Section B – Reading

Answer ALL questions

Case Study 1
Return to river town

Read the text and answer the questions below.

Many people become English language teachers because they want to see different places
and experience different cultures. I am very lucky in that my job as an English teacher has
opened doors to some fascinating areas. In 1996, as a Peace Corps volunteer, I arrived in
Fuling, a quiet town on the Yangtze River in China, to teach English. I went back recently to
find the landscape and my former students transformed.

Nowadays, there is excellent mobile phone coverage at the bottom of the Yangtze River,
and Huang Dejian is one of the few people who know this. He’s the director of the new White
Crane Ridge Underwater Museum and today his phone rings constantly while he is at a
depth of 40 metres. The museum is the strangest sight in the city of Fuling; visitors enter
through a 100-metre-long escalator covered in a steel tube which looks like a huge straw
dipped into the muddy Yangtze.

The last time I met Huang, all this area was dry land, the $34 million museum didn’t exist
and the Three Gorges Dam was still being built 450 kilometres down the river. Fuling is
situated at the junction of the Yangtze and the Wu Rivers and in the mid-1990s it was very
quiet and isolated. There was no main road or railway line and the Yangtze ferries took
seven hours to arrive at Chongqing, the nearest large city. Foreigners were never seen so,
for example, if I ate lunch in the town centre, I often attracted a crowd of 30 people staring
at me. The city had one escalator, one nightclub, and no traffic lights. I didn’t know anybody
with a car.

In those days, I worked at Fuling Teachers College. Nearly all of my students came from
village homes with little tradition of education; many had illiterate parents. My students
taught me many things, including what they thought about living in the countryside (which
was where most Chinese lived at that time). They also taught me about the complications
of life in China. My students had little money, but they were hopeful and they had
opportunities; it was impossible to think of such people as poor.

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5

During my visit, about 15 students returned to Fuling for an unplanned reunion. They gave
us news on the classmates who, like so many Chinese of their generation, have moved far
from their home town. My old students were interested in discussing their society. One
student, who had the English name of Mo Money said, ‘Life is competitive. I think this is a
special stage for China. In the past, we criticised capitalist America, but now we are in a
similar situation.’

My last meeting on this visit was with fishermen Huang Zongming and his brother Zongguo.
I was here when they moved out of their homes in June 2003, when the first stage of the
dam was completed. The brothers told me there’s still good fishing further up the river and
Zongming has still never travelled on a train. I discovered that they are the only people I
know who have not changed, despite the changes all around them.

(Adapted from National Geographic Learning)

Question 1

Match the numbers of paragraphs 1 to 6 with the headings (a) to (h) below. You will not
need TWO (2) headings.

a) Leaving China

b) A remote, calm town

c) Living the same lifestyle

d) Reasons for a career choice

e) Learning about changes

f) An unusual tourist attraction

g) Rural life

h) Learning Chinese

Total 6 Marks

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Question 2

Read the following sentences and write true if the view is expressed in the text, false if the
opposite view is expressed in the text and not given if the information is not given in the
text.

a) The writer has worked in many countries. 1

b) Huang Dejian works at the bottom of a river. 1

c) The writer remembers the underwater museum from his previous visit. 1

d) The parents of many of the students could not read or write. 1

e) The fishermens’ lives have been radically altered over the last 15 years. 1

Total 5 Marks

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Developing English Language Skills / ELF Level 4 © NCC Education Limited 2018
Case Study 2
Life on the River Seine

Read the text and answer the question below.

On the Île de la Cité, in front of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris there is a bronze
compass set into the paving stones. From here, which is point zero, all distances from Paris
are measured. At the centre point of Paris there is the River Seine: its liquid heart. ‘For
Parisians, the Seine is a compass, a way to know where you are’, says Marina Ferretti, an
art historian.

I love my boat

It is said that French men fall in love with their boats. One day, 34 years ago, Claude
Tharreau, a young market researcher, was walking along the Seine when he saw for sale
the Cathare, a 70-foot-long Dutch boat built in 1902. ‘I had actually been looking for an
apartment,’ he says. Three days later he had signed the contract to buy the boat. ‘It was
only afterwards I noticed it was a boat with no electricity or water.’ There are 199 houseboats
in Paris and, undoubtedly, 199 stories of love.

Instant beach

Twelve years ago, the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë had the idea of developing the
beach-on-the-Seine. In order to develop the beach, the main road on the Right Bank of the
river was blocked off for four weeks. Project manager Damien Masset listed the ingredients
for an instant beach: 5 million kilos of sand, 250 blue umbrellas, 350 deck chairs, 800 chairs,
250 loungers, 40 hammocks, 200 tables, four ice-cream stands, eight cafés, 875 yards of
wooden fencing, 250 people to build it, 450 to manage it. Since the beach was constructed,
the Seine has become an urban Riviera with a constant movement of beach-volleyball
players, sand-castle engineers, samba, tango, and break dancers, rock, jazz, soul
musicians and of course sunbathers of many shapes and sizes.

