Choose the best word or phrase (a, b, c or d) to fill each blank.

(67) Who _____ in that house?

a) does live   

b) lives          

c) does he live          

d) he lives

(68) I’ll call you when I _____ home.

a) get            

b) ’ll get                    

c) ’ll have got           

d) ’m getting

(69) If you _____ me, what would you do?

a) was           

b) would be  

c) were         

d) have been

(70) I don’t know where _____ last night.

a) did he go  

b) he did go  

c) went he    

d) he went

(71) John and Betty are coming to visit us tomorrow but I wish _____.

a) they won’t

b) they hadn’t                       

c) they didn’t                       

d) they weren’t

(72) I’m so hungry! If only Bill _____ all the food in the fridge!

a) wasn’t eating                    

b) didn’t eat 

c) hadn’t eaten                     

d) hasn’t eaten

(73) I regret _____ harder in school.

a) not studying        

b) not to study                      

c) to not study          

d) not have studied

(74) Surely Sue _____ you if she was unhappy with your work.

a) will tell     

b) would have told   

c) must have told                 

d) had told

(75) Our neighbours aren’t very polite, and _____ particularly quiet!

a) neither they aren’t            

b) either they aren’t  

c) nor are they                                  

d) neither did they be

(76) We had expected that they _____ fluent English, but in fact they didn’t.

a) were speaking      

b) would speak         

c) had spoken                       

d) spoke

(77) I’d rather _____ next weekend, but I do!

a) I don’t have to work        

b) I didn’t have to work       

c) not to work                                  

d) no working

(78) Harriet is so knowledgeable. She can talk about _____ subject that comes up.

a) whatever  

b) whenever  

c) wherever  

d) whoever

Section 10

Choose the best word or phrase (a, b, c or d) to fill each blank.

(79) I always _____ milk in my coffee.

a) have          

b) drink

c) mix           

d) make

(80) I _____ TV every evening.

a) watch                   

b) look at                  

c) see         

d) hear

(81) Can you give me a _____ with my bag.

a) leg

b) back

c) hand                     

d) head

(82) Before you enter the triathlon, please bear in _____ that you’re not as young as you used to be!

a) thought                 

b) question                

c) mind                     

d) opinion

(83) The breath test showed he had consumed more than three times the legal limit of alcohol, so the police arrested him for _____.

a) trespassing            

b) mugging               

c) speeding   

d) drunk driving

(84)     The meeting was _____ and not very interesting.

a) time-wasting        

b) time-consuming    

c) time-using            

d) out of time

(85) After the movie was released, the main _____ point was its excessive use of violence.

a) discussion             

b) speaking               

c) conversation         

d) talking

(86) There have been several big _____ against the use of GM foods recently.

a) campaigns            

b) issues        

c) boycotts                           

d) strikes

Section 11

Read the text below. For questions 87 to 92, choose the best answer (a, b, c or d).

Standards of spelling and grammar among an entire generation of English-speaking university students are now so poor that there is ‘a degree of crisis’ in their written use of the language, the publisher of a new dictionary has warned. Its research revealed that students have only a limited grasp of the most basic rules of spelling, punctuation and meaning, blamed in part on an increasing dependence on ‘automatic tools’ such as computer spellcheckers and unprecedented access to rapid communication using e-mail and the Internet. The problem is not confined to the US, but applies also to students in Australia, Canada and Britain.

Students were regularly found to be producing incomplete or rambling, poorly connected sentences, mixing metaphors ‘with gusto’ and overusing dull, devalued words such as ‘interesting’ and ‘good’. Overall they were unclear about appropriate punctuation, especially the use of commas, and failed to understand the basic rules of subject/verb agreement and the difference between ‘there’, ‘their’ and ‘they’re’.

Kathy Rooney, editor-in-chief of the dictionary, said, ‘We need to be very concerned at the extent of the problems with basic spelling and usage that our research has revealed. This has significant implications for the future, especially for young people. We thought it would be useful to get in touch with teachers and academics to find out what problems their students were having with their writing and what extra help they might need from a dictionary. The results were quite shocking. We are sure that the use of computers has played a part. People rely increasingly on automatic tools such as spellcheckers that are much more passive than going to a dictionary and looking something up. That can lull them into a false sense of security.’

Beth Marshall, an English professor, said, ‘The type of student we’re getting now is very different from what we were seeing 10 years ago and it is often worrying to find out how little students know. There are as many as 800 commonly misspelled words, particularly pairs of words that are pronounced similarly but spelled differently and that have different meanings – for example, “faze” and “phase”, and “pray” and “prey”.’

(87) grasp (line 4) is closest in meaning to:

a) ability                   

b) use            

c) understanding      

d) skill

(88) We can infer from the style of the text that this article was printed in a…

a) newspaper.           

b) dictionary.            

c) novel.                   

d) guidebook.

(89) Kathy Rooney carried out research to see…

a) if students could spell certain words.      

b) how widespread the use of computers is.

c) if academics were in touch with their students.  

d) how dictionaries can help students.

(90) them (line 22) refers to:

a) spellcheckers                    

b) computers 

c) people       

d) dictionaries

(91) According to Beth Marshall, students today…

a) spell 800 words incorrectly on average.   

b) like using spellcheckers.

c) mispronounce and misspell words.                      

d) are not as knowledgeable as they were in the past.

(92) Choose the best title for the article.

a) Standards of spelling and grammar         

b) Dictionaries of the future

c) Students don’t know their ‘there’ from their ‘they’re’    

d) Automatic tools

Section 12 (93 to 100)

Write a review of a film you have seen for a local English-language newspaper. Include information about the plot, the acting, the cinematography and anything else you think is relevant. Write 200–220 words.

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