VI. Fill the gaps with the correct prepositions.

The video wave has swept too far. It bears a large responsibility …..(1) the declining interest …..(2) reading among the young. If we don't do something to stem the tide, the reading impulse will soon be drowned.

The time-honoured way of improving reading is …..(3) reading fiction. Everyone, psychologists tell us, needs stories. Cavemen told them …..(4) their fires. Mythologies and folk stories have been passed …..(5) generations for centuries. Most of us are literate and …..(6) theory our fictional needs could be satisfied by reading.

But it's not so. Today's generation …..(7) average and below average school children rely …..(8) video, television and film. While many of these offerings may be harmless …..(9) themselves, they do nothing to build …..(10) reading skills. They are replacing the consolidatory work which turns halting mechanical reading …..(11) the real thing. If some of the hours children spend watching television were devoted …..(12) reading, the population would be better educated.

Watching a story is a totally passive pastime. Someone else has made all the decisions …..(13) casting, set, clothing, facial expressions, tone and so on. Reading a story is an active partnership between writer and reader. Ideas are sketched and the mind of the reader creates the rest.

Why is dramatized fiction usurping the written kind? It is because children whose reading is hesitant cannot readily identify and enjoy the plot. Watching something is easier. This is leading …..(14) a generation whose mental processes are too stultified. The problem is that many children read very slowly. I worry, for instance, about children who carry the same 100-word book …..(15) with them …..(16) a fortnight. I meet them daily. They conscientiously decode a page or two in a class and about the same again …..(17) homework. It is hardly surprising that such children then declare that they find reading boring and prefer to watch television. Their difficulty is not reading the words − it is interpreting them. They need to be able to read fast enough to feed the mind's hunger …..(18) a story.

That means practice. Only …..(19) reading daily will a child become a strong and independent reader. Parents need to be convinced …..(20) the importance of preventing their children …..(21) wasting their hours …..(22) inert viewing. Without the television the child is likely to turn …..(23) books for entertainment.

I used to think that filmed versions of enjoyable books were a spur …..(24) reading. I have changed my mind. Visual images drown the imagination. A dramatization, seen once, can spoil your reading for ever. Dramatized fiction is the literary equivalent of empty calories. It replaces the appetite …..(25) real food. Children must have a nutritionally balanced reading diet.

VII. Fill the gaps with the correct prepositions.

…..(1) the early hours of the night it had rained and the iron gate that led …..(2) the gatekeepers' houses had rattled loose …..(3) the wind, and as it cringed and banged it disturbed Mrs O'Brien's spaniel where he lay …..(4) a mat in the dark, drafty hallway. Time and again he gave a muffled growl, padded …..(5) the hall, and scratched …..(6) the door. His uneasiness and the noise of the wind had wakened Mrs O'Brien in the room above him, and she lay in bed wondering if she should go …..(7) and let him …..(8) the warm comfort of the kitchen. Beside her her husband was asleep, snoring loudly, unaware …..(9) her wakefulness or …..(10) the windows shaking in their heavy frames. The rain rattled like hailstones …..(11) the panes. How …..(12) earth anybody could sleep …..(13) that, she wondered − it was enough to waken the dead and there he was deep asleep as if it were a calm summer night. What kind of a man was he! You'd think he'd be worrying …..(14) his journey to the Rock in the morning and his long six weeks …..(15) from her.

The dog growled again, and throwing back the bedclothes she got …..(16) and groped …..(17) the table for the matchbox. She struck one match but it was a dead one, and she clicked her tongue …..(18) disapproval. She was never done telling Tom not to put his spent matches …..(19) into the box but he never heeded her. It was tidy, he told her, but it was exasperating if she knew anything. She struck three before coming …..(20) a good one, and …..(21) the spurt of flame she glanced …..(22) the alarm clock and saw that it was two hours …..(23) midnight. She slipped downstairs, lit the lamp and let the dog …..(24) the kitchen. She patted his head and he jumped on the sofa, thumped it loudly …..(25) his tail and curled …..(26) on a cushion.

On the floor, Tom's hampers lay ready …..(27) the morning, when the boatmen would come to row him …..(28) to the lighthouse to relieve young Frank Coady. She looked at the hampers with sharp calculation, wondering if she had packed everything he needed. She was always sure to forget something − boot polish or a pullover or a corkscrew or soap − and he was always sure to bring it …..(29) with her as soon as he stepped ashore for his two-weeks leave. She could never remember a time when he arrived back without some complaint or other. But this time she was sure that she had forgotten nothing, for she had made a list and ticked each item …..(30) as she packed them into the cases. No, he wouldn't be able to launch any of his ill humour on her this time!