EGZAMIN B2 WERSJA A.doc

AKADEMICKIE CENTRUM KSZTAŁCENIA JĘZYKOWEGO

UNIWERSYTETU SZCZECIŃSKIEGO

EGZAMIN NA POZIOMIE B2 - JĘZYK ANGIELSKI

2011

Wersja A

Please mark your answers ONLY on the ANSWER SHEET

1. LISTENING

You are going to hear five short recordings. The recordings will be played twice.

Listen and decide if the sentences are true (T) or false (F).

(1) The man thinks he’s lucky because he found something.                       

(2) This is an advert for something to drink.                                                

(3) The first thing the speaker is going to do is write a report.                    

(4) The person making the phone call is called Andy.                                  

(5) The speaker doesn’t mention taking enough money.                              

2. LANGUAGE IN USE

A. Fill in the gaps in the text with a suitable word from the list below. Use each word only once.

Victims of reputation

Bats are one of the most (6)______ and successful groups of animals that have (7)______ lived on earth. Over 950 species are known to exist – that’s one quarter of all present-day mammals. Bats are spread to almost every part of the world, from Arctic to the stormy southern tip of South America. (8)_______, bats all over the world are under pressure of a fast-growing human population. Loss of suitable place to live, fall in food supply and environmental (9)_______ are all making life increasingly difficult for many bat species.

Strangely, there are some wild creatures which are, in fact, little or no threat to humans, but consistently disturb people by their presence and cause (10)______ fear. Some of them are such animals as cockroaches, spiders, mice and bats. Exactly why bats should frighten so many of us is hard to understand. Unfortunately they do have many of the characteristics that people seem to find distressing in wild animals. They are small, fast-moving, capable of sudden changes in direction and (11)______ at night. (13)_______, they have rapidly moving wings, an unpredictable way of flying that can bring them extremely close and a strange, often frightening (12)______ . Given these characteristics, and the fact that bats often find suitable places to (14)______ around human dwellings, it is perhaps not surprising that human fears have been transformed into (15)_______ and myth.

1

B. Choose  one correct answer to fill in the gaps in the following text:

A Day in the Life of Pauline  Martignetti

In 1860 Mary Tealby founded what (16)__________ later called the Battersea Dogs’ Home, which gives a home to lost, abandoned or unwanted dogs. Pauline Martignetti, 43, who (17)__________a van driver with the Home for 21 years, lives near London with four dogs of her own, (18)__________she brought from the Dogs’ Home. “After 21 years in this job I (19)__________a deep distrust of human beings. I’ve seen dogs in terrible conditions. Some (20)__________lost but most of them are abandoned. August is a hectic month because people go on holiday and throw their dogs out on street before they (21)__________.  On a really busy day I’ll have to pick up between 15 and 20 dogs, mostly from police stations where the injured or abandoned dogs (22)__________handed in. When I take the dogs to the Home they (23)__________in Tealby block for seven days in case their owner comes for them. Unfortunately, this only (24)__________to 13% of them. Half of them are sold. Others are in (25)__________terrible state they go to a special treatment block to be looked after.”

(16)           a)  were                            b) was                                          c) is

(17)           a) has been                            b) have been                            c) had been

(18)           a) which                            b) when                            c) where

(19)           a) has                                          b) had                                          c) have

(20)           a) was                                          b) are                                          c) has been

(21)           a) left                                          b) leaving                            c) leave

(22)           a) had been                            b) has been                            c) have been

(23)           a) are kept                            b) are keeping                            c) kept

(24)           a) happen                            b) happens                            c) happened

(25)           a) such a                            b) so                                          c) this a

3. READING

Read the text and decide if the sentences are true or false:

Capone was born in Brooklyn in 1899 and attended school through the sixth grade. After that, he learned his lessons in the streets with tough street gang members like Johnny Torrio and a kid who would remain a close friend throughout his life, Charles "Lucky" Luciano.

In his teens, Capone was hired by Torrio to be a bouncer in a Brooklyn saloon and brothel. Capone was slashed by a bandit named Frank Galluccio and he ended up with a huge scar on his face that would later inspire his hated "Scarface" nickname.

In 1920, Torrio left New York and moved to Chicago bringing Capone along with him. Torrio planned to gain control of the liquor market, now made illegal by Prohibition. The two of them worked together to eliminate all opposition in the city, including the 1924 assassination of Dion O'Banion, the boss of the Irish mob.

Capone was now 26 years old and had in his control a crime empire worth over $30 million. He became the gangster executive, employing over 1000 people with a weekly payroll of over $300,000. His secret of success was to limit the mob's activities to the ones which had a strong demand from the public - liquor, gambling and prostitution. He gave the people what they wanted and they loved him for it. Capone became a local celebrity and was even cheered when he went to a ball game.

But of course, he wasn’t admired by all. He had surrounded himself with men that he could trust but there were still many assassination attempts. In September of 1926, the O'Banions sent a convoy of cars loaded with machine-gunner's past Capone's Lexington Hotel headquarters. They shot over 1000 bullets into the building but Capone escaped injury.

Capone appeared to be indestructible, but he was doomed to fail when he ordered the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in an attempt to get his rival Bugs Moran. After this, the public had enough of the brutal bootleg wars and Washington put immense pressure to shut Capone down.

In the end, it would not be murder or the Prohibition laws that would get Capone... but tax evasion and he was sentenced to the Federal Prison in Atlanta for 11 years.

In 1934, Capone would be transferred to the most brutal prison in America, Alcatraz, and this would finally signal the end to his career. Alcatraz was a place of total punishment and few privileges, using terrible methods to exact vengeance against the prisoners. One of the most successful methods of punishment were the prison's "holes", places that were little more than dungeons and where prisoners could be severely beaten.

The first years of the new "escape-proof" prison were known as the "silent years", because no prisoners were allowed to speak to each other, sing or even whistle. Talking was forbidden except for three minutes during the morning and afternoon recreation periods and on weekends for two hours. Capone, of course, quite arrogant when he arrived at the prison, had no idea the rule of silence applied to him. He found himself in the "hole" twice for this offence and once more for trying to bribe a guard for information from the outside. On all three occasions, Capone returned from the "hole" changed. Eventually, it would break him.

After five years, Capone's mind snapped and there were times when he would refuse to leave his cell and go to the canteen to eat. Sometimes he would sit in the corner of his cell and talk to himself.

He spent the last portion of his time at Alcatraz in the prison hospital. He was being treated for an advanced form of syphilis, which he had been suffering from since his youth. He left Alcatraz in 1939.

After his release, Capone retired from the public view to his house in Miami Beach. It was said that he spent the next eight years wavering between self-consciousness and psychosis.