Paper 1 Reading (1 hour 15 minutes)
This paper consists of four parts. Each part contains one or more texts and a comprehension task. The texts are taken from newspapers, magazines, non-literary books, leaflets, brochures etc. The tasks test a wide range of reading skills and strategies. There are between 40-50 multiple matching, gapped text and multiple-choice questions all together.
Part 1
Multiple matching - you must read a text preceded by multiple matching questions.
The prompts are either headings or summary sentences. Some of the choices may be required more than once.
Example
Answer questions 1-13 by referring to the reviews of crime novels.
For questions 1-13 match each of the statements below (1-13) with one of the novels (A-H) reviewed below. Some choices may be required more than once.
It takes place in a poor district. |
1... |
The main character is not typical of this kind of novel. |
2... |
The main character is feeling dissatisfied with his current work. |
3... |
It has a particularly dramatic opening. |
4... |
The main character remains determined despite opposition. |
5... |
The reader feels sure that the main character will solve the crime. |
6... |
It features people's peculiarities. |
7... |
It is likely to amuse you. |
8... |
It is too long. |
9... |
It successfully combines the conventional elements of this kind of novel. |
10... |
It is not as good as the writer's other books. |
11... |
It is impossible to predict the ending. |
12... |
The suspense is particularly skillfully managed. |
13... |
Book A
Steve Martin's Compeling Evidence is compelling indeed. The narrator, a lawyer struggling to build a new practice after being forced to leave a high-powered law firm, finds himself manoeuvred into defending his boss's wife when she is tried for her husband's murder. The trial scenes are riveting, with the outcome in doubt right up to the verdict, and a really unexpected twist in the final pages. This is a terrific debut into a crowded genre.
Book B
Curtains form the Cardinal begins with a bang, and plunges the charismatic Sigismondo, troubleshooter for the aristocracy of the Italian Renaissance, into a turmoil of politics, clerical intrigue and high-society murder from which we are always confident he will emerge unscathed to disclose the guilty parties. The plot is convoluted and the book is abuout 50 pages overweight, but it is still great stuff.
Book C
File Under: Deceased introduces a refreshingly different new detective from a first novelist, Sarah Lacey. Leah Hunter is a tax inspector, ideally positioned, it seems, for a bit of investigating when a strange man falls dead an her feet. Undaunted by attacks form various quarters - perhaps tax inspectors are used to this thing - and the disapproval of her handsome local detective sergeant, gutsy, versatile Leah is a winner in every way.
Book D
Double Deuce by Robert B. Parker sets that most literate of private investigators. Spenser, the job of assisting his friend Hawk to clear drug dealers out of a deprived estate in rundown Boston. The slick dialogue comes almost as fast as the bullets, but there are few corpses and more philosophy than usual. High-quality entertainment as always from Parker.
Book E
False Prophet by Faye Kellerman, features her usual pair of detectives, Pete Decker and Marge Dunn, investigating an attack and burglary at the house of a legendary film star's daughter. The author's easy writing style and eye for odd human behaviour make this an entertaining mystery.
Book F
Husband and wife Diane Henry and Nicholas Horrock, write as a team. Blood Red, Snow White features another lawyer, another female client, but the action is all outside the courtroom and the defender finds himself becoming the victim as the plot unravels. All the classic ingredients of romance, money and violence are mixed efficiently to produce an engrossing suspense novel.
Book G
Dead for a Ducat by Simon Shaw presents actor Philip Fletcher in a new role, that of intended victim. The hilarious collection of characters are brought together to film the story of Robin Hood, bud Philip isn't the only person to feel this is not the way his career should be developing. Simon Shaw never fails to entertain, but in moving his star actor from black comedy to farce, he gives a performance below his usual high standard.
Book H
Fall Down Easy is Lawrence Gough's best book for some time. Canadian police hunt a versatile bank robber who preys on female bank tellers. The slow, expertly-paced build-up of tension and the portrayal of the clever, disturbed robber raise this way above the average detective novel.
Cambridge Certificate in Advanced English 4, Examination Papers from the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate, wyd. Cambridge University Press 2001,
Part 2
Gapped text - you must read a text with paragraphs removed. You need to use the missing paragraphs to complete the text. There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.
Example
For questions 18-24, choose which of the paragraphs A-H fit into the numbered gaps in the magazine article below. There is only one extra paragraph, which does not fit in any of the gaps.
