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Writing
Task 1:
The graph below shows the
production levels of the main
kinds of fuel in the UK between
1981 and 2000.

Summarise the information by


selecting and reporting the main
features, and make comparisons
where relevant.

Task 2:
In some countries, students live with their family while studying at a university.
In other countries, students attend university in another city. Do you think the
advantages of living away from family home while attending university
outweigh the disadvantages?

Reading
Passage 1:
You should spend about 20 minutes Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or
on Questions 1-13 which are based on D.
Reading Passage 1 below.
Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on
Bovids your answer sheet.
A
1
The family of mammals called bovids In which region is the biggest range
belongs to the Artiodactyl class, of bovids to be found?
which also includes giraffes. Bovids A. Africa
are a highly diverse group consisting B. Eurasia
of 137 species, some of which are C. North America
man’s most important domestic D. South-east Asia
animals. 2
Most bovids have a preference for
B living in
A. isolation
Bovids are well represented in most B. small groups
parts of Eurasia and Southeast Asian C. tropical forest
islands, but they are by far the most D. wide open spaces
numerous and diverse in the latter 3
Some species of bovid are solitary, Which of the following features do all
but others live in large groups with bovids have in common?
complex social structures. Although A. Their horns are shot.
bovids have adapted to a wide range B. They have upper incisors.
of habitats, from arctic tundra to deep C. They store food in the body.
tropical forest, the majority of species D. Their hooves are undivided.
favour open grassland, scrub or
desert. This diversity of habitat is also Look at the following
matched by great diversity in size and characteristics (Questions 4-8) and
form: at one extreme is the royal the list of sub-families below.
antelope of West Africa, which stands
a mere 25 cm at the shoulder; at the Match each characteristic with the
other, the massively built bison of correct sub-family, A, B, C or D.
North America and Europe, growing
to a shoulder height of 2.2m. Write the correct letter, A, B, C or
D, in boxes 4-8 on your answer
C sheet.

Despite differences in size and NB You may use any letter more
appearance, bovids are united by the than once
possession of certain common
features. All species are ruminants, List of sub-families
which means that they retain
undigested food in their stomachs, A Antelope
and regurgitate it as necessary. Bovids
are almost exclusively herbivorous: B Bovinae
plant-eating “incisors: front teeth
herbivorous”. C Caprinae

D D Cephalophinae

Typically their teeth are highly 4


modified for browsing and grazing: can endure very harsh environments
grass or foliage is cropped with the
upper lip and lower incisors** (the
upper incisors are usually absent),
and then ground down by the cheek 5
teeth. As well as having cloven, or includes the ox and the cow
split, hooves, the males of ail bovid
species and the females of most carry
horns. Bovid horns have bony cores 6
covered in a sheath of horny material may supplement its diet with meat
that is constantly renewed from
within; they are unbranched and
never shed. They vary in shape and 7
size: the relatively simple horns of a can usually move a speed
large Indian buffalo may measure
around 4 m from tip to tip along the
outer curve, while the various 8
gazelles have horns with a variety of does not defend a particular area of
elegant curves. land

E
Answer the questions below.
Five groups, or sub-families, may be
distinguished: Bovinae, Antelope, Choose NO MORE THAN THREE
Caprinae, Cephalophinae and WORDS from the passage for each
Antilocapridae. The sub-family answer.
Bovinae comprises most of the larger
bovids, including the African bongo, Write yours answers in boxes 9-13
and nilgae, eland, bison and cattle. on your answer sheet.
Unlike most other bovids they are all
non-territorial. The ancestors of the 9
various species of domestic cattle What is the smallest species of Bovid
banteng, gaur, yak and water buffalo called?
are generally rare and endangered in
the wild, while the auroch (the
ancestor of the domestic cattle of 10
Europe) is extinct. Which species of Bovinae hos now
died out?
F

