FINAL TEST FOR UPPER-INTERMEDIATE

CLASSES
READING MODULE
Reading Passage 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on
Reading Passage 1 below.
Walking wit din!sa"#s
Peter L. Falkingham and his colleagues at Manchester University
are developing techniues !hich look set to revolutionise our
understanding o" ho! dinosaurs and other e#tinct animals $ehaved.
The media image of palaeontologists who study prehistoric life is often of
feld workers camped in the desert in the hot sun, carefully picking away at the
rock surrounding a large dinosaur bone. But Peter Falkingham has done little of
that for a while now. Instead, he devotes himself to his computer. ot because
he has become inundated with paperwork, but because he is a new kind of
palaeontologist! a computational palaeontologist.
"hat few people may consider is that uncovering a skeleton, or
discovering a new species, is where the research begins, not where it ends.
"hat we really want to understand is how the e#tinct animals and plants
behaved in their natural habitats. $rs Bill %ellers and Phil &anning from the
'niversity of &anchester use a (genetic algorithm() a kind of computer code
that can change itself and(evolve()to e#plore how e#tinct animals like
dinosaurs, and our own early ancestors, walked and stalked.
The fossilised bones of a complete dinosaur skeleton can tell scientists a
lot about the animal, but they do not make up the complete picture and the
computer can try to fll the gap. The computer model is given a digitised
skeleton, and the locations of known muscles. The model then randomly
activates the muscles. This, perhaps unsurprisingly, results almost without fail
in the animal falling on its face. %o the computer alters the activation pattern
and tries again ... usually to similar e*ect. The modelled (dinosaurs( +uickly
(evolve(. If there is any improvement, the computer discards the old pattern
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and adopts the new one as the base for alteration. ,ventually, the muscle
activation pattern evolves a stable way of moving, the best possible solution is
reached, and the dinosaur can walk, run, chase or gra8e. 2ssuming natural
selection evolves the best possible solution too, the modelled animal should be
moving in a manner similar to its now)e#tinct counterpart. 2nd indeed, using
the same method for living animals 9humans, emu and ostriches: similar top
speeds were achieved on the computer as in reality. By comparing their
cyberspace results with real measurements of living species, the &anchester
team of palaeontologists can be confdent in the results computed showing
how e#tinct prehistoric animals such as dinosaurs moved.
The &anchester 'niversity team have used the computer simulations to
produce a model of a giant meat)eating dinosaur. It is called an
acrocanthosaurus which literally means (high spined li8ard( because of the
spines which run along its backbone. It is not really known why they are there
but scientists have speculated they could have supported a hump that stored
fat and water reserves. There are also those who believe that the spines acted
as a support for a sail. 0f these, one half think it was used as a display and
could be ;ushed with blood and the other half think it was used as a
temperature)regulating device. It may have been a mi#ture of the two. The
skull seems out of proportion with its thick, heavy body because it is so narrow
and the <aws are delicate and fne. The feet are also worthy of note as they look
surprisingly small in contrast to the animal as a whole. It has a deep broad tail
and powerful leg muscles to aid locomotion. It walked on its back legs and its
front legs were much shorter with powerful claws.
Falkingham himself is investigating fossilised tracks, or footprints, using
computer simulations to help analyse how e#tinct animals moved. &odern)day
trackers who study the habitats of wild animals can tell you what animal made
a track, whether that animal was walking or running, sometimes even the se#
of the animal. But a fossil track poses a more considerable challenge to
interpret in the same way. 2 crucial consideration is knowing what the
environment including the mud, or sediment, upon which the animal walked
was like millions of years ago when the track was made. ,#periments can
answer these +uestions but the number of variables is staggering. To physically
recreate each scenario with a bo# of mud is e#tremely time)consuming and
di=cult to repeat accurately. This is where computer simulation comes in.
