Read the following restaurant reviews and then decide which ones (A to H) correspond to statements 1 to 8. One statement DOES NOT correspond to any paragraphs and one paragraph DOES NOT correspond to any statements.
LONDON RESTAURANTS
A. Anchor & Hope
Great things at friendly prices come from the open kitchen at this packed, no-reservations, leading gatropub on the Cut in Waterloo_ pot-roast duck and chicken pithivier (puff pastry pie) are two standouts. It’s cramped, informal, and highly original, and there are great dishes for groups, like slow-roasted leg of lamb. Expec to share a table, too.
B. Boxwood Café
Attached to the Berkeley and in the Gordon Ramsay stable, the Booxwood is the best uptown but relaxed place to dine in Knightsbridge, with opulent marble, brown, and greens. The New York-style restaurant is open late (until midnight Thursday-Saturday) and set lunch is useful at £28. Favorite dishes range from Orkney scallops to yellowfin tuna, and veal burger to treacle tart. Service is top-notch, and you’ll find a fashionable buzz.
C. Great Queen street
Expect crowds and a buzz at Convent Garden’s leading gastropub that showcases classic British dishes in a burgundy and bare oak-floor-and-table setting. Old-fashioned dishes like pressed tongue, mackerel and gooseberry, and mussels and chips may be revived from a bygone era, but Londoners adore them. Dishes for the whole table – like venison pie or seven-hour shoulder of lamb – are highly convivial. There’s little for nonmeat eaters, and no dinner Sunday.
D. Skylon
Located in the Royal Festive Hall, Skylon is the Southbank Centre’s destination restaurant/bar/grill. Spacious, attractive, and with huge picture windows with spectacular views of the Thames, Skylon guarantees a classy pre- or post-performance meal in the ‘50s Festival Hall. Against a background of dancing and music, concertgoers sip lush cocktails at the central bar and dine on lamb and harissa at the grill, or Anjou pigeon, spelt risotto, and sea bass with bok choy in the restaurant. The food is accomplished, and the setting impressive.
E. Yauatcha
It’d a superbly lighted slinky Soho classic. Well designed by Christian Liaigre – with black granite floors, aquarium, candles, and a starry ceiling – the food is a match for the seductive setting. There’s wicked dim sum (try prawns or scallops), crispy duck rolls, silver cod, fancy cocktails, and tea and colorful cakes in the first-floor teatoom. Note the quick table turns, and ask to dine in the more romantic basement at night.
F. Cecconi’s
Enjoy all-day buzz at this Italian brasserie opposite the Royal Academy on Burlington Gardens. Between Savile Row and New Bond Street, clients pitch up for breakfast, brunch, and Italian tapas (cicchetti) at the bar, and return for something more substantial later on. Ilse Crawford’s green-and-brown interior is a stylish background for classics like veal Milanese, Venetian calves’ liver, and tiramisu. Note: it’s a nice pit stop during a shopping spree.
G. Scott’s
Scott’s is so hot that it’s where the A-list go to celebrate. Founded in 1851, and recently renovated and reborn as a glamorous seafood heaven and oyster bar, it draws beautiful people who pick at Cumbrae oysters, Red Sea prawns, and Stargazy pie. Standouts like cod with chorizo and padron peppers are to die for. Prices are high, but you’re dining at the hippest joint in town.
H. Tayyabs
City finance boys, Asians, and medics from the Royal London Hospital swamp this high-turnover halal Pakistani curry canteen in Whitechapel. Expect queues after dark, and bear in mind it’s BYOB, jam-packed, noisy, and mildly chaotic. Nonetheless, prices are dirt cheap and you can gorge on minced meat shami kebabs, skewed beef seekh kebabs, karahi chicken, or marinated lamb chops.
Read the following film reviews and then decide which ones (A – E) correspond to questions 1 – 7. Some of the reviews may be required more than once.
