FCE TEST6

PADDLE POWER
The sleepy Welshtown of Bala is the white-water capital of Britain. Local residents
include Matt Cook, who once came fourth in the freestyle world championships ,
and former European freestyle champion Lynsey evans. ______ . These create a
natural playground for paddlers. One of the toughest sections of white water lies
on the Tryweryn river, which cuts straight through Bala. Graded four out of six (six
being impassable), it is a swirling mass of furious white water, interspersed by
slippery rocks. Used for the world championship, it's where the worls's best
paddlers pit their wits and strenght against nature. And later on today, it will be
the venue for my first white-water voyage.

Before allowing us near any white water, Sarah insists that we head out onto the
calm waters of Bala Lake to learn a few basic skills. ____________. As i paddle my
first few strokes, it causes my boat to bob about alarmingly. I'm having trouble
simply going in a straight line.

The most important thing you need to master before going out into the water is
the "low brace turn", which breaks down into three main elements. The first is
the 'sweep stroke'._______ .While doing this you need to 'edge'-or cause the
kayak to tip slightly towards the side that you wish to turn. This is achieved by
straightening the leg that corresponds to the direction in which you wish to turn,
while being your orther leg and bracing it against to the top of the boat.

Finally, you need to put your paddle into the 'brace' position: bar her against your
stomach, arms parallel with your shoulders. The idea is that if at this point you
find yourself tipping over too far, you can use your paddle to prevent the kayak
turning over.______________. I flounder around in the freezing cold lake like an
ant stuck in a paddle, and my breath is snatched away.

After we eventually master the basics, it's time to tackle some world
championship level white water, on the Tryweryn. __________. I can hardly hear
myself think. The first section of the course involves crossing a segment of high-
speed water punctuated by slippery stone slabs. This is where the 'edging'
technique i learnd earlier comes into play.

The next section involves traversing an even angrier patch of white water. All i
remember is paddling frantically through a narrow corridor of rocks, as the water
slashes up in my face and my boat bounces its way through the swirling
torrent._______. Eventually, things slow down slightly and i'm able to take stock.
This is it. I'm off and running: racing down the river at ridiculous speed.
Awelsome!

A. A stiff breeze is blowing across this massive open space.

B. Basically, you use the paddle to turn the boat sharply in the opposite
direction.
C. Despite my understandable trepidation, Sarrah is confident that she can get
me to complete it in one piece.
D. Despite my best efforts, however, i end up in the water almost
immediately.
E. Only a shout of "Right paddle!" from Sarah saves me from going over
again .
F. Standing on the bank, psyching myself up, the sound of the ranging water
crashing over rocks is deafening.
G. They're attrated here by the huge number of rivers that cascade down from
the surrounding moutains..
 Test 7 : I RUN UP MOUNTAINS
Some years ago, I decided to climb Mount Aconcagua, in the Andes, which usually
takes three days. I didn’t have that sort of time – so I thought about how it could
be done more quickly. In the end, I managed it in four hours and twenty-five
minutes. Since then I’ve climbed several mountains this way, including the ‘seven
summits’ the highest mountains on each continent. __d____. When I climbed
Mount Everest, the only nutrition I took with me was carbohydrate gels, salted
crackers and about three litres of rosehip tea. It took me sixteen hours and forty-
two minutes to go up – a new speed record on northern route.

I have also set speed records on Antarctica’s Mount Vison, the Carstenz Pyramid
in New Guinea and other summits. Attempts such as these needs months of
training and preparation, as with any serious sport. To build up strength, I
sometimes haul an enormous tractor tyre behind me while running uphill.
____b____. I call it ‘the beast’ because of the aggressive energy I build during
these training sessions.

The psychological side of training is as important as the physical. I use foreign

languages to affect my mental state and enhance my performance. I shout things
out in these, even though I know there’s nobody to hear me. I’m Austrian and
speak only a few worlds of the Russian language. ______e___. I couldn’t tell you
why that should be the case.

