Reading and Use of English · Part 1
What is genealogy?
Genealogy is a (0) branch of history. It concerns family history, (1) than the national or world history studied at school. It doesn’t merely involve drawing a family tree, however – tracing your family history can also (2) in learning about your roots and your identity.
The internet enables millions of people worldwide to (3) information about their family history, without great (4). People who research their family history often (5) that it’s a fascinating hobby which (6) a lot about where they come from and whether they have famous ancestors.
According to a survey involving 900 people who had researched their family history, the chances of discovering a celebrity in your past are one in ten. The survey also concluded that the (7) back you follow your family line, the more likely you are to find a relation who was much wealthier than you are. However, the vast majority of people who (8) in the survey discovered they were better off than their ancestors.
Reading and Use of English · Part 2
Motorbike stunt rider
I work (0) as a motorbike stunt rider – that is, I do tricks on my motorbike at shows. The Le Mans race track in France was (9) I first saw some guys doing motorbike stunts. I’d never seen anyone riding a motorbike using just the back wheel before and I was (10) impressed I went straight home and taught (11) to do the same.
It wasn’t very long before I began to earn my living at shows performing my own motorbike stunts. I have a degree (12) mechanical engineering; this helps me to look at the physics (13) lies behind each stunt. In addition to being responsible for design changes to the motorbike, I have to work (14) every stunt I do.
People often think that my work is very dangerous, but, apart (15) some minor mechanical problem happening occasionally during a stunt, nothing ever goes wrong. I never feel in (16) kind of danger because I’m very experienced.
Reading and Use of English · Part 3
An incredible vegetable
Garlic, a member of the Liliacaea family which also includes onions, is (0) commonly used in cooking all around the world. China is currently the largest (17) of garlic, which is particularly associated with the dishes of northern Africa and southern Europe. It is native to central Asia and has long had a history as a health-giving food, used both to prevent and cure (18).
The forefather of antibiotic medicine, Louis Pasteur, claimed garlic was as (19) as penicillin in treating infections. Modern-day (20) have proved that garlic can indeed kill bacteria and even some viruses, so it can be very useful for people who have coughs and colds. In (21), some doctors believe that garlic can reduce blood (22).
The only (23) to this truly amazing food is that the strong and rather (24) smell of garlic is not the most pleasant!
Words: PRODUCT · ILL · EFFECT · SCIENCE · ADD · PRESS · ADVANTAGE · SPICE
Reading and Use of English · Part 4
Key word transformations
Complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning to the first sentence, using the word given. Do not change the word given. You must use between two and five words, including the word given.
Reading and Use of English · Part 5
Life on the island of Hale
We live on the island of Hale. It's about four kilometres long and two kilometres wide at its broadest point, and it's joined to the mainland by a causeway called the Stand – a narrow road built across the mouth of the river which separates us from the rest of the country. Most of the time you wouldn’t know we’re on an island because the river mouth between us and the mainland is just a vast stretch of tall grasses and brown mud. But when there’s a high tide and the water rises above the road and nothing can pass until the tide goes out again, then you know it’s an island.
We were on our way back from the mainland. My older brother, Dominic, had just finished his first year at university in a town 150 km away. Dominic’s train was due in at five and he’d asked for a lift back from the station. Dad normally hates being disturbed when he’s writing and having to go anywhere, but despite his typical sighs and moans, I could tell by the sparkle in his eyes that he was really looking forward to seeing Dominic.
Dominic had been talking non-stop from the moment he got in the car: university this, university that, writers, books, parties, people, money, gigs. I didn’t like the way he spoke and waved his hands around as if he was some kind of intellectual. It made me feel uncomfortable when someone close to you suddenly starts acting like a complete idiot. And I didn’t like the way he was ignoring me, either.
As we approached the island on that Friday afternoon, the tide was low and the Stand welcomed us home, stretched out before us, clear and dry, beautifully hazy in the heat. Beyond the railings, the water was glinting with wonderful silver light.
We were about halfway across when I saw the boy. My first thought was how odd it was to see someone walking on the Stand. You don’t often see people walking around here. Between Hale and Moulton, there’s nothing but small cottages, farmland, heathland and a couple of hills. So islanders don’t walk because of that. If they’re going to Moulton they tend to take the bus.
As we drew closer, he became clearer. He was actually a young man rather than a boy. Although he was on the small side, he wasn’t as slight as I’d first thought. He wasn’t exactly muscular, but he wasn’t weedy-looking either. There was a sense of strength about him, a graceful strength that showed in his balance, the way he held himself, the way he walked.
