Tổng hợp topic Social issues (Racial matter, Unemployment, Women’s issue) IELTS READING (PDF)

A Workaholic Economy

For the first century or so of the industrial revolution, increased productivity led to decreases in working hours. Employees who had been putting in 12-hour days, six days a week, found their time on the job shrinking to 10 hours daily, then finally to eight hours, five days a week. Only a generation ago social planners worried about what people would do with all this new-found free time. In the US, at least it seems they need not have bothered.

Although the output per hour of work has more than doubled since 1945, leisure seems reserved largely for the unemployed and underemployed. Those who work full-time spend as much time on the job as they did at the end of World War II. In fact, working hours have increased noticeably since 1970 — perhaps because real wages have stagnated since that year. Bookstores now abound with manuals describing how to manage time and cope with stress.

There are several reasons for lost leisure. Since 1979, companies have responded to improvements in the business climate by having employees work overtime rather than by hiring extra personnel, says economist Juliet B. Schor of Harvard University. Indeed, the current economic recovery has gained a certain amount of notoriety for its “jobless” nature: increased production has been almost entirely decoupled from employment. Some firms are even downsizing as their profits climb. “All things being equal, we’d be better off spreading around the work,” observes labour economist Ronald G. Ehrenberg of Cornell University.

Yet a host of factors pushes employers to hire fewer workers for more hours and at the same time compels workers to spend more time on the job. Most of those incentives involve what Ehrenberg calls the structure of compensation: quirks in the way salaries and benefits are organised that make it more profitable to ask 40 employees to labour an extra hour each than to hire one more worker to do the same 40-hour job.

Professional and managerial employees supply the most obvious lesson along these lines. Once people are on salary, their cost to a firm is the same whether they spend 35 hours a week in the office or 70. Diminishing returns may eventually set in as overworked employees lose efficiency or leave for more arable pastures. But in the short run, the employer’s incentive is clear. Even hourly employees receive benefits – such as pension contributions and medical insurance – that are not tied to the number of hours they work. Therefore, it is more profitable for employers to work their existing employees harder.

For all that employees complain about long hours, they too have reasons not to trade money for leisure. “People who work reduced hours pay a huge penalty in career terms,” Schor maintains. “It’s taken as a negative signal’ about their commitment to the firm.’ [Lotte] Bailyn [of Massachusetts Institute of Technology] adds that many corporate managers find it difficult to measure the contribution of their underlings to a firm’s well-being, so they use the number of hours worked as a proxy for output. “Employees know this,” she says, and they adjust their behaviour accordingly.

“Although the image of the good worker is the one whose life belongs to the company,” Bailyn says, “it doesn’t fit the facts.’ She cites both quantitative and qualitative studies that show increased productivity for part-time workers: they make better use of the time they have and they are less likely to succumb to fatigue in stressful jobs. Companies that employ more workers for less time also gain from the resulting redundancy, she asserts. “The extra people can cover the contingencies that you know are going to happen, such as when crises take people away from the workplace.” Positive experiences with reduced hours have begun to change the more-is-better culture at some companies, Schor reports.

Larger firms, in particular, appear to be more willing to experiment with flexible working arrangements…

It may take even more than changes in the financial and cultural structures of employment for workers successfully to trade increased productivity and money for leisure time, Schor contends. She says the U.S. market for goods has become skewed by the assumption of full-time, two-career households. Automobile makers no longer manufacture cheap models, and developers do not build the tiny bungalows that served the first postwar generation of home buyers. Not even the humblest household object is made without a microprocessor. As Schor notes, the situation is a curious inversion of the “appropriate technology” vision that designers have had for developing countries: U.S. goods are appropriate only for high incomes and long hours.

Paul Walluh

Questions 27-32
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in reading passage 4? In boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet write:

YES if the statement agrees with the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

Example: During the industrial revolution, people worked harder. Answer: NOT GIVEN

27. Today, employees are facing a reduction in working hours.
28. Social planners have been consulted about US employment figures.
29. Salaries have not risen significantly since the 1970s.
30. The economic recovery created more jobs.
31. Bailyn’s research shows that part-time employees work more efficiently.
32. Increased leisure time would benefit two-career households.

Questions 33-34
Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 33 and 34 on your answer sheet.

33. Bailyn argues that it is better for a company to employ more workers because
A. it is easy to make excess staff redundant.
B. crises occur if you are under-staffed.
C. people are available to substitute for absent staff.
D. they can project a positive image at work.

34. Schor thinks it will be difficult for workers in the US to reduce their working hours because
A. they would not be able to afford cars or homes.
B. employers are offering high incomes for long hours.
C. the future is dependent on technological advances.
D. they do not wish to return to the humble post-war era.

Questions 35-38
The writer mentions a number of factors that have resulted, in employees working longer hours. Which FOUR of the following factors are mentioned? Write your answers (A-H) in boxes 35-38 on your answer sheet.

List of Factors
A. Books are available to help employees cope with stress.
B. Extra work is offered to existing employees.
C. Increased production has led to joblessness.
D. Benefits and hours spent on the job are not linked.
E. Overworked employees require longer to do their work.
F. Longer hours indicate a greater commitment to the firm.
G. Managers estimate staff productivity in terms of hours worked.
H. Employees value a career more than a family.

Why some women cross the finish line ahead of men

RECRUITMENT
The course is tougher but women are staying the distance - reports Andrew Crisp.

A. Women who apply for jobs in middle or senior management have a higher success rate than men, according to an employment survey. But of course, far fewer of them apply for these positions. The study, by recruitment consultants NB Selection, shows that while one in six men who appear on interview shortlists get jobs, the figure rises to one in four for women.

B. The study concentrated on applications for management positions in the $45,000 to $110,000 salary range and found that women are more successful than men in both the private and public sectors Dr Elisabeth Marx from London-based NB Selection described the findings as encouraging for women, in that they send a positive message to them to apply for interesting management positions. But she added, "We should not lose sight of the fact that significantly fewer women apply for senior positions in comparison with men."

C. Reasons for higher success rates among women are difficult to isolate. One explanation suggested is that if a woman candidate manages to get on a shortlist, then she has probably already proved herself to be an exceptional candidate. Dr Marx said that when women apply for positions they tend to be better qualified than their male counterparts but are more selective and conservative in their job search. Women tend to research thoroughly before applying for positions or attending interviews. Men, on the other hand, seem to rely on their ability to sell themselves and to convince employers that any shortcomings they have will not prevent them from doing a good job.

D. Managerial and executive progress made by women is confirmed by the annual survey of boards of directors carried out by Korn / Ferry /Carre/ Orban International. This year the survey shows a doubling of the number of women serving as non-executive directors compared with the previous year. However, progress remains painfully slow and there were still only 18 posts filled by women out of a total of 354 non¬executive positions surveyed. Hilary Sears, a partner with Korn/Ferry, said, "Women have raised the level of grades we are employed in but we have still not broken through barriers to the top."

E. In Europe, a recent feature of corporate life in the recession has been the de-layering of management structures. Sears said that this has halted progress for women in as much as de-layering has taken place either where women are working or in layers they aspire to. Sears also noted a positive trend from the recession, which has been the growing number of women who have started up on their own.

F. In business as a whole, there are a number of factors encouraging the prospect of greater equality in the workforce. Demographic trends suggest that the number of women going into employment is steadily increasing. In addition, a far greater number of women are now passing through higher education, making them better qualified to move into management positions.

G. Organisations such as the European Women's Management Development Network provide a range of opportunities for women to enhance their skills and contacts. Through a series of both pan-European and national workshops and conferences the barriers to women in employment are being broken down. However, Ariane Berthoin Antal, director of the International Institute for Organisational Change of Archamps in France, said that there is only anecdotal evidence of changes in recruitment patterns. And she said, "It’s still so hard for women to even get on to shortlists -there are so many hurdles and barriers.' Antal agreed that there have been some positive signs but said, "Until there is a belief among employers until they value the difference, nothing will change."

Questions 14-19
Reading passage 2 has 7 paragraphs (A-G). State which paragraph discusses each of the points below. Write the appropriate letter (A-G).

Example: The salary range studied in the NB Selection survey. Answer: B

14. The drawbacks of current company restructuring patterns.
15. Associations that provide support for professional women.
16. The success rate of female job applicants for management positions.
17. Male and female approaches to job applications.
18. Reasons why more women are being employed in the business sector.
19. The improvement in female numbers on company management structures.

Questions 20 – 23
The author makes reference to three consultants in the Reading Passage. Which of the list of points below do these consultants make? In boxes 20 - 23, write:

M if the point is made by Dr Marx
S if the point is made by Hilary Sears
A if the point is made by Ariane Berthoin Antal

20. Selection procedures do not favour women.
21. The number of female-run businesses is increasing.
22. Male applicants exceed female applicants for top posts.
23. Women hold higher positions now than they used to.

Questions 24 - 27
Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS answer the following questions. Write you answers in boxes 24 - 27 on your answer sheet.

