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1.      PTE: https://superpte.com/pte-listening-multiple-choice-practice-questions/ (N.B.: with PTE, students are negatively marked. This is not the case with EAP)

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Useful information on how to write to your tutor (or anyone in authority).

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PTE: https://superpte.com/pte-reading-multiple-choice-practice-questions/ (N.B.: PTE negatively marks wrong answers; this is notthe case for the EAP exams)

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TOEIC: https://www.examenglish.com/TOEIC/toeic_reading7.htm

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Cornell Method Slides 16-21

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Academic Conventions_ Reading and Note Taking

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1.      TOEIC: https://www.examenglish.com/TOEIC/TOEIC_listening_part3.htm

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CAE Listening Practice Test 1 - EngExam.info

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CAE Listening Part 1

https://engexam.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/CAE-1-1-1.mp3

You will hear three different extracts. For questions 1-6, choose the answer ( A, В or C) which fits best according to what you hear. There are two questions for each extract.

Extract One

You hear part of an interview with a woman who works in retail management.

Extract Two

You overhear a woman telling a friend a story about a swan.

Extract Three

You hear part of an interview with Bruce Loader, a successful businessman who is talking about his early life.
For this task: Answer Keys :: Tapescript

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CAE Listening Practice Test 1 - EngExam.info

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CAE Listening Practice Test 1: Take it online to see your score and CAE Grade. You can also save it in PDF or print - all free of any charge!

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IELTS Academic Reading Sample 11.2 - IELTS-up

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(A) There's no denying that women around the world have made great strides toward equality in the past century. One hundred years ago, women in the United States still didn't have the right to vote, and very few were allowed to pursue higher education or a meaningful career outside of their household duties. Fast forward to today, and more than 70 percent of women between the ages of 20 and 54 are active members of the national workforce. On top of this, 2015 marked the first year when women were, on average, more likely to have a bachelor's degree than men, and this trend is on the rise.

(B) But despite all this newfound opportunity, the prevailing societal attitudes about what women are historically supposed to value still have a long way to go. That's why we've partnered with SK-II to learn more about all of the ways women are still pressured to stick to outdated gender norms. "Women have won unprecedented rights thanks to the feminist movement, but as a society, we still expect women to prioritize family over career, or even over their own needs," says Silvia Dutchevici, president and founder of the Critical Therapy Center in New York City. Dutchevici says many women feel pressure to "have it all," meaning both a thriving career and the perfect family, but that can be very difficult to achieve.

(C) "Most women try to balance work and family," Dutchevici says, "but that balance is seldom equal." In fact, she says working mothers ― even those with partners ― often find themselves essentially working two full-time jobs: keeping their career together while doing the brunt of housework, cooking and child-rearing. This happens for a variety of reasons, but societal expectations about the roles of women and men at home are still very much to blame, says Tamra Lashchyk, a Wall Street executive, business coach and author of the book "Lose the Gum: A Survival Guide to Women on Wall Street."

(D) "No matter how successful she is, the burden of running a household still falls on the woman's shoulders," Lashchyk says. "Men get more of a pass when it comes to these duties, especially those that involve children." Lashchyk says much of this pressure on women to conform to a more domestic lifestyle comes from friends and family.

(E) "In many people's minds, a woman's career success pales in comparison to having a family," she says. "Especially if the woman is single, no matter how great her professional achievements, almost every single one of her conversations with her family will include questions about her romantic life or lack thereof. I could literally tell my family I'd cured cancer and the conversation would still end with, 'But are you dating anyone?'" While covert societal expectations might contribute to some of this inequality, workplace policies on maternity and paternity leave can hold a lot of the blame.

(F) "Unfortunately, many workplace policies regarding taking time off to care for family do not the changing times," Dutchevici says. "Both men and women suffer in their careers when they prioritize family, but women carry far harsher punishments. Their choice to take time off and start a family can result in lower pay, and fewer promotions in the future. The right to family leave is not a woman's issue, it is a society's issue, a family's issue." Lashchyk agrees with this sentiment. "There should be more flexibility and benefits [in the workplace], like longer periods of time for paternity leave....If paternity leave was extended, men could share a greater responsibility in child care, and they could also spend more time bonding with their infant children, which is beneficial for the entire family.

(G) Another less visible way the modern workplace forces women to choose family over career has to do with the fact that women are pushing back pregnancy, says Jeni Mayorskaya, a fertility expert and CEO of Stork Club, an online community for women dedicated to fertility issues. "Compared to our parents, our generation is having children a decade later," Mayorskaya says. "Unfortunately, when we hit our mid-30s and we're finally ready for that managing position or that title of a partner at a firm we fought so hard for, we have to think about putting our career on pause and becoming a mom."

(H) So what can women do to combat these societal pressures? Finding workplaces that offer flexible schedules, work-at-home opportunities and ample maternity and paternity leave is a good first step, but Dr. Neeta Bhushan, an emotional intelligence advocate and author, says women should also learn to put themselves first. "The first step is being mindful of your emotional health in your relationships with others and the relationship you have with yourself," Bhushan says. "When you put yourself first, you are able to make a bigger impact on your community. This is different than being selfish ― think beyond you. You want to make sure that you are being taken care of so that you can take care of others."

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IELTS Academic Reading Sample 11.2 - IELTS-up

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(A) There's no denying that women around the world have made great strides toward equality in the past century. One hundred years ago, women in the United States still didn't have the right to vote, and very few were allowed to pursue higher education or a meaningful career outside of their household duties.

