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2017 — Review

Research Students

Section I Vocabulary

1. They were given the task of protecting the man for the ( ) of the trial.

2. No one is ( ) to enter the premises while renovations are under way.

3. It would have been ( ) impossible to make sure all the information was correct.

4. That was ( ) the most spectacular success story in the country.

5. Those patients shouldn't be expected to understand medical ( ) or complex terminology.

6. He was told that the board of directors had decided to ( ) the meeting until early next month.

7. New buildings should ( ) the existing environment while utilizing the latest science and materials.

8. Most of Mars' surface was shaped later by meteorite impacts, volcanic eruptions, and ( ) by dust and wind.

9. Those terror attacks have led to ( ) levels of security in airports in many countries all over the world.

10. The researchers found that the system was in ( ) danger of collapse.

Section II Grammar

1. Sorry, but I feel a little sick. Would you mind ( ) on the sofa?

2. Because the project is far behind schedule, I think your boss will demand that you ( ) it immediately.

3. If you're not involved in your local community group, there isn't ( ) you can do for your town.

4. I haven't been able to find my cell phone for four days, so I decided I'm going to buy ( ) today.

5. The philosopher's main interest is how ( ) relates to the world.

6. To sum up, the point of his argument is that morality is ( ) than a set of cultural conventions.

7. This picture, ( ) I paid ten thousand dollars, was painted by a famous artist who was born in my hometown.

8. If you visit the temple, you can see many monks in meditation ( ).

9. It took a long time, but it seems now she ( ) to new situations.

10. This shampoo includes many special ingredients which ( ).

Section III Error Detection

1. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

[A]Many birds travel in flocks, but the question of how they choose the leader has long puzzled scientists. [B]Now a team of researchers from Oxford University thought they have the answer. [C]"Some birds are naturally faster and consistently get to the front, where they end up doing more of the navigation, [D]which means on future flights they know the way better," said study co-author Associate Professor Dora Biro.

2. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

[A]In the mid-1980s, James Flynn made a groundbreaking discovery on human intelligence. [B]The political scientist at the University of Otago in New Zealand found that over the last century, [C]in every nation in the developing world where intelligence-test results are on record, [D]IQ test scores had significantly risen from one generation to the next.

3. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

[A]Analysis of the neck bones of an extinct member of the giraffe family reveals how today's giraffe got its exceptionally long neck. [B]In a recent study, scientists describe the neck of a "transitional" or "intermediate" species [C]that existed seven millions of years ago. [D]The findings are based on analysis of fossil vertebrae of Samotherium major, a giraffid that roamed parts of Eurasia, including Greece, South Italy, Turkey, Moldavia, Iran, and China.

4. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

[A]Even if we all ate the same meal, everyone would metabolize it different, [B]according to a new study that suggests that there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all dietary advice. Rather, [C]diets should be tailored to an individual's gut microbiome, or combination of gut bacteria. [D]"If my response and your response to the same food are opposite, then by definition a similar diet cannot be effective for both of us," said co-author Dr. Elan Elinav.

5. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

[A]Astronomers have witnessed for the first time a star the size of our sun being completely ripped apart and destroyed by a supermassive black hole. [B]The scientists watched the process unfold as the star was grabbed and ripped to pieces. [C]Stellar remnants not swallowed up by the black hole were shot out into space [D]at close to speed of the light by powerful magnetic fields forming plasma jets.

6. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

[A]Headlines can paint a pretty grim picture of life across our planet. [B]On bad days, they can make any of us want to seek shelter in home. [C]But in fact, doing the opposite can produce surprisingly curative results. Spin the globe. Pack a bag. Break bread with strangers. Soak in radical beauty. [D]In short – travel.

7. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

[A]Travelers often visit India to see its many temples and palaces, [B]but a new trip provides the chance to explore the country's lesser-known music and dance heritage, spanning several thousand years. [C]The sixteen-day India Dance and Music Tour concentrates in northern India. [D]Highlights include visiting workshops that produce and sell Indian musical instruments, attending a recital during a sunrise boat cruise, and touring one of the most famous schools of Hindustani classical music.

8. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

[A]How many miles a week should I run to improve my health? [B]Surprisingly few, it seems. [C]According to a new review of related studies to running and health, [D]jogging for as few as five or six miles per week could substantially improve someone's health.

9. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

[A]Imagine that: [B]With a simple flash of light or heat, an unassuming piece of paper folds itself into a crane [C]and, as the light or heat pulses, it flaps its paper wings in flight. [D]Though the concept is still in its early days, scientists are closer to making this a reality with the recent unveiling of a graphene-based self-folding paper.

10. Identify the grammatically incorrect part:

[A]In the United States, driverless cars are already taking to the street on an experimental basis. [B]Manufacturers promise that these marvels of technology will change our world. [C]The cars will communicate with one another, allowing them to move fluidly through the streetscape while reducing traffic congestion, time spent prowling for parking, and pollution. [D]With sharper senses and faster reaction times than people, autonomous vehicles could theoretically make car-on-car collision a thing of the past.

Section IV Cloze

The word "cool" has been cool for a long time. Originally associated with temperature, by the 16th century the term had evolved to describe not just the atmosphere, but also an internal state of calm, almost icy composure. And by the late 1800s it began to signify style and hipness and some of the other meanings with which it is associated today. Now, cool is used as a synonym for almost anything good. Music can be cool and restaurants can be cool. Every so often even a minivan seems cool. But not all words and phrases persist. In the 1940s, dress snappy and someone might say you looked "spiffy." In the 1950s, people might say you looked "swell." These days, teenagers might say you're "on fleek." What was once "awesome" is now "dope." Tell someone today that they look spiffy and people will think that you are caught in a time warp. Language is constantly evolving. Certain words and phrases catch on and become popular while others die out and wither away. So what leads some phrases to become more successful than others? Why do some stand the test of time while others die out? There is no record of every time someone utters a certain word or phrase, so to study these questions, a colleague of mine and I turned to the next best thing: books. For hundreds of years, of course, books have documented the words and phrases used to express different ideas. This includes everything from Shakespeare's sonnets to Jane Austen's description of the landed gentry, and many thousands of works by unknown authors in between. Books provide a written record of culture, a constantly evolving collection of snapshots of what things were like across time and space. Using a searchable database of more than five million books from the last 200 years, we were able to track the popularity of thousands of words and phrases over time. Interestingly, we discovered that our senses (e.g., sight, smell and touch) have a big impact on linguistic success. There are multiple ways to convey the same thing, and phrases with similar meanings often act as substitutes, competing for usage. A not-so-friendly person, for example, can be described as unfriendly or cold. An intelligent student can be described as smart or bright. For each of these pairs, one of the phrases relates to the senses (i.e., cold person or bright student) while its semantic analogue (unfriendly person or smart student) does not. While this might seem like a minor difference, it actually has a big impact on linguistic success. Compared with their semantic equivalents (e.g., unfriendly person or smart student), we found that phrases that relate to senses in metaphoric ways (e.g., cold person or bright student) became more popular over time.

