Контроль чтения. Reading test

TEST 9 READING

1. Установите соответствие между заголовками 1–8 и текстами A–G. Запишите свои ответы в таблицу. Используйте каждую цифру только один раз. В задании есть один лишний заголовок.

1. Education: the Way to the Top

2. From Agony to Love

3. Teaching to Learn

4. Learning That Never Stops

5. Things Worth Learning

6. The Right Word Can Bring Changes

7. What My Father Taught Me

8. The Power of Numbers

A. Education has the power to transform a person’s life. I am the living example of this. When I was on the streets, I thought I was not good at anything but I wrote a poem, and it got published. I went back to school to learn. I have learned the benefit of research and reading, of debate and listening. One day soon a group of fresh-faced college students will call me professor.

B. Language has the capacity to change the world and the way we live in it. People are often afraid to call things by their direct names, use taboos not to notice dangerous tendencies. Freedom begins with naming things. This has to happen in spite of political climates, careers being won or lost, and the fear of being criticized. After Helen Caldicott used the word ‘nuclear arms race’ an anti-nuclear movement appeared.

C. I never wanted to be a teacher. Yet years later, I find myself teaching high school English. I consider my job to be one of the most important aspects of my life, still I do not teach for the love of teaching. I am a teacher because I love to learn, and I have come to realize that the best way to learn is to teach.

D. One day my sister and I got one and the same homework. My sister finished the task in 2 minutes and went off to play. But I could not do it, so I went into my sister’s room and quickly copied her work. But there was one small problem: my father caught me. He didn’t punish me, but explained that cheating makes people feel helpless. And then I was left feeling guilty for cheating.

E. Lifelong learning does not mean spending all my time reading. It is equally important to get the habit of asking such questions as ‘what don’t I know about this topic, or subject?’, ‘what can I learn from this moment or person?’, and ‘what more do I need to learn?’ regardless of where I am, who I am talking to, or what I am doing.

F. Math has always been something that I am good at. Mathematics attracts me because of its stability. It has logic; it is dependable and never changes. There might be some additions to the area of mathematics, but once mathematics is created, it is set in stone. We would not be able to check emails or play videogames without the computer solving complex algorithms.

G. When my high school English teacher asked us to read Shakespeare, I thought it was boring and too difficult. I agonized over the syntax — I had never read anything like this. But now I am a Shakespeare professor, and enjoy teaching Hamlet every semester. Each time I re-read the play, I find and learn something new for myself.

2. Прочитайте текст и заполните пропуски A–F частями предложений, обозначенными цифрами 1–7. Одна из частей в списке 1–7 — лишняя. Занесите цифры, обозначающие соответствующие части предложений, в таблицу.

If you eat very quickly, it may be enough to increase your risk of being overweight, research suggests.

Osaka University scientists looked at the eating habits of 3,000 people. Just about half of them told researchers that they A ______ . Compared with those who did not eat quickly, fast-eating men were 84% more likely to be overweight, and women were 100% more likely to В ______ .

Japanese scientists said that there were a number of reasons why eating fast С ______ . They said it could prevent the work of a signalling system which tells your brain to stop eating because your stomach is full. They said: ‘If you eat quickly you basically fill your stomach before the system has a chance to react, so you D _____ .

The researchers also explained that a mechanism that helps make us fat today, developed with evolution and helped people get more food in the periods when they were short of it. The scientists added that the habit of eating fast could be received from one’s parents genes or E ______ .

They said that, if possible, children should be taught to F ______ , and allowed to stop when they felt full up at mealtimes. ‘The advice of our grandmothers about chewing everything 20 times might be true — if you take a bit more time eating, it could have a positive influence on your weight.

1. just overfill your stomach

2. could be bad for your weight

3. have a habit of eating quickly

4. linked to obesity

5. eat as slowly as possible

6. put on weight

7. learned at a very early age

3.

12. The fears of the users about the «millennium bug» were ...

1) overestimated.

2) suppressed.

3) unrealistic.

4) justified.

The Difference Engine: No more addresses

REMEMBER the panic over the "millennium bug", when computers everywhere were expected to go haywire on January 1st, 2000, thanks to the way a lot of old software used just two digits to represent the year instead of four? Doomsters predicted all sorts of errors in calculations involving dates when the clocks rolled over from 99 to 00. In the event, the millennium dawned without incident. That may have been because of the draconian preparations undertaken beforehand. Or perhaps, as many suspected, the problem was grossly exaggerated in the first place, as it often happens. Certainly, the computer industry made a packet out of all the panic-buying of new hardware and software in the months leading up to the new millennium. And who would blame them for this? Business is business.

Well, something similar is about to happen in the months ahead. This time, the issue concerns the exhaustion of Internet addresses — those four numbers ranging from 0 to 255 separated by dots that uniquely identify every device attached to the Internet. According to Hurricane Electric, an Internet backbone and services provider based in Fremont, California, the Internet will run out of bulk IP addresses sometime next week — given the rate addresses are currently being gobbled up.

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) will then have doled out all its so-called "slash-eight" blocks of addresses to the five regional Internet registries around the world. In turn, the registries are expected to have allocated all their remaining addresses to local network operators by October at the latest. After that, any organization applying for new addresses will be told, "Sorry, none left".

The issue is real and has been a long time in the making. The Economist first warned about it ten years ago. The problem concerns the address space of the existing version of the Internet protocol (IPv4), which is only 32 bits wide. The total number of binary addresses possible with such an arrangement is 4.3 billion. Back in the 1980s, when the Internet connected just a couple of dozen research institutes in America, that seemed like a huge number. Besides, the Internet was thought at the time to be just a temporary network anyway.

But with the invention of the Web in 1990 came an explosion in popular demand. It was soon clear that it was only a matter of time before the Internet would exhaust its supply of addresses. Work on a replacement for IPv4 began in the early 1990s, with IPv6 finally being made available around 1998. By giving the new internet version an address space of 128 bits, the designers pretty well guaranteed that it would not run out of unique identifiers for decades, or even centuries, to come.

Two raised to the 128th power is an astronomical number. That will come in handy when the "Internet of things" becomes a reality. Already, some two billion people have access to the Internet. Add all the televisions, phones, cars and household appliances that are currently being given Internet access — plus, eventually, every book, pill case and item of inventory as well — and a world or two of addresses could easily be accounted for. And yet, the solution of any problem begins with its verbalization. We are forewarned and it means — forearmed.

13. Which of the following was NOT the reason why the «millennium bug» didn't work?

1) The problem never existed.

2) The new hardware had been installed.

3) The manufacturers had improved software.

4) The users took necessary precautions.

14. The number of available IP addresses is limited by ...

1) the number of computers connected to the Internet.

2) the number of organizations applying.

3) address space of the Internet protocol.

4) the Internet protocol version.

15. The solution of the problem with the lack of IP addresses is to ...

1) add a temporary network.

2) speed up research.

3) improve the current Internet protocol.

4) restrict the number of users.

16. The existing version of the protocol was believed appropriate because ...

1) the addresses were not permanent.

2) another network was being developed.

3) the net was not popular.

4) no one expected the demand to grow.

17. The phrase «Internet of things» refers to ...

1) personal computers of the users.

2) things ordered through the Internet.

3) a new network replacing the current Internet.

4) appliances with access to the Web.

18. Speaking of the future of the world-wide web, the author appears to be

1) overexcited.

2) hopeful.

3) pessimistic.

4) doubtful.