You
should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
Aphantasia: A life
without mental images
Close your eyes and
imagine walking along a sandy beach and then gazing over the horizon as the Sun
rises. How clear is the image that springs to mind?
Most
people can readily conjure images inside their head - known as their mind's
eye. But this year scientists have described a condition, aphantasia, in which
some people are unable to visualise mental images.
Niel
Kenmuir, from Lancaster, has always had a blind mind's eye. He knew he was
different even in childhood. "My stepfather, when I couldn't sleep, told
me to count sheep, and he explained what he meant, I tried to do it and I couldn't,"
he says. "I couldn't see any sheep jumping over fences, there was nothing
to count."
Our
memories are often tied up in images, think back to a wedding or first day at
school. As a result, Niel admits, some aspects of his memory are
"terrible", but he is very good at remembering facts. And, like
others with aphantasia, he struggles to recognise faces. Yet he does not see
aphantasia as a disability, but simply a different way of experiencing life.
Mind's eye blind
Ironically,
Niel now works in a bookshop, although he largely sticks to the non-fiction
aisles. His condition begs the question what is going on inside his
picture-less mind. I asked him what happens when he tries to picture his
fiancee. "This is the hardest thing to describe, what happens in my head
when I think about things," he says. "When I think about my fiancee
there is no image, but I am definitely thinking about her, I know today she has
her hair up at the back, she's brunette. But I'm not describing an image I am looking
at, I'm remembering features about her, that's the strangest thing and maybe
that is a source of some regret."
The
response from his mates is a very sympathetic: "You're weird." But
while Niel is very relaxed about his inability to picture things, it is often a
cause of distress for others. One person who took part in a study into
aphantasia said he had started to feel "isolated" and
"alone" after discovering that other people could see images in their
heads. Being unable to reminisce about his mother years after her death led to
him being "extremely distraught".
The super-visualiser
At
the other end of the spectrum is children's book illustrator, Lauren Beard,
whose work on the Fairytale Hairdresser series will be familiar to many
six-year-olds. Her career relies on the vivid images that leap into her mind's
eye when she reads text from her author. When I met her in her box-room studio
in Manchester, she was working on a dramatic scene in the next book. The text
describes a baby perilously climbing onto a chandelier.
"Straightaway I can
visualise this grand glass chandelier in some sort of French kind of ballroom,
and the little baby just swinging off it and really heavy thick curtains,"
she says. "I think I have a strong imagination, so I can create the world
and then keep adding to it so it gets sort of bigger and bigger in my mind and
the characters too they sort of evolve. I couldn't really imagine what it's
like to not imagine, I think it must be a bit of a shame really."
Not
many people have mental imagery as vibrant as Lauren or as blank as Niel. They
are the two extremes of visualisation. Adam Zeman, a professor of cognitive and
behavioural neurology, wants to compare the lives and experiences of people
with aphantasia and its polar-opposite hyperphantasia. His team, based at the
University of Exeter, coined the term aphantasia this year in a study in the
journal Cortex.
Prof
Zeman tells the BBC: "People who have contacted us say they are really
delighted that this has been recognised and has been given a name, because they
have been trying to explain to people for years that there is this oddity that
they find hard to convey to others." How we imagine is clearly very
subjective - one person's vivid scene could be another's grainy picture. But
Prof Zeman is certain that aphantasia is real. People often report being able
to dream in pictures, and there have been reported cases of people losing the
ability to think in images after a brain injury.
He
is adamant that aphantasia is "not a disorder" and says it may affect
up to one in 50 people. But he adds: "I think it makes quite an important
difference to their experience of life because many of us spend our lives with
imagery hovering somewhere in the mind's eye which we inspect from time to time,
it's a variability of human experience."
Questions 1–5
Do
the following statements agree with the information in the IELTS reading text?
In
boxes 1-5 on your answer
sheet, write
TRUE
if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE
if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN
if there is no information on this
1. Aphantasia is a condition, which describes people, for whom
it is hard to visualise mental images.
2. Niel Kenmuir was unable to count sheep in his
head.
3. People with aphantasia struggle to remember personal traits and
clothes of different people.
4. Niel regrets that he cannot portray an image of his fiancee in his
mind.
5. Inability to picture things in someone's head is often a cause of
distress for a person.
6. All people with aphantasia start to feel 'isolated' or 'alone' at
some point of their lives.
7. Lauren Beard's career depends on her imagination.
8. The author met Lauren Beard when she was working on a comedy scene
in her next book.
Questions 9–13
Complete
the sentences below.
Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write
your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer
sheet.
9. Only a small fraction of people have imagination as as
Lauren does.
