The Daily Dose

Cambridge 14 (General Training) | Test 1 | Section 3 Papyrus   Libraries and archives are cultural crossroads of knowledge exchange, where the past transmits information to the present, and where the present has the opportunity to inform the future. Bureaucracies have become the backbone of civilizations, as governments try to keep track of populations, business transactions and taxes. At a person...

Cambridge 16 (General Training) | Test 3 | Section 2 Running a meeting   Prior to the meeting, think about the seating and arrange it in an appropriate way. A circle can work well for informal meetings, but sometimes the furniture cannot be re-arranged or rows are more suitable. Consider the participants and decide what is best. Before people arrive, it’s a good idea to designate someone to stand...

Cambridge 18 (General Training) | Test 2 | Section 3 A home-sewing revival: the return of Clothkits   “I can’t remember many of the clothes I wore before I was six, but I have a vivid memory of a certain skirt whose patterns I can still trace in my mind. It was wraparound, with a belt that threaded through itself, decorated with cats in two shades of green. I wore it with a knitted red jersey my m...

Cambridge 18 (General Training) | Test 3 | Section 3 Roman Roads   The long straight roads built by the Romans have, in many cases, become just as famous in history as their greatest emperors and generals. Building upon more ancient routes and creating a huge number of new ones, Roman engineers were fearless in their plans to join one point to another in as straight a line as possible, whatever th...

Cambridge 18 (General Training) | Test 2 | Section 2 Encouraging Employees to be Healthy   Recent reports have shown that ignoring mental health costs Australian companies at least $11 billion a year. We all have a responsibility to look out for one another. Some ways you can do this in the workplace include: running employee surveys to get valuable information on morale in the workplace; training...

literate (adjective) /ˈlɪtərət/ able to read and write e.g., The job requires you to be computer literate.   feather (noun) [countable] /ˈfeðər/ one of the many soft light parts covering a bird’s body e.g., Do you prefer a feather pillow or a foam pillow?   annual (adjective) /ˈæn.ju.əl/ happening once every year e.g., The company charges an annual fee of $45.   ownership (noun) [uncountable] /ˈəʊ...

Cambridge 19 (General Training) | Test 1 | Section 3 White storks back in Britain after hundreds of years   The last definitive record of a pair of white storks successfullybreeding in Britain was in 1416, from a nest on St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh. No one knows why storks disappeared from our shores. They often featured on the menus of medieval banquets so we might, quite simply, have consume...

Cambridge 19 (General Training) | Test 3 | Section 2 What to do if you are made redundant   Don’t rush into applying for any or every job that comes up. Take stock of what you have to offer, what you want to do, and carry out in-depth research to find out what employers are actually looking for. Talk to people in your target industry for career advice and information. This information will be inva...

Cambridge 19 (General Training) | Test 1 | Section 2 Resigning from a job in a professional manner   When you take the decision to resign and move on to another job, you might really want to dance your way out of the door, or get your own back by criticizing your boss to the whole office. But you need to resist these temptations because in future you might find you’re working with your ex-line man...

Cambridge 11 (General Training) | Test 2 | Section 2 How to get a job in journalism   You can get a good qualification in journalism, but whatemployers actually want is practical, rather than theoretical, knowledge. There’s no substitute for creating real stories that have to be handed in by strict deadlines. So, write for your school magazine, then maybe try your hand at editing . Once you’ve don...

Cambridge 14 (General Training) | Test 4 | Section 3 The Role of the Swiss Postbus   There isn’t an inhabited place in Switzerland that cannot bereached by some sort of public transport. Federal law and the Swiss Constitution stipulate that every village with a population greater than 40 is entitled to regular bus services. The frequency of these services is directly related to population density...

Cambridge 15 (General Training) | Test 4 | Section 3 Animals can tell right from wrong   Wolves live in tight-knit social groups that are regulated bystrict rules. Wolves also demonstrate fairness. During play, dominant wolves will appear to exchange roles with lower-ranking wolves. They pretend to be submissive and go so far as to allow biting by the lower-ranking wolves, provided it is not too h...

Cambridge 15 (General Training) | Test 1 | Section 3 The California Gold Rush of 1849   On January 24, 1848, James Wilson Marshall, a carpenter , found small flakes of gold in the American River near Coloma, California. At the time, Marshall was working to build a water-powered sawmill for businessman John Sutter. As it happens , just days after Marshall’s discovery, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalg...

