READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.
How the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable was laid
On August 16, 1858, the first telegraphic message crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Travelling
along a recently laid cable, the message from Britain’s Queen Victoria to US President
James Buchanan took just 16 hours. Prior to this, communication across the Atlantic
would have been by ship – and taken around 10 days.

People had been communicating via overland telegraph since 1844 and messages had
been passing between Britain and France since 1850 when the first submarine cable was
laid in the English Channel. But the attempt to span the Atlantic Ocean was the most
daring attempt yet – and was the talk of the age, the 19th-century equivalent of the Apollo
space mission. The idea that one could seemingly cheat time and space was inspiring
and it changed the way people thought about the world and their place in it.

The driving force behind the trans-Atlantic telegraph cable was an American businessman
called Cyrus Field. In 1856, he and Englishmen John Watkins Brett and Charles Tilson
Bright formed the Atlantic Telegraph company. They raised £350,000 mostly from
businessmen in London, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow. They also secured £14,000
annually from the British government plus the loan of ships and a similar amount from the
US government.

Getting the cable made proved to be difficult. The distance between the west coast of
Ireland and Newfoundland is over 3,700km, and Field was unable to find a company that
was capable of supplying the required cable in the desired time frame. As a result, two
companies were engaged to fulfil the order. The cable had a core of seven copper wires
down which the signal would pass. These were insulated with several layers of gutta-
percha (a natural plastic made from tree sap) and then armoured with iron wire. When it
was complete, the weight of the cable proved too great for any single ship. It was therefore
loaded onto two: the British ship, HMS Agamemnon and the American ship, USS Niagara.

The first attempt to lay the cable began on August 5 1857 with both ships departing from
the west coast of Ireland, near Ballycarbery Castle. The venture did not go according to
plan. The cable snapped on the first day, but was recovered from the bottom and repaired.
A few days later, mid-Atlantic, the cable snapped again, this time in water 3km deep. It
was lost and the expedition abandoned.

The next summer in 1858 they tried again. On this expedition, the two great ships met
mid- Atlantic, each carrying half the cable. The two ends were joined together and the
ships sailed away from each other. The cable broke three times and each time they were
forced to start again. On July 29, with little hope of success, the cable was joined for the
fourth time and the ships sailed for home. This time they succeeded. The cable was
landed in Newfoundland on August 4 and in Ireland the following day. And a week or so
later Queen Victoria sent that first trans-Atlantic message to President Buchanan.

The celebrations were tremendous. One US newspaper proclaimed:

New York has seldom seen a more complete holiday than that on September 1 1858, in
celebration of the successful laying of the Atlantic cable. The enthusiasm of an entire
nation was expressed in this jubilee of its metropolis, and the era of a closer connection
with Europe was well ushered in by a day of genuine rejoicing and gaiety.

Celebrations were, however, short-lived: the cable performed badly and failed after just
three weeks. The project was put on hold, but the concept had been proved possible. By
1865, further research had been carried out into the problems which had plagued the
earlier cables. In addition, cables had been successfully laid in the Mediterranean and in
the Persian Gulf. The cables that were used were better engineered, with thicker cores
and better insulation allowing faster transmission speeds.

In 1865, Field incorporated a second company to raise enough funds to try again. He
chartered the largest ship in the world at the time, the SS Great Eastern, which could
carry the entire Atlantic cable. Huge salt-water tanks and other state-of-the-art machinery
were fitted to ensure it remained in mint condition during its journey. All went well until, in
heavy winds 1000km off the coast of Newfoundland, the cable rubbed on the side of the
ship, snapped and plunged to the deep ocean floor.

Not one to quit, Field vowed to return the following year. This final 1866 expedition proved
to be successful and the cable was put into commercial service on July 28. One month
later, the 1865 cable was brought to the surface and repaired, providing a second Atlantic
telegraph link.
The service had obvious and immediate impact. People in government were able to
respond more swiftly to evolving situations. News travelled more quickly, which boosted
trade on both sides of the Atlantic. It also had a profound effect on things such as family
life and cultural ties. For example, it was no longer so difficult for immigrants in America
to keep in touch with their families back home.

