Section 1: Food of thought

A. THERE are not enough classrooms at the Msekeni primary school, so half the lessons take
place in the shade of yellow-blossomed acacia trees. Given this shortage, it might seem odd
that one of the school‘s purpose-built classrooms has been emptied of pupils and turned into a
storeroom for sacks of grain. But it makes sense. Food matters more than shelter.

B. Msekeni is in one of the poorer parts of Malawi, a landlocked southern African country of
exceptional beauty and great poverty. No war lays waste Malawi, nor is the land unusually
crowded or infertile, but Malawians still have trouble finding enough to eat. Half of the children
under five are underfed to the point of stunting. Hunger blights most aspects of Malawian life,
so the country is as good a place as any to investigate how nutrition affects development, and
vice versa.

C. The headmaster at Msekeni, Bernard Kumanda, has strong views on the subject. He thinks
food is a priceless teaching aid. Since 1999, his pupils have received free school lunches.
Donors such as the World Food Programme (WFP) provide the food: those sacks of grain
(mostly mixed maize and soyabean flour, enriched with vitamin A) in that converted classroom.
Local volunteers do the cooking – turning the dry ingredients into a bland but nutritious slop,
and spooning it out on to plastic plates. The children line up in large crowds, cheerfully singing
a song called ―We are getting porridge‖.

D. When the school‘s feeding programme was introduced, enrolment at Msekeni doubled.
Some of the new pupils had switched from nearby schools that did not give out free porridge,
but most were children whose families had previously kept them at home to work. These
families were so poor that the long-term benefits of education seemed unattractive when set
against the short-term gain of sending children out to gather firewood or help in the fields. One
plate of porridge a day completely altered the calculation. A child fed at school will not howl
so plaintively for food at home. Girls, who are more likely than boys to be kept out of school,
are given extra snacks to take home.

E. When a school takes in a horde of extra students from the poorest homes, you would expect
standards to drop. Anywhere in the world, poor kids tend to perform worse than their better-
off classmates. When the influx of new pupils is not accompanied by any increase in the
number of teachers, as was the case at Msekeni, you would expect standards to fall even further.
But they have not. Pass rates at Msekeni improved dramatically, from 30% to 85%. Although
this was an exceptional example, the nationwide results of school feeding
programmes were still pretty good. On average, after a Malawian school started handing out
free food it attracted 38% more girls and 24% more boys. The pass rate for boys stayed about
the same, while for girls it improved by 9.5%.

F. Better nutrition makes for brighter children. Most immediately, well-fed children find it
easier to concentrate. It is hard to focus the mind on long division when your stomach is
screaming for food. Mr. Kumanda says that it used to be easy to spot the kids who were really
undernourished. ―They were the ones who stared into space and didn‘t respond when you
asked them questions,‖ he says. More crucially, though, more and better food helps brains grow
and develop. Like any other organ in the body, the brain needs nutrition
and exercise. But if it is starved of the necessary calories, proteins and micronutrients, it is
stunted, perhaps not as severely as a muscle would be, but stunted nonetheless. That is why
feeding children at schools works so well. And the fact that the effect of feeding was more
pronounced on girls than on boys gives a clue to who eats first in rural Malawian households.
It isn‘t the girls.

G. On a global scale, the good news is that people are eating better than ever before. Homo
sapiens has grown 50% bigger since the industrial revolution. Three centuries ago, chronic
malnutrition was more or less universal. Now, it is extremely rare in rich countries. In
developing countries, where most people live, plates and rice bowls are also fuller than ever
before. The proportion of children under five in the developing world who are malnourished to
the point of stunting fell from 39% in 1990 to 30% in 2000, says the World Health Organization
(WHO). In other places, the battle against hunger is steadily being won. Better nutrition is
making people cleverer and
more energetic, which will help them grow more prosperous. And when they eventually join
the ranks of the well off, they can start fretting about growing too fat.