The term ‘antelope is not a very 11


precise zoological name – it is used to What facilitates the movement of the
loosely describe a number of bovids sitatunga over wetland?
that have followed different lines of
development. Antelopes are typically
long-legged, fast-running species, 12
often with long horns that may be laid
along the back when the animal is in What sort of terrain do barbary sheep
full flight. There are two main sub- live in?
groups of antelope: Hippotraginae,
which includes the oryx and the
addax, and Antilopinae, which 13
generally contains slighter and more What is the only living member of the
graceful animals such as gazelle and Antilocapridae sub-family?
the springbok. Antelopes are mainly
grassland species, but many have
adapted to flooded grasslands: pukus,
waterbucks and lechwes are all good
at swimming, usually feeding in deep
water, while the sitatunga has long,
splayed hooves that enable it to walk
freely on swampy ground.

The sub-family Caprinae includes the


sheep and the goat, together with
various relatives such as the goral and
the tahr. Most are woolly or have long
hair. Several species, such as wild
goats, chamois and ibex, are agile
cliff – and mountain-dwellers.
Tolerance of extreme conditions is
most marked in this group: Barbary
and bighorn sheep have adapted to
arid deserts, while Rocky Mountain
sheep survive high up in mountains
and musk oxen in arctic tundra.

The duiker of Africa belongs to the


Cephalophinae sub-family. It is
generally small and solitary, often
living in thick forest. Although
mainly feeding on grass and leaves,
some duikers – unlike most other
bovids – are believed to eat insects
and feed on dead animal carcasses,
and even to kill small animals.
I

The pronghorn is the sole survivor of


a New World sub-family of
herbivorous ruminants, the
Antilocapridae in North America. It is
similar in appearance and habits to
the Old World antelope. Although
greatly reduced in numbers since the
arrival of Europeans, and the
subsequent enclosure of grasslands,
the pronghorn is still found in
considerable numbers throughout
North America, from Washington
State to Mexico. When alarmed by
the approach of wolves or other
predators, hairs on the pronghorn’s
rump stand erect, so showing and
emphasizing the white patch there. At
this signal, the whole herd gallops off
at speed of over 60 km per hour.

Passage 2:
You should spend about 20 minutes The Reading Passage has eight
on Questions 14-27 which are based paragraphs A-H
on Reading Passage 2 below.
Which paragraph contains the
Art in Iron and Steel following information?
A
Write the correct letter A-H, in
Works of engineering and technology boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.
are sometimes viewed as the
antitheses of art and humanity. Think 14
of the connotations of assembly lines, Art connected with architecture for
robots, and computers. Any positive the first time.
values there might be in such
creations of the mind and human
industry can be overwhelmed by the
associated negative images of 15
repetitive, stressful, and threatened small artistic object and constructions
jobs. Such images fuel the arguments built are put together
of critics of technology even as they
may drive powerful cars and use the
Internet to protest what they see as 16
the artless and dehumanizing aspects the working condition were recorded
of living in an industrialized and by the artist as an exciting subject.
digitized society. At the same time,
landmark megastructures such as the
Brooklyn and Golden Gate bridges 17
are almost universally hailed as mention of one engineers’ artistic
majestic human achievements as well work on an unfinished engineering
as great engineering monuments that project
have come to embody the spirits of
their respective cities. The
relationship between art and 18
engineering has seldom been easy or Two examples of famous bridges
consistent. which became the iconic symbols of
those cities
B

