Муниципальное бюджетное общеобразовательное учреждение средняя школа № 2











СБОРНИК ЗАДАНИЙ ДЛЯ ПОДГОТОВКИ К ЕГЭ ПО АНГЛИЙСКОМУ ЯЗЫКУ:
Раздел 2 (чтение)





составитель: учитель английского языка
1 категории Звонкова Татьяна Юрьевна





Смоленск 2021










Пояснительная записка


Данное методическое пособие содержит 10 текстов с заданиями для подготовки к выполнению раздела 2 ЕГЭ по английскому языку (чтение). Тексты будут полезны для обогащения словарного запаса учащихся. Задания после текстов направлены на тренировку понимания прочитанного, развития способности извлекать нужную информацию из текстов.
Материал для упражнений взят из художественных произведений современных английских авторов (см. список источников) уровня B 2.















Text № 1

And the third time she met him, the blessed third time as he said later, because blessing always comes the third time round, was in the factory. It was such a surprise to see him there and she could see from his sly, pleased smile that it was no coincidence. He had taken a job there because he wanted a rest from the sea, he said. He was in Exeter to stay a few days with a friend and was having such a good time that he thought he would stay on for a while. In the meantime he took a job in the factory because a person had to work or become a burden on someone else. He spent so much time hanging around where Maryam was working in the line that the supervisor told him off in the end, but he still came to talk to her.
The supervisor was a thin weasly man who strode about querulously, looking for provocation and bickering with everyone. Abbas was an immediate provocation to him, and it took a day or two before Abbas learned to evade his attentions. His work was supplying several of the lines with what they needed, so he could roam about whenever he was not in demand, charming the women and keeping out of the way of the supervisor. Afterwards he walked her home, still talking, making her laugh, flattering her outrageously. She knew she was being courted and she lay awake in the dark afterwards, thrilled by what it meant. [….].  Maryam would have preferred to stop her memories there for a while, to linger over the image of the Abbas she had just met, but she could not supress the presence of Ferooz in the vicinity. She was still living with Ferooz and Vijay at the time, and they did not like what was going on with Abbas. At first they did not like the idea of a boyfriend. Then they did not like his age, old enough to be her father. He is twenty-eight, she told them, which is what he had told her. Then they did not like that he was a sailor. “They are wild, irresponsible people, Vijay said. Drunkards. He’s just using you. There’s only one thing men like him think about”.
It was a terrible evening. She was supposed to meet him at the cinema but they would not let her go out, talking at her with such alarm that she dared not move. The next morning, before anyone was up, she collected a few clothes in a carrier bag and went to him, to Abbas, to where he was staying with his friend. He must have guessed that she would come, that she had not been allowed to come the previous evening. He was standing at the window, so early in the morning, looking out for her, and as soon as he saw her, he ran downstairs to let her into the flat. ‘What happened to you?’ he asked, pulling her into the house and shutting the door gently so as not to wake up his friend. ‘I thought . . . I thought you no longer wanted to see me. ‘They wouldn’t let me come,’ she said, thrilled, despite the tension of the moment, to see him so agitated. She told him about the arguments and the abuse, and he said let’s get out of this place, and she thought fine. She was happy to go far away from the mess, get away, leave it behind. She did not know if she had any rights, or if Ferooz and Vijay could have her brought back. So when Abbas said, Yallah, let’s get out of here, she said count me in, I’m coming. It felt glorious, not to stop and think, not to go back to the belittling life she was used to.  She had thought of dying when she saw his collapsed body by the door, his dying, her own dying. Later, his collapse made her think of him gone, and then of her own life, of its beginnings and its endless furtive turnings. It was Ferooz who had told her the story of her arrival in the world, the story of her beginnings. She was found outside the casualty doors at Exeter Hospital, an abandoned baby. A night-duty porter, whose name nobody bothered to remember, stepped outside to see the dawn and to smoke a cigarette, and saw a bundle at his feet. It was wrapped in a cream-coloured crocheted shawl and had a brown envelope pinned to it like a delivery address or a label. When he saw that the bundle was a baby, the night-duty porter may have smiled or he may have been uncertain whether he should pick it up and take it inside in the warmth, or whether to call someone who would know exactly what to do. The nurses sometimes became annoyed when the porter tried to help, as if he might break something, or hurt the patient, or just generally be uncouth.
He put his cigarette away without lighting it and went in to tell the other porter on duty. They called the duty Staff Nurse, who swept up the bundle and hurried inside with it, and Maryam expected that the nurse gave the porters a rebuking glance and that they exchanged a look at the fuss she was making. She was tiny when she made this dramatic arrival, weighing just over four pounds and was no more than two or three days old. The doctor who examined her said that she had been well looked after. Her mother was possibly a teenager, the doctor said, to judge from the size of the baby, but that was only a guess. Maryam wondered what faces the doctor and the Staff Nurse would have made at each other as they shared this information. What word would have described a girl like her mother at that time: scrubber, slag, slut? She was not told that kind of detail, and she had no choice but to add in some extra strokes of her own to fill in the picture. She was not sure about the cream-coloured crocheted shawl, for example, whether that was there in the story she was told or whether she added it because that was what she imagined an abandoned baby would be bundled up in. She had a cream-coloured crocheted shawl for her own babies, and sometimes thought my mother as she handled it, and felt tender towards the absent one. In the meantime, while the doctor continued his examination of the baby, the Staff Nurse called the police in case the mother was still nearby. Also, she did not think anyone should touch the envelope in case there was some evidence that would be useful to the police. One could not be sure what horror lay behind such cases. It was most likely that the mother had relinquished her baby out of the shame of being unwed, or out of desperation at the thought of a despised and lonely motherhood, but it was just possible that the baby had not been left by the mother but by a relative, or by someone who had harmed the mother. In any case, whoever had done it, it was a crime. Offences against the Person Act 1861, Ferooz told her. She had looked it up.
Last gift (A. Gurnah)

1) From the first paragraph we knew that Abbas began to work to the factory because he
a) decided to give up his job in the navy.
b) wanted to marry Maryam.
c) wanted to change his job for a while and get some money.
d) treated work conditions in the factory quite comfortable.

