Reading Passage 1
You should spend ideally 20 minutes solving Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1.
The Birds of London
A. There are more than two hundred different species and subspecies of birds in the London area, ranging from the magpie to the greenfinch, but perhaps the most ubiquitous is the pigeon. It has been suggested that the swarms of feral pigeons are all descended from birds which escaped from dovecotes in the early medieval period; they found a natural habitat in the crannies and ledges of buildings as did their ancestors, the rock doves, amid the sea-girt cliffs. ‘They nest in small colonies,’ one observer has written, ‘usually high up and inaccessible’ above the streets of London as if the streets were indeed a sea. A man fell from the belfry of St Stephens Walbrook in 1277 while in quest of a pigeon’s nest, while the Bishop of London complained in 1385 of ‘malignant persons’ who threw stones at the pigeons resting in the city churches. So pigeons were already a familiar presence, even if they were not treated with the same indulgence as their more recent successors. A modicum of kindness to these creatures seems to have been first shown in the late nineteenth century when they were fed oats rather than the customary stale bread.
B. From the end of the nineteenth century, woodpigeons also migrated into the city; they were quickly urbanised, increasing both in numbers and in tameness. ‘We have frequently seen them on die roofs of houses,’ wrote the author of BirdLife in London in 1893, apparently as much at home as any dovecote pigeon.’ Those who look up today may notice their ‘fly-lines’ in the sky from Lincoln’s Inn Fields over Kingsway and Trafalgar Square to Battersea, with other lines to Victoria Park and to Kenwood. The air of London is filled with such ‘fly-lines’, and to trace the paths of the birds would be to envisage the city in an entirely different form; then it would seem linked and unified by thousands of thoroughfares and small paths of energy, each with its own history of use. The sparrows move quickly in public places, and they are now so much part of London that they have been adopted by the native population as the sparred; a friend was known to Cockneys as a ‘cock sparrer’ in tribute to a bird which is sweer and yet watchful, blessed with a dusky plumage similar to that of the London dust, a plucky little bird darting in and out of the city’s endless uproar.
C. They are small birds which can lose body heat very quickly, so they are perfectly adapted to the ‘heat island’ of London. They will live in any small cranny or cavity, behind drainpipes or ventilation shafts, or in public statues, or holes in buildings; in that sense, they are perfectly suited to a London topography. An ornithologist who described the sparrow as peculiarly attached to man’ said it never now breeds at any distance from an occupied building’. This sociability, bred upon the fondness of the Londoner, is manifest in many ways. One naturalist, W.H. Hudson, has described how any stranger in a green space or public garden will soon find diet ‘several sparrows are keeping him company … watching his every movement, and if he sits down on a chair or a bench several of them will come close to him, and hop this way and that before him, uttering a little plaintive note of interrogation — Have you got nothing for us? They have also been described as die urchins of the streets —‘thievish, self-assertive and pugnacious’ — a condition which again may merit the attention and admiration of native Londoners. Remarkably attached to their surroundings, they rarely create ‘fly-lines’ across the city; where they are born, like other Londoners, they stay.
D. There are some birds, such as the robin and the chaffinch, which are less approachable and trustful in the city than in the country. Other species, such as the mallard, grow increasingly shyer as they leave London. There has been a severe diminution of the number of sparrows, while blackbirds are more plentiful. Swans and ducks have also increased in number. Some species, however, have all but vanished. The rooks of London are, perhaps, the most notable of the disappeared, their rookeries destroyed by building work or by tree-felling. Areas of London were continuously inhabited by rooks for many hundreds of years. The burial ground of St Deinstalls in the East and the college garden of the Ecclesiastical Court in Doctors’ Commons, the turrets of the Tower of London and the gardens of Grays Inn, were once such localities. There was a rookery in the Inner Temple dating from at least 1666, mentioned by Oliver Goldsmith in 1774. Rooks nested on Bow Church and on St Olave’s. They were venerable London birds, preferring to cluster around ancient churches and the like as if they were their local guardians. Yet, in the words of the nineteenth-century song, ‘Now the old rooks have lost their places’. There was a grove in Kensington Gardens devoted to the rooks; it contained some seven hundred trees forming a piece of wild nature, a matter of delight and astonishment to those who walked among them and listened to the endless cawing that blotted out the city’s noise. But the trees were torn down in 1880. The rooks have never returned.
