Girls play outside in nature less than boys do, even at the age of two, according to the first national survey of play among preschool-age children in Britain. While researchers expect to see older children socialised to particular gender roles, they were shocked to see similar patterns of behaviour starting to emerge at such a young age. They fear it could have long-term implications for girls’ health, as girls are less physically active as they get older and are more likely than boys to have difficulties with their mental health.

The study also found that preschool-age children from a minority ethnic background play less outdoors than their white counterparts, and children in urban areas play less outdoors than those in rural areas. “The results highlight inequalities in play even in the youngest age group, which may exacerbate existing inequalities in health,” the report concluded.

The research surveyed more than 1,100 parents and carers of children aged two, three and four. They found that preschool children spent approximately four hours a day at play, of which one hour and 45 minutes was spent playing outdoors, mainly in back gardens at home. Away from home, children played in playgrounds and green spaces, with the most adventurous play usually associated with indoor play centres.

“The popularity of these play centers is growing,” the report said. “This may be driven by indoor play centres providing adventurous play experiences that overcome some of the barriers to outdoor adventurous play such as traffic, weather and safety concerns.”

Sally Weale. Girls play outside less than boys even at two years old, UK survey reveals.
In: The Guardian. Internet:<theguardian.com> (adapted).

According to the preceding text, judge the following item.

Children’s parents were not considered a source of information in the research mentioned in the text.

“The High Priestess of Soul,” Nina Simone was a singer, pianist, songwriter, and civil rights activist. Mostly known as a jazz singer, her music blended gospel, blues, folk, pop, and classical styles. No popular singer was more closely associated with the Civil Rights Movement than Simone.

Nina Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon on February 21st, 1933, in Tryon, North Carolina. Her mother, Mary Kate Irvin, was a Methodist preacher and housekeeper, and her father, John Divine Waymon, worked as an entertainer, barber, and dry-cleaner. The family’s home was filled with music and Simone’s mother encouraged her musical pursuits but she did not approve of nonreligious music like blues and jazz. Simone took up the piano before her feet could reach the pedals, and by the age of six, she was playing during church services.

In 2008, Rolling Stone named Simone to its list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time, and, in 2018, Simone was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Internet:<womenshistory.org> (adapted).

Based on the previous text, judge the following item.

The words “preacher”, “housekeeper”, “entertainer”, “barber”, and “dry-cleaner” (second paragraph) belong to the same grammatical class and serve the same purpose in the discourse.

Gabriele Tinti’s Hungry Ghosts is a cycle of 51 poems written in collaboration with the photographer Roger Ballen, whose photographic negatives are reproduced in the book. The images are mostly terrifying, in keeping with the otherworldly inclination of the poems. This bilingual edition includes Tinti’s original Italian poems with English translations by David Graham, interspersed with Greek lines taken from inscriptions found on archaeological objects and from ancient Greek texts.

The book is inspired by the Petavatthu, a Theravada Buddhist scripture that includes stories about the realm of the “hungry ghosts,” a category of supernatural beings ubiquitous in East and South Asian religions, with section headings such as “Abandoned Ghosts,” “Protectors,” “Guardians,” and “Hungry Ghosts.” T he poems are quite short and try to emulate the obscure, esoteric quality of scriptural language, though they struggle, at times, under the weight of too many venerable references drawn from both Buddhist and Greek traditions.

Internet:<poetryfoundation.org>(adapted).

About the linguistic and lexical features of the preceding text, judge the following item.

Both “written” and “reproduced” (first sentence) are past participles and are used, in the text, in passive voice constructions.

Gabriele Tinti’s Hungry Ghosts is a cycle of 51 poems written in collaboration with the photographer Roger Ballen, whose photographic negatives are reproduced in the book. The images are mostly terrifying, in keeping with the otherworldly inclination of the poems. This bilingual edition includes Tinti’s original Italian poems with English translations by David Graham, interspersed with Greek lines taken from inscriptions found on archaeological objects and from ancient Greek texts.

The book is inspired by the Petavatthu, a Theravada Buddhist scripture that includes stories about the realm of the “hungry ghosts,” a category of supernatural beings ubiquitous in East and South Asian religions, with section headings such as “Abandoned Ghosts,” “Protectors,” “Guardians,” and “Hungry Ghosts.” T he poems are quite short and try to emulate the obscure, esoteric quality of scriptural language, though they struggle, at times, under the weight of too many venerable references drawn from both Buddhist and Greek traditions.

