TEST FOR ENGLISH MAJORS (2014)
GRADE EIGHT
PART I LISTENING COMPREHENSION (35 MIN)
SECTION A MINI-LECTURE
In this section you will hear a mini-lecture. You will hear the lecture ONCE ONLY. While listening, take notes on the important points. Your notes will not be marked, but you will need them to complete a gap-filling task after the mini-lecture. When the lecture is over, you will be given two minutes to check your notes, and another ten minutes to complete the gap-filling task on ANSWER SHEET ONE, using no more than three words in each gap. Make sure the word(s) you fill in is (are) both grammatically and semantically acceptable. You may refer to your notes while completing the task Use the blank sheet for note-taking.
Now, listen to the mini-lecture.
How to Reduce Stress
Life is full of things that cause us stress. Though we may not like stress, we have to live with it.
I. Definition of stress
A. (1) _______ reaction
i.e. force exerted between two touching bodies
B. human reaction
i.e. response to (2) _______ on someone
e.g. increase in breathing, heart rate, (3) _______, or muscle tension
II. (4) _______,
A. positive stress
where it occurs: Christmas, wedding, (5) _______
B. negative stress
where it occurs: test-taking situations, friend’s death
III. Ways to cope with stress
A. recognition of stress signals
– monitor for (6) _______of stress
– find ways to protect oneself
B. attention to body demand
– effect of (7) _______
C. planning and acting appropriately
– reason for planning
– (8) _______ of planning
D. learning to (9) _______
– e.g. delay caused by traffic
E. pacing activities
– manageable task
– (10) _______
SECTION B INTERVIEW
In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Mark the best answer to each question on ANSWER SHEET TWO.
Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions.
Now listen to the interview.
1. According to the interviewer, which of the following best indicates the relationship between choice and mobility?
A. Better education→greater mobility→more choices.
B. Better education→more choices→greater mobility.
C. Greater mobility→better education→more choices.
D. Greater mobility→more choices→better education.
2. According to the interview, which of the following details about the first poll is INCORRECT?
A. Shorter work hours was least chosen for being most important.
B. Chances for advancement might have been favoured by young people.
C. High income failed to come on top for being most important.
D. Job security came second according to the poll results.
3. According to the interviewee, which is the main difference between the first and the second poll?
A. The type of respondents who were invited.
B. The way in which the questions were designed.
C. The content area of the questions.
D. The number of poll questions.
4. What can we learn from the respondents’ answers to items 2, 4 and 7 in the second poll?
A. Recognition from colleagues should be given less importance.
B. Workers are always willing and ready to learn more new skills.
C. Psychological reward is more important than material one.
D. Work will have to be made interesting to raise efficiency.
5. According to the interviewee, which of the following can offer both psychological and monetary benefits?
A. Contact with many people.
B. Chances for advancement.
C. Appreciation from coworkers.
D. Chances to learn new skills.
SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST
In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Mark the best answer to each question on ANSWER SHEET TWO.
Questions 6 and 7 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 20 seconds to answer the questions.
Now listen to the news.
6. According to the news item, “sleepboxes” are designed to solve the problems of _______
A. airports.
B. passengers.
C. architects.
D. companies.
7. Which of the following is NOT true with reference to the news?
A. Sleepboxes can be rented for different lengths of time.
B. Renters of normal height can stand up inside.
C. Bedding can be automatically changed.
D. Renters can take a shower inside the box.
Question 8 is based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the question.
Now listen to the news.
8. What is the news item mainly about?
A. London’s preparations for the Notting Hill Carnival.
B. Main features of the Notting Hill Carnival.
C. Police’s preventive measures for the carnival.
D. Police participation in the carnival.
Questions 9 and 10 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 20 seconds to answer the questions.
Now listen to the news.
9. The news item reports on a research finding about _______
A. the Dutch famine and the Dutch women.
B. early malnutrition and heart health.
C. the causes of death during the famine.
D. nutrition in childhood and adolescence.
10. When did the research team carry out the study?
A. At the end of World War II.
B. Between 1944 and 1945.
C. In the 1950s.
D. In 2007.
PART II READING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN)
In this section there are four reading passages followed by a total of 20 multiple-choice questions. Read the passages and then mark the best answer to each question on ANSWER SHEET TWO.