Questions 1-4
Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.
1 What kind of birds are the London pigeons descended from?
2 What were pigeons given to eat before attitudes towards them changed?
3 What are the routes taken by wood pigeons known as?
4 What TWO activities have contributed to the drastic reduction in the number of
rooks?
Questions 5-9
Complete the notes below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in blank spaces 5-9 on your answer sheet.
SPARROWS
Word meaning 5……………………………. is derived from the bird’s name suited to the atmosphere of London because of a tendency to rapidly 6…………………….. always likely to reproduce close to 7………………………… characteristic noted: 8………………………… because of the attitude of people in London make a sound that seems to be a kind of
9…………………………
Question 10-13
Write the correct letter A-F in boxes 10—13 on your answer sheet.
Classify the following as being stated of
A pigeons
B wood pigeons
C sparrows
D chaffinches
E blackbirds
F rooks
10 They are happier with people when they are in rural areas.
11 They rapidly became comfortable being with people.
12 They used to congregate particularly at old buildings.
13 They used to be attacked by people.
Reading Passage 2
Questions 14-26
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 on the following pages
Questions 14-20
Reading passage has seven paragraphs A-Q.
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number i-x in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.
List of Headingsi. The advantage of an intuitive approach to personality assessment ii. Overall theories of personality assessment rather than valuable guidance iii. The consequences of poor personality assessment iv. Differing views on the importance of personality assessment v. Success and failure in establishing an approach to personality assessment vi. Everyone makes personality assessments vii. Acknowledgement of the need for improvement in personality assessment viii. Little progress towards a widely applicable approach to personality assessment ix. The need for personality assessments to be well-judged x. The need for a different kind of research into personality assessment |
14 Paragraph A
15 Paragraph B
16 Paragraph C
17 Paragraph D
18 Paragraph E
19 Paragraph F
20 Paragraph G
Psychology and personality ASSESSMENT
A. Our daily lives are largely made up of contacts with other people, during which we are constantly making judgments of their personalities and accommodating our behavior to them in accordance with these judgments. A casual meeting of neighbors on the street, an employer giving instructions to an employee, a mother telling her children how to behave, a journey in a train where strangers eye one another without exchanging a word – all these involve mutual interpretations of personal qualities.
B. Success in many vocations largely depends on skill in sizing up people. It is important not only to such professionals as the clinical psychologist, the psychiatrist or the social worker but also to the doctor or lawyer in dealing with their clients, the businessman trying to outwit his rivals, the salesman with potential customers, the teacher with his pupils, not to speak of the pupils judging their teacher. Social life, indeed, would be impossible if we did not. To some extent, understand, and react to the motives and qualities of those we meet; and clearly we are sufficiently accurate for most practical purposes, although we also recognize that misinterpretations easily arise – particularly on the pare of others who judge us!
C. Errors can often be corrected as we go along. But whenever we are pinned down to a definite decision about a person, which cannot easily be revised through his feed-back’, the Inadequacies of our judgments become apparent. The hostess who wrongly thinks that the Smiths and the Joneses will get on well together can do little to retrieve the success of her party. A school or a business may be saddled for years with an undesirable member of staff because the selection committee which interviewed him for a quarter of an hour misjudged his personality.
D. Just because the process is so familiar and taken for granted, It has aroused little scientific curiosity until recently. Dramatists, writers and artists throughout the centuries have excelled in the portrayal of the character, but have seldom stopped to ask how they, or we, get to know people, or how accurate is our knowledge. However, the popularity of such unscientific systems as Lavater’s physiognomy in the eighteenth century, Gall’s phrenology in the nineteenth, and of handwriting interpretations by graphologists, or palm-readings by gipsies, show that people are aware of weaknesses in their judgments and desirous of better methods of diagnosis. It is natural that they should turn to psychology for help, in the belief that psychologists are specialists in ‘human nature’.