2) From the second paragraph we understood that Abbas
a) was a hard-working and responsible employee.
b) didn’t treat his work seriously.
c) stole things from the factory.
d) got a promotion very quickly.

3) Maryam’s brothers didn’t like Abbas because
a) he was a poor.
b) he was married.
c) they didn’t believe in his honesty towards girls.
d) he had some illnesses.

4) Maryam didn’t go to the cinema with Abbas because
a) she had to work that evening.
b) her brothers didn’t allow her to go.
c) she didn’t have a suitable clothes.
d) she was under the weather

5) What does the word belittling mean
a) underrated
b) interesting
c) hard
d) dangerous
6) From the story we knew that Maryam was
a) born in a rich family
b) got education in a private college
c) was found on the steps of a hospital
d) was brought by her grandparents

7) Why they decided to call the police?
a) to try to find the baby’s relatives
b) to catch the criminal who stole the baby
c) to bring the baby back home
d) to send her to the orphanage
















TEXT № 2
Manhood arrived largely unremarked: no slaying of a ram, no staff and scroll and the command to go seek God and fortune. There were occasional jokes about finding me a wife. My father made the jokes, my mother scotched them with a fierce look. The boys at school knew that they were now men. If we could, we refused to obey a teacher who commanded too brusquely. We all began talking seriously about the future.
Independence was just round the corner, and we spoke of the opportunities that it would bring to us. That was not the way it turned out, and I think we knew that even as we deluded ourselves with visions of unity and racial harmony. With our history of the misuse and oppression of Africans by an alliance of Arabs, Indians and Europeans, it was naïve to expect that things would turn out differently. And even where distinctions were no longer visible to the naked eye, remnants of blood were always reflected in the division of the spoils of privilege. As the years passed, we bore with rising desperation the betrayal of the promise of freedom. After three years of independence, it was clear that the future had to be sought elsewhere. On the verge of leaving school, I lay in wait for my father one afternoon. I had to wait for him to rise from his nap, wash and get changed. It was late by the time he was ready, looking smart and carrying a subtle scent of prosperity. He stood smiling for a while, repeating the word England softly. I thought he would laugh and walk away, throwing an apt proverb over his shoulder. ‘Are you thinking of a scholarship?’ he asked at last. I nodded. He smiled and shook his head. ‘You won’t get it,’ he said. I nodded. He sat down and crossed his legs, leaning back in the chair, chin in hand. Since independence he had found himself an office job in the Ministry of Works. He had recast himself as a respectable and relatively eminent member of the community. He had not abandoned his old friends entirely, but now saw them discretely and less regularly. He dressed the part now and perfumed himself with sandalwood. He still chased whores, though, and still staggered home drunk on some nights. We were sitting in the guest room, which I can never dissociate from Said’s death, our legs almost touching. He carefully brushed dust off his cuffs, sighed patiently and raised interrogative eyebrows at me. ‘So . . . where will you get the money?’ he asked. ‘This government won’t give it to you, be you as clever as the devil. They don’t waste their money on Arabi rangi rangi. Unless you want to go to Cuba to learn to be a freedom fighter. Or you want to go to Bulgaria to learn Esperanto. How will you get there?’ ‘I can find a job when I get there,’ I said. ‘Work and study.’ ‘And I can put my head in a bucket of water and gurgle,’ he said. ‘But where will that get me? You don’t know how hard these things are. I asked you how will you get there?’ He looked at me expectantly but I said nothing. How did I know how I would get there? ‘I would find a way’.
He made an impatient clucking noise. ‘You have to be very tough for this kind of thing,’ he said. I nodded meekly. I was relieved that he had not laughed me out of the house, or accused me of abandoning them. I suppose I had also thought that he would be angry when he found out, and I had wanted to get the unpleasantness over with. So I was prepared to listen dutifully to any advice. He grinned at me and shook his head. The dust was beginning to settle on his cuffs again. The screams of children playing outside came in through the open window. The heat was coming in waves off the whitewashed walls. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said.
Memory of departure (A. Gurnah)























From the first paragraph we knew that the boy’s mother
was a rude woman
didn’t like the idea of her son’s marriage
had a successful career
had a constant lack of money

What problems does the author describe in the second paragraph?

hard work conditions of Africans.
the inequality of people with different colour of skin.
a low level of education of Africans.
the pressure of Africans by other nations.

What does the phrase Independence was just round the corner mean?
The independence was illusive.
The independence was in the nearest future.
The independence has finished.
The independence is a myth.

The boy’s father was

unemployed
a lucky businessman
a respectable member of the community
a caring parent
5) What was the boy’s father worried about?
a) about the financial situation of his son
b) about the future of his own career
c) about the sense of his son’s further education
d) about the live conditions of his family

From the conversation of the father and the son we understood that

the boy neglected his father’s opinion.
the boy was ready to follow his father’s advice.
the boy didn’t respect his father.
the boy decided to ask his mother’s advice.


What conclusion can we draw after reading this extract?

It is good to be independent of parents.
Africans have the same opportunities as other nations in the society
After school all youngsters should find a job.
After leaving school the youngsters have a difficult period of time.
























