IELTS Forcast Reading Test 2025 - Q1 Test 5 with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
Luyện tập đề IELTS Forcast Reading Test 2025 - Q1 Test 5 được lấy từ cuốn sách Forcast Test 2025 - Q1 với trải nghiệm thi IELTS trên máy và giải thích đáp án chi tiết bằng Linearthinking, kèm answer key và list từ vựng IELTS cần học trong bài đọc.
IELTS Forcast Reading Test 2025 - Q1 Test 5 with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 1
Question 1 - 5
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Summary
Modern man's basic need to belong to clubs and groups dates back to early history. Each person within the group had a to play and was considered integral to the entire group's dynamics and success. For an individual, belonging to a group could affect their chances of . In those times, few could avoid death living alone in . Living with other humans offered from danger. Staying in a group also meant that could be passed down to descendants.
Question 6 - 10
Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
THE PROCEDURE FOR LARKIN'S EXPERIMENT
Volunteers believed they were playing a computer game, similar to
The computer was controlling the gameplay, to some and not others.
The volunteers gave their after the game.
Each volunteer first sat on their own in a room and had their foot movements
The volunteer took part in a task with a woman who on purpose.
Question 11 - 13
Choose appropriate options A, B, C or D.
11
Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the first paragraph?
A
one experts view on evolution
B
the consequences of being excluded
C
being made fun of by the people around you
D
a social event that people are eagerly awaiting
12
According to the article, which method do people consciously use to obtain membership into their chosen group?
A
They tell the group they are strongly motivated.
B
They convey the best parts of their personality to the group.
C
They show how the group will be important to their lives.
D
They alter aspects of their personality to suit others.
13
The writer's main purpose in writing this article is to
A
explain how people feel when they face rejection.
B
encourage people to go it alone and not be part of a group.
C
show the unconscious drive behind the need to belong.
D
compare how the modern lifestyle is different to the past.
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 2
Question 14 - 17
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.
Summary
The would-be risk surely exists, since the avionic systems on modern aircraft are used to manage flight and deal with . Those devices are designed to meet the safety criteria which should be free from interrupting or interior emission. The personal use of mobile phone may cause the sophisticated outside of plane to dysfunction. Though definite interference in piloting devices has not been scientifically testified, the devices such as those detect in cabinet could be affected.
Question 18 - 22
Use the information in the passage to match the Organization (listed A-E) with opinions or deeds below.
List of Findings
A
British Civil Aviation Authority
B
Maryanne Greczyn
C
RTCA
D
Marshall Cross
E
Boeing Company
18
Mobile usage should be forbidden at a specific time.
19
Computers are more dangerous than cell phones.
20
Finding that mobile phones pose little risk to flight navigation devices.
21
The disruption of laptops is not as dangerous as cell phones.
22
The mobile signal may have an impact on earlier devices.
Question 23 - 26
Choose
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
23
Almost all scientists accept that cell phones have higher emissions than that of personal computers.
24
Some people believe that radio emissions will interrupt the equipment on the plane.
25
The signal interference-detecting device has not yet been developed because they are in a priority for neither the administrative department nor offer economic inventive.
26
FAA initiated open debate with the Federal Communications Commission.
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 3
Question 27 - 34
Reading Passage has eight paragraphs, A-H.
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-C and E-H from the list of headings below.
List of Headings
I
The conservation role of majority language speakers
II
Some advantages of changing languages
III
The loss rate of European languages
IV
Positive gains of conservation programmes
V
The economic value of minority languages
VI
The success rate of language rescue strategies in the past decade
VII
Improving the consistency of research data
VIII
The potential failure of language conservation
IX
The value of minority languages to language researchers
X
The current position of minority languages
27
Paragraph A
28
Paragraph B
29
Paragraph C
30
Paragraph D
31
Paragraph E
32
Paragraph F
33
Paragraph G
34
Paragraph H
Question 35 - 39
Look at the following opinions and the list of people below.
Match each opinion with the correct person, A-G.
List of Findings
A
Michael Krauss
B
Nicholas Ostler
C
James Matisoff
D
Sarah G Thomason
E
Leanne Hinton
F
Gary F Simons
G
Hans-Jurgen Sasse
35
In the long run, the California scheme will not have enough tutors.
36
Decisions need to be made about priorities in language rescue.
37
Languages currently in use face extinction in the foreseeable future.
38
There is a solution to the problem of languages dying out.
39
A language may be dying when its speakers begin to value it less.
Question 40
Choose appropriate options A, B, C or D.