24. What change has there been in the number of women in top management positions detailed in the annual survey?
25. What aspect of company structuring has disadvantaged women?
26. What information tells us that more women are working nowadays?
27. Which group of people should change their attitude to recruitment?

The discovery that language can be a barrier to communication is quickly made by all who travel, study, govern or sell. Whether the activity is tourism, research, government, policing, business, or data dissemination, the lack of a common language can severely impede progress or can halt it altogether. 'Common language' here usually means a foreign language, but the same point applies in principle to any encounter with unfamiliar dialects or styles within a single language. 'They don't talk the same language' has a major metaphorical meaning alongside its literal one.

Although communication problems of this kind must happen thousands of times each day, very few become public knowledge. Publicity comes only when a failure to communicate has major consequences, such as strikes, lost orders, legal problems, or fatal accidents — even, at times, war. One reported instance of communication failure took place in 1970, when several Americans ate a species of poisonous mushroom. No remedy was known, and two of the people died within days. A radio report of the case was heard by a chemist who knew of a treatment that had been successfully used in 1959 and published in 1963. Why had the American doctors not heard of it seven years later? Presumably, because the report of the treatment had been published only in journals written in European languages other than English.

Several comparable cases have been reported. But isolated examples do not give an impression of the size of the problem — something that can come only from studies of the use or avoidance of foreign-language materials and contacts in different communicative situations. In the English-speaking scientific world, for example, surveys of books and documents consulted in libraries and other information agencies have shown that very little foreign-language material is ever consulted. Library requests in the field of science and technology showed that only 13 per cent were for foreign language periodicals. Studies of the sources cited in publications lead to a similar conclusion: the use of foreign-language sources is often found to be as low as 10 per cent.

The language barrier presents itself in stark form to firms who wish to market their products in other countries. British industry, in particular, has in recent decades often been criticised for its linguistic insularity - for its assumption that foreign buyers will be happy to communicate in English, and that awareness of other languages is not therefore a priority. In the 1960s, over two-thirds of British firms dealing with non-English-speaking customers were using English for outgoing correspondence; many had their sales literature only in English; and as many as 40 per cent employed no-one able to communicate in the customers' languages. A similar problem was identified in other English-speaking countries, notably the USA, Australia and New Zealand. And non-English-speaking countries were by no means exempt - although the widespread use of English as an alternative language made them less open to the charge of insularity.

The criticism and publicity given to this problem since the 1960s seems to have greatly improved the situation. Industrial training schemes have promoted an increase in linguistic and cultural awareness. Many firms now have their own translation services; to take just one example in Britain, Rowntree Mackintosh now publish their documents in six languages (English, French, German, Dutch, Italian and Xhosa). Some firms run part-time language courses in the languages of the countries with which they are most involved; some produce their own technical glossaries, to ensure consistency when material is being translated. It is now much more readily appreciated that marketing efforts can be delayed, damaged, or disrupted by a failure to take account of the linguistic needs of the customer.

The changes in awareness have been most marked in English-speaking countries, where the realisation has gradually dawned that by no means everyone in the world knows English well enough to negotiate in it. This is especially a problem when English is not an official language of public administration, as in most parts of the Far East, Russia, Eastern Europe, the Arab world, Latin America and French-speaking Africa. Even in cases where foreign customers can speak English quite well, it is often forgotten that they may not be able to understand it to the required level - bearing in mind the regional and social variation which permeates speech and which can cause major problems of listening comprehension. In securing understanding, how 'we' speak to 'them' is just as important, it appears, as how 'they' speak to 'us'.

Questions 14-17
Complete each of the following statements (Questions 14-17) with words taken from Reading Passage 2. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

14. Language problems may come to the attention of the public when they have ........................... such as fatal accidents or social problems.

15. Evidence of the extent of the language barrier has been gained from ............................ of materials used by scientists such as books and periodicals.

16. An example of British linguistic insularity is the use of English for materials such as ...........................

17. An example of a part of the world where people may have difficulty in negotiating English is ........................... .

Questions 18-20
Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 18-20 on your answer sheet.

18.According to the passage, ‘They don't talk the same language' (paragraph 1), can refer to problems in...
A. understanding metaphor.
B. learning foreign languages.
C. understanding dialect or style.
D. dealing with technological change.

19. The case of the poisonous mushrooms (paragraph 2) suggests that American doctors …
A. should pay more attention to radio reports.
B. only read medical articles if they are in English.
C. are sometimes unwilling to try foreign treatments.
D. do not always communicate effectively with their patients.
20 According to the writer, the linguistic insularity of British businesses...
A. later spread to other countries.
B. had a negative effect on their business.
C. is not as bad now as it used to be in the past.
D. made non-English-speaking companies turn to other markets.

Questions 21-24
List the FOUR main ways in which British companies have tried to solve the problem of the language barrier since the 1960s. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 21-24 on your answer sheet.

21 ......................................
22 ......................................
23 ......................................
24 ......................................

Questions 25 and 26
Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 25 and 26 on your answer sheet.
25. According to the writer, English-speaking people need to be aware that...
A. some foreigners have never met an English-speaking person.
B. many foreigners have no desire to learn English.
C. foreign languages may pose a greater problem in the future.
D. English-speaking foreigners may have difficulty understanding English.

26. A suitable title for this passage would be .......
A. Overcoming the language barrier
B. How to survive an English-speaking world
C. Global understanding - the key to personal progress
D. The need for a common language

Questions 27-30
Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs A-G. From the list of headings below choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B-E. Write the appropriate numbers (i-viii) in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use them all.

List of Headings
i. A truly international environment
ii. Once a port city, always a port city
iii. Good ports make huge profits
iv. How the port changes a city's infrastructure
v. Reasons for the decline of ports
vi. Relative significance of trade and service industry
vii. Ports and harbours
viii. The demands of the oil industry

Example: Paragraph A. Answer: vii

27. Paragraph B
28. Paragraph C
29. Paragraph D
30. Paragraph E

What Is a Port City?

The port city provides a fascinating and rich understanding of the movement of people and goods around the world. We understand a port as a centre of land-sea exchange, and as a major source of livelihood and a major force for cultural mixing. But do ports all produce a range of common urban characteristics which justify classifying port cities together under a single generic label? Do they have enough in common to warrant distinguishing them from other kinds of cities?

A. A port must be distinguished from a harbour. They are two very different things. Most ports have poor harbours, and many fine harbours see few ships. Harbour is a physical concept, a shelter for ships; port is an economic concept, a centre of land-sea exchange which requires good access to a hinterland even more than a sea-linked foreland. It is landward access, which is productive of goods for export and which demands imports, that is critical. Poor harbours can be improved with breakwaters and dredging if there is a demand for a port. Madras and Colombo are examples of harbours expensively improved by enlarging, dredging and building breakwaters.

B. Port cities become industrial, financial and service centres and political capitals because of their water connections and the urban concentration which arises there and later draws to it railways, highways and air routes. Water transport means cheap access, the chief basis of all port cities. Many of the world's biggest cities, for example, London, New York, Shanghai, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Jakarta, Calcutta, Philadelphia and San Francisco began as ports - that is, with land-sea exchange as their major function - but they have since grown disproportionately in other respects so that their port functions are no longer dominant. They remain different kinds of places from non-port cities and their port functions account for that difference.

C. Port functions, more than anything else, make a city cosmopolitan. A port city is open to the world. In it races, cultures, and ideas, as well as goods from a variety of places, jostle, mix and enrich each other and the life of the city. The smell of the sea and the harbour, the sound of boat whistles or the moving tides are symbols of their multiple links with a wide world, samples of which are present in microcosm within their own urban areas.

D. Sea ports have been transformed by the advent of powered vessels, whose size and draught have increased. Many formerly important ports have become economically and physically less accessible as a result. By-passed by most of their former enriching flow of exchange, they have become cultural and economic backwaters or have acquired the character of museums of the past. Examples of these are Charleston, Salem, Bristol, Plymouth, Surat, Galle, Melaka, Soochow, and a long list of earlier prominent port cities in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.

E. Much domestic port trade has not been recorded. What evidence we have suggests that domestic trade was greater at all periods than external trade. Shanghai, for example, did most of its trade with other Chinese ports and inland cities. Calcutta traded mainly with other parts of India and so on. Most of any city's population is engaged in providing goods and services for the city itself. Trade outside the city is its basic function. But each basic worker requires food, housing, clothing and other such services. Estimates of the ratio of basic to service workers range from 1:4 to 1:8.

F. No city can be simply a port but must be involved in a variety of other activities. The port function of the city draws to it raw materials and distributes them in many other forms. Ports take advantage of the need for breaking up the bulk material where water and land transport meet and where loading and unloading costs can be minimised by refining raw materials or turning them into finished goods. The major examples here are oil refining and ore refining, which are commonly located at ports. It is not easy to draw a line around what is and is not a port function. All ports handle, unload, sort, alter, process, repack, and reship most of what they receive. A city may still be regarded as a port city when it becomes involved in a great range of functions not immediately involved with ships or docks.

