Тесты по чтению на английском языке. Готовимся к централизованному тестированию

(4)After 15 years in general practice, Dr Roet came to realize that the inability to shed tears and show emotion was behind many of the illnesses he had been trying to treat. He now feels that providing a "safe place" to cry is far more helpful to his patients than dispensing drugs. Many have not cried for years and at first are ashamed when the tears start to flow but, he says, it's only when tears can come that emotional healing can take place. "I hope that people will learn to respect tears. As we learn to laugh and cry naturally, without fear of guilt, we develop peace of mind and the tranquility that provides a healthy basis for the rest of our life."

(5)But he admits he remains unable to shed them himself. "The only safe place for me to cry is in the cinema, where the tears well up and flood over the most trivial situations. I believe now that I was told so much as a child that boys don't cry that this imprint has sealed my tear ducts, except out of sight in the darkness of the make-believe cinema world."

(6)Sporting stars who break down in public remind us that there is nothing wimpy, nothing weak or loser-like about the ability to shed tears. Men who can cry easily are the real winners in life, those who are at the same time confident and sensitive. Agassi's tennis was wondrous, but it was his ability to cry and remind us that he was fully human rather than just a tennis robot that turned him into a world-class heart-throb. Women always warm to a man who can cry. And perhaps the new breed of weeping sports stars will give other men "permission" to cry, so that tears can become as natural a form of expression as smiling and laughter.

A.Doctor Himself has to be Helped

B.Tears are for Women Only

C.Cry and Still Be Hero

D.Men: Laugh More, Cry More

E.Tears Mirror Your Soul

F.Cry and be Healthier

G.Women Hate Weeping Men

H.There is Nothing Wrong with Crying

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d III. Прочитайте текст и выполните послетекстовые задания.

(1)What are the good things about the sun? Well, apart from giving us the light and heat we need in order to live, of course, the sun also has various beneficial effects on the skin. It stimulates the circulation, for example, and it's very good for skin complaints like acne. Sunlight also acts on the skin to produce vitamin D, which is vital for our health.

(2)Most people would agree that the sun has a good effect psychologically as well. In fact, there's evidence that a lack of sunlight makes some people ill. So, if you work a lot in artificial light, doctors think it's a good idea to try and spend at least 15 minutes a day in natural daylight during the summer, and longer in winter.

(3)But there are some negative effects, too. Sunlight causes 95% of all skin cancers although fortunately 99% of these cancers are cured. It's particularly important that children are protected from strong sunlight because 80% of sun damage occurs before the age of 20. These days more and more people travel from colder countries to spend their holidays in places where they can be sure of enjoying plenty of sunshine. But the more intense the light, the higher the risk of skin damage. For light-skinned people, the risk of skin cancer doubles every thousand kilometers nearer to the equator you go. It's the ultra violet light that is damaging and before you go swimming or walking, it's worth remembering that ultra violet can pass through water, shade and even through thin clothing.

(4)The skin has its own natural protection from about 30% of ultra violet light. You should use a good sun screen to increase that but remember that the degree of protection depends on how thinly you spread the cream on your skin. Once your skin is tanned, the tan will protect your skin 2-4 times more than an untanned skin, but it's a good idea to carry on using a light sun screen all the same. And how long will the tan last? About 30 days is the answer. So the message is: enjoy the sun but never underestimate its power, and make sure you take sensible precautions to protect yourself from its harmful effects.

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d Выберите вариант ответа, соответствующий содержанию прочитанного текста (задания 1-5).

1. The beneficial effect of the sun is vivid as

A. it provides us with light and heat and is also health-giving B. it helps to combat acne

C. vitamin D is generated with its help

2. Psychologically thinking, sunlight is

A.an antidepressant

B.an antibiotic

C.an anesthetic

3. The risk of skin cancer increases

A. every thousand kilometers closer to the equator

B. for people who have light skin and live in sunny regions C. for inhabitants of sunny regions

4. The most dangerous thing about ultraviolet light is that

A. it can spoil your clothes and damage your skin B. it may lead to sun stroke

C. it can pass through water, shade and thin clothing making protection against it difficult.

5. To protect yourselves from ultraviolet light you need

A.to rely on the natural protection the skin has.

B.to use a good sunscreen.

C.to be tanned and keep using a sunscreen nonetheless.

d Определите значение указанного слова в тексте (задания

6-8).

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d Выберите правильный вариант перевода в соответствии с содержанием текста (задания 9-12).

9.In fact, there's evidence that a lack of sunlight makes some people ill. (2)

A.В действительности, есть доказательства того, что из-за недостатка солнечного света некоторые люди заболевают.

B.Фактически, недостаток солнечного света делает некоторых людей больными.

C.Факты свидетельствуют о том, что недостаток солнечного света может привести некоторых людей к болезни.

