UNIT 4 – PLACES TO LIVE

I. GRAMMAR
There is/ There are
Complete the table with the correct words.

Prepositions for when things happen

in
in spring, summer, autumn, winter
in May, June, December
in 1974, in 2020
Come back in three months.

on
on Monday, Thursday, Sunday
on my birthday
on 30th April

at
at four o’clock
at 1.25 p.m
before
I have breakfast before I go to school.
Mum walks the dog before she goes to work.

after
I do my homework after school.
Vanessa goes dancing after dinner.

for
Wait here for a minute.
I practice the violin for five hours a week.

by
I need to be at the station by three o’clock. (= I need to be at the station before or at three
o’clock.)
Give me your homework by Friday. ( = Give me your homework on Friday, but not after
Friday.)

during
During my holidays, I had fun with my friends. ( = I had fun with my friends while I was on
my holidays.)
The phone always rings during dinner! (= The phone always rings when we are having
dinner.)
 Don’t use during to say how long. You use for.
My parents are in France for three weeks.
My parents are in France during three weeks.

until/til
The post office is open from 9 a.m until/til 4.30 p.m. (from 9 a.m to 4.30 p.m.)
Let’s wait till Maria gets here.
last/this/next
You use last for the past.
Last year I went to Spain.
You use this for now.
This week I am busy.
You use next for the future.
Next week it’s my birthday.

II. LISTENING
1. Complete the sentences with the correct ending from the box.
the corner the right to the lake
straight ahead of you opposite Medical Centre

1 Take the lift up to the twelfth floor and the tutor's office is the third door on …………………
2 To get to the bank, cross the road at the library and turn left at.......................................
3 Go down the footpath to the main road and the station's right.......................................
4 Turn left at the top of the stairs, go along to the end of the corridor and you'll see the
seminar room .......................................
5 Take the second road on the right, then, first left and you'll find the physics building next
to the .......................................
6 Go along the main path as far as the canteen, then follow it round to the left until you
get.......................................

2. You will hear six short conversations where one person is explaining to another how to
find different places on campus. Think about some of the expressions you expect to hear.
Then listen and complete the sentences. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS in each
sentences. Pay attention to your spelling and grammar. (track 31)
1. The Sports Centre is on the other side ……………………………………..
2. The lecture theatre in the Law school is on ………………………………………
3. To reach the Business School, you take the footpath………………………………….
4. The theatre is …………………………………………………
5. The nearest bus stop is opposite the …………………………………………….
6. The bank is …………………………………………. to the shop.

3. You will hear Sandra and Tom talking about the facilities on campus. Listen and answer
the questions. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS. (Track 32)
1. Which floor is the library coffee shop on? …………………………………….
2. What does Sandra like to do there? ……………………………………………..
3. Where is the silent zone? ……………………………………………………………..
4. Where does Tom live? …………………………………………………………………
5. How many people live in Sandra’s house? …………………………………………….
6. What does Tom often do near Sandra’s house? …………………………………………….

4. Listen to two students talking about the different food outlets on a university campus
and label the plan below. (Track 33)
A Fast food hall
B Snack bar
C Mexican restaurant
D College dining room
E Italian restaurant
PRACTICE FOR THE TEST
Questions 1 -4 (Track 34)
You will hear Lily explaining to Chen how to use the library. Label the plan of the library.
A PC Zone
B Library Cafe
C Cookbooks
D Travel
E Silent zone

Questions 5 -7 (Track 35)

Listen to the next part of the recording and complete the sentences. Write only TWO
WORDS.
5 First look up the title in the ..............................................................
6 The class mark is one or two letters and..............................................................
7 The ………………………………………………………… shows you where to look for the books.
Questions 8 -10 (Track 36)
Listen to the last part of the recording and answer the questions. WRITE NO MORE THAN
THREE WORDS.
8 What do you need to scan first? .......................................................
9 What does the scanner do when you scan a book?..................................................
10 What does the system do at the end?.........................................................
III. READING
1. Underline one fact and one opinion in the text.
Art is more important than almost anything else. But it is also very difficult to do and often
difficult to understand. So why should we pay for this high culture for the fun of a few?
And, come to that, how should we pay? Answering those questions convincingly is now
more urgent than ever. The government has recently announced that it will cut the arts
budget, so we need to think about what can be done.

