Cambridge 5 Reading Test 1 - Answers With Explanation

1. Johnson "treated English very practically, as a living language, with many different shades of meaning" — grounded in current usage rather than an academy's rules, matching D. (Questions 1-3 may be given in any order.)

2. "Working to a deadline, he had to draw on the best of all previous dictionaries" — Johnson's contract set a time limit for the work, matching E.

3. The Dictionary "illustrated their many meanings with some 114,000 quotations", showing careful attention to shades of meaning — matching G.

4. James Boswell described the garret "fitted up like a counting house" with a long desk "at which the copying clerks would work standing up".

5. Johnson wrote the definitions "filling about eighty large notebooks (and without a library to hand)" — he had no library available to him.

6. Boswell said the Dictionary "conferred stability on the language of his country".

7. Johnson's fame let his friends "prevail upon King George III to offer him a pension".

8. The rise of dictionaries "is associated with the rise of the English middle class, who were anxious to define and circumscribe the various worlds to conquer" — TRUE.

9. Johnson's Dictionary "made Johnson famous" in his own lifetime, leading to his pension and to him becoming "the Johnson of folklore" from then on — his fame was established before, not after, his death, so FALSE.

10. The passage gives no information about how long Johnson had been planning a dictionary before signing the 1764 contract — NOT GIVEN.

11. "Johnson decided he did not need an academy to settle arguments about language; he would write a dictionary himself" — FALSE.

12. Johnson "was to be paid £1,575 in instalments", not only on completion — FALSE.

13. Johnson "was also helped by six assistants, two of whom died whilst the Dictionary was still in preparation" — TRUE.

14. Paragraph F proposes "some sort of built-in animal aggression instinct" evolved as "an advantageous trait" — a biological explanation, matching F.

15. Paragraph A explains Milgram told each teacher-subject the experiment was "in the noble cause of education", testing whether punishment helped pupils learn — matching A.

16. Paragraph B reveals "the supposed 'pupil' was in reality an actor hired by Milgram to simulate receiving the shocks" — matching B.

17. Paragraph D reports the psychiatrists' prediction of how many teacher-subjects would give the highest shock — the expected statistical outcome, matching D.

18. Paragraph I states sociobiology "is concerned with elucidating the biological basis of all behaviour" — its general aim, matching I.

19. Paragraph C quotes Milgram telling reluctant subjects "You have no other choice. You must go on" — how he kept them going, matching C.

20. Paragraph A says the experiment was designed to test "whether or not punishing pupils for their mistakes would have a positive effect on the pupils' ability to learn" — B.

21. Paragraph B says Milgram told the teacher-subject "to administer whatever level of shock was called for, as per the rule governing the experimental situation of the moment" — D.

22. Paragraph D's psychiatrists thought "most subjects would not go beyond 150 volts" and only a "lunatic fringe of about one in 1,000" would reach 450 volts — they badly underestimated real compliance, matching C.

23. Paragraph A says Milgram "tested 40 subjects from all walks of life", not psychology students specifically — FALSE.

24. Paragraph F suggests the aggressive instinct "evolved as an advantageous trait, having been of survival value to our ancestors" — TRUE.

25. Paragraph H says the subject instead surrenders "individual properties like loyalty, self-sacrifice and discipline to the service of ... systems of authority" — authority wins out over personal values, so FALSE.

26. Paragraph I frames the two explanations as an unresolved problem for sociobiology to "sort out", not one Milgram's experiment has already solved — FALSE.

27. The opening paragraph lists environmentalists' "hit-list of our main fears" — a set of pessimistic beliefs — YES.

28. The 1972 book 'The Limits to Growth' is used only as a comparison point for resource abundance since then; the passage never says data collection itself only began in 1972 — NOT GIVEN.

29. "More food is now produced per head of the world's population than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving" — the opposite of an increase, so NO.

30. The passage discusses the rate species become extinct but says nothing about new species replacing them — NOT GIVEN.

31. Pollution "appear[s] to have been exaggerated, or [is] transient — associated with the early phases of industrialisation" — some pollution genuinely is linked to industrialisation, YES.

32. Pollution is "best cured not by restricting economic growth, but by accelerating it" — the opposite of slowing growth, so NO.

33. Paragraph 4 worries that "scientific funding goes mainly to areas with many problems", creating a false impression of how many problems exist — the selection of areas to research, C.

34. The WWF's claim of 'two thirds of the world's forests lost forever', against a true figure "nearer 20%", illustrates environmental groups exaggerating their claims — D.

35. Paragraph 6 notes a pollution-control opponent is "instantly seen as self-interested" while a green organisation opposing the same thing is seen as "altruistic" — some lobby groups attract more criticism than others, C.

36. "People are clearly more curious about bad news than good. Newspapers and broadcasters are there to provide what the public wants" — meeting readers' expectations, B.

37. Even if the US population doubles by 2100, its entire century of rubbish "will still take up only one-12,000th of the area" of the country — the problem is smaller than commonly believed, B.

38. "Carbon dioxide emissions are causing the planet to warm" over decades — the writer calls this a long-term (E) challenge.

39. The passage argues economic analysis, not panic, should guide the response — dealing with warming the right (D) way.

40. The writer argues money would be better spent on "the world's single, most pressing health problem: providing universal access to clean drinking water" — the more urgent (I) problem.