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CAMBRIDGE 10 – TEST 1 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage below:

Stepwells

A millennium ago, stepwells were fundamental to life in the driest parts of India. Although
manyhave been neglected, recent restoration has returned them to their former glory. Richard
Cox travelled to north-western India to document these spectacular monuments from a bygone
era.

During the sixth and seventh centuries, the inhabitants of the modern-day states of Gujarat and
Rajasthan in North-western India developed a method of gaining access to clean, fresh groundwater
during the dry season for drinking, bathing, watering animals and irrigation. However, the significance
of this invention – the stepwell – goes beyond its utilitarian application.

Unique to the region, stepwells are often architecturally complex and vary widely in size and shape.
During their heyday, they were places of gathering, of leisure, of relaxation and of worship for
villagers of all but the lowest castes. Most stepwells are found dotted around the desert areas of Gujarat
(where they are called vav) and Rajasthan (where they are known as baori), while a few also survive in
Delhi. Some were located in or near villages as public spaces for the community; others were
positioned beside roads as resting places for travellers.

As their name suggests, stepwells comprise a series of stone steps descending from ground level to the
water source (normally an underground aquifer) as it recedes following the rains. When the water level
was high, the user needed only to descend a few steps to reach it; when it was low, several levels
would have to be negotiated.

Some wells are vast, open craters with hundreds of steps paving each sloping side, often in tiers.
Others are more elaborate, with long stepped passages leading to the water via several storeys built
from stone and supported by pillars, they also included pavilions that sheltered visitors from the
relentless heat. But perhaps the most impressive features are the intricate decorative sculptures that
embellish many stepwells, showing activities from fighting and dancing to everyday acts such as
women combing their hair and churning butter.

Down the centuries, thousands of wells were constructed throughout northwestern India, but the
majority have now fallen into disuse; many are derelict and dry, as groundwater has been diverted for
industrial use and the wells no longer reach the water table. Their condition hasn’t been helped by
recent dry spells: southern Rajasthan suffered an eight-year drought between 1996 and 2004.

However, some important sites in Gujarat have recently undergone major restoration, and the state
government announced in June last year that it plans to restore the stepwells throughout the state.

In Patan, the state’s ancient capital, the stepwell of Rani Ki Vav (Queen’s Stepwell) is perhaps the
finest current example. It was built by Queen Udayamati during the late 11th century, but became
silted up following a flood during the 13th century. But the Archaeological Survey of India began
restoring it in the 1960s, and today it’s in pristine condition. At 65 metres long, 20 metres wide and 27
metres deep, Rani Ki Vav features 500 distinct sculptures carved into niches throughout the
monument, depicting gods such as Vishnu and Parvati in various incarnations. Incredibly, in January
2001, this ancient structure survived a devastating earthquake that measured 7.6 on the Richter scale.
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Another example is the Surya Kund in Modhera, northern Gujarat, next to the Sun Temple, built by
King Bhima I in 1026 to honour the sun god Surya. It’s actually a tank (kund means reservoir or pond)
rather than a well, but displays the hallmarks of stepwell architecture, including four sides of steps that
descend to the bottom in a stunning geometrical formation. The terraces house 108 small, intricately
carved shrines between the sets of steps.

Rajasthan also has a wealth of wells. The ancient city of Bundi, 200 kilometres south of Jaipur, is
renowned for its architecture, including its stepwells. One of the larger examples is Raniji Ki Baori,
which was built by the queen of the region, Nathavatji, in 1699. At 46 metres deep, 20 metres wide and
40 metres long, the intricately carved monument is one of 21 baoris commissioned in the Bundi area
by Nathavatji.

In the old ruined town of Abhaneri, about 95 kilometres east of Jaipur, is Chand Baori, one of India’s
oldest and deepest wells; aesthetically, it’s perhaps one of the most dramatic. Built in around 850 AD
next to the temple of Harshat Mata, the baori comprises hundreds of zigzagging steps that run along
three of its sides, steeply descending 11 storeys, resulting in a striking geometric pattern when seen
from afar. On the fourth side, covered verandas supported by ornate pillars overlook the steps.

Still in public use is Neemrana Ki Baori, located just off the Jaipur–Dehli highway. Constructed in
around 1700, it’s nine storeys deep, with the last two levels underwater. At ground level, there are 86
colonnaded openings from where the visitor descends 170 steps to the deepest water source.

Today, following years of neglect, many of these monuments to medieval engineering have been saved
by the Archaeological Survey of India, which has recognised the importance of preserving them as part
of the country’s rich history. Tourists flock to wells in far-flung corners of northwestern India to gaze
in wonder at these architectural marvels from 1,000 years ago, which serve as a reminder of both the
ingenuity and artistry of ancient civilisations and of the value of water to human existence.

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Questions 1–5
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1. Examples of ancient stepwells can be found all over the world.

2. Stepwells had a range of functions, in addition to those related to water collection.
3. The few existing stepwells in Delhi are more attractive than those found elsewhere.
4. It took workers many years to build the stone steps characteristic of stepwells.
5. The number of steps above the water level in a stepwell altered during the course of a year.

Questions 6–8
Answer the questions below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

6. Which part of some stepwells provided shade for people?

7. What type of serious climatic event, which took place in southern Rajasthan, is mentioned in the
article?
8. Who are frequent visitors to stepwells nowadays?

Question 9-13
Complete the table below

Choose ONE WORD AND /OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

Stepwells Date Features Other notes

Restored in the 1990s
Late 11th As many as 500 sculptures
Rani Ki Vav Excellent condition, despite the
century decorate the monument
9 …………… of 2001.
Steps on the 10 ……………
Looks more like a 11 …………… than
Surya Kund 1026 produce a geometric pattern
a well.
Carved shrines.
One of 21 baoris in the area
Raniji Ki Baori 1699 Intricately carved monument
commissioned by Queen Nathavatji
Old, deep and very dramatic
Steps take you down 11
Chand Baori 850 AD
storeys to the bottom Has 12 …………… which provide a
view to the steps.
Neemrana Ki Has two 13 ……………
1700 Used by public today
Baori levels.

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CAMBRIDGE 10 – TEST 2 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage below.

Questions 1-7

Reading Passage 1 has seven paragraphs, A-G. Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the
list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i-ix, in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i. The search for the reasons for an increase in population 1. Paragraph A

ii. Industrialisation and the fear of unemployment 2. Paragraph B
iii. The development of cities in Japan 4 The time and place of the 3. Paragraph C
Industrial Revolution 4. Paragraph D
iv. The time and place of the Industrial Revolution 5. Paragraph E
v. The cases of Holland, France and China 6. Paragraph F
vi. Changes in drinking habits in Britain 7. Paragraph G
vii. Two keys to Britain’s industrial revolution
viii. Conditions required for industrialisation
ix. Comparisons with Japan lead to the answer

Tea and the Industrial Revolution

A Cambridge professor says that a change in drinking habits was the reason for the Industrial
Revolution in Britain. Anjana Abuja reports.

A. Alan Macfarlane, professor of anthropological science at King’s College, Cambridge has, like other
historians, spent decades wrestling with the enigma of the Industrial Revolution. Why did this
particular Big Bang – the world-changing birth of industry - happen in Britain? And why did it strike at
the end of the 18th century?

B. Macfarlane compares the puzzle to a combination lock. ‘There are about 20 different factors and all
of them need to be present before the revolution can happen,’ he says. For industry to take off, there
needs to be the technology and power to drive factories, large urban populations to provide cheap
labour, easy transport to move goods around, an affluent middle-class willing to buy mass-produced
objects, a market-driven economy and a political system that allows this to happen. While this was the
case for England, other nations, such as Japan, the Netherlands and France also met some of these
criteria but were not industrialising. All these factors must have been necessary. But not sufficient to
cause the revolution, says Macfarlane. ‘After all, Holland had everything except coal while China also
had many of these factors. Most historians are convinced there are one or two missing factors that you
need to open the lock.’

C. The missing factors, he proposes, are to be found in almost even kitchen cupboard. Tea and beer,
two of the nation’s favourite drinks, fuelled the revolution. The antiseptic properties of tannin, the
active ingredient in tea, and of hops in beer – plus the fact that both are made with boiled water –
allowed urban communities to flourish at close quarters without succumbing to water-borne diseases
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such as dysentery. The theory sounds eccentric but once he starts to explain the detective work that
went into his deduction, the scepticism gives way to wary admiration. Macfarlanes case has been
strengthened by support from notable quarters – Roy Porter, the distinguished medical historian,
recently wrote a favourable appraisal of his research.

D. Macfarlane had wondered for a long time how the Industrial Revolution came about. Historians had
alighted on one interesting factor around the mid-18th century that required explanation. Between
about 1650 and 1740，the population in Britain was static. But then there was a burst in population
growth. Macfarlane says: ‘The infant mortality rate halved in the space of 20 years, and this happened
in both rural areas and cities, and across all classes. People suggested four possible causes. Was there a
sudden change in the viruses and bacteria around? Unlikely. Was there a revolution in medical
science? But this was a century before Lister’s revolution*. Was there a change in environmental
conditions? There were improvements in agriculture that wiped out malaria, but these were small
gains. Sanitation did not become widespread until the 19th century. The only option left is food. But
the height and weight statistics show a decline. So the food must have got worse. Efforts to explain this
sudden reduction in child deaths appeared to draw a blank .’

E. This population burst seemed to happen at just the right time to provide labour for the Industrial
Revolution. ‘When you start moving towards an industrial revolution, it is economically efficient to
have people living close together,’ says Macfarlane. ‘But then you get disease, particularly from
human waste.’ Some digging around in historical records revealed that there was a change in the
incidence of water-borne disease at that time, especially dysentery. Macfarlane deduced that whatever
the British were drinking must have been important in regulating disease. He says, ‘We drank beer. For
a long time, the English were protected by the strong antibacterial agent in hops, which were added to
help preserve the beer. But in the late 17th century a tax was introduced on malt, the basic ingredient of
beer. The poor turned to water and gin and in the 1720s the mortality rate began to rise again. Then it
suddenly dropped again. What caused this?’

F. Macfarlane looked to Japan, which was also developing large cities about the same time, and also
had no sanitation. Water-borne diseases had a much looser grip on the Japanese population than those
in Britain. Could it be the prevalence of tea in their culture? Macfarlane then noted that the history of
tea in Britain provided an extraordinary coincidence of dates. Tea was relatively expensive until
Britain started a direct clipper trade with China in the early 18th century. By the 1740s, about the time
that infant mortality was dipping, the drink was common. Macfarlane guessed that the fact that water
had to be boiled, together with the stomach-purifying properties of tea meant that the breast milk
provided by mothers was healthier than it had ever been. No other European nation sipped tea like the
British, which, by Macfarlanes logic, pushed these other countries out of contention for the revolution.

G. But, if tea is a factor in the combination lock, why didn’t Japan forge ahead in a tea-soaked
industrial revolution of its own? Macfarlane notes that even though 17th-century Japan had large cities,
high literacy rates, even a futures market, it had turned its back on the essence of any work-based
revolution by giving up labour-saving devices such as animals, afraid that they would put people out of
work. So, the nation that we now think of as one of the most technologically advanced entered the 19th
century having ‘abandoned the wheel’.

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Questions 8-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

8. China’s transport system was not suitable for industry in the 18th century.
9. Tea and beer both helped to prevent dysentery in Britain.
10. Roy Porter disagrees with Professor Macfarlane’s findings.
11. After 1740，there was a reduction in population in Britain.
12. People in Britain used to make beer at home.
13. The tax on malt indirectly caused a rise in the death rate.

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CAMBRIDGE 10 – TEST 3 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage below.

Questions 1-4

Reading Passage has five paragraphs, A-E. Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-E from the
list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i-vii, in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings Example Answer

Paragraph A viii
i. Economic and social significance of tourism
ii. The development of mass tourism
iii. Travel for the wealthy 1. Paragraph B
iv. Earning foreign exchange through tourism 2. Paragraph C
v. Difficulty in recognising the economic effects of tourism 3. Paragraph D
vi. The contribution of air travel to tourism 4. Paragraph E
vii. The world impact of tourism
viii. The history of travel

The Context, Meaning and Scope of Tourism

A. Travel has existed since the beginning of time, when primitive man set out, often traversing great
distances in search of game, which provided the food and clothing necessary for his survival.
Throughout the course of history, people have travelled for purposes of trade, religious conviction,
economic gain, war, migration and other equally compelling motivations. In the Roman era, wealthy
aristocrats and high government officials also travelled for pleasure. Seaside resorts located at Pompeii
and Herculaneum afforded citizens the opportunity to escape to their vacation villas in order to avoid
the summer heat of Rome. Travel, except during the Dark Ages, has continued to grow and, throughout
recorded history, has played a vital role in the development of civilisations and their economies.

B. Tourism in the mass form as we know it today is a distinctly twentieth-century phenomenon.

Historians suggest that the advent of mass tourism began in England during the industrial revolution
with the rise of the middle class and the availability of relatively inexpensive transportation. The
creation of the commercial airline industry following the Second World War and the subsequent
development of the jet aircraft in the 1950s signalled the rapid growth and expansion of international
travel. This growth led to the development of a major new industry: tourism. In turn, international
tourism became the concern of a number of world governments since it not only provided new
employment opportunities but also produced a means of earning foreign exchange.

C. Tourism today has grown significantly in both economic and social importance. In most
industrialised countries over the past few years the fastest growth has been seen in the area of services.
One of the largest segments of the service industry, although largely unrecognised as an entity in some
of these countries, is travel and tourism. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (1992),
Travel and tourism is the largest industry in the world on virtually any economic measure including
value-added capital investment, employment and tax contributions. In 1992’ the industry’s gross
output was estimated to be $3.5 trillion, over 12 per cent of all consumer spending. The travel and

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tourism industry is the world’s largest employer the almost 130 million jobs, or almost 7 per cent of all
employees. This industry is the world’s leading industrial contributor, producing over 6 per cent of the
world’s national product and accounting for capital investment in excess of $422 billion m direct
indirect and personal taxes each year. Thus, tourism has a profound impact both on the world economy
and, because of the educative effect of travel and the effects on employment, on society itself.

D. However, the major problems of the travel and tourism industry that have hidden, or obscured, its
economic impact are the diversity and fragmentation of the industry itself. The travel industry includes:
hotels, motels and other types of accommodation; restaurants and other food services; transportation
services and facilities; amusements, attractions and other leisure facilities; gift shops and a large
number of other enterprises. Since many of these businesses also serve local residents, the impact of
spending by visitors can easily be overlooked or underestimated. In addition, Meis (1992) points out
that the tourism industry involves concepts that have remained amorphous to both analysts and
decision makers. Moreover, in all nations this problem has made it difficult for the industry to develop
any type of reliable or credible tourism information base in order to estimate the contribution it makes
to regional, national and global economies. However, the nature of this very diversity makes travel and
tourism ideal vehicles for economic development in a wide variety of countries, regions or
communities.

E. Once the exclusive province of the wealthy, travel and tourism have become an institutionalised
way of life for most of the population. In fact, McIntosh and Goeldner (1990) suggest that tourism has
become the largest commodity in international trade for many nations and, for a significant number of
other countries, it ranks second or third. For example, tourism is the major source of income in
Bermuda, Greece, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and most Caribbean countries. In addition, Hawkins and
Ritchie, quoting from data published by the American Express Company, suggest that the travel and
tourism industry is the number one ranked employer in the Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, France, (the
former) West Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the
United States. However, because of problems of definition, which directly affect statistical
measurement, it is not possible with any degree of certainty to provide precise, valid or reliable data
about the extent of world-wide tourism participation or its economic impact. In many cases, similar
difficulties arise when attempts are made to measure domestic tourism.

