Who Decides What Is Worth Preserving
About this practice test
Three connected texts consider how cultural practices, buildings and archives can be preserved through shared authority, practical selection and continued community use.
What you’ll practice
Finding detail
Locate specific information and evidence.
Interpreting ideas
Connect main points and inferences.
Evaluating arguments
Assess claims, evidence, and limitations.
What to expect:
24 questions with explanations to review after submission.
Study the questions and tasks
Work through the material below, or start the interactive practice above to complete an attempt. Try the exercises before opening any answer or transcript sections, then use them to review your work.
- Practice level
- C2. Try this level if you can follow the instructions and understand most of the language; choose an earlier level if you need more support.
- Question formats
- Yes / No / Not Given, Single choice, Cloze (text), Short answer, Fill in the blank (dropdown)
How to approach this practice
Read the passage for its main idea, then return to the relevant sentence or paragraph for each question. Base answers on the passage.
The Argument in the Archive
At the end of every consultation on preservation, someone asks the wrong question: not What can we save? but Who decides what is worth saving? I have sat through enough meetings in old libraries and council rooms to distrust the comforting fiction that preservation is neutral. Every act of preservation is also an act of selection, and selection is never innocent. A cracked fountain, a factory chimney, a song scribbled in a notebook: each survives because some people valued it more than other things that vanished without comment. The mistake begins when we pretend that age itself confers moral authority. It does not. Age can make an object interesting, even moving, but interest is not the same as entitlement. A warehouse may be older than the apartment block beside it, yet that does not mean the warehouse must be saved at all costs. If preservation were only a matter of counting years, any relic would outrank a living neighbourhood. In practice, of course, we never use years alone; we weigh beauty, rarity, memory, money, and politics, usually in that order when we are being honest, and in some other order when we are not. Last spring, Mara, a local conservator, argued for keeping the soot-blackened facade of the Orion Theatre. The developer wanted it cleaned until it looked new, because that is what investors often call respect. Mara said the blackened stone was part of the building's story: the years of coal smoke, the cheap repairs, the volunteer nights when actors painted sets under broken lights. She was right, but not because grime is sacred. She was right because the decision was not simply about material condition; it was about which past a city preferred to display. To erase the stains would have been to flatter one version of history and silence another. This is why I resist the claim that experts alone should decide. Experts matter. A conservator can explain which lime mortar will survive winter, and an archivist can tell the difference between damp and rot. But expertise does not become innocence merely because it wears a lab coat. Specialists are trained in methods, not in moral disinterest, and their training can hide its own hierarchy of taste. A standard that looks objective may still privilege what is legible to institutions, what is expensive to maintain, or what fits the story a city already likes telling about itself. The same caution applies to digital copies, which are useful and overrated in exactly the same breath. Scanning a mural may preserve its image, but it does not preserve the scale of the wall, the smell of damp plaster, the way sunlight moved across the paint at noon, or the social habits that made people stop and look up. A scan can widen access, and that matters. A child far away may study a manuscript no museum would ship. Yet access is not the same as continuation. If we confuse the two, we will congratulate ourselves for preserving what we have only translated. Nor should communities be treated as decorative consultees, invited to admire a decision already made elsewhere. The people who live with the consequences should have a real place in the argument, because they are the ones who inherit the noise, the rent rises, the traffic, the pride, or the loss. In the case of the Orion Theatre, the residents who remembered matinées, protest meetings, and wedding receptions did not merely supply sentiment; they supplied evidence. They could say what the place had done, not just what it looked like. A preservation process that excludes them may still be orderly, but it is orderly in the way a closed door is orderly. I do not, however, argue for preserving everything. That would be a sentimental refusal to choose, and refusal is a choice as well. Some buildings fail to earn the cost of their repair; some rituals survive only as performances; some objects are painful not because they are old but because they are worshipped for the wrong reasons. The answer, then, is not a hidden committee but a layered one: residents, custodians, historians, engineers, and yes, sometimes even the people who must pay for the work. None should own the whole decision. When power is shared, the result will often be slower and messier, but it will also be more honest about what preservation is: a public argument about value. That argument should not begin with the fantasy that there is one correct past waiting to be recovered untouched. Past worlds have already been broken by use, weather, neglect, and previous restorers. What we can preserve is not purity but relation: a trace of craft, a usable memory, a place where disagreement remains visible. If that sounds less triumphant than the slogans used by heritage campaigns, so be it. I would rather inherit a difficult honesty than a polished lie. The question is not whether we can save the past. It is which future stories we are willing to make possible by saving some things and letting others go.