The human worker may have Use the information in the passage
appeared to be but a cog in the wheel to match the people (listed A-F)
of industry, yet photographers could with opinions or deeds below.
reveal the beauty of line and
composition in a worker doing Write the appropriate letters A-F in
something as common as using a boxes 19-23 on your answer sheet.
wrench to turn a bolt. When Henry
Ford’s enormous River Rouge plant List of people
opened in 1927 to produce the Model
A, the painter/photographer Charles A Charles Sheeler
Sheeler was chosen to photograph it.
The world’s largest car factory B Michael Rooker
captured the imagination of Sheeler,
who described it as the most thrilling C Claude Monet
subject he ever had to work with. The
artist also composed oil paintings of D Christian Schussele
the plant, giving them titles such as
American Landscape and Classic E Joseph Pennell
Landscape.
F Lewis Hine
C
19
Long before Sheeler, other artists, who made a comment that concrete
too, had seen the beauty and constructions have a beauty just as
humanity in works of engineering and artistic processes created by engineers
technology. This is perhaps no more the architects
evident than in Coalbrookdale,
England, where iron, which was so
important to the industrial revolution,
was worked for centuries. Here, in the 20
late eighteenth century, Abraham who made a romantic depiction of an
Darby III cast on the banks of the old bridge in one painting
Severn River the large ribs that
formed the world’s first iron bridge, a
dramatic departure from the classic
stone and timber bridges that dotted 21
the countryside and were captured in who produced art pieces
numerous serene landscape paintings. demonstrating the courage of workers
The metal structure, simply but in the site
appropriately called Iron Bridge, still
spans the river and still beckons
engineers, artists, and tourists to gaze
22
upon and walk across it, as if on a
who produced portraits involving
pilgrimage to a revered place.
subjects in engineers and inventions
and historical human heroes.
D

At Coalbrookdale, the reflection of


the ironwork in the water completes 23
the semicircular structure to form a who produced a painting of factories
wide-open eye into the future that is and named them ambitiously
now the past. One artist’s bucolic
depiction shows pedestrians and
horsemen on the bridge, as if on a
woodland trail. On one shore, a pair Complete the following summary of
of well-dressed onlookers interrupts the paragraphs of Reading Passage
their stroll along the riverbank,
perhaps to admire the bridge. On the Using NO MORE THAN THREE
other side of the gently flowing river, WORDS from the Reading Passage
a lone man leads two mules beneath for each answer.
an arch that lets the towpath pass
through the bridge’s abutment. A Write your answers in boxes 23-26 on
single boatman paddles across the your answer sheet.
river in a tiny tub boat. He is in no
rush because there is no towline to Iron bridge Coalbrookdale, England
carry from one side of the bridge to
the other. This is how Michael In the late eighteenth century, as
Rooker was Iron Bridge in his 1792 artists began to capture the artistic
painting. A colored engraving of the attractiveness incorporated into
scene hangs in the nearby architecture via engineering and
Coalbrookdale museum, along with technology were captured in
countless other contemporary numerous serene landscape paintings.
renderings of the bridge in its full One good example, the engineer
glory and in its context, showing the called 24……………………. had
iron structure not as a blight on the designed the first iron bridge in the
landscape but at the center of it. The world and changed to using irons yet
surrounding area at the same time earlier bridges in the countryside
radiates out from the bridge and pales were constructed using materials such
behind it. as 25……………………. and wood.
This first Iron bridge which across the
E 26…………………… was much
significant in the industrial revolution
In the nineteenth century, the period and it functioned for centuries.
railroads captured the imagination of Numerous spectacular paintings and
artists, and the steam engine in the sculpture of Iron Bridge are collected
distance of a landscape became as and exhibited locally in
much a part of it as the herd of cows 27…………………….., showing the
in the foreground. The Impressionist iron structure as a theme on the
Claude Monet painted man-made landscape.
structures like railway stations and
cathedrals as well as water lilies. 24
Portrait painters such as Christian
Schussele found subjects in engineers
and inventors – and their inventions –
as well as in the American founding 25
fathers. By the twentieth century,
engineering, technology, and industry
were very well established as subjects
for artists. 26

F
27
American-born Joseph Pennell
illustrated many European travel
articles and books. Pennell, who early
in his career made drawings of
buildings under construction and
shrouded in scaffolding, returned to
America late in life and recorded
industrial activities during World War
I. He is perhaps best known among
engineers for his depiction of the
Panama Canal as it neared completion
and his etchings of the partially
completed Hell Gate and Delaware
River bridges.

