UTBK/SNBT Bahasa Inggris: Pertanyaan, Jawaban, Latihan Soal & Pembahasan

Forget lions, tigers, and bears. When it comes to the art of war, army ants are among the most frightening creatures on earth. With powerful mouth parts, these fighters can skillfully cut creatures much larger than themselves into pieces. Acting together in great number, army ant colonies succeed at making tens of thousands of such kills each day. Their capabilities do have limits, though. Contrary to popular belief, they almost never take down large animals or people

One of the best places to observe army ants is Barro Colorado, an island in a lake created by Panama Canal. The island is home to as many as 50 colonies of Ecilon burchelli, the most studied army ant in the world. It is one of 150 types of army ants in the New World;more 170 other types live in Asia, Africa, and Australia.

The colonies of this army ant are huge, ranging from 300.000 to 700.000 ants. They never stay in one place long, moving from nest site. Linking legs together, they use their own bodies to form enormous nests called bivouacs, which they hang beneath a fallen tree. There they stay about 20 days as the queen lays as many as 300.000 eggs.

When the ants go hunting as many as 200.000 of them leave the nest in a group that broadens into a fan as wide as 14 meters. This swarm raid takes a slightly different course each day, allowing the hunter to cover fresh ground each time.

Protecting the ants wherever they go are soldiers, recognizable by their oversized jaws. If their frightening looks do not scare enemies away, soldiers also have a powerful bite and the attack is often suicidal. Because their jaws are shaped like fishhooks, the soldiers cannot pull them out again. Amazonian tribes have used soldier ants to close wounds, breaking off the bodies and leaving the head in place.

Eciton burchelli are blind and cannot see what is a head of them, but they move together in such great numbers that they can easily kill the non army ants insect and other small creatures that constitute their prey. When the groups happen upon a break in the path, ants immediately link legs together and form living bridges so that the groups can move forwards without any delay.

In Japanese the word ant is written by linking two character: one meaning "insect", the other meaning "loyalty". Indeed, individual ants are completely loyal to their fellow ans. They display many examples of selfiess cooperation that, while certainty extreme, cannot fail to win human admiration.

(Adapted from www.nationalgeographic.com. Accessed February 12, 2014)

It can be inferned from paragraph 1 that the author tells us to ignore lions, tigers, and bears because ....

Non-verbal communication is defined as communication between people by means other than speech. Non-verbal communication (NVC) derives from the following major sources: (1) eye contact (amount of looking at another person's body and face); (2) mouth (especially smiling or grimacing in relation to eye contact); (3) posture (for example, sitting forwards or backwards); (4) gesture (as with the use of arm movements when talking); (5) orientation (of the body to the addressee); (6) body distance (as when we stand too close or too far away from others); (7) smell (including perfumes); (8) skin (including pigmentation, blushing and texture); (9) hair (including length, texture and style); (10) clothes (with particular reference to fashion).

Non-verbal communication is not quite the same as "body language" because any claim about a language must refer to an agreed and identifiable grammar and syntax. NVC is not always so precise or advanced; the vocabulary of non-verbal signs is more limited than speech. Even so, it is a mistake to consider NVC as isolated from speech. Instead, some complex interaction is envisage between word and body signal, and one that is not always complementary, imagine yourself interviewing job applicants. You might not offer employment to a candidate who refuses to look at you, always frowns, hunches both shoulders, sweats a lot, and has a Mohican hair cut-despite the fact that he or she gives thoughtful and intereseting replies to your questions.

Take eye contact as an example for discussion. Mutual eye contact (where both people look into each other's eyes) can be a sign of liking, but prolonged gaze leads to discomfort. The directed eye contact violates a code of looking, where eye contact is frequently broken but returned to, and leads to depersonalization of the victim because an aggressor deliberately breaks the rules which the victim adheres to. Eye contact is often enhanced by size of pupils, eyebrow inflection and movement, and smiling.

(Adapted from O'sullivan, Tim, et.al., 1994. Key concept in Communication and cultural studies. 2nd. Ed. New York: Routledge)

In which lines of the text does the author mention that NVC is inseparable from speech?