Saving Ada Quill's Archive
On the edge of Fenmere, in the former grain cooperage, sat the Halcyon Archive: six shelves of papers left by Ada Quill, the last recorded maker of straw marquetry in the region. To outsiders the collection looked modest—ledger books, cutting cards, bundles of straw, and four tin boxes of notes—but to those who knew the craft it was the only place where the method survived in more than memory. Ada had died three years earlier, and since then the archive had been visited by school groups, collectors, and one municipal committee that had come mainly to decide whether it deserved rescue at all. The problem was not simply money. The county's conservation office would fund only items that could be stabilised within eighteen months, and the building itself leaked whenever the wind came off the estuary. Leon Varga, the archivist assigned to the case, argued for keeping the whole collection together. He said the archive was not a shop window with a few bright examples in it; it was a record of practice, hesitation, revision, and error. Council member Ruth Penn preferred a narrower plan. She wanted the most attractive pieces cleaned, digitised, and displayed, because a public fund, she said, ought to serve the public. That division sounded practical until the boxes were opened. The first layer held the expected showpieces: braided fans, lacquered panels, and a sample album of finished ornaments. Beneath them lay what Leon called the archive's 'working parts'—notes on humidity, lists of suppliers, invoices with coffee stains, and sheets where Ada had tested half a dozen adhesives before rejecting them. There were also voice cassettes, each labeled with a date and a question: why one straw split, why another kept its colour, why a design that looked elegant on paper collapsed under glue. The material that seemed least polished was often the most revealing. At the public hearing, a retired teacher said children should see the beautiful objects, not the administrative debris. A former apprentice answered that the debris was the teaching. She held up a dog-eared notebook in which Ada had written, 'Do not trust the first success.' Several heads in the room nodded, but the council still hesitated. Their unease was revealing: they wanted the archive to prove that a threatened craft was noble, efficient, and complete, when its actual history was improvised, wasteful, and sometimes embarrassing. Leon noted, with only mild irony, that the least tidy evidence often protected the most orderly story. The turning point came from a practical limit rather than an ideal one. Some of the papers had become acidic enough to damage neighbouring sheets, and a few straw samples had begun to shed dust that could not safely be left in open storage. The panel therefore separated the collection into three groups. The first would remain in climate control as the 'working core': Ada's main notebook, the finished pattern books, and the audio cassettes after conversion. The second would be digitised and described online, including duplicates, publicity photographs, and the school-pack leaflets produced after Ada's death. The third group, mostly inert but unstable scraps, would be sealed until a later treatment could be found. That compromise pleased no one completely, which is usually a sign that the compromise is honest. The apprentices disliked losing the physical copies of some materials they used for demonstrations. The councillors disliked paying for storage that would never be seen. Yet the plan did something the louder proposals could not: it preserved enough context to make the craft intelligible without pretending that every scrap had equal value. Leon later wrote that conservation was not the fantasy of total rescue. It was the more ordinary discipline of choosing what a future reader must have if the past is to remain readable. In the report, the final sentence looked almost stern: the archive should be treated as a living record, not a shrine. That word mattered. A shrine asks for reverence; a record asks for interpretation. Reverence tends to freeze differences in place, while interpretation admits that some parts will be copied, some handled, and some lost. The board did not ask who had the power to save everything, because no one did. It asked who could preserve enough evidence for the craft to be understood after the last maker had gone. The answer, inconveniently, was not a single person or institution. It was a chain of decisions shared by the donor, the archivist, the conservators, and the people who still cared whether straw could be coaxed into ornament. The archive survived by being made smaller, and in that reduction it became clearer. What had seemed like surrender was, in the end, a method of inheritance: not every object, but enough relation between objects to let the craft remain thinkable.
