English as a Second Language (Speaking endorsement) 0510 | Paper 1 Mock 01 | Component: Reading and Writing
Instruction
The teenager who cleans water with clay
1 When Rina Salcedo was fourteen, the water in her village of Balanan changed colour every time it rained. The well turned a milky brown, and within a week half of her class was absent with stomach illness. Families boiled their water instead, but firewood was expensive and the shop that sold bottled water was an hour away by bus.
2 The idea came from her grandmother's kitchen. "There was an old clay pot beside the door, and the water in it always tasted cool and fresh," Rina says. "I began to wonder whether the clay was doing something to the water, and not simply keeping it cold."
3 She started to experiment in the yard behind her house. She mixed local clay with rice husks and shaped the mixture into deep pots. When the pots are fired in a simple brick oven, the husks burn away and leave thousands of tiny holes, far too small for most bacteria to pass through. Her first eleven pots cracked in the heat. The twelfth held together.
4 Her science teacher, Ms Alonzo, arranged for the pots to be tested at a college laboratory in Cebu. The results surprised everyone. The filters removed more than 98 per cent of the bacteria in the water. Each pot costs about four dollars to make, and it lasts around two years if it is cleaned every month with a soft brush.
5 Three years later Rina, now seventeen, runs a small workshop with two neighbours. Together they have trained thirty people to make the pots, and about nine hundred filters are now in daily use in twelve villages. Rina insists that the training matters more than the invention itself. "A filter that nobody knows how to clean is just a heavy pot," she says.
6 Life has changed for the inventor as well. She was invited to speak at a science conference in Manila, where she stood in front of six hundred people and forgot none of it. A university has offered her a scholarship to study environmental engineering, and she will begin next year. Every Saturday morning she meets a group of younger students who are building projects of their own, from a solar dryer for fish to a rain gauge made from a plastic bottle.
7 Her advice to them never changes. "Do not begin with a clever idea," she says. "Begin with a problem you can see from your own front door."
Instruction
Four people who help run community kitchens
A Yusuf
I never planned to run a kitchen. I had an allotment, and one August I was carrying home more courgettes and beans than I could possibly eat on my own. A neighbour suggested cooking a meal for the street, and eight people came. Four years later we serve about ninety meals every Thursday from a converted garage behind the community centre. The building is the hardest part of all this. We have one small fridge and no dry store at all, so the ingredients arrive in the morning and everything has to be chopped, cooked and served on the same day. The strangest change is the one in me. I used to lie awake for hours every night, and since the kitchen opened I sleep straight through until morning. Cooking for other people has done more for me than any advice I was ever given.
B Priya
Our kitchen runs on Saturdays in the hall of a community centre in Durban. Most of what we cook comes from a market stall whose owner puts aside the vegetables that will not last another day. My two daughters have come with me since the very first week. One of them writes the names of our guests in a book and the other carries the plates, and between them they have never missed a Saturday. If I could pass on one thing to a new kitchen, it would be this: watch the door. People arriving for the first time often stand outside for ten minutes, deciding whether to come in. Someone should go out, say hello and walk in beside them, then sit at their table for a while. Cooking is the easy part. Making a stranger feel expected is the part that takes practice.
C Elena
We open three evenings a week between November and March, in a church hall in Valencia. Volunteers are what I think about most. In our first winter we lost half of them by January, and it was not because the work was hard. People arrived, stood in a corner because nobody had told them what to do, and quietly decided that they were not needed. Now every new volunteer is met by someone who stays beside them for the whole of the first evening. My biggest worry at the moment is the gas bill, which is almost double what it was two winters ago, so we are testing slower recipes that use one pot instead of three. I have changed too. I had never spoken in front of strangers in my life, and last month I stood up and explained our work to the city council for twenty minutes.
D Kwame
For two years we cooked in a room at the back of a school in Accra. The food was good and the room cost us nothing, but I kept noticing the same thing. The people who most needed a hot meal lived forty minutes away, and nobody is going to walk that far in the rain. So we bought an old van and fitted it with a gas ring and a serving hatch. The kitchen now goes to the market on Tuesdays and to the bus station on Fridays, and we serve three times as many people as before. My one piece of advice about the food is this: do not try to be clever. We cook the same three dishes every week, in rotation, so that anybody who is hungry already knows what is waiting and never has to ask.
Instruction
What is a library for now?
1 Ask most adults to describe a library and they will describe the one they visited as children: rows of shelves, a stamp on a card, and a librarian asking for silence. Walk into a public library today and the picture is different. Borrowing books is still at the centre of the work, but it is no longer the only reason to open the door.
2 The clearest change is in what can be borrowed. Hundreds of libraries now run what they call a library of things. At Riverside Library in Manchester, members take home electric drills, sewing machines, carpet cleaners, board games and even a guitar. A ticket costs nothing, and the items are returned in the same way as a novel. The reasoning is simple: most households need a drill for about ten minutes a year, and buying one is a poor use of both money and metal.
3 The building itself has changed use too. Free internet access is now among the most requested services, and many libraries lend laptops for several weeks at a time to students who have none at home. A growing number have a small recording booth, where anyone can make a podcast or record a job interview practice, and a few have added a 3D printer that members can book by the hour.
