Information Point (Shahkot)

INTERNATIONAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE TESTING SYSTEM MAT2RS

Academic Reading IP MT (AR) 130523 SAT

Materials Provided:
Listening and reading answer sheet
Reading question booklet

Instructions to be followed STRICTLY! :-

• Write down the 6-digit “candidate number” (mentioned at the top-right

corner) in both your listening and reading answers sheets.
• Write down your class level (B1/B2/INT) in the field “centre number” in
listening and reading answer sheets.
• DO NOT open this question booklet until you are told to do so.
• You are required to complete all the questions with sharp ONE hour.
• NO extra time for transferring your answers shall be provided.
• Each question carries one mark (no cross-marking).
• Write down your answer clearly in BLOCK letters in your reading answer
sheet.
• Before commencing with questions kindly make sure that this book
contains 13 printed pages.
• You are requested NOT to make any bold markings/writing answers on
this book. The same should be erasable. If not a fine will be charged.
• At last hand this book to the invigilator.

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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.
How do they catch fish?
A. Maori fish hooks, made from wood, bone, stone and flax, are intended to have the best
possible design and function. The hooks are designed to target specific species with
precision. In the industry of commercial long-line fishing, there are some Maori hook
designs which are making a splash.

B. When Polynesians first came New Zealand sometime within the years 1100-1300 AD,
they didn’t have the technology necessary to heat and manipulate metal out of rocks.
Meanwhile, fish was the settlers’ main food source at the time, so fishermen made their
hooks and fishing gear out of wood, bone, stone and shells. Other plants native to the
island of New Zealand, like as flax (harakeke), cabbage tree (ti) and astelia (kiekie) gave the
necessary fibrous material to make fishing lines and nets of greater or equal strength to the
jute, which was being used by the Europeans at the time. However, as a material, metal is
more malleable, and can be changed into any shape, while natural materials are limited in
the shapes they can take on. The Maori fish hooks needed to be more innovative in the
ways that they dealt with these limitations.

C. Early accounts of Europeans who settled and explored New Zealand claimed that Maori
hooks, known as matau, were “odd”, “of doubtful efficacy”, “very clumsy affairs” or
“impossible looking.” Archaeologists from more recent times have also mentioned the
round hook appearing as odd, with comments such as, “shaped in a manner which makes it
very difficult to imagine could ever be effective in catching a fish.” William Anderson, who
was aboard the Resolution during Cook’s third voyage in 1777 as the ship’s surgeon,
commented that the Maori “live chiefly by fishing, making use…of wooden fish hooks
pointed with bone, but so oddly made that a stranger is at a loss to know how they can
answer such a purpose.”

D. The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa did their own recent study on Maori
fish hooks two hundred and thirty years later, and were able to demonstrate that the
unique hook design was a matter of function. The hook’s design allowed it to catch fish by
spinning away from the direction of the point and catching their jaws, instead of poking a
hole through the fish or by being used as a lever, which some archaeologists also
suggested. It seems that the design of the Maori fish hook is, perhaps, the world’s most
efficiently and masterfully designed fish hook, likely superior to any modern metal fish
hook of today.

E. To make larger hooks, Maori used shanks made of strong wood, with stout points made
of bone or shell. They tied tree branches and saplings together to grow them into the ideal
shapes for building, then harvested the plants when they grew to the appropriate size.
They hardened wood by carefully drying it and burying underground with fires lit above it.
Human bone was often used for bone points, which they lashed securely to a groove at the
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end of the shank with pre-made flax materials (muka). When they wanted to catch larger
species like sharks, groper and ling, they used composite hook. However, average the
traditional hook was usually not longer than a three finger breadth (128 mm length).

