General Training Reading

SECTION 1 — Questions 1–14

Read the text below and answer Questions 1–7.

Westbrook Community Centre: Evening and Weekend Classes, Spring Term

A — Beginners' Photography
Tuesdays, 7.00–9.00 p.m., 8 weeks, £96
Learn how to take better pictures with any digital camera or even your mobile phone. You'll practise framing, lighting and simple editing. Classes are limited to ten students. In the final week, the best photos from the course will be displayed in the centre café for all visitors to see.

B — Conversational Spanish
Mondays, 6.30–8.00 p.m., 10 weeks, £120
Improve your speaking confidence with a native-speaker teacher. The course book is included in the fee. Please note that this course is designed for people who already know some basic Spanish. Complete beginners should wait for our introductory course in the autumn.

C — Furniture Restoration
Saturdays, 10.00 a.m.–1.00 p.m., 6 weeks, £150
Give an old chair or small table a new life. Bring along a small item of furniture of your own, and our experienced instructor will show you how to repair, sand and refinish it. All tools and materials are included. Please wear old clothes.

D — Healthy Cooking on a Budget
Wednesdays, 6.00–8.00 p.m., 5 weeks, £75
Learn to prepare tasty, nutritious meals without spending a fortune. No experience is needed. There is an additional charge of £5 per session to cover ingredients, payable on the night. Bring containers so that you can take home what you cook.

E — Creative Writing
Thursdays, 7.00–8.30 p.m., 8 weeks, £80
This course takes place entirely online by video call, so you can join from home. It is led by a published novelist. Each student will have the chance to send in one piece of writing for detailed personal comments from the tutor.

Questions 1–7

Look at the five classes, A–E, above.

For which class are the following statements true?

Write the correct letter, A–E. You may use any letter more than once.

Read the text below and answer Questions 8–14.

Greenway Station: Lost Property

Items found on our trains or at Greenway Station are kept at the Lost Property Office, next to Platform 1, for seven days. After this, they are transferred to our regional lost property centre in Halbury, where they are kept for a further three months.

Opening hours
Monday to Friday: 8.00 a.m. – 6.00 p.m.
Saturday: 9.00 a.m. – 1.00 p.m.
Closed on Sundays and public holidays

Reporting a lost item
Please report your lost item by completing the form on our website. You will receive a reference number by email. Unfortunately, our staff are unable to deal with enquiries about lost property by telephone.

Collecting your item
When you collect an item, please bring photo identification and your reference number. If you would like someone else to collect it for you, they will need a letter signed by you, as well as their own photo identification.

Charges
There is no charge for collecting an item from Greenway Station. Items collected from the regional centre in Halbury are subject to a £5 handling fee.

Please note
For health reasons, any food or drink that is handed in will be thrown away immediately.

Questions 8–14

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the text above?

Write

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

SECTION 2 — Questions 15–27

Read the text below and answer Questions 15–21.

Larkfield Logistics: Requesting Annual Leave — A Guide for New Staff

Your entitlement
Full-time employees receive 25 days of paid annual leave each year, in addition to public holidays. Part-time employees receive leave in proportion to the number of hours they work. The leave year runs from 1 April to 31 March.

How to apply
All requests for leave must be made through the staff portal, which can be accessed from any company computer or from your phone. Your request will be approved or refused by your line manager, usually within three working days. Please do not book travel or make other arrangements until your leave has been approved.

Notice
You should give at least twice as much notice as the amount of leave you are requesting. For example, if you wish to take one week off, you should apply at least two weeks in advance.

Busy periods
November and December are our busiest months. During this period, no more than two people from any team may be on leave at the same time, and requests are dealt with in the order in which they are received.

Unused leave
We encourage all staff to take their full entitlement. However, if you are unable to do so, you may carry up to five unused days over into the next leave year. These days must be taken by the end of June. Any leave that is not used by then will be lost.

New employees
During your probation period, which normally lasts three months, you may only take leave with the agreement of your department head.

Questions 15–21

Complete the sentences below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the text for each answer.

Read the text below and answer Questions 22–27.

Working from Home: Guidance for Employees

A Before you begin working from home on a regular basis, please speak to your manager. Not every task can be done effectively away from the office, so you will need to agree together which parts of your job are suitable. You will also be asked to complete a short online assessment about your home working arrangements.

B It is important to set up a proper workspace rather than working from the sofa or the kitchen table. Your screen should be at eye level, and your chair should support your lower back. Try to work near a window if possible, as natural light reduces eye strain. If you do not have a suitable chair or screen, the company can provide one on request.

C You are responsible for keeping company information safe while you are at home. Always lock your computer when you leave it, even for a few minutes, and do not allow family members or visitors to use your work laptop. Any printed documents containing customer details must be shredded, not put in the household rubbish.

D When you are not in the office, it is easy for colleagues to lose track of what you are doing. Please keep your online calendar up to date, attend your team's weekly video meeting, and reply to messages promptly during your normal working hours.

