Listening Comprehension

Term I

Babylonia

The people of Babylonia were rich and powerful. They were also happy. They loved each other and they enjoyed working together. But men could live only on Earth. Heaven was for God and his angels.

The King of Babylonia decided that his people should have heaven, too. So he ordered them to build a great tower. Six hundred thousand men began making bricks and mixing mortar  and putting up a building higher. All day every day men carried bricks and mortar up a stairway on the west side of a tower. Then they walked down another stairway on the west. This went on for forty – two years until the tower was twenty – seven miles high. It was so high that it took a man a whole year to carry bricks from the ground to the top.

Now the tower had risen nearly to heaven. And God saw he had to do something. He sent seventy angels down to Earth. The angels had orders: first to take away the one language everybody understood, then to put the people into groups with a new language in each group.

In no time the men who carried bricks couldn’t talk to the men who carried them and the men who carried bricks couldn’t say an understandable word to the men who laid the bricks. Everything was a mess, and everybody blamed everybody else for not understanding. The people no longer talked about the Tower of Heaven. The talked about the Tower of Babel, which meant the Tower of Confusion. Their work came to a dead stop. The builders went away carrying their new languages with them.

That is how it happened that different languages appeared in different parts of the world.

Name   _____________________

     Form    ___________________     

    Date     _____________________

Task I. Listen to the text “Babylonia”. Choose the correct answer.

1. What were the people of Babylonia lacking?

1. They had no heaven for themselves.
2. They were not rich and powerful.
3. There was no love between them.

2. What did the king order his people to do?

1. He ordered them to ask God to come to the Earth.
2. He decided to build a great tall tower.
3. He ordered them to work together.

3. What did God do to keep the invaders out?

1. He ruined the Tower.
2. He decided to take away the one language that everybody understood.
3. He made the people poor.

4. What did the people do when everything was a mess?

1. They went away carrying their new language with them.
2. They continued all the same.
3. They blamed the king for the confusion.

5. What were people talking about the Tower after the God’s decision?

1. The tower of Babel.
2. The tower of Heaven.
3. The tower of Confusion.

6. Why different tongues are spoken in different parts of the world?

1. Because God decided to take away the one language everybody understood.
2. Because people couldn’t understand each other.
3. Because the builders went away carrying their new languages with them.

Task II. Fill in the gaps to complete the following questions with the verbs given below:

did, was, were, couldn’t, should, made, did, hadn’t, was.

1. What thing … lacking in Babylonia?
2. What did the king of Babylonia decide that his people … have?
3. How high … the Tower?
4. The Tower had risen nearly to Heaven, … it?
5. I wonder if the people … able to finish the Tower?
6. What … it hard for people to co-operate? (to make)
7. Whom … everybody blame for not understаnding?
8. Did God send angels to the Earth or … he give people orders?
9. Why … the men understand each other?

Task III. Answer the following questions.

1. Did the people of Babylonia enjoy working together?
2. How many people began building the Tower?
3. How high was the Tower?
4. How long did it take a man to carry bricks from the ground to the top?
5. What orders did the seventy angels have?
6. Why did people stop talking about the Tower of Heaven?
7. What did they talk about?
8. Why are different languages spoken in different parts of the world?
9. What do you think of having one common international language on the Earth now?

Task IV. A. Describe the Tower of Babel.

               B. Name the groups of people who took part in building the Tower of Babel.