Singing in the plane
A 55-year-old British pilot sang throughout the night to keep from falling asleep and freezing to death after his plane crashed into a snow-covered forest in Labrador. Mr William Loverseed, of Wellington Gardens, Selsey, near Chichester, kept singing "All I Want is a Room Somewhere," over and over. "It was the most appropriate1 song I could think of," he said. Mr Loverseed was ferrying a single-engined Piper Cherokee from the United States to Britain for his employers, South Coast Aviation of Chichester. He ran into unexpected freezing rain which built up ice quickly on the wings and fuselage, forcing the aircraft down. He said: "I sat there wrestling with the controls2 until I hit something in the dark, and it was trees." His right ankle was broken by the impact and, unable to walk to safety, he squeezed into a warmer suit. "My main occupation the whole night was to keep awake so I would not freeze," he said. Sixteen hours later a Canadian armed forces helicopter heard signals from his emergency transmitter and picked him up. (from the Daily Telegraph) most appropriate1: best for that situation controls'-: things you use to make a machine stop, turn etc.
Match the words and phrases from the text (1-7) with their meanings (A-G). Example 1 C. 1. throughout A. water at ooc 2. keep from B. again and again 3. freezing to death C. for all of 4. over and over D. crash 5. ferrying E. avoid 6. ice F. dying of cold 7. impact G. taking
Snake!
When he was a young man the writer Roald Dahl went to work in Tanzania (then called Tanganyika). There he saw a fight to the death between Salimu, an African servant, and a deadly snake. One morning I was shaving myself in the bathroom of our Dar es Salaam house, and gazing out of the window into the garden. I was watching Salimu as he slowly raked1the gravel2on the front drive. Then I saw the snake. It was six feet long and thick as my arm and quite black. It was a mamba, and there was no doubt that it had seen Salimu and was gliding fast over the gravel straight towards him. I flung myself toward the open window and yelled in Swahili, "Salimu! Salimu! Beware huge snake! Behind you! Quickly quickly!" There was not much Salimu could do. He knew it was useless to run because a mamba at full speed could travel as fast as a galloping horse. It would reach him in another five seconds. I leant out of the window and held my breath. Salimu swung round and faced the snake. He crouched very low with one leg behind the other like a runner about to start hundred ard sprinfl, and he was holding the long rake out rn front of hrm. He raised it, but no higher than his shoulder, and he stood there for those long four or five seconds absolutely motionless4, watching the great black deadly snake as it glided so quickly over the gravel towards him. He waited until the very last moment when the mamba was not more than five feet away and then wham! Salimu struck first. He brought the metal prongs of the rake down hard right on to the middle of the mamba's back and he held the rake there with all his weight, leaning forward now and jumping up and down to put more weight on the fork in an effort to pin the snake to the ground. I saw the blood spurt where the prongs had gone right into the snake's body and then I rushed downstairs. Outside on the drive Salimu was still there pressing with both hands on the rake and the great snake was writhing and twisting5and throwing itself about, and I shouted to Salimu in Swahili, "What shall I do?" "It is all right now, bwana!" he shouted back. "I have broken its back and it cannot travel forward any more! Stand away, bwana! Stand well away and leave it to me!" Salimu lifted the rake and jumped away and the snake went on writhing and twisting but it was quite unable to travel in any direction. The boy went forward and hit it accurately and very hard on the head with the metal end of the rake and suddenly the snake stopped moving. Salimu let out a great sigh6 and passed a hand over his forehead. Then he looked at me and smiled. "Asanti, bwana," he said, "asanti sana," which simply means, "Thank you, bwana. Thank you very much."
(from Going Solo by Roald Dahl)
raked 1: A rake is a tool with a long handle and metal teeth like a comb. The teeth are called 'prongs'. To rake is to make things flat and smooth with a rake. gravel 2: small stones sprint 3: a short fast race absolutely motionless4: without moving at all writhing and twisting 5: turning its body sigh 6: the sound you make when you are sad, tired etc., by breathing out loudly
Put these sentences into the right order.
a. Salimu hit the snake on the back with his rake. b. Salimu smiled at Roald Dahl and thanked him. c. Roald Dahl ran to help Salimu. d. The snake saw Salimu and started moving towards him. e. Roald Dahl was shaving and watching Salimu at work. f. Salimu hit the snake on the head. g. Roald Dahl saw the snake and shouted to Salimu.
Queens of chess
Read this with a dictionary - but don't look up more than one or two words in any paragraph.
