C1 Reading

ESCOLAS OFICIAIS DE IDIOMAS Proba de certificacin de nivel C1

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PROBA DE CERTIFICACIN DE NIVEL C1

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TASK 1 (....../8)

Below you will find some recommendations of what to do and what to see when travelling in Asia.

Read texts B-K and headings 1-8 carefully. In BLOCK CAPITALS, write the letter of the text next to the corresponding heading in the space provided, as in example 0.

Notice that there are two texts which do not go with any of the headings and that each text goes with only one heading.

Answers must be based exclusively on the information in the texts.

Authentic Asian Experiences

A. Bruce Lee may be Hong Kong's most famous export, but you wouldn't know it from touring around town. Aside from a lone bronze statue erected in 2005, Hong Kong has done zilch to honor the man who almost single-handedly garnered worldwide respect for kung fu, Hong Kong film and Asian masculinity. Today, his home is a sleazy love motel but for die-hard fans of the Little Dragon, it's still worth a visit at least until he gets the respect he deserves.

B. Don't hate the custard apple because it's not beautiful. The gnarled ridge of bumps that forms its outer skin, like a cluster of barnacles, conceals what is perhaps Asia's most delectable fruit: creamy, white and phenomenally sweet. The variety common in the island of Taiwan is locally called sek-kia, a reference to depictions of the Buddha where the deity sports knotted braids on his head. Eating this local delicacy certainly promises a transcendental experience.

C. Legend has it that a 6th century Afghan king was so worried about the security of his city, Kabul, that he forced all his male subjects to build a wall on the hilltops surrounding the town. Those that were too lazy, tired or sick to work would be buried in the wall's foundations. These days Afghanistan's capital has spilled far beyond the old wall's perimeter, but a hike along its heights is still one of the best ways to see the city. And unlike 1,500 years ago, taking a rest among the ramparts is encouraged, not punished.

D. The Phnong minority in Cambodia's eastern Mondulkiri province are among the world's best elephant trainers, having been using elephants as beasts of burden for centuries. Not far from the provincial capital of Sen Monorom, these local mahouts and their steeds will walk visitors through the lush jungles and swidden farms to one of the province's numerous waterfalls. But be warned, these elephants enjoy spraying water at each other and tourists.




E. After local tourism authorities get their hands on them, Asian festivals can quickly veer into twee territory. But Loy Krathong, the full-moon festival in the 12th month of the Thai calendar, remains magical. After nightfall, locals send candlelit and flower-strewn floats made of banana leaves down rivers to represent relinquishing one's negative emotions for the upcoming year. Otherworldly schools of lantern balloons are also dispatched into the sky. In big cities, firework displays complete the show.

F. President Bill Clinton once called the Demilitarized Zone dividing North and South Korea "the scariest place on earth." At Panmunjom, the main meeting point in the DMZ between the two Koreas, North Korean guards glare at you from only feet away. You can even dip a toe into the forbidden North itself in one of the conference rooms that straddle the border. But the real reason to go is to witness one of the last conflicts left over from the Cold War, and gain a better understanding of how it has torn the Korean people asunder.

G. Come the end of the lunar year, the Vietnamese Kitchen God the one privy to all the family secrets must return to heaven to make his report. Not that you would ever bribe the gods, but consider helping Ong Tao get to heaven faster by getting him a carp to ride home on. Once a year, families all across Vietnam schlep to nearby ponds and lakes to release a fish in the water. Unfortunately, most also toss the plastic bag in too. If your fish succumbs to the toxic soup, don't be too surprised if your prayers are not answered.

H. In addition to the two things you don't want to see being made laws and sausages there may be a third: Vietnamese rice-paper noodles. But don't let your hygiene fears keep you away from visiting one of the traditional noodle-making villages scattered across the country. In crowded courtyards with pigs and chickens, families pour a fermented gruel of rice flour and water onto the base of linen steamers. Barnyard atmosphere aside, the way they lift the delicate, translucent sheets onto bamboo racks is nothing less than an art form.