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Questions 5-10
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

5. The largest employment figures in the world are found in the travel and tourism industry.
6. Tourism contributes over six per cent of the Australian gross national product.
7. Tourism has a social impact because it promotes recreation.
8. Two main features of the travel and tourism industry make its economic significance difficult to
ascertain.
9. Visitor spending is always greater than the spending of residents in tourist areas.
10. It is easy to show statistically how tourism affects individual economies.

Questions 11-13
Complete the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
11. In Greece, tourism the most important ....................... .
12. The travel and tourism industry in Jamaica is the major ....................... .
13. The problems associated with measuring international tourism are often reflected in the
measurement of ....................... .

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CAMBRIDGE 10 – TEST 4 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Passage below.

The megafires of California

Drought, housing expansion, and oversupply of tinder make for bigger, hotter fires in the western
United States

Wildfires are becoming an increasing menace in the western United States, with Southern California
being the hardest hit area. There's a reason fire squads battling more frequent blazes in Southern
California are having such difficulty containing the flames, despite better preparedness than ever and
decades of experience fighting fires fanned by the ‘Santa Ana Winds’. The wildfires themselves,
experts say, are generally hotter, faster, and spread more erratically than in the past.

Megafires, also called ‘siege fires’, are the increasingly frequent blazes that burn 500,000 acres or
more - 10 times the size of the average forest fire of 20 years ago. Some recent wildfires are among the
biggest ever in California in terms of acreage burned, according to state figures and news reports.

One explanation for the trend to more superhot fires is that the region, which usually has dry summers,
has had significantly below normal precipitation in many recent years. Another reason, experts say, is
related to the century- long policy of the US Forest Service to stop wildfires as quickly as possible. The
unintentional consequence has been to halt the natural eradication of underbrush, now the primary fuel
for megafires.

Three other factors contribute to the trend, they add. First is climate change, marked by a 1-degree
Fahrenheit rise in average yearly temperature across the western states. Second is fire seasons that on
average are 78 days longer than they were 20 years ago. Third is increased construction of homes in
wooded areas.

‘We are increasingly building our homes in fire-prone ecosystems,’ says Dominik Kulakowski, adjunct
professor of biology at Clark University Graduate School of Geography in Worcester, Massachusetts.
‘Doing that in many of the forests of the western US is like building homes on the side of an active
volcano.'

In California, where population growth has averaged more than 600,000 a year for at least a decade,
more residential housing is being built. ‘ What once was open space is now residential homes
providing fuel to make fires burn with greater intensity,’ says Terry McHale of the California
Department of Forestry firefighters' union. ‘With so much dryness, so many communities to catch fire,
so many fronts to fight, it becomes an almost incredible job.'

That said, many experts give California high marks for making progress on preparedness in recent
years, after some of the largest fires in state history scorched thousands of acres, burned thousands of
homes, and killed numerous people. Stung in the past by criticism of bungling that allowed fires to
spread when they might have been contained, personnel are meeting the peculiar challenges of
neighborhood - and canyon- hopping fires better than previously, observers say.

State promises to provide more up-to-date engines, planes, and helicopters to fight fires have been
fulfilled. Firefighters’ unions that in the past complained of dilapidated equipment, old fire engines,
and insufficient blueprints for fire safety are now praising the state's commitment, noting that funding
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for firefighting has increased, despite huge cuts in many other programs. ‘We are pleased that the
current state administration has been very proactive in its support of us, and [has] come through with
budgetary support of the infrastructure needs we have long sought,' says Mr. McHale of the
firefighters’ union.

Besides providing money to upgrade the fire engines that must traverse the mammoth state and wind
along serpentine canyon roads, the state has invested in better command-and-control facilities as well
as in the strategies to run them. ‘In the fire sieges of earlier years, we found that other jurisdictions and
states were willing to offer mutual-aid help, but we were not able to communicate adequately with
them,’ says Kim Zagaris, chief of the state's Office of Emergency Services Fire and Rescue Branch.

After a commission examined and revamped communications procedures, the statewide response ‘has
become far more professional and responsive,’ he says. There is a sense among both government
officials and residents that the speed, dedication, and coordination of firefighters from several states
and jurisdictions are resulting in greater efficiency than in past ‘siege fire’ situations.

In recent years, the Southern California region has improved building codes, evacuation procedures,
and procurement of new technology. ‘I am extraordinarily impressed by the improvements we have
witnessed,’ says Randy Jacobs, a Southern California- based lawyer who has had to evacuate both his
home and business to escape wildfires.‘ Notwithstanding all the damage that will continue to be caused
by wildfires, we will no longer suffer the loss of life endured in the past because of the fire prevention
and firefighting measures that have been put in place, ’ he says.

Questions 1-6
Complete the notes below. Choose ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each
answer.

Wildfires

• Characteristics of wildfires and wildfire conditions today compared to the past:

- occurrence: more frequent

- temperature: hotter
- speed: faster
- movement: 1..................................... more unpredictably
- size of fires: 2..................................... greater on average than two decades ago

• Reasons wildfires cause more damage today compared to the past:

- rainfall: 3..................................... average

- more brush to act as 4.....................................
- increase in yearly temperature
- extended fire 5.....................................
- more building of 6..................................... in vulnerable places

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Questions 7-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 7-13 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

7. The amount of open space in California has diminished over the last ten years.
8. Many experts believe California has made little progress in readying itself to fight fires.
9. Personnel in the past have been criticised for mishandling fire containment.
10. California has replaced a range of firefighting tools.
11. More firefighters have been hired to improve fire-fighting capacity.
12. Citizens and government groups disapprove of the efforts of different states and agencies working
together.
13. Randy Jacobs believes that loss of life from fires will continue at the same levels, despite changes
made.

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CAMBRIDGE 11 – TEST 1 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage below.

Crop-growing skyscrapers

By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the Earth’s population will live in urban centres. Applying the most
conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about
three billion people by then. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% larger than Brazil) will
be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming methods continue as they are
practised today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops
is in use. Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management practices. What can
be done to ensure enough food for the world’s population to live on?

The concept of indoor farming is not new, since hothouse production of tomatoes and other produce
has been in vogue for some time. What is new is the urgent need to scale up this technology to
accommodate another three billion people. Many believe an entirely new approach to indoor farming is
required, employing cutting-edge technologies. One such proposal is for the “Vertical Farm”. The
concept is of multi-storey buildings in which food crops are grown in environmentally controlled
conditions. Situated in the heart of urban centres, they would drastically reduce the amount of
transportation required to bring food to consumers. Vertical farms would need to be efficient, cheap to
construct and safe to operate. If successfully implemented, proponents claim, vertical farms offer the
promise of urban renewal, sustainable production of a safe and varied food supply (through year-round
production of all crops), and the eventual repair of ecosystems that have been sacrificed for horizontal
farming.

It took humans 10,000 years to learn how to grow most of the crops we now take for granted. Along
the way, we despoiled most of the land we worked, often turning verdant, natural ecozones into semi-
arid deserts. Within that same time frame, we evolved into an urban species, in which 60% of the
human population now lives vertically in cities. This means that, for the majority, we humans have
shelter from the elements, yet we subject our food-bearing plants to the rigours of the great outdoors
and can do no more than hope for a good weather year. However, more often than not now, due to a
rapidly changing climate, that is not what happens. Massive floods, long droughts, hurricanes and
severe monsoons take their toll each year, destroying millions of tons of valuable crops.

The supporters of vertical farming claim many potential advantages for the system. For instance, crops
would be produced all year round, as they would be kept in artificially controlled, optimum growing
conditions. There would be no weather-related crop failures due to droughts, floods or pests. All the
food could be grown organically, eliminating the need for herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers. The
system would greatly reduce the incidence of many infectious diseases that are acquired at the
agricultural interface. Although the system would consume energy, it would return energy to the grid
via methane generation from composting non-¬edible parts of plants. It would also dramatically reduce
fossil fuel use, by cutting out the need for tractors, ploughs and shipping.

A major drawback of vertical farming, however, is that the plants would require artificial light.
Without it, those plants nearest the windows would be exposed to more sunlight and grow more
quickly, reducing the efficiency of the system. Single-storey greenhouses have the benefit of natural
overhead light: even so, many still need artificial lighting. A multi-storey facility with no natural
overhead light would require far more. Generating enough light could be prohibitively expensive,

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unless cheap, renewable energy is available, and this appears to be rather a future aspiration than a
likelihood for the near future.

One variation on vertical farming that has been developed is to grow plants in stacked trays that move
on rails. Moving the trays allows the plants to get enough sunlight. This system is already in operation,
and works well within a single-storey greenhouse with light reaching it from above: it is not certain,
however, that it can be made to work without that overhead natural light.

Vertical farming is an attempt to address the undoubted problems that we face in producing enough
food for a growing population. At the moment, though, more needs to be done to reduce the
detrimental impact it would have on the environment, particularly as regards the use of energy. While
it is possible that much of our food will be grown in skyscrapers in future, most experts currently
believe it is far more likely that we will simply use the space available on urban rooftops.

Questions 1-7
Complete the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Indoor farming

1. Some food plants, including ……………………….. are already grown indoors.

2. Vertical farms would be located in ……………………….., meaning that there would be less need to
take them long distances to customers.
3. Vertical farms could use methane from plants and animals to produce ………………………...
4. The consumption of ……………………….. would be cut because agricultural vehicles would be
unnecessary.
5. The fact that vertical farms would need ……………………….. light is a disadvantage.
6. One form of vertical farming involves planting in ……………………….. which are not fixed.
7. The most probable development is that food will be grown on ……………………….. in towns and
cities.

Questions 8-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

8. Methods for predicting the Earth’s population have recently changed.

9. Human beings are responsible for some of the destruction to food-producing land.
10. The crops produced in vertical farms will depend on the season.
11. Some damage to food crops is caused by climate change.
12. Fertilisers will be needed for certain crops in vertical farms.
13. Vertical farming will make plants less likely to be affected by infectious diseases.

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CAMBRIDGE 11 – TEST 2 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage below.

Raising the Mary Rose

How a sixteenth-century warship was recovered from the seabed

On 19 July 1545, English and French fleets were engaged in a sea battle off the coast of southern
England in the area of water called the Solent, between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. Among the
English vessels was a warship by the name of Mary Rose. Built in Portsmouth some 35 years earlier,
she had had a long and successful fighting career, and was a favourite of King Henry VIII. Accounts of
what happened to the ship vary: while witnesses agree that she was not hit by the French, some
maintain that she was outdated, overladen and sailing too low in the water, others that she was
mishandled by undisciplined crew. What is undisputed, however, is that the Mary Rose sank into the
Solent that day, taking at least 500 men with her. After the battle, attempts were made to recover the
ship, but these failed.

The Mary Rose came to rest on the seabed, lying on her starboard (right) side at an angle of
approximately 60 degrees. The hull (the body of the ship) acted as a trap for the sand and mud carried
by Solent currents. As a result, the starboard side filled rapidly, leaving the exposed port (left) side to
be eroded by marine organisms and mechanical degradation. Because of the way the ship sank, nearly
all of the starboard half survived intact. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the entire site
became covered with a layer of hard grey clay, which minimised further erosion.

Then, on 16 June 1836, some fishermen in the Solent found that their equipment was caught on an
underwater obstruction, which turned out to be the Mary Rose. Diver John Deane happened to be
exploring another sunken ship nearby, and the fishermen approached him, asking him to free their
gear. Deane dived down, and found the equipment caught on a timber protruding slightly from the
seabed. Exploring further, he uncovered several other timbers and a bronze gun. Deane continued
diving on the site intermittently until 1840, recovering several more guns, two bows, various timbers,
part of a pump and various other small finds.

The Mary Rose then faded into obscurity for another hundred years. But in 1965, military historian and
amateur diver Alexander McKee, in conjunction with the British Sub-Aqua Club, initiated a project
called ‘Solent Ships’. While on paper this was a plan to examine a number of known wrecks in the
Solent, what McKee really hoped for was to find the Mary Rose. Ordinary search techniques proved
unsatisfactory, so McKee entered into collaboration with Harold E. Edgerton, professor of electrical
engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1967, Edgerton’s side-scan sonar systems
revealed a large, unusually shaped object, which McKee believed was the Mary Rose.

Further excavations revealed stray pieces of timber and an iron gun. But the climax to the operation
came when, on 5 May 1971, part of the ship’s frame was uncovered. McKee and his team now knew
for certain that they had found the wreck, but were as yet unaware that it also housed a treasure trove
of beautifully preserved artefacts. Interest ^ in the project grew, and in 1979, The Mary Rose Trust was
formed, with Prince Charles as its President and Dr Margaret Rule its Archaeological Director. The
decision whether or not to salvage the wreck was not an easy one, although an excavation in 1978 had
shown that it might be possible to raise the hull. While the original aim was to raise the hull if at all
feasible, the operation was not given the go-ahead until January 1982, when all the necessary
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information was available.

An important factor in trying to salvage the Mary Rose was that the remaining hull was an open shell.
This led to an important decision being taken: namely to carry out the lifting operation in three very
distinct stages. The hull was attached to a lifting frame via a network of bolts and lifting wires. The
problem of the hull being sucked back downwards into the mud was overcome by using 12 hydraulic
jacks. These raised it a few centimetres over a period of several days, as the lifting frame rose slowly
up its four legs. It was only when the hull was hanging freely from the lifting frame, clear of the seabed
and the suction effect of the surrounding mud, that the salvage operation progressed to the second
stage. In this stage, the lifting frame was fixed to a hook attached to a crane, and the hull was lifted
completely clear of the seabed and transferred underwater into the lifting cradle. This required precise
positioning to locate the legs into the stabbing guides’ of the lifting cradle. The lifting cradle was
designed to fit the hull using archaeological survey drawings, and was fitted with air bags to provide
additional cushioning for the hull’s delicate timber framework. The third and final stage was to lift the
entire structure into the air, by which time the hull was also supported from below. Finally, on 11
October 1982, millions of people around the world held their breath as the timber skeleton of the Mary
Rose was lifted clear of the water, ready to be returned home to Portsmouth.

Questions 1-4
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1. There is some doubt about what caused the Mary Rose to sink
2. The Mary Rose was the only ship to sink in the battle of 19 July 1545
3. Most of one side of the Mary Rose lay undamaged under the sea.
4. Alexander McKee Knew that the wreck would contain many valuable historical objects.

Questions 5-8
Look at the following statement (Questions 5-8) and the list of dates below. Match each statement with
the correct date, A-G

5. A search for the Mary Rose was launched.

6. One person’s exploration of the Mary Rose site stopped
7. It was agreed that the hull of the Mary Rose should be raised.
8. The site of the Mary Rose was found by chance.

List of Dates
A. 1836
B. 1840
C. 1965
D. 1967
E. 1971
F. 1979
G. 1982

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Questions 9-13
Label the diagram below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Raising the hull of the Mary Rose: Stages one and two

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CAMBRIDGE 11 – TEST 3 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage below.

