Every reading part of every Cambridge English Qualification, written to the current handbook specification, with an answer key that explains why each answer is right. Choose your exam from the menu, set a timer, and keep the answers closed until you have committed to every question.
A2 Key (A2). Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 of the Reading and Writing paper. Timing on the real exam — Reading and Writing: 60 minutes. The open cloze in this paper is on the Use of English samples page.
Tip: Think about where you would see each text and who wrote it. Then check every word of the option you choose: one small detail, such as a time, a day or a number, can make an option wrong.
Questions 1–6 For each question, choose the correct answer.
Why has Jess written this note?
Answer key
1. A — Only the pool is closed, and the gym is “open as usual”, so you can use it on Monday morning. B is wrong because the pool closes only from 8 to 11 a.m., and C is wrong because the gym does not close.
2. B — Zoe’s train now arrives 30 minutes later, and she asks if Dan can still pick her up. She will take a taxi herself only if Dan can’t come (A), and she is still travelling by train (C).
3. C — The label says to keep the soup in the fridge once it is open. The three days start when you open it, not when you buy it (B), and it is “not suitable for freezing” (A).
4. A — The supermarket has said staff can use its car park while the office car park is being painted. Staff can still drive (B), and it is the office car park that can’t be used, not the supermarket’s (C).
5. B — DVDs are for one week, and books are for three or four weeks. Children, not adults, get the longer time (A), and children can borrow 12 books, which is more than adults’ 8 (C).
6. A — Jess is passing on a message: Mia’s mother is now coming on Saturday, not Sunday. It is the mother, not Jess, who wants lunch (B), and Mia should call this evening because her mother is away tomorrow (C).
Tip: Read the question first, then look for the part of each text about that idea. Often two or three texts talk about the same thing, so read carefully to see which one really answers the question.
Questions 7–13 For each question, choose the correct answer. Three people talk about the evening classes they go to.
Which person says the class costs less than they expected?
Which person goes to the class with a member of their family?
Which person is learning something to use on a future trip?
Which person had problems in their first lesson?
Which person says there aren’t many people in the class?
Which person has made new friends at the class?
Which person has already booked a place on another course?
A Marta
I started going to a pottery class in January. It’s every Tuesday at the arts centre, and I go with my sister because she wanted to try it too. The first lesson was terrible for me – everything I made fell over, and I almost didn’t go back! But now I can make cups and bowls, and we use them at home. The class costs £15 an evening, which is quite a lot. I’d like to do the next course in the summer, but I’m not sure I can pay for it.
B Josh
My partner and I are going to Mexico next year, and I want to be able to chat to people when we’re there. That’s why I joined a Spanish class at the town library. There are only seven students, so the teacher has lots of time to help each of us. I paid £90 for twelve weeks, which isn’t cheap, but I’m learning a lot. We don’t meet outside the class, but everyone is friendly. The course ends in March, and I’ve already booked a place on the next level.
C Priya
A friend told me about this cooking class. I travel a lot for my job, so it’s nice to have a hobby at home. There are about twenty of us, and every week we cook food from a different country. The first lesson was easy, but it’s harder now. I thought a cooking class would be expensive, but it’s only £6 a lesson! I’ve got to know two women in the class, and we often meet for coffee at the weekend now. My husband would like to come too, but he works late on Wednesdays.
Answer key
7. C — Priya thought a cooking class “would be expensive, but it’s only £6 a lesson”. Josh says his class “isn’t cheap” and Marta says hers costs “quite a lot”, but neither expected it to cost more.
8. A — Marta goes with her sister. Priya’s husband would like to come, but he works late, so he doesn’t go.
9. B — Josh is learning Spanish so he can chat to people in Mexico next year. Priya travels for her job, but her cooking class is not for a trip.
10. A — In Marta’s first lesson “everything I made fell over”. Priya says her first lesson was easy.
11. B — Josh’s class has “only seven students”. Priya’s class has about twenty people, and Marta doesn’t say how many people are in hers.
12. C — Priya has “got to know two women in the class”, and they often meet for coffee at the weekend. Josh says everyone in his class is friendly, but they “don’t meet outside the class”, and Marta already knew her sister.
13. B — Josh has “already booked a place on the next level”. Marta would like to do the next course, but she isn’t sure she can pay for it, so she hasn’t booked.
Tip: The questions follow the order of the text. When you find the right place, read the whole sentence and the one after it: words from a wrong option are often in the text too, but the text says something different about them.
Questions 14–18 For each question, choose the correct answer.
A life with dogs
Every morning at eight o’clock, Lucy Grant, 34, leaves her flat in Leeds with a bag of dog biscuits and twelve dog leads. She is a dog walker, and she spends most of her day in the city’s parks.
Five years ago, her life was very different. She worked in an office, selling holidays to customers on the phone. ‘The pay was good and my customers were nice, but I sat at a desk all day and I always felt tired,’ she says. Then her neighbour broke his leg and couldn’t take his dog, Biscuit, out. Lucy offered to walk Biscuit before and after work. ‘I didn’t ask for any money – I just wanted to help him,’ she says. ‘But I loved it, and I started to feel much healthier.’
A year later, Lucy left her office job and started her own business. Now she has more than thirty customers. A few people find her on her website, but most new customers stop her in the park and ask for her phone number. ‘They see me with lots of happy dogs, and that’s the best advertisement,’ she laughs.
Lucy doesn’t mind early mornings or bad weather. ‘I’ve got good boots and a warm coat, so rain isn’t a problem,’ she says. For her, the hardest part of the job is when a dog doesn’t like other dogs. ‘Then I have to walk it on its own, and that takes a lot of extra time.’
Next year, Lucy wants to find another dog walker to work with her, because at the moment she has to say no to some of the people who call her. One day, she’d love to live in the countryside, but that’s a long way in the future.
What does Lucy say about her old job?
Why did Lucy first walk her neighbour’s dog?
How do most of Lucy’s new customers find her?
What does Lucy find most difficult about her job?
What does Lucy want to do next year?
Answer key
14. A — Lucy says “I sat at a desk all day and I always felt tired.” She says the pay was good and her customers were nice, so B and C are wrong.
15. C — Her neighbour had a broken leg, and Lucy says “I just wanted to help him.” She didn’t ask for money, and feeling healthier was a result of the walks, not the reason for starting.
16. B — “Most new customers stop her in the park.” Only “a few people” find her on her website, and the text doesn’t mention friends.
17. C — The hardest part is a dog that doesn’t like other dogs, because she has to walk it on its own. She says she doesn’t mind early mornings or bad weather.
18. A — She wants “to find another dog walker to work with her” next year. Living in the countryside is only a dream for “one day” in the future, and she wants more help because she has to say no to people now, not because she wants fewer customers.
Tip: Read the words before and after each gap. Many answers are about which words go together, like “make a mistake” or “have a good time”.
Questions 19–24 For each question, choose the correct answer.
Hot-air balloons
The first flight with people in a hot-air balloon (19) place in Paris in 1783. The balloon was the (20) of two French brothers, Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier. Their family had a paper factory.
Two months before that flight, the brothers tested a balloon with three animals in a basket under it: a sheep, a duck and a chicken. The balloon stayed in the air for about eight minutes, and all three animals were fine when it (21) to the ground.
Today, a balloon flight is a popular (22) to celebrate a birthday or another special day. Most flights happen early in the morning or in the evening, because there is usually (23) wind at these times. Pilots can make a balloon go up or down, but they cannot (24) which direction it travels in. That depends on the wind.
Answer key
19. B — The fixed phrase is “take place”, meaning “happen”. We don’t say “have place” or “make place”.
20. C — “The balloon was the idea of two brothers” means they thought of it. “Thought” and “mind” are about thinking too, but they can’t be used in this phrase.
21. A — “Returned to the ground” means “came back down”. “Replied” is about answering, and “repeated” means “did again”.
22. B — “A popular way to celebrate” is the natural phrase for a method of doing something. A “road” is a real street, and we don’t say “a popular plan to celebrate a birthday”.
23. C — “Wind” is uncountable here, so we use “less”. “Fewer” is for plural nouns (fewer clouds), and we don’t say “smaller wind”.
24. B — Pilots cannot “decide which direction” the balloon goes, because the wind controls it. “Agree” is about two people having the same idea, which doesn’t make sense here, and we don’t say “prefer which direction”.
B1 Preliminary (B1). Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 of the Reading paper. Timing on the real exam — Reading: 45 minutes. The open cloze in this paper is on the Use of English samples page.
Tip: Decide where you would see each text and who wrote it before you read the options. Then check every word of your chosen option against the text: a single detail such as a time or a place is often what makes a distractor wrong.
For each question, choose the correct answer.
Sophie is telling Ben that
Answer key
1. B — “Group work welcome” means people can study together in this room as long as they talk quietly. A is wrong because quiet talking is allowed, and C is wrong because the top-floor room is for people who want silence, not for groups.
2. A — Their mother “needs it back by 6”, so Ben must bring the car back before then. B is wrong because she is driving to Gran’s in the evening, and C is wrong because Sophie reminds Ben to fill the car up himself.
3. C — The second-floor printer can’t print in colour yet, so colour documents must go to the meeting-room printer. A is wrong because it only works for black and white, and B is wrong because staff can still print in colour in the meeting room.
4. B — Passengers go by train to Hillford and then take a bus, so they use two kinds of transport. A is not mentioned, and C is wrong because the notice gives the bus journey time but says nothing about how long the train normally takes.
5. C — “I’ll swap it for a bigger bike” means Maria will exchange it instead of selling it. A is wrong because she wants a bigger bike, for an older child, and B is wrong because her son stopped using it because he grew too tall, not because he didn’t like it.
