Cave fauna

Why do we need sport?
Spectators play vicariously when watching football. After ninety minutes
of a close match between your team and the local rivals, you can feel
palpable exhaustion. Just as when you are in a car being driven at speed by
someone you do not trust, during the match you kick every ball and feel
the agony of every shot that goes off~target. The tribalism of sport is well
documented. It is just play - dressing in the team colours, crying when you
lose in the final - but it enriches lives. The players themselves kiss, stamp,
shout and perform cartwheels, but they are being paid to play and have to
perform in front of hundreds or thousands or even millions of critical
supporters.
We all need sport to exert our freedom of spirit in this polite and ordered
world. We need to be able to cavort and weep, to swear and sweat, to want
to win at all costs when the cost is nothing. In sport we experience pure
joy, there is no sense of our place in any hierarchy, and we feel warm when
we remember our most recent triumph.

 

23 Which of the following does the writer imply with regard to football spectators?

 

A They lack control over events.
B They have unrealistic expectations.
C They are ashamed of their behaviour.
D They have a sense of superiority.

 

24 In the second paragraph, the writer says that sport is important because it

 

A enables people to confront their fears.
B improves people's self-esteem.
C brings people together in a common cause.
D takes people's minds off serious matters.

The Tennis Coach
The verdict was: 'You can be fixed.' My long-time tennis guru volleyed the ball
across the net with a grin which seemed to threaten as much as it promised.
My elbow ached and my feet pinched in this season's shoes. But I believed.
Therefore Iwas here, on the courts of the Hotel Hermitage -like an old banger
rolled into the body shop, ready and willing to be fixed.

 

I was a vintage model- slow to start, running erratically - and my game was
riddled with rust spots. It took a master craftsman like Mark Nicklessto pound
out the dents in my forehand and put some spring back into my suspension.
This latter fix was accomplished in seconds. He showed me how to hit from
the legs, instead of windmilling my arms. The ache in my elbow ceased.

 

My mechanic was a Californian whom I have followed around the world as
he perfected his idiosyncratic teaching technique in a dozen resorts. 'Location,
location, location,' he intoned, drawing lines in the clay to show that for each
shot I delivered across the net there was only one perfect position. Being in
the right place not only reduces the wear and tear of racing mindlessly around
the court, it allowed me to focus on the way the point was likely to develop.
'Anticipation,' Nickless said, 'wins more points than perspiration.'

 

Not that there was not a lot of sweat and swearing in the lessonsahead. But
here were sublime moments, too - and breakthroughs in stroke mechanics
which I prayed would stay with me, at least through the summer.

 

25   Which of the following does the writer emphasise during the extract?

          A   how strange he found the coach’s methods

В   how hard it was for him to improve as a player

С   how much he trusted the coach

         D    how nervous he was during lessons

26 The writer implies that during the lessons

         

          A he played shots that he will not always be able to play.

  В  he began to overestimate his abilities as a player.

  С   he made a special effort to remain calm.

           D    he could not always put in the effort required of him.

You are going to read an extract from a novel. Seven paragraphs have been removed from the extract. Choose from the paragraphs A-H the one which fits each gap (27-33). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.

 

Mark your answers on the separate answer sheet.

The Play

 

 

 

27-

Another was a passion for secrets: in a prized varnished cabinet, a secret drawer was opened by pushing against the grain of a cleverly turned dovetail joint, and here she kept a locked diary, and a notebook written in a code of her own invention. An old tin box hidden under a removable floorboard beneath her bed contained treasures that dated back four years to her ninth birthday. But all this could not conceal from Briony the simple truth: she had no secrets.

28-

The unfortunate truth was that nothing in her life was sufficiently interesting or shameful to merit hiding. None of this was particularly an affliction; or rather, it appeared so only in retrospect, once a solution had been found. At the age of eleven she wrote her first story - a foolish affair, imitative of half a dozen folk tales and lacking, she realised later, that vital knowingness about the ways of the world that compels a reader's respect.

29-

Even writing out the she saids, the and thens, made her wince, and she felt foolish, appearing to know about the emotions of an imaginary being. Self­exposure was inevitable the moment she described a character’s weakness; the reader was bound to speculate that she was describing herself.

30-

Her efforts received encouragement. In fact, the Tallises soon realised that the baby of the family possessed a strange mind and a facility with words. The long afternoons she spent browsing through dictionary and thesaurus made for constructions that were inept, but hauntingly so. Briony was encouraged to read her stories aloud in the library and it surprised her parents and older sister to hear their quiet girl perform so boldly, unapologetically demanding her family’s total attention as she cast her narrative spell. Even without their praise and obvious pleasure, Briony could not have been held back from her writing.

