اختبار آيلتس تجريبي.. Test D

اختبار آيلتس أكاديمي تجريبي كامل ومجاني من دليلك (Test D): القراءة (3 نصوص، 40 سؤالًا) والاستماع (4 أجزاء، 40 سؤالًا) والكتابة (مهمتان) والمحادثة (3 أجزاء). الإجابة الصحيحة والشرح تحت كل سؤال بضغطة على «اعرض الإجابة»، لمن يستعد للآيلتس ويريد يتدرّب ويراجع أخطاءه.

حل الأسئلة أولًا ثم افتح الإجابة، أو ابدأ الاختبار التفاعلي بالوقت ليُصحَّح تلقائيًا مع باند تقديري. أصوات الاستماع تعمل في الاختبار التفاعلي، ونصها هنا تحت كل جزء.

القراءة الأكاديمية.. Reading

3 نصوص و40 سؤالًا في 60 دقيقة.

ابدأ الاختبار التفاعلي بالوقت

Passage 1: The Story of Paper and Early Printing

ALong before paper existed, societies recorded information on whatever surface was locally abundant. In ancient Egypt, scribes flattened and pressed strips cut from the pith of the papyrus plant into sheets that could be rolled into scrolls, a technique so effective that the plant's name eventually gave later languages the very word "paper". Elsewhere, particularly in the eastern Mediterranean and beyond, parchment made from stretched and scraped animal skin offered a tougher, longer-lasting alternative, though it required an entire flock to supply a single substantial manuscript and remained costly to produce in any quantity. In China, meanwhile, bamboo strips bound with cord and silk cloth served as writing surfaces for official records, but bamboo was heavy and cumbersome to store, while silk was far too expensive for everyday use. None of these materials offered the combination of cheapness, lightness and abundance that a truly widespread writing medium would eventually require.

BThat combination arrived, according to the most widely accepted historical account, through the efforts of a court official named Cai Lun, who served the Han dynasty imperial court in China. In 105 CE, Cai Lun is credited with refining a papermaking process that used a pulp of mulberry bark, hemp waste, old rags and discarded fishing nets, beaten together with water and then pressed and dried into thin sheets. Archaeological evidence has since suggested that rudimentary paper existed in China even before Cai Lun's lifetime, so his true contribution was most likely to standardise and improve an existing technique rather than to invent the process outright. Whichever is the case, the resulting material was far cheaper than silk and considerably lighter than bamboo, and it could be produced in bulk from materials that were otherwise regarded as waste.

CFor several centuries, knowledge of papermaking remained largely confined within China, closely guarded as a valuable state asset. Its spread westward is conventionally traced to the Battle of Talas in 751 CE, a military clash between Tang dynasty forces and an Abbasid army in Central Asia, after which a number of Chinese papermakers are said to have been taken prisoner and put to work in the city of Samarkand. Whether the transfer of the craft happened quite this dramatically is debated among historians, but Samarkand did become, within a generation or two, the first major papermaking centre outside China, and its high-quality product was soon prized across the wider Islamic world. From Samarkand, the craft travelled onward to Baghdad, where paper workshops supplied the scholars of the city's renowned House of Wisdom, and then further west still, reaching Damascus, Cairo and eventually the Islamic territories of southern Spain.

DBy the twelfth century, papermaking had taken firm root in Muslim Spain, most notably around the town of Xàtiva, from where the technique gradually crossed into Christian Europe over the following two centuries. European papermakers eventually mechanised the most labour-intensive stage of the process, harnessing water-powered hammers to pound rag pulp far faster than hand-beating ever could, and by the fourteenth century paper mills using this method were operating across Italy, France and the German-speaking lands. As mechanisation drove down production costs, paper increasingly displaced parchment for everyday documents, though parchment persisted for prestige manuscripts and legal records for a good while longer, valued for its durability and its air of formality.

EPrinting, it is worth noting, developed as a largely separate strand of innovation, and one that also has its deepest roots in China. Block printing, in which an entire page of text was carved in reverse onto a wooden block, inked and pressed onto paper, produced what is generally regarded as the world's oldest dated printed book, a Buddhist text known as the Diamond Sutra, printed in 868 CE. In the following two centuries, Chinese and Korean printers experimented further: the artisan Bi Sheng is credited with developing movable type from fired clay in the 1040s, and Korean printers later cast movable type from bronze, producing the Jikji, a Buddhist text printed in 1377, more than seventy years before any comparable European achievement. Movable type nonetheless brought only a modest advantage in East Asia, where written language required many thousands of distinct characters, making the setting and storing of type an unwieldy undertaking compared with the simplicity of a single carved block.

FMovable type found a more decisive application in Europe, where alphabetic scripts required only a few dozen recurring characters. Around the middle of the fifteenth century, a goldsmith from the German city of Mainz named Johannes Gutenberg combined durable metal type, cast from an alloy that could withstand repeated use, with an oil-based ink better suited to metal than the water-based inks used for wood blocks, and a wooden press adapted from the mechanism already used to press grapes and olives. The resulting system allowed a skilled printer to produce far more copies of a text, far more quickly and far more cheaply, than any scribe working by hand. Paper, already abundant and inexpensive thanks to centuries of prior refinement, supplied the ideal surface for this new method, and the pairing of the two technologies is widely credited with accelerating the spread of literacy across Europe in the decades that followed.

pith:
the soft, spongy tissue at the centre of a plant stem
movable type:
individual characters that can be arranged and rearranged to print different texts

أسئلة النص 1

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.

  1. 1Papyrus scrolls were used mainly to record religious ceremonies in ancient Egypt.

    TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN

    اعرض الإجابة

    NOT GIVEN

    "'scribes flattened and pressed strips cut from the pith of the papyrus plant into sheets that could be rolled into scrolls' (Paragraph A)"

    ليش صحيح: نقطة ارتكاز مجاورة.. الفقرة تصف صناعة اللفائف من نبات البردي، لكنها لا تذكر أبدًا الغرض أو المحتوى الذي دوّنته.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: ليست TRUE لعدم وجود تصريح بأنها استُخدمت لتدوين الطقوس الدينية؛ وليست FALSE لعدم وجود نفي لذلك أيضًا.. النص ساكت تمامًا عن هذه النقطة.

  2. 2Cai Lun is now believed to have improved an existing papermaking process rather than inventing it from nothing.

    TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN

    اعرض الإجابة

    TRUE

    "'his true contribution was most likely to standardise and improve an existing technique rather than to invent the process outright' (Paragraph B)"

    ليش صحيح: إعادة صياغة مباشرة لحقيقة مؤكدة في النص.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: ليست FALSE لعدم وجود تناقض، وليست NOT GIVEN لأن الحقيقة مذكورة صراحة.

  3. 3Chinese papermakers guarded the craft closely for several centuries before it spread beyond China.

    TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN

    اعرض الإجابة

    TRUE

    "'knowledge of papermaking remained largely confined within China, closely guarded as a valuable state asset' (Paragraph C)"

    ليش صحيح: إعادة صياغة مباشرة لحقيقة مؤكدة في النص.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: ليست FALSE لعدم وجود تناقض، وليست NOT GIVEN لأن الحقيقة مذكورة صراحة.

  4. 4Water-powered hammers allowed European papermakers to pound rag pulp faster than by hand.

    TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN

    اعرض الإجابة

    TRUE

    "'harnessing water-powered hammers to pound rag pulp far faster than hand-beating ever could' (Paragraph D)"

    ليش صحيح: إعادة صياغة مباشرة لحقيقة مؤكدة في النص.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: ليست FALSE لعدم وجود تناقض، وليست NOT GIVEN لأن الحقيقة مذكورة صراحة.

  5. 5Parchment disappeared from use in Europe as soon as paper mills began operating there.

    TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN

    اعرض الإجابة

    FALSE

    "'parchment persisted for prestige manuscripts and legal records for a good while longer' (Paragraph D)"

    ليش صحيح: العبارة تدّعي اختفاءً فوريًا، بينما النص يذكر استمرارية الرق لفترة أطول.. تناقض مباشر.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: ليست TRUE بسبب التناقض الصريح؛ وليست NOT GIVEN لأن الاستمرارية مذكورة بوضوح.

  6. 6Gutenberg's press used the same type of ink that had been used for wood-block printing.

    TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN

    اعرض الإجابة

    FALSE

    "'an oil-based ink better suited to metal than the water-based inks used for wood blocks' (Paragraph F)"

    ليش صحيح: العبارة تدّعي تطابق نوع الحبر، بينما النص يذكر نوعين مختلفين صراحة.. تناقض مباشر.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: ليست TRUE بسبب التناقض الصريح؛ وليست NOT GIVEN لأن الفرق بين النوعين مذكور بوضوح.

Complete the notes below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Before paper: Egyptians used papyrus; China used bamboo and silk

105 CE: Cai Lun's recipe used mulberry bark, hemp waste, rags and old (7) ________

751 CE: after the Battle of Talas, papermakers were taken to (8) ________

The craft then reached Baghdad's House of (9) ________

12th century: papermaking centre established in Muslim Spain at Xàtiva

European mills used water-powered (10) ________ to pound rag pulp

868 CE: the Diamond (11) ________, the oldest dated printed book

Gutenberg's press was adapted from a mechanism used to press grapes and (12) ________

Result: paper and print together accelerated the spread of (13) ________ across Europe

  1. 7Question 7

    اعرض الإجابة

    nets

    "'a pulp of mulberry bark, hemp waste, old rags and discarded fishing nets' (Paragraph B)"

    ليش صحيح: الكلمة الأخيرة في قائمة المكونات المذكورة حرفيًا.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: أي كلمة أخرى غير مذكورة في قائمة المكونات هذه.

  2. 8Question 8

    اعرض الإجابة

    Samarkand

    "'put to work in the city of Samarkand' (Paragraph C)"

    ليش صحيح: اسم المدينة المذكور حرفيًا كوجهة صناع الورق.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: أي مدينة أخرى غير مذكورة في هذا الموضع تحديدًا.

  3. 9Question 9

    اعرض الإجابة

    Wisdom

    "'paper workshops supplied the scholars of the city's renowned House of Wisdom' (Paragraph C)"

    ليش صحيح: الكلمة الدقيقة المكمّلة لاسم المؤسسة.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: أي كلمة أخرى غير مستخدمة في اسم هذه المؤسسة.

