2023 READING PRACTICE 22

READING PASSAGE 1
New Zealand Seaweed
Call us not weeds; we are flowers of the sea.
Section A
Seaweed is a particularly nutritious food, which absorbs and concentrates traces of a wide variety of
minerals necessary to the body’s health. Many elements may occur in seaweed – aluminium, barium,
calcium, chlorine, copper, iodine and iron, to name but a few – traces normally produced by erosion
and carried to the seaweed beds by river and sea currents. Seaweeds are also rich in vitamins: indeed,
Eskimos obtain a high proportion of their bodily requirements of vitamin C from the seaweeds they
eat.
The nutritive value of seaweed has long been recognised. For instance, there is a remarkably low
incidence of goitre amongst the Japanese, and for that matter, amongst our own Maori people, who
have always eaten seaweeds, and this may well be attributed to the high iodine content of this food.
Research into old Maori eating customs shows that jellies were made using seaweeds, fresh fruit and
nuts, fuchsia and tutu berries, cape gooseberries, and many other fruits which either grew here
naturally or were sown from seeds brought by settlers and explorers.
Section B
New Zealand lays claim to approximately 700 species of seaweed, some of which have no
representation outside this country. Of several species grown worldwide, New Zealand also has a
particularly large share. For example, it is estimated that New Zealand has some 30 species
of Gigartina, a close relative of carrageen or Irish moss. These are often referred to as the New
Zealand carrageens. The gel-forming substance called agar which can be extracted from this species
gives them great commercial application in seameal, from which seameal custard is made, and in
cough mixture, confectionery, cosmetics, the canning, paint and leather industries, the manufacture
of duplicating pads, and in toothpaste. In fact, during World War II, New Zealand Gigartina were
sent to Australia to be used in toothpaste.
Section C
Yet although New Zealand has so much of the commercially profitable red seaweeds, several of which
are a source of agar (Pterocladia, Gelidium, Chondrus, Gigartina), before 1940 relatively little use
was made of them. New Zealand used to import the Northern Hemisphere Irish moss (Chondrus
crispus) from England and ready-made agar from Japan. Although distribution of the Gigartina is
confined to certain areas according to species, it is only on the east coast of the North Island that its
occurrence is rare. And even then, the east coast, and the area around Hokiangna, have a

1|Page
2023 READING PRACTICE 22

considerable supply of the two species of Pterocladia from which agar is also available. Happily, New
Zealand-made agar is now obtainable in health food shops.
Section D
Seaweeds are divided into three classes determined by colour – red, brown and green – and each
tends to live in a specific location. However, except for the unmistakable sea lettuce (Ulva), few are
totally one colour; and especially when dry, some species can change colour quite significantly – a
brown one may turn quite black, or a red one appear black, brown, pink or purple.
Identification is nevertheless facilitated by the fact that the factors which determine where a seaweed
will grow are quite precise, and they therefore tend to occur in very well-defined zones. Although
there are exceptions, the green seaweeds are mainly shallow-water algae; the browns belong to
medium depths, and the reds are plants of the deeper water. Flat rock surfaces near mid-level tides
are the most usual habitat of sea bombs, Venus’ necklace and most brown seaweeds. This is also the
location of the purple laver or Maori karengo, which looks rather like a reddish-purple lettuce. Deep-
water rocks on open coasts, exposed only at very low tide, are usually the site of bull kelp, strap weeds
and similar tough specimens. Those species able to resist long periods of exposure to the sun and air
are usually found on the upper shore, while those less able to stand such exposure occur nearer to or
below the low-water mark. Radiation from the sun, the temperature level, and the length of time
immersed all play a part in the zoning of seaweeds.
Section E
Propagation of seaweeds occurs by spores, or by fertilisation of egg cells. None have roots in the usual
sense; few have leaves, and none have flowers, fruits or seeds. The plants absorb their nourishment
through their fronds when they are surrounded by water: the base or “holdfast” of seaweeds is purely
an attaching organ, not an absorbing one.
Section F
Some of the large seaweeds maintain buoyancy with air-filled floats; others, such as bull kelp, have
large cells filled with air. Some, which spend a good part of their time exposed to the air, often reduce
dehydration either by having swollen stems that contain water, or they may (like Venus’ necklace)
have | swollen nodules, or they may have distinctive shape like a sea bomb. Others, like the sea cactus,
are filled with slimy fluid or have coating of mucilage on the surface. In some of the larger kelps, this
coating is not only to keep the plant moist but also to protect it from the violent action of waves.

