Practice Test 2

Reading Passage 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14, which are based on Reading Passage 1 given below.

Tea Times

A. The chances are that you have already drunk a cup or glass of tea today, Perhaps, you are sipping one as you read this. Tea, now an everyday beverage in many parts of the world, has over the centuries been an important part of rituals of hospitality both in the home and in wider society.

B. Tea originated in China, and in Eastern Asia, tea making and drinking ceremonies have been popular for centuries. Tea was first shipped to North-Western Europe by English and Dutch maritime traders in the sixteenth century. At about the same time, a land route from the Far East, via Moscow, to Europe was opened up. Tea also figured in America’s bid for independence from British rule – the Boston Tea Party.

C. As, over the last four hundred years, tea-leaves became available throughout much of Asia and Europe, the ways in which tea was drunk changed. The Chinese considered the quality of the leaves and the ways in which they were cured all important. People in other cultures added new ingredients besides tea-leaves and hot water. They drank tea with milk, sugar, spices like cinnamon and cardamom, and herbs such as mint or sage. The variations are endless. For example, in Western Sudan on the edge of the Sahara Desert, sesame oil is added to milky tea on cold mornings. In England, tea, unlike coffee, acquired a reputation as a therapeutic drink that promoted health. Indeed, in European and Arab countries as well as In Persia and Russia, tea was praised for its restorative and health-giving properties. One Dutch physician, Cornelius Blankaart, advised that to maintain health a minimum of eight to ten cups a day should be drunk and that up to 50 to 100 daily cups could be consumed with safety.

D. While European coffee houses were frequented by men discussing politics and closing business deals, respectable middle-class women stayed at home and held tea parties. When the price of tea fell in the nineteenth century, poor people took up the drink with enthusiasm. Different grades and blends of tea were sold to suit every pocket.

E. Throughout the world today, few religious groups object to tea drinking. In Islamic cultures, where drinking of alcohol is forbidden, tea and coffee consumption is an important part of social life. However, Seventh-Day Adventists, recognising the beverage as a drug containing the stimulant caffeine, frown upon the drinking of tea.

F. Nomadic Bedouin are well known for the traditions of hospitality in the desert. According to Middle Eastern tradition, guests are served both tea and coffee from pots kept ready on the fires of guest tents where men of the family and male visitors gather. Cups of “bitter” cardamom coffee and glasses of sugared tea should be constantly refilled by the host.

G. For over a thousand years, Arab traders have been bringing Islamic culture, including tea drinking, to northern and western Africa. Techniques of tea preparation have been adapted. In West African countries, such as Senegal and The Gambia, it is fashionable for young men to gather in small groups to brew Chinese “gun-powder” tea. The tea is boiled with large amounts of sugar for a long time.

H. Tea drinking in India remains an important part of daily life. There, tea made entirely with milk is popular. “Chai” is made by boiling milk and adding tea, sugar and some spices. This form of tea making has crossed the Indian Ocean and is also popular in East Africa, where tea is considered best when it is either very milky or made with water only. Curiously, this “milk or water” formula has been carried over to the preparation of instant coffee, which is served in cafes as either black or sprinkled on a cup of hot milk.

I. In Britain, coffee drinking, particularly in the informal atmosphere of coffee shops, is currently in vogue. Yet, the convention of afternoon tea lingers. At conferences, it remains common practice to serve coffee in the morning and tea in the afternoon. Contemporary China, too, remains true to its long tradition. Delegates at conferences and seminars are served tea in cups with lids to keep the infusion hot. The cups are topped up throughout the proceedings. There are as yet no signs of coffee on such occasions.

Questions 1-8

Reading Passage 1 has 9 paragraphs (A-I).
Choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph from the list of headings given below. Write the appropriate numbers (I-xiii) in Boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.One of the headings has been done for you as an example.

There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use all of them.

