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.

Beethoven’s Piano

In 1817 the English piano maker Thomas Broadwood met Beethoven in Vienna and promised him the gift of a piano.

Beethoven kept it until his death in 1827, reputedly using it to write, among other things, the Hammerklaviersonata. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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 externallocus 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

1. A proactive person …..
2. A reactive person …..
3. Analyzing circadian rhythms …..
4. The idea that the best time to work is in the morning …..
5. The notion of feeling alert in the late afternoon …..
6. Productivity appears to be enhanced …..

List of phrases

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.

Intuition

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.

PART 4

For questions 29-44, read the text below and look carefully at each line. Some of the lines are correct, and some have a word which should not be there. If a line are correct, put a tick (ü) by the number on the separate answer sheet. If a line has a word which should not be there, write the word on the separate answer sheet. There are two examples at the beginning (0) and (00).

Example:

THE INTERVIEW

PART 5

For questions 45-50, read the following text and then choose from the list A-J the best phrase to fill each of the blanks. Write one letter (A-J) in the correct box on your answer sheet. Some of the suggested answers do not fit at all. One answer has been given as an example (0).

A played in its country of origin                         F never did lay down official rules

B should be regarded                                         G vary from place to place

C will naturally introduce                                   H describe how games are played

D have decided between alternative rules          I are happily ignored

E tend to be played everywhere                         J have official rules