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Falkingham uses computational techni+ues to model a volume of mud
and control the moisture content, consistency, and other conditions to simulate
the mud of prehistoric times. 2 footprint is then made in the digital mud by a
virtual foot. This footprint can be chopped up and viewed from any angle and
stress values can be e#tracted and calculated from inside it. By running
hundreds of these simulations simultaneously on supercomputers, Falkingham
can start to understand what types of footprint would be e#pected if an animal
moved in a certain way over a given kind of ground. .ooking at the variation in
the virtual tracks, researchers can make sense of fossil tracks with greater
confdence.
The application of computational techni+ues in palaeontology is
becoming more prevalent every year. 2s computer power continues to
increase, the range of problems that can be tackled and +uestions that can be
answered will only e#pand.
Questions 1-%
$o the following statements agree with the information given in /eading
Passage > ?
'n boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet write
&'U( i! the statement agrees with the in!ormation
F)L*( i! the statement contradicts the in!ormation
+,& -./(+ i! there is no in!ormation on this
> In his study of prehistoric life, Peter Falkingham rarely spends time on
outdoor research these days.
@ %everal attempts are usually needed before the computer model of a
dinosaur used by %ellers and &anning manages to stay upright.
4 "hen the %ellers and &anning computer model was used for people, it
showed them moving faster than they are physically able to.
6 %ome palaeontologists have e#pressed reservations about the
conclusions reached by the &anchester team concerning the movement
of dinosaurs.
A 2n e#perienced tracker can analyse fossil footprints as easily as those
made by live animals.
B /esearch carried out into the composition of prehistoric mud has been
found to be inaccurate.
Questions 0-1
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"abel the diagram below.
#hoose $% &%R' ()*$ %$' +%R, !rom the passage !or each answer.
+rite your answers in boxes --. on your answer sheet.
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Questions 12-13 #omplete the /ow-chart below. +rite +, M,'( &3)+
&4, 4,'5*.
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Reading Passage $
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 16-7%, which are based on
Reading Passage 2 below.
Te #!%!ts a#e &!'ing - !# a#e
te()
+hat is the current state o! play in *rti0cial 1ntelligence2
2 Can robots advance so far that they become the ultimate threat to our
e#istence? %ome scientists say no, and dismiss the very idea of 2rtifcial
Intelligence. The human brain, they argue, is the most complicated system
ever created, and any machine designed to reproduce human thought is bound
to fail. Physicist /oger Penrose of 0#ford 'niversity and others believe that
machines are physically incapable of human thought. Colin &c1inn of /utgers
'niversity backs this up when he says that 2rtifcial Intelligence (is like sheep
trying to do complicated psychoanalysis. They <ust don(t have the conceptual
e+uipment they need in their limited brains(.
B 2rtifcial Intelligence, or 2l, is di*erent from most technologies in that
scientists still understand very little about how intelligence works. Physicists
have a good understanding of ewtonian mechanics and the +uantum theory
of atoms and molecules, whereas the basic laws of intelligence remain a
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mystery. But a si8eable number of mathematicians and computer scientists,
who are specialists in the area, are optimistic about the possibilities. To them it
is only a matter of time before a thinking machine walks out of the laboratory.
0ver the years, various problems have impeded all e*orts to create robots. To
attack these di=culties, researchers tried to use the (top)down approach(,
using a computer in an attempt to program all the essential rules onto a single
disc. By inserting this into a machine, it would then become self)aware and
attain human)like intelligence.
C In the >DAEs and >DBEs great progress was made, but the shortcomings
of these prototype robots soon became clear. They were huge and took hours
to navigate across a room. &eanwhile, a fruit ;y, with a brain containing only a
fraction of the computing power, can e*ortlessly navigate in three dimensions.
0ur brains, like the fruit ;y(s, unconsciously recognise what we see by
performing countless calculations. This unconscious awareness of patterns is
e#actly what computers are missing. The second problem is robots( lack of
common sense. Fumans know that water is wet and that mothers are older
than their daughters. But there is no mathematics that can e#press these
truths. Children learn the intuitive laws of biology and physics by interacting
with the real world. /obots know only what has been programmed into them.
