Session One, Level 4 Written Paper

LABEL

Paper Reference(s)

4142/01 4064/01

London Tests of English

Level 4

May 2007
Time: 2 hours 30 minutes

Materials required for examination

Items included with question papers

Cassette player

Information sheets

1 Cassette per 10 candidates

Instructions to Candidates

Your candidate details:

Step 1: Write your surname, initials and signature in the boxes at the top right of the page.

Step 2: - If you have been given a label containing your details then stick it carefully in the box at

the top left of the page.

- If you have not been given a label, then write your centre number and candidate number in

the boxes at the top left of the page.

Use blue or black ink. Do not use pencil. Some tasks must be answered with a cross in a box ( ). If you

change your mind about an answer, put a line through the box ( ) and then mark your new answer with

a cross ( ). For Task 5 indicate which question you are answering by marking the box ( ).

Answer ALL the questions. Write your answers in the spaces provided in this question paper.

Information for Candidates

The marks for the various tasks are shown in round brackets: e.g. (15 marks).

There are 5 tasks in this question paper. The total mark for this paper is 100.

There are 20 pages in this question paper. Any blank pages are indicated.

Advice to Candidates

Write your answers neatly.

You should remove information sheets 1 and 2 (pages 9–10) to answer Task Three.

You should remove information sheet 3 (pages 15–16) to answer Task Four.

Examiner’s use only

Team Leader’s use only

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Hello everyone! Today’s test is the London Tests of English Level Four. The theme of this
test is Fame. This test lasts two hours and thirty minutes. There are five tasks. Tasks One
and Two are listening. You must listen to the tape and write your answers in this booklet.
Good luck!

1. Task One: Encounters with Fame (15 marks)

You are doing research into issues connected with fame. Your first task is to listen to a
radio phone-in programme about three different people’s experiences of fame and famous
personalities.

Listen to the programme and answer the questions below. Put a cross ( ) in the box next
to the correct answer, A, B, C or D, as in the example.

You will hear the programme twice. Do as much as you can the first time and finish your
work the second time.

You have one minute and a half to read the questions.

Example: What is the phone-in programme about?

A what it feels like to be famous

B why people are famous

C people’s reactions to famous people

D why people want to be famous

1. How does Tina feel about being on the programme?

A excited

B inadequate

C unprepared

D fortunate

2. What is the best description of Tina’s experience of famous people?

A non-existent

B very limited

C frequent

D very frequent

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3. Tina says that during the evening she

A made the director nervous.

B surprised the director.

C failed to make an impression.

D made a helpful contribution.

4. Tina believes her problem with famous people comes from

A not really knowing them properly.

B them thinking she’s not their equal.

C not knowing what to say.

D them not knowing her.

5. Why did the boys want Neil’s autograph?

A They assumed he was famous.

B He was regularly on TV at that time.

C He reminded them of somebody famous.

D They recognised him from his quiz appearance.

6. How did Neil feel about the boys wanting his autograph?

A pleased

B proud

C surprised

D annoyed

7. What is Judy’s reason for phoning the programme?

A She is friends with some famous people.

B She was quite well-known at one time.

C She thinks fame carries risks.

D She wants to talk about an experience she had.

8. According to Judy, what is the problem the two writers have?

A They are unhappy.

B They have money worries.

C They have run out of ideas.

D They do not like the house they have bought.

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9. What does Mike, the presenter, say about what Judy says?

A It proves that security is more important than fame.

B Judy is confusing fame with something else.

C The two writers deserve what is happening to them.

D It suggests that fame actually limits your freedom.

10. What does Mike think is Judy’s ‘good thought’?

A Pop fans put pressure on their idols.

B It is safer to be unknown.

C There is something more important than fame.

D You cannot count on being famous for ever.

(Total 15 marks)

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2. Task Two: Hall of Fame – Edison (15 marks)

You will now hear a radio talk. The speaker discusses the life and achievements of the
famous inventor, Edison.

Listen to the talk and complete the notes below. Write between one and four words in each
gap. The first one is an example.

