Student’s name: ____________________
Pre CAE– Ready for Advanced
Final Test- November 2016
A- READING COMPREHENSION
Gapped text: You are going to read an extract from a newspaper article. Six paragraphs
have been removed from the extract. Choose from the paragraphs A–G the one which
fits each gap (1–6). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.
Are ‘emoji’ dumbing us down or enriching our
communications?
A few years ago, during a mildly flirtatious text message exchange, I was sent a picture of a ghost followed by a
picture of a balloon.
‘Ghost balloon,’ she noted, as an afterthought.
I was stunned by these tiny images that
magically appeared among the familiar forms
of the Roman alphabet. ‘Tell me how to do the
ghost balloon?’ I pleaded. She told me to
enable a character set called ‘emoji’ on my
phone, which I did, and I sent her back a
picture of a ghost, and a picture of a balloon.
‘Ghost balloon,’ she replied. ‘What does ghost
balloon mean?’ I asked. Her reply was curt and
emphatic. ‘Nothing’.
But do emoji have a reductive effect on the
way we communicate? Or do they add a
richness that conventional language simply
can’t convey? The emoji story begins at the end
of the 1990s, when an employee with a
Japanese mobile network began working on an
idea that he thought might lure teenagers to the
network. He and his team created 176
characters, 12 pixels square, that took
inspiration from manga art and the Kanji
characters used in the Japanese writing system,
and made them available for use in SMS
messages. The cherries, suns, watches, birds
and broken hearts were instantly popular, and
the two competing Japanese networks rushed
to produce their own full-colour versions.
But with no emoji standard agreed between the
networks, a different kind of misunderstanding
began to brew; the pictures would only be
guaranteed to display properly if the sender
and recipient were using the same mobile
network. It wasn’t until 2006 that the three
networks came to some kind of consensus –
and around the same time, Google and Apple®
prompted the international expansion of emoji
by urging Unicode to join the venture.
In October 2010, a hand-picked selection of
722 emoji characters were finally cemented
into Unicode across sets such as
‘Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs’,
‘Emoticons’ and ‘Transport and Map
Symbols’. As far as computers were concerned,
this effectively put emoji on a par with the
Roman alphabet. A pig now has the code of
U+1F437; any device that recognizes Unicode
6.0 and has an emoji font installed will display
a pig, if someone is kind enough to send you
one. As well as this image you’ll find hand
gestures, clothing, meteorological symbols,
trains, planes and automobiles – a set of
symbols that was thrashed out at great length
by committees.
You won’t find much racial diversity among
the human characters, either – much to the
1
chagrin of American singer Miley Cyrus, who
called for an ‘Emoji Ethnicity Update’ on
Twitter, while cultural commentators thought:
‘Actually, she has a point’.
They provide the potential to bridge language
barriers and now the utopian idea of a pictorial
language that can be understood by everyone
has been taken a step further with iConji, a
system that features over 1200 symbols and
allows construction of simple sentences. But
that inevitably involves the establishment of a
lowest common denominator, of simplifying
language to get the message across.
‘Ghost balloon’ may have had no intrinsic
meaning, but it created an instant association
with the person who sent it to me and came to
mean something specific. It certainly
stimulated the creative side of my brain, ‘I am
wrestling with the etiquette of 21st-century
communication.’ And I don’t know about you,
but that’s something I need to express pretty
much every day. Ghost balloon.
A
Only in Japan, perhaps, would these catch on quite so fast. ‘[In conversation] we tend to
imply things instead of explicitly expressing them,’ says Japanese author Motoko Tamamuro, ‘so
reading the situation and sensing the mood are very important. We take extra care to consider
other people’s feelings when writing correspondence, and that’s why emoji became so useful in
email and text – to introduce more feeling into a brevitized form of communication.’
B
As a whole though, emoji are still unmistakably Japanese; there isn’t one for cheese, but
you will find one for bento box, there’s no Easter egg, but there is a Kadomatsu, the Japanese
pine decoration associated with New Year.
C
They are just unnecessary pictures that add precious little meaning to written
communication. Or at least that’s probably what the vast majority of people over the age of 25
think of emoji, but this set of glyphs is now sweeping the Western world. We’re embracing emoji
ranging from the angry face to the tomato to the hospital to the ghost, and indeed the balloon.