Non-verbal communication is defined as communication between people by means other than speech. Non-verbal communication (NVC) derives from the following major sources: (1) eye contact (amount of looking at another person's body and face); (2) mouth (especially smiling or grimacing in relation to eye contact); (3) posture (for example, sitting forwards or backwards); (4) gesture (as with the use of arm movements when talking); (5) orientation (of the body to the addressee); (6) body distance (as when we stand too close or too far away from others); (7) smell (including perfumes); (8) skin (including pigmentation, blushing and texture); (9) hair (including length, texture and style); (10) clothes (with particular reference to fashion).

Non-verbal communication is not quite the same as "body language" because any claim about a language must refer to an agreed and identifiable grammar and syntax. NVC is not always so precise or advanced; the vocabulary of non-verbal signs is more limited than speech. Even so, it is a mistake to consider NVC as isolated from speech. Instead, some complex interaction is envisage between word and body signal, and one that is not always complementary, imagine yourself interviewing job applicants. You might not offer employment to a candidate who refuses to look at you, always frowns, hunches both shoulders, sweats a lot, and has a Mohican hair cut-despite the fact that he or she gives thoughtful and intereseting replies to your questions.

Take eye contact as an example for discussion. Mutual eye contact (where both people look into each other's eyes) can be a sign of liking, but prolonged gaze leads to discomfort. The directed eye contact violates a code of looking, where eye contact is frequently broken but returned to, and leads to depersonalization of the victim because an aggressor deliberately breaks the rules which the victim adheres to. Eye contact is often enhanced by size of pupils, eyebrow inflection and movement, and smiling.

(Adapted from O'sullivan, Tim, et.al., 1994. Key concept in Communication and cultural studies. 2nd. Ed. New York: Routledge)

According to the text, NVC ...

Non-verbal communication is defined as communication between people by means other than speech. Non-verbal communication (NVC) derives from the following major sources: (1) eye contact (amount of looking at another person's body and face); (2) mouth (especially smiling or grimacing in relation to eye contact); (3) posture (for example, sitting forwards or backwards); (4) gesture (as with the use of arm movements when talking); (5) orientation (of the body to the addressee); (6) body distance (as when we stand too close or too far away from others); (7) smell (including perfumes); (8) skin (including pigmentation, blushing and texture); (9) hair (including length, texture and style); (10) clothes (with particular reference to fashion).

Non-verbal communication is not quite the same as "body language" because any claim about a language must refer to an agreed and identifiable grammar and syntax. NVC is not always so precise or advanced; the vocabulary of non-verbal signs is more limited than speech. Even so, it is a mistake to consider NVC as isolated from speech. Instead, some complex interaction is envisage between word and body signal, and one that is not always complementary, imagine yourself interviewing job applicants. You might not offer employment to a candidate who refuses to look at you, always frowns, hunches both shoulders, sweats a lot, and has a Mohican hair cut-despite the fact that he or she gives thoughtful and intereseting replies to your questions.

Take eye contact as an example for discussion. Mutual eye contact (where both people look into each other's eyes) can be a sign of liking, but prolonged gaze leads to discomfort. The directed eye contact violates a code of looking, where eye contact is frequently broken but returned to, and leads to depersonalization of the victim because an aggressor deliberately breaks the rules which the victim adheres to. Eye contact is often enhanced by size of pupils, eyebrow inflection and movement, and smiling.

(Adapted from O'sullivan, Tim, et.al., 1994. Key concept in Communication and cultural studies. 2nd. Ed. New York: Routledge)

The author organized the ideas in the text by ...

The MV Akademik Shokalsky, a "highlyice-strengthened" Russian tour ship built in Finland in 1984 "for polar and oceanographic research," is stranded in Antarctica's summer ice with 74 passengers and crew members aboard. The group, which includes two Guardian journalists is retracing the harrowing 1911 Antarctic expedition led by Sir Douglas Mawson, who lost many of his team members and nearly died himself on the frigid continent a century ago.