10.Sunlight causes 95 % of all skin cancers although, fortunately 99% are cured. (3)

A.Солнечный свет становится причиной 95% всех раковых заболеваний кожи, хотя случается так, что 99% излечимы.

B.Солнечный свет становится причиной 95% всех раковых заболеваний кожи, тем не менее, 99% поддаются лечению.

C.Солнечный свет становится причиной 95% всех раковых заболеваний кожи, хотя, к счастью, 99% излечимы.

11.The more intense the light, the higher the risk of skin damage. (3)

A.Усиление потока солнечного света влечет за собой увеличение риска заболевания кожи.

B.Чем сильнее солнечный свет, тем больше риск повреждения кожи.

C.Если усиливается солнечный свет, то увеличивается риск повреждения кожи.

12.Once your skin is tanned, the tan will protect... (4)

A.Если однажды ваша кожа загорела, то этот загар будет защищать …

B.Стоит только вам загореть, и этот загар будет защищать ...

C.Достаточно однократного приема солнечных ванн, чтобы защитить …

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TEST 09

ON GENERAL BIOLOGY AND GENETICS

I. Прочитайте текст и выберите вариант ответа, соответствующий содержанию прочитанных фрагментов (А-D).

A.In the 5,000 years or so of recorded history, the human race has changed remarkably little physically. The men and women of ancient Egypt were very little different from today, in fact. This is because our biological makeup is determined by genes and no matter what we do in our lifetime, we cannot alter our genes.

B.The way we live does affect certain things though. Take life expectancy, for example. For most of human history, men could expect to live around 40 years and women a few years less. The number fluctuated a bit, in actual fact. It was 45 years in Classical Greece – that's around 650 BC – but it fell to 40.2 in the time of the Roman Empire in the second century AD, and fell again to 37.7 years by the Middle Ages in around 1400. That's for men. For women, it was a similar pattern. They could expect to live 31.1 years in the Middle Ages, compared with Roman times when they had a life expectancy of 34.6 years. In the past 100 years, though, there have been such huge advances in medicine that many of the infectious illnesses people used to die of can be easily treated. So now, in the West, men can expect to live to 70 and women even longer – till they are 76.

C.Then there's the question of infant mortality. In the past, it was extremely common for children to die soon after they were born. So people tended to have quite a few children. For families in Classical Greece, for example, the number of births was 4.3 on average, as you can see on the chart, but only 2.7 of those children survived to adulthood. In Roman times, the number of births was down a little to 3.7 with approximately 2 children surviving. Then, in the Middle Ages, the survival rate dropped drastically. Families had 4 or more children

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on average and only 1.6 of them survived. Nowadays, with greatly improved post natal care, the situation is much, much better. Families have around 2.2 children and the majority grow up fit and well.

D. As average life expectancy continues to rise, the question is whether there is any limit on the human lifespan. Could people in the 21st century survive to be 125? Unfortunately, the answer seems to be 'no'. The current view is that, with a few exceptions, the natural human lifespan is around 85 years.

1. The average age for both men and women used to be

A.50 years

B.40 years

C.30 years

D.60 years

2. If a woman can expect to live till about 76 she probably lives in

A.Africa

B.Classical Greece

C.the West

D.the East

3. Less than one third of all children survived in

A.Classical Greece

B.Roman Empire

C.Medieval Europe

D.Ancient Egypt

4. We can refer an average family with two or three healthy kids to

A.Elizabethan England

B.Jacobean France

C.Classical Greece

D.contemporary USA

5. People lived the least in

A.Classical Greece

B.Roman Empire

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C.Medieval Europe

D.Western world

d II. Прочитайте текст. Подберите соответствующий заголовок к каждому абзацу (1-5).

(1)Forty million years ago, when the earth was much wetter and warmer, huge forests with many kinds of trees thrived in the far north. Out of some of these trees, stretching as tall as ten-story buildings oozed a sticky resin. Mosquitoes buzzed through the forests, and grasshoppers and crickets leaped, and ants and spiders scurried by the trees in search of food. If they carelessly let a leg or wing touch the resin they were stuck, preserved like mummies in an airtight trap. Millions of years passed, and the climate of the earth altered dramatically. The northlands turned cold and icy. The giant trees fell, buried under the salt water that now covered the land. Far beneath the water, the globs of resin slowly changed, hardening into solid, glowing pieces of amber.

(2)Still millions of years later, storms at sea broke the amber free and tossed it onto beaches for early cave dwellers to find. The cave dwellers wondered if the strange golden stone, warm to the touch, could be solid sunlight. They carved pieces of amber into the shapes of animals or the sun and wore them on cords around their necks for magical protection. When early Chinese people found amber the color of tigers' stripes, they believed it held the souls of dead tigers and they treasured it as a source of courage. The ancient Greeks rubbed amber against cloth or animal skins to polish it and make it glow, they noticed that the amber would pull feathers or pieces of straw to it. They had discovered static electricity. For hundreds of years, people used amber to decorate warriors' weapons; some soldiers braided amber beads in their horses' manes to ensure success in battle. Amber was also ground fine and mixed with honey, oil of roses, and crabs' eyes or claws for use as medicine. Amber mixtures were believed to cure earaches, headaches, and any number of diseases.

