Language Activities

Comprehension

1. What is the name of the main character?

2. Who tells us the story of Lionel Wallace?

3. Under what circumstances did Wallace tell Redmond his story? Why was it difficult for Redmond to believe it?

4. What career did Wallace make for his short life?

5. When did Wallace come upon the green door in the wall for the first time? Why did the boy hesitate before entering it?

6. What did the boy see in the garden? Whom did he meet there?

7. What did Wallace see in the book the sombre woman showed him?

8. Where did the boy find himself after he had turned the last page of the book? What did he feel?

9. Who took care of Lionel when he was a child?

10. How did the boy’s father and other members of the family regard the boy’s story?

11. What was the idea of the game “North-West passage”? Why did the boy play it?

12. How did Wallace’s school fellows learn about the enchanted garden? What was their reaction?

13. What prevented Wallace from going through the door later when he came upon it? Recall the episodes when Wallace came upon the green door.

14. How does the story end?

15. Make a short summary of the story.

Vocabulary

Word List

to be stripped of smth.

to account for smth.

to resort to smth.

to get over smth.

to the very best of one’s ability

to throw light on smth.

reticent

to confide in smb.

to be haunted by smth./smb.

not to care a rap for smb.

to be a year short of forty

to be in office

to make the running

to be assured of smth.

to make one’s confession to smb.

to play smb. a trick

in a trice

conspicuous

to give smb. a thrashing

to go astray

to be familiar to smb.

to be on (upon) one’s mind

to keep smth. to oneself

to bear out one’s words

to put in a word

to doubt smth.

at a venture

remorse

to keep a secret from smb.

to reject smth.

1. Reproduce the passages from the text in which the vocabulary is used.

2. Paraphrase the following using the vocabulary:

1. How can you explain losing five games in a row?

2. He was filled with shame and regret after hitting the child.

3. Michael is very secretive about his past.

4. The socialist party have been governing for almost ten years in this country.

5. Jim had the car mended in a very short time.

6. She looks very worried; I wonder what she’s thinking about.

3. Translate the following using the vocabulary:

1. Мне пришлось прибегнуть к угрозам, чтобы вернуть деньги.

2. Будучи экономистом, ему удалось пролить некоторый свет на эту проблему.

3. Я изо всех сил старался ей помочь.

4. Она милая и добрая девушка, но я не думаю, что могу ей довериться.

5. Разве ты не видишь, ей наплевать на тебя.

4. Paraphrase or explain the following:

1. Afterwards as I sat up in bed and sipped my morning tea, I found myself trying to account for the flavour of reality that perplexed me in his impossible reminiscences, by supposing they did in some way suggest, present, convey – I hardly know which word to use – experiences it was otherwise impossible to tell.

2. “…He doesn’t care a rap for you – under his very nose…”

3. He left me behind him long ago; he soared up over my head, and cut a figure in the world that I couldn’t cut – anyhow.

4. I take it that means October.

5. All that had faded among the incurable blurs of memory.

6. As I realized the fullness of what had happened to me, I gave way to quite ungovernable grief.

7. And one day I got entangled among some rather low-class streets on the other side of Campden Hill, and I began to think that for once the game would be against me and that I should get to school late.

8. Carnaby became outrageously virtuous, and said I’d have to – and bear out my words of suffer.

9. And I went by it intent upon my purpose.

10. And I was all-a-tingle for that word with Gurker.

11. “…A thousand inconceivable petty worldlinesses weighed with me in that crisis.”