Starting point

Have you ever seen a pop-up or a flashing message on your computer saying that you have won

a prize? Did you dick on it? What happened?

Have you ever received an email that you thought was suspicious? Describe it. What did

you do about it?

1) Read the article, ignoring the gaps for now, and complete these sentences with a word

or a short phrase.

1 The writer received an email saying his friend’s wife's money _________ at the airport.

2 The _________in the email was not perfect.

3 In a lottery scam, people give hundreds because they expect to get ______.

4 In some scams, people ask for money to open ____________ so that they can move money to

another country.

5 If you get close to finding out the truth, you might be _____________ , according to some

reports.

6 Because they feel embarrassed, some ________________don’t want to get the police

involved.

7 When booking a holiday, you might think you’re getting a _________but you will have to

pay extra.

8 You are more likely to ____________________ if someone appears to be honest.

2) EXAM PRACTICE

You are going to read an article about ways in which people try to steal money from you online.

Seven sentences have been removed from the article. Choose from sentences A-H the one which

fits each gap (1 -7). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.

A But before you book a holiday this way, think twice.

B Of course, people who send money will never see it again.

C Eventually, he explained that the email account had been taken over by hackers.

D Again, you receive an email, but this time you are told that you have won a fortune.

E I could have got my money back but it wasn’t worth having.

F Most of us are honest and we want to believe that others are too.

G No-one wants to admit that he or she has been fooled.

H She was asking me to help by sending money.

Don't be fooled!
Internet scams, where people - trick you out of your money, are not likely to go away any time
soon, James Hallam reports.

L ast summer, I received an email from the wife of an old friend. The message said that they were stuck in
Italy after all their money had been stolen as they waited to check in at the airport and now couldn’t afford
to get back home. 1___Several things struck me as odd about the email. Firstly, why didn´t my friend
write? I had only exchanged emails once with his wife and I had never met her. Secondly, there were
some odd things about the email, such as the less than perfect English and the fact that it wasn’t addressed
to me by name, simply beginning, ‘Hello.’ Despite the fact that I didn’t really believe the email, I felt the
need to write to my friend to sort it out. 2____ The email hardly had been sent to everyone in her address
book.
But what happened to me was quite a simple trick. There are people out there who have come up with all
kinds of ways to cheat us. A common one is known as the lottery scam. 3 ____ In order to get this money,
however, you need to send a small amount to cover ‘registration fees' or something similar (the 'small'
amount is usually in the hundreds, but you are assured that you will be receiving millions).
There are variations of the lottery scam - sometimes the writer pretends to be someone who has come into
a large amount of money but needs to get it out of the country in a different currency and they want you
to lend them some to open a bank account. Or they want to set up a business and they invite you to invest
in it, always with the promise of a much larger amount in return. 4____ Even if only a small percentage of
people fall for it, it can still add up to a lot of money or the criminals.
And it gets worse. In some of these scams, people travelled to foreign countries to try to get money back.
On arrival, they have often been tricked into giving yet more money. There are reports of people being
attacked because they have come too close to discovering the truth. Cases like this are difficult to confirm,
however. 5____ There is a great deal of embarrassment involved, so victims don’t always go to the police.
On the subject of travelling, be very careful of any special holiday deals that you find on the internet.
Often, it seems as if you are being offered an amazing bargain online. 6 ____ What seems like a great
discount could actually cost you more. In many cases, for example, the price you pay includes flights but
not accommodation.
You could also find that your hotel is in a very different location to what the website said. And of course,
it is very easy for companies to put pictures on their site that are misleading - that picture of a five-star
hotel might have been taken years ago, before they built a motorway next to it! Naturally, the same risks
apply to anything you buy on the Internet, so beware!
Perhaps one of the cruellest ways people can trick you is when there are emotions involved. Many of us
have online friendships, sometimes with people we haven’t met in person. Imagine, then, if one of these
people suddenly asks you to borrow money because his or her grandmother is sick and can’t afford to pay
for medicine. You would want to help, wouldn’t you? 7____ That's why it is easy to be fooled by
someone if they seem sincere and we have things in common with them. The story about the sick
grandmother might be true, but it probably isn't. Thinking carefully before you act could save you from
making a huge mistake.

3) Find words or phrases in the text which have a similar meaning to these words and

phrases.

1. show (their) tickets (paragraph 1)

2. invent; think of (paragraph 2)
3. inherit; get (money) when someone dies (paragraph 3)
4. the money a country uses, e.g.: dollars/pounds/euros (paragraph 3)
5. start (paragraph 3)
6. when (they) get there (paragraph 4)
7. a feeling that you´ve done something silly (paragraph 4)
8. the place where something is (paragraph 5)
9. luxury (paragraph 5)
10. shared interests (paragraph 6)
Use of English

1) EXAM PRACTICE. Read the text below and decide which answer (A, B, C or D) best fits

each gap.

Global Positioning System

GPS is a remarkable (1) ____. You may have seen your parents using a GPS system in their car, or you might
even have GPS on your smartphone. It tells you your exact position, possibly making the simple map and
compass (2)____.

The (3)____ of GPS was developed by the US military and the system was set (4) ____ by them. It is based on
a network of 24 satellites in orbit around the Earth. Using radio signals, the hand-held receiver calculates the
(5) ____ to the satellites and is then able to figure (6) ____ where the user is to (7)____ a few metres.

There are (8) ____ practical applications of this system. For example, it was used during (9) ____ of the
Channel Tunnel, connecting England to France, to (10) ____ sure that the two ends of the tunnel met in the
middle. Scientists are currently (11) ____ new ways to use GPS, such as the study of earthquakes. GPS
systems could track the way the ground beneath our feet moves and one day (12) ____ that an earthquake is
likely could save thousands of lives.

1 A appliance B discovery C solution D invention

2 A traditional B classic C obsolete D old
3 A concept B ideal C image D thought
4 A off B up C in D over
5 A length B line C distance D size
6 A off B up C on D lout
7 A within B among C between D around
8 A uncountable B numerous C massive D grand
9 A installation B construction C shaping D manufacture
10 A do B have C make D take
11 A researching B experimenting C estimating D predicting
12 A declaring B doubting C knowing D wondering

2) EXAM PRACTICE. Read the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap.

Use only one word in each gap Write your answers IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

Dinosaur extinction

After ruling the Earth (1) ____ 200 million years, the dinosaurs suddenly (2) ____ extinct around 65
million yeap ago. Scientists disagree about the precise reasons why they died (3) ____, but they agree that (4)
____ was probably the result of a dramatic change in the Earth’s climate. There are two main answers (5) ____
the question of what caused the change. A huge volcanic explosion has (6) ____ suggested as one possible
meteorite crashing into the Earth. However the explosion came (8) ____ both theories agree that disaster
spread over the planet. Large amounts of dust in the atmosphere blocked the Sun’s heat and temperatures
dropped. It (9) ____ estimated that around 25 per cent of plant life on the Earth was destroyec by fire. With
the conditions they (10) ____ used to disappearing, the dinosaurs could (11) ____ survive. Only smaller
animals, such as birds and mammals, could adapt ____ the new situation.