  4. 10Question 10

    اعرض الإجابة

    hammers

    "'harnessing water-powered hammers to pound rag pulp' (Paragraph D)"

    ليش صحيح: الكلمة الدقيقة للأداة التي شغّلتها الطاقة المائية.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: كلمات أخرى غير مذكورة في هذا الموضع من النص.

  5. 11Question 11

    اعرض الإجابة

    Sutra

    "'a Buddhist text known as the Diamond Sutra, printed in 868 CE' (Paragraph E)"

    ليش صحيح: الكلمة الدقيقة المكمّلة لاسم الكتاب.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: أي كلمة أخرى غير مستخدمة في اسم هذا الكتاب.

  6. 12Question 12

    اعرض الإجابة

    olives

    "'a wooden press adapted from the mechanism already used to press grapes and olives' (Paragraph F)"

    ليش صحيح: النص التكميلي يذكر 'grapes' صراحةً قبل الفراغ، فلا يبقى إلا 'olives' لإكمال الجملة بكلمة واحدة صحيحة.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: 'grapes' غير صحيحة لأنها مذكورة بالفعل قبل الفراغ؛ أي كلمة أخرى مثل 'wine' غير مذكورة حرفيًا في هذا الموضع.

  7. 13Question 13

    اعرض الإجابة

    literacy

    "'accelerating the spread of literacy across Europe' (Paragraph F)"

    ليش صحيح: الكلمة الدقيقة المذكورة حرفيًا لوصف الأثر النهائي.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: كلمات أخرى مثل 'education' ليست الكلمة المستخدمة حرفيًا هنا.

Passage 2: How Migratory Birds Navigate

AEach year, migratory birds complete journeys that number among the most extraordinary feats in the animal kingdom. The Arctic tern travels close to seventy thousand kilometres in a round trip between its Arctic breeding grounds and Antarctic wintering grounds, crossing open ocean for days at a stretch with no coastline in sight and no opportunity to ask for directions. Many species return, year after year, to the very same nesting site, sometimes within a few metres of where they hatched, despite having spent the intervening months thousands of kilometres away. For centuries this precision struck observers as close to miraculous, and it remains one of the more stubborn puzzles in animal behaviour: how does a creature with a brain smaller than a human thumbnail calculate, and repeatedly recalculate, a route across a featureless expanse of sky and sea?

BOne of the earliest testable answers focused on the sky itself. Researchers working with captive birds inside planetariums discovered that certain species orient themselves according to the rotation of the star field around the North Celestial Pole, apparently learning, while still young, which patch of sky remains fixed as the others wheel around it during the night. Indigo buntings raised without any view of the stars, and then shown an artificial sky rotating around a false pole, oriented their migratory restlessness toward that false pole rather than true north, strong evidence that the star pattern itself, rather than any innate compass, was doing the work. A parallel line of research established that many day-flying species instead calibrate a sun compass, correcting continuously for the sun's changing position across the day using an internal biological clock. Neither mechanism, however, could explain how birds manage overcast nights and days, when neither stars nor sun are visible at all.

CThe gap left by celestial cues pointed researchers toward the Earth's magnetic field, and toward a sense long suspected but only recently substantiated: magnetoreception. Two competing explanations for how birds might detect magnetism have dominated the field. The first proposes that light-sensitive proteins called cryptochromes, located in the retina of the eye, undergo a chemical reaction affected by the surrounding magnetic field, potentially allowing a bird to perceive magnetic orientation as a visual overlay on its normal view of the world. The second, older hypothesis proposed tiny deposits of magnetite, a naturally magnetic mineral, located in the upper beak and connected to the nervous system, functioning much like a conventional compass needle. Recent studies, however, have cast serious doubt on the beak hypothesis, after researchers found that the structures once identified as magnetite-based sensors were in fact iron-rich immune cells unrelated to navigation, leaving the cryptochrome hypothesis as the current front-runner, though far from conclusively confirmed.

DA further, still more contested body of research concerns smell. Experiments with homing pigeons, dating back several decades, found that birds whose sense of smell had been temporarily disabled struggled considerably more than untreated birds to find their way back to a home loft from an unfamiliar release site, suggesting that pigeons may build something resembling an olfactory map of the atmospheric odours characteristic of different regions. Sceptics have questioned how such a map could function over the vast distances covered by true long-distance migrants, as opposed to the comparatively short releases used in most pigeon experiments, and some have argued that disrupting smell may simply cause generalised stress or disorientation rather than removing a specific navigational input. The debate remains unresolved, and olfactory navigation is generally regarded as, at most, a supplementary rather than a primary cue.

ETaken together, the accumulated evidence increasingly suggests that no single explanation is sufficient on its own. Rather than relying on one dominant sense, migratory birds appear to draw on a redundant set of overlapping systems, celestial, magnetic and possibly olfactory, cross-checking one against another and falling back on whichever cues remain available under a given sky. This redundancy view carries a practical warning as well as a scientific one: because several of these mechanisms are thought to be sensitive to artificial light and electromagnetic interference, the growing brightness and electronic noise of the modern night sky may be degrading more than one navigational system simultaneously, rather than merely inconveniencing a single sense that the others could otherwise compensate for. Conservationists increasingly cite this cumulative vulnerability, rather than any single mechanism, as the strongest reason to take light pollution seriously as a threat to migratory species.

magnetoreception:
the ability of an organism to detect a magnetic field, used for orientation or navigation
cryptochrome:
a light-sensitive protein found in the cells of plants and animals

أسئلة النص 2

Reading Passage 2 has five sections, A-E. Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below. Write the correct number, i-vii, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

  • iA method later shown to rely on false assumptions
  • iiThe unresolved question of a bird's sense of smell
  • iiiWhy a single explanation is unlikely to be sufficient
  • ivThe extraordinary scale of the navigational puzzle
  • vTwo celestial compasses and their shared limitation
  • viA magnetic sense with two rival explanations
  • viiEfforts to breed magnetoreception out of captive birds

  1. 14Section A

    اعرض الإجابة

    iv.. The extraordinary scale of the navigational puzzle

    "'how does a creature with a brain smaller than a human thumbnail calculate... a route across a featureless expanse of sky and sea?' (Section A)"

    ليش صحيح: الفقرة تعرض حجم اللغز الملاحي الهائل.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: v تخص البوصلتين السماويتين (B)؛ vi تخص الحاسة المغناطيسية (C)؛ ii تخص حاسة الشم (D)؛ iii تخص خلاصة E؛ i/vii غير مذكورتين في A.

  2. 15Section B

    اعرض الإجابة

    v.. Two celestial compasses and their shared limitation

    "'certain species orient themselves according to the rotation of the star field... many day-flying species instead calibrate a sun compass... Neither mechanism, however, could explain how birds manage overcast nights' (Section B)"

    ليش صحيح: الفقرة تصف بوصلتين سماويتين وقصورهما المشترك.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: iv تخص حجم اللغز (A)؛ vi تخص الحاسة المغناطيسية (C)؛ باقي العناوين تخص فقرات أخرى.

  3. 16Section C

    اعرض الإجابة

    vi.. A magnetic sense with two rival explanations

    "'Two competing explanations for how birds might detect magnetism have dominated the field' (Section C)"

    ليش صحيح: الفقرة تعرض تفسيرين متنافسين للحاسة المغناطيسية.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: i يصف الموضوع كله كاعتماد على افتراض خاطئ، بينما الفقرة تعرض تفسيرين أحدهما لا يزال قائمًا؛ v تخص البوصلتين السماويتين (B).

  4. 17Section D

    اعرض الإجابة

    ii.. The unresolved question of a bird's sense of smell

    "'A further, still more contested body of research concerns smell... The debate remains unresolved' (Section D)"

    ليش صحيح: الفقرة تناقش مسألة حاسة الشم غير المحسومة.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: vi تخص الحاسة المغناطيسية (C)؛ vii غير مذكورة إطلاقًا؛ باقي العناوين تخص فقرات أخرى.

  5. 18Section E

    اعرض الإجابة

    iii.. Why a single explanation is unlikely to be sufficient

    "'no single explanation is sufficient on its own. Rather than relying on one dominant sense, migratory birds appear to draw on a redundant set of overlapping systems' (Section E)"

    ليش صحيح: الفقرة تختتم بحجة أن تفسيرًا واحدًا لا يكفي.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: vi/ii/v تخص فقرات سابقة عن آليات محددة؛ i/vii/iv لا تطابق محتوى E.

Complete the summary below. Choose the correct letter, A-G, from the box below. Write the correct letter in boxes 19-22 on your answer sheet.

  • Aredundant
  • Bsingle
  • Clight
  • Dacoustic
  • Ecumulative
  • Fcompensate
  • Gisolated

Rather than depending on a single dominant sense, migratory birds appear to rely on a (19) ________ set of overlapping navigational systems.

Because several of these systems may be disrupted by artificial light, modern (20) ________ pollution could interfere with more than one sense at once.

This (21) ________ vulnerability is now cited by conservationists as the strongest reason to treat the issue seriously, rather than assuming that a bird's other senses could (22) ________ for any single system that fails.

  1. 19Question 19

    اعرض الإجابة

    A.. redundant

    "'migratory birds appear to draw on a redundant set of overlapping systems' (Section E)"

    ليش صحيح: الكلمة مأخوذة حرفيًا وتصف طبيعة الأنظمة المتعددة والمتداخلة.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: B (single) يناقض الفكرة مباشرة؛ باقي الخيارات لا تصف طبيعة هذه الأنظمة.

  2. 20Question 20

    اعرض الإجابة

    C.. light

    "'the growing brightness... of the modern night sky may be degrading more than one navigational system' (Section E)"

    ليش صحيح: التلوث الضوئي هو المذكور في النص كمصدر التشويش.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: D (acoustic) غير مذكور في النص كنوع تلوث مؤثر؛ باقي الخيارات لا تلائم السياق.

  3. 21Question 21

    اعرض الإجابة

    E.. cumulative

    "'Conservationists increasingly cite this cumulative vulnerability' (Section E)"

    ليش صحيح: الكلمة مأخوذة حرفيًا وتصف الهشاشة الناتجة عن تأثر عدة أنظمة معًا.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: G (isolated) عكس المعنى المطلوب؛ باقي الخيارات لا تصف طبيعة هذه الهشاشة.