F. To capture seabirds for food and feathers, like albatross, the islanders used slender
hooks which can be differentiated from other hooks intended to catch fish by their lighter
build and lack of an inturned point. Many of these hooks were collected by early explorers,
suggesting that the taking of seabirds with hook and line was an important source of food
and feathers for Maori. (105 mm length). Slender hooks with wide gapes were used to
capture albatross and other seabirds for food and feathers, and can be distinguished from
hooks intended to catch fish by the lighter construction and lack of an inturned point. Early
explorers collected many of these hooks which could indicated that catching seabirds with
a hook and line provided significant amounts of food and feathers for the Maori. (105 mm
length)

G. Maori adopted new materials quickly once they became available with European
explorers, sealers and whalers who began to arrive towards the end of the 1700s. At this
point, the Maori were still making their fish hooks, but now using metals and imported
materials. Wooden and flax parts of old, abandoned fish hooks decomposed quickly as
traditional hooks were cast away in favor of new ones. Tools made of luxury materials such
as ivory or greenstone may have been kept around as decorations items, with stylized
Maori fish hooks seen today as a symbol of cultural revitalization.

H. The Maori kept recreating traditional designs even as new materials poured in,
preferring hook shapes which were introduced by Pakeha into the 1800s. By following the
tradition of the rotating hook design, they remained connected with a part of their
traditional culture. In the end, though, it was only a matter of time before the amount of
mass-produced metal European hooks finally overwhelmed the area, highlighting the
difficulty of making hooks from nails, horseshoes and other metal objects, and finally the
use of the traditional designs fell out of favor.

I. By the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, tourists and collectors’
demands for Maori artifacts had grown, leading manufacturers to produce large quantities
of forged hooks. These replicas were then traded with both Maoris and Europeans to use as
forgeries of the real thing, sometimes directly commissioned by artifact dealers
themselves. Fake hooks can be spotted by their cheap construction, inconsistent materials,
rudimentary lashings, odd or over-elaborate decorative carvings, and finally, by the lack of
in-turned points or angled grooves used to actually attach the fishing line.

J. The ways that matau have changed throughout their history is somewhat symbolic of
how Maori have adapted to use European tools, materials and technology to their purposes
over time, as well as the ways that European influence and technology contributed to,
rather overtook, generally compatible Maori skills, and traditional materials were replaced
or complemented by metals and, more recently, artificial materials. Commercial longline
fishermen everywhere have begun using the circle hook design today, one that is nearly the
same as the traditional matau in both its appearance and functionality. It seems that the
advantages and improved catch rates of this Maori technology have been recognized once
more.
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Questions 1–8

The reading passage has ten paragraphs labelled A-J.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-J in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

1 Instruction on how to recognise authentic Maori hooks from counterfeit ones

2 A description of a different type of hooks that are not used to catch fish
3 An acknowledgement that Maori design and craftsmanship are still relevant today
4 An investigation into how the hooks functioned so effectively
5 A description of how modern technology began to dominate and eventually took over
!!!!!!from traditional hook construction
6 A list of raw materials used to construct hooks
7 An outline of how different styles of hooks and types of materials were employed to
……catch larger fish

8 An account of how the Maori employed new technology and adapted it

Questions 9–13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the reading passage?

In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement reflects the claims of the writer

NO .if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

9 The early European settlers quickly understood how the Maori fish hook worked.
10 The hook works by making a hole and embedding itself in the mouth of the fish.
11 The Maoris catch seabirds by their feet.
12 There used to be a demand for Maori fish hooks and many counterfeit ones were
!!!!!!!produced.
13 Today European style hooks have completely replaced the traditional styles used by
!!!!!!!the Maoris.

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READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14 – 26, which are based on Reading Passage 2
below.

Questions 14–19

The reading passage has eight paragraphs, A-H

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-F from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i-xi, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i. Potential error exists in the database
ii. Supporter of database recleared its value
iii. The purpose of this paleobiology data
iv. Reason why some certain species were not
included in it
v. Duplication of breed but with different names
vi. Achievement of Paleobiology Databasesince
vii. Criticism on the project which is waste of fund

