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The document discusses the significance of radiocarbon dating, particularly through the work of Nancy Athfield in Cambodia, where she aimed to uncover the true age of ancient remains linked to the Angkor royal family. Despite initial findings that raised more questions than answers, Athfield's research contributed significantly to geological sciences in Cambodia. Additionally, the document explores the relationship between art and lying, suggesting that both involve a creative process and a refusal to accept reality, with artists crafting narratives that resonate beyond mere deception.
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READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.
Radiocarbon Dating - The Profile of Nancy Athfield
Have you ever picked up a small stone off the ground and wondered how old it was?
Chances are, that stone has been around many more years than your own lifetime.
Many scientists share this curiosity about the age of inanimate objects like rocks, fossils
and precious stones. Knowing how old an object is can provide valuable information
about our prehistoric past. In most societies, human beings have kept track of history
through writing. However, scientists are still curious about the world before writing, or
‘even the world before humans. Studying the age of objects is our best way to piece
together histories of our pre-historic past. One such method of finding the age of an
object is called radiocarbon dating. This method can find the age of any object based on
the kind of particles and atoms that are found inside of the object. Depending on what
elements the object is composed of, radiocarbon can be a reliable way to find an
object's age. One famous specialist in this method is the researcher Nancy Athfield
Athfield studied the ancient remains found in the country of Cambodia. Many prehistoric
remains were discovered by the local people of Cambodia. These objects were thought
to belong to some of the original groups of humans that first came to the country of
Cambodia. The remains had never been scientifically studied, so Nancy was greatly
intrigued by the opportunity to use modern methods to discover the true age of these
ancient objects.
Athfield had this unique opportunity because her team, comprised of scientists and
filmmakers, were in Cambodia working on a documentary. The team was trying to
discover evidence to prove a controversial claim in history: that Cambodia was the
resting place for the famous royal family of Angkor. At that time, written records and
historic accounts conflicted on the true resting place. Many people across the world
disagreed over where the final resting place was. For the first time, Athfield and her
team had a chance to use radiocarbon dating to find new evidence. They had a chance
to solve the historic mystery that many had been arguing over for years.
Athfield and her team conducted radiocarbon dating of many of the ancient objects
found in the historic site of Angkor Wat. Nancy found the history of Angkor went back to
as early as 1620. According to historic records, the remains of the Angkor royal family
were much younger than that, so this evidence cast a lot of doubt as to the status of the
ancient remains. The lesearch ultimately raised more questions. If the remains were not
of the royal family, then whose remains were being kept in the ancient site? Athfield's
team left Cambodia with more questions unanswered. Since Athfield’s team studied the
remains, new remains have been unearthed at the ancient site of Angkor Wat, so it is
possible that these new remains could be the true remains of the royal family. Nancy
wished to come back to continue her research one day.In her early years, the career of Athfield was very unconventional. She didn't start her
career as a scientist. At the beginning, she would take any kind of job to pay her bills.
Most of them were low-paying jobs or brief Community service opportunities. She
worked often but didn’t know what path she would ultimately take. But eventually, her
friend suggested that Athfield invest in getting a degree. The friend recommended that
Athfield attend a nearby university. Though doubtful of her own qualifications, she
applied and was eventually accepted by the school. It was there that she met Willard
Libby, the inventor of radiocarbon dating. She took his class and soon had the
opportunity to complete hands-on research. She soon realised that science was her
passion. After graduation, she quickly found a job in a research institution.
After college, Athfield’s career in science blossomed. She eventually married, and her
husband landed a job at the prestigious organisation GNN. Athfield joined her husband
in the same organisation, and she became a lab manager in the institution. She earned
her PhD in scientific research, and completed her studies on a kind of rat when it first
appeared in New Zealand. There, she created original research and found many flaws
in the methods being used in New Zealand laboratories. Her research showed that the
subject's diet led to the fault in the earlier research. She was seen as an expert by her
peers in New Zealand, and her opinion and expertise were widely respected. She had
come a long way from her old days of working odd jobs. It seemed that Athfield’s career
was finally taking off
But Athfield's interest in scientific laboratories wasn't her only interest. She didn't settle
down in New Zealand. Instead, she expanded her areas of expertise. Athfield eventually
joined the field of Anthropology, the study of human societies, and became a well-
qualified archaeologist. It was during her blossoming career as an archaeologist that
Athfield became involved with the famous Cambodia project. Even as the filmmakers
ran out of funding and left Cambodia, Athfield continued to stay and continue her
research.
