PART 1

Questions 1 - 6. Read the texts. Fill in each gap with ONE word. You must use a word which is somewhere in the rest of the text

Anna and her brother Lou visited a farm. They were thrilled because they had never seen farm animals up close before. The first (1) they encountered were sheep. Lou was surprised to learn that the wool from these (2) is used to make clothes such as sweaters and scarves. Next, they went to the chicken coop. Anna noticed a (3) sitting on a nest of eggs. The farmer explained that the (4) would hatch in about three weeks. Lou curiously asked if the chicks would resemble their father or mother. The (5) laughed and said they might look like both.  Then, they headed to the barn, where they met a friendly cow. Anna was amazed to learn that this (6) could produce up to 30 liters of milk. Before leaving, the children bought some milk and eggs and then returned home, happy with their visit.

PART 2

Read the texts and the statements A-J. Decide which text matches with the situation described in the statements. Each statement can be used ONCE only. There are TWO extra statements which you do not need to use.

• A) You cannot make an advanced reservation for this hotel.
• B) You must pay a bit more but can stay in a luxury room.
• C) You don't have to pay for food and beverages if you stay in this hotel
• D) You can go on safari trips there.
• E) You can stay in only one type of bedroom there.
• F) Which advertisement is NOT for a hotel?
• G) You don't pay for recreation facilities in this hotel.
• H) This hotel takes you to many cities.
• I) Hotel managers are all multilingual.
• J) You can rent swimming equipment in this hotel.

PART 3

Questions 15 – 20
Read the text and choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below. There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use all of them. You cannot use any heading more than once. Mark your answers on the answer sheet.

I. The world's first public passenger railway was built in Great Britain in 1826 and ran between the industrial north-eastern towns of Stockton and Darlington. After 180 years' experience the British say that their trains still don't seem to run efficiently or even safely. On average, about 500 accidents with broken rail tracks happen in the country every year.

II. The British government is promising to give £33.5 billion to modernize the railways before 2010. Another £30 billion is to come from the private sector. The main target is to increase safety and speed. For example, new London-to-Scotland highspeed trains significantly reduce journey times and in 2004 a warning system was installed throughout the country.

III. Statistics show that only 12% of all journeys made in Britain are by public transport. The remaining 88% are made by car. Every year British people spend about two weeks travelling to and from work including nine days their own cars. But anyone will say this isn't a quick and easy way to travel. In fact, a journey from London to Manchester frequently takes seven hours. A cyclist could get there quicker.

IV. Every year there are about half a million traffic jams in Britain. That in nearly 10,000 a week. There are hundreds of big traffic jams every day According to the forecast, the number of jams will grow by 20 per cent over the next ten years. Nearly a quarter British people find themselves in a jam every day and 55 per cent at least once a week.

V. Nowadays many British people take their children to school by car Twenty years ago, nearly one in three primary school children made theirown way to school. Now only one child in nine makes their own way. During the school year at 08:50 a.m. one car in five on the roads in any British town is taking children to school. The solution could be special school buses widely used in the USA.

VI. Many scientists hope that new technologies allowing more people to work at home may help with traffic problems. Fewer people will work from 9 to 5 and travel to and from work during the rush hour. But only 15% of people now want to spend more time working at home. The workplace is, for many people, a place to meet other people and to talk to them, so they would miss it if they worked from home.

A) Bicycle is faster
B) Controlling skies
C) Office at home
D) Lack of safety
E) Paid roads
F) Improving railways
G) Blocked roads
H) Buses instead of cars

PART 4

Read the following text for questions 21 - 29.

Social media, magazines and shop windows bombard people daily with things to buy, and British consumers are buying more clothes and shoes than ever before. Online shopping means it is easy for customers to buy without thinking, while major brands offer such cheap clothes that they can be treated like disposable items - worn two or three times and then thrown away. In Britain, the average person spends more than £1,000 on new clothes a year, which is around four per cent of their income. That might not sound like much, but that figure hides two far more worrying trends for society and for the environment. First, a lot of that consumer spending is via credit cards. British people currently owe approximately £670 per adult to credit card companies. That’s 66 per cent of the average wardrobe budget. Also, not only are people spending money they don’t have, they’re using it to buy things they don’t need. Britain throws away 300,000 tons of clothing a year, most of which goes into landfill sites.

People might not realize they are part of the disposable clothing prob lem because they donate their unwanted clothes to charities. But charity shops can’t sell all those unwanted clothes. ‘Fast fashion’ goes out of fashion as quickly as it came in and is often too poor quality to recycle; people don’t want to buy it second-hand. Huge quantities end up being thrown away, and a lot of clothes that charities can’t sell are sent abroad, causing even more economic and environmental problems.

However, a different trend is springing up in opposition to consumerism - the ‘buy nothing' trend. The idea originated in Canada in the early 1990s and then moved to the US, where it became a rejection of the overspending and overconsumption of Black Friday and Cyber Monday during Thanksgiving weekend. On Buy Nothing Day people organize various types of protests and cut up their credit cards. Throughout the year, Buy Nothing groups organize the exchange and repair of items they already own. The trend has now reached influencers on social media who usually share Posts of clothing and make-up that they recommend for people to buy. Some YouTube stars now encourage their viewers not to buy anything at all for periods as long as a year. Two friends in Canada spent a year working towards buying only food. For the first three months they learned how to live without buying electrical goods, clothes or things for the house. For the next stage, they gave up services, for example haircuts, eating out at res taurants or buying petrol for their cars. In one year, they’d saved $55,000. The changes they made meant two fewer cars on the roads, a reduction in plastic and paper packaging and a positive impact on the environment from all the energy saved. If everyone followed a similar plan, the results would be impressive. But even if you can’t manage a full year without going shopping, you can participate in the anti-consumerist movement by refus ing to buy things you don’t need. Buy Nothing groups send a clear message to companies that people are no longer willing to accept the environmental and human cost of overconsumption.

