Table Of ContentPublished by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011, USA
10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia
0
Cambridge University Press 1988
Fist published 1988
Reprinted 1990
Printed in Great Britain
by Scotprint Ltd, Musselburgh, Scotland
ISBN 0 521 34817 X
Copyright
The law allows a reader to make a single copy of part of a book
for purposes of private study. It does not allow the copying of
entire books or the making of multiple copies of extracts. Written
permission for any such copying must always be obtained from the
publisher in advance.
Contents
Introduction iv
Young and old 1
Every day 2
Where we live 4
Some interesting numbers
A year in England 7
Tooth task 8
Three fish 9
What can you do with an old can?
Coloured legs 12
Water 12
Poem 14
A camel or a car? 15
Miss Angell- secretary 17
Fresh from the kitchen 20
Noises people hate 23
A rose called 'Peace' 25
From the clouds 27
Lucky babies 30
Colours 32
Two poems 34
A road for Rhenigidale 35
Singing like a bird 37
Who was Dracula? 39
50 kilos a year 40
Meet Nasredin 43
120 cats - and Blossom 44
Bicycles up Kilimanjaro 47
A new family 50
Makeup for men 52
Cows, customers and cold feet 54
How to remember 56
The beginning, the middle and the end 58
Answers 59
Acknowledgements inside back cover
Introduction
To the reader
Ask a teacher (or othfir English speaker) to help you with this introduction.
Welcome to Something to Read 1, a collection of 32 short texts on a variety of subjects
for Beginner and Elementary students of Enghsh. As you'll see from the Contents page,
there are three groups of texts; the first group is easier than the second, and the second
is easier than the third. Within each group the early texts are usually simpler than the
later ones. It's not necessary, however, to start at the beginning and read through the
whole book in order. We've provided you with a choice of topics so that you can look
for things that interest you personally.
We believe that it's useful for you to begin reading authentic English as early as pos-
sible. Many texts therefore include extracts from books, magazines etc. Where such
authentic material has been shortened - for reasons of difficulty, space or organisation
- you'll see [. . .].
When you're reading, we suggest that you concentrate on general meaning first
rather than trying to understand every word. In other words, try not to use a dictionary
all the time. Where we feel that a dictionary would* b.e particularly helpful, we tell you.
After the &st few texts, there are tasks, marked These are there to give you help
with meaning and opportunities to assess your reading, if you want them. These tasks
are not tests of memory, so do look at the text while you're daing them. The answers
to the tasks are on pages 59-60.
We hope you enjoy the book!
To the teacher
Something to Read 1 is intended to provide more extensive reading practice than is gen-
erally possible in a course book With this book the choice of what, when and how much
to read is, we feel, best left to the students. The teacher's role is simply to make the
book available, although you might like to provide time in class for students to talk about
what they've read. To start your students off, we suggest that you explain the above
introduction to them, or provide a translation, and then encourage them to choose a text
and start reading.
Whatever course book your students are using, it may be a helpful indication of level
to know that students using Level 1o f the Cambmdge English Course should be able to
begin reading from the first group of texts by the time they reach Unit 12 and from the
second and third groups at about Units 16 and 24 respectively.
Every day
*
Read this with a dictionary - look up only the underlined words.
. . .
In the world
More than 172,000 babies are born.
204,820 tonnes of fish are caught.
75,972 cars, 240,821 TV sets and 419,178 radios are made.
1,780,465 people travel by plane.
More than 2 cigarettes are made for every man, woman and child in the world.
75 Americans, 55 Japanese and 5 Swedes kill themselves, and 34 Thais, 30 Brazilians
and 1.5 Canadians are murdered.
115,000 tourists arrive in Spain, 51,000 in Italy, and 32,000 in Britain.
The Sultan of Brunei - the richest man in the world - gets $282,191.
11,673,342 Russians go to the cinema.
. . .
In Britain
2,000 babies are born, 1,100 couples
get married, and 1,800 people die.
There are 68,500,000 phone calls.
mpfesg et maiFi.isd
32,000,000 letters are posted.
126 people go to prison.
5,046 ueoole take their driving test. r
,I
and 2,454 of them pass.
1,991,780p eople travel on the L rrrxrx*i,
Underground railway. fu prtso~
. . .
And
The k son your head grow about 0.33 m.,a nd between 30 and 100 of them f-all o ut.
You blink 17,000 times.
While you sleep you dream for about 2 hours and lose 340g. in weight.
Where we live
Cities and towns
in cities- a nd
towns
nnof
40% of the people in the world live in cities and towns. In Britain 90.83%o f people live
in cities and towns; in Burundi it's 2.29%.
\.
Rich countries, poor countries
Map 2 shows
how much money
people earn in
one year in the
different coun-
ties of the
world. For exam-
ple, in the United
States people
earn an average
of $6,400 in one
year.
TABLE 1
The Lot of the Many, a Lot for the Few
Average income per head, 1981
Shares of world populi " I, 1981 Shares of world income, 1981 US$
30
809
1600
3200
6400
0
data not available
Sources: Lloyds Bank Economic Review on Tatwan
1983; WorldBankAtlas 1980, 1983 Extremes: Bhutan, Laos $80 Qatar $27,720
Table 1 shows that the poor countries (where rich countries (where people earn an average of
people &TI an average of $400) have 49%o f the $6,400) have 67% of the money but 15% of the
population of the world but 5% of the money. The population.
Some interesting numbers
One
Multiplying Is gives numbers that are the same when read from the right or the left.
Here it stops, but look also at 11:
and at 111:
