TEST6 You are going to read an article about the smile in art. For questions 31-36, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text. The painted smile Smiles make us smile, they are infectious. We are certain we understand what a smile means. It's an expression of happiness or pleasure, easy to spot and easy to understand, and it charms us. People seem at their most natural and spontaneous when they smile - we all know what a forced smile looks like. We smile automatically when someone points a camera at us; it’s a social and cultural reflex, and what we expect of a picture portrait. Yet the smile, like everything else, has a history. If you walk around any art gallery and look at the portraits you'll find very few genuine smiles. The same is true of early photograph portraits. They were, it seems, unfashionable for a long period in the history of portraiture. Physically, a smile itself is not complex - it comes when we contract the zygomatic major, a muscle in the face - but the meaning of smiles changes with the mood of the times, and can even be different for men and women in the same culture. Still walking around the gallery, you will find more smirks than smiles. One reason for this may be that with a smile, what you see is what you get, a frozen moment ofhappy unselfconsciousness. A smirk is more ambiguous, allowing for several interpretations - condesceftsion, flirtatiousness, boredom, and so on - and forces a longer and deeper engagement with the painting from the viewer. The most famous smile/smirk in portraiture is, of course, Leonardo's Mona Lisa. Artists great and small have been obsessed by it, critics too. It became a cult in the 19" century, and millions of words have been written about what it might mean and what she represents. There is something in it that draws us back to either confirm or revise our interpretation, always demanding further examination. At first look she seems to be welcoming, inviting you to join her; look again and she's changed her mind about you. Some she attracts, ‘others she repels. To the critic John Ruskin the painting was merely a caricature: to Walter Pater it contained everything. To some it is romantic, to others it can illustrate that withering look women sometimes bestow on obtuse men that illustrates the adage, ‘He that will not when he may / Shall not when he would’. So the smirk allows for a wider range of interpretation than the smile, but that doesn’t really explain why the smile was so rare for so long. One theory is that back then everybody had terrible teeth and didn’t want to reveal a gap-toothed, black-toothed mouth to the world. But can this really be the reason? At a time when everybody had bad teeth, would it have made people particularly shy or embarrassed, or others less attractive? Yet, both painters and sitters did have a number of reasons for being disinclined to encourage the smi. The first consideration is practical - smiles are hard to do, for both painter and sitter. For the sitter’s point of view, you can use your own experience of having your photograph taken. When someone gets out their camera and asks you to smile, you do so quite easily; but if they start fiddling about with focus and angles and depth of field, the smile freezes on your face. Not as a smirk, but a grimace. Imagine having to produce the same smile on demand when you go through the process of having your portrait painted. Besides, a smile isn’t really an expression, it’s a response, so cannot easily be maintained or recorded. We have to remember what a portrait was for; what it meant and represented. Nowadays, we all take thousands of pictures of friends and family, and they of us, often smiling, so we have a record of ourselves in almost every mood and context, and we don’t have to worry about being defined by one picture. Wealso have to remember that smiling has a large number of discrete cultural and historical significances, few of them being in line with our idea of it being a sign of warmth, enjoyment or happiness. In fact, by the 17" century it was generally agreed that the only people who smiled, in life and in art, were the poor, the simple, the drunk or the mad. You wouldn't catch an aristocrat doing it. You needed money to have your portrait painted by a known artist, and the portraits that hang in the galleries are usually of prominent people: royals, politicians, generals, high society. Portraits are for posterity. A smile would detract from their gravitas ~ these are serious people. The idea was not to capture a mood, let alone a frivolous one, nor even a record of a certain person at a certain time, but to provide an example, a moral certainty. 36 In the first paragraph, the writer suggests that, A. people in the past didn’t smile as much as we do. B portraiture wasn’t as popular as it is now. what makes us smile is culturally determined. D__ historically, the smile was a social reflex. Why might an artist prefer to paint a smirk to a smile? A. People will spend more time looking at the p B__ Itis physically more complex to do than a smile. C Asmile does not convey the personality of a sitter. D__ Because artists like to confuse their spectators. Which statement best expresses the writer's view of the Mona Lisa? A Too much has been written about it B It defies any fixed interpretations C_Ithas become a cult object. D__Itrepresents missed opportunities. 