THE TRAIN JOURNEY 0 You know I was going down to London to stay with my friend 00 Alice during the holidays. Well, the train journey did turned out to be a bit of a disaster! I went to a party the night before I had left, and I woke up quite late enough, so I had to catch the train that left round about midday. At first, I enjoyed the journey as there was another student sitting opposite of me and we started talking. Anyway, when she got out of the train at Oxford, I decided to read my book but, because I hadn’t had much sleep on the night before, I soon fell asleep. I must have to slept for over an hour, because I was woke up when all the doors started banging and I realised that everyone was getting out because we were once in London. I jumped up and managed to get myself and my luggage out in a couple of seconds, and breathed a huge sigh of relief. It was only when I had arrived at Alice’s house that I have realised I had dropped my address book down when I was getting out of the train. It’s a good thing I can properly remember your address, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to write it to you, would I?

You are going to read a magazine article in which a famous chef talks about the importance of good service in restaurants. Choose the most suitable heading from the list A-I for each part (1-7) of the article. There is one extra heading you do not need to use. There is an example at the beginning (0). A A central figure B A policy for the times C Seen but not heard D A fairer system E Playing the right part F Time well spent G A strong sense of involvement H The deciding factor I All-round improvement At your service Top chef and restaurant owner Giancarlo Curtis talks about what he looks for, apart from good food, when he eats out. Recently, I went into a restaurant near my home where I have eaten several times over the years. It used to have old-fashioned traditional style, but it has just re-opened after being completely renovated. The new surroundings seem to have given a lift to everything, from the food cooked by a new chef from Brittany in France, to the atmosphere and the quality of the service. 【B1】______ Many hours of behind-the-scenes work must have gone into getting the service so good. The staff were very pleasant and the speed with which they reacted to customers’ needs was excellent. When someone sneezed, a box of tissues appeared. I have never seen that before in a restaurant. The preparation has certainly paid off. 【B2】______ Twenty years ago when people went out to restaurants, they probably never set eyes on the chef— probably didn’t even know his name. But the person they did know was the head waiter. He was the important one, the person who could get you the best table, who could impress your friends by recognising you when you arrived. 【B3】______　　　　 Things have changed, but I think what is going to happen with so many good new restaurants opening these days is that the waiters are going to become very important again. The level of service is what is going to distinguish one restaurant from another. 【B4】______ But we are talking about modern, unstuffy service, which is not four waiters hovering around your table making you nervous, but a relaxed presence, giving you the feeling there is someone there and providing help and advice when you need it. There is a fine distinction between a server and a servant, and this is what the best waiter has learnt to appreciate. 【B5】______ Although they have to be commercial, the most popular restaurants aim to provide the kind of reception, comfort and consideration you would give to someone coming for a dinner party at your home. Service is not about the correctness of knives and forks and glasses— people really don’t care about those things any more—nowadays it is about putting people at their ease. 【B6】______ What’s more, waiting staff need to have a stake in the success of the enterprise. I realised that when I opened my own restaurant. The staff, chefs and waiters did all the decorating and the flowers themselves and it worked well because the right atmosphere had been created by people who cared. 【B7】______ Above all, the waiting staff should be consistent, which is why I have always preferred the custom of putting an optional service charge on the bill, rather than relying on discretionary tips, so that all the stall feel valued. I don’t like the kind of situation where there is competition going on, with one star waiter trying to outshine the rest. That affects the quality of the service as a whole.

You see the following notice in an international magazine. Be someone famous for a day If you could change places for 24 hours with a famous person alive today, who would you choose, and why? The best article will be published in our magazine next month. Write your article.

Your teacher has asked you to write a story for the school’s English language magazine. The story must begin with the following words: My day started badly, but it got better and better. Write your story.

The teacher postponed the theatre trip until the summer term. off The theatre trip ____________________ the teacher until the summer term.

“What is the width of this cupboard?“ Rebecca asked her sister. wide Rebecca asked her sister ____________________ was.

George spent ages tidying up his room. took It ____________________ up his room.