10. Hyperphantasia is to aphantasia.
11.There are a lot of subjectivity in comparing people's imagination
- somebody's vivid scene could be another person's .
12. Prof Zeman is that aphantasia
is not an illness.
13. Many people spend their lives with somewhere
in the mind's eye.
You
should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14–26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
Life lessons from
villains, crooks and gangsters
(A) A notorious Mexican drug baron’s audacious escape from
prison in July doesn’t, at first, appear to have much to teach corporate
boards. But some in the business world suggest otherwise. Beyond the
morally reprehensible side of criminals' work, some business gurus say
organised crime syndicates, computer hackers, pirates and others operating
outside the law could teach legitimate corporations a thing or two about how to
hustle and respond to rapid change.
(B) Far from encouraging illegality, these gurus argue that – in the same way big corporations sometimes emulate start-ups – business leaders could learn from the underworld about flexibility, innovation and the ability to pivot quickly. “There is a nimbleness to criminal organisations that legacy corporations [with large, complex layers of management] don’t have,” said Marc Goodman, head of the Future Crimes Institute and global cyber-crime advisor. While traditional businesses focus on rules they have to follow, criminals look to circumvent them. “For criminals, the sky is the limit and that creates the opportunity to think much, much bigger.”
(C) Joaquin Guzman, the head of the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel, for instance, slipped out of his prison cell through a tiny hole in his shower that led to a mile-long tunnel fitted with lights and ventilation. Making a break for it required creative thinking, long-term planning and perseverance – essential skills similar to those needed to achieve success in big business.
(D) While Devin Liddell, who heads brand strategy for Seattle-based design consultancy, Teague, condemns the violence and other illegal activities he became curious as to how criminal groups endure. Some cartels stay in business despite multiple efforts by law enforcement on both sides of the US border and millions of dollars from international agencies to shut them down. Liddell genuinely believes there’s a lesson in longevity here. One strategy he underlined was how the bad guys respond to change. In order to bypass the border between Mexico and the US, for example, the Sinaloa cartel went to great lengths. It built a vast underground tunnel, hired family members as border agents and even used a catapult to circumvent a high-tech fence.
(E) By contrast, many legitimate businesses fail because they hesitate to adapt quickly to changing market winds. One high-profile example is movie and game rental company Blockbuster, which didn’t keep up with the market and lost business to mail order video rentals and streaming technologies. The brand has all but faded from view. Liddell argues the difference between the two groups is that criminal organisations often have improvisation encoded into their daily behaviour, while larger companies think of innovation as a set process. “This is a leadership challenge,” said Liddell. “How well companies innovate and organise is a reflection of leadership.”
Left-field thinking
(F) Cash-strapped start-ups also use unorthodox strategies to problem solve and build their businesses up from scratch. This creativity and innovation is often borne out of necessity, such as tight budgets. Both criminals and start-up founders “question authority, act outside the system and see new and clever ways of doing things,” said Goodman. “Either they become Elon Musk or El Chapo.” And, some entrepreneurs aren’t even afraid to operate in legal grey areas in their effort to disrupt the marketplace. The co-founders of music streaming service Napster, for example, knowingly broke music copyright rules with their first online file sharing service, but their technology paved the way for legal innovation as regulators caught up.
(G) Goodman and others believe thinking hard about problem solving before worrying about restrictions could prevent established companies falling victim to rivals less constrained by tradition. In their book The Misfit Economy, Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips examine how individuals can apply that mindset to become more innovative and entrepreneurial within corporate structures. They studied not just violent criminals like Somali pirates, but others who break the rules in order to find creative solutions to their business problems, such as people living in the slums of Mumbai or computer hackers. They picked out five common traits among this group: the ability to hustle, pivot, provoke, hack and copycat.
(H) Clay gives a Saudi entrepreneur named Walid Abdul-Wahab as a prime example. Abdul-Wahab worked with Amish farmers to bring camel milk to American consumers even before US regulators approved it. Through perseverance, he eventually found a network of Amish camel milk farmers and started selling the product via social media. Now his company, Desert Farms, sells to giant mainstream retailers like Whole Foods Market. Those on the fringe don’t always have the option of traditional, corporate jobs and that forces them to think more creatively about how to make a living, Clay said. They must develop grit and resilience in order to last outside the cushy confines of cubicle life. “In many cases scarcity is the mother of invention,” Clay said.
Questions 14-21
Reading Passage 2 has
eight paragraphs A-H. Match the headings
below with the paragraphs. Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 14-21 on your answer sheet.
14. Jailbreak
with creative thinking
15. Five
common traits among rule-breakers
16. Comparison
between criminals and traditional businessmen
17. Can
drug baron's espace teach legitimate corporations?
