Questions 7 – 11

Read the extract below from the service directory of a Motorists’ Association.

Answer the questions by writing the appropriate extension numbers in boxes 7-11 on your answer sheet.

Questions 12 -15

There are 9 paragraphs in this advice to motorists. Answer the questions below by writing the letter or letters of the appropriate paragraph or paragraphs in boxes 12-15 on your answer sheet.

Advice to motorists

A. Always lock your car and never leave your keys in the car. Sounds obvious, but how often have you left your car unlocked while you paid for fuel at a service station or dashed into a shop? A recently-passed law will ensure that you never forget again – heavy penalties apply.

B. Always lock valuables in the boot. Most car crime is opportunistic, so don’t make it easy. And if something is too valuable to lose, the golden rule is take it with you.

C. Thieves need little incentive. A lot of thefts from cars are carried out by youngsters after nothing more than a few dollars, so don’t leave coin-holders if they can be seen from outside. The cost of repairs often far outweighs the value of what is stolen.

D. At night, always try to park in a brightly-lit area where your vehicle can be seen by passers-by. Poorly-lit streets are the thief’s favourite hunting ground.

E. Never park where you can see broken glass from car windows on the ground. Thieves are creatures of habit and will return to the scene of past successes.

F. Install a car alarm.

G. Where available, use car parks that are well lit and have boom gates. Don’t leave your parking ticket in the car.

H. In high-risk areas leave your glove box and ashtray open to show thieves that there is nothing in the car worth stealing.

I. Don’t buy goods offered for sale if the price seems suspiciously low. Chances are the goods have been stolen.

SECTION 2

Questions 21-28

Read the passage below about the Buddy Peer Support Scheme, and answer the questions that follow.

International Business Institute – Buddy Peer Support Scheme

Think back to your first days and weeks in a new country. Were there times when you had questions that you wished you could ask a friend? Or when you wanted to have a chat about how you were feeling?

To help new students, the International Business Institute (IBI) plans to set up a buddy peer support scheme. The scheme will help new students meet current students at IBI who can provide them with some friendly company during their first months in Newcastle and help them with any small problems that they may have. Often, buddies may not be able to solve the problem, but they may know who can help.

What’s in it for you?

We believe that being a buddy will be rewarding in several ways. As a volunteer, it will be personally satisfying to know that you are able to help new students. However, it will also help you to make contacts that may be valuable in your future academic and professional lives. If you are an overseas student, it will give you another opportunity to practise speaking English. Lastly and most importantly, we hope that it will be enjoyable for you to be a buddy!

Responsibilities of buddies

1. Telephone and arrange to make contact with the new student.
2. Meet the student and show him/her around the campus and the local area. Meet for coffee, perhaps. Answer questions about living in Newcastle and administration procedures at IBI. (We will give you a checklist of things to mention when we send you the new student’s name and telephone number).
3. Arrange to meet the new student one morning or afternoon one weekend early in the semester, and take the student to places that you enjoy in Newcastle.
4. Be prepared to take phone calls from the new student to answer further questions that he/she may have from time to time. Meet to explain information to the new student in person, if required.
5. You will be matched to an individual new student. However, if you have friends who are also buddies, you might prefer to form a support group together. This would mean that you meet the new students as a group rather than one-on-one.
6. Being a buddy is voluntary. There is no “requirement” to provide assistance beyond the help outlined above. However, we hope that the buddy and new students will enjoy each other’s company and continue to meet each other.

Please note that if you agree to become a peer support buddy, you will be expected to fulfil your role conscientiously and cheerfully. It will be important to be considerate and reliable so that our student can feel confident of your support.

7. When you agree to act as a buddy for a particular term, your commitment covers that term only. For example, if you act as a buddy for Term 2, and would prefer to be free in the following term, there is no obligation to continue as a buddy in Term 3. Of course, we hope that you will want to assist every term.

During the first year of a child’s life, parents and carers are concerned with its physical development; during the second year, they watch the baby’s language development very carefully. It is interesting just how easily children learn language. Children who are just three or four years old, who cannot yet tie their shoelaces, are able to speak in full sentences without any specific language training.

The current view of child language development is that it is an instinct – something as natural as eating or sleeping. According to experts in this area, this language instinct is innate – something each of us is born with. But this prevailing view has not always enjoyed widespread acceptance.

In the middle of last century, experts of the time, including a renowned professor at Harvard University in the United States, regarded child language development as the process of learning through mere repetition. Language “habits” developed as young children were rewarded for repeating language correctly and ignored or punished when they used incorrect forms of language. Over time, a child, according to this theory, would learn language much like a dog might learn to behave properly through training.

Yet even though the modern view holds that language is instinctive, experts like Assistant Professor Lise Eliot are convinced that the interaction a child has with its parents and caregivers is crucial to its developments. The language of the parents and caregivers act as models for the developing child. In fact, a baby’s day-to-day experience is so important that the child will learn to speak in a manner very similar to the model speakers it hears.

Given that the models parents provide are so important, it is interesting to consider the role of “baby talk” in the child’s language development. Baby talk is the language produced by an adult speaker who is trying to exaggerate certain aspects of the language to capture the attention of a young baby.

Dr Roberta Golinkoff believes that babies benefit from baby talk. Experiments show that immediately after birth babies respond more to infant-directed talk than they do to adult-directed talk. When using baby talk, people exaggerate their facial expressions, which helps the baby to begin to understand what is being communicated. She also notes that the exaggerated nature and repetition of baby talk helps infants to learn the difference between sounds. Since babies have a great deal of information to process, baby talk helps. Although there is concern that baby talk may persist too long, Dr Golinkoff says that it stops being used as the child gets older, that is, when the child is better able to communicate with the parents.

Professor Jusczyk has made a particular study of babies” ability to recognise sounds, and says they recognise the sound of their own names as early as four and a half months. Babies know the meaning of Mummy and Daddy by about six months, which is earlier than was previously believed. By about nine months, babies begin recognizing frequent patterns in language. A baby will listen longer to the sounds that occur frequently, so it is good to frequently call the infant by its name.

An experiment at Johns Hopkins University in USA, in which researchers went to the homes of 16 nine-month-olds, confirms this view. The researchers arranged their visits for ten days out of a two week period. During each visit the researcher played an audio tape that included the same three stories. The stories included odd words such as “python” or “hornbill”, words that were unlikely to be encountered in the babies’ everyday experience. After a couple of weeks during which nothing was done, the babies were brought to the research lab, where they listened to two recorded lists of words. The first list included words heard in the story. The second included similar words, but not the exact ones that were used in the stories.

Jusczyk found the babies listened longer to the words that had appeared in the stories, which indicated that the babies had extracted individual words from the story. When a control group of 16 nine-month-olds, who had not heard the stories, listened to the two groups of words, they showed no preference for either list.

This does not mean that the babies actually understand the meanings of the words, just the sound patterns. It supports the idea that people are born to speak, and have the capacity to learn language from the day they are born. This ability is enhanced if they are involved in conversation. And, significantly, Dr Eliot reminds parents that babies and toddlers need to feel they are communicating. Clearly, sitting in front of the television is not enough; the baby must be having an interaction with another speaker.