File Test 5 B

File Test 5

Grammar, Vocabulary, and Pronunciation B

GRAMMAR

VOCABULARY

Neil must have felt very annoyed when the manager didn’t believe his explanation. Isn’t it annoying when someone sits near you in public and talks loudly on their phone? I just don’t have the patience for puzzles – they really annoy me! disappoint

PRONUNCIATION

Reading and Writing B

READING

Read the article about horses and emotional intelligence. Five sentences have been removed. Which sentence (A–F) fits each gap (1–5)? There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use. More than a feeling Horses have a long-established historical partnership with humans. They have been essential to cultures across the world, helping us to travel and explore, form new territories and trade routes, develop agriculture and industry, fight territorial battles, and build and protect cities. (----1----) As times have changed, our use of horses has generally shifted away from work and labour to leisure and companionship. If you have ever owned or spent time with a horse, the chances are that you'll have felt a special connection with it and wondered whether the feeling was shared. It’s only recently that scientists have been able to understand more about the minds of these incredible creatures and find clues as to whether horses share the connection humans feel. A study conducted by researchers at the universities of Sussex and Portsmouth suggests that those instincts are correct – your horse feels that special connection too. The results of the study, which were published in an article in the journal Current Biology in April 2018, show that horses can actually understand and remember human emotions. Although previous studies have found that horses can recognize facial expressions, this new research goes further. (----2----) It is thought that this skill is important in that it allows them to monitor the behaviour of the people around them in order to detect whether a person is a threat or not. The study is considered groundbreaking because it is the first of its kind to prove that an animal has this particular ability. In the first part of the study, researchers showed photographs of people with either a happy or angry facial expression to domestic horses. Then in the next part, they prepared the people to meet the horses face-to-face. To make sure that the people did not behave differently, they were not told whether the horses they were going to meet had been shown images of them with a positive or negative expression. (----3----) This is because in horses the right hemisphere of the brain specializes in processing threat, and information from the left eye is processed in the right hemisphere. During the real-life meetings, the people from the photographs sat down in front of the horses with a neutral facial expression. As the researchers had predicted, when the horses met the people who had been photographed with angry faces, their responses were dominated by the left eye. (----4----) Researchers claimed they noticed clear differences in the horses’ responses. This led them to think that the horses remembered the people whose expressions had been angry and therefore judged them to be potentially threatening. What researchers found particularly remarkable was the speed with which the horses were able to recognize emotions. They were only briefly shown an image of the person with a particular emotional expression. The results also did not depend on whether they had had a positive or negative experience with this person. This research is significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, because it proves that horses, like humans, possess emotional intelligence, and so that connection that people often feel with horses really is shared. (----5----) Researchers believe this will perhaps open up

possibilities for more research into how owners can strengthen the connection with their horses and resolve any behavioural issues they may have as a team partnership. A Secondly, it's an important step towards understanding these fascinating creatures in more depth. B The strength of this human-horse partnership over many generations is well documented. C On the occasions when people who had not been photographed were introduced to the horses, there was no negative reaction. D It has found that horses not only recognize expressions but have the ability to remember them and connect them to a specific face. E Previous research has established that when horses feel threatened, they tend to look at the threat with their left eye. F Before this study, researchers thought that horses only responded to people because they provided food. Reading total 10

WRITING

Listening and Speaking B

LISTENING

SPEAKING