Whereas Russian is full of energy and strength, English is a language that calms
me and helps me to focus. Two years ago, I was climbing in Nepal and knew that I
was in danger from avalanches. I noticed that I kept saying to myself: ‘Hey man,
take care!’______c__. It was as if one part of me had stepped outside myself to
make sure I made the right decisions, and that phrase helped.
For other people, this might sound ridiculous, but I don’t care. In high altitudes,
any mistake can be lethal, and I know how it feels to face death. Seventeen years
ago, when I was twenty-four, I was climbing with a friend in the Karakoram
mountains in Pakistan at about 18,000 feet. __f___. It was the sound of an
avalanche, which hit us and broke my right thighbone.

My friend pulled me out of the snow, but although we had survived, we realized
he wouldn’t be able to drag me back to the base camp. I said: ‘Go, just leave me
here.’ And he left me behind. I lay alone in the mountains for days. Sometimes I
hallucinated, orther times I shouted. _____a____ Finally, my friend came back
with other climbers and saved me. I thought extreme mountaineering was too
risky at first, but slowly my perspective changed.

A. All kinds of songs I’d never thought twice about ran though my mind.
B. I can drag this for four hours at a time.
C. I couldn’t stop repeating that.
D. I managed to get up all of those without any oxygen or tents.
E. It’s the one I use when I need to push forward through heavy snow,
however.
F. Suddenly, there was an incredible rumble up above us.
G. These clearly came as quite a shock.
 Test 5: I’m the last speaker of my language
I come from Chile and I’ve always been interested in my country’s history and
culture. It all started when I was about eight and I started to learn about the
country’s indigenous inhabitants. When I fisrt found out about the native people
of Patagonia, in the far south, I had no idea that my mother’s family was from
there and that her grandfather had been a Selk’nam. The last speaker of selk’nam
died in 1974. I really wanted to learn Selk’nam, so relatives on my father’s side
who live in Punta Arenas, the southernmost town in mainland Chile, sent me
dictionaries. ______. But I had no idea what these sounded like.

Then, when I was about eleven, I saw a television programme about the Yagan
people who lived on the island of Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of South
America. The programme interviewed two sisters, Cristina and Ursula Calderón,
and said they were the only two speakers of their language left. _______. Only
later did I discover that the two languages are quite different; that the two people
couldn’t communicate with each other.

One day, my mother told me that although she was born in the capital, Santiago,
her grandfather was a Selk’nam from the North of Tierra del Fuego. Nobody had
ever told me anything about this before. When I asked why, she said that when
she was young she had been teased for looking different, and so she had just kept
quite about it.

When I was a thirteen, I went to the south for the first time on my own to meet
Cristina Calderón . _________. I discovered that there used to be four thousand
Selk’nam in Tierra del Fuego. They were hunters of wild cats and foxes. The Yagan
lived futher south and travelled by canoe all the way down to Cape Horn, but the
Selk’nam moved on foot.
Settlers from the north arrived in the nineteenth century and introduced diseases
like measles and typhoid, which affected the local people very badly. Now, there’s
no way back. I got hold of some recordings of a Selk’nam shaman from the 1960s
and started to study them. ________. Gradually, however, I began to understand
how the worlds sounded and began to reproduce them.

The Selk’nam express themselves using lots of prefixes and suffixes, and the
sounds are guttural, nasal and tonal. ________. For example, it has lots of
different words for the weather. The hardest thing in Selk’nam, however, is the
verbs – they all sound a bit same. There are some English loanwords, such as
‘bread’ and ‘money’. Other are descriptive: ‘read’ translates as ‘playing with
words’ and ‘drum’ as ‘vibrating leather’. Then there are words for modern things
– for ‘telephone’, you have to say ‘speak from afar’, and ‘car’ is ‘go on four
wheels’. I speak the language well now. Cristina’s husband spoke Selk’nam and
apparently I sound just like him.

Because music is something that reaches lots of people, I started composing

traditional sing in Selk’nam and formed a band with two friends. This meant that
they had to learn some words, too. _____. I need to teach my language to more
people because if something happened to me, it would die out all aver again.

