IELTS READING 5: TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN

YES / NO / NOT GIVEN

A. STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTION
Task 1
a) Read these statements and find the words in italics in the passage.
- The scientists are using a technique from electronics to control specific plant
properties.
- Some synthetic biologists work with genetic circuits of mammals.
- Most of synthetic biologists work with mammals.
b) Now decide if the statements above are TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN
according to the passage. Choose
TRUE if the statement agrees with with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
Programmable plants
In electronics, even the most advanced computer is just a complex
arrangement of simple, modular parts that control specific functions; the same
integrated circuit might be found in an iPhone, or in an aircraft. Biologists are
creating this same modularity in – wait for it – plants, by designing gene "circuits"
that control specific plant characteristics – color, size, resistance to drought, you
name it.
The relatively new, interdisciplinary field is synthetic biology – the design
of genetic circuits, just like in electronics, that control different functions and can
be easily placed in one organism or the next. Most of today's synthetic biologists
work with simple microorganisms, like E. coli or yeast.
A CSU team led by June Medford, professor of biology, and Ashok Prasad,
associate professor of chemical and biological engineering, is doing the same thing,
but in the much more complex biological world of plants.
Task 2
a) Read the statements 1-7 below and:
b) Decide if the statements are TRUE, FALSE, or NOT GIVEN
1 At the time of his voyage, Mau had unique navigational skills.
2 Mau was familiar with the sea around Tahiti.
3 Mau thought it would be difficult to use a compass and charts.
4 Mau’s grandfather was his only teacher.
5 Mau used stones to learn where each star was situated in the sky.
6 The first inhabitants of Hawaii could read and write.
7 Mau expected his students to memorise the positions of the stars.
Mau Piailug, ocean navigator
Mau sailed from Hawaii to Tahiti using traditional methods.
In early 1976, Mau Piailug, a fisherman, led an expedition in which he sailed
a traditional Polynesian boat across 2,500 miles of ocean from Hawaii to Tahiti.
The Polynesiai Voyaging Society had organised the expedition. Its purpose was to
find out if seafarers in the distant past could have found their way from one island
to the other without navigational instruments, or whether the islands had been
populated by accident. At the time, Mau was the only man alive who knew how to
navigate just by observing the stars, the wind and the sea. He had never before
sailed to Tahiti, which was a long way to the south. However, he understood how
the wind and the sea behave around islands, so he was confident he could find his
way. The voyage took him and his crew a month to complete and he did it without
a compass or charts.
His grandfather began the task of teaching him how to navigate when he was
still a baby. He showed him pools of water on the beach to teach him how the
behaviour of the waves and wind changed in different places. Later, Mau used a
circle of stones to memorise the positions of the stars. Each stone was laid out in
the sand to represent a star.
The voyage proved that Hawaii’s first inhabitants came in small boats and
navigated by reading the sea and the stars. Mau himself became a keen teacher,
passing on his traditional secrets to people of other cultures so that his knowledge
would not be lost. He explained the positions of the stars to his students, but he
allowed them to write things down because he knew they would never be able to
remember everything as he had done.
B. PRACTICE
I. TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN
Exercise 1: Do the following statements agree with the information given in the
passage? Next to questions 1-8 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
1 People may sympathise with you about how difficult it is to study
English. .................
2 People will be angrier if you don’t understand their language than if you don’t
understand their customs. .................
3 Japanese people think it is impolite to blow your nose around other
people. .................
4 It’s a good idea to find out about the habits of the people where you are going to
live. .................
5 It’s impolite to use chopsticks with your left hand. .................
6 Italian meals usually consist of several courses. .................
7 Muslims will think you don’t know how to behave appropriately if you use your
left hand for eating. .................
8 In Britain, shaking hands is equally common in business and social
situations. .................
Handy hints for overseas students and travellers
A Studying abroad, or simply planning a nice trip to an exotic location?
Unfortunately, while people might be understanding if you have problems with
their language, they are less likely to be forgiving if you break the unwritten social
rules. Did you know, for example, that in Japan it is considered rude to blow your
nose in public (and heaven forbid you put your cotton handkerchief back in your
pocket!)? You might also be studying (and socialising) with people from all over
the world. A few helpful tips will ensure you avoid upsetting your hosts, or even
your fellow students!
