READING (38) BUILDING SKILLS CAMBRIDGE PREPARATION FOR THE TOEFL® IBT TEST

 

CAMBRIDGE PREPARATION FOR THE TOEFL® IBT TEST BUILDING SKILLS READING (38)

 

EXERCISE R23 Identifying summary ideas Each of the passages below is followed by an introductory sentence that begins a brief summary of the passage. Choose the letters of the three statements that express the most important ideas in the passage. Incorrect choices express minor details or are not presented in the passage. In 1836, crews building a canal from Washington, D.C., to the Ohio River found a major obstacle in their path: a long, steep crest of mountains known as Paw Paw Ridge. Various options for surmounting this hurdle were proposed. One idea, to build directly over the sheer cliffs, proved impractical. Another option was to create a series of aqueducts to skirt around the difficult terrain. This idea was rejected because of the anticipated time and expense. The company's project engineer, Lee Montgomery, finally decided to tunnel through the ridge, a distance of about one kilometer. This was expected to take only two years. Perhaps this was optimistic on his part, given that power drills and dynamite had not yet been invented. Montgomery had invested much of his own money in the project and was keen to see the deadlines met. However, the construction crews found that the ridge was composed of soft shale, which frequently caved in and hampered progress. Other problems followed. Cholera, aided by the unsanitary living conditions, swept through the shantytowns, claiming many lives. At one point the laborers could not be paid. The major obstacle for the completion of the Paw Paw Canal was the Paw Paw Ridge. A.            The Paw Paw Canal is named after the mountain ridge that had to be traversed. B.             Several ideas for overcoming the Paw Paw Ridge Canal were considered. C.            It was decided that a one-kilometer tunnel was the best way to overcome the barrier. D.            Power drills and dynamite were not available during the time that the canal was being built. E.            The project was beset with financial setbacks, disease, and unexpected terrain characteristics. F.             Unpaid laborers held protests that led to the loss of lives.   You should choose B because the first paragraph states and discusses ideas that were considered for overcoming the obstacle, C because it concerns the decision on how the ridge was to be dealt with, and E because these were obstacles encountered during the tunneling. A might be inferred but is not stated as fact. D is a detail. The laborers were unpaid at one point, but there is no mention of their possible response as stated in F.   1 A recent survey found that nine out of ten drivers admit to having felt intense anger toward other drivers at some time. "Road rage" seems to be on the rise, and several explanations for this have been presented. First, there are more cars today competing for road space. People also are far more subject to time constraints. A person who must meet a time deadline, but is caught in a tangle of traffic, may feel increasingly frustrated. Soon this stress may result in an outburst of road rage ranging anywhere from pounding on the car horn to getting out of the car and attacking another driver. Of the three major responses to stress which have evolved - fight, flight, or freeze - only one is available to the driver who is suddenly caught behind a dawdler in the fast lane. The car itself prohibits the driver from fleeing the situation or freezing in one place. The only stress response left is fight. Another explanation may be that people are not as courteous as they used to be. A person who is worried about getting to work on time, having a report ready for the afternoon mail, and running into the boss while coming into the office late may forget how to be polite. Other drivers become the enemy and the car, a weapon. Road rage has become a serious problem that is on the rise, A These days the roads are very congested. B Stress caused by the frustration of dealing with the traffic is a major reason for people to succumb to road rage. C The major responses to stress are fight, flight, or freeze. D The fight response is the only recourse for the driver who cannot flee nor freeze because of the situation the car puts him or her in. E The car is now a weapon and all other drivers are the enemy. F The stresses of modem-day living may cause people to forget courtesy and give in to road rage. 2 For a fossil to be found, a complicated series of steps must occur in sequence. The first is that the animal (or plant) must be buried quickly. Animals that die on the plains or in the mountains are soon found by scavengers, such as hyenas or ceratosaurs, and rapidly reduced to bone chips. Most animals that are fossilized are caught in a flash flood, or die in or near a river and are buried in a sand bar, or are caught in a sandstorm. If the current in the river is fairly strong, even those few animals that die in the water are soon torn apart and their bones scattered over acres of river bottom. It is estimated that perhaps one animal in a thousand is fossilized, likely a generous estimate. The second condition necessary for an animal to be fossilized is that it must be buried in a depositional area: that is, more and more layers of mud or gravel must be laid down over it. If the area is subject to erosion - and nearly all land surfaces are - the fossil will soon be washed out and destroyed. The third step is that this depositional area must at some time become an erosional area, so that wind and water wear it down and uncover the buried remains. The fourth step necessary for the recovery of a fossil is that when the fossil is uncovered, someone knowledgeable has to walk along that ridge, or study the face of that cliff, and locate the fossil and recover it. The time frame for this recovery varies, but it is necessarily short. The fossil is protected, but also invisible, until it is exposed. As soon as it is exposed, wind and water attack it, and they can destroy it quickly. The best fossils are found when someone spots an exposed bone that turns out to be part of a buried skeleton and is therefore still well preserved. But many fine fossils have been washed away because no one happened to see them when they were first exposed, or the people who saw them didn't realize what they were seeing. The conditions that have to be met in order for a fossil to be found are relatively rate. A Animals that die are quickly eaten by scavengers and reduced to bone chips within a short period of time. B For an animal or a plant to become fossilized, it must be buried before other animals or the elements destroy the body. C A fossilized animal must first be covered by layers of soil for a length of time and then be uncovered by erosional forces. D A fossil must be protected from the elements for as long as it is buried. E The best fossils are those that have not been washed away and scattered before they are found. F An exposed fossil needs to be found and recognized by someone for what it is before it is destroyed by the elements. 