A m b r I d g e university press

34
“… advances in the
technology required to
remove ink …”
advances
35
“We need to accept a
change in the quality of
paper products”
quality
36
“… it also needs to be
sorted from contaminants
contaminants
Answer
offices
sorted
(re)pulped
de-ink/remove ink//make white
refined
Question
37
38
39
40
41
Questions
Task
Skills tested
30-36
Summary completion
• skimming for information
• understanding paraphrase
• rewording text
37-41
Flow chart completion
• skimming for specific information
• following a process
• summarising ideas

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149
Answer keys
WRITING: MODEL ANSWERS
ACADEMIC WRITING MODULE
Practice Test 3, Writing Task 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.
The chart below shows the amount of money per week spent on fast foods
in Britain. The graph shows the trends in consumption of fast-foods.
Write a report for a university lecturer describing the information shown
below.
You should write at least 150 words.
Model answer 165 words
The chart shows that high income earners consumed considerably more fast
foods than the other income groups, spending more than twice as much on
hamburgers (43 pence per person per week) than on fish and chips or pizza
(both under 20 pence). Average income earners also favoured hamburgers,
spending 33 pence per person per week, followed by fish and chips at 24 pence,
then pizza at 11 pence. Low income earners appear to spend less than other
income groups on fast foods, though fish and chips remains their most popular
fast food, followed by hamburgers and then pizza.
From the graph we can see that in 1970, fish and chips were twice as popular as
burgers, pizza being at that time the least popular fast food. The consumption of
hamburgers and pizza has risen steadily over the 20 year period to 1990 while the
consumption of fish and chips has been in decline over that same period with a
slight increase in popularity since 1985.

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1 5 0
Answer keys
It has often been said that “Good news is bad news” because it does not sell
newspapers. A radio station that once decided to present only good news soon
found that it had gone out of business for lack of listeners. Bad news on the other
hand is so common that in order to cope with it, we often simply ignore it. We have
become immune to bad news and the newspapers and radio stations are aware of
this.
While newspapers and TV stations may aim to report world events accurately, be
they natural or human disasters, political events or the horrors of war, it is also
true that their main objective is to sell newspapers and attract listeners and
viewers to their stations. For this reason TV and radio stations attempt to reflect
the flavour of their station by providing news broadcasts tailormade to suit their
listeners’ preferences. Programmes specialising in pop music or TV soap operas
focus more on local news, home issues and uptodate traffic reports. The more
serious stations and newspapers like to provide “so called” objective news reports
with editorial comment aimed at analysing the situation.
If it is true, then, that newspapers and TV stations are tailoring their news to their
readers’ and viewers’ requirements, how can they possibly be reporting real
world events in an honest and objective light? Many radio and TV stations do, in
fact, report items of good news but they no longer call this news. They refer to
these as human interest stories and package them in programmes specialising,
for instance, in consumer affairs or local issues. Good news now comes to us in
the form of documentaries the fight against children’s cancer or AIDS, or the
latest developments in the fight to save the planet from environmental pollution.
Practice Test 3, Writing Task 2
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Present a written argument or case to an educated reader with no specialist
knowledge of the following topic: