READING COMPREHENSION: TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN
Tick the correct option T (true), F (false) or NG (not given). Number 0 is an
example.
Statements
0. Managing money has become easier.
1. It is possible to pay for your purchase by a pre-authorized
withdrawal.
2. The things we buy say a lot about what we think is important.
3. Budgeting today is not connected with your future.
4. It is impossible to adapt your budget once you establish it.
5. Budgeting will only help you get what you want in the distant
future.
6. A budget gives you an overview of your financial matters.
7. It is best to hire a financial consultant.
8. Kids learn about budgeting at home.
9. It is possible to spend your money cleverly even if you do not
budget very closely.
10. Your financial plans must include your pocket money.
11. What you earn must be more than what you spend.
12. It is important that some of your money is spent immediately.
T
F
NG

Managing Money
taken and adapted from http://www.cba.ca/en/consumer-information/41-saving-investing/57-managing-money
Managing money in today’s world is increasingly complicated. Not only do we have more
spending options than in the past, we now have more choices of how to pay - cash, cheque,
credit card, debit card, pre-authorized withdrawals and through the Internet.
We all use our money in different ways, reflecting our values and priorities. Regardless of our
financial personalities, what we decide to do with our money today will impact our lives
tomorrow. That’s why taking control of our money right now - where it comes from and where
it goes - is the first step towards a secure future.
A budget gives you an overall picture of where your money is coming from, when it’s coming
in and how it’s being spent. Above all, a budget should be flexible, and change according to
your circumstances.
Budgeting helps us achieve short-term goals like paying monthly bills, taking a course or
paying off a credit card. It’s also for longer-term financial goals like buying a home, a car,
paying for an education, a wedding or a holiday. When you take control of your financial
affairs, you’re more confident about the future.
Therefore, everyone should budget. It gives you a "snapshot" of where you stand financially
and where you’re headed. Don’t rely on anyone else to do your budgeting - take control of
your own finances. Even very young children should be encouraged to budget - it makes
them realize the value of saving and achieving their own personal goals. Budgeting to buy a
new comic book, a mountain bike or a pair of roller blades is the ideal way for kids to learn
about the value of money and saving.
Remember that if you know exactly where your money is going, only then can you decide if
you’re spending it wisely.
Create a spending plan that will help you meet your financial obligations and reach your
goals. This plan should act as a flexible guideline that can change over time.
 Make a note of your fixed and variable expenses. When you total your expenses, they
should be equal to or less than your income.



If your first plan is too heavy on expenses, think about which expenses you can reduce
without sacrificing the quality of your lifestyle.
Look at variable expenses that may be reduced or postponed until a later date.
Once you have a good estimate of expenses, subtract that figure from your income. The
remaining money is what you can use for your savings or goals.
KEY:
1. T
2. T
3. F
4. F
5. F
6. T
7. F
8. NG
9. F
10. NG
11. F
12. NG
READING COMPREHENSION: MATCHING
Match the correct questions with the answers in the interview! There are two
extra questions! Number 0 is an example.
Question
0 What happened to your chicken farm?
1 Did you then begin to sell the jam?
2 What advice would you give about running a business?
3 How did your parents support you?
4 How did you fund it?
5 What inspired you to start making jam at the age of 14?
6 Has the health factor been a big part of your success?
7 What was the next step?
8 How did your success affect your life?
9 What does the future hold for SuperJam?
10 What was the first supermarket that you approached?
11 What was your first business idea?
12 Did all this work pay off?
Answer
B
Fraser Doherty: “How I set up SuperJam”
taken and adapted from http://www.newbusiness.co.uk/articles/entrepreneurs/fraser-doherty-how-i-set-superjam
A
Growing up I was always coming up with ideas for new products, and I had my initial
moneymaking scheme when I was about ten: I visited a chicken farm and convinced the
farmer to give me a box of eggs. I told my mum and dad I was going to keep them so they
would hatch and I could start a chicken farm in the back garden.
B
Amazingly, a few weeks later four eggs hatched. We kept the chickens in the back garden
and they began to lay eggs, which I sold to the neighbours. However, my chicken farm
career was tragically cut short when a fox came along and ate my chickens!
C
I was really excited by my gran's jam and having always enjoyed it growing up, thought that it
would be fun to make some myself. I thought that if people liked it then there would be a way
for me to sell it and make some extra pocket money, but that was as far as my ambitions
went at that point.
D
Yes, we began offering the jam door to door in the area, and in some local shops and
farmers' markets. People just really loved the product and I started to get some press
attention and I found myself on page three of the Edinburgh Evening News when I was 15.
