Unit 6: 5 Photocopiable 1

TESTS AUDIO SCRIPT

UNIT TESTS

Unit 6 Track 7: Unit Test six, Dictation, Exercise one

Unit 1

Track 2: Unit Test one, Dictation, Exercise one The tradition of blood brothers / dates back to Viking times. / Being companions since boyhood, / two men would form an unbreakable bond / based on honour and respect for the other’s strength. / Spilling blood over the point of a spear, / they swore never to fight each other / and to avenge the other’s death.

Unit 2

Track 3: Unit Test two, Dictation, Exercise one A Bachelor’s degree / is an academic undergraduate award / earned upon completing a college or university course / typically spanning three to seven years. / It is believed that the term bachelor / may have originally been used / to denote a twelfth-century knight / who was too young or underprivileged / to obtain his own subordinates.

Unit 3

Track 4: Unit Test three, Dictation, Exercise one Vegetarianism is the practice / of the non-consumption of animals / which can be traced back / as far as ancient India and ancient Greece. / This choice of diet in both instances / was the direct result / of the policy of non-violence towards animals. / This concept was highly regarded / by early philosophers and religious doctrines.

Unit 4 Track 5: Unit Test four, Dictation, Exercise one To patent a new invention / you must apply to have your brainchild recognised. / The Intellectual Property Office / searches for similar patents / to make sure your innovation is original. / Owning a patent gives you the legitimacy / to take action against anyone / who attempts to capitalise on your ingenuity / without first obtaining your permission.

The first scheduled rail journey / trundled between Liverpool and Manchester / on the fifteenth of September 1830. / This historic train venture was the first / to chug along solely on steam power / as well as / to transfer mail between cities. / It heralded the arrival / of a new age / in the social and commercial world.

Unit 7 Track 8: Unit Test seven, Dictation, Exercise one Banksy is an anonymous avant-garde artist / responsible for compelling works of graffiti / which pop up in public spaces around the globe. / Should you wish to purchase one of his works, / be prepared to face certain obstacles, / as removing street art from walls / is strictly a matter for the buyer to contend with.

Unit 8 Track 9: Unit Test eight, Dictation, Exercise one Smartphone thumb is thumb pain / resulting from strenuous texting or gaming / on a smartphone or similar mobile device. / It is recommended, therefore, / to keep text messages short / and to limit game play. / Using the forefinger to type / is another way to minimise / the potential impact of excessive texting taking its toll.

Unit 9 Track 10: Unit Test nine, Dictation, Exercise one Not only are sales of drones flourishing / but the first inevitable occurrence / of a collision between a drone and a commercial airplane / has been reported close to London. / Little do people realise / UK laws stipulate / unmanned aircraft can only be controlled / more than fifty metres away / from people, vehicles or other physical structures.

Unit 5 Track 6: Unit Test five, Dictation, Exercise one Victorian Bakers is a TV show / in which professional bakers strive to bake bread / under the gruelling conditions of the nineteenth century. / Slaving away in an unwelcoming environment, / the curious volunteers soon acknowledge / that working for a pittance / under such unfavourable terms / is a far cry / from bakers’ lives of today.

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TESTS AUDIO SCRIPT

REVIEW TESTS



Women, on the other hand, have a much larger repertoire of responses. This is just as well as they typically have a greater number of confidants than men and are happier to seek the company of other women in order to share their intimacies and vent their frustrations. When complaining about a male partner, for example.



To sum up then, a man’s more laid-back approach towards those that he has allowed into his inner circle, is greatly opposed to a woman’s higher stake involvement in which she will demand an amount of conviction equal to that which she herself commits to a friendship. It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, that men have more people they consider friends and that male-male relationships tend to last a lot longer than femalefemale relationships. And what about ‘platonic’ male-female and female-male friendships? Well, that’s a can of worms that would best be opened another place and time …

Review Test 1-3 Track 11: Review Test one, Exercise one Man:









