READING PASSAGE 1

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

MENTAL GYMNASTICS
John McCrone explains how mental exercise is being used to boost
corporate brainpower
The working day has just started at the head office of Barclays Bank in London. Seventeen
staff are helping themselves to a buffet breakfast as young psychologist Sebastian Bailey
enters the room to begin the morning’s training session. But this is no ordinary training
session. He is here, not to sharpen the, finance or management skills, but to exercise their
brains. Today’s workout, organised by a company called Mind Gym, is entitled ‘Having
Presence’.
What follows is an intense 90-minute session, in which this rather abstract concept is broken
down into a concrete set of feelings, mental tricks and behaviours. At one point, the bankers
are instructed to shut their eyes and visualise themselves filling the room and then the
building. They finish by walking around the room acting out various levels of ‘presence’,
from low-key to over-the-top.
Similar mental workouts are happening in corporate seminar rooms around the globe. Mind
Gym alone offers some 70 different sessions, including ones on mental stamina and creativity
for logical thinkers. Other outfits draw more directly on the exercise analogy, offering
‘neurobics’ courses with names like ‘brain sets’ and ‘cerebral fitness’. Whatever the style, the
companies’ sales pitch is similar: ‘Follow our routines,’ they tell us, ‘to shape and sculpt your
brain or mind, just as you might tone and train your body.’ Nearly all claim that their mental
workouts draw on serious research into how the brain works.
Gessner Geyer, from Brainergy of Cambridge, Massachusetts, puts it like this: ‘Studies have
shown that mental exercise can cause changes in brain anatomy and brain chemistry, which
promote increased mental efficiency and clarity. The neuroscience behind this is cutting-
edge.’ Mind Gym trades on a quote from Susan Greenfield, one of Britain’s best-known
neuroscientists: ‘It’s a bit like going to the gym: if you exercise your brain, it will grow.’
In practice, the training can seem mundane. Take ‘Creativity for logical thinkers’, one of
Mind Gym's eight different creativity workouts. One of the mental strategies taught is to make
a sensible suggestion, then pose its opposite. Asked to spend five minutes inventing a new
pizza, a group soon comes up with no topping, sweet topping, cold topping, price based on
time of day, Flat-rate prices and so on.
The trick is simple but Bailey points out how few such tricks people have to call upon when
suddenly asked to be creative: ‘They tend to just label themselves as uncreative, realising that
there are techniques every creative person employs.’ Bailey says the aim is to introduce
people to half a dozen such strategies, so that what at first seems like a dauntingly abstract
mental task becomes a set of concrete, learnable behaviours. He admits this is not a short cut
to genius. Neurologically, some people do start with quicker circuits or greater handling
capacity. However, the right kind of training he believes can dramatically increase brain
efficiency.
Though it is hard to prove that the training itself is effective – how do you measure a change
in creativity levels, or memory skills? – staff certainly report feeling that such classes have
opened their eyes. For example, they may have felt the only way to solve a difficult problem
is to bang away at it as hard as possible. Then they learn that creative thinkers advise taking a
break and letting ideas incubate. A simple tactic, yet one rarely taught in normal life. Which,
according to educational psychologist Guy Claxton, Mind Gym’s academic adviser, is exactly
the point.
Claxton, who dismisses most neurological approaches as ‘neuro-babble’, insists creativity,
mental flexibility, even motivation are all thought habits that can be learned. The problem, he
claims, is that most of us never receive proper training. We develop mental strategies for
tackling tasks haphazardly and soon lose sight of the very thought habits we are relying upon.
Claxton believes we must return our thought patterns to a conscious level, becoming aware of
how we usually think. Only then can we start to practise better thought patterns, until
eventually these become our new habits.
Russian psychologists Lev Vygotsky and Aleksandr Luria put forward similar arguments in
the 1930s and various attempts have been made to put them into practice. The business world
familiar with both ‘better thinking’ gurus such as Edward de Bono and Tony Bunn, and habit-
breaking techniques such as neurolinguistic programming. Modern companies will seize on
anything that claims to create flexible, bright thinkers, without scrutinising the facts. But are
neurobic workouts underpinned by scientific fact?
Certainly the brain adapts to demands placed on it. Neurologists have proved time and again
that people who lose brain cells suddenly during a stroke often sprout new r the connections
to compensate – especially if they undergo therapy. Rats raised in cages with and toys sprout
more neural connections than rats raised in bare cages. Brain scans suggest that people use
more of their grey matter to carry out new tasks than well-rehearsed ones.
So the general basis of neurobics looks sound: the brain really is inherently alterable or
‘plastic’. The problem is in the specifics. Qualities such as creativity are too subjective to rate,
forcing psychologists to rely on the easy-to-score spatial and verbal reasoning tasks involved
in IQ tests. This creates a problem for neurobics. Time and again, psychologists have found
that neither mental exercises nor any other type of brain-boosting regime, including so-called
smart pills designed to improve blood flow to the brain, reliably improve our ability to do
these basic tasks.
Nevertheless, Claxton for one believes there is no reason why schools and universities should
not spend more time teaching analysis and problem-solving techniques, rather than trying to
stuff heads with facts and hoping that effective thought habits are somehow absorbed by
osmosis.
Questions 1 – 5
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
1 Bailey asks his participants to imagine they are buildings.
2 Brain training is used by business people all over the world.
3 The organisations that sell mental exercise all promote it in much the same way.
4 Companies offering mental workouts say that their practice has a scientific basis.
5 Susan Greenfield was one of the founders of Mind Gym.

