You
should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–14, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
The students’ problem
(A) The college and university accommodation crisis in Ireland
has become ‘so chronic’ that students are being forced to sleep rough, share a
bed with strangers – or give up on studying altogether.
(B) The deputy president of the Union of Students in Ireland,
Kevin Donoghue, said the problem has become particularly acute in Dublin. He
told the Irish Mirror: “Students are so desperate, they’re not just paying
through the nose to share rooms – they’re paying to share a bed with complete
strangers. It reached crisis point last year and it’s only getting worse.
“We’ve heard of students sleeping rough; on sofas, floors and in their cars and
I have to stress there’s no student in the country that hasn’t been touched by
this crisis. “Commutes – which would once have been considered ridiculous – are
now normal, whether that’s by bus, train or car and those who drive often end
up sleeping in their car if they’ve an early start the next morning.”
(C) Worry is increasing over the problems facing Ireland's
200,000 students as the number increases over the next 15 years. With 165,000
full-time students in Ireland – and that figure expected to increase to around
200,000 within the next 15 years –fears remain that there aren’t enough
properties to accommodate current numbers.
(D) Mr. Donoghue added: “The lack of places to live is actually
forcing school-leavers out of college altogether. Either they don’t go in the
first place or end up having to drop out because they can’t get a room and
commuting is just too expensive, stressful and difficult.”
(E) Claims have emerged from the country that some students have
been forced to sleep in cars, or out on the streets, because of the enormous
increases to rent in the capital. Those who have been lucky enough to find a
place to live have had to do so ‘blind’ by paying for accommodation, months in
advance, they haven’t even seen just so they will have a roof over their head
over the coming year.
(F) According to the Irish Independent, it’s the ‘Google effect’
which is to blame. As Google and other blue-chip companies open offices in and
around Dublin’s docklands area, which are ‘on the doorstep of the city’, international
professionals have been flocking to the area which will boast 2,600 more
apartments, on 50 acres of undeveloped land, over the next three to 10 years.
(G) Rent in the area soared by 15 per cent last year and a
two-bedroom apartment overlooking the Grand Canal costs €2,100 (£1,500) per
month to rent. Another two-bedroom apartment at Hanover Dock costs €2,350
(almost £1,700) with a three-bedroom penthouse – measuring some 136 square
metres – sits at €4,500 (£3,200) per month in rent.
(H) Ireland’s Higher Education Authority admitted this was the
first time they had seen circumstances ‘so extreme’ and the Fianna Fáil party
leader, Michael Martin, urged on the Government to intervene. He said: “It is
very worrying that all of the progress in opening up access to higher education
in the last decade – particularly for the working poor – is being derailed
because of an entirely foreseeable accommodation crisis.
Questions 1-8
Reading Passage 1 has
eight paragraphs, A–H.
Choose the most suitable
paragraph headings from the list of headings and write the correct
letter, A–H, in boxes 1–8 on your
answer sheet.
1. Cons of the
commuting
2. Thing that
students have to go through
3. Commutes have
become common in Ireland nowadays
4. Danger of the
overflow
5. Cause of the
problems
6. Pricing data
7. Regression
8. Eyeless
choice
Questions 9–14
Do the following
statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 9–14 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
9. The accommodation
problem in Ireland is especially bad in Dublin.
10. Commutes
are considered ridiculous.
11. The
number of students in Ireland is not likely to increase in the
future.
12. Due
to the opening of the new offices around Dublin, the number of local
restaurants will go up significantly over the next 3 to 10 years.
13. The
rent price went up by 15% last year.
14. Michael
Martin stated that crisis could have been omitted if the government reacted
properly.
You
should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15–30, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
The science of sleep
We spend a third of our lives doing it.
Napoleon, Florence Nightingale and Margaret Thatcher got by on four hours a
night. Thomas Edison claimed it was waste of time.
So why do we sleep? This is a question that
has baffled scientists for centuries and the answer is, no one is really sure.