9. Why doesn’t the writer believe the ‘bad teeth’ theory? A. Smiling was generally frowned upon in those days. B People weren't so self-conscious in those days C Inthe past bad teeth weren't considered unattractive. D Sitters and artists had their own reasons for not smiling. Why is it difficult to paint smiles? A Smiles elicit the wrong response from spectators. B They always look more natural in photographs. C_ People find it difficult to smi not in the right mood. D_ It’s hard to maintain a smile for the length of a sitting. What does the writer say about portrait painting in the last two paragraphs? A. Artists had to depict a serious expression for future generations. B Poor people never used to be chosen as subjects. C__ Sitters sometimes smiled to show they had a warm personality. D__ People cannot be represented by only one picture, 133 91S3LTEST6 You are going to read four people’s views on renewable energy sources. For questions 37-40, choose from the peo} A-D. The people may be chosen more than once. A I'm definitely green when it comes to energy and am in favour of using all of the natural sources that can be converted into energy; wind, sun, the sea. They're all free. | think the government should put a lot more money into developing these resources. | have solar panels on my roof and it does save on electricity bills, once you've got past the initial cost, but it’s worth paying for clean energy. Everyone benefits, not just you. It’s the most accessible new power source domestically. It would be great if everyone everywhere did it, if it was a requirement that all houses built from now on should have solar panels built in. Of course, geography plays a part. | don’t suppose they'd be much use in Siberia. Wind power, too, is clean energy, though the turbines are a blot on the landscape, like electricity pylons, and they make a terrible noise. I've also heard that they are bad for bats. And we don’t know yet whether they're cost-effective. B Wind energy seems a promising new source to me. Lessening our dependence on fossil fuels is critical to the health of all living things, and wind energy can do just that. It would mean less smog, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. | know people complain about the unsightly windmills, but they take up a lot less space than people think, and they're working on the problem of how to make it safer for birds. Wind could provide as much energy as nuclear power stations do today. It has also, | believe, become affordable enough to compete with fossil fuels. If a household used wind power for 25% of its needs, then it would only pay about £3-4 a month for it, and the price is still dropping. Other renewable sources? | use solar power at home, pricey to set up, and not enough by itself, and which over time has proved fairly economical, but | sometimes have to take lukewarm showers. © | work in the energy business and at the moment I'm doing research into harnessing hydrogen as an energy source. We need to look to the future. Fossil and nuclear fuel reserves are limited, we need to look to several renewable alternatives, and hydrogen, after all, is the most abundant element in the universe. It burns clean and can be used as a fuel, mostly in vehicles, and its use would significantly reduce CO, levels in cities. However, it is true that there are technological and economic barriers to be overcome before it becomes a Viable energy resource for the future. A major one is that it takes an enormous amount of energy to produce it, a cost which would be passed on to the consumer. At the personal level, we use solar power at home, and | drive an electric car, which is fine for my needs, but until we have a proper infrastructure for them, makes long-distance driving difficult. D While | do see the need for alternative energy sources and am as worried as the next man about pollution levels, it all comes down to economics, doesn’t it? Both at the domestic and national level. So far, the alternatives don’t seem to me to come any cheaper or more efficient than what we've got now. We use solar power at home as a supplement to the main supply, but on its own it wouldn't be sufficient. I can see the point of fracking, though it does make a mess of the countryside, because it produces energy cheaply. We live by the sea, and I’ve often thought that would be a good source of energy. | understand they're working on it, but it depends on where you are in the world whether you get big enough tides to produce enough energy. I've been told that nuclear energy is still the cheapest and most reliable.TEST 6 You are going to read an extract from an article in a business magazine. Six paragraphs have been removed from the extract. Choose from the paragraphs A-G the one which fits each gap (41-46). