01 Exam practice

Use of English

Paper 1 Part 2: Open cloze

For questions 1– 8, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap. Use only one word
in each gap.
There is an example at the beginning (0).

The fame game

In the 1970s, the artist Andy Warhol famously predicted that (0) there would come a time when everyone
could enjoy 15 minutes of fame. (1) that the intervening years have witnessed the advent of live
blogging, social-media sites and the 60-second news cycle, you (2) be forgiven for assuming that his
prediction has indeed (3) true. A hungry news machine now appears to create celebrities overnight,
only to send them back into obscurity after the briefest of flirtations with fame. (4) so it would seem.
Because impressions can be mistaken. Researchers have been studying the ways in (5) fame has
changed over the last 50 years by analysing the Google news archive. (6) I they have found is that the
number of people in the news has indeed increased in line (7) the volume of news now available, but
that surprisingly the duration of their fame has stayed more or less constant for the past century or (8) .
And for the top celebrities, time in the spotlight has actually tended to increase in more recent years.

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 02 Exam practice
Use of English

Paper 1 Part 1: Multiple-choice cloze

For questions 1–8, read the text below and decide which answer (A, B, C or D) best fits each gap.
There is an example at the beginning (0).

How do we best help others?

According to some psychologists, we should (0) A our deeper motives when we attempt to help others
who appear to be in need of our support. Helping others is clearly a good thing to do, and it can have a
therapeutic (1) on both giver and recipient. If, however, we begin to focus on what we might
(2) of helping someone, rather than how that person might be helped, we could be in (3) of
adopting a somewhat calculating attitude. This would be to (4) weight to the ideas of those
psychologists who believe that, ultimately, we only do things for our own (5) : that no actions are
truly altruistic. And, of course, we can all think of examples of problems that have been (6) by the
well-intentioned, but ill-considered intervention of third parties. We should also (7) in mind that
doing too much for people and protecting them from the consequences of their actions can reduce their
motivation and even rob them of the resources to (8) things out for themselves.

0 A examine B delve C quiz D inquire

1 A outcome B result C upshot D effect
2 A take away B get out C have back D come by
3 A peril B danger C risk D hazard
4 A lend B bestow C grant D confer
5 A aims B ideas C ends D favours
6 A irritated B deteriorated C antagonised D exacerbated
7 A call B bear C draw D fetch
8 A cope B resolve C tackle D sort

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 02 Exam practice
Reading

Paper 1 Part 6: Gapped text

You are going to read a newspaper article about open-plan offices. Seven paragraphs have been removed
from the extract. Choose from the paragraphs A–H the one which fits each gap (1–7). There is one extra
paragraph which you do not need to use.

The plan behind open-plan

Whether or not open-plan offices, where employees Consequently, ‘flat top’ desks proliferated, to permit
have their own enclosed spaces, create a productive oversight, even though in reality bosses continued to
working environment for employees has been the retreat to private offices away from the staff whenever the
subject of much debate, but there is a strong argument opportunity arose. Then, in 1965, an industrial designer
that the benefits of an open-plan working environment called Robert Propst hit on the ingenious idea of the
go beyond the purely financial. I once had the chance cubicle office system, and it became fashionable to
to visit New York’s City Hall, during the period when divide office workers once again, to preserve privacy.
Michael Bloomberg, the former trader-turned-financial-
information-mogul, was working there as mayor. As I 5
entered his empire, I experienced a small shock. There is some evidence that removing physical barriers
does indeed bring people closer to one another
1
and does promote casual interactions. This was the
The man himself sat in a vast, airy, open-plan room, conclusion in an utterly fascinating piece in the Harvard
surrounded by officials and banks of giant data screens, Business Review in 2011. This should be required reading
showing information on issues as varied as traffic flows for any bosses planning an office design. But there’s
or public satisfaction with the police. Anybody holding a a roughly equal amount of evidence that because
meeting was encouraged to sit on a central, raised dais, open spaces reduce privacy, they don’t foster informal
rather than scuttle into a private hole; the idea, as one exchanges and may actually inhibit them.
employee explained, being to encourage a climate of
transparency and collaboration. 6
Moreover, to promote collaboration, office bosses
2
must not only approve informal debate, but also
Is the open-plan spirit associated with those promote shared activities within a semi-private space.
environments appropriate to other work contexts? It is Congregating around photocopiers and coffee machines
a fascinating and important question. Many of us spend helps employees bond and share creative ideas, whereas
an inordinate amount of time in an office environment, creating formal ‘lounges’ does not. Scandinavian Airlines
and as anthropologists, architects and psychologists often is apparently a wonderful case study for how to get
note, the way we are physically organised shapes how we things wrong.
work and think in a profound way.
7
3
But, as someone who has worked in both a rabbit warren
So it was that the quasi-cubicle system was born, but and an open-plan environment, I strongly favour the
it was as much a reflection of natural human instincts latter, and wish that more governments would adopt
as it was dictated by the practicalities of the work itself. the system. After all, anything that promotes greater
What gradually emerged were ‘offices’ where so much transparency and egalitarianism seems a thoroughly
paper had to be dealt with that a tradition of piling it high good idea. Knocking down walls may seem like mere
around individual desks became the norm – a feeling of symbolism; but, like all symbols, it can be a powerful
privacy being the not unwelcome by-product. place to start.
4