1 Paragraph A
2 Paragraph B
3 Paragraph C
4 Paragraph D
5 Paragraph E
6 Paragraph G
7 Paragraph H
8 Paragraph I 

Example: Paragraph F Answer: xiii

List of Headings

i. Diverse drinking methods

ii. Limited objections to drinking tea

iii. Today’s continuing tradition – In Britain and China

iv. Tea – a beverage of hospitality

v. An important addition – tea with milk

vi. Tea and alcohol

vii. The everyday beverage in all parts of the world

viii. Tea on the move

ix. African tea

x. The fall in the cost of tea

xi. The value of tea

xii. Tea-drinking in Africa

xiii. Hospitality among the Bedouin

Questions 9-14

Complete the sentences below. Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage to fill each blank space.

Write your answers in the blank spaces next to 9-14 on your answer sheet

9 For centuries, both at home and In society, tea has had an important role in______

10 Falling tea prices in the nineteenth century meant that people could choose the________ of tea they could afford.

11 Because it______ Seventh-Day Adventists do not approve of the drinking

12 In the desert, one group that is well known for Its traditions of hospitality is the_______

13 In India, _______, as well as tea, are added to boiling milk to make “chai”.

14 In Britain, while coffee is in fashion, afternoon tea is still a________

Reading Passage 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15-29, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Tyes and Greens

A. There are a number of settlements in this part of East Anglia with names containing the word “tye”. The word is Anglo-Saxon in origin, and the Oxford English Dictionary quotes the earliest usage of the term as dating from 832. Essentially a “tye” was green, or a small area of open common land, usually sited away from the main village or settlement, perhaps at the junction of two or more routes. Local people and passing travellers had the right to pasture their horses, pigs and other farm animals on the tye.

B. In the Pebmarsh area, there seem to have been five or six of these tyes, all except one, at the margins of the parish. These marginal clearings are all away from the richer farming land close to the river, and, in the case of Cooks Green, Haylcs Tye, and Dorking Tye, close to the edge of still existing fragments of ancient woodland. It seems likely than that, here, as elsewhere in East Anglia, medieval freemen were allowed to clear a small part of the forest and create a smallholding. Such unproductive forest land would, in any case, have been unattractive to the wealthy baronial or monastic landowners. Most of the land around Pebmarsh village belonged to Earls Colne Priory, a wealthy monastery about 10 kilometres to the south, and it may be that by the 13th and 14th centuries the tyes -were maintained by tenant farmers paying rent to the Priory.

C. Hayles Tye seems to have got its name from a certain John Hayle who Is documented in the 1380s, although there are records pointing to the occupation of the site at a much earlier date. The name was still in use in 1500 and crops up again throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, usually in relation to the payment of taxes or tithes. At some point during the 18th century, the name is changed to File’s Green, though no trace of an owner called File has been found. Also in the 18th century, the original dwellings on the site disappeared. Much of this region was economically depressed during this period and the land and its dwellings may simply have been abandoned. Several farms were abandoned in the neighbouring village of Alphamstone, and the population dwindled so much that there was no money to support the fabric of the village church, which became very dilapidated. However, another possibility is that the buildings at File’s Green burnt down, fires being not infrequent at this time.

D. By 1817 the land was in the ownership of Charles Townsend of Ferriers Farm, and in 1821 he built two brick cottages on the site, each cottage occupied by two families of agricultural labourers. The structure of these cottages was very simple, just a two-storey rectangle divided in the centre by a large common chimneypiece. Each dwelling had its own fireplace, but the two families seem to have shared a brick broad-oven which jutted out from the rear of the cottage. The outer wall of the bread-oven Is still visible on the remaining cottage. The fireplaces themselves and the chimney structure appear to be older than the 1821 cottages and may have survived from the earlier dwellings. All traces of the common land had long disappeared, and the two cottages stood on a small plot of less than an acre where the labourers would have been able to grow a few vegetables and keep a few chickens or a pig. The bulk of their time was spent working at Ferrier’s farm.