4 Then there are the activities. Conversation clubs give people who are new to the country somewhere to practise the language with volunteers. Free sessions on writing job applications are among the busiest events of the week. On weekday mornings the same room fills with parents and babies for singing and stories. In the coldest months many libraries also open as warm rooms, where anyone can sit for the afternoon without buying anything.
5 None of this is easy to pay for. Local funding for libraries in many towns has fallen sharply over the past decade, and the first thing to be cut is usually opening hours, so buildings that once opened six days a week now open three. Older library buildings are beautiful and expensive; heating a large old hall with a very high ceiling through a winter can cost more than the events held inside it.
6 Staff face their own difficulty. A librarian trained twenty years ago in cataloguing is now expected to help a visitor upload a document, set up an email account or find an online form, and training for this has not always followed. There is tension inside the building as well. Readers who come for quiet do not always welcome a room of singing toddlers, and libraries have to think carefully about which spaces are noisy and which are not.
7 Finally, there is the problem of proof. The number of books borrowed is easy to count and it continues to fall. The number of people helped through a difficult afternoon is not. Librarians argue that the wrong things are being counted, and until better measurements are agreed, the case for funding is harder to make than it should be.
Instruction
Following the smallest travellers: a life spent studying bird migration
1 At four in the morning the lagoon behind the Meltem Bird Observatory is completely still. Dr Selin Aydar lifts a reed warbler the size of a plum out of a fine net and holds it while a colleague reads out its weight. Eleven grams. The bird is ringed, photographed and released within four minutes, and in three hours the team will handle sixty of them.
2 Aydar found her subject by accident. At the age of nine she picked up a dead swallow in her grandparents' yard and noticed a thin metal ring around its leg with letters and a number on it. Her uncle helped her write to the address stamped on the ring, and three months later a letter arrived explaining that the bird had been ringed by a student two thousand kilometres away. "I could not stop thinking about it," she says. "Something that weighed less than a spoonful of rice had crossed a continent, and two different people had written down where they found it."
3 The observatory's equipment has changed beyond recognition. The smallest tags weigh three tenths of a gram, less than the ring itself, and record the length of each day, from which the bird's position can be worked out. They have one awkward quality: they save their information rather than sending it, so the tag is useless unless the same bird is caught again a year later. Roughly one tag in five comes back. "We plan for failure," Aydar says. "Four out of five stories are simply never told."
4 What the returned tags show is a journey of astonishing effort. In the two weeks before they leave, the warblers feed almost without pausing on insects and small berries and nearly double their body weight, and this fuel must then last for a single flight of up to sixty hours over open desert. A bird that leaves the lagoon too light will not arrive at all. Aydar has spent years mapping the places where the birds stop to feed, and argues that these stopping places matter as much as the marshes where the birds nest.
5 Some birds become famous at the observatory. One female warbler, known from her ring number as K27, was first caught in 2019 and was then caught again in each of the four following autumns, always within thirty metres of the same patch of reeds. Between one capture and the next she had crossed the desert and a sea twice, then returned to a piece of ground smaller than a tennis court. "Every visitor asks me how she does it," Aydar says. "We understand only part of it."
6 The records also show change. Compared with the 1990s, the warblers now leave the lagoon nine days later on average. Warmer autumns keep insects available for longer, which sounds like good news, but Aydar is cautious. If a bird leaves late and the insects at the other end appear at the usual time, it arrives after the food has gone.
7 The observatory's oldest possessions matter just as much. In a metal cupboard by the door are handwritten notebooks running back to 1968, filled with weights, dates and weather notes in faded pencil. Aydar calls them the most valuable equipment in the building. Any laboratory can buy a new tag, she points out, but nobody can go back to a September morning in 1971 and weigh the birds that were there.
8 She does not work alone. About four hundred volunteers send in sightings through a phone app, and their reports have already shown the team two feeding sites that no scientist had recorded. Many messages are questions about rare visitors that turn out to be common birds seen in poor light, and Aydar answers them two evenings a week. Her own research, she says plainly, could not be carried out without those four hundred pairs of eyes.
9 Her ambition now is a chain of protected stopping places along the whole route. "We have spent a century protecting the two ends of the journey," she says. "The birds keep telling us that the middle is where they are lost."
Instruction
Question 1 Report
Read the article about a young inventor who has made a water filter, and then answer the following questions.
1 How old was Rina when the water in her village first became a problem? [1]
2 What made Rina think that clay might change the water in some way? [1]
3 What does Rina mix with the clay before the pots are fired? [1]
4 How long does one filter last if it is cleaned every month? [1]
5 According to Rina, what matters more than the invention itself? [1]
6 In what ways has life changed for Rina since the tests in Cebu? Give three details. [3]
[Total: 8]
Exercise 1 tests your ability to find stated facts quickly and to select only the words the question asks for. Questions 1 to 5 each have one short answer written directly in the article, so a word, a number or a short phrase earns the mark. Question 6 is different: it asks for three separate details, so three ideas must be given, not one idea repeated in three ways.
- Age when the water became a problem: fourteen. [1] The article opens, "When Rina Salcedo was fourteen, the water in her village of Balanan changed colour every time it rained." The common error is to write seventeen, but that is her age at the time of writing, since paragraph 5 says "Three years later Rina, now seventeen". The question asks about the moment the problem began, so the earlier age is the one required.
