Choose THREE letters, A-EThe invention of different gears on a bicycle affected which THREE of the following?A Wheel sizeB BalanceC Rate of speedD The back wheelE SafetyF Downhill travel
Choose the correct letter, A, B or C.
Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F.Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.Write the correct number, i-viii, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.List of Headingsi Unsuccessful deceitii Biological basis between liars and artistsiii How to lie in an artistic wayiv Confabulations and the exemplifiersv The distinction between artists and common liarsvi The fine line between liars and artistsvii The definition of confabulationviii Creativity when people lie Are Artists Liars?A Shortly before his death, Marlon Brando was working on a series of instructional videos about acting, to be called "Lying for a Living". On the surviving footage, Brando can be seen dispensing gnomic advice on his craft to a group of enthusiastic, if somewhat bemused, Hollywood stars, including Leonardo Di Caprio and Sean Penn. Brando also recruited random people from the Los Angeles street and persuaded them to improvise (the footage is said to include a memorable scene featuring two dwarves and a giant Samoan). "If you can lie, you can act," Brando told Jod Kaftan, a writer for Rolling Stone and one of the few people to have viewed the footage. "Are you good at lying?" asked Kaftan. "Jesus," said Brando, "I'm fabulous at it"B Brando was not the first person to note that the line between an artist and a liar is a fine one. If art is a kind of lying, then lying is a form of art, albeit of a lower order—as Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain have observed. Indeed, lying and artistic storytelling spring from a common neurological root—one that is exposed in the cases of psychiatric patients who suffer from a particular kind of impairment. Both liars and artists refuse to accept the tyranny of reality. Both carefully craft stories that are worthy of belief—a skill requiring intellectual sophistication, emotional sensitivity and physical self-control (liars are writers and performers of then-own work). Such parallels are hardly coincidental, as I discovered while researching my book on lying.C A case study published in 1985 by Antonio Damasio, a neurologist, tells the story of a middle-aged woman with brain damage caused by a series of strokes. She retained cognitive abilities, including coherent speech, but what she actually said was rather unpredictable. Checking her knowledge of contemporary events, Damasio asked her about the Falklands War. In the language of psychiatry, this woman was "confabulating". Chronic confabulation is a rare type of memory problem that affects a small proportion of braindamaged people. In the literature it is defined as "the production of fabricated, distorted or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention to deceive". Whereas amnesiacs make errors of omission—there are gaps in their recollections they find impossible to fill—confabulators make errors of commission: they make things up. Rather than forgetting, they are inventing. Confabulating patients are nearly always oblivious to their own condition, and will earnestly give absurdly implausible explanations of why they're in hospital, or talking to a doctor. One patient, asked about his surgical scar, explained that during the Second World War he surprised a teenage girl who shot him three times m the head, killing him, only for surgery to bring him back to life. The same patient, when asked about his family, described how at various times they had died in his arms, or had been killed before his eyes. Others tell yet more fantastical tales, about trips to the moon, fighting alongside Alexander in India or seeing Jesus on the Cross. Confabulators aren't out to deceive. They engage in what Morris Moscovitch, a neuropsychologist, calls "honest lying". Uncertain, and obscurely distressed by their uncertainty, they are seized by a "compulsion to narrate" : a deep-seated need to shape, order and explain what they do not understand. Chronic confabulators are often highly inventive at the verbal level, jamming together words in nonsensical but suggestive ways: one patient, when asked what happened to Queen Marie Antoinette of France, answered that she had been "suicided" by her family. In a sense, these patients are like novelists, as described by Henry James: people on whom "nothing is wasted". Unlike writers, however, they have little or no control over their own material.D The wider significance of this condition is what it tells us about ourselves. Evidently there is a gushing river of verbal creativity in the normal human mind, from