Part 3 Reading Comprehension

Read the passage and answer the questions that follow.

Прочитать и ответить на вопросы после текста.

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When people think of movies, they usually think of Hollywood. However, many of the earliest tools relating to motion pictures were not American inventions. It was thanks to the efforts of inventors from several countries that we can enjoy movies today. In the early 1800s an Englishman named William George Horner invented the zoetrope. In it a series of pictures were mounted inside a drum. When the rotating pictures were viewed through slots, they merged into one and appeared to move. ln California in 1877, another Englishman, named Eadweard Muybridge, used a series of cameras to record the movements of a galloping horse. Later, he also recorded human movements. He used his still pictures to illustrate books; thus it was left to the German, Ottomar Anschutz, to invent a way to rapidly show the picture series to give the impression of movement. Finally, it took a Frenchman, Etienne-Jules Marey, to develop a single camera to record movement. Marey shot his pictures on fixed plates, at the rate of 12 per second. As early as 1888 he was experimenting with celluloid film, an American invention. While Thomas Edison was busy inventing something called the kinetograph camera, Louis Le Prince of France was patenting a 16-lens camera to take moving pictures and a projector to show them. By the following year he was working with a single-lens camera. Unfortunately, in 1890 Le Prince suddenly disappeared from the train in which he was traveling and vanished forever. Taking up where Le Prince left off were Louis and Auguste Lumiere, who gave the world's first projected film performance, before a paying audience in Paris on December 28, 1895. Motion pictures have come a long way since those early days and have had a great influence on society. It was thanks to the contributions of filmmakers and inventors from all over the world that movies have developed into the form we know today.

1. What is the main idea of the passage?

Look over the passage again to find the answers to questions 2-12.

Complete the following sentences with details from the passage.

Дополнить предложения словами из теста, которые подходят по смыслу.

2. A_______ was an invention that consisted of a drum with a series of pictures that rotated and were viewed through slots.

3. After Muybridge recorded the movements of a galloping horse, he recorded ________ .

4. Marey was the first person to use one ________ to record movement.

5. Marey experimented with _______ , which he did not invent.

6. The first projected film performance was given by the _______ brothers.

In sentences 7 and 8, identify the detail that is NOT mentioned in the passage.

Укажите в предложениях, какие детали не были описаны в тексте

7. Muybridge used a series of cameras to record the movements of a galloping horse, human movements, and the movement of objects.

8. At the same time Thomas Edison invented and patented the kinetograph camera, Le Prince patented a 16-lens camera to take moving pictures.

Answer reference questions that follow:

9. What does the word "it" in line 6 refer to?

10. What does the word "they" in line 7 refer to?

The answers to questions 11 and 12 are not directly stated in the passage, but are understood by drawing conclusions from the information given in the passage.

Самостоятельно подумайте ответы на вопросы, они на прямую не связаны с текстом, но они с ним связаны.

11. What do you think would have happened if Le Prince had not disappeared?

12.What can we infer about the motion picture camera from the passage?

Read the following passage and the statements that follow them. Some statements can be inferred from the passage, others cannot. Identify the statements that can be inferred from the passage.

Прочитать и определить какие утверждения упоминаются в тексте.

The mid-1950s saw the growth of a new kind of popular music that was first called “rock 'n' roll” and then simply “rock.” Although quite diverse in style, rock music tends to vocal music with a hard, driving beat featuring electric guitar accompaniment and heavily amplified sound. Early rock grew mainly out of rhythm and blues, a dance music African Americans that combined blues, jazz, and gospel styles. Rock also drew upon country and western music, a folk-like guitar-based style associated with rural Americans and the Nashville Grand Ole Opry. In little more than a decade, rock evolved from a single, dance-oriented style to a music highly varied in its tones, lyrics, and electronic technology.

13. Rock was the first form of popular music.

14. There is basically one style of rock music.

15. Rock music is always loud.

16. Several types of music influenced the development of rock.

17. Rock has always been a complicated style of music.

18. Folk music is popular in rural areas.

19. The evolution of rock music occurred relatively quickly.

20. Read the passage and answer the question that follows.

Прочитать и выбрать одно из 4 утверждений, которое описывает смысл всего текста.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the first distinctly American culture took form. The rise of an American tradition paralleled the expansion of the nation, as American writers began to look within themselves and across their enlarged continental homeland for their subjects and themes. The romance, or novel, provided a useful form for dealing with the large moral subjects and the peculiar circumstances of the American setting. In James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers (1823) and The Deerslayers (1841), Natty Bumppoo and the Mohican guide Chingachgook confronted the environment of the American frontier, chronicling the advance of “civilization” and questioning the implications of its impact on the natural world. The theme of the individual confronting nature was further developed by Herman Melville in the classic novel Moby Dick (1851). Nathaniel Hawthorne dealt with equally difficult questions of inner limits and the individual's responsibilities to society in The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851).

What is the main idea expressed in the passage?

(A) As the nation expanded, novelists began writing about the American frontier.

(B) The first American literature took the form of novels that dealt with uniquely American themes.

(C) In their novels Melville and Hawthorne both addressed difficult questions facing Americans.

(D) The individual versus nature was one of the main themes explored in early American literature.