Reading

Reading Passage 1 — Questions 1–13

The Rise of Urban Beekeeping

For centuries, beekeeping was almost exclusively a rural pursuit, tied closely to farms and open countryside. In the last two decades, however, a striking shift has taken place: hives have begun appearing on the rooftops of office blocks, on hotel terraces, and in the small gardens of city apartments. Paris, London, New York, and Tokyo have all seen a rapid rise in the number of registered urban hives, with some cities reporting a tenfold increase within ten years. In London alone, the number of registered hives is thought to have grown from a few hundred to well over five thousand within roughly fifteen years, a pace of expansion that has surprised even long-standing beekeeping associations.

Several factors explain this trend. Perhaps the most significant is growing public awareness of the decline in global bee populations. Widely publicised research linking this decline to pesticide use, habitat destruction, and disease has alarmed both scientists and the general public, prompting many city dwellers to look for ways to help. Beekeeping, with its promise of direct, hands-on involvement, has proven an appealing option for environmentally conscious urban residents who may not have access to farmland but do have a balcony or flat roof.

Somewhat counterintuitively, several studies suggest that cities may actually offer bees a better environment than many farming regions. Modern agriculture frequently depends on monoculture — vast fields of a single crop — which provides bees with only a narrow, seasonal source of nectar and pollen. Cities, by contrast, tend to offer a patchwork of parks, private gardens, roadside plantings, and even balcony flowerpots, together supplying a much wider variety of flowering plants across a longer part of the year — from early-flowering bulbs in spring to ornamental shrubs still blooming well into autumn. In addition, pesticide use in urban green spaces is typically far lower than on commercial farmland, reducing one of the most significant threats to bee health.

Nonetheless, the rapid growth of urban beekeeping has generated new concerns among ecologists. One is the risk of overcrowding. In popular districts, the number of hives has occasionally grown so large that the local supply of flowers cannot support them all. When this happens, honeybees — which are, in effect, livestock rather than wildlife — may outcompete native wild bee species for the same limited resources, an outcome that could ultimately reduce, rather than protect, biodiversity. Some researchers argue this risk is frequently overlooked by enthusiastic newcomers who assume that "more bees" automatically means "more environmental benefit."

In response to such concerns, a number of cities have begun regulating urban beekeeping more closely. Paris, for example, has introduced limits on the number of hives permitted within certain districts, while several municipalities in North America now require prospective beekeepers to complete a training course and obtain a permit before installing a hive. These courses typically cover essential skills such as hive inspection, swarm management, and the early identification of disease, addressing another common problem: many newcomers to beekeeping have little or no prior experience and may unintentionally endanger their colonies or neighbouring hives through poor practice.

Technology is also playing an increasing role in the development of urban beekeeping. Some researchers are now designing rooftop hives specifically engineered to withstand the stronger winds found at height, a challenge rarely faced by traditional ground-level hives. Others are experimenting with small sensors placed inside hives that allow beekeepers to monitor temperature, humidity, and even sound patterns remotely via smartphone, reducing the need for frequent, disruptive physical inspections. Proponents argue that such tools could make urban beekeeping both safer for the bees and more accessible to first-time keepers, who might otherwise be intimidated by the complexity of hive management. The cost of such sensors has fallen considerably in recent years, and several beekeeping associations now lend basic monitoring kits to new members free of charge, hoping to reduce the number of colonies lost through inexperienced management.

Despite these promising developments, most experts agree that beekeeping alone cannot reverse the broader decline in pollinator populations. Wild bee species, many of which do not live in hives at all, continue to face serious threats from habitat loss and pesticide exposure regardless of how many honeybee hives a city hosts. For this reason, several environmental organisations now recommend that city residents interested in supporting pollinators should also consider planting native, pollinator-friendly species in gardens and window boxes — a simpler, lower-risk complement to keeping hives, and one that directly benefits wild bees as well as honeybees.

Questions 1–5: Do the following statements agree with the information in the passage? Choose TRUE, FALSE, or NOT GIVEN.

Questions 6–9: Complete the summary using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.

Cities may offer bees advantages over farmland: instead of the limited nectar supply typical of farming, urban areas provide a wide variety of flowering plants. Additionally, urban green spaces tend to use less . However, rapid growth in urban beekeeping has raised concern about , a situation in which honeybees may push out wild species. To manage this, some cities now require newcomers to complete a before they are permitted to keep bees.

