CAE Reading and Use of English Part 8

You are going to read about four independent jewellery designers. For questions 47-56, choose
from the sections of the article (A-D). The sections may be chosen more than once.

Which designer …

47 is concerned about the sourcing of her materials?

48 is claimed to have the wrong attitude to business?

49 uses the same combination of metals and precious stones in each piece of jewellery?
50 creates designs that feature different versions of the same symbol?
51 intends her jewellery to stand the test of time?
52 designs pieces to reflect her beliefs that everything is linked by patterns?
53 uses inspirations from experiences when she was young?
54 makes jewellery that is easily attributable to her?
55 does not work exclusively on making jewellery?
56 was originally inspired by a social connection?

Shining lights

A Emma Franklin
‘It has always been about animals,’ Emma Franklin says. ‘My friend’s grandmother had an
amazing stag brooch with huge antlers and that’s where it started. Everyone has a relationship
with an animal in my collection.’ Franklin has focused on jewellery design since her teens and
graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2005, setting up her own business immediately. Based
in east London, Franklin, twenty-nine, hand-makes each necklace, bangle, ring, cuff link and pin,
featuring any of fourteen animal heads, from a pig to a triceratops, as well as a shotgun. All her
pieces are made in solid silver, plated in twenty-two-carat yellow gold or black rhodium,with
black diamonds and freshwater pearls. Bespoke commissions, predominantly engagement rings,
not all animal-related, are becoming more frequent. Franklin’s robust designs are instantly
recognisable, as she has discovered. ‘Recently in a pub this girl was wearing one of my rings at
the bar, so I introduced myself. She was completely star-struck and fetched over her dad, who
had bought it for her. I had to explain that it was really me who was excited.’

В Alexandra Jefford
‘My design style constantly evolves,’ Alexandra Jefford says. ‘But even though I try new things,
I can’t kick my art background. I’m really inspired by art, architecture, design, furniture design.’
Jefford, forty-two, graduated in 1992 with a degree in fine art, began designing jewellery in 2003
and sold her first piece, a gold ring, on its first outing, at dinner with a friend. Her designs,
produced on a project-by-project basis rather than as collections, include her signature Alphabet
series for which she designed a slim font. Her recent О project interprets that letter in various
typefaces. She combines jewellery design with other artistic pursuits such as sculptural welding
and life drawing. Fans range from her daughter’s friends to her mother’s friends, although she
doesn’t always want to sell. ‘I become emotionally involved with all my pieces, so I find it really
hard to let go. There are still some pieces that I hide “for the family museum”. My husband says
that I work as a shopper rather than a seller.’

C Hattie Rickards
Hattie Rickards’ first collection of twelve rings, entitled Revealed, was launched last November
and was an instant success. Her second, Geo, came out last month to even greater acclaim. ‘The
ethos behind Geo is connection and relationships, bringing tessellating or geometrical shapes
together making one, for example, the Kindredring, where two puzzle pieces fit neatly together.’
Hampshire-born Rickards, set up on her own last year. ‘I wanted to create a high-end, luxury
jewellery brand with an ethical backbone, which coincided with a gap in the market.’ All Hattie
Rickards’ jewellery is made using Fairtrade precious stones from Thailand and India and
eighteen-carat, Fairtrade, fair-mined gold from Colombia. HRJ is one of the first twenty
companies to become a certified user of this type of gold, many of its pieces having the premium
‘ecological’ label. There are no plans for e-commerce, as Rickards believes this detracts from the
meaning behind the piece. ‘I am passionate that people understand the symbolism behind my
work. I don’t want it to just be a ring on a website. The story is so important.’

D Mawi Keivom
Mawi Keivom, thirty-nine, is known for her architectural statement jewellery: chunky box chains
with coloured pearls, spiked gold rings and brightly-coloured gems. Born in the north-east of
India, forty miles from the Burmese border, into the Mahr tribe, Keivom draws her influences
from a peripatetic childhood with her diplomat parents that took them to Africa, the Middle East,
south-east Asia and Europe. Keivom studied fashion design in New Zealand, then, after a stint in
New York, moved to London in 1993, where she met her husband, Tim Awan, and together they
set up Mawi in 2001 – she as the jewellery designer, he as the business brain. ‘My style of
jewellery is very individual and not for the faint-hearted. I have a very strong vision that
translates into an industrial, graphic aesthetic offset with crystals and pearls that are a little bit
feminine. I don’t try to do something that is for the moment. My pieces are classics in their own
right, not trend-specific.’
CAE Reading and Use of English Part 8
You are going to read about a certain genre of movies. For questions 47-56, choose from the
sections of the article (A-D). The sections may be chosen more than once.