The ship's passengers include an Australian research team led by University of New South Wales Professor Chris Turney, who said in November that the voluminous data collected by Mawson 100 years ago is critical to understanding global warming. But Turney reported that blizzard-like conditions and think ocean ice are preventing the latest expedition from leaving. "Unfortunately proceeding north we found our path blocked by ice pushed in by an increasingly strong southeasterly wind. On Christmas Eve we realized we could not get through, in spite of being just 2 nautical miles from open water," Turney reported in his blog.

"According to reports nobody is in present danger and three nearby icebreakers are being sent to assist", said Expeditionsonline.com, which books polar expedition. The ship is "stuck part-way through her Australiasian Antarctic Expedition towards Mawson's Hut at Cape Denison, "located about 100 nautical miles east of Dumont D'Urville, a French base on Antarctica, and 1,500 nautical miles south of Hobart in Tasmania.

Three icebreakers-China's Xue Long, Australia's Aurora Australia, and France's L'Astrolabe have been dispatched to the scene, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), which is coordinating the international rescue after the Falmouth Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in the United Kingdom receive a satellite distress call Christmas morning. However, it will take the icebreakers at least two days to get to the stranded ship, which "is experiencing very strong winds and limited visibility." The closest rescue ship is not expected to get to the scene until sometime Friday night.

"While it is early winter in the Arctic, it is early summer in the Antarctic. Continuing patterns seen in recent years, Antarctic sea ice extent remains unusually high, near, or above previous daily maximum values." according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

(Taken from http://cnsnews.com/article/barbara-holingsworth/ship-retracing-1911-antarctic-expedition-stranded-south-poles#sthash.IGAMDhzN.dpuf. Accessed February 20, 2014).

Which of the following is closest in meaning to the word "frigid" (line 4)?

The MV Akademik Shokalsky, a "highlyice-strengthened" Russian tour ship built in Finland in 1984 "for polar and oceanographic research," is stranded in Antarctica's summer ice with 74 passengers and crew members aboard. The group, which includes two Guardian journalists is retracing the harrowing 1911 Antarctic expedition led by Sir Douglas Mawson, who lost many of his team members and nearly died himself on the frigid continent a century ago.

The ship's passengers include an Australian research team led by University of New South Wales Professor Chris Turney, who said in November that the voluminous data collected by Mawson 100 years ago is critical to understanding global warming. But Turney reported that blizzard-like conditions and think ocean ice are preventing the latest expedition from leaving. "Unfortunately proceeding north we found our path blocked by ice pushed in by an increasingly strong southeasterly wind. On Christmas Eve we realized we could not get through, in spite of being just 2 nautical miles from open water," Turney reported in his blog.

"According to reports nobody is in present danger and three nearby icebreakers are being sent to assist", said Expeditionsonline.com, which books polar expedition. The ship is "stuck part-way through her Australiasian Antarctic Expedition towards Mawson's Hut at Cape Denison, "located about 100 nautical miles east of Dumont D'Urville, a French base on Antarctica, and 1,500 nautical miles south of Hobart in Tasmania.

Three icebreakers-China's Xue Long, Australia's Aurora Australia, and France's L'Astrolabe have been dispatched to the scene, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), which is coordinating the international rescue after the Falmouth Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in the United Kingdom receive a satellite distress call Christmas morning. However, it will take the icebreakers at least two days to get to the stranded ship, which "is experiencing very strong winds and limited visibility." The closest rescue ship is not expected to get to the scene until sometime Friday night.

"While it is early winter in the Arctic, it is early summer in the Antarctic. Continuing patterns seen in recent years, Antarctic sea ice extent remains unusually high, near, or above previous daily maximum values." according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

(Taken from http://cnsnews.com/article/barbara-holingsworth/ship-retracing-1911-antarctic-expedition-stranded-south-poles#sthash.IGAMDhzN.dpuf. Accessed February 20, 2014).

The purpose of the text is to ....

The MV Akademik Shokalsky, a "highlyice-strengthened" Russian tour ship built in Finland in 1984 "for polar and oceanographic research," is stranded in Antarctica's summer ice with 74 passengers and crew members aboard. The group, which includes two Guardian journalists is retracing the harrowing 1911 Antarctic expedition led by Sir Douglas Mawson, who lost many of his team members and nearly died himself on the frigid continent a century ago.

