R institute of technology school of foreign languages

DEFENDING YOUR TERRITORY ON THE BEACH

0. F The first thing to note is the range of personal belongings that individuals take with them to the beach- the air-beds, beach umbrellas, radios and towels. Whole families arrive totally weighed down with their possessions. They go to a lot of trouble to get them to the beach, lugging huge, heavy umbrellas hundreds of yards or more from their hotel or from their car.

16. _______ Sometimes you can watch a family group for a whole day and discover that not one member of the group has ever sat in the shade below the umbrella which was so heavy and difficult to carry in the first place. Underwater swimming gear has been carried all the way from the hotel and yet no-one ever went underwater swimming. All this equipment has been merely brought to the beach to mark out the new territorial boundaries of this family group. It forms a fence through which strangers cannot pass without first having been invited.

17. _______ And then there is the question of spacing of spacing. The goal seems to be to find a spot equidistant from those already occupying the beach. You can almost see some people doing the various calculations in their head to work out the right spot, an equal distance from those already there. Having worked out the spot, they then plant the umbrella, as if they were planting a flag and claiming the land, like Columbus claiming the New World for Spain. Anyone who seriously breaks this equidistant rule will probably be watched very carefully to try to find out the reason for their unusual action.

18. _______ Smaller things like a towel can, of course, be used to reserve a smaller space on the beach, but very importantly it is a much smaller space. It is fascinating to see how long just one towel will successfully reserve a space on a beach. I decided to try this by placing a towel on a beach early one morning and to sit and watch what happened as the beach started to fill up.

19. _______ To begin with, it was an extremely effective territorial marker. In fact, as couples and groups arrived on the beach you could see them taking the position of the towel into account in their calculations of the best sites for themselves. It was treated with equal respect by passers-by as well. On their way to the sea, they carefully bypassed it. One young French boy accidentally stepped on it and was told off by his mothers.

20. _______ This unfortunate accident marked the beginning of the end of the territorial marking powers of this particular towel and it was noticeable that thereafter passers-by took less care to avoid it. More and more feet stepped closer and closer, until it was nearly covered in sand. Eventually a middle-aged lady walked right over it. The end of the towel was now turned up and it was immediately apparent that all of its remaining powers had now faded. Shortly after this happened, a young couple sat down in the exact spot marked by the towel, and the young man merely threw the sandy and now dirty towel onto some rocks behind the beach. However, it had managed to reserve this space successfully for nearly three hours!

PART IV.
Read the introduction to a book about convent education. Six paragraphs have been removed from the text. Choose from the paragraphs A-G the one which fits each gap (1- 5) There is one extra which you do not need to use. (5 points)

A. In a convent school, there was always an enormous temptation to get involved in at some minor misbehaviour because it took so little to reduce the nuns to a state of complete apoplexy. Only the truly compassionate could have resisted it- and who feels compassion towards their teachers in their teens?

B. A great deal of thought went into those adaptations. Someone at my school worked out that if you wore a very wide elasticated belt over your dress and then buttoned up your cardigan, the overall effect was of a tiny waist and shorter flared skirt (very fashionable at the time). Of course, it was only a matter of time before one of the nuns decided to investigate.

C. The new breed of convent girls appear at best to share a very positive attitude to life and their education. For the most part, academic standards at convents have always been high; but these girls appear to have been encouraged in other ways; to question just about every subject under the sun, and they have been treated as adults. The resulting maturity makes them a credit to their educators.

D. These days guilt is automatically assumed to be a bad thing, so most people get rid of it. This is often a problem for convent-educated women: is the guilt just something left over from their school days, something negative to be got rid of, or is it the sign of a healthy conscience?

E. Battles fought over the wearing of school uniform seem to remain high in most people’s memory. Britain’s highest ranking woman police officer, Assistant Chief Constable Alison Halford, clearly recalls that at her school, eating in uniform, in the street, ‘was almost a capital offense’.

F. Yet without that particular side to their character, it is doubtful that many of the original founders of religious orders would actually have got their projects started in the first place, given their battle with men who often had a very negative view of the whole idea.

G. In reality we know the nuns were too busy to spend much time sharing information, even within the same school, much less outside of it, so it is all the more extraordinary that women educated in Melbourne, Bombay, New York and Dublin are as much united by similar memories of their school days as they are separated by years or the continents that divide them.

THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT A CONVENT GIRL

Rosemary Forgan explains what makes a convent education special.

