http://www.flo-joe.com/cpe/students/tests/
The answers are on the page
Wednesday, 16 December 2015
Friday, 11 December 2015
Writing task to do over the holidays
http://www.flo-joe.com/cpe/students/writing/makeover/makeover2.htm
Go to this web site to see the question and email it to me when you have finished.
Below is an example of another letter to the editor.
Dear Sir
I look forward to hearing other readers´ views on the subject.
Yours faithfully
Gustavo Albarracín
Go to this web site to see the question and email it to me when you have finished.
Below is an example of another letter to the editor.
Dear Sir
I am writing in response to the article in last Wednesday´s edition of your paper regarding the proposal of increasing nursery provisions across the country to encourage women back into the worklife after having a baby. I would like to comment on the points that were raised.
First of all I would like to say that I totally agree with the statement that providing greater nursery provisions will allow women to return to work as soon as possible. Improvements in childcare programmes will definitely contribute to this, and I think they are a wonderful idea. As I see it women should be able to have children without having to worry about losing their jobs, simply because it is their natural right to do so.
Secondly, I would like to mention that the fear some companies have that this pro-children policy will encourage women to have too many children and therefore cause them serious economic problems, is irrational. Women of these days are career-oriented and are likely to choose to have just one or two children. Not having to worry about leaving the company will just make them more committed to their work and more motivated to contribute to the enterprise´s success.
I also would like to add some ideas to your comments: "a greater nursery provision provides an ideal opportunity to introduce a national programme of pre-school learning". I think it is true that we do not have an adequate nursery programme, specially for six-month babies and toddlers. We have seen education as a right for anyone older than three years old without considering the younger population. I fully expect to see a change in such an important aspect of education in our country.
To sum up, women do not need to risk their careers when deciding to have a baby. It is the government´s job to ensure that children are secure in their first years as well as to create an appropriate national education programme and to encourage companies to provide nursery facilities.
I look forward to hearing other readers´ views on the subject.
Yours faithfully
Gustavo Albarracín
New vocab week 11/12/2015
New vocab and expressions
To cram
into somewhere
Depict = To
show
e.g.
picture A depicts fireman resting after having entered a burning building
To put out
a fire = to extinguish a fire
To put
somebody out = to make somebody do a favour for you
To have repercussions
for somebody/something = to have severe consequences for something
I inferred
from the picture that…
Precisely
that’s why…
She’s a
seasoned professional
To check up
on somebody = to make sure somebody is behaving properly
To go
through something = to check something
To put a
brave face on something/To put on a brave face = To pretend you are happy when
you are not
To be my idea
of doing something
To steer
clear of something = To avoid something
To team up
with somebody = To get together with somebody to do a job
To long for
/ To yearn for = To desire something greatly
To be
caught up in something = To be preoccupied by something/To become so involved with
something that you lose track of reality
To put
somebody on a pedestal = To admire someone greatly
To enable
someone to do something
To be
entitled to something = To have the right to do something
To be
empowered = To be given the ability to do something
Tuesday, 8 December 2015
New vocab and structures from class 4/12/15
Week 4/12/2015
To go on a trip/an excursion
Destination is different to destiny
(fate)
You cannot LIVE an experience. You
have an experience / you experience
Women have more chances /
opportunities to…
Couple (two people together -
romantic). Pair (of socks for example). Partner (one member of the couple).
Interesting synonyms – fascinating,
amazing, incredible, breathtaking.
Absolutely amazing (extreme
adjectives)
Entrepreneur (person) Entrepreneurship
(activity) Entrepreneurial (adjective)
Over the last few years
Suffer FROM something
Expressions for essays
In this respect
To offset something against
something else = to find a balance between two things
The texts contrast the pros and cons
Text 2 argues that…
As far as ____ is concerned
To render something (adjective) = to
cause to be/become
This boils down to… = the most
important thing remaining. E.g. the Spanish premier league boils down to just
two teams.
