Part 2 · Open cloze

Just a decade ago, the night train seemed to be heading for extinction. Faced (1) ______ fierce competition from budget airlines, operators across Europe were cutting services, and many routes disappeared altogether. Today, by contrast, sleeper trains are enjoying a revival that few would have predicted.

The reasons are not hard to find. A growing number of travellers are determined to cut down (2) ______ flying, and a train journey produces only a fraction of the emissions of a short flight. (3) ______ is more, a sleeper allows passengers to cover long distances while they rest, arriving in the heart of a city rather than at an airport miles from (4) ______ they actually want to be.

That is not to say the revival has been trouble-free. Tickets can be expensive, carriages are often elderly, and services are sometimes cancelled at short notice. (5) ______ these drawbacks, demand has frequently outstripped supply, with some routes selling (6) ______ weeks in advance.

Enthusiasts insist that the experience itself is part of the appeal. There is something about drifting off to sleep in one country and waking (7) ______ in another that no aeroplane can match. (8) ______ long as operators can keep fares within reach of ordinary travellers, they argue, the night train's future looks bright.

It is easy to assume that handwriting has had its day. Most of us type far more than we write by hand, and some schools have reduced the time they devote (1) ______ teaching it. Yet researchers are increasingly convinced that putting pen to paper offers benefits that typing cannot match.

In one widely reported study, students who took notes by hand understood the material better (2) ______ those who used laptops. The explanation, the authors suggested, is that because we cannot write (3) ______ quickly as we type, we are forced to summarise (4) ______ than simply transcribe what we hear. In (5) ______ words, writing by hand makes us think.

There is also evidence that forming letters by hand helps young children learn to read. (6) ______ pressing a key, which produces an identical shape every time, drawing a letter requires the child to pay close attention to its form.

None of this means we should abandon our keyboards. But it does suggest that handwriting is (7) ______ no means obsolete, and that schools would do well to think twice before dropping it from the timetable. (8) ______ all, the humble pen may still have a few lessons to teach us.

Most of us like to think that we are capable of doing several things at once. We answer emails during meetings, check our phones while cooking and listen to podcasts at the (1) ______ time as working. Research, however, suggests that the brain is far less adept at juggling tasks (2) ______ we might imagine.

What we call multitasking is, (3) ______ often than not, nothing of the sort. Instead, the brain switches rapidly from one activity to another, and each switch comes at a cost. (4) ______ though it may only take a fraction of a second to refocus, those fractions quickly add up, and over the course of a day the time lost can be considerable.

Interestingly, the people who consider (5) ______ to be the best multitaskers often perform the worst in laboratory tests. Researchers believe this may be because their confidence leads them to take (6) ______ more than they can realistically handle.

None of this means that we should never attempt two things at once. Walking while chatting to a friend poses few problems, since one of the activities requires next (7) ______ no conscious effort. The trouble begins when both tasks demand our full attention, as many drivers who have tried to send a text message have discovered to (8) ______ cost.