A. I felt sudden desiren to learn that one too.

B. It was slow beacause I had no one to talk to.
C. Yagán is quite different, however, because it has more vocabulary.
D. This meant that I was able to start learning words, verbs, and expressions.
E. This was good because I didn’t want to be thw only one.
F. These turned out to be rather hard for me to pronounce, however.
G. The trip seemed the best way to find out about my roots.
 Test 8: Going up in a glider
Going through all the theory of how everything works and what to do once
airborne seems pretty simple. I’m not so keen, though, on the instructions about
what to do in an emergency._____. At least I’m wearing a parachute!

The gilder is connected by rope to a light aircraft as we’re pulled up into the air. A
bumpy start along the field and we’re off and up. ‘I like it when people scream’
were Dan’s words on the ground. ______. But I am fiercely gripping my stomach,
which is doing somersaults. Once we’re up to around 1,500 feet, the rope is
detached with a clunk from the underside of the glider and we’re free.

It’s a strange feeling – there’s a sense of safety when the rope is attached to the
aeroplane._______. ‘I am in control’, Dan tells me. He’s not attempting to be
heroic; this is glider talk. ‘You are in control,’ I respond. Thankfully I’m not or I
doubt we’d be swooping through the peaceful skies so smoothly and effortlessly.
Something you notice straightaway is the lack of an engine, which results in an
eerie silence.

The weather conditions aren’t idea, as it’s an all-too-familiar grey English day.
_____. But I’m told that, with perfect weather conditions of a clear windy day and
lots of cumulus cloud, we’d be able to catch the thermals and rise, staying up in
the air for longer. It’s possible to glider as far as Scotland and back again with the
right conditions!

In a glider both pilot and passenger have a set of controls, so either person can
take control. The passenger can also ‘follow through’ with the controls, basically
lightly touching all their own controls and feeling what the pilot is doing.
________. So when Dan tells me ‘You are in control’ and I repeat ‘I am in control,’
I’m glad he can’t see the terror in my face. After some jumpy manoeuvres to keep
the glider at a ‘normal gliding attitude,’ where the horizon remains at a constant
level, I’m just getting into the swing of it when Dan regains control to bring us in
for landing.

Landing a glider is much calmer than other types of aircraft. _________. You
descend and approach the landing area, deploying the spoiler ( flaps on the
wings) to weaken the air flow, and ease the glider lower until the wheels make
contact and you’re gently bumping along the field. I absolutely loved it and can’t
wait to get back up in the air.

A. This doesn’t make a lot of difference to the experience for me.

B. Release the safely belts and jump out seems to be the only response
possible.
C. This has been the limit of my involvement so far.
D. Once it goes, I feel I want to hold onto something in case we start falling o
the ground.
E. He tells me that it’s too cloudy for those acrobatics, however, and relief
washes over me.
F. I manage not to do it, however.
G. It’s much less sudden and you notice the absence of engine roar.
TEST 7 PAPER 1 : READING

Time flies
How many times do you hear people say they don’t have time to do something?
All the time! ‘I meant to do that but I didn’t have time!’ is something we say or
think far too often; it is the number one excuse for not doing something we
should have done. ______ This is a relationship which has also changed a lot
through history. Think about all the machines and time-saving gadgets that are
now a part of our every life that people living 100 or even 50 years ago had to do
without: washing machines, vacuum cleaners, microwaves and dishwashers are
just a few. We have mobile phones now so that we can contact each other at any
time no matter where we are. The internet gives us information we could possibly
want as well as providing instant communication with other people anywhere in
the world.____________________

The idea of using time efficiently has become increasingly important in the
Western world. People in wealthy developed countries are often expected to do
several jobs at once. At a time when unemployment is high and international
competition is strong there is a lot of pressure on companies and individual
workers to be as efficient as possible and to get as much work done as possible in
the limited time available.______. This concept of time pressure has also been
passed on to the less developed countries where many of the goods for
developing countries are made. In places like India and Mexico people often have
to work very longshifts, sometimes as much as 12 to 16 hours a day, or even for
48 hours without a break. Goods have to be produced to meet demand in the
developed world and this demand puts a lot of pressure on workers.

