First Certificate handbook of Reading Skills and Use of English 7

FCE Course Lesson 25 – First Certificate handbook of Reading Skills and Use of English 7.

Dialogue first certificate handbook Reading Skills and Use of English. In this lesson you will listen to a recording of the first certificate test of a telephone conversation with tips to help you in the first certificate preparation. Part 4 of Reading and Use of English is called Keyword Transformation. Here the main emphasis is on vocabulary and grammar. They give you 6 questions (plus 1 example). Each of these 6 questions contains 3 parts.

Dialogue 25: Skiing

MAN: The whole weekend was crazy. We left here at 6am Friday morning and arrived at Tignes in France at 8pm that night. I thought everyone would be exhausted but the excitement and adrenaline of being there took over so we all went out for dinner. Then we went to a few bars and a disco.

There were 56 of us all together, 20 had never been skiing before, so every morning they had 2 hours of training with an instructor on the beginner’s slopes. The rest of us were doing off-piste skiing. The beginners who learned quickly could do some slopes with the more advanced skiers by the last few days. Some of them were really good by the end!

As I’m part of the committee I couldn’t go completely wild at the discos because I wanted to make sure everybody was safe and having a good time, but it was still so much fun.

Oh, and great news! The rest of the committee and I all took part in a freestyle ski competition, performing tricks like skiing backwards and acrobatics. We agreed that the winner of the contest would not have to pay for the next trip to Andorra in February, and I won because I did an awesome backflip! I hope that holiday will be as fun as this one was!

We’ve decided to do a bit of fundraising because “Comic Relief” is coming up. You know, the charity event where tons of money is raised by people around the UK to help disadvantaged people in places like Africa and even here in Britain. So we’re going to set a bunch of races up between as many different university ski teams as possible. So there will be teams from Leeds, London, Edinburgh and so on. The races are going to take place at the dry ski slopes close to here and we are going to charge spectators a few pounds to watch. It will be a fun way to raise money for charity.

Vocabulary Reading Skills and Use of English first certificate handbook 7

ENGLISH	SYNONYM or DEFINITION
to take over	to take control or charge of
a slope	(skiing) an incline
a committee	a group with task
a trick	a performance
a backflip	a backward somersault done in the air
fundraising	making money for a cause
to charge for something	to ask for money

Exam tips Reading Skills and Use of English 7

EXAM TIP FOR First Reading Skills and Use of English 7

Reading and Use of English part 4 is called Key Word Transformation. Here the primary emphasis is on vocabulary and grammar. You are given 6 questions (plus 1 example). Each of these 6 questions contains 3 parts:

a lead-in sentence
a key word
a second sentence of which you are also given the beginning and the end > Candidates are expected to fill this gap so as to obtain a completed sentence with a similar meaning to the lead-in sentence.

This gap must be filled with 2 to 5 words, one of which is the Key Word given to you. This Key Word cannot be changed. It must appear as given. This rephrasing exercise is designed to test the candidates ability to express meaning in different structures, drawing from lexical and grammatical knowledge, as well as understanding of the context the reading passage.

Advice:

Practise paraphrasing before the exam.
Writing summaries is also good exam preparation as you will be using alternative vocabulary and sentence structure to express the same idea as the text you are summing up.
Work on synonyms. When learning a new word, try and read or learn its definition and a synonym as well as an antonym (a word meaning the opposite): just like the way we present you with new vocabulary in this course! (You are welcome).
Each of your answers must contain 2, 3, 4, or 5 words. You will get 0 points if you write more than 5 words in a gap.
How to count contracted words? Contracted words such as “don’t” count as 2 words, with the exception of one contracted form: “cannot” which counts as 1 word.
Don’t forget to incorporate the Key Word provided, in your answer. You will get 0 points if you forget to add this key word.
Pay attention to verbal forms as they will in some cases indicate whether the subject missing is subject or plural.
Do not forget to transfer your answers to the Answer Sheet, firmly and clearly marked in pencil. Be careful here as you must only write the words that are missing (not the whole sentence!)