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What is corporate social responsibility – and does it work? (theconversation.com)

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When you purchase a product, I imagine you hope that the product was made with attention to human rights: that production occurred without unfair wages, human trafficking, forced or child labour, discrimination, abuses, or safety hazards. Perhaps you also hope that the company producing the item is conscious of avoiding environmental and ecological damage. But in reality, many products are made in factories where conditions are far from humane or ethical. In many instances, we know very little about the way products are made.

In some cases, this can lead to disaster. Take the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh, which killed more than 1,100 workers who were engaged in productions of garments for big brands such as Inditex, Mango, Loblaw, Primark, and Walmart. Such a devastating incident reminds us that corporate social responsibility (CSR) can be a matter of life and death.

The idea that corporations should respect human rights and the environment has been around for a long time. But it only started to be seen in legal terms fairly recently. The term CSR began to be widely used in 1990s, when sweatshops supplying garments to Nike came to the world's attention through widespread media coverage. It gains further traction each time the world experiences corporate social and environmental problems (BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill for example).

Erik S Lesser/EPA

Early scholars defined CSR as a self-regulatory mechanism ensuring that corporations voluntarily conduct their business in a way that is socially responsible, ethical and takes care of the environment. But these scholars gradually observed that in the absence of regulatory pressures, companies only conducted CSR and related disclosure activities (including pouring billions of dollars into building CSR teams) whenever they experienced greater pressure from the public and social movements. Because of the absence of regulatory expectations, CSR activities were not regular or frequent.

But over the past decade, CSR has in some instances become a mandatory corporate activity. CSR now means that many corporations now legally have to comply with particular social disclosure legislation.

Modern CSR

New forms of regulation have emerged all over the world. For instance, both the 2010 California Transparency in Supply Chain Act (CTSCA) and the UK's 2015 Modern Slavery Act require companies to disclose the actions they take to tackle modern slavery, child labour, human trafficking throughout their production chains (including supply chains overseas). Such actions are not just confined to the global north. Section 135 of the Indian Companies Act (2013) prescribes Indian companies to spend 2% of their pre-tax profit on CSR.

These new forms of CSR regulation mark a major shift in corporation law. For the first time, certain disclosures are required to be made, regardless of whether these are relevant to shareholders or not. The aim of this is to achieve transparency for wider groups (NGOs, media, local community, consumers and so on) on issues of human rights and social responsibility.

In addition, companies are now often required not only to take action to eliminate modern slavery or human trafficking or human rights violations in their home countries, but also to prevent such irresponsibility in their production locations (or supply chains) in developing countries.

Such regulations are therefore discouraging companies from sourcing products from factories similar to Rana Plaza. For many suppliers in developing nations, such regulations exert mandatory social compliance on them from their buyers (companies) in the West.

Sk Hasan Ali/Shutterstock.com

Does it work?

So now that compulsory CSR has been around in some countries for a few years, do they actually work? I have been researching whether CSR actually advances corporate social transparency and accountability as expected.

First, myself and colleagues investigated the CTSCA. This mandated CSR disclosure requires US firms based in California to disclose, at minimum level, efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from their supply chains on an annual basis.

Based on a sample of 105 US retail companies subject to the CTSCA, we found that in CTSCA's first year, 83% of firms disclosed their efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking, but disclosures in general were not detailed. Extensive disclosure for any of the specific categories was quite limited, with only 4% firms including extensive information disclosure across all five required items investigated. As such, to ensure greater corporate transparency and accountability, it is important that regulators enforce extensive disclosure requirements.

Then, in another international collaboration, we looked at how the US Conflict Mineral Rule (Section 1502) affects corporate disclosure pertaining to the elimination of human trafficking and slavery in global mineral supply chains. Like the CTSCA, Section 1502 requires minimum disclosure by relevant firms. This means that at a minimum level they have to disclose what they are doing or not doing to prevent human trafficking in their supply chains.

Focusing on a sample of global companies that deal with electronics from 20 countries, we found that companies' conflict mineral disclosures tended not to be extensive, but that social movements (via NGO collaborations or activist protests) lead to more comprehensive, and more transparent, disclosures.

This has practical and policy implications: improved corporate transparency is the result of social movement actions via NGOs. This means that regulation on its own may not result in comprehensive and quality CSR disclosures.

While social movements have led regulators to enact new CSR regulation, regulation on its own may not create much improvement of CSR. This means that continuous monitoring of corporate compliance with CSR legislation by social activists is necessary to achieve the regulatory objective of CSR.

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What is corporate social responsibility - and does it work?

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When you purchase a product, I imagine you hope that the product was made with attention to human rights: that production occurred without unfair wages, human trafficking, forced or child labour, discrimination, abuses, or safety hazards. Perhaps you also hope that the company producing the item is conscious of avoiding environmental and ecological damage.

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TED TALK- Richard St. John's 8 secrets of success - YouTube

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TED TALK- Richard St. John's 8 secrets of success

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Read a review of the film 'A Plastic Ocean' to practise and improve your reading skills.

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Read about the Buy Nothing movement and answer the questions to practise and improve your reading skills.

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Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot on the climate crisis

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In this video, climate activists Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot tell us how we should use nature to tackle the climate crisis.

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Alternative R&L Weeks with Essay & Sp Exam Reminders

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Alternative R&L Weeks with Essay & Sp Exam Reminders