She's just turned 12, goes to a table tennis club every morning, likes pop music and is good, but not outstanding, at lessons. An ordinary girl, she would have no particular claim on history except that she plays chess better, by at least a year, than anyone of her age ever has done- including Kasparov, Fischer and Short. In an age which sometimes seems to produce chess prodigies off the assembly line, Judit Polgar of Hungary and her sisters, Zsofia and Zsuzsa, are changing people's ideas about women chess players. Judit qualified this year, at 11, for the international master's norm (one step below a grand master) at men's level, a performance which the Kasparovs and Shorts of this world did not achieve until they were 14 or 15. Zsofia, aged 13, is a phenomenon in her own right, having qualified as a grand master (female rank) and also beaten male grand masters. But they may be remembered most for changing a very old idea - that there are some things that women can never do as well as men. Klara, their mother, said that when she and her husband, Laszlo, a psychology lecturer, decided to encourage their children to do something well through early specialisation they hadn't thought of chess. That happened when their first child, Zsuzsa, was aged four and discovered some horse-like figures in a box. She dropped her other special interest, mathematics, and hasn't looked back since.
Laszlo has successfully tested his theory that women have been less good than men at chess only because of discrimination through social attitudes and lack of proper facilities and training. The success of the Polgar sisters, helped by a few other girl prodigies, has already dealt with one of the two remaining questions of chess - why women traditionally have been much less good than men. The other is whether computers will ever be able consistently to beat grand masters. They haven't yet, but they are learning fast.
(adapted from an article in the Guardian by Victor Keegan)
Rich man, poor man
Harold Albert, the richest man in the world, lives in the small town of Bird in Kansas, USA. At the age of 14 he began working in his parents' store. There he met his wife, Louie.
HAROLD: When we got married, my folks said we could have the running of the store with my sister. So we got married in the church in the morning, then after we'd had something to eat everyone together, then her and me and my sister, we went back to the store and we opened it up and it was business as usual for the rest of the day. And that's how it was, from that day onwards all we did was work. The only time we shut the store the whole year round was two hours at noon on Christmas Day, so we could eat our Christmas dinner. And people used to come by Christmas afternoon, they'd say "Where were you? I thought something was wrong. I was by an hour ago for some butter and the store was closed." LOUIE: Hard work but we loved it. HAROLD: Every minute.
(Then an oil company came looking for oiF.)
LOUIE: When the oil came into our lives, that was when all the headaches came too. HAROLD: One day they [the oil company] found they had a hole that had some oil. We had some little piece of land we owned ourselves out that way, and they said they'd do a test drill there too. And that one, the one on our land, before we knew what was happening, it was making not ten barrels a day but fifty barrels a day; every day, bang, bang, bang, just like that. So they sank another one on our land and then another one. Every single one of them produced oil. So that was it, there we were, we had a very big strike on our land. LOUIE: We didn't think that it was going to go on much longer. Some lived like it was going to go on for ever. But we lived just like we'd always lived. Then one day the local newspaper printed a story about it. Letters started to come, cables, long distance phone calls, it was like suddenly everybody in the world knew about it and was begging us for our help. Sad thing was you know, we reckoned some of the stories people told us about how much they needed money was true. But they just kept on and on coming, and how could you tell? Then one day someone said to us what we should do was think of something else instead to do with our money and throw all the letters in the fire. So that's what we did.
(It was Louie who decided what they could do with their money to help local people.)
something to do with our money, I've just been in the town to that old library, to get me a couple of books to read. You know what? I'm getting real tired of climbing up those library steps2 every time I go there: it bothers my knees. So why don't we give the town a proper decent library where folk can walk right on in and choose a book for themselves without having to climb all those steps?"
(So Bird now has a new library, but Harold and Louie live in the same small house they've always lived in. Their lives haven't changed and neither have they.)
LOUIE: He's just exactly what he always was, ever since I've first knowed him: a sweet, nice, gentle man.
(from an article by Tony Parker in The New Statesman)
steps 2: you walk up steps to reach a door above the ground, to get onto a bus etc.
Which is the best summary?
A. Harold and Louie worked very hard in a shop until they were rich enough to buy an oil company. Lots of people asked them for money after that so they built a library. Apart from that their lives haven't changed.
B. Harold and Louie lived ordinary lives until an oil company found oil on their land. They became very rich and had lots of letters asking for money. They decided it was better to make their own decision, and so they built a new library. Apart from that their lives haven't changed.
C. Harold and Louie lived like ordinary people, working hard at their jobs. One day an oil company found oil on their land and they became very rich. They gave money to people who asked for it and paid for new steps for the library. Now they have an easy life and live in a big comfortable house.
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LOUIE: "Harold," I said, "I've thought of an idea for
