Unit 3 (Multiple Choice)

Exercise: 1
Practice IELTS Multiple Choice Questions with Answers
Now, let’s look at sample multiple choice IELTS reading questions and check
how the strategies given above works.
Reading Passage
One of the most famous works of art in the world is Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona
Lisa. Nearly everyone who goes to see the original will already be familiar with
it from reproductions, but they accept that fine art is more rewardingly viewed
in its original form. However, if Mona Lisa was a famous novel, few people
would bother to go to a museum to read the writer’s actual manuscript rather
than a printed reproduction. This might be explained by the fact that the
novel has evolved precisely because of technological developments that made
it possible to print out huge numbers of texts, whereas oil paintings have
always been produced as unique objects. In addition, it could be argued that
the practice of interpreting or ‘reading’ each medium follows different
conventions. With novels, the reader attends mainly to the meaning of words
rather than the way they are printed on the page, whereas the ‘reader’ of a
painting must attend just as closely to the material form of marks and shapes
in the picture as to any ideas they may signify.

Questions:
1 According to the passage, Monalisa is:
A Da Vinci’s masterpiece
B One of the famous works of art
C Just another painting
D The only work on art

2 Why do people want to view art in its original form?

A They can appreciate art better in its original form.
B They are tired of viewing duplicates.
C both A & B
D None of the above

3 According to the passage, what is the difference between a novel

and a painting?
A No difference
B Novels are unique.
C Paintings are unique objects.
D None of the above

4 What is the difference between reading a novel and a painting?

A No difference.
B In a novel, they have to carefully observe the way they are printed and in a
painting it is just reading the meaning.
C In a painting, they have to carefully observe the way they are printed and in
a novel it is just reading the meaning.
D None of the above

One Less Missing Link

A. Paleontologist Gen Suwa was walking across the pebble-covered desert of
north-central Ethiopia, peering carefully around him for ancient bones. Then he
saw it: the telltale gleam of a fossil tooth partially exposed on the rocky
ground. "I knew immediately that it was a hominid tooth," says the University
of Tokyo scientist, "and one of the oldest ever found."
B. It was more than that. Suwa had uncovered nothing less than a new
chapter in the history of human evolution. He and his colleagues report in
the current Nature that the archaic molar, along with other fossils they found
in the area on expeditions in 1992 and 1993, belongs to a previously
unknown species. This diminutive, humanlike creature walked the earth
some 4.4 million years ago — half a million years earlier than the oldest
human ancestors ever identified. That stretches our family tree back almost to the
era when humans and a pes branched off from a single ancestor.
C. Paleoanthropologists have not unhearthed anything this revolutionary since
1974, when the famous fossil skeleton known .as Lucy was discovered about 80
km north of the current find. That 3.2 million-year-old female hominid had some
human characteristics – most notably, she walked on two legs rather than
four – but skull and tooth fragments indicated she was somewhat apelike as
well. She fits nicely into the shared-ancestor theory first put forward by Charles
Darwin and supported by modern comparisons between human and ape proteins and
DNA. The divergence between the ape and human lines, argued the
biochemists, came somewhere between 4 million and 6 million years ago
 some paleontologists predicted that as hominid species were discovered from periods
closer and closer to the time of the actual split, they should be even more apelike than
Lucy.
D. Most experts assume ramidus walked on two legs, as Lucy did, but the evidence is
skimpy and indirect. One clue is a tiny fragment of the foramen magnum, the
opening at the base of the skull where the spinal cord joins the brain: its location
suggests an upright stance. Moreover, the structure of the arm bones is different
from what anatomists see in knuckle-walking apes.
E. If ramidus really did travel on two legs, anthropologists may have to rethink their
notions of what' started pre hominids on the evolutionary road that led to modern
Homo sapiens. It is already clear from Lucy, who stood upright but had an apelike skull,
that bipedalism came first and a large brain later. But what prompted the shift to
two-leggedness? The conventional theory is that a change in climate transformed
the eastern and southern African forests to dry, open grasslands, favoring apes
that could walk upright; they would have been able to see predators from farther
away and walk long distances holding food or children.
F. It appears ramidus may have lived not on the savannah, however, but in some sort
of forest. Mixed in with the hominid fossils, the scientists found thousands of
fossilized tree weeds and abundant petrified wood. There were also some 600
species from other animals, including such forest dwellers as monkeys, kudu
antelopes, bats and squirrels. Notably rare were fossils from grassland beasts like
prehistoric horses or giraffes. The theory that ramidus was a forest dweller is still not
proved, but if it is supported by more fieldwork and analysis, then theorists will have
to form a new explanation for the development of erect posture by some apes.
G. While the evolutionary story is still in some doubt, there is no question about the
fossils' antiquity. Ancient bones cannot be dated directly, but geochronologists proceed
by determining the age of nearby rocks. It also helps if the fossils have lain
undisturbed since they were buried. In this case, the ramidus bones could not have
been better placed: they were enclosed in sedimentary rock that was neatly
sandwiched between layers of volcanic ash, which contains radioactive isotopes
that make material easy to date. The volcanic layer just beneath the fossils turned
out to be about 4.4 million years old. That jibes perfectly with the ages of other
fossil animals found, which were already known from analysis of other sites.
H. Scientists are debating whether the new hominid is really the common ancestor
of both humans and apes, whether- it’s the first species to appear on the human side
after the split or whether there are still several pre-ramidus hominids left to be
 found. Bernard Wood, a University of Liverpool paleontologist, thinks Suwa and his
company may have discovered the seminal species. The man who found Lucy in
1974, paleontologist Don Johanson of the Institute of Human Origins, based in
Berkeley, California, disagrees. "I still think we're a Iong way from the common
ancestor," he argues. 'We're one link closer, just as Lucy was a link closer. There
could be room for several nor e species."
I. All these issues - bipedalism, the forest-dwelling theory, the question of how
high ramidus sits in the evolutionary tree - can be settled only with more
fieldwork. The team is returning to Ethiopia next month, to the site hoping to find
parts of other skeletons and uncover more clues about the Ethiopian environment of
4.4 million years ago. Says Suwa: `We're going to crawl on our hands and knees,
looking for every giraffe, pig, bird, rodent, seed and any other fossil we can find."
Humanity has just added half a million years to its heritage; perhaps the next
expedition will give scientists a better idea of how much further back our line of
ancestors goes.

