The introduction of Christianity to the northern realms of Western Europe did not eliminate the Viking way of life in its entirety. It obviously quelled the more pagan practices, yet it is remarkable that saga literature, taken as a whole, did remain relatively unaffected by Christian norms. One may be tempted to suspect this was the result of an exceptionally faithful and tenacious tradition from the saga age. Vikings have always been portrayed as stubborn, determined and vigorous people—that their earlier ways of life should have survived the onset of Christianity it not surprising.
Questions 28-35
Classify the following descriptions as referring to
The Nydam shipN
The Gokstad shipG
The Ladby shipL
The Oseberg shipO
Write the appropriate letters in boxes 28-35 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any answer more than once.
28. was probably not used for long ocean voyages.
29. had completed rotted away, leaving only an outline.
30. was probably used by a lady of high rank.
31. had warriors, shields still attached to its sides.
32. contained the remains of dogs.
33. had a mast about 42 ft high.
34. shows the beginning of the evolution of Viking ships from those meant for both trading and warfare to those used exclusively as warships.
35. provides evidence that the Vikings enjoyed board games.
Questions 36-40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet write
YES if the statement agrees with the information
NO if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this in the passage
36. The only evidence for ship burial is archeological.
37. Ships pervaded all aspects of Viking culture.
38. The Norse sagas give the locations of ship burials.
39. The Vikings stopped the practice of ship burial when they became Christians.
40. The buried ships found so far are intact.
Academic Reading Test 7
INTERNATIONAL ENGLISH LANGUAGETESTING SYSTEM
ACADEMIC READING
TEST 7
TIME ALLOWED:
NUMBER OF QUESTIONS:
1 hour40
Instructions
ALL ANSWERS MUST BE SRITTEN ON THE ANSWER SHEET
The test is divided as follows
Reading Passage 1 Questions 1-14
Reading Passage 2 Questions 15-25
Reading Passage 3 Questions 26-40
Start at the beginning of the test and work through it. You should answer all the questions. If you cannot do a particular question leave it and go on to the next. You can return to it later.
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14, which are based on Reading Passage 1.
Psychological Experiments on the Internet
In the last few years, it has become possible to conduct meaningful behavioral research via the Internet. As of June 17, 1998, there were 35 Internet experiments and surveys on the American Psychological Society list of Psychological Research on the Net. By May 11, 1999, this figure had grown to 65, suggesting a growth rate of about 100% per year. The experiments listed on the APS Web site ranged from 24 in social psychology, through 13 in cognitive psychology, eight in sensation/perception psychology, 2 in emotions, and one in general psychology.
Early pioneers of Internet research soon learned that it was not only possible to conduct research this way, but that it was also feasible to collect large samples of high-quality data in a short period of time. One advantage of Web-based research is the ease with which another researcher can see exactly what the participants experienced and also learn how the experimenter carried it out.
Because the Internet provides a means of reaching large and diverse samples, it seems ideally suited for the purposes of psychological research. Moreover, advanced computer techniques are now available that allow for greater control of Internet experiments. These include the dynamic creation and display of graphics, randomization and timing in experiments such as those in cognitive experimental psychology. In 1995, several developments (Java, JavaScript, HTML 2 with forms) combined to facilitate Web research. Psychologists now agree that experiments that were traditionally done by paper-and-pencil methods can be easily conducted using the technique of forms available in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language).
Whereas laboratory studies typically use a small, homogeneous sample tested in controlled conditions, the Internet study typically uses a large, heterogeneous sample tested in less well-controlled conditions. The trend emerging from the early research on this problem is that Internet studies yield the same conclusions as studies done in the lab. Indeed, some psychologists argue that one should be more skeptical of traditional laboratory research than of Web-based research, because of certain problems inherent in traditional research. For instance, because large and diverse samples are obtained from the Web, one can separately analyze a research question in each demographic sub-sample, to ensure that conclusions that are found with 19-year-old college students also hold good for other demographic groups.
An important approach to validity is the use of criterion groups. For example, a test of mental illness should distinguish people who are patients in mental institutions from those who work there. Natural criterion groups exist in the form of subscribers to contrasting newsgroups on the Web. People who choose to join different groups should differ systematically in specific aspects of their personalities.
An additional advantage is that the Internet makes an experiment available to people from all parts of the world. Pagani and Lombardi took advantage of this new opportunity to conduct a cross-cultural examination of perceptions of the expression of surprise depicted in schematic faces. By manipulating features in schematic faces, they were able to change judgments of the degree of surprise. For people of all cultures, a general expansion of the features of the upper face produced higher judgments of degree of surprise. Interestingly, there were differences in judgment that are correlated with the culture or region of the participants. North Americans and North Europeans gave very similar judgments, but these differed from those of from Asians, who appeared to give relatively more weight to the eyes than the eyebrows. Southern Europeans gave results that are intermediate between those of Asians and North Europeans.
Mueller, Jacobsen and Schwarzer have asked if experiences in controlling a computer are correlated with greater self-efficacy. Perhaps people who learn that by following a scheme they can control a computer also learn that they can control other aspects of their lives. The Internet is a good place to study people who either have or have not learned to program, according to Mueller et al. Besides, the Internet also allows one to collect large samples in which small correlations can be detected, they found.
Questions 1-2
According to the information in the reading passage, select the most appropriate of the given options (A-D). Write the appropriate letter for each question in boxes 1-2 on your answer sheet.