Indicate your answers on the separate answer sheet.
THE DAY I GAVE UP SMOKING
I thought everyone would be pleased, but one of my colleagues was absolutely furious. ŇWhat do you mean?' she raged. 'If it was that easy, why didn't you stop years ago?'
18 |
|
The stop-smoking session was an interesting mixture of group therapy and hypnotherapy and it took place exactly two months and three weeks ago.
19 |
|
On that unexceptional Thursday afternoon, I had simply gone along to the Birmingham session of The Easy Way to Stop Smoking to write an article about other people trying to give up. ' I shan't be trying to stop myself, it wouldn't be fair,' I announced firmly. 'Since my motivation for being here is writing, not stopping, it would not be right to expect your method to work on me.'
20 |
|
We were encouraged to smoke as much as we wished and most of the afternoon was conduceted in a room so smoke-filled that we had to open the windows.
21 |
|
I suppose what happened was that the stop-smoking messages made intellectual sense. Just as smoking itself had become a challenge in the face of opposition, so the notion of stopping began to feel attractive.
22 |
|
In many senses, it was easy. The physical craving, the pangs of desire for nicotine, in just the same place where you feel hunger, faded after a minute or two and I experienced them over only four or five days.
23 |
|
Surprisingly, pottering around at home on weekend mornings proved to be the most difficult thing - and it still is.
24 |
|
Yes, I do miss my cigarettes, but not too much. Each 'new' experience as an non-smoker has to be addressed - eating out, waiting for an aeroplane, booking into a hotel, a theatre interval. All are key moments in which I would have previously smoked cigarettes.
A. The possibility of not being a smoker was beginning to make me feel powerful. It was a secret feeling that had nothing to do with anyone except myself. Could I also conquer the world?
B. I suppose my inability to explain how one afternoon I had been a packet-a-day, life-long smoker, and four hours later I was not, was faintly irritating. I find it curious myself.
C. I am increasingly coming to the view that for me smoking had a great deal to do with displacing boredom; having a cigarette was an activity in itself.
D. I could not have been more reasonable. After all, I positively enjoyed smoking. It gave me real pleasure. I thought the counselor looked at me rather knowingly.
E. I had not intended to stop and I did not even particularly want to. For one thing, I wholly resented the remorseless pressure from the anti-smoking mob - and I still do. For another, I had low blood pressure and a long-living and healthy family. I did not cough or feel unwell and threw off colds more easily, it seemed to me, than friends with consciously healthier lifestyles.
F. My skin is pinker, I can sing higher notes and I don't smell like a bonfire. People have stopped asking me if I have a sore throat.
G. The one activity - my work - that I thought would be the most difficult to accomplish without cigarettes did not cause a single problem. I had really believed that I would not be able to work to deadlines unassisted by nicotine and that for the first time ever I would fail to write a story to order.
H. I noticed with interest that when I was told to smoke I was reluctant to do so - and so were the others.
Cambridge Certificate in Advanced English 3, Examination Papers from the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate, wyd. Cambridge University Press 2001,
Part 3
Multiple choice - you must read a text followed by multiple choice questions with four options A, B, C or D. You have to choose the answer which you think fits best according to the text.
Example
Read the following newspaper article and answer questions 21 -25. On your answer sheet, indicate the letter A, B, C or D against the number of each question. Give only one answer to each question.
HIT AND MISS OF MASS MARKETING
As almost everyone knows, advertising is in the doldrums. It isn't just the recession. Advertising started to plummet early in 1989, well before the recession really began to bite.
Advertising's problems are more fundamental, and the decline is worldwide. The unhappy truth is that advertising has failed to keep up with the pace of economic change.
Advertisers like to think in terms of mass markets and mass media; but as brands and media have proliferated, target markets have fragmented. Even campaign for major brands ought to be targeted at minority audiences, but they rarely are. That is the principal way in which advertising has gone astray.
Think about your own shopping habits. If you visit a supermarket you may leave with 30, 40 or perhaps 50 items listed on your checkout bill, the average number of items of all kinds purchased per visit of all kinds.
Many of these will not be advertised brands; some others will be multiple purchases of the same brand. At a maximum you will have bought a handful of advertised brands form the 15 000 lines on sale in the store. Over a year you are unlikely to buy more than a few hundred brands.
