English C1 practice test
10 free English practice questions at C1 — advanced, with answers. 96 questions in the full bank, covering 4 topics.
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10 free practice questions
Pick an answer to check it. No account needed. Every question explains why the answer is right.
- Question 1grammar
The committee recommended that the proposal ___ reconsidered.
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Answer: D
After "recommend that" English uses the subjunctive: the bare form "be reconsidered".
- Question 2reading
Appraisal systems are defended on the grounds that they identify underperformance. They do, occasionally. What they identify reliably is the employee who is bad at appraisals, which is a different population with a substantial but incomplete overlap. The instrument has been in use for four decades largely because withdrawing it would require someone to say what would replace it. What does the writer suggest about appraisal systems?
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Answer: B
The final sentence gives the reason for their survival: nobody has to propose a replacement. The writer does not call for immediate abolition.
- Question 3vocabulary
He pursued the hobby with an almost ___ dedication.
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Answer: D
Monastic is used figuratively of severe, single-minded discipline. "Monastery" is the building.
- Question 4writing
Which sentence attributes a view without endorsing it?
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Answer: D
Naming the source makes the judgement the review’s. The other three assert it as the writer’s own, two of them with intensifiers that add no evidence.
- Question 5grammar
Never before ___ such a change in so short a time.
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Answer: A
"Never before" at the front of a clause forces inversion of subject and auxiliary.
- Question 6reading
The consultation was, by any procedural measure, exemplary: eleven public meetings, a dedicated website, translated materials. It was also, by the account of nearly everyone who attended, futile — the scheme that emerged was the scheme that had been drawn before the first meeting. Process and influence are not the same thing, and conflating them is how an authority comes to believe it has listened. What is the writer’s central criticism?
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Answer: A
The consultation is called exemplary in form and futile in effect — "process and influence are not the same thing" states the criticism directly.
- Question 7vocabulary
The proposal was met with considerable ___ from residents.
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Answer: A
"Considerable" modifies a noun, and the noun is resistance. "Resistant" is the adjective.
- Question 8writing
Which sentence keeps the parallel structure?
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Answer: D
All three items are nouns of the same form. The others mix gerunds and infinitives inside one list.
- Question 9grammar
___ the report been published earlier, the outcome might have differed.
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Answer: B
This is an inverted third conditional: "had the report been published" replaces "if the report had been published".
- Question 10reading
The complaint that a place has been "ruined" by visitors is almost always made by a visitor, and usually by one who arrived slightly earlier than the people being complained about. The date at which a destination was authentic turns out, on inspection, to be the date of the speaker’s first visit. This is not hypocrisy so much as a failure to notice that one is oneself part of the phenomenon. What is the writer’s attitude to the complaint?
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Answer: C
The tone is light but unpersuaded — the complaint is explained away as an unnoticed self-contradiction, and explicitly not condemned as hypocrisy.
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