B The best advice we can give you is to learn some of the local customs of
the people you will be spending time with. Let’s say you have arrived in Asia and
you’re sharing a meal with new-found friends. You might feel very satisfied with
yourself if you can use chopsticks when you’re eating, but make sure you don’t
point with them. Many Asians consider it rude. And don’t forget to check who
should start the meal first: you or your hosts. Different countries have different
‘rules’ about this. Speaking of food, when eating in certain provinces of China, it is
considered bad luck to turn over a cooked fish. And Italians like it when you show
your appreciation of their cooking, so never refuse a second plateful!
C Behaviour connected with the body can be confusing because of social
differences. In Muslim cultures, for example, people avoid using the left hand to
give and receive. Many people in these cultures eat only with the right hand and
they might consider you impolite if you use your left. But if you are given a
business card in a country like Singapore, and you don’t accept it with both hands,
you’ll be showing disrespect and a lack of interest in the person giving the card. In
Britain, shaking hands is common between business people but is becoming less
common in social situations these days (and then often only the first time you are
introduced). The Italians kiss and shake hands (but be careful, it’s twice – once on
each cheek), the Belgians may kiss three times, alternating from cheek to cheek,
and the French? Well, whole books have been devoted to the subject!
Exercise 2: Do the following statements agree with the information given in
Reading Passage?
In boxes 1-5 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
1 Cuneiform tablets were produced in different shapes and sizes.
2 When Sumerian writers marked on the clay tablets, the tablets were dry
3 Cuneiform was often difficult to read because of its size.
4 A number of languages adopted cuneiform.
5 Cuneiform signs, can be found in some modern alphabets.
An important language development
Cuneiform, the world’s first known system of handwriting, originated some
6.000 years ago in Summer in what is now southern Iraq. It was most often
inscribed on palm-sized, rectangular clay tablets measuring several centimetres
across, although occasionally, larger tablets or cylinders were used. Clay was an
excellent medium for writing. Other surfaces which have been employed - for
example, parchment, papyrus and paper - are not long - lasting and are easily
destroyed by fire and water. But clay has proved to be resistant to those particular
kinds of damage.
The word ‘cuneiform’ actually refers to the marks or signs inscribed in the
clay. The original cuneiform signs consisted of a series of lines - triangular,
vertical, diagonal and horizontal. Sumerian writers would impress these lines into
the wet clay with a stylus - a long, thin, pointed instrument which looked
somewhat like a pen. Oddly, the signs were often almost too small to see with the
naked eye. Cuneiform signs were used for the writing of at least a dozen languages.
This is similar to how the Latin alphabet is used today for writing English, French,
Spanish and German for example.
Before the development of cuneiform, tokens were used by the Sumerians to
record certain information. For example, they might take small stones and use
them as tokens or representations of something else, like a goat. A number of
tokens, then, might mean a herd of goat. These tokens might then be placed in a
cloth container and provided to a buyer as a receipt for a transaction, perhaps five
tokens for five animals. It was not that different from what we do today when we
buy some bread and the clerk gives us back a piece of paper with numbers on it to
confirm the exchange.
By the 4th century BCE, the Sumerians had adapted this system to a form of
writing. They began putting tokens in a container resembling an envelope, and now
made of clay instead of cloth. They then stamped the outside to indicate the
number and type of tokens inside. A person could then ‘read’ what was stamped on
the container and know what was inside.
Gradually, Sumerians developed symbols for words. When first developed,
each symbol looked like the concrete thing it represented. For example, an image
which resembled the drawing of a sheep meant just that. Then another level of
abstraction was introduced when symbols were developed for intangible ideas such
as ‘female’ of ‘hot’ or ‘God’. Cuneiform, in other words, evolved from a way used
primarily to track and store information into a way to represent the world
symbolically. Over the centuries, the marks became ever more abstract, finally
evolving into signs that looked nothing like what they referred to, just as the letters
‘h-o-u-s-e’ have no visual connection to the place we live in. At this last stage in
the evolution of cuneiform, the signs took the form of tringles, which became
common cuneiform signs.
