Reading Passage 1 – Finches on Islands
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
A Today, the quest continues. On Daphne Major-one of the most desolate of the Galápagos Islands, an uninhabited volcanic cone where cacti and shrubs seldom grow higher than a researcher’s knee-Peter and Rosemary Grant have spent more than three decades watching Darwin’s finch respond to the challenges of storms, drought and competition for food Biologists at Princeton University, the Grants know and recognize many of the individual birds on the island and can trace the birds’ lineages hack through time. They have witnessed Darwin’s principle in action again and again, over many generations of finches.
B The Grants’ most dramatic insights have come from watching the evolving bill of the medium ground finch. The plumage of this sparrow-sized bird ranges from dull brown to jet black. At first glance, it may not seem particularly striking, but among scientists who study evolutionary biology, the medium ground finch is a superstar. Its bill is a middling example in the array of shapes and sizes found among Galápagos finches: heftier than that of the small ground finch, which specializes in eating small, soft seeds, but petite compared to that of the large ground finch, an expert at cracking and devouring big, hard seeds.
C When the Grants began their study in the 1970s, only two species of finch lived on Daphne Major, the medium ground finch and the cactus finch. The island is so small that the researchers were able to count and catalogue every bird. When a severe drought hit in 1977, the birds soon devoured the last of the small, easily eaten seeds. Smaller members of the medium ground finch population, lacking the bill strength to crack large seeds, died out.
D Bill and body size are inherited traits, and the next generation had a high proportion of big-billed individuals. The Grants had documented natural selection at work-the same process that, over many millennia, directed the evolution of the Galápagos’ 14 unique finch species, all descended from a common ancestor that reached the islands a few million years ago.
E Eight years later, heavy rains brought by an El Nino transformed the normally meager vegetation on Daphne Major. Vines and other plants that in most years struggle for survival suddenly flourished, choking out the plants that provide large seeds to the finches. Small seeds came to dominate the food supply, and big birds with big bills died out at a higher rate than smaller ones. ‘Natural selection is observable,’ Rosemary Grant says. ‘It happens when the environment changes. When local conditions reverse themselves, so does the direction of adaptation.
F Recently, the Grants witnessed another form of natural selection acting on the medium ground finch: competition from bigger, stronger cousins. In 1982, a third finch, the large ground finch, came to live on Daphne Major. The stout bills of these birds resemble the business end of a crescent wrench. Their arrival was the first such colonization recorded on the Galápagos in nearly a century of scientific observation. ‘We realized,’ Peter Grant says, ‘we had a very unusual and potentially important event to follow.’ For 20 years, the large ground finch coexisted with the medium ground finch, which shared the supply of large seeds with its bigger-billed relative. Then, in 2002 and 2003, another drought struck. None of the birds nested that year, and many died out. Medium ground finches with large bills, crowded out of feeding areas by the more powerful large ground finches, were hit particularly hard.
G When wetter weather returned in 2004, and the finches nested again, the new generation of the medium ground finch was dominated by smaller birds with smaller bills, able to survive on smaller seeds. This situation, says Peter Grant, marked the first time that biologists have been able to follow the complete process of an evolutionary change due to competition between species and the strongest response to natural selection that he had seen in 33 years of tracking Galápagos finches.
H On the inhabited island of Santa Cruz, just south of Daphne Major, Andrew Hendry of McGill University and Jeffrey Podos of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have discovered a new, man-made twist in finch evolution. Their study focused on birds living near the Academy Bay research station, on the fringe of the town of Puerto Ayora. The human population of the area has been growing fast-from 900 people in 1974 to 9,582 in 2001. Today Puerto Ayora is full of hotels and mai tai bars,’ Hendry says. ‘People have taken this extremely arid place and tried to turn it into a Caribbean resort.’
I Academy Bay records dating back to the early 1960s show that medium ground finches captured there had either small or large bills. Very few of the birds had mid-size bills. The finches appeared to be in the early stages of a new adaptive radiation: If the trend continued, the medium ground finch on Santa Cruz could split into two distinct subspecies, specializing in different types of seeds. But in the late 1960s and early 70s, medium ground finches with medium-sized bills began to thrive at Academy Bay along with small and large-billed birds. The booming human population had introduced new food sources, including exotic plants and bird feeding stations stocked with rice. Billsize, once critical to the finches’ survival, no longer made any difference. ‘Now an intermediate bill can do fine,’ Hendry says.
