READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading
passage 1 on pages 2 and 3.

The Clipper Races: an era of competition between cargo ships

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the British East India Company had
the monopoly on trade with China and India. This meant that because no rival could
legally import tea or other goods from these countries at this time, the company was
rarely in a hurry to transport its merchandise. Instead, its priority was to minimise costs
by carrying as much as possible on each ship. This meant that its ships known as -

East Indiamen were enormous, strong and very slow.

-

By 1800, the average East Indiaman could carry 1,200 tons of merchandise. The
trading pattern for China tea usually meant the East Indiamen set sail from Britain in
January, sailed round the Cape of Good Hope at the southernmost tip of Africa, and
arrived in China in September. There they would load up that year's tea harvest, set
off again and, depending on the wind and weather, aim to arrive back by the following
September. So even with favourable sailing conditions, the round trip lasted almost
two years, and if anything went wrong it could take a lot longer.

However, by 1834 the company had lost its trading monopolies, and tea had become
a freely traded item. Having no more use for its great ships, the company sold them
off, and many were bought by merchants or their captains, who continued to plough
the seas between Britain and China. But now that tea could be traded freely, a few
smart sailors began to realise that whoever brought each new harvest of tea to Britain
first, stood to make the most money.

This waspartly because if you were home first, you could sell your shipment of tea
before your competitors even arrived, and partly because consumers in Britain in the
nineteenth century believed that the fresher and earlier-picked the tea the better the

resulting drink. Tea traders nowneeded faster, sleeker ships to bring their precious
cargo back. Nevertheless, in Britain this idea only caught on slowly, and white the
1840s saw a few faster ships launched, for the time being many merchants remained
satisfied with the slow but reliable East Indiamen.

In fact it was the Americans who pioneered the first clipper ships. These vessels were
foet and elondor with ow hull that wae doopor at tho hook thon ot tho front ond
lal was deeper at DATv lal aua

masses of sails on tall masts. They earned their name from the way that they clipped
off journey times British merchants resolved to build their own clippers to rival the
Americans and the first British tea clipper, Stornaway, was built in Aberdeen in 1850
More tea clippers were designed and built in Britain throughout the 1850s and 1860s,
they had a narrower beam than their American equivalents, making them less powerful
during storms, but faster in calmer weather.
There was a great spirit of competition between the British and American ships plying
the tea trade, but to begin with the Americans had the edge. Then in 1851 a British
ship owner, Richard Green, built the aptly named clipper Challenger, with the stated
intention of beating the American ships. Loaded with tea, Challenger left China for
London in 1852 at the same time as the American clipper Challenge, a much larger,
older ship, already greatly admired for its speed. Large sums were bet on which would
comnlete the iourney first In the event the British shin heat its rival to I ondon by twNO

days, amid much jubilation. From then on, such international races grew in popularity.

After 1855, American participation in the British tea trade gradually stopped. But even
without the Anglo-American rivalry, the competitive spirit continued. It was really ignited
when new ports were opened up for trade in China. These included Fouchow, which
was much closer to the tea-producing areas than Canton, the port used previously. As
a result, tea could be loaded onboard earlier and fresher, and the clippers could set off
in late May or early June - sometimes not even taking time to fill out the official
paperwork racing back to Britain whatever the difficulties.
-

They sped down through the South China Sea and Ocean, then raced
into the Indian
to get round the southernmost tip of Africa at the Cape of Good Hope. Then it was
north across the vast Atlantic, past the Azores, through the English Channel and into
the estuary of the River Thames. Once there, they would be towed by tugs, up the river
ond into tho dookn

The cargo of the winning ship could earn a premium of up to sixpence per pound-and
so the captain and crew were rewarded by the owners of the cargo. But the races were
about more than just money the crews, about 40 men on each clipper, were expert
sailors, proud of their ships, and they delighted in competing against each other.
Without their enthusiasm, the races would never have happened, since getting the ship
home as fast as possible required the crew to be totally dedicated and to sacrifice
much of their rest for the duration of the race.

EXAMS
Questions 1-6

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 1-6 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

1 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the British East India Company
faced a lot of competition.

2 Before 1800, cargo size was the most important consideration for the East India
Company.

3 At best, voyages of the East Indiamen to China and back took nearly two years
to complete.
REAL
4 Before 1834, voyages to and from China were considered to be highly
dangerous

5 After 1834, the ships which had served the East India Company stopped being
used for commercial purposes.

6 In the nineteenth century, British drinkers preferred tea made from mature
leaves to that made from younger leaves.
Questions 7- 13

Complete the notes below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 7-13 on your answer sheet.