As the marks became more abstract, the system became more efficient
because there were fewer marks a ‘reader’ needed to learn. But cuneiform also
became more complex because society itself was becoming more complex, so
there were more ideas and concepts that needed to be expressed. However, most
linguists and historians agree cuneiform developed primarily as a tool for
accounting. Of the cuneiform tablets that have been discovered, excavated and
translated, about 75 percent contain this type of practical information, rather than
artistic or imaginative work.
Cuneiform writing was used for thousands of years, but it eventually ceased
to be used in everyday life. In fact, it died out and remained unintelligible for
almost 2.000 years. In the late 19th century, a British army officer, Henry
Rawlinson, discovered cuneiform inscriptions which had been carved in the
surface of rocks in the Behistun mountains in what is present-day Iran. Rawlinson
made impressions of the marks on large pieces of paper, as he balanced
dangerously on the surrounding rocks.
Rawlinson took his copies home to Britain and studied them for years to
determine what each line stood for, and what each group of symbols meant. He
found that in the writing on those particular rocks every word was repeated three
times in three languages: Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian. Since the meanings
in these languages were already known to linguists, he could thus translate the
cuneiform. Eventually, he fully decoded the cuneiform marks and he discovered
that they described the life of Darius, a king of the Persian Empire in the 5th
century BCE.
Exercise 3: Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer in Reading
Passage ?
In boxes 1-5 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
1 Janos Vargha predicted that the Nagymaros dam would wreck the natural
atmosphere before it was built.
2 The Nagymaros dam’s project was managed by the Russians only.
3 The Danube Circle was an unauthorised group for opposing the dam.
4 The Politburo accepted Vargha as editor of the Hungarian edition.
5 The human rights Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia accepted green thoughts.
The Nagymaros Dam
When Janos Vargha, a biologist from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences,
began a new career as a writer with a small monthly nature magazine called Buvar,
it was 9 years after the story behind the fall of the Berlin Wall had started to unfold.
During his early research, he went to a beauty spot on the river Danube outside
Budapest known as the Danube Bend to interview local officials about plans to
build a small park on the site of an ancient Hungarian capital.
One official mentioned that passing this tree-lined curve in the river, a
popular tourism spot for Hungarians was monotonous. Also, it was to be
submerged by a giant hydroelectric dam in secret by a much-feared state agency
known simply as the Water Management.
Vargha investigated and learned that the Nagymaros dam (pronounced
“nosh-marosh”) would cause pollution, destroy underground water reserves, dry
out wetlands and wreck the unique ecosystem of central Europe’s longest river.
Unfortunately, nobody objected. “Of course, I wrote an article. But there was a
director of the Water Management on the magazine’s editorial board. The last time,
he went to the printers and stopped the presses, the article was never published. I
was frustrated and angry, but I was ultimately interested in why they cared to ban
my article,” he remembers today.
He found that the Nagymaros dam was part of a joint project with
neighbouring Czechoslovakia to produce hydroelectricity, irrigate farms and
enhance navigation. They would build two dams and re-engineer the Danube for
200 kilometres where it created the border between them. “The Russians were
working together, too. They wanted to take their big ships from the Black Sea right
up the Danube to the border with Austria.”
Vargha was soon under vigorous investigation, and some of his articles got
past the censors. He gathered supporters for some years, but he was one of only a
few people who believed the dam should be stopped. He was hardly surprised
when the Water Management refused to debate the project in public. After a public
meeting, the bureaucrats had pulled out at the last minute. Vargha knew he had to
take the next step. “We decided it wasn’t enough to talk and write, so we set up an
organization, the Danube Circle. We announced that we didn’t agree with
censorship. We would act as if we were living in a democracy.” he says.
The Danube Circle was illegal and the secret publications it produced turned
out to be samizdat leaflets. In an extraordinary act of defiance, it gathered 10,000
signatures for a petition objecting to the dam and made links with
environmentalists in the west, inviting them to Budapest for a press conference.