To regard something as something
else e.g. advertising is regarded as fundamental
To do something on a whim = to do
something without thinking
So as to = in order to
Monday, 30 November 2015
New vocab and structures from class 27/11/15
New vocab and structures
Apart from
= except for = save (formal)
To make a
living = to scrape a living (just survive) = to get by (to just survive)
To make
ends meet = to have enough to reach the end of the month
To take up
residence = to live in a new place/to reside in a new place
To be
capable of doing something
On this
basis = consequently = therefore = as a result
In as much as = in so much as
E.g. Ana is crazy, in so much as she
wears different coloured shoes.
Victor is weird, in as much as he
screams and shouts whenever strangers pass.
Alluring = attractive
Hurdle = obstacle/difficulty
Pressing (adjective) = urgent
Avowal = statement/assertion/claim
Stint = period
To redress something = to correct
something
Forebear = ancestor/forefather
To eptiomise = to be the best
example of something
To undermine = to take somebody’s
authority away from them
Answers to reading from class (27/11/15)
Reading part 5
31 C
32 A
33 D
34 B
35 D
36 C
Reading part 6
37 C
38 F
39 H
40 D
41 G
42 A
43 E
Reading part 7
44 C
45 B
46 D
47 B
48 E
49 C
50 D
51 A
52 C
53 B
Monday, 23 November 2015
Friday, 20 November 2015
Vocabulary week 5 20/11
To put forward = to suggest
To become clear
Make sense
To back something up = To give evidence for
something
To be widely read in the subject/field/area of
something = To be an expert on something
In view of the fact = bearing in mind/taking
into account
Regardless of = despite/in spite of
To be a great read/watch= To be enjoyable to
read (a book) / watch (a film)
Zealous
Stolid
Talking in the short term
As I see it it’s essential/fundamental/paramount
to
If we look at_____
When it comes to _______ = Talking of… /
Regarding
Living standards are going to get a bit down = are
going to get worse/are going to suffer/are going to decrease/are going to go
down
The price of water will raise = rise
E.g Companies will raise the price of water.
The price of water will rise.
That’s a very good question because…
Let’s look at ______ for instance.
Cultural heritage
To pedestrianize = To remove cars from a street
It’s common
to see…
It can
affect your relationship with your children
As a
result..
It is often
said that…
It leads to…
It all
stems from…
All in all…
To be used
to + gerund – used to do something
To be at an
age
To end up +
gerund e.g. Everyone will end up having to live far from the coast
To “live” a situation – To experience a situation
To care
ABOUT what is happening
Answers to previous use of English exercises
http://www.englishaula.com/en/cpe-use-of-english-part-3-word-formation-exercise-exam-3.html
https://www.englishforums.com/English/Conjunctions/mnrnw/post.htm
(Scroll down to find the full text in one of the posts)
https://www.englishforums.com/English/Conjunctions/mnrnw/post.htm
(Scroll down to find the full text in one of the posts)
Tuesday, 17 November 2015
Use of English class activities
Food for a
Future
Jon Wynne-Tyson was an original thinker whose best-known book ‚Food for a
Future‘ was published in 1975, In this classic work, a case was forward for can only be described as a more responsible and humane attitude
towards the world’s food resources. It had gradually clear to Wynne-Tyson that the economics and ecology of meat
production did not sense. What justification was , he argued, for using seven tonnes of cereal to produce one tonne
of meat? Even today, the book's succinct style makes it compulsively
readable. his approach is basically an emotional one, Wynne-Tyson goes to
great lengths to back every statement with considerable supporting evidence and statistical
data. Thus, even of us who are widely read the subject of vegetarianism will gain fresh insights from this book. It
is generally agreed that his most skilful achievement is the slow revelation of
his main thesis the arguments unfold. The book concludes that a move away from an
animal-based diet to which is based on plant sources is inevitable in the long-term, in of the fact that there is no sound nutritional, medical or social
justification for meat eating. of whether you agree with a conclusion or not, the book certainly makes fascinating read.