Questions 1-2
Complete the following table about “Lucy”

Discovered Country
Lived years
in the year discovered Sex Walked on
ago
of in
1974 1. Female Two legs 2.

Questions 3-4

3. Which two of the arguments in the box below support the theory that
bipedalism was caused by forests giving way to grasslands?
4. Which three of the arguments in the box below support the theory, that
ramidus lived in forests?
A. Fossilized tree weeds were found to be mixed with the hominid fossils.
B. Traces of other animals such as bats and squirrels were found together
with ramidus fossils.
C. Standing legs,
D. Fossils of prehistoric horses and giraffes were not found together with
ramidus fossils.
 E. Apes that could use the upper limbs to hold food and children while
walking had a better chance to survive.

Questions 5-6
Answer the following questions by choosing the appropriate letter(s).
5. How do scientists determine the date of the fossils they discover? (please
choose one)
A.By measuring the radioactive content in the nearby rock
B.By determining the physical features of the fossils using anatomic techniques.
C.By comparing with fossils of other animals who lived in the same period.
6. By analysing the fossils using genetic engineering technology. Which two of
the following theories are not contested in the reading passage?
A.The fossil tooth found by Suwa is 4.4 million years old.
B.Ramiidus lived in forest.
C.Humans and apes split 4.4 million years ago.
D.Ramidus walked on two legs.
E.Climate changes millions of years ago brought some apes to the
ground.
F.Humans and apes share ancestors.

Questions 7-13
Complete the following summary of the reading passage. Choose NO
MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage fix each answer.

Charles Darwin thought that humans and apes shared ancestors.

Paleontological discoveries since the great naturalist have pushed human history
back millions of years ago. Lucy, the famous fossil skeleton discovered by 7 ,
and the fossil tooth by Suwa and 8 have each made mankind 9 closer to our
common ancestor.

While acknowledging the importance of the latest discovery by Suwa,

scientists have different opinions about how close the finding was to the time
when humans and apes 10 . Apart from this, other 11 that need further
evidence to settle include 12 the forest-dwelling theory, and such evidence can
only be collected through 13 .That is why Suwa is going back, hoping to find
more.
Exercise 2
In this exercise, you will read a passage and answer the questions that follow. The
suggested time fir reading the passage and answering the questions is 15 minutes.

Are You a Machine of Many Parts?

