GE3/HANDOUT 15

HANDOUT 15. IELTS ORIENTATION

READING PASSAGE 2.

A.
Do you read while listening to music? Do you like to watch TV while finishing
your homework? People who have these kinds of habits are called multi-taskers.
Multi-taskers are able to complete two tasks at the same time by dividing their
focus. However, Thomas Lehman, a researcher in Psychology, believes people
never r e a l l y do multiple things simultaneously. Maybe a person is reading while lis-
tening to music, but in reality, the brain can only focus on one task. Reading the
words in a book will cause you to ignore some of the words of the music. When
people think they are accomplishing two different tasks efficiently, what they
are really doing is dividing their focus. While listening to music, people become
less able to focus on their surroundings. For example, we all have experience
of times when we talk with friends and they are not responding properly.
Maybe they are listening to someone else talk, or maybe they are reading a
text on their smart phone and don't hear what you are saying. Lehman called
this phenomenon “email voice".
B.
The world has been changed by computers and its spin offs like smart-phones
or cellphones. Now that most individuals have a personal device, like a smart-
phone or a laptop, they are frequently reading, watching or listening to virtual in-
formation. This raises the occurrence of multitasking in our day to day life.
Now when you work, you work with your typewriter, your cellphone, and some
colleagues who may drop by at any time to speak with you. In professional
meetings, when one normally focuses and listens to one another, people are

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more likely to have a cell phone in their lap, reading or communicating

silently with more people than ever, liven inventions such as the cordless
phone has increased multitasking. In the old days, a traditional wall phone
would ring, and then the housewife would have t o stop her activities to an-
swer it. When it rang, t h e housewife will sit down with her legs up. and
chat , with no laundry or sweeping or answering the door. In the modern era,
our technology is convenient enough to not interrupt our daily tasks.
C.
Earl Miller, an expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studied the
prefrontal cortex, which controls the brain while a person is multitasking.
According to his studies, the size of this cortex varies between species, He
found that for humans, the size of this part constitutes one third of the brain,
while it is only 4 to 5 percent in dogs, and about 15% in monkeys. Given that
this cortex is larger on a human, it allows a human to be more flexible and accu-
rate in his or her multitasking. However, Miller wanted to look further into
whether the cortex was truly processing information about two different tasks si-
multaneously. He designed an experiment where he presents visual stimulants to
his subjects in a wax that mimics multi-tasking. Miller then attached sensors to
the patients “heads to pick up the electric patterns of the brain. This sensor
would show if “the brain particles, called neurons, were truly processing two
different tasks. What he found is that the brain neurons only lit up in singular ar-
eas one at a time, and never simultaneously.
D.
Davis Meyer, a professor of University of Michigan , studied the young
adults in a similar experiment. He instructed them to simultaneously do math
problems an classify simple words into different categories. For this
experiment, Meyer found that when you think you are doing several jobs at the
same time, you are actually switching between jobs. Even though the people
tried to do the tasks at the same time, and both tasks were eventually
accomplished, overall, the task look more time than if the person focused on a
single task one at a time..
E.
People sacrifice efficiency when multitasking, Gloria Mark set office work-
ers as his subjects. He f o u n d that t h e y w e r e c o n s t a n t l y multitasking.
He observed that nearly every 11 minutes people at work were disrupted.

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He f ound that doing different jobs at t he same time may actually save time.
However, despite the fact that they are faster, it does not mean they are more
efficient. And we are equally likely to self-interrupt as be i n t e r r u p t e d by
outside sources. He found that in office nearly every 12 minutes an em-
ployee would stop and with no reason at all, cheek a website on their
computer, call someone or write an email. If they concentrated for more than
2 0 minutes, they would feel distressed. He suggested that the average person
may suffer from a short concentration span. This short attention span might
be natural, but others suggest that new technology may be the problem. With
cellphones and computers at our sides at all times, people will never run out of
distractions. The format of media, such as advertisements, music, news articles
and TV shows are also shortening, so people are used to paying attention to infor-
mation for a very short time.
F.
So even though focusing on one single task is the most efficient way for our
brains to work, it is not practical to use this method in real life. According to
human nature, people feel more comfortable and efficient in environments with a
variety of tasks; Edward Hallowell said that people are losing a lot of efficiency
in the workplace due to multitasking, outside distractions and self-distractions.
As it matter of fact, the changes made to the workplace do not have to be dra-
matic. No one is suggesting we ban e-mail or make employees focus on only
one task. However, certain common workplace tasks, such as group meetings,
would be more efficient if we banned cell-phones, a common distraction. A per-
son can also apply these tips to prevent self-distraction. Instead of arriving to
your office and checking all of your e-mails for new tasks, a common work-
place ritual, a person could dedicate an hour to a single task first thing in the
morning. Self- timing is a great way to reduce distraction and efficiently finish
tasks one by one, instead of slowing ourselves down with multi-tasking.
Questions 1-5
Reading passage 2 has six paragraphs A-F. Which paragraph contains the fol-
lowing information? Write the correct letter A-F in the gaps.
1.………A reference to a domestic situation that does not require multitasking
2.………A possible explanation of why we always do multitask together.
3 ………A practical solution to multitask in work environment.
4……….Relating multitasking to the size of prefrontal cortex.

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5……….Longer time spent doing two tasks at the same time than one at a time.
Questions 6-10.
Look at the following statements (6-10) and the list of scientists below. Match
each statement with the correct scientist A-E.
NB: You may use any letter more than once.
List of scientists
A. Thomas Lehman
B. Earl Miller
C. David Meyer
D. Gloria Mark
E. Edward Hallowell.
1.…..When faced multiple visual stimulants, one can only concentrate on one of
them.
2.……Doing two things together may be faster but not better.
3……People never really do two things together even if you think you do.
4…….The causes of multitasks lie in the environment.
5……..Even minor changes in the workplace will improve work efficiency.
Questions 11-13.
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from
the passage for each answer.
A term used to refer to a situation when you are reading a text and cannot fo-
cus on your surroundings is (11)……………………..The (12)……………part of
the brain controls multitasking. The practical solution of multitask in work is not to
allow use of cellphone in (13)…………..

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