3 One of the major hazards for deep-sea divers is decompression sickness (DCS), more commonly known as "the bends." This sometimes fatal condition is caused by gas bubbles forming in the bloodstream if the diver ascends too rapidly. These bubbles travel in the blood and may become lodged anyplace in the body. Most commonly, they get trapped in joints, particularly the spine. The resulting pain causes the diver to bend over, hence the name of the condition. The reason gas bubbles form has to do with the saturation and desaturation of body tissues with various gases. At increasingly great depths, the diver breathes air at higher pressures. This results in an increased quantity of air being dissolved in the bloodstream. Different body tissues are saturated with different gases from the air at different rates. When the diver rises to the surface, oxygen is used by the body tissues, carbon dioxide is released quickly, and nitrogen remains. The nitrogen needs to be released gradually from the bloodstream and body tissues. If nitrogen is subjected to a too rapid pressure reduction, it forms bubbles. Not only do these bubbles collect in joints, but they also become trapped in capillaries. This prevents blood and oxygen from supplying necessary nutrients to body tissues, which consequently begin to die. Saturation and desaturation are affected by various factors such as the depth, length of time, and amount of exertion under water. There are other factors that must be taken into account when determining a safe ascent rate. These include the diver's sex and body build, the number of dives undertaken within the previous 12 hours, the time spent at the dive location before the dive, and the composition of the respiration gas. Diving tables set guidelines based on statistical probabilities of getting the bends. However, someone who stays within the suggested limits can still get DCS. Since even a mild case can leave a diver permanently disabled, it is imperative that divers recognize the symptoms. Unfortunately, such symptoms can be simitar to those of the flu or a strained muscle, something that occurs frequently when divers are handling heavy equipment, using improperly fitted gear, or engaging in unaccustomed activity. Because even professionals can have difficulty diagnosing DCS, the most reliable test is to recompress the patient and see whether the symptoms abate. Decompression sickness (DCS) is a sometimes fatal condition that affects deep-sea divers. A DCS is the formation of gas bubbles in the bloodstream caused by the different saturation and desaturation rates of gases under pressure. B Most people are more familiar with the term "the bends," referring to the way a diver bends over in pain. C Body tissues die when nitrogen prevents blood and oxygen from bringing important nutrients. D Saturation and desaturation rates of gases are affected by factors that divers need to take into consideration. E DCS can be misdiagnosed as the flu. F The best way to diagnose DCS is to put the patient through recompression. 4 One of the most basic laws of economics is that nothing of value is free. Sometimes this is dubbed "tanstaafl." The word tanstaafl is formed from the initials of the statement: "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." What this means is that everything that has value must be paid for in currency, labor, or by some other means. Not only do people have to pay for everything that has value, but governments do as well. Governments have a lot of expenditures - public buildings, roads, military, etc. - and to get the necessary money, they tax their citizens. Nobody likes to pay taxes, and history has shown that when taxes get too high, people eventually revolt and overthrow the offending government. To avoid raising taxes, a government must find another way to deal with the problem of getting money to meet its expenses. A case in point is the government of the Roman Empire. The Roman government taxed its citizens in order to pay for the expenses of running such a vast empire. It became apparent that if it raised taxes further, it risked provoking unrest. So it came up with the idea of clipping the denarius, a coin made of 94 percent silver. When the tax collectors brought in people's taxes paid in silver coins, the Roman treasury clipped, or shaved the edges off, the coins. The clippings were minted into new coins. For a time, this gave the government the money necessary for its budget. But it did not take the Roman people long to realize that some of their coins were missing silver. Therefore, they either refused to accept the clipped coins or charged more coins for their goods or services. In later centuries a system called reeding came into practice. A reeded coin has grooves along its edge making it easy to see whether or not clipping has taken place. But since the Roman government still needed money and clipping no longer served its purpose, the Roman treasury started melting down coins and reminting them with a mixture of base metal, such as copper. However, each time a coin was melted down and reminted with a base-metal mixture, the content of precious metal became less and that of base metal, more. When the Roman people realized that their money was being debased, they responded by hoarding coins. Whenever they got a good coin, one with a high percentage of silver in it, they kept it. They spent only bad coins, those with a low percentage of silver. This behavior is explained by Gresham's Law, which states: Bad money drives good money out of circulation. When debasement happens, money loses its value and prices inevitably rise. The Roman government tried various ways of dealing with the economic problem of running their Empire. A The Roman officials understood the concept of tanstaafl - that nothing of value is free. B Like Roman people, the Roman government had expenses, which in the case of the Empire included building cities, maintaining roads, and keeping an army. C The Roman Treasury met expenditures by taxing citizens until further tax increases would have caused discontent. D The Roman currency was the denarius, which was composed of 94 percent silver. E By clipping silver from an old coin, the Treasury was able to mint new coins until the people became wise and the coins had to be reeded. F A further need for money caused the Roman Treasury to start the practice of minting coins that were debased.

ANSWER KEYS AND EXPLANATION