READING PASSAGE 1
You
should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
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Timekeeper: Invention of Marine Chronometer
A
Up
to the middle of the 18th century, the navigators were still unable to exactly
identify the position at sea, so they might face a great number of risks such
as the shipwreck or running out of supplies before arriving at the destination.
Knowing one’s position on the earth requires two simple but essential
coordinates, one of which is the longitude.
B
The
longitude is a term that can be used to measure the distance that one has
covered from one’s home to another place around the world without the
limitations of naturally occurring baseline like the equator. To determine
longitude, navigators had no choice but to measure the angle with the naval
sextant between Moon centre and a specific star— lunar distance—along with the
height of both heavenly bodies. Together with the nautical almanac, Greenwich
Mean Time (GMT) was determined, which could be adopted to calculate longitude
because one hour in GMT means 15-degree longitude. Unfortunately, this approach
laid great reliance on the weather conditions, which brought great
inconvenience to the crew members. Therefore, another method was proposed, that
is, the time difference between the home time and the local time served for the
measurement. Theoretically, knowing the longitude position was quite simple,
even for the people in the middle of the sea with no land in sight. The key element
for calculating the distance travelled was to know, at the very moment, the
accurate home time. But the greatest problem is: how can a sailor know the home
time at sea?
Marine clock
Timekeeping app
C
The
simple and again obvious answer is that one takes an accurate clock with him,
which he sets to the home time before leaving. A comparison with the local time
(easily identified by checking the position of the Sun) would indicate the time
difference between the home time and the local time, and thus the distance from
home was obtained. The truth was that nobody in the 18th century had ever
managed to create a clock that could endure the violent shaking of a ship and
the fluctuating temperature while still maintaining the accuracy of time for
navigation.
D
After
1714, as an attempt to find a solution to the problem, the British government
offered a tremendous amount of £20,000, which were to be managed by the
magnificently named ‘Board of Longitude’. If timekeeper was the answer (and
there could be other proposed solutions, since the money wasn’t only offered
for timekeeper), then the error of the required timekeeping for achieving this
goal needed to be within 2.8 seconds a day, which was considered impossible for
any clock or watch at sea, even when they were in their finest conditions.
Timekeeping app
E
This
award, worth about £2 million today, inspired the self-taught Yorkshire
carpenter John Harrison to attempt a design for a practical marine clock. In
the later stage of his early career, he worked alongside his younger brother
James. The first big project of theirs was to build a turret clock for the
stables at Brockelsby Park, which was revolutionary because it required no
lubrication. Harrison designed a marine clock in 1730, and he travelled to London
in seek of financial aid. He explained his ideas to Edmond Halley, the
Astronomer Royal, who then introduced him to George Graham, Britain’s
first-class clockmaker. Graham provided him with financial aid for his
early-stage work on sea clocks. It took Harrison five years to build Harrison
Number One or HI. Later, he sought the improvement from alternate design and
produced H4 with the giant clock appearance. Remarkable as it was, the Board of
Longitude wouldn’t grant him the prize for some time until it was adequately
satisfied.
Marine clock
Timekeeping app
F
Harrison
had a principal contestant for the tempting prize at that time, an English
mathematician called John Hadley, who developed sextant. The sextant is the
tool that people adopt to measure angles, such as the one between the Sun and
the horizon, for a calculation of the location of ships or planes. In addition,
his invention is significant since it can help determine longitude.
G
Most
chronometer forerunners of that particular generation were English, but that
doesn’t mean every achievement was made by them. One wonderful figure in the
history is the Lancastrian Thomas Earnshaw, who created the ultimate form of
chronometer escapement—the spring detent escapement—and made the final decision
on format and productions system for the marine chronometer, which turns it
into a genuine modem commercial product, as well as a safe and pragmatic way of
navigation at sea over the next century and half.
Timekeeping app
Marine clock
Questions 1-5
Reading Passage 1 has seven
paragraphs, A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than
once.