Other shops started calling me up about the jam and the whole thing just grew and grew.
E
It got to the stage when I couldn't go much further with the product without moving into a
factory. At that point I realized that I wanted to try and make a career out of it. I did some
research and found that sales of jam had been in decline for the past couple of decades.
This was partly because jam is traditionally very unhealthy and has an old fashioned image. I
figured if I could create a healthier and modern brand of jam, then maybe I could challenge
the trend of declining sales. I came up with a way of making jam completely from fruit juice,
not using anything artificial or adding any sugar. Then, probably quite naively, I decided that I
was going to try and sell the product to the big supermarkets.
F
I went to a Waitrose “meet the buyer” day and pitched my idea to the senior jam buyer. He
said that it was a great idea, but explained that I had a long way to go. I had to set up
production, create a brand and then go back to him at the right price.
G
I had a little bit of money that I had saved myself and got a loan from the Prince's Trust for
£5,000. Both the advertising agency and the factory were willing to take the long-term view
and didn't need money on day one, as they thought they would benefit in the long run.
H
Waitrose agreed to try it out in their stores in March 2007. The media coverage that we got
was unbelievable. Nobody could have imagined it would capture people's imaginations like it
did. In the first day in one of the Edinburgh stores they sold 1,500 jars, which was more jam
than they would normally sell in a month. They had never seen anything like it. Then Tesco
phoned up out of the blue and said that they would like to stock it, then Morrisons; now all of
the major retailers stock SuperJam.
I
Yes, of course. It wouldn't have taken off in the way that it did unless it solved a problem that
was there. Jam had always been very unhealthy and a lot of people didn't eat it, but since
we've launched we've sold around 800,000 jars of SuperJam.
J
Go out and give things a shot. Don't be afraid to try things and see what you learn. On a
practical level the best help that I've had has been from mentors.
K
The business is growing at a really fast pace, and there are supermarkets that don't yet stock
the product but are interested in it. There are lots of other fruits that we can make jam from to
expand the range in terms of flavours, and hopefully we can expand into other countries too.
KEY
1. D
2. J
3. 
4. G
5. C
6. E
7. H
8. 
9. K
10. F
11. A
12. I
READING COMPREHENSION: SHORT ANSWERS
Answer the questions in note form! Number 0 is an example.
0. How often do we hear about environmental problems?
Almost every day.
1. What reason for environmental problems does the author name?
______________________________________
2. Are the problems reason enough for pessimism?
______________________________________
3. Who can help repair the changes?
______________________________________
4. What kind of life should we lead to be friendly to nature?
______________________________________
5. Is taking rubbish to a landfill site polluting the environment?
______________________________________
6. How much of our waste cannot be recycled at all?
______________________________________
7. What is the stratosphere made of?
______________________________________
8. How can microscopic life in the oceans be destroyed?
______________________________________
9. What can CFC do?
______________________________________
10. How long does CFC stay in the atmosphere?
______________________________________
Environment - how can you help protect it?
taken from http://www.ypte.org.uk/environmental/environment-how-can-you-help-protect-it-/81
Our planet is in trouble! Almost every day we seem to hear of yet another problem affecting
the environment - and what a list of problems! - pollution, acid rain, climate change, the
destruction of rainforests and other wild habitats, the decline and extinction of thousands of
species of animals and plants....and so on.
Nowadays, most of us know that these threats exist and that humans have caused them.
Many of us are very worried about the future of our planet and unless we can find a way of
solving the problems we have made then the environment will suffer even more.
It all sounds so sad - but we certainly mustn't despair! Every one of us, whatever age we are,
can do something to help slow down and reverse some of the damage. We cannot leave the
problem-solving entirely to the experts - we all have a responsibility for our environment. We
must learn to live in a sustainable way i.e. learn to use our natural resources which include
air, freshwater, forests, wildlife, farmland and seas without damaging them. As populations
grow and lifestyles change, we must keep the world in a good condition so that future
generations will have the same natural resources that we have.
We humans create such a lot of rubbish! We now produce just under half a tonne per person
each year. Most of this is taken away by dustmen and buried in enormous landfill sites or
burned in incinerators - both of these actions can be dangerous for the environment. Is all
our rubbish really rubbish? If you think about it, much of what we throw away could be used
again. It makes sense to reuse and recycle our rubbish instead of just trying to solve the
problem of where to put it! Encouragingly rates of recycling have increased so that we
recycle 35% of our household rubbish, although we could recycle up to 80%. Much of our
waste is made up of glass, metal, plastic and paper. Our natural resources such as trees, oil,
coal and aluminium are used up in enormous amounts to make these products and the
resources will one day be completely used up. We must cut down on energy use.