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(3)In the early 1700s, King Frederick I of Prussia had an entire room built from 100, 000 pieces of amber of many colors – yellow, orange, red, brown, and even blue and green – all fitted together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. The room was used and admired for more than 200 years, but in the 1940s, during World War II, it was taken apart and loaded into boxes for storage in a safer place. The boxes were somehow lost, and where the amber room is today remains a mystery.

(4)The pieces of amber with inclusions of early life or gas bubbles are the most valuable to scientists. They hold clues about the earth's ecology millions of years ago and enable scientists to compare early life forms with today's. More than a thousand kinds of insects have been found preserved in amber, from prehistoric flies that proved to be the ancestors of our houseflies to a 140-million-year-old weevil that lived at the time of the dinosaurs. Although most of the preserved insects are now extinct, their descendants may still survive, sometimes in new places. A termite found in Mexican amber now lives only in Australia.

(5)Scientists use X-rays to study skeletons of frogs and lizards, seeds inside fruit, and other inclusions without opening the amber. They also scan the surface of ancient mummified insects with electron microscopes, revealing such detail as preserved muscle fibers and the spinning glands of trapped spiders. In addition, scientists can extract DNA directly from an amber inclusion. Amber is the only known fossil from which ancient DNA can be recovered.

A.Mysterious Loss of Amber Room

B.Use of Amber throughout Millennia

C.Discovery of Static Electricity

D.Amber and Its Role in Science

E.Giant Jigsaw Puzzle

F.How Amber Appeared

G.Scientific Research Methods

d III. Прочитайте текст и выполните послетекстовые задания.

(1) The shark's teeth aren't found just in its mouth but over its whole body. The real name of these growths is "dermal denticles," meaning

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skin teeth, but they're actually the shark's scales. Normally these miniature teeth can only be seen with a magnifying glass but they cover the skin like a thick forest. They are similar to human teeth, made of blood vessels, pulp, and enamel, but they're differently shaped.

(2)The denticles begin to grow while the shark is still an embryo inside its mother. Appearing as tiny forms called papilliform growths, they stay just under the skin and harden as lime salts from the mother's body are deposited on them. The deposits' build up until the dermal denticles are fully formed. The denticles then emerge through the skin. Their bases are calcified, like human teeth, and their roots reach beneath the hide into the dermis, or deeper skin, of the shark. Each denticle is held in place by the same tough connective fibers that hold the shark's teeth inside its mouth.

(3)When fully grown, these denticles resemble tiny spines reaching out of the skin, curving backward toward the tail fin. The first row of these minute teeth appear just outside the large teeth of the mouth and form a dense, crisscrossing pattern over the entire body. They may grow so close together that the skin beneath cannot be seen, even under a magnifying glass, or they may be so sparse that the skin can clearly be seen. Because of the denticles, shark skin was used by knights who wanted a material to keep their swords from slipping out of their hands during battle.

(4)This toothed skin probably began to appear when skeletons were evolving in most other animals. Sharks have no bones. It means that they have only their skin to hold their vital organs in place. Shark skin must be extraordinary to serve this purpose, and it is. Under the buoyant pressure of ocean water, the skin keeps the shark compact and sleek. Although dermal denticles are tough, they suffer a great deal of damage from the shark's daily activities. Healthy denticles can only be found toward the rear of a shark, along its sides. Other areas, such as the leading edge of the first dorsal fin or the tip of the snout, are most likely to rub against something, and those denticles become worn and unidentifiable.

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d Выберите вариант ответа, соответствующий содержанию прочитанного текста (задания 1-5).

1. The name of the growths mentioned in the text can be translated as

A. shark's scales.

B. skin-formed teeth.

C. teeth growing on skin.

2. The denticles begin to grow when the shark is

A. still a fetus.

B. little and totally dependent on its mother.

C. several months old and has accumulated enough calcium in its organism.

3. The dentacles may grow close together

A. yet the skin beneath can be easily seen under a magnifying glass. B. so that even a magnifying glass won’t help to discern the skin. C. but the skin is visible.

4. Shark skin was used by knights who wanted some material

A. to make strong armor.

B. to prevent their swords from corrosion. C. for the sword handles.

5. Shark's dermal denticles are an effective means to

A.protect the shark's skin from injury.

B.make the shark's body compact and sleek under the pressure of ocean water.

C.preserve the shark's vital organs.

d Определитезначениеуказанногословавтексте(задания6-8).

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