Exercise:

Silk is a thin, but ____________ fibre that silkworms produce, and it can be woven into a very soft and smooth cloth. It
was invented in Ancient China, and played an important ____________ in their culture and economy for thousands of
years. Legend has it that the ____________ for making silk cloth was first invented by the wife of the Yellow Emperor,
Leizu, about five thousand years ago. The ____________ for silk first came to Leizu while she was having tea in the
imperial gardens, and a silkworm fell into her tea and produced a long string that was both strong and soft. Leizu then
discovered how to ____________ the silk fibres into a thread, and she also invented the silk loom that wove the
threads into a soft cloth. Soon Leizu had a forest of mulberry trees for the silkworms to feed on, and taught the rest of
China how to ____________ silk. ____________ made of silk were extremely valuable in Ancient China, because
wearing silk was an important way of showing how rich you were. Silk even ____________ as money during some
Ancient Chinese dynasties.

The Tribune

(1)
A
solid
B
strong
C
firm
D
rigid

(2)
A
role
B
effect
C
place
D
share

(3)
A
sale
B
use
C
motion
D
method

(4)
A
cause
B
thought
C
idea
D
point

(5)
A
involve
B
contribute
C
engage
D
combine

(6)
A
do
B
provide
C
make
D
give

(7)
A
Items
B
Property
C
Belongings
D
Pieces

(8)
A
set
B
had
C
put
D
served
Exercise:

There are many different kinds of birds which successfully share our cities with us, but ____________ of the most
intelligent are crows.
This bird has been carefully tested by scientists in ____________ manner of ways, and the results
are clear for everyone to see.
Even their success in ____________ they have adapted to our civilization would seem to
confirm this. Despite past attempts to kill them all, crows, ____________ are very common in land used by farmers, can
still be seen in towns and cities, going about their daily business.
They are sociable, especially ____________ not looking
after their babies, and often gather as a group on winter nights. Sometimes thousands of them gather ____________ in
one place. Most crows are able to adapt to different conditions, and they are quite trusting, ____________ though they
are often shy where people attack them. Some become friendly when in towns, and then they regularly visit gardens, and
it is not strange for them to become friends ____________ humans.

The Tribune
Exercise:

Romes ____________ with tourists is not difficult to understand.

It ____________ (1) POPULAR
boasts ancient history dating back more than two and a half thousand years, (2) PRIDE
incredible architecture, museums, culture, and cuisine. That's why we can easily see (3) ADD
why this city is visited by so many people from all over the world. In ____________ , (4) REPEAT
it is quite a big city, as it has the fourth biggest population in the European Union. For (5) FOUND
this reason, many tourists find themselves returning ____________ to see what they (6) KING
weren't able to see the first time.
While Roman mythology claims the city was (7) BELIEVABLE
____________ around 753 BC, the site has actually been used by humans for much (8) IMPORTANT
longer. This makes Rome one of the oldest continuously occupied locations in
Europe. It has been a ____________ , a republic, an empire, and then a republic
again. It even houses the ____________ tiny independent country state of the
Vatican City within its walls. This only serves to add to its significant cultural
____________ and diversity.

The Tribune
Exercise:

(1) You should try and take advantage of his help.

MOST
You should try and ____________ help he gives you.

(2) My sister was involved in her school spelling competition.

PART
My sister ____________ spelling competition.

(3) Could they grow anything here after the war?

ABLE
Were ____________ here after the war?

(4) 'Why didn't you call me?' asked Joe.

ASKED
Joe ____________ not called him.

(5) Driving that fast was a stupid thing to do.

ONLY
If ____________ driving so fast.

(6) I hadn't seen my sister for about a year, when I saw her last.
GONE
About ____________ before I saw my sister again, after the last time I saw her.

The Herald
Exercise:

Arctic ice management

Temperatures are now so high at the North Pole that scientists are contemplating radical schemes to avoid catastrophe.

Physicist Steven Desch has come up with

a
novel
solution to the problems that now beset the Arctic.
He and a team of
colleagues from Arizona State University want to replenish the region's shrinking sea ice by building 10 million wind-
powered pumps over the Arctic ice cap. In winter, these would be used to pump water to the surface of the ice where it
would freeze, thickening the cap.

The pumps
could add an extra metre of sea ice to the Arctic's current layer,
Desch argues. The current cap rarely exceeds
2-3 metres in thickness and is being eroded constantly as the planet succumbs to climate change.
Thicker ice would
mean longer-lasting ice.
In turn, that would mean
the danger of all sea ice disappearing from the Arctic in summer would
be reduced significantly.

Desch and his team have put forward the scheme in a paper that has just been published in Earths Future, and they
have worked out a price tag for the project: $500bn. It is an astonishing sum. However, it is the kind of outlay that may
become necessary if we want to halt the calamity that faces the Arctic. They say that it is now warming twice as fast as
their climate models predicted only a few years ago.