You will hear the talk twice. Do as much as you can the first time and finish your work
the second time.

You have one minute to read the notes.

That is the end of the listening tasks. The other tasks test your reading and writing of

English. Now go on to Task Three.

(Total 15 marks)

Example: Edison’s first names were ............................................................................

1. Edison was born in ............................................................................ in 1847.

2. Edison probably suffered from what is now called

............................................................................

3. ............................................................................ was responsible for most of his

education.

4. Edison became ............................................................................ as a teenager.

5. It could be said that Edison set up the world’s .........................................................

at his laboratory.

6. He invented the ............................................................................ which made the

light bulb usable.

7. The light bulb has given people ............................................................................

that they didn’t have before.

8. Constant night work inevitably ............................................................................

9. Without the movie camera ............................................................................ would

not have developed as it did.

10. Among his few failures was ............................................................................

Thomas Alva

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3. Task Three: The Psychology of Fame

Task Three (a): Reading (10 marks)

You decide to investigate the effects of fame on personalities and behaviour.

Read the article on Information Sheet 1 and complete the task below. Six sentences are
missing from the text. Complete the table that follows by matching one of the sentences
(A-H) with each of the numbered gaps (1–6).

Number 1 has been completed for you as an example.

Be careful. There are two more sentences than you need.

Missing sentences

A. But another respondent, a well-known

celebrity, said he vividly remembers a
painful moment.

E. The worst you could say of that was

that it clouded your vision.

B. Figley believes all this indicates that

there is a certain amount of insecurity
in being famous.

F. Their replies tended to confirm these

reactions.

C. Figley says, ‘What this shows is that

there’s a constant need for reassurance
that they deserve what they’ve
received’.

G. This was definitely more valuable and

difficult to destroy.

D. From 51 replies, he compiled a list

of the primary sources of stress for
celebrities and their families.

H. You’re very vulnerable to the personal

evaluations of other people.

Missing sentence

Gap number

Q3(a)

(Total 10 marks)

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Task Three (b): Writing (20 marks)

You read two articles from a psychology magazine on the effects of fame on couples and
individuals. These articles are on Information Sheet 2.

You are then asked to write an article for your college magazine entitled ‘The Dangers of
Fame’.

Your answer must cover the following points

•

the effects of fame on the individual

•

the pressures of modern fame on relationships

•

different responses to the pressures of fame.

Use

only the information on Information Sheet 1 and Information Sheet 2 to help you

write your reply.

Use your own words as much as possible.

Write 180–220 words.

..............................................................................................................................................

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Q3(b)

(Total 20 marks)

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Task 3
Information Sheet 1

The Other Side of Fame

Fame has always had a bad reputation among thinkers. Poets sang of its seductiveness, and its
tendency to breed vanity and superficiality. They meant the old kind of fame, the kind based
on accomplishment. ....................................... The new, less durable fame, the kind refracted
through images, proves especially corrosive to the self.

“To be a celebrity means to have more than the usual assaults on one’s ego,” says Charles
Figley, Ph.D., director of the Psychosocial Stress Research Program at Florida State University.
“ ....................................... The public is ultimately in control of whether your career
continues.”

Figley, who is writing a book on the stresses peculiar to celebrities, conducted a survey in which
200 questionnaires were mailed out to names randomly selected from a list of the public’s
top-ranked celebrities in 1991. ....................................... He also analysed their reactions and
solutions. Most of the questionnaires were completed by the celebrities, the rest by a spouse,
friend, or adult child of the celebrity. The top ten stressors, in order, were

•

the celebrity press

•

critics

•

threatening

letters/calls

•

the lack of privacy

•

the constant monitoring of their lives

•

worry about career plunges

•

stalkers

•

lack of security

•

curious

fans

•

worries about their children’s lives being disrupted

The celebrities’ reactions to these sources of stress were: depression, loss of sleep, crying over
nothing, bad moods, lack of concentration, stomach problems, paranoia, over-spending, lack
of trust, and self-hatred. ....................................... For example, one of his respondents said
that, at any time, he expected someone to come up, tap him on the shoulder and tell him to
go back to being a waiter and say to him, ‘What do you think you’re doing here, anyway?’
.......................................

