Reading Practice

The water hyacinth

The water hyacinth grows in tropical countries. It has beautiful purple-blue flowers, but
everybody hates it. Why?

Millions and millions of these plants grow in rivers and lakes. Sometimes the plants become so
thick that people can walk on them. People cannot travel in boats on the water, and they cannot fish
in it. The plants stop the water from moving. Then the water carries diseases.
Farmers cannot use the water on their land.

Now scientists think that water hyacinths can be useful. The plants are really a tree crop. No one has
to take care of them. They just grow and grow and grow. What can farmers use them for?

Some fish like to eat them. Farmers can grow these fish in the lakes and rivers. Workers can
collect and cut the plants with machines. Then they can make fertilizer to make their crops grow
better. They can also make feed for their farm animals. Maybe it will be possible to make
methane gas for energy. (We burn gas from petroleum for energy.
Methane gas comes from plants.)

Then poor tropical countries will not have to buy so much expensive petroleum. Maybe in the
future people will love the water hyacinth instead of hating it.

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Questions 1-
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?

Write

YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

1 Water hyacinths grow very thick on some tropical lakes and rivers.

2 Water hyacinths help make water clean.

3 Water hyacinths grow in parts of Asia and Africa.

4 Some kinds of fish like to eat water hyacinths.

5 Water hyacinths can make petroleum.

6 Water hyacinths are a tree crop.

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Reading Practice

How Do Many Hearing-impaired People Talk?

Hearing-impaired people cannot hear sounds well. How do they “hear” words?

Many hearing-impaired people use sign language. They talk with their hands. Two hearing- impaired
people can talk to each other. They both use sign language. Sometimes a person who can hear and
interprets for hearing-impaired people. The person listens to someone talking, and then he or she
makes hand signs. There are two kinds of hand sign. Some signs are for whole words. For example,
there is one hand sign for the word love. There are hand signs for different actions, things, and ideas.
Some of the signs are very easy, for example, the sign for eat, milk, and house. You can see what
they mean. Others are more difficult, for example, the sign for star, egg, and week.

The second kind of hand sign is fingerspelling. In fingerspelling, there is a sign for every letter in the
alphabet. For example, to fingerspell the word love, a person makes four different signs. It is much
slower to fingerspell, but is useful for signing names and technical words. People can use both kinds
of hand signs together.

Each country has its own sign language. For example, American Sign Language (ASL) is very
different from British Sign Language. Using sign language is almost like a dance. The whole body
talks. Sign languages are beautiful.

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Questions 1-
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in the reading passage?

Write

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

1 Hearing-impaired people cannot hear sounds well.

2 A person who interprets for hearing-impaired people cannot hear.
3 There are more signs for words than for letters.
4 Japanese people use ASL.
5 Finger spelling has signs for numbers.
6 Africans cannot learn ASL because they don't speak English.
7 Only the hands move in ASL.
8 It is difficult for children to learn ASL.

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Reading Practice

Mau Piailug, ocean navigator

Mau sailed from Hawaii to Tahiti using traditional methods

In early 1976, Mau Piailug, a fisherman, led an expedition in which he sailed a traditional
Polynesian boat across 2,500 miles of ocean from Hawaii to Tahiti. The Polynesiai Voyaging
Society had organised the expedition. Its purpose was to find out if seafarers in the distant past
could have found their way from one island to the other without navigational instruments, or
whether the islands had been populated by accident. At the time, Mau was the only man alive who
knew how to navigate just by observing the stars, the wind and the sea. He had never before sailed
to Tahiti, which was a long way to the south. However, he understood how the wind and the sea
behave around islands, so he was confident he could find his way. The voyage took him and his
crew a month to complete and he did it without a compass or charts.

His grandfather began the task of teaching him how to navigate when he was still a baby. He
showed him pools of water on the beach to teach him how the behaviour of the waves and wind
changed in different places. Later, Mau used a circle of stones to memorise the positions of the
stars. Each stone was laid out in the sand to represent a star.

The voyage proved that Hawaii’s first inhabitants came in small boats and navigated by reading the
sea and the stars. Mau himself became a keen teacher, passing on his traditional secrets to people of
other cultures so that his knowledge would not be lost. He explained the positions of the stars to his
students, but he allowed them to write things down because he knew they would never be able to
remember everything as he had done.

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Questions 1-
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1 ?

Write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1.....................At the time of his voyage, Mau had unique navigational skills.

2.....................Mau was familiar with the sea around Tahiti.

3. Mau thought it would be difficult to use a compass and charts.

4. Mau’s grandfather was his only teacher.

5. Mau used stones to learn where each star was situated in the sky.

6. The first inhabitants of Hawaii could read and write.

7. Mau expected his students to memorise the positions of the stars.

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