I. One thing 16th century cartographers managed to get right was labeling the edges of their maps of Asia with "Here be dragons." On Indonesia's Komodo Island, there actually are dragons. And the best way to see the mostly uninhabited islands where the endangered Komodo dragons make their home is by hiring a wooden schooner and crew. And don't let the fear of being devoured prevent you from taking advantage of some of the world's best diving. Despite some staged video footage, insist rangers, Komodo dragons don't like to swim.




J. Whenever Hayato Endo, the Japanese aikido master, needs cardio, he hikes up Penang Hill. He forgoes the funicular because he wants "to feel the climb." Follow his three-hour tropical trudge to the summit, and every aching muscle in you will feel it too. The reward is a breathtaking view of Georgetown and the piratical Strait of Malacca. At the outdoor coffee shack 30 minutes below the peak, ask resting Chinese or Tamil retirees how often they make the climb. Should caffeine fail to boost you to the top, their answer will be the kick in the butt you've needed.

K. Sivilay Lasachack, the Laos-born, Czech-trained brewmaster behind one of Asia's hottest beers, doesn't actually drink alcohol. She prefers tea. Thankfully, there are hordes of people willing to take the rice-based booze off her hands. A hit with backpackers and global beer snobs alike, the hard-to-find Beer Lao has become a quintessential part of a trip to Southeast Asia. Find out what the buzz is about by touring the firm's Vientiane plant. You'll get the full story fresh off the line.

Adapted from www.time.com

ANSWER GRID

HEADINGS TEXT LETTER

Examiners use only

Ex. 0 Pay homage to the master A

1. Be mesmerized by the lights

2. Bear testimony to an unsettled feud

3. Dare a strenuous trek

4. Dont judge a book by its cover 5. Enjoy a quiet stroll 6. Squeamish beware!

7. Take a plunge on the wild side

8. Take a sip




TASK 2 (....../8)

You are going to read an article about the scientific work of Professor Fritz Vollrath. Read the text carefully. Then read statements 1-8, decide whether they are TRUE or FALSE and mark the correct option (X) in the space provided, as in example 0.

Answers must be based exclusively on the information in the text.

A PASSION FOR SPIDERS' SILK

Up on the roof of Professor Fritz Vollrath's lab in the zoology department at Oxford University, there is a makeshift greenhouse in which he nurtures his favourite golden orb web spiders. Walking into the greenhouse is a little like finding yourself inside one of those Damien Hirst vitrines that dramatise fast-forward life and death. The air is frenzied with the buzz of flies and thick with the smell of rotting fruit; look up and dozens of the mature African spiders, three inches across, are sitting pretty on elaborate webs among the foliage, clearly living the arachnid life of Riley. Vollrath points out their offspring, thousands of tiny spiderlings, scurrying about on leaves beneath.

It seems a good place to ask him exactly how he first got interested in spiders and their webs. He laughs and turns the question around. "The strange thing to me," he says, "was always the question of why scientists were not more interested in them. I mean, here is a creature which, according to its size, can build from its own body a structure on the scale of a football pitch overnight, every night, and can catch the equivalent of an aeroplane in it. Why would you not want to study how it did that?" There were more practical reasons, too. Vollrath was a graduate student of neurophysiology when he started looking at webs and spider silks in earnest. "To do any small thing in neurophysiology, you had to read an awful lot of scientific literature. With spiders, I realised there was hardly any literature at all. You could just do a lot of looking." His fascination with spider silk began when he was at university in Munich in 1972 and the lightweight, high-tensile Olympic park, designed by Frei Otto to mimic spider-web construction, created a new imaginative framework for architecture. Vollrath, who speculated that spider silk might generate a similar revolutionary shift in the emergent field of biomaterials, was snared.

In the years since, he has probably spent more time studying how spiders spin their everyday miracles than any man alive. He has fed spiders drugs, tiny droplets of amphetamines and caffeine, and measured the dramatic disruptive effect it has on their web building. Mostly, though, Vollrath has defined a pioneering area of study into the properties of spider silks that could have huge potential medical benefits for humans in everything from knee replacements to nerve repair to heart transplants.

