Name: ______________________________________ Class: ______________________________

Gold Advanced Exit test

Section 1: Vocabulary

1 Read the text and decide which answer (A, B, C or D) best fits each gap.

I rarely act on (1) ___ , so when my grandmother,
who has the most (2) ___ demeanour of anyone
her age, suggested we go on a walking tour of
Australia, I nearly passed out. Ive had a (3) ___ ,
she told me last night. Lets have an adventure!
Gran is always telling me to make my (4) ___ on
the world, as she wants me to (5) ___ my potential.
Sadly, I dont have her optimism and think that her
belief is largely (6) ___ thinking on her part. She
wants me to be as courageous as she was in her
(7) ___ , when she travelled through Africa alone.
I was brought up with her amazing stories about
when she was (8) ___ with life-or-death choices,
all of which have been (9) ___ to my memory like
a digital library. But truth be told, I have always
felt somewhat in awe of her, as she seems
absolutely fearless (10) ___ I seem to be terrified
(11) ___ everything. Gran and my parents have
never (12) ___ any demands on me and have
allowed me to find my own way. They have
always been there to guide me but deep down I
think they were all hoping that I would (13) ___
Grans example. When she came up with her
suggestion, I found lots of excuses not to go but
Gran (14) ___ a command at me: Go pack your
bag one only. Nothing that (15) ___ up too much
space! You do not want to argue with my gran
when shes like this. She looked up from the
computer. I can get tickets for tomorrow morning,
so go pack, she said, printing off our tickets.

1 A intuition B instinct C impulse D impression

2 A juvenile B infant C childish D youthful
3 A brainwave B brainteaser C brainstorm D brainchild
4 A sign B mark C success D hit
5 A gain B grow C fulfil D earn
6 A aspiring B ambitious C hopeful D wishful
7 A youth B infancy C adolescence D childhood
8 A encountered B tackled C faced D joined
9 A dedicated B committed C promised D compelled
10 A despite B whereas C otherwise D however
11 A from B by C of D for
12 A had B made C forced D kept
13 A practise B make C pursue D follow
14 A barked B coughed C groaned D muttered
15 A makes B puts C uses D take
/ 15

GOLD ADVANCED PHOTOCOPIABLE 2014 Pearson Education Ltd 1

2 Read the text. Use the word given in capitals at the end of some of the lines to form
a word that fits in the gap in the same line.

Biodiversity refers to the (1) ____________ of ecosystems and living organisms VARY
and constitutes the (2) ____________ of life on Earth. It is vital to human FOUND
(3) ____________ on the planet. Without it, we would not have the basic SURVIVE
components of life: oxygen, food, freshwater, fertile soils, medicines, a stable
climate and so on. (4) ____________ , it is the one natural feature on Earth FORTUNE
which has been most affected by human (5) ____________ . The main reason ACT
for this is because it is impossible to put a price tag on biodiversity, so its
(6) ____________ importance has been largely ignored by financial markets, ECONOMY
whose (7) ____________ to this valuable resource has added to the DIFFER
(8) ____________ lack of strategic protection and conservation. SHAME
According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, there are between five
and thirty million species on our planet but the (9) ____________ of only EXIST
around two million of those has been formally identified. Every day the
(10) ____________ of species is around 1,000 times more than it would EXTINCT
have been without human (11) ____________ , due to the INTERFERE
(12) ____________ of habitats and land being turned over to agriculture, DESTROY
to name but two causes. Climate change, over-exploitation, habitat loss and
fragmentation, pollution and the spread of (13) ____________ alien species INVADE
are contributing to the biggest disaster and loss of life since dinosaurs
disappeared from the planet around sixty-five million years ago.
/ 13

GOLD ADVANCED PHOTOCOPIABLE 2014 Pearson Education Ltd 2

Section 2: Grammar

3 Complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning to the first sentence,
using the word given. Do not change the word given. You must use between three
and six words, including the word given.

1 I am always upset when I hear about children starving in Africa.

IT
I _________________________________ hear about children starving in Africa.

2 We have never told the staff that there might be redundancies.

NO
At _________________________________ the staff that there might be redundancies.

3 They worked late and they didnt get paid for it.
DID
Not _________________________________ they also didnt get paid for it.

4 She knows a lot about British history.

GOOD
She _________________________________ British history.

5 My parents wouldnt let me train as an airline pilot.

STOPPED
My parents _________________________________ as an airline pilot.

6 Theres no chance whatsoever of getting tickets for the concert.

QUITE
Its _________________________________ tickets for the concert.