The Desire to Know
Speaking frames for part 2
Introducing yourself
I'm speaking English
for my own satisfaction / my job / in order to improve my employment prospects
/ so that I can study a degree/course in …
If you want to get
ahead these days, you need to have a good command of English
I’ve always loved
(the sea).
I'd love to visit
places untouched by man.
However, there's no
place like home.
That's a big
question!
I want to be a useful
member of society.
I'm keen on ...
I'm an avid
(traveler, reader) ...
I haven't given it
much thought until now.
Analysing pictures
What strikes me about
the first picture is the fact that...
This picture reminds
me of...
Judging from the
photograph, the children...
The man appears to
be...
From what we can see
here, he must...
There are many
similarities...
Both pictures
depict...
Both pictures are
quite similar in that they show...
When you give it a
closer look it reveals...
The first picture ...
whereas the other picture ...
Another important
difference is...
Picture ... doesn't
show ... as clearly as ...
Picture ... attempts
to ... but I think picture ... does this more effectively...
All pictures are
interesting, but ... gives a stronger idea of...
It's difficult to
tell from a photograph but this picture could have been taken in ...
I might be wrong, but
I'd say that this picture ...
I would imagine/guess
that this picture comes from ...
…picture ... is by
far the best to show … because ...
To me, picture ... is
essential for this kind of publication.
I'm surprised there
is no picture showing...
A picture of ...
would get the message across more effectively.
The cover would be so
much better if we had a picture of ...
So let's look at the
alternatives ...
The name for this
escapes me at present, but it's for/it's like ...
The name for it is on
the tip of my tongue ...
Expressing Opinions
As far as the problem
in question is concerned ...
The main problem
centres around ...
It's my belief ...
For my part ...
As I see it ...
As I was saying ...
I forgot to mention
...
I'm of the opinion
that ...
To my mind ...
To my way of thinking
...
I am convinced that
...
I am inclined to
believe that ...
Don't get me wrong
but shouldn't we ... ?
Judging by ... they
must be ...
... is a separate
issue.
Moving on to ...
Taking everything
into account ...
I couldn't agree
more.
I agree up to a
point.
I think I see what
you mean, but ...
I'm in two minds
about it. / I'm ambivalent about ...
I don't see eye to
eye with you here ...
That's true in a way,
I suppose, but ...
I don't feel
convinced ...
That's one way of
looking at it. On the other hand ...
It brings us to the
question / idea / problem of whether ...
Perhaps we should put
... first? What do you think?
A strong point in
favour of ... is that ...
What do you think
should go next?
Are you happy with
this order then?
Would you go along
with that?
Adding to what your partner has said…
Just following from
what X was saying, I also feel ...
While generally
agreeing with X, I must say that ...
Adding to what X has
just said, I think ...
I can sympathise with
what X said but ...
One thing X didn't
mention is ...
Surprising, as it may
seem, I don't support X's view on ...
Perhaps it should be
also emphasized that ... / it should be pointed out that ...
Friday, 30 October 2015
Listening week 2
Listening tape script
Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English Listening Test. SAMPLE TEST.
I am going to give you the instructions for this test. I shall introduce each part of the test and give you time to look at the questions. At the start of each piece you will hear this sound:
— ÄÄÄ —
You will hear each piece twice. Remember, while you are listening, write your answers on the question paper. You will have five minutes at the end of the test to copy your answers onto the separate answer sheet.
There will now be a pause. Please ask any questions now, because you must not speak during the test.
PAUSE 5 SECONDS
Now open your question paper and look at Part 1.
PAUSE 5 SECONDS
You will hear three different extracts. For questions 1 – 6, choose the answer (A, B or C) which fits best according to what you hear. There are two questions for each extract.