The things you hear, or indeed remember from personal experience, about convent education may strike you as bizarre, inspiring or brutal according to one’s stand on these matters, but what is quite breathtaking to most people is the similarity of the experience.

Unlikely as it sounds, it was as if women in religious orders, not just in Britain but all over the world, conspired to produce an identical female educational system that hardly changed in 150 years.

For decades it must have seemed as if nuns were busying about in every corner of the world, worrying over the length of girls’ skirts, urging them to eat unpalatable food and, most important of all, alerting them to the dangers lying in wait in the outside world.

0.G

The other thing that strikes a lot of people is how, with all the emphasis on humility, modesty and the putting of almost everybody before oneself, the nuns managed to produce so many extraordinarily strong-minded women.

21. _______

There seems little doubt that one aspect of convent education that appeals to parents is the idea of a school uniform. In turn the efforts made by daughters to liven it up a bit, or even to make it a bit more modern, deserve awards for creativity.

22. _______

Nuns seemed to spend a lot of their time like this, doing detective work, looking for something wrong- based on no more than a feeling that something was going on. On many occasions, of course, their intuition was absolutely right.

23. _______

But what really separated the convent school from any other was the sense of guilt which children were made to feel if they failed to reach the required standards in all things. And of course, unless you are guilty of the sin of pride, you will assume you don’t reach the required standard.

24. _______

So much has changed as far as convent schools are concerned that it would probably be difficult for today’s convent girls to identify with previous generations of convent girls and their school experiences. Nowadays their manner, their attitudes, their aspirations and ambitions are almost unrecognisable to those educated in previous generations of convent schools.

25. _______

What they haven’t had, however, is an education occasionally so insane that one had no choice but to rebel, thus sampling at an early age the heady delights of rebellion! However, maybe today’s convent education is closer to the ideals of the early founders, enabling children to fulfil their potential free of the heavy burden of guilt.

PART V. Read the texts below and choose the correct answer. (15x1= 15 pts.)
Text I:

Secrets from Time Past
We had been in the old French farmhouse barely two months when my husband received the most terrible news. He was poorly, and, as it turned out, he had only a few months to live. You can imagine then that the following months, living alone in the French countryside, were difficult. When the long winter was over, I decided to clear out the house and re-arrange the furniture, putting fresh paint on the walls and re-planting the garden. I wanted the house to look as my husband would have liked it.

It was when I took the heavy wooden doors off the antique dresser in the kitchen that I found a small brown package, tucked up into one of the corners. It was a handful of letters, some hand-written, others typed. They had been wrapped in brown greaseproof paper. I sat at the old kitchen table and carefully unwrapped them one by one. The letters were dated 1917 and were the correspondence between a British mother and her solider son, who had obviously been sent to France during the First World War. As I read the words sent between the two, I wept.

The first was a letter from the mother, in which she seems quite oblivious to the hardships her son is having to endure on the front line. She complains of the price of coal and vests, but most poignantly, she bitterly criticises the behaviour of the young soldier’s wife, now heavily pregnant. She complains that the young wife did not invite her mother-in-law to spend time with them before the soldier left for France.

I read the son’s reply to his mother, in which he calmly explains his love for his wife and their desire to spend time alone now that they are married. He ends by imploring his mother to have more patience, and be more open-minded and understanding towards his new wife. He says “Now is not the time for quarrelling. If you were in my position, or my brother’s, you would realise more fully what is to be miles away from your own fireside, not knowing when death may overcome you.”

It was the most extraordinary feeling to hold the letters in my hands. I felt as if I was intruding on their most private correspondence- secrets from the past- and I so desperately hoped that the young man had returned safely home to his loved ones. I have since been trying to contract the family. I am hoping that perhaps one of the grandchildren or great grandchildren will be alive today, and I can pass on the letters, which form such an intimate part of their family history.
26. Where did the writer find the letters?