Cambridge 16 (General Training) | Test 4 | Section 3 History of Women’s Football in Britain   Women’s football in Britain has deeper roots than might beexpected. In one town in 18th-century Scotland, single women played an annual match against their married counterparts, though the motives behind the contest were not purely sporting. Some accounts say that the games were watched by a crowd of sing...

Cambridge 16 (General Training) | Test 3 | Section 3 Feathers as Decoration in European History   Today, we do not generally associate feathers with the militaryin Europe, yet history shows that in fact feathers have played an intriguing role in European military clothing. The Bersaglieri of the Italian Army, for example, still wear a bunch of long black feathers in their hats hanging down to one...

Cambridge 16 (General Training) | Test 2 | Section 3 Jobs in Ancient Egypt   In order to be engaged in the higher professions in ancientEgypt, a person had to be literate and so first had to become a scribe. The apprenticeship for this job lasted many years and was tough and challenging. It principally involved memorizing hieroglyphic symbols and practicing handwritten lettering. Scribes noted the...

notion (noun) [countable] /ˈnoʊ.ʃən/ a belief or idea He didn’t have a clear notion of what he had to do.   congested (adjective) /kənˈdʒestɪd/ crowded; full of traffic The roads to Bordeaux were heavily congested.   deliberately (adverb) /dɪˈlɪbərətli/ intentionally I'm sure he says these things deliberately to annoy me.   buzz (noun) [ C usually singular ] informal /bʌz/ a feeling of excitem...

Cambridge 19 (General Training) | Test 1 | Section 3 Emojis   As a form of global communication, emojis only began their growth in 2011. Four years later, it was estimated that they were being used by over 90 per cent of the online population. In excess of six billion were being sent every day. Their prevalence in the culture was such that Oxford Dictionaries recently chose one as their word of th...

Cambridge 19 | Test 4 | Passage 3 The Unselfish Gene   There has long been a general assumption that human beings are essentially selfish . We’re apparently ruthless, with strong impulses to compete against each other for resources and to accumulate power and possessions . If we are kind to one another, it’s usually because we have ulterior motives . If we are good, it’s only because we have manag...

Cambridge 19 | Test 4 | Passage 1 The impact of climate change on butterflies in Britain   According to conservationists , populations of around two thirds of butterfly species have declined in Britain over the past 40 years. If this trend continues, it might have unpredictable knock-on effects for other species in the ecosystem. Butterfly eggs develop into caterpillars and these insects, which ar...

Cambridge 19 | Test 3 | Passage 3 Is the era of artificial speech translation upon us?   Noise, Alex Waibel tells me, is one of the major challenges thatartificial speech translation has to meet. A device may be able to recognize speech in a laboratory, or a meeting room, but will struggle to cope with the kind of background noise I can hear in my office surrounding Professor Waibel as he speaks t...

Cambridge 19 | Test 2 | Passage 3 An inquiry into the existence of the gifted child   Let us start by looking at a modern “genius,” Maryam Mirzakhani, who died at the early age of 40. She was the only woman to win the Fields Medal—the mathematical equivalent of a Nobel Prize. It would be easy to assume that someone as special as Mirzakhani must have been one of those “gifted” children, those who h...

Cambridge 19 | Test 2 | Passage 2 Athletes and Stress   It isn’t easy being a professional athlete. Not only are the physical demands greater than most people could handle, athletes also face intense psychological pressure during competition. This is something that British tennis player Emma Raducanu wrote about on social media following her withdrawal from the 2021 Wimbledon tournament. Though th...

Cambridge 19 | Test 1 | Passage 3 The persistence and peril of misinformation   Misinformation—both deliberately promoted and accidentally shared—is perhaps an inevitable part of the world in which we live, but it is not a new problem. People likely have lied to one another for roughly as long as verbal communication has existed. Deceiving others can offer an apparent opportunity to gain strategic...

Cambridge 8 | Test 1 | Passage 2 Air Traffic Control in the USA   An accident that occurred in the skies over the Grand Canyon in 1956 resulted in the establishment of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to regulate and oversee the operation of aircraft in the skies over the United States, which were becoming quite congested . The resulting structure of air traffic control has greatly increa...