E. This belief is hardly justified: for the primary aim of psychology had been to establish the general laws and principles underlying behavior and thinking, rather than to apply these to concrete problems of the individual person. A great many professional psychologists still regard it as their main function to study the nature of learning, perception and motivation in the abstracted or average human being, or in lower organisms and consider it premature to put so young a science to practical uses. They would disclaim the possession of any superior skill in judging their fellow-men. Indeed, being more aware of the difficulties than is the non-psychologists, they may be more reluctant to commit themselves to definite predictions or decisions about other people. Nevertheless, to an increasing extent psychologists are moving into educational, occupational, clinical, and other applied fields, where they are called upon to use their expertise for such purposes as fitting the education or job to the child or adult, and the person to the job, Thus a considerable proportion of their activities consists of personality assessment.
F. The success of psychologists in personality assessment has been limited, in comparison with what they have achieved in the fields of abilities and training, with the result that most people continue to rely on unscientific methods of assessment. In recent times there has been a tremendous amount of work on personality tests and on carefully controlled experimental studies of personality. Investigations of personality by Freudian and other ‘depth’ psychologists have an even longer history. And yet psychology seems to be no nearer to providing society with practicable techniques which are sufficiently reliable and accurate to win general acceptance. The soundness of the methods of psychologists in the field of personality assessment and the value of their work is under constant fire from other psychologists, and it is far from easy to prove their worth.
G. The growth of psychology has probably helped responsible members of society to become more aware of the difficulties of assessment. But it is not much use telling employers, educationists and judges how inaccurately they diagnose the personalities with which they have to deal unless psychologists are sure that they can provide something better. Even when university psychologists themselves appoint a new member of staff, they almost always resort to the traditional techniques of assessing the candidates through interviews, past records, and testimonials, and probably make at least as many bad appointments as other employers do. However, a large amount of experimental development of better methods has been carried out since 1940 by groups of psychologists in the Armed Services and in the Civil Service, and by such organizations as the (British) National Institute of Industrial Psychology and the American Institute of Research.
Question 21
Choose THREE letters A-F.
Write your answers in box 21 on your answer sheet.
21 Which THREE of the following are stated about psychologists involved in personality assessment?
A ‘Depth’ psychologists are better at it than some other kinds of a psychologist.
B Many of them accept that their conclusions are unreliable.
C They receive criticism from psychologists not involved in the field.
D They have made people realise how hard the subject is.
E They have told people what not to do, rather than what they should do.
F They keep changing their minds about what the best approaches are.
Questions 22-26
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 21 In boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet write.
YES, if the statement agrees with the views of the writer.
NO, if the statement contradicts the views of the writer.
NOT GIVEN, if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this.
22 People often feel that they have been wrongly assessed.
23 Unscientific systems of personality assessment have been of some use.
24 People make false assumptions about the expertise of psychologists.
25 It is likely that some psychologists are no better than anyone else at assessing personality.
26 Research since 1940 has been based on the acceptance of previous theories.
Reading Passage 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 21-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3
Titan of technology
A. Moore is the scientific brain behind Intel, the world’s biggest maker of computer chips. Both funny and self-deprecating, he’s a shrewd businessman too but admits to being an ‘accidental entrepreneur’, happier in the backroom trading ideas with techies than out selling the product or chatting up the stockholders. When he applied for a job at Dow Chemical after gaining his PhD, the company psychologist ruled that I was okay technically, but that I’d never manage anything’. This year, Intel is set to turn over $28 billion.
B. When Moore co-founded Intel (short for Integrated Electronics) to develop integrated circuits thirty-five years ago, he provided the motive force in R&D (Research & Development) while his more extrovert partner Robert Noyce became the public face of the company. Intel’s ethos was distinctively Californian: laid- back, democratic, polo shirt and chinos. Moore worked in a cubicle like everyone else, never had a designated parking space and flew Economy. None of this implied lack of ambition. Moore and Noyce shared a vision, recognising that success depended just as much on intellectual pieces as on Intel’s ability to deliver a product. Noyce himself received the first patent for an integrated circuit in 1961, while both partners were learning the business of electronics at Fairchild Semiconductor.
C. Fairchild’s success put money in Moore and Noyce’s pockets, but they were starved of R&D money. They resigned, frustrated, to found Intel in 1968. ‘It was one of those rare periods when money was available,’ says Moore. They put in $250,000 each and drummed up another $2.5m of venture capital ‘on the strength of a one-page business plan that said essentially nothing’. Ownership was divided 50:50 between founders and backers. Three years later, Intel’s first microprocessor was released: the 4004, carrying 2,250 transistors. Progress after that was rapid. By the time the competition realised what was happening, Intel had amassed a seven-year R&D lead that it was never to relinquish.