$ Because of the limitations of the top)down approach to 2rtifcial
Intelligence, attempts have been made to use a (bottom)up( approach instead )
that is, to try to imitate evolution and the way a baby learns. /odney Brooks
was the director of &IT(s 2rtifcial Intelligence laboratory, famous for its
lumbering (top)down( walking robots. Fe changed the course of research when
he e#plored the unorthodo# idea of tiny (insectoid( robots that learned to walk
by bumping into things instead of computing mathematically the precise
position of their feet. Today many of the descendants of Brooks( insectoid
robots are on &ars gathering data for 2%2 9The ational 2eronautics and
%pace 2dministration:, running across the dusty landscape of the planet. For all
their successes in mimicking the behaviour of insects, however, robots using
neural networks have performed miserably when their programmers have tried
to duplicate in them the behaviour of higher organisms such as mammals.
&IT(s &arvin &insky summarises the problems of 2l! (The history of 2l is sort of
funny because the frst real accomplishments were beautiful things, like a
machine that could do well in a maths course. But then we started to try to
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make machines that could answer +uestions about simple children(s stories.
There(s no machine today that can do that.(
, There are people who believe that eventually there will be a combination
between the top)down and bottom)up, which may provide the key to 2rtifcial
Intelligence. 2s adults, we blend the distinguishes us as human, that it is
impossible for machines ever to have emotions. Computer e#pert Fans
&oravec thinks that in the future robots will be programmed with emotions
such as fear to protect themselves so that they can signal to humans when
their batteries are running low, for e#ample. ,motions are vital in decision)
making. People who have su*ered a certain kind of brain in<ury lose the ability
to e#perience emotions and become unable to make decisions. "ithout
emotions to guide them, they debate endlessly over their options. &oravec
points out that as robots become more intelligent and are able to make
choices, they could likewise become paralysed with indecision. To aid them,
robots of the future might need to have emotions hardwired into their brains.
F There is no universal consensus as to whether machines can be
conscious, or even, in human terms, what consciousness means. &insky
suggests the thinking process in our brain is not localised but spread out, with
di*erent centres competing with one another at any given time. Consciousness
may then be viewed as a se+uence of thoughts and images issuing from these
di*erent, smaller (minds(, each one competing for our attention. /obots might
eventually attain a (silicon consciousness(. /obots, in fact, might one day
embody an architecture for thinking and processing information that is di*erent
from ours ) but also indistinguishable. If that happens, the +uestion of whether
they really (understand( becomes largely irrelevant. 2 robot that has perfect
mastery of synta#, for all practical purposes, understands what is being said.
Questions 16-72
/eading Passage @ has si# paragraphs, *-3.
"hich paragraph contains the following information?
+rite the correct letter *-3 in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet. $5 You may
use any letter more than once.
>6 an insect that proves the superiority of natural intelligence over 2rtifcial
Intelligence
>A robots being able to beneft from their mistakes
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>B many researchers not being put o* believing that 2rtifcial Intelligence
will eventually be developed
>G an innovative approach that is having limited success
>5 the possibility of creating 2rtifcial Intelligence being doubted by some
academics
>D no generally accepted agreement of what our brains do
@E robots not being able to e#tend their intelligence in the same way as
humans
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Questions 71-73
"oo6 at the !ollowing people 78uestions 21-29: and the list o! statements
below.
&atch each person with the correct statement *-'.
+rite the correct letter *-' in boxes 21-29 on your answer sheet.
@> Colin &c1inn
@@ &arvin &insky
@4 Fans &oravec
2 2rtifcial Intelligence may re+uire something e+uivalent to feelings in
order to succeed.
B $i*erent kinds of people use di*erent parts of the brain.
C Tests involving fction have defeated 2rtifcial Intelligence so far.
$ People have intellectual capacities which do not e#ist in computers.
, People have no reason to be frightened of robots.
Questions 76-7%
#omplete the summary below.
#hoose ,+( 4,'5 ,+L8 !rom the passage !or each answer.
+rite your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.
"hen will we have a thinking machine?