1. What will future historians remember about the impact of science during the last
decade of the 20th century? They will not be much concerned with many of the
marvels that currently preoccupy us, such as the miraculous increase in the power
of home computers and the unexpected growth of the Internet. Nor will they dwell
much on global warming, the loss of biodiversity and other examples of our
penchant for destruction. Instead, the end of the 20 century will be recognized as
the time when, for better or worse, science began to bring about a fundamental
shift in our perception of ourselves.
2. It will be the third time that science has forced us to re-evaluate who we are. The
first time, of course, was the revolution that began with Copernicus in 1543 and
continued with Kepler, Galileo and Newton. Despite the Church's opposition, we
came to realize that the Earth does not lie at the centre of the universe. Instead, we
gradually found we live on a small planet on the edge of a minor galaxy, circling one
star in a universe that contains billions of others. Our unique position in the universe
was gone for ever.
3. A few centuries later, we were moved even further from stage centre. The
Darwinian revolution removed us from our position as a unique creation of God..
Instead, we discovered we were just another part of the animal kingdom proud to have
"a miserable ape for a grandfather", as Thomas Huxley put it in 1860. We know now
just how close to the apes we are over 90% of our genes are the same as those of
the chimpanzee.
4. Increasing knowledge of our own genetics is one of the driving forces in the third
great conceptual shift that will soon take place. Others are the growing knowledge of
the way our minds work, our new ability to use knowledge of the nervous system
to design drugs that affect specific states of mind and the creation of sophisticated
scanners which enable us to see what is happening inside our brains. In the third
revolution, we are taking our own selves to pieces and finding the parts which
make up the machine that is us.
5. Much of the new knowledge from genetics, molecular biology and the neuro-
sciences is esoteric. But its cultural impact is already running ahead of science.
People begin to see themselves not as wholes with a moral centre but the result of
the combined action of parts for which they have little responsibility.
6. It's Nobody's Fault is the title of a popular American book on "difficult" children.
Many different children, the book explains, are not actually difficult but are suffering
from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). There is nothing wrong with them or the
way they have been brought up. Rather, the part of the brain which controls attention is
short of a particular neurotransmitter.
7. ADD is currently the world's fastest growing psychological problem. In the United
States, a survey showed that 1.5m children between the ages of five and eighteen
were being treated with a drug, Ritalin, for the disorder. Since then the number
taking the drug is believed to have doubled.
8. You might, as many people do, question the way in which the disorder has been
diagnosed on such a staggering scale. But that is not the point. The cultural shift is
that people are not responsible for their disorders, only for obtaining treatment for
the parts of them that have gone wrong.
9. The more we know about the parts of ourselves, the more cures for our defects
will appear. Prozac is one example. The best-selling Listening to Prozac claimed the
drug "can transform pessimists into optimists, turn loners into extroverts". And
Prozac, the book explained, "was not so much discovered as planfully created,
through the efforts of a large pharmaceutical firm ... the likely result of this form of
research is not medicines that correct particular illnesses but medicines that affect
clusters of functions in the human brain."
10.Even when a treatment is not to hand, the notion that we are made of "clusters
of functions" remains strong. Genetic analysis supports this view. A gene linked to
alcoholism has been located and a Gallup poll has revealed that the great majority of
Americans consider alcoholism to be a disease. There are claims of genes too for
obesity, homosexuality and even for laziness.
11.Some claims about genes may be silly. Or you may think that the current
conceptual shift is just a re-run of old arguments about the relative roles of
nature and nurture. Instead, take one drug Viagra, as an example of the new
way of thinking about ourselves. If you suffer from impotence, it might have
a variety of physiological causes. Or you might just be anxious about sexual
performance. But Viagra does not make such fine distinctions: it acts at the
 level of the chemical reactions that control the blood flow needed to maintain
an erection.
12.Once we can dissect ourselves into parts and know how the parts work, it
really does not matter what was the initial cause of the problem. If you own a
car and the brakes wear out quickly, it is not important whether you've been
driving the car too hard or you bought cheap brake shoes to begin with. You
just need to change the brakes.
13.The more direct means we have of changing who we are, through changing
the parts that we are composed of, the harder becomes the question of who
was the person who made the decision to change, before becoming someone
else. This will be the real issue for the 21' century: who are we, if we are the
sum of our parts and science has given us the power to change those parts?
Questions:
1. What is the most important scientific progress in the 20th century?
A. The development of computer technology.
B. The birth and growth of the Internet.
C. Mankind's ability to control global warming.
D. People's new knowledge of themselves.
2. What did Copernicus discover?
A. The Earth does not lie at the centre of the universe.
B. The Church was wrong about the history of mankind.
C. Human beings live on a small planet.
D. Mankind have a unique position in the universe.
3. What did Darwin discover?
A. Human beings were a unique creation of God.
B. Human beings and apes shared a common ancestor.
C. Human beings were lucky while apes were miserable.
D. Human beings and chimpanzees were nearly identical.
4. Which of the following is NOT "one of the driving forces in the third great
conceptual shift"? (Paragraph 4)
A. Knowledge of our own genetics.
B. Knowledge of the way our minds work.
C. Knowledge of how to use sophisticated scanners.
D. Knowledge of how to design drugs that affect specific states of mind.
5. Which of the following is likely to be the main idea of the book It's Nobody's
Fault?
 A. Many children are suffering from ADD.
B. ADD is the problem for the problematic children.
C. Some people's brains do not have neurotransmitters.
D. The way people are brought up determines their behaviour.
6. How many people are taking Ritalin in the US?
A. Less than 1.5 million people.
B. 1.5 million of the people aged 5-18.
C. 3 million of the people aged 5-18.
D. More than 3 million teenagers.
7. Which of the following reflects the cultural shift?
A. More people are diagnosed to be suffering from mental disorders.
B. B People are not responsible for the problems they have.
C. More people are seeking mental treatment.
D. People begin to question the accuracy of doctors' diagnoses
8. What is Prozac?
A. A book.
B. A medicine
C. A type of people
D. A mental disorder
9. Genetic -analysis seems to have confirmed that there is a gene in our body
that is responsible for
A. alcoholism.
B. obesity.
C. homosexuality.
D. laziness.
10. Which of the following does the drug Viagra illustrate?
A. "Some claims about genes may be silly." (Paragraph 11)
B. We have a "new way of thinking about ourselves". (Paragraph 11)
C. A physical disorder "might have a variety of physiological causes".
(Paragraph 11)
D. "People ... are ... obtaining treatment for the parts of them that have gone
wrong." (Paragraph 8)

