Cambridge C2 Proficiency Reading practice test 2

For questions 1 to 8, read the text below and decide which answer (A, B, C or D) best fits each gap. Mark your answers on the separate answer sheet. There is an example at the beginning (0).

SKIES UNDER WATCH

Only a decade ago, the notion that an aircraft no bigger than a toy could paralyse an international airport would have been dismissed as the (0) stuff of thrillers. Today, a single sighting of a drone near a runway can bring flights to a (1) ........ halt, leaving thousands of passengers stranded. Airport managers are left hard (2) ........ to explain why so small a device should cause such upheaval. Part of the answer lies in simple economics. A machine costing a few hundred pounds can (3) ........ havoc on a timetable planned months in advance, and it is the airport, not the operator, that bears the cost. Nor are the obvious remedies as straightforward as they appear. Shooting such a device down above a crowded terminal is out of the (4) ........ . Debris, after all, has to land somewhere. Jamming its signal, meanwhile, may (5) ........ with the very navigation systems on which the airport itself depends. Little wonder, then, that governments across Europe have begun to (6) ........ stock of how exposed their airports, power stations and ports really are. Ministers are quick to assure the public, often in a brisk post on social media, that the situation is under control. Yet official reassurance has a habit of ringing (7) ........ when the person responsible is never traced. Until defences catch up, every unexplained light in the night sky is likely to be met with a (8) ........ of speculation that no official statement can entirely dispel.

Example

0. Only a decade ago, the notion that an aircraft no bigger than a toy could paralyse an international airport would have been dismissed as the (0) ........ of thrillers.

A) stuff

B) fabric

C) grain

D) substance

Answer: A

1. Today, a single sighting of a drone near a runway can bring flights to a (1) ........ halt, leaving thousands of passengers stranded.

A) crushing

B) stumbling

C) grinding

D) dragging

2. Airport managers are left hard (2) ........ to explain why so small a device should cause such upheaval.

A) put

B) set

C) kept

D) held

3. A machine costing a few hundred pounds can (3) ........ havoc on a timetable planned months in advance, and it is the airport, not the operator, that bears the cost.

A) wage

B) inflict

C) exert

D) wreak

4. Shooting such a device down above a crowded terminal is out of the (4) ........ .

A) matter

B) question

C) issue

D) point

5. Jamming its signal, meanwhile, may (5) ........ with the very navigation systems on which the airport itself depends.

A) intervene

B) intrude

C) impinge

D) interfere

6. Little wonder, then, that governments across Europe have begun to (6) ........ stock of how exposed their airports, power stations and ports really are.

A) make

B) draw

C) take

D) hold

7. Yet official reassurance has a habit of ringing (7) ........ when the person responsible is never traced.

A) empty

B) hollow

C) vacant

D) blank

8. Until defences catch up, every unexplained light in the night sky is likely to be met with a (8) ........ of speculation that no official statement can entirely dispel.

A) flurry

B) gust

C) shower

D) draught

For questions 9 to 16, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each space. Use only one word in each space. There is an example at the beginning (0). Write your answers IN CAPITAL LETTERS on the separate answer sheet.

WHO MAY PLAY SCHUBERT?

The sight of four young players in jeans tackling late Schubert is enough to keep a certain kind of concert-goer at home, however exquisite the playing may be. To such listeners, the great quartets are the preserve of ensembles steeped in decades of tradition, and a group better known for folk arrangements and improvisation has no business coming anywhere near them. What these purists rarely pause to consider is how oddly their reverence sits with the composer himself. Schubert wrote much of his chamber music for evenings among friends, whose enthusiasm often outstripped their technique, and he would scarcely have insisted on a dress code. When the Halden Quartet opened its programme at a London hall last week with the String Quartet in G major, the opening bars were far from what the purists would call reverent: the tremolos snarled, and the silences were stretched almost to breaking point. Yet the liberties were never taken at the expense of the work's architecture, which emerged with startling clarity. No sooner had the final chord died away than the hall erupted. Whether such performances turn the tradition on its head or simply restore it to its roots is a question best left to the critics; nobody in the audience, at any rate, seemed in any doubt, least of all the elderly couple in the front row who had booked their tickets fully expecting to disapprove.

Example

9. The sight of four young players in jeans tackling late Schubert is enough to keep a certain kind of concert-goer at home, however exquisite the playing may (0) ........ . To such listeners, the great quartets are the preserve of ensembles steeped in decades of tradition, and a group better known for folk arrangements and improvisation has no business coming anywhere {{9}} them.

10. {{10}} these purists rarely pause to consider is how oddly their reverence sits with the composer himself. Schubert wrote much of his chamber music for evenings among friends, {{11}} enthusiasm often outstripped their technique, and he would scarcely have insisted on a dress code.

11. {{10}} these purists rarely pause to consider is how oddly their reverence sits with the composer himself. Schubert wrote much of his chamber music for evenings among friends, {{11}} enthusiasm often outstripped their technique, and he would scarcely have insisted on a dress code.

12. When the Halden Quartet opened its programme at a London hall last week with the String Quartet in G major, the opening bars were far {{12}} what the purists would call reverent: the tremolos snarled, and the silences were stretched almost to breaking point. Yet the liberties were never taken {{13}} the expense of the work's architecture, which emerged with startling clarity.

13. When the Halden Quartet opened its programme at a London hall last week with the String Quartet in G major, the opening bars were far {{12}} what the purists would call reverent: the tremolos snarled, and the silences were stretched almost to breaking point. Yet the liberties were never taken {{13}} the expense of the work's architecture, which emerged with startling clarity.