2. Match the statements 1-5 with a-c based on the text below.
1 There are historical documents available about attitudes regarding work culture_______
2 Thefts from one's employer are regarded as unacceptable_______
3 Managers did not give career progression the highest rating_______
4 Teamwork is considered important_______
5 There have been fundamental changes in the economy. _______

a China
b the West
c both China and the West

In Western literature, traditionally job performance appraisal systems were related to the
completion of tasks specific to one's job. Chinese tradition, on the other hand, is rooted in
collectivist philosophies such as the Confucian principles of benevolence, right conduct,
loyalty and good manners. More than 2,000 years ago, Confucius described an ideal
commonwealth state in which 'a sense of sharing displaces the effects of selfishness and
materialism'. President Hu Jintao recently declared the importance of developing an
‘advanced socialist culture'.
Given these cultural differences, our study addressed two questions: whether the Chinese
concept of counterproductive work behaviour is the same as in the West; and what relative
importance Chinese and Western managers give to task performance and other work
behaviours when assessing job performance.
There were noticeable similarities between Chinese and Western managers in terms of
what they considered to be counterproductive behaviour such as stealing from the
organisation, which is frowned on in any work environment, Chinese or Western. But
Chinese managers scored higher than Western managers on the importance placed on task
completion and on individualistic aspects such as ‘challenging work' and 'opportunity for
advancement'. They rated equally with Western managers on aspects such as 'work with
people who cooperate'. China has evolved from a centralised and planned economy to a
decentralised and market-driven one in 20 years. It is possible that the increasingly
competitive environment has forced organisations and managers to pay more attention to
the completion of tasks to survive and succeed. It is also possible that Chinese people have
generally become more individualistic during industrialisation.

3. Match each item 1-9 with the correct group A-D. You can use any letter more than
once.
1 people feel safe here ...........
2 these exist in different forms ...........
3 people support each other ...........
4 it is difficult to say exactly what they are ...........
5 they have a lot to offer their members ...........
6 people can do things on a bigger scale ...........
7 the members meet up in person ...........
8 people are prepared to take on other people's responsibilities ...........
9 people are strangers ...........

This is true for:

A all communities
B online communities
C traditional communities
D none of the mentioned communities

The importance of community

'Community' is not a concept that is easy to define. In this essay, I will examine what
transforms individuals into a community, and discuss some different types. I will also look
at what all communities have in common, the benefits they offer and draw conclusions
about their increasing importance.
The word 'community' may trigger images of traditional communities in the developing
world, where large families live together. Elderly parents live with their children and
grandchildren in one house. Parents have relative freedom: if they leave the house there is
always someone left behind to look after their children. I f it is their own parents who need
to support, their older children can take care of this. We may also imagine the neighbours
as people who are happy to help out whenever it is needed. The stereotypical view is that
of a village, where people have little but can feel very rich because everyone takes
responsibility for the welfare of the others.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are other types of communities: ultramodern ones,
where the community members are unlikely to have actually met each other. These are
online communities, where people blog or chat about particular issues that are important
to them. They come across others on websites and may develop a relationship there with
like-minded people, discussing the same topics. The view is often that these are artificial
bonds between people who are, in effect, still isolated strangers.
In reality, of course, this is not true, as the connections are real. Moreover, there are many
types of communities in between these extremes: people who join sports and leisure clubs,
who sign up with voluntary, political, religious or other organizations, who attend events
such as coffee mornings (e.g. fundraising circles, mother and baby groups), or who take part
in group discussions in their local area. They may be campaigning about issues or simply
getting together for companionship and support.
Human beings are social by nature, so it should not be a surprise that we organize ourselves
in groups. However, there is more going on: these groups provide something that we
cannot achieve on our own. The main benefit of being part of a larger group is strength in
numbers. For example, we can access and share more information, we can take part in
team sports, we can complain and campaign more effectively and even if we are just having
a chat, online or in person, we can feel supported in whatever we do.
The stereotypical views of the happy village and the isolated computer users may not be
completely true, but what we do know is that whatever forms communities take, what
defines them is the sense of identity and security that they provide for their members: the
knowledge that there are people who we have something in common with and who can be
relied on to be there when we need each other.

PRACTICE FOR THE TEST:

Match the statements 1-6, which describe num ber systems in different cultures, with the
cultures and languages A-F.
1 In this community, people do not really learn how to count, because there is no need for
them to learn. ______
2 The most used system was started by these people. ______
3 The counting system in this culture works with small sets but uses addition. ______
4 The situation in this community demonstrates that people can estimate quantities even in
cultures where exact numbers do not exist. ______
5 The system here has been in existence for a very long time but may not be the best one.
______
6 The counting system in this culture is different from that in most other cultures. ______

