Reading Task 1
Прочитайте тексты и установите соответствие между текстами и их заголовками: к каждому тексту, обозначенному буквами А-G, подберите : соответствующий заголовок, обозначенный цифрами 1-8. Используйте каждую цифру только один раз.
A. Bath is a world famous city known for its thermal baths, which are a major tourist attraction. The city is situated in the southwest of England, near the country’s west coast and about 150 kilometres from London. Bath is in the area of England that is known as Somerset, a county bordered on the north by the Bristol Channel.
B. The baths for which Bath is known were built around the year 60. It was the Romans who established the city as a spa. They did so about 20 years after they arrived in England. They constructed the baths, along with a temple, on a hillside near hot springs. Over the next 300 years, structures would be added to the baths, making them grander.
C. Over the years, Bath slowly became an important city. Wealthy people began moving there in the 1500s. In 1767, construction began on the Royal Crescent, a group of buildings that form a semicircle and look out onto a park. The buildings were constructed in the Georgian style. Afterward, more buildings were built in the same style, giving Bath the character it has today.
D. Bath is situated in the Avon Valley. The city is built on and surrounded by hills, which have a maximum height of 238 metres. The valley, which is about 18 metres above sea level, runs through the city centre. The River Avon runs through this area, and because it is a low-lying area, the city sometimes suffers from floods during rainy seasons.
E. Presently, there are just over 80,000 people living in the city itself. The greater region of Bath, which includes nearby parts of Somerset, has a total population of around 160,000. The majority of people living in Bath are of English birth, with just under 3% of people being from places outside the UK. A resident of Bath is known as a Bathonian.
F. As it is located in the southwest of England, Bath generally has winters that are warmer than other parts of the country. Its summers are usually cool and rainy, and the temperature doesn’t go much over 20°Celsius. Average rainfall is 700 millimetres, which is spread out evenly throughout the seasons. Its windiest period is in the winter, while summers tend to have light breezes.
G. The city of Bath has five theatres, and performances are put on by both national and international companies. There are also important concerts that take place in Bath, as well as literature and film festivals. One such festival decides who in Bath is that year’s greatest poet, singer or storyteller. These various events attract thousands of people to the city.
Reading Task 2
:Прочитайте текст. Определите, какие из приведённых утверждений соответствуют содержанию текста (1 – True), какие не соответствуют (2 – False) и о чём в тексте не сказано, то есть на основании текста нельзя дать ни положительного, ни отрицательного ответа (3 – Not stated).
In the autumn of 1900, a team of Greek sponge divers were returning from the coast of Africa. A dangerous storm started, which forced them to take shelter near the small Greek island of Antikythera. While the crew waited for the storm to pass, the captain of the boat sent one of his divers to search the seabed for sponges.
The diver, Elias Stadiatis, discovered the remains of a 2,000-year-old shipwreck at the bottom of the sea, 60 meters below. When he returned to the surface, he was so excited about what hed found that the captain thought he had been affected by too much carbon dioxide. But when the captain himself went down to take a look, he saw that his crewman really had found ancient treasures. He immediately told the Greek authorities, and the sponge divers, with the assistance of the Greek navy, began to recover the wonderful things.
In the following months, using only very basic diving equipment, the divers managed to bring to the surface an amazing number of ancient artefacts, including bronze and marble statues, delicate glassware and gold jewelry. All of this had remained undisturbed for nearly two thousand years. The operation only stopped because conditions became too dangerous to continue.
One of the items that was discovered was a piece of bronze. It was in such poor condition that no one was sure what it was. One archaeologist suggested that it was some kind of clockwork mechanism, but no one believed him and it was put away for storage in a museum. It was nearly fifty years before anyone else took any interest in the item.
In 1951, a British scientist called Derek Price began to investigate the item. He discovered that it contained a complex gear mechanism and suggested that it was used to make calculations about the position of planets. It is regarded as the world’s first example of an analog computer. Today, it is world famous, and is known as ‘the Antikythera mechanism’. Before the discovery of this mechanism, it was believed that no complex clockwork machines had been invented until the 14th century. Scientists continue to investigate just how it was used.
The site of the shipwreck continues to fascinate modern archaeologists, who are keen to make further diving expeditions in the area. But diving in dangerous waters at depths of between sixty and seventy metres is expensive and difficult, so there have been only a few expeditions over the last hundred years or so. If it’s difficult now, just think how much harder it was for a team of Greek divers over a hundred years ago.