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 Exam practice 2: Reading

A But in our own times, that pendulum has swung mix of cubicles, open workstations, private offices
back. Most large companies have – like Bloomberg – and group workstations. In some cases, these were
embraced the idea of open-plan space in the hope not assigned to one particular individual, but were
of promoting collaboration. In truth, corporate available to any employee of the company on either a
experiences of this arrangement are very mixed, reservable or first-come, first-served basis.
as two decades of research by management
F The key issue to address, apparently, is whether
consultants shows.
employees feel any sense of control. People must
B During my career as a journalist, I have often walked feel confident that they can converse without being
through government buildings, and have become interrupted or overheard and must also be able
accustomed to seeing a rabbit warren. Across the to avoid interacting whenever they want. Without
western world, senior officials typically work from that possibility, staff will instead choose to conduct
offices interconnected by corridors, guarded by important business out of the office, or retreat into
secretaries in ante-chambers. This building though, private ‘cyber caves’, doing their work entirely online.
was different.
G The trend towards separation intensified, as clerks
C How Bloomberg’s open-plan design at City Hall started to surround their desks with more papers
stacks up, on these criteria, is tough to assess from and machines, and bosses expressed hierarchies
the outside. The employees I spoke to seemed pretty by retreating to a superior enclave. But in the early
happy, but it may have been early days. Received twentieth century, a new idea spread in American
wisdom suggests that open-plan tends to become less companies: that top managers should watch their
attractive as people get older, and may not be equally workers to keep productivity high.
suited to all kinds of business.
H Yet, generally, we barely even notice our surroundings.
D In theory, anyone in such a space can see – and yell Except, that is, when somebody such as Bloomberg
at – everyone else; much as they can on a modern tries to shake things up. The idea of an ‘office’ let alone
financial trading floor or at a newspaper. This, of its layout – has not been constant. It first cropped up
course, is no accident given that Bloomberg spent in Ancient Roman times, when magistrates worked in
most of his career building the financial information temples and palaces. These typically included a place
giant that bears his name. for storing documents, and this developed into the
place where the scribes actually worked.
E It was the changing nature of work itself and the
emergence of mobile technology that led to that
evolution. Companies started experimenting with a

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 03 Exam practice
Reading

Paper 1 Part 5: Multiple-choice questions

You are going to read an article about British and US versions of English. For questions 1–6, choose the
answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.

National identity? Do the math(s)

