you create a
cattle pasture.”
Around the world, bamboo species are routinely protected as part of forest eco-systems in national parks and reserves, but
there is next to nothing that protects bamboo in the wild for its own sake. However, some small steps are being taken to
address this situation. The UNEP-INBAR report will help conservationists to establish effective measures aimed at
protecting valuable wild bamboo species. Townsend, too, sees the UNEP report as an important step forward in
promoting the cause of bamboo conservation. “Until now, bamboo has been perceived as a second-class plant. When you
talk about places such as the Amazon, everyone always thinks about the hardwoods. Of course these are significant, but
there is a tendency to overlook the plants they are associated with, which are often bamboo species. In many ways, it is
the most important plant known to man. I can’t think of another plant that is used so much and is so commercially
important in so many countries.”He believes that the most important first step is to get scientists into the field. “We need
to go out there, look at these plants and see how they survive and then use that information to conserve them for the
future.”
Questions 1-7
Write the correct letter A-F in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet
Questions 8-11
Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-D) with opinions or deeds below.
Write the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 8-11 on your answer sheet.
A Ian Redmond
B Valerie Kapos
C Ray Townsend
D Chris Stapleton
Questions 12-13
Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
What environmental problem does the unique root system of bamboo prevent? 12 _______________________
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
Children’s Literature
Stories and poems aimed at children have an exceedingly long history:lullabies, for example, were sung in Roman times,
and a few nursery games and rhymes are almost as ancient. Yet so far as written-down literature is concerned, while there
were stories in print before 1700 that children often seized on when they had the chance, such as translations of Aesop’s
fables, fairy-stories and popular ballads and romances, these were not aimed at young people in particular. Since the only
genuinely child-oriented literature at this time would have been a few instructional works to help with reading and general
knowledge, plus the odd Puritanical tract as an aid to morality, the only course for keen child readers was to read adult
literature. This still occurs today, especially with adult thrillers or romances that include more exciting, graphic detail than
is normally found in the literature for younger readers.
By the middle of the 18th century there were enough eager child readers, and enough parents glad to cater to this interest,
for publishers to specialize in children’s books whose first aim was pleasure rather than education or morality. In Britain,
a London merchant named Thomas Boreham produced Cajanus, The Swedish Giant in 1742, while the more famous John
Newbery published A Little Pretty Pocket Book in 1744. Its contents - rhymes, stories, children’s games plus a free gift
(‘A ball and a pincushion’)——in many ways anticipated the similar lucky-dip contents of children’s annuals this
century. It is a tribute to Newbery’s flair that he hit upon a winning formula quite so quickly, to be pirated almost
immediately in America.
Such pleasing levity was not to last. Influenced by Rousseau, whose Emile(1762) decreed that all books for children save
Robinson Crusoe were a dangerous diversion, contemporary critics saw to it that children’s literature should be
instructive and uplifting. Prominent among such voices was Mrs. Sarah Trimmer, whose magazine The Guardian of
Education (1802) carried the first regular reviews of children’s books. It was she who condemned fairy-tales for their
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violence and general absurdity; her own stories, Fabulous Histories (1786) described talking animals who were always
models of sense and decorum.
So the moral story for children was always threatened from within, given the way children have of drawing out
entertainment from the sternest moralist. But the greatest blow to the improving children’s book was to come from an
unlikely source indeed: early 19th century interest in folklore. Both nursery rhymes, selected by James Orchard Halliwell
for a folklore society in 1842, and collection of fairy-stories by the scholarly Grimm brothers, swiftly translated into
English in 1823,soon rocket to popularity with the young, quickly leading to new editions, each one more child-centered
than the last. From now on younger children could expect stories written for their particular interest and with the needs of
their own limited experience of life kept well to the fore.
What eventually determined the reading of older children was often not the availability of special children’s literature as
such but access to books that contained characters, such as young people or animals, with whom they could more easily
empathize, or action, such as exploring or fighting, that made few demands on adult maturity or understanding.
