FCE Тест – Четене и Слушане

READING AND USE OF ENGLISH

For questions 1-8, read the text below and decide which word A, B, C or D best fits each space.

There is an example at the beginning (0):

EXAMPLE (0). A. major B. frequent C. similar D. various

The Thames Barrier is a (0) A. major part of the flood defence scheme for protecting London (1) ________rising water levels. The defenses (2) ________include raised river embankments and additional flood gates at strategic points, including the Barking Barrier. The unique structure that is the Barrier spans the 520-metre wide Woolwich reach and (3)_________of 10 separate movable gates, each pivoting and supported between concrete structures whic  h house the operating machinery.

When raised, the four main gates (4) _______stand as high as a five-storey building and as wide as the opening of Tower Bridge. Each (5) _______3700 tonnes. During the first twelve years of (6)_______, the Barrier has been closed twenty nine times to protect London. (7)_______the Barrier from the comfortable cafeteria. Picnic on the riverside embankment. Enjoy beautiful views from the riverside walk. Visit the shop which stocks a large selection of souvenirs, books and Barrier information.

There is a children’s play area suitable for 4- to 12-year olds, located adjacent to the riverside walk. A visit to the spectacular Thames Barrier is a (8)_______experience.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

For questions 9-16, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each space. Use only one word in each space.

There is an example at the beginning (0).

Example: Datamac was the greatest machine (0) in the world.

Datamac was the greatest machine (0) in the world. Its business (9) _____ facts: it accepted (10) _____, stored them, tested them and delivered them.

It was located in Tokyo, where it received messages and questions from all (11) _____ the world. It sent answers to every town and city in every (12) _____. An army of workers fed it with facts all the time. Other workers moved about inside Datamac and (13) _____ after it.

Datamac had a very special duty. It was in (14) _____ of all the facts about every person in the world. Each day it brought these four thousand million facts together, and answered the question: “(15) _____ will happen tomorrow?” Every city in the world received the report for its own part of the country. And the complete World Report (16)_____ to the Chief of the Correction Force in Tokyo. John Williams had been Chief for only three weeks. By now he was not afraid of the World Report every morning. It was just a pile of papers, fifteen centimeters thick.

For questions 17-24, read the text below. Use the word given in capitals at the end of some lines to form a word that fits in the space in the same line.

There is an example at the beginning (0).

Example: (0) enthusiast (ENTHUSE)

For questions 25-30, complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning to the first sentence, using the word given. Do not change the word given. You must use between two and five words, including the word given.

There is an example at the beginning (0).

Example:(thought)

(0). They think the owner of the house is in France.
The owner of the house __is thought to be__ in France.
The gap can be filled by the words “is thought to be” so you write: (0). is thought to be

25. (had)

26. (responsible)

27. (reader)

28. (denied)

29. (time)

30. (belong)

You are going to read an extract from the novel, “Alice in Wonderland”. For questions 31-36, choose the answer A, B, C or D which you think fits best according to the text.

Before she had drunk half the bottle, she found her head pressing against the ceiling, and had to stoop to save her neck from being broken. She hastily put down the bottle, saying to herself ‘That’s quite enough – I hope I will not grow any more – as it is, I can’t get out at the door – I do wish I hadn’t drunk quite so much!
Alas, it was too late to wish that! She went on growing, and growing, and very soon had to kneel down on the floor: in another minute there was not even room for this, and she tried the effect of lying down with one elbow against the door, and the other arm curled round her head. Still she went on growing, and, as a last resource, she put one arm out of the window, and one foot up the chimney, and said to herself ‘Now I can do no more, whatever happens. What will become of me?’
Luckily for Alice, the little magic bottle had now had its full effect, and she grew no larger: Still it was very uncomfortable, and, as there seemed to be no sort of chance of her ever getting out of the room again, no wonder she felt unhappy.

‘It was much pleasanter at home,’ thought poor Alice, ‘when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller,and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbithole – and yet … and yet – it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what can have happenedto me! When I usedto read fairy-tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened,and now here I am in the middle of one! Thereought to be a book written about me, that there ought! And when I grow up, I’ll write one … but I’m grown up now,’ she added in a sorrowful tone; ‘at least there’s no room to grow up any more in here.’
‘But then,’ thought Alice, ‘will I never get any older than I am now? That’ll be a comfort, one way … never to be an old woman …. but then … always to have lessons to learn! Oh, I shouldn’t like that!’
‘Oh, you foolish Alice!’ she answered herself. ‘How can you learn lessons in here? Why, there’s hardly room for you, and no room at all for any lessonbooks!’
And so she went on, taking first one side and then the other, and making quite a conversation of it altogether; but after a few minutes she heard a voice outside, and stopped to listen.
‘Mary Ann! Mary Ann!’ said the voice. ‘Fetch me my gloves this moment!’ Then came a little pattering of feet on the stairs. Alice knew it was the Rabbit coming to look for her, and she trembled till she shook the house, quite forgetting that she was now about a thousand times as large as the Rabbit, and had no reason to be afraid of it.
Presently the Rabbit came up to the door, and tried to open it; but, as the door opened inwards, and Alice’s elbow was pressed hard against it, that attempt proved a failure. Alice heard it say to itself ‘Then I’ll go round and get in at the window.’