"No one was much interested in spiders when I started," he says. "Now an awful lot of people are." Vollrath's silk group at Oxford has been going for about 15 years. Quite early on, it perfected a technique to reel silk directly from the spider. Spider silks are just about the toughest material on the planet. Stronger by mass than steel and more durable and flexible than Kevlar, they are also alive to ambient conditions and made to adapt and retain their tensility as humidity and temperature change. This is one of the reasons why webs are preserved intact in the tombs of the pharaohs. As it works, the spider adjusts the concentration of the structural




components by running fast or slow for example, so it can produce, by turns, almost crystalline, very stable silk or quite diffuse, very flexible silk, for different parts of the web.

As a spin-off from its lab work, Vollrath's team partners a more commercial operation, Oxford Biomaterials, which looks at different ways to employ the silk-based technologies. Most of these applications are medical. "Silk from silkworms is probably the most ancient suture material," Vollrath says. "It is thin and strong and biodegradable in the body. Farmers out in the fields across the world have known when they get a cut to grab some spider webs and slap them on. This is all homespun wisdom. The question is, can we make better use of it?"

To this end, Oxford Biomaterials has a range of projects under Vollrath's co-direction. "The whole field of regenerative medicine could be huge. Say you have a problem with your knee. The solution now is to put a new titanium knee joint in place. That's it. The cells will not repair anything. But to help the body repair itself, you need to put something in that will give the cells the right environment to grow. That is where silks come in".

The holy grail of this effort, also pursued by other groups around the world, is in using silks for nerve repair and renewal. That goal is some way off, though Vollrath is confident it is feasible. And there are still large challenges working with spider silk. One is the impossibility of farming it on any significant scale. Unlike silkworms, whose cocoons can be nurtured and collected intensively, spiders are territorial and cannibalistic so "cannot be kept like cows in a field".

Adapted from www.guardian.co.uk




ANSWER GRID

STATEMENTS T F Examiners use only

0. Fritz Vollrath has his laboratory at Oxford University. X

1. Its pleasant inside the glasshouse.

2. Vollrath points out how baby spiders move hurriedly below the webs.

3. Vollrath reckons his field of study is fascinating.

4. Vollrath was initially discouraged by the small number of scientific studies on spiders.

5. Spider webs are woven to adapt to the surrounding conditions.

6. The healing properties of spider webs have been traditionally overlooked.

7. Vollrath's team is on the verge of unlocking the key for the use of spiders silk for nerve repair.

8. The farming methods used with silkworms may be mirrored with spiders.




TASK 3 (/9)

Here is a magazine article about the Colombian artist Fernando Botero.

Read the text carefully. For statements 1-9 choose the option (a, b or c) that best completes them. Mark (X) the correct option in the space provided, as in example 0. Only one option is correct.

Answers must be based exclusively on the information in the text.

Master caster

In Pietrasanta, a corner of Italy near the quarry that yielded Michelangelo the marble for David, Colombian artist Fernando Botero has been happily shaping his voluptuous creations for 36 years, forging himself a reputation as one of Latin Americas greatest living artists.

Fernando Botero sticks his foot to the floor and his Fiat Uno sparks into life. His little red ride lurches forward at the startling speed required to make the steep incline from the piazza to his small but perfectly outlined artists abode. The 80-year old Colombian artist throws his vehicle sharply to the left and then, with the unnerving assurance of a rally car driver, immediately to the right into a reduced parking bay in front of his studio, an inconspicuous footnote to the medieval fortress above.

Following in the footsteps of Michelangelo and Henry Moore, Latin Americas maestro has made this little corner of Italy his own, carving out an intimate relationship with a town that- largely as a result of his collective work - now calls itself city of art.

Its here that he and his Greek muse and sculpture soulmate Sophia Vari cast their giant bronze statues and have their marble sculptures chiselled and polished by artisans. The road from Pietrasanta to Carrara is lined with a dozen bronze foundries and rows of cranes heaving giant blocks of white marble; the regions century-old connection to sculpture dates back as far as the Romans. When we found Pietrasanta 36 years ago it was like a dream says Vari. The people here live off the artists. Everything was so easy.

Botero is clearly comfortable at the heart of the small industry that has built up around him. In sculpture there are a number of people that intervene and if theres no infrastructure you cant work, Botero says. The Mariani Foundry produces almost a dozen of his works a year. Warehouses sitting either side of the train tracks that divide the medieval town from the beach clubs and villas of Pietrasanta are filled with plaster casts of Boteros and Varis creations. As in their smaller studios at home, they work on their own. Their respective lock-ups hold almost 15 years of their local output.

