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 37Book 2 · Section 1 · 37 / 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 37
READING TEXT
  1. What is commonly called pepper in reality comes from two very
  2. different families of plants. Black and white pepper both come from the fruit
  3. of the Piper nigrum, a vine with fruits called peppercorns. The peppercorns
  4. turn from green to red as they ripen and finally blacken as they dry out. The
  5. dried-out peppercorns are ground to obtain black pepper. White pepper,
  6. which has a more subtle flavor than black pepper, comes from the same
  7. peppercorns as black pepper; to obtain white pepper, the outer hull of the
  8. peppercorn, the pericarp, is removed before the peppercorn is ground.
  9. Red and green peppers, on the other hand, come from a completely
  10. different family from black and white pepper. Red and green peppers are
  11. from the genus Capsicum. Plants of this type generally have tiny white
  12. flower and fruit which can be any one of a number of colors, shapes, and
  13. sizes. These peppers range in flavor from very mild and sweet to the most
  14. incredibly burning taste imaginable.
  15. Christopher Columbus is responsible for the present-day confusion over
  16. what a pepper is. The Piper nigrum variety of pepper was highly valued for
  17. centuries, and high demand for pepper by Europeans was a major cause of
  18. the fifteenth-century push to locate ocean routes to the spice-growing
  19. regions of Asia. When Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492, he was
  20. particularly interested in finding black pepper because of the high price that
  21. it would command in Europe. Columbus came across plants from the
  22. Capsicum family in use among the people of the New World, and he
  23. incorrectly identified them as relatives of black pepper. Columbus
  24. introduced the spicy Capsicum chili peppers to Europeans on his return from
  25. the 1492 voyage, and traders later spread them to Asia and Africa. These
  26. Capsicum peppers have continued to be called peppers in spite of the fact
  27. that they are not related to the black and white pepper of the Piper nigrum
  28. family. .
QUESTION 1

The purpose of this text is

QUESTION 2

The word turn in paragraph 1 could best be replaced by

QUESTION 3

According to the text, both black and white peppers

QUESTION 4

What part of the Piper nigrum is the pericarp?

QUESTION 5

What usually does NOT vary in a Capsicum plant?

QUESTION 6

The word range in line 13 is closest in meaning to

QUESTION 7

The word push in paragraph 3 could best be replaced by

QUESTION 8

The word them in paragraph 3 refers to

QUESTION 9

It can be inferred from the text that chili peppers originally came from

QUESTION 10

Where in the text does the author explain the mistake that Columbus made?