Cambridge 4 Reading Test 1 - Answers With Explanation

1. The opening lines say children are "frequently confronted with statements about the alarming rate of loss of tropical rainforests" and describe "frequent and often vivid media coverage" — the opposite of being ignored, so FALSE.

2. The passage says children's ideas about rainforests form "independent of any formal tuition" — they pick up ideas from the popular media too, not only the classroom, so FALSE.

3. "Many studies have shown that children harbour misconceptions about 'pure', curriculum science" — directly matches, TRUE.

4. These misconceptions "become incorporated into a multifaceted, but organised, conceptual framework, making it and the component ideas... more robust but also accessible to modification" — being part of an organised framework is what makes them easier to revise, TRUE.

5. Children answered "five open-form questions", not yes/no questions, so FALSE.

6. The passage notes more girls than boys viewed rainforests as animal and human habitats, but says nothing about which sex is more likely to hold mistaken views about rainforest destruction specifically — NOT GIVEN.

7. The results are described as "generally consistent with our previous studies of pupils' views", confirming this study follows earlier ones, TRUE.

8. No further study, of primary-school children or otherwise, is mentioned as planned — NOT GIVEN.

9. Asked where rainforests are, children most often named a location — Africa was the most common single answer (43%) — matching M, "Rainforests are found in Africa."

10. On the importance of rainforests, the dominant idea (64% of pupils) was that they provide animal habitats — matching E, "Without rainforests some animals would have nowhere to live."

11. On the causes of destruction, "more than half of the pupils (59%) identified that it is human activities which are destroying rainforests" — matching G, "People are responsible for the loss of the rainforests."

12. Asked about the importance of conservation, "the majority of children simply said that we need rainforests to survive" — matching P, "Humans depend on the rainforests for their continuing existence."

13. Only 6% of children linked rainforest destruction to global warming, which the writer calls surprising "considering the high level of media coverage on this issue" — matching J, "As the rainforests are destroyed, the world gets warmer."

14. The study's stated aim is "to help teachers design their educational strategies to build upon correct ideas and to displace misconceptions" — best matched by B, about children's ideas and their implications for course design.

15. "Although at least some cetaceans have taste buds, the nerves serving these have degenerated or are rudimentary" — the underdeveloped nerves belong to the taste buds.

16. Baleen species are the ones whose eye position "so restricts the field of vision... that they probably do not have stereoscopic vision."

17. "The position of the eyes in most dolphins and porpoises suggests that they have stereoscopic vision forward and downward" — both words are needed for the mark.

18. "Eye position in freshwater dolphins, which often swim on their side or upside down while feeding, suggests that what vision they have is stereoscopic forward and upward."

19. "The bottlenose dolphin has extremely keen vision in water", and can also see fairly well through the air-water interface.

20. "Large baleen whales primarily use the lower frequencies and are often limited in their repertoire."

21. The "notable exceptions" to that limited repertoire are "the nearly song-like choruses of bowhead whales in summer and the complex, haunting utterances of the humpback whales" — both names are needed.

22. "Stroking or touching are part of the courtship ritual in most species" — touch is the sense involved in mating.

23. Freshwater dolphins are described as swimming "on their side or upside down while feeding."

24. "Judging from the way it watches and tracks airborne flying fish, it can apparently see fairly well through the air-water interface as well" — describing the bottlenose dolphin.

25. "Vision is obviously more useful to species inhabiting clear open waters than to those living in turbid rivers and flooded plains" — good vision goes with clear water habitats.

26. "Such weaknesses [in taste and smell] are more than compensated for by cetaceans' well-developed acoustic sense" — hearing is the best-developed sense overall.

27. "Blind people can appreciate the use of outlines and perspectives to describe the arrangement of objects and other surfaces in space" — they can recognise conventions such as perspective, matching C.

28. The writer was "taken aback" that the blind woman traced a curve inside her circle drawing to show the wheel spinning — she had included a symbol representing movement, matching C.

29. "All but one of the blind subjects assigned distinctive motions to each wheel" and interpreted the lines of motion much as the sighted control group did, showing good understanding of movement symbols — matching A.

30. "Subjects assumed that spokes extending beyond the wheel's perimeter signified that the wheel had its brakes on" — the diagram whose spokes extend past the outer circle matches E, use of brakes.

31. "Dashed spokes indicated the wheel was spinning quickly" — the diagram with a dashed/dotted spoke pattern matches C, rapid spinning.

32. "Curved spokes indicated that the wheel was spinning steadily" — the diagram with curved, swirling spokes matches A, steady spinning.

33. "We gave a list of twenty pairs of words to sighted subjects" — the experiment used word pairs.

34. Subjects matched words to a circle and a square — abstract shapes that, unlike a heart, don't directly represent their meaning.

35. "All our subjects deemed the circle soft and the square hard" — this full agreement came from the sighted volunteers first tested.

36. "Only 51% — only a small majority of sighted... had paired far and near to the opposite partners" — the 51% figure describes the sighted group again.

37. "Only 51% had paired far and near to the opposite partners" while "only 51% linked deep to circle and shallow to square" — the low-consensus pairing was deep/circle.

38. "When we tested four totally blind volunteers using the same list, we found that their choices closely resembled those made by the sighted subjects" — the repeat test used blind volunteers.

39. The blind volunteers' choices "closely resembled" the sighted subjects' — in other words, similar choices.

40. Across both parts, the writer's overall finding is that the blind interpret visual metaphors much as sighted people do, matching B.