Exercise 1. Read the text and questions below. For each question, choose the correct answer, A, B, C or D.
Lake Vinney
My favourite place for water sports is Lake Vinney, but is has only existed since 1975 when the valley was filled with water to provide electricity. Under the water is the village, Vinnthrope. Last week I talked to Pat Smithers, who runs a shop on the edge of the lake and looks after a huge cap park. She gets up early to travel to her shop to sell newspapers and food and doesn’t finish work till late because of the car park. She said drowning the village was the best thing that ever happened, as it brought a lot of business to the area, and the number of visitors from all over the country continues to increase, especially as there is a new road which means it is easier to get there. When I asked people enjoying the water sports, they said they never thought about the drowned houses and streets. When I spoke to some people in the café overlooking the lake, I was surprised they still get angry about what happened. They used to live in Vinnthrope and were moved to other places in the area, among them thirty children who are now middle-aged, but they still miss the village. They say that nobody asked them what they wanted – they were told one day that everything was decided. They were separated from their friends and had to get buses to new schools instead of walking there together. It is a shame that these people lost their homes, and I hope something similar never happens again in the future. I would miss the water sports if they weren’t there, however, and I must say that I hadn’t ever thought about what was under the water until last week.
Question №1 What is the writer trying to do?
· Describe what people think about the drowned village.
B. Persuade people to take up water sports on Lake Vinney.
C. Discuss what might happen to Lake Vinney in the future.
D. Explain why people like living by Lake Vinney.
Question № 2 What do we find out about Lake Vinney?
A. It attracts tourists from abroad.
B. There are lots of houses on the banks.
C. More people are visiting it every year.
· D. Mainly local people do water sports there
Exercise 2. Read the text and questions below. For each question, choose true if the statement is true according to the text, false if the statement is false and not stated if the information about this statement is not given in the text.
Electric cars? Solar-powered buses? When most people imagine solutions to the problems of city air pollution they probably think of electricity and solar power. But the problem with an electric car is that the electrical energy stored within batteries has to be first produced by conventional means such as burning coal, which creates the very problem the car is supposedly designed to avoid. Even the battery disposal is an environmental hazard. As for solar power, at present the solar panels that catch the sunlight are twice as big as the cars they power. And speeds of ten kilometers an hour are hardly practical. What is required is a safe, cheap and highly efficient engine that produces fewer major air pollutants and only in small quantities. You may be surprised that the answer has been with us for quite some time.
The probable solution to city air pollution is a concept for an engine that was first proposed by a French scientist in 1824 and later designed and patented by a German refrigeration engineer in 1892, whose name was Rudolph Diesel. His design for an engine that would produce more energy output but burn less fuel became known as the diesel engine. Most people think of diesel engines as being efficient and cheaper to run but smelly and rather noisy.
It is true that the black soot emitted from the exhausts of diesel lorries is far fewer of all the major air pollutants than petrol-driven engines, except for nitrogen oxides and black soot. However, soot can be trapped, and already new diesel engines are under development, being redesigned to burn diesel fuel in such a way that the nitrogen oxide gases are released into the air as harmless nitrogen and oxygen.
In fact, if all cars were running on diesel fuel, air pollution in major cities would disappear overnight. Why then has it taken this long to do something about it? The problem is that the disadvantages of diesel engines, which include greater noise and vibration as well as taking longer to start up, have meant that car manufacturers have been reluctant to invest in productions of more expensive diesel-powered cars – afraid that customers would not purchase their products. Fortunately, new technology is ensuring that diesel-powered engines become lean, clean and mean. It might not be long before city smog is but a distant memory.