The roller-coaster of cable-laying highs and lows between 1857 and 1866 caught the
imaginations of a generation the way the space race did in the 20th century. There was
immense public interest in the endeavour and in telegraphy more generally. At the time,
telegraphic science was reported widely in the newspapers and the fortunes of the
telegraph companies were followed closely. Discussions of the pitfalls and solutions to
spanning the Atlantic with cable became everyday topics of conversation, and endless
articles in the newspapers ensured that the project stayed in people’s thoughts.
Questions 1 – 6
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the text In boxes
1 – 6 below, 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 Field failed to find a company that could produce all of the cable needed by the specified date.
2 HMS Agamemnon and USS Niagara set sail from different locations on August 5, 1857.
3 On the 1858 expedition, the cable broke three times because of a manufacturing fault.
4 The newspaper quoted in the passage disapproved of the enthusiasm that met the 1858
expedition.
5 Many articles appeared in the press between 1857 and 1866 about the science behind the
telegraph.
6 Between 1857 and 1866, people talked about the problems related to the telegraph project on
a regular basis.
Questions 7 – 13
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the text for each answer. Write your
answers in boxes 7 – 13 below.
The history of the trans-Atlantic telegraph The first
attempts to lay cable:
• the Atlantic Telegraph company was set up by Field, Brett and Bright in 1856
• the central wires of the cable were made of 7…………………..
• the cable was put onto two ships due to its 8…………………..
• the 1857 attempt failed
• the cable was successfully laid in 1858
Events between 1858 and 1866:
• celebrations were brief since problems emerged
• further research led to the cable’s thickness and 9 ......................... being improved
• Field set up another company to get the 10........................... for another attempt
• the strong winds experienced by the SS Great Eastern led to the cable being lost
• the 1866 expedition was successful
The changes the trans-Atlantic telegraph brought about:
• members of the 11 ............................... could react more quickly to events
• news could be relayed faster, thus improving 12…….. …………
• it became easier for US 13…………………..
• to maintain contact with their families
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage
2 below.

WHAT’S HAPPENING TO OUR FOOD?

Is the way we produce and process food making it less nourishing than in our grandparents’ day?

A We now know a lot about what food does to the body and the importance of a healthy diet.
But what if modern intensive farming methods have affected the mineral and vitamin content
of what we eat? Donald Davis, at the University of Texas, has found notable declines in
nutrients in crops including tomatoes, eggplants and squash. Davis blames agricultural
practices that emphasise quantity over quality. High-yielding crops produce more food,
more rapidly, but they can’t make or absorb nutrients at the same pace, so the nutrition is
diluted. ‘It’s like taking a glass of orange juice and adding water to it. If you do that, the
concentration of nutrients that was in the original juice drops,’ he says. But the idea that
modern farming produces less nourishing crops remains controversial, since nutrient levels
can vary widely according to the variety of plant, the year of harvest and the time of harvest.

B But intensive farming has also led to a huge increase in food supply, which has undoubtedly
had a positive effect on our diet and health. ‘Evidence suggests that some nutrients have
fallen, particularly trace elements such as copper in vegetables,’ says Paul Finglas, at the
Institute of Food Research in Norwich. ‘Foods are now bred for yield, and not necessarily
nutritional composition. But I don’t think that is a problem, because we eat a wider range of
foods today than we did 10 years ago, let alone 40 years ago’. Eric Decker, professor of
food science at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, agrees. If nutrients are
declining, the losses are insignificant, he says. ‘Over the last century, lifespans have got
longer, people are bigger and stronger, and a lot of that has to do with the food supply being
better.’ Even Davis agrees that any differences in nutrient levels are relatively small.
‘Despite their declines, fruit and vegetables are still our richest source of many nutrients,
and you can make up for it by eating more,’ he says. ‘But we know that many people don’t
get the recommended amounts of nutrients such as iron, magnesium, and calcium. They
aren’t overt deficiencies in the usual sense, but they increase susceptibility to lots of
different problems.’