Exercise 3
 In this exercise, you will read a passage and answer the questions that follow. The
suggested time fir reading the passage and answering the questions is 15 minutes.

Making Allowances for Your Kids' Dollar Values

Would you stoop to pick up a found penny? If you believe in the value of
money or the possibility of luck, you would. Unless, of course, you're a teenager.
When Nuveen Investments asked 1,000 kids aged 12 to 17 to name the sum
they would bother to pick up, 58 per cent said a dollar or more. Some won't give
pocket space to coins even if they're already in hand, says Neale Godfrey, author
of Money Doesn't Grow on Trees. Many high schoolers buy lunch and throw away
the change, she says. As one boy explained to her, "What am I going to do with
it?"

This cavalier attitude is making some parents rethink the allowance

tradition. The weekly stipend is meant to help kids learn about money, but some
experts say too much cash – easily handed out in these flush times —and too few
obligations can lead to a fiscally irresponsible future. Many kids have a "lack of
understanding (of) how hard it is to earn money," says Godfrey. "That is not OK."

Allowances, done right, are a way to teach children to plan ahead and
choose wisely, to balance saving, spending, investing, and even philanthropy.
Doing it right means deciding ahead of time how much to give and how often to
give it. And it requires determining what the child's responsibilities will be.

About 50 per cent of children between 12 and 18 get an allowance or cash

from their parents, says a survey conducted in 1997 by Ohio State University for
the US Labor Department. The median amount they got was $50 a week.
(Teenagers in the East North Central region, which includes Ohio and Indiana,
get the most — a median of $75 a week —and kids in the East South Central,
including Mississippi and Alabama, are given the least, with a median of $30 a
week.) Nationally speaking, about 10 million kids receive a total of around $1
billion every week.

The problem with a parental open-wallet policy, says Godfrey: "If you're
always given money, why would it have any value to you?" Earned money is
spent more wisely, she says. "You're teaching them that there is not an
entitlement programme in life. The way you get it is you earn it."
 Godfrey thinks an allowance should be chore-based, and she divides work
into two categories: citizen-of-the-household chores and work-for-pay chores.
"The punishment for not doing your work-for-pay chores is you don't get paid."
Other experts, including Jayne Pearl, author of Kids and Money, believe that
every family member is entitled to a small piece of the financial pie and that it
shouldn't be tied to work. Doing so "complicates things unnecessarily and
imbues allowance with power struggles and control issues," says Pearl. "I think of
(an allowance) as learning capital .... They have to have some money to practise
with."

For many kids, 3 is a good time to begin getting an allowance, experts say.
This sounds early, but it's then that children start understanding the notion of
exchanging coins for, say, candy. Deciding how much to give can be tough. "If
the parents can afford it, I have them pay their age per week," says Godfrey. "A
3-year-old gets $3."

Sound like a lot for a little person? Godfrey's plan takes 10 per cent off the
top for charity. The remainder is divided into thirds and put into jars. The quick-
cash jar "is for instant gratification." This spend-as-they-choose money means
that candy bars, Pokemon cards, and other impulse buys are no longer paid for
by Mom and Dad, which causes kids to curb many impulses. Says Godfrey of her
17-year-old daughter, Kyle "Her Starbucks bill is her own."

The second jar is for medium-term savings, meant to be spent on medium-

ticket luxuries like in-line skates or a CD player. The final jar is invested for the
long term, such as for college.

Kelly Grant, 13, thinks that is fair. An eighth grader in Greenville, S.C., Kelly
and his brother, Christopher, 15, each gets $15 a week. The trade-off: "I have to
walk and feed the dog, and I have to do the recyclables," Kelly says. He spends
but still saved enough to buy a Sony PlayStation.