1. 
   In the corner of the kitchen
   
2. 
   In the corner of an old dresser
   
3. 
   Under a door in the kitchen
   
4. 
   In the drawer of an old dresser
   

27. Why were the early months in France difficult?

1. 
   She couldn’t speak the language
   
2. 
   She was living in the middle of nowhere
   
3. 
   Her husband was dying
   
4. 
   She was homesick
   

28. What kind of letters were they?

1. 
   Official letters from the army a soldier’s family
   
2. 
   Personal family correspondence
   
3. 
   Love letters from a soldier
   
4. 
   Official letters from the government to a soldier
   

29. Why was the mother’s letter inconsiderate?

1. 
   She tells her son private information about his wife
   
2. 
   She did not give a thought to the price changes that were happening
   
3. 
   She seemed unaware of how difficult things were for her son
   
4. 
   She complains about her son being away
   

30. Which cannot be inferred from the reading text?

1. 
   The woman found the old correspondence of a family in her house by chance.
   
2. 
   The woman took his husband’s likes and dislikes into consideration while redecorating the house.
   
3. 
   The woman felt uncomfortable reading the private letters of family members whom she never met.
   
4. 
   The grandchildren of the family whose letters the woman had found in the house are highly probably alive.
   

31. The word “oblivious” in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to

a. Unconcerned

b. Forgetful

c. Distracted

d. Careless
32. Which is TRUE about the passage?

a. The woman knew in advance that her husband did not have much time left.

b. The woman and her husband had been living in the French countryside for more than two months when they received the bad news.

c. The woman got emotional as she read the letters sent between the mother and son.

d. The soldier was the sole family member who was at the front line during the war.
33. The word “quarrelling” in the text is closest in meaning to

a. Disapproving

b. Disputing

c. Mistreating

d. Abusing

Text II
The Melting Pot
The USA is a land of immigrants. Between 1815 and 1914, the world witnessed the greatest peaceful migration in its history. 35 million people, mostly Europeans, left their homelands to start new lives in America. Why did these people risk everything they have by leaving their homes and families to see what the New World had to offer? How had the Old World let them down? There are both push and pull factors which we should consider.

First, what forced emigrants to make the momentous decision to leave? One major cause of the exodus among European peasants was the rise in population which in turn led to land hunger. Another was politics. Nationalism saw increased taxation and the growth of armies, and many young men fled eastern Europe to avoid being conscripted. Also, the failure of the liberal revolutions in Europe caused the departure of hundreds of thousands of refugees.

Physical hunger provided another reason. Between 1845 and 1848, the terrible potato famine in Ireland ended in the deaths of one million Irish people and the emigration of a further million who wished to escape starvation. Following the collapse of the economy of southern Italy in the 1860s, hundreds of thousands decided to start afresh in America.

Religion was also a pressing one. It encouraged millions to leave the Old World. We should remember that the Pilgrim Fathers had wished to escape the ungodliness of England, while the Russian Jews of the last century sought to escape persecution and death in their native land.

In short, people chose to leave their homes for social, economic and religious reasons. As a result, by 1890 among a total population of 63 million, there were more than nine million foreign-born Americans.

But what were attractions? First of all, there was the promise of land which was so scarce in Europe. Next, factories were calling out for labour, and pay and conditions were much better than back home. Men were needed to open up the West and build the long railroads. Settlers were needed to populate new towns and develop commerce. There was the space for religious communities to practise their faith in peace and comparative isolation.

This immigration meant that by around the 1850s Americans of non-English extraction had started to outnumber those of English extraction. As we know, there were losers. To start with, there were those unwilling immigrants, the slaves who had been used as a source of cheap labour for the tobacco plantations of the South. Nor should we forget the equally awful fate of the American Indians. By 1860 there were 27 million free whites, four million slaves and a mere 488,000 free blacks.

Nowadays, the USA is still seen by millions as the Promised Land. Gone are the days when you could buy US citizenship for one dollar. Yet, even though entry is strictly limited, refugees continue to find freedom and people from poorer countries a better way of life. As always, it remains a magnet to the ambitious and the energetic who are ready to commit themselves to the land that gives them a second chance.

34. What is not given as a reason for emigration in the text?

a. The search for religious freedom

b. The search for adventure

c. Avoidance of military service

d. Economics
35. The lives of 19^th century European peasants were difficult because ……………………

a. there was no shortage of land

b. of peace.

c. the population had gone down.

d. there were too many of them.
36. “Exodus” in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to

a. alteration

b. discrimination

c. immigration

d. population


37. Which of these things was not a benefit of moving to the USA?

a. Employment

b. A healthy life

c. Availability of land

d. Business opportunities
38. Which fraction gives the closest estimate of the number of non-native born Americans in 1890?

a. A third

b. An eighth

c. A half

d. A quarter
39. The story of the American Indians is ……………………………

a. sadder than that of the slaves.

b. the saddest tale of all.

c. not as sad as that of the slaves.

d. as sad as that of the slaves.
40. “One” in paragraph 4 refers to

a. reason

b. problem

c. urge

d. practice

İZMİR INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ACADEMIC YEAR 2012-2013 PROFICIENCY EXAM PAPER 2 - LANGUAGE USE

PART I.