14. No sooner had the final chord died away {{14}} the hall erupted. Whether such performances turn the tradition {{15}} its head or simply restore it to its roots is a question best left to the critics; nobody in the audience, at any rate, seemed in any doubt, {{16}} of all the elderly couple in the front row who had booked their tickets fully expecting to disapprove.

15. No sooner had the final chord died away {{14}} the hall erupted. Whether such performances turn the tradition {{15}} its head or simply restore it to its roots is a question best left to the critics; nobody in the audience, at any rate, seemed in any doubt, {{16}} of all the elderly couple in the front row who had booked their tickets fully expecting to disapprove.

16. No sooner had the final chord died away {{14}} the hall erupted. Whether such performances turn the tradition {{15}} its head or simply restore it to its roots is a question best left to the critics; nobody in the audience, at any rate, seemed in any doubt, {{16}} of all the elderly couple in the front row who had booked their tickets fully expecting to disapprove.

For questions 17 to 24, read the text below. Use the word given in capitals at the end of some of the lines to form a word that fits in the space in the same line. There is an example at the beginning (0). Write your answers IN CAPITAL LETTERS on the separate answer sheet.

THE HUNT FOR A SPARE ROOM

For many students, a room in a shared house is becoming unaffordable even in cities once thought of as cheap places to study. In the most sought-after university towns, rent can now swallow a wildly disproportionate share of the maintenance loan, leaving little for food, books or travel. Before a single night has been spent in the property, deposits and advance payments may be prohibitively high for anyone without a parent willing to act as guarantor. Demand so outstrips supply that tenants are left at the mercy of unscrupulous landlords, some of whom let damp, mould-ridden rooms that an inspector would promptly declare uninhabitable. Small wonder, then, that many first-years confess to deep misgivings, which are hardly eased by signing a year-long contract for a house they have only ever seen in photographs. Viewings, where they happen at all, are often rushed affairs in which a dozen applicants compete for a single box room. For a significant minority, the obstacles prove insurmountable, and they resign themselves to living with their families, sacrificing the independence that leaving home was supposed to bring. Whatever the causes, such stories sit uneasily with official boasts about the accessibility of higher education, and with the cherished notion that where one studies should be determined by ability rather than by the size of a parent's bank balance.

Example

17. most sought-after university towns, rent can now swallow a wildly {{17}} PROPORTION

18. advance payments may be {{18}} high for anyone without a parent PROHIBIT

19. left at the mercy of {{19}} landlords, some of whom let damp, SCRUPLE

20. mould-ridden rooms that an inspector would promptly declare {{20}}. HABIT

21. Small wonder, then, that many first-years confess to deep {{21}}, which are GIVE

22. For a significant minority, the obstacles prove {{22}}, and they MOUNT

23. resign themselves to living with their families, sacrificing the {{23}} DEPEND

24. sit uneasily with official boasts about the {{24}} of higher education, ACCESS

For questions 25 to 30, complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning to the first sentence, using the word given. Do not change the word given. You must use between three and eight words, including the word given. Here is an example (0). Write only the missing words on the separate answer sheet.

Key word transformations

Little did Ravi realise how difficult readjusting to gravity would be after six months in orbit. The scandal had no bearing whatsoever on the minister's decision to resign. It was not until an expert examined it that Clare realised how valuable the painting was. Had it not been for the guide's quick thinking, the group would have got lost. There is little likelihood of the board approving the proposal. Joanna goes out of her way to avoid any confrontation with her neighbours.

Example

Example

The old lighthouse on the headland is reputed to be haunted.

25. {{25}} readjusting to gravity would be after six months in orbit.

26. The scandal {{26}} the minister's decision to resign.

27. It was not {{27}} that Clare realised how valuable the painting was.

28. Had it {{28}} quick thinking, the group would have got lost.

29. There is little {{29}} the proposal.

30. Joanna {{30}} any confrontation with her neighbours.

You are going to read an extract from a novel. For questions 31 to 36, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text. Mark your answers on the separate answer sheet.

