PRACTICE ENGLISH

1. TIMED PRACTICE TEST (IC3 READING – June 2021)
TIME: 1 HOUR
Reading passage 1
COMMUNICATING SYLES AND CONFLICT
Knowing your communication style and having a mix of styles on your team can provide a
positive force for resolving conflict.
A As far back as Hippocrates’ time (460-370B.C.), people have tried to understand other
people by characterizing them according to personality type or temperament. Hippocrates believed
there were four different body fluids that influenced four basic types of temperament. His work
was further developed 500 years later by Galen. These days there are any number of self-
assessment tools that relate to the basic descriptions developed by Galen, although we no longer
believe the source to be the types of body fluid that dominate our systems.
B The values in self-assessments that help determine personality style. Learning styles,
communication styles, conflict-handling styles, or other aspects of individuals is that they help
depersonalize conflict in interpersonal relationships. The depersonalization occurs when you
realize that others aren’t trying to be difficult, but they need different or more information than
you do. They’re not intending to be rude: they are so focused on the task they forget about greeting
people. They would like to work faster but not at the risk of damaging the relationships needed to
get the job done. They understand there is a job to do. But it can only be done right with the
appropriate information, which takes time to collect. When used appropriately, understanding
communication styles can help resolve conflict on teams. Very rarely are conflicts true personality
issues. Usually they are issues of style, information needs, or focus.
C Hippocrates and later Galen determined there were four basic temperaments: sanguine,
phlegmatic, melancholic and choleric. These descriptions were developed centuries ago and are
still somewhat apt, although you could update the wording. In today’s world, they translate into
the four fairly common communication styles described below:
D The sanguine person would be the expressive or spirited style of communication. These people
speak in pictures. They invest a lot of emotion and energy in their communication and often speak
quickly. Putting their whole body into it. They are easily sidetracked onto a story that may or may
not illustrate the point they are trying to make. Because of their enthusiasm, they are great team
motivators. They are concerned about people and relationships. Their high levels of energy can
come on strong at times and their focus is usually on the bigger picture, which means they
sometimes miss the details or the proper order of things. These people find conflict or differences
of opinion invigorating and love to engage in a spirited discussion. They love change and are
constantly looking for new and exciting adventures.
E Tile phlegmatic person - cool and persevering - translates into the technical or systematic
communication style. This style of communication is focused on facts and technical details.
Phlegmatic people have an orderly methodical way of approaching tasks, and their focus is very

2. much on the task, not on the people, emotions, or concerns that the task may evoke. The focus is
also more on the details necessary to accomplish a task. Sometimes the details overwhelm the big
picture and focus needs to be brought back to the context of the task. People with this style think
the facts should speak for themselves, and they are not as comfortable with conflict. They
need time to adapt to change and need to understand both the logic of it and the steps involved.
F Tile melancholic person who is soft hearted and oriented toward doing things for others
translates into the considerate or sympathetic communication style. A person with this
communication style is focused on people and relationships. They are good listeners and do things
for other people-sometimes to the detriment of getting things done for themselves. They want to
solicit everyone’s opinion and make sure everyone is comfortable with whatever is required to get
the job done. At times this focus on others can distract from the task at hand. Because they are so
concerned with the needs of others and smoothing over issues, they do not like conflict. They
believe that change threatens the status quo and tends to make people feel uneasy, so people with
this communication style, like phlegmatic people need time to consider the changes in order to
adapt to them.
G The choleric temperament translates into the bold or direct style of communication. People with
this style are brief in their communication - the fewer words the better. They are big picture
thinkers and love to be involved in many things at once. They are focused on tasks and outcomes
and often forget that the people involved in carrying out the tasks have needs. They don’t do detail
work easily and as a result can often underestimate how much time it takes to achieve the task.
Because they are so direct, they often seem forceful and can be very intimidating to others. They
usually would welcome someone challenging them. But most other styles are afraid to do so. They
also thrive on change, the more the better.
H A well-functioning team should have all of these communication styles for true effectiveness.
All teams need to focus on the task, and they need to take care of relationships in order to achieve
those tasks. They need the big picture perspective or the context of their work, and they need the
details to be identified and taken care of for success. We all have aspects of each style within us.
Some of us can easily move from one style to another and adapt our style to the needs of the
situation at hand-whether the focus is on tasks or relationships. For others, a dominant style is very
evident, and it is more challenging to see the situation from the perspective of another style. The
work environment can influence communication styles either by the type of work that is required
or by the predominance of one style reflected in that environment. Some people use one style at
work and another at home.
The good news about communication styles is that we have the ability to develop flexibility in our
styles. The greater the flexibility we have, the more skilled we usually are at handling possible and
actual conflicts. Usually it has to be relevant to us to do so, either because we think it is important
or because there are incentives in our environment to encourage it. The key is that we have to want
to become flexible with our communication style. As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you
can or you can’t, you’re right!”