Clipper races

The ships

Clipper ships were first used for trading by American merchants.

The ships were remarkable for the number of 7 they had.

The performance of British tea clippers was particularly affected when there were
8. at sea.

The races

It was in a ship called 9 that the British first competed successfully

against the Americans.

Richard Green s snip arrived two days anead of its competitor.

Competition increased when additional Chinese trading 10 were

established.

Merchants were occasionally in such a hurry that they failed to complete the 11
before leaving China.

At the end of their journey, the ships needed the help of 12...

EXAM
The rewards

The crews were motivated by both 13. and their enthusiasm for the
competition.
READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading

Pessgge 2 on pages 6 and 7.

Orientation of birds
A For many of us, the way birds are able to
orientate is both astounding and difficult to
appreciate fully. For instance, the annual
migration of tire golden plover of the Pacific
takes it from Alaska to Hawaii on a flight of well
over 3000 kilometres, and if it were to deviate by

only one degree, it would miss the island on

which it nests.

B The first systematic studies on orientation in birds were made possible by the
'homing instinct' exhibited by so many species. Birds are caught at a time when
they show an attachment to their territory, especially during the nesting season.
They are taken to some spot, released, and the percentage of returns is
recorded. The distance can be varied, and the direction, as well as the method
of transporting them, and then the influence of climatic and other factors on their
ability to find their way home can be studied. These experiments have shown a
wide variation in ability to home, and three types of homing behaviour have been
identified.
C methodically explore the area in which they are released
In the first type, birds
until they pick up some familiar feature, and then they quickly find their way back
to the nest. Such birds possess a highly developed visual memory, as
experiments with pigeons have shown. Domestic pigeons have been trained to
peck at a certain point on an aerial photograph, with a system of rewards, and
four years later the birds were still able to respond to this training when placed
on the aerial photograph. Birds' eyes have a power of resolution two to three
times greater than ours, enabling them to pick up very fine details. If a bird uses
only this type of homing behaviour, however, it can only succeed if the point of
release is not too far away. If the birds are transported 800 kilometres from their
nest, it is only by good fortune that they find their way back as a result of long
exploratory flights. Usually, the area known to a bird is its feeding territory.
Released within this the birds soon make their return; release them
area,
outside it and far fewer return. However, if a bird is released for a second time
in the same place, its visual memory comes into play, and the bird, no longer
requiring tedious exploratory flights, will return much more quickly.

D The second type of homing behaviour is shown by birds that are capable of
choosing their flight direction and holding to it for the rest of their journey. How
do they decide what direction to take? They appear to choose their normal
migration direction even if they are released in a different place from their usual
stalling point. If, for example, birds which normally fly to the north-east to reach
 latitude 45 degrees north released at that latitude, they will immediately start
are
flying north-east they're released further to the west, they'll
anyway. So if
maintain the correct direction, but fly west of their destination, and so fail to
arrive.
E The third type of homing behaviour shows the highest degree of orientation.
Released at one point, the birds immediately take stock of it, compare its
position with that of the nest, decide on the direction and fly off. This happens
even if the birds are in a country right off their migration routes, where they have
never been before. In one example, a laysan albatross returned to its nesting
area on Midway Island in the middle of the Pacific, having flown over 5000

kilometres from the west coastal of the USA in just over ten days. This is a
perfect example of the third type of homing, for the albatross clearly couldn't
rely on any landmarks over the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

F The percentage of successful birds varies greatly, being highest in those

species with a strong migratory behaviour. Thus the lesser black-backed gull is
more migratory than the herring gull and more often reaches 'home'. Great

migrants such as the swift have the highest percentage of returns. In one case,
seven out of nine alpine swifts were recaptured at their nests after being
displaced some 1400 kilometres; one made the journey in three days.

G What part does heredity play in all this? Two research studies suggest that
instinctive, i.e. genetically inherited, behaviour patterns play a part in navigation.
The first was carried out by Ernst Schuz and it is highly significant. Schuz caught
first year European storks and released them later, after the departure of the
adult storks at a time when they normally make their south-west autumn
migration to Africa. The recaptures showed that, in spite of thefact that there
were no adults to guide them, the birds unanimously headed south-west. This
was a most striking finding, for it showed that the birds had an innate and
unlearned attraction for the African wintering area that they have occupied for
thousands of years.