TEXT A
My class at Harvard Business School helps students understand what good management theory is and how it is built. In each session, we look at one company through the lenses of different theories, using them to explain how the company got into its situation and to examine what action will yield the needed results. On the last day of class, I asked my class to turn those theoretical lenses on themselves to find answers to two questions: First, How can I be sure I’ll be happy in my career? Second, How can I be sure my relationships with my spouse and my family will become an enduring source of happiness? Here are some management tools that can be used to help you lead a purposeful life.
1. Use Your Resources Wisely. Your decisions about allocating your personal time, energy, and talent shape your life’s strategy. I have a bunch of “businesses” that compete for these resources: I’m trying to have a rewarding relationship with my wife, raise great kids, contribute to my community, succeed in my career, and contribute to my church. And I have exactly the same problem that a corporation does. I have a limited amount of time, energy and talent. How much do I devote to each of these pursuits?
Allocation choices can make your life turn out to very different from what you intended. Sometimes that’s good: opportunities that you have never planned for emerge. But if you don’t invest your resources wisely, the outcome can be bad. As I think about my former classmates who inadvertently invested in lives of hollow unhappiness, I can’t help believing that their troubles related right back to a short-term perspective.
When people with a high need for achievement have an extra half hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they’ll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments. Our careers provide the most concrete evidence that we’re moving forward. You ship a product, finish a design, complete a presentation, close a sale teach a class, publish a paper, get paid, get promoted. In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationships with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer the same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse and on a daily basis it doesn’t seem as if thing are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to under invest in their families and overinvest in their careers, even though intimate and loving family relationships are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.
If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you’ll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. If you look at personal lives through that lens, you’ll see that same stunning and sobering pattern: people allocating fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most.
2. Create A Family Culture. It’s one thing to see into the foggy future with a acuity and chart the course corrections a company must make. But it’s quite another to persuade employees to line up and work cooperatively to take the company in that new direction.
When there is little agreement, you have to use “power tools” – coercion, threats, punishments and so on, to secure cooperation. But if employee’s ways of working together succeed over and over, consensus begins to form. Ultimately, people don’t even think about whether their way yields success. They embrace priorities and follow procedures by instinct and assumption rather than by explicit decision, which means that they’ve created a culture. Culture, in compelling but unspoken ways, dictates the proven, acceptable methods by which member s of a group address recurrent problems. And culture defines the priority given to different types of problems. It can be a powerful management tool.
I use this model to address the question, How can I be my family becomes an enduring source of happiness? My students quickly see that the simplest way parents can elicit cooperation from children is to wield power tools. But there comes a point during the teen years when power tools no longer work. At that point, parents start wishing they had begun working with their children at a very young age to build a culture in which children instinctively behave respectfully toward one another, obey their parents, and choose the right thing to do. Families have cultures, just companies do. Those cultures can be built consciously.
If you want your kids to have strong self-esteem and the confidence that they can solve hard problems, those qualities won’t magically materialize in high school. You have to design them into family’s culture and you have thought about this very early on. Like employees, children build self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works.
11. According to the author, the key to successful allocation of resources in your life depends on whether you _______
A. can manage your time well.
B. have long-term planning.
C. are lucky enough to have new opportunities.
D. can solve both company and family problems.
12. What is the role of the statement “Our careers provide the most concrete evidence that we’re moving forward” with reference to the previous statement in the paragraph?
