the end
C. Read the passage and choose the correct answer for the following questions: (5 points)
All at once Hazel was coming in through the French windows, pulling off gardening gloves, and Bill was entering through the door, both at once. So I only had time to take one quick look at her before I turned to face him. All very confusing. What that first glimpse showed me was that time had thickened her figure but didn’t seem to have made much difference to her face. It still had good skin and youthful outlines. She was holding a bunch of roses – must have been cutting them in the garden while waiting for me. The gardening gloves lent a delightfully informal touch. It was quite an entrance, though Bill spoilt it a bit by making his at the same time.
Bill seemed longer and thinner. His tightly massed hair had a tinge of grey. Apart from that, twenty years had done nothing to him, except deepen the lines of thoughtfulness that had already, when I knew him, begun to spread across his face. Or was that all? I looked at him again, more carefully, as he looked away from me at Hazel. Weren’t his eyes different somehow? More inward¬ looking than ever? Gazing in not merely at his thoughts, but at something else, something he was keeping hidden or perhaps protecting.
Then we were chattering and taking glasses in our hands, and I came back to earth. For the first ten minutes we were all so defensive, so carefully probing, that nobody learnt anything. Bill had forgotten me altogether, that much was clear. He was engaged in getting to know me from scratch, very cautiously so as not to hit a wrong note, with the object of getting me to contribute a big sub¬scription to his African project. I kept trying to absorb details about Hazel, but Bill was talking earnestly about African education, and the strain of appearing to concentrate while actually thinking about his wife proved so great that I decided it would be easier just to concentrate. So I did. I let him hammer away for about ten more minutes, and then the daughter, who seemed to be acting as parlour¬maid, showed in another visitor. Evidently we were to be four at lunch.
1. What effect had time had on Hazel and Bill?
A. They had both lost weight.
B. They were more withdrawn.
C. They hadn’t changed at all.
D. They had changed in subtle ways.
2. When they all started talking, the writer
A. relaxed at last.
B. stopped dreaming.
C. spoke most to Hazel.
D. began to remember things.
3. The writer found the first part of their conversation
A. sentimental.
B. irritating.
C. uninformative.
D. trivial.
4. Why did Bill speak seriously?
A. He wanted some money from the writer.
B. He did not remember the writer.
C. His wife was present.
D. He was talking about the past.
5. In the end the writer found Bill’s conversation
A. monotonous
B. convincing
C. thought-provoking
D. instructive
D. You are going to read a text about closed-circuit television (CCTV) in public places. Seven paragraphs have been removed from the text. Choose from the paragraphs A-H the one which fits each gap (1 -7). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use. (7 points)
WE’VE ALL BEEN FRAMED
Everybody’s on television now. We are routinely filmed as we walk down the high street and enter the shop to buy a newspaper. Police cameras take over as we drive down the road to drop our children at school. Another hidden eye watches the playground for anything suspicious. And so it goes on - in the office, at the cashpoint, at shopping malls, stations, airports, car parks, football grounds, public squares, even public conveniences.
1. _______________________________
Do the claims for drastic crime reduction attributed to CCTV by the government and local authorities stand up to independent analysis? Could the £1bn spent on monitoring and system costs over the past decade have been used more effectively? If viewing surveillance is a form of power, what limits are placed on its operation by the democratic and legal processes?
2. _______________________________
When we meet in Hull, Norris and I travel to his home, where there are 10 cameras focused on various parts of the high street. While I pay the cab driver, Norris is switching off the burglar alarm. Aha! So he’s not against using modern technology to prevent crime? Of course not. Nor does he appear enthusiastic when I ask if he would like to get rid of all CCTV cameras tomorrow.
3. _______________________________
I’ve never been convinced, though’, he continues, ‘that there could be a simple solution to crime. One of my main complaints is that the last government invested 80% of the crime-prevention budget on technology which was never properly evaluated.
