IELTS Reading Recent Actual Test 35

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

The Research for Intelligence

A

In Robert Plomin’s line of work, patience is essential. Plomin, a behavioral geneticist at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, wants to understand the nature of intelligence. As part of his research, he has been watching thousands of children grow up. Plomin asks the children questions such as “What do water and milk have in common?” and “In what direction does the sun set?” At first he and his colleagues quizzed the children in person or over the telephone. Today many of those children are in their early teens, and they take their tests on the Internet. In one sense, the research has been a rousing success. The children who take the tests are all twins, and throughout the study identical twins have tended to get scores closer to each other than those of non-identical twins, who in turn have closer scores than unrelated children. These results— along with similar ones from other studies— make clear to the scientists that genes have an important influence on how children score on intelligence tests.

B

But Plomin wants to know more. He wants to find the specific genes that are doing the influencing. And now he has a tool for pinpointing genes that he could not have even dreamed of when he began quizzing children. Plomin and his colleagues have been scanning the genes of his subjects with a device called a micro array, a small chip that can recognize half a million distinctive snippets of DNA. The combination of this powerful tool with a huge number of children to study meant that he could detect genes that had only a tiny effect on the variation in scores.

C

Still, when Plomin and his co-workers unveiled the results of their micro-array study—the biggest dragnet for intelligence-linked genes ever undertaken—they were underwhelming. The researchers found only six genetic markers that showed any sign of having an influence on the test scores. When they ran stringent statistical tests to see if the results were flukes, only one gene passed. It accounted for 0.4 percent of variation in the scores. And to cap it all off, no one knows what the gene does in the body.” It’s a real drag in some ways,” Plomin says.

D

Plomin’s experience is a typical one for scientists who study intelligence. Along with using micro-arrays, they are employing brain scans and other sophisticated technologies to document some of the intricate dance steps that genes and environment take together in the development of intelligence. They are beginning to see how differences in intelligence are reflected in the structure and function of the brain. Some scientists have even begun to build a new vision of intelligence as a reflection of the ways in which information flows through the brain. But for all these advances, intelligence remains a profound mystery. “It’s amazing the extent to which we know very little,” says Wendy Johnson, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota.

E

In some ways, intelligence is very simple. “It’s something that everybody observes in others,” says Eric Turkheimer of the University of Virginia. Everybody knows that some people are smarter than others, whatever it means technically. It’s something you sense in people when you talk to them. “Yet that kind of gut instinct does not translate easily into a scientific definition. In 1996 the American Psychological Association issued a report on intelligence, which stated only that “individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought.”

F

To measure these differences, psychologists in the early 1900s invented tests of various kinds of thought, such as math, spatial reasoning and verbal skills. To compare scores on one type of test to those on another, some psychologists developed standard scales of intelligence. The most familiar of them is the intelligence quotient, which is produced by setting the average score at 100. IQ scores are not arbitrary numbers, however. Psychologists can use them to make strong predictions about other features of people’s lives. It is possible to make reasonably good predictions, based on IQ scores in childhood, about how well people will fare in school and in the workplace. People with high IQs even tend to live longer than average.” If you have an IQ score, does that tell you everything about a person’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses? No,” says Richard J. Haier of the University of California, Irvine. But even a simple number has the potential to say a lot about a person. “When you go see your doctor, what’s the first thing that happens? Somebody takes your blood pressure and temperature. So you get two numbers. No one would say blood pressure and temperature summarize everything about your health, but they are key numbers.”

G

Then what underlies an intelligence score?” It’s certainly tapping something,” says Philip Shaw, a psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). The most influential theory of what the score reflects is more than a century old. In 1904 psychologist Charles Spearman observed that people who did well on one kind of test tended to do well on others. The link from one score to another was not very tight, but Spearman saw enough of a connection to declare that it was the result of something he called a g factor, short for general intelligence factor. How general intelligence arose from the brain, Spearman could not say. In recent decades, scientists have searched for an answer by finding patterns in the test scores of large groups of people. Roughly speaking, there are two possible sources for these variations. Environmental influences— anything from the way children are raised by their parents to the diseases they may suffer as they develop 一 are one source. Genes are another. Genes may shape the brain in ways that make individuals better or worse at answering questions on intelligence tests.

Questions 1-6

The reading passage has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-G from the list below.

