Read the sentences and choose the correct options.
ПОЛУЧИТЬ ОТВЕТ Read the text and choose the correct answer to the question why the author believes that reading is good for the state of your mind. Reading Did you know that some people don't do their reading home task? It's shocking, but it's true. Some students don't even read short texts that they are given in class. There are many reasons for this. They may be distracted or bored. They may be unwilling to focus. They may be weak readers. Whatever the reason, it has to stop today. Here's why. Reading stimulates your mind. It is like exercise for your brain. When people get old, their muscles begin to get weaker and their strength leaves them. Sports can prevent this loss. The same thing happens to people's brains when they get older. Brains get weaker and slower with age. Reading strengthens your brain and prevents these unpleasant changes. You can benefit from reading in the near future too. Reading provides knowledge. Knowledge is power. Therefore, reading can make you a more powerful person. You can learn to do new things by reading. Do you want to make video games? Do you want to design clothing? Reading can teach you all this and more. But you have to get good at reading, and the only way to get good at something is to practise. Read everything that you can at school, no matter if you find it interesting. Reading enlarges your vocabulary. Even a "boring" text can teach you new words. Having a larger vocabulary will help you better express yourself. You will be able to speak, write, and think more intelligently. What's boring about that? Do not just leave a text because it is unfamiliar to you. Each time you read, you are offered new ideas and perspectives. Reading can change the way that you understand the world. It can give you a broader perspective on things. You can learn how people live in faraway places. You can learn about cultures different from your own. Reading is good for your state of mind. It has a calming effect. It can lower your stress levels and help you relax. You can escape from your troubles for a moment when you read, and it's a positive escape. So do yourself a favour: the next time you get a reading task, take as much as you can from it. Squeeze every drop of knowledge out of it. Then move on to the next one.
Choose the correct answer.
Read the text and fill in the gaps with the correct grammatical forms.
Read and choose the correct answer. Eating around the world The Toros live in Tokyo, Japan. Yamada Toro lives with his wife, Keiko, and his children Yoshi and Haruna. He works in an office. Keiko always cooks breakfast before Yamada leaves for work at 7.00 a.m. They have dinner together at home in the evenings. They eat a lot of fish and rice. Keiko cooks all the meals for her family. They never go to fast food restaurants because they try to lead a healthy lifestyle. Steve and Corinne Merton and their children, Larry and Courtney, live in New York. They are a typical American family. Steve and Corinne both work and they don’t usually have time to cook, so they like convenience food. The children eat a lot of hot dogs, burgers and cola. They eat at fast food restaurants once a week. They never go to the gym as keeping fit is not important for them. Julio Esteban, his wife Manuela and their children, Maria and Pedro, live in Havana. Cuba is a tropical country so they eat a lot of fresh fruit – pineapples, watermelons and bananas. Families in Cuba have ration books. They show how much food the family can buy every month. Sometimes they go to the sports centre to do exercise. Swimming is Maria and Pedro’s favourite pastime.
Read the text and choose the correct answer. English is an international language spoken by an increasing number of people around the world. In many English-speaking countries, though, English isn’t the only language. In the UK, for example, people speak Welsh, Gaelic and a few other old languages. Because these languages aren’t international, people pay less attention to them. So, what does this mean for children who grow up speaking them as their mother tongue? I grew up in Wales. My family spoke English, but the Welsh language was everywhere. When you were driving around Wales, all the road signs were in English and Welsh. As a child, I hated reading everything twice! We had Welsh television programmes too. While everyone in England was watching fashionable American TV shows, we were learning about local farming in Welsh! At secondary school I was dreaming of going to live in Paris, when I realized that instead of Welsh lessons, I needed French lessons. No one spoke Welsh outside Wales. Now I feel differently. Welsh is a part of my identity and, besides, we have better Welsh TV now! In parts of Scotland, some children grow up in families where grandparents still speak Gaelic. Gaelic has even fewer speakers than Welsh, and few are confident that this part of their culture will survive. It’s difficult when English is everywhere else in the country, but teaching subjects in Gaelic in schools helps. However, often there aren’t enough Gaelic-speaking teachers. Unless families continue to speak the language at home too, these languages won’t survive. Between 1950 and 2010, 230 languages went extinct, nowadays, a third of the world’s languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers left. Every two weeks a language dies with its last speaker, 50 to 90 percent of them are predicted to disappear by the next century. Many old languages are disappearing in the UK. People on the Isle of Man spoke Manx for centuries until the last native speaker died in the twentieth century. The same thing happened to Cornish. There was a language spoken by smugglers who were bringing goods into the country illegally, or travellers and criminals. It allowed them to keep secrets from the police, but it too has disappeared. Languages, even if they are spoken by very few people, have a history and culture, and it’s a shame to see them go. When humanity loses a language, we also lose the potential for greater diversity in art, music, literature, and oral traditions. If we care about saving forests and animals, we should care about saving languages too.