$espite some advances, the early robots had certain weaknesses. They were
given the information they needed on a @6.............This was known as the (top)
down( approach
and enabled them to do certain tasks but they were unable to recognise
@A.............or did they have any intuition or ability to make decisions based
on e#perience. /odney Brooks tried a di*erent approach. /obots similar to
those invented by Brooks are to be found on @B............where they are
collecting information.
Reading Passage *
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 70-62, which are based on
Reading Passage 9 below.
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Endange#ed lang"ages
'$e;er mind whales sa;e the languages' says Peter &onaghan
graduate o! the *ustralian $ational <ni;ersity
"orried about the loss of rainforests and the o8one layer? "ell, neither of
those is doing any worse than a large ma<ority of the B,EEE to G,EEE languages
that remain in use on ,arth. 0ne half of the survivors will almost certainly be
gone by @EAE, while 6EH more will probably be well on their way out. In their
place, almost all humans will speak one of a handful of megalanguages )
&andarin, ,nglish, %panish.
.inguists know what causes languages to disappear, but less often
remarked is what happens on the way to disappearance! languages(
vocabularies, grammars and e#pressive potential all diminish as one language
is replaced by another. (%ay a community goes over from speaking a traditional
2boriginal language to speaking a creoleI,( says 2ustralian ick ,vans, a
leading authority on 2boriginal languages, (you leave behind a language where
there(s very fne vocabulary for the landscape. 2ll that is gone in a Creole.
Jou(ve <ust got a few words like (gum tree( or whatever. 2s speakers become
less able to e#press the wealth of knowledge that has flled ancestors( lives
with meaning over millennia, it(s no wonder that communities tend to become
demoralised.(
If the losses are so huge, why are relatively few linguists combating the
situation? 2ustralian linguists, at least, have achieved a great deal in terms of
preserving traditional languages. 2ustralian governments began in the >DGEs
to support an initiative that has resulted in good documentation of most of the
>4E remaining 2boriginal languages. In ,ngland, another 2ustralian, Peter
2ustin, has directed one of the world(s most active e*orts to limit language
loss, at the 'niversity of .ondon. 2ustin heads a programme that has trained
many documentary linguists in ,ngland as well as in language)loss hotspots
such as "est 2frica and %outh 2merica.
2t linguistics meetings in the '%, where the endangered)language issue
has of late been something of a ;avour of the month, there is growing evidence
that not all approaches to the preservation of languages will be particularly
helpful. %ome linguists are boasting, for e#ample, of more and more
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sophisticated means of capturing languages! digital recording and storage, and
internet and mobile phone technologies. But these are encouraging the (+uick
dash( style of recording trip! ;y in, switch on digital recorder, ;y home,
download to hard drive, and store gathered material for future research. That(s
not +uite what some endangered)language specialists have been seeking for
more than 4E years. &ost loud and untiring has been &ichael Krauss, of the
'niversity of 2laska. Fe has often complained that linguists are playing with
non)essentials while most of their raw data is disappearing.
"ho is to blame? That prominent linguist oam Chomsky, say Krauss and
many others. 0r, more precisely, they blame those linguists who have been
obsessed with his approaches. .inguists who go out into communities to study,
document and describe languages, argue that theoretical linguists, who draw
conclusions about how languages work, have had so much in;uence that
linguistics has largely ignored the continuing disappearance of languages.
Chomsky, from his post at the &assachusetts Institute of Technology, has
been the great man of theoretical linguistics for far longer than he has been
known as a political commentator. Fis landmark work of >DAG argues that all
languages e#hibit certain universal grammatical features, encoded in the
human mind. 2merican linguists, in particular, have focused largely on
theoretical concerns ever since, even while doubts have mounted about
Chomsky(s universals.
2ustin and Co. are in no doubt that because languages are uni+ue, even
if they do tend to have common underlying features, creating dictionaries and
grammars re+uires prolonged and dedicated work. This re+uires that
documentary linguists observe not only languages( structural subtleties, but
also related social, historical and political factors. %uch work calls for persistent
funding of feld scientists who may sometimes have to venture into harsh and
even ha8ardous places. 0nce there, they may face di=culties such as
community suspicion. 2s ick ,vans says, a community who speak an
endangered language may have reasons to doubt or even oppose e*orts to
preserve it. They may have seen support and funding for such work come and
go. They may have given up using the language with their children, believing
they will beneft from speaking a more widely understood one.