E. Both cottages are clearly marked on maps of 1874, but by the end of the century, one of them had gone. Again, the last years of the 19th century were a period of agricultural depression, and a number of smaller farms in the area were abandoned. Traces of one, Mosse’s Farm, still partly encircled by a very overgrown moat, may be seen less than a kilometre from File’s Green. It seems likely that, as the need for agricultural labour declined, one of the cottages fell into disuse, decayed and was eventually pulled down. Occasional fragments of rubble and brick still surface in the garden of the remaining cottage.

F. In 1933, this cottage was sold to the manager of the newly-opened gravel works to the north-west of Pebmarsh village. He converted these two dwellings into one. This, then, is the only remaining habitation on the site and is called File’s Green Cottage.

Questions 15-18

Choose the appropriate letters A-D. Write them in Boxes 15-18 on your answer sheet.

15 A tye was …

A a green

B a large open area

C common land with trees

D found at the junction of two or more routes

16 The Pebmarsh area …

A probably had seven tyes

B probably had six tyes

C appears to have had five or six tyes

D was not in East Anglia

17 The tyes in the Pebmarsh area were …

A near the river

B used by medieval freemen

C mostly at the margins of the parish

D owned by Haris Colne Priory

18 According to the writer, wealthy landowners …

A did not find the sight of forest land attractive

B found the sight of forest land attractive

C were attracted by the sight of forest land

D considered forest land unproductive

Question 19-29

1380s- John Hayle, who is __________19________, apparently gave his name to Hayles Tye.

1500s- the name of Hayles Tye was still _______20______, _____21_______ again in the following two centuries in relation to taxes.

18^th century- Hayles Tye was renamed__________22______ the original dwellings may either have dissappeared, or were _____23_________Charles Townsend.

1817 – the land was ____24______ by Charles Townsend.

1821- Charies Townsend built _________25_______ cottages on the site, _______26_______inhabited by two families, but by the end of the nineteenth century only one cottage_______27_______.

1933- The cottage, now called File’s Green Cottage, was bought by the local _____28_______ manager who converted the cottage into ________29_______.

Reading Passage 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 30-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Haydn’s late quartets

A. By the time he came to write the String Quartets published as Opus 76 and Opus 77, Haydn was undoubtedly the most famous living composer in the whole of Europe. He had recently returned from the highly successful second visit to England, for which he had composed his last six symphonies, culminating in the brilliant and festive Drum Roll Symphony (No. 103) and London Symphony (No, 104). This is public music, full of high spirits, expansive gestures and orchestral surprises. Haydn knew how to please his audience. And in 1796, following his return to Vienna, he began work on his largest and most famous choral work, the oratorio, “The Creation”. In the succeeding years, till 1802, he was to write a series of other large scales religious choral works, including several masses. The oratorios and masses were also public works, employing large forces for dramatic effect, but warm and full of apparently spontaneous religious feeling. Yet at the same time he composed these 8 quartets, in terms of technical mastery and sheer musical invention the equal of the symphonies and choral works, but in their mood and emotional impact far removed, by turns introspective and detached, or full of passionate intensity.

B. Once again, as in the early 1770s when he appears to have been going through some kind of spiritual crisis, Haydn returned to the String Quartet as a means to accomplish a two-fold aim: firstly to innovate musically in a genre-free from public performance requirements or religious convention; secondly to express personal emotions or philosophy in a musical form that is intimate yet capable of great subtlety and complexity of meaning. The result is a series of quartets of astonishing structural, melodic, rhythmic and harmonic variety, inhabiting a shifting emotional world, where tension underlies surface brilliance and calm gives way to unease.