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use. THE MODERN OFFICE Long gone are the rows of private offices that were the norm in many companies, to be replaced by open-plan layouts that aim to reduce costs and improve employee relations. Offices are evolving, it seems, and the ranks of symmetrical desks, Partitions and swivel chairs are undergoing a sea- change. laa Areas of informal seating, coffee bars and telephone nooks allow employees to step away from their desks to carry out a task in a specifically tailored environment, while also opening up the opportunity for chance encounters between members of staff. workers scored lowest in terms of innovation, while employees who were offered a broader variety and choice of workplaces scored significantly higher. [aa] —] To this end, architects and designers are looking not only at the hospitality and residential sectors for inspiration, but also to the technology industry where experience design has played an important role in office design for years. One of the'most significant borrowings from hotel design to office design is thinking about the total experience of the visitor from beginning to end, from the moment you enter to the moment you leave. [a2] (a5) — The concept of cellular working is becoming less required, and the whole nature of mobility, of moving freely around the office talking and swapping ideas, is where and when a great deal of decision-making takes place. And this new kind of workspace definitely encourages collective thought. Another development is that over the past few years, many co-working spaces have opened up, targeting start-up companies and freelancers looking for affordable offices. The variety of users of these shared office spaces has forced designers to create diverse settings within one building (a3 | (a6 A survey of workplaces recently found that more than 8 million people in the UK work in open-plan offices, but their rigid layouts forced almost 70% of them to sit at the same desk with the same co- workers each day. The survey - which covered the whole country and all industries - found that these Workplaces with such collaborative, informal and social spaces are the ones where employees report the highest levels of pride, enjoyment and productivity. And it’s not just tech companies and start-ups: banks, retailers and manufacturers are jumping on the bandwagon too.Once the seeds were sown by the tech ‘companies, other companies wanted to ‘compete with them, and soon realised that they had to come up with more innovative ways to engage employees and respond to what people wanted in a workplace. These results confirmed to employers the benefits of a more stimulating office environment. In fact, employees across all sectors and generations now look for a more stimulating ‘experience’ at the office. With the average person spending the majority of their waking hours in an office, it makes sense to ‘open up offices in this way. There should be more of an overlap between work, socialising and home environments many believe, and the new talk is of the ‘experience economy’ and ‘experience design’; indeed, more and more people are adopting it ‘The rather dull design features of the open plan office are being replaced in favour of plush upholstery, curated bookcases and leafy pot:-plants. More space is being given over to socialising and to encourage workers to move away from their desks. These features, borrowed from the hospitality industry, are seen {as valuable resources in offices. Greater pooling of ideas is just one of the many positive outcomes of people working in offices like these. This is what many believe office working is meant to be; it's about exploring and assisting the intellectual capital of employees to the fullest extent. It encourages and makes the best use of what each employee has to offer. But the frivolous innovations brought in to keep their employees happy ~ water-slides, themed rooms, and so on - were not wanted by the more traditional organisations, even though they were keen to change. They sought to. introduce more sophisticated stimuli In an age when so many of our conversations take place digitally, even within the office, the immediacy of a face-to-face conversation ‘aan provide greater clarity, prevent misunderstandings and prevent employees getting the wrong idea about what task it is they are to perform. The idea is to stop people working in a bubble and to interact more. ‘These range from the completely private to the deliberately social and noisy. Choice and adaptability of workspaces are key here. The demand is for less structured workspaces, with those involved appreciating that productivity is not necessarily inked to time spent behind a desk. 137 91S3LTEST 6 Part 8 You are going to read a magazine article about stress. For questions 47-56, choose from the sections (A-E). The sections may be chosen more than once. Which section suggests a change in posture will help in coping with a stressful situation? informs us that the more active you are, the more efficient your brain