UNIT 5 Answers to Coursebook activities

2 a Example answers
Paragraph 1 – Ancient Chinese kites
Paragraph 2 – Kiting in India and Afghanistan
Paragraph 3 – The use of kites in modern times
Paragraph 4 – The reduced role of kites today
b • approximately – roughly • regarded – considered
• ideal – perfect • opponents – competitors
• resilient – strong • forecasting – predicting
• motifs – symbols • diminished – reduced
• evolved – developed • recreation – leisure
c • duels with rivals – battles with opponents
• the golden age – the heyday; the highest point
• thanks to the increase – because of the growth

3 a • silk fabric
• silk line
• bamboo framework
• flat and often rectangular
• later, tail-less kites
• decorated with mythological motifs and legendary figures
• some fitted with strings and whistles
• nowadays they come in many shapes
b • measuring distances
• testing the wind
• lifting men
• military communication
• artistic and dangerous sport of kite running
• scientific purposes
• nowadays a toy
c • 2800 years ago in China
• for measuring and communicating
• ancient tradition of kite running
• period from 1860 to about 1910 was the golden age of kiting
• manned kites and power kites were developed
• aeroplanes reduced the interest in kites
• now used for leisure
• many shapes exist
• children play with them less now because of safety issues and other pursuits

4 a Example answer
A 9-year-old New Mexican boy, who has been training since he was 4 and is the son
of successful ballooning parents, is confidently about to attempt the record for the
youngest solo balloonist.

© Cambridge University Press 2013 Cambridge Checkpoint English 7: My World 1

 UNIT 5 Answers to Coursebook activities

b The different uses in Text 5B are:

• parenthesis/in apposition (‘from Albuquerque, New Mexico,’)
• before a relative clause (‘Troy and Tami Bradley, who are well known in the
ballooning community’,)
• before and when there is a change of subject (‘They have won some of the
biggest races ever staged, and Troy …’)
• before and when there is a new idea (‘I’ve always wanted to fly solo, and I’ve had
plenty of time to train.’)
• before a clause starting with a present participle (‘Troy piloted the first ever
balloon …, making his first solo flight when he was 14’)
• after an initial adverbial phrase (‘Judging by interviews, young Bobby …’)
• introducing speech (‘He says, “I’ve …”’).
c Although some wind is needed to fly hot air balloons, they can’t fly if there is too
much wind. Balloons need cool, stable, calm winds to operate most effectively, so early
morning, as the sun rises and when the winds are at their calmest, is the best time.
Furthermore, a lower temperature means it is easier to get the balloon off the ground
without using so much gas, and this means the balloon can be flown for longer.

5 a The customer is being offered a hot air balloon ride over a spectacular landscape.
b The advert contains:
• non-sentences
• short sentences
• imperative sentences
• repetitive grammatical structures.
These structures are eye-catching, easy to read and understand, and the repetition
reinforces the message of how desirable the product is.
c The alliteration is predominantly on the letter s, which is often used to make
something sound exciting (‘Soar into the sky’, ‘release your mind and spirit’, ‘see
the earth … never seen it before’, ‘snow-capped summits’, ‘majestic mountains’,
‘Move silently through mist’, ‘Experience sunrises and sunsets … splendour’,
‘ultimate, unforgettable trip of a lifetime’). Alliteration makes the phrases
memorable, an important aim of advertising, and gives the text a lyrical quality,
associated with poetry and heightened experience.
d The effect of exclamation marks is always to demand attention and add drama or
emotion to what is being described. They are therefore used a lot in advertising.
e The combined effect of the three words beginning with the negative prefix un is
to stress the positive meaning of an experience without limits, beyond belief, not
able to be forgotten. Synonyms would not have created the pattern of repetition or
achieved the same degree of economy of expression.

© Cambridge University Press 2013 Cambridge Checkpoint English 7: My World 2

 UNIT 5 Answers to Coursebook activities

6 b Example answer

It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.
A mile from shore a fishing boat chummed the water and the word for Breakfast
Flock flashed through the air, till a crowd of a thousand seagulls came to dodge
and fight for bits of food.
It was another busy day beginning. But way off alone, out by himself beyond
boat and shore, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was practising. A hundred feet in the
sky he lowered his webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to hold a painful hard
twisting curve through his wings. The curve meant that he would fly slowly, and
now he slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face, until the ocean stood still
beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in fierce concentration, held his breath, forced
one ... single ... more ... inch ... of ... curve ... Then his feathers ruffled, he stalled
and fell.
Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air is for them
disgrace and it is dishonour. But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed,
stretching his wings again in that trembling hard curve – slowing, slowing, and
stalling once more – was no ordinary bird.
Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight – how to
get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters,
but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.
More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly. This kind
of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one’s self popular with other birds.
Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent whole days alone, making
hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting.

7 The young seagull was alone in his ledge. His two brothers and his sister had already
flown away the day before. He had been afraid to fly with them. Somehow when he
had taken a little run forward to the brink of the ledge and attempted to flap his
wings he became afraid. The great expanse of sea stretched down beneath, and it was
such a long way down, miles down, he felt certain that his wings would never support
him, so he bent his head and ran away back to the little hole under the ledge where
he slept at night.
Even when each of his brothers and his little sister, whose wings were far shorter
than his own, ran to the brink, flapped their wings and flew away, he failed to muster
up courage to take that plunge, which appeared to him so desperate. His father and
mother had come around calling to him shrilly, scolding him, threatening to let him
starve on his ledge unless he flew away. But for the life of him he could not move.
That was twenty-four hours ago. Since then nobody had come near him. The day
before, all day long, he had watched his parents flying about with his brothers and
sister, perfecting them in the art of flight, teaching them how to skim the waves and
how to dive for fish. He had, in fact, seen his older brother catch his first herring and
devour it, standing on a rock, while his parents circled around raising a proud cackle.
And all the morning the whole family had walked about on the big plateau midway
down the opposite cliff, laughing at his cowardice.

© Cambridge University Press 2013 Cambridge Checkpoint English 7: My World 3

 UNIT 5 Answers to Coursebook activities

9 a • swoop – rush downwards • gaze – look fixedly

• scamper – run briskly • snatch – seize suddenly
• squint – look sideways • soar – fly upwards
• glide – slide smoothly • spy – observe secretly
b The moral is that one must learn to accept one’s responsibilities and one’s destiny
for the good of the community.
c Example answer
Grandmother Eagle got the idea from rabbit Kwinyaw of adopting a child. Inya, the
sun, told her she would find one near a spring, and she carried him to her nest and
told him he would become a chief. She fed him and he grew.
The child became lazy and only interested in food. Grandmother tried to interest
him in the world beyond the nest, but he did not see the point of visiting distant
places which he could see without moving, or of looking for food when he could
depend on it being brought to him.
So Grandmother pushed him out of the nest three times, and he fell, his wings
useless through lack of use. But each time Grandmother saved him just as he was
about to hit the rocks below. This continued, until one day the child flapped his
wings and learned to fly. He returned to the nest and Grandmother invited him to
eat with her. But he wanted to use his new skill immediately to go exploring, and
not stay in the nest with Grandmother any more.

© Cambridge University Press 2013 Cambridge Checkpoint English 7: My World 4