3. Questions 1-8
Reading Passage has eight sections A-H.
Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number i-x in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i Summarising personality types
ii Combined styles for workplace
iii Physical explanation
iv A lively person who encourages
v Demanding and unsympathetic personality
vi Lazy and careless personality
vii The benefits of understanding communication styles
viii Cautious and caring
ix Factual and analytical personality
x Self-assessment determines one’s temperament
1. Section A
2. Section B
3. Section C
4. Section D
5. Section E
6. Section F
7. Section G
8. Section H
Questions 9-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
9. It is believed that sanguine people dislike variety.
10. Melancholic and phlegmatic people have similar characteristics.
11. Managers often select their best employees according to personality types.
12. It is possible to change one’s personality type.
13. Workplace environment can affect which communication style is most effective.

4. Question 14
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in box 14 on your answer sheet.
14. The writer believes using self-assessment tools can
A. help to develop one’s personality.
B. help to understand colleagues’ behaviour.
C. improve one’s relationship with the employer.
D. directly resolve conflicts.
Reading passage 2
ANTS COULD TEACH ANTS
The ants are tiny and usually nest between rocks in the south coast of England. Transformed into
research subjects at the University of Bristol, they raced along a tabletop foraging for food -and
then, remarkably, returned to guide others. Time and again, followers trailed behind leaders,
darting this way and that along the route, presumably to memorize land- marks. Once a follower
got its bearings, it tapped the leader with its antennae, prompting the lesson to literally proceed to
the next step. The ants were only looking for food but the researchers said the careful way the
leaders led followers -thereby turning them into leaders in their own right -marked
the Temnothorax albipennis ant as the very first example of a non-human animal exhibiting
teaching behavior.
"Tandem running is an example of teaching, to our knowledge the first in a non-human animal,
that involves bidirectional feedback between teacher and pupil," remarks Nigel Franks, professor
of animal behavior and ecology, whose paper on the ant educators was published last week in the
journal Nature.
No sooner was the paper published, of course, than another educator questioned it. Marc Hauser,
a psychologist and biologist and one of the scientists who came up with the definition of teaching,
said it was unclear whether the ants had learned a new skill or merely acquired new information.
Later, Franks took a further study and found that there were even races between leaders. With the
guidance of leaders, ants could find food faster. But the help comes at a cost for the leader, who
normally would have reached the food about four times faster if not hampered by a follower. This
means the hypothesis that the leaders deliberately slowed down in order to pass the skills on to the
followers seems potentially valid. His ideas were advocated by the students who carried out the
video project with him.
Opposing views still arose, however. Hauser noted that mere communication of information is
commonplace in the animal world. Consider a species, for example, that uses alarm calls to warn
fellow members about the presence of a predator. Sounding the alarm can be costly, because the
animal may draw the attention of the predator to itself. But it allows others to flee to safety. “Would
you call this teaching?” wrote Hauser. “The caller incurs a cost. The naive animals gain a
benefit and new knowledge that better enables them to learn about the predator’s location than if