1 a description of Harrison’s background
2 problems caused by poor ocean navigation
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3 the person who gave financial support to Harrison
4 an analysis of the long-term importance of sea clock
invention
5 the practical usage of longitude
Questions 6-8
Do the following statements
agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 6-8 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE
if the
statement is true
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FALSE
if the
statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
6 In theory, sailors can easily calculate their longitude
position at sea.
7 To determine longitude, the measurement of the distance from
the Moon to the given star is a must.
8 Greenwich Mean Time was set up by the English navigators.
Questions
9-14
Complete
the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A
NUMBER from the passage for each
answer.
Write your answers in
boxes 9-14 on your answer sheet.
9
Sailors were able to use
the position of the Sun to calculate ……………………
10 An invention that could win the competition would lose no
more than ……………………. every day.
11 John and James Harrison’s clock worked accurately without
………………………….
12 Harrison’s main competitor’s invention was known as
………………………….
13 Hadley’s instrument can use …………………………. to make a
calculation of location of ships or planes.
14 The
modem version of Harrison’s invention is called ……………………………
READING
PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20
minutes on Questions 15-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
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Ancient People in Sahara
On
Oct. 13, 2000, Paul Sereno, a professor from the University of Chicago, guided
a team of palaeontologists to climb out of three broken Land Rovers, contented
their water bottles and walked across the toffee-coloured desert called Tenere
Desert. Tenere, one of the most barren areas on the Earth, is located on the
southern flank of Sahara. According to the turbaned nomads Tuareg who have
ruled this infertile domain for a few centuries, this California-size ocean of
sand and rock is a ‘desert within a desert’. In the Tenere Desert, massive
dunes might stretch a hundred miles, as far as the eyes can reach. In addition,
120-degree heat waves and inexorable winds can take almost all the water from a
human body in less than a day.
Mike
Hettwer, a photographer in the team, was attracted by the amazing scenes and
walked to several dunes to take photos of the amazing landscape. When reaching
the first slope of the dune, he was shocked by the fact that the dunes were
scattered with many bones. He photographed these bones with his digital camera
and went to the Land Rover in a hurry. ‘I found some bones,’ Hettwer said to
other group members, ‘to my great surprise, they do not belong to the
dinosaurs. They are human bones.’
One
day in the spring of 2005, Paul Sereno got in touch with Elena Garcea, a
prestigious archaeologist at the University of Cassino in Italy, asking her to
return to the site with him together. After spending 30 years in researching
the history of Nile in Sudan and of the mountains in the Libyan Desert, Garcea
got well acquainted with the life of the ancient people in Sahara. But she did
not know Sereno before this exploration, whose claim of having found so many
skeletons in Tenere desert was unreliable to some archaeologists, among whom
one person considered Sereno just as a ‘moonlighting palaeontologist’. However,
Garcea was so obsessive with his perspective as to accept his invitation willingly.
In
the following three weeks, Sereno and Garcea (along with five excavators, five
Tuareg guides, and five soldiers from Niger’s army) sketched a detailed map of
the destined site, which was dubbed Gobero after the Tuareg name for the area,
a place the ancient Kiffian and Tuareg nomads used to roam. After that, they
excavated eight tombs and found twenty pieces of artefacts for the above
mentioned two civilisations. From these artefacts, it is evidently seen that
Kiffian fishermen caught not only the small fish, but also some huge ones: the
remains of Nile perch, a fierce fish weighing about 300 pounds, along with
those of the alligators and hippos, were left in the vicinity of dunes.
Sereno
went back with some essential bones and artefacts, and planned for the next
trip to the Sahara area. Meanwhile, he pulled out the teeth of skeletons
carefully and sent them to a researching laboratory for radiocarbon dating. The
results indicated that while the smaller ‘sleeping’ bones might date back to
6,000 years ago (well within the Tenerian period), the bigger compactly tied
artefacts were approximately 9,000 years old, just in the heyday of Kiffian
era. The scientists now can distinguish one culture from the other.
