READING PASSAGE 44 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13which are based on Reading Passage 44 below. NATURE OR NURTURE? A A few years ago, in one of the most fascinating and disturbing experiments in behavioral psychology. Stanley Milgram of Yale University tested 40 subjects from all walks of life for their willingness to obey instructions given by a ‘leader’ in a situation in which the subjects might feel a personal distaste for the actions they were called upon to perform. Specifically. Milgram told each volunteer ‘teacher-subject’ that the experiment was in the noble cause of education, and was designed to test whether or not punishing pupils for their mistakes would have a positive effect on the pupils’ ability to learn. B Milgram’s experimental set-up involved placing the teacher-subject before a panel of thirty switches with labels ranging from’15 volts, of electricity (slight shock)’ to ‘450 volts (danger – severe shock)’ in
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READING PASSAGE 49 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 49 on the following pages. Questions 1-5 Reading Passage 1 has five marked paragraphs, (A-E). Choose the correct heading for each section From the list of headings below. Write the correct numbers (i-viii) in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet. List of Headings i Avoiding an overcrowded centre ii A successful exercise in people power iii The benefits of working together in cities iv Higher incomes need not mean more cars V Economic arguments fail to persuade Vi The impact of telecommunications on population distribution Vii Increases in travelling time Viii Responding to arguments against public transport 1 Paragraph A 2 Paragraph B 3 Paragraph C 4 Paragraph D 5 Paragraph E ADVANTAGES OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT
READING PASSAGE 46 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14which are based on Reading Passage 46 below. WHAT’S SO FUNNY? John Mc Crone reviews recent research on humor The joke comes over the headphones: ‘Which side of a dog has the most hair? The left.’ No, not funny. Try again. ‘Which side of a dog has the most hair? The outside.’ Hah! The punchline is silly yet fitting, tempting a smile, even a laugh. Laughter has always struck people as deeply mysterious, perhaps pointless. The writer Arthur Koestler dubbed it the luxury reflex: ‘unique in that it serves no apparent biological purpose’. Theories about humor have an ancient pedigree. Plato expressed the idea that humor is simply a delighted feeling of superiority over others. Kant and Freud felt that joke-telling relies on building up a psychic tension which is safely punctured by the ludicrousness of the punchline. But most modern humor theorists have settled on some version of Aristotle’s belief th
READING PASSAGE 32 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-12 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below. SPOKEN CORPUS COMES TO LIFE A The compiling of dictionaries has been historically the provenance of studious professorial types - usually bespectacled - who love to pore over weighty tomes and make pronouncements on the finer nuances of meaning. They were probably good at crosswords and definitely knew a lot of words, but the image was always rather dry and dusty. The latest technology, and simple technology at that, is revolutionising the content of dictionaries and the way they are put together. B For the first time, dictionary publishers are incorporating real, spoken English into their data. It gives Lexicographers (people who write dictionaries) access to a more vibrant, up-to-date vernacular language which has never really been studied before. In one project, 150 volunteers each agreed to discreetly tie a Walkman recorder to their waist and leave i