Khazar University

English Language and Literature Department

ESL Pre-advanced
Midterm Exam / Spring 2021
Total 30 points
Instructor: Gulnaz Novruzzada
Date 09.04.2021
You have 90 minutes to complete this exam.
Section A: Reading (10 points)
A. Read the text. Match sentences A–F with the gaps 1–5 in the text. There is one sentence
that you do not need to use. ( 5 points, each 1 p.)
New statistics in the Youth Review show that, as schools in Britain prepare to break up for the
holidays, over one million teenagers could be wandering the streets because there is nowhere else to
go. A year-long enquiry consulted 16.000 British teenagers and recommends radical action to
transform their lives. 1. ___________. The Youth Review was undertaken by children’s charity
Children and Nestle. It comes at a time of unprecedented debate about the welfare of young people
in the UK. Recent statistics demonstrate worrying trends in many aspects of teenagers’
lives.2._________ Researchers spent twelve months touring each region of the country and
consulting over 16.000 teenagers to find out what life is truly like for young people today in the UK
and how they themselves believe that improvements can be made.
Publicising the Review today, pop star and youth icon Lily Allen said: I want to see a new start for
teenagers in communities where they have nothing to do, nowhere to go and nowhere to call their
own. The Youth Review has consulted 16.000 teenagers across the country and their message was
clear. 3. __________. The number of teenagers who go off the rails is a problem for us all and
instead of helping them only after they’re in crisis , we need to stop them getting into trouble in the
first place.
The Review discovered:
60% of young people in deprived areas have been victims of crime in their own community.
4. ______ . 70% of teenagers said that, in their opinion, young people got involved in anti-social
behaviour because they were bored.
More than 70 % of eleven to sixteen year olds said that they have witnessed anti-social behaviour
over the last year, whilst 12 % of young people belong to a gang.
80% of young people said they had nowhere to go and nothing to do outside school. 5.
________62% said that they did not know where to go to get help or information if they needed it.
The Review is calling for an urgent transformation of support for teenagers. It recommends a
programme of government investment and action to provide positive opportunities for all young
people, with early support and intervention for troubled teenagers to prevent difficulties escalating.
 A. These experiences, near to their homes, have left young people fearful for their own society.
B. However, the government is going to invest 50 million.
C. For example, youth on youth violence and anti-social behaviour among teenagers is rising.
D. As a result, they hung around on the streets.
E. Recommendations include “ a youth hub” in every community to tackle anti-social behaviour
and crimes.
F. They said to give young people more of a stake in communities and give them more
opportunities.

B. Match five of the highlighted words / phrases to the definitions.( 5 points, each 1 )
1. never done or known before ______________
2. the action of involving in a difficult situation, in order to improve it or prevent it from getting
worse: ___________________
3. increasing rapidly.___________
4. an act of asking for information. ____________
5. during the time when something else happens ____________

Section B Listening
Listen and write the missing words. ( 10 points, each 1)
So, we think we know how to motivate people, right? Offer them a 1. ___________. Do this and
you'll get this. Do this faster, earn more money. Do this better than everyone else, here's a
promotion. We offer 2. __________ when we want people to do things. We do it at work, at school,
even at home with our kids. Tidy your room and you can watch TV.
But when social psychologists test whether incentives work, they get surprising results. Sam
Glucksberg, from Princeton University, America, set people a problem to solve and told them he was
going to 3. ______________ them to see how long they took. Then he put them in two groups. He
offered one group a reward for finishing fast. Five dollars for anyone finishing in the top 25 per
cent and 20 dollars for the person who finished the fastest of all. To the other group he offered no
incentive, but he told them he was going to use their times to calculate an 4. ____________ time.
The first group, the ones with the reward, solved the problem faster, you'd think, right? Well, no,
they actually took three and a half minutes longer than the group who just thought they were being
timed. Incentive didn't work. In fact, it made them 5. _________. This experiment has been
repeated, with the same results, many times. But in business we still offer bonuses, 6.
____________and rewards to staff.
That's fine if we want them to do something simple, like chop wood. We'll pay you more if you chop
the wood faster. An incentive works then. But if we want someone to do something complex,
something creative, something where they have to think, rewards don't work. They might even have
the opposite result, and make people perform worse. Another study, by Dan Ariely, showed that the
bigger the reward, the worse the subjects performed on a complex task. The reward made them
focus so hard on the result that they couldn't think creatively any more.
And this all 7. ____________ because more and more simple jobs will become 8. ____________.
We'll be left with creative, problem-solving jobs that computers will never do. And we need to find
a way to motivate people to do those jobs when we've proved the traditional incentives don't work.
So what does work? Giving your workers freedom; freedom to work on the things they want to work
on, freedom to choose when, where and how they work. Want to work from home three days a week,
get up late and work into the night instead? Fine. Just do the job well. And evidence shows people
who choose the way they work get results. Companies that give 9. ______________ time during the
week to work on things that interest them and are not part of their regular job achieve amazing
things. Some of the big tech companies are good examples of this, with ping-pong tables and
10. ___________ to relax in.

Section C Vocabulary (10 p)

A. Write the correct idiom/phrase/collocation corresponding to the following definitions. (5 p,each 1)

1. to lose other people's respect, humiliated _____________

2. relaxed and happy to accept things without worrying ______________
3. the number of offences ______________
4. to find something by chance ____________
5. To be very angry, furious _______________

B. Fill in the blank with the appropriate words given below. There are TWO EXTRA words.
(5 points- each -0.5)
interaction stunned Cut crime over the moon hysterical Public eye
harassed Deter Feedback self-satisfied Mind-blowing Soak up

1. Politicians have promised to spend $1 million on crime prevention. They hope to

___________ in the city by 50% over the next decade as a result.
2. From the top of the mountain, there was a __________view of the valley below. It was just
amazing!
3. He was in his early 40s and had the ___________________air of someone who has achieved
fame and success.
4. They were threatened and ________________in various ways to leave the land.
5. In an attempt to ___________ people from committing crime, the government has increased
the number of police officers on the streets.
6. Blogging is a fun way to explore your interests while also putting your writing in the
____________.
7. The whole class were _______________ when Mr Hardy said he was leaving to work abroad.
He was our favourite teacher.
8. We are able to carry out short or long-term diagnoses, and provide concise, objective and
helpful ___________________.
9. I was so __________________I walked all the way home with this huge smile on my face.
10. She reacted to the news with ________________screams.