  4. 22Question 22

    اعرض الإجابة

    F.. compensate

    "'rather than merely inconveniencing a single sense that the others could otherwise compensate for' (Section E)"

    ليش صحيح: الكلمة الدقيقة التي تصف دور الحواس الأخرى لو تأثرت حاسة واحدة فقط.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: باقي الخيارات (A-E, G) لا تصف فعل التعويض المذكور هنا.

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.

  1. 23According to the passage, planetarium experiments with indigo buntings showed that the birds

    1. A. could not orient at all without a view of real stars.
    2. B. oriented according to a learned star pattern rather than an innate compass.
    3. C. relied primarily on the sun rather than the stars.
    4. D. ignored the position of the North Celestial Pole entirely.
    اعرض الإجابة

    B. oriented according to a learned star pattern rather than an innate compass.

    "'oriented their migratory restlessness toward that false pole rather than true north, strong evidence that the star pattern itself, rather than any innate compass, was doing the work' (Section B)"

    ليش صحيح: إعادة صياغة مباشرة لنتيجة التجربة.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: A يناقض النص (الطيور توجهت نحو القطب الزائف)؛ C يخص طيورًا نهارية مختلفة؛ D يناقض النص مباشرة.

  2. 24Recent research into the magnetite hypothesis found that the structures once thought to detect magnetism were actually

    1. A. non-functional remnants of an earlier evolutionary stage.
    2. B. present only in species that do not migrate.
    3. C. iron-rich immune cells unrelated to navigation.
    4. D. located in the retina rather than the beak.
    اعرض الإجابة

    C. iron-rich immune cells unrelated to navigation.

    "'the structures once identified as magnetite-based sensors were in fact iron-rich immune cells unrelated to navigation' (Section C)"

    ليش صحيح: إعادة صياغة مباشرة لنتيجة الأبحاث الحديثة.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: A/B/D معلومات غير مذكورة في النص إطلاقًا.

  3. 25The passage indicates that disabling a homing pigeon's sense of smell

    1. A. has no measurable effect on its ability to find its way home.
    2. B. made the pigeon perform better than untreated birds.
    3. C. made it considerably harder for the pigeon to return home.
    4. D. proved conclusively that pigeons build an olfactory map.
    اعرض الإجابة

    C. made it considerably harder for the pigeon to return home.

    "'birds whose sense of smell had been temporarily disabled struggled considerably more than untreated birds to find their way back to a home loft' (Section D)"

    ليش صحيح: إعادة صياغة مباشرة.. تعطيل حاسة الشم صعّب العودة إلى الوكر.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: A وB يناقضان النص مباشرة؛ D مبالغة، فالنص يصف الأمر بأنه لا يزال محل جدل.

  4. 26The writer's overall argument in the final section is that

    1. A. magnetoreception has now been proven to be the only mechanism birds use.
    2. B. migratory birds most likely rely on several overlapping systems rather than one.
    3. C. olfactory navigation is now considered the primary mechanism.
    4. D. light pollution affects only one of a bird's navigational senses.
    اعرض الإجابة

    B. migratory birds most likely rely on several overlapping systems rather than one.

    "'Rather than relying on one dominant sense, migratory birds appear to draw on a redundant set of overlapping systems' (Section E)"

    ليش صحيح: إعادة صياغة مباشرة لحجة الكاتب الختامية.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: A وC يناقضان حجة الكاتب؛ D يناقض النص الذي يذكر تأثر أكثر من حاسة.

Passage 3: The Economics of Happiness Research

For most of the twentieth century, economists treated growth in national income as a reasonably faithful proxy for growth in human welfare: if a country's gross domestic product rose, the assumption ran, its citizens were, on average, becoming better off. That assumption came under sustained scrutiny in 1974, when the economist Richard Easterlin published a study comparing self-reported happiness with income across a range of countries and time periods. His central finding, since known as the Easterlin Paradox, complicated the tidy equation between money and wellbeing in a way that has shaped the field ever since.

The paradox has two distinct halves. Within any single country at a given moment, Easterlin found what economists had long expected: richer individuals reported higher levels of happiness than their poorer compatriots, a reasonably strong and consistent pattern. Yet when the comparison shifted to looking across countries, or tracking a single country's average happiness as its income grew over several decades, the expected relationship largely disappeared: nations that had grown considerably richer over time did not, on the whole, report correspondingly higher average happiness. Two explanations were offered for this apparent contradiction. The first pointed to relative income: people may judge their own wellbeing less by their absolute standard of living than by how it compares with a reference group of peers, so that a rising tide that lifts all boats leaves relative standing, and therefore reported happiness, largely unchanged. The second pointed to hedonic adaptation: individuals adjust psychologically to improved circumstances surprisingly quickly, so that a pay rise or a larger home delivers only a temporary lift in wellbeing before satisfaction settles back toward its previous baseline.

The paradox did not go unchallenged. In a widely cited reassessment published decades later, the economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers revisited the question using far larger and more complete cross-national datasets than had been available to Easterlin in 1974. Their analysis found a clear, statistically robust positive relationship between a country's income and its average reported happiness, both when comparing different countries at a single point in time and when tracking individual countries as their income changed over the years. Stevenson and Wolfers argued that the original paradox had rested, at least in part, on the limitations of the sparse and noisy survey data available at the time, rather than on any deep psychological ceiling on the benefits of rising income, though they stopped short of claiming the relative-income and adaptation explanations were wholly without merit.

Whatever the outcome of this technical dispute, the broader idea that subjective wellbeing deserves direct measurement, rather than being inferred solely from income statistics, has moved well beyond academic debate and into government policy. The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has tracked a Gross National Happiness index since the 1970s, explicitly positioning it alongside, rather than beneath, conventional economic indicators. The United Kingdom's Office for National Statistics has published regular national wellbeing measures since 2010, surveying citizens directly about life satisfaction, sense of purpose and daily emotional experience. Internationally, the OECD's Better Life Index combines such subjective self-reports with objective indicators such as housing, health and safety, explicitly framing the exercise as a corrective to any government that treats GDP growth as an end in itself rather than a means to broader human flourishing.

Such measures are not without serious methodological difficulties, and critics of the wellbeing agenda have been quick to point them out. Self-reported happiness scores are known to be sensitive to the precise wording of survey questions, to a respondent's mood at the moment of answering, and, more troublingly for cross-national comparison, to cultural norms that shape how comfortable people feel expressing either distress or contentment to a stranger with a clipboard. The adaptation problem raises a further, more unsettling concern: if people genuinely adjust their expectations downward in response to persistent disadvantage, their self-reported satisfaction may understate real suffering in exactly the populations that policy most needs to help, a risk that grows more serious the more heavily a government leans on subjective survey data to guide the allocation of scarce resources.

None of these objections, in this writer's view, amounts to a case for abandoning happiness research altogether; they argue instead for a measure of humility about what it can currently deliver. Subjective wellbeing indicators illuminate dimensions of a good life, purpose, social connection, day-to-day emotional experience, that GDP was never designed to capture and plainly cannot capture on its own. But given the genuine measurement difficulties that still surround self-reported happiness, it would be premature, and arguably reckless, to let such indicators displace conventional economic measures as the primary yardstick for policy. The more defensible course, at least for now, is to track both sets of indicators alongside one another, treating each as a partial and imperfect window onto a reality that neither, alone, is capable of fully describing.

hedonic adaptation:
the tendency to return to a stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative life changes
reference group:
a group of people against whom an individual compares their own circumstances or status

أسئلة النص 3

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3? Write YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer, NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer, NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this.

  1. 27Twentieth-century economists generally treated rising national income as a reliable proxy for rising human welfare.

    YES / NO / NOT GIVEN

    اعرض الإجابة

    YES

    "'economists treated growth in national income as a reasonably faithful proxy for growth in human welfare' (Paragraph 1)"

    ليش صحيح: إعادة صياغة مباشرة لرأي وصفه الكاتب.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: ليست NO لعدم وجود تناقض؛ وليست NOT GIVEN لأن الفكرة مذكورة بوضوح.

  2. 28Easterlin's original study found that, within a single country, richer individuals reported happiness similar to that of poorer individuals.

    YES / NO / NOT GIVEN

    اعرض الإجابة

    NO

    "'richer individuals reported higher levels of happiness than their poorer compatriots' (Paragraph 2)"

    ليش صحيح: النص يذكر أن الأثرياء أبلغوا عن سعادة أعلى، ما يناقض القول بتشابه المستويين.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: ليست YES بسبب التناقض المباشر؛ وليست NOT GIVEN لأن النتيجة مذكورة بوضوح.

  3. 29Stevenson and Wolfers found no significant relationship between a country's income and its average reported happiness.

    YES / NO / NOT GIVEN

    اعرض الإجابة

    NO

    "'Their analysis found a clear, statistically robust positive relationship between a country's income and its average reported happiness' (Paragraph 3)"

    ليش صحيح: النص يذكر علاقة إيجابية قوية وواضحة، ما يناقض القول بعدم وجود علاقة.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: ليست YES بسبب التناقض المباشر؛ وليست NOT GIVEN لأن النتيجة مذكورة بوضوح تام.

  4. 30The writer believes Bhutan's Gross National Happiness index has proven more accurate than the OECD's Better Life Index.

    YES / NO / NOT GIVEN

    اعرض الإجابة

    NOT GIVEN

    "مؤشرا بوتان ومنظمة التعاون الاقتصادي والتنمية مذكوران في الفقرة الرابعة دون أي مقارنة مباشرة بينهما."

    ليش صحيح: نقطة ارتكاز مجاورة.. كلا المؤشرين مذكوران، لكن أي حكم بدقة أحدهما غائب تمامًا.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: ليست YES لعدم وجود تصريح بالمقارنة؛ وليست NO لعدم وجود نفي لها أيضًا.

  5. 31Cultural differences in expressing emotion make cross-national comparison of happiness surveys more difficult.

    YES / NO / NOT GIVEN

    اعرض الإجابة

    YES

    "'more troublingly for cross-national comparison, to cultural norms that shape how comfortable people feel expressing either distress or contentment' (Paragraph 5)"

    ليش صحيح: إعادة صياغة مباشرة لأثر الفروق الثقافية على المقارنة.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: ليست NO لعدم وجود تناقض؛ وليست NOT GIVEN لأن الفكرة مذكورة بوضوح.