7 We dont think hell be here before 2 oclock this afternoon.

EXPECTED
He _________________________________ before 2 oclock this afternoon.

8 The company was in danger of going bankrupt last year.

COULD
The company _________________________________ last year.

9 She hasnt visited her parents for ages.

HIGH
Its _________________________________ her parents.

10 I only know the truth because she told me.

NOT
If she hadnt told me, I _________________________________ the truth.
GOLD ADVANCED PHOTOCOPIABLE 2014 Pearson Education Ltd 3
11 Ill give you a set of keys because I might not be here when you return.
CASE
Ill give you a set of keys _________________________________ when you return.

12 My boss thought I had stolen some money from the office.

ACCUSED
My boss _________________________________ some money from the office.

13 Hes a great speaker because of his enthusiasm for the subject.

WHAT
His enthusiasm for the subject _________________________________ a great speaker.

/ 13

4 Complete the text. Use only one word for each gap.

In 1948, Garry Davis, a former American actor and B-17 bomber pilot went to the US Embassy in
Paris and declared that he (1) ____________ longer wished to be an American citizen but a citizen of
the world. (2) ____________ been through the Second World War, he could not (3) ____________
the thought of a third world war, which threatened as the Cold War (4) ____________ East and West
started to ignite. He went to the UN General Assembly and demanded (5) ____________ should
become a single world government, for the whole of the planet. His ideas gained many supporters,
(6) ____________ Albert Schweitzer and Albert Camus. He founded the World Government of
World Citizens, along with the World Service Authority (WSA) in 1953 in Ellsworth, Maine, USA.
Today anyone can apply (7) ____________ a World Passport, provided they fill in the application
form and send in their payment. The cheapest passport is for three years and costs $45; the most
expensive is a World Donor Passport, which lasts for fifteen years and is only issued on a donation of
at (8) ____________ $4,000 to the World Refugee Fund, which helps WSA provide documents for
needy refugees. A World Passport does not supersede a persons national passport, which, by nature,
is exclusive, in (9) ____________ to a World Passport, which is wholly inclusive. It represents the
ideal that we are all human beings who belong to one big family (10) ____________ of belonging to
sovereign states which are constantly vying for predominance. (11) ____________ Garry Davis own
words, The world passport opens the door. Anyone can get it. Everyone is a human being, everyone
has a right to travel. However, not every nation accepts the passport, (12) ____________ there is
evidence that more than 160 nations have stamped World Passports at some time or another,
(13) ____________ a case-by-case basis. Garry Davis died aged 92 in 2013, without seeing his dream
of a peaceful world come true. (14) ____________ his death, his dreams are not forgotten and the
organisation he created still carries his message to the world.

/ 14

GOLD ADVANCED PHOTOCOPIABLE 2014 Pearson Education Ltd 4

Section 3: Listening

5 06 You will hear five different speakers talking about dealing with forgetfulness.
While you listen, you must complete both tasks.

Task 1
For questions 15, choose from the list (AH) what the result of each speakers forgetfulness is.

A being unable to do something Speaker 1 (1) _____

B failing to deal with a problem Speaker 2 (2) _____
C feeling very worried Speaker 3 (3) _____
D appearing to be stupid Speaker 4 (4) _____
E being unable to get a message across Speaker 5 (5) _____
F disappointing someone
G ending a relationship
H infuriating someone

Task 2
For questions 6-10, choose from the list (A-H) the way each speaker chose to deal with the problem.

A taking photos of what they wish to recall Speaker 1 (6) _____

B recalling something connected to what they wish to remember Speaker 2 (7) _____
C recollecting the original learning experience Speaker 3 (8) _____
D acquiring a technological aid Speaker 4 (9) _____
E writing lists on small pieces of paper Speaker (10) _____
F having short written reminders
G creating an image of whats around them
H using a series of different techniques
/ 10

