READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Pessgge 2 on pages 6
and 7.

Twin Study: Two of a kind

A. THE scientific study of twins goes back to the late 19th century, when Francis Galton, an
early geneticist, realized that they came in two varieties: identical twins born from one egg and
non-identical twins that had come from two. That insight turned out to be key, although it was not
until 1924 that it was used to formulate what is known as the twin rule of pathology, and twin
studies really got going.
B. The twin rule of pathology states that any heritable disease will be more concordant (that
is, more likely to be jointly present or absent) in identical twins than in non-identical twins-and, in
turn, will be more concordant in non-identical twins than in non- siblings. Early work, for example,
showed that the statistical correlation of skin-mole counts between identical twins was 0.4, while
non-identical twins had a correlation of only
0.2. (A score of 1.0 implies perfect correlation, while a score of zero implies no correlation.) This
result suggests that moles are heritable, but it also implies that there is an environmental
component to the development of moles, otherwise the correlation in identical twins would be
close to 1.0.
C. Twin research has shown that whether or not someone takes up smoking is determined
mainly by environmental factors, but once he does so, how much he smokes is largely down to his
genes. And while a person's religion is clearly a cultural attribute, there is a strong genetic
component to religious fundamentalism. Twin studies are also unraveling the heritability of
various aspects of human personality. Traits from neuroticism and anxiety to thrill- and novelty-
seeking all have large genetic components. Parenting matters, but it does not determine
personality in the way that some had thought.
D. More importantly, perhaps, twin studies are helping the understanding of diseases such
as cancer, asthma, osteoporosis, arthritis and immune disorders. And twins can be used, within
ethical limits, for medical experiments. A study that administered vitamin C to one twin and a
placebo to the other found that it had no effect on the common cold. The lesson from all today's
twin studies is that most human traits are at least partially influenced by genes. However, for the
most part, the age-old dichotomy between nature

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and nurture is not very useful. Many genetic programs are open to input from the environment,
and genes are frequently switched on or off by environmental signals. It is also possible that genes
themselves influence their environment. Some humans have an innate preference for participation
in sports. Others are drawn to novelty. Might people also be drawn to certain kinds of friends and
types of experience? In this way, a person's genes might shape the environment they act in as
much as the environment shapes the actions of the genes.
E. In the past, such research has been controversial. Josef Mengele, a Nazi doctor working
at the Auschwitz extermination camp during the second world war, was fascinated by twins. He
sought them out among arrivals at the camp and preserved them from the gas-chambers for a
series of brutal experiments. After the war, Cyril Burt, a British psychologist who worked on
the heredity of intelligence, tainted twin research with results that appear, in retrospect, to have
been rather too good. Some of his data on identical twins who had been reared apart were
probably faked. In any case, the prevailing ideology in the social sciences after the war was
Marxist, and disliked suggestions that differences in human potential might have underlying
genetic causes. Twin studies were thus viewed with suspicion.

F. The ideological pendulum has swun g back; however, as the human genome project
and its aftermath have turned genes fro abstract concepts to real pieces of DNA. The role of genes
in sensitive areas such as intelligence is acknowledged by all but a few die-hards. The interesting
questions now concern how nature and nurture interact to produce particular bits of biology,
rather than which of the two is more important. Twin studies, which are a good way to ask
these questions, are back in fashion, and many twins are enthusiastic participants in this
research.
G. Research at the Twinsburg festival began in a small way, with a single stand in 1979.
Gradually, news spread, and more scientists began turning up. This year, half a dozen groups of
researchers were lodged in a specially pitched research tent. In one comer of this tent, Paul
Breslin, who works at the Monell Institute in Philadelphia, watched over several tables where
twins sat sipping clear liquids from cups and making notes. It was the team's third year at
Twinsburg. Dr. Breslin and his colleagues want to find out how genes influence human
perception, particularly the senses of smell and taste and those (warmth, cold, pain, tingle, itch
and so on) that result from stimulation of the skin. Perception is an example of something that is
probably influenced by both genes and experience. Even before birth, people are exposed to
flavors such as chocolate, garlic, mint and vanilla that pass intact into the bloodstream, and thus
to the fetus. Though it is not yet clear whether such pre-natal exposure shapes taste-perception,
there is evidence that it shapes preferences for foods encountered later in life.