Stress-busting solutions celebrities mentioned included talking to friends or therapists, beefing
up security, having friends outside the business, protecting their kids, laughing as much as
possible, finding faith and religion, getting out of Los Angeles and Hollywood. “A sense of
humor was one thing that kept coming up when they were asked about coping,” Figley says.
“One family had fun with it, and made a game out of trying various disguises so as not to be
recognized.” ....................................... He and his family were going out for pizza, and his
youngest child asked his mother, “Does dad have to come?”

(Source: From ‘The Other Side of Fame’ by Mary Loftus, Psychology Today, May–June 1995)

Task 3
Information Sheet 2

Celebrity splits under the spotlight

It is not surprising we see so many celebrity couples split up. Not only do they face the same

hitches as ‘normal’ relationships, they also face struggles that are unique to stardom. When

things go wrong – it is evident to the public from the following day’s newspapers.

The strain of heavy work schedules often means stars face days, weeks and even months

apart in different countries and locations. Their glamorous lifestyles do have downsides.

Living life under the constant glare of publicity can only make life more difficult. ‘There

are issues every couple will have to face but they are intensified and exaggerated (for the

famous),’ says Suzanne Lopez speaking to CNN’. It’s like being put in a petri dish and under

a microscope and having the heat turned up on you.

It is a wonder how some celebrity marriages have lasted as long as they have. Showbiz

couples are dogged by rumours and criticism. Despite having a seemingly happy marriage

and baby boy, the marriage of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones is plagued by

public opinion about their 25-year age difference. It is often questioned why such a young,

beautiful actress married the older Douglas. His extreme wealth is often cited as a likely

factor; that and the fact that she now has a higher Hollywood profile.

Surely such scrutiny must put undue pressure on such relationships. Dr Adam Joinson,

an expert on the psychology of fame at the University of Glamorgan, disagrees. It would

be harder for a star to maintain a relationship with a lawyer or lecturer than with another

celebrity. ‘I think it is perhaps easier for famous couples. because what tends to happen is

that someone who isn’t famous suddenly finds themselves thrust into the spotlight when

they start a relationship with a celebrity. Look at Noel Gallagher of the pop group Oasis – his

wife Meg Matthews is now relatively famous through association.’

Not only does like attract like, each member of a celebrity couple understands the life their

famous partner lives. Dr Joinson says, ‘Fame seems to make people very self-conscious

and it can be difficult to understand the pressure. If you come home to someone who’s not

famous and talk about a hard day on the set drinking champagne, they won’t understand.’

The Price of Fame

The constant attention that comes with fame inflates some celebrities’ egos. For others

though the effect is the reverse: it makes them so aware of their shortcomings that they may

be driven to self-destruction.

Mark Schaller, Ph.D., of the University of British Columbia, has surveyed the works of

songwriters Kurt Cobain and Cole Porter and of writer John Cheever to see how often they

used the first person singular. With each man, the rate of self-reference jumped after he

became famous.

Schaller theorizes that the relentless scrutiny of fans and the media leads some celebrities

to become acutely self-conscious. Some develop “impostor syndrome,” he observes. “They

think to themselves, ‘I know that I’m not as great as they think I am’.”

The need to escape this agonizing self-awareness may lead some famous people into

among other things, alcoholism or drug abuse says Schaller. Porter and Cheever were both

alcoholics. Using journals and letters, Schaller has found that Cheever’s battles with alcohol

apparently followed the periods of his greatest renown.

(Source: doj.shef.ac.uk/shef_ac_files)

(Source: www.psychologytoday.com)

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4. Task Four: Isaac Newton (20 marks)

You find an article on the famous scientist, Isaac Newton.

Read the article on Information Sheet 3 and complete the tasks below.

Task Four (a): (8 marks)

Read the article and for statements (1–8) indicate whether the statement is True, False or
Not stated by putting a cross ( ) in the appropriate box, as in the example.