Tip: Underline the three things each person needs, then look for a text that gives all three. Most texts match one or two needs, so a campsite that shares a word with the description is not enough on its own.
For each question, choose the correct answer. The people below all want to go camping. Below there are descriptions of eight campsites. Decide which campsite would be the most suitable for the people below.
Mark and Jenny Harrison are going camping with their children, aged four and six. The children love animals and need space to play safely, and the family want to be able to walk to the sea from their tent.
Tom is going on a cycling holiday on his own. He wants to cook his own food to save money, and he needs a safe place to leave his bike at night. After a long day, he’d like to sleep without any noise.
Priya and four friends from university are going camping for the weekend. They haven’t got much money and none of them has a car. In the evenings, they want to have fun without leaving the campsite.
Gerald and Ann are travelling around the country in their camper van with their dog, Bruno. They need electricity for the van, and they’d like to learn more about the wildlife in the places they visit.
Lucy has never been camping and doesn’t own a tent or anything to cook with. She’s planning a short break in the middle of October, and she wants to go swimming every day.
A The Old Mill
Just ten minutes from Castleton railway station – our free minibus meets every train. Tent pitches start at only £8 a night, and there’s a barbecue area for everyone to use. On Friday and Saturday nights, local bands play live music in our barn bar until late.
B Greenhill Farm
Stay on a real working farm! Children can help to feed the goats and collect the eggs every morning, and there’s a large field with swings and a climbing frame. The nearest beach is a twenty-minute drive away, but there’s a shallow river for paddling. Tents only – no camper vans.
C Lakeside Retreat
Never camped before? Our large tents are already put up for you, with real beds, lights and everything you need for cooking – just bring a sleeping bag. Guests can use the heated indoor pool at any time. We’re open all year round. Sorry, no pets.
D Bayview Park
A family site on the cliffs, with a path down to the sandy beach just five minutes’ walk away. Young visitors love our adventure playground and the pets’ corner, where they can hold the rabbits and guinea pigs and help give them their dinner.
E Oak Lodge
A lively family site on the edge of the forest, popular with cyclists. We hire out mountain bikes and can repair yours if something goes wrong. Cooking and campfires aren’t allowed on the pitches, but our café serves a big breakfast and dinner every day.
F Pine Forest Camp
Camper vans are welcome and every space has an electric hook-up. Join our rangers on a guided walk through the forest to learn about the trees and birds. Tents can be hired, and in summer you can swim in the lake (June to August only). Open until the end of October. No dogs, please.
G Riverside Meadow
A peaceful site for adults only, where there’s no music after 9 p.m. Our shared kitchen has cookers, fridges and everything you need to make your own meals. We’re right next to the national cycle route, and bikes can be locked in our covered shed overnight.
H Moorside Camping
Probably the cheapest site in the area at £6 a night. Spaces for camper vans have electricity, and well-behaved dogs are very welcome. Every morning our warden leads a free walk across the moor to spot birds and other wildlife. It’s very quiet here – the nearest town is eight miles away. Open April to September.
Answer key
6. D — Bayview Park has a playground, a pets’ corner where children can hold and feed animals, and a beach five minutes’ walk away. Greenhill Farm (B) has animals and a play area, but the beach is a twenty-minute drive.
7. G — Riverside Meadow has a shared kitchen, a covered shed where bikes can be locked overnight, and no music after 9 p.m. Oak Lodge (E) is popular with cyclists, but it is a lively family site and cooking isn’t allowed.
8. A — The Old Mill is cheap, its free minibus meets trains at the station, and there is live music on Friday and Saturday nights. Moorside Camping (H) is even cheaper, but it is very quiet and eight miles from the nearest town.
9. H — Moorside Camping has electricity for camper vans, welcomes dogs, and the warden leads a wildlife walk every morning. Pine Forest Camp (F) has electricity and guided walks, but dogs are not allowed.
10. C — Lakeside Retreat has tents that are already put up with beds and cooking equipment, a heated indoor pool that guests can use at any time, and it is open all year. Pine Forest Camp (F) hires out tents and is open in October, but lake swimming is only possible from June to August.
Tip: Questions 11–14 follow the order of the text, so find the right paragraph first and read it closely. For Question 15, think about the text as a whole, especially the beginning and the end.
For each question, choose the correct answer.
Jake Holloway talks about the repair café he started
When people hear that I spend my Saturdays mending other people’s toasters, they usually laugh. But the repair café I started in my town three years ago has become one of the things I’m proudest of.
The idea came to me by accident. My neighbour was about to throw away a lamp because the switch had stopped working. I’ve been an electrician for twenty years, so I took it home and fixed it in ten minutes. She was so pleased that she told half the street, and soon people were knocking on my door with broken radios and hairdryers. I was happy to help, but my wife wasn’t very keen on our hallway being full of other people’s things, so I realised I needed to find a proper place.
The community hall agreed to let us use their main room once a month for free, and I put up a notice asking for volunteers. I expected two or three people to reply. In fact, fourteen did – a retired tailor, a teenager who’s brilliant with computers, a woman who fixes bicycles... Everyone brings their own tools, and we sit at long tables while visitors bring us their broken things.
We have one important rule: visitors don’t just leave something and come back later. They sit with the volunteer and watch, so that next time they might be able to do the repair themselves. It was my idea, although a few of the volunteers weren’t sure about it. Some visitors find it annoying at first – they just want their things fixed. But most of them end up asking lots of questions, and I love it when someone comes back months later to tell me they’ve repaired something at home.
Of course, we can’t fix everything. Some modern machines are made so that you can’t even open them, and for older ones it’s often impossible to find parts. That’s not because our volunteers don’t know what they’re doing, and it’s certainly not the owner’s fault. But I still feel disappointed, because people often arrive hoping for a small miracle. Most of them come back another month with something else, though.
What has surprised me most is how sociable the café has become. There’s tea and homemade cake, and people often stay long after their repair is finished, just chatting. For some of our older visitors, it’s the only time they talk to anyone all week. I started the café to stop things ending up in the rubbish, but I think now it’s really about bringing people together.
Why did Jake start looking for a place to hold the repair café?
What does Jake say about the volunteers?
What does Jake say about the rule for visitors?
How does Jake feel when something cannot be repaired?
What would Jake write in a message to a friend?
Answer key
11. C — Jake says his wife “wasn’t very keen on our hallway being full of other people’s things, so I realised I needed to find a proper place”. The free room at the community hall (B) came after he started looking, and the neighbour only told other people about him (A).
12. A — He expected two or three replies but fourteen people volunteered. B is wrong because their skills are different (a tailor, a bicycle repairer), C is wrong because they bring their own tools, and D is wrong because the café meets once a month.
13. D — Some visitors find the rule “annoying at first”, but most “end up asking lots of questions”. C is wrong because Jake says the rule was his idea, and some volunteers weren’t sure about it.
14. B — He feels disappointed “because people often arrive hoping for a small miracle”. He says it isn’t the volunteers’ lack of skill (A) or the owner’s fault (C), and most owners do come back (D).
15. C — In the last paragraph Jake says he started the café to stop things ending up in the rubbish, but now it is “really about bringing people together”. D is wrong because far more volunteers replied than he expected, and A and B are not mentioned.
Tip: Read the sentence before and after each gap and look for words that point back or forward, such as he, that, though and so. When you have finished, check that the three sentences you have not used really don’t fit anywhere.
Five sentences have been removed from the text below. For each question, choose the correct answer. There are three extra sentences which you do not need to use.
A year without a car
Last January, my car failed its yearly safety check, and the mechanic told me the repairs would cost more than the car was worth. (16) So, instead of buying another one, I decided to try living without a car for a year.
I live in a small town, and my office is about eight kilometres away. The first thing I did was buy a second-hand bike. For the first couple of weeks my legs ached every evening, and I arrived at work red-faced and out of breath. (17) By March, the ride was taking me just twenty-five minutes, which is almost the same as driving in the morning traffic.
Shopping was more of a problem. I used to do one big shop every Saturday and fill the boot of the car with bags. (18) Now I call in at the shops on my way home a few times a week and only buy what fits in my bike bags. I’ve found that I waste far less food this way.
The hardest part was visiting my parents, who live in a village with only two buses a day. One Sunday I missed the last bus home and had to phone my brother to come and get me. (19) After that, I always checked the timetable carefully before I went anywhere.
I have to admit there were days, especially in the winter rain, when I really missed my car. (20) I’ve saved a lot of money, I’m much fitter, and I know my town far better than I did before. The year finished three months ago, and I still haven’t bought another car.
Answer key
16. D — The writer looks at other cars but finds them too expensive, which explains “So, instead of buying another one …”. B doesn’t fit because a cheap offer would be a reason to buy a car, not to stop.
17. A — “Though” contrasts with the aching legs in the sentence before, and the improvement leads to the faster ride “By March”. H is about finding the bike, which happened before the first rides.
18. G — “That” refers to filling the car boot with a big weekly shop, which was impossible without a car, and “Now” gives the new habit. E is wrong because the writer still uses bike bags for shopping.
19. C — “He” is the brother who had to drive out and collect the writer. No other sentence has a reference that fits the brother.
20. F — “But” contrasts the bad days in the rain with the positive result, and the next sentence lists the reasons the writer doesn’t regret it. A doesn’t fit because the problem with aching legs was in the first weeks, not the winter.
Tip: Read the whole sentence, not just the words around the gap. Several options often have a similar meaning, so check which one fits the words that come after it, such as a preposition or a that-clause.
For each question, choose the correct answer.
Lighthouses
For hundreds of years, lighthouses have helped sailors to (21) dangerous rocks and find their way safely into harbours. The earliest ones were simply fires (22) on hills near the coast. Later, tall towers were built so that the light could be seen from much further away.