Christopher, who has a girlfriend, spends most of what he gets; he

supplements his pocket money by doing extra work, like mowing the lawn. "I'm
supposed to do a load of laundry every night." He has, he admits, a tendency to
forget. "They charge my allowance sometimes," he says, "but they don't really
remember to do it."

The Grant boys are still learning about earning and show signs of valuing
money. They wouldn't stop to pick up a dime, but both say there are coins they
would rescue from the sidewalk. Says Christopher: "You can do a lot with a
quarter."

Questions:
1. Nuveen Investments found that
A. many kids don't bother to pick up small coins.
B. few kids want one-dollar coins.
C. some kids save coins.
D. no kids want to pick up coins.
2. Godfrey feels that
A.many kids appreciated the value of coins.
B.many kids know how hard it is to earn money.
C.many kids don't know the value of money.
D.many kids should be given more pocket money.
3. The writer feels that allowances
A. should not be given to children.
B. should not be given to young children.
C. could help children learn many things.
D. s p o i l o l d e r c h i l d r e n .
4. On average, children who receive the most allowances live in
A. the East North Central region.
B. the East South Central region.
C. big cities like New York or L.A.
D. small towns in New England.
5. Which of the following would Godfrey probably agree?
A. Children should not be given allowances.
B. Children should receive allowances if they help with housework.
C. Children should be given allowances whether they help with
housework.
D. Children should be paid for satisfactorily performing school work.
6. Which of the following would Pearl probably agree?
A. Children should not be given allowances.
B. Children should receive allowances if they help with housework.
C. Children should be given allowances whether they help with
housework.
D. Children should be paid for satisfactorily performing school work.
7. Who supports the idea of starting to give allowances to kids when they
are three?
A. The writer.
B. Pearl.
C. Godfrey's daughter
D. Godfrey.
8. According to Godfrey, if a child has a monthly allowances of $100,
how much should he/she spend on "impulse buys"?
A. $10.
B. $30.
C. $33.3.
D. $50.
9. The Grant brothers get allowances
A. without having to work.
B. by doing housework.
C. but the money is not enough.
D. though their parents sometimes forget to give them the money.
Exercise 4

In this exercise, you will read a passage and answer the questions that follow. The
suggested time for reading the passage and answering the questions is 10 minutes.

The Lost City of DeMille Emerges from the Desert Sands of

California

For 75 years, the majestic dunes that tower over this humble coastal village
have held one of Hollywood's oldest and strangest secrets.

Cecil B. DeMille, a founding father of motion pictures, once chose this

remote, wind-swept site 170 miles (270 kilometres) north of Los Angeles to erect
a plaster replica of ancient Egypt and stage his 1923 silent epic "The Ten
Commandments." It had all the right touches, on a monumental scale — from
the walls of a pharaoh's city rising 10 stories high to an avenue of nearly two
dozen five-ton sphinxes lining the sand. There had never been anything like it,
and it remains one of the largest movie sets ever built.

But once the cameras stopped rolling and a cast of thousands sent packing,
it all vanished. Then in his memoirs, DeMille dropped a playful hint of the
historic set's mysterious fate. "If 1,000 years from now, archaeologists happen
to dig beneath the sands of Guadalupe," he wrote, "I hope they will not rush into
print with the amazing news that Egyptian civilization, far from being confined to
the Valley of the Nile, extended all the way to the Pacific Ocean of North
America."

They will not. Because now, in an only-in-California endeavour as sublime as it

is ridiculous, what's left of the lost city of DeMille may soon be saved by an
authentic archaeological dig like none other.

That all of the Egyptian relics to be excavated are fake hardly matters, at
least not to the small and zealous band of filmmakers and archaeologists
leading the unusual project, or to the curious towns around here that are
beginning to help pay for it. Inside the new Dunes Discovery Center along the
creaking and dusty old main street of Guadalupe (population 6,000), some
worn, fragile DeMille props that already have been discovered are even being
displayed reverently in glass cases, as if they were priceless artifacts.

"Digging up a fake Egyptian city in California is hard to do without laughing, I

know," said Peter Brosnan, 46, a documentary filmmaker who has made the
buried set his abiding pastime. "But this is an important piece of early 20` x-
century American history. It's about the only set left from the era of silent film.
We know it's down there in the sand, and we think it's mostly intact."

Chunks of artful plaster are not all they are after. The sheer size of DeMille's
production also makes it a rich time capsule preserved in a mountain of sand,
with abundant emblems of daily life from the 1920s. Something always turns up
when the sands shift, such as cough syrup bottles once used to-hold sips of
alcohol.

To make the film, DeMille marched an army of 2,500 actors from Los
Angeles and kept them captive there for two months in an elaborate tent city
assembled on the 18-mile stretch of dunes. More than 1,500 construction
workers also came to build the mammoth biblical set.