is? tells us that doing household chores is better for the brain than daydreaming? tells us that the mind will not accept a falsehood? suggests that the reader's personal experience will help him/her see the truth of the point he is making? talks about changes in our understanding of stress? admits that it takes time to improve powers of concentration? informs us that the brain can be deceived? focuses on self-belief? mentions losing control over our thoughts?A Whether stress is good or bad for you is a hotly contested subject in academic circles. Until recently, the default position was that stress was toxic: that it increased your chance of getting ill and even dying, it caused depression, damaged brain cells and aged you. However, recent research has shown that stress can prolong your life; it shows you are pursuing meaningful goals and engaging with life, which protects your health and brain. A recent study has shown that people over 50 who had the busiest lives had the highest brain function and powers of memory. SO, is it a case of a little stress being good but too much being bad? It’s not as clear cut as that; it’s more a question, not of the scale of the stress that's important, but how we react to it; whether we view it as a threat or a challenge, whetherit makes us retreat into ourselves or push forward. Think of it as a form of energy - the ancient ‘fight or flight’ response - and those who turn it to their advantage have managed to harness the brain’s power to shape itself by experience. B Arecent experithent showed how important confidence is when faced by a stressful situation. ‘A group of mathematics students, all at the same level of competence, were given problems to solve in front of an audience. One half were confident in their abilities, the other half not. Both groups, naturally, produced more of the stress hormone cortisol during the test, but the group of anxious students performed worse the more stressed they felt, while the more cortisol the confident group produced, the better they did. This seemed to prove that if you increase alertness/stress up to a certain point, performance gets better, but there's a point at which further increases cause a decline in performance. However, just saying ‘I feel confident’ won't work, your brain won't believe it. Yet research shows that activating the left frontal lobe of your brain, which is associated with positive behaviour, can help. Oddly, you can facilitate this by squeezing a rubber ball in your hand for 45 seconds, then releasing it for 15 seconds, and repeating. Another trick is to adopt a power pose - head up, shoulders squared, arms spread to take up space - which, apparently, increases dopamine activity in the brain. CAN STRESS BE GOOD FOR YOU c iF you want to make stress work for you, or at least reduce anxiety, one way is to be focused on whatever it is you're doing, however unpleasant. Even if you are cleaning the toilet and you are focused on it, the evidence is that you will be happier than someone loafing on a sunny beach whose mind is wandering. When the mind wanders, it tends to drift towards negative thoughts, memories and unresolved conflicts, which the brain tries to sort out. Our minds wander on average 160 times a day, and this kind of unfocused worrying ‘can lead to anxious thoughts that can spiral into a vicious cycle of anxiety, procrastination or poor performance. The solution to this is to train your attention. It won't happen in a day, but start with short periods of time and then increase them bit by bit, and reward yourself after each session, rather as if you were training a puppy. This will strengthen your brain's ability to control the emotional content of your mind. It also helps to think of at least three good things that have happened during the day before you go to sleep, even it’s something like an email from a friend, because small, positive thoughts make it easier for the brain to bring up more positive thoughts in a spiral effect. D You may have noticed this yourself, that fear and excitement are similar feelings; they have roughly the same symptoms - fast pulse, dry mouth, sweating, extreme butterflies ~ but you can use these to your advantage when doing something stressful, by telling yourself that the anxiety is really excitement. If you tell yourself you feel calm, it will have no effect simply because it’s a lie; all the symptoms say you are not. But if you tell yourself you are excited, you can trick your mind into believing it because the symptoms are almost identical. By doing this, you are rebranding the stress energy and conjuring up a mental context for yourself which changes one emotion, anxiety, into another, excitement. Tests have shown that it can even make you perform better than usual. This is because you now feel you are taking on a challenge rather than facing a threat, which sets up a series of changes to the chemistry of the brain. Dopamine activity is increased, which focuses your attention and sharpens you mentally, and that biochemical boost in turn sharpens your performance. 9 1S3L