which both artistic invention and lying are drawn. We are bom storytellers, spinning narrative out of our experience and imagination, straining against the leash that keeps us tethered to reality. This is a wonderful thing; it is what gives us our ability to conceive of alternative futures and different worlds. And it helps us to understand our own lives through the entertaining stories of others. But it can lead us into trouble, particularly when we try to persuade others that our inventions are real. Most of the time, as our stories bubble up to consciousness, we exercise our cerebral censors, controlling which stories we tell, and to whom. Yet people lie for all sorts of reasons, including the fact that confabulating can be dangerously fun.E During a now-famous libel case in 1996, Jonathan Aitken, a former cabinet minister, recounted a tale to illustrate the horrors he endured after a national newspaper tainted his name. The case, which stretched on for more than two years, involved a scries of claims made by the Guardian about Aitken's relationships with Saudi arms dealers, including meetings he allegedly held with them on a trip to Paris while he was a government minister. What amazed many in hindsight was the sheer superfluity of the lies Aitken told during his testimony. Aitken's case collapsed in June 1997, when the defence finally found indisputable evidence about his Paris trip. Until then, Aitken's charm, fluency and flair for theatrical displays of sincerity looked as if they might bring him victory. They revealed that not only was Aitken's daughter not with him that day (when he was indeed doorstepped), but also that the minister had simply got into his car and drove off, with no vehicle in pursuit.F Of course, unlike Aitken, actors, playwrights and novelists arc not literally attempting to deceive us, because the rules are laid out in advance: come to the theatre, or open this book, and we'll lie to you. Perhaps this is why we felt it necessary to invent art in the first place: as a safe space into which our lies can be corralled, and channeled into something socially useful. Given the universal compulsion to tell stories, art is the best way to refine and enjoy the particularly outlandish or insightful ones. But that is not the whole story. The key way in which artistic "lies" differ from normal lies, and from the "honest lying" of chronic confabulators, is that they have a meaning and resonance beyond their creator. The liar lies on behalf of himself; the artist tell lies on behalf of everyone. If writers have a compulsion to narrate, they compel themselves to find insights about the human condition. Mario Vargas Llosa has written that novels "express a curious truth that can only be expressed in a furtive and veiled fashion, masquerading as what it is not. " Art is a lie whose secret ingredient is truth.
Complete the notes below.Write ONE WORD ONLY for each answer.Notes on Customer's InformationExample AnswerInformation Source: found in the brochureIncluded Services: 【L1】______ and accommodationSydney Arrival Date: 15th of 【L2】______Accommodation Criteria: 【L3】______
Some people think healthcare should be free for everyone, while others think people should pay for their healthcare. Discuss both views and give your own opinion. (2016-03-19)
Using a computer every day can have more negative than positive effects on young children. Do you agree or disagree?
Complete the sentences below.Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.
Some people think that parents should teach children how to be good members of society. Others, however, believe that school is the place to learn this. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.
Choose the correct letter, A, BorC.GENERAL COURSE DETAILS
Look at the following opinions or deeds (Questions 9-13) and the list of people below.Match each opinion or deed with the correct person, A-F.Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.A A. M. BarnardB Philip SmithC George Claridge DruceD Joan ThirskE Professor HackelF Nathaniel Fiennes
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 20-23 on you answer sheet, writeTRUE if the statement agrees with the informationFALSE if the statement contradicts with the informationNOT GIVEN if there is no information on this.
Some people claim that public museums and art galleries will not be needed because people can see historical objects and works by using a computer. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Youshouldspendabout20minutesonthistask.ThetablebelowgivesinformationaboutstudentenrolmentsatBristolUniversityin1928,1958and2008.Summarisetheinformationbyselectingandreportingthemainfeatures,andmakecomparisonswhererelevant.Writeatleast150words.