DeMille, who remade the film in the 1950s in Egypt with. Charlton Heston
playing Moses, even hired musicians to lug instruments into the sands of
Guadalupe and play for the huge cast as it worked. But their performances on
the set ended one day when a runaway horse-drawn chariot crashed into the
orchestra pit.
 "At first I thought that doing a real dig for this was a little strange," said
John Parker, an archaeologist who has worked extensively at the dunes. "In
order not to destroy this stuff we have to use the same techniques we would
use as if this was a 10,000-year-old prehistoric site. But along with the film
history we find, it could be a great way to see what life was like here in the
1920s."

By the time he was finished, DeMille had spent $1.4 million filming the
biblical epic, a huge sum at the time. And he was way over budget. Mr.
Brosnan said he suspects that DeMille buried the set because it was the
cheapest option he had. Other film historians contend that he also may have
been worried that another director would sneakily use it and re lease a similar
movie faster.

Archaeologists are convinced that more than one third of the film set is long
gone, ravaged by time and the powerful forces of nature along the ocean
here. But after using ground-penetrating radar to probe the dunes, some of
which slope as high as 500 feet (150 metres), they believe they finally know
exactly where everything that's left has been entombed. Many of the sphinxes,
as well as several 35-foot statues of a pharaoh king that DeMille put outside
the walls of his phony Egyptian city seem fairly well preserved, they said.

"They really did a good job hiding it," said Liz Scott-Graham, the programme
manager at the Dunes Discovery Center, the non-profit group that owns the
dunes and treats them like a nature preserve. "You would never know it's all
still there."

Questions:

1. Which of the following is true?

A. Buried under the dunes are priceless Egyptian relics.
B.The city is Hollywood's oldest movie set.
C.Egyptian civilization actually extended to North America .
D.Although a replica, the city is now considered archaeologically
important.
2. Why did DeMille build the Egyptian city?
A . To shoot "The Ten Co mma n d men ts " .
B. To build a tourist resort.
C. To commemorate a pharaoh.
 D . To study Egyptian cu l tu re.
3. Why did archaeologists dig up the dunes?
A. To look for Egyptian relics.
B. T o s h o o t a d o c u m e n t a r y .
C. To save the DeMille city.
D. To study the history of motion pictures .
b. Filmmakers and archaeologists show interest in the site
A. because they could study people's life in the 1920s.
B. because they could study how films were made in the 1920s.
C. because they wanted to know how the city was built.
D. because they wanted to remake the film.
c. The following statements are true except
A. DeMille buried the set because he didn't want others to use it .
B. DeMille did not finish the film because of the budget and had to
remake it in the 1950s.
C. DeMille buried the set because it was the cheapest way.
D. DeMille used more than 4,000 people in building the set and making
the film.
d. What happened to the buried city?
A. More than one third of the city is damaged by the powerful forces of
nature.
B. The city was so well hidden that nearly everything remains intact .
C. Part of the city has been used by other filmmakers .
D. Most of the city is long gone .

Exercise 5
Separate, But EQ
Bad news for readers of this magazine: it's not enough to be smart
anymore. That's the sobering message from the folks behind the Bar-On
Emotional Quotient Inventory, which is being billed as the world's first
commercially available test for measuring "emotional intelligence." Israeli
psychologist Reuven Bar-On, who according to promotional materials has spent
more than 16 years honing the EQ test, defines emotional intelligence as
"capabilities, competencies, and skills that influence one's ability to succeed
in coping with environmental demands and pressures and directly affect one's
overall psychological well-being."
 In the early 1960s, examiners would give three-year-olds a marshmallow.
The children were told that if they could hold off eating it until the examiner
returned from some nonexistent errand, they would get a second
marshmallow. Only about 15 per cent of the kids withstood the marshmallow
temptation, with the other 85 per cent becoming the people who lean over the
tracks to see if a train is coming. This test of "impulse control", one of Bar-On's
components of emotional intelligence, turned out to be the single most
important indicator for how well those kids adapted in terms of number of
friends and performance in school, according to Stein.

The Bar-On test itself consists of neither chocolate nor marshmallows, and
unlike some psychological exams, it's not designed to uncover nuts. Bar-On
and Stein see the test as a tool to create emotional profiles, which can be used
to match people to suitable careers or to identify and improve weak areas.
The test lists 152 statements, including "I like everyone I meet" and "I do
very weird things", which subjects judge themselves to agree or disagree
with on a five-point scale. The statements cover five areas: intrapersonal,
interpersonal, adaptability, stress management and general mood. Those
areas can then be further broken down. For example, general mood consists
of optimism and happiness. (Yours truly scored a full 20 points higher in
happiness than in optimism. I'm still pretty happy, but I doubt it will last.)