Ine case of starlings is a little different. Ihese birds have a great aptitude for
homing, but this behaviour differs in the different age groups. Birds that were
shifted to the south-east of their normal migration route split into two lots. The
adults, in full possession of their gift for orientation, found their wintering area
by modifying their direction by 90 degrees, whereas the juveniles sought their
winter quarters to the south-east of their real position.
Questions 14 - 18

Complete the summery below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

Types of homing behaviour

First type:

Birds rely on their sophisticated 14. However, they are generally most
successful if they are released within their feeding territory.

Second type:
Birds select their accustomed 15 no matter where they are released. As a

result, they may miss their 16

REAL
Third type:
Birds orientate correctly, even when they are released in an unfamiliar place and have
no 17 to make use of. One bird with this type of skill is the 18

Questions 19

Reading Passage
- 22
CLUS
2 has eight paragraphs, A-H
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 19-22 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

19 the effects of distance on some birds' ability to find their nests

20 a methodology for testing the general ability of birds to find their nests

21 one aspect of physical ability in humans and birds

22 how some birds' migration was delayed for experimental purposes
Questions 23 - 26

Look at the following types of birds (Questions 23-26) and the list of points which the
author wishes to illustrate below.

Match each bird with the point which it illustrates, A-G.

Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.

23 domestic pigeon
24 alpine swift
25 European stork
26 starling

List of points which the author wishes to illustrate

A an ability to orientate without previous training
B
the speed at which birds can fly
C the ability to remember things seen previously
D the effect of age on homing ability
E the strength required to fly a great distance
F a high success rate in finding nests
G the importance of seasonal cues for migrating birds
READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading
passage 3 on pages 10 and 11.

The role of accidents in business

In 1894 Dr John Kellogg and his brother. Will, were supervising a hospital and health
spa in Michigan. The patients were on a restricted diet. One day, the brothers left
cooked wheat untended for more than 24 hours. When they returned, they saw what
they had done. It was no good to eat, but they decided to run the stale wheat through
rollers, just to see how it would turn out. Normally, the process produced long sheets,
but they were surprised to discover that this time the rollers created flat flakes. They
baked them, and then tried the same thing with corn. From this accidental discovery
came the cornflakes that generations have now been eating for breakfast.

Accidents happen; there is nothing predictable and orderly about innovation. Nobel
laureate Sir Alan Hodgkin, who discovered how nerve cells transmit electrical impulses
between the skin and the brain, commented: 'I believe that the record of my published
papers conveys an impression of directedness and planning which does not at all
coincide with the actual sequence of events.

The same rule applies in business. The mistake that gave us cornflakes keeps
repeating itself in the history of disruptive innovation, the kind that transforms markets.
Louis Daguerre, for, instance, discovered the technique that gave us photography in
the 1830s, when drops of mercury from a shattered thermometer produced a
photographic image. The microwave was discovered when Peroy Spender, a scientist
with Raytheon, was testing a new vacuum tube and discovered that the sweet in his
pocket had melted. The artificial sweetener, saccharin, was the unintentional result of
a medical scientist's work on a chemical treatment for gastric ulcers. While working for

the firm 3M, researcher Art Fry had no idea he was taking the first steps towards Post-
It Notes when he used bits of adhesive office paper that could be easily lifted off the
page to replace the scrap paper bookmarks that kept falling out of his nymn book.

Breakthrough and disruptive innovation rarely driven by orderly process. Usually

are
they come out of a chaotic, haphazard mess, which is why big companies, full of
managers schooled in business programmes designed to eliminate random variation
and mistakes, struggle with them. In these sorts of environments, accidents are called
failures and are discouraged.

It is no surprise then that research from the late British economist Paul Geroski and
London Business School's Constantinos Markides found that companies that were
skilled at innovation were usually not that skilled when it came to commercialisation,
and vice versa. Their book, Fast Second, divides businesses into 'colonists' and
'consolidators'. Small and nimble, colonists are adept at creating market niches but are
terrible institution builders. Consolidators, with their strong cultures of discipline and
cost control, ideas from other firms and
know how to take clever turn them into mass-

market items. Microsoft is a prime instance of this.