The ship's passengers include an Australian research team led by University of New South Wales Professor Chris Turney, who said in November that the voluminous data collected by Mawson 100 years ago is critical to understanding global warming. But Turney reported that blizzard-like conditions and think ocean ice are preventing the latest expedition from leaving. "Unfortunately proceeding north we found our path blocked by ice pushed in by an increasingly strong southeasterly wind. On Christmas Eve we realized we could not get through, in spite of being just 2 nautical miles from open water," Turney reported in his blog.

"According to reports nobody is in present danger and three nearby icebreakers are being sent to assist", said Expeditionsonline.com, which books polar expedition. The ship is "stuck part-way through her Australiasian Antarctic Expedition towards Mawson's Hut at Cape Denison, "located about 100 nautical miles east of Dumont D'Urville, a French base on Antarctica, and 1,500 nautical miles south of Hobart in Tasmania.

Three icebreakers-China's Xue Long, Australia's Aurora Australia, and France's L'Astrolabe have been dispatched to the scene, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), which is coordinating the international rescue after the Falmouth Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in the United Kingdom receive a satellite distress call Christmas morning. However, it will take the icebreakers at least two days to get to the stranded ship, which "is experiencing very strong winds and limited visibility." The closest rescue ship is not expected to get to the scene until sometime Friday night.

"While it is early winter in the Arctic, it is early summer in the Antarctic. Continuing patterns seen in recent years, Antarctic sea ice extent remains unusually high, near, or above previous daily maximum values." according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

(Taken from http://cnsnews.com/article/barbara-holingsworth/ship-retracing-1911-antarctic-expedition-stranded-south-poles#sthash.IGAMDhzN.dpuf. Accessed February 20, 2014).

Which of the following statements is NOT stated in the text?

The MV Akademik Shokalsky, a "highlyice-strengthened" Russian tour ship built in Finland in 1984 "for polar and oceanographic research," is stranded in Antarctica's summer ice with 74 passengers and crew members aboard. The group, which includes two Guardian journalists is retracing the harrowing 1911 Antarctic expedition led by Sir Douglas Mawson, who lost many of his team members and nearly died himself on the frigid continent a century ago.

The ship's passengers include an Australian research team led by University of New South Wales Professor Chris Turney, who said in November that the voluminous data collected by Mawson 100 years ago is critical to understanding global warming. But Turney reported that blizzard-like conditions and think ocean ice are preventing the latest expedition from leaving. "Unfortunately proceeding north we found our path blocked by ice pushed in by an increasingly strong southeasterly wind. On Christmas Eve we realized we could not get through, in spite of being just 2 nautical miles from open water," Turney reported in his blog.

"According to reports nobody is in present danger and three nearby icebreakers are being sent to assist", said Expeditionsonline.com, which books polar expedition. The ship is "stuck part-way through her Australiasian Antarctic Expedition towards Mawson's Hut at Cape Denison, "located about 100 nautical miles east of Dumont D'Urville, a French base on Antarctica, and 1,500 nautical miles south of Hobart in Tasmania.

Three icebreakers-China's Xue Long, Australia's Aurora Australia, and France's L'Astrolabe have been dispatched to the scene, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), which is coordinating the international rescue after the Falmouth Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in the United Kingdom receive a satellite distress call Christmas morning. However, it will take the icebreakers at least two days to get to the stranded ship, which "is experiencing very strong winds and limited visibility." The closest rescue ship is not expected to get to the scene until sometime Friday night.

"While it is early winter in the Arctic, it is early summer in the Antarctic. Continuing patterns seen in recent years, Antarctic sea ice extent remains unusually high, near, or above previous daily maximum values." according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

(Taken from http://cnsnews.com/article/barbara-holingsworth/ship-retracing-1911-antarctic-expedition-stranded-south-poles#sthash.IGAMDhzN.dpuf. Accessed February 20, 2014).

It is implied the second paragraph that ....

