Английский язык

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it.

People have enjoyed sports for thousands of years. Children, men and women play sports both for pleasure and for challenge. Every sport involves physical skill. Every sport has a set of rules that the players of the sport follow. In some sports one person competes against other individuals. Examples of these sports include boxing, tennis and so on. In many games one team competes against the other team.
People can go in for winter and summer sports. Summer sports are typical for warmer countries. Those who live in regions that experience cold winters have long enjoyed ice skating, skiing, and sledding. These activities have grown immensely in popularity over the years. Today thousands of resorts cater to the winter tourist trade, and millions of people each year take winter sports vacations.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it.

A tree is a woody plant of a big size, usually over 20 feet high. It grows with a single trunk with branches on the upper part. The parts of a tree are the leaves and needles, buds, cones and flowers, branches and twigs, a trunk or a stem and roots. The world’s tallest tree is situated in California, the USA. The world’s oldest tree is also in California. It is more than 4600 years old.
Trees have many important functions. For example, they help prevent erosion. They also provide building materials. Many trees are grown by people because of their edible fruits and nuts. Without trees it would be difficult for people to breathe. Trees keep our air supply fresh. They take in harmful gases and produce oxygen. In fact, this is the way trees and other plants make their food. One large tree can provide a day’s oxygen for up to four people.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it.

When you look at a coffee bean, it’s really hard to believe that such a small thing is so important for so many people. Coffee is the world’s second most traded thing. It is by all means one of the most popular drinks ever. Statistics says that the major part of the planet population drink coffee. Some prefer black coffee, that is coffee served without milk. Others like white coffee  — coffee with milk.
However, few people know enough about coffee beans. First of all, coffee beans are actually not beans. They are the pits of a fruit. In fact, coffee comes from coffee cherries and they are only called beans because they look a bit like other beans. Secondly, most of the world’s coffee comes from one country. Brazil is by far the largest producer of coffee in the world selling nearly a third of all the coffee drunk in the world.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it.

People all over the world love Christmas. In English-⁠speaking countries it is the 25th of December. It is a time for buying and giving presents, having parties and being with family.
People start to get ready for Christmas in late October or early November. Shop keepers decorate their shops with lights. They do it because shoppers start to look for presents. Shops are very busy at this time and stay open late. People with family and friends in other countries often send them cards and presents. Everyone begins to make plans for the coming holiday. Most people buy Christmas trees and put them inside the house. They put colourful decorations on them. They also sing carols. Children enjoy Advent calendars with little doors for each day until Christmas. Every day they open a new door and see a picture or a chocolate inside..

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it.

People all over the world love Christmas. In English-⁠speaking countries it is the 25th of December. It is a time for buying and giving presents, having parties and being with family.
People start to get ready for Christmas in late October or early November. Shop keepers decorate their shops with lights. They do it because shoppers start to look for presents. Shops are very busy at this time and stay open late. People with family and friends in other countries often send them cards and presents. Everyone begins to make plans for the coming holiday. Most people buy Christmas trees and put them inside the house. They put colourful decorations on them. They also sing carols. Children enjoy Advent calendars with little doors for each day until Christmas. Every day they open a new door and see a picture or a chocolate inside.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it.

Thanks to their industries, British towns grew into cities in the late 1800s. Many people became much better off, and their standards of living improved greatly. Rich families even had houses with bathrooms.
At that time the British took advantage of new railway lines built to carry people and goods from one part of the country to another. For the first time people could travel long distances quickly and cheaply. Steam engines were used to power locomotives as well as boats. One more improvement was the setup of a cheap postal service. Streets were lit by gas lamps, so they became safe. Special men lit the lamps every evening. People could also travel around the city cheaply using the horse-⁠drawn buses. Some people, even women, started to ride bicycles. So, Great Britain and the British people were celebrating their wealth.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it.

A long time ago men learnt how to make structures with walls and roofs to protect themselves from bad weather and wild animals. These ancient structures were quite primitive and very different from modern buildings. Still, they gave people shelter and comfort which they needed. Now there are many types of buildings in the world. They vary in size, shape and function.
There are several factors which influence the construction of a building. Firstly, builders need to consider which building materials are available or suit better. Secondly, they must know what a building is going to be used for. Moreover, they should think about land prices and climate in the area where they are going to construct a building. It is not a very good idea to build a house with big windows in the north or construct a lot of detached houses in the city centre where land is very expensive.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1,5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1,5 minutes to read it.

Horses are beautiful and powerful animals that can be found in almost every country in the world. They have oval-⁠shaped hooves, long tails, short hair and long, slender legs. Horses have long been domesticated by people. In the past, they were the most common means of travelling and transportation. Farmers also used them as a source of motive power. Today, horses still serve in work roles. However, they are just as common for sport, recreation and hobby. Domestication of horses has led to wide variations in the characteristics of breeds of horses. They vary from very slim to massive. Some horses are built for speed, strength or steadiness. The most valuable ones are certainly a combination of these important qualities.
Horses are highly social herd animals. They prefer to live in a group. There is always a dominant horse in the herd, while others obey it. The dominant horse directs the behaviour of others.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it.