Life for the people who looked after lighthouses was not easy. Keepers often lived on tiny islands, and bad weather could (23) that no boat arrived with fresh food for weeks. At night they had to climb the stairs again and again to (24) sure the lamp was still burning.
Today, almost all lighthouses work automatically, and on many ships satellite systems have (25) the place of the light. However, lots of old lighthouses are still standing, and some have been turned into museums or hotels where visitors can (26) what life was like for the keepers.
Answer key
21. C — You avoid something dangerous by not going near it. You prevent or stop an event from happening, and you protect someone from danger, so these don’t work with “rocks” as the object.
22. A — We say a fire is lit. Turned (on) and switched (on) are used for electric lights and machines, and they would also need “on”.
23. D — Only mean can be followed directly by a that-clause here (“bad weather could mean that …”). Cause and make need an object, and result needs “in”.
24. B — Make sure is a fixed expression meaning “check that something is true”.
25. C — To take the place of something means to replace it. The other verbs don’t form this expression.
26. D — Find out means to learn information, and it can be followed by a question word such as “what”. Look after means take care of, carry out means do a task, and get on means have a good relationship.
B2 First (B2). Part 1, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 of the Reading and Use of English paper. Timing on the real exam — Reading and Use of English: 1 hour 15 minutes.
Tip: Read past each gap before choosing. The words that follow, such as a preposition, a that-clause or the noun a verb goes with, often rule out three options that mean almost the same thing.
For questions 1–8, read the text below and decide which answer (A, B, C or D) best fits each gap. There is an example at the beginning (0): A had, B spent, C lived, D passed. The answer is A, and it is shown in the text.
The return of the night train
Not long ago, it looked as though the sleeper train had (0) had its day. With cheap flights available to almost anywhere, one overnight service after another (1) to an end, and few people seemed to miss them.
Now, however, the night train is enjoying something of a (2). New routes are being launched across Europe, and tickets for the most popular journeys often sell out weeks in (3). The reasons are partly environmental, since a long train journey produces only a (4) of the emissions of the equivalent flight. But passengers also talk about something that is harder to (5): the simple pleasure of falling asleep in one country and waking up in another, with no queues at security and no long trip out to an airport. (6) the fact that the journey takes far longer, many travellers feel they actually save time, because they arrive rested and right in the centre of town.
The trains themselves have (7) a long way, too. Narrow, uncomfortable bunks are gradually being replaced by modern cabins, some with their own washbasin. Tickets are not always cheap, but for a growing number of people, the experience is well (8) the money.
Answer key
1. A — The fixed expression is ‘come to an end’. ‘Reach’ can collocate with ‘an end’, but it takes a direct object (‘reached its end’), so it cannot be followed by ‘to’.
2. A — ‘Enjoy something of a revival’ means become popular again, which is what the rest of the paragraph describes. You can ‘make a return’, but not ‘enjoy a return’ with this meaning, and ‘renewal’ and ‘restoration’ describe renewing or repairing something, not a rise in popularity.
3. C — ‘In advance’ means ‘before the time’, so the tickets sell out weeks before the journey. ‘Ahead’ has a similar meaning but is not used after ‘in’, and ‘in front’ refers to position, not time.
4. D — ‘Only a fraction of’ means a very small amount compared with something else, which is the comparison the writer makes with flying. ‘Piece’, ‘section’ and ‘segment’ all describe a part cut from a whole, not an amount compared with something else, and none of them is used with ‘emissions’.
5. B — The writer contrasts emissions, which can be measured, with a pleasure, which is ‘harder to measure’. You count separate things, such as passengers, not a feeling, and ‘weigh’ and ‘score’ do not fit the idea of putting a value on an experience.
6. B — ‘Despite’ is followed by a noun phrase, here ‘the fact that …’. ‘Although’ has the right meaning but needs a clause (‘Although the journey takes …’), and ‘However’ cannot join the two parts of the sentence.
7. C — ‘Come a long way’ is a fixed expression meaning ‘improved a great deal’, which the next sentence explains. ‘Go a long way’ means ‘be very useful’, and ‘travelled a long way’ would only describe a real journey, not an improvement.
8. B — ‘Well worth the money’ means it is good value even though it is expensive, which fits the contrast with ‘not always cheap’. ‘Deserving’ and ‘equal’ need a preposition (‘deserving of’, ‘equal to’).
Tip: Find the part of the text each question refers to (the questions follow the order of the text), then check every word of the option against it: several wrong options use words from the text with a different meaning.
You are going to read an article in which a woman describes volunteering at a repair café. For questions 31–36, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.
What the repair café taught me
I have never thought of myself as a practical person. As a child, I was the one sent out of the room whenever anything needed mending, and as an adult I had got into the habit of simply replacing whatever broke. So when my neighbour Ruth suggested I help out at the repair café she runs in the church hall on Saturday mornings, my first reaction was to laugh. ‘I’d only make things worse,’ I told her. She looked at me as if I’d said something slightly foolish. ‘Nobody expects you to know anything,’ she said. ‘That’s rather the point.’
For anyone who hasn’t come across one, a repair café is exactly what it sounds like. People bring in broken objects – a lamp, a toaster, a jacket with a torn pocket – and volunteers try to fix them for free while the owners drink tea and watch. Some of the volunteers are retired engineers or electricians; others, like Ruth, a former primary school teacher, have simply picked up skills over the years. I agreed to go along for one morning, mainly, I suspect, so that she would stop asking.
My first visitor was an elderly man called Frank, carrying a radio that had belonged to his late wife. It had stopped working a few weeks earlier, and he told me, a little apologetically, that his son had offered to buy him a new one. I had no idea where to begin, and I must have looked it, because one of the other volunteers, a quiet man named Dev, pulled up a chair beside me. He didn’t take the radio from me. Instead, he asked questions. What did I notice? What might have changed since it last worked? Twenty minutes later, I found a wire that had come loose, and Dev showed me how to reconnect it. When the radio crackled into life, Frank clapped his hands like a small boy.
I would like to say that I never looked back, but the truth is more complicated. Over the following months I failed far more often than I succeeded. I spent an entire morning on a coffee machine that turned out to need a part nobody makes any more, and a woman once left in tears because we couldn’t save her grandmother’s sewing machine. What surprised me was how much those failures taught me. Dev had a phrase he repeated whenever something went wrong: ‘Now we know one more thing it isn’t.’ At first I found this irritating. Eventually, I realised it was simply an accurate description of how problems get solved.
The biggest change, though, has not been in my hands but in the way I look at the things I own. I now find it almost impossible to throw anything away without first opening it up to see what has gone wrong. My partner has had to get used to a kitchen table that is permanently covered in tiny screws. I have also become more careful about what I buy in the first place, choosing things that can be taken apart rather than sealed plastic boxes that are designed to be thrown away.
Perhaps the thing that has stayed with me most, however, is the conversation. People rarely bring in an object simply because it is broken; they bring it because it matters to them, and mending it gives them a reason to tell you why. I have heard about first jobs, long marriages and family holidays, all while holding a screwdriver. Ruth was right, of course. Not knowing anything was the point. It meant I had to listen.
When the writer said she would only make things worse, Ruth
Why did the writer agree to go to the repair café?
What does the writer say about Dev in the third paragraph?
What point does the writer make in the fourth paragraph?
The writer mentions the kitchen table in order to show
In the final paragraph, the writer suggests that
Answer key
31. B — Ruth looks at her ‘as if I’d said something slightly foolish’ and says that knowing nothing is ‘rather the point’, so she thinks the writer has misunderstood the idea. The other volunteers’ skills (C) are described by the writer in the next paragraph, not by Ruth.
32. C — She says she went ‘mainly … so that she would stop asking’. Retired engineers and electricians (A) are mentioned, but not as her reason for going.
33. B — Dev ‘didn’t take the radio’ but ‘asked questions’, and it is the writer who then finds the loose wire. Option A is the opposite of what happens, and there is nothing to suggest he was unwilling (D): he sat down beside her without being asked.
34. C — She says she was surprised ‘how much those failures taught me’ and came to see Dev’s phrase as ‘an accurate description of how problems get solved’. She found the phrase irritating only ‘at first’, so D is wrong, and she says she failed more often than she succeeded, which rules out A.
35. A — The table covered in screws is an example of how she now opens up everything she owns, and her partner ‘has had to get used to’ it. Getting used to something is not the same as disapproving of it (C).
36. D — People bring objects ‘because it matters to them’, and mending it ‘gives them a reason to tell you why’, followed by examples of personal stories. She says she ‘had to listen’, but she does not compare her listening and repair skills (B).
Tip: After choosing a sentence, read the text before and after the gap together with it: pronouns (‘it’, ‘them’) and phrases like ‘that happens’ must point clearly to something in the text.
You are going to read a magazine article about a man who researches forgotten footpaths. Six sentences have been removed from the article. Choose from the sentences A–G the one which fits each gap (37–42). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.
The man who finds lost footpaths
When Graham Pike retired after forty years as a postman, his family assumed he would spend his time in the garden. Instead, he can usually be found in the county records office, studying maps that are more than two hundred years old. (37) Many of these routes have disappeared from modern maps altogether, and unless someone can prove they exist, the public could lose the right to use them for ever.
England has a remarkable network of public footpaths, some of which have been walked for centuries. However, thousands of old paths were never officially recorded when the current maps were drawn up in the middle of the last century. Walkers tend to assume that any path they use is theirs to keep, but that is not always the case. (38) Graham is one of several hundred volunteers around the country who are trying to find them before that happens.
His interest began almost by chance. Walking his dog one morning, he noticed an old stone step built into a wall, leading nowhere. (39) ‘It was obviously put there for a reason,’ he says. ‘People had climbed over it thousands of times. I wanted to know who they were, and where they were going.’
