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2016 — Review

Research Students

Section I Vocabulary

1. Although Paul and his brother did not show ( ) hostility towards each other, their friends could tell they were on bad terms.

2. After finishing the splendid dinner, we spent the ( ) of the evening talking to each other.

3. Some local people were ( ) by the harmful chemicals which were released into the river.

4. When we got on the train, all the seats were ( ), so we had to stand until we reached the next station.

5. Their daughters are truly interested in one of the rare species that ( ) those islands.

6. If Alice had known Doug's flight was going to be ( ) so long, she would have come to the airport much later.

7. A suspicious-looking man had been seen in the ( ) of the bank shortly before it was robbed yesterday.

8. The famous nonfiction writer also wrote several novels under a ( ), but only her family and her editor knew it.

9. Her colleagues believe that if the sales division ( ) market research on it more thoroughly, the new product will sell much better than the previous one.

10. Some critics say the 1990s saw what could be ( ) a computer revolution. By the mid 1990s the number of people buying personal computers increased significantly.

Section II Grammar

1. A ( ) number of people are involved in this project.

2. It was so unfortunate that we missed the last train ( ) a few seconds.

3. I was driving on the beach this morning, so my car needs ( ).

4. ( ) having taught English in high school for 18 years, she returned to graduate school to develop her teaching skills.

5. If I have a few days off next week, I want to visit ( ) my father was born.

6. His marketing team works ( ) any other team in the company.

7. He didn't manage to pass the exam, ( ) the fact that he worked very hard all semester.

8. If we had started studying Spanish three years ago, we ( ) much more fluent in it now.

9. These old photos ( ) me of the happy days we spent there.

10. The main issue we will discuss today is ( ) of urban poverty.

Section III Error Detection

1. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

[A]A new research paper argues that the desire for personal happiness, though very important in American history and culture, is valued less by other cultures. [B]There are many parts of the world that are more suspicious of personal happiness, [C]which are defined in the paper as experiencing pleasure, positive emotion, or success. [D]Now empirical research is catching up with these cultural beliefs.

2. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

[A]"Feeling really lucky," Donald Johanson wrote in his diary on the morning of November 24, 1974, while staying at a remote camp in northern Ethiopia's Afar region. [B]Hours later he discovered the 3.2-million-year-old remains of a small-bodied early human, possibly on the lineage that gave rise to Homo sapiens. [C]He and his collaborators named it Australopithecus afarensis, and [D]the skeleton become known to the world as Lucy.

3. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

[A]Many people believe that innovation happens when a solo genius has "aha" moment, but that is usually not the way. In fact, [B]most innovations happen through collaboration, with many false starts and mistakes along the way. Often, [C]innovations result from combinations of many ideas, [D]even old ideas being combined in new ways or being applied to new circumstances, notes Linda A. Hill of Harvard Business School.

4. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

While [A]there is no denying that exceptional players can put points on the board and enhance team success, [B]new research by Roderick Swaab and his colleagues suggest that there is a limit to the benefit that top talents bring to a team. [C]Swaab and his colleagues compared the amount of individual talent on teams with the teams' success, and [D]they found striking examples of more talent hurting the team.

5. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

A librarian has discovered a rare copy of William Shakespeare's First Folio in France. [A]The 400-year-old book, one of the most valuable in the English language, was found by the librarian in Saint-Omer [B]while preparing books for an exhibition about links between the region and England. [C]An expert has been confirmed that it is a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio, [D]a find that delighted historians and librarians.

6. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

The world's thinnest, strongest material — graphene — was identified a decade ago, but [A]the single-atom-thick sheet of carbon is still turns up surprises. Thought to be an impermeable barrier, [B]research reported this week shows that graphene in fact allows protons to pass through it, [C]which opens up the possibility of its use as a membrane in fuel cells. Meanwhile, [D]a separate report reveals that graphene outperforms steel in its ability to withstand projectiles.

7. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

[A]The world of haute couture fashion has descended on Australia's state museums. [B]Across the country, fashion lovers are being treated to fabulous exhibitions. At the National Gallery of Victoria, viewers can experience The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier. The Queensland Art Gallery is currently showing Thirty Years of Japanese Fashion and the Art Gallery of South Australia is hosting Masterpieces from Paris. [C]As fashion takes hold of the country's major museums, a question is being raised: [D]Should fashion be classified to art?

8. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

[A]A new species of ant has been discovered on the Spanish island of Mallorca, [B]but it is already on the verge of extinction. [C]Lasius balearicus is the first ant known to be restricted to a specific island in the Mediterranean. However, [D]there are not many of them, they are confined to a small area, and it is low genetic diversity. As a result, their discoverer Gerard Talavera of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona, Spain, thinks the species has a "low probability" for survival.

9. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

[A]The finale of Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony came from a "lightning bolt" of inspiration while attending the funeral of a colleague — [B]such inspired was Mahler that he rushed straight home [C]and wrote down the final movement of his symphony that had so far eluded him. [D]Nice story, but not true, says Chris Walton, author of a new book called: Lies and Epiphanies: Composers and Their Inspiration from Wagner to Berg.

10. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

[A]More than 50 green sea turtles were released onto the Gulf of Mexico off the Texas coast on Friday [B]after recovering from cold-stunning, or hypothermia, brought on by a drastic drop in water temperature. [C]As with other reptiles, sea turtles rely on their external environment to regulate body temperature. [D]Cold-stunning occurs in sea turtles when water temperatures drop below 10 degrees Celsius. Symptoms include decreased heart rate and inactivity, which increases the risks for sea turtles of injury or death by predators and boats.

Section IV Cloze

In 6,000 B.C.E., Earth's entire human population stood between 5 and 20 million people. It took about 8,000 years to reach the one billion mark, yet just 100 years more to reach two billion in 1930. Eighty-five years later, that figure has more than tripled, to about 7.3 billion people today. This massive expansion has been fueled not by an increasing birth rate, but by a gradual extension of life expectancy and a huge reduction in infant mortality. By 2025, the United Nations projects that our global population could exceed 8.3 billion. Ninety percent of this growth will be concentrated in the poorest countries. The most dramatic increases will take place in sub-Saharan Africa, where fertility rates have remained high. Population shifts are often driven by economic forces. In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, Europe's conquest of the sea spurred trade, exploration and settlements across the globe. The temperate zones of the Americas were especially well-suited to their crops and livestock. Between the 16th and mid-19th centuries, millions of black Africans were brought to the Americas against their will by the Atlantic slave trade, victims of the New World's voracious need for labor. In the industrialized nations of Europe, Japan, Canada and the United States, the trend is towards zero population growth. Birth rates have also fallen in India and China, yet 17 percent of the world's people live in India, and 19 percent live in China. In some countries, aggressive educational programs are helping to change old-fashioned beliefs, which held childbirth as a woman's duty, and viewed large families as proof of wealth, fortification against hardship and security for aging parents. Not all of the factors which could limit population growth are so well planned. In the end, the environmental pressures created by the rapidly expanding population may deplete the very resources necessary for survival.

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Section V_1 Reading I

I hate to be a cynic, but I suppose it was inevitable: With consumers today increasingly willing to pay a premium for local and/or organic food, it was only a matter of time before the scam artists of the world exploited shoppers' good intentions. Just in the last couple of weeks, two separate investigations uncovered cases of organic food fraud, or at least misrepresentation. A Los Angeles television network exposed farmers' market vendors, who were lying about where and how their food was grown. Reporters bought produce at farmers' markets across Southern California, and then made surprise visits to farms where the items were supposedly grown. Most were truthful, but a few weren't: the reporters found weeds or dirt where vegetables were supposed to be growing. In one case, a vendor admitted — after the reporters followed his truck to the wholesale warehouses in downtown Los Angeles — that he sold some items he had bought wholesale as his own, including avocados from Mexico. The investigation also found produce advertised as pesticide-free that tested positive for pesticides. This sort of dishonesty isn't confined to big cities like Los Angeles. Even in my rural area, which has some good farm stands and farmers' markets, there are people who set up tables by the roadside and sell produce that couldn't possibly have been grown locally. (Plump, red tomatoes in June? Not around here.) As far as I know, they don't claim that they are selling locally grown produce. But they are taking advantage of the assumption of most people — especially tourists — that vegetables sold by the side of the road in a rural area are grown by a local farmer. The other investigation was conducted by an independent research institute that says it promotes "economic justice for family-scale farming." The group rated organic egg producers according to their animal welfare and environmental practices, and found that some looked more like factory farms, at least by the research institute's standards. In this case, part of the problem lies in the varied interpretations of "organic." As the report explains: "All organic egg producers claim to be following national organic standards, but with different working definitions and viewpoints of what the standards mean. For most consumers and many producers, organic farming means respecting underlying principles of the organic farming movement.... For others, especially industrial-scale producers, 'organic' appears to be nothing more than a profitable marketing term that they apply to the agro-industrial production system — simply substituting organic feed in their production model and eliminating harmful synthetic inputs, such as pesticides and antibiotics." The latter interpretation, even if it doesn't match consumers' expectations, doesn't necessarily equate to fraud. But in several cases, the independent research group found, farms were clearly misrepresenting their operations in their marketing.

