Cambridge 13 Reading Test 3 - Answers With Explanation

1. The trunk is "increasingly being used as a replacement for endangered hardwoods in the furniture construction industry."

2. Sap from the flower stems "can also be reduced by boiling to produce a type of sugar used for cooking."

3. The fibrous middle layer produces "coir," which "is particularly important in manufacturing ropes."

4. "An important product obtained from the shell is charcoal."

5. "When broken in half, the shells are also used as bowls in many parts of Asia."

6. Coconut water "provides the hormones which encourage other plants to grow more rapidly and produce higher yields."

7. Coconut oil and milk are "widely used in cooking in different parts of the world, as well as in cosmetics."

8. Glycerine gave Alfred Nobel "his nitroglycerine-based invention: dynamite."

9. Seeds germinate while "exposed to the full glare of the tropical sun" — the opposite of needing shade — FALSE.

10. Coconuts moved the other way: "Arab traders and European sailors likely moved coconuts from South and Southeast Asia to Africa and then across the Atlantic" — FALSE.

11. The passage discusses the debated origin of west-coast American coconuts but never compares them to east-coast coconuts — NOT GIVEN.

12. "In Asia, there is a large degree of coconut diversity... but there are no relatives growing in the wild" — meaning none are truly wild, so all are cultivated — TRUE.

13. The passage doesn't describe or compare cultivation methods between America and the Pacific — NOT GIVEN.

14. Ramirez-Esparza notes "it really matters whether you use baby talk in a one-on-one context" — one-on-one attention matters.

15. Kuhl's co-authored finding shows "the baby brain is engaged in trying to talk back right from the start" — a link between listening and speech effort.

16. VanDam explains the two parents give "the kid... a wider repertoire of kinds of speech to practise" — the benefit of two different speech styles.

17. Ramirez-Esparza found "the more baby talk parents used, the more their youngsters began to babble."

18. VanDam's team "equipped parents with recording devices and speech-recognition software."

19. "Dads did not raise their pitch or fundamental frequency when they talked to kids" — fathers kept their ordinary speech.

20. "Their role may be rooted in what is called the bridge hypothesis, which dates back to 1975."

21. "The kid then has a wider repertoire of kinds of speech to practise."

22. Researchers fitted "26 children with audio-recording vests that captured language and sound during a typical eight-hour day."

23. "Frequent baby talk had dramatically boosted vocabulary, regardless of socioeconomic status."

24. Paragraph F reports that older infants (11.5 months) showed different, harder brain activation for non-native sounds than the seven-month-olds did — a shift within the first year.

25. Paragraph A: "prompting some hopeful parents to play classical music to their pregnant bellies" — done before birth.

26. Paragraph E: babies "seem to like listening to each other rather than to adults," with 'infant' sounds holding "babies' attention nearly 40 percent longer."

27. Paragraph C lists several rival theories: changing rivers, population pressure, resource exhaustion, invasion, and climate change.

28. Paragraph H: Petrie says the research helps governments "be more proactive in issues such as the management and administration of water supply" today.

29. Paragraph A contrasts the Harappans' lack of self-imagery with "the Egyptians... carving and painting representations of themselves all over their temples."

30. Paragraph B describes cities with "great baths, craft workshops, palaces and halls laid out in distinct sectors" and "wide main streets and narrow alleyways."

31. Paragraph D: the team "found inaccuracies in the published geographic locations of ancient settlements ranging from several hundred metres to many kilometres."

32. Dixit and Hodell gathered "shells of Melanoides tuberculata snails from the sediments of an ancient lake."

33. The shells came "from the sediments of an ancient lake."

34. "The amount of evaporation from the lake exceeded the rainfall — indicative of a drought."

35. The team is "analysing grains cultivated at the time" to see how farmers adapted.

36. They're also "looking at whether the types of pottery used... were distinctive to specific regions."

37. Singh says "it is essential that we obtain more climate data from areas close to the two great cities... and also from the Indian Punjab" — stressing the need for more evidence.

38. Petrie says studying past responses lets "us learn from the past to engage with the public... to be more proactive" — a present-day payoff from historical study.

39. Hodell states: "We estimate that the weakening of the Indian summer monsoon climate lasted about 200 years" — an approximate figure.

40. Petrie: "There is plenty of archaeological evidence to tell us about the rise of the Harappan Civilisation, but relatively little about its fall."