AZURA ENGLISH CENTER MID-TERM EXAMINATION 2021

OFFICIAL TEST LISTENING AND READING TEST

(9-page test) Time limit: 1 hour 15

minutes

Full name: …………………………………..

Class: Pre IELTS 5

SECTION 1: LISTENING (22 points)

The listening part will last for around 7 minutes. You will be given 3 minutes to read the
questions beforehand and 5 minutes to transfer your answer into the google form.

PART 1: Listen and answer questions 1 to 10.

★ Questions 1 - 4: Listen to the recording of three students talking to their tutor

about the presentation they are planning. Circle the best letter among A, B, or C.
(1 point each)

1. The topic of the presentation is

A. how mobile phones are designed.

B. the risks caused by mobile phones.

C. how mobile phones are used.

2. The introduction explains the

A. dangers of mobile phones.

B. importance of mobile phones.

C. importance of understanding the dangers of mobile phones.

3. On the second slide, the students are planning to

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 A. point out some different kinds of risks.

B. explain why mobile phones are dangerous.

C. mention ways to avoid the risks.

4. The tutor suggests

A. not discussing the dangers of mobile phones.

B. discussing the benefits of mobile phones.

C. having an argument.

★ Questions 5 - 7: Listen to the next part of the recording and complete the
information for each slide. Write ONE WORD ONLY. (1 point each)

Slide 1 Slide 2 Slide 3

- Introduction - Health - (7) _____________

for avoiding
- (5)____________ - (6) _____________
dangers
of using mobile
- Security
phones

★ Questions 8 - 10: Listen to the last part of the recording and complete the
sentences. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER. (1
point each)

Note: In order for google form to easily mark your answers, numbers up to nine
should always be written in words, anything higher than nine can be written in
numerals.

8. The actual talk will last for ______________________.

9. Each student will speak for _____________________.

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 10. The slides must all have the ___________________.

PART 2: Write down the 12 names you hear. Each will be spelled out two times. (1 point
each)

E.g. 0. Brian Singer, Kowolski

1. ………….. 7. …………..

2. ………….. 8. …………..

3. ………….. 9. …………..

4. ………….. 10. …………..

5. ………….. 11. …………..

6. ………….. 12. …………..

SECTION 2: READING (30 points)

The reading part will take place for around 50 minutes. You will be given 5 minutes to
transfer your answer into the google form.

PART 1: Read and answer questions 1 to 10. (1 point each)

A. The last time I went to a restaurant was about 2 months ago. My wife and I wanted
to celebrate our wedding anniversary with a good meal so we went to an expensive
Italian restaurant in downtown Lisbon. We both had pasta to start and for the main
course my wife ordered a steak and I chose fish. For dessert, we both ate chocolate
cake topped with fresh cream. Delicious!

B. I went to a restaurant yesterday evening with my sister's children. It wasn't very

expensive and the menu was very limited. We all had a burger and French fries, and
drank cola. It wasn't very good.

C. My boyfriend loves spicy food so this restaurant was perfect. The waiters were all
really friendly and polite, and they played traditional sitar music which was very

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 relaxing. The menu offered vegetarian dishes as well as meat dishes served with rice
and a sauce - it depended on how hot you wanted it! I chose a mild beef curry but
my boyfriend had a lamb 'vindaloo' - he also drank 2 liters of water!!

D. My class at the university went there last weekend. It's a very popular type of
restaurant in my country. It generally offers one type of food (a kind of bread with
cheese and tomato sauce) which you then choose what ingredients to add on top of it.
I asked for olives and mushrooms on mine and my classmates each had something
different so we could taste a piece of each person's meal.