Reading story books is better for children than watching television or playing computer games. To what extent do you agree or disagree? (2015-12-12)
In recent years, many countries focus on reducing the traffic on the road, for example, introducing the congestion tax on vehicles during rush hours. Do you think it is a positive or negative development? (2016-01-30)
Some people say it is more important to plant trees in open spaces in towns and cities than build more housing. To what extent do you agree or disagree? (2015-03-12)
{{B}}Reading Module (60 minutes){{/B}}
Youshouldspendabout20minutesonthistask.Themapsbelowshowthesiteofaschoolin2013andtheplannedonein2016.Summarisetheinformationbyselectingandreportingthemainfeatures,andmakecomparisonswhererelevant.Writeatleast150words.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.A Americans today choose among more options in more parts of life than has ever been possible before. To an extent, the opportunity to choose enhances our lives. It is only logical to think that if some choices are good, more is better; people who care about having infinite options will benefit from them, and those who do not can always just ignore the 273 versions of cereal they have never tried. Yet recent research strongly suggests that, psychologically, this assumption is wrong, with 5% lower percentage announcing they are happy. Although some choices are undoubtedly better than none, more is not always better than less.B Recent research offers insight into why many people end up unhappy rather than pleased when their options expand. We began by making a distinction between "maximisers" (those who always aim to make the best possible choice) and "satisficers" (those who aim for "good enough," whether or not better selections might be out there).C In particular, we composed a set of statements—the Maximisation Scale—to diagnose people's propensity to maximise. Then we had several thousand people rate themselves from 1 to 7 (from "completely disagree" to "completely agree") on such statements as "I never settle for second best." We also evaluated their sense of satisfaction with their decisions. We did not define a sharp cutoff to separate maximisers from satisficers, but in general, we think of individuals whose average scores are higher than 4 (the scale's midpoint) as maximisers and those whose scores are lower than the midpoint as satisficers. People who score highest on the test—the greatest maximisers—engage in more product comparisons than the lowest scorers, both before and after they make purchasing decisions, and they take longer to decide what to buy. When satisficers find an item that meets their standards, they stop looking. But maximisers exert enormous effort reading labels, checking out consumer magazines and trying new products. They also spend more time comparing their purchasing decisions with those of others.D We found that the greatest maximisers are the least happy with the fruits of their efforts. When they compare themselves with others, they get little pleasure from finding out that they did better and substantial dissatisfaction from finding out that they did worse. They are more prone to experiencing regret after a purchase, and if their acquisition disappoints them, their sense of well-being takes longer to recover. They also tend to brood or ruminate more than satisficers do.E Does it follow that maximisers are less happy in general than satisficers? We tested this by having people fill out a variety of questionnaires known to be reliable indicators of well-being. As might be expected, individuals with high maximisation scores experienced less satisfaction with life and were less happy, less optimistic and more depressed than people with low maximisation scores. Indeed, those with extreme maximisation ratings had depression scores that placed them in the borderline of clinical range.F Several factors explain why more choice is not always better than less, especially for maximisers. High among these are "opportunity costs." The quality of any given option cannot be assessed in isolation from its alternatives. One of the "costs" of making a selection is losing the opportunities that a different option would have afforded. Thus an opportunity cost of vacationing on the beach in Cape Cod might be missing the fabulous restaurants in the Napa Valley. Early Decision Making Research by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed that people respond much more strongly to losses than gains. If we assume that opportunity costs reduce the overall desirability of the most preferred choice, then the more alternatives there are, the deeper our sense of loss will be and the less satisfaction we will derive from our ultimate decision.G The problem of opportunity costs will be better for a satisficer. The latter's "good enough" philosophy can survive thoughts about opportunity costs. In addition, the "good enough" standard leads to much less searching and inspection of alternatives than the maximiser's "best" standard. With fewer choices under consideration, a person will have fewer opportunity costs to subtract.H Just as people feel sorrow about the opportunities they have forgone, they may also suffer regret about the option they settled on. My colleagues and I devised a scale to measure proneness to feeling regret, and we found that people with high sensitivity to regret are less happy, less satisfied with life, less optimistic and more depressed than those with low sensitivity. Not surprisingly, we also found that people with high regret sensitivity tend to be maximisers. Indeed, we think that worry over future regret is a major reason that individuals become maximisers. The only way to be sure you will not regret a decision is by making the best possible one. Unfortunately, the more options you have and the more opportunity costs you incur, the more likely you are to experience regret.I In a classic demonstration of the power of sunk costs, people were offered season subscriptions to a local theatre company. Some were offered the tickets at full price and others at a discount. Then the researchers simply kept track of how often the ticket purchasers actually attended the plays over the course of the season. Full-price payers were more likely to show up at performances than discount payers. The reason for this, the investigators argued, was that the full-price payers would experience more regret if they did not use the tickets because not using the more costly tickets would constitute a bigger loss. To increase sense of happiness, we can decide to restrict our options when the decision is not crucial. For example, make a rule to visit no more than two stores when shopping for clothing.Questions 1-4Look at the following descriptions or deeds (Questions 1-4) and the list of catego ries below.Match each description or deed with the correct category, A-D.Write the correct letter, A-D, in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.A "maximisers"B "satisficers"C neither "maximisers" nor "satisficers"D both "maximisers" and "satisficers"
Look at the following statements (Questions 19-23) and the list of scientists below.Match each statement with the correct scientist, A-E.Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 19-23 on your answer sheet.NB You may use any letter more than once.List of Scientists A Thomas Lehman B Earl Miller C David Meyer D Gloria Mark E Edward Hallowell