Jim fell off his bike because he wasn’t looking where he was going. paying If Jim ____________________ to where he was going, he wouldn’t have fallen off his bike.

It was wrong of you to borrow my jacket without asking. ought You_____________________ before you borrowed my jacket.

You are going to read a magazine article about learning to fly a plane. Eight paragraphs have been removed from the article. Choose from the paragraphs A-I the one which fits each gap (15-21). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use. There is an example at the beginning (0). Learning to Fly I had been testing cars and motorcycles for over twenty years. I couldn’t take any more. It wasn’t terribly exciting and, in any case, new cars were beginning to look identical and drive similarly. What I needed was a new challenge. Unfortunately, I wore glasses. The Royal Air Force wouldn’t consider anyone for pilot training unless they had perfect eyesight. Halfway through an aptitude test, they realised that my eyes were far from perfect. I didn’t stand a chance. 【B1】__________ It was an obvious choice. It’s just twenty minutes’ drive from my home. It’s very quiet, too, so the t;90 per hour fur the training is spent flying in the air, not waiting on the ground for other planes to take off. 【B2】__________ It took me a whole year to get my private pilot’s licence. It started well, with my first solo flight coming after just seven hours. Then came all the studying, the exams, the hard work. I never thought I’d get to the end of it. 【B3】__________ Then came last winter and the end of the course was in sight. For weeks, the weather was so terrible that for most of the time it was impossible. to fly. Strong winds, heavy rain and even snow and ice made flying conditions extremely hazardous. 【B4】__________ But finally the first of three practical exams arrived- the navigation test. The exam finer sets you a course that you have to plan according to the weather, and then fly with him sitting beside you. 【B5】__________ I passed this test, but I don’t know how. The second test involves flying cross-country to two other ah ports. which you can choose, and landing at both. The important thing is to give the right messages to the air-traffic control people and understand their replies. 【B6】__________ After this alarming episode, the excreiscs in the flight- handling test were simple. As we completed the sixth exercise, the examiner suddenly turned to me and said, “Congratulations-you’ve passed!“ I wasn’t sure why, because we usually land as slowly as possible. Then I turned round and realised straightaway: we were being followed by a British Airways jumbo jet! A A week which I had set aside for finishing the course came and went with no possibility of getting in the air at all. And besides the problems with the weather, my second son was born, and that made it even more difficult to find the time for lessons and studying. B But the real reason I chose this club was that a friend of mine, Andrew Wilkins, is the chief instructor there. He impressed me by taking me out for a free flight just so that I could see what it was like. C Unfortunately, I got myself lost this time and flew too far east. I completely missed the first airport. However, I flew over a car factory I recognised and managed to get back on course. D Along the way, he’ll take the controls and fly off course, ,just to get you lost. Then he’ll hand back the controls to you and expect you to find your way home. E One day I was asked by an air-traffic controller if I could see another aircraft ahead. I said yes, and immediately it disappeared into a cloud. I just didn’t know what to do. F At the time, taking private lessons to learn how to fly was financially beyond me. So 1 had to delay my plans to become a pilot for quite a while. It was twenty years, in fact, before I finally enrolled at a flying club in Hertfordshire. G Since getting my pilot’s licence, I’ve been out flying a few times. The highlight so far was flying up to Birmingham International Airport for a motor show with Andrew beside me. As we approached the runway, the air-traffic controller came on the radio asking for as much speed as our little plane could manage. H For months, my head was always in a book and my head hurt from all the facts, figures and flying instructions. I This feeling of needing a change coincided with my 40th birthday, which started me thinking about what I’d been doing all those years. When I left school all I had really wanted to do was fly.

You must answer this question. 1. Some British people are coming to your area and you have been asked to help organise the group’s visit. Read the extract from a letter you have received from Mrs Davidson, the leader of the group, and the notes you have made. Then write a letter to Mrs Davidson, using all your notes. Write a letter of between 120 and 180 words in an appropriate style. Do not write any postal addresses.