Time is increasingly becoming a commodity like any other.________. Do you use

the self-service check out in the supermarket? Have you bought furniture and
then assembled it yourself at home? Have you spent time setting up a new
computer? If you have then you have been working for free. It is impossible to
buy and sell time these days. For example, you can pay someone else to do your
shopping for you or walk your dog for you if you don’t have time, but it won’t be
cheap. A positive reflection of how our relationship with time is changing is that in
some cities there are things called time banks where you can exchange time with
other busy people._________. You will then be paid back in time when you need
it. No money changes hands but every one has to pay into the bank in time.

The biggest challenge we face in our personal lives is how not to waste time and
make the most of the time we have. Accoding to recent research 20% of people
regularly cancel social arrangements because of a lack of time and men do this
more often than women. However, cancelling social arrangements can have a
serious negative impact because it reduces our quality of life; it can stop us doing
what we want, which can lead to unhappiness.___________. This doesn’t have to
be something active or sociable; it might be finding time to read a good book. By
making sure we don’t miss out on the things we enjoys and value we are likely to
be happier and more satisfield with life in general.

The key to making the most of our time, both at work and in our personal live, is
prioritizing. It is important to recognise which things need to be done immediately
and which can wait until later._________. You might think that revising for an
exam or doing homework at the last minute is a good way of saving time but the
results will not be as good. Finally, psychologists say that people who are always
on time tend to be organized and have everything under control. Those who are
usually early are likely to be anxious and in need of being in control all the time.
People who are often late are probably just disorganized, although it might be
that they are consciously or unconsciously rebelling against our time obsessed
society.

A. In spite of these new inventions we stills run out of time.

B. If you have some free time you can volunteer to do something for someone
else like wait for a delivery or water their plants while they are on holiday.
C. As a result working hours have increased by 25% in the USA and in Japan
workers sometimes sleep in the office.
D. Time is money and nowadays many companies try to save time and money
by making their customers work for free.
E. Time is a very precious commodity and humans have aways had a very
close relationship with it.
F. If you try to do too many things at once you are more likely to make
mistakes and waste time going back to correct them.
G. This doesn’t mean we should put off things which are boring or difficult just
because we don’t want to do them.
H. It is important to find time for ourselves to do the thingd which matter
most to us.
TEST 8 PAPER 1: READING
Why did you decide to buy a holiday home here?

We have always loved travelling and spending time in different countries on

holidays. It made sense to us to have somewhere which was our own, where we
could go back to again and again whenever we liked._________. It has everything
we were looking for moutains, beautiful scenery, good countryside for walking
and there are towns and a major city nearby. We looked at some very remote
places but decided we wanted to be in a town. We enjoy being able to walk down
to the shops in the morning to get fresh bread and walk to a restaurant for dinner
in the evening. It was important to us that it was easy to get to for short holidays
too so the fact that there is an airport nearby was a key factor. ____. We love
both of our houses even though they are very different in style and in very
different places.

How did you find this particular property?

We did some research into the area we liked and we looked at adverts on the
internets, which gave us an idea of what was available. Then we went to an
agency which specialized in property in the area where we were looking. They
were really helpful and in three days they took us to a number of different houses
as well as some empty plots of land with potential for building a new property.
___________. We spent time talking to the couple who were selling it and looking
around the garden as well as the house. It’s not a big house; there are only two
bedrooms; but it is exactly what we were looking for. It ha a fantastic terrace with
views of the the mountains and because it is high up we can see right over the
town too. It’s very picturesque. It has a wonderful big fireplace too so is nice and
warm in water. In fact it is a beautiful place to have a holiday at any time of the
years.
What do you like most about owning a second home?

____________. We spend lots of holidays here ourselves and sometimes friends

and family join us, but we also let friends and family stay in it by themselves if
they want to. It means the house is occupied more, and the more it is used the
better. It would be a shame if it were empty a lot of the time. We also like that we
have met someone good friends here.__________. It means we don’t feel like
strangers when we’re here. Another thing we like is that there is always
somewhere new to visit and explore as well as favourite places to go back to.

