Part 2

For questions 9 – 16, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap. Use only one word
in each gap. There is an example at the beginning (0).

Write your answers IN CAPITAL LETTERS on the separate answer sheet.

Example: 0 W H A T
__________________________________________________________________________________________

Team building

Many companies are now organising (0) are called team-building weekends for their staff. Employees get

together somewhere well (9) from their usual workplace and engage in leisure activities that (10)

for teamwork and co-operation. The idea is that this will improve their working relationships back in the office.

The success of these events, however, can depend on (11) suitable the activity chosen is for the

individuals involved. Abseiling and paintballing are unlikely to appeal to all employees equally, and some people

may resent (12) to take part in activities which they regard (13) too physically challenging.

Another potential issue is that managers may feel uncomfortable with the idea of competitive activities in

(14) they might be defeated by more junior members of staff. By the same token, junior members

of staff may be unsure exactly what is expected of them. Should they (15) all out to impress their

superiors by doing their best to win, or should they hold back (16) that their superiors don’t lose face?

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 Part 5
You are going to read an extract from a book. For questions 31 – 36, choose the answer (A, B, C or D)
which you think fits best according to the text.
Mark your answers on the separate answer sheet.
The Lives of Diplomats’ Children
During the writing of this book about the lives of
diplomatic wives, I was reminiscing with my oldest
friend, a diplomat’s child like myself, whom I have
known since we were at boarding school together,
aged ten. I was not at all surprised to find that, like
me, she has the most vivid memories surrounding the
arrival of the post: the staircase, the old chest, the
anxious craning over the banisters for that glimpse of a
familiar envelope or handwriting. ‘There was one time
when I did not hear from my parents for nearly three
months,’ she recalls. ‘I thought they must be dead.’
Now an English literature academic, she believes that
her chosen field of expertise – eighteenth century
epistolatory novels and letters – is no accident.
Like that of our mothers, the experience of diplomatic
children is enormously varied. ‘The myth is that
diplomatic life, with all the travelling, new places, new
faces, is attractive and exciting for children,’ wrote
Jane Ewart-Biggs, ‘but I believe that nothing could
be further from the truth.’ Although the necessity of
changing houses, schools, friends, food and even
languages every few years can be problematic for
many children, others happily adapt.
My own feelings, while principally positive, are not
wholly uncomplicated. I was brought up in Spain (in
Madrid and Bilbao) and in Singapore. My memories
of both places are startlingly happy. In Bilbao, when I
was six, we lived in an apartment overlooking the sea. I
learnt not only to speak but to read and write Spanish;
bizarrely, I came top in Spanish and bottom in English.
I became unhealthily obsessed with Velazquez and the
gorier paintings of Goya. The teaching was somewhat
old-fashioned, even for those days, and I was required
to write essays on subjects like ‘My Father’s Job’,
‘My Wonderful Mother’ and ‘My Wider Family’. To my
parents’ mingled pride and dismay, I wrote page after
page of repetitive, banal drivel in laboriously crafted
script, full of curls and flourishes, which I insisted they
read.
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Adv p001-03B Practice Test B.indd 6
In Singapore, when I was eight, my brother and I ran
wild in a tropical garden filled with bougainvillaea and
frangipane trees. We swam in jellyfish-infested seas
and went barefoot for two years. I wrote my first stories
and it was always hot. England was a far away, drizzle-
grey dream, from whence letters and comics turned
up occasionally, as emotionally distant as the moon.
The utter despair, which I experienced two years later,
when I was sent to boarding school there, has stayed
with me all my life.
Adults are often tempted to believe that, because
children are not yet physically or emotionally mature,
they do not experience the ‘big’ emotions of grief
or rage in quite the same way that we do. The pain I
experienced on being separated from my family was
like a bereavement. For many children in boarding
school for the first time, it is the nights which are the
worst, but for me it was always the mornings. I would
wake up in the cold first light to see the stark little
chest of drawers at the foot of my bed, and beyond
it the melancholy autumn beech leaves, dripping and
tapping at the window panes. Then I would hide under
the bedclothes, sick to my stomach at the thought of
another day to get through.
After half a term of this complete misery – after which I
was supposed to have ‘settled in’ like everyone else –
in some trepidation, I wrote a letter: ‘Mummy, Mummy,
Mummy, Oh my Mummy ...’ it began. I don’t remember
the exact wording of the rest of the letter, but I was sure
that the hidden message which lay behind these words,
the plea to be taken away, could not be mistaken. It was
the only letter to which, although I doubtless received
a letter back, I never received a reply. So I stayed at
school and learnt to survive.
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 31 What is the main theme of the first paragraph?
A the children’s fear of something bad happening to their parents
B the importance of letters in the lives of a boarding school pupil
C the close friendships made by boarding school children at school
D the fact that the children of diplomats attended similar schools

32 What did Jane Ewart-Biggs believe about diplomats’ children?

A They love the excitement of a life full of change.
B They are often unhappy.
C They adjust to change more easily than other children.
D Their happiness depends on their mothers.

33 What point does the writer make about her schooling in Spain?
A She was very unsuccessful at school.
B She developed artistic skills.
C She felt uncomfortable at school there.
D She was good and bad in unexpected areas.

34 Why did the writer’s parents experience dismay when they read her schoolwork?
A What she wrote was uninteresting.
B She seemed to be learning little at school.
C She exaggerated her family’s importance.
D Her handwriting was very poor.

35 The writer’s initial feeling about boarding school can best be summed up as
A extremely angry.
B very cold.
C desperately unhappy.
D rather ill.

36 How did the writer’s parents respond to the letter described in the last paragraph?
A They ignored her pleas.
B They refused her request.
C They told her that she’d learn to survive.
D They were too busy to reply to her.

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