Spoken Corpus Comes to Life: reading answers and analysis
Dictionary-making used to be a job for bookish professors. Now 150 volunteers wore hidden recorders for up to two weeks, and ten million words of real speech went into a computer database. It shows how words are really used and how often (the commonest 'like' is the preposition), adds phrases missing from dictionaries, and captures pauses and noises. Foreign learners benefit most.
Questions 1-12 · 12 marks · 3 question blocks
Where the answers sit
The headings (1-6) cover every paragraph except C, the example. The diagram labels (7-11) run through paragraphs B to F. Question 12 asks about the whole article.
Questions 1-6
A describes traditional dictionary-makers, and B the new recording method. D covers accurate frequency counts, and E new phrases like 'it's a question of'. F is pauses and noises (non-verbal content), and G the cooperative British National Corpus. 'The first study of spoken language' is a trap for B, which says real speech has never really been studied.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | vi | — |
| 2 | ii | — |
| 3 | x | — |
| 4 | viii | — |
| 5 | iv | — |
| 6 | ix | — |
Questions 7-11
The labels follow the paragraphs: the corpus added to an existing written one, key words with related phrases, the most frequent meanings, written versus spoken use, and feelings conveyed through pauses and noises. The key accepts several forms of each.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 7 | existing | — |
| 8 | phrases | related phrases |
| 9 | meanings | forms |
| 10 | spoken | real / oral |
| 11 | noise | noises / pauses / noises and pauses / pauses and noises |
Question 12
The article is about technology revolutionising how dictionaries are made, which is announcing a new approach. The Language Activator is only one example of it.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 12 | B | — |
The questions most people get wrong
ii. B describes the new method of hidden recorders and transcription. It says this language 'has never really been studied before', which is different from being the first study.
iv. F is about the pauses and noises we use to play for time and show emotion, which is non-verbal content.
B. Everything supports the 'revolution' announced in A. The Language Activator (A) is just one product of the new approach.
Sit this test on Langujet, then come back
The full Cambridge 1 Test 3 reading paper: all three passages, 60 minutes, marked the second you finish with a review of every answer. Already done it? Take it again and see if the same traps still get you.
Cambridge IELTS 1, Test 3, Reading Passage 1. The passage name belongs to Cambridge University Press. No passage text or question wording is reproduced on this page. The answers are published for self-marking, and the analysis is our own.