Pennell has often been quoted as


saying, “Great engineering is great
art,” a sentiment that he expressed
repeatedly. He wrote of his
contemporaries, “I understand
nothing of engineering, but I know
that engineers are the greatest
architects and the most pictorial
builders since the Greeks.” Where
some observers saw only utility,
Pennell saw also beauty, if not in
form then at least in scale. He felt he
was not only rendering a concrete
subject but also conveying through
his drawings the impression that it
made on him. Pennell called the
sensation that he felt before a great
construction project ‘The Wonder of
Work”. He saw engineering as a
process. That process is memorialized
in every completed dam, skyscraper,
bridge, or other great achievements of
engineering.

If Pennell experienced the wonder of


work in the aggregate, Lewis Hine
focused on the individuals who
engaged in the work. Hine was
trained as a sociologist but became
best known as a photographer who
exposed the exploitation of children.
His early work documented
immigrants passing through Ellis
Island, along with the conditions in
the New York tenements where they
lived and the sweatshops where they
worked. Upon returning to New York,
he was given the opportunity to
record the construction of the Empire
State Building, which resulted in the
striking photographs that have
become such familiar images of
daring and insouciance. He put his
own life at risk to capture workers
suspended on cables hundreds of feet
in the air and sitting on a high girder
eating lunch. To engineers today, one
of the most striking features of these
photos, published in 1932 in Men at
Work, is the absence of safety lines
and hard hats. However, perhaps
more than anything, the photos evoke
Pennell’s “The Wonder of Work” and
inspire admiration for the bravery and
skill that bring a great engineering
project to completion.

Passage 3:
You should spend about 20 minutes Use the information in the passage
on Questions 28-40 which are based to match the people (listed A-C)
on Reading Passage 3 below. with opinions or deeds below.

Write the appropriate letters A-C


Psychology in boxes 28-31 on your answer
Of New Product Adoption sheet.
A
A Richard Thaler
In today’s hypercompetitive
marketplace, companies that B Everett Rogers
successfully introduce new products
are more likely to flourish than those C Kahneman and Tversky
that don’t. businesses spend billions
of dollars making better “mousetraps” 28
only to find consumers roundly stated a theory which bears potential
rejecting them. Studies show that new fault in the application
products fail at the stunning rate of
between 40% and 90%, depending on
the category, and the odds haven’t 29
changed much in the past 25 years. In decided the consumers’ several
the U.S. packaged goods industry, for behavior features when they face
instance, companies introduce 30,000 other options
products every year, but 70% to 90%
of them don’t stay on store shelves
for more than 12 months. Most 30
innovative products – those that generalised that customers value
create new product categories or more of their possession they are
revolutionize old ones – are also going to abandon for a purpose than
unsuccessful. According to one study, alternative they are going to swap in
47% of first movers have foiled,
meaning that approximately half the
companies that pioneered new 31
product categories later pulled out of answered the reason why people
those businesses. don’t replace existing products

B
Do the following statements agree
After the fact, experts and novices with the information given in
alike tend to dismiss unsuccessful Reading Passage 3?
innovations as bad ideas that were
destined to fail. Why do consumers In boxes 32-36 on your answer sheet,
fail to buy innovative products even write
when they offer distinct
improvements over existing ones? TRUE if the statement is true
Why do companies invariably have
more faith in new products than is FALSE if the statement is false
warranted? Few would question the
objective advantages of many NOT GIVEN if the information is
innovations over existing alternatives, not given in the passage
but that’s often not enough for them
to succeed. To understand why new 32
products fail to live up to companies’ The products of innovations which
expectations, we must delve into the beat existing alternatives can
psychology of behavior change. guarantee a successful market share.
o TRUE
C o FALSE
o NOT GIVEN
New products often require
consumers to change their behavior. 33
As companies know, those behavior The fact that most companies
changes entail costs. Consumers recognised the benefits of switching
costs, such as the activation fees they to new products guarantees a
have to pay when they switch from successful innovation.
one cellular service provider to o TRUE
another. They also bear learning o FALSE
costs, such as when they shift from o NOT GIVEN
manual to automatic automobile 34
transmissions. People sustain Gender affects the loss and gain
obsolescence costs, too. For example, outcome in the real market place.
when they switch from VCRs to DVD o TRUE
players, their videotape collections o FALSE
become useless. All of these are o NOT GIVEN
economic switching costs that most
35
companies routinely anticipate.
Endowment-effect experiment
showed there was a huge gap between
D
the seller’s anticipation and the
chooser’s offer.
What businesses don’t take into
o TRUE
account, however, are the
o FALSE
psychological costs associated with
behavior change. Many products fail o NOT GIVEN
because of a universal, but largely 36
ignored, psychological bias: People Customers accept the fact peacefully
irrationally overvalue benefits they when they are revealed the status quo
currently possess relative to those bias.
they don’t. The bias leads consumers o TRUE
to value the advantages of products o FALSE
they own more the benefits of new o NOT GIVEN
ones. It also leads executives to value
the benefits of innovations they’ve Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or
developed over the advantages of D.
incumbent products.
Write your answers in boxes 37-40
E on your answer sheet.

