LISTENING Part 1

Listen to a short news report from BBC London News. Fill in the gaps with missing words. There might be one to three words needed in the gaps. You will hear the recording twice.

Boris Johnson announced his new policy after he was re-elected the 1)_______________ of London.

He wants to know if immigrant workers are more prepared to take 2)_________________, 3)_______________ jobs.

Londoners will be able to take the jobs that the city creates thanks to 4)______________ and 5)_________________ programmes.

He also emphasized that employees will have to 6)______________ for the fact that recruitment procedures seem to go against Londoners.

According to Ms Klimas, Polish immigrants 7)__________________ where the local people are not interested.

She says young English people should also begin by working 8)________________________, instead of getting everything straightaway.

If 9)______________ were higher, the English people would probably accept jobs that immigrants take up.

Boris Johnson doesn't want to exclude competition so he won't impose 10)__________________ on foreign workers.

_____ / 10

LISTENING Part 2

Listen to 5 short news reports/monologues. Decide which statement a-j matches what the speakers say. There are only 5 statements you will need to use. You will hear each report/monologue twice.

You now have one minute to read the statements.

a Anti-deceptive-ads campaign managed to eradicate the problem of dishonest competition among shoemaking companies.

b Intolerance towards immigrants is escalating due to growing instances of law violation.

c Despite dynamic economic growth in China, the country's situation on the global market still leaves much to be desired.

d The emergence of new-line news outlets leaves many real journalists and reporters in the lurch.

e Due to fewer armed conflicts around the world, immigrants and refugees have nothing to fear when choosing new places to live.

f Vast majority of companies adhere to strict regulations and undergo tests for unfounded advertising claims.

g A thorough investigation is being carried out to crack down on organizations which encourage exploitation of illegal immigrant workers.

h New media options grow in popularity owing to their news being well presented, fully objective and bona fide.

i Even though the numbers of asylum seekers are dropping, refugees still have to suffer indignity stemming from prejudice and intolerance.

j More criminal charges against violators of intellectual property rights are filed in China.

Speaker 1 ___ Speaker 2 ___ Speaker 3 ___ Speaker 4 ___ Speaker 5 ____

_____ / 5

READING

Task 1.

Complete the gaps in the text from 1 to 7 with appropriate sentences from A to G.

A Point of View: Science, magic, and madness

Galileo was a great scientist partly because he wasn't afraid to admit when he was wrong, argues Adam Gopnik, who only wishes some of the people who write to him, could do the same.

1………………………. You're resigned to getting the responses before you write the story. If you write something about Shakespeare, you will get many letters and emails from what we call the cracked (and I think you call the barking), explaining that Shakespeare didn't write the plays that everyone who was alive when he was, said he had. If you write something about the scandal of American prisons, you will be sent letters, many heartbreaking, from those wrongly imprisoned - and you will also get many letters from those who you're pretty sure couldn't possibly be more rightfully imprisoned. Sorting out what to say to each kind is a big job. 2…………………….

3. ……………………. If you write about Botticelli as a painter of the Italian Renaissance, you'll be told sapiently that there was never really a renaissance in Italy for him to paint in. If you write about Abraham Lincoln and emancipation, you'll be bombarded, on a Fort Sumter scale, with people telling you that the American Civil War wasn't really fought over slavery. The Spanish Inquisition was a benevolent, fact-checking organisation, Edmund Burke was no conservative… On and on it goes. Now these letters and emails come more often from the half-bright, some of them professional academics, than from the fully bonkers or barking. You can tell the half-bright from the barking because the barking don't know how little they know, while the half-bright know enough to think that they know a lot, but don't know enough to know what part of what they know is actually worth knowing.

Not long ago, for instance, I wrote an essay about the great Galileo, and the beginnings of modern science. I explained, or tried to, that what made Galileo's work science, properly so-called, wasn't that he was always right about the universe (he was very often wrong) but that he believed in searching for ways of finding out what was right by figuring out what would happen in the world if he wasn't. 4……………………. When he wanted to find out if Aristotle was right to say that a feather would always fall at the same speed as a brick, he didn't look the answer up in an old book about bricks and feathers, or in two books, one about each. Instead, he threw a brick and a feather off the Tower of Pisa, and, checking to make sure that no-one was down there, watched what happened. They hit the ground at the same time. That story may be a legend - though it was first told by someone who knew him well - but it's a legend that points towards a truth.

We know for certain that he attempted lots of adventures in looking that were just as decisive. He looked at stars and planets and the way cannonballs fell on moving ships - and changed the mind of man as he did. 5…………………. In 1632 Galileo wrote a great book - his Dialogue On Two World Systems. It's one of the best books ever written because it's essentially a record of a temperament, of a kind of impatience and irritability that leads men to drop things from towers and see what happens when they fall. He invented a dumb character for the book named Simplicio and two smart ones to argue with him. The joke is that Simplicio is the most erudite of the three - the dumb guy who thinks he's the smart guy (the original half-bright guy), who's read a lot but just repeats whatever Aristotle says. He's erudite and ignorant.

6………………………. He always emphasises the importance of looking for yourself. But he also wants to convince you that sometimes it's important not to look for yourself, not just to trust your own eyes, and that you have to work to understand the real meaning of what you're seeing. 7…………………………

BBC © 2013 

1. The oddest response, though, is if you write making an obvious point about an historical period or historical figure, you will get lots of letters and emails insisting that the obvious thing about the guy or his time is completely wrong.

