ACADEMIC READING
QUESTIONS 1-14
You are advid to spend about 15 minutes on Questions 1-14 which refer to Reading Passage 1 below.
READING PASSAGE 1
FINDING THE LOST FREEDOM
1. The private car is assumed to have widened our horizons and incread our mobility. When we consider our children's mobility, they can be driven to more places (and more distant places) than they could visit without access to a motor vehicle. However, allowing our cities to be dominated by cars has progressively eroded children's independent mobility. Children have lost much of their freedom to explore their own neighbourhood or city without adult supervision. In recent surveys, when parents in some cities were asked about their own childhood experiences, the majority remembered having more, or far more, opportunities for going out on their own, compared with their own children today. They had more freedom to explore their own environment.
2. Children's independent access to their local streets may be important for their own personal, mental and psychological development. Allowing them to get to know their own neighbourhood and community gives them a 'n of place'. This depends on 'active exploration', which is not provided for when children are pasngers in cars. (Such children may e more, but they learn less.) Not only is it important that children be able to get to local play areas by themlves, but walking and cycling journeys to school and to other destinations provide genuine play activities in themlves.
3. There are very significant time and money costs for parents associated with transporting their children to school, sport and to other locations. Rearch in the United Kingdom estimated that this cost, in 1990, was between 10 billion and 20 billion pounds.
4. The reduction in children's freedom may also contribute to a weakening of the n of local community. As fewer children and adults u the streets as pedestrians, the streets become less sociable places. There is less opportunity for children and adults to have the spontaneous of community. This in itlf may exacerbate fears associated with assault and molestation of children, becau there are fewer adults available who know their neighbours' children, and who can look out for their safety.
5. The extra traffic involved in transporting children results in incread traffic congestion, pollution and accident risk. As our roads become more dangerous, more parents drive their children to more places, thus contributing to incread levels of danger for the remaining pedestrians. Anyone who has experienced either the reduced volume of traffic in peak hour during school holidays, or the traffic jams near schools at the end of a school day, will not need convincing about the points. Thus, there are also important environmental implications of children's loss of freedom.
6. As individuals, parents strive to provide the best upbringing they can for their children. However, in doing so, (e.g. by driving their children to sport, school or recreation) parents may be contributing to a more dangerous environment for children generally. The idea that 'streets are for cars and back yards and playgrounds are for children' is a strongly held belief, and parents have little choice as individuals but to keep their children off the streets if they want to protect their safety.
7. In many parts of Dutch cities, and some traffic calmed precincts in Germany, residential streets are now places where cars must give way to pedestrians. In the areas, residents are accepting the view that the function of streets is not solely to provide mobility for cars. Streets may also be for social interaction,
walking, cycling and playing. One of the most important aspects of the European cities, in terms of giving cities back to children, has been a range of 'traffic calming' initiatives, aimed at reducing the volume and speed of traffic. The initiatives have had complex interactive effects, leading to a n that children have been able to 'recapture' their local neighbourhood, and more importantly, that they have been able to do this in safety. Recent rearch has demonstrated that children in many German cities have significantly higher levels of freedom to travel to places in their own neighbourhood or city than children in other cities in the world.
8. Modifying cities in order to enhance children's freedom will not only benefit children. Such cities will become more environmentally sustainable, as well as more sociable and more livable for all city residents. Perhaps it will be our concern for our children's welfare that convinces us that we need to challenge the dominance of the car in our cities.
Questions 1-5
Read statements 1-5 which relate to Paragraphs 1,2, and 3 of the reading passage. Answer Т if the statement is true, F if the statement is fal, or NI if there is no information given in the passage. Write your answers in the spaces numbered 1-5 on the answer sheet. One has been done for you as an example.
Example: The private car has made people more mobile. Answer: Т
1.The private car has helped children have more opportunities to learn.
2.Children are more independent today than they ud to be.
3.Walking and cycling to school allows children to learn more.
4.Children usually walk or cycle to school.
5.Parents save time and money by driving children to school.