Statement

True

False

Not

stated

Example:

Newton nearly died in infancy.

1. Newton had an unstable personality.

2. Barrow thought that Newton was

unintelligent.

3. Newton could not do any work when

the university was closed.

4. Newton’s work attracted controversy.

5. Newton’s work with alchemy distracted

him from his important work.

6. Newton’s understanding of gravity was

complete by 1666.

7. Hooke disagreed with Newton’s ideas

about planetary motion.

8. Newton could be disorganised.

Q4(a)

(Total 8 marks)

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Task Four (b): (8 marks)

For each of the words or phrases (1–8) below, find a word or phrase in the text which has
the same meaning. The paragraph in which you will find the answer is indicated. Write
your answer on the dotted line, as in the example.

Example:

was on the brink of

paragraph

.......................................

(1)

absorbed

paragraph

.......................................

(2)

disagreed

paragraph

.......................................

(3)

disagreements

paragraph

.......................................

(4) aimless, unsystematic thoughts

paragraph

.......................................

(5)

approaches

paragraph

.......................................

(6)

followed

back

paragraph

.......................................

(7) complete, not needing further development

paragraph

.......................................

(8)

development

paragraph

.......................................

Q4(b)

(Total 8 marks)

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Task Four (c): (4 marks)

What do the highlighted words from the article refer to?

The first one has been done as an example.

Example:

this

(Paragraph 1)

..........................................................................

(1)

it (Paragraph 2)

..........................................................................

(2)

there (Paragraph 2)

..........................................................................

(3)

that (Paragraph 4)

..........................................................................

(4)

one (Paragraph 6)

..........................................................................

to fulfill his birthright as a farmer

Q4(c)

(Total 4 marks)

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Task 4
Information Sheet 3

Famous Man: Issac Newton

Generally regarded as the most original and influential theorist in the history of science,

Isaac Newton (1642–1727) was born prematurely in Woolsthorpe on Christmas Day 1642. The
posthumous son of an illiterate farmer, Newton was barely three years old when his mother,
Hanna, placed him with his grandmother in order to remarry and bring up a second family
with Barnabas Smith, a wealthy rector from nearby North Witham. Much has been made of
Newton’s posthumous birth, his prolonged separation from his mother, and his unrivalled
hatred of his stepfather. Until Hanna returned to Woolsthorpe in 1653 after the death of her
second husband, Newton was denied his mother’s attention, a possible clue to his complex
character. Newton’s childhood was anything but happy, and throughout his life he verged on
emotional collapse. With his mother’s return to Woolsthorpe, Newton was taken from school
to fulfill his birthright as a farmer. Happily, he failed in this, and returned to King’s School at
Grantham to prepare for entrance to Trinity College, Cambridge, to which he was admitted in
1661. Here Newton entered a new world, one he could eventually call his own.

By all appearances his academic performance was undistinguished. In 1664 Isaac Barrow,

Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, examined Newton’s understanding of the
work of the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid and found it sorely lacking. We now know
that during his undergraduate years Newton was deeply engrossed in private study, that he
privately mastered the works of René Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, Thomas Hobbes, and other
major figures of the scientific revolution. A series of extant notebooks shows that by 1664
Newton had begun to master Descartes’ Géométrie and other forms of mathematics far in
advance of Euclid. In 1665 Newton took his Bachelor’s degree at Cambridge without honours
or distinction. Since the university was closed for the next two years because of plague,
Newton returned to Woolsthorpe. There, in the following 18 months, he made a series of
original contributions to science. In mathematics Newton conceived his ‘method of fluxions’
(infinitesimal calculus), laid the foundations for his theory of light and colour, and achieved
significant insight into the problem of planetary motion, insights that eventually led to the
publication of his Principia (1687).

