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C2 Proficiency · Word Formation · Cambridge Ready original exercise

For questions 1–8, read the text below. Use the word given in capitals at the end of some of the lines to form a word that fits in the gap in the same line. There is an example at the beginning (0).

PERISH

DECIPHER

APPEAR

INCREASE

ABUNDANT

GENUINE

RELEVANT

VIGILANT

We tend to assume that anything saved on a computer will survive (0) ___ . Yet digital records are, in many respects, more (1) ___ than the parchment and paper they replaced. A letter left in a drawer for a century can still be read; a file created a generation ago may already be (2) ___ , not because the data has vanished but because the software needed to open it has long since (3) ___ . Hard drives fail without warning, and the machines that read older formats are (4) ___ hard to find. The sheer (5) ___ of digital material only adds to the problem. Because copying costs nothing, we keep everything and organise little, so that what is (6) ___ worth preserving lies buried in an ever-growing heap of the trivial and the (7) ___ . Archivists insist that keeping digital records alive demands constant (8) ___ : files must be checked, copied and converted to new formats long before anyone needs them. Left to chance, much of our era may prove harder for future historians to read than the medieval manuscripts it so easily outshone.

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