2. We call it the experimental method, and if science had an essence, that would be it.

3. But on every page of that wonderful book, he's trying to imagine a decisive test - dropping a cannonball from a ship's mast, or digging a hole in the ground and watching the Moon - to help you argue your way around the universe.

4. When you write for a living, over time you learn that certain subjects will get set responses.

5. One story of that search is famous.

6. Galileo wasn't naive about experiments.

7. (My wife has a simple rule - be nice to the ones who are going to be getting out).

____ / 7

Task 2

Find the words in the text which mean:

1. crazy (paragraph 1) ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

2. with great intelligence or knowledge (paragraph 2) …………………………………………………………………………..

3. the act of freeing somebody, especially from legal, political or social restrictions (paragraph 2) ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

4. kind, helpful and generous (paragraph 2) ………………………………………………………………………………………….

5. one of the many soft light parts covering a bird's body (paragraph 3) …………………………………………………

6. having or showing great knowledge that is gained from academic study (paragraph 4) ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

_____ / 6

USE OF ENGLISH

Task I

Read the text below and decide which answer (A, B, C or D) best fits each gap.

There is one branch of business that depends for its success on well-written letters. This is direct mail advertising.

The value of direct mail advertising lies in the fact that the advertiser is able to direct his (1) …………… straight to potential customers and avoid the wastage of effort that results from many other forms of advertising. With the exception of the consumer goods that have the widest (2) ……………. use, like , for example , toothpaste, no advertisement in a newspaper or periodical, or displayed on a poster, can interest everyone who reads it. The enormous increase in the number and the (3) ……………. of newspapers and magazines has meant that many firms have found the cost of advertising their goods in these media (4) ……………. and they are turning more and more to direct mail, which they have found produces results much more (5) …………….. .

1. A attention B appeal C interest D enthusiasm

2. A likely B suitable C common D possible

3. A popularization B circulation C rotation D release

4. A prohibitive B prohibited C luxurious D outstanding

5. A inexpensive B cheap C cheaply D convenient _____ / 5

Task II

Read the text below and complete it with ONE word which best fits each gap. There is an example at the beginning.

Two decades (0) have passed since the word ‘globalization’ started showing up. At (1) …………….. , the focus was on Western companies’ trying to compete (2) …………. imports from Asia. The battle lines (3) ………….. drawn along each country’s borders. (4) ……………. on , things became more complex. Asian companies started designing and assembling products in the West. At the turn of the century, there was a lot of talk about (5) …………… it was a good thing or bad thing. Now it is pretty clear that globalization is an unavoidable thing.

_____ / 5

Task III

Read the text below and decide which answer (A, B, C or D) best fits each gap.

After toiling for years as an engineer for an electric company in New York, Lee Harrison was more than ready for early retirement at the age 49. On his modest pension and savings, such a dream (1) ……………………………. in Manhattan. So after reading various guides on retiring to Latin America, Harrison moved to Ecuador, (2) ………………………. promised to cost a fraction of his former salary.

Harrison said he was enchanted by the country’s pleasant climate, friendly residents, and by the fact that it is not yet overrun with expatriates. He (3) ………………………. $34,000 for a three-bedroom house alongside a river in Vilcabamba, a picturesque village surrounded by mountain peaks (4) …………………………….. . The spacious home is a far cry from his small apartment in Manhattan , and here he pays less than $10 a year in property taxes.

With pensions dwindling and life expectancies growing, retirees like Harrison around the world are doing the math and concluding that moving to a lower-cost location will increase the chances (5) ……………………………… longer than they do.

1. A …. must be impossible 4 A …. in the south of the country

B …. seemed likely B …. in South of the country

C …. must have been possible C …. on the south of the country

D …. would have been impossible D …. in southern country

1. A …. which country 5 A …. as their money last

B …. what country B …. to make their money to last

C …. where the good life C …. to use money

D …. the good life of it D …. of their money lasting

1. A …. had already paid

B …. is able to pay

C …. has just paid

D …. considers paying

_____ / 5

Task IV

Read the text and complete the gaps with the correct form of the words given in CAPITALS below.

NUCLEAR POWER

Advocates of nuclear power point to its (1) ……………. low fuel costs. It is argued that, although expensive to build, nuclear plants are (2) …………….. cheap to run. Taking into account back-end costs such as the fabrication of uranium and the (3) ……………… of spent radioactive materials, the total fuel costs of a nuclear power plant are typically about one-third of those of a coal-fired plant and about one-quarter of those of a gas (4) ……………… plant, reported the World Nuclear (5) ………………. in London.

(1) COMPARE (2) RELATE (3) MANAGE (4) COMBINE (5) ASSOCIATE

_____ / 5

WRITING

Task I

You are the IT Manager in your company and the CEO has asked you to write a report (approximately 200 words) on your company’s information security.

This report should include such areas of concern as:

• common access to the same central data – need to grade and restrict access to more sensitive info

• lack of log-in codes for the staff – need to assign log-in codes

• lack of clear policy of the email communication at work - when at work communicate for work, prohibition of opening unfamiliar attachments.

Present potential problem(s) / or need(s) that could arise while implementing these changes.

Write a suitable summary and recommendation.

______ /14

Task II

Situation

You and four other colleagues have conducted research on the Internet use in 5 different countries for a client in Great Britain. One of your colleagues has not sent his data collected in one country yet.

Write an email (approximately 80 words) to your colleague:

• reproaching him for being late,

• giving reasons for his prompt answer (importance of the client for your company, consequences of not sending the report on time, etc.)

• giving him a new deadline and reminding of what the data should include (data from rural and urban areas, kinds of Internet links, etc).

______ / 8

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