Questions 6-9
In Paragraphs 4 and 5, there are FOUR problems stated. The problems, numbered as questions 6-9, are listed below. Each of the problems has a cau, listed A-G. Find the correct cau for each of the problems and write the corresponding letter A-G, in the spaces numbered 6-9 on the answer sheet. One has been done for you as an example.
There are more caus than problems so you will not u all of them and you may u any cau more than once.
Problems
Example: low n of community feeling
6.streets become less sociable
7.fewer chances for meeting friends
8.fears of danger for children
9.higher accident risk Caus
Answer: F
A few adults know local children В fewer people u the streets С incread pollution
D streets are less friendly
E less traffic in school holidays
F reduced freedom for children
G more children driven to school
Questions 10-14
Questions 10-14 are statement beginnings which reprent information given in Paragraphs 6, 7 and 8. In the box below, there are some statement endings numbered i-x. Choo the correct ending for each statement. Write your answers i-x, in the spaces numbered 10-14 on the answer sheet. One has been done
for you as an example.
There are more statement endings than you will need.
Example: By driving their children to school, parents help create … Answer: i
10.Children should play ...
11.In some German towns, pedestrians have right of way …
12.Streets should also be ud for ...
13.Reducing the amount of traffic and the speed is ...
14.All people who live in the city will benefit if cities are ...
List of statement endings
i ... a dangerous environment.
ii ... modified.
iii ... on residential streets.
iv ... modifying cities.
v ... neighbourhoods.
vi ... socialising.
vii ... in backyards.
viii ... for cars.
ix ... traffic calming.
x ... residential
Questions 15-28
READING PASSAGE 2
RISING SEA
Paragraph 1. INCREASED TEMPERATURES
The average air temperature at the surface of the earth has rin this century, as has the temperature of ocean surface waters. Becau water expands as it heats, a warmer ocean means higher a levels. We cannot say definitely that the temperature ris are due to the greenhou effect; the heating may be part of a ‘natural’ variability over a long time-scale that we have not yet recognized in our short 100 years of recording. However, assuming the build up of greenhou gas is responsible, and that the warming will continue, scientists – and inhabitants of low-lying coastal areas – would like to know the extent of future a level ris.
Paragraph 2.
Calculating this is not easy. Models ud for the purpo have treated the ocean as passive, stationary and one-dimensional. Scientists have assumed that heat simply diffud into the a from the atmosphere. Using basic physical laws, they then predict how much a known volume of water would expand for a given increa in temperature. But the oceans are not one-dimensional, and recent work by oceanographers, using a new model which takes into account a number of subtle facets of the a – including vast and complex ocean currents – suggests that the ri in a level may be less than some earlier estimates had predicted.
Paragraph 3.
An international forum on climate change, in 1986, produced figures for likely a-level ris of 20 cms and 1.4 m, corresponding to atmospheric temperature increas of 1.5 and 4.5C respectively. Some scientists
estimate that the ocean warming resulting from tho temperature increas by the year 2050 would rai the a level by between 10 cms and 40 cms. This model only takes into account the temperature effect on the oceans; it does not consider changes in a level brought about by the melting of ice sheets and glaciers, and changes in groundwater storage. When we add on estimates of the, we arrive at figures for total a-level ris of 15 cm and 70 cm respectively.
Paragraph 4.
It’s not easy trying to model accurately the enormous complexities of the ever-changing oceans, with their great volume, massive currents and nsitively to the influence of land mass and the atmosphere. For example, consider how heat enters the ocean. Does it just ‘diffu’ from the warmer air vertically into the water, and heat only the surface layer of the a? (Warm water is less den than cold, so it would not spread downwards). Conventional models of a-level ri have considered that this the only method, but measurements have shown that the rate of heat transfer into the ocean by vertical diffusion is far lower in practice than the figures that many modelers have adopted.
Paragraph 5.
Much of the early work, for simplicity, ignored the fact that water in the oceans moves in three dimensions. By movement, of cours e, scientists don’t mean waves, which are too small individually to consider, but rather movement of vast volumes of water in huge currents. To understand the importance of this, we now need to consider another process – advection. Imagine smoke rising from a chimney. On a still day it will slowly spread out in all directions by means of diffusion. With a s
trong directional wind, however, it will all shift downwind, this process is advection – the transport of properties (notably heat and salinity in the ocean) by the movement of bodies of air or water, rather than by conduction or diffusion.