  6. 32The writer believes that self-reported happiness measures should immediately replace GDP as the primary policy metric.

    YES / NO / NOT GIVEN

    اعرض الإجابة

    NO

    "'it would be premature, and arguably reckless, to let such indicators displace conventional economic measures as the primary yardstick for policy' (Paragraph 6)"

    ليش صحيح: الكاتب يصف الاستبدال الفوري بأنه سابق لأوانه وغير حكيم.. عكس ما تدّعيه العبارة.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: ليست YES بسبب التناقض الصريح؛ وليست NOT GIVEN لأن رأيه مذكور بوضوح تام.

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below. Write the correct letter in boxes 33-36 on your answer sheet.

  • Ahow their circumstances compare with those of a reference group of peers.
  • Breturn psychologically to their previous baseline after a temporary improvement in circumstances.
  • Cthe limitations of the sparse and noisy survey data available in the 1970s.
  • Dtreat GDP growth as an end in itself rather than a means to broader flourishing.
  • Erely exclusively on subjective survey data to allocate scarce public resources.
  • Fcompare their own happiness only with their own past income levels.

  1. 33The relative-income explanation for the Easterlin Paradox suggests that people judge their wellbeing according to

    اعرض الإجابة

    A.. how their circumstances compare with those of a reference group of peers.

    "'people may judge their own wellbeing less by their absolute standard of living than by how it compares with a reference group of peers' (Paragraph 2)"

    ليش صحيح: إتمام مباشر مطابق حرفيًا لتفسير الدخل النسبي.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: F فخ قريب (مقارنة بالدخل الشخصي الماضي لا بمجموعة مرجعية)؛ B/C/D/E لا تتعلق بهذا التفسير.

  2. 34Hedonic adaptation refers to the tendency of individuals to

    اعرض الإجابة

    B.. return psychologically to their previous baseline after a temporary improvement in circumstances.

    "'individuals adjust psychologically to improved circumstances surprisingly quickly... satisfaction settles back toward its previous baseline' (Paragraph 2)"

    ليش صحيح: إتمام مباشر مطابق حرفيًا لتعريف التكيّف الشعوري.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: A تصف تفسير الدخل النسبي؛ C/D/E/F لا تتعلق بالتكيّف.

  3. 35Stevenson and Wolfers argued that the original paradox may have partly reflected

    اعرض الإجابة

    C.. the limitations of the sparse and noisy survey data available in the 1970s.

    "'the original paradox had rested, at least in part, on the limitations of the sparse and noisy survey data available at the time' (Paragraph 3)"

    ليش صحيح: إتمام مباشر مطابق حرفيًا لتفسير إعادة التحليل.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: E فخ لغوي (معلومة غير مذكورة عن اعتماد كامل على البيانات الذاتية)؛ A/B/D/F لا تتعلق بهذه النتيجة.

  4. 36The OECD's Better Life Index was designed to correct governments that

    اعرض الإجابة

    D.. treat GDP growth as an end in itself rather than a means to broader flourishing.

    "'explicitly framing the exercise as a corrective to any government that treats GDP growth as an end in itself rather than a means to broader human flourishing' (Paragraph 4)"

    ليش صحيح: إتمام مباشر مطابق حرفيًا لغرض المؤشر المعلن.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: E فخ لغوي من فقرة الانتقادات اللاحقة؛ A/B/C/F لا تتعلق بغرض المؤشر.

Complete the sentences below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Self-reported happiness scores are sensitive to the exact (37) ________ of survey questions.

If people adjust their expectations to persistent disadvantage, their self-reports may (38) ________ real suffering.

The writer argues that abandoning conventional economic measures in favour of happiness indicators would be premature and arguably (39) ________.

The writer recommends tracking both sets of indicators (40) ________ one another rather than letting one replace the other.

  1. 37Question 37

    اعرض الإجابة

    wording

    "'sensitive to the precise wording of survey questions' (Paragraph 5)"

    ليش صحيح: الكلمة الدقيقة المستخدمة حرفيًا لوصف العامل المؤثر.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: كلمات أخرى مثل 'phrasing' ليست الكلمة المستخدمة حرفيًا هنا.

  2. 38Question 38

    اعرض الإجابة

    understate

    "'their self-reported satisfaction may understate real suffering' (Paragraph 5)"

    ليش صحيح: الكلمة الدقيقة المستخدمة حرفيًا لوصف أثر التكيّف على دقة الاستبيانات.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: كلمات أخرى مثل 'hide' ليست الكلمة المستخدمة حرفيًا هنا.

  3. 39Question 39

    اعرض الإجابة

    reckless

    "'it would be premature, and arguably reckless, to let such indicators displace conventional economic measures' (Paragraph 6)"

    ليش صحيح: الكلمة الدقيقة المستخدمة حرفيًا لوصف موقف الكاتب.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: كلمات أخرى مثل 'risky' ليست الكلمة المستخدمة حرفيًا هنا.

  4. 40Question 40

    اعرض الإجابة

    alongside

    "'to track both sets of indicators alongside one another' (Paragraph 6)"

    ليش صحيح: الكلمة الدقيقة المستخدمة حرفيًا لوصف توصية الكاتب النهائية.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: كلمات أخرى مثل 'together' ليست الكلمة المستخدمة حرفيًا هنا.

الاستماع.. Listening

4 أجزاء و40 سؤالًا في 32 دقيقة تقريبًا. في الاختبار التفاعلي يُشغَّل الصوت مرة واحدة فقط.

ابدأ الاختبار التفاعلي بالوقت

Part 1

A customer phones Fairview Lawn Tennis Club to enquire about a Joint Membership for himself and his sister.

Example.. Membership type → Joint Membership

Complete the form below. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

Fairview Lawn Tennis Club.. Membership Enquiry Form

Membership type: Joint Membership (Example)

Customer's first name: (1) ________

Surname: (2) ________

Contact number: (3) ________

Start date: (4) ________

Number of members joining: (5) ________

Coaching levels needed: (6) ________

Collection point for pack: (7) ________

  1. 1Question 1

    اعرض الإجابة

    Ryan

    "Sure, it's Ryan."

    ليش صحيح: الاسم الأول مذكور بشكل واضح ومباشر مباشرة بعد سؤال المنسقة.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا يوجد خيارات أخرى في هذا السؤال (إكمال فراغ حر).

  2. 2Question 2

    اعرض الإجابة

    MacGregor

    "It's, um, MacGregor... M-A-C-G-R-E-G-O-R."

    ليش صحيح: الاسم يُهجّى حرفًا بحرف مع تأكيد المنسقة عليه.. علامة الإجابة المضمونة حسب تكنيكة 12.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل؛ يجب كتابة التهجئة الدقيقة كما سُمعت (MacGregor بكلمة واحدة).

  3. 3Question 3

    اعرض الإجابة

    07844 441988

    "it's oh-seven-eight-four-four, four-four-one, nine-eight-eight.. OK so that's 07844 441988?.. That's it."

    ليش صحيح: الرقم الثاني هو الرقم الصحيح والمؤكَّد من الطرفين.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: الرقم الأول (oh-seven-two-two...) فخ تصحيح فوري.. العميل يوقفه بنفسه قبل إكماله فهو غير صالح.

  4. 4Question 4

    اعرض الإجابة

    8th August / 8th of August / the 8th of August

    "the courts are being resurfaced that week... We've moved new starts to the 8th of August instead."

    ليش صحيح: هذا هو التاريخ النهائي بعد التصحيح.. فخ تغيير الرأي.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: the 1st of August هو التاريخ الأول الذي تم إلغاؤه صراحة بسبب أعمال رصف الملاعب.

  5. 5Question 5

    اعرض الإجابة

    two / 2

    "Just two of us.. me and my sister... Two members, noted."

    ليش صحيح: مؤكَّد مرتين بشكل مباشر.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل.

  6. 6Question 6

    اعرض الإجابة

    beginner and intermediate / intermediate and beginner

    "she'll need intermediate coaching... beginner's more my level... one beginner and one intermediate, got that down."

    ليش صحيح: المستويان مذكوران ومؤكَّدان معًا في جملة المنسقة الختامية؛ الترتيب بينهما غير مهم فيُقبل بأي ترتيب.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل غير هذين المستويين؛ ذكر مستوى واحد فقط يكون إجابة ناقصة.

  7. 7Question 7

    اعرض الإجابة

    Riverside Centre / Riverside Center

    "collect it from the desk at the Riverside Centre.. collect from the Riverside Centre."

    ليش صحيح: هذا هو المكان الذي اتفق عليه الطرفان فعليًا، وهو ضمن حد الثلاث كلمات المسموح به؛ تُقبل التهجئة البريطانية (Centre) والأمريكية (Center) لنفس الكلمة.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل أخرى مذكورة كمكان استلام الحزمة.

Choose the correct letter, A, B or C.

  1. 8What is the total price Ryan will pay per person, including the coaching package?

    1. A. £120
    2. B. £165
    3. C. £210
    اعرض الإجابة

    B. £165

    "the standard Joint Membership rate is 120 pounds... an extra 45 pounds per person, per year.. that's the standard rate plus the coaching package for both of you, then.. the standard-plus-coaching option sounds perfect for us, we don't need all that."

    ليش صحيح: الرقم النهائي (165) غير مسموع في الصوت إطلاقًا.. يُحسب من جمع السعرين المذكورين صراحة (120 + 45 = 165)، وقد طلب العميل الباقة فعليًا وأكّد صراحة رفضه للباقة الأغلى؛ فخ حسابي حقيقي لأن أحدًا لا يذكر الرقم 165.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: A (120) هو السعر الأساسي فقط دون باقة التدريب؛ C (210) هو سعر باقة Premium المذكورة صراحة في الصوت لكن العميل يرفضها بوضوح.

  2. 9What will the club do if a court is closed for maintenance at short notice?

    1. A. Credit the member for another session
    2. B. Refund the booking
    3. C. Move the member to the next available court at the same time
    اعرض الإجابة

    C. Move the member to the next available court at the same time

    "move you to the next available court at the same time.. most members actually prefer to just switch courts straightaway... that's become our standard policy for short-notice closures."

