READING
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on
Reading Passage 1 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
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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 smuggled 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 magnificent silks in the process.
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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.
Write your answers in boxes 1-9 on your answer sheet.
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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
production
Questions 10-13
Do the following statements agree with the information in the Reading Passage?
In boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet, write
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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.
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-21 which are based on
Reading Passage 2 below.
Great Migrations
Animal migration, however it is defined, is far more than just the movement of
animals. It can loosely be described as travel that takes place at regular intervals
- often in an annual cycle - that may involve many members of a species, and is
rewarded only after a long journey. It suggests inherited instinct. The biologist
Hugh Dingle has identified five characteristics that apply, in varying degrees and
combinations, to all migrations. They are prolonged movements that carry
animals outside familiar habitats; they tend to be linear, not zigzaggy; they
involve special behaviours concerning preparation (such as overfeeding) and
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arrival; they demand special allocations of energy. And one more: migrating
animals maintain an intense attentiveness to the greater mission, which keeps
them undistracted by temptations and undeterred by challenges that would turn
other animals aside.
An arctic tern, on its 20,000 km flight from the extreme south of South America to
the Arctic circle, will take no notice of a nice smelly herring offered from a bird-
watcher's boat along the way. While local gulls will dive voraciously for such
handouts, the tern flies on. Why? The arctic tern resists distraction because it is
driven at that moment by an instinctive sense of something we humans find
admirable: larger purpose. In other words, it is determined to reach its
destination. The bird senses that it can eat, rest and mate later. Right now it is
totally focused on the journey; its undivided intent is arrival.
Reaching some gravelly coastline in the Arctic, upon which other arctic terns
have converged, will serve its larger purpose as shaped by evolution: finding a
place, a time, and a set of circumstances in which it can successfully hatch and
rear offspring.
But migration is a complex issue, and biologists define it differently, depending in
part on what sorts of animals they study. Joe! Berger, of the University of
Montana, who works on the American pronghorn and other large terrestrial
mammals, prefers what he calls a simple, practical definition suited to his beasts:
'movements from a seasonal home area away to another home area and back
again'. Generally the reason for such seasonal back-and-forth movement is to seek
resources that aren't available within a single area year-round.
But daily vertical movements by zooplankton in the ocean - upward by night to
seek food, downward by day to escape predators - can also be considered
migration. So can the movement of aphids when, having depleted the young
leaves on one food plant, their offspring then fly onward to a different host plant,
with no one aphid ever returning to where it started.
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Dingle is an evolutionary biologist who studies insects. His definition is more
intricate than Berger's, citing those five features that distinguish migration from
other forms of movement. They allow for the fact that, for example, aphids will
become sensitive to blue light (from the sky) when it's time for take off on their
big journey, and sensitive to yellow light (reflected from tender young leaves)
when it's appropriate to land. Birds will fatten themselves with heavy feeding in
advance of a long migrational flight. The value of his definition, Dingle argues, is
that it focuses attention on what the phenomenon of wildebeest migration shares
with the phenomenon of the aphids, and therefore helps guide researchers
towards understanding how evolution has produced them all.
Human behaviour, however, is having a detrimental impact on animal migration.
The pronghorn, which resembles an antelope, though they are unrelated, is the
fastest land mammal of the New World. One population, which spends the
summer in the mountainous Grand Teton National Park of the western USA,
follows a narrow route from its summer range in the mountains, across a river,
and down onto the plains. Here they wait out the frozen months, feeding mainly
on sagebrush blown clear of snow. These pronghorn are notable for the
invariance of their migration route and the severity of its constriction at three
bottlenecks. If they can't pass through each of the three during their spring
migration, they can't reach their bounty of summer grazing; if they can't pass
through again in autumn, escaping south onto those windblown plains, they are
likely to die trying to overwinter in the deep snow. Pronghorn, dependent on
distance vision and speed to keep safe from predators, traverse high, open
shoulders of land, where they can see and run. At one of the bottlenecks, forested
hills rise to form a V, leaving a corridor of open ground only about 150 metres
wide, filled with private homes. Increasing development is leading toward a crisis
for the pronghorn, threatening to choke off their passageway.
Conservation scientists, along with some biologists and land managers within the
USA's National Park Service and other agencies, are now working to preserve
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migrational behaviours, not just species and habitats. A National Forest has
recognised the path of the pronghorn, much of which passes across its land, as a
protected migration corridor. But neither the Forest Service nor the Park Service
can control what happens on private land at a bottleneck. And with certain other
migrating species, the challenge is complicated further - by vastly greater
distances traversed, more jurisdictions, more borders, more dangers along the
way. We will require wisdom and resoluteness to ensure that migrating species
can continue their journeying a while longer.
Questions 14-18
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading
Passage?
In boxes 14-18 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
14 Local gulls and migrating arctic terns behave in the same way when offered
food.
15 Experts’ definitions of migration tend to vary according to their area of study.
16 Very few experts agree that the movement of aphids can be considered
migration.
17 Aphids’ journeys are affected by changes in the light that they perceive.
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18 Dingles aim is to distinguish between the migratory behaviours of different
species.
Questions 19-22
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-G, below.
Write the correct letter, A-G. in boxes 19-22 on your answer sheet
A be discouraged by difficulties.
B travel on open land where they can look out for
predators.
C eat more than they need for immediate purposes.
D be repeated daily. '
E ignore distractions.
F be governed by the availability of water.
G follow a straight line.
19 According to Dingle, migratory routes are likely to
20 To prepare for migration, animals are likely to
21 During migration, animals are unlikely to
22 Arctic terns illustrate migrating animals’ ability to
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Questions 23-26
Complete the summary below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.
The migration of pronghorns
Pronghorns rely on their eyesight and 23 _________ to avoid predators. One
particular population’s summer habitat is a national park, and their winter home
is on the 24 _________ where they go to avoid the danger presented by the snow
at that time of year
However, their route between these two areas contains three 25 _________
One problem is the construction of new homes in a narrow 26 _________ of land
on the pronghorns’ route.
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