With companies spending hundreds of billions of dollars on research and development,

US academics Robert Austin and Lee Devin examined how managers can encourage
productive slip-ups. In their article Accident, Intention and Expectation in the Innovation
Process, they argue that business processes actually prevent helpful mis-steps from
occurring. According to their catalogue of accidents, not all false steps and mishaps
are equal. Accidents, they say, come from unlikely mental associations such as
memories and vague connections, looking for something and finding it in an
unexpected way, looking for one thing and finding something else, and not looking for
anything but finding something valuable.

Accident-prone innovation, they say, requires companies to get outside the 'cone of
expectation'. It means throwing together groups from diverse backgrounds, and
combining ideas in unpredictable ways. Other strategies also include having systems
that watch out for accidents and examine them for value, generating them when they
do not happen often enough, seizing oil the useful ones, capturing their valuable
features, and building on them to add value and give potential for useful accidents.

All this, however, requires thinking that is often counter-intuitive to the way businesses
operate. In other words, it is the kind of thinking that qoes aqainst the beliefs of most
business managers. It runs counter to the notion frequently pushes by consultants that
you can 'harness' creativity and direct it to line up with intention. 'The cost of accidents
business, people tend to call such efforts failure.'

There are tentative signs that more starting to realise that failure can
companies are
lead to commercial gain, and that this is part or the risk-talking that underpins
innovation. Australia's largest brewing company, for example, made a bad error when
it launched a new beer called Empire Lager, pitched at younger consumers. Having
spent a fortune creating a beer with a sweeter taste, designing a great-looking bottle
and a television campaign, Foster's was left with a drink that no-one wanted to buy.
The target market was more interested in brands built up by word of mouth.

Instead of wiping the unsuccessfull product launch, Fosters used this lesson learned
to go on and develop other brands instead. One of them, Pure Blonde, is now ranked
as Australia's fifth-largest beer brand. Unlike Empire Lager, there has been almost no

promotion and its sales are generated more by word of mouth.

Other companies are taking similar steps to study their own slip-ups. Intuit, the
company behind financial tools such as Quicken, holds regular 'When Learning Hurts'
sessions. But this sort of transformation is never easy. In a market that focuses on the
short-term, convincing employees and shareholders to tolerate failure and not play it
safe is a big thing to ask.
Questions 27-31

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to sav what the writer thinks about this
27 The delay in the process used by the Kellogg brothers affected the final product.
28 Sir Alan Hodgkin is an example of someone whose work proceeded in a logical
and systematic way.
29 Daguerre is an exception to the general rule of innovation.
30 The discovery of saccharin occurred by accident during drug research.
31 The company 3M should have supported Art Fry by funding his idea of Post-It
Notes.

REAL
Questions 32 - 35

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-H, below.

Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 32-35
32 The usual business environment
on R
your answer sheet.

33 Geroki and Markides's book

34 Microsoft is an example of a company which

35 The origin of useful accidents

EXAMS
A can be found in unusual thoughts and chance events.
B
can be taught in business schools.
nas a success irom someone eis

D is designed to nurture differences.

E is unlikely to lead to creative innovation
F says that all mistakes the same.
are
G
shows that businesses are good at either inventing of selling.
H suggests ways of increasing the number of mistakes
Questions 36 - 40

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D

Write the correct letter in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.

36 How do Austin and Devin advise companies to get out of the 'cone of
expectation'?

A by decreasing the number of company systems

B
by forming teams of different types of people
C by hiring new and creative people
D by holding regular brainstorming meetings
37 In recommending 'counter-intuitive' thinking, what do Austin and Devin imply?
A that failing at business is bad for staff morale
B that innovation cannot be planned for
C that most businesses should be devoted to avoiding mistakes
D that the cost of mistakes is an important consideration
Tbo uritor docoriboo tho Empiro r diopotorin ordor to obou tbot
The wmter descnbes Ime Empire Lager aisaste LOW tat

A success can come out of a business failure

B
the majority of companies now value risk-talking.
C TV advertising works better on older people
D young beer drinkers do not like a sweet taste

39 Pure Blonde has been more successful than Empire Lager because

A digital media other than TV were used.

B it was advertised under a different brand name.

C it was launched with very little advertising.

D the advertising budget was larger
40 The writer concludes that creating a culture that learns from mistakes

A brings short-term financial gains.

B can be very difficult for some companies.
C holds no risk for workers.

D is a popular move with shareholders.