In which section does the writer…

47 praise the quality of some more serious films?

48 point out the value of feel-good films in difficult economic times?

49 mention a film character who learns from his experiences?
50 explain how a director uses a film as a vehicle for his own opinion?
51 comment on the artistic merit of the cinema?
52 talk about the importance of escapism in films?
53 mention a special technique used to create a feel good reaction?
54 insist that lighter films can also be clever?
55 talk about films that make us reflect on life?
56 refer to films where ordinary people triumph over authority?

Films that make you feel good

A
Feel-good films stretch back right into the early days of cinema. The Brits were pioneers of the
form. Producer Cecil Hepworth’s Rescued By Rover (1905), a winsome yarn about a dog
retrieving a kidnapped baby, was an early example of feel-good film-making. What distinguished
it was the tempo. The film-makers used cross-cutting to crank up the tension, which is only
finally released when the baby is found. The film “marks a key stage in the medium’s
development from an amusing novelty to the ‘seventh art,’ able to hold its own alongside
literature, theatre, painting, music and other more traditional forms,” claims the British Film
Institute’s Screen online website. Film historians today continue to study Hepworth’s storytelling
abilities but that wasn’t what interested the 1905 audiences who flocked to see it. They went
because it was a feel-good film.

В
There has long been a tendency to sneer at feel-good films. Serious, self-conscious auteurs are
often too busy trying to express their innermost feelings about art and politics to worry about
keeping audiences happy. However, as Preston Sturges famously showed in his comedy
Sullivan’s Travels(1941), if you’re stuck on a prison chain gang, you don’t necessarily want to
watch Battleship Potemkin. Sullivan’s Travels is about John L Sullivan, a glib and successful
young Hollywood director of comedies, who yearns to be taken seriously. Sullivan dresses up as
a hobo and sets off across America to learn more about the plight of the common man. He ends
up sentenced to six years in prison. One of the prisoners’ few escapes from drudgery is watching
cartoons. As he sits among his fellow cons and sees their faces convulsed with laughter at a piece
of what he regards as throwaway Disney animation, he rapidly revises his own priorities. “After I
saw a couple of pictures put out by my fellow comedy directors, which seemed to have
abandoned the fun in favour of the message, I wrote Sullivan’s Travels to satisfy an urge to tell
them to leave the preaching to the preachers,” Sturges recalled.

C
A few years ago there were a lot of ‘deep-dish’ movies. We had films about guilt, (Atonement)
about the all-American dream coming apart at the seams (Revolutionary Road) and even a very
long account of a very long life backwards(the deeply morbid The Curious Case Of Benjamin
Button). Deep-dish, feel-bad films have plenty to recommend them. If you’re not teenager and
you don’t just want to see the next summer tent-pole blockbuster, you’ll welcome movies that
pay attention to characterisation and dialogue and don’t just rely on CGI or the posturing of
comic book heroes. However, as film-makers from Preston Sturges to Danny Boyle have
discovered, there is no reason that a feel-good movie needs to be dumb. You can touch on social
deprivation and political injustice: the trick is to do so lithely and, if possible, with a little
leavening humour.

D
Historically, the best feel-good movies have often been made at the darkest times. The war years
and their immediate aftermath saw the British turning out some invigorating, entertaining fare
alongside all the propaganda. The Age of Austerity was also the age of the classic Ealing
comedies, perfect examples of feel-good film-making. In the best of these films like Passport To
Pimlico or Whisky Galore, a community of eccentric and mildly anarchic characters would
invariably come together to thwart the big, bad, interfering bureaucrats. Stories about hiding
away a hoard of whisky or setting up a nation state in central London were lapped up by the
audiences. To really work, feel-good movies must have energy and spontaneity – a reckless
quality that no amount of script tinkering from studio development executives can guarantee.
The best take you by surprise. What makes the perfect feel-good movie? That remains as hard to
quantify as ever – you only know one when you see one.
CAE Reading and Use of English Part 8
You are going to read an article about children. For questions 47-56, choose from the sections of
the article (A-E). The sections may be chosen more than once. When more than one answer is
required, these may be given in any order.