Claire accidentally damaged my book. mean Claire____________________ my book.

We might net find it easy to book a seat at the last minute. could It____________________ us to book a seat at the last minute.

THE TRAIN JOURNEY 0 You know I was going down to London to stay with my friend 00 Alice during the holidays. Well, the train journey did turned out to be a bit of a disaster! I went to a party the night before I had left, and I woke up quite late enough, so I had to catch the train that left round about midday. At first, I enjoyed the journey as there was another student sitting opposite of me and we started talking. Anyway, when she got out of the train at Oxford, I decided to read my book but, because I hadn’t had much sleep on the night before, I soon fell asleep. I must have to slept for over an hour, because I was woke up when all the doors started banging and I realised that everyone was getting out because we were once in London. I jumped up and managed to get myself and my luggage out in a couple of seconds, and breathed a huge sigh of relief. It was only when I had arrived at Alice’s house that I have realised I had dropped my address book down when I was getting out of the train. It’s a good thing I can properly remember your address, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to write it to you, would I?

A JOB WITH RISKS Have you ever been to the cinema and wondered in amazement. how 　　　　　AMAZE film stars manage to perform 【C1】______ acts like jumping off buildings or driving DANGER at great speed? They don’t, of course. The real 【C2】______ are usually stunt men PERFORM or women, who can earn a very good 【C3】______ by standing in LIVE for the stars when necessary. The work is 【C4】______ demanding and, before INCREDIBLE qualifying for this job, they have to 【C5】______ their ability in six sports including PROOF skiing, riding and gymnastics. Naturally, 【C6】______ and timing are important and everything is planned down SAFE to the 【C7】______ detail. In a scene which involves a complicated series of TINY actions, there is no time for 【C8】______ mistakes. A stunt man or woman often CARE has only one chance of getting things right, 【C9】______ film stars, who can LIKE always film a scene 【C10】______ until it gains the director’s approval. REPEAT

You are going to read an extract from a novel. For questions 7-13, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text. miss Rita Cohen, a tiny, pale-skinned girl who looked half the age of Seymour’s daughter, Marie, but claimed to be some six years olde. r, came to his factory one day. She was dressed in overalls and ugly big shoes, and a bush of wiry hair framed her pretty face. She was so tiny, so young that he could barely believe that she was at the University of Pennsylvania, doing research into the leather industry in New Jersey for her Master’s degree. Three or four times a year someone either phoned Seymour or wrote to him to ask permission to see, his factory, and occasionally he would assist a student by answering questions over the phone or, if the student struck him as especially serious, by offering a brie~ tour. Rita Cohen was nearly as small, he thought, as the children from Marie’s third-year class, who’d been brought the, 50 kilometres from their rural schoolhouse one day, all those years ago, so that Marie’s daddy could show them how he made gloves, show them especially Marie’s favourite spot, the laying- off table, where, at the end of the process, the men shaped and pressed each and every glove by pulling line 13 it carefully down over steam-heated brass hands. The hands were dangerously hot and they were shiny and they stuck straight up from the table in a row, thin-looking, like hands that had been flattened. As a little girl, Marie was captivated by their strangeness and called them the ’pancake hands’. He heard Rita asking, ’How many pieces come in a shipment?’ ’How many? Between twenty and twenty- five thousand.’ She continued taking notes as she asked, ’They come direct to your shipping department?’ He liked finding that she was interested in every last detail. ’They come to the tannery. The tannery is a contractor. We buy the material and they make it into the right kind of leather for us to use. My grandfather and father worked in the tannery right here in town. So did I, for six months, when I started in the business. Ever been inside a tannery?’ ’Not yet.’ ’Well you’ve got to go to a tannery if you’re going to write about leather. I’ll set that up for you if you’d like that. They’re primitive places. The technology has improve, d things, but what you’ll see isn’t that different from what you’d have seen hundreds of years ago. Awful work. It’s said to be the oldest industry of which remains have been found anywhere. Six-thousand-year-old relics of tanning found somewhere Turkey, I believe. The first clothing was just skins that were lined by smoking them. I told you it was an interesting subject once you gel into it. My father is the leather scholar; he’s the one you should be talking to. Start my father off about gloves and how’ll talk for two days. That’s typical, hay the way: glovemen love the trade and everything about it. Tell me, have you ever seen anything being manufactured, Miss Cohen?’ ’I can’t say I have.’ ’Never seen anything made?’ ’Saw my mother make a cake when I was a child.’ He laughed. She had made him laugh. An innocent with spirit, eager to learn. His daughter was easily 30cm taller than Rile Cohen, fair where she was dark, but otherwise Rite Cohen had begun to re, mind him of Marie. The good-natured intelligence that would just waft out of her amt into the house when she came home from school, full of what she’d learned in class. How she remembered everything. Everything neatly taken down in her notebook and memorised overnight. ’I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to bring you right through the whole process. Come on. We’re going to make you a pair of gloves and you’re, going to watch them being made from start to finish. What size do you wear?’