Write the correct number, i-x, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet

List of Headings

i      Low probability triggers unpersuasive findings

ii     Understanding of intelligence remains limited

iii    Difficulty in accurately defining intelligence

iv    People with high IQ seldom fall sick

v     An innovative appliance to improve the probe

vi   The financial cost of a new research

vii  Why an indicator is imperfect but referable

viii  Genes mean extra when compared with environment

ix    A vital indicator for kids’ intelligence performance

x     Multiple factors involved in intelligence

Example Answer

Paragraph A    ix

1   Paragraph B

2   Paragraph C

3   Paragraph D

4   Paragraph E

5   Paragraph F

6   Paragraph G

Questions 7-10

Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-G) with opinions or deeds below.

Write the appropriate letters A-G in boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet.

A     Plomin

B     Philip Shawn

C     Eric Turkheimer

D     Charles Spearman

E     Richard J. Haier

F     Wendy Johnson

7   A full conclusion can be hardly reached just by the one example in IQ test.

8   It is not easy to exclude the occasionality existed in the research.

9   Humans still have more to explore in terms of the real nature of intelligence.

10   It is quite difficult to find the real origins where the general intelligence comes.

Questions 11-13

Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.

Summary

Many researchers including Plomin have faced with the typical challenge when 11 _________ are implemented. They try to use all possible methods to record certain 12 _________ performed both by genes and environment which contributes to the progress of intelligence. The relationship between intelligence and brain become their targeted area. What’s more, according to some researchers, intelligence is regarded to be 13 _________ of how messages transmit in the brain.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below. 

The Sweet Scent of Success

A

Innovation and entrepreneurship, in the right mix, can bring spectacular results and propel a business ahead of the pack. Across a diverse range of commercial successes, from the Hills Hoist clothes line to the Cochlear ear implant, it is hard to generalize beyond saying the creators tapped into something consumers could not wait to get their hands on. However, most ideas never make it to the market. Some ideas that innovators are spruiking to potential investors include new water-saving shower heads, a keyless locking system, ping-pong balls that keep pollution out of rainwater tanks, making teeth grow from stem cells inserted in the gum, and technology to stop LPG tanks from exploding. Grant Kearney, chief executive of the Innovation Xchange, which connects businesses to innovation networks, says he hears of great business ideas that he knows will never get on the market. “Ideas by themselves are absolutely useless,” he says. “An idea only becomes innovation when it is connected to the right resources and capabilities”.

B

One of Australia’s latest innovation successes stems from a lemon-scented bathroom cleaner called Shower Power, the formula for which was concocted in a factory in Yatala, Queensland. In 1995, Tom Quinn and John Heron bought a struggling cleaning products business, OzKleen, for 250,000. It was selling 100 different kinds of cleaning products, mainly in bulk. The business was in bad shape, the cleaning formulas were ineffective and environmentally harsh, and there were few regular clients. Now Shower Power is claimed to be the top-selling bathroom cleaning product in the country. In the past 12 months, almost four million bottles of OzKleen’s Power products have been sold and the company forecasts 2004 sales of 10 million bottles. The company’s, sales in2003 reached $11 million, with 70% of business being exports. In particular, Shower Power is making big inroads on the British market.

C

OzKleen’s turnaround began when Quinn and Heron hired an industrial chemist to revitalize the product line. Market research showed that people were looking for a better cleaner for the bathroom, universally regarded as the hardest room in the home to clean. The company also wanted to make the product formulas more environmentally friendly One of Tom Quinn’s sons, Peter, aged 24 at the time, began working with the chemist on the formulas, looking at the potential for citrus-based cleaning products. He detested all the chlorine-based cleaning products that dominated the market. “We didn’t want to use chlorine, simple as that,” he says. “It offers bad working conditions and there’s no money in it.” Peter looked at citrus ingredients, such as orange peel, to replace the petroleum by-products in cleaners. He is credited with finding the Shower Power formula. “The head,” he says. The company is the recipe is in a vault somewhere and in my sole owner of the intellectual property.

D

To begin with, Shower Power was sold only in commercial quantities but Tom Quinn decided to sell it in 750ml bottles after the constant “raves” from customers at their retail store at Beenleigh, near Brisbane. Customers were travelling long distances to buy supplies. Others began writing to OzKleen to say how good Shower Power was. “We did a dummy label and went to see Woolworths,” Tom Quinn says. The Woolworths buyer took a bottle home and was able to remove a stain from her basin that had been impossible to shift. From that point on, she championed the product and OzKleen had its first supermarket order, for a palette of Shower Power worth $3000. “We were over the moon,” says OzKleen’s financial controller, Belinda McDonnell.

