Read the text below and decide which answer (A, B, C or D) best fits each gap.

Shopping heaven?

Had a bad week? What you need is a little retail therapy. Meet up with your friends for a quick trip to the shops, make a few (1) ………… buys, collect a few shiny carrier bags with trendy logos and you’ll be feeling better in no time. Has the boss been getting at you? A pair of designer shoes will soon put things into (2) …………. Have you had a row with your family? A few new CDs and you can put them out f your mind. And you don’t even need to worry about money – the shops are (3) ………… over themselves to give you credit. Shopping is our fastest-growing leisure activity – the feel-good (4) ………… we’ve all been looking for. The problem is, of course, that for too many people shopping is a quick (5) ………… but not a solution – and with mounting credit card bills they’re in danger of ending up trapped in a vicious downward (6) ………… of debt from which there finally seems to be no escape.

1 A instant B instinct C impact D impulse

2 A shape B order C dimension D perspective

3 A going B looking C falling D working

4 A factor B feature C element D item

5 A repair B cure C fix D remedy

6 A pattern B circle C ladder D spiral

Reading

The following texts are about children and advertising. What type of information do you expect to find in the texts?

Read the opening and closing lines of both texts to get a general idea of the content and style. Do the texts give one point of view, or more than one?

Read quickly through the texts and match the following headings to the paragraphs.

Text 1

Writer’s conclusion (para. …………)

The origins of advertising to children (para. …………)

Why children are vulnerable (para. …………)

Text 2

Why regulation is needed (para. …………)

The basic question (para. …………)

Evidence that there is a problem (para. …………)

The argument against regulation (para. …………)

Text 1

Marketing people say that the big sell to the tinies began for them with the invention of the child-carrying supermarket trolley. Their most powerful weapon in the fight to sell is sitting right under the nose of the parent, bored, seeking attention and absolutely bound to spot anything whose packaging features a logo or a cartoon character seen regularly on the television. But many of the items in these packages are foods and soft drinks with high fat and sugar contents which are not particularly good for children.

It takes until the age of about six for the young consumer to understand the difference between an advert and programme on the television, and even longer to appreciate what the ad is trying to do. Even then, the child does not necessarily care. Keeping in with the peer group is much more important at that age, and marketing managers are well aware of this. If they can start a craze with, for example, collectable toys given away in packets of cereal or crisps, sales of that product will probably go through the roof.

Such marketing is aimed at a very impressionable age group, and although companies claim that it is the responsibility of parents to monitor what their children eat, drink or play with, it may be that the time has come for a little more social responsibility to be shown by those people who are exploiting children for their own financial gain.