THE STORY OF SILK

The history of the world’s most luxurious fabric, from ancient China to the present day

Silk is a fine, smooth material produced from the cocoons - soft protective shells - that are made by
mulberry silkworms (insect larvae). Legend has it that it was Lei Tzu, wife of the Yellow Emperor,
ruler of China in about 3000 BC, who discovered silkworms. One account of the story goes that as she
was taking a walk in her husband’s gardens, she discovered that silkworms were responsible for the
destruction of several mulberry trees. She collected a number of cocoons and sat down to have a rest. It
just so happened that while she was sipping some tea, one of the cocoons that she had collected landed
in the hot tea and started to unravel into a fine thread. Lei Tzu found that she could wind this thread
around her fingers. Subsequently, she persuaded her husband to allow her to rear silkworms on a grove
of mulberry trees. She also devised a special reel to draw the fibres from the cocoon into a single
thread so that they would be strong enough to be woven into fabric. While it is unknown just how
much of this is true, it is certainly known that silk cultivation has existed in China for several
millennia.

Originally, silkworm farming was solely restricted to women, and it was they who were responsible for
the growing, harvesting and weaving. Silk quickly grew into a symbol of status, and originally, only
royalty were entitled to have clothes made of silk. The rules were gradually relaxed over the years until
finally during the Qing Dynasty (1644—1911 AD), even peasants, the lowest caste, were also entitled
to wear silk. Sometime during the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), silk was so prized that it was also
used as a unit of currency. Government officials were paid their salary in silk, and farmers paid their
taxes in grain and silk. Silk was also used as diplomatic gifts by the emperor. Fishing lines, bowstrings,
musical instruments and paper were all made using silk. The earliest indication of silk paper being used
was discovered in the tomb of a noble who is estimated to have died around 168 AD.

Demand for this exotic fabric eventually created the lucrative trade route now known as the Silk Road,
taking silk westward and bringing gold, silver and wool to the East. It was named the Silk Road after
its most precious commodity, which was considered to be worth more than gold. The Silk Road
stretched over 6,000 kilometres from Eastern China to the Mediterranean Sea, following the Great
Wall of China, climbing the Pamir mountain range, crossing modern-day Afghanistan and going on to
the Middle East, with a major trading market in Damascus. From there, the merchandise was shipped
across the Mediterranean Sea. Few merchants travelled the entire route; goods were handled mostly by
a series of middlemen.

With the mulberry silkworm being native to China, the country was the world’s sole producer of silk
for many hundreds of years. The secret of silk-making eventually reached the rest of the world via the
Byzantine Empire, which ruled over the Mediterranean region of southern Europe, North Africa and
the Middle East during the period 330—1453 AD. According to another legend, monks working for
the Byzantine emperor Justinian smuggle silkworm eggs to Constantinople (Istanbul in modern-day
Turkey) in 550 AD, concealed inside hollow bamboo walking canes. The Byzantines were as secretive
as the Chinese, however, and for many centuries the weaving and trading of silk fabric was a strict
imperial monopoly. Then in the seventh century, the Arabs conquered Persia, capturing their
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magnificent silks in the process.

Silk production thus spread through Africa, Sicily and Spain as the Arabs swept, through these lands.
Andalusia in southern Spain was Europe’s main silk-producing centre in the tenth century. By the
thirteenth century, however, Italy had become Europe’s leader in silk production and export. Venetian
merchants traded extensively in silk and encouraged silk growers to settle in Italy. Even now, silk
processed in the province of Como in northern Italy enjoys an esteemed reputation.

The nineteenth century and industrialisation saw the downfall of the European silk industry. Cheaper
Japanese silk, trade in which was greatly facilitated by the opening of the Suez Canal, was one of the
many factors driving the trend. Then in the twentieth century, new manmade fibres, such as nylon,
started to be used in what had traditionally been silk products, such as stockings and parachutes. The
two world wars, which interrupted the supply of raw material from Japan, also stifled the European silk
industry. After the Second World War, Japan’s silk production was restored, with improved production
and quality of raw silk. Japan was to remain the world’s biggest producer of raw silk, and practically
the only major exporter of raw silk, until the 1970s. However, in more recent decades, China has
gradually recaptured its position as the world’s biggest producer and exporter of raw silk and silk yarn.
Today, around 125,000 metric tons of silk are produced in the world, and almost two thirds of that
production takes place in China.

Questions 1-9
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Early silk production in China

• Around 3000 BC, according to legend:

- silkworm cocoon fell into emperor’s wife’s 1 ....................
- emperor’s wife invented a 2 .................... to pull out silk fibres

• Only 3 .................... were allowed to produce silk

• Only 4 .................... were allowed to wear silk

• Silk used as a form of 5 ....................

- e.g. farmers’ taxes consisted partly of silk

• Silk used for many purposes

- e.g. evidence found of 6 .................... made from silk around 168 AD

Silk reaches rest of world

• Merchants use Silk Road to take silk westward and bring back 7 .................... and precious metals
• 550 AD: 8 .................... hide silkworm eggs in canes and take them to Constantinople
• Silk production spreads across Middle East and Europe
• 20th century: 9 .................... and other manmade fibres cause decline in silk

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Questions 10-13
Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage? In boxes 10-13 on your
answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

10. Gold was the most valuable material transported along the Silk Road.
11. Most tradesmen only went along certain sections of the Silk Road.
12. The Byzantines spread the practice of silk production across the West.
13. Silk yarn makes up the majority of silk currently exported from China.

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CAMBRIDGE 11 – TEST 4 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage below.

Research using twins

To biomedical researchers all over the world, twins offer a precious opportunity to untangle the
influence of genes and the environment - of nature and nurture. Because identical twins come from a
single fertilized egg that splits into two, they share virtually the same genetic code. Any differences
between them -one twin having younger looking skin, for example - must be due to environmental
factors such as less time spent in the sun.

Alternatively, by comparing the experiences of identical twins with those of fraternal twins, who come
from separate eggs and share on average half their DNA, researchers can quantify the extent to which
our genes affect our lives. If identical twins are more similar to each other with respect to an ailment
than fraternal twins are, then vulnerability to the disease must be rooted at least in part in heredity.

These two lines of research - studying the differences between identical twins to pinpoint the influence
of environment, and comparing identical twins with fraternal ones to measure the role of inheritance -
have been crucial to understanding the interplay of nature and nurture in determining our personalities,
behavior, and vulnerability to disease.

The idea of using twins to measure the influence of heredity dates back to 1875, when the English
scientist Francis Galton first suggested the approach (and coined the phrase 'nature and nurture'). But
twin studies took a surprising twist in the 1980s, with the arrival of studies into identical twins who had
been separated at birth and reunited as adults. Over two decades 137 sets of twins eventually visited
Thomas Bouchard's lab in what became known as the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart.
Numerous tests were carried out on the twins, and they were each asked more than 15,000 questions.

Bouchard and his colleagues used this mountain of data to identify how far twins were affected by their
genetic makeup. The key to their approach was a statistical concept called heritability. in broad terms,
the heritability of a trait measures the extent to which differences among members of a population can
be explained by differences in their genetics. And wherever Bouchard and other scientists looked, it
seemed, they found the invisible hand of genetic influence helping to shape our lives.

Lately, however, twin studies have helped lead scientists to a radical new conclusion: that nature and
nurture are not the only elemental forces at work. According to a recent field called epigenetics, there
is a third factor also in play, one that in some cases serves as a bridge between the environment and our
genes, and in others operates on its own to shape who we are.

Epigenetic processes are chemical reactions tied to neither nature nor nurture but representing what
researchers have called a 'third component'. These reactions influence how our genetic code is
expressed: how each gene is strengthened or weakened, even turned on or off, to build our bones,
brains and all the other parts of our bodies.

If you think of our DNA as an immense piano keyboard and our genes as the keys - each key
symbolizing a segment of DNA responsible for a particular note, or trait, and all the keys combining to
make us who we are - then epigenetic processes determine when and how each key can be struck,
changing the tune being played.

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One way the study of epigenetics is revolutionizing our understanding of biology is by revealing a
mechanism by which the environment directly impacts on genes. Studies of animals, for example, have
shown that when a rat experiences stress during pregnancy, it can cause epigenetic changes in a fetus
that lead to behavioral problems as the rodent grows up. Other epigenetic processes appear to occur
randomly, while others are normal, such as those that guide embryonic cells as they become heart,
brain, or liver cells, for example.

Geneticist Danielle Reed has worked with many twins over the years and thought deeply about what
twin studies have taught us. 'It's very clear when you look at twins that much of what they share is
hardwired,' she says. 'Many things about them are absolutely the same and unalterable. But it's also
clear, when you get to know them, that other things about them are different. Epigenetics is the origin
of a lot of those differences, in my view.'

Reed credits Thomas Bouchard's work for today's surge in twin studies. 'He was the trailblazer,' she
says. 'We forget that 50 years ago things like heart disease were thought to be caused entirely by
lifestyle. Schizophrenia was thought to be due to poor mothering. Twin studies have allowed us to be
more reflective about what people are actually born with and what's caused by experience.'

Having said that, Reed adds, the latest work in epigenetics promises to take our understanding even
further. 'What I like to say is that nature writes some things in pencil and some things in pen,' she says.
'Things written in pen you can't change. That's DNA. But things written in pencil you can. That's
epigenetics. Now that we're actually able to look at the DNA and see where the pencil writings are, it's
sort of a whole new world.'

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Questions 1-4
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1. There may be genetic causes for the differences in how young the skin of identical twins looks.
2. Twins are at greater risk of developing certain illnesses than non-twins.
3. Bouchard advertised in newspapers for twins who had been separated at birth.
4. Epigenetic processes are different from both genetic and environmental processes.

Questions 5-9
Look at the following statements (Questions 5-9) and the list of researchers below.
Match each statement with the correct researcher, A, B or C.
Write the correct letter, A, B or C, in boxes 5-9 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

List of Researchers
A. Francis Galton
B. Thomas Bouchard
C. Danielie Reed

5. invented a term used to distinguish two factors affecting human characteristics

6. expressed the view that the study of epigenetics will increase our knowledge
7. developed a mathematical method of measuring genetic influences
8. pioneered research into genetics using twins
9. carried out research into twins who had lived apart

Questions 10-13
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-F, below.
Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.

Epigenetic processes

In epigenetic processes, 10 .................... influence the activity of our genes, for example in creating our
internal 11 .................... . The study of epigenetic processes is uncovering a way in which our genes
can be affected by our 12 .................... . One example is that if a pregnant rat suffers stress, the new-
born rat may later show problems in its 13 .................... .

A. nurture B. organs C. code

D. chemicals E. environment F. behaviour

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CAMBRIDGE 12 – TEST 1 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1- 13, which are based on Passage below.

Cork

Cork - the thick bark of the cork oak tree (Quercus suber) - is a remarkable material. It is tough, elastic,
buoyant, and fire-resistant, and suitable for a wide range of purposes. It has also been used for
millennia: the ancient Egyptians sealed then sarcophagi (stone coffins) with cork, while the ancient
Greeks and Romans used it for anything from beehives to sandals.

And the cork oak itself is an extraordinary tree. Its bark grows up to 20 cm in thickness, insulating the
tree like a coat wrapped around the trunk and branches and keeping the inside at a constant 20°C all
year round. Developed most probably as a defence against forest fires, the bark of the cork oak has a
particular cellular structure - with about 40 million cells per cubic centimetre - that technology has
never succeeded in replicating. The cells are filled with air, which is why cork is so buoyant. It also has
an elasticity that means you can squash it and watch it spring back to its original size and shape when
you release the pressure.

Cork oaks grow in a number of Mediterranean countries, including Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece and
Morocco. They flourish in warm, sunny climates where there is a minimum of 400 millimetres of rain
per year, and no more than 800 millimetres. Like grape vines, the trees thrive in poor soil, putting
down deep root in search of moisture and nutrients. Southern Portugal’s Alentejo region meets all of
these requirements, which explains why, by the early 20th century, this region had become the world’s
largest producer of cork, and why today it accounts for roughly half of all cork production around the
world.

Most cork forests are family-owned. Many of these family businesses, and indeed many of the trees
themselves, are around 200 years old. Cork production is, above all, an exercise in patience. From the
planting of a cork sapling to the first harvest takes 25 years, and a gap of approximately a decade must
separate harvests from an individual tree. And for top-quality cork, it’s necessary to wait a further 15
or 20 years. You even have to wait for the right kind of summer’s day to harvest cork. If the bark is
stripped on a day when it’s too cold - or when the air is damp - the tree will be damaged.

Cork harvesting is a very specialised profession. No mechanical means of stripping cork bark has been
invented, so the job is done by teams of highly skilled workers. First, they make vertical cuts down the
bark using small sharp axes, then lever it away in pieces as large as they can manage. The most skilful
cork- strippers prise away a semi-circular husk that runs the length of the trunk from just above ground
level to the first branches. It is then dried on the ground for about four months, before being taken to
factories, where it is boiled to kill any insects that might remain in the cork. Over 60% of cork then
goes on to be made into traditional bottle stoppers, with most of the remainder being used in the
construction trade, Corkboard and cork tiles are ideal for thermal and acoustic insulation, while
granules of cork are used in the manufacture of concrete.

Recent years have seen the end of the virtual monopoly of cork as the material for bottle stoppers, due
to concerns about the effect it may have on the contents of the bottle. This is caused by a chemical
compound called 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA), which forms through the interaction of plant phenols,
chlorine and mould. The tiniest concentrations - as little as three or four parts to a trillion - can spoil
the taste of the product contained in the bottle. The result has been a gradual yet steady move first
towards plastic stoppers and, more recently, to aluminium screw caps. These substitutes are cheaper to
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manufacture and, in the case of screw caps, more convenient for the user.

The classic cork stopper does have several advantages, however. Firstly, its traditional image is more
in keeping with that of the type of high quality goods with which it has long been associated. Secondly
- and very importantly - cork is a sustainable product that can be recycled without difficulty. Moreover,
cork forests are a resource which supports local biodiversity, and prevents desertification in the regions
where they are planted. So, given the current concerns about environmental issues, the future of this
ancient material once again looks promising.

Questions 1-5
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 221?

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1. The cork oak has the thickest bark of any living tree.
2. Scientists have developed a synthetic cork with the same cellular structure as natural cork.
3. Individual cork oak trees must be left for 25 years between the first and second harvest.
4. Cork bark should be stripped in dry atmospheric conditions.
5. The only way to remove the bark from cork oak trees is by hand.

Questions 6-13
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 6-13 on your answer sheet.

Comparison of aluminium screw caps and cork bottle stoppers

Advantages of aluminium screw caps

• do not affect the 6.......................... of the bottle contents

• are 7.......................... to produce
• are 8.......................... to use

Advantages of cork bottle stoppers

• suit the 9.......................... of quality products

• made from a 10.......................... material
• easily 11..........................
• cork forests aid 12..........................
• cork forests stop 13.......................... happening

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CAMBRIDGE 12 – TEST 2 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage below.

The risks agriculture faces in developing countries

Synthesis of an online debate

A. Two things distinguish food production from all other productive activities: first, every single
person needs food each day and has a right to it; and second, it is hugely dependent on nature. These
two unique aspects, one political, the other natural, make food production highly vulnerable and
different from any other business. At the same time, cultural values are highly entrenched in food and
agricultural systems worldwide.

B. Farmers everywhere face major risks; including extreme weather, long-term climate change, and
price volatility in input and product markets. However, smallholder farmers in developing countries
must in addition deal with adverse environments, both natural, in terms of soil quality, rainfall, etc. and
human, in terms of infrastructure, financial systems, markets, knowledge and technology. Counter-
intuitively, hunger is prevalent among many smallholder farmers in the developing world.

C. Participants in the online debate argued that our biggest challenge is to address the underlying
causes of the agricultural system’s inability to ensure sufficient food for all, and they identified as
drivers of this problem our dependency on fossil fuels and unsupportive government policies.

