Multiple-choice reading
You are going to read an article about a young chef who became famous on social media. For questions 31–36, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.
From the kitchen to the screen
Marco Vidal turned a childhood passion into an unexpected career
I meet Marco Vidal at the small restaurant he owns in the old quarter of the city, just as the lunch service is winding down. He’s still in his chef’s whites when he comes out to greet me, wiping his hands on a cloth and apologising for keeping me waiting. There is none of the celebrity swagger one might expect from someone who has amassed four million followers online. He’s quiet, earnest, and seems genuinely puzzled by his own fame.
Marco grew up in a village in the south, where his grandmother ran a modest guesthouse. ‘She cooked for the guests every night, always traditional dishes – the kind you don’t see on menus any more,’ he recalls. He would stand on a stool beside her, watching and occasionally stirring. He never saw it as anything other than something ordinary families did. ‘It didn’t occur to me that it was a skill worth teaching to others until much later.’
After finishing school, Marco enrolled at a catering college, where he found the formal setting both challenging and eye-opening. ‘The techniques were new to me, of course, but what surprised me was how little attention was paid to the emotional side of cooking – why certain dishes matter to people, what they represent.’ He graduated near the top of his class, took a series of jobs in professional kitchens, and eventually saved enough to open his own place.
The online presence came about almost by accident. A friend persuaded him to film himself preparing a dish that had belonged to his grandmother. He uploaded it without much thought. Within a week, the video had been viewed nearly a million times. line 22‘I honestly didn’t understand what had happened,’ he says. ‘I hadn’t done anything differently. It was just a recipe.’ But viewers responded to something beyond the food itself – the unhurried pace, the quiet narration, the sense that something genuine was being shared.
Marco now posts two videos a week and employs a small team to help with editing. He is careful, however, not to let commercial pressures distort what made his channel successful. ‘I’ve turned down several sponsorship deals because the products didn’t feel right. It would be very easy to accept money and lose what people actually come to watch.’ He pauses before adding: ‘My grandmother never charged extra for kindness.’
When I ask him about the future, Marco speaks not of expanding the restaurant or growing his subscriber count, but of writing a book – a collection of recipes accompanied by the stories behind them. line 39‘Food without memory is just fuel,’ he says. ‘I want people to feel something when they cook these dishes, not just follow instructions.’ Whether or not the book materialises, one thing is clear: Marco Vidal has found a way to make the personal universal.
Gapped text
You are going to read an article about a conservationist who restores old buildings. Six sentences have been removed from the article. Choose from the sentences A–G the one which fits each gap (37–42). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.
Saving old walls
Elena Marsh has dedicated her life to preserving historic buildings that others have given up on
Elena Marsh parks her mud-spattered van outside a roofless sixteenth-century farmhouse and pulls on a hard hat before I have even got out of the passenger seat. She has been restoring historic buildings for over twenty years, and the sense of urgency is instilled in everything she does. The farmhouse before us has been derelict for decades. It was scheduled for demolition until Elena intervened. 37
Her path into this unusual profession began, as these things sometimes do, with a single moment of outrage. As a student visiting a medieval town in the north of the country, she watched a demolition crew knock down a perfectly intact Renaissance doorway to make room for a car park. ‘I stood there with my mouth open,’ she tells me. ‘It was irreplaceable.’ She went home that evening and decided to study architectural conservation. 38
The early years were not easy. Funding for conservation projects is notoriously difficult to obtain, and Elena spent much of her twenties writing unsuccessful grant applications and taking on any paid work she could find. She nearly gave up on two separate occasions. 39 ‘A colleague of mine managed to secure a European heritage grant for a project that had been rejected three times. That gave me hope,’ she recalls.
These days, Elena runs a small but respected practice with five full-time employees. Her approach is distinctive: she insists on using only traditional materials and techniques, even when more modern alternatives would be cheaper and faster. 40 ‘A lime mortar repair carried out correctly will last centuries. A cement patch will crack within years and can actually damage the original stonework further.’
The farmhouse restoration is part-funded by a community heritage scheme, which means local volunteers can take part in the work. Elena believes this is essential. 41 ‘When people help to restore something with their own hands, they feel ownership of it,’ she says. ‘Then they look after it.’
When I ask Elena what she hopes people will think when they look at a building she has restored, she takes a long pause. ‘I hope they won’t think about me at all,’ she says finally. 42 ‘The building should feel as if it never changed — as if it always looked exactly this way. That’s when you know the job is done.’
Multiple matching
You are going to read a magazine article in which four people describe their experience of returning to education as adults. For questions 43–52, choose from the people (A–D). The people may be chosen more than once.