‘Friends for life’ is an expression we’re all fully aware of and we may even have found ourselves using from time to time. But how many friends do we actually have and how do we go about maintaining or discarding these friendships throughout our lives? It’s believed that the average person has about 150 people in their social circle – and that figure includes members of family. Out of those, only an average of two are considered to be ‘close’. You may think this number sounds depressingly small but if you have at least that many consider yourself somewhat lucky – 4.7 million people in the UK admit to having no best friend at all. And this is decidedly not a good thing – for by all accounts lonely people are twice as likely to die of heart disease as those who are socially active. Tellingly, there is a big difference between the sexes when it comes to making and keeping friends. Men, for example, typically have a larger circle of friends than women – with an average of 26 to 12 respectively. Why is this? Research suggests a number of common theories. For starters, men are said to be more choosy when it comes to who they hang out with. Whilst this may at first seem somewhat contradictory given the numbers just quoted, it means that those friends that we do choose have been carefully handpicked. Men, it would seem, are also more tolerant to being let down – that is, we don’t take it too hard or too personally when a gathering is cancelled, we’re not invited or someone refuses to help out in times of need. This tolerance also seems to extend to retaining flatmates. Studies carried out on American campuses showed that men are much happier to continue sharing with someone of the same sex than women – who tend to flit between female flatmates until they find someone who is a much better fit. It has been argued that this greater level of tolerance in men is due to the fact that we actually invest less in a relationship. Men are much more likely to brood, for example when in a bad mood, preferring not to share our innermost feelings but rather suffer in silence.

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Review Test 1-6 Track 12: Review Test two, Exercise one A Woman 1: I must admit I didn’t know what to expect. And I’m not a great fan of the TV series either but my husband was really keen and had wanted to go for ages. Plus he convinced me that if nothing else I can bask in the sun and top up my tan so I thought fair enough – why not. The weirdest thing of course was the fact that all the staff were dressed up as aliens. That took some getting used to let me tell you! A lot of the passengers came in all shapes, sizes and colours too but I’m pleased to say looking like a Martian or Vulcan wasn’t compulsory.

The ship was huge with the usual kinds of entertainment – pool, squash, shops and bars and whatnot. In the evening there were charity events with stars from the TV show. I didn’t have a clue who they were and they were mostly B-list celebrities anyway I was informed. Still, that didn’t bother me. The one thing that did slightly was that we only actually spent two days out of the six at sea. And although we docked at some wonderful locations I didn’t get to lie on the deck and soak up the views as much as I’d hoped.

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TESTS AUDIO SCRIPT

Review Test 1-9

B Man:



My word! What an experience! I’d never seen such a mix of people in one place before and the energy and enthusiasm throughout the whole tour was something to behold. There were bright colours everywhere you looked and people were wearing the most bizarre things at times. Still, there was a great spirit of acceptance and although it took a day or two I started to feel quite relaxed and uninhibited. The on-board entertainment was an array of spiritual workshops, yoga practice, chanting and live concerts and we stopped off on a few occasions to go for festivals in the woods. None of which I was that keen on to begin with but there were a number of educational lectures by highlyrespected academics – although I’d never heard of any of them – on topics such as Native American religion which I found engrossing. Interestingly though there were plenty of shops selling new age products which seemed to me a little too commercial and somewhat contrary to the whole concept I felt. And the noise! At times with the whole ship chanting and singing and banging on tablas you could barely hear yourself think let alone meditate.

C Woman 2: I’d always wanted to take dancing classes so the idea of combining that with a cruise holiday was a bit like killing two birds with one stone – get away from it all and do something I’d wanted to do for ages. My partner was a little reluctant at first and of course the event was quite formal at times, which required formal dress and shoes, but there was a hire place on board so we didn’t need to take that much with us. There were classes during the daytime and competitions in the evenings with some of the same judges as on the TV panel. Leaving from Southampton was also quite convenient for us and we stopped off in Spain and Portugal for a break and to put on our land-legs again for a night. The weather wasn’t the best unfortunately, well not until we left UK waters, but getting a tan wasn’t the top priority – not for me at least – so although it put a slight dampener on things at the off, it certainly wasn’t a deal breaker. Somewhere more tropical might be a nice idea but overall I’d recommend it and we both certainly picked up some new moves which we’ll be able to impress friends with at future events.