‘That you won’t’ thought Alice, and, after waiting till she fancied she heard the Rabbit just under the window, she suddenly spread out her hand, and made a snatch in the air. She did not get hold of anything, but she heard a little shriek and a fall, and a crash of broken glass, from which she concluded that it was just possible it had fallen into a cucumber-frame, or something of the sort.
Next came an angry voice – the Rabbit’s – ‘Pat! Pat! Where are you?’ And then a voice she had never heard before, ‘Sure then I’m here! Digging for apples, your honour!’
‘Digging for apples, indeed!’ said the Rabbit angrily. ‘Here! Come and help me out of this!’ (Sounds of more broken glass.)
‘Now tell me, Pat, what’s that in the window?’
‘Sure, it’s an arm, your honour!’
‘An arm, you goose! Who ever saw one that size? Why, it fills the whole window!’
‘Sure, it does, your honour: but it’s an arm for all that.’

31. Why didn’t Alice leave the house when she noticed she was growing?

32. As she grew, Alice had to:

33. Alice had a long conversation with:

34. Mary Ann is most likely:

35. Before the Rabbit called him, Pat was spending his time:

36. Why does the Rabbit argue about what they see in the window?

For questions 37-42 you are going to read a magazine article about one person’s experience of being aware while she is dreaming,
called lucid dreaming. Six sentences have been removed from the article. Choose from the sentences the one
which fits each gap. There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.

The other night I experienced a lucid dream. In the dream I was sitting gazing into our fish aquarium. I peered in closely, examining our spotted suckerfish. I often gaze at him because he never moves much in the daytime. I watch him to see if he is OK. As I stared at him, suddenly I noticed there were two more suckerfish! They were identical to the original.
37. _____ Then I wondered where they could have come from. As I pondered this I abruptly realised that I must be dreaming! 38._____ I jumped up and looked around. There were other people in this dream with me. I had a husband, a son and a dog. Before looking at the fish, I had been going along, living my daily life in a mundane fashion. The last thing I had remembered doing was feeding the dog and kissing my little boy on the head while he played on the kitchen floor.
As I looked at these people, I realised it wasn’t my real husband or either of my real children – I excitedly blurted out at them that we were all dreaming. 39.______ I yelled again “WE ARE DREAMING!!!” As I became even more self-conscious, I announced that I could test my theory by flying.
If this really was a dream, I should be able to fly! So I jumped up and flew to the ceiling. I can still see the look on the man’s face as he watched me float up to the ceiling. Unfortunately, as I watched the fear and doubt on his face, I began to fall. I sank all the way back down and landed with a hard thud on the floor. When that happened, I began to doubt my own perception and lost my awareness as I fell back into a regular dream state.
The above is an example of lucid dreaming. 40._______ You are aware that you are dreaming, while dreaming. If you have ever had it happen to you spontaneously, you understand how exciting it is, the heart races with excitement at your prospects.
Gazing at something in your home or on your body, such as your hands during your regular workday is a technique used by dream researchers to induce lucid dreaming. Another technique is to continually ask yourself throughout the day if you are dreaming. 41.______ On another occasion just before becoming lucid in a dream, I noticed that my kitchen cupboards were the wrong colour, which alerted me. The duplicated fish are another example.
Stephen LaBerge, the pioneer of tucld dreaming research, suggests that once you can become lucid, there is no limit to what your imagination can create in a dream. 42.______ You can even try out things you’ve always wanted to try and see what it is like. It has been discovered, and my experience supports this, that when you do become lucid, it is extremely difficult to stay that way. Research has shown though that the more you do it, the better at it you get and the better your control is. Often a few seconds of lucidity is all that is manageable. It is still a thrilling experience.

You are going to read four accounts of people who have followed their dreams and travelled someplace amazing.
For questions 43-52, choose from the people A-D. The people may be chosen more than once.