A. To offer further explanation
B. To provide a definition
C. To present a contrast
D. To illustrate career development
13. According to the author, a common cause of failure in business and family relationships is _______
A. lack of planning.
B. short-sightedness.
C. shortage of resources.
D. decision by instinct.
14. According to the author, when does culture begin to emerge _______
A. When people decide what and how to do by instinct.
B. When people realize the importance of consensus.
C. When people as a group decide how to succeed.
D. When people use “power tools” to reach agreement.
15. One of the similarities between company culture and family culture is that _______
A. problem-solving ability is essential.
B. cooperation is the foundation.
C. respect and obedience are key elements.
D. culture needs to be nurtured.
Text B
It was nearly bed-time and when they awoke next morning land would be in sight. Dr. Macphail lit his pipe and, leaning over the rail, searched the heavens for the Southern Cross. After two years at the front and a wound that had taken longer to heal than it should, he was glad to settle down quietly at Apia (阿皮亚，西萨摩亚首都) for twelve months at least, and he felt already better for the journey. Since some of the passengers were leaving the ship next day at Pago-Pago they had had a little dance that evening and in his ears hammered still the harsh notes of the mechanical piano. But the deck was quiet at last. A little way off he saw his wife in a long chair talking with the Davidsons, and he strolled over to her. When he sat down under the light and took off his hat you saw that he had very red hair, with a bald patch on the crown, and the red, freckled skin which accompanies red hair; he was a man of forty, thin, with a pinched face, precise and rather pedantic; and he spoke with a Scots accent in a very low, quiet voice.
Between the Macphails and the Davidsons, who were missionaries, there had arisen the intimacy of shipboard, which is due to propinquity rather than to any community of taste. Their chief tie was the disapproval they shared of the men who spent their days and nights in the smoking-room playing poker or bridge and drinking. Mrs. Macphail was not a little flattered to think that she and her husband were the only people on board with whom the Davidsons were willing to associate, and even the doctor, shy but no fool, half unconsciously acknowledged the compliment. It was only because he was of an argumentative mind that in their cabin at night he permitted himself to carp (唠叨).
‘Mrs. Davidson was saying she didn’t know how they’d have got through the journey if it hadn’t been for us,’ said Mrs. Macphail, as she neatly brushed out her transformation (假发). ‘She said we were really the only people on the ship they cared to know.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought a missionary was such a big bug (要人、名士) that he could afford to put on frills (摆架子).’
‘It’s not frills. I quite understand what she means. It wouldn’t have been very nice for the Davidsons to have to mix with all that rough lot in the smoking-room.’
‘The founder of their religion wasn’t so exclusive,’ said Dr. Macphail with a chuckle.
‘I’ve asked you over and over again not to joke about religion,’ answered his wife. ‘I shouldn’t like to have a nature like yours, Alec. You never look for the best in people.’
He gave her a sidelong glance with his pale, blue eyes, but did not reply. After many years of married life he had learned that it was more conducive to peace to leave his wife with the last word. He was undressed before she was, and climbing into the upper bunk he settled down to read himself to sleep.
When he came on deck next morning they were close to land. He looked at it with greedy eyes. There was a thin strip of silver beach rising quickly to hills covered to the top with luxuriant vegetation. The coconut trees, thick and green, came nearly to the water’s edge, and among them you saw the grass houses of the Samoaris (萨摩亚人); and here and there, gleaming white, a little church. Mrs. Davidson came and stood beside him. She was dressed in black, and wore round her neck a gold chain, from which dangled a small cross. She was a little woman, with brown, dull hair very elaborately arranged, and she had prominent blue eyes behind invisible pince-nez (夹鼻眼镜). Her face was long, like a sheep’s, but she gave no impression of foolishness, rather of extreme alertness; she had the quick movements of a bird. The most remarkable thing about her was her voice, high, metallic, and without inflection; it fell on the ear with a hard monotony, irritating to the nerves like the pitiless clamour of the pneumatic drill.
‘This must seem like home to you,’ said Dr. Macphail, with his thin, difficult smile.
‘Ours are low islands, you know, not like these. Coral. These are volcanic. We’ve got another ten days’’ journey to reach them.’
‘In these parts that’s almost like being in the next street at home,’ said Dr. Macphail facetiously.
‘Well, that’s rather an exaggerated way of putting it, but one does look at distances differently in the J South Seas. So far you’re right.’
Dr. Macphail sighed faintly.
