Candidate name: __________________________________
Date: ___________________________________________
JAXTINA IELTS EXAMINATION
MIDTERM TEST
120 MINUTES
INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES
Do not open this question paper until you are told to do so.
Write your name in the space at the top of this page.
At the end of the test, hand in this question paper.
1
LISTENING
SECTION 1 Questions 1-10
Complete the notes below.
Write ONE WORD AND / OR A NUMBER for each answer.
Things to do before we go
Example:
Collect the currency
Cancel appointment with (1) ___________ (Monday)
Begin taking the (2) ___________ (Tuesday)
Buy (3) ___________, a small bag, a spare (4) ___________, an electrical
(5)___________
Book a (6) ___________
Instructions for Laura’s mum
Feed the cat
Vet’s details:
Name: Colin (7) ___________
Tel: (8) ___________
Address: Fore Street (opposite the (9) ___________)
Water the plants
Meet the heating engineer on (10) ___________
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SECTION 4 Questions 31 – 40
Complete the notes below
Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer.
Saving the Juniper plant
Background:
Juniper was one of the first plants to colonize Britain after the last (31) ___________.
Its smoke is virtually (32) ___________, so juniper wood was used as fuel in illegal
activities.
Oils from the plant were used to prevent (33) ___________spreading.
Nowadays, its berries are widely used to (34) ___________food and drink
Ecology
Juniper plants also support several species of insect and (35) ___________
Problems
In current juniper populations, ratios of the (36) ___________ are poor.
Many of the bushes in each group are of the same age so (37) ___________ of whole
population is rapid.
Solutions:
Plant-life is trialing novel techniques across (38) ___________ areas of England.
One measure is to introduce (39) ___________ for seedlings.
A further step is to plant (40) ___________ from healthy bushes.
3
READING
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1 – 13, which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.
Hello Happiness!
Ask 100 people what would make them happy, and a sizeable majority would say
“winning the lottery.” Yet, if they won a vast fortune, within a year they would be
back to their previous level of happiness. The fact is that money has many uses,
but more money does not mean more happiness. Surveys carried out in recent
years by leading psychologists and sociologists all confirm that while individuals
may increase their material wealth during the course of their lifetime, this has no
bearing on their well-being. And what is true for individuals can be applied on a
larger scale to the world population. Statistically, wealthier nations do not
achieve higher scores on the happiness-ometer than developing or
underdeveloped nations. Once the basic criteria of adequate shelter and
nutrition are satisfied, increased wealth plays no significant role. So why the
obsession with getting rich? The answer, say researchers, is simple. Call it
jealousy, competitiveness, or just keeping up with the Joneses, however well we
are doing, there is always someone else who is doing better. Just as we acquire a
new $25,000 car, our neighbor parks his brand spanking new $40,000 set of
wheels in his drive, causing us much consternation, but fueling us with new
aspirations in the process. And so the cycle continues. Money, or material
wealth, may be a prime mover, but it is not the foundation of our well-being.
If money isn’t the key to happiness, then what is? In all 44 countries surveyed by
a prominent research centre, family life provided the greatest source of
satisfaction. Married people live on average three years longer and enjoy greater
physical and psychological health than the unmarried and, surprisingly, couples
in a co-habitational relationship. Having a family enhances well-being, and
spending more time with one’s family helps even more. Social interaction among
families, neighborhoods, workplaces, communities and religious groups
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correlates strongly with subjective well-being. In fact, the degree of individuals’
social connections is the best benchmark of their happiness.
Friendship is another major factor. Indeed, to return to the dollar-equals-
happiness equation, in one survey, having a friend converted into $50,000 worth
of happiness, and confirms the well-known phenomenon that loneliness can lead
to depression. Work is another area central to well-being, and certain features
correlate highly with happiness. These include autonomy over how, where, and
at what pace work is done, trust between employer and employee, fair
treatment, and active participation in the making of decisions. Occupationally,
happiness tends to be more common among professionals and managers, that
is, people who are in control of the work they do, rather than subservient to their
bosses, inequality implies less control for those who are in the weaker position,
although there are more risks of losing their privileges for those in the stronger
position.
Control of one’s life in general is also key. Happiness is clearly correlated with
the presence of favorable events such as promotion or marriage, and the
absence of troubles or bad luck such as accidents, being laid off or conflicts.
These events on their own signal the success or failure to reach one’s goals, and
therefore the control one has. On a national level, the more that governments
recognize individual preferences, the happier their citizens will be. Choice, and
citizens’ belief that they can affect the political process, increase subjective well-
being. Furthermore, evidence exists for an association between unhappiness and
poor health: people from underdeveloped countries are among the unhappiest in
the world, and their life expectancy has been falling steadily. People are more
satisfied in societies which minimally restrict their freedom of action, in other
words, where they are in control rather than being controlled. Happy people are
characterized by the belief that they are able to control their situation, whereas
unhappy people tend to believe that they are a victim of fate. Happy people are
also more psychologically resilient, assertive and open to experience.
