Four parts · 26 questions. Reading and Writing together: 2 hours 10 minutes.
Read the article. For each question, choose the correct answer, A, B or C.
Our Four-Day Week: What Really Happened
Rachel Dunmore, managing director of a 40-person design agency, looks back on an 18-month experiment.
When I announced to my team eighteen months ago that we would be trialling a four-day week, the reaction was not what I expected. I had imagined cheers; instead, there was a long silence, followed by a question from one of our senior designers: "So who's going to answer the phone on Fridays?"
It was a fair question. Our clients are used to us being available whenever they need us, and I was nervous that some of them would take their business elsewhere. In the end, we solved the problem by splitting the team in two. Half the staff take Monday off and the other half Friday, so the office is open five days a week but nobody works more than four.
The first three months were, frankly, chaotic. Meetings that had always lasted an hour had to be cut to thirty minutes, and several people admitted that they were working late on their four days to keep up. One project manager told me she felt more stressed, not less. I began to wonder whether I had made an expensive mistake.
What changed things was not a new rule but a conversation. At a team meeting, someone pointed out that we were trying to squeeze five days of our old habits into four, rather than changing the habits themselves. We agreed to stop sending internal emails about anything that could be sorted out in a two-minute chat, and to keep every morning until eleven free for focused work, with no meetings allowed. Within weeks, the late evenings had largely disappeared.
The results since then have surprised even the sceptics. Our output, measured in completed projects, has risen by around eight per cent. Sick days have halved. And for the first time in years, we have not lost a single member of staff to a competitor. Recruitment has become easier, too: when we advertised a junior position last spring, we received three times as many applications as usual.
I don't want to pretend it has been perfect. Some clients still find the split week confusing, and we have had to be very clear about who is responsible for each account on any given day. There are also roles for which the model simply doesn't work as well. Our office manager, for instance, chose to stay on five days because she felt the job required her to be there constantly — a choice we respected.
Would I recommend it to other businesses? Cautiously, yes. But I would warn anyone considering it that a four-day week is not a gift you give your staff; it is a project you undertake with them. If the people doing the work aren't involved in redesigning how it is done, I suspect it will fail.
Part 2 (Questions 7–12)
Read the article. Six sentences have been removed. Choose the correct sentence, A–G, for each gap. There is one extra sentence you do not need.
Bees in the City
Ten years ago, if you had told most Londoners that there were bees living on the roof of their office, they would probably have called pest control. (7) Today, hives can be found on top of hotels, banks and even railway stations, and the number of registered urban beekeepers has risen sharply.
Part of the appeal is the honey itself. Because city bees feed on a huge variety of plants in parks, gardens and along railway lines, their honey often has a more complex flavour than honey from the countryside. (8) Some rooftop beekeepers sell every jar they produce within days.
Yet not everyone is convinced that the trend is good news. (9) The bees most at risk are not honeybees at all, but the hundreds of species of wild bees, many of which live alone rather than in hives. Honeybees compete with them for the same flowers, and where there are too many hives, wild bees can struggle to find enough food.
(10) One study of a European capital found that the number of hives had grown far faster than the number of flowering plants available to feed them. In some districts there were simply too many mouths to feed.
So what should a city-dweller who wants to help bees actually do? (11) Planting window boxes with lavender, thyme or other nectar-rich flowers provides food for all kinds of bees, not just those kept by humans. Leaving a corner of a garden untidy, with dead wood and bare soil, gives solitary bees somewhere to nest.
None of this means that urban beekeeping should stop. (12) As one beekeeper put it, keeping bees should be the last step in helping them, not the first.
- AThere is growing scientific evidence to support these concerns.
- BConservationists point out that keeping honeybees does little to protect the species that actually need help.
- CAttitudes, however, have changed remarkably quickly.
- DThe answer, according to most experts, is to grow flowers rather than to keep hives.
- EThis has made it something of a luxury product, and prices reflect that.
- FIt does suggest, though, that beekeepers need to think about the wider environment their bees live in.
- GMost wild bees, by contrast, produce no honey that humans can collect.
Part 3 (Questions 13–19)
Read the four texts about volunteering. For each question, choose the correct text, A, B, C or D. You may use a text more than once.
Text A — Advertisement
Turtle Coast Conservation Project — volunteers wanted.