You are going to read an article about people who changed their jobs. For questions 23-35, choose from the people (A-D). The people may be chosen more than once. There is an example at the beginning (0). Which person mentions enjoying their pastime more than the job they used to do? enjoying being in charge of their own life? 【S1】______ being surprised by suddenly losing their previous job? 【S2】______ not having other people depending on them financially? 【S3】______ missing working with other people? 【S4】______ undergoing training in order to take up their new job? 【S5】______ a contact being useful in promoting their new business? 【S6】______ not being interested in possible promotion in their old job? 【S7】______ disliking the amount of time they used to have to work? 【S8】______ surprising someone else by the decision they made? 【S9】______ a prediction that hasn’t come true? 【S10】______ consulting other people about their businesses? 【S11】______ the similarities between their new job and their old one? 【S12】______ working to a strict timetable? 【S13】______ A NEW LIFE A The Farmer Matt Froggatt used to be an insurance agent in the City of London but now runs a sheep farm. “After 14 years in business, I found that the City had gone from a place which was exciting to work into a grind-no one was having fun any more. But I hadn’t planned to leave for another five or ten years when I was made redundant. It came out of the blue, but it made me take a careful look at my life. I didn’t get a particularly good pay-off but it was enough to set up the farm with. My break came when I got to know the head chef of a local hotel with one of the top 20 hotel restaurants in the country. Through supplying them, my reputation spread and now I also supply meat through mail order. I’m glad I’m no longer stuck in the office but it’s astonishing how little things have changed for me: the same 80- to 90- hour week and still selling a product.“ B The Paniter Ron Able white was a manager in advertising but now makes a living as an artist. “My painting began as a hobby but I realised I was getting far more excitement out of it than out of working. The decision to take redundancy and to become an artist seemed logical. The career counsellor I talked to was very helpful. I think I was the first person who had ever told him, ’1 don’t want to go back to where I’ve been.’ He was astonished because the majority of people in their mid-forties need to get back to work immediately -they need the money. But we had married young and our children didn’t need our support. It was a leap into the unknown. We went to the north of England, where we didn’t know a soul. It meant leaving all our friends, but we’ve been lucky in that our friendships have survived the distance plenty of them come up and visit us now.“ C The Hatmaker After working for five years as a company lawyer, Katherine Goodison set up her own business in her London flat, making hats for private clients. “My job as a lawyer was fun. It was stimulating and I earned a lot of money, but the hours were terrible. I realised I didn’t want to become a senior partner in the company, working more and more hours, so I left. A lot of people said I’d get bored, but that has never happened. The secret is to have deadlines. Since it’s a fashion-related business, you have the collections, next year’s shapes, the season -there’s always too much to do, so you have to run a very regimented diary. I feel happier now, and definitely less stressed. There are things I really long for, though, like the social interaction with colleagues. What I love about this job is that I’m totally responsible for the product. If I do a rubbish job, then I’m the one who takes the blame. Of course, you care when you’re working for a company, but when your name is all over the promotional material, you care that little bit more.“ D The Masseur Paul Drink water worked in finance for 16years before becoming a masseur at the Life Centre in London. “I had been in financial markets from the age of 22, setting up deals. I liked the adrenaline but I never found the work rewarding. I was nearly made redundant in 1989, but I escaped by resigning and travelling for a year. I spent that year trying to work out what I wanted to do. I was interested in health, so I visited some of the world’s best gymnasiums and talked to the owners about how they started up. I knew that to change career I had to get qualifications so I did various courses in massage. Then I was offered part-time work at the Life Centre. I have no regrets. I never used to feel in control, but now I have peace of mind and control of my destiny. That’s best of all.“