- The water in her grandmother's old clay pot always tasted cool and fresh. [1] Rina says, "There was an old clay pot beside the door, and the water in it always tasted cool and fresh," and then, "I began to wonder whether the clay was doing something to the water, and not simply keeping it cold." The taste and freshness of the stored water is the observation that started the idea. An answer such as "her grandmother told her to use clay" is not creditable, because the text never says the grandmother suggested anything.
- Rice husks. [1] Paragraph 3 states, "She mixed local clay with rice husks and shaped the mixture into deep pots." The husk is the part that matters, because it burns away in the oven and leaves "thousands of tiny holes, far too small for most bacteria to pass through", so writing "rice" alone loses the mark.
- Around two years. [1] Paragraph 4 says each pot "lasts around two years if it is cleaned every month with a soft brush". Note that the question repeats the condition about monthly cleaning, which is your signal that the figure you need is the one attached to that condition, not the cost of four dollars in the same sentence.
- The training. [1] Rina "insists that the training matters more than the invention itself", and she explains why: "A filter that nobody knows how to clean is just a heavy pot." An answer naming the workshop is not accepted, because the workshop is the place, while the training is the activity she values.
- Any three of the following changes in her own life, one mark each. [3]
- She was invited to speak at a science conference in Manila, in front of six hundred people.
- A university has offered her a scholarship to study environmental engineering.
- She runs a small workshop with two neighbours and has trained thirty people to make the pots.
- Every Saturday morning she meets younger students who are building their own projects.
Examination point: when a question ends with "Give three details", check that your three answers come from three different sentences and describe three different things. Two rewordings of the same fact will be credited once.
Answer Details
Exercise 1 tests your ability to find stated facts quickly and to select only the words the question asks for. Questions 1 to 5 each have one short answer written directly in the article, so a word, a number or a short phrase earns the mark. Question 6 is different: it asks for three separate details, so three ideas must be given, not one idea repeated in three ways.
- Age when the water became a problem: fourteen. [1] The article opens, "When Rina Salcedo was fourteen, the water in her village of Balanan changed colour every time it rained." The common error is to write seventeen, but that is her age at the time of writing, since paragraph 5 says "Three years later Rina, now seventeen". The question asks about the moment the problem began, so the earlier age is the one required.
- The water in her grandmother's old clay pot always tasted cool and fresh. [1] Rina says, "There was an old clay pot beside the door, and the water in it always tasted cool and fresh," and then, "I began to wonder whether the clay was doing something to the water, and not simply keeping it cold." The taste and freshness of the stored water is the observation that started the idea. An answer such as "her grandmother told her to use clay" is not creditable, because the text never says the grandmother suggested anything.
- Rice husks. [1] Paragraph 3 states, "She mixed local clay with rice husks and shaped the mixture into deep pots." The husk is the part that matters, because it burns away in the oven and leaves "thousands of tiny holes, far too small for most bacteria to pass through", so writing "rice" alone loses the mark.
- Around two years. [1] Paragraph 4 says each pot "lasts around two years if it is cleaned every month with a soft brush". Note that the question repeats the condition about monthly cleaning, which is your signal that the figure you need is the one attached to that condition, not the cost of four dollars in the same sentence.
- The training. [1] Rina "insists that the training matters more than the invention itself", and she explains why: "A filter that nobody knows how to clean is just a heavy pot." An answer naming the workshop is not accepted, because the workshop is the place, while the training is the activity she values.
- Any three of the following changes in her own life, one mark each. [3]
- She was invited to speak at a science conference in Manila, in front of six hundred people.
- A university has offered her a scholarship to study environmental engineering.
- She runs a small workshop with two neighbours and has trained thirty people to make the pots.
- Every Saturday morning she meets younger students who are building their own projects.
Examination point: when a question ends with "Give three details", check that your three answers come from three different sentences and describe three different things. Two rewordings of the same fact will be credited once.
Question 2 Report
Your school has started a photography club that meets after lessons. The school magazine has asked students to write a review of it.
Here are some comments about the club from your friends:
- "The tutor explains everything twice, which is perfect if you have never held a camera."
- "There are only six cameras for twenty of us, so you spend a lot of time waiting."
- "We went out to the harbour to take pictures instead of sitting in a classroom."
- "Five o'clock is far too late for anyone who has a bus to catch."
Now write a review of the photography club for your school magazine. The comments above may give you some ideas, and you should also use some ideas of your own. Write about 120 to 160 words.
You will receive up to 6 marks for the content of your review, and up to 9 marks for the language used.
[Total: 15]
Exercise 6 is worth 15 marks: 6 for content and 9 for language, marked separately. Unlike Exercise 5, there are no bullets to answer. The four comments are a starting point, not a plan, and the highest content levels are reserved for responses that add ideas of their own.
Earning the 6 content marks. A review has four jobs, and Level 6 (6 marks) requires all four.
- Inform. Say what the club actually is and what happens at it, since a reader of the school magazine may never have been. When it meets, who runs it, what a typical session involves.
- Judge. Give one clear overall verdict and give it early, so the reader knows where the review stands.
- Support both sides. Weigh strengths against weaknesses with examples. The comments supply both: a tutor who explains everything twice, which suits complete beginners, against six cameras for twenty members, which means waiting.