But how good is the evidence for this alternative viewpoint then - that happiness,
and not financial status, contributes to good health, and long life? A study of
nuns, spanning seven decades, supports this theory. Autobiographies written by
the nuns in their early 1920s were scored for positive and negative emotions.
Nuns expressing the most positive emotions lived on average ten years longer
than those expressing the least positive emotions. Happy people, it seems, are
much less likely to fall ill and die than unhappy people.
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But what must we do to be happy? Experts cite the old maxim “be happy with
what you’ve got.” Look around you, they say, and identify the positive factors in
your life. Concentrating on the negative aspects of one’s life is a no-no, and so is
worrying. Worrying is a negative thinking habit that is nearly always about
something that lies in the future. It stems, apparently, from our cave dwelling
days, when we had to think on a day-to-day basis about how and where to find
food and warmth, for example. But in the modern world, worrying simply
undermines our ability to enjoy life in the present. More often than not, the
things we worry about never come to pass anyway. Just as important is not to
dwell on the past - past mistakes, bad experiences, missed opportunities and so
on.
What else can we do? Well, engage in a loving relationship with another adult,
and work hard to sustain it. Try to plan frequent interactions with your family,
friends and neighbors (in that order). Make sure you’re not working so hard that
you’ve no time left for personal relationships and leisure. If you are, leave your
job voluntarily to become self-employed, but don’t get sacked – that’s more
damaging to well-being than the loss of a spouse, and its effects last longer. In
your spare time, join a club, volunteer for community service, or take up religion.
If none of the above works, then vote for a political party with the same agenda
as the King of Bhutan, who announced that his nation’s objective is national
happiness.
Questions 1 – 3
Choose THREE letters A – H below.
NB. Your answers may be given in any order.
Which THREE of the following statements are true, according to the text?
A. Money can bring misery.
B. Wealthier nations place more emphasis on happiness than poorer ones.
C. Securing a place to live is a basic human need.
D. The desire for social status is global phenomenon.
E. Unmarried people living together are less likely to be happier than married people.
F. The less responsibility one has, the happier one is.
G. Involvement in policy making can increase well-being.
H. Our prehistoric ancestors were happier than we are.
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Questions 4 – 7
Complete the summary using the list of words, A – I below.
A. episode F. level
B. interaction G. course
C. cooperation H. conflict
D. control I. limit
E. number
Money can buy you just about anything, but not, it seems, happiness. Whether on a
personal or national (4) ____________, your bank balance won’t make you happier. Once
the basic criteria of a roof over your head and food on the table have been met, money
ceases to play a part. One of the most important factors in achieving happiness is the
extent of our social (5) ____________ - our relationships with family, friends, colleagues
and so on. Equally important is the amount of (6) ____________ we have, either in our
personal life, working life, or even in our ability to influence the political (7) ____________
that our country embarks on.
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Questions 8 – 13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? Write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
8. People from undeveloped nations try to attain the same standard of living as those
from developed nations.
9. Seeing what others have makes people want to have it too.
10. The larger the family is, the happier the parents will probably be.
11. One’s attitude to life has no influence on one’s health.
12. Instinct can be a barrier to happiness.
13. Family and friends rank equally as sources of happiness.
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READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14 – 26, which are based on Reading
Passage 2 below.
One Who Hopes
A. Language lovers, just like music lovers, enjoy variety. For the latter there's
Mozart, The Rolling Stones and Beyonce. For the former there's English,
French, Swahili, Urdu... the list is endless. But what about those poor
overworked students who find learning difficult, confusing languages a
drudge? Wouldn't it put a smile on their faces if there were just one simple,
easy-to-learn tongue that would cut their study time by years? Well, of
course, it exists. It's called Esperanto, and it's been around for more than
120 years. Esperanto is the most widely spoken artificially constructed
international language. The name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the
pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof first published his Unua Libro in
1887. The phrase itself means 'one who hopes'. Zamenhof's goal was to
create an easy and flexible language as a universal second language to
promote peace and international understanding.
B. Zamenhof, after ten years of developing his brainchild from the late 1870s
to the early 1880s, had the first Esperanto grammar published in Warsaw
in July 1887. The number of speakers grew rapidly over the next few
decades, at first primarily in the Russian empire and Eastern Europe, then
in Western Europe and the Americas, China, and Japan. In the early years,
speakers of Esperanto kept in contact primarily through correspondence
and periodicals, but since 1905 world congresses have been held on five
continents every year except during the two World Wars. Latest estimates
for the numbers of Esperanto speakers are around 2 million. Put in
percentage terms, that's about 0.03% of the world's population - no
staggering figure, comparatively speaking. One reason is that Esperanto
has no official status in any country, but it is an optional subject on the
curriculum of several state education systems. It is widely estimated that it
can be learned in anywhere between a quarter to a twentieth of the time
required for other languages.
