INSTITUTO DE EDUCACIÓN SUPERIOR N°28 “OLGA COSSETTINI”

TRADUCTORADO LITERARIO TÉCNICO, CIENTIFICO EN INGLÉS

SIMULACRO INGRESO AL CURSO LECTIVO 2024

APELLIDO: .................................... NOMBRES: ..............................................

D.N.I.: ........................................... COMISIÓN:................. TURNO …………….

1. Reading comprehension: Multiple matching

1- Read the text below. For questions 1-15, choose from the paragraphs (A-D). The paragraphs may
be chosen mor e than once. When mor e than one answer is r equir ed, these may be given in
any order.

Which paragraphs mention the following?

o common causes of dissatisfaction with the school system ( )
o official requirements which do not apply to home education ( )
o asking for assistance if necessary ( )
o an increase in the range of families whose children are taught at home ( )
o being forced to do something unnecessarily ( )
o checking that the law is being respected ( )
o the practical application of knowledge ( )
o somebody's normal activity being prevented by illness ( ) ( )
o a situation in which legal action could be taken ( )
o optional study outside normal timetable hours ( )
o somebody not being able to achieve their full potential ( ) ( )
o realizing that something was wrong at school ( )
o alerting parents to the nature of the job ( )

Home is where the school is who need more individual attention. Rhiannon
spends an hour and a half studying science
A At 8 am, when other children have to catch (today's subject: static electricity), then switches
trains or buses to school, 14-year-old Rhiannon to maths.
Cassell walks into the family living room in
Huntly, Aberdeenshire, and checks on the day's If she is having difficulties, she seeks her father's
assignments with her teacher — her father help. 'He doesn't do the work for us, just helps us
Matthew. Then Rhiannon, like her older sisters reason it out.' After lunch Rhiannon is back at
Tess, 16, and Abigail, 15, heads back to her own work for a practical follow-up on the morning's
room, while their father works with the two science lesson: an experiment with balloons and
youngest children, James, ten, and Alicia, eight, dust. She then reads her current literary classic
 INSTITUTO DE EDUCACIÓN SUPERIOR N°28 “OLGA COSSETTINI”
TRADUCTORADO LITERARIO TÉCNICO, CIENTIFICO EN INGLÉS
SIMULACRO INGRESO AL CURSO LECTIVO 2024

APELLIDO: .................................... NOMBRES: ..............................................

D.N.I.: ........................................... COMISIÓN:................. TURNO …………….

Little Women until 2.30pm. Although, that's the for a fortnight, with a package of homework
official end of the school day, Rhiannon may to keep her going. 'She completed it in an
carry on with a subject she enjoys or is having hour,' recalls Beverley. Soon afterwards, she
problems with. and her husband removed Cassie from school,
and Beverley began supervising her work at
B Matthew Cassell, 37, has been supervising his home. Now ten, Cassie reads voraciously over
children's education since he retired on health a wide range of subjects. She and her brother
grounds 4 years ago. He is not anti-school or Alexander, seven, don't follow a fixed
critical of teachers. 'It's just that I can give the timetable and there's no bell to bring studies to
children more time than they'd get in a large an abrupt end. Cassie approves of this flexible
class.' Regular tests and careful record keeping regime. 'If it's a nice day I can go for a bike
ensure Matthew keeps a check on their ride with my dad,' she says.
progress. The Cassells are in good company.
Once only possible for the wealthy, home
schooling is increasingly popular among parents D As well as being more fun, home education can be
fed up with bullying, narrow curriculums, rigid positively beneficial. 'On average, home-
timetables, or the lack of proper religious schoolers are two years ahead of their schooled
teaching. Matthew's daughter, Rhiannon, echoes counterparts,' says Roland Meighan, professor of
another common reason for parents opting for special education at Nottingham University. A
home education: 'At school I always felt they parent need not be a qualified teacher to be a home
were holding me back. Now I can learn at my educator and children do not have to follow the
own pace.' national curriculum or sit formal tests. It is
C Alarm bells rang for Beverley Young after her perfectly legal to keep a child away from school,
four-year-old daughter Cassandra's teacher as long as he or she is being educated. Parents do
not even need to tell the local authority, although
suggested the girl's numerical skills were weak
it is necessary for the head teacher to be informed
because she had failed a simple sorting activity.
if a child is withdrawn from a state school. In that
Beverley asked Cassie why she had not put case, responsibility for ensuring that alternative
coloured balls in the correct holes. 'But, arrangements are satisfactory does lie with local
Mummy, I'm a big girl,' she replied. authorities, which can take parents to court if
'We do that sort of thing with my baby brother.' children's needs are not being met. Laurence
Cassie was also much better than her Purcell, head of school services for Kensington
classmates at reading but the teacher still and Chelsea, claims there is no official hostility to
made her sound out the individual letters of the idea. 'We don't wish to discourage parents,' he
words. Although she rapidly became bored with says. 'But we do warn them of the heavy workload
everything, the school would not let her go up they are taking on.' At first his inspectors visit
to a higher class. Then Cassie contracted an parents once a term, and then once a year if
infectious skin disease and had to stay at home everything is fine.
 INSTITUTO DE EDUCACIÓN SUPERIOR N°28 “OLGA COSSETTINI”
TRADUCTORADO LITERARIO TÉCNICO, CIENTIFICO EN INGLÉS
SIMULACRO INGRESO AL CURSO LECTIVO 2024

APELLIDO: .................................... NOMBRES: ..............................................