C In addition to changes in its production, food is being transported for ever-increasing

distances. Fruit and vegetables in supermarkets might look shiny and fresh, but often they
were picked several days earlier. Some nutrients, particularly vitamin C and folic acid, begin
to deteriorate as soon as picking happens, but manufacturers can take action to minimise
this. ‘Lots of these reactions are driven by enzymes,’ says Carol Wagstaff, from the
University of Reading, UK, who points out that chilling is the best way of slowing down such
reactions. That said, if you are choosing between organic fruit or vegetables from a distant
country or locally grown, non-organic ones, always opt for home-grown, she says. ‘From a
nutritional standpoint, go for the shortest possible supply chain rather than the production
method.’
Many kinds of mass-produced fruit and veg – most famously tomatoes – are harvested
unripe before being transported to supermarkets. Wagstaff agrees that this may cause
some loss of flavor, compared with a tomato that you have grown at home, and left on the
plant until it’s absolutely ready to eat. ‘But there’s no way you could do that at a commercial
 level, because of the bruising and other types of damage that would occur if ripe fruits were
transported through a typical supply chain,’ she says. In addition, each method of shipping
and storing foods has different effects on the compounds they contain. Vitamin C, for
example, breaks down in the dark, whereas glucosinolates – found in vegetables like
cabbage – deplete in the light.

D Surprisingly, frozen fruit and vegetables are often nutritionally better than fresh. ‘Frozen
peas are much more nutritious than those you buy ready to shell,’ says Catherine Collins,
principal dietician at St George’s Hospital in London. What’s more, frozen foods often have
fewer additives. ‘Freezing is a preservative,’ she says. Similarly, processing has become a
maligned word in the context of food, but there are some cases where it enhances a food’s
health benefits. For example, lycopene – a compound tomatoes are rich in, and which has
been shown to protect against certain diseases – is much more readily absorbed by humans
from tomato paste than fresh tomatoes. A recent trend is the sale of ‘fresh-cut’ fruit and
vegetables – peeled potatoes, ready chopped carrots and bagged salads. One in five adults
in the UK regularly buys fruit and vegetables in this form every week, according to market
research firm Mintel. Surely this cutting and peeling speeds up the degradation of nutrients?
‘There is a chance that ready prepared vegetables may have a lower content of some
vitamins,’ says Judy Buttriss, of the British Nutrition Foundation in London. ‘But if their
availability means that such vegetables are consumed in greater quantities, then the net
effect is beneficial.’

E The bottom line is that although aspects of today’s food production, processing and storage
might make what we eat a bit less nutritious, they are also making foods more available –
and this is far more important. ‘The most important thing you can do is eat more fruits,
vegetables and wholegrains, and cut down on highly refined, processed foods, vegetable
oils and added sugars,’ says Davis. He believes this will make a far greater difference to us
than worrying about growing methods and transportation.
 Questions 14 – 18
Reading Passage 2 has 5 sections, A - E.
Which section contains the following
information? Write the correct letter, A - E, in
boxes 14 - 18 below. NB You may use any
letter more than once.

14 an admission that if one type of food is harvested too soon, its taste may be affected
15 the view that there is not a great difference between the quantity of nutrients in our
food now and in the past
16 a comparison which illustrates why developments in agriculture may reduce the
amounts of nutrients in foods
17 a warning that customers could be deceived by the attractive appearance of a fruit or
vegetable
18 evidence of the popularity of a new development in food processing which aims
to save customers’ trouble
Questions 19 – 22
Look at the following statements (Questions 19 - 22) and the list of people
below. Match each statement with the correct person, A - F.
Write the correct letter, A - F, in boxes 19 - 22 below.