    ليش صحيح: هذه هي السياسة المعلنة صراحة للإغلاق قصير المدى.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: A وB مذكوران كخيارات متاحة لكن يُستبعدان لأن المنسقة تحدد أن الخيار الفعلي المعتمد هو C؛ الاسترداد الكامل يُستخدم فقط للإغلاقات الأطول.

  3. 10How much deposit does the club ask new members to pay in advance?

    1. A. The full membership fee
    2. B. £20
    3. C. No deposit is required
    اعرض الإجابة

    B. £20

    "We take 20 pounds now by card, and the rest is paid at the desk on your first visit."

    ليش صحيح: هذا هو مبلغ العربون الفعلي المطلوب من العميل.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: A وC ممارسات تتبعها أندية أخرى وتم استبعادهما صراحة (but we found the small deposit works best for us).

نص الاستماع (Transcript).. Part 1

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): Good afternoon, Fairview Lawn Tennis Club, this is Sophie speaking, how can I help you?

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): Hi there, yes, um, I'd like to find out about joining the club, if that's alright.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): Of course! We've actually got a couple of different membership options running at the moment. Did you have one in mind?

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): I saw online there's a Joint Membership for two people.. that's the one I'm interested in.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): Perfect, that's one of our most popular options. Right, let me just pull up the membership form here… OK, could I take your first name, please?

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): Sure, it's Ryan.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): Lovely, and your surname?

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): It's, um, MacGregor.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): Sorry, could you spell that for me?

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): Yeah, no problem.. it's M-A-C-G-R-E-G-O-R.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): M-A-C-G-R-E-G-O-R… is that "Mac" all one word, capital G for Gregor?

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): That's right, one word, capital G.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): Great, got it.. Ryan MacGregor. And could I get a contact number, in case we need to reach you?

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): Yeah, it's oh-seven-two-two... actually, hang on, let me give you my other one, the one I actually answer.. it's oh-seven-eight-four-four, four-four-one, nine-eight-eight.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): OK so that's 07844 441988?

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): That's it.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): Great. Now, for the start date.. new joint memberships usually begin on the first of the month. Did you have a preference?

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): The first of next month would be great actually, so, um, let's say the 1st of August.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): Right, so I'll pencil you in for the 1st of August... actually, hold on, sorry, I've just seen a note here.. the courts are being resurfaced that week, so all new memberships starting then have been pushed back. We've moved new starts to the 8th of August instead. Would that work for you?

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): Oh.. yeah, the 8th is fine too, that works.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): Brilliant, I'll put you down for the 8th of August, then. And how many people will be joining altogether?

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): Just two of us.. me and my sister.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): Two members, noted. Now I'll need to sort out coaching levels.. are you both around the same standard?

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): Not really, she's played for years, so she'll need intermediate coaching. I've barely picked up a racket, so beginner's more my level.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): OK, one beginner and one intermediate, got that down. And where would you like to collect your membership pack?

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): Wherever's easiest, honestly.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): Most new members collect it from the desk at the Riverside Centre.. that's usually the easiest spot.

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): That sounds perfect, let's do that.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): Great, I've written "collect from the Riverside Centre."

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): Now, let's talk price. The standard Joint Membership rate is 120 pounds per year, per person.

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): OK.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): That includes court access and equipment storage, but if you'd like the group coaching package added on, that's an extra 45 pounds per person, per year.

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): Oh, yeah, we'd love that actually, we both want proper lessons.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): Great, so that's the standard rate plus the coaching package for both of you, then.

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): Got it, so the standard rate plus the coaching package.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): We also do a Premium package with one-to-one private lessons, but that one comes to 210 pounds per person.. probably more than you need to start with.

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): Oh, no, the standard-plus-coaching option sounds perfect for us, we don't need all that.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): Now, just a couple of quick questions before I finish the sign-up. If a court happens to be closed for maintenance on a day you've booked, we have three options. We can either credit you for another session, refund the booking, or move you to the next available court at the same time.. most members actually prefer to just switch courts straightaway rather than wait around, so that's become our standard policy for short-notice closures. For longer closures we'd offer a full refund automatically.

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): OK, sounds good.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): And there's also a small deposit to secure your membership. We take 20 pounds now by card, and the rest is paid at the desk on your first visit. Some clubs ask for the full amount upfront, or take no deposit at all, but we found the small deposit works best for us.. it's just enough to make sure people follow through.

Customer (Ryan MacGregor): Makes sense, I'll pay it now then.

Membership Coordinator (Sophie): Lovely, let me just take your card details…

Part 2

The volunteer coordinator of Northbridge Community Food Bank gives an induction talk about the expanded facility and then announces the weekly shift schedule.

Complete the notes below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

Northbridge Community Food Bank.. Induction Notes

Facility

Weekly food distributed increased from 2 tonnes to (11) ________ tonnes

New (12) ________ storage unit added, separated by a plastic curtain

Sorting Area

Expanded into the former (13) ________ workshop

New conveyor belt: now handles up to (14) ________ kilos per hour

Loading

Both (15) ________ resurfaced

Old staff car park converted into a (16) ________

Break Room

Relocated to a space overlooking the (17) ________

  1. 11Question 11

    اعرض الإجابة

    five / 5

    "weekly food distributed has gone up from two tonnes to five tonnes, so it's now a proper five-tonne operation each week."

    ليش صحيح: الرقم الجديد مذكور صراحة ومكرر مرتين.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل؛ 2 هو الرقم القديم فقط.

  2. 12Question 12

    اعرض الإجابة

    refrigerated

    "We've also added a refrigerated storage unit right next to the main warehouse."

    ليش صحيح: هذه هي الصفة المستخدمة مباشرة لوصف الوحدة الجديدة.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل أخرى مذكورة لهذا النوع من التخزين.

  3. 13Question 13

    اعرض الإجابة

    printing

    "We've knocked through into the old printing workshop next door."

    ليش صحيح: هذه هي الورشة التي تم ضمها لتوسعة منطقة الفرز.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل مذكورة لهذا التوسع بالذات.

  4. 14Question 14

    اعرض الإجابة

    five hundred / 500

    "a proper conveyor belt system that can handle up to five hundred kilos an hour now, whereas before we could only manage around two hundred."

    ليش صحيح: هذا هو الرقم الأقصى الجديد.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: two hundred هو الرقم القديم قبل التوسعة.. فخ رقمي مباشر.

  5. 15Question 15

    اعرض الإجابة

    loading bays

    "we've resurfaced both loading bays."

    ليش صحيح: هذا هو الجزء الذي أُعيد رصفه، مذكور صراحة.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل.

  6. 16Question 16

    اعرض الإجابة

    collection point

    "we converted the old staff car park into a collection point."

    ليش صحيح: هذا هو الاسم المُعطى للمكان الجديد.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: staff car park هو الاستخدام القديم قبل التحويل، وليس الإجابة المطلوبة.

  7. 17Question 17

    اعرض الإجابة

    warehouse / warehouse floor

    "it's got its own space overlooking the warehouse floor."

    ليش صحيح: هذا هو المكان الذي أصبح غرفة الاستراحة تطل عليه بعد النقل.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: the office هو الموقع القديم الذي انتقلت منه الغرفة، وليس موقعها الحالي.

Complete the table below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

Morning SortingMonday9 amPriya(18) ________
Afternoon DeliveryWednesday1 pmMarcusLoading vans
Evening PackingFriday(19) ________(20) ________Packing food parcels

  1. 18Question 18

    اعرض الإجابة

    sorting donations

    "you'll mostly be sorting donations into categories."

    ليش صحيح: هذه هي المهمة المذكورة صراحة لوردية الفرز الصباحية.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: loading vans مهمة الوردية المختلفة (Afternoon Delivery)، مذكورة مسبقًا في الجدول لصف آخر.

  2. 19Question 19

    اعرض الإجابة

    7 pm / seven pm

    "that runs on Fridays at six in the evening.. actually, sorry, that's changed too, it's been moved to seven in the evening now."

    ليش صحيح: هذا هو الوقت الحالي والمصحَّح بعد أن صحّح المنسق نفسه فورًا.. فخ تغيير الرأي.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: six in the evening هو الوقت القديم الذي صرّح المنسق بأنه تغيّر.

  3. 20Question 20

    اعرض الإجابة

    Grace

    "It's supervised by Grace."

    ليش صحيح: هذا هو اسم المشرفة على وردية التعبئة المسائية.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: Priya و Marcus مشرفان لورديتين أخريين وليس لهذه الوردية.

نص الاستماع (Transcript).. Part 2

Volunteer Coordinator (Liam): Morning everyone, thanks for coming along today. I'm Liam, I'm the volunteer coordinator here at Northbridge Community Food Bank, and I just wanted to run you through everything before your first shift.

Volunteer Coordinator (Liam): So, let's start with a bit about the food bank itself. We've actually just finished a big expansion, and weekly food distributed has gone up from two tonnes to five tonnes, so it's now a proper five-tonne operation each week, which means we can support a lot more local families. We've also added a refrigerated storage unit right next to the main warehouse, separated by a plastic curtain, so, um, we can now take in fresh produce and dairy, not just tinned and dried goods, which has made a big difference.

Volunteer Coordinator (Liam): Now, the sorting area.. that's had probably the biggest change. We've knocked through into the old printing workshop next door and basically doubled the floor space. All the shelving is brand new, and, this is the bit new volunteers ask about most, we've added a proper conveyor belt system that can handle up to five hundred kilos an hour now, whereas before we could only manage around two hundred.

Volunteer Coordinator (Liam): Moving on to the loading area.. we've resurfaced both loading bays, and, actually, we converted the old staff car park into a collection point, so now donors can drive straight up and drop parcels off without coming inside at all. That's proved really popular with local supermarkets.

Volunteer Coordinator (Liam): One more thing before I move on to the shift schedule.. the volunteer break room. It's been relocated. It used to be tucked away near the office, but now it's got its own space overlooking the warehouse floor, so you can actually sit and watch the sorting happen while you have a cup of tea, which is nice.

Volunteer Coordinator (Liam): Right, now let's talk about the shift schedule, because that's changed quite a bit too.

