2 PAPER 1 Reading Part 1 You are going to read a magazine article about travel guidebooks. For questions 1-8, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text. Mark your answers on the separate answer sheet. When I tell someone I write travel guides for a living, I ean see the envy in their eyes. 365 days’ paid holiday a year,” they think. And why should I tell them it's really not at all like that? I've made a pretty good living out of it. Only now, I'm told, the so-called holiday is about to end It was widely reported last year that sales of guidebooks are falling fast, thanks to developments in the Internet and ‘mobile phones. It makes sense. Why bother taking a heavy book with you when you can download all the information you need to your phone as you walk around the cathedral? Writing a new book about a place is a rewarding job, but one that’s becoming a rarity. Publishers are more concerned with keeping existing books up to date than bringing out new ones in an already crowded market. This is understandable, since every guidebook is actually out of date as soon as itis published. It may have been researched 1 vear before being printed and it could have sat on the ‘bookshop shelf for a year or two, so its information might be three years old by the time the reader uses it in practice. Icis hardly surprising, therefore, that some publishers are investing almost as much in updating and redesigning their books as thev did creating them. Updating guides is nowadays a good way for new writers to get started. But if the Internet via a mobile phone can deliver information just as well as printed paper but much faster, at almost no cost, is there a future for the printed guidebook? Other books you read at home, but a travel guide's main purpose is for urgent reference when you're desperate to find accommodation or somewhere to eat. Using a modern cellphone, any traveller can now enjoy a “paperless holiday’. Want to know the opening times of the ‘muscu? Look them up online. Need some information on the ancient building you're standing in? Download it, “We did an experiment last year when we went to [FYR*] Macedonia and Serbia,” says Jan Dodd, author of the Rough Writing guidebooks Nick Inman on where travel guide authors are going. Guides to Vietnam and Japan. ‘We had no guidebook but got by fine with intemet cafés, using online sources for train information, hotels, even restaurants occasionally. We ‘missed the historical background, but you could probably find that online, too. Although sales of some guidebook series are not doing so well, the effects of the IT revolution may not prove as serious as they first seem. People get excited about new technology and forget to think clearly. I saw one tourist couple who were carrying around all their downloads in a pile of neat plastic envelopes,’ observed Nick Rider, author of Cadogan’s Yucatén and Mayan Mexico guides, after a recent trip. “The fact that people print things out means that the printed word is still very useful, though a good book ‘would actually be much easier to carry around.’ And books still have some advantages over computers and mobile phones. Not everyone likes looking ata screen, particularly in bright sunlight. Not everywhere on earth has a reliable internet connection. And who wants to spend all that time ina hatel room recharging hatteries? ‘The Internet’ strength of total democracy, enabling anyone to write whatever they like, is also its weakness. ‘A huge amount of what's around on the net is boring, unedited, untested, uninformed and untrustworthy,’ says Rider, ‘Another large percentage of net material is basically advertising, and so equally untrustworthy. Also, internet searches about destinations often produce facts and figures that are years out of date” ‘The travel guide will have to adapt to changing travel habits but it isn't finished yet. ‘The guidebook is not going to disappear — at least not for a considerable amount of time. That's the gencral opinion among our members, says Mary ‘Anne Evans of the Guild of Travel Writers. “Publishers themselves really do not know what the Internet is capable of, and currently the thinking is that the two will coexist” Let's hope I'l be ‘on holiday’ for a good while yet. “Tha speaker i ering to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 108 | Test 3 Reading Part 11 How does Nick Inman feel about his job? ‘A He isn’t paid enough money for it. B tis pity that it has now finished. © He likes being on holiday all the time. D People have the wrong idea about it. 2 What is meant by ‘It makes sense’ in line 8? A. This is partly tre. B_ tis not easy to understand. © This is not surprising. D tis foolish to think that. 3 What does ‘did’ in line 22 refer to? updating investing creating redesigning vom> 4 What does Nick Inman suggest about guidebooks in the fourth paragraph? ‘A They contain information that cannot be found elsewhere. B People tend to study them before they set off on a journey. © They are stil cheaper than using more modern technology. D__ People use them when they nead information in a hurry. 