Extract One.
PAUSE 15 SECONDS
— ÄÄÄ —
Strolling along a deserted beach, I saw a bottle dusted with sand and found a message curled inside. An exciting moment! But messages in bottles are not new here. The earliest dates back to eighteen sixty when ships used them to keep those on land informed of their progress. None too reliable when your ship is sinking! But the local museum is launching a project using bottled messages, not just to promote the whereabouts of the islands and attract tourism. Islanders are being invited to include maps and information about the islands themselves. Bottles have been collected from local beaches and are, though not in the traditional sense, being recycled. Primarily and more ambitiously, the project is set to identify tidal movements. Not by science or satellite systems, but by hurling these bottles back into the sea! The hope is that people will reply to these messages through the more traditional postal system. Islanders will gain pen pals and new visitors, and the final whereabouts of the bottles will enable scientists to track their paths. And all this from bottles discarded on a beach!
PAUSE 5 SECONDS
Extract Two.
PAUSE 15 SECONDS
Presenter: Last year, Tim Fitzgerald exhibited photographs of his family, but in the current exhibition, which he shares with two other visual artists, he focuses solely on landscapes. What’s your impression of them? Critic: I’m not sure he has what it takes to move beyond his family. Last year’s images of his nearest and dearest were very moving, weren’t they – there was a wonderful close-up of his sister’s face, almost like an abstract. But these landscapes… they’re not impressive or particularly articulate. Presenter: I know he invokes the influence of several famous painters. You didn’t find any of that in his landscapes? Critic: No. I think he has produced a couple of strong images, but there’s no sign of them in the current show and I'm at a loss to know why. It’s a very random choice. And also, four small photos in a large gallery feel very sparse. You can see it was an attempt to draw you in, but for me it backfired. You need more impact to raise the curtain on the exhibition – it’s not as if it’s the last room, it’s the first, and you move on to other artists’ works…
PAUSE 5 SECONDS
Extract Three.
PAUSE 15 SECONDS
— ÄÄÄ —
One of my own thoughts about this piece is the idea that you’re letting yourself go, abandoning yourself. For me, that’s certainly what happens to me. When you’re really immersed in it, you’re no longer self-conscious, you’re absolutely the recipient of the sound. For me it’s not even as if it conjures up a specific event. At one point, I was playing it all the time – in supermarket queues, walking into work – having that sound in my ears gave me a world and a space that was very different. My family got pretty fed up. Certainly my husband winces at my corny tastes. I don’t know if corny’s the right word, but a colleague once said to me she would have expected something less banal. I find that rather sad. OK, so it’s a piece that obviously works for many other people too, but that doesn’t mean to say it should be denigrated, just because you don’t have to have great sophistication in music to appreciate it.
PAUSE 5 SECONDS
You will hear a nutritionist talking about the production and uses of mastic, a spice that is found in the Mediterranean area. For questions 7 – 15, complete the sentences with a word or short phrase.
You now have forty-five seconds in which to look at Part 2.
