TEST 1
LISTENING
PART 1 Questions 1-10
Complete the notes below. Listening test Audio
Write ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.
Transport survey
Name: Sadie Jones
Year of birth: 1991
Postcode: (1) ……………………..
DW30 7YZ
Travelling by bus
24 April
Date of bus journey: (2)………………………
dentist
Reason for trip: shopping and visit to the (3) ………………….
Travelled by bus because cost of parking
(4) ............................. too high
Got on bus at Claxby
(5) ............................. Street
late
Complaints about bus service: - bus today was (6) …………………….
evening
- frequency of buses in the (7) …………………
Travelling by car
- Goes to the supermarket
(8) ................................... by car
Travelling by bicycle
pollution
- Dislikes travelling by bike in the city centre because of the (9) ……………………
storage
- Doesn’t own a bike because of a lack of (10) ………………………
PART 2 Questions 11-20
Questions 11-13
Choose the correct letter, A, B or C.
Listening test Audio
Becoming a volunteer for ACE
11. Why does the speaker apologise about the seats?
A. They are too small.
B. There are not enough of them.
C. Some of them are very close together.
12. What does the speaker say about the age of volunteers?
A. The age of volunteers is less important than other factors.
B. Young volunteers are less reliable than older ones.
C. Most volunteers are about 60 years old.
13. What does the speaker say about training?
A. It is continuous.
B. It is conducted by a manager.
C. It takes place online.
Questions 14 and 15
Choose TWO letters, A—E.
Which TWO issues does the speaker ask the audience to consider before they apply
to be volunteers?
A. their financial situation
B. their level of commitment
C. their work experience
D. their ambition
E. their availability
3
Listening test Audio
Questions 16-20
What does the speaker suggest would be helpful for each of the following areas of
voluntary work?
Choose FIVE answers from the box and write the correct letter, A-G, next to
Questions 16-20.
Helpful things volunteers might offer
A. experience on stage
B. original, new ideas
C. parenting skills
D. an understanding of food and diet
E. retail experience
F. a good memory
G. a good level of fitness
Area of voluntary work
16. Fundraising ……………
17. Litter collection ……………
18. ‘Playmates’ ……………
19. Story club ……………
20. First aid ……………
4
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage
1 below.
Urban farming
In Paris, urban farmers are trying a soil-free approach to agriculture that uses less space
and fewer resources. Could it help cities face the threats to our food supplies?
On top of a striking new exhibition hall in southern Paris, the world’s largest urban rooftop
farm has started to bear fruit. Strawberries that are small, intensely flavoured and
resplendently red sprout abundantly from large plastic tubes. Peer inside and you see the
tubes are completely hollow, the roots of dozens of strawberry plants dangling down inside
them. From identical vertical tubes nearby burst row upon row of lettuces; near those are
aromatic herbs, such as basil, sage and peppermint. Opposite, in narrow, horizontal trays
packed not with soil but with coconut fibre, grow cherry tomatoes, shiny aubergines and
brightly coloured chards.
Pascal Hardy, an engineer and sustainable development consultant, began experimenting
with vertical farming and aeroponic growing towers — as the soil-free plastic tubes are
known — on his Paris apartment block roof five years ago. The urban rooftop space above
the exhibition hall is somewhat bigger: 14,000 square metres and almost exactly the size
of a couple of football pitches. Already, the team of young urban farmers who tend it have
picked, in one day, 3,000 lettuces and 150 punnets of strawberries. When the remaining
two thirds of the vast open area are in production, 20 staff will harvest up to 1,000 kg of
perhaps 35 different varieties of fruit and vegetables, every day. ‘We’re not ever, obviously,
going to feed the whole city this way,’ cautions Hardy. ‘In the urban environment you’re
working with very significant practical constraints, clearly, on what you can do and where.
But if enough unused space can be developed like this, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t
eventually target maybe between 5% and 10% of consumption.’
Perhaps most significantly, however, this is a real-life showcase for the work of Hardy’s
flourishing urban agriculture consultancy, Agripolis, which is currently fielding enquiries
from around the world to design, build and equip a new breed of soil-free inner-city farm.
