Task 1. Read the text below and match the words from the article 1–10 with their meanings a–j.
The police have a duty to every householder
Matthew's 21 and has been living in a "bash" for six months. His parents don't know where he is. His girlfriend, Nicky, is younger and three months pregnant. The "bash" is built from planks and crates, roofed with old rugs and plastic sheeting and raised off the ground with wooden pallets. The nearest running water is in a nearby church hall. There's no electricity. Matthew and Nicky don't go hungry. A mobile kitchen brings soup and rolls every night. Students from King's College, across the river, regularly bring food. On the face of it – a brave face – they wouldn't give up this life for anything. They don't bother with the dole. Matthew candidly says that it's a waste of time when they can make do by begging in the West End. It's this that brings them into conflict with us. Matthew talks about Paul and Charlie, both officers at nearby Kennington Road Police Station. "Paul's caught me begging once, he gave me a warning", Matthew says. "But if he catches me again he'll do me". Paul puts the other point of view. "Some people think the Vagrancy Act is obsolete and should be scrapped. But while it's there, we have to enforce it. And we have to think of the nuisance to other people". Indeed, most commuters find the beggars and their dogs frightening. Many think the police should evict the vagrants and clear away the "bashes". But the fact is that we owe a duty to these citizens too. Our real work with the "bashdwellers" is not the cat and mouse game of trying to catch them with their palms out. It's the work the public never see: helping to get someone a hospital bed. Encouraging those who need to visit drug and alcohol rehabilitation centres. Directing newly homeless people to hostels and free kitchens. Putting our heads together with social workers, housing officers, welfare and benefits offices and voluntary organisations. It's spending hours talking to homeless people finding out about their lives and their problems. Where they've come from. If their families know where they are. And persuading the young ones to return home. "We'll try to give them the respect that every Londoner is entitled to", Paul says. Partly as a result of his help, Nicky and Matthew have reached the end of their life on the road. They're moving to a flat before their baby is born. Reading this you may be in local government, a social worker, architect, counsellor, teacher, or anyone with an interest in the plight of the homeless. If you would like to know more about how we can work together to ease the problems of homelessness, please call the Metropolitan Police 0800 662244.
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| 1. crates 2. rug 3. on the face of it 4. obsolete 5. scrapped 6. evict 7. rehabilitation 8. is entitled to 9. counsellor 10. plight | a) very old fashioned, out of date b) has a right to c) remove, take away d) large, wooden boxes e) someone who gives help and advice f) desperate, difficult situation g) apparently h) cancelled, got rid of i) a kind of small carpet j) helping people find their way back into society |
Task 2. Answer the questions according to the reading passage.
Active passive smoking
Psychologist George Spilich at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, decided to find out whether, as many smokers say, smoking helps them to think and concentrate. He put non-smokers, active smokers and smokers deprived of cigarettes through a series of tests. In the first test, each subject sat before a computer screen and pressed a key as soon as he or she recognized a target letter. In this simple test, smokers, deprived smokers and non-smokers performed equally well. The next test was more complex. Non-smokers were faster, but under the stimulation of nicotine, active smokers were faster than deprived smokers. In the third test of short-term memory, non-smokers made the fewest errors, but deprived smokers committed fewer errors than active smokers. In the fourth test, non-smokers were the best and deprived smokers bested those who had smoked a cigarette just before testing. As the tests became more complex, non-smokers performed better than smokers by wider and wider margins.
1. It is pointed out in the passage that the purpose of George Spilich's experiments is…
a) to test whether smoking has a positive effect on the mental capacity of smokers;
b) to show how smoking damages people's mental capacity;
c) to prove that smoking affects people's regular performance;
d) to show that non-smokers are less productive at work than smokers;
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e) to prove that nicotine helps people's short term memory.
2. We understand from the passage that…
a) active smokers in general performed better than deprived smokers;
b) active smokers responded more quickly than the other subjects in all tests;
c) the other subjects were not better than nonsmokers in the simplest test;
d) deprived smokers gave the slowest responses to the various tasks;
e) non-smokers committed more errors than deprived smokers in most of the tests.
3. George Spilich's experiment was conducted in such a way as to…
a) check the effectiveness of nicotine on nonsmokers;
b) put the subjects through increasingly complex tests;
c) finish the tests as quickly as possible;
d) force the subjects to recall the words they learned;
e) compel the subjects.
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