16. It can be inferred from the first paragraph that Dr. Macphail _______
A. preferred quietness to noise.
B. enjoyed the sound of the mechanical piano.
C. was going back to his hometown.
D. wanted to befriend the Davidsons.
17. The Macphails and the Davidsons were in each other’e company because they _______
A. had similar experience.
B. liked each other.
C. shared dislike for some passengers.
D. had similar religious belief.
18. Which of the following statements best DESCRIBES Mrs. Macphail?
A. She was good at making friends.
B. She was prone to quarrelling with her husband.
C. She was skillful in dealing with strangers.
D. She was easy to get along with.
19. All the following adjectives can be used to depict Mrs. Davidson EXCEPT _______
A. arrogant.
B. unapproachable.
C. unpleasant.
D. irritable.
20. Which of the following statements about Dr. Macphail is INCORRECT?
A. He was sociable.
B. He was intelligent.
C. He was afraid of his wife.
D. He was fun of the Davidsons.
Text C
Today we make room for a remarkably narrow range of personality styles. We’re told that to be great is to be bold, to be happy is to be sociable. We see ourselves as a nation of extroverts – which means that we’ve lost sight of who we really are. One-third to one-half of Americans are introverts – in the other words, one out of every two or three people you know. If you’re not an introvert yourself, you are surely raising, managing, married to, or coupled with one.
If these statistics surprise you, that’s probably because so many people pretend to be extroverts. Closet introverts pass undetected on playgrounds, in high school locker rooms, and in the corridors of corporate America. Some fool even themselves, until some life event – a layoff, an empty nest, an inheritance that frees them to spend time as they like – jolts them into taking stock of their true natures. You have only to raise this subject with your friends and acquaintances to find that the most unlikely people consider themselves introverts.
It makes sense that so many introverts hide even from themselves. We live with a value system that I call the Extrovert Ideal – the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfortable in the spotlight. The archetypal extrovert prefers action to contemplation, risk-taking to heed-taking, certainty to doubt. He favors quick decisions, even at the risk of being wrong. She works well in teams and socializes in groups. We like to think that we value individuality, but all too often we admire one type of individual – the kind who’s comfortable “putting himself out there.” Sure, we allow technologically gifted loners who launch companies in garages to have any personality they please, but they are the exceptions, not the rule, and our tolerance extends mainly to those who get fabulously wealthy or hold the promise of doing so.
Introversion – along with its cousins’ sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness – is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we’ve turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.
The Extrovert Ideal has been documented in many studies, though this research has never been grouped under a single name. Talkative people, for example, are rated as smarter, better-looking, more interesting, and more desirable as friends. Velocity of speech counts as well as volume: we rank fast talkers as more competent and likable than slow ones. Even the word introvert is stigmatized – one informal study, by psychologist Laurie Helgoe, found that introverts described their own physical appearance in vivid language, but when asked to describe generic introverts they drew a bland and distasteful picture.
But we make a grave mistake to embrace the Extrovert Ideal so unthinkingly. Some of our greatest ideas, art, and inventions – from the theory of evolution to van Gogh’s sunflowers to the personal computer – came from quiet and cerebral people who knew how to tune in to their inner worlds and the treasures to be found there.
21. According to the author, there exists, as far as personality styles are concerned, a discrepancy between _______
A. what people say they can do and what they actually can.
B. what society values and what people pretend to be.
C. what people profess and what statistics show.
D. what people profess and what they hide from others.
22. The ideal extrovert is described as being all the following EXCEPT _______
A. doubtful.
B. sociable.
C. determined.
D. bold.
23. According to the author, our society only permits _______ to have whatever personality they like.
A. the young
B. the ordinary
C. the artistic
D. the rich
24. According to the passage, which of the following statements BEST reflects the author’s opinion?
A. Introversion is seen as an inferior trait because of its association with sensitivity.
B. Extroversion is arbitrary forced by society as a norm upon people.
C. Introverts are generally regarded as either unsuccessful or as deficient.
D. Extroversion and introversion have similar personality trait profiles.
25. The author winds up the passage with a _______ note.
A. cautious
B. warning
C. positive
D. humorous
Text D
Speaking two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.
This view of bilingualism is remarkably different from the understanding of bilingualism through much of the 20th century. Researchers, educators and policy makers long considered a second language to be an interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child’s academic and intellectual development.
They were not wrong about the interference: there is ample evidence that in a bilingual’s brain both language systems are active even when he is using only one language, thus creating situations in which one system obstructs the other. But this interference, researchers are finding out, isn’t so much a handicap as a blessing in disguise. It forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, giving the mind a workout that strengthens its cognitive muscles.