D. By the year 2000, Intel’s Pentium-4 chip was carrying 42 million transistors. ‘Now,’ says Moore, ‘we put a quarter of a billion transistors on a chip and are looking forward to a billion in the near future.’ The performance gains have been phenomenal. The 4004 ran at 108 kilohertz (108,000 hertz), the Pentium*4 at three gigahertz (3 billion hertz). It’s calculated that if automobile speed had increased similarly over the same period, you could now drive from New York to San Francisco in six seconds. Moore’s prescience in forecasting this revolution is legendary. In 1965, while still head of the R&D laboratory at Fairchild, he wrote a piece for Electronics magazine observing ‘that over the first few years we had essentially doubled the complexity of integrated circuits every year. I blindly extrapolated for the next ten years and said we’d go from about 60 to about 60,000 transistors on a chip. It proved a much more spot-on prediction than I could ever have imagined, up until then, integrated circuits had been expensive and had had principally military applications. But I could see that the economics were going to switch dramatically. This was going to become the cheapest way to make electronics.’
E. The prediction that a chip’s transistor-count – and thus its performance – would keep doubling every year soon proved so accurate that Carver Mead, a friend from Caltech, dubbed it ‘Moore’s Law’. The name has stuck. ‘Moore’s Law’ has become the yardstick by which the exponential growth of the computer industry has been measured ever since. When, in 1975, Moore looked around him again and saw transistor-counts slowing, he predicted that in future chip-performance would double only every two years. But that proved pessimistic. Actual growth since then has split the difference between his two predictions, with performance doubling every 18 months.
F. And there’s a corollary, says Moore. ‘If the cost of a given amount of computer power drops 50 per cent every 18 months, each time that happens the market explodes with new applications that hadn’t been economical before.’ He sees the microprocessor as ‘almost infinitely elastic’. As prices fall, new applications keep emerging: smart light bulbs, flashing trainers or greetings cards that sing ‘Happy Birthday’. Where will it all stop? Well, it’s true, he says, ‘that in a few more generations [of chips], the fact that materials are made of atoms starts to be a real problem. Essentially, you can’t make things any smaller.’ But in practice, the day of reckoning is endlessly postponed as engineers find endlessly more ingenious ways of loading more transistors on a chip. ‘I suspect I shared the feelings of everybody else that when we got to the dimensions of a micron [about 1986Ị, we wouldn’t be able to continue because we were touching the wavelength of light. But as we got closer, the barriers just melted away,’
G. When conventional chips finally reach their limits, nanotechnology beckons. Researchers are already working on sci-fi sounding alternatives such as molecular computers, built atom by atom, that theoretically could process hundreds of thousands times more information than today’s processors. Quantum computers using the state of electrons as the basis for calculation could operate still faster. On any measure, there looks to be plenty of life left in Moore’s Law yet.
Questions 27-29
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write your answers next to 27-29 on your answer sheet.
27 What do we learn about Gordon Moore’s personality in the first two paragraphs?
A It has changed noticeably as his career has developed.
B It was once considered unsuitable for the particular type of business he was in.
C It made him more suited to producing things than selling them.
D It is less complicated than it may at first appear.
28 What do we learn about Intel when it was first established?
A It was unlike any other company in its field at the time.
B It combined a relaxed atmosphere with serious intent.
C It attracted attention because of the unconventional way in which it was run.
D It placed more emphasis on ingenuity than on any other aspect.
29 What is stated about the setting up of Intel in the third paragraph?
A It was primarily motivated by the existence of funds that made it possible.
B It involved keeping certain sensitive information secret.
C It resulted from the founders’ desire to launch a particular product.
D It was caused by the founders’ dissatisfaction with their employer’s priorities.
Questions 30-34
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading -Passage 3?
