CAMBRIDGE LOWER SECONDARY ENGLISH 8: END OF UNIT 4 TEST
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End of unit 4 test
Section A: Reading
Read the article below, then answer questions 1–6.
The future is here!
Ever wondered what might happen in the future? Flying cars? Computers in brains?
Although the world has changed dramatically in the past 50 years, we haven’t quite
reached the stage where teachers are made from metal. Yet. In the past, though,
people had some crazy ideas about what the year 2020 would be like. But just how 5
accurate were they? Read on . . .
No work
Sounds good to me! In the 1960s, an article in the magazine Time claimed that by
2020 everybody would be very rich indeed. The idea was that instead of working
ourselves to exhaustion (which let’s face it, we all do), machines would do all the
work. Humans would do nothing except count the money. Imagine the fun you could
have . . .
10 Accuracy score: 0 out of 10. I’m still working.
No food
This isn’t quite as bad as it sounds – to be honest, it sounds awful – but it actually
wasn’t a scary belief that there’d be nothing to eat in the future. No, this is the strange
prediction made by Ray Kurzweil in a 2005 book. He claimed that by 2020, humans
wouldn’t need food. Instead, technology would feed our bodies and remove waste 15
products. The result – no need to eat.
How boring would that be?
Accuracy score: 0 out of 10. I’m still cooking.
Flying houses
This next prediction is about . . . well, flying houses, as you may have guessed from
the subheading! In the 1960s, Arthur C. Clarke, a leading writer and inventor, reckoned
20 that by 2020 we’d have houses that could move to other streets, towns and even
countries. Could be fun – if it gets too hot in Mumbai, you could always fly to
Iceland! Accuracy score: 0 out of 10. I’m still on the ground.
So, a big fat zero for all of those predictions. Shame. But were there any predictions
that did come true? Well, Arthur C. Clarke wrote about an electronic device that stored
Cambridge Lower Secondary English 8 – Creamer, Clare & Rees-Bidder © Cambridge University Press 2021
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CAMBRIDGE LOWER SECONDARY ENGLISH 8: END OF UNIT 4 TEST
25 lots of information for humans to read. He called it a Newspad. Sounds familiar . . .
1 Give one word from the first paragraph (lines 1–5) that means ‘greatly’.
[1]
2 Suggest how the writer has made the opening of the article effective. Give a clear example to
support your answer.
[2]
3 Look at paragraph 2 (lines 6–10). Give two examples of informal language and explain their
effects.
[2]
4 Look at paragraph 3 (lines 11–17). Give two interesting examples of sentence punctuation and
explain their effects.
[2]
5 This article uses a headline and subheadings. Give two further features in the article that are
typical of this text type.
• [2]
6 What is the main purpose of this text?
Cambridge Lower Secondary English 8 – Creamer, Clare & Rees-Bidder © Cambridge University Press 2021
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CAMBRIDGE LOWER SECONDARY ENGLISH 8: END OF UNIT 4 TEST
Tick () one box.
to inform the reader to
persuade the reader to advise
the reader
to entertain the reader [1]
Section B: Writing
1 Write a talk for your class predicting what schools may be like in the year 2100. You
should write three paragraphs.
You could include:
• what may still be the same
• what may be different
• how technology may influence schools. [10]
Space for your plan:
Write your talk:
Cambridge Lower Secondary English 8 – Creamer, Clare & Rees-Bidder © Cambridge University Press 2021
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Cambridge Lower Secondary English 8 – Creamer, Clare & Rees-Bidder © Cambridge University Press 2021
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Cambridge Lower Secondary English 8 – Creamer, Clare & Rees-Bidder © Cambridge University Press 2021
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