E

Shower Power was released in Australian supermarkets in 1997 and became the top-selling product in its category within six months. It was all hands on deck cat the factory, labelling and bottling Shower Power to keep up with demand. OzKleen ditched all other products and rebuilt the business around Shower Power. This stage, recalls McDonnell, was very tough. “It was hand-to-mouth, cash flow was very difficult,” she says. OzKleen had to pay new-line fees to supermarket chains, which also squeezed margins.

F

OzKleen’s next big break came when the daughter of a Coles Myer executive used the product while on holidays in Queensland and convinced her father that Shower Power should be in Coles supermarkets. Despite the product success, Peter Quinn says the company was wary of how long the sales would last and hesitated to spend money on upgrading the manufactur​ing process. As a result, he remembers long periods of working round the clock to keep up with orders. Small tanks were still being used, so batches were small and bottles were labelled and filled manually. The privately owned OzKleen relied on cash flow to expand. “The equipment could not keep up with demand,” Peter Quinn says. Eventually a new bottling machine was bought for $50,000 in the hope of streamlining production, but he says: “We got ripped off.” Since then, he has been developing a new automated bottling machine that can control the amount of foam produced in the liquid, so that bottles can be filled more effectively – “I love coming up with new ideas.” The machine is being patented.

G

Peter Quinn says OzKleen’s approach to research and development is open slather. “If I need it, I get it. It is about doing something simple that no one else is doing. Most of these things are just sitting in front of people … it’s just seeing the opportunities.” With a tried and tested product, OzKleen is expanding overseas and developing more Power-brand household products. Tom Quinn, who previously ran a real estate agency, says: “We are competing with the same market all over the world, the cleaning products are sold everywhere.” Shower Power, known as Bath Power in Britain, was launched four years ago with the help of an export development grant from the Federal Government. “We wanted to do it straight away because we realised we had the same opportunities worldwide.” OzKleen is already number three in the British market, and the next stop is France. The Power range includes cleaning products for carpets, kitchens and pre-wash stain removal. The Quinn and Heron families are still involved. OzKleen has been approached with offers to buy the company, but Tom Quinn says he is happy with things as they are. “We’re having too much fun.”

Questions 14-20

Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-G.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-G, in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.

14   Description of one family member persuading another of selling cleaning products

15   An account of the cooperation of all factory staff to cope with sales increase

16   An account of the creation of the formula of Shower Power

17   An account of buying the original OzKleen company

18   Description of Shower Power’s international expansion

19   The reason for changing the packaging size of Shower Power

20   An example of some innovative ideas

Questions 21-24

Look at the following people and the list of statements below.

Match each person with the correct statement.

Write the correct letter A-E in boxes 21-24 on your answer sheet

21   Grant Kearney

22   Tom Quinn

23   Peter Quinn

24   Belinda McDonnell

List of Statement

A   Described his story of selling his product to a chain store

B   Explained there was a shortage of money when sales suddenly increased

C   Believe innovations need support to succeed

D   Believes new products like Shower Power may incur risks

E   Says business won’t succeed with innovations

Questions 25-26

Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.

Write your answers in boxes 25-26 on your answer sheet.

25   Tom Quinn changed the bottle size to 750ml to make Shower Power

A   easier to package.

B   appealing to individual customers.

C   popular in foreign markets.

D   attractive to supermarkets.

26   Why did Tom Quinn decide not to sell OzKleen?

A   No one wanted to buy OzKleen.

B   New products were being developed in OzKleen.

C   He couldn’t make an agreement on the price with the buyer.

D   He wanted to keep things unchanged.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Tattoo on Tikopia

A

There are still debates about the origins of Polynesian culture, but one thing we can ensure is that Polynesia is not a single tribe but a complex one. Polynesians which include Marquesans, Samoans, Niueans, Tongans, Cook Islanders, Hawaiians, Tahitians, and Maori, are genetically linked to indigenous peoples of parts of Southeast Asia. It’s a sub-region of Oceania, comprising of a large grouping of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean, within a triangle that has New Zealand, Hawaii and Easter Island as its corners.

B

Polynesian history has fascinated the western world since Pacific cultures were first contacted by European explorers in the late 18th century. The small island of Tikopia, for many people – even for many Solomon Islanders – is so far away that it seems like a mythical land; a place like Narnia, that magical land in C. S. Lewis’ classic, ‘The Chronicles of Narnia.’ Maybe because of it – Tikopia, its people, and their cultures have long fascinated scholars, travelers, and casual observers. Like the pioneers Peter Dillion, Dumont D’Urville and John Coleridge Patterson who visit and write about the island in the 1800s, Raymond Firth is one of those people captured by the alluring attraction of Tikopia. As a result, he had made a number of trips to the island since the 1920s and recorded his experiences, observations, and reflections on Tikopia, its people, cultures and the changes that have occurred.