Internet:<poetryfoundation.org>(adapted).

About the linguistic and lexical features of the preceding text, judge the following item.

The phrase “emulate the obscure, esoteric quality” (last sentence of the second paragraph) represents an incorrect or awkward collocation in English.

Text 7A3-I



As a science fiction writer, Octavia Butler forged a new path and envisioned bold possibilities. The future she wrote about is now our present moment. She wrote 12 novels and won each of science fiction’s highest honors. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to be awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant. She is also, increasingly, a writer recognized as one of the most important voices and visionaries of the 20th century, and now the 21st. As a Black woman and a writer, Butler demolished walls that seemed impermeable, writing on themes that seemed uncategorizable. Her ideas and characters continue to resonate with new readers when so many are looking for, if not hope, then a map for a way forward.


Her vision about the climate crisis, political and societal upheaval and the brutality and consequences of power hierarchies seems both sobering and prescient. However, as Butler often noted, being right was never the point. She didn’t want to be right — far from it. She wanted to give us time, and tools, to correct the course.



Lynell George. The Visions of Octavia Butler. Internet: <www.nytimes.com> (adapted).


In text 7A3-I, the clause “as Butler often noted” (second sentence of the second paragraph) is an adverbial clause that indicates

Text 7A2-II


In October 1971, a gentleman called Frieder Nake published a note entitled, There Should Be No Computer Art, which I quote here. “Soon after the advent of computers, it became clear that there was a great potential application for them in the area of artistic creation”, he began. “Before 1960, amazing, large, expensive, digital computers helped to produce poetic text and music. Analog computers, or only oscilloscopes, generated drawings of sets of mathematical curves and representations of oscillations. It was not before the first exhibitions of computer produced pictures were held in 1965 that a greater public took notice of this threat, as some said, progress, as some thought. I was involved in this development from its beginning.


I think that the way the art scene reacted to the new creations is interesting, pleasing, and stupid. I stated in 1970 that I was no longer going to take part in exhibitions. I find it easy to admit that computer art did not contribute to the advancement of art if we compare the computer products to all existing works of art. In other words, the repertoire of results of aesthetic behavior has not been changed by the use of computers. This point of view, namely, that of art history, is shared and held against computer art by many art critics. There is no doubt in my mind”, Frieder Nake said, “that interesting new methods have been found in the last decade which can be of some significance for the creative artist”.


As you might imagine, this was a bit of a controversial take. Here was a man who had for part of the previous decade been an insider, an advocate for the use of algorithmic and generative processes to create art. However, he was now seeing things from another perspective. I’ll just finish with another piece from what he posted in that article: “Questions like ‘is a computer creative’, or ‘is a computer an artist’, or the like, should not be considered serious questions, period. In the light of what we are facing at the end of the 20th century, those irrelevant questions do not matter”.

Where is the Art? A History in Technology.

Internet: <https://www.infoq.com> (adapted).


In text 7A2-II, the fragment ‘I think that the way the art sc ene reacted to the new creations is interesting, pleasing, and stupid’ (first sentence of the second paragraph)

Maya Angelou (1928-2014) had a broad and distinguished career both inside and outside the literary realm. She is most famous for her work as a poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist, working with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. She also worked in entertainment as a singer, a dancer, an actor, and a director. Her poetry was inspired and informed by her life and work, and this personal connection made her poems profound and powerful. Over the course of a career spanning the 1960s to her death in 2014, she captured, provoked, inspired, and ultimately transformed American people and culture.


Internet: <poetryfoundation.org> (adapted).

About the preceding text, its linguistic features and the meanings it conveys, as well as the reading strategies that apply to it, judge the item that follow.

The comma after “memoirist”, in the second sentence of the text, is incorrect because of the use of “and” after it.

Text 7A2-II


In October 1971, a gentleman called Frieder Nake published a note entitled, There Should Be No Computer Art, which I quote here. “Soon after the advent of computers, it became clear that there was a great potential application for them in the area of artistic creation”, he began. “Before 1960, amazing, large, expensive, digital computers helped to produce poetic text and music. Analog computers, or only oscilloscopes, generated drawings of sets of mathematical curves and representations of oscillations. It was not before the first exhibitions of computer produced pictures were held in 1965 that a greater public took notice of this threat, as some said, progress, as some thought. I was involved in this development from its beginning.