In 2003, the film was finished in uncertain conclusions, but Nancy continued her
research on the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat. This research was not always easy. Her
research was often delayed by lack of funding, and government paperwork. Despite her
struggles, she committed to finishing her research. Finally, she made a breakthrough.
Using radiocarbon dating, Athfield completed a database for the materials found in
Cambodia. As a newcomer to Cambodia, she lacked a complete knowledge of
Cambodian geology, which made this feat even more difficult. Through steady
determination and ingenuity, Athfield finally completed the database, Though many did
not believe she could finish, her research now remains an influential and tremendous
contribution to geological sciences in Cambodia. In the future, radiocarbon dating
continues to be a valuable research skill. Athfield will be remembered as one of the first
to bring this scientific method to the study of the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat.Questions 1-7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 1-7 on you answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
Naney Athfield first discovered the ancient remains in Cambodia.
The remains found in the Cambodia was in good condition
Naney took some time off from her regular work to do research in Cambodia
The Cambodia government asked Nancy to radiocarbon the remains.
The filmmakers aimed to find out how the Angkor was rebuilt.
Nancy initially doubted whether the royal family was hidden in Cambodia.
Soar on a
Nancy disproved the possibilty that the remains belonged to the Angkor royal family.Questions 8-13
Complete the flow-chart below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.
The Career of Nancy Athfield
During her mid-teens, Nancy wasn't expected to attend 8
4
Willard Billy later helped Nancy to find that she was interested in science.
4
Her PhD degree was researching when a kind of 9 . first went into
New Zealand
4
Her research showed that the subject's 10. accounted for the
fault in the earlier research.
4
She was a professional 11... ... before she went back to Cambodia in
2003.
1
When she returned Cambodia, the lack Of 12.0.0... WAS a barrier for her
research,
t
Then she compiled the 13. of the Cambodia radiocarbon dating of
the ancients.
4
After that, the lack of a detailed map of the geology of Cambodia became a hindrance of
her research.READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading
Passage 2 below.
Are Artists Liars?
A Shortly before his death, Marlon Brando was working on a series of instructional
videos about acting, to he called “Lying for a living’. On the surviving footage, Brando
can he 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
line 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 their own work). Such parallels are hardly coincidental, as
| 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 brain damaged 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 tilings 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 sear, explained that during the
Second World War he surprised a teenage girl who shot him three times in 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 Moseovitch, 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 born 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 out 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 series 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. Whitt 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 are 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 fell 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 insight till 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 resonancebeyond their creator. The liar lies on behalf of himself; the artist tell ies 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 he expressed in a furtive and veiled fashion, masquerading
as what it is not.” Artis a lie whose secret ingredient is truth.Questions 14-19
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 Headings
Unsuccessful deceit
Biological basis between liars and artists
How to lie in an artistic way
Confabulations and the exemplifiers
The distinction between artists and common liars
The fine line between liars and artists
The definition of confabulation
Creativity when people lie
44 Paragraph A
45 Paragraph B
16 Paragraph C
47 Paragraph D
18 Paragraph E
19 Paragraph F
Questions 20-21
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Write the correct letters in boxes 20-21 on your answer sheet.
Which TWO of the following statements about people suffering from confabulation are
true?
A They have lost cognitive abilities.
B They donot deliberately tell a lie
€ They are normally aware of their condition
D They donot have the impetus to explain what they do not understand.
E They try to make up stories.Questions 22-23
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Write the correct letters in boxes 22-23 on your answer sheet.