Have you ever had any problems with the house?

Fortunately no, nothing serious but it is always a worry when it is empty for long
periods of time and we are so far away. We are lucky to have helpful neighbours
and friends who live nearby who can keep an eye on the house for us. In the very
cold weather last winter the pipe to the outside tap froze and split but the
postman noticed and sealed it for us. We had a problem with the hot water tank
once too. We arrived one time and turned it on and suddenly water started
pouring down the stairs. _______. We were able to get a plumber to come and
look at it and then arranged for a new one to be fitted so it wasn’t too bad. One
advantage of not always being here is that we have been able to have both the
bathrooms redecorated. Some friends of ours did all the work for us and it
worked out really well.

Would you like to move and live here permanently?

No. we have too much that we would miss back home: good friends and
family._________. We might come for a month or more at a time instead of a
week or two as we do now. But we bought it as a holiday home or second home
not somewhere to live all the time. We like having both our homes and don’t
want to give up either of them. We are vary lucky that we can enjoy spending
time in two lovely houses.

A. We visited this area a coupe of times and we really liked it.

B. That wasn’t a very good start to our holiday but it is lucky it happened to us
and not friends of ours .
C. Next year we will both retire and then we will be able to spend much more
time here.
D. And finally we were looking for somewhere in contrast to where we live the
rest of the year.
E. The house we now own was actually the last one we saw and we instantly
knew it was perfect.
F. The weather is usually better than what we’re used to at home with lots of
blue sky and sunshine, even in winter.
G. It is so nice each time we come out to have a group of people to spend time
with and social events to go to.
H. We love that we can share it with our friends and family.
TEST 2 PAPER 1 : READING

Technical theater
When we go to the theater we go to see the actors and their performance; the
stage is the central focus point; it is where everything happens, or at least
everything that we the audience are supposed to see. But there is so much more
to putting on a performance than just the acting cast. There is a whole team of
people who we never see but without whom no production would be possible. We
spoke to Adam James who has worked in technical theater since the age of 14 to
find out what goes on behind the scenes and how he got involved.

I was 12 years old when I first saw a show in my local leisure centre. I was
fascinated by the fact that everything came in about ten lorries and they basically
built a theater from scratch. _________. I got to know some of the people
working on the stage management team and they let me shadow them while they
worked. I met the stage manager and after watching the team work and talking to
him I decided that was what I wanted to do as a job. I didn’t know anything about
work in the theater industry so I started studying and learning about the
job._________. However, what I really wanted was to get involved and start
working as part of a stage management team. Once I was 14 I managed to get
some work experience and I started to miss school sometimes and go to work at
the theater instead.

I left school when I was 16 and because I had quite a lot of experience I was get a
job as an assistant stage manager in a theater in London. I worked there for about
a year and then did some freelance work in Cornwall and went on tours around
the country.__________. Working on tour was intense but really good fun. A
typical Monday would see us arrive at about 8 o’clock in the morning and open up
the lorries. We would have some coffee and then when everyone had arrived we
would spend the day building the show. In the afternoon the cast would arrive
and I would show them around so they knew where they could make quick
costume changes and things like that.________-. Once the show had started it
was just a case of watching and supervising and letting the show happen around
us. As stage manager I was always the first and the last person on stage. Working
on tour can be stressful as you have to keep track of where everyone is for health
and safety reasons and monitor everything that goes on back stage and keep to
time. Then once the show is over you have to check everything that needs
repairing or re-doing before the next performance.

After a couple of years touring I decided to return to London and go to college to

study technical theater. I studied for a year but I realized that it wasn’t very
useful to me. I had learnt a lot more from my years working._______. I felt like I
was already established in the industry so I decided to leave college and got a job
in a theater. When finding work in technical theater first hand experience is much
more important than qualifications. ___________. I did some more freelance
work in London for a while and now I work for a production company.