40
The Alaskan Language Center was set up to
A
teach indigenous languages to children.
B
revive indigenous languages which have fallen from use.
C
prevent further loss of indigenous languages.
D
predict the rate of loss of indigenous languages.
DOL IELTS Đình Lực
05/05/2026
📖 Bài đọc passage 1
The need to belong
No one likes to feel left out, ignored by colleagues at meetings or not be invited to the big party that everyone is talking about. Imagine not being part of a joke, or worse still, if the joke is on you. For most people, living the life of an outsider can have a negative effect on self-esteem and mood. It can even lead to negative behaviour. The pull to belong is extremely strong. Scientists believe that, in part, there is an evolutionary explanation for why we have this need to belong.
In the past, people hunted and cooked together in tribes and each member of the group would be assigned a role. As each member had a purpose, it meant that in the event of the loss of one person, the group as a whole would suffer. For this reason, they had a vested interest in protecting each other. To our prehistoric ancestors, membership of a group meant the difference between survival and death. Those who were rejected and excluded from joining a group had to fend for themselves and struggled to stay alive alone in the wild. Apart from protection, being part of a group also ensured that genes could be passed onto future generations.
Although it is very different now from the way our primitive ancestors lived, our brains have not had time to evolve to fit today's lifestyles. In this day and age, it is no longer a matter of survival to be affiliated to a tribe or group, but the evolutionary instinct to find protection still lingers.
This inherent feeling of security that comes with being part of a group is powerful enough to make people employ both conscious and unconscious strategies to gain membership. One obvious way people try to be accepted into a group is self-presentation, which is the act of portraying yourself in the best possible light An individual will attempt to outwardly display the characteristics that are important to the group's advancement At the same time, they will conceal any parts of their personality that may be seen as undesirable or not useful to a group. An example of self-presentation is the job application process. A candidate applying for a job will promote themselves as motivated, but is likely to hide the fact that they are disorganised. These conscious tactics that people use are not a surprise to anyone, but we also use other strategies unknowingly.
Psychologists Jessica Larkin, Tanya Chartrand, and Robert Arkin suggested that people often resort to automatic mimicry to gain affiliation into groups, much like our primitive ancestors used to do. Before humans had the ability to speak, physical imitation was a method of begging for a place in the group. Most will be unaware they are doing it. Larkin and her co-workers decided to test this hypothesis.
They took a group of student volunteers and had them play a game called Cyberball, a ball tossing arcade game that resembled American football. The volunteers were led to believe they were all playing against each other, but in actual fact, they were not. The computer was manipulating the game by passing the ball to some volunteers and excluding others.
The 'accepted and 'rejected students were then asked if they enjoyed the game and about their opinions of the other players. Participants were then put alone in a room and their natural foot movements were filmed. Then a female entered the room under the pretence of conducting a fake photo description task. The female deliberately moved her foot during the task, but not in a way that would be noticeable to the volunteer. It turned out that the rejected students mimicked the female's foot movements the most This revealed that after exclusion, people will automatically mimic to affiliate with someone new.
However, Larkin and her colleagues wanted to go further. They believed that more often than not, in the real world, we actually know the people who reject us. How do we behave towards the group that we know has excluded us? The experiment was repeated with this question in mind. In the second experiment, only female volunteers played the Cyberball game, during which they experienced rejection by either men or women. Then each volunteer did the fake photo task, but this time with a man and then a woman.
The results clearly indicated that the female students who felt rejected would unconsciously make more of an effort to mimic members of their own in-group - that is, other women - rather than men. This deep-wired instinct to mimic was not only directed towards random people, as initially thought but targeted to specific groups, the particular group that did the rejecting in the first place.
To some, it is inconceivable why people will go to great lengths to be accepted into one of life's social groups or clubs, enduring rejection and sometimes humiliation in order to be accepted. You only have to look at college campuses, which are notorious for strict initiations inflicted on candidates desperately seeking membership. But it happens and will continue to happen, because the desire to belong is a very powerful force and a fundamental part of human nature.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 1
1
role
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài Gap Fill
Step 01: Read the question to understand (main idea + detail) + Predict Word Form + Meaning
Simplified: Each person had a ________ to play
Main idea: Mỗi người trong nhóm đều có một _________ để đóng và được coi là thành phần không thể thiếu của nhóm.
