Section I Reading Comprehension

PartA

Directions:

Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A,B,C or

D.  Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHET.40 points)

 

Text 1

Rats and other animals need to be highly at tuned to social signals from others so that can identify friends to cooperate with and enemies to avoid. To find out if this extends to non-living beings, Loleh Quinn at the University of California, San Diego, and her colleagues tested whether rats can detect social signals from robotic rats.

They housed eight adult rats with two types of robotic rat- one social and one asocial- for 5 our days. The robots rats were quite minimalist, resembling a chunkier version of a computer mouse with wheels-to move around and colorful markings.

During the experiment, the social robot rat followed the living rats around, played with the same toys, and opened caged doors to 1let trapped rats escape. Meanwhile, the asocial robot simply moved forwards and backwards and side to side

Next, the researchers trapped the robots in cages and gave the rats the opportunity to release them by pressing a lever.

Across 18 trials each, the living rats were 52 percent more likely on average to set the social robot free than the asocial one. This suggests that the rats perceived the social robot as a genuine social being. They may have bonded more with the social robot because it displayed behaviours like communal exploring and playing. This could lead to the rats better remembering having freed it earlier, and wanting the robot to return the favour when they get trapped, says Quinn.

The readiness of the rats to befriend the social robot was surprising given its minimal design.The robot was the same size as a regular rat but resembled a simple plastic box on wheels.“assumed we d have to give it a moving head and tail, facial features, and put a scene on it to it smell like a real rat, but that wasn't necessary," says Janet Wiles at the University of Queen in Australia, who helped with the research.

The finding shows how sensitive rats are to social cues, even when they come from basic

robots. Similarly, children tend to treat robots as if they are fellow beings, even when they display only simple social signals.“ We humans seem to be fascinated by robots, and it tuns out other animals are too,"says Wiles.

 

21. pickup social signals from non-living rats

22. It set the trapped Tats free.

23. expected it to do the same in return

24. respond more to cations than to 1ooks

25. are more sensitive to social cues than expected

 

 

Text2

It is fashionable today to bash Big Business. And there is one issue on which the many critics agree: CEO pay. We hear that CEOs are paid too much (or too much relative to workers), or that they rig others' pay, or that their pay is insufficiently related to positive outcomes. But the likely truth is CEO pay is 1argely caused by intense competition.

It is true that CEO pay has gone up- -top ones may make 300 times the pay of typical

workers on average, and since the mid-1970s, CEO pay for 1arge publicly traded American

corporations has, by varying estimates, gone up by about 500%. The typical CEO of a top

American corporation- from the 350 largest such companies- now makes about $18.9 million a year.

While individual cases of overpayment definitely exist, in general, the determinants of CEO pay are not so mysterious and not so mired in corruption. In fact, overall CEO compensation for the top companies rises pretty much. In lockstep with the value of those companies on the stock market.

The best model for understanding the growth of CEO pay, though, is that of limited CEO

talent in a world where business opportunities for the top firms are growing rapidly. The efforts of America's highest-earning 1% have been one of the more dynamic elements of the global economy. It's not popular to say, but one reason their pay has gone up so much is that CEOs really have upped their game relative to many other workers in the U.S. economy.

Today's CEO, at 1least for major American firms, must have many more skills than simply

being able to“run the company." CEOs must have a good sense of financial markets and maybe even how the company should trade in them. They also need better public relations skills than their predecessors, as the costs of even a minor slipup can be significant. Then there's the fact that large American companies are much more globalized than ever before, with supply chains spread across a larger number of countries. To lead in that system requires knowledge that is fairly mind-boggling.

There is yet another trend: virtually all major American companies are becoming companies, one way or another. An agribusiness company, for instance, may focus on R

highly IT-intensive areas such as genome sequencing. Similarly, it is hard to do a good job running the Walt Disney Company just by picking good movie scripts and courting stars; you also need build a firm capable of creating significant CGI products for animated movies at the highest levels of technical sophistication and with many frontier innovations along the way.

