Mock Test – Reading Practice Test 34

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

The Adolescents

A

The American Academy of Pediatrics recognizes three stages of adolescence. These are early, middle and late adolescence, and each has its own developmental tasks. Teenagers move through these tasks at their own speed depending on their physical development and hormone levels. Although these stages are common to all teenagers, each child will go through them in his or her own highly individual ways.

B

During the early years young people make the first attempts to leave the dependent, secure role of a child and to establish themselves as unique individuals, independent of their parents. Early adolescence is marked by rapid physical growth and maturation. The focus of adolescents’ self-concepts is thus often on their physical self and their evaluation of their physical acceptability. Early adolescence is also a period of intense conformity to peers. ‘Getting along,’ not being different, and being accepted seem somehow pressing to the early adolescent. The worst possibility, from the view of the early adolescent, is to be seen by peers as ‘different’.

C

Middle adolescence is marked by the emergence of new thinking skills. The intellectual world of the young person is suddenly greatly expanded. Their concerns about peers are more directed toward their opposite sexed peers. It is also during this period that the move to establish psychological independence from one’s parents accelerates. Delinquency behavior may emerge since parental views are no longer seen as absolutely correct by adolescents. Despite some delinquent behavior, middle adolescence is a period during which young people are oriented toward what is right and proper. They are developing a sense of behavioral maturity and learning to control their impulsiveness.

D

Late adolescence is marked by the final preparations for adult roles. The developmental demands of late adolescence often extend into the period that we think of as young adulthood. Late adolescents attempt to crystallize their vocational goals and to establish a sense of personal identity. Their needs for peer approval are diminished and they are largely psychologically independent from their parents. The shift to adulthood is nearly complete.

E

Some years ago, Professor Robert Havighurst of the University of Chicago proposed that stages in human development can best be thought of in terms of the developmental tasks that are part of the normal transition. He identified eleven developmental tasks associated with the adolescent transition. One developmental task an adolescent needs to achieve is to adjust to a new physical sense of self. At no other time since birth does an individual undergo such rapid and profound physical changes as during early adolescence. Puberty is marked by sudden rapid growth in height and weight. Also, the young person experiences the emergence and accentuation of those physical traits that make him or her a boy or girl. The effect of this rapid change is that young adolescent often becomes focused on his or her body.

F

Before adolescence, children’s thinking is dominated by a need to have a concrete example for any problem that they solve. Their thinking is constrained to what is real and physical. During adolescence, young people begin to recognize and understand abstractions. The adolescent must adjust to increased cognitive demands at school. Adults see high school in part as a place where adolescents prepare for adult roles and responsibilities and in part as preparatory for further education. School curricula are frequently dominated by the inclusion of more abstract, demanding material, regardless of whether the adolescents have achieved formal thought. Since not all adolescents make the intellectual transition at the same rate, demands for abstract thinking prior to achievement of that ability may be frustrating.

G

During adolescence, as teens develop increasingly complex knowledge systems and a sense of self, they also adopt an integrated set of values and morals. During the early stages of moral development, parents provide their child with a structured set of rules of what is right and wrong, what is acceptable and unacceptable. Eventually, the adolescent must assess the parents’ values as they come into conflict with values expressed by peers and other segments of society. To reconcile differences, the adolescent restructures those beliefs into a personal ideology.

H

The adolescent must develop expanded verbal skills. As adolescents mature intellectually, as they face increased school demands, and as they prepare for adult roles, they must develop new verbal skills to accommodate more complex concepts and tasks. Their limited language of childhood is no longer adequate. Adolescents may appear less competent because of their inability to express themselves meaningfully.

I

The adolescent must establish emotional and psychological independence from his or her parents. Childhood is marked by a strong dependence on one’s parents. Adolescents may yearn to keep that safe, secure, supportive, dependent relationship. Yet, to be an adult implies a sense of independence, of autonomy, of being one’s own person. Adolescents may vacillate between their desire for dependence and their need to be independent. In an attempt to assert their need for independence and individuality, adolescents may respond with what appears to be hostility and lack of cooperation.

J

Adolescents do not progress through these multiple developmental tasks separately. At any given time, adolescents may be dealing with several. Further, the centrality of specific developmental tasks varies with early, middle, and late periods of the transition.

