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Reading

Read the text and do the tasks.

Tilly Smith (a British school girl) was able to save many lives when the tsunami struck Phuket beach in Thailand. Though she has won a number of awards, her parents have not allowed their daughter to be interviewed on television and made into a heroine. Why do you think they took that decision?

Now here is a story from Thailand.

     The Smith family from South-East England were celebrating Christmas at a beach resort in southern Thailand. Tilly Smith was a ten-year-old schoolgirl; her sister was seven years old. Their parents were Penny and Colin Smith.

     It was 26 December 2004. Deadly tsunami waves were already on their way. They had been triggered by a massive earthquake off northern Sumatra earlier that morning.

     “The water was swelling and kept coming in,” Penny Smith remembered. “The beach was getting smaller and smaller. I didn’t know what was happening.”

      But Tilly Smith sensed that something was wrong. Her mind kept going back to a geography lesson she had taken in England just two weeks before she flew out to Thailand with her family.

     Tilly saw the sea slowly rise, and start to foam, bubble and form whirlpools. She remembered that she had seen this in class in a video of a tsunami that had hit the Hawaiian islands in 1946. Her geography teacher had shown her class the video, and told them that tsunamis can be caused by earthquakes, volcanoes and landslides.

     Tilly started to scream at her family to get off the beach. “She talked about an earthquake under the sea. She got more and more hysterical,” said her mother Penny. “I didn’t know what a tsunami was. But seeing my daughter so frightened, I thought something serious must be going on.”

     Tilly’s parents took her and her sister away from the beach, to the swimming pool at the hotel. A number of other tourists also left the beach with them. “Then it was as if the entire sea had come out after them. I was screaming, ‘Run!’”

     The family took refuge in the third floor of the hotel. The building withstood the surge of three tsunami waves. If they had stayed on the beach, they would not have been alive.

     The Smiths later met other tourists who had lost entire families. Thanks to Tilly and her geography lesson, they had been forewarned. Tilly went back to her school in England and told her classmates her terrifying tale.

Task I.  Define if the sentences are true or false:

1. In 2004 Tilly Smith, an Australian school girl, and her family flew to Thailand on Christmas holidays.

2. In the morning on the 26^th of December the girl learned about the massive earthquake in Sumatra and was very frightened.

3. Having a rest at the beach with her family, Tilly looked at the sea and realized that something wrong was happening.

4. Tilly saw that the sea looked exactly as it was in the video of a tsunami her Geography teacher had shown her class 2 weeks before.

5. Having heard Tilly’s words about the earthquake under the sea, Penny Smith got very hysterical and made her family get off the beach.

6.  Thanks to Tilly the other tourists left the beach before the water came out.

7. The family of the Smiths managed to leave the hotel before tsunami waves reached the buiding.

8.  A lot of people stayed alive thanks to Tilly Smith and her Geography lesson.

Task II. Choose the correct variant:

1. Which disaster caused the tsunami in Phuket in 2004?

a) the earthquake

b) the landslide

c) the volcano eruption

2)  Why did Tilly’s parents take her and her sister from the beach?

a) They saw the tsunami was coming.

b) They saw Tilly very frightened and realized something serious would happen.

c) They heard somebody screamed “Run!”

3) Why was Tilly Smith awarded?

a) She showed excellent results in Geography tests at school.

b) She gave all the money she had saved to the victims of tsunami.

c) She saved many lives when the natural disaster happened in Thailand.