TEXT № 3
  Emma grinned mockingly when I said things like that, which I did now and then when Amelia’s glares and charged looks overcame me. She didn’t always use to mock, and sometimes she had led the charge herself, but that was in earlier days when we were young enough to flatter ourselves that our little world was changing, and that in some indefinable way what we said and thought mattered to its direction.  ‘Here we are again, decadent England in the dock,’ she would say after one of my outbursts. ‘For our child-rearing failures this time, as well as everything else in the universe. Actually, I’m not even sure that the child is doing anything wrong. It can’t possibly be your fault, oh all right, our faults. Well, it so happens that she’s your daughter, and that’s a responsibility you’ll never be able to evade by haranguing me about how corrupt we are and all those other things. There’s no need for you to repeat them! We’re all quite familiar with them by now, and I may even agree with one or two of them. But since you’re uninfected by all this pestilence, you save her. Teach her about nobility and principle and sacrifice and laughter and whatever else it is that our degraded culture is no longer capable of. Rescue her.’ Say, who else could return the memory of life to men with a torn hope? I used to quote that line by Leopold Sedar Senghor to her when we first knew each other, and sometimes she remembered it and threw it into her England-in-the-dock routine. There were times when I quite enjoyed this scene. It allowed me to bellow against the historical and cultural oppression under which I found myself. To her it sounded like a rant, but that’s how the savage’s critique of Europe unavoidably ends up sounding. (I read that in a book.) The general drift of these conversations was that I usually finished up being called intolerant, ungrateful, a fundamentalist, a raging mujahedin, a pig and a bastard. Just think about that. After these exchanges and against all the odds, we sometimes ended up in passionate late-night orgies of forgiveness and affection. I swear that those moments made the rantings seem worthwhile.  I liked to dwell on differences – I still do – to reflect on how hubris and greed have eaten away the foundations without discrimination, and how the continent on which we live is now sliding on pools of slime and waste and sleaze, and how cynicism and exhaustion are condemning all of us to live on bullshit, and how the over-fed can sneer unreflectingly at the ones they have browbeaten and defeated. Emma called me narcissistic – or as an embellishment she described what I did as the narcissism of minor difference. She always was good with phrases, although this one she picked up somewhere. When she found a little phrase, she polished it and rubbed it until it was hard and glinting. Then she kept it by her in case she needed to blind me with her cleverness. I don’t think she did it to be cruel. It was just that she liked to win her arguments, and not always without charm.  Anyway, she thought I gave these differences too much importance, especially since in the end I was only trying to say NO to stories that rose and swelled heedlessly around me despite my feeble refusal. My indignation and grievance were not going to change the way the story went: in it my maladies and inadequacies would be perpetually in the foreground, my churlish cruelties would not diminish in their pettiness, and when all was said and done I would still live in civil chaos given the slightest opportunity, would starve myself through sheer lack of foresight and would forever need the master’s firm guiding hand if I was to be prevented from being a danger both to myself and to everyone else. She waited for me, her eyes bright with cleverness. ‘Because, you see, you can’t change the story while you are in it, and therefore it follows certainly, without question or doubt, that you can’t achieve anything by saying NO to what happens in it. The story exists because it has to, and it needs you to be these things so we can know who we are. So your huffing and puffing is nothing more than a temper tantrum, and your indignant fictions are only corrosive fantasies. We need you too much, and we need you as you are.’ This was where my narcissism lay, I suppose, in my desire to insert myself in a self-flattering discourse which required that England be guilty and decadent, instead playing my part as well and as silently as Pocahontas.
Admiring silence (A. Gurnah)






























The first lines of the text let us know that
The family has financial problems.
His daughter was going to marry.
The usual lifestyle of the family was changing.
The family decided to move abroad.

According to Emma the society they live in
lost the cultural values.
was cruel towards poor people.
didn’t have the capacity to protect people.
was undergoing discrimination.

The conversation between the husband and the wife ended up in
mutual disrespect.
unfair accusations of the man.
a party
fighting

What does the idiom against all the odds mean?
despite everything
all is well that ends well
thanks to
in addition to

From the third paragraph we knew that Africa
was undergoing the changes of climate
was suffering from severe illnesses
had awful living conditions for people
had a strong political influence in the world

Emma was
a light-hearted woman
very eloquent
selfish and mean
greedy and jalous

In the last paragraph Emma accuses her husband of
being pretentious
being to rude towards her
lacking responsibility
being lazy
TEXT № 4

Dottie first heard the news of her sister’s labour on the factory Tannoy. The voice booming through the public address system did not say that she was being urgently summoned to attend a birth, but Dottie knew. She hurried away with a feeling that this was a moment she had already lived through. In the office she was told that the hospital had rung with a message. Sophie had collapsed at work. In the cab to the hospital she wondered if there was something she should do, some preparation she could make. It was a short journey from Kennington to Tooting, but the traffic was heavy and their progress was slow. At last the taxi came to a shuddering stop at the hospital entrance, and Dottie stepped out into a patch of autumn sunlight that had evaded the buildings around her. The ward sister smiled and told her that she was too late. The baby had already arrived. Sophie must have been in labour for a while before she collapsed, the sister said as she guided Dottie to the patient’s bedside.  Sophie’s exhaustion was plain in her face, but through her tiredness shone a small smile of triumph. Haltingly, searching for words, she told Dottie how she had been rushed into a cab from Kimberly Street in Waterloo. The cab driver had refused payment, she said, telling her she would be his good luck. At the hospital, the nurses had been kind. They had washed her and shaved her, and Sophie had been ashamed because she had made the bath water filthy. Then the baby came and it was so perfect. Didn’t Dottie think so? To her surprise, the nurses asked for a name for the baby. She had not thought they would ask her straight away, had thought she would have time to talk to Jimmy first. But the nurses became annoyed, Sophie said, and after they had been so kind. So she gave them the name she had been thinking of. ‘I called him Hudson, Sis,’ she said, looking at Dottie with uncertainty.  Dottie said nothing for a while, and then talked about the baby’s perfection, and the pain her sister must have borne for so long. She sat beside Sophie and watched the baby sleeping in his metal cot. She made cheerful conversation about their plans, knowing that her sister was waiting for her to say something else. Sophie’s hand lay in hers and she stroked it absently, tutting at the groans of pain that her sister made now and then. She knew that Sophie wanted her to say how pleased she was about the name. It was their younger brother’s, and Sophie was waiting to hear her say that naming the baby after him was right because they had loved him so much. Dottie watched the baby and stroked Sophie’s hand abstractedly, smiling with an unconscious wince whenever she caught her sister’s eye, or whenever Sophie moaned with the pain in her body and between her thighs. She hoped that Sophie would soon fall asleep. But although she dropped off for a short period, her eyes flew open with sudden anxiety and turned blearily at Dottie.
‘It’s a lovely name, and the baby looks just like Hudson,’ Dottie said at last, and heard Sophie gurgling with pleasure and relief. ‘Does he really look like Hudson?’ Sophie asked, grinning with delight. ‘Just like him,’ Dottie said.
  In a few moments Sophie was asleep. Dottie sat silently beside her for a long time, grateful for the solitude. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that her sister’s hand was stirring uncertainly, and she reached out and held it again. Sophie sighed heavily in her sleep.
Dottie (A. Gurnah)