You must answer this question. 1. Your English friend, Bill, is a travel writer and he recently visited a town which you know well. He has written a chapter about the town for a guide book and you have just read the chapter. Read the extract from Bill’s letter and your notes. Then, using all your notes, write a letter to Bill, giving him the information and suggestions he needs. Thanks for agreeing to check the chapter that I’ve written. Could you let me know what you liked about it? If any of the information is inaccurate, please give me the correct information! Do you think there’s anything else I should include? Once again, thanks a lot for reading the chapter Please write back soon. Bill Notes for Bill Tell Bill what I liked about his chapter—places to visit .... Give Bill correct information about —parking in city centre —museum opening times Suggest Bill include —map —nightlife (give Bill details) Write a letter of between 120 and 180 words in an appropriate style. Do not write any postal addresses.

THOMAS EDISON On the night of 21 October 1931, millions of Americans took part in a coast-to-coast ceremony to commemorate the passing of a great man. Lights 【B1】______ in homes and offices from New York to California. The ceremony 【B2】______ the death of an inventor—indeed, to many people, the most important inventor of 【B3】______ time: Thomas Alva Edison. Few inventors have 【B4】______ an impact as great as his on everyday life. While most of his 1 000- plus inventions were devices we no 【B5】______ use, many of the things he invented played a crucial 【B6】______ in the development of modern technology, simply by showing what was possible. And one should never 【B7】______ how amazing some of Edison’s inventions were. In so many ways, Edison is the perfect example of an inventor, by which I 【B8】______ not just someone who 【B9】______ up clever gadgets, but someone whose products transform the lives of millions. He possessed the key characteristics that an inventor needs to 【B10】______ a success of inventions. Sheer determination is certainly one of them. Edison famously tried thousands of materials while working 【B11】______a new type of battery, reacting to failure by cheerfully 【B12】______to his colleagues: ’Well, 【B13】______we know 8 000 things that don’t work.’ Knowing when to take no 【B14】______ of experts is also important. Edison’s proposal for electric lighting circuitry was 【B15】______ with total disbelief by eminent scientists, until he lit up whole streets with his lights.

MY HOME TOWN I was born in one of the the most interesting cities in Malaysia. It has a rich, colourful history and many parts of the city have hardly changed at 【C1】______ during the last five centuries. However, nowadays, it is 【C2】______ longer the trade centre that it once 【C3】______ it is difficult to imagine that at one time its harbour 【C4】______ to be visited by over 2,000 ships a week, and that the huge warehouses along the quayside would have 【C5】______ full of spices and silks, jewels and tea. The old city centre is small, which 【C6】______ it very easy to explore 【C7】______ foot. A river neatly divides the town, 【C8】______ only physically but in spirit too. On one side, you find a 【C9】______ many grand houses, but immediately you cross the river, you find【C10】______ in ancient Chinatown, which is where you really 【C11】______ a step back into the past. From the earliest times, this has been the heart of the city and it’s fun to wander through the colourful, noisy backstreets. As 【C12】______ as the streets that sell a wide 【C13】______ of clothes and shoes, there are also streets famous 【C14】______ high quality antiques. Unfortunately, most of the bargains disappeared many years ago. However, 【C15】______ you look around carefully, you could still come across an interesting souvenir.

A famous architect designed Dr Schneider’s house for her. had Dr Schneider ____________________ a famous architect.