D.N.I.: ........................................... COMISIÓN:................. TURNO …………….

2. Gapped text

Choose from the sentences A-H the one which best fits each gap in the article. There is one
extra sentence which you do not need to use. An example is given.

A - Others include severe tiredness or the consumption of excess alcohol.

B - When she woke up five hours later, she was covered in red marks.
C - She did not realize that anything was wrong at first.
D - She does not look forward to turning the lights out at night.
E - This often leaves those specializing in sleepwalking understaffed and underfunded.
F - In the majority of cases the experience is quite uneventful.
G - It turned out that she had been making them in her sleep.
H - It may seem amazing but all these kinds of things as possible.

Walk on the Dark Side

Mike Thomson reports on a disturbing phenomenon – sleepwalking

Dangerous as well as embarrassing, sleepwalking remains a mystery while its results can be both
upsetting and unpredictable. Despite their popular image as zombie-like figures who stumble about with
outstretched arms, sleepwalkers are often capable of performing complex acts. Dr Peter Fenick, a consultant
neuro-psychiatrist, says their capabilities are surprising. “I’ve known sleepwalkers who have got onto motorbikes,
ridden horses, and driven cars.” 0 – H

However, some sleep disorder experts believe that such behavior occurs when the individual is suffering
from nocturnal blackouts or amnesia. These produce what is called the ‘fugue’ state. In this condition the individual
enters a lighter state of sleep and can cope more easily with lengthier and more complicated tasks than the
average sleepwalker, who is usually back in bed within 15 minutes.

Whatever the definition given, however, few people are as clear-thinking and articulate when they are
asleep as Janet Brierly from London, who found that her phone bill had mysteriously trebled. She later discovered
why. Friends would remark on lengthy late-night calls she had made to them (many of them international), none of
which she remembered. 1 - __ She has since been forced to hide her telephone in a drawer at night.

It is estimated that as many as one in three children and one in 20 adults sleepwalk at some time. Experts
believe the condition is most common among children and the elderly. Overall, men are more likely to sleepwalk
than women, though the reason for this remains a mystery. What is now becoming clear is that sleepwalking tends
to run in families. Stress or anxiety are believed to be major causes. 2 - __

Sleepwalking is thought to start about 90 minutes after the person goes to sleep. It occurs at the transition
point between deep sleep and the more alert form of dreaming sleep. 3 - __ It leads to little more than a walk round
the bedroom or the opening of a few drawers. Injuries most often occur when sleepwalkers believe they are
somewhere they are not: windows, stairs and electrical appliances can lead to disaster.

Nancy Harrison from Wiltshire woke up shivering one night to find the bedroom window wide open and her
husband Robert’s bed empty. 4 - __ “I assumed Robert had gone to the bathroom. But when I went to close the
window, I happened to look down and there was his body lying on the lawn. I was really scared. I couldn’t believe
he could still be alive and I dashed downstairs. But when I bent down to check if he was still breathing, I discovered
he was unhurt and still asleep.”
 INSTITUTO DE EDUCACIÓN SUPERIOR N°28 “OLGA COSSETTINI”
TRADUCTORADO LITERARIO TÉCNICO, CIENTIFICO EN INGLÉS
SIMULACRO INGRESO AL CURSO LECTIVO 2024

APELLIDO: .................................... NOMBRES: ..............................................

D.N.I.: ........................................... COMISIÓN:................. TURNO …………….

In another instance a Birmingham woman poured hot water over herself while she was sleepwalking. She
was convinced that her house was filling up with ice. 5 - __

Trying to find the root cause of the problem of why people sleepwalk is not straightforward. There are
several sleep laboratories and clinics around the country, but most concentrate on treating more common
complaints such as snoring or insomnia. 6 - __

To see a specialist you will need to be referred by your own doctor, who may first try you on sleeping pills.
These work by temporarily stopping the body entering the phase of sleep which accompanies sleepwalking, but
their addictive nature means they are only short-term solution.

3. Multiple Choice

Read about the history of time, then answer the questions about the text, choosing either a, b, c or d
as the best answer.