J At a control site distant from Puerto Ayora, and relatively untouched by humans, the medium ground finch population remains split between large- and small-billed birds. On undisturbed parts of Santa Cruz, there is no ecological niche for a middling medium ground finch, and the birds continue to diversify. In town, though there are still many finches, once-distinct populations are merging.
K The finches of Santa Cruz demonstrate a subtle process in which human meddling can stop evolution in its tracks, ending the formation of new species. In a time when global biodiversity continues its downhill slide, Darwin’s finches have yet another unexpected lesson to teach. ‘If we hope to regain some of the diversity that’s already been lost/ Hendry says, ‘we need to protect not just existing creatures, but also the processes that drive the origin of new species.
Reading Passage 2 – Flight from reality?
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
Mobiles are barred, but passengers can lap away on their laptops to their hearts’ content. Is one really safer than the other? In the US, a Congressional subcommittee grilled airline representatives and regulators about the issue last month. But the committee heard that using cellphones in planes may indeed pose a risk albeit a slight one. This would seem to vindicate the treatment of Manchester oil worker Neil Whitehouse, who was sentenced last summer to a year in jail by a British court for refusing to turn off his mobile phone on a flight home from Madrid. Although he was only typing a message to be sent on landing not actually making a call, the court decided that hems putting the flight at risk.
A The potential for problems is certainly there. Modern airliners are packed with electronic devices that control the plane and handle navigation and communications. Each has to meet stringent safeguards to make sure it doesn’t emit radiation that would interfere with other devices in the plane-standards that passengers’ personal electronic devices don’t necessarily meet. Emissions from inside the plane could also interfere with sensitive antennae on the fixed exterior.
B But despite running a number of studies, Boeing, Airbus and various government agencies haven’t been able to find clear evidence of problems caused by personal electronic devices, including mobile phones. “We’ve done our own studies. We’ve found cellphones actually have no impact on the navigation system,” says Maryanne Greczyn, a spokeswoman for Airbus Industries of North America in Herndon, Virginia, Not do they affect other critical systems, she says The only impact Airbus found? “Sometimes when a passenger is starting or finishing a phone call, the pilot hears a wry slight beep in the headset,” she says.
C The best evidence yet of a problem comes from a report released this year by Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority. Its researchers generated simulated cellphone transmissions inside two Boeing aircraft. They concluded that the transmissions could create signals at a power and frequency that would not affect the latest equipment, but exceeded the safety threshold established in 1984 and might, therefore, affect some of the older equipment on board. This doesn’t mean “mission critical” equipment such as the navigation system and flight controls. But the devices that could be affected, such as smoke detectors and fuel level indicators, could still create serious problems for the flight crew if they malfunction.
D Many planes still use equipment certified to the older standards, says Dan Hawkes, head of avionics at the CAA’s Safely Regulation Croup. The CAA study doesn’t prove the equipment will actually fail when subjected to the signals but does show there’s a danger. “We’ve taken some of the uncertainty out of these beliefs,” he says Another study later this year will see if the cellphone signals actually cause devices to fail.
E In 1996, RTCA, a consultant hired by the Federal Aviation Administration in the US to conduct tests, determined that potential problems from personal electronic devices were “low”. Nevertheless, it recommended a ban on their use during “critical” periods of flight, such as take-off and landing. RTCA didn’t actually test cellphones, but nevertheless recommended their wholesale ban on flights, But if “better safe than sorry” is the current policy, it’s applied inconsistently, according to Marshall Cross, the chairman of Mega Wave Corporation, based in Boylston, Massachusetts. Why are cellphones outlawed when no one considers a ban on laptops? “It’s like most things in life. The reason is a little bit technical, a little bit economic and a little bit political,” says Cross.