‘The method’s advantages are many,’ he says. ‘First, I don’t much like the fact that most
of the fruit and vegetables we eat have been treated with something like 17 different
pesticides, or that the intensive farming techniques that produced them are such huge
generators of greenhouse gases. I don’t much like the fact, either, that they’ve travelled an
average of 2,000 refrigerated kilometres to my plate, that their quality is so poor, because
the varieties are selected for their capacity to withstand such substantial
TEST 1
5
journeys, or that 80% of the price I pay goes to wholesalers and transport companies, not
the producers.’
Produce grown using this soil-free method, on the other hand — which relies solely on a
small quantity of water, enriched with organic nutrients, pumped around a closed circuit
of pipes, towers and trays — is ‘produced up here, and sold locally, just down there. It
barely travels at all,’ Hardy says. “You can select crop varieties for their flavour, not their
resistance to the transport and storage chain, and you can pick them when they’re really
at their best, and not before.’ No soil is exhausted, and the water that gently showers the
plants’ roots every 12 minutes is recycled, so the method uses 90% less water than a classic
intensive farm for the same yield.
Urban farming is not, of course, a new phenomenon. Inner-city agriculture is booming
from Shanghai to Detroit and Tokyo to Bangkok. Strawberries are being grown in disused
shipping containers, mushrooms in underground carparks. Aeroponic farming, he says, is
‘virtuous’. The equipment weighs little, can be installed on almost any flat surface and is
cheap to buy: roughly €100 to €150 per square metre. It is cheap to run, too, consuming a
tiny fraction of the electricity used by some techniques.
Produce grown this way typically sells at prices that, while generally higher than those of
classic intensive agriculture, are lower than soil-based organic growers. There are limits to
what farmers can grow this way, of course, and much of the produce is suited to the
summer months. ‘Root vegetables we cannot do, at least not yet,’ he says. ‘Radishes are
OK, but carrots, potatoes, that kind of thing — the roots are simply too long. Fruit trees
are obviously not an option. And beans tend to take up a lot of space for not much return.’
Nevertheless, urban farming of the kind being practised in Paris is one part of a bigger and
fast-changing picture that is bringing food production closer to our lives.
6
Complete the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for
each answer. Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.
Urban farming in Paris
lettuces
1. Vertical tubes are used to grow strawberries, .......................................... and herbs.
1,000 kg
2. There will eventually be a daily harvest of as much as ........................................ in
weight of fruit and vegetables.
3. It may be possible that the farm’s produce will account for as much as 10% of the
city’s ..............................................
(food) consumption overall.
Questions 4—7
Complete the table below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 4-7 on your answer sheet.
Intensive farming versus aeroponic urban farming
Growth Selection Sale
Intensive • wide range • quality not good producers
• 6………………..
farming pesticides
of 4......................... used • varieties of fruit and receive very little
• techniques pollute air vegetables chosen of overall income
that can survive
long 5……………… journeys
Aeroponic • no soil used • produce chosen
urban • nutrients added to because of
farming water, which is its 7………………….
flavour
recycled
7
Questions 8-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
8. Urban farming can take place above or below ground.
9. Some of the equipment used in aeroponic farming can be made by hand.
10. Urban farming relies more on electricity than some other types of farming.
11. Fruit and vegetables grown on an aeroponic urban farm are cheaper than
traditionally grown organic produce.
12. Most produce can be grown on an aeroponic urban farm at any time of the year.
13. Beans take longer to grow on an urban farm than other vegetables.
8
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14—26, which are based on Reading
Passage 2 below.
Forest management in Pennsylvania, USA
How managing low-quality wood (also known as low-use wood) for bioenergy can encourage
sustainable forest management
A A tree’s ‘value’ depends on several factors including its species, size, form,
condition, quality, function, and accessibility, and depends on the management
goals for a given forest. The same tree can be valued very differently by each person
who looks at it. A large, straight black cherry tree has high value as timber to be cut
into logs or made into furniture, but for a landowner more interested in wildlife
habitat, the real value of that stem (or trunk) may be the food it provides to animals.
Likewise, if the tree suffers from black knot disease, its value for timber decreases,
but to a woodworker interested in making bowls, it brings an opportunity for a
unique and beautiful piece of art.
B In the past, Pennsylvania landowners were solely interested in the value of their
trees as high-quality timber. The norm was to remove the stems of highest quality
and leave behind poorly formed trees that were not as well suited to the site where
they grew. This practice, called ‘high-grading’, has left a legacy of ‘low-use wood’
in the forests. Some people even call these ‘junk trees’, and they are abundant in
Pennsylvania. These trees have lower economic value for traditional timber
markets, compete for growth with higher-value trees, shade out desirable
regeneration and decrease the health of a stand’ leaving it more vulnerable to poor
weather and disease. Management that specifically targets low-use wood can help
landowners manage these forest health issues, and wood energy markets help
promote this.