Nina's family choose a Christmas tree

The expedition to Wyndle Bank Farm never varied, and Nina could have recited its liturgy in her sleep. There was the squabble over whose boots were whose in the porch, the forty minutes of lanes beneath the Malvern Hills, the farmer's collie barking at the car, the flask of tea that was always too sweet, and the saw, which her father carried up the field like a ceremonial sword. Some Decembers she had rehearsed excuses: a deadline, a cold, a friend in crisis. She had never used any of them. Nor, as far as she knew, had anyone else; they all grumbled, Tom loudest of all, and they all turned up. Gerald approached the business with the gravity of a man choosing a cathedral organ, and it was hard not to love him for it. Still, when Nina tried to picture a December without the lanes and the collie and the oversweet tea, something tightened unexpectedly beneath her ribs. This year there was an added reason to dread the outing, or to cling to it; she had not decided which. The house on Orchard Rise had been sold in October to a couple with twin toddlers and firm views about knocking through. In the new year Gerald and Ruth would move to a flat in Worcester with a lift and no stairs, and the tree chosen today would stand, like every one before it, in the tall hallway for the last time. Nobody had mentioned it in the car. Ruth had talked about parking, and Tom about a podcast. The plantation was vast, row upon row of Nordmann firs drawn up the slope like a patient army, and a bitter wind scoured it from the west. Ruth would have settled for the first presentable tree inside the gate; she saw no point in comparing things destined to vanish under tinsel. Gerald, in other years, had worked his way to the top field and then doubled back, sometimes twice, to reconsider firs he had already dismissed, as though they might have improved in his absence. It was this, rather than the wind coming off the hills, that had made the outing so long in past years. Today, though, he had brought a tape measure. For thirty years he had judged height by eye, standing back with his head on one side, and he had never once misjudged the hallway. Now he halted at every tree, drew the tape slowly up the trunk and held it there, studying the branches, until Ruth called his name. At the fifth fir Nina saw him let it snap back into its case without so much as a glance at the figure. He caught her watching, smiled, and wandered on to the next. By eleven Ruth's hands had retreated into her sleeves and her nose had turned an indignant pink. 'My feet have gone,' she told the firs. 'One day I shall simply buy an artificial one from the garden centre and be done with it.' Tom groaned, precisely on the word 'centre'. Nina found her own lips shaping 'be done with it' a fraction ahead of her mother's. Gerald gave his usual answer without lifting his eyes from the tape: 'Then you'll need a plastic husband to go with it.' Ruth snorted into her scarf; he did not seem in the least put out. In the end they took the first tree Gerald had stopped at that morning, a few yards inside the gate. It leaned a little to the left and had a bald patch on one flank where a neighbour had crowded it out. Tom said it looked moth-eaten; Gerald said it had character; Ruth said she didn't care so long as they could go home. Without anyone discussing it, they understood that the bare side would face the wall. Tom, wedged in the back beside the netted fir, kept up a running commentary. 'Honestly, Dad, it was an audition. Forty hopefuls, and you give the part to the first one through the door.' Gerald laughed until he had to wipe his eyes at the lights. When they pulled up outside the house, its porch light already burning against the early dusk, Tom looked up at it and started on another line about understudies. Halfway through, his voice wavered, and he turned to the window. Nina had a reply ready, and kept it to herself. Years later, Nina thought of that tree more tenderly than of any of the handsome, symmetrical ones that had preceded it. It had stood in the hallway with its good side bravely presented and its bareness turned to the wall, and no one who came to the door would have suspected a thing. It seemed to her afterwards exactly right for that Christmas, for a family who could bicker for an hour about boots or podcasts while each of them kept the one thing they all felt politely out of sight.

31. In the first paragraph, what is Nina's attitude to the family's annual trip to the tree farm?

A) She sees it as a tradition her father has imposed on reluctant relatives

B) She finds its predictability tiresome but would be sorry to see it abandoned

C) She values it chiefly as a chance to spend time with her brother

D) She is embarrassed by how seriously her father takes it

32. What does 'this' refer to in the third paragraph?

A) the bitter wind blowing across the hillside

B) Ruth's readiness to settle for the first decent tree

C) the sheer number of trees in the plantation

D) Gerald's habit of going back to trees he had already rejected

33. Gerald's insistence this year on measuring every tree with a tape suggests that he

A) doubts whether any tree will fit the space available this year

B) wants to prove that his judgement is better than Ruth's

C) is reluctant to bring the morning to an end

D) has lost confidence in his own eye since retiring

34. When Ruth repeats her threat to buy an artificial tree from the garden centre, the others' reaction shows that

A) the remark has become part of the ritual itself

B) they suspect that this time she really means it

C) they are growing tired of her impatience

D) they are uneasy that it might upset Gerald

35. Why does Nina not respond to Tom's joke on the drive home?

A) She shares his view that the morning was wasted

B) She is afraid that their father will be hurt by it

C) She is annoyed that he has spoiled the occasion

D) She senses that it is masking a feeling similar to her own

36. In the final paragraph, how does Nina come to regard the tree they chose?

A) as a sign that her father's judgement had begun to fail

B) as fittingly representing the mood of that particular Christmas

C) as a disappointment she could only laugh about much later

D) as a reminder of how rarely the family had agreed on anything

You are going to read an extract from an article. Seven paragraphs have been removed from the extract. Choose from the paragraphs A to H the one which fits each gap (37 to 43). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use. Mark your answers on the separate answer sheet.