14 Paragraph A
15 Paragraph B
16 Paragraph C
17 Paragraph D
18 Paragraph E
19 Paragraph F

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 Fossil files The Paleobiology
A. Are we now living through the sixth extinction as our own activities destroy ecosystems
and wipe out diversity? That’s the doomsday scenario painted by many ecologists, and they
may well be right. The trouble is we don’t know for sure because we don’t have a clear
picture of how life changes between extinction events or what has happened in previous
episodes. We don’t even know how many species are alive today, let alone the rate at
which they are becoming extinct. A new project aims to fill some of the gaps. The
Paleobiology Database aspires to be an online repository of information about every fossil
ever dug up. It is a huge undertaking that has been described as biodiversity’s equivalent of
the Human Genome Project. Its organizers hope that by recording the history of biodiversity
they will gain an insight into how environmental changes have shaped life on Earth in the
past and how they might do so in the future. The database may even indicate whether life
can rebound no matter what we throw at it, or whether a human induced extinction could be
without parallel, changing the rules that have applied throughout the rest of the planet’s
history.

B. But already the project is attracting harsh criticism. Some experts believe it to be
seriously flawed. They point out that a database is only as good as the data fed into it, and
that even if all the current fossil finds were catalogued, they would provide an incomplete
inventory of life because we are far from discovering every fossilised species. They say that
researchers should get up from their computers and get back into the dirt to dig up new
fossils. Others are more sceptical still, arguing that we can never get the full picture
because the fossil record is riddled with holes and biases.

C. Fans of the Paleobiology Database acknowledge that the fossil record will always be
incomplete. But they see value in looking for global patterns that show relative changes in
biodiversity. “The fossil record is the best tool we have for understanding how diversity and
extinction work in normal times,” says John Alroy from the National Center for Ecological
Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara. “Having a background extinction estimate gives
US a benchmark for understanding the mass extinction that’s currently under way. It allows
us to say just how bad it is in relative terms.”

D. To this end, the Paleobiology Database aims to be the most thorough attempt yet to
come up with good global diversity curves. Every day between 10 and 15 scientists around
the world add information about fossil finds to the database. Since it got up and running in
1998, scientists have entered almost 340,000 specimens, ranging from plants to whales to
insects to dinosaurs to sea urchins. Overall totals are updated hourly at [Link].
Anyone can download data from the public part of the site and play with the numbers to
their heart’s content. Already, the database has thrown up some surprising results. Looking
at the big picture, Alroy and his colleagues believe they have found evidence that
biodiversity reached a plateau long ago, contrary to the received wisdom that species
numbers have increased continuously between extinction events. “The traditional view is
that diversity has gone up and up and up,” he says. “Our research is showing that diversity
limits were approached many tens of millions of years before the dinosaurs evolved, much
less suffered extinction.” This suggests that only a certain number of species can live on
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Earth at a time, filling a prescribed number of niches like spaces in a multi-storey car park.
Once it’s full, no more new species can squeeze in, until extinctions free up new spaces or
something rare and catastrophic adds a new floor to the car park.

E. Alroy has also used the database to reassess the accuracy of species names. His
findings suggest that irregularities in classification inflate the overall number of species in
the fossil record by between 32 and 44 per cent. Single species often end up with several
names, he says, due to misidentification or poor communication between taxonomists in
different countries. Repetition like this can distort diversity curves. “If you have really bad
taxonomy in one short interval, it will look like a diversity spike—a big diversification
followed by a big extinction-when all that has happened is a change in the quality of
names,” says Alroy. For example, his statistical analysis indicates that of the 4861 North
American fossil mammal species catalogued in the database, between 24 and 31 per cent
will eventually prove to be duplicates.

F. Of course, the fossil record is undeniably patchy. Some places and times have left
behind more fossil-filled rocks than others. Some have been listed more thoroughly. And
certain kinds of creatures—those with hard parts that lived in oceans, for example–are
more likely to leave a record behind, while others, like jellyfish, will always remain a
mystery. Alroy has also tried to account for this. He estimates, for example, that only 41 per
cent of North American mammals that have ever lived are known from fossils, and he
suspects that a similar proportion of fossils are missing from other groups, such as fungi
and insects.

G. Not everyone is impressed with such mathematical wizardry. Jonathan Adrain from the
University of Iowa in Iowa City points out that statistical wrangling has been known to
create mass extinctions where none occurred. It is easy to misinterpret data. For example,
changes in sea level or inconsistent sampling methods can mimic major changes in
biodiversity. Indeed, a recent and thorough examination of the literature on marine bivalve
fossils has convinced David Jablonsky from the University of Chicago and his colleagues
that their diversity has increased steadily over the past 5 million years.