I think that the way the art scene reacted to the new creations is interesting, pleasing, and stupid. I stated in 1970 that I was no longer going to take part in exhibitions. I find it easy to admit that computer art did not contribute to the advancement of art if we compare the computer products to all existing works of art. In other words, the repertoire of results of aesthetic behavior has not been changed by the use of computers. This point of view, namely, that of art history, is shared and held against computer art by many art critics. There is no doubt in my mind”, Frieder Nake said, “that interesting new methods have been found in the last decade which can be of some significance for the creative artist”.


As you might imagine, this was a bit of a controversial take. Here was a man who had for part of the previous decade been an insider, an advocate for the use of algorithmic and generative processes to create art. However, he was now seeing things from another perspective. I’ll just finish with another piece from what he posted in that article: “Questions like ‘is a computer creative’, or ‘is a computer an artist’, or the like, should not be considered serious questions, period. In the light of what we are facing at the end of the 20th century, those irrelevant questions do not matter”.

Where is the Art? A History in Technology.

Internet: <https://www.infoq.com> (adapted).


In the first paragraph of text 7A2-II, the passage ‘amazing, large, expensive digital computers helped to produce poetic text and music’ (third sentence of the first paragraph) can be correctly rewritten, in terms of grammatical rules, as

Text 7A2-I



If we believe that our own information age is defined by the digital structures of electronic communication, we must take early modern culture as inextricably bound to the medium of print. Printed text and image arose within a few years of each other in the mid-fifteenth century, credited to the German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg, who seemingly drew together a series of extant yet disparate technologies into a new machine that could print several thousand sheets a day. The ancient oil or wine press, the goldsmith’s craft in fine metal carving, the late-medieval development of plentiful rag paper, and the recent formulation of more stable oil-based inks enabled Gutenberg’s ‘revolution’.


Similarly, early photography developed from a coming together of two otherwise disparate technologies: on the one hand, the pinhole camera through which capture a refected view of the world as an image, and on the other the chemical means to fix the effects of light exposure on paper. In both cases, these technologies shared aesthetic resources with other media available at the time, while also producing forms of representation that were uniquely theirs, and which offered access to new ways of seeing, and enabled new forms of subjectivity. The greatly expanded flow of visual information facilitated by these technological breakthroughs worked to quicken the circulation of knowledge, and the foundations of thought itself.



Genevieve Warwick and Richard Taws. After Prometheus:

Art and Technology in Early Modern Europe. In:

Art History – Journal of the Association of Art Historians.

Special Edition: Art and Technology in Early Modern Europe. p. 201 (adapted)

In the first sentence of text 7A2-I,

Text 1A1-II


Brazil’s first scientific expedition to the Arctic aims to explore the biodiversity of one of the planet’s coldest territories, learn more about its ecological importance and its role in global climate change, and contribute to its preservation. The Brazilian team of scientists from the University of Brasília and the Federal University of Minas Gerais has been in the Svalbard archipelago—a section of the Arctic Circle that belongs to Norway—since July 8.

According to the expert, research in the region is crucial in monitoring relevant developments in Brazil as well as worldwide. “What happens here in the Arctic affects Brazil, so we should have the right to speak and vote, which is not happening.”

Brazil is the only among the ten largest global economies without a voice on issues related to the region. Therefore, Brazil’s scientific presence in the Arctic—a region covering more than 16 million square kilometers—can prove significant for the inclusion of the nation as an observer member of the Arctic Council, the international cooperation body on environmental strategies for the territory. The country should also join the Svalbard Treaty, which not only recognizes Norway’s sovereignty over the archipelago, but also grants access to the area’s resources for signatory nations.


Internet: <agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br> (adapted).

According to text 1A1-II, judge the following item.

The excerpt “without a voice on issues related to the region” (first sentence of the third paragraph), could be correctly replaced by “that lacks representation in matters pertaining to the region”, without changing its meaning.

Text II


This book wants to show the newcomer the lie of the land without confusing him with details. In writing it I thought first and foremost of readers in their teens. But I have never believed that books for young people should differ from books for adults except for the fact that they must reckon with the most exacting class of critics, critics who are quick to detect and resent any trace of pretentious jargon or bogus sentiment. I know from experience that these are the vices which may render people suspicious of all writings. I have striven to use plain language even at the risk of sounding casual or unprofessional. I hope that no reader will attribute my decision to get along with a minimum of the art historian’s conventional terms to any desire on my part of ‘talking down’ to him. Apart from this decision, I have tried to follow a number of more specific self-imposed rules, such as limiting myself to real works of art and cutting out anything which might merely be interesting as a specimen of taste or fashion. This decision entailed a considerable sacrifice of literary effects. Praise is so much duller than criticism, and the inclusion of some amusing monstrosities might have offered some light relief. Thus, while I do not claim that all the works illustrated represent the highest standard of perfection, I did make an effort not to include anything which I considered to be without a peculiar merit of its own.