Questions 10–13: Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

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Reading Passage 2 — Questions 14–26

Energy Storage and the Renewable Transition

As countries around the world invest heavily in wind and solar power, a less visible but equally critical challenge has emerged: how to store the energy these sources generate. Unlike traditional power stations, which can increase or decrease output on demand, wind turbines and solar panels are inherently intermittent — they produce electricity only when the wind blows or the sun shines. In some regions, solar output can vary by more than eighty percent between a clear afternoon and a heavily overcast one, illustrating just how sharply supply can fluctuate within a single day. Without effective storage solutions, this variability threatens to undermine the reliability of electricity grids that increasingly depend on renewables. (Paragraph A)

The most established storage technology is pumped hydroelectric storage, which has been used for decades. This method involves pumping water uphill into a reservoir when electricity is abundant and cheap, then releasing it downhill through turbines to generate power when demand rises. Pumped hydro currently accounts for the vast majority of the world's grid-scale storage capacity, largely because it is durable, long-lasting, and capable of storing very large quantities of energy, with some facilities able to supply a region for several hours at a stretch during peak demand. However, it requires specific geography — hills or mountains near a reliable water source — which limits where new facilities can realistically be built, and suitable sites in many densely populated regions have already been developed. (Paragraph B)

Battery storage, by contrast, has expanded dramatically in recent years, driven largely by the same lithium-ion technology used in electric vehicles. Battery systems can be installed almost anywhere, respond to changes in supply and demand within milliseconds, and have fallen sharply in price over the past decade, with some estimates suggesting costs have dropped by roughly eighty percent since the early 2010s. Yet batteries also face limitations: most current lithium-ion systems can only store energy efficiently for a matter of hours, making them well suited to smoothing short-term fluctuations but less effective at addressing longer gaps in renewable output, such as several consecutive cloudy or windless days. (Paragraph C)

To address this longer-duration challenge, researchers are exploring a range of alternative technologies. One promising approach is so-called "green hydrogen," produced by using surplus renewable electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis. The hydrogen can then be stored for extended periods and later converted back into electricity, or used directly as a fuel in industries such as steel production and heavy transport, which are otherwise difficult to decarbonise. Critics note, however, that the process of converting electricity to hydrogen and back again is relatively inefficient, meaning a significant proportion of the original energy is lost along the way. (Paragraph D)

Another approach under development is thermal energy storage, in which excess electricity is used to heat a material — often molten salt or even simple materials like sand — to extremely high temperatures. This stored heat can later be used directly for industrial processes or converted back into electricity when required. Advocates argue that thermal storage using inexpensive materials could prove considerably cheaper than battery systems at large scale, although the technology remains less mature and is not yet widely deployed commercially. A handful of pilot plants using heated sand have already demonstrated the concept at a small scale, and several energy companies are now watching these projects closely to assess whether the approach can be scaled up economically. (Paragraph E)

Beyond individual technologies, some experts argue that the greater challenge lies in redesigning electricity markets and grid infrastructure to accommodate a mix of storage solutions operating together. A grid that can flexibly draw on batteries for short-term balancing, pumped hydro for daily cycles, and hydrogen or thermal storage for seasonal gaps would be far more resilient than one relying on any single technology. Achieving this, however, requires substantial coordination between governments, private investors, and grid operators — a task complicated by the fact that energy policy varies enormously between countries and regions. (Paragraph F)

Despite these challenges, investment in storage technology has accelerated sharply, driven by falling renewable costs and increasingly ambitious climate targets. Many analysts now regard energy storage, rather than renewable generation itself, as the central bottleneck determining how quickly the world can transition away from fossil fuels. As one industry commentator put it, generating clean electricity has, in many respects, become the easier half of the problem; storing it reliably remains the harder one. (Paragraph G)

Questions 14–18: Which paragraph (A–G) contains the following information?

Questions 19–22: Complete the sentences using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage.

Questions 23–26: Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

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Reading Passage 3 — Questions 27–40

Bilingualism and the Developing Brain

For much of the twentieth century, raising a child to speak two languages was widely viewed with suspicion by educators and even some psychologists, who feared that dividing a child's attention between languages might slow linguistic development or create general cognitive confusion. Early studies appeared to support this concern, reporting that bilingual children performed less well than monolingual peers on certain vocabulary tests, findings that were widely cited in parenting advice and teacher training materials for several decades. However, many of these early studies have since been criticised for methodological flaws, including a failure to account for socioeconomic differences between the groups being compared, as bilingual participants in these studies often came disproportionately from lower-income immigrant families facing a range of other educational disadvantages.

