LISTENING

SECTION 1  —  Questions 1–10  —  TRACK 1

Questions 1–7

Complete the notes below.

Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

Stanmore’s Bank Student Package

Example      Answer
Type of account:  current account 

Student Package Bank Stanmore

Instant overdraft up to: 1 £

Overdraft may later be increased to: 2 £

Note: no fee or 3 charged on regular overdraft while a student

Card for use at 4

Cheque book and cheque 5

Note: 6 not automatically part of package – must apply separately

Initial deposit into account: minimum of 7 £

Questions 8–10

Choose THREE letters A–F

Which THREE things are acceptable forms of identification?

A  student registration form

B  letter from parents
C  letter from university
D  passport
E  electricity or gas bill
F  university student identity card

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SECTION 2  —  Questions 11–20  —  TRACK 2

Questions 11–15
Choose the correct letter, A, B or C.

Howchester Community Centre Association

11  This is the

A  first meeting of the association.
B  second meeting of the association.
C  third meeting of the association.

12  Howchester doesn’t currently have a

A  venue for big events.
B  large population.
C  Village Hall.

13  The speaker suggests that the village already has

A  a plot of land for the community centre.
B  enough sporting facilities.
C  an amateur dramatics group.

14  The association will have to change its

A  name.
B  legal status.
C  goals.

15  Much of the next year will be spent

A  raising money.
B  designing the building.
C  building the centre.

Questions 16–20

Answer the questions below.

Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS OR A NUMBER for each answer.

16  What will the first event be?

17  How much will a ticket to the first event probably cost?

18  How long will permanent officers remain in their positions?

19  What will the Treasurer have to open?

20  When will meetings be held each month?

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SECTION 3  —  Questions 21–30  —  TRACK 3
Complete the form below.

Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

Name: Arzu

Nationality: Turkish

Length of time learning English: 21         

CATEGORY COMMENT

Grammar: • Poor use of 22         

(i.e. heavy reliance on 23           )

• Is able to use 24 ‘         ’ successfully

• Verb endings often don’t 25          pronouns

• Large number of errors with 26         

• Inability to form 27          correctly

Vocabulary: • Some mistakes with 28         

• Her limited vocabulary needs to 29         

Pronunciation: • Unnatural pronunciation of ‘that’

• Too much 30          while talking

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SECTION 4  —  Questions 31–40  —  TRACK 4

Questions 31–36

Complete the sentences below.

Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.

SCREENPLAY WRITERS WORKSHOP

31  A ‘premise line’ is a script          in one sentence.

32  Jake’s mention of a ‘dynamic relationship adventure’, refers to a          .

33  The aim of screenplay formatting is to meet          .

34  Week 4 encourages writers to write          .

35  Characters should be          , consistent and three-dimensional.

36  After the course, participants have two weeks to work on their          .

Questions 37–40

Which aspect of the course relates to the following ideas?

A  group sessions
B  individual writing time
C  post-course action

Write the correct letter, A, B or C, next to questions 37–40.

37  twenty hours work per week    

38  communicating via email    
39  talking on the telephone    
40  not using cassette recorders    