Finding the answer took him nearly a year. Old maps, he explains, are not always reliable, because mapmakers sometimes copied from one another and repeated each other’s mistakes. (40) In the case of the stone step, the proof came from a letter written in 1820, in which a farmer complained that villagers were walking across his land on their way to church.
The work can be slow and frustrating. Documents are often handwritten, faded or incomplete, and it may take weeks to find a single useful reference. (41) Of the eleven paths Graham has researched so far, only four have been officially added to the map, and he is still waiting for decisions on the rest. ‘Patience is essential,’ he says. ‘If you want quick results, this is the wrong hobby.’
Not everyone is pleased by what he does. Some landowners worry that reopened paths will bring walkers, dogs and litter onto their property, and Graham understands their concerns. (42) ‘Most of the time, we find a solution that works for everyone,’ he says. ‘A path can often be moved a few metres to the edge of a field, for example.’
For Graham, the reward comes on the day he can finally walk a route that has been forgotten for generations. ‘You’re following in the footsteps of people who lived here long before us,’ he says. ‘It’s like having a conversation with the past.’ He has already started on his twelfth path, an old route that once linked two villages on opposite sides of a river valley.
Answer key
37. B — The sentence explains why he studies old maps, and ‘paths that local people once used’ is picked up by ‘Many of these routes’ in the next sentence.
38. G — The threat that unrecorded paths ‘may be closed’ is what ‘before that happens’ refers to in the following sentence, and ‘the official record’ links back to paths that were never officially recorded.
39. E — ‘It’ refers to the stone step, and the empty field on both sides explains why it seemed to lead nowhere and why he wondered who had used it.
40. A — ‘Therefore’ follows from the point that old maps are unreliable, and ‘several different sources’ prepares for the example of the letter from 1820 that provided the proof.
41. F — ‘Even when the evidence is strong’ adds a second difficulty to the slow search for documents, and ‘several years’ explains why he is still waiting for decisions on seven of the paths. D does not fit because it contradicts the point that it may take weeks to find a single reference.
42. C — ‘Them’ refers to the landowners, and talking to them in person is the reason ‘we find a solution that works for everyone’.
Tip: Underline the key idea in each question, then scan for a paraphrase of it rather than the same words. Where two people mention the same topic, such as savings, time off or a problem, read closely to see which one matches the whole question.
You are going to read an article in which four people talk about their first year of running a small business. For questions 43–52, choose from the people (A–D). The people may be chosen more than once.
Which person admits they did not realise how much time would be spent on tasks other than the main work?
Which person was encouraged to start their business by someone they used to work for?
Which person changed what they sold because of what customers asked for?
Which person wishes they had got expert help sooner?
Which person says that something which went wrong led to an improvement?
Which person mentions that it is difficult to take time away from the business?
Which person particularly enjoys getting to know people in the local area?
Which person spent money they had been saving for a different purpose?
Which person has become more confident about making decisions?
Which person feels that their previous job was good preparation for running a business?
A Hannah, soup and sandwich van
When I left my job as a school cook, the plan was to sell homemade soup from a van at farmers’ markets. I’d been saving for years to put down a deposit on a flat, and in the end that money went on the van instead – my parents thought I’d gone mad. The soup went down well, but within a month people kept asking whether I did anything they could eat with one hand while walking round the stalls. So I started making hot filled rolls, and now they’re what most people queue for; the soup has become almost a side dish. The hardest part is that the business only works if I’m there. The markets run every weekend, all year round, and if the van doesn’t turn up, customers soon find somewhere else to go. I haven’t had a proper holiday since I started. A friend who runs a café gave me some brilliant tips before I opened, which saved me from a lot of beginners’ mistakes.
B Callum, bicycle repairs
I’d worked in a big bike shop for six years when the owner, Mike, told me I was wasted there and ought to set up on my own. Coming from him, that meant a lot. I didn’t have any savings to speak of, so I got a small loan from the bank and rented a unit on an industrial estate. Three months in, a pipe burst over a weekend and the whole place flooded. At the time I honestly thought that was the end of it, but the insurance paid out, and I took the chance to move into an empty shop on the high street. I get twice as many customers now, simply because people walk past. What I love is that I’ve got to know half the neighbourhood – people pop in to ask about a squeaky brake and end up staying to chat for half an hour. The paperwork I could do without, but an accountant deals with most of it, so it hardly takes up any of my time.
C Priya, handmade pottery
I’d been making pots in my spare time for years, and it was customers at a craft fair who first said I should do it full time. What I hadn’t appreciated was how little of my week would actually be spent making things. Answering emails, photographing every piece for the website, packing orders, doing the accounts – it easily takes up half my working hours, and none of it is what I went into business to do. My biggest mistake, though, was pricing. I charged far too little at the start because I didn’t want to seem greedy, and I was working all hours for almost nothing. There’s a small business advice centre ten minutes from my house, and I only went there after nearly a year. They sorted out my prices in a single afternoon. If I’d walked through their door in the first month, I’d have saved myself a great deal of stress. I do manage to take the odd week off, as long as I let my customers know well in advance.
D Ollie, houseplant shop
Before opening the shop, I managed a branch of a large clothing chain, and to be honest it was the best training I could have had. I already knew how to order stock, organise staff and deal with difficult customers, so none of that came as a surprise. What did come as a shock was a supplier going out of business two weeks before Christmas, which left me with half-empty shelves at the busiest time of the year. I lost a lot of money, and I can’t say any good came of it. The thing that has changed most is me. In my old job, every decision had to be approved by head office, and I’d got used to waiting for someone else to say yes. Now I have to make the call myself, often in a matter of minutes, and I’ve found I worry about getting it wrong far less than I used to. My sister looks after the shop whenever I want a break, which makes a huge difference.
Answer key
43. C — Priya ‘hadn’t appreciated how little of my week would actually be spent making things’, as emails, photos and accounts take ‘half my working hours’. Callum mentions paperwork, but says it ‘hardly takes up any of my time’.
44. B — Callum’s former boss, the owner of the bike shop, told him to ‘set up on my own’. Priya was encouraged by customers, not by an employer.
45. A — Hannah’s customers wanted food they could eat while walking, so she began selling hot filled rolls, which are now more popular than the soup she planned to sell.
46. C — Priya went to the advice centre ‘only … after nearly a year’ and says going in the first month would have saved her ‘a great deal of stress’. Hannah got tips from a friend before she opened, so she has no such regret.
47. B — The flood at Callum’s unit allowed him to move to the high street, where he gets ‘twice as many customers’. Ollie also had a problem with a supplier, but says he ‘can’t say any good came of it’.
48. A — Hannah says the business ‘only works if I’m there’ and she hasn’t had ‘a proper holiday’. Priya and Ollie both say they can take breaks.
49. B — Callum says ‘What I love is that I’ve got to know half the neighbourhood’, with people staying to chat.
50. A — Hannah’s savings for a flat deposit ‘went on the van instead’. Callum had no savings and took out a loan.
51. D — Ollie now makes decisions himself ‘in a matter of minutes’ and worries about getting them wrong ‘far less than I used to’.
52. D — Ollie calls managing a clothing shop ‘the best training I could have had’. Hannah and Callum mention their previous jobs, but neither says the job prepared them to run a business.
C1 Advanced (C1). Part 1, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8 of the Reading and Use of English paper. Timing on the real exam — Reading and Use of English: 1 hour 30 minutes.
Tip: Read the words on both sides of each gap: at this level the answer often depends on a fixed phrase, a dependent preposition, or whether the verb takes a direct object.
For questions 1–8, read the text below and decide which answer (A, B, C or D) best fits each gap. There is an example at the beginning (0): A transfer, B convey, C shift, D pass. The answer is A, and it is shown in the text.
Maps that bend the truth
Every flat map of the world is, in a sense, a compromise. It is impossible to (0) transfer the curved surface of a globe onto a sheet of paper without stretching it somewhere, so cartographers have always had to decide which kind of distortion they are prepared to (1) up with.
The projection that most of us grew up with was devised in the sixteenth century for sailors. Because any straight line drawn on it corresponds to a constant compass bearing, it was, for the purposes of navigation, a stroke of (2). The trouble is that land masses are stretched more and more the further they lie from the equator. Greenland appears to (3) Africa in size, although Africa is in fact around fourteen times larger. Some geographers argue that distortions of this kind have (4) a subtle influence on how people perceive the relative importance of different regions.
Several alternatives have been (5) over the years, including one that shows every country at its true relative size, though at the (6) of making whole continents look oddly elongated. Few of these have ever (7) on outside specialist circles. A map that looks wrong, however accurate it may be, is always going to be a hard (8).
Answer key
1. B — ‘Put up with’ means ‘tolerate’, which is what cartographers must do with distortion. ‘Keep up with’ means ‘stay level with’ and ‘take up with’ means ‘start associating with someone’, so neither fits a distortion; ‘make up with’ means ‘become friends again’.
2. C — ‘A stroke of genius’ is a fixed phrase for a brilliantly clever idea. ‘Talent’, ‘wisdom’ and ‘intellect’ are close in meaning but do not combine with ‘a stroke of’.
3. B — Only ‘rival’ takes a direct object: Greenland appears to rival Africa, i.e. to be as big. ‘Compete’, ‘contend’ and ‘vie’ all have the right idea but need ‘with’ before Africa.
4. C — The collocation is ‘exert an influence (on)’. You can ‘impose’ or ‘enforce’ a rule and ‘apply’ pressure, but none of these collocates with ‘influence’.
