Read the first two lines of texts A-E. Match the texts with text types 1-6. There is one extra text type.

1) travel writing 4) a children’s story

2) a news report 5) an autobiography

3) an article 6) a fictional diary

 

12. Read texts A-E. Which text would you most/ least like to continue reading.Why?

A. Once a year, around the beginning of December, the evening news bulletin would end with a seemingly insignificant item in which we saw a cargo ship, docked in a faraway port, being loaded with bananas, a Christmas present from our comrades in an exotic but friendly country. Over the next few weeks, there would be regular updates on the ship's progress on its journey to our shores, which my classmates and I would follow with great interest. But the fruit never seemed to make the final leg of their journey to the cheerless supermarket shelves in our little, provincial town and so it felt that we were destined never to discover what real bananas tasted like. We resigned ourselves to the fact that we just weren't worthy enough (after all, the Party leader had once famously said that we should use pickled cabbage instead of lemon to flavour our tea). And then, just before my twelfth birthday, the Party leader suddenly disappeared from the news bulletins and everything changed until, finally, my mother excitedly brought home a brown paper-bag of bananas. My uncle, who was old enough to remember the old days, showed me how to peel one. I remember being surprised at its grainy texture, as I bit it I was startled to find it was soft in the middle, my tongue tingled pleasingly with the creamy, intense banananess of the taste. Soon afterwards the street markets seemed to sell nothing but bananas, I was packed off to school each day with two bananas in my satchel and my parents seemed to grow restless and disillusioned.

Anna Zelmer

B. In the village square I came on a great studded door bearing the sign: 'Posada de Nuestra Senora'. I pushed the door open and entered a whitewashed courtyard hanging with geraniums and crowded with mules and asses. An old woman, crouching by the fire in the corner, was stirring soup in a large black cauldron, and as she seemed to be in charge I went up to her and made a sign for food. Without a word she lifted a ladleful of the soup and lifted it to my mouth. I tasted and choked; it was hot, strong, and acrid with smoke and herbs. I wiped my burnt mouth, nodded my head and said, 'Good,' in loud, clear English.

Supper was laid at last on the long wooden table set out under the open sky. When it was ready the innkeeper, with a sweep of his arm, invited me to join them. Carters and drovers gathered quickly round the table, and a girl dealt out loaves to each of us, and we ate the stew from a common dish, scooping it up with our bread. The old woman sat beside me and roared at me continuously, pinching my legs and thumping me in the belly and urging me to eat.

Supper was prolonged and noisy, and I didn't know whether it was night or morning. By now I was gorged with stew and warmed to idiocy by wine; I was the stranger, but I felt at home. In each face around me I seemed to recognise characters from my own village [in England]. I felt like a child crawling on the edge of some rousing family life which I had yet to grow to understand. And I think they felt it too, for they treated me like a child, grinning, shouting, and acting dumb-shows to please me.

Laurie Lee

C. 'Rabbit,' said Pooh to himself. 'I like talking to Rabbit. He talks about sensible things. He doesn't use long, difficult words, like Owl. He uses short, easy words like "What about lunch?!' and "Help yourself, Pooh." I suppose, really, I ought to go and see Rabbit.'

Pooh always liked a little something at eleven o'clock in the morning, and he was very glad to see Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and when Rabbit said, 'Honey or condensed milk with your bread?' he was so excited that he said, 'Both,' and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, 'But don't bother about the bread, please.'

And for a long time after that he said nothing... until at last, humming to himself in a rather sticky voice, he got up, shook Rabbit lovingly by the paw, and said that he must be going on.

'Well, good-bye, if you're sure you won't have any more.'

Is there any more?' asked Pooh quickly.

A. A. Milne

D. Sunday 5th November

Tom started saying he was too fat and was going on a diet. 'How many calories are you supposed to eat if you're on a diet?' he said.

'About a thousand. Well, I usually aim for a thousand and come in at about fifteen hundred.' I said, realising as I said it that the last bit wasn't strictly true.

'A thousand?' said Tom, incredulously. 'But I thought you needed two thousand just to survive.'

I looked at him nonplussed. I realised that I have spent so many years being on a diet that the idea that you might actually need calories to survive has been wiped out of my consciousness. Have reached point where believe nutritional ideal is to eat nothing at all, and that the only reason people eat is because they are so greedy they cannot stop themselves from breaking out and ruining their diets. 'How many calories in a boiled egg?' said Tom.'Seventy-five.''Banana?''Large or small?' 'Small.' 'Peeled?' 'Yes.'

'Eighty' I said, confidently. 'Olive?'

'Black or green?''Black.' 'Nine.'

'Box of chocolates?''Ten thousand, eight hundred and ninety-six.' 'How do you know all this?'

I thought about it. 'I just do, as one knows one's alphabet or times tables.'

'OK. Nine eights,' said Tom. 'Sixty-four.No, fifty-six.Seventy-two.' 'What letter comes before J? Quick.' 'P. L, I mean.'

Helen Fielding

E. So why does British home-cooking seem to compare so unfavourably with the cuisines of our European neighbours? It is as though our natural reserve, our dislike of showiness and distrust of spontaneity, is reflected in our predictable combinations of bland, cautious flavours. Garlic, for example, a staple of so many other cuisines, was shunned until relatively recently in Britain. MrsBeeton, the influential Victorian cookery writer, wrote that 'the smell of this plant is generally considered offensive and it is the most acrimonious in taste.' Similarly our overcooked vegetables and fondness for atrocious packaged foods are perhaps an expression of our 'could be worse/mustn't grumble' culture and our tendency, as George Orwell put it, 'to take our pleasures sadly'. 'I shouldn't really' we say instinctively, before shyly helping ourselves to anything which even vaguely suggests luxury or extravagance.

Terry Bleater