Spend your summer protecting endangered sea turtles on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Volunteers patrol beaches at night, move eggs to safe hatcheries and help release baby turtles into the sea. No previous experience is needed, as full training is given on arrival, but you must be over 18 and reasonably fit: patrols can involve walking up to 10 km in the dark. Placements start every Monday from June to October, and the shortest placement we accept is four weeks. The programme fee of £1,450 covers shared accommodation, three meals a day and airport transfers; flights and insurance are not included. Places fill quickly, so apply early.
Text B — Email
Hi Jess, sorry I've been so quiet — the internet here is unpredictable, to say the least! I'm now six weeks into my placement at the village school, and I'm finally starting to feel at home. I won't lie, the first fortnight was hard. I couldn't understand a word anyone said, the heat was unbearable, and I spent most evenings wondering why I'd come. But the kids are wonderful, and teaching them has done something I never expected: I used to dread speaking in front of people, and now I stand up in front of thirty children every morning without a second thought. I honestly think I'll be much better in job interviews when I get home! Love, Maya
Text C — Newspaper article
The rise of "voluntourism" — short trips abroad that combine a holiday with volunteer work — has been welcomed by many as a sign of a generous generation. Some development experts are less enthusiastic. When unqualified visitors spend a fortnight building a school, they argue, they may be taking paid work away from local builders, and the results are not always safe. Projects involving children raise particular concerns: a constant stream of short-term carers can be upsetting for young people who become attached to adults who then leave. Anyone considering such a trip should ask detailed questions before paying a deposit — who runs the project, how long it has existed, and whether local people were involved in planning it.
Text D — Notice
Careers Office — Volunteering Week.
Employers consistently tell us that volunteering experience makes a CV stand out, showing teamwork, reliability and initiative. But you don't need to travel to the other side of the world to gain these skills. Dozens of charities right here in the city are looking for help, from food banks to youth sports clubs, and many need only a few hours a week. Placements on your doorstep are also easier to fit around your studies, and you can keep them going for months, which employers value far more than a single summer. Come to our drop-in sessions in the Student Centre to meet local organisations.
Which text…
13.states that volunteers must pay for their placement?
14.suggests that volunteering abroad can sometimes do more harm than good?
15.describes a personal benefit the writer had not expected?
16.recommends volunteering near where you live?
17.mentions a minimum length of stay?
18.refers to difficulty in adjusting to new surroundings?
19.advises researching an organisation before committing to it?
Part 4 (Questions 20–26)
Read the text and answer the questions. Write no more than five words for each answer.
The Woman Who Listened to Forests
Elena Marsh was born in 1968 in a small town on the edge of the Scottish Highlands, where her father worked as a forester. As a child she spent hours in the woods with him, and she later said that it was there she learned to listen before looking.
At university she studied music, not biology, and for several years after graduating she worked as a sound engineer for a radio station in Glasgow. It was a chance assignment — recording birdsong for a nature programme — that changed the direction of her life. Listening back to her recordings, she noticed that the sounds of the forest changed in clear patterns over the course of a day, and that some of these patterns disappeared completely in areas where trees had been cut down.
Fascinated, she left the radio station in 1997 and spent the next three years making recordings in forests across northern Europe, funding the work largely by selling recordings to film studios. Her equipment was simple: two microphones fixed to a tree, connected to a recorder that ran on solar power so that it could be left in place for weeks at a time.
At first, scientists paid little attention to her. Without formal training in ecology, she found it difficult to get her findings published. The breakthrough came in 2004, when she worked with a team of researchers in Norway who used her recordings to show that the variety of sounds in a forest was a reliable indicator of how healthy it was. Their joint paper made it possible to monitor huge areas of forest cheaply, simply by leaving recorders in place, rather than sending experts to count species by hand.
Today, the method she helped develop is used by conservation organisations on five continents. Marsh herself, now in her late fifties, still records in the woods near her childhood home. She refuses to use headphones in the field, insisting that the best way to hear a forest is to sit quietly in it.
| 20.What was Elena's father's job? | |
| 21.Which subject did Elena study at university? | |
| 22.What was she recording when she first noticed patterns in forest sounds? | |
| 23.How did she pay for her years of forest recordings? | |
| 24.Why did her recorder run on solar power? | |
| 25.According to the 2004 research, what does the variety of forest sounds show? | |
| 26.What does Marsh refuse to use when recording outdoors? | |