Reading Comprehesion

1. Read the following text and decide if the statements below are True or False. TICK your answer in the
appropriate box on the right.

MODERN-DAY MYSTERIES

Blue dogs and giant plastic figures. Unbelievable or fascinating? It seems everyone loves a good mystery and solving
them is fun − but do all mysteries have a solution?

Mystery blue dogs

It’s not every day you see bright blue dogs. When they started appearing in Mumbai in India, locals found it puzzling,
then worrying. A journalist posted photos on social media and the story quickly went viral. Soon, people from all over
the world wanted to know what had happened. Could someone have painted them? Was it a joke? Were they a new
species? It turned out that all the dogs were ‘street dogs’ without owners. At first, people thought that the dogs could
have been in a polluted river and this somehow turned them blue. However, nobody had ever seen dogs there. Then
locals noticed dogs on the land outside a dye factory a few kilometers away from the river. The dogs had managed to
get inside the fences. There were puddles of blue dye all around. It was very hot and the dogs must have rolled in the
water to cool off, leaving their fur blue. Luckily, the colour wasn’t permanent and the dogs were fine!

Giant man found on beach

Finding a plastic figure on a beach might not sound particularly curious, but when it’s 1.8 meters high, it is! When
people first saw the photos, they thought they weren’t real – but the figure, which looks like a giant Lego® man, is real.
It was found on a beach in Japan, and similar figures have appeared on beaches around the world, including the
Netherlands and the UK. It can’t be a dramatic advertising stunt, as some people thought, because Lego said they
didn’t create the figures. So, who is making them and why? One theory is that they might be the work of a Dutch artist
who calls himself ‘Ego Leonard’. He might have made the figures to protest about the amount of plastic in our oceans.
Leonard hasn’t confirmed if this is true. All the figures have the curious slogan ‘No Real Than You Are’ on them. What
does it mean? Did Leonard make the figures? Why? Nobody is sure – perhaps you will solve the mystery!

2. STATEMENTS TRUE FALSE

When a journalist posted photos of the blue dogs people from different
1)
countries became interested.

It was unlikely anything in the river made the dogs blue because no dogs
2)
were ever seen in the river.

3) Apparently, the dogs went in the water because they were thirsty.

4) The figures found on the beach were made to advertise a toy.

5) Ego Leonard may have been responsible for making the figures.

Read the text and the questions below. For each question (1-4) tick the correct letter (A-D).

Cycling to India

When I was 11, during a junior school leavers' assembly in front of all the mums and dads, my headmistress asked my
class what they wanted to do when they left school. Footballer, doctor, film star, politician, came the replies. My
answer? "I want to cycle around the world and raise money for charity." A big cheer resounded around the school hall.
"So cool."

Little did they know that 20 years later, I would be setting off on a 9,000-mile journey to India, on my own, carrying
everything I needed on my steel-framed bicycle, affectionately known as "Shirley". I would like to say it was planned to
the nth degree and that everything ran like clockwork. In reality, I was arrested twice, chased by wild dogs, beaten and
wined and dined by the mafia and attacked by bandits.
On my last day, I was cycling through the Bandipur wildlife park in southern India. My flowery bike wasn't great
camouflage and startled a number of elephants as I passed. They decided to charge. The advice is "if an elephant
charges you, stand your ground, and bow your head to show respect."

What tosh! With 30 tonnes of muscle and bone crashing towards me, destroying small trees and making the ground
vibrate under my feet, there was no way I was standing firm. I dropped my bike into third gear and rode as fast as
possible.

Another time I ran out of food and water in the desert and was woken one morning to find maggots in my hair and
beard. Yet the greatest memories are of so many wonderful people I met in every country, who invited me into their
homes to celebrate local festivals, play music, dance, sing, eat, and share each other's cultures, beliefs, history and
ways of life.

After six months' cycling, I rolled into Chembakolli, a tiny village, my final destination. It was my 31st birthday – 20
years since I had first dreamed up the idea. I was greeted by a carnival of people playing the drums, singing, cheering,
and waving banners saying "Happy birthday". All I could do was crouch down and cry tears of joy. I'd cycled 9,000
miles from England to India. I'd lived my dream.
1 When did the writer tell everyone what he wanted to do? Tick your choice

A During a class talk. A

B Before he went to school. B

C During school meeting. C

D After he left school. D

Tick your
2 Why did the elephants run after the bike?
choice

A The elephants liked the flowers. A

B The bike surprised them. B

C They didn't recognize it. C

D They don't like bikes. D

Tick your
3 How did he get to safety?
choice

A He went faster on his bike. A

B He stood his ground. B

C He ran away. C

D He dropped the bike. D

Tick your
4 How does the writer find himself in the final paragraph? choice

A Being attacked by bandits. A

B Spending time with locals in the country. B

C Learning about what life is about. C

D Running out of food and water in the desert. D

3. Read the following text and decide if the statements below are True or False. Write T for true or F for false

KARAOKE CARS…
In the next few years you’ll be riding the digital highway in a networked car.’ Ian Sample reports
MUSIC ON THE MOVE

