A. You will hear a recording. Write the missing words in each blank.

Privacy and the right to privacy are increasingly becoming hot (1) in the media, which is a touch (2) , given that it is often the media that is responsible for invasion of privacy. This is not just about those whose careers put them in the public eye, but ordinary people who through no fault of their own have come to public notice because of some event that has attracted the attention of the media. It might be that a member of their family has been (3) for some crime, (4) or wrongfully, or perhaps they are the (5) of some natural disaster. Some people argue that those who have chosen to be in the public sphere, and have teams of public (6) people to make sure they get as much public attention as possible – actors, rock stars, politicians and the like – have given up their right to privacy and get everything they deserve.

B. You will hear a recording. Write the missing words in each blank.

There is such a thing as information (1) There is just so much information out there now that we can’t (2) with it or fully absorb it, or even decide which bits of it we want to keep in our minds, or which to (3) There is a similar thing going on with the range of choices we have as (4) There is so much stuff out there, so much to choose from, that, according to some experts, this situation is making us (5) Most of us believe that the more we have to choose from the better, yet apparently our dissatisfaction with this wealth of choice, or rather the anxiety it produces, is part of a larger (6) It seems that, as society grows more (7) and people become freer to do what they want, the unhappier they become.

C. You will hear a recording. Write the missing words in each blank.

Post-modernism is broadly speaking a (1) against the movement or the period, or perhaps simply the values and beliefs of, modernism. Most people, even those who seem to know what it is or was about, tend to define it in (2) terms by telling us what it isn’t, or doesn’t do. (3) the term had a fairly limited application and referred to a new anti-modernist style of architecture. But it spread like a virus to include almost all aspects of (4) culture. One thing we can be sure about is that it wanted to get rid of what were called the grand narratives by which we explained how the world – and history – got us from the past to the present. Another feature of post-modernism is its belief that truth and reality are human-centered and (5) That is, the primary (6) of truth in the present age is the self. This, I believe, has now all passed and been thrown in the rubbish bin of history. Yet it is difficult to know whether the age of information technology confirms the passing of post-modernism or is a consequence of it.