Companies have long assumed that 37


people will adopt new products that What does paragraph A illustrated in
deliver more value or utility than the business creative venture?
existing ones. Thus, business need
only to develop innovations that are A. above 70% of products stored in
objectively superior to incumbent the warehouse
products, and consumers will have B. only US packaged goods industry
sufficient incentive to purchase them. affected
In the 1960s, communications scholar C. roughly half of new product
Everett Rogers called the concept business failed
“relative advantage” and identified is D. new products have a long life
as the most critical driver of new- span.
product adoption. This argument
assumes that companies make 38
unbiased assessments of innovations What do specialists and freshers tend
and of consumers, likelihood of to think how a product sold well:
adopting them. Although compelling,
the theory has one major flaw: It fails A. as more products stored on a shelf
to capture the psychological biases B. being creative and innovative
that affect decision making. enough
C. having more chain stores
F D. learning from a famous company
like Webvan
In 2002, psychologist Daniel
Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in 39
economics for a body of work that According to this passage, a number
explores why and when individuals of products fail because of the
deviate from rational economic following reason:
behavior. One of the cornerstones of A. they ignore the fact that people
that research, developed with tend to overvalue the product they
psychologist Amos Tversky, is how own.
individuals value prospects, or B. they are not confident with their
choices, in the marketplace. products
Kahneman and Tversky showed, and C. they are familiar with people’s
others have confirmed, that human psychology state
beings’ responses to the alternatives D. they forget to mention the
before they have four distinct advantages of products
characteristics.
40
G What does the experiment of “status
quo bias” suggest which conducted
First, people evaluate the by Nobel prize winner Kahneman and
attractiveness of an alternative based Tversky:
not on its objective, or actual, value A. about half of them are willing to
but on its subjective, or perceived change
value. Second, consumers evaluate B. student is always to welcome new
new products or investments relative items
to a reference point, usually the C. 90% of both owners in a neutral
products they already own or position
consume. Third, people view any D. only 10% of chocolate bar owner
improvements relative to this is willing to swap
reference point as gains and treat all
shortcomings as losses. Fourth, and
most important, losses have a far
greater impact on people than
similarly sized gains, a phenomenon
that Kahneman and Tversky called
“loss aversion.” For instance, studies
show that most people will not accept
a bet in which there is a 50% chance
of winning $100 and a 50% chance of
losing $100. The gains from the
wager must outweigh the losses by a
factor of between two and three
before most people find such a bet
attractive. Similarly, a survey of 1,500
customers of Pacific Gas and Electric
revealed that consumers demand
three to four times more
compensation to endure a power
outage – and suffer a loss – than they
are willing to pay to avoid the
problem, a potential gain. As
Kahneman and Tversky wrote,
“losses loom larger than gains.”

Loss aversion leads people to value


products that they already possess –
those that are part of their endowment
– more than those they don’t have.
According to behavioral economist
Richard Thaler, consumers value
what they own, but many have to give
up, much more than they value what
they don’t own but could obtain.
Thaler called that bias the
“endowment effect.”

