E test 10

THE CORPORATION FOR FINANCING AND
PROMOTING TECHNOLOGY
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ENGLISH TEST
Time allowed: 60 minutes
50 questions
PART 1
For questions 1-7, you must choose which of the paragraphs A-H on page 2, fit into the gaps in the
following newspaper article. There is one extra paragraph which does not fit in any of the gaps.
Indicate your answers on the separate answer sheet.
B e e t h o v e n ’ s P i a n o
In 1817 the English piano maker Thomas Broadwood met Beethoven in Vienna and promised him
the gift of a piano.
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Beethoven kept it until his death in 1827, reputedly using it to write, among other things, the
Hammerklavier sonata. Then it passed to Liszt, who left it to the Hungarian National Museum in
Budapest. There it remained, a national treasure, seen but barely heard, until it began a journey
almost as momentous as the one all those years ago, back through Europe to Britain.
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Why is this piano so important? Well, it is an icon. It featured prominently in Beethoven’s later years
and the very abuse to which he subjected it, hammering at the notes to try to hear them, records the
terrible pathos of Beethoven’s deafness.
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But bringing this Broadwood back to life is also a landmark in the modern history of performance,
recognising that old instruments offer unique insights into old music- and none more than pianos in
the time of Beethoven, when their technology was young and fast-developing and composers
responded immediately to the latest thing on the market. The novelty of the Broadwood was a heavier
action, which meant that whatever his hearing impairment, Beethoven could feel he was making
more sound than a Viennese piano could deliver.
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English test – C2

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For a player like Melvyn Tan, those limitations are critical because they demonstrate how
Beethoven’s writing pushed the piano to its physical extremities. It’s important not to lose the
limitations when a piano is restored.
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David Winston, the restorer, has some sympathy with this view: “It’s true that every time you restore
you lose original information. So I have to ask myself: will this work increase the piano’s lifespan,
and is it reversible? And I document everything so it’s clear to someone 50 years from now exactly
what I’ve done.”
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Winston’s work has lift the Viennese input alone but removed the rest. He has replaced the strings,
which weren’t original, the dampers and the hammer coverings. Otherwise, he says, the piano was in
decent structural condition. “It was chosen in the first place to be robust, and it is.” However, the
present tour has raised a musicological question for Tan.
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So either he didn’t write Hammerklavier on the Broadwood after all or he wrote it idealistically,
beyond the character and limitations of the instrument at hand.
A The Broadwood had in fact been regularly tampered with- from when it first arrived in
Vienna to more recent times when it was patched up by Hungarians without access to the
right materials.
B He could afford it- his was the most successful piano company in the world- and a model was
dispatched from London on 27 December, by sea through the Straits of Gibraltar to Trieste
and then by cart to Vienna, arriving the following June.
C This treatment did a lot of damage. By 1824 a friend observed that “there was no sound left in
the treble and broken strings were mixed up like thorns in a gale.”
D This is one of the reasons why the ethics of making such improvements to an old instrument
are contentious. Not everyone agreed that Beethoven’s Broadwood should be returned to
playing condition, still less taken on tour.
E He has found it difficult to programme the tour because- and this is slightly embarrassing-
few of the scores Beethoven supposedly wrote on the Broadwood are playable on it. The

keyboard is too short.
F George Bernard Shaw said that the most entirely creditable incident in English history was
the sending of £100 to Beethoven on his death-bed by the London Philharmonic Society. But
there was another.
English test – C2
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G This time, though, the piano is working its passage, on a concert tour sponsored by
Broadwood’s (the firm still exists). Like all great stars (and this one is insured for £5m) it
travels with an entourage. There is the pianist Melvyn Tan who plays it, the piano doctor
David Winston who restored it, four attendants who transport it between venues by
unpublishable routes, and two security men who sleep with it.
H Although it was also harder work, it gave a better sense of control, and a more consistent,
more modern sound across its range. But, of course, it’s not a modern sound. It still has the
limitations of its time, including a slight twang, a noisy action and ineffectual dampers.
PART 2
Choose ONE phrase (A-J) from the list in the box below to complete each key point below.
The information in the completed sentences should be an accurate summary of points made by the
writer.
Write the appropriate letters (A-J) in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.
N.B. There are more phrases (A-J) than sentences so you will not use them all. You may use any
phrase more than once.
PERSONAL TIME MANAGEMENT
Since the early work of Halberg (1960), the existence of human “circadian rhythms” has been
well-known to biologists and psychologists. Circadian rhythms dictate that there are certain times of
the day when we are at our best both physically and psychologically. At its simplest, the majority of
us feel most alive and creative in the mornings, while come the evenings we are fit only for
collapsing with a good book or in front of the television. Others of us note that in the morning we
take a great deal of time to get going physically and mentally, but by the evening are full of energy
and bright ideas, while a very few of us feel most alert and vigorous in the late afternoon.
Irrespective of our personal rhythms, most of us have a productive period between 10 a.m. and noon,