The Hungarian government enforced a news blackout on the dam, but
articles about the Danube Circle began to be published and appear in the western
media. In 1985, the Circle and Vargha, a public spokesman, won the Right
Livelihood award known as the alternative Nobel prize. Officials told Vargha he
should not take the prize but he ignored them. The following year when Austrian
environmentalists joined a protest in Budapest, they were met with tear gas and
batons. Then the Politburo had Vargha taken from his new job as editor of the
Hungarian version of Scientific American.
The dam became a focus for opposition to the hated regime. Communists
tried to hold back the waters in the Danube and resist the will of the people.
Vargha says, “Opposing the state directly was still hard.” “Objecting to the dam
was less of a hazard, but it was still considered a resistance to the state.”
Under increasing pressure from the anti-dam movement, the Hungarian
Communist Party was divided. Vargha says, “Reformists found that the dam was
not very popular and economical. It would be cheaper to generate electricity by
burning coal or nuclear power.” “But hardliners were standing for Stalinist ideas of
large dams which mean symbols of progress.” Environmental issues seemed to be
a weak point of east European communism in its final years. During the 1970s
under the support of the Young Communist Leagues, a host of environmental
groups had been founded. Party officials saw them as a harmless product of
youthful idealism created by Boy Scouts and natural history societies.
Green idealism steadily became a focal point for political opposition. In
Czechoslovakia, the human rights of Charter 77 took up environmentalism. The
green-minded people of both Poland and Estonia participated in the Friends of the
Earth International to protest against air pollution. Bulgarian environmentalists
built a resistance group, called Ecoglasnost, which held huge rallies in 1989. Big
water engineering projects were potent symbols of the old Stalinism.
II. YES / NO / NOT GIVEN
Exercise 1: Read the following passage. Do the statements agree with the views of
the writer? Write
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts what the writer thinks
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to know what the writer’s point of view is
1 Some journalists take the view that more British schoolchildren should study
languages.
2 The number of English speakers worldwide makes it unnecessary for British
tourists to learn languages.
3 Only British teenagers find languages boring.
4 British teenagers' reluctance to learn languages is linked to the availability of
films and music in English.
5 In the past, studying French made it easier for British people to learn further
languages.
6 The lack of linguistic skills within British companies has resulted in business
being lost.
7 American business people are less interested in learning languages than British
business people.
An answer to the belief that British people cannot learn languages
A Every so often, the educational supplements of our broadsheets devote an
entire issue to the danger the British face of falling behind in Europe because so
few of our schoolkids take up the study of foreign languages. Most recently, the
German ambassador lambasted us for only ever speaking English, a rebuke echoed
by his French and Spanish counterparts.
B The truth is that foreign languages are phenomenally unpopular in
secondary schools. Poor teaching and the late introduction of the subject are often
cited as the main reasons youngsters arc so loath to study them. Another factor for
our notorious laziness vis-a-vis other tongues has to be mat we are brought up to
believe that the whole world speaks English, so why bother? Why indeed?
Struggling to communicate in another language is, for all but the committed and
enthusiastic linguist, a frustrating experience, which, if not necessary, is best
avoided. And yes. when millions of Brits take their annual holidays abroad, local
tourism, travel, catering, and retail staff are all trained in at least rudimentary
English. So, again, there is little motivation to learn more than a couple of word for
a few days' stay.
All this is true, and yet illuminates only part of the picture. British teenagers
are generally bored by French or German verbs, but (he underlying reasons are
more complex than a vague assumption that they only need to speak English
because everyone else does. Their leisure activities revolve around pop music,
sport, computers, television, and films. These things are already in English;
translations and subtitles are the exception. Furthermore, the most powerful
country in the world happens to speak our language, and we absorb its cultural
exports easily and readily So, for us, language is not a major issue.
C Of course, should the world situation change, and the United States
become a Hispanic country, as some boffins have predicted, the British would see
the benefit of learning Spanish and do so. Not so long ago, knowledge of French
was more widespread here, and eagerly acquired, when that language was of
paramount international importance.