What difference does a letter ‘s’ make? When it comes to number crunching and national pride, the answer for
some people in the USA and Britain is ‘a lot’. A few days ago, I wrote a column for the financial pages of a British
newspaper about equity market issues in the USA. I argued that it was tough for the Federal Reserve – or anyone
else – to prove whether so-called ‘short-selling bans’ actually worked on the basis of any ‘math’. To be honest,
that is not a spelling of the word that I would normally use; the British style is ‘maths’, whilst in the USA, people
typically say ‘math’. But I’d been chatting with some US academics just before I wrote the piece and was focused
on the equity market issues. Thus the word ‘math’ crept in, and that missing ‘s’ seemed such a trivial issue that
nobody picked it up. When my column was published, however, my spelling elicited almost as many comments
as my views on short selling. ‘Why is a British journalist for a British paper saying “math” instead of “maths”? It’s
really annoying,’ thundered one reader. Or as another said: ‘Many feel strongly that American English and British
English should not be swapped indiscriminately.’ ‘Math’ seems such an affectation for a UK-educated person (and
certainly a mathematician) to use that it is seen as crossing a red line and going over to the other side.
Why such emotion? At first glance, it seems somewhat odd. If you look at the linguistic history of mathematics,
that ‘s’ can be justified or dismissed with equal logic. Linguists believe that the word takes its root from the Ancient
Greek manthanein, which can be roughly translated as ‘to learn’. Initially, this meant general ‘learning’ – hence
the word ‘polymath’. But in the fourteenth century, the term ‘mathematics’ entered the English language, from
French, and became associated with numbers. However, and crucially, this concept was initially expressed as a
plural, because medieval number crunching came in many forms, including astrology, trigonometry, calculus and
physics. But then something curious happened: by the twentieth century, the word had mutated into a singular
noun, notwithstanding that final ‘s’ (in the same way as ‘physics’) and that sparked the transatlantic linguistic divide:
in the USA and Canada, ‘mathematics’ came to be abbreviated to ‘math’ because it was easier to pronounce and
acted as a singular concept in terms of grammar (‘math is my favourite subject’). In Britain, Australia and the rest
of the English-speaking world, however, that ‘s’ was retained (‘maths is my favourite subject’).
Given that the meaning is otherwise identical, you’d think that the words were largely interchangeable and that
it would hardly matter which was used. But judging from the blogosphere, no such assumption can be made on
either side of the Atlantic. One male reader of my column blames this on a deep sense of ‘intellectual insecurity’
about quantative issues today. ‘People know that they ought to understand maths ... but most at some point in
their education reach a stage where they can no longer meet the challenge that the subject poses. Hence the
mention of math or maths induces a sense of anxiety and remembered humiliation that provokes them to prove
that they can at least spell.’
More to the point in this instance, however, is the fact that two-thirds of the world’s English speakers reside in
the USA, where they use American words and spellings. Data suggests that the remaining third are becoming
increasingly Americanised too: a growing proportion of textbooks in the emerging market countries are being
produced in an American style. It is perhaps no surprise that some British nationals are defensive, using their
version of English as a way of guarding their history and culture, and thereby perpetuating its idiosyncrasies. Yet
it’s strange to think all of this emotion should have been focused on a concept that does not involve language.
The beauty of numbers, after all, is that they transcend culture and the narrow confines of grammar. But humans
are rarely entirely logical when so much is at stake. So my suggestion is that we all just declare a truce – and learn
to say ‘arithmetic’ instead.

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 Exam practice 3: Reading

1 In the first paragraph, we learn that the writer used a US spelling in an English newspaper
A to appease US academics.
B in a moment of inattention.
C in an attempt to be provocative.
D to best reflect her subject matter.

2 Many of the writer’s British readers regarded her spelling of the word in question as
A a sign of disloyalty.
B a reflection on her education.
C a result of her training in mathematics.
D an attempt to curry favour with Americans.

3 In the second paragraph, the writer

A suggests that the British use of ‘maths’ is an anomaly.
B explains why a plural concept of ‘mathematics’ developed.
C investigates the changing meaning of the word ‘mathematics’.
D questions the logic behind the idea of a singular concept of ‘math’.

4 What does the writer imply in the third paragraph?

A She fails to see why alternative spellings came to co-exist.
B She regards the US spelling of the word as the more convenient.
C She finds the debate about the spelling of the word somewhat petty.
D She wonders if the two spellings reflect different ideas about the subject.

5 The reader’s comment quoted is implying that

A mathematicians have little patience with linguistic irregularities.
B maths students resent the suggestion that they lack language skills.
C people who are good at mathematics also tend to be good at spelling.
D language skills are perceived as easier to acquire than mathematical ones.

6 From the conclusion, we understand that the writer

A supports the idea of standardised spelling in English.
B predicts that different varieties of English will disappear.
C regrets the attitude of those who defend varieties of English.
D accepts that language is an important part of cultural identity.

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