Reading Comprehension Passages 5. [antikvár]

To the Teacher These passages and exercises have been selected or prepared at the 'structure' level of Collins English Library, Level 6. That has not been very difficult. Much modern or fairly modern written English, including unedited writing, is no more complex than Level 6. If you allow that a comma with and or a semi-colon with but often replaces a full-stop, Nevil Shute, for example, wrote full-length novels at about the structure level of Level 4. The vocabulary of Level 6 contains some 2500 headwords. These are sufficient for many purposes; a student who knows most of them will get far more than a general idea of meaning from these passages. Part of the purpose of this collection is to give students practice in reading selected pieces of unedited English with fair understanding. It is the vocabulary, not the structural complexity, that may need extra effort. But after five or six years of English study, students should not be frightened off by a few unfamiliar words, provided the passages are kept short, as these are. Any word that is not known or cannot be recalled should be explained at once, as simply as possible. Give one meaning only—the one relevant to the context, e.g. Commissioner, chief officer. To the Student Half the passages in this book are exactly as their authors wrote them; they have not been made easy for you. So you will be doing well if you find you have a good idea of what they are about. When you read a passage for the first time, read it fairly quickly and try to understand its general meaning. On a second reading, be more careful, especially at sections that seem more difficult. If there are some words you do not know, do not spend a long time puzzling over them; instead, look through the exercises. You may find that a particular word does not occur in the exercises. In that case it is not essential that you understand it and remember it. Words that do help to explain important ideas are dealt with in the exercises.