31-

If this was supposed to be a joke, Briony ignored it. She was on course now, and had found satisfaction on other levels; writing stories not only involved secrecy, it also gave her all the pleasures of miniaturisation.

32-

Her passion for tidiness was also satisfied, for the unruly aspects of our existence could be made just so. A crisis in a heroine’s life could be made to coincide with hailstones and thunder, whereas nuptials were generally blessed with good light and soft breezes. A love of order also shaped the principles of justice, with death and marriage the main engines of house­keeping, the former being set aside exclusively for the morally dubious, the latter a reward withheld until the final page.

The Trials of Arabella, the play Briony wrote for her brother’s homecoming, was her first excursion into drama. She had found the transition quite effortless. It was a relief not to be writing out the she saids, or describing the weather or the onset of spring or her heroine’s face - beauty, she had discovered, occupied a narrow band.

 

33-

 

The play may have been a melodrama, but its author had yet to hear the term. The innocent intensity with which Briony set about the project made her particularly vulnerable to failure. She could easily have welcomed her brother with another of her stories, but it was the news that her cousins were coming to stay that had prompted this leap into a new form.

 A An entire world could be created in five pages, and one that was more pleasing than a model farm. The childhood of a spoiled prince could be framed within half a page, a moonlit dash through sleepy villages was one rhythmically emphatic sentence, falling in love could be achieved in a single word - a glance. The pages of a recently finished story seemed to vibrate in her hand with all the life they contained.

 

В A room near Briony’s had been dusted down, new curtains had been hung and furniture carried in from other rooms. Normally, she would have been involved in these preparations, but they coincided with her two-day writing bout.

С Only when a story was finished, all fates resolved and the whole matter sealed off at both ends so it resembled, at least in this one respect, every other finished story in the world, could she feel immune, and ready to bind the chapters with string, paint or draw the cover, and take the finished work to show to her mother or her father.

D In any case, she was discovering, as had many writers before her, that not all recognition is helpful. Cecilia’s enthusiasm, for example, seemed a little overstated, tainted with condescension perhaps, and intrusive too; her big sister wanted each bound story catalogued and placed on the library shelves, between Rabindranath Tagore and Quintus Tertullian.

E What was unpleasant and distasteful, on the other hand, had infinite variation. A universe reduced to what was said in it was tidiness indeed, almost to the point of nullity, and to compensate, every utterance was delivered at the extremity of some feeling or other, in the service of which the exclamation mark was indispensable.

F But this early attempt showed her that the imagination itself was a source of secrets: while she was writing a story, no one could be told. Pretending in words was too tentative, too vulnerable, too embarrassing to let anyone know.

G Her straight-backed dolls in their many-roomed mansion appeared to be under strict instructions not to touch the walls; the various thumb-sized figures to be found standing about her dressing table suggested by their even ranks and spacing a citizen’s army awaiting orders. This taste for the miniature was just one aspect of an orderly spirit.

H Her wish for a harmonious, organised world denied her the reckless possibilities of wrongdoing. Mayhem and destruction were too chaotic for her tastes, and she did not have it in her to be cruel. Her effective status as an only child, as well as the relative isolation of the Tallis house, kept her, at least during the long summer holidays, from girlish intrigues with friends.

 

 

The most crucial, as well as the most frequently over­looked, point about 'folk music' is that the constituency whom it most truly represents doesn't consider it to be 'folk music', but simply their music. 'Folk music' is, invariably, a term applied from outside the cultures and communities to which it refers. In terms of theory, 'folk music' - the traditional set of forms, styles and songs indigenous to a people, a culture or a locale - is radically distinguishable from 'art' music, of both the classical and avant-garde varieties, and from 'popular' music, mass- produced for and mass-marketed to a mass audience. In practice, it's getting harder and harder to tell them apart.

Before the advent of recording, distinctions between categories of music were not so much based on the music itself as on who it was by and for. Such distinctions were a reflection of the class system, which is not sur­prising since these are essentially European definitions, and reflect prevailing European social structures. European classical music operates according to a strict hierarchical structure, with the composer (the monarch, so to speak) at the top. The composer's wishes are inter­preted and enforced by the conductor (the general) and carried out by the orchestra (the troops). During their life­times, the great composers often also functioned as the featured soloists, but after their deaths their music became fixed and formalised; those who succeeded them rarely inherited their licence to improvise.