Dottie was late because of
bad weather conditions
a heavy traffic on the road
she couldn’t leave her office
she didn’t want to go to the hospital first

Who did Dottie met first at the hospital entrance?
Sophie’s husband
the ward sister
the policeman
Sophie and Dottie’s father

Sophie told Dottie about
her way to the hospital
bad conditions in the hospital
her heavy childbirth
her difficult relations with husband

Why were the nurses annoyed?
Because they didn’t manage to do their work perfectly.
Because Sophie could choose the name for her son.
Because Sophie didn’t have money for medical service.
Because Sophie was rude towards them.

From the third paragraph we knew that Hudson was
Sophie and Dottie’s father
Sophie and Dottie’s young brother
their cousin
their neighbor

What was Sophie mood after childbirth?
She was annoyed and angry.
She was tired but pleased.
She was excited and full of energy
She was upset

From the extract we knew that
Sophie didn’t have a husband
Sophie and Dotty’s relationships were very close.
Sophie and Dotty were raised in a rich family.
Sophie and Dotty had hard life conditions.


TEXT № 5

Daud leant against the wall in the ophthalmic theatre, counting the seconds as they ticked past him. A few feet from him, two student nurses cowered against the same wall, masked and terrified. This was their first day and they stood exactly where the Sister had told them to stand and did not even whisper to each other. Daud glanced at them, indulged an admiration for their lovely forms, and then returned to the passing seconds. They glanced at him and wondered who he was, wearing a frilly cap and wellington boots, and looking as if he had nothing to do. The surgeon glanced at him too before continuing with his yachting tale, made uneasy by something in the way that Daud stood. Unlike the young nurses, he knew that Daud was a theatre orderly who had a tendency to give himself critical airs. His poses, the surgeon thought, made him look ridiculous. Once or twice he had seen Daud leaning against the wall reading a book, which he thought was a bit much in an ophthalmic theatre.  Sister Wilhelmina Shelton (Jamaica and Brent) was in charge that afternoon. She glowered over her mask, looking for something to do. Her eyes rested on Daud and smiled. He raised his eyebrows at her and pretended to be nodding off to sleep, sliding gently along the tiled wall as if he would end in a heap on the floor. She flashed a warning and glanced quickly at the surgeon. She had had something of a soft spot for him since he had told her that she reminded him of his mother. He enjoyed working with her because she was always provoking the surgeons and laughing at everybody. He had often been tempted to ask her how she came to be where she was, such a long way from home. But she might ask him the same question and then where would he begin? She was a short, plump black woman with a pleasant smile and a combative edge in her voice. When he first met her she looked at him with aloof disdain, warning him to keep his distance and not hurl himself at her just because he was black. At the first opportunity on his own he had called her Auntie, just to please her. She snorted with contempt at his brazen flattery but he could see the laughter in her eyes.  She was kind to him in those early weeks and he was grateful. He had needed as much help as he could get then. The sight and smell of bodies being opened up had revolted and sickened him. He had no idea that bodies bled like that, or smelt like that. Most of all he resented that circumstances had forced him to find out, had humbled him to such an extent. His job included cleaning the dirty theatre after use, and scrubbing the pus and whey off the instruments and the furniture. Those were his simplest duties, and the ones he had been started on when he began working there. It was still what he did most of the time, although occasionally he was allowed to hold the surgeon’s hand or wipe a Hippocratic brow. His list of tasks also included shaving the patients’ pubic hair should he be directed to do so. It was not a fate that had yet befallen him, but one he dreaded. The thought of handling a bunch of decrepit cobblers filled him with revulsion, and he was afraid he would accidentally cut the patient. He did not even know where he would begin if he was asked to shave a woman. Sister Wilhelmina Shelton cupped her hand to her mask, indicating that she wanted him to go to tea. He stopped counting, having got to three thousand two hundred and twenty, which meant that there were still three thousand seven hundred and eighty seconds to go before he finished work, and levered himself off the wall. The Sister glowered at the two nurses and nodded for them to follow him. He waited for them outside the theatre door, in case they did not know where to go. He did not realize how stiffly he was holding himself, as if expecting a rebuff. The two nurses took their masks off, their eyes bright with embarrassment. They smiled at each other and took deep, exaggerated breaths. They were both wearing the frilly hats that women staff used to cover all their hair. He wore one as well, or sometimes two, because he knew it irritated the Superintendent, Mr. Solomon. He wished Student Nurse Mason was not wearing one.
He thought her face so beautiful that it made his chest ache.
Pilgrims way (A. Gurnah)

