G. Cities which began as ports retain the chief commercial and administrative centre of the city close to the waterfront. The centre of New York is in lower Manhattan between two river mouths, the City of London is on the Thames, Shanghai along the Bund. This proximity to water is also true of Boston, Philadelphia, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Yokohama, where the commercial, financial, and administrative centres are still grouped around their harbours even though each city has expanded into a metropolis. Even a casual visitor cannot mistake them as anything but port cities.

Questions 31-34
Look at the following descriptions of some port cities mentioned in Reading. Match the pairs of cities (A-H) listed below with the descriptions. Match the appropriate letters A-H in boxes 31-34 on your answer sheet.

NB There are more pairs of port cities than descriptions, so you will not use them all.

31. required considerable harbour development
32. began as ports but other facilities later dominated
33. lost their prominence when large ships could not be accommodated
34. maintain their business centres near the port waterfront

A. Bombay and Buenos Aires
B. Hong Kong and Salem
C. Istanbul and Jakarta
D. Madras and Colombo
E. New York and Bristol
F. Plymouth and Melaka
G. Singapore and Yokohama
H. Surat and London

Questions 35-40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 35-40 on your answer sheet, write:

YES if the statement agrees with the information
NO if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this in the passage

35. Cities cease to be port cities when other functions dominate.
36. In the past, many port cities did more trade within their own country than with overseas ports.
37. Most people in a port city are engaged in international trade and finance.
38. Ports attract many subsidiaries and independent industries.
39 Ports have to establish a common language of trade.
40. Ports often have river connections.

The Concept of Role Theory

Role set

Any individual in any situation occupies a role in relation to other people. The particular individual with whom one is concerned in the analysis of any situation is usually given the name of focal person. He has the focal role and can be regarded as sitting in the middle of a group of people, with whom he interacts in some way in that situation. This group of people is called his role set. For instance, in the family situation, an individual’s role set might be shown as in Figure 6.

The role set should include all those with whom the individual has more than trivial interactions.

Role definition
The definition of any individual’s role in any situation will be a combination of the role expectations that the members of the role set have of the focal role. These expectations are often occupationally denned, sometimes even legally so. The role definitions of lawyers and doctors are fairly clearly defined both in legal and in cultural terms. The role definitions of, say, a film star or bank manager, are also fairly clearly defined in cultural terms, too clearly perhaps. Individuals often find it hard to escape from the role that cultural traditions have defined for them. Not only with doctors or lawyers is the required role behavior so constrained that if you are in that role for long it eventually becomes part of you, part of your personality. Hence, there is some likelihood that all accountants will be alike or that all blondes are similar - they are forced that way by the expectations of their role.

It is often important that you make it clear what your particular role is at a given time. The means of doing this are called, rather obviously, role signs. The simplest of role signs is a uniform. The number of stripes on your arm or pips on your shoulder is a very precise role definition which allows you to do certain very prescribed things in certain situations. Imagine yourself questioning a stranger on a dark street at midnight without wearing the role signs of a policeman!

In social circumstances, dress has often been used as a role sign to indicate the nature and degree of formality of any gathering and occasionally the social status of people present. The current trend towards blurring these role signs in dress is probably democratic, but it also makes some people very insecure. Without role signs, who is to know who has what role?

Place is another role sign. Managers often behave very differently outside the office and in it, even to the same person. They use a change of location to indicate a change in role from, say, boss to friend. Indeed, if you wish to change your roles you must find some outward sign that you are doing so or you won’t be permitted to change - the subordinate will continue to hear you as his boss no matter how hard you try to be his friend. In very significant cases of role change, e.g. from a soldier in the ranks to officer, from bachelor to married man, the change of role has to have a very obvious sign, hence rituals. It is interesting to observe, for instance, some decline in the emphasis given to marriage rituals. This could be taken as an indication that there is no longer such a big change in role from single to married person, and therefore no need for a public change in sign.

In organizations, office signs and furniture are often used as role signs. These and other perquisites of status are often frowned upon, but they may serve a purpose as a kind of uniform in a democratic society; roles without signs often lead to confused or differing expectations of the role of the focal person.

Role ambiguity
Role ambiguity results when there is some uncertainty in the minds, either of the focal person or of the members of his role set, as to precisely what his role is at any given time. One of the crucial expectations that shape the role definition is that of the individual, the focal person himself. If his occupation of the role is unclear, or if it differs from that of the others in the role set, there will be a degree of role ambiguity. Is this bad? Not necessarily, for the ability to shape one’s own role is one of the freedoms that many people desire, but the ambiguity may lead to role stress which will be discussed later on. The virtue of job descriptions is that they lessen this role ambiguity.

Unfortunately, job descriptions are seldom complete role definitions, except at the lower end of the scale. At middle and higher management levels, they are often a list of formal jobs and duties that say little about the more subtle and informal expectations of the role. The result is, therefore, to give the individual an uncomfortable feeling that there are things left unsaid, i.e. to heighten the sense of role ambiguity.

Looking at role ambiguity from the other side, from the point of view of the members of the role set, lack of clarity in the role of the focal person can cause insecurity, lack of confidence, irritation and even anger among members of his role set. One list of the roles of a manager identified the following: executive, planner, policy maker, expert, controller of rewards and punishments, counselor, friend, teacher. If it is not clear, through role signs of one sort or another, which role is currently the operational one, the other party may not react in the appropriate way — we may, in fact, hear quite another message if the focal person speaks to us, for example, as a teacher and we hear her as an executive.

Questions 29 - 35
Do the following statements reflect the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 29-35 on your answer sheet write:

YES if the statement reflects the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to know what the writer thinks about this

29. It would be a good idea to specify the role definitions of soldiers more clearly.
30. Accountants may be similar to one another because they have the same type of job.
31. It is probably a good idea to keep dress as a role sign even nowadays.
32. The decline in emphasis on marriage rituals should be reversed.
33. Today furniture operates as a role sign in the same way as dress has always done.
34. It is a good idea to remove role ambiguity.
35. Job descriptions eliminate role ambiguity for managers.

Questions 36-39
Choose ONE OR TWO WORDS from Reading Passage 3 for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 36-39 on your answer sheet.

36. A new headmaster of a school who enlarges his office and puts in expensive carpeting is using the office as a .............
37. The graduation ceremony in many universities is an important............
38. The wig which judges wear in UK courts is a ..........
39. The parents of students in a school are part of the headmaster’s .............

Question 40
Choose the appropriate letter A-D and write it in box 40 on your answer sheet.

This text is taken from ....

A. a guide for new managers in a company.
B. a textbook analysis of behaviour in organisations.
C. a critical study of the importance of role signs in modern society.
D. a newspaper article about role changes.

Votes for Women

The suffragette movement, which campaigned for votes for women in the early twentieth century, is most commonly associated with the Pankhurst family and militant acts of varying degrees of violence. The Museum of London has drawn on its archive collection to convey a fresh picture with its exhibition.

The Purple, White and Green: Suffragettes in London 1906 – 14

The name is a reference to the colour scheme that the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) created to give the movement a uniform, nationwide image. By doing so, it became one of the first groups to project a corporate identity, and it is this advanced marketing strategy, along with the other organisational and commercial achievements of the WSPU, to which the exhibition is devoted.

Formed in 1903 by the political campaigner Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia, the WSPU began an educated campaign to put women's suffrage on the political agenda. New Zealand, Australia and parts of the United States had already enfranchised women, and growing numbers of their British counterparts wanted the same opportunity.

With their slogan 'Deeds not words', and the introduction of the colour scheme, the WSPU soon brought the movement the cohesion and focus it had previously lacked. Membership grew rapidly as women deserted the many other, less directed, groups and joined it. By 1906 the WSPU headquarters, called the Women's Press Shop, had been established in Charing Cross Road and in spite of limited communications (no radio or television, and minimal use of the telephone) the message had spread around the country, with members and branch officers stretching to as far away as Scotland.

The newspapers produced by the WSPU, first Votes for Women and later The Suffragette, played a vital role in this communication. Both were sold throughout the country and proved an invaluable way of informing members of meetings, marches, fund-raising events and the latest news and views on the movement.

Equally importantly for a rising political group, the newspaper returned a profit. This was partly because advertising space was bought in the paper by large department stores such as Selfridges, and jewellers such as Mappin & Webb. These two, together with other like-minded commercial enterprises sympathetic to the cause, had quickly identified a direct way to reach a huge market of women, many with money to spend.

The creation of the colour scheme provided another money-making opportunity which the WSPU was quick to exploit. The group began to sell playing cards, board games, Christmas and greeting cards, and countless other goods, all in the purple, white and green colours. In 1906 such merchandising of a corporate identity was a new marketing concept.

But the paper and merchandising activities alone did not provide sufficient funds for the WSPU to meet organisational costs, so numerous other fund-raising activities combined to fill the coffers of the 'war chest'. The most notable of these was the Woman's Exhibition, which took place in 1909 in a Knightsbridge ice-skating rink, and in 10 days raised the equivalent of £250,000 today.

The Museum of London's exhibition is largely visual, with a huge number of items on show. Against a quiet background hum of street sounds, copies of The Suffragette, campaign banners and photographs are all on display, together with one of Mrs Pankhurst's shoes and a number of purple, white and green trinkets.