FILM REVIEWS
THE BANQUET
The epic scale of this martial arts extravaganza has the contrary effect of dwarfing its actors, making miniatures of them in the opulence of its vast sets. The juiciest bits og Hamlet – poisoned blades and double-crossings – have been transferred to the ruthless king-making of 10th-century China. Drums beat and soldiers march as prince Daniel Wu returns to avenge the murder of his father.
Hamlet’s Freudian crush on his mother is out in the open: here she’s his stepmother and childhood friend (Zhang Ziyi), who was married off to his father and now his uncle. Chinese superstar Zhang is perhaps alone among the actors in making her presence felt, as an empress in possession of youth, beauty and icy ambition. But in spite of the ample resources in offer here, the combat scenes rarely dazzle. Where Zhang Yimou and Ang Lee revelled so gleefully in the genre’s gravity-defying antics, you get the impression that the director Feng Xiaogang would like it to be known that his film is more serious than all that.
SHUTTER
Shutter, a debut by youthful co-directors Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Mongpoom, – part mystry, part horror – features naturalistic acting from its lead duo, who are involved in a hit-and-run accident in the film’s early stages. Impressive lead actor Ananda Everingham plays a photographer – cue plenty of creepy scenes in darkrooms and strange occurrences inside the frame.
Shutter doesn’t entirely avoid the cliches of the genre – a lank-haired, scrawny girl seems to be a contractual obligation since Ring’s Sadako, just as you have to have a magic sword in wuxia. But it largely avoids hysteria, while achieving some seriously creepy scenes amid an unpredictable plot.
HUNGER
McQueen is renowned as an artist and winner of the Turner prize, and this is his first feature film. I came to it sceptically, having been alienated by his video-art work Deadpan (1997). But Hunger shows that McQueen is a real film-maker and his background in art has meant a fierce concentration on image, an unflinching attention to what things looked like, moment by moment. There is an avoidance of affect and a repudiation of the traditional gestures of dialogue, dramatic consensus and narrative resolution. This is a powerful, provocative piece of worl, which leaves a zero-degree burn on the retina.
OF TIME AND THE CITY
Terence Davies’ new film, his first for eight years, is a heartfelt and even ecstatic study of Liverpool, the home town of his 1950s boyhood. The movie is brashly emotional and sentimental – sometimes angry, more often hilarious. Nothing has given me more sweetness of its temper, the unfashionable seriousness of its design and its mixture of worldliness and innocence make for something sublime.
Of Time and the City was made possible by a modest grant from a number of public bodies, including Liverpool’s Digital Departures project. The result is miraculous. It has ended the director’s unhappy professional drought, returned him to the wellspring of his early autobiographical inspiration, and done so in such a way as to create new perspectives on the unholy trinity of class, sexuality and Catholicism. The movie might even inaugurate a new “late” period for this director: one showing him making peace with himself and with his past, but still laying painfully bare the cost of this process.
DEATH RACE
The old Roger Corman exploitation romp undergoes a go-faster upgrade in this bone-headed yarn about convicts forced to race for their lives in a World Gone Insane. Once out of the starting grid, the films proceeds to edit the action so dementedly that one struggles to work out whose car just exploded, who flipped over and who’s driving the one with the missile-launcher on the roof. But that’s OK, because by this point we’re past caring anyway. When the people in this film talk to each other, they might as well be revving their engines or honking their horns. Watching Death Race is like entering a dance marathon with a pneumatic drill as your partner.
Read the following text about the horoscope. Match each sign with the sentence that best describes it. There are two sentences that do not match any of the paragraphs.
HOROSCOPE
1.ARIES
Aries loves the challenge and does not back away from a good fight. Natives of this sign are noted for their aggressive ways, their leadership qualities, and a certain take-charge manner. They are constantly on the go, with a seemingly endless supply of energy.
TAURUS
Natives of this sign are slow, steady, earthy, and rather fixed in opinion. They need time to take in and digest new ideas and concepts. Taurus likes beautiful things such as jewellery, artwork, well-furnished apartments, and stylish, attractive clothing. But mostly, Taurus just likes things, that which exists in the material world, because they can be touched and admired.