Questions 6 – 13
Look at the following statements (Questions 6-13) and the list of people below.
Match each statement with the correct person, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter, A, B, C or D, in boxes 6-13 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
6 People rarely take time to stand back from a problem before taking a decision.
7 Most people underestimate their potential to be creative.
8 Most ways of looking at mental development are unconvincing.
9 Exercising the brain can be compared to exercising the body.
10 Training can actually modify the structure of the brain.
11 Effective mental training begins with a close examination of how we ordinarily think
12 People who think that they are uncreative may be unaware of techniques used by
creative people
13 Educators should place greater emphasis on developing students' thinking skills.

List of People
A Sebastian Bailey
B Gessner Geyer
C Susan Greenfield
D Guy Claxton
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading
Passage 2

Mammoth Kill
What led to the disappearance of the giant mammals? Kate Wong examines the
theories
Although it’s hard to imagine in this age of urban sprawl and automobiles, North America
once belonged to huge, elephant-like mammoths, camels, bear-sized beavers and other giant
beasts, collectively known as ‘megafauna’. Some 11,000 years ago, however, these large-
bodied mammals – about 70 species in all – disappeared. Their demise coincided roughly
with the arrival of humans in this region and dramatic climate change – factors that have
inspired several theories about the die-off. Yet despite decades of scientific investigation, the
exact cause remains a mystery. Now new findings offer support to one of these controversial
hypotheses: that human hunting drove these huge ‘megafaunal’ species to extinction.
This belief resulted in the overkill model which emerged in the 1960s, when it was put forth
by Paul S Martin of the University of Arizona. Since then, critics have charged that no
archaeological remains exist to support the idea that the first Americans hunted to the extent
necessary to cause these extinctions. But at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate
Paleontology in Mexico City in October 1999, specialist John Alroy of the University of
California at Santa Barbara argued that, in fact, hunting-driven extinction is not only
plausible, it was unavoidable. He has determined, using a computer simulation, that even a
very modest amount of hunting would have wiped out these animals.
Assuming an initial human population of 100 people that grew no more than two per cent
annually, Alroy determined that, if each band of, say, 50 people killed 13 to 20 large animals
a year, humans could have eliminated the animal populations within 1,000 years. Large
mammals in particular would have been vulnerable to the pressure because they have longer
gestation periods than smaller mammals and their young require extended care.
However, not everyone agrees with Alroy’s assessment. For one thing, the results depend on
population size estimates for the extinct animals – estimates that are not necessarily reliable.
But a more specific criticism conies from mammal expert Ross D E MacPhee of the American
Museum of Natural History in New York City, who points out that the relevant archaeological
record contains barely a dozen examples of stone points embedded in mammoth bones (and
none, it should be noted, are known from other megafaunal remains) – hardly what one might
expect if hunting drove these animals to extinction. Furthermore, some of these species had a
vast range, covering the whole continent – the Jefferson’s Ground Sloth, for example, lived as