Photographs depict vivid scenes of a suffragette's life: WSPU members on a self-proclaimed 'monster' march, wearing their official uniforms of a white frock decorated with purple, white and green accessories; women selling The Suffragette at street corners, or chalking up pavements with details of a forthcoming meeting.

Windows display postcards and greeting cards designed by women artists for the movement, and the quality of the artwork indicates the wealth of resources the WSPU could call on from its talented members.

Visitors can watch a short film made up of old newsreels and cinema material which clearly reveals the political mood of the day towards the suffragettes. The programme begins with a short film devised by the 'antis' - those opposed to women having the vote -depicting a suffragette as a fierce harridan bullying her poor, abused husband. Original newsreel footage shows the suffragette Emily Wilding Davison throwing herself under King George V's horse at a famous race.

Although the exhibition officially charts the years 1906 to 1914, graphic display boards outlining the bills of the enfranchisement of 1918 and 1928, which gave the adult female populace of Britain the vote, show what was achieved. It demonstrates how advanced the suffragettes were in their thinking, in the marketing of their campaign, and in their work as shrewd and skilful image-builders. It also conveys a sense of the energy and ability the suffragettes brought to their fight for freedom and equality. And it illustrates the intelligence employed by women who were at that time deemed by several politicians to have 'brains too small to know how to vote'.

Questions 14 and 15

Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 14 and 15 on your answer sheet.

14. What is the main aspect of the suffragette movement's work to which the exhibition at the Museum of London is devoted?
A. the role of the Pankhurst family in the suffrage movement
B. the violence of the movement's political campaign
C. the success of the movement's corporate image
D. the movement's co-operation with suffrage groups overseas

15. Why was the WSPU more successful than other suffrage groups?
A. Its leaders were much better educated.
B. It received funding from movements abroad.
C. It had access to new technology.
D. It had a clear purpose and direction.

Question 16
Choose TWO letters A-E and write them in boxes 16 on your answer sheet.

In which TWO of the following years were laws passed allowing British women to vote?
A. 1906
B. 1909
C. 1914
D. 1918
E. 1928

Questions 17-19
Complete the notes below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Reading Passage 2 for each answer. Write the answers in boxes 17-19 on your answer sheet.

Three ways in which the WSPU raised money:

• the newspapers: mainly through selling ..........17..........
• merchandising activities: selling a large variety of goods produced in their ..........18..........
• additional fund-raising activities: for example, ..........19..........

Questions 20-26
Do the following statements reflect the situation as described by the writer in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 20 - 26 on your answer sheet, write:

YES if the statement reflects the situation as described by the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to know what the situation is from the passage

Example: The WSPU was founded in 1906 by Emmeline Pankhurst. Answer: NO

20. In 1903 women in Australia were still not allowed to vote.
21. The main organs of communication for the WSPU were its two newspapers.
22. The work of the WSPU was mainly confined to London and the south.
23. The WSPU's newspapers were mainly devoted to society news and gossip.
24. The Woman's Exhibition in 1909 met with great opposition from Parliament.
25. The Museum of London exhibition includes some of the goods sold by the movement.
26. The opponents of the suffragettes made films opposing the movement.

Question 27
Choose the appropriate letter, A-D and write it in boxes 27 on your answer sheet.

The writer of the article finds the exhibition to be
A. misleading.
B. exceptional.
C. disappointing.
D. informative.

Lost for Words

Many minority languages are on the danger list.

In the Native American Navajo nation which sprawls across four states in the American south-west, the native language is dying. Most of its speakers are middle-age or elderly. Although many students take classes in Navajo, the schools are run in English. Street sign, supermarket goods and even their own newspaper are all in English. Not surprisingly, linguists doubt that any native speakers of Navajo will remain in a hundred years’ time.

Navajo is far from alone. Half the world’s 6,800 languages are likely to vanish within two generations - that’s one language lost every ten days. Never before has the planet’s linguistic diversity shrunk at such a pace. “At the moment, we are heading for about three or four languages dominating the world”, says Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading. “It’s a mass extinction, and whether we will ever rebound from the loss is difficult to know.’

Isolation breeds linguistic diversity as a result, the world is peppered with languages spoken by only a few people. Only 250 languages have more than a million speaker, and at least 3,000 have fewer than 2,500. It is not necessarily these small languages that are about to disappear. Navajo is considered endangered despite having 150,000 speakers. What makes a language endangered is not that the number of speakers, but how old they are. If it is spoken by children it is relatively safe. The critically endangered languages are those that are only spoken by the elderly, according to Michael Krauss, director of the Alaska Native Language Center, in Fairbanks.

Why do people reject the language of their parent? It begins with a crisis of confidence when a small community finds itself alongside a larger, wealthier society, says Nicholas Ostler of Britain’s Foundation for Endangered Languages, in Bath. ‘People lose faith in their culture’ he says. ‘When the next generation reaches their teens, they might not want to be induced into the old tradition.’

The change is not always voluntary. Quite often, governments try to kill off a minority language by banning its use in public or discouraging its use in school, all to promote national unity. The former US policy of running Indian reservation in English, for example, effectively put languages such as Navajo on the danger list. But Salikoko Mufwene, who chairs the Linguistics Department at the University of Chicago, argues that the deadliest weapon is not government policy but economic globalisation. ‘Native Americans have not lost pride in their language, but they have had to adapt to socio-economic pressures’ he says. ‘They can not refuse to speak English if most commercial activity is in English". But are languages worth saving? At the very least, there is a loss of data for the study of languages and their evolution, which relies on comparisons between languages, both living and dead. When an unwritten and unrecorded language disappears, it is lost to science.

Language is also intimately bond up with culture, so it may be difficult to reserve one without the other. ‘If a person shifts from Navajo to English, they lose something' Mufwene says. ‘Moreover, the loss of diversity may also deprive us of different ways of looking at the world’, says Pagel. There is mounting evidence that learning a language produces physiological changes in brain. ‘Your brain and mine are different from the brain of someone, who speaks French, for instance’ Pagel says, and this could affect our thoughts and perceptions. ‘The patterns and connections we make among various concepts may be structured by the linguistic habits of our community.’

So despite linguists’ best efforts, many languages will disappear over the next century. But a growing interest in cultural identity may prevent the direst predictions from coming true. ‘The key to fostering diversity is for people to learn their ancestral tongue, as well as the dominant language’ says Doug Whalen, founder and president of the Endangered Language Fund in New Haven, Connecticut. ‘Most of these languages will not survive without a large degree of bilingualism’ he says. In New Zealand, classes for children have slowed the erosion of Maori and rekindled interest in the language. A similar approach in Hawaii has produced about 8000 new speakers of Polynesian languages in the past few years. In California, ‘apprentice’ programmes have provided life support to several indigenous languages. Volunteer 'apprentices' pair up with one of the last living speakers of Native American tongue to learn a traditional skill such as basket weaving, with instruction exclusively in the endangered language. After about 300 hours of training, they are generally sufficiently fluent to transmit the language to the next generation. But Mufwene says that preventing a language dying out is not the same as giving it new life by using every day. ‘Preserving a language is more likely preserving fruits in a jar’ he says.

However, preservation can bring a language back from the dead. There are examples of languages that have survived in written form and then been revived by latter generations. But a written form is essential for this, so the mere possibility of revival has led many speakers of endangered languages to develop systems of writing where none existed before.

Question 1-4
Complete the summary below. Choose no more than two words from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

There are currently approximately 6,800 languages in the world. This great variety of languages came about largely as a result of geographical (1) …......... But in today’s world, factors such as government initiatives and (2) ......…....… are contributing to a huge decrease in the number of languages. One factor which may help to ensure that some endangered languages do not die out completely is people’s increasing appreciation of their (3) ......…..... This has been encouraged though programmes of languages classes for children and through ‘apprentice’ schemes, in which the endangered language is used as the medium of instruction to teach people a (4) …............ Some speakers of endangered languages have even produced writing systems in order to help secure the survival of their mother tongue.

Question 5-9
Look at the following statements (Question 5-9) and the list of people in the box below. Match each statement with the correct person A-E. Write the appropriate letter A-E in box 5-9 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

5. Endangered languages cannot be saved unless people learn to speak more than one language.
6. Saving languages from extinction is not in itself a satisfactory goal.
7. The way we think may be determined by our language.
8. Young people often reject the established way of life in their community.
9. A change of language may mean a loss of traditional culture.

A. Michael Krauss
B. Salikoko Mufwene
C. Nicholas Ostler
D. Mark Pagel
E. Doug Whalen

Question 10-13
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet, write:

YES If the statement agrees with the view of the writer
NO If the statement contradicts the view of writer
NOT GIVEN If it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this.

10. The Navajo language will die out because it currently has too few speakers.
11. A large number of native speakers fails to guarantee the survival of a language.
12. National governments could do more to protect endangered languages.
13. The loss of linguistic diversity is inevitable.