In boxes 30-34 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
30 Competitors soon came close to catching up with Intel’s progress.
31 Intel’s Pentium 4 chip was more successful than Moore had anticipated.
32 Moore’s prediction in 1975 was based on too little evidence.
33 Flashing trainers are an example of Moore’s theory about the relationship between cost and applications.
34 Moore has always been confident that problems concerning the sire of components will be overcome.
Questions 35-40
Complete the summary below using words from the box.
Write your answers in blank spaces 35-40 on your answer sheet.
MOORE’S LAW
Gordon Moore’s ability to foresee developments is well-known. In 1965, he referred to the increase in the 35………………………….. of integrated circuits and guessed that the number of transistors would go on rising for a decade. The 36……………………….. of his prediction surprised him. Previously, the 37…………………….. and main 38……………………………………… of integrated circuits had been the major 39……………………….. with regard to their development. But Moore observed that the 40………………………. of integrated circuits was going to improve dramatically. His resulting forecasts concerning chips led to the creation of the term ‘Moore’s Law’.
| design | use | opinion | invention |
| cost-effectiveness | failure | sophistication | proposition |
| production | influence | understanding | cost |
| accuracy | demand | theory | inter-dependence |
| familiarity | reception | appearance | reference |
Answers
[restrict paid=true]
Reading Passage 1
Questions 1-13
| 1. | rock doves
Note 1st paragraph: it has been suggested … sea-girt cliffs. The pigeons today are descended from birds from the medieval period, and they were descended from rock doves. The pigeons lived on buildings, while the rock doves lived on cliffs. |
| 2. | stale bread
Note 1st paragraph, last sentence: People first started to be kind to them in the 19 century, when they gave them oats. Before that, it was common to give them stale (old and not good to eat) bread. |
| 3. | fly(-)lines
Note 2nd paragraph: ‘Those who look up … history of use’. The use of inverted commas indicates that this is the special term used. You can see these lines all over London if you look up, we are told, and examples of places in London that birds fly to and from are given. |
| 4. | building work; tree(-)felling
Note Last paragraph: ‘The rooks of London … tree-felling’. The places where rooks live (rookeries) have been destroyed by these two activities, and this is why they have disappeared. |
| 5. | friend
Note Cockneys (people born and brought up in London) pronounced the word as ‘sparrer’; they had a word, ‘cock sparrer’, which meant ‘friend’. They used the bird’s name in this word because they felt the bird was like a friend, ‘sweet and yet watchful’ (pleasant but also taking care of others). |
| 6. | lose body heat
Note London is called a ‘heat island’ (a place where heat is concentrated), and the bird is ‘perfectly adapted’ to such a place because it loses its body heat very quickly, so it can stay warm in London. |
| 7. | (an) occupied building
Note It was said that it ‘never breeds at any distance from an occupied building’. It always breeds close to buildings with people in them. |
| 8. | sociability
Note This means that it likes people and being with people. This characteristic is ‘bred upon the fondness of the Londoner’ – caused and encouraged by the fact that people in London like the bird. |
| 9. | interrogation
Note The birds seem to be ‘uttering a little plaintive note’ – making a sad sound that suggests they are asking for something. |
| 10. | D
Note 4th paragraph,1st sentence: Chaffinches are ‘less approachable and trustful in the city than in the country’. They are happier to have people near them when they are in the countryside than when they are in the city. |
| 11. | B
Note 2nd paragraph,1st sentence: Woodpigeons ‘were quickly urbanised’ (rapidly became used to living in a city) and they increased in numbers and ‘tameness’ (they became less wild and more used to living with people). |
| 12. | F
Note the last paragraph: ‘They were venerable … preferring to cluster around ancient churches and the like’. They used to gather in groups at very old churches and at similar very old buildings. |
| 13. | A
Note 1st paragraph: ‘A man fell … the Bishop … complained of malignant’ (very nasty, very unpleasant) people who ‘threw stones at the pigeons’. |
Reading Passage 2
Questions 14-26
| 14. | vi
Note The first sentence states that we assess other people’s personalities frequently during our ‘daily lives’, and the rest of the paragraph gives examples of everyday situations in which this happens. |
| 15. | ix
Note The paragraph lists situations in which it is important that correct assessments of people’s personalities are made. |
| 16. | iii
Note The paragraph begins by stating that it becomes very clear when inaccurate assessments of people’s personalities have been made, and then examples are given of the results when this has happened. (Paragraph B is about needing to make accurate assessments, while Paragraph C is about what happens if inaccurate assessments are made.) |
| 17. | vii