Fifteen to thirty miles above the Earth lies the stratosphere, a broad band of gases and one
of these gases is ozone. It's only a small part of the stratosphere but very important because
it prevents too many of the sun's ultra violet rays from reaching us. Too many ultra violet rays
can give us skin cancer and destroy plankton, the important microscopic life in the sea. In the
1980s it was discovered that 'holes' were appearing in the ozone layer above the Antarctic
and Arctic.
CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) are gases used in the manufacture of aerosols and fridges, and
they are believed to have been responsible for destroying the ozone layer. In 1987 the
Montreal Protocol was introduced and later signed up to by 120 countries who agreed to half
their CFC emissions by the year 2000.
We now know that apart from destroying the ozone layer, CFCs contribute significantly to the
greenhouse effect. Even though they have been banned, their long atmospheric lifetime of
20 to 100 years will continue to contribute to the greenhouse effect until they finally are
broken down by the sun.
KEY:
1. Humans.
2. No.
3. Everybody/everyone of us/every human being.
4. Sustainable.
5. Yes
6. 20%
7. (A broad band of ) gases.
8. Through too many ultra violet rays.
9. Destroy the ozone layer/contribute to the greenhouse effect.
10. Between 20 and 100 years.
READING COMPREHENSION: GAPFILL
Insert the missing parts (A-J) into the text. Number 0 is an example.
0. Outside of Western cultures
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.
I.
J.
are the most popular in Scotland
must be measured against the total sales of women's skirts
than I did when I lived in Scotland
to do away with this arbitrary sex distinction
typical for females and not males
via the Web and word of mouth alone
and some forms of Japanese hakama and the Bhutanese gho
to sell skirts specifically designed for men
were also worn by ancient Chinese men
whether the ends are sewn together or simply tied
Men’s skirts
taken and adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men%27s_skirts
(0) Outside of Western cultures, men's clothing commonly includes skirts and skirt-like
garments, however in North America and much of Europe, the wearing of a skirt is today
usually seen as (1) _____________________ . People have attempted to promote the
wearing of skirts by men in Western culture (2) _______________________, but with limited
general success and considerable cultural resistance.
One common form is a single sheet of fabric folded and wrapped around the waist, such as
the dhoti or lungi in India, and sarong in South and Southeast Asia. There are different
varieties and names of sarong depending on (3) ____________________________.
Some long robes also resemble a skirt or dress, including the Middle Eastern and North
African caftan and djellaba. Other similar garments worn by men around the world include
the Greek and Balkan fustanella (a short flared cotton skirt), the Pacific lava-lava (similar to a
sarong), (4) _______________________. Skirts that are called qun or chang in Chinese (5)
_________________________.
The wearing of skirts, kilts, or similar garments on an everyday basis by men in Western
cultures is extremely limited. Kilts, and derivatives of the garment (6) __________________.
One manufacturer of contemporary kilt styles claims to sell over 12,000 such garments
annually, resulting in over $2 million worth of sales, and has appeared at a major fashion
show. According to a CNN correspondent, at Seattle's Fremont Market, men are often seen
sporting the Utilikilt. Actually, the Seattle-made utilikilt, a rugged, everyday riff on traditional
Scottish garb, has leapt from idea to over 10,000 sold in just three years (7)
_____________________ . They've become a common sight around Seattle, especially in
funkier neighbourhoods and at the city's many alternative cultural events. They often are
worn with chunky black boots. "I actually see more people wearing kilts in Seattle (8)
__________________," one purchaser remarked in 2003.
In addition, since the mid-1990s a number of clothing companies have been established
(9) _____________________ . These include Macabi Skirt in the 1990s, Menintime in 1999
and Midas Clothing in 2002. Recently, fashion shop chain H&M started selling skirts for men.
Of course, any of the above claims of "relative popularity" shown by sales numbers of tens of
thousands per year (10) ______________________________ , numbered at 15,454,000 in
the United States alone in 2008 according to the American Apparel and Footwear
Association, showing again that sales of skirts for men are a vanishingly small percentage of
skirt sales to and for women.
KEY:
1. typical for females and not males
2. to do away with this arbitrary sex distinction
3. whether the ends are sewn together or simply tied
4. and some forms of Japanese hakama and the Bhutanese gho
5. were also worn by ancient Chinese men
6. are most popular in Scotland
7. via the Web and word of mouth alone
8. than I did when I lived in Scotland
9. to sell skirts specifically designed for men
10. must be measured against the total sales of women's skirts