HARRY – A

Just north of Fregate I met two manta rays. They were seven or eight feet wide with massive outstretched fins that seemed like rubberized wings. The water was murky, rich with plankton that attracted the giant rays that filtered it
through their wide mouths. They treated me with caution, maintaining a constant distance if I turned towards them, but were content to let me swim on a parallel course, as if I, too, was feeding on the plankton. For a few minutes we were companions, until, circling and shifting shape against the depths, they became faint black shadows in the gloom and were gone. The deep blue of the Indian Ocean has captured my heart and drawn me back again and again to  hese pure shores. On Praslin there were dolphins offshore and a pair of octopus, sliding across the coral as they flashed signals to one another with changing skin tones as remarkable as – but much faster than – any chameleon. At Conception, close to Mahe, giant rocks formed an underwater cathedral beckoning me into its vaults where moray eels gaped at me, the strange visitor to their liquid world.

GABRIEL – B

And so my first real trip to Asia unfolded in what seemed a series of dream-panels – adventures and faces and events so far removed from my day-to-day experience that I could not convert them into any tongue I knew. I revisited them again and again, sleepless, in my memories and notes and photographs, once home. Almost every day of the three-week trip was so vivid that, upon returning, I gave a friend a ninehour account of every moment. The motorbike ride through Sukhothai; the first long lazy evening in an expat’s teak house in Sunkumvhit; the flight into the otherworldly charm of Rangoon and the Strand Hotel, and the pulse of warm activity around the Sule Pagoda at nightfall. Long hot days in the silence, 5,000 temples on every side; slow trips at dawn along Inle lake, seeing a bird-faced boat being led through the quiet water; a frenzied morning back in Bangkok, writing an article while monsoon rains pounded on the windows all around me.

MAYA – C

And so my first real trip to Asia unfolded in what seemed a series of dream-panels – adventures and faces and events so far removed from my day-to-day experience that I could not convert them into any tongue I knew. I revisited them again and again, sleepless, in my memories and notes and photographs, once home. Almost every day of the three-week trip was so vivid that, upon returning, I gave a friend a ninehour account of every moment. The motorbike ride through Sukhothai; the first long lazy evening in an expat’s teak house in Sunkumvhit; the flight into the otherworldly charm of Rangoon and the Strand Hotel, and the pulse of warm activity around the Sule Pagoda at nightfall. Long hot days in the silence, 5,000 temples on every side; slow trips at dawn along Inle lake, seeing a bird-faced boat being led through the quiet water; a frenzied morning back in Bangkok, writing an article while monsoon rainspounded on the windows all around me.

TOM – D

I’d been to New York three times in the past but not for long and I couldn’t remember much of it. This time I only had four days but I was on my own and this seems like a better way to get to know a City: less being sociable, more walking and visiting different places. Perfect. I liked New York even more than I expected and it’s right up there on my list of foreign cities where I’d like to live. It’s fighting for the top spot with San Francisco, with the next position occupied by Paris. I stayed at the Incentra Village House, which was lovely: reasonably priced, really friendly, comfortable rooms. I’d stay there again. I did a lot of walking and could easily have done a lot more. I rarely left Manhattan. One day I walked more than 12 miles, including the length of Central Park and on down Fifth Avenue. Fifth Avenue was the least pleasant place; it felt like London’s Oxford Street. I also walked along the High Line, which is very nicely one, although rather shorter than Paris’s Promenade Plantee.

LISTENING – Part 1

You will hear people talking in eight different situations. For questions 53-60, choose the best answer A, B or C.

53. You are in a shop when you overhear this man answering the telephone.
What does the caller want to buy?

54.  You are listening to the radio when you hear this man speaking.
What is he talking about?

55. You are sitting in a cafe when you hear this woman speaking.
She is telling her friend about?

56. Listen to this woman introducing a college lecture.
The visiting lecturer?

57. You will hear someone talking about soap operas.
What does the speaker think about them?

58. You are staying in the home of a British family.
You hear the mother answering the phone.
The caller wants to take her daughter.

59. Listen to a policeman being interviewed on the evening television news.
What is he describing?

60. You overhear this exchange in a major London railway station.
The cause of the delay is

Part 4

you will hear three people discussing a film they have just seen at the cinema (Wendy, Mrs Turner and Adrian).
For questions 61-67, choose the best answer A B or C.

61. What did Wendy’s mum think of the film?

62. Adrian mentions doing a course in order to show that

63. Adrian feels that watching a film at home

64. When Adrian suggests that Wendy was frightened, she

65. What do Wendy and her mum disagree about?

66. What is it suggested that they do now that the movie has ended?

67. Adrian doesn’t let Mrs. Turner drive because

Part 2:

You will hear part of a radio talk about an institution that helps addicts. For questions 68-77, complete the sentences with a word or short phrase.

Part 3

You will hear five different people talking about visits they have made to a hospital. For questions 78-82, choose
from the list A-H the reasons why each attended the hospital on the occasion described. Use the letters only once.
There are three extra letters which you do not need to use.