TEST#3 READING [C1]

You have four people’s opinions on teaching English. You need to read all their opinions and then choose who said what for aII 7 questions.

What approach do language tutors take in the classroom? It depends which tutor. Bella, a very experienced tutor, denies having an overall approach at all. ‘I don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all way of teaching.It all depends on the class and the students. For beginners I prefer to keep everything lively and light-hearted, with plenty of variety, lots of real objects, chanting, games and so on, whereas I can’t imagine getting an advanced class to chant together. It would just be embarrassing. With them it’s often better just to talk as you would with your friends.’And she believes the same is true of individual students as for classes: they are all different and they need different approaches. She readily admits that new ways of teaching based on some acquisition of language theory can be interesting and helpful, but warns that if they are imposed too rigidly they can be counterproductive.

Sara’s ideas are heavily influenced by her experience last year teach- ing in South Korea. She and her colleagues were using a method based on reading and listening only. Just receptive skills — no speaking and writing at first. The idea was to talk to the students all the time and get them reading as much as possible. The teachers never made them write or say anything, but in the end they started to talk spontaneously. They had heard so much English that eventually it just came naturally to them. The approach, she told us, follows the ideas of an American linguist called Dr Brown. His theory was that if you make people talk or write before they are ready they get stressed and turn to their own language. They say something in their language, then translate it into English. So the students are not learning real English; they are learning a mongrel language that is neither Korean nor English. The same thing applies to pronunciation; if students are exposed to the sounds of another language from the start, in time they will spontaneously repeat those sounds like a parrot. On the other hand if they try to speak before hey are ready they will go to the nearest sound in their own language, so they will be using Korean sounds. Once they have learnt the faulty pronunciation it will be virtually impossible to unlearn it. Sara summed up Dr Brown’s ideas like this: ‘Don’t förce it. Forcing distorts learning. Let it come naturally.’

Leo is also influenced by a well-known language teacher. ‘I’m very interested in the Michel Thomas method,’ he told us. ‘I’ve never taught in one of his centres, but I learnt German using his course, and found it very effective.’ Leo explained how Thomas developed a way of breaking up language into semantic chunks so that the student can start small and quickly build up long complex sentences, slotting the phrases together like lego. ‘Even after ten minutes you really feel that you’re speaking the language,’ said Leo. ‘His delivery is great, too. He’s got a deep gutteral voice, authoritative but not threatening. It’s almost hypnotic as he calms you down at the beginning, getting you to relax, telling you not to worry, that it’s all down to him. I wish I sounded like that.’

Connor always makes his students work, he assured us with a smile, and gets them to produce language from the start. He finds that nothing fixes some language skill in a student’s mind like using it right away. If the student has to say something, and say it right, then the tutor knows that he — or she – is really learning it. Listening is fine, but for Connor it just isn’t enough. A learner has to use it the language, not just listen to someone else using it. ‘Some students can listen to something a thou- sand times and then when you ask them to repeat it they just gaze at you blankly. I’m not surprised. You couldn’t teach someone to play the piano just by getting them to listen to piano music, would you? You wouldn’t teach someone to drive by making them watch the cars going up and down the street.’

CONNOR     LEO     SARA        BELLA

Read the text below. Match the 7 headings to the corresponding paragraphs.There is one more heading than you need.

1   ________________________

The Museum of London is full of beautiful and fascinating displays. A visitor can enjoy the dignified grandeur of a Roman room, walk through a recreation of the pleasure gardens of Vauxhall where elegant 18 century figures are silhouetted against the moonlight, or peer through the shop windows in a Victorian street. But in 2018 these elaborate displays were relegated to second place. Visitors hurried past them in their eagerness to see the latest star exhibit: a lump of fat found in a sewer.

2  ________________________

The lump of fat in question was from the Whitechapel Fatberg. Whitechapel is the part of London where the fatberg was found (and, incidentally, the area which Jack the Ripper terrorised decades earlier), and ‘fatberg’ is a new word, coined, in 2013, for a new thing: it refers to the huge masses of fat the size of an iceberg that occasionally materi- alise in the sewers (or waste pipes) beneath city streets. Fatbergs form when fat, grease, and other unsuitable waste like cotton-wool buds are flushed down the toilet. These materials and ordinary sewage all clog to- gether to form an agglomeration that blocks the sewer. The Whitechapel Fatberg weighed more than ten double-decker London buses and was longer than Tower Bridge.

3  __________________________

This famous fatberg, though particularly big, is not the only one the world has seen. A fatberg might develop under any city whose popu- lation flushes non-degradable items like tampons or wetwipes down the toilet and pours hot fat down the kitchen sink. In Valencia, Spain, a fatberg blocking the sewage system was discovered in 2017. Its re- mOVaI COSt €2,000,000. Clearing fatbergs costs New York City alone more than $4,500,000 per year, and other mai or U.S. cites have been similarly afflicted. Australia pays about $15,000,Q00 a year to clear its blockages. Fatbergs have cropped up throughout the west, but the U.K. and the U.S.A. have the dubious honour of leading the World in fatberg production.

4  ___________________________

Even an enormous fatberg might be able to slip through the smooth passages of a modern sewage system, but not through the Victorian sewage pipes of London. About 150 years old, they are too narrow for the waste produced by today’s population, and their rough surface grips the fat. Under pressure the fat hardens and gets wedged in the sewer. It can be very difficult to remove. A team of eight sewage workers worked all day for weeks to break the Whitechapel fatberg down. The pieces had to be suctioned out and taken away in tankers. Most of it was eventually turned into biofuel.

5 ____________________________

The museum could only show a small piece of the fatberg, but find- ing a way of exhibiting even that small part was no easy task. It was highly toxic —just smelling it could be dangerous – so it had to be kept in a completely secure showcase. But neither its toxicity nor vile appear- ance frightened visitors away. On the contrary, they flocked to see it, fascinated and disgusted in equal measure.

6 _____________________________

After some months the museum decided that despite its popularity the fatberg was too dangerous to display any longer, so it was removed from the public galleries to be put in long-term storage. To monitor its chang- ing state, and to allow the public to continue to see it, a webcam was trained on it day and night. ‘Fatcam’ showed moulds suddenly appearing on its surface and flies emerging from it. It continued to ‘sweat’ and to change colour.

Read the text and write the correct word or phrase from the three options given to fill the 7 gaps in the text.

Read the texts and fill in the gaps using the correct word or phrase from the three options’given to you.