A Piraha
B Munduruku
C Yupno
D Waimiri
E English
F Indian

In Rarities in Numeral Systems, Harald Hammarstrtim lists 12 South American languages

that lack exact numbers above one. He prefers to call these systems 'one-few-many', since
there are usually words in these languages for 'few' and 'many'. He also mentions two
languages that have no exact numbers. The most studied of these is Piraha, which is spoken
by only about 400 people. It has a word for 'about one' and a word for 'about two'. As if
that wasn't fuzzy enough, the words for 'about one' and 'about two' are the same - hoi - the
only difference being a change in inflection.
The Amazonian Indians whose sense of number has been most closely studied are the
Munduruku, who have numerical words only up to five. Animals and babies are good at
discriminating quantities above five, so one would expect that the Indians are too -even
though they do not have words to express such amounts. And this is exactly what
experiments conducted by the French linguist Pierre Pica have confirmed: when given tests
that involve comparing sets of more than five dots on a screen, the Munduruku scored just
as high as Westerners. When Pica looked more closely at the Munduruku's number words,
he realized that only their words for one and two were used with any sense of exactness.
The words for three, four and five were approximations - as if what they meant to say was
'threeish', 'fourish' and 'fiveish'. In this aspect, the Munduruku are just like the 'one-two-m
any' tribes, who also have exact numbers only up to two.
When Indians do learn numbers, in fact, they appear uninterested by them. A Piraha girl
was once taken out of the village to receive medical treatment. During her time with
Brazilians, she learnt some Portuguese and how to count in Portuguese. No problem. But
after returning to the community, while she retained some Portuguese she quickly forgot
how to count.
Anthropologists first reached communities on the other side of the world, in Papua New
Guinea, in the late nineteenth century. They discovered that they used not just their fingers
to count but also their whole bodies. The natives started out with the fingers and thumb of
one hand for one to five, but then carried on for higher numbers with wrist, elbow,
shoulders, sternum and so on. For example, one tribe, the Yupno, go as high as 34: their
word for 34 is 'one dead man'. These Papuan 'body-tally' systems are unusual because
almost all other systems group numbers in much smaller sets.
In the Amazon, there are also tribes with bases of two, three and four. For example, the
Waimiri have words for one to three, and then say '3+1', '3+2', '3+3', '3+3+1', '3+3+2' and
'3+3+3'.
Our base ten system of the digits zero to nine, which has its origins in India, is now in use all
over the developed world. It is a natural system, but for several hundred years
mathematicians have questioned whether it is the wisest base for us to have. The campaign
for adding two new numbers, so that our system becomes base 12, is still active – the
argument is to do with the extra divisibility of 12 compared with ten, since 12 can be
divided by two, three, four and six while ten can be divided only by two and five. In fact,
there are humans that already use base 12: and almost all of them belong to the tribes of
the Plateau area of northern Nigeria.

IV. WRITING
Writing IELTS Task 1 có 7 dạng đề phổ biến. Bao gồm: Line Graph, Bar Chart, Pie Chart,
Table, Mixed Charts, Process, Maps.
Look at examples of comparative and superlative forms.
The population of Summerville was the highest in 2010
The average house price was higher in 2010 than in 2005.
1. Look at the information about the town of Summerville in the table and circle the correct
options in the sentences below.
Changes in Summerville 2000-2010

2000 2005 2010

Average house prices $150,000 $155,000 $159,000

Population 45,000 53,000 61,000

Number of houses built 240 190 175
Number of sports centres 0 2 2

Number of entertainment complexes 2 2 3

1 Summerville had a smaller/ largest/higher population in 2005 than 2000.

2 Average house prices were the lowest/ highest/ tallest in 2010.
3 In 2000 the population was the higher/ greatest/ lowest.
4 The number of houses / sports centres/ entertainment complexes built was higher in
2010 than 2005.
5 The number of houses built in 2000 was lower/ higher/ the largest.

2. Look at the bar chart and the two pie charts below and complete the sentences opposite.
1 During the 2000s and 2010s people in Toronto spent more on entertainment because
they ...................................................
2 Due to higher monthly salaries people spent more on food and clothing in
the ..................................
3 Spending on entertainment was...............................................in the 1990s because the cost of
renting an apartment was high.
4 People spent more on sport and entertainment in the 2000s because it
was ................................ .............................................. to rent an apartment.
5 In the 1990s the ...............................................was the highest so people spent less on other
things.
6 In the 2010s monthly salaries were high and rent costs were low so people spent more
on ...............................................than in the 1990s.

Proportion of monthly income spent on different living expenses

3. Look at the graph and the bar chart below and decide if the sentences are True or False.
Write T or F.
1 Land used for housing has decreased since 1980. …
2 The city of Newtown has expanded the amount of its park land over the last 30 years.......
3 The cost of all land types increased in 2010.......
4 In 2000 more land was used for housing than for offices and shops.......
5 The price of business land was the highest in 1980.......
6 The amount of land used for business purposes grew from 2000 to 2010.......