Paragraph 6.
Massive ocean currents called gyres do the moving. The currents have far more capacity to store heat than does the atmosphere. Indeed, just the top 3 m of the ocean contains more heat than the whole of the atmosphere. The origin of gyres lies in the fact that more heat from the Sun reaches the Equator than the Poles, and naturally heat tends to move from the former to the latter. Warm air ris at the Equator, and draws more air beneath it in the form of winds (the “Trade Winds”) that, together with other air movements, provide the main force driving the ocean currents.
Paragraph 7.
Water itlf is heated at the Equator and moves poleward, twisted by th e Earth’s rotation and affected by
the positions of the continents. The resultant broadly circular movements between about 10 and 40
North and South are clockwi in the Southern Hemisphere. They flow towards the east at mid latitudes in the equatorial region. They then flow towards the Poles, along the eastern sides of continents, as warm currents. When two different mass of water meet, one will move beneath the other, depending on their relative densities in the subduction process. The densities are determined by temperature and salinity. the convergence of water of different densities from the Equator and the Poles deep in the oceans caus continuous subduction. This means that water moves vertically as well as horizontally. Cold water from the Poles travels as depth – it is denr than warm water – until it emerges at the surface in another part of the world in the form of a cold current.
Paragraph 8. HOW THE GREEN HOUSE EFFECT WILL CHANGE OCEAN TEMPERATURES
Ocean currents, in three dimensions, form a giant ‘conveyor belt’, distributing heat from the thin surface layer into the interior of the oceans and around the globe. Water may take decades to circulate in the 3-D gyres in the lop kilometer of the ocean, and centuries in the deep water. With the incread atmospheric temperatures due to the greenhou effect, the oceans conveyor belt will carry more heat into the interior. This subduction moves heat around far more effectively than simple diffusion. Becau warm water expands more than cold when it is heated, scientists had presumed that the a level would ri unevenly around the globe. It is now believed that the inequalities can
not persist, as winds will act to continuously spread out the water expansion. Of cour, of global warming changes the strength and distribution of the winds, then this ‘evening-out’ process may not occur, and the a level could ri more in some areas than others.
Questions 15-20
There are 8 paragraphs numbered 1-8 in Reading Passage 2. The first paragraph and the last paragraph have been given headings. From the list below numbered A-I, choo a suitable heading for the remaining 6 paragraphs. Write your answers A-I, in the spaces numbered 15-20 on the answer sheet.
There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not u all the headings.
List of headings
A THE GYRE PRINCIPLE
B THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT
C HOW OCEAN WATERS MOVE
D STATISTICAL EVIDENCE
E THE ADVECTION PRINCIPLE
F DIFFUSION VERSUS ADVECTION
G FIGURING THE SEA LEVEL CHANGES
H ESTIMATED FIGURES
I THE DIFFUSION MODEL
15.Paragraph 2
16.Paragraph 3
17.Paragraph 4
18.Paragraph 5
19.Paragraph 6
20.Paragraph 7
Questions 21 and 22
Answer questions 21 and 22 by lecting the correct answer to complete each ntence according to the information given in the reading passage. Write your answers А, В, С or D in the spaces numbered 21 and 22 on the answer sheet.
21. Scientists do not know for sure why the air and surface of ocean temperatures are rising becau:
A there is too much variability
В there is not enough variability
Сthey have not been recording the temperatures for enough time
D the changes have only been noticed for 100 years
22. New rearch leads scientists to believe that:
A the oceans are less complex
В the oceans are more complex
С the oceans will ri more than expected
D the oceans will ri less than expected
Question 23
Look at the following list of factors A-F and lect THREE which are mentioned in the reading passage which may contribute to the rising ocean levels. Write the THREE corresponding letters A-F, in the space numbered 23 on the answer sheet.
List of factors