5. A — Alternatives are ‘put forward’, i.e. proposed. ‘Bring about’ means ‘cause’ and ‘carry out’ is used for tasks or research, so neither is used for ideas that are suggested; ‘make out’ means ‘see with difficulty’ or ‘claim’.
6. C — ‘At the expense of’ means that something is lost in order to gain something else: here, a natural-looking shape is lost in exchange for correct size. ‘Sacrifice’ has the right meaning but is not used in the pattern ‘at the … of’.
7. D — ‘Catch on’ means ‘become popular’, which is the point being made. ‘Take on’ needs an object (take on a job), and ‘pick on’ and ‘get on’ have unrelated meanings.
8. A — ‘A hard sell’ is something that is difficult to persuade people to accept. ‘Bargain’ appears in ‘drive a hard bargain’, but ‘a hard bargain’ describes tough negotiation, not an idea people resist.
Tip: For questions about a comparison or a final paragraph, ask what the writer is implying rather than what is literally stated, and check each option against the whole paragraph.
You are going to read an article about a mountain weather forecaster. For questions 31–36, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.
Reading the mountain
Journalist Clare Denholm spends a day with a mountain weather forecaster in the Scottish Highlands.
By half past seven, Iain Rennie has already been out once to look at the sky, and he is not impressed by what he has seen. ‘The models say it’ll clear by lunchtime,’ he says, pulling on a second pair of gloves. ‘The sky says otherwise.’ I had arranged to spend the day with him on the understanding that we would climb to the plateau where he takes his daily readings, and I had pictured, with some complacency, a brisk walk followed by a flask of coffee in the sunshine. Within an hour of setting off, leaning into a wind that seemed personally offended by my presence, I had revised that picture considerably.
Rennie is one of a small team who spend each winter producing forecasts for climbers and walkers. The computer models they draw on are extraordinarily sophisticated, and he is the first to acknowledge it. But mountains, he explains, create their own weather on a scale the models cannot resolve. A ridge can funnel the wind to twice the speed recorded a mile away; a hollow can hold fog long after the valley below has cleared. ‘The model gives you the broad picture. It can’t tell you what’s happening on this particular slope, and that’s the bit that gets people into trouble.’
Hence the daily climb. On the plateau, Rennie digs a pit in the snow and studies its layers with the absorption of a man reading a letter from an old friend. He measures, prods, photographs and makes notes in a small waterproof notebook whose pages have been softened by years of damp. I ask whether the readings could not simply be taken by automatic sensors. ‘Some of them are,’ he says. ‘But a sensor measures what it was built to measure. It doesn’t notice that the snow squeaks differently today, or that the overhang of snow on the far ridge has grown overnight.’
It would be easy to cast all this as a romantic tale of human instinct pitted against the machine, and Rennie is impatient with that version. He has spent years comparing his own observations with the models’ output, and he readily admits that on a number of occasions the computer has been right and he has been wrong. What matters, he insists, is not choosing between the two but knowing where each is most likely to fail. ‘The dangerous forecaster isn’t the one who trusts the model, or the one who trusts his gut. It’s the one who’s stopped checking either.’
The forecast itself, when he writes it up that evening, is strikingly restrained. There are no dramatic adjectives, and he resists any temptation to tell readers what they should do. Instead, he describes conditions as precisely as he can and leaves the decisions to them. This, he says, is a matter of principle. People who are told that a route is safe tend to stop paying attention, whereas people who have been given the information to judge for themselves go on judging all day.
Not everyone appreciates the approach. Every season he receives a handful of messages complaining that the forecasts are too cautious, or too vague, or that they spoiled a weekend which turned out to be perfectly pleasant. He reads them all and answers most. ‘If someone has a good day out after I’ve warned them it might be bad,’ he says, ‘that isn’t a failure. That’s the forecast doing its job. They went prepared.’
On the way down, the cloud lifts for perhaps five minutes, and the whole range appears below us, astonishingly clear. I remark, a little breathlessly, that the models seem to have been right after all. Rennie glances at the sky to the west, where a grey bank of cloud is already building, and says nothing at all.
What does the writer suggest about herself in the first paragraph?
What point does Rennie make about computer models in the second paragraph?
The writer compares Rennie to ‘a man reading a letter from an old friend’ in order to convey
How does Rennie react to the idea that human instinct is superior to computer forecasting?
According to the fifth paragraph, Rennie avoids telling readers what to do because he
What is suggested about Rennie in the final paragraph?
Answer key
31. C — She had imagined ‘with some complacency’ an easy walk and coffee in the sunshine, then ‘revised that picture considerably’. The early start is mentioned but causes no surprise (A), and nothing suggests she doubted him (B) or regretted coming (D).
32. A — Mountains create weather ‘on a scale the models cannot resolve’, and a model ‘can’t tell you what’s happening on this particular slope’. B contradicts ‘extraordinarily sophisticated’; ‘the bit that gets people into trouble’ refers to local conditions, not to the models themselves (D).
33. D — The image is introduced by ‘with the absorption of’: he reads the snow layers with close attention and a sense of familiarity. The worn notebook suggests long experience (B), but that is a separate detail and not what the comparison illustrates.
34. B — He is ‘impatient with that version’, admits the computer has sometimes been right when he was wrong, and says the real skill is knowing where each method fails. A reverses his view; C and D are not mentioned.
35. C — People told a route is safe ‘tend to stop paying attention’, while those left to judge ‘go on judging all day’. He describes conditions ‘as precisely as he can’, so B is not his reason, and blame (A) is never mentioned.
36. A — The clear spell lasts ‘perhaps five minutes’, and his glance at the cloud ‘already building’ in the west implies the bad weather he predicted is on its way. B is unlikely, since he has already said he readily admits when the computer is right, and there is no sign of tiredness (C) or annoyance (D).
Tip: Before matching, note each writer’s position on the four themes in the questions (the past, local people, cost, lasting appeal). Some writers say nothing on a theme, and that matters too.
You are going to read four extracts from articles in which architectural historians discuss the conversion of former industrial buildings into cultural venues such as galleries and concert halls. For questions 37–40, choose from the historians A–D. The historians may be chosen more than once.
A Ruth Callander
Few urban projects attract as much goodwill as the transformation of an old mill or power station into a gallery. The appeal is understandable, yet the economics are frequently misrepresented. Adapting a structure designed for heavy machinery to the needs of the public, with all that this involves in terms of fire safety, access and climate control for fragile artworks, routinely costs more than building from scratch, and the true bill tends to emerge only once work is well under way. Nor should we pretend that what survives is the building as its workers knew it: the noise, dirt and danger that defined it are precisely what conversion removes. That said, I have little patience with the claim that such venues are a passing fashion. The best of them have been drawing visitors for decades, and their success owes less to novelty than to the sheer generosity of their spaces. Decisions about which buildings to save, however, are too important to be left to local sentiment, which tends to favour the familiar over the genuinely significant.
B Daniel Okafor
The case for converting industrial buildings is usually made in cultural terms, but it is worth being clear-eyed about money. Surveys of structural condition are notoriously unreliable in buildings of this kind, and contamination left behind by past industrial processes can add unforeseen sums to a budget that looked perfectly reasonable at the outset. Even so, such projects deserve support, provided that the people who live alongside these buildings are given a genuine say in what they become. Too often a scheme is drawn up elsewhere and presented to residents as a finished proposal, with predictable resentment as a result. What visitors encounter afterwards is, inevitably, a building tidied into respectability: the history is there, but at one remove, as something to be read about on an information panel rather than felt. And I suspect that the current enthusiasm will cool. A generation raised on converted warehouses may well find them as unremarkable as their grandparents found purpose-built museums.
C Helena Voss
Critics who complain that conversion sanitises our industrial heritage seem to me to misunderstand what heritage is for. A building left to decay, or preserved behind a fence as a monument, communicates far less about the lives once lived inside it than one that people can still walk through and use. Handled with restraint, by keeping the scale of the halls and the marks that machinery has left on the floors, conversion allows the past to remain a lived presence rather than an exhibit. It is also, in my experience, a sound investment. These structures were built to bear enormous loads and generally need far less work than their appearance suggests. My concern lies elsewhere. Many such venues rely heavily on the initial wave of curiosity that greets their opening, and once that has passed, visitor numbers tend to fall away unless there is an unusually strong programme of events to sustain them.
D Gareth Lomax
There is a real risk, when a factory becomes a concert hall or a museum, that conversion erases the very history that made it worth saving. Stripped of its machinery and scrubbed clean, a former workplace can end up telling visitors almost nothing about the labour once carried out there. This is one reason why I believe that the communities who worked in and around such buildings must be closely involved from the earliest stages of any project. They hold knowledge that no architect’s brief can supply, and a scheme that ignores them is unlikely to earn the loyalty of its neighbours. As for the long-term future of these venues, I am less confident than some of my colleagues. Their appeal has so far rested on a sense of discovery, of being admitted to a place that was once closed to the public, and it remains to be seen whether that feeling will survive once such conversions have become commonplace.
Which historian has a different view from the others on whether converted buildings keep a meaningful connection with their past?
Which historian shares Okafor’s opinion about the involvement of local people in conversion projects?
Which historian has a similar view to Callander on the cost of converting industrial buildings?
Which historian expresses a different opinion from the others about whether converted venues will continue to attract visitors?
Answer key
37. C — Voss argues that careful conversion ‘allows the past to remain a lived presence’. The other three all believe it loses that connection: Callander says the noise, dirt and danger are ‘precisely what conversion removes’, Okafor that the history is ‘at one remove’, and Lomax that conversion can erase ‘the very history that made it worth saving’.
38. D — Okafor wants residents to have ‘a genuine say’, and Lomax says local communities ‘must be closely involved from the earliest stages’. Callander takes the opposite view, saying decisions are too important ‘to be left to local sentiment’, and Voss does not discuss the issue.
