e· ExamHubENGLISH WORKBOOK TRAINER
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SECTION 01 · Reading: separate texts

Reading

Choose a text number. Its questions will appear on its own page.

40 texts
Text 28Book 2 · Section 1 · 28 / 40
How to solve: ReadingA text with several questions: main idea, details, word meaning and inference.

What it tests

Careful reading: finding the main idea, locating details, understanding a word from its context and drawing conclusions the text supports.

In the exam: part I, 10 tasks.

Step by step

  1. Read the questions first, so you know what to look for.
  2. Skim the whole text once for its topic and the author's purpose.
  3. For each question find the exact place in the text (line numbers help) and read the sentence before and after it.
  4. Choose the option that says the same thing in other words — not the one that copies the most words.
  5. For “main idea” questions pick the option that covers the whole text, not one paragraph.

Watch out for

  • An option that is true in real life but not stated in the text.
  • An option that repeats words from the text but changes the meaning (“always” instead of “often”, wrong date or person).
  • A detail that is correct but too narrow for a “main idea” question.

Example

Text: “It took 800 men seven years to build the bridge.” — The bridge was built in: a) one year b) seven years c) 800 days

b) The text says “seven years”; 800 is the number of men, not days.

Text 28
READING TEXT
  1. Federal Express is a company that specializes in rapid overnight delivery of
  2. high-priority packages. The first company of its type, Federal Express was
  3. founded by the youthful Fred Smith in 1971, when he was only 28 years old.
  4. Smith had actually developed the idea for the rapid delivery Line service in a
  5. term paper for an economics class when he was a student at Yale University.
  6. The term paper reputedly received a less-than-stellar grade because of the
  7. infeasibility of the project that Smith had outlined. The model that Smith
  8. proposed had never been tried; it was a model that was efficient to operate but at
  9. the same time was very difficult to institute.
  10. Smith achieved efficiency in his model by designing a system that was
  11. separate from the passenger system and could, therefore, focus on how to
  12. deliver packages most efficiently. His strategy was to own his own planes so
  13. that he could create his own schedules and to ship all packages through the hub
  14. city of Memphis, a set-up which resembles the spokes on the wheel of a
  15. bicycle. With this combination of his own planes and hub set-up, he could get
  16. packages anywhere in the United States overnight.
  17. What made Smith's idea difficult to institute was the fact that the entire
  18. system had to be created before the company could begin operations. He
  19. needed a fleet of aircraft to collect packages from airports every night and
  20. deliver them to Memphis, where they were immediately sorted and flown out to
  21. their new destinations; he needed a fleet of trucks to deliver packages to and
  22. from the various airports; he needed facilities and trained staff all in place to
  23. handle the operation. Smith had a $4 million inheritance from his father, and he
  24. managed to raise an additional $91 million dollars from venture capitalists to get
  25. the company operating.
  26. When Federal Express began service in 1973 in 25 cities, the company was
  27. not an immediate success, but success did come within a relatively short period
  28. of time. The company lost $29 million in the first 26 months of operations.
  29. However, the tide was to turn relatively quickly. By late 1976, Federal Express
  30. was carrying an average of 19,000 packages per night and had made a profit of
  31. $3.6 million.
QUESTION 1

The most appropriate title for the text is

QUESTION 2

The word developed in line 4 could best be replaced by

QUESTION 3

What is stated in the text about Smith's term paper?

QUESTION 4

What was a key idea of Smith's?

QUESTION 5

A hub city in line 13 is

QUESTION 6

It can be inferred from the text that Smith selected Memphis as his hub city because it

QUESTION 7

The pronoun they in line 20 refers to

QUESTION 8

It is NOT mentioned in the text that, in order to set up his company, Smith needed

QUESTION 9

How long did it take Federal Express to become profitable?

QUESTION 10

Which paragraph explains what made Smith's model effective?