C. As a constructed language, Esperanto is not genealogically related to any
ethnic language. Whilst it is described as 'a language lexically
predominantly Romanic', the phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and
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semantics are based on the western Indo-European languages. For those of
us who are not naturally predisposed to tucking languages under our belts,
it is an easy language to learn. It has 5 vowels and 23 consonants. It has
one simple way of conjugating all of its verbs. Words are often made from
many other roots, making the number of words which one must memorise
much smaller. The language is phonetic, and the rules of pronunciation are
very simple, so that everyone knows how to pronounce a written word and
vice-versa, and word order follows a standard, logical pattern. Through
prefixing and suffixing, Esperanto makes it easy to identify words as
nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, direct objects and so on, by means of
easy-to-spot endings. All this makes for easy language learning. What's
more, several research studies demonstrate that studying Esperanto
before another foreign language speeds up and improves the learning of
the other language. This is presumably because learning subsequent
foreign languages is easier than learning one's first, while the use of a
grammatically simple and culturally flexible language like Esperanto
softens the blow of learning one's first foreign language. In one study, a
group of European high school students studied Esperanto for one year,
then French for three years, and ended up with a significantly better
command of French than a control group who had studied French for all
four years.
D. Needless to say, the language has Its critics. Some point to the Eastern
European features of the language as being harsh and difficult to
pronounce, and argue that Esperanto has an artificial feel to it, without the
flow of a natural tongue, and that by nature of its artificiality, it is
impossible to become emotionally involved with the language. Others cite
its lack of cultural history, indigenous literature - "no one has ever written
a novel straight into Esperanto" - together with its minimal vocabulary and
its inability to express all the necessary philosophical, emotional and
psychological concepts.
E. The champions of Esperanto - Esperantists - disagree. They claim that it is
a language in which a great body of world literature has appeared in
translation: in poetry, novels, literary journals, and, to rebut the accusation
that it is not a 'real' language, point out that it is frequently used at
international meetings which draw hundreds and thousands of
participants. Moreover, on an international scale, it is most useful - and fair
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- for neutral communication. That means that communication through
Esperanto does not give advantages to the members of any particular
people or culture, but provides an ethos of equality of rights, tolerance and
true internationalism.
F. Esperantists further claim that Esperanto has the potential - were it
universally taught for a year or two throughout the world - to empower
ordinary people to communicate effectively worldwide on a scale that far
exceeds that which is attainable today by only the most linguistically
brilliant among us. It offers the opportunity to improve communication in
business, diplomacy, scholarship and other fields so that those who speak
many different native languages will be able to participate fluently in
international conferences and chat comfortably with each other after the
formal presentations are made. Nowadays that privilege is often restricted
to native speakers of English and those who have special talents and
opportunities for learning English as a foreign language.
G What Esperanto does offer in concrete terms is the potential of saving
. billions of dollars which are now being spent on translators and
interpreters, billions which would be freed up to serve the purposes of
governments and organisations that spend so much of their resources to
change words from one language into the words of others. Take, for
example, the enormously costly conferences, meetings and documentation
involved in the European Union parliamentary and administrative
procedures - all funded, essentially, by tax payers. And instead of the
World Health Organisation, and all NGOs for that matter, devoting
enormous sums to provide interpreters and translations, they would be
able to devote those huge amounts of money to improving the health of
stricken populations throughout the world.
Questions 14 – 19
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs (A – G).
Choose the correct heading for paragraph B – G from the list of headings below.
i. A non-exclusive language
ii. Fewer language, more results
iii. Language is personal
iv. What’s fashionable in language
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v. From the written word to the spoken word
vi. A real language
vii. Harmony through language
viii. The mechanics of a language
ix. Lost in translation
Example: Paragraph A vii
14. Paragraph B
15. Paragraph C
16. Paragraph D
17. Paragraph E
18. Paragraph F
19. Paragraph G
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Questions 20 – 22
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
20. What advantage is there to learning Esperanto as one’s first foreign language?
A. Its pronunciation rules follow those of most European languages.
B. There are no grammar rules to learn.
C. It can make the learning of other languages less complicated.
D. Its verbs are not conjugated.
21. What do its critics say of Esperanto?
A. It is only used in artificial situations.
B. It requires emotional involvement.
C. it cannot translate works of literature.
D. It lacks depth of expression.
22. How could Esperanto help on a global level?
A. It would eliminate the need for conferences.
B. More aid money would reach those who need it.
C. The world population would be speaking only one language.
D. More funds could be made available for learning foreign languages.
Questions 23 – 26
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 23 – 26 on your answer sheet write
YES if the statement agrees with the information
NO if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this in the passage
23. Supporters of Esperanto say it gives everyone an equal voice.
24. Esperanto is the only artificially constructed language.
25. Esperanto can be learned as part of a self-study course.
26. Esperanto can be used equally in formal and casual situations.
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WRITING
WRITING TASK 2
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Write about the following topic:
Traffic and housing problems in major cities could be solved by moving companies,
factories and their employees to the countryside.
To what extend do you agree or disagree?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge
or experience.
Write at least 250 words.
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