D. On the question of mitigating the risks farmers face, most essayists called for greater state
intervention. In his essay, Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of the International Fund for Agricultural
Development, argued that governments can significantly reduce risks for farmers by providing basic
services like roads to get produce more efficiently to markets, or water and food storage facilities to
reduce losses. Sophia Murphy, senior advisor to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy,
suggested that the procurement and holding of stocks by governments can also help mitigate wild
swings in food prices by alleviating uncertainties about market supply.

E. Shenggen Fan, Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute, held up social
safety nets and public welfare programmes in Ethiopia, Brazil and Mexico as valuable ways to address
poverty among farming families and reduce their vulnerability to agriculture shocks. However, some
commentators responded that cash transfers to poor families do not necessarily translate into increased
food security, as these programmes do not always strengthen food production or raise incomes.
Regarding state subsidies for agriculture, Rokeya Kabir, Executive Director of Bangladesh Nari
Progati Sangha, commented in her essay that these ‘have not compensated for the stranglehold
exercised by private traders. In fact, studies show that sixty percent of beneficiaries of subsidies are not
poor, but rich landowners and non-farmer traders.

F. Nwanze, Murphy and Fan argued that private risk management tools, like private insurance,
commodity futures markets, and rural finance can help small-scale producers mitigate risk and allow
for investment in improvements. Kabir warned that financial support schemes often encourage the
adoption of high-input agricultural practices, which in the medium term may raise production costs
beyond the value of their harvests. Murphy noted that when futures markets become excessively
financialised they can contribute to short-term price volatility, which increases farmers’ food
insecurity. Many participants and commentators emphasised that greater transparency in markets is
needed to mitigate the impact of volatility, and make evident whether adequate stocks and supplies are
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available. Others contended that agribusiness companies should be held responsible for paying for
negative side effects.

G. Many essayists mentioned climate change and its consequences for small-scale agriculture. Fan
explained that in addition to reducing crop yields, climate change increases the magnitude and the
frequency of extreme weather events, which increase smallholder vulnerability. The growing
unpredictability of weather patterns increases farmers’ difficulty in managing weather-related risks.
According to this author, one solution would be to develop crop varieties that are more resilient to new
climate trends and extreme weather patterns. Accordingly, Pat Mooney, co-founder and executive
director of the ETC Group, suggested that ‘if we are to survive climate change, we must adopt policies
that let peasants diversify the plant and animal species and varieties/breeds that make up our menus.

H. Some participating authors and commentators argued in favour of community- based and
autonomous risk management strategies through collective action groups, co-operatives or producers’
groups. Such groups enhance market opportunities for small-scale producers, reduce marketing costs
and synchronise buying and selling with seasonal price conditions. According to Murphy, ‘collective
action offers an important way for farmers to strengthen their political and economic bargaining power,
and to reduce their business risks. One commentator, Giel Ton, warned that collective action does not
come as a free good. It takes time, effort and money to organise, build trust and to experiment. Others,
like Marcel Vernooij and Marcel Beukeboom, suggested that in order to ‘apply what we already
know’, all stakeholders, including business, government, scientists and civil society, must work
together, starting at the beginning of the value chain.

I. Some participants explained that market price volatility is often worsened by the presence of
intermediary purchasers who, taking advantage of farmers’ vulnerability, dictate prices. One
commentator suggested farmers can gain greater control over prices and minimise price volatility by
selling directly to consumers. Similarly, Sonali Bisht, founder and advisor to the Institute of Himalayan
Environmental Research and Education (INHERE), India, wrote that copipunity-supported agriculture,
where consumers invest in local farmers by subscription and guarantee producers a fair price, is a risk-
sharing model worth more attention. Direct food distribution systems not only encourage small-scale
agriculture but also give consumers more control over the food they consume, she wrote.

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Questions 1-3
Reading Passage has nine paragraphs, A-l.
Which paragraph contains the following information?

1. a reference to characteristics that only apply to food production.

2. a reference to challenges faced only by farmers in certain parts of the world.
3. a reference to difficulties in bringing about co-operation between farmers.

Questions 4-9
Look at the following statements (Questions 4-9) and the list of people below.
Match each statement with the correct person, A-G.
NB You may use any letter more than once.

List of People 4. Financial assistance from the government does not always go to the
farmers who most need it.
A. Kanayo F. Nwanze 5. Farmers can benefit from collaborating as a group.
B. Sophia Murphy 6. Financial assistance from the government can improve the standard of
C. Shenggen Fan living of farmers.
D. Rokeya Kabir 7. Farmers may be helped if there is financial input by the same
E. Pat Mooney individuals who buy
F. Giel Ton 8. Governments can help to reduce variation in pages.
G. Sonali Bisht 9. Improvements to infrastructure can have a major impact on risk for
farmers. from them.

Questions 10-11
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Write the correct letters in boxes 10-11 on your answer sheet.
Which TWO problems are mentioned which affect farmers with small farms in developing countries?

A. lack of demand for locally produced food

B. lack of irrigation programmes
C. being unable to get insurance
D. the effects of changing weather patterns
E. having to sell their goods to intermediary buyers

Questions 12-13
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Which TWO actions are recommended for improving conditions for farmers?

A. reducing the size of food stocks.

B. attempting to ensure that prices rise at certain times of the year.
C. organising co-operation between a wide range of interested parties.
D. encouraging consumers to take a financial stake in farming.
E. making customers aware of the reasons for changing food prices.

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CAMBRIDGE 12 – TEST 3 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage below.

Flying Tortoises

An airborne reintroduction programme has helped conservationists take significant steps to protect
the endangered Galapagos tortoise.

A. Forests of spiny cacti cover much of the uneven lava plains that separate the interior of the
Galapagos island of Isabela from the Pacific Ocean. With its five distinct volcanoes, the island
resembles a lunar landscape. Only the thick vegetation at the skirt of the often cloud-covered peak of
Sierra Negra offers respite from the barren terrain below. This inhospitable environment is home to the
giant Galapagos tortoise. Some time after the Galapagos’s birth, around five million years ago, the
islands were colonised by one or more tortoises from mainland South America. As these ancestral
tortoises settled on the individual islands, the different populations adapted to their unique
environments, giving rise to at least 14 different subspecies. Island life agreed with them. In the
absence of significant predators, they grew to become the largest and longest-living tortoises on the
planet, weighing more than 400 kilograms, occasionally exceeding 1,8 metres in length and living for
more than a century.

B. Before human arrival, the archipelago's tortoises numbered in the hundreds of thousands. From the
17th century onwards, pirates took a few on board for food, but the arrival of whaling ships in the
1790s saw this exploitation grow exponentially. Relatively immobile and capable of surviving for
months without food or water, the tortoises were taken on board these ships to act as food supplies
during long ocean passages. Sometimes, their bodies were processed into high- grade oil. In total, an
estimated 200,000 animals were taken from the archipelago before the 20th century. This historical
exploitation was then exacerbated when settlers came to the islands. They hunted the tortoises and
destroyed their habitat to clear land for agriculture. They also introduced alien species - ranging from
cattle, pigs, goats, rats and dogs to plants and ants - that either prey on the eggs and young tortoises or
damage or destroy their habitat.

C. Today, only 11 of the original subspecies survive and of these, several are highly endangered. In
1989, work began on a tortoise-breeding centre just outside the town of Puerto Villamil on Isabela,
dedicated to protecting the island’s tortoise populations. The centre’s captive-breeding programme
proved to be extremely successful, and it eventually had to deal with an overpopulation problem.

D. The problem was also a pressing one. Captive-bred tortoises can’t be reintroduced into the wild
until they’re at least five years old and weigh at least 4,5 kilograms, at which point their size and
weight - and their hardened shells - are sufficient to protect them from predators. But if people wait too
long after that point, the tortoises eventually become too large to transport.

E. For years, repatriation efforts were carried out in small numbers, with the tortoises carried on the
backs of men over weeks of long, treacherous hikes along narrow trails. But in November 2010, the
environmentalist and Galapagos National Park liaison officer Godfrey Merlin, a visiting private motor
yacht captain and a helicopter pilot gathered around a table in a small cafe in Puerto Ayora on the
island of Santa Cruz to work out more ambitious reintroduction. The aim was to use a helicopter to
move 300 of the breeding centre’s tortoises to various locations close to Sierra Negra.

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F. This unprecedented effort was made possible by the owners of the 67-metre yacht White Cloud,
who provided the Galapagos National Park with free use of their helicopter and its experienced pilot,
as well as the logistical support of the yacht, its captain and crew. Originally an air ambulance, the
yacht’s helicopter has a rear double door and a large internal space that’s well suited for cargo, so a
custom crate was designed to hold up to 33 tortoises with a total weight of about 150 kilograms. This
weight, together with that of the fuel, pilot and four crew, approached the helicopter’s maximum
payload, and there were times when it was clearly right on the edge of the helicopter’s capabilities.
During a period of three days, a group of volunteers from the breeding centre worked around the clock
to prepare the young tortoises for transport. Meanwhile, park wardens, dropped off ahead of time in
remote locations, cleared landing sites within the thick brush, cacti and lava rocks.

G. Upon their release, the juvenile tortoises quickly spread out over their ancestral territory,
investigating their new surroundings and feeding on the vegetation. Eventually, one tiny tortoise came
across a fully grown giant who had been lumbering around the island for around a hundred years. The
two stood side by side, a powerful symbol of the regeneration of an ancient species.

Questions 1-7
Reading Passage has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

List of Headings 1. Paragraph A

2. Paragraph B
i. The importance of getting the timing right 3. Paragraph C
ii. Young meets old 4. Paragraph D
iii. Developments to the disadvantage of tortoise populations 5. Paragraph E
iv. Planning a bigger idea 6. Paragraph F
v. Tortoisespopulate the islands 7. Paragraph G
vi. Carrying out a carefully prepared operation
vii. Looking for a home for the islands’ tortoises
viii. The start of the conservation project

Questions 8-13
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

The decline of the Galapagos tortoise

• Originally from mainland South America

• Numbers on Galapagos islands increased, due to lack of predators
• 17th century: small numbers taken onto ships used by 8 .................
• 1790s: very large numbers taken onto whaling ships, kept for 9 ................. and also used to
produce 10 .................
• Hunted by 11 ................. on islands
• Habitat destruction: for the establishment of agriculture and by various 12 ................. not native to
the islands, which also fed on baby tortoises and tortoises’ 13 .................

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CAMBRIDGE 12 – TEST 4 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage below.

The History of Glass

From our earliest origins, man has been making use of glass. Historians have discovered that a type of
natural glass - obsidian - formed in places such as the mouth of a volcano as a result of the intense heat
of an eruption melting sand - was first used as tips for spears. Archaeologists have even found
evidence of man-made glass which dates back to 4000 BC; this took the form of glazes used for
coating stone beads. It was not until 1500 BC, however, that the first hollow glass container was made
by covering a sand core with a layer of molten glass.

Glass blowing became the most common way to make glass containers from the first century BC. The
glass made during this time was highly coloured due to the impurities of the raw material. In the first
century AD, methods of creating colourless glass were developed, which was then tinted by the
addition of colouring materials. The secret of glass making was taken across Europe by the Romans
during this century. However, they guarded the skills and technology required to make glass very
closely, and it was not until their empire collapsed in 476 AD that glass-making knowledge became
widespread throughout Europe and the Middle East. From the 10th century onwards, the Venetians
gained a reputation for technical skill and artistic ability in the making of glass bottles, and many of the
city’s craftsmen left Italy to set up glassworks throughout Europe.

A major milestone in the history of glass occurred with the invention of lead crystal glass by the
English glass manufacturer George Ravenscroft (1632 - 1683). He attempted to counter the effect of
clouding that sometimes occurred in blown glass by introducing lead to the raw materials used in the
process. The new glass he created was softer and easier to decorate, and had a higher refractive index,
adding to its brilliance and beauty, and it proved invaluable to the optical industry. It is thanks to
Ravenscroft’s invention that optical lenses, astronomical telescopes, microscopes and the like became
possible.

In Britain, the modem glass industry only really started to develop after the repeal of the Excise Act in
1845. Before that time, heavy taxes had been placed on the amount of glass melted in a glasshouse, and
were levied continuously from 1745 to 1845. Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace at London’s Great
Exhibition of 1851 marked the beginning of glass as a material used in the building industry. This
revolutionary new building encouraged the use of glass in public, domestic and horticultural
architecture. Glass manufacturing techniques also improved with the advancement of science and the
development of better technology.

From 1887 onwards, glass making developed from traditional mouth-blowing to a semi-automatic
process, after factory- owner HM Ashley introduced a machine capable of producing 200 bottles per
hour in Castleford, Yorkshire, England - more than three times quicker than any previous production
method. Then in 1907, the first fully automated machine was developed in the USA by Michael Owens
- founder of the Owens Bottle Machine Company (later the major manufacturers Owens- Illinois) - and
installed in its factory. Owens’ invention could produce an impressive 2,500 bottles per hour Other
developments followed rapidly, but it | was not until the First World War when Britain became cut off
from essential glass suppliers, that glass became part of the scientific sector. Previous to this, glass had
been seen as a craft rather than a precise science.

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Today, glass making is big business. It has become a modem, hi-tech industry operating in a fiercely
competitive global market where quality, design and service levels are critical to maintaining market
share. Modem glass plants are capable of making millions of glass containers a day in many different
colours, with green, brown and clear remaining the most popular. Few of us can imagine modem life
without glass. It features in almost every aspect of our lives - in our homes, our cars and whenever we
sit down to eat or drink. Glass packaging is used for many products, many beverages are sold in glass,
as are numerous foodstuffs, as well as medicines and cosmetics.

Glass is an ideal material for recycling, and with growing consumer concern for green issues, glass
bottles and jars are becoming ever more popular. Glass recycling is good news for the environment. It
saves used glass containers being sent to landfill. As less energy is needed to melt recycled glass than
to melt down raw materials, this also saves fuel and production costs. Recycling also reduces the need
for raw materials to be quarried, thus saving precious resources.

Questions 1-8
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

The History of Glass

• Early humans used a material called 1................................. to make the sharp points of their
2.................................

• 4000 BC: 3................................. made of stone were covered in a coating of man-made glass.

• First century BC: glass was coloured because of the 4................................. in the material.

• Until 476 AD: Only the 5................................. knew how to make glass.

• From 10th century: Venetians became famous for making bottles out of glass.

• 17th century: George Ravenscroft developed a process using 6................................. to avoid the
occurrence of 7................................. in blown glass.

• Mid-19th century: British glass production developed after changes to laws concerning
8.................................

Questions 9-13

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. In 1887, HM Ashley had the fastest bottle-producing machine that existed at the time.
10. Michael Owens was hired by a large US company to design a fully-automated bottle manufacturing
machine for them.
11. Nowadays, most glass is produced by large international manufacturers.
12. Concern for the environment is leading to an increased demand for glass containers.
13. It is more expensive to produce recycled glass than to manufacture new glass.
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CAMBRIDGE 13 – TEST 1 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage below.

Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website

New Zealand is a small country of four million inhabitants, a long-haul flight from all the major
tourist-generating markets of the world. Tourism currently makes up 9% of the country's gross
domestic product, and is the country's largest export sector. Unlike other export sectors, which make
products and then sell them overseas, tourism brings its customers to New Zealand. The product is the
country itself- the people, the places and the experiences. In 1999, Tourism New Zealand launched a
campaign to communicate a new brand position to the world. The campaign focused on New Zealand's
scenic beauty, exhilarating outdoor activities and authentic Maori culture, and it made New
Zealand one of the strongest national brands in the world.