far north as the Yukon and as far south as Mexico – which would have made hunting them in
numbers sufficient to cause their extinction rather unlikely, he says.
MacPhee agrees that humans most likely brought about these extinctions (as well as others
around the world that coincided with human arrival), but not directly. Rather than through
hunting, he suggests that people may have introduced a deadly disease, perhaps through their
dogs or accompanying vermin, which then spread wildly among the native species because of
their low resistance to the new introductions. Repeated outbreaks of a deadly disease could
thus quickly drive them to the point of no return. So far, MacPhee does not have empirical
evidence for this theory, and it will not be easy to come by: such disease would kill far too
quickly to leave its signature on the bones themselves. But he hopes that analyses of tissue
and DNA from the most recent animal remains will eventually reveal the microbes
responsible.
The third explanation for what brought on this North American extinction does not involve
human beings. Instead, its proponents blame the loss on the climate. The Pleistocene epoch in
question witnessed considerable climate instability, explains Russell W Graham of the Denver
Museum of Nature and Science. As a result, their regular habitats disappeared, and species
that had once formed communities split apart. For some animals, this brought opportunity.
For much of the megafauna, however, the increasingly uniform terrain left them with
shrinking geographical ranges – a death sentence for large animals, which need
correspondingly large ranges. Although these creatures managed to maintain viable
populations through most of the Pleistocene period, the final major climate fluctuation pushed
them over the edge, Graham says.
For his part, Alroy is still convinced that human hunters were the destroyers of the giant
animals. The overkill model explains everything the disease and climate scenarios explain, he
asserts, and in addition makes accurate predictions about which species would eventually
become extinct.
Questions 14 – 20
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.
Three theories have been put forward to explain the disappearance of the different species of
large mammals that inhabited 14 ……………. 11,000 years ago. The 15 ……………
proposed around fifty years ago by Paul S Martin, blames 16 …………… by people for mass
extinction. Computer calculations seem to support this explanation, but critics question the
reliability of the figures they are based on.
The second theory suggests that humans introduced a 17 ……………. which wiped out the
large mammals. However, so far this theory also lacks any 18 ……………. .
The final theory suggests that this period experienced significant 19 …………….. which
eventually led to the loss of habitat and to the division of the 20 ……………. that some of the
large mammals had organised.
Questions 21 – 26
Look at the following statements (Questions 21-26) and the list of people below.
Match each statement with the correct person, A, B or C.
Write the correct letter, A, B or C, in boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once

21 Too little evidence exists to support the hunting theory.

22 The bigger the animal, the bigger the territory it requires for survival.
23 Globally, humans have been indirectly responsible for the elimination of many
species.
24 Population estimates can be used to understand how large mammals become
extinct.
25 Scientific examination of fossil remains may provide some proof for one of the
theories.
26 Environmental changes negatively affected the social groupings of some large
species.

List of People

A John Alroy
B Ross D E MacPhee
C Russell W Graham
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading
Passage 3