Note The paragraph begins by stating that little attention has been paid to the question of how personality can be assessed or how accurately personalities are assessed. It then states that people have been attracted by a number of ‘unscientific systems’ for assessing personality because they realise there are ‘weaknesses in their judgments’, and they are ‘desirous of’ (they want) better methods for assessing personality. This means that people know they are not very good at it and want to get better at it. |
| 18. | ii
Note The main point of the paragraph is that a lot of psychologists consider that their main role is to deal with ‘general laws and principles’ concerning human behaviour and thought. They think it is not their role to find ‘practical uses’ for their knowledge, and they do not think they have great skill at judging other people themselves. As a result, they do not want to give ‘definite predictions or decisions about other people’. Some psychologists are moving into work that Involves doing this, we are told at the end of the paragraph, but the main point is that psychologists think they should deal with general theories and not try to give practical guidance. |
| 19. | viii
Note The main point of this paragraph is that ‘unscientific methods of assessment’ are still used because, although psychologists have done research on personality assessment, they have not produced techniques for doing this that ‘are sufficiently reliable and accurate to win general acceptance’. They have therefore not made much progress towards coming up with methods that are of practical use in society in general. |
| 20. | v
Note In the first half of the paragraph, we are told about unsuccessful approaches to personality assessment by a variety of people who ‘inaccurately … diagnose personality’ and make ‘bad appointments’ because of poor personality assessment methods. In the last part of the paragraph, we are told about attempts to find ‘better methods’ (more successful ones) that have been used by certain organisations. |
| 21. | C/D/E (in any order)
Note C: Paragraph E, last sentence. They are ‘under constant fire’ (constantly criticised severely) by ‘other psychologists’ (ones not working in the area of personality assessment) D: Paragraph F, first sentence. Psychologists involved in personality assessment have shown people who have to make important decisions in society how difficult it is to assess personality. E: Paragraph F, second sentence. The writer is saying that psychologists have shown people that their judgments of personality are poor, but they have not managed to ‘provide something better’ (suggest a better method). Option A (paragraph E, third sentence) is not a possible answer because depth psychologists have been studying personality assessment for longer than other psychologists, but the writer does not say they are better at this than other psychologists. Despite the work of depth psychologists, a widely accepted approach has not developed. Option B (paragraph E, last two sentences) is not a possible answer because their methods are criticised, and it is not easy for them to ‘prove their worth’ (to prove that their methods are right), but we are not told that they themselves agree that their methods don’t work. Option F (paragraph F) is not a possible answer because we are told about the existence of different methods used by different people and in different organisations, but we are not told that the same psychologists keep using different methods or changing from one method to another. |
| 22. | YES
Note Paragraph B, last sentence: We know that ‘misinterpretations easily arise’ (it is easy for people to make inaccurate personality assessments), and we feel that this happens particularly when other people judge us (rather than when we judge others). |
| 23. | NOT GIVEN
Note Paragraph C: Various ‘unscientific systems’ are mentioned in the middle of the paragraph. The writer says that these have become popular because people want to get better at assessing personality, but he does not say whether or not any of them have actually been useful in a practical way. |
| 24. | YES
Note Paragraph D, last sentence and paragraph E, first sentence: The writer says that it is ‘natural’ (understandable) that people think that psychologists are experts on personality, but that this belief is ‘hardly justified’ (not really correct at all) because they are not experts on this. |
| 25. | YES
Note Paragraph F: The writer refers to ‘university psychologists’ and says that when they appoint a new member of staff, they ‘probably make at least as many bad appointments as other employers do’. They assess personality using the same ‘traditional methods’ that other people use, and they judge personality as inaccurately as other people do. |
| 26. | NO
Note Paragraph F, last sentence: The research since 1940 that the writer mentions has involved ‘the experimental development of better methods’, which means it has tried new methods and has not been based on the theories that led to the previous methods. |
Reading Passage 3
Questions 27-40
| 27. | C
