READING PRACTICE

MULTIPLE CHOICE

Choose A, B, C, or D which you think fits best according to the text

READING PASSAGE 1
Nelson Rodker was two years Elizabeth's senior, and was a model child in every way. Elizabeth, on the
other hand, began her life as a rebellious, spunky and passionate child, but was extraordinarily pretty, and
such children are never called difficult; they are called original. It was their parents' ardent hope that their
children might be friends and, when they grew up, like each other well enough to marry.
In order to ensure this, the children were brought together. If Elizabeth looked about to misbehave, her
mother placed her hand on Elizabeth's forearm and, with a little squeeze Elizabeth learned to dread, would
say in tones of determined sweetness: 'Darling, don't you want to see Nelson's chemistry set?' Elizabeth did
not want to see it - or his stamp collection. As she grew older, she did not want to dance with Nelson or go
to his school reception. But she did these things. That warm pressure on her forearm was as effective as a
slap, although her compliance was not gained only by squeezes and horrified looks. Elizabeth had begun to
have a secret life: she hated Nelson and the Rodkers with secret  fury. While she was too young to wonder if
this loathing included her parents, she felt that if they forced Nelson upon her and chose the Rodkers for
their dearest friends, they must in some way be against her. At the same time she realised that they were
foolable. If she smiled at Nelson, they were happy and considered her behaviour impeccable. If rude, she
spent weeks in the pain of constant lectures. Thus, she learned to turn a cheerful face while keeping the fires
of her dislike properly banked. The fact of the matter was that an afternoon of Nelson's stamp collection was
good for two afternoons hanging around the park with her real friends.
The beautiful daughters of the nervous well-to-do are tended like orchids, especially in New York.
Elizabeth's friends were carefully picked over. The little O'Connor girl was common; that her father had won
a Pulitzer prize was of no matter. The one friend her mother approved of was Holly Lukas, whose mother
was an old friend. Elizabeth never brought her real friends home, since, with the exception of Holly, they
were all wrong: the children of broken homes, of people with odd political or religious preferences or of
blacklisted movie producers. Elizabeth learned the hard way that these children would not be made
comfortable in her house. This might have put a crimp in Elizabeth's social life except that none of her
friends wanted to entertain at home. They knew early on that the best place to conduct a private life was in
public.
Like most girls her age, Elizabeth became horse crazy. She did not want to share this passion with her
parents, who felt riding once a week was quite enough, so she made a deal with the stable that, in exchange
for a free lesson, she would clean out the stalls on Tuesdays. This, however, was not known by her mother,
who had her expensively outfitted. These riding clothes Elizabeth carried in a rucksack along with her real
riding clothes - an old pair of blue jeans and a ratty sweater. It was soon discovered that Elizabeth was
coming home late one extra afternoon a week stinking of horse. She was made to remove her jodhpurs at the
service entrance and, when these garments were found to be relatively horseless, a search was made and the
offending jeans rooted out. Elizabeth was mute. One word about manure, and her riding days were over. But
manure was not on her mother's mind and, in fact, when she learned that Elizabeth spent one day a week in
the company of a pitchfork, she was much relieved.
At college Elizabeth had her first taste of freedom. While similarly restrained girls went wild, she reveled
in being left alone and staying up late reading anything she liked. Her parents were not against reading, but
Elizabeth's reading habits contributed to eyestrain and bad posture and, besides, all that reading made one
lopsided. At home on holidays she was correctness itself. In the middle of her first love affair, she was
grown up enough to restrain herself from calling her beloved in Vermont, lest her parents find him on the
telephone bill. Elizabeth's parents set great store on adult behavior. Had they known what sort of adult
Elizabeth had become, great would have been their dismay.
After graduation, her decision to live in New York was not easily come by, but she loved New York and
wanted to enjoy it finally on her own terms. Using as collateral a diamond-and-sapphire bracelet left to her
by her grandmother, she borrowed enough money to rent an apartment in Greenwich Village. Through a
friend of the O'Connor girl's father, she found a job at a publishing company and went to work. Her    
parents were puzzled by this. The daughters of their friends were announcing their engagements in the
Times. Elizabeth further puzzled them by refusing to take a cent of their money, although her mother knew
the truth: what you dole out to the young binds them to you. To have Elizabeth owing nothing was
disconcerting to say the least.
1. What characterized Elizabeth’s treatment as a young child?
A. She was surrounded with children who were older than her.
B. She was regarded by adults as being exceptionally intelligent.
C. She was excused any bad behavior due to her good looks.
D. She was painstakingly prepared for future relationships.
2. What is implied about Elizabeth’s childhood in the second paragraph?
A. She compiled with her parent’s wishes form a sense of duty.
B. She tolerated her mother’s plans in order to achieve her own ends.
C. She spent time with Nelson despite his parents being set against her.
D. She disliked having to hide her true feelings from those around her.
3. What do we learn about Elizabeth’s school friends in the third paragraph?
A. They were embarrassed that their parents had successful career.
B. They were reluctant to invite friends back to their house.
C. The felt uncomfortable in the presences of Elizabeth’s mother.
D. They caused Elizabeth to come into conflict with her parents.
4. When Elizabeth’s mother found out about her daughter’s work at the riding school, she _______.
A. calmed down, as she had been expecting something else.
B. was angry about the unnecessary purchase she had made.
C. was uninterested in anything to do with the riding school.
D. forced Elizabeth to throw away the old pair of jeans.
5. Why would Elizabeth’s parents have been disappointed in her during her college days?
A. Her excessive reading went against how they had brought her up.
B. Her changed appearance would not have been as they wished it.
C. Her wild social life meant she could not be studying hard.
D. Her clandestine relationship would have shocked them.
6. Once she moved back to New York, Elizabeth resolved to _______.
A. sell her grandmother’s valuable bracelet.
B. stay a single working woman
C. exist unsupported by her parents
D. try to be more positive about the city