2|Page
2023 READING PRACTICE 22

Questions 1-6
Reading Passage 1 has six sections A-F.
Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number i-x in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i Locations and features of different seaweeds
ii Various products of seaweeds
iii Use of seaweeds in Japan
iv Seaweed species around the globe
v Nutritious value of seaweeds
vi Why it doesn’t dry or sink
vii Where to find red seaweeds
viii Underuse of native species
ix Mystery solved
x How seaweeds reproduce and grow

1 Section A
2 Section B
3 Section C
4 Section D
5 Section E
6 Section F

3|Page
2023 READING PRACTICE 22

Questions 7-10
Complete the flow chart below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet.

Gigartina
(also called as 7 _________________)

↓ made into

8 ___________________

↙ ↘

medicine
9 __________________
(e.g. 10 __________________)
canned or bottled food
toothpaste others

Questions 11-13
Classify the following description as relating to
A Green seaweeds
B Brown seaweeds
C Red seaweeds
Write the correct letter A, B, or C in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.

11 Can resist exposure to sunlight at high-water mark

12 Grow in far open sea water
13 Share their habitat with karengo

4|Page
2023 READING PRACTICE 22

READING PASSAGE 2
THE BRIDGE THAT SWAYED
When the London Millennium footbridge was opened in June 2000, it swayed alarmingly. This
generated huge public interest and the bridge became known as London’s “wobbly bridge.”
I
The Millennium Bridge is the first new bridge across the river Thames in London since Tower Bridge
opened in 1894, and it is the first ever designed for pedestrians only. The bridge links the City of
London near St Paul’s Cathedral with the Tate Modern art gallery on Bankside.
II
The bridge opened initially on Saturday 10th June 2000. For the opening ceremony, a crowd of over
1,000 people had assembled on the south half of the bridge with a band in front. When they started
to walk across with the band playing, there was immediately an unexpectedly pronounced lateral
movement of the bridge deck. “It was a fine day and the bridge was on the route of a major charity
walk,” one of the pedestrians recounted what he saw that day. “At first, it was still. Then it began to
sway sideways, just slightly. Then, almost from one moment to the next, when large groups of people
were crossing, the wobble intensified. Everyone had to stop walking to retain balance and sometimes
to hold onto the hand rails for support.” Immediately it was decided to limit the number of people
on the bridge, and the bridge was dubbed the ‘wobbly’ bridge by the media who declared it another
high-profile British Millennium Project failure. In order to fully investigate and resolve the issue the
decision was taken to close the bridge on 12th June 2000.
III
Arup, the leading member of the committee in charge of the construction of the bridge, decided to
tackle the issue head on. They immediately undertook a fast-track research project to seek the cause
and the cure. The embarrassed engineers found the videotape that day which showed the center span
swaying about 3 inches sideways every second and the south span 2 inches every 1.25 seconds.
Because there was a significant wind blowing on the opening days (force 3-4) and the bridge had
been decorated with large flags, the engineers first thought that winds might be exerting excessive
force on the many large flags and banners, but it was rapidly concluded that wind buffeting had not
contributed significantly to vibration of the bridge. But after measurements were made in university
laboratories of the effects of people? walking on swaying platforms and after large-scale experiments
with crowds of pedestrians were conducted on the bridge itself, a new understanding and a new
theory were developed.

