FCE PRACTICE - TEST 2


Reading • Part 1
Question 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Time allowed 01:00

You are going to read an article about sleeping. For questions 1–8, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.


Sleep examined

1 There are some things I take my time with – jogging, for instance. I put on my shorts and trainers and set off at a steady trot, but women with prams walk past me up the hills, and men with dogs stroll past me down them. There are some things I don’t: talking, making four packed lunches every morning, using my credit card (I’ve more than once had it questioned because I’ve used it so speedily in different places). But above all, I go to sleep quickly – like a light turned off, like a duster wiping a blackboard, erasing all consciousness.

2 I remember being tired as a child and fighting it. I never wanted to go to sleep – it seemed such a waste of time. More than that, there was a stage in my life when it became frightening, like a small death each night, a time of darkness and unknowing, when I was blotted out, and then who was I? So I hated sleep, I couldn’t understand adults who went to sleep well before midnight and then liked to lie in the next morning, and stumbled downstairs, slow- moving and puffy-eyed, like underwater creatures.

3 I remember being tired as an adolescent, and that was completely different. Sleep became delicious; lying in bed during weekend mornings, preferably after a late night, was like lying in a warm bath. Slipping in and out of shallow slumber; hearing sounds downstairs of ordinary life going on (the coffee machine, the lawnmower, the car engine) and just turning contentedly over to find a softer spot in the pillow before drifting off again. My eldest daughter is like that now – she pads downstairs on a Sunday morning, like a cat in her pyjamas, in time for lunch, soft-edged and dark-eyed after many hours of sleep.

4 As a student, I was an insomniac, full of energetic tiredness, coffee and the occasional extended sleep to keep me going, and it seemed easy to stay up all night. You could always catch up later. It was even rather addictive, doing without sleep, being tired and having that light-headed wakefulness. You just mustn’t stop, had to keep going, mustn’t close your tired eyes. Life was about moving forward, being active, doing as much as possible each hour.

5 Then came motherhood. No one had told me what being tired really was, although every mother goes through it, so tired that I was seeing the world through a film of exhaustion. Tiredness like sadness: crying at small things, irritation, falling asleep at dinner parties (that terrible feeling when you can’t, just can’t, keep your eyelids from falling), falling asleep while you sing your baby to sleep, falling asleep in your chair, at your computer, on the way to work; falling asleep mid-sentence. But falling asleep lightly, in the shallows of sleep so that you wake at the slightest sound from the child. One child, two children, three children, four. I used to look at them in their buggies, sleeping tucked up in a rug as they were pushed along the road, and wish I was a baby too, and somebody was wrapping me up so I could close my eyes and snuggle up in my own warmth. Heaven is an unbroken night.

6 I’m kind of through all that now, but tiredness is still in the bones. I can’t sleep it off. I open a book and find my head dropping. I sit down in front of the TV and I’m asleep. I wake up in the morning and think: no no no, I’m not ready. I remember when I was that child and I’d wake up in the morning, bursting with energy, jumping out of bed. I want that back, that sense of total wakefulness running through my veins, which I can only achieve now by drinking three large cups of thick black coffee.

7 I sometimes try to fight sleep. There isn’t enough time for everything. There are so many little jobs I want to do. But where as a child I used to win, now I lose. Sleep triumphs. It crashes down on top of me like a breaking wave, and I give in pathetically easily and drown in it.

1 Which of these does the writer do quickly?
A run downhill
B spend money
C eat her meals
D clean the house
2 As a child, the writer found it strange that older people
A always went to bed so late at night.
B did not tell the truth about how long they slept.
C wanted to remain in bed so long.
D looked so tired