Airbus Amber
READING MODEL 9
PART 1
Read the following text, then read the five statements. Some of these statements are
true according to the text, some of them are false. Write T for True or F for False in the
box next to each statement.
Walls and wall building have played a very important role in Chinese culture. These people,
from the dim mists of prehistory have been wall-conscious; from the Neolithic period – when
ramparts of pounded earth were used - to the Communist Revolution, walls were an essential
part of any village. Not only towns and villages; the houses and the temples within them were
somehow walled, and the houses also had no windows overlooking the street, thus giving the
feeling of wandering around a huge maze. The name for “city” in Chinese (ch’eng) means wall,
and over these walled cities, villages, houses and temples presides the god of walls and
mounts, whose duties were, and still are, to protect and be responsible for the welfare of the
inhabitants. Thus a great and extremely laborious task such as constructing a wall, which was
supposed to run throughout the country, must not have seemed such an absurdity.
However, it is indeed a common mistake to perceive the Great Wall as a single architectural
structure, and it would also be erroneous to assume that it was built during a single dynasty.
For the building of the wall spanned the various dynasties, and each of these dynasties
somehow contributed to the refurbishing and the construction of a wall, whose foundations
had been laid many centuries ago. It was during the fourth and third century B.C. that each
warring state started building walls to protect their kingdoms, both against one another and
against the northern nomads. Especially three of these states: the Ch’in, the Chao and the Yen,
corresponding respectively to the modern provinces of Shensi, Shanzi and Hopei, over and
above building walls that surrounded their kingdoms, also laid the foundations on which Ch’in
Shih Huang Di would build his first continuous Great Wall.
The role that the Great Wall played in the growth of Chinese economy was an important one.
Throughout the centuries many settlements were established along the new border. The
garrison troops were instructed to reclaim wasteland and to plant crops on it, roads and canals
were built, to mention just a few of the works carried out. All these undertakings greatly
helped to increase the country’s trade and cultural exchanges with many remote areas and
also with the southern, central and western parts of Asia – the formation of the Silk Route.
Builders, garrisons, artisans, farmers and peasants left behind a trail of objects, including
inscribed tablets, household articles, and written work, which have become extremely valuable
archaeological evidence to the study of defence institutions of the Great Wall and the
everyday life of these people who lived and died along the wall.
Airbus Amber
, Airbus Amber
1. Chinese cities resemble a maze due to the fact that the houses have no external
windows.
2. Constructing a wall that ran the length of the country was an absurdly laborious
task.
3. The Great Wall of China was built by the Ch’in, the Chao and the Yen.
4. Crops were planted along the canals.
5. The Great Wall helped build trade in China and abroad.
PART 2
Read the text and fill the gaps with the correct sentences A-H. Write the letter of the
missing sentence in the box in the gap. There are two extra sentences you will not need.
You can make me do it, but you can’t make me like it
A good news story about education? It sounds like an oxymoron, but blazoned on Monday's front
pages was the finding of a major new international survey that ‘UK pupils move close to top of world
class’, especially in reading. This will have been gratifying to a government for whom ‘education,
education, education’ increasingly seems to be a euphemism for ‘reading, reading, reading’. But such
singlemindedness has had other, unacknowledged consequences.
1.______________________.
Traditionalists, however, maintain that you're never too young to learn to read: on the contrary, the
earlier the better. Reading, and especially early reading, is considered so self-evidently good that
children are coaxed, pressed and, if required, bribed into submission.
2 _______________________. My own position has changed radically between my first and second
children. The first taught herself to read at the age of four. Thereafter she secreted books around
her bed like contraband, and had to be physically prised from them at the dinner table. When her
younger sister started school last year, I expected a repeat performance.
3 _______________________. Should I be vacuuming away her words, and pumping in someone
else's? Should I have been coercing her to try to read when she was plainly unwilling? I can coerce
when it’s necessary, but the thought of becoming a dictator in the matter of when she learned to
read seemed so awful that I decided to stop meddling altogether.
4. _______________________.
But in other schools there's no shortage of horror stories, like the parents of four-year-olds paying
for coaching to help them keep up with the fast readers. The mother of a four-and-a-half-year-old
was told that her son had to apply himself to reading because the school didn't want him to end up
at the bottom of the pile. Einstein may have learned to read only at 10, but today he'd be
stigmatised and in remedial class.
5 __________________________.