READING PASSAGE 2:
ALL THOSE YEARS AGO
WE DON'T forget, thought Mma Ramotswe. Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as
the sky may sometimes be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, of smells, of
places, of little things that happened to us and which come back, unexpectedly, to remind us who we are.
And who am I? I am Precious Ramotswe, citizen of Botswana, daughter of Obed Ramotswe who died
because he had been a miner and could no longer breathe. His life was unrecorded; who is there to write
down the lives of ordinary people?
I AM Obed Ramotswe, and I was born near Mahalapye in 1930. Mahalapye is halfway between
Gaborone and Francis-town, on that road that seems to go on and on forever. It was a dirt road in those days,
of course, and the railway line was much more important. The track came down from Bulawayo, crossed
into Botswana at Plumtree, and then headed south down the side of the country all the way to Mafikeng, on
the other side.
As a boy I used to watch the trains as they drew up at the siding. They let out great clouds of steam, and
we would dare one another to run as close as we could to it. The stokers would shout at us, and the station
master would blow his whistle, but they never managed to get rid of us. We hid behind plants and boxes and
dashed out to ask for coins from the closed windows of the trains. We saw the white people look out of their
windows, like ghosts, and sometimes they would toss us one of their Rhodesian pennies-large copper coins
with a hole in the middle-or, if we were lucky, a tiny silver coin we called a tickey, which could buy us a
small tin of syrup. Mahalapye was a straggling village of huts made of brown, sun-baked mud bricks and a
few tin-roofed buildings. These belonged to the Government or the Railways, and they seemed to us to
represent distant, unattainable luxury. There was a school run by an old Anglican priest and a white woman
whose face had been half-destroyed by the sun. They both spoke Setswana, which was unusual, but they
taught us in English, insisting, on the pain of a thrashing, that we left our own language outside in the
playground.
On the other side of the road was the beginning of the plain that stretched out into the Kalahari. It was
featureless land, cluttered with low thorn trees, on the branches of which there perched the hornbills and the
fluttering molopes, with their long, trailing tail feathers. It was a world that seemed to have no end, and that,
I think, is what made Africa in those days so different. There was no end to it. A man could walk, or ride,
forever, and he would never get anywhere.
I am sixty now, and I do not think God wants me to live much longer. Perhaps there will be a few years
more, but I doubt it; I saw Dr Moffat at the Dutch Reformed Hospital in Mochudi who listened to my chest.
He could tell that I had been a miner, just by listening, and he shook his head and said that the mines have
many different ways of hurting a man. As he spoke, I remembered a song which the Sotho miners used to
sing. They sang: 'The mines eat men. Even when you have left them, the mines may still be eating you.' We
all knew this was true. You could be killed by falling rock or you could be killed years later, when going
underground was just a memory, or even a bad dream that visited you at night. The mines would come back
for their payment, just as they were coming back for me now. So I was not surprised by what Dr Moffat
said.
Some people cannot bear news like that. They think they must live forever, and they cry and wail when
they realise that their time is coming. I do not feel that, and I did not weep at that news which the doctor
gave me. The only thing that makes me sad is that I shall be leaving Africa when I die. I love Africa, which
is my mother and my father. When I am dead, I shall miss the smell of Africa, because they say that where
you go, wherever that may be, there is no smell and no taste.
I'm not saying that I'm a brave man-I'm not-but I really don't seem to mind this news I have been given. I
can look back over my sixty years and think of everything that I have seen and of how I started with nothing
and ended up with almost two hundred cattle. And I have a good daughter, a loyal daughter, who looks after
me well and makes me tea while I sit here in the sun and look out to the hills in the distance. When you see
these hills from a distance, they are blue; as all the distances in this country are. We are far from the sea
here, with Angola and Namibia between us and the coast, and yet we have this great empty ocean of blue
above us and around us. No sailor could be lonelier than a man standing in the middle of our land, with the
miles and miles of blue about him.
1. What is the writer implying in the first paragraph?
A. Memories need to be recalled to make sure they do not disappear.
B. We have no control over our memories but they are a part of us.
C. Few people are interested in the lives of the ordinary people.
D. Obed Ramotswe was a most unfortunate man.
2. What is suggested about the local boys?
A. They often tried to rob the people.
B. The railway employees had little control over how they behaved.
C. They were reluctant to get too close to the railway track.
D. The passengers were rather irritated by their presence.
3. When talking about Mahalapye, Obed paints a picture of _______.
A. a group of houses reflecting a social divide
B. a village which was arranged neatly around the railway line
C. children receiving an education which was inadequate
D. local children who were encouraged to pursue their own culture
4. What point is Obed making in paragraph 6?
A. The doctor was reluctant to tell him any bad news.
B. He refuses to despair when hearing bad news
C. People react to bad news in very similar ways
D. Bad news is never as bad as it seems.
5. What does Obed imply in the last paragraph?
A. He would like to see more of his only child.
B. His life has been a hard struggle to make ends meet.
C. He has found living in Africa a solidarity experience.
D. Despite problems, his achievements have been praiseworthy.
6. The overall impression Obed gives of life in Africa in his day is that it was a land where _______.
A. the problems of everyday life could easily be forgotten.
B. there were opportunities for people to take advantage of
C. the geography had a profound effect on people’s character
D. strong family ties and loyalties were paramount