Natural world wonders

1. Spread over 135 square miles in Yunnan province, the Shilin Forest looks like an ancient petrified forest filled with rock formations that jut vertically from the ground. Geologists say Shilin Stone Forest was formed 270 million years ago, when the constant movement of the earth caused the waters of the large sea, which covered the area, to retreat and allowed the limestone cliffs to rise.

2. The Darvaza gas crater, known as «The Door to Hell», is a 196 feet wide and 65 feet deep hole in the Karakum desert in Turkmenistan. The fire, fueled by natural gas, has been burning for the last 42 years, not by a natural occurrence, but instead, as a result of a Soviet gas exploration accident. Geologists accidentally tapped into a massive underground natural gas cavern, causing the ground to collapse and the

entire drilling rig to fall in.

3. Also known as «The Great Blue Hole», the Belize Barrier Reef is one of largest barrier reefs in the world. It creates a natural ecosystem that includes atolls, several hundred sand cays, mangrove forests, coastal lagoons and estuaries.  It’s so vast that much of it remains undiscovered and only 10 per cent of the marine life on this reef has been identified.

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не менее двухвариантов ответа

• The Shilin Stone Forest has an extraordinary origin.

• The two natural holes have the same origin.

• The diversity of living organisms is presented in the Belize Barrier Reef.

• The diversity of living organisms is presented in the Darvaza gas crater.

Завершите утверждение согласно содержанию текста.

The Darvaza gas crater was formed

Укажите не менее двух вариантов ответа

• In a hot and dry place

• in a hot and rainy place

• in a hot and wet place

• In a hot and sunny place

Ответьте на вопрос:

What do the trees in the Shilin Forest look like?

• They are soft and non-living.

• They are low and green.

• They are hard and non-living.

• They are high and green.

Основной идеей текста является

• There are unique places in the world which are the mystery of nature.

• The Shilin Stone Forest was formed because of the sea level fall.

• The Darvaza gas crater was formed because of people’s carelessness.

• The Belize Barrier Reef represents the whole natural ecosystem.

Vladimir Nabokov

1. Best known for his extraordinary English-language novels, Vladimir Nabokov had almost as distinguished a literary career in his native Russian language, publishing nine novels and countless stories, poems and plays while living as an emigrant in Berlin.

2. Nabokov once claimed that his English was a feeble shadow of his magisterial Russian, but his precarious years in Germany left him and his fellow exiles with an extremely limited reading audience and opportunity to thrive as working artists. Simultaneously, his exile severed any tie with his native tongue. It was not possible for him to grow or evolve his language usage in Russian for the rest of his life.

3. Still reveling in artistic possibility in Berlin, however, Nabokov’s first novel, Mary, is a tiny diamond of loveliness, while later Russian novels such as The Eye, Laughter in the Dark and Despair are all masterpieces of grotesque and glorious strangeness. And perhaps only somewhat intentionally (never knowing which way history would turn, but probably suspecting that that he’d never return home), his final Russian novel, The Gift, features a tour through Russian literature. The novel serves as a swan song for Nabokov’s fertile but increasingly uprooted relationship with his native literary soil.

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Укажите не менее двух вариантов ответа

• Nabokov wrote nine novels in English before he switched to writing in his native Russian.

• Vladimir Nabokov was sure that he would come back to his motherland sometime.

• Vladimir Nabokov, a famous Russian-born novelist, was forced to flee from Russia.

• According to Nabokov he had to abandon his rich Russian for a second-rate brand of English.

Завершите утверждение согласно содержанию текста.

Nabokov stopped writing in Russian because

Укажите не менее двух вариантов ответа

• few people read in Russian abroad

• he preferred English to Russian

• he couldn’t practice living Russian

• he was forced to write in English

Ответьте на вопрос:

Which of Nabokov’s novels is devoted to his motherland and reflects his home-sickness?

• «The Gift»

• «Mary»

• «Despair»

• «The Eye»

Основной идеей текста является

• Nabokov’s estrangement from living German was evident to him.

• In Berlin Nabokov became a recognized Russian poet and writer.

• Nabokov suffered badly from being far away from native Russian.

• Nabokov’s first writings were in Russian, but his famous works are in English.