39. B — Callander says costs are higher than expected and only emerge once work is under way; Okafor likewise warns of ‘unforeseen sums’ from unreliable surveys and contamination. Voss disagrees, calling conversion ‘a sound investment’, and Lomax does not mention cost.
40. A — Callander rejects the idea that such venues are ‘a passing fashion’, pointing to decades of success. Okafor expects enthusiasm to ‘cool’, Voss says numbers ‘fall away’ once curiosity passes, and Lomax is ‘less confident’ that their appeal will last.
Tip: Check both sides of every gap: reference words and contrasts at the start of the paragraph after a gap are often as useful as the text before it.
You are going to read an extract from a magazine article about a group of volunteers who search for lost varieties of apple. Six paragraphs have been removed from the extract. Choose from the paragraphs A–G the one which fits each gap (41–46). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.
The orchard detectives
Tom Pryce joins a group of volunteers searching for apple trees that were thought to have disappeared for ever.
The tree stands at the bottom of a farmyard in Shropshire, half-smothered in ivy and leaning at an angle which suggests that it gave up on dignity some time ago. Jean Hollis, a retired biology teacher, walks around it twice before she says anything. Then she picks a single wrinkled apple out of the grass, turns it over in her hand and cuts it cleanly in two with a penknife.
(41)
Hollis is one of a dozen or so volunteers who spend their autumn weekends doing exactly this. Their aim is to track down varieties of apple that were once grown across the region but have since vanished from nurseries and official collections. Some were named after the farms where they first appeared; others survive only as a line in a nineteenth-century catalogue. By one estimate, the county alone once grew more than two hundred distinct varieties.
(42)
Not all of them, though. A healthy apple tree can live for a century or more, which means that the last specimens of a forgotten variety may be hiding in plain sight: in a hedge, a back garden or, as here, the corner of a farmyard. The difficulty lies in knowing what you have found.
(43)
That is exactly what happened last year, with a tree in a churchyard near Ludlow. Its DNA matched nothing on the database, but its fruit fitted, almost point for point, an old description of a variety called the Hollowmere Russet, which had not been recorded for eighty years. The group’s reaction, Hollis admits, was not entirely scientific.
(44)
Not everyone is convinced that such efforts are worthwhile. Old varieties, sceptics point out, were often abandoned for good reasons: they cropped unreliably, bruised easily or tasted, frankly, unremarkable. Why go to such lengths to rescue an apple that nobody particularly wanted to eat?
(45)
It is these practical qualities, rather than nostalgia, that have begun to attract the attention of researchers. Two of the group’s rediscovered varieties have been included in a university breeding programme, and a local cider maker has planted a small orchard of trees grafted from specimens the volunteers identified.
(46)
Back in the farmyard, she has finished with the apple. It is, she thinks, probably nothing unusual: a common variety that has simply grown old and misshapen. She writes a label anyway, ties it to a low branch and makes a note to come back for leaves in the spring.
Paragraphs
Answer key
41. C — ‘What she is looking for’ explains why she has just cut the apple in two, and the features listed (core, flesh, stalk) are what the halved apple would reveal. The next paragraph’s ‘doing exactly this’ refers back to this close examination.
42. F — ‘That figure’ refers to the estimate of ‘more than two hundred distinct varieties’. F ends with the old trees dying, which leads into ‘Not all of them, though’. D is tempting after the introduction of the group, but it says nothing about trees, so ‘Not all of them’ would have no reference.
43. A — ‘Physical examination is only the first step’ answers ‘The difficulty lies in knowing what you have found’, and A’s final sentence about a result that ‘matches nothing at all’ is what ‘That is exactly what happened’ refers to in the next paragraph.
44. E — The group’s reaction was ‘not entirely scientific’, and E gives that emotional reaction: eleven years of searching and a member in tears. ‘That one’ refers to the Hollowmere Russet.
45. G — ‘The argument’ is the sceptics’ question about why anyone would rescue an unremarkable apple. G’s mention of disease resistance and coping with wetter winters is what ‘these practical qualities’ refers to in the following paragraph.
46. B — ‘Such terms’ refers to the practical and commercial uses just described, and ‘though’ introduces Hollis’s different, more personal view of the work’s value before the article returns to the farmyard.
Tip: Underline the key idea in each question, such as ‘long-held belief’ or ‘over time’, and look for a section that matches the whole idea, not just one word.
You are going to read an article in which five literary translators talk about their work. For questions 47–56, choose from the translators (A–E). The translators may be chosen more than once.
Which translator mentions a colleague whose unfamiliarity with the original language is helpful?
Which translator describes starting work on a book by producing a version they know is imperfect?
Which translator has revised a long-held belief about how noticeable a translator should be?
Which translator rejects the view that the kind of book they work on is less worthy than others?
Which translator admits that an error they made was drawn attention to publicly?
Which translator explains why the way characters speak to each other is difficult to recreate?
Which translator expresses concern about the financial rewards of the profession?
Which translator describes resisting an urge to make a book easier for a new readership to follow?
Which translator mentions a significant delay caused by an author’s involvement?
Which translator says they have become less of a perfectionist over time?
A Isobel Grant, who translates from Italian
I came to translation late, after fifteen years as a teacher, and I think that has made me unusually tolerant of drafts. My first version of any novel is deliberately rough: I charge through it in a matter of weeks, simply to get the whole shape of the book into English. The real work comes afterwards, when I read the English aloud, often to my long-suffering partner, and listen for the places where the rhythm stumbles. People assume the hardest thing to translate is humour, but in my experience it’s dialogue. Characters in Italian novels often address one another with a formality that sounds stiff and unnatural if you reproduce it faithfully. Yet if you make them too casual, you lose something essential about who they are and how they relate to each other.
B Samuel Adeyemi, who translates from French
There’s a romantic idea that the translator should be invisible, and for years I accepted it without question. I’ve since changed my mind. Every choice I make, down to whether a character ‘strolls’ or ‘wanders’, reflects my own reading of the book, and I think readers deserve to know that. So I’ve started writing short afterwords explaining some of my decisions, which not every publisher welcomes. I also stay in close contact with the authors I translate, where that’s possible. Most are generous and trusting, though one insisted on approving every single sentence, which added the best part of a year to the project. The oddest part is how often an author, reading my version, rediscovers something in their own book that they’d forgotten was there.
C Hannah Lindqvist, who translates from Swedish and Norwegian
I mainly translate crime fiction, which some colleagues seem to regard as a lesser calling. I don’t accept that. A thriller is an unforgiving thing to translate, because if the tension slackens for even a page, readers notice immediately, whereas a literary novel can survive a certain amount of clumsiness. Research takes up far more of my time than people imagine: police procedures, legal terminology, the layout of a particular town. I once spent two days establishing which way a ferry turned as it left a harbour, simply because the plot depended on it. What I find hardest is leaving things unexplained. Scandinavian readers pick up cultural references instantly, and the temptation to slip in a helpful phrase for English-speaking readers is strong, but it slows everything down.
D Rafael Moreno, who translates from Spanish
Poetry was my first love, and I still translate it alongside the novels that pay the bills. The two require quite different temperaments. With a novel you can afford to lose a detail here and there, provided the overall voice is right, but in a poem every word is doing several jobs at once, and something always has to be sacrificed. I’ve come to accept that, whereas early in my career I would agonise over a single line for days. It has never been an easy way to make a living, and that worries me. Rates haven’t risen in real terms for twenty years, and I know several talented people who have left the profession. What keeps me going is the occasional letter from a reader who says a book I translated made them want to learn Spanish.
E Chloe Barrand, who translates from Japanese
Japanese and English are so far apart grammatically that there’s no question of following the original sentence by sentence; I have to take in a whole paragraph and then rebuild it. Subjects are often left out in Japanese, for instance, so I’m constantly deciding who is actually doing what, and occasionally I’ve got it wrong, which one sharp-eyed reviewer was delighted to point out in print. I work with an editor who doesn’t read Japanese at all, and I’ve come to value that enormously: she responds to the English purely as English, and she’s quick to spot the moments when I’ve been too literal. Apart from that, I try not to read other translations of the same author, because I find another translator’s voice very hard to get out of my head.
Answer key
47. E — Barrand’s editor ‘doesn’t read Japanese at all’, which she values because the editor reads the English ‘purely as English’.
48. A — Grant’s first version is ‘deliberately rough’, written quickly to capture the shape of the book. Barrand rebuilds paragraphs (E), but says nothing about a rough first draft.
49. B — Adeyemi accepted ‘for years’ that translators should be invisible but has ‘since changed my mind’ and now writes afterwords about his choices.
50. C — Lindqvist says some colleagues see crime fiction as ‘a lesser calling’ and replies ‘I don’t accept that’. Moreno translates poetry and novels (D) but does not defend either against criticism.
51. E — Barrand has occasionally misread who is doing what, and a reviewer was ‘delighted to point out in print’ one of these mistakes.
52. A — Grant says dialogue is hardest because Italian characters use a formality that sounds stiff in English, yet making them casual changes ‘how they relate to each other’.
53. D — Moreno says rates ‘haven’t risen in real terms for twenty years’, that ‘that worries me’, and that talented people have left the profession.
54. C — Lindqvist is tempted to ‘slip in a helpful phrase for English-speaking readers’ but avoids it because it slows the story down.
55. B — One author insisted on approving every sentence, which ‘added the best part of a year’ to Adeyemi’s project. Lindqvist spent two days on research (C), but that was her own choice, not an author’s demand.
56. D — Early in his career Moreno would ‘agonise over a single line for days’, but he has ‘come to accept’ that something must be sacrificed. Grant’s tolerance of drafts (A) comes from her teaching background, not from a change over time.