H. With an inventory of all living species, ecologists could start to put the current
biodiversity crisis in historical perspective. Although creating such a list would be a task to
rival even the Palaeobiology Database, it is exactly what the San Francisco-based ALL
Species Foundation hopes to achieve in the next 25 years. The effort is essential, says
Harvard biologist Edward o. Wilson, who is alarmed by current rates of extinction. “There is
a crisis. We’ve begun to measure it, and it’s very high,” Wilson says. “We need this kind of
information in much more detail to protect all of biodiversity, not just the ones we know
well.” Let the counting continue.

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Questions 20–22

Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-D) with opinions below.

Write the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 20-22 on your answer sheet.

A. Jonathan Adrain
B. John Alroy
C. David Jablonsky
D. Edward o. Wilson

NB there are more options than required, so you will not use them all.
20 Creating the Database would help scientist to identify connections of all species.
21 Believed in contribution of detailed statistics should cover beyond the known species.
22 reached a contradictory finding to the tremendous species die-out.

Questions 23 and 24

Choose the TWO correct letters

Write your answers in boxes 23-24 on your answer sheet.

Please choose TWO CORRECT descriptions about the The Paleobiology Database in
this passage:

A almost all the experts welcome this project

B intrigues both positive and negative opinions from various experts
C all different creature in the database have unique name
D aims to embrace all fossil information globally
E get more information from record rather than the field

Questions 25 and 26

Complete the summary below; Choose correct options A-F from the box below.

Write appropriate letters A-F in boxes 25 and 26 on your answer sheet.

The fact cannot be denied that the impressions found in archaeological excavation and
their database is 25 ……………. . Due to the factor of time and place the occurrence of
fossils is more concentrated in some segments than others. Certain number of fossils are
26 ……………… well.

A. Catalogued B. Categorised C. Vast

D. Uneven E. Excavated F. Defined

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READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27 – 40, which are based on Reading Passage 3
below.
Nutmeg – A Valuable Spice
The nutmeg tree, Myristica fragrans, is a large evergreen tree native to Southeast Asia.
Until the late 18th century, it only grew in one place in the world: a small group of
islands in the Banda Sea, part of the Moluccas – or Spice Islands – in northeastern
Indonesia. The tree is thickly branched with dense foliage of tough, dark green oval
leaves, and produces small, yellow, bell-shaped flowers and pale yellow pear-shaped
fruits. The fruit is encased in a fleshy husk. When the fruit is ripe, this husk splits into
two halves along a ridge running the length of the fruit. Inside is a purple-brown shiny
seed, 2–3 cm long by about 2 cm across, surrounded by a lacy red or crimson covering
called an ‘aril’. These are the sources of the two spices nutmeg and mace, the former
being produced from the dried seed and the latter from the aril.

Nutmeg was a highly prized and costly ingredient in European cuisine in the Middle
Ages, and was used as a flavouring, medicinal, and preservative agent. Throughout this
period, the Arabs were the exclusive importers of the spice to Europe. They sold
nutmeg for high prices to merchants based in Venice, but they never revealed the exact
location of the source of this extremely valuable commodity. The Arab-Venetian
dominance of the trade finally ended in 1512, when the Portuguese reached the Banda
Islands and began exploiting its precious resources.

Always in danger of competition from neighbouring Spain, the Portuguese began

subcontracting their spice distribution to Dutch traders. Profits began to flow into the
Netherlands, and the Dutch commercial fleet swiftly grew into one of the largest in the
world. The Dutch quietly gained control of most of the shipping and trading of spices in
Northern Europe. Then, in 1580, Portugal fell under Spanish rule, and by the end of the
16th century the Dutch found themselves locked out of the market. As prices for
pepper, nutmeg, and other spices soared across Europe, they decided to fight back.

