Day reading Passage (Australian culture and culture shock)

3 
To reinvigorate (v) 
- to make something stronger, or more exciting or successful 
again.
Example: Lower interest rates could reinvigorate consumer spending and the
struggling housing market.
4 
Lapsed (adj) 
- no longer being continued or valid; expired; terminated.
Example: a lapsed insurance policy.
5 
Flagging (adj) 
- becoming weaker, smaller.
Example: We have to find ways to boost our flagging sales.
6 
To drop out (phr verb) 
- to not do something that you were going to do, or to stop 
doing something before you have completely finished. If a student drops out, they 
stop going to classes before they have finished their course.
Example: He dropped out of school when he was 16.
7 
Vocational (adj) (C1) -
providing skills and education that prepare you for a job.
Example: The school offers vocational programs in welding, electrical work, and
building maintenance.
8 
To dawn on somebody (phr verb) (C2) 
- If a fact dawns on you, you understand it 
after a period of not understanding it; to become known or obvious to someone, often 
suddenly:
Example: I was about to pay for the shopping when it suddenly dawned on me that
I’d left my wallet at home.
Example: It finally dawned on him that she’d been joking.
9 
To head (v) (B2) 
- to go in a particular direction.
Example: I think we ought to head home now, before it gets too dark.

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Day 19
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.
The University of Life
Katherine Demopoulos meets students who took a break from study to volunteer overseas
and returned with a new sense o f purpose
The majority of 18-year-old students entering higher education go straight from school to 
university. For many school leavers, however, there is the irresistible attraction of the ‘gap 
year, a time between school and university when they decide to experience something 
new, different or exciting. Many of these so-called ‘gappers’ go off travelling around the 
world, often supplementing their limited funds by taking on casual work, while others may 
do voluntary work in a village in a distant part of the world.
For the majority of gappers, the gap year is simply a chance to enjoy life as an 
independent adult for the first time. Increasingly, however, they are also proving a great 
way of reinvigorating a lapsed or flagging interest in education, offering a chance to think 
about why you should study, or if you need to study at all. A growing number of students, 
having taken a break after school, are heading back into further and higher education via 
a roundabout route of working and ‘gapping’. According to the latest data from the British 
university admissions service, UCAS, 105,000 students aged 19, and 44,400 aged 20, 
entered higher education last year - figures that show a steady annual increase in this age 
group over the previous three years.
19-year-old student Christine Samways is a typical example. She left school at 16 with 
nine good exam passes at grades A to C, but did not want to continue studying at the time. 
She was also worried that, despite having all the attributes of a good student, she would 
find the challenges of higher education too great and would be forced to drop out. Instead, 
she gained a vocational qualification in hairdressing. However, she very quickly began to 
realise it was not quite what she wanted and that going back into some kind of education 
could be her next step. Like many 16-year-old school leavers starting work for the first 
time, it dawned on her that if you don’t have qualifications, or the right qualifications, you 
have fewer work choices. The things that you want to do just aren’t available to you,’ she 
says.
Unsure of what her next step should be, Christine decided to head to Mexico to do 
voluntary work at a children’s home. She was there for a year under the auspices of the 
International Cultural Youth Exchange (ICYE) - an organisation which has been running 
since 1949, when it sent 50 German students to the US as peace ambassadors. She 
never expected that working in Mexico would give her such a sense of confidence and, 
perhaps just as importantly, direction. On returning home to the UK, she decided to make 
a fresh start in education by enrolling on a course in Social Sciences and Humanities to

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Reading Passage 1
prepare herself for university. Her new sense of confidence helped at her college interview. 
Previously, a formal interview would have made her very nervous, but she now found it 
much easier to talk on an informal and formal level to people she didn’t know. ‘I feel more 
comfortable in these situations,’ she says. ‘Mexico was the first time I’d been out of my 
comfort zone. Now I think I can cope with things better.’
Christine is now working towards a degree in International Development at Bath University, 
a choice of subject informed by her experience of working with Mexican children. And, as 
well as finding some direction in her career, she now speaks good Spanish - a skill she 
says she intends to keep up, perhaps by working abroad. She knows that the Mexican 
children’s home benefited from her time there, just as she did. As well as being ‘an extra 
pair of hands’, she helped to streamline the children’s timetable so they spent more 
structured time on homework. The children began to ‘do better in school,’ she says. ‘You 
only move up a year if you pass a year - got four children that at the beginning of the year 
were told they were going to stay down, but they moved up. It’s a good feeling.’
ICYE also brings students to Europe from the countries that European students 
traditionally visit. Agnes Eldad, from Kampala, Uganda, has just graduated with a degree 
in Social Work. She came to the UK in January this year, getting a voluntary work 
placement relieving full-time carers of elderly people in Bexleyheath, Kent. With her social 
work background, she wanted to understand how elderly people were treated in Britain 
and to see for herself how their relationships with their children, grandchildren and in-laws 
worked.
Agnes found the experience extremely beneficial, but says that the ICYE only really works 
if participants have a focus for what they want to do, see and study. Ironically, for her, 
this could be the only chance to work with elderly people before she goes back home 
in January. In Uganda, old people live with, and are supported by, their families, so she 
won’t have an opportunity to work with them. Instead, she now wants to set up her own 
vocational training programme for young girls in northern Uganda. Agnes says her time in 
the UK has helped her to set her goals for the future.

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Day 19
In boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet, write