Table Of Contents s CAE
i.i
*
1 i
i.i.i w
i Reading Skills
; i
i
l 4
CAMBRIDGE
EXAMINATIONS
PUBLISHING
Diana Pye
Simon Greenall C a m b r id g e
UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAE
Reading Skills
CAMBRIDGE
EXAMINATIONS
PUBLISHING
Simon Greenall
Diana Pye
C a m b r id g e
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia
© Cambridge University Press 1996
First published 1996
Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 521 45557 X
Copyright
The law allows a reader to make a single copy of part of a book
for purposes of private study. It does not allow the copying of
entire books or the making of multiple copies of extracts. Written
permission for any such copying must always be obtained from the
publisher in advance.
Contents
Map of the book iv
Thanks vi
To the student 1
To the teacher 3
1 Foundation unit
2 Survival 12
3 Consumer issues 20
4 Transport 28
5 Travel 36
6 Large-scale art 44
7 Children and education 51
8 The oceans 58
9 Memorable incidents 66
10 Cultural issues 72
11 The living world 79
12 Communications 86
13 Science fiction? 94
14 Modern life 101
15 Other people, other ways 109
16 The world of work 116
Answer key 125
Acknowledgements 138
iii
Map of the book
Exam question
Unit Title Topics types Reading strategies
1 Foundation unit The CAE exam Multiple matching All the strategies tested in
the exam (see To the teacher)
2 Survival Cold water survival Multiple matching: Understanding main ideas,
Culture shock headings with sections retrieving specific information,
of the text understanding the text as a
whole, identifying information
to perform a task,
understanding writer’s
intention, inferring, dealing
with difficult vocabulary
3 Consumer issues How hidden persuasion Multiple matching: Predicting, forming an overall
makes shoppers spend summary sentences impression, skimming for main
Choosing burgers with sections of text ideas, retrieving specific
information, dealing with
difficult vocabulary, identifying
information to perform a task
4 Transport Aircraft Multiple matching: Predicting, forming an overall
Cycling in town headings with impression, understanding text
paragraphs organisation, skimming for
main ideas, dealing with
difficult vocabulary, inferring
5 Travel Travel brochure on Multiple matching: Forming an overall impression,
China items of detail with retrieving specific information,
Reviews of travel guides places reading for specific information,
identifying information to
perform a task, inferring,
dealing with difficult vocabulary
6 Large-scale art The story of Christo, the Gapped text: inserting Forming an overall impression,
sculptor sentences which belong understanding main ideas,
An artist who uses large to a text identifying clues to text
areas of land for artistic structure, retrieving specific
expression information
7 Children and Teenagers in love with Multiple matching: Interpreting opinions,
education money opinions with people predicting, inferring, forming an
The best way to teach a overall impression, retrieving
genius specific information, evaluating
the text
8 The oceans Changes in the climate Multiple-choice Predicting, retrieving specific
The route of shipwrecked questions information dealing with
trainers difficult vocabulary,
understanding text
organisation, understanding
main ideas, evaluating the text
Map of the book
Exam question
Unit Title Topics types Reading strategies
9 Memorable A dangerous encounter Gapped text: inserting Forming an overall impression,
incidents with a shark paragraphs which belong understanding main ideas,
A theft during a journey to a text retrieving specific information,
understanding text
organisation, interpreting
purpose of sentences, dealing
with difficult vocabulary
10 Cultural issues Minority languages Multiple matching: Understanding main ideas,
Cultural differences figures to languages; evaluating the text, inferring,
among nations completing sentences retrieving specific information
with phrases
11 The living world The continued presence Multiple matching: Predicting, understanding
of wolves in Europe completing sentences main ideas, retrieving specific
Animal intelligence with phrases information, inferring,
understanding writer’s attitude
and purpose, distinguishing
between fact and opinion
12 Communications The effect of fax Multiple-choice Inferring, understanding
machines questions writer’s attitude and tone,
Etiquette on the Internet understanding writer’s style,
understanding main ideas,
understanding writer’s
intention, understanding text
organisation, dealing with
difficult vocabulary
13 Science fiction? Domestic help in the Gapped text: inserting Forming an overall impression,
future paragraphs which evaluating the text,
Genetically engineered belong to a text understanding main ideas,
food understanding text
organisation, predicting,
inferring, retrieving specific
information, interpreting
writer’s opinion, understanding
writer’s style
14 Modern life Living longer today Multiple-choice Understanding main ideas,
A critical look at questions retrieving specific information,
psychoanalysis inferring, understanding writer’s
style, predicting
15 Other people, Smoking in the USA Gapped text: inserting Predicting, understanding main
other ways A traditional tribe in sentences which belong ideas, evaluating the text,
Pakistan to a text identifying arguments for and
against, understanding the
writer’s attitude, understanding
text organisation, inferring,
forming an overall impression
16 The world of Office life of the future Multiple-choice Predicting, understanding
work How much work is done questions main ideas, retrieving specific
in meetings? information, inferring,
understanding writer’s opinion,
dealing with difficult vocabulary
v
Thanks
We would like to thank:
Our editor Alison Silver, for her endless support, advice and care over this
book.