Prediction: Danh từ số ít (theo sau "a") --> có thể ghép được với động từ "play"
-------
Step 02: Locate relevant information
🔍 Từ khoá: “each person”, “group”, “play”, “success”, "was considered integral"
→ Dựa vào các từ khoá trên → Tìm được trích dẫn ở đoạn 2
-------
Step 03: Read relevant information to understand (main + detail)
📌 Trích dẫn: "In the past, people hunted and cooked together in tribes and each member of the group would be assigned a role." (Đoạn 2)
Simplified:
people hunted and cooked together in tribes and each member would be assigned a role
Main idea: Trong thời cổ, con người sống thành bộ lạc – cùng săn bắt, nấu nướng – và mỗi thành viên được giao một vai trò cụ thể để duy trì hoạt động của cả nhóm.
-------
Step 04: Compare meaning with meaning
Trong bài đọc: Mỗi thành viên được giao một vai trò cụ thể trong bộ lạc.
Trong câu hỏi: Mỗi người trong nhóm có một ________ để đóng, đảm bảo sự thành công của tập thể.
→ Suy ra từ cần điền mang nghĩa “vai trò”.
Mobiles are barred, but passengers can tap away on their laptops to their hearts' content. Is one really safer than the other? In the US, a Congressional subcommittee grilled airline representatives and regulators about the issues last month. But the committee heard that using cell phones in planes may indeed pose a risk, albeit a slight one. This would seem to vindicate the treatment of Manchester oil worker Neil Whitehouse, who was sentenced last summer to a year in jail by a British court for refusing to turn off his mobile on a flight home from Madrid. Although he was only typing a message to be sent on landing, not actually making a call, the court decided that he was putting the flight at risk.
A
The potential for problems is certainly there. Modern airlines are packed with electronic devices that control the plane and handle navigation and communications. Each has to meet stringent safeguards to make sure it doesn't emit radiation that would interfere with other devices in the plane-standards that passengers' personal electronic devices don't necessarily meet. Emissions from inside the plane could also interfere with sensitive antennae on the fixed exterior.
B
But despite running a number of studies, Boeing, Airbus, and various government agencies haven't been able to find clear evidence of problems caused by personal electronic devices, including mobile phones. "We've done our own studies. We've found cellphones actually have no impact on the navigation system," says Maryanne Greczyn, a spokeswoman for Airbus Industries of North America in Herndon, Virginia. Nor do they affect other critical systems, she says. The only impact Airbus found? Sometimes when a passenger is starting or finishing a phone call, the pilot hears a very slight beep in the headset," she says.
C
The best evidence yet of a problem comes from a report released this year by Britain's Civil Aviation Authority.
Its researchers generated simulated cellphone transmissions inside two Boeing aircraft. They concluded that the transmissions could create signals at a power and frequency that would not affect the latest equipment, but exceeded the safety threshold established in 1984 and might therefore affect some of the older equipment on board. This doesn't mean "mission critical" equipment such as the navigation system and flight controls. But the devices that could be affected, such as smoke detectors and fuel level indicators, could still create serious problems for the flight crew if they malfunction.
D
Many planes still use equipment certified to the older standards, says Dan Hawkes, head of avionics at the CAA's Safety Regulation Group. The CAA study doesn't prove the equipment will actually fail when subjected to the signals, but does show there's a danger. "We've taken some of the uncertainly out of these beliefs," he says. Another study later this year will see if the cellphone signals actually cause devices to fail.
E
In 1996, RTCA, a consultant hired by the Federal Aviation Administration in the US to conduct tests, determined that potential problems from personal electronic devices were "low". Nevertheless, it recommended a ban on their use during "critical" periods of flight, such as take-off and landing. RTCa didn't actually test cellphones, but nevertheless recommended their wholesale ban on flights. But if "better safe than sorry" is the current policy, it's applied inconsistently, according to Marshall Cross, the chairman of MegaWave Corporation, based in Boylston, Massachusetts. Why are cellphones outlawed when no one considers a ban on laptops? "It's like most things in life. The reason is a little bit technical, a little bit economic, and a little bit political," says Cross.
F
The company wrote a report for the FAA in 1998 saying it is possible to build an on-board system that could detect dangerous signals from electronic devices. But Cross's personal conclusion is that mobile phones aren't the real threat. "You'd have to stretch things pretty far to figure out how a cellphone could interfere with a plane's systems," he says. Cellphones transmit in ranges of around 400, 800, or 1800 megahertz. Since no important piece of aircraft equipment operates at those frequencies, the possibility of interference is very low, Cross says. The use of computers and electronic game systems is much more worrying, he says. They can generate very strong signals at frequencies that could interfere with plane electronics, especially if a mouse is attached (the wire operates as an antenna or if their built-in shielding is somehow damaged. Some airlines are even planning to put sockets for laptops in seatbacks.