Since the 1960s, a substantial body of research has significantly revised this picture. Rather than harming cognitive development, exposure to two languages from an early age appears, according to numerous studies, to confer certain cognitive advantages, particularly in a domain researchers term "executive function." This umbrella term covers a set of mental processes including the ability to focus attention selectively, ignore irrelevant information, and flexibly switch between competing tasks or mental rules — skills that are relevant well beyond language itself, extending into areas such as academic performance and everyday decision-making.

The theoretical explanation most commonly proposed is that a bilingual brain must constantly manage two active language systems, even when using only one language at a given moment. This ongoing management, researchers argue, effectively trains the brain's attentional control systems, since the speaker must continually suppress the non-target language to avoid interference. Some researchers have likened this to a form of mental exercise, analogous to how physical exercise strengthens muscles through repeated, effortful use.

Evidence for this "bilingual advantage" has come from a range of experimental tasks. In one frequently cited design, participants are asked to respond to the colour of a word rather than its meaning — for example, correctly identifying that the word "green" is printed in red ink. This task requires participants to suppress an automatic, competing response, namely reading the word itself. Several studies have found that bilingual participants, both children and adults, tend to complete such tasks slightly faster and with fewer errors than monolingual participants, a finding often interpreted as evidence of superior inhibitory control. Some researchers have further reported that this advantage appears most clearly in older adults, raising intriguing questions about whether bilingualism might also help delay certain age-related cognitive changes, though this remains an active and unsettled area of research.

Nevertheless, the bilingual advantage hypothesis remains a matter of ongoing scientific debate. A number of more recent, large-scale studies have failed to replicate the effect, finding no significant cognitive difference between bilingual and monolingual participants once other variables, such as immigration status, socioeconomic background, and general educational attainment, are carefully controlled for. Some researchers now suggest that earlier positive findings may partly reflect a publication bias, whereby studies reporting a clear, novel advantage were more likely to be published than studies finding no effect, subtly distorting the overall body of published evidence.

Further complicating the picture, researchers have observed that the strength and nature of any bilingual advantage, where it exists, appears to vary considerably depending on factors such as the age at which a second language was acquired, the degree of ongoing daily use of both languages, and even the specific structural similarities or differences between the two languages involved. This variability has led some researchers to argue that broad claims of a single, universal "bilingual advantage" oversimplify what is, in reality, a highly complex and context-dependent phenomenon.

Despite this unresolved scientific debate, most researchers agree on one point largely independent of the cognitive advantage question: bilingualism carries clear social, cultural, and practical benefits, including the ability to communicate across communities, engage more fully with extended family, and access broader educational and employment opportunities later in life. Many researchers therefore argue that decisions about raising bilingual children should not hinge primarily on uncertain claims about cognitive enhancement, but rather on these more firmly established social and cultural advantages, which remain compelling regardless of how the ongoing scientific debate about executive function ultimately concludes.

Questions 27–32: Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer? Choose YES, NO, or NOT GIVEN.

Questions 33–36: Complete the summary using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.

Researchers propose that managing two languages simultaneously trains the brain's systems, since a bilingual speaker must constantly suppress the language not being used. This is sometimes compared to a form of mental . Evidence for this comes from tasks such as the colour-word task, where participants must suppress an automatic in order to respond correctly. However, many recent large studies have failed to these earlier findings.

Questions 37–40: Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

Show explanations for tricky True/False/Not Given & Yes/No/Not Given answers

• Q4 (NOT GIVEN): النص يذكر أن بعض المدن فرضت شروط تدريب وتصريح، لكنه لا يقول إن كل المدن تفعل ذلك.
• Q27 (NO): النص يقول صراحة إن هذه الدراسات المبكرة انتُقدت لاحقًا بسبب عيوب منهجية، أي عكس ما تقوله العبارة.
• Q29 (NO): النص يوضح أن هناك جدلًا علميًا مستمرًا، وليس إجماعًا.
• Q32 (NO): الفقرة الأخيرة تذكر بوضوح فوائد اجتماعية وثقافية للثنائية اللغوية، بعيدًا عن الجانب المعرفي.