18. Great
entrepreneur
19. How
criminal groups deceive the law
20. The
difference between legal and illegal organisations
21. Similarity
between criminals and start-up founders
Questions 22–25
Complete the sentences
below.
Write ONLY ONE WORD from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in
boxes 22–25 on your answer
sheet.
22. To
escape from a prison, Joaquin Guzman had to use such traits as creative
thinking, long-term planning and.
23. The
Sinaloa cartel built a grand underground tunnel and even used a to
avoid the fence.
24. The
main difference between two groups is that criminals, unlike large
corporations, often have encoded into their daily life.
25. Due
to being persuasive, Walid Abdul-Wahab found a of
Amish camel milk farmers.
Question 26
Choose the correct
letter, A, B, C or D.
26. The
main goal of this article is to:
A Show
different ways of illegal activity
B Give an
overview of various criminals and their gangs
C Draw a
comparison between legal and illegal business, providing examples
D Justify
criminals with creative thinking
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27–40, which
are based on Reading Passage 3 below.
Britain needs strong TV
industry
Comedy writer Armando Iannucci has called for an industry-wide
defence of the BBC and British programme-makers. "The Thick of It" creator
made his remarks in the annual MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival.
"It's more important than ever that we have more strong,
popular channels... that act as beacons, drawing audiences to the best content,"
he said. Speaking earlier, Culture Secretary John Whittingdale rejected
suggestions that he wanted to dismantle the BBC.
'Champion supporters'
Iannucci co-wrote "I'm
Alan Partridge", wrote the movie "In the Loop" and
created and wrote the hit "HBO" and "Sky Atlantic show Veep".
He delivered the 40th annual MacTaggart Lecture, which has previously been
given by Oscar winner Kevin Spacey, former BBC director general Greg Dyke,
Jeremy Paxman and Rupert Murdoch. Iannucci said: "Faced with a global
audience, British television needs its champion supporters."
He continued his praise for British programming by saying the
global success of American TV shows had come about because they were emulating
British television. "The best US shows are modelling themselves on what
used to make British TV so world-beating," he said. "US prime-time
schedules are now littered with those quirky formats from the UK - the "Who Do You Think You Are"'s
and the variants on "Strictly
Come Dancing" - as well as the single-camera non-audience
sitcom, which we brought into the mainstream first. We have changed
international viewing for the better."
With the renewal of the BBC's royal charter approaching, Iannucci
also praised the corporation. He said: "If public service broadcasting -
one of the best things we've ever done creatively as a country - if it was a
car industry, our ministers would be out championing it overseas, trying to win
contracts, boasting of the British jobs that would bring." In July, the
government issued a green paper setting out issues that will be explored during
negotiations over the future of the BBC, including the broadcaster's size, its
funding and governance.
Primarily Mr Whittingdale wanted to appoint a panel of five
people, but finally he invited two more people to advise on the channer
renewal, namely former Channel 4 boss Dawn Airey and journalism professor
Stewart Purvis, a former editor-in-chief of ITN. Iannucci bemoaned the lack of
"creatives" involved in the discussions.
"When the media, communications and information industries
make up nearly 8% our GDP, larger than the car and oil and gas industries put
together, we need to be heard, as those industries are heard. But when I see
the panel of experts who've been asked by the culture secretary to take a root
and branch look at the BBC, I don't see anyone who is a part of that cast and
crew list. I see executives, media owners, industry gurus, all talented people
- but not a single person who's made a classic and enduring television
show."
'Don't be modest'
Iannucci suggested one way of easing the strain on the licence fee
was "by pushing ourselves more commercially abroad".
"Use the BBC's name, one of the most recognised brands in the
world," he said. "And use the reputation of British television across
all networks, to capitalise financially oversees. Be more aggressive in selling
our shows, through advertising, through proper international subscription
channels, freeing up BBC Worldwide to be fully commercial, whatever it takes.
"Frankly, don't be icky and modest about making money, let's
monetise the bezeesus Mary and Joseph out of our programmes abroad so that
money can come back, take some pressure off the licence fee at home and be
invested in even more ambitious quality shows, that can only add to our
value."
Mr Whittingdale, who was interviewed by ITV News' Alastair Stewart
at the festival, said he wanted an open debate about whether the corporation
should do everything it has done in the past. He said he had a slight
sense that people who rushed to defend the BBC were "trying to have an
argument that's never been started".
"Whatever my view is, I don't determine what programmes the
BBC should show," he added. "That's the job of the BBC." Mr
Whittingdale said any speculation that the Conservative Party had always wanted
to change the BBC due to issues such as its editorial line was "absolute
nonsense".
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