5|Page
2023 READING PRACTICE 22

IV
The unexpected motion was the result of a natural human reaction to small lateral movements. It is
well known that a suspension bridge has tendency to sway when troops march over it in lockstep,
which is why troops are required to break step when crossing such a bridge. “If we walk on a swaying
surface we tend to compensate and stabilise ourselves by spreading our legs further apart but this
increases the lateral push”. Pat Dallard, the engineer at Arup, says that you change the way you walk
to match what the bridge is doing. It is an unconscious tendency for pedestrians to match their
footsteps to the sway, thereby exacerbating it even more. “It’s rather like walking on a rolling ship
deck you move one way and then the other to compensate for the roll.” The way people walk doesn’t
have to match exactly the natural frequency of the bridge as in resonance the interaction is more
subtle. As the bridge moves, people adjust the way they walk in their own manner. The problem is
that when there are enough people on the bridge the total sideways push can overcome the bridge’s
ability to absorb it. The movement becomes excessive and continues to increase until people begin
to have difficulty in walking they may even have to hold on to the rails.
V
Professor Fujino Yozo of Tokyo University, who studied the earth-resistant Toda Bridge in Japan,
believes the horizontal forces caused by walking, running or jumping could also in turn cause
excessive dynamic vibration in the lateral direction in the bridge. He explains that as the structure
began moving, pedestrians adjusted their gait to the same lateral rhythm as the bridge; the adjusted
footsteps magnified the motion just like when four people all stand up in small boat at the same time.
As more pedestrians locked into the same rhythm, the increasing oscillation led to the dramatic
swaying captured on film until people stopped walking altogether, because they could not even keep
upright.
VI
In order to design a method of reducing the movements, an immediate research program was
launched by the bridge’s engineering designer Arup. It was decided that the force exerted by the
pedestrians had to be quantified and related to the motion of the bridge. Although there are some
descriptions of this phenomenon in existing literature, none of these actually quantifies the force. So
there was no quantitative analytical way to design the bridge against this effect. The efforts to solve
the problem quickly got supported by a number of universities and research organisations.
VII
The tests at the University of Southampton involved a person walking on the spot on a small shake
table. The tests at Imperial College involved persons walking along a specially built, 7.2m-long
platform, which could be driven laterally at different frequencies and amplitudes. These tests have
their own limitations. While the Imperial College test platform was too short that only seven or eight
6|Page
2023 READING PRACTICE 22

steps could be measured at one time, the “walking on the spot” test did not accurately replicate
forward walking, although many footsteps could be observed using this method. Neither test could
investigate any influence of other people in a crowd on the behavior of the individual tested.
VIII
The results of the laboratory tests provided information which enabled the initial design of a retrofit
to be progressed. However, unless the usage of the bridge was to be greatly restricted, only two
generic options to improve its performance were considered feasible. The first was to increase the
stiffness of the bridge to move all its lateral natural frequencies out of the range that could be excited
by the lateral footfall forces, and the second was to increase the damping of the bridge to reduce the
resonant response.

Questions 14-17
Choose FOUR letters, A-I.
Write the correct letters in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.
Which FOUR of the following could be seen on the day when the bridge opened to the public?

A the bridge moved vertically

B the bridge swayed from side to side
C the bridge swayed violently throughout the opening ceremony
D it was hard to keep balance on the bridge
E pedestrians walked in synchronised steps
F pedestrians lengthened their footsteps
G a music band marched across the bridge
H the swaying rhythm varied to the portions of the bridge
I flags and banners kept still on the bridge

7|Page
2023 READING PRACTICE 22

Questions 18-23
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 18-23 on your answer sheet.