List of people
A Donald Davis
B Paul Finglas
C Eric Decker
D Carol Wagstaff
E Catherine Collins
F Judy Buttriss

19 People are more likely to become ill if they have low levels of some nutrients.
20 Making healthy foods easy to cook may be more important than their vitamin
content.
21 An improved diet has made people nowadays live longer and be healthier than in
the past.
22 People’s diets are more varied now than they were in the past.
Questions 23 – 26
Complete the summary below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the text for each
answer. Write your answers in boxes 23 - 26 below.
Food transportation
In order to prevent loss of nutrients when transporting fruit and vegetables, chilling is used
to slow down the effect that 23 ……… have on them.

Some foods, such as tomatoes, must be picked before they are ripe to avoid
problems such as 24 during transportation.

Other foods, such as cabbage, lose nutrients when kept in the 25 ………. .
Vegetables such as 26 , which are picked fresh and transported to the supermarket,
may be less nutritious
than those which are frozen.
 READING PASSAGE 3

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

Decisions, Decisions.

Research explores when we can make a vital decision quickly and we need to proceed
more deliberately

A A widely recognised legend tells us that in Gordium (in what is now Turkey) in the
fourth century BC an oxcart was roped to a pole with a complex knot. It was said that the
first person to untie it would become the king of Asia. Unfortunately, the knot proved
impossible to untie. The story continues that when confronted with this problem, rather
than deliberating on how to untie the Gordian knot. Alexander, the famous ruler of the
Greeks in the ancient world, simply took out his sword and cut it in two – then went on to
conquer Asia. Ever since the notion of a ‘Gordian solution’ has referred to the
attractiveness of a simple answer to an otherwise intractable problem.

B Among researchers in the psychology of decision making, however, such

solutions have traditionally held little appeal. In particular, the ‘conflict model’ of decision
making proposed by psychologists Irving Janis and Leon Mann in their 1977 book,
Decision Making, argued that a complex decision-making process is essential for
guarding individuals and groups from the peril of ‘group-think’. Decisions made without
thorough canvassing, surveying, weighing, examining and reexamining relevant
information and options would be suboptimal and often disastrous. One foreign affair
decision made by a well-known US political leader in the 1960s is typically held us as an
example of the perils of inadequate thought, whereas his successful handling of a water
crisis is cited as an example of the advantages of careful deliberation. However,
examination of these historical events by Peter Suedfield, a psychologist at the University
of British Columbia, and Roderick Kramer, a psychologist at the Stanford Graduate
School of Business, found little difference in the two decision-making processes; both
crises required and received complex consideration by the political administration, but
later only the second one was deemed to be the effective.

C In general, however, organizational and political science offers little evidence that
complex decisions fare better than simpler ones. In fact, a growing body of work
suggests that in many situations simply ‘snap’ decisions with being routinely superior to
more complex ones – an idea that gained widespread public appeal with Malcolm
Gladwell’s best-selling book Blink (2005).

D An article by Ap Dijksterhuis of the University of Amsterdam and his colleagues,

Making the Right Choice: the Deliberation-without-attention Effect’, runs very much in the
spirit of Gladwell’s influential text. Its core argument is that to be effective, conscious
(deliberative) decision making requires cognitive resources. Because increasingly
complex decisions place increasing strain on those resources, the quality of our
decisions declines as their complexity increases. In short, complex decisions overrun
our cognitive powers. On the other hand, unconscious decision making (what the author
refer to as ‘deliberation without attention’) requires no cognitive resources, so task
complexity does not Effectiveness. The seemingly counterintuitive conclusion is that
although conscious thought enhances simple decisions, the opposite holds true for more
complex decisions.

E Dijksterhuis reports four Simple but elegant studies supporting this argument. In
one, participants assessed the quality of four hypothetical cars by considering either four
attributes (a simple task) or 12 attributes (a complex task). Among participants who
considered four attributes, those who were allowed to engage in undistracted
deliberative thought did better at discriminating between the best and worst cars. Those
who were distracted and thus unable to deliberate had to rely on their unconscious
thinking and did less well. The opposite pattern emerged when people considered 12
criteria. In this case, conscious deliberation led to inferior discrimination and poor
decisions.