A key feature of the campaign was the website www.newzealand.com, which provided potential
visitors to New Zealand with a single gateway to everything the destination had to offer. The heart of
the website was a database of tourism services operators, both those based in New Zealand and those
based abroad which offered tourism services to the country. Any tourism-related business could be
listed by filling in a simple form. This meant that even the smallest bed and breakfast address or
specialist activity provider could gain a web presence with access to an audience of long-haul visitors.
In addition, because participating businesses were able to update the details they gave on a regular
basis, the information provided remained accurate. And to maintain and improve standards, Tourism
New Zealand organised a scheme whereby organisations appearing on the website underwent an
independent evaluation against a set of agreed national standards of quality. As part of this, the effect
of each business on the environment was considered.

To communicate the New Zealand experience, the site also carried features relating to famous people
and places. One of the most popular was an interview with former New Zealand All Blacks rugby
captain Tana Umaga. Another feature that attracted a lot of attention was an interactive journey
through a number of the locations chosen for blockbuster films which had made use of New Zealand's
stunning scenery as a backdrop. As the site developed, additional features were added to help
independent travelers devise their own customised itineraries. To make it easier to plan motoring
holidays, the site catalogued the most popular driving routes in the country, highlighting different
routes according to the season and indicating distances and times.

Later, a Travel Planner feature was added, which allowed visitors to click and 'bookmark; places or
attractions they were interested in, and then view the results on a map. The Travel Planner offered
suggested routes and public transport options between the chosen locations. There were also links to
accommodation in the area. By registering with the website, users could save their Travel Plan and
return to it later, or print it out to take on the visit. The website also had a 'Your Words' section where
anyone could submit a blog of their New Zealand travels for possible inclusion on the website.

The Tourism New Zealand website won two Webby awards for online achievement and innovation.
More importantly perhaps, the growth of tourism to New Zealand was impressive. Overall tourism
expenditure increased by an average of 6.9% per year between 1999 and 2004. From Britain, visits to
New Zealand grew at an average annual rate of 13% between 2002 and 2006, compared to a rate of 4%
overall for British visits abroad.

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The website was set up to allow both individuals and travel organisations to create itineraries and
travel packages.to suit their own needs and interests. On the website, visitors can search for activities
not solely by geographical location, but also by the particular nature of the activity. This is important
as research shows that activities are the key driver of visitor satisfaction, contributing 74% to visitor
satisfaction, while transport and accommodation account for the remaining 26%. The more activities
that visitors undertake, the more satisfied they will be. It has also been found that visitors enjoy
cultural activities most when they are interactive, such as visiting a marae (meeting ground) to learn
about traditional Maori life. Many long-haul travellers enjoy such. learning experiences, which provide
them with stories to take home to their friends and family. In addition, it appears that visitors to New
Zealand don't want to be 'one of the crowd' and find activities that involve only a few people more
special and meaningful.

It could be argued that New Zealand is not a typical destination. New Zealand is a small country with a
visitor economy composed mainly of small businesses. It is generally perceived as a safe English-
speaking country with a reliable transport infrastructure. Because of the long-haul flight, most visitors
stay for longer .(average 20 days) and want to see as much of the country as possible on what is often
seen as a once-in-a-lifetime visit. However, the underlying lessons apply anywhere - the effectiveness
of a strong brand, a strategy based on unique experiences and a comprehensive and user-friendly
website.

Questions 1-7
Complete the table below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Section of website Comments

Database of tourism services easy for tourism-related businesses to get on the list
allowed businesses to 1 ...........................................
information regularly
. provided a country-wide evaluation of businesses,
including their impact on the 2 ...........................................
Special features on local topics e.g. an interview with a former sports
3 ...........................................,
and an interactive tour of various locations used in
4 ...........................................
Information on driving routes varied depending on the 5 ...........................................
Travel Planner included a map showing selected places, details of public
transport and local 6 ...........................................

‘Your Words' travellers could send a link to their 7 ...........................................

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Questions 8-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
8. The website www.newzealand.com aimed to provide ready-made itineraries and
packages for travel companies and individual tourists.
9. It was found that most visitors started searching on the website by
geographical location.
10. According to research, 26% of visitor satisfaction is related to their accommodation.
11. Visitors to New Zealand like to become involved in the local culture.
12. Visitors like staying in small hotels in New Zealand rather than in larger ones.
13. Many visitors feel it is unlikely that they will return to New Zealand after their visit.

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CAMBRIDGE 13 – TEST 2 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage below.

Bringing cinnamon to Europe

Cinnamon is a sweet, fragrant spice produced from the inner bark of trees of the genus Cinnamomum,
which is native to the Indian sub-continent. It was known in biblical times, and is mentioned in several
books of the Bible, both as an ingredient that was mixed with oils for anointing people's bodies, and
also as a token indicating friendship among lovers and friends. In ancient Rome, mourners attending
funerals burnt cinnamon to create a pleasant scent. Most often, however, the spice found its primary
use as an additive to food and drink. In the Middle Ages, Europeans who could afford the spice used it
to flavour food, particularly meat, and to impress those around them with their ability to purchase an
expensive condiment from the 'exotic' East. At a banquet, a host would offer guests a plate with
various spices piled upon it as a sign of the wealth at his or her disposal. Cinnamon was also reported
to have health benefits, and was thought to cure various ailments, such as indigestion.

Toward the end of the Middle Ages, the European middle classes began to desire the lifestyle of the
elite, including their consumption of spices. This led to a growth in demand for cinnamon and other
spices. At that time, cinnamon was transported by Arab merchants, who closely guarded the secret of
the source of the spice from potential rivals. They took it from India, where it was grown, on camels
via an overland route to the Mediterranean. Their journey ended when they reached Alexandria.
European traders sailed there to purchase their supply of cinnamon, then brought it back to Venice.
The spice then travelled from that great trading city to markets all around Europe. Because the
overland trade route allowed for only small quantities of the spice to reach Europe, and because Venice
had a virtual monopoly of the trade, the Venetians could set the price of cinnamon exorbitantly high.
These prices, coupled with the increasing demand, spurred the search for new routes to Asia by
Europeans eager to take part in the spice trade.

Seeking the high profits promised by the cinnamon market, Portuguese traders arrived on the island of
Ceylon in the Indian Ocean toward the end of the 15th century. Before Europeans arrived on the island,
the state had organized the cultivation of cinnamon. People belonging to the ethnic group called the
Salagama would peel the bark off young shoots of the cinnamon plant in the rainy season, when the
wet bark was more pliable. During the peeling process, they curled the bark into the 'stick' shape still
associated with the spice today. The Salagama then gave the finished product to the king as a form of
tribute. When the Portuguese arrived, they needed to increase production significantly, and so enslaved
many other members of the Ceylonese native population, forcing them to work in cinnamon
harvesting. In 1518, the Portuguese built a fort on Ceylon, which enabled them to protect the island, so
helping them to develop a monopoly in the cinnamon trade and generate very high profits. In the late
16th century, for example, they enjoyed a tenfold profit when shipping cinnamon over a journey of
eight days from Ceylon to India.

When the Dutch arrived off the coast of southern Asia at the very beginning of the 17th century, they
set their sights on displacing the Portuguese as kings of cinnamon. The Dutch allied themselves with
Kandy, an inland kingdom on Ceylon. In return for payments of elephants and cinnamon, they
protected the native king from the Portuguese. By 1640, the Dutch broke the 150-year Portuguese
monopoly when they overran and occupied their factories. By 1658, they had permanently expelled the
Portuguese from the island, thereby gaining control of the lucrative cinnamon trade. In order to protect
their hold on the market, the Dutch, like the Portuguese before them, treated the native inhabitants
harshly. Because of the need to boost production and satisfy Europe's ever-increasing appetite for
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cinnamon, the Dutch began to alter the harvesting practices of the Ceylonese. Over time, the supply of
cinnamon trees on the island became nearly exhausted, due to systematic stripping of the bark.
Eventually, the Dutch began cultivating their own cinnamon trees to supplement the diminishing
number of wild trees available for use.

Then, in 1796, the English arrived on Ceylon, thereby displacing the Dutch from their control of the
cinnamon monopoly. By the middle of the 19th century, production of cinnamon reached 1,000 tons a
year, after a lower grade quality of the spice became acceptable to European tastes. By that time,
cinnamon was being grown in other parts of the Indian Ocean region and in the West Indies, Brazil,
and Guyana. Not only was a monopoly of cinnamon becoming impossible, but the spice trade overall
was diminishing in economic potential, and was eventually superseded by the rise of trade in coffee,
tea, chocolate, and sugar.

Questions 1-9
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

The Early History of Cinnamon

Biblical times: added to 1 ..........................................
used to show 2 ........................................... between people
Ancient Rome: used for its sweet smell at 3 .......................................... .
Middle Ages: added to food, especially meat
was an indication of a person's 4 .......................................... .
known as a treatment for 5 ........................................... and other
health problems
grown in 6 .......................................... .
merchants used 7 ........................................... to bring it to
the Mediterranean
arrived in the Mediterranean at 8 .......................................... .
traders took it to 9 ........................................... and sold it to destinations around Europe

Questions 10-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
10. The Portuguese had control over the cinnamon trade in Ceylon throughout the 16th century.
11. The Dutch took over the cinnamon trade from the Portuguese as soon as they arrived in Ceylon.
12. The trees planted by the Dutch produced larger quantities of cinnamon than the wild trees.
13. The spice trade maintained its economic importance during the 19th century.

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CAMBRIDGE 13 – TEST 3 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage below.

The coconut palm

For millennia, the coconut has been central to the lives of Polynesian and Asian peoples. In the western
world, on the other hand, coconuts have always been exotic and unusual, sometimes rare. The Italian
merchant traveller Marco Polo apparently saw coconuts in South Asia in the late 13th century, and
among the mid-14th-century travel writings of Sir John Mandeville there is mention of 'great Notes of
Ynde' (great Nuts of India). Today, images of palm-fringed tropical beaches are cliches in the west to
sell holidays, chocolate bars, fizzy drinks and even romance.

Typically, we envisage coconuts as brown cannonballs that, when opened, provide sweet white flesh.
But we see only part of the fruit and none of the plant from which they come. The coconut palm has a
smooth, slender, grey trunk, up to 30 metres tall. This is an important source of timber for building
houses, and is increasingly being used as a replacement for endangered hardwoods in the furniture
construction industry. The trunk is surmounted by a rosette of leaves, each of which may be up to six
metres long. The leaves have hard veins in their centres which, in many parts of the world, are used
as brushes after the green part of the leaf has been stripped away. Immature coconut flowers are tightly
clustered together among the leaves at the top of the trunk. The flower stems may be tapped for their
sap to produce a drink, and the sap can also be reduced by boiling to produce a type of sugar used for
cooking.

Coconut palms produce as many as seventy fruits per year, weighing more than a kilogram each. The
wall of the fruit has three layers: a waterproof outer layer, a fibrous middle layer and a hard, inner
layer. The thick fibrous middle layer produces coconut fibre, 'coir', which has numerous uses and is
particularly important in manufacturing ropes. The woody innermost layer, the shell, with its three
prominent 'eyes', surrounds the seed. An important product obtained from the shell is charcoal, which
is widely used in various industries as well as in the home as a cooking fuel. When broken in half, the
shells are also used as bowls in many parts of Asia.

Inside the shell are the nutrients (endosperm) needed by the developing seed. Initially, the endosperm
is a sweetish liquid, coconut water, which is enjoyed as a drink, but also provides the hormones which
encourage other plants to grow more rapidly and produce higher yields. As the fruit matures, the
coconut water gradually solidifies to form the brilliant white, fat-rich, edible flesh or meat. Dried
coconut flesh, 'copra', is made into coconut oil and coconut milk, which are widely used in cooking in
different parts of the world, as well as in cosmetics. A derivative of coconut fat, glycerine, acquired
strategic importance in a quite different sphere, as Alfred Nobel introduced the world to his
nitroglycerine-based invention: dynamite.

Their biology would appear to make coconuts the great maritime voyagers and coastal colonizers of
the plant world. The large, energy-rich fruits are able to float in water and tolerate salt, but cannot
remain viable indefinitely; studies suggest after about 110 days at sea they are no longer able to
germinate. Literally cast onto desert island shores, with little more than sand to grow in and exposed to
the full glare of the tropical sun, coconut seeds are able to germinate and root. The air pocket in the
seed, created as the endosperm solidifies, protects the embryo. In addition, the fibrous fruit wall that
helped it to float during the voyage stores moisture that can be taken up by the roots of the coconut
seedling as it starts to grow.

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There have been centuries of academic debate over the origins of the coconut. There were no coconut
palms in West Africa, the Caribbean or the east coast of the Americas before the voyages of the
European explorers Vasco da Gama and Columbus in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. 16th
century trade and human migration patterns reveal that Arab traders and European sailors are likely to
have moved coconuts from South and Southeast Asia to Africa and then across the Atlantic to the east
coast of America. But the origin of coconuts discovered along the west coast of America by 16th
century sailors has been the subject of centuries of discussion. Two diametrically opposed origins have
been proposed: that they came from Asia, or that they were native to America. Both suggestions have
problems. In Asia, there is a large degree of coconut diversity and evidence of millennia of human use
- but there are no relatives growing in the wild. In America, there are close coconut relatives, but no
evidence that coconuts are indigenous. These problems have led to the intriguing suggestion that
coconuts originated on coral islands in the Pacific and were dispersed from there.

Questions 1-8
Complete the table below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

THE COCONUT PALM

Part Description Uses
trunk up to 30 metres timber for houses and the making of 1 .........................................
leaves up to 6 metres long to make brushes
flowers at the top of the trunk stems provide sap, used as a drink or a source of
2 ...........................................
fruits outer layer
middle layer ( coir used for 3 ........................................... , etc.
fibres)
inner layer (shell) a source of 4 ...........................................
(when halved) for 5 ...........................................
coconut water a drink
a source of 6 ........................................... for other plants
coconut flesh oil and milk for cooking and 7 ...........................................
glycerine (an ingredient in 8 ........................................... )

Questions 9-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
9. Coconut seeds need shade in order to germinate.
10. Coconuts were probably transported to Asia from America in the 16th century.
11. Coconuts found on the west coast of America were a different type from those
found on the east coast.
12. All the coconuts found in Asia are cultivated varieties.
13. Coconuts are cultivated in different ways in America and the Pacific.

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CAMBRIDGE 13 – TEST 4 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage below.

Cutty Sark: the fastest sailing ship of all time

The nineteenth century was a period of great technological development in Britain, and for shipping
the major changes were from wind to steam power, and from wood to iron and steel. The fastest
commercial sailing vessels of all time were clippers, three-masted ships built to transport goods around
the world, although some also took passengers. From the 1840s until 1869, when the Suez Canal
opened and steam propulsion was replacing sail, clippers dominated world trade. Although many were
built, only one has survived more or less intact: Cutty Sark, now on display in Greenwich, southeast
London.

Cutty Sark's unusual name comes from the poem Tam O 'Shanter by the Scottish poet Robert Bums.
Tam, a farmer, is chased by a witch called Nannie, who is wearing a 'cutty sark' – an old Scottish name
for a short nightdress. The witch is depicted in Cutty Sark's figurehead – the carving of a woman
typically at the front of old sailing ships. In legend, and in Bums 's poem, witches cannot cross water,
so this was a rather strange choice of name for a ship.

Cutty Sark was built in Dumbarton, Scotland, in 1869, for a shipping company owned by John Willis.
To carry out construction, Willis chose a new shipbuilding firm, Scott & Linton, and ensured that the
contract with them put him in a very strong position. In the end, the firm was forced out of business,
and the ship was finished by a competitor.