Questions 1 – 7
The reading passage has seven paragraphs, A – G.
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A – G from the list below.
Write the correct number, i – xi, in boxes 1 – 7 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings

i Why better food helps students‘ learning ii A song for getting porridge
iii Surprising use of school premises
iv Global perspective v Brains can be starved
vi Surprising academics outcome
vii Girls are specially treated in the program
viii How food program is operated
ix How food program affects school attendance
x None of the usual reasons
xi How to maintain academic standard

1 Paragraph A
2 Paragraph B
3 Paragraph C
4 Paragraph D
5 Paragraph E
6 Paragraph F
7 Paragraph G

Questions 8 – 11
Complete the sentences below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A
NUMBER from the passage.
Write your answer in boxes 8 – 11 on your answer sheet.

8 ___________ are exclusively offered to girls in the feeding programme.

9 Instead of going to school, many children in poverty are sent to collect ___________ in the
fields.
10 The pass rate at Msekeni has risen to ___________ with the help of the feeding
programme.
11 Since the industrial revolution, the size of the modern human has grown by ___________.
Questions 12 – 13
Choose TWO letters, A – F.
Write your answers in boxes 12 and 13 on your answer sheet.
Which TWO of the following statements are true?
A Some children are taught in the open air.
B Malawi have trouble to feed its large population.
C No new staffs were recruited when attendance rose.
D Girls enjoy a higher status than boys in the family.
E Boys and girls experience the same improvement in the pass rate.
F Who has cooperated with WFP to provide grain to the school at Msekeni.

Section 2 : Water Filter

A. An ingenious invention is set to bring clean water to the third world, and while the science
may be cutting edge, the materials are extremely down to earth. A handful of clay, yesterday‘s
coffee grounds and some cow manure are the ingredients that could bring clean, safe drinking
water to much of the third world.

B. The simple new technology, developed by ANU materials scientist Mr. Tony Flynn, allows
water filters to be made from commonly available materials and fired on the ground using cow
manure as the source of heat, without the need for a kiln. The filters have been tested and shown
to remove common pathogens (disease-producing organisms) including E-coli. Unlike other
water filtering devices, the filters are simple and inexpensive to make. ‘They are very simple
to explain and demonstrate and can be made by anyone, anywhere,’ says Mr. Flynn. “They
don‘t require any western technology. All you need is terracotta clay, a compliant cow and a
match.”

C. The production of the filters is extremely simple. Take a handful of dry, crushed clay, mix
it with a handful of organic material, such as used tea leaves, coffee grounds or rice hulls, add
enough water to make a stiff biscuit-like mixture and form a cylindrical pot that has one end
closed, then dry it in the sun. According to Mr. Flynn, used coffee grounds have given the best
results to date. Next, surround the pots with straw; put them in a mound of cow manure, light
the straw and then top up the burning manure as required. In less than 60 minutes the filters are
finished. The walls of the finished pot should be about as thick as an adult‘s index. The
properties of cow manure are vital as the fuel can reach a temperature of 700 degrees in half
an hour and will be up to 950 degrees after another 20 to 30 minutes. The manure makes a good
fuel because it is very high in organic material that burns readily and quickly; the manure has
to be dry and is best used exactly as found in the field, there is no need to break it up or process
it any further.

D. “A potter‘s kiln is an expensive item and can could take up to four or five hours to get up to
800 degrees. It needs expensive or scarce fuel, such as gas or wood to heat it and experience to
run it. With no technology, no insulation and nothing other than a pile of cow manure and a
match, none of these restrictions apply,” Mr. Flynn says.

E. It is also helpful that, like terracotta clay and organic material, cow dung is freely available
across the developing world. “A cow is a natural fuel factory. My understanding is that cow
dung as a fuel would be pretty much the same wherever you would find it.” Just as using
manure as a fuel for domestic uses is not a new idea, the porosity of clay is something that
potters have known about for years, and something that as a former ceramics lecturer in the
ANU School of Art, Mr. Flynn is well aware of. The difference is that rather than viewing the
porous nature of the material as a problem -after all not many people want a pot that won‘t hold
water -his filters capitalize on this property.

F. Other commercial ceramic filters do exist, but, even if available, with prices starting at US$5
each, they are often outside the budgets of most people in the developing world. The filtration
process is simple, but effective. The basic principle is that there are passages through the filter
that are wide enough for water droplets to pass through, but too narrow for pathogens. Tests
with the deadly E-coli bacterium have seen the filters remove 94.6 to 99.8 percent of the
pathogen –well within safe level. Using only one filter it takes two hours to filter a litre of
water. The use of organic material, which burns away leaving cavities after firing, helps
produce the structure in which pathogens will become trapped. It overcomes the potential
problems of finer clays that may not let water through and also means that cracks are soon
halted. And like clay and cow dung, it is universally available.

