Parliament decided to govern the country without the king in

A) 1640

B) 1641

C) 1629

D) 1649

The word “to forgive” used in the text is closest in meaning to the word

A) to ignore

B) to miss

C) to support

D) to excuse

23. The pronoun “it” in the sentence ‘I don’t need it’ refers to_ _.

A) London

B) money

C) army

D) Parliament

24. Charles II offered to pay the army, but he didn’t want to__ .

A) return to England

B) forget about Parliament working against his father

C) let the Scottish church be free

D) forgive his father’s killers

Text 3

“White plague”

For its sudden destruction of crops, farmers call hail the “white plague.” “It wipes you at in the passing of a cloud,” complained a Colorado farm boy bitterly. “Half an hour ago ■ ou had a half-section of wheat—320 acres—ready to harvest and haul to town. Now you haven’t got a penny.”

Thousands of hailstorms occur each year, especially in the moist, temperate climates of the middle latitudes. In the United States alone, crop damage from hail totals about one billion dollars a year, with a further $75 million in losses attributable to livestock deaths and property damage.

The groundwork for such devastation is laid innocently enough, deep within a thunderstorm’s cumulus cloud. There, at frigid altitudes above 15,000 feet, the air is at first so pure that water droplets can exist at temperatures well below the freezing point without turning to ice.

As the storm’s convection currents become more powerful, however, they sweep tiny particles of dust and ice upward into the cloud. Each of these foreign bodies - a potential hailstone nucleus - begins to collide with supercooled water droplets, which freeze to it on impact. Buffeted about by a series of updrafts and downdrafts, the hailstone gathers layer upon layer of ice. When it has grown so heavy that even the strongest updraft cannot sustain it, the mature hailstone plummets to earth.

While weak storms produce small stones that melt before reaching the ground, severe thunderstorms are capable of generating hail the size of eggs, baseballs, or even grapefruit. When a particularly violent storm ravaged Coffeyville, Kansas, on September 3, 1970, residents collected scores of unusually large hailstones, including one that measured nearly six inches in diameter and weighed 1 2/3 pounds. When the amazing specimen was sent to Colorado’s National Center for Atmospheric Research, meteorologists confirmed that it set a new record for size— and calculated that, in its final stages of growth, the stone had required an updraft of 100 miles per hour to keep it in the air.

25. The potential hailstorms come from ...

A) seas and oceans

B) outer space

C) the ground surface

D) under the earth

26. The noun ‘impact’ means ...

A) humidity

B) nucleus

C) direction

D) influence

27. It took_____ for hail to destroy the Colorado farm boy’s harvest.

A) one evening

B) and hour and a half

C) an hour

D) 30 minutes

28. If the air is pure it is______ .

A) humid

B) poisoned

C) suffocating

D) clean

29. The word ‘devastation’ is closest in meaning to______ .

A) destruction

B) distribution

C) establishment

D) manufacture

30. The general topic discussed in the text is________ .

A) a disease

B) destruction of a farm

C) devastation of a family

D) a natural phenomenon

31. In lines 1-2 the phrase ‘it wipes you out’ means________ .

A) you feel delighted after a hailstorm.

B) hailstorms can bring financial profit.

C) a hailstorm will make you feel enthusiastic.

D) hailstonns can cause financial ruin.

32. The verb ‘collide’ in this text means to_______ .

A) run into

B) move away from

C) go up and down

D) rise into the air

It can be inferred from the passage that some hailstones melt before reaching

the ground because of their_____________ .

A) immunity

B) width

C) size

D) breadth

The Colorado scientists recognized a new record of a hailstone for its

A) size

B) quality

C) number

D) structure

The damage brought by hail in crop production annually accounts for

A) 75 million dollars

B) 15 million dollars

C) a billion dollars

D) 320 thousand dollars

36. The phrase ‘the amazing specimen’ refers to______ .

A) a boy that found an unusual thing

B) a baseball

C) a loud thunderstorm

D) ahailstone

Text 1

A Typical Shop Worker’s Desk

Shop workers probably have the untidiest desks of all. The desksof shop workers are used for a number of purposes. They often havea computer and telephone to take care of paper work, but they also usetheir desk as a place to lay their various tools as they work at their differenttasks. In many machine shops, you will also be surprised at howdirty a shop worker’s desk is! Shop workers have to do a variety ofphysical tasks that often involve greasy equipment. Of course, thegrease from the tools and the equipment dirty the desk as the shopworker sits down to do a report or make a telephone call. Shop workersusually don’t clean their desk too often as they know that the desks willjust get dirty the next time they sit down to have a cup of coffee.

Text 2

World population growth theory

The population of the world has increased more in modem times than in all other ages of history combined. World population totaled about 500 million in 1650. It doubled in the period from 1650-1850. Today the population is more than five billion.

Estimates based on research by the United Nations indicate that it will more than double in the twenty-five years between 1975 and the year 2000, reaching seven billion by the turn of the century.

No one knows the limits of population that the earth can support. Thomas Malthus, an English economist, developed a theory that became widely accepted in the nineteenth century. He suggested that because world population tended to increase more rapidly than the food supply, a continual strain was exerted upon available resources. Malthus cited wars, famines, epidemics, and other disasters as the usual limitations of population growth.

Text 3

Michelangelo Buonarroti

Michelangelo Buonarroti was one of the most famous artists in history. He was a painter, a sculptor, an architect, and a poet. He created some of the world’s most beautiful and most famous paintings and statues.

Michelangelo was bom in 1475 in a small Italian town near Florence. At the age of twelve, he was apprenticed to Ghirlandaio, a well-known Italian artist.

He learnt to draw by copying other artists’ paintings. He soon became interested in sculpture, too. At the age of 21, he went to Rome, and began to create the works of art that made him famous all over the world.

Michelangelo’s first great work was the Pieta for St Peter’s Cathedral. This statue shows Jesus Christ in the anus of the Virgin Mary after his death on the cross. Michelangelo went to Florence, where he produced his famous statue of David. It is 18 feet high and carved from a solid piece of marble. The Statue is so lifelike that it seems ready to spring into action. We have a copy of this statue in the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum.

At the age of 30 he was called to Rome and for the next 30 years he worked there for a succession of Popes.

In 1508, he began painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. He spent more than twenty years painfully lying on his back on a scaffold, painting the figures and Biblical scenes on half of the ceiling. After a long rest, he completed the second half in about a year. People consider the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to be one of the world’s greatest and most amazing works of art.

Michelangelo embodied the perfect multi-talented Renaissance man. His influence on later artists is immense.

Text 4