CANCER
Home, mother, food – these are some of this emotional sign’s values. The home is the protective shelter where Cancer hides when the world and all its problems are just too overwhelming. Cancer is the sign of the emotions, for like the tides of the ocean, this sign swells with highs and lows of emotional pulse.
LEO
This is the sign of self-consciousness and ego, and it is not pure accident that many of these natives enjoy the theater and the movies, for Leo is the sign of entertainment. Leo’s aim to be everybody’s focus of attention grows out of a strength of will and the passion of the heart for self-recognition. They have a great deal of loyalty to those whom they love and their affections are generally firm and lasting.
SCORPIO
It’s hard to get beneath the surface of a Scorpio, for they hide their emotions from others in a self-protective strategy designed to keep from surrendering control to another. Scorpio is known for great strength and a surface reserve that when penetrated yields great treasures, a stubborn nature.
GEMINI
Noted for being quite adaptable to new ideas and for versatility, this sign is almost always on the go. Their many ideas are often expressed with a sense of humor. They seem to like just about everybody, and have some difficulties focusing on only one partner in a romantic relationship.
CAPRICORN
It is the sign of big companies, large corporations, and serious pursuits. Capricorn is also associated with how others see you, your reputation, and your parents. They are strong, patient, and very skillful when they are the boss. Material affairs and steady concentration of effort are more important to this sign than to any other.
AQUARIUS
It rules the common man, medicine, electricity, inventions, and the forward movement of mankind into the world of the future. Aquarians are interested in evolution and the future. They can be quite fixed in their ideas and detached in their emotional relationships, for they approach life through the mind.
You are going to read an article about what NOT TO DO when starting a new job. The title of each of the paragraphs has been removed from the article. Choose from the titles (A-K) the one which best fits each gap (1-10). Use each letter only ONCE. There is ONE extra title you DO NOT need to use. D
10 THINGS YOU SHOULD NEVER DO WHEN STARTING A NEW JOB
Congratulations! You’ve finally secured a new job, and now you want to start off on the right foot. You want to be careful not to make any career-ending mistakes. So, what should you NEVER do when starting a new job?
Title1 ____
You learned this in first grade, when the teacher began keeping track of tardies: Being on time matters. Factor in extra time if there’s traffic, construction, or other reasons to expect a delay.
Title 2 ____
Before starting your job, talk with the hiring manager or human resources professional to make sure you understand what constitutes acceptable outfit for your new workplace. There’s nothing more embarrassing than showing up wearing something that doesn’t fly with your supervisors.
Title 3 ____
Many companies require new employees to go through a training process before starting a new position. While it may be tempting to skip these sessions or treat them lightly, don’t do it. Even if your training managers won’t be your direct supervisors, they are watching you.
Title 4 ____
No matter where you’re working, there are certain processes, tools, and forms that make up the standard operating procedures of your company. You may have been introduced to these through a very organized, systematic orientation, or you may feel like you’re expected to absorb them by osmosis. If you were formally informed, consider yourself fortunate, if not, don’t feel shortchanged or frustrated. Instead, take initiative and master the basics on your own.
Title 5 ____ It’s understandable that you may need help or guidance during your first few weeks at a new job, and asking co-workers for assistance or just to answer questions can be perfectly acceptable. But remember, you were hired because managers believed in your ability to get the job done. Ask for help if you need it, but believe in yourself and prove that you can do the work yourself.
Title 6 ____
Your employer isn’t paying you to chat with your girlfriend or even your kids’ babysitter. Make a personal policy of limiting personal phone calls and texts to your lunch break, except for emergencies.
Title 7 ____
Most likely, you and your employer agreed to a certain salary during the hiring process. So don’t change your mind before you even show up at work. Don’t expect more money until you’ve worked long enough to prove your value to the employer.
