Read the passage and complete questions 1-8. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
The life of the European bee-eater
A brilliant movement of colour as it catches its food in the air, the European bee-eater moves between three continents.
True to their name, bee-eaters eat bees (though their diet includes just about any flying insect). When the bird catches a bee, it returns to its tree to get rid of the bee's poison, which it does very efficiently. It hits the insect's head on one side of the branch, then rubs its body on the other. The rubbing makes its prey harmless.
European bee-eaters (Merops apiaster) form families that breed in the spring and summer across an area that extends from Spain to Kazakhstan. Farmland and river valleys provide huge numbers of insects. Flocks of bee-eaters follow tractors as they work fields. When the birds come upon a beehive, they eat well - a researcher once found a hundred bees in the stomach of a bee eater near a hive.
European bees pass the winter by sleeping in their hives, which cuts off the bee eater's main source of food. So, in late summer, bee-eaters begin a long, dangerous journey. Massive flocks from Spain, France, and northern Italy cross the Sahara desert to their wintering grounds in West Africa. Bee-eaters from Hungary and other parts of Central and Eastern Europe cross the Mediterranean Sea and Arabian Desert to winter in southern Africa. 'It's an extremely risky stratagem, this migration, says C. Hilary Fry, a British ornithologist who has studied European bee-eaters for more than 45 years. 'At least 30 percent of the birds will be killed by predators before they make it back to Europe the following spring.'
In April, they return to Europe. Birds build nests by digging tunnels in riverbanks. They work for up to 20 days. By the end of the job, they've moved 15 to 26 pounds of soil — more than 80 times their weight.
The nesting season is a time when families help each other, and sons or uncles help feed their father's or brothers' chicks as soon as they come out of their eggs. The helpers benefit, too: parents with helpers can provide more food for chicks to continue the family line.
It's a short, spectacular life. European bee-eaters live for five to six years. The difficulties of migration and avoiding predators along the way affect every bird. Bee-eaters today also find it harder to find food, as there are fewer insects around as a result of pesticides. Breeding sites are also disappearing, as rivers are turned into concrete-walled canals.
(By Bruce Barcott, National Geographic magazine, 2008)
1. Bee-eaters' prey are bees and other
2. Bee-eaters need to remove the from bees before eating them.
3. There is plenty of food for bee-eaters on agricultural land and in .
4. Bee-eaters migrate to spend the winter in different parts of .
5. Because of , almost one-third of bee-eaters do not survive migration.
6. Bee-eaters make nests in , which they build themselves.
7. When nesting, the receive food from different family members.
8. One problem for bee-eaters is , which have reduced the amount of food available.
Read the following passage and choose the correct answer to each question.
The ballpoint pen
Most of us have at least one, but how did this popular item evolve?
One morning in 1945, a crowed of 5,000 people jammed the entrance of Gimbels Department Store in New York. The day before, Gimbels had placed a full-page advertisement in the New York Times for a wonderful new invention, the ballpoint pen. The advertisement described the pen as 'fantastic' and 'miraculous'. Although they were expensive, $12.50 each, all 10,000 pens in stock were sold on the first day.
In fact, this 'new' pen was not new at all. In 1888, John Loud, a leather manufacturer, had invented a pen with a reservoir of ink and a rolling ball. However, his pen was never produced, and efforts by other people to produce a commercially successful one failed too. The main problem was with the ink. If it was too thin, the ink leaked out of the pen. If it was too thick, it didn't come out of the pen at all.
Almost fifty years later, in 1935, a newspaper editor in Hungary thought he spent too much time filling his pens with ink. He decided to invent a better kind of pen. With the help of his brother, who was a chemist, he produced a ballpoint pen that didn't leak when the pen wasn't being used. The editor was called Ladislas Biro, and it was his name that people would associate more than any other with the ballpoint pen.
By chance, Biro met Augustine Justo, the Argentinian president, Justo was so impressed with Biro's invention that he invited him to set up a factory in Argentina. In 1943, the first Biro pens were produced.
Unfortunately, they were not popular, since the pen needed to be held in a vertical position for the ink to come out. Biro redesigned the pen with a better ball, and in 1944 the new product was on sale throughout Argentina.
It was a North American, Milton Reynolds, who introduced the ballpoint pen to the USA. Copying Biro's design, he produced the version that sold so well at Gimbels. Another American, Patrick Frawley, improved the design and in 1950 began producing a pen he called the Papermate. It was an immediate success, and within a few years, Papermates were selling in their millions around the world.
People went to Gimbels to buy a ballpoint pen because _____.
Why were early ballpoint pens not produced commercially?
Why was Ladislas Biro's pen better than earlier models?
Biro's first commercially-produced pen _____.
Patrick Frawley's pen _____.
Read the passage quickly. Match the names of the people with what they did.
Listen and complete the table. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS OR A NUMBER for each answer.
| Animal World - today's events | |||
| Name of event | Location | Type of event | Time |
| The World of Ants | The | 11 a.m. | |
| The | film | 12 noon | |
| Encouraging | Exhibition Room | demonstrate | 2.30 p.m. |
| Birds of Prey | the lawn | p.m. | |
Listen and complete the sentences. Write ONE WORD for each answer.
1. Joe's low doesn't allow him to buy many electronic goods.
2. He's often influenced by his when he buys electronic items.
3. Advertisements featuring somebody sometimes help him decide which product to buy.
4. Joe prefers to get new products from .
5. He doesn't like waiting for a long time after something.
6. He finds it hard to resist buying electronic products if they are new and .