1. What does "to pay a premium" mean in the passage?

2. What can be inferred about food production from this passage?

3. Based on the information provided in the passage, which of the following statements is true?

4. Based on the information provided in the passage, which of the following statements is NOT true?

5. Which of the following statements best describes the author's point of view?

Section V_2 Reading II

In these days of go-anywhere adventure travel, it is possible to fly to the South Pole or crunch your way to the North Pole in an icebreaker. Our ambition, more polar bear than polar cap, took us 71 degrees north to a remote land that lies astride the 180-degree meridian in the Chukchi Sea off the northeast coast of Siberia. Wrangel Island is one of the new destinations made possible by the rapid melt of the polar icecap. Just 10 years ago, our voyage to this island would not have been possible. In 2001, the mean summer, ice-free period was 92 days; by 2010 this had increased to 135 days; by the time we arrived there at the end of August, 2011, Wrangel was completely ice free. Some scientists project that if the melt continues at the same rate as in the past 10 years, polar bears could be extinct in this region by the mid-21st century. Put another way, if you want to experience these creatures in their natural habitat, you should go sooner rather than later. So this summer we set off on the long flight east via Moscow to Anadyr. We stepped off the plane into the relief of fresh air, bright sunlight and a warm day. After a walk round the town, 50 passengers and staff transferred to the ship, the Spirit of Enderby, in several inflatable boats. Our wildlife encounters started immediately: in the strong currents of the estuary we could see the bobbing heads of spotted seals, and the flashing white bodies of beluga whales. For the next five days, as the Spirit of Enderby progressed towards Wrangel, we settled into a happy routine of morning and afternoon boat rides, shore landings and tundra walks, only twice prohibited by rough seas and wind conditions. Passing through the Bering Strait, the 80km wide channel between eastern Russia and Alaska, we continued on to anchor at Uelen, a native Chukchi village. The Chukchi are a tough people who resisted colonization by the Russians for more than 50 years and whose antecedents were among those who crossed to populate the Americas, when the two continents were joined by an ice bridge. We enjoyed seeing exquisite walrus tusk carvings, which illustrate their way of life, and examples of clothing made from skins and fur. We were entertained by a group performing traditional dances and were made very welcome. We learned how they still hunt a subsistence quota of whales and walruses in small boats and how the inland Chukchi herd reindeer. As we waved to them on our way back to the ship, a grey whale broke the surface nearby and gave us a great tail fluke display. We sailed through the night to anchor off Kolyuchin Island and awoke to the promising augurs of calm seas and patchy blue skies. The bridge announced dramatically that there were polar bears in sight on land off the port side. We clambered quickly to the top deck and watched for the next hour as a bear entertained us by ambling along the brow of a distant hill, going into a derelict wooden building and reappearing to sit on the porch before strolling off into the distance.

1. In 2001, it was not possible for tourists to visit Wrangel Island ______

2. According to some scientists, if the polar icecap keeps melting at the same pace as in the past 10 years ______

3. Soon after the ship set off from Anadyr, ______

4. The Chukchi took a stand against colonization by the Russians for a long time and ______

5. While the ship was off Kolyuchin Island, passengers ______