From the first paragraph we knew that
nurses knew Daud very well.
nurses didn’t knew who he was.
they were Daud’s colleagues
they were Daud’s enemies

Daud’s occupation was linked with
surgery
cinema
theatre
security service

The idiom to have a soft spot for someone means
to disrespect someone
to like someone
to use someone
to laugh at someone

What information did we get from the second paragraph about Wilhelmina?
about her family
about her appearance
about her illnesses
about her job

5) Daud’s job
a) demanded an intellectual knowledge
b) was highly paid
c) was ungrateful
d) was dirty

6) What was Daud doing to kill the time while working?
a) he was singing
b) he was counting
c) he was listening to music
d) he was whistling

7) From the last paragraph we knew that the staff
a) was friendly
b) argued with the authority
c) wore special clothes
d) had to work extra hours






TEXT № 6
 My father did not want me. I came to that knowledge when I was quite young, even before I understood what I was being deprived of and a long time before I could guess the reason for it. In some ways not understanding was a mercy. If this knowledge had come to me when I was older, I might have known how to live with it better but that would probably have been by pretending and hating. I might have faked a lack of concern or I might have ranted in angry outrage behind my father’s back and blamed him for the way everything had turned out and how it might all have been otherwise. In my bitterness I might have concluded that there was nothing exceptional in having to live without a father’s love. It might even be a relief to have to do without it. Fathers are not always easy, especially if they too grew up without their father’s love, for then everything they know would make them understand that fathers had to have things their own way, one way or another.
Also fathers, just like everyone else, have to deal with the relentless manner in which life conducts its business, and they have their own tremulous selves to salve and sustain, and there must be many times when they hardly have enough strength for that, let alone love to spare for the child that had appeared any old how in their midst. But I also remembered when it was otherwise, when my father did not shun me with an icy silence as we sat in the same small room, when he laughed with me and tumbled me and fondled me. It was a memory that came without words or sound, a little treasure I hoarded. That time when it was otherwise would have had to be when I was very young, a baby, because my father was already the silent man I knew later by the time I could remember him clearly.
Babies can remember many things in their podgy sinews, which become the problem of later life, but it is not always certain that they remember everything in its place. There were times when I suspected that the fondling memory was an invention to comfort myself and that some of the memories I recollected were not my own. There were times when I suspected they were put there for me by other people, who were dealing kindly with me and were trying to fill in the empty spaces in my life and theirs, people who exaggerated the orderliness and drama of the haphazard tedium of our days, who preferred that what came to be was signaled by what had passed.
When I reached this point I began to wonder if I knew anything about myself because it was most likely that I only knew what people told me about how I was as an infant, at times one person saying this and another saying that, forcing me to bow to the more insistent one and occasionally selecting for myself the younger self I preferred. There were moments when these guilt-ridden thoughts became absurdly insistent, though I could remember sitting in the sun beside my father on the doorstep of our house while he held a stick of pink candy floss into which I was about to sink my face. That was a memory which came to me as an arrested instant without conclusion, a moment without preamble or direction. How could I have invented that? I just was not sure if it had really happened. My father was laughing in that breathless way of his as he looked at me, as if he was never going to be able to stop, his arms squeezed to his ribs, holding himself in. He was saying something to me that I could now no longer hear. Or perhaps he was not speaking to me at all but to someone else who was there.
Perhaps he was speaking to my mother in that heaving, laughing way.
Gravel heart (A. Gurnah)

From the first paragraph we knew that
relations between the father and the son were warm.
father didn’t have any feelings towards his son.
they lived in a one flat
they worked at the same place

What was the attitude of the boy towards the lack of father’s life?
He felt very upset because of it.
He talked about his problems with his friends
He didn’t care about it.
He was happy to be alone.

When the boy was younger
He used to spend much time with his father.
He used to run from home quite often.
He studied well at school.
He spent his time with his mother.

What conclusion did the boy draw about his memory?
He had a very good memory
Some facts in his memory belonged to other people.
He forgot a lot of facts about his childhood.
He studied well at school thanks to his memory.

What does the adjective haphazard mean?
systematic
chaotic
pleasant
difficult

The boy’s souvenirs of his childhood were
illogical
incoherent
frightening
pleasant

What conclusion can we draw from the extract?
The boy’s childhood was tough.
The boy didn’t like his relatives.
The boy tried to understand the change of his father behaviour.
The boy was happy to get rid of his parents’ care.











