CAE Use of English Part 1, Test 1 – A tune to love (or hate)

Answers and explanations

1. C – hours. Morning hours is a general term we use to refer to that particular time of the day. ‘Periods’ and ‘phases’ both refer to a more specific stretch of time. Moreover, they are too technical and do not work great in this context. ‘Morning time’ is not a collocation.
2. B – down. To come down to something means to depend on a specific thing. For instance, your success at work often comes down to the amount of effort you put in and your qualifications. The remaining three participles form their own phrasal verbs with varying meanings, none of which work in this context.
3. A – tolerable. When you make something more tolerable, doing it gives you less pain or discomfort. ‘Possible’ does not work well here as waking up is possible either way, it’s the stress we are mostly talking about here. ‘Viable’ and ‘feasible’ in this context are pretty much fancier synonyms for ‘possible’. In CAE Use of English you will often get bombarded by words you might now know, so working on your C1-C2 vocabulary will make you feel more confident.
4. D – long. ‘Before long’ means ‘soon, momentarily’, e.g. ‘take one pill and, before long, your headache will go away like you never had it’. This word is the only one of the four that makes an adverbial phrase.
5. A – jump. To get a jump on something means to do it (or start doing it) sooner than you normally would, either to finish it earlier or to get an advantage. ‘Headway’ here would be similar in meaning to ‘progress’. To get (or have) a lead on someone means to have information about them – clearly not the phrase we are looking for.
6. B – advised. A good phrase to introduce a recommendation. As its phrasing suggests, ‘be informed’ introduces a new piece of information, not a cautionary tip. ‘Be careful’ is more fitting for a warning than a piece of useful information.
7. C – associated. ‘Connected’ conveys a more direct, or physical, type of connection. Here we are more focusing on subjective perception of the tune, we associate it with an experience we do not look forward to. ‘Joined’ and ‘remembered’ do not fit here.
8. A – prevent. To prevent something is to ensure that it does not take place. ‘Save from’ could work here, but we are missing the preposition for that. ‘Forbid’ sounds too radical here and simply does not fit.