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READING PASSAGE 1
Cognitive Dissonance
A. Charles Darwin said, “This not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” So, you’ve sold your home, quit your job, shunned your colleagues, abandoned your friends and family. The end of the world is nigh, and you ‘know for a fact’ that you are one of the chosen few who will be swept up from the ‘great flood’ approaching on 21st December at midnight to be flown to safety on a far-off planet. And then midnight on 21st December comes around and there is no flood. No end of the world. No flying saucer to the rescue. What do you do? Admit you were wrong? Acknowledge that you gave up position, money, friends – for nothing? Tell yourself and others you have been a schmuck? Not on your life.
B. Social psychologist Leon Festinger infiltrated a flying saucer doomsday cult in the late 1950s. The members of this cult had given up everything on the premise that the world was about to self-destruct and that they, because of their faith, would be the sole survivors. In the lead up to the fateful day, the cult shunned publicity and shied away from journalists. Festinger posed as a cultist and was present when the space ship failed to show up. He was curious about what would happen. How would the disappointed cultists react to the failure of their prophecy? Would they be embarrassed and humiliated? What actually happened amazed him.
C. Now, after the non-event, the cultists suddenly wanted publicity. They wanted media attention and coverage. Why? So, they could explain how their faith and obedience had helped save the planet from the flood. The aliens had spared planet earth for their sake – and now their new role was to spread the word and make us all listen. This fascinated Festinger. He observed that the real driving force behind the cultists’ apparently inexplicable response was the need, not to face the awkward and uncomfortable truth and ‘change their minds,’ but rather to ‘make minds comfortable’ – to smooth over the unacceptable inconsistencies.
D. Festinger coined the term ‘cognitive dissonance’ to describe the uncomfortable tension we feel when we experience conflicting thoughts or beliefs (cognitions) or engage in behaviour that is apparently opposed to our stated beliefs. What is particularly interesting is the lengths to which people will go to reduce the inner tension without accepting that they might, in fact, be wrong. They will accept almost any form of relief, other than admitting being at fault, or mistaken. Festinger quickly realized that our intolerance for ‘cognitive dissonance’ could explain many mysteries of human behavior.
E. In a fascinating experiment Festinger and his colleagues paid some subjects twenty dollars to tell a specific lie, while they paid another group of subjects only one dollar to do the same. Those who were paid just one dollar were far more likely to claim, after the event, that they had actually believed in the lie they were told to tell. Why? Well, because it’s just so much harder to justify having done something that conflicts with your own sense of being ‘an honest person’ for a mere pittance. If you get more money, you can tell yourself: ‘Yeah, I lied, but I got well paid! It was justified.’ But for one dollar? That’s not a good enough reason to lie, so what you were saying must have been true in the first place, right?
F. Emotional factors influence how we vote for our politicians much more than our careful and logical appraisal of their policies, according to Drew Westen, a professor of psychiatry and psychology. This may come as little surprise to you, but what about when we learn that our favored politician may be dishonest? Do we take the trouble to really find out what they are supposed to have done, and so possibly have to change our opinions (and our vote), or do we experience that nasty cognitive dissonance and so seek to keep our minds comfortable at the possible cost of truth?
G. Cognitive dissonance is essentially a matter of commitment to the choices one has made, and the ongoing need to satisfactorily justify that commitment, even in the face of convincing but conflicting evidence. This is why it can take a long time to leave a cult or an abusive relationship – or even to stop smoking. Life’s commitments, whether to a job, a social cause, or a romantic partner, require heavy emotional investment, and so carry significant emotional risks. If people didn’t keep to their commitments, they would experience uncomfortable emotional tension. In a way, it makes sense that our brains should be hard-wired for monitoring and justifying our choices and actions – so as to avoid too much truth breaking in at once and overwhelming us.
H. I guess we can’t really develop unless we start to get a grip and have some personal honesty about what really motivates us. This is part of genuine maturity. If I know I am being lazy, and can admit it to myself, that at least is a first step to correcting it. If, however, I tell myself it’s more sensible to wait before vacuuming, then I can go around with a comfortable self concept of ‘being sensible’ while my filthy carpets and laziness remain unchanged. Cognitive dissonance can actually help me mature, if I can bring myself, first, to notice it (making it conscious) and second, to be more open to the message it brings me, in spite of the discomfort. As dissonance increases, providing I do not run away into self-justification, I can get a clearer and clearer sense of what has changed, and what I need to do about it. And then I can remember what Darwin had to say about who will survive…
Questions 1–13
Reading Passage 1 has eight paragraphs, A–H. Choose the most suitable headings for these paragraphs from the list of ten headings below. Write the appropriate number i–x in the text boxes 26–33. There are more paragraph headings than paragraphs, so you will not use them all.