Title 8 ____
Of course you want to make a good impression as soon as you arrive at a new job, and show your new employer they made the right choice in hiring you. However, be cautious of suggesting new policies or strategies during your first few weeks, as it may not be the best way to demonstrate you are a team player. At first, take time to really understand and learn your job, then over time, you can make suggestions and changes as situations arise, and as your input and expertise is called upon.
Title 9 ____
In a new job, there will always be a learning curve, and effective supervisors understand that. Inevitably, you’ll be asked to do something or expected to know something that you don’t yet know or know how to do. Rather than saying you can complete the task on your own, tell the truth and “don’t be afraid to say, ‘I don’t know,’
Title 10 ____
You may be so eager to start your new job that you don’t want to stop and ask questions. But by skipping even the most basic questions, you are setting yourself up for failure.
You will read a text about four young artists. For questions 1-12 match the statements with the artists A-D.
YOUNG FUTURE TALENT
You might not know these names yet, but you soon will. From novelists and painters to actors, from singers to comedians, Senga McAllister talks fame and fortune with the young British talent heading your way.
A. Aida Seed, 32, painter.
Aidan is a precious talent. Artist in residence at London’s National Portrait Gallery, before that he spent two years enjoying the enviable title of Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge. Aidan tells me this post was open to writers, artists and composers, so it wasn’t only other painters he had to beat off in order to get it. He laughs. “There was no beating involved. I doubt I was the most talented artist who applied that year – I got lucky, that’s all. Someone liked my stuff.” Self-deprecation aside, the art world is buzzing about Aidan’s immense talent.
Aidan is proud of his working-class background. His mother, Pauline, who died when he was twelve, was a cleaner, and he grew up on a council state. “I didn’t have a toothbrush until I was eleven,” he tells me. “As soon as I had one, I used it to mix paint.” Pauline, a single parent, was too poor to buy him paints or canvas; he was forced to steal what materials he could from school. “I knew stealing was wrong, but painting was a compulsion for me – I had to do it, no matter what.”
B. Kerry Gatti, comedian.
The first thing Kerry tells me it that he’s a bloke, not a bird, though with his large frame and deep voice, I can see that for myself. His name, he says, has embarrassed him since childhood. “My mum thought it was a unisex name, like Hilary or Lesley – frankly, either of those would have been just as bad.” So why’s he never changed his name? “My Mum’d be hurt,” he explains. At the age of eight Kerry was part of a local programme for gifted children. “At the weekends I wanted to play football with my mates, but instead I had to go to workshops,” he says. “I absolutely hated it.” Kerry’s mother has never worked. His father was a security guard and they always lived on a tight budget. “My parents wanted me to go to university and study English literature, but there was no way I was doing that.” He left school at 16, only to return a year later when he realized unemployment wasn’t the dream of a perfect relaxing life he’d imagined it to be. “All right, so I gave in,” he laughs. “I went to university, but I didn’t do English literature, though I suppose there was quite a lot of it in my drama degree – but there was also stuff that left practical and real, which is what I loved about it.”
C. Pippa Dowd, 23, singer.
Pippa Dowd is Limited Sympathy’s lead singer. “Don’t ask me who we’re like,” he says tetchily, when I dare to open with this no doubt predictable question. “I don’t care if it’s bad for marketing to say we’re not like anyone else. We’re not. Listen to our album if you want to know what we’re like.” I already had, and plucked up the courage to tell the formidable Pippa that, in my humble opinion, Limited Sympathy’s music has some things in common with The Smiths, New Order, Prefab Sprout, and other bands of that ilk. “What ilk is that?” she asks. “You mean good bands? Yes, I hope we belong in the category of bands who produce good music.”