Volunteer Coordinator (Liam): Right, we'll start with the Morning Sorting shift. That runs on Mondays at nine in the morning, and it's supervised by Priya.. you'll mostly be sorting donations into categories.

Volunteer Coordinator (Liam): Next we've got the Afternoon Delivery shift, that's on Wednesdays at one in the afternoon, supervised by Marcus, and that one's mainly loading vans for local deliveries.

Volunteer Coordinator (Liam): Then there's the Evening Packing shift, for making up the food parcels, that runs on Fridays at six in the evening.. actually, sorry, that's changed too, it's been moved to seven in the evening now, to fit around most people's work hours. It's supervised by Grace, and it's all about packing food parcels ready for collection.

Volunteer Coordinator (Liam): That's everything for today.. if anyone has questions about rotas or swapping shifts, please do come and see me at the office afterwards.

Part 3

Two business students, James and Freya, discuss the methods they will use for their case-study presentation on the CityCycle bicycle-sharing scheme.

What did the students decide about each research method below? Choose the correct letter, A, B or C, next to Questions 21–25. You may choose any letter more than once.

  • AWill be used in full, without piloting first
  • BWill be tested first as a pilot
  • CWill not be used

  1. 21Online user survey

    اعرض الإجابة

    A.. Will be used in full, without piloting first

    "I think we should just go ahead and use it as our main source... no need to test it first."

    ليش صحيح: كلا الطالبين يتفقان صراحة على استخدامه كمصدر رئيسي مباشرة دون تجربة أولية.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: B مستبعد لأن Freya تنص صراحة (no need to test it first)؛ C غير منطقي لأنهما اتفقا على استخدامه فعليًا.

  2. 22Staff interviews

    اعرض الإجابة

    B.. Will be tested first as a pilot

    "let's pilot that one on a smaller scale first.. so that's a pilot then, not the full study yet."

    ليش صحيح: القرار النهائي بعد التردد الأولي هو التجربة على نطاق صغير أولًا.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: A مستبعد لأن فريا توضح صراحة (not the full study yet)؛ C مستبعد لأنهما لم يقررا استبعادها بل تأجيل استخدامها الكامل فقط.

  3. 23Financial report analysis

    اعرض الإجابة

    C.. Will not be used

    "let's just drop it, it doesn't really fit our research question.. so the financial reports are out."

    ليش صحيح: القرار النهائي الصريح هو التخلي عن هذه الطريقة تمامًا.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: A وB مستبعدان لأن جيمس يغيّر رأيه من الإعجاب الأولي إلى الرفض الكامل.. فخ تغيير الرأي.

  4. 24Competitor benchmarking

    اعرض الإجابة

    A.. Will be used in full, without piloting first

    "let's commit to doing it properly... let's put that in as one of our main methods."

    ليش صحيح: كلا الطالبين يلتزمان صراحة باستخدامها كإحدى الطرق الرئيسية رغم التردد الأولي.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: B مستبعد لأنها وُصفت بـ(one of our main methods) وليس تجربة أولية؛ C مستبعد لأنهما يقرران المضي بها.

  5. 25Social media sentiment analysis

    اعرض الإجابة

    C.. Will not be used

    "we ended up deciding against it... we're not going ahead with that one at all."

    ليش صحيح: قرار صريح ونهائي باستبعادها تمامًا.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: A وB مستبعدان لأن (not going ahead with that one at all) تنفي أي استخدام حتى كتجربة أولية.

Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

The students are aiming to collect at least (26) ________ responses to the user survey.

The pilot interviews will take place (27) ________.

The students will conduct their interviews outside (28) ________.

James predicts that (29) ________ will be the strongest influence on a scheme's profitability.

The students' presentation is being supervised by (30) ________.

  1. 26Question 26

    اعرض الإجابة

    150 / one hundred and fifty

    "We're aiming for at least 150 responses for the user survey."

    ليش صحيح: الرقم مذكور صراحة كهدف عدد الردود.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل.

  2. 27Question 27

    اعرض الإجابة

    next week

    "We're planning to run the staff pilot interviews next week."

    ليش صحيح: التوقيت مذكور صراحة للمقابلات التجريبية تحديدًا.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: the following two weeks تخص أبحاث المقارنة الكاملة، وليس التجربة الأولية.

  3. 28Question 28

    اعرض الإجابة

    Eastgate Depot

    "We've got permission to talk to staff outside the Eastgate Depot, the scheme's main depot on the east side of town."

    ليش صحيح: اسم المستودع مذكور صراحة كموقع إجراء المقابلات.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل؛ the east side of town وصف عام للموقع وليس اسم المكان المطلوب.

  4. 29Question 29

    اعرض الإجابة

    station coverage

    "I think station coverage, so basically how many docking stations there are, will turn out to be the strongest factor, more than pricing."

    ليش صحيح: هذا هو العامل الذي يتوقع جيمس أنه الأقوى تأثيرًا.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: membership pricing و bike availability عوامل ضمن سؤال البحث وليست الفرضية المطلوبة.

  5. 30Question 30

    اعرض الإجابة

    Dr Whitmore / Dr. Whitmore / Whitmore

    "That's Dr. Whitmore in the business school, she's already reviewed our proposal."

    ليش صحيح: الاسم مذكور صراحة كمسؤولة الإشراف على العرض التقديمي.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل.

نص الاستماع (Transcript).. Part 3

Student (James): OK, so we need to sort out our methods for the case study before Thursday's meeting. We're looking at the CityCycle bike-sharing scheme, right?

Student (Freya): Yeah, specifically how well it's actually performing compared to the business plan they published.

Student (James): Right. So what sources were we thinking of using to build our analysis?

Student (Freya): Well, our first idea was an online survey of scheme users, sent out through, um, the scheme's own app and social media.

Student (James): OK, and how do you feel about that one?

Student (Freya): I mean, I'm pretty confident about it.. I think we should just go ahead and use it as our main source, it's quick to set up and we can get a big sample.

Student (James): Yeah, I agree, let's use that one properly, no need to test it first.

Student (Freya): Sounds decided then. What else did we list?

Student (James): We also talked about interviewing scheme staff, actually going down to the depot and talking to the people who manage the bikes.

Student (Freya): Hmm, I'm honestly not sure about that one. I worry the staff won't want to talk to students they've never met.

Student (James): That's a fair concern.

Student (Freya): Maybe we should just try it with one or two staff first, see how it goes, before committing to it properly.

Student (James): Yeah, actually, that makes sense.. let's pilot that one on a smaller scale first.

Student (Freya): OK, good, so that's a pilot then, not the full study yet. What about the financial report analysis you mentioned?

Student (James): Right, the idea was to go through the parent company's published accounts to see how profitable the scheme actually is.

Student (Freya): I did like that idea at first, but, actually, thinking about it more, I don't think it tells us anything about how PEOPLE actually use the bikes, only the company's overall numbers.

Student (James): Yeah, I'm with you on that one now.. let's just drop it, it doesn't really fit our research question.

Student (Freya): OK, so the financial reports are out. Anything else on our list?

Student (James): We were also considering competitor benchmarking, comparing CityCycle against similar schemes in two or three other cities.

Student (Freya): And how confident are we about that one?

Student (James): I'll admit I was hesitant to start with, but after our last meeting I think we're both on board.. let's commit to doing it properly, it should give us some really useful context.

Student (Freya): Yeah, definitely, let's put that in as one of our main methods.

Student (James): Great, and finally we talked about a social media sentiment analysis.

Student (Freya): Oh.. right, yeah, we did think about that, but, honestly, we ended up deciding against it. The posts are too random and don't really tell us anything reliable.

Student (James): Yeah, we're not going ahead with that one at all.

Student (Freya): OK, that all sounds like a solid plan.

Student (Freya): Now let's think about the practical details.. sample size, timing, that kind of thing.

Student (James): We're aiming for at least 150 responses for the user survey, since that should give us a decent statistical sample.

Student (Freya): Good number. And what about our timeline?

Student (James): We're planning to run the staff pilot interviews next week, and then the full benchmarking research the following two weeks after that.

Student (Freya): And where will we actually be doing the staff interviews?

Student (James): We've got permission to talk to staff outside the Eastgate Depot, the scheme's main depot on the east side of town.. the manager was actually really supportive when we called.

Student (Freya): That's great access to have. Now, in terms of writing it up, what's our main research question again?

Student (James): We want to find out what most influences whether a bike-sharing scheme becomes profitable.. so things like membership pricing, station coverage, or bike availability.

Student (Freya): And do we have a hypothesis already?

Student (James): I think station coverage, so basically how many docking stations there are, will turn out to be the strongest factor, more than pricing.

Student (Freya): Interesting prediction.. we'll see if the data supports that. One last thing.. who's supervising our presentation?

Student (James): That's Dr. Whitmore in the business school, she's already reviewed our proposal.

Part 4

A university lecturer introduces the strategies, challenges and yearly survival cycle of desert plant adaptation.

Answer the questions below. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

  1. 31From approximately what year did understanding of desert plant water chemistry begin to advance significantly?

    اعرض الإجابة

    1975

    "our understanding of the underlying chemistry really only advanced significantly from around 1975 onwards."

    ليش صحيح: السنة مذكورة صراحة كنقطة انطلاق التقدم العلمي.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل رقمية أخرى مذكورة في هذا السياق.

  2. 32What do desert plants often have thicker than plants in wetter climates?

    اعرض الإجابة

    cuticles / waxy cuticles

    "desert plants often have much thicker waxy cuticles than plants in wetter climates."

    ليش صحيح: هذه هي المقارنة الصريحة بين نباتات الصحراء ونباتات المناخات الأكثر رطوبة؛ waxy صفة اختيارية.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل؛ لم يُذكر أي جزء آخر من النبات في سياق هذه المقارنة.

  3. 33What is the common minimum distance sensors must be placed from a plant's stem when measuring water loss?

    اعرض الإجابة

    half a metre / 0.5 metre / half a meter / 0.5 meter

    "sensors buried at a minimum distance from the plant's stem.. commonly around half a metre."

    ليش صحيح: المسافة مذكورة صراحة كحد أدنى شائع؛ تُقبل التهجئة البريطانية (metre) والأمريكية (meter).

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل رقمية أخرى مذكورة لهذا الشرط.

  4. 34How often do researchers typically need to take measurements in desert conditions?