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Section V_1 Reading I

According to the UN, developed countries throw away around 30% to 40% of all food purchased. And if food waste was cut by a quarter, world famine could be solved. In the UK, of the 41 million tons of food that is bought each year, 15 million tons are wasted. You might think supermarkets are the biggest culprits, but the truth is that most have made major strides in recent years. One UK waste-advisory charity's best estimate is that supermarket waste accounts for less than 2% of what gets chucked out each year. Part of that is attributable to advances in supply-chain technology. As you might guess, fresh food and short shelf-life products account for a lot of what gets thrown away. But these days good demand-forecasting and inventory-planning software can handle even the trickiest items. Supermarkets have an interest in avoiding waste because margins on fresh produce tend to be quite tight. If you make 25 pence for every £1 ($1.50) of broccoli sold you have to sell three pieces to make up for the loss from one gone bad. So if you have noticed fewer items with reduced stickers, it is because they are getting a grip on the problem. What waste remains is at least partly driven by consumers expecting fresh food items to be constantly available and stacked in attractive displays — both factors pushing food retailers to order more than they can sell. The biggest contributor to Britain's food-waste shame is household rubbish, which in the UK accounts for almost half the food thrown away. Many of us make bad decisions about food, especially when we are hungry, over-ordering in restaurants and over-buying in shops. The most primitive parts of our brains, faced with feast, react as though famine were just around the corner. And yet the game seems to be stacked against consumers. Supermarkets may strive to eliminate spoilage while food is in their supply chain, but once you have paid for something it is not their problem. They would argue, not unfairly, that they have tried to ensure the food you buy is as fresh as possible to give you the best possible chance to consume it before it goes bad. Back in 2010, one British supermarket giant even briefly experimented with a "buy one, get one free later" scheme to help reduce waste. But for the most part, food retail is structured and incentivised to get us to buy as much as possible, regardless of whether we actually need it. In the developing world, anywhere from 6% to 15% of food gets thrown out despite poorer infrastructure, less reliable logistics, hotter climates, and inferior refrigeration. Indeed, weight for weight, in places such as sub-Saharan Africa and south and southeast Asia, people waste only around a tenth of what the British do. The overwhelming differentiator seems to be the value that we attach to food. Having a full fridge to cater to our every whim and those of our families seems more important than not having a full rubbish bin.

1. Although some people might think supermarkets are largely responsible for the great amount of food waste in the UK, most of them ______

2. Food retailers in the UK tend to order more than they can sell because some consumers ______

3. In the UK, household rubbish accounts for almost half of the food waste, as many people ______

4. Supermarkets in the UK ______

5. According to the passage, the author thinks ______

Section V_2 Reading II

Philosophers, psychologists, and scientists have been puzzling over the essential definition of human uniqueness since the beginning of recorded history. The Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert says that every psychologist must, at some point in his or her career, write a version of what he calls "The Sentence." Specifically, The Sentence reads like this: The human being is the only animal that ______. The story of humans' sense of self is, you might say, the story of failed, debunked versions of The Sentence. Except now it's not just the animals that we're worried about. We once thought humans were unique for using language, but this seems less certain each year; we once thought humans were unique for using tools, but this claim also erodes with ongoing animal-behavior research; we once thought humans were unique for being able to do mathematics, and now we can barely imagine being able to do what our calculators can. We might ask ourselves: Is it appropriate to allow our definition of our own uniqueness to be, in some sense, reactive to the advancing front of technology? And why is it that we are so compelled to feel unique in the first place? "Sometimes it seems," says Douglas Hofstadter, a Pulitzer Prize–winning cognitive scientist, "as though each new step towards artificial intelligence, rather than producing something which everyone agrees is real intelligence, merely reveals what real intelligence is not." While at first this seems a consoling position — one that keeps our unique claim to thought intact — it does bear the uncomfortable appearance of a gradual retreat, like a medieval army withdrawing from the castle to the keep. But the retreat can't continue indefinitely. Consider: if everything that we thought hinged on thinking turns out to not involve it, then … what is thinking? It would seem to reduce to either an epiphenomenon — a kind of "exhaust" thrown off by the brain — or, worse, an illusion. Where is the keep of our selfhood? The story of the 21st century will be, in part, the story of the drawing and redrawing of these battle lines, the story of human beings trying to stake a claim on shifting ground, flanked by beast and machine, pinned between meat and math. Is this retreat a good thing or a bad thing? For instance, does the fact that computers are so good at mathematics in some sense take away an arena of human activity, or does it free us from having to do a nonhuman activity, liberating us into a more human life? The latter view seems to be more appealing, but less so when we begin to imagine a point in the future when the number of "human activities" left for us to be "liberated" into has grown uncomfortably small. What then?

1. What is the purpose of "The Sentence"?

2. Which of the following is NOT mentioned as a way in which humans used to be viewed as unique?

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

4. What does "the keep of our selfhood" mean in the passage?

5. Which of the following best reflects the author's message?