1. In which text did the person go there for a special occasion?

2. In which text did the person visit an Indian restaurant?

3. In which text did the person eat pizza?

4. In which text did the person eat fast food?

5. In which text did someone eat seafood?

6. In which text did the person talk about the atmosphere of the
restaurant?

7. Which restaurant was cheap?

8. In which text didn't the person enjoy their meal?

9. In which text did someone eat a very hot dish?

10. In which text did the person have a vegetarian meal?

PART 2: Read about a newly-wed couple, Richard and Victoria. Then decide
whether the following statements are true (T) or false (F). (1 point each)

Considering their wedding cost over $20,000 and took a year and a half to organize, you
would be surprised to hear that Richard and Victoria Hammond now intend to forget it. Well,
almost.

"It was a wonderful wedding, an unbelievable day," says Victoria. "But we have so much we
want to do together now, we are both looking to the future." Her husband, banker and
amateur race driver Richard, agrees. "Both our minds are now fixed firmly on the future. I'll

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never forget our wedding ceremony or the reception we had at a cliff-side hotel afterwards,
but there's so much we want, so many hopes. Our marriage is so much more important than
the wedding."

"At the moment, we are still living with my parents," explains Victoria, "so our first wish is to
find our own place. We intend to start looking for a new house with all the modern
conveniences in the suburbs in the new year." Both Victoria and her husband Richard have a
lot of siblings. Do they intend to add to the extended Hammond family? "We plan on having
two or three children ourselves," Richard tells me. "Victoria is just wonderful with children
and I can get 3 years of paternity leave from my work, which is just perfect."

The young couple has just returned from a two-week honeymoon spent in an authentic
Scottish castle. Both the newly-weds are big travel lovers and Richard hopes this will
continue. "I would like to go travelling as much as possible together. Travelling with someone
else is such a sharing experience. I think it's sad to experience all the wonderful places in the
world and have no-one else there." Victoria also has another great travel ambition that she
might have to do alone. "I have always been fascinated by safari and my real wish is to go on
safari. Richard has no interest in wildlife though."

And what about the marriage itself? In a world with such a high divorce rate, how do Richard
and Victoria hope to avoid all the problems that beset so many other couples? Richard
explains thoughtfully that "our ambition is to always talk to each other. If you stop
communicating, what chance do you have?" His wife goes along with that completely. "I
hope that we can speak about things, but also not expect everything to be easy. I think many
people expect the wedding to be the end of getting to know each other. I think it's the start."

1. Victoria and Richard have been married for about a year and a half.

2. They got married in a dramatic location.

3. The wedding was expensive.

4. Their first ambition is to find a house to live in.

5. Victoria wants an old-fashioned house.

6. They both have many brothers and sisters.

7. Richard can temporarily leave his job to look after his children.

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 8. Richard and Victoria have identical tastes regarding vacations.

9. Richard hopes to make talking an important part of their marriage.

10. Victoria thinks she now knows Richard sufficiently well.

PART 3: Read and answer questions 1 to 10. (1 point each)

TWISTED LIGHT

A. Why is your mobile phone or wireless signal so slow? If you ask your service provider,
they'll tell you that it's the bandwidth. We're running out of signal space on the wireless
spectrum. All wireless communications travel through radio or optical frequencies: your TV
or radio programmes, your GPS device that helps you find your way, your mobile and
smartphone, laptop and wirelessly connected PC. The demands from users and industry on a
limited resource, the wireless spectrum, are growing daily and are closely regulated. The
reason is that two users cannot use the same signal: think about radio stations, which have to
operate on different frequencies otherwise they cause interference with each other. Likewise,
mobile phone operators cannot transit over the same frequency in the same market at the
same time. Government-controlled agencies grant licences to use the wireless spectrum but if
a wireless company wants to add more spectrum to its service to boost its capacity, it's likely
to be disappointed as there isn't much more available. What is needed is a way of pushing
more data through the same amount of bandwidth.

B. Now scientists may have found a way of manipulating light waves to carry more
information: potentially enough for users to be able to download a film onto a smartphone in
a single second. By twisting light waves, scientists could possibly transmit data at speeds of
2.56 terrabits per second: that's 85,000 times faster than the 30 megabits per second currently
possible. To put it another way, this is the same as transmitting 70 DVDs through the air in
about a second. Researchers based in America, China, Israel and Pakistan have built on
previous research from Sweden, which negates the need for more bandwidth by making
better use of the spectrum. The basis of the research is to manipulate the properties of light.