PAUSE 45 SECONDS
— ÄÄÄ —
I want to talk to you today about a spice which is not very well known outside its home territory, and that is mastic. Mastic is a resinous substance which comes from a tree of the pistachio nut family and it is one of Europe’s oldest spices. In fact, in its heyday it was considered so precious that armies quite literally fought over the islands where it was grown so that their masters would have the right to control its cultivation and sale. Let’s take a look first at how mastic is produced. The mastic tree itself resembles an olive to the untrained eye but is not quite as large. In a process which is rather similar to the collection of rubber, growers cut the bark of the tree so that the tree then has to exude a sticky sap or resin to heal the wound, and this sap is mastic. The sap needs to harden in order to be of any use and strangely this only happens in the Mediterranean area. Efforts have been made in the past to transplant and cultivate the tree in other parts of the world, but so far without success. The resin is then removed from the tree and, because it’s so precious, people even pick up the dirt under the tree and ensure that every last tiny bit of mastic is harvested. The growers try to pick out any grit which might have become embedded in the mastic gum. They just use simple pins to do this; unusually for nowadays, there are no mechanical aids or gadgets to speed up the process. Everything is still done in the traditional, labour-intensive way, by hand. If you examine a small piece of mastic it will look like a white crystal, similar to sea salt. Poets have even mentioned mastic in their work, alluding to it rather romantically as ‘silver tears’, suggesting again how much it’s valued. Having harvested and cleaned the crystals, the growers often take the mastic from their trees, except for a small amount which they keep for their personal use, to a local co- operative, which contacts various commercial buyers and negotiates a decent price for the growers. Now, what is mastic actually used for? In fact, its use can be traced back thousands of years. Archaeologists have found small lumps of mastic with the imprint of juvenile human teeth, suggesting that the earliest use of mastic was as a chewing gum for young people, something which still occurs today. Nowadays it’s also used as a flavouring in sweet things like biscuits and to great effect in ice cream. Its value here is that it also provides a stickier texture, which means that it takes longer to soften, a useful quality in the hot Mediterranean summers. Mastic can also be used to flavour liquids. For example, in some rural areas, small fires are lit and a few grains of mastic dropped on the hot charcoal. Then pots are inverted on top so the clay picks up the flavour of the smoke and the mastic. Chilled water is then poured in, and when this is drunk it tastes very subtly of mastic. Apart from its culinary uses, some mastic is also sold for other purposes. It can be used in shampoo, toothpaste and, indeed, for certain stomach ailments. In fact, it’s this area that mastic producers are now looking towards to provide a wider use for their produce, now that natural herbs and spices are being investigated to provide the medical products of the future.
You will hear a discussion in which two marine biologists, Gina Kelso and Thomas Lundman, talk about an award-winning television film they made about wildlife in Antarctica. For questions 16 – 20, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which fits best according to what you hear.
Int.: Today, we’re talking to marine biologists Gina Kelso and Thomas Lundman, who you will recently have seen in their award-winning TV series about Antarctica. So, Thomas, what’s it like to suddenly become a household name? Thomas: Well, we’re being interviewed for all sorts of publications and programmes since our television series about the wildlife in Antarctica won a major award. I’m often asked if I’ve always been interested in marine wildlife, and I find that hard to answer. What about you, Gina? Gina: That’s an easy one for me, Thomas. I grew up on African shores, where my father worked for an international company. I could swim by the age of four, snorkel at five. I guess I was destined for marine biology because I’ve always been as happy in the water as on land. I remember a particular evening when I was about eleven. It was dusk and I was snorkelling, and I came across hundreds of stingrays entwined together. It was extraordinary; another world, and that was the moment that decided me. Although I later went to school in the middle of England, I’d lie awake at night dreaming of the ocean. Fortunately, I got in to university to do zoology and went on to do research in marine biology. Thomas:
CPE Listening Tapescript SAMPLE TEST B