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Track 13, Review Test three, Exercise one Presenter: The robots are coming! Since the dystopian visions of sci-fi's earliest writers to the darkly prophetic visions of today's big screen, the rebellion of intelligent machines has long been one of mankind’s most harboured fears. But is that brave new world of science-fiction about to become reality? I’m here in the studio with sociologist Amanda Davies and futurologist Matthew Smith to discuss. Firstly, Amanda – there’s been a lot of concern recently about future generations being put out of work due to an unprecedented rise in robots doing our work. Is there anything in this or is it just common scaremongering? Amanda: I’d say there’s definitely something in it and in fact it’s happening all around us now – just on a relatively moderate scale for now so that it’s not that obvious to many of us. More and more supermarkets, for example, are utilising selfcheckout machines which has already replaced a lot of staff. Most high street banks offer online banking services, which has reduced the need for many people to do the work they once did. Whilst companies favour these technologies in order to reduce costs, and we are choosing these services because of the convenience and speed, it’s all too easy to forget about the knock-on effects they are having on the labour market – and if the trend continues as it looks like it will, then we could be heading into a very gloomy world of excessive unemployment. Presenter: Isn’t that an exaggeration, though? Supermarket checkouts and online banking are hardly the bedrock of a healthy labour market. Amanda: Well I fear that it’s just the start. With Google’s £400 million recent acquisition of British artificial intelligence firm DeepMind, things could well get a lot worse a lot quicker. As things stand, some forecast unemployment will be as high as 50 percent within the next 30 years. And we’re not just talking menial jobs here with occupations such as train drivers, taxi drivers and pilots in the transport sector to accountants and insurers in the service sector all expected to become obsolete. Over the last ten years alone, for example, one half of all secretarial jobs in the UK have disappeared but it’s not just a concern for the working class.

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Presenter: And your views Matthew? Matthew: I’ll accept that it could be a concern for the future but I can’t help believing that it won’t happen on such a scale as the doom merchants are predicting. Have you ever seen the self-service checkouts? They’re mostly empty as people still have either a natural distrust of them or simply prefer the smile and chit-chat with the person operating the till. And as for Google’s acquisition I think we need to put things in perspective. They have, for example, set up an ethics board to monitor the situation and to keep things in check. They’re not simply charging ahead and drastically changing society without an awareness of the bigger picture. And surely in the long-term this will be a benefit to everyone. People will no longer have to do menial tasks and dangerous jobs that I’m sure they’d rather not do anyway. But the onus will be very much on the government to provide training for a whole range of new services and jobs in IT. Presenter: Fine. But will that in itself be enough to cope with the greater number of possible redundancies? Matthew: Certainly there will be a shift in society as a whole with more and more people out of work. But once again, governments are aware of this and some countries are already proposing a basic guaranteed income in return for people willing to re-train or for carrying out community services. Ultimately people will have more leisure time and some of the luckier ones will find themselves free to pursue whatever interests they’ve never previously been able to attend to – which will of course result in a booming health and recreation industry … Amanda: I’m sorry, I need to cut in there. The desire to work is one of man’s fundamental needs and for many provides a real meaning in life. Mass unemployment and sponsored community work are not the answer and we need to confront this question before we find ourselves with too much time on our hands. Presenter: It’s certainly a pretty complex issue with huge bearings on the lives of future generations. We’ll have to leave it there I’m afraid [fade out] but you can read more on this topic on our website where Amanda and Matthew …

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END-OF-YEAR TEST Track 14, End-of-Year Test, Listening, Exercise one ONE Like most things in life there was a certain amount of providence involved: my friend’s sister had just come back from teaching English in Singapore and she reckoned it was a good way to earn money and see the world. I’d always wanted to do the latter, so I did a course and four weeks later I was living and working in Germany. It’s very hard to progress, but I’m planning to get into teacher training. Rather than living in any one place for a year or more, I’ll get to venture further afield more often and stay in new places just for a month or two – long enough to acclimatise and say you’ve lived there but not too long to get tied down. One thing’s for sure, after living overseas for so long, going back to the UK isn’t top of the agenda. TWO When I first got into film, I wanted to direct. There’s a lot of nepotism in the industry though, so unless you know someone who knows someone, you can forget it! So I made a conscious decision to pursue other avenues and when the plans to use one location for filming fell through, and I just happened to know of a place that I thought would be equally effective, I took some snaps of it and presented them. They were impressed by my vision and sent me out scouting on other occasions – next thing I know I’ve been doing it for years! The sights I see are truly inspiring and for now, being a location manager is just fine – sooner or later I’ll return to my initial Hollywood dream again – and eventually settle down in LA itself and get my big break!