Three Conditions for Community Stewardship
First, when a town debates whether to preserve a dance, a workshop or a worn building, the obvious fight is usually about sentiment. A plaque may look harmless; a festival may even appear generous. Yet the more difficult question is who gets to define the value in the first place, and who bears the cost once the label of "heritage" has been attached. This brief argues that community-led preservation deserves support only when it remains tied to living use, broad consent and an openness to revision. Otherwise, preservation can become a polished vocabulary for control. In the harbour quarter, the old boat shed was defended not as a romantic relic but as a place where repair classes still met, markets still set up on Saturdays and older residents could tell younger ones how hulls had once been patched after storms. That example matters because several groups could name a reason for keeping it: boat builders, school pupils, stallholders, and people who used the waterfront every week. A proposal to protect a fountain in a very different district failed for the opposite reason. A heritage committee admired it, and the tourism office liked the image, but local shopkeepers and residents saw little in it beyond a decorative object. The lesson is not that committees are useless. It is that a narrow coalition can mistake its own taste for public memory. Preservation therefore needs more than enthusiasm. It needs a wider base than one organiser, however energetic, because a community is not defined by whoever speaks loudest at the first meeting. The brief asks whether the people most affected can describe what may change without feeling that the practice has been stripped of meaning. Communities often accept movement, relocation and redesign if those changes keep the practice recognisable in use. But if every detail must stay fixed, then the thing may survive as a label while the relationships around it dry up. Next, the brief turns from consent to capacity. A group that guards a tradition without time, training or tools may become exhausted, and then the unpaid labour that was supposed to be supported simply shifts from one volunteer to another. Public money is most defensible when it enlarges what local people can do for themselves: recording oral histories, repairing artefacts, learning bookkeeping, running bookings or managing a shared venue. The point is not to turn residents into professional curators. It is to make preservation less dependent on heroic improvisation. External institutions are not excluded, but they should arrive as partners, not governors. Their best contribution is often technical or legal: archive climate control, accessibility grants, advice about leases, or political weight against speculative development. Yet even useful help can curdle if the donor's taste still steers the project after the first round of decisions. At that point the arrangement is not partnership but control in polite language. A serious programme needs an exit plan, or at least a clear moment when local judgement starts to matter more than outside preference. The next test is how a policy handles change itself. The brief also insists that not every loss deserves the same response. Some things are irreplaceable; others are better documented than forced to remain unchanged. A market square that no longer functions as a market may deserve a careful record, not a demand that it continue in the same role forever. A ritual that keeps participants safe only if it moves indoors may deserve the move. The real mistake is to assume that every alteration is decline and every intact form is automatically virtuous. Finally, the brief warns about symbolism without support. Cities and ministries often speak most warmly about diversity when they are least willing to shift money or authority. They sponsor plaques, launch festivals and publish elegant statements, yet the people who carry the tradition still struggle with rent, access and travel costs. That gap can turn preservation into performance without redistribution. In such cases the institution gains a picture of care while the community absorbs the inconvenience. For that reason, the brief prefers reversible support to permanent custody: small grants, regular review and the right to step back if priorities change. Preservation should behave like a living contract rather than a locked cabinet. If the practice still matters, support can continue. If shared commitment weakens, the wiser response may be to archive, adapt or let go. What deserves preserving is not simply what is oldest, easiest to label or most flattering to officials. It is what a community can still recognise as part of its own life.
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Question 1 · Yes / No / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the writer’s or speaker’s view. Choose Not Given when the view is not stated.
The writer believes city leaders usually defend preservation projects by promising more tourism and higher visitor numbers.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- Yes
- No
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- Not Given
Not Given. The essay discusses beauty, memory, money, politics, expertise, and community consequences, but it does not say what city leaders usually promise when defending preservation. Tourism and visitor numbers are not mentioned, so the writer's view on that specific claim is not stated.
In practice, of course, we never use years alone; we weigh beauty, rarity, memory, money, and politics, usually in that order when we are being honest, and in some other order when we are not
When power is shared, the result will often be slower and messier, but it will also be more honest about what preservation is: a public argument about value
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Question 2 · Yes / No / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the writer’s or speaker’s view. Choose Not Given when the view is not stated.