TEXT № 7

In front of Martha was grimed glass, its lower part covered with grimed muslin. The open door showed an oblong of browny-grey air swimming with globules of wet. The shop fronts opposite were no particular colour. The lettering on the shops, once black, brown, gold, white, was now shades of dull brown. The lettering on the upper part of the glass of this room said Joe’s Fish and Chips in reverse, and was flaking like stale chocolate.  She sat by a rectangle of pinkish oilcloth where sugar had spilled, and on to it, orange tea, making a gritty smear in which someone had doddled part of a name: Daisy Flet … Her cup was thick whitey-grey, cracked. The teaspoon was a whitish plastic, so much used that the elastic brittleness natural to it had gone into an erosion of hair lines, so that it was like a kind of sponge. When she had drunk half the tea, a smear of grease appeared half-way down the inside of the cup: a thumb mark. How hard had some hand - attached to Iris, to Jimmy? - gripped the cup to leave a smear which even after immersion in strong orange tea was a thumbprint good enough for the police?
Across the room, by another pinkish rectangle, sat Joe’s mother Iris, a small, fattish, smeared woman. She was half asleep, catnapping. She wore an overall washed so often it had gone a greyish yellow. A tired soured smell came from her. The small fattish pale man behind the counter where the tea-urn dominated was not Joe, who had gone off to the war and had never returned home, having married a woman and her café in Birmingham. He was Jimmy, Joe’s mother’s partner. Jimmy wished to marry Iris, but she did not want to marry again. Once was enough she said. Meanwhile they lived together and proposed to continue to live together.
Although both were now ‘resting’, this being a slack time in the café, and had announced, as if they were turning a notice on a door to say CLOSED, that they were resting, both observed Martha. Or rather, their interest, what was alert of it, was focused on what she would do next, but they were too good mannered to let this appear. About an hour before she had asked if she might use the telephone. She had not yet done so. From time to time the two exchanged remarks with each other, as thickly indifferent as words coming out of sleep, sleep-mutters; but yet it was open to Martha to join in if she wished, to comment on weather and the state of Jimmy’s health, neither very good. Today he had a pain in his stomach. Really they wanted to be told, or to find out, why the telephone call was so important that Martha could not make it and be done. The air of the small steamy box which was the café vibrated with interest, tact, curiosity, sympathy-friendship, in short; all the pressures which for a blissful few weeks since Martha had been in England, rather, London, she had been freed from.
For a few weeks she had been anonymous, unnoticed, - free. Never before in her life had she known this freedom. Living in a small town anywhere means preserving one’s self behind a mask. Coming to a big city for those who have never known one means first of all, before anything else, and the more surprising if one has not expected it, that freedom: all the pressures are off, no one cares, no need for the mask. For weeks then, without boundaries, without definition, like a balloon drifting and bobbing, nothing had been expected of her.
But since she had taken the room upstairs over the café, had been accepted into the extraordinary kindness and delicacy of this couple, she had made a discovery: ‘Matty’ was reborn. And after how many years of disuse? ‘Matty’ now was rather amusing, outspoken, competently incompetent, free from convention, free to say what other people did not say: yet always conscious of, and making a burnt offering of, these qualities. ‘Matty’ gained freedom from whatever other people must conform to, not so much by ignoring it, but when the point was reached when conformity might be expected, gaining exemption in an act of deliberate clumsiness-like a parody, paying homage as a parody does to its parent-action. An obsequiousness in fact, an obeisance. Exactly, so she understood, had the jester gained exemption with his bladder and his bells; just so, the slave humiliated himself to flatter his master: as she had seen a frightened African labourer clown before her father. And so, it seems, certain occupants of recent concentration camps, valuing life above dignity, had made themselves mock those points of honor, self-respect, which had previously been the focus-points of their beings, to buy exemption from the camp commanders.
The four-gated city (D. Lessing)



























In the first paragraph the author gives the description of
Martha’s appearance
the exterior parts of the shop
Martha’s mood
Weather

What were relationships between Iris and Jimmy?
They were husband and wife
They were enemies
They were relatives
They had common interests in business

What did we know about Jimmy?
He had a mistress.
He had serious problems with his health.
He liked to spend money.
He had an unsupportable character.

What does a collocation a slack time mean?
a hard time
a time full of events
busy time
a time for rest

Why did Martha feel at ease in London?
She found a lot of friends quickly.
She didn’t feel pressing.
She was free to choose a job.
She was in love with a local man.

What was the attitude of Iris and Jimmy towards Martha?
They were kind to her.
They were rude to her.
They gave her difficult tasks.
They criticized her behavior.

What does the collocation to gain exemption mean?
to get promotion at work
to obtain a special position
to become famous
to suffer from a serious illness




TEXT № 8

Beyond our boundaries on that side the country was new to me. I followed unfamiliar paths past kopjes that till now had been part of the jagged horizon, hazed with distance. This was Government land, which had never been cultivated by white men; at first I could not understand why it was that it appeared, in merely crossing the boundary, I had entered a completely fresh type of landscape. It was a wide green valley, where a small river sparkled, and vivid water-birds darted over the rushes. The grass was thick and soft to my calves, the trees stood tall and shapely.
I was used to our farm, whose hundreds of acres of harsh eroded soil bore trees that had been cut for the mine furnaces and had grown thin and twisted, where the cattle had dragged the grass flat, leaving innumerable criss-crossing trails that deepened each season into gullies, under the force of the rains.
This country had been left untouched, save for prospectors whose picks had struck a few sparks from the surface of the rocks as they wandered by; and for migrant natives whose passing had left, perhaps, a charred patch on the trunk of a tree where their evening fire had nestled.
It was very silent: a hot morning with pigeons cooing throatily, the midday shadows lying dense and thick with clear yellow spaces of sunlight between and in all that wide green park-like valley, not a human soul but myself. I was listening to the quick regular tapping of a woodpecker when slowly a chill feeling seemed to grow up from the small of my back to my shoulders, in a constricting spasm like a shudder, and at the roots of my hair a tingling sensation began and ran down over the surface of my flesh, leaving me goose-fleshed and cold, though I was damp with sweat.
Fever? I thought; then uneasily, turned to look over my shoulder; and realized suddenly that this was fear. It was extraordinary, even humiliating. It was a new fear. For all the years I had walked by myself over this country I had never known a moment’s uneasiness; in the beginning because I had been supported by a gun and the dogs, then because I had learnt an easy friendliness for the Africans I might encounter. I had read of this feeling, how the bigness and silence of Africa, under the ancient sun, grows dense and takes shape in the mind, till even the birds seem to call menacingly, and a deadly spirit comes out of the trees and the rocks.
You move warily, as if your very passing disturbs something old and evil, something dark and big and angry that might suddenly rear and strike from behind. You look at groves of entwined trees, and picture the animals that might be lurking there; you look at the river running slowly, dropping from level to level through the veil, spreading into pools where at night the buck come to drink, and the crocodiles rise and drag them by their soft noses into underwater caves. Fear possessed me. I found I was turning round and round, because of that shapeless menace behind me that might reach out and take me; I kept glancing at the files of kopjes which, seen from a different angle, seemed to change with every step so that even known landmarks, like a big mountain that had sentineled my world since I first became conscious of it, showed an unfamiliar sunlit valley among its foothills. I did not know where I was. I was lost. Panic seized me. I found I was spinning round and round, staring anxiously at this tree and that, peering up at the sun which appeared to have moved into an eastern slant, shedding the sad yellow light of sunset. Hours must have passed! I looked at my watch and found that this state of meaningless terror had lasted perhaps ten minutes. The point was that it was meaningless. I was not ten miles from home: I had only to take my way back along the valley to find myself at the fence; away among the foothills of the kopjes gleamed the roof of a neighbour’s house, and a couple of hours walking would reach it. This was the sort of fear that contracts the flesh of a dog at night and sets him howling at the full moon. It had nothing to do with what I thought or felt; and I was more disturbed by the fact that I could become its victim than of the physical sensation itself: I walked steadily on, quietened, in a divided mind, watching my own pricking nerves and apprehensive glances from side to side with a disgusted amusement. Deliberately I set myself to think of this village I was seeking, and what I should do when I entered it – if I could find it, which was doubtful, since I was walking aimlessly and it might be anywhere in the hundreds of thousands of acres of bush that stretched about me.
With my mind on that village, I realized that a new sensation was added to the fear: loneliness. Now such a terror of isolation invaded me that I could hardly walk; and if it were not that I came over the crest of a small rise and saw a village below me, I should have turned and gone home. It was a cluster of thatched huts in a clearing among trees. There were neat patches of mealies and pumpkins and millet, and cattle grazed under some trees at a distance.
This was the old Chief’s country (D. Lessing)



