GOLD ADVANCED PHOTOCOPIABLE 2014 Pearson Education Ltd 5

Section 4: Reading
6 Read the article below and choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits
best according to the text.
1 What do we learn about Barbara
Arrowsmith-Young in the first paragraph?
A She has learned over the years how to
help her own child.
B When she was a child, it was thought that
she would grow out of her problems.
C Her particular problem went
undiagnosed until she was a young
woman.
D She believes that children need to be told
if they are likely to find school difficult.
2 How did her problem manifest itself?
A She could understand the meaning of
difficult words.
B She found it hard to remember anything.
C She had amazing eyesight.
D She could seem quite stupid at times.
3 Her teachers at school
A thought she was just being lazy.
B set exams that were too difficult.
C helped her with special lessons.
D said that she would be unable to pass
university entrance exams.
4 When Barbara was twenty-six years old, she
A was studying neuropsychology in Russia.
B discovered that she was not the only
person in the world with her problem.
C started to write a book about her
disabilities.
D wrote to a Russian soldier who had the
same problems as she did.
5 What do we learn about the Russian soldier?
A His language skills were those of a
young child.
B He knew that his injury had caused
damage to his sight.
C He believed that brain damage might be
the cause of his problem.
D His interpretation of his problem was
slightly different from Barbaras.
GOLD ADVANCED PHOTOCOPIABLE
6 According to Mark Rosenzweig,
A rats have much larger brains than people
think.
B neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain
to keep on growing.
C Barbara would not be able to do anything
to improve her brain.
D the brain requires regular and frequent
stimulation to function normally.
7 Barbaras attempt at improving her brain
A ended up with her giving up from
extreme tiredness.
B made her feel as if her personality was
changing.
C included spending a long time focusing
on speed tests.
D failed to help her make connections she
had always found difficult.
8 What do we learn about the traditional
attitude towards people with learning
disabilities?
A It was impossible to improve the
performance of the brain.
B People were taught how to live with the
problem.
C Brain exercises have always been a part
of dealing with learning disabilities.
D They would never be able to function in
a modern society.
9 Barbara Arrowsmith-Young
A has taught thousands of children to pass
exams.
B says that every child is able to improve
their brains as she did.
C says if learning disabilities are not
diagnosed quickly enough, people cannot
find work.
D says that childrens problems are often
not correctly recognised.
/9
2014 Pearson Education Ltd 6
How to rebuild your own brain
Its not the kind of thing you would ever forget.
When Barbara Arrowsmith-Young started school in
Canada in the early 1950s, her teacher told her
mother in her presence that she would never be
able to learn. Having helped over 4,000 children
overcome exactly the same diagnosis, she can laugh
at it. But she didnt at the time. Today Arrowsmith-
Young holds a masters degree in psychology and
has published a groundbreaking book called The
Woman Who Changed Her Brain. But until she was
in her mid-twenties, she was desperate, tormented
and often depressed. She didnt know what was
wrong.
On the one hand, she was brilliant with near-total
auditory and visual memory. I could memorise
whole books. On the other hand, she was a dolt. I
didnt understand anything, she says. Meaning just
never crystallised. Everything was fragmented,
disconnected.
In exams, she sometimes got 100 percent but
whenever the task involved reasoning and
interpretation she would fail dismally. The teachers
didnt understand, she says. They thought I wasnt
trying and I was often punished. To help her, her
mother devised a series of flash cards with numbers
and letters and, after much hard work, she achieved
literacy and numeracy of a sort, even getting into
university, where she disguised her learning
disabilities by working twenty hours a day: I used
to hide when the security guards came to close the
library at night, then come back out and carry on.
The breakthrough came when she was twenty-six.
A fellow student gave her a book by a Russian
neuropsychologist, Aleksandr Luria. The book
contained his research on the writings of a highly
intelligent Russian soldier, Lyova Zazetsky, who
had been shot in the brain during a battle, and
recorded in great detail his subsequent disabilities.
For the first time, Arrowsmith-Young says, I
recognised somebody describing exactly what I
experienced. His expressions were the same: living
life in a fog. His difficulties were the same: he
couldnt tell the time from a clock, he couldnt tell
the difference between the sentences The boy chases
the dog and The dog chases the boy. I began to see
that maybe an area of my brain wasnt working.
The bullet had lodged in a part of the brain where
information from sight, sound, language and touch
is synthesised, analysed and made sense of.
Arrowsmith-Young began to realise that, in all
GOLD ADVANCED PHOTOCOPIABLE
probability, this was the region of her own brain
that had been malfunctioning since she was born.
Then she read about the work of Mark Rosenzweig,
an American researcher who found that laboratory
rats given a rich and stimulating environment
developed larger brains. Rosenzweig concluded that
the brain continues developing rather than being
fixed at birth: a concept known as neuroplasticity.
Arrowsmith-Young decided that if rats could grow
bigger and better brains, so could she.
She started devising exercises for herself to work
the parts of her brain that werent functioning. She
drew 100 two-handed clockfaces on cards and
wrote the time each told on the back. Then she
started trying to tell the time from each. She did this
eight to ten hours a day, gradually becoming faster
and more accurate.
I was experiencing mental exhaustion like I had
never known, she says, so I figured something was
happening. After three or four months of this, it
really felt like something had fundamentally
changed in my brain. I watched an edition of a news
programme and I got it. I read pages from ten
books, and understood every single one. It was like
stepping from darkness into light.
She developed more exercises, for different parts of
her brain, and found they worked, too. Now almost
30, she was finally beginning to function normally.
It was revolutionary work, and not just for her. At
that time, she says, all the work around learning
disabilities involved compensating for what learners
couldnt do. It all started from the premise that they
were unchangeable.
Faced with little receptivity for her ideas,
Arrowsmith-Young decided to found her own
school in Toronto in 1980; she now has thirty-five
such schools. Thousands of children dismissed as
impossible to teach, have attended Arrowsmith
schools and gone on to academic and professional
success.
So much human suffering is caused by cognitive
mismatches with the demands of the task, says
Arrowsmith-Young. So many wrong diagnoses get
made, so many children get written off, so many
people take wrong decisions and end up in lives and
careers they did not choose for themselves but were
chosen for them by cognitive limitations that can be
identified and strengthened. There is hope for these
people.
2014 Pearson Education Ltd 7
Section 5: Writing