The History of Time

If you can read a clock, you can know the time of day. But no one knows what time itself is. We cannot
see it. We cannot touch it. We cannot hear it. We know it only by the way we mark its passing. For all
our success in measuring the smallest parts of time, time remains one of the great mysteries of the
universe. One way to think about time is to imagine a world without time. There could be no
movement, because time and movement cannot be separated. A world without time could exist only
as long as there were no changes. For time and change are linked. We know that time has passed
when something changes.

In the real world, the world with time, changes never stop. Some changes happen only once in a
while, like an eclipse of the moon. Others happen repeatedly, like the rising and setting of the sun.
Humans always have noted natural events that repeat themselves. When people began to count such
events, they began to measure time. In early human history, the only changes that seemed to repeat
themselves evenly were the movements of objects in the sky. The most easily seen result of these
movements was the difference between light and darkness.

The sun rises in the eastern sky, producing light. It moves across the sky and sinks in the west,
causing darkness. The appearance and disappearance of the sun was even and unfailing. The periods
of light and darkness it created were the first accepted periods of time. We have named each period
of light and darkness: one day.

People saw the sun rise higher in the sky during the summer than in winter. They counted the days
that passed from the sun's highest position until it returned to that position. They counted three
hundred and sixty-five days. We now know that is the time Earth takes to move once around the sun.
We call this period of time a year.

Early humans also noted changes in the moon. As it moved across the night sky, they must have
wondered: Why did it look different every night? Why did it disappear? Where did it go? Even before
they learned the answers to these questions, they developed a way to use the changing faces of the
moon to tell time. The moon was "full" when its face was bright and round and "new" when it was
almost entirely dark. The early humans counted the number of times the sun appeared between full
moons. They learned that this number always remained the same, about twenty-nine suns. Twenty-
nine suns equalled one moon. We now know this period of time as one month.
 INSTITUTO DE EDUCACIÓN SUPERIOR N°28 “OLGA COSSETTINI”
TRADUCTORADO LITERARIO TÉCNICO, CIENTIFICO EN INGLÉS
SIMULACRO INGRESO AL CURSO LECTIVO 2024

APELLIDO: .................................... NOMBRES: ..............................................

D.N.I.: ........................................... COMISIÓN:................. TURNO …………….

Early humans hunted animals and gathered wild plants. They moved in groups or tribes from place to
place in search of food. Then, people learned to plant seeds and grow crops. They learned to use
animals to help them work, and for food. They found they no longer needed to move from one place
to another to survive. As hunters, people did not need a way to measure time. As farmers, however,
they had to plant crops in time to harvest them before winter. They had to know when the seasons
would change. So, they were forced to developed calendars. No one knows when the first calendar
was developed. But it seems possible that it was based on moons, or lunar months.

When people started farming, the wise men of the tribes became very important. They studied the
sky. They gathered enough information so they could know when the seasons would change. They
announced when it was time to plant crops.

1. Why is time such a difficult concept to understand?

a. it's always changing
b. it's always moving
c. it's been misunderstood since pre-history
d. it's not tangible

2. How were early humans able to begin measuring time?

a. by counting the objects in the sky

b. by working both at night and during the day
c. the movements of objects they saw every day
d. by following the sun to the west

3. How did the concept of seasons become understood?

a. by tracking the sun's movements through the months
b. by noting the differences in temperature
c. by measuring the length of the days
d. with the introduction of early calendars

4. How would an early human have defined a 'month'?

a. the number of days between a full moon and a new moon

b. the number of days from one phase of the moon's cycle and then back to the same point
again
c. the number of days for the sun and moon to be seen together
d. the number of days between eclipses of the moon

5. Why did the move towards farming require a better understanding of time?

a. so that crops were grown at the right time of the year

b. because looking after animals required it
c. because they needed to have traditional celebrations at the same time every year
d. because they wanted to know when animals would give birth

6. What is the meaning of the word 'forced' in the penultimate paragraph?

a. the wise men were given no choice

b. the crops wouldn't grow without the calendars
c. time became a lot more important
d. it was critical for survival
 INSTITUTO DE EDUCACIÓN SUPERIOR N°28 “OLGA COSSETTINI”
TRADUCTORADO LITERARIO TÉCNICO, CIENTIFICO EN INGLÉS
SIMULACRO INGRESO AL CURSO LECTIVO 2024

APELLIDO: .................................... NOMBRES: ..............................................

D.N.I.: ........................................... COMISIÓN:................. TURNO …………….

READING Answer keys

1. Multiple Matching

1. B
2. D
3. A
4. B
5. C
6. D
7. A
8. /9. B, C (in any order)
10. D
11. A
12/13 B, C (in any order)
14 C
15 D

[Link] Text

1–G 2–A 3–F 4–C 5–B 6–E

3. Multiple Choice

1.d 2.c 3.a 4.b 5.a 6.d