Airbus Amber
READING MODEL 9
PART 1
Read the following text, then read the five statements. Some of these statements are
true according to the text, some of them are false. Write T for True or F for False in the
box next to each statement.
Walls and wall building have played a very important role in Chinese culture. These people,
from the dim mists of prehistory have been wall-conscious; from the Neolithic period – when
ramparts of pounded earth were used - to the Communist Revolution, walls were an essential
part of any village. Not only towns and villages; the houses and the temples within them were
somehow walled, and the houses also had no windows overlooking the street, thus giving the
feeling of wandering around a huge maze. The name for “city” in Chinese (ch’eng) means wall,
and over these walled cities, villages, houses and temples presides the god of walls and
mounts, whose duties were, and still are, to protect and be responsible for the welfare of the
inhabitants. Thus a great and extremely laborious task such as constructing a wall, which was
supposed to run throughout the country, must not have seemed such an absurdity.
However, it is indeed a common mistake to perceive the Great Wall as a single architectural
structure, and it would also be erroneous to assume that it was built during a single dynasty.
For the building of the wall spanned the various dynasties, and each of these dynasties
somehow contributed to the refurbishing and the construction of a wall, whose foundations
had been laid many centuries ago. It was during the fourth and third century B.C. that each
warring state started building walls to protect their kingdoms, both against one another and
against the northern nomads. Especially three of these states: the Ch’in, the Chao and the Yen,
corresponding respectively to the modern provinces of Shensi, Shanzi and Hopei, over and
above building walls that surrounded their kingdoms, also laid the foundations on which Ch’in
Shih Huang Di would build his first continuous Great Wall.
The role that the Great Wall played in the growth of Chinese economy was an important one.
Throughout the centuries many settlements were established along the new border. The
garrison troops were instructed to reclaim wasteland and to plant crops on it, roads and canals
were built, to mention just a few of the works carried out. All these undertakings greatly
helped to increase the country’s trade and cultural exchanges with many remote areas and
also with the southern, central and western parts of Asia – the formation of the Silk Route.
Builders, garrisons, artisans, farmers and peasants left behind a trail of objects, including
inscribed tablets, household articles, and written work, which have become extremely valuable
archaeological evidence to the study of defence institutions of the Great Wall and the
everyday life of these people who lived and died along the wall.
Airbus Amber
, Airbus Amber
1. Chinese cities resemble a maze due to the fact that the houses have no external
windows.
2. Constructing a wall that ran the length of the country was an absurdly laborious
task.
3. The Great Wall of China was built by the Ch’in, the Chao and the Yen.
4. Crops were planted along the canals.
5. The Great Wall helped build trade in China and abroad.
PART 2
Read the text and fill the gaps with the correct sentences A-H. Write the letter of the
missing sentence in the box in the gap. There are two extra sentences you will not need.
You can make me do it, but you can’t make me like it
A good news story about education? It sounds like an oxymoron, but blazoned on Monday's front
pages was the finding of a major new international survey that ‘UK pupils move close to top of world
class’, especially in reading. This will have been gratifying to a government for whom ‘education,
education, education’ increasingly seems to be a euphemism for ‘reading, reading, reading’. But such
singlemindedness has had other, unacknowledged consequences.
1.______________________.
Traditionalists, however, maintain that you're never too young to learn to read: on the contrary, the
earlier the better. Reading, and especially early reading, is considered so self-evidently good that
children are coaxed, pressed and, if required, bribed into submission.
2 _______________________. My own position has changed radically between my first and second
children. The first taught herself to read at the age of four. Thereafter she secreted books around
her bed like contraband, and had to be physically prised from them at the dinner table. When her
younger sister started school last year, I expected a repeat performance.
3 _______________________. Should I be vacuuming away her words, and pumping in someone
else's? Should I have been coercing her to try to read when she was plainly unwilling? I can coerce
when it’s necessary, but the thought of becoming a dictator in the matter of when she learned to
read seemed so awful that I decided to stop meddling altogether.
4. _______________________.
But in other schools there's no shortage of horror stories, like the parents of four-year-olds paying
for coaching to help them keep up with the fast readers. The mother of a four-and-a-half-year-old
was told that her son had to apply himself to reading because the school didn't want him to end up
at the bottom of the pile. Einstein may have learned to read only at 10, but today he'd be
stigmatised and in remedial class.
5 __________________________.
Airbus Amber