Willis's company was active in the tea trade between China and Britain, where speed could bring
shipowners both profits and prestige, so Cutty Sark was designed to make the journey more quickly
than any other ship. On her maiden voyage, in 1870, she set sail from London, carrying large amounts
of goods to China. She returned laden with tea, making the journey back to London in four months.
However, Cutty Sark never lived up to the high expectations of her owner, as a result of bad winds and
various misfortunes. On one occasion, in 1872, the ship and a rival clipper, Thermopylae, left port in
China on the same day. Crossing the Indian Ocean, Cutty Sark gained a lead of over 400 miles, but
then her rudder was severely damaged in stormy seas, making her impossible to steer. The ship's crew
had the daunting task ofrepairing the rudder at sea, and only succeeded at the second attempt. Cutty
Sark reached London a week after Thermopylae.

Steam ships posed a growing threat to clippers, as their speed and cargo capacity increased. In
addition, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the same year that Cutty Sark was launched, had a
serious impact. While steam ships could make use of the quick, direct route between the Mediterranean
and the Red Sea, the canal was of no use to sailing ships, which needed the much stronger winds of the
oceans, and so had to sail a far greater distance. Steam ships reduced the journey time between Britain
and China by approximately two months.

By 1878, tea traders weren't interested in Cutty Sark, and instead, she took on the much less prestigious
work of carrying any cargo between any two ports in the world. In 1880, violence aboard the ship led
ultimately to the replacement of the captain with an incompetent drunkard who stole the crew's wages.
He was suspended from service, and a new captain appointed. This marked a turnaround and the
beginning of the most successful period in Cutty Sark's working life, transporting wool from Australia
to Britain. One such journey took just under 12 weeks, beating every other ship sailing that year by
around a month.
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The ship's next captain, Richard Woodget, was an excellent navigator, who got the best out of both his
ship and his crew. As a sailing ship, Cutty Sark depended on the strong trade winds of the southern
hemisphere, and Woodget took her further south than any previous captain, bringing her dangerously
close to icebergs off the southern tip of South America. His gamble paid off, though, and the ship was
the fastest vessel in the wool trade for ten years.

As competition from steam ships increased in the 1890s, and Cutty Sark approached the end of her life
expectancy, she became less profitable. She was sold to a Portuguese firm, which renamed her
Ferreira. For the next 25 years, she again carried miscellaneous cargoes around the world. Badly
damaged in a gale in 1922, she was put into Falmouth harbour in southwest England, for repairs.
Wilfred Dowman, a retired sea captain who owned a training vessel, recognised her and tried to buy
her, but without success. She returned to Portugal and was sold to another Portuguese company.
Dowman was determined, however, and offered a high price: this was accepted, and the ship returned
to Falmouth the following year and had her original name restored.

Dowman used Cutty Sark as a training ship, and she continued in this role after his death. When she
was no longer required, in 1954, she was transferred to dry dock at Greenwich to go on public display.
The ship suffered from fire in 2007, and again, less seriously, in 2014, but now Cutty Sark attracts a
quarter of a million visitors a year.

Questions 1-8
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
1. Clippers were originally intended to be used as passenger ships.
2. Cutty Sark was given the name of a character in a poem.
3. The contract between John Willis and Scott & Linton favoured Willis.
4. John Willis wanted Cutty Sark to be the fastest tea clipper travelling between the UK and China.
5. Despite storm damage, Cutty Sark beat Thermopylae back to London.
6. The opening of the Suez Canal meant that steam ships could travel between Britain and China faster
than clippers.
7. Steam ships sometimes used the ocean route to travel between London and China.
8. Captain Woodget put Cutty Sark at risk of hitting an iceberg.

Questions 9-13
Complete the sentences below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
9. After 1880, Cutty Sark carried ........................................... as its main cargo during its most
successful time.
10. As a captain and ........................................... , Woodget was very skilled.
11. Ferreira went to Falmouth to repair damage that a ........................................... had caused.
12. Between 1923 and 1954, Cutty Sark was used for ........................................... .
13. Cutty Sark has twice been damaged by ........................................... in the 21st century.

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CAMBRIDGE 14 – TEST 1 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–13, which are based on the reading passage
below.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CHILDREN’S PLAY

Brick by brick, six-year-old Alice is building a magical kingdom. Imagining fairy-tale turrets and fire-
breathing dragons, wicked witches and gallant heroes, she’s creating an enchanting world. Although
she isn’t aware of it, this fantasy is helping her take her first steps towards her capacity for creativity
and so it will have important repercussions in her adult life.

Minutes later, Alice has abandoned the kingdom in favour of playing schools with her younger brother.
When she bosses him around as his ‘teacher’, she’s practising how to regulate her emotions through
pretence. Later on, when they tire of this and settle down with a board game, she’s learning about the
need to follow rules and take turns with a partner.

‘Play in all its rich variety is one of the highest achievements of the human species,’ says Dr David
Whitebread from the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, UK. ‘It underpins how we
develop as intellectual, problem-solving adults and is crucial to our success as a highly adaptable
species.’

Recognising the importance of play is not new: over two millennia ago, the Greek philosopher Plato
extolled its virtues as a means of developing skills for adult life, and ideas about play-based learning
have been developing since the 19th century.

But we live in changing times, and Whitebread is mindful of a worldwide decline in play, pointing out
that over half the people in the world now live in cities. ‘The opportunities for free play, which I
experienced almost every day of my childhood, are becoming increasingly scarce,’ he says. Outdoor
play is curtailed by perceptions of risk to do with traffic, as well as parents’ increased wish to protect
their children from being the victims of crime, and by the emphasis on ‘earlier is better’ which is
leading to greater competition in academic learning and schools.

International bodies like the United Nations and the European Union have begun to develop policies
concerned with children’s right to play, and to consider implications for leisure facilities and
educational programmes. But what they often lack is the evidence to base policies on.

‘The type of play we are interested in is child-initiated, spontaneous and unpredictable – but, as soon as
you ask a five-year-old “to play”, then you as the researcher have intervened,’ explains Dr Sara Baker.
‘And we want to know what the long-term impact of play is. It’s a real challenge.’

Dr Jenny Gibson agrees, pointing out that although some of the steps in the puzzle of how and why
play is important have been looked at, there is very little data on the impact it has on the child’s later
life.

Now, thanks to the university’s new Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and
Learning (PEDAL), Whitebread, Baker, Gibson and a team of researchers hope to provide evidence on
the role played by play in how a child develops.

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‘A strong possibility is that play supports the early development of children’s self control,’ explains
Baker. ‘This is our ability to develop awareness of our own thinking processes – it influences how
effectively we go about undertaking challenging activities.’

In a study carried out by Baker with toddlers and young pre-schoolers, she found that children with
greater self-control solved problems more quickly when exploring an unfamiliar set-up requiring
scientific reasoning. ‘This sort of evidence makes us think that giving children the chance to play will
make them more successful problemsolvers in the long run.’

If playful experiences do facilitate this aspect of development, say the researchers, it could be
extremely significant for educational practices, because the ability to self regulate has been shown to
be a key predictor of academic performance.

Gibson adds: ‘Playful behaviour is also an important indicator of healthy social and emotional
development. In my previous research, I investigated how observing children at play can give us
important clues about their well-being and can even be useful in the diagnosis of neurodevelopmental
disorders like autism.’

Whitebread’s recent research has involved developing a play-based approach to supporting children’s
writing. ‘Many primary school children find writing difficult, but we showed in a previous study that a
playful stimulus was far more effective than an instructional one.’ Children wrote longer and better-
structured stories when they first played with dolls representing characters in the story. In the latest
study, children first created their story with Lego *, with similar results. ‘Many teachers commented
that they had always previously had children saying they didn’t know what to write about. With the
Lego building, however, not a single child said this through the whole year of the project.’

Whitebread, who directs PEDAL, trained as a primary school teacher in the early 1970s, when, as he
describes, ‘the teaching of young children was largely a quiet backwater, untroubled by any serious
intellectual debate or controversy.’ Now, the landscape is very different, with hotly debated topics such
as school starting age.

‘Somehow the importance of play has been lost in recent decades. It’s regarded as something trivial, or
even as something negative that contrasts with “work”. Let’s not lose sight of its benefits, and the
fundamental contributions it makes to human achievements in the arts, sciences and technology. Let’s
make sure children have a rich diet of play experiences.’
__________________________________
* Lego: coloured plastic building blocks and other pieces that can be joined together

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Questions 1-8:
Complete the notes below
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer:
Write your answers in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.

Children's play:

Uses of children’s play

· building a ‘magical kingdom’ may help develop 1 ....................
· board games involve 2 .................... and turn-taking

Recent changes affecting children’s play

· populations of 3 .................... have grown
· opportunities for free play are limited due to:
- fear of 4 ....................
- fear of 5 ....................
- increased 6 .................... in schools

International policies on children’s play:

· it is difficult to find 7 .................... to support new policies
· research needs to study the impact of play on the rest of the
child’s 8 ....................

Questions 9-13:
Do the following statements agree with the information given on the reading passage?
In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. Children with good self-control are known to be likely to do well at school later on.
10. The way a child plays may provide information about possible medical problems.
11. Playing with dolls was found to benefit girls’ writing more than boys’ writing.
12. Children had problems thinking up ideas when they first created the story with Lego.
13. People nowadays regard children’s play as less significant than they did in the past.

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CAMBRIDGE 14 – TEST 2 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage below.

Alexander Henderson (1831-1913)/

Born in Scotland, Henderson emigrated to Canada in 1855 and become a well-known landscape
photographer

Alexander Henderson was born in Scotland in 1831 and was the son of a successful merchant. His
grandfather, also called Alexander, had founded the family business, and later became the first
chairman of the National Bank of Scotland. The family had extensive landholding in Scotland. Besides
its residence in Edinburgh, it owned Press Estate, 650 acres of farmland about 35 miles southeast of the
city. The family often stayed at Press Castle, the large mansion on the northern edge of the property,
and Alexander spent much of his childhood in the area, playing on the beach near Eyemouth or fishing
in the streams nearby.

Even after he went to school at Murcheston Academy on the outskirts of Edinburgh, Henderson
returned to Press at weekends. In 1849 he began a three-year apprenticeship to become an accountant.
Although he never liked the prospect of a business career, he stayed with it to please his family. In
October 1855, however, he emigrated to Canada with his wife Agnes Elder Robertson and they settled
in Montreal.

Henderson learned photography in Montreal around the year 1857 and quickly took it up as a serious
amateur. He became a personal friend and colleague of the Scottish – Canadian photographer William
Notman. The two men made a photographic excursion to Niagara Falls in 1860 and they cooperated on
experiments with magnesium flares as a source of artificial light in 1865. They belonged to the same
societies and were among the founding members of the Art Association of Montreal. Henderson acted
as chairman of the association’s first meeting, which was held in Notman’s studio on 11 January 1860.

In spite of their friendship, their styles of photography were quite different. While Notman’s
landscapes were noted for their bold realism, Henderson for the first 20 years of his career produced
romantic images, showing the strong influence of the British landscape tradition. His artistic and
technical progress was rapid and in 1865 he published his first major collection of landscape
photographs. The publication had limited circulation (only seven copies have ever been found), and
was called Canadian Views and Studies. The contents of each copy vary significantly and have proved
a useful source for evaluating Henderson’s early work.

In 1866, he gave up his business to open a photographic studio, advertising himself as a portrait and
landscape photographer. From about 1870 he dropped portraiture to specialize in landscape
photography and other views. His numerous photographs of city life revealed in street scenes, houses,
and markets are alive with human activity, and although his favourite subject was landscape he usually
composed his scenes around such human pursuits as farming the land, cutting ice on a river, or sailing
down a woodland stream. There was sufficient demand for these types of scenes and others he took
depicting the lumber trade, steamboats and waterfalls to enable him to make a living. There was little
competing hobby or amateur photography before the late 1880s because of the time-consuming
techniques involved and the weight of equipment. People wanted to buy photographs as souvenirs of a
trip or as gifts, and catering to this market, Henderson had stock photographs on display at his studio
for mounting, framing, or inclusion in albums.

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Henderson frequently exhibited his photographs in Montreal and abroad, in London, Edinburgh,
Dublin, Paris, New York, and Philadelphia. He met with greater success in 1877 and 1878 in New
York when he won first prizes in the exhibition held by E and H T Anthony and Company for
landscapes using the Lambertype process. In 1878 his work won second prize at the world exhibition
in Paris.

In the 1890s and 1880s Henderson travelled widely throughout Quebec and Ontario, in Canada,
documenting the major cities of the two provinces and many of the villages in Quebec. He was
especially fond of the wilderness and often travelled by canoe on the Blanche, du Lièvre, and other
noted eastern rivers. He went on several occasions to the Maritimes and in 1872 he sailed by yacht
along the lower north shore of the St Lawrence River. That same year, while in the lower St Lawrence
River region, he took some photographs of the construction of the Intercolonial Railway. This
undertaking led in 1875 to a commission from the railway to record the principal structures along the
almost-completed line connecting Montreal to Halifax. Commissions from other railways followed. In
1876 he photographed bridges on the Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa and Occidental Railway between
Montreal and Ottawa. In 1885 he went west along the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) as far as
Rogers Pass in British Columbia, where he took photographs of the mountains and the progress of
construction.

In 1892 Henderson accepted a full-time position with the CPR as manager of a photographic
department which he was to set up and administer. His duties included spending four months in the
field each year. That summer he made his second trip west, photographing extensively along the
railway line as far as Victoria. He continued in this post until 1897, when he retired completely from
photography.

When Henderson died in 1913, his huge collection of glass negatives was stored in the basement of his
house. Today collections of his work are held at the National Archives of Canada, Ottawa, and the
McCord Museum of Canadian History, Montreal.

Questions 1-8
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1. Henderson rarely visited the area around Press estate when he was younger.
2. Henderson pursued a business career because it was what his family wanted.
3. Henderson and Notman were surprised by the results of their 1865 experiment.
4. There were many similarities between Henderson’s early landscapes and those of Notman.
5. The studio that Henderson opened in 1866 was close to his home.
6. Henderson gave up portraiture so that he could focus on taking photographs of scenery.
7. When Henderson began work for the Intercolonial Railway, the Montreal to Halifax line had been
finished.
8. Henderson’s last work as a photographer was with the Canadian Pacific Railway.

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Questions 9-13
Complete the notes below
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer..

Alexander Henderson

Early life
• was born in Scotland in 1831 – father was a 9 …………………………
• trained as an accountant, emigrated to Canada in 1855

Start of a photographic career

• opened up a photographic studio in 1866
• took photos of city life, but preferred landscape photography
• people bought Henderson’s photos because photography took up considerable time and the
10 ……………………… was heavy
• the photographs Henderson sold were 11 …………………………… or souvenirs

Travelling as a professional photographer

• travelled widely in Quebec and Ontario in 1870s and 1880s
• took many trips along eastern rivers in a 12…………………………..
• worked for Canadian railways between 1875 and 1897
• worked for CPR in 1885 and photographed the 13 …………………………… and the railway at
Rogers Pass

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CAMBRIDGE 14 – TEST 3 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage below.

The concept of intelligence

A. Looked at in one way, everyone knows what intelligence is; looked at in another way, no one does.
In other words, people all have unconscious notions – known as ‘implicit theories’ – of intelligence,
but no one knows for certain what it actually is. This chapter addresses how people conceptualize
intelligence, whatever it may actually be.