Some believe that sleep gives the body a chance to recuperate from the day's
activities but in reality, the amount of energy saved by sleeping for even
eight hours is miniscule - about 50 kCal, the same amount of energy in a piece
of toast.
With continued lack of sufficient sleep, the
part of the brain that controls language, memory, planning and sense of time is
severely affected, practically shutting down. In fact, 17 hours of sustained
wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol
level of 0.05% (two glasses of wine). This is the legal drink driving limit in the
UK.
Research also shows that sleep-deprived
individuals often have difficulty in responding to rapidly changing situations
and making rational judgements. In real life situations, the consequences are
grave and lack of sleep is said to have been be a contributory factor to a
number of international disasters such as Exxon Valdez, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and the Challenger shuttle explosion.
Sleep deprivation not only has a major impact
on cognitive functioning but also on emotional and physical health. Disorders
such as sleep apnoea which result in excessive daytime sleepiness have been
linked to stress and high blood pressure. Research has also suggested that
sleep loss may increase the risk of obesity because chemicals and hormones that
play a key role in controlling appetite and weight gain are released during
sleep.
What happens when we sleep?
What happens every time we get a bit of shut
eye? Sleep occurs in a recurring cycle of 90 to 110 minutes and is divided into
two categories: non-REM (which is further split into four stages) and REM
sleep.
Non-REM
sleep
Stage one: Light Sleep
During the first stage of sleep, we're half
awake and half asleep. Our muscle activity slows down and slight twitching may
occur. This is a period of light sleep, meaning we can be awakened easily at
this stage.
Stage two: True Sleep
Within ten minutes of light sleep, we enter
stage two, which lasts around 20 minutes. The breathing pattern and heart rate
start to slow down. This period accounts for the largest part of human sleep.
Stages three and four: Deep Sleep
During stage three, the brain begins to
produce delta waves, a type of wave that is large (high amplitude) and slow
(low frequency). Breathing and heart rate are at their lowest levels.
Stage four is characterised by rhythmic
breathing and limited muscle activity. If we are awakened during deep sleep we
do not adjust immediately and often feel groggy and disoriented for several
minutes after waking up. Some children experience bed-wetting, night terrors,
or sleepwalking during this stage.
REM sleep
The first rapid eye movement (REM) period
usually begins about 70 to 90 minutes after we fall asleep. We have around
three to five REM episodes a night.
Although we are not conscious, the brain is
very active - often more so than when we are awake. This is the period when
most dreams occur. Our eyes dart around (hence the name), our breathing rate
and blood pressure rise. However, our bodies are effectively paralysed, said to
be nature's way of preventing us from acting out our dreams.
After REM sleep, the whole cycle begins again.
How much sleep is required?
There is no set amount of time that everyone
needs to sleep, since it varies from person to person. Results from the sleep
profiler indicate that people like to sleep anywhere between 5 and 11 hours,
with the average being 7.75 hours.
Jim Horne from Loughborough University's Sleep
Research Centre has a simple answer though: "The amount of sleep we
require is what we need not to be sleepy in the daytime."
Even animals require varied amounts of sleep:
Species
|
Average
total sleep time per day
|
Python
|
18 hrs
|
Tiger
|
15.8 hrs
|
Cat
|
12.1 hrs
|
Chimpanzee
|
9.7 hrs
|
Sheep
|
3.8 hrs
|
African elephant
|
3.3 hrs
|
Giraffe
|
1.9 hr
|
The current world record for the longest
period without sleep is 11 days, set by Randy Gardner in 1965. Four days into
the research, he began hallucinating. This was followed by a delusion where he
thought he was a famous footballer. Surprisingly, Randy was actually
functioning quite well at the end of his research and he could still beat the scientist
at pinball.
Questions 15–22
Do the following
statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 15–22 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
15. Thomas Edison
slept 4 hours a night.