Hence, Desch's scheme to use wind pumps to bring

water which is insulated from the bitter Arctic cold by its icy surface,
where it will freeze and thicken the ice cap. Nor is the physicist alone in his Arctic scheming. Other
projects
to halt sea-ice
loss include one to artificially whiten the Arctic by scattering light-coloured aerosol particles over it
to reflect solar radiation
back into space,
and another to spray sea water into the atmosphere above the region
to create clouds that would also
reflect sunlight away from the surface.

All the projects are highly imaginative, and extremely costly. The fact that they are even being considered reveals just how
desperately worried researchers have become about the Arctic. The situation is causing grave concern, and it is now
much more serious than even the worst case scenarios originally suggested.

Last November, when sea ice should have begun thickening and spreading over the Arctic as winter set in, the region
warmed up. Temperatures should have plummeted to -25C but reached several degrees above freezing instead.
Its
been about 20C warmer than normal over most of the Arctic Ocean. This is unprecedented.

In fact, sea ice growth stalled during the second week of January - in the heart of the Arctic winter - while the ice cap
actually retreated within the Kara and Barents seas, and within the Sea of Okhotsk. Similarly, the Svalbard archipelago,
normally shrouded in ice, has remained relatively free because of
the inflow of warm Atlantic water along the western part
of the island chain.
Consequently, although there has been some recovery, sea ice remains well below all previous record
lows.

Equally worrying is the likely impact on wildlife. Juvenile Arctic cod like to hang out under the sea ice. Polar bears hunt on
sea ice, and seals give birth on it. We have no idea what will happen when that lot disappears.

In addition, there is the problem of increasing numbers of warm spells during which rain falls instead of snow. That rain
then freezes on the ground and forms a hard coating that prevents reindeer and caribou from finding food under the snow.
Nor would the rest of the world be isolated. With less ice to reflect solar radiation back into space, the dark ocean waters
of the high latitudes will warm and the Arctic will heat up even further. The Arctic ice cap reaches its maximum extent
every March and then, over the next six months, dwindles.

The Tribune
Questions

1) What is the writers intention in the first paragraph?

A) To criticise an existing way of doing things.

B) To predict problems a project could face.

C) To inform the reader about an innovative concept.

D) To persuade influential bodies to undertake a course of action.

2) What outcome does the writer suggest in the second paragraph?

A) The thinning of the sea ice could be halted.

B) The risk of there being no sea ice in the future would be dramatically lowered.

C) 2-3 metres of additional sea ice could be deposited.

D) The constant erosion of the sea ice could be stopped.

3) What does the writer mean when he describes the water as being insulated in the fourth paragraph?

A) The ice cap protects the water underneath from freezing.

B) The effect of the sun prevents the water from getting too cold.

C) Arctic water is colder.

D) Pollution in the water makes it difficult for it to freeze.

4) What objective is the writer describing at the end of the fourth paragraph?

A) Cleaning the ice that has been discoloured.

B) Increasing the amount of snow that falls on the ice.

C) Making the thickness of the ice uniform.

D) Preventing the sun from impacting the ice.

5) What is the writer referring to with the word This at the end of paragraph 6?

A) Conditions that have never happened before.

B) Conditions that happen very rarely.

C) Normal winter conditions.

D) Conditions that were predictable.

6) What reason does the writer give in the seventh paragraph for the sea ice not getting thicker?

A) The winds from the north are too warm.

B) The ice cap is not thick enough.

C) Seismic activity under the ice had an effect.

D) Warm water currents affected the formation of the ice.

Exercise:

The Monarch butterfly

The large and brilliantly-coloured monarch butterfly is among the most easily recognizable of the butterfly species that call
North America home. They have two sets of wings and a wingspan of about 10 cm. Monarch butterflies are found across
North America wherever suitable feeding, breeding, and overwintering habitat exists. They are broken into two populations
separated by the Rocky Mountains, called the eastern and the western populations. Whether monarchs are present in a
given area within their range depends on the time of year.

____________

They travel great distances between summer breeding habitat and winter habitat, where they spend several months
inactive.

One of the most spectacular natural phenomena in the world is the annual migration across North America of the Monarch
butterfly. Monarchs know the correct direction to migrate even though the individuals that migrate have never made the
journey before. They follow an internal compass.

____________

A single monarch can travel hundreds or even thousands of kilometres. In theory, these small insects cover a round trip of
over 15,000 km. In practice, however, no individual butterfly completes the entire round trip.

Female Monarchs lay eggs for the next generation during the northward migration, and at least five generations are
involved in the annual cycle. Most adult monarchs only live for a few weeks, searching for food in the form of flower nectar,
for mates, and for milkweed on which to lay their eggs. The last generation that hatches in late summer delays sexual
maturity and undertakes a spectacular fall migration.

____________

There are many different migration routes, both in the northern and southern hemispheres, but the eastern population starts
its journey in Canada and finishes in Mexico.

This is where some extremely sad news comes from. Storms earlier this year blew down more than a hundred acres of
forests where migrating Monarch butterflies spend the winter in central Mexico. These storms also appear to have frozen or
killed about 7m of the estimated 84m butterflies that wintered there.