- Add your own idea. Something not in the comments: the cost, the standard of the photographs produced, whether the club could borrow cameras from the art department, whether an earlier start would help those catching buses.
Copying the four comments one after another with nothing added keeps content in the middle levels, around 2 or 3 marks, however correct the English is.
Earning the 9 language marks. Range: evaluative vocabulary that is precise (patient, well organised, frustrating, worth the wait) rather than repeated good and bad, plus concessive structures for balance (although, even so, on the other hand, despite this). Accuracy: present simple for what the club is like generally, past simple for the one trip you cite as evidence. Register: written for fellow students in a school magazine, so lively but not slangy. Organisation: an opening line that draws the reader in, a paragraph of description, a paragraph of judgement, and a recommendation naming who would enjoy it.
Model response (about 150 words)
Worth the wait: the photography club
The photography club meets in Room 12 every Tuesday from five until half past six, and it is the most useful new thing the school has started this year, provided you can stay that late.
Mr Ibrahim runs it, and he explains every setting twice without ever making anyone feel foolish. If you have never held a camera, start here. Better still, we do not sit in a classroom. Last month the whole group spent the session at the harbour photographing boats in the evening light, and the results are on the wall outside the library.
The problems are real, though. Six cameras between twenty members means a good deal of standing about, and a five o'clock start is impossible for anyone on the school bus.
If the club could borrow the art department's two cameras and begin at four, it would be excellent. As it is, it is very good.
Where marks are commonly lost here. Reviews built entirely from the four comments stay in the middle bands. Responses that praise everything are unbalanced, so the reader cannot judge. Others drift into a narrative of one afternoon and never evaluate the club at all, which is description rather than review.
Answer Details
Exercise 6 is worth 15 marks: 6 for content and 9 for language, marked separately. Unlike Exercise 5, there are no bullets to answer. The four comments are a starting point, not a plan, and the highest content levels are reserved for responses that add ideas of their own.
Earning the 6 content marks. A review has four jobs, and Level 6 (6 marks) requires all four.
- Inform. Say what the club actually is and what happens at it, since a reader of the school magazine may never have been. When it meets, who runs it, what a typical session involves.
- Judge. Give one clear overall verdict and give it early, so the reader knows where the review stands.
- Support both sides. Weigh strengths against weaknesses with examples. The comments supply both: a tutor who explains everything twice, which suits complete beginners, against six cameras for twenty members, which means waiting.
- Add your own idea. Something not in the comments: the cost, the standard of the photographs produced, whether the club could borrow cameras from the art department, whether an earlier start would help those catching buses.
Copying the four comments one after another with nothing added keeps content in the middle levels, around 2 or 3 marks, however correct the English is.
Earning the 9 language marks. Range: evaluative vocabulary that is precise (patient, well organised, frustrating, worth the wait) rather than repeated good and bad, plus concessive structures for balance (although, even so, on the other hand, despite this). Accuracy: present simple for what the club is like generally, past simple for the one trip you cite as evidence. Register: written for fellow students in a school magazine, so lively but not slangy. Organisation: an opening line that draws the reader in, a paragraph of description, a paragraph of judgement, and a recommendation naming who would enjoy it.
Model response (about 150 words)
Worth the wait: the photography club
The photography club meets in Room 12 every Tuesday from five until half past six, and it is the most useful new thing the school has started this year, provided you can stay that late.
Mr Ibrahim runs it, and he explains every setting twice without ever making anyone feel foolish. If you have never held a camera, start here. Better still, we do not sit in a classroom. Last month the whole group spent the session at the harbour photographing boats in the evening light, and the results are on the wall outside the library.
The problems are real, though. Six cameras between twenty members means a good deal of standing about, and a five o'clock start is impossible for anyone on the school bus.
If the club could borrow the art department's two cameras and begin at four, it would be excellent. As it is, it is very good.
Where marks are commonly lost here. Reviews built entirely from the four comments stay in the middle bands. Responses that praise everything are unbalanced, so the reader cannot judge. Others drift into a narrative of one afternoon and never evaluate the club at all, which is description rather than review.
Question 3 Report
On the way home from a day trip you left a bag on the bus. The bus company has a lost property office which accepts messages by email.
Write an email to the lost property office about this.
In your email you should:
- describe the bag and say what was inside it
- say when and where you were travelling
- explain what you would like the office to do next.
Write about 120 to 160 words.
You will receive up to 6 marks for the content of your email, and up to 9 marks for the language used.
[Total: 15]
Exercise 5 is marked twice on the same piece of writing: up to 6 marks for content and up to 9 for language, making 15 in all. The two marks are independent, so accurate English on an incomplete answer still loses content marks, and a full answer written in poor English still loses language marks. Write 120 to 160 words.
How the 6 content marks are earned
The three bullets are the content. Top band means all three are covered fully and developed with relevant detail, so that the reader is fully informed. Cover two well and mention the third briefly and the mark falls to around 3; deal with only one and it falls to about 2. For this task each bullet needs the following.
- Describe the bag and say what was inside it. Development means enough for a stranger in a store room to pick it out: colour, size, material, a strap, a badge, a name tag, any mark or repair. Then list the contents, and name at least one item that is identifiable, such as a book with a name in it or a set of keys with a particular fob.
- Say when and where you were travelling. Give the date, the route or service number, the time of the journey and where you boarded and left. Adding the deck or the seat is genuine development, because it tells the office where to look.