4. _______________________________
Norris and Armstrong felt it was high time to do some evaluating themselves. They spent days, nights, and weekends in three different control rooms - one in a poor, multi-racial inner-city area, one in a prosperous country town and one in a major city center. ‘In a busy street’, says Norris, ‘there are hundreds of issues to focus on. So how do you decide who’s a likely trouble-maker and who’s not? The answer, in all cases, is that it’s based on crude stereotypes.’
5. _______________________________
Norris is slightly surprised that a country where the concept of Big Brother has become part of the language should accept so many ‘little brothers and sisters’ to the point where its citizens are, he says, the most filmed in the world ‘without any democratic or legal controls’. To which I point out that most people assume that if they’ve done nothing wrong then they have nothing to fear.
6. _______________________________
State concern? What has the state got to do with it? ‘People think of a camera operator watching over them kindly but all the information is being stored. Real-time images can be connected to computers to be analyzed.’
7. _______________________________
What he sees as the possible long-term implications can best be summed up by the penultimate paragraph of the book: ‘The history of the 20th century should remind us that democratic institutions are not assured. They can be, and have been, captured by totalitarian regimes of both left and right. We should not trust in the myth of a benevolent government, for while it may be only a cynic who questions the benign intent of their current rulers, it would surely be a fool who believed that such benevolence! is assured in the future.’
A ‘No, probably not,’ he replies after a pause. They can be effective in limited circumstances - in car parks, for instance. And with the new generation of speed cameras, we have a chance to reduce pedestrian deaths in urban areas. Their use on railway crossings seems highly sensible and when cameras allow the police to find a bomber, a mugger or a murderer then none of us could say it wasn’t a social good.
B Norris disagrees. ‘We all have something to hide,’ he says. ‘People have affairs. People hide their true feelings about others. Are these really matters of state concern?’
C Answers to these and many other questions are to be found in Norris and Armstrong’s book, The Maximum Surveillance Society: The Rise of CCTV. I decided to meet one of them in person.
D So where is all this leading? Should we be alarmed about what is likely to happen in the future - not tomorrow or the next day, perhaps, but some years from now?
E In other words the targets are men rather than women, young men rather than middle-aged or elderly men. If you’re a young man in a baseball cap, then your every move is likely to be under observation. ‘Older men are largely ignored,’ Norris says.
F Occasionally, we catch sight of ourselves on a screen in one of these places. But the real addicts of closed-circuit television are the ones who are paid to watch, day and night. Dr Clive Norris and Dr Gary Armstrong have spent a total of 600 hours in control rooms watching the people who watch us. Both are lecturers in criminology and both are worried about the phenomenal growth of CCTV surveillance in recent years. Accordingly, they set out to ask some questions.
G If the control room spots one of these crimes taking place, it doesn’t mean that the police or the security guards will respond, he says. ‘They have their own agendas. In our 600 hours they went into action just 43 times.’
H The present government, on the other hand, has begun a massive program of crime reduction and they should be congratulated on providing a lot of money for evaluation. But while the use of CCTV continues to spread, there still hasn’t been a properly conducted survey into its effectiveness.’
PART FOUR: WRITING
A. Finish each of the sentences in such a way that it means exactly the same as the sentence printed before it. (10 points)
1. Tim insisted on being told the complete story.
Nothing but ____________________________________________________
2. She never seems to succeed, even though she works hard.
However ____________________________________________________
3. Andrew is the most generous person I have ever met
I’ve yet ___________________________________
4. She never seems to succeed even though she studies much.
Much ____________________________________________________
5. I never thought that I would win a prize
It had ____________________________________________________
B. Write a new sentence using the word given. (10 points)
1. I don’t think the television’s likely to blow up at any minute.
LIKELIHOOD ____________________________________________
2. This car only cost me five hundred pounds.
PICKED ____________________________________________
3. Someone paid five thousands pounds for the painting.
WENT ____________________________________________
4. We have made neither a profit nor a loss this year.
EVEN ____________________________________________
5. In 1967 programs began to be transmitted in color.
ADVENT ____________________________________________
– THE END –
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