Raised in Bristol, Pippa has been trying to get her foot in the door of the music industry since the age of 16, when she dropped out of school. When the other members of the band met Pippa, they asked her to join their fledging band, which at the time was called Obelisk. “I didn’t want to be part of a band called that, and it turned out none of the girls were keen on it. One day I was bitching to them about my parents, who have never encouraged my music career. I told them my dad said to me when I was really broke that he had limited sympathy for me, because he believed I’d brought it on myself for choosing to pursue my unrealistic dreams instead of becoming a dull-as-ditchwater accountant like him. That phrase had stuck in my mind – “limited sympathy” – because it was so dishonest. What he really meant was that he had no sympathy at all, so why didn’t he say that? Anyway, I suggested it as a band name and the girls loved it.” A couple of months later, Limited Sympathy had a three-album deal.
D. Martha Wyers, 31, author.
Fiction writer Martha Wyers has more awards and accolades to her name than most people twice her age. These include the prestigious Kaveney Schmidt Award and the Albert Bennett short story prize. How many in total? I ask her, and she looks embarrassed. “I don’t know, maybe thirty?” she says, blushing. Now she’s branched out into full-length fiction, and her first novel, Ice on the Sun, was published in hardback last year by Picador, and is now out in paperback. “I suppose it’s a literary novel, but I hope it’s readable too,” Martha says. Born and brought up near Winchester, you might say that Martha was born with more than a silver spoon in her mouth. Her father is an investment banker, and Martha describes her mother as ‘an aristocrat who wouldn’t ever have had to work if she hadn’t wanted to’, though as it happens she always has and she now runs a Tai Chi school that she set up herself. The extensive ground of her family home are regularly used by touring companies for open-air productions of Shakespeare and opera. Martha’s mother is passionate about the arts, and always wanted her only daughter to do something creative.
The British government has recently published a report on social class in the UK. Read texts B-H about this report and headings 1-5 carefully. Notice that: each heading goes with only one text, there are more texts than headings. Answers must be based exclusively on the information in the texts.
HAS THE DIVIDE BETWEEN BRITAIN’S SOCIAL CLASSES REALLY NARROWED?
A. The Government has published a document which makes the startling claim that, after a long period of social stagnation, British society has become socially mobile again. For 30 years there was no appreciable movement between social classes, although society as a whole became better off. Children born in relative poverty left school with fewer qualifications than children from more comfortable homes, and went into low-paid work. But since 2000, the Government claims, that general pattern has changed for the better.
B. It is well known that a child’s chances of achieving the benchmark of five good GCSEs, including maths and English, are heavily influenced by social background. Children brought up in low-income households are much less likely to succeed than the children of successful, financially secure parents. But studies that compare GCSE results achieved by children born in 1970 and children born in 1990 show the gap has closed to a significant degree.
C. It is too early to judge what the social impact of these findings will be because children born in 1990 are still teenagers. Who can tell what jobs will be available for them in a few years? Abigail McKnight, co-author of the report, warned: «How this is going to play out, we don’t know. Obviously, you need a very long run of data, so we will see what the recession brings.”
D. The very rich just go on getting richer. However, that is a separate issue. New Labour has never claimed that it was going to stop people from becoming very rich. What it did promise was that it would remove the obstacles which prevent people at the bottom of the ladder from climbing any higher. This report is their evidence that the Government have made a start.
E. As Bernard Shaw wittily pointed out in his play Pygmalion, a person’s class could be immediately deduced from the way they spoke. A dropped «h» or shortened vowel sounds were sure signs of a lower-class background. Even when the flower girl in Shaw’s play has learnt to pronounce words with an upper-class accent and to dress and sit like a lady, she gives herself away by exclaiming «not bloody likely» – albeit in a cut-glass accent.
F. Britain’s class structure loosened after the Second World War. The landed aristocracy became relatively poorer, the number of people in manual work decreased, and the 1944 Education Act opened universities to more children whose parents could not afford private education. Television knocked down some of the cultural barriers between classes.
G. In the 1960s, the famous Frost Report sketch satirised the way people dressed and spoke according to how they perceived their social status. But even as that sketch was broadcast, the social stigma attached to speaking with a workingclass or regional accent was breaking down. Middle-class teenagers were swept up in Beatlemania just as much as their working-class contemporaries.