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

Ancient Chinese Chariots

The Shang Dynasty or Yin Dynasty, according to traditional historiography, ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC. Archaeological work at the Ruins of Yin (near modern-day Anyang), which has been identified as the last Shang capital, uncovered eleven major Yin royal tombs and the foundations of palaces and ritual sites, containing weapons of war and remains from both animal and human sacrifices.

The Tomb of Fu Hao is an archaeological site at Yinxu, the ruins of the ancient Shang Dynasty capital Yin, within the modern city of Anyang in Henan Province, China. Discovered in 1976, it was identified as the final resting place of the queen and military general Fu Hao. The artefacts unearthed within the grave included jade objects, bone objects, bronze objects etc. These grave goods are confirmed by the oracle texts, which constitute almost all of the first hand written record we possess of the Shang Dynasty. Below the corpse was a small pit holding the remains of six sacrificial dogs and along the edge lay the skeletons of human slaves, evidence of human sacrifice.

The Terracotta Army was discovered on 29 March 1974 to the east of Xi’an in Shaanxi. The terracotta soldiers were accidentally discovered when a group of local farmers was digging a well during a drought around 1.6 km (1 mile) east of the Qin Emperors tomb around at Mount Li (Lishan), a region riddled with underground springs and watercourses. Experts currently place the entire number of soldiers at 8,000 – with 130 chariots (130 cm long), 530 horses and 150 cavalry horses helping to ward off any dangers in the afterlife. In contrast, the burial of Tutankhamun yielded six complete but dismantled chariots of unparalleled richness and sophistication. Each was designed for two people (90 cm long) and had its axle sawn through to enable it to be brought along the narrow corridor into the tomb.

Excavation of ancient Chinese chariots has confirmed the descriptions of them in the earliest texts. Wheels were constructed from a variety of woods: elm provided the hub, rose-wood the spokes and oak the felloes. The hub was drilled through to form an empty space into which the tampering axle was fitted, the whole being covered with leather to retain lubricating oil. Though the number of spokes varied, a wheel by the fourth century BC usually had eighteen to thirty-two of them. Records show how elaborate was the testing of each completed wheel: flotation and weighing were regarded as the best measures of balance, but even the empty spaces in the assembly were checked with millet grains. One outstanding constructional asset of the ancient Chinese wheel was dishing. Dishing refers to the dish-like shape of an advanced wooden wheel, which looks rather like a flat cone. On occasion they chose to strengthen a dished wheel with a pair of struts running from rim to rim on each of the hub. As these extra supports were inserted separately into the felloes, they would have added even greater strength to the wheel. Leather wrapped up the edge of the wheel aimed to retain bronze.

Within a millennium, however, Chinese chariot-makers had developed a vehicle with shafts, the precursor of the true carriage or cart. This design did not make its appearance in Europe until the end of the Roman Empire. Because the shafts curved upwards, and the harness pressed against a horse’s shoulders, not his neck, the shaft chariot was incredibly efficient. The halberd was also part of a chariot standard weaponry. This halberd usually measured well over 3 meters in length, which meant that a chariot warrior wielding it sideways could strike down the charioteer in a passing chariot. The speed of chariot which was tested on the sand was quite fast. At speed these passes were very dangerous for the crews of both chariots.

The advantages offered by the new chariots were not entirely missed. They could see how there were literally the Warring States, whose conflicts lasted down the Qin unification of China. Qin Shi Huang was buried in the most opulent tomb complex ever constructed in China, a sprawling, city-size collection of underground caverns containing everything the emperor would need for the afterlife. Even a collection of terracotta armies called Terra-Cotta Warriors was buried in it. The ancient Chinese, along with many cultures including ancient Egyptians, believed that items and even people buried with a person could be taken with him to the afterlife.

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

Homeopathy

Overdosing on nothing

A

An international protest this week aims to demonstrate the truth about homoeopathy – that there/s literally nothing in it, says Martin Robbins AT 10.23 am on 30 January, more than 300 activists in the UK, Canada, Australia and the US will take part in a mass homoeopathic “overdose”. Skeptics will publicly swallow an entire bottle of homoeopathic pills to demonstrate to the public that homoeopathic remedies, the product of a scientifically unfounded 18th-century ritual, are simply sugar pills. Many of the sceptics will swallow 84 pills of Arsenicum album, a homoeopathic remedy based on arsenic which is used to treat a range of symptoms, including food poisoning and insomnia. The aim of the “10:23” campaign, led by the Merseyside Skeptics Society, based in Liverpool, UK, is to raise public awareness of just exactly what homeopathy is, and to put pressure on the UK’s leading pharmacist, Boots, to remove the remedies from sale. The campaign is called 10:23in honor of the Avogadro constant (approximately 6 x 1023, the number of atoms or molecules in one mole of a substance), of which more later.