____________

A combination of such high winds, rain and freezing temperatures have never been seen in this area. This highlights just
how fragile these forests are, and how fragile the Monarchs are.

These beautiful creatures travel enormous distances for one reason. They depend on finding relatively well-preserved
forests, where millions of the orange-and-black butterflies hang in clumps from the branches, and mate. The trees, and the
clumping, help to protect the butterflies from cold rains and steep drops in temperature.

____________

The biggest danger to their habitat comes from illegal logging. In April, Mexicos government announced it would create a
special national police squad to patrol nature reserves and fight environmental crimes. While the force has not yet formally
deployed, illegal logging in the monarch reserve dropped about 50%this year.

Unlike in past years, when most logging was done in the farming communities, about three-quarters of the tree-cutting this
year occurred on public lands in the reserves core area  precisely the kind of terrain that environmental police could
most effectively protect. Conservationists have tried to convince the largely impoverished farm and mountain communities,
which actually own most of the land, that the forest is worth more to them in terms of tourism when left standing, instead of
being cut down.

____________

The future looks bleak indeed for these intrepid and elegant travellers.

The Tribune

Sentences
A
This migratory generation can live upward of eight months.
B
But they also face some threats in these forests.
C
Many of them are eaten by birds.
D
They have had limited success in doing this.
E
They are one of the few insects that migrate.
F
This was the first time such weather patterns occurred.
G
This points them in the right direction each spring and fall.
Exercise:

Exotic Fruit

(A) The Banana

The banana is a fruit which is actually a berry, and in some countries, bananas are used for cooking. The fruit is variable in
size, colour and firmness, but is usually elongated and curved, with soft flesh. It is rich in starch, and covered with a rind
which may be green, yellow, red, purple, or brown, when ripe. The fruit grows in clusters hanging from the top of the plant.
Banana plants are grown in at least 107 countries, primarily for their fruit, and to a lesser extent to make fibre, banana
wine and banana beer,
and as ornamental plants. Bananas are an excellent source of vitamin B6 and though
many
people think they have a very high potassium content, that is not the case.
In 2016, the leading producer of bananas was
India with 32 million tons.

(B) The Mango

The mango is a juicy fruit with a stone inside, which is native to South Asia, from where it has been distributed worldwide
to become one of the most popular fruits in the tropics. It is the national fruit of India, Pakistan, and the Philippines,
and
the national tree of Bangladesh. Over 400 varieties of mangoes are known, many of which ripen in summer, while some
give a double crop. The most common variety of mango grown worldwide is the Tommy Atkins mango, and its estimated
that mangoes are the most daily eaten fruit around the world. It takes three to six months to ripen, and
it does not survive
freezing
and drying. Mangoes contain a variety of nutrients, but the only vitamin present in significant amounts is vitamin
C. Mangoes were being grown and harvested in India going back to 2000 BCE, and some mango tree species can live up
to 300 years and continuously produce fruit.

(C) The Kiwi

The Kiwi is a fruit with an oval shape. It is green on the inside with small black seeds that can be eaten. The kiwi has furry
brown skin which can also be eaten, but is usually removed, and is relatively thin. The kiwi is native to South China. It was
named in 1959 after the kiwi, a bird
and the symbol of New Zealand.
Before that, its English name was Chinese
gooseberry.
The kiwi is extremely healthy and contains many vitamins and minerals. Kiwis are rich in vitamin C, vitamin K,
potassium, and fibre,
and they have more vitamin C than the same amount of oranges. They are very useful, and can be
eaten raw, turned into a juice, added to baked goods or used to season and garnish food dishes. Most of the kiwis bought
in local grocery stores come from Australia, but the fruit originally came from central and Eastern China.

(D) The Coconut

The coconut is very strange because it is a fruit, a nut, and a seed, all at the same time. Its name comes from the Spanish
word for head
because it looks like a human head. They also used this name because the dark spots on the fuzzy brown
coconuts look like a monkeys face. Coconuts are known for being very useful, as they are widely used in cooking and
frying,
as well as in soaps
and cosmetics. The coconut also has cultural and
religious importance in certain societies,
particularly in India,
where it is used in Hindu religious ceremonies. Coconuts are different from other fruits because of the
large quantity of water they contain, and when they are green, they are harvested for their potable coconut water, which is
a good source of vitamin C, Riboflavin and Calcium, but is very high in Sodium. Pacific Islanders believe coconuts can
cure all diseases.

The Tribune
Questions

1) Which fruit
gets its name from a European language?

2) Which fruit
contains more vitamin C than an equivalent amount of another fruit?

3) Which fruit
is connected to a belief system?

4) Which fruit
can be used to make a cleaning product?

5) Which fruit is
the national fruit of several countries?

6) Which fruit
used to have a different name?

7) Which fruit
is mistakenly thought to be a good source of potassium?

D
8) Which fruit is
used in making alcoholic drinks?

9) Which fruit
is spoilt if frozen?

10) Which fruit

is associated with a bird?