READING
PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14 which
are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
……………………………
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READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20
minutes on Questions
15-27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
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
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
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You should spend about 20
minutes on Questions
28-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.
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.
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