C Wood energy markets can accept less expensive wood material of lower quality than
would be suitable for traditional timber markets. Most wood used for energy in
Pennsylvania is used to produce heat or electricity through combustion. Many
schools and hospitals use wood boiler systems to heat and power their facilities,
many homes are primarily heated with wood, and some coal plants incorporate
wood into their coal streams to produce electricity. Wood can also be gasified for
electrical generation and can even be made into liquid fuels like ethanol and
gasoline for lorries and cars. All these products are made primarily from low-use
wood. Several tree- and plant-cutting approaches, which could greatly improve the
long-term quality of a forest, focus strongly or solely on the use of wood for those
markets.
D One such approach is called a Timber Stand Improvement (TSI) Cut. In a TSI Cut,
really poor-quality tree and plant material is cut down to allow more space, light,
and other resources to the highest-valued stems that remain. Removing invasive
plants might be another primary goal of a TSI Cut. The stems that are left behind
might then grow in size and develop more foliage and larger crowns or tops that
produce more coverage for wildlife; they have a better chance to regenerate in a less
9
crowded environment. TSI Cuts can be tailored to one farmer’s specific
management goals for his or her land.
E Another approach that might yield a high amount of low-use wood is a Salvage Cut.
With the many pests and pathogens visiting forests including hemlock wooly
adelgid, Asian longhorned beetle, emerald ash borer, and gypsy moth, to name just
a few, it is important to remember that those working in the forests can help ease
these issues through cutting procedures. These types of cut reduce the number of
sick trees and seek to manage the future spread of a pest problem. They leave
vigorous trees that have stayed healthy enough to survive the outbreak.
F A Shelterwood Cut, which only takes place in a mature forest that has already been
thinned several times, involves removing all the mature trees when other seedlings
have become established. This then allows the forester to decide which tree species
are regenerated. It leaves a young forest where all trees are at a similar point in their
growth. It can also be used to develop a two-tier forest so that there are two harvests
and the money that comes in is spread out over a decade or more.
G Thinnings and dense and dead wood removal for fire prevention also center on the
production of low-use wood. However, it is important to remember that some
retention of what many would classify as low-use wood is very important. The tops
of trees that have been cut down should be left on the site so that their nutrients
cycle back into the soil. In addition, trees with many cavities are extremely
important habitats for insect predators like woodpeckers, bats and small mammals.
They help control problem insects and increase the health and resilience of the
forest. It is also important to remember that not all small trees are low-use. For
example, many species like hawthorn provide food for wildlife. Finally, rare species
of trees in a forest should also stay behind as they add to its structural diversity.
Questions 14-18
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
14. bad outcomes for a forest when people focus only on its financial reward
15. reference to the aspects of any tree that contribute to its worth
16. mention of the potential use of wood to help run vehicles
17. examples of insects that attack trees
18. an alternative name for trees that produce low-use wood
10
Questions 19-21
Look at the following purposes (Questions 19-21) and the list of timber cuts below.
Match each purpose with the correct timber cut, A, B or C.
Write the correct letter, A, B or C, in boxes 19-21 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
List of Timber Cuts
A. a TSI Cut
B. a Salvage Cut
C. a Shelterwood Cut
19. to remove trees that are diseased
20. to generate income across a number of years
21. to create a forest whose trees are close in age
Questions 22-26
Complete the sentences below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet.
fire
22. Some dead wood is removed to avoid the possibility of ............ .
nutrients
23. The............... from the tops of cut trees can help improve soil quality.
cavities
24. Some damaged trees should be left, as their ............... provide habitats for a range
of creatures.
hawthorn
25. Some trees that are small, such as ............... , are a source of food for animals and
insects.
rare
26. Any trees that are ............... should be left to grow, as they add to the variety of
species in the forest.
WRITING TASK 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.
The graph below gives information about the percentage of the population in
four Asian countries living in cities from 1970 to 2020, with predictions for
2030 and 2040.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and
make comparisons where relevant.
WRITING TASK 2
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task. Write about the following topic:
The most important aim of science should be to improve people’s lives. To
what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own
knowledge or experience.
Write at least 250 word