Sitting on an invisible chair

Can a few minutes against the kitchen wall help to bring blood pressure down? Tom Ashworth tried it. A routine check at my GP practice last spring left me with a number I did not much like, and a second reading was no kinder. Borderline, the doctor called it, and I went home half-resigned to a lifetime of little white tablets. At my next appointment, however, there was no prescription. Instead I was sent along the corridor to Imogen Hale, a physiotherapist attached to the practice, who listened, nodded and handed me a photocopied sheet bearing a single stick figure and very little else. (37) ........ My first reaction was relief. My second, about ninety seconds into my first attempt that evening, was something closer to betrayal. My thighs trembled, then shook. Yet what puzzled me more than the discomfort was the principle. For as long as I could remember, a healthy heart had meant movement: running, cycling, swimming. Holding still seemed, if anything, the opposite of what my heart needed. (38) ........ That caveat is worth dwelling on, because the wall sit has lately acquired a reputation it may struggle to live up to. Social media is full of clips in which cheerful presenters promise that a few minutes against a wall will do the work of a daily pill. It is precisely the kind of enthusiasm that makes clinicians nervous. (39) ........ Having been assessed and found unremarkable, I was cleared to begin. The early sessions were a test of nerve, conducted under the sceptical gaze of my teenage son. Towards the end of the second week I realised that I had not drawn a breath for some time; my jaw was clenched and my face, my son informed me, had turned an interesting colour. (40) ........ So I counted, to the bafflement of the household. By the third week the holds were merely unpleasant rather than unbearable, and the routine had slipped into the dead minutes of the day. Two minutes while the kettle boiled; another pair while a file downloaded; a final set before bed. (41) ........ Nearly, but not quite. Around the fifth week my enthusiasm sagged. The novelty had worn off; the discomfort had not. A run at least rewards you with scenery; the wall offered only the wall, and with no visible change to show for it I began skipping sessions, telling myself that two a week were surely almost as good as three. (42) ........ The trend, when it finally declared itself, was modest but unmistakable: my morning readings had drifted downwards and stayed there. I cannot honestly say how much of that was the wall's doing and how much I owe to less salt and fewer late-night biscuits. At my twelve-week review Hale was pleased but careful. She declined to credit any single cause and was in no hurry to pronounce me cured. 'It isn't magic,' she said. 'It's one tool.' (43) ........ And so I keep repeating it. Not every day, and rarely with good grace, but most mornings I sit on the invisible chair while the kettle boils, counting aloud to a household that has long since stopped finding it funny. A This, Hale told me at my first follow-up, is the commonest mistake she sees, and far from a harmless one. Holding the breath while straining adds to precisely the temporary surge in pressure she had warned me about. The remedy is almost insultingly simple: breathe steadily throughout, breathing out on the effort, and if necessary count aloud, since it is remarkably difficult to hold your breath while talking. B Hale is used to this objection. 'People think of exercise as something you can see happening,' she says. During a sustained hold, the working muscles squeeze the blood vessels that supply them; when the contraction ends, blood floods back in. Repeat that often enough, the thinking goes, and the vessels grow better at relaxing, which eases the pressure against which the heart has to work. 'That's the working explanation, at any rate,' she adds. 'I'd be the first to admit it isn't settled.' C What rescued me was a modest blood pressure monitor that Hale had suggested I buy at the outset. She had been firm about how to use it. A single reading, she said, means very little, since the figure shifts with coffee, stress, a hurried climb upstairs or the time of day. Better to sit quietly, measure at the same hour each morning and judge the trend over several weeks rather than fixating on any one number. D Which is perhaps the most sensible way to regard the wall sit: not as a miracle, still less as a replacement for anything, but as one modest, unglamorous tool among several. Its virtue lies less in what it achieves in any single session than in how readily it can be repeated, and it is repetition, she reminds me, that counts. E The figure, I saw on closer inspection, was sitting on a chair that wasn't there. That, it turns out, is more or less the entire regime: back pressed flat against a wall, feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent until the thighs are roughly parallel with the floor, and held. Two minutes, four times over, with a couple of minutes' rest between each, three days a week. No equipment, no gym membership, no Lycra. F This, according to Hale, may prove to be the exercise's real advantage. Most people told to be more active drift away within weeks, defeated by the weather, the cost, the journey to a gym or sheer self-consciousness. A routine that asks for a few square feet of wall and less than a quarter of an hour, and can be done in slippers, strips away nearly every excuse. G Hale counts herself among them. 'The worst outcome,' she says, 'is someone watching one of those clips and quietly binning their tablets.' In her view isometric training is an addition to treatment, never a substitute for it, and anyone already taking medication should change nothing without first speaking to whoever prescribed it. Nor is it for everyone: straining against a fixed load can push blood pressure up sharply while the hold lasts, which is why people whose hypertension is poorly controlled, or who have a heart condition, need to be assessed before they start. H None of this, Hale stresses, is an argument against the more familiar kinds of exercise. Brisk walking, cycling and swimming remain the foundation of any advice on heart health, and for most people the ideal is some combination of the two. Where the wall sit comes into its own is with those who, for whatever reason, find that kind of activity hard to fit in or hard to face.

37. Gap 37

A) This, Hale told me at my first follow-up, is the commonest mistake she sees, and far from a harmless one. Holding the breath while straining adds to precisely the temporary surge in pressure she had warned me about. The remedy is almost insultingly simple: breathe steadily throughout, breathing out on the effort, and if necessary count aloud, since it is remarkably difficult to hold your breath while talking

B) Hale is used to this objection. 'People think of exercise as something you can see happening,' she says. During a sustained hold, the working muscles squeeze the blood vessels that supply them; when the contraction ends, blood floods back in. Repeat that often enough, the thinking goes, and the vessels grow better at relaxing, which eases the pressure against which the heart has to work. 'That's the working explanation, at any rate,' she adds. 'I'd be the first to admit it isn't settled.'

C) What rescued me was a modest blood pressure monitor that Hale had suggested I buy at the outset. She had been firm about how to use it. A single reading, she said, means very little, since the figure shifts with coffee, stress, a hurried climb upstairs or the time of day. Better to sit quietly, measure at the same hour each morning and judge the trend over several weeks rather than fixating on any one number

D) Which is perhaps the most sensible way to regard the wall sit: not as a miracle, still less as a replacement for anything, but as one modest, unglamorous tool among several. Its virtue lies less in what it achieves in any single session than in how readily it can be repeated, and it is repetition, she reminds me, that counts

E) The figure, I saw on closer inspection, was sitting on a chair that wasn't there. That, it turns out, is more or less the entire regime: back pressed flat against a wall, feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent until the thighs are roughly parallel with the floor, and held. Two minutes, four times over, with a couple of minutes' rest between each, three days a week. No equipment, no gym membership, no Lycra

F) This, according to Hale, may prove to be the exercise's real advantage. Most people told to be more active drift away within weeks, defeated by the weather, the cost, the journey to a gym or sheer self-consciousness. A routine that asks for a few square feet of wall and less than a quarter of an hour, and can be done in slippers, strips away nearly every excuse