And, like me, you’ve been in wildlife filmmaking for how long… about eight years now? Gina: Yeah, I knew it was what I wanted to do, but instead of following the normal route of joining a TV company as a researcher, I was lucky enough to be chosen to take part in that first wildlife programme we did together. Do you remember? Thomas: Yeah, where we made the first ever live broadcast under the sea. The practice run was very funny. I had to dive into a swimming pool and give a running commentary on some plastic plants that had been borrowed from a studio to make it look more realistic. Fortunately, the programme itself was a success and so one thing led to another after that, and we both moved more into the production side. Gina: And it was tough making this latest series in Antarctica, wasn’t it? Thomas: Well, the series is introduced by a well-known naturalist, dressed in a thermal anorak with the hood drawn so tightly that you can only see his nose. Gina: And you get an idea of what conditions were like, but he was only the presenter – flown in to do his bit and flown back out again. We spent eight months there filming with a team of cameramen and researchers, living on a specially adapted boat. Thomas: I didn't think I’d stand a chance of working on the programme, because I imagined they’d be looking for rugged types and I’m more the quiet academic. So I was quite taken aback when they asked me. We went for the spring and then returned the following spring, because the winter would’ve been too cold. Even then, on the Antarctic peninsula it can drop to minus fifteen degrees. Gina: We were involved mostly with the underwater scenes. It’s a lot warmer in the sea, but we still had to wear extra-thick wetsuits and thermal underwear. The thing about living in that remote research community was I missed hanging out with my friends. Thomas: But the Antarctic’s a place of incredible beauty and even after working sixteen-hour days, there were still moments of peacefulness. Gina: But being with the animals for so long, we got to see things the other scientists hadn't. One guy’s been studying fur seals for years – knows everything about them – but he’s never seen them eat. He was thrilled when we were able to tell him about it. And if we’d had his input at the time, we would have realised the significance of what we’d seen and focused more on it. Thomas: Absolutely. And the highlight of the trip was the day we entered a bay carved into huge glaciers to find around forty humpback whales feeding. It was very quiet, and then we heard a soft explosion. It was the noise of the whales' blowholes. What they do is dive down, and as they start to come up again they release air bubbles from their blowholes. Then they swim round each other, trapping the krill they eat in a curtain of bubbles. So it’s an extraordinarily effective piece of teamwork that really increases their feeding efficiency. We filmed them for ten days because we wanted a shot of them as they finished eating. We waited and waited and then one day they just suddenly stopped. Int.: And that’s …
Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English Listening Test. SAMPLE TEST.
I am going to give you the instructions for this test. I shall introduce each part of the test and give you time to look at the questions. At the start of each piece you will hear this sound:
— ÄÄÄ —
You will hear each piece twice. Remember, while you are listening, write your answers on the question paper. You will have five minutes at the end of the test to copy your answers onto the separate answer sheet.
There will now be a pause. Please ask any questions now, because you must not speak during the test.
PAUSE 5 SECONDS
Now open your question paper and look at Part 1.
PAUSE 5 SECONDS
You will hear three different extracts. For questions 1 – 6, choose the answer (A, B or C) which fits best according to what you hear. There are two questions for each extract.
Extract One.
PAUSE 15 SECONDS
— ÄÄÄ —
Strolling along a deserted beach, I saw a bottle dusted with sand and found a message curled inside. An exciting moment! But messages in bottles are not new here. The earliest dates back to eighteen sixty when ships used them to keep those on land informed of their progress. None too reliable when your ship is sinking! But the local museum is launching a project using bottled messages, not just to promote the whereabouts of the islands and attract tourism. Islanders are being invited to include maps and information about the islands themselves. Bottles have been collected from local beaches and are, though not in the traditional sense, being recycled. Primarily and more ambitiously, the project is set to identify tidal movements. Not by science or satellite systems, but by hurling these bottles back into the sea! The hope is that people will reply to these messages through the more traditional postal system. Islanders will gain pen pals and new visitors, and the final whereabouts of the bottles will enable scientists to track their paths. And all this from bottles discarded on a beach!
PAUSE 5 SECONDS
Extract Two.
PAUSE 15 SECONDS
Presenter: Last year, Tim Fitzgerald exhibited photographs of his family, but in the current exhibition, which he shares with two other visual artists, he focuses solely on landscapes. What’s your impression of them? Critic: I’m not sure he has what it takes to move beyond his family. Last year’s images of his nearest and dearest were very moving, weren’t they – there was a wonderful close-up of his sister’s face, almost like an abstract. But these landscapes… they’re not impressive or particularly articulate. Presenter: I know he invokes the influence of several famous painters. You didn’t find any of that in his landscapes? Critic: No. I think he has produced a couple of strong images, but there’s no sign of them in the current show and I'm at a loss to know why. It’s a very random choice. And also, four small photos in a large gallery feel very sparse. You can see it was an attempt to draw you in, but for me it backfired. You need more impact to raise the curtain on the exhibition – it’s not as if it’s the last room, it’s the first, and you move on to other artists’ works…
PAUSE 5 SECONDS
Extract Three.