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READING
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
Accounting for Taste
We consume books, movies, music, and visual art
primarily to fulfill the internal emotional needs that are
fundamental to our personalities. But we also make
choices about art based on a desire to carve out identities
for ourselves, to articulate the stories of our lives. By the
same token, we look for those stories in others. We also
feel intuitively that we can judge others by their tastes.
Unfortunately, those judgments are often wrong, largely
because we pay attention to the wrong things.
The living spaces of highly open people contain more
books, CDs, and DVDs – and their collections are more
eclectic – than their less open counterparts, Sam Gosling, a
psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, has found.
They enjoy discovering new artistic material and influencing
the tastes of others. ‘Openness correlates to a great range
of tastes,’ explains Stephen Dollinger, a psychologist at
Southern Illinois University. ‘These individuals are more
cultured and have a greater conception of what makes
great and interesting art.’ Less open people, meanwhile,
may be stuck on the tastes of their youth, watching
nostalgic movies and listening to classic rock.
Introverts, meanwhile – those reserved, thoughtful, self-
reliant types who draw their energy from spending time by
themselves – tend to take a contemplative, critical approach to
art and music. For them, form is more important than emotional
expression, according to research by the late University College
London psychologist Cyril Burt. Whereas extroverts enjoy
sensational art, introverts prefer more contemplative music
with highly developed formal elements.
People high in neuroticism – less emotionally-stable
people who are anxious, sensitive, and easily upset –
tend to be artistically creative and gravitate toward films,
songs, and literature often seen as romantic, according
to Burt’s research. They decorate their living spaces with
inspirational posters bearing messages like ‘Until you
spread your wings, you’ll never know how far you can fly.’
These self-affirmations help neurotic people manage their
tendency to worry and become blue, explains Gosling.
Neurotics use art to regulate their moods in the same way.
When feeling sad, they may be inclined to wallow in their
misery by choosing melancholic music, movies, or books.
Or, they may choose uplifting art to boost their mood.
One of the most surprising findings in the field of taste
research is that artistic preferences have a strong genetic
component. A study of 3,000 twins, for instance, revealed
that whether we like jazz or not is partially heritable. That
is not to say that there is a gene for liking jazz music the
way there are genes for eye colour. What may be inherited,
though, are particulars of personality and aspects of
intelligence that influence enjoyment of certain forms of art.
That differences in taste attitudes are heritable stands
to reason, given that personality itself is partly genetically
determined. Cognitive ability, another factor that influences
taste, is also partly genetic. We inherit such capacities
as attentional focus, memory, and speed and depth
of associative thinking. These skills may help a person
understand the complex and spontaneous nature of jazz,
free verse, improv comedy, and other art forms that require
mental flexibility.
If our taste preferences reflect our personalities, does
this mean we can accurately judge others based on their
tastes? We all form impressions based on people’s artistic
choices, confident that we can judge their personalities
based on the things they love. But decoding people based
on taste is not an exact science.
Personality types are not mutually exclusive – most of
us are a complex combination of many traits. An open-
minded taste hunter, for instance, may also have an
extrovert’s need to seek sensation. No one trait wholly
determines our tastes – various overlapping personality
traits each exert an influence, as do cognitive abilities like
language mastery and overall intelligence. Combined with
experiences and exposure, the result is the infinite variety
of preferences we see.
We make judgments about others’ tastes based on
stereotypes, explains Gosling. Some stereotypes are
correct. When Gosling asks his students to list their top 10
favourite songs, other students are able to match lists to
students with impressive accuracy. Rock fans truly are less
friendly, conservative, and religious, and more artistic and
anxious than fans of religious music. We assume classical
music fans are friendly, conscientious, and emotionally
stable – and for the most part, we’re right.
People judging others based on Facebook profiles,
which typically include catalogues of favourite books,
music, and movies, are able to accurately predict openness
and extroversion, but not emotional stability, Gosling
has found. And our stereotypes about fans of heavy
metal, electronic, pop, rap, and soul are considerably less
accurate, perhaps because inaccurate racial assumptions
cloud our judgment.
Another reason our judgments falter is that we focus
on the wrong cues. We wrongly assume, for instance,
that people with highly decorated and cluttered rooms
are more extroverted. We also assume such people are
more open, when really we should be looking for variety
in books and music, for books on art and poetry, and for
art supplies. We assume that rooms with stale air belong
to emotionally unstable people, when really we should be
scanning for inspirational posters.
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Questions 1–6

Classify the following as traits associated with

A  highly open people

B  introverted people
C  neurotic people

Write the correct letter A, B or C.

1  a desire to produce art    

2  an interest in the structure of artistic works    

3  a desire to change other people’s tastes    

4  an interest in many different kinds of art    

5  a need to control psychological states through art    

6  a clear idea of excellence in art    

Questions 7–9

Choose THREE letters A–F.

The list below gives various abilities which may be partially inherited.

Which THREE abilities are mentioned by the writer of the text?

A  the ability to create art

B  the ability to concentrate
C  the ability to quickly see links between ideas
D  the ability to play complicated music
E  the ability to understand other people’s tastes
F  the ability to think in a flexible way

Questions 10–13

Complete the summary of the last three paragraphs of Reading Passage 1.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

We rely on 10     when evaluating other people and their tastes. Although this can
be a good way of determining certain personality traits, it works poorly when it comes to
evaluating 11     . It’s possible that we hold 12     about certain types of music,
which can make our assessments inaccurate. We also tend to look at 13     about
somebody’s taste, rather than focusing on the important characteristics.