We Have Star Performers

Most organisations are looking for talent. But what if they’ve got it wrong, asks Jeffrey
Pfeffer
A. One widely held assumption about talent is that it is a reasonably fixed characteristic
and it is therefore the job of organisations to identify, recruit and retain star
performers. This belief affects the way people are managed in the workplace. Most
recruitment decisions are influenced by the skills and abilities of an individual rather
than their aptitude and attitude. In terms of career development, organisations invest in
staff who have been selected to reach higher-level positions, while ignoring front-line
employees and people with less perceived potential. This idea, that talent is a fixed,
identifiable characteristic – and that those firms with the best people do the best – is
both flawed and harmful to people and organisations. There is a lot of evidence on this
point, and it is useful to highlight some of the most pertinent arguments.
B. First, are there stars? There is no question that in every field, from sports to computer
programming to music, there are people who are better than the rest. As psychologist
Dean Keith Simonton, who has spent his career studying greatness, has said,
‘Wherever you look, the same story can be told. Identify the ten per cent who have
achieved the most in a certain endeavour. Count the accomplishments they have to
their credit. Now tally the accomplishments of the remaining 90 per cent. The first
tally will equal or surpass the second.’ For instance, in music, 16 individuals have
produced about 50 per cent of the Western classical music that is performed and
recorded today, while another 235 composers have produced the remaining half. The
more interesting questions concern not the existence of stars, but whether these stars
can be reliably identified and, even more importantly, whether their talent is a fixed
aspect or can be altered.
C. Identifying the best people is tricky. Quality of performance changes over time and
this is true whether we are talking about professors or footballers. If performance
naturally varies, any measurement taken at a single point in time, such as when
someone is being hired, will have error and imprecision. Therefore, single assessments
of talent are likely to contain mistakes in their categorisation of people. Also,
judgements about performance and ability depend on the standards used to judge what
is good and bad. It should surprise no-one that for Bach to be considered a great
musician, standards of music needed to change to embrace the qualities that his
compositions possessed. Similarly, artists and art come in and out of fashion, which
means that what is genius depends not only on a person’s ability, but on the prevailing
standards used to evaluate output.
D. Finally, it is difficult to evaluate people and their abilities with precision. In the
domain of work, research shows that the best predictors of job performance tend to be
measures of intelligence. But even these measures correlate only loosely with
performance, which means that more than 80 per cent of the variation in performance
is unexplained by even the best predictors. Even in the sports arena, where one would
think natural ability would be readily assessed because sports teams spend lots of
resources on identifying talent, mistakes get made. Basketball star Michael Jordan was
 dropped by his high-school basketball coach and a number of top American football
quarterbacks were available early in their careers because they were not considered
good enough by various teams.
E. This leads on to the next question: is talent born or made? Should organisations
assume that almost anyone can become a star performer, which implies that there
ought to be a greater emphasis on motivation and development, or do they just figure
out who is good and who isn’t? Here the evidence is clear: talent is at least as much
‘created’ as inherent and, more importantly, the customary way companies think
about identifying talent almost certainly works to destroy a lot of untapped potential.
Decades of research by K Anders Ericsson, professor of psychology at Florida State
University, show that exceptional performance doesn’t happen without around ten
years of nearly daily, deliberate practice for about four hours a day, by people who
with the assistance of their coaches have access to the best techniques. Once achieved,
exceptional performance can’t be maintained without relentless effort. So performance
may be as much a consequence of training as it is of innate ability, which suggests that
performance can be altered by how people are managed.
F. Further research by Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck shows that the
tendency of organisations to see performance results as an opportunity for an
‘assessment’ of ability, results in lower performance and poor motivation. Dweck
identified two sets of goals that people bring to a performance context: ‘performance
goals, where the purpose is to validate one’s ability or avoid demonstrating a lack of
ability, and learning goals, where the aim is to acquire new knowledge and skills’.
People with performance goals have been shown to be more prone to helpless
behaviour and debilitation after a setback, while people with learning goals strive for
higher performance. The implications for managing people and talent are clear. Seeing
talent as fixed and job performance as a way of classifying people creates a self-
fulfilling prophecy in which ability and intelligence do become fixed. By contrast,
seeing ability as malleable leads to a different sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, in which
individuals and their employers may invest in ways to enhance performance.
Questions 27 – 32
Reading Passage 3 has six paragraphs, A-F.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
27 disagreement with the view that employing talented people enables companies to
achieve top performance
28 a description of what individuals have to do on a regular basis to improve their
performance
29 the evidence that exceptional talent exists in all areas of life
30 how different ways of evaluating achievement at work can cause different reactions
in employees
31 the belief that the time when an assessment is carried out affects its accuracy
32 the extent to which different talented individuals have contributed to their particular
area of achievement

Questions 33 – 35
Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for
each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 33-35 on your answer sheet.
33 How many Western classical composers are identified as exceptionally talented?
34 Which composer initially received little recognition for his work?
35 Who can help improve the performance of people practising daily?
Questions 36 – 40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 36-40 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
36 Companies usually hire people on the basis of their character.
37 There are some areas of sport that have a greater proportion of talent than others.
38 Measures of intelligence accurately predict performance at work.
39 There are cases in which talented sportspeople have been overlooked.
40 Newly formed organisations have the most highly motivated staff.