5. the caller had not called. This happens throughout the animal kingdom, but we don’t call it
teaching, even though it is clearly transfer of information.”
Tim Caro, a zoologist, presented two cases of animal communication. He found that cheetah
mothers that take their cubs along on hunts gradually allow their cubs to do more of the hunting -
going, for example, from killing a gazelle and allowing young cubs to eat to merely tripping the
gazelle and letting the cubs finish it off. At one level, such behavior might be called teaching -
except the mother was not really teaching the cubs to hunt but merely facilitating various stages of
learning. In another instance, birds watching other birds using a stick to locate food such as insects
and so on, are observed to do the same thing themselves while finding food later.
Psychologists study animal behavior in part to understand the evolutionary roots of human
behavior, Hauser said. The challenge in understanding whether other animals truly teach one
another, he added, is that human teaching involves a “theory of mind” -teachers are aware that
students don’t know something. He questioned whether Franks’s leader ants really knew that the
follower ants were ignorant. Could they simply have been following an instinctive rule to proceed
when the followers tapped them on the legs or abdomen? And did leaders that led the way to food
-only to find that it had been removed by the experimenter -incur the wrath of followers? That,
Hauser said, would suggest that the follower ant actually knew the leader was more knowledgeable
and not merely following an instinctive routine itself.
The controversy went on, and for a good reason. The occurrence of teaching in ants, if proven to
be true, indicates that teaching can evolve in animals with tiny brains. It is probably the value of
information in social animals that determines when teaching will evolve rather than the constraints
of brain size.
Bennett Galef Jr., a psychologist who studies animal behavior and social learning at McMaster
University in Canada, maintained that ants were unlikely to have a “theory of mind” -meaning that
leader and followers may well have been following instinctive routines that were not based on an
understanding of what was happening in another ant’s brain. He warned that scientists may be
barking up the wrong tree when they look not only for examples of humanlike behavior among
other animals but humanlike thinking that underlies such behavior. Animals may behave in ways
similar to humans without a similar cognitive system, he said, so the behavior is not necessarily a
good guide into how humans came to think the way they do.
Questions 15-19
Look at the following statements (Questions 15-20) and the list of people in the box below.
Match each statement with the correct person, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter, A, B, C or D, in boxes 15-20 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
15. Animals could use objects to locate food.
16. Ants show two-way, interactive teaching behaviors.

6. 17. It is risky to say ants can teach other ants like human beings do.
18. Ant leadership makes finding food faster.
19. Communication between ants is not entirely teaching.
List of People
A. Nigel Franks
B. Marc Hauser
C. Tim Caro
D. Bennett Galef Jr.
Questions 20-23
Choose FOUR letters, A-H
Write your answers in boxes 20-23 on your answer sheet.
Which FOUR of the following behaviors of animals are mentioned in the passage?
A. touch each other with antenna
B. alert others when there is danger
C. escape from predators
D. protect the young
E. hunt food for the young
F. fight with each other
G. use tools like twigs
H. feed on a variety of foods
Questions 24-27
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage?
In boxes 24-27 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
24. Ants' tandem running involves only one-way communication.
25. Franks's theory got many supporters immediately after publicity.
26. Ants' teaching behavior is the same as that of human.
27. Cheetah share hunting gains to younger ones

7. Reading passage 3
IT’S ECO-LOGICAL
Planning an eco-friendly holiday can be a minefield for the well- meaning traveller, says
Steve Watkins. But help is now at hand.
If there were awards for tourism phrases that have been hijacked, diluted and misused then
‘ecotourism’ would earn top prize. The term first surfaced in the early 1980s reflecting a surge in
environmental awareness and a realisation by tour operators that many travellers wanted to believe
their presence abroad would not have a negative impact. It rapidly became the hottest marketing
tag a holiday could carry.
These days the ecotourism label is used to cover anything from a two-week tour living with remote
Indonesian tribes, to a one-hour motorboat trip through an Australian gorge. In fact, any tour that
involves cultural interaction, natural beauty spots, wildlife or a dash of soft adventure is likely to
be included in the overflowing ecotourism folder. There is no doubt the original motives behind
the movement were honourable attempts to provide a way for those who cared to make informed
choices, but the lack of regulations and a standard industry definition left many travellers lost in
an ecotourism jungle.
It is easier to understand why the ecotourism market has become so overcrowded when we look at
its wider role in the world economy. According to World Tourism Organisation figures,
ecotourism is worth US$20 billion a year and makes up one-fifth of all international tourism. Add
to this an annual growth rate of around five per cent and the pressure for many operators, both in
developed and developing countries, to jump on the accelerating bandwagon is compelling.
Without any widely recognised accreditation system, the consumer has been left to investigate the
credentials of an operator themselves. This is a time-consuming process and many travellers
usually take an operator’s claims at face value, only adding to the proliferation of fake ecotours.
However, there are several simple questions that will provide qualifying evidence of a company’s
commitment to minimise its impact on the environment and maximise the benefits to the tourism
area’s local community. For example, does the company use recycled or sustainable, locally
harvested materials to build its tourist properties? Do they pay fair wages to all employees? Do
they offer training to employees? It is common for city entrepreneurs to own tour companies in
country areas, which can mean the money you pay ends up in the city rather than in the community
being visited. By taking a little extra time to investigate the ecotourism options, it is not only
possible to guide your custom to worthy operators but you will often find that the experience they
offer is far more rewarding.
The ecotourism business is still very much in need of a shake-up and a standardised approach.
There are a few organisations that have sprung up in the last ten years or so that endeavour to
educate travellers and operators about the benefits of responsible ecotourism. Founded in 1990,
the Ecotourism Society (TES) is a non-profit organisation of travel industry, conservation and
ecological professionals, which aims to make ecotourism a genuine tool for conservation and
sustainable development. Helping to create inherent economic value in wilderness environments
and threatened cultures has undoubtedly been one of the ecotourism movement’s most notable

