READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
The Development of Plastics
Paragraph 1
When rubber was first commercially produced in Europe during the nineteenth century, it rapidly became a very important commodity, particularly in the fields of transportation and electricity. However, during the twentieth century a number of new synthetic materials, called plastics, superseded natural rubber in all but a few applications.
Paragraph 2
Rubber is a polymer—a compound containing large molecules that are formed by the bonding of many smaller, simpler units, repeated over and over again. The same bonding principle—polymerization—underlies the creation of a huge range of plastics by the chemical industry.
Paragraph 3
The first plastic was developed as a result of a competition in the USA. In the 1860s, $10,000 was offered to anybody who could replace ivory—supplies of which were declining—with something equally good as a material for making billiard balls. The prize was won by John Wesley Hyatt with a material called celluloid. Celluloid was made by dissolving cellulose, a carbohydrate derived from plants, in a solution of camphor dissolved in ethanol. This new material rapidly found uses in the manufacture of products such as knife handles, detachable collars and cuffs, spectacle frames and photographic film. Without celluloid, the film industry could never have got off the ground at the end of the 19th century.
Paragraph 4
Celluloid can be repeatedly softened and reshaped by heat, and is known as a thermoplastic. In 1907, Leo Baekeland, a Belgian chemist working in the USA, invented a different kind of plastic, by causing phenol and formaldehyde to react together. Baekeland called the material Bakelite, and it was the first of the thermosets—plastics that can be cast and moulded while hot, but cannot be softened by heat and reshaped once they have set. Bakelite was a good insulator, and was resistant to water, acids and moderate heat. With these properties it was soon being used in the manufacture of switches, household items such as knife handles, and electrical components for cars.
Paragraph 5
Soon chemists began looking for other small molecules that could be strung together to make polymers. In the 1930s British chemists discovered that the gas ethylene would polymerize under heat and pressure to form a thermoplastic they called polythene. Polypropylene followed in the 1950s. Both were used to make bottles, pipes and plastic bags. A small change in the starting material—replacing a hydrogen atom in ethylene with a chlorine atom—produced PVC (polyvinyl chloride), a hard, fireproof plastic suitable for drains and gutters. And by adding certain chemicals, a soft form of PVC could be produced, suitable as a substitute for rubber in items such as waterproof clothing. A closely related plastic was Teflon, or PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene). This had a very low coefficient of friction, making it ideal for bearings, rollers, and non-stick frying pans. Polystyrene, developed during the 1930s in Germany, was a clear, glass-like material, used in food containers, domestic appliances and toys. Expanded polystyrene—a white, rigid foam—was widely used in packaging and insulation. Polyurethanes, also developed in Germany, found uses as adhesives, coatings, and—in the form of rigid foams—as insulation materials. They are all produced from chemicals derived from crude oil, which contains exactly the same elements—carbon and hydrogen—as many plastics.
Paragraph 6
The first of the man-made fibres, nylon, was also created in the 1930s. Its inventor was a chemist called Wallace Carothers, who worked for the Du Pont company in the USA. He found that under the right conditions, two chemicals—hexamethylenediamine and adipic acid—would form a polymer that could be pumped out through holes and then stretched to form long glossy threads that could be woven like silk. Its first use was to make parachutes for the US armed forces in World War II. In the post-war years, nylon completely replaced silk in the manufacture of stockings. Subsequently many other synthetic fibres joined nylon, including Orion, Acrilan and Terylene. Today most garments are made of a blend of natural fibres, such as cotton and wool, and man-made fibres that make fabrics easier to look after.
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
Dirty River But Clean Water
Paragraph A
Fire and flood are two of humanity’s worst nightmares. People have, therefore, always sought to control them. Forest fires are snuffed out quickly. The flow of rivers is regulated by weirs and dams. At least, that is how it used to be. But foresters have learned that forests need fires to clear out the brash and even to get seeds to germinate. And a similar revelation is now dawning on hydrologists. Rivers – and the ecosystems they support – need floods. That is why a man-made torrent has been surging down the Grand Canyon. By Thursday, March 6th, it was running at full throttle, which was expected to be sustained for 60 hours.
Paragraph B
Floods once raged through the canyon every year. Spring snow from as far away as Wyoming would melt and swell the Colorado River to a flow that averaged around 1,500 cubic meters (50,000 cubic feet) a second. Every eight years or so, that figure rose to almost 3,000 cubic meters. These floods infused the river with sediment, carved its beaches, and built its sandbars.