B

That such a protest is even necessary in 2010 is remarkable, but somehow the homeopathic industry has not only survived into the 21st century, but prospered. In the UK alone more than £40 million is spent annually on homoeopathic treatments, with £4 million of this being sucked from the National Health Service budget. Yet the basis for homoeopathy defies the laws of physics, and high-quality clinical trials have never been able to demonstrate that it works beyond the placebo effect.

C

The discipline is based on three “laws”; the law of similars, the law of infinitesimals and the law of succession. The law of similars states that something which causes your symptoms will cure your symptoms, so that, for example, as caffeine keeps you awake, it can also be a cure for insomnia. Of course, that makes little sense, since drinking caffeine, well, keeps you awake. Next is the law of infinitesimals, which claims that diluting a substance makes it more potent. Homoeopaths start by diluting one volume of their remedy -arsenic oxide, in the case of Arsenicum album -in 99 volumes of distilled water or alcohol to create a “centesimal”. They then dilute one volume of the centesimal in 99 volumes of water or alcohol, and so on, up to 30 times. Application of Avogadro’s constant tells you that a dose of such a “30C” recipe is vanishingly unlikely to contain even a single molecule of the active ingredient. The third pillar of homoeopathy is the law of succession. This states-and I’m not making this up -that by tapping the liquid in a special way during the dilution process, a memory of the active ingredient is somehow imprinted on it. This explains how water is able to carry a memory of arsenic oxide, but apparently not of the contents of your local sewer network.

D

The final preparation is generally dropped onto a sugar pill which the patient swallows. Homeopaths claim that the application of these three laws results in a remedy that, even though it contains not a single molecule of the original ingredient, somehow carries an “energy signature” of it that nobody can measure or detect. Unsurprisingly, when tested under rigorous scientific conditions, in randomized, controlled and double-blind trials, homoeopathic remedies have consistently been shown to be no better than a placebo. Of course, the placebo effect is quite powerful, but it’s a bit like justifying building a car without any wheels on the basis that you can still enjoy the comfy leather seats and play with the gear shift.

E

Even some retailers who sell the treatments have admitted there is no evidence that they work. In November, Paul Bennett, the superintendent pharmacist at Boots, appeared before the UK parliament’s Commons Science and Technology Committee’s “evidence check” on homoeopathy. He was questioned by Member of Parliament Phil Willis, who asked: “Do they work beyond the placebo effect?””I have no evidence before me to suggest that they are efficacious,” Bennett replied. He defended Boots’s decision to sell homoeopathic remedies on the grounds of consumer choice. “A large number of our consumers actually do believe they are efficacious, but they are licensed medicinal products and, therefore, we believe it is right to make them available,” he said.

F

You might agree. You might also argue that homoeopathy is harmless: if people want to part with their money for sugar pills and nobody is breaking the law, why not let them? To some extent that’s true -there’s only so much damage you can do with sugar pills short of feeding them to a diabetic or dropping a large crate of them on someone’s head. However, we believe there is a risk in perpetuating the notion that homoeopathy is equivalent to modern medicine. People may delay seeking appropriate treatment for themselves or their children.

G

We accept that we are unlikely to convince the true believers. Homoeopathy has many ways to sidestep awkward questions, such as rejecting the validity of randomized controlled trials, or claiming that homoeopathic remedies only work if you have symptoms of the malady they purport to cure. Our aim is to reach out to the general public with our simple message: “There is nothing in it”. Boots and other retailers are perfectly entitled to continue selling homoeopathic remedies if they so wish and consumers are perfectly entitled to keep on buying them. But hopefully the 10:23 campaign will ram home our message to the public. In the 21st century, with decades of progress behind us, it is surreal that governments are prepared to spend millions of tax pounds on homoeopathy. There really is nothing in it.