Magy's English Edu. Club
Cambridge 12 Academic Reading Test Two Passage Three
The Benefits of Being Bilingual
Complete the table.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Test
27. Observing the …… of Russian-English bilingual people when asked to select certain objects
The answer is EYE MOVEMENTS.
In paragraph two, some of the most compelling evidence for this phenomenon, called ‘language co-activation’, comes from studying eye movements.
Findings
28. Bilingual people engage both languages simultaneously: a mechanism known as ……
The answer is LANGUAGE CO-ACTIVATION.
In paragraph two, some of the most compelling evidence for this phenomenon, called ‘language co-activation‘, comes from studying eye movements.
Test
29. A test called the ………, focusing on naming colors
The answer is STROOP TASK.
In paragraph three, in the classic Stroop Task, people see a word and are asked to name the color of the word’s font.
Findings
30. Bilingual people are more able to handle tasks involving a skill called …….
The answer is CONFLICT MANAGEMENT.
In paragraph three, for this reason, bilingual people often perform better on tasks that require conflict management.
31. When changing strategies, bilingual people have superior ………
The answer is COGNITIVE CONTROL.
In paragraph three, for example, when bilinguals have to switch from categorizing objects by color (red or green) to categorizing them by shape (circle or triangle), they do so more quickly than monolingual people, reflecting cognitive control when having to make rapid changes of strategy.
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
Write YES, NO, or NOT GIVEN.
32. Attitudes towards bilingualism have changed in recent years.
The answer is YES.
In paragraph one, in the past, such children were considered to be at a disadvantage compared with their monolingual peers. Over the past few decades, however, technological advances have allowed researchers to look more deeply at how bilingualism interacts with and changes the cognitive and neurological systems, thereby identifying several clear benefits of being bilingual.
33. Bilingual people are better than monolingual people at guessing correctly what words are before they are finished.
The answer is NOT GIVEN.
In paragraph two, when we hear a word, we don’t hear the entire word all at once: the sounds arrive in sequential order. Long before the word is finished, the brain’s language system begins to guess what that word might be.
34. Bilingual people consistently name images faster than monolingual people.
The answer is NO.
In paragraph three, for instance, knowing more than one language can cause speakers to name pictures more slowly, and can increase ‘tip-of-the-tongue states’, when you can almost, but not quite, bring a word to mind.
35. Bilingual people’s brains process single sounds more efficiently than monolingual people in all situations.
The answer is NO.
In paragraph four, when monolingual and bilingual adolescents listen to simple speech sounds without any intervening background noise, they show highly similar brain stem responses. When researchers play the same sound to both groups in the presence of background noise, however, the bilingual listeners’ neural response is considerably larger, reflecting better encoding of the sound’s fundamental frequency, a feature of sound closely related to pitch perception.
36. Fewer bilingual people than monolingual people suffer from brain disease in old age.
The answer is NOT GIVEN.
In paragraph five, in a study of over 200 patients with Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative brain disease, bilingual patients reported showing initial symptoms of the disease an average of five years later than monolingual patients.
Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs, A–G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
37. an example of how bilingual and monolingual people’s brains respond differently to a certain type of non-verbal auditory input
The answer is D.
In paragraph four, when monolingual and bilingual adolescents listen to simple speech sounds without any intervening background noise, they show highly similar brain stem responses. When researchers play the same sound to both groups in the presence of background noise, however, the bilingual listeners’ neural response is considerably larger, reflecting better encoding of the sound’s fundamental frequency, a feature of sound closely related to pitch perception.
38. a demonstration of how a bilingual upbringing has benefits even before we learn to speak
The answer is G.
In paragraph seven, in one study, researchers taught seven-month-old babies growing up in monolingual or bilingual homes that when they heard a tinkling sound, a puppet appeared on one side of a screen. Halfway through the study, the puppet began appearing on the opposite side of the screen. In order to get a reward, the infants had to adjust the rule they’d learned; only the bilingual babies were able to successfully learn the new rule.
39. a description of the process by which people identify words that they hear
The answer is B.
In paragraph two, when we hear a word, we don’t hear the entire word all at once: the sounds arrive in sequential order. Long before the word is finished, the brain’s language system begins to guess what that word might be.
40. reference to some negative consequences of being bilingual
The answer is C.
In paragraph three, as a result, the constant juggling of two languages creates a need to control how much a person accesses a language at any given time.