A good car journey needs decent music. But how do you know which tunes you’ll want to hear a hundred miles down
the road? With the Internet car it’s not a problem – whatever you want will be waiting for you at the next signpost.
Just get it as you go by. Turning signposts into drive-through jukeboxes is the brainchild* of Hiroyuki Morikawa at the
University of Tokyo. He’s looking forward to the day when drivers will be able to request files on the move and receive
them just a few minutes later over a wireless network. The music will be requested by mobile phone and sent to ‘hot
spots’ which are on the car’s route. When the car passes a ‘hot spot’, the music will be sent to it.

SINGALONG JAM

Thanks to Internet technology, Tokyo’s traffic jams are going to be transformed into wild karaoke parties. According to
Masao Nakagawa of Keio University in Yokahama, high speed radio links aren’t just for connecting cars to the Internet.
They could also let drivers share information with vehicles nearby. ‘You could have a very good data link between a
few cars,’ says Nakagawa. ‘You could arrange it so that people in the middle car hear the people in front through their
front speakers and the people behind through their rear speakers.’ Being in radio contact with other drivers might
make it easier for people to express their road rage, but Nakagawa sees a far more entertaining use for the
technology. ‘We have this think called karaoke. You could have everyone joining in,’ he says. ‘It’d be very good for
keeping you awake on a long drive.’

ROVING REPORTER

The networked car isn’t only about getting information to the driver. Hideki Sunahara and is colleagues at Keio
University say that vehicles should be talking back to the Internet. ‘Information-flow must be two-way,’ says Sunahara.
Cars could use sensors to collect information about weather of traffic and send them to the Internet. There are eighty
million cars in Japan and they could generate up-to-the-minute weather and traffic reports. In a recent test,
Sunahara’s group fitted cars with equipment which fed back information on its position, speed and the state of its
windscreen wipers. ‘With this information you can work out where the traffic is moving and where it’s not moving at
all.’ The windscreen wipers show clearly where it is raining and where it is not. - brainchild* a brilliant idea.

ARTIST PETER FULLER TALKS ABOUT HIS HOBBY

I’m in my sixties now, but I started cycling when I was a kid. In the summer my friends and I would ride our bikes into
the woods and see who was brave enough to go down steep hills or do big jumps. The bikes we had then weren’t built
for that, and often broke, so I used to draw pictures of bikes with big thick tyres that would be strong enough for what
we were doing. They looked just like modern mountain bikes. However, it wasn’t until many years later that someone
actually invented one. By the 1980s, they were everywhere.

At that time I was into skateboarding. I did that for a decade until falling off on to hard surfaces started to hurt too
much. Mountain biking seemed a fairly safe way to keep fit, so I took that up instead. I made a lot of friends, and got
involved in racing, which gave me a reason to train hard. I wanted to find out just how fit and fast I could get, which
turned out to be fairly quick. I even won a couple of local races.
In the end I stopped racing, mainly because I knew what it could mean to my career if I had a bad crash. But I still like
to do a three-hour mountain bike ride every week. And if I’m out cycling in the hills and see a rider ahead, I have to
beat them to the top. As I go past I imagine how surprised they would be if they knew how old I am.

GAME OF THRONES STUDIO TOUR

Over the past decade, Northern Ireland has welcomed fans from around the globe to the “real-world Westeros” where
they can explore the stunning landscapes, coastlines and mountains that have featured in the show’s most
unforgettable scenes.

Now Linen Mills Studios, once a closed film set, is inviting you to stand in the very same spot where some of those
scenes were filmed. It's time to step inside the Seven Kingdoms and make your own personal journey through the
fantasy world that captured the imaginations of millions.

The world's only official Game of Thrones Studio Tour in Northern Ireland transports fans to the heart of the Seven
Kingdoms.

Game of Thrones® has aired in over 207 countries, broken ratings records and over eight seasons it has became one of
the most iconic series in television history. Since the very first episode, Northern Ireland was the "Home of Thrones" –
the filming location for many of the show’s most memorable moments.

Game of Thrones Studio Tour invites you to explore behind the scenes of Westeros. Based at the original filming
location at Linen Mill Studios in Banbridge, Northern Ireland, the unique experience features imagery, sets, original
props and costumes – all the things that are guaranteed to excite both passionate fans and TV buffs alike.

