EXERCISE

09 READING COMPREHENSION

TEXT

1 When I first came to Spain, I didn’t speak a word of Spanish, I mean not one. Well, I suppose that’s not
entirely true. I did know the basic greetings, but that was it. I didn’t even know how to conjugate the
simplest of verbs. Whenever I went to a bar, I would always just use nouns, like cerveza, and use my
fingers to indicate quantities, and I followed every sentence with gracias, and that was the extent of
my knowledge. Well, that and whatever I found of use in my well-worn dictionary. When it was time to
pay, I’d simply put a few euro coins on the table and hope that would be enough to cover the cost. And
if not, it wasn’t difficult to interpret the bartender’s demands for more money! Needless to say, I didn’t
make many friends at first despite my outgoing personality. I made a lot acquaintances with foreigners
who spoke English natively or at least well enough to converse with, but most of those were just people
traveling through Spain on their way to what, to my young mind, seemed like far-flung destinations I’d
heard of but couldn’t find on a map. The only Spaniards I knew were those whose English was better
than my Spanish. It was impossible to keep down a steady job without knowing the language, so I drifted
from place to place, living off the kindness of strangers and occasionally, I’m a little ashamed to admit,
by stealing fruit from open-air markets. I say “a little” because it really was a matter of survival. I got no
thrill from doing it, and I did it as little as possible. So why, you may well ask, did I ever come to Spain in
the first place if I had no job prospects and no money? Funny you should ask!

EXCERCISE

2 1. In the first sentence, the writer is 1. True False

exaggerating.
2. When he first came to Spain, the writer would 2. True False
have been to say “deme una cerveza por favor”.
3. In a bar, 3. a) the writer asked for a bill to see what he owed,
b) the writer used a phrase book to ask how
much the bill was,
c) the bartender used his fingers to indicate how
much the writer owed,
d) the writer paid what he thought would be
enough to pay for his consumption.
4. If the writer didn’t pay enough, he probably 4. True False
ran out without paying.
5. The writer didn’t make friends at first because 5. True False
he was shy.
6. Most of the people the writer talked to at first 6. True False
were foreigners living in Spain.
7. The phrasal verb “keep down” (underlined) 7. a) find,
probably means b) do well in,
c) maintain,
d) get training for.
8. The writer lived in the same general area for 8. True False
long periods of time.
9. The writer 9. a) got a thrill out of stealing,
b) stole to survive,
c) was probably a menace to society,
d) had no moral problems with stealing.
10. The next paragraph in this story will probably be 10. a) how the writer learned Spanish,
about b) how the writer found a job,
c) why the writer came to Spain,
d) why the writer left Spain.

9 · COMPRENSIÓN ESCRITA · NIVEL AVANZADO