1. Psychologists have found that the Internet...
A is inferior to the laboratory for research purposes
B enables them to expand the scope of their research
C helps people gain control over their lives
D knits together the international psychology community
2. Criterion groups formed on the Web....
A help psychologists identify personality types
B provide clues to the causes of mental illness
C have never been studied by psychologists before
D are usually mixtures of different types of people
Questions 3-8
In questions 3-8, complete each sentence by choosing one of the possible endings from the list below which best reflects the information in the reading passage. Write the corresponding letter (A-K) for each question in boxes 3-8 on your answer sheet. Note that there are more choices than spaces, so you will not use all of the choices.
The first one has been done for you as an example.
Example Answer
The American Psychological Society's Net list...H
3 Behavioral research via the Internet.....
4 The Internet makes it easy...
5 Advanced computer techniques...
6 Internet studies show the same results...
7 Cultural differences were found...
8 The degree of computer control may ....
List of possible endings
A in perceptions of the expression of surprise
B among groups surveyed on the Web
C is currently doubling every year
D have made paper-and-pencil techniques obsolete
E to collect large samples of data
F as those done in the lab
G is becoming meaningful in recent years
H show little interest in general psychology
I give researchers better control over Internet experiments
J the work of other psychologists
K indicate the level of self-efficacy
Questions 9-13
The paragraph below is a summary of the reading passage. Complete the summary by choosing NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage to fill each space. Write your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.
Example Answer
it has become possible to conduct meaningful behavioral
research...
One difference between laboratory studies and Internet research is that the latter uses .......9.......data. As a result, some psychologists are becoming more.......10.......about the traditional approach to psychological experimentation. They say that the Internet makes it easier to make comparisons between........11........groups. Pagani and Lombardi tested reactions to expressions of surprise using computer-created........12.........Mueller, Jacobsen and Schwarzer found that the large amount of information yielded by the Internet enabled them to identify........13........
Question 14
In your view, the writer of the reading passage thinks that psychologists..........
A are wary of the Internet as a research tool
B will abandon traditional research methods
C see great potential for their work in the Internet
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15-25 which are based on Reading passage 2.
Ice Fishing for Space Clues
Deep inside a glacier at the South Pole, the world's most unconventional telescope is facilitating a new kind of astronomy based not on light but on neutrinos, ghostly particles that emerge from some of the most violent phenomena in the universe — supernovas and quasars. The Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array—AMANDA for short—has no mirror, no eyepiece, and no dome. Instead, it consists of about 700 bowling-ball-sized glass sensors that pick up the faint blue flashes given off when neutrinos collide with atoms more than a mile down in the Antarctic ice.
With no electrical charge and little mass, neutrinos zip through the universe largely unimpeded by gravity or magnetic fields, passing blithely through stars, planets, and your body. But one time in a billion a passing neutrino will strike a proton. The collision ejects a heavy electron, or muon, that travels in the same direction as the neutrino and leaves a trail of blue light as it sheds energy, much like a meteorite burning up in the atmosphere. AMANDA's photoreceptors absorb that telltale blue flash, turning the light into a measurable and meaningful electrical signal. A computer then compares the signals from several photoreceptors to calculate the path of the light streak in three dimensions. From that, scientists have a good idea of the neutrino's point of origin.
"The muon tells us the direction the neutrino came from, and then we have a telescope, because you can trace the neutrino back up into the sky," says Francis Halzen, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Because neutrinos barely interact with matter, they reach Earth still carrying unadulterated information about the cosmic events that produced them. Photons of visible light, in contrast, can get absorbed, obscured, and altered by intervening matter on its way to Earth. "Photons are very gregarious. They interact with everything they come into contact with on their way to Earth. Only neutrinos can bring us unvarnished information," said Robert Morse, Halzen's colleague at Wisconsin and AMANDA's project leader.
Just finding neutrinos is not good enough—it's the rare, very energetic ones that Morse and Halzen are after. But Earth is constantly showered with a far greater abundance of low-energy neutrinos generated in the sun or created when cosmic rays strike atoms in the upper atmosphere. Scientists have built giant underground water tanks to detect these solar neutrinos. But even the largest of these neutrino observatories—the 12.5-million-gallon Super Kamiokande in Japan—is too small to catch the few high-energy neutrinos.
Since it is prohibitively expensive to build a sufficiently large tank of water, physicists Halzen and Morse pursued a suggestion from a glaciologist: Look for neutrinos in the vast expanses of ultra-clear ice in Antarctica. At depths greater than about three-quarters of a mile, the pressure inside the glaciers squeezes out air bubbles, creating an extremely transparent medium in which a photon of light travels an average of 700 feet before being absorbed. Down there, the ice is bathed in a continuous blue glow from millions of sparking muons. The primary task of the AMANDA sensors is to study this glow and track how the muons travel through the ice. All the downward-moving muons come from low-energy neutrinos created in the atmosphere above the South Pole. The interesting ones will be those moving upward, which are mostly more energetic particles originating from the sun or from somewhere far beyond the solar system. The intensity of each blue flash reveals the energy of the neutrino that produced it.
So far, AMANDA has successfully detected and tracked the background of low-energy neutrinos from the sun. To pick up the long-sought high-energy particles from intergalactic space, Morse and his Wisconsin colleagues are adding 5,000 sensors to transform AMANDA into IceCube. At 3,000 feet in each dimension, IceCube will be the largest single scientific instrument ever built. Finding even a handful of neutrinos from quasars and their ilk could allow the first direct measurement of the massive, galaxy-shaping, star-swallowing "black holes" believed to lieat the center of these celestial bodies. "The hope is that a particle that is almost nothing may tell us everything about the universe," says Halzen.