1. 
   Read the text and circle the best option that is suitable for each gap. (10x1=10 pts.)
   

Trees are amongst the biggest and longest-living things on Earth, some (41) _______ back longer than the oldest buildings. But (42) _______ being nice to look at, tree also play an important role in improving the quality of our lives.

On a world-wide (43) _______, forests help to slow down the effects of global warming by using up the gas (44) _______ as carbon dioxide and giving (45) _______ the oxygen we need to breathe. At local neighborhood level, trees also bring important environmental benefits. They offer shade and shelter, which in (46) _______ reduces the amount of energy needed to heat and cool (47)_______ buildings; at the same time, they also remove other impurities from the air we breathe.

Urban trees are especially important because for many people they provide the only daily contact with the natural world. What’s (48) _______, urban trees also provide a home for birds, small animals and butterflies. (49) _______ the trees we could lose the pleasure of seeing these creatures in our cities. Unfortunately,

(50) _______, trees in cities are now coming under threat.

41. A) dating B) ageing C) growing D) stretching

42. A) as far as B) as long as C) as soon as D) as well as

43. A) scale B) size C) range D) area

44. A) called B) known C) titled D)referred

45. A) in B) away C) up D) out

46. A) turn B) place C) order D) reach

47. A) opposite B) close C) next D) nearby

48. A) more B) else C) most D) other

49. A) Throughout B) Beyond C) Without D) Outside

50.A) therefore B) whilst C) however D) despite

2. 
   Read the text and circle the best option that is suitable for each gap. (10x1=10 pts.)
   

Can we see (51) _______ the earth is a globe? Yes, we can, when we watch a ship that sails out to sea. If we watch closely, we see that the ship begins (52) _______ . The bottom of the ship disappears first, and then the ship seems to sink lower and lower, (53) _______ we can only see the top of the ship, and then we see nothing at all. What is hiding the ship from us? It is the earth. Stick a pin most of the way into an orange, and (54) _______ turn the orange away from you. You will see the pin disappear, (55) _______ a ship does on the earth. Is it interesting? Definitely, yes! Humankind (56) _______ on Earth for centuries; (57) _______, they are not aware of the perfect clues. All (58) _______ the world, everyday life gives us clues about (59) _______ we are, in (60) _______ kind of a shape we live.
51. A) if B) where C) that D) whether

52. A) being disappeared B) to be disappeared C) to disappear D) disappearing

53. A) until B) since C) by the time D) after

54. A) reluctantly B) slowly C) passionately D) accidentally

55. A) the same B) alike C) just as D) similar to

56. A) has lived B) lives C) had lived D) had been living

57. A) but B) however C) in fact D) actually

58. A) about B) above C) around D) away

59. A) who B) which C) that D) where

60. A) which B) that D) who D) what

PART II.

There are 10 errors in the text below. Find the errors among the boldfaced, underlined items.

(10x1=10 pts.)

Hardly a day goes by without a fresh demonstration of the ignorance of American’s first video generation. (61) A) Illiteracy is growing, and a new B) poll shows that a quarter of university students have

C) any idea D) when Columbus reached America. (62) A) The institutions, B) at least, have C) until now been presumed to be D) above the decay. (63) It was A) imagined, for example, that they B) have still been reading books C) at Harvard D) for years. (64) A) Almost that illusion, B) too, C) has been shattered by Professor Sven Birkerts, D) who teaches Creative Writing to undergraduates there. (65) “Almost none of my students

A) read independently,” he says B) in a powerful lament C) which has D) just been published by Harvard Magazine. (66) A) Every year, he says, he B) makes a survey C) among his students, and “ D) the responses are heartbreaking”. (67) The Harvard undergraduates A) studying under Professor Birkerts are, B) to put it no higher, reluctant readers, C) who interests D) are lower. (68) The printed page A) taxes and wearies them. I read B) of their first papers, C) so neatly word- processed, and my heart D) sinks, “ he writes, adding: “ He doesn’t think it is a serious problem” (69) Professor Birkerts said A) yesterday that the trend away from reading seemed to B) have reached a critical stage, “ It’s merely that they are C) any longer receiving the world

D) through the medium of print,” (70) Professor Birkerts wonders A) what his students imagine they can learn B) to write without C) bothering to read, “Too busy” I wish I D) had the time.

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