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Cambridge IGCSE

FIRST LANGUAGE ENGLISH 0500/12

Paper 1 Reading February/March 2021
INSERT 2 hours

INFORMATION
• This insert contains the reading texts.
*6937020964-I*

• You may annotate this insert and use the blank spaces for planning. Do not write your answers on the
insert.

This document has 8 pages. Any blank pages are indicated.

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Read Text A, and then answer Questions 1(a)–1(e) on the question paper.

Text A: Top tips for travel writing

This text is an online article giving advice from the editor of a website to people thinking of a career
in travel writing.

‘Don’t worry,’ said the stallholder. ‘The snake round your daughter’s neck is not
venomous.’

That was the example my instructor used when he taught us the immense value of a
good opening to an article. My instructor is the travel editor for a national newspaper.
Since 2000, he has written about, and been hopelessly lost in, diverse destinations on 5
six continents.

Having quit my job in software design to become a travel blogger and edit this website,
I was attending a travel writing conference he was running. I wanted to improve the
writing on my blog; my writing has improved, but I didn’t anticipate how much that
conference would affect my role as an editor. If you have sent me an article and I have 10
rejected it, it was probably because of something I learned at that conference.

Writers of the unsuccessful articles submitted to me seem to think that they need extra
padding at the beginning that goes something like: ‘Travel is wonderful. We should all
travel.’ Get to the point. The articles I hate the most begin: ‘Our plane landed in ’. If
the most interesting portion of your trip is the plane landing and collecting your luggage, 15
then OK, start your story that way. Arguably though, if this really is the most interesting
portion of your trip, you’d be better off staying at home.

Good travel writing transports people. It celebrates the differences in manners and
customs around the world, helping readers to understand other people and places. It
helps readers plan their own trips and avoid costly mistakes while travelling. Most of 20
all, readers get to experience those far-off destinations that they may never visit.

I should point out, while I’m encouraging others to pursue their career in travel writing,
that it was also at that conference that I decided to return to working in software design.
Sitting in a room full of travel writers who were describing how difficult it is to make a
living persuaded me to keep it strictly as a hobby. 25

But if you have the desire to travel, and the savings, I can recommend that annual
conference which my good friend runs every August.

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Read Text B, and then answer Question 1(f) on the question paper.

Text B: The truth about being a travel writer

This text is a magazine article about being a travel writer.

Go ahead, hate travel writers.

Content removed due to copyright restrictions.

We spent
an agonising night at the airport – no lounges, only stiff plastic chairs.’

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Read Text C, and then answer Questions 2(a)–2(d) and Question 3 on the question paper.

Text C: How I became a travel writer

The narrator, Charlie, has booked a place on a sponsored trek to the ancient ruined city of Machu
Picchu, Peru. He hopes to meet his favourite travel writer, Jed Davies, who has been invited by
the charity to go on the trek.

I would meet the others in Madrid.

Content removed due to copyright restrictions.

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Content removed due to copyright restrictions.

I’d already decided – travel writing was what I wanted to do.

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