In
the fall of 2006, for the purpose of exhuming another 80 burials, these people
had another trip to Gobero, taking more crew members and six extra scientists
specialising in different areas. Even at the site, Chris Stojanowski,
bio-archaeologist in Arizona State University, found some clues by matching the
pieces. Judged from the bones, the Kiffian could be a people of peace and
hardworking. ‘No injuries in heads or forearms indicate that they did not fight
too much,’ he said. ‘And they had strong bodies.’ He pointed at a long narrow
femur and continued, ‘From this muscle attachment, we could infer the huge leg
muscles, which means this individual lived a strenuous lifestyle and ate much
protein. Both of these two inferences coincide with the lifestyle of the people
living on fishing.’ To create a striking contrast, he displayed a femur of a
Tenerian male. This ridge was scarcely seen. ‘This individual had a less
laborious lifestyle, which you might expect of the herder.’
Stojanowski
concluded that the Tenerian were herders, which was consistent with the other
scholars’ dominant view of the lifestyle in Sahara area 6,000 years ago, when
the dry climate favoured herding rather than hunting. But Sereno proposed some
confusing points: if the Tenerian was herders, where were the herds? Despite
thousands of animal bones excavated in Gobero, only three cow skeletons were
found, and none of goats or sheep found. ‘It is common for the herding people
not to kill the cattle, particularly in a cemetery.’ Elena Garcea remarked,
‘Even the modem pastoralists such as Niger’s Wodaabe are reluctant to slaughter
the animals in their herd.’ Sereno suggested, ‘Perhaps the Tenerian in Gobero
were a transitional group that had still relied greatly on hunting and fishing
and not adopted herding completely.’
Questions
15-18
Do the following statements
agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 15-18 on your answer sheet, write
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TRUE
if the
statement is true
FALSE
if the
statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
15 The pictures of rock engravings found in. Green Sahara is
similar to those in other places.
16 Tenere Desert was quite a fertile area in Sahara Desert.
17 Hettwer found human remains in the desert by chance.
18 Sereno and Garcea have cooperated in some archaeological
activities before studying ancient Sahara people.
Questions
19-21
Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A
NUMBER from the passage for each
answer.
Write your answers in
boxes 19-21 on your answer sheet.
19 What did Sereno and Garcea produce in the initial weeks
before digging work?
20 What did Sereno send to the research centre?
21 How old were the bigger tightly bundled burials having been
identified estimated to be?
Questions
22-27
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 22-27 on your answer sheet.
A comparative study of two ancient cultures
the
Kiffian
—They
seemed to be peaceful and industrious since the reseacher did not find 22…………..……… on their heads and
forearms.
—Their
lifestyle was 23………………………
—Through
the observation on the huge leg muscles, it could be inferred that their diet
had plenty of 24………………………
the
Tenerian
—Stojanowski
presumed that the Tenerian preferred herding to 25………………….…..
—But
only the bones of individual animals such as 26…………..………… were found.
—Sereno
supposed the Tenerian in Gobero lived in a 27…………………….. group at that time
Timekeeping app
You should spend about 20
minutes on Questions 28-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.
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Quantitative Research in Education
Many
education researchers used to work on the assumption that children experience
different phases of development, and that they cannot execute the most advanced
level of cognitive operation until they have reached the most advanced forms of
cognitive process. For example, one researcher Piaget had a well-known
experiment in which he asked the children to compare the amount of liquid in
containers with different shapes. Those containers had the same capacity, but
even when the young children were demonstrated that the same amount of fluid
could be poured between the containers, many of them still believed one was
larger than the other. Piaget concluded that the children were incapable of
performing the logical task in figuring out that the two containers were the
same size even though they had different shapes, because their cognitive
development had not reached the necessary phase. Critics on his work, such as
Donaldson, have questioned this interpretation. They point out the possibility
that the children were just unwilling to play the experimenter’s game, or that
they did not quite understand the question asked by the experimenter. These
criticisms surely do state the facts, but more importantly, it suggests that
experiments are social situations where interpersonal interactions take place.
