Adults

READING

READ THE TEXTS AND CHOOSE THE CORRECT OPTION

The Wild Zoo

We have over fifty types of animals at The Wild Zoo, and there are shows for children too! You can visit every day from 9.30 a.m. until 6.30 p.m. In the summers, we have night tours from 7 p.m. until 10 p.m. too. The Wild Zoo also has an education centre so you can find out more about all the animals on the island. You can bring your own food and eat it, but you mustn’t eat it near the animals!

Two readers write about their holidays

ALICE
I like beach holidays and my favourite place is Aruba in the Caribbean. My parents took me and my brother there two years ago and then again last year. It was great because everyone speaks English! The food was brilliant, especially the fish, and the beaches were clean with not many people! It was a bit too hot for me. I still email a girl called Penny who was in the same hotel as we were. One day, we’re both going to go back.

MARY
I first went to France with my school when I was eleven and it was amazing. It was cool to speak to the people in French! Last year I went again and stayed with my French friend. She lives in a small town by the sea. It’s usually very quiet but there were many people. It was sunny and warm all the time, which I loved. Just before we came home I fell down some steps and broke my arm. I hope I can go back next year, maybe with my family, but I’ll be more careful!

Read the article about Bridget and choose the correct option

I have a slightly unusual hobby – you probably only use it to wash your face or hands, but I make small sculptures out of soap. I’m a bit of an expert these days, having read about it in many different books, and I’ve even managed to get several friends interested in doing it. I didn’t even know people made sculptures from soap until I found a short online film about it by accident and thought it was something I’d like to try.
It’s especially popular in Thailand. They often make sculptures of flowers there so I decided to try that.I wasn’t expecting my first sculpture to be brilliant, but I surprised myself with how good it was. I felt more confident about trying other things after my family told me how good it looked. It took quite a long time, and I didn’t really have the right tools, but I enjoyed making it.


I myself experienced an event that might be considered paranormal by some. A long time ago, my cousin died unexpectedly and her husband, who is a great ghost sceptic, couldn’t find my cousin’s life insurance policy. One night, my cousin appeared in my dreams. “You smell really bad,” I told her. “Of course I smell bad, I’m dead,” she said. “Anyway, I’m here to tell you where the document my husband is looking for is.” And she told me. The following day, I told my cousin’s husband that I might know where the policy was –I didn’t tell him how I knew, because that would have prevented him looking for it. The thing is that we went to his home and the document was exactly where my dead cousin had told me it would be. Paranormal?

Read a piece of article about how smartphones have changed our lives and answer the questions

It’s hard to believe that smartphones have only been around for little over a decade. They’re now so common that it’s surprising if someone doesn’t have one. As I sit on the underground in the mornings, all I see are tired-looking travellers staring at their smartphones. When I step off the underground, others are navigating the platform, eyes still fixed on their screens. Most of them will spend the rest of their day checking their messages and the latest news updates or keeping up on celebrity gossip.

There’s no doubt that the smartphone has changed our lives significantly. For most of the twentieth century, the telephone changed little. It only allowed us to talk to people over long distances and, later, send text messages to them. The smartphone, however, changed all of that by adding features such as cameras, GPS and sophisticated computer technology. They are multi-purpose tools, whose uses are only limited by the imaginations of computer programmers. If you’re lost, your phone will help you find your way. If you’re feeling lonely, it will help you find the perfect friend. You can even do your shopping on it, without leaving the comfort of your kitchen. The problem is that we’ve become so dependent on this technology that we’ve failed to notice the dangers.

Read a part of an article about recognition ability and answer the questions below

How do we recognise people and does everyone have the same ability? Most of us tend to assume that from the moment we’re born, we can recognise our mother’s face. From that point, we learn to recognise others’ faces and, once developed, this ability remains with us throughout our lifetimes until old age or mental illness causes confusion. Few of us would contemplate the idea that recognition is a skill or indeed something a person can be good or bad at. While true in certain respects this is, however, not the complete picture.

The first premise is almost correct, although newborn babies cannot focus well enough for several weeks to be able to recognise their mother’s facial features. Initially, they recognise through voice and smell. As the eye muscles develop, they become able to focus within a range of about thirty centimetres – the perfect distance for studying and remembering a face – and by the age of eight months, the focus range has extended, enabling a baby to recognise its mother across a room, and even to understand the emotions she displays, without the need for words. Studies have shown that babies of this age can in fact do better than adults at picking out faces in a group of people, although this ability is said to decrease from nine months old.

So, how do we do this? Recognition is actually a very complex mental process and one which scientists have been fascinated by for a long time. Research tells us that three areas of the brain are involved in recognition: one looking at the physical aspects – the colour, shape of eyes, etc.; the second identifying the person as known or unknown; and the third checking out any information we might have about a known person in our memory banks. All of this is done in milliseconds of course – a light bulb goes on in our brain telling us, oh yes, that’s … !

LISTENING

Listen to the audio and choose the correct option

Listen to the conversation at a hotel and answer.

Listen to the conversation between Susie and Ben and choose the correct option.

Listen to the conversation between Ellen and Laura and answer the question.

Listen to the conversation between a patient and a doctor and answer.

Listen to the speaker and answer the questions.

You will hear two friends talking about a new cinema.

You will hear two friends talking about playing the drums.

Listen to the beginning of a radio programme about inventions and choose the correct alternatives.

Listen to an interview and choose the correct answers.

Listen to the radio interview and select the right answer.

Listen to the beginning of a man talk about a social media influencer and decide which is the correct answer.

LANGUAGE