Reading and Use of English · Part 6
Good preparation leads to success in ballet dancing
What we ballet dancers do is instinctive, but instinct learnt through a decade of training. A dancer’s life is hard to understand, and easy to misinterpret. Many a poet and novelist has tried to do so, but even they have chosen to interpret all the hard work and physical discipline as obsessive. And so the idea persists that dancers spend every waking hour in pain, bodies at breaking point, their smiles a pretence.
As a former dancer in the Royal Ballet Company in Britain, I would beg to question this. 37 With expert teaching and daily practice, its various demands are easily within the capacity of the healthy human body. Contrary to popular belief, there is no need to break bones or tear muscles to achieve ballet positions. It is simply a question of sufficient conditioning of the muscular system.
Over the course of my dancing life I worked my way through at least 10,000 ballet classes. I took my first at a school of dance at the age of seven and my last 36 years later at the Royal Opera House in London. In the years between, ballet class was the first thing I did every day. It starts at an early age, this daily ritual, because it has to. 38 But for a ballet dancer in particular, this lengthy period has to come before the effects of adolescence set in, while maximum flexibility can still be achieved.
Those first classes I took were remarkably similar to the last. Ballet classes have changed little since 1820. Starting with the left hand on the barre, the routine unrolls over some 75 minutes. 39 Even the leading dancers have to do it.
These classes serve two distinct purposes: they are the way we warm our bodies and the mechanism by which we improve basic technique. In class after class, we prove the old saying that practice makes perfect. 40 And it is also this daily repetition which enables us to strengthen the muscles required in jumping, spinning or lifting our legs to angles impossible to the average person.
The human body is designed to adapt to the demands we make of it, provided we make them carefully and over time. 41 In the same way, all those years of classes add up to a fit-for-purpose dancing machine. This level of physical fluency doesn’t hurt; it feels good.
42 But they should not be misled: there is a difference between hard work and hardship. Dancers have an everyday familiarity with the first. Hardship it isn’t.
A Through endless tries at the usual exercises and frequent failures, ballet dancers develop the neural pathways in the brain necessary to control accurate, fast and smooth movement. · B The ballet shoe offers some support, but the real strength is in the muscles, built up through training. · C As technology takes away activity from the lives of many, perhaps the ballet dancer’s physicality is ever more difficult for most people to imagine. · D Ballet technique is certainly extreme but it is not, in itself, dangerous. · E The principle is identical in the gym – pushing yourself to the limit, but not beyond, will eventually bring the desired result. · F No one avoids this: it is ballet’s great democratiser, the well established members of the company working alongside the newest recruits. · G It takes at least a decade of high-quality, regular practice to become an expert in any physical discipline.
Reading and Use of English · Part 7
Rising Star
A Margaret Garelly goes to meet Duncan Williams, who plays for Chelsea Football Club. It’s her first time driving to Chelsea’s training ground and she turns off slightly too early at the London University playing fields. At his current age of 18, Duncan would have been a bright first-year undergraduate mixing academic studies with football, rugby and cricket, given his early talent in all these sports. However, instead of studying, he is sitting with his father Gavin at Chelsea’s training base, reflecting on Saturday’s match against Manchester City. Such has been his rise to fame that it is surprising to hear him describe how his career was nearly over before it began.
B Gavin, himself a fine footballer and now a professional coach, sent Duncan to three professional clubs as a 14-year-old, but all three turned him down. Gavin says Duncan had fantastic technique and skill, but the other boys shot up in height and he didn’t. Gavin was upset and surprised that no team seemed to want him. When Chelsea accepted him as a junior, it was made clear that this was more of a last chance than a new beginning. Fortunately, that summer he grew and got much stronger.
C Duncan says the first half of that season he played in the youth team. He got lucky when the first-team manager came to watch them play QPR. Although they lost 3-1, he had a really good game and moved up to the first team after that performance. Gavin points out that it can be beneficial to be smaller and weaker when developing because it forces players to learn how to keep the ball better and use quick feet. He reassured Duncan that when he was bigger and quicker, opponents would not be able to get near him.
D Not every kid gets advice from an ex-England player over dinner, nor their own private training sessions. Now Duncan is following in Gavin’s footsteps by joining a national scheme where people like him give advice to ambitious young teenagers who hope to become professionals. He is an old head on young shoulders, but also has youthful enthusiasm. Fame has clearly not gone to his head. Will he play for the national team? The way he is playing, that will not be long.