In developing the test, Bar-On administered it to more than 9,000

subjects in nine countries. The large pool includes enough journalists for a
comparison between purveyors of print versus broadcast news. "We found that
people in the electronic media tend to be more optimistic than those in the
print media," Stein said. That difference can be easily explained. A few years
back, this writer covered an auction of vintage Rolls-Royces and Bentleys for
another publication. A prominent television journalist, who is safer left
unidentified, also showed up. My optimism took a permanent hit that day, for
whereas I was scrambling for a story, he came to shop. Although he might have
a strong faith in the future, my broadcast brother could afford to be more lenient
with his impulse control: if he opted to eat his marshmallow, he could always afford
another Bentley-load.

Questions:

1. According to the passage, the EQ test

A. is administered by a non-profit organization .
 B. has been designed to discover people who are mentally
C. can influence one's mental health .
D. is available to paying individuals .
2. The marshmallow test showed that
A. most children could not resist the temptation of eating the
marshmallow.
B. the four-year-olds are better able to control their impulse than the
three-year-olds.
C. most children were eager to get on the train.
D. most children got a second marshmallow.
3.What is the purpose of the EQ test?
A. To tell people it's not enough to be smart .
B. To tell whether people are psychologically healthy .
C. To tell how well people can manage personal relationship and
stress.
D. To help people find good jobs .
4."I'm still pretty happy, but I doubt it will last." (Paragraph 3) Why does the
writer say that?
A. He scored high in general mood.
B. He is a pessimistic' Person.
C. He scored much higher in happiness than in optimism.
D. He does not manage stress well.
5."People in the electronic media tend to be more optimistic than people in
the print media." (Paragraph 4) According to the author, this is because TV
journalists are
A. wealthier.
B. less stressful.
C. more adaptable.
D. more prominent.

Exercise 6
Future of Historic Air Base
RAF Upper Heyford - once the heart of allied defence against nuclear attack by
the USSR - could become a Cold War 'museum'.
Historians want parts of the base to be preserved as a heritage centre that could
show future generations the struggle with Soviet communism 'in a way no
document can'.

Details of the latest recommendations for Heyford - now being called Heyford
Park - have been put forward by English Heritage which has called for measures
to prevent demolition of the 'irreplaceable' military remains.

Current thinking comes from a detailed assessment of Cold War infrastructure

across England by English Heritage experts. Keith Watson, the chief executive of
the North Oxfordshire Consortium who are to develop part of the site for housing,
said they were in full agreement with English Heritage's proposals.

He said: "We are quite content with what English Heritage is proposing. It has
always been part of our scheme to retain these structures in any event. "We are
working with English Heritage to agree a consistent plan for the buildings."

David Went, English Heritage inspector of ancient monuments, said many Upper
Heyford features exemplify historical aspects of national importance about the
Cold War.

"The sheer scale and bare functionality of the structures on the base can
illustrate for present and future generations, in a way no document can, the
reality of the struggle with Soviet Communism," he said.

"In our view much of this character would be lost by future ill-thought-out change
and there stands an opportunity to ensure this does not happen.

"We recognize that preservation of the whole base exactly as it stands today
may not be a realistic option but a sustainable future could be found which
balances the need for preservation against other needs."

Mr Went said the English Heritage view was that the future appearance of the
base should include the most significant monuments and should:

 keep the open character of the runway area without planting schemes
planned by developers
 keep a section of the main runway and the remainder as a grassed avenue
 provide all-weather access to the monuments, preferably by keeping
existing base taxiways and perimeter tracks, for visitors or other practical
use
  preserve the present landscape balance around the bomb bunkers and
quick reaction area.

The English Heritage study, submmitted to the Planning Inspectorate in advance

of the public inquiry into planning wrangles over the base which started at
Bodicote House yesterday, has revealed that much of the Heyford landscape
prior to becoming an airbase was open common or heathland - a feature
Cherwell District Council planners would like re-established as a local country
park.

The council aims to defend the accepted 1,000-home plan which the North
Oxfordshire Consortium of developers wishes to extend to over 5,000 homes.

Questions:
1. Why does English Heritage want to preserve the air base?
A. They believe it is still of military importance.
B. They think it can show young people something about history.
C. There hasn't been proper planning by developers.
2. What do the North Oxfordshire Consortium think?
A. They want to build more houses than originally planned
B. They say there is some possibility of keeping the base's original buildings.
C. They want to call the base "Heyford Park".
3. Which of these proposal does English Heritage oppose?
A. Planting trees where the runway is currently.
B. Making it easy for people to see the important military buildings.
C. Not destroying all of the runway.
4. Which would be the best sub-title to the article?
A. Fight Against Communism Not Over Yet.
B. Historians and Developers Clash Bitterly.
C. Fight to Preserve Historical 'Document'.