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 H. However, there are clearly genetic influences at work, as well-for example in the ability
to taste quinine. Some people experience this as intensely bitter, even when it is present at very
low levels. Others, whose genetic endowment is different, are less bothered by it. Twin studies
make this extremely clear. Within a pair of identical twins, either both, or neither, will find
quinine hard to swallow. Non-identical twins will agree less frequently.
I. On the other side of the tent Dennis Drayna, from the National Institute on Deafness
and Other Communication Disorders, in Maryland, was studying hearing. He wants to know
what happens to sounds after they reach the ear. It is not clear, he says, whether sound is
processed into sensation mostly in the ear or in the brain. Dr. Drayna has already been involved
in a twin study which revealed that the perception of musical pitch is highly heritable.At
Twinsburg, he is playing different words, or parts of words, into the left and right ears of his
twinned volunteers. The composite of the two sounds that an individual reports hearing depends
on how he processes this diverse information and that, Dr. Drayna believes, may well be
influenced by genetics.
J. Elsewhere in the marquee, Peter Miraldi, of Kent State University in Ohio, was trying
to find out whether genes affect an individual's motivation to communicate with others. A
number of twin studies have shown that personality and sociability are heritable, so he thinks this
is fertile ground. And next to Mr. Miraldi was a team of dermatologists from Case Western
Reserve University in Cleveland. They are looking at the development of skin diseases and male-
pattern baldness. The goal of the latter piece of research is to find the genes responsible for
making men's hair fall out.
K. The busiest part of the tent, however, was the queue for forensic- science
research into fingerprints. The origins of this study are shrouded in mystery. For many months,
the festival's organizers have been convinced that the Secret Service-the American government
agency responsible for, among other things, the safety of the president-is behind it. When The
Economist contacted the Secret Service for more information, we were referred to Steve Nash,
who is chairman of the International Association for Identification (IAI), and is also a detective
in the scientific investigations section of the Marin County Sheriff's Office in California. The
IAI, based in Minnesota, is an organization of forensic scientists from around the world.
Among other things, it publishes the Journal of Forensic Identification.

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Questions 14-18
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-K. Which
paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-K, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet
NB You may use any letter more than once.
2 Mentioned research conducted in Ohio
3 Medical contribution to the researches for twins.
4 Research situation under life threatening conditions
5 Data of similarities of identical twins
6 Reasons that make one study unconvincing

Questions 19-20
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using NO MORE
THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 19-20 on your answer sheet.

The first one that conducted research on twins is called 19 ........................ He separated
twins into two categories: non identical and identical twins. The twin research was used in
medical application in as early as the year of 20 .............

Questions 21-23
Choose the correct letters in following options:
Write your answers in boxes 21-23 on your answer sheet.
Please choose THREE research fields that had been carried out in Ohio, Maryland and Twins
burgh?
A. Sense
B. Cancer
C. Be allergic to Vitamin D
D. Mole heredity
E. Sound
F. Boldness of men

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Questions 24-26
Choose the correct letters in following options:
Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.
Please choose THREE results that had been verified in this passage
A Non identical twins come from different eggs
B Genetic relation between identical twins is closer than non- identical ones.
C Vitamin C has evident effect on a cold.
D Genetic influence to smoking is superior to environment's
E If a pregnant woman eats too much sweet would lead to skin disease.
F Hair loss has been found to be connected with skin problem

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READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading passage 3 on pages 10 and11.

The origin of ancient writing

A. The Sumerians, an ancient people of the Middle East, had a story explaining the
invention of writing more than 5,000 years ago. It seems a messenger of the King of Uruk arrived
at the court of a distant ruler so exhausted that he was unable to deliver the oracle message. So the
king set down the words of his next messages on a clay tablet. A charming story, whose retelling
at a recent symposium at the University of Pennsylvania amused scholar. They smiled at the
absurdity of a letter which the recipient would not have been able to read.
B. They also doubted that the earliest writing was a direct rendering of speech. Writing
more likely began as a separate, symbolic system of communication and only later merged
with spoken language.
C. ▼et in the story the Sumerians, who lived in Mesopotamia, in what is now
southern Iraq, seemed to understand writing's transforming function. As Dr. Holly Pittman, director
of the University's Center for Ancient Studies, observed, writing 'arose out of the need to store and
transmit information ...over time and space'.
D. In exchanging interpretations and information, the scholars acknowledged that
they still had no fully satisfying answers to the questions of how and why writing developed.
Many favored an explanation of writing's origins in the visual arts, pictures becoming
increasingly abstract and eventually representing spoken words. Their views clashed with a
widely held theory among archaeologists that writing developed from the pieces of clay that
Sumerian accountants used as tokens to keep track of goods.

