Text One

«Loch Ness»

Vocabulary:

Highlands narrow deep peat a monster

a submarine to float to catch sight of length snake-like

Loch Ness is a large lake in the Highlands of Scotland. It’s narrow and quite deep, nearly 300 metres. There is a lot of peat in it, so it’s very black.

People have said and believed for hundreds of years that there is a monster in the lake. Fifty years ago they built a new road along the lake and since then people have reported that they have seen the monster. There have also been expeditions with small submarines and underwater cameras to try and find out more about the monster.

In some interesting underwater photos from 1975 you can see a head and a big body. But not everybody believes that there really is a large animal in the loch. Some people say that it’s only peat, which is rising from the bottom of the lake, or branches of trees which are floating in the water. And yet there are people who keep watch day and night all summer in the hope of catching sight of Nessie, if and when she raises her head.

This is what the monster, Nessie, looks like, if you believe what the photos show you: it’s dark brown, its total length is about 15 metres and its head is very small and snake-like.

People say that the best time to see the monster is in the summer months, early in the morning and evening, when the weather is warm and the loch is calm.

Text Two

«Man’s Best Friend»

Vocabulary:

to train safely traffic a task suitable for

to trace criminal an earthquake drugs to smuggle

Dogs are nice to play with and they are good company. You can also train them to be hunting-dogs, sheep dogs and many other things.

Most of us have seen guide dogs with blind people, who can move safely in the streets with their help. The dogs have learnt to stop for traffic, they know when it’s safe for their master to cross the street and they «tell» him about things in his way.

It takes a long time to train a dog for these tasks, and all dogs are not suitable for training. The dog must be intelligent, have a nice temperament and be willing to co-operate.

When the dog is one year old, the real training for its special task begins. Some dogs become police dogs. They learn to trace people who are lost, to stop criminals from running away from the police and to find people who are buried under the ruins of a house after an earthquake, for example. The dogs’ very fine sense of smell helps them to do this.

Other dogs learn to trace drugs. Nowadays these dogs are becoming more and more important, when the smuggling of drugs is increasing. Some people believe that the dogs learn to trace drugs because they are drug addicts themselves. This idea is quite wrong. The dogs could not do their important job for years if they were dependent on drugs.

The trainer hides the drugs in more and more difficult places, but the dogs find them every time. They can even «smell» drugs which people have hidden in metal containers.

These useful dogs are worth their weight in gold to the people who have trained them. But above all, dogs are good company for many people who like to have them to talk to.