To understand why the Millennium Bridge swayed, engineers of Arup studied the videotape taken
on the day of the opening ceremony. In the beginning they thought the forces
of 18 __________________ might have caused the movement because there were many flags
and banners on the bridge that day. But quickly new understandings arose after series of tests were
conducted on how people walk on 19 __________________ floors. The tests showed people
would place their leg 20 __________________ to keep balance when the floor is shaking. Pat
Dallard even believes pedestrians may unknowingly adjust their 21 __________________ to
match the sway of the bridge. Professor Fujino Yozo’s study found that the vibration of a bridge could
be caused by the 22 __________________. of people walking, running and jumping on it
because the lateral rhythm of the sway could make pedestrians adjust their walk and reach the same
step until it is impossible to stand 23 __________________.

Questions 24-26
Complete the table below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet

Test conducted by Problems of the test

24 ________ Not enough data collection

25 ________ Not long enough

26 ________ Not like the real walking experience

8|Page
2023 READING PRACTICE 22

READING PASSAGE 3
Musical Maladies
Norman M. Weinberger reviews the latest work of Oliver Sacks on music.
I
Music and the brain are both endlessly fascinating subjects, and as a neuroscientist specialising in
auditory learning and memory, I find them especially intriguing. So I had high expectations of
Musicophilia, the latest offering from neurologist and prolific author Oliver Sacks. And I confess to
feeling a little guilty reporting that my reactions to the book are mixed.
II
Sacks himself is the best part of Musicophilia. He richly documents his own life in the book and
reveals highly personal experiences. The photograph of him on the cover of the book— which shows
him wearing headphones, eyes closed, clearly enchanted as he listens to Alfred Brendel perform
Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata—makes a positive impression that is borne out by the contents of the
book. Sacks’s voice throughout is steady and erudite but never pontifical. He is neither self-conscious
nor self-promoting.
III
The preface gives a good idea of what the book will deliver. In it Sacks explains that he wants to
convey the insights gleaned from the “enormous and rapidly growing body of work on the neural
underpinnings of musical perception and imagery, and the complex and often bizarre disorders to
which these are prone” He also stresses the importance of “the simple art of observation” and “the
richness of the human context.” He wants to combine “observation and description with the latest in
technology,” he says, and to imaginatively enter into the experience of his patients and subjects. The
reader can see that Sacks, who has been practicing neurology for 40 years, is torn between the “old-
fashioned” path of observation and the new-fangled, high-tech approach: He knows that he needs to
take heed of the latter, but his heart lies with the former.
IV
The book consists mainly of detailed descriptions of cases, most of them involving patients whom
Sacks has seen in his practice. Brief discussions of contemporary neuroscientific reports are
sprinkled liberally throughout the text. Part I, “Haunted by Music,” begins with the strange case of
Tony Cicoria, a nonmusical, middle-aged surgeon who was consumed by a love of music after being
hit by lightning. He suddenly began to crave listening to piano music, which he had never cared for
in the past. He started to play the piano and then to compose music, which arose spontaneously in
his mind in a “torrent” of notes. How could this happen? Was the cause psychological? (He had had
a near-death experience when the lightning struck him.) Or was it the direct result of a change in the
9|Page
2023 READING PRACTICE 22