The final apotheosis of literary childhood as something to be protected from unpleasant reality came with the arrival in
the late 1930s of child-centered best-sellers intend on entertainment at its most escapist. In Britain novelist such as Enid
Blyton and Richmal Crompton described children who were always free to have the most unlikely adventures, secure in
the knowledge that nothing bad could ever happen to them in the end. The fact that war broke out again during her books’
greatest popularity fails to register at all in the self-enclosed world inhabited by Enid Blyton’s young characters. Reaction
against such dream-worlds was inevitable after World War II, coinciding with the growth of paperback sales, children’s
libraries and a new spirit of moral and social concern. Urged on by committed publishers and progressive librarians,
writers slowly began to explore new areas of interest while also shifting the settings of their plots from the middle-class
world to which their chiefly adult patrons had always previously belonged.
Critical emphasis, during this development, has been divided. For some the most important task was to rid children’s
books of the social prejudice and exclusiveness no longer found acceptable. Others concentrated more on the positive
achievements of contemporary children’s literature. That writers of these works are now often recommended to the
attentions of adult as well as child readers echoes the 19th-century belief that children’s literature can be shared by the
generations, rather than being a defensive barrier between childhood and the necessary growth towards adult
understanding.
Questions 14-18
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from Reading Passage 2 for each answer.
Before 1700 Not aimed at young children Education and Puritanical tract
morality
centered
Questions 19-21
Write the correct letter A-E in boxes 19-21 on your answer sheet.
List of statements
19 Thomas Boreham
21 Grimm Brothers
Questions 22-26
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
23 Sarah Trimmer believed that children’s books should set good examples.
26 Today children’s book writers believe their works should appeal to both children and adults.
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.
Talc Powder
Peter Rrigg discovers how talc from Luzenac’s Trimouns in France find its way into food and agricultural products—
from chewing gum to olive oil.
High in the French Pyrenees, some 1,700m above see level, lies Trimouns, a huge deposit of hydrated magnesium silicate
- talc to you and me. Talc from Trimouns, and from ten other Luzenac mines across the globe, is used in the manufacture
of a vast array of everyday products extending from paper, paint and plaster to cosmetics, plastics and car tyres. And of
course there is always talc’s best known end use: talcum powder for babies’ bottoms. But the true versatility of this
remarkable mineral is nowhere better displayed than in its sometimes surprising use in certain niche markets in the food
and agriculture industries.
Take, for example, the chewing gum business. Every year, Talc de Luzenac France—which owns and operates the
Trimouns mine and is a member of the international Luzenac Group (art of Rio Tinto minerals)—supplies about 6,000
tones of talc to chewing gum manufacturers in Europe. “We’ve been selling to this sector of the market since the
1960s,”says Laurent Fournier, sales manager in Luzenac’s Specialties business unit in Toulouse. “Admittedly, in terms of
our total annual sales of talc, the amount we supply to chewing gum manufacturers is relatively small, but we see it as a
valuable niche market: one where customers place a premium on securing supplies from a reliable, high quality source.
Because of this, long term allegiance to a proven suppler is very much a feature of this sector of the talc
market.”Switching sources—in the way that you might choose to buy, say, paperclips from Supplier A rather than from
Supplier B—is not a easy option for chewing gum manufacturers,”Fournier says. “The cost of reformulating is high, so
when customers are using a talc grade that works, even if it’s expensive, they are understandably reluctant to switch.”
But how is talc actually used in the manufacture of chewing gum? PatrickDelord, an engineer with a degree in
agronomics, who has been with Luzenac for 22 years and is now senior market development manager, Agriculture and
Food, in Europe, explains that chewing gums has four main components. “The most important of them is the gum
base,”he says. “It’s the gum base that puts the chew into chewing gum. It binds all the ingredients together, creating a
soft, smooth texture. To this the manufacturer then adds sweeteners, softeners and flavourings. Our talc is used as a filler
in the gum base. The amount varies between, say, ten and 35 per cent, depending on the type of gum. Fruit flavoured
chewing gum, for example, is slightly acidic and would react with the calcium carbonate that the manufacturer might
otherwise use as a filler. Talc, on the other hand, makes an ideal filler because it’s non-reactive chemically. In the factory,
talc is also used to dust the gum base pellets and to stop the chewing gum sticking during the lamination and packing
process,”Delord adds.