A second rule also demanded a little self-denial. I vowed to resist any temptation to be original in my selection, lest the well-known masterpieces be crowded out by my own personal favourites. This book, after all, is not intended merely as an anthology of beautiful things; it is meant for those who look for bearings in a new field, and for them the familiar appearance of apparently ‘hackneyed’ examples may serve as welcome landmarks.

One more rule I have followed. When in doubt I have always preferred to discuss a work which I had seen in the original rather than one I knew only from photographs. I should have liked to make this an absolute rule, but I did not want the reader to be penalized by the accidents of travel restrictions which sometimes dog the life of the art-lover.


E. H. Gombrich. The Story of Art. Phaidon, New York – London: 1995, p. 7-8 (adapted).

Based on text II, judge whether the following statements are right (C) or wrong (E).

In “for them the familiar appearance” (third sentence of second paragraph), “them” refers to the people the book is meant for: “those who look for bearings in a new field”.

Text 7A2-II


In October 1971, a gentleman called Frieder Nake published a note entitled, There Should Be No Computer Art, which I quote here. “Soon after the advent of computers, it became clear that there was a great potential application for them in the area of artistic creation”, he began. “Before 1960, amazing, large, expensive, digital computers helped to produce poetic text and music. Analog computers, or only oscilloscopes, generated drawings of sets of mathematical curves and representations of oscillations. It was not before the first exhibitions of computer produced pictures were held in 1965 that a greater public took notice of this threat, as some said, progress, as some thought. I was involved in this development from its beginning.


I think that the way the art scene reacted to the new creations is interesting, pleasing, and stupid. I stated in 1970 that I was no longer going to take part in exhibitions. I find it easy to admit that computer art did not contribute to the advancement of art if we compare the computer products to all existing works of art. In other words, the repertoire of results of aesthetic behavior has not been changed by the use of computers. This point of view, namely, that of art history, is shared and held against computer art by many art critics. There is no doubt in my mind”, Frieder Nake said, “that interesting new methods have been found in the last decade which can be of some significance for the creative artist”.


As you might imagine, this was a bit of a controversial take. Here was a man who had for part of the previous decade been an insider, an advocate for the use of algorithmic and generative processes to create art. However, he was now seeing things from another perspective. I’ll just finish with another piece from what he posted in that article: “Questions like ‘is a computer creative’, or ‘is a computer an artist’, or the like, should not be considered serious questions, period. In the light of what we are facing at the end of the 20th century, those irrelevant questions do not matter”.

Where is the Art? A History in Technology.

Internet: <https://www.infoq.com> (adapted).


In the sentence “Here was a man who had for part of the previous decade been an insider, an advocate for the use of algorithmic and generative processes to create art.” (second sentence of the third paragraph of text 7A2-II),

Text 1A1-II


Brazil’s first scientific expedition to the Arctic aims to explore the biodiversity of one of the planet’s coldest territories, learn more about its ecological importance and its role in global climate change, and contribute to its preservation. The Brazilian team of scientists from the University of Brasília and the Federal University of Minas Gerais has been in the Svalbard archipelago—a section of the Arctic Circle that belongs to Norway—since July 8.

According to the expert, research in the region is crucial in monitoring relevant developments in Brazil as well as worldwide. “What happens here in the Arctic affects Brazil, so we should have the right to speak and vote, which is not happening.”

Brazil is the only among the ten largest global economies without a voice on issues related to the region. Therefore, Brazil’s scientific presence in the Arctic—a region covering more than 16 million square kilometers—can prove significant for the inclusion of the nation as an observer member of the Arctic Council, the international cooperation body on environmental strategies for the territory. The country should also join the Svalbard Treaty, which not only recognizes Norway’s sovereignty over the archipelago, but also grants access to the area’s resources for signatory nations.


Internet: <agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br> (adapted).

According to text 1A1-II, judge the following item.

The first Brazilian expedition to the Arctic, as presented in the first paragraph, has a threefold objective.