8. achievements. TES organises an annual initiative to further aid development of the ecotourism
industry. This year it is launching ‘Your Travel Choice Makes a Difference’, an educational
campaign aimed at helping consumers understand the potential positive and negative impacts of
their travel decisions. TES also offers guidance on the choice of ecotour and has established a
register of approved ecotourism operators around the world.
A leading ecotourism operator in the United Kingdom is Tribes, which won the 1999 Tourism
Concern and Independent Traveller’s World ‘Award for Most Responsible Tour Operator’.
Amanda Marks, owner and director of Tribes, believes that the ecotourism industry still has some
way to go to get its house in order. Until now, no ecotourism accreditation scheme has really
worked, principally because there has been no systematic way of checking that accredited
companies actually comply with the code of practice. Amanda believes that the most promising
system is the recently re-launched Green Globe 21 scheme. The Green Globe 21 award is based
on the sustainable development standards contained in Agenda 21 from the 1992 Earth Summit
and was originally coordinated by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC). The scheme is
now an independent concern, though the WTTC still supports it. Until recently, tour companies
became affiliates and could use the Green Globe logo merely on payment of an annual fee, hardly
a suitable qualifying standard. However, in November 1999 Green Globe 21 introduced an annual,
independent check on operators wishing to use the logo.
Miriam Cain, from the Green Globe 21 marketing development, explains that current and new
affiliates will now have one year to ensure that their operations comply with Agenda 21 standards.
If they fail the first inspection, they can only reapply once. The inspection process is not a cheap
option, especially for large companies, but the benefits of having Green Globe status and the
potential operational cost savings that complying with the standards can bring should be
significant. ‘We have joint ventures with organisations around the world, including Australia and
the Caribbean, that will allow us to effectively check all affiliate operators,’ says Miriam. The
scheme also allows destination communities to become Green Globe 21 approved.
For a relatively new industry it is not surprising that ecotourism has undergone teething pains.
However, there are signs that things are changing for the better. With a committed and unified
approach by the travel industry, local communities, travellers and environmental experts could
make ecotourism a tag to be proud of and trusted.
Questions 28-33
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 28-33 on your answer sheet write
YES if the statement agrees with the writer’s views
NO if the statement contradicts the writer’s views
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
28. The term ‘ecotourism’ has become an advertising gimmick.
29. The intentions of those who coined the term ‘ecotourism’ were sincere.

9. 30. Ecotourism is growing at a faster rate than any other type of travel.
31. It is surprising that so many tour organisations decided to become involved in
ecotourism.
32. Tourists have learnt to make investigations about tour operators before using them.
33. Tourists have had bad experiences on ecotour holidays.
Questions 34-36
According to the information given in the reading passage, which THREE of the following are
true of the Ecotourism Society (TES)?
Write the appropriate letters A-F in boxes 33-35 on your answer sheet.
A. It has monitored the growth in ecotourism.
B. It involves a range of specialists in the field.
C. It has received public recognition for the role it performs.
D. It sets up regular ecotour promotions.
E. It offers information on ecotours at an international level.
F. It consults with people working in tourist destinations
Questions 37-38
According to the information given in the reading passage, which TWO of the following are true
of the Green Globe 21 award?
Write the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 36-37 on your answer sheet.
A. The scheme is self-regulating.
B. Amanda Marks was recruited to develop the award.
C. Prior to 1999 companies were not required to pay for membership.
D. Both tour operators and tour sites can apply for affiliation.
E. It intends to reduce the number of ecotour operators.
Questions 39-40
Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS, answer the following questions.
Write your answers in boxes 12-14 on your answer sheet.
1. Which body provides information on global tourist numbers?
2. Who often gains financially from tourism in rural environments?