GE B1+ End of Year Test Use of English 2

Money

Nowadays, many people use their smartphones to pay for their shopping. You can buy anything you want just by touching your phone against a device in a shop. This ¹_____ changed the way we buy things because we don’t need to carry money anymore. ¹_____, we haven’t always been able to make our purchases as easily as that.

Thousands of years ago, there was no money, so people ³_____ exchange things they owned for the things they wanted. The things they exchanged were usually either animals ⁴_____ crops. Later, they started to use things like stones, ⁵_____ could be carried more easily.

Coins, and later paper money, appeared around 3,000 years ago and haven’t changed very much since then. Most countries have their own form of money, or currency, such as the pound or rupee. Some currencies, such as the euro, ⁶_____ even used by many countries as the main currency.

In recent years, though, people have argued that traditional money isn’t practical enough for our modern needs. They say we need something ⁷_____ secure, which can be used anywhere in the world. By using technology, such as smartphones or tablets, we can securely access all our money at any time. This has led to the appearance of new digital currencies, such as Bitcoin. It’s unlikely that notes and coins ⁸_____ exist at all in the future.