7 Choose the correct alternatives to complete the letter.

Dear Mr Jones,
I am writing with (1) regard/concern/referring/reply to your letter of 6 July, in (2) that/which/
where/it you claimed that we owe you 1,090 for work carried out on the company vehicle. We
(3) appreciate/like/would like/obliged to point out that there are several incorrect details in your letter.
(4) Secondly/Firstly/Finally/In addition, we agreed for work to be done up to the value of 500 but
stated that we should be informed if you considered that even more work would be required.
(5) Although/However/Alternatively/As a result, when we came to collect the vehicle, you presented us
with a bill for 1,090, which we refused to pay as it had not been agreed by a member of our staff. In
fact, there is no evidence to indicate that you tried to contact us.
(6) By contrast/Whereas/Furthermore/Likewise, the work you did carry out appears to have been both
unnecessary and sub-standard, (7) according/given/with reference/concerning to an expert who has
checked the vehicle.
As agreed, we have paid you the original 500 and have no intention of paying a further 590, which
was as a result of an error made by you.
I very much (8) hope/advise/ensure/look forward that this will be an end to the matter.

(9) Yours sincerely/Best wishes/Yours faithfully/Truly yours,

Brenda Maynard
/9
8 Put the sentences (AG) in the correct order to make a report.

A My recommendations would therefore be to extend or refurbish the canteen and put the
managing contract out to tender.
B Another major issue appears to be the lecture theatres, which are now extremely outdated.
Considering that the building housing these was built over 100 years ago, it is no surprise that
they are not adequate any more.
C To sum up, the problems can be resolved by extending the canteen and finding better caterers,
and the new lecture block should be built as soon as possible on the land on the edge of the field.
D The aim of this report is to highlight the main problems in the college, identify the areas which
should be looked at more closely and make recommendations as to how this can be done.
E The main problem seems to lie with the student recreational areas. The canteen cannot
accommodate the growing number of students.
F My next recommendation concerns the lecture theatres. Unfortunately, a new purpose-built
building is needed and I would suggest that we look at using part of the field at the back of the
main buildings for this.
G In addition, the food offered on the premises is totally unsatisfactory as well as being overpriced.

1 _____ 2 _____ 3 _____ 4 _____ 5 _____ 6 _____ 7 _____

/7

GOLD ADVANCED PHOTOCOPIABLE 2014 Pearson Education Ltd 8

Section 6: Speaking

9 Talk to your teacher about yourself and your views. You should:

say what you hope to be doing in five years time.

talk about the job you would do if you could have any job in the world.
describe the advantages and disadvantages of living in a world dependent on technology.
explain how you think technology will change over the next decade.
say what you think humanity has learned from history, if anything.

Your teacher will mark your presentation using the score card below. The teacher circles 1
mark if a student includes the area and 2 marks for communicating it accurately and
effectively. There is a maximum of 10 marks.

The student:
said what they hope to be doing in five years time. 1 2
talked about the job they would do if they could have any job in the world. 1 2
described the advantages and disadvantages of living in a world dependent 1 2
on technology.
explained how they think technology will change over the next decade. 1 2
said what they think humanity has learned from history. 1 2

/ 10
TOTAL: / 100

GOLD ADVANCED PHOTOCOPIABLE 2014 Pearson Education Ltd 9