International Relations

Respuesta correcta: A) exacerbate

• A) exacerbateCorrect. 'Exacerbate' means to make a problem or bad situation worse, which fits perfectly here.
• B) alleviateIncorrect. 'Alleviate' means to make something less severe, which is the opposite of what's needed.
• C) mitigateIncorrect. 'Mitigate' means to make something less severe, which doesn't fit the negative consequence implied.
• D) facilitateIncorrect. 'Facilitate' means to make an action or process easy or easier, which is not appropriate for a social divide.

Respuesta correcta: D) frustrate

• A) reassure'Reassure' means to remove someone's doubts, and the sentence describes a delegation that cannot meet expectations. Nothing in it suggests either side felt more confident afterwards.
• B) entertain'Entertain' can mean to consider an idea or to host guests, and neither reading fits here. The sentence concerns a diplomatic mismatch, not hospitality or the weighing of proposals.
• C) amend'Amend' means to change the terms of a document or rule, and the delegation has no draft to amend. The clause says it cannot address positions, which is about substance rather than revision.
• D) frustrate'Frustrate' means to prevent someone from achieving what they had prepared for, which is what the clause describes. Both sides have positions ready that this delegation is unable to address, and that mismatch is what the word names.

Respuesta correcta: B) erode

• A) galvanise'Galvanise' means to inspire people to act, and the sentence describes the opposite result for the traders who planned around the reopening. Nothing suggests their confidence grew.
• B) erode'Erode' means to wear away gradually, which matches the effect described: confidence is built up over the reopening announcement and then worn down by a failure that repeats. The word also fits the slow time scale implied.
• C) consolidate'Consolidate' means to strengthen something already in place, and the clause describes confidence being undermined. A corridor that works on paper but not in practice cannot reinforce anything.
• D) deflect'Deflect' means to divert something away from a course, and the sentence is about a loss of trust rather than about anything being turned aside. No object is diverted anywhere.

Respuesta correcta: B) hollow out

• A) build up'Build up' means to strengthen, and the sentence describes the opposite: a text that looks substantial and carries no obligation. Nothing in the clause suggests reinforcement.
• B) hollow outTo hollow something out is to remove what gave it substance while leaving the outward form intact, which is exactly what the sentence describes. The document keeps its wording and loses its force, and the final clause confirms nothing was formally breached.
• C) draw up'Draw up' means to prepare a document, and the communiqué already exists. The sentence concerns what the document achieves once drafted, not the act of drafting it.
• D) follow up'Follow up' means to take further action after something, and no subsequent action appears in the sentence. The point being made is about the agreement's lack of teeth at the point of issue.

Respuesta correcta: C) A team of rural students prepared hard and gained confidence in a Model UN event.

• A) The rural team won the prize for the best delegation.Incorrect. The text says 'They did not win the prize for best delegation'; they only received the students' vote for the most convincing speech.
• B) Students in Bucaramanga often travel to Japan to study.Incorrect. The text says the team members had never left Santander; they only represented Japan in a simulation.
• C) A team of rural students prepared hard and gained confidence in a Model UN event.Correct. The text focuses on the rural team: their weeks of preparation, the vote for their speech and the teacher's comment about confidence.
• D) The Model United Nations discusses only the problem of clean water.Incorrect. Clean water is given as one example introduced by 'such as', so it is not the only topic discussed.

Respuesta correcta: D) It treats the event as an established fact rather than something happening now.

• A) It makes the event sound as though it has only just begun.A noun phrase carries no progressive meaning, so it cannot suggest an action under way. If anything the nominal form removes the sense of something in progress, which is the opposite of what this option claims.
• B) It identifies who is responsible for the visit.The agent is stated in both versions: 'the foreign minister' appears as the subject in the first and inside the noun phrase in the second. Nominalization shifts emphasis onto the event; it does not add or remove the agent.
• C) It removes every trace of the visit from the sentence.The visit is named directly in 'border visit', so it remains fully present in the headline. What changes is the grammatical status of the words, not whether the event is mentioned at all.
• D) It treats the event as an established fact rather than something happening now.'Border visit' is a noun phrase, so the event is presented as a completed and identifiable thing instead of a live action. The reader receives the visit as a settled fact, which is what the nominal style does to agency and timing.

Respuesta correcta: A) It is suppressed, because 'which produced' follows the agreement as the subject.