F The company wrote a report for the FAA in 1998 saying it is possible to build an on-board system that can detect dangerous signals from electronic devices. But Cross’s personal conclusion is that mobile phones aren’t the real threat. “You’d have to stretch things pretty far to figure out how a cellphone could interfere with a plane’s systems,” he says. Cellphones transmit in ranges of around 400, 800 or 1800 megahertz. Since no important piece of aircraft equipment operates at those frequencies, the possibility of interference is very low, Cross says. The use of Computers and electronic game systems is much more worrying, lie says. They can generate very strong signals at frequencies that could interfere with plane electronics, especially if a mouse is attached {the wire operates as an antenna or if their built-in shielding is somehow damaged. Some airlines are even planning to put sockets for laptops in seatbacks.
G There’s fairly convincing anecdotal evidence that some personal electronic devices have interfered with systems. Aircrew on one flight found that the autopilot was being disconnected, and narrowed the problem down to a passenger’s portable computer. They could actually watch the autopilot disconnect when they switched the computer on. Boeing bought the computer, took it to the airline’s labs and even tested it on an empty flight. But as with every other reported instance of interference, technicians were unable to replicate the problem.
H Some engineers, however, such as Bruce Donham of Boeing, say that common sense suggests phones are more risky than laptops. “A device capable of producing a strong emission is not as safe as a device which does not have any intentional emission,” lie says. Nevertheless, many experts think it’s illogical that cellphones are prohibited when computers aren’t. Besides, the problem is more complicated than simply looking at power and frequency. In the air, the plane operates in a soup of electronic emissions, created by its own electronics and by ground-based radiation. Electronic devices in the cabin-especially those emitting a strong signal-can behave unpredictably, reinforcing other signals, for instance, or creating unforeseen harmonics that disrupt systems.
I Despite the Congressional subcommittee hearings last month, no one seems to be working seriously on a technical solution that would allow passengers to use their phones. That’s mostly because no one -besides cellphone users themselves-stands to gain a lot if the phones are allowed in the air. Even the cellphone companies don’t want it. They are concerned that airborne signals could cause problems by flooding a number of the networks’ base stations at once with the same signal This effect, called bigfooting, happens because airborne cellphone signals tend to go to many base stations at once, unlike land calls which usually go to just one or two stations. In the US, even if FAA regulations didn’t prohibit cellphones in the air, Federal Communications Commission regulations would.
J Possible solutions might be to enhance airliners’ electronic insulation or to fit detectors which warned flight staff when passenger devices were emitting dangerous signals. But Cross complains that neither the FAA, the airlines nor the manufacturers are showing much interest in developing these. So despite Congressional suspicions and the occasional irritated (or jailed) mobile user, the industry’s “better safe than sorry” policy on mobile phones seems likely to continue. In the absence of firm evidence that the international airline industry is engaged in a vast conspiracy to overcharge its customers, a delayed phone call seems a small price to pay for even the tiniest reduction in the chances of a Plane Crash. But you’ll still be allowed to use your personal computer during a flight. And while that remains the case, airlines can hardly claim that logic has prevailed.
Reading Passage 3 – Language Strategy in Multinational Company
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.
A The importance of language management in multinational companies has never been greater than today. Multinationals are becoming ever more conscious of the importance of global coordination as a soured of competitive advantage and language remains the ultimate barrier to aspirations of international harmonization. Before attempting to consider language management strategies, companies will have to evaluate the magnitude of the language barrier confronting them and in doing so they will need to examine it in three dimensions: the Language Diversity, the Language Penetration and the Language Sophistication. Companies next need to turn their attention to how they should best manage language. There is a range of options from which MNCs can formulate their language strategy.
