Cambridge 11 Reading Test 2 - Answers With Explanation

1. "Some maintain that she was outdated, overladen and sailing too low in the water, others that she was mishandled by undisciplined crew" — competing theories — TRUE.

2. The passage names the ships in the battle but never says whether any other vessel sank that day — NOT GIVEN.

3. "Because of the way the ship sank, nearly all of the starboard half survived intact" — TRUE.

4. "McKee and his team now knew for certain that they had found the wreck, but were as yet unaware that it also housed a treasure trove of beautifully preserved artefacts" — FALSE.

5. "In 1965, military historian and amateur diver Alexander McKee... initiated a project called 'Solent Ships'... what McKee really hoped for was to find the Mary Rose."

6. "Deane continued diving on the site intermittently until 1840" — after that his exploration stopped.

7. "The operation was not given the go-ahead until January 1982, when all the necessary information was available" — agreement to raise the hull.

8. "On 16 June 1836, some fishermen in the Solent found that their equipment was caught on an underwater obstruction, which turned out to be the Mary Rose" — found by chance.

9. "The hull was attached to a lifting frame via a network of bolts and lifting wires."

10. "The problem of the hull being sucked back downwards into the mud was overcome by using 12 hydraulic jacks."

11. "This required precise positioning to locate the legs into the 'stabbing guides' of the lifting cradle."

12. "The hull was lifted completely clear of the seabed and transferred underwater into the lifting cradle."

13. The lifting cradle "was fitted with air bags to provide additional cushioning for the hull's delicate timber framework."

14. Paragraph A closes with: modern science "has definitively proved the moai builders were Polynesians, but not how they moved their creations" — one question is settled, one isn't.

15. Paragraph B: as trees became scarce, islanders "could no longer construct wooden canoes for fishing, they ate birds. Soil erosion decreased their crop yields" — shrinking food supply.

16. Paragraph C opens: "The moai, he thinks, accelerated the self-destruction" — the statues worsened the crisis.

17. Paragraph D: the Rapanui "built thousands of circular stone windbreaks and gardened inside them... pioneers of sustainable farming" — resourceful land management.

18. Paragraph E: Hunt and Lipo argue the moai "were walked upright," and "archaeological evidence backs up Rapanui folklore" that the statues walked.

19. Paragraph F: rats "would have prevented the reseeding of the slow-growing palm trees and thereby doomed Rapa Nui's forest, even without the settlers' campaign of deforestation" — a cause beyond human control.

20. Paragraph G sets Diamond's view of "reckless destroyers" against Hunt and Lipo's claim of "an unlikely story of success" — two opposing views.

21. Diamond believes settlers cut down trees "for firewood and farming."

22. "As trees became scarce and they could no longer construct wooden canoes for fishing."

23. "They ate birds" once canoes could no longer be built.

24. Moving the moai by sledge, in Diamond's view, "required both a lot of wood and a lot of people."

25–26. Hunt and Lipo believe the moai "were walked upright" using ropes rather than dragged on wood (transport method), and that moai-building "helped keep the peace between islanders" rather than accelerating self-destruction (impact on society) — the opposite of Diamond's claims on both points.

27. "We certainly do have an inclination to follow the crowd... people often choose a definitively wrong answer if they see others doing the same" — our tendency to be swayed by others.

28. "In each set of trials, volunteers generally preferred the work of renowned artists, even when they believed it was by an animal or a child. It seems that the viewer can sense the artist's vision."

29. "The harder it is to decipher the meaning, the more rewarding is the moment of recognition" — satisfaction from working out what a painting represents.

30. "Mondrian's works are deceptively simple, but eye-tracking studies confirm that they are meticulously composed" — more carefully constructed than they look.

31. Impressionist blurring "seems to stimulate the brain's amygdala... which plays a crucial role in our feelings" — emotions.

32. "Too little and the work is boring, but too much results in a kind of 'perceptual overload'" — a precise degree of complexity.

33. Appealing works show "'fractals' — repeated motifs recurring in different scales" — repeated images.

34. The passage describes Forsythe's fractal findings but never says they contradicted earlier beliefs — NOT GIVEN.

35. "This hypothesis will need to be thoroughly tested, however" — regarding the mirror neurons theory — YES.

36. "While the fashions of the time might shape what is currently popular, works that are best adapted to our visual system may be the most likely to linger" — taste isn't governed entirely by trends — NO.

37. "It would, however, be foolish to reduce art appreciation to a set of scientific laws" — the writer disagrees — NO.

38. "We shouldn't underestimate the importance of the style of a particular artist, their place in history and the artistic environment of their time" — YES.

39. The passage compares art appreciation to science in the final line, but never claims one is easier to find meaning in than the other — NOT GIVEN.

40. The whole passage surveys scientific studies of how the brain responds to abstract paintings — matching "Some scientific insights into how the brain responds to abstract art."