Тести (Reading Comprehension, Level B1, Form 8-9)

Reading Comprehension A

Read the text about the pirates. Then match the paragraph titles (A–I) with the paragraphs (1–8). There is one extra title.

Pirates

1. _____ When you hear the word pirate, you probably see a man with a wooden leg, a piece of black cloth over one eye, dressed in seventeenth-century clothes. On his shoulder, there is a parrot. Most likely, you can picture him standing next to a box full of treasure under a palm tree somewhere on a desert island.

2. _____ A pirate was a bandit who sailed the seas in search of ships carrying valuable things.

3. _____ Almost all of the pirates’ ships flew the famous Jolly Roger which was a black flag with a skull and two white bones on it.

4. _____ When a pirate got on a ship, he stole everything and killed the sailors.

5. _____ Then he sold the stolen goods in the nearest port and spent all the money on various forms of entertainment, usually on drinking beer and rum.

6. _____ However, the pirates were very disciplined. There was order and discipline on their ships because they wanted their actions to be successful. Some pirates did not obey the rules and they were punished in a cruel way.

7. _____ Pirates did not spend all the money they stole. Often, they buried the treasure in some distant place so that it was very difficult to find for many years. Many treasure boxes were never found.

8. _____ Watch out! Maybe the next time you walk along the beach you will step on something big and heavy?

A – Actions after getting on a ship

B – Job

C – Discipline on ships

D – Use of stolen money

E – What did a pirate look like?

F – Pirates’ private life

G – Chances to find treasure

H – Pirate symbols

I –  Hiding the treasure

Read the text and decide if the statements are true (T), false (F) or the text doesn’t say (DS)

1. A pirate used to have a monkey on his shoulder.

2. Pirates sailed the seas and oceans in the 10^th and 11th centuries.

3. The discipline on the pirates’ ship was very tough.

4. The famous Jolly Roger which was a red flag with a skull and two white bones on it.

Reading Comprehension B

Read this article about the Great Wall of China. Some parts of sentences have been left out from the text. Your task is to reconstruct the text by filling in the gaps (1-4) from the list (A-F) below. Remember that there are two extra letters that you do not need.

A) during the summer

B) who were forced to build

C) one of China’s tourist attractions

D) visited by most tourists

E) over twenty centuries ago

F) 12 metres high

The Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China is the only man-made construction that can be seen from space. It is 6,000 kilometres long. It runs along China’s northern border and has an unusual shape. It looks as if its architects did not have any specific plans. It looks like a snake or a long road. Nobody knows why its shape is like this but legend states that it was built to imitate the movements of a dragon - a popular religious symbol in China. The section of the Wall 1_______________ is at Badaling Pass near Peking. Here, the building material is grey granite blocks, 6 metres high. On both sides of its roof, there are low walls which protect you from falling off the Wall. In the middle, there is a road which is wide enough for five horses running side by side. Other sections of the Great Wall are built of various materials, often of poor quality, for example of wood or sand depending on whether the wall crossed deserts, plains or the country. The people who 2________________ the Great Wall were often those who could not pay their taxes, prisoners of war and criminals. There were about one million slaves working on the wall. They lived in poor conditions, in places called work camps. They worked without clothes 3_______________ and they wore only animal skins in the winter. They often died of disease and hunger. Those who died were often buried in its foundations, making the Wall the ‘world’s longest cemetery’. There are still many of the original 25,000 towers left. They are about 4______________ and the distance between two neighbouring towers is over 200 metres. The army usually lived in these towers. In the period of the Wall’s glory almost a million men stayed there. Today the Great Wall is one of China’s tourist attractions. Where else in the world can you see something built by man over twenty-two centuries ago?

Read the text and decide if the statements are true (T) or false (F).

1. Astronauts can see the Great Wall of China from space.

2. The Great Wall of China was designed to look like a snake.

3. The Great Wall of China was built of one type of material.

4. Prisoners and criminals were not allowed to build the Wall.

5. The builders of the Great Wall of China wore poor clothes.

6. The builders of the Great Wall of China had enough food to live.

7. The Wall’s towers are over two hundred metres from each other.

8.  In the towers of the Great Wall there lived about one million slaves.