FCE Paper 1 – Reading

You are going to read a newspaper article about dog owners. Seven sentences have been removed from the article.  Choose from the sentences A – H the one which fits each gap 1 -7. There is one extra sentence that you do not  need to use.

A : All of this leads some people to suggest that dog fights should be prohibited.

B: These include working on farms, helping blind people navigate their way through life, and assisting the police
and security forces.

C : Dogs often give the impression that they know exactly what their owners want, without being told.

D : Owners then have to start counting calories and prepare simple dished with vegetables.

E : Some dog owners have become very selective when it comes to their pets’ diet.

F : It is true that the occasional dog can go wild and attack someone, sometimes causing severe injuries.

G: Examples of these include loss of appetite and even a tendency to bite people.

H : When you look at the extremes to which some owners go, it would certainly seem so.

A Dog’s Life

The old saying that a dog is man’s best friend has been around for centuries, and few people who have dogs of their own would argue with it.

Famous for their affectionate and loyal nature, dogs are often regarded as friends rather than pets. Children and old people are particularly inclined to develop close relationships with their dogs. (1)________ This sensitivity is what makes them seem almost human.

After centuries of being bred to be domestic animals, dogs have developed into safe companions. (2)_________ Such cases are rare, though, and almost always involve animals that have been trained to be aggressive. This doesn’t mean that dogs are naturally violent or dangerous, simply that they can be trained to perform a number of tasks. In fact, their capacity to learn and follow instructions is what makes dogs so valuable as working animals.

During the long history of mankind’s association with animals, the role of the dog has changed. At one time dogs were simply domestic animals that performed a useful function. Today, of course, the majority of dogs are kept as household pets, although there are still some animals engaged in important occupations. (3)___________

Many owners like to treat their pet dogs like human beings, but do some people go too far? (4)_______ Wouldn’t expensive, fashionable coats for dogs be a waste of money? Surely designer beds for dogs costing over £1,000 would be ridiculous. But these are just some of the items available from the exclusive dog boutiques to be found in many major cities around the world. This is clearly a luxury that average dog owners cannot afford. In France dogs are welcome in expensive restaurants, one of which has recently announced a new special menu for dogs. Dogs are such valued customers that they may be served before their master.

(5)__________Susan Brown buys fresh seasonal products for her Yorkshire terrier. The weekly menu consists of chicken, lamb and fish. ‘I spend hours preparing the food,’ she says. ‘I steam it, and go through it to make sure there are no bones. He loves shepherd’s pie, spring vegetables and low-fat yoghurt.’ Chef Max Oliver claims that breed should be taken into account when deciding on a dog’s diet. Boxers have delicate stomachs and they should feed on tinned food and croquettes.

It is not surprising that you can now find cookbooks with special recipes for exciting healthy dishes for dogs. Many fond owners pamper their dogs with delicacies, and the percentage of obese dogs has increased. Obese dogs are taken to the vet who puts them on a diet. (6)______ Restrictions on how much they eat make dogs feel miserable.

It is no wonder that dogs treated in such an excessive way can become nervous and unsure of themselves, acting in uncharacteristic ways. (7)_______ As a result, more and more owners are taking their confused animals to dog psychologists. These medical experts try to analyse and explain the dog’s moods. Psychologists advise the worried owners to remember that dogs basically want to run, bark and eat. Too much affection confuses them. Everything else just sends them barking mad.

(Answers: 1:C, 2:F, 3:B, 4:H, 5:E, 6:D, 7: G)

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READING TEST: PARAGRAPH TOPIC HEADINGS

For each paragraph, choose the most suitable heading from the list which follows. There is one extra

heading you do not need to use.

