READING. For most of us, love is the most absorbing subject in

L0VE Ilk 1

For most of us, love is the most absorbing subject in

existence. There is an enormous range of meanings in this one little

word: motherly love and self-love, fatherly love and children's love fc

their parents; there is brotherly love and there is the love of one's home and

one's country; there is love of money and there is love of power. Love clearly

includes all of these, but the love in which one can be oneself is the pre-eminent

love for most of us. Love at its fullest can include an enormous range of emotions

and sentiments. It can combine humility with pride, passion with peace, selfassertion

with self-surrender; it can reconcile violence of feeling with tenderness.

" Being in love" is love at its most intense, and is personally focused in a very special

way. Our common speech reflects this fact, as we talk of " falling in love" as if it were

something into which we are precipitated against our will, like falling into a pond.

EXERCISE 1: Find words or phrases in the passage which mean the same as:

COLUMN A COLUMN B

a) very interesting, taking up a lot of one's time

b) the best of all; having better qualities than the

others in the same group

c) attitude based on one's thoughts and feelings

d) modesty

e) satisfaction with something one has achieved;

self-respect

f) self-confidence; ability to speak on one's own

behalf

g) find an agreement between things that are

opposed

h) gentleness

i) cause to happen suddenly and unexpectedly

j) small area of water, often man-made

80 • ELS

EXERCISE 2: Choose the correct answer according to the passage.

1. Love, according to the passage,

A) makes us experience all emotions more intensely

B) enables the balancing of extreme feelings

C) happens against our will

D) is only real when we are " in love"

E) is sometimes really difficult to achieve

2. It is stated in the passage that

A) we frequently mention love in our speech

B) there are various kinds of love

C) nobody wants to " fall in love"

D) it requires effort to maintain any kind of love

E) everyone is more interested in love than in anything else

3. The writer states that, generally, the most important kind of love

A) absorbs us more than anything in existence

B) occurs when we feel that we are " in love"

C) is " fallen into" and happens against our will

D) is the one which allows us to behave as we are

E) can only be possessed by emotional people

EXERCISE 3: Complete the sentences by selecting words from Column B in EXERCISE 1.

1. Today's lecture will be given by the man who is in this particular field of

science.

2. Attempts are being made to; the management and the workers and

bring an end to the strike.

3. That book was so that I could hardly put it down for a minute.

4. The things he just said reflect my on the matter entirely.

5 is all very well, but you won't get the job if you don't talk about your

achievements.

ВАРИАНТ 18

READING THE MIND'S EYE

Which weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead? Everyone knows

the answer: they both weigh the same. An interesting point, however, is what sort of

image popped into your head when you read those words. One person who

answered this question saw, distinctly, a pair of scales with a cube of lead on one

scale balancing a big mound of feathers on the other. A second person got no

mental image, but simply conceived of the problem in terms of words. People differ

greatly in their power to " make pictures in their heads." Years ago the British

scientist Sir Francis Galton asked a group of colleagues to try to visualize the

breakfast table as they had sat down to eat that morning. Some of them saw the

table in sharp detail and in colour. Others saw it only in black and white. Still others

saw a blurred outline, as if through a badly adjusted magic lantern. Many could get

no visual image at all. Scientists believe that most people are born with the ability to

summon up in the mind's eye precise visual images of past experiences, but that

many of us lose this power as we grow up, simply because we fail to exercise it.

EXERCISE 1: Find words or phrases in the passage which mean the same as:

COLUMN A COLUMN B

a) one of the light things which cover a bird's skin

and gives the bird its colour

b) soft, heavy metal

c) go or come quickly (in or out)

d) instrument for weighing with two pans that have

to be balanced (phrase)

e) solid which has six equally-sized square sides

f) pile; heap

g) imagine; form an idea in the mind

h) clear; distinct

i) unclear; indistinct; confused in appearance

j) old-fashioned device for projecting pictures

onto a screen

k) gather together; bring into existence (phrase)

I) in imagination; in memory (phrase)

82 • ELS

EXERCISE 2: Choose the correct answer according to the passage.

1. We can infer that Sir Francis Galton's aim was

A) to measure people's ability to picture past experiences

B) to discover what his colleagues had eaten for breakfast

C) to find out how much attention his colleagues paid to their domestic surroundings

D) to assess the incidence of colour-blindness

E) to provide practice in making pictures in one's head

2. The writer states that

A) most people cannot visually recall events as recent as that morning

B) some people are completely unable to guess at the weight of something

C) past experiences become less important to us as we grow up

D) there is no difference between feathers and lead

E) not all people have the same ability to visualize things

3. People's ability to recall past experiences visually

A) depends on how far in the past they were

B) often diminishes with the passing years

C) eventually decreases despite exercise

D) enables us to keep precise pictures of them

E) varies according to the words used to describe them

EXERCISE 3: Complete the sentences by selecting words from Column B in EXERCISE 1.

1. Before you leave, just in and say goodbye.

2. I was so tired that I had to all my strength just to climb the stairs to

bed.

3. The camera lens must have had a fingerprint on it, because all our photos are

4. I hope the pillows aren't filled with as I'm allergic to them.

5 people see their holiday destinations as far more beautiful than they

actually are.

ELS o 83