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Part 6 CPE Reading 0 USE OF ENGLISH

Part 6 of the CPE exam involves reordering six paragraphs that have been removed from a longer text back into their correct positions, with one extra paragraph included that does not fit anywhere. It is a difficult part of the exam that gets easier with practice. When reordering the paragraphs, it is important to look for clues in the sentences immediately before and after each gap, as well as clues provided by names, pronouns, chronology, quotation marks, contrasting phrases, verb tenses, and repetition throughout the entire text. Common clues used include pronouns, time phrases, and contrasting phrases like "but" and "however".

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676 views4 pages

Part 6 CPE Reading 0 USE OF ENGLISH

Part 6 of the CPE exam involves reordering six paragraphs that have been removed from a longer text back into their correct positions, with one extra paragraph included that does not fit anywhere. It is a difficult part of the exam that gets easier with practice. When reordering the paragraphs, it is important to look for clues in the sentences immediately before and after each gap, as well as clues provided by names, pronouns, chronology, quotation marks, contrasting phrases, verb tenses, and repetition throughout the entire text. Common clues used include pronouns, time phrases, and contrasting phrases like "but" and "however".

Uploaded by

Pame Araujo Rocknroll
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Part 6 CPE Reading & Use of English Strategy

Cambridge calls part 6 a 'gapped text' activity. You get a long text with
six paragraphs removed (leaving 6 gaps, hence the name of the task).
Your job to is put the paragraphs back into the right place. It's quite
hard, and Cambridge make it harder by including an extra paragraph
that doesn't fit into any of the spaces.

Part 7 is a hard part of the exam that gets easier the more you practice.

How to start

Read the whole text. Read all the paragraphs.

Then pay special attention to the sentences before and after the gap - a
lot of the most important information will be there. You don't have to
start with the first gap - always start with the one you think is going to
be easiest and leave the hardest ones till later. The first answer you
choose will be a 1 in 7 chance, but the last one is 1 in 2.

But be careful! Sometimes there won't be a clue in the sentence


immediately before or after the gap. You really do need to read the
whole text to get its meaning - sometimes the 'clue' is the entire
paragraph

Get a clue

Detectives use clues to fill in gaps. 'Lord Haversham was killed by a left-
handed man at 1:25 in the morning... the only person alone at that time
was Charles the butler.' You can develop similar skills by looking for
clues in your Cambridge part 7 text.

What sort of clues are in a text?

 Names and pronouns (Jack... he... this...)


 Chronology (Then... Finally...)
 Quotation marks ("I couldn't believe it.")
 Contrast words (However, but)
 Verb tenses (had gone... will have finished)
 Cause and effect (Therefore... as a result...)
 Repetition (in other words...)

Fill in those gaps

Pronouns

Let's start filling in gaps by looking for clues!

Once upon a time there was a boy named Jack. [1]


__________________________. Then he died.

Choose one of these sentences to go in gap


A - He ate all the chocolate in London.

B - Their house was on a hill.

The documentary featured interviews with many of the top scientists in


the field. [2] __________________________. But the story was far
from funny, and many viewers wrote to the BBC to complain about its
depressing ending.

Choose one of these sentences to go in gap


A - It was watched by 8 million people.

B - One was Simon Baron-Cohen, brother of the famous comedian

Contrasting phrases

We've seen the power of 'but'. Here's another example:


The website was not immediately popular.
[3] __________________________.

A - However, in 2014 visitor numbers surged and it briefly became the


number 1 site in its category.

B - In 2014 visitor numbers surged and it briefly became the number 1


site in its category.

Which do you think creates a better flow to the story?

TIME PHRASES

In the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, actors and actresses were


tied to restrictive contracts that put their interests below the interests of
the movie studios. [4] __________________________.

A - These days, however, they are free to choose projects that interest
them.

B - More movies are now made in India than in Los Angeles.

Pronouns help us here - 'they' and 'them' in answer A refer to 'actors


and actresses'. And we also have help from the time phrase. 'The golden
age' is a period of time (if that wasn't clear there's also the past tense
'were tied'), which contrasts (using the contrast phrase 'however') the
phrase 'these days'.

Sentence B might be true, but is irrelevant to the sentence before the


gap

QUOTATION MARKS

A gap or two might be in speech marks ("") - that makes it pretty easy
to find the answer (in my opinion, anyway!). Ask yourself: which of the
sentences sounds like it was voiced by a real person? If there is a text
written in a neutral register and one of the answers has the pronoun 'I'
then that has to go inside the quotation marks.

But there was more to his performance than scoring the winning goal.
He also motivated his younger teammates, driving them forward,
boosting their morale when needed. '[5]_____________________.'

A - He had become a true leader of men.

B - I felt like I was on top of the world, like that woman in that movie

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