THE NEED FOR A GREEN WORLD

A. Some countries do not do as much as others.

B. Publicity may encourage green attitudes.

C. Some people take a lot of trouble.

D. Pollution is all around us.

E. Government action is essential.

F. Wildlife suffers.

G. A heavy price paid for economic success.

H. Possible to take being Green to extremes.

I. The end of civilised society.

1

Possibly, in Europe, one person in ten has turned green. No wonder. You would have to lead a sheltered life not to be aware of the garbage in the air, on the land, and in the sea. Take the Adriatic coast of Italy where, all night long, the slime and the scum lap the moonlit beaches. At dawn, the shore is covered in a thick brown-green gunge. Dump trucks roar into action, and the splodge is collected and taken away, but by early afternoon, it has again started to drift inshore. The sludge is killing fish, clams and mussels. It is killing the tourist business, too.

2

Where does it come from? For years, nitrates and phosphates and God knows what other chemicals have been dumped into the Adriatic. As Italy’s economic miracle has worked its wonders, the industry of the Po valley has had its effluent combine with rising temperatures in the sea to produce a thick algae. The result is economic disaster for the tourist industry: 3,000 hotels, 26,000 villas and 800 restaurants take a lot of filling. One politician suggested the building of swimming pools.

3

Whatever may be happening south of the Alps, there is little doubt that Britain remains the least green country in Northern Europe. The average Britain does not sort as much garbage for recycling, does less to conserve energy, rarely votes on green issues, and only began driving on unleaded petrol once there was a tax incentive. Britain is probably about five years behind the leaders.

4

West Germany is ahead. The Greens are a real political threat there, so the government has been forced to deal with their issues. In German supermarkets, shoppers choose the green-friendly and the not-nasty. Fly-sprays are exchanged for old-fashioned fly-papers. A Green householder will have two dustbins, one for normal rubbish, and one for paper which is taken to be recycled. Glass goes into a special container down the road, and used batteries are taken to special collecting-points.

5

But if the German consumer takes his Greenness seriously, the American has elevated it to an art form. It is no longer a simple matter of separating the bottles from the chicken bones, and picking out the lettuce leaves for the compost heap. In offices, workers have lines of colour-coded wastepaper baskets, one for white paper with glue, one for white paper without glue, one for coloured paper, and yet more baskets for other types of rubbish. Trash Police are employed to report on Garbage Louts.

6

The science of garbology has taken hold. It has an official magazine, entitled, of course, Garbage. It lifts the lid on garbage for the common man. Its first print run of 100,000 was sold out with days. The magazine has a Garbage Index with lots of information for the fact-hungry. Americans throw away 1.6 billion ball-point pens every year, as well as two billion razor blades and 250 million car tyres. Greens are recommended to read the Los Angeles Times, 83 per cent of which is printed on recycled paper, rather than The Washington Post, none of which is.

7

Out on America’s beaches, there is a another problem: sixty per cent of the rubbish washed up on the beach is plastic. To keep the floating rubbish from reaching New York, the US Army Corps of Engineers uses skimmers to lift debris from the water. One result of the plastic garbage is dead fish. A rare three-metre-long beaked whale was washed ashore on Long Island. After a postmortem, scientists concluded that the animal had starved to death, its stomach blocked by plastic carrier bags.

8

On a larger scale, Western consumption patterns are wrecking the ozone layer over the Antarctic and destroying the Brazilian rain forest. Power stations in Britain are killing trees in Norway. Today’s central heating will produce tomorrow’s global warming, and the flooding of low-level lands the day after. These problems are too large to be left to the individual. They are probably too large to be left to the Greens. According to the British Green Manifesto, “Conservation must replace consumption as the driving force of our economy… Green politics is about `enough’, not about `more and more’… nuclear power stations are extremely dangerous. We want to see them phased out quickly… The growth of air traffic over Europe is unnecessary…”

(Answers: 1.E; 2.G; 3.A; 4.C; 5.H; 6.B; 7.F; 8.E)

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 Multiple Choice Questions:

( Answers: 1. D; 2. D; 3. A; 4. C; 5. C; 6. B; 7. D; 8. C; 9. C; 10. D )

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