ENGLISH CHAMPION 2017 ROUND 1 – GRADE 8 (Test 5)

Look at the six sentences for this part.

You are going to listen to two friends, Jane and Ed, talking about another person with superhuman abilities.

Decide if each sentence is correct or incorrect.

 If it is correct, put a tick in the box for YES. If it is not correct, put a tick in the box for NO.

Ed was surprised after learning about Mr. Velu’s abilities.

Jane thinks Mr. Velu can make money from his abilities.

They agree that anyone can get strong if they want to.

Jane thinks that only a few people have secret abilities.

Ed thinks we’ll see more unusual abilities in the future.

They both want to read more about Mr. Velu.

You hear someone being interviewed.

What question are they answering?

You hear someone describing an event she went to.

What kind of event was it?

You will hear people talking in an extract. For questions 1-2, choose the answer which fits best according to what you hear.

You hear part of an interview with a health expert.

What does the interviewer say happens to people after a bad night’s sleep?

Some children fail to sleep well because they

Read the text and answer the questions below.

English dot com

When you hear how I learned a foreign language, you have to remember a few things. In 1993, when I was starting to learn English, no one had heard of the internet. I wasn't able to read websites on topics that I found interesting or follow blogs. And I have no idea how I decided which movies to see without my favourite movie review website.

My reading practice was limited to literature. All I had were the few books on sale locally, plus whatever I could get from my cousin in America. For listening practice, I only had the news and cartoons on cable TV. DVDs didn't exist at all. People bought and rented VHS videos but in Poland there was no spoken English on them. The only way to hear that was to visit the movies.

My dictionaries were all in book form until I received my first PC dictionary. It came on at least six disks and had unhelpful explanations and few example sentences. It doesn't sound very useful but in fact, I loved it, because of its ability to work with other programs and find English words more quickly. Today, computerized dictionaries have simple explanations and lots of examples.

If I were a complete beginner learning English today, I'd spend hours on the web, reading about my favourite topics, downloading up to date movies, emailing English-speaking friends and posting comments on forums. Yes, I admit, at first, it would probably be hard to understand real-life English, but I'd spend time looking things up and in the end I'm sure I'd pick up the language much faster than I did back in 1993.

(Adapted from an article by Tomasz R Szynafski)

What is Tomasz trying to do in the text?

Tomasz says he doesn't know

To watch films in English, Polish people in the 1990s had to

Tomasz liked his first computer dictionary because it

Which of these might Tomasz say about learning English through the internet?

You are going to read an article about an animal behavior. Six sentences have been removed from the article. Choose the sentence which fits each gap (1-6). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.

A.Such behavior, developed over hundreds of thousands of years, is instinctive and completely natural.

B.This use of a third individual to achieve a goal is only one of the many tricks commonly used by apes.

C.So the psychologists talked to colleagues who studied apes and asked them if they had noticed this kind of deception,

D.When she looked and found nothing, she 'walked back, hit me over the head with her hand and ignored me for the rest of the day'.

E.Of course, it's possible that he could have learned from humans that such behavior works, without understanding why.

F.The ability of animals to deceive and cheat may be a better measure of their intelligence than their use of tools.

G.The psychologists who saw the incident are sure that he intended to get the potato.

Nature’s Cheats

Anna is digging in the ground for a potato, when along comes Paul. Paul looks to see what Anna's doing and then, seeing that there is no one in sight starts to scream as loud as he can. Paul's angry mother rushes over and chases Anna away. Once his mum has gone, Paul walks over and helps himself to Anna's potato.

Does this ring a bell? I'm sure it does. We've all experienced annoying tricks when we were young - the brother who stole your toys and then got you into trouble by telling your parents you had hit him. But Anna and Paul are not humans. They're African baboons, and playing tricks is as much a part of monkey behavior as it is of human behavior.

Throughout nature, tricks like this are common - they are part of daily survival. There are insects that hide from their enemies by looking like leaves or twigs, and harmless snakes that imitate poisonous ones. 16.1 Some animals, however, go further and use a more deliberate kind of deception - they use normal behavior to trick other animals. In most cases, the animal probably doesn't know it is deceiving, only that certain actions give it an advantage. But in apes and some monkeys, the behavior seems much more like that of humans.