The writer believes digital copies are useful but do not fully preserve an original.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- Yes
- No
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- Yes
Yes. The writer acknowledges the value of digital access, but insists that a scan cannot preserve the full physical and social experience of the original. The essay draws a clear distinction between access and continuation.
A scan can widen access, and that matters
Yet access is not the same as continuation
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Question 3 · Yes / No / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the writer’s or speaker’s view. Choose Not Given when the view is not stated.
The writer believes that preservation decisions always involve value judgments.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- Yes
- No
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- Yes
Yes. The writer rejects the idea that preservation is neutral and argues that preserving something always means selecting it over something else. That makes preservation a matter of values, not a neutral procedure.
Every act of preservation is also an act of selection, and selection is never innocent
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Question 4 · Yes / No / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the writer’s or speaker’s view. Choose Not Given when the view is not stated.
The writer believes national governments should have a special role in preservation decisions.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- Yes
- No
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- Not Given
Not Given. The writer proposes a layered process involving several groups, but the essay never mentions national governments or assigns them any special authority. Since that specific view is absent, the claim cannot be confirmed or contradicted.
The answer, then, is not a hidden committee but a layered one: residents, custodians, historians, engineers, and yes, sometimes even the people who must pay for the work
None should own the whole decision
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Question 5 · Yes / No / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the writer’s or speaker’s view. Choose Not Given when the view is not stated.
The writer believes something is worth preserving simply because it is old.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- Yes
- No
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- No
No. The writer directly rejects the idea that age by itself gives something a right to be preserved. Age may create interest, but the essay says that is not enough.
Age can make an object interesting, even moving, but interest is not the same as entitlement
The mistake begins when we pretend that age itself confers moral authority. It does not
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Question 6 · Yes / No / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the writer’s or speaker’s view. Choose Not Given when the view is not stated.
The writer believes communities affected by preservation should have a real place in the argument.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- Yes
- No
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- Yes
Yes. The writer states this directly and strengthens the point by saying residents contribute evidence, not just emotion. Their lived experience is presented as part of legitimate decision-making.
The people who live with the consequences should have a real place in the argument
They could say what the place had done, not just what it looked like
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Question 7 · Yes / No / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the writer’s or speaker’s view. Choose Not Given when the view is not stated.
The writer believes expert knowledge should be the only basis for deciding what to preserve.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- Yes
- No
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- No
No. The essay accepts that experts are necessary, but it explicitly denies that expertise is morally neutral or sufficient on its own. The writer argues against allowing experts alone to control the decision.
Experts matter. A conservator can explain which lime mortar will survive winter, and an archivist can tell the difference between damp and rot. But expertise does not become innocence merely because it wears a lab coat
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Question 8 · Single choice
Choose one answer.
Which statement best captures the essay's central argument?
Return to the passage, recording or visual- Preservation is a selective public argument in which expertise matters but cannot replace shared judgment.
- Preservation mainly protects technically repairable objects, while questions of value are secondary.
- Preservation should avoid all change and keep every object exactly as it was.
- Preservation is a symbolic public project in which institutional priorities matter but should not determine historical meaning.
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- Preservation is a selective public argument in which expertise matters but cannot replace shared judgment.
The correct choice is "Preservation is a selective public argument in which expertise matters but cannot replace shared judgment." It reflects the essay's claims that preservation is never neutral, expertise is necessary but not innocent, and decisions should be shared. "Preservation mainly protects technically repairable objects, while questions of value are secondary" fails because the essay makes value central. "Preservation should avoid all change and keep every object exactly as it was" fails because the writer rejects preserving everything and the fantasy of untouched purity. "Preservation is a symbolic public project in which institutional priorities matter but should not determine historical meaning" captures only part of the argument and does not express the essay's emphasis on shared authority and selection.
Every act of preservation is also an act of selection, and selection is never innocent
The answer, then, is not a hidden committee but a layered one: residents, custodians, historians, engineers, and yes, sometimes even the people who must pay for the work
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Question 9 · Cloze (text)
Complete each blank with the missing word or phrase.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each gap. Complete the summary. After the review, the panel split the archive into a set that would stay in 1___, a second set to be digitised and 2___, and a third set left for 3___. Leon argued that this was not 4___ but a way of keeping the past 5___, and the report finally described the archive as a 6___ rather than a shrine.
