C1 Multiple-choice Reading Practice (Free)

Original, independent teaching material. No account needed. The result counts correct answers in this sample, not exam marks.

I used to think that the greatest compliment anyone could pay a map was that it was accurate. Then I joined a project to map the walking routes in my home town. Our team had access to excellent satellite images, so I imagined our task would be mostly technical: confirm where each path ran, measure the distances and give the finished files to a designer. At our first public meeting, however, a resident asked why the route to the health centre went through the park. It was the shortest route, I explained. She replied that the park gates were locked long before her evening appointments ended. Nothing on our beautifully precise base map was wrong, but it did not answer her question.

We began holding walks with different groups of residents. This was less efficient than studying a screen, at least if efficiency meant the number of streets checked per hour. A parent stopped at every crossing to explain which traffic signals changed before her children could comfortably reach the other side. A retired shopkeeper identified a passage that looked private but was, in fact, open to everyone. Such observations did not replace measurements. They told us which measurements were worth making. We timed the crossings, checked the passage's status with the council and added opening hours to routes through gated spaces. The map became less tidy, but the information became more useful.

One proposal caused particular disagreement. Some volunteers wanted to mark places where people felt unsafe. Others objected that putting a warning symbol beside a street could damage its reputation, especially if the concern rested on a single unpleasant encounter. I initially favoured including everything residents reported: surely leaving information out would amount to censorship. Our coordinator asked whether I would publish the exact same warning after hearing an account from five years earlier. I would not. The problem was not whether residents' experiences mattered; it was how to represent experiences without turning them into permanent facts about a place. We eventually recorded specific, checkable conditions, such as broken lights, and dated those entries.

That decision did not make our work neutral. Choosing to record lighting rather than feelings was itself a judgement about what the map could responsibly claim. Nor could we simply solve the problem by collecting more opinions. People who attended our meetings were generally confident about speaking in public and had time to spare. A large response from that group might give us a very detailed picture of a narrow range of lives. We therefore visited a shift-workers' breakfast club and arranged short conversations outside a school. We heard different priorities there, including routes with toilets and places to rest. The number of contributors mattered less than the experiences missing from the conversation.

By the time we prepared the first printed version, I had become attached to its awkward qualifications. Several routes carried notes about steep sections or temporary works; one suggested connection was left uncoloured because its legal status was unresolved. The designer worried that this would make the publication appear unfinished. Yet a confident line would have concealed uncertainty rather than removed it. We kept the gap, explained it in the key and invited readers to report changes. There was a practical limit, of course: a pocket map could not include every observation. We selected details that would change a walking decision and provided a link to fuller notes.

The printed map is now distributed in the library. I still care whether its distances and street names are correct. Accuracy has not become optional. What has changed is my understanding of what an accurate map owes its users. It should make its choices visible enough for someone to question them, and it should be clear about when its information was checked. Our map will become outdated; that is unavoidable. What would trouble me more is a version so polished that nobody noticed whose journeys it had failed to imagine.

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