B1 Preliminary (PET) Practice Paper 38

alice: Hi, is this where the repair café is happening today? I have a broken lamp. george: Yes, that's right! Just take a seat, and one of our volunteers will be with you shortly. alice: Thank you. Is there a fee for getting something repaired? george: No, it's completely free, though we do accept small donations to help cover our costs. alice: That's generous. Roughly how long does a typical repair take? george: It varies, but most small electrical items like lamps take around thirty to forty-five minutes. alice: Will the volunteer fix it for me, or will I need to help? george: We encourage you to work alongside the volunteer so you learn how it's done. alice: That sounds like a great approach. Do I need to book an appointment in advance? george: No booking needed — we operate on a first-come, first-served basis every second Saturday.

The growing popularity of repair cafés, community events where volunteers help people fix broken household items rather than throwing them away, reflects a broader cultural shift towards reducing waste and challenging the assumption that broken items are simply worthless. For Isabel, attending her first repair café was motivated by a broken toaster that seemed too minor a problem to justify professional repair costs, yet too wasteful to discard entirely. At the event, held monthly in a community hall, Isabel worked alongside a retired electrician volunteer who patiently explained each step of diagnosing the toaster's fault, rather than simply fixing it for her without explanation. This educational approach, common across most repair cafés, aims to gradually build participants' confidence and practical skills rather than creating dependency on volunteer expertise for every future repair. Isabel admits she initially expected the process to feel intimidating, given her limited technical knowledge, but found the informal, patient atmosphere surprisingly welcoming even for complete beginners. Successfully repairing the toaster herself, with guidance rather than having it done entirely for her, provided a sense of accomplishment that simply buying a replacement item could never have offered. Since that first visit, Isabel has returned to the repair café several times, both to fix additional broken items and increasingly to volunteer her own newly acquired basic skills to help other first-time visitors. She believes the movement's genuine value extends beyond simply preventing individual items from reaching landfill, fostering broader community connections and practical skills that modern consumer culture, built around effortless replacement rather than repair, has gradually allowed to diminish.

Repair cafés ___1___ in popularity across many towns and cities as people become more conscious of unnecessary waste. When my uncle ___2___ his broken lamp to a local repair café last month, he expected the volunteers to simply fix it for him quickly. Instead, a volunteer ___3___ him through the process of identifying the faulty wire himself, explaining each step patiently. My uncle ___4___ surprised at how satisfying it felt to fix something with his own hands, guided rather than done for him. Since then, he ___5___ several more items to similar events, gradually building his confidence with basic repairs. He ___6___ that this approach differs significantly from simply paying someone else to fix things without any explanation. My uncle now ___7___ to volunteer occasionally himself, sharing the small amount of knowledge he has gained. He ___8___ that everyone should try visiting a repair café at least once before assuming a broken item is not worth saving.