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PART 4, PAPER ONE, CAMBRIDGE FIRST CERTIFICATE:
CHECKING DETAIL
Read the passage and answer the questions. In the Cambridge First Certificate, the time for this exercise would be 15-20 minutes.
THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY
Of which country is it said that people...............?
01. shout insults at each other
02. go to bed late
03. are contented
04. confuse public and private money
05. have a liquid diet
06. complain about the weather
07. take a long time getting home at the weekend
08. don't want additives
09. have a high quality of life
10. like to rest in the afternoon
11. rob the government
How far off is European unity? Are the differences between the peoples of Europe too great for comfort? Does the view from somewhere else agree with your own? How do you see Denmark? Is the quality of life there better than anywhere else? Or France? Does a Frenchman really live only for "le car"? Here is what some English newspapers had to say about certain European countries. Does their view agree with your own?
A. Denmark. "Although foreigners living in Denmark often complain of nine months of winter and 12 months of high taxation, a survey of 124 nations conducted by Pennsylvania University ranks the country first in the world for quality of life. This has come as something of a surprise to most of Denmark's five million inhabitants who see their country's liberal image threatened by rising economic problems, racial tension caused by the arrival of Middle Eastern refugees and social unrest. But recent EEC polls also show the Danes as the most happy of all people in the Community, even if they do not wish to become too closely involved in it."
B. France. France, it would appear, is a nation that lives and dies for its automobile. "France has the most deadly roads in Europe. 11,000 are killed every year, and nearly 200,000 injured. It also has the rudest and most aggressive drivers. One third of drivers admitted that they sometimes shouted insults at other drivers. The worst offenders were drivers in the professional and senior white-collar classes and drivers aged from 18 to 34. Another major hazard on French roads are traffic jams, and they are getting worse. Three-quarters of French families own at least one car, and one in four owns two or more cars. Returning to Paris after a weekend in the country has become a nightmare with regular traffic jams of more than 30 kilometres."
C. Italy. Italy is pictured as a place where public money always ends up in private pockets. "At a hospital in Sicily the windows are broken, the beds have no sheets and the patients ragged and barefoot. Yet according to the to the hospital's accounts, the patients gobble kilos of Parmesan cheese and consume litres of olive oil every day. Meanwhile Italy's railways have added up huge expenses on luxury travel and hotel suites for hundreds of employees to attend a transport exhibition in Vancouver. The delegation included wives, girlfriends, secretaries and executives who never set foot in Canada but went directly to Florida or the Bahamas."
D. Spain. In Spain, "...the preferred form of exercise is `Iberian yoga'. It involves stretching your stomach muscles to the maximum round a four-course meal and a bottle of wine. The exercise is difficult without wine as the sportsman is afterwards required to lie flat on his back and empty his mind of all useful thought. It takes about two hours to perform this, and at the end, a Spaniard may or may not feel the urge to return to his job that afternoon. The most beneficial effect of the yoga is that once rested, the Spaniard is strong enough to stay out until two in the morning, eating fried squid and gossiping with his friends."
E. Germany. The Germans are presented not just as nationalists, but as a bunch of nationalist beer-drinkers. "`We are not going to drink that imported stuff. The beer has got to be pure. I have been a regular in this pub for 35 years and I don't know a single person who would drink it. It's all chemicals.' The beer-drinkers of West Germany are agreed. The European Court can force them to let that nasty foreign beer into their country, but it cannot make them drink it. Beer makes up a quarter of the average German man's diet. Therefore the additives used in other countries could endanger his health. At least, so runs the argument put forward by the Bavarian brewers."
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