From the beginning of the extract we knew that
the area was unknown for the author
the author felt uncomfortable there
rich people lived in the area
the area was well-cultivated

What does the word innumerable mean?
strange
countless
dangerous
colorful

In the second paragraph the author
describes her feelings
gives the description of the landscape
explain why she lives here
speaks about her duties

How can we describe the author’s state?
She was happy to be there.
She missed her previous home.
She felt ill.
She was angry because of bad life conditions.

Why the author was frightened?
She lost her belongings.
She got lost.
She was scared of the crocodiles.
She met unfriendly local people.

Why does the author use the phrase a meaningless terror?
to describe the dangerous situation of the woman.
to underline her panic.
to explain her loneliness.
to explain her tiredness.

What we knew about the psychological state of the woman at the end of the extract?
she felt upset
she felt lonely
she was happy to find the place she searched for
she was irritated





TEXT № 9

Anyway. Oxford. I can’t bear either that I’ve got to come back here in September while you’ll be as free as a bird. For two pins I’d forget the whole thing and apply to Bristol and be with you. It’s not that I’m really so stuck on Oxford, it’s just that I know it would break my father’s heart if I didn’t go. His great-great-grandfather was at St Mark’s and every Maddstone since. There’s even a quad named after us. You might think that would make it easier for me to get in, but actually it doesn’t work like that anymore. I’ll actually have to do better in my entrance exam than virtually anyone, just to prove that I’ve got in on merit not on family name and connections. It would mean so much to him. I hope that doesn’t sound chronically pathetic. I’m his only son and I just know how much he’d love coming to visit me and walking round the colleges and pointing out his old haunts and so on. I wish you could come and visit me here. Suppose next term I smuggle you in as a new boy? All you’ve got to do is squeak and look pretty, and you’re very good at that. No, not pretty – you’re beautiful of course. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen or ever will see. (You are very good at squeaking though.)
I love your letters. I still can’t believe all this is true. Has it really happened to us? Other boys here have girlfriends too but I’m certain it’s not the same for them. They show their letters around and make a great show of drooling publicly over them. That must be a sign that it’s really no more than a joke to them. And it isn’t a joke for us, is it? You mention that strange thing about Fate and how it was that our school group was at the Royal Academy and how, if we hadn’t been, we probably wouldn’t have gone into the Hard Rock Café. That is such a completely weird thought. But then, when you came up to our table there were I think seven of us and why was it you looked twice at me? Apart from the fact that I’m such a moron that I was standing up. I really hate to disillusion you on that, by the way, but it wasn’t politeness that made me stand up. I saw you and I stood up.
It was like a sort of instinct. This must sound completely crazy – it was as if I had known you forever. What’s more, if I think about it, I could swear that I knew you were going to come out of that swing door. I had been feeling funny all day. Feeling different if you know what I mean, and by the time we got into the restaurant after sweating around the gallery for two hours and walking half a mile down Piccadilly I just knew something was going to happen to me. And when you started coming towards us (you patted the front of your apron and checked your ear for a pencil in the funniest way - I can remember every detail of it - I just leap to my feet. I nearly shouted out, ‘At last!’ and then you looked up into my eyes and we smiled at each other and that was it.
But you must have noticed the other boys there. Most of them surely taller and better looking than me. Ashley Barson-Garland was there, who’s twenty times funnier and twenty times brainier. That reminds me . . . I did something completely awful this morning, in Biology. It’s a bit complicated to describe and I feel awful about it. It’s not something for you to worry about, but it was odd. I read Barson-Garland’s diary. Part of it. I’ve never done anything like that before and I just don’t know what came over me. I’ll tell you all about it when we meet. When we meet… When we meet… When we meet… I just CANNOT stop thinking about you. All kinds of wicked things start happening to me.
The Stars’ tennis balls (S. Fry)



From the beginning of the text we knew that the author
was happy to return to Oxford.
was upset he got bad marks at the exams.
wanted to find a new job.
decided to help his parents

What does the author say about other boys’ attitude towards their girlfriends’ letters?
He approved their behavior.
He didn’t share their attitude.
He helped them to answer the letters.
He didn’t care about it.