Acid rain is a serious environmental problem these days. Basically, we have acid rain when water in the atmosphere mixes with dangerous gases and then falls onto the ground. It can fall as rain, snow, dust or even fog. When it comes into contact with animals, plants and even buildings or cars, it does a lot of harm to them. It also damages the soil. If it gets into a river or a lake, water creatures there suffer, too.
It is obvious that acid rain is caused by air pollution. Factories and plants send smoke into the air. People burn fossil fuels to produce energy. They also drive their cars or use public transport instead of using their bikes or walking. Sometimes acid rain happens because of volcanic activity or other natural causes, but in most cases, it is man-made. We should consider our environmental footprint seriously and start doing everything we can to stop acid rain.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it.

...You don’t see many birds in winter. Most have left your area. Those that stay are not as active. Activity uses energy that is needed to keep warm. The worst problems for birds in winter are getting enough heat and holding on to the heat once it is made. These are problems for all birds. But it is especially true for very small ones. They cannot find enough food. The weather stays so cold for so long that they cannot eat enough to keep alive. But birds have many ways of fighting the cold.
You shiver to keep warm. The heat that you make is made mostly in your muscles. The muscles make more heat when they are active. So one way of keeping warm is to move about, use your muscles. Another way is to shiver. When your body needs heat, the muscles tighten and loosen quickly. They become active. Just as you shiver to keep warm, so do birds.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it.

How many nostrils do you have? Four. Two you can see, two you can’t. This discovery came from observing how fish breathe. Fish get their oxygen from water. Most of them have two pairs of nostrils, a forward-⁠facing set for letting water in and a pair of "exhaust pipes" for letting it out again. The question is, if humans evolved from fishes, where did the other pair of nostrils go. The answer is that they migrated back inside the head to become internal. To do this they somehow had to work their way back through the teeth.
Similar gaps between the teeth can also be seen at an early stage of the human birth. When they fail to join up, the result is a cleft palate. So one ancient fish explains two ancient human mysteries. The most recent research on noses, incidentally, shows that we use each of our two external nostrils to detect different smells.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it.

Antarctica is the driest place on Earth. Parts of the continent have seen no rain for two million years. A desert is technically defined as a place that receives less than 10 inches of rain a year. The Sahara gets just 1 inch of rain a year.
As well as the driest place on Earth, Antarctica can also claim to be the wettest and the windiest. Seventy percent of the world’s fresh water is found there in the form of ice, and its wind speeds are the fastest ever recorded. The unique conditions in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica are caused by so-⁠called katabatic winds. These occur when cold, dense air is pulled downhill simply by the force of gravity. Though Antarctica is a desert, these completely dry parts of it are called, somewhat ironically, oases. They are so similar to conditions on Mars that NASA used them to test the Viking mission.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it.

The highest mountain is located on Mars. The giant volcano Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in the solar system and in the known universe. At 14 miles and 388 miles across, it is almost three times the height of Mount Everest and so wide that its base would cover Arizona, or the whole of the area of the British Isles. The crater on the top is around 45 miles wide and over nearly 2 miles deep, easily big enough to swallow London.
We traditionally measure mountains by their height. If we measured them by their size, it would be meaningless to isolate one mountain in a range from the rest. That being so, Mount Everest would dwarf Olympus Mons. It is part of the gigantic range which is nearly 1,500 miles long.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it.

The ostrich is the bird that lays the smallest egg for its size. Although it is the largest single cell in nature, an ostrich egg is less than 2 per cent of the weight of the mother. A wren’s egg, by comparison, is 13 per cent of its weight. The largest egg in comparison with the size of the bird is that of the Little Spotted kiwi. Its egg accounts for 26 per cent of its own weight.
An ostrich egg weighs as much as twenty-⁠four hen’s eggs; to soft-⁠boil one takes forty-⁠five minutes. Queen Victoria tucked into one for breakfast and declared it among the best meals she had ever eaten. The largest egg laid by any animal  — including the dinosaurs  — belonged to the elephant bird of Madagascar, which became extinct in 1700. It was ten times the size of an ostrich egg, nine litres in volume and the equivalent of 180 chicken’s eggs.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it.

Despite its status as a proverbial fact, a goldfish’s memory isn’t a few seconds long. Research demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that goldfish have a memory-⁠span of at least three months and can distinguish between different shapes, colours and sounds. They were trained to push a lever to earn a food reward; when the lever was fixed to work only for an hour a day, the fish soon learned to activate it at the correct time. A number of similar studies have shown that farmed fish can easily be trained to feed at particular times and places in response to an audible signal.
Goldfish don’t swim into the side of the bowl, not because they can see it, but because they are using a pressure-⁠sensing system called the lateral line. Certain species of blind cave fish are able to navigate perfectly well in their lightless environment by using their lateral line system alone.