The classic model of 'folk' is the similarly formal tradi­tion of the Anglo-American ballads, with their fixed musical structures and set narrative lines. To perform one of these ballads, a singer is by definition required to pre­serve intact both its storyline and its musical setting. The Anglo-American use of the term 'folk' music implies that such music exists, simply and solely, to fulfil the needs of a particular community. They develop it by and for them­selves over a period of centuries as part of a single collective process, only slightly more personal to any given individual than the shaping of a rock by water. Through oral transmission, it filters down through the generations, serving both as a touchstone of the com­munity's history and values, and as an index of how its communal life has changed. It is this latter attribute which many traditionalists find alarming or repugnant. Forthem, the key element is the preservation of a piece's pure and unsullied essence, and the imposition of an alien style onto a traditional piece is deemed an act of presumption verging on outright heresy; at the very least, it effectively amputates the piece from its native roots.

In the blues world, the picture is far more complex. Blues obeys a different set of imperatives and simul­taneously holds the following truths to be self-evident: yes, there is a strong and very clearly defined tradition, and, yes, its practitioners are expected to improvise freely within it, recreating it anew to meet the immediate needs of both performer and audience. There are set themes, and there are specified functions: dance songs, work songs, celebrations, laments, love songs, hate songs, and so forth. The tradition is unfixed; indeed, it demands to be freshly reinvented with each perfor­mance, recreated anew to reflect the changing needs and circumstances of its time and place. Blues artists both ancient and modern have worked from a 'common stock’ of folk materials: instrumental motifs and vocal tics, melodies, lyrical tags, chord progressions and even com­plete songs are derived directly from the tradition, and some of them long predate the era of recording, let alone the conventional mechanics of publishing and copyright laws. What counts above all in the blues is individuality: the development ofa unique and unmistakable voice, the ability to place an ineradicable personal stamp on those 'common stock' materials freely available to all. While instrumental dexterity, vocal facility and stylistic versatil­ity are heartily respected within the blues community, what distinguishes the truly great from the merely pro­fessional is the fully realized man (orwoman)'s communi­cated essence of self; the ability to serve as a conduit for the full gamut of human emotion, to feel those emotions with sufficient depth andintensity to reach out and touch listeners in places that those listeners might not even have known thatthey had. Without exception, every blues singer who has managed to pull ahead of the pack or haul himself (or herself) from the hordes of hopefuls chasing the blues-lovers' dollar has this quality. Any competent blues artist should have the ability to entertain - those who don't should simply find another line of work before they starve to death - but the measure of true mastery, from the 1920s pioneers to the contemporary brand leaders, is the scale on which performers are capable of being themselves in public. And, by extension, the depth and complexity of that self. To serve as a neutral trans­mitter simply doesn't cut it here.

 

 

 

34     What point does the writer make about the term ‘folk music’ in the first paragraph?

A It is no longer possible to be clear about what it covers.

В It has become totally outdated.

С It is resented by certain people.

D It is sometimes wrongly applied to certain types of music.

35     Which of the following does the writer say about European classical music?

A   Criticism of its rigid structure is commonplace.

В   Too much respect is paid to composers while they are alive.

С   It could not function without the obedience of those involved.

D   The system by which it operates affects its quality.

36     The writer uses the image of a rock to illustrate

A the role that 'folk' music plays in people's lives.

В   the strength of the tradition of ‘folk’ music.

С   the process by which ‘folk’ music is created.

       D   the unchanging nature of ‘folk’ music.

37     The writer says that certain people disapprove of some kinds of ‘folk’ music on the grounds that

A   it fails to exploit the music’s true spirit.

В   it misrepresents the way their community lives.

С   it combines styles which do not sound good together.

D   it shows disrespect for the traditions of the music.

38     The writer repeats the word ‘yes’ near the beginning of the fourth paragraph to

A underline that he really means what he is saying.

В   emphasise that contrasting beliefs co-exist within blues music.

С   anticipate the reader’s questions about blues music.

       D   convey his personal enthusiasm for blues music.

39     What does the writer imply about the ‘common stock’ of materials in blues music?

A Some artists are less keen to make use of it than others.

В Certain themes within it vary in popularity from time to time.

С It is difficult to prove who wrote songs contained in it.

D It is unlikely to maintain its popularity.

40     What does the writer imply about individuality in blues music?

A It is more highly regarded than great musical ability.

В It involves drawing on experiences unique to the particular performer.

С It includes the expression of a surprising combination of emotions.

D It is more likely to be conveyed vocally than by the playing of an instrument.

 

 

Key
Reading
Part 1
1D 2А ЗА 4В 5D 6C 7D 8A 9С 10В 11С 12В 13D 14D 15В 16В 17A 18 С
Part 2
19В 20D 21В 22A 23A 24D 25С 26A
Part 3
27G 28H 29F 30С 31D 32A33E
Part 4
34A 35С 36С 37D 38В 39С 40 A