F In other studies, Dijksterhuis surveyed people shopping for clothes (‘simple’

products) and furniture (‘complex’ products). Compared with those who said they had
deliberated long and hard, shoppers who bought with little conscious deliberation felt
less happy with their simple clothing purchase but happier with the complex furniture
purchases. Deliberation without attention actually produced better results as the
decisions became more complex.

G From there, however, the researchers take a big leap. They write: There is no
reason to assume that the deliberation-without-attention effect does not generalize to
other types of choices – political, managerial or otherwise. In such cases, it should
benefit the individual to think consciously about simple matters and to delegate thinking
about more complicated matters to the unconscious.

H This radical inference contradicts standard political and managerial theory but
doubtless comforts those in politics and management who always find the simple solution
to the complex problem an attractive proposition. Indeed, one suspects many of our
political leaders already embrace this wisdom.

I Still, it is there, in the realms of society and its governance, that the more
problematic implications of deliberation without attention begin to surface. Variables that
can be neatly circumscribed in decisions about shopping lose clarity in a world of group
dynamics, social interaction, history and politics. Two pertinent questions arise. First,
what counts as a complex decision? And second, what counts as a good outcome?

J As social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890 – 1947) noted, a ‘good’ decision that
nobody respects is actually bad, his classic studies of decision making showed that
participating in deliberative processes makes people more likely to abide by the results.
The issue here is that when political decision-makers make mistakes, it is their politics,
or the relationship between their politics and our own, rather than psychology which is at fault.

K Gladwell’s book and Dijksterhuis’s paper are invaluable in pointing out the
limitations of the conventional wisdom that decision quality rises with decision-making
complexity. But this work still tempts us to believe that decision making is simply a
matter of psychology, rather than also a question of politics, ideology and group
membership. Avoiding social considerations in a search for general appeal rather than
toward it.
Questions 27-31
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.

27 The legend of the Gordian knot is used to illustrate the idea that
A anyone can solve a difficult problem
B difficult problems can have easy solutions
C the solution to any problem requires a lot of thought
D people who can solve complex problems make good leaders

28 The ‘conflict model’ of decision making proposed by Janis and Mann requires that
A opposing political parties be involved
B all-important facts be considered
C people be encouraged to have different ideas
D previous similar situations be thoroughly examined

29 According to recent thinking reinforced by Malcolm Gladwell, the best decisions

A involve consultation
B involve complex thought
C are made very quickly
D are the most attractive option

30 Dijksterhuis and his colleagues claim in their article that

A our cognitive resources improve as tasks become more complex
B conscious decision making is negatively affected by task complexity
C unconscious decision making is a popular approach
D deliberation without attention defines the way we make decisions

31 Dijksterhuis’s car study found that, in simple tasks, participants

A were involved in lengthy discussions
B found it impossible to make decisions quickly
C were unable to differentiate between the options
D could make a better choice when allowed to concentrate
Questions 32-35

Complete the summary using the list of words A-I below.

Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 32-35 on your answer sheet.

Dijksterhuis’s shopping study and its conclusions

Using clothing and furniture as examples of different types of purchases, Dijksterhuis

questioned shoppers on their satisfaction with what they had bought. People who spent
32 .................. time buying simple clothing items were more satisfied than those who had
not. However, when buying furniture, shoppers made 33.................... purchasing decisions
if they didn’t think too hard. From this, the researchers concluded that in other choices,
perhaps more important than shopping. 34 ......................... decisions are best made by
the
unconscious. The writer comments that Dijksterhuis’s finding is apparently 35
…............... but nonetheless true.

A more B counterintuitive C simple

D better E conscious F obvious
G complex H less I worse

Questions 36-40
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage?
In boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

36 Dijksterhuis’s findings agree with existing political and management theories.

37 Some political leaders seem to use deliberation without attention when
making complex decisions.
38 All political decisions are complex ones.
39 We judge political errors according to our own political beliefs.
40 Social considerations must be taken into account for any examination of
decision making to prove useful.