D The belief that we will lag behind our European business partners also
needs to be dissected. The canard here is that we lose out because our businessmen
and women can't keep up with the local lingo. But surely, it's competitiveness and
the attraction of lucrative offers that count. After all. American executives don't
wring their hands at their lack of linguistic skills.
Exercise 2: Read the following passage. Do the statements agree with the views of
the writer? Write
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts what the writer thinks
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to know what the writer’s point of view is
1 The delay in the process used by the Kellogg brothers affected the final product.
2 Sir Alan Hodgkin is an example of someone whose work proceeded in a logical
and systematic way.
3 Daguerre is an exception to the general rule of innovation.
4 The discovery of saccharin occurred by accident during drug research.
5 The company 3M should have supported Art Fry by funding his idea of Post-It
Notes.
The role of accidents in business
In 1894 Dr John Kellogg and his brother. Will, were supervising a hospital
and health spa in Michigan. The patients were on a restricted diet. One day, the
brothers left cooked wheat untended for more than 24 hours. When they returned,
they saw what they had done. It was no good to eat, but they decided to run the
stale wheat through rollers, just to see how it would turn out. Normally, the process
produced long sheets, but they were surprised to discover that this time the rollers
created flat flakes. They baked them, and then tried the same thing with corn. From
this accidental discovery came the cornflakes that generations have now been
eating for breakfast.
Accidents happen; there is nothing predictable and orderly about innovation.
Nobel laureate Sir Alan Hodgkin, who discovered how nerve cells transmit
electrical impulses between the skin and the brain, commented: 'I believe that the
record of my published papers conveys an impression of directedness and planning
which does not at all coincide with the actual sequence of events.’
The same rule applies in business. The mistake that gave US cornflakes
keeps repeating itself in the history of disruptive innovation, the kind that
transforms markets. Louis Daguerre, for, instance, discovered the technique that
gave US photography in the 1830s, when drops of mercury from a shattered
thermometer produced a photographic image. The microwave was discovered
when Peroy Spender, a scientist with Raytheon, was testing a new vacuum tube
and discovered that the sweet in his pocket had melted. The artificial sweetener,
saccharin, was the unintentional result of a medical scientist’s work on a chemical
treatment for gastric ulcers. While working for the firm 3M, researcher Art Fry had
no idea he was taking the first steps towards Post- It Notes when he used bits of
adhesive office paper that could be easily lifted off the page to replace the scrap
paper bookmarks that kept falling out of his hymn book.
Breakthrough and disruptive innovation are rarely driven by orderly process.
Usually they come out of a chaotic, haphazard mess, which is why big companies,
full of managers schooled in business programmes designed to eliminate random
variation and mistakes, struggle with them. In these sorts of environments,
accidents are called failures and are discouraged.
It is no surprise then that research from the late British economist Paul
Geroski and London Business School’s Constantinos Markides found that
companies that were skilled at innovation were usually not that skilled when it
came to commercialisation, and vice versa. Their book, Fast Second, divides
businesses into 'colonists’ and 'consolidators’. Small and nimble, colonists are
adept at creating market niches but are terrible institution builders. Consolidators,
with their strong cultures of discipline and cost control, know how to take clever
ideas from other firms and turn them into mass-market items. Microsoft is a prime
instance of this.
With companies spending hundreds of billions of dollars on research and
development, US academics Robert Austin and Lee Devin examined how
managers can encourage productive slip-ups. In their article Accident, Intention
and Expectation in the Innovation Process, they argue that business processes
actually prevent helpful mis-steps from occurring. According to their catalogue of
accidents, not all false steps and mishaps are equal. Accidents, they say, come from
unlikely mental associations such as memories and vague connections, looking for
something and finding it in an unexpected way, looking for one thing and finding
something else, and not looking for anything but finding something valuable.
Accident-prone innovation, they say, requires companies to get outside the
‘cone of expectation’. It means throwing together groups from diverse
backgrounds, and combining ideas in unpredictable ways, other strategies also
include having systems that watch out for accidents and examine them for value,
generating them when they do not happen often enough, seizing oil the useful ones,
capturing their valuable features, and building on them to add value and give
potential for useful accidents.