D
One emoji aficionado says the apps on modern iPhones and Android phones allow us to
engage a part of our brain which uses symbolic and visual thinking. He believes this is why they
have gained so much popularity – they rake in well over $3m each month.
E
However, emoji is different, it is more about embellishment and added context; it’s about
in-jokes, playfulness, of emphasizing praise or cushioning the impact of criticism, of provoking
thought and exercising the imagination.
F
But if you’re not satisfied with the variety of emoji at your disposal, a huge industry
exists to embellish and enhance your messages with whatever pictures you like. Line, the
dominant message app in Japan with over 100 million users, allows in-app purchases of extra
emoji. Meanwhile, other apps have moved into the realm of ‘stickers’: sets of images, a little
larger than emoji, that people can buy and send to each other in order to convey emotions that
some would say words simply can’t express.
G
With this additional party they were able to achieve standard handling of computer text,
and move towards their aim of guaranteeing that symbols display properly across devices
worldwide.
2
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B- USE OF ENGLISH AND VOCABULARY
1 Transformations – For questions 1-5, complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning
to the first sentence, using the word given. Do not change the word given IN ANY WAY. You must use
between 2 and 6 words, including the word given.
1. None of the phones were left when we got to the shop. time
______________________________ the shop, all the phones had been sold.
2. I didn't know it was Carl until he took off his hat. when
Only ______________________________ his hat did I recognise Carl.
3. Perhaps John heard the story from Pippa.
have
Pippa might ______________________________ story.
4. It's not possible that you saw Mary last night, she was with us! have
You ______________________________ last night, she was with us!
5. Immediately after Bess arrived home, the phone rang.
sooner
No ______________________________ home than the phone rang.
6. "You won't get lost along the country lanes if you always have the map open." long
He told them they wouldn't get lost ______________________________ had the map open.
7. If that passing woman hadn't arrived, we would have been completely lost.
for
Had it ______________________________, we would have got completely lost.
8. The town's population surrendered as soon as the enemy arrived.
than
No sooner had the enemy arrived ______________________________ surrendered.
9. Another student stole Carol's watch from the classroom.
had
Carol ______________________________ by another student from the classroom.
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10. Please do those photocopies whenever you have the time.
happen
Please do those photocopies if ______________________________ the time.
11. "Ian took the money, not his brother Dylan," Susan said.
it
According to Susan, ______________________________ took the money, not Dylan.
12. I'd prefer you not to stay out so late.
rather
I'd ______________________________ stay out so late.
13. We paid someone to fix the roof for us last summer.
had
Last summer, we ______________________________.
14. You should have spoken to Meg sooner.
spoken
If ______________________________ to Meg sooner.
15. "You played your music too loud last night," Jan said to Ben angrily.
accused
Jan ______________________________ his music too loud the previous night.
16. Someone was driving the car very erratically, the police confirmed.
being
The police confirmed that the car ______________________________ erratically.
17. Any time you see Clara, ask her about her husband.
happen
If ______________________________ Clara, ask her about her husband.
18. The major revealed everything about the old scandal after he left office.
did
Only after leaving office ______________________________ everything about the old scandal.
19. John said he almost never went out on a Wednesday night.
rarely
"______________________________ out on a Wednesday night," John said.
20. Daniel regretted speaking so rudely to his landlord.
more
Daniel ______________________________ politely to his landlord.
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Open cloze: For questions 1–8, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap. Use
only one word in each gap. There is an example at the beginning (0).
Write your answers IN CAPITAL LETTERS.
Example: 0 IN
Facial recognition glasses coming soon
New software from Lambda Labs based (0) _________ San Francisco raises the prospect of never forgetting a
face (1) _________ .
The software enables a camera to detect faces and then identify them via a screen which sits above the user’s
right eye and is visible (2) _________ to them. However, the company has come up
(3) _________
pressure from American senators to answer questions the wearable computer raises over privacy.
The first version of the software allows users to take photographs and tag them with information on who is in
them. Comparisons can then be (4) _________ between subsequent photos and those previously uploaded.
Future versions may (5) _________ allow real-time recognition of faces.
The company already makes software that allows the recognition of faces in digital photographs, and claims it
is in use by 1000 developers (6) _________ work generates 5 million attempts at recognition per month.
They emphasize that the product is not yet fit (7) _________ public consumption, and limit its uses to internet
searches and finding directions. They argue that the software will remove the barriers (8) _________ social
interactions currently formed by mobile phones.
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