You can have up to 20 people working on any one performance so there’s a real
team spirit. There are people working in lighting, sound, wardrobe, wigs, props,
carpentry and stage management. Apart from the technical side we also have to
look after the actors. As stage manager it’s my job to meet and greet the cast on
their first day and make sure they know where everything is and have everything
they need. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was try to control 2,500 primary
school children. I really like what I do. There are of course a number of
disadvantages; I don’t like the hours and the disruption to my personal life that
working evenings can cause.________. But I would highly recommend it to
others; it’s very enjoyable and always different; you never have the same day
twice and there’s something very exciting and beautiful about live theater.

A. It was a course for people who didn’t know anything about the theater.
B. The more I found out about technical theater the more interested I
became.
C. Also there’s quite a lot of instability and insecurity to the job and the
money is not always good.
D. While the cast were getting ready we would get on with any necessary
maintenance jobs.
E. I was very curious as I watched the whole thing being put together and I
found it hugely exciting.
F. Working in a large theater is much more difficult because there are so
many more people to organize.
G. The work was quite sporadic but the money was good; in one month I could
earn enough to last me six months.
H. Theaters are looking for people with proven ability and who know what
they are doing, and what interests them the most on your CV is your last
job.
TEST 3 PAPER 1 : READING

Being a Good Manager

Being a good manager of people requires excellent communication and
interpersonal skills. All people are different and in a working environment there
wil aways be a great mix of personalities and skills. _________. Like with
everything in life though, experience brings knowledge and in my many years as
both an employee and a manager in various charity organisations I have come to
recognise the qualities and skills which make an efficient manager.

I’ve worked with lots of different people in the past and I think I have experienced
all sorts of different types of manager. There are those who are very controlling
and always telling you what to do while at the other extreme there are others
who are nowhere to be seen. ___________. I think it’s important to let people
work on their own and not interfere too much; ideally you want to promote
assertiveness and self-confidence in your workers and if are always watching over
them and checking up on them they will not develop these skills. At the same
time it is not helpful to leave your workers completely alone. The manager is
there to oversee things and make sure everything runs smoothly, if employees
have a problem or need help they should always be able to ask for it, and the
manager should be able to provide it . A line manager who is not available to staff
when they need them is of no use at all.

To be an effective manager I think it is important to be optimistic and able to

instill a positive attitude in the workforce; the worst kind of manager is one who
allows or even encourages a bad feeling in the workplace. __________________.
As a result we all lacked confidence in the whole organization and the office
became a very negative environment to work in. It’s a manager’s responsibility to
keep workers spirits high and create a pleasant atmosphere. Having a naturally
optimistic and friendly personality helps.
The best types of manager are those who can accept the responsibility they have
been given. If something goes wrong a good manager will take the blame; they
are responsible for the team and if the team, or any individual within it, is not
performing well then it is ultimately the manager’s fault.__________. They must
also then do all they can to solve any unsatisfactory situations and deal with
dissatisfaction from higher up in the organisation on the team’s behalf.

One thing managers often do not do enough is give praise. Praise is a very
effective management tool and should be exploited as much as
possible.________. Managers who give a lot of praise are also in a much better
situation to criticise when work is not of a satisfactory standard. It is important
that employees receive positive as well as negative feedback on their
performance; the more feedback there is the more aware workers will be of what
is expected of them and positive feedback helps increase motivation. Connected
to this last point is the ability to judge on merit. Managers must be able to
separate their assessment of their work. It is really important to see team
member’s actions objectively. Any feelings of favouritism or discrimination can be
very harmful to the team.

Managers need to be able to recognise the strengths and weaknesses of their

employees and use them appropriately. This includes recognising their own
strengths and weaknesses.__________. Managers need to be flexible in their
approach to assigning work so that tasks are assigned to those best suited to
doing them. I have worked for an organisation where work was given to
individuals based on the time of the day they were available to work rather than
their personal expertise; this not only resulted in the jobs not being done well and
therefore reduced efficiency, but also great dissatisfaction among workers and
clients. For example, someone with excellent computer skills but poor public
speaking skills should not be asked to go into schools and universities to give
presentations. At the same time it is essential to share knowledge and experience
so that the teams as a whole develop existing skills and individuals learn new
ones._________. As the manager learns skills and gains useful information it is
important that they share it with the team. The manager should not be doing
tasks which could be done equally well by someone less qualified than
themselves. Where possible managers should delegate and occupy themselves
with higher level activities. However, it is also important that in times of crisis or
when the team is exceptionally busy, the manager should not feel themselves too
important to join situation.