Questions 27-32

Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs, A-G. Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-G from the list of headings below. Write the correct number, i-ix, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i. The reaction of the limit community to climate change

ii. Understanding of climate change remains limited

iii. Alternative sources of essential supplies

iv. Respect for limit opinion grows

v. A healthier choice of food

vi. A difficult landscape

vii. Negative effects on well-being

viii. Alarm caused by unprecedented events in the Arctic

ix. The benefits of an easier existence

Example: Paragraph A. Answer: viii

27. Paragraph B

28. Paragraph C

29. Paragraph D

30. Paragraph E

31. Paragraph F

32. Paragraph G

Climate change and the Inuit

The threat posed by climate change in the Arctic and the problems faced by Canada's Inuit people

A. Unusual incidents are being reported across the Arctic. Inuit families going off on snowmobiles to prepare their summer hunting camps have found themselves cut off from home by a sea of mud, following early thaws. There are reports of igloos losing their insulating properties as the snow drips and refreezes, of lakes draining into the sea as permafrost melts, and sea ice breaking up earlier than usual, carrying seals beyond the reach of hunters. Climate change may still be a rather abstract idea to most of us, but in the Arctic, it is already having dramatic effects - if summertime ice continues to shrink at its present rate, the Arctic Ocean could soon become virtually ice-free in summer. The knock-on effects are likely to include more warming, cloudier skies, increased precipitation and higher sea levels. Scientists are increasingly keen to find out what's going on because they consider the Arctic the 'canary in the mine' for global warming - a warning of what's in store for the rest of the world.

B. For the Inuit the problem is urgent. They live in precarious balance with one of the toughest environments on earth. Climate change, whatever its causes, is a direct threat to their way of life. Nobody knows the Arctic as well as the locals, which is why they are not content simply to stand back and let outside experts tell them what's happening. In Canada, where the Inuit people are jealously guarding their hard-won autonomy in the country's newest territory, Nunavut, they believe their best hope of survival in this changing environment lies in combining their ancestral knowledge with the best of modern science. This is a challenge in itself.

C. The Canadian Arctic is a vast, treeless polar desert that's covered with snow for most of the year. Venture into this terrain and you get some idea of the hardships facing anyone who calls this home. Farming is out of the question and nature offers meagre pickings. Humans first settled in the Arctic a mere 4,500 years ago, surviving by exploiting sea mammals and fish. The environment tested them to the limits: sometimes the colonists were successful, sometimes they failed and vanished. But around a thousand years ago, one group emerged that was uniquely well adapted to cope with the Arctic environment. These Thule people moved in from Alaska, bringing kayaks, sleds, dogs, pottery and iron tools. They are the ancestors of today's Inuit people.

D. Life for the descendants of the Thule people is still harsh. Nunavut is 1.9 million square kilometres of rock and ice, and a handful of islands around the North Pole. It's currently home to 2,500 people, all but a handful of them indigenous Inuit. Over the past 40 years, most have abandoned their nomadic ways and settled in the territory's 28 isolated communities, but they still rely heavily on nature to provide food and clothing. Provisions available in local shops have to be flown into Nunavut on one of the most costly air networks in the world, or brought by supply ship during the few ice-free weeks of summer. It would cost a family around £7,000 a year to replace meat they obtained themselves through hunting with imported meat. Economic opportunities are scarce, and for many people state benefits are their only income.

E. While the Inuit may not actually starve if hunting and trapping are curtailed by climate change, there has certainly been an impact on people's health. Obesity, heart disease and diabetes are beginning to appear in a people for whom these have never before been problems. There has been a crisis of identity as the traditional skills of hunting, trapping and preparing skins have begun to disappear. In Nunavut's 'igloo and email' society, where adults who were born in igloos have children who may never have been out on the land, there's a high incidence of depression.

F. With so much at stake, the Inuit are determined to play a key role in teasing out the mysteries of climate change in the Arctic. Having survived there for centuries, they believe their wealth of traditional knowledge is vital to the task. And Western scientists are starting to draw on this wisdom, increasingly referred to as 'Inuit Qaujimajatugangit', or IQ. 'In the early days, scientists ignored us when they came up here to study anything. They just figured these people don't know very much so we won't ask them,' says John Amagoalik, an Inuit leader and politician. 'But in recent years IQ has had much more credibility and weight.' In fact it is now a requirement for anyone hoping to get permission to do research that they consult the communities, who are helping to set the research agenda to reflect their most important concerns. They can turn down applications from scientists they believe will work against their interests or research projects that will impinge too much on their daily lives and traditional activities.

G. Some scientists doubt the value of traditional knowledge because the occupation of the Arctic doesn't go back far enough. Others, however, point out that the first weather stations in the far north date back just 50 years. There are still huge gaps in our environmental knowledge, and despite the scientific onslaught, many predictions are no more than best guesses. IQ could help to bridge the gap and resolve the tremendous uncertainty about how much of what we're seeing is natural capriciousness and how much is the consequence of human activity.

Questions 33-40
Complete the summary of paragraphs C and D below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from paragraphs C and D for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 33-40 on your answer sheet.

If you visit the Canadian Arctic, you immediately appreciate the problems faced by people for whom this is home. It would clearly be impossible for the people to engage in 33 .................... as a means of supporting themselves. For thousands of years they have had to rely on catching 34 .................... and 35 .................... as a means of sustenance. The harsh surroundings saw many who tried to settle there pushed to their limits, although some were successful. The 36 .................... people were an example of the latter and for them the environment did not prove unmanageable. For the present inhabitants, life continues to be a struggle. The territory of Nunavut consists of little more than ice, rock and a few 37 .................... . In recent years, many of them have been obliged to give up their 38 .................... lifestyle, but they continue to depend mainly on 39 .................... their food and clothes. 40 .................... produce is particularly expensive.

Questions 1-5
Reading Passage 1 has five marked paragraphs, A-E. Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below. Write the correct number i-viii, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i. Avoiding an overcrowded centre
ii. A successful exercise in people power
iii. The benefits of working together in cities
iv. Higher incomes need not mean more cars
v. Economic arguments fail to persuade
vi. The impact of telecommunications on population distribution
vii. Increases in travelling time
viii. Responding to arguments against public transport

1. Paragraph A
2. Paragraph B
3. Paragraph C
4. Paragraph D
5. Paragraph E

Advantages of public transport

A New study conducted for the World Bank by Murdoch University's Institute for Science and Technology Policy (ISTP) has demonstrated that public transport is more efficient than cars. The study compared the proportion of wealth poured into transport by thirty-seven cities around the world. This included both the public and private costs of building, maintaining and using a transport system. The study found that the Western Australian city of Perth is a good example of a city with minimal public transport. As a result, 17% of its wealth went into transport costs. Some European and Asian cities, on the other hand, spent as little as 5%.

Professor Peter Newman, ISTP Director, pointed out that these more efficient cities were able to put the difference into attracting industry and jobs or creating a better place to live. According to Professor Newman, the larger Australian city of Melbourne is a rather unusual city in this sort of comparison. He describes it as two cities: 'A European city surrounded by a car-dependent one'. Melbourne's large tram network has made car use in the inner city much lower, but the outer suburbs have the same car-based structure as most other Australian cities. The explosion in demand for accommodation in the inner suburbs of Melbourne suggests a recent change in many people's preferences as to where they live.

Newman says this is a new, broader way of considering public transport issues. In the past, the case for public transport has been made on the basis of environmental and social justice considerations rather than economics. Newman, however, believes the study demonstrates that 'the auto-dependent city model is inefficient and grossly inadequate in economic as well as environmental terms'.

Bicycle use was not included in the study but Newman noted that the two most 'bicycle friendly' cities considered - Amsterdam and Copenhagen - were very efficient, even though their public transport systems were 'reasonable but not special'.

It is common for supporters of road networks to reject the models of cities with good public transport by arguing that such systems would not work in their particular city. One objection is climate. Some people say their city could not make more use of public transport because it is either too hot or too cold. Newman rejects this, pointing out that public transport has been successful in both Toronto and Singapore and, in fact, he has checked the use of cars against climate and found 'zero correlation'.

When it comes to other physical features, road lobbies are on stronger ground. For example, Newman accepts it would be hard for a city as hilly as Auckland to develop a really good rail network. However, he points out that both Hong Kong and Zürich have managed to make a success of their rail systems, heavy and light respectively, though there are few cities in the world as hilly.
A. In fact, Newman believes the main reason for adopting one sort of transport over another is politics: 'The more democratic the process, the more public transport is favored.' He considers Portland, Oregon, a perfect example of this. Some years ago, federal money was granted to build a new road. However, local pressure groups forced a referendum over whether to spend the money on light rail instead. The rail proposal won and the railway worked spectacularly well. In the years that have followed, more and more rail systems have been put in, dramatically changing the nature of the city. Newman notes that Portland has about the same population as Perth and had a similar population density at the time.
B. In the UK, travel times to work had been stable for at least six centuries, with people avoiding situations that required them to spend more than half an hour travelling to work. Trains and cars initially allowed people to live at greater distances without taking longer to reach their destination. However, public infrastructure did not keep pace with urban sprawl, causing massive congestion problems which now make commuting times far higher.
C. There is a widespread belief that increasing wealth encourages people to live farther out where cars are the only viable transport. The example of European cities refutes that. They are often wealthier than their American counterparts but have not generated the same level of car use. In Stockholm, car use has actually fallen in recent years as the city has become larger and wealthier. A new study makes this point even more starkly. Developing cities in Asia, such as Jakarta and Bangkok, make more use of the car than wealthy Asian cities such as Tokyo and Singapore. In cities that developed later, the World Bank and Asian Development Bank discouraged the building of public transport and people have been forced to rely on cars - creating the massive traffic jams that characterize those cities.

