IELTSwithJurabek

PASSAGE 2

Read the text and answer questions 14-26

THE ECONOMIC EFFECT OF CLIMATE

Latitude is crucial to a nation's strength, says Anjana Ahuja

14A Dr William Masters was reading a book about mosquitoes when an idea struck him. 'There was this anecdote about the yellow fever epidemic that hit Philadelphia in 1793,' Masters recalls. 'This epidemic decimated the city until the first frost came.' The sub-zero temperatures froze out the insects, allowing Philadelphia to recover. If weather could be the key to a city's fortunes, Masters thought, then why not to the historical fortunes of nations? And could frost lie at the heart of one of the most enduring economic mysteries of all - why are almost all the wealthy, industrialised nations to be found where the climate is cooler?

15B After two years of research, he thinks that he has found a piece of the puzzle. Masters, an agricultural economist from Purdue University in Indiana, and Margaret McMillan at Tufts University, Boston, show that annual frosts are among the factors that distinguish rich nations from poor ones. The pair speculate that cold snaps have two main benefits - they freeze pests that would otherwise destroy crops, and also freeze organisms, such as those carried by mosquitoes, that carry disease. The result is agricultural abundance and a big workforce.

16C The academics took two sets of information. The first was average income for countries, the second was climate data provided by the University of East Anglia. They found a curious tally between the sets. Countries having five or more frosty days in the winter months are uniformly rich; those with fewer than five are impoverished. Masters notes: 'Finland is a small country that is growing quickly, but Bolivia is a small country that isn't growing at all. Perhaps climate has something to do with that.'

17D Other minds have applied themselves to the split between poor and rich nations. Jared Diamond, from the University of California at Los Angeles, pointed out that Eurasia is broadly aligned east-west, while Africa and the Americas are aligned north-south. In Europe crops could move quickly across latitudes because climates are similar. One of the first domesticated crops, einkorn wheat, extended quickly from the Middle East into Europe; it took twice as long for it to get from Mexico to what is now the eastern United States. This easy movement along similar latitudes in Eurasia would also have meant a faster dissemination of other technologies, such as the wheel and writing.

18E There are exceptions to the 'cold equals rich' argument. There are well-heeled tropical countries such as Singapore, a result of its superior trading position. Likewise, not all European countries are moneyed. Masters stresses that climate will never be the overriding factor - the wealth of nations is too complicated to be attributable to just one factor. Climate combines with other factors, such as institutions including governments, and access to trading routes, to determine whether a country will do well.

19F In the past, Masters says, economists thought that institutions had the biggest effect on the economy, because they brought order to a country in the form of laws and property rights. 'But there are some problems that even countries with institutions have not been able to get around,' he says. 'My feeling is that, as countries get richer, they get better institutions. And the accumulation of wealth and improvement in governing institutions are both helped by a favourable environment, including climate.'

20G This does not mean that tropical countries are beyond economic help. Instead of aid being geared towards improving administrative systems, it should be spent on technology to improve agriculture and to combat disease. Masters cites regions in India that have been provided with irrigation: agricultural productivity has gone up and there has been an improvement in health. Supplying vaccines against tropical diseases and developing crop varieties that can grow in the tropics would break the poverty cycle.

PASSAGE 3

Read the text and answer questions 27-40

A CLOSER EXAMINATION OF A STUDY ON VERBAL AND NON-VERBAL MESSAGES

Description of the Study

The findings of a study on verbal and non-verbal messages in communication by Albert Mehrabian and his colleagues at UCLA in 1967 have been quoted so frequently that they are now often regarded as a self-evident truth.

In the first experiment, subjects listened to a female saying the word 'maybe' in three tones of voice to convey liking, neutrality and disliking. They were then shown photos of female faces expressing the same three emotions and asked to guess the emotions in the recorded voice and the photos. The photos got more accurate responses than the voices. In the second experiment, subjects listened to nine recorded words spoken in different tones of voice. Three words had positive meanings, three were neutral and three were negative. Again, subjects guessed the speaker's emotions. Tone of voice carried more meaning than individual words. The researchers concluded that 7% of our feeling towards a speaker is based on actual words, 38% on tone of voice, and 55% on body language.

Methodological Issues

A closer look reveals limitations. The study involved only 62 subjects. Of these, 25 were used to select the word for the first experiment, while the key issue was determined by only the 37 remaining subjects. All were female undergraduates, and their ages and academic qualifications seem remarkably uniform. Thus, the findings may simply be a product of the sample.

Critics have pointed out that the 7-38-55 formula is flawed since it was pieced together from two different experiments, neither of which involved all three channels. In the first experiment the single word maybe was used throughout so it was impossible for the effects of changes in verbal input to be assessed. The researchers intentionally used a neutral word so naturally the subjects found little meaning there. Such a methodology lacks validity. In the real world, people communicate in context and speak in phrases and full sentences.

My concern is that interpretations of this study have gained such prominence in our pedagogical literature. This 7-38-55 formula appears in many basic texts used for training in public speaking, interpersonal communication and organizational communication.

Lessons to consider

One appealing aspect of the Mehrabian study is its numerical precision. Communication is complex, but seems less so when we can rely on these three magical numbers. The popular appeal of the study has given the formula enormous credibility. There is a mystique about non-verbal communication, and references to this research encourage people to believe in the overwhelming importance of the non-verbal message compared with the verbal one. Yet even one ill-chosen word can make or break communication. Bradley observes, 'If we could communicate 93% of information and attitudes with vocal and facial cues, it would be wasteful to spend time learning a language.'

Mehrabian himself believes his research should not be interpreted to devalue language, saying that all his findings dealt with communications of feelings and attitudes, and it is absurd to suggest that the verbal portion of all communication constitutes only 7% of the message. Anytime we communicate abstract relationships, clearly 100% of the entire communication is verbal.

To be fair, many textbook writers attempt to be faithful to the context of Mehrabian's research. Others try to play down the specific percentages, saying that the general importance of non-verbal cues is more important. Nonetheless, other textbook authors simply use the numbers without placing any limits on their meaning.

Conclusion

Since this relatively small study was first published it has achieved an influence far beyond its intended scope. We need to put it into its proper perspective and learn some important lessons from it regarding social science research, communication pedagogy, and the forces which have created widespread misunderstanding about communication.