Reading Exam 1

Part 1 EOI Topic: Personal, social, academic

and professional relationships
Read the article about a test for couples. For questions 1–8, See: English File 4th edition B2.1
decide if the statements are true (T) or false (F). 0 is the Files 1A, 3A, 4B, 6A, 8A, 9B
example. English File 4th edition B2.2
Files 1B, 2B, 5A, 5B, 7A, 7B

0 There is evidence that the love test developed in the US works.

1 Responses in a love test depend partly on the participants’ attitudes towards
their relationships.
2 People are more likely to give honest answers about work relationships than
romantic relationships.
3 Traditional research into feelings and relationships often gives unreliable
results.
4 There was no questionnaire section in the new love test.
5 People taking this test were asked to predict the future of their relationships.
6 More people taking the test chose positive words than negative words.
7 The researchers were able to predict how many couples would separate.
8 People’s true feelings came out in the test.

Question 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Option T

TOTAL

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 The Love Test
Would you want to take a love test that could predict what the chances are of you staying
together with your partner? You might wonder whether such a thing exists, and if so, how it
works. Well, researchers in the US have developed one and tried it out, and they claim that
it is a reliable predictor of the future of relationships.
The problem with any test of this nature is of course the extent to which participants will tell
the truth. If asked about their relationship in a test situation, people are likely to hide their
true feelings, and say what they think they should say. This will be at least partly motivated
by whether or not they want the relationship to succeed and continue. Assuming that they
do, they are unlikely to express reservations about the other person, or present the
relationship in a negative light, even if there are factors that would make it possible to
predict that the relationship will fail.
There are various feelings that many people are reluctant to admit even to themselves, let
alone to a researcher. These include such things as racism, and bias towards or against
people of a certain kind. Feelings at work, too, come under this category, as telling the truth
about people you work with could be career-threatening. Reluctance to declare real feelings
and attitudes is one of the main reasons why a great deal of research that involves asking
people what they think is flawed. The results aren’t reliable because people give the answers
they think they should give, for whatever reason – often fear of admitting the truth.
This test, however, tries to avoid this problem by centering on word association tests, rather
than direct questions or box-ticking multiple-choice questions. When the researchers tried it
out, they got volunteers to fill in a questionnaire giving objective facts about the relationship
and then gave them word association tests. This involved finding out how easy people found
it to associate their partner with positive or negative words.
The researchers analysed the results and predicted which people were most likely to stay
together. They found that the people who had chosen positive words to associate with their
partners were more likely to stay together. They did the test with 116 people and 19 of them
(16 per cent) split up with their partners after taking the test. This was exactly the figure that
the researchers had predicted from their analysis of the test results.
Their conclusion was that the test was a much more reliable predictor than interviews in
which people told researchers about their relationships. The word association tests
highlighted reservations and negative feelings people were having about their partners that
conventional tests would not have revealed, as the participants would almost certainly have
kept those feelings to themselves. Instead, the fact that people were starting to feel less
happy with the relationship they were in came out indirectly, with no need for people to
express their doubts and criticisms openly.

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Part 2 EOI Topic: Activities, processes and
procedures
Read the extracts about wasting time and time management. See: English File 4th edition B2.1
Match paragraphs 1–6 with topics A–J. There are three topics Files 2A, 3B, 4A, 5A, 6A, 6B, 7A, 7B
you don’t need to use. Paragraph 0 is the example. English File 4th edition B2.2
File 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A, 4B, 6A, 9B

A advice that should not be required

B difficulties people have in accepting change
C an attitude that is affecting the lives of the next generation
D a perception that is probably unjustified
E whether a certain term is always accurate
F why ideas and developments spread quickly
G a claim that is no longer made
H new problems as well as advantages
I a common feeling about a process
J criticism that is not supported by evidence

Question 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Option D

TOTAL

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 A question of time
Paragraph 0
Whenever the subject of time management comes up, people say that we are busier today
than ever before. Can this really be true? Do we honestly believe that we are the busiest
people in the whole history of humanity? When you think about it, that seems unlikely,
especially when you consider that we are often told that we have more leisure time than
people ever had in the past. So why is it that we feel so busy?
Paragraph 1
We all know about the benefits and uses of email. But how much attention has been paid to
the sheer waste of time it creates? How many working hours are occupied in the time-
consuming business of looking through emails and responding to them? And it is not correct
to say that people are dealing with the same things, only in a different way. No, many
workers are dealing with often irrelevant matters that previously would never have been
communicated at all. And this takes them away from dealing with the really important
things in their jobs.
Paragraph 2
The idea of doing nothing seems to have got lost in modern society. If this concept exists at
all, it now gets called ‘downtime’ – time when there is nothing you absolutely have to do –
and this ‘downtime’ is something that people see themselves as struggling to have any of in
their busy lives. In addition, there is a sort of disapproval of the idea of doing nothing, as if
everyone should be doing ‘something’ all the time. Children, for example, have every
moment of their non-school time filled with organized activities, and rush around with no
idea of what it’s like just to hang around taking it easy.
Paragraph 3
In the world of work, there is a lot of talk about time management, and no shortage of help
offered by experts on the subject. Like everything in modern business, the concept of time
management comes with its own jargon, a language that lends it a ‘quasi-scientific’ air.
People go to training courses and conferences where they learn about the most effective
ways of managing their time. But surely time management is a relatively simple skill? In
reality, very few people are truly incapable of self-organization.
Paragraph 4
A decade ago, there was much talk of something called the ‘paperless office’. The
computer, it was claimed, would free everyone from the time-consuming business of using
paper. Many would say that, in reality, we use more paper now than ever before. People are
drowning in documents, forms and reports. The reasons for this are uncertain, but it is true
that you seldom hear people talking about the ‘paperless office’ anymore.

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 Paragraph 5
In our homes, household appliances mean we should all live in an era of ‘time-saving’
devices. However, perhaps it would be better to think of our washing machines and
hairdryers as ‘labour-saving’ rather than ‘time-saving’. Consider the dishwasher. By the
time you’ve carefully stacked everything in the right place, rinsed the plates before they go
in, and then washed the things that can’t go in, you might as well have done the whole job
by hand.
Paragraph 6
Now, here’s a time-consuming activity that drives everyone mad – phoning a company that
you have some kind of dealing with. Inevitably you have to go through an endless number
of stages before you get to talk to a human. You key in numbers on your phone, speak to a
recorded message, and then you spend ages listening to music while you are in a queue.
Why do companies think it is good practice to waste their customers’ time in this way and
annoy them so much?

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