21. How much income do the Britons spend on buying clothes on average every year?

22. Which is not mentioned in the text as a worrying British lifestyle?

23. What is the idea behind the ‘buy nothing* trend?

24. What do Nothing groups tell production companies?

For questions 25-29, decide if the following statements agree with the information given in the text. Mark your answers on the answer sheet.

25. People buy clothes because they want to throw them away.

26. The amount the average Briton owes on credit cards is one-third of the amount they spend on clothes each year.

27. Charities can find ways to use clothes even if they are not very good quality.

28. Buy Nothing Day is popular only in the UK.

29. If everyone followed the Buy Nothing idea, the environment would benefit.

PART 5
Read the following text for questions 30-35.

The history of salt

Salt is so simple and plentiful that we almost take it for granted. In chemical terms, salt is the combination “of a sodium ion with a chloride on, making it one of the most basic molecules on earth. It is also one of the most plentiful: it has been estimated that salt deposits under the state of Kansas alone could supply the entire world’s needs for the next 250,000 years.

But is salt is also an essential element. Without it, life itself would be impossible since the human body requires the mineral in order to function properly. The concentration of sodium ions in the blood is directly related to the regulation of safe body fluid levels. And while we are all familiar with its many uses in cooking, we may not be aware that this element is used in some 14,000 commercial applications. From manufacturing pulp and paper to setting dyes in textiles and fabric, from producing soaps and detergents to making our roads safe in winter, salt plays an essential part in our daily lives. Salt has a long and influential role in world history. From the dawn of civilization, it has been a key factor in economic, religious, social and political development. In every corner of the world, it has been the subject of superstition, folklore, and warfare, and has even been used as currency. As a precious and portable commodity, salt has long been a cornerstone of economies throughout history. In fact, researcher M.R. Bloch conjectured that civilization began along the edges of the desert because of the natural surface deposits of salt found there. Bloch also believed that the first war – likely fought near the ancient city of Assault on the Jordan River – could have been fought over the city’s precious supplies of the mineral. In 2200 BC, the Chinese emperor Hsia Yu levied one of the first known taxes. He taxed salt. In Tibet, Marco Polo noted that tiny cakes of salt were pressed with images of the Grand Khan to be used as coins and to this day among the nomads of Ethiopia’s Danakil Plains it is still used as money. Greek slave traders often bartered it for slaves, giving rise to the expression that someone was “not worth his salt.” Roman legionnaires were paid in salt – a salarium, the Latin origin of the word “salary.”

Merchants in 12th-century Timbuktu – the gateway to the Sahara Desert and the seat of scholars – valued this mineral as highly as books and gold. In France, Charles of Anjou levied the gabelle, a salt tax, in 1259 to finance his conquest of the Kingdom of Naples. Outrage over the gabelle fueled the French Revolution. Though the revolutionaries eliminated the tax shortly after Louis XVI, the Republic of France re-established the gabelle in the early 19th Century; only in 1946 was it removed from the books.

The Erie Canal, an engineering marvel that connected the Great Lakes to New York’s Hudson River in 1825, was called “the ditch that salt built.” Salt tax revenues paid for half the cost of construction of the canal. The British monarchy supported itself with high salt taxes, leading to a bustling black market for the white crystal. In 1785, the earl of Dundonald wrote that every year in England, 10,000 people were arrested for salt smuggling. And protesting against British rule in 1930, Mahatma Gandhi led a 200-mile march to the Arabian Ocean to collect untaxed salt for India’s poor. In religion and culture, salt long held an important place with Greek worshippers consecrating it in their rituals. Further, in Buddhist tradition, salt repels evil spirits, which is why it is customary to throw it over your shoulder before entering your house after a funeral: it scares off any evil spirits that may be clinging to your back. Shinto religion also uses it to purify an area. Before sumo wrestlers enter the ring for a match – which is, in reality, an elaborate Shinto rite – a handful is thrown into the center to drive off malevolent spirits.

In the Southwest of the United States, the Pueblo worship the Salt Mother. Other native tribes had significant restrictions on who was permitted to eat salt Hopi legend holds that the angry Warrior Twins punished mankind by placing valuable salt deposits far from civilization, requiring hard work and bravery to harvest the precious mineral. Today, a gift of salt endures in India as a potent symbol of good luck and a reference to Mahatma Gandhi’s liberation of India. The effects of salt deficiency are highlighted in times of war, when human bodies and national economies are strained to their limits. Thousands of Napoleon’s troops died during the French retreat from Moscow due to inadequate wound healing and lowered resistance to disease – the results of salt deficiency.

For questions 30-33, fill in the missing information in the numbered spaces. Write no more than ONE WORD and / or A NUMBER for each question.

Salt is such an essential 30 that people would not be able to live without it. As well as its uses in cooking, this basic mineral has thousands of business 31  ranging from making paper to the manufacture of soap. Being a prized and portable commodity, it has played a major part in the economies of many countries. As such, salt has not only led to war, but has also been used to raise 32  by governments in many parts of the world. There are also many instances of its place in religion and culture, being used as a means to get rid of evil 33

For questions 34-35, choose the correct answer A, B, C, or D. Mark your answers on the answer sheet.

34. Which of these statements is true of salt according to the passage?

35. In this passage, the author argues that …