Return to the passage, recording or visualCheck answers and explanations
- Blank 1
- climate control
- Blank 2
- described online
- Blank 3
- later treatment
- Blank 4
- total rescue
- Blank 5
- readable
- Blank 6
- living record
Gap 1: climate control. The working core remained there. Gap 2: described online. The second group was digitised and described online. Gap 3: later treatment. Unstable scraps were sealed until treatment could be found. Gap 4: total rescue. Leon described conservation as something other than rescuing everything. Gap 5: readable. The aim was to keep the past readable. Gap 6: living record. The report said the archive should be treated as a living record, not a shrine.
The first would remain in climate control as the 'working core': Ada's main notebook, the finished pattern books, and the audio cassettes after conversion
The second would be digitised and described online, including duplicates, publicity photographs, and the school-pack leaflets produced after Ada's death
It was the more ordinary discipline of choosing what a future reader must have if the past is to remain readable
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Question 10 · Short answer
Write a short answer to the question.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage. What specific craft did Ada Quill practise?
Return to the passage, recording or visualCheck answers and explanations
- Accepted answers
- straw marquetry
The passage identifies Ada as the last recorded maker of straw marquetry. The qualifier “straw” is necessary because the question asks for her specific craft.
Ada Quill, the last recorded maker of straw marquetry in the region
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Question 11 · Short answer
Write a short answer to the question.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage. What kind of cooperage housed the archive?
Return to the passage, recording or visualCheck answers and explanations
- Accepted answers
- former grain cooperage / grain cooperage
The archive was in the former grain cooperage. Both 'former grain cooperage' and the shorter 'grain cooperage' are acceptable because the passage states the type directly. 'Former' is part of the location, but omitting it still leaves a source-based answer within the word limit.
On the edge of Fenmere, in the former grain cooperage, sat the Halcyon Archive
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Question 12 · Short answer
Write a short answer to the question.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage. What time limit shaped the county's funding decision?
Return to the passage, recording or visualCheck answers and explanations
- Accepted answers
- within eighteen months / eighteen months / 18 months
The office would fund only items that could be stabilised within eighteen months. That exact limit, or the shorter 'eighteen months', is the correct answer. A longer period would contradict the passage's funding rule.
The county's conservation office would fund only items that could be stabilised within eighteen months
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Question 13 · Short answer
Write a short answer to the question.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage. What phrase did Leon use for the material that was not meant to be only on display?
Return to the passage, recording or visualCheck answers and explanations
- Accepted answers
- working parts
Leon called those notes, invoices, and trial sheets the archive's 'working parts'. This phrase fits the way the passage contrasts them with the showpieces. 'Showpieces' would be the wrong idea, because Leon is naming the less polished but more informative material.
what Leon called the archive's 'working parts'—notes on humidity, lists of suppliers, invoices with coffee stains, and sheets
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Question 14 · Short answer
Write a short answer to the question.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage. What term did the panel give the material that would stay under climate control?
Return to the passage, recording or visualCheck answers and explanations
- Accepted answers
- working core
The passage explicitly names the first group the 'working core'. That term is different from Leon's 'working parts', which refers to the broader evidence inside the archive. The answer must identify the climate-controlled group, not the whole archive.
The first would remain in climate control as the 'working core
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Question 15 · Short answer
Write a short answer to the question.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage. Which leaflets were digitised after Ada's death?
Return to the passage, recording or visualCheck answers and explanations
- Accepted answers
- school-pack leaflets / the school-pack leaflets
The digitised second set included the school-pack leaflets produced after Ada's death. 'School-pack leaflets' is the concise source-based answer. This is distinct from the duplicate items and publicity photographs mentioned alongside them.
including duplicates, publicity photographs, and the school-pack leaflets produced after Ada's death
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Question 16 · Short answer
Write a short answer to the question.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage. What did the report say the archive should be treated as?
Return to the passage, recording or visualCheck answers and explanations
- Accepted answers
- living record / a living record
The report states directly that the archive should be treated as 'a living record, not a shrine'. Therefore 'living record' is the correct answer. 'Shrine' is the term the report rejects, because reverence alone would freeze interpretation.
the archive should be treated as a living record, not a shrine
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Question 17 · Fill in the blank (dropdown)
Choose the correct option for each blank.