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READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14–26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
In 1998 two rival groups of scientists embarked on
research projects to measure the effects of gravity on the
expansion of the universe. Since the Big Bang 13.7 billion
years ago, the universe had been expanding. What was
unknown was whether this expansion would go on forever.
Was there too little mass in the universe to slow down
the expansion and it would continue forever? Or was the
amount of mass in the universe sufficient to not only slow
down the growth of the universe, but to eventually pull it
all back together to one point? Both teams got startling
results. Instead of slowing or continuing at a steady rate,
the universe was expanding faster and faster. A mysterious
energy was causing the universe to fly apart.
We have since established that the acceleration of the
expansion of the universe began about 9 billion years ago.
These findings were understandably shocking to scientists
who thought it most likely we lived in a universe which was
gently slowing down due to gravity. In order to determine
how fast the universe is expanding scientists use ‘standard
candles’. These are objects which we know always have
the same total brightness. The most reliable standard
candles are Type 1a supernovae. Because the mass of a star
which becomes a Type 1a supernova is always the same,
we know how bright the explosion which follows will be.
By measuring how much fainter the light from a Type 1a
supernova appears to us on Earth we know how far away
it must be.
However, we still need a way to measure the rate at
which these standard candles are moving away from us. To
do this, scientists look at the redshift of the light emitted
from the parent galaxy in which the Type 1a supernova
appeared. Redshift is the effect of the ‘stretching’ of light
which has travelled a long distance to reach us.
We know that light always travels at the same speed
through a vacuum – and that this speed doesn’t change
over time. However, the amount of energy in the light does
change. If the object which emits the light is moving away
from us, the wavelength of the light will be ‘stretched’,
which means the energy of the light is decreased. The
further away the object is from us here on Earth, the faster
it is moving away from us so the lower the energy of the
light we receive.
The scientists who were researching the expansion of the
universe in 1998 found that when they compared the light
from distant Type 1a supernovae to the redshift of the light
in the galaxy in which it was located that it was dimmer than
expected. Something was causing the expansion of the
universe to accelerate. A ‘dark’ unknown energy was at work.
We can speculate about the properties of dark energy by
studying the universe around us. It has to be very evenly
spread out throughout the entire universe. It doesn’t
interact with anything we can measure, other than by
causing the universe to expand. This makes it difficult to
measure it and advance theories or disprove ideas.
A related mystery is that of dark matter. Dark matter is
material which we can’t observe through telescopes or any
other method, but we can infer its existence by observing
the rotation of galaxies outside our own. Some of these
galaxies are rotating at speeds far greater than they should
be – and the reason is that material which we can’t see is
present within the body of the galaxy.
Various theories attempt to explain dark energy and
dark matter. To determine which one is correct we need
to find out more about them. The American space agency,
NASA, are considering missions to explore dark energy. At
the moment there are three possible contenders which
all chart the rate of acceleration of the universe using
standard candles. Each spacecraft also offers its own
unique instruments which measure redshifts of light from
distant stars.
The new observations from these missions will help
identify what we are dealing with. These missions could
bring back information which shakes up modern physics
and puts us back on track to formulating a fundamental
theory of the universe. Embarrassingly, until then we won’t
know what 74% of our universe is. We live in the dark ages.
   7
Questions 14–19
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

Write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

14  In 1998, scientists discovered the universe was expanding.       

15  The amount of mass in the universe affects how fast it expands.       

16  The results of the 1998 studies were as expected.       

17  Both teams of scientists used the same methods.       

18  Standard candles are always the same brightness when seen from Earth.       

19  Standard candles are more common than scientists once thought.       

Questions 20–25
Complete the sentences below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

20 To measure the speed of a standard candle, you need to know the        of the
light from the galaxy it is in.

21  Although the speed of light is constant in        , the amount of energy changes.

22  Scientists were surprised to find that their standard candles were        .

23 The fact that dark matter        with ordinary matter makes studying it difficult.

24  The speed of        tells us that dark matter must exist.

25 Understanding dark energy and matter may help scientistscreate        about
the way the universe works.

Question 26
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, D or E.

Which of the following is the most suitable title for Reading Passage 2?

A  Mistakes made by scientists in trying to understand the nature of the universe