    اعرض الإجابة

    hourly

    "researchers usually need to take measurements more frequently than in other environments.. often, hourly rather than daily."

    ليش صحيح: هذا هو المعدل الفعلي الموصى به.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: daily هو المعدل الأقل تكرارًا المستبعد صراحة بعبارة (rather than).

  5. 35What do some cosmetics companies advertise on their packaging as a result of using desert plant extracts?

    اعرض الإجابة

    desert-derived ingredients

    "they can then advertise their own "desert-derived" ingredients on the packaging, which customers respond well to."

    ليش صحيح: هذه هي العبارة الدقيقة المُعلن عنها على العبوات.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل.

Complete the notes below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer.

Desert Shrub.. Yearly Survival Cycle

Early dry season: (36) ________.. cutting down on water loss

Onset of rains: (37) ________.. reproducing quickly before conditions dry out again

Peak growing season: main activity is (38) ________

Late dry season: (39) ________.. shutting down growth and metabolic activity

Case study region: (40) ________, home to specially adapted plant species

  1. 36Question 36

    اعرض الإجابة

    leaf shedding

    "In the early dry season, the main response is what's called leaf shedding, cutting down on water loss."

    ليش صحيح: هذا هو الاسم الرسمي للاستجابة المذكورة صراحة لبداية الموسم الجاف.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل.

  2. 37Question 37

    اعرض الإجابة

    rapid flowering

    "Once the rains begin, the plant shifts to what's called rapid flowering, reproducing quickly before conditions dry out again."

    ليش صحيح: هذا هو المصطلح الدقيق المستخدم لاستجابة النبات عند بداية الأمطار.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل.

  3. 38Question 38

    اعرض الإجابة

    water storage

    "During the peak growing season, the main activity becomes water storage, and this is usually when the plant builds up its reserves for the months ahead."

    ليش صحيح: هذا هو النشاط الرئيسي المذكور صراحة لموسم النمو الأعلى.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل.

  4. 39Question 39

    اعرض الإجابة

    dormancy

    "the final major stage is what's called dormancy, which involves shutting down growth and metabolic activity."

    ليش صحيح: هذا هو الاسم الرسمي للمرحلة المرتبطة بتوقف النمو في الموسم الجاف المتأخر.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل.

  5. 40Question 40

    اعرض الإجابة

    Namib Desert

    "the Namib Desert is often cited as a leading example of extreme plant adaptation... researchers there actively study the region through internationally funded field stations."

    ليش صحيح: المنطقة مذكورة صراحة كدراسة الحالة المذكورة.

    ليش الباقي خطأ: لا بدائل؛ لم تُذكر أي منطقة أخرى كمثال في هذا السياق.

نص الاستماع (Transcript).. Part 4

Lecturer: Good afternoon, everyone. Today I want to talk about a topic that's fascinated botanists for well over a century: how desert plants survive extreme conditions. That is, the various strategies plants use to cope with intense heat, very little rainfall, and huge swings in temperature between day and night.

Lecturer: Let's start with a bit of background. Scientists have studied these adaptations for a long time, but our understanding of the underlying chemistry really only advanced significantly from around 1975 onwards, when researchers began using more detailed lab techniques to study exactly how these plants manage water at a cellular level.

Lecturer: So, what are the main strategies desert plants use? Well, there are several, and I'll go through the main ones. First, water storage.. many desert plants, especially cacti, store large amounts of water in thick, fleshy stems, which lets them survive months without rain. Second, there's a structural adaptation.. desert plants often have much thicker waxy cuticles than plants in wetter climates, because a thicker cuticle dramatically reduces the amount of water lost through the plant's surface. And third, there's a behavioural strategy some plants use called CAM photosynthesis.. instead of opening their pores, called stomata, during the day like most plants, these desert species open them at night, when it's cooler and less water evaporates.

Lecturer: Now, of course, surviving isn't the only challenge, and I want to spend some time on the difficulties researchers face when studying these plants. The first major challenge is root access. Desert plants often need extremely deep root systems to reach underground water, and some species need roots reaching down at least ten metres to find any moisture at all.

Lecturer: The second challenge is measurement. Even with modern equipment, it's still genuinely difficult to measure exact water loss in real desert conditions, and some studies require sensors buried at a minimum distance from the plant's stem.. commonly around half a metre, although this varies a lot by species.

Lecturer: Third, there's the issue of temperature extremes. Because desert surface temperatures can shift dramatically between day and night, researchers usually need to take measurements more frequently than in other environments.. often, hourly rather than daily.

Lecturer: Fourth.. and this is one people don't always expect.. there's a commercial benefit. A number of cosmetics companies have started using extracts from desert succulents specifically because they can then advertise their own "desert-derived" ingredients on the packaging, which customers respond well to.

Lecturer: Now let's look at how a typical desert shrub manages its survival across the year. In the early dry season, the main response is what's called leaf shedding, cutting down on water loss. Once the rains begin, the plant shifts to what's called rapid flowering, reproducing quickly before conditions dry out again. During the peak growing season, the main activity becomes water storage, and this is usually when the plant builds up its reserves for the months ahead. And then, going into the late dry season, the final major stage is what's called dormancy, which involves shutting down growth and metabolic activity until conditions improve.

Lecturer: Finally, let's talk about a case study.. the Namib Desert is often cited as a leading example of extreme plant adaptation. The Namib is home to several hundred specially adapted plant species, and researchers there actively study the region through internationally funded field stations.

Lecturer: That brings us to the end of today's lecture.. next week we'll look at animal adaptations in the same environments.

الكتابة.. Writing

مهمتان في 60 دقيقة: Task 1 (20 دقيقة، 150 كلمة على الأقل) وTask 2 (40 دقيقة، 250 كلمة على الأقل).

ابدأ الاختبار التفاعلي بالوقت

Writing Task 1

The table below shows the number of international tourist arrivals (in millions) to five countries in 2000, 2010 and 2020. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words.

International tourist arrivals (millions), 2000-2020 (millions of arrivals)
200020102020
France777738
Spain475319
United States516019
China315626
Thailand10167
اعرض الإجابة النموذجية (Band 9)

The table shows how many international tourists (in millions) visited France, Spain, the United States, China and Thailand in 2000, 2010 and 2020. Overall, arrivals in all five countries rose or held steady between 2000 and 2010 before falling dramatically by 2020, a pattern consistent across every destination in the table. France attracted the largest number of tourists throughout the whole period, while China recorded the fastest growth of any country in the first decade shown. In 2000, France was the clear leader with 77 million arrivals, roughly two-and-a-half times the figure for China, which had received 31 million. The United States and Spain occupied the middle ground, with 51 million and 47 million respectively, while Thailand trailed at just 10 million, the lowest total of the five. Over the following decade, most countries saw moderate to strong growth: China's arrivals climbed to 56 million, an increase of over 80%, and the United States rose to 60 million, whereas France's total remained completely unchanged at 77 million. By 2020, every country in the table experienced a steep decline, with the United States and Spain falling to roughly a third of their 2010 levels, while the other three countries fell to around half. France still topped the table with 38 million arrivals despite the drop, whereas Spain and the United States converged at a near-identical 19 million each. Thailand, which had reached 16 million in 2010, fell back to just 7 million, close to its 2000 level, making it the smallest market throughout the period shown.

TA (Band 9): key features are fully covered and clearly highlighted - the response selects exactly the two data-licensed features (the shared 2020 collapse + France's sustained lead / China's fastest growth) and every comparative claim is supported using figures/data, staying inside the given data with no invented causes. CC (Band 9): four functionally distinct paragraphs give clear progression throughout, with varied cohesive devices (whereas, while, over the following decade, by 2020) replacing mechanical sequencers. LR (Band 9): precise, varied trend and comparison vocabulary (climbed, trailed, converged, fell back, steep decline) used with sophisticated control and no propagated template slips. GRA (Band 9): tense matches the table's time frame throughout (simple past for dated points), with a wide range of structures - comparative and relative clauses, subordination - used with full flexibility and control.

قائمة الفحص للتقييم الذاتي
  • TAهل بدأت بفقرة overview منفصلة تلخص أبرز نمط عام وأبرز فرق بدون أرقام تفصيلية فيها؟
  • TAهل كل جملة مقارنة في تقريري مدعومة برقم فعلي من الجدول؟
  • TAهل تجنبت تخمين سبب ارتفاع أو انخفاض الأرقام (مثل جائحة أو سياسة) لأنه غير مذكور في الجدول؟
  • GRAهل استخدمت الزمن المناسب لكل فترة (ماضي بسيط للأحداث المكتملة)؟
  • CCهل نوّعت أدوات الربط ولم أكرر نفس الكلمة (Firstly/So/Also) في كل فقرة؟
  • TAهل عدد كلماتي 150 كلمة على الأقل بدون حشو أو تكرار غير مفيد؟
  • TAهل وصفت فقط أبرز 2-3 دول/سمات بدلاً من سرد كل رقم في الجدول؟
  • LRهل نوّعت مفردات المقارنة والاتجاه (fell/declined/dropped مقابل rose/climbed) بدل تكرار نفس الفعل في كل جملة؟

Writing Task 2

Write about the following topic: Traffic congestion is becoming a serious problem in many large cities around the world. What problems does traffic congestion cause, and what measures could be taken to reduce it? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.

اعرض الإجابة النموذجية (Band 9)

In cities across the world, traffic congestion has grown from an occasional inconvenience into a chronic problem affecting millions of commuters every day. This essay will outline the main problems caused by heavy traffic and then propose several measures that could realistically reduce it. The most immediate consequence of congestion is lost time and reduced productivity: workers who spend an hour or more each day sitting in stationary traffic have less time for their families, their health and their jobs, and the cumulative economic cost to a city can run into billions of pounds annually through delayed deliveries and missed appointments. A second, equally serious problem is environmental damage. Idling engines burn fuel far less efficiently than moving ones, so congested roads produce disproportionately high levels of exhaust emissions, worsening urban air quality and contributing to respiratory illness among residents who live near major routes. There is also a safety dimension, since frustrated drivers in slow-moving traffic are more prone to risky manoeuvres such as sudden lane changes, which increases the likelihood of collisions. Several measures could meaningfully ease this pressure. Firstly, expanding and subsidising public transport - more frequent buses, extended underground lines and dedicated bus lanes - gives commuters a genuinely faster alternative to driving, which is the single most effective way to shift demand away from private cars. Secondly, congestion charging, of the kind introduced in central London, discourages unnecessary car journeys into the busiest districts by attaching a direct financial cost to them, and the revenue raised can be reinvested in public transport infrastructure. Thirdly, encouraging remote and flexible working arrangements, an option that expanded considerably in the past decade, reduces the number of vehicles on the road during peak commuting hours in the first place. In conclusion, while traffic congestion imposes serious economic, environmental and safety costs on large cities, a combination of stronger public transport, targeted charging schemes and flexible working could substantially relieve the problem.

