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 30Book 2 · Section 1 · 30 / 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 30
READING TEXT
  1. The Celtic languages are a group of languages of northern Europe that are
  2. descendents of the Indo-European family of languages. These languages developed
  3. from the language of the Celts, a warlike civilization originating in the eastern part
  4. of central Europe, in the northern Alps, and along the Danube during the Bronze
  5. Age. The Celts reached the height of their civilization during the Iron Age, the last
  6. five centuries B.C., and then fanned out from their original homeland into many
  7. parts of continental Europe and across the Channel and into the British Isles. Celtic
  8. languages were spoken in much of western Europe during Pre-Roman and Roman
  9. times. Place names of Celtic origin can be found today all over the British Isles
  10. and France, in northern Spain and Italy, and in Switzerland and parts of Germany.
  11. Rather than one language, the Celtic languages consist of two distinct clusters:
  12. the Gaelic group and the Brythonic group. These two clusters of languages most
  13. likely developed from dialects of the same language, the language of the Celts in
  14. their original homeland. These two dialects were most likely mutually intelligible
  15. to some degree as late as the fourth century. The Gaelic group of Celtic languages
  16. consists of Irish, Scottish, and Manx, the language of the Isle of Man. The
  17. Brythonic group of Celtic languages includes Welsh, Cornish, Breton, and Gaulish,
  18. the language of Gaul prior to the days of the Roman Empire, with its Latin-
  19. speaking population.
  20. Many, though not all, of the Celtic languages are either extinct or are in the
  21. process of becoming extinct. Gaulish apparently disappeared around 600 A.D.
  22. Cornish and Manx both actually became extinct, the former in the nineteenth
  23. century and the latter just a few decades ago, but both are being revived and are
  24. now taught in a few schools each. Scottish, Irish, and aBreton are all declining in
  25. use. There are under a hundred thousand speakers of Scottish Gaelic, mostly on the
  26. northern Hebridean Islands; there are more than a hundred thousand speakers of
  27. Irish, mainly in the western counties of Ireland; there are about a half million
  28. speakers who use Breton on a daily basis. In all these situations, though, the rate of
  29. transmission to new generations is low, and this does not bode well for the survival
  30. of these languages. Of all the Celtic languages, perhaps only Welsh has a strong
  31. hold on the future.
QUESTION 1

The author's purpose in the text is to

QUESTION 2

According to the text, the Celtic languages did NOT

QUESTION 3

The text states that the Celts were

QUESTION 4

The expression fanned out in line 6 could best be replaced by

QUESTION 5

It is implied in the text that Gaulish

QUESTION 6

The main idea of the third paragraph is that

QUESTION 7

It is NOT true according to the text that both Cornish and Manx

QUESTION 8

According to the text, the percentage of young people learning Scottish, Irish, and Breton is

QUESTION 9

The word mainly in line 27 is synonymous to

QUESTION 10

Where in the text does the author explain when the two clusters of Celtic languages were still understood by members of each group of speakers?