auditory regions of his cerebral cortex? Electro encephalography (EEG) showed his brain waves to
be normal in the mid-1990s, just after his trauma and subsequent “conversion” to music. There are
now more sensitive tests, but Cicoria has declined to undergo them; he does not want to delve into
the causes of his musicality. What a shame!
V
Part II, “A Range of Musicality,” covers a wider variety of topics, but unfortunately, some of the
chapters offer little or nothing that is new. For example, chapter 13, which is five pages long, merely
notes that the blind often have better hearing than the sighted. The most interesting chapters are
those that present the strangest cases. Chapter 8 is about “amusia,” an inability to hear sounds as
music, and “dysharmonia,” a highly specific impairment of the ability to hear harmony, with the
ability to understand melody left intact. Such specific “dissociations” are found throughout the cases
Sacks recounts.
VI
To Sacks’s credit, part III, “Memory, Movement and Music,” brings us into the underappreciated
realm of music therapy. Chapter 16 explains how “melodic intonation therapy” is being used to help
expressive aphasic patients (those unable to express their thoughts verbally following a stroke or
other cerebral incident) once again become capable of fluent speech. In chapter 20, Sacks
demonstrates the near-miraculous power of music to animate Parkinson’s patients and other people
with severe movement disorders, even those who are frozen into odd postures. Scientists cannot yet
explain how music achieves this effect.
VII
To readers who are unfamiliar with neuroscience and music behavior, Musicophilia may be
something of a revelation. But the book will not satisfy those seeking the causes and implications of
the phenomena Sacks describes. For one thing, Sacks appears to be more at ease discussing patients
than discussing experiments. And he tends to be rather uncritical in accepting scientific findings and
theories.
VIII
It’s true that the causes of music-brain oddities remain poorly understood. However, Sacks could
have done more to draw out some of the implications of the careful observations that he and other
neurologists have made and of the treatments that have been successful. For example, he might have
noted that the many specific dissociations among components of music comprehension, such as loss
of the ability to perceive harmony but not melody, indicate that there is no music center in the brain.
Because many people who read the book are likely to believe in the brain localisation of all mental
functions, this was a missed educational opportunity.

10 | P a g e
2023 READING PRACTICE 22

IX
Another conclusion one could draw is that there seem to be no “cures” for neurological problems
involving music. A drug can alleviate a symptom in one patient and aggravate it in another, or can
have both positive and negative effects in the same patient. Treatments mentioned seem to be almost
exclusively antiepileptic medications, which “damp down” the excitability of the brain in general;
their effectiveness varies widely.
X
Finally, in many of the cases described here the patient with music-brain symptoms is reported to
have “normal” EEG results. Although Sacks recognises the existence of new technologies, among
them far more sensitive ways to analyze brain waves than the standard neurological EEG test, he
does not call for their use. In fact, although he exhibits the greatest compassion for patients, he
conveys no sense of urgency about the pursuit of new avenues in the diagnosis and treatment of
music-brain disorders. This absence echoes the hook’s preface, in which Sacks expresses fear that
“the simple art of observation may be lost” if we rely too much on new technologies. He does call for
both approaches, though, and we can only hope that the neurological community will respond.

Questions 27-30
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

27 Why does the writer have a mixed feeling about the book?
A The guilty feeling made him so.
B The writer expected it to be better than it was.
C Sacks failed to include his personal stories in the book.
D This is the only book written by Sacks.

28 What is the best part of the book?

A the photo of Sacks listening to music
B the tone of voice of the book
C the autobiographical description in the book
D the description of Sacks’s wealth

11 | P a g e
2023 READING PRACTICE 22

29 In the preface, what did Sacks try to achieve?

A make terms with the new technologies
B give detailed description of various musical disorders
C explain how people understand music
D explain why he needs to do away with simple observation

30 What is disappointing about Tony Cicoria’s case?

A He refuses to have further tests.
B He can’t determine the cause of his sudden musicality.
C He nearly died because of the lightening.
D His brain waves were too normal to show anything.

Questions 31-36
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 31-36 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

31 It is difficult to give a well-reputable writer a less than favorable review.

32 Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata is a good treatment for musical disorders.
33 Sacks believes technological methods is not important compared with observation when
studying his patients.
34 It is difficult to understand why music therapy is undervalued.
35 Sacks should have more skepticism about other theories and findings.
36 Sacks is impatient to use new testing methods.

12 | P a g e
2023 READING PRACTICE 22

Questions 37-40
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below.
Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.

37 The dissociations between harmony and melody

38 The study of treating musical disorders
39 The EEG scans of Sacks’s patients
40 Sacks believes testing based on new technologies

A show no music-brain disorders.

B indicates that medication can have varied results.
C is key for the neurological community to unravel the mysteries.
D should not be used in isolation.
E indicate that not everyone can receive good education.
F show that music is not localised in the brain.

13 | P a g e