The MV Akademik Shokalsky, a "highlyice-strengthened" Russian tour ship built in Finland in 1984 "for polar and oceanographic research," is stranded in Antarctica's summer ice with 74 passengers and crew members aboard. The group, which includes two Guardian journalists is retracing the harrowing 1911 Antarctic expedition led by Sir Douglas Mawson, who lost many of his team members and nearly died himself on the frigid continent a century ago.

The ship's passengers include an Australian research team led by University of New South Wales Professor Chris Turney, who said in November that the voluminous data collected by Mawson 100 years ago is critical to understanding global warming. But Turney reported that blizzard-like conditions and think ocean ice are preventing the latest expedition from leaving. "Unfortunately proceeding north we found our path blocked by ice pushed in by an increasingly strong southeasterly wind. On Christmas Eve we realized we could not get through, in spite of being just 2 nautical miles from open water," Turney reported in his blog.

"According to reports nobody is in present danger and three nearby icebreakers are being sent to assist", said Expeditionsonline.com, which books polar expedition. The ship is "stuck part-way through her Australiasian Antarctic Expedition towards Mawson's Hut at Cape Denison, "located about 100 nautical miles east of Dumont D'Urville, a French base on Antarctica, and 1,500 nautical miles south of Hobart in Tasmania.

Three icebreakers-China's Xue Long, Australia's Aurora Australia, and France's L'Astrolabe have been dispatched to the scene, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), which is coordinating the international rescue after the Falmouth Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in the United Kingdom receive a satellite distress call Christmas morning. However, it will take the icebreakers at least two days to get to the stranded ship, which "is experiencing very strong winds and limited visibility." The closest rescue ship is not expected to get to the scene until sometime Friday night.

"While it is early winter in the Arctic, it is early summer in the Antarctic. Continuing patterns seen in recent years, Antarctic sea ice extent remains unusually high, near, or above previous daily maximum values." according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

(Taken from http://cnsnews.com/article/barbara-holingsworth/ship-retracing-1911-antarctic-expedition-stranded-south-poles#sthash.IGAMDhzN.dpuf. Accessed February 20, 2014).

What is the topic of the text above?

Parents send their children to school with the best of intentions, believing that formal education is what kids need to become productive, happy adults. Many parents do have qualms about how well schools are performing, but the conventional wisdom is that these issues can be resolved with more money, better teachers, more challenging curricula, or more rigorous tests. But what if the real problem is school itself? The unfortunate fact is that one of our most cherished institutions is, by its very nature, falling our children and our society.

Children are required to be in school, where their freedom is greatly restricted, far more than most adults would tolerate in their workspaces. In recent decades, we have been compelling them to spend ever more time in this kind of setting, and there is strong evidence that this is causing psychological damage to many of them. And as scientist have investigated how children naturally learn, they have realized that kids do so most deeply and fully, and with greatest enthusiasm, in conditions that are almost opposite to those of school.

Compulsory education has been a fixture of our culture now for several generations. President Obama and Secretary of Education Ame Duncan are so enamored of it that they want even longer school days and years. Most people assume that the basic design of today's school emerged from scientific evidence about how children learn. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Schools as we know them today are a product of history, not of research. The blueprint for them was developed during the Protestant Reformation, when schools were created to teach children to read the Bible, to believe Scripture without questioning it, and to obey authority figures without questioning them. When schools were taken over by the state, made compulsory, and directed toward secular ends, the basic structure and methods of teaching remained unchanged. Subsequent attempts at reform have failed because they have not altered basic blueprint. The top down, teach-and-test method, in which learning is motivated by a system of rewards and punishments rather than by curiousity or by any real desire to know, is well designed for indoctrination and obedience training but not much else. It is no wonder that many of the world's greatest enterpreneurs and innovators either left school early (like Thomas Edison) or said they hated school and learned despite it, not because of it (like Albert Einstein).

(Adapted from http://www.rd.com/advice/parenting/American-school-system-damaging-kids/#Fxzz2q3Slk4Hn. Accessed February 12, 2014)

Which of the following is closest in meaning to the word "qualms" (line 2)