PAUSE 15 SECONDS
— ÄÄÄ —
One of my own thoughts about this piece is the idea that you’re letting yourself go, abandoning yourself. For me, that’s certainly what happens to me. When you’re really immersed in it, you’re no longer self-conscious, you’re absolutely the recipient of the sound. For me it’s not even as if it conjures up a specific event. At one point, I was playing it all the time – in supermarket queues, walking into work – having that sound in my ears gave me a world and a space that was very different. My family got pretty fed up. Certainly my husband winces at my corny tastes. I don’t know if corny’s the right word, but a colleague once said to me she would have expected something less banal. I find that rather sad. OK, so it’s a piece that obviously works for many other people too, but that doesn’t mean to say it should be denigrated, just because you don’t have to have great sophistication in music to appreciate it.
PAUSE 5 SECONDS
You will hear a nutritionist talking about the production and uses of mastic, a spice that is found in the Mediterranean area. For questions 7 – 15, complete the sentences with a word or short phrase.
You now have forty-five seconds in which to look at Part 2.
PAUSE 45 SECONDS
— ÄÄÄ —
I want to talk to you today about a spice which is not very well known outside its home territory, and that is mastic. Mastic is a resinous substance which comes from a tree of the pistachio nut family and it is one of Europe’s oldest spices. In fact, in its heyday it was considered so precious that armies quite literally fought over the islands where it was grown so that their masters would have the right to control its cultivation and sale. Let’s take a look first at how mastic is produced. The mastic tree itself resembles an olive to the untrained eye but is not quite as large. In a process which is rather similar to the collection of rubber, growers cut the bark of the tree so that the tree then has to exude a sticky sap or resin to heal the wound, and this sap is mastic. The sap needs to harden in order to be of any use and strangely this only happens in the Mediterranean area. Efforts have been made in the past to transplant and cultivate the tree in other parts of the world, but so far without success. The resin is then removed from the tree and, because it’s so precious, people even pick up the dirt under the tree and ensure that every last tiny bit of mastic is harvested. The growers try to pick out any grit which might have become embedded in the mastic gum. They just use simple pins to do this; unusually for nowadays, there are no mechanical aids or gadgets to speed up the process. Everything is still done in the traditional, labour-intensive way, by hand. If you examine a small piece of mastic it will look like a white crystal, similar to sea salt. Poets have even mentioned mastic in their work, alluding to it rather romantically as ‘silver tears’, suggesting again how much it’s valued. Having harvested and cleaned the crystals, the growers often take the mastic from their trees, except for a small amount which they keep for their personal use, to a local co- operative, which contacts various commercial buyers and negotiates a decent price for the growers. Now, what is mastic actually used for? In fact, its use can be traced back thousands of years. Archaeologists have found small lumps of mastic with the imprint of juvenile human teeth, suggesting that the earliest use of mastic was as a chewing gum for young people, something which still occurs today. Nowadays it’s also used as a flavouring in sweet things like biscuits and to great effect in ice cream. Its value here is that it also provides a stickier texture, which means that it takes longer to soften, a useful quality in the hot Mediterranean summers. Mastic can also be used to flavour liquids. For example, in some rural areas, small fires are lit and a few grains of mastic dropped on the hot charcoal. Then pots are inverted on top so the clay picks up the flavour of the smoke and the mastic. Chilled water is then poured in, and when this is drunk it tastes very subtly of mastic. Apart from its culinary uses, some mastic is also sold for other purposes. It can be used in shampoo, toothpaste and, indeed, for certain stomach ailments. In fact, it’s this area that mastic producers are now looking towards to provide a wider use for their produce, now that natural herbs and spices are being investigated to provide the medical products of the future.