G
There's fairly convincing anecdotal evidence that some personal electronic devices have interfered with systems. Air crew on one flight found that the autopilot was being disconnected, and narrowed the problem down to a passenger's portable computer. They could actually watch the autopilot disconnect when they switched the computer on. Boeing bought the computer, took it to the airline's labs, and even tested it on an empty flight. But as with every other reported instance of interference, technicians were unable to replicate the problem.
H
Some engineers, however, such as Bruce Donham of Boeing, say that common sense suggests phones are riskier than laptops. "A device capable of producing a strong emission is not as safe as a device which does not have any intentional emission," he says. Nevertheless, many experts think it's illogical that cellphones are prohibited when computers aren't. Besides, the problem is more complicated than simply looking at power and frequency. In the air, the plane operates in a soup of electronic emissions, created by its own electronics and by ground-based radiation. Electronic devices in cabin-especially those emitting a strong signal-can behave unpredictably, reinforcing other signals, for instance, or creating unforeseen harmonics that disrupt systems.
I
Despite the Congressional subcommittee hearings last month, no one seems to be working seriously on a technical solution that would allow passengers to use their phones. That's mostly because no one -besides cellphone users themselves-stands to gain a lot if the phones are allowed in the air. Even the cellphone companies don't want it. They are concerned that airborne signals could cause problems by flooding a number of the networks' base stations at once with the same signal. This effect, called bigfooting, happens because airborne cellphone signals tend to go to many base stations at once, unlike land calls which usually go to just one or two stations. In the US, even if FAA regulations didn't prohibit cell phones in the air, Federal Communications Commission regulations would.
J
Possible solutions might be to enhance airliners' electronic insulation or to fit detectors which warned flight staff when passenger devices were emitting dangerous signals. But Cross complains that neither the FAA, the airlines nor the manufacturers are showing much interest in developing these. So, despite Congressional suspicion and the occasional irritated (or jailed) mobile user, the industry's "better safe than sorry" policy on mobile phones seems likely to continue. In the absence of firm evidence that the international airline industry is engaged in a vast conspiracy to overcharge its customers, a delayed phone call seems a small price to pay for even the tiniest reduction in the chances of a plane crash. But you'll still be allowed to use your personal computer during a flight. And while that remains the case, airlines can hardly claim that logic has prevailed.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 2
14
navigation and communications
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài Gap Fill
Step 01: Read the question to understand (main idea + detail) + Predict Word Form + Meaning
Simplified: The would-be risk exists , since the avionic systems on modern aircraft are used to manage flight and deal with _________
Main idea: Có rủi ro tiềm ẩn vì hệ thống điện tử hàng không trên máy bay hiện đại được dùng để điều khiển chuyến bay và xử lý __________ .
Prediction: Danh từ (Noun)→ chỉ điều gì mà hệ thống này “xử lý”.
-------
Step 02: Locate relevant information
🔍 Từ khoá: "would-be", "risk", “avionic systems”, “modern aircraft”, “manage flight”, “deal with”
→ Dựa vào các từ khoá trên → Tìm được trích dẫn ở đoạn A.
-------
Step 03: Read relevant information to understand (main + detail)
📌Trích dẫn: "Modern airlines are packed with electronic devices that control the plane and handle navigation and communications." (Đoạn A)
Simplified: Modern airlines are packed with electronic devices that control the plane and handle navigation and communications
-------
Step 04: Compare meaning with meaning
Trong bài đọc: Máy bay hiện đại có rất nhiều thiết bị điện tử giúp điều khiển máy bay và xử lý điều hướng và liên lạc.
Trong câu hỏi: Hệ thống điện tử hàng không được dùng để điều khiển chuyến bay và xử lý _________.
→ Suy ra “điều hướng và liên lạc” là từ/cụm tiếng Anh cần điền.
A. Ten years ago, Michael Krauss, a professor at the University of Alaska, shocked his colleagues in the discipline of lia gusties with his prediction that half the 6,000 or so languages spoken in the world would disappear within a century. Krauss founded the Alaskan Native Language Center to preserve as much as possible of the 20 tongues still known to the state's indigenous people. Only two of those languages were being taught to children, and the rest were rapidly falling from use. Other linguists are making similar predictions. A survey in Australia found that 70 of the surviving 90 Aboriginal languages were no longer used regularly by all age groups. The same is true for all but 20 of the other 175 North American languages in the US.