The brief says support is justified only when preservation remains part of ordinary life, has broad local backing and is open to revision rather than being kept as a display object. In short, it needs ___.
Return to the passage, recording or visualChoices for blank 1
- curatorial prestige
- institutional ownership
- ongoing use
- private sponsorship
Check answers and explanations
- Blank 1
- ongoing use
"Ongoing use" best captures the passage's point that preservation must still live in the community, not sit there as a label or display. "Curatorial prestige" and "institutional ownership" describe control or display, which the brief questions, while "private sponsorship" is not the standard it sets.
This brief argues that community-led preservation deserves support only when it remains tied to living use, broad consent and an openness to revision
Otherwise, preservation can become a polished vocabulary for control
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Question 18 · Fill in the blank (dropdown)
Choose the correct option for each blank.
In the harbour example, the shed earns support because several groups can see it as useful to them now, not just because it is old. The passage presents it as a place of ___ rather than as a decorative exhibit.
Return to the passage, recording or visualChoices for blank 1
- official display
- shared practical use
- tourist branding
- private ownership
Check answers and explanations
- Blank 1
- shared practical use
"Shared practical use" fits the example because the shed serves repair classes, markets and storytelling at the same time. The other choices all move the site toward display, branding or ownership, which is exactly the weaker kind of value the brief contrasts with real community use.
the old boat shed was defended not as a romantic relic but as a place where repair classes still met, markets still set up on Saturdays and older residents could tell younger ones how hulls had once been patched after storms
That example matters because several groups could name a reason for keeping it: boat builders, school pupils, stallholders, and people who used the waterfront every week
official display: Incorrect: the passage explicitly contrasts the shed with a decorative object.
shared practical use: Correct: the shed is defended because it is still useful to several groups.
tourist branding: Incorrect: tourism prefers the image of the site, but that is not why the shed matters.
private ownership: Incorrect: ownership is not the reason given; collective use is.
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Question 19 · Fill in the blank (dropdown)
Choose the correct option for each blank.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage. The brief accepts some changes to a tradition, but what kind of loss should communities not feel has occurred? ___
Return to the passage, recording or visualChoices for blank 1
- made louder
- placed on loan
- stripped of meaning
- turned expensive
Check answers and explanations
- Blank 1
- stripped of meaning
The passage says people may accept movement or redesign if the practice remains recognisable, but they should not feel that its significance has been removed. Therefore the source phrase is "stripped of meaning".
The brief asks whether the people most affected can describe what may change without feeling that the practice has been stripped of meaning
Communities often accept movement, relocation and redesign if those changes keep the practice recognisable in use
made louder: Incorrect: sound volume has nothing to do with the warning about adaptation.
placed on loan: Incorrect: the issue is not lending or ownership.
stripped of meaning: Correct: this is the passage's idea of harmful change.
turned expensive: Incorrect: cost is not the point being made here.
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Question 20 · Fill in the blank (dropdown)
Choose the correct option for each blank.
Public money is judged useful when it helps local people do the hidden work of keeping a tradition alive rather than waiting for outsiders to do it. The brief calls this building local ___.
Return to the passage, recording or visualChoices for blank 1
- attendance
- spectacle
- publicity
- capacity
Check answers and explanations
- Blank 1
- capacity
"Capacity" is the term the passage uses for giving residents the tools and skills to sustain preservation themselves. The other choices are related public goals, but they do not describe the practical strengthening of local ability that the brief recommends.
Public money is most defensible when it enlarges what local people can do for themselves: recording oral histories, repairing artefacts, learning bookkeeping, running bookings or managing a shared venue
The point is not to turn residents into professional curators. It is to make preservation less dependent on heroic improvisation
attendance: Incorrect: the issue is not simply getting more people through the door.
spectacle: Incorrect: spectacle is part of the criticism, not the remedy.
publicity: Incorrect: the brief is sceptical of appearance without practical support.
capacity: Correct: the passage explicitly argues for enlarging local capacity.