- Explain what you would like the office to do next. Make one clear request: hold the bag, confirm by email whether it has been found, or say how and when it can be collected. A request the reader can act on scores; a general complaint about the bus service does not.
How the 9 language marks are earned
Four things are judged together. Range: vocabulary that is precise rather than repeated, and a mixture of simple and complex sentences, including relative clauses and time clauses. Accuracy: control of tenses, especially the past simple for the journey and a conditional or modal for the request; errors in ambitious language are tolerated while meaning stays clear. Register: polite and reasonably formal throughout, since the reader is a stranger at an office. Organisation: an appropriate opening and closing, one paragraph for each bullet, and linking words that carry the reader forward.
A model response
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing because I left a bag on one of your buses last Saturday and I would be grateful for your help.
The bag is a dark green rucksack, medium sized, made of canvas with brown leather straps. There is a small tear near the left pocket and a blue badge sewn onto the front. Inside there were a grey jumper, a library book with my name written inside the cover, and a set of keys on a red cord.
I was travelling on the number 14 service from Ferndown to the city centre on Saturday 12 April. I got on at about four o'clock and left the bus at the station, and I think the bag stayed on the seat by the window upstairs.
Could you please check whether it has been handed in and email me to say when I may collect it?
Yours faithfully,
Amina Farouk
Where marks are usually lost
Candidates often describe the bag carefully and forget the contents, or give the day without the route, so the office could not begin to search. The third bullet is frequently answered with a complaint rather than a request. Writing the contents as a bare list with no sentence structure also limits the language mark, as does drifting into an informal tone with a reader you have never met.
Answer Details
Exercise 5 is marked twice on the same piece of writing: up to 6 marks for content and up to 9 for language, making 15 in all. The two marks are independent, so accurate English on an incomplete answer still loses content marks, and a full answer written in poor English still loses language marks. Write 120 to 160 words.
How the 6 content marks are earned
The three bullets are the content. Top band means all three are covered fully and developed with relevant detail, so that the reader is fully informed. Cover two well and mention the third briefly and the mark falls to around 3; deal with only one and it falls to about 2. For this task each bullet needs the following.
- Describe the bag and say what was inside it. Development means enough for a stranger in a store room to pick it out: colour, size, material, a strap, a badge, a name tag, any mark or repair. Then list the contents, and name at least one item that is identifiable, such as a book with a name in it or a set of keys with a particular fob.
- Say when and where you were travelling. Give the date, the route or service number, the time of the journey and where you boarded and left. Adding the deck or the seat is genuine development, because it tells the office where to look.
- Explain what you would like the office to do next. Make one clear request: hold the bag, confirm by email whether it has been found, or say how and when it can be collected. A request the reader can act on scores; a general complaint about the bus service does not.
How the 9 language marks are earned
Four things are judged together. Range: vocabulary that is precise rather than repeated, and a mixture of simple and complex sentences, including relative clauses and time clauses. Accuracy: control of tenses, especially the past simple for the journey and a conditional or modal for the request; errors in ambitious language are tolerated while meaning stays clear. Register: polite and reasonably formal throughout, since the reader is a stranger at an office. Organisation: an appropriate opening and closing, one paragraph for each bullet, and linking words that carry the reader forward.
A model response
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing because I left a bag on one of your buses last Saturday and I would be grateful for your help.
The bag is a dark green rucksack, medium sized, made of canvas with brown leather straps. There is a small tear near the left pocket and a blue badge sewn onto the front. Inside there were a grey jumper, a library book with my name written inside the cover, and a set of keys on a red cord.
I was travelling on the number 14 service from Ferndown to the city centre on Saturday 12 April. I got on at about four o'clock and left the bus at the station, and I think the bag stayed on the seat by the window upstairs.
Could you please check whether it has been handed in and email me to say when I may collect it?
Yours faithfully,
Amina Farouk
Where marks are usually lost
Candidates often describe the bag carefully and forget the contents, or give the day without the route, so the office could not begin to search. The third bullet is frequently answered with a complaint rather than a request. Writing the contents as a bare list with no sentence structure also limits the language mark, as does drifting into an informal tone with a reader you have never met.
Question 4 Report
Read the four texts, in which four people (A to D) describe helping to run a community kitchen. Then answer Question 7(a) to 7(i).
Question 7 Which person ...
Write the correct letter, A, B, C or D, on the line.
(a) explains why the kitchen moved to a different place? [1]
(b) mentions family members who help every week? [1]
(c) suggests why some volunteers stopped coming? [1]
(d) describes an unexpected effect on their own health? [1]
(e) gives some advice about choosing what to cook? [1]
(f) gives some advice about how to welcome guests who arrive for a meal for the first time? [1]
(g) mentions a difficulty caused by a lack of space? [1]
(h) describes speaking in public for the first time? [1]
(i) mentions a cost that has risen? [1]
[Total: 9]
Exercise 2 tests scanning. Nine statements have to be matched to four short texts, and each statement is true of exactly one writer, so a single detail in one text decides each mark. The verbs in the items tell you what to look for: "explains why" needs a reason, "gives some advice" needs a recommendation addressed to someone else, and "mentions" needs only a stated fact.