16. Scientists
don't have a certain answer for why we have to sleep.
17. Lack
of sleep might cause various problems.
18. Sleep-deprivation
may be the cause of anorexia.
19. There
are four stages of the REM sleep.
20. According
to Jim Horne, we need to sleep as much as it takes to not be sleepy during the
day.
21. Giraffes
require less sleep than dogs.
22. After
four sleepless days, Randy had a delusion about him being a football
celebrity.
Questions 23–27
Choose the correct
letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter
in boxes 23–27 on your answer sheet.
23. During
the Light Sleep stage:
- Muscle activity
increases
- Jiggling might
occur
- It is not easy to
be woken up
- After waking up,
one may experience slight disorientation
24. Heart
rate is at the lowest level during:
- Light Sleep stage
- Rem Sleep
- True Sleep stage
- Third Sleep stage
25. The
brain activity is really high:
- During REM sleep
- During the stage
of True Sleep
- When we are awake
- During the Deep
sleep stage
26. Humans
require at least:
- 7.75 hours of sleep
- 5 hours of sleep
- 8 hours
- There is no set
amount of time
27. Pythons
need:
- Less sleep than
tigers
- Twice as much
sleep as cats
- Almost ten times
more sleep than giraffes
- More sleep than
any other animal in the world
Questions 28–30
Complete the sentences
below.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in
boxes 28–30 on your answer sheet.
28. If
we continually lack sleep, the specific part of our brain that controls
language, is .
29. True
Sleep lasts approximately .
30. Although
during REM sleep our breathing rate and blood pressure rise, our bodies .
You
should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 31–40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.
A new study finds that
half of human cultures don't practice romantic lip-on-lip kissing. Animals
don't tend to bother either. So how did it evolve?
When you think about it, kissing is strange
and a bit icky. You share saliva with someone, sometimes for a prolonged period
of time. One kiss could pass on 80 million bacteria, not all of them good.
Yet everyone surely remembers their first
kiss, in all its embarrassing or delightful detail, and kissing continues to
play a big role in new romances.
At least, it does in some societies. People in
western societies may assume that romantic kissing is a universal human
behaviour, but a new analysis suggests that less than half of all cultures
actually do it. Kissing is also extremely rare in the animal kingdom.
So what's really behind this odd behaviour? If
it is useful, why don't all animals do it – and all humans too? It turns out
that the very fact that most animals don't kiss helps explain why some do.
According to a new study of kissing
preferences, which looked at 168 cultures from around the world, only 46% of
cultures kiss in the romantic sense.
Previous estimates had put the figure at 90%.
The new study excluded parents kissing their children, and focused solely on
romantic lip-on-lip action between couples.
Many hunter-gatherer groups showed no evidence
of kissing or desire to do so. Some even considered it revolting. The Mehinaku
tribe in Brazil reportedly said it was "gross". Given that
hunter-gatherer groups are the closest modern humans get to living our
ancestral lifestyle, our ancestors may not have been kissing either.
The study overturns the belief that romantic
kissing is a near-universal human behaviour, says lead author William Jankowiak
of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. Instead it seems to be a product of
western societies, passed on from one generation to the next, he says. There is
some historical evidence to back that up.
Kissing as we do it today seems to be a fairly
recent invention, says Rafael Wlodarski of the University of Oxford in the UK.
He has trawled through records to find evidence of how kissing has changed. The
oldest evidence of a kissing-type behaviour comes from Hindu Vedic Sanskrit
texts from over 3,500 years ago. Kissing was described as inhaling each other's
soul.
In contrast, Egyptian hieroglyphics picture
people close to each other rather than pressing their lips together.
So what is going on? Is kissing something we
do naturally, but that some cultures have suppressed? Or is it something modern
humans have invented?
We can find some insight by looking at
animals.
Our closest relatives, chimpanzees and
bonobos, do kiss. Primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University in Atlanta,
Georgia, has seen many instances of chimps kissing and hugging after conflict.