All this, however, requires thinking that is often counter-intuitive to the way
businesses operate. In other words, it is the kind of thinking that goes against the
beliefs of most business managers. It runs counter to the notion frequently pushes
by consultants that you can ‘harness’ creativity and direct it to line up with
intention. ‘The cost of accidents business, people tend to call such efforts failure.’
There are tentative signs that more companies are starting to realise that
failure can lead to commercial gain, and that this is part or the risk-talking that
underpins innovation. Australia’s largest brewing company, for example, made a
bad error when it launched a new beer called Empire Lager, pitched at younger
consumers. Having spent a fortune creating a beer with a sweeter taste, designing a
great-looking bottle and a television campaign, Foster’s was left with a drink that
no-one wanted to buy. The target market was more interested in brands built up by
word of mouth.
Instead of wiping the unsuccessfull product launch, Fosters used this lesson
learned to go on and develop other brands instead. One of them, Pure Blonde, is
now ranked as Australia’s fifth-largest beer brand. Unlike Empire Lager, there has
been almost no promotion and its sales are generated more by word of mouth.
Other companies are taking similar steps to study their own slip-ups. Intuit,
the company behind financial tools such as Quicken, holds regular ‘When
Learning Hurts’ sessions. But this sort of transformation is never easy. In a market
that focuses on the short-term, convincing employees and shareholders to tolerate
failure and not play it safe is a big thing to ask.
Exercise 3: Read the following passage. Do the statements agree with the views of
the writer? Write
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts what the writer thinks
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to know what the writer’s point of view is
1 Out of four Vedas, music is only described in samaveds.
2 Music is believed to have an effect on human body.
3 Indian classical music system is simple and sophisticated.
4 There are 7 basic notes and 12 semitones in Indian classical music.
5 Talas in the Indian music is derived from western music
6 Indian classical music could express in writing.
7 The composition used by Indian musicians was based on Devnagri script.
8 New script used for music had no symbols.
Classical music over the centuries
INDIAN CLASSICAL MUSIC
The origins of Indian classical music can be found from the oldest of
scriptures, part of the Hindus tradition, the Vedas.
 Samaveda, one of the four Vedas, describes music at length. Indian classical
music has its origins as a meditation tool for attaining self realization. All different
forms of these melodies (ragas) are believed to affect various “chakras” (energy
centers, or “mood”) in the path of the Kundalini. However, there is little mention
of these esoteric beliefs in Bharat’s Natyashastra , the first treatise laying down the
fundamental principles of drama, dance and music. The Samadeva, one of the four
Vedas, created out of riga-veda so that its hymns could be sung as Samagana,
established its first pop.
Indian classical music has one of the most complex and complete musical
systems ever developed. Like Western classical music, it divides the octave s into
12 Semitones of which the 7 basic notes are Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa, replacing
Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do. However, it uses the just intonation tuning (unlike
western classical music which uses the equal temperament tuning system).

Indian classical music is monophonic in nature and based around a single

melody line which is played over a fixed drone. The performance is based
melodically on particular rages and rhythmically on talas.
NATIONAL SYSTEM
Scholars of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth century were enormed
by Indian music. With no facility to record the sound they explored for some
existing system that might exist system that express sounds in the composition.
There were pointers to an ancient notations system which scholars had also
translated into Persian: still’ complexity of Indian classical music could not be
expressed in writing. Though some western scholars did record compositions in
staff notation system, Indian musicians used Pt.Bhakhande system. Though more
accurate, this relies on Devanagari script rather than symbols and hence is
cumbersome at times. A new notation system has been proposed which uses
symbols and offers instantaneous comprehension like staff notation system. It is
with standardization of a notation system that hitherto unknown compositions
would see the light of day.
INSTRUMENTS
Instruments typically used in Hindustani music include sitar, sarood,tanpura,
bansuri, shehnai, sarangi, and table. Instruments typically used in carnatic music
include flute, gottuvadyam, veena mridangam, kanjira, ghatam and violon.