B
Outwardly, the consolidation of human language might seem like a good trend that could ease ethnic tensions and aid global commerce. Linguists don't deny those benefits, and they acknowledge that small communities often choose to switch to the majority language because they believe it will boost their social or economic status.
C
Many experts in the field nonetheless mourn the loss of rare languages, for several reasons. Some of the most basic questions in linguistics have to do with the limits of human speech, still far from fully explored. Many researchers would like to know which elements of grammar and vocabulary - if any - are universal. An English researcher, Nicholas Ostler, offers an example: 'lea, spoken in northern Colombia, seems to have nothing comparable to a personal pronoun system - I, we, you, etc. Otherwise, I would have thought that personal pronouns were a linguistic universal'. Other scientists try to reconstruct ancient migration patterns by comparing borrowed words in otherwise unrelated languages. In each of these cases, the wider the range of languages you study, the more likely you are to get the right answers.
D
'I think the value is mostly in human terms,' says James Matisoff, a specialist in rare Asian languages at the University of California. 'Language is the most important element in the culture of a community. When it dies, you lose the special knowledge of that culture and a unique window on the world. But despite the constant talk about saving endangered languages over the past ten years, the field of descriptive linguistics has accomplished little in this respect. 'You would think that there would be some organised response to this situation, some attempt to determine which languages can be saved and which should be documented before they disappear,' says Sarah G Thomason, of the University of Michigan. 'But there isn't any such effort.'
E
However, there are some signs of progress. The Volkswagen Foundation, a German charity, has created a multimedia archive in the Netherlands that can house recordings, grammars, dictionaries and other data. Contributions from the Ford Foundation have helped a master-apprentice programme, in which fluent speakers receive $3,000 to teach a younger relative their native tongue through shared activities. So far, about 75 teams have completed the programme. 'It's too early to call this language revitalisation, admits Leanne Hinton of Berkeley. 'In California, the death rate of elderly speakers will always be greater than the recruitment rate of young speakers. But, if nothing else, we prolong the survival of the language.' This will give linguists more time to record these tongues before they vanish.
F
Complicating matters, dozens of institutions around the world are setting up digital libraries on endangered languages. This could create chaos, because the projects use non-standardised data formats, terminology and even names of languages. Gary F Simons, of the Dallas-based research group SIL International, has been working to bring some order to this by building an 'open languages data community' - a kind of digital card catalogue. This system will allow researchers to check their theories against a vast array of data.
G
However, even if a language has been fully documented, all that remains once it vanishes from use is a fossil skeleton. Linguists may be able to sketch an outline of the language and fix its place on the evolutionary tree, but little more. As yet, there is no discipline of conservation linguistics. Almost every strategy to keep people speaking a language has succeeded in some places but failed in others. One factor that always seems to occur in the death of a language, according to Hans-Jurgen Sasse of the University of Cologne in Germany, is that speakers start regarding their own language as inferior to the majority language. Children pick up on the attitude, and prefer to speak the dominant language. This is how Comish and some dialects of Scottish Gaelic slipped into extinction.
H
'Ultimately, the answer to the problem of language extinction is multilingualism,' argues James Matisoff. 'Even uneducated people can speak a number of languages if they start as children.' Many people in the world are at least bilingual, and in some places it is common to speak three or four languages. But in addition to the fact that children may reject minority languages, there is also the concern that speakers of a majority language may react badly to speakers of minority languages. The first step in saving dying languages may be to persuade the world's majorities to allow the minorities among them to speak with their own voice.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 3
27
X
Giải thích chi tiết
Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài Matching Headings
Step 01: Read to understand main idea
Dựa trên phần Simplify & Connection, đoạn này trình bày thực trạng hiện tại của các ngôn ngữ thiểu số:
Một nửa trong số 6.000 ngôn ngữ trên thế giới có nguy cơ biến mất trong vòng 1 thế kỉ.
Ngay cả tại Alaska, phần lớn các ngôn ngữ bản địa đã không còn được truyền dạy cho trẻ em.
Tình trạng tương tự xảy ra ở Úc và Mỹ.
⇒ Toàn bộ đoạn thể hiện bức tranh hiện tại về sự suy giảm của các ngôn ngữ thiểu số trên toàn cầu.
-------
Step 02: Compare meaning with meaning
Đại ý của đoạn: Đưa ra bằng chứng và số liệu về tốc độ biến mất nhanh chóng của các ngôn ngữ thiểu số trên thế giới, minh chứng bằng nghiên cứu ở Alaska, Úc, và Bắc Mỹ.
