Reading in our life

Multiple Choice Test

Прочитайте текст и выполните тест. В каждом из 8 заданий только один ответ правильный.

My husband hasjust returned from a trip to Iceland. He enthused about the natural and man-made wonders of the place: the geysers; the ancient glaciers; the fact that a large beer costs $10 a glass. However, it was when he told me that 99 per cent of the Icelandic population are literate that I got excited. If Icelandic schools can produce such spectacular results, why can't ours in Britain? According to the Basic Skills Agency, one in six people in Britain has literacy problems. I think we must ask why so many children are leaving school (after eleven years of compulsory education) unable to read and write their own language satisfactorily. I was once told by a highly literate woman that: 'Reading and writing isn't everything. We should learn to value people for themselves, they have other skills.' We were in a literacy centre at the time, full of adults struggling to learn their own language. A couple of people were in their seventies and had spent a lifetime covering up the fact that they couldn't read or write. Some of their excuses were creative. One man wrapped a bandage around his right hand whenever he had an official form to fill in. Other, more common, excuses are: 'I've forgotten my glasses' or 'My handwriting is bad'.
I was a late reader myself, so I can empathize with the terror of looking down at a page full of incomprehensible black squiggles. I used to dread being asked to read by the teacher in my infant school (who was so unkind that my brain turned to porridge whenever I saw her). I learned to read during an absence from school. I was away for three weeks with mumps. My mother bought Richmal Crompton's Just William books, and I was so captivated by the ink drawings that I wanted to know what the captions said underneath. My mother read them to me, and somehow, by the time I went back to school, I could read the books myself.
For those of you who don't know the William books, I'd better explain their attraction. They start in the 1930s when William Brown is an eleven-year-old boy. He lives in a village in the country with his family. His mother, Mrs Brown, is a long-suffering woman prone to headaches. Mrs Brown can't quite bring herself to think badly of William, though God knows there is daily evidence that he is the son from hell. Mr Brown is a permanently angry man. Unlike his wife, he is convinced that William is the spawn of the devil.
William leads a gang called 'The Outlaws', but he is not a wicked boy. The books are wonderful and have a rich, sophisticated vocabulary. The reader sees the adult world through William's eyes and, like him, finds it a baffling, hypocritical place.
William Brown hated school and was constantly in trouble. And, judging by the letters he wrote (ransom notes, usually), he struggled with his spelling and punctuation. My literary hero never grew up, but I hope that a good teacher out there in Fictionland persevered with him and that he left school able to read and write. Because I fear that William's 'other skills' - disorderliness, hand-to-hand fighting - would not have adequately equipped him for adult life. Unless, of course, he wanted to join the foreign legion, whose only entry qualification is that applicants must have hands and legs.
Good teachers should be honoured by society. We should pay them more and stop being jealous of their long holidays. Boring, inadequate teachers should be sifted out before they leave teacher-training college. On no account should their fatal influence be allowed to pollute the lives of small children. One of my daughters wept every night for weeks because she was afraid of the 'shouting' teacher.
Millions of jobs have disappeared now, and will never return. However, unemployed people remain, and it's only fair that if they are to stay at home in, they should be allowed to pick up a book and be able to read it.

    Инструкция

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Прочитайте текст на английском языке про Содружество наций и выполните TRUE / FALSE тест. Если предложение в задании соответствует по смыслу содержанию текста, выберите TRUE. В противном случае нажимайте FALSE. Если ответ правильный, в строке Your score появится заработанный балл. Все кнопки, которые вы используете, останутся на месте, остальные исчезнут. Проанализируйте свои результаты. Чтобы повторно выполнить тест, перезагрузите страницу.

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Reading test: National Parks

Подберите заголовок к каждому тексту. Из 7 предложенных два заголовка лишние.
Такой вид тестового задания называется  Matching (установление соответствия) и встречается в материалах OГЭ, ЕГЭ и  ВПР. Впечатайте номера текстов рядом с буквами (смотрите таблицу ниже), лишние заголовки обозначьте словом 'extra" и нажмите на check, чтобы увидеть свой результат. 

A. The Hottest place in the World.
B. Mystery people.                   
C. Isn’t it great.
D. The biggest trees.
E. Death valley.
F. Rock art.
G. Fantastic plants.

1. Going to this place once meant danger and even death. It's the hottest place in the United States and summer temperatures there can reach 54 degrees C! Today, it is a national park and thousands of people drive there (in air-conditioned comfort, of course) to enjoy the beauty of this strange land.
There are lots of ghost towns in this place. In the 1800s people streamed here looking for gold and silver. The terrible heat combined with hard work made people leave the towns. Today, you can visit these eerie ghost towns and look inside old houses, prisons and banks to see how people lived back then.

2. The Redwood National Park in California is home to the oldest trees in the world. One of them, called General Sherman, is more than 3,000 years old. It's about 84m tall.
The Saguaro National Park in Arizona is the only place in the United States where you can find the magnificent saguaro cactus. It's one of the slowest-growing plants -it takes seventy-five years before it even grows its first branch!

3. The Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado is famous for its 'cliff dwellings'. The Anasazi Indians, who lived there over a thousand years ago, built many houses, both underground and on the tops of the cliffs. For some unknown reason, the Anasazi Indians disappeared suddenly and mysteriously in 1300 AD.

4. In the Capitol Reef National Park in Utah you'll see lots of beautiful cliffs. Many of them are covered with petroglyphs (rock carvings) and pictographs (rock paintings). They were made by the Fremont Indians, who -just like the Anasazi - mysteriously disappeared in 1300 AD.

5. It is one of the true natural wonders of the world. It makes up most of the Grand Canyon National Parkand millions of tourists visit it every year.
The Grand Canyon is over 320 km long and up to 6 km deep. The top and the bottom of the canyon have very different weather and vegetation. In fact, going from the top to the bottom is somewhat like going from Canada to Mexico.There are signs that people lived in the Grand Canyon 4,000 years ago.

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