In which section of the article is the following mentioned?

47 an example of a sign that has become simpler

48 the difference between how the deaf children communicate an image and how other people
communicate the same image
49 the fact that the same signs can be used in the communication of a number of ideas
50 the characteristics of languages in general at different stages of their development
51 a belief that language is learnt by means of a specific part of the mind
52 an aspect of language learning that children are particularly good at
53 how regularly the children have been monitored
54 older children passing their sign language on to younger children
55 the reason why the children created a particular sign
56 opposing views on how people acquire language

Deaf Childern’s Ad Hoc Language Evolves and Instructs

A A deep insight into the way the brain learns language has emerged from the study of
Nicaraguan sign language, invented by deaf children in a Nicaraguan school as a means of
communicating among themselves. The Nicaraguan children are well-known to linguists because
they provide an apparently unique example of people inventing a language from scratch. The
phenomenon started at a school for special education founded in 1977. Instructors noticed that
the deaf children, while absorbing little from their Spanish lessons, had developed a system of
signs for talking to one another. As one generation of children taught the system to the next, it
evolved from a set of gestures into a far more sophisticated form of communication, and today’s
800 users of the language provide a living history of the stages of formation.

B The children have been studied principally by Dr. Judy Kegi, a linguist at the University of
Southern Maine, and Dr. Ann Senghas, a cognitive scientist at Columbia University in New
York City. In the latest study, published in Science magazine, Dr. Senghas shows that the
younger children have now decomposed certain gestures into smaller component signs. A
hearing person asked to mime a standard story about a cat waddling down a street will make a
single gesture, a downward spiral motion of the hand. But the deaf children have developed two
different signs to use in its place. They sign a circle for the rolling motion and then a straight line
for the direction of movement. This requires more signing, but the two signs can be used in
combination with others to express different concepts. The development is of interest to linguists
because it captures a principal quality of human language – discrete elements usable in different
combinations – in contrast to the one sound, one meaning of animal communication. ‘The
regularity she documents here – mapping discrete aspects of the world onto discrete word
choices – is one of the most distinctive properties of human language’ said Dr. Steven Pinker, a
cognitive scientist at Harvard University.

C When people with no common language are thrown into contact, they often develop an ad hoc
language known to linguists as a pidgin language, usually derived from one of the parent
languages. Pidgins are rudimentary systems with minimal grammar and utterances. But in a
generation or two, the pidgins acquire grammar and become upgraded to what linguists call
creoles. Though many new languages have been created by the pidgin-creole route, the
Nicaraguan situation is unique, Dr. Senghas said, because its starting point was not a complex
language but ordinary gestures. From this raw material, the deaf children appear to be
spontaneously fabricating the elements of language.

D Linguists have been engaged in a longstanding argument as to whether there is an innate,

specialised neural machinery for learning language, as proposed by Noam Chomsky of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or whether everything is learned from scratch. Dr.
Senghas says her finding supports the view that language learning is innate, not purely cultural,
since the Nicaraguan children’s dis-aggregation of gestures appears to be spontaneous. Her result
also upholds the idea that children play an important part in converting a pidgin into a creole.
Because children’s minds are primed to learn the rules of grammar, it is thought, they
spontaneously impose grammatical structure on a pidgin that doesn’t have one.

E The Nicaraguan children are a living laboratory of language generation. Dr. Senghas, who has
been visiting their school every year since 1990, said she had noticed how the signs for numbers
have developed. Originally the children represented ’20’ by flicking the fingers of both hands in
the air twice. But this cumbersome sign has been replaced with a form that can now be signed
with one hand. The children don’t care that the new sign doesn’t look like a 20, Dr. Senghas
said; they just want a symbol that can be signed fast.