You will hear a discussion in which two marine biologists, Gina Kelso and Thomas Lundman, talk about an award-winning television film they made about wildlife in Antarctica. For questions 16 – 20, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which fits best according to what you hear.
Int.: Today, we’re talking to marine biologists Gina Kelso and Thomas Lundman, who you will recently have seen in their award-winning TV series about Antarctica. So, Thomas, what’s it like to suddenly become a household name? Thomas: Well, we’re being interviewed for all sorts of publications and programmes since our television series about the wildlife in Antarctica won a major award. I’m often asked if I’ve always been interested in marine wildlife, and I find that hard to answer. What about you, Gina? Gina: That’s an easy one for me, Thomas. I grew up on African shores, where my father worked for an international company. I could swim by the age of four, snorkel at five. I guess I was destined for marine biology because I’ve always been as happy in the water as on land. I remember a particular evening when I was about eleven. It was dusk and I was snorkelling, and I came across hundreds of stingrays entwined together. It was extraordinary; another world, and that was the moment that decided me. Although I later went to school in the middle of England, I’d lie awake at night dreaming of the ocean. Fortunately, I got in to university to do zoology and went on to do research in marine biology. Thomas:
CPE Listening Tapescript SAMPLE TEST B
And, like me, you’ve been in wildlife filmmaking for how long… about eight years now? Gina: Yeah, I knew it was what I wanted to do, but instead of following the normal route of joining a TV company as a researcher, I was lucky enough to be chosen to take part in that first wildlife programme we did together. Do you remember? Thomas: Yeah, where we made the first ever live broadcast under the sea. The practice run was very funny. I had to dive into a swimming pool and give a running commentary on some plastic plants that had been borrowed from a studio to make it look more realistic. Fortunately, the programme itself was a success and so one thing led to another after that, and we both moved more into the production side. Gina: And it was tough making this latest series in Antarctica, wasn’t it? Thomas: Well, the series is introduced by a well-known naturalist, dressed in a thermal anorak with the hood drawn so tightly that you can only see his nose. Gina: And you get an idea of what conditions were like, but he was only the presenter – flown in to do his bit and flown back out again. We spent eight months there filming with a team of cameramen and researchers, living on a specially adapted boat. Thomas: I didn't think I’d stand a chance of working on the programme, because I imagined they’d be looking for rugged types and I’m more the quiet academic. So I was quite taken aback when they asked me. We went for the spring and then returned the following spring, because the winter would’ve been too cold. Even then, on the Antarctic peninsula it can drop to minus fifteen degrees. Gina: We were involved mostly with the underwater scenes. It’s a lot warmer in the sea, but we still had to wear extra-thick wetsuits and thermal underwear. The thing about living in that remote research community was I missed hanging out with my friends. Thomas: But the Antarctic’s a place of incredible beauty and even after working sixteen-hour days, there were still moments of peacefulness. Gina: But being with the animals for so long, we got to see things the other scientists hadn't. One guy’s been studying fur seals for years – knows everything about them – but he’s never seen them eat. He was thrilled when we were able to tell him about it. And if we’d had his input at the time, we would have realised the significance of what we’d seen and focused more on it. Thomas: Absolutely. And the highlight of the trip was the day we entered a bay carved into huge glaciers to find around forty humpback whales feeding. It was very quiet, and then we heard a soft explosion. It was the noise of the whales' blowholes. What they do is dive down, and as they start to come up again they release air bubbles from their blowholes. Then they swim round each other, trapping the krill they eat in a curtain of bubbles. So it’s an extraordinarily effective piece of teamwork that really increases their feeding efficiency. We filmed them for ten days because we wanted a shot of them as they finished eating. We waited and waited and then one day they just suddenly stopped. Int.: And that’s …
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