Exercise 7
A Siberian Winter

It was only minus 28 degrees Celsius when we landed in Irkutsk. But that was
cold enough to make breathing an effort - the air felt like ice as it scraped the
back of my throat. Five minutes later, I needed a second pair of gloves and
pulled my scarf tight over my nose and mouth. I was obviously a beginner at
this.

At the petrol station, Mikhail the attendant laughed when we asked if he wasn't
freezing. He'd spent the whole day outside with no more than his fur hat and a
sheepskin coat for warmth. It was mid-afternoon and icicles were hanging from
his moustache like Dracula's fangs. He said he never drank to stay warm - unlike
many others.

Vodka

There's a belief in Siberia that enough vodka will insulate you from the cold. It's
been proved tragically wrong in the past few weeks. Dozens of bodies of the
homeless or men walking drunkenly back from the pub were hauled out of the
snowdrifts, frozen or so badly frost-bitten that many will never walk again.

The local hospital in Irkutsk is overwhelmed. Ironically, it's the burns unit that's
taken all the frostbite victims - 200 of them in just two weeks in one town. Even
here, icicles are hanging down on the inside of the windows, though the heating
is on full power. The doctor was too busy performing amputations to talk to us.

Shortages

But we could hear the screams from the operating room. They'd run out of
anaesthetic after performing 60 amputations that week. The other patients could
hear it too, and one girl in the corridor, clinging to her mother for support, was
near to tears.

Nastya is only 16. Last week she missed her last bus home, so she walked
instead - seven kilometres through the snow, in temperatures of minus 40. She
had no gloves. Now her hands are bandaged and hang down uselessly. She'll find
out soon if they need to be amputated.

She was far from the worst case. In one bed, Nikolai Dobtsov lay quietly staring
at the ceiling. Underneath the sheets, blood was seeping through his bandages,
from where his feet and hands had been amputated the day before. He was a
truck driver, he explained, with a good job delivering wood - and recently there'd
been a lot of demand. So he'd set out to deliver a last load upcountry. The
weather forecast - just minus 25 in Irkutsk - seemed to suggest that the journey
was safe. It wasn't. His truck broke down miles from anywhere, and for 6
desperate hours he fought to repair the axle. He even greased his hands for
protection, and finally managed to get the truck going again. Somehow he found
the strength to drive himself back and straight to hospital, but it was already too
late.

I asked Nikolai what would happen to him now. He just laughed, and shrugged.
Nikolai has no wife or family in Irkutsk - and invalidity benefit is a pittance. Life in
an institution may be the best he can hope for, and he'll almost certainly never
work again.

Resilience

That incredible stoicism is everywhere. In Irkutsk at least, people seem simply to

accept that winter is harsh - and this one especially so. It is without doubt the
cruellest Siberian winter in living memory. Yet outdoors, everything appears to
function normally - even schools re-opened as the temperature rose briefly to
minus 25.

The trams and buses are back on the roads, though everyone drives slowly to
avoid skidding on the layers of ice below the grit. The main street bustles with
people wrapped in layers against the cold. But even indoors, the chill is
inescapable. After her shift as a tram conductor, Natasha Fillipova comes home
to a freezing house. She shows us the bedroom - where ice has built up on the
inside walls. She scrapes it off with her fingers, but that has little effect. One
night, Natasha says, she washed her hair before going to bed. When she woke
up, it was frozen solid to the wall. The children are doing their homework in the
bathroom - the only room warm enough to sit in. Natasha doesn't want to
complain. But she is angry with the state and the architects for building shoddy
houses.

The flats here are supposed to withstand up to minus 40 degrees. They don't,
and her children are ill with coughs and colds. Natasha's anger is brief, and she
seems faintly embarrassed about it. Siberians are used to cold weather, she
explains. Here, she tells us, people prefer to rely on themselves - and the
knowledge that eventually, spring will come.

Questions:
1. What do we learn in the opening paragraph?
A. The author arrived by bus.
B. The author wasn't accustomed to such cold.
 C. The author wished he had had another pair of gloves.
D. The author ate some ice when he arrived.

2. What is the local theory about vodka?

A. If you drink too much, you may never walk again.
B. If you don't drink it, you may lose your legs.
C. If you drink it, you may suffer less from the cold.
D. You shouldn't drink it if you are old.

3. Which sentence is true about the hospital?

A. It is too warm inside.
B. They don't have enough supplies and equipment.
C. The staff didn't want to talk to the journalist.
D. Most frost-bite victims need to have operations.

4. What happened to Nikolai?

A. He almost lost his hands.
B. He ignored the weather forecast.
C. He had a problem with his engine.
D. He had had to help himself

5. Houses in Irkutsk...
A. don't have separate bathrooms.
B. were built by private companies for profit.
C. are too cold if the temperature is less than -40ºC.
D. cause health problems for their residents.