5 The main purpose of Jan Dodd's experiment was to find out whether a guidebook was necessary. facts about the two countries’ history. how good her own guidebook was. how to travel and where to stay. vowD> 6 In\Nick Rider's opinion, the two people he observed ‘Ahad made the best possible use ot modern technology. B probably should have taken a guidebook with them. need not have taken any written tourist information. D__ had almost certainly printed out the wrong information 7 Which of the following best describes what Nick Rider says about the Internat? A. Its travel advertisements usually give the best information. B__Itis quite difficult to find reliable travel information there. C Information about the places tourists visit is regularly updated. D__ The processing of information is not democratic enough 8 What does Mary Anne Evans say about the future of traveller information? ‘A. People will want to use both the Internet and guidebooks. B Publishers are sure the Internet cannot compete with guidebooks. © Before long, guidebooks will no longer be available, D_ There will always be a demand for guidebooks as they are now. Reading Part 1 Test3 | 109kK Ep Reading Part 2 You are going to read an article in which the writer looks at the harm done by plastic bags and ways of reducing this. Seven sentences have been removed from the article. Choose from the sentences ‘A-H the one which fits each gan (915). There is one extra sentence which yau do not need to use astic bags are one of the greatest problems of the ‘consumer society — or to be more precise, of the throwaway society, First introduced in the United States in 1957, and into the rest of the world by the late 1960s, they have been found so convenient that they have come to be used in massive numbers. In the world as a whole, the ‘annual total manufactured now probably exceeds a trillion, that is, one million billion, or 1,000,000,000,000,000. According to a recent study, whereas plastic bags were rarely seen at sea in the late eighties and early nineties, they are now being found almost everywhere across the planet, from Spitsbergen in the Arctic to the South Atlantic close to Antarctica. They are among the 12 items of rubbish most often found in coastal clean-ups. ‘Windblown plastic bags are so common in Africa that a small industry has appeared: harvesting bags and using them to make hats and other items, with one group of people collecting 30,000 per month. In some developing countries they are a ‘major nuisance in blocking the drainage systems of towns and villages What matters is what happens to them after nce: Forme ‘numbers end up being buried or burnt, which is an enormous waste of the oil products witich have gone into their manufacture. [OT] Turtles mistake them for their jellyfish food and choke on them; birds mistake them for fch with similar consequences; dotphine have heen found with plastic bags preventing them breathing properly. The wildlife film-maker Rebecca Hosking was shocked by the effects of the bags on birds on the Pacific island ‘of Midway. She found that two-fifths of the $00,000 albatross chicks born each year de, the vast majority from swallowing plastic that their parents have mistakenly brought back as food. [74] | Many local residents and shopkeepers joined in, andthe idea of getting rid of them completely soon spread to other towns and villages. Although some people remain unconvinced, it does seem possible that the entire country could eventually become plastic-bag free. Who could have imagined half-a-century ago that our public places would one day all become cigarette-smoke free? Or that we would all be using lead- free petrol? Who would have thought even a decade ago, tome to that, that about two-thirds of us would by now be actively involved in recycling? [#2] ‘What is needed is a general change in consumer attitudes, towards the habit of using re-usable shopping bags. Older people will remember how this used to be entirely normal as every household had a ‘shopping bag’, a strong bag which was used to carry items bought in the daily trip to tho shops, INBHL —_] Today, many of us toad to drive to the supermarket once a week and fill up the car with seven days’ worth of supplies, for which plastic bags, of course, are fantastically useful. It's a hard habit to break However, there has already been a big drop in plastic bag use, partly because the leading supermarkets and other shopkeepers are making a major effort to help us give up the habit, with a whole variety of new ideas. is clear that habits are starting to change; reusable bags are ible than they were even two years ago. more vi Many believe there should be a tax on plastic bags, and the governments of a number of countries are considering the idea. What people have in mind is the example of Ireland, where a tax of €0.22 was introduced on all plastic bags, the first of its kind in the world. [E18] In addition, all the money from the new tax is used for environmental clean-up projects 110 | Test3 Reading Part 2Major changes in public opinion and behaviour can certainly occur. On and they are everywhere, too. These range from cheap ‘bags for life’ offers to bag-free check-outs. Worse still, billions get into the environment, especially the ocean environment, where they become a terrible threat to wildlife. Rut there was a very different pattern of household shopping then: the purchase of a much smaller number of items, on a daily basis, after a walk to small, local shops. F She realised then that it was too late to do anything about this man-made disaster. This quickly brought about a quite amazing reduction of 90 per cent, from 1.2 billion bags a year to fewer than 200,000 and an enormous increase in the use of cloth bags. Asa result, she started a movement fo turn her home town into the first community in the country to be free of plastic bags.ky Reading Part 3 You are going to read an article in which four people talk of their experiences of learning languages. For questions 16-30, choose from the people (A-D). The people may be chosen more than once. Mark your answers on the separate answer sheet. Which person had tried the same method of study when she was younger? thought her chosen form