B  The effects of dark energy on standard candles and the problems it causes for scientists
C The discovery of dark energy and the challenges scientists face in trying
to understand it
D Why the universe is expanding and what standard candles can tell us about
its early history
E The use of standard candles and the strange effect they have on dark energy
and dark matter
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READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27–40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.
Autistic women: a life more ordinary
Why do women make up only one in four
of those diagnosed as autistic?
A  I am in Godalming, Surrey, sitting with a group of
pleasant, personable women who have come together, as
they do each month, to share news, views and experiences.
You’d imagine that the room would be alive with a babble
of voices, but it’s not. The gossipy, reciprocal flow of normal
female conversation is absent, and so far not one of them
has asked me, a stranger, a single question about myself
or what I am doing here. The stilted atmosphere would
strike outsiders as weird, but these women are oblivious
to the awkwardness. They are autistic, and for them this
is normality.
B   ‘We are not real women according to any of the known
guidebooks… [But] we are not from another planet.
We tricked you… We are from right here, Planet Earth.’
So writes Judy Singer, one of 19 contributors to Women
from Another Planet?, an anthology written by a group of
women on the autistic spectrum who met on the internet.
While Singer, her co-authors, and the women gathered
around me in Surrey may not be from another planet, they
do constitute a distinct minority. According to current
statistics, one in 100 British people has autism, and one in
four of those is female.
C  Ever since autism was first identified in the 1940s it
has been accepted that autistic males heavily outnumber
females. In Autism: Explaining the Enigma, Uta Frith, a
leading developmental psychologist at University College
London, says that among those with the most severe
autistic symptoms, the ratio of men to women is four to
one, rising to fifteen to one among those with Asperger’s
syndrome (a variant in which autistic behaviours are less
extreme and verbal ability is higher). But she goes on
to speculate, ‘It is worth considering whether girls are
less likely to be detected… Girls are often considered
to be more verbal and more compliant than boys in
educational settings, and therefore might show better
compensatory learning.’
D She raises a vital question. Are women less likely to
have autism, or are they under-diagnosed and slipping
through the net because they are better than their
male counterparts at adapting to social situations? The
contributors to Women from Another Planet? believe the
latter. Most of them were not formally diagnosed until
adulthood, if at all. Most lead apparently ‘normal’ lives in
that they study and have jobs and sometimes husbands
and children. But all feel profoundly ‘different’; they write
of the terrible, damaging strain of attempting to conform
to social expectations.
E Certainly, social stereotyping can lead to autistic
behaviour going unnoticed. A woman who depends
heavily on a dominant husband and has little life outside
the home may well escape scrutiny. In school, while autistic
boys are typically loud, disruptive and destructive, girls can
be quiet, passive and compliant, but mentally absent; and
students who give no trouble are less likely to be flagged
up by a busy teacher.
F Simon Baron-Cohen, the director of the Autism Research
Centre at Cambridge, has pioneered the theory that autism
is caused by a testosterone surge in pregnancy, affecting
the child’s brain development, leading it to be born with
an ‘extreme’ male brain – strong on systemising, weak on
empathy. This, he believes, can affect both males and females.
Autistic girls, he has said, often have ‘tomboy’ traits, and feel
‘more compatibility with typical [not autistic] males simply
because typical males may be more willing to adhere to
the linear, step-by-step form of thinking and conversation.’
This is echoed by the internet group: ‘We may have more
in common with [non-autistic] men than we do with [non-
autistic] women, for it is women who are more often the social
gatekeepers, who scrutinise our manners, care more for them
than for our minds, and want to keep us out of the club.’
G The need, then, is growing for ‘clubs’ of a different
kind, spaces where autistic women can communicate
with others who share and appreciate their differences.
The Godalming club which I have visited is a pioneering
experiment by the careworker Bettina Stott. She had run
a mixed-sex social-skills group for people with autism for
some years, but two years ago, at the request of some of
the female members, she started an all-women group,
which meets once a month. ‘Our ladies are very vulnerable,’
she tells me shortly before the meeting starts. ‘They tend
to fall in with what men suggest. In their own group they
can discuss topics in a different way. It gives them a chance
to talk honestly about their autism, and to learn about the
way society works; they may adhere to social structures,
but often they don’t understand what they’re for.’ Group
meetings begin with informal socialising, then move on
to a structured discussion of a topic – anxiety, empathy,
bullying – guided by careworkers.
H Stott feels that autistic women are more able to see
things from another’s point of view than autistic men,
and are more emotionally responsive. Many of them have
been misdiagnosed in the past with psychiatric illnesses
or learning difficulties. ‘Autistic tendencies are often
overlooked,’ she says.
   9
Questions 27–31

Reading Passage 3 has eight paragraphs, A–H.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A–H next to questions 27–31.

27  a possible cause of autism    

28  autistic women having social and professional relationships    

29  the lack of typical woman-to-woman interaction    

30  the different stages of a group meeting    

31  how many people in the UK are autistic    

Questions 32–34

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

32  The women in Godalming

A  would like to gossip but they cannot.
B  are too scared to ask the writer questions.
C  are unaware of the strange atmosphere.
D  have never met each other before.

33  According to the passage, Asperger’s syndrome is

A  only diagnosed in women very rarely.
B  not actually a type of autism at all.
C  an extremely severe form of autism.
D  a condition only found in men.

34  Simon Baron-Cohen argues that the brain of an autistic girl is

A  no different to the brain of a non-autistic girl.
B  very similar to the brain of a non-autistic boy.
C  less able to deal with logical and linear thinking.
D  likely to have increased powers of empathy.

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Questions 35–40

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?

Write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

35  It was Judy Singer’s idea to put together Women from Another Planet?.       

36  Autism has been recognised as a medical condition for hundreds of years.       

37  Doctors currently fail to diagnose autism in some autistic girls.       

38  The Godalming group of women agrees with the views of Simon Baron-Cohen.       

39  Bettina Stott’s Godalming club is partly funded by the local council.       

40  Bettina Stott believes that autistic men are better able to respond to emotions than

autistic women.       

   11