Which TWO of the following statements about playwrights and novelists are true?
A They give more meaning to the stories
B They tell lies for the benefit of themselves.
© They have nothing to do with the truth out there.
D We can be misled by them if not careful
E We know there are lies in the content.
Questions 24-26
Complete the summary below.
hoose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.
A24. z ++... accused Jonathan Aitken, a former cabinet minister, who was
selling and buying with 25..............:s.:-+-. Aitken’s case collapsed in June 1997,
when the defence finally found indisputable evidence about his Paris trip. He was
deemed to have his 26. They revealed that not only was Aitken’s
daughter not with him that day, but also that the minister had simply got into his car and
drove off, with no vehicle in pursuitREADING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading
Passage 3 below.
What is Meaning
—Why do we respond to words and symbols in the waves we do?
The end, product of education, yours and mine and everybody's, is the total pattern of
reactions and possible reactions we have inside ourselves. If you did not have within
you at this moment the pattern of reactions that we call ‘the ability to read.” you would
see here only meaningless black marks on paper. Because of the trained patterns of
Tesponse, you are (or are not) stirred to patriotism by martial music, your feelings of
reverence are aroused by symbols of your religion, you listen more respectfully to the
health advice of someone who has “MD” after his name than to that of someone who
hasn't. What | call here a ‘pattern of reactions’, then, is the sum total of the ways we act
in response to events, to words, and to symbols.
Our reaction patterns or our semantic habits, are the internal and most important
residue of whatever years of education or miseducation we may have received from our
parents’ conduct toward us in childhood as well as their teachings, from the formal
education we may have had, from all the lectures we have listened to, from the radio
programs and the movies and television shows we have experienced, from all the books
and newspapers and comic strips we have read, from the conversations we have had
with friends and associates, and from all our experiences. If, as the result of all these
influences that make us what we are, our semantic habits are reasonably similar to
those of most people around us, we are regarded as “normal,” or perhaps “dull.” If our
semantic habits are noticeably different from those of others, we are regarded as
“individualistic” or “original.” or, if the differences are disapproved of or viewed with
alarm, as “crazy.”
Semantics is sometimes defined in dictionaries as “the science of the meaning of
words'— which would not be a bad definition if people didn’t assume that the search for
the meanings of words begins and ends with looking them up in a dictionary. If one
stops to think for a moment, it is clear that to define a word, as a dictionary does, is
simply to explain the word with more words. To be thorough about defining, we should
next have to define the words used in the definition, then define the words used in
defining the words used in the definition and so on. Defining words with more words, in
short, gets us at once into what mathematicians call an “infinite regress”. Alternatively, it
can get us into the kind of run-around we sometimes encounter when we look up
“impertinence” and find it defined as “impudence,” so we look up “impudence” and find it
defined as “impertinence.” Yet—and here we come to another common reaction
pattern—people often act as if words can be explained fully with more words. To a
person who asked for a definition of jazz, Louis Armstrong is said to have replied, “Manwhen you got to ask what it is, you'll never get to know,” proving himseff to be an
intuitive semanticist as well as a great trumpet player.
Semantics, then, does not deal with the “meaning of words” as that expression is
commonly understood, P. W. Bridgman, the Nobel Prize winner and physicist, once
wrote, “The true meaning of a term is to be found by observing what a man does with it,
not by what he says about it.” He made an enormous contribution to science by showing
that the meaning of a scientific term lies in the operations, the things done, that
establish its validity, rather than in verbal definitions.
Here is a simple, everyday kind of example of “operational” definition. If you say, “This
table measures six feet in length,” you could prove it by taking a foot rule, performing
the operation of laying it end to end while counting, “One...two...three...four...” But if
you say—and revolutionists have started uprisings with just this statement “Man is born
free, but everywhere he is in chains!"—what operations could you perform to
demonstrate its accuracy or inaccuracy?
But let us carry this suggestion of “operationalism” outside the physical sciences where
Bridgman applied it, and observe what “operations” people perform as the result of both
the language they use and the language other people use in communicating to them.
