Test on Reading the Second Term

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Form __________     

Date______________________________________________________________________

READING COMPREHENSION

The second term

VARIANT 1

Read the text and do the tasks

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 (будівельний розчин) 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.

1. Tick the correct answer. Get one point for each correct choice.

1. Why was the King of Babylonia dissatisfied?

1. His people had no heaven for themselves.
2. His people were not rich and powerful.
3. There was no love between his people.

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

1. He ordered them to ask God to come done to earth.
2. He ordered them to build a great tower.
3. He ordered them to dance together.

3. What did God do to keep the people out of heaven?

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 languages with them.
2. They continued all the same.
3. They blamed the King of the confusion.

2. Mark the sentences true (T) or false (F).

• The people of Babylonia were not rich and powerful.
• The people of Babylonia loved each other and they enjoyed working together.
• The King of Babylonia ordered to build a great tower.
• Six hundred men began making bricks and mixing mortar and putting up a building higher.
• This went on for forty years until the tower was twenty – seven miles high.
• The God sent seventy angels down to earth.
• The angels had orders: first to take away the one language everybody understood.
• Tower of Babel meant the Tower of Confusion.