In April 1667, Newton returned to Cambridge and, against stiff odds, was elected a

minor fellow at Trinity College. Success followed good fortune. In the next year he became
a senior fellow upon taking his Master of Arts degree, and in 1669, before he had reached
his 27th birthday, he succeeded Isaac Barrow as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. The
duties of this appointment offered Newton the opportunity to organize the results of his
earlier optical researches, and in 1672, shortly after his election to the distinguished Royal
Society, he communicated his first public paper, a brilliant but no less controversial study on
the nature of colour. In the first of a series of bitter disputes, Newton locked horns with the
Society’s celebrated curator of experiments, the bright but brittle Robert Hooke. The ensuing
controversy, which continued until 1678, established a pattern in Newton’s behaviour. After
the initial skirmishes, he quietly retreated. Nonetheless, in 1675 Newton ventured yet another
paper, which again drew lightning, this time charged with claims that he had plagiarised from
Hooke. The charges were entirely groundless. Twice burned, Newton withdrew.

In 1678, Newton suffered a serious emotional breakdown, and in the following year

his mother died. Newton’s response was to cut off contact with others and devote himself
completely to research into the science of alchemy. This, once an embarrassment to Newton
scholars, was not misguided musings but rigorous investigations into the hidden forces of
nature. Newton’s alchemical studies opened theoretical avenues not found in the mechanical
philosophy, the world view that sustained his early work. That reduced all phenomena to the
impact of matter in motion, while the alchemical tradition upheld the possibility of attraction
and repulsion at the level of particles. Newton’s later insights in celestial mechanics can be
traced in part to his alchemical interests. By combining action-at-a-distance and mathematics,
Newton transformed the mechanical philosophy by adding a mysterious but, crucially, a
measurable quantity, gravitational force.

In 1666, as tradition has it, Newton observed the fall of an apple in his garden at

Woolsthorpe, later recalling, ‘In the same year I began to think of gravity extending to the
orb of the Moon’, that is, that gravity is universal. Newton’s memory was not accurate. In
fact, all evidence suggests that the concept of universal gravitation did not spring full-blown
from Newton’s head in 1666 but was nearly 20 years in gestation. Ironically, Robert Hooke
helped give it life. In November 1679, Hooke initiated an exchange of letters that bore on the
question of planetary motion. Although Newton hastily broke off the correspondence, Hooke’s
letters provided a conceptual link between central attraction and a force declining with the
square of distance. Sometime in early 1680, Newton appears to have quietly drawn his own
conclusions.

Meanwhile, in London, Hooke, astronomer Edmund Halley, and mathematician and

architect Christopher Wren struggled unsuccessfully with the problem of planetary motion.
Finally, in August 1684, Halley paid a legendary visit to Newton in Cambridge, hoping for
an answer to his riddle: What type of curve does a planet describe in its orbit around the sun,
assuming an inverse square law of attraction? When Halley posed the question, Newton’s
ready response was ‘an ellipse.’ When asked how he knew it was an ellipse Newton replied
that he had already made the calculation. He had characteristically misplaced it but promised
to send Halley a fresh one forthwith. In partial fulfillment of his promise Newton produced his
De Motu of 1684. From that seed, after nearly two years of intense labour, the Philosophiae
Naturalis Principia Mathematica appeared. Arguably, it is the most important book published
in the history of science.

(Source: Adapted from web.clas.ufl.edu)

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5. Task Five: Writing (20 marks)

As a result of your work on aspects of fame, your tutor asks you to write about the topic.

She gives you the following two options.

EITHER

A Write an essay entitled ‘A famous invention and its effects’.

In your essay cover the following points

•

what the invention is

•

its impact, negative or positive

•

its role in the future.

If you refer to information or ideas from other parts of the test, you should use
your own words as far as possible.

B Write an essay which starts ‘I have always dreamt of being famous ………’

In your essay cover the following points

•

the context in which you would be famous

•

the impact you would have

•

how it would change your life.

If you refer to information or ideas from other parts of the test, you should use
your own words as far as possible.

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Put a cross ( ) in the box next to the essay you have chosen. A B

Write 200–250 words

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TOTAL FOR PAPER: 100 MARKS

THAT IS THE END OF THE TEST

(Total 20 marks)

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