The implication here is that Piaget’s investigation and his attempts to
replicate it are not solely about measuring the children’s capabilities of
logical thinking, but also the degree to which they could understand the
directions for them, their willingness to comply with these requirements, how
well the experimenters did in communicating the requirements and in motivating
those children, etc.
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The
same kinds of criticisms have been targeted to psychological and educational tests.
For instance, Mehan argues that the subjects might interpret the test questions
in a way different from that meant by the experimenter. In a language
development test, researchers show children a picture of a medieval fortress,
complete with moat, drawbridge, parapets and three initial consonants in it: D,
C, and G. The children are required to circle the correct initial consonant for
‘castle’. The answer is C, but many kids choose D. When asked what the name of
the building was, the children responded ‘Disneyland’. They adopted the
reasoning line expected by the experimenter but got to the wrong substantive
answer. The score sheet with the wrong answers does not include in it a child’s
lack of reasoning capacity; it only records that the children gave a different
answer rather than the one the tester expected.
Here
we are constantly getting questions about how valid the measures are where the
findings of the quantitative research are usually based. Some scholars such as
Donaldson consider these as technical issues, which can be resolved through
more rigorous experimentation. In contrast, others like Mehan reckon that the
problems are not merely with particular experiments or tests, but they might
legitimately jeopardise the validity of all researches of this type.
Meanwhile,
there are also questions regarding the assumption in the logic of quantitative
educational research that causes can be identified through physical and/or
statistical manipulation of the variables. Critics argue that this does not take
into consideration the nature of human social life by assuming it to be made up
of static, mechanical causal relationships, while in reality, it includes
complicated procedures of interpretation and negotiation, which do not come
with determinate results. From this perspective, it is not clear that we can
understand the pattern and mechanism behind people’s behaviours simply in terms
of the casual relationships, which are the focuses of quantitative research. It
is implied that social life is much more contextually variable and complex.
Such
criticisms of quantitative educational research have also inspired more and
more educational researchers to adopt qualitative methodologies during the last
three or four decades. These researchers have steered away from measuring and
manipulating variables experimentally or statistically. There are many forms of
qualitative research, which is loosely illustrated by terms like ‘ethnography’,
‘case study’, ‘participant observation’, ‘life history’, ‘unstructured interviewing’,
‘discourse analysis’ and so on. Generally speaking, though, it has
characteristics as follows:
Qualitative
researches have an intensive focus on exploring the nature of certain phenomena
in the field of education, instead of setting out to test hypotheses about
them. It also inclines to deal with ‘unstructured data’, which refers to the
kind of data that have not been coded during the collection process regarding a
closed set of analytical categories. As a result, when engaging in observation,
qualitative researchers use audio or video devices to record what happens or
write in detail open-ended field-notes, instead of coding behaviour concerning
a pre-determined set of categories, which is what quantitative researchers
typically would do when conducting ‘systematic observation’. Similarly, in an
interview, interviewers will ask open-ended questions instead of ones that
require specific predefined answers of the kind typical, like in a postal
questionnaire. Actually, qualitative interviews are often designed to resemble
casual conversations.
The
primary forms of data analysis include verbal description and explanations and
involve explicit interpretations of both the meanings and functions of human
behaviours. At most, quantification and statistical analysis only play a
subordinate role. The sociology of education and evaluation studies were the
two areas of educational research where-criticism of quantitative research and
the development of qualitative methodologies initially emerged in the most
intense way. A series of studies conducted by Lacey, Hargreaves and Lambert in
a boys’ grammar school, a boys’ secondary modem school, and a girls’ grammar
school in Britain in the 1960s marked the beginning of the trend towards
qualitative research in the sociology of education. Researchers employed an
ethnographic or participant observation approach, although they did also
collect some quantitative data, for instance on friendship patterns among the
students. These researchers observed lessons, interviewed both the teachers and
the students, and made the most of school records. They studied the schools for
a considerable amount of time and spent plenty of months gathering data and
tracking changes over all these years.