So sánh với tiêu đề: “The current position of minority languages” nói đến tình trạng hiện tại của các ngôn ngữ thiểu số, hoàn toàn trùng khớp với nội dung của đoạn A.
✅ Đáp án đúng: J. The current position of minority languages
No one likes to feel left out, ignored by colleagues at meetings or not be invited to the big party that everyone is talking about. Imagine not being part of a joke, or worse still, if the joke is on you. For most people, living the life of an outsider can have a negative effect on self-esteem and mood. It can even lead to negative behaviour. The pull to belong is extremely strong. Scientists believe that, in part, there is an evolutionary explanation for why we have this need to belong.
In the past, people hunted and cooked together in tribes and each member of the group would be assigned a role. As each member had a purpose, it meant that in the event of the loss of one person, the group as a whole would suffer. For this reason, they had a vested interest in protecting each other. To our prehistoric ancestors, membership of a group meant the difference between survival and death. Those who were rejected and excluded from joining a group had to fend for themselves and struggled to stay alive alone in the wild. Apart from protection, being part of a group also ensured that genes could be passed onto future generations.
Although it is very different now from the way our primitive ancestors lived, our brains have not had time to evolve to fit today's lifestyles. In this day and age, it is no longer a matter of survival to be affiliated to a tribe or group, but the evolutionary instinct to find protection still lingers.
This inherent feeling of security that comes with being part of a group is powerful enough to make people employ both conscious and unconscious strategies to gain membership. One obvious way people try to be accepted into a group is self-presentation, which is the act of portraying yourself in the best possible light An individual will attempt to outwardly display the characteristics that are important to the group's advancement At the same time, they will conceal any parts of their personality that may be seen as undesirable or not useful to a group. An example of self-presentation is the job application process. A candidate applying for a job will promote themselves as motivated, but is likely to hide the fact that they are disorganised. These conscious tactics that people use are not a surprise to anyone, but we also use other strategies unknowingly.
Psychologists Jessica Larkin, Tanya Chartrand, and Robert Arkin suggested that people often resort to automatic mimicry to gain affiliation into groups, much like our primitive ancestors used to do. Before humans had the ability to speak, physical imitation was a method of begging for a place in the group. Most will be unaware they are doing it. Larkin and her co-workers decided to test this hypothesis.
They took a group of student volunteers and had them play a game called Cyberball, a ball tossing arcade game that resembled American football. The volunteers were led to believe they were all playing against each other, but in actual fact, they were not. The computer was manipulating the game by passing the ball to some volunteers and excluding others.
The 'accepted and 'rejected students were then asked if they enjoyed the game and about their opinions of the other players. Participants were then put alone in a room and their natural foot movements were filmed. Then a female entered the room under the pretence of conducting a fake photo description task. The female deliberately moved her foot during the task, but not in a way that would be noticeable to the volunteer. It turned out that the rejected students mimicked the female's foot movements the most This revealed that after exclusion, people will automatically mimic to affiliate with someone new.
However, Larkin and her colleagues wanted to go further. They believed that more often than not, in the real world, we actually know the people who reject us. How do we behave towards the group that we know has excluded us? The experiment was repeated with this question in mind. In the second experiment, only female volunteers played the Cyberball game, during which they experienced rejection by either men or women. Then each volunteer did the fake photo task, but this time with a man and then a woman.
The results clearly indicated that the female students who felt rejected would unconsciously make more of an effort to mimic members of their own in-group - that is, other women - rather than men. This deep-wired instinct to mimic was not only directed towards random people, as initially thought but targeted to specific groups, the particular group that did the rejecting in the first place.
To some, it is inconceivable why people will go to great lengths to be accepted into one of life's social groups or clubs, enduring rejection and sometimes humiliation in order to be accepted. You only have to look at college campuses, which are notorious for strict initiations inflicted on candidates desperately seeking membership. But it happens and will continue to happen, because the desire to belong is a very powerful force and a fundamental part of human nature.
Mobiles are barred, but passengers can tap away on their laptops to their hearts' content. Is one really safer than the other? In the US, a Congressional subcommittee grilled airline representatives and regulators about the issues last month. But the committee heard that using cell phones in planes may indeed pose a risk, albeit a slight one. This would seem to vindicate the treatment of Manchester oil worker Neil Whitehouse, who was sentenced last summer to a year in jail by a British court for refusing to turn off his mobile on a flight home from Madrid. Although he was only typing a message to be sent on landing, not actually making a call, the court decided that he was putting the flight at risk.
