Un texto dividido en secciones y 10 afirmaciones que hay que asignar a cada sección.
Claves
Es lectura rápida de búsqueda (scanning) de ideas parafraseadas.
Una misma idea puede aparecer en dos secciones con un matiz distinto: lee con precisión.
Estrategia paso a paso
Lee las 10 afirmaciones primero y subraya las palabras clave.
Lee sección por sección y marca todas las afirmaciones que encajan.
Trampas habituales
Palabras iguales en el texto que no expresan la misma idea.
'Formal study' ≠ aprender de conversaciones.
Ejemplo resuelto
'has started a formal course of study' → 'I'm studying for a degree in archaeology'.
Preguntas de ejemplo
Intenta responder antes de abrir la solución. Las preguntas están en el idioma del examen.
Pregunta 1
Dificultad fácil≈ 1 min
Part 8 · The night shift
A · Jenny, baker
I've been baking bread through the night for nearly twenty years, and I still love the moment, around four in the morning, when the first loaves come out of the oven and the whole street smells of them. The craft itself has hardly changed in that time, though the customers have: people now ask for sourdough and spelt where they once wanted a plain white loaf. The hours were brutal at first. I used to try to live a normal life at weekends, which meant my body never knew what time it was. These days I keep to the same routine seven days a week, even on holiday, and I feel far better for it. My friends think I'm antisocial, and I suppose I am, but I'd rather be well rested than have a busy diary.
B · Marcus, hospital porter
People imagine hospitals are quiet at night, but some of my busiest shifts have been between midnight and dawn. What I like is that the hierarchy relaxes a bit. On a day shift, a porter is more or less invisible, but at three in the morning, when there are only a handful of staff on the ward, a consultant will stop and chat to you over a cup of tea. I've picked up more about medicine from those conversations than I ever would have from a textbook. Some of the nurses have urged me to train properly, but at my age I'm content to keep learning on the job. The downside is that I rarely see my children awake during the week, which is something I've never really made peace with.
C · Aisha, radio presenter
I present a phone-in programme that runs from one until five in the morning. When I started, I assumed my listeners would be mainly insomniacs, but they're a much more varied group: taxi drivers, new parents, students cramming for exams, people who simply can't face the silence of an empty house. Some of the calls are funny; others are heartbreaking. A surprising number ring simply to read out a poem they have written or to settle an argument about a football result. I've had to learn when to keep someone talking and when to gently pass them on to a helpline. Nobody trained me for that part of the job, and I think the station should have. It's a responsibility I take very seriously.
D · Pete, lorry driver
I switched to nights about six years ago, mainly because the roads are so much emptier. I can do a journey in five hours that would take eight during the day, and there's no one stuck in traffic beside me leaning on their horn. It suits my temperament. I've always been happier with my own company than in a crowd, and a cab on an empty motorway is about as solitary as it gets. The risk, of course, is tiredness, and I'm strict with myself about breaks, whatever the delivery schedule says. I've seen what happens when drivers push on when they shouldn't. Being paid more for the same work doesn't hurt either, although that wasn't why I made the change.
E · Lucy, museum security officer
Walking through the galleries at night with only a torch is a strange experience. During the day the rooms are full of noise and schoolchildren; at night it's just me and a few thousand years of history. I've become quite attached to certain objects – there's a Roman oil lamp I always say goodnight to, which my colleagues find hilarious. I'd never set foot in a museum as a child; it simply wasn't the kind of thing my family did. The job itself is mostly routine, checking alarms and doors, and I did worry at first that I'd find it boring. In fact, the quiet has given me time to think, and I'm now studying for a degree in archaeology in the hours between rounds.
You are going to read an article in which five people talk about working at night. For each question, choose from the people (A–E). Which person has grown fond of something in their workplace?
AA. Jenny
BB. Marcus
CC. Aisha
DD. Pete
EE. Lucy
Ver respuesta y explicación
Respuesta correcta: E. Lucy
Explicación
Lucy has 'become quite attached' to certain objects, such as a Roman oil lamp she says goodnight to. Jenny loves a moment in her working night, not an object in her workplace.
Pregunta 2
Dificultad media≈ 1 min
Part 8 · Behind the exhibition
A · Hannah, natural history museum
When we planned an exhibition on insects, more experienced colleagues warned me that the public would find the subject off-putting, and for the first few weeks the visitor figures seemed to prove them right. What changed things was a single live exhibit: a colony of leafcutter ants marching across a glass bridge above the visitors' heads. We had come very close to cutting it from the budget because of the cost of caring for the ants, but it became the image everyone shared online, and by the end of the run we had broken the museum's attendance record. I learnt never to underestimate curiosity. People don't need to be told that a subject is attractive; they need one moment that makes them stop and look. We now build every exhibition around at least one such moment.
B · Tomás, art gallery
My most ambitious project was a retrospective of a painter who had been largely forgotten. Tracking down the works took three years, as many were in private hands and some owners were reluctant to lend them. One collector agreed only on condition that his name appeared on every label, which I found rather distasteful, but without his six paintings the show would have had enormous gaps, so I gave in. The critics were generally kind, although one review complained that the hanging was too crowded – a fair point, I now think. If I were doing it again, I would show fewer works and give each of them more room to breathe. Still, the show brought the painter back into the conversation, and two of his works have since been bought by national collections.