The collective evidence from a number of such studies suggests that the bilingual experience improves the brain’s so-called executive function, a command system that directs the attention processes that we use for planning, solving problems and performing various other mentally demanding tasks. These processes include ignoring distractions to stay focused, switching attention willfully from one thing to another and holding information in mind, like remembering a sequence of directions while driving.
Why does the tussle between two simultaneously active language systems improve these aspects of cognition? Until recently, researchers thought the bilingual advantage stemmed primarily from an ability for inhibition that was honed by the exercise of suppressing one language system: this suppression, it was thought, would help train the bilingual mind to ignore distractions in other contexts. But that explanation increasingly appears to be inadequate, since studies have shown that bilinguals perform better than monolinguals even at tasks that do not require inhibition, like threading a line through an ascending series of numbers scattered randomly on a page.
The key difference between bilinguals and monolinguals may be more basic: a heightened ability to monitor the environment. “Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often? you may talk to your father in one language and to your mother in another language,” says Albert Costa, a researcher at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain. “It requires keeping track of changes around you in the same way that we monitor our surroundings when driving.” In a study comparing German-Italian bilinguals with Italian monolinguals on monitoring tasks, Mr. Costa and his colleagues found that the bilingual subjects not only performed better, but they also did so with less activity in parts of the brain involved in monitoring, indicating that they were more efficient at it.
The bilingual experience appears to influence the brain from infancy to old age (and there is reason to believe that it may also apply to those who learn a second language later in life).
26. According to the passage, the more recent and old views of bilingualism differ mainly in _______
A. its practical advantages.
B. its role in cognition.
C. perceived language fluency.
D. its role in medicine.
27. The fact that interference is now seen as a blessing in disguise means that _______
A. it has led to unexpectedly favorable results.
B. its potential benefits have remained undiscovered.
C. its effects on cognitive development have been minimal.
D. only a few researchers have realized its advantages.
28. What is the role of Paragraph Four in relation to Paragraph Three?
A. It provides counter evidence to Paragraph Three.
B. It offers another example of the role of interference.
C. It serves as a transitional paragraph in the passage.
D. It further illustrates the point in Paragraph Three.
29. Which of the following can account for better performance of bilinguals in doing non-inhibition tasks?
A. An ability to monitor surroundings.
B. An ability to ignore distractions.
C. An ability to perform with less effort.
D. An ability to exercise suppression.
30. What is the main theme of the passage?
A. Features of bilinguals and monolinguals.
B. Interference and suppression.
C. Bilinguals and monitoring tasks.
D. Reasons why bilinguals are smarter.
PART III GENERAL KNOWLEDGE (10 MIN)
There are ten multiple-choice questions in this section. Mark the best answer to each question on ANSWER SHEET TWO.
31. Which of the following is the French-speaking city in Canada?
A. Vancouver.
B. Ottawa.
C. Montreal.
D. Toronto.
32. Which of the following are natives of New Zealand?
A. The Maoris.
B. The Aboriginals.
C. The Red Indians.
D. The Eskimos.
33. The established or national church in England is _______
A. the Roman Catholic Church.
B. the United Reformed Church.
C. the Anglican Church.
D. the Methodist Church.
34. The 13 former British colonies in North America declared independence from Great Britain in _______
A. 1774.
B. 1775.
C. 1776.
D. 1777.
35. “Grace under pressure” is an outstanding virtue of _______ heroes.
A. Scott Fitzgerald’s
B. Ernest Hemingway’s
C. Eugene O’Neill’s
D. William Faulkner’s
36. Widowers’ House was written by _______
A. William Butler Yeats.
B. George Bernard Shaw.
C. John Galsworthy.
D. T. S. Eliot.
37. Who wrote The Canterbury Tales?
A. William Shakespeare.
B. William Blake.
C. Geoffrey Chaucer.
D. John Donne.
38. Which of the following pairs of words are homophones?
A. wind (v.) / wind (n.).
B. suspect (v.) / suspect (n.).
C. convict (v.) / convict (n.).
D. bare (adj.) / bear (v.) .
39. Which of the following sentences has the “S+V+O” structure?
A. He died a hero.
B. I went to London.
C. Mary enjoyed parties.
D. She became angry.
40. Which of the following CAN NOT be used as an adverbial?
A. The lion’s share
B. Heart and soul.
C. Null and void.
D. Hammer and tongs.
PART IV PROOFREADING & ERROR CORRECTION (15 MIN)
The passage contains TEN errors. Each indicated line contains a maximum of ONE error. In
each case, only ONE word is involved. You should proof-read the passage and correct it in the following way:
For a wrong word, underline the wrong word and write the correct one in the blank provided at the end of the line. For a missing word, mark the position of the missing word with a “^” sign and write the word you believe to be missing in the blank provided at the end of the line. For an unnecessary word, cross the unnecessary word with a slash “／”and put the word in the blank provided at the end of the line.