Text I


Despite the tricky and life-threatening relationship between Paleolithic humans and the megafauna that comprised so much of their environment, twentieth-century scholars tended to claim cave art as evidence of an unalloyed triumph for our species. It was a “great spiritual symbol,” of a time when “man had just emerged from a purely zoological existence, when instead of being dominated by animals, he began to dominate them.” But the child-like and highly stylized stick figures found in caves do not radiate triumph. By the standards of our own time, they are excessively self-effacing and, compared to the animals portrayed around them, pathetically weak.

While twentieth-century archeologists tended to solemnize prehistoric art as “magico-religious” or “shamanic,” today’s more secular viewers sometimes detect a vein of sheer silliness. India’s Mesolithic rock art portrays few human stick figures; those that are portrayed have been described by modern viewers as “comical,” “animalized” and “grotesque.” As Judith Thurman wrote about the artists, “despite their penchant for naturalism, rarely did they choose to depict human beings, and then did so with a crudeness that smacks of mockery.”

But who are they mocking, other than themselves and, by extension, their distant descendants, ourselves? Of course, our reactions to Paleolithic art may bear no connection to the intentions or feelings of the artists. Yet there are reasons to believe that Paleolithic people had a sense of humor not all that dissimilar from our own.


Barbara Ehrenreich. The Humanoid Stain. Later on. Internet: (adapted).

Judge whether the following items about text I are right (C) or wrong (E).

In the last sentence of the text, inserting a comma immediately after the first occurrence of “that” would make the sentence grammatically incorrect.

Four types of English exist in Africa, identifiable in terms of history, functions, and linguistic characteristics. West African Pidgin English has a history going back to the 15th century, 400 years before formal colonization. Creole varieties of English have a history going back to repatriation of enslaved people from the Caribbean and the United States of America in the 19th century. Second language varieties, which are the most widespread on the continent, are prototypically associated with British colonization and its education systems. L1 (first language) English occurred mostly in Southern and East Africa and is best represented in South Africa. The latter shows significant similarities with the other major Southern Hemisphere varieties of English, spoken in Australia and New Zealand.


African Englishes From a Sociolinguistic Perspective.

Internet: <oxfordre.com> (adapted).

Considering the previous text, its ideas and linguistic features, as well as the reading strategies that apply to it, judge the following item.

In the first sentence of the text, the words “history”, “functions”, and “linguistic” are working as modifiers describing “characteristics”.

Text II


This book wants to show the newcomer the lie of the land without confusing him with details. In writing it I thought first and foremost of readers in their teens. But I have never believed that books for young people should differ from books for adults except for the fact that they must reckon with the most exacting class of critics, critics who are quick to detect and resent any trace of pretentious jargon or bogus sentiment. I know from experience that these are the vices which may render people suspicious of all writings. I have striven to use plain language even at the risk of sounding casual or unprofessional. I hope that no reader will attribute my decision to get along with a minimum of the art historian’s conventional terms to any desire on my part of ‘talking down’ to him. Apart from this decision, I have tried to follow a number of more specific self-imposed rules, such as limiting myself to real works of art and cutting out anything which might merely be interesting as a specimen of taste or fashion. This decision entailed a considerable sacrifice of literary effects. Praise is so much duller than criticism, and the inclusion of some amusing monstrosities might have offered some light relief. Thus, while I do not claim that all the works illustrated represent the highest standard of perfection, I did make an effort not to include anything which I considered to be without a peculiar merit of its own.

A second rule also demanded a little self-denial. I vowed to resist any temptation to be original in my selection, lest the well-known masterpieces be crowded out by my own personal favourites. This book, after all, is not intended merely as an anthology of beautiful things; it is meant for those who look for bearings in a new field, and for them the familiar appearance of apparently ‘hackneyed’ examples may serve as welcome landmarks.

One more rule I have followed. When in doubt I have always preferred to discuss a work which I had seen in the original rather than one I knew only from photographs. I should have liked to make this an absolute rule, but I did not want the reader to be penalized by the accidents of travel restrictions which sometimes dog the life of the art-lover.


E. H. Gombrich. The Story of Art. Phaidon, New York – London: 1995, p. 7-8 (adapted).

Considering text II, judge whether the following statements are right (C) or wrong (E).

In the fragment “most exacting class of critics, critics who are quick to (…)” (third sentence of the first paragraph), omitting the second occurrence of the word “critics” would maintain the grammar correctness of the sentence.