G. The invention was born out of a World Vision project involving the Manatuto community
in East Timor. The charity wanted to help set up a small industry manufacturing water filters,
but initial research found the local clay to be too fine – a problem solved by the addition of
organic material. While the problems of producing a working ceramic filter in East Timor were
overcome, the solution was kiln-based and particular to that community‘s materials and
couldn‘t be applied elsewhere. Manure firing, with no requirement for a kiln, has made this
zero technology approach available anywhere it is needed. With all the components being
widely available, Mr. Flynn says there is no reason the technology couldn‘t be applied
throughout the developing world, and with no plans to patent his idea, there will be no legal
obstacles to it being adopted in any community that needs it. “Everyone has a right to clean
water, these filters have the potential to enable anyone in the world to drink water safely,” says
Mr. Flynn.

Questions 14-19
Complete the flow chart, using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading
Passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

Guide to Making Water Filters

Step one: combination of 14 …… and organic material, with sufficient 15……. to create a
thick mixture

sun dried
Step two: pack 16.….. around the cylinders
Place them in 17 ……

for firing (maximum temperature: 18 ……

filter being baked in under 19……
Questions 20-23
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 20-23 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage

20 It takes half an hour for the manure to reach 950 degrees.

21 Clay was initially found to be unsuitable for filter making.
22 Coffee grounds are twice as effective as other materials.
23 E-coli is the most difficult bacteria to combat.
Questions 24-26

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

Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.

24 When making the pot, the thickness of the wall

A is large enough to let the pathogens to pass.

B varied according to the temperature of the fuel.
C should be the same as an adult‘s forefinger.
D is not mentioned by Mr. Flynn.

25 What is true about the charity, it

A failed in searching the appropriate materials.

B thought a kiln is essential.
C found that the local clay are good enough.
D intended to build a filter production factory.

26 Mr. Flynn‘s design is purposely not being patented

A because he hopes it can be freely used around the world

B because he doesn‘t think the technology is perfect enough
C because there are some legal obstacles
D because the design has already been applied thoroughly

Section 3 : Love stories

“Love stories” are often associated – at least in the popular imagination – with fairy tales,
adolescent day dreams, Disney movies and other frivolous pastimes. For psychologists
developing taxonomies of affection and attachment, however, this is an area of rigorous
academic pursuit. Beginning in the early 1970s with the groundbreaking contributions of John
Alan Lee, researchers have developed classifications that they believe better characterise our
romantic predispositions. This involves examining not a single, universal, emotional
expression (“love”), but rather a series of divergent behaviours and narratives that each has an
individualised purpose, desired outcome and state of mind. Lee’s gritty methodology
painstakingly involved participants matching 170 typical romantic encounters (e.g., “The night
after I met X…”) with nearly 1500 possible reactions (“I could hardly get to sleep” or “I wrote
X a letter”). The patterns unknowingly expressed by respondents culminated in a taxonomy of
six distinct love “styles” that continue to inform research in the area forty years later.

The first of these styles – eros – is closely tied in with images of romantic love that are
promulgated in Western popular culture. Characteristic of this style is a passionate emotional
intensity, a strong physical magnetism – as if the two partners were literally being “pulled”
together – and a sense of inevitability about the relationship. A related but more frantic style
of love called mania involves an obsessive, compulsive attitude toward one’s partner. Vast
swings in mood from ecstasy to agony – dependent on the level of attention a person is
receiving from his or her partner – are typical of manic love.

Two styles were much more subdued, however. Storge is a quiet, companionate type of loving
– “love by evolution” rather than “love by revolution”, according to some theorists.
Relationships built on a foundation of platonic affection and caring are archetypal of storge.
When care is extended to a sacrificial level of doting, however, it becomes another style –
agape. In an agape relationship one partner becomes a “caretaker”, exalting the welfare of the
other above his or her own needs.