- (a) Kwame, D. [1] He explains the move: "The people who most needed a hot meal lived forty minutes away, and nobody is going to walk that far in the rain. So we bought an old van and fitted it with a gas ring and a serving hatch." Yusuf also works in a converted building, but he never describes moving from one place to another.
- (b) Priya, B. [1] "My two daughters have come with me since the very first week ... between them they have never missed a Saturday." The item requires family members and a weekly pattern, and both are present.
- (c) Elena, C. [1] "In our first winter we lost half of them by January, and it was not because the work was hard. People arrived, stood in a corner because nobody had told them what to do, and quietly decided that they were not needed." The suggested cause is being left without a role, not the difficulty of the work.
- (d) Yusuf, A. [1] "I used to lie awake for hours every night, and since the kitchen opened I sleep straight through until morning." He calls it "The strangest change", which matches the word unexpected in the item.
- (e) Kwame, D. [1] "My one piece of advice about the food is this: do not try to be clever. We cook the same three dishes every week, in rotation." This is advice about what to cook, which is different from Priya's advice about welcoming people.
- (f) Priya, B. [1] "watch the door. People arriving for the first time often stand outside for ten minutes ... Someone should go out, say hello and walk in beside them." The item specifies guests arriving for the first time, and her advice is aimed exactly at them.
- (g) Yusuf, A. [1] "The building is the hardest part of all this. We have one small fridge and no dry store at all, so the ingredients arrive in the morning and everything has to be chopped, cooked and served on the same day." Lack of storage space is the difficulty, and its consequence is stated.
- (h) Elena, C. [1] "I had never spoken in front of strangers in my life, and last month I stood up and explained our work to the city council for twenty minutes."
- (i) Elena, C. [1] "My biggest worry at the moment is the gas bill, which is almost double what it was two winters ago."
Examination point: three items here point to Elena and two each to the others, so the letters are not evenly spread. Never change a confident answer simply because one letter seems to appear too often.
Answer Details
Exercise 2 tests scanning. Nine statements have to be matched to four short texts, and each statement is true of exactly one writer, so a single detail in one text decides each mark. The verbs in the items tell you what to look for: "explains why" needs a reason, "gives some advice" needs a recommendation addressed to someone else, and "mentions" needs only a stated fact.
- (a) Kwame, D. [1] He explains the move: "The people who most needed a hot meal lived forty minutes away, and nobody is going to walk that far in the rain. So we bought an old van and fitted it with a gas ring and a serving hatch." Yusuf also works in a converted building, but he never describes moving from one place to another.
- (b) Priya, B. [1] "My two daughters have come with me since the very first week ... between them they have never missed a Saturday." The item requires family members and a weekly pattern, and both are present.
- (c) Elena, C. [1] "In our first winter we lost half of them by January, and it was not because the work was hard. People arrived, stood in a corner because nobody had told them what to do, and quietly decided that they were not needed." The suggested cause is being left without a role, not the difficulty of the work.
- (d) Yusuf, A. [1] "I used to lie awake for hours every night, and since the kitchen opened I sleep straight through until morning." He calls it "The strangest change", which matches the word unexpected in the item.
- (e) Kwame, D. [1] "My one piece of advice about the food is this: do not try to be clever. We cook the same three dishes every week, in rotation." This is advice about what to cook, which is different from Priya's advice about welcoming people.
- (f) Priya, B. [1] "watch the door. People arriving for the first time often stand outside for ten minutes ... Someone should go out, say hello and walk in beside them." The item specifies guests arriving for the first time, and her advice is aimed exactly at them.
- (g) Yusuf, A. [1] "The building is the hardest part of all this. We have one small fridge and no dry store at all, so the ingredients arrive in the morning and everything has to be chopped, cooked and served on the same day." Lack of storage space is the difficulty, and its consequence is stated.
- (h) Elena, C. [1] "I had never spoken in front of strangers in my life, and last month I stood up and explained our work to the city council for twenty minutes."
- (i) Elena, C. [1] "My biggest worry at the moment is the gas bill, which is almost double what it was two winters ago."
Examination point: three items here point to Elena and two each to the others, so the letters are not evenly spread. Never change a confident answer simply because one letter seems to appear too often.
Question 5 Report
Read the article about a scientist who studies bird migration, and then answer the following questions.
10 What first made Aydar interested in the movement of birds?
A She was taken to the observatory on a school trip.
B Her uncle worked with birds when she was a child.
C She found a dead bird wearing a numbered ring. [1]
11 Why must a tagged bird be caught a second time?
A The tag saves its information instead of sending it.
B The tag has to be replaced after one journey.
C The tag cannot be read while the bird is flying. [1]
12 The phrase 'this fuel' in paragraph 4 refers to
A the wind that carries the birds over the desert.
B the insects that appear at the far end of the journey.
C the extra body weight the birds put on before leaving. [1]
13 What does the story of the bird known as K27 show?
A A warbler can return to a very small area after a huge journey.
B A warbler will use the same route only if the weather is calm.
C A warbler lives longer than most other small birds. [1]
14 Why does Aydar describe the old notebooks as the most valuable equipment in the building?
A They are the only place where the information from the tags is kept.
B They contain measurements of the past that can never be taken again.
C They prove that the observatory has been open longer than any other. [1]
15 What does the article suggest about Aydar and the volunteers?
A She could not do her research without the reports they send.
