Task 5. (12 points)
Read the text. For questions 5.1.-5.8., choose the correct paragraph and put
the appropriate letter (A-G) in the table. Some letters may be chosen more than once
and some may not be chosen at all. Then, answer questions 5.9.-5.12 in your own words
in the spaces provided. For each correct answer you will be given 1 point.
Eight o’clock in the morning, a semi-detached house in Croydon. Andrew Varley, 34,
a building surveyor, would like to leave for work, but cannot find his keys; Jane, 32,
his wife, is doing the decent thing and looking in the usual places - chairs, pockets, fridge
Meanwhile, the couple’s children, Rose and Alexander, are watching breakfast television.
All seem oblivious to the revolution going on in their living room. ‘A minor revolution at least,’
whispers Siamac Salari, as he crouches in the corner of the room, a tiny camcorder in his hand.
Salari is an advertising man, and so does not fight shy of hyperbole. Still, the least that
can be said of his work is that it is novel. He has persuaded one of the UK’s most
successful advertising agencies that the best way to find out what makes people tick -
the better to sell to them, naturally - is to go and live with them. Culture Lab, the new
department created solely for the purpose of examining that, is dedicated to observing
12 households, starting with the Varleys.
Salari, or a colleague, will stay with each family for a two-week stretch once a year,
filming their every motion and conversation. Salari’s goal is to be as unobtrusive
as possible. He may or may not sleep under the same roof as the family, but he has to be
indoors when they rise, since the most banal event, he says, might prove ‘crucial’.
What happens to the junk mail? What’s the breakfast choice? Do the TV adverts make
an impact this early in the day? Already, the early start has paid off. ‘Jane eats one slice
of toast spread with butter, another with margarine,’ says Salari, ‘the sort of daily compromise
that tends not to show up on a questionnaire.’
Salari is thinking hard commerce. This is not some fanciful academic exercise.
At regular moments, he will assign a commercial application to what appears a routine
action, noting which companies ‘would love to know that’. Just after breakfast, for instance,
Alexander instinctively reacts to the appearance on television of the cartoon character
Fireman Sam by rushing to put on his own toy fireman’s hat, which brings a huge smile
to Salari’s face. ‘That’s fantastic,’ he enthuses, ‘as ritualistic as dressing for dinner. Total
immersion. How much do you think toy manufacturers would love to see footage of this?’
It’s not Salari’s first media venture. While he was a consultant for Channel 4’s Shop
Till You Drop series, at one point, he invited us to watch a supermarket’s ‘ballet of
trolleys’. No doubt it pained him that while he presented the rules of shopping as the subtlest
of languages, the shoppers themselves turned out to be inarticulate. How he would have loved
to have come across a housewife like Jane then, since she soon reveals her outstanding
knowledge of kitchen fluids.
We have just returned from walking Rose to school when Jane decides to clean
the kitchen. As she proceeds, she talks us through each liquid’s properties and values,
‘efficiency’ here, ‘reliability’ there. She recalls the moment she first discovered the beauty
of Dettox - ‘the one to trust,’ she utters, as if in an ad - and describes its effect on different
surfaces. Suddenly, we’re in the intricately precise world of Nicholson Baker. In his novels,
the American’s prose lingers over the spout of a milk carton or a straw or a shoelace. When you
lift your head from the page, you can’t help but obsess about tiny objects.
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
Część II
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The family receive £50 per day from Salari’s unit. Jane thinks they might make good
subjects because they are ‘pretty average, bordering on middle-class.’ Salari has little
time for traditional markers, such as class. He eschews all boxes; only observing in the round
will do, says Salari. Take the Varleys: a pleasant, if modest, house; modest tastes; modest
disposable income. Who, then, would have predicted the husband’s flash car? ‘It’s a Probe,
V6, 24 valve, a very different proposition from the 16 valve,’ Andrew will later tell us; he is
as eloquent on cars as his wife is on cleaning fluids.
abridged from The Observer Review
Which paragraph
5.1. refers to a change in company structure resulting from a new assignment?
5.2. mentions an object which its owner might be considered unlikely to possess?
5.3. gives an example of somebody’s immediate reaction to input from the media?
5.4. points to the family’s apparent indifference to somebody’s presence in their
home?
5.5. contains an expression about Salari as a man who likes exaggerating?
5.6. mentions a finding regarding eating habits?
5.7. refers to a disappointing event in Salari’s career?
5.8. draws an analogy between Jane and her husband?
5.9. What is meant by the statement ‘Salari is thinking hard commerce’ in the context of
paragraph D?
5.10. In what way is Jane different from the participants of the Shop Till You Drop series?
5.11. What feature is characteristic of both Jane’s descriptions and Nicholson Baker’s style?
5.12. Explain in what way paragraph C develops the idea signalled in paragraph B.
TRANSFER ANSWERS 5.1.-5.8. TO THE ANSWER SHEET!
G.
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Official CKE answer key found in corpus at arkusze/jezyk-angielski-2011-maj-matura-dwujezyczna-odpowiedzi (matura.lol's automatic pairing missed it). Paragraph-matching (article about Culture Lab/Salari observing the Varley family), paragraphs labelled A-G in the text: 5.1 B, 5.2 G, 5.3 D, 5.4 A, 5.5 B, 5.6 C, 5.7 E, 5.8 G. Own-words answers: 5.9 'Salari's project is not an academic exercise but the way he earns money.' 5.10 'She is very talkative.' 5.11 'very precise descriptions of simple objects.' 5.12 'Paragraph C presents in detail the research project mentioned in paragraph B.'
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