The final two styles of love seem to lack aspects of emotion and reciprocity altogether. The
ludus style envisions relationships primarily as a game in which it is best to “play the field” or
experience a diverse set of partners over time. Mutuallygratifying outcomes in relationships
are not considered necessary, and deception of a partner and lack of disclosure about one’s
activities are also typical. While Lee found that college students in his study overwhelmingly
disagreed with the tenets of this style, substantial numbers of them acted in a typically ludic
style while dating, a finding that proves correct the deceit inherent in ludus. Pragma lovers also
downplayed emotive aspects of relationships but favoured practical, sensible connections.
Successful arranged marriages are a great example of pragma, in that the couple decide to make
the relationship work; but anyone who seeks an ideal partner with a shopping list of necessary
attributes (high salary, same religion, etc.) fits the classification.

Robert J. Sternberg’s contemporary research on love stories has elaborated on how these
narratives determine the shape of our relationships and our lives. Sternberg and others have
proposed and tested the theory of love as a story, “whereby the interaction of our personal
attributes with the environment – which we in part create – leads to the development of stories
about love that we then seek to fulfil, to the extent possible, in our lives.” Sternberg’s taxonomy
of love stories numbers far more, at twenty-six, than Lee’s taxonomy of love styles, but as
Sternberg himself admits there is plenty of overlap. The seventh story, Game, coincides with
ludus, for example, while the nineteenth story, Sacrifice, fits neatly on top of agape.

Sternberg’s research demonstrates that we may have predilections toward multiple love stories,
each represented in a mental hierarchy and varying in weight in terms of their personal
significance. This explains the frustration many of us experience when comparing potential
partners. One person often fulfils some expected narratives – such as a need for mystery and
fantasy – while lacking the ability to meet the demands of others (which may lie in direct
contradiction). It is also the case that stories have varying abilities to adapt to a given cultural
milieu and its respective demands. Love stories are, therefore, interactive and adaptive
phenomena in our lives rather than rigid prescriptions.

Steinberg also explores how our love stories interact with the love stories of our partners. What
happens when someone who sees love as art collides with someone who sees love as business?
Can a Sewing story (love is what you make it) co-exist with a Theatre story (love is a script
with predictable acts, scenes and lines)? Certainly, it is clear that we look for partners with love
stories that complement and are compatible with our own narratives. But they do not have to
be an identical match. Someone who sees love as mystery and art, for example, might locate
that mystery better in a partner who views love through a lens of business and humour. Not all
love stories, however, are equally well predisposed to relationship longevity; stories that view
love as a game, as a kind of surveillance or as an addiction are all unlikely to prove durable.

Research on love stories continues apace. Defying the myth that rigorous science and the
romantic persuasions of ordinary people are incompatible, this research demonstrates that good
psychology can clarify and comment on the way we give affection and form attachments.

Questions 27–34
Look at the following statements (Questions 27–34) and the list of styles in the box below.
Match each statement with the correct term, A–F.
Write the correct letter, A–F, in boxes 27–34 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.

27 My most important concern is that my partner is happy.

28 I enjoy having many romantic partners.
29 I feel that my partner and I were always going to end up together.
30 I want to be friends first and then let romance develop later.
31 I always feel either very excited or absolutely miserable about my relationship.
32 I prefer to keep many aspects of my love life to myself.
33 When I am in love, that is all I can think about.
34 I know before I meet someone what qualities I need in a partner.
List of Love Styles
A Eros
B Mania
C Storge
D Agape
E Ludus
F Pragma
Questions 35–40
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 35–40 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 say what the writer thinks about this
35 People’s notions of love affect their relationships, rather than vice versa.
36 Some of our love stories are more important to us than others.
37 Our love stories can change to meet the needs of particular social environments.
38 We look for romantic partners with a love story just like our own.
39 The most successful partners have matching love stories.
40 No love story is more suited to a long relationship than any other.

1 iii 14 clay 27. D

2x 15 water 28. E
3 viii 16 straw 29. A
17 cow
4 ix 30. C
manure
18 950
5 vi 31. B
degrees
6i 19 60 minutes 32. E
7 iv 20 . FALSE 33. B
8 extra
21 TRUE 34. F
snacks
22 NOT
9 firewood 35. YES
GIVEN
10 85% 23 FALSE 36. YES
11 50% 24 C 37. YES
12 A 25 D 38. NO
39. NOT
13 C 26 A
GIVEN
40. NO