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Question 21 · Fill in the blank (dropdown)
Choose the correct option for each blank.
The brief welcomes outside help only up to the point where local judgement remains in charge. If the donor still sets the direction after the first decisions, the result is no longer partnership but ___.
Return to the passage, recording or visualChoices for blank 1
- control
- cooperation
- delegation
- stewardship
Check answers and explanations
- Blank 1
- control
"Control" is correct because the passage says outside help stops being partnership once it keeps steering the project. The other options describe cooperative or neutral relationships, which the brief explicitly distinguishes from control.
Yet even useful help can curdle if the donor's taste still steers the project after the first round of decisions
At that point the arrangement is not partnership but control in polite language
control: Correct: the passage contrasts genuine partnership with hidden control.
cooperation: Incorrect: cooperation is what the brief wants, not what it criticises here.
delegation: Incorrect: the passage says the opposite, because the donor still steers.
stewardship: Incorrect: stewardship suggests careful care, not outside control.
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Question 22 · Fill in the blank (dropdown)
Choose the correct option for each blank.
When a place no longer serves its old purpose, the brief says the sensible response may be to document it rather than insist that it keep the same ___.
Return to the passage, recording or visualChoices for blank 1
- shape
- role
- ownership
- status
Check answers and explanations
- Blank 1
- role
"Role" fits the argument that a changing place may deserve documentation instead of being frozen into its former function. "Shape", "ownership" and "status" are all plausible in isolation, but they do not express the source's distinction between documentation and forcing continuity.
A market square that no longer functions as a market may deserve a careful record, not a demand that it continue in the same role forever
The real mistake is to assume that every alteration is decline and every intact form is automatically virtuous
shape: Incorrect: physical shape is not the point of the policy distinction.
role: Correct: the passage says the square should not be forced to keep the same role.
ownership: Incorrect: ownership is not what the passage is discussing here.
status: Incorrect: the passage is about function, not status.
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Question 23 · Fill in the blank (dropdown)
Choose the correct option for each blank.
The criticism of official celebrations is that they can leave money and power untouched, so the visible ceremony hides a lack of real change. In the brief, that becomes performance without ___.
Return to the passage, recording or visualChoices for blank 1
- memory
- publicity
- redistribution
- compromise
Check answers and explanations
- Blank 1
- redistribution
"Redistribution" is correct because the passage argues that ceremonies and statements are hollow if they do not shift resources or authority. The other options are valuable in other contexts, but they do not name the structural change the brief says is missing.
That gap can turn preservation into performance without redistribution
They sponsor plaques, launch festivals and publish elegant statements, yet the people who carry the tradition still struggle with rent, access and travel costs
memory: Incorrect: memory is not what the institutions are accused of lacking.
publicity: Incorrect: publicity is part of the problem, not the missing remedy.
redistribution: Correct: the passage says real change requires more than ceremony.
compromise: Incorrect: the passage criticises unequal power, not a lack of compromise.
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Question 24 · Single choice
Choose one answer.
According to the brief, what should preservation policy treat as its safest default when a community's priorities may change over time?
Return to the passage, recording or visual- permanent custody with no review
- short-term grants without reassessment
- outside experts retaining final authority
- reversible support with regular review
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- reversible support with regular review
The correct answer is reversible support with regular review. The passage explicitly says the brief prefers it to permanent custody and adds that preservation should work like a living contract. The other choices either freeze control, end review, or hand authority away from the community.
the brief prefers reversible support to permanent custody: small grants, regular review and the right to step back if priorities change
Preservation should behave like a living contract rather than a locked cabinet
What to review next
Find the words that support each answer. For a mistake, compare the question with the evidence and identify the detail or inference you missed.
A focused practice result shows how you did on these tasks. Use several activities across skills to decide what to study next; one practice score does not certify an overall CEFR level.
Before you practise: a worked example
Look for evidence in the text. Separate what the writer says from what you already know about the topic.
The library normally closes at six, but on Fridays it stays open until eight. When does it close on Friday?
The answer is eight. But introduces an exception to the normal closing time, so the first time mentioned is not the answer.
This teaching example is separate from the scored questions. After your test, compare any mistakes with the explanation and revisit the topic before trying again.