C

While engaged in the study of the kinship and religious life of the people of Tikopia, Firth made a few observations on their tattooing. Brief though these notes are they may be worth putting on record as an indication of the sociological setting of the practice in this primitive Polynesian community. The origin of the English word ‘tattoo’ actually comes from the Tikopia word ‘tatau’. The word for tattoo marks, in general, is tau, and the operation of tattooing is known as ta tau, ta being the generic term for the act of striking.

D

The technique of tattooing was similar throughout Polynesia. Traditional tattoo artists create their indelible tattoos using pigment made from the candlenut or kukui nut. First, they burn the nut inside a bowl made of half a coconut shell. They then scrape out the soot and use a pestle to mix it with liquid. Bluing is sometimes added to counteract the reddish hue of the carbon-based pigment. It also makes the outline of the inscribed designs bolder on the dark skin of tattooing subjects.

E

For the instruments used when tattooing, specialists used a range of chisels made from albatross wing bone which were hafted onto a handle which was made from the heart wood of the bush and struck with a mallet. The tattooer began by sketching with charcoal a design on the supine subject, whose skin at that location was stretched taut by one or more apprentices. The tattooer then dipped the appropriate points – eighter a single one or a whole comb – into the ink (usually contained in a coconut-shell cup) and tapped it into the subject’s skin, holding the blade handle in one hand and tapping it with the other. The blood that usually trickled from the punctures was wiped away either by the tattooer or his apprentice, the latter having also inevitably painful – a test of fortitude that tattooers sought to shorten by working as fast as possible. In fact, tattoos nearly always festered and often led to sickness – and in some cases death.

F

In ancient Polynesian society, nearly everyone was tattooed. It was an integral part of ancient culture and was much more than a body ornament. Tattooing indicated ones’ genealogy and/or rank in society. It was a sign of wealth, of strength and of the ability to endure pain. Those who went without them were seen as persons of lower social status. As such, chiefs and warriors generally had the most elaborate tattoos. Tattooing was generally begun at adolescence, and would often not be completed for a number of years. Receiving tattoos constituted an important milestone between childhood and adulthood, and was accompanied by many rites and rituals. Apart from signaling status and rank, another reason for the practice in traditional times was to make a person more attractive to the opposite sex.

G

The male facial tattoo is generally divided into eight sections of the face. The center of the forehead designated a person’s general rank. The area around the brows designated his position. The area around the eyes and the nose designated his hapu, or sub-tribe rank. The area around the temples served to details his signature. This signature was once memorized by tribal chiefs who used it when buying property, signing deeds, and officiating orders. The cheek area designated the nature of the person’s work. The chin area showed the person’s mana. Lastly, the jaw area designated a person’s birth status.

H

A person’s ancestry is indicated on each side of the face. The left side is generally the father’s side, and the right side was the mother’s. The manutahi design is worked on the men’s back. It consists of two vertical lines drawn down the spine, with short vertical lines between them. When a man had the manutahi on his back, he took pride in himself. At gatherings of the people he could stand forth in their midst and display his tattoo designs with songs. And rows of triangles design on the men’s chest indicate his bravery.

I

Tattoo was a way delivering information of its owner. It’s also a traditional method to fetch spiritual power, protection and strength. The Polynesians use this as a sign of character, position and levels in a hierarchy. Polynesian peoples believe that a person’s mana, their spiritual power or life force, is displayed through their tattoo.

Questions 27-30

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet, write

YES                  if the statement is true

NO                   if the statement is false

NOT GIVEN    if the information is not given in the passage

27   Scientists like to do research in Tikopia because this tiny place is of great remoteness.

28   Firth was the first scholar to study on Tikopia.

29   Firth studied the culture differences on Tikopia as well as on some other islands of Pacific.

30   The English word ‘tattoo’ is evolved from the local language of the island.

Questions 31-35

Label the diagram below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from Reading Passage for each answer.

bowl made of 31 _______ burn the material inside to get 32 _______, and stir in the 33 _______

produced from 34 _______ of small trees

produced from 35 _______ of seabird

Questions 36-40

Complete the notes below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

LOCATION ON THE BODY	SIGNIFICANCE	GEOMETRIC PATTERNS
36 ________ of male face	general rank
37 ________ of male face	prestige
Female’s right side of the face	38 ________
male back	sense of pride	39 ________
male chest	bravery	40 ________