E Many people find that working from home makes it harder to switch off. Set clear start and finish times, take regular breaks away from your screen, and make sure you go outside during the day. If you are feeling isolated or stressed, our confidential staff wellbeing service is available to help.

F To help with the extra costs of working from home, such as heating and electricity, the company pays a fixed monthly allowance to all employees who work from home for at least two days a week. This is added to your salary automatically. Please note that you cannot claim separately for internet costs.

Questions 22–27

The text has six paragraphs, A–F.

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i–viii, next to questions 22–27.

List of Headings

• i Protecting company information
• ii Arranging a comfortable place to work
• iii Help with household bills
• iv Agreeing which work is suitable
• v Keeping in contact with colleagues
• vi Looking after your wellbeing
• vii Choosing a new computer
• viii Working hours for part-time staff

SECTION 3 — Questions 28–40

Read the text below and answer Questions 28–40.

Bamboo: the grass that builds

A To most people, bamboo looks like a kind of tree. It is tall, it has a hard, woody stem, and in some parts of the world it forms dense forests. In fact, bamboo is a grass, more closely related to wheat and rice than to oak or pine. There are well over a thousand species, ranging from small plants less than a metre high to giants that reach thirty metres or more. Bamboo is also famous for its speed of growth. Although the rate varies greatly between species, some can grow by almost a metre in a single day, making them among the fastest-growing plants on Earth.

B This speed is one of the reasons why bamboo is attracting interest as a building material. A tree grown for timber may need between twenty and fifty years before it can be harvested, whereas many types of bamboo are ready in three to five years. Just as importantly, cutting bamboo does not kill the plant. Bamboo grows from an underground network of roots and stems, and when a stem is cut, new shoots soon appear to replace it. As a result, a bamboo forest can be harvested regularly for many years without needing to be replanted.

C In much of Asia, Latin America and Africa, bamboo has been used for thousands of years. It has provided the frames and walls of houses, as well as bridges, furniture, baskets, paper and musical instruments. Young bamboo shoots are a common ingredient in many Asian dishes. Even today, in Hong Kong, workers construct scaffolding from bamboo poles tied together, and this is used on some of the city's tallest buildings. Supporters of bamboo point out that such scaffolding is light, cheap and quick to put up, and that it can be taken down and used again.

D Bamboo's popularity is not only due to its availability. It is also remarkably strong. Because its stem is hollow, it is light, yet it can carry heavy loads, and some engineers compare its strength, relative to its weight, with that of steel. Bamboo is also flexible. Under pressure, it tends to bend rather than break, which makes it a suitable material for buildings in areas at risk of earthquakes. Bamboo houses can also be built quickly, but it is their ability to move with the ground that is most valued in such regions.

E Nevertheless, bamboo has some serious weaknesses. Untreated bamboo is attractive to insects, and if it is kept in damp conditions, it can rot within a few years. For this reason, it usually needs to be treated with chemicals. This treatment does not make the bamboo any stronger, but it protects it from insects and decay. A further difficulty is that, unlike sawn timber, no two bamboo poles are exactly alike. Their irregular shape and thickness make them hard to use in standard designs, and in many countries, building regulations have been written with steel, concrete and timber in mind. Officials may therefore be unwilling to approve a bamboo building, however well it is constructed.

F Bamboo also has an unusual way of reproducing. Many species flower only once every few decades, and when they do, all the plants of that species in a region tend to flower at the same time, produce huge quantities of seed, and then die. This can have dramatic consequences. In parts of north-east India, the mass flowering of one species, roughly every fifty years, has been followed by a sudden rise in the number of rats, which feed on the seeds. When the seeds run out, the rats move on to farmers' crops, and serious food shortages have resulted.

G In recent years, new ways of using bamboo have been developed. In 'engineered bamboo', the stems are cut into thin strips, which are glued together under pressure to make boards and beams of standard sizes. These can be used in much the same way as timber, which helps to overcome the problem of irregular shape. Bamboo is also marketed as an environmentally friendly material for products such as flooring and clothing. However, some of these claims have been questioned. Turning bamboo into fabric, for instance, often involves large quantities of chemicals, and many bamboo products are transported long distances before they reach the shops. Bamboo may well have an important part to play in a more sustainable future, but its benefits depend on how it is grown, processed and used.

Questions 28–33

The text has seven paragraphs, A–G.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A–G.

Questions 34–36

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

• A All species grow at a similar rate.
• B Some species can grow nearly a metre in a day.
• C It grows faster than any other plant on Earth.
• D It grows most quickly in its first year.

• A it is heavier than other materials.
• B houses made from it can be built quickly.
• C it bends instead of breaking.
• D it is cheap to repair.

• A to make it stronger
• B to protect it from insects and rot
• C to make it easier to cut
• D to give it a more regular shape

Questions 37–40

Complete the sentences below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the text for each answer.