The chewing gum business is, however, just one example of talc’s use in the food sector. For the past 20 years or so, olive
oil processors in Spain have been taking advantage of talc’s unique characteristics to help them boost the amount of oil
they extract from crushed olives. According to Patrick Delord, talc is especially useful for treating what he calls
“difficult” olives. After the olives are harvested-preferably early in the morning because their taste is better if they are
gathered in the cool of the day - they are taken to the processing plant. There they are crushed and then stirred for 30-45
minutes. In the old days, the resulting paste was passed through an olive press but nowadays it’s more common to add
water and centrifuge the mixture to separate the water and oil from the solid matter. The oil and water are then allowed to
settle so that the olive oil layer can be decanted oft and bottled. “Difficult” olives are those that are more reluctant than
the norm to yield up their full oil content. This may be attributable to the particular species of olive, or to its water content
and the time of year the olives are collected—at the beginning and the end of the season their water content is often either
too high or too low. These olives are easy to recognize because they produce a lot of extra foam during the stirring
process, a consequence of an excess of a fine solid that acts as anatural emulsifier. The oil in this emulsion is lost when
the water is disposed of. Not only that, if the waste water is disposed of directly into local fields—often the case in many
smaller processing operations—the emulsified oil may take some time to biodegrade and so be harmful to the
environment.
“If you add between a half and two percent of talc by weight during the stirring process, it absorbs the natural emulsifier
in the olives and so boosts the amount of oil you can extract,”says Delord. “In addition, talc’s flat, 'platy’ structure helps
If the use of talc in olive oil processing and in chewing gum is long established, new applications in the food and
agriculture industries are also constantly being sought by Luzenac. One such promising new market is fruit crop
protection, being pioneered in the US. Just like people, fruit can get sunburned. In fact, in very sunny regions up to 45
percent of atypical crop can be affected by heat stress and sunburn. However, in the case of fruit, it’s not so much the
ultra violet rays which harm the crop as the high surface temperature that the sun’s rays create.
To combat this, farmers normally use either chemicals or spray a continuous fine canopy of mist above the fruit trees or
bushes. The trouble is, this uses a lot of water—normally a precious commodity in hot, sunny areas—and it is therefore
expensive. What’s more, the ground can quickly become waterlogged.” So our idea was to coat the fruit with talc to
protect it from the sun,”says Greg Hunter, a marketing specialist who has been with Luzenac for ten years. “But to do
this, several technical challenges had first to be overcome. Talc is very hydrophobic: it doesn’t like water. So in order to
have a viable product we needed a wettable powder—something that would go readily into suspension so that it could be
sprayed onto the fruit. It also had to break the surface tension of the cutin (the natural waxy, waterproof layer on the fruit)
and of course it had to wash off easily when the fruit was harvested. No-one’s going to want an apple that’s covered in
talc.”
Initial trials in the state of Washington in 2003 showed that when the product was sprayed onto Granny Smith apples, it
reduced their surface temperature and lowered the incidence of sunburn by up to 60 per cent. Today the new product,
known as Invelop Maximum SPF, is in its second commercial year on the US market. Apple growers are the primary
target although Hunter believes grape growers represent another sector with long term potential. He is also hopeful of
extending sales to overseas markets such as Australia, South America and southern Europe.
Questions 27-32
Use the information in the passage to match each use of talc power with correct application from A, B or C.
Write the appropriate letters A-C in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.
Questions 33-38
Complete the following summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each
answer.
The use of talc powder in the olive oil industry in Spain has been around for 33 _________________ years. It is
extremely useful in dealing with “difficult” olives which often produce a lot of 34 _____________________ due to the
high content of solid matter.
The traditional method of oil extraction used in some smaller plants often produces 35 _____________, which contains
emulsified oil, and if it is directly disposed of, it may be 36 _______________ to the environment, because it cannot 37
_____________. But adding talc powder can absorb the emulsifier and increase the production, because the size of oil 38
_________________ grows.
Questions 39-40
Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
What are the last two stages of chewing gum manufacturing process?
39 ____________________________________________________
40 ____________________________________________________
Task 1:
You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.
The plans below show a student room for two people and a student room for one person at an Australian
university.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features and make comparisons where
relevant.
You should write at least 150 words.
Your work
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This material belongs to BUBU ACADEMY, please do not re-up or copy!
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Task 2:
There has been a huge increase in the size of cities. Many cities have grown in a haphazard way.
Why is careful planning important in the development of cities?
Your work
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