G) Hale counts herself among them. 'The worst outcome,' she says, 'is someone watching one of those clips and quietly binning their tablets.' In her view isometric training is an addition to treatment, never a substitute for it, and anyone already taking medication should change nothing without first speaking to whoever prescribed it. Nor is it for everyone: straining against a fixed load can push blood pressure up sharply while the hold lasts, which is why people whose hypertension is poorly controlled, or who have a heart condition, need to be assessed before they start

H) None of this, Hale stresses, is an argument against the more familiar kinds of exercise. Brisk walking, cycling and swimming remain the foundation of any advice on heart health, and for most people the ideal is some combination of the two. Where the wall sit comes into its own is with those who, for whatever reason, find that kind of activity hard to fit in or hard to face

38. Gap 38

A) This, Hale told me at my first follow-up, is the commonest mistake she sees, and far from a harmless one. Holding the breath while straining adds to precisely the temporary surge in pressure she had warned me about. The remedy is almost insultingly simple: breathe steadily throughout, breathing out on the effort, and if necessary count aloud, since it is remarkably difficult to hold your breath while talking

B) Hale is used to this objection. 'People think of exercise as something you can see happening,' she says. During a sustained hold, the working muscles squeeze the blood vessels that supply them; when the contraction ends, blood floods back in. Repeat that often enough, the thinking goes, and the vessels grow better at relaxing, which eases the pressure against which the heart has to work. 'That's the working explanation, at any rate,' she adds. 'I'd be the first to admit it isn't settled.'

C) What rescued me was a modest blood pressure monitor that Hale had suggested I buy at the outset. She had been firm about how to use it. A single reading, she said, means very little, since the figure shifts with coffee, stress, a hurried climb upstairs or the time of day. Better to sit quietly, measure at the same hour each morning and judge the trend over several weeks rather than fixating on any one number

D) Which is perhaps the most sensible way to regard the wall sit: not as a miracle, still less as a replacement for anything, but as one modest, unglamorous tool among several. Its virtue lies less in what it achieves in any single session than in how readily it can be repeated, and it is repetition, she reminds me, that counts

E) The figure, I saw on closer inspection, was sitting on a chair that wasn't there. That, it turns out, is more or less the entire regime: back pressed flat against a wall, feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent until the thighs are roughly parallel with the floor, and held. Two minutes, four times over, with a couple of minutes' rest between each, three days a week. No equipment, no gym membership, no Lycra

F) This, according to Hale, may prove to be the exercise's real advantage. Most people told to be more active drift away within weeks, defeated by the weather, the cost, the journey to a gym or sheer self-consciousness. A routine that asks for a few square feet of wall and less than a quarter of an hour, and can be done in slippers, strips away nearly every excuse

G) Hale counts herself among them. 'The worst outcome,' she says, 'is someone watching one of those clips and quietly binning their tablets.' In her view isometric training is an addition to treatment, never a substitute for it, and anyone already taking medication should change nothing without first speaking to whoever prescribed it. Nor is it for everyone: straining against a fixed load can push blood pressure up sharply while the hold lasts, which is why people whose hypertension is poorly controlled, or who have a heart condition, need to be assessed before they start

H) None of this, Hale stresses, is an argument against the more familiar kinds of exercise. Brisk walking, cycling and swimming remain the foundation of any advice on heart health, and for most people the ideal is some combination of the two. Where the wall sit comes into its own is with those who, for whatever reason, find that kind of activity hard to fit in or hard to face

39. Gap 39

A) This, Hale told me at my first follow-up, is the commonest mistake she sees, and far from a harmless one. Holding the breath while straining adds to precisely the temporary surge in pressure she had warned me about. The remedy is almost insultingly simple: breathe steadily throughout, breathing out on the effort, and if necessary count aloud, since it is remarkably difficult to hold your breath while talking

B) Hale is used to this objection. 'People think of exercise as something you can see happening,' she says. During a sustained hold, the working muscles squeeze the blood vessels that supply them; when the contraction ends, blood floods back in. Repeat that often enough, the thinking goes, and the vessels grow better at relaxing, which eases the pressure against which the heart has to work. 'That's the working explanation, at any rate,' she adds. 'I'd be the first to admit it isn't settled.'

C) What rescued me was a modest blood pressure monitor that Hale had suggested I buy at the outset. She had been firm about how to use it. A single reading, she said, means very little, since the figure shifts with coffee, stress, a hurried climb upstairs or the time of day. Better to sit quietly, measure at the same hour each morning and judge the trend over several weeks rather than fixating on any one number

D) Which is perhaps the most sensible way to regard the wall sit: not as a miracle, still less as a replacement for anything, but as one modest, unglamorous tool among several. Its virtue lies less in what it achieves in any single session than in how readily it can be repeated, and it is repetition, she reminds me, that counts

E) The figure, I saw on closer inspection, was sitting on a chair that wasn't there. That, it turns out, is more or less the entire regime: back pressed flat against a wall, feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent until the thighs are roughly parallel with the floor, and held. Two minutes, four times over, with a couple of minutes' rest between each, three days a week. No equipment, no gym membership, no Lycra

F) This, according to Hale, may prove to be the exercise's real advantage. Most people told to be more active drift away within weeks, defeated by the weather, the cost, the journey to a gym or sheer self-consciousness. A routine that asks for a few square feet of wall and less than a quarter of an hour, and can be done in slippers, strips away nearly every excuse

G) Hale counts herself among them. 'The worst outcome,' she says, 'is someone watching one of those clips and quietly binning their tablets.' In her view isometric training is an addition to treatment, never a substitute for it, and anyone already taking medication should change nothing without first speaking to whoever prescribed it. Nor is it for everyone: straining against a fixed load can push blood pressure up sharply while the hold lasts, which is why people whose hypertension is poorly controlled, or who have a heart condition, need to be assessed before they start