C. One property of light is wavelength: lasers, radio waves, microwaves are simply different
wavelengths of light. Light is made up of photons and photons have two other properties that
define a beam of light: spin angular momentum and orbital angular momentum. A good way
of thinking about how photons travel is to think of the orbit of a planet: it spins around on its

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axis (spin angular momentum), and at the same time the planet is also revolving around the
sun (orbital angular momentum). The latter force means that light can be twisted around its
axis of travel to take the shape of a spiral or a corkscrew. At the centre of the spiral, the light
waves cancel each other out, leaving darkness in the middle, called an optical vortex. When
light travels, it is formed into a spiral shape and it can be manipulated. There are infinite
possibilities for ways in which the photon can be made to spiral: clockwise,
counterclockwise, tight spirals or loose ones. Each of these spiral states can be uniquely
identified but, more importantly, for wireless communication, the spirals can be wrapped up
within each other — or multiplexed — into a single beam. The beam can be transmitted and
unwound at the receiving end to get the data streams back out again, essentially doubling or
trebling or even quadrupling the bandwidth.

D. Scientists have been twisting light since the 1970s, and the spin angular momentum of
waves is already manipulated in standard wireless communication. For years, Bo Thide of the
Swedish Institute of Space Physics theorised that the orbital angular momentum could be used
to create the spiral signal or as Thiele calls it a 'radio vortex'. Then in an experiment in
Venice, his team transmitted two signals simultaneously on the same frequency over a
distance of 442 metres. Following on from this, researchers in America, China, Israel and
Pakistan, led by Alan Wilner, twisted together eight light data streams, each stream with its
own level of orbital angular momentum twist. One of the streams was transmitted as a thin
stream while the others were transmitted around the outside. The data beam was then sent to a
receiver and untwisted to recover the data.

E. The achievement is very exciting for developers of wireless network technology as the
useful spectrum of frequencies is largely used up. The orbital angular momentum model
would allow for an infinite number of data transmissions without taking up any more of the
spectrum. There is a problem, however: researchers can only transmit the data stream one
metre, which is an insignificant distance for communication purposes. The short transmission
range is due to turbulence in the atmosphere, which disrupts the signal as the light hits air
molecules. But the scientists are planning to be able to send the beam considerably further.
One idea is to create links every kilometre to extend the network. Another is to build high-
speed satellite communication links where the atmospheric problems would not affect the
signal. Another possibility is to adapt the technology for fibre-optic use, the way data is
currently transmitted over the Internet. Unfortunately, at this point standard fibre-optic cables

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are not capable of carrying multichannel signals and fibre-optic cables that can carry the
signal experience problems of interference between channels as they carry data with high bit
rates.

F. Nevertheless, exploiting the orbital angular momentum gives scientists options that could
lead to significant increases in data transfer; even a modest increase in the existing data
transfer rate is worthwhile. Furthermore, very often technology is pulled along by innovative
research so a novel solution to carrying the data-rich signal may not be far behind.

★ Questions 1-6

The passage has six paragraphs labelled A-F

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-F in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

1. changing light waves to increase capacity

2. a practical demonstration of the new technology

3. use of the wireless spectrum needing to be monitored closely

4. overcoming the problem of the short range of the new signal

5. improvements in data transmission possibly leading to technological breakthroughs

6. the prospect of saving people a lot of time

★ Questions 7-11

Complete the summary using the list of words.

Choose your answers from the box below the summary and write them in boxes 7-11 on
your answer sheet.

bandwidth multiplexing

atmospheric interference wireless spectrum

light waves spirals

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 novel data streams

Researchers are looking for a way of using the (7) …………. more efficiently. One option is
to transmit signals that are twisted into (8) …………. and wrapping them together, or (9)
…………. them. This is still problematic on earth due to (10) …………. but scientists hope
that fibre-optic cable technology will catch up with the research breakthrough.

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