C2 Proficiency (C2). Part 1, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 of the Reading and Use of English paper. Timing on the real exam — Reading and Use of English: 1 hour 30 minutes.
Tip: Read each sentence to the end before choosing: at this level the right answer often depends on a word that comes after the gap, such as a preposition or the noun that completes a fixed expression.
For questions 1–8, read the text below and decide which answer (A, B, C or D) best fits each gap. There is an example at the beginning (0).
Recording the unremarkable
For most of the last century, urban noise was regarded as little more than an unfortunate (0) of progress: something to be endured, grumbled about and, where means allowed, shut out behind double glazing. Lately, however, a small but dedicated band of sound recordists has begun to document the city’s acoustic life with the kind of care that naturalists once (1) on birdsong. Their archives (2) the hiss of trolleybuses long since withdrawn from service, the clatter of a street market packing up for the night and the dull, rhythmic thump of a printing works that closed its doors a decade ago.
What began as a pastime for a handful of enthusiasts has now (3) the interest of historians, who point out that sound is among the most perishable forms of evidence. A photograph shows us how a street looked in 1950, but leaves us none the (4) about how it sounded. The notion that only the remarkable deserves to be kept has long (5) sway in archives of every kind, and ordinary noise has almost always been the first thing to be lost.
Recordists, for their part, go to great (6) not to tidy up what they capture. A passing siren or a snatch of overheard conversation is not an intrusion to be edited out but part of the record itself. Few of them would (7) claim to being artists, yet the best of their recordings (8) a chord with listeners who have never set foot in the cities concerned.
Answer key
0 (example). A — Example. A by-product is an unintended secondary result of a process, which is how noise relates to progress. A spin-off is a useful extra product, and an aftermath follows a disaster rather than accompanying a process.
1. C — You lavish care, attention or money on something, so only ‘lavished’ fits with the preposition ‘on’. ‘Devoted’, ‘dedicated’ and ‘committed’ are close in meaning but all take ‘to’.
2. B — An archive preserves something so that it survives for the future. ‘Conserve’ means to protect from waste or damage (energy, wildlife), and ‘maintain’ and ‘sustain’ mean to keep something going, which does not suit sounds that have already disappeared.
3. D — The fixed collocation is ‘pique someone’s interest’. You can spur someone into action or incite a crowd, but neither verb collocates with ‘the interest of’.
4. A — ‘None the wiser’ is a fixed phrase meaning ‘knowing no more than before’. ‘None the better’ means not improved, which makes no sense with ‘about how it sounded’.
5. C — An idea that dominates ‘holds sway’. ‘Carried’ may suggest ‘carry the day’, but ‘carry sway’ is not an English expression, and neither is ‘bear sway’ in modern usage.
6. B — The idiom is ‘go to great lengths’ to do or avoid something. ‘Go to great extents’ is a confusion with ‘to a great extent’, and ‘go to great measures’ and ‘go to great troubles’ are common errors (the correct forms are ‘take measures’ and ‘go to great trouble’).
7. D — ‘Lay claim to (being)’ means to say that you have a quality or status. ‘Stake a claim’ needs the article ‘a’, and ‘make claim to’ and ‘put claim to’ are not used.
8. A — Something that produces an emotional response ‘strikes a chord’ with people. ‘Ring’ belongs to ‘ring a bell’ (seem familiar), which is a different meaning, and ‘hit a chord’ is not idiomatic.
Tip: The questions follow the order of the text. For each one, find the relevant sentences first, then check every option against them: the wrong options often use words from the text with a meaning the writer does not intend.
You are going to read an extract from an essay. For questions 31–36, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.
Learning to look: a novelist discovers what a sketchbook can teach a writer
I came to drawing late and, I should admit at the outset, by accident. A friend who teaches life classes had been let down by a model one wet Tuesday in February and, knowing that I had nothing more pressing to do than stare at an unfinished chapter, persuaded me to come along and sit for the group instead. I spent two hours on a hard wooden chair, trying not to think about my left foot, which had gone numb within the first twenty minutes. At the end of the session I walked round the easels expecting to be flattered, or at least recognised. What I found instead was a room full of strangers, each of them unmistakably me. One had caught the slump of my shoulders; another had made a great deal of a frown I was apparently wearing; a third had given up on my face altogether and produced a meticulous study of the chair.
It was this, rather than any wish to acquire a new accomplishment, that sent me back the following week to the other side of the easel. As a novelist I had always supposed that looking was something I did rather well. Noticing is, after all, the trade: the telling detail, the gesture that betrays a character’s state of mind. But within minutes of picking up a stick of charcoal I understood that what I had been doing for thirty years was not so much looking as recognising. I would glance at a thing, identify it and move on, carrying away not the object itself but a label for it. The word ‘hand’ does very well in a sentence. It is no help whatsoever when you are confronted with an actual hand, foreshortened, half in shadow, with one finger bent at an angle you would have sworn was anatomically impossible.
The tutor, a patient man with the air of someone who had watched a great many beginners make the same mistakes, gave us one instruction that I have never forgotten. ‘Draw what is there,’ he said, ‘not what you know is there.’ It sounded like the kind of thing people embroider on cushions, and I confess I rolled my eyes a little. Then he set up a simple arrangement – a jug, an apple, a crumpled cloth – and walked round the room pointing out, without a trace of unkindness, that every one of us had drawn the rim of the jug as a neat oval, although from where we were sitting it was nothing of the sort. We had drawn the idea of a jug. The jug itself, squat and slightly lopsided, had gone entirely unrecorded.
Over the months that followed I became, by any reasonable standard, a slightly less bad draughtswoman. That is not the point of this essay, and it would be dishonest to pretend that my drawings are anything other than laborious. What changed was the quality of my attention elsewhere. I began to notice the way light pooled on the kitchen table in the late afternoon, and that the colour of a shadow is almost never grey. On the bus I would find myself tracing the line of a stranger’s jaw with my eyes, and then looking away, embarrassed, when they caught me at it. The effect on my writing was less direct than I would like to claim. I did not suddenly start producing lush descriptive passages; if anything, I wrote fewer of them. But the ones I kept had been paid for, as it were, in a currency I had not previously possessed.
There is a strand of thinking, fashionable in some quarters, which holds that any pastime must justify itself by making us more productive in our ‘real’ work. I am wary of it. It seems to me to smuggle the logic of the office into the one area of life that might otherwise escape it, and I notice that those who champion it are rarely people who have spent an evening failing, repeatedly and in public, to draw a pear. The value of drawing, for me, lies precisely in its uselessness – in the fact that nothing depends on it, and that I will never be good enough for anyone to want the results. That freedom is not a small thing. In my own profession, every sentence is shadowed by the question of whether it will be read, and by whom.
I still go on Tuesdays. The room is cold, the coffee is worse than it was, and the tutor, now a good deal greyer, still pauses at my easel and says ‘Look again’ in a tone that suggests he has not quite given up hope. I have filled eleven sketchbooks, none of which I would show to anyone. Occasionally, leafing back through the early ones, I come across a drawing of a hand or a jug and find that I can recall with great precision the afternoon on which it was made: the rain on the skylight, the smell of turpentine drifting in from the painting class next door, a remark someone made about a film. The drawing is poor, but the looking it records was real, and it seems to have fixed the whole occasion in a way that my notebooks, for all their fluent sentences, very rarely have.
What does the writer suggest about the drawings of her that she saw at the end of the first session?
In the second paragraph, the writer realises that as a novelist she had
How did the writer first react to the tutor’s instruction?
What does the writer say about the effect of drawing on her writing?
Why does the writer mention people ‘failing … to draw a pear’ in the fifth paragraph?
In the final paragraph, the writer suggests that her sketchbooks matter to her because
Answer key
31. C — The drawings showed ‘a room full of strangers, each of them unmistakably me’: each artist caught a different real aspect (the shoulders, the frown). She had expected flattery (A), but she does not say she deserved it, and nothing suggests she was self-conscious about the frown (D) – she did not even know she was wearing it.
32. A — She had been ‘recognising’ rather than looking: she would ‘identify’ a thing and carry away ‘a label for it’. B reverses her point about the ‘telling detail’, and nothing in the paragraph concerns readers’ needs (C) or an earlier reluctance to admit a weakness (D).
33. B — Comparing it to something ‘people embroider on cushions’ and rolling her eyes show she thought it a trite saying. The tutor spoke to the whole group ‘without a trace of unkindness’, so A is wrong; her difficulty applying it only became clear later, and she does not say it was abstract (D).
34. C — She wrote ‘fewer’ descriptive passages, but those she kept ‘had been paid for … in a currency I had not previously possessed’, i.e. real observation. A is the opposite of what she says, and she stresses the effect was ‘less direct than I would like to claim’, which rules out B.
35. A — She observes that those who ‘champion’ the idea that pastimes must make us more productive are ‘rarely’ people who have actually struggled with a hobby, implying they do not know what they are talking about. She is wary of the idea itself, not attacking hobbyists (C), and the pear is not used to describe beginners’ discouragement (B).
36. D — Looking at an old drawing, she recalls the whole afternoon ‘with great precision’, which her notebooks ‘very rarely’ do. The rain and the turpentine are remembered, not drawn, so C is wrong; she says the drawings are ‘poor’, which rules out A.
Tip: Look for words that point backwards, such as pronouns, determiners like ‘this’ or ‘those’ and references to people already mentioned, and check that the paragraph after the gap follows on as well as the one before. The extra paragraph will usually be on the right topic, so topic alone is never enough.
You are going to read an extract from a magazine article. Seven paragraphs have been removed from the extract. Choose from the paragraphs A–H the one which fits each gap (37–43). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.