H) None of this, Hale stresses, is an argument against the more familiar kinds of exercise. Brisk walking, cycling and swimming remain the foundation of any advice on heart health, and for most people the ideal is some combination of the two. Where the wall sit comes into its own is with those who, for whatever reason, find that kind of activity hard to fit in or hard to face

40. Gap 40

A) This, Hale told me at my first follow-up, is the commonest mistake she sees, and far from a harmless one. Holding the breath while straining adds to precisely the temporary surge in pressure she had warned me about. The remedy is almost insultingly simple: breathe steadily throughout, breathing out on the effort, and if necessary count aloud, since it is remarkably difficult to hold your breath while talking

B) Hale is used to this objection. 'People think of exercise as something you can see happening,' she says. During a sustained hold, the working muscles squeeze the blood vessels that supply them; when the contraction ends, blood floods back in. Repeat that often enough, the thinking goes, and the vessels grow better at relaxing, which eases the pressure against which the heart has to work. 'That's the working explanation, at any rate,' she adds. 'I'd be the first to admit it isn't settled.'

C) What rescued me was a modest blood pressure monitor that Hale had suggested I buy at the outset. She had been firm about how to use it. A single reading, she said, means very little, since the figure shifts with coffee, stress, a hurried climb upstairs or the time of day. Better to sit quietly, measure at the same hour each morning and judge the trend over several weeks rather than fixating on any one number

D) Which is perhaps the most sensible way to regard the wall sit: not as a miracle, still less as a replacement for anything, but as one modest, unglamorous tool among several. Its virtue lies less in what it achieves in any single session than in how readily it can be repeated, and it is repetition, she reminds me, that counts

E) The figure, I saw on closer inspection, was sitting on a chair that wasn't there. That, it turns out, is more or less the entire regime: back pressed flat against a wall, feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent until the thighs are roughly parallel with the floor, and held. Two minutes, four times over, with a couple of minutes' rest between each, three days a week. No equipment, no gym membership, no Lycra

F) This, according to Hale, may prove to be the exercise's real advantage. Most people told to be more active drift away within weeks, defeated by the weather, the cost, the journey to a gym or sheer self-consciousness. A routine that asks for a few square feet of wall and less than a quarter of an hour, and can be done in slippers, strips away nearly every excuse

G) Hale counts herself among them. 'The worst outcome,' she says, 'is someone watching one of those clips and quietly binning their tablets.' In her view isometric training is an addition to treatment, never a substitute for it, and anyone already taking medication should change nothing without first speaking to whoever prescribed it. Nor is it for everyone: straining against a fixed load can push blood pressure up sharply while the hold lasts, which is why people whose hypertension is poorly controlled, or who have a heart condition, need to be assessed before they start

H) None of this, Hale stresses, is an argument against the more familiar kinds of exercise. Brisk walking, cycling and swimming remain the foundation of any advice on heart health, and for most people the ideal is some combination of the two. Where the wall sit comes into its own is with those who, for whatever reason, find that kind of activity hard to fit in or hard to face

41. Gap 41

A) This, Hale told me at my first follow-up, is the commonest mistake she sees, and far from a harmless one. Holding the breath while straining adds to precisely the temporary surge in pressure she had warned me about. The remedy is almost insultingly simple: breathe steadily throughout, breathing out on the effort, and if necessary count aloud, since it is remarkably difficult to hold your breath while talking

B) Hale is used to this objection. 'People think of exercise as something you can see happening,' she says. During a sustained hold, the working muscles squeeze the blood vessels that supply them; when the contraction ends, blood floods back in. Repeat that often enough, the thinking goes, and the vessels grow better at relaxing, which eases the pressure against which the heart has to work. 'That's the working explanation, at any rate,' she adds. 'I'd be the first to admit it isn't settled.'

C) What rescued me was a modest blood pressure monitor that Hale had suggested I buy at the outset. She had been firm about how to use it. A single reading, she said, means very little, since the figure shifts with coffee, stress, a hurried climb upstairs or the time of day. Better to sit quietly, measure at the same hour each morning and judge the trend over several weeks rather than fixating on any one number

D) Which is perhaps the most sensible way to regard the wall sit: not as a miracle, still less as a replacement for anything, but as one modest, unglamorous tool among several. Its virtue lies less in what it achieves in any single session than in how readily it can be repeated, and it is repetition, she reminds me, that counts

E) The figure, I saw on closer inspection, was sitting on a chair that wasn't there. That, it turns out, is more or less the entire regime: back pressed flat against a wall, feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent until the thighs are roughly parallel with the floor, and held. Two minutes, four times over, with a couple of minutes' rest between each, three days a week. No equipment, no gym membership, no Lycra

F) This, according to Hale, may prove to be the exercise's real advantage. Most people told to be more active drift away within weeks, defeated by the weather, the cost, the journey to a gym or sheer self-consciousness. A routine that asks for a few square feet of wall and less than a quarter of an hour, and can be done in slippers, strips away nearly every excuse

G) Hale counts herself among them. 'The worst outcome,' she says, 'is someone watching one of those clips and quietly binning their tablets.' In her view isometric training is an addition to treatment, never a substitute for it, and anyone already taking medication should change nothing without first speaking to whoever prescribed it. Nor is it for everyone: straining against a fixed load can push blood pressure up sharply while the hold lasts, which is why people whose hypertension is poorly controlled, or who have a heart condition, need to be assessed before they start