C · Priya, science centre
We designed an interactive exhibition on climate for teenagers, and I was proud of it until I watched a group of fifteen-year-olds walk through the whole thing in under ten minutes. They pressed every button and read almost nothing. My first reaction was irritation with them, but eventually I realised the fault was ours: we had crammed the displays with text because we were so anxious to be accurate. In the second version we cut the wording by two-thirds and added a game in which visitors run a city's energy supply. Some of my colleagues felt we had oversimplified the science, and there were some heated discussions, but visitors now stay for forty minutes on average, and several schools have asked to borrow the game.
D · Owen, local history museum
Our exhibition about the town's shoe factory, which closed in the 1980s, was built almost entirely around objects and stories donated by former workers. I hadn't anticipated how emotional the opening would be; several elderly visitors were in tears when they recognised old friends in the photographs. What I'm less proud of is that we left out the strike of 1974, which is still a sensitive subject in the town. At the time it felt like a sensible way to avoid upsetting anyone, but a local journalist pointed out that we had told only the comfortable half of the story, and she was right. We've since added a room devoted to it, built around interviews with people on both sides of the dispute.
E · Lena, design museum
I curated a show on everyday objects – kettles, chairs, light switches – and I was worried that it would look trivial next to the big fashion exhibitions the museum is known for. In fact, the opposite happened. Visitors loved spotting things from their grandparents' kitchens, and the comments book filled up with family stories. The most useful lesson, though, came from a tiny detail. We had fixed the labels slightly too low on the wall, which meant that older visitors had to bend down to read them, and several wrote to complain. It sounds minor, but it taught me that accessibility has to be considered from the very first sketch, not added at the end.
You are going to read an article in which five museum curators describe an exhibition they organised. For each question, choose from the curators (A–E). Which curator left out part of a subject in order to avoid controversy?
AA. Hannah
BB. Tomás
CC. Priya
DD. Owen
EE. Lena
Ver respuesta y explicación
Respuesta correcta: D. Owen
Explicación
Owen 'left out the strike of 1974, which is still a sensitive subject… to avoid upsetting anyone'. Tomás showed fewer works in hindsight for reasons of space, not controversy.
Pregunta 3
Dificultad difícil≈ 1 min
Part 8 · How I found my science
A · Hannah Cole, marine biologist
I had always assumed I would become a vet, and I spent most of my teenage years volunteering at an animal hospital. What changed my mind was a week-long field trip in my first year at university, when we spent every morning wading through rock pools on the Cornish coast. I had never paid much attention to the creatures that live there, and I was astonished by how little was known about some of them. Our lecturer admitted cheerfully that she could not name half of what we found. That admission made more of an impression on me than anything else she said: it had never occurred to me that there could still be so much left to discover so close to home. Veterinary work, by contrast, had begun to seem rather settled to me – a matter of applying what was already known rather than finding out anything new. I switched courses the following term, much to my parents' bewilderment. They came round eventually, although my mother still introduces me as 'the one who looks at slugs'.
B · Ravi Mehta, astronomer
People expect me to say that I fell in love with the stars as a child, but I grew up in a city where you could barely see the moon. My route into astronomy was mathematics, which I found easy at school and, to be honest, rather dull. A physics teacher who noticed that I was bored lent me a book on the orbits of planets, and I remember being struck by the idea that the equations I was solving in class could describe something so vast. I didn't look through a proper telescope until I was twenty-two. When I finally did, I was slightly disappointed: the planets looked like smudges. Fellow students who had grown up with telescopes in their back gardens found my indifference baffling, and for a while I wondered whether I had chosen the wrong discipline altogether. It took me years to realise that most of the excitement in my field happens not at the eyepiece but in the data, which is where I now spend most of my working life.
C · Sofia Brandt, geologist
My career began with a failure. I had applied to study medicine and was turned down by every university I tried, so I accepted a place on a geology course more or less at random, intending to reapply the following year. I never did. Within weeks I had discovered that I loved being outdoors, and that reading the history of a landscape from its rocks felt like detective work. It helped that the department was small and the lecturers approachable; questions that would have seemed naive elsewhere were treated as worth answering. What I hadn't expected was how physically demanding the job would be. Fieldwork often means walking twenty kilometres a day with a heavy pack, and in my early years I struggled to keep up with colleagues who had been hiking since childhood. I'm still not the fastest on the mountain, but I've learnt to pace myself, and I no longer feel I have to prove anything.
D · Tom Okafor, neuroscientist
I spent five years as a nurse before I went anywhere near a laboratory. Working on a stroke ward, I was struck by how differently patients with apparently similar injuries recovered. Some regained their speech within weeks; others never did. None of the doctors I asked could explain why, and I found that frustrating and fascinating in equal measure. I read whatever I could find on the subject during quiet night shifts, though much of it was frankly beyond me at the time. Eventually I went back to university as a mature student, which was harder than I had anticipated – not academically, but financially, since I had a mortgage and a young family. I don't regret it for a moment, though. My clinical background gives me a perspective that many of my colleagues lack: I never forget that the brains I study belong to people.
You are going to read an article in which four scientists describe how they chose their field. For each question, choose from the scientists (A–D). Which scientist no longer feels the need to show others what they are capable of?
AA. Hannah Cole
BB. Ravi Mehta
CC. Sofia Brandt
DD. Tom Okafor
Ver respuesta y explicación
Respuesta correcta: C. Sofia Brandt
Explicación
Sofia: 'I no longer feel I have to prove anything'. Tom is confident about his perspective but never says he used to feel a need to prove himself.