No water-skiing allowed

On one of those exhausting summer days, the river outside the office of the chief of the
police who patrol the Seine looks cool and inviting. ‘Is it possible to swim in the Seine?’ I ask
Sandrine Berjot, the police commandant who heads the patrol. ‘No,’ she says simply. ’The
fine is 38 euros.’ ‘What about stepping in the river?‘ I ask. ‘No, you can’t even put your toe
in the water.’ Other rules include: you can’t water-ski in certain zones; you must not tie your
boat around a tree with a rope; you must not protest or put up banners. The most serious
rule is failure to help someone who is in danger. The penalty is up to 75,000 euros and five
years in prison. ‘If someone is drowning, you don’t have to jump in. But you do have to call
the police.’

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The river

You cannot experience the same river twice. The Impressionist artist Claude Monet kept a
floating studio on the river. Henri Matisse, a post-Impressionist painter, had a studio by the
river. The flat grey ribbon of water which was painted by earlier artists became a dance of
light through the lens of these painters. What colour is the Seine? It’s complicated. The
Seine reflects life and everything around it. Its colours are never ending. Unfortunately, there
are many kinds of objects polluting the River Seine: lost plastic toys, balloons, cigarette ends
and empty wine bottles.

(Adapted from National Geographic Life)

Questions

Complete the sentences below by filling each gap with ONE (1) or TWO (2) words, a year
or a number from the text.

a) Marina Ferretti explains that the river is a kind of ________. 1

b) Claude Tharreau’s boat dates from the year _________. 1

c) Claude’s boat was not equipped with ___________or_________. 1

d) If you are caught swimming in the river, you have to pay ________ euros. 1

e) Some famous __________ had studios by the river. 1

Total 5 Marks

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Developing English Language Skills / ELF Level 4 © NCC Education Limited 2018
Case Study 3
Sylvia Earle

Read the text and answer the question below.

Sylvia Earle was called a "Hero for the Planet" by Time magazine. She’s an oceanographer,
explorer, author, and lecturer.

One of the world's best-known marine scientists, Sylvia Earle loves to dive deep into the
ocean. She has spent much of her life in or under the sea. Earle has led more than a hundred
expeditions, including the first team of women aquanauts during the Tektite Project in 1970.
She has logged more than 7,000 hours underwater and set a record for solo diving in 1,000-
metre depths.

Earle describes the first time she experienced the sea: ‘I was three years old and I got
knocked over by a wave. The ocean certainly got my attention! It wasn’t frightening, it was
more exciting. Since then, life in the ocean has captured my imagination and held it ever
since.’

Earle was formerly chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) in the USA. She is also the founder of Deep Ocean Exploration and Research, Inc.
and chair of Google Earth Ocean, among many other roles. Her particular role is developing
a global network of areas on the land and in the ocean to protect the living systems that
provide the foundations of global processes. She explains why this is important: ‘When I first
explored the Gulf of Mexico in the 1950s, the sea appeared to be a blue endless ocean. It
seemed to be too large and wild to be affected by anything that people could do. Then, in
just a few decades, not millennia, the blue wilderness ocean of my childhood disappeared.
By the end of the 20th century, up to 90 percent of the sharks, tuna, swordfish, marlins,
turtles, whales, and many other large creatures that had existed in the Gulf for millions of
years had disappeared due to overfishing and pollution.’

In order to explain why the ocean is so important to life on Earth, Earle states that ‘the ocean
is the centre of our life support system and the foundation of the ocean’s life support system
is life in the ocean. The ocean is alive; it provides us with oxygen and uses up carbon. If we
take away the ocean then we don’t have a planet that works.’

Despite all of the problems seen in the Gulf of Mexico, and in particular the Deepwater
Horizon Oil disaster of 2010, Earle reveals that she is optimistic. ‘In 2003, I found reasons
for hope in clear, deep water, far offshore from the mouth of the Mississippi River as it was
full of life. Large areas of the Gulf have escaped damage. Protecting important sources of
renewal such as unscathed marshes, healthy reefs and deep-sea gardens will provide hope
for the future of the Gulf, and for all of us.’

(Adapted from National Geographic Life)

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Questions

Answer the following questions by writing ONE (1), TWO (2) or THREE (3) words or a
number.

a) How many hours has Sylvia Earle spent diving? 1

b) What two things caused the reduction of sea life population in the Gulf of 1
Mexico?

c) Which important element do the oceans give us? 1

d) How does Sylvia feel about the future? 1

Total 4 Marks

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Developing English Language Skills / ELF Level 4 © NCC Education Limited 2018