C. The six quartets of Opus 76 differ widely in character. The opening movement of No. 2 is tense and dramatic, while that of No. 4 begins with the soaring long-breathed melody that has earned the nickname of “The Sunrise”. The minutes to have moved a long way from the stately court dance of the mid-eighteenth century. The so-called “Witches Minuet” of No. 2 is a strident canon, that of No. 6 is a fast one-in-a-bar movement anticipating the scherzos of Beethoven, while at the heart of No. 5 is a contrasting trio section which, far from being the customary relaxed variant of the surrounding minute, flings itself into frenetic action and is gone. The finales are full of energy and grace. We associate with Haydn but with far less conscious humour and more detachment than in earlier quartets.

D. But it is in the slow movements that Haydn is most innovative and most unsettling. In No. 1, the cello and the first violin embark on a series of brusque dialogues. No. 4 is a subdued meditation based on the hushed opening chords. The slow movements of No. 5 and No. 6 are much looser in structure, the cello and viola setting off on solitary episodes of melodic and harmonic uncertainty. But there the similarity ends, for while No. 5 is enigmatic and predominantly dark in tone, the overlapping textures of its sister are full of light-filled intensity.

E. The Opus 76 quartets were published in 1799 when Haydn was well over 60 years old. Almost immediately he was commissioned to write another set by Prince Lobkowltz, a wealthy patron, who was later to become an important figure in Beethoven’s life. Two quartets only were completed and published as Opus 77 Nos. 1 & 2 in 1802. But these are not the works of an old man whose powers are fading, or who simply consolidates ground already covered. Once again Haydn Innovates. The opening movement of Opus 77 No. 2 is as structurally complex and emotionally unsettling as anything he ever wrote, alternating between a laconic opening theme and a tense and threatening counter theme which comes to dominate the whole movement. Both quartets have fast scherzo-like “minuets”. The slow movement of No. 1 is in traditional variation form but stretches the form to the limit in order to accommodate widely contrasting textures and moods. The finale of No. 2 is swept along by a seemingly inexhaustible stream of energy and inventiveness.

F. In fact, Haydn began the third quarter in this set but never finished it, and the two completed movements were published in 1806 as Opus 103, his last published work. He was over 70 and clearly lacked the strength to continue composition. The two existing movements are a slow movement followed by a minute. The slow movement has a quiet warmth, but It is the minuet that is remarkable. It is in true dance time, unlike the fast quasi-scherzos of the earlier quartets. But what a dance in a sombre D minor Haydn unfolds an angular, ruthless little dance of death. The central trio section holds out a moment of consolation, and then the dance returns, sweeping on relentlessly to the final sudden uprush of sound. And then, after more than 40 years of composition the master falls silent.

Questions 30-32

Choose the appropriate letters A-D. Write them next to 30-32 on your answer sheet.

30 Which one of the following statements Is true?

A Haydn wrote the London Symphony In England

B We do not know where Haydn wrote the London Symphony

C Haydn wrote the London Symphony in Vienna

D Haydn wrote the Drum Roll Symphony in England

31 Like symphonies 103 and 104, the oratorios and masses were …

A written in the eighteenth century

B for the public

C as emotional as the quartets

D full of religious feeling

32 The string quartets in Opus 76 and Opus 77 were …

A the cause of a spiritual crisis

B intimate yet capable

C calm unease

D diverse

Questions 33-37

Complete the text below, which is a summary of paragraphs 3 and 4 in Reading Passage 3.

For example, the opening of “The Sunrise” is not nearly as _____33____ as that of No. 2._____34_____those of the mid-eighteenth century, the minuets are more frenetic and less relaxed. It is in the slow movements, however, that Haydn tried something very different. In contrast to No. 4, No, 1 if much ______35___ brusque, the former being much___36____,____37_____ , Nos. 5 and 6 are alike in some respects.

Word List

Questions 38-40

Do the statements below agree with that information in Reading Passage 3?

38 Before the Opus 76 quartets were published, Haydn had been commissioned to write more.

39 The writer says that Opus 103 was Haydn’s last published work

40 The writer admires Haydn for the diversity of the music he composed.

Answers