The self-guided tour allows you to walk through the original sets, as well as getting up close to the famous costumes,
props and set pieces. Step inside the iconic Great Hall at Winterfell where Jon Snow was proclaimed the “King in the
North,” see Daenerys Targaryen’s imposing Dragonstone throne, and marvel at the intricate detail in the Hall of Faces.

You can even test your own acting skills in an interactive screen experience before moving on to discover the set
design and visual effects that brought Game of Thrones® to life. You’ll find it all here, dragons' eggs, Valyrian steel and
even insights into how those mythical characters were created using makeup and prosthetics.

• You must book tickets in advance. Tickets will be scanned on entry so make sure you have them printed out
or available to be scanned on your mobile device.
• The Studio Tour is located between Dublin and Belfast and coach transfers from either city can be included
in your ticket purchase.
• There is no car parking onsite so you’ll need to park in the complimentary Studio Tour Car Park nearby and
then catch the shuttle bus to the tour entrance.
 • A visit to the studio tour will generally take 2-3 hours but as the tour is self-guided, you can spend longer, if
you prefer.

MY TWO CATS

Misha and Masha are nine years old. Because I work for the British Council and I've worked in lots of different parts of
the world, they're quite international cats. They were born in St Petersburg, Russia in the middle of winter; and St
Petersburg winters are very, very cold. It's kind of minus 30 degrees, and some friends of mine found these two tiny
little kittens in the snow and brought them in and then sent an email around the office saying 'Who can look after
these two cats?' And my wife and I already had two cats at the time, from Indonesia, and we thought can we ... have
we got room ... can we adopt these two new cats? And then, when we saw them, they were just so cute that we
couldn't say no. So we brought them home and so they lived with us for two years in Russia. And then we moved back
to the UK and they had to stay in France for six months just to check that they didn't have rabies before they were
allowed into the UK. And then they lived with us in Cambridge and we had a cat flap so they used to wander about it.

When it came to leave the UK, we discovered that they'd in fact had about five or six different homes and had made
friends with all kinds of people along the street and used to go and get fed and get stroked and cuddled by all of our
neighbours. Then we moved to Mexico and we had a house with a garden so we had to build a special fence that kind
of curled in on itself so that the cats would climb up and then feel that they were starting to fall down so they'd climb
back down again.

And then we moved to Guangzhou this time last year. So now they are 'flat cats'. They've not been squashed, they just
live in our flat, live in our apartment and they don't go out. They just go out onto the balcony. But the interesting thing
is that their personality seems to have changed in every country they've lived in. So Masha used not to be very friendly
towards people. As she's got older, she's now quite a cuddly cat. And they've adapted to living, to being kind of free to
roam about and then being in the garden and now they seem to be very happy just being in a flat.

.
Verb Tenses

1. Read the following sentences and use the verbs in brackets in the appropriate tense.
1. Is this fish? It ________________________________ (look) like chicken to me.
2. This word ___________________________________________ (pronounce) the same as “air”.
3. Nowadays, more and more people ______________________ (subscribe) to streaming platforms.
4. As soon as I parked the car, big hailstones _____________________________(start) to fall down.
5. I’m a teacher so I’m used to _________________________________________ (speak) in public.
6. David suddenly realised that he ____________________________ (leave) his laptop on the train.
7. If I visited Mexico City, I _______________________________ (like) to see Frida Kahlo museum.
8. While I _____________________________ (walk) to school, I found a $100 note on the sidewalk.
9. I’m afraid I won’t be able to go with you. I ________________________ (work) this time tomorrow.
10. The children’s clothes are dirty because they ____________________ (play) football in the mud.
11. _____________________ (you/come) to my party this weekend?
12. By the morning the streets were all wet because it _____________________ (rain) all night.
13. By the end of this week, we _____________________ (move) all your things to the new room, I promise.
14. She wanted to know why he _____________________ (leave) the show so suddenly.
15. Here are your tickets. The movie ______________________ (start) at 8 p.m.
16. Look over there, that man seems _____________________ (have) a problem with his car...
17. The cameraman is exhausted because he _____________________ (film) the bears all day.
18. While I _____________________ (examine) its head, the reptile began to struggle violently.
19. This time tomorrow we _____________________ (perform) our very first live show!
20. Record producers _____________________ (always/make) promises they can’t keep.
21. Joe and Dan __________________________________ (be) classmates ever since they
22. I _______________________ (be) a member of this gym for six months.
23. Everyone shouted when Messi ______________________________ (score) the goal.
24. It would have been very difficult for me to succeed if you ___________________ (not support) me.
25. I remember ____________________ (read) Alice in Wonderland for the first time. It’ blew my mind.
26. I promise I _______________________________ (text) you when I finish my class.
27. If you were the mayor of your town, what ______¬¬__________ you ________¬-____¬¬___ (change)?
28. I don’t think my boss would agree ____________________ (give) me some time off work.
29. In this photo, I can see teenagers playing volleyball in what ___________ (look) like a school hall.
30. I____________________________ (train) for months now. I’m confident I can run a good race.
31. Robin is an archeologist. She’s amazing at ______________ (discover) the meaning of ancient writings on stone.