Art students with electric chisels and old pros with angle grinders and paper hats can be seen ploughing their way studiously through the saintly stone to produce a 5ft-high face of the Prince of Pop or a version of a pregnant man for British artist Marc Quinn. The chisels for hire go about their job irrespective of whats in front of them, but theres a soft spot for Vari and Botero thanks to their close association with the town. Their work is given pride of place. It has no problem imposing itself in the soulless industrial surroundings despite its diminutive scale. A sculpture doesnt have to be humongous to be monumental says Vari. Monumental comes from an equilibrium between the masses. A monumental sculpture should manage to conquer the space around it, says Botero.




Pietrasantas modern fortunes owe much to Botero and Varis decision to set up shops here every summer more than 30 years ago. While nearby Forte dei Marmi pulls a party crowd, Pietrasanta has etched a place for itself on the Tuscan tourist trail with more than a dozen art galleries and particularly with the draw of donations by resident artists like Botero who has earned a reputation for his grand gestures. The towns leaders are suitably grateful for their generosity. Its the sort of gesture theyve become famous for.

Their work is every bit as itinerant as their creators, who move freely around the world like millionaire hobos of the art world: a special year spent celebrating Boteros 80th birthday started with a Vari intervention in Colombia. A short stint in their Paris and Monte Carlo residences was followed by a month in Pietrasanta before another month riding the waves in their 100ft yacht La Paloma, visiting Varis favourite Greek islands with Boteros brood from an earlier marriage. Its easy to see why his work smiles from the inside, his bonhomie and his mischievous sense of humour felt in every cheeky look, or embarrassed blush.

Art is a reflection about excellence, he says. Youre always looking for excellence and through a life of these visions you create a profound conviction of what is needed, to have a style. Style is born of a profoundly radical conviction. If you have conviction you cant flirt with ten different ideas at the same time. First comes the conviction then the style, he adds. An admirer of early Renaissance artists such as Piero della Francesca and Sandro Boticelli, he says that his arrival in Florence, Italy, as a young student in 1953 underlined his commitment to a style he had already fallen for. His largest bronze sculptures have changed hands for as much as $1,76m, making him the most expensive living Latin American artist. Works by Rufino Tamayo and Frida Kahlo may have fetched more, but the Mexicans never had quite the chance to enjoy the high values placed on their work. Not so in the case of Fernando Botero, the Renaissance man with the Midas touch.

Adapted from www.wallpaper.com

Ex. 0. The place where Fernando Botero lives in Italy Examiners use only

a) is close to the place where the marble for Michelangelos David comes from

b) is the place which inspired the David by Michelangelo

c) is the same place where Michelangelo worked and lived




1. Boteros residence is located Examiners use only

a) a long way from a fortification

b) in the local square

c) uphill

2. Pietrasanta calls itself city of art, primarily because Examiners use only

a) Boteros artwork contributed to it

b) Botero has followed patterns set by Michelangelo and Henry Moore

c) many well-known artists have lived there

3. Botero and Sophias giant bronze figures are moulded Examiners use only

a) by local artisans

b) by skilled craftsmen

c) by themselves

4. People in Pietrasanta Examiners use only

a) benefit from artists living there

b) lead their lives isolated from the artists

c) live a comfortable life

5. Botero and Vari work Examiners use only

a) in a shared studio

b) in individual workshops

c) in the foundry




6. Pietrasanta has become a prominent town Examiners use only

a) thanks to its artistic community

b) thanks to its vicinity to Forte dei Marmi

c) thanks to the towns rulers

7. Botero and Vari visited the Greek islands with Examiners use only

a) Boteros former wife

b) Boteros offspring

c) Varis in-laws

8. When Botero arrived in Florence as a young student Examiners use only

a) he discovered works by Renaissance artists

b) he committed to local art trends

c) he became even more enthusiastic about his own style

9. Boteros masterpieces are Examiners use only

a) more expensive than the ones by Rufino Tamayo and Frida Kahlo

b) the most expensive ones ever sold in Latin America

c) the most expensive ones sold by a still productive Latin American artist

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