In 1602, Dutch merchants founded the VOC, a trading corporation better known as the
Dutch East India Company. By 1617, the VOC was the richest commercial operation in
the world. The company had 50,000 employees worldwide, with a private army of
30,000 men and a fleet of 200 ships. At the same time, thousands of people across
Europe were dying of the plague, a highly contagious and deadly disease. Doctors were
desperate for a way to stop the spread of this disease, and they decided nutmeg held the
cure. Everybody wanted nutmeg, and many were willing to spare no expense to have it.
Nutmeg bought for a few pennies in Indonesia could be sold for 68,000 times its
original cost on the streets of London. The only problem was the short supply. And
that’s where the Dutch found their opportunity.

The Banda Islands were ruled by local sultans who insisted on maintaining a neutral
trading policy towards foreign powers. This allowed them to avoid the presence of
Portuguese or Spanish troops on their soil, but it also left them unprotected from other
invaders. In 1621, the Dutch arrived and took over. Once securely in control of the
Bandas, the Dutch went to work protecting their new investment. They concentrated all
nutmeg production into a few easily guarded areas, uprooting and destroying any trees
IP MT (AR) 130523 SAT
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outside the plantation zones. Anyone caught growing a nutmeg seedling or carrying
seeds without the proper authority was severely punished. In addition, all exported
nutmeg was covered with lime to make sure there was no chance a fertile seed
which could be grown elsewhere would leave the islands. There was only one obstacle
to Dutch domination. One of the Banda Islands, a sliver of land called Run, only 3 km
long by less than 1 km wide, was under the control of the British. After decades of
fighting for control of this tiny island, the Dutch and British arrived at a compromise
settlement, the Treaty of Breda, in 1667. Intent on securing their hold over every
nutmeg-producing island, the Dutch offered a trade: if the British would give them the
island of Run, they would in turn give Britain a distant and much less valuable island in
North America. The British agreed. That other island was Manhattan, which is how New
Amsterdam became New York. The Dutch now had a monopoly over the nutmeg trade
which would last for another century.

Then, in 1770, a Frenchman named Pierre Poivre successfully smuggled nutmeg plants
to safety in Mauritius, an island off the coast of Africa. Some of these were later
exported to the Caribbean where they thrived, especially on the island of Grenada. Next,
in 1778, a volcanic eruption in the Banda region caused a tsunami that wiped out half
the nutmeg groves. Finally, in 1809, the British returned to Indonesia and seized the
Banda Islands by force. They returned the islands to the Dutch in 1817, but not before
transplanting hundreds of nutmeg seedlings to plantations in several locations across
southern Asia. The Dutch nutmeg monopoly was over.

Today, nutmeg is grown in Indonesia, the Caribbean, India, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea
and Sri Lanka, and world nutmeg production is estimated to average between 10,000
and 12,000 tonnes per year.
__________

Questions 27–31

Complete the notes below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.

The nutmeg fruit and tree

 the leaves of the tree are 27 .................... in shape

 the 28 .................... surrounds the fruit and breaks open when the fruit is ripe
 the 29 .................... is used to produce the spice nutmeg
 the covering known as the aril is used to produce 30 ....................
 the tree has 31 .................... flowers and fruit

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Questions 32–34

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the reading passage?

In boxes 32-34 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

32 In the Middle Ages, most Europeans knew where nutmeg was grown.
33 The VOC was the world’s first major trading company.
34 Following the Treaty of Breda, the Dutch had control of all the islands where nutmeg
……grew.

Questions 35–40

Complete the table below

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 35-40 on your answer sheet.

Middle Ages Nutmeg was brought to Europe by the 35 ………….

16th century European nations took control over the nutmeg trade
17th century Demand for nutmeg grew, as it was believed to be effective
against the disease known as the 36 .......……..

The Dutch
 took control of the Banda Islands
 restricted nutmeg production to few areas
 put 37 .......…….. on nutmeg to avoid it being cultivated
outside the islands
 finally obtained the island of 38 .......…….. from the
British
Late 18th century 1770 — nutmeg plants were secretly taken to 39 .......……..

1778 — half the Banda Islands' nutmeg plantations were

destroyed by a 40 .......……..

••• This is the end of the test •••

{Word Count: 4233}

IP MT (AR) 130523 SAT

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