Free Cambridge C2 Proficiency Use of English Exams (100+ Tests)

A Map That Refused to Be Neat — Part 7

"A Map That Refused to Be Neat" is a Cambridge C1 Advanced Reading Part 7 practice exam (Gapped Text). This paper rewards close reading, inference and awareness of text organisation. Work under timed conditions when possible — the combined Reading and Use of English paper allows 90 minutes across Parts 1–8. After completing the exercise, use review mode to understand why each answer is correct and note any vocabulary or discourse patterns you missed.

Gapped text

When a group of volunteers began producing a walking guide to the older streets of their town, they expected the familiar problems of a mapmaking project: finding safe routes, checking opening hours and deciding how much detail a visitor could usefully absorb. They did not expect their most difficult question to be the names of the lanes themselves. The volunteers knew that a printed guide could not settle every difference, but they hoped it might make those differences visible. [GAP] Instead of choosing one version and treating the others as mistakes, the volunteers began writing down who used each name and in what circumstances. A delivery driver, for example, might use one term because it matched the name on an address database, while a resident used another because it referred to a former shop or workshop. Their notes began to combine practical instructions with observations that made a journey feel recognisable. [GAP] The team started asking people not merely where a route went, but what made them notice that they had arrived. Answers included the smell of bread near an early-morning bakery, a wall that stayed warm long after sunset and a set of steps that became slippery when leaves collected on them. [GAP] For that reason, the finished guide contains some details that would never appear on a standard street plan. It notes where a visitor can hear a clock before seeing it and where a narrow passage becomes difficult to use when market stalls extend into the pavement. [GAP] Some residents worried that such observations might make the guide feel too personal. The volunteers accepted that the map could not pretend to be neutral, but they also wanted to avoid turning it into a collection of private memories that outsiders could not understand. [GAP] The compromise was to include short descriptions that pointed towards experience without dictating it. A line such as ‘listen for the workshop doors at midday’ could prepare a visitor to notice a pattern, while still allowing the meaning of that pattern to remain their own. The group also wanted the guide to remain useful to someone without local contacts or prior knowledge. [GAP] By the time the guide was printed, the volunteers had stopped describing it as a record of the town. It was better understood as an invitation to pay attention to a place whose history could not be reduced to a single official label.

Questions summary

Paragraph A

Even so, avoiding a false neatness required a compromise. The volunteers had to decide how far a guide could reflect individual experience before it ceased to help someone unfamiliar with the town. The group therefore had to decide which personal observations could remain intelligible to someone arriving for the first time.

Paragraph B

This shift in emphasis also changed the questions the volunteers asked. Technical accuracy still mattered, but it was no longer the only kind of information they considered useful. Questions about texture, sound and timing became as important as questions about direction, distance, official names and the ways people used them.

Paragraph C

In that sense, the guide was not really a catalogue of directions. It was an attempt to make visitors more alert to the small signals by which local knowledge is usually passed on. That purpose made the map a tool for noticing rather than a guarantee that every visitor would follow the same route.

Paragraph D

A similar project in another district had relied mainly on historical photographs. Its organisers found that the images attracted visitors who enjoyed comparing old façades with the buildings that had replaced them. Its emphasis was on visual comparison, in particular, rather than on the spoken, sensory evidence central to this project.

Paragraph E

The breakthrough came when the group realised that disagreement was not an obstacle to the map but part of what it ought to show. A route could be measured confidently, yet its meaning changed according to the people who used it. This explained why several legitimate descriptions of one place could coexist.

Paragraph F

The project might have been shorter if the team had settled on a conventional route description. Yet the extra conversations gave the guide a quality that no amount of official checking could have supplied. Those conversations also made the volunteers less confident that a single version of the town could speak for everyone.

Paragraph G

The first surprise was that different residents often gave the same narrow lane different names. None of the names was invented, and each seemed perfectly sensible once its history had been explained. The variations reflected former businesses, family habits and changes in the way addresses had been recorded over many years.