B She values their enthusiasm more than the information they provide.
C She would prefer them to report only the rarest birds. [1]
[Total: 6]
Exercise 4 gives six one-mark questions on a longer article. Two ask for a detail you can point to, two ask you to work out something the article implies without stating it, one asks what a phrase refers to, and one asks about the writer's or speaker's attitude. Every wrong choice here is a real detail from the article placed where it does not belong, so the test is location as much as comprehension.
- What first made Aydar interested in the movement of birds. The answer is that she found a dead bird wearing a numbered ring. Paragraph 2 says that "at the age of nine she picked up a dead swallow in her grandparents' yard and noticed a thin metal ring around its leg". The choice about an uncle who worked with birds misuses a genuine detail: the uncle appears, but only because he "helped her write to the address stamped on the ring". A school trip to the observatory is not mentioned anywhere.
- Why a tagged bird must be caught a second time. The answer is that the tag stores its information instead of sending it. Paragraph 3 states that the tags "save their information rather than sending it, so the tag is useless unless the same bird is caught again a year later". Nothing says a tag has to be replaced after one journey. The idea that a tag cannot be read in flight sounds plausible but reverses the problem the article describes, which is storage rather than reading.
- What the phrase "this fuel" in paragraph 4 refers to. It refers to the extra body weight the birds put on before leaving. The sentence explains that in the two weeks before departure the warblers "nearly double their body weight, and this fuel must then last for a single flight of up to sixty hours". A pronoun phrase points backwards, so the answer must be in the words immediately before it. The insects at the far end of the journey are real, but paragraph 6 places them at the arrival point, so they are what the bird hopes to find, not what it carries. The desert crossing is mentioned, but no helpful wind is described at all.
- What the story of the bird known as K27 shows. It shows that a warbler can return to a very small area after an enormous journey. Paragraph 5 records that she was caught in four following autumns "always within thirty metres of the same patch of reeds", having crossed a desert and a sea twice in between, and returned "to a piece of ground smaller than a tennis court". Weather is discussed elsewhere in the article but never in connection with K27, and her age is never compared with that of other species.
- Why Aydar calls the old notebooks the most valuable equipment. Because they hold measurements of the past that can never be taken again. Her reasoning in paragraph 7 is that "any laboratory can buy a new tag, she points out, but nobody can go back to a September morning in 1971 and weigh the birds that were there". The notebooks are not where tag data is stored; the tags themselves carry that. Nor does the article compare this observatory's age with any other.
- What the article suggests about Aydar and the volunteers. It suggests she could not do her research without the reports they send, which paragraph 8 states directly: her research "could not be carried out without those four hundred pairs of eyes". The suggestion that she values enthusiasm above information contradicts the same paragraph, where the volunteers' reports revealed "two feeding sites that no scientist had recorded". The suggestion that she wants only rare birds reported also fails, because she answers questions about birds that "turn out to be common birds seen in poor light" two evenings a week without complaint.
Exam takeaway: for a question asking what a phrase refers to, read the clause before it rather than searching the whole article for a matching noun. Distractors in this exercise are deliberately taken from other paragraphs, so a detail that is true of the article can still be the wrong answer to the question asked.
Answer Details
Exercise 4 gives six one-mark questions on a longer article. Two ask for a detail you can point to, two ask you to work out something the article implies without stating it, one asks what a phrase refers to, and one asks about the writer's or speaker's attitude. Every wrong choice here is a real detail from the article placed where it does not belong, so the test is location as much as comprehension.
- What first made Aydar interested in the movement of birds. The answer is that she found a dead bird wearing a numbered ring. Paragraph 2 says that "at the age of nine she picked up a dead swallow in her grandparents' yard and noticed a thin metal ring around its leg". The choice about an uncle who worked with birds misuses a genuine detail: the uncle appears, but only because he "helped her write to the address stamped on the ring". A school trip to the observatory is not mentioned anywhere.
- Why a tagged bird must be caught a second time. The answer is that the tag stores its information instead of sending it. Paragraph 3 states that the tags "save their information rather than sending it, so the tag is useless unless the same bird is caught again a year later". Nothing says a tag has to be replaced after one journey. The idea that a tag cannot be read in flight sounds plausible but reverses the problem the article describes, which is storage rather than reading.
- What the phrase "this fuel" in paragraph 4 refers to. It refers to the extra body weight the birds put on before leaving. The sentence explains that in the two weeks before departure the warblers "nearly double their body weight, and this fuel must then last for a single flight of up to sixty hours". A pronoun phrase points backwards, so the answer must be in the words immediately before it. The insects at the far end of the journey are real, but paragraph 6 places them at the arrival point, so they are what the bird hopes to find, not what it carries. The desert crossing is mentioned, but no helpful wind is described at all.
- What the story of the bird known as K27 shows. It shows that a warbler can return to a very small area after an enormous journey. Paragraph 5 records that she was caught in four following autumns "always within thirty metres of the same patch of reeds", having crossed a desert and a sea twice in between, and returned "to a piece of ground smaller than a tennis court". Weather is discussed elsewhere in the article but never in connection with K27, and her age is never compared with that of other species.