H) None of this, Hale stresses, is an argument against the more familiar kinds of exercise. Brisk walking, cycling and swimming remain the foundation of any advice on heart health, and for most people the ideal is some combination of the two. Where the wall sit comes into its own is with those who, for whatever reason, find that kind of activity hard to fit in or hard to face

42. Gap 42

A) This, Hale told me at my first follow-up, is the commonest mistake she sees, and far from a harmless one. Holding the breath while straining adds to precisely the temporary surge in pressure she had warned me about. The remedy is almost insultingly simple: breathe steadily throughout, breathing out on the effort, and if necessary count aloud, since it is remarkably difficult to hold your breath while talking

B) Hale is used to this objection. 'People think of exercise as something you can see happening,' she says. During a sustained hold, the working muscles squeeze the blood vessels that supply them; when the contraction ends, blood floods back in. Repeat that often enough, the thinking goes, and the vessels grow better at relaxing, which eases the pressure against which the heart has to work. 'That's the working explanation, at any rate,' she adds. 'I'd be the first to admit it isn't settled.'

C) What rescued me was a modest blood pressure monitor that Hale had suggested I buy at the outset. She had been firm about how to use it. A single reading, she said, means very little, since the figure shifts with coffee, stress, a hurried climb upstairs or the time of day. Better to sit quietly, measure at the same hour each morning and judge the trend over several weeks rather than fixating on any one number

D) Which is perhaps the most sensible way to regard the wall sit: not as a miracle, still less as a replacement for anything, but as one modest, unglamorous tool among several. Its virtue lies less in what it achieves in any single session than in how readily it can be repeated, and it is repetition, she reminds me, that counts

E) The figure, I saw on closer inspection, was sitting on a chair that wasn't there. That, it turns out, is more or less the entire regime: back pressed flat against a wall, feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent until the thighs are roughly parallel with the floor, and held. Two minutes, four times over, with a couple of minutes' rest between each, three days a week. No equipment, no gym membership, no Lycra

F) This, according to Hale, may prove to be the exercise's real advantage. Most people told to be more active drift away within weeks, defeated by the weather, the cost, the journey to a gym or sheer self-consciousness. A routine that asks for a few square feet of wall and less than a quarter of an hour, and can be done in slippers, strips away nearly every excuse

G) Hale counts herself among them. 'The worst outcome,' she says, 'is someone watching one of those clips and quietly binning their tablets.' In her view isometric training is an addition to treatment, never a substitute for it, and anyone already taking medication should change nothing without first speaking to whoever prescribed it. Nor is it for everyone: straining against a fixed load can push blood pressure up sharply while the hold lasts, which is why people whose hypertension is poorly controlled, or who have a heart condition, need to be assessed before they start

H) None of this, Hale stresses, is an argument against the more familiar kinds of exercise. Brisk walking, cycling and swimming remain the foundation of any advice on heart health, and for most people the ideal is some combination of the two. Where the wall sit comes into its own is with those who, for whatever reason, find that kind of activity hard to fit in or hard to face

43. Gap 43

A) This, Hale told me at my first follow-up, is the commonest mistake she sees, and far from a harmless one. Holding the breath while straining adds to precisely the temporary surge in pressure she had warned me about. The remedy is almost insultingly simple: breathe steadily throughout, breathing out on the effort, and if necessary count aloud, since it is remarkably difficult to hold your breath while talking

B) Hale is used to this objection. 'People think of exercise as something you can see happening,' she says. During a sustained hold, the working muscles squeeze the blood vessels that supply them; when the contraction ends, blood floods back in. Repeat that often enough, the thinking goes, and the vessels grow better at relaxing, which eases the pressure against which the heart has to work. 'That's the working explanation, at any rate,' she adds. 'I'd be the first to admit it isn't settled.'

C) What rescued me was a modest blood pressure monitor that Hale had suggested I buy at the outset. She had been firm about how to use it. A single reading, she said, means very little, since the figure shifts with coffee, stress, a hurried climb upstairs or the time of day. Better to sit quietly, measure at the same hour each morning and judge the trend over several weeks rather than fixating on any one number

D) Which is perhaps the most sensible way to regard the wall sit: not as a miracle, still less as a replacement for anything, but as one modest, unglamorous tool among several. Its virtue lies less in what it achieves in any single session than in how readily it can be repeated, and it is repetition, she reminds me, that counts

E) The figure, I saw on closer inspection, was sitting on a chair that wasn't there. That, it turns out, is more or less the entire regime: back pressed flat against a wall, feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent until the thighs are roughly parallel with the floor, and held. Two minutes, four times over, with a couple of minutes' rest between each, three days a week. No equipment, no gym membership, no Lycra

F) This, according to Hale, may prove to be the exercise's real advantage. Most people told to be more active drift away within weeks, defeated by the weather, the cost, the journey to a gym or sheer self-consciousness. A routine that asks for a few square feet of wall and less than a quarter of an hour, and can be done in slippers, strips away nearly every excuse

G) Hale counts herself among them. 'The worst outcome,' she says, 'is someone watching one of those clips and quietly binning their tablets.' In her view isometric training is an addition to treatment, never a substitute for it, and anyone already taking medication should change nothing without first speaking to whoever prescribed it. Nor is it for everyone: straining against a fixed load can push blood pressure up sharply while the hold lasts, which is why people whose hypertension is poorly controlled, or who have a heart condition, need to be assessed before they start

H) None of this, Hale stresses, is an argument against the more familiar kinds of exercise. Brisk walking, cycling and swimming remain the foundation of any advice on heart health, and for most people the ideal is some combination of the two. Where the wall sit comes into its own is with those who, for whatever reason, find that kind of activity hard to fit in or hard to face

You are going to read an extract from a book on historic garden waterworks. For questions 44 to 53, choose from the sections (A to E). The sections may be chosen more than once. Mark your answers on the separate answer sheet. In which section are the following mentioned?