Here is a personnel manager studying an application blank. He comes to the words
“Education: Harvard University,” and drops the application blank in the wastebasket
(that's the “operation") because, as he would say if you asked him, “I don't like Harvard
men.” This is an instance of ‘meaning’ at work—but it is not a meaning that can be
found in dictionaries.
If | seem to be taking a long time to explain what semantics is about, it is because | am
trying, in the course of explanation, to introduce the reader to a certain way of looking at
human behavior. | say human responses because, so far as we know, human beings
are the only creatures that have, over and above that biological equipment which we
have in common with other creatures, the additional capacity for manufacturing symbols
and systems of symbols. When we react to a flag, we are not reacting simply to a piece
of cloth, but to the meaning with which it has been symbolically endowed. When we
react to a word, we are not reacting to a set of sounds, but to the meaning with which
that set of sounds has been symbolically endowed.
A basic idea in general semantics, therefore, is that the meaning of words (or other
symbols) is not in the words, but in our own semantic reactions. If | were to tell a
shockingly obscene story in Arabic or Hindustani or Swahili before an audience that
understood only English, no one would blush or be angry; the story would be neither
shocking nor obscene-induced, it would not even be a story. Likewise, the value of a
dollar bill is not in the bill, but in our social agreement to accept it as a symbol of value.
If that agreement were to break down through the collapse of our government, the dollar
bill would become only a scrap of paper. We do not understand a dollar bill by staring at
it long and hard. We understand it by observing how people act with respect to it. Weunderstand it by understanding the social mechanisms and the loyalties that keep it
meaningful. Semantics is therefore a social study, basic to all other social studies.Questions 27-31
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.
27 What point is made in the first paragraph?
A The aim of education is to teach people to read
B Everybody has a different pattern of reactions
C Print only carries meaning to those who have received appropriate ways to respond
D The writers should make sure their works satisfy a variety of readers.
28 According to the second paragraph, people are judged by
A the level of education.
B the variety of experience.
C how conventional their responses are.
D complex situations.
29° What point is made in the third paragraph?
A Standard ways are incapable of defining words precisely.
B A dictionary is most scientific in defining words.
C Adictionary should define words in as few words as possible.
D Mathematicians could define words accurately.
30 What does the writer suggest by referring to Louis Armstrong?
A He is an expert of language.
B Music and language are similar.
C He provides insights to how words are defined.
D Playing trumpet is easier than defining words.
31. What does the writer intend to show about the example of ‘personnel manager"?
A Harvard men are not necessarily competitive in the job market
B Meaning cannot always be shared by others.
C The idea of operationalism does not make much sense outside the physical science.
D Job applicants should take care when filing out application forms.Questions 32-35
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 32-35 on you answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN ifthe information is not given in the passage
32. Some statements are incapable of being proved or disproved.
33. Meaning that is personal to individuals is less worthy to study than shared
meanings.
34 Flags and words are eliciting responses of the same reason
35 A story can be entertaining without being understood.
Questions 36-40
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-H, below.
Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.
36 A comic strip
37 A dictionary
38 Bridgman
39 A story ina language the audience cannot understand
40 A dollar bill
A _is meaningless
B has lasting effects on human behaviors.
C isa symbol that has lost its meaning
D can be understood only in its social context,
E can provide inadequate explanation of meaning
F reflects the variability of human behaviors.
G _ emphasizes the importance of analyzing how words were used.
H suggests that certain types of behaviors carry more meanings than others.Passage 1
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
NOT GIVEN
FALSE
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
TRUE
university
rat
10. diet
11. archaeologist
12. funding
13. database
COENMM ARON
Passage 2
14.
15. i
16.iv
47. viii
18.4
19. v|
20.8
21.E
22.4
23.E
24. national newspaper
25. arms dealers
26. victory
Passage 3
27.C
28.C
29.4
30.C
31.B
32. TRUE
33. NOT GIVEN
34. TRUE
35. FALSE
36.
37
38
39
40
o°gmm