11 Form - reading comprehension - II term (Нерсисян)

1. Choose correct variant.

PUDDING RECIPE. In a saucepan, mix sugar,cocoa and flour.Gradually stir in milk until smooth.Let the mixture boil over a low heat.Stir continuously for two minutes or until it gets thicker.Remove from the heat and stir in some vanilla.Pour into two bowls.Cover and refrigerate until chilled. This recipe is enough for two people.

4. Read the text and decide if the statements below are true (Т) or false (F).              

A visit to parts of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, is like a trip back in time. People live in simple farm houses. Family members, including small children, all work in the fields. Crops are planted and harvested without modern farm technology.

Most Amish are easy to recognize and they are known as the Plain People, who came to the United States from Germany and Switzerland in the 1700s-1800s. They were expelled or chose to leave because of religious oppression. Most of them settled in Pennsylvania, where they were promised religious freedom.

The Amish permit few differences among their own people and live much like their ancestors did. They believe that hard work is important and enjoyable. They do not believe in depending on the world outside their community. Modern technology and things like electricity, central heating and indoor water pipes are not considered necessary; they heat their houses with wood stoves and get their water from wells. Instead of cars the Amish travel in buggies pulled by horses. Almost every Amish man can build a house, make furniture, and raise crops and animals. Almost every Amish woman can preserve food and make clothing or quilts.

The Amish pay taxes, but they do not really vote in elections and don’t accept help from the federal government. They live by rules explained in the Bible. They believe it is wrong to fight wars and such religious beliefs sometimes have brought the Amish into conflict with American law. Amish men refuse military service during war time. Instead, they are permitted to perform some other kind of public service.

Most Amish families have seven or eight children, but refuse to send them to public schools, so they attend their own community schools and only for 8 years. When boys and girls reach the age of 16, they have two years of rumspringa. During this period of time they can live the “American” life; wear make-up and jewelry, go to parties and have a job with American people. They have to decide for themselves whether they want to stay Amish and return to the old-fashioned way of living or become American! A very difficult choice, which often leaves confused and depressed young people on their own. 

1) Amish people were invited to Pennsylvania where they could enjoy religious freedom. 

4. 2) The Amish have no private access to electricity or technology. 

4. 3) Amish people are very skillful and hardworking. 

4. 4)The Amish are law-abiding citizens and reject violence.

4.  5) Rumspringa is the term used about the time young Amish “come of age”.

5. 2) Black Friday 

5. 3) The name Black Friday was first used by 

5. 4) Which best explains the main idea of the second paragraph? 

5. 5) Which was not cited as one of the downsides of Black Friday? 

6. Read the text and choose the best item

Thomas Alva Edison

The American inventor, Thomas Alva Edison, was born in Ohio in 1847.

Tom, or Al, as his family called him, was one of those children who are always asking "Why?" He was always trying to learn how things worked or how they were made. The boy's education was limited to three months in the public school of Port Huron, Michigan. He started work at the age of twelve, when a new railway was opened between Port Huron and Detroit. Young Edison began to travel every day on one of the trains. He sold fruit, sweets and cakes to the passengers. The hours that he had to wait at Detroit before starting back home, he spent in the library reading techni­cal books.

Several years later, Edison learned telegraphy and he became a tele­graph operator. He was soon one of the fastest operators in a large tele­graph company in Boston. He wanted to improve the telegraph system and worked very hard at it. Night after night he read the "Book of Experi­ments", by Michael Faraday, the inventor of the electric generator, in the hope that this would help him to solve his problems. He did not sleep more than four hours a night and sometimes he did not go to bed at all. He often did not even find time for breakfast.

"Aren't you going to stop to eat your breakfast?" his landlady once asked him. "No," he answered, "I've got so much to do, and life is short." After a few months of work, he built a transmitter of a new kind. This was his first important invention.

Edison was advised to go to New York where the opportunities were greater. He did so, but when he reached New York, he had no money left at all. "I had to walk in the streets all night because I hadn't the price of a bed; and in the morning nothing to buy breakfast with," he said.

But soon, he opened a small workshop. At the age of twenty he had two inventions.

One of Edison's greatest inventions was the gramophone, or the "pho­nograph", as he called it, which repeated his words. He told his assistants that this was only the beginning. The time would come, he said, when his new instrument would record music. "It will play symphonies and whole operas, the world will hear again the great singers who are no longer living..." Another of Edison's inventions was the electric lamp. Edison believed that only work could bring success. He continued ac­tive work until only eighteen days before his death in 1931, at the age of eighty-seven.

That evening, Americans all over the country turned off their electric lights for a few moments — the light which Edison had given them. 

1) Thomas Alva Edison was a famous ...

6. 2) He began to work at the age of...

6. 3) The boy's first work was ...

6. 3) Edison learned the telegraphy and became ...

6. 4) He worked very hard because ...

6. 5) Michael Faraday was the inventor of...

6. 6) On the day when Edison died people in America turned off the lights because ...

6. 7) Put the events in order.

a) Night after night he read the "Book of Experi­ments", by Michael Faraday, the inventor of the electric generator, in the hope that this would help him to solve his problems.

b) The boy's education was limited to three months in the public school of Port Huron, Michigan. 

c) Another of Edison's inventions was the electric lamp.

d) Young Edison began to travel every day on one of the trains. 

e) Edison was advised to go to New York where the opportunities were greater.