Note 2nd paragraph: He had the most important role in Research & Development (coming up with new products) and was not as ‘extrovert’ (lively, confident and enjoying talking to people) as his partner, whose role was to represent the company in public. Option A (V paragraph) is incorrect because he still has the same personality and is happier exchanging ideas with ‘techies’ (experts on technical matters) than being involved In selling products or talking to shareholders in the company. Option B (1** paragraph) is Incorrect because he was considered not to be someone who could ever be a manager, ‘ but the psychologist did not say he was in the wrong kind of business. Option D d” paragraph, 1“ sentence) is incorrect because the opposite is probably true. Although he is funny and ‘self-deprecating’ (he talks as if his achievements and abilities are not big or important), he is actually ‘shrewd’ (he is clever and makes good judgments). |
| 28. | B
Note 2nd paragraph: The company was ‘laid-back’ (had a calm and relaxed approach and atmosphere), but this never ‘implied lack of ambition’ (meant that the company wasn’t ambitious). Option A [2nd paragraph) is incorrect because the company was ‘distinctively Californian’ (it was clearly very typical of companies in California at the time). Option C (2nd paragraph) is incorrect because it may have been unconventional – people wore casual clothes and Moore did not have special treatment even though it was his company – but there is no suggestion that these aspects attracted attention. Option D (2nd paragraph) is incorrect because the emphasis was equally on ‘intellectual pizazz’ (having clever and exciting ideas) and the ‘ability to deliver a product’ (they saw having clever ideas and producing products as equally important). |
| 29. | D
Note 3rd paragraph, 1st sentence: They got paid well, but they were frustrated because the company did not provide funding for research and development, and so they left and set up their own company. Option A is incorrect because money was available for setting up companies at that time, but this is not why they set one up, it is what helped them set it up after they had decided to do so. Option B is incorrect because their business plan ‘said essentially nothing’ (this means that it had very little detail in it, not that it left out secret information). The competition was seven years behind Intel in terms of research and development because of what they did after they set the company up, not because they kept things secret at the time when they set it up. Option C is incorrect because their first microprocessor came out three years after they set up the firm, but it did not exist when they set it up. They set up the firm to develop products themselves, not because they had a particular product in mind. |
| 30. | FALSE
Note 3rdparagraph: Intel was seven years ahead of the competition in terms of research and development, and we are told that it did not ‘relinquish’ this lead (it never lost this advantage). The competition, therefore, did not catch up with Intel. |
| 31. | NOT GIVEN
Note 4th paragraph: It seems clear that it was successful, but we are not told anything about Moore’s expectations concerning how successful it would be. |
| 32. | NOT GIVEN
Note 6th paragraph: His estimation in 1975 of how much growth there would be was ‘pessimistic’ (it was too low)’, so it was inaccurate, but we are not told how much evidence he based the prediction on. |
| 33. | TRUE
Note 7th paragraph: Moore says that every time the cost of producing more computer power falls, an enormous number of new products using microprocessors appear because they can now be produced more cheaply. Flashing trainers are an example of such a product. |
| 34. | FALSE
Note 7th paragraph: ‘I suspect I shared Moore says that he agreed in the past that there would be a point where no more development was possible, but he had been proved wrong about this because the ‘barriers’ (problems connected with making components even smaller) had ‘melted away’ (disappeared because people had found ways of solving these problems). |
| 35. | sophistication
Note He referred to the fact that the ‘complexity’ of integrated circuits had ‘doubled’ (they had become twice as complex’). In this context, ‘sophistication’ means ‘complexity’. |
| 36. | accuracy
Note His prediction proved to be more ‘spot-on’ than he had expected. If something is ‘spot-on’, it is completely accurate or correct. |
| 37. | cost
Note Before then, integrated circuits had been ‘expensive’, so the cost was an issue. |
| 38. | use
Note Before then, integrated circuits had had ’principally military applications’ – they had been used mainly in military equipment. |
| 39. | influence
Note The cost of producing them and the main way in which they were used had obviously affected the development of integrated circuits. Moore felt that this was going to change and that these factors would no longer be such an influence. |
| 40. | cost-effectiveness
Note He predicted that there was going to be a dramatic change in the cost of producing integrated circuits – it was going to come down a lot. They were going to become ‘the cheapest way to make electronics’. If a product can be made cheaply in comparison with how much it can be sold for, it is cost-effective. |
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