H. The class system may be better concealed than it used to be, but it is alive and well. It persists in the mind, as anyone who watched the recent BBC2 series, Prescott: The Class System And Me, will have seen. John Prescott rose to the second-highest political office in the land and yet, as he freely admits, he never shed the sense of inferiority that came from being an 11-plus failure and a ship’s waiter.
Read the following text about climate change and match each paragraph with its heading. There are two extra headings which you do not need to use.
Floods and erosion are ruining Britain’s most significant sites
PARAGRAPHS
A. Climate change is already wrecking some of Britain’s most significant sites, from Wordsworth’s gardens in Cumbria to the white cliffs on England’s south coast, according to a new report. Floods and erosion are damaging historic places, while warmer temperatures are seeing salmon vanishing from famous rivers and birds no longer visiting important wetlands.
B. The report was produced by climate experts at Leeds University and the Climate Coalition, a group of 130 organisations including the RSPB, National Trust, WWF and the Women’s Institute. “Climate change often seems like a distant existential threat [but] this report shows it is already impacting upon some of our most treasured and special places around the UK,” said Prof. Piers Forster of Leeds University.
C. “It is clear our winters are generally getting warmer and wetter, storms are increasing in intensity and rainfall is becoming heavier. Climate change is not only coming home – it has arrived,” Forster said. It is also already affecting everyday places such as churches, sports grounds, farms and beaches, he said.
D. Wordsworth House and Garden in Cockermouth, where the romantic poet William Wordsworth was born in 1770, was seriously damaged by two recent flooding events linked to a changing climate. In November 2009, torrential rain caused £500,000 of damage, sweeping away gates and walls that had survived since the 1690s. Floods inundated the site again during Storm Desmond in December 2015. “When I saw the damage the floods had caused in 2009 I was shocked and it took almost three years to repair the garden,” said the house’s head gardener, Amanda Thackeray. “Then after all that hard work to see the devastation from flooding in 2015 was very upsetting.”
E. A century-long record shows the UK is experiencing more intense heavy rainfall during winter. Researchers can also use climate models to reveal the influence of global warming on some extreme events and have found the UK’s record December rainfall in 2015 was made 50-75% more likely by climate change. Another study found Storm Desmond was 40% more likely to have occurred because of the human activities that release greenhouse gases, such as burning fossil fuels.
F. Rising temperatures are also affecting wildlife, including in the famous salmon rivers, the Wye and Usk, where otters and kingfishers also live. December is peak spawning time for salmon in Wales, but recent winters have been exceptionally warm.
G. 2015 was little better, with young salmon found at just 17 sites out of 142, when they usually would be expected at 108 areas. Research has shown salmon populations across the Wye catchment fell by 50% from 1985-2004, despite cuts in water pollution. But stream temperatures have risen by up to 1C in that time, leaving researchers to conclude that climate change is a key factor in plummeting salmon numbers.
H. Geoff Hilton, at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust said the shrinking flocks could have knock-on effects on the wetland habitat: “These are quite big changes ecologically. If you suddenly lose thousands of geese from a wetland, there are bound to be big effects on that wetland.”
I. Warmer conditions have also meant water primrose, an alien invader to the UK, has grown aggressively in wide, dense mats and is seriously damaging native plants and fish. However, warmer winters have seen little egret numbers visiting Slimbridge increasing from just eight in the 1990s to 30 in 2013.
J. Other sites being ruined by climate change, according to the new report, include a famous riverside pub on Manchester’s river Irwell, which has not re-opened after the 2015 floods and the historic clubhouse at Corbridge cricket club in Northumberland, now demolished after the same floods.
K. The report also warns that the 5,000-year-old neolithic village at Skara Brae on Orkney, revealed after a great storm in 1850 stripped away grass and sand, could be destroyed in future as violent storms become more common.