Paragraph C:
However, in the four decades since the building of the Glen Canyon Dam, just upstream of the Grand Canyon, the only sediment that it has collected has come from tiny, undammed tributaries. Even that has not been much use as those tributaries are not powerful enough to distribute the sediment in an ecologically valuable way.
Paragraph D
This lack of flooding has harmed local wildlife. The humpback chub, for example, thrived in the rust-red waters of the Colorado. Recently, though, its population has crashed. At first sight, it looked as if the reason was that the chub were being eaten by trout introduced for sport fishing in the mid-20th century. But trout and chub co-existed until the Glen Canyon Dam was built, so something else is going on. Steve Gloss, of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), reckons that the chub’s decline is the result of their losing their most valuable natural defense, the Colorado’s rusty sediment. The chub were well adapted to the poor visibility created by the thick, red water which gave the river its name, and depended on it to hide from predators. Without the cloudy water, the chub became vulnerable.
Paragraph E
And the chub are not alone. In the years since the Glen Canyon Dam was built, several species have vanished altogether. These include the Colorado pike-minnow, the razorback sucker, and the round-tail chub. Meanwhile, aliens including fathead minnows, channel catfish, and common carp, which would have been hard put to survive in the savage waters of the undammed canyon, have moved in.
Paragraph F
So flooding is the obvious answer. Unfortunately, it is easier said than done. Floods were sent down the Grand Canyon in 1996 and 2004 and the results were mixed. In 1996, the flood was allowed to go on too long. To start with, all seemed well. It built up sandbanks and infused the river with sediment. Eventually, however, the continued flow washed most of the sediment out of the canyon. This problem was avoided in 2004, but unfortunately, on that occasion, the volume of sand available behind the dam was too low to rebuild the sandbanks. This time, the USGS is convinced that things will be better. The amount of sediment available is three times greater than it was in 2004. So if a flood is going to do some good, this is the time to unleash one.
Paragraph G
Even so, it may turn out to be an empty gesture. At less than 1,200 cubic meters a second, this flood is smaller than even an average spring flood, let alone one of the mightier deluges of the past. Those glorious inundations moved massive quantities of sediment through the Grand Canyon, wiping the slate dirty, and making a muddy mess of silt and muck that would make modern river rafters cringe.
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.
Looking at Daily Life in Ancient Rome
In this preface to a history, the writer explains the factors affecting the scope of his study.
If our ideas on Roman life are not to become lost in confusion, we must study it within a strictly defined time. Nothing changes more rapidly than human customs. Looking at our own more familiar world, apart from the great scientific discoveries of recent centuries which have turned it upside down—steam, electricity, railways, motor cars, and aeroplanes, for example—it is clear that the elementary forms of everyday life have been subject to increasing change.
Potatoes, for example, were not introduced into Europe until the sixteenth century, coffee was first drunk there in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth, and the banana was used in desserts in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth. The law of change was not less operative in antiquity. It was a commonplace of Roman rhetoric to contrast the crude simplicity of the Republic (509 BC–27 BC) with the luxury and refinement of the imperial times which followed. There is no common measure, whether of home, or house, or furniture, between ages which are so different.
Since a choice of time must necessarily be made, this history will confine itself to studying the generation which was born about the middle of the first century AD, toward the end of the reign of Claudius (41–54 AD) or the beginning of the reign of Nero (54–68 AD), and which lived on into the reign of Trajan (98–117 AD) and of Hadrian (117–138 AD). This generation saw the Roman Empire at its most powerful and prosperous. It was witness to the last conquests of the Caesars: the conquest of Dacia, in modern-day Eastern Europe, which brought vast mineral wealth into the Empire, and the conquest of Arabia, which helped to bring the riches of India and East Asia flooding into Rome. In the material domain, this generation attained the pinnacle of ancient civilization.
By a fortunate coincidence—all the more fortunate in that Latin literature was soon to run nearly dry—this generation is the one whose records combine to offer us the most complete picture of Roman life that we possess. We have a profusion of vivid and picturesque descriptions, precise and colourful, in such works as the Epigrams of Martial, the Satires of Juvenal, and the Letters of Pliny.
In addition, the Forum of Trajan in Rome itself and the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii, the two prosperous resorts buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, supply an immense fund of archaeological evidence. Later excavations have also restored to us the ruins of the city of Ostia, which date in the main from the time when the Emperor Hadrian created this great commercial city as a realization of his town planning ideas. Fortune has favoured the historian of this time.
It is not enough to focus our study of Roman life only on a fixed time. It would lack foundation and consistency if we did not also focus it in space—in the country or in the town. Even today, when the facilities for communication bring something of the city into the smallest and most isolated country cottage, there remains a significant difference between rural existence and the excitement of city life: a much greater gulf separated the peasant from the townsman of antiquity.