Use of English

Vocabulary: read the following sentences and circle the option that fits best, a, b, c or d.
1) That was a really tiring _____________. I need to rest now.
a) arrival b) travel c) take off d) Journey
2) Romeo and Juliet fell in love _____________.
a) out of sight b) at first sight c) by sight d) lost sight
3) Do you want a __________ ticket or a single ticket?
a) parking b) train c) return d) Local
4) __________ holidays give you the flexibility to travel easily and cheaply.
a) Backpacking b) Package c) Budget d) Tour
5) I’d like to __________ a living doing something I love.
a) do b) make c) have d) Take
6) Is there any way I can make __________ for what I did?
a) after b) to c) in d) Up
7) If you come to Salta, eating empanadas is not only a good idea. It’s a ___.
a) miss b) worth c) must d) Should
8) After walking in the ______, I was soaked to the bone.
a) howling wind b) heavy rain c) thick fog d) strong gust
 9) Argentina and Brazil share a jaguar _______ action plan.
a) renovation b) restoration c) preservation d) Conservation
10) I bought some wonderful things at a _____ shop for my friends back home at the end of my holiday trip.
a) tourist b) cosy c) national d) souvenir

Writing

Using the word provided in parentheses, complete the second sentence with no more than five words so that it has a
similar meaning to the first sentence. DO NOT CHANGE the word given.

1) At first, I had problems with anxiety at work. But now things are different. (USED)
I __________________________________with anxiety at work. But now things are different.
2) “We should try the new Chinese restaurant in King Street,” said Sue. (SUGGESTED)
Sue _____________________________________ the new Chinese restaurant in King Street.
3) “Don’t be late,” mum told me. (ASKED)
Mum __________________________________________________________________ late.
4) She tried to stay cheerful although she felt sick. (SPITE)
She tried to stay cheerful __________________________________________________ sick.
5) We should get back inside. It’s starting to rain. (BETTER)
We __________________________________________________ inside. It’s starting to rain.
6) If you work harder, you’ll get better results. (THE)
The harder _____________________________________ grades you’ll get.
7) It took a long time for them to prepare the food. (SPENT)
They _____________________________________ the food.
8) Has someone dyed your hair for you? (HAVE)
_____________________________________ your hair dyed?
9) I’d like you to be more honest with me. (WISH)+
_____________________________________ more honest with me.
10) ‘What did you buy at the supermarket?’ he asked. (WHAT)
He wanted to know _________________________________________ at the supermarket.
11) We should book the tickets now to secure good seats for the movie. (BETTER)
We ________________________________¬______ now to secure good seats for the movie.
12) They postponed the match due to the bad weather. (PUT OFF)
The match ______________________________________________ due to the bad weather.

13) Can I suggest that you go to bed early tonight? You’ll feel better in the morning. (TRY)
14) Why don’t you ____________________ to bed early tonight? You’ll feel better in the morning.

15) We are sorry, but our captain is injured and he won’t be able to play in the final. (REGRET)
16) We ________________ you that our captain is injured and he won’t be able to play in the final.

17) The government should do something about the food and housing crisis. (TIME)
18) It’s ____________________________________ something about the food and housing crisis.

1. You want to invite your friend to a new café you like. Write an email to your friend, including the following
information:
 The date and time you’d like to meet up.
 The location.
 Tell your friend why they might like to go there.
 Write 35 – 50 words
2. In your English class you have been talking about camping holidays. Now your English teacher has asked you
to write an essay.
o Now your teacher has asked you to write an essay about the following statement: “There are both
pros and cons to going on a camping holiday.”
o Write your essay in 120 - 180 words.
3. A friend invited you to attend a costumes party. Write a message to your friend. You
should…
 politely refuse the invitation
• give reasons why you cannot join them
• invite your friend to do something else
• write 35 – 50 words
4. This is part of a letter you have received from a friend… (write 12-180 words)
‘For my next holiday, I want to visit your area.
Do you think it’s better to spend the holidays in the city or the countryside? Which would you recommend
and why?’

5) You are planning to watch the Boca vs. River football match at home this weekend and want to
invite your friend. Write a message to your friend.
In your message, you should…
  invite your friend to watch the match
 suggest a time to meet
 say who else is coming
 suggest something to bring
 write 35-50 words
6) You have seen this post on a fitness website:
We’re looking for articles about health and fitness. What kinds of things motivate you to do
exercise? Write an article telling us about them, and explain why they encourage you to work
out. We’ll publish the best articles in the website. Write your article in 120–180 words, using
an appropriate style.