of study was reasonably priced? found she enjoyed working with other students? believes that she learned from her language mistakes? was aware ot the need to stay sate? was unable to write quickly enough? missed going out with people of her own age? eventually found the learning materials she needed? ‘was once embarrassed when she was practising the language? needed to learn the language as quickly as possible? wanted more help with her pronunciation? made a change because she was disappointed with her progress? felt rather tired when she was studying? ‘wished that she had attended a course of formal lessons? studied the language while she was waiting to do something else? 112 | Test 3 16 7 18 19 Bi BSS] BR] sie Reading Part 3 aLanguage learning Pyare Twas living with an English-speaking family and the idea was that 'd pick up a lot of language by being ‘there with them, but it just wasn’t happening. Everyone watched television all the time and rarely spoke to me, so I might as well have been at home watching the same channels on satellite TV. After a week I left and moved in with a couple who had young children, and that was ‘much better. They were all very friendly and I could chat with them anytime, really. When I got things wrong they would often correct me and I think that helped me improve my speaking a lot. They didn’t know much about grammar, though, so it was probably a mistake Besete ae Tania age sola rach cafe estan ost taught it. I would also have liked to be nearer the city centre, because the house was so far out of town that I couldn't get to the kinds of places where other teenagers ‘went in the evenings. Although often I was so tired after playing with the kids I was happy just to have an early night. ic used the Intemet to improve my Spanish. It wasn't the first time I'd tried this, but I enjoyed it much more this time, probably because I’m in my mid-teens now. Itcost nothing, of course, and although at first I didn’t know quite where to look, in the end I came across some gieat websites where I could practise reading and listening and do grammar exercises. At the same time, Iwas joining social networking sites like MySpace and getting in touch with Spanish-speaking teenagers from. various parts of the world. I was careful, though, not to give out my personal details because when you're online you can never be quite sure who is contacting vou, whatever the language is, also tried online chat in Spanish, but I couldn't keep up with people. All the time I was thinking about my grammar and it was taking ime so long 1 reply W each settence after TU read it dat I didn’t think it was fair on them, so I gave up. I'l try again sometime, though. Ey chive Ireally want to learn Polish so I bought a course of language lessons as an MP3 to play on my iPod. That ‘meant I could work on it anywhere I went, particularly at those times when you've got nothing to do, like standing at the bus stop, or in cinema queues. Once I ‘was concentrating so hard on getting grammar point right that I completely forgot I was on the bus and I started repeating restaurant phrases aloud. I felt a bit uncomfortable when I noticed everyone looking at ‘me, so I didn’t do that again. Actually, one problem with learning on my own was not knowing when I was, saying words properly and when T wasn't. I could have done with comeone to correct me, really. I don"t mean a teacher, just somebody who spoke Polish well. Overall, though, it was a useful course and I think it was good value for money. After I'd finished the beginner's level I bought the intermediate level and I'm on that now. Stacey Thad lessons in Hindi at a local language school. Our teacher was great and I realy liked the book we were using, too, but unfortunately the only class available at my level was late in the evening. So after a long day at school, and then all the written homework we have to do, I didn’t have a lot of energy left for language learning. Also, some of my classmates were much older than me and I didn’t really get to know them. But thas didn’t matter because whenever we did group activities, which Td never done before, but took to straight = | made sure I was with the younger ones. I was having lessons every evening and that was costing my parents quite @ lot, but weld booked to go to India later that yeas so there was no time to lose. It was really important to me that I could communicate with people there in their Reading Part 3 own language. Test3 | 113Ezy PAPER 2 Writing Part 1 You must answer this question. Write your answer in 120—150 words in an appropriate style. 11 You have received an email from your English-speaking friend, Kay, who is thinking of buying items over the Internet. Read Kay's email and the notes you have made. Then write an email to Kay, using all your notes. email From: Kay Simmonds Sent: Sth February Subject: Online shopping | know you've had some experience buying things over the Internet and I'm wondering if you stil think it's a good idea. oe eee Suggest What are the best kinds of thing to buy that way? My friend Mark says it's ~~ _ easy to tind good books and Cbs online, but dl be interested to know what you think, Also, I'm not really sure about how | would pay for things. Should I send cash through the post? Na because Explain (One last thing: if| buy something and it's not what | wanted, or it gets —— damaged in the post, what can | do? Please email me back soon. | want to get started as soon as possible! Love Kay | eee errno ‘Write your email. You must use grammatically correct sentences with accurate spelling and Punctuation in a style appropriate tor the situation. 114 | Test3 ‘Whiting Part 1