• A) It is suppressed, because 'which produced' follows the agreement as the subject.'Agreement' is the grammatical subject of 'produced', so the framework is presented as arising from an abstraction rather than from anyone's deliberate act. A nominalization of this kind quietly removes a doer from the sentence.
• B) It is the committee, named in the first clause and carried over by the relative pronoun.'Which' refers back to the event of reaching agreement, not to the committee, and in any case the committee is not the subject of 'produced'. The subject is the thing that came out of it, the framework.
• C) It is the framework, which produces the agreement in the reading the sentence gives.The direction is the other way round: the agreement produced the framework. Reading the framework as the producer inverts the causality that 'which produced' states plainly.
• D) It is made explicit by 'everyone', which names the people who signed.'Everyone' identifies who signed, which is a different role from producing the framework. Naming the signatories does not supply an agent for the clause the sentence is asking about.

Respuesta correcta: B) A resident of Ipiales who wants to travel to Quito will still need a passport.

• A) The border card will be expensive for most families.Incorrect. The text says the card 'will be free', so it cannot be expensive.
• B) A resident of Ipiales who wants to travel to Quito will still need a passport.Correct. The card is limited to 50 kilometres and 'Longer trips will still require a passport'; Quito is much farther than 50 kilometres from the border, so a passport is needed.
• C) Very few people cross the Rumichaca bridge every day.Incorrect. Officials estimate about 20,000 daily crossings, which is a large number, not a small one.
• D) After January, passports will no longer be valid at the border.Incorrect. The text says passports are still required for longer trips, so they remain valid; the card is only an alternative for short trips.

Respuesta correcta: D) Show an identity document to enter their street.

• A) Leave their homes for the three days of the summit.Incorrect. The text never asks residents to leave; it only explains how they can enter their street.
• B) Use their private cars only in the early morning.Incorrect. The streets are closed to private cars during the three days, and the early-morning advice is for tourists, not residents.
• C) Take a special bus to the historic centre.Incorrect. Buses continue with a different route, but no special bus to the historic centre is mentioned for residents.
• D) Show an identity document to enter their street.Correct. The text states that 'Residents of the area must show an identity document to enter their street', which is the exact requirement.

Respuesta correcta: A) To show students that diplomacy is about serving people and listening to them.

• A) To show students that diplomacy is about serving people and listening to them.Correct. The speaker's key lesson is 'diplomacy is about people, not only about governments', and the speech ends by advising students to learn to listen.
• B) To describe the elegant dinners that diplomats attend.Incorrect. The dinners are mentioned only as the speaker's mistaken idea as a teenager; the speech corrects that image.
• C) To explain how to recover a lost passport abroad.Incorrect. Lost documents are part of the speaker's personal story, but the speech gives no instructions about recovering them.
• D) To convince students that languages are not useful for diplomats.Incorrect. The speaker says 'learn languages, but above all, learn to listen', which values languages while adding something more important.

Respuesta correcta: C) had

• A) hasIncorrect. The sentence refers to a past sequence, requiring the past perfect in inversion.
• B) wasIncorrect. 'Was' does not fit the past perfect structure required by 'Hardly'.
• C) hadCorrect. 'Hardly had...' is a classic C1 inversion structure used for sequential events.
• D) didIncorrect. 'Did' would require the base form of the verb, not the past participle 'been'.

Respuesta correcta: B) value

• A) meeting'The meeting of' would name a gathering, and the sentence is about the act of signing rather than about a meeting taking place. The clause discusses what the signature was worth.
• B) value'The value of' is the fixed nominal phrase meaning how much something is worth, and the clause says that amount was settled separately from the wording. That separation of price from text is exactly what the phrase names.
• C) length'The length of' would measure a duration or extent, and the sentence contrasts the signature's worth with the document's text. Nothing in the clause is about size.
• D) order'The order of' would name a sequence or a command, and the memorandum is signed by both sides rather than being an instruction. The clause concerns what the signature was worth to each of them.

Respuesta correcta: C) outcome

• A) explainingA gerund noun cannot follow 'their' in that way, and 'their explaining' would name the act of explaining rather than the result of the talks. The sentence is about what the talks produced, not what they consisted of.
• B) circumstance'Circumstance' names a condition, and the eleven weeks of talking are not a condition that belongs to the talks. What belongs to them as the result of a process is an outcome, not the circumstances they ran in.
• C) outcome'Talks' is a process, so what the sentence needs to name is the thing that came out of it. 'Their outcome' is the nominal expression that lets the process act as a possessed thing, which is the structure being tested.
• D) reasons'Their reasons' would name why the talks happened or were held, which is not what became clear afterwards. The clause reports a result emerging from the process, so the noun has to express that result.