Plenty of students continue to be drawn to the intellectual thrill of
linguistics feld work. That(s all the more reason to clear away barriers, contend
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,vans, 2ustin and others. The highest barrier, they agree, is that the linguistics
profession(s emphasis on theory gradually wears down the enthusiasm of
linguists who work in communities. Chomsky disagrees. Fe has recently begun
to speak in support of language preservation. But his linguistic, as opposed to
humanitarian, argument is, let(s say, unsentimental! the loss of a language, he
states, (is much more of a tragedy for linguists whose interests are mostly
theoretical, like me, than for linguists who focus on describing specifc
languages, since it means the permanent loss of the most relevant data for
general theoretical work(. 2t the moment, few institutions award doctorates for
such work, and that(s the way it should be, he reasons. In linguistics, as in
every other discipline, he believes that good descriptive work re+uires
thorough theoretical understanding and should also contribute to building new
theory. But that(s precisely what documentation does, ob<ects ,vans. The
process of immersion in a language, to e#tract, analyse and sum it up,
deserves a Ph$ because it is (the most demanding intellectual task a linguist
can engage in(.
I a language developed from a mi#ture of two di*erent languages
Questions 70-37
$o the following statements agree with the views of the writer in /eading
Passage 4?
1n boxes 2--92 on your answer sheet write
8(* i! the statement agrees with the ;iews o! the writer
+, i! the statement contradicts the ;iews o! the writer
+,& -./(+ i! it is impossible to say what the writer thin6s about this
@G By @EAE only a small number of languages will be ;ourishing.
@5 2ustralian academics( e*orts to record e#isting 2boriginal languages have
been too limited.
@D The use of technology in language research is proving unsatisfactory in
some respects.
4E Chomsky(s political views have overshadowed his academic work.
4> $ocumentary linguistics studies re+uire long)term fnancial support.
4@ Chomsky(s attitude to disappearing languages is too emotional.
Questions 33-3%9 #hoose the correct letter * 5 # or ,.
44 The writer mentions rainforests and the o8one layer
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2 because he believes an#iety about environmental issues is unfounded.
B to demonstrate that academics in di*erent disciplines share the same
problems.
C because they e#emplify what is wrong with the attitudes of some
academics.
$ to make the point that the public should be e+ually concerned about
languages.
46 "hat does ick ,vans say about speakers of a Creole?
2 They lose the ability to e#press ideas which are part of their culture.
B 0lder and younger members of the community have di=culty
communicating.
C They e#press their ideas more clearly and concisely than most people.
$ 2ccessing practical information causes problems for them.
4A "hat is similar about "est 2frica and %outh 2merica, from the linguist(s
point of view?
2 The ,nglish language is widely used by academics and teachers.
B The documentary linguists who work there were trained by
2ustralians.
C .ocal languages are disappearing rapidly in both places.
$ There are now only a few undocumented languages there.
4B &ichael Krauss has fre+uently pointed out that
2 linguists are failing to record languages before they die out.
B linguists have made poor use of improvements in technology.
C linguistics has declined in popularity as an academic sub<ect.
$ linguistics departments are underfunded in most universities.
Questions 30-62
:omplete each sentence !ith the correct ending, )--, $elo!. 4rite
the correct letter, )--, in $o#es 30-62 on your ans!er sheet.
4G .inguists like Peter 2ustin believe that every language is uni+ue
45 ick ,vans suggests a community may resist attempts to save its
language
4D &any young researchers are interested in doing practical research
6E Chomsky supports work in descriptive linguistics
2 even though it is in danger of disappearing.
B provided that it has a strong basis in theory.
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C although it may share certain universal characteristics.
$ because there is a practical advantage to it.
, so long as the drawbacks are clearly understood.
F in spite of the prevalence of theoretical linguistics.
1 until they realise what is involved.
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