READING PASSAGE 1

Multitask
A

Do you read while listening to music? Do you like to watch TV while finishing your homework?
People who have these kinds of habits are called multi-taskers.

Multitasks are able to complete two tasks at the same time by dividing their focus. However,
Thomas Lehman, a researcher in Psychology, believes people never really do multiple things
simultaneously. Maybe a person is reading while listening to music, but in reality, the brain can
only focus on one task. Reading the words in a book will cause you to ignore some of the words
of the music. When people think they are accomplishing two different tasks efficiently, what
they are really doing is dividing their focus. While listening to music, people become less able to
focus on their surroundings. For example, we all have experience of times when we talk with
friends and they are not responding properly. Maybe they are listening to someone else talk, or
maybe they are reading a text on their smartphone and don’t hear what you are saying. Lehman
called this phenomenon “email voice”

the world has been changed by computers and its spin offs like smart-phones or cellphones. Now
that most individuals have a personal device, like a smart-phoneor a laptop, they are frequently
reading, watching or listening to virtual information. This raises the occurrence of multitasking
in our day to day life. Nowwhen you work, you work with your typewriter, your cellphone, and
some colleagues who may drop by at any time to speak with you. In professional meetings, when
one normally focuses and listens to one another, people are more likely to have a cell phone in
their lap, reading or communicating silently with more people than ever, liven inventions such as
the cordless phone has increased multitasking. In the old days, a traditional wall phone would
ring, and then the housewife would have to stop her activities to answer it. When it rang, the
housewife will sit down with her legs up. and chat, with no laundry or sweeping or answering the
door. In the modern era, our technology is convenient enough to not interrupt our daily tasks.

Earl Miller, an expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studied the prefrontal
cortex, which controls the brain while a person is multitasking. According to his studies, the size
of this cortex varies between species. He found that for humans, the size of this part constitutes
one third of the brain, while it is only 4 to 5 percent in dogs, and about 15% in monkeys. Given
that this cortex is larger on a human, it allows a human to be more flexible and accurate in his or
her multitasking. However, Miller wanted to look further into whether the cortex was truly
processing information about two different tasks simultaneously. He designed an experiment
where he presents visual stimulants to his subjects in a wax that mimics multi-tasking. Miller
then attached sensors to the patients ” heads to pick up the electric patterns of the brain. This
sensor would show if” the brain particles, called neurons, were truly processing two different

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Davis Meyer, a professor of University of Michigan, studied the young adults in a similar
experiment. He instructed them to simultaneously do math problems and classify simple words
into different categories. For this experiment. Meyer found that when you think you are doing
several jobs at the same time, you are actually switching between jobs. Even though the people
tried to do the tasks at the sametime, and both tasks were eventually accomplished, overall, the
task took more time than if the person focused on a single task one at a time.

People sacrifice efficiency when multitasking, Gloria Mark set office workers as his subjects. He
found that they were constantly multitasking. He observed that nearly every 11 minutes people at
work were disrupted. He found that doing different jobs at the same time may actually save time.
However, despite the fact that they are faster, it does not mean they are more efficient. And we
are equally likely to self-interrupt as be interrupted by outside sources. He found that in office
nearly every 12 minutes an employee would stop and with no reason at all,check a website on
their computer, call someone or write an email. If they concentrated for more than 20 minutes,
they would feel distressed. He suggested that the average person may suffer from a short
concentration span. This short attention span might be natural, but others suggest that new
technology may be the problem. With cellphones and computers at our sides at all times, people
will never run out of distractions. The format of media, such as advertisements, music, news
articles and TV shows are also shortening, so people are used to paying attention to information
for a very short time

So even though focusing on one single task is the most efficient way for our brains to work, it
is not practical to use this method in real life. According to human nature, people feel more
comfortable and efficient in environments with a variety of tasks, Edward Hallowell said that
people are losing a lot of efficiency in the workplace due to multitasking, outside distractions and
self-distractions. As it matter of fact, the changes made to the workplace do not have to be
dramatic.

No one is suggesting we ban e-mail or make employees focus on only one task. However, certain
common workplace tasks, such as group meetings, would be more efficient if we banned cell-
phones, a common distraction. A person can also apply these tips to prevent self-
distraction. Instead of arriving to your office and checking all of your e-mails for new tasks, a
common workplace ritual, a person could dedicate an hour to a single task first thing in the
morning. Self-timing is a great way to reduce distraction and efficiently finish tasks one by one,
instead of slowing ourselves down with multi-tasking.

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Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet

1 a reference to a domestic situation that does not require multitasking

2 a possible explanation of why we always do multitask together

3 a practical solution to multitask in work environment

4 relating multitasking to the size of prefrontal cortex

5 longer time spent doing two tasks at the same time than one at a time

Questions 6-10
Look at the following statements (Questions 6-10) and the list of scientists below.

Match each statement with the correct scientist, A-E.

Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 6-10 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

List of Scientists

A Thomas Lehman

B Earl Miller

C David Meyer

D Gloria Mark

E Edward Hallowell

6 When faced with multiple visual stimulants, one can only concentrate on one of them.

7 Doing two things together may be faster but not better.

8 People never really do two things together even if you think you do.

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10 Even minor changes in the workplace will improve work efficiency

Questions 11-13
Complete the sentences below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your
answers in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.

A term used to refer to a situation when you are reading a text and cannot focus on your
surroundings is 11… .

The 12… part of the brain controls multitasking.

The practical solution of multitask in work is not to allow use of cellphone in 13… .

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2. E 9. E

3. F 10. E

4. C 11. email voice

5. D 12. prefrontal cortex

6. B 13. group meetings

7. D

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