SECTION A In this section you will hear a
mini-lecture. You will hear the lecture ONCE ONLY. While listening to the
lecture, take notes on the important points. Your notes will not be marked, but
you will need them to complete a gap-filling task on ANSWER SHEET ONE after the
mini-lecture. Use the blank paper for note. taking. Now listen
to the mini-lecture. The name "Queen Victoria" (1)_____up a picture of
a small, plump old lady. It is hard to
(1)_____ visualise her as a child. Yet, of course, she
was once young and not always the formidable matriarch and magnificent
Queen-Empress of popular legend. Victoria was born on a bright
spring day, in the (2)_____of London. She bore a marked
(2)_____ resemblance to her
ancestors. By 1798 Victoria’s grandfather, King George Ⅲ was
severely ill. Victoria’s father, Edward, Duke of Kent, was the old King’s
fourth son, but since his three elder brothers were without (3)_____,
(3)_____ there seemed a good chance that he might one day
himself become King. Between the seven princes and five princesses of the
royal family, not one of them had a (4)_____child to carry
(4)_____ on the succession. The Prince of Wales
had one child, the Princess Charlotte, who in time would have become Queen,
but she died in childbirth in the autumn of 1817. Edward and Victoire met in
1816. Soon after Charlotte’s death, Edward proposed to Victoire, and the
couple were married the following summer. Victoire of
Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld was 31 years old when she married the English Duke, a
pretty woman with dark hair and sparking eyes, with a fine figure and lively
ways. A German Princess of (5)_____ (5)_____ lineage but little
(6)_____, she had been first married at the age of 17 to Prince Emich
(6)_____ Charles of Leiningren. Together they had weathered the storms of the
Napoleonic invasions of Germany, their tiny principality (7)_____by the wars.
Emich Charles died only a few months after
(7)_____ the first defeat of Napoleon, in 1814, leaving his widow with
two small children. Her marriage with the Duke of Kent seemed to promise
Victoire a (8)_____future, taking her away from her narrow
(8)_____ existence in the village of
Amorbach, with its careful economies and restricted social life, into one
of the leading Courts of Europe, with the chance of one day becoming a queen.
In the summer of 1818 Edward brought his bride to England. The
Duke was (9)_____that his
(9)_____ child should be born in his native land, and by dint of
(10)_____from his long-suffering friends,
(10)_____ he managed to bring his wife back to England in time for the
baby’s birth.