So large was the inequality between them that, according to the historian Rostovtzeff, it pitted one against the other in a fierce and silent struggle which pierced the wall protecting the Roman privileged classes from the barbarian flood from the north. When the barbarian forces began to invade Roman territory, the peasants decided to fight alongside them.
The townsman, in fact, enjoyed all the goods and resources of the earth. The peasant knew nothing but unending labour without profit and was unable to enjoy the activities available in even the poorest of cities: the liveliness of the sports field, the warmth of the public baths, and the magnificence of public spectacles.
In a work on the history of everyday life, we must give up any attempt to blend two such dissimilar pictures into one and must choose between them. The time which we have chosen to describe day by day is that of those Roman subjects who spent their time exclusively in the town, or rather in The City, Rome, which they regarded as the hub and centre of the universe, proud and wealthy ruler of a world which seemed at that time to have been pacified forever.
To perform our task well, we must first try to form an adequate picture of the surroundings in which our subjects lived and by which their lives were coloured, freeing ourselves from any misconceptions concerning it. We must seek to reconstruct the physical nature of the great city and the social milieu of the various classes of the hierarchy by which it was governed. We must also investigate the moral background of thought and sentiment which can help explain both its strength and its weaknesses.
The way in which the Romans of Rome employed their time can only be studied satisfactorily after we have plotted out the main lines of the framework within which they lived and outside of which the routine of their daily life would be more or less unintelligible.
Part 1
Questions 1-6
Complete the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
1.Rubber became widely used in transport and 1 .
2. The bonding process of many plastics is also called 2 .
3. The first plastic, celluloid, was invented to replace 3 .
4. Photographic film was one of the early applications of 4 .
5. Bakelite cannot be reshaped once it has 5 .
6. The clear form of polystyrene resembles 6 .
Questions 7-10
Look at the following materials (Questions 7–10) and the list of characteristics below.
Match each material with the correct characteristic, A–E.
|
Characteristics A Used as an insulating foam B Ideal for slippery surfaces C Originally used in parachutes D Can substitute rubber in clothing E First synthetic plastic |
Materials
7 PVC (soft form)
8 Teflon
9 Nylon
10 Polystyrene foam
Questions 11-13
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Part 2
Questions 14-20
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 14–20 on your answer sheet, write:
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
14 Damage caused by fire is worse than that caused by flood.
15 The flood peaks at almost 1500 cubic meters every eight years.
16 Contribution of sediments delivered by tributaries has little impact.
17 Decreasing number of chubs is always caused by introducing of trout since mid-20th century.
18 It seemed that the artificial flood in 1996 had achieved success partly at the very beginning.
19 In fact, the yield of artificial flood water is smaller than an average natural flood at present.
20 Mighty floods drove fast-moving flows with clean and high-quality water.
Questions 21-26
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet.
The eco-impact of the Canyon Dam
Floods are people’s nightmare. In the past, the canyon was raged by flood every year. The snow from far Wyoming would melt in the season of 21 and caused a flood flow peak in the Colorado River. In the four decades after people built the Glen Canyon dam, it only could gather 22 together from tiny, undammed tributaries.
Humpback chub population on reduced, why?
Then, several species disappeared including Colorado pike-minnow, 23 and the round-tail chub. Meanwhile, some moved in such as fathead minnows, channel catfish, and 24 . The non-stopped flow led to the washing away of the sediment out of the canyon, which poses great threat to the chubs because it has poor 25 away from predators. In addition, the volume of 26 available behind the dam was too low to rebuild the bars, and flooding became more serious.
Part 3
Questions 27-30
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.
Questions 31-36
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 31-36 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
Rome’s conquest of Arabia resulted in large-scale immigration from the east into Rome.
32
More can be learned about Roman life from the literature of the period studied in this book than from later Latin literature.
33
Discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii showed that certain beliefs about Roman life were wrong.
34
Roman peasants provided assistance to the Empire when it was attacked.
35
Rural inhabitants of the Roman Empire had a difficult life.
36
Entertainment facilities were limited to the city of Rome itself.
Questions 37-40
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-I, below.
Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.
|
A emperors |
B setting |
C values |
|
D peasants |
E city-dwellers |
F social classes |
|
G myths |
H period |
I investigation |
The scope of the writer’s study
It was important for the writer to limit several aspects of his 37 . He decided to focus on a limited 38 in Roman history and to concentrate on the section of the population who were 39 . The writer was interested in the physical environment, the people that ruled the country, and the 40 that contributed both to Rome’s strength and to its weaknesses.