C1 Advanced Gapped Text – test 2. Tekst to wspomnienie osoby, która w wieku czterdziestu trzech lat nauczyła się latać szybowcem. Luki sprawdzają odniesienia do osób, powtarzające się zwroty i następstwo zdarzeń.
C1 Advanced Gapped Text – lot szybowcem
Z tekstu poniżej usunięto 6 akapitów. Znajdziesz je pod tekstem jako akapity A–G – jeden z nich jest zbędny i nie pasuje do żadnej luki. Przy każdym pytaniu wybierz z listy literę akapitu, który pasuje do danej luki. Format jest taki sam jak w egzaminie Reading and Use of English Part 7: 6 luk i 7 akapitów do wyboru. Jak szukać powiązań:
- zaimki i określenia (this, those, it, the latter) muszą mieć wyraźny odpowiednik w poprzednim akapicie,
- sprawdzaj oba końce luki: brakujący akapit musi pasować do tekstu przed nim i po nim,
- zwracaj uwagę na chronologię, kontrast (however, yet) i powtórzone słowa kluczowe.
Test 2 z serii C1 Advanced Gapped Text. Zwróć uwagę na powtarzający się zwrot instruktorki – pomoże ci połączyć kilka akapitów.
There you are
I was forty-three when I first sat in the cockpit of a glider, and I had never been more frightened in my life. The instructor, a softly spoken woman named Margaret who had been flying since the 1970s, strapped herself in behind me and asked whether I was ready. I lied and said yes.
The first thing that surprised me was the noise, or rather the lack of it. Once the tow plane released us and turned away, the only sound was the rush of air past the canopy. It was like being inside a held breath.
Margaret let me take the controls almost immediately. My movements were clumsy and far too large, and the glider responded by lurching from side to side. She said nothing, and after a while I realised that she was waiting for me to discover the problem for myself.
[ 1 ] …………
That phrase became a kind of refrain over the following months. She used it whenever I got something right, and it meant more to me than any amount of praise. Getting things wrong, on the other hand, she treated as entirely normal.
And there was plenty to get wrong. Gliding is a sport of constant decisions, most of them made with incomplete information. There is no engine to rescue you, so every mistake in judgement has to be paid for with height, which is the one thing you can never get back.
The key to staying up is finding thermals – columns of warm air rising from the ground. Experienced pilots can read the landscape for clues: a ploughed field that heats quickly in the sun, a cloud with a flat, dark base.
[ 2 ] …………
Then, one afternoon in late spring, something changed. Margaret pointed to a cloud forming over a village a few miles away and suggested I try my luck beneath it. Almost as soon as I arrived, the glider began to climb.
[ 3 ] …………
Margaret was waiting at the edge of the field. She did not say 'There you are.’ Instead, she told me it was time I started preparing to fly solo.
The prospect terrified me more than my first flight had. For weeks I found excuses to postpone it: the wind was too strong, I was tired, I had a cold. Margaret accepted each excuse without argument, which somehow made them harder to keep making.
My solo flight finally took place on a still, clear morning in July. I remember very little of it, except the strange sensation of looking over my shoulder and seeing the empty seat behind me.
[ 4 ] …………
In the years since, I have flown hundreds of hours and crossed half the country on a single flight. But none of those achievements has matched the quiet satisfaction of that short, ordinary circuit.
[ 5 ] …………
The farmer, to his credit, was more curious than angry. He helped me secure the glider and made me a cup of tea while we waited for my team to arrive with the trailer.
Such landings, I have since learned, are simply part of the sport. Every cross-country pilot has a collection of stories about unexpected fields, puzzled farmers and long drives home. They are told in the clubhouse with a mixture of pride and embarrassment.
Margaret retired from instructing a few years ago. I went to see her last summer and told her about my longest flight, a journey of over five hundred kilometres. She listened carefully, asked a few technical questions and then smiled.
[ 6 ] …………
I am an instructor myself now. I try to teach the way she taught me: to say very little, to let students discover things for themselves, and to save my praise for the moments when it really counts.
Missing paragraphs
A 'There you are,’ she said. I had not heard the phrase for years, and it took me a moment to realise that I was, absurdly, close to tears.
B I circled in the rising air for what felt like an eternity, watching the altimeter tick upwards. When I finally looked at my watch, I had been airborne for over an hour. I landed shaking with delight.
C When I finally did – when I stopped gripping the stick as if it might escape and started using my fingertips – the aircraft settled into a smooth, steady glide. Margaret’s only comment was a quiet 'There you are.’
D For months I could see none of these clues. My flights were short, and most ended with a gentle descent back to the airfield after twenty minutes or so. I began to suspect that I lacked some instinct that other pilots were born with.
E The flight lasted twelve minutes. It was, by any objective measure, entirely unremarkable. I took off, flew one circuit and landed, a little too fast but safely. The members of the club, who had been watching from the clubhouse, applauded as I climbed out.
F Gliders were flown long before powered aircraft. Nineteenth-century pioneers launched themselves from hilltops in fragile wooden machines, and many of them paid for their curiosity with serious injuries.
G I have also, inevitably, had my share of frightening moments. The worst came during a competition, when a thermal I was relying on collapsed beneath me and I was forced to land in a farmer’s field, narrowly missing a line of electricity cables.