A. This includes the manager passing on what they know.

B. They should never promise anything that is not possible as this will lead to
disappointment and undermine confidence in the company.
C. Now that I work as a manager myself I try to be neither too controlling nor
too distant.
D. Efficiently managing a team of people is no easy task and there will be
many challenging moments.
E. In the past I have worked in a office where my line manager was constantly
complaining about and criticising the directors of the company.
F. Managers should look for examples of good work and congratulate workers
accordingly.
G. Managers choose and develop their team and so must accept respon-
sibility for the bad as well as the good results of their efforts.
H. An efficient team makes the most of all the skills different individuals bring
to it.
FCE TEST 1: PAPER 1 READING 1 hour

The Wisdom of Birds by Tim Birkhead

Review by Stephen Moss

You wait for one history of ornithology to come along and a whole flock appears
over the horizon. _______. However, in the past few years a clutch of scientists,
journalists, taxonomists and birders (including myself) have turned their
attentions to this fascinating and complex topic.

One of the most exciting things about the study of birds is that it is not yet
complete. We may smile at the beliefs of our ancestors – such as the notion that
swallows spent their winter hibernating underwater – yet there is still so much
that we don’t know. Writing almost a century ago, the German-American
ornithologist Paul Bartsch drew attention to our ignorance about many aspects of
bird behaviour: ‘There are still many unsolved problems about bird life. Little, too,
is known about the laws and routes of migration, and much less about the final
disposition of the untold thousands which are annually produced .’__________.
For, despite great progress, modern bird studies often give rise to new and even
more complex inquiries.

Tim Birkhead is well qualified to examine the ways successive generations have
tried to answer the fundamental questions about birds. A professor at the
University of Sheffield, he specializes in two very different disciplines: the study of
animal behaviour and the history of science. _______. In it, he ranges from
Aristotle to modern sciencetists such as Peter Berthold, whose migration studies
have revealed much about how birds migrate round the wourld.

Unlike other histories of the subject, The Wisdom of Birds by Tim Birkhead does
not take a chronological approach. ______. In other hands this might have been
confusing, but Birkhead steers his narrative through this complex structure to tell
a compelling story.

He is clearly passionate, not just about the birds themselves, but also about the
people who have studied them, and the works they have produced. So The
Wisdom of Birds by Tim Birkhead is lavishly illustrated with examples of bird art,
including many from the early works of ornithology.__________.

If the book has a hero, it ia an unlikely but deserving one. Birkhead begins and
ends with a challenge to his colleagues : who is the greatest ever ornithologist?
________. But Birkhead’s own choice is an often neglected seventeenth-century
Englishman, John Ray. He launched the revolutionary concept of studying living
birds in the field, rather than dead ones in a museum.

______. John Ray travels trough time to be the guest of honour at an

International Ornithological Congress. As Birkhead says: ‘He would be amazed by
how much we know and, of course, by how much more there is still to learn
about birds.’ This is a fitting ending to a book that is one of the most entertaining,
informative and enthusiastic accounts of the history of ornithology, and of the
many different ways in which we have observed, studied and wondered about
birds.

A. These two interests come together in The Wisdom of Birds.

B. The Wisdom of Birds concludes with a striking image.
C. Much the same could be said today.
D. Some of them come in for particular criticism in the book.
E. These, and the fine production of the book itself, add immensely to the
reader’s satisfaction.
F. The subject was neglected for decades.
G. The names they come up with are strong contenders.
H. Instead, Brikhead explores ornithological themes such as birdsong, the
breeding cycle and migration, moving back and forth across the centuries.
FCE TEST 2 : PAPER 1 READING 1 hour
Aiming high
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