List of Headings
i. Leon Festinger: On being stood up by the aliens
ii. Dishonest politicians? Never!
iii. Mind manipulation: the true reason of strange behaviour
iv. You can’t handle the truth!
v. The catastrophe of 21st December
vi. Grow up—make cognitive dissonance work for you
vii. How many dollars would you take to tell a lie?
viii. Revealing mysteries: Darwin was right.
ix. Cognitive dissonance: who are you kidding?
x. The high cost of commitment exposes us to cognitive dissonance
1. Passage A
2. Passage B
3. Passage C
4. Passage D
5. Passage E
6. Passage F
7. Passage G
8. Passage H
Questions 9–13 Choose the correct letter, A, B or C Write the correct letter in boxes 9–13 on your answer sheet.
9. After the space ship didn’t show up on the fateful day, the members of the flying saucer doomsday cult
A. didn’t want to admit the uncomfortable truth and still believed that the world would self-destruct.
B. were embarrassed and humiliated because of their failure.
C. wanted media attention to say that they had saved the planet.
10. The main reason why people fight cognitive dissonance is
A. a desire to reduce inner tension.
B. people’s unwillingness to accept their mistakes.
C. wish to avoid the awkward feeling of lying without a good reason.
11. During the experiment, people who were telling lies were more likely to claim that they believed in the lie if
A. they were paid less.
B. they were paid more.
C. they felt uncomfortable lying.
12. Commitment to the choices someone has made, and the ongoing need to justify that commitment despite the conflicting evidence, can be explained by the fact that
A. it causes uncomfortable emotional tension.
B. commitments require heavy emotional investment.
C. our brain always justifies our choices.
13. The major part of genuine maturity is the ability of
A. sensible reasoning.
B. disregarding cognitive dissonance
C. being honest with yourself.
14. According to the text, which of the situations below is NOT an example of cognitive dissonance?
A. A man learns that his favourite politician is dishonest but continues to vote for him.
B. A woman doesn’t want to vacuum but convinces herself that otherwise her carpet will remain filthy and finally does it.
C. A woman has been dating her boyfriend for five years. Everyone tells her that it’s an abusive relationship because he often beats and humiliates her but she
Reading Passage 2
Tools for Ancient Writing
{A}With time, the record-keepers developed systematized symbols from their drawings. These symbols represented words and sentences, but were easier and faster to draw and universally recognized for meaning. The discovery of clay made portable records possible (you can't carry a cave wall around with you). Early merchants used clay tokens with pictographs to record the quantities of materials traded or shipped. These tokens date back to about 8,500 B.C. With the high volume and the repetition inherent in record keeping, pictographs evolved and slowly lost their picture detail. They became abstract-figures representing sounds in spoken communication. The alphabet replaced pictographs between 1700 and 1500 B.C. in the Sinaitic world. The current Hebrew alphabet and writing became popular around 600 B.C. About 400 B.C. the Greek alphabet was developed. Greek was the first script written from left to right. From Greek followed the Byzantine and the Roman (later Latin) writings. In the beginning, all writing systems had only uppercase letters, when the writing instruments were refined enough for detailed faces, lowercase was used as well (around 600 A.D.)
{B} The earliest means of writing that approached pen and paper as we know them today was developed by the Greeks. They employed a writing stylus, made of metal, bone or ivory, to place marks upon wax-coated tablets. The tablets are made in hinged pairs, closed to protect the scribe's notes. The first examples of handwriting (purely text messages made by hand) originated in Greece. The Grecian scholar, Cadmus invented the written letter - text messages on paper sent from one individual to another.
{C} Writing was advancing beyond chiseling pictures into stone or wedging pictographs into wet clay. The Chinese invented and perfected 'Indian Ink'. Originally designed for blacking the surfaces of raised stone-carved hieroglyphics, the ink was a mixture of soot from pine smoke and lamp oil mixed with the gelatin of donkey skin and musk. The ink invented by the Chinese philosopher, Tien-Lcheu (2697 B.C.), became common by the year 1200 B.C. Other cultures developed inks using the natural dyes and colors derived from berries, plants and minerals. In early writings, different colored inks had ritual meaning attached to each color.