But why should we even care what people think intelligence is, as opposed only to valuing whatever it
actually is? There are at least four seasons people’s conceptions of intelligence matter.

B. First, implicit theories of intelligence drive the way in which people perceive and evaluate their own
intelligence and that of others. To better understand the judgments people make about their own and
others’ abilities, it is useful to learn about people’s implicit theories. For example, parents’ implicit
theories of their children’s language development will determine at what ages they will be willing to
make various corrections in their children’s speech. More generally, parents’ implicit theories of
intelligence will determine at what ages they believe their children are ready to perform various
cognitive tasks. Job interviewers will make hiring decisions on the basis of their implicit theories of
intelligence. People will decide who to be friends with on the basis of such theories. In sum,
knowledge about implicit theories of intelligence is important because this knowledge is so often used
by people to make judgments in the course of their everyday lives.

C. Second, the implicit theories of scientific investigators ultimately give rise to their explicit theories.
Thus it is useful to find out what these implicit theories are. Implicit theories provide a framework that
is useful in defining the general scope of a phenomenon – especially a not-well-understood
phenomenon. These implicit theories can suggest what aspects of the phenomenon have been more or
less attended to in previous investigations.

D. Third, implicit theories can be useful when an investigator suspects that existing explicit theories
are wrong or misleading. If an investigation of implicit theories reveals little correspondence between
the extant implicit and explicit theories, the implicit theories may be wrong. But the possibility also
needs to be taken into account that the explicit theories are wrong and in need of correction or
supplementation. For example, some implicit theories of intelligence suggest the need for expansion of
some of our explicit theories of the construct.

E. Finally, understanding implicit theories of intelligence can help elucidate developmental and cross-
cultural differences. As mentioned earlier, people have expectations for intellectual performances that
differ for children of different ages. How these expectations differ is in part a function of culture. For
example, expectations for children who participate in Western-style schooling are almost certain to be
different from those for children who do not participate in such schooling.

F. I have suggested that there are three major implicit theories of how intelligence relates to society as
a whole (Sternberg, 1997). These might be called Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian, and Jacksonian. These
views are not based strictly, but rather, loosely, on the philosophies of Alexander Hamilton, Thomas
Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson, three great statesmen in the history of the United States.

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G. The Hamiltonian view, which is similar to the Platonic view, is that people are born with different
levels of intelligence and that those who are less intelligent need the good offices of the more
intelligent to keep them in line, whether they are called government officials or, in Plato’s term,
philosopher-kings. Herrnstein and Murray (1994) seem to have shared this belief when they wrote
about the emergence of a cognitive (high-IQ) elite, which eventually would have to take responsibility
for the largely irresponsible masses of non-elite (low-IQ) people who cannot take care of themselves.
Left to themselves, the unintelligent would create, as they always have created, a kind of chaos.

H. The Jeffersonian view is that people should have equal opportunities, but they do not necessarily
avail themselves equally of these opportunities and are not necessarily equally rewarded for their
accomplishments. People are rewarded for what they accomplish, if given equal opportunity. Low
achievers are not rewarded to the same extent as high achievers. In the Jeffersonian view, the goal of
education is not to favor or foster an elite, as in the Hamiltonian tradition, but rather to allow children
the opportunities to make full use of the skills they have. My own views are similar to these
(Sternberg, 1997).

I. The Jacksonian view is that all people are equal, not only as human beings but in terms of their
competencies – that one person would serve as well as another in government or on a jury or in almost
any position of responsibility. In this view of democracy, people are essentially intersubstitutable
except for specialized skills, all of which can be learned. In this view, we do not need or want any
institutions that might lead to favoring one group over another.

J. Implicit theories of intelligence and of the relationship of intelligence to society perhaps need to be
considered more carefully than they have been because they often serve as underlying presuppositions
for explicit theories and even experimental designs that are then taken as scientific contributions. Until
scholars are able to discuss their implicit theories and thus their assumptions, they are likely to miss the
point of what others are saying when discussing their explicit theories and their data.

Questions 1-3
Reading Passage has ten sections, A-J
Which section contains the following information?
1. information about how non-scientists’ assumptions about intelligence influence their behavior
towards others
2. a reference to lack of clarity over the definition of intelligence
3. the point that a researcher’s implicit and explicit theories may be very different

Questions 4-6
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage?
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

4. Slow language development in children is likely to prove disappointing to their parents.

5. People’s expectations of what children should gain from education are universal.
6. Scholars may discuss theories without fully understanding each other.

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Questions 7-13
Look at the following statements (Questions 7-13) and the list of theories below.
Match each statement with the correct theory, A, B or C.

NB. You may use any letter more than once.

7. It is desirable for the same possibilities to be open to everyone.

8. No section of society should have preferential treatment at the expense of another.
9. People should only gain benefits on the basis of what they actually achieve.
10. Variation in intelligence begins at birth.
11. The more intelligent people should be in positions of power.
12. Everyone can develop the same abilities.
13. People of low intelligence are likely to lead uncontrolled lives.

List of Theories
A. Hamiltonian
B. Jeffersonian
C. Jacksonian

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CAMBRIDGE 14 – TEST 4 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage below.

The secret of staying young

Pheidole dentata, a native ant of the south-eastern U.S., isn’t immortal. But scientists have found that it
doesn’t seem to show any signs of aging. Old workers ants can do everything just as well as the
youngsters, and their brains appear just as sharp. ‘We get a picture that these ants really don’t decline,’
says Ysabel Giraldo, who studies the ants for her doctoral thesis at Boston University.

Such age-defying feats are rare in the animal kingdom. Naked mole rats can live for almost 30 years
and stay fit for nearly their entire lives. They can still reproduce even when old, and they never get
cancer. But the vast majority of animals deteriorate with age just like people do. Like the naked mole
rat, ants are social creatures that usually live in highly organised colonies. ‘It’s this social complexity
that makes P. dentata useful for studying aging in people,’ says Giraldo, now at the California Institute
of Technology. Humans are also highly social, a trait that has been connected to healthier aging. By
contrast, most animal studies of aging use mice, worms or fruit flies, which all lead much more
isolated lives.

In the lab, P. dentata worker ants typically live for around 140 days. Giraldo focused on ants at four
age ranges: 20 to 22 days, 45 to 47 days, 95 to 97 days and 120 to 122 days. Unlike all previous
studies, which only estimated how old the ants were, her work tracked the ants from the time the pupae
became adults, so she knew their exact ages. Then she put them through a range of tests.

Giraldo watched how well the ants took care of the young of the colony, recording how often each ant
attended to, carried and fed them. She compared how well 20-day-old and 95-day-old ants followed the
telltale scent that the insects usually leave to mark a trail to food. She tested how ants responded to
light and also measured how active they were by counting how often ants in a small dish walked across
a line. And she experimented with how ants react to live prey: a tethered fruit fly. Giraldo expected the
older ants to perform poorly in all these tasks. But the elderly insects were all good caretakers and trail-
followers – the 95-day-old ants could track the scent even longer than their younger counterparts. They
all responded do light well, and the older ants were more active. And when it came to reacting to prey,
the older ants attacked the poor fruit fly just as aggressively as the young ones did, flaring their
mandibles or pulling at the fly’s legs.

Then Giraldo compared the brains of 20-day-old and 95-day-ole ants, identifying any cells that were
close to death. She saw no major differences with age, nor was there any difference in the location of
the dying cells, showing that age didn’t seem to affect specific brain functions. Ants and other insects
have structures in their brains called mushroom bodies, which are important for processing
information, learning and memory. She also wanted to see if aging affects the density of synaptic
complexes within these structures – regions where neurons come together. Again, the answer was no.
what was more, he old ants didn’t experience any drop in the levels of either serotonin or dopamine –
brain chemicals whose decline often coincides with aging. In humans, for example, a decrease in
serotonin has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease.

‘This is the first time anyone has looked at both behavioral and neural changes in these ants so
thoroughly,’ says Giraldo, who recently published the findings in the Proceeding of the Royal Society
B. Scientists have looked at some similar aspects in bees, but the results of recent bee studies were
mixed – some studies showed age-related declines, which biologists call senescence, and others didn’t.
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‘For now, the study raises more questions than it answers,’ Giraldo says, ‘including how P. dentata
stays in such good shape.’

Also, if the ants don’t deteriorate with age, why do they die at all? Out in the wild, the ants probably
don’t live for a full 140 days thanks to predators, disease and just being in an environment that’s much
harsher than the comforts of the lab. ‘The lucky ants that do live into old age may suffer a steep decline
just before dying,’ Giraldo says, but she can’t say for sure because her study wasn’t designed to follow
an ant’s final moments.

‘It will be important to extend these findings to other species of social insects,’ says Gene E. Robinson,
an entomologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This ant might be unique, or it
might represent a broader pattern among other social bugs with possible clues to the science of aging in
larger animals. Either way, it seems that for these ants, age really doesn’t matter.

Questions 1-8
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Ysabel Giraldo’s research

Focused on a total of 1………………………….. different age groups of ants, analyzing

Behaviour:

• how well ants looked after their 2 …………………………..

• their ability to locate 3………………………… using a scent trail
• the effect that 4………………………….. had on them
• how 5…………………………. They attacked prey

Brains:
• comparison between age and the 6…………………………… of dying cells in the brains of ants
• condition of synaptic complexes (areas in which 7…………………………… meet) in the brain’s
‘mushroom bodies’
• level of two 8………………………….. in the brain associated with ageing

Questions 9-13
Do the following statements agree with the information give in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. Pheidole dentata ants are the only known animals which remain active for almost their whole lives.
10. Ysabel Giraldo was the first person to study Pheidole dentata ants using precise data about the
insects’ ages.
11. The ants in Giraldo’s experiments behaved as she had predicted that they would.
12. The recent studies of bees used different methods of measuring age-related decline.
13. Pheidole dentata ants kept in laboratory conditions tend to live longer lives.
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CAMBRIDGE 15 – TEST 1 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage below.

Nutmeg – a valuable spice

The nutmeg tree, Myristica fragrans, is a large evergreen tree native to Southeast Asia. Until the late
18th century, it only grew in one place in the world: a small group of islands in the Banda Sea, part of
the Moluccas – or Spice Islands – in northeastern Indonesia. The tree is thickly branched with dense
foliage of tough, dark green oval leaves, and produces small, yellow, bell-shaped flowers and pale
yellow pear-shaped fruits. The fruit is encased in a flesh husk. When the fruit is ripe, this husk splits
into two halves along a ridge running the length of the fruit. Inside is a purple-brown shiny seed, 2-3
cm long by about 2 cm across, surrounded by a lacy red or crimson covering called an ‘aril’. These are
the sources of the two spices nutmeg and mace, the former being produced from the dried seed and the
latter from the aril.

Nutmeg was a highly prized and costly ingredient in European cuisine in the Middle Ages, and was
used as a flavouring, medicinal, and preservative agent. Throughout this period, the Arabs were the
exclusive importers of the spice to Europe. They sold nutmeg for high prices to merchants based in
Venice, but they never revealed the exact location of the source of this extremely valuable commodity.
The Arab-Venetian dominance of the trade finally ended in 1512, when the Portuguese reached the
Banda Islands and began exploiting its precious resources.

Always in danger of competition from neighbouring Spain, the Portuguese began subcontracting their
spice distribution to Dutch traders. Profits began to flow into the Netherlands, and the Dutch
commercial fleet swiftly grew into one of the largest in the world. The Dutch quietly gained control of
most of the shipping and trading of spices in Northern Europe. Then, in 1580, Portugal fell under
Spanish rule, and by the end of the 16th century the Dutch found themselves locked out of the market.
As prices for pepper, nutmeg, and other spices soared across Europe, they decided to fight back.

In 1602, Dutch merchants founded the VOC, a trading corporation better known as the Dutch East
India Company. By 1617, the VOC was the richest commercial operation in the world. The company
had 50,000 employees worldwide, with a private army of 30,000 men and a fleet of 200 ships. At the
same time, thousands of people across Europe were dying of the plague, a highly contagious and
deadly disease. Doctors were desperate for a way to stop the spread of this disease, and they decided
nutmeg held the cure. Everybody wanted nutmeg, and many were willing to spare no expense to have
it. Nutmeg bought for a few pennies in Indonesia could be sold for 68,000 times its original cost on the
streets of London. The only problem was the short supply. And that’s where the Dutch found their
opportunity.

The Banda Islands were ruled by local sultans who insisted on maintaining a neutral trading policy
towards foreign powers. This allowed them to avoid the presence of Portuguese or Spanish troops on
their soil, but it also left them unprotected from other invaders. In 1621, the Dutch arrived and took
over. Once securely in control of the Bandas, the Dutch went to work protecting their new investment.
They concentrated all nutmeg production into a few easily guarded areas, uprooting and destroying any
trees outside the plantation zones. Anyone caught growing a nutmeg seedling or carrying seeds without
the proper authority was severely punished. In addition, all exported nutmeg was covered with lime to
make sure there was no chance a fertile seed which could be grown elsewhere would leave the islands.
There was only one obstacle to Dutch domination. One of the Banda Islands, a sliver of land called
Run, only 3 km long by less than 1 km wide, was under the control of the British. After decades of
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fighting for control of this tiny island, the Dutch and British arrived at a compromise settlement, the
Treaty of Breda, in 1667. Intent on securing their hold over every nutmeg-producing island, the Dutch
offered a trade: if the British would give them the island of Run, they would in turn give Britain a
distant and much less valuable island in North America. The British agreed. That other island was
Manhattan, which is how New Amsterdam became New York. The Dutch now had a monopoly over
the nutmeg trade which would last for another century.

Then, in 1770, a Frenchman named Pierre Poivre successfully smuggled nutmeg plants to safety in
Mauritius, an island off the coast of Africa. Some of these were later exported to the Caribbean where
they thrived, especially on the island of Grenada. Next, in 1778, a volcanic eruption in the Banda
region caused a tsunami that wiped out half the nutmeg groves. Finally, in 1809, the British returned to
Indonesia and seized the Banda Islands by force. They returned the islands to the Dutch in 1817, but
not before transplanting hundreds of nutmeg seedlings to plantations in several locations across
southern Asia. The Dutch nutmeg monopoly was over.

Today, nutmeg is grown in Indonesia, the Caribbean, India, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Sri
Lanka, and world nutmeg production is estimated to average between 10,000 and 12,000 tonnes per
year.

Questions 1-4
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

The nutmeg tree and fruit

● the leaves of the tree are 1……………………. in shape

● the 2……………………. surrounds the fruit and breaks open when the fruit is ripe
● the 3……………………. is used to produce the spice nutmeg
● the covering known as the aril is used to produce 4……………………..
● the tree has yellow flowers and fruit

Questions 5-7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 5-7 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

5. In the Middle Ages, most Europeans knew where nutmeg was grown.
6. The VOC was the world’s first major trading company.
7. Following the Treaty of Breda, the Dutch had control of all the islands where nutmeg grew.

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Questions 8-13
Complete the table below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Middle Ages Nutmeg was brought to Europe by the 8……………

16th century European nations took control of the nutmeg trade
17th century Demand for nutmeg grew, as it was believed to be effective against the disease
known as the 9……………

The Dutch
– took control of the Banda Islands
– restricted nutmeg production to a few areas
– put 10…………… on nutmeg to avoid it being cultivated outside the islands
– finally obtained the island of 11…………… from the British
Late 18th century 1770 – nutmeg plants were secretly taken to 12……………
1778 – half the Banda Islands’ nutmeg plantations were destroyed by a
13……………

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CAMBRIDGE 15 – TEST 2 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage below.