Why the author uses the phrase to drool publicly over them (letters)?

to show that boys treated the letters seriously
to underline that the boys wanted to keep them in secret.
to show that letters were source of joke.
to explain that the relations between boys and their girlfriends were close.

The authors hopes that
he will be earn a lot of money
his relations with her girlfriend are serious.
he can be useful for his family
he will have a rest after studies

In the fourth paragraph the author speaks about
his studies at the Royal Academy.
his hobbies
his first encounter with her girlfriend
his relations with his family.

From the fifth paragraph we knew that the author
felt unease after the first encounter with his girlfriend.
was on a high.
lost his wallet at the café.
had an argument with his friends.

What happened during Biology lesson?
The author got a bad mark.
The author forgot to bring a book.
He read the private notes of another person.
He fell asleep during the lesson.




TEXT № 10

English boarding schools have much to recommend them. If boys are going to be adolescent, and science has failed to come up with a way of stopping them, then much better to herd them together and let them get on with it in private. Six hundred suits of skin oozing with pustules, six hundred scalps weeping oil, twelve hundred armpits shooting out hair, twelve hundred inner thighs exploding with fungus and six hundred minds filling themselves with suicidal drivel: the world is best protected from this.
For the good of society, therefore, Adrian Healey, like many Healeys before him, had been sent to a prep school at the age of seven, had proceeded to his public school at twelve and now, fifteen years old, he stood trembling with pubertal confusion on the brink of life. There was little to admire. The ravages of puberty had attacked his mind more than his skin, which was some kind of a blessing. From time to time a large, yellow-crowned spot would pop from his forehead, or a blackhead worm its way from the sweaty shelter of the side of his nose, but generally the complexion was good enough not to betray the hormonal crisis and mental havoc that boiled within and the eyes were wide and sensual enough for him to be thought attractive.
Too smart at exam passing to be kept out of the Sixth Form, too disrespectful and dishonourable to be a prefect, he had read and absorbed more than he could understand, so he lived by pastiche and pretence. His constipation, furred tongue and foul-smelling feet were no more than conventional school attributes, passed down from generation to generation, like slang and sadism. Adrian might have been unorthodox, but he was not so blind to the proper decencies as to cultivate smooth-flowing bowels or healthy feet. His good nature prevented him from discovering the pleasures of bullying and his cowardice allowed him to ignore it in others. The great advantage of English public school life lies of course in the quality of tutelage it provides. Adrian had received a decent and broad English education in the area of his loins. Not all the credit for this could go to his schoolmasters, although a few of them had not been afraid to give practical guidance and instruction of a kind which would gladden the heart of those who believe that the modern teacher is slipshod in his approach to the Whole Boy.
Mostly he had been given space to make his own way and learn his own lessons of the flesh. He had quickly happened upon the truth which many lonely contemporaries would never discover, the truth that everybody, simply everybody, was panting for it and could, with patience, be shown that they were panting for it. So Adrian grabbed what was to hand and had the time of his life genitally – focusing exclusively on his own gender of course, for this was 1973 and girls had not yet been invented. His love life, however, was less happy. Earlier that afternoon he had worshipped at his altar in a private welter of misery that his public swagger never hinted at. It had been upstairs, in the Long Dorm.
The room was empty, the floorboards squeaking more faintly than usual beneath his tread. Cartwright’s cubicle had its curtain drawn. The distant moan of whistles and cheers on the Upper Games Field and the nearer bang of a downstairs door slamming shut had unsettled him. They were over-familiar, with a bogus, echoing quality, a staginess that put him on his guard. The whole school knew he was here. They knew he liked to creep about the House alone. They were watching, he was convinced of it. The background shouts of rugger and hockey weren’t real, they were part of a taped soundtrack played to deceive him. He was walking into a trap. It had always been a trap. No one had ever believed in him. They signed him off games and let him think that he had the House to himself. But they knew, they had always known. Tom, Bullock, Heydon-Bayley, even Cartwright. Especially Cartwright. They watched and they waited. They all knew and they all bided their time until the moment they had chosen for his exposure and disgrace.

A Liar (S. Fry)







































What is the attitude of the author towards the boarding schools?
He thinks they are useless.
He thinks they have sense.
He doesn’t recommend them.
He says they are dangerous.

What we knew about Adrian in the second paragraph?
He finished the school with good marks.
He was sent abroad to study.
He was sent to a boarding school and he felt nervous.
He lost his parents.

What was the attitude towards bulling at school?
He was afraid of it.
He tried not to notice it.
He supported such behaviour.
He didn’t know what it was?

What does the word unorthodox mean?
unconventional
upset
rude
clumsy

What we knew about Adrian’s look?
He was attractive.
He was very thin.
He had some problems with his health and appearance.
He wore expensive clothes.

What was the attitude of other students towards Adrian?
They communicated with him with pleasure.
They laughed at him.
They knew that he liked to be alone.
They criticized his behaviour.

What conclusion can we draw about the character of Adrian in general?
He was a light-hearted person.
He was very sociable.
He was a contradictive person.
He was shy.





Sources

Fry S. A liar. William Heinemann UK. - 1991.
Fry S. The Stars’ tennis balls. Hutchinson. UK. - 2000.
Gurnah A. Admiring silence. The New press. UK. - 1996.
Gurnah A. Dottie. Jonathan Cape. UK. -1990.
Gurnah A. Gravel heart. Bloomsbury. UK. -1917.
Gurnah A. Last gift. Bloomsbury. UK. -1911.
Gurnah A. Memory of departure. Jonathan Cape. UK. -1987.
Gurnah A. Pilgrims way. Jonathan Cape. UK. -1988.
Lessing D. The four-gated city. McGibbon and Kee. UK. - 1969.
Lessing D. This was the old Chief’s country. British first edition. UK. - 1973.