You have to fill the gaps with the words and phrases below in the two texts.

You can not use any option twice and there are 22 extra options
in total. This exercise would be similar to parts 3 and 4 of the Aptis Advanced reading component.

It’s 1_______ now, but a little over a century ago, 2_______ anyone knew what plastic was. Today plastic is everywhere, and it
makes modern life possible, from life-saving medical devices to the lightweight materials used in our cars, computers, phones,
spaceships, shopping bags, 3_______. For all the convenience it provides, plastic has become a plague on the environment—
particularly our oceans, Earth’s last 4_______sinks. Of the 9.2 billion tons of plastic produced during the past century, most of it
since the 1960s, more than 6.9 billion tons have become waste. And of that waste, a staggering 6.3 billion tons have never been
recycled—a figure that stunned scientists who crunched the numbers in 2017. It’s unclear how much unrecycled plastic waste ends
up in the ocean. In 2015, Jenna Jambeck, a University of Georgia engineering professor, 5_______ everyone’s attention with a
rough estimate: 5.3 million to 14 million tons of plastic each year, just from coastal regions. Most of it is dumped carelessly on land
or in rivers, mostly in Asia. Then, Jambeck said, it’s blown or washed into the sea.Imagine five plastic grocery bags stuffed with
plastic trash, Jambeck said, sitting on every foot of coastline around the world. That would correspond to about 8.8 million tons of
plastic trash each year. It’s unclear how long it will take for that plastic to completely biodegrade 6_______its constituent molecules.
Estimates range from 450 years to never. Meanwhile, ocean plastic is estimated to kill millions of marine animals every year. Nearly
700 species, including endangered ones, have been affected by it. Some are strangled by abandoned fishing nets or discarded six-
pack rings. Many more are probably harmed invisibly. Marine species of all sizes, from zooplankton to whales, now eat
microplastics, the 7_______ smaller than one-fifth of an inch across.
national geographic society - planet or plastic? - 2018

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One of France's most well-known criminal lawyers, Christian Etelin, was sitting at his desk late at night last November
contemplating retirement, when he received a phone call that stunned him. First of all, because the caller had been declared dead
years ago - 8_______, because it involved a brash armed robbery that occurred nearly 30 years ago. The voice on the other end of
the phone was that of Gilles Bertin - a one-time nihilist punk singer with a Bordeaux Group called Camera Silens with a heavy
following 9_______ anarchists and extreme left-wing youths who thought there was no future, for them at least.
Britain had Sid Vicious and the Sex Pistols - Gilles Bertin was France's equivalent. In the late 1980s the group and their
hangers-on were destitute, despite their success, and addicted to drugs. Several had been infected with the HIV virus after sharing
contaminated heroin syringes. They figured they 10_______to live, so they decided to go out with a bang, mount a massive armed
robbery and then blow it all before they died. And that's exactly what some of the band members did - they stole 12 million francs
(nearly 2 million euros) from a Brinks deposit in Toulouse - a small fortune at the time. They even - apparently - called the local
newspaper afterwards boasting of their feat. No-one was injured in the robbery and the police 11_______ realised they were dealing
with amateurs. All were caught within a year except one suspect, Gilles Bertin. Hardly any of the money was retrieved and some of
the anarchist robbers, already very sick, died from AIDS-related symptoms. The others, after 12_______time in jail, returned to
obscurity and nine-to-five jobs.
Gilles Bertin received a 10-year sentence in his absence and as the years passed, the robbery and punk movement faded
from view. The singer/convicted armed robber was declared dead. His family - including his son born during those wild years in
Bordeaux - had never heard from him again. And yet he is very much alive when I meet him at a crowded ancient brasserie called
the Cafe de la Concorde for lunch in the heart of Toulouse. Tall with shaggy hair and blind in one eye - a consequence of hepatitis
caused by drug use - he is incredibly polite and shy. He tells me a little about those 28 years on the run and why he has returned.
After the robbery, he was 13 _______ carrying bags of banknotes and he headed to Portugal, where he opened a record store - all
paid for in cash, of course. Occasionally a travelling French music fan would recognise him but he would deny it was him. Every
time he saw a car with French number plates outside the store he was convinced he was being monitored or followed.
After 10 years of running the shop he thought the French police were really on his tracks this time and he headed to
Barcelona with his Spanish girlfriend. Her family ran a bar and he became the barman. They had a child. Only his girlfriend knew
about his background - to everyone else he was a man 14_______ no past.

BBC.com - stories - The punk who returned from the dead - and handed himself in

mean everywhere armed up didn't have long

would like to between and secondly literally roughly passing

hardly hard to imagine so with blue

into bits but spending a brief whished

drainage in addition to others along caught sleepy

immediately of bottom and on and on and even worse

called parts back shining amongst

quickly

Answer sheet

1- hard to imagine

2- hardly

3- and on and on

4- drainage

5- caught

6- into

7- bits

8- and secondly

9- amongst

10- didn't have long

11- quickly

12- spending a brief

13- literally

14- with