I
In a 1990 paper, Thaler and his
colleagues describe a series of
experiments they conducted to
measure the magnitude of the
endowment effect. In one such
experiment, they gave coffee mugs to
a group of people, the Sellers, and
asked at what price point – from 25
cents to $9.25 – the Sellers would be
willing to part with those mugs. They
asked another group – the Choosers –
to whom they didn’t give coffee
mugs, to indicate whether they would
choose the mug or the money at each
price point. In objective terms, all the
Sellers and Choosers were in the
same situation: They were choosing
between a mug and a sum of money.
In one trial of this experiment, the
Sellers priced the mug at $7.12, on
average, but the Choosers were
willing to pay only $3.12. In another
trial, the Sellers and the Choosers
valued the mug at $7.00 and $3.50,
respectively. Overall, the Sellers
always demanded at least twice as
much to give up the mugs as the
Choosers would pay to obtain them.

Kahneman and Tversky’s research


also explains why people tend to stick
with what they have even if a better
alternative exists. In a 1989 paper,
economist Jack Knetsch provided a
compelling demonstration of what
economists William Samuelson and
Richard Zeckhauser called the “status
quo bias.” Knetsch asked one group
of students to choose between an
attractive coffee mug and a large bar
of Swiss chocolate. He gave a second
group of students the coffee mugs but
a short time later allowed each
student to exchange his or her mug
for a chocolate bar. Finally, Knetsch
gave chocolate bars to a third group
of students but much later allowed
each student to exchange his or her
bar for a mug. Of the students given a
choice at the outset, 56% chose the
mug, and 44% chose the chocolate
bar, indicating a near even split in
preferences between the two
products. Logically, therefore, about
half of the students to whom Knetsch
gave the coffee mug should have
traded for the chocolate bar and vice
versa. That didn’t happen. Only 11%
of the students who had been given
the mugs and 10% of those who had
been given the chocolate bars wanted
to exchange their products. To
approximately 90% of the students,
giving up what they already had
seemed like a painful loss and shrank
their desire to trade.

Interestingly, most people seem


oblivious to the existence of the
behaviors implicit in the endowment
effect and the status quo bias. In study
after study, when researchers
presented people with evidence that
they had irrationally overvalued the
status quo, they were shocked,
skeptical, and more than a bit
defensive. These behavioral
tendencies are universal, but
awareness of them is not.
Listening
Part 1:

Complete the form below.


Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.
Phone interview

Name: John Murphy

Example Answer

Position applying for: lifeguard

Street Address: 45 1………….. Court

Contact phone number: 2…………..

Current part-time job:` 3…………..

Previous job at Ridgemont High School: 4…………..

Additional relevant work experience: 5…………..

Relevant skills/qualifications: CPR certification & 6…………..

CPR certification expiration date: 7…………..

Preferred weekly shift: 8…………..

Time available to start work: 9…………..

Advertisement source: 10…………..

Part 2:

Choose the correct letter, A, B or C 16


What is the primary method for
increasing safety?
11 A. informing students and staff of
The lecture was organised by safety precautions
A. City of Nottingham. B. offering free self-defense courses
B. University of Nottingham to students
Students’ Union. C. reminding students to carry a
C. Nottingham Police Department. mobile phone at all times

12 17
The majority of crime on campus is If a student must work late, it is most
A. Drugs and Alcohol. important to
B. Violence A. not return home until the morning.
C. Theft B. go back with a friend.
C. bring a mobile phone.
13
The campus crime rate has 18
………….. so far this year. It is dangerous to
A. increased A. drive home late at night.
B. decreased B. carry a knife.
C. stayed the same C. carry pepper spray.

14 19
Why is there added concern about Students who complete a self-defense
crime? course are
A. exaggeration in media A. more aware of dangers.
B. crime TV shows B. mentally tougher.
C. factual news articles C. walking more confidently.

15 20
Carlos says if you are the victim of a A university is
crime, you should A. not surrounded by walls.
A. run away. B. patrolled by military.
B. resist C. completely safe.
C. seek help.

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