The cascade at Hallingford

A Downhill all the way To understand the Hallingford cascade, one must first understand the hill. The springs that rise beneath its crown yield only a modest volume of water, and the estate in the 1740s possessed nothing in the way of mechanical assistance. Yet far from fighting the absence of any mechanical pump, its designers made the slope itself the engine of the spectacle. Water gathered in two ponds near the summit is released at a stroke and left to find its own way down, over the stepped cascade and through a grotto to a single jet at the foot of the park. Every stage was reckoned with care: the drop between one basin and the next was calculated so that the water reaches each new feature just as the last falls quiet. There is a price for such elegance. One performance drains the upper ponds, and the springs need the better part of a day to fill them again, so no party arriving too late can persuade the staff to run it twice. B An afternoon on the hill On a fine Sunday between May and October the lawns below the summit fill well before the appointed hour. There is an irony here that few of those waiting pause to savour: a display conceived to flatter a duke's guests now plays, without so much as a ticket, to anyone who cares to climb the hill. Regulars who come every week and know each stage by heart stand beside first-timers raised on illuminated fountains set to music, with expectations to match. It must be admitted, a little ruefully, that the more scrupulously the cascade has been returned to its original modest flow, the more often visitors ask whether something has gone wrong. Disappointment rarely survives what follows. Families hurry down the zigzag paths to stay level with the water as it passes from basin to grotto; no one in the 1740s thought to plan for it, yet seen from the terrace the procession of people chasing the water downhill is as much a part of the choreography as the water itself. C Behind the stonework None of this happens by itself. Hidden in chambers beside the steps, four keepers open the valves and lift the sluices in sequence, each waiting for a signal that is less heard than sensed: a change in the note of the water above, a tremor in the iron underfoot. Open a gate a few seconds early and the next basin overflows; open it late and the crowd is left staring at dry stone. There is no manual that captures it; each keeper learns the timing at the elbow of the last. The cascade belongs in law to the Hallingford trustees, but you would never guess as much from those who run it. The keepers talk of 'my cascade' and bristle when anyone else lays a hand on the sluices. Their devotion extends to the winter months outside the season, spent overhauling valves and raking silt from the channels. D Under scaffolding The restoration completed six years ago was preceded by a long and occasionally bad-tempered debate. Some argued for the cascade as first conceived; others insisted that a century and a half of Victorian tinkering was by now its history too, and that stripping it away would be vandalism dressed up as scholarship. The first party largely prevailed, though the plans in the estate archive proved fragmentary, and many gaps had to be filled by conjecture and comparison with cascades elsewhere. The Victorians' enlarged channels were narrowed again and the flow brought back to its eighteenth-century volume. The work also yielded a surprise. Once moss and later render had been scraped away, the restorers found that the steps had never been meant to be smooth: the roughened treads and tapering channels make a modest sheet of water break into foam, so that it looks a good deal more lavish than it is. E What remains to be seen Whether the cascade will still be performing in its present form in fifty years is far from certain. In recent dry summers, letters to the local press have questioned the wisdom of tipping so much water down a hillside for an afternoon's amusement while nearby gardens turn brown, and the trustees have been urged to install a modern recirculating pump so that the same water could be used again and again. Purists reply that this would betray the very principle the cascade embodies. Neither side has yet carried the day, and those responsible are, sensibly perhaps, watching the weather. A run of parched summers may yet oblige the trustees to call time on the season well before October, which would settle the argument, though hardly as anyone wishes.

44. the concession that greater fidelity to the past can leave people feeling short-changed

A) Downhill all the way

B) An afternoon on the hill

C) Behind the stonework

D) Under scaffolding

E) What remains to be seen

45. the claim that the designers' ingenuity lay in exploiting a constraint rather than overcoming it

A) Downhill all the way

B) An afternoon on the hill

C) Behind the stonework

D) Under scaffolding

E) What remains to be seen

46. the claim that the display's appearance of abundance is partly contrived

A) Downhill all the way

B) An afternoon on the hill

C) Behind the stonework

D) Under scaffolding

E) What remains to be seen

47. a skill that survives only because it has been handed down in person

A) Downhill all the way

B) An afternoon on the hill

C) Behind the stonework

D) Under scaffolding

E) What remains to be seen

48. an element that nobody planned but which has become integral to the show

A) Downhill all the way

B) An afternoon on the hill

C) Behind the stonework

D) Under scaffolding

E) What remains to be seen

49. the reason the display cannot be staged again at will on the same day

A) Downhill all the way

B) An afternoon on the hill

C) Behind the stonework

D) Under scaffolding

E) What remains to be seen

50. a threat to the number of months in which performances are given

A) Downhill all the way

B) An afternoon on the hill

C) Behind the stonework

D) Under scaffolding

E) What remains to be seen

51. a sense of ownership that has no formal basis

A) Downhill all the way

B) An afternoon on the hill

C) Behind the stonework

D) Under scaffolding

E) What remains to be seen

52. the irony that an entertainment devised to impress the privileged is now offered to anyone without charge

A) Downhill all the way

B) An afternoon on the hill

C) Behind the stonework

D) Under scaffolding

E) What remains to be seen

53. an argument that alterations made long after a work's creation have acquired a legitimacy of their own

A) Downhill all the way

B) An afternoon on the hill

C) Behind the stonework

D) Under scaffolding

E) What remains to be seen