We’re also involved in animation programmes – which for most is the main attraction in being a holiday rep – and I’m no different. Meeting people, generally having fun in all manner of manic ways. It’s definitely a job with a short life span though – and burnout is not uncommon if you don’t have a proper break. Then it’ll be time to find a ‘proper job’ – which almost definitely means going back to the UK and starting from scratch on the bottom rung of the ladder again. FIVE You’d think with most organisations only taking on volunteers or paying very low salaries there’d be difficulty finding people. In fact, the opposite is true – more and more NGOs prefer applicants with degrees in social work or some other related field – which, fortunately, I’ve got – so I’m a relatively solid candidate and I get to put the three years I spent at college to good use! Striving to make a difference is key for me, impacting people’s lives for the better – although the opportunity to do that and travel is the main incentive for many people. Next I’m thinking of heading out to Nepal for a year – although if I get the chance to move up into management I’ll probably stay somewhere longer term. Track 15, End-of-Year Test, Listening, Exercise two ONE Man:

Did you hear about that tennis player, that whatshername, being banned from playing? For 10 years she’d been taking this banned substance and won something like, what, 5 or 6 grand slams in that time. Disgraceful …

Woman:

Well, yeah, but by all accounts the substance she was taking was only banned in January this year. So you can’t take anything away from her achievements. And if anything, it should be her doctors or advisers or whoever that should shoulder the blame if you ask me. And wasn’t she using it for health reasons or something? Irregular heartbeat or diabetes or something, wasn’t it? You can’t condone the use of illegal drugs but I do feel for her. And having to publicly apologise and all … that’s just wrong!

Man:

No, no, no. I don’t accept that. As a professional sportsperson it’s your job to know the laws and regulations. After all, they’re there to ensure everyone is on a level playing field so to speak. Full credit to her for coming out and admitting it before the press got a hold of the story – which I think she had to do – but even that was probably just a case of trying to save face.

Woman:

Well, yes – it did take a certain amount of guts. But I beg to differ in many ways.

THREE A lot of people are envious when I tell them what I do. It’s not all it’s cut out to be though. For a start, I can boast about having been to over thirty different countries in the last five years but I couldn’t actually tell you much about them. As a musician in an orchestra, though, I do count myself lucky – after all, music is my passion – and there’s no plan to do anything different any time soon! But the travelling side of things really isn’t that glamorous and there’s often little time in any one place before you move on again. I do get long holidays when I’m not touring but there’s always plenty of rehearsing to do in preparation for the next place – Turkey actually – so, no peace for the wicked as they say. FOUR Typically I get up early in the morning and do the rounds. This is by far the worst part of the day as you’re basically dealing with people’s gripes, helping them out with broken TVs, no hot water and whatnot. © Pearson 2017    FOCUS 5    PHOTOCOPIABLE

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TWO Woman:

So, I got the chance to visit China last year and I had no idea how important food is over there. In fact, the usual everyday greeting actually translates as ‘Have you eaten?’ – weird, eh?

Man:

Yeah, yeah. So, how was it?

Woman:

What got me most though was how loud everything is. In the restaurants, for example, it’s almost deafening. You can hardly hear yourself think. Everybody’s talking animatedly and laughing and stuff – very different to the more restrained type of things we get in restaurants over here. You won’t be shocked to hear that a good rule of thumb is: the louder the restaurant, the better the food.

Man:

Ha, ha.

Woman:

And you have to eat slowly, and pay a lot of attention to what you’re doing. You can’t just gobble up your meal or have a half-hearted conversation – it’s actually a pretty intense experience. You feel like you can’t let your hair down at all so it’s hard to relax.

Man:

And what about the food?

Woman:

Rice, noodles, tofu are the staples. So being a veggie is certainly not impossible. For meat though there’s a famous saying: ‘The Chinese eat everything with four legs, except tables, and everything that flies, except airplanes’.

Man:

Wow. Imagine that. But how will they get access? I mean, is there an infrastructure in place? Don’t you need cables and whatnot? And I’m not being funny but illiteracy in Kenya is sky high and they speak something like over 60 different languages. So, even for those that can read, you can’t imagine there’ll be anything in their own tongue.

Woman:

Yeah, there has to be some money involved somewhere, eh? Not that I’m a complete sceptic or anything.

THREE Man:

So I saw a weird photo in the paper today. It was this Maasai man, from Africa right, holding a mobile phone but he was all dressed up in colourful traditional robes and stuff. Quite a striking image but I couldn’t get over how bizarre it all was.

Woman:

Yeah, well I read there’ll be over 700 million smartphones in Africa by 2020 so I guess it’ll become quite a common sight. And it’s big business so people are bound to start cashing in. Take that Facebook guy. He wants to provide free Internet to the whole of Africa – is that pure altruism or is there something in it for him, eh? I’d like to think his motives are genuine but you can’t help but wonder, can you?

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