C1 Advanced Gapped Text – test 5. Tekst popularnonaukowy o historii roweru – od drewnianej „maszyny biegowej” Karla Draisa po rowery elektryczne. To tekst informacyjny, a nie narracja, więc powiązania między akapitami są mniej oczywiste.
C1 Advanced Gapped Text – historia roweru
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 5 z serii C1 Advanced Gapped Text – połowa cyklu. W tekstach informacyjnych szukaj nazw wynalazków, dat i słów typu that design, the effect, her enthusiasm, które odsyłają do poprzedniego akapitu.
Two wheels and two centuries
Few inventions seem as simple, or as obvious, as the bicycle. Two wheels, a frame, a chain and a pair of pedals: it is hard to believe that it took human beings until the nineteenth century to put them together. Yet the story of the bicycle is anything but straightforward.
Its earliest ancestor was the 'running machine’, built by the German inventor Karl Drais in 1817. It had two wheels and a steerable front, but no pedals; riders pushed themselves along with their feet, as young children do on balance bikes today.
Drais’s invention enjoyed a brief period of popularity among fashionable young men in Europe, who raced them along city pavements. Complaints from pedestrians soon followed, and several cities banned the machines altogether.
[ 1 ] …………
The resulting machine, known in English as the 'boneshaker’, lived up to its name. With iron tyres and a heavy wooden frame, it transmitted every bump in the road straight to the rider’s spine.
To go faster, manufacturers made the front wheel larger, since each turn of the pedals would then carry the rider further. The logic led, eventually, to the high-wheeler, or 'penny-farthing’, with a front wheel that could be around one and a half metres in diameter.
Riding one required considerable skill and no small amount of courage. The rider sat almost directly above the huge front wheel, and any sudden stop could throw him head first over the handlebars – an accident common enough to have its own name, 'taking a header’.
[ 2 ] …………
That design arrived in the 1880s. The 'safety bicycle’ had two wheels of similar size and a chain that drove the rear wheel. Combined with the pneumatic tyre, patented shortly afterwards, it produced a machine that was fast, comfortable and relatively easy to ride.
[ 3 ] …………
Nowhere was the impact greater than on the lives of women. The bicycle offered a degree of independence that had previously been unthinkable, allowing women to travel without chaperones and to explore beyond their immediate neighbourhoods.
It also changed what they wore. The long, heavy skirts of the period were dangerous on a bicycle, and many women adopted shorter skirts or loose trousers known as 'bloomers’, to the horror of more conservative observers.
Some of those observers went further, warning that cycling would damage women’s health or encourage immoral behaviour. The American campaigner Susan B. Anthony took a very different view. The bicycle, she declared, had done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.
[ 4 ] …………
In some places, notably the Netherlands and Denmark, cycling never entirely lost its status, and after the fuel crises of the 1970s both countries invested heavily in dedicated cycle lanes. Elsewhere, it took much longer for attitudes to change.
[ 5 ] …………
Technology has played its part, too. Electric bicycles, which provide assistance when the rider pedals, have made cycling possible for people who might otherwise find hills or long distances too demanding.
Purists sometimes dismiss them as cheating, but the numbers tell a different story. Many electric bike owners report cycling more often and further than they did before, and a significant proportion use them to replace car journeys.
Two hundred years after Karl Drais first pushed his running machine along the streets of Mannheim, the bicycle remains one of the most efficient forms of transport ever devised. Measured by the energy needed to move a person a given distance, it outperforms walking, running and every motorised vehicle.
[ 6 ] …………
It is a remarkable turnaround for a machine that was once banned from city pavements. Drais, one suspects, would be delighted.
Missing paragraphs
A The craze faded almost as quickly as it had begun, and for several decades the idea was largely forgotten. It was not until the 1860s that French mechanics had the idea of attaching pedals directly to the front wheel.
B Not surprisingly, the high-wheeler remained largely the preserve of athletic young men. Women, older people and the cautious were effectively excluded from cycling, and would remain so until a safer design appeared.
C The effect was extraordinary. Within a decade, cycling had become a mass activity across Europe and North America. For the first time, ordinary working people had access to a means of personal transport that cost almost nothing to run.
D That efficiency may yet prove to be its greatest asset. As cities search for ways to reduce emissions and ease congestion, the humble bicycle looks less like a relic of the past than a vehicle for the future.
E Today, however, the bicycle is enjoying a remarkable revival. Concerns about pollution, traffic congestion and public health have led cities around the world to follow the Dutch and Danish example.
F The first bicycle races were held in Paris in 1868, and they quickly attracted large crowds. Within a few years, professional cyclists had become some of the best-known sportsmen in France.
G Her enthusiasm was widely shared, but the golden age of the bicycle proved short-lived. In the early twentieth century, the arrival of the motor car pushed cyclists to the margins, and in many countries the bicycle came to be seen as a poor person’s vehicle.