TR (Band 9): both parts of the two-part prompt (problems AND measures) are addressed fully and separately, matching the official function outline a problem and present a solution; ideas are relevant, fully extended and well supported with concrete mechanisms and examples (London's congestion charge, idling-engine emissions), avoiding the Band-6 cap of unevenly covered prompt parts. CC (Band 9): five single-function paragraphs give clear overall progression, internally organised with genuine logical-shift devices (A second problem, There is also, Firstly, Secondly, Thirdly), avoiding the Band-6 cap of illogical paragraphing. LR (Band 9): sophisticated, precise, un-repeated vocabulary (stationary traffic, idling engines, respiratory illness, risky manoeuvres) used with precision. GRA (Band 9): a wide range of complex structures - causal subordination, a non-defining relative clause, a superlative-plus-relative construction - used with full flexibility and control and essentially error-free.

قائمة الفحص للتقييم الذاتي
  • TRهل تناولت الجزأين معاً (المشاكل والحلول) بشكل كامل ومتوازن وليس جزءاً واحداً فقط؟
  • TRهل كل مشكلة وكل حل مدعوم بمثال أو تفصيل حقيقي وليس جملة عامة فقط؟
  • CCهل بدأت كل فقرة بجملة موضوع (topic sentence) واضحة؟
  • CCهل فصلت فقرة المشاكل عن فقرة الحلول بوضوح؟
  • LRهل تجنبت تكرار نفس الكلمة (مثل traffic أو congestion) بدون بدائل؟
  • GRAهل استخدمت جملاً معقدة متنوعة (وصلية، شرطية) وليس فقط جملاً بسيطة متتالية؟
  • TRهل عدد كلماتي 250 كلمة على الأقل بدون نسخ عبارات من نص السؤال؟
  • CCهل خاتمتي تلخص المشاكل والحلول معاً بوضوح دون تكرار حرفي للمقدمة؟

المحادثة.. Speaking

3 أجزاء في 14 دقيقة تقريبًا.

ابدأ الاختبار التفاعلي بالوقت

Part 1 (4-5 min)

Let's talk about food and cooking.

  • Do you enjoy cooking?
  • What kind of food do you usually eat at home?
  • Is cooking something people in your family do together? (Why?)
  • Did you learn to cook as a child?

Let's move on to talk about sport and exercise.

  • Do you play any sports?
  • How often do you exercise?
  • Do you prefer exercising alone or with other people? (Why?)
  • Were you interested in sport when you were younger?

Part 2 (cue card)

Alright? Remember you have one to two minutes for this, so don't worry if I stop you. I'll tell you when the time is up.

Describe a memorable journey you made.

  • where you went
  • who you travelled with
  • what happened during the journey

and explain why this journey was memorable for you.

You will have to talk about the topic for one to two minutes. · You have one minute to think about what you're going to say. · You can make some notes to help you if you wish.

Rounding-off questions

  • Would you make the same journey again?
  • Do you prefer travelling alone or with others?

Part 3

We've been talking about a journey you made. I'd like to discuss with you one or two more general questions relating to this topic.

Let's consider first of all why people travel. 1. Why do you think people enjoy travelling to new places? 2. Do people travel for different reasons nowadays compared with the past?

  • Why do you think people enjoy travelling to new places?
  • Do people travel for different reasons nowadays compared with the past?
  • Is that a recent development, do you think?
  • Why do you think people are travelling for those reasons now rather than before?
  • Do you think people will travel even more in the future?

Finally, let's talk about the impact of tourism on places. 3. What effects can tourism have on a local area? 4. Do you think tourism brings more benefits or more problems to a place?

  • What effects can tourism have on a local area?
  • Do you think tourism brings more benefits or more problems to a place?
  • What do you think of the way some places have changed because of tourism?
  • Can you tell me a little bit more about why tourism might cause problems for local people?
  • Do you think governments will need to control tourism more in the future?
اعرض الإجابة النموذجية.. Part 2 (Band 6)

OK, so, um, the journey I want to talk about is a trip I took to Scotland, to a place called Inverness, um, about two years ago. I went with my older brother, we drove up from London because he wanted to see the countryside, and it was, um, a really long drive, like eight hours or something. What happened is, um, halfway through the trip our car had a problem, like a flat tyre, and we were in the middle of nowhere, no signal on the phone or anything, and we had to wait almost two hours for someone to help us. It was a bit scary at first because, um, it was getting dark and cold, but then, um, a farmer stopped and helped us change the tyre, and he was really kind, he even gave us some tea from his flask. This journey was memorable for me because, um, even though it started badly, it, um, showed me that people can be really generous, and also me and my brother, we talked a lot during the wait, about things we don't normally talk about, so it made us closer, I think. And also when we finally got to Inverness the scenery was, um, really beautiful, so it was worth it in the end. Yeah, so that's basically why I remember this trip so much.

FC: keeps going and demonstrates a willingness to produce long turns, but coherence dips through repeated 'um' and the connective-spam pattern 'and also... and also...' (a Band-5-leaning FC marker per standards/ielts/speaking.md §4's synthesis) that Band 6 tolerates only because it rarely impedes communication. LR: word choice sometimes inappropriate ('or something', 'things we don't normally talk about') but meaning is clear; paraphrase ability is present but not stress-tested. GRA: mix of short and complex forms with limited flexibility; clauses are strung together with 'but'/'and' rather than true subordination, errors rarely impede communication. P: chunking generally appropriate but rhythm affected by frequent filled pauses.

اعرض الإجابة النموذجية.. Part 2 (Band 8)

The journey I'd like to talk about is one I made across Vietnam, from Hanoi down to Ho Chi Minh City, which I did on my own about three years ago, mostly because I wanted to prove to myself that I could travel solo for an extended period. I travelled by train for most of it, which meant I had roughly thirty hours of overnight journeys spread across the trip, sharing carriages with local families who were endlessly curious about why a foreigner was riding third class rather than flying. What actually happened, and what I remember most vividly, is that on one of those overnight legs the train broke down in the middle of the night somewhere north of Da Nang, and rather than being an inconvenience, it turned into this unexpectedly wonderful few hours where an elderly couple in my carriage shared their food with me and, through a mixture of broken English and hand gestures, told me the story of how they'd met decades earlier. This journey has stayed with me because it completely reshaped how I think about travel.. I'd always assumed the destinations were the point, but that night taught me that it's really the unplanned, unscripted moments with strangers that end up mattering far more than any landmark I ticked off along the way. I've since built every trip I take around leaving room for exactly that kind of disruption, rather than over-planning every hour, and I genuinely credit that one broken-down train with changing the way I travel for good.

FC: fluent, rare repetition/self-correction, coherent and relevant development across a single unbroken narrative arc (motive, method, incident, outcome). LR: wide, ready, flexible use with skilful idiomatic items ('ticked off', 'reshaped how I think', 'credit that one broken-down train'). GRA: wide range, flexible; majority of sentences error-free with dense accurate subordination. P: wide range implied by long unbroken clause chains and sustained rhythm across long utterances, consistent with a fuller sustained-2:00 length.

اعرض الإجابة النموذجية.. Part 3 (Band 8)

Examiner: Do you think people travel for different reasons nowadays compared with the past? Candidate: I'd say so, yes.. historically travel was often about necessity, trade or migration, whereas now, at least for a lot of people, it's much more about self-discovery or simply escaping routine, which I think reflects how much more leisure time and disposable income people have compared with previous generations. Examiner: Why do you think people are travelling for those reasons now rather than before? Candidate: I think it largely comes down to how connected everyone is these days.. social media constantly shows people images of places they could visit, so there's this steady pull to go and experience things firsthand rather than just imagining them, and budget airlines have also made it far more financially realistic than it used to be. Examiner: Do you think people will travel even more in the future? Candidate: I'd guess yes, up to a point.. as long as it stays affordable, but I think there might also be a countertrend where people start travelling more thoughtfully rather than more frequently, partly because of growing awareness around the environmental cost of constant air travel.

FC: hesitation occasionally content-related only; each turn is a fully extended, logically connected response rather than a bare opinion, and all three turns stay on the single travel theme rather than jumping topic. LR: effective paraphrase ('escaping routine' reframes the prompt) and precise exam-register collocations ('the environmental cost of constant air travel'). GRA: majority of sentences error-free with correct hedging modality ('I'd say so', 'I'd guess') and comparative/conditional structures under time pressure. P: sustained rhythm and flexible stress/intonation implied across long, unbroken multi-clause turns.

قائمة الفحص للتقييم الذاتي
  • FCهل تحدثت بشكل متواصل بدون توقفات طويلة تبحث فيها عن كلمة؟
  • FCهل وقعت في «الربط الزائد».. تكرار and then... and then أو and also... and also بدل روابط متنوعة؟
  • LRهل استخدمت إعادة الصياغة عندما لم تعرف الكلمة الدقيقة، بدل التوقف الصامت؟
  • LRهل تجنبت الكلمات العامة جدا مثل or something واستبدلتها بمفردات أدق؟
  • GRAهل جربت جملا مركبة (subordinate clauses) بدل جمل قصيرة متكررة فقط؟
  • GRAراجع كثافة الأخطاء في جملك المعقدة تحديدا.. الجمل البسيطة قد تكون صحيحة لكن الجمل المعقدة هي الفارق بين باند 5/6 و 7/8
  • Pهل قسّمت كلامك إلى وحدات معنى واضحة (chunking) بدل كلام متصل بلا فواصل نطقية؟
  • Pهل حافظت على إيقاع ثابت دون تسريع الكلام بشكل يفقده وضوحه؟