when the stomach, pancreas, spleen and heart all appear to be in their most active phases.
Conversely, the majority of us experience a low period in the hour or two after lunch (a time when
people in some societies sensibly take a rest), as most of our energy is devoted to the process of
digestion. The simple rules here are: don’t waste too much prime time having a coffee break around
11 a.m. when you should be doing some of your best work, and don’t make the after-lunch period
even less productive by overloading your digestion. A short coffee or tea break is, in fact, best taken
on arrival at the office, when it helps us start the day in a positive mood, rather than mid-morning
when it interrupts the flow of our activities. Lunch is best taken early, when we are just beginning to
feel hungry, and we are likely to eat less than if we leave it until later. An early lunch also means that
we can get back into our productive stride earlier in the afternoon.
English test – C2
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Changes in one’s attitude can also enhance personal time management. For example, the notion of
proaction is eminently preferable to reaction. To proact means to anticipate events and be in a
position to take appropriate action as soon as the right moment arrives. To react, on the other hand,
means to have little anticipation and do something only when events force you to do so. Proactors
tend to be the people who are always one step ahead of other people, who always seem to be in the
right place at the right time, and who are always better informed than anyone else. Many of us like an
easy life, and so we tend to be reactor. This means that we aren’t alert to the challenges and
opportunities coming our way, with the consequence that challenges bother us or opportunities pass
us by before we’re even properly aware they’re upon us. We can train ourselves in proaction by
regularly taking the time to sit down and appraise the likely immediate future, just as we sit down
and review the immediate past.
Psychologists recognise that we differ in the way in which we characteristically attribute
responsibility for the various things that happen to us in life. One of the ways in which we do this is
known as locus of control (Weiner, 1979), which refers to assigning responsibility. At its simplest,
some individuals have a predominantly external locus of control, attributing responsibility to outside
causes (for example, the faults of others or the help given by them), while with other individuals the
locus of control is dominantly internal, in which responsibility is attributed to oneself (for example,
one’s own ability or lack of them, hard work, etc.).

However, the picture usually is not as simple as this. Many people’s locus of control is more likely to
be specific to a particular situation, for example, internal in certain areas, such as their social lives.
Or, to take another example, they may attribute certain kinds of results to themselves, such as their
successes, and certain kinds of results to other people, such as their failures. Obviously the best kind
of locus of control is one that is realistic and able to attribute every effect to its appropriate course,
and this is particularly important when it comes to time management. Certainly, there are occasions
when other people are more responsible for our time loss than we are, but for most of us, and for
most of the time, the blame must fall fairly and squarely upon ourselves.
Time management – key points
Answer
Example Our patterns of circadian rhythms ….. G
8. A proactive person …..
9. A reactive person …..
10. Analyzing circadian rhythms …..
11. The idea that the best time to work is in the morning …..
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12. The notion of feeling alert in the late afternoon …..
13. Productivity appears to be enhanced …..
List of phrases
A … agrees with the circadian rhythms of most people.
B … makes us feel alive and creative.
C … conforms to the circadian rhythms of a minority of people.
D … if our energy is in a low phase.
E … is more able to take advantage of events when they happen.
F … enables one to gauge physical potential at particular times throughout the day.
G … can affect us physically and mentally.
H … when several specific internal organs are active.
J … when we eat lunch early.
PART 3

For questions 14-28, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each space. There is
an example at the beginning (0).
Write your word on the separate answer sheet.
Example: 0 with
I n t u i t i o n
Sometimes you just know things about people the first time you see them- for example that you want
to be friends (0) …. them or that you don’t trust them. But perhaps this kind of intuition isn’t as hard
to explain (14) …. it may seem. For instance, everybody gives out body language signals (15) …. the
time. The (16) …. you hold your body, head and arms tells people about your mood. If you hold your
arms tightly at your sides (17) …. fold them across your chest, people will generally feel that you
(18) …. being defensive. Holding your head on one side shows interest in the (19) …. person, while
(20) …. relaxed, ‘open’ posture indicates that you are self-confident. All this affects (21) …. we feel
about someone.
Also, a stranger may (22) …. you of a previous meeting with someone. This may be because of (23)
…. as simple as the fact that he or she is physically similar (24) …. someone who treated you well-
or badly. But your reaction doesn’t (25) …. to be the result of the memory of a person you previously
met- your feelings about the stranger could (26) …. influenced by a smell in the air that brings to
mind a place (27) …. you were happy as a child. Since even a single word can bring back a memory
(28) …. as that, you may never realize it is happening.
English test – C2
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