{D} The invention of inks paralleled the introduction of paper. The early Egyptians, Romans, Greeks and Hebrews, used papyrus and parchment papers. One of the oldest pieces of writing on papyrus known to us today is the Egyptian "Prisse Papyrus" which dates back to 2000 B.C. The Romans created a reed-pen perfect for parchment and ink, from the hollow tubular-stems of marsh grasses, especially from the jointed bamboo plant. They converted bamboo stems into a primitive form of fountain pen. They cut one end into the form of a pen nib or point. A writing fluid or ink filled the stem, squeezing the reed forced fluid to the nib {E} By 400 A.D. a stable form of ink developed, a composite of iron-salts, nutgalls and gum, the basic formula, which was to remain in use for centuries. Its color when first applied to paper was a bluish-black, rapidly turning into a darker black and then over the years fading to the familiar dull brown color commonly seen in old documents. Wood-fiber paper was invented in China in 105 A.D. but it only became known about (due to Chinese secrecy) in Japan around 700 A.D. and brought to Spain by the Arabs in 711 A.D. Paper was not widely used throughout Europe until paper mills were built in the late 14th century
{F} The writing instrument that dominated for the longest period in history (over one-thousand years) was the quill pen. Introduced around 700 A.D., the quill is a pen made from a bird feather. The strongest quills were those taken from living birds in the spring from the five outer left wing feathers. The left wing was favored because the feathers curved outward and away when used by a right-handed writer. Goose feathers were most common; swan feathers were of a premium grade being scarcer and more expensive. For making fine lines, crow feathers were the best, and then came the feathers of the eagle, owl, hawk and turkey.
{G} There were also disadvantages associated with the use of quill pens, including a lengthy preparation time. The early European writing parchments made from animal skins, required much scraping and cleaning. A lead and a ruler made margins. To sharpen the quill, the writer needed a special knife (origins of the term "pen-knife".) Beneath the writer's high-top desk was a coal stove, used to dry the ink as fast as possible. H Plant-fiber paper became the primary medium for writing after another dramatic invention took place: Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with replaceable wooden or metal letters in 1436. Simpler kinds of printing e.g. stamps with names, used much earlier in China, did not find their way to Europe. During the centuries, many newer printing technologies were developed based on Gutenberg's printing machine e.g. offset printing.
{I} Articles written by hand had resembled printed letters until scholars began to change the form of writing, using capitals and small letters, writing with more of a slant and connecting letters. Gradually writing became more suitable to the speed the new writing instruments permitted. The credit of inventing Italian 'running hand' or cursive handwriting with its Roman capitals and small letters, goes to Aldus Manutius of Venice, who departed from the old set forms in 1495 A.D. By the end of the 16th century, the old Roman capitals and Greek letterforms transformed into the twenty-six alphabet letters we know today, both for upper and lower-case letters. When writers had both better inks and paper, and handwriting had developed into both an art form and an everyday occurrence, man's inventive nature once again turned to improving the writing instrument, leading to the development of the modern fountain pens.
Questions 16-18 Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, D, E ? Write your answers in boxes 17-18 on your answer sheet.
Question 16-17 What two features do record retention possess in nature?
(A) Easier and faster
(B) Capaciousness
(C) portable
(D) convenient
(E) Iterance
Question 18 What hurt the technique of producing wooden paper from popularity for a long time?
(A) Scarcity
(B) Complexity
(C) Confidentiality by the inventors
(D) High cost Questions
Question19-25. The reading Passage has eleven paragraphs A-I. Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-1, in boxes 31-37 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
(19) the working principle of the primitive pens made of plant stems
(20) a writing tool commonly implemented for the longest time
(21) liquid for writing firstly devised by Chinese
(20) majuscule scripts as the unique written form originally
(22) the original invention of today's correspondence
(23) the mention of two basic writing instruments being invented coordinately
(24) a design to safeguard the written content
Questions 25-26 Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
(25) What makes it not so convenient to use the quill pens?
(26) When did one more breakthrough occur following the popularity of paper of plant fibers?
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