D. Newman believes one of the best studies on how cities built for cars might be converted to rail use is The Urban Village report, which used Melbourne as an example. It found that pushing everyone into the city centre was not the best approach. Instead, the proposal advocated the creation of urban villages at hundreds of sites, mostly around railway stations.
E. It was once assumed that improvements in telecommunications would lead to more dispersal in the population as people were no longer forced into cities. However, the ISTP team's research demonstrates that the population and job density of cities rose or remained constant in the 1980s after decades of decline. The explanation for this seems to be that it is valuable to place people working in related fields together. 'The new world will largely depend on human creativity, and creativity flourishes where people come together face-to-face.'

Questions 6-10
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 6-10 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

6. The ISTP study examined public and private systems in every city in the world.
7. Efficient cities can improve the quality of life for their inhabitants.
8. An inner-city tram network is dangerous for car drivers.
9. In Melbourne, people prefer to live in the outer suburbs.
10. Cities with high levels of bicycle usage can be efficient even when public transport is only averagely good.

Questions 11-13
Look at the following cities (Questions 11-13) and the list of descriptions below. Match each city with the correct description, A-F. Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.
11. Perth
12. Auckland
13. Portland

List of Descriptions
A. successfully uses a light rail transport system in hilly environment
B. successful public transport system despite cold winters
C. profitably moved from road to light rail transport system
D. hilly and inappropriate for rail transport system
E. heavily dependent on cars despite widespread poverty
F. inefficient due to a limited public transport system

Literate women make better mothers?

Children in developing countries are healthier and more likely to survive past the age of five when their mothers can read and write. Experts in public health accepted this idea decades ago, but until now no one has been able to show that a woman's ability to read in itself improves her children's chances of survival.

Most literate women learnt to read in primary school, and the fact that a woman has had an education may simply indicate her family's wealth or that it values its children more highly. Now a long-term study carried out in Nicaragua has eliminated these factors by showing that teaching reading to poor adult women, who would otherwise have remained illiterate, has a direct effect on their children's health and survival.

In 1979, the government of Nicaragua established a number of social programmes, including a National Literacy Crusade. By 1985, about 300,000 illiterate adults from all over the country, many of whom had never attended primary school, had learnt how to read, write and use numbers.

During this period, researchers from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the Central American Institute of Health in Nicaragua, the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua and the Costa Rican Institute of Health interviewed nearly 3,000 women, some of whom had learnt to read as children, some during the literacy crusade and some who had never learnt at all. The women were asked how many children they had given birth to and how many of them had died in infancy. The research teams also examined the surviving children to find out how well-nourished they were.

The investigators' findings were striking. In the late 1970s, the infant mortality rate for the children of illiterate mothers was around 110 deaths per thousand live births. At this point in their lives, Those mothers who later went on to learn to read had a similar level of child mortality (105/1000).For women educated in primary school, however, the infant mortality rate was significantly lower, at 80 per thousand.

In 1985, after the National Literacy Crusade had ended, the infant mortality figures for those who remained illiterate and for those educated in primary school remained more or less unchanged. For those women who learnt to read through the campaign, the infant mortality rate was 84 per thousand, an impressive 21 points lower than for those women who were still illiterate. The children of the newly-literate mothers were also better nourished than those of women who could not read.

Why are the children of literate mothers better off? According to Peter Sandiford of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, no one knows for certain. Child health was not on the curriculum during the women's lessons, so he and his colleagues are looking at other factors. They are working with the same group of 3,000 women, to try to find out whether reading mothers make better use of hospitals and clinics, opt for smaller families, exert more control at home, learn modem childcare techniques more quickly, or whether they merely have more respect for themselves and their children.

The Nicaraguan study may have important implications for governments and aid agencies that need to know where to direct their resources. Sandiford says that there is increasing evidence that female education, at any age, is 'an important health intervention in its own right' .The results of the study lend support to the World Bank's recommendation that education budgets in developing countries should be increased, not just to help their economies, but also to improve child health. 'We've known for a long time that maternal education is important,' says John Cleland of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. 'But we thought that even if we started educating girls today, we'd have to wait a generation for the pay-off. The Nicaraguan study suggests we may be able to bypass that.'

Cleland warns that the Nicaraguan crusade was special in many ways, and similar campaigns elsewhere might not work as well. It is notoriously difficult to teach adults skills that do not have an immediate impact on their everyday lives, and many literacy campaigns in other countries have been much less successful. 'The crusade was part of a larger effort to bring a better life to the people,' says Cleland. Replicating these conditions in other countries will be a major challenge for development workers.

Questions 14-18
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-J, below. Write the correct letters, A-J, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

The Nicaraguan National Literacy Crusade aimed to teach large numbers of illiterate 14 .................. to read and write. Public health experts have known for many years that there is a connection between child health and 15.................. However, it has not previously been known whether these two factors were directly linked or not. This question has been investigated by 16.................... in Nicaragua. As a result, factors such as 17 ...................... and attitudes to children have been eliminated, audit has been shown that 18................ can in itself improve infant health and survival.
A. child literacy

B. men and women

C. an international research team
D. medical care

E. mortality

F. maternal literacy
G. adults and children

H. paternal literacy

I. a National Literacy Crusade
J. family wealth

Questions 19-24
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 19-24 on your answer sheet, write:

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

19. About a thousand or the women interviewed by the researchers had learnt to read they were children.
20. Before the National Literacy Crusade, illiterate women had approximately the same levels of infant mortality as those who had learnt to read in primary school.
21. Before and after the National Literacy Crusade, the child mortality rate for the illiterate women stayed at about 110 deaths for each thousand live births.

22. The women who had learnt to read through the National Literacy Crusade showed the greatest change in infant mortality levels.
23. The women who had learnt to read through the National Literacy Crusade had the lowest rates of child mortality.
24. After the National Literacy Crusade, the children of the women who remained illiterate were found to be severely malnourished.

Questions 25 and 26
Choose TWO letters, A-E. Write the correct letters in boxes 25 and 26 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO important implications drawn from the Nicaraguan study are mentioned by the writer of the passage?

A. It is better to educate mature women than young girls
B. Similar campaigns in other countries would be equally successful.
C. The effects of maternal literacy programmes can be seen very quickly
D. Improving child health can quickly affect a country's economy.
E. Money spent on female education will improve child health.

Questions 27-30
Reading Passage 3 has six sections, A-F. Choose the correct heading for sections A-D from the list of headings below. Write the correct number, i-vii, in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i. The role of video violence
ii. The failure of government policy
iii. Reasons for the increased rate of bullying
iv. Research into how common bullying is in British schools
v. The reaction from schools to enquiries about bullying
vi. The effect of bullying on the children involved
vii. Developments that have led to a new approach by schools

27. Section A
28. Section B
29. Section C
30. Section D

Persistent bullying is one of the worst experiences a child can face. How can it be prevented? Peter Smith, Professor of Psychology at the University of Sheffield, directed the Sheffield Anti-Bullying Intervention Project, funded by the Department for Education. Here he reports on his findings.

A. Bullying can take a variety of forms, from the verbal -being taunted or called hurtful names- to the physical- being kicked or shoved- as well as indirect forms, such as being excluded from social groups. A survey I conducted with Irene Whitney found that in British primary schools up to a quarter of pupils reported experience of bullying, which in about one in ten cases was persistent. There was less bullying in secondary schools, with about one in twenty-five suffering persistent bullying, but these cases may be particularly recalcitrant.

B. Bullying is clearly unpleasant and can make the child experiencing it feel unworthy and depressed. In extreme cases, it can even lead to suicide, though this is thankfully rare. Victimised pupils are more likely to experience difficulties with interpersonal relationships as adults, while children who persistently bully are more likely to grow up to be physically violent, and convicted of anti-social offences.
C. Until recently, not much was known about the topic, and little help was available to teachers to deal with bullying. Perhaps as a consequence, schools would often deny the problem. 'There is no bullying at this school' has been a common refrain, almost certainly all true. Fortunately, more schools are now saying: There is not much bullying here, but when it occurs we have a clear policy for dealing with it.'