A. The potential for problems is certainly there. Modern airlines are packed with electronic devices that control the plane and handle navigation and communications. Each has to meet stringent safeguards to make sure it doesn't emit radiation that would interfere with other devices in the plane-standards that passengers' personal electronic devices don't necessarily meet. Emissions from inside the plane could also interfere with sensitive antennae on the fixed exterior.
B. But despite running a number of studies, Boeing, Airbus, and various government agencies haven't been able to find clear evidence of problems caused by personal electronic devices, including mobile phones. "We've done our own studies. We've found cellphones actually have no impact on the navigation system," says Maryanne Greczyn, a spokeswoman for Airbus Industries of North America in Herndon, Virginia. Nor do they affect other critical systems, she says. The only impact Airbus found? Sometimes when a passenger is starting or finishing a phone call, the pilot hears a very slight beep in the headset," she says.
C. The best evidence yet of a problem comes from a report released this year by Britain's Civil Aviation Authority.
Its researchers generated simulated cellphone transmissions inside two Boeing aircraft. They concluded that the transmissions could create signals at a power and frequency that would not affect the latest equipment, but exceeded the safety threshold established in 1984 and might therefore affect some of the older equipment on board. This doesn't mean "mission critical" equipment such as the navigation system and flight controls. But the devices that could be affected, such as smoke detectors and fuel level indicators, could still create serious problems for the flight crew if they malfunction.
D. Many planes still use equipment certified to the older standards, says Dan Hawkes, head of avionics at the CAA's Safety Regulation Group. The CAA study doesn't prove the equipment will actually fail when subjected to the signals, but does show there's a danger. "We've taken some of the uncertainly out of these beliefs," he says. Another study later this year will see if the cellphone signals actually cause devices to fail.
E. In 1996, RTCA, a consultant hired by the Federal Aviation Administration in the US to conduct tests, determined that potential problems from personal electronic devices were "low". Nevertheless, it recommended a ban on their use during "critical" periods of flight, such as take-off and landing. RTCa didn't actually test cellphones, but nevertheless recommended their wholesale ban on flights. But if "better safe than sorry" is the current policy, it's applied inconsistently, according to Marshall Cross, the chairman of MegaWave Corporation, based in Boylston, Massachusetts. Why are cellphones outlawed when no one considers a ban on laptops? "It's like most things in life. The reason is a little bit technical, a little bit economic, and a little bit political," says Cross.
F. The company wrote a report for the FAA in 1998 saying it is possible to build an on-board system that could detect dangerous signals from electronic devices. But Cross's personal conclusion is that mobile phones aren't the real threat. "You'd have to stretch things pretty far to figure out how a cellphone could interfere with a plane's systems," he says. Cellphones transmit in ranges of around 400, 800, or 1800 megahertz. Since no important piece of aircraft equipment operates at those frequencies, the possibility of interference is very low, Cross says. The use of computers and electronic game systems is much more worrying, he says. They can generate very strong signals at frequencies that could interfere with plane electronics, especially if a mouse is attached (the wire operates as an antenna or if their built-in shielding is somehow damaged. Some airlines are even planning to put sockets for laptops in seatbacks.
G. There's fairly convincing anecdotal evidence that some personal electronic devices have interfered with systems. Air crew on one flight found that the autopilot was being disconnected, and narrowed the problem down to a passenger's portable computer. They could actually watch the autopilot disconnect when they switched the computer on. Boeing bought the computer, took it to the airline's labs, and even tested it on an empty flight. But as with every other reported instance of interference, technicians were unable to replicate the problem.
H. Some engineers, however, such as Bruce Donham of Boeing, say that common sense suggests phones are riskier than laptops. "A device capable of producing a strong emission is not as safe as a device which does not have any intentional emission," he says. Nevertheless, many experts think it's illogical that cellphones are prohibited when computers aren't. Besides, the problem is more complicated than simply looking at power and frequency. In the air, the plane operates in a soup of electronic emissions, created by its own electronics and by ground-based radiation. Electronic devices in cabin-especially those emitting a strong signal-can behave unpredictably, reinforcing other signals, for instance, or creating unforeseen harmonics that disrupt systems.
I. Despite the Congressional subcommittee hearings last month, no one seems to be working seriously on a technical solution that would allow passengers to use their phones. That's mostly because no one -besides cellphone users themselves-stands to gain a lot if the phones are allowed in the air. Even the cellphone companies don't want it. They are concerned that airborne signals could cause problems by flooding a number of the networks' base stations at once with the same signal. This effect, called bigfooting, happens because airborne cellphone signals tend to go to many base stations at once, unlike land calls which usually go to just one or two stations. In the US, even if FAA regulations didn't prohibit cell phones in the air, Federal Communications Commission regulations would.