For chimpanzees, kissing is a form of
reconciliation. It is more common among males than females. In other words, it
is not a romantic behaviour.
Their cousins the bonobos kiss more often, and
they often use tongues while doing so. That's perhaps not surprising, because
bonobos are highly sexual beings.
When two humans meet, we might shake hands.
Bonobos have sex: the so-called bonobo handshake. They also use sex for many
other kinds of bonding. So their kisses are not particularly romantic, either.
These two apes are exceptions. As far as we
know, other animals do not kiss at all. They may nuzzle or touch their faces
together, but even those that have lips don't share saliva or purse and smack
their lips together. They don't need to.
Take wild boars. Males produce a pungent smell
that females find extremely attractive. The key chemical is a pheromone called
androstenone that triggers the females' desire to mate.
From a female's point of view this is a good
thing, because males with the most androstonene are also the most fertile. Her
sense of smell is so acute, she doesn't need to get close enough to kiss the
male.
The same is true of many other mammals. For
example, female hamsters emit a pheromone that gets males very excited. Mice
follow similar chemical traces to help them find partners that are genetically
different, minimising the risk of accidental incest.
Animals often release these pheromones in
their urine. "Their urine is much more pungent," says Wlodarski.
"If there's urine present in the environment they can assess compatibility
through that."
It's not just mammals that have a great sense
of smell. A male black widow spider can smell pheromones produced by a female
that tell him if she has recently eaten. To minimise the risk of being eaten,
he will only mate with her if she is not hungry.
The point is, animals do not need to get close
to each other to smell out a good potential mate.
On the other hand, humans have an atrocious
sense of smell, so we benefit from getting close. Smell isn't the only cue we
use to assess each other's fitness, but studies have shown that it plays an
important role in mate choice.
A
study published in 1995 showed that women, just like mice, prefer the smell of
men who are genetically different from them. This makes sense, as mating with
someone with different genes is likely to produce healthy offspring. Kissing is
a great way to get close enough to sniff out your partner's genes.
In 2013, Wlodarski examined kissing
preferences in detail. He asked several hundred people what was most important
when kissing someone. How they smelled featured highly, and the importance of
smell increased when women were most fertile.
It turns out that men
also make a version of the pheromone that female boars find attractive. It is
present in male sweat, and when women are exposed to it their arousal levels
increase slightly.
Pheromones are a big part of how mammals chose
a mate, says Wlodarski, and we share some of them. "We've inherited all of
our biology from mammals, we've just added extra things through evolutionary
time."
On that view, kissing is just a culturally
acceptable way to get close enough to another person to detect their
pheromones.
In some cultures, this sniffing behaviour
turned into physical lip contact. It's hard to pinpoint when this happened, but
both serve the same purpose, says Wlodarski.
So if you want to find a perfect match, you
could forego kissing and start smelling people instead. You'll find just as
good a partner, and you won't get half as many germs. Be prepared for some
funny looks, though.
Questions 31–35
Do the following
statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 31–35 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
31. Both
Easter and Wester societies presume that kissing is essential for any part of
the world.
32. Our
ancestors were not likely to kiss.
33. Chimpanzees
and bonbons kiss not for the romance.
34. There
are other animal, rather than apes, that kiss.
35. Scent
might be important in choosing your partner.
Questions 36–39
Complete the sentences
below.
Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in
boxes 35–39 on your answer sheet.
36. According
to the Mehinaku tribe, kissing is .
37. Human
tradition is to when they meet.
38. A
male black widow will mate with the female if only she is .
39. Humans
benefit from getting close due to the fact that we have an of
smell.
Question 40
Choose the correct
letter, A, B, C or D.
40. Passage
3 can be described as:
- Strictly
scientific text
- Historical article
- Article from a
magazine
- Dystopian sketch
Get your Answer : Please Click Here
No comments:
Post a Comment