- Why Aydar calls the old notebooks the most valuable equipment. Because they hold measurements of the past that can never be taken again. Her reasoning in paragraph 7 is that "any laboratory can buy a new tag, she points out, but nobody can go back to a September morning in 1971 and weigh the birds that were there". The notebooks are not where tag data is stored; the tags themselves carry that. Nor does the article compare this observatory's age with any other.
- What the article suggests about Aydar and the volunteers. It suggests she could not do her research without the reports they send, which paragraph 8 states directly: her research "could not be carried out without those four hundred pairs of eyes". The suggestion that she values enthusiasm above information contradicts the same paragraph, where the volunteers' reports revealed "two feeding sites that no scientist had recorded". The suggestion that she wants only rare birds reported also fails, because she answers questions about birds that "turn out to be common birds seen in poor light" two evenings a week without complaint.
Exam takeaway: for a question asking what a phrase refers to, read the clause before it rather than searching the whole article for a matching noun. Distractors in this exercise are deliberately taken from other paragraphs, so a detail that is true of the article can still be the wrong answer to the question asked.
Question 6 Report
Read the article about how libraries are changing, and then complete the notes.
Imagine you are going to give a talk to your classmates about public libraries today. Use words from the article to help you write some notes. Make short notes under each heading.
Question 8 What libraries offer today, apart from lending books [4]
....................................................................................
....................................................................................
....................................................................................
....................................................................................
Question 9 Difficulties that libraries are facing [3]
....................................................................................
....................................................................................
....................................................................................
[Total: 7]
Exercise 3 tests selective note-making. You are not asked to summarise the whole article: you are asked for four separate points under the first heading and three under the second, each one a different idea drawn from the text. Short notes are enough, and words copied from the article are accepted, but a point written under the wrong heading earns nothing and the same idea worded twice is credited only once.
Question 8: what libraries offer today, apart from lending books. [4] The heading excludes book borrowing itself, so paragraph 1, which says "Borrowing books is still at the centre of the work", supplies no marks. Any four of the following do:
- a library of things, lending tools and household items such as "electric drills, sewing machines, carpet cleaners, board games and even a guitar"
- free internet access, "now among the most requested services"
- lending laptops for several weeks to students who have none at home
- a small recording booth for making a podcast or practising a job interview
- a 3D printer that members can book by the hour
- conversation clubs for people who are new to the country
- free sessions on writing job applications
- singing and stories for parents and babies on weekday mornings
- opening as a warm room in the coldest months
Question 9: difficulties that libraries are facing. [3] Any three of the following:
- local funding has fallen sharply, so opening hours are cut and "buildings that once opened six days a week now open three"
- older buildings are expensive to heat, since "heating a large old hall with a very high ceiling through a winter can cost more than the events held inside it"
- staff trained in cataloguing are now expected to help with digital tasks, and "training for this has not always followed"
- tension between readers who come for quiet and noisy activities such as singing toddlers
- the value of the work is hard to prove, because book loans are easy to count and keep falling while "the number of people helped through a difficult afternoon is not"
Two common errors cost marks here. The first is writing two versions of one idea, such as listing the drill and the sewing machine as separate points when both belong to the library of things. The second is crossing the headings: falling funding is a difficulty, not something the library offers, so it earns nothing under the first heading.
Examination point: the article is organised so that paragraphs 2 to 4 supply the first heading and paragraphs 5 to 7 supply the second. Finding the dividing line in the text before you write is the fastest way to fill both sets of lines correctly.
Answer Details
Exercise 3 tests selective note-making. You are not asked to summarise the whole article: you are asked for four separate points under the first heading and three under the second, each one a different idea drawn from the text. Short notes are enough, and words copied from the article are accepted, but a point written under the wrong heading earns nothing and the same idea worded twice is credited only once.
Question 8: what libraries offer today, apart from lending books. [4] The heading excludes book borrowing itself, so paragraph 1, which says "Borrowing books is still at the centre of the work", supplies no marks. Any four of the following do:
- a library of things, lending tools and household items such as "electric drills, sewing machines, carpet cleaners, board games and even a guitar"
- free internet access, "now among the most requested services"
- lending laptops for several weeks to students who have none at home
- a small recording booth for making a podcast or practising a job interview
- a 3D printer that members can book by the hour
- conversation clubs for people who are new to the country
- free sessions on writing job applications
- singing and stories for parents and babies on weekday mornings
- opening as a warm room in the coldest months
Question 9: difficulties that libraries are facing. [3] Any three of the following:
- local funding has fallen sharply, so opening hours are cut and "buildings that once opened six days a week now open three"
- older buildings are expensive to heat, since "heating a large old hall with a very high ceiling through a winter can cost more than the events held inside it"
- staff trained in cataloguing are now expected to help with digital tasks, and "training for this has not always followed"
- tension between readers who come for quiet and noisy activities such as singing toddlers
- the value of the work is hard to prove, because book loans are easy to count and keep falling while "the number of people helped through a difficult afternoon is not"
Two common errors cost marks here. The first is writing two versions of one idea, such as listing the drill and the sewing machine as separate points when both belong to the library of things. The second is crossing the headings: falling funding is a difficulty, not something the library offers, so it earns nothing under the first heading.
Examination point: the article is organised so that paragraphs 2 to 4 supply the first heading and paragraphs 5 to 7 supply the second. Finding the dividing line in the text before you write is the fastest way to fill both sets of lines correctly.