Respuesta correcta: B) substance

• A) session'The sessions of' would name the meetings themselves, and the clause says their character was not written down rather than that the meetings did not happen. Eleven sessions are precisely what the first part of the sentence already counts.
• B) substance'The substance of' is the fixed nominal phrase meaning what something actually amounts to in practice, and the clause about the report never capturing it matches exactly. The sentence is describing an essence that resists summarisation.
• C) committee'The committee of' is not a natural collocation at all, since a committee is a group rather than an aspect of talks. No body is described as being omitted from the report.
• D) delegation'The delegation of' is likewise not idiomatic, and the sentence is not about who attended. The clause concerns the character of what was said rather than the people in the room.

Respuesta correcta: D) origins

• A) amounts'The amounts of' would name quantities, and the sentence is not discussing how much trade recovered. The clause attributes the recovery to causes rather than measuring it.
• B) delays'The delays of' would name waiting periods, and the sentence says trade recovered in the first quarter, which implies promptness rather than delay. Nothing here is about time lost.
• C) contents'The contents of' would mean what is inside something, and no container is being inspected. The clause explains the cause of a recovery rather than listing items.
• D) origins'The origins of' names the beginning or cause of something, and the clause explains where the recovery came from. Both ports and government measures appear as candidate causes, so the phrase has to be one about causation.

Respuesta correcta: D) explained

• A) accounted'Account for' is the correct phrasal verb here, since accounting for a delay means setting out the reasons for it. Using 'accounted' alone would drop the particle and lose the sense of explanation the sentence needs.
• B) looked'Look into' is a licensed verb, but what the ministry never did was account for the reasons; the following 'the record' needs the verb that puts something on the record. Looking would not fit the phrase at all.
• C) put'Put the record' reverses the direction of the relationship: the ministry would be placing the record somewhere rather than committing a reason to it. The preposition 'into' also requires a motion towards an interior, not a record.
• D) explained'Explain something into existence' is not idiomatic: 'into' cannot serve as the particle of 'explain'. The record itself already exists, and what the ministry failed to do was account for the delay in it.

Respuesta correcta: A) The current strategy is directed towards the wrong objective.

• A) The current strategy is directed towards the wrong objective.Correct. 'Bark up the wrong tree' comes from hunting dogs barking at a tree the animal is not in, so it means putting effort into the wrong cause or the wrong solution.
• B) They are literally looking for something in the trees of Barranquilla.Incorrect. This reads the idiom word for word; nobody in the debate is searching any trees, because the phrase is figurative and describes a mistaken strategy.
• C) The approach is too noisy and aggressive.Incorrect. 'Barking' here does not describe loud or aggressive behaviour; the idiom is about aiming at the wrong target, not about the tone of the discussion.
• D) A new environmental project involving trees should be started.Incorrect. The speaker is criticising the current approach, not proposing a new project; 'tree' is part of a fixed expression and has no literal meaning here.

Respuesta correcta: D) They should present the advantages and the disadvantages of the agreements.

• A) They should study how Colombian coins are designed.Incorrect. This is a literal interpretation; the idiom refers to two aspects of an issue, not to real money.
• B) They should talk only about the benefits for exporters.Incorrect. Valeria warns that talking only about exports is a problem, and Tomás agrees with her, so he wants to include more than one side.
• C) He disagrees with Valeria and wants to change the topic.Incorrect. 'Good point' shows agreement, and he continues on the same topic instead of changing it.
• D) They should present the advantages and the disadvantages of the agreements.Correct. 'Both sides of the coin' means the positive and negative aspects of a situation; exports are one side and the effects on farmers are the other.

Respuesta correcta: B) The first difficult step was taken and the two sides started communicating better.

• A) The two countries have signed a final agreement on fishing.Incorrect. The minister says 'There is still a lot of work ahead', which shows that the negotiation is not finished.
• B) The first difficult step was taken and the two sides started communicating better.Correct. 'Break the ice' means to end the initial tension and start talking; he adds that much work remains, so no final agreement exists yet.
• C) The negotiations failed and the countries stopped talking.Incorrect. He says 'the atmosphere is much better', which describes progress, not failure.
• D) The ships can now travel because the frozen sea has melted.Incorrect. This reads 'ice' literally; the Caribbean is not frozen, and the expression refers to tension between people.

Respuesta correcta: B) A compromise in which each school pays part of the cost.

• A) Travelling only half of the distance to Brazil.Incorrect. This takes 'halfway' as a physical distance; Felipe is talking about sharing costs, not about where to travel.
• B) A compromise in which each school pays part of the cost.Correct. 'Meet someone halfway' means to make a compromise; Felipe divides the transport costs between the two schools.
• C) Accepting the Brazilian school's request without changes.Incorrect. He says 'That's not fair' and suggests a different plan, so he does not accept the original request.
• D) Cancelling the exchange because it is too expensive.Incorrect. Felipe proposes a way to continue with the exchange; nothing in his answer suggests cancelling it.