D. Three factors are involved in this change. First is an awareness of the severity of the problem. Second, a number of resources to help tackle bullying have become available in Britain. For example, the Scottish Collllcil for Research in Education produced a package of materials, Action Against Bullying, circulated to all schools in England and Wales as well as in Scotland in summer 1992, with a second pack, Supporting Schools Against Bullying, produced the following year. In Ireland, Guidelines on Countering Bullying Behaviour in Post-Primary Schools was published in 1993. Third, there is evidence that these materials work, and that schools can achieve something. This comes from carefully conducted 'before and after" evaluations of interventions in schools, monitored by a research team. In Norway, after an intervention campaign was introduced nationally, an evaluation of forty-two schools suggested that, over a two-year period, bullying was halved. The Sheffield investigation, which involved sixteen primary schools and seven secondary schools, found that most schools succeeded in reducing bullying.

E. Evidence suggests that a key step is to develop a policy on bullying, saying clearly what is meant by bullying, and giving explicit guidelines on what will be done if it occurs, what record will be kept, who will be informed, what sanctions will be employed. The policy should be developed through consultation, over a period of time- not just imposed from the head teacher's office! Pupils, parents and staff should feel they have been involved in the policy, which needs to be disseminated and implemented effectively.

Other actions can be taken to back up the policy. There are ways of dealing with the topic through the curriculum, using video, drama and literature. These are useful for raising awareness, and can best be tied into early phases of development while the school is starting to discuss the issue of bullying. They are also useful in renewing the policy for new pupils or revising it in the light of experience. But curriculum work alone may only have short-term effects; it should be an addition to policy work, not a substitute.

There are also ways of working with individual pupils, or in small groups. Assertiveness training for pupils who are liable to be victims is worthwhile, and certain approaches to group bullying such as 'no blame', can be useful in changing the behaviour of bullying pupils without confronting them directly, although other sanctions may be needed for those who continue with persistent bullying.

Work in the playground is important, too. One helpful step is to train lunchtime supervisors to distinguish bullying from playful fighting and help them break up conflicts. Another possibility is to improve the playground environment so that pupils are less likely to be led into bullying from boredom or frustration.

F. With these developments, schools can expect that at least the most serious kinds of bullying can largely be prevented. The more effort put in and the wider the whole school involvement, the more substantial the results are likely to be. The reduction in bullying - and the consequent improvement in pupil happiness- is surely a worthwhile objective.

Questions 31-34
Choose the correct letter A. B. C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 31-34 on your answer sheet.

31. A recent survey found that in British secondary schools
A. there was more bullying than had previously been the case.
B. there was less bullying than in primary schools.
C. cases of persistent bullying were very common.
D. indirect forms of bullying were particularly difficult to deal with.

32. Children who are bullied
A. are twice as likely to commit suicide as the average person.
B. find it more difficult to relate to adults.
C. are less likely to be violent in later life.
D. may have difficulty forming relationships in later life.

33. The writer thinks that the declaration 'There is no bullying at this school'
A. is no longer true in many schools.
B. was not in fact made by many schools.
C. reflected the school's lack of concern.
D. reflected a lack of knowledge and resources.

34. What were the findings of research carried out in Norway?
A. Bullying declined by 50% after an anti-bullying campaign.
B. Twenty-one schools reduced bullying as a result of an anti-bullying campaign
C. Two years is the optimum length for an anti-bullying campaign.
D. Bullying is a less serious problem in Norway than in the UK.

Questions 35-39
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 35-39 on your answer sheet.

What steps should schools take to reduce bullying?

The most important step is for the school authorities to produce a 35 .............. which makes the school's attitude towards bullying quite clear. It should include detailed 36 .................. as to how the school and its staff will react if bullying occurs. In addition, action can be taken through the 37 ........................... This is particularly useful in the early part of the process, as a way of raising awareness and encouraging discussion On its own, however, it is insufficient to bring about a permanent solution. Effective work can also be done with individual pupils and small groups. For example, potential38 ......................... of bullying can be trained to be more self-confident. Or again, in dealing with group bullying, a 'no blame' approach, which avoids confronting the offender too directly, is often effective. Playground supervision will be more effective if members of staff are trained to recognise the difference between bullying and mere 39 ......................... .

Question 40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in box 40 on your answer sheet.

Which of the following is the most suitable title for Reading Passage 3?
A. Bullying: what parents can do
B. Bullying: are the media to blame?
C. Bullying: the link with academic failure
D. Bullying: from crisis management to prevention

Why Pagodas Don’t Fall Down?

In a land swept by typhoons and shaken by earthquakes, how has Japan's tallest and seemingly flimsiest old buildings - 500 or so wooden pagodas-remained standing for centuries? Records show that only two have collapsed during the past 1400 years. Those that have disappeared were destroyed by fire as a result of lightning or civil war. The disastrous Hanshin earthquake in 1995 killed 6,400 people, toppled elevated highways, flattened office blocks and devastated the port area of Kobe. Yet it left the magnificent five-storey pagoda at the Toji temple in nearby Kyoto unscathed, though it levelled a number of buildings in the neighbourhood.

Japanese scholars have been mystified for ages about why these tall, slender buildings are so stable. It was only thirty years ago that the building industry felt confident enough to erect office blocks of steel and reinforced concrete that had more than a dozen floors. With its special shock absorbers to dampen the effect of sudden sideways movements from an earthquake, the thirty-six-storey Kasumigaseki building in central Tokyo-Japan's first skyscraper–was considered a masterpiece of modern engineering when it was built in 1968.

Yet in 826, with only pegs and wedges to keep his wooden structure upright, the master builder Kobodaishi had no hesitation in sending his majestic Toji pagoda soaring fifty-five meters into the sky-nearly half as high as the Kasumigaseki skyscraper built some eleven centuries later. Clearly, Japanese carpenters of the day knew a few tricks about allowing a building to sway and settle itself rather than fight nature's forces. But what sort of tricks?

The multi-storey pagoda came to Japan from China in the sixth century. As in China, they were first introduced with Buddhism and were attached to important temples. The Chinese built their pagodas in brick or stone, with inner staircases, and used them in later centuries mainly as watchtowers. When the pagoda reached Japan, however, its architecture was freely adapted to local conditions they were built less high, typically five rather than nine storeys, made mainly of wood and the staircase was dispensed with because the Japanese pagoda did not have any practical use but became more of an art object. Because of the typhoons that batter Japan in the summer, Japanese builders learned to extend the eaves of buildings further beyond the walls. This prevents rainwater gushing down the walls. Pagodas in China and Korea have nothing like the overhang that is found on pagodas in Japan.

The roof of a Japanese temple building can be made to overhang the sides of the structure by fifty percent or more of the building's overall width. For the same reason, the builders of Japanese pagodas seem to have further increased their weight by choosing to cover these extended eaves not with the porcelain tiles of many Chinese pagodas but with much heavier earthenware tiles.

But this does not totally explain the great resilience of Japanese pagodas. Is the answer that, like a tall pine tree, the Japanese pagoda with its massive trunk-like central pillar known as shinbashira simply flexes and sways during a typhoon or earthquake) For centuries, many thought so. But the answer is not so simple because the startling thing is that the shinbashira actually carries no load at all. In fact, in some pagoda designs, it does not even rest on the ground, but is suspended from the top of the pagoda-hanging loosely down through the middle of the building. The weight of the building is supported entirely by twelve outer and four inner columns.

And what is the role of the shinbashira, the central pillar? The best way to understand the shinbashira's role is to watch a video made by Shuzo Ishida, a structural engineer at Kyoto Institute of Technology. Mr Ishida, known to his students as 'Professor Pagoda' because of his passion to understand the pagoda, has built a series of models and tested them on a 'shaketable' in his laboratory. In short, the shinbashira was acting like an enormous stationary pendulum. The ancient craftsmen, apparently without the assistance of very advanced mathematics, seemed to grasp the principles that were, more than a thousand years later, applied in the construction of Japan's first skyscraper. What those early craftsmen had found by trial and error was that under pressure a pagoda's loose stack of floors could be made to slither to and fro independent of one another. Viewed from the side, the pagoda seemed to be doing a snake dance with each consecutive floor moving in the opposite direction to its neighbours above and below. The shinbashira, running up through a hole in the centre of the building, constrained individual storeys from moving too far because, after moving a certain distance, they banged into it, transmitting energy away along the column.

Another strange feature of the Japanese pagoda is that, because the building tapers, with each successive floor plan being smaller than the one below, none of the vertical pillars that carry the weight of the building is connected to its corresponding pillar above. In other words, a five storey pagoda contains not even one pillar that travels right up through the building to carry the structural loads from the top to the bottom. More surprising is the fact that the individual storeys of a Japanese pagoda, unlike their counterparts elsewhere, are not actually connected to each other. They are simply stacked one on top of another like a pile of hats. Interestingly, such a design would not be permitted under current Japanese building regulations.

And the extra-wide eaves? Think of them as a tight rope walker balancing pole. The bigger the mass at each end of the pole, the easier it is for the tightrope walker to maintain his or her balance. The same holds true for a pagoda. 'With the eaves extending out on all sides like balancing poles,' says Mr. Ishida, 'the building responds to even the most powerful jolt of an earthquake with a graceful swaying, never an abrupt shaking. Here again, Japanese master builders of a thousand years ago anticipated concepts of modern structural engineering.