EXAMPLE
When ∧ art museum wants a new exhibit, (1) an
it never buys things in finished form and hangs (2) never
them on the wall. When a natural history museum
wants an exhibition, it must often build it. (3) exhibit
There is widespread consensus among scholars that second language acquisition (SLA)
emerged as a distinct field of research from the late 1950s to early 1960s.
There is a high level of agreement that the following questions 1______
have possessed the most attention of researchers in this area: 2______
Is it possible to acquire an additional language in the
same sense one acquires a first language? 3______
What is the explanation for the fact adults have 4______
more difficulty in acquiring additional languages than children have?
What motivates people to acquire additional language?
What is the role of the language teaching in the 5______
acquisition of additional languages?
What social-cultural factors, if any, are relevant in studying the
learning of additional languages?
From a check of the literature of the field it is clear that all 6______
the approaches adopted to study the phenomena of SLA so far have
one thing in common: The perspective adopted to view the acquiring
of an additional language is that of an individual attempts to do 7______
so. Whether one labels it “learning” or “acquiring” an additional
language, it is an individual accomplishment or what is under 8______
focus is the cognitive, psychological, and institutional status of an
individual. That is, the spotlight is on what mental capabilities are
involving, what psychological factors play a role in the learning 9______
or acquisition, and whether the target language is learnt in the
classroom or acquired through social touch with native speakers. 10______
PART V TRANSLATION (60 MIN)
SECTION A CHINESE TO ENGLISH
Translate the following text into English. Write your translation on ANSWER SHEET THREE.
当我在小学毕了业的时候，亲友一致的愿意我去学手艺，好帮助母亲。我晓得我应当去找饭吃，以减轻母亲的勤劳困苦。可是，我也愿意升学。我偷偷地考入了师范学校---制服，饭食，书籍，宿处，都由学校供给。只有这样，我才敢对母亲提升学的话。入学，要交十元的保证金。这是一笔巨款！母亲作了半个月的难，把这巨款筹到，而后含泪把我送出门去。她不辞劳苦，只要儿子有出息。当我由师范毕业，而被派为小学校长，母亲与我都一夜不曾合眼。我只说了句：“以后，您可以歇一歇了！”她的回答只有一串串的眼泪。
SECTION B ENGLISH TO CHINESE
Translate the following text into Chinese. Write your translation on ANSWER SHEET THREE.
The physical distance between speakers can indicate a number of things and can also be used to used to consciously send messages about intent. Closeness, for example, indicates intimacy or threat to many speakers whilst distance may denote formality or a lack of interest. Proximity is also both a matter of personal style and is often culture-bound so that what may seem normal to a speaker from one culture may appear unnecessarily close or distant to a speaker from another. And standing close to someone may be quite appropriate in some situations such as an informal party, but completely out of place in others, such as meeting with a superior.
Posture can convey meaning too. Hunched shoulders and a hanging head give a powerful indication of mood. A lowered head when speaking to a superior (with or without eye contact) can convey the appropriate relationship in some cultures.
PART VI WRITING (45 MIN)
Nowadays some companies have work-from-home or remote working policies, which means that their employees do not have to commute to work every day. Some people think that this can save a lot of time travelling to and from work, thus raising employees’ productivity. However, others argue that in the workplace, people can communicate face to face, which vastly increases the efficiency of coordination and cooperation. What is your opinion?
Write an essay of about 400 words on the following topic: My Views on Working from Home
In the first part of your essay you should state clearly your main argument, and in the second part you should support your argument with appropriate details. In the last part you should bring what you have written to a natural conclusion or make a summary.
Marks will be awarded for content, organization, language and appropriateness. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks.
Write your essay on ANSWER SHEET FOUR.