One over two, two over one: a week with a dry-stone waller in the northern hills
The rain arrives shortly after nine, sideways and in no particular hurry, and Tom Aske does not so much as glance up. He is kneeling in the gap of a collapsed wall on the hillside above the village where he was born, turning a lump of gritstone over in his hands as though it were a question he has been asked many times and still finds interesting. Around him, arranged in a loose semicircle on the wet grass, lie perhaps two tonnes of stone that were, until last winter, a wall.
(37)
Repairing it will take him the best part of a week. The first job, and the one that most surprises onlookers, is to take down a good deal more than has already fallen. A wall that has partly collapsed is unstable on either side of the breach, and building onto loose work is, in Aske’s phrase, ‘asking to come back next year’. So he strips it back to sound foundations and sorts every stone by size and shape, until the hillside looks less like a building site than an archaeological dig.
(38)
What he eventually offers, over tea from a flask in the lee of a hawthorn, is not so much a method as a set of principles. Every stone must be laid with its length running into the wall rather than along it. Each must cross the joint between the two below: ‘one over two, two over one’. And the whole structure must taper as it rises, so that its own weight holds it together. There is no mortar. There never has been.
(39)
For most of the nineteenth century there was no shortage of people capable of making those decisions. The enclosure of upland pasture created tens of thousands of miles of walling across the north and west of Britain, much of it built by gangs of men who could each lay several metres a day. Aske’s great-grandfather was one of them, and a length of his work still runs along the ridge behind the farmhouse, as straight as the day it was finished.
(40)
His own route into the trade was hardly a traditional one. He left school intending to become an engineer and spent eight years designing drainage systems for a firm in Leeds before, as he puts it, ‘the walls came and got me’. A weekend course, taken on a whim, led to another; within two years he had given up his job and was working alongside a retired waller in his seventies, a man who said little but corrected a great deal.
(41)
Today there is a modest revival under way. Conservation bodies offer grants for the restoration of historic boundaries, and competitions held at agricultural shows draw crowds who watch in near silence as teams race to complete a section before the bell. Courses of the kind that first drew Aske in are often fully booked months ahead, many of them attended by people who, like him, have spent their working lives in offices.
(42)
By Friday afternoon the gap has gone. The new section is, to my untrained eye, indistinguishable from the old work on either side, and I say so. Aske seems genuinely pleased, though he walks the length of it twice before he will agree. Then he crouches, lays a hand flat against the face of the wall, and pushes. Nothing moves.
(43)
Answer key
37. C — The base text ends with the stones that ‘were, until last winter, a wall’; C explains what happened to it (‘Frost did most of it’). The next paragraph’s ‘Repairing it’ refers back to the wall in C.
38. F — ‘It is this sorting’ picks up ‘sorts every stone by size and shape’. F ends with the writer asking how Aske decides, and the next paragraph gives his answer: ‘What he eventually offers … is not so much a method as a set of principles.’
39. A — ‘That absence’ refers to ‘There is no mortar’. A ends with ‘a poor decision’, which is picked up by ‘those decisions’ at the start of the following paragraph.
40. H — ‘The skills that built those walls’ refers to the nineteenth-century enclosure walls just described. H brings the story up to the present and to Aske himself, which leads into ‘His own route into the trade’. E looks relevant to the history, but the base text has already explained the enclosure period, and E does not link to Aske’s career.
41. D — ‘Those years at the old man’s side’ refers to the retired waller in his seventies who ‘corrected a great deal’; D’s point that he ‘never once praised his work’ develops that description.
42. B — ‘Not all of this enthusiasm’ refers back to the revival, the crowded competitions and the fully booked courses. ‘However’ signals the contrast with that positive picture.
43. G — Aske pushes the wall and ‘Nothing moves’; in G he straightens up and predicts how long it will last, echoing the ‘two hundred years’ of the first wall in C and closing the article.
Tip: Several questions have a trap in a second section: one writer mentions the idea but denies it or says the opposite. Before choosing, check that the whole question matches, not just a key word.
You are going to read an article in which four writers talk about books they abandoned. For questions 44–53, choose from the sections (A–D). The sections may be chosen more than once.
Which writer was affected by the response of someone close to them?
Which writer regrets not acknowledging a problem sooner?
Which writer benefited in later work from the project they gave up?
Which writer lost access to material that the project depended on?
Which writer admits to having overestimated one of their own skills?
Which writer describes an unexpected sense of relief?
Which writer felt that the subject had already been thoroughly covered by others?
Which writer has not ruled out completing the project?
Which writer felt unable to depart from the historical record?
Which writer explains that their relationship with the subject had changed?
A Helena Marsh, novelist
For the better part of six years I was writing a novel about a glassmaker in seventeenth-century Newcastle, and for at least four of those I knew, somewhere below the level of conscious thought, that it wasn’t working. That is the part I find hardest to forgive myself for. The research was the trouble, or rather my relationship with it. Every time the story needed my glassmaker to do something dramatic, I would unearth a guild record or a parish register proving he couldn’t possibly have done it, and I never quite found the nerve to overrule the evidence. The result was a book in which nothing was allowed to happen. I had also, I think, flattered myself that I could sustain a voice from the period across four hundred pages. I’d read enough letters and diaries to imitate the rhythms for a chapter or two; beyond that it curdled into pastiche, and I simply didn’t have the ear to stop it. When I finally put the manuscript in a drawer, I felt every bit as bereft as I’d expected to – rather as if I’d moved out of a house I had lived in for years. The drawer is still shut, and I intend to keep it that way.
B Daniel Osei, non-fiction writer
The idea was a biography of a river: its engineering, its floods, the communities that had grown up along its banks. I spent the first year walking its entire length, and I have rarely been happier. What I hadn’t foreseen was that the private papers of the old canal company, which were to form the backbone of the book, would be withdrawn from public view when the estate that owned them changed hands. Without them I had a travelogue, and not a particularly original one: by then two other writers had brought out books about the same stretch of water, one of them very good indeed, and between them they had said more or less everything worth saying. I could have pressed on, I suppose, and some friends urged me to. But something else had happened too. The more time I spent on that towpath, the less the river seemed like a subject and the more it felt like somewhere I simply went – a place to walk the dog and think about other things. You can’t write a book about somewhere that has become so ordinary to you. Or at least, I couldn’t.
C Ruth Kerrigan, memoirist
I began writing about my father about a year after he died, which, looking back, was probably too soon. It was meant to be an honest book – about his charm, certainly, but also about his drinking and the long silences that shaped our childhood. I’d written perhaps two-thirds of it, in about eight months of fairly steady work, when I showed a draft to my younger sister. She read it in one sitting, and when she rang the next morning she was very calm, which was worse than anger would have been. She said the man in the book was someone she recognised, but that he wasn’t her father, and that she didn’t want strangers to meet him. I argued, of course. But within a week I had stopped writing, and what took me aback was how light I felt. I hadn’t realised how much energy I’d been spending on bracing myself for publication. People sometimes assume I must have come to see him differently, that I softened. I didn’t; I’d write the same things about him tomorrow. I simply decided that the truth of it belonged to more people than me.
D Marcus Webb, crime writer
The novel I abandoned was set on an oil platform in the North Sea, and I got about ninety thousand words in before admitting that the plot had collapsed under its own weight. It wasn’t a question of craft – I knew how to write that kind of book by then. The whole thing simply rested on a twist that, once I’d laid it out on paper, was obvious from the second chapter. My agent was disappointed, and said so, though she was gracious about it. What I didn’t anticipate was how much of that failed draft would find its way into other work. The detective at the centre of my best-known series first appeared there as a minor character, a weary safety inspector with three lines of dialogue, and a good deal of what readers seem to like about her was worked out in those discarded chapters. Nor have I entirely let the platform book go. I reread it every couple of years, and I have a feeling that one day, with a better twist and some ruthless cutting, it may yet see the light of day.
Answer key
44. C — Ruth stopped writing within a week of her sister’s calm objection that ‘she didn’t want strangers to meet him’. Daniel’s friends urged him to continue, but he did not follow their advice, and Marcus’s agent is a professional contact whose disappointment did not change anything.
45. A — Helena knew for ‘at least four’ of six years that the novel wasn’t working and says ‘That is the part I find hardest to forgive myself for.’ Marcus wrote ninety thousand words before admitting failure, but expresses no regret about the delay.
46. D — Marcus’s best-known detective ‘first appeared there as a minor character’, and much of her appeal ‘was worked out in those discarded chapters’.
47. B — The canal company papers, ‘the backbone of the book’, were ‘withdrawn from public view’ when the estate changed hands.
48. A — Helena ‘flattered myself that I could sustain a voice from the period’ but ‘didn’t have the ear’. Marcus says explicitly that ‘It wasn’t a question of craft’.
49. C — Ruth says ‘what took me aback was how light I felt’. Helena felt ‘bereft’, and says it was exactly what she had expected.
50. B — Two other writers had published books about the same river and ‘between them they had said more or less everything worth saying’.
51. D — Marcus rereads the book regularly and thinks it ‘may yet see the light of day’. Helena’s drawer ‘is still shut, and I intend to keep it that way’.
52. A — Whenever her story needed drama, Helena found documents proving it could not have happened, and ‘never quite found the nerve to overrule the evidence’.
53. B — For Daniel the river stopped seeming ‘like a subject’ and became an ordinary place to walk the dog. Ruth rejects the idea that her view of her father changed: ‘I didn’t; I’d write the same things about him tomorrow.’
Written by Kirill O'Nayd
English test expert and educator at TestSucceed. He has spent years preparing candidates for Cambridge English Qualifications from A2 Key to C2 Proficiency, and taking apart how each paper awards its marks. See all TestSucceed preparation materials.