ON TOP OF THE WORLD
In December 2011, a teenage mountaineer from California became the youngest person to complete one of his sport's most extravagant (26) ________: scaling the highest peak on (27) ________ of the world's seven continents, Jordan Romero was just 15 when he reached the summit of Vinson Massif in Antarctica. Jordan, who grew up climbing the mountains in Big Bear Lake, just east of Los Angeles, conquered his first major summit, Mount Kilimanjaro, at the age of nine. At 13, he became the youngest person to make it to the top of Everest. He beat the previous record for the Seven Summits, (28) ________ was held by 16- year-old British climber George Atkinson. Both teenagers sparked controversy in mountaineering (29) ________, with purists claiming they were too young to contribute properly to climbs, and therefore relied excessively on the support of their team-mates. (30) ________ Jordan broadcast his achievements on the Internet, his mother declined to comment when contacted by the press, claiming that the family was not seeking attention for his feats.
(Adapted from Ready for Advanced by Roy Norris and Amanda French with Miles Hordern)

In the nineteenth century railways were built from the big industrial cities like Leeds and Manchester to seaside towns like Blackpool and Scarborough. For the first time, ordinary working people could visit the seaside. They used to take day trips on Sundays and special days like Bank holidays. Traditionally, people sat in deckchairs on the beach, swam in the sea, and ate fish and chips. Children could watch Punch and Judy shows, build sandcastles and ride donkeys on the beach. In the 1950s, the first package holidays were launched.
Throughout the 60s and 70s, the British increasingly began to abandon the traditional seaside holiday in favour of sunshine and warmer seas in countries like Spain and Greece. Caravan and camping holidays also became popular in the 60s and 70s as car ownership increased. In the 1990s, budget airlines like easyJet slashed the cost of air tickets to many European destinations. Long-haul flights also came down in price, so holidays to exotic destinations in Australia and Asia became affordable to ordinary families. A growing number of people began to book their own flights and accommodation, and as a result, the package holiday market declined.
The holiday habits of the British continued to change into the new millennium. The internet changed the way people booked holidays by allowing them to find the best deals online. City breaks grew in popularity and many families were able to afford a second foreign holiday-often a winter skiing holiday. However, the travel industry has suffered a serious setback in recent years because people are more aware that flying causes serious damage to the environment. More people are choosing not to fly nowadays, and many airlines are struggling to survive in the new economic climate.
(Adapted from Aim High by Tim Falla and Paul A Davies)

In many countries, a growing number of people in their twenties are turning to social media in the hope of finding work. Services like the social networking site Twitter and the professional networking site Linkedln offer the chance for more direct contact with would-be employers than has previously been the case. But with greater access comes a greater chance to make mistakes.
Take the case of a young jobseeker in the US who contacted a senior marketing executive via Linkedln. The marketing executive in question had an impressive list of influential people in her contact list; people whom the young jobseeker felt could help him land a job. The marketing executive, however, had other ideas. Indignant at the suggestion that she would willingly share a list of contacts painstakingly built up over many years with a complete stranger who'd done nothing to deserve such an opportunity, she not only rejected his contact request, but sent a vicious and heavily sarcastic rejection note that has since gone viral. But if the incident makes young people think more carefully about how they use social media in a professional capacity, she may have actually ended up doing them a favour. She has drawn attention to an unfortunate truth. Social media is a potentially dangerous tool for job hunters who don't know how to use it. And a worrying number are getting it wrong.
There's a horrible irony here, because in many countries social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have been the bread and butter of twenty-somethings' social lives for years. When my generation were teenagers, social media was our escape from the prying eyes of parents and teachers. It was a cyber extension of the playground pecking order - a place to impress, to embellish and experiment. However, when it comes to using social media for professional networking, our very knowledge and experience of sites like Facebook may actually be a hindrance. Using social media in a professional capacity is a completely different ball game, but for some twenty-somethings, the division is not clear cut. We first

earned our online presence by being bold and over-confident, which could explain why some of us still come across like this. Just because a lot of people 'liked' your posts on Facebook, it doesn't mean you'll be able to use Linkedln to show potential employers that you're someone worth employing. We need to realise that what we learned about social networking as teenagers no longer applies, and we must live up to employers' standards if we want to get on in the world of work.
(Adapted from Cambridge English Advanced by Cambridge University Press)