Lindsay White, Jeanne McCarten, Liz Sharman, Joanne Currie, Peter
Ducker and everybody at Cambridge University Press for making this book
possible.
The authors and publishers would like to thank the following teachers and
their students for piloting CAE Reading Skills:
John Ejsmond (British Institute, Florence)
Diane Fleming, Rosemary Hancock and Mike O’Neill (Institut Britanic,
Barcelona)
Michael Jenkins (IALS, Edinburgh)
Pierrick Picot (Institut de Perfectionnement en Langues Vivantes, Angers)
Paul Power
Their detailed comments and constructive suggestions have helped us
enormously.
To the student
About the exam
The Certificate in Advanced English (CAE) is for students at an advanced
level of English. To give you an idea of the level, you may have taken the
Cambridge First Certificate of English (FCE) and obtained a grade C or
above. However, this is not essential if you want to sit the CAE.
There are five papers in the exam: Reading (Paper 1), Writing (Paper 2),
English in Use (Paper 3), Listening (Paper 4), and Speaking (Paper 5). This
book helps you prepare for Reading (Paper 1). You may like to use CAE
Writing Skills and CAE Listening and Speaking Skills to help you prepare for
Papers 2,4 and 5.
Paper 1 (Reading) takes 1 hour 15 minutes to do, and contains four
passages taken from newspapers, magazines and other sources. There are a
number of different question types such as blank-filling, multiple-choice
questions and matching exercises. You are usually required to choose an
answer from a number of different options. It’s a good idea to choose your
answers carefully and write them on the exam paper, then transfer your
answers in pencil to the Answer sheet. You can see an example of the Answer
sheet on page 137 of this book, and it’s a good idea to study it carefully
before the exam so it will not come as a surprise when you take the exam.
The questions test a number of different reading skills, such as reading for
main ideas, reading for specific information, understanding text
organisation, inferring, dealing with unfamiliar words, and evaluating the
text. These are all skills which you may already have acquired and developed
in your language lessons so far, but which you need to be confident of using
in the exam.
In your preparation for the exam, you should try to develop your skill in
reading quickly, and as long as you give yourself plenty of practice in this,
you will have more time for checking your answers in the exam.
About this book
This book is designed to give you practice in developing the different
reading skills which are tested in the exam, and in answering the exam
questions themselves. You need to be very familiar with the exam question
types in order to answer them effectively.
You can use this book in class, alone or with a partner, or as self-study
material working at home. The answers are at the back of the book, but try
not to look at them before you’ve tried to answer the questions on your own.
There is a progression of difficulty, but you can dip into different units in
any order you like. There are two sections in each unit, each taking about 60
minutes to do. Section A is concerned with exam-type questions, and Section
1
To the student
B focuses on the general reading skills you need to take the exam. In each
section there are exam tips and study tips to help you. Unit 1 provides you
with a great deal of information about the exam, which we hope you’ll find
useful.
We have chosen texts which we hope you will enjoy reading. Your
motivation is extremely important in your preparation for the exam, and we
have tried to provide texts and tasks which interest you.
Good luck with CAE Reading Skills, and good luck with the exam!
Diana Pye Simon Greenall
2
To the teacher
Aims
CAE Reading Skills aims to help you prepare your candidates for Paper 1
(Reading) of the Certificate in Advanced English (CAE). Our principal aim
is to provide systematic coverage of the specific skills needed for the
Reading paper of the exam. However, in keeping with the declared spirit of
the exam, which is designed to reflect current developments in methodology
and teaching practice, as well as to test the candidates’ language compe
tence, our secondary aim is to provide a thorough presentation and devel
opment of the various skills needed for effective reading comprehension at
an advanced level.
The book contains a great deal of information about the exam itself, and
in particular, about the exam question types, about the strategies required to
answer the questions successfully, and about the texts used.
You can use it as a self-study book, either in the classroom or for the
candidate working at home. It can also be used interactively in the classroom
if you require extra material to supplement the main course of preparation
for the exam. While we give no explicit pairwork instructions, you can use
most activities for discussion work. Although we have chosen text types
which reflect those you would expect to find in the exam, we have also
selected them with the interests and motivation of the non-examination class
in mind. Even if you find yourself with a class in which some students have
not yet decided to take the exam, you will be able to use the book for
advanced level reading skills.
Organisation
The book is divided into sixteen units.
The Foundation unit (Unit 1) uses a ‘loop’ format in which information
about the exam is presented using activities similar to the question types in
the exam. Helping the candidates become familiar with the exam format is
an important part of exam preparation, and we hope that you will find this
approach useful and challenging.
The remaining fifteen units each focus on a specific exam question type,
and are divided into two sections which are thematically linked. There is a
balance between exam-specific and exam-oriented question types. Exam-
specific question types are those used in the CAE exam which consist of
various types of cloze (blank-filling) passages, multiple-choice questions (one
stem in the form of a question or an incomplete statement, followed by four
possible answers) and multiple-matching exercises (several stems usually in
the form of incomplete statements with several possible answers). These
items provide an objective test in so far as they always have a ‘right answer’.
3