Could urban engineers learn from dance?

A. The way we travel around cities has a major impact on whether they are sustainable. Transportation
is estimated to account for 30% of energy consumption in most of the world’s most developed nations,
so lowering the need for energy-using vehicles is essential for decreasing the environmental impact of
mobility. But as more and more people move to cities, it is important to think about other kinds of
sustainable travel too. The ways we travel affect our physical and mental health, our social lives, our
access to work and culture, and the air we breathe. Engineers are tasked with changing how we travel
round cities through urban design, but the engineering industry still works on the assumptions that led
to the creation of the energy-consuming transport systems we have now: the emphasis placed solely on
efficiency, speed, and quantitative data. We need radical changes, to make it healthier, more enjoyable,
and less environmentally damaging to travel around cities.

B. Dance might hold some of the answers. That is not to suggest everyone should dance their way to
work, however healthy and happy it might make us, but rather that the techniques used by
choreographers to experiment with and design movement in dance could provide engineers with tools
to stimulate new ideas in city-making. Richard Sennett, an influential urbanist and sociologist who has
transformed ideas about the way cities are made, argues that urban design has suffered from a
separation between mind and body since the introduction of the architectural blueprint.

C. Whereas medieval builders improvised and adapted construction through their intimate knowledge
of materials and personal experience of the conditions on a site, building designs are now conceived
and stored in media technologies that detach the designer from the physical and social realities they are
creating. While the design practices created by these new technologies are essential for managing the
technical complexity of the modern city, they have the drawback of simplifying reality in the process.

D. To illustrate, Sennett discusses the Peachtree Center in Atlanta, USA, a development typical of the
modernist approach to urban planning prevalent in the 1970s. Peachtree created a grid of streets and
towers intended as a new pedestrian-friendly downtown for Atlanta. According to Sennett, this failed
because its designers had invested too much faith in computer-aided design to tell them how it would
operate. They failed to take into account that purpose-built street cafés could not operate in the hot sun
without the protective awnings common in older buildings, and would need energy-consuming air
conditioning instead, or that its giant car park would feel so unwelcoming that it would put people off
getting out of their cars. What seems entirely predictable and controllable on screen has unexpected
results when translated into reality.

E. The same is true in transport engineering, which uses models to predict and shape the way people
move through the city. Again, these models are necessary, but they are built on specific world views in
which certain forms of efficiency and safety are considered and other experience of the city ignored.
Designs that seem logical in models appear counter-intuitive in the actual experience of their users.
The guard rails that will be familiar to anyone who has attempted to cross a British road, for example,
were an engineering solution to pedestrian safety based on models that prioritise the smooth flow of
traffic. On wide major roads, they often guide pedestrians to specific crossing points and slow down
their progress across the road by using staggered access points divide the crossing into two – one for
each carriageway. In doing so they make crossings feel longer, introducing psychological barriers
greatly impacting those that are the least mobile, and encouraging others to make dangerous crossings
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to get around the guard rails. These barriers don’t just make it harder to cross the road: they divide
communities and decrease opportunities for healthy transport. As a result, many are now being
removed, causing disruption, cost, and waste.

F. If their designers had had the tools to think with their bodies – like dancers – and imagine how these
barriers would feel, there might have been a better solution. In order to bring about fundamental
changes to the ways we use our cities, engineering will need to develop a richer understanding of why
people move in certain ways, and how this movement affects them. Choreography may not seem an
obvious choice for tackling this problem. Yet it shares with engineering the aim of designing patterns
of movement within limitations of space. It is an art form developed almost entirely by trying out ideas
with the body, and gaining instant feedback on how the results feel. Choreographers have deep
understanding of the psychological, aesthetic, and physical implications of different ways of moving.

G. Observing the choreographer Wayne McGregor, cognitive scientist David Kirsh described how he
‘thinks with the body’, Kirsh argues that by using the body to simulate outcomes, McGregor is able to
imagine solutions that would not be possible using purely abstract thought. This kind of physical
knowledge is valued in many areas of expertise, but currently has no place in formal engineering
design processes. A suggested method for transport engineers is to improvise design solutions and
instant feedback about how they would work from their own experience of them, or model designs at
full scale in the way choreographers experiment with groups of dancers. Above all, perhaps, they
might learn to design for emotional as well as functional effects.

Questions 1-6
Reading Passage has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?

1. reference to an appealing way of using dance that the writer is not proposing
2. an example of a contrast between past and present approaches to building
3. mention of an objective of both dance and engineering
4. reference to an unforeseen problem arising from ignoring the climate
5. why some measures intended to help people are being reversed
6. reference to how transport has an impact on human lives

Questions 7-13
Complete the summary below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Guard rails

Guard rails were introduced on British roads to improve the 7…………………… of pedestrians,
while ensuring that the movement of 8……………………. is not disrupted. Pedestrians are led to
access points, and encouraged to cross one 9…………………….. at a time.

An unintended effect is to create psychological difficulties in crossing the road, particularly for less
10………………….. people. Another result is that some people cross the road in a
11……………………. way. The guard rails separate 12……………………., and make it more
difficult to introduce forms of transport that are 13…………………….

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CAMBRIDGE 15 – TEST 3 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage below.

Henry Moore (1898-1986)

The British sculptor Henry Moore was a leading figure in the 20th-century art world

Henry Moore was born in Castleford, a small town near Leeds in the north of England. He was the
seventh child of Raymond Moore and his wife Mary Baker. He studied at Castleford Grammar School
from 1909 to 1915, where his early interest in art was encouraged by his teacher Alice Gostick. After
leaving school, Moore hoped to become a sculptor, but instead he complied with his father’s wish that
he train as a schoolteacher. He had to abandon his training in 1917 when he was sent to France to fight
in the First World War.

After the war, Moore enrolled at the Leeds School of Art, where he studied for two years. In his first
year, he spent most of his time drawing. Although he wanted to study sculpture, no teacher was
appointed until his second year. At the end of that year, he passed the sculpture examination and was
awarded a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London. In September 1921, he moved to London
and began three years of advanced study in sculpture.

Alongside the instruction he received at the Royal College, Moore visited many of the London
museums, particularly the British Museum, which had a wide-ranging collection of ancient sculpture.
During these visits, he discovered the power and beauty of ancient Egyptian and African sculpture. As
he became increasingly interested in these ‘primitive’ forms of art, he turned away from European
sculptural traditions.

After graduating, Moore spent the first six months of 1925 travelling in France. When he visited the
Trocadero Museum in Paris, he was impressed by a cast of a Mayan* sculpture of the rain spirit. It was
a male reclining figure with its knees drawn up together, and its head at a right angle to its body.
Moore became fascinated with this stone sculpture, which he thought had a power and originality that
no other stone sculpture possessed. He himself started carving a variety of subjects in stone, including
depiction of reclining women, mother-and-child groups, and masks.

Moore’s exceptional talent soon gained recognition, and in 1926 he started work as a sculpture
instructor at the Royal College. In 1933, he became a member of a group of young artists called Unit
One. The aim of the group was to convince the English public of the merits of the emerging
international movement in modern art and architecture.

Around this time, Moore moved away from the human figure to experiment with abstract shapes. In
1931, he held an exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in London. His work was enthusiastically
welcomed by fellow sculptors, but the reviews in the press were extremely negative and turned Moore
into a notorious figure. There were calls for his resignation from the Royal College, and the following
year, when his contract expired, he left to start a sculpture department at the Chelsea School of Art in
London.

Throughout the 1930s, Moore did not show any inclination to please the British public. He became
interested in the paintings of the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, whose work inspired him to distort the
human body in a radical way. At times, he seemed to abandon the human figure altogether. The pages

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of his sketchbooks from this period show his ideas for abstract sculptures that bore little resemblance
to the human form.

In 1940, during the Second World War, Moore stopped teaching at the Chelsea School and moved to a
farmhouse about 20 miles north of London. A shortage of materials forced him to focus on drawing.
He did numerous small sketches of Londoners, later turning these ideas into large coloured drawings in
his studio. In 1942, he returned to Castleford to make a series of sketches of the miners who worked
there.

In 1944, Harlow, a town near London, offered Moore a commission for a sculpture depicting a family.
The resulting work signifies a dramatic change in Moore’s style, away from the experimentation of the
1930s towards a more natural and humanistic subject matter. He did dozens of studies in clay for the
sculpture, and these were cast in bronze and issued in editions of seven to nine copies each. In this
way, Moore’s work became available to collectors all over the world. The boost to his income enabled
him to take on ambitious projects and start working on the scale he felt his sculpture demanded.

Critics who had begun to think that Moore had become less revolutionary were proven wrong by the
appearance, in 1950, of the first of Moore’s series of standing figures in bronze, with their harsh and
angular pierced forms and distinct impression of menace. Moore also varied his subject matter in the
1950s with such works as Warrior with Shield and Falling Warrior. These were rare examples of
Moore’s use of the male figure and owe something to his visit to Greece in 1951, when he had the
opportunity to study ancient works of art.

In his final years, Moore created the Henry Moore Foundation to promote art appreciation and to
display his work. Moore was the first modern English sculptor to achieve international critical acclaim
and he is still regarded as one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century.

*Mayan: belonging to an ancient civilisation that inhabited parts of current-day Mexico, Guatemala,
Belize, El Salvador and Honduras.

Questions 1-7
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage?
In boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1. On leaving school, Moore did what his father wanted him to do.
2. Moore began studying sculpture in his first term at the Leeds School of Art.
3. When Moore started at the Royal College of Art, its reputation for teaching sculpture was excellent.
4. Moore became aware of ancient sculpture as a result of visiting London Museums.
5. The Trocadero Museum’s Mayan sculpture attracted a lot of public interest.
6. Moore thought the Mayan sculpture was similar in certain respects to other stone sculptures.
7. The artists who belonged to Unit One wanted to make modern art and architecture more popular.

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Questions 8-13
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Moore’s career as an artist

1930s
● Moore’s exhibition at the Leicester Galleries is criticised by the press
● Moore is urged to offer his 8………………… and leave the Royal College.

1940s
● Moore turns to drawing because 9…………………. for sculpting are not readily available
● While visiting his hometown, Moore does some drawings of 10………………….
● Moore is employed to produce a sculpture of a 11…………………
● 12………………. start to buy Moore’s work
● Moore’s increased 13…………………. makes it possible for him to do more ambitious sculptures

1950s
● Moore’s series of bronze figures marks a further change in his style

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CAMBRIDGE 15 – TEST 4 – PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage below.

The return of the huarango

The arid valleys of southern Peru are welcoming the return of a native plant

The south coast of Peru is a narrow, 2,000-kilometre-long strip of desert squeezed between the Andes
and the Pacific Ocean. It is also one of the most fragile ecosystems on Earth. It hardly ever rains there,
and the only year-round source of water is located tens of metres below the surface. This is why the
huarango tree is so suited to life there: it has the longest roots of any tree in the world. They stretch
down 50-80 metres and, as well as sucking up water for the tree, they bring it into the higher subsoil,
creating a water source for other plant life.

Dr David Beresford-Jones, archaeobotanist at Cambridge University, has been studying the role of the
huarango tree in landscape change in the Lower Ica Valley in southern Peru. He believes the huarango
was key to the ancient people’s diet and, because it could reach deep water sources, it allowed local
people to withstand years of drought when their other crops failed. But over the centuries huarango
trees were gradually replaced with crops. Cutting down native woodland leads to erosion, as there is
nothing to keep the soil in place. So when the huarangos go, the land turns into a desert. Nothing grows
at all in the Lower Ica Valley now.

For centuries the huarango tree was vital to the people of the neighbouring Middle Ica Valley too.
They grew vegetables under it and ate products made from its seed pods. Its leaves and bark were used
for herbal remedies, while its branches were used for charcoal for cooking and heating, and its trunk
was used to build houses. But now it is disappearing rapidly. The majority of the huarango forests in
the valley have already been cleared for fuel and agriculture – initially, these were smallholdings, but
now they’re huge farms producing crops for the international market.

‘Of the forests that were here 1,000 years ago, 99 per cent have already gone,’ says botanist Oliver
Whaley from Kew Gardens in London, who, together with ethnobotanist Dr William Milliken, is
running a pioneering project to protect and restore the rapidly disappearing habitat. In order to succeed,
Whaley needs to get the local people on board, and that has meant overcoming local prejudices.
‘Increasingly aspirational communities think that if you plant food trees in your home or street, it
shows you are poor, and still need to grow your own food,’ he says. In order to stop the Middle Ica
Valley going the same way as the Lower Ica Valley, Whaley is encouraging locals to love the
huarangos again. ‘It’s a process of cultural resuscitation,’ he says. He has already set up a huarango
festival to reinstate a sense of pride in their eco-heritage, and has helped local schoolchildren plant
thousands of trees.

‘In order to get people interested in habitat restoration, you need to plant a tree that is useful to them,’
says Whaley. So, he has been working with local families to attempt to create a sustainable income
from the huarangos by turning their products into foodstuffs. ‘Boil up the beans and you get this thick
brown syrup like molasses. You can also use it in drinks, soups or stews.’ The pods can be ground into
flour to make cakes, and the seeds roasted into a sweet, chocolatey ‘coffee’. ‘It’s packed full of
vitamins and minerals,’ Whaley says.

And some farmers are already planting huarangos. Alberto Benevides, owner of Ica Valley’s only
certified organic farm, which Whaley helped set up, has been planting the tree for 13 years. He
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produces syrup and flour, and sells these products at an organic farmers’ market in Lima. His farm is
relatively small and doesn’t yet provide him with enough to live on, but he hopes this will change.
‘The organic market is growing rapidly in Peru,’ Benevides says. ‘I am investing in the future.’

But even if Whaley can convince the local people to fall in love with the huarango again, there is still
the threat of the larger farms. Some of these cut across the forests and break up the corridors that allow
the essential movement of mammals, birds and pollen up and down the narrow forest strip. In the hope
of counteracting this, he’s persuading farmers to let him plant forest corridors on their land. He
believes the extra woodland will also benefit the farms by reducing their water usage through a
lowering of evaporation and providing a refuge for bio-control insects.

‘If we can record biodiversity and see how it all works, then we’re in a good position to move on from
there. Desert habitats can reduce down to very little,’ Whaley explains. ‘It’s not like a rainforest that
needs to have this huge expanse. Life has always been confined to corridors and islands here. If you
just have a few trees left, the population can grow up quickly because it’s used to exploiting water
when it arrives.’ He sees his project as a model that has the potential to be rolled out across other arid
areas around the world. ‘If we can do it here, in the most fragile system on Earth, then that’s a real
message of hope for lots of places, including Africa, where there is drought and they just can’t afford
to wait for rain.’

Questions 1-5
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

The importance of the huarango tree

– its roots can extend as far as 80 metres into the soil

– can access 1………………… deep below the surface

– was a crucial part of local inhabitants’ 2………………… a long time ago

– helped people to survive periods of 3…………………..

– prevents 4………………… of the soil

– prevents land from becoming a 5…………………

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Questions 6-8
Complete the table below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Traditional uses of the huarango tree

Part of tree Traditional use
6……………….. Fuel
7………………. and ………………. Medicine
8……………… construction

Questions 9-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. Local families have told Whaley about some traditional uses of huarango products.
10. Farmer Alberto Benevides is now making a good profit from growing huarangos.
11. Whaley needs the co-operation of farmers to help preserve the area’s wildlife.
12. For Whaley’s project to succeed, it needs to be extended over a very large area.
13. Whaley has plans to go to Africa to set up a similar project.

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