J. Possible solutions might be to enhance airliners' electronic insulation or to fit detectors which warned flight staff when passenger devices were emitting dangerous signals. But Cross complains that neither the FAA, the airlines nor the manufacturers are showing much interest in developing these. So, despite Congressional suspicion and the occasional irritated (or jailed) mobile user, the industry's "better safe than sorry" policy on mobile phones seems likely to continue. In the absence of firm evidence that the international airline industry is engaged in a vast conspiracy to overcharge its customers, a delayed phone call seems a small price to pay for even the tiniest reduction in the chances of a plane crash. But you'll still be allowed to use your personal computer during a flight. And while that remains the case, airlines can hardly claim that logic has prevailed.
to manage flight and deal with _________
Simplified: Modern airlines are packed with electronic devices that control the plane and handle navigation and communications
B. Outwardly, the consolidation of human language might seem like a good trend that could ease ethnic tensions and aid global commerce. Linguists don't deny those benefits, and they acknowledge that small communities often choose to switch to the majority language because they believe it will boost their social or economic status.
C. Many experts in the field nonetheless mourn the loss of rare languages, for several reasons. Some of the most basic questions in linguistics have to do with the limits of human speech, still far from fully explored. Many researchers would like to know which elements of grammar and vocabulary - if any - are universal. An English researcher, Nicholas Ostler, offers an example: 'lea, spoken in northern Colombia, seems to have nothing comparable to a personal pronoun system - I, we, you, etc. Otherwise, I would have thought that personal pronouns were a linguistic universal'. Other scientists try to reconstruct ancient migration patterns by comparing borrowed words in otherwise unrelated languages. In each of these cases, the wider the range of languages you study, the more likely you are to get the right answers.
D. 'I think the value is mostly in human terms,' says James Matisoff, a specialist in rare Asian languages at the University of California. 'Language is the most important element in the culture of a community. When it dies, you lose the special knowledge of that culture and a unique window on the world. But despite the constant talk about saving endangered languages over the past ten years, the field of descriptive linguistics has accomplished little in this respect. 'You would think that there would be some organised response to this situation, some attempt to determine which languages can be saved and which should be documented before they disappear,' says Sarah G Thomason, of the University of Michigan. 'But there isn't any such effort.'
E. However, there are some signs of progress. The Volkswagen Foundation, a German charity, has created a multimedia archive in the Netherlands that can house recordings, grammars, dictionaries and other data. Contributions from the Ford Foundation have helped a master-apprentice programme, in which fluent speakers receive $3,000 to teach a younger relative their native tongue through shared activities. So far, about 75 teams have completed the programme. 'It's too early to call this language revitalisation, admits Leanne Hinton of Berkeley. 'In California, the death rate of elderly speakers will always be greater than the recruitment rate of young speakers. But, if nothing else, we prolong the survival of the language.' This will give linguists more time to record these tongues before they vanish.
F. Complicating matters, dozens of institutions around the world are setting up digital libraries on endangered languages. This could create chaos, because the projects use non-standardised data formats, terminology and even names of languages. Gary F Simons, of the Dallas-based research group SIL International, has been working to bring some order to this by building an 'open languages data community' - a kind of digital card catalogue. This system will allow researchers to check their theories against a vast array of data.
G. However, even if a language has been fully documented, all that remains once it vanishes from use is a fossil skeleton. Linguists may be able to sketch an outline of the language and fix its place on the evolutionary tree, but little more. As yet, there is no discipline of conservation linguistics. Almost every strategy to keep people speaking a language has succeeded in some places but failed in others. One factor that always seems to occur in the death of a language, according to Hans-Jurgen Sasse of the University of Cologne in Germany, is that speakers start regarding their own language as inferior to the majority language. Children pick up on the attitude, and prefer to speak the dominant language. This is how Comish and some dialects of Scottish Gaelic slipped into extinction.
H. 'Ultimately, the answer to the problem of language extinction is multilingualism,' argues James Matisoff. 'Even uneducated people can speak a number of languages if they start as children.' Many people in the world are at least bilingual, and in some places it is common to speak three or four languages. But in addition to the fact that children may reject minority languages, there is also the concern that speakers of a majority language may react badly to speakers of minority languages. The first step in saving dying languages may be to persuade the world's majorities to allow the minorities among them to speak with their own voice.