On top of all of this, major CEOs still have to do the job they have always done- _wh" includes motivating employees, serving as an internal role model, helping to define and ext/ corporate culture, understanding the internal accounting, and presenting budgets and bus

plans to the board. Good CEOs are some of the world's most potent creators and have some of very deepest skills of understanding.

 

26. Increased business opportunities for top firms

27.  operate more globalized companies

28. strict corporate governance

29.  confirm the status of CEOs

30. CEOs Are Not Overpaid

 

Text3

Madrid was hailed as a public health beacon 1ast November when it rolled out ambitious restrictions on the most polluting cars. Seven months and one election day later,

conservative city council suspended enforcement of the clean air zone, a first step toward.

possible demise.

Mayor Jose Luis Matinez -Almeida made opposition to the zone a centrepiece of his election campaign, despite its success in improving air quality. A judge has now overruled the city's decision to stop 1levying fines, ordering them reinstated. But with legal battles ahead, the zone's future looks uncertain at best.

Among other weaknesses, the measures cities must employ when left to tackle dirty air on their own are politically contentious, and therefore vulnerable. That's because they inevitably put the costs of cleaning the air on to individual drivers- who must pay fees or buy better vehicles- rather than on to the car manufacturers whose cheating is the real cause of our toxic pollution.

It's not hard to imagine a similar reversal happening in London. The new ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) is 1ikely to be a big issue in next year's mayoral election. And if Sadiq Khan wins and extends it to the North and South Circular roads in 2021 as he intends, it is sure to spark intense opposition from the far 1arger number of motorists who will then be affected. the 1evers that are available to them to safeguard residents' health in the face of a serious threat. The zones do deliver some improvements to air quality, and the science tells us that means real health benefits - fewer heart attacks, stokes and premature births, 1ess cancer, dementia and asthma Fewer untimely deaths.

But mayors and councilors can only do so much about a problem that is far bigger than any one city or town. They are acting because national governments一Britain's and others across Restrictions that keep highly polluting cars out of certain areas - city centres,"school str even individual roads-are a response to the absence of a larger effort to properly enforce ex regulations and require auto companies to bring their vehicles into compliance. Wales

introduced special 1ow speed limits to minimise pollution. We re doing everything but insist that manufacturers clean up their cars.

 

31. Its fate is yet to be decided

32.They put too much burden on individual motorists.

33. arouse strong resistance.

34. National governments.

35.should be forced to follow regulations

 

Text4

Now that members of Generation Z are graduating college this spring- the most commonly- accepted definition says this generation was boom after 1995, give or take a year- the attention has been rising steadily in recent weeks. GenZs are about to hit the streets looking for work in a labor market that's tighter than its been in decades. And employers are planning on hiring about 17 percent more new graduates for jobs in the U.S. this year than last, according to a survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Evrybody wants t know how the people who will soon inhabit those empty office cubicles will differ from those came before them.

If“entitled” is the most common adjective, fairly or not, applied to millennials (those born between 1981 and 1995), the catchwords for Generation Z are practical and cautious. According to the career counselors and experts who study them, Generation Zs are clear- eyed, economic pragmatists. Despite graduating into the best economy in the past 50 years, Gen Zs know what an economic train wreck looks like. They were impressionable kids during the crash of 2008, when many of their parents lost their jobs or their life savings or both. They aren' t interested in taking any chances. The booming economy seems to have done little to assuage this underlying generational sense of anxious urgency, especially for those who have college debt. College loan balances in the U.S. now stand at a record $1.5 billion, according to the Federal Reserve.

One survey from Accenture found that 88 percent of graduating seniors this year chose their major with a job in mind. In a 2019 survey of University of Georgia students, meanwhile, the career office found the most desirable trait in a future employer was the ability to offer secure employment (followed by professional development and training. and then inspiring purpose). Job security or stability was the second most important career goal (work-life balance was number one), followed by a sense of being dedicated to a cause or to feel good about serving the greater good.

 

36.  are drawing growing public attention

37. what a tough economic situation is like

38.  relieve

39. have a clear idea about their future job

40.  less adventurous

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