B Lingua Franca: The simplest answer, though realistic only for English speaking companies, is to rely on one’s native tongue. As recently as 1991 a survey of British exporting companies found that over a third used English exclusively in dealings with foreign customers. This attitude that “one language fits all” has also been carried through into the Internet age. A survey of the web sites of top American companies confirmed that over half made no provision for foreign language access, and another found that less than 10% of leading companies were able to respond adequately to emails other than in the company’s language. Widespread though it is, however, reliance on a single language is a strategy that is fatally flawed. It makes no allowance for the growing trend in Linguistic Nationalism whereby buyers in Asia, South America and the Middle East, in particular, are asserting their right to “work in the language of the customer”. It also fails to recognize the increasing vitality of languages such as Spanish, Arabic and Chinese that over time are likely to challenge the dominance of English as a lingua franca. In the IT arena, it ignores the rapid globalization of the Internet where the number of English-language e-commerce transactions, emails and web sites, is rapidly diminishing as a percentage of the total. Finally, the total reliance on a single language puts the English speaker at risk in negotiations. Contracts, rules and legislation are invariably written in the local language, and a company unable to operate in that language is vulnerable.
C Functional Multilingualism: Another improvised approach to Language is to rely on what has been termed “Functional Multilingualism”. Essentially what this means is to muddle through, relying on a mix of languages, pidgins and gestures to communicate by whatever means the parties have at their disposal. In a social context, such a shared effort to make one another understand might be considered an aid to the bonding process with the frustration of communication being regularly punctuated by moments of absurdity and humor. However, as the basis for business negotiations, it appears very hit-and-nuts. And yet Hagen’s recent study suggests that 16% of an international business transaction; is conducted in a “cocktail of languages.” Functional Multilingualism shares the same defects as reliance on a lingua franca and increases the probability of cognitive divergence between the parties engaged in the communication.
D External Language Resources: A more rational and obvious response to the language barrier is to employ external resources such as translators and interpreters, and certainly there are many excellent companies specialized in these fields. However, such a response is by no means an end to the language barrier. For a start these services can be very expensive with a top Simultaneous Interpreter, commanding daily rates as high as a partner in an international consulting company. Secondly, any good translator or interpreter will insist that to be fully effective they must understand the context of the subject matter. This is not always possible. In some cases, it is prohibited by the complexity or specialization of the topic. Sometimes by lack of preparation time but most often the obstacle is the reluctance of the parties to explain the wider context to an ‘outsider’. Another problem is that unless there has been considerable pre-explaining between the interpreter and his clients it is likely that there will be ambiguity and cultural overtones in the source messages the interpreter has to work with. They will, of course, endeavor to provide a hi-fidelity translation but in this circumstance, the interpreter has to use initiative and guesswork. This clearly injects a potential source of misunderstanding into the proceedings. Finally, while a good interpreter will attempt to convey not only the meaning but also the spirit of any communication, there can be no doubt that there is a loss of rhetorical power when communications go through a third party. So in situations requiring negotiation, persuasion, humor etc. the use of an interpreter is a poor substitute for direct communication.
E Training: The immediate and understandable reaction to any skills-shortage in business is to consider personnel development and certainly the language training industry is well developed. Offering programs at almost every level and in numerous languages. However, without doubt, the value of language training no company should be deluded into believing this to be assured of success. Training in most companies is geared to the economic cycle. When times are good, money is invested in training. When belts get tightened training is one of the first “luxuries” to be pared down. In a study conducted across four European countries, nearly twice as many companies said they needed language training in coming years as had conducted training in past years. This disparity between “good intentions” and “actual delivery”, underlines the problems of relying upon training for language skills. Unless the company is totally committed to sustaining the strategy even though bad times, it will fail.
F One notable and committed leader in the field of language training has been the Volkswagen Group. They have developed a language strategy over many years and in many respects can be regarded as a model of how to manage language professionally. However, the Volkswagen approach underlines that language training has to be considered a strategic rather than a tactical solution. In their system to progress from “basics” to “communications competence” in a language requires the completion of 6 languages stages each one demanding approximately 90 hours of a refresher course, supported by many more hours of self-study, spread over a 6-9 months period. The completion of each stage is marked by a post-stage achievement test, which is a pre-requisite for continued training. So even this professionally managed program expects a minimum of three years of fairly intensive study to produce an accountant. Engineer, buyer or salesperson capable of working effectively in a foreign language. Clearly, companies intending to pursue this route need to do so with realistic expectations and with the intention of sustaining the program over many years. Except in terms of “brush-up” courses for people who were previously fluent in a foreign language, training cannot be considered a quick fix.