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 E. Archaeologists generally concede that they have no definitive answer to the
question of whether writing was invented only once, or arose independently in several places,
such as Egypt, the Indus Valley, China, Mexico and Central America. The preponderance of
archaeological data shows that the urbanizing Sumerians were the first to develop writing, in
3,200 or 3,300 BC. These are the dates for many clay tablets in an early form of cuneiform, a
script written by pressing the end of a sharpened stick into wet clay, found at the site of the ancient
city of Uruk. The baked clay tablets bore such images as pictorial symbols of the names of
people, places and things connected with government and commerce. The Sumerian script
gradually evolved from the pictorial to the abstract, but did not at first represent recorded spoken
language.
F. Dr. Peter Damerow, a specialist in Sumerian cuneiform at the Max Planck Institute
for the History of Science in Berlin, said, 'It is likely that there were mutual influences of
writing systems around the world. However, their great variety now shows that the development
of writing, once initiated, attains a considerable degree of independence and flexibility to adapt
to specific characteristics of the sounds of the language to be represented. Not that he accepts the
conventional view that writing started as a representation of words by pictures. New studies of
early Sumerian writing, he said, challenge this interpretation. The structures of this earliest
writing did not, for example, match the structure of spoken language, dealing mainly in lists and
categories rather than in sentences and narrative.
G. For at least two decades, Dr. Denise Schmandt-Besserat, a University of Texas
archaeologist, has argued that the first writing grew directly out of a system practised by
Sumerian accountants. They used clay tokens, each one shaped to represent a jar of oil, a
container of grain or a particular kind of livestock. These tokens were sealed inside clay
spheres, and then the number and type of tokens inside was recorded on the outside using
impressions resembling the tokens. Eventually, the token impressions were replaced with
inscribed signs, and writing had been invented.
H. Though Dr. Schmandt-Besserat has won much support, some linguists
question her thesis, and others, like Dr. Pittman, think it too narrow. They emphasize that pictorial
representation and writing evolved together. 'There's no question that the token system is a
forerunner of writing', Dr. Pittman said, 'but I have an argument with her evidence for a link
between tokens and signs, and she doesn't open up the process to include picture making.
I. Dr. Schmandt-Besserat vigorously defended her ideas. 'My colleagues say that pictures
were the beginning of writing' she said, 'but show me a single picture that becomes a sign in
writing. They say that designs on pottery were the beginning of writing, but show me a single sign
of writing you can trace back to a pot - it doesn't exist'. In its first 500 years, she asserted,
cuneiform writing was used almost solely for recording economic information, and after that its
uses multiplied and broadened.

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 J. Yet other scholars have advanced different ideas. Dr. Piotr Michalowski, Professor
of Near East Civilizations at the University of Michigan, said that the proto- writing of
Sumerian Uruk was 'so radically different as to be a complete break with the past'. It no doubt
served, he said, to store and communicate information, but also became a new instrument of power.
Some scholars noted that the origins of writing may not always have been in economics. In Egypt,
most early writing is high on monuments or deep in tombs. In this case, said Dr. Pascal Vernus
from a university in Paris, early writing was less administrative than sacred. It seems that the
only certainty in this field is that many questions remain to be answered.

Questions 27-30

Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D

27 The researchers at the symposium regarded the story of the King of Uruk as

ridiculous because

A writing probably developed independently of speech.

B clay tablets had not been invented at that time.

C the distant ruler would have spoken another language.

D evidence of writing has been discovered from an earlier period.

28 According to the writer, the story of the King of Uruk

A is a probable explanation of the origins of writing.

B proves that early writing had a different function to writing today.

C provides an example of symbolic writing.

D shows some awareness amongst Sumerians of the purpose of writing

29 There was disagreement among the researchers at the symposium about A the
area where writing began.

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 B the nature of early writing materials.
C the way writing began
D the meaning of certain abstrac t images.

30 The opponents of t he theory that writing developed from tokens believe that it
A grew out of accountancy.
B evolved from pictures.
C was initially intended as decoration.

D was unlikely to have been connected with commerce.

Questions 31-36

Look at the following statements (Questions 31-36) and the list of people below. Match each statement with

the correct perso n, A-E.

Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 31-36 on your answer sheet. NB You

may use any letter more than once.

List of people

Dr. Holly Pittman

Dr. Peter Damerow
Dr. Denise Schmandt-Besserat
Dr. Piotr Michalowski
Dr. Pascal Vernus

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31 There is no proof that early writing is connected to decorated household objects

32 As writing developed, it came to represent speech.

33 Sumerian writing developed into a means of political control.

34 Early writing did not represent the grammatical features of speech.

35 There is no convincing proof that tokens and signs are connected.

36 The uses of cuneiform writing were narrow at first, and later widened.

Questions 37- 40

Complete the summary wing the list of words, A-N, below.

Write the correct letter, A-N, in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet

The earliest form of writing

Most archaeological evidence shows that the people of 37 ..............................invented

writing in around 3,300 BC. Their script was written on 38............ and was called

39 ............... Their script originally showed images related to political power and business,

and later developed to become more 40...............

A cuneiform B pictorial C tomb walls

Durban E legible F stone blocks

G simple H Mesopotamia I abstract

J papyrus sheets K decorative L clay tablets Uruk

M Egypt

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Key

Passage 2: Twin Study: Passage 3: The origin of

Two of a kind ancient writing

14. J 27 A

15.D 28D

16.E 29 C

17.B 30 B

18.E 31 C

19. Francis Gaitan 32 B

20.1924 33 D

21.A 34 B

22.E 35 A

23. F 36 C

24.A 37 H

25.B 38 L

26.D 39 A

40 I

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