What about Paul the baboon? His scream and his mother's attack on Anna could have been a matter of chance, but Paul was later seen playing the same trick on others. 16.2 Another tactic is the 'Look behind you!' trick. When one young male baboon was as attacked by several others, he stood on his back legs and looked into the distance, as if there was an enemy there. The attackers turned to look behind them and lost interest in their victim. In fact, there was no enemy.

Studying behavior like this is complicated because it is difficult to do laboratory experiments to test whether behavior is intentional It would be easy to suggest that these cases mean the baboons were deliberately tricking other animals, but they might have learned the behavior without understanding how it worked. 16.3 They discovered many liars and cheats, but the cleverest were apes who clearly showed that they intended to deceive and knew when they themselves had been deceived.

An amusing example of this comes from a psychologist working in Tanzania. A young chimp was annoying him, so he tricked her into going away by pretending he had seen something interesting in the distance. 16.4

Another way to decide whether an animal's behavior is deliberate is to look for actions that are not normal for that animal. A zoo worker describes how a gorilla dealt with an enemy. 'He slowly crept up behind the other gorilla, walking on tiptoe. When he got close to his enemy, he pushed him violently in the back, then ran indoors.' Wild gorillas do not normally walk on tiptoe. 16.5 But looking at the many cases of deliberate deception in apes, it is impossible to explain them all as simple imitation.

Taking all the evidence into account, it seems that deception does play an important part in ape societies where there are complex social rules and relationships and where problems are better solved by social pressure than by physical conflict. 16.6 Studying the intelligence of our closest relatives could be the way to understand the development of human intelligence.

For these questions, read the text below and decide which answer best fits each gap. 

Origami

Origami is the art 17.1toofwithfor paper folding, the aim of 17.2whichwhathowwhere is to make objects using folds and creases. Although other shapes are possible, in 17.3timemostgeneralall, objects begin with a square sheet of paper whose sides may be different colours. This is usually folded without cutting. The origins of origami are not known for 17.4positivedefinitelyabsolutelycertain. Some are of the opinion that it began in Japan, others that it originated in China, from where it was taken to Japan in the seventh century. It may also have developed independently in the West. What is clear is that it reached its 17.5the greatestmuch greatgreatestgreater development in Japan. Probably the most famous modern origami artist was Akira Yoshizawa, who died in 2005. He pioneered origami as a creative art, as well as 17.6comingrunningkeepingturning up with a symbolic method of representing paper folding. In all, he created more than 50,000 models, only a few hundred of which were shown in his books.

Simplify.

Harry plants 3 rows of tomatoes with n plants in each row. He also plants 1 row of beans with 5 plants in the row. Which equation can be used to find t, the total number of plants Leon planted?

A hexagon and the measures of some of its angles are shown below. What is the measure of angle N?

Salt solution is an example of:

Sound waves can move through a medium due to the vibration of molecules in that matter. Which of the following mediums does not allow us to hear any sound?

The items in this part have four underlined words or phrases. You must identify the one underlined expression that must be changed for the sentence to be correct.
All root vegetables grow underground, and not all vegetables that grow underground are roots.

The items in this part have four underlined words or phrases. You must identify the one underlined expression that must be changed for the sentence to be correct.
The process of fermentation takes place only in the absent of oxygen.

The items in this part have four underlined words or phrases. You must identify the one underlined expression that must be changed for the sentence to be correct.
In about 1920, experimental psychologists have devoted more research to learning than to any other topic.

The items in this part have four underlined words or phrases. You must identify the one underlined expression that must be changed for the sentence to be correct.
Transfer taxes are imposed on the sell or exchange of stocks and bonds.

The items in this part have four underlined words or phrases. You must identify the one underlined expression that must be changed for the sentence to be correct.
One of the greatest of mountains climbers, Carl Blaurock was the first to climb all of the mountains higher than 14,000 feet in the United States.

Choose the sentence which is closest in meaning to the one in bold.
Taking photographs inside the museum is strictly forbidden.

Choose the sentence which is closest in meaning to the one in bold.
None of his classmates can compete with him as regards his mathematical genius.

Choose the sentence which is closest in meaning to the one in bold.
Of the people interviewed, all were in favor of the government proposal.

Choose the sentence which is closest in meaning to the one in bold.
As opposed to being beneficial, too much sleep can actually lower a person's performance.

Choose the sentence which is closest in meaning to the one in bold.
So far, thanks to the fine weather, the project has gone according to schedule.