Questions
28-32
Look at the following statements
or descriptions (Questions 28-32) and the list of people below.
Match each statement or description with the correct person or people, A, B, C or D
Write the correct letter, A, B, C or D, in boxes 28-32 on
your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than
once.
Lists of
People
A Piaget
B
Mehan
C
Donaldson
D
Lacey, Hargreaves and Lambert
28 A wrong answer indicates more of a child’s different
perspective than incompetence in reasoning.
29 Logical reasoning involving in the experiment is beyond
children’s cognitive development.
30 Children’s reluctance to comply with the game rules or
miscommunication may be another explanation.
31 There is an indication of a scientific observation approach
in research.
32 There is a detail of flaw in experiments on children’s
language development.
Questions
33-36
Complete the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes
33-36 on your answer sheet.
33 In Piaget’s experiment, he asked the children to distinguish
the amount of ……………………… in different containers.
34 Subjects with the wrong answer more inclined to answer
‘………………………….’ instead of their wrong answer D in Mehan’s question.
35 Some people criticised the result of Piaget experiment, but
Donaldson thought the flaw could be rectified by ……………………….
36 Most qualitative researches conducted by Lacey, Hargreaves
and Lambert were done in a …………………………
Questions
37-39
Choose THREE letters, A-F.
Write the correct letters in boxes 37-39 on your answer sheet.
The list below includes characteristics of the ‘qualitative research’.
Which THREE are
mentioned by the writer of the passage?
A Coding behavior in terms of predefined set of
categories
B Designing an interview as an easy conversation
C Working with well-organised data in a closed set of
analytical categories
D Full of details instead of loads of data in
questionnaires
E Asking to give open-ended answers in questionnaires
F Recording the researching situation and applying note-taking
Question
40
Choose the correct
letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in box 40 on your answer sheet.
What
is the main idea of the passage?
A to prove that quantitative research is most applicable
to children’s education
B to illustrate the society lacks of deep comprehension
of educational approach
C to explain the ideas of quantitative research and the
characteristics of the related criticisms
D to imply qualitative research is a flawless method
compared with quantitative one
Passage 1: Timekeeper – Invention of Marine
Chronometer
Questions 1–5 (Matching Information)
1.
Harrison’s
background → E
2.
Problems
caused by poor ocean navigation → A
3.
Financial
supporter of Harrison → E (George Graham)
4.
Long-term
importance of sea clock invention → G
5.
Practical
usage of longitude → B
Questions 6–8 (T/F/NG)
6.
In
theory, sailors can easily calculate longitude → TRUE
7.
To
determine longitude, measurement of Moon–star distance is a must → FALSE
(alternative method = comparing home time & local time)
8.
Greenwich
Mean Time was set up by English navigators → NOT GIVEN
Questions 9–14 (Sentence Completion)
9.
Position
of the Sun → local time
10. Error allowed → 2.8 seconds
11. Clock worked without → lubrication
12. Competitor’s invention → sextant
13. Instrument can use → angles
14. Modern version → marine chronometer
Passage 2: Ancient People in Sahara
Questions 15–18 (T/F/NG)
15. Rock engravings in Green Sahara
similar to others → NOT GIVEN
16. Tenere Desert was fertile → FALSE
17. Hettwer found human remains by chance
→ TRUE
18. Sereno & Garcea had cooperated
before → FALSE
Questions 19–21 (Short Answer)
19. Produced → a detailed map
20. Sent → teeth
21. Bigger burials age → 9,000 years
old
Questions 22–27 (Notes Completion)
Kiffian
22. injuries
23. strenuous
24. protein
Tenerian
25. hunting
26. cows
27. transitional
28. B
29. A
30. C
31. D
32. B
33. liquid
34. Disneyland
35. rigorous experimentation
36. grammar school
37. B
38. D
39. E
40. C
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