Consumer durables ? Perhaps a dozen a year. Cars? If yours is a new car, the statistical likelihood is that it is supplied by your employer.
If it isn't , you only buy one every three years. And though it may seem otherwise, you do not buy one every three years. And though it may seem otherwise, you do not buy that many clothes either, and most of them will not be advertised brands.
Even when you throw in confectionery, medicines, hardware, all the services you can think of, it is virtually certain you do not buy more than 400 different brands a year. Compare that figure with the 32 500 branded goods and services that, according to Media Register, are advertised. Let's ignore the 23 000 which spend less then Ł 50 000 a year, and concentrate on the 9 500 brands that Media Register individually lists and analyses.
Mr. and Mrs Average have bought 400 of that 9 500 and not all because of their advertising. That's about 4 per cent. So you can forget that naive claim usually attributed to Lord Leverhumle: ' Half of my advertising is wasted but I've no way of knowing which half. You could say that 96 percent of all advertising is wasted, but nobody knows which 96 percent.
When you're watching TV tonight, count how many of the commercials are for brands you buy or are likely to buy in the future. For most people the figure seems to be about one in 16 (6 per cent) so the commercials for the other 15 (96 per cent) are, on the face of it, wasted.
You probably think you're a special case, that you are impervious to advertising. Almost everyone thinks the same. But you aren't and they aren't. The truth is nobody buys most of the brands they see advertised.
Waste is inherent in the use of media for advertising. The notion that every viewer of a publication or every viewer of a commercial break might immediately rush out and buy all or even many of the brands advertised is ludicrous. People register only a tiny mumber of advertisements they see and ignore the rest, so waste cannot be avoided. That does not mean advertising isn't cost-effective. Millions of advertisements have proved it is.
Advertising has to communicate with large numbers of people to reach the relevant minority, because the advertiser cannot know, in advance, exactly which individuals will respond to his blandishments. Media advertising works, despite its much publicised expense, because it is a cheap means of mass communication.
Nonetheless, all waste is gruesome. With smart targeting the advertiser can minimise the wastage by increasing the percentage of readers or viewers who will respond; but he can never know precisely who will respond. Even the most accurate and finely turned direct mail-shot never achieves a 100 per cent response. This is one of the fundamental differences between the use of media and face-to-face selling. It is possible, just, to envisage a salesman scoring with every prospective client he speaks to. The same could never happen when media are used. If the advertiser knew exactly which people were going to respond there would be no point in using media at all. The advertiser could communicate with them directly.
This is as true of Brith, Marriage and Death notices as it is of soft drink commercials. Any advertiser who can net one million new customers (2 per cent of the adult population) is doing well. Of soap powder, the two top-selling brands in supermarkets would be delighted with a million extra customers. So that any advertising campaign, for any product (or any political party for that matter) which could win over 2 per cent of the population would be outstandingly successful: and that, as I began by saying, is but a tiny minority of the population.
The most cost-effective way to reach them may be the use of mass media, but if advertising is to get going again its message will need to be more tightly targeted then ever before.
21. How can advertisers cut down on waste?
a. by using more face-to-face, direct selling techniques
b. by advertising through the mail rather then on TV
c. by aiming their advertising at particular groups of customer
d. by using mass media advertising for certain types of products only
22. Advertising seems to be effective for ?
a. about half of all products
b. many well-known brands
c. very few products
d. the most heavily advertised products
23. Advertising through TV and other media is considered worhtwile because
a. a huge number of people see the adverts.
b. consumers are influenced far more than they realise
c. it is easy to target a specialised audience
d. people respond immediately to TV advertising
24. One of the advertising industry's problems is that
a. manufacturers are not spending enough on their campaigns.
b. there are too many good quality products on the market
c. nowadays consumers have less money to spend
d. marketing is not sufficiently well-directed
25. In order to be successful, advertisers need to
a. reseach carefully who is most likely to buy the product
b. achieve only a small percentage increase in sales
c. consider which type of advertising will be most effective
d. target the widest possible audience among the adult population
Cambridge Certificate in Advanced English 3, Examination Papers from the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate, wyd. Cambridge University Press 2001,
Part 4
Multiple matching/multiple choice - you must answer the questions by finding the relevant information in the text or texts.