Questions 1-4
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet, write:

TRUE if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
FALSE if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if there it impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

1. Only two Japanese pagodas have collapsed in 1400 years.
2. The Hanshin earthquake of 1995 destroyed the pagoda at the Toji temple.
3. The other buildings near the Toji pagoda had been built in the last 30 years.
4. The builders of pagodas knew how to absorb some of the power produced by severe weather conditions.

Questions 5-10
Classify the following as typical of

A. both Chinese and Japanese pagodas
B. only Chinese pagodas
C. only Japanese pagodas

Write the correct letter, A, B or C, in boxes 5-10 on your answer sheet.

5. easy interior access to top
6. tiles on eaves
7. use as observation post
8. size of eaves up to half the width of the building
9. original religious purpose
10. floors fitting loosely over each other

Questions 11-13
Choose the correct letter, A, B or C. Write the correct letter in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.

11. In a Japanese pagoda, the shinbashira
A. bears the full weight of the building.
B. bends under pressure like a tree.
C. connects the floors with the foundations.
D. stops the floors moving too far.

12. Shuzo Ishida performs experiments in order to
A. improve skyscraper design.
B. be able to build new pagodas.
C. learn about the dynamics of pagodas.
D. understand ancient mathematics.

13. The storeys of a Japanese pagoda are
A. linked only by wood.
B. fastened only to the central pillar.
C. fitted loosely on top of each other.
D. joined by special weights.

Questions 27-30
Reading Passage 3 has six sections, A-F. Choose the correct heading for sections B, C, E and F from the list of headings below. Write the correct number, i-xi, in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i. MIRTP as a future model
ii. Identifying the main transport problems
iii. Preference for motorised vehicles
iv. Government Authorities' instructions
v. Initial improvements in mobility and transport modes
vi. Request for improves transport in Makete
vii. Transport improvements in the northern part of the district
viii. Improvements in the rail network
ix. Effects of initial MIRTP measures
x. Co-operation of district officials
xi. Role of wheelbarrows and donkeys

Example: Section A. Answer: vi

27. Section B
28. Section C

Example: Section D. Answer: ix

29. Section E
30. Section F

Makete Integrated Rural Transport Project

Section A
The disappointing results of many conventional road transport projects in Africa led some experts to rethink the strategy by which rural transport problems were to be tackled at the beginning of the 1980s. A request for help in improving the availability of transport within the remote Makete District of south­western Tanzania presented the opportunity to try a new approach.

The concept of 'integrated rural transport' was adopted in the task of examining the transport needs of the rural households in the district. The objective was to reduce the time and effort needed to obtain access to essential goods and services -through an improved rural transport system. The underlying assumption was that the time saved would be used instead for activities that would improve the social and economic development of the communities. The Makete Integrated Rural Transport - Project (MIRT P) started in 1985 with financial support from the Swiss Development Corporation and was coordinated with the help of the Tanzanian government.

Section B
When the project began Makete District was virtually totally isolated during the rainy season. The regional road was in such bad shape that access to the main towns was impossible for about three months of the year. Road traffic was extremely rare with the district, and alternative means of transport were restricted to donkeys in the north of the district, people relied primarily on the paths, which were supper and dangerous during the rains.

Before solutions could be proposed, the problems had to be understood. Little was known about the transport demands of the rural households, so Phase I, between December 1985 and December 1987, focused on research. The socio-economic survey of more than 400 households in the district indicates that a household in Makete spent, on average, seven hours a day on transporting themselves and their goods, a figure which seemed extreme but which has also been obtained in surveys in other rural areas in Africa. Interesting facts regarding transport were found- 95% was on foot, 80% was within the locality and 70% was related to the collection of water and firewood and travelling to running mills.

Section C
Having determined the main transport needs, possible solutions were identified which might reduce the time and burden During Phase II. from January to February 1991, a number of approaches were implemented in an effort to improve mobility and access to transport.

An improvement of the rotted network was considered necessary to ensure the import and export of goods to the district. These improvements were carried out using methods that were heavily dependent on labour. In addition to the improvement of roads, these methods provided training in the operation of a mechanical workshop and bus and truck services. Howerer, the difference from the conventional approach was that this time consideration was given to local transport needs outside the road network.

Most goods were transported along the paths that provide shortcuts up and down the hillsides, but the paths were a real safety task and made the journey on foot even more arduous. It made sense to improve the paths by building steps, handrails and footbridges.

It was uncommon to fix the means of transport that were more efficient than walking but less technologically advanced than motor vehicles. The use of bicycles was constrained by their high cost and the lack of available spare parts. Oxen were not used at all but donkeys were used by a few households in the northern part of the district. MIRTP focused on what would be most appropriate for the inhabitants of Makete in terms of what was available, how much they could afford and what they are willing to accept. After careful consideration, the project chose the promotion of donkeys - a donkey costs less than a bicycle - and the introduction of a locally manufacturable wheelbarrow.

Section D
At the end of Phase II, it was clear that the selected approaches to Makete's transport problems had had different degrees of success. Phase III, from March 1991 to March 1993, focused on the refinement and most of these activities.

The road improvements and accompanying maintenance system had helped make the district centre accessible throughout the year. Essential goods from outside the district had become more readily available at the market and prices did not fluctuate as much as they had done before.

Paths and secondary roads were improved only at the request of communists who were willing to participate in construction and maintenance. However, the improved paths impressed the inhabitants, and requests for assistance greatly increased soon after only a few improvements had been completed.

The efforts to improve the efficiency of the existing transport services were not very successful because most of the motorised vehicles in the district broke down and there were no resources to repair them. Even the introduction of low-cost means of transport was difficult because of the general poverty of the district. The locally manufactured wheelbarrows were still too expensive for all but a few of the households. Modifications to the original design by local carpenters cut- production time and costs. Other local carpenters have been trained in the new design So that they can respond to requests. Nevertheless, a locally produced wooden wheelbarrow which costs around 500QTanzanian shillings (less than US$20) in Makete, and is about one-quarter the cost of a metal wheelbarrow, is still too expensive for most people.

Donkeys, which were imported to the district have become more common and contribute, in particular, to the transportation of crops and goods to market. Those who have bought donkeys are mainly from richer households but with an increased supply through local breeding, donkeys should become more affordable. Meanwhile, local initiatives are promoting the renting out of the existing donkeys.

It should be noted, however, that a donkey, which at 20,000 Tanzanian shillings costs less than a bicycle, is still an investment equal to an average household's income over half a year. This dearly illustrates the need for supplementary measures if one wants to assist the rural poor.

Section E
It would have been easy to criticize the MIRTP for using in the early phases a top-down approach, in which decisions were made by experts and officials before being handed down to communities, but it was necessary to start the process from the level of the governmental authorities of the district. It would have been difficult to respond to the requests of villagers and other rural inhabitants without the support and understanding of district authorities.

Section F
Today, nobody in the district argues about the importance of improved paths and inexpensive means of transport. But this is the result of dedicated work over a long penned particularly from the officers in charge of community development. They played an essential role in raising awareness and interest among the rural communities.

The concept of integrated rural transport is now well established in Tanzania, where a major program of rural transport is just about to start. The experiences from Makete will help in this initiative, and Makete District will act as a reference for future work.

Questions 31-35
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 31-35 on your answer sheet, write:

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

31. MIRTP was divided into five phases.
32. Prior to the start of the MIRTP, the Makete district was almost inaccessible during the rainy reason.
33. Phase I of MIRTP consisted of a survey of household expenditure on transport.
34. The survey concluded that one-fifth or 20% of the household transport requirement as outside the local area.
35. MIRTP hopes to improve the movements of goods from Makete district to the country's capital.

Questions 36-39
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-J, below. Write the correct letters, A-J, in boxes 36-39 on your answer sheet.

36. Construction of footbridges, steps and handrails
37. Frequent breakdown of buses and trucks in Makete
38. The improvement of secondary roads and paths
39. The isolation of Makete for part of the year

A. provided the people of Makete with experience in running bus and truck services.

B. was especially successful in the northern part of the district.

C. differed from earlier phases in that the community became less actively involved.

D. improved paths used for transport up and down hillsides.

E. was no longer a problem once the roads had been improved.

F. cost less than locally made wheelbarrows.

G. was done only at the request of local people who were willing to lend a hand.

H. was at first considered by MIRTP to be affordable for the people of the district.

I. hindered attempts to make the existing transport services more efficient.

J. was thought to be the most important objective of Phase III.

Question 40
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in box 40 on your answer sheet.

Which of the following phrases best describes the main aim of Reading Passage 3?

A. to suggest that projects such as MIRTP are needed in other countries
B. to describe how MIRTP was implemented and how successful it was
C. to examine how MIRTP promoted the use of donkeys
D. to warn that projects such as MIRTP are likely to have serious problems

Các khóa học IELTS online 1 kèm 1 - 100% cam kết đạt target 6.0 - 7.0 - 8.0 - Đảm bảo đầu ra - Thi không đạt, học lại FREE

>> IELTS Intensive Writing - Sửa bài chi tiết

>> IELTS Intensive Listening 

>> IELTS Intensive Reading 

>> IELTS Intensive Speaking